You want to retire early, so you come up with a plan. “I’m going to buy ten rental properties and call it quits, then I’ll never have to work again.” Within a decade, you’ve got your ten rental properties, but now you want more. You buy another ten, then a big apartment complex, and now you’re raising money to buy even more. You have zero free time, investors to answer to, and a lot of stress. This wasn’t what you wanted. Let’s take it back to where you are now: how do you actually make it to early retirement? At the height of Chad Carson’s real estate investing career, he was working eighty-hour weeks flipping homes, buying rentals, and dreaming of a financial freedom-enabling portfolio. But when the market crashed, he took a step back and asked, “What do I really want?” Thus, the small and mighty investor mindset was born. Now, Chad is retired early in his forties, working just two hours per week and making six figures in passive income. Want to do it, too? Today, Chad discusses how you can build a small and mighty portfolio with fewer rentals, more cash flow, and ultimate time freedom. We’ll show you how to reverse engineer your goals to build the real estate portfolio you ACTUALLY want to own, why having hundreds of doors isn’t completely worth it, and the “metrics of success” you can use to measure your progress toward financial freedom. In This Episode We Cover: How to retire early (like Chad) with a small real estate portfolio  Why “door count” isn’t an accurate measure of success in real estate investing Reverse-engineering your financial freedom and how to start working toward it today Discovering your “why” and how NOT to get stuck in the day-to-day drudgery of adult life Measuring your progress toward financial freedom with the “metrics of success” Knowing when is “enough” and why winners know when to quit  And So Much More! Links from the Show Grab Chad’s Book, “The Small and Mighty Real Estate Investor” Join BiggerPockets for FREE Let Us Know What You Thought of the Show! Craft Your Personal Real Estate Portfolio with “Start with Strategy” Property Manager Finder See Dave at BPCON2024 in Cancun! Who Cares About the Number of Doors You Have—Cash Flow Is What Actually Matters Chad's BiggerPockets Profile Dave's BiggerPockets Profile Door count is a terrible metric. Please stop using it. 00:00 Intro 01:56 You DON'T Need 100 Rentals 05:18 What Do You REALLY Want? 09:53 Why Work More? 14:04 Metrics of Success 23:36 Reverse Engineering Financial Freedom 26:42 Does Door Count Matter? 33:13 What is "Enough"? 37:20 The Dish Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1004 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email advertise@biggerpockets.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices