Making $200K/Year in 3 Years w/ This High-Cash Flow Strategy

David:
This is the BiggerPockets Podcast show 764.

Brittany:
Just three years ago, I was working 60 hours a week for somebody else, and now I have a portfolio of over 5.5 million dollars.

David:
What’s going on, everyone? This is David Greene, your host of the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Here today with my co-pilot and partner in crime, Rob Abasolo. Rob, how you doing today?

Rob:
Good. Hey, you forgot to say that we’re the biggest, the baddest, the best real estate podcast show on the internet.

David:
I did not forget to say that. I just let you say it because I remember what it was like when I hosted this with Brandon and he never let me talk.

Rob:
Genius.

David:
I’m not going to do the same thing. So welcome to saying the alliteration to start the show, we are the biggest, the best, and the baddest real estate podcast in the world. On that tone, today’s interview was with Brittany Swait, who has accumulated 59 units over three years with a foundation in property management using techniques that we talk about on this podcast. It was an awesome show. Rob, what were some of your favorite parts?

Rob:
Very cool story. Full-time mom, full-time property manager, full-time building a real estate empire. I think for a lot of the newbies out there, they’re going to love today’s episode because, personally, I think she totally demystifies rehab costs. I think when you’re getting into rehabs in the BRRRR, where you’re like, “Man, I don’t know how much things are going to cost. It’s scary. How should I do this?” She just has a way of dispelling that and I think making it feel feasible to the everyday person. What about you?

David:
Yeah. She did a wonderful job of giving very practical information mixed with the goal setting element. So this is when you’re going to want to listen to twice. It’s an amazing story. Please share it with anyone you know. Before I throw to Rob in the quick tip, I just want to say, listen closely for the word shmedium, and when you hear it, I want you to go to the comments and tell us what you think about our business idea.

Rob:
That’s a good one. I’ve already put a deposit on a Lamborghini because I know how big of a business this is going to be.

David:
Yeah. So let’s bring us in today’s quick tip. What do you got for us, Rob?

Rob:
Buy nice and not thrice. Comes after twice. If you want to know what this means, you’re going to have to listen to the episode because we get into the philosophy of buying quality things.

David:
Absolutely, and that’s all we’re going to say. Listen more to understand why that can be beneficial in your business. Very powerful stuff though. All right. Let’s bring in Brittany.

David:
Today’s guest is Brittany Swait. Brittany has been investing for only three years. She currently owns 59 units as of this week. She added a few more since the time we first met her. She’s investing in Omaha and Miramar Beach, Florida. She loves watching basketball much like me, especially when it gives her an excuse to travel to a game and get short-term rental ideas from wherever she stays. Brittany, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast.

Brittany:
Thank you guys for having me.

David:
Yes, it is our pleasure. So before we dig into how you’ve accumulated such a impressive portfolio in a short period of time, was there a specific moment when your why got crystal clear for you? Can we start with that?

Brittany:
Yeah, for sure. So 2019, I was having some health issues, went into the hospital, had a surgery, came home. I was diagnosed with cancer. So came home. My son was about five at the time, and he wanted to learn his bike, learn to ride his bike. So I was really in an emotional state of I didn’t know what my future held, if I had a future, and I just felt really sad. So I said, “I’m going to give you 100% of my attention.” So I shut off my computer and my phone, nothing at that time mattered except for watching my son ride his bike. So we did that. We sat out in the front yard for about six hours, and I realized that was the first time that I had ever in my adult life disconnected from work, really. I had my first daughter at 19, and so since then I’d really been in survival mode instead of really living a life and thriving. So that was my, I guess, light bulb moment, really.

David:
Well, that’s pretty powerful. If you had to say what was stopping you from disconnecting, was it just everyday life stuff? Was it work? What was keeping that moment from happening before it did?

Brittany:
I always wanted to be the best, and I was really good at work. So I think we as mothers have this mom guilt. No matter how good or bad of a mother we are, we never feel like we do enough, but with work, I always felt like I’m successful. I can see it, I can see the numbers, I can see the promotions, I could see all that and I could feel it. So to me, it was just easiest to give my energy and attention to work because that’s what made me feel good and feel successful.

David:
Yeah, I can relate to that quite a bit.

Rob:
What was work, by the way, just so we understand what your career was at that time?

Brittany:
Yeah, so property management. At that time, I had been in it for about three years.

David:
There’s always something to do in property management. There’s never a time where you’re like, “I just don’t know what I could be doing right now.” So I can see that that would become easily become addicted. Then you measure in the dopamine of checking boxes and knowing you’re being productive, which all of us have. It’s like it’s very hard for those of us in this industry to have a day go by where we’re like, “What did I produce? What did I get done?” If there’s nothing there, then you just get this withdrawal feeling of you didn’t get any dopamine. There’s always something to do within the property management system. I can see that. Did you have a childhood or early years where you felt like you weren’t good enough for certain things and then when you got a taste of being good at something, you’re like, “Oh, I love this and I just want to keep pursuing it”?

Brittany:
I think just as a awkward teenager, I don’t know if everybody feels that, but I did, I did also take the test that tells you about your personality, and my number one characteristic is competition. So after I found that out, it all made sense. You like to do what you’re good at and you don’t do what you’re not good at. So really at that time I said, “Well, that makes sense. I know that I’m good at this so that’s why I enjoy doing so much.”

Rob:
Okay. So you’re a mom and you’re sitting on the step there watching your kid ride his bike, learn how to do all that, and you’re a property manager. I’m sure there’s a lot going on, but were you really loving being a property manager? Was that something that you always knew that you wanted to do or is that something that you just found yourself in organically? Was it an opportunity that just popped up randomly?

Brittany:
Yeah, it was a really random opportunity. So before that, I was a stay-at-home mom for a couple years, but I was in management prior to that. So I had just filled in. My cousin worked at this property management company and he was going to be out of town, and so he said, “Can you sit in on this meeting for me?” and I did. Long story short, the owner ended up bringing me on in the leasing department, and then I, in probably six months, ended up taking over the entire company, so overseeing all of operations for leasing, bookkeeping, and maintenance, and our construction crews.

Rob:
Wow, okay. So yeah, going back to when David was joking and saying, “Yeah, you’re never really bored in this.” Sounds like you probably weren’t. So were you loving this? Now you obviously have a portfolio that we’ll get into in a second, but is it the same grind property managing for someone else as yourself?

