The Science of Flipping - Episode 21: Interview with Todd Toback Part 1 | 8 Secrets to Build a Bigger Better Business | Real Estate Investing Podcast

Episode Date: January 24, 2014

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () { podlovePlayer("#player-5eb5ab3242205", "https://thescienceofflipping.com/wp-json/podlove-web-player/shortcode/post/386", "https://thescienceofflipping.com/wp-json/podlove-web-player/shortcode/config/default/theme/default"); }); <p> document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () { podlovePlayer("#player-5eb5ab3242268", {"title":"Real Estate Investing Podcast u2013 Episode 21 | Interview with Todd Toback Part 1 | 8 Secrets to Build a Bigger Better Business","subtitle":null,"summary":null,"duration":"","poster":null,"chapters":"","transcripts":"","audio":[{"url":"http://thescienceofflipping.com/audio/Podcast-Episode-21-A-Interview-with-Todd-Toback-Part-1.mp3","mimeType":"audio/mpeg","title":"AUDIO/MPEG","size":0}]}, "https://thescienceofflipping.com/wp-json/podlove-web-player/shortcode/config/default/theme/default"); }); <a href="http://thescienceofflipping.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/itunes-justin-colby.png"><img alt="itunes-justin-colby" src="https://thescienceofflipping.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/itunes-justin-colby-150x150.png" width="150" height="150" /></a></p> In part 1 of the 2 part interview, Justin interviews Todd Toback on his 8 secrets to building a bigger better business.  Todd is a master wholesaler out of San Diego. He has built a complete business that allows him to only come into the office 15 hours a week.  Don’t miss this interview.

Welcome to the Science of Flipping Podcast. I'm your host, Justin Colby. Welcome, welcome, welcome everybody to the Science of Flipping Podcast. I am your host, Justin Colby, and today, guys, I am incredibly excited. This is episode number 21, and I have a special guest today. We are bringing on Todd Toback, master wholesaler out of California, and he's got the eight secrets to build a bigger, better business. Again, my name's Justin Colby, and we're going to rock this out on episode 21. If you've never listened to this podcast, if this is the first time you've heard our podcast,

I highly encourage you to get over to our website, thescienceofflipping.com. Get your free e-book. It is the number one e-book on the market today. It is the 15 most costly mistakes a real estate investor can make in today's market. I know Todd is going to say the flipping.com, download that ebook for free. It is a must read very short, very quick. Make sure you have that. But again, if this is your first time, you know, again, I'm your host, but this podcast is about systemizing your business, hitting the goals in your business so that you do not have to be in your business all the time and you can be working on your business. And the reason why I bring this special guest on is because that is exactly what Todd does. We were just chatting a little bit before this podcast, guys, and I can tell you he's

in his office maybe 15, 20 hours a week most, right? He's a family man and he does very well for himself. I want to just give a huge welcome to Todd Toback. How are you, buddy? I'm doing good, Justin. How about you? I'm doing good. Doing good. Thank you for asking. Super, super pumped to be on the podcast, by the way. Thank you so much. I love, love, love to teach. I just love to share information and just love the community of real estate. So I really, really appreciate it and I am stoked to give out lots of info today. Right on. Well, I appreciate you being on and for all you out

there listening, Todd Toback is an incredible real estate investor. He is down in San Diego, California, and he has built a complete hands-free wholesale business. Now, San Diego, for those who know, people would tell Todd, myself, or anyone, oh, you could never wholesale down in San Diego. San Diego is a fix and flip type business that you would need to create. And Todd basically proved everyone wrong. He's making well into the seven figures. He is a true wholesaler. He has incredible systems. And he does this all virtually. Again, he works 15 to 20 hours most in his office,

but he outsources all aspects of his business. And as I teach week in and week out here, that is the way to truly enjoy your life so that you can be doing deals from the comfort of your own couch, Todd, from vacation, right? You have vacations planned with your family this year and that's the life you want to live, right?

