Right About Now with Ryan Alford - The Secrets Behind Making Millions with Jamil Damji
Episode Date: June 11, 2024TAKEAWAYSJamil's journey and experiences in real estatePivotal moments that shaped Jamil's careerChallenges faced by Jamil, including struggles with alcoholism and addictionThe importance of self-disc...overy and making internal changes for personal and professional growthJamil's commitment to authenticity and integrity in his workJamil's intention to self-produce a show focused on solving real-world problems in the real estate industryThe societal impact of the real estate industry and the responsibility of real estate professionalsThe power of television as a medium for reaching a wider audience and increasing awarenessJamil's coaching and mentoring activities in the real estate industryJamil's efforts to address homelessness and housing affordability through sustainable solutionsTIMELINESThe journey in real estate (00:00:00) Jamil's perspective on inspiring others and taking responsibility for their actions.Life and work balance (00:01:15) Jamil's current lifestyle, including his primary residences and time spent with family.Getting started in real estate (00:03:50) Jamil's accidental entry into real estate and his rejection of predetermined paths.Wholesaling and its challenges (00:06:45) The story of Jamil's first wholesale transaction and the challenges he faced.Rejecting hopelessness and making choices (00:10:37) Jamil's view on making different choices and not succumbing to hopelessness.Self-discovery and personal growth (00:14:44) Jamil's struggle with addiction, self-discovery, and personal transformation.Success as an inside job (00:16:53) Jamil's belief in success originating from within and his holistic transformation.The impact of the TV show "Triple Digit Flip" (00:19:39) Jamil's experience with the A&E show "Triple Digit Flip" and the reasons for declining further episodes.TV Show Authenticity (00:22:24) Jamil discusses his commitment to authenticity and refusal to dramatize events for television.Self-Produced Show (00:23:18) Jamil and his partner plan to self-produce a show to address societal issues related to real estate.Solving Real Estate Problems (00:24:13) Jamil shares his intention to help vulnerable people impacted by real estate challenges through education and support.Challenges with TV Show Concept (00:26:27) Jamil discusses the resistance and feedback received when pitching their show concept to a network.Power of Television (00:28:58) The conversation shifts to the significance and impact of television as a medium for reaching a wider audience.Building Relationships in Real Estate (00:31:22) Jamil explains his approach to building a successful wholesale real estate business through relationship-based techniques.Addressing Homelessness and Housing (00:37:32) Jamil shares his experiences with homelessness and his efforts to provide low-income housing solutions.Co-Living Rental Model (00:41:38) Jamil discusses his pivot from short-term rentals to co-living models, aiming to provide affordable housing with dignity.Keeping Up with Jamil's Projects (00:43:59) Information on where to follow Jamil's projects and contact him for further engagement. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE. Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding. Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
I think that when we can show that and prove the concept to people that, hey,
anyone can do what we do, then I think we'll have a tidal wave of people that will start
taking responsibility for what they produce in this world and how they show up.
This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production.
We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month.
Taking the BS out of business for over 6 years and over 400 episodes.
You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks?
Well, it starts right about now.
Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to Right About Now.
We're taking the BS out of business, baby.
That's the tagline,
but it's the truth. And you know what? There's no one better than my good friend,
Jamil Damji. What's up, Jamil? What's cracking, brother? Good to see you, man.
Hey, man. It's good to see you. I always think TV when I see you and I talk to Pace and you're
best known for probably with the masses. I think you're best known in our circles with just being a badass real estate investor,
but best known probably to the masses from triple digit flip.
But yes.
How's life, brother?
Life is great, man.
We are about to do a big event here in Orlando, Florida.
Pace and I, we got Cody Sanchez and Grant Cardone, Donald
Miller, who have all agreed to come in and bless our stage and our communities with their knowledge
and wisdom. Pace and I are going to definitely rock the house there. 3,000 people in one event,
which will be just an incredible room. So I'm excited for that. But otherwise,
will be just an incredible room. So I'm excited for that. But otherwise, really catching a stride here in life right now. I have three primary residences. I spend two weeks a month in Phoenix,
Arizona. I spend a week at the beach in my house in Marina del Rey in California. And then I spend
a week out of every month with my 15-year-old daughter in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. So I'm really figuring
out how to have this life where I get to do the things that I've been working so hard to do,
which is continue to grow professionally, but be there consistently for my family and myself.
Yeah. It's a delicate balance, isn't it? It's like juggling the balls. But I respect the hell out of you for trying to get it done
because that's what it's all about at the end of the day.
Yeah, we all got to juggle balls, no ditty.
Yep, but I will say this.
