Epic Real Estate Investing - Thriving Amid COVID-19 Crisis | Jamel Gibbs | 1001

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

Today, Matt is re-joined with Jamel Gibbs, a successful real estate investor and educator, an owner of Mill Street Properties LLC and REI Education Academy who teaches their clients how to build successful REI businesses. Tune in and find out what’s changed in Jamel’s business due to a pandemic and how he thrives to keep the wheels turning despite the current crisis! 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. Hey there, Epic Investor. It's Matt Terrio from Epic Real Estate. This is where we show people how to invest in real estate with an emphasis on retiring early. This is the Epic Real Estate Investing Show. And if it's your first time here, glad you found this. Make yourself at home. And if you like what you hear, make sure you hit the subscribe button before you go. And if this is not your first time here, welcome back.

And thank you for sharing this with your friends and family over the years. Just passing 10-year anniversary, all well-eastern. into our 11th year. We've got our 1,000 episode coming up. And we're going to do a live event for that in celebration. But with the whole situation of the crisis, it's kind of difficult to do live events. Maybe we'll do something virtual now that I'm thinking about it. But we've just got a few days. I'm just brainstorming right now. Anyway, thank you for sharing this. You're the absolute best for doing that. It certainly wouldn't be at 1,000 episodes if it weren't for you doing that. So today, joining me back again is a very successful real estate investor and educators,

the owner of Mill Street Properties LLC, a successful real estate investing firm, also the owner of 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 brother from another mother who's going to be right here at home at Epic

and what I like best about him though is he's still in the streets each and every day taking down deals, kicking butt, taking names and he's got his ear close to the street and he knows what's up right now and that's why I wanted to invite him on as right along with all of our guests this month you know, keeping you abreast of what's going on in the new market

and how do you bob and weave and get through this thing not only surviving but thriving on the other side. So please help me welcome to the show Mr. Jamel Gibbs. Jamel, welcome back. What's up, my brother from another mother. What's up, man? How you doing?

Doing good, man. I was trying to figure out how to get some exercise in today, but the weather sucks. It's tough, isn't it? I mean, tell me about it, man. I've got the treadmill garage. I got a really nice set of dumbbells. But, man, just the motivation factor. It's hard to get out there in the garage, stare at the wall and do it, you know?

It is, man. I was trying to get some. I did a lot of lower body yesterday, so I did probably 30 sets of squats, body weight squats. 30 sets. Yeah, 30 sets. That's like, how long does that take to complete? I mean, it took me 45 minutes to an hour to get the full workout in. So we figure it took me, I do 30 sets of 30s on the squats.

The first set is more or less, it's like eight sets of four. 30 body weight and then I get into squats and super set in that with step-ups. Then I get into squats and super-set-net with lunges. And then I did some stair sprints. I did about 10 sets of stair sprints up 50 stairs and down. Well, no problem with the motivation over there for you then. No, man, it's 900 reps. That's a thousand reps.

Yeah, man, today is ridiculous though, man. It's like, come on. I want to get outside. I want to get to the workout, get to the park, do some pull-ups and push-ups and dips, but it seems like unlimited because of the weather. So I got to figure out what I'm going to do home today, man. Right. Yeah, I think we're all like itching to be pushed out of Dodge and go do something.

You're looking good, man, nice and lean. Thanks, man. Yeah, I've lost 35 pounds since January 1st. Nice. And I'm sure I've put on since in quarantine five back. it's probably closer to 10, but I just won't get on the scale. I don't want to look. Just happy hour hits a little bit earlier each and every day.

I was on the wagon all year. And then nothing like a crisis to spark some drinking. Yeah, nothing like it, man. I just tightened up my diet, man. So, you know, I'm trying to, I'm on my way back down right now. When I last saw you, I was around 220. I'm back up to like 245 right now. I want to say 10 pounds of that is easily water weight.

So I haven't been killing my diet, but because I'm not as active as I was before. Right, right. So, you know, I'm putting on a few, but it's not, it doesn't look bad on me. Right. No, you look good, dude. And we're going to hit our first 100 day, or excuse me, 100 degree day here next week. We just got our pool fixed. And so I'm like, I'm like, okay, now we've got to pull back on the calories.

