The Code To Winning - THE FUTURE OF REAL ESTATE BELONGS TO INNOVATORS || RUDY GOMEZ || EPISODE 050

Episode Date: August 30, 2025

Rudy Gomez is a real estate entrepreneur who began his journey at just 17 years old as a realtor’s assistant. After earning his license, he went on to work with top brokerages like Keller Williams and Berkshire Hathaway, gaining valuable experience in investment real estate and building his own property portfolio. This foundation set the stage for his greatest venture yet: Acquire’d.   As the CEO & Co-Founder of Acquire’d, Rudy is leading a new era in real estate. Operating in the competitive California market, Acquire’d specializes in sourcing off-market properties, negotiating deals, and delivering seamless transactions for investors and homebuyers. By combining cutting-edge tools with deep local expertise, the company is redefining transparency, efficiency, and client satisfaction.   In this episode, Rudy shares his journey from the ground up, what it took to transition from the corporate world to entrepreneurship, the importance of mentorship and networking, and the hard truths about wholesale real estate. He pulls back the curtain on the strategies and secrets that have helped him close countless deals and build a thriving real estate empire.   Whether you’re an aspiring investor or simply curious about how wholesale real estate really works, this conversation is packed with actionable insights, bold truths, and hard-hitting advice.

So the way I got introduced to the whole world of like business and entrepreneurship. It wasn't real estate in the beginning. It was just business. And I was actually selling shoe store called Journeys. I don't know if you guys heard journeys. But I was selling shoes and I was pretty good at it, right? Like you'd come in for one pair of shoes. You'd leave with like two socks and a shoe cleaner.

Right. And this guy came in. He's like, hey, I really like your style. Like, I want to mentor you. And I was like, oh, this is kind of weird. I was like 16 at the time. I wasn't even 17. Meeting him, he gave me this book called Rich Dad Poor Dad.

right and there was a four quadrants it was like the investor the business owner the employee and what really stood out to me was the investor right because i was like wait you can make your money work for you and i started learning more about investing and then i learned about real estate right so it's like what better tangible asset like what else you know i like real estate seemed cool like houses and buildings i was like why not get into that and they say 90% of millionaires were made from real estate. How did that transition end up happening when you were from like realtor to wholesaling? Yeah, so good question. So I went to a meetup in Torrance and it was a small meetup. There was maybe like three or four people there. And they started talking about wholesaling and I was still an agent at

Berkshire Hathaway at the time. Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffett? Yeah, yeah. So I started off at the KW and Cerritos and then I transferred to the Berkshire Hathaway in Gardena. Right. So I was working for Berkshire Hathaway and learned about wholesaling at this meetup and it was more of like submitting offers getting properties under contract and then I joined a corporate wholesale company and that's where I really learned a lot of the ropes I had really great leaders in the company I will say so I learned a lot from them and then that's where I met my the code two winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. Again, we are in the golden state, the city of angels. It's amazing to be able to be here. If you are curious and interested in learning a lot about wholesaling, real estate, flipping,

buying, you know, investing, finding good deals, this is the episode for you. I'm going to give you a brief introduction of our guest today in the episode. He's the CEO and also the co-founder of Acquired. comma with the D. The entire purpose of acquired is literally helping qualified investors find quality deals. Seven-figure wholesaler

and helping, like I said, if you're in wholesaling, this is the episode for you. And also if you're looking for good deals, our amazing guest today, he goes by the name of Rudy Gomez. Welcome to the studio, Rudy. How you doing, boss?

I'm good. Thank you for having me. This is a beautiful studio, by the way. The view's amazing. This is the best. You know, I was telling them earlier on, I've done like probably seven or eight studios across the country. This is like the best one.

Because I'm very specific at what I look at because it's not necessarily about like location. The location, of course, is important, but like the feel. You know, like when I'm in here, like it's just there's like a good feel about it. So shout out to the team for an amazing studio. Yeah. Yeah. When you sent me the address, I looked it up and I was like, oh, this is a nice area. Like I'm curious how it's going to look.

And, you know, sure enough, I. It's a beautiful view. When they say this opposite crypto arena, I was sold and I was like, yeah, nothing else. I can just see LeBron down there. They're practicing. Awesome stuff. So I know you and I spoke briefly as well. Born and Raines in L.A.

How'd you like L.A.? I love it, man. Like I told you, like I always thought I was going to move. Like I looked at Texas. I even looked at Florida. Florida was very close to moving in Florida. But as I started to do more traveling, I just realized there's really no place like LA for me personally right it's funny because I go out and some people are like oh you live

in LA like how's that and I'm like it's amazing it's like paradise sunshine beaches um there's pros and cons for sure um but yeah born and raised in LA different parts of LA but like we were talking about earlier LA is so big so depending on what you want they're all here you know it's crazy when you said Florida um because I've done I've literally traveled in 41 different states nice there's two specific cities where I feel extremely young entrepreneurs are thriving. And maybe it's because of the people I've been connecting with. But one of the two cities, one of them is Miami, Florida. Like I went there for a week and I was just blown.

Like I, you know, by just the amount of young entrepreneurs down there. And then Scottsdale, Arizona. I don't know if you've ever been like to Scottsdale before. But like those are the two hubs of young, like super young people just like making a killing, whether it's startups, you know, solo or entrapineers, just people that are out there just making. LA is always going to have that because of just like the diversity

and the industry as well, and it's just like thriving. But like those two stood up for me, but in terms of like LA is LA. LA is always been LA and LA will always be LA. Yeah, I'm saying. So, yeah, also stuff. I'm, if you don't mind me asking,

how old are you? I'm 25. Okay, you're looking way younger than 25. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you. I used to get carded a lot, but like when I don't get carded, I'm like, are they going to ask? Like, do I look older now?

But thank you. Also, I know that you started your journey. Obviously, I did my research as well. You started your journey when you were 17 years old. Can you just run us through like when you started like in your early days? How did that teach you about credibility, hustle? Just talk about your journey at age 17. Yeah, well, so the way I got introduced to the whole world of like business and entrepreneurship,

It wasn't real estate in the beginning. It was just business. And I was actually selling shoes at a shoe store called Journeys. I don't know if you guys heard of Journeys. But I was selling shoes and I was pretty good at it, right? Like you'd come in for one pair of shoes. You'd leave with like two socks and a shoe cleaner, right? And this guy came in.