Oh, absolutely. And one of the things Justin and I was talking about is first decide what you want in life, right? What are the things that you want. And then build a business around that. You're going to be disappointed in your real estate business. So I was telling Justin one of the things that we do at the beginning of the year is plan all of our vacations. So in 2014, we put that in the calendar, and then we plan work around that. And I love, love, love real estate. I could do, uh, if I, if I, um, you know, didn't make those decisions, I could work at real estate 24 hours a day,

seven days a week. I would just love it so much. Um, but you know, for me, I love my family more. And so, um, I would encourage anybody that like one tip, and this is not, um, you know, part of the, the eight tips we're going to talk about today though, is decide what you want, right? Decide what you want in life and then just create a business, not a business that you're a slave to. So that's my comments on that. And I guess, yeah, let's get into it. Yeah, right. Now, Tom, how many vacations are you going to take this year?

We're going to have 10 weeks of vacation this year. Some of those are going to be staycations. When you have four kids traveling all around the country, sometimes isn't a vacation, uh, but we have a number of vacations that will go away, um, to, and then a number that we hang out in San Diego because San Diego is a pretty, pretty neat place. And, uh, just staying here sometimes is awesome. But, uh, one of the things that I had on my calendar actually this week is, um, getting scuba certified. So I put that on my calendar, um, for this week and I blocked it in and the class, you know, it starts from like 3.30 to nine every single day. And so I'm able to do that because I put that rock in first, right?

That was one of my goals to get scuba certified right now because I want to become a really, really good diver so that when my kids get older, right, I'm a very proficient diver and I can go on vacation with them. Nice. I mean, that's what it's all about right there. It's all about, baby. That's right. That's right. And so, you know, I teach systems constantly through the fix and flip model,

and you absolutely have the systems in your business. But before we get into your business and the eight tips that you're going to be talking about, which would be the secrets, right? These are the eight secrets that you've built your business around to build the biggest, best business that you know how. Before we get there, why don't we just jump into who you are and how you got started in real estate? Sure.

Thanks, Justin. Well, you know, my story is probably like a lot of your listeners. And, you know, I remember coming out to California. I was, I'm from New York, by the way, love, I'm a New York Jet fan, obsessed New York Jet fan. And I went to college in the Midwest, small college called Calvin College. And I don't know how many of you ever lived in Michigan or been to Michigan, but it snows every from, it seems like late October to late April. And so I'm sitting in the snow and I'm like, you know, I'm getting out of here. I'm going to California. And so I took my 10 year old black Labrador retriever. I had a 1989 Mercury Cougar. I had $300 in my pocket, and I drove out to California.

And I'm like, okay, great. I got out here, and the sun was amazing, and the ocean, and the beach, and I was loving it. I was like, wow, that's expensive. And I knew that I didn't really want to get a job. But it was really, really expensive to live out here. And I'm like, you know what? I guess I got a college degree, and I guess I should use it. but it was really, really expensive to live out here. I'm like, you know what? I guess I got a college degree, and I guess I should use it.

I got a job, and I really got lucky in this perspective. I actually got a job with Pfizer Pharmaceuticals selling Viagra. It was actually my job to sell erection pills for a living. Right around the hundredth joke, right? Sales were always up, you know, the competition was stiff. You know, I'm like, you know what, this is getting really, really old. And, you know, you know, I was looking for something different. And so I was thinking, well, maybe I just need to make more money, right? That's the answer, right? I'm going to just make more money. And so I go to my boss and he was really, really good. Um, great boss. And I'm really thankful that he hired me and

coached me and trained me. And to this day, um, you know, I really appreciate him giving me that chance there. But I remember I went to him and I was like, Derek, you know, I, I really want a $30,000 raise and I think I deserve it. And he sat down with me and he says, Todd, you know, you're, I'm not going to submit this, this raise to human resources. And I'm like, well, why not? He goes, well, you're just lacking a certain corporate maturity, right? Just the corporate world doesn't just work that way. You can't just ask for a $30,000 raise and just get it. You know, there's certain procedures and protocols and the way things are done. And this is not the way that it was done. And so I remember sitting there and thinking about like how expensive a house in California was and how I'd always be struggling financially.

