Scott Trench:

Sure, house hacking, to me, is the cheat code for a middle-class person, or a middle-class income earner, getting started on this journey. What it means is you buy a house and you rent out either extra bedrooms. Or you could buy a duplex, triplex or quad, four unit property, and rent out the other units. And if done correctly, this can help you either cover your mortgage entirely, heavily subsidize your mortgage payment, or even allow you to cashflow your lifestyle by having more rent than your mortgage payment costs.

Speaker 1:

This is Start FM. Now, here’s your host, active real estate investor and entrepreneur, Chad Duval.

Chad Duval:

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Chad Duval:

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Chad Duval:

(music).

Chad Duval:

And we are recording. All right, Scott Trench, how you doing? Welcome to the show.

Scott Trench:

I’m doing great. Thanks for having me, Chad.

Chad Duval:

Great, great. Well, I’m honored to have Scott here today and I thought we bring him in and dive into his real estate experiences, and try and bring some value to you guys as far as how to start in real estate. But then also progress into his new role as CEO of Bigger Pockets. So with that being said, Scott, let’s dive into your story a little bit and give a little background of who you are to the listeners who are not familiar with who you are.

Scott Trench:

Sure. So just a quick overview. I’m the CEO and president of biggerpockets.com. I’m a huge personal finance nut. So one of my obsessions with my career is, how do I achieve financial independence as early on life for myself as possible, of course, but really how do I help as many people as possible achieve that early in life?

Scott Trench:

Because I believe that when you achieve financial independence through real estate, or whatever other means that you choose to pursue it through, that if you can get there early in life, that you have the opportunity to go out and live your passions, be a happier, healthier person, and potentially go on to have a huge downstream impact on society. So I love it when people are able to retire by the time that they’re 25, 30, 35, 40, just as early in life as they can. I’ve written a book on that topic called, Set for Life. And I’ve been house hacking, or buying real estate, for the past five years. I’m also a licensed agent here in Denver.

Chad Duval:

Oh, perfect. Perfect. So house hacking, what exactly do you mean by house hacking, for everybody who’s new to real estate?

Scott Trench:

Sure. House hacking, to me, is the cheat code for a middle-class person, or a middle-class income earner, getting started on this journey. What it means is you buy a house and you rent out either extra bedrooms. Or you could buy a duplex, triplex or quad, four unit property, and rent out the other units. And if done correctly, this can help you either cover your mortgage entirely, heavily subsidize your mortgage payment, or even allow you to cashflow your lifestyle by having more rent than your mortgage payment costs.

Chad Duval:

Yeah. No, and it’s super powerful. I like your term a cheat code. That’s exactly how I started in real estate as well. A lot of listeners know I did the same thing using the USDA rural development loan, which is, I’m assuming it’s similar to the type of, actually yeah, so for your first, let’s just dive into that first property that you house hacked. What loan product did you use for that? Because I know there’s various types that you could possibly use. Low down payment, you’ve got 25% downs, you’ve got all kinds of different variations. So I’d be curious on what you used for your first one.

Scott Trench:

Sure. Well, why don’t I take a step back there and I’ll just describe the entire situation and thought process that moved me into that house hack, which will of course cover the questions you’re asking there. Does that work?

Chad Duval:

Yeah, yeah, yeah definitely.

Scott Trench:

Yeah. I bought my first house back in 2014. So I graduated college in 2013, went on a trip to Europe that summer and blew all my money and started from scratch at a corporate job in late 2013. In that job I discovered the concept of financial independence, maybe a month or two or three into that job, and was like, this is it. Boom. I want to go and do that with my career. I want to achieve financial freedom as early in life as possible. So I began following two, among all the content in the industry that now is financial independence. The two that really stuck out to me at that time were biggerpockets.com and Mr. Money Mustache.

Chad Duval:

Oh I love Mr. Money Mustache, he’s’ awesome.

Scott Trench:

Yeah. If you haven’t heard of Mr. Money Mustache, or haven’t checked him out, and you’re listening to this, go check him out. mrmoneymustache.com and read a bunch of his articles. He’s inspired a lot of the thought for this community that we call the financial independence community. But basically it’s like, why do you need to spend all this money? Why can’t you do it yourself? Spend a lot less money, live very frugally, and be happier while you’re doing it? And by the way, you’re going to achieve freedom throughout that process.

