How to Use Credit Cards to Fund Real Estate Deal Scotty Tregellas

All right, Science Flipping podcast listeners, as always in this episode is brought to you by Rocketly.ai if you’re looking for a seller, lead generating system that has automation in AI Bot and has sellers coming to you, then Rocketly.ai is your choice. Make sure you head over to the website, fill out an application and schedule a demo now to see the power of Rocketly.ai. What is up? Science Flipping Family, welcome back to another incredible episode of the Science of Flipping with an incredible guest. Scotty t is in the house. He is someone who I look to for credit advice. He has built an incredible business in real estate using leverage, understanding credit, understanding credit cards, lines of credit, etc, and so I’m super excited to have him here on the episode. What’s up, dude?

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Scotty: Thanks for having me Justin.

Justin: Yeah, man, this is this is gonna be fun, because you are new to me, but you’re not new to real estate. You’re not new to a lot of my friends and colleagues, and you are the man when it comes to credit cards, lines of credit financing your real estate business. You yourself are a real estate investor and have been for a long time. So let’s dive right in. Credit cards, good or bad?

Scotty: Good, (All right). Good. So funny people think they’re bad. They’re not scary. Dave Ramsey, Grant, Cardone, whatever perspective that you want to have, credit cards are good, credit cards are bad. It’s all about like, how are you manage debt? Are you using the credit cards to create a profit and leverage that? Then that’s great. It’s good debt. So of course, they’re good.

Justin: So you out of the gate. Got me set up. You said these are the 9, 12 how many cards did you say I need to go get?

Scotty: I think the first stack was around nine. Yeah, nine cards.

Justin: And what cards did you give me? Because I can remember off the top my head looking at the list, the premium Chase Premiere.

Scotty: Yeah, so it wasn’t the premiere, because that’s just another charge card. It’s like the twin brother to the Amex platinum. It’s valuable, but it’s a charge card. You got to pay it off every month. So, I think the ones that I recommended you were a couple personal cards, because, of course, like me, likes to travel, (Yeah). So, working towards that goal, I think it was Chase out by a reason you and that’s life, (Yeah). And then, of course, a few more business credit cards that focus more of more rewards geared towards the spin that you’re using, like most marketing, right? So like Amex gold, the Chase Ink, preferred, and then, okay, you want 0% there’s the Chase Ink, unlimited, right? So it’s like you kind of gave me a direction on what you wanted out of the credit cards, and then I just gave you a list of credit cards to go out and apply for, and there we are.

Justin: Yeah, so I want to jump directly into how does this affect real estate investors? How can real estate investors? And I’m telling all of you to go find him on Instagram, Youtube. Scotty T, Tregellas is his last name, but I think it’s easiest if you do. Scotty T.

Scotty: Yeah, you can just search S, C, O, T, T, Y, T and I’m usually the first one that pops up in Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, anything. I’m the verified one, so you can follow me and find me there. But yeah, no, with real estate that I used credit to get into real estate. I would have never been able to even get started with wholesaling if I did not first master the credit. You know, I feel like I’ve repeated this story so many times, and I hate saying it, because I don’t want any sympathy, but I was actually very homeless when I closed my very first wholesale deal, and I was in really bad motorcycle accident in 2015 wrecked at like 130 mile an hour. I’m blessed to be alive, but I couldn’t walk or work for about a year. Completely destroyed my life. And then I had someone approach me wanting to basically get into real estate. And I grew up watching my dad build custom homes all over the country, and so I had this, like, passion and love for real estate, but didn’t know anything about it. And so, I was like, Yeah, I want to get in real estate. He’s like, Well, you need to fix your credit. So, I paid a guy, and I got ripped off. Of course, like, we all know, like the credit industry is very sketch. It’s very hard to trust people in the credit world. That’s why I hate it, (Yeah), but of course, I got ripped off. I actually sold my very last gun. I’m from Kansas, so, you know, we all got guns there, sold my very last gun, paid this guy to repair my credit and nothing. But I don’t have that, like, oh, well, I guess I don’t get to invest in a real estate. There goes my dreams. This guy took advantage. I mean, no, I don’t have that kind of mindset. So I started YouTube University and figured out how to start like disputing, and in two months, I went from a 531 with tens of thousands of medical debt and collections on my credit to a 741 and literally less than two months, I’m like, whoa, okay. 2 Months.

Justin: You’re able to move your needle that fast in two months?

Scotty: Oh, yeah, and now I can do that in less than five days.

Justin: Five days. Yeah, move your needle. 200 points

Scotty: Oh yeah. And we’ll get there. Okay, we’ll get there.

Justin: We’re gonna stay tuned, because you and I need to know how he’s gonna do that. Yeah, go ahead.

Scotty: I will give you guys the exact blueprint. So if you hang out and watch this full episode, there’s gonna be a QR code somewhere where you can download this exact blueprint on how to be able to do that in five days. (There you go). So anyways, so went to 741 I’m like, okay, cool. And then I got access to a couple credit cards. And I think this was back in like 2017 back when Cody Sperber was huge on YouTube, sure. So, I maxed out two personal credit cards. Don’t max out personal credit cards, guys. I paid 10 grand for his mentorship program. Invested another thousand dollars in direct mail marketing in Tulsa, Oklahoma, so direct mail thousand bucks closed 80 grand next month. So, my very first wholesale deal was 60,000.

Justin: Now why did you say don’t max out your personal credit cards?

Scotty: Because if you’re maxing out your personal credit yes, it benefited me, but if you max out your personal credit cards, utilization is going to skyrocket and your scores are going to drop drastically, because utilization is 30% of your overall score factor. It’s 35% is on time payments.

Justin: So, our utilization, just for those is like, what percentage of available credit that you have… (That you’ve used) Yeah, just so make sure.

Scotty: Easy numbers, you got $10,000 in credit. You’re using 3000 of it. That’s 30% if you’re at that 30% threshold, you’re gonna see your scores drop drastically.

Justin: Okay, so with that being said, as someone literally, I told you when I took you on, I went and paid off all my credit cards, whether I needed to or not I just did it because I could. But in your example, I would make the argument what you did was smart, still to this day, (Absolutely) right? Like you leveraged credit so you could go find $80,000 of wholesale fees. So if you do that for 60 days, get your 80 grand just because closing times, etc, pay it off, does it still really hurt you? And if so, how long does it hurt you? What does that look like?

Scotty: Absolutely not so. Of course, it was a sacrifice I made back then. Of course, it turned out in my favor, but it will only hurt you temporarily, because if you were to pay off those credit cards, just like you did recently, that utilization is going to drop and your scores are going to rise. So as long as you’re paying those cards down before the statement date, your scores will reflect that.

Justin: So, giving that in real estate, I’m more like, I support you. This is why we’re going to do a lot of cool stuff together. Like I do want people to use leverage when correct, right? Because it’s an investment in their business if done correctly, buying this watch or buying that watch, dumb, paying for coaching, investing in coaching, investing in marketing, investing in the business, smart, right? (Absolutely). So, keep going along your journey, because what I want people to understand as real estate investors, there is good credit, there’s bad credit, and there’s good debt, there’s bad debt. How would you suggest people to look at this for themselves? Obviously, again, kind of as always, like, I don’t want you to have to sell yourself. I know I work with them. I know what he’s already doing, and his team’s doing for me. So, look them up, get them on Instagram, Youtube, scottytregellas, but what is your first piece of advice? Like you’re speaking of my mastermind tomorrow, (Yeah). What are the first pieces of advice you’re gonna go tell that room.

Scotty: Stop leveraging personal credit for business. Okay, that’s the first thing that I want everyone to stop doing. Of course, I did it and it was it worked out in my favor. But if you do it too long, you will really restrict your entire like, livelihood and business. You’re going to restrict it because it’s going to restrict getting access to more and more capital right? Then you can have, you know, amazing credit when it’s paid off 800 or you can be in, you know the six hundreds, if you have maxed out personal credit, and if you’re in that range of six hundreds, you’ll get denied for everything, (Yeah) but if you have those credit cards paid off, you’ll get approved for everything. So that’s just the biggest difference from using personal credit and not so. Of course, use it if that’s your only option, but temporarily. You really want to shift your focus over to business credit, because the way business credit is scored, it’s only based off of one thing, on time payments. So as long as you’re never late, you’ve got a good score (Yeah). So, you have a Chase Sapphire reserve card on the personal side, it’s going to report the balance of your personal credit. But if you have a Chase Ink preferred on a business credit card, it’s not going to report that balance to your personal credit. You can max that sucker out, yeah, and it will never punish you, as long as you’re never late. So the the focus should be, stop leveraging personal credit. Get access to business credit as quickly as possible, because also, if you can get approved for $10,000 on personal you can get approved for $100,000 on business, right? So having good personal credit and established business credit, you can really see three to 5 extra the credit card limit.

Justin: Someone doesn’t know, first of all, I would tell most people don’t try to do this alone, like anything else, like go get a hold of Scotty, because you might just think you’re getting a good credit card. Because he said, Go get a business credit card. So you go to Wells Fargo and get a business credit card. Don’t do that, because it’s probably not the right card. But if someone’s sitting here saying, I want to start getting business credit cards, I have five personal cards, what do I do? What do they do? Besides come to you, which is what I want them to do, because otherwise they’re because otherwise they’re gonna go to Wells Fargo or Chase and just get the generic card. (Yeah). What can they do?

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Scotty: Man, I see so many people, you know, big players in our industry, either not using credit or (Kinda crazy to me). And if they are, they’re doing it completely wrong, (Right) and I can circle back to that, but I mean, the first thing that you want to do is really build relationships with banks. Okay, so you’ve got all the top tier banks, like Chase, Bank of America, US bank and then, of course, Amex, which isn’t really a bank, but you want to build a relationship with them, and if you have to do so on the personal credit side, great, go after personal credit cards with them, or and, or go open up a business and a personal checking account with those banks, because if you have a relationship with those banks, they’re willing To give you money if they know who you are, right? If you didn’t know me, you wouldn’t lend me money, right? But if we had a relationship, you’d be more optim to lend me money. If we had a really good relationship, you might give me a lot of money. (Yeah). So that’s the goal. The banks work the same way. They want to know who you are. They want to know that you’re credible. Go establish that relationship, okay, of course, maintain good personal credit. Don’t have any derogatories or anything like that. My goal for everyone that I work with, I want to see you above 740 across the board, and then from there, with as far as business credit, at least three to five trade lines. So that’s an 80 paid X score. Okay? And once you’re done.

Justin: What’s a trade line?

Scotty: A trade line is really just a an account that’s reporting to the business credit bureaus.

Justin. Like Home Depot, buy, Best Buy.

Scotty: Like Home Depot, Best Buy Yep, yep, yep, office supply or anything.

Justin: So how many trade lines? Three to five you want three to five trade lines reporting to Dun and Bradstreet and Experian. So three will establish you an 80 paid X score with Dun and Bradstreet, and that’s considered like a perfect, you know, business credit score. It scored from zero to 100, 80 is on time anything above that is you pay it early, so you only need three, and once you have three, you don’t ever have to go back. Those will stay on there forever (Yeah). So just get those three, knock them out and move on.

Justin: By the way, what if you have, like, for me, I have four different charge cards, right? You know that (Yep), effectively the same thing or no?

Scotty: Nope, absolutely not. Good question. Because, very good question. Because a lot of people think, Hey, I have this business credit card. There’s my business trade line. Like, no, no, no, no, those credit cards do not report to Dun and Bradstreet, Experian or Equifax of business credit they do not report. So you have to go and get trade lines that actually report to those bureaus in order to establish a score credit cards don’t.

Justin: Charge cards, even Amex platinum. So where can people go? So you said, Office Depot.

Scotty: Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s ULINE, Grainger, office supplies. I mean, we literally have a list of hundred like, hundreds of them (Yeah). And you know, Tier one is just simple net 30s, where you just go make an account. You can get approved as long as you have your like, business foundation set up correctly. Like, address, everything’s reporting consistently. Like, Secretary of State, IRS, your banks, everything is consistent. Create an account. One of these, like Grainger, ULINE, Quill office, depot, right? Create an account, and then set up a net 30. So basically you’re buying something, and then you have 30 days to pay that off. Once you get that statement, you pay it off. And then they have, like, 30-45, days to report that. And then once it’s reported, boom, you’ve got one, (Yeah). Okay, you only need three. You’ve got your 80 paid X score, move on. So good personal credit 740 plus 80 paid X score, then the bank relationships. And once you have that, our data shows that you’re getting approved for three to 5x the credit card limits.

Justin: Wow. So how does someone break into the real estate space using credit cards to their advantage?

Scotty: Same way I did. Okay, I would not be here, and I’ve made millions of dollars in real estate all because I maxed out two credit cards. But it’s not a perfect story. As business owners, we know it’s a f***** roller coaster. Yeah, right, I’ve failed. I’ve succeeded, and I’ve failed over and over and over again. COVID killed me. I lost $2.4 million in May of what, 2019 COVID killed me, but because I had access to credit, I was able to restart right the interest rate spikes couple years ago killed a lot of people, knocked a lot of people out, out of the bar industry. But guess what? I had hundreds of thousands of dollars that I was able to fund my business and keep going on, right? So, the goal is just to have access to that, to be able to either start, scale or even buy a business.

Justin: I call it having runway, (Absolutely) right? And so I think out of the I think you said there was nine that you sent my way. I think there was four or so that were like, just get these because its a 0% interest rate right? And I think a lot of people don’t even realize it’s still a thing. It’s very much a thing (Yeah), right? I had one of our members of Science of Flipping just got $36,000 on a 0% interest rate credit card like last week. I know interest rates are up, but they gave it to them for 18 months (Yeah), right? I mean, that’s free money. (Yeah), that is the definition of it (Yeah). And if you need marketing runway, if you need just sustainability runway, because things are getting a little wobbly, that’s why you have some of these things. It’s not the perfect answer, but that’s a way to be able to have runway to get through a tough time or even to get ramped up.

Scotty: Right. So, this is how I like to compare it. So put me, or anybody me for an example. Back where I was, I was living in a camper in the middle of the woods in Southeast Kansas. (What the hell) Yeah, when I closed my first deal. Now tell me this and you you’re a mentor to several. I’m sure you’ve heard this. Oh, I’m going to wait to get started until I save up money (Of course), right? If I would have said that in the position I was in in 2016 would I be here today? No. (No chance). It’s way, way easier to get access to $250,000 in credit than it would be to save $250,000 to start your business.

Justin: So, say that louder for people in the back. But what I would say to that is, it is the common rebuttal a coach, a community leader like myself, gets is, I’m gonna wait because they’re short sighted. I mean, go get my first deal by watching YouTube University. From there, I’ll invest in coaching, (Right). Your argument, and you have nothing to make this argument for me for is to take the leap of faith, invest in the coaching so you can fast forward your line to success.

Scotty: Yep, I think the absolutely take the risk. (Right). I mean, it’s easy for me to say because I literally had nothing to lose.

Justin: You’re a proof of it. Yeah, I borrowed not from a credit card, because I couldn’t, because that was, you know? I lost my home foreclosure, repo man took my car, but I borrowed $25,000 from a friend. Same idea. Yeah, I’m about to shoot a private money lending fund your deal course. I’m actually gonna ask you to be a part of it, because it’s really about being able to fund your deal and get access to funding for all things marketing, deal flow, right? You know you can use some credit cards will give you cash advances. What’s your thoughts on that?