He's like, hey, I really like your style. Like, I want to mentor you. And I was like, look, this is kind of weird. I was like 16 at the time. I wasn't even 17. I was maybe even younger. I was like maybe like 15, 16. And he was like, meet me at his Starbucks in Long Beach and like we'll talk more there.

And like he didn't really give me too much information. And at the time, I don't know if you, have you ever heard of this company called Amway? So it's like a M-W-A-Y. Yeah, yeah. And white kind of thing. I think so. It's been years. But they're like an ML at multi-level or multi-level marketing company.

Oh, yeah. One of those companies, right? I didn't end up getting into it. But meeting him. he gave me this book called Rich Dad Poor Dad, Right? And there was a four quadrants. It was like the investor, the business owner, the employee. And what really stood out to me was the investor, right?

Because I was like, wait, you can make your money work for you. And I started learning more about investing and then I learned about real estate, right? So I was like, what better tangible asset? Like what else, you know, I like real estate? It seemed cool like houses and buildings. I was like, why not get into that? And they say 90% of millionaires were made from real estate, right? So one day I was walking home.

I had been studying like real estate. I was like, you know what? I'm going to get my license. By the time I turn 18, I'm going to get my license and start off as a realtor and then eventually work on to be an investor. And I was walking home, saw an open house and talk to the realtor. And I was like, hey, like, I want to get into real estate.

I'm going to graduate high school. Like, what can I do? And she was like, come to this office Monday morning and it was on a Saturday. And she was like, it was a Keller Williams and Cerritos. right go there meet people like the broker and the team lead and everybody there and i started off as an intern it's funny the way i started because i was talking to the broker and i was like hey is there anything i can do like hang out here like what can i do just to be more present and this guy happens to be walking by and he's like hey armando he's like are you looking for an assistant and he's like

no he's like well you have one right so i ended up being his assistant for about almost a year eight months to like a year doing open houses with him cold calling i was 17 at the time um he worked a lot with the Hispanic community so i would do a lot of like spanish cold calling spanish meeting so my spanish got a lot better during that time and um as soon as i got turned 18 got my real estate license joined another team and then got introduced to the wholesale side but i actually sucked as a realtor because i was very young right and you know a lot of people they're biggest purchase is going to be their home, right, for most people, right, for majority of the population, unless they're buying like a yacht or a jet or something, right, which is not most

people, right? So it's a big emotional decision. There's a lot of emotion involved. And to trust an 18 year old wasn't the easiest. Like I did get listings, right? People did, were more open to working with me on the investor side, because investors don't care how old you are. They just care how much value you bring, right? So it was a lot of a different type of relationship with these investors and a lot of them they actually liked the fact that I was young and they were more open to teaching me. And then how did that transition end up happening when you were from like realtor to wholesaling? Yeah, so good question. So I went to a meetup in Torrance and it was a small meetup. There was maybe like three or four people there and they started talking about wholesaling and I was still an agent at Berkshire

Hathaway at the time. Berkshire Hathaway? Yeah. Warren Buffett? Yeah, yeah. So I started off at the KW and Cerritos and then I transferred to the Berkshire Hathaway and Gardena. Okay. Right. So I was working for Berkshire Hathaway and learned about wholesaling at this meetup and it was more of like submitting offers, getting properties under contract. And then I joined a corporate wholesale company and that's where I really learned a lot of the ropes.

I had really great leaders in the company, I will say. So I learned a lot from them. And then that's where I met my business partner, Miguel. And we were like, hey, like, why not just do our own thing? because we worked really well together at that company. And there were other things that we wanted to do, like our own way, right? Because like I said, it was more of a corporate company, which they're doing great. They're obviously doing what they're doing for a reason, right?

They've built a system that works. But we felt that we can do things a little bit differently and kind of our way and get a little bit more creative with it. So we decided to do our own thing. Okay. You know what's interesting about wholesaling is that in the real estate market, There's a few names that I've met. Matter of fact, in A.Z, you probably might know him, Carlos Reyes. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And I met him like 2022, 22, 23 as well, or one of Brad's meetings. But the reason I'm bringing this up is the market has changed since 2020. Oh, yeah. COVID time, right? Oh, yeah. And like looking back pre-COVID and after COVID, what has been the biggest differences? Yeah, so it's so crazy because I remember in like 2021, 2021, 22, like it didn't even make sense.

Like properties were selling $300K above the ask. Like money was so cheap. Like interest rates were at 3%. People were getting bid out on the open market. Like I remember like most people want the off market deals, right? Exactly. But there were deals that were listed on the MLS. A wholesaler would bid it up.

get it under contract and then put it out to their network of investors. And then those investors would still bid it up, right? And end up picking it up, right? So it was, it honestly, like, it was insane. It just didn't make sense at the time. Like houses were selling left and right. But the jump from 3 to 6 percent, I saw a lot of people, like a lot of commercial brokers leave the industry, a lot of mortgage brokers leave the industry.

I even know of a guy that he worked, he came to join our team. and the team that he was previously on, his, like, one of the owners committed suicide, right? Because he was over leverage. So when that jumped from three to six percent, it was like $20 plus million and he just couldn't take all the stress, right? Now, you know, I feel like it was very interesting to see, like, how it was in December, January, February.

I feel like a lot of investors, they like got very excited, right? A lot of them, what they were waiting on was like the elections. They're like, I'm not touching anything until the elections. Like, I'm going to hold off. Elections came. A bunch of them bought a lot. And what we're seeing right now is that a lot of them are, their properties are kind of sitting on the market, right?

Properties are sitting a little bit longer than general or than usual than it was in January, December. It was very interesting to see because the slowest quarter in real estate is usually the fourth quarter, right? Because, you know, you have the holidays. People don't want to move during New Year. and all those holidays, right? Interestingly enough, we had more units sold in the fourth quarter

than we did in the summer months. Wow. Yeah, last year. And I'm not the only one, right? There's other companies that can say the same thing too. But now, like I'm saying, we're seeing a lot of investors. Like, they bought a couple properties and they're stuck. They're like, hey, I'm not buying anything right now.

