Scaling a Business: The Power of Networking With Brandon Neth

March 12, 2024

On this episode of The Same Day Podcast, Yoni Schmidt and Brandon Neth share insights on the power of networking. As an entrepreneur with a knack for real estate, travel, and financial independence, Brandon explains some of the pitfalls of growing a business, how adopting technology streamlines processes, his advice to aspiring property managers and investors, and his views on financial literacy.

Scaling a Business: The Power of Networking

Brandon Neth is a growth manager, team builder, investor, and consultant with a significant following on social media. Over the last decade, he has been the Growth Manager for FinanceBuzz, including the FBZ Elite Facebook travel group, and the Co-founder of Evergreen Properties, where he and his wife Mariel have built an impressive portfolio of single and multifamily properties. He runs his Facebook and YouTube presence for The Neth Lab, where he discusses real estate, travel, and financial independence. Brandon has been featured in Business Insider, Yahoo, MSN, Credit.com, U.S. News, and Reader’s Digest.

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • How Brandon Neth’s upbringing influenced his career trajectory
  • Scaling a business through networking and connecting with other professionals
  • The most challenging aspect of building a real estate business: wearing too many hats and being spread too thin
  • Brandon covers his best strategies for sourcing and buying properties
  • The importance of adopting technology and software to manage a property management business efficiently
  • Upgrades property owners should consider — and their impact on rental rates
  • Advice for new small investors and property managers
  • Brandon describes how he and his wife can travel extensively, use credit cards as a tool, and why financial literacy is crucial

In this episode…

In the business world, you can reap many rewards by surrounding yourself with intelligent, educated, and experienced people. The lessons you learn from somebody in one sector can be applied to others, providing you with a broader perspective and a competitive advantage.

As an entrepreneur, Brandon Neth networks for many reasons. He says learning from others’ mistakes is valuable since you can avoid similar pitfalls in your own business pursuits. As a real estate professional and investor, Brandon used networking to connect with a realtor who eventually became his business partner. Through that relationship, he built associations with tradespeople, including plumbers, electricians, painters, drywallers, and others, to help grow his real estate portfolio. By learning from people who have faced similar challenges, you can apply what you’ve gained, and through trial and error, you can polish your business skills to improve your processes. Additionally, Brandon explains how he’s used networking to build a significant social media following for his travel, financial literacy, and real estate channels.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode…

Keyrenter Property Management:

This episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management.

Keyrenter Property Management is a full-service property management company that helps clients buy, renovate, and operate real estate assets.

The team helps clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management.

That’s why, no matter what rental you have — single-family homes, condos, townhomes, or apartments — they can give you the management solutions you need.

To learn more about their services, go to https://keyrenterpmc.com/ or send them an email at [email protected].

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:05

Welcome to The Same Day Podcast where we discuss driving incremental business growth and other topics related to real estate, property management and entrepreneurship. Now to the show at hand.

Yoni Schmidt 0:20

Yoni Schmidt here with The Same Day Podcast where I connect with top business and real estate leaders. past guests include Scott Reeves, and Chris Lile, and today’s episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management at Keyrenter Property Management. We’re all about full service property management company, helping our clients buy, renovate and operate real estate assets. We help our clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management. Welcome to today’s episode of The Same Day Podcast where we shine a spotlight on the movers and shakers in the world of finance, real estate, and beyond. Today, we have the pleasure of hosting a truly remarkable guest, Brandon Neth. Brandon is not only a growth manager, team, builder, investor and consultant, but also a visionary in the realm of finance, real estate and credit. With a career that spans over a decade Brandon has demonstrated an unwavering passion for financial literacy, striving tirelessly to elevate others to a place of financial independence and security. Brandon, alongside his wonderful wife, Mariel have built an impressive portfolio of single family homes in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Their investment savvy and commitment to building strong tenant relationships has set the standard in the industry, proving that sound investment methods and genuine care for people can indeed go hand in hand. Brandon’s journey is a testament to the power of dedication, strategic thinking and the profound impact of fostering financial literacy. We’re excited to dive into his story, learn from his experience and get inspired by the wisdom he has to share. Please join me in welcoming Brandon Neth to The Same Day Podcast. Brandon, thank you so much for being here today.

Brandon Neth 2:00

Absolutely, man, appreciate you having me. Thank you.

Yoni Schmidt 2:03

Of course. So let’s dive right in. Brandon, I know a little bit about you, I guess we’ve hung out a couple of times. And you know, I’ve seen around town, you’re very plugged in, you’re very involved in the world of real estate. You know, we’ve talked a lot about finance, real estate, credit, all the things that you’re doing, you have a massive following on social media when it comes to the credit and finance world. You’ve also expressed a deep passion for finance, real estate and credit in general. Can you share a little bit about these interests? Initially? How did they take root and what has influenced your career? How has this influenced, I guess, your career trajectory?

Brandon Neth 2:44

So I’ve got one of these stories. I was super broke kid, right? Like I literally grew up in a trailer. My parents always made decent money, but we never had money because they had no financial literacy. Right? Money came in, money went out. That’s just how it was. They’re hard workers. They are terrible with money. And I saw that from a fairly young age. But I still didn’t have the education to really understand what I needed to do. And it wasn’t really until college. And when I met my wife who kind of put me in the right place that kind of said, you need to do X, Y, and Z. And she kind of gave me this foundation of quit spending money as soon as you earn it, learn to save it, learn to invest it. And she likes to say she created a monster because she planted this seed and now I’m crazy. Like it everything we do we do extreme. So it kind of came from a place of necessity. And it’s turned into a lifestyle I’m lucky has turned into like you said a social media following is turned into jobs consulting, and now a you know, a portfolio of you know, 3036 rentals over the last couple of years. And it’s really taking us to a place of financial financial independence. And that was our goal. We started a few years back, we got to lean fire, which is financial independence, retire early, at 33 years old, decided we didn’t want to live the lean, which you know, is a little bit of money. We don’t want to live the Lean life, we wanted to get to fat fire. And the quickest, easiest way was through real estate. So we kind of took that leap and here we are.

