BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 332: How to Build a Deal-Finding MACHINE with Adam Johnson and Brent Moreno
Episode Date: May 30, 2019Build a deal funnel to fuel your business and keep the leads coming! On today’s show Brandon and David sit down with Adam Johnson and Brent Moreno, two wholesalers running a business that fuels the...ir investment portfolio! Adam and Brent share several key pieces that make their business go, like how they have built systems to reduce their workload, how they keep their pipeline full of leads, and how they use a “three foot rule” to make sure everyone knows how they can help them. You’ll also love how they recruit others to work in their business, how they use stories to hold people’s attention, and how they have leveraged an army of Uber drivers to find them deals! These two guys have formed a great partnership, and share TONS of practical, meat-and-potatoes advice for how you can do the same. Their advice on “helping over haggling” alone is priceless! If you want to learn how to form the perfect partnership, how to build a portfolio off of a consistent pipeline of deals, AND how to wholesale those deals for profit, this is an episode you can’t miss! In This Episode We Cover: How they got into wholesaling How their business is structured Why they love wholesaling more than anything else How they use systems to create success when they don’t feel like working What a perfect partnership should look like The funnel they have set up to find, capture, and follow up with distressed seller leads The three-foot rule How they use Uber drivers to find them deals How they are helpers not hagglers The number one thing a newbie needs to do well to start a wholesale business How to recruit others to bring you deals How to use stories to get others involved in helping your business How they believe there is no “box” to think outside of And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Webinar BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Money Podcast BiggerPockets Business Podcast Podio InvestorPO REIpro PropStream ListSource LeadSherpa David Goggins on Joe Rogan’s Podcast Gary Johnston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 332.
As legitimately as I can say it, I started helping people regardless of what the outcome was for me.
And it's crazy because we bought more houses and made more money.
And we helped a lot of people in the process.
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.
Hey, what's going on, everyone?
This is Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, David Green.
David Green, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast, buddy.
How you doing?
Thank you.
I'm doing great.
I just got back from hanging out with you in Hawaii.
I got a nice tan going on.
I'm refreshed.
Well, good.
You have a great.
What's the word farmer's tan?
You had a nice looking, I took that picture, remember?
I won't show anybody.
It's pretty great there.
Yeah, it looks like you're wearing a white tank top with it when I have no shirt.
It's bad.
No, I think you smooth that out the last day.
It was good.
No, we had a blast.
We had a lot of fun.
Went to a luau together.
Actually, Kevin, who's our producer here, Kevin's actually on the call with us right now,
but he always hides his face.
But Kevin's here.
Kevin was out.
So was Jake.
He's our new head of Pro at Bigger Pockets.
He was out there.
And then, of course, Ryan Murdoch, and the five of us went to a luau together, which was actually a ton of fun.
So, yeah, it was great.
So thank you for coming out.
That's why we love real estate, because you can work from anywhere in the country.
And Hawaii is not a bad place to work from.
It is not a bad place to work from.
So, yeah, we had some good time mastermining on the future of the Bigger Pockets podcast, got some new technology, got some new microphones.
Oh, and we made a video.
When are we dropped in that?
And we made it?
I don't know soon.
I don't know if maybe it's out.
Maybe it's not.
Anyway, lots of good video content.
We're pumping on a lot of stuff, so check that out, of course, over on the Bigger Pocket's YouTube page and subscribe there.
But that is actually not our quick tip today.
So now it's time for our quick tip.
All right, so today's quick tip is if you are a landlord, if you are somebody that owns even one rental property,
Bigger Pockets actually has a page on the site dedicated to help you with some different resources.
So just go to the tools, like on the navigation bar and Bigger Pockets, go to tools, drop down to landlord resources.
and you'll find links to different resources that can help you, different companies.
We have some partnerships with different people, tenant screening,
property management and software, stuff like that.
So again, check it out.
There's also an ultimate tenant screening guide that I wrote a few years back.
We put that on there as well.
So again, if you're a landlord, check that out.
We just want to make life a little bit easier for you, landlord.
You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday.
How can you find amazing candidates fast, easy?
Just use indeed.
When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need.
That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites.
Indeed, sponsored job posts help you stand out and hire the right people quickly.
Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking.
And it works.
Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored post.
The best part, no monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts.
You only pay for results.
And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you,
23 people just got hired through Indeed worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer.
Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of the show will get a $75 sponsored job credit
to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash rookie. Just go to Indeed.com
slash rookie right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.
That's Indeed.com slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.
Managing properties can feel like a full-on circus.
You're juggling vendors, tracking payments, chasing approvals across multiple properties,
and maybe a few HOAs, all while trying to keep tenants happy and owners confident.
One delay can throw everything off, and suddenly your day is all clean up, no progress.
That's why hundreds of property managers rely on bill to streamline their finances.
Bill for property management lets you add all your properties, assign permissions, pay bills,
and receive payments quickly and efficiently
without the usual bottlenecks.
It syncs with platforms like QuickBooks,
Zero, NetSuite, and Sage intact,
so your accounting stays aligned.
You can automate bulk payments across properties and HOAs.
Choose flexible payment methods like Same Day ACH,
international wires, card, or check,
and set custom roles in approval policies.
There's even a dedicated bill inbox for each property
to keep everything organized.
Ready to simplify your workflow?
book your free demo at bill.com slash bigger pockets and get a $100
Amazon gift card. That's bill.com slash bigger pockets.
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.
That's the power of the Fundrise flagship fund.
Now you can invest in a $1.1 billion portfolio of real estate, starting with as little as $10.
The portfolio features 4,700 single-family rental homes spread across the booming sunbelt.
They also have 3.3 million square feet of highly sought after industrial facilities, thanks to the e-commerce wave.
The flagship fund is one of the largest of its kind.
It's well diversified, and it's managed by a team of professionals.
And it's now available to you.
Visit fundrise.com slash BP Market to explore the fund's full portfolio.
check out historical returns and start investing in just minutes.
Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fundrise
Flagship Fund. Fundrise Fund
prospectus at fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. And finally, lastly, before we get to today's show, David, I just want to let you know something. I had a great time with you out here in Hawaii. So thank you for joining me. I want you to know I appreciate you, dude. Thank you, Brandon.
The feeling is mutual. And we would like to bring more people into this awesome circle that we've been able to build.
of using real estate to fuel a perfect life?
Perfect life.
I don't know if I called that, but we're working there.
All right, dude.
Well, thank you.
And I guess that's all I got.
So make sure you guys rate and review this show,
the Bigger Pockets podcast.
Make sure you're listening to the Money Show,
the business show,
and hanging out on our social media channels.
So without further ado, I want to bring in today's guests.
So today's guests are Adam Johnson and Brent Marino,
two dudes that are just really crushing.
it down in Mississippi with their real estate.
They've done almost, what was it, 60-some deals last year,
on track for 100 deals this year.
Their systems are just phenomenal.
You guys are going to be blown away by the way that they use things like text messages
to get deals kind of automatically.
They talk about why you might not want to look like a big deal
when you're going to meet with sellers.
They got some really cool tips.
If you're a landlord, some really cool tips on making sure your tenants pan time,
do some of their own maintenance,
and change their furnace filters, which is cool.
And then listen closely for when they talk about the three-foot rule.
The three-foot rule could completely change your real estate investing forever.
I'm not even kidding.
It's really, really cool.
So definitely check that out.
Stay till the end because you guys are going to love this show.
Just build more and more, more, just meat and value.
I think you'll love it.
So take some notes.
And with that, it's time to get to today's show.
Fellas, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast.
Man, so good to have you guys here today.
Man, we're excited to be here.
Pretty pumped.
Good, good.
We haven't done a two-for-show in a little while,
so we decided to bring on two completely strangers to each other.
And you guys are partners, right?
Yeah.
Okay, good, good, good.
All right, so we're going to go through how are you able to find each other.
How are you able to work together, what you're doing?
I hear there's some pretty fun stuff in there.
And we'll start, though, prior to that.
What did each of you guys do?
And you go ahead and like when you, the first couple times you talk,
If you think about it, say who you are.
So people kind of get an idea of what your voices are compared to who your name is.
And then let us know, like, kind of what your story is before real estate.
Go ahead.
So this is Adam.
Some people call me Big Sip.
Is that real?
That's a true story.
Okay, Big Sip.
I like it.
Which the funny thing is, is, you know, it's Mississippi.
So Big Sip, it just makes sense.
Oh, I thought you took like a really big drink of like sweet tea or something.
No, well, you kind of.
And it stuck.
you're close to what my mother thought, which was the first time she heard it, she goes,
have you been drinking alcohol again?
Apparently there's a lot of confusion there, but it is just because I'm from Mississippi
and I used to be a much bigger fella.
Oh, all right.
So I've been doing real estate 16 and a half years now.
I think the first one was October 11th of 2002.
And I would have been 19 and some change.
I've done a lot of other stuff in the meantime, some tax offices, insurance offices, and other things.
But real estate's just always been right there at the forefront.
And it's something that I've always enjoyed the most.
Because you're not a female, and I don't feel bad asking you this.
How old are you right now?
Because you look like, I would say you're like 29.
And if you've been doing it for 16 years, you were like a teenager.
How old are you?
I'll take it.
I'll be turned to 36 next month.
Okay.
All right.
So you got into the game early on.
Yes, I was very fortunate the way I grew up. My dad's been doing this for 45 years.
Okay. That's cool. All right. So you were kind of bored into it. What about, what about you, Brent?
Yeah, I'm Brent, everybody. I was not born into it. I grew up on a small little family farm in Leakesville, Mississippi. I always tell everyone, it's the only place you don't go through to get to somewhere else.
Nice. So I grew up there, always kind of had aspirations to do kind of big things, to always do my own thing,
went to college, played baseball, mess up backup, that screw this, I want to do music, not play music
or anything. I just wanted to work for a record label, moved to Chicago. I started working for
guitar center, doing like pro audio stuff, and then just, you know, started touring. And then I found
out that these companies were hiring people like me who had touring experience to do experiential
marketing. And what that is basically these major brands, if you ever been to a music festival or
sporting event, the booths that are set up outside for like three giveaway stuff, brand recognition
type stuff. I did that for 11 and a half years. Spent a lot of time on the road, traveled all over
the country, 49 states, six countries doing marketing stuff. And so I did that for a while.
