The 3 C’s of Real Estate Investing: Josh Anderson on Contracts, Contractors and Capital

Josh Anderson (00:00)
Showing up. I mean, I think everybody, I don’t, it doesn’t matter if you’re green. Go, go listen to as many podcasts about investing as you can or whatever topic you’re trying to figure out. There there are tons of people that have gone before you. Go read books, go listen to podcasts. If you don’t like the podcast 15 minutes in, turn it off and go find another one. There’s a gazillion great podcasts. It’s filtering through. It’s all it’s the information thing again. Like we’re we’re in like this information super highway and you do have to go find the good information. Yeah, I listen, I’ve been in lots of rooms over the years and I just think people have to get in a room.

Meghan Escobar (02:11)
Welcome back, everyone. This is another episode of Real Estate Pros Podcast, hosted by Investor Fuel. I am your host, Meghan Escobar. And today I have the pleasure of of sitting with an incredible guest, Josh Anderson of The Anderson Real Estate Group out of Nashville. He is doing a few things out here, folks. He is not just your traditional real estate agent group—he is focused on wholesaling, creative financing, and a whole bunch of other things, and we’re gonna dive into that. He’s gonna tell us a little bit more about who he is and what markets he’s operating in, but I just want you all to know that I think you’re gonna be able to walk away with some great insights here. Josh is Josh has been dropping gems, and I’m excited for him to bring them onto the show so our audience can get their pen and paper out and start start writing down their gems that they’re getting. So let’s go ahead and dive in. Josh, again for being here. Absolutely. So first and foremost, for those people that might not be familiar with your name or your business—

Josh Anderson (03:08)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Meghan Escobar (03:16)
Mm-hmm. Give us a thirty thousand foot view of what your main focus is these days and what markets you’re operating in.

Josh Anderson (03:22)
Yeah. Again, thanks for having me. Josh Anderson. I got in the business in 2006 as a traditional real estate agent, realtor. I serve Nashville and kind of all of Middle Tennessee, about an hour around Nashville. And, you know, we we do traditional real estate. We help people relocate to the Nashville area, help people inside of Nashville move up, move down, move around. And we also work with a lot of investors with regard to flipping houses, long-term rentals, and Airbnbs.

Meghan Escobar (03:57)
Nice. What do you w— what would you say the main focus for you right now is within that— within those realms, within those…

Josh Anderson (04:06)
Yeah, you know, a lot of it overlaps. And so I would say our business is driven primarily by people, traditional real estate, people buying and selling. But within that, we have probably fifteen or twenty percent of our traditional buyer or seller clients that also decide early on or sometime after they buy their primary residence that they want to build some type of portfolio in real estate. So it’s either a long-term hold, they might love the idea of Airbnbs, or they might want to flip houses, or they might want to be an investor for a builder. They might want to be the the money person. They might want to do hard money loans. And so, you know, we we we’ve done a little bit of everything in real estate.

And I’d say our primary business is always going to be traditional real estate. We do have a division that is called… it’s our investment division called Fast Cash Offers TN, and they… we do wholesale and flip properties through that as well. So yeah, so I’m always kind of looking. I I do have lots of clients that all want something a little bit different, but whenever I look at a property, selfishly I look at it for myself or the team first. So before deciding even to list the property, is this is this something that I want in my portfolio, or do I know somebody that is a client that would want this in their portfolio? And if not, then it becomes a listing opportunity.

Meghan Escobar (06:33)
That’s amazing. And you know, one thing that really caught my attention throughout our kind of a discovery conversation, if you will, was the way that you hyper-focus on mastering the numbers, you know, making sure that it makes sense. You you you go by what you like to call as the Three C’s: the Contract, the Contractor, and the Capital. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Josh Anderson (06:53)
Yeah, well, most everybody listening to this does not know me, but I am I am absolutely an acronym guy. I have an acronym for everything—it’s crazy. The Three C’s for me, I mean, everybody probably calls it something a little bit different. For me, it was like those are the three things that are required for a deal to happen. So you obviously have to be able to identify the property and get an offer on it that becomes a contract. If you buy a property that you’re wanting to flip and you do not have a contractor, you are not going to do well. I I’ve learned that you can have the money and you can have the contract, but if you don’t have a reliable contractor, your money is not going to move near as fast as you otherwise could have if you have a great team behind you.

