Epic Real Estate Investing - Trash Leads to Cash Leads | Chris Craddock | 1008

Episode Date: May 4, 2020

In today’s episode, Matt interviews Chris Craddock, a real estate agent and investor since 2003, and a nationally certified life coach with a doctorate in leadership. Being both a real estate investor and an agent, Chris talks about how you can bring a relationship between these two worlds and TRANSFORM your TRASH LEADS to CASH LEADS! Tune in and find out more!   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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base.com. Here's Matt. Hey there, Epic Investor. It's Matt Terrio from Epic Real Estate, where we show people how to invest in real estate with an emphasis on retiring early. All you got to do is just shift your mindset one time from creating mountains of cash to creating streams of cash, and you will be well on your way 10 times faster than how the majority of the population is going about it. This is the Epic Real Estate Investing show. If it's your first time here, I'm really glad that you found us. 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. I love you guys. Thank you for sharing this with your friends and family. Got us here past the 10-year mark well into our 11th year. You're the absolute best for doing that.

We just wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you. So I got a great guest for you today, real estate agent and investor. We've had a couple of those this month and very interesting and different perspective. and I think as many different perspectives we can get with the current situation, the current environment, all the better. He's been investing since 2003, did 409 transactions last year, and he's got a doctorate and leadership. I think he's our first official doctor on the real estate investing show.

So without further ado, please help me welcome to the show, Mr. Chris Craddock. Chris, welcome to Epic Real Estate Investing. Hey, thanks so much, Matt. Looking forward to hanging with you, man. This is great. Well, we got a mutual friend and Chris Arnold, I imagine, is how we hooked up. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Chris Limiting. Great guy. I said put the word out to Chris. I was like, I need people that have been through at least one downturn on the show to share their experience of what's going on now and how it compared to before and how it's changing their business.

And so he's connecting me with a lot of great people. And you are in that line of great people. So thanks for being here, Chris. Well, thanks so much, man. I appreciate it. And, you know, I'll tell you what, with being both the investment. investor side, the agent side. We kind of really created a system that has helped a lot of people monetize a lot of things that they've just seen as trash. And they started monetizing their dead leads through what we're doing. I mean, just last month, I sent almost $40,000 in referral fees to investors that have just gotten these dead leads that, you know, they're given to us. We're turning them into listings and we're sending them back because I know most of these investors, they've tried it, they've done whatever, and it's just not worked.

And so they just have whatever, throw it away, not worth my time. But when they start seeing checks, you know, coming, when about 40 grand starts getting, you know, coming out, then all of a sudden it starts being more people's time. Right, right. So that's, I definitely want to talk about that because there's a lot of people that think that's an easy thing to do. Like, well, if they want somebody in the house, I'll just take the listing. That'll be easy. And, you know, I was in a mastermind where I actually met Chris Arnold.

with at the time, there's probably 50 of the most successful real estate investors in the country. And, you know, you have the hot seat. We'd be there for three days sequestered in a hotel room and, and, you know, sharing your wins and conquering your challenges. And I would say I was in that group for four years. And these are the smartest people in the country, mind you, that have the experience, they know how to do deals. They all make a lot of money. But at least once per session, someone will come up and says, you know, we get all these leads. We just can't buy them, but we know they could be listings and how do you make it work? Right. And just over and over and over again, it seems to be really tough. So I guess we'll get into that, Chris, but kind of share with me a little bit of your,

a little bit of your background. We can go through it quickly and just how you started investing. Yeah, yeah. So I was on staff. I graduated from college, got married, right out of school, and on staff with an organization called Young Life. I loved Young Life. It was awesome. changed my life. And, you know, it was great. But I made like 20 grand a year from Young Life. And I live in the D.C. area. And so if you, if you make 20 grand a year in the D.C. area, you're going to die. You know, yeah. You need a few roommates at least. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Well, so, you know, at the time, it was before Google was found of all information and knowledge. I went to the local library, checked out every book that had on investing, starting with rich dad, poor dad, which, you know, changed my life. And I've never heard of it. What's that?