Got tired of being on the road. Was planning on getting married. Found Max. Max and I actually met
each other while we were out doing marketing gigs. We became good friends because we had the same mindset.
that's Max Maxwell, by the way.
Saw he had posted a Instagram photo of a house.
He bought for 17 grand.
Always had a curiosity about real estate.
And I was like, I always thought you had to have money, a lot of money.
And I called him up.
I said, hey, next time you find a house like that, 17 grand, let me know.
I'll be in.
I'll buy it.
We can go in together, a partner on it.
He's like, it'd be easier to show you what I'm doing.
So I go over to his office next time I'm home in Winston Salem.
We sit down.
He'd just getting started.
He's like, I've been doing this for two months.
I've been making, you know, 20 grand every month.
I was kind of like the kid in Wolf of Wall Street.
He usually had a check 20 grand.
I'm quitting my job right now.
And he was like, no, I'll tell you, it's wholesaling.
I'd never heard of it.
So I called Adam.
I knew on Adam for probably about four or five years in.
And I called Adam and I was like, hey, ever heard of wholesale?
And he goes, yeah, yeah, I do it all the time.
I was like, well, why you never told me about this?
You knew I had a business mindset.
Like, I wanted to open a business.
I wanted to do my own thing.
I've always wanted to, always wanted to kind of be involved in real estate.
So that's what kind of got me into it.
And then when I moved back from South Carolina to Mississippi, it just made sense.
All right.
So let me break here real quick because I want to make sure that those listening to
we even actually talked about wholesaling very often lately on the podcast.
We used to talk about a lot more than we do lately.
Can you one of you describe what exactly what do you mean by wholesaling?
And then people are listening to wait, 20 grand a month?
Like, how is that possible?
Can somebody walk me through?
What do you mean when we say wholesaling?
So basically what it is.
So we do a little bit of everything.
We do wholesaling. We do flips. We do buying holds. And what we try to do is focus on the acquisition side, but the ones that we get creatively will typically keep for rentals. The ones that we cherry pick out will keep for our flip deals. And then the wholesale ones are basically where we know we've got a deal on it. We just don't want to fool with it. So we pass that along to another investor for a much smaller fee.
Okay.
So essentially wholesaling is this finding an opportunity, property, getting at a discount,
putting that property under contract, and then you're not selling the property.
You're selling that piece of paper for an assignment fee.
So you're assigning that your interest in that property to an investor who pays you, you know,
anywhere.
I think our average is around $8,000 here in Mississippi.
Okay.
And you never own the property.
You never, or do you guys, I mean, I guess it's getting into the weeds a little bit,
but do you double clothes?
Do you do a sign?
How do you typically do a, because there's a lot of ways to do it?
Yeah, most of the time, 90% of the time it's assignment.
Okay.
If it's a high amount of money, if it's a large amount of money and we've never worked
with that buyer before, we'll probably double close it.
Okay.
Let me jump in real quick.
Remember Brandon, when we were in Hawaii, we were talking about how we think we own our
phones, but we don't really own our phone.
We own the right to use our phones.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is very similar to that.
When you're getting a deal from a wholesaler, you're buying the right to buy the property
at terms that they've already established for you.
It's kind of like hiring a professional negotiator that goes in there and gets you a really good deal on a house and then they get it cut because they negotiated, which isn't different than how we do a lot of other things in life.
When you're a professional athlete, you have an agent who negotiates your salary for the team with you or a musician.
You have someone who negotiates your contract.
Real estate investing is the same way.
And I know a lot of people get hung up.
They think wholesaling is dishonest or immoral or something like that.
But it's not.
It's the same thing that we do.
do with a lot of other things in life.
There are some states that have rules that say you can't do it or you can only do it
certain ways.
So they have to operate within those structures.
But it's really not different than anything else that we do in life.
Yeah.
That's exactly right.
All right.
So let's go back to your story.
So you guys, first of all, how do you guys originally meet like four or five years earlier?
So I had a, at one point in time, I moved back to Mississippi, was living in a house
with an old friend of mine who we played baseball together with in high school.
And he was actually dating my best friend's sister at the time.
And so he would come over every now and then when I was home, we'd get together.
And he told me he owned all these businesses, H&R blocks and tax offices and stuff like that.
And I was like, well, he's fairly successful guy.
He knows a little bit about business.
So we, you know, we hung out, had a lot of good fun times together, became really close friends.
That relationship obviously ended, but ours did not.
We kept in touch.
As soon as I found out about real estate and wholesale, I called him.
And he suggested that I read a book, which was flipping properties version two.
I forget who it was written by.
it's not like the greatest, most detailed book in the world, but it was like four bucks on Amazon.
But that was his test to gauge how interested I was.
So I read it in like two days and I came back and I had a bunch of questions and he's like,
okay, this got serious.
And then I took it another step farther.
Once I started, because I had a really good job.
I was making close to six figures with my job that I was working.
So I was taking all the money I was making in wholesaling, putting it back into systems and marketing.
Yeah, that's how we met.
And we met that way.
and then whenever I moved back to Mississippi, we quickly realize it would just make more sense
to be partners versus working against each other.
Okay.
So I think we can probably move to partnerships at this point because this is something that I'm a big
fan of.
I love partnerships in real estate.
Now, I'm not saying they always work out great, but especially when you're getting started,
like you don't have everything you need.
You might not have the money.
You might not have the knowledge.
You might not have the experience.
You might not have whatever, right?
But you probably have something like two or three of those things that you could bring to
the table and then a partner can bring the other things and you can work together.
Did you guys find that you have complimentary skills or one of you good at something,
something else or we both get at the same things?
Very much so.
We were laser cut pieces of a puzzle.
Okay.
Very different in our skill sets and what we bring.
I mean, I guess with any partnership, you've got to have the same core driving principles
and values, which we both want to get to the same spot.
So I think that's very, very important.
But we're drastically different in what we bring to the take.
table, what we enjoy. Brent's actually a little more introverted, very phenomenal when it comes
to anything tech related and how to do things on a big scale. I'm the guy that, you know,
put me in somebody's living room. If there's a deal to be had, I'll get it. But I still use
an AOL email address.
There's not, look, we didn't have internet at his house. So what, like August of 2017.
Wow. And we're still knocking down like 40 deals a year.
But wow, that's that's impressive.
I mean, and it's, it's cool to see that the partnership working this way and that like one of you, you know, is a little more introverted.
I think you said, Brent, you were a little more tech focused.
You're kind of that side of things.
Adam, you do a lot more of the, hey, I'm going to get the deal.
I'm going to work these systems.
I'm guessing.
Are you both systems people or one of you feel stronger in that?
I would say I'm more of a systems person.
Okay.
Mainly because of death.
Most of the systems that we have now are all.
all, you know, online and, you know, you have your podios and stuff like that. So I've been
working on him for several months. And when I came in, for me, the way I had things structured
in South Carolina before I moved, I had an acquisitions manager, I had a cold caller, all that
stuff. I enjoy the fact that if I'm not there, business is still running. Whereas with him,
he still very much enjoys going out into an appointment and taking phone calls and stuff. I was
like, look, I'm going to make it. The phones ring so much to where you can't handle it
anymore. So it took about three or four months of me just tweaking a few things, doing some
Facebook ads, sending out a few more mailers and stuff like that before he finally realized
that I can't take the phones anymore. So we hired a lead manager. We're slowly kind of scaling to the
point because my goal is, I tell everybody, like, why are you so systems based? It's like, well, to be
completely honest, I hate working. I love real estate. I love what it can do for you, but I love what
systems can do for you as well. And if I'm gone and he's gone, I want the business.
still be running. I wouldn't say that you hate working. I think you hate to be obligated to work.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's because I mean, I think we both love working. I mean, I can't tell you,
a lot of times we're at 40 hours by Wednesday at lunchtime. Yep. But it's nice knowing that you don't
have to all the time. I know somebody just like that. He lives in Hawaii. He's brilliant.
But he cannot be tied down. I don't know if you're talking about. Whatever. Yeah. That is the thing.
not wanting, not being required to work.
That's the thing.
That makes it completely different.
Systems to me are, they take your normal skills, the things you can do, and they amplify
them incredibly, right?
It's like Tony Stark's armor.
That's what makes a Iron Man.
Those are your systems.
You have it in your brain.
You know what to do.
You have the plans, but you can't actually execute it.
The system is what superpowers you so that every idea you have or plan you have can be put in
place and can be working for you.
and your normal potential is like TEDxed.
Absolutely.
And I think that's kind of the goal in what we've seen in the last two weeks or so with
our new lead manager is that she's coming in and she's actually doing a lot of
investor PO.
She's actually doing a lot of my notes and setting all my appointments for me.
And even on the back end, like she's, I'll come in.
I'll be like, hey, mark this is this.
And we're making an offer of this on this property.
And she's been taking care of it all.
but that's exactly right so that I can just go from living room to living room to living room.
I love that.
And that's really like the core of what you're doing here is getting other people now involved
who can do all those tasks.
So you can do what your superpower is, which is get me in the living room.
Like that's what you're really good at.
You're like, let's build out the system that makes sure that I'm consistently getting in the living room.
Right now I'm building out this multifamily business, so to speak, mobile home parks and some other stuff.
Anyway, and that's exactly what I'm trying to do.
is like I am I like what I'm really good at is like running the numbers on a deal and making an
offer negotiation like I love that part of things right but like I'm not real big on the lead
side of things I'm not real big on the like research try you know the research of the area
and trying to figure out exactly what makes it a great area you I I'm going to get somebody else to do
that I just want a continual flow of awesome deals in my lap that I can go and figure out exactly
how much I can pay for it and then you know go move on to the next one so it's the same thing
I know David, you do the exact thing. David Green here is like as an agent and as an investor.
I mean, David's like, I just want a good deal in my lap and I'm going to go out and go get it.
Or I'm going to, I want a client like an appointment set.
I'm going to be in their living room convincing them that I'm the agent to work with.
Let's just work on what we're good at.
This is like a hundred times more important than we're probably actually conveying.
It's literally the difference between being successful or not.
If you look at why we are not successful at stuff, it's usually because it requires us to do too many things that we just don't like doing or we're not comfortable doing.
too much risk, too much discomfort, too much whatever.
When you're a living room guy and what you know is you put me in front of that person,
I will close the deal.
