BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 371: 75 Deals at Just 20 Years Old with William Brown

Episode Date: February 27, 2020

$700,000-plus in wholesale fees—fresh out of high school! On this show, Will Brown reveals how laser-focusing on “deal flow” allowed him to build a rental property portfolio, build a self-sustai...ning business, and amass a small fortune… all in a matter of months. You’ll be blown away by Will’s story of being struck by inspiration while playing Grand Theft Auto at age 18. That led to the BiggerPockets Podcast, and well… you’ll have to hear the rest of his story to believe it. If you want to know the exact structure of a four-deal-per-month wholesaling business and the specific marketing methods Will uses to reach sellers, check out this episode. He walks us through how he handles leads, how he manages his business from 3,000 miles away, and why he’s handing over the reins to a partner so he can focus on building a technology startup. This is a fantastic episode highlighting a BiggerPockets member who took massive action, trusted the process, and saw massive results. Download this one, and make sure you’re subscribed to the BiggerPockets so you won’t miss a show! In This Episode We Cover: How Will built a powerful marketing machine How he's able to spend only 30 minutes on each deal How he prevents leads from slipping through the cracks Ringless voicemail messaging and text message marketing Why he prefers wholesaling over flipping houses How he handles tricky title issues Why it's never a bad idea to make an offer Will's artificial intelligence startup And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Webinar BiggerPockets Ultimate Beginner's Guide BiggerPockets Podcast 077: Negotiating Your Way to 1000 Wholetail Real Estate Deals with Michael Quarles BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Podcast 209: Flipping 83 Homes in the Last 18 Months with Kevin Carroll BiggerPockets Podcast 330: How to Ditch Distractions and Get WAY More Done With Cal Newport Shark Tank Check the full show notes here: http://biggerpockets.com/show371 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is the Bigger Pockets podcast podcast show 371. Since July, I'm like that when I told you like the 30,000, I would say that's their first deal. From then until now, is some closing is this week and next week. 75 deals, 770, 401.6 in collected assignment fees. 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 high, you're in the right place.
Starting point is 00:00:32 Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everyone? This is Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. David Green. David, what's up, man?
Starting point is 00:00:49 How you doing? I'm really good. I went to, did cryotherapy last night with some of the old buttons guys. What heck is that? You basically sit there and you cry a lot and it's supposed to be therapeutic. No, I'm kidding.
Starting point is 00:00:59 It's like people using really cold temperatures to try to heal your body. So you do that like, you know, freeze yourself. And they had all kinds of different things. So we did that. I'm trying to know, I honestly was somewhat underwhelmed. If I'm being honest, I was expecting a lot more. I actually have heard of it before. But I kind of put it in the same category as like a lot of like, I mean,
Starting point is 00:01:16 I'm not saying like chiropractic or like the, what's the pokey things you put on your body? Acupuncture. They might work. I have no idea. But I got to put them all in the same category. It's like they seem some people are really passionate about it. And other people are like, that's hokey. So I have not tried it personally.
Starting point is 00:01:28 I'm going to get a ton of hate mail now on my Instagram. I know. That's what happens when you take a comment on your distance. But as I said, I don't know. I'm just saying I tend to look with suspicion upon a lot of things. But anyway, well, I'm sure you guys can tear me apart. But with that said, that's actually closely related to today's quick tip. It actually has nothing to do with today's quick tip.
Starting point is 00:01:50 But today's quick tip is very simple. Here's what I want to encourage you guys to do today. Go out there today in the next 24 hours. And I want you to have one conversation with a possible seller, not an agent, not a, you know, some like not a, maybe a text message, but an actual interaction where you say something, they say something back. Whether that means you're door knocking, whether it means you're going to call somebody on Craigslist, a landlord on Craigslist and say, hey, I don't want to rent your house, but can I buy it? Just get in that practice. Go talk to a seller within 24 hours from right now. And if you do that, let us know, post about it on Instagram or on social tag at Bigger Pockets. So let us know.
Starting point is 00:02:26 You know, also take David Green 24 or Beardy Brandon. That is today's quick. You know how many people are going to do that? Probably like one out of a hundred that listened to this. But I want to see more people do it. So, I mean, just that practice of getting out there and doing it. I encourage you guys to do it. So that's really all I got.
Starting point is 00:02:43 So today's show is all about generating leads. We've got a guest on who's only 20 years old, did 75 deals in the past, what, 18 months, something like that. The guy is a machine. and he, no pun intended because of his new business, artificial intelligence stuff. He talks about that a little bit later in the show as well. And he has got some stuff figured out in terms of lead gen and why that's one of the most, if not the most important things a real estate investor can learn how to do.
Starting point is 00:03:10 So tons of good actionable advice today. So grab a pen and paper, takes some notes today and let's get into it. David, anything you want to say before we get into it? Yeah, one thing. If you're a bigger pockets pro or premium member, then you can buy BPCon 2020 tickets today. So check your inbox more information because Brandon and I hope to hang out with you in New Orleans, October 5th and 6th. If you're not a pro or premium member, stay tuned and we'll announce when you can get tickets because they're going to go on sale for everybody later. We had awesome time last year in Nashville.
Starting point is 00:03:39 Some people said it changed their life. And you got to see Brandon and I pretty much like all day long hanging out and talking to everybody. So if you're a pro and premium member, go grab some tickets because you're not going to want to miss out. Yeah, this thing 100% guaranteed is going to sell out. so and probably soon. So jump in, make it happen. You've upgraded how to buy properties, but did your insurance get the memo? When investors start scaling, insurance can't be an afterthought. Most policies were designed for a single property, not multiple rentals, LLC ownership,
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Starting point is 00:04:32 That's N-R-E-I-G.com slash B-Podd. We all joke that rentals are passive, but if you're spending nights matching receipts or guessing what a property earned last month, that's not passive at all. Baselain fixes that part of landlording, the financial chaos. Their banking and AI bookkeeping system automatically tags every transaction, updates cash flow insights in real time, and builds the reports you need for tax season. You can even automate transfers and move money around without paying wire fees. It's just cleaner. Sign up at baselane.com slash BP and get a $100 bonus.
Starting point is 00:05:02 Base lane is a financial technology company and not a bank. Banking services provided by Threadbank. Member FDIC. Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance. But a quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of these smartest ways to protect and even improve your property's cash flow. As the months get colder, frozen pipes, icy walkways, and seasonal wear and tear can increase the likelihood of claims.
Starting point is 00:05:24 And traditional insurance companies aren't always built to handle these claims quickly or smoothly. That's why more real estate investors are turning to steadily. They focus exclusively on landlords, whether it's a single-family rental, a burr-builder's risk policy, or midterm holiday guests. You get fast quotes, flexible coverage, and protection for property damage, liability, and even loss of rental income. Now is the perfect time to review your rates and coverage. get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com slash landlord insurance. Steadily, landlord insurance designed for the modern investor. And with that, let's get to today's show. All right, Will, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast, man. Good to have you here.
Starting point is 00:06:04 Thanks, man. Happy to be here. Sweet. All right. So let's talk about your real estate journey. I mean, you're a young guy. I mean, how old? Do you mind me asking? Is that 20? 20. Yeah. All right. So you are, you might be, you might be the youngest one we've had on the podcast. I'm not sure. I don't, I don't know if we've had a 20. I know we had a 21. I don't know. I'm probably missing somebody. But tell us how you got started in real estate so many years ago. Yeah, absolutely. So, man, it feels so long ago. October 2016, I went to one of these mastermind things with my mom. Okay. I was like she kind of knew as an entrepreneur. She knew I kind of want to do that sort of
Starting point is 00:06:40 stuff. But neither my parents were entrepreneurs, both of them were actually landscape architects. I was never interested in real estate. It bored me. You know, I want to play video games because I is I could do things quicker. I can move up quicker. I could acquire more things. I was like, real estate, that's too adult. Like, that's too slow. So I go to this event, and it's a three-day seminar, like your classic one, and it gets to the end of it, and you know, we're hooked. And I don't know anything about it. They're really good there. At some of them, they're really good. And at the end of it, we basically go back and talk to my dad, and he's like, you guys are crazy. We're not spending $2,000 on this. And then they kind of helped us see a reason.
Starting point is 00:07:12 Like, oh, yeah, probably doesn't make sense to spend $20,000 on this. So I was salty for a couple once from October to November, then December. This is of 2016. And then January of 2017, I always, like, always love to play video games. I was playing Grand Theft Auto. You guys familiar? I love Gran The Rhone cars and things like that. And do good deeds for people. Drive around, do good deeds, help people cross the road and stuff. Yeah. It's a good game. How many points do you get for helping little ladies cross the street in that game? Quite a few. It just doubles your score for the day. It's like a score. That's what I thought.
Starting point is 00:07:47 So they came out with this update where you could buy properties and they would like cash flow and you could start to stack them, right? Just like in real estate. And I was playing there and this thought hit me. I remember the exact moment was like riding my motorcycle, whatever. I was like, you know what? What am I in your hand? I don't remember which one.
Starting point is 00:08:05 I know I did. Okay. I want to do this in real life. You know what I mean? It's like I want to at this point, I'm getting bored. I see this isn't going anywhere. And I kind of had like the life that, you know, was like pretending to live and then the one that I was actually living.
Starting point is 00:08:17 Okay. So then and there, right, I finished playing and I unplugged the Xbox. For the note, record, I have not plugged it in since then. Wow. And what I did is I went to my room, I went to my desk, and started Googling real estate investing. We like this fury and started Googling stuff and I found bigger pockets. I started looking around. I think I read like the ultimate beginner's guide.
Starting point is 00:08:36 I was like, oh, it's complicated, you know? And so I listened to podcast number 77 with Michael Corals. Yep. five times in a row. And then I'm like, okay, this is great. So I download all the podcasts. And I think for the next week, I just start at one. I listen to one.
Starting point is 00:08:53 And I listen to one. And I listen to two. And I listen to three. And then four. But I think I was talking with David. My personality type is I'm a driver, but I'm also like a fidgetter. Like I don't know if it's ADD or something. But I can't just sit there and listen. Right.