Scott Trench:

I drank the Kool-Aid, I bought in. I started bringing lunch to work. I started living my life as cheaply as I possibly could. I became happier, healthier, started saving up a lot of money. And at the same time, I started listening to the Bigger Pockets podcast and thinking about how to get started in real estate investing. And towards the end of 2014, let’s call it July, August, I felt that I was in position to buy a house hack. And what do I mean by that? Well, my salary at that time was about $50,000 per year. I had saved about 18 to 25,000 ish, somewhere in that ballpark. At the moment I purchased my house hack, I’d saved up about 20, 25,000. When I first started thinking about it, probably a little less.

Scott Trench:

But I’m saving about $2,000 per month, $50,000 income, $20,000 ish in cash liquid. And I felt that that was a reasonably strong position to enter a house hack because I could qualify for a reasonable mortgage. I could put down the three and a half to 5% down payment that was needed. And for me, that was the financial position capable of supporting an investment like that. I bought a duplex here in Denver. I think I closed in November of 2014. I purchased the property for $240,000. I used an FHA loan with a 5% down payment. I believe I could have used a three and a half percent down payment, but I’m also not sure if that might have just become an option in the year or two following that acquisition. That property, when I bought it, it was vacant. I quickly moved in with a roommate and fixed that unit up reasonably well, and then switched to the other unit and put a tenant into the … I’m confusing units A and B here. Put a tenant into the other unit.

Scott Trench:

So collectively, between my roommate and this other unit, I was collecting $1,700 per month in rent, and the mortgage was 1550. Because I used an FHA loan I had to deal with not only principal, interest, taxes and insurance, but also PMI, which is a form of mortgage insurance, and a trade-off for being able to use that very low down payment loan. So that’s the financials and overview of that house hack. It took me probably three or four months to fix up the place. Partially because I didn’t know what I was doing, and partially because I was, frankly a little lazy. I probably could have fixed it up in about a month or two if I’d been a little bit more down to the grindstone.

Chad Duval:

Were you doing it yourself or did you hire a lot of that?

Scott Trench:

I did most of it myself. However, I did hire out. One of the major problems, and I knew this going in, was that there was a lot of galvanized lead piping on the waste side of the water. And so I just spent about three grand to get that replaced and I hired a plumber to do that.

Chad Duval:

Ah, gotcha. Okay. So for timeline clarification, you started, you found Mr. Money Mustache in the beginning of ’14, and then by the end of the year you had a property? Or was it a year and a half? I can’t remember what year you said you started [crosstalk 00:10:26].

Scott Trench:

Yeah. That’s more or less correct. I can’t remember exactly when I discovered all of this FI stuff, but it was either at the very end of 2013, or the very beginning of 2014.

Chad Duval:

Wow. Wow. That’s impressive. So you really took it and ran with it.

Scott Trench:

Oh yeah. Well, I was just like, this is so clearly correct. I had to do it.

Chad Duval:

Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, no, I know, and to go back to Mr. Money Mustache, and Bigger Pockets, they both work hand-in-hand. I was similar in the same way, like around ’14 ish, I stumbled across Mr. Money Mustache, and there was a lot of overlap. I saw a lot of Bigger Pockets references and that sort of thing. And Mr. Money Mustache using real estate as a little side gig as well, along with all his index funds, was very unique. And yeah, you’re right, it’s mesmerizing and you get hooked once you start reading his material. It doesn’t really surprise me that you went that fast, but it’s very impressive because a lot of people, they have a hard time getting off the sidelines. Was it your background in finance that gave you the confidence to move forward? Or would you say everything just made perfect sense when you started reading and studying all this stuff to finally actually move forward with it?

Scott Trench:

Well I think that’s a great line of questioning, and I think what you’re getting at is what enabled me to move that quickly on that? And I think there’s two things. One, I thought it was right. And generally, when I have a new way of thinking, I go after it very hard, as soon as I’m convinced that it’s right. But two, and maybe more the real reason, is earlier that year I had been influenced by a neighbor. His name is Adam, and Adam had a little bit of a troubled past. He was an alcoholic. He was in trouble in his youth. He had a couple of issues. But he had been able to start over basically, and has built an immensely successful contracting business in my hometown.

Scott Trench:

And I had the privilege of working for this guy for a summer in college, and for a few weeks prior to starting my job out here in Colorado. One of the things that he brought to me was he said, “Hey, you know what? I don’t have all this classical training. I don’t have a ton of educational credentials. I don’t have all these credentials that a lot of other business people have. What I do have is I set goals and I use these types of coaching packages, and this other stuff.” And I got introduced to it. And I’ll be honest, at first I thought it was cheese, like cheesy. When you go into this goal setting world there’s a lot of like find your inner motivation, get going, dah, dah, dah, dah.