You're a cheetah and you see that gazelle and you want to chase that gazelle down, right?
If somebody requires to do too much stuff that's not cheetah like,
hey, hook up the plow to you and make you drag it or climb that tree and survey the area,
find the gazelles or something, you're just not going to do it.
And that's why Brandon was saying he loves that people partner with real estate because
we don't realize how much we get in our own way and hold ourselves back.
And when you get a partner who's like, oh, God, I don't want to have to sit in front of someone, that sounds terrifying. What do I say? What if they don't like me? What if I sweat? Where do I put my hands? At that point, you want the guy who's kind of running interference for you and looking up the numbers, doing the research, getting you the information that you need to be successful during your job. And that's what good partnerships are. They're not just two people that split up the work. They're two people that are doing different parts of the job because they enjoy doing that and they get to focus on that.
Absolutely. And that's been a huge thing for us is because we're so different on the front end on what our skill sets are. So as Brent's doing his thing, that's Brent's thing. I might have feedback every now and then or a couple of questions, but at the end of the day, that's his department. And vice versa, when we're working a deal, he'll have some say-so. He'll have his questions. But at the end of the day, that's my side. And it just, it works really well. It takes a load off. Plus, we know that we'll get our.
our stuff done respectively, which is always nice.
That's great.
All right.
So let's dive into the nitty gritty on the business.
I want to know how you're finding deals.
Well, let's start with how you're finding them.
They don't want to move to how you're like organized your business.
I mean, what CRMs are you using?
How do you get those coming in there?
And then we'll go to how you're funding your deals and then how you're managing
your deals.
Sound good?
Four step process here.
All right, number one.
How are you finding deals?
Let's go through all the different ways that you guys currently attract deals to
your business.
And who is in charge of that?
You know, the first thing I've got to tell you is that good.
deals are created, not found, right?
Oh, look at that.
This guy's been listening.
I love that.
No, so we have a multitude of things that we work on.
We pull several lists in which Brent will get into the technical side of this.
So we pull everything from divorce to probate to pre-foreclosures, HOA liens, tax delinquents.
Water lists.
Water list.
What do you mean?
Waterless. What do you mean?
The shutoffs.
So you can basically go to the water department as long as it's a public's own entity and request to have.
So what I normally do is I word it to where give me every property that's had water shut off in the last six months.
It's had no service in the last six months.
And that's a clear definition of what is vacant for sure.
Okay.
I want to hit people.
I love it. I think that's fascinating because, again, you're trying to look for people who,
have some sort of distress there.
So you pull these lists, and then what do you do with them?
And by the way, how are you pulling the list?
So all that's coming to the courthouse.
The only time we don't is we're using R.E.I. Pro.
Or, you know, PropStream or list source to pull like absentee on 65 in order,
absentee out of state, all that stuff.
But everything else is coming directly from the courthouse.
We have a courthouse runner that goes down there because we're in Mississippi.
We're about 10 years behind everyone.
Our stuff is not available online.
to actually physically go to the courthouse and get all that information.
So the way our funnel works now is we pull those lists, we throw it into a skip tracer.
We're using Sherpa, which is leadshirpa.com.
And then that's skip tracers, skip traces everything, removes all litigators, potential litigators,
and everyone from the DNC list.
Then it's a text blast, but it's not a text blast in the sense of I hit the button,
so it's actually legal because I'm hitting the button every single time.
it just merges their information into every message.
And that's our first step.
We hit everybody with that.
And then the callbacks come back into our lead manager.
She's actually handling all the text messages.
Our AMs and other markets are handling their text messages,
but all the calls are coming back to our lead manager who then screens them,
books the appointments.
So if we don't hear back from them, they go into our co-caller's list.
Our co-caller then hits everyone that we did hear from, from the text messages.
from there we take all the people who said do not call or whatever the case meant or not not
interested in all we'll take them off and if we still haven't heard from you then it goes into a
mailer and then we'll mail you so this is fascinating because we haven't we haven't really talked
about the text message thing here on the show but i know that's very it's a new technology and i've
almost been reluctant to talk about it because i feel like this is really cool and i don't want
everybody in the world to know about this but we're going to talk about anyway so mad because i knew
we were going to have to burn.
Yeah, exactly.
All right, but it's a growing trend.
So you're saying you get these lists of people that have some indication that there is
a problem going on.
Then how do you get,
I mean,
this program like lead Sherpa,
I think is what you said,
that'll actually get their phone number.
Like,
how does that work?
They have a tracing database or skip tracing feature inside Sherpa.
Okay.
And I think the first,
I'm not real familiar with.
I've never logged in,
but I think the first one we did, what was our response?
We were at 56% response rate.
Wow.
Yeah, insane, right?
Yeah, typical direct mail is like 2%, 3%, I don't know, some people get 10, but.
Well, yeah, I was doing good at 18 to 22% with direct mail,
and then he brought along the text messages and just blew that out of the water.
What does this text say?
I mean, how do I want to buy your house?
No, it says, it says, hi, so-and-so, whoever the name is,
Hi, Charles.
Apologies for the message out of the blue.
I'm contacting you today regarding the property located at such and such address,
which it merges all that.
I don't know if you have any interest in selling the property whatsoever,
but if you do, you can give me a call or text back.
Thanks.
That's it.
Wow.
Wow.
And why do you think that works so well?
People are glued to their phones.
And it's a lot of people who text back and says, you know, how did you get my number?
Yeah.
What's great about Sherpa,
is that it has, if you go over to the left-hand side,
it basically has a little dashboard where you can just automatic reply,
and it has features.
So like it says,
you know,
how'd you get my number?
And it already has automatic response.
So just click on that and it sends it,
which basically says,
we use a software that matches public records that we pull from the courthouse
to match numbers to people.
Do people get upset about that?
Sometimes,
I mean,
it's very rarely that they get too upset.
They just want to know.
It's kind of strange for them to get a random text message out of the blue,
which is why we lead.
Yeah.
Hey, this is out of the blue, I apologize.
We're very apologetic up front.
And people tend to kind of take that tone a little bit better than just saying,
hey, just notice your property at this or you're interested in selling.
Call me back.
It looks like you're getting divorced.
Yeah, that would go.
And we had everybody with the same message no matter what motivation there is.
So if it's a foreclosure or probate or whatever it is, it's the same message every single time, even even in our letters.
We haven't tested it, but I feel like we've had less abrasive responses than we typically do.
Seems like the ones that are curious or kind of on edge about it are a little more balanced out.
Yeah, yeah.
As opposed to some of those that give you a call and they are just, yeah.
All right.
So you've got this machine that you're sending out these direct mail,
I mean, sorry, you're sending out these text messages to people.
Some of them you get a text or call back right away and you start dealing with those and interacting with those.
The ones that are like, hey, take me off your list, you take them off your list.
The ones that just don't reply at all, the other half, let's say.
say that are not responding or 40 some percent, you are putting them into a direct mail camp.
Cold call and then direct mail or cold call?
Yeah, it's cold call.
Cold call.
And then if they don't answer or if they do.
All right.
And then what are you sending for direct mail?
Is this postcard, letter and what's kind of your gist in those?
It's a letter.
It basically just has a few bullet points.
And what it says is, hey, you know, I may be interested in purchasing your property of such
such address. I'm not a realtor looking to list your home. I'm a local investor wanting to purchase it.
And then, you know, it does a few bullet points. No fees, no commissions, no hassle. We buy as is.
If you're interested, give us a call. Cool. And how many of these are you typically doing? I mean,
total, like, deals that come in in a given year or month or like, what's kind of your rate here?
I don't know right now. This is all fairly new. So, I mean, like the tech blast has been within
the last four weeks.
Okay.
We've been doing some cold calling.
You would know what the response rates to those would be.
So we're averaging about for, so we're on a triple dialer, which is Bojo sales,
which means it's just dialing three numbers at one time.
Whenever somebody picks up and just drops the other two and leaves a voicemail.
So our cold caller was doing that.
And for about every five to 600 dials, she would get anywhere from 10 to 20 contacts.
And out of those 10 to 20 contacts, we'd get one to two.
leads every day. So she would call anywhere from about $600 a day. Okay. And you're focusing just
on Mississippi? Are you going all over there? Yeah, just Mississippi. Yeah. Now, we're spread out
over the state. We have stuff from the north end to the south end and several places in between.
I think last count we have like 14 or 15 counties that we're working. I mean, I just think it's
fascinating. So it'll be interesting to hear like where you guys end up in the next six months to a
year. But let's say prior to that. If you just started that, what were you doing for deals before?
And then give us an idea of your overall business right now.
I mean, how many deals have you done over the past?
How long you've been working together?
And what's your portfolio look like today?
I think we did 63 last year.
Last I checked, we're on track to do well over 100 this year.
Wow.
The majority of that up until Brent came along was either direct mail or selective cold calling.
And what I mean by selective is it was never on a massive scale.
It was just, you know, pre-foreclosures.
some of what I really thought were hot driving for dollars leads.
A few of those, I would go ahead and do a one-off skip, skip, trace, and call.
But the vast majority was direct mail.
Okay.
And were you then selling, I mean, like, were you wholesaling most of these?
What's your kind of rate wholesale versus flip versus rental?
Like 60% wholesale?
Yeah.
Say 60, give or take a few percent wholesale.
Probably 5 to 10% buy and hold maybe.
probably closer to 5%,
and then threw some flips in there.
Okay.
There's really not a standard operating procedure
when it comes to when we actually get the deals
because there's so many people that we work with
that try to do so many different things
and have so many different likes and risk exceptions,
I guess, would be the word for it,
that it's really case by case.
That makes sense.
And what makes it a case by case one way versus the other?
I mean, people listen to right now, I'm sure they love the idea of, hey, I'm going to start getting leads coming in, and then I'm going to figure out what to do with them based on what they are.
I mean, that's a cool idea, right?
Like, it's like when you milk cows, I was watching this documentary.
What was it, like, fed up on Netflix other day or one of the shows?
Anyway, and it was like talking about like dairy production, how they took all the fat out of the milk and they told everyone that skim milk was better for you, which is, you know, you could argue one way or another.
But all of those fat left over and they're like, well, we just toss it.
But no, why don't we just make cheese with it?
And then that's why you go to the cheese aisle and out at the grocery store.
