Joe:  Welcome. This is the Real Estate Investing Mastery Podcast. Hey, what's up, ladies and gentlemen? Welcome to the Real Estate Investing Mastery Podcast. Been doing this show for 14 years now, almost 15 years. Can you believe that? Glad you're here. I'm really honored to have our guest today. His name is Sam Primm from a company called Faster Freedom. A lot of you guys have probably heard of him because he's all over the social medias and he's doing really, really well in his business. And he takes a very different strategy than what I normally have done. I'm always about wholesaling, making a fast dollar, in and out of a deal. This is the definition Sam is a definition of a buy-and-hold investor and he has a ton of Property and we're gonna be talking to him about that. But here's the cool thing about Sam He lives in St. Louis and he's been here for a long time. I live in St Louis. I'm kind of a hermit, but I venture out once in a while to these masterminds or something. And I met him for the first time in Florida. So I talked to him and it was in Florida, wasn't it? Yeah. And I said, hey, you're in St Lewis, right? And you're all over the socials and we should play golf sometimes. We played golf a couple of weeks ago and Sam's just a real, he's a great guy. He's one of the real deals. And if you haven't seen him on Instagram or YouTube or Twitter X or whatever TikTok, He's out there everywhere, go look him up, Sam Primm, P-R-I-M-M. But he's got a great company here in St. Louis. And the cool thing is the gentleman who started his company that Sam later bought the company and evolved it and made it just 20 times bigger, his name was Brian. And that was a guy, when I wasfirst getting started doing real estate in 2006 and seven, I first started studying and kind of figuring out what I wanted to do. That guy Brian was really inspirational to me. And I kind of, he really inspired me. I never really knew him that well, but I followed everything that he did. And he was doing at the time, a lot of lease options, but Brian has kind of since retired, moved on. He's still kind of semi-active in the lending business. But anyway, it's Sam has taken Brian's company and just made it. You know, no offense against to Brian, but he's made it 20 times better and bigger. And it's amazing. SoSam's got a real cool story. I'm looking forward to talking to him about that and sharing with you guys, listening to this and watching this, how you can actually become wealthy in real estate by taking on a ton of debt, which might scare some of y'all. But that's what Sam is known for us. But Sam, how are you in a man?

Sam:  I'm doing well, man. I'm excited to dig in and talk about debt and leverage and all the things that help normal people get ahead.

Joe:  Talkreal quick, give us an introduction on how you got started in real estate. How long have you been in St. Louis?

Sam:  I was born and raised here in St. Louis. So born in 1987. So however long that is, that's 37 years going on 37. So born and raise here, I didn't ever plan to get into real estate. My dad was an engineer. My mom was a teacher, like super like normal, like TV commercial type of, you know, childhood. Um, and now that's what I thought I was going to do, right? My dad worked for Boeing for, for 35, 40 years, whatever it was. So it's like, all right, that what your parents do. That's what, I'm going to deal. I remember, I remember seeing those Folgers commercials of the dad getting up while the kids were sleeping and making his coffee and heading to work. And that's what that's, what like was my goal and dream, right? Um, so I started to go down that path. College, uh, you know, high school, college, all the things. And then a year or two after I graduated college, I read a book called rich dad, poor dad. I know that's so cliche, right. Weren't you hoping there was some like I was in jail and I was thinking about something decided to change my life. No, I write a rich dad poor dad kind of opened my eyes a little bit and started to invest on real estate on the side, which I'm sure we went into for a few years and then I went all in 2018 is when I went all in and when did you first read the book 2012 on my honeymoon 2012.

Joe:  On your honeymoon, you read it. So the book came out in what, like 2005, I think. I think so. Maybe 2004 or something. And it's amazing, it still has a huge impact today. What made you start thinking about owning rental properties? I mean, because that's kind of what you're doing now. You own millions and millions of dollars ofsingle family homes, right? And what made you decide like that, going that route instead of fix and flip, instead of rehabbing or wholesaling or commercial properties, things like that?

Sam:  Yeah, my original goal wasn't necessarily right away. My very original goal, wasn't to quit my job. So I was looking for more of the long-term wealth. I, I didn't know anything about anything, but I did know owning rental properties was a good way to maybe retire a little bit earlier, get a little ahead a little earlier. So I didn't know about the burrs method or too much debt leveraged. And I didn't have enough money to put 20% down on the rental. So my goals were to flip a house and then take that profit and use that as 20% percent down on a rental. So every rental I bought, I was going to have to flip a house to buy it. Um, that was my original plan, not knowing about refinancing and not knowing about the property way to leverage. So, um, we were actually halfway through our first deal before we discovered the refinance method. So I'm one of those things where you just try and figure it out. And real estate is fortunately adaptable and versatile. So we were able to kind of pivot and keep and own that rental, that very first one that we were flipping, we kept it as a rental.

Joe:  And St. Louis is such a good market to do this strategy in, isn't it?

Sam:  Yeah, St. Louis, you don't get the big highs of, you know, other cities on the coast and down south, but you also don't get the huge crazy swings and the crazy lows like St. Louis. I was in college studying at that time, but looking back 15, all the numbers show 15 St. Louis dropped about 15% while other markets got absolutely crushed. I know there were certain areas of St. Louis that I'm sure got hit worse, but overall it did pretty well. Over the past five years, St. Louis has had not one year over year reduction in price. So it's just a solid, steady market. It's not the most exciting place in the world, but it's a great place to own rentals.

Joe:  When you're comparing markets, you're looking at the value of the homes and the price, the values of the rents, the rent that it can bring in. And there's certain ratios that people look at. Is that one of the things you look at when you look different markets? And what is that ratio called? What do you use?