Yeah, it's crazy. Oh, actually, man, I just finished out reading The Road Less Stupid, Keith Cunningham, who was the rich dad from Kiyosaki's rich dad, was just, oh, man, he's a stud. But, you know, I've read all these books. And, you know, frankly, I look back at how little I knew, but I just knew that people were in distress. So I just started knocking on doors, almost like an idiot, you know, just like, hey, I'll buy your house.

and literally in four months, I made 12 times what I made in a year. And I'm like, dang, this is pretty sweet. And what I found in life is, you know, perfect or imperfect action trumps perfect inaction any day of the week. Yeah, yeah. Do it, right? And so just when I did it, made a bunch of money. And actually, I kind of backed off for a little while because I love doing the ministry

stuff. But I've got six kids as well. And so, you know, just gotten TV early, you know. There's something else to do. But, you know, I got six kids. And so, you know, our money started running out, you know, as I was doing ministry stuff. And so got back into flipping, investing, all the other stuff. And, you know, all of, like, there were tons of short sales in what I was doing before.

And so I realized get licensed because you're going to get paid a commission regardless. Might as well, you know, pay myself for other some other guy. And so, you know, started flipping short sales. Then the margins on short sales shifted. So you couldn't really flip up as much anymore. And around that time, I had gotten. a doctorate and leadership just because I led large groups of people in ministry. And around that time, I read Gary Keller's book, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent.

I realized that if you could lead people, you could build large, large organizations. And so I started that. I guess it was December 2014 was kind of when I really, really went all in on building a residential team. And, you know, in five years, we built, you know, our team did just under 120 million last year. So, you know, built that in the five years. Well, nice.

Congrats. Thanks, bro. Thanks, man. Yeah, the millionaire real estate investor. Did you read that one too? I did. It's good. Yeah, that's one of my favorites. I think that's one of the best well-rounded books. What I love about it is everybody thinks that investing is all about flips. And flips are great, but still, we're training time for dollars with flips. What I love about about investing and buying properties is that's where cash flow happens. And, you know, like in the richest man in battle line where he talks about, you know, basically sending your money out like an army and it brings back stuff for you, put overalls on it and put it to work for you and let it go. So yeah, I love it. And that's what I loved about the millionaire real estate investor was it's how do you create a portfolio that

Well, it's about investing. It's not about flipping and wholesaling because that's not investing. Right, right. It's not investing if you just go and you have to go work for it and, you know, buy a low, sell high. You're just trading, right? sweet no that's why i like that book because it really focused on the investing part um well super and you're part of the keller williams organization right now as an agent in what market i'm in the dc market so we uh we do see virginia maryland and uh then i also have an expansion team down in richmond very good okay how far away is richmond from dc it's about an hour

and a half okay yeah awesome are you that you're the leader of the team there uh so I've got a partner that, so the way, the way a lot of the expansion stuff runs is we find an expansion partner that's just a, just a high level person that, you know, we help use our systems, our organization, are just all the stuff that we have in place to help them build a team. So he actually, he was just a stud guy who was newer to real estate, but, you know, I just saw high level of talent with him. And so we started partnering together. And yeah, now we're, you know, we're crushing and we're going to do over 100 transactions down there this year. So. Fantastic.

Great, yeah. I just love partnering with people that are high talent people. You know, I just, I think that you go so much farther together, you know, if you do it, do it well. Yep, yeah. We made it, about six months ago, we made a shift in all of our vendors and our service providers, the people that, you know, our accountants and CPAs and legal team and everything. I'm just kind of like, okay, let's, time to kick it up a notch. Let's go and find more talent.

right and guy you notice it right away right away when you uh when you when you do stuff like that and it's a little bit painful it's a little bit uncomfortable at first you know you're saying buy to old relationships that uh you know become valuable relationships to you but you know what got you here ain't going to get you there right that's right so tell me what does uh how is business right now right this very second how does it different than it was say six weeks ago oh man i'll tell Yeah, I keep joking. I mean, we're still winning. So last month we did 57 transactions, well, actually two months ago, now we're in, we just got into May. Last month in April, we did, I think it was like 49 transactions. So we're still winning, but I keep joking that

we're winning scared, you know, like we're just, I'm just waiting for that shoe to drop, you know, and get rough. But what I found is we're, uh, So what did March look like then? So March was 57 and then April was 49. So yeah, we're still doing great. We're still profitable. Like everything is still great, but we've had to shift. So there's a couple things that we've done to shift. One, we're training more. So like the Navy SEALs, you know, when they get in a battle, when things get stressful and crazy, they're not going to rise to the level of their goals. They're going to fall to the level of their training. And so we've, for me, myself and for all those that I'm in business with, we've upped our training level, like doing a lot more education, you know, podcasts like this is great because just helps you think. on a high level, you're hanging out with people that are going to make you better, even if it's virtually or through stuff. So that is the first part. And then the second part, so one, we're up in the training. And then two, we're just listening to what people want. And if people don't want to get together, we'll do it virtually. If people want to get together,