Brittany:
I always had a weird pride of ownership even though it wasn’t mine. I felt like I treated the company as it was, and so I loved it. I probably worked 60 to 80 hours a week for the first three years. It wasn’t until that moment when everything happened with my health that I said, “If something were to happen to me, if I weren’t to make it past this point, all I could say is that I spent the last three years of my life contributing to a company that is not even mine, number one, and number two, I have nothing after this.”

Rob:
Yeah. Do you feel like during that time, was it hard to stay positive? Are you a naturally positive person? I mean, you said you’re competitive and you always want to be the best. So was that behind any of this? Tell us a little bit about the mindset as you started to think about some of these changes in your life.

Brittany:
Yeah. So initially, I think anybody that’s diagnosed really at the beginning, there’s so many unknowns. So you lean on your doctors and you say, “Can I make it through this?” and they tell you the data. The data doesn’t make sense to me. So I said, “Well, I’m not dying. I’m going to make it through this.” So I would go to treatment and the whole time in my head I would be saying, “You’re fighting this. You’re fighting this. You’re going to make it through.” Ironically, I went through treatment. They expected to me to have another surgery to remove the tumor, and the tumor was gone when they went in there.

Rob:
Wow, that’s amazing.

Brittany:
So I said, “I won.” So my competition really came out at that point. I said, “Well, I won beating cancer.”

Rob:
Yeah. That’s amazing. Well, first of all, congratulations.

Brittany:
Thank you.

Rob:
I mean, we can say you’re competitive, and it sounds to me, really, you’re just a fighter, right? You take on things head on, and obviously, that comes into play as you started to get into the real estate world, you’re like, “All right. I’m managing for someone else. It’s time for me to do my own thing and build my own legacy.” So how did you and your husband evaluate the decision to leap into real estate and to actually drop the stability of your property management gig?

Brittany:
I was overseeing the actual portfolio. So I would see all the numbers and I would always say, “This seems really inaccessible. It seems so far out. You have to have a lot of money to get into this,” and we just didn’t. So we said, “How can we?” So we didn’t know. We ended up reading Rich Dad Poor Dad, and that lit the fire under both of us. So we looked at where we did have money. We had bought our house a few years before this. So we went and saw how much equity we had in it. We looked at my husband’s 401(k) and said, “Do we have options that we can just drain this?” Then my husband started a second job. He started a company so that we just had all this extra income that we could just throw towards investing.

Rob:
Really cool. Really cool. So what was the first property that you got into from this? Obviously, I’m sure you’re evaluating a lot, you’re researching a lot of options in front of you. Tell us about the first deal.

Brittany:
Yeah. So my closing agent that my boss had worked with for a long time had closed a deal and she had contacted me and said, “Hey, I have this landlord. He’s a doctor. He doesn’t have time to landlord anymore. He just wants to get out of it. He’s got a couple deals. Do you want me to send them over to you so you can look at them?” I was like, “Yeah, they’re probably going to be too expensive.” So she sends them over and I see a $80,000 asking price. I said, “Okay. 80,000? That seems attainable.” So I ran the numbers and I ran the numbers again and again and again because I said, “This can’t be right. He’s asking 80,000, but the current value of it is about 150,000.”

Brittany:
So to me, it was a no-brainer, and I said, “We have to buy this property. There wasn’t a if. There wasn’t a maybe.” I said, “What do we have to do to get this?” So we went and got a HELOC on our house. We drained my husband’s 401(k), and then we took all the of our savings that we had and scrapped it together and had … I don’t know how we came up with it all, honestly.

Rob:
Pretty low stakes all around sounds like.

Brittany:
Yeah. We just threw it all in.

Rob:
You’re jumping into the real estate pool at this point. Did you have a goal? Did you set a goal initially or were you just like, “I’m just going to buy a house and see where it goes”? Did you know that you wanted to build an empire?

Brittany:
So I just found our goals from 2019, and our goal was that we wanted to buy three rental properties in a year, and we wanted to own one million dollars in five years and five million dollars in real estate in 15 years. So that was our goal at the time.

Rob:
Did that seem impossible at that moment where you’re like, “Ooh, I don’t know if we can hit it,” or were you, I mean, obviously, we know you’re a fighter here, so was that like, “No problem”?

Brittany:
Yeah. It seemed attainable. So I didn’t want to create a goal that we wouldn’t be able to achieve and then feel discouraged. So I felt like it was safe to set that three-property goal.

Rob:
David is the master goal setter. We did a podcast not too long ago where we had to list out our goals. He’s like, “What are your goals?” and I was like, “I don’t know. I think, I don’t know, want this,” and then I was like, “What are your goals?” and he had 15 written out.

Brittany:
A scroll?

Rob:
Yeah. I was just like, “What?” He’s like, “I’ve got nothing prepared,” and the scroll just goes out infinitely and really inspired me to start writing it down. I think it’s good to have a small goal and a big goal the way that you did it. You had your one million dollar goal and your five million dollar goal. One of them is definitely obtainable. The other one obviously scarier, but as soon as you knock out that first goal, the next one seems pretty easy. So that’s how I approach all these things. I’m trying to goal set more and more.

David:
It’s funny you mentioned that because I just got back from Scottsdale two days ago at our house, Rob, doing a goal setting retreat. Apparently, you inspired this because you were like, “David is so good at setting goals.” I was like, “I didn’t know it was that good.” I need to share the gospel of goal setting with more people. So we had everybody out there and we went through goals and we incorporated them into business in other parts of our life.

David:
What came out of that event was this revelation to pretty much everyone there that goal setting is not as simple as write down what you want to accomplish. You have to incorporate it into, “How do I want my life to look and what kind of a person do I want to become?” because the best goals will require more of you than the person that you are right now. They force you to grow personally in order to be able to achieve things.

David:
Now, Brittany, I’m sure that that was a part of your journey. You started off working for someone else’s company, doing a great job, getting a lot of accolades. It was probably personally fulfilling, but it was taking away from the time with your kids. Cancer hits, and obviously, that’s going to shake everything up. Now you’re asking different questions, “What do I want my life to look like? Who do I want to be?” which is funny because that’s what comes right before we set new goals. So did you incorporate that into your goal setting? Was that more of a subconscious thing as you sat down and decided what you wanted your life to look like?