Starting point is 00:09:06 I got to be engaged. And I'm like, okay, I can't drive and do this. I can't read and do this. So what I started doing was I started making little paper cranks. with Post-it notes. As I was listening to podcasts, that allowed me to be present and just listen and not kind of like,
Starting point is 00:09:21 you know, not necessarily get bored, but allow me to do something. I've got hundreds and hundreds of these paper cranes now in a chest that I made. They're kind of, you know, special to me because it's what I forged. I would take,
Starting point is 00:09:31 I write notes on them and then form them. And that's how I got started and learned about real estate and started the education. That's cool. It's funny. You mentioned the fidgeting. I'm actually at this very moment
Starting point is 00:09:42 twirling a pen in my fingers. I can't not do it. Every podcast I've ever recorded, I'm twirling a pen in my fingers. That's what I do. Anyway, that's cool, though. I mean, like, I love the tangible sign of, like, like, this is, this is the, the tangible proof that I did hundreds of hours of education, like, to learn that stuff. And I didn't pay $20,000 for it.
Starting point is 00:10:01 You know, that's cool. All right. So, so you got excited. You started learning. You're still young. I mean, like, I don't know any 17, 18 year olds that are, you know, 16, 17, 18 year olds jumping into real estate. So what, what happened next?
Starting point is 00:10:12 Like, how did you buy your first deal? Oh yeah, absolutely. So my friends thought I was totally weird. I was listening to real estate podcasts in high school. You know, they're like, what are you doing, dude? I was like, Hannah, you know, this is something I'm interested in. So fast forward to that summer, I start taking the action, you know, going putting out the handwritten ban at signs, not using any technology, not knowing what I'm doing, getting yelled that by people because we put the signs in their yards and they weren't very happy with that. And I just started to learn and started to kind of gain traction, start to, you know, just about the taking the action part of it. I wasn't showing any results, but I was more interested in learning the processes than getting an immediate result. So then the next fall, I go to college and I go to William and Mary, which is where I went in Virginia for one year. I'd be the first semester and I kind of get caught up in college life.
Starting point is 00:11:01 But college for me was this playground for startups. I was like, oh, there's an opportunity here and here and here and here. And I think at one point I had like four different startups in college, one where I would pick up trash from my friends like dorm doors for like $2 a week. I'd hire people to go around and picking up trash. And the bureaucracy shut me down. They said it was a fire hazard. So here, like all this is like pressuring and they're like, I'm like, I want to do these good things. I'm providing value and they're stopping me.
Starting point is 00:11:26 So I read the one thing by Gary Keller because I was working like 13 to 15 hour days and I was not making any progress and I was not going anywhere. And that book was like the medicine I knew I needed. And I kid you not. I read that and that same day I withdrew all like my positions from different clubs I was in. I'd stopped all my startups, shut down websites. Wow. I realized that I had to focus on the one thing that I had had in my mind for last year and
Starting point is 00:11:50 half, which was real estate, but I had all these reasons why I couldn't do it. And I went to our library. I went to the third floor in a corner little room, kind of like this one, no windows, and I started making cold calls. I started getting on the dialer, started listening to more podcasts and just became hyperintentional and focused as to, okay, this is the thing I'm going to do. And I'm not going to give another option because I know what can be done. I've heard it on 250 podcasts.
Starting point is 00:12:15 Why shouldn't I be able to do it? Yeah, that skill right there, the ability to say, you know what, I'm going to shut down everything else that I have going on, even though they're all good ideas. And I'm going to focus on this thing because if I just do this right, everything else becomes not important. I don't even need to do the other things because this is the one thing. It's like I use the analogy a lot. And I said it at the BP conference last year in 2019. But I said, like, people are always building bridges from where they are today to where they want to get to,
Starting point is 00:12:40 like financial freedom island. And so they're building this bridge and then they get like 20 feet into the bridge and then they start building another bridge. And then they start building another bridge. And pretty soon they got 50 bridges trying to span this distance. And because you've got 50 bridges, each one only moves a foot every year versus if you had one bridge and you focused your energy on that. So kudos to you for recognizing that set. Like, hey, like if I have multiple things, I'm not going to get anywhere. The very first quote, the very first line in the one thing is a quote from, I don't even know who said it. But if you chase two rabbits, you'll catch neither. You won't catch any. You won't catch any. So very cool. So you said real estate, that's the thing. I'm going to go into it. I started making cold calls. I mean, like, who were you calling? What were you saying?
Starting point is 00:13:20 Like, was that terrifying as it would be for me? So, yeah. And I lived at Williamsburg, like Colonial Williamsburg, which is where William and Mary is all really nice houses. And it's like a retirement community. So it's all like really nice houses where there are old people who don't want to be bothered. And I just kept calling. And I started looking,
Starting point is 00:13:41 I was like, okay, how do you make an offer? Like 65% of the Z estimate, make an offer? And I just felt wrong. I was just like, I must be doing something wrong because I just don't feel like there's a fit here. I'm not providing value. These people don't have problems. The only problem they have is me calling them and taking their time.
Starting point is 00:13:57 So I started to really learn to iterate. But it was, you know, it's in that muscle. You know, people talk to me and they're like, you know, hey, what should I do? And usually, the first thing I say is, I'm more than happy to help you. And what I want you to do is go out this weekend and door knock 100 doors. because if you can't get over the fear of rejection first, I guess that'd be a tip to anyone who's looking to get their first deal. Go and doork 100 doors.
Starting point is 00:14:19 Because the problems that lie between you and like doing deals have nothing to do with the market, have nothing to do with your knowledge base. But if you can't go out and knock on 100 doors, just download a simple script and say, I'm interested in buying your property. Would you entertain an offer? Then that's something you got to look at for yourself.
Starting point is 00:14:36 And that's always going to be there. And you're going to focus on building the other bridges. and not work on that one. And it's going to hold you back. Well, let me ask you, when you first made that decision, hey, I'm going to go full time. I'm not going to just play this video game. How old were you?
Starting point is 00:14:52 January of 2017 would have made me 18. Okay. So you're 18 years old. You unplug that Xbox and you strike out to a brave new world. I want to kind of back up and just ask, do you think that you were successful because you just didn't know you weren't supposed to be? I wasn't supposed to be.
Starting point is 00:15:12 Well, at 18 years old, you're not supposed to be able to figure out real estate investing. That's like common conventional wisdom, right? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I have the answer to that. I think I was just frustrated with the different paths that I saw that were open to me at the time. And I didn't have entrepreneurs. I didn't have mentors in my life. I didn't have people I could talk about these things too.
Starting point is 00:15:32 And I started getting on the podcast. It's like kind of, you know, Brandon, you and David. And just like this new way of being like this freedom, this not got to do this and complaining about this, it was fresh, you know, and it was inviting. I was like, you know, this is a new, this is a new world to live into. And it's one that can sustain me, sustain my family, sustain future ventures that I'll want to go into. So I think it was the desire there and curiosity. The reason I ask is most people that want to do what you did don't, because they have all these self-loving beliefs in their mind that I can't do it. This won't work.
Starting point is 00:16:05 Blah, blah, blah. And at 18, you just hadn't had enough of life tell you. that you can't yet to where you actually believe that garbage. And so you went and you made things happen. And we're going to hear more about your story. But for the people that are listening, there really is no excuse that an 18 year olds can do it. If you're older than 18 and you're not, it's all the stuff that you've learned along the way
Starting point is 00:16:25 that makes you think you can't. And you, whether you realize it or not, intuitively knew this, because when you made people go doork, you basically said, I'm going to help you get rid of all the garbage you think about fear of rejection and what would they think. And I don't know what to do.
Starting point is 00:16:38 And just get it all out of the way so that they came to learn from you as a blank slate. Is that more or less why you think you had people doing that? Yeah, and what percentage of them do you think actually went out and did it? Yeah. Oh, I can imagine, man. Did you actually track that? Like 10%.
Starting point is 00:16:53 Because I follow up. You did track that. Someone asked me something. Like, I follow up. I've got planners on planners. I'm not the most organized person. But I, you know, I kind of think it's a little savagery. But every year, you know, when everyone's posting on Facebook, their New Year's resolutions,
Starting point is 00:17:08 I write down what they say. And I'm holding them accountable in the grass, like a tiger, right, in the grass throughout the year. That's funny. Just so I can know, right? Like, what's this person up to? Are they just talk or do they have walk as well? So that's this little funny thing that I do. That's funny. That's awesome.
Starting point is 00:17:27 I love that idea. Yeah, you know, I have a performance coach. His name is Jason Dreeze. And he's always telling me that like, and that like most of, I guess most of success or doing things has nothing to do with the tactics. Like you can't mention a minute ago. Like the strategy and the, I mean, the tactics, the strategy is like, that's fine. And like, you can tell these people, go do not a hundred, a hundred doors or they have a goal to lose weight or to build a real estate business. But like, it's not the tactics or strategy that people struggle with. It's all up here.
Starting point is 00:17:54 There's something mental that stops people. Like, do you remember, and David, you brought that a good point about, like, sometimes you just like don't know that you're not supposed to or that the norm isn't success. Do you remember we interviewed Kevin Carroll a long time ago? I think it was like episode like two. I looked up 209. Yeah, he said, I want to flip a a hundred houses. Yeah, because he had friends that were flipping 100 houses. So he's just like, so I just went and flipped 100 houses. And it was like, no, most people just like flip a house like their first year.
Starting point is 00:18:18 He's like, yeah, I didn't know that. So I just assumed that everyone flips 100 houses their first year. And so we just went and flipped 100. Like that, that, I don't know, that mentality is just crazy. I read another story recently about a lady who was like some kind of like sales trainer or something like that. And she went to a seminar and they said that the guy at the seminar was saying, if I teach you, this strategy I'm going to teach you guys today, you'll be able to close 80% of the people you pitch. And so she went out there and followed exactly what he did, worked hard out.
Starting point is 00:18:46 I got up to like 50, 60, 60, 70%, couldn't break 70%. She was like, stuck there. She couldn't close more than that. A couple years later, she went back to this guy and she said, yeah, I don't understand. How do you get to 80%? He said, oh, I didn't say 80%. I said 18%. And so it's because she thought he was like 80% was the bar.
Starting point is 00:19:06 It just changed her mentality. and she was closing like three times, four times what this guy was. So anyway, there's such power in like the way that we think, you know. I just made a video that put on Instagram today because I was listening to our interview with Jocko. And I'm like, oh, there's just so much good stuff in here. And I was thinking about how he was talking about if you focus on the target that's too far out there. It's blurry and it's fuzzy and you can't quite see it. So you focus on your front site and keep the target somewhere in the background.
