Epic Real Estate Investing - $6,000,000 or BUST! with Jamel Gibbs | 839

Episode Date: November 17, 2019

Today, Matt interviews Jamel Gibbs, a successful real estate investor and educator, an owner of Mill Street Properties and REI Education Academy who consults and coaches people all across the country in an effort to help them achieve true financial freedom. You will hear about Jamel's most effective message that he has been sending to prospective sellers, how he and his team run business in 9 different markets, and his $6,000,000 plan for the next year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terrio Media. Success in real estate has nothing to do with shiny objects. It has everything to do with mastering the basics. The three pillars of real estate investing. Attract, convert, exit. Matt Terrio has been helping real estate investors do just that for more than a decade now. If you want to make money in real estate, keep listening. If you want it faster, visit R-E-I-A's.

com. Here's Matt. Hello, and welcome to the epic real estate investing show. I've got a great guest for you today. I'm really excited to share this person with you and what they're up to and how they can impact your business. But first, if you're been looking for private money, if that's been to become a big mystery to you and you're like, how do you do that? How do you find these private money solutions, right? Or how do you find private lenders?

Well, I've got a great solution for you. It's new private money. your total funding problem is solved. So if you need money of any type for any type of real estate investment, this is the right place to go, new private money.com, long and short term money for your deals, debt or equity lending, purchase, refinance, rehab, construction, development, and everything in between. As long as you're not looking for a loan on your primary residence,

just fill out the form and then, boom, get ready to close. They do ask you for your social security number, but it is not a determining factor, just if you have a good one, it just really helps. So it's really simple. You just fill out the form and then lenders will come to you to compete to fund your real estate investment. And you'll get an answer and responses in as quickly as 30 minutes. And the sources of these funds come from private lenders and family offices, crowdfunding platforms, hard money companies, hedge funds, investors in your local area even, and just an abundance of access to OPM, other people's money. So go check that out at new private money.com.

And secondly, though, the money's not going to do you any good unless you actually have a deal to fund. And I just started using this new resource for my direct mail. This company, they've done a nice mix of direct mail text messaging and email and just kind of coordinating them all together to really increase the effectiveness and the impact of your direct mail. And they built it specifically for people with small mail budgets. So if you're really limited on your direct mail budgets, but you want to get the, biggest bang for your buck. Go check them out. It's at mailmix.io, mailmix.com. Ilemics. That mix being a mix of direct mail, text messaging, an email, all a coordinated message, hitting your motivated sellers all at once. And they've already done all the work for you as well.

They've put these campaigns in place for you. So you just set it and forget it. Mailmix.io. All righty. So let's get on with the show. My guest is a very successful real estate investor and educator. He's the owner of Mill Street Properties, a successful real estate investing firm. He's also the owner of the REI Education Academy, which is a successful real estate investment education firm and publishing company that teaches their clients how to build successful real estate investing businesses. And he coaches and consults people all across the country in an effort to help them achieve true financial freedom through real estate investing. A man after my own heart. All righty. So please help me welcome Mr. Jamel Gibbs to the show.

Jamel, welcome to Epic Real Estate Investing. What's up, man. How are you? Doing good, man. Doing good. Good to see you. Awesome. You know, we just met here a few months ago, and we've got a ton of mutual friends, and everyone has vouched for you for being an excellent dude and a very successful guy, and you're really smart and you know what you're doing. So I thought, let's come on the show and get to know you better.

Awesome, man. I'm excited. Totally, right? Me too. So where are you from? Where are you based? I'm in North Carolina by way of, I mean, I've moved to several different places. I'm originally from Brooklyn, New York. I moved to Pennsylvania. I lived there for about eight years, and then now I'm here in North Carolina. Sweet.

So you moved down to North Carolina. Was that a personal thing, or was that a real estate motivated move? Personal. We, you know, my wife and I, we've been together now for, it's going to be 20 years coming out. Oh, congrats.

Yeah, when I was 19 years old, I met it. We hooked up. Good. How do he starts? You know, her family, they were here already. So we were visiting here and just decided to move down. Got it.

So has real estate been your thing from day one? Or was something happened before that that motivated you to move into it? That's a really good question, man. You know, I started in business at a very young age. My mom started me on the newspaper route when I was seven. I had a barbershop by the time I was 15. I didn't go to college. Fresh out of high school, I went to Wall Street for about a year up until 9-11.

And then after 9-11, I got into real estate. So that's how I transitioned into the real estate investing business. Got it. So were you anywhere close to ground zero on 9-11 then? I was on Wall Street. Well, actually, the main headquarters was in the World Trade Center. Wow. I was about two blocks away from there.

