Epic Real Estate Investing - How to Wholesale 100+ Deals per Year with James Hawk | 840

Episode Date: November 18, 2019

“If we are not doing 150 deals per year at least, we are not very happy.” James Hawk This Monday, Matt is joined with James Hawk, an extraordinary wholesaler and co-founder of Flip Marketing, LLC and Hayden Hawk Realty. You will find out how James started his real estate journey, how his team is structured, how he finds most of his deals today, how he handles Florida market, why wholesaling is one of the hottest topics in RE world, James’ biggest challenge right now, and many more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Making offers and cashing checks. What's new? What's Next with Ashley Montaigne. Hey, what's up? It's Ash bringing you what's new and what's next at Epic Real Estate. We just wrapped up another RIAA summit here in Las Vegas, and I wanted to give a shout out to Joseph and Ryan, who were able to join us. It was great to finally meet the both of you. We're excited to see what you guys are able to do back in your markets. You guys are ready. We're rooting for you.

And we're excited to see when you guys come back around with some wind. wins. Just something I had on my mind before I get into what's new with our wins and what's next. The topics of fear and self-doubt came up a couple of times this weekend, and I think it was very real. We were able to have some really raw conversations as to what the root of that fear was and the root of self-doubt was. And not only were we able to tackle it on the emotional side, but with some really great practical examples of how to get over those boundaries on any side of a deal, whether it be stressing out on the idea of where the cash is going to come from or the money's going to come from or how you're going to find a buyer for that wholesale deal. So just really logical

step-by-step scenarios and examples of how to get through those. And I don't want to dwell on this topic too much. But for anybody that's out there and is feeling some self-doubt and is lacking some confidence, I just want to send you a message to just encourage you to take that leap forward. because we've seen what's on the other side of it, all of the things that real estate can bring to your life. And it's really just a small hurdle that's in the way. And most of the time, it's more times than not. It's really just mental. So just start.

Just get going. And we're here to help you along the way. And if you'd like some personalized help doing that, go to riaase.com and we'd be happy to have a conversation with you. All righty. So let's get into some wins. These are some wins that are Epic Pro Academy members posted on follow. through Friday. And just a heads up, we had a monster follow through Friday this past week. So, Jesse, he had a huge win. Him and his son sent about 75 yellow letters and closed on a lead that

netted them $19,701. He said, thank you, Matt, for all your teachings, encouragement, and motivation. Wow, Jesse, I love that. That is awesome. Father and Son team, keep it up. I think this is one of the first times that I've seen you post. So I'm excited for the next one. And just keep that momentum going. And for anyone who says that yellow letters don't work, this is living proof. It's just about your messaging. All right. So Parker, he's currently working on 15 contracts and is pushing hard to reach one million in gross revenue by the year's end. That is a big goal. And I so know that you're going to reach it, Parker. That's awesome. Chris, so he signed up a new team member with a wholesale acquisition and disposition experience. He sent his first text blast with a new

broadcasting system that we're using and in two hours he was able to secure three appointments. And he closed on a purchase with the waterfall exit strategy, which is a series of cascading exit strategies as the deal develops. Rashida, she got a property under contract. She's going to sell her finance that deal. Yay, Rashida, good job. Chris, he closed two buy and holds. Jack and Josh, they closed on their next flip property. Enrique, he got a 15-unit portfolio. under contract. He plans to buy and hold them all. Oh man, Enrique, that is awesome. You are killing it. I am so, so happy for you. I'm glad to see you're still pushing hard. Kevin, Kevin closed a deal as well. And Josiah, he made a goal that he's going to do a half marathon in January. So he shared with us

a documented six-mile run that he had this past week, which is amazing. And he got one deal under contract as well and secured two private money lenders. That is awesome. Powerhouse, Josiah, you are a powerhouse. Keep it up. All right, so that's all that I have for you guys. Let's jump into what's next. So the epic intensive, two weeks ago I mentioned that we were planning on hosting three more epic intensives in 2020.

So our first one is going to be in April in Las Vegas, Nevada. The dates are tentative still, so I will announce them once we have them secured. And we'll be sending you guys updates as we go. If you'd like to sign up to our first to be notified list, go to epicintensive.com. You can sign up there. You just have to enter your name and email address, and you'll be first in line and get all the details. Alrighty, guys, that's all that I have for you guys today. Enjoy the week and enjoy the show.