Chad Duval:

Yeah, it sounds so foofy.

Scott Trench:

It is, it is, it’s foofy, whatever your word is. But I also respected the fact that, hey, if it works for this guy, it could clearly work for me. I see the truth in at least the idea of writing down clear goals, articulating what you want in life, and then going after that. And because I was setting goals, I saw very clearly that my career trajectory at my first job was not going to get me to a place I wanted to be in three, five years. So as I absorbed new perspectives, like Mr. Money Mustache and Bigger Pockets, and expanded the possibilities that I had in my mind, then I was like, oh, clearly there’s another way here. And it allowed me to pivot very quickly. So I think that just having written goals and tracking progress towards them daily, when a new opportunity presents itself, you’re immediately ready to react to it. I think that’s-

Chad Duval:

Yeah, either this is going to help my goal, or actually deter my goals. That’s a really smart way of looking at it for sure.

Scott Trench:

That’s all the foofy stuff I got for today.

Chad Duval:

Yeah, no, I agree. It can get a little foofy, but there’s a lot of truth in a lot of that stuff. I totally get what you’re saying. So you got the house hack, you were still living with a roommate, you rented out the other unit, you’re basically living for free, you’re making a hundred bucks, or something like that, a month. So where did your next, I’m assuming once you got that rolling, you were even more hooked into real estate, as most people do with their first property. If they stick to real estate, they usually get hooked. How did your real estate career progress from that? And did you have any other properties moving forward?

Scott Trench:

Yeah. So around the same time I purchased that duplex, I quit my corporate job and joined a tiny startup called biggerpockets.com, as the third employee. So that was a big career risk, but that was partially influenced by the fact that I had saved up all that money, could live for a lot less than the salary that I needed, and I perceived Bigger Pockets as something that was more in line with what I wanted to do with my career, and a better longterm financial opportunity because I thought it was a fast growing community that was really awesome and had huge potential.

Scott Trench:

So when I joined that company, at first I actually made less than I made at my corporate job previously. But over those same months where I was fixing up the duplex, I began to pick up. Because I was in charge of selling advertising for the platform and that was a commission-based. So over that course of 2015, I really began ramping up my sales bit by bit by bit by bit. And that’s where my focus was throughout that year and going into 2016. In March of 2016, I actually formed a partnership with a buddy and we bought another duplex together that we jointly house hacked.

Scott Trench:

And the reason we formed that partnership was because we felt that it would be a huge amount of debt relative to our incomes to have multiple properties each under our own names with that. And that we could diversify the risk a little bit more with a partnership on this property. So that was the next one. That was a duplex. I actually still live in that duplex. It’s a great location and really enjoy living there. And I live next to one of my good friends.

Chad Duval:

Oh nice.

Scott Trench:

And then in 2017, a year after that, I bought a quadplex. I’m not sure if I’m done house hacking. I may do another one in the future, but I may also not do another one in the future. This one is just a straight up rental property. We each put down, same partner there, we put down a 25% down payment jointly on that property as well. In 2018, I did not purchase any more investment property of that sort. Instead, I invested in a syndication with someone I knew on Bigger Pockets. And in 2019, I’ve automated my portfolio which now consists of eight units across two duplexes and a quadplex.

Scott Trench:

I hired a property manager and made a couple of offers, but was actually unsuccessful in landing any deals at all this year. So I’ll double down again this next year. I think a part of that, for 2019 here, is the fact that my job’s gotten a lot busier here with Bigger Pockets, and I felt that I couldn’t commit the time to managing tenants anymore, and I was still managing myself. So I thought that by moving those properties into a property management firm, that coming up here, I just completed that maybe a month ago. Now I think I’ll be ready, willing, and able to buy more property and not have to manage it personally.

Chad Duval:

Yeah, no. How does it feel though, that first month that you feel lost a little bit because you don’t have all that stuff you have to deal with?

Scott Trench:

No, I feel great. This is much better this way, trust me.

Chad Duval:

I just did the same thing this year too. I put all my properties into property management and it’s like, it’s so crazy how much time it frees up for you to actually pursue more properties, or other things like podcasts, and creating content, and focusing on your nine to five, and that sort of thing. So yeah, totally, totally get where you’re coming from on that. So you bought a couple of properties under a partnership. Can you talk a little bit more about that partnership? Is that something that you recommend somebody who’s never done a deal before take advantage of? And if so, what sort of things do you look for in a successful partnership? I’m assuming yours is successful if you continue to be investing together.