Starting point is 00:19:31 And as you get closer, it comes into focus more. And for somebody like Will, who, and again, we're kind of jumping the gun here because I know we haven't described what success that he's had, it was really that he just thought 80% was possible. So it happened. And what I like to tell people is prepare for the absolute worst. Expect to knock on 100 doors to get one opportunity. So when the opportunity comes, you give it everything you have, right? Tell yourself, this is going to be the hardest thing I've ever done. That's okay. I like it. Because if it's anything less, than that, you'll be really grateful. You'll be happy. And most of the people that I see that don't succeed, like I see this a lot for agents that come work on my team or get in real estate, they just thought it would be easier than it is. It's that simple. If you look at people that don't stick with going to the gym, they just thought it would be easier than it was. In general, we set a bar way too low. And then when it wasn't that easy to clear it, we say, oh, I don't want to do this anymore. And for like someone like, well, who just didn't know where the bar is supposed to be set, he's like, well, I'll just go do it, right?
Starting point is 00:20:32 anything's better than not succeeding. It made it happen. And, you know, I point this out because Brandon and I both did things that we didn't know you weren't supposed to do. Brandon slept on a couch at like seven feet tall so that he could house hack. I started buying in other states without knowing that that was risky and you shouldn't do it. I just never heard anyone say you shouldn't do it. It didn't seem any different to me. And like most of the success we had, I mean, you started basically the podcast for bigger pockets and built it up to be this gargantuan thing because no one told you that that was hard to do.
Starting point is 00:21:01 just went out there and did it. So thanks for letting us jump in there, well, and point out a part of your story that's really great. If you can remember where you were, go ahead and pick it up and run with it again. Yeah, for sure. So now it's cool, right? So after read the one thing, after making cold calls, it's getting a point where things are starting to pick up speed. And I'm actually starting to show results and show traction. So I finish my first year's school, I think it was May 2nd, 2018. And basically, I pack all my stuff in a car. And I didn't really, my parents, their lifelong goal was to like sail on a boat. So when I went to college the year before, they sold their house. And now they're like
Starting point is 00:21:34 kind of living and running a charter business on like a sailboat in the Caribbean. That's cool, which is really cool, really, really nice family, you know, meetups and vacations, nice warm weather down there. And I pack all my stuff in the car and I drive down because I had a connection in like Norfolk, Virginia, like the bad area of Norfolk. I then got a place to crash where I have to pay rent on an air mattress in a living room where they had like a bulldog that was like peeing all over a floor and stuff. It was there. It was like so excited. So excited more than ever before my life because I felt like I finally had, you know, I'd have school obligations.
Starting point is 00:22:05 I didn't have other obligations. I could just focus. And I started gaining traction. I had a partner at the time. His name was Josh. We basically started working together. We were going to get like probates and things like that making all these cool calls. I think we went for like three or four weeks just making so many calls.
Starting point is 00:22:21 My first deal, I don't think it, I don't know, we can see if we can consider a deal or not because I got a second first deal. The first deal was a probate that we went to. and I did none of the work, none of the work for the deal. And here's what was great. We went and I had another mentor mine who I met at a Ria. His name is Phil. And we knew that he was holding houses.
Starting point is 00:22:42 So I'd kind of be skipping school and setting up his security systems for him, right? Just how can I have value? How can I have value? How can I have value? And we're like, hey, we got this, but we don't really know how to do it. He says, you guys come along with me to the appointment and, you know, I'll handle things that you can watch. I remember, just like Josh and I were standing awkwardly in her kitchen, right?
Starting point is 00:22:58 With her hands behind her back. while he's negotiating with them on the price. And he's like, you know, do it. We'll throw you a $5,000 commission. I go, I'll just pay you out of pocket. So that was the first deal. That eventually closes after some hiccups. We didn't handle any of the title.
Starting point is 00:23:11 I didn't even know what title was. I didn't know anything like that. And he hands us, he like pays us and we go and we cash it. And we're holding like $2,000, whatever deposit, and like $3,000 in cash. Like, this is the most cash I've ever held in my entire life. We go to the supermarket and we're like, we don't have to budget for food.
Starting point is 00:23:28 we've made it, we're rich, we got $3,000 of cash, you know, paying for cash for everything. That was a great feeling. And then things started to get real, right? So we started to pick up traction and I basically moved to a place that was, we knew we had to come. We kind of want to move in the same building as Phil so we could be with proximity. Just like by the waterfront, which were there was I think like $2,000 a month and rent. And our only goal was make enough to pay rent, right, make enough to pay rent to the next month. And we start talking people. We get into marketing arrangements. We get into partnerships and start really learning. and here's a huge distinction.
Starting point is 00:24:01 At one point, we got, I was on a triple line dialer, and then my partner was across the room, and we were going as hard as we could, as far as we could go as fast as we could, with the cold calling. And we had to wait for the calls to come in. So we were playing like mobile games on our phone, because again, fidgeting, right?
Starting point is 00:24:16 I'm not going to want to sit there and be bored. I was like, there's got to be a better way. We're spending all our time trying to get a lead. And then we got a call with someone through some mutual groups. It was like, yeah, I mean, we can just, it's called marketing. They'll call you. and we're saying, okay, you're going to send out, it was like ringless voicemails at the time, you're going to sound these ringless voicemails.
Starting point is 00:24:34 And then from 9 to 12 in the morning, sellers are going to call us, they're going to call us saying they want to sell. That would be completely game changing. And I remember, I was like, there's no way this is possible. But if it is possible, it's going to change everything. Can you explain real quick what ringless voicemail is? Because that's a cool technology that actually probably drives some people nuts. But from a marketing standpoint, it's amazing.
Starting point is 00:24:56 Yeah, for sure. Just out of a base level, it's, a technology that if Brandon's got a cell phone, my technology sends him a voicemail. It inserts a voicemail to his voicemail box that I pre-recorded without bringing his phone, without disturbing him. And so he just basically sees that he's got a new voicemail in his box. So it's kind of like direct mail, right? It sits with them. It's not like they have to pick up the phone or not, like a cold call. Maybe they weren't home. When they get back, they're going to be able to check their voicemails. Yeah, that's cool. Because then it's not as bad as like a robo dialer necessarily
Starting point is 00:25:28 where you're interrupting them at dinner with an automated message of the IRS is calling you. Like it's like, it's in their voicemail. They can check it later. They're like, oh, I must have missed a call. And they can call you back. Yeah. And it worked. And basically we had this guy, you know, again, we were still getting started.
Starting point is 00:25:44 We know what we were doing. We had this guy that just like kept calling us back. And we're like, well, this guy's like either like psycho or really motivated. And so we called them back. We're like, who wants to call me? You or me. So we call this guy. And he's a guy that like moves to the area like seven years ago, whatever, with the
Starting point is 00:25:58 military and he wanted to move back and he like bought cash and like kind of flipped his house a little bit he's like you know i just want i just want what i paid for it seven years ago so like okay we'll go out and look at it it's like this little little little like kind of ranch type thing really really sweet house so we're walking around it we're like okay this is this seems possible uh did we remember to bring a contract okay this is the first time kind of looking through the contract like we got it from someone that sent it to us and he was willing to sign it we're like okay let's agree $25,000 let's that that's buying you for this house, which I don't know where you might be in the country. But for that, that was like, okay, we had no idea what it was worth. He was like, I just want what I paid for.
Starting point is 00:26:35 So we're like, okay, now I go on bigger pockets and I post it because I didn't have any cash buyers list. Yeah. I had two people that messaged me about it, one person and then another person. And the first person we said, okay, come out, you know, let's take a look at it, you know, whatever, 8 a.m. tomorrow. So he comes out, walks through, I think like, after we're talking people, we didn't realize, but the lot was buildable. And that builders were buying lots for 50 to 60,000 there, the lot itself. Oh, wow. And the house was in pretty good shape.
Starting point is 00:27:02 It was in pretty good shape. So we basically get this first guy. We're like, so you know, you're ready to do it? We're asking 60,000. He's like, let me go over my numbers. We're like, all right, man, but I can tell you another guy's coming here five minutes later. So the other guy comes. And I still, I'm still in touch with this guy.
Starting point is 00:27:16 And I went actually back to visit him in the house once he had flipped it to see kind of what he'd done with it. And he comes in, he's doing it. He gets his dad over because there's still like old bobbing tube wiring in the roof. and we're like, please don't be, like, please be updated. Again, we didn't know anything. So he's like, yeah, can you do like 55? Or he's, we were asking 65,000. He's like, can you do 60,000? I said, we do 60,000 if you take your $5,000 earn this money and you go drop that off at title today. I've got the assignment here. We assign a contract on the hood of his car and pretty much we're just dumbfounded.
Starting point is 00:27:49 And we're like, now what do we do? Yeah. And you got it for 25, you said, right? 25, yep. That's awesome. So I got to tell you. you. So that one, the total, I think the assignment fee on that, we were in like a 50-50 split with the person that was funding the marketing at the time was like 30,000, 32,000. And so we got half of that. And so that's 16,000 check. I remember, I think I posted a video like, you know, drive into the bank to cash it. It was great, but it did not come easy. Every single thing that could have gone wrong went wrong. Primarily because the seller did not know real estate and we did not know real estate either. So you got two parties of a transaction. It's the buyer's first. time buying a house and no one knows what they're doing. They were asking me a question because we had title right and he went to the seller went to the title company and he's calling me freaking out like why is there not a check at title? Why is there not a check of title? I'm like, I don't really know. Let me find out. I didn't know that Virginia was a record and dispersed the next day state.
Starting point is 00:28:47 So there's so many things that I didn't learn and it's basically he started getting super pissed off and we ended up giving him his whole whole thing is they kind of wanted like he wanted like three days to move out his stuff, but he needed the money to move out of his stuff. So we ended up just saying, what can we do to solve this? He was super frustrated on the phone and we're like, this must be a big misunderstanding. What if we increased the purchase price $5,000 and kind of gave that to you as an advance through escrow? Because that's what attorney recommended us to do. He's like, oh, that takes care of everything. That covers my moving costs. And then we close the deal. But we were in every cent and everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. Yeah, there's a,
Starting point is 00:29:22 There's a lot of lessons in there. But I'm curious of like, looking back now that you've done this now for a couple years and you've done more deals, for those people who are in your shoes where you were then, they don't know anything. And so they are saying, I'm not, they choose not to invest in real estate. They choose not to take action because they don't know the whole thing. I use the analogy of driving through fog all the time. You can't see a mile down the road.