Sam:  Yeah. So there's, so we, we just invest here, but I do have students in all 50 states. I'm pretty familiar with, with all the markets. We only invest locally. I think I tell people the best place to invest is your backyard, the city you live in. Now, if you live downtown Miami and you want to own single-family rentals, you might have to go elsewhere and do it remotely. Or if you, you know, live in LA or something, then you want do single-family rentals. But the best places, if your strategy you want use works in your back market, in your backyard do it there. So that's what, That's what we tell people and in St. Louis, we just try to look to get like two to 300 bucks a month cashflow after everything. So make sure there's at least 20% equity and make sure that we're cash on at least 250 to 300 a month, like netnetnet after everything, all expenses. And some people look at like that 1% rule, which is how much money you have in the house will rent cover 1% of that. So if, if you have $150,000 mortgage on the house, you need to get at least $1,500 a month rent. Now that's, it's just a general rule. You still have to dig in because certain markets have higher property taxes or certain markets, have you know, different types of laws and insurances higher in Florida, Texas right now than so there's other variables, but in general, most people say if my cost basis in the property, I can get it 1% of that and rent it's probably worth digging into, but if I have 150,000 in a house and it rents for 1200, there's no point in even looking at it because we know it won't work.

Joe:  I want to ask you about the burr method and you still call it that and but people would say you can't get those numbers today. That's like it's impossible. It is. So, can you?

Sam:  You can. Yeah. So, there's a few different things that I've looked into over the past couple years to continue to do the BERS deals. But I'm also, well, I'm hard headed, but I'm not that hard headed. That's why I've kind of shifted some of my teaching into, it was all about the Bers for a while. Now it's about find the deal, find the funding, and then let's figure the best strategy. Is it wholesaling it? Is it flipping it? Is it doing a short-term rental or a midterm rental maybe to help with cash flow? So, it is possible today. It's a little bit harder than it was. I also think, Joe, that it's never going to be what it was. I don't think we're ever going to have that 2017 to 2021-22 timeframe where prices are 18, there's a little blip, but prices are pretty steady, rents are going up with it, rates are low. Historically, the Fed's funds rarely add zero or near it. So I don't know that we're going to ever have that again, so I think we just have to get creative. Midterm rentals are a huge thing that a lot of my students are doing now. They work in a ton of areas, especially around hospitals. You're able to get double the rent, basically. I mean, if you do a good midterm rental, you're, you know, still 85, 90% occupancy. And that's- So what do you mean by midterm rentals? Talk about what that is. Yeah. So midterm, rentals are like renting out to traveling nurses or corporate leases or insurance displacements. And a lot of people think that the market's not big enough, but they're completely wrong. If you go to Furnish Finder, there's about 250,000 midterm rental listings. And that Furnished Finders is the place to go for midterm rentals. Whether you're a traveling nurse. Or you're a corporate lease, or you an insurance displacement lease, that's where you go. There's two million traveling nurses in the country. That doesn't even talk about like insurance displacement. Like my, you remember this a couple of years ago, Joe, there was a tornado came through right around Christmas time in St. Louis. My brother-in-law's house got hit and he did three six-month midterm leases at houses in the area while his house was getting rebuilt and put back together. So it happens. It doesn't happen as much as somebody needing to move their family from one house to the other, but the supply is so low, the midterm rentals are just an option. It's like short-term rents 15 years ago. And then there's things like, you know, going with a 30-year DSCR loan instead of a small local bank, because the rates are better. So it's just one of those things where there's four or five levers you can pull to get from like negative 100 cash flow to positive 200 cash flow. And while that's not like anything to write home about 200 bucks a month, you are owning a real estate or a piece of real estate using little to none of your own money. So it's still worth it because that asset will create wealth for you in the long run.

Joe:  Back in the mid-90s, I was starting to think about buying a house. Back in 1900s, last century. So like, I remember talking to people at that time, and I forget what mortgage rates were, they were probably 8%, but I remember taking to people then that were excited about 8% interest rates because they used to be, five years, 10 years earlier, 15, 18% interest rates, right? But here's this funny thing, I'm sitting there looking at a book over here, Nothing Down by Robert Allen, it's a famous book, and it says on there, updated for the 80s, and I found it on eBay. But people back in the 80s, 70s, 80s 90s were buying rental properties even when interest rates were above 10% and they were still cash flowing so people you know think the sky is falling or whatever because interest rates are rising and they think that the there's no way you can invest in real estate because it's different now and interest, you can't cash flow, but you actually can. And you're living proof that it's actually happening. But has it gotten harder? And what's gotten harder in the last few years since H rates have gone up?

Sam:  That's a great point. It's a recency bias. People have recency biases. They only remember what happened the past year and as things change, people have trouble changing and adapting with it. That's why the cream rises to the top because not everybody can adapt with the changing environment around them. That's beautiful thing. People like you that are successful are able to get out of their own perception and have perspective. Perception is what you think it is. Perspective is what it really is. So very few people are able to get perspective and actually understand the bigger picture beyond just what's happening right there. So aside from that weird little tangent I just went on, some things that have changed is interest rates have gone up, which your cost of money goes up, and house prices, it's good and bad, it's as good if you own it bad if you don't have not really fallen with interest rates raising. Interest rates usually typically go up, house prices typically go down. But the fact that our supply is so out of whack and is so low, we have this headwinds of interest rates and cost of money and inflation and everything is making it harder to own and buy things. But prices in general seem to keep going because the supply is so long, there's always somebody that can afford it or isn't a good enough financial situation. The cost of money is a tough pill to swallow. Lots of things that my students are doing and other people are doing is a couple things, as I mentioned earlier, but going a 25-year mortgage at 8% at a small local bank is okay, but what if you can get a 6.5% over 30 years at a national DSCR lender? So getting flexible with your long-term funding options is one way. What is DSLR? DSCR is debt service coverage ratio. So it's just a, uh, it's a different type of funding. It's not based off the feds funds rate. Um, it, it it's based more off of what the 30 year mortgage and funds, you know, just these big, huge head funds and big companies are becoming lenders. So it is just a different way to borrow long-term debt that's going to give you 30 years, 25 year mortgage over 30 year mortgage, that that 30 yearmortgagesis going to give you a couple hundred more bucks a month. Now, granted, it's a longer time to pay it off, but if you're worried about it right now, you're going to get a little bit more there. So there's that. A lot of people are afraid to manage their real estate properties. So if you manage in-house, if you do a good job, one rental is going to take you an hour to a month maximum to manage if the agrisystem is in place at all. So that's a way to save a couple hundred bucks a month.