you know, for us personally, we're okay. We're not in a shelter and place state. So we'll get together with people. So we're just shifting. And again, I think the best people in sales are the ones that listen to what people are looking for and then are able to deliver it, which is part of the reason, you know, with that whole, the whole investor cast off deals, you know, that, that is like one of the big keys to that is almost everybody just wants to give them what they give, give people instead of actually listening and creating a creative solution and winning, you know, because I think that's like win and sales in any business. Got it. So here we are. So in the last two months, a little over, we'll just call it an easy map, 100, 100 deals.

what is your makeup there between say resident owner consumer buyers and investor buyers? Yeah, so about 25% of what we do is investor work. So it was just over 100 deals last year. And now this year we're probably going to be just over 50% that is going to be some sort of distressed seller or investor deal. And then the vast majority of the rest of it is kind of our standard residential sphere. So a big piece of it. I mean, we're going to do hundreds and hundreds of deals this year

that are more in the distressed world in the investor world. Okay. So you feel you're pretty bullish on what it looks like for the rest of the year. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think if you're working with sellers right now, I think now is the time, you know, talk to them. Everybody's like sellers are getting nervous. But I'll tell you what, this is the greatest script in the world to me is,

is, hey, if I knew that 2008 was coming and I had equity in my house before the big crash, would I have cashed out my equity or would I stay through and and do it? We don't know that it's going to be a cliff like 2008 and maybe it won't be, but I'll tell you what, if I'm even thinking about remotely thinking about selling, am I going to protect my equity? Am I going to protect the assets that I have by selling now when I know I can still cash out and get most of my equity? Absolutely. So I feel like the script has been working really well and I think that it's going to continue to work well until until things shift and then we got to shift from there. Right. That's nice. A nice golden nugget there. Thank you, Chris. Yeah, I mean, anytime, I really subscribe to the whole idea of just making the market the bad guy. Like, you be the friend, you be the consultant.

I'm on your team. I'm here to help. But darn it, this whole market just might get in the way of that, of us both getting what we want, right? And I like that. So if we knew in 2008, if we knew 2008 was coming, we were sold in 2007, right? I like it. Sweet. Make a note of that.

Use it. It's really tough to make the market the bad guy when you've been appreciating for the last 10 years. Right. You know what I mean? It's your friend. It loves you. I know. I know. No, it doesn't. It hates you. You should sell at a discount. Cool. So, all right. So you feel really good about the future. I mean, you're operating from the listing side so I can see that. I feel really good about the future because we're buying. So there's going to be a lot more just, there's going to be a lot of real estate exchanging hands, right? It's going to go going back and forth. and if you can get in the middle of that, then you should probably do pretty well for yourself. Let's just jump into what we were talking, like kind of what the headline was.

You got trash leads to cash leads, I think was how you got it. So explain to me. Tell me what that's about, how you're working with real estate investors and how my real estate investors could learn from that. Yeah, absolutely. So I actually have created a class on our website where we're, you know, teaching people how to do this because I think what you said, Matt, was so true. I've got so many friends that are very high-level investors. I mean, a lot of people

that run other podcasts, other coaching business, other things. And almost all of them, some of them have their own brokerage and every single one that I talk to, their conversion ratio for these leads are so small. And we're not talking about stupid people. We're talking about people with massive businesses here. You're talking about brokerages or investors right now? Investors. Right. Okay. I did it. Okay. You know, a handful of, like our friend, like our friend Chris, he's got a brokerate, like a retail brokerage as well, but he's got a massive wholesaling business down in Dallas. So we've got lots of people to do that. But what I've found is almost all of them cracking the code to be able to really convert at a high level. Because, I mean, you think about it, you go on 10 appointments. Maybe you get a fix and flip or a wholesale for one, you know, one out of 10 maybe. I mean, maybe your ratios are better. But let's just call it one out of 10 because that's kind of what I'm seeing ballpark. And then of them, you know, maybe maybe a handful of them are not going to sell to anybody. They're just kind of kicking tires or whatever. Even after you pre-qualified, they're not going to sell.