Justin: No need. No need. So the thing with cash advances, so for example, I just got approved for a card the other day, I’d get so many (That’s great). But let’s just use like I have a Chase Ink, unlimited, 0% interest for 12 months, the limit is $80,000 and the cash advance is something like seven grand (Okay). What is that seven grand gonna do for us when we’re spending 40 grand a month in PPC? (Nothing). Not much, right? But as soon as I take that cash advance out, one; I lose the 0% interest. Okay, (So that’d be dumb). That’d be dumb, and it’s seven grand is not much. What if they give you?

Justin: What about those credit cards? They give you a check that says here’s 0% interest percent interest check from the credit card that’s 0% interest.

Scotty: So, there is that route

Justin: Like Citizens Bank sends me those right?

Scotty: Yeah, Citizens banks. Awesome, awesome. I’m I don’t have access to Citizens Bank being in Vegas, but here in Florida, or if you’re really in the south southeast region of the country. Citizens Bank is a great one.

Justin: But anyways, so, but those are still 0% so for that example, it probably makes sense.

Scotty: So, what I suggest doing is liquidating, right? So let’s just go back to my Chase Ink unlimited 0% interest for 12 months, $80,000 we’re in real estate. So, let’s talk real estate. If I want to buy a house, can I go to the title company with credit card and swipe? (Nope) No. So if I had $0 but that is one hell of a deal, and I want to take it down. Okay, yeah, we can go get private money. We got to do the pitch. We got to do all this. But damn, and I have that 0% interest card, $80,000 how do I get that? Let’s liquidate it, turn that $80,000 into cash.

Justin: Does it stay 0% interest?

Scotty: 0% interest.

Justin: Is there something like secret sauce?

Scotty: Some secret sauce that you may not say, I have to say out loud, just shoot me a DM, yeah, now. DM, me liquidation, and we can get you that cash in a few days.

Justin: There you go. Good. So, there you go. So that whole 80 grand, though, yeah, you can liquidate all 80 grand at 0% interest, still, maybe some fees, maybe a couple, yeah, processing fees, sure, yeah. And any like crazy terms, like, it’s got to be back in 30 days or No, nothing. It’s the length of the same length of this you ran the credit card at Nordstroms

Scotty: Same.

Justin: Wow.

Scotty:  So what you want? I mean, we can get into the secret sauce if you DM me, that’s liquidation. But we can even set it up to where the merchant that is taking that card is, you know, card specific. So for example, if they always do it on like, MX gold, right? I wouldn’t liquidate an Amex gold. I don’t recommend liquidation with AmEx, but if I was, I would want to be charged something with marketing so I can get 4x rewards. Yeah, since so it’s like, Great, I’m getting cash and I’m getting 4x rewards just because of this. So it’s like, double whammy.

Justin: So one of the things, I think there’s a lot of people that don’t even understand the points game. Let’s talk about that. I live. I did a video a long time on YouTube. Go check that out. I don’t even know the name is, but like I did a seven night stay at the Four Seasons in Maui, first class of the family, $0 right? People like want to brag about their lifestyle, but you have to understand sometimes, when you’re looking at that lifestyle, it doesn’t actually cost anything, because they know how to work the game, right? So let’s talk about some of the hacks that people should be doing, and then DM them to get the real knowledge. Go get my guy. But like, what are some of the hacks? I mean, I know a lot of them, but let’s talk about what people may not know.

Scotty: So, the biggest thing that I’m seeing people do when they think they’re travel hacking.

Justin: By the way, I didn’t want to bring up didn’t mean the cocktails and dinners and lunches and breakfasts were free fast. That still a boatload of money, (Those are pricey), but getting there and sleeping.

Scotty: But flying there first class, staying in the best room for free. We get to ball out a little bit more on those dinners and drinks.

Justin: Yeah, you can afford $48 eggs.

Scotty: Exactly. Welcome them out. (That’s right), Yeah. Well, so the biggest thing that I’m seeing people do, because I have some clients who are spending seven figures a month on credit cards, (Yeah) so they have a ton of points, and they think millions. So they think by just going to Amex portal and booking a flight with their points, that they’re travel hacking and saving money. Well, no, you’re not. You’re actually spending probably about three to 4x the points that you need to. So you’re not saving money at all, because how, like, the point system is scored, it’s one point per penny okay.

Justin: On Amex. If you run the AMEX.

Scotty: Really across the board everywhere, right? So if you booked it within the AMEX or anywhere it’s typically one point per penny, and we’ve gotten upwards to 52 cents per point, (So a lot better than a penny). Yeah. Let’s see. So I went to Norway, so, you know Robert Winsley? (Yeah). Okay, so every year we were somewhere in the world right for New Year’s and Christmas, and this, this past we went to Norway for a month. And so, my wife and I went from Vegas to Norway our flight just one way. We only book one way. There’s cash value was $29,800 just two tickets, first class, one way. I spent $101 now, the point guys out there who are using their they’re booking their flights with just points straight in the portal. They’re like, oh, you probably spent 800,000 points. No, 174,000 points.

Justin: Now, secret there. DM, you.

Scotty: DM me, (I like it), travel. DM, me travel.

Justin: There you go. Yeah, because I, I’m one of those guys. I mean, the reality is that story I just told you about the four seasons for class I did directly line to line through Amex. Yeah. I had 2 million Amex points. I think it cost me a million two or something like that to go do all that the first class of four seasons. But it was direct Amex. So I got, I thought I was like, bro, I got this. Yeah, so you’re saying Justin you…

Scotty: Oh, man, you probably could have went to Maui, like, three times, wow, taking that same vacation at least three times.

Justin: So you’re gonna, now that I’m already working with you, you’re gonna let me in on some of these secret, (Oh, absolutely). I actually have to book a flight to Kauai. Like, soon.

Scotty: I’ll do it for you while I’m here in Miami. (Done). Yeah, (Here), yeah. So, like, that’s actually something that Robert Winsley and I are partnering up on, is a Travel Concierge Service, (Yeah). You know, like, for the top investor lift clients, for our friends and colleagues that are traveling like me, I’m doing ton of traveling now domestic.

Justin: I think the rest of people can pay you, right?

Scotty: And, of course, yeah, hey, if you want to, you know, concierge, we’ll literally book everything for you, right? There are some qualifications as far as, like, spending credit cards credit you have to qualify for this service. But we will literally tell you, just like I did with you. Hey, you need these cards. Yeah, apply for these, this way. Once you have them, you need to spend them this way. Oh, you have a trip coming up. Great. You text this number. We’re called Alfred, like Batman, Batman, right? (I love that) So you’re gonna text Alfred, and then we’re just gonna send you back a whole itinerary of here’s your trip.

Justin: So, I give you like this is real time. I need to book a basically a week long stay in Kauai in November. I would tell you the dates, I would tell you what credit card points I have where, or even give you access to them.

Scotty: We’ll know all that. You don’t need to tell me anything except for the trip that you want to take, because it’s kind of a three step onboarding process. One, an application. Once you’re in, you’re in, and then two, is basically an onboarding we’ll have all your information. So, like, you’re we won’t have like, your bank account information. (Right). But like, Chase and AmEx, they have separate portals, right?

Justin: Of course. My bookkeeper has all the portals. He can see everything.

Scotty: So, we have that we know how many points you have, and we’ll be able to leverage everything. You just simply put in a travel request form. Say, Hey, Scotty, we want to go here for a week long. Here’s where our preference is, and then we book it. Send you back the itinerary.

Justin: This is great. So you will be able to help people actually understand the points game, because I think it’s underutilized, not just in real estate investors. I’m just saying in general, people don’t. They get credit cards because they just get credit cards right? In to some extent, I’m that guy, meaning I fly American a ton. So I have three different American Airlines credit cards because they kept giving me like, 60,000 free points. When you spend the first three grand, I’m like, I spend three grand a day, all right, so that’s done. So I just kept applying because I got free points. While there’s some goodness to that, you’re just saying it’s not really the right way to work this system, because I can get just a Chase card that’s not connected American. I get way more points. You’re able to use those points on different platforms, and I can get 4x what I would be doing, one for one on one.

Scotty: Exactly. So, I don’t have any airline cards, (Alright). So, I do have hotel. You don’t want to go after, like, airline and hotel until you’re chasing status, right? So, for example, like, we’ve got the platinum. Everyone really has the platinum, and they think it’s super baller having the platinum. And, like, I laugh when people throw that down on the table. It’s like, well, you know what? You’re getting one point for dollar. I’m throwing my gold where I’m getting four points, right? So, but with the travel cards, the way to travel hack is being able to, like, manipulate the points and send them out to, obviously get more value out of them, but with like, specific airline hotel cards, they’re locked in. So you have American you cannot use those American Airline points anywhere outside of American airlines, (That’s right), right? So, you’re kind of glued there. But if you used your gold, your Amex, and you had all those points within your you know your portal there. You can transfer those out to United, anywhere so.

Justin: Anywhere and to your point, I wouldn’t want to do it through American. I would do it in a different. I don’t know how you make all your magic work, but essentially you say, Justin, you have a million five Amex points. So, I think I’m somewhere around there. I don’t even know where I’m at. I’m gonna go book you on united to Kauai. Don’t worry about it, but it’s probably not going from Amex directly to United. Is that correct?

Scotty: It might. It might go to a partner. So for example, I have most of my status and relationship with United (Sure). So, my trip overseas was through United, but I flew with KLM so Air France (Got it. Yeah), right. So, it’s like they do partner, (Yep), yeah. And that’s another thing, is just being aware of transfer bonuses. So what is today? The first so yesterday was the very last day to be able to transfer Chase points to KLM, so Air France for 25% bonus. So, if you had 100,000 points in Chase, and you transfer them over to Air France, you would now have 125,000 points. Now remember mine and my wife’s trip flying KLM, 20 $30,000 flight was only 144,000 give or take, or 174 something like that. Something like that, right? So, there you go. You start to realize the value of the points when they’re transferred and manipulate.

Justin: So, when you can do that, now you’re really doing a second level of hacking, which is like there’s transfer bonuses that, if you know you’re going to Kauai and you would say, Justin, we have till the end of April, right? Today is May, 1 transfer this 100 grand over to KLM, because we’re gonna book you on KLM to Kauai. You’re gonna get for the 100 grand, you’re getting $125,000 or 125,000 points, yeah, knowing that kind of stuff, is a second level. And you would just tell your client, Justin, you got to do this now because this thing is…

Scotty: Yes, so real world scenario this is what I would do, and this is like what I did with my wife, because our next big month long vacation is going to be Switzerland.

Justin: Okay, can you go bring us back some watches? Please?

Scotty: Absolutely.

Justin: So hard to get out here.

Scotty: I know I know me.

Justin: Get me the damn new lemons I need it.

Scotty: Okay, I’m gonna go find the meteorite (Done). I’ll find yours.

Justin: You can get your meteorite. I’ll get the lemons.

Scotty: Say less (Done). Awesome. Yeah, Winsley and I have a little Switzerland date going on, so we’re gonna go buy watches together. I’ll pick yours up on a zero % interest card.

Justin: Yes, and then you’ll get the points, about the point in cash, yep, yep.

Scotty: Hacking guys, (Right) DM me, no, but so it’s like I said, Rachel, Hey, are we going to Switzerland this year? Because there’s this transfer bonus going on right now, and this is exactly what I would do with like my clients. So we had to sit down and talk. This is what I would do with you. Hey, because KLM there France, it’s good for like Europe or Middle East. (Okay). So, I’d say Justin, do you plan on going Middle East or anywhere in Europe at all this year? If not, then we’re gonna keep our points in Chase. If so, we’re gonna transfer these out for this bonus. You don’t have to plan a trip or anything, but we’re just going to park them over there for a 25% bonus. (That’s right). And with us, I was like, I’m traveling literally every other weekend for like events and stuff like that this year. Let’s not travel heavily out of the country. Let’s just focus on this this year. And so, we didn’t kind of transferring. Another thing, a lot of people are, I’m going to like a lot of events, and I have a clients like, hey, Scotty, will you? Will you book a trip from, you know, Houston to Cancun? I’m like, no, no. So, here’s what I do when I’m flying domestic. I pay for all my flights. Okay? So, if you’re flying domestic, fly with your preferred airline, right that way you’re stacking point and use the correct credit card. So for example, from Vegas to Miami, I flew American, (But you paid for it.) and I paid for it (With the right credit card because I’m probably getting 2, 3, 4X the points anyway). So 5x (Okay), I use the platinum my business card, Platinum within the portal. Okay, not in American Airlines, but within the Amex portal. Okay, so I log into the Amex postal. (Got it) Okay. Now you might see a little bit of $1 difference. It might be a little bit more expensive, maybe, you know, 40,50 bucks maybe 100 whatever. But outside of the portal, you’re getting 3x points. Inside of the portal, you’re getting 5x points for 40 more bucks, whatever, right?

Justin: Dude, there are so many hacks. This is wild. I thought I knew the game.

Scotty: So there’s just so many ways just continuously rack up points.

Justin: So kind of getting back to real estate, just because we could go in this deep dive, right? But if someone’s in real estate investing, or wants to or is aspiring, the first point you’d make is charges to the game and get a coach to teach you what really to do. (Yes). So you can get to the front of the line, so you can learn what really actually works to get a deal, versus trying to do it on YouTube University, use the right credit cards on something like that. But even then, if they don’t have a business credit card, would you make them go do that? Or could they go get a new personal credit card and you get 0% like when you want them to go get more cards, no matter what?

Scotty: Absolutely, absolutely because, I mean, I’ve got, I think now, over 70. 10 out of 28, yeah, and say, You, I doubt they have more than me, so I’m always going to encourage them to get more.

Justin: Is there a point of like it’s gonna hurt you?

Scotty: No, absolutely, not absolutely

Justin: Because the more credit lines, the better your credit profile.

Scotty: Absolutely.

Justin: When I was broke I had a credit coach, right? Because he had to get me back going. He’s like, what people underestimate is the credit profile. They care. They think the credit score is the best thing. But if you have no profile and you have an 800 credit score, people still, banks still won’t lend you money because you have no history of borrowing it or giving it back.

Scotty: Yep. We’re actually helping someone right now. He was using personal credit. We stopped him from that. His scores are around 760 now, and he’s still getting denied on business credit, because he only has one personal credit card, right? So it’s like, hey, we have to follow the process and the blueprint that I’ve laid down, and we have to slow down, to speed up and go focus on step one is, that’s your personal profile. There’s you, you the business owner, are the foundation of everything so.

Justin: So you cut a check to get a coach learn how to do it, go out there and do it. What are the reasons and what strategy should they be using with even like I know you told me to go into a certain bank here in Florida, open up a bank account. What strategies should aspiring real estate investors, or even active real estate investors, be doing with all of this?

Justin: So, I think the best strategy would be to not just like application, dump too many cards, because first, like you we could go out and get 20 cards right now, but we don’t need 20 cards (Right). The whole point of having credit is to have that, like risk tolerance, where it’s like, okay, if COVID happens again, do I have more available credit over here? And if not, can I go get access to that credit and it still be on 0% right? So, for example, if that $80,000 Chase Card is completely maxed out. Now the interest rate is over, it’s like, what do I do? Oh, no, what if I can’t pay that off? Well, guess what? I can go out and get access to more 0% interest and roll that balance over to that new 0% interest, right? So, everything can just continue rolling over to 0% so the strategy for real estate investors would be, obviously, stop using your personal credit, start leveraging business credit, but in a very strategic way. It’s, I think this is one of the most important things that people it’s really hard to see on the surface, is, if you apply out of order, then it can really restrict you on what you can get access one two years down the road. And that’s why it’s like, I built the perfect credit stacking blueprint, and I’m actually going to be sharing that tomorrow (Yeah). And if you’re you know, still around on this podcast, you can actually get access to that here.