Starting point is 00:29:44 So people stop driving. I mean, we would never do that in real life. But with real estate, you can't see a mile down the road. So you pull over and you stop driving because you don't know the whole picture. But you were just like, now we're going to keep driving. driving through this fog, we'll figure it out as we go. So what kind of advice do you have for people that are in your shoes a couple years ago that don't know everything and they're freaked out about having those like the seller upset
Starting point is 00:30:02 or not understanding the local like how this works or how title works or how Oscar works? Yeah, for sure. And I think it's kind of like the, you know, my common thing and what I've been able to articulate is, are your reasons and justifications greater to you than your dreams and your wishes on what you want your life to be? everyone's got reasons. Everyone's got justifications. We live in an extremely justified world. You're wrong. I'm right. We got to do this. And everyone's calling you different things. But at the end of the day, right, if you had control, right, hypothetically, if you had control of your life, which we all know that when you take action and responsibility, you get that control, are your reasons and the justifications and all the things you're wondering about, oh, I got to pay this, I don't got to do that, I got to pay rent, I got to do this. I'm not old enough. I'm not this and I'm not this and I'm not that. all those reasons, which you ask a random person on the street. And what I did in my mind is I said, okay, let me stop asking, like in that,
Starting point is 00:31:01 let me stop saying what was it if it was a random person on the street. Let me say, what if it was someone I really looked up to? What if it was someone admired? Would they say that those reasons are still justified? So are you like what you want to do with your life? This is what was so difficult for me because it was a burning passion for me. Like I want to create my life the way I want it. I think a lot of people say they do.
Starting point is 00:31:23 And they're comfortable where they are. And there's a payoff from complaining, right? Because then you get to be with other people at the bottom of the mountain, always saying something could be somewhere else. So it's kind of direct. You know, if that's like bringing up something in someone, then I would just take a look, you know, if you're listening to this, just like, is there a truthful element?
Starting point is 00:31:44 Because I do know one thing. If something like kind of frustrates you or confronts you, it wouldn't confront you, Brandon, if I said your beard wasn't the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Because you know that's true. I know it. I got this. If you had issue with it, right?
Starting point is 00:32:00 Or if you were insecure about it, then it might confront something. Yes. So are your dreams like greater to you than your reasoned justifications? Yeah. That's what I would say. That's what I'm where I noticed to show up when people say don't judge me. I don't want to be judged.
Starting point is 00:32:16 But we only referred to that when someone saying something, we don't want to hear. I've never heard someone say, wow, you're really handsome and someone go, don't you dare judge me. Who are you to tell me that? But if it's, you look ugly today, that might come out. Yeah. And it kind of ties into the extreme ownership stuff we talk about, where if you're only willing to accept what makes you feel good and not what makes you feel bad, you're never going to improve. And that's what that's what made me think of that as you were talking, because the answers for what most of us need to be more successful are all around us. People are trying to tell us it. The universe is trying to tell us that. And we are the ones who don't want to
Starting point is 00:32:51 hear it. It's really us that gets the way of our own success. And you hit a very good point there, Will, when you said, it's because we take comfort in making excuses. We don't actually want to be successful. We want someone to give us permission to not be successful because that's easier. If you guys want to hear more about that whole idea of extreme ownership that was on show 365, we did with Chaco. Well, I realize we haven't actually asked you what you're doing as to as we've been listening to you, tell us how you did it. Can you give us an overview of the businesses that you're running, how many deals you're doing, where are you making your money?
Starting point is 00:33:20 Yeah, oh no, you call my bluff. It's time for me to go. I got this far. No, so since July, I mean, it's like that when I told you, like the $30,000, I would say that's their first deal. From then until now, use some closings this week and next week.
Starting point is 00:33:35 I got my pipeline up here. 75 deals. Wow. $770,401. $0.601.6 in collected assignment. fees. Wow. Wow, that's crazy. How many deals?
Starting point is 00:33:50 70. That's crazy. 75. 75 deals. And those are wholesale deals? Any of those flips? Any of those rentals? Are those primarily wholesaling?
Starting point is 00:33:58 Yeah. So I've never actually flipped a house. Yeah. That's not a bad thing. I either wholesale or I'll take it down creatively myself. So those are just wholesale deals. That doesn't include I own nine units that I've bought creatively financed. They're subject to owner financing.
Starting point is 00:34:15 And then I think there's one. that I bird. I guess, did that? Does it kind of? Maybe I did like light paint to it. On your subject to deals, did you run into any trouble with the title company actually? How did you get around that? Because I've heard people say the title companies don't want to do subject two deals anymore.
Starting point is 00:34:31 Yeah. So I think that's a great intro is I went through like four different title companies. And my team, we do not like when we have to use another title company. Because I sat down after having like a, you know, a terrible experience with our first one. I'm just being like so frustrated. I sat down and I found a title company that was referred to me by a friend where the two brothers are our Marines or ex-marines. And I basically sat down with them across from a desk and just drill them with questions. What are you doing this case? What do you do in this case? What do you do in this case? Basically just my like list of things that used to frustrate me.
Starting point is 00:35:05 And it was night and day to me. And I was asked, what are you doing this case? I found a title company that wanted to work with me and that they were knowledgeable and that they were able to provide the things that we were looking for. That's my answer to that. I found a title company that could do it, knew how to do it, has done it before, and did it the right way consistently. That's cool.
Starting point is 00:35:28 That advice right there is like solid, not just with title companies, but with agents, with attorneys, with whatever. Like there's usually somebody, I mean, unless you're trying to do something completely illegal, but like, and even then,
Starting point is 00:35:38 I'm sure that this advice applies. But there's always somebody willing to do it. There's always somebody who, and a lot of times people say, we don't do that. It's because they just haven't done it in the past and they don't want to learn how to do it. And so they just don't do it.
Starting point is 00:35:51 And so if you ask around enough, again, the same thing applies are lenders, right? Oh, yeah, we can't get you a loan. You haven't had a job for two years. Go to the next lender.
Starting point is 00:35:59 Yeah, we can't get you alone. You haven't had the same job for two years. Next lender. Oh, yeah, we actually have a program for people who can, who have less than two years at the job. Great. Right.
Starting point is 00:36:07 But the other banks will tell you, no, it's not possible. They won't tell you to go to another bank. Those will say it's not possible. And so like never believe what like a bank says or like when they're talking about in generalities. Like yeah, their program might not do it. But those people are so like narrow minded in every industry that they assume that the entire industry believes what they believe rather than believing that there's other options out there.
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Starting point is 00:38:17 and even loss of rental income. Now is the perfect time to review your rates and coverage. Get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com slash landlord insurance. Steadily, landlord insurance designed for the modern investor. So 75 deals in a year and you're 20 years old, which is... A year and a half. A year and a half, okay, in the first year and a half, at 20 years old, which is crazy, I want to go into the nitty-gritty how-to because the people listen to the show are like, you know, they might be 20, it might be 30, might be 50, but they're like, I want to make $700,000 in assignment fees.
Starting point is 00:38:50 But before we get there, I want to go in the nitty-gritty, how you're doing it, what you're doing for lead, Jen, who answers the phone calls, what your team looks like? I want to go through all that. But first, what the heck is wholesaling? For those people who have never heard the term before, let's get on the same page as well, how are you making money without flipping these houses without owning them as rentals. What does that mean? Yeah, 100%. So in a distilled version, basically, the theory of it is that someone has a property that either they inherited it or it needs a ton of work or there's some emotional like
Starting point is 00:39:21 disattachment to it, like someone died. They just don't want to deal with it. That they are willing to trade a slice of their equity in that property for the speed and convenience of being able to sell it quickly and hassle-free. So wholesaling and being a wholesaler is the opportunity to go in and have authentic communication to find out what's important to someone, not try and tell someone what they need, not try and trick them as to what their property's worth. We only ask questions, right? And it's say it's contracting a property with a purchase and sale agreement and then either assigning it to an end buyer who's going to be in a flipper who's going to be a buy-in holder, who's going to be one of maybe someone more of the sophisticated people in the market who has
Starting point is 00:40:06 their own cash or closing on it yourself and then turning around and reselling it. Wholesailing is just the exit strategy. What blew my mind the first 12 months is that here's like the biggest thing. This is the thing I really want to say. I listen to 150 the podcast, right? And I was taking notes on each one. Okay. And I was writing down all the things that everyone had and what they were still looking for. So they had money, they had network, they had connections, they had track record, they had all that stuff. They weathered the oh wait recession. And there was one thing that still was the bottleneck for every single guest you guys had on here. And it was their deal flow. It was the ability to get good discounted deals into their pipeline system. And so what I realized is,
Starting point is 00:40:53 wow, if I can build a business just around that, I know I can. do this because it's not a function of having money. It's not a function of having a network. It's not a function of having a track record because those guys have those things and they still need this. So I knew right away if it's terms of value proposition, finding the deal. And wholesaling is simply the way to then sell the deal, take some of those funds, put it back into marketing and build your database. It's so good. Here's why this is so important. I want everyone to understand this. We talked to Cal Newport, I don't know, like a year ago on the podcast here. And he wrote a couple my favorite books. One's called So Good They Can't Ignore You. And in that book, he makes this point
Starting point is 00:41:33 that if you want true financial success and freedom and all that, like, it's not about finding some gimmick way to like, you know, sell some random product that you get lucky. And like, I mean, yeah, some people have gotten lucky and made money that way. But if you really want success in life, develop rare and valuable skills. Like what in the marketplace is rare and valuable? And in real estate, the most rare and valuable skill a person can have is finding deals. Like, that's it today. Now, in 2012, that might have been different. The rare and valuable skill then was being able to finance deals. But today, it's how do you find good deals? And if you would just devote your time and effort to that, you will never struggle in this, in this market cycle. You're not going to ever
Starting point is 00:42:15 have a problem because there's a million people out there who want a deal. And there's like 1% of them that have the patience, endurance mindset to go out and actually do that to go find a good deal. So it sounds like that's what you did is you're like, hey, I'm going to go and learn how to build deal flow. Is that right? Because that's it. There's really no other part of the business. Yeah. Right.
Starting point is 00:42:35 I mean, you could say like here's all the different things. And even still, as you scale up into multifamily, it's still just deal flow. It starts. In real estate, it starts with an opportunity. You don't have an opportunity. You're not going to be doing legal. You're not going to be doing accounting. You're not going to be doing finance.
