BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 236: From Tragedy to Broke to $400,000 a Month with Lance Wakefield

Episode Date: July 20, 2017

How does one scale a real estate investing business to hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit in under two years? That’s the topic on today’s episode of The BiggerPockets Podcast, where you’ll hear just how Lance Wakefield, a real estate wholesaler in the Dallas area, accomplished that amazing feat. You’ll hear Lance’s powerful story of hitting rock bottom through numerous tragedies that hit him all at once and the devastation that caused—but you’ll also hear how he went from having just $3,500 to his name to earning over $400,000 in profit in less than 18 months. This show is motivating, educational, powerful, and moving—so don’t miss a moment of it. This is one show you’ll want to bookmark and listen to over and over and over again! In This Episode We Cover: What Lance did before real estate investing How he learned to flip homes at the age of 15 The concept of “house hacking” car dealerships The life tragedies that led him to lose everything Why stupid deals provide priceless teaching moments How to achieve massive success in just 21 months Why he teamed up with his wife The story behind their first deal What to know about the 2% Rule What you get when you spend $50k/month on marketing How to build out your processes How to obtain the right mailing list The software he uses to build his deal funnel How he determines the needs of the seller How to make real estate investing a business What’s next for Lance And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Hard Money Lenders Advertise on BiggerPockets Negotiating Your Way to 1000 Wholetail Real Estate Deals with Michael Quarles BiggerPockets Meet Pipedrive BiggerPockets Webinars J. Scott’s BiggerPockets Profile A Simple Morning Ritual to Help You Dominate Every Area of Your Life with Hal Elrod Books Mentioned in this Show Trump-Style Negotiation by George Ross Multipliers by Liz Wiseman Traction by Gino Wickman The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod Set for Life by Scott Trench Fire Round Questions Proof of funds letter Building a buyers list Questions to ask an accountant Best way to find Contractors in this busy market Tweetable Topics: “It was stupid to do as a deal. But as a learning experience, it was priceless.” (Tweet This!) “Our goal is to meet the need of the seller.” (Tweet This!) “When you are not focusing on the revenue, you are focusing on the wrong thing.” (Tweet This!) “Negotiation is everything. It is the key to real estate.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Lance Lance’s BiggerPockets Profile Lance’s LinkedIn Profile Lance’s Facebook Profile Lance’s Instagram Profile Lance’s Phone Number: 469-478-2143 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 236. We're spending about $50,000 a month on marketing right now. So having an agent looks and scour MLS for you, that ain't going to cut it, in my opinion. You've got to do active marketing and we have systems set up that create deals. I mean, you're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com.

Your home for real estate investing online. I'm Scott Trench, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast. You already wrecked it, Scott. You already wrecked it. Josh says, what's going on, everyone? That's right. Josh Dorkin. What's going on, everybody?

This is Scott Trench, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's up, Scott? You know second time's a charm. second time's a charm, yes. That was good. So how are you doing, buddy? I am doing pretty good. You know, my foot's recovering, so I'm able to kind of walk around and start to run and

all that kind of stuff. Are you playing rugby again yet or when's that come? So I hope to play rugby by the end of the month, but there's a little bit of a problem because the screw they put in actually snapped, which has set me back a little bit farther than I was hoping. So, but all the bones are in good spots and hopefully with some physical therapy, I'll be back on the field. Nice, nice.

Yeah, Scott is a rugby player and he's a beast. So if you want to wrestle Scott, just give him a call. His phone number is, area code. I don't even know. All right. So Josh, Josh today is actually, I saw a picture earlier. He's in the Badlands of South Dakota out in the middle of nowhere. So, of course, thank you, Scott for jumping in and covering for him.

Mount Rushmore, right? He was at Mount Rushmore yesterday, badlands today. And I don't know where he's going tomorrow. I don't know. He's all over. RV and he's doing this thing. So, uh, there's fireworks behind the mountain.

Yeah, I know. All the presidents. Yep. That's a pretty epic place to watch the, uh, fourth of July. Today we're recording this on the 5th of July. I'm not exactly sure what date this comes out. I think later in July. But, uh, anyway, I had a good fourth.

Did you have a good fourth? I had a great fourth. We actually could see the fireworks right from my house. Me too. I actually sat in my hot tub and watched them out like from my backyard. It was pretty fun. Oh, always got a one up me. I do.

I, that's my goal in life. So, um, uh, today's show is amazing. I actually feel bad. Josh didn't get to do this interview. This is one that I've been looking forward to for months now. This guy hit me up a while back via email and told me a little bit of a story and I was like, this guy is legit. Let me just give you guys a quick sample of what we're talking about. I mean, he went from December of 2015, right, which was like a year and a half ago. He had $3,500 to his name. Last month, he profited over $400,000. He sent out $100,000 direct mail

pieces. I mean, think of that scale, like that growth. That's what we're talking about today. This guy built a big business in a very short amount of time. And it is incredibly impressive. Yeah, very impressive. Very, very motivating of something, I don't know, it's, you guys are going to love it. You guys are going to love it. Whether or not you try to do one deal or trying to do 100 deals a month like he is doing, I mean, you're going to love this show.

So listen tight for that, especially like, I mean, he talks a lot about negotiation. He talks a lot about just like the funnels that are involved, the need to run your business like a business, all this stuff. very, very cool. The theme is, I think underlying it all was he has built a disciplined, effective system for converting leads into profit. And it's, and because he's done that so well, he's benefited from some truly incredible growth. That's true. It's true. So for decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without the complexity and expense.

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check out historical returns, and start investing in just minutes. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fundrise Flagship Fund before investing. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. Here's the thing about traveling. If you buy food at the airport, a burrito, salad, bag of peanuts, you start wondering if

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returns. If you own a rental property, don't assume you're covered. Have NREG review your insurance with someone who gets investing at NRE.com slash BP pod. That's NREIG.com slash BPod. Last thing before you of the show, we have to get to today's. That was so delayed, Scott. It was so delayed. Today's quick tip. Why don't you take it, Scott? Today's quick tip is if you are interested in hard money or private lending, go check

out the BiggerPockets, hard money directory at biggerpockets.com slash hard money lenders. That's actually mentioned in today's show as well. And there, as a borrower, you could see hundreds of lenders all across the country. And as a lender, you can go and advertise your business. As always, with any lender, make sure you do due diligence on the lender and make sure it's a good fit for you. Yep. Hey, Scott, if I wanted to advertise my business on BP, like let's say I may anything, right? I'm a real estate agent.

I'm a whatever. You're kind of ahead of all BP kind of like, what we call it? I don't know how those sales, but whatever that is, right? Business development. How do I get in touch? I mean, what do I do if I want to use bigger pockets to reach more people? Awesome. You can go to biggerpockets.com slash advertise and send an email directly through there.

and I'll check it out. One thing to note with the advertising stuff is we really only directly work on advertising with people that are interested in marketing to the entire national audience, at the time of this recording at least. If you're more of a regional person, you know, you have your business that serves, you know, Milwaukee or Tampa, Florida or something like that, or even the whole state of California, that's kind of the use for the pro membership. You can advertise your business in the marketplace there. The stuff that I work with is really like, you know, I'm a national lender and I could load an all 550. States and I want to put out some content there, like our sponsors on today on the show.

Perfect. Perfect. All right. Well, I thought I'd throw that in there. Now, let's get to the show because today's show is incredible. And last thing I'll say before we get to it, if you've not left us a rating or review in iTunes, please do so. With that, let's get to the show.

All right, Lance, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. How you doing? I'm doing great. How are you doing? I'm doing awesome. I'm doing awesome. I'm excited to have you on here today. You know, you emailed me a while back a few months ago and kind of told me your story.

And I was like, we need to get you on the show. show. Like you have, uh, yeah, you have an awesome story. Uh, you've done a lot of cool stuff. So, uh, you were, we're excited to dig into that. And you did a lot of cool. I'm excited to finally. Yeah, in a very short time. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, cool. Well, let's go to the beginning. I mean, before real estate, I mean, what, what did you do? How'd you get into real estate investing? Like, kind of walk us through that beginning steps there into your first deal. Well, so the, the beginning, there's a few different beginnings. So I went on, I'm Mormon. I'm like LDS Mormon. So I went on a My mission. Okay. My mission was from 2006 to 2008. I was in Belgium and France. So 2006, when I left,

the world was amazing. I got back in October 2008 and the sky had fallen. And so we found a house that was really close to the university that I was going to go to. I got back. I was 21 and was able to work out a deal on like a rat mortgage type of thing. And it was great because it was a six bedroom, four bathroom, home like two units and upstairs and a downstairs unit. And so I house hacked. I was I I lived in one room. I shared it with another dude, rented it to him. Every other room was leased out and full and the house was just packed with people. And I made like 1500 bucks a month and I thought I was the smartest guy in the world and paid the mortgage. All the utilities are paid. So it was like my first deal where I kind of experienced real estate and got to see what it was like to just have that

that income coming in. I lived, you know, not in the best circumstances, but I was 21. So who cared, So it was my first deal, and it really came to me as a just kind of factor of the economy and economic state of things at the time. So that was my very first real estate experience. That's awesome. It's funny. Scott, you and I always seem to be on the shows together with the people who house hack. This is like, I think, the third one. Yep.

That's funny. Yeah, because Scott's a big house hacking guy. I'm a big house hacking guy. And Lance, I didn't know you are, but you are too. That's awesome. And everyone seems to feel it was a really smart decision at the time. So something going on. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, saving that money was like huge for me at the time, right? Because $300 a month, that was like everything I would get paid at my like $8 an hour job, you know, it was like. So it was a big deal not to have to pay that and getting the additional income was huge. So obviously I did the natural thing and bought a motorcycle. What was your job at the time?