Not a lot of them. But like bigger players, they're just like, hey, like, we kind of over-leverage ourselves. We're waiting to hold these off and then buy more. Like right now I'm doing a flip two. where we originally thought we were going to list it for, what did we say, $599, and we ended up listening it for $575. Wow. Yeah, yeah.

No, the reason I'm asking that, because I was in Utah and Idaho area, and the market, real estate market, is completely went, like, ridiculous. My friend, because we did a lot of sales and solar and all that kind of stuff, and he bought, like, I think, two, three homes in Idaho, literally right next to the university campus, BYU, at that time for like 200,000, which is now going for like 600. That's insane. And so like Boise was the fastest growing city in the United States because many people were

leaving California going down there and like people were buying homes for like just literally three, four, five bedrooms for like about like two, three, four hundred dollars, $400,000. And then like you and I spoke about the Bay Area, you just get like a one bedroom, two bedroom in the Bay Area. You click Zillow before you know. It says like three million. I'm like,

better be three million pesos. Exactly. Exactly. What the hell is this? So the market has gone bonkers. That's why I had to ask you, how has everything been going regarding that? And has it been,

are people buying more homes right now in California? Like, how has it been like California? Because I, you know, I always say it's California. Like we're saying, like California is always going to be people moving, moving in and out. I mean, we're still, I will say we're in like 19 non-contingent escrow. we have another 20 under contract. So investors are still buying.

What we are seeing, though, is that the bigger price point, and that's in general, right, especially with the investor side of things and bigger price points, because there's a little bit of more of an uncertainty, right? It's more difficult to tie up more capital into one project, right? So what I am seeing on the investor side of things is, like, really good deals. Like, they'll have bigger spread, but bigger price points. investors are a little bit more skeptical to touch it. There's still buyers out there, right?

It just comes down to the risk tolerance. But we're also seeing like deals in the cheaper price points like two, three hundred, four hundred thousand, but with less margins selling quicker, right? So they're willing to take less margin for a safer return than a little bit of more margin on a bigger project where they have to tie up more capital. Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Yeah. So that's what we're seeing right now. Like we just sold a deal in Stockton that was honestly like, I mean, there was money to be made, but it wasn't like a home run deal. Maybe it was a single, right, or a double. And it sold from the moment that we got it signed from the seller. This was like two weeks ago, a week and a half. Moment from we got it signed from the seller to having the wire in escrow an hour and 26 minutes.

Bro, when you say stocked and you bring good memories because that was one of my favorite areas in solar. One of the people, obviously, not only were they more receptive, it's the fact that they were just such big systems. when I was doing solar down there because it's so hot in Stockton, the 209 area, because I lived by Tracy. And Stockton, the only problem is that many people were failing credit when we were down there. But, like, in terms of my first deal was like a straight $15,000 when I was self-gaining for solar. So like Stockton is like, man, that's home for me in terms of like sales and solar. And I'm glad you can, you know, you touched on that.

And California is all going to be California. for our views out there that can't really like fathom what wholesaling and real estate is, how could you like best explain that? Yeah. And honestly, like in the introduction, you did a great job. You're connecting quality deals with qualified investors, right? I look at wholesaling as matchmaking. It's like arbitrage, right?

Like I was saying, I was telling someone earlier, it's like Airbnb. They're one of the biggest, you know, rental companies out there, but they're middlemanning it, right? They're connecting homeowners. that are putting their homes on the market with guests. Same with Uber. Uber doesn't own any cars, but they're connecting cars, drivers. They're one of the biggest transportation companies

with people who need rights, right? It's arbitration. So you're matchmaking, you're essentially the middleman because you're connecting motivated sellers with qualified investors. And a lot of the times the sellers are in a distress situation or the house is distressed, right?

because investors, they don't necessarily buy turnkey, nice-looking homes. They want to buy properties that they can come in, add value to the homes, and then put it back on the market for a profit. Right. So whether there was maybe there was a death in the family, maybe there was a divorce, like I had one guy that wanted to sell before the end of the year for tax purposes, right? There's just different reasons why people may need to sell quick, right? So they work with someone like us that have a network of investors,

and then investors work with us because we kind of do a lot of the pre-negotiation, the heavy lifting, and then put it in front of the investor on a silver platter. Because to negotiate a deal, that can take time, right? Like just today. Exactly. Yeah, we got these three properties under contract in Torrance that one of my acquisition guys, we were talking about it. It took them two months to finally get them under contract,

two months of negotiating with the seller, two months of figuring out the tenant situation. That's a lot of back and forth. Not only is it time, but it's money too. So we do all of that for the investors and then put it on a silver platter for them, for them to be able to say, hey, I want this house. It's like Amazon and buying houses. If you want to open escrow today, as long as it's before 2 p.m. the wire cutoff time, we can open escrow the same day. You see a house you like it.

We can buy it the same day. You go on refit and zillow, you can't do that, right? You go on refit and zillow. That may take some time. There's counteroffers, seller counteroffers. They may say, hey, we're doing an open house, but we're reviewing. offers next week, we're doing all that up front. So by the time it gets to an investor, it's like, hey, do you want it? Yes or no? Yes. Okay, send the wire to escrow. We immediately open it and

close it in two weeks. Powerful. That's powerful. Aren't people sometimes usually super skeptical with wholesalers thinking, oh, no, they're going to give me something that's going to be a little bit more expensive because I want to try and get that. But how you just explain it right now, it's just like everything is done on their behalf. And as a qualified investor, you just end up just buying the property while everything is taken care of and, you know, behind the scenes. What are some of the myths that you want to try and debunk about wholesaling? So a lot of the times, and honestly, like, I don't blame investors when they say that because wholesalers will give out numbers that don't even make sense.