But you know you've got at least five more that are going to sell to somebody, right? At least five out of ten are going to sell, you know, to somebody. Maybe they're going to go on the market. Maybe they just want more money. Maybe they're going to sell to another investor, whatever. So if you can solve their problem and figure out the psychology of why they want to talk to investor, because we all know that if you're talking to an investor, you're going to take less money for your house, but they want something. They're willing to trade something to have it the easy way.

So if the agent walks in and says, hey, I'm a real estate agent and I can give you my listing presentation, they're not going to bite on that, right? They're not going to care about that. Their uncle's brother is a hairdresser and a real estate agent. Why are they going to work with you? They don't care. You're not going to get it. And that's why nobody has done it. But when you understand that you're coming in as somebody that's a problem. solver that works as an investor and you know you the agent still has the option of the cash deal you know the the regular listing like everybody else or the the model where you know we call it a hybrid model and this is what we teach the hybrid model where you basically are listening to what their

pain point is and then like a doctor you know my shoulders all jacked up you know and you're you're hearing their pain just and just like the doctor you did all these things to check out my shoulder I've had four shoulder surgeries three on this one but I just went back in and And he checked all the pain until I kind of squealed when he did one of them. And he's like, oh, there we go. That's there, there's the problem. And that's what we're doing with these sellers, just finding the pain point. Then we write the diagnosis and say, all right, this is how we're going to solve the problem for you.

Boom, custom made. It's not the stupid listing presentation that you've rehearsed, you know, for everybody. It's custom made. Oh, you don't want lots of people coming through your house. Let's talk through how we do this. All right. So we'll do an investor open house and only open it up from the hours of, two to four, which is what wholesalers do anyway, right? And so, you know, you're just doing that same

thing. You're just finding out what their pain point is, solving the problem, getting them what they want and making a lot of money. Here's the crazy thing. We're usually most agents, if I can go in as an agent, 6% and our market, 4% is what most agents are taking, 4.2%. And it's rare that we don't take at least 6%, but we're often taking more like 8 or 9% on a listing. And we're keeping all and giving the buy side, two and a half percent. So we're making basically wholesale prices on these deals. And we're, we're creating a referral program with, with the wholesalers or the other people that are allowing them to cash in and get, get a referral from it. And then we're making good money and everybody wins. Got it. All right. So when you are talking to a seller for that very first conversation,

do they think they're talking to an agent or an investor? They're talking to an investor. So, so, depends. You know, if you're doing your own leads, you know, then you're, you're talking as an investor and then you're going to have to, you're going to have to transition. If it's an investor handoff, so let's say it's a wholesaler, one, two, three wholesaling, um, connects with, you know, one, two, three real estate, um, you know, whatever it is, then they're going to just still set the appointment up or set up the, just say, yeah, we're going to bring somebody out to take a look. And it's the agent that goes out and takes a look. And if you just go out there and do a listing

presentation, you're screwed, right? You go out there and you, you know, you walk through, you find out what they want. And then, and then you say, well, we can give you the cash offer, but I think it's going to be lower than what you've. So you're being introduced to the client as an agent. But they talk to an investor first. My follow. Yeah, no, no, they don't, they don't say I'm a real estate agent. If they say I'm a real estate agent, I'm toast. Like I don't. Okay, who's day then? I'm lost in the process here. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. So what is the name of your wholesale and company? I'm just a real estate company.

Epic real estate. Okay. Give me, so a name of a, let's say, ABC wholesale. Okay. Does the deal. Somebody. So ABC wholesale generates the lead? Yeah, they're talking to them on the phone.

I find out, let's say the house, the ARB on the house is 250. These people want 200 for the house. So there's not enough really money in there to do the deal, you know, after repair, everything else. There's just more money in there to do the deal. So you say ABC wholesale says, you know what, let me set up an appointment with, you know, somebody to come out there. Let me set up the appointment. Does Friday at 10 a.m. work for you? Okay, perfect. So they set it up. So set up with somebody. Like what if I was a seller, I'd be like, well, who's this somebody? What do they do? Who are they? Why don't I want to talk to them? We're going to bring somebody out there

to evaluate your house. And so who's this somebody? Then you say, oh, just just some part of of our team coming out to evaluate your property. So you're evaluating the property. So you come out. You're part of the investor team basically. Exactly. Because we partnered together. We've already, we've created a partnership on this. So we partner together. And so, uh, because I never wanted to deceive anybody. You know, this is, this is what it is. You go out there. And bottom line is, they want 200. They're not going to move off 200. You pre-qualified that this wouldn't be something you'd go, go spend your time on for a fix and flip or a wholesale. Um, but, but they do want to sell and probably slightly under market, maybe 5% after you look at what it would sell for on the market.