Joe:  That's huge. And I wanna, oh, that's huge because a lot of people think you have to hire a property management company. Correct. Or they think it's really hard and that can add significant savings and more money into your pocket if you learn how to do it yourself and it doesn't take much time.

Sam:  It does not, if you, if you just do a few simple things like utilize technology that's out there, like people don't understand that you can go to a technology, you get a free one or a pretty inexpensive one, and they will do the background check and credit, they'll do all that stuff for you. Don't the, you know, the company that you're going to hire is going to do the same thing. So you can just have them do the background check, the credit check. You set the expectations clearly. You have some type of place for them to go online and communicate with you or a Google number or something like you don't have to get over technical with it. But if you do the burrs method, which is what I really like in preach, you have a freshly rehabbed house. So you're not gonna be getting a maintenance call every single week and having to figure out how to, you'll get a few and you'll, but in general, you just rehabbed it. You just made sure all the windows were working. You made sure the toilets were fine. You did everything. So you were gonna have minimal maintenance in those first few years. So that's one way to save a lot of money because if you're renting something for 2000 bucks a month, the property management company's probably going to charge you 10% a month, which is 200 bucks, they're probably going to charge one to a half of a month's rent to get it leased up in the first place. So there's another, you know, a thousand to two thousand. They're up charging your maintenance probably by 25% on what their cost is. So that's one way that is it's, it's scary, but so is working a job and relying on someone else your whole life. Like you have to get over these fears and understand you're going to have to get uncomfortable. And if you managing a property for a couple of years while you're building up some equity and you're building up stable properties before you hand it off to somebody else. If that's your uncomfortable, then you should consider yourself lucky.

Joe:  Oh yeah, and I know guys that, um, and this isn't me, but well, it is actually. Uh, when I owned a bunch of rental properties, I just hired an assistant to me, do it for me. She spent, yeah, she spent five to 10 hours a week, maybe. On the property management side of the business, and then helped me with the rest of my stuff. But you can hire VAs to do this for you. And there's so many good programs and books and courses out there on property management that you can just give to your VA and say, study this, implement it. Okay, so cool. I want to talk about the BRRR strategy because we've been talking about that a little bit. What is BRRR? What does that stand for?

Sam:  Okay, so the BRRRR method stands for Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, and Repeat. We're going to get rid of that last R, Repeat. We're gonna change that to Systemize, because repeating, going back and doing what you did is not any way to grow and scale. So we're gonna Systemize. So I changed the last R to Systemized. So it's just a way to creatively buy assets using little to none of your own money by borrowing money. I can go example or go over the letters, but it can be used for anything. I bought six apartment complexes with the Burr's method. Nine unit, 12 unit, 19 unit, 27 unit, 29 unit, 32 unit. I just offered on an 80 unit all with this method. Now the deliverable is a little bit different than a house, but you can do it on a single family rental. I've done that 150 times. You can do it on self-storage. I have three of those. So you can do it on any real estate asset class as long as you're following the process and going through the letters the right way.

Joe:  This used to be the big thing that everybody was talking about five years ago, the burst strategy. It was big on bigger pockets. Everyone was talking about it, but people say you can't do it now anymore today. But I just want to clarify that you still can, maybe call it something different, but just so I'm clear, you can still buy rental properties today. That cashflow a few hundred dollars. You can still get mortgages that will let you cashflow that. And if you can learn how to manage the properties yourself, It's not that hard, is it, to find a property that will cashflow a little bit for you?

Sam:  Not if you're picking the right markets and not if you're doing the whole process the right way. Like the, the B, right? I'll just go through it briefly for those of you, the buy step. If you're able to buy a property at a deep enough discount, your cost of owning and your cost of like your long-term loan will be less. So maybe before you could offer at 80 cents on the dollar minus repairs. Now you just have to offer 75 cents on the dollar because your money costs a little bit more. So maybe you could have added 15 of them this year, you know, five years ago, but you only had five this year. So you might have to be more selective for sure, but it doesn't mean don't do it. You're buying the damn rental property with little to no money out of your pocket. The other option is putting 40 grand down or 20% down on it. So even if you go through the whole process and you're out of pocket, four or five grain, which happens a ton these days, that's still better than putting $200,000 down on that $250,000 house, right?

Joe:  That's a good point. I wanted to clarify that because one of the big advantages to the BRRR strategy is that you can get your money back. And then maybe five years ago, you get all your money, back plus some, cause after you buy it from maybe a hard money lender, and then you rehab it and fix it up, then you put a tenant in there, and then your refinance it with a longer traditional mortgage, right. You can get capital back that you put in the deal. So maybe you can't do that now. Maybe you actually are putting in four or five grand is what you're saying. So maybe you're not getting as much of it back as you used to before but that's still really good You're buying an asset that cash flows 200 bucks 300 bucks a month and you're out of pocket for that is only five ten thousand dollars That's still very very good return on your cash. Am I kind of getting it right there?