Justin: Oh, they’re around. Awesome. Hit up Scotty. So first thing they need to do build business credit. First thing there is go get the line trade lines, which is the Best Buy, Home Depot, Quill, etc. Then what business credit cards or lines of credit should there be?

Scotty: So, the first one that I’d recommend going to is always build a relationship with Chase Bank. Chase first, okay, to me, they have the best credit cards out there. They may not be the best bank, but the best credit cards. Remember, we’re going after the record. That’s right, all right. So it depends, right? So for for someone in like our position, 0% may not be the focus, but someone just starting out 0% true, you have to make that decision. Do you want more rewards for what you’re already spending money on? Great. Marketing? Cool. Go get the ink preferred card. But if you are a 0% interest person right now, go after the ink unlimited card. But remember, there’s, there’s bank rules that you have to be aware of. For example, there’s three Chase credit cards. And of course, the premier, which is a charge card, just like a card, just like a platinum, but the three cards are the ink unlimited, ink preferred and the ink cash you Justin. Can only have two of those three, all right. So, you have to pick and choose between. Do you want more rewards on the marketing spend the preferred, or do you want the 0% interest? Okay, so you’ll pick one three months down the road you can go get that cash. That ink cash (So I get two of the three). You get two of the three. But if you had a wife that was equity partner or a business partner, let’s talk about double stacking. All right, so which car did you pick the unlimited or the preferred (Unlimited). Okay, so you’ve got the unlimited and the cash. All right, your partner is going to, it’s been PPC marketing. He’s gonna go get the preferred. Same day. (Yeah). Same business. Okay, so now you both literally just got the preferred and the unlimited.

Justin: I have my wife on my LLC, Docs,

Scotty: Boom! I’m thinking about adding mine too.

Justin: I don’t believe in it, but I might do that just for this one example.

Scotty: Yeah, yeah. So, okay, yeah, I’m a sole owner of all my companies, so it’s like, I get so excited when people have, like, their wives or business partners. I’m like, hell yeah, we’re literally going to double and triple the amount of funding we can get access to.

Justin: That’s insane. Yeah, this is wild dude. Here’s what I want. I want to stop here. Why? Because I want them to reach out to you. I want you guys to all go get him on Instagram. Scotty Tregellas, YouTube. Scotty Tregellas, he gave you some words to drop in his DMs. He has my business. I’m his client. If it’s good enough for me, he’s damn sure good enough for you guys. Appreciate you being here, man, let’s go. I’ve helped people understand credit in a bigger, much bigger way than they do now.

Scotty: Absolutely. Let’s do it.

Justin: All right, y’all that’s it for today. We will see. On the next episode, peace.

Pursuing Purpose Over Passion | Mikey Taylor

Justin: What is up? Entrepreneur DNA family, as always, I have a high powered guest with me. He’s a friend of mine. He’s been in my world now for probably going on almost a decade. Very close to it, he is an incredible real estate investor. He’s a business owner, he’s an angel investor, he’s a professional skateboarder. Mikey Taylor, in the house, what’s up brother?

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Mikey: Hey, what’s going on? Good to see you. I mean, I wish it was in real life, but I’ll take the digital version.

Justin: We’ll do it. We’ll figure it out. I mean, we are coast to coast, so we will, we’ll find a way to get together and knock some more of these things out. Dude, I’m gonna jump in. I think you’re one of the more dynamic people that we have in the space of being an influencer, being a business owner, being in real estate, my audience is here to learn how to start, grow and scale businesses. Is all about entrepreneurship, regardless of the vertical. You’re now a politician. Forgot to mention that in your intro. So that’s fun.

Mikey: Don’t turn the show off once you hear that.

Justin: But dude, listen, you started out as a skateboarder turned pro, followed your passion, and here we are with the accolades that I just kind of mentioned. Let’s start with your passion, the skateboarding. And then how in the hell do you take something that is the passion of your life and say, You know what, I’m going to flip it and we are going to get into business, and I’m going to go this route and become wildly successful?

Mikey: So it I kind of lucked out. I’m not gonna lie like it’s very rare for a passion to turn into a career. And I would have probably told you 10 years ago, find the thing you love and then figure out how to monetize it. I’ve completely flipped my stance on it. So I started skateboarding. I fell in love with it. I didn’t want it to end. Luckily, I had a pretty big entrepreneurial spirit in me that I wasn’t even aware was a thing. And then I just went out there and sold like I tried to get, you know, sponsors to give me free product. I took the product, sold it to my friends in the neighborhood. Then I started getting recognition in the magazines, then I had demand, and then I created product to sell off that demand. It was kind of the perfect storm. But now, if you ask me, I actually don’t think you should make a passion your career. I think actually purpose is more important, figuring out why you’re on this earth and what you’re meant to do, and then tie in business opportunities to that, because it’s too easy for a passion to turn into a hobby that doesn’t generate any money. And so I’ve kind of now separated the two. I do the things I love, I don’t even worry about making money, and then I try to align my purpose with, you know, what I’m spending my day to day time on

Justin: You know? So, I’ll add a layer to that. To me, it is the same when people ask me, you know, should I go into business with my loved one, my wife, my husband, whatever, my brother, my sister? My answer is no, for kind of, probably the same reason that you kind of say, don’t follow the passion and turn that into a business go, you know, have fun with your passion same thing. Like, I don’t believe in now, that’s just me. Like, I don’t want to have my wife be my business partner, because then we have to have these terrible dinners where we have to go over P and L’s and tough months and great months. And I’m like, God, I just want to love on you and let you be my light at the end of the day, not like crap. We still have to knock out this meeting, but I’m saying that just to say I also agree with you. I’ve seen too many people that go after passion. They lose their passion, because now it becomes work. Now they don’t have the thing of passion, which leads to your purpose, comment, and now where’s their purpose? Because they lost their passion, and I tend to agree with you wholeheartedly. Now was the transition from sports skateboarding, going into business just a brutal grind? Was it just kind of, you know, throw it against the wall, see if it sticks type of idea? How did that transition happen?

Mikey: Yeah, so it the transit, the first transition. So I went from being a pro skateboarder to starting my first business, which was a craft brewery. So two completely different spaces. The transition wasn’t as hard as I thought, and I think that’s because of two factors. One, I was naive. So I just believed that, like anything was possible, and I didn’t totally know how hard the business was going to be. So I went in it willing to get it done. And then I would say, probably the second factor is skateboarders and maybe just pro athletes in general. You’re competitive like you are used to putting everything on the line to succeed and looking at the person next to you who’s trying to do the same exact thing and trying to get one up on them. Right? That environment makes maybe difficulty and challenge very familiar. It’s a very common feeling for us, and that’s what business feels like, like business truthfully feels like nothing’s working. It’s an emotional roller coaster. You feel like you get a win one day and then the next day it’s a total L. Yeah, it’s just, (Yeah), it’s a little bit psycho, and that was normal for me, that that’s like what I experienced on a daily basis. And so the transition wasn’t that bad. The biggest thing I had to learn was working with people like coming from a from being a pro athlete, I was in charge of myself. I negotiated all my deals. I went out, you know, lined up a filmer and a photographer. It was me. I was in control of my, you know, success in a sense. So maybe if you’re in business, I would be the solopreneur. And then when I started my first company, you know, we brought a team on from the beginning. And so I really had to learn how to manage people. And really what that meant is I had to learn how to be a good leader, and I wasn’t a good leader prior to that.

Justin: Well, that’s because you were being a skateboarder as a solo sport, right? And so you don’t have the team, you don’t have the leadership. But you were, you raised yourself within skateboarding as being the solopreneur in skateboarding, right? And so, you hired everything. You were the dishwasher, you were the CEO, you were the plumber. And so that transition is probably pretty normal. And by the way, you would probably agree this. I think that’s everyone’s start of business, and it should be, you need to be, quite literally, everything. You need to be the plumber, you need to be the CEO, you need to be the accountant, you need to be the, you know, dishwasher, because that’s the only way for you to really start a business. The question becomes, when you were starting the hustle while still skateboarding, how did you find time? How did you make that work? I asked because I think a lot of our listeners and people that are watching on YouTube and everywhere else are they probably have a W2. They’re trying to, trying to either figure out how to break into entrepreneurship, or they are an entrepreneur and wouldn’t need to figure out how to scale it. So how did you make that work with a full time, crazy ass schedule, like skateboarding?

Mikey: Okay, so you know, I’ll start by telling you my model of success and what I really drove while I was skateboarding, which was just out work, like my whole thing was, like, if the person next to me is willing to put in five hours, I’m putting in eight, like just be more than everyone else. And when I got towards the later half of my career, maybe I had four or five years left, I made the decision that I could give up some of the time that I was putting into skateboarding and allocate that into a business. And I felt like the time I was still putting into skateboarding was somewhat competitive with everyone else, but I wasn’t able to run the business by myself, so I had to bring people in from the beginning, right? I had limited time. So I guess the best way to say it is this, you can either hire the help, or you can educate yourself and do everything you. And I made the decision to leverage people and have them cover the time that I didn’t have. I had to give up equity to do that. We had to give up revenue to do that. But that was my plan, so that I could create a business and spend, let’s say, 50% of my time there and still have, you know what would be the last four years of my skate career, and put time there. So I brought in people and leveraged people.

Justin: You bring up a great point that I mentioned a lot. You can spend time or you can spend money, right? And sometimes you spend both, but my guess you probably didn’t take a very big paycheck for the first couple years of that startup business.

Mikey: I didn’t. I paid myself zero.

Justin: There you go. That’s what I wanted to hear. Because I think a lot of people don’t even understand that. They don’t understand the sacrifice, right? Is to start a business. It takes so much sacrifice to your point, it’s basically crazy. I told my wife the other day is like, are you ready for me to just go be a bartender on a beach? Like, no brains, no headaches, no worries. Like, we’re out. Like, you ready for this? Because that’s the reality is, like, what we do as entrepreneurs, it is a special breed that can really make it, in the sense that you’ve been able to make it, and part of that is the sacrifice of even income, right? I would say, for the first year, I didn’t take $1 out of my real estate investing business because there was no money, right?

Mikey: Yep, that’s right. So, you pose the question about, what do people do that have a W2 job and want to create something? It’s actually a perfect segue, right? Bring people on to help you build it, and don’t pay yourself, right? You’re, you’re paying yourself on the back end with your equity, right? Just keep in mind, there’s two times to get paid on the front end or on the back end, and the back end is always the highest potential for it to be much greater. And so you have a perfect scenario where you have income coming in, you’re going to have to put some time, extra time, into the business, but it’s not going to be enough for you to build the thing on your own. So bring partners in. I’m actually a big believer in that.

Justin: Yeah, I actually more and more and more a big believer in that the older I get and the more opportunities I have. The starting a business to sell you were able to exit that right and have a nice payday there. Was that by chance or was that, like, fully intentional? I’m gonna build this Brewer company to a place where a bigger distributor type company, I forget you sold to but Anheuser Busch or (Something we sold to Coors, no, course, Coors) Yeah. So, Coors bought you. Like, Was that intentional? Or did you just kind of catch the wave of momentum and just kept riding it?

Mikey: Yeah? So, when we started the brewery, myself and my enough money to start it ourselves, so we had to go basically raise money from investors. It’s the first time I’ve ever raised money, and I learned very quickly that every single investor is going to ask you, how do I make money? How do I get paid back? And you really have two options to present to them. It’s either one, you’re going to drive at an exit, or two, you’re going to build a cash flowing business, right? There’s going to be dividends and potentially a sale down the road. The strategy that we presented is that we were going to build something to sell, and so from the beginning, you know, and we had multiple capital raises along the way. It was us stepping on the gas. It was raise money to build out our infrastructure, to build more, you know, bigger team, to get more product on the market. And that was it. We stepped on the gas for three and a half years. And then because of that, and I think our thesis and our philosophy of of what the opportunity was, we were very desirable. I mean, it was, you know, Budweiser and Miller Coors weren’t a bidding war for us, and it just kept going like this, right? So to answer your question, we built it to sell. We had the right idea at the right time, and we executed on it.

Justin: What? Just out of pure curiosity, what makes a beer company buyable, right? Like, besides the flavor of the beer. Like, I you know, is your label better? You have a cool label, and they just want it, like, what makes that beer besides the actual taste?

Mikey: Okay? So you have, there’s two different viewpoints on this one, right? I would say, for most of the buyers, like, when you’re talking about a Budweiser or Miller Coors, you could take it to any other industry. What they’re really looking for is how much demand does your company have, and what’s our ability to scale it, or what? How can we add distribution on top of your machine? Right? For us, this was the thesis at that time, every brewery was, it was all about, like, high alcohol beers. It was like a double IPA that you would drink one beer put you like, it felt like you had a steak dinner, right? And all of the emphasis was on the beer. And so we came in and went, you know what? Let’s flip the script, like, let’s make beer easy to drink, which was suicide for the craft beer industry, because the craft beer industry looked at beer as a specialty. And if you created a beer that was easily drinkable, that felt like it was no longer a craft beer, you were one of these, like Miller, Coors, like light, you know, lagers, sure, but our view was no you could still make a good beer that’s easy to drink. And then on top of that, we put more emphasis on the brand. So we didn’t want the liquid itself to sell. We wanted to create a community and an experience, so that when people drink our beer, they felt something about it. You know, the message that we were communicating is when you’re drinking a Saint Archer, that was our beer company, you are a part of California, but you’re a part of California through the lens that we see it, which is surf, skate, snow, music, art, culture, that’s our lane. That’s our vibe. If you’re one of us, you’re about it. And so what that ended up doing is it created a ton of demand, and we held it in California. So, our idea was, if we own California and create demand throughout the entire country, then when a company comes to acquire us, they’re gonna go, Wait a minute. You guys have demand in every other state, and you don’t offer it, okay. We’re gonna get behind you. We’re gonna buy it, we’re gonna open up distribution, and that’s how we’re gonna make our money. So that was our thesis. It worked. (It worked). And yeah.

Justin; How many years did you have to be in the trenches, 36 months?

Mikey: It was about three and a half years in the trenches. And then we all lasted about a year after they bought us, and then we all left.

Justin: You left or they, they said, Goodbye?

Mikey: Not a good fit. It was, no, we all left. It like, look, selling a business is awesome. It’s really awesome if you have investors. But no one can run your business like you can. And it’s it’s hard to find a buyer that’s gonna allow you to do your thing. Very common, the buyer comes in, and all of a sudden they run your business like they run every other business. And then you ruin the thing that got you there, you know. So unfortunately that happened.

Justin: All right? So you have this, this crazy life faltering event. You have an actual exit, which is very, very hard, as you’re well aware. What’s the next step? Now, do you kind of go off in the wilderness for a little bit and do some soul searching? Or where do you go from here?

Mikey: I took about eight months, and it was soul searching. It was absolutely soul searching. You know, I had to work through some emotional issues that I just wasn’t aware of. It’s very common for pro athletes, but you know, for us, our sport becomes our identity, right? Like I always viewed myself as Mikey Taylor, the skater, and then, you know, to take it even further, the pro skateboarder. And so when you lose that, you know, very often, we feel like we lose ourselves. And so I had to kind of find myself. I had to discover who I really was. And you know what the point of all of this is? And that took about eight months. And then after that, I felt like I was finally in a position to create the right business that complimented my purpose, as opposed to trying to start a business to become my new identity. And that business ended up being a private equity real estate firm. So I started a company where we were going to go out and raise money from investors who wanted to invest in real estate and earn passive income, and, you know, build their wealth through appreciation and get some, you know, tax help. But didn’t want to do the work. And so we started that the two asset classes we focus on are similar to, you, multifamily and storage. And it’s been, you know, again, stepping on the gas,

Justin: Yeah. It’s, it’s been a fun road. I mean, you know, listen, I think it’d be interesting to hear, you know, your projections of what’s going to happen next 24 months. But building a company like that, where did you start? You kind of have this idea now, what’s your starting box? Where do you go from there? (On the new company?) No, just the when you started the?