Yoni Schmidt 4:16

Nice love that. So Mariel is really the the you know, driver behind you that kind of sparked everything. Love that we should probably have you as a catalyst. Catalyst. Definitely.

Brandon Neth 4:29

You know, and I want to say something real quick about that. Because her and I have had this conversation a ton of times and I think this is really important for people listening. Your network is your network, right? Like it’s who you know, and I think it’s so important that people surround themselves with smart educated people because I had no idea and there’s so many people that have no idea and I think that’s why it’s so beneficial to be connected in the real estate space, the finance space. If you’re getting in real estate you don’t understand connect with somebody like Yoni and Keyrenter right, like talk to these people that have done this, because you just don’t know what you don’t know. And it’s so important to have a role model and people that have done this to take those lessons and apply them to what you’re doing.

Yoni Schmidt 5:12

Yeah, I love that. And, you know, I know that you and Mariel are self managing your properties. But you and I have had tons of conversations. And Mariel and I have tons of conversations about, you know, stories, just that we share with each other about what happened, how we handle the situation, and we just share the knowledge so that, you know, we can we can avoid those pitfalls. I guess that’s really one of those, you know, one of those truly, like powerful sound bites, I think is like your net worth is your your network is your net worth, is something that I’ve heard actually earlier this week. And I truly believe that, you know, that is the case. So with a strong emphasis on, you know, financial literacy, and how do you approach educating others? And what do you believe are the key components to achieving that financial independence?

Brandon Neth 6:07

So I’ve got a very like, in your face approach, right? I think in the US, it’s kind of been taboo for such a long time to talk about money. I remember growing up, my family was always very open about how broke we were and how we didn’t have money to buy things, right. That was just kind of my experience with money. And kind of the group of people I ran with, like, we did some bad things when I was young, you know, like, we did what we need to do to get round to finance and money. And people Oh, and money was stuff that was kind of talked about at one point. And I think because of that, like, I kind of adopted this mindset, that when I want to talk about money with somebody, I’m just gonna straight up. So here’s how it is. And I’m probably a little too open for most people. But I do think that it’s very important to have these conversations because generally speaking in the United States, we have we’re terrible with money people are, you know, you look at your average net worth you look how much debt people have things like this. It’s because people don’t know they haven’t been educated. And I think a big part of that is just it’s been taboo to talk about. So my approach is I talk to somebody and they ask me questions. I’m super transparent, like I’m in their face, I’m asking them questions that probably makes some people uncomfortable, to be straight, I just am. But I think what that does is when I start giving people information and giving them real answers, it develops a relationship, and people are like, he’s not feed me shit. He’s doing, you know, the best he can. He’s giving me advice, because I’ve lived it. And I think, again, thus far it’s work. You know, it’s not for everybody, but I think those people that I’d have an experience or background like me, they appreciate it. So I give people the knowledge, I give them the resources, even if it’s not me, you know, like, there’s other people out there a lot smarter than me, I’m not smart. If I can do it, anybody can do it. That’s the thing. I always tell people. So there’s a lot a lot of people out there with a lot more education and a lot more brain power than me. Here’s the resources go week, go learn. And one thing I will say about all of this real estate, financial independence, credit cards, credit any of this stuff, you can lead a candle to water, but you can’t force him to drink. Okay, so I can give you all the resources and all the foundation, but until you take the steps to actually do it, you know, nothing’s gonna happen.

Yoni Schmidt 8:29

Yeah, I agree. I also agree that, you know, the discussion of money is taboo in general. And that’s the sentiment, but it shouldn’t be and people should talk openly about it, ask the right questions, learn. And, yeah, I definitely agree that you can only lead them to the water, you can’t force them to drink. So that’s a great

Brandon Neth 8:52

It’s a hard conversation to have, right, bro? I mean, let’s let’s be real, like, it’s not an easy conversation to have, especially right. You’re not in a good place financially. It’s really hard to tell somebody hey, man, I’ve got $50,000 in credit card debt and $100,000 in student loan debt, I want to invest and build wealth. How do I do it?

Yoni Schmidt 9:07

It’s not easy. It’s not Yeah. And so finding those resources talking to the people who have done it before, who have the experience is super important. I love learning that and I love the you know, the rags to riches story, it warms my heart and just like, you know, it makes a lot of sense that you know, someone really wants to improve their life and their lifestyle that they would do anything it takes to you know, work through it and just like build, build their their network and build their net worth. So I guess you know, you and Mariel started Evergreen Properties. Your experience with Evergreen Properties shows a real knack for that team building and scaling a business you built, you know, a team of reliable contractors that you can call upon at any given moment and scale the business really rapidly since you moved into the Tulsa market. Can you tell us a little bit, you know about what the most effective strategies for assembling this hype high performing team and scaling the business? Were?

Brandon Neth 10:18

So this is a tough one, right? Because I think it’s very case by case. It’s market by market. But I can give you my general advice and what we did. And it kind of comes down to the same answer I just gave you, we networked. So when we came here, we had a couple rental properties in Washington State, which is where we’re originally from, we decided to sell those because we, we just did the simple math, we could sell those to to mind here, right? And the cash flow.