Sam:  100%. I mean, a few years ago, I remember one of our employees bought like 15 bird deals and he pulled out 211 grand on those. Like that's how easy it was. You were able to do it. They would cash flow. You'd pull out extra bit of money. You cash flow $350, $400 bucks a month. Um, so. That's when it was easy that was the kind of the thethe time to really step on the gas and we did and now it just it just looks different now we're getting all of our money back or leaving maybe a couple grand in the deal and we're cash on one hundred and seventy five bucks a month like. We're in a different position. So I'm not going to tell everybody to do this, but I'll do it for 50 bucks a month because guess what happens that property that I'm getting paid $50 a month to own goes doubles in value every 15 years, the new time, first time home buyer house price points more than double, but go back and look at the house value charge those listening houses double in value, every 15 years, somebody else is taking care of the owning expenses and, and all of the debt that's getting paid down. I'm, not paying any taxes because of the tax savings. Plus, you're getting a little bit of tax-free cash flow, and it strengthens the balance sheet of my overall portfolio of businesses because I have this equity built in. So, real estate does go up in value over time. So if you're able to do that, even if you have to come out of pocket, I'm not suggesting someone do this 50 bucks a month. I did this. I said I'd be okay losing 50 bucks month on a rental and I got crushed online for it. Ken McElroy, I think, called me an idiot, but hey, how great is that? People are people how much how much is the average listener putting in their 401k every month? Probably have several hundred even if their employees matching it and I'd rather have a rental than a 401k all damnday So the point is it's just this vision of no money 500 bucks a month cash flow $80,000 equity easy pulling out 10 green. Okay, those days are gone But it still works for those that are doing things the right way and being strategic in each step and having some discipline rather than just buy.

Joe:  Yeah. So you got to look at this because this is one of the mistakes I made when I was first getting started is I thought, Oh, $200 a month cash flow, right? And if I got five deals, that's a thousand dollars a month. And I would spend all that money and not thinking about future vacancies, maintenance, and repairs. And so when you talk about cash flow, there's a big difference between gross cash flow and net cash flow. Right? We talk about that a little bit. And then after that, I want to ask you, don't let me forget, I wanna ask you some of the benefits of owning rental property because touched on a little bit. But okay, so talk about the net cashflow. What is that? How do you calculate that number? What are you taking into account?

Sam:  So I've changed it and fixed it now that I have a portfolio that's somewhat mature. Before I would just take, it's called the cash flow formula and the beautiful thing about this one is that they're pretty known variables. When you're buying and you don't know exactly what it's going to be worth or what it is going to appraise for or what exactly how much equity you're going to have or what the rehab is going cost, it is a little scary that initial buy. But when you get to the rent step it's pretty well known. So you should just take your rent minus your expenses and there's seven major expenses do account for. I only accounted for six up until about two years ago, but you just take your rent, which you should be able to figure out. Don't use the rents estimate. It's a fine likebarometer, but go see what properties are renting for in that area, just like you do on house purchases. So get actual rental comps. So you'll know it. Then you subtract out your mortgage. You should generally know what your costs are going to be in your interest rate. Then he subtract out your taxes. You can find that number. Then you subtract out, your insurance, get a quote on that. Then do you subtract out your maintenance, we do 150 bucks a month per door. So you know, five, six months, go buy nothing and then a water heater or something goes out. So, you know, you have to put that away. And then you put money away for property management, 10% of rent, or if you're managing it yourself, I would still put some money aside in case you ever do offload it. And then you subtract out vacancy, put 5% aside, the biggest expense and owning rental properties is turnover, because you still have all those expenses I just mentioned, but no income to offset it. And most people are gonna have two, three months in tenants. So A, do everything you can to keep your tenants. B, sets of vacancy aside for that. And then the last one I didn't account for is CapEx, capital expenditures, just because I didn't t think about it. Everything was brand new or newer in the property. If it didn't have 5-year life on it, we'd replace it on the rehab. But stuff happens. SoCapEx is like replacing the roof every 10-15 years or something. Yeah, so stuff happens and we're starting to account for that now. But if you do all of that and are realistic in your numbers and you're cashflow in two, 300 bucks a month, that's a home run or even a hundred bucks a monthly these days. A lot of people I know would say they cashflow 500 bucks a moth but they didn't put money aside for vacancy or they didn't put money side for cap backs or even maintenance maybe even. So if you account for all of that and it works, keep it, if you count for all of that, and it doesn't cashflow but there's still equity, flip it. That's the, you know, that a beautiful thing about real estate, buy rehab and then flip it or buy rehab or rent it, it's kind of up to you.

Joe:  It's so important if you own rental properties that you set aside that money because it can be so stressful if you don't have that money saved when you get a vacancy or the tenant is late, right? And you're freaked out because, oh my gosh, where, where is this money going to come from to cover the mortgage? Cause I didn't get rent or paying for when they do leave to repaint the walls and replace the carpets or whatever, if you have that money set aside, I'm speaking from experience, you will not be so stressed out and worried about it. Cause sometimes a lot of the people thatsay, this is so stupid. Why would you be short $50 a month on a property don't realize that you're setting aside this money for vacancies, maintenance, repairs, capex, things like that in the future. You can sleep at night. You're going to be okay. And there's at least four or five things that you don't necessarily see as a benefit for owning rental properties. You already talked about these. Appreciation is one of them. That house is going to appreciate over time. Principal pay down is another one. Who's paying your mortgage on that rental property anyway. I'm not, but then it is right. They're paying it. So it's okay. And then you've got taxed benefits, tax write-offs. And eventually you can get to a point where if you have other businesses, you may not have to pay any money in taxes. I mean, Sam, when is the last time you paid federal income taxes?