From coast to coast, epic investors are doing the most. It's time for another epic field report. So hey, Jesse, welcome to the Epic Real Estate Investing show. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Yeah, I'm glad to have you as well. So I invited you on because we do this thing every Friday inside of our private Facebook group called Follow Through Friday, where people post their wins for the week. And you posted a humdinger.

Can't like you getting old. I use the word humdinger. But anyway, the post says, my son and I sent about 75 yellow letters double closed on a lead that netted us $19,7101.336. Got a picture of the statement there. Thanks for all your teachings, encouragement, and motivation Matt. So very good, Jesse. congratulations on that. Thank you very much.

Appreciate it. So you found this deal via a yellow letter. So explain to me how that works. You sent out 75. Was that all at once? And who did you send those two? That was basically all at once. I actually had my son get involved with me as he graduated college a couple of, probably a year

and a half ago. And he was pretty interested in what I was set off to do. And I had taken him with me to do. to a couple of RIA meetings and had shown him your podcast as well. And I had started out writing out a few letters and sending just a handful here and there. And he's actually kind of the light under my fire. And he decided to say, you know, Dad, I know you're busy. You got an eye on a fiber actually probably a 24-7 dirt feels like.

And he says, let's just do a bigger batch all at one time. So I says, yeah, let's go ahead and do it. We need to target some off market listing distressed owners. And he was able to put together a list from list source and combine a tax delinquencies, absentee owners. And we gathered up about 70 in a particular area that we were looking for, which was just in our backyard, realistically, which is where we wanted to work in. And we sent out these letters and they were all yellow letters, handwritten letters,

directed to the homeowners or the, in some, cases estate owners because we did find some owners that had some lawyers names attached to them. So didn't know what exactly the situation was there until they actually, this particular one, reached out to us. Perfect. And what were the magic words inside your letter? Do I have one here? It says, basically, hi, Dave.

My name is Jesse. My wife, Anna, and I would like to buy your house. please give us a call or a text. Thank you. Basically, just a two-word letter. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And that was it. And that's actually what got us a call.

Fantastic. Reached out to a local buyer. I did some public research, spotted a particular investor that was buying a lot of property in the area. I reached out to him and shown him the property. And he was very interested at the asking price that I had requested. And so unfortunately, he was not ready. to close at the timing where I was able to close and just do a simple wholesale transition.

So I had to close on it outright and take ownership of it and wait about two to three weeks after he had completed a couple of rehab projects that he was working on. So he can obtain the funds from there and 1031 exchange it and put it into here. So that was the timing of it. We closed. and then about three weeks later we actually sold it to him and closed again. Okay, so it wasn't a double closed then. You actually took ownership of it.

Didn't all happen at the escrow office. Correct, correct. It was 30 days after. Okay, perfect. All right, so you said you did some public research to find your buyer. What does that look like? What does that mean? We have a particular software that we're using through a RIA club.

We can see what the latest purchases in the area have been by whom. at what amount. So we can't just filter that out, look at the lowest prices. And it also tells us who or how many transactions have happened under one entity name or a certain individual's name. So that's how we were able to identify who buyers were, investor buyers in the area. Right. Very good. Yeah, there's a lot of those softwares out there. So many software's not to choose from. How do you know what you do? Exactly. Perfect. So you bought the property low. You sold it high. You made 19 grand and some change. Your lesson, what's the biggest lesson that you got out of this?

I would say that it's patience and continued follow-up. What was it like doing this with your son? Wonderful. As a matter of fact, I couldn't be happier with the relationship that's growing, that it's a bigger relationship that I'm developing with my son, doing something that I enjoy. He's actually getting to enjoy it now. I'm taking him under my wing and we're kind of, he's my yink to my yang and we're helping each other out. And I'm very humbled because I know that he's learning the skills to be able to build wealth for himself a lot sooner than