Yoni Schmidt 10:46

So that again, did you turn 31, then? No,

Brandon Neth 10:49

I didn’t turn 31. Because I didn’t have the education at the time. Right. I just didn’t understand it. But luckily, I was smart enough. I didn’t I didn’t know that two year if you live in a property two years, the last five years, and you sold it. You didn’t have to pay the taxes on it the same. And I lived in both of those over the past five years. That’s why I sold them when I did, because I was able to avoid the taxes. So I knew that. So anyway, I moved those transferred over here. I had the money sitting and I was in a new city like what do I do? I have no idea. I started going to the real estate meetups right, I started going around, I found a realtor, I got lucky I got connected to somebody that will be in touch with a contractor. And she actually ended up becoming my business partner. And through her because she’d been doing this for years, I just kind of lived on her coattails for a while. I was like alright, she doing okay, I can do this, I can improve that. I kind of found the things I was good at the things she wasn’t combined them, um, use the network she had, and the network I had built and I started finding people. And what I’m gonna say, I don’t want anybody out there to be like, Oh, this is easy. It’s not contractors are pain in the ass. They’re really difficult. There. It’s the same thing with tenants, right? Like, everything’s good until it’s not. Right. And it’s trial and error, and you’re gonna take losses, and it’s going to happen, and I definitely have I’ve taken some really, I just infuriating situations, but I am to the point yes, where I’ve got, you know, I’ve got a very investor friendly, plumber, electrician, drywall person, painter, General, contractor, woodworker, finisher, all these people. And it’s been through trial and error. But to answer your question, simply, and I know it sounds repetitive, repetitive, but you have to network you have to get in the Facebook groups connect with people like Yoni and Mat and the people that have been doing this forever, and talk to their contractors. The thing, I will say the biggest advantage, I self manage. You guys, our property management company. One of the biggest advantages of what you guys do is you have this network of people in place, you don’t have to go through this hardship you marry when I

Yoni Schmidt 13:00

say that, you pretty much pay an education,

Brandon Neth 13:04

it’s like going to college, you’re going to take these losses, and you’re going to lose money in some capacity that you’re paying for education. Yeah, you don’t want to do that. There’s property manager, there’s people like GE, Richard that can help you out, they can get kind of cut that learning curve down pretty significantly. Yeah,

Yoni Schmidt 13:21

I mean, we’ve done it some of the mistakes that we’ve made. Were also, you know, the early start, were just like expensive, expensive lessons and expensive, you know, moments of education, I would say. And oftentimes you’d be surprised, but maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe our listeners would be a little surprised. You know, your best landscaper, your best plumber, HVAC contractor is probably not on Google. They’re not marketing. They’re not out there, you know, pushing their name out. And you know, spending tons of money on marketing, and you’ll find them at the gas station, fueling their truck. And the only reason you weren’t

Brandon Neth 13:59

chosen Home Depot checking out on your check it out. Yeah,

Yoni Schmidt 14:01

exactly. And you see what they’re buying, they’re buying 10 capacitors and you’re like, Are you Are you by chance that you know, a licensed HVAC contractor? And the answer is like, Yes, I am. And you know, that’s your best. That becomes your best HVAC contractor. I do remember one of our best landscapers in Oklahoma City, for example, literally stumbled upon him in at a gas station, just feeling his pump. And the only reason I knew was because of the trailer that he had and all the equipment that was in it. And, you know, just sparked up a conversation with him. And ever since then, he’s been working with us in Oklahoma City, providing really great value to our clients because he he’s not necessarily spending 1000s and 10s of 1000s of dollars on marketing and we can consistently feed him work. And he gives us that preferential pricing and treatment. Yeah. So as someone who’s been involved in every aspect of building a business for You know, sales to quality service to, you know, scaling it, what have been the most challenging and rewarding parts of, you know, wearing so many hats, because I know you’re, you know, wearing the hat of the deal sorcerer, you’re wearing the hat of the, you know, general contractor and the rehabber and the, you know, leasing agent and the property manager, and it just never ends. And in some cases, even probably the maintenance guy who’s like coming out to just like, make sure that this is something maybe simple and you can fix it right there. And then, and it’s not something that you’re gonna have to like, get a, you know, someone who’s gonna cost you 65 $75 an hour to go out and do the work. And you’re, you’re really helping your bottom line at the end of the day.

