BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 460: From Sleeping on a Couch to Owning 20 Units (in 2 Years!) with Robert Charles & Ayoka Moss

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

If you’re listening to the BiggerPockets podcast, you know that the only way to reach financial success is to climb the corporate ladder, right? Nope! Yet, many people still believe that the only way for them to get rich is by going above and beyond for a job, only to be let go when the company is sold or merged. This is exactly what Ayoka Moss and Robert Charles thought, until they were put in a situation where entrepreneurialism and real estate was the only option. Ayoka had serious drive, especially after reading Rich Dad Poor Dad (a favorite of the BP community). Robert, on the other hand, was working as hard as he could, selling cars, breaking sales records, but once he was let go due to his company being bought out, he had open ears for Ayoka’s proposal. Ayoka and Robert decided to start wholesaling real estate, and had 6 failed deals before they finally found themselves making a profit. Once the money came in, they knew they had to do whatever it takes to reach success in real estate. Now, only a couple years later, Ayoka and Robert are living rent free, with 20 units, and 35 deals done! That’s some serious change when compared to their old W2 lifestyles. Ayoka and Robert go through how they got deals done, found mentors, and most importantly, changed mindsets to tackle what really matters. In This Episode We Cover: How real estate wholesaling works Why the corporate lifestyle doesn’t last forever for most people Understanding real estate before you jump in head first  “Un-Labelling” yourself so you can accomplish anything Balancing wholesale fees with cash flowing rental properties  Finding mentors and providing value so they trust you And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums Grant Cardone Breakfast Club: Mark Whitten Explains How Easy It Is To Build Wealth With Real Estate Linkedin Amway Hertz Ty Flip Man Taylor Shares How He's Created Multiple Millionires and Many 6 Figure Earners Real Estate Disruptors PropStream Zillow Homevestors Grant Cardone BiggerPockets Podcast 452: Landing Incredible Deals Using This “Scary” Technique with Steve Trang Steve Trang Yahoo Finance Check the full show notes here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/show460 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 460. I think that proved the proof of concept. Like, I got out the car and I just spoke to the guy and I made a couple calls. I looked up some public knowledge information on Google Zillow. And that got me $2,700. And I cannot tell you the amount of wholesale deals that we've done after that, the multifamilies that we brought, that $2,700 was probably the best check that I've ever cash. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small.

If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everyone is Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast. And I got to tell you, everybody, one of my best friends in the entire world, somebody that I just couldn't not live without is my wife. David's like, what? I was like, oh, no, but my bestie in the entire world, David Green's here to join. What's up, man? How you doing? You're not as bestie as my wife, but you're bestie second to my wife. Is that okay? I'm okay with being second to Heather,

but anybody else that I'm coming for them. They need to know. Well, welcome to the show. It's good to have you here again, you know? I miss you. It's been like a week. Thank you very much. Yes, it has. And absence makes the heart grow fonder. I'm already starting to like you a little more. It does something. Let's see. I wanted to ask you real quick, before we jump into today's amazing show, I know you're closing on some deals in Maui and you got another big deal that you're working on. Can you give everybody a quick update? Yeah, thank you for asking there. I closed on two condos in Maui where you are. And I'm really excited about both of those. They've actually gone up six figures from the time I put them in contract to when they closed

just because of the timing of and how long it took them to close, right? It was like a 12 year closing. Let's give credit to where credits do. You also went after a bunch of deals. You negotiated strongly and then you got some amazing deals like way better than I got because you're good at what you do. So it's not just luck. Well, I kind of have, I have an upper hand because I work as a real estate agent. So I know the little nuances of what to look for.

But thank you, yes, for pointing that out. And it went so good. I'm actually putting a David Green team in Hawaii right now so that they can help me find deals and help more of the people that come to us and say, Hey, how do I do what you did? I'll have a crew that I can refer them to. And I'm just big on Hawaiian real estate right now. I think we're going to see a surge.

I think the economy is going to do really well. And I think that buying in the best areas is something that everyone should be very conscious of. So thank you there. And then I just maybe a week ago, maybe a little bit less, put a really big retail complex under contract that I've been doing due diligence on for a couple months now. That was in Minnesota. So I'm raising a little bit of money for anybody that wants to just with my mom and dad. It's actually, I'm naming LSC. I'm naming the LSC after you, Brandon.

Oh, I hope you are. My Minnesota Muse. All right. All right. With that said, we got to get chatting about today's show because today's show is so good. We got Aoka and Robert today. They are a couple that left their property, like left their home in New York City, end up going across the country in a rental car, like, left everything.

started over with nothing two years ago. And now they've done like 15 wholesale deals. They own 20 units. They're killing it. And it's all based on, I mean, they got a lot of good stuff in today's show, everything from burning their ships. If you know that analogy to like we have about confidence. We talk about just overcoming fear and inaction. And then just networking, how to connect with people that can help you do deals, even when you don't have any cash, even when you're getting started with nothing. They go into all that and more today. It's a phenomenal show. First, let's get to today's quick tip. Today's quick tip is, what do you got, David?

Today's quick tip is to ask yourself, what are the parts of you that need to change to get to the next level of success? One of the big enemies of success is when we look for an environment that is conducive to who we already are and we actually try to bend other people, control other people, control an industry or an outcome to make it work for us. But successful people learn that they need to adapt. to the environment they're in. In fact,

sometimes your best ability is adaptability. Today's guests talk about specific things that they did to change the minds of the head. I believe they were going to. Hold on. Hold on.

We can't just roll over that. The best ability of adaptability, that's pretty legit. I do need to clarify. There was one time where I said it's tore up from the flora and you asked me if I made it up and we just kept talking

and I didn't make it up. It was in my head. I never said I made it up myself, but I didn't deny that it came from some. And we got like 900 YouTube comments. Mr. David, Mr. David steals.

It's constant quotes. Yeah. Yeah, I don't want to become a plagiarizer like you. So no. The line that I heard was your best ability is availability. And I remixed it into adaptability. So I can't take all the credit. That's really good though.

That's really good. That can be a book title. That's going to be your new book title. The best ability is adaptability. A memoir. Hardcore. Everyone I hire on my team that does well, this is what they figure out. They adapt themselves to the environment we're in.

They don't come in and try to change everything else. We actually just had a conversation on the lending team about the loan officers wanting an email template to send to everybody because that's faster for them, but it's not good for the client. We need to adapt to the client's needs and not try to make them adapt to ours. So today's guests give incredibly powerful insight on specifically how they did that, how they thought before, how they think now, and they refer to it as unlabeling themselves. The label that they believed they should think and they should do, they had to get rid of it. And I think that for this is a really long quick tip now, but for everyone that listens when you get done, ask yourself that same question. All right.

Today's long quick tip. There are two kinds of real estate investors. Those who have reviewed their insurance and those who think that they have. Most don't realize their coverage wasn't built for how they actually invest. Vacancy periods, rehabs, short-term rentals,

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And they still offer their price beat guarantee. So you can get great pricing and a timeline you can count on. Fast, simple, reliable. That's Dominion Financial. Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash Dominion. That's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. All right. This intro is way long enough.

Let's get into the interview with Aoka and Robert. You guys are going to love this. Ayoca and Robert, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Great to have you guys here. It is an honor to be here. Well, thanks. So let's jump into your story. Let's talk about how you guys got into real estate.

So what was before real estate? What were you doing? And then how did you first discover the idea of, hey, we want to invest in real estate? So interesting, I guess interesting story. So I originally, we're from New York, and I originally was working in loss prevention. So that's my background. So I was working with like high-end retailers like Blumentdells and Victoria's Secret and stuff like that. And I actually, and then at the time I was working at Michael Coors.

So I was a district loss prevention corporate investigations. They gave me this long dragged out title, made me feel fancy and important. So I got to admit, I was really hoping you were going to say you were a mall cop. I was really hoping that you were like chasing people down at the mall. I'm slightly disappointed that it was such a corporate job. Well, believe it or not, I actually did. I used to get, we always mentioned this. Like, I was catching shoplifters.