Scott Trench:

Yeah. We’ll certainly buy more together in the future as well and continue to hold these. This partner is someone I’ve known for over a decade, and I’ve lived with, as a friend, for a long time. He’s almost like a family member or a brother. I have total confidence in two characteristics of this individual. One, is his integrity and two, is his competence and ability to drive the partnership forward. In certain aspects, I’ve met other people in my life where I have the same level of, those two qualities are satisfactorily fulfilled in other types of businesses. With colleagues at work, those types of things.

Scott Trench:

But in real estate, really there was not many other people that I thought had that combination that would have worked. And I guess a third important quality is that we’re relatively in the same position where we can both move faster together then than our-

Chad Duval:

You mean financial?

Scott Trench:

It wouldn’t make sense to, yeah, it wouldn’t make sense to partner with someone who was worth a hundred million dollars because it’s completely different ballpark then that. So yeah, I think that that worked for us. I think that, that, helped diversify the risk and helps getting a little faster. I think you got to be very careful because it’s a long-term commitment. It’s been five years and we’re going to buy more. And it may be 10, 20, 30, 50 years that we’re in this thing together.

Chad Duval:

It’s almost like a marriage.

Scott Trench:

So I think you have to put in the same level. Yeah. Like a marriage is right.

Chad Duval:

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. No, I get that. Yeah. So with your partnership, it’s working well, do you guys have a similar strengths, or are you guys very opposite? Because I’ve heard from other investors who have partners is they’re very complimentary. Like one’s really good at finance and one’s very good at hands-on. Or very complimentary. Is that how it works with you guys too?

Scott Trench:

Yeah. I’d say we’re very similar in most respects. But perhaps, if you’re looking for a difference, where we compliment each other in the partnership, I tend to be more of, if you’re familiar with the DISC profile, a high D. Where I like to make a large number of decisions very rapidly and move forward. I’m comfortable, if I have to make 10 decisions, I’m going to make all 10 very decisively and I’ll be right on six or seven of them. And the other three, I might be either middling or wrong on, and one, I’ll be devastatingly wrong on.

Scott Trench:

And that’s how I’ve always done things and that’s worked for me. And I’m very happy with that outcome from decision-making if I can get that. And then some other people, and I’d say my business partner is more along this lines. He’s a little bit more deliberate on stuff, especially the bigger issues, and takes more time and thinks those out. And I think that’s helped us. That combination has helped us operate efficiently, but also make good bets on decisions of which property to buy.

Chad Duval:

What’s that called again? That you’re referring to?

Scott Trench:

It’s called the DISC profile. It’s actually something we use here at Bigger Pockets with our team members. Where we’ll learn, hey, do you prefer to be direct, or do you prefer to be a little bit more passive? Are you a people person? You like to get involved with that? Or are you more isolated in work that, closing the books or whatever it is, that doesn’t really require as much interaction. Do you like a change of pace every day or do you like the same thing? There’s just different work style qualities that you can learn from this assessment.

Chad Duval:

Yeah. That’s really cool. I’m really curious what I stand in that. I guess it’s a good self-awareness test for yourself and especially, yeah when you go into a partnership, or any relationship, it’d be good to see you where the two of you stand. That’s a really good idea. I’m going to try that.

Scott Trench:

Yeah, absolutely.

Chad Duval:

So have you had any crazy war stories with your properties yet? Everything sounds like you’re killing it. You’re making a lot of money, your house hacking, living for free. You’ve got a very successful partnership. Has there been any major issues along the way?

Scott Trench:

I think I’ve intentionally constructed a very boring real estate business.

Chad Duval:

That’s the best.

Scott Trench:

Which is how I like it. Yeah. So I’m not looking for excitement. On the flip side of that, I’m also buying deals that are on the MLS. So I’m not getting a crazy off market deal that’s had a hoarder living in the place for 15 years, that I got to go clean up a big pile of mess, and can add value through a major rehab. I’m buying, more or less, rent ready ish properties, or properties that are pretty close to it. And then operating them reasonably. I try to buy a solid property in a great location at a fair price, and just consistently apply that. So I think I’ve had probably a more boring experience then maybe the next guy.

Scott Trench:

That said, I do have a horror story, since you asked. Where one of my tenants, this is an inherited tenant. A problem I knew came with the property, and I knew it was impacting the price. And I knew I’d have to deal with. I should have removed them immediately, but instead I let them stay for about a year and a half. And these guys would fight late into the night, they’d cause all sorts of problems. I’m sure that they had pets they didn’t tell me about, those kinds of things. One day I go over there because they say their heater’s not working. And outback, they’ve constructed an enormous pile, mounds of junk, that wall off their backyard. And there’s a roaring bonfire, which one, you’re not allowed to have in the city of Denver.