I actually was a maintenance tech at a like 350 unit apartment complex. Oh, okay. I did have some other interesting experience in high school with real estate. I was growing up in Hawaii and I was living there from about 2000 to about 2006 when I went on my mission. And so during that time, real estate in Hawaii went from you. You could buy a home like no joke. You can you can even look it up on county records.

Like in 2000, you could buy homes on an acre in Hawaii for 95 pay. Like 95,000 bucks got you 2,000 square foot home on an acre, gorgeous views, the whole deal. 2006, same home, 1.5 million. It was like insanity in Hawaii. So I worked with this guy, this dude who was like crazy drunkle dude. And he was a carpenter and his wife was a real estate agent. So she'd buy him. He'd fix him up and they'd resell him.

And he used me as his worker slave for 10 bucks an hour. I thought it was the greatest thing in the world because I was 15 making more money than anyone else I knew. And learned about flipping homes and how they were doing it. I didn't learn a ton because at the time I was like, whatever. Yeah. I just want to go hang out with girls and serve. but I really learned about seeing, seeing them go through the process was really cool.

And I knew it was like, I want to do this, but like what do you do in college to do this? And I didn't really, didn't really click for me at the time. Makes sense. It's interesting. Like a lot of like,

you know, when I think of my early like high school college days before real estate investing, a lot of like the little experiences I was in helped define like later. Like when I look back, I'm like, oh yeah, that makes perfect sense that I was learning these little things here and there.

But I never realized that'd be in real estate. So yeah, interesting. So, all right. So, Let's move forward. So you got your first house hack. You know, what came next at that point? After that, as things were slowly getting better with the economy, I did a remote flip in Arizona.

I had a friend who had been flipping homes, buying them at the auctions or whatever was going on in 2009-10. And he bought a home. We flipped it. It didn't work out that while. I made like nothing, basically on the house and it was a bunch of working headache. And so then I was like, whatever. And during that time, I'd started some used car dealerships. And so I really like was focusing.

more on those and they were really growing. I went from, I actually, I actually house hacked my car dealership. It was awesome. So, um, so I found this like huge garage for rent for 1,500 bucks a month. It was like 12 garage bays and then I had a big office and a teeny tiny like closet office. So, and then I had a really big parking lot for parking cars. So I leased, I leased the office from this car dealer and the garage and everything. I immediately relisted it and, and, leased the garage space to a mechanic for $1,500 a month. I covered it. Then I went to college and I found these dudes who were like, dude, I want to be a car dealer.

I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, come, come be a car dealer with me. Like, I'll make you a salesman, 500 bucks a month each. So I found five guys you wanted to do it, 500 bucks a month each. Plus, I was also house hacking my house at the time. And I was like, yeah, this is awesome. Plus, I was selling cars and making money. So I got more or more into the car thing. And I was going to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

And at BYU, I was like entrepreneur of the year a couple years in a row because I had like a restaurant going. I had all these different kind of entrepreneurial things. And this is like going from 2009, 10, 11, 12. And in 2013, crap didn't just hit the fan. It was like a giant grenade filled with crap that exploded all over me and like everything that had anything to do with me. It all came crashing down. Like I was married. I had a little girl.

we got divorced. My best friend died. He was 26. He just had a, he was in a hospital working, had heart failure, drop dead. That was it. Like, nothing could have been done to save him. You know, just thing after thing. And it kind of all culminated with my brother.

He was 22. He went into a dentist office to get a tooth removed. End up choking to death on the gauze and died. And so that was in about an 18-month period. When that happened, I had two car dealerships at the time, one in Nevada in Las Vegas, and the other one was in Provo, Utah. And so when that happened, it was like just crushing. I went up to Utah for the funeral. I'd actually just gotten to Vegas.

I'd been there for 15 minutes. I drove down, and my dad called me and told me what happened. So I got in the car and drove back. And my manager of my dealership in Vegas knew I was leaving decided it was a good idea to start using meth or something. I don't know exactly what happened still to this day. But he took every single car he could with every single title he could and went and sold them. And then the companies that give you lines of credits for vehicles, they do inspections. And there's a bunch of cars missing.

They're like, give us the money. And I was in Utah for like funeral, like all this other stuff going on and didn't have the money. And so from having a ton of money and everything going great, it was rock bottom to like, like, no joke. Like people from the state level are like calling me like trying to not arrest. me, but not good things, you know, not good things. And so I did the natural thing and went and lived in my parents' basement in Hawaii for a while and just kind of hid, let things blow over and tried to figure out my life again with like no brother and just all of this stuff going on. I knew I had talent and ability and could do things, but it all come crashing down. So it really

hurt my motivation to like do more and to try again. I was like really broken. Yeah. So, When that happened, since then, everything settled out. I've corrected everything. All of that's been taken care of. During that, I actually, there's some good things that came out of it. About a week before my brother died, I met my current wife. And she went with me to Hawaii. And she, like, took care of me and helped me get through everything.

And so after that, it all happened, a buddy of mine who had bought a house in, like, 2010 or whenever the Obama, like, taxed $7,500 deal was going on. Yep. He bought a house to get that. And it was like, it was a massive house, like 5,000 square foot house, biggest in the neighborhood. And it was literally around the corner from the house that I had bought in House Hacked. And so he was out of cash. So my parents were like, well, why don't you fix up his house? I could do construction work, but I really shouldn't.

So me and a buddy of mine basically made it our full-time jobs to fix up this house. and we went through and it was, dude, it was like the rehab of all rehabs. Now looking back, I'm like, I was so stupid to do that, knowing what I know now. But it turned out okay. We ended up selling the home and basically breaking even. Why do you say that? Why were you stupid to do that? Man, because if you ran the numbers, it was like, I think we spent like 200K on repairs or something stupid.

It was like just, it was stupid numbers. And the amount of time, like, it was stupid to do as a deal, but as a learning, experience, it was priceless. Like to learn, because it's like, we fixed, we had a dig out, it had a basement. It was in Utah. So we had to dig out the foundation with a backhoe the whole way around the house. We had to repair the foundation.

We replaced everything in that house. HVAC, roof, plumbing, electrical. Like, I can, I can wire a whole house. I can plumb a whole house. I can do all that stuff now because we had to. We didn't have the money to sub it out. It's either figure it out or lose a bunch of money. So we finished it and we sold the house. house and it all went well. But as learning experience, it was great as a way to make money, horrible.

How much would those repairs have been if you contracted it all out? I have no idea. I mean, we would have lost even more money. It was like looking back at it now, it was like, it was like giving a toddler a cow and being like, eat this. Here's your food. And it's food, right? You could eat it. But for a toddler to eat a cow, it's just like, what do you? So you just start working on it. And it's like, We got it done. It took a year and it was like, it was brutal. But it was, I mean, there were good things about it. My dad was over there.

He's a professor at BYU. So he would come over because it was right next to campus. He'd come over every day after work on his off days and he'd work right alongside me. It was a good bonding experience for us after, you know, my brother was his only other son, his only other child. And so it was a good experience for us to become closer during that time and to kind of repair what had been happening. And so, yeah. So during that time, my goal was to kind of figure out what I was going to do next, right? Because I had even, I still haven't graduated college.

I hadn't graduated college. So I went back and did a little bit more classes, but my degree's in French because it was quick and easy. And I already spoke French. So I was like, this is the quickest, easiest way to graduate. But it's pretty worthless, right? So I was kind of going to school, kind of just trying to figure things out. And we'd finished up this house. After that, I moved to Texas where my ex-wife had moved with my daughter and was like,

I don't know what to do here. So I got a job at a 9 to 5 being a project manager for a remodeling company. And it was absolute hell. It was like 200 miles a day in a car and just brutal, brutal. So that was the only 9 to 5 job, the only W2 job I've had in my life since I've other than like those weird jobs I had during high school. But since that I've had and I was able to last a whopping three months until my second child was born.

And I quit. the day he was born, which most people would be like, you're an idiot, but whatever, you know, we figured it out. So, and that led us to trying to do our own, our own house flipping thing in Texas. And so I got started doing that. And we bought a little tiny house in McKinney where the city I was living in for 40,000 bucks, spend another 45 or so fixing it up. And then we, we were going to sell it. We decided to turn it into a rental for, and we still have it as rental today. And we rent it for $1,350. And we bought that in very end of 2015, very beginning of 2016. So about 18 months ago.

Wow. So like so everything we're going to talk about here in a minute, like has happened in the last roughly 18 months. Like every, yeah, everything, everything for that have been an actual real estate investor since I quit my job was October 3rd. It's 21 months because my, my boy just turned 21 months old. It's 21 months since then. But I didn't actually start.

doing this stuff until my first real deal, I guess, was in March of 2016. Wow. Okay. That's crazy. So in the last little over a year, let's fast forward to the very end, summarize up and then we'll go back. How many total things have you done now in the past like roughly year and a half? Oh, man.

So I just, I just looked and right now we have 86 properties under contract. We're sending out like 125,000 mailers a month right now. And we've got 13 employees. I think last month we did just under 400,000 in sales. And that's like revenue from wholesale deals, not the total price of the sale of the home. That's like our net portion out of a wholesale or wholesale deal. That's our portion. It was like we did 400,000 last month.

So it's been so. But first, first, before I get into what happened, the 200 miles a day I was driving in my car. I discovered bigger pockets. I listened to every single podcast twice, every single one. Wow. So really, to me, it turned into Professor, Professor Dorkin and Professor Turner, teaching me what to do. And I listened to those podcasts.

And there's some like the Michael Quarles shows and some of those other shows where I listened to them three, four, five, six times. And I'd go back to segments of those shows and re-listen to them to learn how to negotiate and to learn how to do certain parts of it. But at the end of the day, I was like a fire, ready, aim kind of guy. Like, I would just contract properties. No clue how I was going to pay for them. No clue how to assign stuff.