And Rob was like, he, Rob's had like a million jobs. But like at one point, I was catching shoplifters and getting beat up and he was doing makeup at Sephora. So like, perfect, perfect. All right. I love that. So, yeah, so I was working and I was catching shoplifers and all this stuff. And I actually just came across the Breakfast Club interview with this guy named Mark Witten. And I was just kind of interested in this wholesaling, real estate, no cash or credit. And I was like, oh, what is that? And for me, at the time, I had a, I guess, somewhat decent paying job. And I wasn't looking to leave or anything. Rob was selling cars. And I let him tell his own story. So I just saw the interview. about it and I was like, oh, okay, let me see what this is about. And somehow this woman wrote me on LinkedIn and it was completely unrelated to real estate. She was actually contacted me to see if I wanted

to do like network marketing with Amway. And initially I thought it was a scam, you know, but I remember being in the car, Rob and I was like, let's just, I want to check this out and see what it's about. So I did. And if I did not open that LinkedIn email, I don't, I know for sure we probably wouldn't be here today. Long story short, her emailing me about Amway ended up being her introducing me to the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And that is pretty much how I got into real estate because I had two years ago, I didn't know what equity was. Two years ago, I didn't know what a real estate agent did. I mean, we were always renters. And I just had no idea of the world that this world even existed. That's cool. Yeah, Rich had poorheads. It made such an impact on so many people's lives,

like my own and so many. So Robert, where did you fit into that picture? I mean, you were selling cars, sounds like. Yeah, so I was selling cars at Volvo, Ferrari, Porsche, high-end stuff. And I've always... Sephora. Well, funny thing, you know, I'm six foot four and people would think I'd be the security guard, but I'm actually the one doing feathering and eyeliner on, you know, supermodels. And it's just the weirdest thing. But I always thought, weird.

So, well, I always thought that when I applied for something, I wanted to be the best. So when I applied for the Sephora, I wanted to own a Sephora. Long story short, I ended up selling cars for about two years. And my company gets brought out after I have the best month of the company. And I get fired. and I remember putting in all the extra days, the extra hours, the just busting my butt. And none of that being given back to me when I got fired. No explanation of what to do next.

Just all my time that I invested was just completely gone. And I remember calling Ayoka and she said, please, no matter what you do, don't get a job. Come home. Let me show you this interview and we can take it from there. And that's how we got started. All right. So tell us about the first deal. Did you guys do it together? Were you doing stuff a little bit more separate or how that we're going to be in? Before you get into the first deal, I want to know, can you fit in a Ferrari at six foot four?

No, you just open the doors. You just open the doors. That's it. And I'm glad we're able to talk about this because I've been thinking about if I ever get a Lamborghini or Ferrari that would it even be comfortable. Like Brandon's obviously out. Okay. He would have to be sitting in the back seat. I don't even know if they have a back seat for him. So me, I'm at six foot two. Am I borderline or is this out also? Listen, you have to be slim torso, size nine, and I'm out that book. So I'm not in it.

I don't think so. Maybe convertible. So you basically got to be the super models that you were air brushing or putting makeup onto fit out. Exactly. Okay. Thank you for carrying that up, Robert. Okay, now we can hear about your deal.

Well, I kind of like to like, me and Rob, I just want to say that like all night last night. One, we are super excited to be doing this with you guys. And all night last night, we were just up and we're just like, okay, who do we want to talk to like while we're doing this, you know, this podcast? Like, and I feel like it's so we really want to talk to like the us two years ago. Two years ago who we were is so completely different like from who we are today. And before we got our first deal, so to paint the full picture in a very quick, second. Rob and I were, you know, we're living in New York. We were in one bedroom apartment. We're both working our jobs. And when I found the whole real estate thing, I was really enamored. I tried in New York.

And as Robin, we've been together for nine years, this year, make 10 years. And we've never thought about being entrepreneurs ever. Like it was never even a thought in our mind. Like it was just, you know, get promoted, climb up the ladder, try to get more money and eventually get a house. We never wanted to have kids. I hope he still doesn't want to have kids, but, so we never wanted to have kids. But we always knew we just wanted to have some sort of success. And we never thought about it in the form of quadrants, you know, with being an employee business investor, business owner, self-employed. We just never thought about it. We just thought the path was employee. And so when I was trying in New York, and at the time I tried to bring it to him, he was so completely close off

to the idea of, you know, trying something different. you know, like completely just not interested. The reason why I was so disinterested was because I felt like the only way you can make money, the only way you can be successful is if you give your all to a company. You give every waking moment that you have to the business and maybe they'll, you know, give you something back in terms of a 401K or retirement or something. That was my thinking of what a job was. So I would try to do every single thing that I come in on my days off, drive, deliver cars out to the Hamptons, and then pay for an Uber all the way back.

So it's like I really wanted to bust my butt. And when Ayoka came to me and told me about, hey, I don't know if we'll make money. Stop what you're doing. That's actually making you money and try to do this real estate thing. I'm like, you know, you got to be insane. Like that there's no way possible that I would sacrifice what I know now. for what it's uncertain in the future. It just didn't make sense to me. Yeah. Do you think that's what Rich Dad Porta did? Was it kind of like reframe that in your mind?

Completely. Like I just did not even, I never even thought about like I never even placed myself in the position of, you know, the employee, self-employed business. I didn't know investor. I just never even thought about it. I didn't have people in my circle that were anything but employees. And not, and that's obviously not a bad thing. But I just. If you don't have that, you know, around you, I didn't have that in my family. I didn't have that in my friends. I didn't have that in my network. I didn't even think about having a network at that time. Like I just, you know, you have friends, you have coworkers and so on.

And I just really would love to speak to those people that kind of just never really, like, that was where we were, where we just didn't think about the other side that there was another. There was, there is another side. And before we got our first deal, I basically went to my, my VP at the time. and I told him that I wanted to take a couple weeks off, go to Tennessee, and just explore. You know, I didn't go into great detail or anything. And I basically just told him like, you know, like a leave of absence in a sense. And I was granted it. But then they were like, hey, you can keep working remotely while you're in Tennessee.

And I was like, oh, I didn't expect that. I had $5,000 to my name. And I was like, okay. So I literally went in my office and I cut my badge. And I said, I'll never walk back in here again. And I just think about that last night. It was scary for us to go back into two years of what we've been doing because these past two years we've just been going. We haven't been able to actually sit down and do this.

So it's really a beautiful thing for us. We came down to Tennessee with no car, really nowhere to stay. I do have family in Tennessee. That's how we came down here with my sister. She said, hey, you guys can come stay with us. It wasn't the perfect environment at the time. So we went to a hotel and we were just like, hey, let's figure this out. Rob had a friend that worked that hurts and had a 40% discount, getting rental cars.

And we were like, all right, we got a car now. So yeah. So, and just we just came down here and we rented a car, Joe, we actually came down here. And before we came down to Chattanooga, where we're currently at right now. Now, in New York, I feel like you never know what happens in this world when it comes to your job because my selling cars and reaching out to people, just talking to people, walking up to people that, you know, walking into a showroom, it trained me just to speak to people, just to get on the phones and call and say, how can I help? And when we decided to come down to Chattanooga, we got on the phone with a seller that had six properties. And we didn't know what we were doing. We just got down here, tried to wholesale those six properties,

and it ended up being a complete disaster. But that's another story for another day. I don't hear that. Why wasn't it a disaster? So, yeah, we were learning strictly off of YouTube. So we came down. And we were like, okay. And you know what's funny is that you were the first person,

Brandon, that I saw. It was you and then Ty the Flipman. And I was watching, I think you were going live at one time. And I actually went back in my email to try to find like to coordinate these times. It was back in 2018 like July or so. And I was telling Rob, okay, so we basically just got to make calls to these people. We downloaded PropStream, which we love. And we got a list of vacant properties while we're, and Rob called.

And one guy that was out-of-state owner, he was like, yeah, I'm ready to sell. He lived in Georgia. His properties were in Tennessee. But he was like, okay, we met with him and we had no idea what to do. And at the time, we're like sleeping in the hotel. And we're like, yeah, we can buy all six of these houses. Yeah, we have cash. Yeah.

Yeah. And he just loved our ambition, I think. Like, he literally would say, oh, I just, you guys are young and, oh, that turns me on. Let's do this. I can tell you guys have money. Yeah. Yeah. We literally have almost nothing to our name.