Starting point is 00:42:50 you can't finance nothing. You can't go get a loan from a bank on a nothing burger deal. Start with a deal, and then you can get a loan from whoever the heck you want because it's such a good deal. Yeah, I always make that point that the better deal you have, the easier is the finance, right?
Starting point is 00:43:05 I mean, imagine, like, I have a million-dollar house. I'm going to sell to you for 20 grand. If you don't have 20 grand, I'm guessing you'll find a way to come up with 20 grand. You'll figure something out because you can make a million dollars on it. Like, ever, nobody has a problem thinking of a creative way to buy a house for 20 grand. That's worth a million.
Starting point is 00:43:19 If you're trying to buy a million dollar house for a million two, you're never going to get a loan in that because why would you overpay? That's stupid. So the better deal you have, the easier finance thing, which goes back at the end, the most rare and valuable skill you can have in real estate is finding good deals because that makes everything else easier. That is your one thing. And that's what wholesale is kind of fun.
Starting point is 00:43:36 It's also important to point out that that is a principle that works for all of business. This isn't just real estate. If you can get your brain to think that way, you'll be very successful. If you are going to company and you're the person who greets people that walk in the front door, and you get them a cup of coffee and you go tell someone else your lead is here. You are valuable. The company probably wouldn't work well without you. You are not as valuable as the lead generator who got someone to get that person to come in
Starting point is 00:44:01 for the appointment to possibly spend money. And the principle there is that finding opportunity, generating business is the most valuable thing you can do in any company, in any business that there is. And if you control that, everybody works for you because they all need what you have. You have the opportunity. You have the revenue. they will play a piece in this puzzle to help you to do it. If you start off saying, well, I really want to learn how to manage properties
Starting point is 00:44:25 or I really want to know how to do a rehab. That's cool. It's not the most important part. You're going to end up working for the person that has a deal if you get good at doing that. And I like to highlight that because if you're the person that it's the same as being a real estate agent, I have all the leads come my way. So I have opportunities to hire admin and hire buyers agents because all the opportunity comes through me because I found the lead.
Starting point is 00:44:46 I could have got really good at being a transaction. coordinator, it wouldn't have been a whole lot of value to bring to someone else. So when you're thinking of, hey, I want to get into real estate investing, the first thing you should be thinking is exactly what Will did. How do I get leads, deals, opportunity? And then everything else is a secondary problem or a tertiary problem. All right, you guys want to know how in 2020? Yeah, I do.
Starting point is 00:45:08 How are you doing it? So if you got listeners, right, you got a bunch of people spending $20, $40,000, $40,000 on direct mail. And this is like a lot of people think you have to spend a lot of money to do this. or that you need to be super intelligent. But I've gone and done the work. And this is my way of giving back. This is my value for what bigger pockets gave me.
Starting point is 00:45:26 I'm going to show you the couple pieces of technology that I use, the specific ones that I use and in conjunction with all them and a couple key players on the team. I basically spend 15 to 30 minutes per deal that we close maximum now. I live in California. My team's in Virginia. And they close and everything's smooth. then it's able to fund what I'm doing out here,
Starting point is 00:45:49 which I'll talk about later. That's cool. So November of last year, so last last year, the new year's screwing with me. I hired my first, my first employee ever. Her name's Cindy,
Starting point is 00:46:01 and she's still with me, and she's an administrative assistant because I recognize my personality type. I'm a driver. I'm going to go get her. I want to move forward. I want to only focus on that, and there's the rest of the business
Starting point is 00:46:12 that has to be cleaned up. So a lot of people think that technology is going to be the answer to everything that I can tell you because we're in it, AI is not there yet. You can't have intelligent systems yet. What I have done is I don't think I use any of the technology I'm going to talk about as it's intended to be used.
Starting point is 00:46:30 I use it for its core component, what it does best at, and it plugs into the rest of my system so that it's simple. Three rules, right? Keep it simple, stupid, focus on the one thing, and abide by the 80-20 rule. Every single time, always. 80% of cold callers in office are only going to drink 20% of the revenue.
Starting point is 00:46:50 I read this in like I listened to 8020 rules of like sales and marketing. Yeah, so good. And I was working out of the time and I was listening to it. And I think I just like dropped the weights when they said this line. When it was like inside 8020, there's another 80, 20. 4% of what you do generate 64% of your total results. And that's with cars on the road and sap in the trees or anywhere else you look in the universe. So I use the same thing in technology.
Starting point is 00:47:17 I don't like big fancy systems. I don't like things that are like, oh, and here's all the features, right? When it comes to the operations, I want streamlined and I want simple, and I want it be able to be easy so I can train the next person on how to do it. So let's start with lead gen. LeadGen is what the methods we're using right now are text message, ringless voicemails, and mail to targeted lists. that is not new to most people hearing here.
Starting point is 00:47:47 I'm going to share the specific companies that I use. But moreover, I'm going to kind of let that there right now, just to show you that I'm doing this using the same thing everyone else is doing, and it's not just a function of lead gen, but it's a couple pieces together. Legion comes in. Now, I'm a big believer, and I'm a practical person, and I like to optimize things. I don't think a lead has slipped through our cracks in the last 12 months. since we got these systems up and running.
Starting point is 00:48:16 The key to this business is building a system that either you're using a CRM or whatever you're using, that nothing slips through the cracks and that you are on and aggressive with a flow-up on each and every single lead that comes in. Because if you don't, you're basically paying an extremely high water bill, right, to get that water flowing for those leads.
Starting point is 00:48:41 You're paying all this, $20, $40,000, $40,000, a month. And then it's going into a bucket that's got a big hole in the bottom. And why can I not get deals? But most people, most people, right, they started with construction and then they need a legion. So they had their construction business and then they needed to add legion. So they were like, okay, we don't have the time. We don't have the system set up. Let's just see if it's a lead or not when it comes in and then either buy it or don't buy it and get on to the next one. The key here is build a bucket and tape all the holes and having someone manage it so that no lead escapes. Unless their house has sold or they've explicitly asked us to stop calling, they are in there and they're going to get followed up with every day until we reach them,
Starting point is 00:49:28 every couple days after we reach them every week, every month, every three months, every six months. So the system that I use, I'm going to give a big shout out to these guys, because they originally had it on Podio. And Podio has all these different things that you've got to configure. And they built their standalone system that is really good at some things and really kind of buggy at some other things. But the one thing it could do is track those leads. And it had simple, it didn't have any of the fluff.
Starting point is 00:49:54 It just had, here's the notes, here's exactly on, here's a stage of the lead, and here's who is assigned to on the team. That's investor fuse. Investor fuse to 0.0. And what I was actually, I reached out to them and told them to come on here. For me, this is just about sharing the tech. that I use. I could share my screen right now and show you our thing. So investor views, leads come in. It's not going to work. It's not going to generate leads. They're different silo
Starting point is 00:50:17 to the business. Now, we have our specific technology we use for the league generation to get them in the bucket. Because here's one thing to note, no technology, again, right now is going to be able to follow up with and nurture your leads to the extent that are well-trained and hungry and empathetic acquisition manager can. I'm not saying that technology is not possible in the future. I'm just saying it doesn't exist right now. And trying to use automated follow-up campaigns, that's not what I'm about. I'm about getting on the phone and talking to people. So the systems works. I've got the lead gen things. The text message one is called lead Sherpa. We actually just started using them a couple weeks ago. It's like PCPA compliant text messaging. And what we'll go through and do is we'll get a
Starting point is 00:51:06 courthouse list. I don't want a text message. I don't want to pay 12 cents per skip trace for a list of 100,000, but we'll go through and we'll get the specific list and then we'll skip through their system and text. And I think there's like the numbers that they're showing, like 93% of people responding, like text message, you see some influencers like Gary Vee. That's where they're moving to. That's where it's going. So that has been worked for us because you either get a yes or no right away. And if it's a yes, then you have a conversation and it's it's there. You know, it's right there at their phone. They just text, yeah, I'm interested. What can you offer? Yeah, what does your text, what does a text say? Yeah, so we, what's cool is you
Starting point is 00:51:42 basically can have like some like pre-form filled ones. I believe I have my acquisition manager handle it. But it's basically like, hey, this is Tyler. And I was, I was looking for Brandon. And I wanted to call to see, or I wanted to shoot you a quick text here to see if you might consider an offer on your property at one, two, three main street in Hawaii. Right. That's it. And they either say yes or no. If no, if no, it automatically takes them off the list. I think their system has intelligence to do that. If yes, they're like, well, yeah, well, it's your offer.
Starting point is 00:52:09 Then just quick qualification. Okay, you know, talking about the rehab, telling about that all through text. Yeah. So that has been working very well. And I don't have the exact numbers like costs per lead. Because again, I'm like so like forward. I'm like, I want to see how many leads we're doing,
Starting point is 00:52:22 our deals we're doing per month. But it's not comparing to anything else right now in the market. Yeah. That's cool. I like that you're pointing out that tech is not replacing the job of a human, but it is enabling you to do it better. I see a lot of people that are like, hey, David, I'm working on this platform.
Starting point is 00:52:39 It's going to scrub the internet for leads. It's going to analyze the lead for you. It's going to talk to the seller. It's going to put it under contract. It's going to arrange everything. And you're just going to sit at home with a Mai Tai in your hand and do nothing. And then you're going to get titled to a property. And I just think, like, it's almost annoying that you're looking for an answer like that
Starting point is 00:52:54 because it will never work. The seller of the property is not going to sell something to a bot that they don't know. Now, you can use technology to make a lot. to make it easier for you to do that job. Like what you're pre-screening people, you're gathering information, what's the rehab going to be so that you can then look at it
Starting point is 00:53:10 and then you have the phone call and you form a relationship with that person to get the property. That is the way that people should be looking at how to use tech. It's to enhance what they're doing. It's not to replace the actual work you still have to do.
Starting point is 00:53:24 100%. And it allows you to scale. Whenever I would look at an opportunity, I'm looking at scale. Okay, you can do it one. how scalable is flipping houses. I got into so many arguments in the beginning, right? Because I would say debates, not really arguments.
Starting point is 00:53:39 Well, you know, with people at Rias. And basically what it's come down to in kind of my first question now is, well, what are your goals, right? Because if your goals are, you know, you want to flip 100 houses, then obviously you got to flip 100 houses. But if your goals are, how do you build a business that brings you $20,000, $30,000 a month? You don't have a ton of capital tied into it.