Seriously. Right. So cool. So we talked all about how you got started in your business the last time you're here. You can go back in and search Jamel Gibbs. You can find out all about him and his history then. But I really want to talk to you about just what's going on right now. What's going on in your business right now?

And how have things changed and what are you doing about it? Well, I'll be honest with you, man. You know, over. So we're probably six weeks into this quarantine, this whole situation. I've done better, ironically, I've done better now than I've done in a long time. And to be honest with you, we were pretty active doing a lot of deals knocking down doors every single week. But just in the last week or so, we got seven contracts, you know what I mean? And we're pulling them in from everywhere.

So right now my primary focus, I'm not doing as many markets as I was before. I'm really focusing on my home market. But we are, we did pull in a deal from Pittsburgh. Just this last, I want to say three days ago, we pulled in a deal from Pittsburgh. It's a 110,000 dollar house. We got it for 10 grand. I couldn't believe it. So that's telling me a couple of different things.

Right now, I'm expected to make about 40 to 50, about 40 grand on that because we got it up for 49, 49. So you figure 10 grand to 50 grand is what 40,000 bucks in profit. Even if somebody offered me 40 grand, I'm going to take it. It's 30 grand and I've never even seen the house. But we knocked down a couple of our creative deals, which is, you know, one of my favorite strategies, which I know it's yours as well. We're knocking down an owner finance deal. But a lot of the stuff that we're getting now, just to be clear, are least.

that we've had in the pipeline that we're simply going back you know these are people that we made offers to three four five months ago we're simply going back to those same people and believe it or not man some of them are even contacting us but we're just making lower offers than what we made before and people are just taking the deals so people are they're they're understanding that it's becoming a buyer's market but at the same time they they're aware that they need to sell while they can still get something from their for their properties. I do have one deal where I negotiated, and this is a funny situation, it kind of ticked me off a little bit with this guy,

but we were, you know, I've been negotiating this deal with him. I had it on a contract for, you know, since last June, okay? It was in a state situation. We had to get the probate process taken care of. I recommended an attorney. He contacted the attorney. The attorney took forever to finally get the paperwork done. I got an extension on a contract.

That extension expired. That's how long it's been. And I tried to get another extension. I had the property on the contract for 28 grand. Now the guy's trying to raise the price on me. So what he doesn't know is I reached out to another wholesaler friend, which is, you know, we could talk about this as well, why joint venturing is so important, but this other wholesaler sells a lot of the properties

that I put up on the market if we're wholesaling. If we're doing some creative stuff, that's a whole different strategy. But in this particular instance, I contacted the other wholesaler and I said, why don't you call this guy up and act like you're ready to buy the property? So she'd call the guy up and he's like, I need 35,000. No, matter what, giving her, you know, a hard time. So I said, all right, let's, let's give it a week, let him sit on it. And I'm in communication with him the whole time as well. So he's trying to play me against her, not knowing that we're the same people, we're on the same team. And long story short, he basically, he's trying to say, oh, I got another buyer involved. And

he tried to run that game on me when he first contacted me, trying to raise the price. But, you know, at the end of the day, he doesn't know that he's dealing with the same person, no matter who he decides to go with. So even if I got to pay another two or three thousand bucks, right now, this week we actually got him off of the price because he was stuck on that $35,000. So I told Ashley, I said, look, why don't you contact him and offer him $30,000? And I'm going to stick to my $28. And she contacted him. He said, well, what if you do $33, we can make it happen? So we got him off a little bit.

So now we're just working them down. I think we may end up at like $32,000, which I'm okay with. It's $4,000 more than what I had it on the contract for. But I didn't really put down a lot of earnest money. He could keep the $100 that I gave him. I don't care. And we already have a buyer lined up for $42 grand. So that's a $10,000 profit.