Sam:  Um, 2021, and it was because my accountant wasn't doing right. We got a new accountant and we haven't paid it since we got the right person in place.

Joe:  So you're going to get appreciation, principal pay down, tax write-offs. You also get forced appreciation. In other words, you get equity in the deal, right? So like you're typically buying a property at 70 to 80 cents on the dollar. So you should have about 20% equity in a deal. And as you pay down the principal and as the equity, as the house appreciates, you get more and more equity, which allows you to create more leverage so that you can buy more properties like this and just keep on repeating it over and over again. Are there any other benefits that I?

Sam:  Well, you didn't mention that it's small, but you didn't mention the cash flow even, right? You should be getting that 50, 100, 200 buck a month cash flow. Cause you talked about earlier, your gross cash flow can be 600 bucks. You can still lose money. Cause you have to account for these things like you're setting money aside for your real estate taxes at the end of the year, setting money aside for vacancy, aside for maintenance. So it's it, your net is what you need to worry about. You said, but yet the cashflow and then the other side of the coin is you get that equity that really, really grows and then you can do out refinances and pull it out tax-free like my very first rental property I bought in 2014, end of 2014, so 2015 refinance so right at 10 years. It was in Maryland Heights. It was worth 125 green. I had a 100-year mortgage on it. Now it's worth 270 green and I have a $60,000 mortgage on that. So I have $210,000 in equity because of what you just mentioned. It goes up in value over time. In 2018, I think it dipped a little bit, but guess what, it went right back up. In 2020, everyone freaked out and went down a little but then it went right back up. So in the long run, death, taxes and real estate doubles in value every 15 years. Those are the three guarantees in life if you own real estate in the right areas. So there's just so much that goes into just that one. And then what happens if you do it five times or 10 times or a hundred times? So it's just there's there's so much power to it. And this is not even mentioning the fact they didn't have to use any of your own money to buy it or very little of your own money buy it. Hey, Joe, if you want $200,000 in Bitcoin, how much are you going to have to spend? 200,000. If you want $200,000 in stocks, how much are you going to have to spend? 200,00. If you want a $200000 house, you can even put 20% down or you can do this and have zero money in it. So it's just one of those things where it's just not easy. It's not like direct depositing into a stock or crypto. So that's why people don't do it. But if you can. Do it the first couple of times like anything else and learn the flow and learn from your mistakes or the smarter thing is to learn from somebody else's mistakes and have guidance. It's, it's an absolute no brainer. I think it's the only way for the future generation to get ahead because we're behind this financial, you know, flow of debt and inflation and the cost of everything's going up. I think is the only that people aren't going to be working until they're, they're 80.

Joe:  Yeah. And in real estate is the best hedge against inflation, isn't it? Because obviously this goes without saying. You need, if you're going to go into this real estate game, building bar, buying long-term rental properties like this, it's got to be long- term. You got to have a long term view to the horizon. This isn'tget rich quick. This isn't even get rich in a couple years in five years. This is something that is going to be buildingyou wealth over time. And in 30 years, you're gonna be sitting on a big fat portfolio of free and clear rental properties, or maybe you keep on leveraging it up and you keep buying more and more real estate, but this is for somebody getting started. You know, maybe they have a full-time job Sam, right now, they're working 40, 50 hours a week. They don't want to quit. They're kind of happy where they are, but they're not happy with what the stock market's doing or just investing all of their money into the 401ks or whatnot. They want to get into real estate, doing some of what you're talking about. What kind of advice would you give them to get started?

Sam:  Everybody has their advice of you have to do this, you must do this. And one of my pet peeves is people that speak in absolute. So I will not do my own pet peeve, but I do think there are a couple of things that most people should do if they want to get going in the right direction, the right path, because the people that tell you have to do it this way, you're following their path. And my path is different than yours and yours is different than anybody else listening. So The couple of things that I think most people should do to set themselves up for success is one, you need a base level of knowledge. You don't have to be an expert. You won't be an expert. I'm not an expert, just the things change. We're not experts at everything because it's always moving and shifting. However, you do have to understand the difference in wholesaling and flipping or double closing or assigning or what ARV means. You have to have a base-level of knowledge so that when you're talking with people or reading or learning, you're able to absorb the information. Getting that base level of knowledge for free from your podcast, from my podcast, from YouTube videos and things like that, I think is important. And then the second thing that I think is a, is a almost a non-negotiable is getting involved with your community. So join your local Facebook groups, your local meetups, um, all the active investors go to meetups and all the. Active or want to be active investors are on the Facebook group. So just get a base level of knowledge, get involved in a community. And then at that point, you'll hopefully have made some connections and build some confidence that you'll take action and you're never going to know what you want to do until you do your first deal, you may Completely say I don't want rentals or I I don't want a wholesale or I don't want to flip your you're gonna understand what you do And don't what it's like trying to understand what? You want to do at a city you've never been to you have to go there and experience it first and then you'll figure out Where you want to go? So I think those are the main things because aside from the obvious having connections and having knowledge builds confidence What does confidence do confidence leads to action? You're not gonna do anything unless you have unless you take action So aside from like X's and O's that those two things cover I think they build confidence and in confidence you'll you'll be more likely to take action if you're confident

Joe:  Yeah, that's interesting. It made me think about, you mentioned buying in your own backyard is where you recommend people start. What about somebody listening to this who is in Miamiand they want to start buying rental properties like you're talking about, how do you find the good markets and then how do find the people that you trust that can help you find rental properties in those markets?