So the agent goes out and talks to them, says everything, disclosures that they're an agent because you have to do that, but says, hey, you know, I can do three things. I can make you the cash offer. I can do, I can list the property like everybody else does or we've got a hybrid program. We've got a different program that, you know, that can work. But what we're going to do is we're going to talk through what you're looking for. And if I can help you, cool. And if I can't, I'll tell you that too.

And we're just going to see if there's a good fit here. Boom. So you take all the pressure off. And then you go through and they tell you, hey, I want 200. And you're like, you know, my cash offer would be much, much lower. And the reality is if they say, well, we really want a cash offer and they push you, push you, push you on it. Then you can give them the cash offer. Let's say it's where a deal gets made.

And if they say, hey, I'll do 150. Then great. You write it up. Even if you're a real estate agent, you write it up. And, you know, the wholesaler are taking it. You wholesale to somebody else. buy it yourself. Heck man, if the deal is good enough, look me up and call me, I'll buy it.

Right. You know, so it doesn't matter. You know, if they say yes to that, cool. But the reality is you just tell them, hey, my cash offer is going to be lower than you want. And then you get into the hybrid model. And then you're able to tell them how you can get them what they want. Okay.

So we do something, I don't know, relatively similar is we'll go out and we'll offer and try to get the equity price, right, get through the deep equity position. and if they say no, then we leave them with what we call a three option letter of intent. So it's three different ways that we can purchase their house. So you're kind of doing the same thing. You just have, but you're kind of doing it in two parts with a separate person that comes out. And then you said, here's the three options. Which one do you want?

Right? Yeah. Got it? Okay, cool. And it is one of those options is I'll list their house for you. Yeah. And my guess is, and so I do have a number of other friends that do it like that. And what I've seen is, and maybe you guys are, are,

crushing it on the listing side of it and getting a lot of people to say yes. But what I've seen is what you go out there for tends to be what you'll be able to get. Because if you make a, if I, as soon as you give an offer of 150, they're like, you know, close it up. No, this is what I'm looking for unless they say yes, right? If they say yes, cool. But usually they'll close it up. But if you kind of push that aside and say, this isn't good for you, what I think you want, because you've already prequalified, you already know what they want. What I think I could do for you is get you this 200 that you're looking for. You know, here's how we do it. Here's what the program looks like. And then you walk through it from there. Okay. So, um, playing devil's advocate a little bit.

I just moved into a new market in Las Vegas. And so I'm kind of a reestablishing here. And then this whole virus thing happened. I was like, okay, well, that's a bummer. But, uh, here's been my challenge. And I'm, I know I'll solve it. I just know it's going to go through a, I'm going to have to go through a lot of people before I do. But if I'm an investor, because you, Chris, you are not, I can see an uncommon real estate behind you, right, is your title there for your company. You are not a common real estate agent. The common real estate agent would hear what you just said and be totally confused and go screw up every single follow up meeting. So as an investor, how do you find the right person and then, you know,

how do you find the right agent that gets it? Because I was an agent for four years. They don't. You know what I mean? Like you are uncommon. So fitting title. Yeah. So what I would say is this.

There's actually a quote that one of my favorite quotes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle says this, that mediocrity knows nothing greater than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius. And so what I would do is start working to find other people that as soon as you start talking to them, you hear that there's some sort of a genius to them, that they're a good salesperson. There's something, you know, something special, something uncommon about them.

And then once you find that, just because they're uncommon, doesn't mean they're going to be able to walk through the process. Once you find that, then you start working with them to get this nailed down, which is kind of what I've been doing, why I'm creating this class, you know, because I've now trained two other agents on my team how to close at a high level one. one's at 61%, ones at 81% closing ratio for their appointments. So learning how to close at a high level, there really is a scripting and a dialogue that works for that. So working through to make sure that they're scripting and dialogue is really good. So you pick the right agent and the agent

needs to pick the right investor that's willing to hand off well instead of just like, boom, here. I mean, any leads will work. But, you know, if you really want to close at a high level, there is a system. You know, you find that person that is uncommon and then you work through the scripting and dialogue and really make sure that they're following it and following it well. Okay, so finding that one uncommon agent, would you recommend just talking to agents the same way that you go looking for a good deal? You've got to talk to a bunch of sellers before you find one. Yeah, I mean, I would say there's probably a handful of things that I would do. I do believe, I believe strongly in referral. So, you know, if you move into a new market, you go to some of the

