45: Finding Your Unfair Advantage, Rural Investing, and Getting Started with Tom Sylvester
On today’s episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, we cover a huge variety of really interesting topics with real estate investor Tom Sylvester (yes, that rhymes!)
Tom has been investing in the Rochester, NY area for several years and has a great perspective on getting started, building systems to manage your business, investing in rural areas (or as Brandon says, “rrrrrurrral”,) and a whole lot more.
Don’t miss a second of this excellent interview!
Read the transcript for episode 45 with Tom Sylvester here.
In This Show, We Cover
- Tom’s early lessons
- The advantages and disadvantages to rural investing
- Finding mentors and networking
- Talking with your spouse about getting started with real estate
- Getting started with real estate at a young age
- When is the right time to quit your day job?
- Red flags for problem tenants
- The $10 Toilet part that could have saved Tom hundreds of dollars
- And much more.
Links from the Show
- Investing in Rural Markets: The Secret to Real Estate Investing Success?
- The Top 100 Ways To Make Money In Real Estate
- How to Get Started With $100 blog post by Tom
- Keyword Alerts
- How To Survive When Your Spouse Doesn’t Believe In Your Dream
- How to Start Investing In Real Estate at a Young Age (or a “Young at Heart Age”)
- BP Podcast 044: Creating Systems to Flip Houses While Still Employed with Michael Woodward
- Tenant Screening: The Ultimate Guide
- Cashflow 101: Using the Game to Define Your Investing Strategy
- Home Depot Toilet Fill Valve
- Dropbox App
Books Mentioned in the Show
- The Automatic Millionaire: A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich by David Bach
- Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
- The 4 Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
- The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
- The Book on Flipping Houses by J Scott
- The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs by J Scott
- What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow… And 36 Other Key Financial Measures by Frank Gallinelli
- The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Real Estate Investing by BiggerPockets
Tweetable Topics
- Find your unfair advantage in business and exploit it. (Tweet This!)
- What do you want your life to be? How are you going to get there? (Tweet This!)
- If you aren’t finding success – be persistent but change your tactic. (Tweet This!)
- Know the difference between a cheap property and deal. (Tweet This!)
Connect with Tom
- Tom’s BiggerPockets Profile
- Tom’s Website: Tom-Sylvester.com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Available Results
Generated results are saved to your library for reuse and search.
Choose Template
Pick the result you want. You can review provider and model before generating.
A concise first-pass summary for understanding the episode quickly.
A comprehensive, source-grounded extraction of the reusable knowledge in an episode.
A comprehensive extraction focused on opportunities, strategy, markets, and company building.
Explicit actions, next steps, habits, recommendations, and things to avoid.
Repeatable methods, frameworks, mental models, processes, and systems.
A dedicated inventory of concrete resources named in the episode.
A concise first-pass summary for understanding the episode quickly.
A detailed readable summary organized by chapter or topic.
A navigable map of subjects, topic flow, and suggested chapters.
A comprehensive, source-grounded extraction of the reusable knowledge in an episode.
Reusable atomic knowledge units extracted from the episode.
A comprehensive extraction focused on health practices, protocols, claims, and safety caveats.
A comprehensive extraction focused on opportunities, strategy, markets, and company building.
Explicit actions, next steps, habits, recommendations, and things to avoid.
A dedicated inventory of concrete resources named in the episode.
A dedicated analysis of warnings, limitations, trade-offs, weak evidence, and uncertainty.
A concise first-pass summary for understanding the episode quickly.
A detailed readable summary organized by chapter or topic.
A navigable map of subjects, topic flow, and suggested chapters.
A comprehensive, source-grounded extraction of the reusable knowledge in an episode.
Reusable atomic knowledge units extracted from the episode.
A comprehensive extraction focused on health practices, protocols, claims, and safety caveats.
A comprehensive extraction focused on opportunities, strategy, markets, and company building.
Scientific findings, mechanisms, studies, hypotheses, and the limits of the evidence discussed.
Technologies, AI models, technical methods, capabilities, limitations, and adoption implications.
Investment theses, assets, catalysts, valuation reasoning, time horizons, and risks.
Chronologies, actors, causes, consequences, turning points, and competing historical interpretations.
Policies, proposals, stakeholders, arguments, implementation constraints, and predicted effects.
Career paths, skills, hiring signals, workplace decisions, transitions, and limitations of the advice.
Behavioral mechanisms, biases, motivation, habits, emotions, interventions, and evidence limitations.
Economic mechanisms, incentives, indicators, market structure, forecasts, and uncertainty.
Leadership principles, team systems, organizational design, culture, feedback, and failure modes.
Audience, positioning, messaging, acquisition, retention, experiments, metrics, and failed approaches.
Teaching methods, learning strategies, practice, feedback, assessment, and effectiveness evidence.
Theses, premises, arguments, objections, values, thought experiments, and unresolved questions.
Communication patterns, conflict, boundaries, expectations, repair methods, and contextual limitations.
Books, papers, authors, courses, and other learning resources mentioned in the episode.
Repeatable methods, frameworks, mental models, processes, and systems.
Explicit actions, next steps, habits, recommendations, and things to avoid.
Memorable statements and important claims with attribution and source context.
A dedicated inventory of concrete resources named in the episode.
A dedicated analysis of warnings, limitations, trade-offs, weak evidence, and uncertainty.