It's like 500 rows of cheese because, like, the government just subsidizes, like, cheese manufacturing now because we have so much of it because we're trying to get people healthier, but not eating fat.
Anyway, so you got these deals coming in, this milk coming in, and you're like, all right, let's separate out the fat and the milk and we're going to make some cream cheese out of this.
And I think that's fascinating.
By the way, David, did you like that analogy?
That's pretty good, wasn't it?
I was actually feeling so much pride that Brandon has stepped up his analogy game.
All right.
So you got all this stuff coming in.
You're figuring out what to do with it.
What do you look for to say that one's going to be a rental?
Earlier you said something about creative.
Can you talk about that?
Our approach is drastically different.
I'll try to put this in a concise answer.
And then if you want to expound on something, let us know.
So our approach is very much different in the fact that a lot of people worry about what their exit strategy is.
And a lot of people worry about how much they're going to make.
We don't really do either.
What we do is we go in.
in number one, figure out what the homeowner is trying to accomplish and try to
or shape a deal or an offer around what their motivation is. Because that's the most likely
thing to get accepted. So we put a lot of focus in on that. And we don't worry about the money.
I mean, we can tell you deal after deal we've done this year that we didn't make anything
on. We just got it done because it needed to be done. And so what we do is we come in and
try to shape our offer around what the homeowner really wants and what they have the ability to
provide. So that's kind of what we look for is the can and the will, I call it, what can they do
and what will they do, and then find the blend of those. And then what we do is we take whatever
proposal we've come up with and then see which one of our buyers that will fit and then see
if there's any room for us to make money. So actually us making money is the last part of
equation every time.
Yeah, but you're a wholesaler and wholesalers are only about the money and they're all about
greed and ripping people off, right?
You know, I've seen that a lot, but usually those don't have any notches on their
belt to say that they're wholesalers.
They're trying to wholesale.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's a problem of that.
So let's talk about that for a minute before we move on.
Why is there such a negative view towards wholesalers?
Like, what causes that and how do you avoid that in your business?
How do you keep a good reputation?
I think wholesale is get a bad rep because of the fact that most of them have the inability to take serious action, mostly on their education side, and also the ability to be consistent and know what they know.
The problem is that I see a lot of is that they, it's not necessarily that they're greedy.
They just want to get their first deal done or they want to get a deal done so badly that they will inflate numbers and throw out a really high ARV and then shoot for the moon to try.
to try to get the most amount of money as possible, which that's where a little bit of that
greed comes in.
We've seen it several times.
As a matter of fact, last week we had a deal blow up with a guy that we were trying to help.
Well, up in his face, he had a $20,000 offer.
He was trying to get $25,000.
And next thing you know, it comes back and it blows up in his face because his buyer backs out
because the mortgage was higher than they originally thought.
There was just a lot of things that were missed.
when he could have just took the $80,000 offer and gotten his money right there and there.
But I feel like education is the big one.
People see, they only see the big checks.
They don't see all the sweat and the hard work and the education that goes in behind it.
They see a $50,000 check and they go, oh, I can do that.
Well, in Mississippi, I can buy like two or three houses for $50 grand.
Yeah.
Like straight up.
You know, you're not going to get those kinds of checks.
So one thing we see here locally is that we see a lot of people,
trying to get these $20, $30,000 deals.
They happen occasionally.
They're just not every day.
I've only done a handful of $20,000 wholesales, ever.
Yeah.
When you say $20,000, are you talking about your assignment fee or are you talking about
the purchase price?
Yeah, the assignment fee.
So what do you guys find works better to do a few deals with a high assignment fee or to do
large volume with the lower one?
Volume.
The volume is better.
Okay, can you go into a little bit of why you think that is for someone who's
thinking, hey, I want to be a wholesaler and how they should.
build their business to look?
Well, I'm a firm believer in spreading out risk, right?
So that's why like even on our flip deals,
we'll typically have two or three people putting the money in
because they want to spread their risk out
and they're used to working with each other.
Same for us.
Well, there's a couple reasons.
I think number one is keeping the mindset that you need a consistent flow.
And because we're not knocking out, you know,
$50,000 or $100,000 assignment fees,
sometimes we make zeros, sometimes we make five grand, sometimes we make 10 grand. But what that does
is it really forces us to go in and make sure that we've got deal after deal after deal after deal,
because we don't know what they're going to make. So I think that's probably the biggest thing
for me on why I like that. I think those are just more consistent. They're more probable.
I had one deal. It would have been a $40,000-a-thousand-dollar assignment fee that was supposed to be
good to go. And this is, this is kind of my second reason behind that. But I got back from Phoenix,
came in, should have been closing the week after I got back, and the whole thing fell apart.
And, uh, and that's, that hurts a little bit. Like that can make for a pretty bad day when you,
you've, you've really wanting this deal to close. You get emotionally wrapped up in it.
And then it falls apart. It's not just costing you that deal, but what else are you going to
miss over the next two weeks while you're beating yourself up? And so if it's,
an $8,000 deal, not quite as big of a deal.
So for somebody who wants to start like this funnel that you guys have built,
what do you think is the first step they need to take?
Do they need a buyer list?
Do they need to build the system?
Do they need to get out there and start putting stuff in contract and then from their scale up?
So him and I have a, you know, there's a train of thought that if there's a deal there,
the buyers will come, right?
Which is very true.
I like to focus on the other hand, as I tell everybody, is like, I like to go and try
to meet buyers. So I'll go to foreclosure auctions. I go to RIA meetings, stuff like that.
So I'm telling you from a perspective of how I got started. I wanted immediately find
buyers because I didn't want to waste time, money, and energy in areas where I didn't have,
I didn't know I had people buying it. So I would get really detailed with the buyers that would
meet at foreclosure auctions, asking the questions like, you know, what's your perfect investment
look like? Are you flipping? Are you buying holding? Where are you doing that at? What's your
general? What's your price range look like? What kind of returns are you looking for?
Or that way I know I can spend my money and time and energy in a certain area.
And I know what price frames I need to be at.
And I just need to be under that.
But it's a much easier process.
When I already know what the number the guy's going to give me,
I don't have to worry about what the ARV is or anything else.
I just need to know where he needs to be at on return and then go spend my time,
money, energy in that area and get him that deal.
Okay.
And that comes from just knowing your market, right?
Knowing what buyers want, knowing what they want to pay,
kind of like what the people that are coming to you are looking for, correct?
Correct.
So if we looked at your business and we said,
what is the one most important piece that makes this whole thing profitable?
What would you say that is?
I mean, I'll tell you what I think it is,
is that when we walk into somebody's living room,
we used to go in with the mindset of,
I'm going to buy this house.
And the day that that changed, it was 2016,
and I forget what happened.
I woke up one morning and just had one of those epiphanies.
And I said, you know what?
I don't care if I buy the house.
or not, like legit, do not care if I buy the house. I'm going to go in and I'm going to give
them everything I have to offer and help them whatever the case is. If it's me, great. If it's not me,
even better because I got a lot to do today. So I went in and just as legitimately as I can say it,
I started helping people regardless of what the outcome was for me. And it's crazy because we bought
more houses and made more money. And we helped a lot of people in the process.
That's really cool.
So it was the mindset shift from I need to make money to I need to help this person.
Yeah.
Yes, man, that's such a good point because I find this all the time.
As a real estate agent, we ran into the same problem, right?
I want to help people, but I also have to make money.
And you kind of got to balance this walk between bringing value to somebody, but you can't
just bring value because then you can be taken advantage of.
Everybody's going to want you to sell their house for free.
Everybody's going to want you to go find them a buyer that's going to pay retail price.
But your buyers are looking to you for the day.
deal while the seller is looking for how much money can you get me. So you have to be wise enough
to know, how do I convert this value that I've added to somebody into something that makes money
so that I can run a business so that I can be in a position to keep adding value? And I think
we all start off going one way or the other too much. We're too much focused on our profit in the
business or we're too much focused on adding value. And then you get burned a couple of times and
you start to realize how to find that middle ground. What have you guys found is your kind of like
or sauce with the combination of how you add value versus how you run your business.
Was there a point where once you realize something that kind of kicked into place and you
could really scale?
One of the best quotes I've ever heard.
Actually, I heard it from his dad.
I'm not sure if he got it from somewhere else.
But the relief of stress is often greater than price.
So a lot of times these people, like we don't even talk price.
We don't talk numbers a lot of the times until we get to like the nitty gritty, basically,
until we get to the very end.
I want to know who you are, where you're from, what your family does.
You know, who's your favorite sports team?
Whatever the case may be, I want to try to build that rapport and relationship to where you start telling me everything you need in life.
Where are you trying to go and how can I help you get there?
And then it comes to, okay, well, you know, if I can't get a number out of them first, which is going to happen 99% of the time, they're going to give me a number because we walk in and we say, we're helpers, we're not hackers.
If you give me a ballpark or where you need to be that you think it's fair, that you think I cannot, you know, honestly make a little bit of money on this.
I can't do everything for free.
Where do you think we should be at?
And if I can make that number work, great.
If I can't, I'll give it my best shot and I'll explain why I can't and go from there.
And then I'll give you some pointers on, you know, if you want to remodel your house,
like what colors are working.
Here's a good contractor to reach out to.
Like all this stuff.
Just I want to provide as much service as possible to where at the end of the day,
they don't really have a choice but to go with me.
So would you say that it's good advice for a newbie to understand
as much as it feels cool to walk in there with a briefcase and a suit and sit down and want to be
this wheeler dealer type of a person who's a professional and he can get stuff done and it looks
like Gordon Gecko in the movies, you're way better off to come with an approachable.
We're both people.
You're in a spot.
I'm in a spot.
Let's see if we can get those two spots to combine.
I can tell you that the best approach I've ever had.
So I'm so glad you brought that up because that is a huge area of misconception.
people will spend hours getting their logo where they like it and your logo is not going to buy any houses.
Yeah.
But that's probably my biggest thing because until, what was it, July of last year, I upgraded my car finally because my, my Volvo I was driving.
I was taking the seller to the bank on a Saturday, which happened to be my birthday.
It was an hour and a half one way.
And I was taken to go get him some money because we were supposed to close on Tuesday.
Wednesday, and he didn't have money to pay his movers. I said, look, it's my birthday. Let me come
pick you up. We'll go to the bank. We'll make sure you've got some money. Come back. And that goes into
really, truly trying to help somebody. So anyway, my car ended up, the radiator blew up.