I need to get an invite here to the stage here, brother, on one of these events.
Heck yeah, dude.
I think you would smash it.
You know, this one, this last event, I don't know if you're familiar with Sage,
who they are.
They do like ClickFunnels events and whatnot. And they really take control of the guests,
who speaks, what they say, when they say it. It's like this whole thing. Unfortunately for
Pace and I this time, we really were disengaged from that whole process. We had so many friends
and people we would have loved to have had on that. But, dude, I would love to have you come and speak at one of our events.
In addition to that, I mean, Pace and I do, we come into different towns continuously throughout the year.
And where are you physically located?
We're in G Vegas, Greenville, South Carolina.
You guys need to get here, brother.
This is a happening real estate market.
I'll tell you that.
Heck yeah.
Heck yeah. Yeah. Everything on the coast. And we're everything on the coast and we're not on the coast carolina's on the coast the yeah yeah we have to get y'all we'll talk after this we gotta get me you and pace together
somehow some way but jamil let's set the table for everyone people probably heard of any show
the triple digit flip they know you're a badass real estate guy, but let's set the table, man. What got
you in real estate? Where does the passion and the energy come from? I've always loved that about you.
I've just, it exudes from you, but let's set the table. Where did all that, where'd all that jazz
come from? I accidentally found myself in real estate. I'm a East Indian, culturally heritage
wise. My family had eyes for me to be
a doctor or an engineer, but doctor was where I was being groomed to have my life. I didn't get
into medical school, which was, at the time, one of the most disappointing and heartbreaking
things that ever happened to me. I had worked so hard in college to get a near 4.0 GPA. I killed the
medical school entrance exam. I did all the things you need to do to pad a resume with volunteering
and extracurricular activities that I didn't have time for, but did anyways, because I needed it for
my application and the interview process. And then some dude said, no, just not today. And I saw that
as a sign, really, because I had done all of the things that you should do. In fact, I can say it
now, but in the exam, in the medical school entrance exam, the guy who sat behind me cheated
off me on the test. I know him really well. He's my cousin and he had partied the
night before and needed help on the exam and I let him cheat off me. He got into medical school.
That guy's prescribing you guys all the things and is giving you everything you need right now to
survive, I guess. He gets into medical school. I don't get into medical school. And so that just
showed me the disparity in this whole process, right? There's some guy, depending on how he woke up today or what,
who I remind him of or what something, something about me made this guy say, no,
it wasn't my testing scores because they were better than my cousins. It wasn't my GPA. It
was also better than my cousins. So what about me made that person say no? And when I saw that, I realized that another
human being had control of my destiny and on an arbitrary decision could change the trajectory
of my life. And I decided then never again, I was never going to let another human make my choices.
I was never going to let a human being say yes or no to me. No, I'm going to pave my own path. I'm going
to do it myself. And so that's where the passion came from was a general, you know, looking at life
and looking at the way the system is set up and just rejecting. It was a full rejection of what
was in it paved out in front of me as a way to succeed. So I knew I had to take control of it.
Now I find myself in an entrepreneurial situation, which wasn't really lucrative at the time, but it put me in proximity to a guy who was investing in real estate. And I got an opportunity to do my first wholesale transaction, which at the time I didn't even know existed. Right. There was no online education. I thought I invented wholesaling because of the deal, but I hadn't, right? I just, I, yeah, right?
I thought I did because I hear from these developers that they're looking for these
old bungalows in Calgary, Alberta, where I grew up, that they could demolish.
They just needed to have 100 foot frontage, sorry, 50 foot frontage, 100 plus feet in
depth.
They needed to be zoned R2 and they needed to be in specific neighborhoods in the city.
Now, I lived in one of those neighborhoods in a rental and I had tried to rent one of these
houses a few months earlier, but I couldn't because it was $200 out of my budget. But it
was still available when I was walking my dog the next day. And I called the for rent sign and I
asked the homeowner if they would consider selling it instead of renting it because they had been
unsuccessful renting the spot. Her answer was, yeah, for the right price. And I inquired what that would be. She says $350,000.
And this decision that I make next is what changed everything for me. I didn't go to the people who
were looking for that house and say, I can get you this house for $350,000, which most people
would have done. I went and I asked the question, how much would you pay? And they said $400,000. So now I have a $50,000 problem to solve, right?
Because I can buy it for $350,000. I can sell for $400,000. I have no money. I have no credit. I
have no way of acquiring this. What do I do? I start talking to my family members. I start asking
for a loan. I start seeing who could give me $350,000 for a week or two. And nobody wanted
to give me any money. I'm the kid who didn't get into medical school. Why would I give him anything? Right? So then I start cold calling real estate
attorneys and I get all the way through to the letter S. A guy named David Steed answers my call.