Like I'm saying, and I'm a wholesaler myself, like wholesalers will, I hear it all the time. Like, oh, these wholesalers will inflate the ARVs and they'll tell me the rehab's only this, but it ends up being that. And I was like, well, that's perfect because there's two numbers I will not give. is the ARV and the rehab. I let the investors decide what that is. And I always say, like, I tell my team, it's like, let's differentiate the difference

between the facts and the opinions, right? When we get a deal under contract, an opinion is like, this is going to cost us $30K. Well, I just flipped a condo. I got four quotes. The cheapest being 40 and the most expensive being $120K and everything in between. So rehab is relative, right?

Like, if I have a really good contractor, it's going to be cheaper than if I have contractor that I've never used, right? Same with ARV. I can say, you know, AARV is going to be 700,000, right? Or I can say, well, there's a comp here that's a three-bed, two-bath, slightly smaller than us, but it has a better view. That one sold for 750.

There's another comp here that's a two-bed, one-bath, smaller house. You know, the lot is not usable. That one sold for $675. What do you think ARV is going to be? So like I'm naming the facts. That's what the comparables are. And then I'm staying away from the opinions by saying, hey, I think it's 700. Same with the rehab.

I'm not telling an investor, hey, it's going to cost you $50K. I'm saying, well, here's the pictures. Looks like the roof is good. Definitely needs new flooring, new kitchen, new bathroom. Looks like you can probably keep the windows. What do you think is going to cost to fix? Right? Versus saying it's going to cost $50K to fix.

Because if I tell an investor it's going to cost $50K to fix and then they buy it, based on that and then they spend 50 and they're not even done, what are they going to say? They're not going to want to buy for me again. Exactly. Right. So that's what I tell my team is like, hey, let's provide them with the facts. What are the comparables? Right. What's selling in the area? And then put it on them to tell you what their ARV. Because last thing you don't want is like, let's say, same with the ARV. Let's say I tell you, hey, if you buy this house, it's going to sell for 700. and then you buy it based on that and you put it on the market for 700

and it's crickets. Like, are you going to buy for me again? Or are you going to be happy with me? Like, probably no, right? Versus if I say, hey, these are the comparables and I kind of let you decide what you think the ARV is, right?

It's not necessarily, I'm telling you the facts. These are the facts, right? I'm not telling you what my opinion is. That's smart. The reason I was just thinking right now, that's how my, when I was growing up, my parents, my dad did that a lot like, you, you know,

what's a good of punishment for? I'm like, I don't know, just ground me. It actually once happened one time. So it's a good way because if they decide, it makes such a big difference psychologically, it's all for sales in terms of closing a deal. I find it very fascinating. I like that so much.

And you don't necessarily, has there been a scenario where you guys have actually bought the home yourself and like found there's a good deal to invest in yourself or is it just like between like the buyer and the investor yeah so so the way we wholesale is actually a little bit different we actually do what's called a concurrent closing so on every wholesale deal we're actually closing on the property so we're actually buying it closing it taking title but we only we're only on title for about 24 to 48 hours and then we concurrently and sell it off market so we're actually on title on these properties we only own them for a bit.

What about that? I thought there was one where you can buy something and it's only valid for like 30 days. Is that something completely different where if it doesn't close and within 30 days it goes back to like the owner? Yeah, that could be like an option agreement, like an option to buy or it could be like let's say you have a property under contract with a 30 day inspection window where if you don't find a buyer or if you don't close on it within those 30 days, you can tell the seller like, hey, like I'm within my inspection window. I don't want the deal I'm out. There's that there's that way to do it too. But to answer your question, like yeah, the really good deals like right just today I came, you know, well, I don't know if you know, it's the city of Paris.

It's kind of deep in the inland empire. Not familiar with it. So it's, I think it's Riverside or San Bernardino County. It's about an hour and a half from L.A. Okay. So it's not the closest, but it's not the farthest either. But that's a project that we're probably thinking about picking up ourselves. I'm doing a flip right now in Culver City.

that's not too far away. Just bought another one in Barstow. Those we keep as rentals. Cover City, we're flipping. This one in Paris, we're probably going to flip it. But this one is going to be special because what we're trying to implement is crowd fund and syndicate within the team to promote investing within the company. Well, that's so smart.

Yeah, not only does it promote investing, because I work with a lot of young guys, right? So you don't want them to necessarily, like, blow it all, right? Go out. You know, we like to have fun. So, but, you know, if you can invest it, right, put it into a project, keep reinvesting. Not only does it promote, you know, building wealth, but it also helps with the retention, right? Like, it's the biggest thing with retention because people want to work with a company that they make money, but they're also building wealth at the same time and reinvesting it within the company.

So once we build that track record of like, hey, we do a couple projects within, we want to open it up for all the other investors and then have a fun where investors cannot just buy from us, but also invest with us because, like, we're talking about California is very expensive. And to invest in California, you need like six figures, like liquid on top of, you know, and if with 100K, you can maybe flip a $500,000 to $800,000 house, right, which a lot of houses are more than that in California. So for someone that may have 20, 30, 40K that they want to invest, they can put it in our fund. Maybe they want to get their feet wet or someone that's looking for something more passive, they don't want to deal with the hassle of flipping the house, they can put it into this fund because the really good deals will keep for ourselves

and take on the projects ourselves and then the rest will wholesale. Oh, dude, that's, that's, money right there. That's absolutely amazing. And I'm so curious, when did you guys start acquired? Yeah. I like the acquired, you know, because it's with naming and how things going, like, it's very unique. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I actually liked that a lot. I had to like let you know. Like, when did you guys start acquired? We just started actually February 5th of last year. Okay. Yeah, February 5th of last year.

And how big is your team? We have like 26 people. We have two locations. We have one in Beverly Hills and one in Costa Mesa. And between you and your co-founder, you guys are in different areas? Or is it like, how does that work? So we both work out of the Beverly Hills office because he lives in Hollywood Hills, I live in Beverly Hills.