Mikey: Private equity firm, Commune, yeah, private equity. Okay. So basically, like, I know what I’m good at, like I know my skill set. I know what I’m not good at, and what I am not is I am not an operator. I am not the person who’s going to make sure we’re being efficient and creating systems and managing those systems, not me. And so whenever I start a business, my first person I’m bringing on is going to be, ultimately the COO I need to find the person that’s going to keep my ideas and my energy moving in a straight and forward path. And so I looked for that person, and then the second person I looked for was the analytical type. I wanted somebody who was a monster when it come to, you know, underwriting deals, creating, you know, complex structures, that was going to be another key component to this. So I went out and found those two and then I looked for somebody that was going to manage all of our development. And then from there, we started building the business. And then the second we could bring people on to help, we started doing that.

Justin: And you were just acquiring assets at the point apartments, storage.

Mikey: Well, what, what we look for? And I think this comes back to the entrepreneur. I mean, I want to build stuff like I like creating. And so our thesis on multifamily, we want dead assets that are not producing revenue. We want to scrape them, and we want to build new apartments. On the storage side I want something similar. I want a big box retailer like Kmart, or a Bed Bath and Beyond that went vacant that doesn’t have any revenue coming in. I want to buy it, and I want to repurpose it into storage. So we’re a group that is very willing to do the hard work, because, quite frankly, I want bigger returns than the market has to offer.

Justin: Oh, there’s no doubt in that that, again, Toys “R” Us, or Walmart or whatever. What a great model where you in, you build out the interior of those stores to be storage facilities. I just think that model is incredible. But to your point, you know, a heavy financial lift out of the gate. I mean, you’re, you’re not raising a million or two, right? You’re really going for it. Oh, yeah, big raises. What’s, what’s been your most fun, enjoyable project for your private equity so far?

Mikey: Good question. We had a really hard one. It’s always the hard ones that you remember. It’s never the easy ones.

Justin: That’s a funny I answer the same way a lot of times.

Mikey: Yeah, we had one a few years ago that it was three vacant apartment buildings right next to each other in a really desirable, like high end market. And we came in, we were gonna, you know, we worked out a deal to keep the owner in the deal, and we’re gonna scrape the apartments build, you know, one big structure on it. And in the ninth inning, it looked like it was all gonna fall apart. And so, you know, we looked at the partners and went, What the heck are we gonna do? We were up all night with our attorneys, which. Meant a very, very expensive night, and we got very creative with the financing, and we ended up basically getting the deal done. We got all the investors in. We started building it. We’re about four months away from completion, but that was one of those deals that reminded me why everyone doesn’t do this like the it was, that was a hard one. So I remember that one, and then we have one deal right now that I’m really excited about. It’s a it was a boat yard in a market called Ventura. It’s, you know, one of the most undersupplied cities in the entire country, and it’s just now starting to blow up. And so we have a couple projects out there where I think we’re perfect timing. The demand is super offset on where supply is. The city is finally going, please build. And it’s close to my backyard. It’s 20 minutes away. So we have a handful of stuff out there that I’m really excited about. But the project we did in Mar VISTA was one of the more complex and difficult deals to do.

Justin; That’s always the best answers is when you go and you say, well, it was probably the one where you know whether you lost money or more complex or is just the toughest one those. That’s the reality. Kind of, getting back to this entrepreneurship, everyone who’s in business right now knows those days, the dog days, the days are long, the years are short. Type of concept, what is, what’s your big push right now? And by the way, if you guys are liking Mikey, you need to be liking him. You need to be following them all over Tiktok, big following on Tiktok, big following on Instagram. He puts out incredible content, so make sure you do that. Where else do they want? Where else do you want to drive them real quick?

Mikey: You can find me at any platform. Just Mikey Taylor. Our company is Commune Capital. We’re on all the other platforms as well. So if you want to learn about investing, we put out a lot of content that’s educational. And if you’re looking for a group to invest with, do your research on us. See if we’re a good fit. And you know, I’d love to tell you about it so you can find us through any platform as well. You know, what’s the what’s Why am I driving so hard right now? That was the question?

Justin: Yeah, four kids, multiple businesses, just going for it in politics.

Mikey: So, I have this, I have this personal view that we were all given our talents by God to go out and use and I think he has this idea of what we look like when we capture as close to our potential as possible. And so I don’t know I want to finish the race and go I got as close to that example as I possibly could. It’s exhausting. It’s hard. I would say, out of everything I’m doing, the hardest thing is probably the parenting. It’s difficult being a dad. You know you’re building up the next generation, and they catch some of your qualities, and they catch all your flaws. And so that’s humbling by nature, I would say, for the business, this is probably the most unique opportunity I have seen in my investing lifetime. In the last 20 something years, I’ve never seen anything like this. And you know what that means, specifically to what we’re doing, there is the most extreme housing shortage that many of these states have ever seen. That is not normal. And you know, 2008 I was investing looking back, I wish I could have gone back to 2008 and went after it as hard as I possibly could. And so not knowing how long this moment is going to last, where supply is so below demand, it’s difficult to get deals done. I want to finish this race and go, Oh my gosh. We went after it as hard as we could. We got 20 new properties at a discount, as opposed to five. And so we’re really trying to capture the opportunity. We’re doing more deals than we’ve ever done. It is difficult to do them, though, in the moments where it’s challenging, it means deal flow is up and it means it’s hard. It’s never easy in the good opportunities. So our heads are down. We are as a firm, really, really going for it right now.

Justin: No, I’d love to hear that. I think I feel the same way. You know, it is. I’d actually the secondary question to that is, where do you think the real estate market, the financial market, the interest rates? Where do you see them? And no one has a crystal ball. I get that right, (Yeah). Where do you see them going over the next let’s call it 24 months. What do you think it looks like?

Mikey: Okay, so I, I have never been, the interest rate thing. I think interest rates are staying. I don’t think they’re coming down like everybody thought. If I were to guess, and I could totally be wrong, I’m not sure we’ll see the interest rates we saw in 21 ever again. I think that was probably a once in a lifetime opportunity. I think interest rates of 4 ½%-5%. What’s the real estate market going to look like? It depends on the sector. If you’re in office, I think you are smoked. I don’t think there’s any. I don’t think there’s anything in the near future that looks like we’re going to get it get out okay. I think it’s going to be a decade of trying to figure out this asset class, if you’re in storage, if you’re in multifamily, even single family, right? I think we’re totally fine, as long as you know how to do this. If you’re a group that understands that things don’t go right, and you’re planning for the unexpected, and you’re removing as many of the options that are going to force a sell you are going to do so fine. I mean, look at, look at Blackstone. Blackstone just committed, what, 10 billion into multifamily like, if you have a long-term outlook, and you know how to do this, I think you’re going to make a lot of money for a long time.

Justin: Yeah, I think at the end of the day, the, you know, Wall Street money is gonna keep coming. I know. I just, I just posted a real deal article that said, like, the House or the Senate or whatever, is trying to stop them from being able to buy single family homes and and that, just, in my opinion, anything could happen. You’re in politics, you would know, but like no chance they have the checkbook, they keep the people in office, so they’re gonna be able to buy as much as they want of any asset class, because that’s how those people stay in office. So they’re gonna say, no, we want 10 billion worth of multi family. So we’re gonna go get it. (Yeah, that’s right) But I follow that money. Go ahead.

Mikey:  I do the same thing. I follow the money, right? Like, you know, look, look, we talked about smart money and dumb money, right? The smart money is long term. They don’t look at things on a five year hold. They’re gonna look at things at a 10 year hold, right? They’re looking at a 20 to 30 year outlook when you’re playing the long game, like a legacy Outlook to it is very hard to lose, or, I should say it’s much harder to lose. So, you know, you talk about some of the people getting impacted right now, because I think this is a great opportunity. It does not mean everyone is winning in real estate. You have a lot of syndicators right now that were buying product on bridge debt that had some type of value add. They were in, you know, these Midwest or southern markets, because they were hot, they are getting smoked right now. They are no longer doing distributions. They’re doing capital calls. They’re having to restructure their debt. I mean, you are that’s a very different experience for investors that went there than what I think a lot of the smart money is doing. So just keep in mind that because there’s an opportunity. That doesn’t mean everyone’s making money. It doesn’t mean everyone’s doing well, like, it’s usually the short-term outlook, which we all fall victim to, which brings on a lot of risks, and which ultimately means you have the potential of losing money.

Justin: Yeah. I mean, listen, starting a business in general, you have the potential losing a lot of money, right? Lot of money, energy and time, and so whether you’re in real estate or otherwise, you always have to know the risk. And what I think is what people should be hearing, that he’s not saying directly, is just don’t have the microwave society, immediate gratification outlook on this. If you have the longer-term outlook, and in the single family space, that would be more of a BRRRR model, buy it, remodel it, refinance, rent and refinance, right? You’re just gonna hold it for a long time, but you forced appreciation through the renovations. That is a better business model than, you know, just a hope and a prayer, right? I love fix and flipping, but, you know, at the end of the day, if you can withstand slowly building and accumulating wealth. Then there’s your model. I have something that I try to do, which is I try to accumulate the smaller priced assets for an exit, to go into the bigger assets, to go exit those, to go into even larger assets. But it’s because it’ll have the equity. So would you agree that some of this smart money is because they can create the equity, because then you don’t have to get forced to sell, regardless of the economy, is get something that has a lot of equity.

Mikey: I’m a look, I’m a big believer in that. I mean, the if you can create value, you can create wealth, right? Whether that’s business, whether that’s real estate, I’m a huge, huge believer in that. So, yeah, the more equity you have in something, the less the market has no the more the market has to drop for you to lose money, right? I mean, you have 50% equity in a deal, the market turns by 10% you’re not tripping at all. So it is always safer to have more equity 100% and I think, you know, you touch on something important, like, you know, for you, for example, you’ve been doing this a long time. Do things go wrong on a deal?

Justin: Of course.

Mikey: Of course.

Justin: Every time, just every time.

Mikey: So, when you move forward on a deal, you’ve been doing this long enough where you’re going to look at all the potential factors, and you’re going to plan for them, right? And if you still have a project that can succeed or survive with adversity, you move forward. The challenge is, for a lot of new investors, they look at the market, they look at people making money, and they go, I have to get in. And the fact that they’re not in yet, there’s an extra emotional push to make you basically get your first deal. And a lot of times they buy a crappy deal, which means everything has to go perfectly, right or you’re losing money. And that is a one in a million type of shot. And so that’s more what I’m referring to. It’s it’s just the, unfortunately, the newer, inexperienced investors that don’t know that things go wrong and don’t have the discipline created yet to say no.

Justin: Yeah, you know that is the hardest, even for myself, saying no, is that one of the harder things that I have to do? I have a great deal like today, for example, I get sent to deal in West Palm Beach. The numbers look great, but it’s a stick built, not a brick built. And I’m just like, that is the one thing I didn’t want to see on that property, right? And so you go, God, okay, well, what is the biggest downside and what is my downside risk? And you have to figure out if I’m going to say yes to that. I have to be willing to take this downside risk and to be able to willing to have this lower return, or whatever the case may be. What’s next for Mikey Taylor, where are you going, like we just joked about, but you are actually in politics. You have a city council role, but what is the next, you know, finishing out this decade? What are the 2020s look like for Mikey Taylor?

Mikey: Okay, I have three factors, I guess. I have the dad, the business owner, and then the, you know, Councilman on the dad side, my two oldest girls, which are nine and 11, I’m going to be entering the teen stages, you know, in the next 10 years, my oldest is going to be 21 and so, yeah, it’s going to be a lot of emphasis on, on making sure we’re instilling the foundation that is going to put them in a position where when they get thrown curve balls, or they get any factor in life that’s going to basically be difficult that they can get through that. So parenting on a business side, we have a goal. We want to get to a billion of AUM in the next five years. That’s our company goal. I really want to do in three years. If nothing changes and it’s just business as usual, we’ll get there in about eight so that’s kind of my more current business goal. We’re at. We’re getting close to about 300 million right now for concepts contact, so I still have a little bit of room. And then on the city council goal, I want to, ultimately, I want my kids to have the option to stay here, right like I live in a city that is a little bit more fluent. It’s an older demographic. We’re aging and so a lot of like 18 to 35 year olds leave, and then they don’t come back. So I want to create a place where, you know, our kids and the next generation actually want to live here and create business here, create families. So I would say that’s my city goal right now.

Justin: Can you get to that billion dollar mark faster?

Mikey: Yes. I mean, the answer is yes. It just it all comes down to really deal flow and capital, right? Do you have access to deals? And then can you fund them? And then the timeline of it, because we do development, and I’m gonna get a little bit into the weeds here, you’re holding at cost until you get your project reappraised. So, you know, for example, we have one project right now that’s gonna cost us about $40 million to build, right so we close on a deal. We bring investors in $40 million total cost takes two years to build, another six to nine months to stabilize. Then you get it, reappraised and refi, so you’re three years out from having the opportunity of turning that $40 million cost into a $75 million value. And so, you know, we have a handful of projects that, you know have that type of growth potential. It’s just the time you can’t speed up the time on development.

Justin: Yeah, there’s no, no doubt. I mean, that’s kind of, do you buy something turnkey, more the Grant Cardone style, where you go buy that?

Mikey: Yeah, it’s a different. Yep, and it’s a different story. Then you just find deals, raise money and close. But where we’re at, which is, I want a bigger return, you just have to be willing to put in the time. And so I think it’s going to be, it’ll probably land at four, if I’m ready, if I’m gonna guess I wanted three. Goal for the company is five. I think it lands at four.

Justin: Well, so listen, you’re talking about creating value in these properties. But I think that’s something all business owners need to understand, is you want a bigger return. So you’re creating the value in these properties, you’re buying, you’re developing, creates the value you are, your income, what you earn, the wealth you accumulate, is in direct relation to the value that you’re providing the marketplace, and you are providing the value by buying, scraping and building, and maybe you’re not scraping all of it and whatever. But the point being is you’re you’re increasing the value of the marketplace so you will get compensated as such same place for some of you people trying to buy rentals, single family rentals, I love single family still. Great asset class, great dollar amount. People always need someone to live. So, you know, run the BRRRR model, you know, force appreciation, create the value, refinance out. It’s all the same thing. But if you’re listening to this and watching Mike Taylor on YouTube and all these different things, understand what value are you bringing to the marketplace? Yes, you have to ask yourself that I don’t know. I know what Mikey brings. I know what I bring. What value are you bringing? If you need to, you know, do some self soul searching, then do it. Because I almost guarantee you you’ll make more money and create a better life if you do that. Dude, any parting words, this is this has been great. We’ve hit all sectors here. We got family, we got work, we got business, we got sports, we got politics. Any parting words for the people out there listening to Entrepreneur DNA?