I did. And by the time he actually gets my age, we're hoping that, you know, he's going to be much happier and well off. Isn't that what we all want for? our kids. Exactly. Exactly. What a blessing. What a blessing. Great. So what is the future hold? What's next? Well, we just finished getting a couple of deals under contract right now. A three unit, six unit. We're working on the inspections. We're revving up our marketing campaign, which we just sent out another batch of 75 letters. We hired my daughters. She's a high school senior. My daughter's friend who has a lot of time in writing out these letters for us. So we're paying her. And so we kind of increased her, her work time and her workload. And she's happy with that. And we're also incorporating probate letters into our marketing

campaign because we have seen that there's been some success stories within our RIA club with some bigger discounted properties in that avenue. Well, congrats, Jesse. If you need any help, you know how to reach us. Keep doing what you're doing. And we'll do this again. Sound good? Yeah, definitely, Matt. I just want to tell you that I really appreciate all your help, your teachings. I was a pro-academy member about a little over a year ago and I've been listening to your podcast, commuting to work on the train. You've kind of been somewhat of a big brother to me in my ear and in my eye. And so I really appreciate all your help and your guidance on that. And I'm hoping that both my son and I are going to get an opportunity pretty soon to come. come by and meet with you. That would be fantastic. That would be fantastic. Well, thank you.

And it's a big gift to me just by you going out there and taking action on what you've learned around here. And I really appreciate you. And let's stay in touch. We'll do, Matt. Appreciate it. You bet. This is Terio 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-aise.com. Here's Matt. Hello, and welcome to the epic real estate investing show. Glad you found us. And if it's not your first time here, welcome back. Before we get started, I got a great show for you today, by the way, great guest. And before we do get started, though, I wanted to tell you about this new service, new private

money.com. I can't believe that something like this didn't exist before, but it does now. And if you've been in a situation where this whole private money thing becomes a mystery to you, how do you get private money? Everybody wants private money. Everybody wants to use other people's money. Well, now there's a nice, simple little place to go to for any type of real estate investing, long and short-term money for your deals, debt or equity lending, purchase, refinance, rehab, construction, development, everything in between. Even if your credit score is a little bit challenged, they do ask for your credit score, but it is not the deciding factor. It does make stuff a little easier, but it really is focused on the deal. So go to newprivatemoney.com. You submit your deal there, and within 30 minutes, you'll have multiple offers, multiple private lenders from all over the country,

family offices, crowdfunding platforms, hard money companies, hedge funds, investors in your local area, all fighting for the right to, do business with you, the privilege to do business with you, and they'll start competing against each other as well. So go to newprivantmoney.com. But we all know, before you use the money, you need to find a deal. So another service I've just started using mailmix.io, it's a nice little mix of direct mail, text messaging, and email. It's probably got the lowest, the skip tracing prices I've ever seen. So I'm channeling just all my skip tracing right through this service. but it's designed for the real estate investor with a small direct mail marketing budget. And so it's really effective.

It just sends out this little combination of texts and emails and direct mail postcards and letters, all pre-done for you. The whole campaign, it really is set it and forget it. And you are on your way. So you can go check that out at mailmix.io. All righty. So today's guest, world extraordinary wholesaler, Mr. James, Hawke. James, welcome to the epic real estate investing show. Hey, man, how are you? I'm glad to be here.

Thanks for having me. You bet. You bet. James, what market are you in? I'm in Jacksonville, Florida, and I live in Miami. So we're basically all of Northeast Florida, Nassau play St. John's and Duval County. Got it. All right. And how long have you been in that area operating? Yeah, since 2010. I started on my own, and in 2013, you met Hunter, that's my business partner now. We kind of merged our companies together and been moving forward ever since. Fantastic. So tell me a little bit about yourself.

We just got to meet here recently and over a lot of drinking and foul language and bad jokes and being politically incorrect and having a whole lot of fun. Love that. Yeah. But we've got a lot of mutual friends. Everyone speaks really highly of you. You're very good at what you do and accomplished real estate investors. So tell me how you got started and bring you up to speed to where you are today.

Sure. Thank you. And that's awesome to hear, by the way. So, yeah, I started in 2010. And at the time, I was working at a bridge company. So I actually built and fabricated everything for an actual bridge. And then we would ship it out. So steel fabrication. And we actually did the Woodrow Wilson in D.C. So we were on Discovery channels, mega builders and stuff like that. It was cool. So it was a cool company. But I decided that, obviously, I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life. I mean, that's a lot of hard work. And I really wanted to be a real estate agent. So I went to real estate school, and then I got out of real estate school, I had a friend that I found out later what he was doing, his wholesaling houses. I'd never heard of it.