some of the meetups, some of the other investor places, and just start asking around for who the good agents are in that area. And, you know, and then just start talking to them. And then there's, there's going to be good agents that you may not jive with, you know, you want to find somebody one. I mean, this is, this is really going to be a business partnership. So yeah, yeah, so you want to be with somebody that, I mean, one of the biggest investors I work with, you know, he's, he's become one of my closest friends, you know, he came over and we have like moonshine happy hours, you know, So it's just great. You want to be somebody that you can talk with, have fun with, but then also mastermind

with because literally he makes me a lot better and I make him better, you know, in just the relationship there. So that's what I would say is the type of person you're looking for. You're not sharing equity in each other's company, but you really are entering into a business partnership. No, totally, totally. Yeah, no, I mean, it's good that you found somebody. And, you know, so now I'm in a new market.

I'm looking for that somebody. And, you know, I know you have a course about it. we'll talk about that in a sec, but I just wondering, like, is there a shortcut to go find that person? Because it's not easy. That can be as difficult as finding the deals. Is finding somebody like, even if you have a good agent,

even a high productive agent that does a lot of production in the area and maybe they've been doing it for a long time, they still might know only agent stuff. Yeah. Right? You know, you got to talk to my lender. You got to get prequalled first. And then on Saturday, I'm going to put you in my car and we're going to take you out

and around and do, you know what I'm saying? Like, like, that's all. they know and anything outside of that, they freak out and say it's illegal and you're going to jail. With the big investment group that I, you know, that I mentioned before. So the way I built that relationship, so I did some, some stuff before. I knew, I knew that I knew how to convert these leads really, really well. And that's another story for another time, you know, for something else that I did. So I kept calling them up. I'm like, guys, I know you guys are spending well over six big years a month. Let's, let's have a conversation. And, you know, they kept saying, okay, okay, and put me off, put me off, put me

they were using, you know, somebody that was, I mean, a top, top producer in the country, really, really high level person. But eventually they're like, look, we've tried all of these different things. We've even given this girl, we've given her a thousand leads and she's only closed six deals, you know, in the last six months of the thousand leads we've sent her way. They're like, it's just not worth our time. And I'm like, give me a shot. Let me give me something.

And so they gave me 150 leads. Turn out like 70 of them had already been sold, 30, 30. of them were out of area. So I had like 40 and I'm like, okay, here's the deal. I got to close as many as that girl did with a thousand leaves. And so I ended up closing six of them with that. I called them up and they're like, all right, this is worth that getting together. Let's get together. And then, you know, we just started to date before we got married, built the relationship and then we've turned it into something really good. And so, I mean, finding somebody, I will say this, finding somebody that is also relentless, that's when you're looking for an agent, if you find somebody that doesn't believe that

persistence breaks resistance, then you're going to lose out big time here because that is, that is one of the biggest, most important things here is to persist. Otherwise, you know, you're done. Totally. Persistence breaks resistance. I like a little. I love all those little quotes. Yeah. I might be a little bit of a meme there on Instagram. I'll say I got this from Mr. Chris Craddock. Okay. So if someone were to make that arrangement, Does the agent send deals back the other direction ever? Yeah, I mean, heck, we're closing one right now where came to one of the guys on my team that I trained. He looked at it and said, man, there's a lot of meat on this bone.

And so we called them back. And what we've worked out is essentially, so we usually keep three and a half percent on our side when we get six percent on the deal. What we worked out because they want to incentivize us, they said, okay, you'll keep the three and a half percent and we'll give you a $500 bonus. because of the fact that you sent it back to us. So it was a deal that was just found money for them. So they didn't want to squeeze us. They wanted to reward us for sending it back to them. And then they also have essentially found money on that.

See, that's a good partner. They're relationship focused and not transaction focused. And that's good. I also think moving into this shifting market, can you tell me what your perspective is? I think it's really important for investors now, even though it might not have been, because agents hadn't wanted to play too much with investors because they haven't had to.