And I got stranded with the seller and Slidell for a few hours. But I drove a 99-ball, though,
that I bought for 2,500 bucks. Before that, for about four or five years, I drove an O2
Cadillac that by the end of every day, like my last appointment of the day, could always tell
when I was pulling up because my power steering fluid had leaked out. So you get that whir,
whined, and noise. So, I mean, like, there wasn't anything tied to a fancy car. I never went in
with any kind of paperwork ever. And half the time on the appointments, I'm in tennis shoes and
gym shorts. And I do that specifically to tear that wall down. Because when you
walk in really slick, slick people take advantage of people, right? That's the mindset,
especially when they're already in a bad spot. I don't want to be associated with an attorney's
office, a bank. I want to seem as far from that as I possibly can. I want to be that guy that looks
like they got lost in the neighborhood. Yeah, I believe 100% in that. I drive a Toyota Camry,
even though I'm selling Bay Area Rail Estate, because I don't want the person whose house I'm going
to sell to see me pull up in a Lamborghini and think, oh, so I'm paying for that
McGinney. That's what you're telling me right now, right? Right off the bat, you've created a hill for yourself that you have to
and you made it really, really difficult for yourself to do. You want to make it as easy for yourself as you can as you guys have seen,
which means tailoring yourself to your audience. If these are blue-collar people who live blue-collar lifestyles,
they're going to resent if you show up really flashy, right? And the opposite can be true in some cases, too.
I've seen some people who are trying so hard to prove that they're not flashy, that they show up in flip-flops and sandals.
and the person's like, well, why should I listen to you at all if you're representing me in something?
Or if you'd worn a suit, they would feel like you're taking them serious.
It really just comes down to the audience that you have.
It would make sense to show up in a suit to the person who's losing their house and they feel like they're getting screwed.
And you're the one who's going to benefit from it.
In that case, it might make more sense to take a much more humble approach.
But I love what you guys are saying is that you'll do whatever you got to do to make the business work better.
That's what this is coming down to.
If I got to drive a car that leaks oil, that's what I'm going to do.
If I got to show up in a clean but humble clothing, that's what I'm going to do.
And that's what newbies need to understand.
Like your guys' audience, the people that are buying from you in Mississippi are expecting
a certain type of product.
Like you said, you could buy three houses for 50 grand.
So your business model needs to be made to reflect that.
That's the stuff you're going for.
You're not going to be trying to put different things under contract and make 50 grand on a wholesale
deal there as opposed to maybe the guy in Beverly Hills who's doing the same thing.
Did you know, you can go on vacation and actually earn money?
Because while you're out exploring new horizons, your home is sitting there, dark, silent, and wildly underemployed.
And it could be making you extra cash.
And Airbnb makes that possible with something called the co-host network.
If you're away for a while, or you live far from your place, you can hire a vetted local co-host with real hosting experience to help take care of everything.
They handle guest messages.
They prep your space, manage reservations.
and they keep things running smoothly so you don't have to constantly check your phone between activities.
That means fewer logistics, less stress, and more time actually enjoying your trip,
instead of thinking about what's happening back home.
You can relax, knowing guests are taking care of, and your place is in good hands.
So instead of your home just existing in the dark, it can be quietly earning its keep
while you're off making memories somewhere else.
You travel, your house works, everyone's happy.
Your home might be worth more than you think.
Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host.
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.
That's the power of the Fundrise flagship fund.
Now you can invest in a $1.1 billion portfolio of real estate, starting with as little as
10 bucks. The portfolio features 4,700 single-family rental homes spread across the booming
sunbelt. They also have 3.3 million square feet of highly sought after industrial facilities,
thanks to the e-commerce wave. The flagship fund is one of the largest of its kind. It's well diversified,
and it's managed by a team of professionals. And it's now available to you. Visit fundrise.com
slash BP Market to explore the fund's full portfolio, check out historical returns, and start
investing in just minutes. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the
Fundrise Flagship Fund.
This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at
fundrise.com slash flagship.
This is a paid advertisement.
Can you guys walk me through how when a lead comes in?
Because I'm fascinated by your guys as systems, right?
So a lead comes in.
They say, yeah, I might, you know, I don't know.
I might be interested in selling or whatever.
Let's say it comes in from direct mail, comes in from the text message, it doesn't
matter.
What happens to?
Can you walk me through the process?
What's CRM does you use?
Who does what?
How do you get to the closing table?
So on the CRM, we use IPO.
It's called Investor PO.
It's the reason I chose that as one, the guy that built it was in a mastermind of mine.
And he built it with the back end all on Podio.
I've built and worked inside a Podio.
Most everyone I know also has the same kind of mindset toward Podio to where I hate it.
I hate it.
I just don't like it.
I don't like trying to teach it to somebody.
It's like, might as well be trying to teach him French or something.
Especially somebody like me.
Yeah.
So what I really liked about it is the fact that it's got its own dashboard,
its own systems, it's got its own SMS, follow-up, text messages,
you know, voice broadcasting, all that stuff,
that it just does automatically.
So it follows up for everybody automatically.
So what happens is when a lead comes in,
whether it's through our website or through a phone call from any of our marketing pieces
that we send out, it goes immediately to our lead manager.
She answers the phone or responds to an email, whatever the case may be,
tries to get them on the phone and then starts going through the process of figuring out, you know, what their motivation is, you know, how much they're looking to get, try to get a ballpark and seeing if they're negotiable on that number. And if they have some, like, yeah, I can go a little bit lower. I consider, you know, a lower offer. Then, okay, great, perfect. Then that goes to him. And then he kind of goes like an extra level of qualifying before he goes on the appointment. And then once he goes on the appointment, it's then based on where they're at, what they want to do and how I can help him get there.
All right. All right. So then let's shift and talk about it. So the deal comes in. You're moving through it. You want to buy it. You like it. Everything looks good. How are you funding it? Let's see, especially if you want to go rental property here. Let's say you want to keep this as a rental because the wholesale deals, you know, that's easy to talk about how you, you know, you fund them. Let's actually talk about all three because I think this is important. Because for me, it's easy. But maybe somebody to learn it is like, I have no idea. How do you fund, quote unquote, fund a wholesale deal? And then what's that look like for a flip for you? And what does that look like?
like for funding for a rental property?
So I guess the best way is just give you some examples of a few deals that we've just done.
So for just a rental, we try to use creative terms for our buying holds.
So like for instance, the last one that we bought for a buy and hold, which was really funny
because this was a lesson in me for follow up and why it's good to have a system other than
yellow note paper.
So yeah.
we had one, we had made an offer on a property, gosh, probably a year and a half ago, maybe two years now.
And the guy owned the property free and clear. It was a rental property, which at the time was going well.
A year or so later, the lead comes back to Brent through somebody he knew. Turns out it was the same guy.
Brent put it all together that I had been there a year and a half before with my dad, actually.
And this guy since then had a really bad experience with a tenant and had decided that maybe rental properties when it's going bad is not for him.
So what we did is we went in and talked to him.
We realized that, and again, it's finding that what their motivation is.
So he liked the monthly income, but turns out he wasn't fit to be a landlord.
So we bought it pretty much full retail, but we did it was zero down three percent for 360 months.
So now we just keep it.
There's no, you know, there's no bank financing.
There's no inspections.
There's no appraisals.
None of that stuff matters because we've got it.
It's $150,000 house.
We paid $140 for it.
But it's a cash flow machine.
That's cool.
Okay.
So you get some creative strategies in there.
So what about like the flipping, if you're going to flip a house, how do you fund that?
So we've got, there's a, again, we get creative with those too.
So it just depends.
If the house is free and clear, we're going to push really.
really, really hard to have them do a short-term, no interest, no payments, you know,
maybe for six, eight, ten, twelve months where we don't pay them until we sell the house.
So then we're just fine. We're just bringing in the money for, you know, buy and hold costs.
I should have said closing costs and hold call. And then whatever the repairs are.
And then we partner up, we have a gosh, probably eight or ten guys that we partner with,
depending on the deal, the area, how big the project is.
And we'll bring their money in, but it depends on how we're getting it.
So if they go in for cash, typically anywhere from a 60-40 split one side or the other,
if they pay cash for the house and the repairs and everything.
If it's creative, so like we did one where I think there were two payments behind,
we caught them up, took the note over subject two, and we did a 60-40 split our way,
But it was, I think we were in 71, and I think the guy walked away with an extra 22,
which he was thrilled about.
That's cool.
It's cool.
I've never actually done one of those where you partner with the seller you were saying.
I've never done something like that before.
But again, the idea of like bringing in other people, if you don't have the money,
maybe it means you're bringing a partner and you fund it.
Like they fund the deal and you do the work or you find the deal.
Like, again, a lot of this comes back to just like doing what you're really good at and what you have in front of you.
and getting other people to do what they're good at.
And somebody, a seller comes to you and they have got the ability to hold the house for a year.
Great.
If they don't, you figure out another way.
It's the milk and cheese analogy from earlier, right?
Like, you're going to figure it out one way or another.
Well, I think.
And oftentimes, you know, you're able to give the seller a little bit more money that way.
Yeah.
Because we're looking at cash on cash returns.
So if we're only having to put 70 versus 175 and get the same kind of returns,
like, well, I can give you a little bit more money.
Right.
Yeah.
So it's a really great opportunity for this.
it's a great opportunity for us to get a really high cash on cash return.
There's not a lot of risk involved, especially for us when we go to private money guys,
they assume all the risk with the project.
We're just going to funding the deal and we take a percentage of it.
That's it.
Yeah, I mean, go ahead.
I was just going to say, I think that's also where a lot of newbies go wrong is,
you know, you're talking about they want to get dressed up, drive the fancy car,
and show up in the briefcase and, you know, straight Gordon Gecko style.
Yeah.
And the truth of it is is that there's people out there.
that can do 100% of everything involved in a deal by themselves,
but there's not very many of them,
and they don't do many deals from my experience.
But I think a lot of new people feel like that takes away from their pride or just
it kind of takes money out of their pocket.
Oh, yeah, it takes money out of their pocket,
which wasn't going in their pocket anyway most of the time.
But I think people forget that investing is very much a team sport.
Yep, very much so.