Starting point is 00:53:57 Your overall risk is very low and it's kind of streamlined and you can adapt quicker. then at scale, I think wholesaling wins. I think wholesaling wins because of the lack of infrastructure that you need. You need infrastructure for flipping houses. You need those contractors. You need all that money. You don't need any of that for wholesaling.
Starting point is 00:54:18 And people could not believe how much money I'd be like leaving on the table. Like we wholesaled 75 deals. Do you know what that would be if I, like for seven, I'd probably, probably like three or four million in revenue if I flipped to myself. but if I flipped it myself, I probably would have done 12 or 15. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:54:38 I would have done 77. The cool thing about that is you're just really like, you're focusing on your strength, which is, you know, in this case, Legion, like you're just doing Legion. Because otherwise if you're going to flip, and I love flipping houses, but like when I'm flipping houses,
Starting point is 00:54:51 I got to be good at Legion. I've got to be good at the follow up, at closing, the title and escrow stuff, and then the contractor stuff. And then the selling stuff and get that all that. Like, I have to be good at everything. And so as wholesaling, you've got to understand everything because you can't just go and give a crap deal to somebody.
Starting point is 00:55:05 You got to understand what makes a deal. But you don't have to know how to manage a contractor. You don't have to know how to keep things on budget and on time. Now, I will say this, like just because we like to give this warning when we're talking about wholesaling, is that there are some states that specifically Ohio has had some issues in Florida. And there are probably others that have been like, no, you can't wholesale in the state.
Starting point is 00:55:24 You can only, unless you have a real estate license. And there's other some legalities in different areas. So just make sure you guys, you know, do your homework, do it correctly. do it legally and don't do anything that's going to get you in trouble. But if you can be the person to find good deals, it's a valuable skill. And here's kind of like in terms of job security, right? People always have a problem with their house. People will always inherit a house that they don't want. You know what I mean? Most millennials are living in cities now. What are they going to do with the house they inherited from the grand princess in middle of Kansas and they live in Denver? What are they going to
Starting point is 00:55:54 do with it? You think they're going to go learn how to flip a house and flip it? No, they're going to want sell it. So there's always a deal. So even if a assignment, of contracts get banned, what's to stop you from just be able to close on it and list on the MLS? Give them the speed and convenience that wholesaling would and still turn around and sell it. Now you need to get funds. I mean, every industry adapts, but people are never going to stop having issues with their houses, bottom line.
Starting point is 00:56:20 Yeah, agreed. Because what a wholesaler does is they solve problems. Now, where the legality issue comes from is people are saying, well, you're practicing real estate without a license. and you're engaging in brokering because that's what an agent does is in between and there's a lot less regulation. So I think at wholesale and we're going to see more and more rules,
Starting point is 00:56:39 not so they outline it, but more rules and guidelines and oversight because it's just been kind of a wild west thing in the past. It'll be defined more in the future. Yeah, and that will eventually probably happen. But right now it's still a little bit wild west. That said, you shouldn't treat it as like a wild west thing. I mean, treat it like a business like you clearly are, Will. And, you know.
Starting point is 00:56:57 And one, you know, on top of that, I got, I got my buddy Warren over there on the shelf, Warren Buffett. I read that book when I was like 16. I did not understand half of it. He has a famous quote, right? When everybody's getting in, it's time to get out. When everybody's getting out, it's time to get in. And just by the pure amount of Facebook messages and people that are just like, hey, I know, I want to get started, I want to get started.
Starting point is 00:57:21 It's economics. The more people, right, that tighter the deals, the more people that get into it that don't know what they're doing, that didn't. consultant attorney that screw some seller over big time, maybe even unintentionally, and that's where laws come in. Right. So it's kind of, that's the direction that it's heading, kind of like everything, is for regulation. This wholesaling, I mean, it really didn't exist before like 2010, right? And like at the scale it is now. Yeah. As far as I believe. But now it's, it's an incredible opportunity. Like I seriously feel like to go back, if you're starting with no
Starting point is 00:57:55 network, no connections, but you've got hustle and you can talk to people and you can think of at least systems oriented or partner with someone who can think with systems, there is more than enough technology and you're not going to be able to find a better wealth generator in a way to get into the real estate business and learn what's up than to start wholesale business and fail forward and fail fast and fail so many times until you get to the point where I want to fail more than anyone else in any room. Like, I want to have failed, right? At 20, I want to be able to fail more than the guy who's 60 there in the room. Yeah. Because that's, that's just traction. I've said it many times before, you take away those 77 deals, right? Take away, take away all that. Take away all
Starting point is 00:58:37 properties that I own. Six months later, I'd have it all back and more because I've got the lesson. And no market crash, nothing, no person can take away the lessons that I've learned and the knowledge about how to put this thing together and what's working. So for me, you know, I'm going on to two different ventures now with it, right, when it comes to scalability, but this has been the greatest stepping stone. But it's my fallback. I know that at any point in my life, say everything goes south, right? Hopefully it doesn't.
Starting point is 00:59:12 So long as I'm not incapacitated, you can drop me off at any major metropolitan area in the country. and I will be able to have it back up and running in two to three months. That's security to me. That's like what most people rely on a diploma for. That's why I said, I'd rather rely on that than a piece of paper that's going to become worth less and less as the years go on, my personal opinion. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, you know, earlier we talked about this, I gave the analogy with the bridge building, right?
Starting point is 00:59:42 Building bridges across the island and people do too many things. Now, you built up this wholesaling business, and you're kind of the vision. visionary, you use a term from the book, Traction. Like, you're the visionary, you're guiding the vision. You hired some people. So now you have a team of people, I'm assuming, that's working this business for you, correct? So what, go ahead, yeah. Yeah, what's your team look like today?
Starting point is 01:00:02 Yeah, I learned a valuable lesson last year. And this is one I never thought learned, is that it is possible to grow out of scarcity. What do you mean? Let that sit in, because most people contract out of scarcity, right? And you do less. For me, it was June. and I was moving out here to California to build our tech startup, and I knew that we'd have more and more expenses
Starting point is 01:00:24 and that I wasn't going to have enough money. The word enough, like not enough, big indicator scarcity. So I started talking people and we got super aggressive because we've had things working in Virginia for a long time. And I opened up in Baltimore, and I opened up in Houston, and opened up in Dallas and opened up in Florida, all simultaneously, all pretty much with new guys who I thought were like me who would be able to figure it out.
Starting point is 01:00:46 Wow, was that a lesson learned? because I basically quintupled my marketing costs and the people that I had in place in Virginia, I was able to train them hands on, hey, here's what you do. But from afar and five at a time, I found my time getting sucked up into like disputes. So, wow, this isn't working here.
Starting point is 01:01:04 He said this about this person, and we completely took our eye off the ball. I learned that lesson last summer, and it was costly. It was very, very costly. It spent all that. It wasn't just the funds. It doesn't cost them much to start up in any new market.
Starting point is 01:01:18 my time and energy, my focus, lost. Like, I took my eye off the ball. So that's what growth out of scarcity looks like. I said, okay, I don't have enough funds right now coming in to build this thing to what I want. We need to grow more. And there were so many lessons inside of that. So scaled it all, skilled it all down.
Starting point is 01:01:39 Back to our core, like downsized in three months, downsized in three months, right? And now my entire team, it's like as lean as, can be is my one administrative assistant who was my transaction coordinator. She's my lead manager. She's everything. She's my problem solver. She's everything. She sends out the contract. She's great. Sydney. I love you. And I got one acquisition manager. I had two. Like I kind of want to go on to other things. He saw us kind of winding it down, which some people would say would be crazy. And I would probably say I'd be absolutely crazy. I'll talk about that in a second as to why,
Starting point is 01:02:14 how could I possibly be winding down something that's generating me 20 or 30,000? month, bottom line. Like, like, how in any logical world does that make sense to do? I talk to so many people. Maybe it's a good conversation. One acquisition manager, Tyler, he's the baller. And I think he was actually on your mobile home scouting team. Oh, nice. Making a lot of those people. But Tyler, here's a funny story with him, he was a fifth year at the fraternity I was in college. I was in the fraternity for one year. So I think he and I had met at like one of the alumni stuff. Spent five years learning to get an accounting degree. If there's people in college to listen to this, listen to this, spend five years to get an degree. And he met,
Starting point is 01:02:55 he sat down with me in like December going into his first winter of accounting work at like one of the one of the big four accounting firms. And I started telling him, I posted a little video based to the time about what I do. He's like, no way. You're not doing that. Because he was listening bigger pockets too. I'm like, like, yeah, dude, we're doing this many years. Like, dude, send me your bank receipts. I don't believe you. I said, I'm like, okay. I mean, I'm, I'm, fine with that. I don't think you're trying to do me any harm. I think you're just curious. I just sent him like, here's the actual overseas of closing. And he was just dumbfounded. What I like so much is his loyalty. And he was like, I'm going to finish up with my team,
Starting point is 01:03:26 you know, and then I'm going to come work with you and I'm work for you because I want to learn from you. And Tyler, he's got, you know, kind of like where Tom, very beginning, and he's got the grit to figure it out. He knows this is what he wants to do. And his dreams are bigger than his reasons. Why not? He's more justified than almost anyone else I could talk to, spent five years to get an accounting degree. Did one winter in accounting is now full-time real estate investor. And what's really cool for me is to be able to pass the torch and be able to give him the reins to kind of take it on and handle and run the business and start.
Starting point is 01:03:56 I think he allowed to this first owner finance one yesterday actually and start building his like his portfolio and working towards it himself. That's cool. You know, that's one thing we don't talk about enough about here is this idea of like, you know, yes, you can hire an assistant, you can hire a transaction coordinator, you can hire a acquisitions manager, and that's good for you, for your business to hire somebody because you can let the reins go. But we don't talk enough about it. What we're actually doing is not just providing food on someone's table, but we're equipping them to change their own life as well.