Back then, obviously, there was nowhere near as much information out there as there is now. That was 2010. So I've literally just started going on the internet and finding whatever I could find on wholesaling houses and, you know, just started taking it. in action, man. I mean, I would just work around my regular job. I was working night shift, so I would go in at three and get off at two, three in the morning. And when I woke up during the day, I would work on that until I went to work. It took me a good four months or so before I did my first deal. It was for $4,000. And after that, I mean, it became real. And I really got excited

about it. When you get that first check, that feeling is amazing, you know? So the next, deal I did was about two months later and it was a two house package deal and I made $20,000. And that was the most money. I think that I mean, the most money I'd ever seen in my life at the time for sure. So after that, quit my job. Not saying that you should do that, but after two deals. Yes, you are saying that and you should do that. I mean, that's what I did.

I just went all in and, you know, it worked out, man. I mean, we started doing deals. I was doing well in 2013. I met my business partner now, Hunter. We just run across each other on Craigslist, like posting deals and stuff like that. And we met at this house, this highly desirable neighborhood that I got under contract. And he's like, hey, man, this is the first time we met, by the way. He's like, what would you think if I could go bring the money for this deal?

You brought the deal. And then we flipped this house together. And I'm like, great, sure. I'd never actually rehabbed a house up until that point. And it was a great deal. So we actually netted over $100,000 on that flip in 2013. And that got us obviously really excited. So next thing you know, I mean, just really more so based on our core values aligning

and everything else, the partnership was working really well on that deal. And he was, he really, we compliment each other. So what I'm great at, you know, he might be weaker at and then vice versa. So it works out really well. and he's an amazing guy. So ever since then, man, we've been building out a team in Northeast Florida. And yeah, we're doing well, man. We do some, we do some deals.

Sweet. So what would you say your strength is? I mean, really for me personally, my strength is more like the sales and marketing. I mean, for the longest time, I went on all the appointments. I mean, I've been on literally like probably, I think the last time we looked, we counted it was like 2,500 appointments or so I've been on. So you don't do that now, though? No, no, I do periodically. Like if we hire someone new, I'll go up there and I'll be involved in the training. And then also I do, you know, sales meetings every week. So I'm still really involved.

I only go to appointment so when it's really necessary. So that's kind of where I'm at now. And I live in Miami. So I fly back and forward. Got it. How far is that between Miami and Jacksonville? It's only an hour flight. But if I was driving, it would be five and a half hours. Got it. All right. So if you hire somebody, so how you have you? How big is your operation? What does that look like today? We're right at about 10 people. So we have two acquisitions. We have a dispositions. We have an office manager, transaction coordinator, you know, lead, follow-up specialist.

We have a full-time marketing staff. That's a full staff. What's the deal flow to keep everybody happy? Yeah, I mean, if we're not doing 150 deals at least, like we're not very happy. A year, right? Yeah, and just wholesale. And just wholesale. All right.

I was going to say, is that a day? Because we also do a little bit of rehab and still we flip a little bit and we do some new construction. We also do some like land as well. Some like it. Very good. So take me back to getting that first deal done. You made $4,000. It took you four months to get it.

What did you find most surprising about that experience once the deal was done? I mean, you know, it's you believe it. you're putting all your faith into it and you're doing everything you can to make it happen. But until you actually have that money in your hands, is it real yet? You know, there's always that little doubt in the back of your mind. You know, can this work for me, can it not? And at the end of the day, it can work for everyone. You just got to be willing to not pay attention to that little voice and just keep moving forward.

Right. So that's what I did. And once I had it, I mean, it was, yeah, this is what I'm doing. It was an instant decision. There's no doubt about it. I was 100% committed. What was the lesson then? What was the big lesson?