Brandon Neth 15:52

Yeah, so you hit it right on the head, I will say, I think the most difficult part about business in general is Yeah, you’d have to wear so many hats, you have to do everything. I think a lot of times people come up with an idea, a really good idea, they start a business, they don’t realize they have to be the accountant, they have to be this they have to be that. And in real estate, it’s even more difficult. Because yeah, you have to do maintenance, you have to be the GC, all these different things. And I’ll say the the biggest challenge is probably consistently been, you know, the horsepower, the bandwidth, whatever you want to call it, just the wherewithal to continue to do it. There has been plenty of times where I’ve been like, Screw this, I’m gonna sell my properties, take my equity and go do something else. But it’s just real estate has so many advantages, tax advantages, long term wealth building, and there’s just so much to it. Like, it’s silly. I think generally speaking, it’s silly to sell if you’re if you’re doing well and successful. There’s definitely a time to sell don’t get me wrong, but I definitely get to that point. So yeah, the biggest hurdle, I think, for us, the biggest issue we’ve had is that time management, we I think we’re lucky from the perspective that there’s two of us, it’s me, my wife, and we’d already gotten to financial independence or financial freedom. So we could kind of jump into this full time and learn. And I know, that’s not what everybody can do. And again, I know I harp on this, but that’s where our property manager becomes very, very advantageous. But for us, like really getting in there, getting our hands dirty, doing it all, and making these connections with the people that will tell us, you know, you should try this, you should try that that’s been very important to us. I think I think generally speaking, the key to this has been the flow between my wife and I, okay, I can’t do this, you can’t do this. So I’ll do the bookkeeping, she’ll do the tenant placement, right? Like we’ve really had to kind of differentiate what we do. And sure we help each other out. But like, you kind of have to sit down and differentiate and make defined roles and what find out what people are good and are not good at. And I think the other key somebody told me this a long time ago in business, surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. Right? Just I know, I’m not the smartest guy in the room, but I’ve got people around me are smart. So my GC is super impatient call my GC my go to guy is super smart. He knows everything about construction, right? I’ve got a very good CPA and tax strategist like these individual people are smarter than me better than me. They do. They do what they do. And I’m kind of at the at the center of it, feeding them the information. And I think that’s really important build, build your team out and let them do what they do. And let them give you advice and quit. Don’t be a know what I like, listen to what people tell you listen to what advice they give you.

Yoni Schmidt 18:35

Yeah, I love that. I mean, for us at Keyrenter, one of the things that I always tell our business development managers and even, you know, a philosophy that I live by is always add value to people’s lives. And you know, do it with the expectation of nothing in return, and act as a thought partner to those landlords and homeowners that call us day in and day out. And they’re asking tough questions about, you know, evictions and, you know, vacancies and, you know, just trying to help them however we can. And you’re absolutely right. I think you’re also in general, we are the average of the percent of the people in the, you know, groups that we surround ourselves by. So, always constantly striving to surround ourselves with smarter people will yield you know, just a better network, which will yield a better net worth and overall, you know, a lot of people have done what we’re doing it like you said, it’s not rocket science, right? It’s not that difficult. Anyone can learn this. I feel the same way. I’m probably not the smartest person in the room. And I enjoy being smooth surrounding myself and being around people who are much smarter than me and have done this in the past and ask them those questions that you know, may help me help a client or Help someone avoid a really expensive financial mistake. Right. So, you know, talking a little bit about your investments in Tulsa, you know, those of you yield impressive results. I mean, you’re in my neighborhood, we live in the same neighborhood. I see those properties, I drive by them often. You know, I see what you’ve done, you’re like really improving the face of the neighborhood in a way that I’m extremely thankful because you’re adding value to all of our properties. Tell us a little bit about what drew you and Mariel to Tulsa. And you know, what makes it an attractive market for investors.

Brandon Neth 20:41

So, quick shout out to Mike Basch at Atento if you don’t, oh, my gosh, he is kind of like this unstoppable force that moved to Tulsa years back and has just changed the landscape of what this city is. He was implemental in the early stages of Tulsa remote, which is the program I came on. And it’s one of those things you see on the news. This city will pay you $10,000 to move to this city, and most people are like, That’s crap. Well, it’s not I moved to Tulsa. Almost five years ago now, on Tulsa, they gave me $10,000 To come here. And I use that as a downpayment on a house. It was $40,000.

Yoni Schmidt 21:22

Oh my god, I love that

Brandon Neth 21:24

kind of answers everything right there. So why did I want to come here $40,000 house, and guess what that house rented for $950 a month?

Yoni Schmidt 21:32

Wow, those are incredible returns.

Brandon Neth 21:34

Incredible numbers. And now I will be straight with you and say that that doesn’t necessarily exist today. Tulsa has appreciated like everywhere, everything got crazy with COVID. But there are still deals. Even a bad deal in Tulsa today, or I’m sorry, even an average deal in Tulsa. People kind of look at it, and would be an outrageously good deal on the East Coast and the West Coast. Okay, these big markets. Yes, they’re attractive, because you might make some pretty good appreciation. But let me tell you something, appreciation is not guaranteed. Things happen all the time. Cash flow, which is why I came to Tulsa is very, very important, because you can use that cash flow to create long term wealth and a number of ways. So I went from cash flow. And on my two rentals in Washington State, we are cashflow like $2,500 a month, which was crazy good because I didn’t carry much debt. I came to Tulsa. where I’m at now we we’ve done some flips and done some other things. But now we cashflow almost $14,000 a month, we’ve got almost $2 million in equity. And we’ve done this in about two we’ve been here for almost five years, but we didn’t really get started until year one. So we’re about four years in. And it’s just it. Tulsa is such a unique market, I always tell everybody, we’re this close to becoming something special. This see we really are and what the changes that are happening, the people that are going into play some of the things that I know are happening behind the scenes, I think we’re gonna be there. And what’s gonna be really, really interesting for people, especially as investors is we’ve got this crazy good opportunity for cash flow. But if these things happen, we’re gonna have this crazy good opportunity for appreciation like these other cities. So we’re kind of going to be, you know, where the two circles meet, we’re going to be that perfect place, I think, in the next few years. And I think the best time to buy real estate was yesterday. The Second best is today, right? So like, get on it, make a move. And like time in market is better than timing the market. So I know a lot of people are worried about what’s going to happen in the market. But let me tell you something. Real Estate in general, you make a bad buy today. Guess what Jim did 10 years down the road is going to be a good buy. Right? It’s just how it works.