A rental car. Yeah. A rental car. you know with like Wyoming plates and I'm like come on man I didn't drive here from Wyoming to like come see your properties in Tennessee but it's like you know it's the confidence that we had portrayed even though we had nothing the belief that we we knew that we could get the deals I guess just maybe thinking naive but knowing that we could do it I guess maybe got us into speaking to them yes so he allowed us to sign all six contracts we negotiated down we saw the properties and

And we do like, okay, so now we got to get a buyer. So how do we do that? So we're driving. We see, we buy ugly houses on a bandit sign. I'm like, oh, they buy ugly houses. These are all ugly houses. We got six of them. Yes.

We call like home vesters and a guy comes out and he looks at them. And basically he was just like, well, your numbers are all off on like all of these. We like them, but like your numbers are off. And we're like, okay. And long story short, our confidence like fell because we're like, okay, we don't know what we're doing yet. Went back to the seller and we're like,

okay, we're not going to be able to buy these properties. And, you know, he was like, I understand, you know, come back in the future. And by the way, you need to start investing in Bitcoin. And we're like, wow, that was easy. It was, we thought it was going to be like, it was like the hardest thing to like go back and say, we're not going to be able to buy these.

We're like, oh, we're going to get sued. know, everything. But I like that he threw with a Bitcoin clothes. And I got a time share also. And can I introduce you in these nice Persian rugs while you're here? One thing I like that you two pointed out was the actual confidence swings that go on, especially when you're new. You get these crazy spikes where you're like, I could do this.

I could take over the world. I could not just have 20 houses. I could have 100. And you can. And then the next day something happens and you're like, oh, I suck at life. Why did I ever think I could be a real estate investor? This is overwhelming. I was a fool.

And the reality is somewhere in between. It sounds like you two experience that as well. Do you have any advice for the people listening who may be going through those same confidence swings for how they can get through that period? Yeah. For me, maybe a yoke tells me sometimes I have too much confidence. I maybe come off as maybe a little bit arrogant. You know, what can you do? I'm a New Yorker.

That Ferrari swag is tough to brush out. Hey, I can't fit enough. So I got to kind of feel it. But anyway, I think when it comes to confidence is the thing about confidence is something imaginary. It's not you can't go buy it in the store. It's not something you can build. It's not something you can not necessarily build, but not something you could go. It's not tangible.

It's not something you can touch. It's really just the self-confidence in you that knowing that I can do it, I can bust my butt. I can, I will do it. There is no plan B. If you have a plan B, plan A, you're. already prepping for that to fail. So when we came down here, plan A was our plan, no matter what, we were going to be successful. There was no if and buts about it. And I think just saying that regurgitating that to yourself every single day, Ayoka, she writes her affirmations every day.

I believe that I'll be able to fit in a Ferrari one day. I have those affirmations, you know, I have those affirmations, but, you know, it happens with the movie. swings when I say I'll fit in a Ferrari and I go to McDonald's and I get, you know, a McDouble. You know, you also have to feed into that affirmation. You have to feed into it. And I think when people have confidence issues, it's they don't continue to nurture that. They just say it and it should happen like that. And you have to continue to nurture it. That's the big thing I think advice with me that I've learned that we've nurtured it and continue to say it day in and day out.

You know, one thing I found with confidence is that, like, confidence comes with, like, repeated, you know, repeated use of the right actions, right? Because that starts to form your identity, right? So, like, I'm not confident in a lot of things because I don't have that identity that I'm confident. Like, I'm not a confident stick shift driver, right? Like, I can do it, but I haven't done it enough to be confident, you know, to be confident at it. Now, so when I do it, but if I, if I practiced it a whole lot, if I just did it over and over and over and over, I would start to get that identity of like, oh, yeah, I can drive a stick shift. And once I believe that in my soul, my identity says I can drive a stick shift, then I'm confident.

And then it just comes. And so like when people are getting to real estate, I'm always encouraging them. Just like, that's why the importance of analyzing a hundred deals comes in. I say that in webinars all the time. Analyze 100 properties. Because after that, it's going to be like driving a stick shift 100 times. You're going to feel pretty confident at the end of it. So let's talk about how you went from this trying to figure it out,

this failure of the first, those six properties that didn't work out. where a lot of people were just throwing the towel at that point. What did you do next? I mean, what was the first successful deal then? How did you end up landing something? Yeah. So we were driving for dollars, our first deal, and we would always drive for dollars. Like, okay, let's train our eye to look for ugly houses.

Like, train our eyes to look for problems, obviously. And we were driving and we saw this one house, and it was just like disaster. And someone was out there mowing the yard. So Rob just said, hey, are you guys interested? Are you interested in selling this house? And the guy was like, well, I just mowed a yard for the guy, but I can give you the number to the person that basically owns the property. So that's what he did. He gave us the number. We called again, another, you know, we're still learning how to get our numbers correct. So we were like, okay, let's put this one under contract. We did successfully. And we did successfully. And, we're, we're still learning how to get our numbers correct. So we were like, okay, we're like, okay, let's put this one under contract. We did successfully. And we're, And that deal pretty much got us $2,700. And it was the best thing that we, it was the best $2,700 we've ever, I've ever made. Yeah, I think, I think that proved the proof of concept. Like, we just got out the car.

As nervous as I was, I got out the car and I just spoke to the guy. And I made a couple calls. I looked up some public knowledge information on Google Zillow. And that got me $2,700. And I cannot tell you the amount of wholesale deals that we've done after that, the multifamily that we brought, that $2,700 was probably the best check that I've ever cashed. I counted it at least, I probably counted until it was like $10,000, but it was just $2,700. But it was just the fact that we came down here, took action, and it netted us $2,700 off of just ourselves.

So that's where you made the connection between action and money. Yeah. And it became real in that point. Yeah. So this is awesome. Can you share what you did specifically that made that $2,700? Yeah, sure. So what we met with the, it was actually a caretaker of the owner.

And she, you know, she was, it was so funny because I remember specifically when we met with her and we got the contract with them, they were like, can we take a picture of you guys? and we're like, well, I've watched a lot of YouTube videos and no one's ever taken a picture of the wholesalers. I'm like, okay, sure. Rob and I are like smiling. She's like, okay, like one by yourselves and one together. She's like, I just think you're such a beautiful couple. And I'm like, I'm sure that's not what it is. You just want to make sure that if anything happens to your house that you have a picture of us for the news.

So like that was, so that was even more pressure for us because it's like, okay, now she has a picture of us, we need to close this deal. Okay. So, and I can't remember the exact number that we locked it up under. I mean, it was, we negotiated, negotiated them down from like they wanted $40,000 to like $11,000. And at the time, we were like, okay, let's find a buyer. We found a buyer that happened to be my uncle's landlord. And we just networked with him.

and it was actually such a crazy story because he was such a big buyer in the area, a local buyer. This house had been vacant for about 20 years. So the moment that we got it under contract, it actually, and we got it under contract with him as the buyer, the next day it was condemned. Like there was the condemned note on the house and we're like, okay, sellers are calling this. Like, what did you do? and we're like, we didn't get it condemned. We end up finding out that the buyer kind of had a lot of friends in high places and ended up getting the property condemned.

And he called us back. And he was like, well, I can't buy it at this price. The number may have been like $20,000. We had it originally under contract for 11 with the seller. So we're like, wow, we're going to make almost $9,000 off of this. So he's like, I can't buy it at this price. It's condemned. So I'll buy it at.

13 or something and we're like wow like so yeah so long story short that is we we learned easily that things like that can happen we're happy that he didn't just go around to the seller because he probably could have he was a big name but we kind of learned like all right trust and you know the relationships we got to the closing table we were very happy with that uh 2700 so happy that we went back to new york because we still had our apartment there we went back there We went back to New York, sold everything that we had. I mean, our TV, we were just in there for under a year. So we sold our TV, our beds, everything for like wholesale prices.

