From Stress to Success: Using Real Estate to Gain Your Freedom

Brett McCollum (00:01.081)
Welcome back to the show guys. I’m your host Brett McCollum and I’m here today with Joel Kraut. And today we’re going to be talking about how we can use real estate to get to freedom. Before we do guys, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs to 2 to 5X their businesses, allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted, and allow them to build the lives they’ve always dreamed of. Without further ado, Joel, how are you, man?

Joel Kraut (00:27.31)
How you doing today, Brett? Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me all with you guys.

Brett McCollum (00:30.765)
Man, I’m super excited to talk with you, man. We got to know each other quite a bit pre-show. Kind of trading some back and forth, like real estate war stories, that sort of thing. And guys, you’re in for a good treat. Joel is a wonderful man. I’m excited for you guys to get to know him just like I have. But before we get too far into things, Joel, give us some background. Who are you? Who’s Joel? Like that sort of thing.

Joel Kraut (00:57.358)
So I actually graduated from Penn State University in 1984, went to work for Eastman Kodak, but quickly found my way to the trading world. So I worked on Wall Street for about 22 years, 25 years as an independent proprietary trader. So one of the unique things is we didn’t have any customers. We just traded our own money for ourselves. It all started from a HELOC from my parents’ house and grew into a business over time where we ended up with 55 people across six exchanges.

Well, if you’ve ever watched the movie, the big short, which many people in our industry have, we helped create some of the derivative products used in that movie and helped launch ETFs on the floor of the American Stock Exchange back in the early 2000s. And we’ve had an unbelievable unique opportunity to see how some of that works in real life and participate in it. And from there, like many, we sort of morphed into the real estate world. You know, I found my way in through the realtor who actually sold me my

first primary residence in New Jersey when I moved from New York to New Jersey. And together, you know, we started to find our way through. We did my first deal. I talked to you earlier, a really simple one, bought a condominium, you know, three bedroom, one bath for 70 something thousand. And what happened though, what really opened my mind to real estate investing, a young lady came to me, her name was Maria. She was a mortgage rep. And she said, Mr. Kraut, I looked up your mortgage.

which kind of freaked me out to be honest, because I didn’t realize in 1996 that all the mortgages were recorded instruments in public records. I wasn’t thinking that way. I wasn’t an investor. I was a regular Joe Blow. Just I bought a house and then I bought this first investment property. But she came to me and said, you bought it really well. I had no idea. We could refinance the house, the condo. You could get all of your money back. You’ll still own it. You’ll still cashflow.

And you won’t have any money in the deal. And I just did that. didn’t. I got nervous actually, because it sounded too easy. Being a Wall Street guy, someone tells me you’re going to have everything for free and it’s all like works. So I said, wait a second, hold on. I’m going to call my friend. And I called up the realtor I knew and I said, look, please don’t laugh at me. I just have to ask you this question. And I ran her through and of course she started laughing. She says, of course it’s legal to refinance it. Well, I didn’t realize that.

Brett McCollum (03:07.662)
Right.

Yeah. Are you lying to me? Yeah.

Brett McCollum (03:27.874)
Hmm.

Joel Kraut (03:28.526)
But what we did it, I got about 16 or $18,000 back in my hand and I had no money in the deal. I’m like, this is amazing. We went on and did 11 more deals together, Maria and I over the next two years. So she did 22 mortgages with me out of actually just figuring out that one thing. To this day, I still think she’s one of the most creative mortgage reps I’ve ever worked with and opened my eyes to what was possible.

So from there, you know, we went on and you know, I’m a dad. have five natural kids, two extep kids who I’m still friendly with and one that I’m a guardian to. So eight is enough, you know, the old movie, old show, you know, haha. But so we sort of have that mentality of being in a, know, the annoying dad and teach them about money and talking about my wins and mistakes, lots of mistakes so that they could be aware and start to understand that at earlier ages.