But moving into a new market, it's good. I mean, agents need to have a good real estate agent relationship with somebody. Oh, yeah. I mean, I love what Grant Cardone says about real estate agents. He says the biggest problem with real estate agents is they don't buy their own product. And so that's the biggest issue is like agents don't understand investment at all. And so, I mean, that's where you've got to find the agent that actually understands that. And that's actually one of the things that I feel like is one of the biggest problems.

of our industry, which is why I'm starting teaching coach this, is how does the agent understand investment side? And then the partnerships there is, that's where there's so much money to be made for everybody if they just understand how people can partner together and not have their little, you know, we're all of scarcity mindset up versus abundance mindset, you know. You're running with other people. Everybody gets better. Yeah. I wrote in my book, my first was a long time ago, but I written when I was at my experience that being in my agency office was a gosh 95% of these real estate agents don't even own their own house you know they're out selling other people buy and sell houses and they're over there renting a little you know 800 square foot apartment oh my gosh funny it's like it's like a Ford salesman selling like uh whatever a Dodge you know believe it and do it yeah I mean if you're going to sell portions you better drove to work in a porch you better drove to work in a porch Right. Okay, cool.

So you have this thing called Trash Leads to Cash Leads. It's about building a relationship between an agent and an investor. And you teach people that. Who's the ideal client or student for that program that you got together? It's both, but it's mainly for the agent. So I've got a lot of investor friends that they're building the relationship. And then they're telling the agent, hey, if you want this relationship, you've got to take this class. because just like you said, you can find that uncommon person that still won't close well.

Because even if you do well, if your technique isn't good, if you're a good salesperson, but you don't have the right technique, then you're still going to lose out on a lot, a lot of deals. And so that's where I see, you know, when the agent goes through this, understands the scripts, the dialogues, how to work with the investor on the warm handoff, how to work with the investor on how to frame the agent meeting, all of these different things. It's all about how it's framed so that you walk in and they don't get switched. Got it. Cool. Do you have an affiliate program for that, Chris?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Because I was thinking about putting something to my members area of how to work with agents. I'm still going to do it. But it's really not even that there's so much like the whole course is going to be teaching my students how to to teach agents. You know what I mean? But if you already got something that teaches the agents how to do it, then, hey, that maybe that'll be about the better fit. Sweet. All right.

So, what am I missing? Is it as simple as that or is there something else? It's as simple as that. I mean, it's really understanding, it's understanding what the seller wants. And if you go in and you make the, if you make the low offer, you know, 60 cents on the dollar, they're not going to have trust for you to be the person that is going to to have their best, you know, best hopes in mind. So that's why having the handoff is so, so powerful.

That's why our conversion ratio goes up. You know, if you just go in and say, hey, I can buy it for this or I can list it for this. They're going to say, well, you don't care about me. You just want to get, you know, whatever. But if you say, I can buy it for this and they sell it, cool, that's awesome. But if you know, and let's be honest, sales at a high level, you're going to prequalify before you go on the appointment, right?

So if you've already prequalify, you're not going to do the deal. why are you going to lose the trust with them by making an offer that you know there's no chance they're going to make? I mean, I can tell you, anybody that's even a decent salesperson can rule out at least 50% of the people, they know they're never going to take it. So then, you know, allow that, allow somebody to come in and, you know, make an offer that they will want to take without losing the trust of a low, low offer. Got it. Got it. So you've been doing this since 2008, we said, right? Oh, 2003. you've been through a downturn and potentially could be going through another one. Might be just a little bump.

Might be a deep giant pothole. We don't know. But where are you seeing the opportunities right now moving forward? Oh, man. Well, I'll tell you what. I'm not as certain about where the opportunities are yet. But I do know that with a recession, you know, it's the biggest transfer of wealth that happens. And so I'm not sure exactly where they are.

So what I've done is went out and, you know, I've done some things. I've sold some properties. I've done things to get myself into a high cash position because I do believe, you know, everybody talks about the overnight success story. And there's no such thing as an overnight success story. It's a 10-year overnight success story where you prepare yourself so that when the opportunity happens, you're ready for it. And so what I'm doing right now is I'm stockpiling cash.

I'm being cash-heavy. I'm talking to my friends that have high cash positions. saying, hey, when stuff comes, would you be interested in investing with me? Because, you know, it's not all about only having the cash, but it's also having the deals. And you can work yourself into a deal with somebody that has cash if you have the deal as well. So I'm looking to have lots of cash for my own deals, but also have other people because I think there's going to be a lot of stuff on sale coming up here. So I want to get as many people that have cash that may not be able to find deals as well to be ready where I can partner with them where I bring it and they