Brittany:
Yeah, I think. So I had read a book and I can’t remember what it was, but it basically says you imagine your life or you take what you want your life to look like and then you work backwards from there. So I said, “What do we want our lives to look like?” At that time, I said I want to buy an RV and be able to just travel wherever I want. It has since changed. I do not want an RV, and I do not want to take long road trips across the country, but seeing we want to move to Florida in a few years, and I said, “How do we do that?” and we just worked backwards from that point.

David:
I’ve always wondered if people … It’s very hard to come up with goals if we’re being honest. When you sit down, when I joined GoBundance, that was the thing that they made us do. They’re like, “What are your goals?” It was like I don’t think like that. I don’t think about what are my goals. I just think about how do I get through tomorrow. I didn’t know what my goals were, and you don’t realize how hard it is until you actually have to come up with them.

David:
Then I’ve noticed everyone has the same goals. They always involve the word freedom. There’s always an RV travel across the country, which is funny because I never as a kid was thinking, “All I want is to have an RV and to go to Omaha, Nebraska,” but yet that pops up. There’s always a beach somewhere like, “I want to be on a beach contemplating life,” which that’s like a vacation, right?

David:
I think it’s so hard to come up with goals that we just think about a vacation we would take and we’re like, “That’s what I want my whole life to be. I want my life to be a vacation,” and until you actually get real detailed about what you’re looking for, your reticular activating system, your subconscious does not know what you want your life to look like. It’s incredibly hard. So I applaud you coming on here and saying that you took on that challenge because that’s what you got to get figured out first, and then the real estate, the way you build up, will adapt to what you want those goals to be, but none of us are thinking about goals. We’re just thinking about the next unit, the next unit. Make the list, check the box, move on, get the dopamine hit, very similar to how you were living your life before.

David:
So you got that first deal, and I understand that you used the BRRRR method to stack from there. Walk us through the number of units and the cash flow that you added on every year using that strategy.

Brittany:
Yeah. So in our first year, we brought on two properties and we cash flowed just $3,700 a year. Year two, we had 10 and we’re cash flowing $53,000 a year.

Rob:
Whoa. That’s a big difference. Okay. It’s $50,000 difference. Okay. Just making sure.

Brittany:
Yeah, which we actually pivoted our strategy a little bit with that, but in our third year, this year, we’re at 59 properties and we’re cash flowing $200,000 after all of our expenses.

David:
Okay, and that was after year one. Now, was it all just BRRRR? Is that how you got there?

Brittany:
Yes, all of those were the BRRRR method. We did have one fourplex that we were long-term renting all four units, and I got weirdly scared after it didn’t rent after two days, and so I said, “Let’s furnish this thing and see if we can rent it another way,” and so we did, and that’s the big jump in our cash flow is because we have two midterm rentals in that fourplex now.

David:
Okay. So that was another unexpected blessing where it’s funny that you freaked out after two days. That’s solely a property manager, “I did such a good job. It should be booked right now.”

Brittany:
“Nobody wants this.”

David:
Yeah, “I’ve done something wrong. Change right now. Oh, wait,” which is the property managers I get are eight weeks later, “Where are we at with that? Oh, yeah. No one’s rented it. I forgot about it.” I would much rather have you working for me. So what was the paradigm shift when you went to, “Oh, I can furnish them and I can rent them out faster and for more money”? How much did that impact your strategy moving forward?

Brittany:
So I would say it’s huge. So now we look at, “Is this good for a long-term rental?” So everything that we buy, we want it to also work long-term. The midterm market is becoming really saturated where we’re at so I want that to fall back on as a plan B, but really anything near the hospitals, we found rent long-term or medium-term.

David:
Yeah. Basically, here’s what I’m hearing is you went from analyzing a property based on where a long-term tenant would want to live, which is fairly simple. I mean, that strategy is very easy. It’s why beginners start there, especially small multi-family because you take the house and then you look for what it would rent for, and you run your numbers. With medium-term, with short-term rentals, you don’t start with a property, you start with a location, then you look for the property in the location, then you try to determine what it would rent for. So it’s like a third dimension that gets added into this. I noticed that the more complicated the process becomes, usually the more lucrative it is, the more simple that it is, the easier it is to get into, but the harder it is to make money. Is that a similar pattern that you notice when you switched strategies?

Brittany:
I did, yeah. So I’d say your long-term rentals, they’re just easy. I mean, you can analyze them in just seconds, really. You type everything into your calculator, but you go to the medium-term and you say … Number one, it’s not just your purchase price. You’re looking at furnishing it, and that was a big mistake that we made at the beginning. I thought, “Give me two grand. I can furnish this thing,” and then I was $5,000 in the hole and 75% done. So making sure that you take everything into account when you are buying the property and not just your purchase price and your rehab.

David:
Rob can spend two grand on the throw pillows that go on the $9,000 couch.

Rob:
That’s a little hyperbolic, but I have been known to walk out of world market having spent a thousand dollars on throw pillows and fake plants.

David:
Oh, yeah, quickly.

Rob:
It’s actually pretty spot on.

Brittany:
Yeah, it’s so quick, but that’s my favorite part of it is the design part. So we can go in and we rehab our long-term rentals, so it’s all the same finishes, paint color, light fixtures, tile, and then we go into these, and that’s when I really get to have some fun. My husband’s always saying, “That light fixture’s expensive,” and I’m like, “Well, remember the rent though is going to be triple, so it’ll make up for it.”

David:
I make fun of Rob for this all the time. I bust his quaff about it, but the reality is I’m jealous because I am handicapped when it comes to design. Okay. I’m like a dog. They’re colorblind, right? I just don’t know. Until I’ve seen it put together and I can tell what it looks like, it is very, very, very difficult for me to figure out any kind of design element. So part of this is probably passive aggressiveness on my behalf, and I’m jealous.

Brittany:
Leave his throw pillows alone.

Rob:
You leave them out of it.

David:
I can understand the big picture of real estate very well, but when it zooms in, I’m like, “Enhance, enhance,” and there’s no enhancing. My software doesn’t work that well. I can’t actually see where I’m getting at.

Rob:
It’s because you need a keyboard that’s really loud and then you say enhance and that’s how it’s like, “Enhance.”

David:
Oh. See, it’s your background in marketing that will help you solve a lot of these problems.

Rob:
That’s right.

David:
We all did benefit from your design expertise in the Scottsdale house, so I appreciate that. People give me credit for it. They’re like, “Oh, my God, David, you designed it so beautiful,” and I’m like, “Yeah, I did. Just don’t ever ask me to do that in front of you where I would be exposed.”