Scott Trench:

And two, it’s shielded by all this stuff. I’m banging on the door for five, 10 minutes because they told me to call, come over there. I texted them 20 minutes before and came by, and I can’t figure out why they’re not reacting or whatever. And they come out, and I don’t know what they were on or whatever, but they were not completely with it or whatever. And I’m like, “Guys, what’s going on? First of all, you tripped the breaker that the heaters on. So that’s all fixed and good to go. Why the heck is there a bonfire? Why are these mountains of junk? What’s going on here?” And they’re like, well. But I was most mad about the mounds of junk. I’m telling you, I’m butchering this story, I’m sorry.

Scott Trench:

But they’re saying, “Oh, well we put up the bonfire because it was cold inside. And we put up all the mounds of junk to hide the bonfire from the police.” I was like, Oh my God. So I knew it was time to get rid of them. I gave them cash for keys, a few weeks later repaired their unit. And while the units being repaired, my contractor is held up at gunpoint by the police looking for my previous tenants. So we literally dodged a bullet, I think, with those guys.

Chad Duval:

Wow. Yeah, that’s definitely a good war story right there. And a lesson to fire your tenants fast if you need to. It’s hard to convert a bad tenant into a good tenant, at least historic ways I’ve seen it for sure.

Scott Trench:

Yeah, absolutely.

Chad Duval:

And going back to saying that your portfolio is structured in a boring way, is that because you want to focus more on your day-to-day tasks with BP, or is that just your investing style?

Scott Trench:

Yeah, I believe that my biggest value to my career, my longterm wealth, society, all that stuff comes through this job as CEO of biggerpockets.com. Not through the acquisition, renovation and operation of rental properties. I invest in real estate because I know real estate, I’m comfortable with it, and I feel that I can get a greater return long-term, mostly passively, in real estate than I can in alternative assets like stocks, for example. But I invest most of my time in building the business of Bigger Pockets, not my rental portfolios.

Chad Duval:

Right, right. I guess this is a good transition into your current role at BP. Can you walk us through? You said you were the third employee at BP, so I’m assuming it was Josh, Brandon, and then you? I’m assuming? Is that how it went?

Scott Trench:

That’s right, yes. We also had a couple of other people that have come and gone, and a couple of contractors have actually been around much longer than me. So shout out to Davis Ayed and Ed Morgan, who continue to work with us.

Chad Duval:

So yeah. So you started there in finance, I believe, right? So you’re doing accounting in that sort of thing, or just like financial forecasting and that sort of thing?

Scott Trench:

Sure. I was the director of operations. So I did everything that Josh and Brandon didn’t want to do. That was the customer support, sales, finance, general operations, anything to do with our lawyers or accountants. Yeah, any problems with the community. More and more of the new revenue streams. I really loved our publishing division and how that got going. I think that’s a really cool unique business model for us where we can find somebody who’s posted on our forums for several years and really knows a topic. And we just know they can write, know they know their stuff, and know that they’ve put in the long-term work. They’re good human beings. And they go on on almost all the time to write a really good book, and we dominate the real estate investing book categories now.

Scott Trench:

So a lot of different revenue streams there. And over the past five years, I’ve just taken up more and more management responsibility. I think Brandon really enjoys content and teaching our audience how to invest in real estate. And he likes to do that from Hawaii. So he was not interested in a president or CEO role as they became available. And then for Josh, Josh had founded the business and really spent 14 years working 70, 80 hours a week or more. And so he was ready to take a back seat at the end of last year. End of 2018.

Chad Duval:

Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. An overnight success. Nobody saw the 14 years.

Scott Trench:

That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. That guy really put in the sweat equity to get to where he is.

Chad Duval:

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So yeah. So now you are taking over? Yeah, you are the CEO now, so what does that title mean for BP now? What is your day-to-day look like? Is this still the same, like a lot of operational stuff or are you, I guess the head firefighter for BP now, basically?

Scott Trench:

Yeah. Well, I would say that that’s, that’s exactly the opposite of what I do at this point. So I was like operation director and vice-president of operations. Whatever those two title differences meant, for four years leading up to this. And then in 2018, Josh wanted to sell the business, or recapitalize, bring on partners. And he named me president at that point to lead the business through that transaction. So 2018, most of the year was spent preparing for that. And technically, the difference between president and CEO, is president is really more of, it’s like if there’s VP of marketing and COO, president is the next extension of that. You’re responsible for the P&L, the financial performance of the business. A CEO is responsible for the vision, strategy, long-term planning, those types of things.