pay for it, you know, other people's money, right? You know, that kind of stuff, you know, to be ready. So that's what I'm doing to be ready because there is going to be a transfer of wealth. This is when fortunes are going to be won and fortunes are going to be lost. And I definitely want to be on the one side. Right. Yeah, definitely. You get to choose which side you want to be on. with that said, what do you think are the big risks or the big dangers moving into this uncertain future we've got? The only thing that I'm worried about with my plan is what happens if we get into some sort of hyperinflation. You know, that's where I am nervous about that having real estate and hyperinflation, you know, that's the best hedge against inflation, you know,

but being cash heavy is not. I don't feel like we're going to inflate our, devalue our money. I just don't think we're going to do that at an insane level. So that's where they say that we've already, the quantitative easing has already been greater than it was in 2008. Yeah. Yeah. We're already there. Like, we're not even out of, you know, our lockdown yet.

And it's already been more now than it was in the two or three years that followed 2008. Yeah. So I thought about that too, because I've been thinking about, you know, I've got a number of free and clear homes. Like, should I sell them now, get the cash out? But I'm thinking about exactly what you're thinking about right now. Like, ooh, I don't know if I want to be holding a bunch of cash right now. Yeah.

So I'm going back and forth. So I own a number of properties and I got rid of the ones that I didn't want, that aren't like my, you know, my niche properties. You know, I have like, I think like seven next to the local university. And they've appreciated so much in value. And I've had zero days vacancy. So since 2008, when I bought my first. one. And so I'm going to hold on to those, but the ones that are further out, yeah, gotten

rid of. And then I have my, the tough thing is I'm in the process of building my personal house, which is probably bigger and more expensive than I have needed to do. But, you know, we're going through all the process now. And I'm like, oh, crap, do I really want to drop this got in cash right now? So anyway, so that's what I'm wrestling with right now. Just trying to decide, even my wife is saying, well, do we just unload the farm? We're building on this, like, big farm. Do we unload that and then re-buy when everything goes on sale? And I'm like, I don't think so because I love the location, but I don't know.

So anyway, you're here. And I don't know the answer. I'm just, you know, wrestling with it like everybody else. Yeah. Not knowing is like the, that's like the worst part. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, if we're in lockdown for another six months, then I have to start to really be concerned. But there's the possibility, you know, if it's just two or three months, no big deal. just business as usual, but, you know, everyone's kind of second-guessing their moves at the moment because we just don't know. Right. Right. It keeps life exciting, though. Right. Well, I was just, I was just been a mastermind Gary Keller led yesterday. And one of the things he said that I thought was interesting was listings are down to about 50% what they should be, what they normally would be. But there's only about 28% less buyers in the market. So it still means, you know, price is a function of supply and demand, right?

Right, right. It still means that there's more buyers than there are listing. So inventory is actually going to get tighter as of right now. So he's just like, man, you know, if you can control the listing side of it, if you can get the listing side of it, you can still make a lot of money on that, knowing that, you know, inventory is still going to be tight, you know. Right. Right.

So that's really, that's interesting because you can see that type of information pretty easily with the way the MLS tracks, like on the retail side of things, right? it's going to be very interesting to see what the wholesale side looks like, the stuff that doesn't hit the MLS. Where is the supply and demand going to be there? Yeah. Right. Absolutely.

Awesome. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure, Chris. If someone wanted to get in touch with you and check you out and even check out your education, your school, the programs you put together, what's the best way for them to do that? Yeah. My website, just chriscroutic.com, is there. You can click on it. On Facebook, we got our group on Common Real Estate.

and I've got a page on Facebook. So try to interact with people. People were so generous to me with their time when I was getting into this. So I want to try to be as generous as I can with my time and help other people. And then we got our class that teaches this. If you're either an investor or an agent that wants to get this done, happy to work on that front too. But yeah, anything I can do to serve and get back, I'm happy to do.

That's great, Chris. Thank you very much for that. And, gosh, I think Mr. Arnold's batting 1,000. He sent me some great people, so thank you for not letting me down or letting us down. You're fantastic. I appreciate you. You are the uncommon real estate agent, though, so I get it. I like that.

Well, perfect. So let's stay in touch. We'll do this again. That sounds great. Perfect. Awesome. All right. Thanks, Chris.

Hey, if you found this episode valuable, there's a really good chance that you know someone else who would too. So if you think about it, if their name comes to mind, their face comes to mind, share it with them. them to click the subscribe button when they get here and I'll take great care of them. And yeah, that's it. God loves you. So do I. Peace, health, blessings and success to you. I'm Matt Terrio. Living the dream. We got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know home poor. 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.

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