Yoni Schmidt 23:53

It tends to be extremely forgiving in the long term and everything ends up being cheap in the rearview mirror. So my 100% agree with that. Mike Basch was actually a guest on the podcast. So shout out to him. And shout out to Mat Zalk, who convinced him to move to Tulsa. And then subsequently he moved his entire family from all over the world to Tulsa, Oklahoma, which has been awesome.

Brandon Neth 24:19

And 1000s of random people through Tulsa remote.

Yoni Schmidt 24:22

Yeah. So great program. Yeah. So you talk about investment opportunities, you know, how are you finding these investment opportunities in the market right now? What are your strategies? I mean, I know, of course, it’s networking. It’s knowing that people who are going to be selling their properties or interested in selling their properties, you know, getting out of the market and making room for new investors. What would you say your maybe like top three strategies in terms of finding good opportunities to invest in

Brandon Neth 24:58

so something ideas a little unique is all actually knock on doors, right? So I will drive in my neighborhoods. And if I see a house, I’m knocking on doors I’m tracking person down. For example, literally the house right across the street from me right now, I’m talking to this guy to try to buy his house. And the reason I know he wants to sell, it’s because he had renters in there, they weren’t good, they trashed the place. So I will actually talk to people. I think a lot of investors are afraid to do that. Or they’re intimidated, or they want to use a wholesaler or a cold caller. And those methods work. Don’t get me wrong. But I have had great success buying houses by knocking on doors, looking at people in their eyes and saying, This is what I’m going to do. I also think we kind of have a unique approach to it, because I’m really, really happy to take places that most other people pass on. Because there’s too much work like the house I live in right in your neighborhood Yanni, this house had two holes in the roof, the size of cars, and the foundation was collapsed. And it was condemned because they were they were they were cooking crack in the house. That’s how bad the house is. It’s now a $350,000 house, I have $150,000 in equity, and it’s beautiful. So strategy number one is knock on people’s doors. Strategy number two is to kind of find your niche, right, like what you’re willing to do. Some people, they’re really really good at quick rehabs and getting people in there fast. And like, if that’s what you do great, I will take the most dilapidated house and make it beautiful. So I think that’s the other key to my strategy, how I’m tracking down deals, I’m taking things other people pass on. And probably number three, I would say the traditional outlets, right like the networking for people to saying, Hey, I’ve got this house or I’ve got a friend that this is coming up, one of my realtor friends would call me and say they have a pocket deal. If you don’t know what a pocket deal is, it just means essentially a realtor that has a deal coming up. And they tell you about it before it goes on the MLS or Zillow, if somebody doesn’t know what that means. Those and you know, wholesalers call me they know my neighbors, they know my buying boxes. And I’m just ready to buy when I’m ready to buy. So I think it’s worked out. So those three things combined have equal a pretty solid portfolio in my opinion.

Yoni Schmidt 27:14

Yeah, love that knocking on doors, that’s definitely, you know, the true and try to guess, way of doing business in general. And this is a relationship based industry and, you know, in general, so looking people in the eye, and you know, making them an offer is a great way to, you know, find an opportunity and know if you have a partner on the other side who’s willing to actually work with you. I love that. You know, one of the things that I’ve always been so impressed with is how you’ve managed to place high quality long term tenants in your properties. I speak to Marielle about this often. And she tells me stories. And I rarely hear stories about, you know, the really, really horrible tenants and nightmare tenants. And it has to do, I guess, with the way that you operate your business? Can you tell us a little bit about the secret sauce to building strong relationships with your tenants, and ensuring that mutual satisfaction not just for the self managing landlords, but also for us, the property managers out there who want to do a really good job for our owners.

Brandon Neth 28:23

So I want to start out by by saying it hasn’t been perfect, right? Like I’m still learning we’ve had our issues. But I will say generally speaking, based off the number of properties I have, and you know what I’ve done, I think I do better than the average person. First of all, my secret sauce is Mariel. I’ve said that time and time again. She’s just got this personality that she brings the best out of people, she lights up a room. She’s like, she should be a real estate agent and a property manager full time but she doesn’t want to do it. She’s too lazy. She wants to sit on the couch and raise a baby and watch Netflix. But either way, her and her approach to people. She’s just so happy she puts she takes any sort of tension and like any sort of tension is the best way to say add an ad to the air because we show all of our properties and I think that’s part of it. A lot of people do automated showings, you call up a company and they say hey I want to go look at 123 main street they say great fill out an application if you’re approved we’ll give you a lockbox code you go over there between this time and this time looked at the property. I understand the automation said that especially if you’re large landlord you got to do that you can’t go to every single property but at our level where we are we’ve got an all say they the the advantage of being able to go meet the tenant sit down and talk to them show them the property and like our passion I think comes through because we really try to do our properties right pretty much everything we get we got to the studs New electrical, new plumbing, new a check new windows, new drywall, new appliances new cabinets. And when we can show that to the tenant, they get excited, right? So they’re like, Okay, these people care. And we can look them in the eye again and say, Hey, if you have a maintenance issue, call us, we’re going to take care of it. If you’re unhappy, let us know. And I think what that does is it kind of puts us in a unique situation where not everybody else can do that. So these people are like, Alright, I’m going to give these people that is a beautiful house. And it’s all of our properties are pretty nice. And these people are going to take care of me. So we tend to get tenants that are happy. The other thing, I’ll say, this is a double edged sword, though, and we were talking about that before the podcast started. Having these really good relationships, where we’re almost friends creates this awesome opportunity to make cash flow, and the people stay and nobody’s happy. But it also, it almost gives them, I guess, the ability to feel like because we’re so friendly, that they can call us about every single thing. And that does, I think, maybe result in a little bit more text messages at eight o’clock at night than typically gets. And most of the most of our problem properties are maintenance free to be straight with you, because they’re pretty much new. I know that won’t be the case in 10 years, but I will have a tenant call and say, hey, somebody, I’ve got an apartment complex. There’s a car in the parking lot, but I don’t know who it is, do you have any idea who it is, they’re not going to call key ranch or eight o’clock or nine o’clock at night and say that the case they’re going to send something through. And maybe it gets addressed. So it’s a double edged sword, it can create a little bit of extra, I guess, hand holding, it’s probably the best way to say it. But I would say generally speaking, I think I do better. I rent my properties very, very quickly. I know my tenants, they know me, I have a very, very low turnover rate. I have a very, very low not pay rate. I’ve had one eviction over. I don’t know, I guess if you do the math over essentially 120 doors over the last four years. It’s pretty, pretty solid, pretty solid.