Even if I was making, you know, pretty good money at my job, I was like, ah, and I was all, you know, felt dejected and I was embarrassed. And I'm driving home on the one-on-one freeway in California and, you know, just driving, just like thinking about the conversation. I remember I was like so down and embarrassed and defeated. My confidence was in the toilet and I'm looking to the, out of the right hand corner out of my eye. Okay. Like picture this, just driving in this, uh, you know, this, this car and I see a Barnes and Nobles, Justin on the right hand side. And some said, Justin, on the right-hand side. Something said, Todd, I want you to pull over.

I'm about three lanes away, Justin, from the exit. I'm going like 65, 70. Something said, Todd, just... I pulled over all three lanes of traffic. Everyone's honking their horn, giving me the finger. I got to the bookstore. and something drew me there.

The book Multiple Streams of Income by Robert Allen. Have you heard of that? I have, actually. Great book. And by the way, the whole pulling over the three lanes, isn't that the greatest move? Greatest move. It's only a bad move if you get a ticket, right? But my wife says I still drive that way. But I picked up the book,

Multiple Streams of Income, and I read half of it in the store. And I took it home. And I'm like, oh, man, I'm going to take massive action on this. And so one of the things I talked about was finding out-of-state owners to do deals with. So I went down. I was living up in Santa Barbara at the time, small little beach town called Carpinteria and I went down like what if I could find a motivated seller in Carpinteria California and so I actually went down to the courthouse because back in 2000 2001 you could just pull data like you do now at least in Santa Barbara you could you actually had to go down and physically take the names so Justin I went down to the county recorders down there, and I brought some donuts, and I brought some bagels.

And I had to manually take names from this big book of all the people who lived out of state who owned a condo in the complex that I was living in. And it was brutal, brutal, brutal, right? So all the tools that we have now like makes investing cake compared to what it used to be. And I remember I pulled out 28 names and I'm like, yes, you know, I felt so accomplished. And, you know, only if I knew

that I would probably have a snowball's chance in hell doing a deal with that many names. But I had, you know, I had enthusiasm, right? And I had like a, you know, can do it attitude. So I took the 28 names and I hand-wrote 28 letters. And I said, hey, I'm interested in buying your house. And I took the exact letter that was in multiple streams of income. And I took that letter and I sent them out.

I hand-wrote the letters. And I had the letters in front of me and I just prayed over the letters. I was like, God, I want this so bad. Just like you said, ask anything your name and it shall be given. And I'm going to take these letters just to make them turn into a deal. And I was like, please, please, please. The reason why I walked into that bookstore and I just had faith. And so I put them out there.

And for some reason, I knew a deal was going to come. I just knew it. And I sent out the letters. Day one passed, no calls. Day two passed, no calls. Day three passed, no calls. Day four, day five, day six. Finally, on the seventh day, and I know that's kind of weird, but on the seventh day, it was one week later, I get a phone call, just one, by the way, 28 letters. And when you send out letters, actually, that ratio is just about right. I get one phone call from a couple who lived in Bakersfield. They had retired from their job. This is a vacation house. They hadn't used it in two years.

They're paying all the HOA fees. They're like, yeah, we're really, really tired of this townhome. By the way, it was a block from the beach. Amazing, amazing place. We just want to sell it. Basically, they came into town. I had no idea what I was doing. And we agreed on a purchase price of $5,000, if I remember correctly. And I knew that... How did you just come to that number? Well, really, I didn't know, right? That's awesome. You know, I had no idea.