And we were talking off camera, but you know, as a parent, for those of you out there, you go through that period when you’re kind of the annoying person to your kids. But I assure Brett, they will circle back when they’re a little older. Thank you for some of that because you really helped open their eyes and now they’re thinking about it in a very different way. And it’s helping them get ahead of the curve as well. And, you know, as a parent, you kind of feel like you did a good job for them in that regard.

Even though there was a lot of bumps and bruises along the way, we all learned something from it and we used it positively for the next 30, 40, 50 years. And that’s really the key. mean, look, we all go through trials and tribulations. Nothing is perfect for any of us. Anyone who says that is just lying or, you know, as I told you, too embarrassed to talk about their difficulties for a period of time. And the reality is we’re all human. We all really want the same thing at the end of the day. We are all chasing freedom.

the freedom to control how we live our day every day, choose what we want to do and the manner we want to do it, and figuring out and finding ways to work together to figure out how to get there. If we do that well together, we’ve accomplished unbelievable things. And for me at this stage of my life,

Joel Kraut (05:43.79)
Our company is really about lifestyle, right? We meet people from all over America that are in the real estate biz or trying to figure out if they should move from the stock market. What are they going to do with their cryptocurrency? And things keep changing and evolving, but at the core, people want freedom. And I feel like in a little way, you know, we get to help them on that journey all the time. And to me, that’s the coolest part of what we do. So.

You know, that’s worth very thankful for. We’ve been at it for a long time and, know, truthfully, we’ve just been blessed. mean, you know, BIRD.com has been a life-changing thing for us. And, and for me, after being in the war for a long time, you know, to now have friends all over the country is incredible.

Brett McCollum (06:28.473)
Yeah, I mean, yeah. And again, we talked a lot, like I said, pre we said pre show a lot on some of this stuff. So, um, catching people up to speed a little bit here, right? You mentioned you were on Wall Street for, what was it? 22 years. Is that right? When did you exit that? And when, and when did you start more on the full time on the real side, real estate side of things?

Joel Kraut (06:50.094)
So I officially started a hundred percent full-time in real estate in January of 2006. I’d been buying and selling and flipping from about 2001 to then, and decided I knew enough and I was going to finally, we suffered a big loss and a position on the Wall Street side and decided that it was time to morph and move over and not put whatever I had left into my trading account to potentially lose it again. I would put it into sticks and bricks because, hey, sticks and bricks, what could go wrong, right?

Brett McCollum (06:56.162)
Okay.

Joel Kraut (07:19.662)
It’s been around since the beginning of the Bible. Right. Exactly. This, this was this great plan that went really awry. And, um, I learned, I thought I understood leverage from being on wall street from 87 to then, but I really learned what leverage was about personally. When, uh, that back half of Oh seven through about Oh nine, when things just kept going down. mean, I owned a couple of boat anchors. I like to joke houses.

Brett McCollum (07:21.45)
What happened two years later, right? Yeah

Brett McCollum (07:38.147)
Mm-hmm.

Joel Kraut (07:50.026)
in the greater Newark, New Jersey area. And I was into them for back then for 300,000 each. They ended up getting sold out at the 155, 145, 170 level because I did not hit the 265 bit because I thought, it’ll come back. You know, when I had that opportunity, I could have escaped with a reasonable loss, but you know, I was too smart for my own good and held on. And, know, I held on to the anchor.

Brett McCollum (08:14.925)
Yeah, that’s there’s a lesson in that too. you know, what’s the Kenny Rogers song? gotta know when to hold them. You know, no one to pull that stuff. But I think as real estate investors, know personally, and some of the stuff we talked about, that’s kind of been with some of my MO was like, I’m it’s gonna work. Like, of course, they’re gonna work. I’m not gonna, you know, I’m not gonna worry about tomorrow because this this thing tomorrow because it’s gonna work out.

Joel Kraut (08:22.924)
Absolutely, yes.