But I just don't want him to try to screw us on the front end. And he doesn't necessarily know that we're working together to make this happen. doesn't know that I'm involved. So this is a, you know, we're just trying, these are things that you have to do as a real estate investor to make deals happen sometimes. But, you know, that's just one unique situation right there. So you've got a big profit on that one and the big profit on the other. Who is your typical customer or buyer right now?

Is it the same person or are you noticing a change in players? Yeah, so I'm no, you know what I'm noticing? As I'm putting my deals out, let's say on Craigslist, so I put them out to my buyer's list. Um, a couple, a couple of things that I want to mention there. Number one, people are sitting a little longer before they contact us to, so let's just say I put out a deal today. It may take me where it used to take me two hours to get a hit and, you know, people are all over the deal. Like I have one right now is a great deal. $250,000 home.

I got it under contract for 140 and I got it up for, I put it up for 160. but the buy now price, and I actually marketed this way, buy now for $155. So what I'm noticing is I had some hits within the first few days, but buyers are being a little more cautious right now. So I'm actually sitting on properties a lot longer. And because of that, and I was expecting this, I'm extending my contracts out like six months. So like this, this one I have on the contract for six months. nobody can do anything.

So you can't come in and, you know, try to steal this deal if you wanted to because I got it for six months and I'm going to record the memorandum as well. Really, really important to do right now because people are going to be thirsty. But, you know, one thing that's working for me right now is lowering my offers and extending my contracts out as far as possible. You may even want to put to be determined on the contract. I'm not sure how bad I'll hold up in court if you ever had to go to court on a deal, but for the most part, try to extend it out as long as possible.

And also, you may want to put a clause in there where you can, you know, based off of the market's condition, the market situation, if you find that you can't close it fast enough, you may want to put a clause in your original contract. And this is something I just came up with the other day. day, hey, you know, I have the right to extend this contract. I have, you know, first right of refusing to extend this contract out if I wanted to, if we, you know, upon contract expiring or something like that, you know what I mean? So that's something that we're,

we're playing around with, just kind of testing out. Look, we're taking it day by day at this point, week by week, and making adjustments. The good thing is, you know, I've been through this before, not quite this situation, but like you, you know, I've been in the business since 2002. I've gone through the market crash back in 07, 08, 09. You know, I wasn't prepared then. I'm basically looking at the mistakes that I made then, and I was prepped for this now because I've been talking about a market correction over the last two years, and it actually came a lot quicker than what we thought.

Right. Who knows? At the end of the day, man, the market may bounce back, you know, but are we in a recession? I do think we are in a recession. You know, I'm not, let's not sugar-coded. It is what it is. So we need to make the adjustments right now. So, yeah, man, we're getting a lot of contracts.

You know, we got $70,000 on a plate right now for, you know, over the last two and a half, three weeks, which is good. Still closing on a couple of deals, still doing what we do. and, you know, just keeping it business as usual. We're not letting the market dictate what we're able to do. We're just making adjustments. Somebody's always going to need a place to live. Somebody's always going to be buying a house at a discounted price. Somebody's always going to need some type of financing on a home on a creative side.

So really, if you just keep it business as usual, yeah, we can't show houses, but we can do it virtually at this point. Right. So we're just making adjustments and making money while we're making. these adjustments and learning to go on. Cool. So some of the adjustments, because we've been talking about how to mitigate your risk on several episodes here during, you know, there's just so much uncertainty, right? Once we're released, then we kind of see how the public is going to respond and how consumer confidence comes back or if it doesn't, then it'll be much more clear as to what to do, but what do you do right now to protect yourself? And, you know, extending the escrow period, I think,

is great what you said. You're extending that contract. I have a question about that in just a second. I also think, you know, a quarantine contingency. I've got that all written and prepared. I just haven't had a reason to use it yet because I've gotten the deals that I wanted. But, you know, like social media, not social media, the social distancing guidelines, right? So contingent on those being lifted, right? And now that we have clearly defined phase one, phase two, phase three of reopening the economy. There's nothing wrong with putting contingencies in there based on those terms, right? I know someone I was just talking to, I was on a mastermind, and they're doing cash today, 90 days to stay.

So that was kind of how they're protecting themselves. And then we added an extra level of security to that. Like, I'll give you some money now because I know you need money right now. Then you can stay in the house for 90 days, rent free. And then once you move out, I'll give you the balance. months, which is another way to really kind of protect yourself. You have one other thing in here. Extend contract.

Oh, record the memorandum. I think that's really good, too. That's probably more important today because people might not, I mean, they're fearful right now and they come out of this and they might not be fearful or change their mind or they might be disgruntled or resentful. Who knows? And pull that right out from underneath you, right? So the memorandum is good.

Okay, so you said six months. So you extend your contract for six months. What's your justification for that? Are you telling people that you're the seller that you're going to wholesale and you need six months? I don't ever tell a seller that I'm going to wholesale a property. What's your justification for the six months then when you ask? We don't know what's going to happen. You know, stuff is closed down right now.

Attorney's offices are closed. So we don't know. It can happen quicker than six months, but I need to protect my contract and know that I'm at least protected as long as, you know, this whole COVID thing is going on. And so that's basically how I approach it. I have gotten like zero backlash, you know, from that. And I think people, they just understand if you ask for it.

Right. And if you don't ask for it, you're never going to get it. If you ask for it, chances are, you know, knowing the social distancing thing is going on, they're all over it. They just want to sell the house. They don't care. Yeah, you can really lean into the environment right now and what's going on is rationalization for just about anything. Yep. pretty much, you know. I've always subscribed the idea that make the market the bad guy. But it's difficult to make the market the bad guy in an appreciating market.

But when you got a virus, when you got a pandemic, boy, that market is really, really bad now. You can blame everything on them. Okay, so it's taken a little bit longer to get buyer feedback. You're seeing a little bit more caution there. And then we've got how to protect ourselves. So now you're getting the deals. You're doing more than you've done. And what really deserves the credit there, I think you said, was just kind of going back

through the old leads that you were already generated, right? So what does that process look like? How are you doing that? So we're, you know, we were, I mean, we're still spending money on Facebook traffic. We're still cold calling and we're still sending out direct mail and things like that. But we're not necessarily spending more money on these avenues. I know a few weeks ago everybody was talking about double down on your marketing. I thought that was a bad idea personally.

And that's because you don't know if you're double downing on your marketing. And that's that's based off of what, you know, I'm going to be the black sheep in this whole thing, right? That's really based off of what your exit strategy is. If you're a wholesaler, double downing on your marketing, while buyers are being more cautious on what they're picking and choosing to close on, you know, you could get yourself. in some trouble. You know, you got more deals coming in. Yeah, there could be a lay of cash through your market. Who you're going to sell the deals to? That's the point. Right. Now, if you're doing creative investing like you and I, you know, I do wholesaling and creative investing, right? I used to do a lot of rehabbing. I even did, you know, just up until last year, we built 33 houses.

I was doing a lot of new construction. I won't touch that right now. But if you're doing creative investing, yes, you can increase your market. and you get a lot more deals because people eventually what's going to happen is you know as you know the longer this thing sits out you know for every month that we're out it's going to take three or four months to get back on track right that's just a fact you know in order for the economy for every month that the economy is down it takes a few months to get back on track to get back to normal so the longer we're out what's going to happen is yeah we're you know people are getting forbearances on their home their mortgages and stuff like that but although they're getting a

the forbearance, the money, the back payments don't disappear. Those things will still be there. So that's going to cause a huge foreclosure problem. And at the end of the day, it's going to allow investors that pick up a lot more deal. So what's going to happen with all those people losing their homes? If you're buying creatively like you and I, that's going to leave an opportunity for us. If you're in an apartment game right now or creative investing where you're renting properties, we're going to clean up. Trust me, give it six months over the next six to 18. months. I believe in that window. I don't have a crystal ball and tell what's going to happen, but I believe in that window, we're going to be able to really, really do some damage,

man, and make a lot of money. But going back to what you were asking, so all we're doing, and I have a virtual assistant. So we're doing every, the good thing is we've always done everything virtually. Okay. All we're doing is going back through our podium leads and our CRM leads and calling back to people we've made an offer on, either they turned us down or they were on the fence a few months ago and they just disappeared off of the face of the earth. We're just getting in contact with these people. We'll send them a text message, say, hey, can you talk?

You know, really generic, really broad message, not anything that's going to allow them to shut us out. You know, so, hey, you know, we spoke a couple months ago, can you talk? Rather than saying, hey, are you still looking at something? your property as allowing them to put their guard up, right? So what we're doing is touching base with these people. We're revisiting the conversation. Say, hey, I know we made you an offer a few months ago. As you can see, you know, I knew you were interested in selling then. But as you can see, you know, things are in a bit of a buying at this point. But just to let you know, we're still buying

houses. So if you're interested, I'd like to revisit the conversation to see what we could do to help you out. That's kind of the way we're taking that approach and we picked up seven contracts just doing that. I didn't spend any extra money on marketing. We're just following up with people who we've been in contact with. Now, you know, obviously this isn't going to work if you're brand new and you have no leads to follow up on. But if you've been doing some damage out there over the last year and doing what you got to do, then this is a great strategy to revisit those old leads, follow up with them. If you can't get them on a phone, write them a letter. You know, get in contact with these people and just revisit, just let them know. Look, let's revisit this offer I made you a few months ago.

Now, their brain is, their thinking is a little different. They were in a seller's market before. Yep. Now, we're in a, we're in a different playing field. So now the ball is in my court. Mm-hmm. I help you, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get the same amount from, you know, two, three months ago. Mm-hmm. Now, I just, just the pendulum swinging back, just the hair back to the buyer, it's been such sellers market for so long. It doesn't have to swing back too much our direction to start having different conversations.

Yeah. And people, honestly, Matt, you know, people are starting to contact us. They're like, hey, are you still interested at this price? Well, we can't pay that price anymore, but we can't pay this price now. You know, you could have took that off for two months ago. See, I'm saying we've had three just fall into our lap based on what you just said. I mean, people just called us. Hey, can you help me find a buyer?

And I was like, tell me about it. Well, I'll take it. Right. And so the other way to do that is, you know, two months ago, that was the price. We're in a different market now. Or it could be, you know what? It's kind of uncertain as to what's coming up. I'd be, you know, I'm willing to take that risk if you're willing to be flexible on how I actually

get you that price. I love that approach, man. Right. And that's my favorite because I really, because you talk about this, I mean, you kind of said it too. And I don't, we, we don't know what it's going to be. But I do think there's going to be a small window. It could be six months, even 12 months, I'd consider a small window for this type of opportunity. But I do think the economy is going to bounce back. I don't think it's going to take a long time. I don't think this is like a five year, 10 year plan. No, I agree. But it could be 12, 18, 24 months. It could be six months. But my point being is to get control of as much as you possibly can right now, right, with those creative terms. Because I think you can get control of a lot of stuff right now with very little cash outlay.

Like almost nothing, man. Yeah. I'm signing contracts and putting a dollar down. You know, like, hey, just to make the contract valid, here's a buck. You know what I mean? People are. It's non-refundable too. How about that?

I'll buy a cup of coffee. Right. No, but I mean, we talk about motivated sellers. And, you know, the last eight, nine years, I think a lot of what I talk about has fallen on deaf ears because being able to negotiate someone's house for just taking over payments and getting them a U-Haul truck. Like, that's so foreign to people in the last several years because it just, the motivation wasn't there. But now people, you know, sadly lose their job. They need the cash. I need a roof. Can you just get my down payment for my apartment building and get me a U-Haul truck and you can have the house. Yeah, man, but you know what, you know, even in a hot seller's market, I was still cranking down, and I'm sure you were as well, still killing now, taking down these creative deals as well. You know, there's a motivated seller. Any and everywhere in any market, it doesn't matter. You just got to find them. Now, there's the key word.

You just got to find them. Yeah. But now they're going to find you is my point. Exactly. That's my point. Exactly. 100% agree. Sweet.

Well, cool. So, all right, so you said, you know, if you've been putting in some work for the last year and you got a bunch of leads, this is going to be pretty easy, just go back and dig through it. But let's just play a game. Let's say I'm a brand new student of Jamels. And I want to get started because this is the best time I think to get started is an opportunity like this. As a brand new student, what are you going to tell me to do right now? As a brand, so if you're brand new and you don't have the follow up leads, you know, you obviously have. have to find a way to get some leads. I'm not going to tell you to go out there. People are cautious with the money that they're spending right now. I'm going to tell you to find some inexpensive ways to market. So what's working right now? Honestly, it's going to take a little more work. What do people have on? What's the biggest commodity people have on their hands right now, Matt? And this is time. Time. That's it, right? You took courage right on my mouth. I was nervous.

Oh, man, you got it. You got it. You got it. Right. So the biggest thing that people have on their hands right now is time. So if you don't have a large budget, go ahead and pull a list, pull a, you know, a co-violation list. You know, you might spend a little bit of money on it. Okay. So you spend 100 bucks. Take the time. Co-call these people, man. Co-call them. Okay. So you can't spend $3,000 this month or $10,000 on direct mail, but you can still contact people. I got a new student, he doesn't have a large budget, but he can sit there in text message people all day long.

You could go to a texting service and spend $30 and send out a thousand text messages, $30 isn't a lot of money, but if it is, you can sit there and one-off text all day long, right? Send out 250 text messages today. The whole point is get out there and do something. You know, email people. You could go to MailChimp, upload a thousand people and send an email blast out to everybody, right?

MailChimp is free for, I believe it's up to 10,000 text, 10,000 emails a month. The whole point is use these strategies. It's going to take you a little more time to get it done. Fortunately, you know, if you're in the business, you have some money, you can spend,

you can still go out and do the postcard thing. But if you're just getting started, focus on inexpensive strategies. Don't spend a lot of money. Make some money before you start spending money, right? That's at least my philosophy on it. Okay, so someone goes and pulls a code violation list, got a great list. I went and skipped trace.

I got the phone numbers. Now I'm going to cold call. What's your guidance on what that call should look like to somebody that's never bought a property before? Never bought a property before. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, what you really want to do is let, first of all, you're introducing your person. Just keep in mind when you're calling someone who don't know you from Adams, right, they don't know you from anywhere. And you're asking them to sell their biggest asset.

You just got to be cautious with that conversation. So the way we approach it is, hey, you know, this is such and such from my company LLC. And, you know, we're contacting you, because we've bought a couple of properties in the area, maybe one or two properties in the area over the last year, and we're looking to buy another one to two. And we see that you own this property. It seems, let's just say you're on a co-violation list. It seems like this property was potentially vacant or had some type of issue because, according to the public records, we're just noticing that this property, you know, had some issues.

I'm just kind of making this up off of the top of my head. But, you know, we understand that, you know, there aren't a lot of people out right now buying properties and selling properties, but I just wanted to let you know we're still in the market. We're still buying. And we are eager to buy another one or two this month. If you're interested in selling, you know, I love to discuss the details with you. It doesn't necessarily have to be that message, but somewhere along those lines, you know,

you can kind of fix that however you want. But the approach is, hey, you know, we're investors in the area. We're local and, you know, we're still out here buying. You know, we've bought a couple properties. If you haven't, don't say that part. You want to be truthful. But, you know, we're investors in the area. We're just looking to buy another one to two properties.

And notice that you, you had this property. And, you know, it's right in the vicinity of where we're looking. Are you interested in potentially discussing an offer? Something like that, you know? Great. Yeah. I mean, I think it could be really simple, right? Yeah.

I like we're local investors. We're still buying. I like using the word still, right? Because a lot of people that suggest most people aren't. And then just ask the question. Yeah. You know what? One more thing before we move on, driving for dollars is huge right now too.

So, yeah, it's a time thing. But even if you don't do it, train somebody else to do it for you. But again, we're talking about if you're brand new, don't want to spend a lot of money, drive for dollars, pick up the phone and call people, send one-off text messages. You know, the thing that's going to cost you the most money is the list. That's it.