And I was like, well, if I can just negotiate the lowest I can, right, well, then I'm in good shape. Right, right. So I went in there and negotiated the lowest I can. We had no contract I'm in good shape. Right. Right. So I went in there and negotiated the lowest I can. We had no contract by the way, no contract. We just wrote it up on the scrap sheet of paper and we sent it to escrow and they basically handled the whole thing. Okay. Now I'm like, well now I have to sell this thing. Right. And so I don't even know what wholesaling was at this point. I didn't know I could just take the contract and do a double closing. I actually spoke to a couple of escrow companies and they're like, no, you can't do those simultaneous closes and assignments of contract.

You just can't do that. So now I thought I had to find a money partner. So I called up everyone. I called up my dad, and I called up my aunts and friends, and no one wanted to fund this deal for me to sell. Well, finally, my brother-in-law said, okay, you know what? I'll partner with you. He knew that the house was probably going to sell for $380,000, $390,000, and the market was like a white hot. And so he actually bought the house with a traditional loan.

We put it on the market, and two days later, we sold it for $90,000 profit. Wow. Okay. Now, there was a buyer that came in that we sold it to traditionally, right? And we had to pay real estate commissions and all that. But long story short, I think we both walked away without $42,000 in our pockets. It was none of my money out of pocket. I never had my credit checked and no experience, right?

Did everything wrong. Didn't do a double close and found the escrow company after we had the house locked up and didn't even know it was worth. Um, but after that I was hooked. Yeah. Yeah. That's a nice little payday. That'll, that'll hook most investors, right? Yeah. That, you know, so from that moment I said, okay, you know what, this is where I'm going to go, um, from this. And, you know, I want to encourage everyone for if it's your first deal. Okay. And you're like, And, you know, I want to encourage everyone for if it's your first deal, okay, and you're like, yeah, you know, I love the idea of building a big business or building systems, you got to start somewhere, right. And so that's what I did. And it's just

massive action, right, going down there and, and writing those names down, you know, 95% of the people are never going to do that stuff. They don't want it bad enough. You know, that took me like five hours to get those 28 names. So, you you know if you if you haven't done your first deal my advice there is just do something yep yeah no that's a you know taking action is probably 95% of what we do wouldn't you agree I mean what happens and the reason why people aren't ultimately successful is they're unwilling or unwanting to take the actions needed to get that first deal or to get that, you know, whatever that is, right? So I would say action, action, action. Yeah, I would say just don't want it bad enough, right?

If you want it bad enough, the action will follow. Oh, absolutely. I would agree 100%. Well, we have a very similar story. It's just you don't know what you're doing, you don't know what you don't know, and you just go. And you go and go and go until you reach your goal. And I know there's people out there listening to this that absolutely can relate to your story. So thank you for giving that. And I know we want to kind of get cranking here. You and I spoke about what we kind of think would be

probably the biggest subject matter, secrets, what people really need to know if they're getting into the real estate investing world, whether you're going to become a true blue fix and flipper like we are here, or if you are going to be a top-notch wholesaler doing hundreds of deals a year making seven figures what are those secrets and Todd I'm gonna I'm gonna let you run with this because you know we've spoke about it but this is some great stuff guys so this is where you want to be taking out that pen and

paper if you're driving, press pause. Start it back up when you're back at the office or back at home. But let's get cranking on this, Todd. All right. Now, before I actually get into these eight secrets, I just want to paint a picture for you guys. Because after I did that first deal, and a lot of you may be listening to this and be like, yeah, I've done my first deal or two. Or I'm doing a deal or two a month, there comes a point, Justin, at least this happened to me in my business, where you know how to do a real estate deal. You know how to lock a property, you know how to fix it up,

or you know how to wholesale it, or you know how to lease option it, or you know how to rent it, or you know how to retail it. And all of a sudden, you realize that your life is crazy. And you're working 24-7. You're pulling your hair out. You're dealing with the books. You're dealing with the finding the property. You're going to the auctions. You're negotiating with buyers. You're negotiating with sellers. Escrow's got a problem. You're dealing with this. You're dealing with your office space or you're dealing with the internet at your office or some kind of software breaks down and you're dealing with a legal issue, whatever it is, right? You realize one day that your head is swarming and all of a sudden the business that you thought would set you free actually owns you. And now you become better off. You can take a look at your income

and maybe you're making 80,000, 100, 150, maybe even 200, 250,000. You're like, you know what? The amount that I'm working, I might as well get a job because I'd be making the same amount of money, but I'd only be working 40 hours a week. Yeah, yeah.

Right? And I had that aha moment right when I was making 200 or 250,000. I remember, Justin, I was lying in bed and my wife, beautiful wife, is sitting next to me. And I'm like, I just don't worry. It'll all work out. And I was like, I just got to make a change. I got to make a change. And so no matter what stage you are in your real estate investing, I want to let you know that being a one-man show does not work for the long term. When you're starting, I know you've got to scratch. And I know you've got to claw. I know you've got to work your way to do your first deal and you've got to do whatever you have to do to get that first deal or two underneath your belt. And that's important.

But from the beginning, I really want to encourage you that you need to create a business that serves you. If you want to cut off the first 10 years of my investing career and get to that spot where you have a seven-figure business that's not running you. Take that advice. A favorite quote from one of my favorite marketers is Dan Kennedy. And he said, a business is not a guy in front of a laptop. And I have that in a little quote in my office to always remind me that that is not a business. It's a job that owns you 24-7. So that's why I'm so excited.

As I mentioned, I got a business that's deep into the seven figures. Deals happen every day that generate income for the business. My team handles it. I'm so thankful for them. They do a great job. And sometimes I see a wire in my bank account. I'm like, hey, what is that from? What deal is that from? And they have to fill me in, which is great. So that being said, let's dive right into these eight secrets. Grab a pen, grab a piece of paper here, and let's do these. Let's do it.

Let's knock them out. All right. So the first thing, and this is kind of really important. Some of you may discount this first one, but it's very, very, very important because it is the basis for the other eight. And the first one I'm going to bring up is your attitude. And what I mean by an attitude, I mean how you actually looking at your business from a giving perspective okay this is like the big aha well Todd what does that mean well I mean it in all aspects okay the first thing and this is probably the most important is

that when you're building a team you know you can't be think okay oh my gosh you know I have to pay this person. I'm going to be giving up a certain amount of my profit, right? Or, you know, how much is this person going to bring me, right? The biggest thing, the biggest aha moment for me when I got people to come and be a part of our team was how much can I give this person that's working for me, okay? How much can I improve their lives? How much can I help develop them so that if they ever leave me, their life is significantly better than it is now? And that is a huge attitude shift, Justin, because people, once they feel that from you, okay, they will jump off a bridge for you.

They will work hard for you, right? They'll be out there doing deals, and believe me, they're going to make income. So when I say, how much do you want to make? And they'll give me a number, and I'll be like, well, I'll add like 20% of that. So if they say, I want to make $100,000, I'll say, well, how about if we can make you $130,000, what would that do for you? And they're like, wow, that would do this and that. I could go on vacation.

I could do this. I could get a house. And so we sit down, and we reverse engineer it, and they feel it. I'm not like, hey, I want you to generate $500,000 in revenue. We sit down. We figure out their income from there. The other perspective is I had this weird scarcity mindset when I was first hiring people. So you're sitting there, and you're like, wow, what if I teach this person too much? You know, and they go out and they'll take

everything that we have and, you know, copy me and run. Right. And I know it's really, really easy to have that perspective, but you can't, um, create an army who will bleed for you. Okay. I'm worrying that they'll overtake your kingdom one day. Yeah. You know, about the movie gladiator, um, and Maximus, right. And I remember at the beginning of the scene and everyone is like screaming for Maximus, they're like, you know, and I'm like, how can I get, you know, my team to bleed for me like that. And that's because he was, he was willing to, you know, invest in them, in them, even from his slave, right, or his assistant that he had, all the way up to his top general. And so we say that about

people who we work with, our customers, which are cash buyers, we're like, hey, how could we help them grow their business this year, right? Our motivated sellers, how can we have them have an easy transaction, make their life easier, and it actually gives us better perspective to sell properties or actually buy properties from them because they feel our genuine interest. And one of the things that I have all my sales guys do is we always try to talk a seller out of doing business with us during the first two or three hours of an appointment. I shouldn't say that. Most appointments are two to three hours. I'll say the first 20 minutes.

And give them their other options. And it turns out by the end of the conversation, they trust you so much. They're so happy with the fact that you were so transparent. So that's the first one is giving perspective. And I'm going to kind of really come back to that throughout the other eight. Does that make sense, Justin? Yeah. You know, there's a lot, a huge importance on this. And as we, every year we mind map our business, right. And how we're going to grow and what we're going to bring on, how we can be more efficient and what roles need to be implemented. Um, I agree

a hundred percent. In fact, we have a meeting tomorrow with our acquisition manager that takes in all of our leads and, um, we are basically going to incentivize him even further. And not only that, but we want to incentivize him to build his team even further. And what happens is what we've already noticed and what you're talking about is, you know, it's kind of that attitude of gratitude. We're giving him more responsibility. We're paying for that responsibility and he turns around and basically falls in love with the idea like he creates his own business out of this and fights and works even harder for us because he's so appreciative of what we're allowing him

to build and take responsibility on um so i couldn't agree more with with your number one right there. Well, number two, and this is going to fit right in, okay, is building a team. There you go. I know a lot of people are still like, oh, I'm uncomfortable with this, right? They're going to have to give up a piece of their deal. Well, I think a little bit goes back to that scarcity mindset. And I was stuck here for a while with this, is that if you're going to have to give up 10, 11, 12, 13% of your deal, a lot of people are fearful of that because maybe they're struggling in the business. But I'm going to tell

you that as soon as you help enough people get what they want, this is not my line. I think this is from Thinking for a Rich. Is that where it's from? You can have anything in the world that you want, right? Yeah, I've heard it so many times. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've said that backwards. But, you know, the biggest thing, once you start building a team, you'll be like, wow, I cannot believe I used to do this on my own. Yep. And so you have to basically go all in, right? There's no like half, like, oh, I'm gonna hire one little virtual assistant on Odesk, you know, and that's fine. And that could take, you know, some things off your plate. But I mean, if you really want to build a real business, you have to decide to hire at least one quality person to start off who will help you acquire

properties. And that's the biggest thing is that you need to hire someone to help you acquire properties so that you're not going out looking at these things, which is a time sucker. I mean, it's very, very important, and it has to be done, so that you can acquire so that you can sell them. And that's the biggest thing is building a team. So in our office, I'll tell you a little bit about our team, is we have an acquisition manager

who's basically in charge of all the acquisitions, and he will go out to the hot leads and lock them up. We also have an inside sales person who will take all the phone calls and who basically tees them up for our acquisition manager. Now, she also will lock up deals. If someone's out of the area or if it's over the phone or maybe it's a marginal deal, we're not sure if we can sell it or they're not that motivated. And so she'll handle that. She does a fantastic job.

Now, what do you pay your acquisition manager versus what do you pay your inside sales, which would be like what I would call is my lead intake guy? Sure. So our – and this basically is going to vary on the market. But you could pay anywhere between, in my opinion, anywhere between 10% and 15% of the actual revenue generated for an acquisition manager.

I would pay closer to 15% as bonuses and things like that and based on performance. And then for an inside sales rep, you're probably looking, for somebody good, I would look at maybe, and then a flat fee per deal. I'm sorry, for whatever reason you cut out right when you said the percentage, could you repeat it? Sure, you mean for the acquisition manager or for the inside sales?

No, the inside sales. Sure, it would be about $15 an hour. Got it. Okay, that's my recommendation. I mean, you could do $8 an hour, $10 an hour. Got it. Okay. That's my recommendation. I mean, you can do, you know, $8 an hour, $10 an hour. It doesn't really matter. Right.

Um, and then we also pay a flat fee per deal. Now what we do for inside sales, and this is really important is that that is a draw. Okay. A draw, meaning that they're really on a hundred percent commission, but, uh,

that is there so that they can obviously do their job without stressing out for the first three months. Does that make sense? Absolutely, brother. And an inside sales rep, you should see a return within two weeks. Okay. So if you're not, it's probably time to build your team even further or basically help somebody move on at that point. Yep.

Yeah. Okay. We'll keep on rocking. It basically helps somebody move on at that point. Yep. Yeah. Okay. We'll keep on rocking. I also have an office manager, which now will handle all the transactions. And they'll deal with escrow, make sure all the paperwork is filled out. They'll also deal with the buyers, make sure the escrow money is in. They can actually also help you sell your properties, right, send them out to the website.

And now my office manager actually has a full-time virtual assistant who works for him. So a lot of those really, really mundane details, right? We have someone who works just for $5 an hour in India, or you could get someone who works in the Philippines so that I'm not paying an office manager who's making a certain salary here, something that I could pay somebody else $5 an hour to do. So that's basically our team in a nutshell. We have one other person and that's our agent relationship manager and he does a fantastic job. And he focuses on getting deals off the, well, basically getting deals from agents. Okay. So what we do is we tee up, okay, leads for him every day within the MLS. We do some email marketing. We do some direct mail marketing to agents.

And then leads come in to him also for him to lock up. And so we have deals coming from a multitude of sources, right? Private sellers and then also through the agents themselves. Perfect. Perfect. Right on. I think we have a very similar situation. And the reason why I bring that up, Todd, is a lot of my listeners know that we're 100% fix and flippers. But we have basically those three components. I myself kind of manage the office on a day to day. So we do not have an office manager right now. But we definitely have an acquisition manager. We definitely have a lead intake is what I like to call him. And then we have our agent

relationships who will go out and actually deal with all the listings on the MLS from active, pending to expired. And I think that's what a lot of people aren't doing right now is kind of chasing those deals that either are pending or expired. I highly encourage, and I'm sure you would say the same, to go after those type of deals when you are dealing with the MLS and train your team to go after those deals. Well, let me give you a tip because that is phenomenal. I mean, that's how we find a lot of our deals. But if anyone's listening to this, you're like, okay, I'm going to try this. Well, my recommendation is have a virtual assistant go into,

of course, a fully licensed virtual assistant who has a real estate license, go into the MLS every night and basically take all those pending and expired listings. And so that your sales team is not digging for them, right? And set them up as tasks for your team to call in the morning, right? So that they're not doing anything but getting on the phone and calling them. They don't have to do any research. So I would suggest that. And your team will love you for it because that's the highest and best use of their time, right? They want to be making, you know, 50 bucks an hour, 100 bucks an hour, right? They don't want to sit there and be earning, you know, doing $5 an hour work, getting

leads off the MLS. So just tee them up. If you look at the NFL for ways businesses should be run, the football players, they need to be playing football. They don't need to be squeezing the water bottles in their mouth. They've got everyone squeezing the water bottles in their mouth. They have other people putting jackets on them. They have other people worried about all the equipment and the travel arrangements. So tee up your people like they're an NFL player. And so just to, you know, team up so that when they're on the field, that's all they're

thinking about. I couldn't agree with you more. You got to put, you know, have you ever read the book strength finders 2.0 sitting in the back of my car? I got to pick it up. Yeah. That's what it talks about. The people with whatever strengths they are, once you find those strengths, that's where you implement them in the business. And you don't have them do the things that they're not strong at. So if someone's good on the phones and they're a good people person, make sure that that's what they do. They're not the people – they're not doing the MLS stuff. They're not the managers in that role.

So that's what they talk about is once you find what everyone is good at on your team, that's how you implement them. And then they're going to be even better because they're excited about it. They know they're getting good results and it's a trickle down effect when it starts to come to that kind of stuff. So that's another great book, Strength Finders 2.0.