Brett McCollum (08:43.993)
you know, instead of no one to hold, no one to fold. sometimes hindsight is, hindsight’s what they say, it’s 2020, you think that it’s gonna do this thing, you plan for it to do this thing, and sometimes unfortunately it doesn’t do the thing that you thought it was gonna do.

Joel Kraut (08:48.599)
Yeah.

Joel Kraut (09:00.878)
Yeah, but that’s like with everything in life, right? So we have to stay calm, stick to what we understand, not get too esoteric on ourselves. Cause that’s usually when we get in trouble, when we get trying to get too fancy, know, too many of those 0 % credit cards exploding on me at 29 % at the same time. And you know, that’s a killer, you know, I was grossly over leveraged, but I’ve learned that lesson and I still use leverage. That’s true, but I use it much more wisely.

Brett McCollum (09:15.075)
Mm-hmm.

Joel Kraut (09:31.432)
And I invest more conservatively today as I’m still flipping houses. I’m in lower cost markets, in margins that make sense. And really my big evaluation tool is can I lose money? If the answer is yes, I go to the next deal. It’s not how much can I make. You know, I’ve learned to look at things differently. And I learned that by the hard slap in the head, know, the kicking the teeth, whatever the right expression is, but

You know, as you go through those experiences in life, helps you gain much better perspective to what really can be. And in using that going forward, you have to use that as part of your equation or else you haven’t learned anything. And that’s a tough way to go. But you know, groups like this, Investor Fuel and others around the country, you know, being in those types of rooms with those people that have the real experiences, it’s invaluable. So for people listening, you know, if you’re considering whether you should make the leap.

of joining into some of these groups. You should give it some hard, real consideration. See who’s part of those groups and what you can really learn from them. And don’t be embarrassed to go ask questions.

Brett McCollum (10:41.803)
I think that’s the whole point of this or any other group is, are you willing to be vulnerable enough to actually grow through your problem? you know, yeah, cause like, it’s like, in the real estate space, right? So I get questions a lot from people of like acquisitions, know, how do you, what your marketing is, how do you get people to call you? What’s the best one? What works, what works, what works? Well, they all work.

Joel Kraut (10:50.658)
Yep. That’s a good way to phrase it.

Joel Kraut (11:11.278)
Right here.

Brett McCollum (11:12.769)
Right? A lot of these masterminds, they all work. It’s how do you use the ones that are there? You know, and if you’re not using them the right way, you may as well not do it. Right? As far as our groups and stuff go. So yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more, man. I wanted to ask you more, cause this is great. Like already, if people, if we stopped it here, just, all right guys, listen to this three times and you’re like, this is phenomenal. Burr.com. You gave me.

the story behind that pre-show and super interesting. Tell me like, cause that’s where you guys are at today, what you’re doing, but tell me, give me the history, like kind of walk me through that.

Joel Kraut (11:56.11)
So as, as we talked, I’d been a hard money lender and in the hard money space in the early, you know, 2010s and earlier. So I understood what it was. I’d seen the initial growth coming out of 10 to about 14, where we all became nice people, right? We became fix and flip lenders instead of hard money, bad people that would take your properties and overcharge you and all that good stuff. So as that changed, as people out there started to see us as a business solution.

You could buy a property, fix it up a little and resell it for a profit. That really became a big industry, the fix and flip business. Around 2018, we started to hear this word burr a lot. And we tried to figure out what was going on with it. We saw bigger pockets beginning the early stages and they had this huge following. Well, we were this little company called Orbit Commercial Capital, which kind of meant nothing. Some people would jokingly ask me if we were part of the gum company or, you know, vice versa.

Brett McCollum (12:32.92)
Mm-hmm.

Joel Kraut (12:55.63)
I was talking to my son one night here in the office, different office then, but he said, look, you know, who owns burr.com? So we did this simple thing. We went to Sergey and Brynn and we Googled it. And we found that someone who traded names for a living, you know, we all have run into that with URLs, owned it, not bigger pockets. We were stunned that they had spent umpteen millions of dollars promoting it and creating it, but they forgot to buy it. So we did.

We literally got an intermediary to go to the third party. They wanted $10,000 originally. I’d never spent more than $29 for URL. And we negotiated a different price from 10,000, a little lower. I remember being afraid to hit the send button when it was time to send the wire. you know, we’ve never spent money like this before. This is, this feels almost irresponsible spending money for URL, but it transformed our lives.

It brought us some incredible adventures. We’ve met, I mean, literally tens of thousands of people across America from it. Wherever we go, people actually already understand what we are, which is amazing. know, people in our industry know, Kiavi, we used to be lending home, but they have to spend umpteen dollars to teach people what Kiavi is. Right. But if you’re a real estate investor, you know what Burr is. We might have to spend any money on that. So.

It’s been incredible adventure for us and opportunity. We’ve met some really cool people through it and we’ve been offered over a million dollars for it. So it’s pretty incredible. You know, our return on that was just insane and unbelievable. So, yeah, I mean, look, we, do loans and all that good stuff associated with it they would have owned that, but

Brett McCollum (14:38.265)
Not 10k anymore is it? Yeah, that’s incredible. Just for a domain right? Isn’t that funny? It’s like wow.

Joel Kraut (14:52.046)
you know, really when you get down to it and peel back the onion, the domain is the leader and it’s really the secret sauce. So.

Brett McCollum (14:58.873)
Tell me the New Orleans story that we talked about because that was super like it just has a little kind of a little funny in the middle of it because I just thought it was kind of fun to talk when we were talking.

Joel Kraut (15:09.07)
So I was there with the usual guy I travel with. We went to the Bigger Pockets Convention in New Orleans in 2021. That was the first big national event coming out of COVID. First time I remember going to a big one. And there were only four lenders in the room at the time. Burr was one of them. We got invited. And Brandon Turner with the beard from the face of Bigger Pockets at the time came over to our booth to say hello and introduce himself.

Brett McCollum (15:19.491)
Mm-hmm.

Joel Kraut (15:35.982)
So, know, welcome to the team. You know, good to have you guys here. It’s great to meet you. All that good stuff, you know, being a good corporate exec type of feeling, you know, being a promotion and face of the firm, you know, bigger pocket. So Brandon, like we’re not really part of bigger pockets. He’s like, like you can see the puzzled look. Like how could that be? Right? It’s burr.com. We own it. Right? Well, no.

Well, the private equity firm that owns our bigger pockets platform must own you guys. Like, well, no. So we explained to him how we got it. And he just thought that was insane. Like he couldn’t believe it. Also took a couple pictures with us. Things kind of went viral. We met people from all over the country. We were at bigger pockets. We were burr, burrs on bigger pockets. They figured we were okay. And people literally from all over America started doing loans with us instantly. We had people working till two, three, four in the morning.

Brett McCollum (16:30.531)
next time.

Joel Kraut (16:34.392)
for six months trying to catch up. We went from doing 200 loans a year to a thousand. It was unbelievable, honestly. was, you know, people I knew for 10, 15 years who had borrowed money from me, calling me up, screaming at me, because why are you ignoring me? Why are you avoiding? Like we’re not, we’re literally just trying to catch up. You know, every day was a challenge in that way, but a great challenge. And we’re really fortunate. We have a very tight core team. A lot of us have grown up together.

that work with us. My kids, have two of my children here that really run the show for me. Some of their friends that have been in my car since they’re either born or eight years old work here and people take tremendous pride in what they do. We’re not perfect, that’s true. But we work hard and we work really diligently for the customers to be as successful as possible for them all over America. it’s been an unbelievable blessing to me and my family and just meeting people everywhere is awesome.

Brett McCollum (17:32.483)
Yeah, and I can tell, I mean, this is the first you and I have had the opportunity to get to know each other. And I mean, I can just tell from our conversation, for whatever it’s worth to anybody listening from me, if you treat people half the way you and I just had a conversation before, it’s like, man, what a beautiful relationship between lender and borrower. Because that’s a rare thing in my…

in the real in the in the lending space that your lender or you know person on the other side actually Sorry for being a little crass when I says give the damn about you Because that’s really it’s really special to to see that though and I think that maybe comes from Your own walk and your own journey and the things that you’ve been through and how you then now treat other people

Joel Kraut (18:07.63)
I understand.