Like, no clue of the documentation I needed. No clue of anything. And I'm just made a work. But I attribute a huge amount of this to bigger pockets because the first several wholesale deals I did, I sold them to people I met at Bigger Pockets meetups. Like, it was so. influential on my life and this isn't like a plug. It is a plug for you guys, but it was not something that you guys were like, hey, you should talk about this. It was legitimately listening

and the information, the learning that I got from it was insanely valuable because I applied it. And so honestly, I got to thank the Bigger Pockets community and especially Brandon and Josh because my life, like Christmas 18 months ago, a buddy had borrowed my truck to move. And I had like a big duly truck. And he had crushed both the humps backing up a trailer. He crushed him. I got $3,500 of insurance money from that. That's literally what kept my family alive and gave my kids some semblance of a Christmas.

I had nothing. I had no money. Nothing. And now it's like, like we were joking because we just, we've lived here for two years now in DFW. And we moved here. My parents had to help us with the down payment. We just moved last week. and we had the whole down payment for the house ourselves.

We've got extra money left over, like completely different night and day over a two-year period. And the biggest educational change and the biggest thing that affected it was bigger pockets for me. That's awesome. Yeah. I'm going to like, I'm going to take that quote. Yeah, I'm going to take that quote and throw up on Instagram or something. That's amazing.

Seriously. Like people say, people say that getting rich quick and stuff doesn't exist. And I don't know. by what standard or if I'm rich or whatever. But I feel like 18 months to do it is awesome. And it's just going bigger and faster now. And it's amazing. So let's talk about why that is.

I mean, why I know people who 18 months ago were telling me that they wanted to get into real estate. And I still talk to them now and they're still trying to get into real estate. And people who have been trying for 10 years to get into real estate, they've bought in one deal, two deals, three deals. What was it different about you and your journey that that has? helped you take off in such a dramatic way. Well,

quitting my job created a sink or swim situation. So it was either, I either made it work or didn't eat. So I made it work. I mean, there wasn't a choice. I had kids. It was like,

I got to make this happen. My wife's also amazing. She got her real estate license. And so the fact that she's had that and I've been able to not be a realtor because that wouldn't help me at all. but having access to her knowledge and what she's learned and MLS and those sorts of things has been hugely helpful to me. So her and I work together every day. We run the business together.

We have two other business partners and the four of us run it. And she's been a huge contributing factor for me because, man, most wives would have just murdered their husband. She's like in the hospital. I'm like, hey, quit my job. So, but she supported it the whole way through. And so did my parents and everybody else around me. So that was that was a big deal after such a big failure for me. So let's go into the specifics here.

So you started with a $3,500 insurance settlement. That's how you kind of got enough to get through Christmas in 2015. Is that right? And then come early 2016, you buy the $45,000 house with $47,000 in repairs. How did you fund that deal? And then what was the, what was the process like after that? So my parents had sold that house in Utah and gotten their money back from that. and they wanted to invest in some rentals.

So they actually did that deal. And that deal to this day hasn't really made me any money. It just kind of kept me busy during that time. What happened is I started doing some mailers. So in January, I used some of that insurance money to do some mailers in January. And I got some response. And I was focusing in like a downtown McKinney area. And this area is it's got homes that were built starting in 1850.

And it's a very unique area. And it's got a street that splits the side since there's an east and west side. the west side, you can get over $300 a square foot for property on the west side. The east side is a little bit more rental friendly. And so we started buying some homes over there with my parents. I never really made any money from that. But what happened is I contracted from the mailers and just kind of networking and things. End up contracting three homes in March.

And one of them, I contracted with a friend of mine. Her name's Jamie Woolley. And I met her to Bigger Pockets Meetup. And we contracted this house. And I was like, we're going to flip this house. and she's like, yeah, we should flip it. And it was like two houses down from a house that she had bought to flip. And she ended up wholesaling.

And she'd bought it for a 90 and she wholesaled it for 130. And so she's like, you know, the guy who bought my house, I think would want to buy this house. And so I was like, okay. So we wholesold it for 180 and we contracted it for 150. And this was an MLS deal. This was something we found on MLS.S. And we wholesold it for 180, contracted at 150. And we split it 15 each.

I had two other properties under contract at the time, one that I, contracted at 110 and the other one I contracted at 100. I was at a bigger pockets meetup. And I was talking to some of these people and they're like, dude, do you have any property? I really need a flip. Like they just finished up a deal and they're like, I can't find a deal. So I was like, I mean, yeah, I got some deals, but they're my deals. You know, you can't have my deals. And I was, they're like, well, we really need a deal. I'm like, well, you can have my deals. If you pay me enough for them and they're like, well, how much you want? And I'm like, for the one for 110. I was like, I want 140. And they're like, okay. And I was like,

Okay. Like I never really made any money flipping homes. But wholesaling, it was like 30,000 bucks. Boom. 15. Boom. And then and then I had another one that I contracted at 100. And I sold it at 125 and it was like, boom, boom, boom, all this money coming in. So I was like, again, did the natural thing. Yeah. So I did the natural thing and bought a Tesla. You know, smart thing to do. There's like there's like this thing that a lot of real estate investors go out by Tesla's. Yeah, this pattern. I think Ben Labovich and. a search shoe cot both have have Tesla. I think what else has got a Tesla? There's a couple other people who have been on the podcast that got them. I'm still working on that. We'll get there.

I built myself an electric bike. Nice. You got to buy the used one. So I got like I got a used one. So it's like 50,000 bucks instead of 150. So I recommend the use throughout. A little better. So let me let me, for those people listening right now,

let me just cover a couple of things. First of all, wholesale in case you guys aren't familiar. It's basically where you find a property. That's a really good deal. You put it under contract. And then you sum, how there's different ways to do it, assign it or double clothes or whatever, to a, usually a flipper. And so the flipper ends up doing the work. You're basically just doing kind of the,

the boots on the ground, finding the deals and then getting them to somebody else. So just in case people are like, what's wholesaling? That's what we're talking about here. Is that all you do? I mean, like, is that all you do? Or have you done a lot more since. I've done other stuff like, so my parents have, in the interest of retirement, they have started a company that buy and holds properties. And right now, I think it's 13 units. and we're trying to finish up closing on apartment complex right now that'll put us at 25 total units for for that business. That's very separate.

And that's like maybe an hour of week of my time. I mean, I don't spend almost any time on that. They're all leased. I've got guys that go in and do the rehabs. But the reason that it works so well is because we're buying them at the wholesale prices. So when we're buying stuff at 50, 60 cents on the dollar, those rental numbers are amazing, you know, versus when you go on the MLS and you're buying stuff at 90, maybe, 95 cents on the dollar. it's really hard to make it work.

And so there's deals we buy that are still hitting a 2% rule because we're able to find those properties and contract them at such a good price. And being a 2% inside a DFW is like gold mine. Can you explain what 2% rule is for those who don't know? Yeah. So 2% is it's 2% of the purchase price. So this property, the example I'll give you is we bought it for 120. It leases out for 2,400.

So $2,400 a month is 2% of $120,000. And the thing people say to me all the time, they're like, I can't find a 2% deal. Should I not invest in real estate? What's your answer to that? Because they hear this 2% rule all the time on bigger pockets. That is such a cop-out answer. I mean, in my opinion, there's 2% deals are everywhere if you're willing to find, I mean, okay, not everywhere, but they're there if you're willing to do the work for finding them.

And you're willing to create the skill set in yourself to be able to negotiate and make those deals happen. Who in their right mind, tell me, Brandon, who, would be like, hey, I got this 2% deal. Do you want it? Yeah. Would you do that? If you had a 2% deal, would you give it to somebody else? Not at all. You would keep it. Yep. So what makes anybody think that they can just be like, hey, I'll take 2% deals over here. It's like, no, you got to go out there and earn it. Go and find it and make it happen. If you wait for it to come to you, forget it. You're never going to get the deals. You got to go and earn them. Skill sets. I mean, before this, we were talking about the books you read. I mean, Brandon, I know you read a lot of books. I read a lot of books. I

do, spend a ton of time educating myself. And that's what enables me to create a situation where I can get these deals that make money. Yeah. So let's go into that. How are you finding these deals? What are your tactics? What are, what are the methods that you're using to find these deals that no one else is finding and, and put them into your rental portfolio?

And marketing. We spend, we're spending about $50,000 a month on marketing right now. So having an agent looks and scour MLS for you, that ain't going to cut it, in my opinion. You've got to do active marketing, and we have systems set up that create deals. I mean, we have people call in that are like, go to hell, never call me again, stop sending me this mail. How did you get my address? And then we somehow buy their home and make money on it. I mean, being able to take people in that position and put them through our process and have them sell to us.

And there's obviously people who call in and they need to sell. And they've got a situation. And so we helped them and resolve situations for them. So to answer your question, marketing, I mean, we spend a ton of money on marketing. And then when a lead comes in, our ability to capture those leads. Like, we answer calls live. None of this voicemail crap. Like, everything is done correctly as to how I can learn to do it from the people who are

an absolute best in the business. I've studied exactly what they do and applied. And during 2016, I'm not a guru guy, but during 2016, I spent over $200,000 on education. Wow. There's a bigger pockets education which took me and got me started and I understood everything and I did some deals. I took the money I made from that deals. I did buy Tesla. But I spent a ton of money also on education. I mean, and this isn't guru weekend workshop crap. This is partnerships with people who are adding value to me and my business. This isn't like 30,000 bucks and I sit there and I'm like, I'm not getting anything from this. When I get out of this, I won't be able to do a deal.

This is like, hey, your company does my marketing. I will answer the phones and I will convert the leads and you will teach me how to do that better while you're doing my marketing and I'll pay you a premium to do my marketing. That was one of the partnerships I set up. Another partnership I set up was teach me in your process from when you start thinking about doing marketing through when a deal funds and closes and everything in between. And I did that with them, but I had to split every single deal I did with them for six months. I mean, it was very costly. But now I have a process that is my own and I've taken the best things I can find from other places and created this process that that works. And it's, it's been, it's been great. Well, I want to dig into that process a little bit. I mean, like, let's start with marketing.