Brittany:
Always take the credit.

David:
Yeah. So I love … Brittany, one of the things that Brandon and I used to say was, “Follow your fire,” okay? It’s like the passion you have because real estate is not a thing, it is a accumulation of a lot of things. As we’ve mentioned, real estate is an entire economic driver. There’s so many jobs within real estate. There’s so many strategies to put into it. You got to find the part of it that you enjoy doing. It sounds like for you, the design element combined with the bargain hunting, combined with your property management, understanding of where to look and what to do, really, you went from just working in property management knowing the fundamentals to scaling incredibly fast. Do you attribute some of that to the fire that you found in that space?

Brittany:
Oh, for sure. That’s probably the number one motivator. So a lot of times I’ll say, “Hey, let’s just stop buying and let’s just live off our cash flow and see what that looks like,” and then we’ll finish one rehab and I’ll say, “Oh, I found another deal,” because now I want to design another one. So I feel like it does have that addictive-

Rob:
Oh, yeah, no doubt.

David:
It needs to because we spend so much time and energy doing it. If Rob did not have that idea for design and flare and he could see things from the perspective of the person looking at Airbnb or VRBO where he’s like, “Ooh, that would stand out,” he wouldn’t be able to do it well. If you didn’t have your background in it, Brittany, you wouldn’t be able to pick the right houses, which is setting me up to my next question here now that we’ve gotten into why the fire’s important. How are you finding these deals? I think the people who don’t understand the fundamentals of the asset class you’re trying to get into, they just grab random houses off of Zillow and they run it and they say, “Oh, it didn’t work. Let me just keep trying.” It’s like the throw spaghetti at the wall method hoping that one of them sticks versus when you really understand what you’re trying to accomplish, you have a specific place you’re going to find deals, a specific location, a specific type of asset. You don’t waste all that energy and time. So what is your system like for identifying a potential problem and then how it’s analyzed?

Brittany:
Yeah. So my two best deals have actually been found on Facebook.

Rob:
Oh, it’s unconventional.

Brittany:
Yeah. We saw one of them posted and I saw the address. I did a quick Google search and I said, “Oh, this is three minutes from the hospital.” Ran my numbers. We ended up getting that one. Then our second one, my realtor had posted basically, “Hey, I’m looking for a small multi-family. Does anybody have anything?” This owner reached out and said, “I don’t have it on the market, but I’d be open to looking at selling it.” So we worked out our deal that way. So Facebook has been my best friend for deals.

David:
So when it comes to Facebook marketplace, are you starting with the location? What are you doing when … How are you using Facebook? How do you know which properties you want to be targeting there?

Brittany:
So I don’t necessarily go to Facebook and look for properties, but a lot of times people will post them in the Facebook real estate groups. They’ll throw their deal out there and you’ll have a hundred people say, “Send me more information.” If I see the address and I know that it’s in an area that I’m interested in, then I’ll run it, but that’s really how things are coming up for me. I’m not looking for them.

David:
So you are starting with location.

Brittany:
Yeah, always location, yup.

David:
So for someone who wants to use your Facebook marketplace marketing strategy, how do they determine what a good location would be for a medium-term rental or a short-term rental?

Brittany:
So I love anything within 10 minutes from the hospital. We used to do short-term rentals, but then I said I’m sick of having to have my phone on in the middle of the night just in case. So that’s why we moved to the medium-term rentals. So yeah, 10 minutes within the hospital and it has to have at least one bedroom. That’s really my minimum criteria.

David:
Do you notice any additional benefit as putting your property manager hat on to having two bedrooms or three bedrooms over one bedroom, specifically in the medium-term rental space?

Brittany:
I would say two bedrooms, for sure, because there’s a lot of people that travel together. I’ve only had one group of three that’s traveled together. Everybody’s usually in pairs or solo. So I do like those two bedrooms, especially, but if you look at the price that you get for rents for a medium-term one bedroom versus long-term, it’s triple of what you get. So I love the one bedrooms also.

Rob:
Yeah. Well, for reference, this is usually the … It’s a spectrum, obviously, but just like David said, the amount of work that you put into something is going to be correlated to the return. So for using long-term rentals as the baseline, that will be the smallest return. Then it’s medium-term rentals and then it’s short-term rentals. The way I like to analyze it is medium-term rentals typically are going to bring two to three times what you would make on a long-term rental, and then short-term rentals are three to four times what you’re going to make on a long-term rental in terms of gross revenue. So when you can find a medium-term rental that is three times what you’re going to bring on a long-term rental, you hit the jackpot because you’re actually not making that much less than if you were doing it as a short-term rental and you end up working a lot less too.

Brittany:
I’ve noticed that there’s way less wear and tear. Medium-term you look at, if you compare it to long-term and the short-term, I mean it’s perfect. They come home, they sleep, they eat, they go to work, whoever is renting it. So you don’t have the same wear and tear that you do with the long-term or the short-term.

David:
Yes. I heard an argument about this online one time where someone was saying, “I don’t like short-term rentals because you have all these people coming in and out of your house increasing wear and tear.” I thought, “No, I bet you it’s the opposite,” because when it’s your house, you just beat the crap out of it, but when you’re staying in it for a couple days, you don’t really have time to get comfortable enough to destroy it like you do your own thing, right? So I would bet you that there’s less wear and tear and you catch the deferred maintenance much quicker before it becomes deferred because as Rob knows, you get that complaint every time there’s a tiny little problem, whereas your tenant will let their shower slowly flood the entire bathroom for three years and you won’t hear about it until your subfloor is completely rotted out.

Rob:
That’s right.

David:
So although that is a pain in the butt that you’re getting all this correspondence, it will lead … It’s like you go to the doctor every four days.

Rob:
That’s true.

David:
Your health’s not going to get that far out of out of hand if you’re constantly getting those checkups, even though it’s a pain in the butt to go.

Rob:
Yeah, I’m thinking through it. I mean, medium-term rentals have actually been harsher on my properties in short-term rentals, but it’s because I didn’t have a good system in place. So whenever someone would book for three, four, five, six months, I’d be like, “All right, great. Set it and forget it,” right? They’re going to be in and medium-term rental tenants typically don’t bother me, but the thing is, just like you said, they live there, they use it. They may not be clean, they may not be organized, they might be messy. So whenever they would check out at month six, my cleaners would basically call me crying being like, “Oh, my gosh, it is nasty in here.”