So we really learned what that was about. And we were like, all right, all we needed to know is this was real. Yeah, I gave up, we went up, we went to New York. We gave up our, I gave my dog. Like, we packed everything that we could possibly cram into contractor bags. I might cry about it because it's so, it's so crazy because that $2,700 was not enough for us to, to set up any type of living situation in that state. But it's just, I don't know, I felt like that $2,700 just like, boom, like, that is,

this can work. So we crammed up, when I tell you, David, we crammed up everything in a Lincoln Navigator and drove down here. And it was just, it was a rental too. But we, we sold everything and cramped our lives, literally pushed all the chips into the center and came down here to Tennessee. And, and just off of that $2,700, that was enough for us to trust each other and trust what we, what we could do and, and try to make it in the real estate world. That was all we needed, $2,700. We didn't need a guru. We didn't need a $40,000 course. We didn't need the systems, the secret list. We didn't need any. We didn't even need, and, you know, no disrespect, but we didn't even need a podcast. All I,

all I needed to know is that I could make $2,700 by talking to someone because they had an asset that was just deteriorating. That was enough for me to push everything into the center of the table and make the bet. That's cool. This is why we preach all the time here. Like, the first deal doesn't have to be a home run. It doesn't have to be a grand slam. Like, just get in the game, because you're going to start building that momentum and your identity starts to shift and you should have to believe in yourself. And that's exactly what I see with you guys. So what happened next? I mean, like, where did you go from there from that, from that first deal? How'd you, I mean, you've done a lot of deals now. So how'd that, how'd that progress? So. Yeah, so, oh, you want to take that?

No, you got. You're the queen. You got it. No, I'll beat you up. Now, okay. Yeah. So, Okay, so we came down. And my cousin, thankfully, he and his girlfriend said, hey, you guys can stay with us. That's fine. We're like, okay, that's great. But you have a one bedroom. But they were like, it's fine.

You guys can have the live room. We're like, hey, let's take the live room. You know, we can do this. So we came down. We, you know, we had all of our stuff. We stuffed it in the closet and the storage unit. And we're like, all right, so we have this couch. And Rob always makes this joke about, you know, he's like, oh, I was holding you because if I don't hold you, we're going to fall.

And I'm like, oh, I thought it was going to love me. No, that couch, like, seriously, it's for the comfort people think, you know, they want the comfortability. Like, I'm willing to change if I get comfortable. Like, our change was brutal. Like, it was hard. Like, our, I, that couch was so small. I'm six foot four and, and I would sleep like this. and I would hold her just so we didn't fall off the edge of the couch.

So it's just like it's real life. It's true. I thought you were going to go with, I thought you guys were to go with an analogy there of like, I'm holding you in life so we don't fall. That sounds like a bad analogy too, sure. Yeah, yeah, that analogy too. But, you know.

All right. Whatever. All right. Yeah, keep going. Keep going. Yeah. So we basically were, we're sleeping on the couch and every single day. day. Even though I had family here, we would come down to Tennessee annually, like, once or twice

a year, but we would just stay in like with my family. We wouldn't, you know, go in sightsee or anything. So we had no idea about the market. So now we told ourselves, we have to learn the market here. We need to learn zip codes. I don't know anything. I grew up here, but I went to New York when I was 13 years old. So I, like, it's a completely different, you know, city for me. And him coming down with me, he had no idea either. So we're like, all right, we need to drive. dollars. So that would be one of our main sources. We would drive, learn zip codes. And that's how we would kind of learn what was the hot zip codes, what were the, you know, the ABC class zip codes and D class zip codes. And we would just drive around, learn all the zip codes and talk to everyone. Like, we would

just get creative. Like, we'd go buy lottery tickets and hand them out to male men and women and say, hey, we're looking for vacant houses. So if you find one, here's our number, and here's a lottery ticket. And we would get people actually, like, working for us. We would try anything to be creative. Like, we would have people just text us, like pictures and addresses of houses. We would do anything to just kind of network. I mean, FedEx, UPS, anybody would talk to you.

And we would get a lot of deals from the majority of our deals were driving for dollars. We started, I should say, that where we were staying. also wasn't the best environment. So we would go, like, we had an office at Panera Bread. Like, we would be there from 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. And we would tell people, like, we would talk to sellers and be like, yeah, we're, when I get back to my office, we'll, you know, hone out numbers and stuff like that. Our office is the next table over where it's a little bit more quiet.

Yeah. And we got to know the staff at the local Panera Bread and Starbucks in the area. in the area and they would allow us to even stay there all night and, you know, shut down the lights and stuff and even lock up at, I don't want to get anybody in trouble, but they would actually let us lock the doors at night. We would bring them pizza, you know, just show them we really appreciated them. But to answer your question directly, how we would scale and get more deals, where we were just talking to everyone. But we were not networking. When I say we're talking to everyone. We would talk to, you know, we would make code calls. We would, we would definitely

be in centers where we could talk to sellers, but when we would have to dispose these deals, we only had one or two buyers. And we would only sell them, we would only look for what they pretty much wanted. So we stayed very small in our networking for the first year that we were in Tennessee. And that we now know really hurt us was staying small and not going out and talking to people, other wholesalers, you know, people that were buying properties. We didn't talk to. We were just like, okay, we don't know anyone. So stay small. We didn't join meetups, which is definitely something I would tell people to do. Join your local meetups. We did that during COVID and it changed our lives. Our lives changed from just COVID alone. So how many wholesale deals have you done now?

in the past couple years. But you just started this a couple years ago, right? Like, you guys. Yeah. Yeah. Two years. So I think probably 15, 20. Wow.

15, 20 deals. Like right, yeah, right around 15. Yeah. And what's, what do you aim for in terms of profit on a wholesale deal? I mean, what do you buying them for? What are you selling them for? So me, car sales, that's kind of our, our judge is more. Ayoca is the analytical person.

and she'll find the problems in the data. And when it comes to the negotiation and aiming for a certain wholesale fee, that's on my side. And I usually try to aim for as much money as possible. So 20,000, $25,000, $30,000. Yeah, that's what I aim for. And we've been blessed.

Really, our average is kind of around the $20,000 range. We've had some $5,000, $7,000 deals. But thankfully, we really do. about 20,000 a deal. Wow, that's awesome. People are listening to this right now just like with their jaw dropped. Like you can make $20,000. Now, one thing we did not explain earlier that maybe we should touch on real quick is

because wholesaling is kind of a unique concept. I know we talk about on the show here a lot, but just in case people are still at this point confused on what the heck are you doing? What do we mean by wholesaling? Can you explain that? Yeah. So wholesaleing is by far the simplest thing. in the history of mankind.

Whenever you, when you look at a farmer, he grows and he sells it to Walmart and you buy it from Walmart. Walmart is wholesaling you produce. When you go to a dealership and they get the car from the factory, they give it to the dealership and you buy it, lease it, finance it, the dealership is the wholesaler. Wholesaling is just a transaction. So what we do is we find problem properties where people, people, People per se don't know what to do with it.

We search for them. We look for them high and low. We try to find them. Certain people put properties on MLS, but for the people that actually don't know what to do with their properties, they just let them go, like out of state owners, tax delinquents, your general list. We find those people and we give them to buyers, cash buyers, that either flip properties, they use them as investments, they do a bivvy of things with it, but they're buying them

at under market value. So we find distressed assets. We get them for a great price. We mark our fee on top of that for finding it. And then we give it to somebody that's so grateful that they found this off-market property at such a steal. And they can make it into an investment of their choosing. And that's it. The simplest things, it sounds so simple, but it's hard.

It's not easy. It's not something where you could do just as a whim. It takes dedication to hard work to do it. But it's a simple, simple concept. Yeah, you find it, find a great deal, find somebody who wants a great deal, make a little profit in the middle. And of course, we always say this. If people are listening to show and they're like, well, I'm going to go do that. It's an awesome way to invest in real estate.

It's an awesome way to get started. It doesn't require a whole ton of money. But just be aware that every state has a different way of doing it. And there are legal ways to do it and there are illegal ways to do it. So that's just the warning we tell everyone is don't just hear something on a podcast and run out and just do it, like do a little bit of research. Please, please. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, do you recommend new. investors jump into wholesale or do you think it's just a certain type of person that's good for that? Or is that pretty much good for everyone? I think it's good for everyone. You know, I always, I always say that I've really tried to, the last two years, I've really changed my mindset from limiting people from thinking that you can't do something. I think you can do this if you can, you know, at a legal, I don't know what I say a legal age, but I think that there's no age limit on this, as long as you can comprehend numbers and everything. I think that there's no specific, you know, I am a girl that never had a degree. You know, I tried to put myself through

college. I come from a family that was on Section 8 and everything food stamps and forward, you know, father was not present in the house at all. I actually found my father while we were down here wholesaling. It's a crazy story as well. Yeah, and found out that I had like 10 other siblings. And it's insane what these last two years have, yeah, have brought. But this, I would tell anybody, don't let any story unlabel yourself. Like, don't ever think that you can't do something. You can definitely wholesale.