The lesson is you can't. So a lot of people would have got discouraged after, let's just say, I mean, I don't know, honestly, what the average lifespan of someone that says they want to do this business and they start trying to do it. And then they just, they let fear or doubt get in their way. I don't know what that lifespan is. But after, you know, four months, you start thinking like, okay, like you're, you're grinding in this thing.

every day. Just like anything on your time, you want to return on that time. So the lesson was, if I wouldn't have just had the faith and been committed to the process and believing that I was going to be able to do it, then it would have probably never happened for me because I'd have probably just quit and just kept doing my regular job. So you've got to make a commitment at the beginning. This is what you want to do. The process works. So it's up to you to actually make that process with you. How did you find that first deal? So that's another interesting story. So LinkedIn was, I used LinkedIn as a, actually a lot back in those days when I first got started

and did a lot of deals through LinkedIn over time, like building buyers list, stuff like that. And there's some huge real estate investing groups on there as well. But I met a guy through one of these groups on LinkedIn, and he lived about 40 minutes away for me at the time. And he was trying to do the same thing. He was right at the same stage. So we were like, hey, let's see if we can do something together. And then I ended up getting that deal. And then he brought the buyer through LinkedIn. So that's how I did it. Yeah. Right. So how did you find that deal, though? Oh, so, okay. Sorry about that. That's all right. So I found it through, I went to one of the big competitors in town that I knew was

wholesaling properties, and I basically locked up one of their deals and, you know, started building a relationship with them. I told them, hey, you know, I'm building a strong buyers list. They're willing to pay like premium prices. So I know you have a ton of deals. And, you know, what would it look like if we could start doing deals together? So I build a relationship with that their time. their dispositions manager, which is now a close friend of mine and has one of the biggest

Keller Williams teams in the country. Got it. All right. So you wholesale to wholesale. Yeah. A wholesale to wholesale. Sweet. Very good. All right. So how do you find most of your deals today? Primarily direct marketing. That's direct mail. Direct mail. We do a ton of direct mail. We do cold calling. We do some text. We do Google PPC. We also do a little bit of Facebook as well. And then those calls come in and you've got two acquisition managers working for you. They field the calls? No, they don't.

So we have a lead follow-up person and then we kind of go around Robin. If the phone doesn't answer, then it rings to the office manager and then she'll answer it. So one of them are always in the office between, let's just say, 8 and 6 p.m. during the day and then we obviously we do like a call service kind of deal at night like someone that we just have part time um but yeah so it would just come in and then we get screened by them and then we're always trying to book appointments now with the cold calling it's a little bit different uh you know we're we'll lock up deals over the phone we do um but if it's a local deal we prefer if as long as we feel like there's a window there right that if we can get out there to them then

I mean, we just, we've tested it a million different times and we always get better deals, right? It isn't even a question if we close it or not. We might still close it, but we've proven that we always make more if we go face to face. Go face to face. Right. So you got a lead person, a lead manager, maybe we call them. Right. Taking those incoming phone calls, right?

Yes. So are you tracking your lead generation sources? What's making the phone ring the most? Definitely direct mail. I mean, last year we sent out right out about a million and a half pieces of direct mail. A million and a half. Yeah, it was a lot. It was like 100,000 pieces a month plus, huh?

Yeah, yeah, it was. We really ramped it up over the summer last year. And actually what we did, because we just felt like we were, we were just spending so much, right? So we felt like we were already really, really good at it. But then we broke everything down through the end of the year going into this. year and just rebuilt the entire thing like got super super dialed in targeted really deep into the analytics on um you know all the marketing and kind of like rebuild all that out so the first quarter actually we took a hit um going into 2019 because of that but then we've been steady building that like steady

like way past what it was before um just based on the new campaigns now awesome congrats bud yeah thank you bet so Florida, that's an interesting state when it comes to what we do, right? They're kind of leading the forefront as far as all the different types of broadcast marketing. And I think they're kind of given a little bit of pushback on the whole wholesaling idea. What are you noticing down there and what are you doing to combat it, I guess? Yeah, I mean, I honestly, in personally, I mean, this might sound crazy. I don't stress out on it too much. And just because we've really, really built a really strong system and brand presence in our market.

And we do things the right way. So we make sure that whatever's going on right now, we're going to be ahead of that. And we're always doing the right thing. And I think that's really just it. Just making sure that you're doing the right thing. And then you shouldn't don't let that worry you, right? Or slow you down. That's my opinion on it.

Got it. So I'm actually thinking what would be really smart for a lot of people to do. And you tell me what you think about this. Okay. It's just to stop using the word wholesaling altogether. That's a very, you know, that's a very interesting take. And what's really interesting about you saying that is my business partner and I had a conversation about this other day where he brought that up to me with like our disposition side and, you know, wholesale homes or whatever. and changing it more into the investment realm.