Rob:
So ever since then, we’ve instituted a new policy where for every month that the cleaner stays at my property, we will charge a cleaning fee for every single month, and we add that to their total bill. That way, we can get our cleaner in there, some eyes on the property, they can let us know if anything looks weird, and that way, whenever the cleaner comes on month six or whenever the people check out, it’s not really a deep clean as much as just a regular turn that you would normally have on the short-term rental platforms.

David:
Yeah, that’s another thing to consider with these. Is there a name for short-term rentals and medium-term rentals combined?

Brittany:
Shmedium?

Rob:
The hybrid, shmedium.

Brittany:
Shmedium term.

Rob:
Sure, it’s a shmedium.

Brittany:
Shmedium.

Rob:
Yes, shmedium-term rentals. I like it.

David:
The shmedium industry, that’s exactly right. In traditional real estate investing where you have a long-term rental, it’s funny because we never … Long-term rental wasn’t even a thing. It was just a rental, right?

Rob:
Rental, yeah.

David:
The problems would come from a plumbing issue or a roof leak or a door hinge, it was always something with a property itself. So it was not usually as expensive, and if you did have to dump a lot of money into fixing a problem, it increased the value of the property in some way. So there’s an issue with the plumbing, and so you have to go rip stuff out and fix it, but then you put in better cabinets when you rebuild it or something.

David:
With the shmedium rental industry, you’re replacing a couch that you just spent $3,000 on six months ago. Let’s say you spent 50 grand to furnish something. That is not the same as spending $50,000 on the property to remodel a kitchen, to remodel a bathroom. That actually increases the value of the asset.

David:
So that is a thing that’s good to highlight to people because when they’re first getting started, I think they just think, “Oh, I’m dumping this much money into getting it going.” They don’t realize that much of that money you’re going to have to dump it again depending on what you spent it in, spent it on. My last question before we move on because I really want to hear more about the BRRRR strategy and how you’re doing it is how concerned are you about oversaturation in the medium-term rental space because it is the bell of the ball these days in real estate investing.

Brittany:
Yeah, I don’t love it. So not exciting because I don’t like the competition out there, but all of our properties that we have would work long-term for long-term rentals. So I mean, it would be less cash flow, but that’s always our plan B. We do provide an amazing product and we have multiple properties. So if something doesn’t work out dates wise or something for somebody, we do have other properties that we can put them in. So that has worked out really nice.

Rob:
I have followup question on this, speaking of creating your own competition. Can you give us any tips for how you’re actually getting some of these medium-term rental tenants? I think that’s probably the question that our audience screams at the speakers every time we talk about it. They’re like, “How do you find the tenants?” Are you just getting them on Airbnb? Are you reaching out to hospitals, Furnished Finders? What’s your tactic?

Brittany:
Yeah. We do everything on Furnished Finders, Furnished Finders and word of mouth. So we’ve had a couple referrals from current nurses that have referred the next round of people, and we found them that way, but Furnished Finders has been our biggest go-to. It’s not always people that you get leads from. I have tons of people call me or text me that they found our listing there. One time we got somebody from Airbnb and they booked through Airbnb for 30-day stay, but we don’t do much on the Airbnb platform anymore, just the Furnished Finders.

Rob:
That’s interesting. I exclusively, for the most part, I would say almost every single, I think every single medium-term rental tenant I’ve had has come from Airbnb. I’ve never actually had any luck on Furnished Finder, but admittedly, I’m not a Furnished Finder nerd. I don’t know the platform. I haven’t gone in and optimized it and all that stuff. So yeah, I’m more of a Airbnb guy for finding all my things, but I have heard really great things about Furnished Finder, and I’d like to put more on there this year. So maybe I’ll hit you up for some tips.

Brittany:
Well, it might also be the area. I know it’s popular here, but if you talk about other states, it might not be as much.

David:
I was thinking the three of us need to create a new platform called shmedium.com, where we advertise short-term and medium-term rental properties.

Brittany:
I actually sent the paperwork to my lawyer as you guys were talking, so I got it trademarked and we’re good.

Rob:
I actually bought the domain.

Brittany:
Oh, you bought it already? I forgot to hit submit when I … Yeah, I was on there. Dang it.

Rob:
Yeah. Actually, it was schmedi.um. That’s the only thing that’s available.

Brittany:
.org.

David:
All right. So Brittany, getting back into your journey here, by the way, thank you for the advice you gave us specifically on this industry. I think for someone who’s worked in property management as long as you have and is managing your own rentals, that’s valuable, valuable insight that most people won’t learn until they’ve made a whole lot of mistakes trying to figure that out. You came into real estate with a leg up from your competition from the previous experience you had as a property manager. What are some tips that you would give to new investors that are trying to price out a rehab? This is a question we get a lot, “How do I determine how much a rehab’s going to cost?”

Brittany:
So I go into properties looking at the major things first. So I look at roof, HVAC, foundation, concrete, my big stuff, plumbing, electrical. If I check too many boxes and the numbers won’t work, then I say, “I’m done looking at this one.” So I’ve got the numbers pretty good. We’ve been working with the same crews for seven years now. So I can look at a house and say, “$5,000 roof, $5,000 driveway, $6,000 foundation.” Whatever it is, I add those up real quick while I’m already past my budget. So there’s no sense in looking at this anymore.

David:
That’s smart. So basically you’re saying you got to eat all your vegetables before you get to the dessert. So if the vegetables are going to make you full, then don’t even start because you want to have some room left. So looking at the roof, the HVAC, the concrete, nobody gets excited about that part. So if that’s taken up the whole rehab budget, just stop right there, this isn’t the right deal for you.

Brittany:
Yup, done, and a lot of that stuff you can see from listing photos or whoever’s sending me the deal, I’ll say, “Hey, send me pictures from every side of the house exterior and then send me a quick video walking me through it. I want everything in the basement. Show me the foundation, furnace, hot water heater, your plumbing stack, the electrical panel,” and I can really just say yay or nay at that point. If it looks good, then I’ll go hands on and look at it myself a lot of times.

David:
That is really good, and I think that advice is incredibly important in today’s market because it’s making a comeback. Years ago, back in my day, we actually cared about things like concretes and plumbing, and the market got so hot that that wasn’t … It didn’t matter, right? “Oh, it needs a new roof. Oh, it’s only 15 grand. It’s going to be worth 25 grand before the escrow’s over.” Who cares, right? Real estate really did change, and I can’t even criticize people for doing it that way because you did make, depending on the market, right?