So we're both out of there. But our team is split into sales and we have acquisitions. Okay. Yeah. So he focuses a lot more with the acquisitions. team and I focus a lot more with the sales team. Okay. So acquisitions, they're focused on going out there, hunting for the deal, getting them under

contract, and then sharing it with our sales team. And then our sales team, what they're focused on is just going out there, building relationships with investors, networking with these buyers, and then adding them to our list so that when the acquisitions team gets a property under contract, each sales agent has their own individual network of investors to send it to. Wow. And speaking of that, I know that with Acquire, you guys really do focus a lot on like off-the-market deals. What are some of those advantages that are in those off-the-market deals that are different compared to the traditional listing?

Yeah, I mean, honestly, I'd say the biggest thing is like just working with a seller. It's just way easier to manage expectations with a seller than it is than working with a seller and then an agent, right? because there's an agent that you have to manage the expectation with and then there's a seller. Sometimes the agents are cool, right? I've done a lot of deals with agents and they make a lot of money when we make our piece of change and it works out, right? But when it's just, you're just cutting out a middleman, another middleman because that's essentially what we're doing, right? So if we're direct to the seller, managing expectations is a lot easier, right? Like letting them know, hey, we're going to have our team come in here.

We're going to have a couple investors. come check out the house. And like I said, it's just less exposure. Investors just prefer off market. It's like they see two houses, same color, same bed and bath, same price. The one that's off market is always going to sell before the one, the one that's off market. Even though the numbers are the same, just because it's off market, it's going to sell faster. You know, the reason I loved, I've come across and spoken to a few wholesalers and people just, like, there's this conflict for you to all salesers.

and real estate agents. It's the funniest thing, yeah, but it's just like, and you know what's crazy about the wholesalers is that most of them that I know are just like such cool dudes. Like they wouldn't have a problem with any other thing, which in my assumption is just assuming that the real estate agent just up thinking the wholesalers are trying to take their deal

and so forth and so forth. What's this conflict happening there? So it's funny because I came from the traditional background like working at Berkshire Hathaway and Keller Williams. And you're right. They like I didn't really know what wholesaling was at the time so I didn't really like pay attention to it. But I didn't hear any positive things about it from from some realtors, right? Not all of them.

But I will say it's honestly you hear more from like old school realtors because wholesaling is kind of more of an, it's not a new thing, but it just became more popular with social media. It's been going on for for a while, right? But because of social media, it's became popular. I think agents, they see it as like what, this guy who's. we always make a joke like wholesalers are in their their parents basement like like man this kid in their parents basement is like because they don't have to get a license you know you don't have to go through any special schooling not that getting a license is very hard um it's literally like you can get in like a month in california it's funny because you need to spend more hours in barber

school than you do to get your real estate license crazy right so um I think that's what it is. And then you see a lot of new wholesalers getting into the game, which I personally think could be a double-edged sword, right? Because if it's so easy to get into, it's so oversaturated. And that's why, like, I will be honest, I've heard, like, this negative stigma amongst wholesalers, right? And I totally get it because there's a lot of people coming into the market

and kind of ruining it for people because they don't know exactly what they're doing. And if you're dealing with sellers, like, that's a pretty big deal, right? You don't want to make sure, these are life-changing decisions, right? So you've got to know what you're doing. And because it's so easy to get into, just anybody can do it. I think it could be a double-edged sword. But I think if you're around the right guidance and you have right mentors around you or just a right team, I think you should be good.

And which leads to my next question, I couldn't agree more. Like everyone doesn't matter. Like even you don't follow much sports, but even in the field of business, every successful person has had like a mentor. Someone they looked up to, someone they mimic. Because the beauty about success is that it's cut, copy, paste. And sometimes if you cut, copy, paste, it helps you take a shortcut to try and prevent them mistakes

that they may have done as well. Did you have a mentor that taught you the ways as well? Yeah. So I'm huge on personal development, like, huge, like little thing. Like, I just finished an eight-week Dale Carnegie course on communication. Wow. Speaking of Florida, I went to Patrick Bed-David's Sales Leadership Summit at Mar-a-Lago. I freaking like you, dude.

That's my guy right there. He's a beast. He's a beast. He's a beast. I went to the vault like four or five years ago. And then ever since every, I've been going every year since then. Last year I took the whole team. This year, we're going to take top producers.

Last year was a little too much. It was like the 20 people that we took. So like things like that. You don't do 10X? I haven't done 10. I haven't done 10x. I just finished the last one. It was in Vegas.

Yeah. It was decent. Yeah. But it was the last and final one. But like the vault, I've heard nothing but great stuff about the vault. I haven't done the vault. I've done multiple 10xes. Let's go this year.

Yeah. No, no, for sure. Yeah, yeah. Continue. Sorry. No, him is, he's a really big. I also, I'm in an inner group. This guy named Albert Preciato.

Just learn a lot from him. And he's super local to his offices down the street. But we also have a business coach based out in Canada. Shout out to Steve. It's very interesting because what he does is he helps startups get to like a million to two million and then like leaves. Like that like that's his thing, right? Like past that like he tells me like you need someone else to get you past that. Right.

But he's never like really done wholesale deals, but he knows business. Right. So he helped us put a lot of our processes and systems in place. He didn't come to teachers about wholesaling. He came to teachers about business, like onboarding process, systems, like little things, like our website, domains. I didn't even know what a domain was until we started the company. Right?

To set up the emails, it took me like half a day, right? But luckily, like, we have someone like, see, he's based out in Canada, but he helped us a lot in terms of like the business side of things. And he comes, like his first business, I think was an electrical contractor business. And then he bought franchises, plumbing franchises. electrical companies, he would buy and resell businesses. So he was helping us on the back end in terms of like the systems and the processes. So he was a pretty big help too.

He still, like we still talk to him to this day. He still helps us out. You know, what people don't understand is how important, like, you know, networking is and just like building personal growth and maintaining those relationships as well. I spoke to you early on about Brad because it's how I end up like seeing you on dropping. bombs. Congrats on that, by the way. Not such a nice view in dropping bombs, but you know what? We take our wins.

