KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Making $40,000+ in 40 Days Driving for Dollars with Zack Boothe

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Welcome to Uncommon Real Estate, where it's all about finding creative solutions for real estate agents and investors. In exclusive mastermind conversations with some of the brightest minds in real estate, you'll learn how to earn an extra six figures a year. Don't follow the herd. Be Uncommon. Here are your hosts, multi-millionaire real estate agent and investor, Chris Craddock and Jeff Saferight. Hey, friends, welcome here to another episode of your Uncommon Lunchbox for those Chris Craddock. myself Jeff Saferight. Today we got on with us, Zach Booth to talk some real estate investing, driving for dollars, and just overall building a pretty sweet real estate investing business. So Zach, thanks for coming on with us today. Chris, you want to give me any further introduction? I'll let's jump in.

Yeah, excited about having Zach here with us. He is an expert when it comes to driving for dollars. I'll tell you, one of the things I really, really loved was, what was it, 40 grand and 40? 40 days or something like that that you did down in Florida in an area that was not even your hometown just to prove that it works. I know like our average listener, we've got some that are just investors and some that are just agents, but I know that my goal is to really speak to those that are real estate agents that want to go beyond their next transaction and become investors as well. I want everybody to understand this is a great chance for you to buy undermarket properties, but it's also a great source of listings as well for people. So with that said,

Zach, tell us about yourself. Tell us where you started. How'd you get into real estate? Yeah, just tell us a little bit about that. Awesome. Thanks for having me. Chris, appreciate you in the audience. Thank you so much for being here. So I started as a window cleaner. So that was my background. That was what made me an expert and got me into real estate investing. So I knew nothing. Honestly, I started a business. when I was 17, which was that window cleaning business. I grew up for a decade. And it was good. It was a good experience. I learned a ton. I built a somewhat successful business. You know, from the outside looking in, it looked like I was doing more than I really was.

I ended up on the history channel because of it. I had YouTube videos with millions and millions of views, window cleaning tutorial videos that I actually put together to train my employees. But yeah, that was, I never planned on having window cleaning fame, right? I was never the intention, but I got sick of it. And the big thing that changed for me was my little boy was born and I couldn't focus on the beautiful moment. All I could think about was how am I going to pay these medical bills? And it actually really bothered me. It bothered me internally. It bothered me that I was so worried about the money on a day that was so important to me. And I knew I needed to change. I knew that I needed to make a change. I knew that if I wanted

financial success, it was going to be up to me. I didn't come for money. I didn't have have wealthy family at all. My grandfather died with like two teeth and a gun to his name. So for me to change my life, I knew that it was going to be up to me. And that's why I got into real estate investing because I thought, man, if others can do it, maybe I can. And so that's what I, that's when I changed. So tell us a little bit, one, tell us what driving for dollars is and tell us why one, like just tell us about it. I know you're one of the experts in this field. So tell us about. Yeah. So I'm an idiot. I thought I came up with the idea. It's been around as long as real estate investing's been around. Right. The whole concept is if someone wants to sell a house at a discount, they're done with it,

whether they're tired landlords or they're inherited the property and they're done with it. They, the property is a thorn in their side. They don't want to deal with it. So if they don't want to deal with it, there's probably deferred maintenance on the house. They don't want to go and pick the weeds and mow the grass and fix the peeling paint. And so when I first started doing real estate investing wholesaling, I was marketing to like general list. So I was pulling lists of like tax delinquents, people that had code violations, people that had evictions. And I was seeing if they wanted to sell. What I quickly found was the properties that I was getting and getting at a discount, all of them had deferred maintenance. I was driving down the street looking for the house number. And I was like,

I'd see it up ahead of me and be like, oh, that's the house. It's got to be. And as I pulled up is the ugly duckling on the street. I'm like, okay, like, there's something to this. And I had a, something go bad in my business. And the very beginning of 2018, I was doing some deals. I had done the eight months before that when I first started, I had made six figures from these general lists. But it got to the point where I wasn't getting leads. So the very beginning of 2018, I had two months that I didn't do a deal. And I had walked away from window cleaning. I had house payments. I had children. I had a wife that was home with the kids. And it's like, okay, I'm going to have to go back to washing windows, and that sounds like the worst thing in the world. So I had to have a way

that worked, a way that was profitable. So I started driving around, writing down addresses and looking up who owned it and county records and reaching out and see if they wanted to sell. So essentially, that's driving for dollars, and that's how it all started. It started because of a need to do deals. That's awesome. That's awesome. So driving for dollars, for those that this is the first time they've ever heard the phrase driving for dollars. What does that mean? Yeah, so you find properties with physical signs and neglect and reach out to the owners and see if they want to sell. That is the simplest definition I can give. Okay. Awesome.