Scott Trench:

So that was really the big change at the end of 2018, when we completed our recapitalization and brought on our private equity sponsors, at the end of last year. I became CEO and president. And so now it’s that joint operations and strategic planning. And in 2019, I’d say that I continued to do, perhaps if one’s good, one’s relatively good and ones relatively poor, but continued to do a relatively reasonable job, I think, at the operations side of the business, and moving the business forward. And really spend a lot of time growing as a CEO on the strategic front. So I’m trying to spend more and more time thinking about our market, what our user’s problems are, what our longterm solutions to those problems, how much are they going to cost? How do we build them efficiently?

Scott Trench:

How do we make sure that they ensure user success? How does that tie to long-term financial performance for the business? Those types of things. Rather than, okay, now we’re going to launch a new podcast and then a new book, then a new whatever, then our new calculators, then the next new feature. More of that strategic vision for the company. So that’s where I spent the meat of my time the last couple of months, is on that.

Scott Trench:

In terms of fires, I do not like firefighting. I don’t think it’s necessary. I think that there’s very rarely a true fire, or true emergency, at a business. So I don’t really tolerate emergencies or fires, so we don’t have them. If there’s a problem, we put a system in place to solve it for next time. I still have fires, but maybe once or twice a month at most that we’re resolving within a few minutes. I’m not getting texts at two o’clock in the morning saying the site’s down.

Chad Duval:

Yeah. That could be a fire, but aside from that, pretty much a lot of things I think is just when people are screaming fire, nine times out of 10, it can be fixed relatively easy and quickly without screaming, fire. I totally agree with that.

Scott Trench:

But some people, and some business leaders, I think just allow their lives to be run like that. Which I think is just horrible. You can never move toward your goals if you’re constantly letting the angriest and loudest user interrupt your work day.

Chad Duval:

Right, right, exactly, exactly. So, yeah, we’re wrapping up a little bit here. We’re getting to the end. So I guess, what are some of the hobbies that you’re interested in? I had heard on another podcast that you do ride your bike to work and you are athletic. So I’m curious what hobbies you have.

Scott Trench:

Sure. Well, in terms of athletics, I’ve played rugby for most of my life. I did not play in 2019, but I’m wondering if that might change in 2020, or the future, because that was my big hobby for a long period of time. And there’s a little bit of like, Oh, what do I do now that I don’t play rugby anymore as my athletic hobby? So I joined a CrossFit gym. I’m really into that right now. I ski, I ride my bike occasionally. Less this year than sometimes in the past, I think. I have a lot of errands that require me to drive around. I’m a bit of a gamer and I like to travel a lot. So I probably do 20, 25 trips, mostly on the weekends. Maybe 10 of which are related to work.

Chad Duval:

Oh nice. Any favorite place you’ve ever been?

Scott Trench:

Yeah, I actually went to Ireland this past year. That was pretty amazing. We ended up having perfect weather. We missed the summer season and ended up getting really lucky with great fall sunny weather, and had some cool experiences there. There was a national plowing championship in Ireland, which is pretty amazing. And the Gaelic football finals, a very Irish experience there.

Chad Duval:

Nice, nice. Yeah. I’ve never been there actually. I’ve flown over it a bunch of times, but never been. And especially being over here in Boston, it’s not a far trip. I need to get over there for sure. So, yeah, I mean, I guess with that, is there any final thoughts, or how can people get in touch with you?

Scott Trench:

You can get in touch with me on Bigger Pockets. You can find my user profile there. You can email me at [email protected]. And then yeah, I think you can follow me at Instagram @scott_trench. And those are probably the places where I’m most likely to respond, are on those three platforms. And then if you’re interested in reading about my path to financial independence, or how I think ordinary person starting with little to no assets and immediate income can get there, you can check out my book, Set for Life, wherever books are sold.

Chad Duval:

Amazon? Any of those places?

Scott Trench:

Yeah. You can buy it on Bigger Pockets, Amazon, or Barnes and Nobles will have it as well.

Chad Duval:

Perfect. Well, Scott, I appreciate you coming on the show today. It was a great conversation. I appreciate all the insights for the audience, and hopefully we’ll be in touch soon.

Scott Trench:

Thank you very much, Chad. Great to be here and I had a great time.