Mikey: I’m going to end on this one, and it’s going to be kind of a side ball, but if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re going to have a different type of challenge when you get into the field of getting married and having kids, and this is going to be the advice I would give you from the last 14 years of being married. When you are with your wife, when you’re with your kids, give them all of your attention. It’s difficult for us. We’re wired a little bit differently, but put them as the priority. And then here’s the second part. You’re going to go through challenges in a marriage. It’s inevitable if you’re willing to get through them. What my experience is is you have a refining fire moment where everything sucks. You work with your wife or your husband to get everything better. And going through that type of challenge together, what you experience on the other end is more powerful than what you had prior to the challenge, and once you go through it, once your outlook on the future for upcoming challenges actually becomes pretty encouraging, because you no longer look at, you know, a winter season in your life as the thing that’s going to break you up. You look at it as another opportunity for you to become even closer with this person. So entrepreneurs, keep that in mind. Having a relationship and building a business is tough. Treat it like you’re dating constantly. Date your partner, take her or him out and work through the conflict. You’ll be completely blessed if you do that.

Justin: My man, that was a hell of a way to end this episode. Everyone needs to go find Mikey Taylor on TikTok, Instagram and all the social medias, brother, I appreciate you being on and we got to stay way closer connected. That is for damn sure.

Mikey: It’s good to see you. I miss you. My man.

Justin: Miss you too. Brother, appreciate it All right, y’all that’s it. See you on the next one.

How Lamassu Leads Dominate the Art of Cold Calling | Scott Morse

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Justin: What is up? Science of Flipping family, we are back with another incredible episode. I’m fired up. I got all the energy, because my guest has all the energy. The man Scott Morris from Lamassu Leads is here. And by the way, if you don’t know them, they are the best outbound cold calling in the space of real estate. Over 59 million outbounds Last year alone. My brother, what is up?

Scott: Thank you brother for having me on here to be able to kind of talk and check out your studio and just connect again.

Justin: Yeah, dude, it’s been a long time. We’ve known each other now for the better part of six?

Scott: Seven years, so about four and a half years. But literally, like my day one in the industry, I met you, but it was in Tennessee at a Clothier event. But yeah, man, so I’ve known you pretty much since the beginning.

Justin: So you have built something really, really special. I don’t know where I rank in one of your first clients, but probably in the beginning side of it all. And you guys, even then, had something special to the industry that I fully bought into. And we fast forward four and a half years, whatever. Maybe you are really changing the industry in the way of outbound cold calling. Let’s dive right into that. Fifty Nine million outbound calls last year. What does that look like?

Scott: Yeah, so 59 million outbound dial attempts. I mean, the infrastructure is tremendous. We have about 180 some agents, 12,000 square foot office, like it’s truly an enterprise operation. But I think the thing that supports it all is just a belief system that’s different than any other outbound agency out there. And that’s what was you were attracted to way back then, even in the beginning.

Justin: Yeah. Well, I think what you pose and what your entire culture does, right? And I want to dive into sales culture, right? You, you’ve been in sales your whole life. So have I, but you built something special. And I would say even you’re identifying that you got to find where the motivation is. And especially for those of you out there, cold calling yourself, he can give you a lot of advice, even just like how to gravitate a lead that isn’t warm and bring them up that escalation ladder. Let’s talk about that. And what your team, your crew, does to take that seller conversation and escalate it up the motivation ladder to hand it off to your clients.

Scott: Yeah. So, I think for a lot of people, they over complex the whole process, and then their belief system is that it almost should be an under qualified lead, that it’s almost like, like a churn type of business model. And so, I didn’t know any better when I came into your guys vertical. I was naive to the REI space, but pretty accelerated in the marketing space, and I was just like, well, why can’t my cold call leads be highly qualified and highly motivated? Why can’t these leads be just as good as PPC, or even better, like if I control all the levers. If I’m the iOS system of my own marketing company, I’m Alpha and Omega. I control how I target the data. I control how I initiate that conversation. I control the entire conversation. Why can’t I have the world’s best outbound leads if I control it all? And so I didn’t know that the industry thought cold call was a bad thing, and they were just doing it kind of a bad or a weak way.

Justin: Yeah, and that’s the reality is, I think there’s plenty, you know, coaches, mentors. People will say, like, cold calling works. I’m one of them. (Yes). Right? I think what people need to know and understand is it’s not whether cold calling works is really what you’re saying on the phone to make that that prospect an actual lead, (Yes), right? So how, what is your team? What does your team look like? They’re in Columbia. Your Lamassu is in Colombia. (Yeah). It is outsourced. I think is incredible. What is that escalation model look like internally for your company?

Scott: Yep. So first off, I live there full time. Like for the past four years, I have planted a monster seed that’s grown into a force now there in Columbia, South America. And so I think that bringing some of that US, kind of management, lead generation style, down there has really helped grow up more than any other like VA type service. And so, you know, even when we first hire, and we have two things that we care about when we first hire high English fluency, it’s the number one priority, coupled with just being a good person. Because if you’re a good human being and you can speak native or you lived in the States, boom. I’ll give you a crack at it. But these guys spend about two months in our Lamassu University, which is about four weeks full classroom, two weeks shadow, and then two weeks like review. So, I don’t think anybody in the industry has ever invested a full six days sprint into an agent before they first pick up the phone. My guys know what a soffit is, an awning, a faucet, a gutter, a shutter. They understand that the CEO of Zillow sold his house for a fraction of what his estimate was. They understand exactly what’s happened in the market right now with interest rates. So I just say that like you can have an highly intelligent conversation if you’re qualified and educated, and so that’s what we do. We put them through a university, and we make our qualifiers as good as about 70% of this industry’s closers, and that’s the front end of the market.

Justin: I was just gonna say that you put them through a full blown coaching on real estate (Exactly), not even what questions to ask. Here’s understanding what you we are actually doing, which is the real estate space.

Scott: Well. And not only do we have to do that what you would do here in the states if they’re coaching, but I have to take kids who don’t know what a yard sign is, doesn’t understand how real estate commissions typically work. I’m starting with a true blank slate, which also too kind of gives me a statistical advantage, because I’m not unlearning any bad knowledge. I’m literally just teaching them, from the sun up, exactly how I want them to understand the real estate industry and understand the impact that we get to make as investors or lead generators out there in the United States. And so these guys have clearly wrapped in their head that like, hey, when I stick on the phone with the seller, past all of these objections, and I deliver a well executed rebuttal. I’m starting a butterfly effect that’s going to have a tremendous impact on people and families all throughout the United States, and even obviously bringing revenue to Colombia, they understand there’s going to be painters, there’s going to be lawn care people, there’s going to be roofers, there’s going to be sheet rock families like all these people get to eat because they stuck on the phone on a cold calling kept somebody on the phone for 15 minutes, delivering value. And so they take pride in being a cold call person. If you can take pride in being an outbound marketer, and you feel it in your spirit, like you’re just unstoppable.

Justin: Your energy is contagious, bro.

So let’s just talk to the person who might be watching or listening this, if they’re cold calling themselves. What pieces of advice would you give to that solopreneur calling themselves? What would you tell that person, length on on the phone? What type of questions two part clothes, like, what overall coaching would you give the you know, real estate investors breaking in by cold calling?

Scott: Even if you’re not breaking in by cold calling, you should break in by cold calling (That’s right), period. You got the capital for PPC, you got the capital for PPL, you got the capital for whatever other marketing channels. Do yourself a favor and put yourself to a little bit of a boot camp. (Yeah). Understand it? Because I’ve met people who have done, let’s say only PPC leads, and now sudden, that channel is either wonky or they now need to add another channel on. They go to a cold call or a quote, unquote, lesser channel, and they get destroyed. See if you can do cold call, you can do any other marketing channel out there. And so starting there, with that foundation and understanding how to really navigate a tougher conversation, to be able to win somebody over. Because in sales, it works like this. It’s sales resistance, sales acceptance. And so when you go into a cold call, there’s inherently more resistance out there than any other outbound or any other channels. And so learning how to bring down that resistance and building rapport and then move into acceptance. So no matter what, I really agree or I believe that you should start in cold calling. And if you are going to start in cold calling, Don’t chicken out, stick around for the success. It’s going to take you 30, 45, 60 days of beating on the phones, understanding your craft, get a couple of deals doing the cold call method, and then potentially think about outsourcing it, (Yeah). But I won’t. I take somebody on, typically, if they’ve never at least picked up the phones themselves. So I want them to understand the value that we’re truly bringing to the marketplace.

Yeah, it’s not easy. I mean, as someone, I’ve door knocked in my life. I’ve cold called in my life, like that art is that skill set is very, very difficult. And so, what I would tell anyone, if you do have a marketing budget and you’re out there watching this or listening to this, you gotta reach out to Lamassu Leads, period, end of story. Because if you have a budget to put forth on PPL, PPC, yep, you have to have different verticals. I will tell everyone that you have to have different marketing strategies, different verticals. Lamassu Leads, what’s the easiest way initially for people to get a hold of you just probably Instagram?

Scott: Yeah. So, I want people to follow us at @lamassuleads, because you get to see behind the scenes of our call center. And I think that authenticity is something that’s lacking in the REI space. And I say this with respect to all the guys and gals out there that maybe have some type of agency. You get to see the behind the scenes. I share, the highs and the lows. You get to see the guys you know in the arcade room on the ping pong to the foosball. You get to see them in the university. You get to see when things go sideways. But I want people to see what it takes to run almost 200 person call center and deliver 59 million outbound dials just last year on behalf of some of the biggest REI players in this space. Because this is a real deal company, we are delivering exceptional value through one of the hardest marketing channels that are out there, and I look at myself as a strategic partner. I ain’t nobody’s client, I ain’t nobody’s call center, bitch, my that’s not it, but I’m somebody’s strategic partner, and I’m helping them stabilize first typically, and then grow this marketing channel that most times has never been successful for them.

Justin: I mean, even when you’re starting, you made that a point, like we would have weekly calls. Let me see the leads. How many of these have converted? Not with me and my team, not I’m saying you would have it with me, my team, right? You personally. Now you were a lot smaller than than you are today, but you really are a partner in that sense. The entire point is you need to make sure we are successful as real estate investors, because you have a client for life, and it continues to spread the word, right?

Scott: So, there’s a plaque, and you’d love it. I’d love to have you at the office. I just got this plaque recently made. It’s black with glass in Boston. It’s a photo of Gary Keller from Keller Williams, and it’s got a quote above it. It says, He who controls the leads, controls the industry, (Facts), and to me, that’s part of the mission here. And so, when I dive into my affiliates accounts, it’s because I want to have the mindset of the largest hedge fund out there, like if I was a hedge fund out there I wish that I would have the analytics that I have. So, when I dig into your account, I want to know what’s exactly working for you guys, what strategies are working, what zip codes are working, so that way I can take that success and continue to replicate it. And so by now, four years later, we’ve really gotten dialed into what levers to pull on this big Boeing 747, plane of cold calling to be able to get the smoothest acceleration off the runway for our clients.

Justin: So, do you guys run a setter closer model within your own Lamassu Leads, or is it all a set to the client?

Scott: This is a really great question. So, the thing that irritated me the most about this industry when I got into it is before I ever started my own cold call company, I outsourced cold calling. First, I tried the Philippines, and it was just what everybody would expect it. And then I tried Egypt, and somehow that was worse. So that was like, screw it. I’ll just kind of start my own. I had some connections down in Colombia, (Good connections), but I had some connections down in Colombia. (Yeah, we need to clarify that. Sure, for the audience). The mother of my two beautiful daughters is from Columbia, so that was the connection. But anyways, and so, but when I outsource to these other companies, they were always like, hey, we’ll sell you a VA, and it’s going to be X amount of dollars. You can have four or five, and by the way, we’ll also sell you a leads manager. And I’m like, wait a minute, why do I need a leads manager? Why? Why? Why? Why can’t I just hire a bunch of leads managers instead of the original VA? Like, why do I need all these people to touch it? And so to follow up on your question, we do believe in the Fronter closer model, but we don’t believe in the initial contact than the leads manager. So our Fronter, I promise you, is as good as 70% of this industry’s closers, they are taking that entire conversation. Our average intake call is about 14 to 17 minutes long right now. So you’re having that healthy of a conversation, and then, just like in boiler room, for you guys and gals haven’t seen the movie boiler room, go watch it. But just like in the movie boiler room, where he’s raises and he says, wreck, go, we are live transferring these hyper qualified leads directly to affiliates. So we are the Fronter. You are the closer. Boom, right over into your lap.

Justin: That’s incredible. So, the reason why that’s incredible is because you and I both know you let that person off the phone. How many times more difficult is it to get it back on? I mean, it’s 5x, 10x, 20x more difficult to get that seller right back on the phone. Life happens, right? So that that live transfer is really going to be a game changer for a lot of them. Given that point. What do you think the secret sauce why your clients do so well beyond their own expertise? What do you say is the live transfer? Do you think it’s the line of questioning that delivers the quality? Is it all of it? Where’s some of the secret sauce that you have?

Scott: This episode is brought to you by my friends and today’s sponsor, Lamassuleads.com the real estate industry’s only enterprise level call center. If you’re like me and you’re tired of under qualified leads, junking up your CRM and wasting time and money, you need to do what I did, and that’s reach out to Lamassuleads.com highly qualified, highly motivated seller leads. It’s that simple. They’re an all in one service. You’ve never experienced anything like this before. They do all the heavy lifting for you while becoming a strategic partner in your real estate investing business. They have the most bad ass office in the industry you have ever seen. And I hope you see their operation. Visit their Instagram at Lamassu leads and give them a follow. Seriously, if you need more motivated seller leads, if you’re tired of babysitting cold callers on the other side of the world, Lamassu Leads is your answer, go to Lamassu leads.com to learn more. That’s www.lamassuleads.com.

Justin: You know, it’s no one’s gonna be able to replicate you, so you might as well give it to us.

Scott: Yeah, I think it’s so many small things it’s hard to say. I’ll tell you that I have disqualifiers, like, if I’m an affiliate who’s like, hey, I don’t accept live transfers, then I can’t work. (You won’t take them on). Yeah, just because I know that diminishes their success by about 15 to 20% because if I have Gladys Smith on the phone, and she wants to move closer to be with her grandkids, because her husband just passed away, and she needs to move now, the last thing I want to do is risk that you can’t get them back on the phone. I need a live transfer Gladys right this second, and so being able to see those kind of small, incremental things, I think today, when, when we’re recording this, you know, there’s other success variables out there. Is how many exit strategies do my affiliates have? That’s another thing that I look at as a qualifier or a disqualifier, to see if they’re accepted to use my services. Because I don’t want to run in place like I want to work with the big dogs, and I want to work with the guys and gals who have a big dog mentality, who are trying to get there. So you don’t have to be the biggest jet, but you got to have the right kind of tools in place. And so right now, I see the people who are the most successful have multiple exit strategies. They have a well oiled sales process out there. They have some CRM drip sequencing. There’s a lot of different things that I see now as to what makes somebody take our leads and just close.

Justin: Do you have any level of nurture within your organization, meaning, as a client, can I say, hey, this lead came across 45 days ago. They’re kind of go like, do you guys do that or not?

Scott: It’s a really great question. So the short answer is no, because that’s a separate service now, sure. So we now have what are called Super nurture agents. And I’m talking these people are like closer level agents. And what they do is they can live inside of your CRM and breathe life to years worth of old data where they came from, TV or radio or mail or an old cold call company that you just hate it. That person just sits inside of your sales force or your REI, simply whatever CRM you’re using, and they’re in there just literally calling the people up, Hey, Mrs. Jones, the CEO of my company, is your file was on his desk. He wanted me to follow what do you see? How the process is selling your house is going? (Yeah) And boom. We’re not saying, Hey, do you have the house? We just want to see how the process is going. So, we’re calibrating with them, and then we’re live transferring that back out. So that is a separate service that we offer on top of our traditional cold call service.