And I talk a lot about having the right team, and it’s a little bit with everything. So like I have I have the right team on all different things in my life, so that could be my CPA and my financial advisor, wealth manager, and all the people that that have like from that angle. And then you need your team contractors: you need a tile guy, you need an electrician, you need a plumber. It might be the same person that can quarterback all that stuff for you. But if you have a contract and you have the money to buy the property and you don’t know anybody in that town that you’re flipping houses, it is not going to work out well. And if it does, you probably got lucky. So finding the contractor, having the right team behind you of contractors, and then the money.

Meghan Escobar (08:31)
Yeah. And and that all makes pretty good sense when you when you break it down, right?

Josh Anderson (08:36)
Yeah, the capital’s probably the easiest of those three things. I mean, it’s easy to go find money, whether you go to a bank, a credit union, you got somebody in your life that is… maybe they don’t have the time, but they have the money. I promise you, if you bring a great deal to anybody in your life that has the money to fund a deal, they will do it 100 times out of 100. If it’s a gr— if it’s truly a good deal and they have money sitting on the sidelines, they will do it. So the money’s not hard.

Finding the deal is is really difficult in a a place like Nashville. It’s not… there there’s deals in every market, but finding the deal is hard, and making sure you have the right team that works that area. So like we have different contractors in kind of different quadrants of Nashville. Because if somebody if if somebody’s a contractor in Franklin, which is south of Nashville, they don’t need to go north of Nashville. If they’ve got… if they’re a good contractor, they’ve got all the business that they can handle right there in Franklin. So we have somebody different in Williamson County than we do for Rutherford County.

Meghan Escobar (09:37)
Gotcha. Yeah. And y— one thing that you mentioned, or a— another thing that you mentioned, too, was, you know, the numbers, the going back to the numbers again, you know, that it it just needs to make sense, and they don’t make as much sense as they did ten years ago. And I and I hear this often, right, with the cost of living increasing, the numbers, the the high interest rates, you know, it’s just it’s not an easy thing to navigate through in this climate. So what do you… what would you say, Josh, has been the key to keeping you guys, you know, running smoothly over at Anderson Real Estate Group?

Josh Anderson (10:47)
Yeah, I think the I think with regard to the numbers and the cost of living, it’s still… it Nashville’s still very affordable when you look at other metro cities that offer something comparable across the board. I actually think it’s a great deal. But yeah, I mean, it it has become more difficult. And so I kind of go through a whole process when I’m talking, when I’m doing a strategy session with an investor, I’m asking them like, is it about cash flow? Is it about appreciation? Is it some variation of both? Are you looking to flip houses or wholesale deals? Like it really just… it it not every investor wants the same thing.

I mean, we have a lot of times an investor will come to us and they’ll say, “Well, just, you know, if it’s a good deal, then bring it to me.” And like, yeah, I need I need more than that, because a good deal is different to everybody. And I need to understand what a good deal really looks like for that particular person. I know what it looks like for me, but it it depends. Do you have… are you putting 20% down? Are you putting 50% down? Are you doing a, you know, are you doing a 1031 exchange? What is what does the full picture look like? And what would a, you know, what would a great deal look like to you if I brought it to you? That’s, “Hey, Meghan, I’m bringing you X, Y, and Z,” and you pass on the next 10 properties I bring you, then we need to go back to the drawing board and like, I need to stop wasting my time and your time and really get a full understanding of what a a 10 deal looks like for you.

Meghan Escobar (12:19)
Fair enough. Fair enough. And again, thank you for breaking that down in in very like layman’s terms, if you will.

Josh Anderson (12:26)
Yeah, but it’s just part of… it’s just part of being a good real estate agent and a good advisor is, you know, if you want to consult and advise with people at the highest level, you have to ask lots of questions and then shut up and take good notes.

Meghan Escobar (12:40)
We have two ears and one mouth for a reason. I love that. And hey, Josh, every operator, every entrepreneur that I’ve had the opportunity to sit with and and and have these incredible conversations, there’s always a moment in time where things got real. You know, maybe that’s a deal that had gone sideways, or just a time you feel like you had to pivot really fast. And with your experience, you’ve been in the game since ’06. So tell us one of those moments that…

Josh Anderson (12:42)
For a reason. That’s right.

Meghan Escobar (13:08)
Kinda still sticks with you.

Josh Anderson (13:10)
Yeah. I mean, I can give you a couple of different instances.

Meghan Escobar (13:12)
I I think I figured you would have a better view.