Sam:  Yeah. So the best places to go are going to be the Midwest and the Southeast. Just the cost of living, the rent versus what it, you know, what the properties go for, like you mentioned earlier is good laws tend to be fair. I'm not going to say, um, lane Lord friendly. I'm just going to stay fair, right? It, I can't kick somebody out on the street tomorrow. They're not paying a wreckin the property. They still have to send them eviction. They still go to the court. The judge says, give them another shot. They stick to this plan. Then they're gone or, you know, they're going now. So there's still a fair process as opposed to some other places. So I think those are kind of the areas to lean on. And I tell people having boots on the ground is very, very important. So whether it's a relative, a cousin, a sibling, a parent, a friend from college, whatever it is in the Midwest or the Southeast that will add a minimum, go check on the property for you and check on things. Um, hopefully you can get some type of partnership or equity with them, even if it's small to have them work on it is a big thing. Like there's a special education math teacher in LA, for example, he's 28 rentals in St. Louis in the past 15 months, and we're his boots on the ground. That's the advantage of us being here and being in my community, but we're the boots on the ground, so… Either partner with somebody or get a part of their community that's in a good place where you can, you know, have them be boots on your ground or find somebody that you trust that's willing to be boots, on the ground. It's pretty tough to live in Miami and decide you want to invest in Charlotte, not knowing anybody it's possible, but it is kind of tough.

Joe:  A few more questions, we got about 10 minutes. The first part of the burr strategy BRRR is bye. And I think I've said this for a long time, because I remember when I was first getting into real estate, watching Brian, what he was doing, I wanted to own a ton of rental properties. As I'd studied everything about property management, managing rehabs, selling the deals on lease options and owner financing and all that. But one of the most important skills that I ignored for a long-time was how to be a deal finder, how to find the good deals. I thought they were on the MLS. I thought people would sell them to me. I thought I could just find them from the local meetups and stuff like that. But I soon quickly discovered when my back was against the wall and I was hemorrhaging cash because the market was collapsing, the people that were successful were the ones that knew how to find good deals. And even when the market was collapsing there were still people buying deals. And the people who were making the money, if they didn't have any money already, they were the deal finders. They were the one's going out there to find. So talk about today in this market that we're in, what are some of the strategies that you're finding that's working for people to find deals? What are they doing? Where are they finding the deals at?

Sam:  Yes, we have five full-time acquisitions reps, their entire job is to find deals. So I got a pretty good sample size and they all kind of have different things that they utilize. So half of our deals come from mark or from networking. They have come from marketing, but we're, we buy 50 houses a year from real estate agents. So real estate, agents are the front lines of the real estate industry. Most of them don't understand investing. And even the ones that do, if they do 20 transactions in a year, one or two of them are going to be, you know, those handyman fixer uppers. So networking with agents that understand investors that bring you those pocket listings of that hoarder house, that pre-foreclosure, that distressed property, and getting ahead of it is a huge resource for us. Now, our number one buyer that buys 30 houses a year from agents, he's been doing this for several years, so it's taken him a while, and he's built relationships with the right agents, but he spends six months and try to find, next six months, and try find five good agents that will bring you their deals, that's a gravy train. That's hopefully a handful of buys a year from here until you're done, maybe more. So agents, wholesalers, go to the other people that are the hunters. Like yes, you have to pay for their services with a markup on the deal, but if it meets your numbers and you're still able to buy it 75, 80 cents on the dollar, good wholesalers buy deep enough to have that happen. So those are your first two, I think, agents and wholesalars. If you want to get like networking and free, you can go to just, we buy houses from a bowling alley owner. He writes, Ben buys houses on top of his bowling lanes and he's in drinking leagues with everybody hanging out. Something happens, somebody passes away, a parent's moved to an assisted care facility. He comes to us and we pay him five grand if we buy it. So there's those types of things. And then marketing, we just had our biggest lead week ever last week. We got like 105 leads, which is a lot for us. 45 of them are direct mail. Just last week, which that's not normal for us, so direct mail is a huge way for people to find deals. It's costly. You have to-

Joe:  I have been finding a huge uptick abusively as well in my direct mail.

Sam:  I wonder what it is. Do you think we're just getting good or youthink something something's with the market?

Joe:  I like to think it's because we're good marketers, but I think it maybe people are getting nervous what's going on in the economy and the news or right now as we're recording this with tariffs, people are scared that Trump is driving us into a war with China. So maybe there's some fear going on in the market, I don't know.

Sam:  There could be. Yeah. So direct mail is a good one, but it's costly and you got to be consistent with it. We buy just as many houses on letter five as we do letter two. So obviously if you didn't send letter five, you probably weren't going to get it. And then we do TV. I know not everybody can do that, but that's just more of a brand builder. I think it just kind of helps all of our other platforms. And then, we do some cold calling, which is, you know, the beautiful thing about technology today is there's a million of them. We have one called DealPilot where you're able to utilize AI to say, hey, 63304, I want to find houses that were built from 1940 to 1980 that have an absentee owner that are in pre foreclosure that have a lien on it. So you could do that before and stack them, but now with AI, you just click a button and it gives you the score. And then you can skip trace them and call them, email them, text them, whatever. So I'm utilizing technology. I think it is a great way for people to find pretty inexpensive leads and then try them for dollars. All our acquisitions reps before and After a poy missed their drive in the area to get a feel for it anyway, they just drive for dollars and have their app up and enter a few that we're able to put into our list. There's other ancillary ways, but those are the main ways we're getting deals.

Joe:  If somebody's just getting started, what would you recommend to focus on?