So, yeah, I mean, I get it. I think the term has really been beat to death out there and probably has gotten, you know, some bad reputations over some people doing the wrong things. Totally. Yeah, I'm going to put wholesale somewhere in the title of this because that's what you do of this episode. And I know already just by putting that word in the title

is going to be one of the most more downloaded episodes. anytime I put like passive income, financial freedom, or wholesaling, those seem to be the top three categories, one of those words are in the titles. Hot topics. Totally. And I just think it's just too much attention has been given to it. And when you got the National Association of Realtors, one of the biggest lobbyist groups in the government really fighting this, it's not illegal to assign a contract.

It's not illegal to double close. Right. But when you start calling yourself wholesaler, all of a sudden, everybody thinks you're practicing real estate without a license, which we all know is not true, but it's got such a broad definition. It's got such a spotlight on it. Like, just stop that. Yeah, you just, you just buy and sell real estate. That's what I say now. I'm buying sell. I mean, I think that, look, I value your opinion, man. I mean, I understand where you're coming from. And I think Hunter would agree with you, you know, and I'm not saying I disagree. I mean, I do agree for sure. It's gotten some of that bad reputation.

but I'm also thinking, you know, how hard would it be to, you know what I mean, really adopt that? That would be the thing. Right. And I'm not trying to get you to agree with me. I was just, I don't talk to many almost exclusive wholesalers. And so I just kind of, I've been on the outside looking in. So I think I have a little bit more of an objective opinion. I'm not so immersed in it.

I mean, we wholesale all the time here, but my intent is always to hold. But I was just thinking what you would think about that. That's all. Yeah. I mean, that was a great question. Yeah, it was more of a statement. A personal statement. Anyway, let's talk about the future then.

Moving into the future, how are you preparing for 2020? Is anything in your business changing or just business as usual? Man, I mean, honestly, we're in meetings every day right now and for, you know, both businesses that we have going. and we're just really trying to refine everything that we did this year. And when we rebuilt the campaigns, that's beginning of the year and just make sure that we're going in there with a really, really strong game plan. But what we're doing is working.

So I think that we're really just going to be pouring fuel on that. Fantastic. Yeah, I actually think wholesaling and buy and hold, as long as you're not over leveraging and you're not cutting your cash flow numbers too narrow. I think they're, you know, recession proof. I really do. Yeah, I agree. I agree. It goes up or down. So you're buying prices and so you're selling prices. They go right up and down with it. So yeah. Yeah, I don't think there's a whole lot to be concerned about at all. So what is in the future then that you're most excited about?

I mean, me, me personally, man. I mean, I think that I'm really, really excited for the team that we have right now. in some of the positions, the new sales positions that we plan on hiring going in the next year, because the team is as strong as it's ever been. We made a lot of critical mistakes over time that really led to teams over a year ago that people were thinking about walking out just because they weren't really leaders, right? We were more of like those bosses. So we went and got a lot of training, brought in consultants to really, really dive. us and as actual leaders, get everyone bought in on the vision and moving forward in the same

direction. And that's what we did. And I mean, the team is just, it's an incredible group of people that work very, very well together. So I'm excited for that into the future and what that's going to look like. Fantastic. All righty. Gosh, any other aspirations? What am I supposed to ask about your business, James? That's so compelling that I'm not asking. That's so compelling. Lead generation. I mean, those are always hot topics. I mean, one thing I think a lot of people don't touch on too much is the buyer's side.

But it's usually always more sales and marketing. That's probably the hottest conversations in wholesaling. But, yeah, I mean, the buyer's side is interesting as well, but not as many people talk about it. Right. So my theory with buyers, because I do hear people talk about it, particularly some of the educators and gurus out there, they'll suggest that you need to build this massive buyers list, right, before you get started. And I actually have never found that to ever be the case, because I've always found that if you had a good deal, you had it under contract,

there's no shortage of money in the system to buy it. Yeah. Would you agree with that? Or do you think you need to have the big buyers list to get started? No. Yeah, I totally agree that you don't need a big buyer's list because the reality of it is when you have a buyer's list of a thousand people, maybe, maybe you have 20 or 30 on there that are your real buyers. Right. So that would be a big number, actually. Yeah, that would be a big number. I'm just, what my point is is this, it's just as easy to just go out and build those instant

relationships a lot faster than the traditional, hey, let me just go out there and build this huge buyers list and like, let that hold me back. I mean, there's plenty of ways to find the real buyers in your market that you can go to. I mean, and build relationships with and start selling them deals right away. So that would be my opinion. Right. Totally. Yeah, if you've got good deals and you start to develop a reputation for finding good deals,

you won't be able to keep people off your buyer's list. It's true. Yeah. And I always recommend because I fell in the distrapt before, this is just my personal preference, that you don't just work with a buyer or two, like over time as you're like growing out your business. and you're starting to do more deals, don't just put all your eggs in that one basket.