You can be an agent. You can be an investor, you know, you can be a millionaire. I would tell anybody that even questions like it. Because I remember, I remember Rob and I question. There were nights that, you know, we lost contracts or that deals didn't close and titles came back and they were, you know, it were just a no-go because of liens or whatever. And those nights, you know, or even one time where someone saw that we had advertised the property on Facebook and they called us like, why are you advertising the seller called? Like, why are you advertising my property? You know, so there were moments where we second guess.

Like, are we supposed to be doing this? Should we be doing this? there are the great highlights, but I definitely wanted to come. And Rob and I was saying we want to come to this interview, very authentic and telling you that there were, there are highs and lows in this. There's a certain mindset that you even have to develop to wake up on a couch that's kind of very uncomfortable to going into a room of a house with somebody that has 20 properties. And there's a certain mindset shift that you have to do to not think about what your

currently your current situation is and put yourself at a higher level of thinking. So to answer your question directly, anybody can do this. I would say if you're a seasoned investor, because we come across season investors, that's just like, I would love to wholesale. And I mean buyers with like, I mean, people, we talk to people that have like a lot of properties and, you know, they're building new construction. They would say, I would love to wholesale, but I just, I don't know how to, I don't want to spend time negotiating with sellers and all of this stuff. And then we talk to people that's just afraid to take action, period. Anybody can do it, in my opinion. You know, just unlabel yourself. Well, I think that's a great point because when we hear $20,000, the wholesale a deal,

there's often an assumption that it's just free money or easy money. Oh, I found a seller. I made $20,000. No, to get that $1,000, you probably had to go through 10 to 15 conversations. and to get to those 10 to 15, you probably had to pursue 100. And to get those 100, you'd probably send out mailers to a thousand. And nobody wants to think about the money that they spent putting out the mailers to a thousand or the time. So that 20 grand isn't profit. There's some business expenses associated with it.

That's why I like filing from wholesalers, to be honest, because they're front-loading all they're taking all the risk and they're putting all the investment. And I just get to swoop in once they've already got the deal under wraps. And that's why it doesn't make sense when people complain about wholesale fees because they don't understand there's a cost, associated. And there's a skill set you guys have developed that you're very good negotiators and you're good at identifying, okay, there's some opportunity here that maybe some people don't have. What I want to ask you guys is how you transitioned into owning real estate. It's a little bit

less of a business. It's active income and a little more passive income. And then once that transition was made, how are you balancing those two things where you've got activities that generate revenue through wholesaling and then you've got activities that generate revenue through passive income. In all honesty, when it comes to kind of juggling the two, it's really hard. I'm not going to, I'm not going to sugarcoat it and say, you know, we have a system here and that. It's, we were doing two rehabs while we were trying to have our wholesale business on the side, which is two different things, you know, fixing flipping and doing a wholesale finding deals. It was, it was difficult because we had no experience flipping, so we wanted to do everything. I want to know what my contractors are doing

because one, not only does it show that I have pride in my project, because I'm there every day, but I also want to know so in the future when I do another project, I can price it out based on what they're actually doing. I know what is, I don't sound like a tool by just not, hey, can you put this sheetrock up and do this light and they charge me 50 grand? I want to know what it takes. With that being said, being there every single day on that flip, it took so much away from us being outside talking to people, getting deals in our funnel. And that's the thing with wholesaling is you send out everybody wants the secret sauce. They want the list, the super system. There is none. What wholesale, what to get deals to your

funnel, you have to, the letter that you send out today might get you a deal 30, 60, 90 days from now. So if you need money and you want to send out one mailer to a delinquent tax person and hope that you get to close it next week, that's not happening. Quit. That's not going to happen. You have to send out mail. You have to talk to people. You have to drive around and get things so cramped into your funnel that you raise your chances to wholesale something. It's just not. it's a numbers game. And that's the biggest thing we learned. So when we were doing that flip for three to four months,

nothing was going in our funnel. And it was brutal. Once we came out of that flip. Let me kind of go into detail how. I want to go into detail, David. So when COVID happened, we were really terrified as wholesale. Because at that time,

we were just strictly wholesaling. And we were, I actually don't remember how, that's when I actually started reading a bit. more, but I started thinking, okay, we need to now have some sort of income, some sort of cash flow coming in. Because at the time, with wholesale, obviously, it's a high-end job. It's a high-end paying job. So we realized that if we cannot wholesale because, you know, people are not lending to buyers or not buying, sellers may not be selling or even if they are selling, if there's no one

buying, or we don't have a transaction. That made us have the transition into how do we we start accumulating cash flow. So when COVID happened, we started thinking, how do we, you know, we would make wholesale fees. And this is, I feel like the mistake that a lot of people kind of don't mention. But we didn't have the mental, you know, fortitude to learn how to put away money. So we would blow a lot of our wholesale fees. Like, we would just like have fun with it. We were just, you know, we weren't thinking about reinvesting our money in all honesty. So it continued being we need to chase this check, you know, continuously. That when, when COVID happened, we were like, we need to learn how to get these wholesale fees and reinvest them into rentals.

So obviously, it's kind of hard to find a house that is $20,000, you know, or $10,000 or $8,000. You can do it. But, you know, at the time, we didn't know about creative strategies or anything. We actually, when they first started opening, when I guess businesses kind of started opening up, I started noticing that on my Facebook page, I would post things about wanting to, you know, how do I buy rentals? And I would get no responses because the network on my Facebook were just people that it was the same people I left in New York in the sense. So it was nobody that could help me with, you know, giving us knowledge. So I started clearing my Facebook completely. And this is something I definitely wanted to mention that you, one of the mindset shifts that happened.

to us was I lost a lot of friends and family, not on like a bad note, but because our mindset started to elevate and I realized we didn't have the network to help us get rentals, learn how to get rentals, learn how to get any sort of passive income. And I started deleting people from my Facebook and I started adding local people. Like I would just try to find anyone that was in real estate. I added real estate groups. And I found one that basically was going to do a small meetup with COVID, you know, precautions and everything. And I said, Rob, we have to go to this. Like, this is where we're going to build our team. This is where we're going to find private lenders. This is where we're going to find people that have rent, you know, have rentals and everything.

So we went and we were scared. I mean, because this was a multifamily meetup. And I'm like, well, wholesale, you know, a couple duplexes, but we don't like, I'm sure everybody that's in this room have properties. So we were just nervous. So we walked in and we're like, we just, you know, let's just try to network with people. One guy that we came across, his name was David, he was, he was one of the guys in the room that pretty much had a lot of properties. So, you know, there was a straight intimidation factor on our end. But we decided to, I was talking to him and he was saying everything that he had and everything. And I said, okay, can we take you out for lunch? And we took him out for lunch.