Justin: Do you have an outbound service?

Scott: We have an outbound cold call service, and then we have a nurture service, and we have a launch control managed service. Those are our three things that we do, and we do with success at a very high level.

Justin: How much different has your business changed since texting has taken so many beatings the last six months? Meaning has it gotten good? Like, you’re like, Yeah, because people realize I can still call, I can still connect. There’s connectivity. Or has it not changed? Where’s it taking your business?

Scott: It’s a really unique perspective. And I say this on camera, knowing that this may be a bit of a self defeating statement, but when there’s blood in the water like that with text. So many people got out of the space that it became, for the first time in years, a bit of a blue ocean again. And so, while there was a time frame where the connectivity with the platform that we used really had to send in, like, wonky messages, I bailed on it, they’re now back to being able to send, like, really healthy type messages, the same ones that we would send a year ago. And what happened is is now we’re back in the space with so many other people are gone, so our texting is performing wildly good. And I think the other advantages it has is, again, we’re doing things at scale. So while an average wholesaler out there may only be able to send a text and test a response and test a response, we’re doing it at such a macro level. I know which templates will get the absolute best results right now in pretty much every single market out there. So, we’ve seen a success because so many other people have left.

Justin: I think one people need to understand, right? Like, first of all, depending upon where you’re at while you’re watching this or listening to this, you may need to be doing this yourself, to your point, right? Get on the phone and make the calls. But the other part is, you would be the equivalent Lamassu Leads would be the equivalent of any of the greats. Meaning, how many chip shots has Tiger Woods taken? How many three pointers has Steph Curry taken? How many right like, you have so many damn reps in the gym that you’ve been able to perfect where a lot of us, like even me, I am a hell of a salesperson and a hell of a closer, (Agree), but I don’t have nearly 59 million dials in a single year, right? You just can’t equate the two. So, the first part, without you selling you, I’ll sell you. Is, if you are at a place of a marketing budget, the first thing you should do is at least reach out, yep, and see if it’s a qualified fit, right? Because some people won’t be a fit for you, and then vice versa, you may not be a fit for other (100%) but I would tell you, if you listen to anything, what you’re saying, You need to diversify how you exit but bring in more leads. Meaning, should he be working with agents? Yes. Should he be cold calling? Yes. Should he be doing PPL? Yes? Should he be texting? Yes, you should be doing all of it. It’s not an “Or” it’s an “And” every time.

Scott: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more, excuse me, and even a guy like myself. So I have my own wholesaling office in Central Florida, so that market sold out guys. I help you with data, I help you with some of these other things. But even us, we do TV, we do mail, we do PPC and we do cold call, obviously. So even with us having this big, monster operation where I could say. Just a 100% cold call. All cold call, we do. We hit the gas pedal here. We hit the gas pedal here. We get the heck all these different places, because I want to diversify my own marketing channels. There’s just going to be people you can get on the phone in this channel who don’t respond to this channel. And then sometimes you can get a really good synergy between the two. So we’ll take our list of people who don’t respond on cold call, we’ll extract that list, and then we’ll send it to mail. So there’s all these kind of center just of synergistic effects that you can do, or you can cold call right after your mail and just check to see if they received a piece of mail that you had sent them. So there’s a lot of synergies between the channels. I think that one thing that you said though about us perfecting it, we still have so much more room for growth. And sales for me, it’s a never ending journey. It’s that relentless pursuit of the idea of perfection, but it’s always going to be a growth because the market’s changing. Our pitch has to adjust a little bit out there. You know, two years ago, people would say, Well, where am I going to move now they really mean it, because the interest rates are so high, these people are almost captive to their own houses right now. And so now we’re having a little bit more of an education pitch with them about their best options to maximize the equity that’s in their house today, to be able to be to be able to make that move. And so we want to educate our sellers. And I think we’re probably the only cold call company out there that has, you know, 100 and some agents that are savvy enough on the phones to educate a seller before they even get to talk to the closer.

Justin: Yeah. How does the real estate market dictate what you guys do on the outbound script? And does that have to change and be fluid?

Scott: The problem is we’re always doing this delicate bound balance between what the investors know and what the consumer knows, (Yeah), and so the investors are gonna have different criteria than so there’s like a six month lag between what the investors are asking for us to do on the phones and what the sellers still think their house is worth and the command. And so that lag, I think, has never gotten a bigger gap than it has here recently, because it’s just moving so much faster the investor knowledge. And so one of the things we do on the phones is we position ourselves with third party stories to help the person kind of make the right decision, and we let them know. Say, Hey, listen, it’s never been busier than it is right now, Mrs. Seller, we’re constantly getting calls with people who have large portfolios or trying to divest their properties, just like you. And what we’re doing, effectively, as we go into those third party stories, is we’re just planting the seeds that the smart money is getting rid of their houses now that, hey, we’re seeing trend lines out there with people with portfolios. So you don’t want to be that last guy when the music stops, Mr. Seller, looking for a seat, and then all of a sudden you’re stuck and you weren’t able to take out the equity in your property. And so for us, it’s educating the consumer and having a belief in our product right? Believe that we’re helping these people. We don’t call happy homes, we call ugly homes and ugly properties, so we know we have to fight for them.

Justin: So, a client needs to give you a list. Do you pull a list? You say, Listen, we know exactly where to go, what to target, leave it to us. Is it a combination of both?

Scott: So, really great question. So, I own synergydata.io. To me, I think it’s the world’s best data company, but I really only service it to my current clients. It’s a publicly available website, but my Lamassu clients like, we curate this experience. And so for the most part, most clients come to me and they’re like, Scott, I like you, but I’m also going to put a little bit of pressure on you. If I buy the data to you, skip the data to you, call the data to you. If this isn’t a raging success, there’s only one person to blame, and I want that smoke, I want all that pressure. I want everything because again, I can control the experience. I can do the data targeting. And the worst part about the cold call industry is everybody’s excuse. There’s never been a guy out there who hired a cold caller with a cold caller when the numbers were down, didn’t blame the data. (Of course). It’s never they had a bad day, it’s never their internet was bad. You hire these guys in the Philippines as a chicken in the background. They’re never going to blame the chicken in the background. They’re like, all the data. What’s bad today? We need more records get out of here. And so I wanted to be able to take that excuse away from us and also from the customer, ever having to hear that and say, Hey, listen, we’ll curate it all. I will also call people’s data if they’re already like, locked in the contract somebody else’s data. I respect that. There are some other good data providers out there, but my ideal situation is just come to me. Let’s get everything registered. Let’s do our diligence, and then when we start accept leads and don’t do anything else other than close, I don’t want you managing playlists. I don’t want you managing data. I don’t want you to have to use your brain. All I want you to do is just close.

Justin: There’s a lot of people out there that would love to hear that again. And so hopefully this gets in those hands, because someone like me or my organization, I don’t want to go cultivate more leads, more leads to the point where someone like me, I’m actually doing more JV partnership type structures, so I can limit the headache of hiring people, tiny people. You know this because this was before bringing Lamassu on, I built my own internal sales team in Phoenix with 20 cold callers. It’s a nightmare, by the way, so good for you to have 200 of these individuals. But I would also say, if you’re like me, listening watching like this is something that you have to think. About is, is it worth building out the organization or just getting on the phone and closing? Because I I’m in a position in life where I just want to get on the phone and close, and for me, I mean, my team, that is a massive value. (Yeah). You know, I want to talk about because you’ve cultivated and built an organization that can allow individuals who work part time, who don’t have a lot of time, who maybe don’t have the ability to hire, train and retain good quality people, you’re basically saying, I got you. Let me just deliver the lead. And all you have to do is get on the phone and close it.

Scott: And it’s so funny, because there’s in this industry, has been a lot of changes in marketing channels. And so what I’ll do is I’ll find people who, like, they had hired somebody in the Philippines or Egypt, maybe Philippines or Egypt, or maybe Pakistan. They had the cold calling, and it just never, like, took off, right? They do money after money after money. Then they moved to PPL, and maybe they had some success, but then they were spending all their time disputing leads. And so it’s like, you can have some of these channels where you’re spending so much time doing everything but calling and closing. And so for us, it’s like, how can I curate I am full transparency. Less leads, longer conversations. Less leads longer Conversations. I’m not a vanity play. I’m not trying to blow you. Oh, I got 14 leads today, Not Buddy. You got 14 data records. You didn’t get 14 leads, (Right). Let me send over a couple of hyper qualified, highly motivated leads that day, so that way you can have a conversation. There’s no point in your CRM saying something where nobody picks up the phone.

Justin: Yeah. So, let’s talk about the lead. So you and I both know this. I’ve always said cold calling in a general sense, and you might argue this point. The lead has a longer tail, typically. Would you still agree, or just (100%) even through your longer tail. Yep. So, what I mean by that, for those that may not understand what we’re saying in the sales world, it will take you longer to nurture and close that deal versus, let’s say a PPC or PPL (Correct). Now to support you again, not to take away and say, go to PPC. It is in both conversation you should be doing and but also PPC to your point, listed properties. Sellers want to sell, but they’re ready to list their property like there’s no qualifying. You’re paying from Google. You’re paying from the PPL company. There’s zero qualifications on whether this is going to be a good fit or not. You just get the 250 to $500 lead that you just spent, and that’s it. (Yep). But I would tell most people, if you have a volume of leads, even through nurture, and this is why AI has changed the game, right? You and I are talking about what we can do together through AI and lead nurture. Talk about that, what people’s expectation, because I think cold calling companies, cold callers, cold calling gets a bad reputation because improper expectation on what to do.

Scott: It also gets a bad reputation because of heartbeat home leads. The scourge of this industry is heartbeat in a home leads. You hire these VAs in the Philippines or Egypt, wherever they are, and they get a customer on the cell, on the phone. They’re like, they have a heartbeat. They have a home. Send it over. That’s not a lead man. That’s not a lead. So once you can get past that, the advantage of cold calling for a guy like me is I get to curate my buyers list. If I know my buyers only like two bedrooms and three bedrooms built before 2000 I can put that into the data set. If I know they like particular zip codes or particular counties, I can put that into the data set. You can’t go into Google and say, Hey, Google, I’d like you to only show my ads to homes where the house is more than 1,200 square feet, never you can’t go to the PPL. You can’t do those types of things. So be in the command center of your outbound channel. And again, you should have these multiple channels, but being that command center allows you to make a little bit more strategic choices, coupled with what you’re talking about, the conversion cycle, you’re right. The tail is longer, but the long tail performs like dividends almost later, because most PPC leads, if they’re gonna go in, they’re gonna fill out the form on multiple websites. If you get that deal, Rockstar deal, but that person’s very likely selling within that short time. That’s it. So if you missed that deal, that deal is gone.

Justin: Called call has some other forms with another investors. So, where’s your speed delivery? Where’s all that stuff? Are you on the phone immediately, which goes back to your transferring live.

Scott: Yeah. And so, for me it’s just like I look in my CRM and we’ll have deals that are three years old, two years old, and we can talk about nurturing cadences, because I love nurturing leads. But I see the cold call not only does it have a longer tail in the conversion window, maybe 60 to 70 days on typical but the very, very long tail pays dividends. I always had deals from three or four years ago that came from cold call every month come good.

Justin: So, let’s talk about nurturing. This is another shortfall. As someone who educates thousands of investors, the effort that people are willing to put in and to nurture the lead that they’ve been given or paid for is slim to none. I got a whole rant now make it concise.

Justin: You just, you just get your you get on that box.

Scott: So I, when I came into this industry, because I was an outsider, made all my money selling leads to attorneys. (Okay). I didn’t understand how the team. How was being taught nurturing leads. So to me, I think what this industry is really good at, Justin, is the No Contact nurturing. Okay, they said in your CRM two days. Hey, I’m trying to reach you. Hey, just following up. I’d like to be able to speak with you. We’re interested in making an offer. What this industry sucks at is the nurturing of the terminated leads, the people who said, Go, f**** yourself, I would never sell my house for that long. I’m not interested. I’m gonna list it with a realtor. I’m working with another wholesaler. Never call me again. Those terminated lead nurture dispositions are where the gold is at man. Calling those people who said, Never in a million years would I sell to you guys. You guys are scam artists. You’re trying to take my house for pennies. That’s where the money’s at. Calling those, texting those. We have a lot of drip sequencing in our CRM, but texting them in 45 days. Hey, I was just thinking about you in 60 days. Hey, this and having these nurture sequences, all dispositions based off of not interested at once retail, listed with a realtor, working with a wholesaler, any of those terminated reasons. That’s where the money’s at.

Justin: Yeah, a 100% so I say that a lot, 100% or Absolutely, 100% (100%). because of that, it’s, it’s very discouraging to see someone go to you as a client, and I’m coaching them, and they’re like, Man, I’m just not getting leads. And I’m not even saying this, (Yeah), and I’ll say, okay, great. How many leads have you gotten this month? I’ve gotten 50. Yeah, gotten 50. How many offers have you made? Zero, zero offers. (It’s impossible) Right. That’s the point. Is, the nurture sequence, regardless of the vertical where the lead came in, (Yes), has to be improved. What would be like two or three points that you would tell someone here’s whether it’s length of how to nurture what you would say, what would be like a starting point? Someone says, Scott, “f” off. That number doesn’t even come close. What would be a starting every week you start to follow up with them a month? What would be the cadence at least that people could start to follow?

Scott: I think first thing is just to understand sales psychology. Sure. Um, a lot of people really get confused. I use this analogy in my office. I have you were a kid. We were both kind of in the same age group, but a doctor used to hit your knee with this little thing and they like, check your reflexes. Maybe they do, I don’t know. (I have a kid has one that goes, Hey, Dad). Yeah, I have one on my desk, and I train that that’s a reactionary, that when a customer gives you their price or their response to your price, it’s a reactionary defense. It literally means nothing. It’s just part of the process. And so the unfortunate part is, is people get a negative response from a customer, and they believe it. They don’t understand it’s just a negative response. And then they put these really bad notes in the CRM customer custody and said, I would never accept this amount, and I would never do this. And then they go back and read their own notes 30 days later, and they’re like, Oh yeah, I remember this person. She was a “b”. I’ll never call her again. And then they see it again, I’ll never call it again. And they literally buy their own BS. And so what I would tell you first is, “f “ your notes. “F” your notes, set it up so it forces you to automatically do the following no matter what that text goes out without having to read the notes we talked about AI multiple times, being able to have a system that does the thinking for you. I don’t want to prejudge my lead. I don’t care about the old notes. I want to send them a message from the customer’s perspective, that we’re building a relationship. Just following up with you. Hey, how’s it going with the open-ended question? How’s it going with the process of selling the house? I was thinking about you, whatever it is that you can set up on some type of automation, but the core tenant here is time and circumstance. These two things change. (Yep). That’s all you need to do is just wait it out to time or circumstance, and you got yourself a deal.

Justin: So I call it an event based business. (Great). We are waiting for the event to happen, time and circumstance (Yes) to the seller. So, if you do this, this is why I fully have bought into AI, not to take away from cold calls, but the nurturing. (Yes). I just say to most people, you’re too emotionally invested. You’re reading the notes where the person said, f*** off. You say, Oh, I would never call that person again, because you’re emotionally attached to that like you got rejected. There’s a scar from childhood about you getting rejected, right? So, then you don’t you’re scared to. AI removes that entire data set. There’s no emotion that bot will literally say the same thing 7,000 times with no emotional attachment. And I believe and tell me how this is gonna affect your business. And again, we’re in talks about how it could, but like, Can this be a pivotal thing for for your industry to say, Hey, bring everyone into a nurture sequence where there is no emotion. You don’t have to think what to say. The bot is built to just do it.