Yoni Schmidt 32:01

Yeah, that’s impressive. I love that. You know, so generally speaking, you are a property manager, right? You’re a self managing landlord. You know, we do it on a different. We do it differently. Of course, because we’re managing third party, we’re managing a little bit for ourselves. But, you know, I’d say 90% of the doors that we manage in the single family homes that we manage, and complexes that we manage are for other investors. What are you noticing, right, in the property management sector as it evolved? You know, are the trends and how do you ensure that you and Mariel and your team are you know, implementing those best practices in just general management in groups?

Brandon Neth 32:47

That’s a really good question. Because I think this is an industry that consistently changes. I did say my parents worked really hard, but they were bad with money. My mom actually was a property manager. That’s what she did. Although she get property management for like HOAs, like high end condominiums. I have been around the industry in some capacity for years, you know, even though I didn’t really realize as absorbing it, I was absorbing it. And I watched things change. And I think today, what we’re seeing is where as people scale, they realize what they have to do. And that is put processes in place, right, you need to have processes. And I think it’s really difficult for a lot of people to take advice from other people. But again, some of these people have done so much, you can kind of almost buy that I know it’s not sexy, but there’s a lot of people out there that are giving good information, they’ll buy, you can buy, like, here’s the packet, here’s how to be a landlord, and they can give you these processes in place. And back in the day, that was, you know, it was unique, like people weren’t sharing, now everybody’s sharing, like, there’s influencers out there trying to make money off you. Some of them are good, some are bad. But what I will say is, because there’s so much technology out there today, you can do this, you can scale, if you keep up with the technology, keep up with what’s changing, you can scale pretty quickly, you don’t need a ton of, you know, you don’t need to spend a ton of time figuring things out. If you follow these processes, you put them in place early on, it’s gonna make your life so much easier as you scale. For example, like, there’s so many Property Management software’s out there. I’m not sure who you guys use, but you know, there’s turbo tenant, there’s building and there’s all these. We’re lucky, like, think of how easy is all that stuff is in one place. 25 years ago, they didn’t have it.

Yoni Schmidt 34:45

Yeah, it’s pretty inexpensive.

Brandon Neth 34:48

I definitely think it’s inexpensive, especially once you get big, right? It really is. So you’re right. So I think that’s the trend technologies coming out trying to make things easier. Stay stay up to date with Stay up to date with it and see what other people are doing. And, you know, if people have had a really bad experience with something like, make sure you take that into account, if they’re telling you, Hey, I know you just spent money on this program, but I had a terrible experience. Make sure you listen, don’t discredit them. You’re not learning if you’re talking, so shut up and listen to what people are telling you.

Yoni Schmidt 35:18

Yeah, love that. Speaking about, you know, updating, you mentioned updating a moment ago, you know, your processes, your systems, you know, talking a little bit about your properties, I’ve seen the level of renovation that you and Mariel bring these properties to unload standard that you bring them to, it’s really nice, as you mentioned earlier, what kind of strategies do you employ to, I guess, maintain and enhance your property value over time, I know that you’re, you know, ripping a lot of them down to the studs and rebuilding, making them super, super nice. So that a tenant really wants to live there. And they’re excited about everything. Can you tell me, what have you found like, is the best value? What’s the best, like the biggest bang for your buck when you’re putting money into your rental, and you want to force value and appreciation and potentially even like, increase the rents?

Brandon Neth 35:18

So I want to start out by saying, I think we are guilty, a little bit of overdoing things sometimes. I definitely know people out there that make better money than I do that do less. Okay, just to be straight. That said, I think when it comes time for them to turn around, sell their properties, they’re gonna have to put more money into it. And they’re not going to get as much as I am. Because most of my properties are to a level that I think a homeowner would buy and be happy, more or less move in. I don’t think you can say that for all right. Let me you know, again, double edged sword. Now that said, I think is when people walk into our properties, something that we consistently see, or we consistently hear like, Oh, I love this is our kitchens are very nice. We do we do custom shaker cabinets that we’ve again, we’ve developed a deal with somebody here we do, we do like a dark navy blue or dark green, do these really unique colors that pop that are trendy. We do stainless steel appliances, we typically do hardwood floors, and we do like designer tile and paint. And these things are things that people get really excited for. I know it seems silly, but the cosmetics is what sells so many people. When I’m sitting there telling somebody, guess what, you have a new age back, you have new windows, you have new plumbing, you have new electric, they don’t care. They’re like, I want to go look at the pretty tile in the bathroom. Yeah. Right. So I think those you get a lot of bang for your buck from bathrooms from kitchens, and curb appeal. Curb appeal is really, you know, one of the reasons I love wholesome is because we have a ton of craftsman homes. And then we have Portland, Oregon, Washington. And like these level, this house, I told you my house is worth I don’t know 350,000 Whatever that number is, this would be a million million to 2,000,005. Important. So I love the fact that I get to move into these beautiful old 1920s homes, rebuy them create these beautiful porches get this crazy good curb appeal, and it’s still affordable. I will say to your point. When you do this stuff, and you put this, you get this level of passion, you get excited, you can show it to people and they can see it, it does increase your rents, it does increase how much money you make. So I try to always stay within the 1% rule. So anybody that doesn’t know it 1% rule just essentially says do you spend for easy math, if you spend $100,000 on a house all in, you need to be bringing in 1% of that per month. So $1,000 per month. That’s kind of like my general rule per door. So every house or property I have, whether it’s a single family or my apartment complex, I tried to stay at 1%. So I tried to keep my renovation, my total costs, including my renovations within that total number that will be 1% What I think it can rent for and I get my best bang for my buck based off what that’s going to be typically kitchens bathrooms, curb appeal.