and learned a lot basically from him. And we also, that day, I sat down with Rob and I said, we need to send this guy an email and see how we can bring him value. And then in return, he has properties. That's something we want to learn. So in exchange, we need to see what he needs. He told us that he wants multifamily units. So I said, okay, me and Rob know nothing about besides the two or three duplexes

that we flipped. We have no idea. No idea. You know, what that means. I buy multifamily. So we had him meet with us and tell, and explain to us what it is that he, that he buys. He told us, you know, he likes big unit. Anywhere from like, it had to be a duplex, but he doesn't really like duplexes. He'd rather have, like, a street of duplexes and stuff like that. So we had to change our entire mindset because I realized that there was somebody out here that had what I wanted. wanted and we need to, if I want to get that and learn that, I need to bring something to him. So we started looking for deals for him and we ended up partnering. This is getting to your

question of how we changed into owning units. We found a duplex that was in an amazing area. And this, we found it off of writing. It was a probate. So Rob focuses on probates and I focus on like everything else. And Rob wrote a letter to him. We look in the obituary. We found out that this man's wife had just recently passed away, wrote a beautiful letter. The guy, the gentleman called us. He was ready to sell and go into an RV and travel for the rest of his life. He was 83. He said he thinks he has five years left. So he basically wanted to sell. He wanted to sell his house. It is a duplex. It was two units on one. So. And at first, we were like, okay, we could wholesale this and make maybe 15 grand, but we also could learn to

transition into cash flowing. We brought the deal to the gentleman David. And David only knew us for about a couple months, maybe two or three months. And he was willing to, just off of our ambition and bringing deals to him and learning. And we would take him out every single week. And we would be bringing him deals some things he didn't like, some things maybe he did, like, but he was willing to just off of seeing our work ethic fund that duplex for us and give us the money to rehab it. And we got an equity position in that instead of just wholesaling it. And that kind of opened our eyes to, wow, like, you know, there are people out here that will help you that don't care about, you know, your racial background or your background in general,

just want to know that you can do what you can perform and you can find assets that are valuable to them and you can honor your word. And that's how we got the transition into zero units and just wholesaling to now we have 20 units in about six months. That's awesome. Yeah. Like I love that you say that like because you were you were putting the work and it's like hustle is like the great equalizer. Hustle is a great equalizer. Like you I don't care what somebody their background is. I don't care if they have a college degree. I don't care if they're like they were living on the street last week and they're, you know, 16 years old. Like it doesn't really matter. Like if you bring value, if you bring me a deal, if you prove that you can do that, then like I'm going to pour into you

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it's just a bunch of these little ones? So, so the duplex, it's a house, 2,500 square foot, and then it has a garage apartment that it was built in the 30s. So it functions like a duplex, but it is a single family house with a garage apartment. And then like Ayoka said, looking for deals completely switching our mindset and our systems from, single family assets to multifamily assets, we were looking at a 45 unit complex. And in negotiations to try to buy that property and bring it to David, we're driving around the area. And one thing I recommend, one thing that is a great thing, if you see something or if you

get a feeling or a hunch, just stop and do it. So I came across a 15 unit complex that had the management number on it. And I said, you know what? It's, let me just give it a call and see what happens. I gave it a call. And I spoke to the lady, an old lady that owned maybe 60 properties, 60 units in that area. And I told her, I said, hey, we're from New York. We're looking at buying some property.

Would you sell to us? And the first thing she said is, you're from New York. Please do not bring any of your liberal antics down here to Tennessee. I said, no, ma'am, I'm not. I only brought cash. So, you know, we built long story short. Long story short is I followed up with this lady every single day. I did, me and I yokea did things for this lady. We put salt on her in our properties when it was snowing. We, we did everything to show value because we really wanted these units. So after about three months of, follow up. She gave us a call and said, hey, I want to sell these properties to you because you guys

keep bugging me. I said, no problem. We brought it to our partner, David. And basically, long story short, David kind of let us know we could either wholesale to him or we could take an equity stake in it. And long story short, we decided, you know what, let's build cash flow. Let's see where this goes. And we have our 20 units just like that, just based off of going to a meet up, talking to someone, and bringing them value, just like that. And it didn't take a, you know, a bank or a magic credit or it just was a conversation. That's, that's how simple it was. It's almost, there's times where my tenants call me and I'm like, I'm not your, I don't feel like I'm your landlord because I did nothing for that deal. But it feels like when I look at it,

I did so much by bringing that guy value, that lender value. I did it by bringing the owner value, which in the future, she's 100% going to sell us the 60 remaining properties that she has. And it was just a conversation. It wasn't nothing special, no secret sauce. It was just us talking and bringing value and following up. And we have 20 units now that feels, it feels like a blur. Like it's so, it's so crazy. It's so surreal.

That's awesome. Are you guys managing yourself then? Is that kind of your role in the partner? Yes, so we do self-manage and we also like that we do have like a management fee that we discussed outside of the, you know, the actual ownership interest. So I just want people to kind of know that like networking changed our lives in the last six months. We went from, I mentioned before, like having our office at Panera bread, you know, and the local Starbucks. And that was very real. That was our office. Every single day we came in like, employees like clockwork like they knew we were going to be there they knew where we sat you know they were bringing us free food and so on and so forth to the point that customers knew us we went from that to going to a meetup and taking another guy out that was just a very friendly actually we met him at a it was like a local cash flow game it was about six people there and we we decided

it was it was advertised on facebook we said hey we need to get to know people this is all during COVID So we went to that little cash flow game and met another gentleman that changed our lives as well. Took him out. His name was Mike. And we took him out to eat. And that same day we took him out to eat, he said, I have an office that is a storage unit, but you guys can convert it to an office. And we got an office just off of that. And we were always forward thinking.

You know, he had an office in his storage unit building as well, you know, two doors down from us. And we knew that, hey, this guy has a wealth of knowledge. We need to find a way to bring him value. So we would do just have basic conversations. Go, you know, Rob, he now does like YouTube video recordings for him. And in exchange, this guy does a lot of creative strategies, you know, gave us our first office. And we paid for it, of course, but it was, you know, insanely low to what people pay for actual office spaces. But you're talking about someone that came down here with.

nothing and knowing nobody to find in ways to just get out there and bring value to people and things would come back. They would just come back to us. And the same way with the units, you know, there are people out here that are willing to help. I can't wait to do this for someone, you know, like there are people out here that's willing to help you because they see that you're willing to help yourself and help others. And I think that was one of the biggest things that I want to bring to people is you can change your, your environment. You can But, you know, we completely had to change our course of friends. We, you know, we had to change the family that we hang out.

We had to change ourselves because there was a lot of arguments that happened in the midst of these two years because we are developing entrepreneurship. You know, we're developing, learning about ourselves. The mindset I had two years ago coming from New York to Tennessee, Rob and I would say, door knocking is one of our favorite things to do. And we were so conditioned that we didn't want to knock on people's doors because we were afraid of, hey, they're going to see that he's this, you know, description of himself. And we're in, you know, this country, Tennessee. And there were people telling us, like, don't do that.

Don't knock on these doors with these Confederate flags and this. And they were the nicest people. You know, they were. How many times have I been invited by a little grandma to have cookies when I knock? I've been invited more times into a house. And it happens to me so often that I'm like, there are really people in this world that just are genuine good people. There are more good people than are bad people. And we would knock on doors and people would just say, come in.

Come take a look at my house. Come, come just walk in and sit down and have a cookie, have this. And it's like there's no excuse. There's no excuse whatsoever. Yeah. You can't make anything an excuse in the world. You can't make the fact of not having a car or not having, you know, a place to stay. We exchanged for where we're living now.

We exchange value for free rent, basically. So we went from the couch to live in a two-bedroom townhouse for exchanging just showing this guy's properties. So we do his listings and showings for him. And exchange, you know, we got a nice, comfortable place to live. And I just like to, I just want to point that out because I keep saying, I'm talking to the people out there that are stuck and I can't do this. I don't know anyone. I'm scared. No one's going to help me.

Why would they help me? I don't have a, I don't have this education. I don't, we knew zero about real estate. I think I started the interview by saying I didn't even know what equity was. I didn't. I had no idea to actually have an equity now and property. So it's, I would say. say bring value to people. It will change your entire life and always think forward. Like when we,

when we meet someone or even doing this, doing this podcast, we're like, all right, we really need to know who we want to target. And we also want to know, like, how do we give to people at the same exact time? So it's, we've met people that changed our lives and even past friends. It's hard for us to have conversations with the people we were friends with for the past 10 years, because our level, our mindsets are just completely different. And they can't really understand that. And it doesn't make them bad people or us bad people. It's just, I think I remember when I really realized that our mindsets were shifting because I was like, it's hard to have conversation with friends. And I would, I would just ask people like, hey, when you became at the level of success that you have,

did you notice that friendships were deteriorating? Or is it just happening to us? Like, Like, did you realize that family, like, you know, you can't sit there and watch and make, make the same jokes? Do you realize that the same shows that I loved two years ago, I can't stand now? And I just feel like those are the trials that we went through these last two years. And it was very, I think we don't, I really like to emphasize the power of mindset and just, and just, you know, changing your environment. It's a very real thing. And I, we had to get out of our own way a bunch of times. And that's how we got to, not saying we're at the epitome of everything, but getting out of our own way and mindset changed our entire life this last two years. Well, that's what I'd like to sum up about what you're describing here is you two did what nobody else is willing to do.