And, you know, I've said it before.
offset at 100 times before like a hundred percent you know 50 percent of a great deal is better than 100
percent of no deal so when you're especially when you're first getting in the game like the first few
deals don't even matter at all like who cares if you make any money like get the knowledge get the
experience start building your reputation start moving that way so yeah anyway fantastic and then
third if you're at a wholesale deal you typically don't need the money right because you just show up at
you know the title company like you're not using anybody's money right you're getting a property into
contract you're selling the contract and the person who buys it is the one that ends up funding their own deal
you're not funny. Is that basically how you guys do that?
Correct.
Yeah.
That's the sign that's in double closes actually.
Perfect.
Okay.
Perfect.
Yeah.
Really, really good.
Okay.
Last question is, how do you, before we move on to the deep dive?
Well, maybe I got two more.
How do you manage your portfolio right now?
Do you have in-house property management?
Outhouse property management?
I love that phrase.
Or how do you deal with that?
Actually, we have what's called a Leon.
Leon.
All right.
That's actually my dad.
He's a 20% partner in what we're doing.
Okay.
Kind of consulting, like I said, he's been doing it at 45 years.
So he handles everything on the back end.
And then he's been doing property management for probably 44, 45 years.
And he's just got it down.
Like he doesn't, it's just him.
I think he's looking at hiring a bookkeeper soon.
But we do a lot of little things like, for instance, on paying rent,
we give them pre-made deposit slips with the micro toner on them.
and they're numbered just like a check number.
So they get 12 at the beginning of every year.
They go deposited at the bank.
The bank gives them a receipt.
And then when we log in, we say, okay, number 104, that's such and such address.
And then there's another little tip, which is we give a discounted rent.
So let's say that market rent is 1,200.
Well, then our rent is going to be 1,100 discounted.
And what we do is the rent is 1,200.
But if they do three things every month, they pay on time.
like the day that it's due, not in the grace period.
If they do any minor maintenance,
basically treat that $100 like a deductible.
So if the toilet leaks, they'll call me fix it,
and then change the air filter every month,
then they get that $100 discount.
That's cool.
Which seems to work out really well.
People, I don't know what it is.
They don't mind paying late fees,
but you take a discount away from them,
and they are livid.
So how do you manage that process?
I mean, like,
how do you know they're going to change their air filter?
Are you just assume that they are?
You just tell them that they are and they probably are.
By the time we do all of our background checks and do a couple phone interviews and then meet them.
And then a lot of times what I like to do if it's possible is a pop-up inspection.
So let's just say that somebody gets approved through the whole process.
You've stalked them on Facebook.
You've done all the background checks.
And they get approved.
I may show up at their house.
Because if their house is clean and neat and they take proper.
pride in it, that's the person you want.
If you show up and it's just a disaster and it's missing doors and kids have drawn all over the walls.
And really, you don't even have to most of the time.
If you tell them that you're on the way, their reaction is going to tell you whether or not you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I like that.
All right.
All right.
So I have to ask you guys something.
Our producer told me I need to ask.
Apparently you have a super secret method for finding deals using Uber drivers in your service.
Can you tell us a little bit about this cutting edge.
technique that you guys have developed.
So that stem from me, right?
So when I first got started in the business, I was traveling all the time.
At one point in time, I did over 300 days in a hotel in one year.
So I was traveling all the time, so I can't go driving for dollars.
I didn't want to spend too much money on marketing techniques.
I already knew that mail is going to cost a lot if I wanted to do mail campaigns.
So I was always stuck on cold calling, but I knew driving for dollars would be probably
how hard to get my first deal.
But I wasn't there.
And so before I got into real estate, I was in South Carolina with my now wife.
She was in law school there.
So when I was home, I might be home for a week, might be home for two weeks.
I would drop her off at school, turn my Uber on and just, you know, hey, if I make a few extra bucks and pay the truck note, that's great.
Whatever.
I'm just going to kind of do it for fun, a little bit of side money.
It's better than staring at the walls.
So I created a Uber Facebook group for Columbia, South Carolina.
and lo and behold, people started finding it, joining it.
And it was just really just kind of a network, talk about events that were coming up.
I didn't really put much attention or time into it.
I didn't think much of it until I got into real estate and I went,
there's over 300 people in this group.
All they do is drive around.
They can be sending me leads.
They're driving around neighborhoods.
They could be sending me pictures of properties and the addresses.
And I can research them on the back end and start calling these lists that they're sending me
and schedule appointments from when I'm.
I'm going to be home.
So that's what I did.
I just went into these Uber groups and started going,
hey,
would you like to make an extra $500 doing what you already do?
Message me for more details.
And I would get probably like 10 or 15 people that would be all over it.
And out of that 10 or 15,
you'd really only get like one or two people that would really take it seriously.
Yeah.
They were like,
they want to get paid up front.
And I would have to explain it to them like,
you know,
I get paid by once I close on the deal.
So they have to put a little bit of trust in you, right?
Once I got that first girl, though,
it started becoming to the point where I was having
monthly meetings with my Uber drivers
and buying on pizza and teaching them a little bit about real estate
and how they can go out and get their own deals and everything else.
So they were sending me those deals.
And when I came here, I just,
every time I hop into an Uber,
it doesn't matter if I'm here or in a market I don't even work in.
I'm just like, hey, you ever see any vacant houses while you're driving around?
Like, you know, just house, yards all grown up,
roofs, you know, got tarp on it or anything like that.
Start talking about it.
So we actually, one of our best bird dogs we have on my bachelor trip,
we're leaving a bar going to the casino.
And it's down here in Blocks, Mississippi, which is the market that we work in.
He picks us up and I immediately start talking about real estate.
And everybody in the car is like, oh, God, Prince talking about real estate again.
I can't help myself.
Turns out the guy had a few people that he knew that wanted to sell.
Next thing you know, I started to start telling him how he could help us and how we could help him.
And within like two weeks, he'd already sent us over 100 properties.
Wow.
I was like, man, this guy's crushing it, right?
So just, and it's not just Uber, right?
We talk about it all the time.
It's like your inner circle.
I call it a three foot rule.
Anyone that's going to be around me for more than a minute within three foot of me,
I'm going to tell them what I do and how they can help me.
That way, you know, I never, we never missed anything.
Because there's always somebody that knows somebody that knows somebody, so on,
so forth. So that like circle of influence is huge, especially when you start telling everyone,
you become friends with everyone and start telling everyone how they can help you and how you can
help them. And it sounds crazy, right, to do it that extreme. But I found that that's what is
always created the craziest best stories. Yeah. I mean, just like, I mean, stopping at a yard sale
for cry out loud. We just did a deal last month that we got on terms, $1,200,
market rent value on two properties that the lady forgot that she had because they were her
husband's rentals. They've been empty for two years. She didn't want anything to do with them.
And we bought it for $40,000 on terms with nothing down. Wow.
$300 a month? Yeah, we rounded up to $300 a month. So she could track. Yeah. Wow. You guys
walked up. It's like, I can see the yards for sale about the house. Yeah. She goes,
oh, I'm going to hold on to the house for a little bit longer. And then her friends laughed her and was like,
What about those rental properties?
Oh my gosh, I forgot all about those.
You mean my personal rental properties.
Wow.
You call it, did you say the three-foot rule?
Yeah.
I love that.
That's fantastic.
That's really good.
You can touch and talk to them.
There you go.
Yeah, I mean, you say, you know, yeah, that might sound crazy or extreme,
but you know what sounds crazy or extreme to me is working the same job
until you're 65 or 70 retiring on Social Security.
That sounds crazy to me.
So pick your crazy.
And I like a crazy story.
I mean, hey, half the deals we do.
I'm just excited for the story to tell.
I mean, it's gotten to the point where we can hardly go to lunch anymore without somebody coming up to us.
While we're at lunch, like, oh, hey, I got this house for you.
Yeah.
You're going to love it.
It's over here.
Like, so it's, you know, we're for what, 150,000 people here in Hattisburg probably?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's not huge.
It's not very big.
So it feels small.
Everybody knows everyone.
There's not a ton of, like, popping lunch spots or anything.
So when we go out, like, usually there's always.
always somebody coming up to us and they have a house or they have a situation or they know
somebody that's in the situation. Yeah, that's really cool. Really, really cool. All right, well,
speaking of stories, I want to go into another story. And so the next segment of a show is called
the deal deep dive. Wouldn't it be great if your houseplants paid rent while you were out of town?
I mean, they've got the whole place to themselves, lots of sunlight, zero responsibilities.
But no, they just sit there waiting for someone to spray them with some cool mist like a bunch
of leafy loafers. But guess what? Your home actually could be earning you money while you're not
there. Airbnb has a great feature called the co-host network, which makes hosting your home so
easy. If you live far from your property or are away for extended periods, you can hire a local
co-host to take care of the hosting for you. These co-hosts are vetted locals who already
have experience hosting on Airbnb. A co-host can handle all the details like messaging guests,
creating your host space, and managing reservations. So everything runs smoothly. It's a practical way
to earn a little extra money, maybe even some cash toward your next trip. Plus, you get to share your
place with someone traveling to your area while you're off making memories somewhere else.
Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host.
All right, rental property investors, listen up. Our friends at Dominion Financial already have some
the best DSCR rates in the industry. Now, they're the fastest, too. They just launched 10-day
DSCR closing. That's right, 10 days. And they're still the only lender with the DSCR price
beat guarantee. That means faster closing. The best terms. Zero guesswork. That's Dominion Financial.
Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Again, that's biggerpockets.com slash dominion.
All right. This is the part of the show where we dive deep into one of your particular deals.
I hope you guys have something in mind. And we're going to dive deep onto a number of different
questions about that thing. So I'm going to just kick this off with what kind of property.
But first of all, you have one in mind, correct? Yes.
It was, what kind of property?
Go ahead.
There's two properties that make this deal that were acquired totally different.
All right.
All right.
That sounds complicated, but those are the best story.
So let's go.
What kind of property or properties are we talking about here?
Like, what is this?
So what was a single family residence and the other was a mobile home on three acres?
Okay.
So what makes this interesting is it was a tax delinquent mail, mail out, the house.
was worth about $145,000, that's the ARV. They were asking $100,000. It was owned
pre-and-clear. Our maximum cash offer was probably going to be around $60,000. So what we did is
we bought it for $100,000 on terms. You remember it was $10,000 down yet, $10,000 down and
$500 a month at $180 months, which for those that can work a calculator is zero percent interest.