Yoni Schmidt 39:17

Yeah. Love that, you know, hard to find the 1% rule nowadays. Yeah, at least, you know, turnkey properties does require knocking on doors and building your network. And the curb appeal is a really important aspect because that’s your first impression, right? And you only get one shot at making your, you know, a really good first impression. And if you don’t have a great curb appeal to your property, then someone’s just gonna roll up and they may just drive right off. So super

Brandon Neth 39:49

spend that little bit of extra for some landscaping, right?

Yoni Schmidt 39:52

Yeah. 100% Yep. Love it. So tell me I guess what advice can you give to small investors or newbies that are coming into the real estate investment world, what avenues exist for them. And you know, what should they consider before diving in.

Brandon Neth 40:11

So a piece of advice, I always tell everybody, and this may not be the most popular thing, but it’s just do it, do not get stuck in this analysis paralysis, because, again, I said it earlier, you might not make the best bike today, but 10 years down the road, it’s going to be a goodbye, and you pass it up on these two or three deals, you’re gonna I promise you, you’re gonna end up kicking yourself down the road, I no personal experience, like everything I saw in 2020, and 2021, I should have just bought, I don’t care if it wasn’t a good deal of the time, Yay, I’m killing myself. So I’m not saying go buy on a whim, I’m not saying don’t do your research, I’m not saying don’t educate yourself. But I’m saying if you’ve got a deal that you’re on the edge, just by looking at it as, look at it as buying an education, you’re, instead of going to college, maybe you spend an extra $10,000 on this property that you shouldn’t have, but 10 years down the line, you’re gonna have so much more education, that’s my number one piece of advice, don’t get stuck, just do it jump in time, time in the market is better than timing the market, just do it.

Yoni Schmidt 41:18

Love it, you know, as giving advice being ever giving advice, you know, as a self managing landlord, who’s doing it yourself, sometimes, you know, looking into the world of property management, that you know, does it third party? What advice would you give property managers and property management companies to ensure that they keep their owners happy, retain the properties under their management? You know, and essentially, do this effectively in you know, do to a place where tenants are happy? What are the major things that you would say, are the most important for property managers doing third party property management?

Brandon Neth 42:00

This, this is a super easy answer, it’s communication. Gotta communicate like, There’s nothing more frustrating than because let me back up. When I said I had the Washington property, I actually used my mom’s property management company to take care of that when we were living in Oklahoma at first, out of state property managers pretty tough. It really is. And again, that’s where a company like you guys really shine. But having done it and not getting the level of communication drives me crazy. Let me give you kind of a horror story. To to drive this home, they took seven months to rent my condo. Part of that was because they came up with this outrageous number that they want to rent it for at first. I was fairly new, I was like, You guys are the experts, I’m gonna let you do it. Three months into it. I said, You guys are crazy. This is crap, we’re going to do my number of course it starts getting hits. And then they had issues finding a qualified candidate. Again, I was finding all this information out because I was calling I was, you know, saying what’s going on, they weren’t communicating with me. So it was super frustrating. Seven months in a place, this tenant wasn’t a good tip. The guy didn’t stay for two years. But at the end of the two years, he trashed my place. He locked himself out of our garage, and instead of calling the property management company, and this will be number two thing that property managers need to do. Instead of getting in contact with our property management company, he took an axe to my garage door, my big two car garage, cut it down, ripped it out so he could drive. Okay, so that was a level of tenant that they put into this place. After seven months and telling me they couldn’t find a qualified candidate. So really frustrating because I was. And none of this was explained to me until I call, like, find out that somebody has ripped down a garage door, you need to tell me if you’re having problems renting a place either tell me if there’s gonna be a maintenance request. That’s going to be a very large expense. Tell me communicate with me. It’s so important. If you don’t, you’re gonna have pissed off home on Earth. Pissed off landlords, period. Yeah, and that leads me to number two is like maintenance maintenance requests, things like that. I think it’s really important. I don’t know if you guys have it, but something I’ve learned. I think there needs to be something spelled out very specifically early on. If it’s under $250 you guys who got the okay to do it. Give me 50 and $1,000 We need to have communication if it’s over $1,000 needs to be in writing it like x y and z you need to give me a specific quote. Because nothing kills cashflow like a surprise 1000 $1,500 Water Heater.

Yoni Schmidt 44:49

Yeah,

Brandon Neth 44:50

it just you know boom there’s a there’s three months worth of profit God right. Yeah. And I think you combine the the main gets in the communication on that side with the having processes in place for us. That all adds up, it’s really important I and that’s me on the outside looking in, because I am eventually going to use a property management company to retire and go somewhere else and let somebody else run my property someday. Love it out those things I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna throw a rock through your window.