It's a nice view, though. It's a very nice view. Yeah. But like, with that, what Brad did, because one of the first guys I had on my podcast was Andy Elliott. Nice. And so that was also complimentary for Brad. So like with Brad, like I think even like Keaton Hoskins, the muscle, one of the big

entrepreneur is down in Utah. What I'm trying to say is that like people sometimes are very. hesitant to try and like make that payment like thinking you know what I can get this thing myself but like those examples just mentioned like I know Albert like I haven't met him in person but all his stuff on social media and I know like you know I saw that he followed you Ryan Panita followed so you already have made oh you know made your name in the real estate market or the industry but it also took a lot of time and going out there and like taking initiative you know what I'm saying yeah I get DMs each time hey KG how do you

You can network with those persons. Like the blueprint is right there. Just go out and have to have the desire. You know what I'm saying? And I'm glad you kind of broke that down because mentorship is of utmost importance. You have to continue going out there knocking the doors and like, you know, finding yourself in the right rooms. Because you'd be impressed. People are willing to help you.

Just take initiative. Take action as well. Can you add one last thing on that? Yeah. No. Just to give you like a very, very direct example, I paid like, like, I. like I don't know like 30k or something like that for the inner circle group for with like Albert and um I met a CPA that saved me six figures like we were ready to pay like we had a CPA already in place

he had done my taxes for the last two three years right and we were already going to set up on a payment plan because it was pretty big tax bill and it was our first year in business so like we didn't know what to expect right our first year like actually starting acquired right and going to this event i went to one of his inner circle events it wasn't even a big event there was maybe like 20 people in the room max and one of the speakers happened to be a CPA and i asked a question and i was like i told him my situation i was like because we do concurrent closings right so because we buy and resell we're subject to short-term capital gains tax right because we're actually buying the property and we're reselling it right so there's pros and cons to doing the concurrent closing

but he was like hey talk to me after this And then I go up to him and he's like, dude, let's set up a Zoom call. This was on a Saturday. The following Monday we had a Zoom call. Like I said, I felt like I made $100,000 because I went to that event. And yeah, I paid $30K, but if I'd never paid that, I would have been paying $100K to the IRS. Exactly. So that's a very like direct example of like why networking and why going out and talking to people is so important.

No, no, I couldn't agree more. Now, I love that, man. I appreciate that. And speaking of that as well, people really right now struggle a lot with deal flow, especially with how saturated the market can be sometimes. What strategies have you guys implemented to try and keep it consistent and the pipeline just ready to go? Yeah. I would say our biggest source right now, and it obviously did not happen overnight, is relationship. Like agent relationships right now has been key like we've been doing we do a lot like we do a lot of like we've been doing direct to seller there's PPC there's PPL there's mailers that we've sent out there's a little bit of everything that we do but our biggest source is like networking with these realtors because these agents it think I look at it as like an assembly line right because just because you're working with an agent doesn't mean it has to be on market right in fact most deals that we've done with agents have been more off market than on market because the way they look at it is like if I'm an agent right and I have a distressed property and like I don't necessarily have to put it on the MLS hire a photographer tell the seller to make their house look pretty and nice and then coordinate open houses do showings if I can

work with someone that like a wholesaler that they work with networks of investors that a lot of times they could either buy it side unseen they can buy it based off of photos i'm just going to save myself time money too because i don't have to spend it on marketing and on top of that because i'm already representing the seller i don't have to put it on the market and risk another agent coming in and taking the buyer's agent commission because i could just double ended represent because in california dual agency's allowed where you can represent the buyer and the seller i'm already representing the seller I can add my other two and a half, two percent representing this wholesaler who's going to sell it to one of their investors.

So now I'm getting paid double. Yeah. No, it's just, I've been very fascinating about wholesaling because I see, it's crazy. I've never been in this industry. If anything, I've done, obviously, pest control, but, like, solar was, like, big for me, insurance as well, nothing has popped up more in my feed than wholesaling. Like, I think there's one Vietnamese guy, Kang. Yeah.

You know, like just people are just popping up and stuff. But the thing is, everyone that I've been following on, people are actually making money, like a lot of money of that because people are just, you know, really using an arbitrage that you kind of explain in trying to help people get deals. But also it's like a win-win scenario because sell, a buyer, and also like the wholesaler as well. And I think it's a very rare occurrence where you actually get to see

three entities completely winning. And that's all I've been seeing a lot. And it's not a coincidence that it's like everyone's doing well because if a market, like a ship rises with a tide, you know what I'm saying? So the more people do well together, it gives the industry a better name because sometimes in like industries you can get, oh my gosh, my industry was so cutthroat. Like you get people that were selling to dead people and doing social security. It was just crazy, bro. So that's what I'm trying. I've noticed wholesaling is just a booming market.

That's what I got to get Rudy here. Rudy. What time works for you, you know? So I'm grateful. Yeah, man. I'm grateful. I'm grateful. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for reaching out. And I wanted to figure out, what does, like, your ideal investor look like and how do you build long-term trust with them versus traditional transaction? I think it's such a reason I had to read that word for it. It's such a unique and important question, you know? Yeah.

So, biggest thing right now that I emphasize with the team is relationships, right? Biggest thing that you see a lot of wholesalers do is, like, hey, you're an investor? Okay, cool. Send me your email. I'll add you to my list. And then I add you to my list and then there's that.

And then, you know, I send you emails. You probably delete them. I spam your inbox with emails and you maybe just read them but not open them. That happens a lot, right? In order to get on our list, it's free, right? But you have to take the time to come to one of our offices, allow someone on my team go to one of your projects or we can do a Zoom or Google Meet's call where I can see you face and face. I'm cool with FaceTime, even if it's FaceTime, right?

And then we sign an acknowledgement, two-page acknowledgement, and then they can get our nonetheless. And the reason why is because I want to emphasize the relationship part. Because, yeah, I've built relationships with people over the phone, but there's nothing like face-to-face. There's nothing like I'm seeing you as a real person. So I want to get away from just being like a wholesaler to being more of a real estate investment advisor, a real estate investment consultant, right, as opposed to just some wholesaler that's just inboxing people with deals. So biggest thing is like relationships and figuring out exactly what the buyer is looking for and what they need and figuring out like why they're even looking to work with us in the first place, just like anything. Like you want to have that doctor approach. Like figuring out exactly what you're looking for, what your issues are and how we can help you, right?