You should always be building your buyers list. Obviously, don't let it hold you back, but always be building it forever, right? So when you do that, they're going to want bigger discounts over time. Like, are you really getting the real price that you could be getting to other buyers in the market? So there's a lot of variables.

And then if they withdraw or stop buying for whatever reason, now you don't have relationships with any of these other buyers. So I feel like you make more money. And then you also, you know, you're protecting your business more if you work with multiple buyers, in my opinion. Got it. What's the biggest challenge or struggling your business right now? I would say that we're going to be on a growth trajectory, right? And we're just really paying close attention to making sure that our margins stay really tight where we want it to be.

And obviously, that's always a big struggle like as you're scaling, right? So paying close attention to that is really where we're at. And that's definitely a struggle that we're paying close attention to. Got it. So you're growing and that's going to take capital to grow. Right. But you still need to maintain profitability as well. So you can't do much into it.

So you have to monitor how fast you're going to actually grow. Right. So it's a constant like monitoring and yeah and everything else. Because I mean it's so Christina Krause says it all the time. I love this. It's like, what is it? you know, get better before you get big. So we want to make sure that we're always doing it the right way.

Because we've made bad hires in the past, you know, over the year, spent way too much in marketing, like bringing someone in and thought we need to ramp up leads. Like, I mean, over, I mean, we've definitely thrown some money out there and made some mistakes over time and had some failures. That's just the way it is. But I would say really, you know, make sure that you're doing it the right way. Absolutely. So let me ask you this, then.

Sure. What are you doing to monitor that? What are you doing as to protect yourself from overspending? Are you looking at your numbers every day, like your profit and loss and your balance statement? Do you have a CFO doing that for you? Yeah. So we have a fractional CFO that monitors everything really close for us. And we have conversations with him periodically if needed through the week.

And then also we have a weekly like two hour. meeting with him. So that really keeps everything tight, right? Like he comes, we have all the numbers. Two hours a week? Yeah, we do a two hour. It's supposed to be an hour, but it always goes two hours because, you know, we have two different businesses that he works for. So we go over both of them. Okay. Sweet. Yeah, because moving into 2020, we're looking to expand quite a bit. And, you know, we're ready to write checks, but we want to make sure that we're writing the right checks. Yeah, that's always the thing, right? Yeah.

Totally. Sweet, brother. So if someone wanted to get in touch with you, what would be the best way for them to do that? I would say the best way would be Instagram. You know, I'm super active on Instagram, also really active on YouTube, but Instagram's like my primary where I spend most of my time. And is it just James Hawk? At James the Hawk. The Hot had James Hawk.

So everyone's like the hawk. I'm like, well, you know someone had James Hawk. Doesn't that bother you? You know what bothers me the most is when I come up with a good idea, I'd be in the shower, just driving down the freeway and have a great idea. And I go to find the domain name. I know the domain. It's taken.

And then nobody's doing anything with it. I have a ton of them. I have a ton of them. Oh, gosh. I think I have three tons. And every single one represents a really good idea at some point. I was like, why does anybody come on? want to buy my domain names. I got some good ones in there. Do you sell any of them? I've only sold one.

I sold Epic Property Management. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. I paid $11 for that and I think I got a grand for it. So that was good. Yeah. Dude, that was a good one. But I spend probably several grand a year and just renewal fees. It's not like it's expensive. It's not like I'm going to make a business out of it because that would be a losing business. But anyway, cool, James. Well, stay in touch. Keep doing what you're doing what you're doing, bud. It sounds like you're on the right trajectory and you're doing really well.

And let's check back and see where you are mid-year next year. Yeah, brother. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. You bet. Take care, bud. Bye. Bye.

Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know home world. We got the dash more. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit C-desweet Radio. com.