Josh Anderson (13:15)
There’s probably also dozens I’m not thinking of, or I I I put into my “never want to think about again” memory. Yeah, you know, so so I got into the business as a realtor in 2006. And one of the things, and this probably isn’t exactly what you’re asking, so I’ll I’ll give you a couple instances, but I I can I can go back to multiple deals that I was like… it was before I really understood: be the buyer first and the listing agent second. And I can I can name addresses of specific properties that I brought to investors that I’m just like… look, in hindsight, I’m like, “I’m such an idiot.” I was so focused on listing a property and getting three percent. Meanwhile, my investor client flipped a property and made, you know, 60% by putting very little.

And it just, you know, those are the reps that you put in, and you learn from because you don’t learn… I was thinking about this this morning. You don’t learn near as much from your successes as you do from your failures. The the the failures are super expensive, they hurt, they’re a blow to your ego, and at the end of the day, you learn so much more from failing and getting back up and trying it again and again and again. And I’m a super hard-headed person, and I’ll just keep failing until I’m successful. And I think that’s part of what has made me so successful is… and maybe it’s being hard-headed and dumb, I I don’t know. But I have I’ve had lots of failures, and they’re not like life-altering failures, but they are like, “Dang, missed out on that fifty thousand dollar commission or that hundred dollar flip… or or hundred thousand dollar flip or this,” you know, whatever it is. And so, you know, you gotta look back and appreciate, but also realize that you missed opportunities and learn. And those are the best learning, yeah. I mean, those… that’s just part of the game.

Meghan Escobar (15:54)
And learn. Yeah. And and I think that’s the stuff that people don’t talk about enough. We we did talk very briefly about, you know, highlight moments, and and we live in that society right now where we only see the highlight moments where we’re not seeing the good, the bad, the ugly. And so I think it’s important to ask these types of questions to have these on shows, so people that are getting into the industry understand that, you know, there’s gonna be… there’s gonna be failures, and…

Josh Anderson (16:26)
Yeah, and I and I believe that… look, everything… Instagram’s a highlight reel. All the things are highlight reels, and that’s great, but it’s just not real life. And and I think that you resonate with other people so much more when you talk like just the raw reel. Like, “Hey, I’ve got the highlight reels. I’ve also got the late nights, and the ‘I don’t know how I was gonna make payroll’ and I stayed up all night and just kept going.” And I’m not saying… I’m not condoning…

Meghan Escobar (16:58)
The… the sacrifices.

Josh Anderson (17:00)
They don’t see all those. They just show up and people are successful, and it’s like, “Yeah, well, you didn’t see all the crap that they did for a decade, the 10,000 hours that they put in before that, that nobody cared about until all of a sudden you’re on screen and you’re successful.” And every… and every entrepreneur and every business owner has… they they know exactly what I’m talking about. And if you haven’t experienced it, then it’s hard for you to understand until you experience it. I try to get my kids to understand, and they just… they’re gonna have to… they’re gonna have to get their butts kicked and fail. But I told them, “Life doesn’t care. It’ll chew you up and spit you out. Like, it does not care who you are, where you came from. You gotta… you gotta just show up and kick ass every day.”

Meghan Escobar (17:46)
That’s it. And it and it truly is what separates the folks who are here to… what was the term that you used? Get a commission check versus the ones who are, you know, here to stay in the game long-term. So yeah. And let me ask you this here: what what… what are you most focused on scaling or solving next? You know, what’s the real big goal for Josh Anderson and The Anderson Real Estate Group?

Josh Anderson (18:10)
Yeah, I… and I told you this on our discovery piece, is it’s my personal brand. And so I… and that’s not… I know that doesn’t necessarily go with the Investor Fuel, but it actually does so much. And so the idea is, I want to be the Digital Mayor of Nashville, and I am going to be the Digital Mayor of Nashville. And so the the reason that is so relevant to this mastermind and this podcast is because it funnels everything else. The ultimate funnel, in my opinion, is a personal brand, and it gives you access, it gives you opportunities, it gives you all the reps.

And and what I want to do differently to be the Digital Mayor is, yes, I want to break news and I want to give people all the things that they need to know to make the great decisions, but it’s… it’s the good, bad, and the ugly. It’s: I’m going to give you all the good stuff about Nashville, but I’m also going to give you the stuff that you might not know that might change your mind on why you would move here or not move here. And so being able to help people at the highest level, like being able to consult and advise people at the highest level, is asking lots of questions, giving great value, and ultimately helping them make better decisions. And I think people really struggle with being able to really filter through all the information that we have in 2026 and make good decisions because the highlight reels are always there. And it’s like, I’m not trying to highlight those reels—I’m trying to give somebody the full picture so they can make the best decision for them or their family.