Starting point is 01:04:25 And so it's like this multiplication effect is that if we can hire people, you're not just doing it for your own good. You're doing it for their good as well. And then they're going to be able to hire people in their future when they obtain financial independence or wealth or whatever they're looking for. And so if you're on the fence about hiring somebody, I definitely would put some serious thought into working with other people and teaching them what you know and what you can what you've learned because again they're going to either they're going to help you and they're going to help themselves which is kind of cool and will mention something that's really important about Tyler well a few things I want to point out because everybody here that's listening you want to be a
Starting point is 01:04:56 Tyler that's how you get opportunity Tyler's loyal I could tell you right off the bat a lot of people or maybe even most people are not they want to come and learn what you're doing so that they can leave and go do it on their own and if you have opportunity there's always going to be people that tell you, oh, I want to do this and I want to do that. The minute it's harder than what they thought or they think that like they could go take some of your business with them. A lot of people will leave. And so when you're in Will's spot and you're picking who's the guy I'm going to give this
Starting point is 01:05:21 opportunity to, a track record of loyalty will take you very far when you're trying to get that opportunity. I don't think Brandon worries would Ryan ever leave me or screw me over. But that's not the case for a lot of people and that he's got the grit to figure it out. Tyler says, okay, how do I got to figure this stuff? out. He doesn't think it's Will's job to teach him every single scenario that he could ever come across and say, what am I supposed to do with this? And those two qualities will get you very far. I wish I had people like that that were coming to work because I'd love to be able to pour into
Starting point is 01:05:52 someone like that and help them build wealth the same way that Tyler is. 100%. And here's the litmus test, litmus test, right? I wanted him to come right over. I want to come over in January. And he said no. He said no. He was like, no, I don't want to, you know, I got to finish from my team. I was really pushing him because I wanted him to join. And the flip side of that coin was I realized that there was a loyalty there that would be so tremendously valued like in the future and that, okay, it was actually best. All right, hold off. You know, let's just set it and let's re-at convene the conversation in the spring, which is what happened. So if you're looking to hire the person, a lot of people put a job post on Indeed. Those are people that are looking for work.
Starting point is 01:06:32 I mean, it's one of the biggest things. It's not, I want to say poaching, but you share, right? That's because I posted a video. I barely ever post on social media. For a millennial, I really got to get better at that. Because every single time I do, you know, something good comes of it. If you didn't see that video, it wouldn't have happened. Maybe I wouldn't be in business. He's been a core component of it. I saw that video and said, I want to come to you, but here are the things that I need to do first for my team back here. Yeah, that's neat. That's neat. So to go to the bridge building thing one more time, this idea of like people built too many bridges. You built one bridge. And then the cool thing is you hired someone else to build that bridge. That's the way that you have multiple
Starting point is 01:07:09 bridges. People talk about multiple streams of income. I actually think it's a horrible idea generally to try to build multiple streams of income. What that means is you're building multiple bridges. The way to do it, though, is you build a bridge and either you make it or you hire someone else to finish that bridge and build it for you. So it sounds like you've got somebody else building your bridge for you now. That one's going. And now you decided to move to California and do a startup. I'm just curious. I know I've seen the word AI. It's on the back behind you and you mentioned earlier. What are you doing right now with artificial intelligence? Yeah. So to take away back, I always knew, just like listening to how cool. I feel like I'm in like the era before the internet,
Starting point is 01:07:45 right? I's like, okay, when this internet thing comes across here is going to be all the functionality and things that it can do. I mean, you know, I'm seeing the studies and the use cases and the papers of what AI can do. I just knew. It was like science fiction. I just knew that's what I want to do something like that with my life. And I was, you know, coming into a turn 20 last June. So I had this blind spot. So what do I really want to do? And I got to tell you, that blind spot got cleared through a conversation that lasted from 630 p.m. to 5 a.m. in a hot tub in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico at the end of a business mastermind. We were having super high-level conversations. And it was, it was hard. I was so confronted because I built in this real estate and building so much
Starting point is 01:08:29 traction. And I was like, wow, here's another bridge. You know, the fog cleared and I saw the next bridge to be built. And I realized that, like, I've got goals. Like, it's like a 2,000 piece Lego Saturn 5 behind me. Like, one of my goals is to colonize Titan by 2050, which is Saturn's largest moon. Their goal is, you know, just like kind of pioneer space travel. That stuff. It just so exciting to me.
Starting point is 01:08:54 It's like, you know, moving humanity forward. How am I going to do that? How many single families do I need to trade in, right, for a rocket ship? I don't know the conversion right there, but it's not good. And that wasn't for me. So the big thing is I think it starts with financial freedom. You get financial freedom, right? And then you get like creative freedom or I would say like kind of thought freedom,
Starting point is 01:09:19 which is you've been able to do the self-development work to get control of your emotions and be able to forge the beliefs and tear down the ones that you don't want. And then it comes up to this thing called creative freedom, which is pretty much your thoughts, you have the ability to, manifest them into the world. You see a problem. You can architect a solution and build it. And that's what we're trying to do right now in AI. And the first vertical we're going into our base, our mission is remodeling customer service through conversational artificial intelligence. So, you know, when you call your bank and your healthcare provider and your insurance company,
Starting point is 01:09:53 you got a wait on hold. You want to do that. You know, with all these, all these applications, you won't have to do, wait, it's like such a glaring problem that, no one's working on. And we were sitting here a couple weeks ago. And we didn't know exactly the first vertical we're going into because we're building the tech. And I'm getting, it's like 2 a.m.
Starting point is 01:10:12 in our office. We're really having a think tank session. I'm getting frosted flakes from like someone who also sublets this office space. And they like to sell real estate software. And the thought hit me. Real estate, property management. We're solving customer servants. Here's how we can do this.
Starting point is 01:10:28 We can do this. So what we're actually building now is a technology. that allows property managers to no longer be in the trenches, but to be like in the skybox seats of their business. So our AI automatically handles all the communication between vendors, owners, tenants, the logistical scheduling, the follow up on the confirmations, everything like that. We had our first like kind of meeting with one person actually leases us this space to get feedback,
Starting point is 01:10:56 which is like, can you get it to automatically integrate with mail and send them three-day notices? And all these like problems. that before we're just, I got to hire someone to do that. I do that. Or it's like now a door has been open to be able to come in and give a solution because we've got the little puzzle piece, which is through text messaging and later it's going to be voice, we're able to effectively communicate and have a conversation
Starting point is 01:11:20 because we take into account context in it, which is not something that no other tech company is doing. And property management is one that is near and dear to my hearts because I don't think I've pulled more hair out over. the simplest things, like going back and forth on my property manager as the owner for three days playing phone tag, trying to get a report. Yeah. Trying to get an answer. And the more people would talk to, like real estate only works. If you're holding real estate, if you don't have property management or a sufficient system in place, it's not going to work. You're not going to get the
Starting point is 01:11:52 returns that you're saying. It's just going to be a mess. It's the ugly duckling of real estate, which is it's one of the most challenging businesses I feel in this vertical. and we're bringing what we can to say, what if we took the time-intensive part that's been out of your control up to this point, and now it became in your control, which is the scheduling. That's cool.
Starting point is 01:12:16 What's the company going to be called? What's it called? So it's called Achieve Intelligent Technologies, Inc. Okay. With that, let's move on to a segment of the show that I love near and dear to my heart. It's the deal deep dive. All right, Will, so this is a part,
Starting point is 01:12:39 of the show where we dive deep into one real estate deal that you've done and just kind of get the nitty-gritty details on it. So you got something in mind that we can pick apart? Oh yeah. I got a good one. All right. Awesome. So first of all, let's start with this question. What kind of property is it and where's it located? So this is a single family brick ranch located in Virginia Beach. It's like four bedrooms, three baths, like 3,000 square feet. Okay. Number two. How did you find that deal? We found that deal. I think that came through our RVM marketing.
Starting point is 01:13:11 We had a couple going at the time. Yeah, ringless voicemails. Cool. Okay. How much was the problem? Like, how much did they want? Then would you end up paying for it? Remember?
Starting point is 01:13:20 Yeah. So it's an interesting. There's a couple really good nuggets in here because I almost didn't do this deal because the guy comes in. He says, hey, the guy I'm speaking to, he lives in Kentucky. You know, his sister was living in the house and the mom had just passed. He's like, I know the house is trashed and we just got to sell it. So we're having a show in at this time, go out there, you know, and take a look and let me know he can offer.
Starting point is 01:13:42 I was like, oh, man, you know, bidding wars, people are kind of paying some dumb prices in this, in this market. I don't think there's to be something. But I go out there. And it was the first property actually went out there with Sydney. And she's taking pictures and I'm walking around. And there's like five other companies out there walking through a bunch of people, you know, taking pictures, taking notes just like we are. It's kind of awkward as, you know, showing sellers usually are. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:14:04 with when there's multiple people. And pretty much, I don't think he had an initial asking price, but I call him back the next day after it. And there was, like I said, five of the people. And I almost didn't call him back. I almost deleted this lead because, like, there's no way I'm going to get it. There was so many people out there. I recognize some of them.
Starting point is 01:14:22 They're at the Rias. And I call them, you know, but the one thing I focused on up to it because I knew I was going to be in a bidding war is how do I build the best level of rapport with this person? that I've ever built in my entire life. Let me be their best friend. Let me give him this authentic, just all the way. And it just felt natural to me.
Starting point is 01:14:41 It wasn't like I didn't have to fake it. I'm just going to be this person's best friend. So I talked to him, and he sounds a little sad on the phone. I'm like, you know, what's going on? And he's like, you know, they came back. They offered us 195. I think my, I was willing to kind of offer like in the mid-toes, but he was like, one-95.
Starting point is 01:15:00 It's like, wow, that's really low. Like, for me, that's really low. hello, they offer you that? I was like, yeah, it's like, have you gotten any other offers? No, no one else has called me back. Five companies went out there. No one, no one really made him offers. It's like, okay, so, well, let me ask you. Like, I mean, you probably ran this across, you know, your brothers and sisters. What do you guys want? What would you be willing to let it go for? He said like, like, 225. So it's like, okay, 225. All right, yeah, that, let me just, let me just rerun our numbers, check. I'm pretty sure that could work. And we could probably do that.
Starting point is 01:15:30 So we lock it up with them at 225. A week later, Because that's kind of how we do it with our disposition, a little quick tip, is we have our buyers list. And then we basically hold a showing for properties for buyers, unless it's like vacant and there's a lockbox and there's nothing there. Like inside of that, someone could possibly steal because we've had issues with that before. But we have the showing and we have like eight people line up. And this is this is prime real estate. A prime like Kempstville neighborhood of Virginia Beach. And it's just like the ideal flip property.