I'm assuming you're talking about direct mail marketing. Earlier you said 100,000 pieces a month, $50,000 a month. Is that like, that's crazy amounts of money. How did you scale to that? I mean, I want to dig into a lot of your direct mail stuff, but how did you scale to that point? I mean, what was your first? How many did you send out at first? And how did you get to sending 100,000 pieces of mail? So the first thing. I did was I identified an area that was exploitable, which was, I don't know if that's a right way to say. I'm not like, I'm not a shark. I don't go after. It was, it was, there was, there is a, people were missing stuff in the market because the cost to essentially build new in DFW.

It obviously depends on the quality of the build and things, but it's like 65 to 85 bucks a square foot to, to build new. And there's these properties you could buy for $100. a square foot. And then when they're rehab, you can sell them for $200 a square foot. And to build new is 60 to 85. So there's this money left here in this area of McKinney. And so I started just working that area. And I made that like my area. Like I knew every street. I knocked on doors. I talked to homeowners. I did everything I could to get deals in that area. And when I got them, I used that money and spent it on marketing. It was like always going back out in marketing. But that small area, because it was a small area, I was able to focus in that area. I love that. And that created a situation where I could recognize deals very quickly. I learned how to recognize deals there. And then once I learned how to do it there, the Metroplex was really the next step. So we went and started my first mailing.

It was actually like a was land only deals. And I sent out 600 postcards from like yellow letters or something. And I got one phone call and I bought one lot. And, uh, and that was it. And then I kept working on it. and it was did a thousand campaign. And these are the ones I was doing in January. And then in April, after I'd made some good money, I made my first partnership.

And they kind of controlled how much marketing was going out. And so we were sending out, I think, about 15,000 postcards a month with them. And they actually took the calls and answered them for me and then transferred them over to me when they were good leads. So I learned how to negotiate and contract a property and sell them and do all that stuff. And then during that year, I also had the other partnership. And so there was a good amount of marketing going on. And then in December, I started doing 25,000 a month. January, I think it was 25.

February was 50. You know, March was 75. We just upped to 100, I think, in April. And now we're up to 125 in July. That's just, those are 125,000 postcards a month. And so the biggest thing that's holding us back right now is my ability to quickly train people to fill the positions quickly, but effectively training people to fill the positions to take all the calls.

Like that's our biggest problem is we've got so many deals. Our problem is managing them all. It's not finding them because they're there. Everyone else is just too lazy to go and find them. No offense to anybody else in the UFW. I got a question here. How many homes are in the Metroplex? A lot.

I think a couple million. I know that number, but it's between one and two million. So you're going to hit on average. every home in the entire metro area every year. Well, at this rate, right? Oh, no, because, I mean, so a rich guy like Brandon, he goes out and buys his home for cash, right? I mail him a postcard, and I'm like, hey, Brandon,

sell me your home for 50 cents on the dollar that you just paid cash for it. What's Brandon going to say? Nope. Nope. Nope, right? So your list, in my opinion, wholesaling, it all starts with your list. And the only proprietary thing about wholesaling is how you acquire your list. And the list is extremely important because it's where it's all starts.

You need to be able to find these people that have these situations that they can't resolve. Like we've done deals where we had to, we had to pay an attorney. So this guy's in jail for life. He murdered a 96 year old woman. And this dude is blind. So even if he needs to sign off for us to sell this house. So it's like I send him the paperwork. He can't read it, right?

It has to be notarized. The notary can't notarize it if he can't read it. So we had to pay his attorney $500 to drive out to his jail in Florida, not in Texas. And we had to find that attorney. And then we had to convince him to do it. And then we had to pay them to do it. And they actually had to go out and do it. And we had no clue if he would sign the paperwork.

He's crazy. He was a murderer. Like, he's crazy. easy. And he went out there and signed the paper. And it's like some that owner of that property, they had hired a real estate agent, put that on the MLS. What agent is going to figure out how to do that and solve that problem for that person? None of them. What agents can take $500 out of their pocket? And this is on a this is on a house we bought for $13,000. Right. So your agent commission is like 300 bucks. Yeah. Or whatever. It's nothing. So it there's a place in the market for us and we are

specifically targeting people who have these problems on the titles of their home because that's something we can recognize. And so we're very specifically targeting these people. And when they call in, we understand how to show them that we can help them. So let me, let me take this down to a level that like most of our listeners aren't going to send 100,000 pieces, right? But can you talk directly to some people right now that are saying, you know, I want to send out my first direct mail campaign next month? What do they do? Who do they send to? Can you give them some advice for those newbies that are getting started with direct mail. Well, step one is equity, right? If they just got an FHA loan for a property, they put 3% down and they get into a situation where they need

to sell and they just bought it a year ago, probably ain't going to happen. Like, there's no equity in there. They bought it on the MLS. They used agents. That's not happening. You need people to have equity. So if you're not looking at people who have equity and I'm talking like 30, 40, 50% of equity in their home, it's a waste of your time. Unless you want to be a subject to guy or, or do something else. And in that case, do that. Don't try and wholesale. But it's all about, that's the beginning.

If they don't have equity, you don't have a wholesale deal. That makes sense. And how do you find that out? There's a lot of different ways. The problem is you've got to look at how they're getting that information. And so there's tricky things. And it gets even trickier in nondisclosure states. And Texas is a nondisclosure state.

So states like Hawaii that are not nondisclosure. So non-disclosure is when they will make public information how much somebody paid for a home. And Hawaii makes that complete. And I say Hawaii because I know Hawaii, they'll disclose that for you. In Texas, you have no clue what anybody else paid for their home unless they left that information on the MLS. And so figuring out that equity percentage is difficult and you really need a lot of experience with doing it. And I'm not really an expert on how to do that. we do do it and my knowledge of exactly how we do it is rather limited.

Sure. Is that because, I mean, you hire other people, essentially companies, you partner with people to do direct mail. And I think there's a lesson to be pulled out of there, right? Like, you don't have to do everything. Like there are companies that will do direct mail marketing for you that will help you with the marketing thing. But it's going to cost you, right? So we do our marketing, I'm sorry. We do our marketing, but we don't do our lists.

So we have someone else to our lists and it's easy to use that. So we just found somebody that looks full with us. And so that's how we do that portion of our marketing. Okay. It seems to me like another part of this is when you first get started, your list was smaller. And perhaps I'm venturing to say that is maybe a little bit more targeted than it is today. And would you say that part of that expansion of growth is because your systems enclosing these deals and finishing the transactions out has improved, enabling you to kind of widen your. funnel is that absolutely yeah absolutely and so before i had to be super targeted and super specific

in an area i knew because i couldn't afford to to be wrong ever like if somebody was getting mail i needed them to call and i was getting i mean i was sitting off like thousand postcards and my response rate was like 10 percent it was like stupid now if i could get 10 percent's response rate be on an island somewhere but what is your response right now i'm Do you know what you're? One to two percent. And it just depends. I mean, there's so many factors when you deep dive into it.

Like if your mail hits on the wrong day, that's effective. I mean, this week, yesterday was Fourth of July, we wouldn't even bother mailing this week. We can't because it's like, so we're just going to double up mail next week. Because this week, it's like, man, if we market who, first of all, mail's not going out every day. There's all these factors. And so it's so touchy once you're really doing it at scale. but one of the keys is just understanding how people are going to receive that and then and then repetitive.

Repetivity. Being repetitive. So those are things that work really well for us. And how often do you mail people? I mean, like, are they getting a postcard every month from you, every quarter, once a year? Every month. So a person every month they get the postcard. Yeah, we switch it up every three months or so.

So we'll kind of blow people up for about three months. And then after that, we are. there are people who do stay on our list, but a good chunk of it kind of changes over because a lot of of those homes are sold. I mean, it's silly to be mailing somebody who's home sold. And so it does get changed. And a lot of these people are in situations where their homes are going to sell. And so it does get changed. And every three months or so, we try and change that every quarter. Okay. Very cool. So moving past this kind of wholesaling piece, you know, you, so you started off, you got the, you started wholesaling some deals. You had this $45,000 property. You've acquired some rent.

I think you mentioned that you also have done a few flips or has that been part of your portfolio and maybe some sites to build that kind of stuff? Can you touch on that stuff? Yeah, I have a build going on right now. I ground up build. It's just a cheap lot that I bought and it made sense to build. So we're doing a build right now. Fixing flips. I've done, I don't know, now probably a couple dozen at this point.

Whenever I do them, though, I'm never involved in the actual flipping up the property. that's, I try and stay as far away from that as I can just because it's doing the work. I have realized, oh, I can pay somebody 15, maybe 20 bucks an hour to do a lot of the work. Now, there are some skill sets that you need for certain things you do have to pay more for, but I know my time is worth a lot more than 15 or 20 bucks an hour. So I really try and separate myself if there is a flip. I mean, as a company now, we never take on flips. And the only time we would is if we closed on a property and couldn't sell it and our only

exit was either lose money or flip, I think we'd probably flip it, but we haven't had that happen yet. So we try to avoid them just because scalability, we've built a system. We spent so much time on our system and process that going outside of that is silly for us because we're so good at what we do. It's like, why would you have, why would you like, it's why you take your car to a mechanic, right? Like, I could probably get through and fix my car and watch a bunch of YouTube videos and figure it out. But there'd be a lot of swearing, a lot of like bloody knuckles and a lot of grease and a lot of frustration and no car for a week. And so it's just, it's better for me to just let someone else do that piece and give up that money that I would be able to save or make. So I like that.

I like that. So let's talk about that system a little bit more because, you know, you spent a lot of time working the system. And obviously, in order to do that volume of deals, you have to have a pretty solid system. First question is, what software do you use to manage everything, like all that, the flow. Pipe drive. What is it called? Pipep drive. I've not even heard of that.