David:
Where I am in California, you might make $250,000 over four years of owning the property where that $15,000 roof wasn’t as significant, but with what we’re seeing with the market slowing down, rates going up, values are not increasing at the level that they were, I really do think that buyers are becoming harder and harder to find in certain locations, which means sellers have to give concessions that they did not have to give for a long time. If you’re selling a property that’s in wonderful condition, you’re probably going to get what you want, but if you got some warts in there, if you got some stuff that the makeup’s been covering and the buyer goes swimming with you and the makeup comes off and they see what they’re really working with, you can’t sell a house that’s got foundation issues anymore. If you’ve got plumbing leaks, it is expensive. There is a lot more room to negotiate. So are you seeing the same thing as you’re scaling to 59 units in three years that you have more negotiating power over these issues than you did before?

Brittany:
Yeah, definitely. Even when the market was really hot, a lot of our stuff was off market. So we would be aggressive with our offers, but we always buy everything with no repairs, no inspection. My biggest thing is I just want somebody to walk it. So if it’s an agent or my husband or whoever it is, I want somebody to have eyes on it that I trust that can say, “This is what I saw.” They didn’t skip over this corner when they were sending me a video for it, and we missed out on something, but we did. We were doing flips a couple years ago, and I would say the huge difference that I’ve seen is roofs. Nobody was asking for a roof replacement. I mean, you could have a hole the size of a raccoon and they would look past it and pay you 50,000 over ask price, and now those things are absolutely being asked for now.

David:
So we’ve got assessing the major costs, which I added are the non-sexy things, but that’s why you got to look at them because they’ll be easily overlooked. Then I really like your advice of, “What can I do? Where can I save money? Does this fall within my wheelhouse of repairs I could make?” So if you’re a plumber and the house has massive plumbing issues but nothing else, maybe you lean more towards that property because you have a competitive advantage, and then what do you have next?

Brittany:
So when I look at the major stuff, I say, “Is this going to last me at least three years?” If not, then I’m replacing it with my rehab. So all of our properties we rehab at the beginning before we rent them out. So we’ve looked at what are our major things that give us problems. So galvanized plumbing is always clogging our drains, clogging the little screens in your faucet and they break when you try to make repairs. So that’s one thing that we always do. If there’s galvanized plumbing, we’re always replacing it. Then drafty windows was another thing that we heard a lot of complaints from tenants. So that’s a big thing that we look at.

David:
So the tenants were complaining that the windows were too cold, that too much cold air was coming in?

Brittany:
Yeah. A lot of our houses are over a hundred years old, so you’ll have those old single pane windows that go up and down and they’re held with weights on the side, and people hate them. They don’t stay up. You got to put your remote there to hold it up. So we just replace them. It’s not as expensive as most people think when you’ve got your crew doing everything else while they’re in there. So it’s a no-brainer at this point.

David:
That is another thing as a real estate broker selling houses for a long time. Windows being a problem was not even something that would be considered. Sellers just were not going to give you anything for that. You had me thinking. How much of this stuff that typically every 10 to 20 years a homeowner would be forced to replace things like windows and roofs and plumbing that because we’ve had such a run in real estate, nobody was spending money to fix these things up is now all going to be starting to become a part of the process because the prices are not exploding as fast as they were? I think being extra diligent at looking at what might need to be replaced is going to become a bigger part of investing than it was in the past. Rob, what’s your theory on this three-year timeframe? When do you think something should be replaced?

Rob:
Well, the old Robuilt adage of buy nice, not thrice, and this really does apply to everything. I mean, obviously, I’m coming at this for more of the furniture side of things, especially in medium-term rentals more than short-term rentals. When you buy something that’s not going to last you, let’s say even the three years that you’re talking about, it’s a really big inconvenience because a lot of times what people do is they’ll buy the cheap thing, cheap thing will break, and now they have to hire somebody to come and get rid of the thing that broke and replace it and assemble it, and because people are cheap, they’ll say, “Oh, you know what? The chances of it breaking in probably pretty low,” and then they go and they buy the cheap thing again, it breaks. Got to get someone to go and toss it in the trash and replace it.

Rob:
Then on the third time, they’re like, “I’m tired of doing this. I’m just going to buy the nice version of this,” and that’s whenever they’re out of the problems and it’s like, “Oh, if they had just done that to begin with, they actually would’ve saved themselves so much headache and pain along the way.” So I imagine that fixing up homes and renovating is probably pretty similar to that simply just because, yeah, you get what you pay for basically, right?

Brittany:
Absolutely, and that’s something that we … That’s our guideline for all of our rehabs. It doesn’t matter what area of town, how much we paid. Everything’s getting rehabbed to a high quality. So you’ve got granite and people say like, “Well, you don’t need to put granite in every house.” Well, granite actually saves me money because I’m not putting a countertop that somebody puts a hot pot and burns it. I’m paying 200 bucks every time that I have to replace it. So spend a little bit more upfront and you get higher rents and happier tenants, and you have a nice product, so your appraisal comes back high-

David:
Shows better in pictures.

Brittany:
So we touch every surface of every house that we are in.

Rob:
We just had someone on the show, oh, man, probably in the last couple weeks that said that they renovate their houses to basically be good enough for them to live in in case they ever lost everything and they needed to be able to live in there themselves.

Brittany:
That was Rick.

Rob:
Oh, it was Rick, yeah.

Brittany:
Rick Marin.

Rob:
Rick Marin, yeah. That should be coming out pretty soon if it’s not out yet, but I thought that was really nice because when you think about it that way, you can spend a little bit more, and as notated in the BRRRR Bible written by David Greene, the actual material isn’t necessarily what costs most of the money, it’s usually the labor. So you can spend a couple hundred bucks to get something nicer and it’s not really going to cost you all that much more in the grand scheme of the budget.

Brittany:
Yeah, especially when you’re doing it all at once before a tenant is in there and they’re doing everything. So yeah, I agree with that.

David:
The quick tip to take from this is when you’re evaluating or analyzing what you’re going to buy, “Am I going to buy the $200 one or the $500 one?” it’s not a $300 difference, it’s $300 plus whatever money you’re going to have to spend on labor to replace it, which is what we don’t think about. If you’re going to have to spend 150 bucks to $200 every time you send someone out to go fix the thing that you bought that was cheap, that’s what makes it more expensive. So you’re not just analyzing the cost of the item, you’re analyzing the cost plus the labor.