Oh, thank God for that. Yeah, seriously. Gosh, explain to me. Take me back there if you don't mind. What was that, what was your big memory there? Well, the one thing that I remember from that day, I was on a 19th floor on 61, 61 Broadway in Manhattan. The main headquarters was in the Second World Trade Building.

We also had an office on 40 Wall Street. the Trump building. But when I was on the 19th floor, I remember because we used to watch the screens for stock prices and stuff like that when we were in the office. I remember just feeling a big rumble. And then all you remember after that was breaking news.

You know, they evacuated the building. We go outside and you see, little it almost looked like little pieces of paper flapping in the air and those were actual people man it was sad

it was really sad so we're going toward the ferry to get out of Manhattan the ferry took you to Staten Island or Brooklyn because they wouldn't allow anyone over the Brooklyn Bridge at that time

so we were in the ferry terminal and the first building came down we thought there was going to be another airplane to hit the ferry building because they said there's another plane coming everybody started running toward the water people started jumping in and uh what that was was the first building coming down and it just clouded the entire ferry terminal so then when we were on the ferry the second we watched the second building fall one of the saddest days you can

imagine man it nothing it pales in comparison to anything else I've ever experienced. Yeah, I mean, just about anybody that was alive during that time, I could probably say just about the same thing. Yeah. Tragedy of so many lives lost. But praise God that they sacrificed yours, brother. Appreciate that.

Yep, glad you're here. So let's transition. I don't know how we transition out of that. I didn't expect that, but 9-11 is just something that, you know, I was in the Marine Corps, and a lot of emotions came up during that time. So, anyway, moving on, sir. So you moved down to South Carolina and started a real estate investing business. Is that just how it started?

Well, I started in Brooklyn, started in a real estate business in Brooklyn. I started meeting different people. I was already good over the phone and networking. So I was networking my way to success. It took me about a year, a little over a year, about 13 months, taking my first check in real estate, which was $1,500. dollars. I remember those.

If you can imagine, you know, wait an entire year for a $1,500 check. Right. I could have been discouraged. Most people would be discouraged after something like that. But, you know, I felt like it was validation for me to know that even though it was a small check, it was something that came in and I made money on it. Because my next check after that, because of my consistency, I made $48,000. thousand dollars and that completely changed my life and you know i was a i was a young kid at that

time i was living in the projects man at that time was living in the hood and um i ended up uh you know i was smart with the money at first over time when you start making more money you uh you forget that money doesn't grow in trees right and i was young and dumb and you think about it i made I was 21 years old. By the time I was 25, I was pretty much well off because of real estate. And by the time I was 27, I was broke again. So I needed the, you know, I wasn't smart with my money. That's what that was all about.

It took me some time to get back on my feet a little less than a year. But then after that, you know, we've just been consistently, I've been really conservative and consistent. with what I do. So, you know, the lesson from that was, you know, yeah, you can make a lot of money while you're young, but you have to be smart. It's not about how much money you make. It's about how much money you keep.

That was my first lesson that I learned. From 2002 to 2005, 2006, 2007 era, we were buying, fixing, and then doing a rent to own on every single house that we bought. We had. I mean, it was just like clockwork. So as I mentioned, I felt like money were growing trees, and I just totally forgot where I came from in regards to my financial situation. And I'm not afraid to admit that. People need to hear that.

So from 2005, I met a guy named Steve D. Palantino, who took me under his wing. A very good friend of mine, even he's about 70 years old, probably a little. Younger than that, Steve, if you're listening, I apologize for messing up your age. Oh, he's listening. He's a raving fan. Steve is a really good friend of mine. He calls me a lad. And he took me under his wing. At that time, he had 120 rental properties. He introduced me to my first private money investor. He showed me what he was doing in order to make money. And I basically copied it. He convinced me to start whole.

selling at that time. This is around 2005 now. So in 2005 to 2008, we were crushing it. And then when that market hit, as I've mentioned, we lost everything by the time of 27. So I had to rebuild. I wasn't prepared for the dip in the market. I wasn't prepared like most people aren't today. Unfortunately, most people are getting in the real estate now because it's easy to make money, but you have to carry yourself for that dip in the market. And, you know, when there's blood in the streets, you buy, obviously, right? So don't be afraid if the market takes a dump. I mean, that's how you get really rich, in my opinion. I'm sure you can vouch for that as well. Yep. Yep. So let's go back a little bit back further in your story. Those 13 months to get that first

check and that check was for a whopping 1500 bucks back then take yourself back there because I think there's a lot of people that can identify with that story but they haven't reached their 13th month yet but they're hitting that 7th 8th and 9th month and stuff is getting tough what were some of the things that you did to support yourself how did you survive through that period it's it's funny man because at that time you know as I've mentioned I work in a barbershop I owned a barbershop when I was in high school I was cutting hair while I was getting my real estate business off the ground. After Wall Street, even on Wall Street, I had to cut hair on the side because I was making,

I was a cold caller becoming an account opener. I was making like $250 every two weeks. So that's $500 a month living in New York City. Yeah, that can go very far. Even living in a hood. That's like a bagel and a cup of coffee a week. Even when we were living in a situation, I was living in. that's a little bit of money.

So, you know, for the most part, I had to support myself through cutting the hair. I would make $100 a day doing that. And that's how I kind of made it through. So you had a side gig. You had a job, right? Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of people frown on that. And I was like, I've been telling people more often lately and unapologetically, like,

dude, if you need to wholesale a house in the next 30 days just to pay rent, forget that plan. the job first and then we'll start working about thinking about the wholesaling. It's not a bad thing. It's just a stepping stone, right? It's a tool or a resource to get you to where you want to go inside of real estate. Totally agree with that, man, because a lot of people, you know, and it's not their fault. They see the images online and on TV and stuff like that. Hey, you know, I can watch A&E flip this house, not to throw anybody under the bus, but, you know, I can make a Throw him.

I can make $50,000 or $100,000 on his flip and do very little work. It doesn't work that way, my friend. You know all those A&E people were just put out of business. Did you know this? Really? Yeah. There's two major seminar companies that used... Oh, I do know what you're talking about.

Use the stars as the face of their educational platform and FTC to shut them both down. Yeah. Yeah, I did see them. Yeah. No more A&E stars out there on the... on the guru circuit anymore, at least not for a while. But another thing that really happened that I can really identify with and I can really relate to is that $1,500 check, it wasn't $1,500 bucks.

It was validation. It was evidence to your efforts actually worked. John Terry, you know, I just met him a month ago. So when I met you as well, he calls it the shut up check. I love that, I love that term. I saw him, when I saw him, he said, you know, he teaches his students to call it the shut up check. So I love that term, man. Shout out to Sean Terry.

Yeah, amen, good friend of the show. Yeah, the shut up check. Interesting. And that would be for what's going on in your exterior world, right? Yeah. I think that the evidence interior wise is probably even more powerful. Yep. Because, you know, you're sitting there and you're hearing maybe the naysayers or even, you know, you're talking to,

yourself. Like, I don't know if I can do this, right? And so it tells me, I guess we could say it tells the exterior world to shut up and it tells that little voice in our head to shut up as well. Yeah. That's where it really all turned around for me is when I had evidence. I was like, oh, I'm all in full steam ahead. Changes your psyche, doesn't it, man? Yeah. Yeah. That you can accomplish anything at that point. You say, if I can get this done, you know, what can I accomplish now? Because look, I could have quit. You're on the course of that year. I would I never got that $1,500 shut up check, as Sean Terry calls it. But then, think about what happened after that.

I mean, $48,000 at 21 years old. Yeah. That is mind-blowing. That was mind-blowing. That was more money than both my parents made combined in an entire year. Yep. Made it in one check. That's what's possible.

Unbelievable. Yeah. That's what real estate investing is done for me. Right. So let's look at that $48,000 check. How far apart were those two from the first and the second check? Two months. Two months.

Okay. So yeah, that's kind of how it works. It's much closer together than no check to the first check. So what did you find most surprising about that? What were you most surprised by once you closed that deal and had that check in your hand? I mean, number one, it was real. But it wasn't as, honestly, I have to admit to this, it wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be after the fact. I had more joy doing the actual work and getting the deal done than I did with putting the money in the bank.

So, yeah, it was a lot of money, but that's how I knew I found what I really loved to do because the money really didn't mean anything to me. It was the joy of actually getting the deal done. I felt like I accomplished something. So it wasn't about the money. It was about, hey, I can do this. This is fun. I love doing this. it was tough.

Don't get me wrong. It was difficult, but it wasn't enough to keep me away from doing another deal. So it was the joy of actually getting the deal done. The $48,000,

I mean, it can come and go just like that. You know, but that joy that you get from that blood, sweat and tears of actually getting the check as more of an impact,

while it had more of an impact on me than it did on getting that the actual funds right yeah i've knocked down some major goals in my life and each time i do i'm surprised by how surprised i am when i'm like is that it like you know or the lack of being surprised or the lack of satisfaction around it yeah so thanks for sharing your story we have a lot of success stories here around the epic community but not too many like yours because most people won't stick it out for 13 months to make it work so that's it very much an inspirational story. So thanks for sharing that, Jamel.

Thanks. You bet. All right. So bring me up to speed today. What does your real estate investing business look like today? So we're doing deals pretty much every single month. Recently, we got into new construction. We're slowing down on that because we don't know what's going to happen with the market. I don't know if you saw any posts on Instagram or Facebook. you know, we bought, we had 33 lots and ended up executing that deal. But in that, those houses were going for 160,000 apiece. We were able to build them for about 116 a piece. So not a bad little lick there.

But right now we're doing more wholesaling than anything. We're doing a lot of creative investing, which I wasn't doing 10, 12. years ago. And I think that that was a difference maker for me back then, the cash flow part. I think if you have cash flow, that can help you through any market. In fact, I know that. So now what we're doing, we're focused more on creative investing. So lease purchases, owner of finance, you know, Rapsin, you know, subject to investing,

all kinds of deals like that, in addition to wholesaling. You would ask me that same question two, three years ago, I was still rehabbing a lot of houses. You know, you can either look on some of my old YouTube and Facebook posts. I was rehabbing a lot of houses building new construction and stuff like that. But decided to start slowing down on that and go with more lower risk investment strategies in order to prepare for whatever is going to come. We don't know what's going to be. Right.

I'm just prepping for that. I just had Patrick Precourt on the show yesterday. It'll be yesterday by the time that your show, people are listening to us right now. And he shared an interesting fact that it just came out the day that we interviewed him, which was yesterday, would be from 2020 to 2022, it's going to be the largest boom in new construction ever. Really? So you... 2020 to 2022. Yes.

So you might want to just look at that before you... pull back on your new construction stuff. Okay. Because those are big major corporations. They do a lot of research. So sometimes it's smart to follow them. So just confirm that. But he just shared that with me yesterday.

So I thought that was interesting. I appreciate that information, man. So it's good to talk to guys like you. Right? So do you all hear that? That's why it's good to talk to me. 220 to 220, exactly. 2020 to 2022.

Yeah. So the next two years, it's supposed to be the largest boom. And we know this is happening because, all of those building permits, they have to be filed so early in advance. So there's a good indicator that what's coming because those permits that are on the rise, right? You mentioned something that was really interesting. You said, follow what the big companies are doing. I'm a firm believer in that even when it comes to hedge funds, you know, you look at what the heads phones are

doing. A lot of them are buying and holding right now. Yeah. And areas in primary markets, you've got Pittsburgh and Jacksonville and Atlanta and Houston, areas like that, these guys of holding, that's validation as to what you should be doing right now. Yep. The wealth is in the hole. It's not in the flip. Mine in the flip. You know, there's a, there's a funny saying, you're only as good as your last flip.

Yeah, right? You know, so once you get rid of that, you get paid once with holding. You can get paid multiple times. So why not hold? Yep. Okay, so a whole setting, you're doing deals. I see you post on your Instagram account and you've got, I mean, he just had like a monster Friday last week. You had like three or four closings in one day, right?

Yeah, yeah. Congrats. So what's your big source of finding your deals right now? What's your big lead generation strategy? We use multiple strategies. I'm a big direct mail guy, but we also do co-calling. We do pay-per-click advertising. We do RVMs. We do email. We do text messaging. We do voice broadcast. The way we set it up is we do a postcard to one list every eight weeks. and then we'll buy another list and send it out every eight weeks and just continue that process. In between the calls, we do emails, we follow up with a text message, we follow up with a voice, ringless voicemail, voice broadcast and things like that.

And then we send out another postcard. So we're touching them five, six times in between the postcard. Yep. And then we follow up with another postcard and then start the cycle all over again. Perfect. Sending out ringless voicemails and text messages, what have you found to be the most effective message that you put in there that gets a response? Something really simple that doesn't sound salesy or like your marketing or something like that. The reason for that, you got to remember, everybody's being bombarded with a sales pitch. And you have everybody and their mama trying to be a real estate investor.

So how do you separate yourself from everybody else? If everybody else sound like the We Buy Houses sales guy, then you're going to get the same result if you follow exactly what they're doing. So how do you separate yourself from that? You write a simple letter. You remove the sales pitch out of it. You sound like yourself. And you, in my opinion, if they're short and sweet,

you'll have much better results from there. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I know exactly what everybody is doing because my phone blows up with them all the time. I was like, this can't be working for you. This is a terrible thing that you just did, right? I get these marketing because I own properties locally here. I get these postcards and I'm looking at it like, you know, why would I want to call this postcard? So that's the way I'll look at it. You know, if it were me, what would I do differently to not sound like? Because 90% of the time, 99% in the time, the seller isn't waking up in the morning thinking about selling their property to you. That's just not the case.

It just depends on a situation. Obviously, if you're focusing on tax delinquent properties, their circumstances are a bit different. If you are focusing on, let's say, the average vacant property owner, they're not waking up in the morning saying, hey, I want to sell my house to Jamel Gibbs today. That's just not the case. So how do you spark their interest? separate yourself, we used to call it the pack of walls. How do you separate yourselves on the pack of walls and come off as a sincere individual who's truly interested in purchasing the house?

Easy. You remove the sales strategy. You remove the sales tactic. You remove the sales speech in the marketing. And you just be yourself. Yep. You know, some of the best marketing I've ever done was when I just sat there and wrote a letter or when I just sat there and typed up a regular email and sent it out.

And, you know, the result from that is far better than the typical, you know, we buy houses type of ad. Right, right. It's kind of like talking to the opposite sex. The best game is no game at all, right? And the same when it comes to sales. Yeah, I think the best salesmanship is having no salesmanship. Yeah. you know, it's funny.

Think about it like this. If you were, if you're a local real estate investor, you know, you're going up against a company that's perceived, maybe they're a small company, but they're coming across as this large company. Who do the people want to do business with? The company or the people.

People would do business with people they like and trust. So how do you get them to like and trust you versus you coming across as this big company, you remove the sales. It's the psychology behind a handwritten bandit sign versus one that's typed up. Or a handwritten yellow letter versus one that's typed up. It's the same psychology behind that.

Yep. You know, people want to do business with people, they like and trust. So if you can come across as an individual that is truly sincere about being interested in a, property. They don't want to just make a low ball offer everybody else. And they don't want to just bombard the seller. Then you're going to win a deal. I just did a, I just locked up a contract the other day. I had someone offer more money on that property than I did. Like the fact that I was

personal with her. And if you watch the video, I explain all the terms in the contract. I wasn't trying to bombard her. I let her tell me what her asking price. was, which was right in line with what I wanted the property for anyway, I removed the sales pitch. And that was it. Yep. So people do business with people they like and trust. Yeah, yep.

I'm never without a business coach. So I've always got somebody. Maybe it's marketing. Maybe it's personal development. Maybe it's real estate specific. And this year I've worked with somebody really closely and marketing genius. And he says, the best marketing and the best way to get people to work with you is the Like trust factor, absolutely, but they're ultimately going to pick the person that they think who can actually help them.

So you have to demonstrate that you can help people by actually helping them, right? That's the old be a real nice guy and help people trick, right? Right in line with that. Here's why it validates exactly what you just said. So not only does she like and trust me, but the reason why she likes and trust me more, she's moving into she needs a different place at first she wanted a retirement home

she's an older lady probably you know I don't I want to give her 70 years old but she's fully aware of what's going on but she was looking into a retirement home and said no I'm just going to look for

a property to rank so I offered assistance right in that regard I mean we're problem solvers as investors if we want to make the money we have to solve the problem, right? How do you solve the problem? You simply ask them what they need.

And even if it's in a small, even if I just send her a referral to someone who can help her find the place, it validates what you just said. It gives life to what she's looking to do, and it helps me to help her even more. 100%. 100%. All right.

you've got a lot of lines in the water when it comes to your marketing. So I'm sure the volume of incoming increase is significant. How do you handle those? Is it you doing it all the time or you got people on your team? How does that work? No way I can do that by myself. So yeah, we got a team. What I like to do, we're in nine different markets.

So like we're doing a mailer. We just did two mailers in one of our markets up in Pennsylvania this week, one last week and one going out tomorrow. But we're in North Carolina. We're in multiple markets. And what I like to do, I figure for every $7,500 we spend, we need one acquisition specialist. An acquisition specialist, in my opinion, can handle three counties.

Oh, you need an acquisition specialist for every 75 you spend. Exactly. Okay, got it. Exactly. So an acquisition specialist can handle three counties without, feeling overwhelmed. When we start going out into four, five, and six counties,

then we need another acquisition specialist. Right. So that's the way we work it. So for every 7,500 we spend an acquisitions specialist can handle that. And we have one disposition. So the disposition specialist handles basically a transaction coordinator,

sell the properties, and make sure they get the clothes. They can handle a lot more of that because you have actual deals and you can deal with 50 folders at one time, you know, at that point. But what we typically do is we'll have acquisition specialists. All the calls go to voicemail.

They call everybody back, whether it's a miscall, whether it's abandoned. We use call rail, so that's what I'm referencing off of. Miss call, abandoned, voicemail, you know, it doesn't matter what the circumstances were. They call every single person back. Sometimes people just don't want to talk. so we call them back and they make sure that they pre-screen them.

We don't count it as a lead until an entire lead sheet is filled out. So what we typically do is we like to get at least 50, we know for every 15 to 20 of those we get filled out, we're going to get a deal. You know, and that's typical across the nation. Actually, if we're talking about

my local market, I want to say for every five to six of those we get filled out, we get a deal. But on a national scale, every 15 to 20 of those, we get filled out. We put it into Podio and we put it on a whiteboard. Once we get it sold, it calculates our profits for the month, and then we move on. We continue, we do that over and over and over again. That's what the business is based on. Now, those are for the wholesale transaction. So we have a set formula we use in order to streamline that entire process. So there's no thinking involved. It's, this is what the numbers are. If you can make the offer and it falls within these numbers,

then this is what we're, this is what we're able to offer. Now, if it's a creative real estate deal, I'm a little bit more involved in those. I am training my team to get a little better with understanding how those processes work. But if we come across somebody that's creative, I'll sit there and train the virtual assistant or the local individual to talk to the seller to make that particular offer. Once we know we have a solid deal with that offer, then I kind of oversee the entire creative investing side of the business.

and then occasionally if we have like some local appointments and no one's available like the other day I had a I was doing it on video the lady I met up with her in person because I had a personal rapport with her already so I do make the effort to go out on appointments most of the time our offers are made over the phone and our contracts assigned through docu sign but you will have those times when an individual will have to be out there sometimes it's just me it works. Got it. So the virtual thing, you're in nine different markets. That's pretty extraordinary. So congrats on that and making that work. We try to build a market to five deals and then we go into the next one. That way, you know, I think anybody can step into any market and do five deals a month.

Yeah. That's easy to do, especially if you have enough volume. If you're in the city and I was talking to another friend of ours, Zach, About a week ago, he, he likes to focus on secondary markets where, you know, the population may be 250,000 people and up. I like to go to a million. You know, my market is about a half a million people, you know, but if I add all three counties where I'm located, we're talking a million and a half people. I like the million plus because, number one, you have, it's validation for more cash buyers. and in addition to that, it's, you know that you're going to find enough distressed properties

every month to be able to make it, make a significant impact in your income. So I like higher populated. I learned that from another friend of ours, Rob Swanson. I learned a little bit from everybody. It's the power of the network, right? That's right, man. We just had Zach on the show a couple days ago, and it came up. He just said, hey, there's a million.

ways to make a million bucks in real estate. Right. Just got to pick one, right? Zach's going for the small markets. You're going for the big markets. That's totally opposite things, but you can make it work in both. That's right. So in your virtual markets, do you have boots on the ground or are you closing everything

over the phone virtually? No, we do have boots on ground as well. We do close over the phone, but what we do is, let's say, for example, we needed pictures of a property. We do have boots on ground. Sometimes we'll even use a notary. service and just send them right out to get the contract sign if they don't have like an email address and while they're there they'll take pictures for us we'll just throw them an extra

50 bucks or something like that so we utilize every single resources that we can mostly realtors we use most realtors as boots on sale and other markets got it in the remark is in there remark go ahead sorry that is you know my wife was just hammering the phones last week you know she was on the phone. She met, we tapped into three new markets, Jacksonville, and O.K.C. in Pittsburgh. And she's hammering these realtors. And we got, like, a listing of, like, I mean, she must have pulled in 500 leads last week just off of, you know, just networking with other people. You know, so, and then they're our boots on ground at that point.

That's fantastic. Okay, so let's go there. Explain to me, what are those calls to realtors look like that turns into 500 leads in a week? Well, just making sure we're dealing with investor-friendly realtors who understand the game. Give you an example. The guy in Jacksonville was fantastic. I mean, absolutely fantastic. The only problem that we had was he was sending us Daisy chain properties, stuff that we've seen before.

So we need some small adjustments, and now he has another 200 properties he's sending. You have to be clear with these individuals. The person in Pittsburgh, she didn't quite get it. So she was sending us rehab properties and stuff that was, you know, full market value no matter what we told her. So you just got to be really clear with them. Right. It's more or less, hey, you know, we're looking for distress properties. We will make offers, you know, on pretty much everything.

We're looking to buy them. We're looking to close on them. And then we're looking to resell them immediately. We're not going to be doing a lot of rehabbing and stuff like that. in exterior markets. And our local market, yes, we will rehab some properties. But we're looking for stuff that we can buy and put right back on the market. We have access to the capital or we have access to hedge funds that we do business with.

That's why we tap into certain markets because this is where they tell us, you know, I'm in the rest of mind in this market here. So we open up the flood gates. we figure for every $10,000 we spend on marketing, we could get five or six deals done per month. And, you know, we have one hedge fund looking for hundreds within the next year. So, you know, we have a solid buyer there. But yeah, it all starts with the realtor. And, you know, as long as you start with a realtor and you communicate with them the right way,

you'll be good to go. Sweet. So the key with the realtor that I picked up there was one being really cool. clear with what you're looking for. And second, when you say that, hey, we're looking stuff to buy and put it right back on the market, you're really indirectly speaking their language on commission, right? That's right. Exactly. So you're playing their favorite radio station, WI-I-FM. What's in it for me? Totally, totally. So great. All right, so let's shift gears a little bit. Have you having been, and there's not a lot of us out there right now that actually were real estate investors during the

downturn, right? A lot of people. people haven't even experienced or even believe that it's a real thing. And I can confirm it definitely is. And I know that you can as well. So having been through that experience once, how has it changed the way you're moving forward right now? Well, I'm just being more conservative with my approach to what I'm doing. What does conservative mean to you? I'm just being smarter with how much money I'm actually going to have in the marketplace. So before, I was on a lot, I was on nothing but rehabs, a lot of them. Yep.

And, you know, when that market tank and I couldn't cash out of these properties on the sales side, I was stuck. One thing I will say, it was a good learning lesson for me because, you know, I was out, I had to pay back. Now, I could have said, okay, I'm going to throw you into this bankruptcy and we're not, I'm not going to pay you back anything to the lenders. But my philosophy is it always do what you say you're going to do all the time. even if it hurts, period.

You always do what you say you're going to do. I lost a lot of money. I paid back every single red cent. I was broke after that. And sure enough, that same lender, one of the lenders came back and offered me a million dollar line of credit to buy more property.

It's part of the reason why I got back on my feet so quickly because I did what I said I was going to do. Yep. And it worked out for everybody. It hurt me. It seemed to me. hurt me up front, but it really helped me in the long run. So no matter who you are or what your plan is, if you make a commitment to somebody, live up to that commitment. If you have to take a loss

to live up to that commitment, then so be it. But at least you'll have the satisfaction of being able to get up in the morning, look yourself in the face, look yourself in the eyes and say, you know, I'm true to my word. And other people, believe it or not, they will notice it and it will benefit you in a long one. So, no matter what happens, always do what you say you're going to do. Now, as far as prepping, I am being more conservative, but I will be more aggressive with,

I'm going to be conservative with how much money I'm going to have out. I'm going to be aggressive with the amount of deals that we're actually going to do. Because we're going to focus on, and we're ramping up right now to prep for anything that's to come. Wholesaling is always a good strategy, no matter what the market condition it. Doesn't even matter because all you got to do is adjust your price, buy a little lower than what you were in this market, and then sell to the same buyers that you're, that's buying right now. Creative investing will allow you to build that real well. So you can get the same house that maybe $200,000 right now.

now, maybe you can get it for $80,000 to $120,000, significant discounts. Hold on to those properties for five years, wait for the market to go right back up, cash out. That's how you're going to really create that generational wealth, in my opinion, in this next upcoming boom. Now, here's the deal. If the new construction is still doing well, you know, as you've mentioned, that can have an impact on things as well. We just got finished wrapping up a 33 house new construction project ourselves. And, you know, that was a pretty substantial payday for us. And I'm glad you mentioned that because I wasn't even thinking along those lines.

I just wasn't thinking along those lines. That's why it's important to have market data and talk to other people. But I'm considering now ramping that back up now. But my only fear with that, and I have to be honest, my only fear with that is having so much money out at one time not knowing what the market is going to do. So to be on a conservative side, if you're brand new and you're less aggressive, focus on creative strategies and wholesaling. Number one, stay positive on your income. And number two, stay safe as well. Amen to that.

I was just texting Pat, so if I can get that article from him, I'll forward that to you so you can review it yourself. Appreciate that, man. You bet. Yeah, the wholesaling and creative investing from the lessons that I learned around the last bubble bursting, right? Yeah, in 2007, 2008. What I learned was forget the fix and flips all together. I'll never do another fix and flip in my life.

Because those are really the people that lost, right? The ones that had a bunch of money in the market and a bunch of projects going because they just couldn't do any wrong and you could make mistakes and the market would bail you out because it was appreciating faster than you could get it fixed and it just seemed like you couldn't lose and those are the people who really got hurt. I was one of them, man, so I know exactly what you mean. I was a fixing flipper. I just got caught out there with my pants down. Yep. And then you look at the developers, new home builders. I mean, they had something like you had times 10, right? Yeah. And maybe times 100 in some regards. I know some of them that did survive. They slowed

down tremendously, but it was because they were able to get their cost per bill was at like 50 to 60 cents on a dollar versus someone that was paying 90. And it's because number one, they're able to get the material so cheap and then they negotiate the labor. So that's one thing that I learned as I built these new construction houses. If you negotiate your labor and your materials down, it doesn't, I mean, you have enough meat on the bone. so that even if there is a market shift, I mean, you may take a hit, but you're still going to end up at the break-even point at least. So I won't lose any money. Right.

I'm not in it, though, break-even, are we? No, uh-uh, not at all. And, yeah, so my whole philosophy after that, or my whole strategy was all about creative acquisitions. Yeah, just hold as much as I can by putting down as little money as I can. That's right. And whatever didn't fit in that little puzzle, then I would wholesale it.

That's right. I never had wholesaling as my primary business. It was always intent to hold, hold, hold, hold, hold. And it's just wholesale what doesn't fit as a hold, right? Because every seasoned real estate investor I've ever met, none of them have ever said I wish I would have sold more. Yeah. I wish I would have bought more and sold less as well,

but they all say every single one of them. And so you make your money when you buy. Yep. Not when you sell. Yep, yep. So perfect. Jamel, if someone wanted to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Because I know you have your own education platform and you help people get wealthy in real estate. What would they have? If they want to reach out, what should they do? You can simply go to jamelgibs.com, which will redirect you to my company site, which is REI Education Academy.com. You can check me out on YouTube,

just like you can, Epic Real Estate, one of the number one channel is on YouTube. I'm trying to get mine there. and what's the name of your YouTube channel? slash Jamel Gibbs. Slash Jamel Gibbs. There you go. All right.

And that's Gibbs with two B's, by the way. You don't want to make the mistake I did. J-A-M-E-L. Oh, he's talking about from that video. Yeah. Zach Chil just gave you a hard time for that, didn't you? Yeah, Zach with an H. I spelled Gibbs with a 1B, and I spelled Christina Krause with a K.

So, Jamil Gibbs.com is fine. R-E-I Education Academy.com is where it's at. And, you know, yeah, if you guys have any questions, I'm on everything just like Matt, you know, Instagram and Facebook and YouTube pretty much. And I'll be happy to help you guys out if you have any questions. Cool, cool. Thanks, buddy.

Appreciate you. What's in your future right now that you're most excited about? Everything. There's an answer. We just had a newborn. She's three months old right now, so you may hear her in the background a little bit. She's three months, just watching her grow. But what I'm most excited about this coming year is we're ramping up, if we're talking about business, we're ramping up.

I'm going to try to hit, and this is my goal. I don't know if I'm going to do it or not, but I'm going to try to hit $6 million in one year next year. So that's $6 million in gross revenue? In gross revenue, not all profit. That's between me, the team, and everything. I typically make about 20% of that. Okay. So $6 million is the goal next year.

Well, what's, where do you stand right now? Like, what is it this year? We're going to do about half that. Okay. So we're at three. We want to get to six. Yeah. What's in the way?

What could potentially stop you? I just need to ramp up, go to more markets and spend more money on marketing. more markets more money in marketing that's it that's it well that's a pretty easy continue to grow the team you need you need more help when you i mean you can in my opinion you can and i've done this that's why i can say it um you can make a million dollars a year by yourself yep once you start getting above a million bucks you need a team you cannot i mean it's almost impossible especially with if you want to have a regular life You're going to need a team in order to, you can hit the million dollar mark by yourself.

But if you want to do more than that, you need a team. Yep. I've got a buddy and one of my mastermind. He's not in real estate, but he speaks to entrepreneurs in general. And he kind of says the same thing. Like, anyone can really be a millionaire by themselves. They can do a million bucks in business each year. And then, you know, you obviously need help to get to that like three, four million

mark. But that $5 million to $10 million mark is like what he, he calls that no man's land. Because that's where you will literally not ever have enough people. You won't, I mean, you won't have any time for yourself. It'll just be like a miserable experience. But the companies that make it to $10 million, they only made it there because they have the systems in place. Right. And you have the leverage in place and they have the structure in place. And then that's where the real freedom starts to happen is at the $10 million mark. But he says, if you're at $2, $3 million a year, be really careful what you wish for trying to get up to the 10 million, right? And I've always remembered that.

And that's kind of a... There's a really good book on that. That was reading recently. Let me say if I could pull it out for you real quick. I think it was, it wasn't the e-myth. It was, let me just pull it out quickly. It wasn't built to sell? It may have been built to sell.

It was built to sell. Yeah, that's exactly what it was. How did you figure that out? Oh, that's what we're talking about. There's only a few of it on that subject. Yeah. Yeah, it was built to sell. Listening to the audible.

And that's exactly what he's talking about. You got to be really careful with that. Totally. Well, if anyone can do it, I think you can, but I wish you all the best. Next year, let's stay in touch. And we'll touch base and check on your progress. Is that all right? Awesome, man.

I appreciate that. Okay, Jamel. Have a good one. Talk to you soon. Hey, take care, man. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow.

You didn't know home boy, we got to dash low. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.