Meghan Escobar (19:50)
That’s huge, you know, especially with with everybody just kind of being so used to seeing just the good, right? And so it’s gonna… it’s gonna be a reality check for people who are, you know, not understanding the full spectrum of, you know, w— what it… what they’re actually looking for, because most people don’t know what they’re looking for. Yeah. So that’s gonna help compound things for you, maybe create some chaos in between, right? Depending on…

Josh Anderson (20:21)
I love chaos. Organized chaos—it needs to be organized chaos. But I love chaos, because through the chaos, good things happen. So yeah, I just… I… the the personal brand isn’t really at all about ego or anything. It’s it’s for me… I’ve gone hard on social media and YouTube, like long-form content, shorts. And I just see a gap in the market. The gap in the market is: there’s lots of agents out there trying to pitch a neighborhood. I’m not even trying to do it from a realtor perspective—I’m trying to just help people make great decisions if they want to move to Nashville or Middle Tennessee, if they want to be on the lake, if they want a luxury property, if they want to build a portfolio of investment properties.

I want to be the guy that helps them make a better decision that changes the trajectory of, you know, like for… from a wealth-building perspective: are these good decisions now and a decade from now? And one of the things I said to you earlier is, do you know anybody that bought a piece of real estate 20 years ago that’s frustrated about it? And I don’t know anybody. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years. I don’t know anybody that bought in 2006 that is like, “Man, that was a terrible decision 20 years later.” No one, because if you went back to 2006…

Meghan Escobar (21:36)
I’ve never… I’ve not heard it yet, either, so…

Josh Anderson (21:39)
No, because every 20 years everything doubles. So like, your your net worth doubled because of a decision you made in 2006, or more than doubled. And so I think those are things to put into perspective of like, I always have to like check myself on like, this feels expensive right now, but in 2035 am I going to be like, “Damn, why didn’t I buy more properties in 2026, 2025?” Because it does feel expensive, even as somebody that lives here and has bought lots of property, but yeah, everything always gets more expensive. So, like, can we figure out a way, even if the cash flow isn’t there, if we can get somebody to pay for the property to appreciate and we can get a hundred percent bonus depreciation and we can get some write-offs in between, does that make sense from a tax perspective? So it’s not always gonna be about cash flow. Can we put five more properties in our portfolio? We might not make money off of them, but can they break even and can a tenant pay for it?

Meghan Escobar (22:40)
The numbers have to make sense.

Josh Anderson (22:41)
They do have to make sense. Yeah. But it’s not always just, “Hey, this is gonna make me a thousand dollars a month above and beyond everything.” It might be that it breaks even, but it gets paid for and it’s in a really great area on the East Bank where Oracle’s announced their headquarters.

Meghan Escobar (22:56)
Right. So there’s a lot of different moving parts, and so you’re looking to kind of hot… Yeah. Parts. My accent’s coming through! All right. Well, thank— thanks for sharing that, Josh. And, you know, a lot of our listeners, they’re either very green coming into the industry, or they’ve been in the industry for a long time and they’re just looking for the next best opportunity: “What’s the next level up?” And, you know, I really think that they would benefit from hearing this, because we we talked a little bit about the power of being in a room, any room. Yeah. And so when it comes to creating those relationships and building your your network and growing your network, you know, what what do you feel has made the biggest difference for you?

Josh Anderson (23:37)
Showing up. I mean, I I think everybody, I don’t… it doesn’t matter if you’re green. Go, go listen to as many podcasts about investing as you can, or whatever topic you’re trying to figure out. There there are tons of people that have gone before you. Go read books, go listen to podcasts. If you don’t like the podcast 15 minutes in, turn it off and go find another one. There’s a gazillion great podcasts. It’s filtering through. It’s all… it’s the information thing again. Like, we’re we’re in like this information superhighway, and you do have to go find the good information. Yeah, I listen, I’ve been in lots of rooms over the years, and I just think people have to get in a room.

It doesn’t have to be your permanent room—it can be the room for six months or a year, it could be the room for three or four years, but go get in a room. If you don’t know what room, like just… you got to get in the game. And getting in the game is showing up. Like, just show up, be open-minded, shake hands, tell people where you’re from, and try to add value. Like, if you can add value to people, if you add enough value to enough people, you are going to win at the level, like whatever level you want. And so you can be in more than one room at a time. It might be an investor mastermind, and it might be one for personal brands. It might be just focusing on one because you don’t have enough money to be in more than one room—that’s totally fine.