Sam:  I would recommend to focus on two or three of those lead sources. There's about 20 of them and see if they're good at those. If they try one, maybe, but that's kind of putting all your eggs in one basket. If you try 10, I promise it's not going to work. So I usually tell people for sure wholesalers, super easy to find, Google them, Facebook groups, meetups, those Bain assigns you see on the side of the arrow, those are all wholesalars. So wholesalas, I think for sure you want to get another networking source agents. And then I usually you tell people either drive for dollars, direct mail or those being assigned for them out themselves is a good way so i would just pick two or three of those and then just see which one you're good at maybe have a niche for driver dollars or maybe you're you're really really good at networking and you didn't know what are you just really social sales type of person you're gonnawanna focus more on that so i will just pick to three and then go go deep and then go wide.

Joe:  Driving for dollars, believe it or not, still works really, really well. I know a guy in Utah, he used to teach and coach people how to drive for dollars and he got frustrated with the coaching business. It's a lot of work and he just was making so much more money actually doing deals. So he quit coaching is now just driving for, he's pretty much canvases the entire state of Utah, he says. People driving for dollars and giving them leads and he's just in a very competitive market is doing really, very well. But the great thing about driving for dollar is it doesn't cost much money. You can anybody can go do it you can hire teenagers to do it for you maybe and you're just looking for properties that have the gutters hang in the you know the grass isn't being cut something's going on there's trash and piled up newspapers whatever and you can drive the same neighborhood every three months and find new houses.

Sam:  We have like we have some students that they just drive to work every day a different way. Not every day. Let's be like probablythree four days a week. They just leave 10 minutes earlier. They get home 10 minutes later and they're just kind of weaving in and out throughout different areas of town on their way to work. Sometimes they're missing the rush hour traffic too. I mean they just do that. The end of the month they have 20, 30 properties. Nothing crazy but they're able to call, text, put in direct mail, sequence, whatever. It's just one of those things like anything else you just have to… Reasonably weave it into your life as much as possible. And I think drive for dollars is a great way. And then there's also the, you know, the way that you can just efficiently try to do it on your way to work on your own.

Joe:  Direct mail has always been my favorite, man. I remember my first deal. Was in Warrington. And I sent a lady a postcard. And even back then, this was 2007. This was my first wholesale deal. Even back then. I remember I bought this guy's course. And you know Chris Chico? Chris Chico. I don't think I know that one. No. Okay. He had a course called Absentee Owner Profits. And at the time, I remember thinking, man, everybody's doing direct mail. And he had a way to get this list of absentee owners. Everybody's mailing absentees owners, tired landlord. And he has this ugly postcard, and I thought that stupid, ugly postcard can't work. But man, I was like, I got to figure this out. You know, if it's working for him, I don't, what other options do I have? So I'm gonna do it. And I forced myself to just do what this guy said to do. I sent a late, and then at the time I was trying to buy houses in Webster and Kirkwood area. And so I sent a postcard to somebody who owned land in Webstar. She called me and said, well, I don't wanna sell my property there. I wanna sell this other property I have over there in Warrenton. Was it Warranton? Warrnton's right there. Right city, it was right city. Okay, out that way, yeah. Further out, what's further out, Wright City or Warrenton? Warrentons further out than Wright City. So then it was Warrent. All right, anyway, but this lady finally calls me and she begged me to make an offer on her house. Can you believe this, Sam? Begged it. She begged me make an offering and it was a three family and out there, there's no three families. I couldn't get comps. I was so scared. She begged and I looked and it expired the year before for 140 grand. I pulled a number out of my, you know what? And she said, okay, I said, I can give you 50 for it. And she says, all right, 50. And I could not believe it. So put a sign out in the yard the next day, sold it for 65 grand the next day and of course you had to go through closing and all that. But I just made it. And so that's when I realized the power of consistent marketing, right? The power of sending out whether you're doing driving for dollars or cold calling or direct mail, do not stop because the deals are going to come to you. And since then, I've discovered what's even equally as important is sending out that first batch of marketing is consistently following up with sellers that do call you, right? When they do call, you send them an offer and you send him an offer every 30 days is what I like to do, but consistently follow up. So you guys at Faster House, Faster Freedom, have an amazing marketing team. I remember going to some of the meetings at Faster house before you got there, maybe when you were there, I don't remember, but seeing they would share the numbers. It was like completely open book and I just was blown away by how good you guys were with tracking all your metrics. Kudos.

Sam:  Yep. Thank you. What you track improves, right? And what you focus on grows. So yeah, if you're not tracking what types of piece of mail you're sending, where you're sending them to, what list, your response rate, I mean, you'll probably make it by, but if you really want to get efficient and, you know, increase those margins, you definitely have to track things.

Joe:  Okay, so I should have asked you this at the beginning because you talk about this, it seems like every couple of days on your Instagram posts, right? How much debt do you have now? And how much do you pay every month on your debt payments? And then tell us the punchline after that.

Sam:  Yeah, so right now I'm in about $30 million worth of debt, and that cost me about $140 grand a month in mortgage payments. And that's mortgage, that's not taxes or insurance. So about 140 grand a months in just mortgage at principal and insurance.

Joe:  And that would freak most people out, but then tell the rest of the story.

Sam:  Yes. So that allows me to own about $51 million in real estate. So, um, thirties millions a lot, but 51 million is more. And the difference that there's two is 21 million. So, I mean, if I did everything the normal way or cash, I'd have like a million in real estate. So, and then the other side of it, the more powerful side is, is that 51 million in really say brings in about 350,000 a month in rent, which is obviously more than enough to pay my mortgage, my interest, taxes, insurance, all the other ancillary costs. Um, and it cash flows 20 grand some months, 40 grand some months, it's not a huge amount of cash flow for 50 million in real estate. Guess what? It's 50 million real estate that I didn't have to use my own money to buy. And it does what I said it's going to do in 15 years from now, it'll be a hundred million in real estate, even if I stopped buying today and the 30 million will be paid down to let's say 20 million. So, um, there'll be 80 million there. Um, and I'd use my money to get that 80 million.