Like I can't, like as a doctor, I can't give you a medication if I don't know what your diagnosis is, right? So that's what a lot of wholesalers are doing. Oh, you're an investor? Cool. What's your number? What's your email? Let me add you to my list. Boom, I just start sending you deals.

And then we maybe talk every three or four months, right? Versus, hey, like, it sounds like you're at a project right now. Like, where's your next project? Maybe I can stop by and meet you there. Or, hey, come by one of our offices. Or where's your office? I want to come and meet you. See the whole operation.

Maybe you can walk me through your buying process. Right? Like really building the relationship with them. I'm all more about quality over quantity. You can add 100 investors on your list in a month. but how many of them are really going to buy if you don't have that relationship with them? And a lot of our business is repeat business, right? Because a lot of investors, they feel comfortable with us.

In fact, I've had investors say, hey, there's this house I want to buy. Can you try and get it for me? And then I pay you guys your fee. Like, I want it at this price. So they could have easily just called the seller themselves or called the agent themselves. But they're like, no, I know you guys can deliver. This is the house I want. like I'll pay you guys to negotiate it for me.

Oh, dude, that's absolute money. I couldn't agree more. I'm the same way, man. I'd rather come all the way to California and like meet the guests in person and engage in conversation, shake their hands, build relationship, build trust, future business partners

or like, you know, endeavours, whatever we end up doing. Like I try to just jump on a, I had a friend, I have a Zoom conference, that I had this morning and I have one again on Friday, I can't stand those, man. And now if I afford to do an interview on that, like it takes away from the excitement of actually meeting the person and figuring out this story.

Of course it does work in some cases and scenarios, but like this is a different feel, man. You know what I'm saying? Like being in person, like understanding there's a feel, there's a level of like connection, there's a level of atmosphere that's been invited inside there. And it's the same thing. I couldn't agree more, especially with building rapport with clients and relationship with people.

And dude, you are killing it right now. Congrats, man. Thank you. Thank you. And I always say, too, like, California is an expensive place, right? So, like, for a deposit, deposits are like 20 to 60,000 to 60,000. So it's like, if you expect your investors to trust you, like, wouldn't you think they'd want to know who you are? If they're sending $20,000 to $60,000 to escrow, a lot of times blindly because they don't, sometimes they don't even see the house.

like I'm pretty sure they'd want to know who you are, right, if they're sending that much money. So it's just important to just meet people in person. And that's one thing that I've been trying to do more that if I, like looking back and like being like a sales agent at the previous company, I always say like if there's anything I can do differently is like more face to face interactions with people, right, than just over the phone. Powerful. Quality of a quantity. That's a very, very important phrase you say. quality over quantity. What have you been looking at right now

when you've been hiring people attribute-wise and things that can add to your team? Yeah, good question. So I would say, honestly, as long as your license and you can commute and come into the office, I don't care if you're brand new and you don't know a thing about real estate. Like I'd rather have someone that's brand new

doesn't know anything about real estate, but is willing to hustle, willing to learn, not scared to hop on the phone, then someone that knows everything there is to know about real estate laws, zoning, building, whatever, but maybe they just don't want to come into the office, maybe they just, you know, either lazier or they're scared to hop on the phone, right? Because it's a lot easier to teach real estate than it is to teach the soft skills, right? The personality, the personable skills, which you can, and that gets better over time. Some people are natural, but I think that's a skill that you get better at.

But honestly, just anyone that's willing to learn, that's licensed and willing to come into the office and like ask questions, really. Most people that are joining me, I will say they're young. Like, I have a kid. He's from the Bay Area. And he's 19. He's already done like 22 deals with us. He's going to make like 40K this month as a 19 year old. Pretty insane. Shout out to Gianni. But yeah, a lot of the them of the team, you know, we had to go through a lot of people hire and fire. I had to fire one of my family members, unfortunately, like a nephew that I grew up with, just didn't work out. Good luck for Thanksgiving. Yeah, exactly, right? But it was a lot of trial and error. A lot of trial and error in the beginning because we, me and my, like, we're young,

right? So we're just like, hey, let's hire all our buddies, right? Which some of them are awesome. I'm like, we have some friends. I have some friends I grew up with, like seven, eight years old that are crushing it right now on the team. But there's other people that, like, we just hired them because we thought they were cool. Like, hey, you're cool. Come join us. Like, join our team. And we had no onboarding process either.

So it was just like the Wild Wild West. But now with more systems in place, like, it's become a lot of a smoother operation for sure. Now, trial and error, you have to learn sometimes. know what I'm saying? If everything goes perfectly well, that's the worst thing ever because your greatest blessing can be your greatest curse. So, no, I love that, man. Like, that's how it is.

Sometimes friends work out. Sometimes it doesn't. Before you know, it's like, unfollow. Like, what's going on? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of trial and error.

But that's the beauty of like entrepreneurship. You learn as you go. And what you were saying earlier, like, if you have the right mentors and the right teacher, it's shortcuts. a lot of time and time is more valuable than money like i'd rather spend 10 to 20k to save two to three years like you can make a lot more than 20k in two to three years right so if you invest that in order to and you're trading off two to three years worth of knowledge and you can skip those two to three years that's that's a really big ROI powerful powerful can you walk us through like

just our viewers right now a very complex wholesaling deal that you went through. What were the high stakes and how did you end up like getting across the finish line? So the one that comes to mind, there's a pretty much high stakes deal, but this one was the most interesting. It was three side by side. Originally we thought there were condos, but originally the technically the land uses apartments. So there's three side by side condos in Palm Springs.

Still remember that it was like 314 East Stevens Road, right? Three side by side condos. And it was a triple close. meaning it was an A to B, B to C, C to D, S grow. Right. So triple close on three condos, that's nine total escrows going on at the same time, right? All for like one transaction, but nine separate escrows. So it was a wholesaler that had to close on the property.

They couldn't reassigning it. And then we close on the property and then we sold it to someone else. Right. So the original fees, the reason why they couldn't close on it was because they were making a lot on it and we were making a lot on it at first. So it went from 180,000 that they were making and we were making 90,000. And we had sold it to an investor. We had sold it like two or three times over. And we had sold it to an investor. Still cheap price point. I think we had sold each of them for like 150K. They got it really cheap, like each condo, like really, really cheap. And it turns out like

the square footage was off. And like we don't want to force the buyer to close on it, right? Because were like, well, we didn't know the square footage and he bought it based on the idea that it was X amount of square footage. We don't want to force him, you know, to close on it. That's not right, right? Because then that would be like false advertisement, right? So we gave him his EMD back and then we put it back on the market. We sell it to someone else.

And then it turns out they're not legally condos. They're legally apartments, right? So they, you couldn't get a loan on it. So you had to buy a cash. They were called, it's an unwarrantable, an unwarrant. warrantable condo, right, where you can't get a loan on it. So even if you bought it and you wanted to resell it, someone couldn't get a loan on it. Like, they'd have to buy a cash. No lender would close on it, right? So we didn't know that either, right? We didn't know that until we got into the second escrow.

And then we don't want to force him to buy it, right? Because we're like, we don't want that, like, that's a liability. Like, if we force him to buy it, he can come back and say, you guys force me, which is not right either, right? So we put it back on the market. Right. And the fee, like I said, we were originally at, they were at like 160, 180, and then we were at 90. Went down to them making 30 and then we made 10, right. So technically for each deal, there was one deal. We did 6,000. And then the other two condos, we made 2,000 each. So it was a total of 10,000, right? But it was on a triple close, nine total escrowes. It was like a three month process. We finally found a buyer to take it on. I think they bought it to put it on Airbnb. But we had sold. it three times over and our fee shrunk by so much. And it was like I said, the biggest thing was managing nine S-girls at the same time on top of managing all your other files. But we finally got it to the finish line. And honestly, like I tried staying away for Palm Springs for a while

after that. Because it's like, this is just too much of a nightmare deal. We're actually trying to put a deal together right now in Palm Springs. But yeah, that's definitely one of the ones that stood out for me. No, man, I just can't believe how fast time has flown by with all the wonderful insights that you've given as well. If you were to give somebody advice right now, this is obviously a big business channel, entrepreneurial as well, somebody trying to start right now, what's the first thing that they should do if you were to give them advice for that? Start and wholesaling. Start and wholesaling. So something very like that you guys can literally start doing today, like two day and I always tell people this like if you took away,

if you deleted all my contacts on my phone and, you know, I had no money, no contacts, but I knew what I knew, I would go on Redfin and Zillow and start calling agents and call closed fixers, right, like fixtures in whatever area you're in, whether you're in California, Texas, Florida,

go on Zill and Redfin, look up closed, where it says close, and look for the properties that look like fixer uppers, right? And then what you do is you call, call the agent and you're like, hey, Mrs. Agent or Mr. Agent, I saw you just closed on this property. I went to through Main Street. It actually looks like something we would have picked up ourselves.

Do you have anything else like it coming up? A lot of times they're like, you know what, not right now, but text me your information, you know, I'll send you something when it comes up. What you're doing is you're planning seeds. But occasionally you'll get, oh, yes, you called me at the right time. I actually have this property. You call me next week. Or actually, yes, I have one. I'm going to put it on the MLS next Monday or yes I have one I just put it on the MLS like here let me send you the address right you start doing that over time like I promise you if you do that every day for 30 days you do it maybe five to eight hours a day there's no reason why you can get one or two deals it's like I've seen it where like my partner will go inside a room and he's like dude I need a deal go inside

a room lock himself up for like six hours come back out and come with like three to four addresses right that are potential deals You're planning seeds, you're building relationships. And like I said earlier, just because you're working with an agent doesn't mean it's on market. Some of the best off market deals I've done in the past where we've done like six figure fees have been through agents. Right. So there's potential there. Man, consistency is the key there.

It's absolutely consistent. You have to have the heart for it and you have to just be diligent on what you're doing because sales can be very discouraging. But if you're not consistent, you don't have the vision and you don't have like a purpose. just one rejection, you start looking at an in-and-out meal and like Chipotle. Exactly. What can I go eat? I'm eating in and out after you, by the way. Nice.

You got to eat while you're here. The coat winning is it's known for insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. I always ask each entrepreneur guest what the term winning means for them because winning is such a broad term and it has a different meaning for different people. What does winning mean for Rudy? Yeah. And like you said, I think winning has everyone's own meaning, right? Like I asked the team, like especially when they're new, I ask them what their motivator is.

Like what's their definition of winning too? Like it's very similar or what gets them going. And I would see mine is just being in a position and just where I can teach and influence people where they can do literally like what I'm doing, right? Like I teach a lot. I don't sell any courses, but I teach the team. And like it, to me, it's empowering for me. Like, I get way more excited seeing someone else do their first deal than me doing a bigger deal, right?

Like teaching someone and then seeing them like develop and grow over time. To me, that's winning, right? Because the more they win, the more I win. Like, there's a quote, I think, I think Rockefeller says it, right? He's like, I'd rather have one percent effort of 100 people than 100 percent. an effort of my own, right? Which is true, right? Like, there's only so much you can accomplish by yourself, right? And if it's just you, like a solopreneur, there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, a lot of people in my industry are solopreneurs. That's why they get into real estate

because they don't want a boss. They don't want anyone to tell them what to do, right? But to me, winning is like having like a team where you see them winning and in a way you work through other people, right? You leverage people, but in a good way where they build an empire within in your own empire. Powerful. Love that so much. If you could let our guests know on this camera over here,

whether you could get a hold of you, if they want to just connect, learn a bit more, maybe even join your team. We'll leave all of everything like the comment section at the bottom there. Can you let our guests know

where they can get a hold of you and connect as well? Yeah. If you guys want to connect with me, you can follow me and send me a message on Instagram, rudy.c.gomez. And then we also have the business account

that's Acquired TM on Instagram and then Facebook, Rudy Gomez and Acquired Homes. The coat winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. Rudy Gomez, thank you so much, my man. Thank you.