It might not even cost money to be in a room. The initial rooms that you’re gonna get in probably don’t cost any money. Right. Just go get in a room. It might not be the right room long term—it probably won’t be. Most often, you’re going to outgrow a room. If you’re showing up the way you’re supposed to and you’re going back home and executing and implementing and doing the things you’re supposed to, that room isn’t going to serve you forever. The goal is to get in better and better rooms over time. Like, that is the goal. The goal is to get into the room. The room is like… if you’ve got a $2 million net worth, go get in the room where everybody is $5 to $10 million net worth. When you get close to the $10 million net worth, go get in rooms that are $25 to $40 million net worth.

Meghan Escobar (25:35)
Evolve, right? Climb.

Josh Anderson (25:51)
And then you want to go get in the hundred-millionaires room, and after that, you want to go hang out with billionaires.

Meghan Escobar (25:57)
And that’s something you can’t fake. You know, relationships are truly everything in this space. You hear it all the time, you know, “Who who who do you know?” You know, it’s who do you know. I think…

Josh Anderson (26:05)
You know, it’s really interesting in 2026. I think we have more opportunities than ever, and I feel like people network less than they did five years ago, seven years ago. And I built my entire business on showing up, shaking hands, and networking, and literally just asking questions. I mean, if you stick your hand out and say, “Hey, I’m Josh Anderson from Nashville, Tennessee,” nobody’s gonna leave you hanging, right? Like, they’re going to shake your hand back and you’re gonna start a conversation. Like, it’s super simple. It’s not always easy, but it’s simple. And I think people are, especially in real estate, people are making it overly difficult. Like, real estate is pretty simple. I’m not saying it’s always easy, but it’s it’s simple.

Meghan Escobar (26:47)
What do you mean by that when you say… I have an idea of what you mean, but somebody out there might not know what you mean by that, you know, it it might be difficult.

Josh Anderson (26:59)
Yeah. Well, the easy part is, like, when you think about simple versus easy, I mean, real estate’s simple. It’s like somebody raises their hand that they might want to sell a property, and like, you raise your hand that you might want to buy a property, and then you put a deal together. And it’s not really that simple, but it kind of is. Like, it comes down to money and it comes down to terms, but like, it’s that simple. Like, somebody wants to sell and somebody wants to buy, and you put them together. Or you’re the person that goes directly to the seller. And so it’s it’s a really simple process—it’s just not always easy.

You know, selling a hundred million dollars of real estate, like, in theory, is simple. It’s not always easy, because it requires, like, you to have a database, and to talk to your database, and add value to your database. And then you have to probably have some leverage, like you probably needed an administrative person to help you out. There are things in there, but the idea of selling a hundred million dollars’ worth of real estate or buying a hundred million dollars’ worth of real estate is relatively simple. If you’re an investor and you want a hundred-million-dollar portfolio of real estate, you need to buy two properties a year for the next twenty-five years and it’s worth a hundred million bucks. It’s fifty properties at the average price of four hundred and fifty, five hundred thousand dollars. It’s relatively simple. You have to have the Contract, you have to have the Contractors, and you have to have the Capital.

Meghan Escobar (28:23)
There you go. You heard it here, folks. And if you don’t have a pen and paper out and writing down some of those gems, then you’re missing… you’re missing the gold here, folks. So definitely replay that, rewind it, watch it over. That was some solid information: shake the hands, you know, have the conversations, and where you can end up, doors will open, you know, doors will continue to open for you. And so before we do wrap up here, you know, if somebody did want to reach out to you and connect with you and learn more from you or collaborate with you, what would be the best way, Josh, for someone to reach you? Is that through socials, email, phone number?

Josh Anderson (29:00)
Yeah, I’d say probably social. Anybody can find me on Instagram or Facebook. It’s Instagram @therealtorjoshanderson, and Facebook just Josh Anderson. You can go to my YouTube page @LiveNashvilleTN. DM me, message me. Yeah, happy to… I’m happy to share links with you if you want to put it into the podcast or send it out.

Meghan Escobar (29:24)
We will 100% add those backlinks in for you on your bio. Absolutely. All right. Well, Josh, I appreciate your time, your story, and more importantly, your perspective and the gems that you dropped here today. We definitely need more people in this space who are doing things the right way, so I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your day and being here with us again. And for those of you tuning in, if you got any value from this, please be sure to hit like and subscribe. We’ve got more conversations with operators just like Josh coming in here talking about how they’re creating real businesses in real time with real people. We will see you on the next episode.