He's so fresh out of law school. He had no secretary and I tell him my problem and he's,
oh, that's easy. That's called a skip transfer. And I'm like, explain. He's like, you take two
contracts, one where you're the buyer and you pay $350,000 on that contract.
And then you take a second contract with everything else lining up, except you're now
the seller on that contract. And the new buyer is going to be who the buyer line is. And the price
is going to differ because you're buying for $350,000, you're selling for $400,000. Everything
else has to be the same. So the conveying attorney, the condition dates, all of that have to line up
for this to work.
But once you've got these things signed, bring these contracts to me.
And then I asked what happens then.
He said, takes me a couple of weeks to do some research, look at liens, make sure that I can convey title, get a payoff on the mortgage.
All of the documents have to be prepared.
And once that's done, I'll have a check waiting for you.
And it happened.
I get a $47,000 cashier check.
And coming from a situation where my parents hadn't made close to that in a year,
in either of their lives, for me, that was the game changer, right?
That's where the scales fell from my eyes and I saw what is possible in life. And I never looked back. I went ham after that and I started wholesaling full-time.
I do really well in it until the financial collapse in 08, where I lose everything because
of leverage and just inexperience and doing too much, which is essentially how I got caught up in that. But it was a beautiful education
and it taught me so much. And so that's where I get started. That's where the passion comes from,
because quite honestly, Ryan, I look at life as a series of choices, right? Everybody gets a chance
to choose something different, choose something that's outside of your regular patterns. And your
life is pregnant with these possibilities of making different choices. But too many of us
get stuck in patterns that are familiar and comfortable. Now, if you continue to choose
the same thing you chose yesterday, then your tomorrow will look like it does today. And if
today looks like a job you hate, a relationship that doesn't serve you and just general discontent with where you've gone,
then you're doing what I learned from Andrew Huberman to be how they treat rats who they're
testing for depression, right? It's this theory of hopelessness, right? It's like, at what point does a rat that you put in water stop swimming?
When does he give up, right? And they look at that time and then they give these rats drugs
to see if they can extend how long the rat will swim. And then they say that's the drug that's
going to cure depression or at least solve some symptoms, right? What about not putting that rat
in that situation? Or how about helping the rat out of that situation
rather than just extending how long he'll swim what about figuring out how to put that rat in
another medium and that's what we're doing to each other in life right we're putting ourselves and
we're putting each other in these glasses of water and these tanks of water and we're like swim
and this is like people that are in relationships that are terrible. These are people who go to their nine to five job that they hate.
They work for somebody they don't admire or don't trust or wouldn't trade places with
based on character.
And they give up.
At some point, they say, you know what?
Life happened to me.
And now I'm just going to do what I do until I have to retire.
So the passion comes from being able to get in front of that person, making the choice to quit, making the choice to give up and saying, hey, I know about another glass.
I know about another way that you can get out of this spot where you're no longer hopeless and you can maybe do something with your life that would make you proud.
Damn, man, we say taking the BS out of business.
That's how you take the BS out of business.
That's real shit right there.
Let me just say, I'm going to unpack a little bit here.
So they say growth happens,
the best and greatest growth happens in discomfort.
I firmly believe that.
When you didn't get into medical school,
when you've been working for, that's the expectation.
You were highly uncomfortable, I would have to guess.
Very uncomfortable.
But look, the greatest gifts sometimes come in these surprises, in this discomfort.
I'm sure, look, I joke all the time.
I have balloons and clowns at my pity parties,
but they only last an hour. They're one hour. You may have had a pity party for a little while.
I'm sure we all do, but you flipped the fucking switch, dude. And you turned it into greatness.
And not only just, okay, going into real estate, but uncovering and unlocking the wholesaling aspect and the ability to do something
that a lot of people around you,
they didn't know how to do.
And that's what I call grit and resourcefulness.
The two greatest attributes on earth.
And you exude it, man.
I love that shit.
Thank you.
And then you start it,
you go through this,
how many stories I've had on the 08 shit.
Like we could probably have a whole episode on that.
That grit and resourcefulness got you through that.
And then now you're passionate about sharing it with others and turning them around.
And that's the greatest gift we all have.
Because I remember growing up in my 20s, I was early successful, but it was me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me.
I remember growing up in my 20s, I was early successful, but it was me, me, me, me, me, me, me.
And when you start sharing those gifts and you start spreading it around, that's what really unlocks not only greater gifts, but it's amazing what starts the doors that start opening.
And I think we had some other doors that started opening.
When did it all change?
What was round two and three of this journey? So the building of Kegley, my wholesale business, was a beautiful
dream come true. Unlike what people may believe the perfect entrepreneur looks like, I definitely
wasn't in the beginning. I was struggling with
alcoholism and addiction to pain medication from a motor vehicle accident. And so as I'm building
this company, I'm still struggling to just maintain life and maintain my head above water.
My relationship was as good as it can be with a man in that state. And I did, I tried, right? I was doing okay,
but it wasn't until I took a good look inside and I said, what am I doing? Like, who am I?
And why am I here? And why am I giving up? Like, why am I getting my energy and my fuel source
from this false light, from these false sources? How do I change this? And that took me down a path of self-discovery. And I was reintroduced
to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which I had been originally introduced to in elementary school
by a person who didn't understand it themselves. And there I was looking at the pyramid and seeing
I've been living in survival. And of course,
when you're in a survival mode, you do what you got to do to survive. And that means you're
clutching and grasping and filling holes of worthiness and filling holes in yourself with
whatever you can. And even though it's temporary, and even though the chemical lasts its half life,
and then you got need more of it or crash, and so you're on this hamster wheel
of trying to maintain. Eventually, you fall, right? You fall on your ass, and you've got to
make a real pivot, a real change, something from the inside out. And that's why I really believe
success is an inside job. We can kick in as many doors as we want, and we can do this the Newtonian
way, where every cause has an effect, and every action has an equal and opposite want. And we can do this the Newtonian way where every cause has an effect and every
action has an equal and opposite reaction. And I can look at the laws of physics and say, okay,
I need to have a force and that means I need to have some mass and acceleration behind me so that
I can actually move this obstacle. Or I can work with my spirit. I can work with the creator,
the thing that binds all of this together, and I can part red seas. I can build universes. I can work with the creator, the thing that binds all of this together, and I can part red seas. I can build universes. I can tap into the divine qualities within me and not have
to do this the hard way. And that is where I think things really started to change. That's where I
think second part and the third part of this story come from was me getting in and having a real
honest look at who I was and how I was showing
up in the world and making adjustments and changing my patterns and deciding that I wasn't
going to be the same Jamil Damji as I was today. I'm going to be a new one. I'm going to make a
new choice. And I don't, I can't say you make all the changes and choices all in one day. You'll
fall, you'll burn out and you won't be able to sustain that either. But it was small micro
change after small micro change after small micro change.
And slowly but surely, I started to evolve.
And I evolved spiritually.
And then I evolved emotionally.
And then the last to drop was physically.
I recently dropped 80 pounds.
I was a heavier guy and unhealthy at that.
And I had to make that final adjustment in my lifestyle.
And I feel like a completely different guy today, right?
I'm healthier.
I'm happier.
I'm more fulfilled.
I've made more money with those attributes still there and intact.
And I'm continuously learning.
I'm still finding myself in hard
situations. I recently just went through a separation with my wife, who is a beautiful
human being and one of the greatest women I've ever met. And it's a friendship that I'll carry
on in for the rest of my life. But I learned so much in how that happened and what I can do differently in my life
to show up better as a father and as a husband in the future. And I'm making those adjustments and
I'm going to continue pushing forward and growing. And that brings me to today, right? I'm
ecstatic with what's around the corner. I know that because I'm not living in fear,
I don't have anxiety about what's coming.
I live in faith, and so I have excitement.
You look great.
Thank you.
You know, I've watched the trends, and you do look good.
I wouldn't be surprised.
You're a handsome devil.
Lots of doors might be opening for you.
When I'm ready, I've still got a lot of healing and things to go through.
I know. You've got to get it right mentally.
You've got the physical, but it's all tied together.
And I love what you said about strength and success starts within.
There's never been a truer statement.
I do another show that's really like a holistic show, Mind, Body, Spirit.
Everything starts internally and like it manifests
you know in the mind or sorry it starts in the mind and manifests in the body if you don't have
your head right in the right head space and that could be spiritually that can be like meditation
whatever your outlet is but having that being centered and focused and it's just so important. And I know
that's had an impact for you. I'm sure the audience would love to hear probably some A&E
fans out there, some triple digit flip fans out there. Talk about that experience a little bit.
It was wonderful while we did it. Pace and I, my sister and Laura Morby, we got to spend hours and hours
on set, hanging out, doing what we do, which is enjoy each other's company and flip real estate.