Joe:  And even if you sold half of your portfolio, you'd pay the other half off and you would own 10, 20 million dollars in real estate free and clear.

Sam:  Mm-hmm, yep. It's a power of leverage and consistency, and a hood market just for a while.

Joe:  Yeah, yeah, good for you, Sam. Plug it away, and you've got a great Instagram channel. You're very active on the YouTubes and podcasts. So how can people find you, and what's your preferred channel?

Sam:  Yeah, whatever my preferred channel is their preferred channel. So whatever channel they are on the most, whether it's X or YouTube or Instagram or Facebook, whatever it is more podcasts, that's what they listen to just just you know, search for Sam or Faster Freedom, and it'll pop up. You know, there's a lot of fake accounts that I promise I'm not going to, you know message you to try to give you to give me crypto with the account that has 10 followers. So, whatever platform they're on, if they want to like get me for sure to respond, send me a message on Instagram at Sam faster freedom andand I'm so there in the DMs. I have a VA helpme in there, but she tells her name's Ashley, so she'll tell you that. But usually it's me if I ever get bogged in, she'll say, Hey, this is Sam. Actually, this is Ashley, Sam's assistant. So you're going to get me 90% of the time, but just DM me on Instagram and she or I will get back to you and then it'll eventually make its way over to me. Good. And to find you on Instagram, people just look for Sam Primm? Yep. Sam Primm or Sam Faster Freedom is kind of my name across most platforms.

Joe:  And you've got an amazing coaching program. Anybody who's looking to actually get some help to get there faster, talk a little bit about your coaching and mentoring program. Cause this is unlike anything I've ever seen before. You guys are doing a fantastic job with this. Talk a little about it if you don't mind.

Sam:  Yeah, for sure. No, thank you. Yeah, we definitely take pride in it. I do because I definitely understand most people's hesitation of the icky guru try to try to, you know, just sell you something because they can't make money elsewhere kind of a mindset out there. So It took me a while to actually come up with this and create it, but it is pretty unique. So we have 2,100 students now, all 50 states, a lot of success, a lot of people have quit their jobs and created more income. And how we do it is it's a little bit different of approach. I mentioned earlier, but we focus on deal flow and we focus on helping you raise funding. And then it's kind of like that customized holistic approach. So if you want to buy rentals, because you have a good job, we'll help you do that. If you want a create a wholesaling company that brings an extra income so you can quit your job, we'll help you to do that if you wanted to do flips. So we'll help you be flexible as possible. And we have 12 group coaching calls that are basically mastermind calls a week. There's one-on-one slots available every single day with some of the team. There's a Facebook group with over 2,100 people inside of it. There's AI technology that's inside there that helps you sort everything and search for what you want to get. There's resources. I'm in there as well. And then there's of course, you know, about 350 videos that teach you how to do everything step by step. So it's, it's a lot. It's like drinking from a fire hose students that join, but after a few weeks, like anything else, they kind of understand that the cadence and the flow and they're able to be pretty successful pretty quickly if they put in the effort, so it's uh, it, it it's big, big ordeal to put on and to have, you know the coaching behind it all, but it's fun to see people win for sure.

Joe:  And then talk a little bit about the meetups here in St. Louis. In a week from when we're recording this, or not less than that, Pace Morby and Jamil Damji, you will be in St Louis. I'm going to come, but I'm gonna be actually late because my daughter's has a birthday party that day. But talk about the meatups that you do here in Saint Louis for anybody that's around the area.

Sam:  Yeah, anyone that's around the area or honestly, we have people come from around the country sometimes for them, especially some of my students come, but yeah, we do meetups here in St. Louis. We used to do them with Brian at Buyers Club, but we started our own called Freedom Club. And on the 14th of May, so like you said, in five, six days, we're having paste, Morby and Jamil Damji. We're renting out this place called Frankie Martin's. We're hoping to have four or 500 people there. It's free event. We're not charging anything for anybody, even though it costs us money to rent it. But yeah, we just like to get together as many people as possible to help build the network here in St. Louis and help teach and educate people for free. And then, of course, you go there and you want to get introduced to our flipping company. We're going to wholesale turn to 50 houses this year. We'll introduce you to that person. We'll manage your rehab for you. We have a company called SCR Rental where we manage your Rehab. We have an lending company where we can lend you money. So it's free. You have to pay a dime for it and you get introduced our businesses. So it works for us because we get business out of it, just like any other marketing tactic, right? You know, you pay money for leads, we're paying money to host an event and they can connect with us. It's a fun, fun time to hang out and, you know hang out with active investors.

Joe:  Nice. Okay. One more question, a website that people can go to, maybe to, you've got a book, you've gotta bunch of videos and trainings. Do you have a website you'd like to send people to?

Sam:  Yeah, fasterfreedom.com is just the website there. Like I said, I got a book on Amazon. It's 10 bucks called the Own Your Freedom. Check it out. And then yeah, there's a ton of free resources, calculator scripts, all this stuff.

Joe:  Love it. Okay, fasterfreedom.com Sam Primm. Thank you so much, man. We'll see you soon. We got to go out and hit the links again.

Sam:  Let's do it. You see my slice slice in action.

Joe:  Oh, man, you're you're way better than I am. So you have nothing to complain about, which isn't saying much. All right. Thanks, Sam. Appreciate it. We'll see you. Bye bye.