You packed up your stuff and you moved to an area that you didn't know that you literally didn't know the zip codes. That was not an area that was comfortable for the current version of yourselves. People didn't think like you. Like you said, there's Confederate flags on these doors that you're knocking in. Then you're getting advice from people that says, don't go do that. That's a bad idea. Then you two said, we want this so bad. We'll figure out a way to do it.

And you venture into this unfamiliar territory, which no one ever wants to do. They always want the comfort and the knowing and the certainty. And you find they're inviting me in for cupcakes. This is not as bad as what people thought. When you step on the other side of certainty, you often find that it was all the preconceived notions that we had about what to expect actually aren't there. And to the victor, go the spoils. You guys are snatching up these deals and you're doing amazing. And then you said, to get to the next level, I got to bring value to someone. You didn't email the person and say,

how do I bring value to you? You figured out what David needed by talking to him and listening to him. And then you said, let's venture into that and figure out how to bring him something of value. And in that process, what I hear you two saying was you learned there were labels that you had mentally taken on yourselves a belief system about how the world worked that you had to let it go, like a snake that just sheds its skin and has to grow a new mindset type of a thing. And now you're flourishing. And I love that you're sharing the story with people because people that have crossed that line that I just described have all said the same thing. It wasn't what I thought. It wasn't until I got there that I realized what was needed. It was me that had to change.

It wasn't that I had to make things work the way that I wanted them to work. And for the people that take that journey like what you're describing. We kind of talked about this before we started the podcast. It's good that it's hard like this. Yes. Because there's that buried entry is what makes it so everyone's not out there just grabbing these deals for the few that are willing to do what it takes to burn the boats, to move to Tennessee, to go into a place or uncomfortable. They deserve to get the lion's share of those deals. So I mean, I'm just juiced up listening to your guys' story and I wish everyone could hear. Calculators are good to analyze deals, right? Contracts are necessary to know. But what you really, really need is this mindset that you two have and that ability

to just do whatever it takes. Thank you. Just to kind of put the cherry on top is I'm willing to do, if you don't wake up every day willing to do anything and everything that it takes to be successful, just hang it up. It's not fair to yourself. It's not fair to everybody on this podcast. That's everyone that's talking about their journey of real estate, for you to listen, for you to absorb that knowledge and then not to change or not to take action because you're just wasting it. But if you actually just put what you have to do into action, it's showing respect to everybody that's giving you information. It's just take action. That's all you have to do. It's just change your mindset and take action.

And everything else will follow from there. Simple as that. Sometimes you have to change everyone around you. You know, I had to question every single thing. Why did I think that? Why did I think that about money? Why did I think that about, you know, why did I think, why was I intimidated by buyers? You know, why can't I become a buyer?

What is so intimidating about this person? And it's not looks and everything. It's like, how do I get where they're at and how can I become that? You know, so it doesn't intimidate me. And it was, it's just a real transition mentally. that you have to do. And there are so many people out here that's willing to help you for very little to nothing, as long as you can find a beautiful way to help them as well. Brandon, I want to throw it to you for the final thought there, because you've done a lot of

this yourself. You've changed your body by changing what you put into it. You've changed your mindset by changing what you read and what you think. A lot of what we're talking about here today, I know you've really taken, you've become intentional about in the last couple years. Is there any insight you can provide on how more people can take the same journey? I mean, I guess I would just throw out at the thing I say all the time. Like, it's, it's look at the, the lead measures that you do. Like, it's the results are, the results are a result of what you, you know, what you do, right? Not what you want, not what you wish.

And I think that's what you guys have a story, you know, shows so much is it's like, you didn't just want to a different life. He just didn't just want to be successful. You're like, what are the tangible things I got to do? I got to follow up. I got to do this thing. I do that thing. And furthermore, even when you don't know what the next thing is to do, it's like

driving through a foggy, you know, on a foggy road at night. You can't see a mile down the road. You can't see 100 feet up the road. But you can see one foot in front of your car. So as long as you just drive that one foot, you can see the next foot. And I think it's like those things just make people no matter what it is. They're trying to improve your relationship, trying to improve your body, trying to improve your, your, your, anything, life, finances, anything. Just keep driving that forward one foot at a time. You're going to be going to get so much further than majority of the world who won't do anything. So my final, final question before I had the famous four is like, well, it's kind of a two-part question. Where do you guys see yourself

headed in the next few years? Like, what are you striving for right now? And then finally, what can our audience bring you, how can they bring you value? Like, what can, what do you guys need right now? So for me. And so what I've always known that I've wanted, well, our goal now was to get 30 properties before 30 years old. So that's sneaking up quickly on Rob, this is in June, but I have all the way to next year. So we decided to change that. And now we now we want to do 100 doors by the end of this year. And that is our, that is our goal is to have 100 doors. And the cash flow side of that is that we want to have at least like 30K net. So we want to go aggressive because we never, and I don't know that that might be aggressive with some people subjective. But it's, it's truly a goal for us to do that by the end of this year. Continue networking with amazing people. We're definitely targeting B.C. class multifamilies with high returns. So, And we want to get more investors, which is something that we're learning and wanting to do. So we can find anything.

We put our, if we put our mind to it, we'll find any property. At one point, we had a gas station under contract. So. But that's our, that's our goal. And on a personal goal is I wanted to start a basically like a YMCA type of foundation for entrepreneurs. When we couldn't find an office space and we were going to these Paneras and. stuff, I just start thinking, why can't I just find a place for entrepreneurs that just want to go and just read and just do work on their laptops and just be surrounded by that type of entrepreneurial energy? So that is something that I'm going to do. And I want to take it internationally and just have like a center, like kind of like a Panera bread without the upsell of the good soups and everything.

Yeah, broccoli cheddar soup. But so good. Oh, that's his favorite. That's his favorite. But that's that. That's his favorite. But that's that. That's. That's one of my personal goals is just to get somewhere where entrepreneurs can kind of just congregate and just, you know, work and a little bit more high end of a library with just more fun. Yeah. And just to piggyback off the way Ayoka said, just the same thing. You know, just 30K net, 100 doors, maybe more than that, you know, it's it's really just our goal is just. full speed. It's just go hard every single day. And if you want to bring value to us, you know, we would love to bring value to you guys. So if you have any, we're an open book. If you have any questions or anything like that. So if you want to bring, if you want to bring

value to us, you could hit us up on Instagram. It's real love underscore real estate. Access any questions. If you want to come out to chat and ride with us for a weekend, we got space in the car. We're always looking for private. money lenders because we find assets that we just want to be able to partner and give returns to. So that's pretty much our goal for the next year or so. Awesome. You guys are awesome. You guys are killing it. So before we get out of here, let's get to the last segment of the show. It's time for our famous for this. This is the part of the show where we ask the same four questions. Every guest, every week,

we're going to throw them at you guys right now. So without further ado, and you may have different answers. You may have the same. So we'll start with Ayoka first on all these. and then go to Robert. But number one, do you have a favorite real estate-related book? Oh, man. I was trying not to be cliche and say rich dad, poor dad. But it was honestly life-changing to me. So I have to recommend that no matter what.

That's everybody's Christmas gift, by the way, is that book. There you go. That's great. Yeah, I found that's like a gateway drug to real estate. That's what gets everybody into it. To be honest with you, it's books are something I have to get more into. I won't lie to you. But when I hear we sit in the car and we play lo-fi music while we're driving for dollars.

And I yokea kind of, we just bounce off topics of the book. So I felt like I've read the book, but that book definitely is just mind-shed. It's the Bible. Have you ever heard someone say they felt like they read a book? Isn't that like the funny thing? That's how much Ayoca talks about it. I feel as if I've read the book because I've heard it told like Camp Fire Stories Generation's 7 passed out of Rich that, that.

We don't have the original copy anymore. It was destroyed during World War I. Yeah, it was destroyed. These are the arguments we have. He feels like he, he feels like he pulled that list. He feel like he read that book, you know. He feels like he checked on that tenant, you know. I think he feels like he's got 100 units right now.