And so it was really a blessing. And I have a tremendous amount of respect and love for
our friends at A&E for the opportunity that we had. They originally
signed us to a six season deal. And as you guys are probably aware, we only have produced two of
them. So they did have an order for us of 30 episodes, which Pace and I, you know, humbly
declined. And the reason for it is just at the end of the day, we are principals
in the real estate business. So our daily job is not choosing tile and picking paint colors,
which unfortunately in a visual medium like TV is something that people want to see. And the
general public doesn't realize that real estate investors don't do those things during the day.
And I've got people that pick tile. I've got people that choose the paint color. I have staff that handles those things. I'm not the guy doing that. I'm looking
for new opportunities. You're doing the boring, not the boring stuff, but the boring as far as
TV goes stuff, the roll up your sleeves and deals and hunting and networking and all that shit.
And they want me to demo a wall. And so it's just not authentic to the
experience that I have on a daily basis. And when you look at it from the perspective of how long
it takes to shoot an episode, they're looking at 80 to 100 hours of footage for a 42 minute episode,
which is oppressively long. And it takes us out of our day to day responsibilities. It removes us
from being able to show up better for our communities, which I'm 100% committed to. And it takes us away from being able to be there for our
staff. I've got over 300 people that rely on Jamil Damji being the best version of himself
every single day and to be there to answer questions, to motivate, to lead. And if I'm
on a TV set pointing at tiles and choosing
paint color, I'm not doing that. Unfortunately, that's just not a show we want to continue making.
And again, no judgment for people who do. And again, a tremendous amount of love and respect
for our producers and friends at A&E. They are professionals and they
did give us one of the things I have just so much respect for in the process with A&E was we
originally told them, hey, we're never going to do this fake drama stuff, right? I'm not going to
throw a contractor under the bus or a vendor under the bus and pretend like somebody screwed something
up. They don't do that. Now, if something authentically happens and a mess up occurs and we catch it and we want to talk about
it, I'm totally down, but I'm not going to make it up. We're not going to lie. And there was only
one instance where a producer, a director had asked for us to do that. And I walked off set.
I just left. I got in my car and said, no, not doing it. And then the producer,
the executive producer got on the phone and told that director, what are you doing? He's,
I'm doing what I do. This is what we're supposed to do. He's not these guys, not this show.
And I was apologized to, got back to set. They said, you just do what you do. And I'm like,
we do it by heart. We do this thing for real. And I'm never going to dramatize and throw someone under the bus. Unfortunately, that's not the TV we make.
And they honored that. And they produced a television show that I'm proud of, that I
know my children will be proud of. And even though it will live in the ether somewhere on the
internet, at some point in 20 years, my kids will look at
it and say, wow, look how fat dad was, or this is cool. But we want to do something that is
meaningful on a societal level. And so Pace and I are self-producing a show where we're going to
look at how we can help solve problems we have a hand in. Now, there's no doubt in my mind that
real estate investors, wholesalers, fix and flippers have a hand in the inventory shortage and affordability going where
it's gone in the United States. And if we want to pretend like we don't have a hand in it,
then we're blindly deluding ourselves. Now, that's not to say that I'm not going to participate in
it because that's how I feed my family. It's the
way that life is. And that's just unfortunately how it's going. So houses are going to get more
expensive. They're going to get harder to buy. But knowing that I have a hand in things getting
more expensive, can I not find ways to help the people who are being negatively impacted by what's
going on in real estate. And that's what
Pace and I want to do. So moving forward, we're self-producing a show where we will go into
Skid Row. We're going to go into tent cities and we're going to find vulnerable people who
really want to affect some change in their life. And we'll show them how to do this business. We'll
show them how to get deals. We'll show them how to make money. And we'll do that with our own time, our own resources and prove
that you can teach a man or a woman to fish and change their existence. And that's going to be
how we can, A, at least begin helping solve the problem that we know is sweeping the country.
helping solve the problem that we know is sweeping the country.
And then looking to then change that model from people that are experiencing being unsheltered to single parents who are doing the best they can to other disenfranchised communities in the United States
that would benefit tremendously from the knowledge that Pace and I have gained in this industry.
And so sharing that, and even I don't give a dang if anybody watches it or doesn't watch it,
for the fact that we'll be able to do it and do it authentically. And it'll be a subject matter
that we're very tied to, that we're very interested in, and that we know will make a huge impact on society.