It's a CRM. It's a sales CRM. It is very, very, very, very basic. It's like you could show a five-year-old how to do it and they could, they could move stuff around and play with it in there.

It's really simple, and that's why we like it. Nice. I'm going to check that out a little bit later because I had not heard of that. Okay. So then walk us through your system in terms of like, you send out the direct mail marketing,

somebody calls. So somebody in your team answers that call. What happened? I mean, like, walk us through beginning to end in like a, you know, minute period, like overall, what happens to the lead? They call in. We differentiate people who are motivated from people who are not. People who are, who are motivated, get escalated to acquisitions managers. They negotiate and contract the properties. To me, it's all about negotiation. One of the amazing things about real estate is negotiation is there. And you can negotiate that. So we negotiate and contract. direct the property. Once the property is contracted, there's a lot of documentation that really goes into a deal. And so we have, originally we're having acquisitions managers do document collection.

We've switched over to having document collectors do document collection. And now, and then once the documents are all collected, everything goes through title. Once the property clears title, because that's a huge thing when you're wholesaling is marketing a property before it's cleared title is opening yourself up to look like an idiot. And so clearing title is very important. Once title's cleared, then we market the property out to our buyers list and through a bunch of other channels, contract the sale of that property and then close. So that's basically the process we go through, which is pretty much what every wholesaler goes through, I think. Sure. That makes sense.

You know, one thing that I notice in your story, and I talk about this a lot, I do it on talk about it on Bigger Pockets webinar, as we talk about on the podcast a lot, is, is this deal funnel. And, like, your explosion seems to be largely fueled by what I call like the deal funnel, which is basically if you want to, to buy, you know, people come to me all the time and they say, you know, I can't find any deals. And I was asked them the question, well, how many offers did you make any offers this week? And they're like, well, I didn't make any offers this week. Okay, well, how many deals did you analyze this week to find out how much to offer? Oh, I didn't analyze any deals. Well, how many leads did you get in this week?

You know, I saw some on the MLS. You know, like, it's like a pretty basic four-part process that everyone has to go through. They get leads. They analyze them to determine how much to pay for them. They make an offer of how much they can pay and negotiate that. And then they get the deal. Would you agree with that assessment? Like at its core?

expand no tell me why so the reason i wouldn't agree is because you don't analyze a process to see what you can pay for it that's silly okay tell me what you do you find out what they need for the property oh okay explain why would i why would so if i if i can pay arv's 200k um i can pay it needs 20k repairs um arv is after repair value once property's all prettied up and all the fru-fruent and you know it looks all pretty once it looks all pretty once it's livable, good condition, and is one of the best houses in the neighborhood, that's what the after repair value is. So if I go in and I say, okay, ARVs 200K, that means, and repairs are 20, that means my buyers

are probably going to be willing to pay depending on the area. Now, this is another big thing as the area stuff is in. There's neighborhoods where I can sell stuff in the high 80 percentages. So like 85, 87, 88, 89 percent, 89 cents on the dollar I can sell stuff for. Now, I got to know that first of all. So I got to have an idea of that. But I can break all this down. I can get back and say, okay, the absolute most I can pay for this house is $145,000 or whatever

that number is. If I go to that person with that number in here, what do you think I'm going to contract that property for? $145,000. And I'm going to be able to sell somebody for like $150 or whatever that number is, $155. And I'll make $5,000 or $10,000. Well, if I do it the other way and I say, how much do you need for your property? What is your need and how can I meet?

it totally different. They say, well, I need $100,000 for it. And I say, okay, well, boom. And then then we work towards that and making a deal that works. And so I would argue that the lead comes in. You discover their need. Then you analyze the property to make sure you can pay that much for it. Then you contract it.

I like that. I like that you're calling me out on that. You know, you want to dig a little deeper than what I was saying. So that's good. So, you mean, I think a lot of it's a mindset thing. Like you said, if you go to a property knowing you can pay a certain amount in negotiation, it's almost like you're at a weaker position maybe. I mean, I think it's good to know.

But like if you naturally know that you can pay $1.45 and still make a profit, like I probably wouldn't negotiate down to $1.30. I'd probably negotiate to $1.45 because in my head, I know that that's all I, you know, that's where it makes sense. So yeah, it's an interesting way looking at that. And I'll give you my. To me, it's all about meeting your needs, meeting their needs, right? If I'm there to help them and they have a need, then what is that need and how

can it be met? Well, how you find that out is the process that we go through to learn that. And so once it's learned, we then try and meet that need. And I'll give you my perspective as kind of, you know, a more fledgling investor. I've got three properties here, eight units. And the, you know, it doesn't occur to me to think of like, oh, what is their need? This is this completely new to me, a new perspective on, on this deal flow process. Because my deals, I look at through the MLS and I find them and I'm buying them kind of semi passively once a year. And it's just not in my head to think, oh, what does this person need for the property? What they need is they're asking price or somewhere around that, right? And you're just kind of flip that completely on my,

just completely flip, turn that on the side. Because if you're finding deals off market and doing this mailing piece, of course, they have no idea what their property is worth. They have no idea what their situation is. They're looking to solve their problem and you're figuring out that piece to it. And then everything else is gravy. Yeah. And so our goal is to meet the meat. So like there's been properties I've contracted on Monday and I've closed on Thursday.

I mean, I'm talking like, boom, their need is I cannot have this any longer. And that's their need. So I got to meet that need. Screw the price. They don't care about the price. They're like, I really don't care. I just cannot own this anymore. because it is going to put me in the hospital.

Okay, I'll take it. You know, I'll deal with your problem. What's an example of someone that has that kind of need to get rid of the property that quickly? Back to those meth heads, man. Those guys just ruin lives. But seriously, when your house becomes like a crack then and, you know, those type of situations when it's been, you know, the property's been in the family for 100 years. And, you know, mom was living there.

Mom just died. I can't go back into that house and look at mom's stuff. I just need it gone. I don't even care about the money. Just get it gone. Their need is to have that gone and off their plate. And literally, they don't want to look at it, think about it, smell it, nothing. So my goal is, okay, I'll have a mobile notary come to you.

You won't do anything. You'll never have to go back. You'll never see the property again. And then we work out the price that works for them and us. And it's got to be a win-win situation, you know. Their price has to work for me. My price has to work for them. And so that's my goal is to find the win-win with everybody.

It's always about win-win situations. because if they feel like they're losing, it's not worth it to me. Because I don't want them going around saying, you know, these guys are whatever, or like writing on the Better Business Bureau or just, I don't want to deal with that. So I want to create that win-win situation. I don't want to be the guy that puts people in lose situations. That's not, doesn't make me feel good at night. It doesn't help me sleep at night.

So it's all about the win-win. And so that's always my goal is to, like I said, meet their needs, discover the need and then meet it. That's awesome. I really like that a lot. So let me, before we go to the fire on, I want to kind of summarize a little bit more of your system in terms of if you said earlier, you get maybe one to two percent response rate on your postcards. Out of people who call you then, do you have any estimate on what percent of the people who actually call you end up turning into a sale for you or at least turn into something that you pursue and then, you know, like how does that filter down? Like if you send 100,000 letters, how does that break down in terms of number of phone calls, number of leads, number of deals, number of closings, all that?

So 100,000 postcards go out. That's going to result in between one and two thousand phone calls. And then of those one or two thousand phone calls, we're going to probably upload about 100 deals into our CRM. And I'm trying to keep the number simple here. So from that hundred, we'll probably contract 10 and we'll probably close nine. Okay. And then what's your average profit on one of those?

Maybe that's a little low, actually. We'll probably contract 25 and close 22, 22 or so, and their average profits about 22,000 a deal. Wow. Wow. And how many months have you doing this? The 100,000 started around April, right? Or am I off there? It was March 2016.

You started sending $100,000 a month. Oh, no, 100, yeah, March, March 2017. Okay. Okay. So, yeah. Our growth is very like, so right now we're effectively in about 25% of the Metroplex. So we can, we can increase this times for what we're doing right now inside DFW and then we're going to have to go to another market.

Wow. That's awesome. And again, I just love to see. The reason I ask that question is I love to see that funnel work out, you know, like if you spend this much. I mean, I'm a marketing guy at my core. And so like, this applies to almost every business in the world is, you know, you, you just work it through that funnel and you find those percentages. And if you can make it all about the efficiency of your funnel. Like that's, that's like, there's a funnel. So training and employees and finding, again, going back to meeting needs,

finding your employees, because like, I can't, I can't, I can't contract that. I can't talk. I can't take a thousand phone calls and then contract these deals and then sell them. You can't do that. So training to me is and creating a working environment where people love their job, they understand their job, their job outline and description is crystal clear. The processes that they work through are clear to them. That training and creating that environment where people want to come to work, they want to meet goals. They want to deliver for you for their own self-worth. and then also to feel like they're contributing to something larger than themselves, that's really what creates an effective funnel because,

Brandon, you can send out 100,000 postcards and you can get 1,000 phone calls in. But if you don't know how to negotiate and work that lead, you can end up with one deal a month. Or you can end up with 50. It's all about like, I think our busiest week, right, or is three weeks ago, we contracted 33 properties in one week. Wow. It's because our process works. My people know exactly how to do it.

And I know how to be a mentor to those people and how to encourage them and elevate them to more than they would be on their own. And so going through that and getting in there and learning what their needs are, understanding and empathizing with them doing those things as a leader to them rather than just saying, this is your job, do it or you're fired and I can replace you tomorrow. Like creating that camaraderie and that drive is really, in my opinion, what sets us apart. And the other thing that sets us apart as wholesalers is this is our business. It's not like I'm doing this on the side. And if something comes from a cool and whatever, this is my focus and my goal is to be the best at this thing.