Yes. That's good. Okay. So how did you guys
find this deal. It was a tax delinquent and inherited property. It was on free and clear. So we
sent a mail or out. Okay. So they sent a mailer out. They called you back, put it into your system,
started working with them. And now we're talking about a single family home here, right?
Yes. Was, all right. So you said your max offer was 60K. Say that again real quick.
What you actually, well, let me just go through the question. So you said that should you find it.
So they originally asked, they were asking 100. And you said 60K. Is that right?
Max cash offer.
Max cash offer.
Okay.
So then in the negotiation, what did you actually end up with to tell us that again?
So we ended up with a hundred thousand dollar purchase price with $10,000 down.
Okay.
And $500 a month for 180 months.
Yes.
So that's where the zero percent interest came from.
Okay.
And now how did you negotiate those terms?
They gave her what she asked for.
She asked for $100.
It was a drill.
It was probably a two.
month process of because she called us and then like a lot of people do, we were the first
ones in the door. So then once we said, hey, you know, we're probably in that 60 range. She put
it on Facebook marketplace and Craigslist. And there was probably eight or 10 other investors
that went by and said that they were in that 50 to 60 range. But it totally validated what
I said and what Brent said, but we kept diving in, like, I wish there was a way we could figure it out,
which we had it in the back of our minds, but we just kept, you know, oh, let's try to figure that.
Do you have any ideas? How can we pay 100 and make this work? And then the last day,
when we got it locked up, because we knew that her two biggest things, right, she needed approximately
$8,000 to move to Colorado, and she wanted $400 to $500 a month to supplement her retirement.
And so I think we called up and said, hey, Ms. Wanda, I think we've got it figured out.
And she goes, oh, you got an idea.
And I said, I think we got it where you can get that $100,000.
We'll get you everything that you're wanting.
And we can put this deal together and make it work right now.
And she was all geared up about it.
We had been working for a long time.
She was already sold on the idea of moving, right?
Because there's a lot of psychology from that after that first appointment.
Yep.
And so she would, she had been ready to move for about four weeks at that point.
And so it was one of those things.
It just, it checked her boxes and she pulled a trigger on it.
All right.
So you funded it with seller financing essentially, correct?
Yeah.
And then what did you actually do with it at that point?
Did you hold onto it, rented it out?
Yeah.
Did the rehab on it?
I think it's rented out for $11, $1,200, give or take a couple bucks.
Okay.
And then I'm curious, where does the mobile home come into play here?
Because I'm going to explain that one.
Okay.
So the question was, what is the outcome?
Like, what happened next?
But yeah, go ahead.
So this is probably one of my favorite deals.
There was so many moving pieces in this thing that it is, it's absolutely ridiculous.
But basically what we did in this.
And I love this story because everybody talks about, you know, well, we do deals this way.
And then we have people that hear about how we do deals.
They say, oh, I mean, you guys really.
think outside the box. And the point of this whole example is that there's not a freaking box.
Like, you can do whatever you can imagine in your mind. You can do it. While this deal was going on,
there was, it was a double wide that had been foreclosed on on two acres. There was an encroachment issue.
So as soon as, and of course, a realtor sent it to me, he said, hey, this one's got some issues.
Maybe you can do something with it, right? I mean, I don't know how we've turned it.
to that, but apparently we're probably. So they send us the deal. There's an encroachment issue.
The original goal was to get the two acres in the mobile home and figure that out. Well,
what we ended up doing was, so you've got a two acre parcel and a three acre parcel owned by
the same person. There's a double wide that's halfway on both of those. When the bank foreclosed
on it, they took the double wide and the two acres. The three acres was free and clear, but it has half a
mobile home owner.
Oh, okay.
So the bank is trying, they filed a Liz Pendens.
They're working on trying to actively serve this guy to try to get the three acres back.
Well, we swooped in and bought the three acres for $3,500.
Okay.
Now the bank's got to deal with me.
So that took about a year trying to negotiate with the bank.
We ended up redrawn some property lines.
We ended up with three acres.
They ended up with two, but the double wide encroachment issue was taken care of.
So we put a mobile home on that property that's paying us $200 a month lot rent.
And there's another mobile home that we just put on there that doesn't have an occupant in it.
We traded the three acres in the mobile home for the balance of the note on that $100,000 house.
So when all the dust settled, we were in that house after FixUp, rent it out for $62,000.
That was our cash out of pocket over the course of 18 to 20 something months.
That's a lot of moving parts, but we got a smoke-in-terms deal on a house.
Yep.
We smoking cash price on some land.
And within a year after both of those were bought, a year to 18 months, we ended up
trading one for the balance of the other one.
And we ended up in the house for $62,000.
And I can show you, I need some whiteboards, but I can.
I know, because they...
That's cool.
And what's neat about this, and that's what I try to convey to people all the time is, like,
there is no book that you can read that's going to teach somebody how to do that.
There is no podcast that you can listen to that's going to teach somebody how to do that, right?
Well, there is now, right?
That one specific case, right?
But real estate's not about, like, show me a blueprint and I'll follow that exactly,
because real estate is just, it doesn't work that way.
It's too many variables.
But what you guys have demonstrated is that you understand like the fundamentals.
You understand how negotiation works, how different options are there.
And you have the mindset of asking how do I get this done, not just saying, well, it doesn't
fit with exactly what this book says, so I'm not going to do it, right?
And that's like a lesson I think people can take.
I mean, there's a lot of good lessons from today's show.
But that's one thing I really hope people walk out of today with this is like, just figure it out.
Get it done because like there's so many ways to pull off these different deals.
There's so many ways to turn milk into cheese that like they should be able to do this.
I mean, anybody can do this if you're just like thinking, how do I do this?
So yeah, kudos to you guys.
You guys did awesome.
Can I give one warning there to people?
Please.
Please.
I think it's very important.
People hear about this creative stuff and it's a, it's a very shiny object.
Yep.
I think it's a valuable thing to have in your tool belt, but I don't think it's necessary.
and I think people need to know that while we do get just insanely creative,
that's just one of many, many deals we've done that you almost have to draw out on a whiteboard.
Our go-to every time we go in somebody's house is a cash deal.
Like, we only do the creative out of necessity.
That's it.
All right.
I think that's smart.
So that was cool.
Yeah, very cool.
And I'm sure people are like, I'm going to go back and listen.
I'm going to go back and listen to that again later.
But I like, I always like the idea when you can pull in a couple of things.
different deals, like, and kind of pulling together.
I did a lot of cross collateralization is what they call it back in the day where I'd,
like, take the clutter on this property and use that as my down payment on this property
and kind of like connect everything together.
And, yeah, there's some fun ways to get creative there.
But anyway, it's time to move on because we're almost out of time on today's show.
But before we let you go, let's head over to the fire round.
It's time for the fire round.
All right, time for the world famous fire round.
Of course, these questions come direct out of the bigger pocket.
It's forums and we're going to fire them at you guys right now.
Let's go like this one.
Hey, this is funny.
This is actually from a guy named Josh Dorkin from Denver, Colorado.
He actually put this on the forums a few years back.
I wanted to get a consensus about those who buy lists for marketing purposes.
If you buy real estate lists like probate, absentee, properties of equity, etc.
Can you let us know, like, well, what kind, I guess what your favorite list is that you're
doing?
Like, what do you get the most deals from?
And then how often do you buy them?
Do you have to buy them every month or, you know, update your list every month or do you just buy them once a year?
What do you think?
Well, we very rarely buy any kind of list.
That's right.
Can you go to the courthouse and just get it?
We go to the courthouse and get it.
I mean, why pay somebody else to get it two weeks later when I can just go get it anyways?
We don't buy any lists.
And as far as favorite list, so everyone asks that question.
They're all my favorite.
They all generate income.
I don't look at it.
I can get really granular with it if I wanted to and track, okay, if I send this many text to this many probate,
how much my response, you know, track all my KPIs on that stuff.
I have an overall KPI that's all I really care about.
It's all working.
And if you try trying to take it and get to the point where you're asking everybody,
who's their favorite list, like my favorite list is, you know, I like three foreclosures.
I mean, they're all the same list.
There's no secret sauce out there.
I mean, there's people who talk about unknown equity and stuff like that when you start
getting the list source.
and there's some crazy things and filters that people use.
However, I'm hitting everybody that fits a certain demographic.
I know what my buyers want.
So I'm hitting, you know, if I have a buyer that loves 3-2s,
I'm hitting every 3-2 that's absentee-owned and absentee out of state, right?
So it's really no favorite list.
I don't have a favorite list.
You have a favorite list?
Whatever our last deal closed.
That's what we close the next deal.
I really, I'm same as Brent.
I could not care less where a lead comes from as long as it comes in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm listening or I was listening to the David Gagins was a guest on Joe, what's his name,
Joe Rogan's podcast.
Yeah, I was listening to David Gaggans, who's like the fittest man on earth kind of guy.
And Joe's, they're having this conversation about people I always ask them like,
you know, what's your exact morning workout look like?
Or how many hours do you rest every time?
And he's like, he like jumps down their throat.
And he's like, it's not like, stop asking for a way out.
Stop looking for these like little tiny tricks that are going to help you.
He's like, get out there and just run.
Go put your shoes on and go run.
Like, just get something done.
So if you're like sitting at home right now going, well, I don't know the exact list to mail to
and I'm not sure if probates is the right one or if I should.
Like stop.
Just stop asking that question.
Like in the words of David Goggin.
Well, I'll use more PG language.
But like, just go do something.
Try it.
Right.
Like get out there.
Like get working because that's the most important thing.
Not do I have the exact list exactly right the way.
that these two guys are doing that, right?
That man's an animal.
He is an animal.
But that's, I mean, that's my favorite quote from richest man in Babylon, right?
Men of action are favored by the goddess of good luck.
That's good.
I don't remember that quote at all, but I love that book.
I think it was chapter four or chapter seven.
Wow.
Deep.
And by the way, if you guys ever, ever listen to this has not read the richest man in Babylon,
highly recommend it.
It is fantastic.
That's probably one of my favorite books of all time.
That's like the one book that I'll just read over and over and over and
and over. And every time I'm like, oh, yeah, that's right. That's what I got to do. Yeah, there you go.