And if you watch that and that we can help a person struggling with addiction or struggling with other factors in their life and help them do the business,
then what excuse does somebody who has everything going for them
except a lack of priority in how they want to spend their downtime, whether that be watching Netflix
or doing something that can help change their financial life. I think that when we can show
that and prove the concept to people that, hey, anyone can do what we do, then I think we'll
have a tidal wave of people that will start taking responsibility for what they produce in this world and how they
show up yes i love that man that i can't wait to watch it i'm surprised y'all and you probably did
but maybe y'all didn't have a discussion with a pitching it there but well we we did but they
they just said people aren't ready for it yeah they. They want to still see house porn. And that's okay. That's
totally okay. It's not until you break the mold that new molds are formed. And maybe we got to
self-produce this and show how the appetite and how strong the appetite is from an internet basis,
right? Because Pace and I have really good YouTube channels and our communities are super connected
and they are engaged
and they're all excited to see this come to fruition.
And so even if it's just self-produced
and watched by our communities, cool.
If it catches on and others see utility
and want to share it and do the same, amazing.
And then if that then turns into a conversation with A&E again where they say, thanks for proving this.
Now we want to do this type of show.
Awesome.
And if not, awesome.
There's not a day that goes by since not filming the TV show that I miss it.
Yeah, it's not sexy, brother. I know I've been in I've been in on both sides of show business for
quite a while, creating ads for some of the biggest brands in the world and sitting on those
some of those TV sets and everything else. And it's a lot more work than people realize. But I do want to back up. We talk a lot about marketing on this show and the power of branding.
And I happen to own the trademark on the phrase, it pays to be known.
And so with that said, I don't want to gloss over too much.
And you did homage to A&E.
But the power of television, even still today,
it's diminished.
But speak to just, you guys did it for a reason, the show.
It was good for them, good for you.
But I talk to people all the time.
Don't get it twisted.
If you get the opportunity to grow your reach
and frequency and awareness
on the power of the medium of
television, as long as it's in line, like you said, with your morals, your beliefs,
and it's not altered, you better take that ticket because it's still very powerful, right?
Yeah, it absolutely is. And again, a tremendous amount of love and respect for A&E and Six West,
Again, a tremendous amount of love and respect for A&E and Six West, our production company that was a huge support and partner through the whole process.
And Pace and I and the rest of the cast have just the utmost respect for all of them.
It was a great opportunity. And I'll always have the TV show under my belt.
I'll always be able to lead a bio with any TV star. And that's awesome,
right? It'll never be stripped from me. It's not something that you can ever take away,
but I did my time. You know what I mean? Oh, absolutely. I did. I did. Yeah. Yeah. And so
you guys that if you have the opportunity, of course, take the opportunity. Will it be
a lot of work? Yes. Will there be a tremendous financial return? No. Will you get credibility
and unlock doors that you wouldn't have been able to unlock without it? Absolutely. And will those
doors lead to greater ROIs and opportunity? You better believe it. And so a TV show is not just
the eyeballs of the
housewife or the house husband that's watching you on a Sunday at 11 a.m. while they're looking
after the kids and doing DIY home project. That's not the guy who's going to stroke a check and join
your mentorship or your coaching or do a deal with you and buy a wholesale property. That's or that's not the person. A voyeur isn't the avatar of my customer.
But my customer respects that I'm on that medium and it lends to my credibility.
It lends to the visibility.
And let's just be honest, right?
It's cool.
It's cool for somebody to have a TV show
and it's even cooler for you to be friends with or know or learn from that guy.
And when I'm on my coaching calls with a few hundred people and they are having a lengthy discussion with me, how many times do I hear?
I just can't believe I'm talking to you. And I'm like, bro, I just farted. There's nothing. It's all good.
Jamil, I'd love you even if you weren't on TV, man.
Thank you.
Talk about some of that coaching stuff.
I know you mentor, you coach, teaching people to do what you do.
I know you mentioned helping on the TV show, which will be amazing.
But for the everyday person, how are you unlocking these opportunities? I built the nation's largest wholesale operation because I scaled and I created a replicatable business where people didn't think it was really possible, right?
No one's ever sold a wholesale business.
Until we came in and franchised ours and built a replicatable model that has now been operating in over 118 different markets under the same brand.
has now been operating in over 118 different markets under the same brand. When you're able to do that, you can prove to folks that this is a replicatable business and this is a sellable
company, right? And that for me is really awesome. But in addition to that, I looked at this business
from a relationship standpoint, right? And what most wholesalers were doing in the past and what
people were teaching them to do were was very
difficult lead generation techniques like cold calling door knocking putting up banded signs
and direct mail and all of this is extremely expensive time consuming and the roi is
you know like maybe not but it's because of that for somebody that is working at W2 and doesn't have a lot of expendable resources and disposable resources available, then asking that person to gamble five, six, seven thousand dollars on the possibility they may get a lead or get a contract is a hefty ask. And then let's just say they are successful. And after $6,000 in
costs, they get a wholesale deal under contract and they make the national average of $15,000
on that assignment, which is pretty standard. Let's just say it costs them six. They make 15.