Starting point is 01:16:00 You need a ton of work and had the capacity to be super beautiful in a, in a neighborhood. where homes were selling 350,000, like 450,000. So we have this showing. People come and go and people are kind of giving me figures. I'm kind of like, well, you know, well, I don't know. Here's the biggest thing. You know, we talk about the things that's like, you know, kind of like, you know, being afraid of rejection.
Starting point is 01:16:23 So many people, like as buyers just don't give offers, I guess because they don't know what they're doing or they don't feel that offers going to good enough. Yeah. And that's reflect badly somehow on them. So like most people, and I think, and I talked to and I, we have people that come out to multiple of our properties. They just never give an offer. They never throw their hat in the ring to say, okay, what is it?
Starting point is 01:16:43 Because I'm usually pretty flexible on our prices, right? I'm more about getting this deal done to get to the next. So this guy got, didn't get that many offers. And we had to like track down these eight people. And I remember, I was back like, we had a two bedroom apartment. The other guy had moved out. So I was using the other bedroom as an office. And she's like, hey, I just got an email back from Jim.
Starting point is 01:17:02 him was a guy who was like kind of kind of like big time in the area and he says you know you guys are in luck i'm flipping a property right around the corner of the other street and i'll love to take down two at the same time my offer right so i have it at 225 a thousand dollars over any other offer up to 281,000 i didn't even know how much that was i couldn't do the math but i got a sick feeling in my stomach and i was like what the heck Because it was just completely unexpected because from our buyers, we'd also gotten cash offers of 205 and 235 and 255. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Starting point is 01:17:44 He was like so above and beyond. That's huge. And I think like 270, like, 270, like you got this deal. And he says, okay, okay, deal. And I basically walk. And I walked to subway and I clue in everyone, all the context that I have at the title company, like my marketing partner at the time, everyone would say like, this, I am going to be like mother, like the mother bird here and protect this thing like it's my baby bird. Good thing I said that because for the issues that were to come down the line with getting it to actually close, so many lessons in it.
Starting point is 01:18:19 It was absolutely necessary. So we got everyone on board. We started things. I was like, okay, we're going to be absolutely, you know, seamless on this. They were on the title search, right? A week later. And I got an email back saying, you know, hey, Will, I got some interesting news here. turns out one of the daughters has a $120,000 judgment attached.
Starting point is 01:18:39 Oh, no. $120,000 judgment. I don't know what that means. And like, well, we don't know. It's kind of, you know, biggest we got to draw the dots. It was the most complicated title that I've ever had because it was like they had to connect with like all these different hospitals and this and this and this. I think it was like four weeks later of drawing thoughts and connections and fact
Starting point is 01:19:01 finding. And I remember. I was actually like skiing with my family last February. And I finally got the email like the clear to close after going through all that because they'd finally connected that the like bankruptcy she had filed in like 2001, you know, covered or whatever negated the judgment on it and that it wasn't. Because I mean, $100,000 like that's a pill to swallow. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 01:19:24 You're taken out of a deduction. I think they owed like $40,000 or $50,000. So they had a bunch of equity. They wouldn't have had it, you know, before. So it was just. just, I would say on that perseverance because there are so many things. I got a $53,000 deal here on the line. And when people aren't picking up my calls, when things aren't that, I'm showing up to the title of companies in person in the office saying what's going on. I put everything else on hold,
Starting point is 01:19:49 right? Back to your one thing. What's your most important priority? It was not about getting new leads. It was not about how do I get other deals or solve the other problems? How do I solve the immediate task here? Because if I can solve this one, this is the one that's going to have the biggest payoff and move us forward. That's cool. That's cool. All right. Well, I covered a lot of the kind of the last few. How do you, it was a wholesale deal. So you didn't have to early fund it, right? Yeah. Okay. I assigned it. Yeah. Perfect. And then the rest of the what did you do with it? We know that. You wholesale that. What was the outcome? You kind of talked about that. So what was the final profit then that you actually walked away with? So at the time, I was still in a 50-50 marketing agreement. So I walked away
Starting point is 01:20:27 with the check for like 26,000 from the 53,000, like 26,500, which to me at the time, I did not nearly have the overhead out of your now. That was, that was completely like game changing. Yeah. I've been doing like, you know, $4,000, $7,000, you know, $8,000. And for that one, but it's, it's again, it's the lessons that were learned on it that I get to keep with me. That money has been spent. Yeah. That money has been invested. But it's the lessons. No one can take those away from me. Yeah. That's awesome, man. All right. Last question, David. What did you learn from this deal?
Starting point is 01:21:01 I learned first and foremost that there is power in being open to possibilities and being willing to say, I don't know how exactly this is going to turn out, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway. Example A or Exhibit A, making the call to the guy, even though there were five other people there. I had no idea they gave one of them gave the guy. I don't know if they just didn't know what they were doing. They just gave him a super lowball offer on purpose, but I had no idea and I almost didn't call the guy. I learned that in cases of bidding wars,
Starting point is 01:21:38 probably the only reason I got that. Because here's the thing, one week later, another one of the buyers finally got back to them with an offer of $2.35,000 above. But my rapport with the guy was worth to him more than $10,000. Because I basically told them, you know that there's me some issues with this and we're going to get you through it. and I'm just going to keep you updated and posted the whole way. We're not going to bag on it, no matter, you know, kind of where we get to.
Starting point is 01:22:01 So the level of rapport that I had with him. And then not, you know, be not taking the first offer that we got. That was like 2.30. But seeing and looking around, now one of our favorite things to do is when we buy a house, see who's flipped them in the neighborhood. Because they can, if they can comp off their own property, now that almost eliminates all risk for the flipper because they knew that one and they know the floor plan and they just another one that can.
Starting point is 01:22:25 do it again. Yeah, that's cool, man. That's awesome. Well, congratulations on that one. And like you said, the lessons are more valuable than even the profit. So thank you for sharing those. And now we're going to move on to the last segment of the show. It's our famous four. All right, Will, this is the part of the show where we ask the same four questions. We ask every guest every week. Question number one, Will, favorite real estate related book? You know, I spent 18 months trying to come up with one that would be different. But I got to bring it back to basics. You guys know what's coming. Rich Dad, all the way. It's the one because it's not super technical, but it invents a possibility. That's an alternate reality to that. Maybe you might be living or you may have thought that there is a
Starting point is 01:23:12 new way to live life. And here's kind of how you might start going about it. It's poorly mindset. It juice me up. I remember reading it. That was the first book I read because it was recommended all the podcast. And I think that's where a lot of people got their start. All right. What about your favorite business book? Oh, man. My favorite business book, it's without a doubt, the one thing, because, you know, and you love it. Geometric progression. One thing is just, it applies everywhere. And whenever I'm trying to solve a problem, I actually go back, open up that book and go back with some of the principles. But one thing for sure, by Gary Keller. Okay. And how about some of your favorite hobbies?
Starting point is 01:23:50 So my hobbies, since moving out here to L.A., I really like going to the beach. I like hiking. There's some good hiking around here. I like to work out a lot. It clears my mind. And I'm going to go with a good classic. I like sleeping. Like 20-year-old hobby.
Starting point is 01:24:07 It's probably one of my favorite things. I enjoy the sleeping as well. That's awesome, man. Well, hey, all right. So let's go last question. What do you think separates successful real estate investors from all those who give up, They fail or they never get started. Yeah, so I thought about this because I know it's coming.
Starting point is 01:24:25 And I think almost if I can condense everything into it is being brutally honest with yourself about your plan A and not having a plan B. Yeah, interesting. So going all in, we talked about that. Did we talk about that? That's right. I talked about that with Josh Dorkin the other day. I was doing Josh Dorkin has a new podcast.
Starting point is 01:24:50 And we're talking about while we were watching Shark Tank and Barclan. Barbara Corkin was tearing this lady apart because she had a plan B like on Shark Tank. She was like, well, I got, you know, my parents pay for my rent. And so I don't really have any expenses. And they kind of take care of me. And she's like, I'm out. I'm not investing because you have a plan B. That's what you're kind of saying?
Starting point is 01:25:04 Yeah. And, you know, sometimes we can trick ourselves into thinking that our plan A is a good one. And then if you have a, if you don't have a good plan A and you don't have a plan B, that's a recipe for failure. That's a recipe for fire and disaster. But being brutally honest and getting brutally honest, feedback from people that you respect, send people DM on Instagram.
Starting point is 01:25:26 Hey, what do you think about this? Come pick your brain for a second. About your long-term vision. At the end of the day, right, if your plan A has you doing the processes and the actions inside of it are actions that you take
Starting point is 01:25:38 and you love doing, you really can't go wrong. If your plan A is, I want to do this and I really don't like doing this, but it's going to get me here, it's probably not going to work because like you said,
Starting point is 01:25:49 it's not about easy. It's about there's going to be, you know, trials and tribulations. But being honest with yourself to say, you know, if I only did one thing for this for my life, is this like what I would want to do or am I doing this to try and get somewhere else? That's what I would say. Good answer, man. Good answer. Well, all right. So for people that want to know more, where can they find out more about you, Will? Yeah. So I'm also going to leave some of the links to some of the tech that I put about here. And if you want to get on our newsletter and maybe because you own properties, you want your property manager to kind of take a look at our tech.
Starting point is 01:26:21 or you're a property manager yourself and you want to automate. We're going to set up a URL here. It's called aresTech.a.i. That's A-R-E-S-T-E-C-H-A-I. All throw up a couple of the links up there and put in a spot to put your email in. And then also you can follow me on Instagram and see the time that I post every six months,
Starting point is 01:26:42 and that is will. J.Brown. I'd be more than happy to answer any questions. But if you're just going to start it, we're going to ask you to go door knock 100 doors. so keep that in mind. I love that. That's so cool, man.
Starting point is 01:26:54 I'm going to start doing that too. I think when people ask me for a device, like, yeah, just go door knock 100 doors. That's cool, man. All right, well, thank you so much. It's been awesome. Really appreciate having you on the show today. So we're going to get out of here.
Starting point is 01:27:06 Of course, everyone, check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 371. You can get links to all the stuff that Will talked about there as well. And you can leave a comment there, talk to Will there. Go check all his links, his sites, and all this cool stuff he's doing. So again, thank you very much. Well, this has been awesome. Thanks. It's been a pleasure. Happy to give back.
Starting point is 01:27:26 Thanks, man. David? Yes, sir. This is David Green for Brandon the beautiful beard 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.
Starting point is 01:28:05 Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calico content, and editing is by Exodus Media. 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.
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