Joel Kraut (18:11.486)
Yeah. Look, the reality is…

Joel Kraut (18:26.21)
Humility as we talked about can teach you to reevaluate everything in your life. You know, when I went through that in seven and a half through 10, one thing I took away from it and learned is everybody matters. And I don’t care if someone’s doing a $50,000 loan or 5 million, everyone matters. And I know whatever you’re doing is the most important thing to you.

And we need to try to do the best we can for you. And we’re also investors for a long time, and my family’s been impacted by that, both good and bad. So they understand that, the trials and tribulations that go along with what you’re trying to do. They know it’s not just a piece of cake, for lack of a better term.

You know, they know it’s not Instagram, it’s real life. And for us…

You know, it’s a life journey. It’s not, know, today’s rate is seven versus seven and an eighth. I don’t really see it that way. And I think that if that’s the only thing someone can bring to you, when you reach a certain tipping point, that’s okay. But before that, you need help. You need something in a relationship. You need to be able to build upon something so that you can keep growing, right? And that’s not just about what the interest rate is for the moment. It’s what’s going on in the market.

People ask me for help all the time. We can help you with different zip codes in different areas if you’re looking. I want you to be successful. Selfishly I need you to. You have my money in your hand. I really want you to be successful. So if you’re gonna go shopping in XYZ City, let us take a look at where we’ve already had a lot of clients in that area and where they’ve been successful. Let us give you a couple of those zip codes. I’ll connect you with the realtor or two. What you do from there is on you, but…

Joel Kraut (20:17.484)
I want you to be successful. I understand what kind of impact that can have for you and your family and change things or change things to the negative. And I don’t want, this is not a contest to see how hard it can be for everybody. Right? That’s not to say it’s easy, but if we can help smooth some of those edges out, then we’re doing what we’re supposed to do. And from where you build relationships, I would say at worst at the low end, 70 % of our customers are repeat offenders. They do loans consistently with us. And that’s, know,

Something’s going on right there. they’re not just customers. I they become friends. mean, we’re business friends. Some of them are personal friends over the years. And that’s part of the amazing part of the whole journey together, right? It’s unbelievable to see what some of these people have done. It’s incredible.

Brett McCollum (21:06.915)
Yeah, I love that. Let me ask you this question that I was curious about. you kind of it sparked my thought when you mentioned interest rates. So on the BRRR side, rates are now higher, you know, albeit not what it was maybe when you were in the early 90s and 80s. But like for us in modern real estate history, current real estate history rather, they’re higher than they’ve been. I know the main for people doing BRRR

Joel Kraut (21:17.442)
Yep.

Joel Kraut (21:29.027)
Right.

Brett McCollum (21:37.049)
you know, I don’t know, 2019 ish through 2022, 2023 early when rates were still so low, you could refi into a low rate, whereas now it’s a little bit more challenging. What are you guys experiencing on that side of it in today’s market? How are you guys pivoting that sort of thing?

Joel Kraut (21:58.094)
I’ve gone through this math example with a lot of people. You know, we take out the whiteboard, we’re speaking in front of 50 or a hundred people and let’s take a look at interest rates. We had an unbelievable pipeline at 4%. Amazing, right? I had not to pick on Gen Z. People would call me up from all over America. They’re serious long-term investors. They’re going to hold the properties for 30 years. It’s all good.

They would take loans that brought them down to debt service coverage of 1.0. So they’d maximize their loans. And when you would look at it, basically they’re earning nothing on the money they’re putting in the deal. Time goes by, they need a new hot water heater, turnover a tenant, something else, they have no money. So just because you borrow cheap, didn’t make you successful automatically. If you didn’t do good deals, you pay the price for not doing good deals. At 7%,

If you take a look at what Section 8 has done around America in October of 23, when they updated, you are actually able, in most cases, on an average loan size DSCR loan, to earn more free cash flow now than then.