Not to just get by. Not to just, oh, if I can get a dealer to a month, that's cool. You know, that'll, that'll cover my expenses and I can go to, I can go on a trip or something. That's, that's not the goal. The goal is to create a business and treat it as a business. like everything is very, it is run like a business, right? Like a normal medium-sized business. It's not a hobby.

Yeah. And so that's the other, that's another huge key is how efficient can you make your filter? Because it is. It is a giant filter. But the efficiency of your filter is what sets you apart because you could spend 50,000 a month on marketing and someone else can 50,000 a month on marketing. But who can get the most return for those marketing dollars? And how does your system affect that?

that return. And how do you learn how to do those things? As a marketing guy, like I'm a, you know, a big believer in tracking those numbers. Like, for example, just like, and if you're listening to this right now, you don't have to memorize all the numbers about the say, but like, let's just say, for example, you sent out 100,000 letters and you got the low and you got only 1% so you got a thousand phone calls. And out of them, let's just say you put 10 under contract. And out of those 10, you only closed on five of them because five fell through the cracks. And then out of those five, you made five grand apiece. You've now made $25,000. But you're you spent 50 just to get those postcards out. So now you're losing money. But if you improve just

each step of that funnel and ask the question, how do I get, how do I go from 1% to 2% or even 1% to 1.2% or 1% to 1.5? And you increase that up to, let's say, 500 phone calls. And then you say, okay, out of those 1,500, how do I improve the percentage of people that actually put their house under contract? How do I train my team better? How do I do I do better negotiation? How do I, who do I talk to to to get better at negotiation? And you can get that up to, let's say, 20. And then out of those 20, let's say you figure out how to close 18 of them. And instead of making 5 grand apiece, you're making 20 grand apiece because you've increased your negotiation. I mean, you're going from making no money to making $300,000 on that spend just by taking each part of your funnel and tweaking it and asking how do I get this better.

And that applies to every business in the world. I mean, I talk to people who own like cleaning businesses. I'm like, okay, well, how many people know about you? How many phone calls do you get? How many of those contracts do you get? out of them, how many of, like, what's your average cost per contract? You know, like, let's just look at the four or five parts of your funnel and ask how do we get each one of these or the most important parts up a little higher. And there's all, being able to do that makes you successful at business, not at real estate.

And the thing that a lot of real estate investors miss is real estate is a business. And, and when you treat it like, oh, well, it's this thing I do on the side or it's, you know, I flip, I buy and hold. I do this. I do that. I do this. It's like, man, you got to focus and pick a business. It's not like you get businesses like McDonald's, right? And they take it from growing, they own the farm and they own everything the whole way through. Right. So there's those guys, but they didn't start out like that. It's like that vertical integration came over years and years and billions and billions and billions of dollars. Like that's where that came in. When you're little, you got to focus. And you focus on that one thing like a laser and you just keep pushing through.

And then once you're really good at that thing, you could add something else. So like for us, maybe once we're really good at this, we also do private money lending. Or maybe we hire crews and, you know, construction managers and we do flipping. But for right now, it is laser focus on wholesaling. And do I want to do other things in real estate? Absolutely. It's that shiny object syndrome you guys talk about from time to time. It's like you got to focus on this one thing and make this one thing your business.

And then once that's your business and that's sustainable and you're spending three, three or four hours a week on it because every system's in place, every manager's in place, everything is in place you need. Then, yeah, okay, let's look at doing something else. But until you're to that point, focus. And so it's so whimsical, I feel like with some of these guys like, yeah, if I can get a wholesale, deal wholesale. If I can't, I'll flip it.

And if I can't do that, it's like, so you're just doing everything then, right? Because like there's no system that can cover all this unless you're like a closet multi, like $100 million net worth person who, don't appear to be at all. And so that's the thing that they're missing is it's like, focus. Just, you know, if you want to be an agent, be an agent and be the best agent you can be. If you want to, whatever part of it you want to do, do that part. Don't do other parts until you've got the scalability to do it and the systems to support doing it.

That's so sure. It's my opinion. It's awesome. Yeah, I think that applies directly to every single person that is attempting to run a business or go into entrepreneurship. And even for me, real estate, I would say, I would say real, I treat real estate like a hobby. My full-time job is here at Bigger Pockets, helping grow this website. That's the business that I'm in and operating.

And for me, I'm not treating my business, my real estate stuff like a business. That's why I'm acquiring one property every year and paying, you know, MLS price and got my license and that kind of stuff. So I'm dipping into these things. For you, it's a retirement plan. it sounds like to me. Like what I'm hearing is like, that's my retirement plan. I'm going to have these properties. I'm going to have tenants that pay them off for me.

And then once they're done, I can retire using some of that money. And it's a great plan. That totally works when you're setting it up to work that way. But if you want to make money in real estate as a real estate investor and had that be your income, it has to be your full-time thing and you have to focus on certain things. And the big mistake I made at first was like, I'll flip this one, I'll buy and hold this one. We'll do this.

We'll do that. And I just kept focusing and focusing and focusing. And now the growth is like so rapid. Like we can barely keep up. And it's because we're so focused and we've learned how to do what we do so well. That's cool. So where are you headed? I mean, last question before the fire round.

Where are you headed next? I mean, how big do you want to scale this business? I mean, are you getting the financial freedom that you want? I mean, when's enough enough? Can I talk to that for a minute. So we were talking about this last week. week. We're thinking a few different directions and it's we want to see the time commitments that all those mean because we've discovered that the most valuable thing we have is our time. And money, we can make more money, but time, you can't get more time. And so we're trying to manage our time as carefully as we can. And we're just not sure of the amount of time and that it's going to take to open another area. So we've thought about going to into other markets with this wholesaling because we have a process that works.

We know that now. We know our process works and it's always getting better. And because it's always getting better, it's always working better and making even more money. And so we need to figure out if we want to take that process into other areas and grow it, keeping our focus, laser focused and adding more areas to it or if we want to take another approach and go more broad. So more vertically integrating things like rather than.

then selling all of our properties, we'd keep, you know, three or five a month and flip those and do, you know, 60 flips a year or something like that. We can go that route and stay in DFW or we can go scaling the business we're in. And half of it is a time thing. The other half is a boredom thing, you know, we've got to keep it interesting and keep keep passion there. And so I'm not sure which direction we're going to go right now. We will pick a direction. But our goal right now is to get to that point I was telling y'all about was we need to be in that three to five hour a week position where we're not working more than that and and then we'll really look at okay are we going to go to the next market or are we going to move into flipping or something else and so

we we decide we're going to we're going to figure that out when we get to that point sounds like you've given yourself a good problem yes that's a good problem I can't complain about that problem. Awesome, awesome. Well, let's shift gears here a little bit and head over to the world famous Fire Round. It's time for the Fire Round. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive.

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show where we pull the questions directly out of the Bigger Pockets forums, and we ask them to our guest. So, Lance, number one, if you had, this person had, has 30 minutes of free consultation. with an accountant. So they said, what should I ask them? I have 30 minutes of free. How to save money on your taxes. Yeah. All right.

You know, that's a really broad question. What are your goals, you know? I would first determine your goals once you know your goals. Ask the accountant what he recommends tax-wise with getting there. It's not a financial planner. If he's just a tax accountant, focus on how he can save you money on taxes, how you can adjust money in different areas, and what tools you can use to reach whatever goals you've decided.

do you have? So I'd 100% know your goals before you go in, be able to explain those goals quickly and clearly, they'd be able to explain where you're at quickly and clearly, and then say, here's where I want to be, here's where I am, how do I get there, and what tools can benefit me and what do I need to know about those tools before making a purchase or selling assets in order to protect those assets? That's, I don't know. That's not really my ballpark, but that's what I would do if I was going into a meeting. But I'd also just probably pay the accountant, whatever I needed, to have whatever time I need, to have whatever advice I need to further as much as possible. And that to me is a big deal. Like having a really good attorney, really good

account, really good financial planner, 100%, 1,000% worth the money. So I would pay them. So I have more time, which might I get short answer. All right. There you. I like it. I think that's great advice. And I think that applies to all these different fields. If you go in there and know nothing about accounting or finance in general, and then it didn't say, what do I do? You're going to get, you're pay a lot of money for some very generic advice. So I think there's also a component of, hey, know at least enough to ask intelligent questions for your. Man, so true. Yeah.

So true. So the next question here is, hi, I've currently started marketing for wholesale deals and received a lot of great deals, but I'm hitting a wall, building my buyers list. I try to make all the, all the meetups and sometimes I work schedule conflicts with them. But I know that there's other wholesalers who have bigger buyer list than me. What are some strategies I can use to build this? Buy a bigger buyers list. Do you say buy a bigger buyers list? Talk to other.

Talk to other wholesalers. Be like, hey, bro, I'll buy your buyers list. That's one way. Trade buyers list is another way. Put out good, legitimate properties that are actual deals and market them on Craigslist, invested connector, bigger pockets. Market them everywhere you can. Facebook, Twitter, everywhere you can possibly market properties.

Market them. And anytime anybody responds, have things set up so that they're automatically added to your buyers list. I mean, we've, we've grown our buyers list. I think our buyers list right now is about 20,000 people, 20-ish thousand. And we add thousand people a month to our buyers list because we're putting out quality, quality properties. They're not daisy-chained BS deals that nobody wants. They're real deals that come from us. They're sorts from us. I'm not remarketing a property that's been marketed by 17 other people, and there's 20 people in the middle making money. They're my deals that I contract. If anybody else tries and wholesales them, I get all over them and let them know they're breaking the law. And it is completely

illegal to try and wholesale my deal without equitable interest in that property. And so my goal is to present that quality to people. And then they join my buyer's list naturally because everybody wants the deals. Yeah. Deals is the biggest is the biggest bottleneck right now in real estate. And so I've got the deals. And so I have no problem building my buyers list because another thing that you guys constantly preaches, money finds deals. And so because, because, Because I have the deals and I don't let other people market them, I get the direct result of that, which is an increased buyers list. That's so true. Yeah, people are several ways to do it.