Scott: Yeah. So for me, I’m excited about all the changes and opportunities. How we’re using AI in our business right now is for AI seller. So, we actually created an AI seller where my guys get to go through training instead of having to do dummy firing on my data, (Yeah) they get to have conversations with an AI seller. (That you guys can build so, you got your…). Well, we built them, and we can set them as, like, passive, neutral, aggressive. So, like, we and they get hung up on by the AI seller. So what we’re. Doing is we’re leveraging that to be able to have our guys sharper on the phone. I think ultimately AI becomes a massive tool for guys and gals that are out there. And in my perspective, is this is like, this may sound rough, candidly, but there’s part of our industry that the mindset is, let’s build value, let’s build portfolios, but we never know what’s around the corner. So if we’re a pirate, we got to get as much booty as we can right now, (Sure). And so, like AI, maybe…

Justin: May it’s gold, by the way. He means gold, jewels, boot, gold anyway.

Scott: But and so who knows how AI is going to really shape the whole industry 15 years from now the REI space, but I can tell you right now, being able to leverage it, to nurture the leads, super savvy play, being able to leverage it as a training tool for us, super savvy play, and we’re just going to get as much impact as we can into this industry and out of this industry.

Justin: The thing that I will always say, and I know you’re going to agree, but there’s always, always going to be a human component, realist, always, because the person selling their home, it’s their home. (Yeah). So, there’s, there’s little to no chance of some Bot being able to convert in a manner that is anywhere relevant to what your team does or a closer can do, right? And people are always about, like, I’m all about AI, I’m bought all the way in. I’m just saying there’s going to be a connectivity that there has to be human engagement there, because the emotion that plays.

Scott: Yeah, for sure, I agree. But let’s leverage the tools that we have. And I think for you guys and gals out there, our big takeaway from this is the reason why a is so powerful, because it has no emotions attached to the lead. So until you have those types of tools, just be emotionless with the lead to pick up the phone. Once you’re on the phone, then let’s start. It’s all Hollywood, baby. Let’s go, but stop reading the notes of your leads before you pick up the phone. Like, I’ll have customers. Have customers like, Can we get a copy of the recording of every lead? And I’m like, Well, I can, but let me tell you why you’re asking that? You’re asking that because you want to pre judge everything that you’ve gotten in such a mentality. You’re like, Okay, I want to listen. So let’s put this to the side. How about they stayed on the phone 14 to 17 minutes. They’re ready to roll, pick up the phone and do your job. Let’s just focus on your closing transaction. Let’s not worry about the things that happened two months ago.

Justin: Right. So let’s, let’s talk about for the person that might be like, Okay, I need to start cold calling. What’s a good list, right? Like, the generic answer, I think absentee Homers. Everyone’s heard it. There tends to be some truism to that. But what would you tell someone? The guy’s like, dude, I’m ready to rock and roll, that I’ll get a deal, and then I’ll go pay Lamassu Leads Yeah, where should he be calling? Or she should be calling? Who should they be calling? Where?

Scott: I wish I could make it simpler than this, but there’s some other factors that go into it. You said starting out. So, I’m assuming this person probably doesn’t understand Novations. Doesn’t understand creatives. (Lets remove all that). Let’s remove all that, because those will affect the types of lists. And if you’re curious, hit me up on IG. And I’ll kind of share some insights there.

Justin: Hit him up on IG, no matter what, because he’s wealth of knowledge, he’s a real estate investor. Lamassu Leads on IG make sure you go there, because he’s just, he’s an amazing human, but he just knows what he’s talking about.

Scott: Thank you. And so, for the newbies starting out some of this also, again, I’m just going to say the typical market, the more rural the market. I do like more owner occupied leveraged, and so I typically like to stay around the 50% right now with what I’m seeing in the industry. I like to see about a 50% blend right now of niche and absentee, to incorporate 50% to 60% of the total data set, and then about 40% to 50% just depending on what’s available over here, being owner occupied, bought maybe pre 2008 and 100% equity, (Sure). And so, I like to see that blend, no matter what list, you’ll never fail with a niche list and niche just for everybody out there, like that pre foreclosure, that pre probate, that divorce, that water shut off if you can get those in your areas, absentee out of state, and then absentee end state. Like, that’s how I kind of stack that list down, and then again, I like some owner occupied, distressed building quality, you know, 100% equity. Those are the types of lists that I like to target, and I kind of throw them in there as a hodgepodge. The one key takeaway is never remove the column that tells you what type of list that came from. So if you do a hodgepodge. You do pre-foreclosure and prevent this and this and this, and make sure that’s there, because you’re gonna be put in 10,000 records. (Right). You’re gonna find out what’s producing the most amount of leads. Now, you know what you’re buying your next 10,000 of (That’s right). But I see so many people they strip away that they go to prop stream or whatever, like, okay, buy a little bit of this, buy a little bit of this, and then they skip it, and they get rid of all their identifiers. You’re a marketing and sales company no matter what. And so you need to be able to track, even if you’re just a guy of one, you need to be able to track those things to what to buy more of. And every quarter, you should be better at your data targeting and better exactly what list you want to buy.

Justin: I think true words you never said in terms of marketing, you need to have the data to be able to understand how to move your ever, right? (Yes). The last point I’ll get to, just because it’s so important to me. What do you think is Junior versus senior? Is marketing senior to sales? Or is sales senior to marketing?

Scott: Sale is everything. (Okay). You can buy a in this space. You can buy leads from guys like me. If you can buy PPL, you can buy PPC. I encourage you to do a lot of this on your own, so you understand, you know, you’re kind of in the gutter, but you can give a glengarry, you can give somebody a Wolf of Wall Street, fire lead, and they can fumble the bag. (That’s it). So, I’d rather see somebody with higher sales skills than marketing skills, because if you have the sales skills, you can buy your way into the marketing in the REI space. We’re not door knocking. This is a little bit different, right? But I think that if you can, if you have intelligent sales skills, you’ve mastered, or mastered, or working towards mastering, the art of communication, the power of persuasion. That will pay off dividends better than you know how to run a PPC ad, because when you still get that person who converted, who’s highly qualified, who’s highly motivated, who has a big urgency, if you don’t communicate as a professional, who can solve their problem, all they’re going to do is say, thank you so much for the information. I’ll speak with my spouse, and we’ll get back to you, and then they’re getting back to your competitor.

Justin: (Right). So, in that vein, what’s frustrating for me is when people say they want to go hire salespeople, and it’s because they just don’t want to do the work anymore, (Yeah), which I know, and you know that they just want to be lazy, and I don’t feel like doing this anymore. They want to hire but that is, like, the death sentence, is it not like, if, if sales is senior to marketing, then you should be as a business owner until the very last second, running sales?

Scott: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more, and some people are like, I’m burnt out. Well, your company’s gonna be toast. So that’s a appropriate way of putting it. You have to be able to close if you’re gonna be in this space, and you’re starting out, and it’s not even difficult. Let’s just be candid. It’s just that people want to go into it without a strategy, they don’t hire a mentor, they don’t understand the basic fundamentals of the sales process. Thankfully, this is not a tough sale. Like, we’re not selling people death benefits. We’re not selling people caskets, you know, stuff that’s like, it’s completely off the wall and a little bit difficult. No, we’re talking about people who have a problem, filled out a form or finished a 15 minute qualifying call. But if you don’t understand it’s a sales process, you don’t, kind of track yourself, and if you’re not willing to consider yourself to be a professional athlete, and what does an athlete do? They review the tape, and you’re not listening to your own calls, and you’re not giving critical feedback, and you’re not practicing daily, you’re just gonna fail at it. But you have to master the basic sales tenants. And if you’ll do that, and you’ll hire the right mentors, and you’ll follow the processes. And then you can institute really good leads. It’s really not that hard to be successful in this space.

Justin: Yeah. And lastly, just do the thing, make the offer. Whether it’s right or wrong, you can learn from it. Be the master right? Go back and say, why didn’t it work? I offered to high, why I offered too high, I didn’t underwrite the rehab high enough. And then lastly, talk, talk to some people, just a little bit about how you can get even better if you sharpen your knife. What I mean by that is Novations, creative financing. You go and get more leads, you will have more deals because you know how to exit those deals.

Scott: Yeah, for me, I see people getting monster bags right now, anchoring on wholesaling, if that’s the right solution, go right in with wholesaling and then pivoting to Novation if that isn’t the right one. And so maybe two years ago, that person didn’t have that as an exit strategy. And if they didn’t work on wholesale for whatever reason, they didn’t have this alternative strategy. And also the markets kind of dictating to no Novations right now. And I think that those guys and gals out there, what you have is, no matter what funnel like, we’ll talk about PPC, I’ll kind of beat them of them for a second. You can’t control if that’s a listing lead or if that’s a true wholesale lead. And so you have this whole upper part of your funnel that’s typically been unmonetizable unless you wait it long enough for that time and circumstance event. And so now you have this Novation exit strategy really helps to go out. For me, what I love is I love guys being able to look at my leads and say, Hey, listen, my spread would be X with this marketing strategy, my spread will be Y with this marketing strategy, it seems like both of them benefit the customer. Let me choose which one will be a little bit more profitable. And so having these additional strategies and have somebody walk you through these strategies is the difference from probably closing a one out of 10, one out of 12, but the marketing channel being one out of 30. So if you can bring your closing ratio down by obviously having more exit strategies, you’re just gonna take a lead like Lamassu Leads and just gonna have higher ROI.

Justin: So let’s finish on this one last call. I keep saying that, but yeah, I got so much we could do this forever. (I agree). So, conversion, (yeah), what would be a newer entry level, just getting started conversion rate with Lamassu Lead let say versus Justin Colby right like? Where should I be? And then where should the newer investor be? And then maybe even a middle ground, just for proper expectation, right? Because I think another reason cold calling gets beaten up is because the conversion late is a longer tail, but then they don’t even know like, if I have 100 leads, I should have gotten two deals. I got to work on the current leads in my database, rather than calling Scott and saying, I need more leads.

Scott: Yeah. So, let’s address the tale real quick. I think the average cold call tail for somebody who’s like a rock star to somebody who’s an OG it’s gonna be 45 to 90 days. And that’s a good swing like, (to contract it?) to contract from lead to contract on blend, which means you’re gonna get some one call closes, and you’re gonna get some that are 180 days out. Like, that’s how you get a 90 day time frame. It’s just, it’s just how it’s gonna be. I love live transfers because of the one call close potential, especially for my virtual guys. So, but you have that time frame, so you have that and then on the other side, the conversion is leads to contracts. So the average, I was gonna say the word duck, and I don’t mean duck, but I mean, like the average guy out there, he could stumble into a deal with my leads. I’m one out of 21. (1 out of 20). So, I’m saying like, you should be one out of 20 with my Lamassu Leads. I got guys that are one out of 10, one out of 12 with our leads. I’m running neck and neck with PPC. I really shouldn’t beat PPC, and I typically don’t over a long enough time frame, but I should be just like a PPC quality lead. So guys like you would be like, Hey, we’re one out of 10, one out of 14. All day long, the average guy out there should be like one out of 20, and if they’re brand new newbie, one out of 25. But let me help somebody else understand why you stick with the process and why you build a pipeline? Because if I send somebody 50 leads and they’re supposed to get two deals, let’s just say minimum two deals, right? And you get two deals, boom. But it’s a 60 day time frame that means you might actually talk to 100 leads before you get that first deal, but then they start going, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, (Right). And so you have to stick with the process. You have to pick up the phone. You have to grind out. It’s going to be that way with any lead source, but when you can call somebody, and they pick up the phone and they want to talk to you, and they’ve been through a 14 to 17 minute qualifying call, and they’ve gotten the Lamassu experience. That is what I consider to be a viable lead.

Justin: Brother I appreciate you coming on, dropping some sales, knowledge, cold calling, knowledge, real estate investing, knowledge. It’s been a pleasure blow. So, Lama su leads IG is where we want to push everybody.

Scott: Yeah, www.lamassuleads.com is how you can get to the website. But I really would like you to see the authenticity of our shop, I want you to see behind the scenes of this 12,000 square foot state of the art energy through the IG, so @lamassuleads on IG.

Justin: Appreciate it. Cool. That’s all we got today. See you guys on the next podcast. Let’s roll.

Justin: What is up, entrepreneur DNA, welcome back to another podcast. I have a good friend of mine here excited to be doing this podcast, because this man spent $60,000 to be a part of a mastermind that I run in the real estate space, and he doesn’t even do real estate. Mr. Jason Payne, what is happening, brother?

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Justin: Yo! Entrepreneur DNA, we are back with another incredible episode and an incredible guest. This man has retired twice by the time he was 39 he is the CEO of Money Ripples, and he’s the anti-financial advisor. Chris Miles, what’s up brother?

Chris: Hey, what’s up? Justin, so, so cool to be here with you.

Justin: Yeah, this is gonna be good stuff, dude. You and I’ve gone back and forth about money and how it works, and real estate and passive income and what’s I mean, this was a no brainer to have you on this, this episode of Entrepreneur DNA. So, I’m excited for you to be here, dude.

Chris: Yeah, same here, man.

Justin: So, you retired twice by the time you were 39. I think most people on the planet are trying to just retire. So, talk a little bit about like, the fact that you retired said, Well, I got to get back in the game because I’m bored, or whatever the case was. Then did it again and then retired again. Give us that journey. I think most people are just like, I just want to try to retire around 65 years old. I think most people are that way.

Chris: Yeah, well, definitely retiring twice by time before you’re 40, sounds pretty impressive. The only reason I had to be twice is because I screwed up the first time and so, so let me take you back like, you know, I wasn’t raised around a lot of money. You know. I was raised by pretty hard-working, middle-class parents, you know, even my mom was an artist. She was trained by the same master painter that trained Bob Ross, that paints this happy little clouds and trees and stuff, you know.

Justin: Bob Ross, we’re both old enough. We all know Bob Ross, legend.

Chris: We all know Bob Ross, right? And so, so I grew up in that environment, you know, watching that stuff on, on PBS and whatnot, and my dad, he was hard working guy in the automotive industry. He was, he was always about telling me, like, Hey, your word is your bond. My mom was telling me, follow your passions, your heart and so naturally I became a, you know, a right brain, left brain, confused kid. But the one thing when it came to money is that the one thing they had in common is that we never had enough of it, right? We can’t afford this. We think I am made of money. Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know, you know, those kind of things I hear growing up, and I vowed I never wanted to be that way. And so when I went to college, you know, I was the first one in my family to do so. And as I did that, I said, you know, I can see pretty quickly that if I just follow this path, I’m not going to become free, because I want to control my time, my destiny, my own freedom, you know, my own everything. And I knew that that path was to be an entrepreneur, and so, I actually dropped out of college with one class to go before I got my bachelor’s. And it was supposed to be temporary. I figured I’d just get some business experience and then go back and get my MBA, right. (Sure). Well, as I dropped out, you know, and I’m like, taking this little hiatus that was supposed to be temporary. I was trying to find some business. I wasn’t sure what it was. And finally, had a friend that he told me. He says, Hey, Chris, you know what? Like, I’ve got, you know, I just got hired with this financial firm. It’s pretty cool. And I don’t know what it was. Maybe I was like Adam Sandler and the wedding singer or something, where it’s like, I like money, you know, when he goes in the bank for that job, he’s like, I like money. I have a jar on top of my fridge. I’d like to add more to it. That’s where you come in. I was kind of the same way, you know, although I was smart, I just really wasn’t trained much in money. But good news is, if you want to be a financial advisor, it doesn’t require anything. All you have to do is not be a criminal and pass a test with 70% you’re in. So, it’s a pretty little bit interesting.