David:
Then I think granted in general is one of the wonder materials of real estate investing. Like you mentioned, it works at every single area. When you know a person that can install it, granite can be incredibly cost-efficient because the labor itself or, sorry, the material itself is not that expensive, which leads us to your last point here. You mentioned knowing a person that can fix certain things. So what advice do you have about knowing that when you’re buying distressed properties, fixer uppers using the BRRRR method, knowing the right people that can do this work is incredibly valuable? What tips do you have for finding those people?

Brittany:
So I like finding people who can do more than one thing because that’s where we save the most money. So I am finding or we have crews that can come in and paint, refinish hardwood floors, tile, install cabinets. They can do everything as opposed to bringing in a drywaller, bringing in somebody to do the floors, bringing in somebody to do the windows. Just finding somebody who can do it all, that’s where we save the most money and are able to meet our budgets.

Rob:
Does that come into play when you’re working with a contractor? Do you prefer to work with a contractor that has a particular trade? My contractor in Joshua Tree was also an electrician. So when it came time to building the house, he did all the electrical work, didn’t sub it out, and that ended up usually being a cost savings to me in the grand scheme of things. Is that ever similar like that in your scope of work?

Brittany:
Absolutely. Most of our guys are … Well, not most of them, but a few of them are plumbers also. So we get the plumbing done with the rest of the rehab. So that’s really nice. So our biggest tradesmen that we’re bringing in would be if we’re replacing an electrical panel or a roof, which our guys actually can do roofs too. So I would say our electrical is our most expensive tradesmen that we’re bringing from the outside.

Rob:
Yeah, that makes sense. So just to recap here because I think we went through five. One was you assess major cost items first like your HVAC, concrete, roof because basically, if you’re checking all those boxes off when you’re doing a renovation, that means that you’re not really going to have a ton of money for the design aspect and the last 10%, right? So you move on after that. It needs to last at least three years. So whatever you put into the property needs to be relatively high quality. DIY when you can. So if you got to step in and paint the house, you’re willing to do that. Always replace the windows and find a crew who can fix more than one thing. Did I miss anything there?

Brittany:
No, I think you got it.

Rob:
… and seen. I did it.

David:
All right. So that all is information that will make you a BRRRR superstar, which is still a pretty, at least as far as I’ve seen, the most efficient way to scale a portfolio once you know what you’re doing. Now, I will add the caveat. The things that make BRRRR successful for scaling quickly can also cause you to fail quickly. Scaling is not always positive. It just is amplifying how quickly something gets done. So if the plane is rising, it rises quicker, but if it’s crashing, it’s going to crash quicker too.

David:
As a property manager, as a person with experience solving the problems of managing rehabs for your clients, you walked into this with a knowledge base that is going to protect you from making the mistakes that could cause people to crash. So that’s one of the reasons I think that you were likely successful at BRRRR. How did you navigate the seasoning period that it’s become more difficult to get your money out of the deals once the rehab’s completed?

Brittany:
Yeah. We actually work with a local credit union, and we do portfolio loans. So they don’t make us wait that six months to a year seasoning period. They’ll finance us 75% of the appraised value. So we’ve been really lucky to do that. It’s actually our third credit union that we’ve worked with. The first one said that we grew too fast, so they wouldn’t do any more business with us. So then we moved on and we found somebody who would, and that’s how we’ve been able to scale as quickly as we have.

David:
So the credit union isn’t making you wait 12 months before you pull the money out?

Brittany:
Nope. We actually just finished one rehab in three weeks, and we have the appraisal Monday, and they’re refinancing it. So it’ll be five weeks total by the time we sign the papers.

David:
If anyone’s wondering why, it’s because these guidelines for the 12-month seasoning periods come from conventional loans because the broker or the lender who gives you that loan is then going to go sell that on the market as a mortgage-backed security, so there’s a guideline that the person buying the loan says it has to be 12 months before we will refi, but credit unions hold those loans on their own books most of the time. They don’t sell them so they can create their own guidelines. They don’t have to play by the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac rules, which is why having a relationship with a local lender is so important or in Brittany’s case, having a relationship with several because when you scale as quickly as you did, you can outgrow the shoe that you were wearing and you have to go get a bigger shoe or another set of them. So congrats on there.

David:
For someone who hears this and they’re like, “You know what? I relate to Brittany,” which by the way, you’re very relatable. I think a lot of people are going to feel that. Would you say that property management is a good place for people to start looking to if they want to get started in real estate investing?

Brittany:
So I would say yes. So property management to me was almost … I feel like it was cheating because I could see what other people were doing and learn from their mistakes, other investors’ mistakes and not have it affect my wallet. So it was nice to learn that. You also learn the ins and outs of the management so you decide, “I absolutely could do this,” or, “This is something I would never ever touch. So just let me be an investor. I’ll pass it off to property management,” or you look at it and say, “I want to save some money and I don’t mind dealing with tenant issues, maintenance issues, leasing issues. I can do this myself.” So I would say the biggest part is learning from other investors even when they don’t know they’re teaching you.

Rob:
Yeah, totally. So you’re now at 59 units after closing on 30 this week, which is a relatively large deal, I’d say.

David:
Timely for this podcast recording.

Rob:
It really is.

Brittany:
I did it just for the podcast.

Rob:
I think it’s probably safe to say that draining your 401(k) was probably worth the risk. Seems like you did okay. Can you tell us what’s your total portfolio net worth and what’s your cash flow sitting at today, if you don’t mind sharing?

Brittany:
Yeah. So our total portfolio is worth 5.5 million.

Rob:
Woo! You did it. That was your goal, right?

Brittany:
We hit it. So we’re 13 years ahead of our goal.

Rob:
Oh, my gosh, that’s amazing.

Brittany:
Yeah, five and a half million and we cash flowed 200,000, and that’s after mortgage, insurance, property taxes, maintenance, capex, all that good stuff.

Rob:
So you’re, let’s see, that would be roughly 16, 17 grand?

Brittany:
Yeah.

Rob:
Not bad.

David:
So from 232 a month in a 401(k) to 16 grand a month with all the equity that you’re building, the loan you pay down, the properties going up and potential rent increases, that wasn’t a terrible decision.

Brittany:
No. It’s one we will never, ever regret. Probably best decision of our lives.

David:
Yeah, and you know what I see, Brittany, is you bet on yourself. You said, “I understand property management. I understand real estate. I’m doing this for someone else.” You didn’t get in the victim mentality of, “Well, how come it’s not fair that they’re not helping me with something?” You just said, “I know how to do it. I’m doing it for them. Let me go do it for myself now.” In a sense, you were like a paid apprentice that learned the business, and then you started your own business.

David:
I think this is a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful blueprint for other people that are doing well in the corporate world, they’re doing well at their job, they want freedom. Rather than just saying, “I’m going to quit my job and I’m going to start investing real estate full-time,” you work in real estate, you learn the industry that way, and you make it like this little jump off point in the middle. It’s not quit to W-2, pure real estate. It’s moved from W-2 into a real estate related industry, learn the business like you did, Brittany, and then move into building your portfolio while you’re still doing. It’s a much smoother transition than just going from the spa and jumping into the swimming pool and trying to figure out if you can make it. Do you have any advice for other people who are maybe sitting in a cubicle right now listening to this wishing that they had your life or the steps you’d recommend that they take?

Brittany:
Yeah, I would say just do it. I also feel like people think that once you’re successful, you have to quit everything that you were doing before. So during this time, I’ve kept my job the whole time. My husband’s worked the whole time. We don’t live off the cash flow yet. We reinvest everything. So I would say my advice would be take what you’re good at and do it for yourself because in my job, I was stuck at, “Here’s your salary. You’ll get a raise every year. Here’s your hours.” You’re stuck in this box, but when I do it for myself, there’s so much opportunity for growth that it’s surpassing my salary times a hundred.

Rob:
That’s cool.

Brittany:
Everything that I learned in property management I would say is more than I ever learned in school. This is like my college degree. I regret going and actually paying for college when I could have dived into this first.

Rob:
Sure, but it all led to this, right?

Brittany:
Absolutely.

Rob:
To this moment and to these successes. So with that, I’m just curious. I mean, so much has happened and you’ve crushed every goal and you’re 13 years ahead of schedule with your five million dollar goal. You’ve actually surpassed it. What has real estate allowed you to do? Is there anything specifically that now where you’re at you’re like, “Wow, I can do this thing now because I’ve built something”?

Brittany:
Yeah. Our favorite thing is to just take trips with our kids. We want to give them experiences instead of just stuff. So not having to ask for time off or plotting your days off on your work calendar, just the freedom to get up and go. Last summer, we spent a month in Florida, and that was really our test of can our business run without us being there. So that was a test and we passed it. So I would say just the freedom. So my biggest goal but also the goal that I don’t really talk about because it’s not pretty is my goal is I don’t want to have to set my alarm in the morning.

Rob:
That’s fuzz amazing. Are you kidding me? That’s a beautiful goal.

David:
I’ll say there’s not much more that will increase the quality of your life than waking up when you want to wake up.

Brittany:
When you want to, yes.

David:
When your body is ready to.

Brittany:
Yeah, and I don’t feel like people talk about it. I feel like when you talk about goals, you say, “How much money do I want to make?” or, “Where do I want to go?” or, What do I want to buy?” but honestly, it’s like, “I just want to sleep,” right?

Rob:
That’s not all bad.

Brittany:
I want to wake up when the sun comes up. I don’t want to hear my blaring alarm waking me up in the morning. It’s just that freedom.

David:
I don’t want to feel nauseous when I hear that sound and the first thought is, “When can I go back to sleep?”

Brittany:
Right, counting down the hours, “15 more minutes. Give me some time.”

Rob:
That’s perhaps the most beautifully honest and perfect answer, but honestly, I thank you, Brittany, because you came into this and it all started with you wanting to watch your kid learn how to ride his bike, and now you’re spending vacations for a month while your business stays relatively passive, and now you’ve got bigger goals. I’m excited to see what your next goal is. I know it’s the waking up thing, but whatever that goal in the portfolio is because based on what we heard, you’re going to do it. There’s just no question about it. So I hope that everyone listening here today can listen to this again and say, “All right, I can do it too.”

David:
Yeah, and nice callback to when we talked about how goal setting is difficult to do but it’s so important because that’s a much better goal than I want to travel the world in an RV. I want to wake up when I want to wake up, and you will design the life you want based on real estate to be able to accomplish that. Really, you deserve a lot of credit. I mean, you should be waking up every day feeling like success because you escape the 6:30 alarm clock. Please, nobody tell Jocko Willink that we just described that as-

Rob:
Yeah, I was going to say.

David:
He’ll come after me and I’m not ready for that level of smoke right now, but I do agree with you. I think that that’s very healthy. This has been a fantastic interview, Brittany. I just want to congratulate you on the success you’ve had, as well as the way that you went about doing it. I hope that we stay in touch. For people that want to learn more about your fantastic life and strategy, where can they find out more about you?

Brittany:
Yeah. I’m most active on Instagram. So it’s Destined_To_Wealth.

David:
Ooh, destined to wealth. That’s wonderful. Rob, how about you? Where can people find out more about you?

Rob:
Well, if you want to search for me and see that little blue check next to my name, I’m just going to rub this in your face all day, David, because I know you want the blue check, but I’m now verified on Instagram and now you’ll know that you’re talking to the real Robuilt and not a robot, not robotilt. So Robuilt, R-O-B-U-I-L-T. I’ll never ask you for crypto or Forex and I’ll never message you first. David, what about you?

David:
If people want to find out more about me, they can follow me at davidgreene, with an E at the end, 24.com or DavidGreene24 on all social media, but just be super, super, super careful that you’re making sure it’s spelled correctly. The minute you follow me, you will get a bunch of fake people that will follow you with fake accounts. I don’t know how they do that, what they’re doing to see who followed me. I think there’s a list of followers that maybe they can see, and as soon as someone follows me, they go, “Oh, follow me too.” So look carefully at the screen name.

Rob:
We can just blame AI for everything now.

David:
That’s what I’m … I think we’re all going to start doing like old people blame the TV for making people dumb, “It was the television.” That’s right. All right, Brittany, thank you very much for being here. We’re going to have you back on again sometime soon because this was a fantastic story. Everybody, go check out Brittany’s Instagram and send her a message if you want to learn how to be an awesome possum just like her. This is David Greene for Rob, tell me where you get them Hanes T-shirts, Abasolo, signing off.