People complain they don't have a buyer's list. And I'm like, well, no, it's not that you have a buyer's list. You don't have a deal. Like if you have a deal, I can guarantee you if you have a good deal. You can find a lot of people want to buy it. I mean, just go throw it up in the bigger pockets marketplace and you'll have 100 people in 10 minutes if it's a good enough deal. But you don't have a deal. That's why you don't have a list.

So I think people, would you agree people spend too much time? I'm focusing on building their buyers list rather than deals. I see that a lot. I spend too much time focusing on BS excuses. Oh, I don't have business cards. I don't have a website. I don't have this. I don't have that.

Revenue, first position. If you're not focusing on revenue, you're focusing on the wrong thing. Like, once you've got a whole business in place, you can hire people to focus on other things, but you have to be single-minded to revenue the whole time because that's what pays these people you're trying to take care of.

That's what creates a system that can help people who are in need. of selling their homes. It's what creates everything is that revenue in first position. And if you lose that from first position at any time, you're risking losing your business. Yeah. So true. I love it. All right. Next question. I am trying to wholesale deals, but I'm finding great deals. But how do I place the deals under contract without a proof of funds letter? I actually get that question a lot of people. Well, first of all, I have contracted more properties than this individual. I don't know who they are, how many properties they've contracted, but because they're asking that question, I know it's less. I've never, ever, ever on a non-MLS deal, on a deal I've got

from marketing, I have never had to provide proof of funds. And I've contracted properties over a million dollars. Never been asked that question because there's no agent involved. Once you have an agent involved, it becomes much more difficult to make money in the deal, in my opinion. There's deals on MLS. Don't get me wrong. I told you a story about one of my first deals, which was an MLS deal. I've never come up against that. I've never had anybody asking for proof of funds. So if they do and you do need to get a proof of funds letter and it is a real deal, there's hard money lenders that will give them to you same day.

I would reach out and make sure you've got a good network of hard money lenders who can give you those proof of funds letters. Private money is an even better way to go. If you can find private money investors that will get a bank letter that they've got those funds and those funds are guaranteed to you upon closing of the property, that's another good way to go. Very cool. And of course, we have a hard money lender directory on BiggerPockets. It's free to go to. Just go to BiggerPockets.com slash hard money lenders. And we try to compile every hard money lender in the country we can find. There are hundreds and hundreds of them on there. And I know Scott Trench has been

leading that for the last couple years. And Scott, you've done a really good job with that. Absolutely. Yeah, nice plug. Yeah, there you go. All right. Last question of the fire round. What is the best way to find contractors in this busy market? Do trial on the air. there's there's there's there's there's there's there's all these like secrets like what's his name j scott says his name he's like go to home depot at six in the morning you know there's i've i've had good and bad contractors i've had and i don't have a good method when when you do find somebody that works though my advice is take care of them because you're going to go you're going to waste you're going to not you're going to waste you're going to spend a lot of money on the wrong guys and

and that money is going to be lost and you're going to get burned and so that's that's that's thing that you need to just count on. You're going to get burned. And so once you do find that good guy, don't, don't beat him up. I'm all about negotiation. Negotiation is like what sets real estate apart for me. Like negotiation is everything. That is the key to real estate. But your contractor, in my opinion, that's one area where if they're being outlandish, yeah, I'll call them out and I'll be like, come on, man. Like, let's be legitimate. Like, we both know that it doesn't cost that. But otherwise, I just try and pay whatever they're asking unless it's really crazy because, you know, they've gotten me out a lot of jams and finding that person that's, that's good, that's worth keeping around is

so expensive and hard that once you got them, take care of them. I love that point. And with negotiation, there's two types of negotiation, I think. There's a negotiation to do for a property with someone that you're never going to see again, right? You know, you could, you could afford to kind of work really hard on the details of that. If it's, if you're, if that's material to the, the, the, the, the, the, numbers in that property, right? But then there's the other type of negotiation is with these long-term folks that you're working with, you know, repeatedly over many months or years. And you do not want to be known as a tough negotiator in that relationship if that's a mutual to mutual benefit. So there's there's kind of that back and forth there. You want to have that good thing going,

I think, in certain types relationships. And of course, you know, defend yourself and others. Yeah, I would take it a step further. And I'd say there's negotiation where you're negotiating to create a deal. So you've got a win, win. situation, right? There's that type of negotiation, and that should always be the goal of negotiation. When you're doing negotiation with the contractor to create a win-lose situation, that's when you're going to get yourself in trouble. Worth anybody, it doesn't have to be anybody. When you're trying to create a win-lose so you want to win and the other person wants to lose, I've been on both, on both ends of that negotiation. And either side, it doesn't,

you don't come out feeling good after. So I try and always avoid that now. I've made that mistake, and I've learned from it and said, okay, I need to win-win negotiate every time. And if I can't figure out how to create that win-win, there's no deal here. And so that I totally agree with you. There's those long-term relationships you want to maintain. But at the day, whether I'm never going to see somebody again, there's still, you know, a human being that's got real problems and things they're trying to deal with. And I still need to make sure that I'm putting, not putting them in a loose situation at the end of that negotiation.

Yeah, that's awesome. Awesome. I love it. All right. I know this is, I know this is fire round, but one thing I want to just kind of point out on this is when you get really good at negotiation, like if you read after Michael Coral's podcast was like 87 or something like 83 where he like does his like his Jedi mind tricks where he's like, you will sell me this house. And there's people commenting and saying, you know, that's unethical. I don't feel good doing that and that sort of thing. And it's like it really is kind of like, I've heard that when you're like a black belt martial artist, it's like, you're.

your hands are like weapons. And so if you use them in a bad way, like, and commit a crime and hurt somebody, you're held to a higher standard. I feel like it's the same thing with negotiation, because literally all day, every day, I negotiate. And so it's like I'm becoming a negotiation ninja. And so I can use it unethically at times if I want to, but choosing to not do that and to put myself in a position of, yeah, I could make an extra $2,000 or $4,000. But in the grand scene of things, that doesn't matter. What matters is that these. people feel like they're treated fairly and it's a win-win situation. If you're not doing that and you're trying to use things to your advantage to create a

lose situation for somebody, you suck. That's all I got to say. That's not cool. You know, it's not right. I love that. Yeah. That's very cool. Well, I mean, man, I feel like I want to spend forever time about negotiation with you

now, but we'll have you back on the show sometime soon and talk about negotiation. But we got to get over to. We've got to do a negotiation battle between, like, man. like you got to find the best guys and just do like negotiation battles and because I would love to negotiate with like any of these guys that are amazing because there's some really good guys you brought on the show that I'm really impressed with what they say and how they say it. I would love to see if I can throw down with them. That would be what's like the highlight of my year.

Let's talk to Mindy about making that a thing. We do a whole show just on negotiation, a whole podcast episode and bring it. That would be super fun. All right. We're going to make that happen. So we'll tell Mindy. I call being on that podcast. I totally dibs that.

My idea, I could have been on it. Okay, you'll be on it. You'll be on it. All right, let's head over to the world famous. Famous for the famous. The Famous for these questions are the same four questions we ask every guest every week. And because you've listened to all the episodes of the podcast, including some of them multiple times, you've heard these hundreds of times. So, number one, Lance, what is your favorite real estate book?

Okay, caveat on this one. Okay. I read this before Donald Trump was. president or before he's running for president. Okay. It's Trump's Down Negotiations by George Ross. Phenomenal book. If you, Brandon, you're saying you want to up your negotiation game.

I do read it, then reread it and then reread it five more times. That book, I wouldn't put this on my like four lists, but another great book. And I think you mentioned on the podcast a few weeks ago with Joe Fairless that you're reading crucial conversations. Yep. So combining crucial conversations in Donald Trump's Trump's down negotiation book or George Ross's Trump's down negotiation book. those two have just those give you the tools to negotiate that you need in my opinion and then um but trump's

on negotiation is all about the huge deals that Donald Trump has done and little tiny things in negotiation like George Ross was a Donald Trump's attorney and someone's calling him like he calls somebody they don't answer then they call back he doesn't answer he always wants to be the one calling them because he always wants to have his A game ready when he's doing that negotiation so it's like That's a really small thing. But if when you actually do it and practice it and you've got your numbers laid out in front of you, you got your data, you got your comps up, you got everything that you need to be on top of your game in that negotiation, that one little thing can be tens of thousands of dollars different for everybody in the outcome because it's all there and you're ready. If you got kids in the car and you're answering your phone, there's kids crying in the background and you're trying to do that negotiation, you're already toast. So that book has been this has been amazing.

That's fantastic. So that sounds to be like that there might have been real estate and business books there. Do you have any other, you know, the second question is, favorite business book. Do you have anything else to add to that? Business book? So, yeah. So my favorite business book, multipliers is my favorite business book.

And it's all about helping people to become more than they, than they know they can be. And being the person in the room that helps people to have growth and to love their job and to get as much out of them more than they know they had. And then another book that I would say is also crucial to small businesses and, you know, the type of people who listen to this podcast is traction. That's another great book that can help you with organizing your business and setting up the systems and procedures you need. Cool. Awesome. What hobbies do you do? What do you do when you're not doing building huge real estate businesses?

Man, I've got a two and a five-year-old. So those are the hobbies. We go boating a lot. We love going out in the boat. There's no waves in Texas. So, you know, a surfboat in Texas with a little nice. nice little like waste high wave behind you is about as good as it gets. So we do that a lot and then travel. We love traveling. We try and go at least two or three times a year somewhere fun and

travel. So those are kind of my kids, family and travel and and boating, I guess. Very cool. All right. My last question today. What do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from all those who give up, fail, or never get started? Self discipline. Hands down. having the self-discipline to grind out and do whatever it takes to make it happen, that is what it's all about because at the end of the day, it's how disciplined are you? Like, sometimes I'm not very disciplined, right? I make $80,000 or $90,000 or whatever in that month and I buy a Tesla.

That's not good. It's self-discipline. Having a self-discipline to reinvest that money and only pull out money and do things. It's so deep to me. Like there's what's his name? Miracle Morning. He was on the show. That book is amazing. Yeah.

That book is amazing. Having a self-discipline to wake up at four or five in the morning and do those things every morning and not just for a day or a week or a month, but for years. Like that's the other thing. Going back to what I did, the biggest thing that I changed when my son was born, I quit my job is I started waking up that day at 5 a.m. every morning and doing the miracle morning, every morning. And my vision board is almost completely realized now 18 months later.

Like it is having that self-discipline is everything like, oh, it's 5 o'clock. I want to be done working. But I've got 20 more calls to make and I'm going to grind those out and do them because I have the self-discipline to do that. It infects every facet of your life, every angle of everything. It all goes back to your self-discipline. how much do you want it and what are you willing to do it and how disciplined are you to get there can you force yourself to do what is needed and if you can't that's why you're not being successful because you don't

you haven't cultivated that self-discipline in yourself i love it that's fantastic where can people find out more about you bigger pockets i'm on bigger pockets i was pretty active at one point i'm less so now i'm also on facebook and lincoln and you can call me 469 30 101, 2354. You should have to do that? I'm sure I want to do that. If you got something to add, you want to buy deals with us. DFW is arguably the best market in the country to buy deals in right now.

The growth and whatnot that is occurring in DFW is incredible. And you've got appreciation and you can find on the NLS, you can find 1%. You can even find 2% if you're willing to go into the war zones in DFW still. I mean, we're talking three, five minutes from Dallas and South Dallas, like downtown, like $100 million buildings, three minutes away, two percent deal. I put together this market index every year about like the best top 50 metros for investors. And it's basically a combination of before expenses, cash flow versus purchase price. So one or two percent deals, that kind of stuff. And then appreciation and price.

and Dallas has topped the list. And it topped it in 2015 and topped it in 2016. And I'm about to do it again this year, the next couple weeks. I wouldn't be surprised if it's right up there again here in 2017. So, yeah, that's, I mean, people want to reach out. They have something they want to add or be involved in some way. Maybe they're, you know, this show could produce a lot. Because like I told you, a little while ago, I don't know which direction we're going.

Maybe someone hears this show and says, hey, I want to be just like him and I'm in Milwaukee. And I want a wholesale. I want to do their process. And maybe we partner with them. And maybe we introduce our process into their market and have them help, you know, spearhead that or something. Who knows what can come from it, right? So I'm open to anything.

And that cell phone number will, uh, will ring kind of like our marketing number. So you, you will be able to get to me. If, uh, if you got something worth hearing, I'll be happy to talk to you and me or my business partner. So we're, I'm always open.

All right. I love it. Well, you know, Lance, this has been incredible. This has been definitely one of the longer shows we've done because there's so much to unpack here. But really appreciate you coming on. No, it's very good. I mean, we could have gone out five hours.

It's good. You've had an amazing journey, especially the last 18 months, have been just like a rocket ship for your business. So thank you for coming on and sharing your story. Thank you guys. I love being on the show. And it was great talking to you. All right. Thanks a lot.

All right. Now is our show with Lance. Thank you so much, Lance for being on the show. Lance Wakefield, super, super motivating, super, super, super, super motivating. super super powerful show, don't you think, Scott? It was fantastic. This guy has, well, he started out trying to do it all. I was going to see.

He has not done it all. He's tried to do it all. And he's found exactly the area, the system that he can focus on and scale and has become the best in his market at that particular niche. And has really built something incredible because of that. So niche, niche, niche, niche. Neach, what do you say? Niche.

I say niche. Potato, potato, whatever. No, but I agree. I think the focus thing is so key, especially when you're getting started. Like, so many people get that shiny object in every episode of the podcast brings them a new thing that they want to get into. I've really been trying to put that into play in my life this year. I'm like, I want to buy a mobile home park, 50 units to 100 units somewhere in the U.S. Like, that is my, like focus. And I'm turning down almost everything else that comes to me.

What about you? Like, what's your focus this year? Huh. So I, my focus this year was I wrote a book. So I just completed writing that book. set for life. That came out in in April. And I'm kind of refocusing, you know, there's writing. There's several parts that. It's writing the book. Then there's promoting the book. And now that's kind of putting on autopilot. So I'm actually kind of redoing my goals right now. But I'm closing on a fourplex. And I'm going to kind of figure out the next thing as soon as that's closed. Very cool. Well, I'm excited about that fourplex for you. That's going to be awesome. So cool.

All right. Well, I don't know. You got anything else? Should we get out of here? Yeah, we can get out of here. things are going well. Life is good. It's summertime, Fourth of July, happy birthday America. Happy birthday. 241 years old.

Nothing counting. No, no, no. All right, guys, thank you so much for being a part of the Bigger Pockets podcast. Of course, stay around after the music and you get to hear the random six from our guest today as kind of a little bonus.

So stick around for that and we'll see you guys next week. Scott, you want to give us up. This is Scott Trench, signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place.

Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. It's time for it. It's time for it. It's time. The Random Five. All right, now for the Random Six that we've started adding here at the end of the show. These are just six random questions we're going to throw at you. And you just get to know you a little bit more on a more personal level. You ready, Lance? Ready.

All right, number one. Do you use, this is kind of related to a question you answered earlier, but do you, do you use an alarm clock or do you wake up naturally? I wake up naturally. At an early time. What time? Usually you said five, six, four. Five.

So I honestly, I just got my self-discipline spiel I let out. But lately it's probably been between six and six 15. So, but yeah, I, I naturally, I was waking up naturally at 5 a.m. for a long time. And then I got, I got baby duty for a while. And that just, I killed it. The same thing happened to me. Yeah. I was, I was doing really good at like 4.30 or 5 and then the baby came and I'm getting back into the five. That's what I'm working towards right now. It's getting back in. So I'm like earlier and earlier and my goal is to be at five by the end of next month. I want to be starting September when school starts. I want to be 5 a.m. that way. I've got the gym and all those things done by the time the kids wake up. Hey, are you on Twitter? No, but I think our business is, but it might be, I don't know. I was going to say people should tweet you and hit you up here on, on, what, September 1st and make sure that you've hit that.

Oh, man. Yeah, they should. Someone's got to hold me a camera. Yeah, we're holding you to that. So we'll hit you up somewhere. We're going to make sure. All right. Next question.

I'll make sure. We have a Twitter. I'll get it to you. Okay. Next question is Star Wars or Star Trek? Oh, Star Wars all day long, man. I agree. I agree.

Do you have a secret talent? Not really. I have freakishly good memory. Like I've memorized like books and stuff and like pie. Like I have pie memorized. Oh, wow. Like to, I don't know, like 50 or 100 decimal points. I don't know.

I have a really good memory. It was it was like up on the classroom in sixth grade. They had like pie like written around the whole classroom. And school was always really boring for me. And so I memorized pie just like chilling there. Because everyone was doing their work and I was done. I was just like, And I memorize fine.

I still haven't memorized. So, like, I have a really good memory, I guess. I'll call that a secret talent. 3.1-4-159. Athletes do it all the time. Yeah. Good job, Scott. All right.

Next one. What is your dream vehicle? I'm driving it, man. I love a Tesla. I love it. I've got kids. So, like, having a Lamborghini or Ferrari or whatever would be cool. But I got kids.

I'd rather spend time with them. Dude, my Tesla's a freaking minivan, too. If seat seven, like, It's awesome. So the Model S has those rear-facing jumper seats in the back. It's my little minivan. And I can race Lamborghinis and still beat them. But I can have the whole family with me while I do it.

So even though the wife gets mad when I race people. Yeah. Yeah, it's all right. We won't tell. All right. My last question of here, what's your favorite dessert? Oh, ice cream. What kind?

And specifically speculose ice cream. It's amazing. I never had it. Speculos is this, it's like a Biscoff biscuit. I think they give them on like Delta or American Airlines or something. Yeah. They're these kind of like ginger snap biscuits and they're a really big thing in Belgium. Delta does it because I get them.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so they have that like in an ice cream where you can buy it at Trader Joe's and that ice cream is just on point. That is that is the deal right there. So I actually, so I owned a restaurant in Utah and I went to Italy. and was trained in making gelato by like Italian professionals. I had like a $40,000 gelato machine and I could make the best speculous gelato,

but I don't have a $40,000 chelot machine anymore. So Trader Joe's the best thing. All right. All right. Last question, Scott. If you could choose any time period to live in, what would that be? I feel like now is pretty comfortable and I like that. But, you know, in the spirit of.

the question. It'd be pretty cool to be alive during like World War II, like the greatest generation. I think there's a lot of really cool stuff that happened. If you're born like the 1920s and kind of seeing all that, there's a lot of really cool history that I would appreciate. Yeah, I always think how amazing it would be to like be born in 1920 and die in, you know, let's say 2010. Like that life, like the transformation from that to that, like it's unbelievable. I mean like unbelievable. Like how much stuff has. I was 96. He's still alive. He was born in 1921. And it's crazy talking to him. He's like, yeah, back when I was in, he was in training in San Diego. And he's like, yeah, I could buy a house for $10,000.

And I was like, I can't afford that is on a Coronado Island in San Diego. And I'm like, $10,000. Like the same house is like four million dollars now. I'm like, oh my gosh, that's crazy. So it's, it's been a ride since then. It has just the contributions that people made in those years to bettering the world, especially, you know, they're fantastic. It's amazing. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for being part of our random six.

Thanks, guys. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K. copywriting is by Calico content, and editing is by Exodus Media.

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