I mean, why pursue any more? I just feel like that. I see that this is a biased interview, so I'm just going to be quiet. Awesome. All right. Number two, David Green. Well, yeah. What is your favorite business book?

I'm reading this right now by Steven Schwartzman. What it takes. What it takes. That sounds exactly in line with how you guys talk. Yeah. I love him. I watch all his interviews and stuff like that. never thought would be in the position that I would be doing. Like, I find my fund from Yahoo Finance now.

So, but so far, it's a, it's a absolutely beautiful book. And it's really helping me increase my, like elevate my thinking. So what it takes. That's how you know that you've entered the financial independence brotherhood, sisterhood is when TMZ is no longer appealing, but Yavu Finance gets you all. Yeah, like what happened? I remember. like looking at all the alerts now they're like banned from my life yep yeah Robert how about you legend has it that is also the same I've felt like I've read the book also but you know um listen it it's different different strokes for different folks but you know I I just I really just bounce stuff off of Ayoka and you know legend has it I know I love podcast so that

Did you feel like you'd already been on the bigger podcast podcast? I felt like this is the third time you guys are talking to me. So it's like, you know, it is what it is. That's funny. Okay. How about this? Well, yeah, let's say it's shifted to like podcasts. Like what do you listen to?

That's exactly what I was going to ask. Who's your favorite speaker to listen to if you don't like to read books? Well, so I'm a huge Grant Cardone fan. I just feel like if you're looking for someone with confidence and you really look at his story, it's a fantastic story. And I'm a big person on Steve Trang. I like real estate disruptors because I think the biggest thing that we have to kind of watch out for is who your teachers are. And I feel like whenever someone's speaking on a podcast or speaking in general, they don't want to give the real juicy bits or it feels like maybe they're holding some stuff back to maybe so you could buy their course.

And I feel like the way he asks questions, the way you guys ask questions, it really pulls it really pulls. out the, the mentality, the certain things that you need to do. So I just, your, your podcast, Steve Trang's, it's just a podcast that can really get the nitty gritty out, the meat. That's that I'm addicted to those. Yeah, we just had Steve Trang on our podcast, episode 4.52. I was just looking that up too. Yeah. I got to listen to it. That was he was really good. That's a, that's great there. And for those of you who listen and don't like books, it's okay. Not everybody likes the same stuff. Don't feel shame. or guilt because you don't like reading. You got two options. You could listen to someone else

who read the book so much that it feels as if you read it or you can listen to other people talk and that's perfectly fine. No, you can't do that. I feel like I already have that Ferrari that I don't fit in and I feel like I fit in it. I'm going to get you down in the comments. I'm going to get you on the comments. How did you not prepare for this question? They asked the same four questions. You know what, Robert, you play a very important role in this whole thing being the whipping boy, right? We got to bring joy to people's laps at your expense. So you're the real MVP at the end of the day. Yeah, follow us on real love and real estate.

It's on our Instagram. We do crazy stuff. It's just you guys got to follow us. Love it. All right, cool. When we're not piling on Robert, what are some of your guys's hobbies? Oh, man. I'll be completely honest.

We're still trying to develop hobbies. We probably need to have more fun, to be honest. But you know what? We spent the first, what, seven years that we've been together because this year I make 10. So having fun. So right now it's kind of business, you know. Like we really genuinely enjoy each other as friends and as being in a relationship. You know, I love him.

We're still getting used to the fact that we are together every day, all day. You know, we went from having separate lives, separate jobs to the same job now. So we're, so it's kind of, we need to make more time for fun. I'll just be honest about that. Yeah. Yeah. My hobbies are one, I love cars, by the way, love, love cars, but love cars. Probably go bankrupt when, you know, buying cars.

But honestly, and if, and not to say a cliche thing, but it's really looking at houses every single day. Like, just immersing myself in work, immersing myself. with Ayoka. Like, I love her so much. And she, I would not be where I'm at if it wasn't for her. She is equally as, you know, because of my mindset, I give it all to her for that because she, if she did not kind of show me what to do, I wouldn't be here. So it's like doing, looking at deals, being with her every day in a car, her telling me about books that I should read and me listening to them. It's, it's, it's, it's, um, that that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, my hobby that I truly, truly love. And I love what I'm doing right now. I am so happy with where

I'm at right now and where we look to be in the future. That's so good. So good. I'm scared you're going to propose. It might be a first. It might be a first. I mean, Robert just feels like he's married anyway. So we're good. That's a good point, right? Legend. Legend had it. Legend has it. I read a book on marriage. And how to, you know, legend has it.

He feels like you guys are already married. Yeah. Okay. All right. Let's close up shop. My last question of the day, what do you guys think separate successful real estate investors

from all those who give up, fail, or never get started? Action. Oh, man. Action and fear. I've been in both places. I've been the place of inaction. And I've been the place of fear.

And it's still a constant battle. But that is the difference, the true difference in my opinion, between the successful investors and the unsuccessful or the ones that's not trying. It's action and fear. Work on it. It is, I never knew that fear was something that you could change. Action, obviously, is something that you can change. But you can also change fear. And my advice for just changing fear is just do it.

Like, there are times where I'm scared to make. the cold call, so I've forced myself to do it. There's times where Rob or I may be scared to knock on the door, so we go there, we open the door, and we do it. You know, you walk down the driveway, you have to do it. So I would say that is, that's going to be the game changer for anybody's life. It's just like, you know, Rob wants to go to the gym and I'll just stop there. Well, I mean, what if you feel like you did go to the gym? He feels like he went, you know? I feel like I worked out today. Yeah, exactly.

This is, this is not what I signed up for. It's becoming very evident. This is different than what. It's really good with this didn't come out at the beginning of the episode because this would have been an hour and a half of continual. I feel like. Yes. Just to answer that question, I feel like what separates, like Ayoko was saying, false evidence appearing real. Like, it's, I'm scared to do this.

There's going to be there. I have to prepare. Like, we went to a seminar and there was someone that. has never done deals and they were just taking notes after notes after notes. And I said, how many seminars have you been to? I've been to hundreds. I travel around the world, the country following seminars. And that's, that's just a waste of your time. Just take action. There is never going to, you are never going to be prepared for a seller opening the door and telling you their problems because all that is, is you're just never going to know. So doing it

is what separates real investors from someone that just goes to seminars and listens to podcasts, as great as this one. There you go. Mike drop. I love it, guys. All right, David, want you get us out of here with the last question? Last question of the day for those who love your story and maybe you want to bring value to YouTube, where can they find out more about you?

Our Instagram is Real Love underscore Real Estate. We do have a YouTube channel, but Rob needs to put more content on it. Come on, Rob. Let's go. Yeah, it's just real love and real estate. And it's nothing special. It's just, we just tried, we've documented so much of our stuff just along the two years. And we just kept it to ourselves. So we just started kind of just finally just kind of sharing it with people.

So that would probably be the best way. And it's just exactly what it is, day-to-day evicting tenants and looking at deals and just the raw nitty-gritty. And the good and the bad. So yeah. Oh, yeah. very cool guys and it's real love real estate let me get that right real love yeah real love yeah all right i'm following you right at this very moment so we're now we're now friends oh that is too awesome well thanks guys and everyone else's going to follow you too so we're gonna

blow up your your your your your instagram i guess that's it so david green i guess we'll get out of here uh well i want to i'm curious why we never came up for a cool name for the underscore. Remember how the pound sign became a hashtag? That's true. Keep saying underscore three syllables for one little line that isn't worth one. That's true. That's true. All right. That's a completely separate bunny show there. Thank you guys very much for coming on for sharing your story for pulling back the curtain and letting us see really all the ugliness that's behind the success because people don't get to see that. They get to see the big checks and the $20,000 numbers getting thrown around. But you guys showed this is the

work that goes into having the incredible body that, you know, gets shown on the Airbrush magazine. So thank you guys. Really respect you for doing that. Thank you. We are so excited about doing this. This is David Green for, oh, that's awesome. I'm glad to hear that. I hope you guys get all the follows of the world because when Brandon blesses you with a follow, it does big things for you. So watch what happens there. This is David Green for Brandon. I feel like I don't steal other people's quotes, Turner. Signing off. Kind of a jerk move that I made. made Brandon wait to then be insulted. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio,

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