That’s a hard concept for people to get their heads around. But we have people successfully investing in the cashflow areas around America, which there are multiple. And when I say multiple, in the double digits easily in markets and making money at 7%. My first loan personally in 1996 as an investor was at eight and seven eights. I never once thought about what about 4 % because I didn’t know we’d ever get there. But what I cared about

And what I believe every investor should care about is what is my cash on cash return to the money I have to put in a deal.

Joel Kraut (23:52.386)
That’s different than being focused on the interest rate.

Right? Each year we’re going to raise the rent a little, hopefully to offset the change in real estate taxes, maybe the water bill, if you’re paying the water bill, your insurance costs, such that you can stay even with that or maybe a dollar ahead. So what is my real cash on cash return into the deal? And can I use the BRRRR method in those markets to potentially get all my money back out?

Yes, maybe I don’t get a big fat check to walk home with in most markets anymore in those transactions, but I can still get to neutral and get my money and move on to my next deal. So that has changed a little in that we’ve done a lot more fix and flip loans than we used to do a lot more new construction than we used to do. We still see new construction is pretty hot around the country in a lot of the markets. So that’s been a big change and a big plus for us.

We started out. Absolutely. When we went to that bigger pockets conference, we were the DSCR lender. was 80, 85 % of our business. Now we’re much closer to 50 50. So that’s been a dramatic change for us, but the core principles of being an investor haven’t changed since the beginning of a bio, the Bible, no matter what version you read, right? mean, someone paid some way in some manner for a place to live. That is still going on today.

Brett McCollum (24:56.345)
Hmm.

Brett McCollum (25:01.027)
Wow, okay.

Joel Kraut (25:20.374)
and Google and Amazon and Apple haven’t taken it away yet. So I’m still a believer. And you know, for me, I love the single family house. I know it’s not as sexy as owning a hundred unit multifamily building, but I still believe everyone goes to sleep in America dreaming of living in their own house. Don’t go to sleep dreaming of living in an apartment 13H. Right? So I’m a believer in that. I keep it simple. I think with people…

Brett McCollum (25:44.793)
That’s incredible.

Well, I think it’s a testament to your journey and your career and your path is all right, you know, because if here’s the thing, if you put your head down in the sand and you say we are the DSCR lender and that’s all we’re going to do, we’re never going to change that, we are this company, that’s all we’re going to do.

I mean, you navigate, you pivot, you do like, you know what? Now, yes, we are the DSCR lender, but we’re also able to pivot to handle this and that too, to be able to be the responsible lending company that you are today versus, no, I’m just gonna do this one thing. And then maybe that like, and you might still had six, I don’t know, but what I can like, you said it too, 70 % of your business is repeat clientele and that’s for a reason.

is because you’re taking care of these people.

Joel Kraut (26:37.132)
Yeah, I we’ve done some of our best deals on a Sunday, six o’clock in the morning from India, call in South Africa, the middle East, Europe. I we we’ve been very fortunate, honestly. A lot of times we can’t even figure out how the people heard of us, but someone Googled Burr something and found us. And that’s been great.

Brett McCollum (26:59.297)
It’s super cool though. it’s just almost fascinating. Like you start like, love like origin stories, you know, just of all kinds of companies, like how did this company, you know, come to be and just that’s how I think it’s really wonderful that how that came to be, you know, it’s super cool.

Joel Kraut (27:12.056)
Like we.