And skip tracing. Yep. Sweet. Well, cool. Jamel, being an educator, I know that, you know, when you are, you actually notice that there's a lot of trainers and educators and gurus all over the place.

And it came out of nowhere, man. Say again? Came out of nowhere. I know. A lot of who came out of nowhere, man. There's a new one in my feed every single day. I see him. I was like, oh my gosh, here's another.

You can see that on Amazon too. I was like another book on wholesaling. And anyway, so what's one piece of information or advice that you hear being given that just makes you cringe every time you hear it? Honestly, man, it was the double. down on your marketing, you know, just a few weeks ago. I think that, you know, and I could be wrong. I'm not saying I have all the answers. I just have 19 years of experience. And, you know, I've done this a long time. But, you know, some people agree with me. Some people don't. I get it.

But it was, I think that was kind of misleading only because if you, you know, just for the reasons we spoke about, if you double down and there's nobody to sell the properties to, you're going to be hurting yourself. You know, should you double down on following up? Absolutely. Because it doesn't cost you anything to do that. There are other ways to get leads. You don't have to spend, you know, if you went from $5,000,

now I'm going to spend $10,000 a month. That's just stupid, you know, in my opinion. So that's one thing that I would say I was against, you know. Right. But there's another side of it. And I understand what you're saying. And that's actually a bigger conversation. is wholesaling going to be more difficult now than it was then if I don't think so okay so

I think it's going to balance out because we can't have the best of both we can't have both worlds if the buyers aren't going to be buying like they used to and we don't want to market because we might not be able to have anyone to sell it to then what is the future of a wholesaling that you see I think honestly and not to cut you off a second ago but I think honestly it's going to balance out people are going to figure it out we just got to give it another 60 to 90 days to just see, you know, what type of traction or what history can we look at over a 90-day period to see what's happening in the market, then make the adjustment. Then you can boost your numbers back up. But in the very beginning, I mean, it was literally a week into the quarantine and they're like

doubled down on your marketing. I'm like, how are you going to, you don't know what's going to happen over the next 30 days. Give it a 90-day. window, see who's buying over the 90 days, and then you can kind of adjust from there. Then you could, quote on, pivot is a, they call it pivot these days. And that's like a popular keyword that everybody's using. But then you can make the adjustment and boost your marketing back up because now you have a proven track record of who's buying. Right. Don't do it as soon as the, soon as the quarantine starts. That's just stupid. All right. Well, you did say something that was like if you're a wholesaler, if you're a one-trick pony, there's probably a lot of validity

to what you're saying, right? But if you're a creative investor, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, exactly. Because my perspective was, all right, so we know based on the people that you and I know together that run marketing companies and direct mail companies and digital platforms and stuff like that, they lost about 60% of their business almost right away when this quarantine happened. Everyone stopped.

Absolutely. Yep. So all of a sudden, it's more room out there, less crowded. then we've also noticed that the clicks have plummeted as far as price point. So it's cheaper and it's less crowded. I'm like, that's where I'm like, I'm doubling down because I want to control as much as I possibly can.

But from your perspective of what you're just saying, if you're just a wholesaler, then, then yeah, there's some logic there as well. Just to clarify, I am only talking to wholesalers when I say that. But it didn't affect me because I do creative deals just like you as well.

Right, right. So am I, I got you, I just, there's clarifying there because I think there's point to both sides. I do want to be clear to that.

Yeah, clear on that because if you're wholesaling, yeah, that's going to cause a problem. But that's why you can't be a one-trick pony, man. Yeah. That's the problem with a lot of people.

No, you cannot. Even, to me, even in a hot market, somebody is going to, uh, want to sell creatively,

right? But the whole point is, you know, if you're only wholesaling ever, I think that's a bad business model. You need to have more than one way to purchase a property. Yep. I totally agree that. I've been saying that from a get-go.

You're going to drive yourself. Love it. You're going to be overworked. That's why you're a boy, man. You know what? What do you say? I said, that's why we're boys, man. That's right.