All right. Question number two. From Gabe in Austin, Texas. What factors do you look at when you're
deciding whether you're going to flip a property or use it as a rental? Does it depend on the area that
the property is located or the shape that it's in? Maybe you guys could look at this from the
perspective of the person buying it from you. All of the above, really? So when we look at a property,
I want to look at, and I know this is always tough, right, given answers, but when there's no set mold, there's a lot of factors to grow in.
So we want to know what the school district is.
If typically in our experience, the bigger the project, the bigger the difference between a rent-ready rehab and a retail-ready rehab.
So it might be that the house that we were just talking about, right, that we bought on terms for 100, to make it retail-ready would have probably cost us $38,000.
to make it rent-ready cost us a little over 17.
So that's a very big factor because that's, I mean,
you're talking about a $20,000 difference in fix-up cost.
The other factor is going to be what kind of terms we're getting it on.
And by the way, for those of you listening, all cash at closing is a term.
It's just a very, very short term.
But that's kind of what we look at.
So we're going to look at, do we have to pay cash for it?
What's the cash on cash return going to be when it's rent-ready versus how much of a project
is it, what can we sell it for, and what can we buy it for with cash? So then we'll try to weigh all
of that out. And some of it even goes as far as, well, if we buy it for cash, we can roll in and make
X number of dollars and split it 50-50 with our guy. Well, if we don't, if we can do creative,
then it might be that we can go creative with the seller, you know, partner up for the
rehab money and do a 70-30 split because there's a smaller amount of money.
coming to the table. So it really just, it all depends on all of those factors, and then we start
figuring out where we can make the most amount of money. All right. All right. I like it.
All right. Last question of the desire round. From some Frank from East Providence, Rhode Island.
And it's actually one of the most popular threads on the entire side. There's more than a thousand
replies in just the past few months on this. So I'm curious what you guys think. The question that he
originally asked is like, it was a question to new investors who haven't yet taken action. What's
holding you back. So I'll tweak that slightly in two different ways. One, you can answer it however
you want. What held you back at the beginning? Like, why didn't you start earlier? Like, what were some
the things that fears that held you back or things that held you back? Or secondly, you mean,
you guys network with a lot of real estate investors, a lot of up-and-coming, a lot of newbies.
What do you see holding people back? And maybe those are the same, maybe not. I know what my two
are. Well, what held me back in the beginning is I had no idea. There was this thing called
wholesaling. If I'd known 20 years ago, I'd be dangerous right now.
now. But it, I didn't know anything about it. But I wasn't one of those people that I'm very
quick to action when it comes to something I'm excited about, something that I'm passionate about.
And as soon as Max kind of ran me through what he was doing, and I called at him, he's like,
oh yeah, I've done it several times. So then I have my proof of concept. I know that it works.
They work for them. It can work for me. So immediately I took about two months to just study as much
as possible. So I was traveling all the time. So all I did was listen to podcasts.
audiobooks, read books, whatever I could do to try to catch up because I feel like I'm so far behind
everybody else.
So I want to just learn as much as possible for the first two or three months.
And then as soon as I just set a date, okay, by this day, I'm going to go start getting
going on appointments.
I'm going to start calling.
So in May of 2017, I said, all right, I got my list.
I got some driver dollars list.
I'm going to call these people where I'm in a hotel, take action, and do it.
So what I feel like most people is their inability, it's analysis paralysis, right?
Some people go for it too fast, too soon and mess up a lot of things, and that's okay,
as long as it's not messing up the sellers.
For us, it's all about being helpful.
So that's really why we created the group that we have.
But it's just we want to make sure everyone's educated.
But education and consistency is what I feel like most people lack.
All right.
Anything you want to add to that?
I think confidence because people haven't been through the whole process.
They're terrified.
I mean, essentially, you're telling them to start a race and you're not mapping out where they're going.
And that's a terrifying thing.
But I think the main issue even behind that is that like what we talked about before,
you know, investing is a team sport.
And you get a lot of people that are so dead set on, I've got to do this on my own.
but they don't have the confidence or the wherewithal to go through the whole process.
So they just get stuck in this loop of, I don't know exactly what to do,
but I won't reach out and partner with anybody.
And so it's just this never-ending spiral or cycle or whatever you want to call it,
where it's just over and over, you're vacillating between those two things.
Whereas, like take Brent, for instance, when he first got started,
I mean, you were straight out of the just, I mean, as new as you can get.
But he studied a lot on his own and then what he wasn't sure of, he called and asked.
You know, whether it was me or Max or whoever, he had people that he was hitting up and which you didn't have to,
but would have been more than happy to split a deal with somebody or whatever the case was just to learn that process.
I think that's where a lot of people go wrong.
it's because they think giving up half a deal is losing money
when really you're making half the deal to get educated.
I can't think I'd have probably stayed in school
if somebody would have offered me money to teach me something.
Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic.
All right. Well, the last segment of the show,
let's head over there.
This is our Famous Four.
All right.
Before we get to the Famous Four,
let's hear about what's going on this week
over on the Bigger Pockets Business Podcast.
Hey there, Brandon.
we have a big name on our show this week. It is Jay Papazan. He is co-author of The One Thing and the Millionaire Real Estate Investor, among several other books. And our conversation focuses on controlling your time through strategic communication, networking, and delegation. Now, Jay has totally changed the way I approach communication and business. So we're going to deep dive on that subject. If you're interested and you should be, subscribe to the Bigger Pockets Business Podcast and check out the show on two.
Tuesday. Okay, everybody, go enjoy your famous four. All right, let's get to this famous four. These are the same four questions we ask every guest every week. So we're going to throw them at you right now. Each of you can answer separately or together in one voice if you want to.
Number one, what's your favorite real estate book? Mine would be rich dad, poor dad's what got me started.
Invest in debt. Invest in debt.
Yeah, I don't even know that one.
If you want to, now just be prepared because it will absolutely screw your day up.
All right.
Invest in debt.
I'm going to look that one up right now.
The how-to book on buying paper for cash flow by Jim Napier.
Oh, is that the one?
Yeah.
All right.
I know Jimmy, Jim Napier.
I know the name, but I have not read that one.
The red copy.
The red copy.
That's what I looked at Amazon.
Yeah.
It's $104 hardcover on Amazon.
Gary Johnston.com and you can get it there for like 25 bucks.
Oh, nice. Garyjonsten.com.
Fancy.
All right.
Next question.
What is your favorite business book?
I like play to win.
It's kind of a mindset but applies, I think, just as equally to business.
And it just, instead of going the default route that most people go, which is playing not to lose,
it really hones you in on every day you go out there
just leaving it all on the table and playing to win
regardless of what happens.
All right.
Mine would be traction.
Oh, yeah.
I got to read that one.
Have you read it, Brandon?
I started the first chapter and I wasn't in the right.
It's all about systems.
Yeah, I started it.
Yeah, I started it.
I was not in the right place yet to finish it,
but I got to get there now because I feel like I'm better now.
But yeah.
Audio versions, I couldn't do the audio version.
It sounded terrible like you were going through a bad breakup and you weren't in the right place.
You got to be like, you got to be like your soil's got to be fertile ready for that seed to be planted, right?
Like it's got to be ready until more breakup talk.
But I was not like I didn't have anybody on my team at the time.
I didn't have like any reason to like it really is about systems and building the team and being a good leader.
At the time, I didn't really have that.
So, like, I didn't get into it.
But now I'm like, man, I need to read this because now I got like a team and I got people.
So I'll get there.
All right.
What are some of your hobbies?
So I like baseball.
I'm a big, uh, major league baseball fan.
So I travel.
I've probably been to 27 stadiums and then just vacation.
Actually, I drove up this morning from the beach.
So just going to the beach hanging out.
That's really, I just enjoy it.
It's relaxing.
I like to fish on occasion when, uh, when,
when the time permits it.
That's about it.
All right.
That sounds good.
Yeah,
we do a lot of real estate.
We're passionate about it and we're obsessed with it.
It's good.
Some would say unhealthy obsession, but we enjoy it.
Cool.
All right.
What do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up,
fail, or never get started?
I think just action.
Well,
what we were talking about earlier, right?
David Gagins.
I think people,
really try to focus on how to do things or the easiest possible way or try to figure out
how to delegate everything, which is fine, but not from the get-go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
People don't, they don't put enough stock into paying the Piper.
And in my experience, everybody has to pay the Piper and interest is pretty high.
I'm right there, Willie.
I couldn't say that any better.
That's good.
That's going to make a nice little Instagram quote card.
I like it.
All right, guys, this has been fantastic, like really, really fun.
And you guys are just crushing it.
I'm excited to see kind of the future of where you guys head with the text message thing.
And hopefully we didn't just make 250,000 people start doing text messages for real estate deals.
But, you know, that's the case.
I'm calling the guy and tell them, I need a piece of the action.
Yeah.
There you go.
There you go.
All right, guys, tell us where can people find out more about you?
So we do a weekly live Q&A on Facebook inside of our group.
That's where we try to educate as many people as possible.
It's 100% free.
You can find us by going to Real Estate Roundup on Facebook.
It's a group, answer the three questions, and we'll let you in.
Every Tuesday at 8 p.m. Central Standard Time.
We do a live Q&A.
Instagram.
He's Big Sip Real Estate.
And I'm Mr. Sipi.
M-I-S-I-P-B-I.
Mr. S-S-P-E-I.
That's funny.
Got it from my touring days.
Pretty good.
I always called me that.
All right. Well, thank you guys. This is some really good stuff. It is. It's been a lot of fun.
Yeah, I appreciate you guys for having us on. We had a blast.
Sorry, we didn't cut as many jokes as I thought we were going to be in a serious about real estate.
I know. Who I thought? We had a long conversation about real estate.
We did say cows, and I missed the opportunity to go, ow now, brown cow. Lennel. Lennelon?
And it's been sitting there this whole time wishing that you could get a chance to redeem yourself. And there you go. You snuck it in right before you.
Well, I kept waiting on the opportunity to say that's utterly ridiculous to talk about cows.
That's awesome, dude.
All right, guys. Thank you very much. It's been fun.
Thank you guys.
This is David Green for Brandon, ready to love again, Turner.
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.
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
to this media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free
newsletter, please visit www.biggerpockets.com. The content of this podcast is for informational
purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset,
real estate included involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified
advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember,
past performance is not indicative of future results. Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability
for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented
in this podcast.