Yoni Schmidt 45:21

Now, I will tell you I mean, at Keyrenter, the way we do it is when a property is vacant, we do every Tuesday traction report, and we send it to the owner letting them know exactly how many leads have been interested in the property, how many of those leads have been pre qualified, how many of those pre qualified leads, scheduled showings and how many of those that scheduled showing actually showed up to the property. And you get this every Tuesday as long as your property is vacant. And you know, communication is a key aspect, and it’s one of our core values is just communicated. As far as the maintenance goes. We’ve built automated systems to where anytime a tenant puts in a work order, you receive an automated email with a PDF of that work order, saying, hey, Brandon, your tenant at 123 Main Street has submitted the following work order, no action required on your part, you know, we just want to make sure that you’re informed. So there are no surprises at the end of the month, what that allows you to do is either prepare yourself for that financial expenditure, because you know that that hot water heater is 20 years old, and it’s time for it to be replaced. Or it’s your time to run interference and just take it forward it to dedicated property manager and say, Hey, I just replaced that hot water heater, here’s the contact information to the plumber who did the work, can you please work with this person, so they don’t have to incur a charge and, you know, see what the issue is diagnose it and resolve it. It comes down to 100% communication and transparency, our threshold is you are close to $300. But anything over $300. Buying emergencies, of course, would require written confirmation and communication from the owner. And in some cases, a couple of quotes to make sure that we’re really getting that, you know, great price for the owner. So love the fact that those are really the two things that you find really frustrating because we know we know, you know from experience is that owners don’t want to be surprised investors don’t want to be surprised that now they’re you know, returns are going to be hurt or you know, well under what they expected. And, you know, just discovered at the end of the day. That’s why at Keyrenter we also offer a checking account like experience to all of our investors where you can log in and see expenses, and Income Daily understanding your cash flow, and cash on cash and cap rates. So we have an owner dashboard and an investor dashboard for all of our owners that own single family residential homes. And then, you know, hopefully in the future we’ll be able to work with this company out of Israel blankethomes.com Lior Abramovich and Sagi Medina who are developing this platform and offer it to also multifamily investors. So they have a really unique product that I’ll be excited to just hang out with, you should go to coffee and just share what they can, what they can do and how they can help. But lastly, beyond your professional accomplishments and everything that you’re doing, what might people be surprised to learn about you, and unusual or interests, and, you know, any unusual hobbies or interests, I know you and Mariel love to travel, any recent trips coming up, or ones that you’ve just gone on. And I know that, you know, you’ve you’re a true survivor of, you know, a difficult, you know, a difficult disease that, you know, is not necessarily something that’s easy to maybe talk about, but it’s an inspiration to people that you’re like pushing through and just, you know, not not giving up and like, you know, really, really just doing everything that you can just stay, you know, active and involved in. It’s a real inspiration. So I think people should hear this message.

Brandon Neth 46:01

Yeah, so I was I was diagnosed with stage four cancer at 38. And, again, crazy story kind of runs along with my life. More or less, they gave me six months to live here in Tulsa. So I freaked out and made some made some bad choices on the real estate side. And financial sides. I was trying to get things done and push through so Mariel didn’t have to deal with deal with a lot of this stuff on our own. But my friends pushed me to MD Anderson went down anyways, over the last few years being a treatment. I got the all clear. So that’s going to be a neat fact. I went from having stage four cancer being told I have six months to live to like literally last two weeks ago being told I have no evidence of disease. So that’s a big one. But to your other point, like, yes, we are huge travelers, we’ve been to 83 countries. And I do it all through credit card points and miles I have earned. I’ve earned or saved over six month coming up on seven figures now your credit card points miles. So learn to optimize the programs. Take advantage of the signup, bonuses, take advantages, that’s all these different things they offer, the one of those geeks that nobody wants to listen to you, but I run my own social media and my own Facebook group surrounding all of it. Because what I love about it is it gives pretty much everybody the opportunity to put their credit in line with their financial life in line, understand some financial literacy and travel the world for pennies on the dollar. So yeah, that’s something that if I’m at a party, people end up hate me because I don’t shut up about it.

Yoni Schmidt 50:38

Love it, how can people find you on Facebook and your group and just those who are interested in financial literacy, investments? finance in general? Tell us about that.

Brandon Neth 51:11

Sure. So we have developed our own bar started developing our own brand is called The Neth Lab. And so our last name is Neth and we take houses from meth to Neth I love The Neth Lab. And then my Facebook we run a Facebook group with like 45,000 members, it’s called FBZ Elite Travel and Points we talked about travel and points. And then I have 150,000 member Real Estate Group. It’s bigger pockets fans. So we talked about everything real estate, you have, you know, 150,000 other investors if you want to network, that’s a great place. And again, with all of these, the credit card side and the real estate side, the end goal being financial independence, right? So we have a fire mindset with everything we do. That’s what we’re looking to do. And you know, I’m always open. If you want to track me down, send me a DM I’ll do everything I can to help you out because I think that’s the most important thing.

Yoni Schmidt 52:07

Love that we’ll include those links in the podcast in the notes below. So if anyone wants to reach out to Brandon, they can. And Brandon, thank you so much for this truly remarkable and inspirational story. I love what you and Mariel are doing. really setting the bar high and I really appreciate you being here today on our podcast.

Brandon Neth 52:30

Hey man, thanks for the invite. I appreciate it. I feel lucky to know you guys.

Yoni Schmidt 52:34

I appreciate that.

Outro 52:39

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