So they're making nine, but they've got overhead and all the other expenses.
So they get the pocket a few thousand bucks. Cool. But are you doing business with that
homeowner again? Not likely because they're in a distressed situation, which is why you were able
to buy their house at that value. They have a distressed property. These people don't usually have three, four, five,
10 homes. So you do all that work, build a relationship, build trust to do one deal that
then ends the relationship. And I'm inherently efficient and lazy. And when I saw that as the
model, I was like, nah, I don't think that's going to make sense for me. So I built my business on scalable techniques, relationship-based
techniques. And those relationships bear fruit over and over again. For instance, one of the
lead generation techniques I've mastered is called agent outreach. This is where we called
outreach to real estate agents who are in control of these types of situations and properties.
And I've got one relationship right
now. I have hundreds of relationships with agents, but there's one in particular, an agent named
Monique Walker here in Phoenix, Arizona. Her and I have been working together for over a decade.
I could literally only answer her phone calls if I just ignored every other call.
Her and I do on average five to six deals, maybe seven deals
every month. If I only answered her calls, I'd have $150,000 in income every month.
Wow. Every single month. So I'm talking about over a million dollars from one relationship
that bears fruit over and over and over and over again, that's the win.
That's the win. And I get invited to her family functions. I get invited and I get sent a
Christmas card and I get gifts and all kinds of love and respect from the people around her and
her teammates and all of the things. And every time she has a chance to say my name to people,
she will. And that leads to more business for me. So the goodwill and the word of mouth
credibility, and then the residual business that comes from that word of mouth, advertising and
credibility is something that I know I could build a scalable business on and relationship-based
lead generation like agent outreach and doing co-wholesale deals and JV deals with other
wholesalers and flexing a disposition model, which is how we really grew dispositions is the selling of the contract, right? Most people, they are good at going and
getting a deal under contract, but then they fail when it comes to selling it for top dollar.
Kigli, my company saw that opportunity and said, we've got all these people out there doing
a great job locking up houses, but then they cancel because they can't find a buyer
and that's something we can solve so i looked at it like if i was to approach this business
like the record business right would i rather be michael jackson or sony yeah sony michael
jackson's gone yeah sony's still making money off of them knowing Knowing that, I chose the record label, not the artist. So Kegley is a
distribution model. We sell houses and contracts for people all across the country and help them
get top dollar. And we get paid on every one of those deals that we help. So that model,
definitely scalable. That model definitely adds value to the marketplace, which the more value you add to people, the more money you make. So it's sustainable. It allows me to build my network and surround myself with awesome
people like you. And it's something I'm proud of. It's something that I can go to bed at night
knowing that I've added value to a market that I genuinely love. And now with what Pace and I are
wanting to do on a societal level, I can
actually feel good about how I'm showing up because I can help solve a problem, which is
really hard to stomach and swallow. I have a hard time when I get to LA, I have a house right on the
water. And unfortunately, that beach attracts a lot of people facing homelessness. And I get to see both sides of
the equation. I got a $9 million neighbor and I got a homeless person that's in front of my
condo. And I get to see the extreme of it. And I will have a conversation with that person and find out that this is just a
regular person with a good mind on them. And they just had a hard time. They were priced out of
their houses. I went to a homeless shelter here in Phoenix, Arizona. And I got to stop saying
homeless people. I learned that's actually not the correct term because you're now giving this
identity. You're giving the shelter that somebody has their identity. You're saying you're a homeless person. You're
a person who is labeled that because you don't have a place to live. So these are people experiencing
homelessness and it makes sense to me and I have no problem changing the way I address it. So
forgive me for those of you listening. I'm still working it into my terminology if I've offended anybody. But with that, we went to a shelter here in Arizona and we saw the people that are there were just
like you and I. They weren't strung out. They weren't bouncing off the walls. They were regular
people. And I asked the administrators there, what's the number one cause
of this? I was always thinking it was, let me ask you, what do you think the number one cause of
homelessness is? Drugs and alcohol. Yeah. Addiction. And then, or what's the next one?
Financial. I don't know. Mental illness. Mental illness would probably be number one for me.
That's what I thought too.
I thought mental illness, drug addiction, that's got to be 80%.
It's not.
It's economics.
It's people who post-COVID can't afford the rent hike.
Legit.