That's right. Yeah, because, yeah, that'll keep you enslaved. That's just a high-paying job that you'll never be able to quit. Yes, sir. Cool, man. So what else? What did I miss? Did I miss anything? What's new? What are you looking forward to most and what are you doing to take advantage of that opportunity? I'm looking forward to all of the creative deals that's going to come on the market and just allow me to create even more cash flow every month. In order to create that, well, in order to prepare myself, which we've been doing already anyway, but in order to really prepare for it, I'm just looking, we're just specific. specifically asking the people, look, you know, how would you like to make some money every month on this property? You know, that type of, we're taking that approach right off the back, you know, um, and, you know, we're still able to pay them a decent amount for the property. Uh, but, you know,

more and more people are looking for creative solutions to sell their properties today. So, all we're doing is taking advantage of it, man, and just cranking out, just keeping our marketing going, cranking out as many offers as possible and just keeping it as business as usual really, you know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. No, totally agree. I think for anyone that wants.

Go ahead. I was going to say a few months ago, we spoke about some goals that I had, man, my goals aren't the same anymore. I think we spoke right after that, you know. My goals, my goals changed. You know, it changed right with the economy. But I'm not going to be able to do this. the same numbers,

I might be able to get close to it, but I doubt it, you know, but we're still going to be able to have a healthy year. That's what counts. Yeah, no, totally. I think you're going to do better quality numbers, Jamel. You might not do the, you might not hit the number that you wanted, but I think, you know,

anyone that's focused on taking advantage of controlling as much property as they can, using their creative structures to do it, can create enough cash flow. I mean, the next six to 12 months, I think anyone that wants to do it can replace their day jobs income. That's right, man. I have 100% agree.

And that's what I mean by the potential for not the big number that you might have been shooting for. And I'm not talking about you specific. I'm talking about anyone that had like a big goal for this year to make a lot of money. I think you make better quality money. You can make the stream of money right now. And that's ultimately what everyone is chasing anyway is to have that freedom. And I think that opportunity right now exists, but greater than it has. the last decade.

So that's where I'm at. And nothing excites me more. No argument there, man. Set themselves free. Say again? I said no argument for me, man. Yeah. You hit the hell right on their head, brother.

Right? I got to bring some people on that. We'll argue with me, though, because this is getting kind of. I'm trying, man, but it's hard to. I just put on everyone that agrees, apparently. But it was funny. I had a guy on, from Fargo.

and this was good. I'm so glad I had him on. He was introduced to a, you know, Chris Arnold, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah, Chris Arnold introduced me to him. Eric, Eric Hatch, a real estate agent out of Fargo, North Dakota. And he's making a lot of investor offers as part of his listing presentation or his listing process. And he actually thinks he's looking at the MLS numbers of how listings have come down 40%.

but the pendings have only come down 20%. And so he thinks that that actually translates to being a stronger seller's market when we come out of this. And I was like, wow, that's the first angle I heard from there. But it just kind of shows that real estate is very local and we're all experiencing something different in our worlds and a difference of opinions and being able to pull all that together and make the best decisions for yourself, I think is what the, this is why we do what we do. That is interesting, man. Numbers don't lie, man. Totally.

You never know what's going to have. I do think it's going to be a stronger seller, a stronger market. I don't know if it's going to be a stronger seller's market, but it's going to be a stronger market for everybody when we come up out of this thing. This is what we do know.

There's going to be a lot of real estate exchanging hands. Oh, yeah. And you just want to be in the middle of that. I'm trying to keep up with you, man. Oh, you blow me. way, but anyway. Sweet. So we good? Do this again in three months and compare notes again?

Let's do it. Man, I love these calls. Man, this was a lot of fun. Awesome. Yeah, I agree. Super. All right. So if you found this episode valuable, there's a really good chance that you probably know someone else who would as well. And when that person's name comes to mind, feel free to share this episode with them and then ask them to click the subscribe button when they get here. And I'll take great care of them. All righty, Jamel, peace. God bless health to you. And I'll talk to you soon.

Sounds good, brother. All right. That's it for today. God loves you. So do I. Peace, health, blessings, and success to you. I'm Matt Terrio. Living the Dream.

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