We never marketed. We started off my own customer base. I’d been around in the lending world since 01, and a lot of my commercial clients own these other properties. And we just started telling them about what we do, and they started to finance those with us because they were sick of banks. They just didn’t want to get all the questions. It just kept growing from there, and then we started to go to some of these events like Bigger Pockets, and it really took off. So we’ve been really fortunate. We spent…

infinitely less than almost every other company in the country that does what we do on marketing. mean, it’s only recently that our website is even, even has any backlinks. know that’s a little embarrassing to admit that, but yes, we did zero SEO marketing, zero. Not like a little, we did zero. So, and we built a real business. So we’ve been very fortunate. mean, honestly, we’re just trying to help people and

Brett McCollum (27:48.313)
That’s

Joel Kraut (28:13.432)
Sometimes that really works out and that’s how I feel that’s what’s happened for us.

Brett McCollum (28:18.135)
Yeah, incredible. Let me ask you this. So before we kind of wrap the show up,

If you could leave one bit of something that’s had staying power inside of you that’s something that you’ve held onto for year, like, is, you know, I’ve struggled with this, or this has made me excited, something you could leave to the audience of something that really stays with you, what would you say?

Joel Kraut (28:40.696)
I would tell people never be afraid to ask questions. There’s no question that’s embarrassing. If you’re in a group of people and you don’t understand the answer, ask someone else. You’ll find a person you communicate well with, but not getting that knowledge and that information can kill you. Our business can be really, really rewarding. It can be very challenging. Even when it looks simple, there’s still going to be challenges. You’re dealing with people. Finding people who have some experience and going to them and being honest.

Brett McCollum (28:43.523)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCollum (28:56.462)
Mm-hmm.

Joel Kraut (29:09.782)
I’m asking you for some help, some knowledge, some input. I’ll do whatever silly job task you want to help offset for you. So I bring some value to you. I’m willing to work hard. I’ll be your runner on the job site, whatever it takes to get that two-way street going. But if you’re honest with people, our industry will give you an unbelievable amount of knowledge for free. And it’s one of the unique industries in that respect. So please.

Ask questions. Don’t be afraid. If you’re not comfortable with people you’re working with because you feel like they’re giving you the run around, they’ve asked you for upfront money, they’re not really answering your questions, just hang the phone up and go to the next person. You’ll find a person that you’ve you hit it off with, you feel good with. That’s the people you’re going to give most of your business to. You should always have door number two. So you give door number two a little love too. This way you have another option just in case at that moment. So I think

You know, people make the mistake of stop asking questions. You know, I’m doing this since 1996. I travel around the country. One of the greatest parts of traveling is I get to learn new things all the time from people doing things in different markets that I’m sitting in physically. And that has been probably my greatest weapon, bonus, ally, whatever you want to call it, to be able to help other people with. It’s just lonely every day.

Brett McCollum (30:29.689)
I love that. man, this has been great. Joel, if people want to reach out to you guys at Burr or to you know, like what’s the best way for that to happen?

Joel Kraut (30:40.088)
The easiest thing is just to go to burr.com, B with four R’s dot com. Hit us up there. Drop a note. We’ll get right back to you. People call me all the time. My information is literally all over the internet at this point. My phone numbers, my emails, my phone numbers at seven three two five nine eight zero three five one. And we do answer it. We work still. And you can find us on Instagram at burr dot loans.

Again, we don’t have Autobots. We really are people answering to stuff and talking to people. So we look forward to that opportunity. We appreciate being on with you guys today, Brett. And I really enjoyed our conversation offline also. Great when you meet people who can really be real. And that’s one of the awesome parts of our whole business and industry. So thank you very much for having me on.

Brett McCollum (31:30.787)
Yeah. And Joel, you’ve been great and guys seriously go follow, go like, subscribe, all the things, you know, and then really seriously reach out to these guys. They’re, great people. And I can tell you as somebody that’s been doing this for a long time, also finding a relationship with a company that’s going to actually truly care about you. It’s, it’s often unfortunately, but it’s a, it’s rare these days. So Joel, man, you’re a great, you’re a leader in our space and I really appreciate talking to you,

Joel Kraut (31:58.722)
Thanks a lot, Brad. You have a great day. you soon. you.

Brett McCollum (31:59.769)
Alright guys, until the next one, take care, we’ll see you soon.