I seen a family there that had pulled in two days earlier
and the mom goes to work and does 10 hours of work a day. And the young brother
and the kids sleep in the trunk of their car that she hides close to the office or close to the
place that she works at. And that's how they live. They're living in their car. And she's,
she was super sweet, like a real great lady. And then I find out that when they asked kids who were there,
what they wanted to be when they grew up, the number one answer was safe. And when I seen that,
my heart broke, man, you got kids. Yeah. It's unbelievable. I got kids and I can't go another day and not be a part of the solution in this situation.
So I'm just super happy, man. I'm so happy that I get to, A, have the awareness that I have
right now, the heightened awareness and the new awareness of what the problem is and what the
causes of the problems are, and then do something that can solve it. Like one of the things that I've been doing is reintroducing low income housing to the market here in Phoenix. I build homes, brand new
homes that are well priced, well below the median home price. And I do that and take less profit
on all of these projects, knowing that I'm providing housing to somebody that wouldn't
be able to afford it if I had,
you know, maximized what this thing should sell for. So I purposely take less money,
but that's okay. I'm not doing that so you guys can say he's a great guy. I'm doing that so I can
sleep at night. It has nothing to do with what you think of me. Secondly, I have changed my rental
model from long-term rentals and short-term rentals, which is what I was doing before.
I was a big Airbnb guy.
And then I learned that there's all these vacant Airbnbs that should have people in it.
But people bought these homes, turned them into vacation rentals,
and they removed this inventory from the rental market.
And that also added to the increases in rents because you get less homes available for
rent. That's going to put demand and pressure in the market and that's going to raise prices. And
so I've pivoted my rental strategy from short-term rentals to co-living, right? I looked at Europe
and I saw how they've been handling this housing shortage that they've
been experiencing much longer than we have in the United States. How are they dealing with it?
And they've been doing co-living for decades, right? Co-living, like there's a company called
PadSplit that I partnered with recently, and they have built a beautiful platform where people can rent houses or rent rooms in a house by the week.
So think of that, right? You are working. You don't have enough money for a security deposit.
You don't have good credit. You don't have the things that you need in order to get into a
single family house, but you are making enough money to pay rent. You are making enough
money to pay for food. You're just not making enough money to rent a whole house. Okay, cool.
What if I take my housing unit and I make more of these co-living environments, but I make them
with dignity. I make the finishes and they're beautiful. I give everybody their own bathroom.
I give everybody a comfortable bed. I give everybody air conditioning that they can control themselves. So instead of doing one
central unit, I do mini splits in all the room. What if I do this in a way where the dignity of
the human being is primary for me? And can I be handsomely rewarded economically for doing so?
And I'm finding that. I'm making three times more what I would make in a long-term renter from a long-term rental than I can when I'm doing co-living. I'm making 3x the
rents. So I'm doing a good deed for the market. I'm doing something good for the people that are
renting from me. I'm making the units gorgeous so that they feel dignity and I'm making more money.
the units gorgeous so that they feel dignity and I'm making more money. And for me, that's a win.
So that's how I'm helping the problem. But in addition to that, by bringing awareness to it, even talking about it on your show here, more people can start having the debate with themselves
on what they can do today that could do something for a human being experiencing this problem.
I love it, brother.
And I think you're going to be seeing more of this sort of sharing economy,
like sharing all kinds of things.
We have redundancies galore, things that we don't necessarily need all the time.
So I think you're going to see the proliferation of that over time.
But I know we could talk forever, bro. Where can everybody keep up with all these projects, all the time so i think you're gonna see the proliferation of that over time but yeah i know
we could talk forever bro where can everybody keep up with all these projects everything you got going
on and when the airing of the tv ad i'm sure that's down the road a bit with filming and all
that have still to take place but where can everybody keep up with everything my youtube
is probably the best place it's just youtube.com slash jamil damji j- J-A-M-I-L-D-A-M-J-I.
Also find me on Instagram at JDAMJI, so at JDAMJI.
Send me a DM.
I love hearing from folks.
Subscribe to my YouTube.
Learn what I do for a business.
I love cracking jokes.
I like making people laugh.
So you'll be entertained.
You'll be educated.
And if there's anything that I could do
to help you or help you with learning something that I'm have a skill at, send me a DM and I'm
happy to be a part of your world. Thank you so much for coming on, bro. We'll do a follow up
maybe when the series comes out. How about that? Would love it. Maybe get you in pace, maybe do it
all together now and talk about the project and everything else so i'd love to
get that schedule when you guys are ready you got it dude hey guys you'll find us ryanisright.com
you can find links to all of jamil's stuff all of the highlight clips from today all of our social
media you can find me at ryan alford that blue check mark, but had it before you could buy it. We'll see you next time.
Right about now.
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