And one other question. So I'm a big fan. I've told everybody, deal machine is who I tend to recommend for driver. Ors use the promo code on Common and you'll get some free data, free advertising on that. I think everybody should look at that. How many houses do you usually expect? to identify as a property that's in neglect before you're able to get a deal from it? A deal? It depends on your market. So, for example, if you're in California versus Illinois,

it's going to be different. So you guys can calculate your exact market. I'm going to give you some math. So get your pen and paper. So you need to figure out what your after repair values, your median house price is in your market. So you can go to Google and search median house price and put your city. You probably already know that. That is what your average wholesale fee should be. So let's say your median house price is $400,000. Your average deal is going to be about $40,000. And I want you to spend less than $0.25 to make a dollar.

Okay. So we're reversing the, we're working the numbers down. Okay. So $400,000, your average deal size is $40,000. 25% of that is $10,000. So to be able to do a deal, you're going to need to spend. spend roughly $10,000 in marketing or less. I spend quite a bit less with my driving for dollar system. But if you do postcards, you're going to need to send about 5,000 postcards. So you'll probably

need about 2,500 addresses and to send two rounds of postcards and you should get a deal that's going to make you about 40 grand. So that would be the math in a market with your median house price of 40 grand, about 2,500 addresses sending two postcards to it. Okay. Awesome. Awesome. All right. So we're talking $2,500, what is the best way? Tell us how do you implement this into your everyday life? And then I want to get into your 40 grand, 40 day challenge that you did. And then obviously, I'm sure Jeff has some questions too. So I'll stop hogging the question, Mike. So you had mentioned deal machine. And so we use deal machine. And I'll share what we use on deal machine and how we do it. So you guys can quickly get those 2,500 addresses, quickly make

that 40 grand. I want you guys to make money off of this podcast. So the first thing you're going to do, you're going to download Deal Machine, use discount code that Chris has. What is it? Uncommon. Uncommon. Get that discount code. So Deal Machine has three ways that you can add properties. You can take a picture. You can do what's called the tap to add and pin mode. So up at the top, when you get in on the street view, top left corner, there's like three little bars. You click the three little pars and pick tap to add. taking a picture of the house is going to slow you down big time and you're not going to get any more deals because of it. I guarantee it. I've split tested, okay? So you're going to do the tap to add because then you're now have a Google Maps image. You're going to be able to identify houses very quickly that have physical signs and neglect.

We're not just doing boarded up. We're doing any houses with physical signs and neglect. Okay. You're going to touch that house on the map and it's going to immediately upload it into the Excel spreadsheet for you that you can then export out a deal machine or do your marketing right there within deal machine. but I want you to be adding anywhere between 50 to 100 properties for every single hour of driving. I have one, like a lot of people think you need this giant team to have a million dollar wholesaling business all around driving for dollars. That's what I have and I have one driver that drives two and a half days a week. We add 2,000 properties to our marketing list every single week. So you don't need a giant team, none of that stuff.

If you use deal machine, tap to add, you can build a list very quickly. So that's what it looks like. I don't have to do the driving anymore. I have someone that does it for me. I have my team that markets them. I have my team that negotiates. But when I first started, I had to do all of the grind myself. And that's why I did the 40-day challenges for you guys to get it over-the-shoulder look, what it looks like to start from scratch with very little money. So, yeah, that's huge. And I want everybody that's a real estate agent to know, like, you also are going to find, if it takes 2,500 to do two deals, you're also going to find a massive amount of sellers. So that should also

be four listings. Two deals, four listings should be kind of the ballpark of what you'd be looking at. So now with that said, let's talk about the 40-day challenge. And then I'll stop. I'll let Jeff ask questions. I'll stop hogging the mic. So tell us about the 48 challenge. How'd that work. And yeah, just tell us about it. Yeah. So I started teaching people this system a couple of years ago. And I noticed that a lot of people were a lot like me. They're very skeptical of gurus of people saying, hey, you can make money doing these things. And it's like, yeah, I was that person. I was very skeptical. What changed everything for me is I was washing windows for a very wealthy developer, actually on his big, huge mansion. And he was an older guy. And he basically just gave me two rentals.

After like an hour and a half conversation, I got to know him. He's a super guy, nice guy. His name was Stan. And I was like, oh, wow, like you can get properties in a massive discount. I got him well over $100,000 at a discount. I capitalized on all that money a year and a half later, but it made me a believer. So I was up super late one night. It's like, how do I inspire people and show people that it's possible? I'm like, I'm no one special. I'm really not. Like, I didn't know anything. I guarantee more than half the listeners on this show are a thousand times further along than I was when I was when I started. And so I was like, how do I show people like what it takes and what it looks like and what they need to do and believe that it's possible? Because if listeners, if you guys don't

believe that it's possible, you'll never take a massive amount of action on it. And if you don't take action, you'll never be successful. So I was like, how do I show people and give them that confidence? So they'll go get started, right? And so I was like, why don't I let them get the gift that I got? Why don't I go find a stand and find a seller and show them its high integrity. You can make a ton of money. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to go do that. So my thought is like, all right, I'm going to hire a film crew and I'm going to go get started. I'm like, I can't do it where I live. Because I'll be like, we have all your connections and everything else. So I picked somewhere where I'd never been. I went to Tampa, Florida, and I picked Tampa,

not because it's like the best place in the country to do this. This works everywhere. I picked Tampa because it was warm, and I was going in January. So the whole goal was to take just a thousand bucks. I had my Airbnb, my car, and my smartphone. And I wasn't going to even have my family with me for the first 30 days of the 40 day challenge. So it was just going to be complete hustle. I still had to support my students and my existing business and everything else. But I was going to start from scratch, 100% on my own. and try and make $40,000 in 40 days just doing real estate wholesaling, just finding deals and selling the opportunity. And that was the challenge. That's what I did. And I documented day by day for

everyone to see. And you made your 40 grand, right? And then some. And then some. Yeah. It was, awesome. The cool thing is you had mentioned, you'll get listings as well. And I just did three wholesale deals and kept two as rentals. So I don't want to be a spoiler alert, but I over doubled my wholesale fees that I was trying to do. Plus, then I had over 100 grand in equity in those two rentals that I kept while from being there. But I know that I walked away from a ton of listings. There was this truck driver guy that wanted to list his house and I took him some coronas and built a great relationship, but I wasn't a fit for him. He wanted an agent. So I was like, okay, I'm not a fit. Here's your beer. Best of luck. And I referred it to an agent. I'm not an agent. So connect with your

wholesalers, everybody, because I was passing deals off because I couldn't deal with them. Yeah, that's awesome. All right, Jeff, I'm done asking questions. You, uh, I'm sorry. I don't believe it. I don't, you just, you just, you just, one more. The action. So for everybody that's interested, if you're like me, I'm always racing ahead.

So I've already, I've already Googled Zach. I just posted the YouTube video of how he did the 40,000 and 40 days. So, so there's a treat for you there. There's also a special link that they could get access to it really easy. just go to dfd mastery.com forward slash 40 and 40. Perfect. Dfd mastery.com forward slash 40 in 40.

Yep. Awesome. And we'll hit that up again at the end of the show here today for those of me that were scrambling for a pen on that. So I guess for myself, I have two questions for you. Number one is how did you get your driver and when did you get your driver? Yeah. When I first started, it's a little different.

I didn't have deal machine. So I added 90 properties and did a deal. No, 70 properties and did a deal. And I made 9 grand on it. And I was like, okay, proof of concept enough. Let's go. Let's do more of this. And I put together like this dinner event and reached out to everyone that I might know

that might be willing to help me for a portion of every deal. And I was paying 20% of all the deals gross revenue to my people. If I would have paid them 25 bucks an hour, plus pay for their gas, plus $100 for every deal that we do, I overpaid by 70 grand in the first six months by paying 20% commissions. So if I had compensated how I compensate now, I threw away a ton of money. But when we got, so I started this clear back in 2017. I met David Leco, the owner of Deal Machine when I spoke in an event in 2018 in the fall. And I helped push a lot of the changes and updates the deal machine has. So all of the route tracking software on the

master map where it shows the houses that you've added on the master map. That was something that I suggested. Before then, I had tech built out for me and I had my own master map using Google Maps. We had a lot of things before Deal Machine, but deal machines made it super easy to hire and manage a driver. So I suggest if you can't put five to 10 hours a week consistently into driving, hire someone else to do it for you. So I hired things out as fast as I possibly can. As soon as I have proof of concept that it makes money and I have a process, I hired out. Yeah. Because that's my biggest question because as an agent, as an actual agent in the residential side,

doing significant business, I got my driving for dollars app and I'm adding stuff to it from time to time. But oftentimes I'm racing by. I see a house. I'm like, oh, man, I should have tagged that house. But I'm already three blocks down the road and I'm not coming back to it. So it's trying to find the driver. and it sounds like driving for dollars has a great system where you can track their hours, track their routes, all of that. That's what I'm hearing, correct?

Yeah, 100%. It makes it super easy. So when I first started, right, I didn't have the back end analytics. So like in Deal Machine, you can go into your desktop version and you can have different drivers and they're going to hit start drive and end drive. So it's going to highlight the streets and color them. It's also going to get into analytics of how many properties they added and how many miles they drove and how many hours they drove. So you can know exactly what's happening. Dude, I paid for tens of thousands of dollars in marketing to addresses that were added with people laying in their bed. Not even kidding you, because I didn't have that when I started. So I have gone through the ringer to really understand the best processes to really make this happen.

And deal machine has been absolutely amazing. A lot of people are like, what about this new driving for dollars that? What about this one? And we've tested a lot of them. But there is so many things that are absolutely essential for my business at this point. The only deal machine is doing. That's awesome. So, so now we've got how many, how many, or how many houses a week are you adding to your list? And maybe in addition to that, as a person just getting into it, how many, how many houses should I be trying to add? Yeah. So I'm adding 2,000 a week in Utah. So every week I had 2,000 properties. Okay. So I'm adding, what is that? 8,000 properties a month to my marketing list. I'm sending two text messages, three cold call

attempts, and two postcards to every single person on that list. And then I redrive every single one of those areas every six months. There's some gold nuggets for you guys. When you start, you don't need to start there. You probably don't have the budget or the team or the processes to do that much marketing. I had to scale up and work my way there. My suggestion is you start with the cheapest monthly subscription to deal machine and max it out, which is 500 properties a month. The next tier above that is a professional and then it's like a thousand a month. So just stay consistent. The biggest problem is people go ham. They get all sorts of excited, get out there and do things and get some leads and then they get bogged down

with the leads and their marketing dice. What's more important is you stay consistent. You say, okay, I got to get 200 or 100 properties every single week, which is going to take an hour or two driving and just stay consistent to that and then reach out to those people in an efficient and systematic way and then continue to dump more and more marketing more and more addresses in your marketing list and recruiting people as you're doing deals. See, and I think there's wisdom there not just for this system, but for everything. I have had four shoulder surgeries, one on three on the left, one on the right. And my shoulder's been a little jacked up recently. And so I was looking at some different options. I know some of my buddies have done this cold shower thing and morning like cold

plunges. And so I was like looking at buying like a cold plunge tank and all the other stuff. And I'm like, you know what? I need to consistently take a cold shower every morning for a couple months before I need to start dropping a few thousand bucks or seven grand or whatever it is on a cold plunge tank. Because I know that's like Tony Robbins big thing is the cold plunge morning. But yeah, that whole idea of just spending a fortune on stuff before you're actually doing it, which I just think is a big, big thing for us to realize, like, go out, get it done, start doing it. Don't go hiring a driver before you've done anything on it for everybody that's listening. Go out and, heck, on any appointments you're going to, just schedule an extra

half hour beforehand and an extra half hour after. So you're driving for an hour all the way to what you're already doing and then just start adding on to that instead of just saying, hey, I'm all in. And then if it doesn't work in the first like three days, like our typical diets, we say, oh, it doesn't work, you know, but like actually do it for a while before you judge its merit of good or bad or anything else. I think there's just a lot of wisdom in what you just said right there. Yeah, 100%.

Absolutely. So once we have all these names on a list, like, what is your thoughts? One of the things that Chris loves to say is find a deal and the money will come. I'm like, what are your thoughts on finding the buyers? Like, how do you develop your buyers list and getting these properties out to people? Yeah, so I'm a big fan of building the buyers list first. So it's really cool. So there's a show called Undercover Billionaire.

And there's two seasons now. I haven't watched the second season, but the first season, I think Kearns is his last name, Frank Kearns or something like that. He shows up with the goal to take $100 and turn it into a million-dollar company in 90 days. And in there, he says, the secret to success in any businesses have the buyers first, then the product. So when he's trying to flip junk, which is same as flipping houses and he even flips a house in that show, he takes and goes to the Craigslist post and looks for people that are going in need of. He finds people, he finds buyers first, then he goes and finds the junk to sell them. So I'm definitely the believer of finding the buyer first.

So my very first wholesale deal, I had built a large cash buyers list and I had one buyer that made me an offer. He was the only person that even said I was remotely close because he was a motivated buyer. He had a tax 1031 exchange. He paid me $10,000 for a contract that all the other specialists, the person that ran the RIA meetings, he's like, oh, you're 20 grand too high, Zach. You'll never sell this deal. I sold it for 10 grand because I had the right buyer. So one of the priorities that I had on the 40 day challenge was to build my buyer.

list at the same time. So I had buyers once the leads started coming in. So one of my favorite ways to quickly build a cash buyers list is what I call brokering a trade with other wholesalers. So I go to one wholesaler and I say, hey, do you want to grow your cash buyers list? I have some cash buyers so that I could trade with you. They say, yes. I say, okay, how many do you have? Okay, I have 3,000. Okay, I'll come back to you when I have much, much more than 3,000. Fair? They say, okay. So then I call the next guy, hey, I got Bobby on the line with 3,000 cash buyers. Do you want to trade cash buyers? I'm going to go to some other people too. And then I have everyone send me their cash buyers.

I clean it up, get rid of duplicates, and send everyone this larger list. And just a couple weeks of being in Florida, everyone, everywhere from Orlando, Tampa, north up through Brooksville, south through Sarasota, I had over 11,000 investor-friendly real estate agents, cash buyers and everything on my list. 11,000. Crazy. That's amazing. You went to wholesalers and said, hey, let's trade. Let's swap buyer lists. And you just went to multiple of them, combine them all together and then send them out to everybody.

Yep. And then I got to keep it too for brokering the trade. I added value to everybody else and I got some value. That's amazing. Awesome. So I know we're at the end of the hour here. Zach, how can people, obviously the value you're adding is anybody that's listening to this, whether you're an agent, whether you're an investor or whether you're the agent investor. Tell us, this is just high level stuff. Tell us. us how people can reach out to you. I know you have a program as well. Tell us how people can reach out to you. Yeah. So I have a couple places, guys. I have my podcast. If you guys love podcast, you can go to Driving for Dollars Mastery. Is the name of my podcast. You can get more of this type of content, more of this kind of information. I have my YouTube channel. We shared that link already, DFDmastery.com forward slash 40 and 40 to get access to that 40 day challenge and all my YouTube stuff. But I'm on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook.

I put out a ton of content to serve and help as many people as I can. If you want to reach me directly, you can even just send me a DM on Facebook or Instagram. I'm there for you. That's awesome. All right. So, Jeff, why don't you tell about our offer to everybody and then let's take us home? Awesome. Absolutely.

Hey, friends, I lost it. I got tongue-time. I was ready to just close it down, man. I'm a closer. I was just closing it down. But if you go, wherever it is, are you listening to the podcast here where there's iTunes, Spotify,

uh, pod bean, wherever you're listening. Give us a five star review. Much appreciate it. Text me, call me. 703 899 7270.

Once again, 703 899 7270. Hit me up on Instagram at Jeff Saferight. I can hit Chris up at at Crad Rock. And I would love to spend a 30 minutes, spend an hour with you, do some masterminding, figure out,

how we can help you grow your business. We're in this together to be uncommon. We'd love to do that. So go to, like I said, wherever you're listening to the podcast, go give us a five-star review, reach out to us, and we would love to get together

and figure out how to grow our businesses together. So this does conclude another episode of the Uncommon Lunchbox. Zach, really appreciate you coming on. Definitely drop some nuggets here for us today. Again, much appreciated. Best of luck to you. For everyone else, continue crushing it. We will be back next Tuesday, same time.

same place. Have a great weekend. See you all soon. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Uncommon Real Estate. Subscribe to the podcast to stay up to date with the latest mastermind conversations from Chris, Jeff, and other uncommon real estate industry leaders. If you love this podcast, please write us a review. And to fast track your real estate career, go to Chris Craddock.com.