Justin: That is insane. I want to stop you there, bro, because I didn’t know that that is wild, that the vast majority of Americans rely on financial advisors. And what you just said is essentially what can get you licensed to be a financial advisor who is in large part responsible for advising people on how to use their money and what the best investments are? Correct?

Chris: Exactly? Yeah. I mean, I think it’s way harder to become a realtor than it is to become a financial advisor. Even with multiple licenses as an advisor, it’s not that tough. I mean, some people can pass those tests in a matter of a couple weeks, and they’re done, you know. So it’s you’re right.

Justin: So people really need to, like, Do you have a word? I don’t mean to cut your story up, but do you have a word for those people who are like, they’re heavily reliant on financial advisors? Because, listen, I you know my story and not about things about you, but you know that is insane, that someone who can go past a test just not have, like, essentially a felony, but then could advise people on what to do with quarter million dollars, a million dollars, or whatever it may be like, what’s your advice to those people looking at financial advisors?

Chris: You know, I think business owners, we get it right, like we know that if we want to follow anybody, it’s somebody who’s been there, done that, and still doing it today. And when you look at financial advisors. I mean, and really, this is what I kind of realized, right? Because, you know, this kind of goes on my story, because several years later, my dad asked me to look at his finances. He’s like, become my financial advisor. Well, I looked at all his numbers, and my dad was, like, the ultra penny pinching saver. I mean, he made Dave Ramsey look, look like he was a spender, right? I mean, that’s kind of guy my dad was, you know. He wasn’t the guy that wouldn’t just not tip at a restaurant, even the guy, if he got bad service, he would steal from the restaurant just because they owed him something. So So anyways, I’m sitting down with him, and he paid off all of his debt, including his house, in just 18 years. He’d stuff money as 401k for decades. So he was like the ultra saver, like the model poster child of what I was teaching (Yeah). And as I sat down with him, he says, he says, Chris, what can I do? And I said, Well, Dad, you’re 61 years old right now. If you want to retire today, you better hope you die in five years, because that’s how long your money is going to last before you run out. He’s like, All right, well, what do I do? You know? What else can I do? I said, I don’t know. You did everything, right? And I don’t want to sell you something in the stock market, because, you know, you’re my dad. I don’t want to just throw you into something just because I make a commission. And then all of a sudden, the market tanks, which, by the way, this is the end of 2005 it’s good. I didn’t just throw them in something the stock market, because that’s right. 2007 and ‘08, ‘09 crashed, right? So, anyways, this bugged me, and that’s where it led me to this next place, because this is the question you should be asking financial advisors. Because just a few weeks later as I’m kind of questioning, almost having this business existential crisis right? I’m questioning whether I’m teaching your even works. Well, of course, a few weeks later, I’m talking with a friend that I trained to be a financial advisor, but then he went to go do real estate investing. And he asked me, we got in this debate, what’s better stocks or real estate, right? Because I was even trading stocks and options and doing stuff. And he’s like, Chris, stop. How many of your clients are actually financially free where they don’t worry about money? I’m like, Well, don’t worry about money. Well, make all my clients worry about running out of money at some point. So I would say none. And he said, awesome way to go. Well, how about this, Chris, how many of you guys as financial advisors, and this is the key question, how many of you guys as financial advisors can actually retire off of these investments, not off the commissions you’re earning, but doing these investments? And as I was really honest with myself, and there’s over 100 people on my office, I said, I don’t know there’s guys been working here since the late 1970s I would probably say none, none of them.

Justin: Meaning they actually didn’t do the advice that they were given. They were not investing.

Chris: Well they just did, It just wasn’t enough, right? Because the mutual funds really don’t return a high enough return to make anything. So all these financial advisors there were really more relying upon the business. And this is the key thing, if there’s anything a financial advisor does, right? It’s they have a business that is the best investment that financial advisor has. Unfortunately, if you’re the entrepreneur listening to financial advisors, the best business you would have, or best investment would be to invest in their businesses, right? Because they get paid based on your money sitting there, assets under management, as they call it, right? And they get paid whether you make money or not. They get paid a percentage or commission of that, or a fee based, you know, something like that. But even if you don’t make money, they still get paid. They are the one person that gets paid, even if you don’t. That to me, I mean any other business for that matter, is crap. And even if you look at like, if you look at the statistics, right, for example, Fidelity, people talk about 401Ks. If you’re a business owner and you’re putting money in a 401K and paying your own match, that’s crap, because the truth is, 401Ks suck. Okay, they’re horrible. Not to mention you’re locking your money up in prison. And you’d be much better putting your money in your own business versus throwing in somebody else’s companies that again, you’re going to make lack lesser performance. But they found out at a, you know? Fidelity who’s the largest 401K provider in the US here. 401K or Fidelity has 45 million people with 401Ks and IRAs. Guess how many have a million dollars or more? 810,000 (I’m guessing 4,000) It’s definitely more than 4,000 that’s the good news. But out of 45 million, you know, still its only 810,000 that’s like one and a half percent. And of those, there’s a different study done by Transamerica that’s asked, Hey what’s your viewpoint on retirement? 35% of those polled that had over a million dollars said they think it’ll, quote, take a miracle to be able to retire, a miracle.

Justin: That is insanity, because I this is something that it’s it’s funny, because I, you know me, I’m a real estate guy. This is what I do now. I also believe in what you do to the point where I do what you do. You know, I don’t sell it, but because I think more financially than I think like anything else, and it’s just a shame to hear the stats that you’ve been quoting, I’m just like, Man, I’m so happy you’re here to shine some light on this, because I think the vast majority of entrepreneurs are uneducated on how money really works, and uneducated on what they should be doing when they’re making money, right? A lot of these listeners, a lot of these viewers on YouTube and Instagram, they’re making money now, like craps going right, and so this kind of goes back to your retirement stories. But what the hell do they do when they’re actually making some money?

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Chris: That’s what I started to learn too. Because, you know, like anything in business, right? Like you want to focus on profit, right? Profit is the key, like the life blood, not just your business, but that’s what really creates freedom in business too. I’ve found out that really, if you look at the Forbes 500 list, I like to see proof, right? Just like with Fidelity, when you factor in the people that don’t think they’ll it’ll take a miracle to be able to retire. Comparatively, that’s like 1% success rate. So, imagine like you go to your your business site, you have a Google review on there, and that there’s 99 one star reviews. But you happen to get that one five star review. Would you ever want to go to that place? Would you ever go to that restaurant, you know, if it has one five star review from their mom, the other ones are 99 one star reviews, saying This place sucks. That’s basically what financial advising is. And so you gotta, like, realize that just because financial advisors seem smarter, they talk the talk, right? And I’ll tell you, I was trained as a financial advisor, they would tell us, hey, you know what? Just get them to trust you. In fact, sometimes you can use and you can you can blow their minds away to the point where they’ll say, You know what it sounds like. You know what you’re doing. I’ll just turn my money over to you. When has that ever worked in business? Maybe you’ve turned money over to employee and say, You know what? You just take. Take it all. I don’t need any accountability, and a financial advisor is an employee for you. I mean, they’re, they’re contracted by you. You can fire them. But it’s amazing that we’ve been so brainwashed by financial companies and advisors and gurus out there that tell you, Oh no, these are like, these guys are like, God for you, right? Like, you got to listen to them and you better kiss up to them. I can’t tell you how many business owners I’ve talked to. They’re like, Yeah, but if I, if I start investing in, like, real estate, which is what I now recommend a lot of people do instead, you know, invest your business first and foremost, then secondly, real estate, like it. Well, if I do that, like, what’s my financial advisor going to say? Who gives a crap? You hire them. They’re your dang employee. You tell them what to do, not the other way around, and it’s like, even if they ask you why, just tell them because I want to, and you can’t question that. They got to honor your word, because they work for you, even though they make it seem like they’re the authority. You got to listen to them. You don’t have to do jack squat what they teach you, because the truth is, you’re probably more successful than they are anyways.

Justin: Man, dude, I would love, I would love to have some financial planners, like, audit their own P & L. Like, I would love to have expose, honestly, transparently. Like, one of the things that you know in my world of real estate investing, you know, I always say, like, if you’re gonna hire a mentor or coach, like, audit what they’re actually doing, like, do they have rentals? Are they flipping anything currently? If they’re gonna teach you how to flip, do they have they wholesaled anything in the last 30 days? Like, audit them. And the same is true in financial industries, right? You know, the things that I do with my money, almost, if I’m being honest, almost a 100% of the time. So, I’m trying to think anything I’m doing with my money is typically because someone like you, a friend, says, here’s what I’m doing here. Literally the results. Here is the P & L, here is the thing, the track record. This is my account. And say, oh, bro, I’m in right? Whatever that is. It’s not because. As you are an advisor, it’s because I’m looking at the actual results of what you are telling me, literally friends. I have a buddy who has no financial license, no nothing. He said, Look at what I’ve done in a sector of business (Yeah). Justin you got to get in, like, showing me results. So, I love, I love what you’re saying, like, I would love to see financial advisors show what they’ve done and, and you’re right. I bet they’re living on their commissions, and, you know, they tinker at best.

Chris: Yeah, that’s the thing is that successful financial advisors are good salespeople. They’re really just sales people in suits, right? And I’m not saying that they’re bad people, because there’s a lot of good-hearted guys. I’m, in fact, I was just a natural…

Justin: That profession. People could be good people. They just chose a profession that, you know, you’re basically saying you got to audit that. I get it.

Chris: Yeah. Exactly, yeah. Because it’s not about them. You know, even though they’re good people, there’s lots of good people in the world, but it’s about do they get you results and that’s what drove me out of the business. That’s why, in 2006 I said, I can’t make this work anymore, especially as I started listening to real estate investors and such, right? I’m like, I realized that if you look at the Forbes 500 list, all the people the one thing they have in common, they’re business owners, aren’t they? The richest people in world, are business owners. They’re not people that said, man, like, they made the corporate, you know the cover of Forbes magazine because they saved in their 401K diligently over the last 50 years. Now that the richest person in a wheelchair in a nursing home, you know? That never happens, you know, because the truth is, you can never save your way to wealth and I learned this firsthand as a financial advisor, even before I left, I remember I was talking with my brother-in-law. Now, my brother-in-law, his dad became a self-made millionaire. The guy was homeless at age 16. He went and got his own Chrysler dealership at age 19, millionaire by age 21 this is in the 1960s right? I mean, this is no small feat. A millionaire in 1960s a heck a lot harder than being a millionaire now. Now you’re a middle class and you’re millionaire, right? (No doubt). Well, he so this family became self-made millionaires, lots of money, I figured, as a financial advisor, if I get in with my brother-in-law, I get in with the rest of the family, I’m set for life, (Yeah). And so, I prepared, like for days and getting the perfect presentation, got my suit pressed, got, you know, got everything all queued up, brought even a guy from my office to back me up, because, you know, mouth of two or three witnesses shall the word be established, that kind of thing, right? So, I go and I present to my brother in law, and he says, All right, Chris, let me get this straight. If I give you 10 grand just to play with today, you’re telling me you can give me 12% right? And I was like, well, there’s no guarantees. And the truth is, by the way, the markets never average 12% long term, it’s more like 8%. So, I said, well, there’s no guarantees. He’s like, okay, Chris, even if you do give me 12% that that 10,000 made me 1200 bucks in a year. But Chris, I can take that same 10 grand, and because they’re in the automotive industry, like with car, you know, the own dealerships and stuff. He’s like, I can see that same 10 grand. I can go buy a big rig, turn around, flip it a couple months later and make 20 grand in profit. So 1,200 in a year, maybe, versus 20 grand profit in a couple months. Why would I invest my money with you? And of course, I said the same thing that I bet you guys have heard before too, which is, you should be diversified. You shouldn’t pull all your eggs in one basket because, I mean, business is risky. Ironically, out of business, right? But I’m like, Nah, you should put your money in business, because I don’t make a commission off of it. That’s what I was really saying and and that’s the problem, right there. Your number one investment should be your business. But I will tell you this, it shouldn’t stop there, because what I learned in 2006 was it drove me nuts that there was guys able to be in their 20s and 30s, and they’d have to keep working, because you can be a business owner, but you can get caught in your own rat race, right? You can, you can make millions and millions of dollars, 10s of millions of dollars. But if that business were to shut down today, the question is, would you be okay? You know, if we had another crappy 2020, where you’re non essential, all that kind of crap, right? We get that again. What’s going to happen? And so that’s why I learned 2006 and so I started meeting with these guys were real estate investors. And no have more flippers and stuff but I realized, wait, I can lend my money out to people. So, remember I’m a financial advisor thinking you gotta squirrel away your money for decades, and then you live on less than the interest. You’re only told to live on 3% the interest. So, if you’re lucky enough to save a million bucks in a mutual fund, you’re told to only pull out 30,000 a year, that’s like, poverty line. As a millionaire, you’re a broker millionaire.

Justin: Yeah that’s where I go. Who the hell teaches that? Like, I don’t even understand that math. But anyways, go ahead.

Chris: Yeah. Well, it’s because they run the numbers and they’re like, both the markets go up or down, because if you pull out money, when the market goes down, it’s like, it’s like a double whammy against you. You could lose money fast. That’s why Dave Ramsey gets ripped on so much, like he got ripped on social media because he was telling people, you should be able to pull it 8% a year. So, you make 12% in the market, you can pull out 8% you’ll be fine. You’ll never run out of money. Well, the sad thing is, on my podcast just a little while ago, actually showed what happens if the market goes down just once at every three years, and guess what? You ran out of money in about 15 years. So, based on average returns of the market pulling out 8%. So that’s where I realized it’s about the cash flow, the passive income. And so when I realized I could take my money, lend it out to even to investors, I don’t have to be the active investor. Because one mistake that I see some people making the business world is that they see people on social media, Instagram, TikTok, and they’re like, hey, 200 bucks. I made $5 million you know, from this, from flipping or wholesaling, or whatever it might be, and, and that’s cool, like, it’s an awesome thing, but it’s a business, right? So, if you’re a business owner, you don’t have systems in place. You go try to start a new business. You might watch that business, such is your economic cash cow, fail. So, you can do that. But just understand you got now two businesses competing for your time. If you do pass investing, which is like what I started getting into more eventually after I stopped doing flipping, is that I could lend my money out, for example, and make maybe 1% a month. Well, that means, if I have that same million bucks, instead of pulling out 30,000 a year, I’m pulling out 120,000 a year, right? (Right). I’m getting a lot more cash with less money. And when I realized that, when I realized, oh, it’s not about just about the returns, it’s about what income could really come my way? What kind of income can I get? That’s when it rocked my world.

Justin: Yeah, well, and so what was the pivot, you know, when you know, obviously you’re here now with the business. This is why we have you on the podcast. What brought you back into the space of entrepreneurship? Business owner, you know, you’ve retired twice. You’re no longer retired. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. What are you doing actively like, what brought you back in?

Chris: Yeah.So 2006 I got the point where I had enough passive income I could quit, right? And I was just like, What do I do with my time? Because I was 20 year 28 years old at the time, I’m like, What do I do? Because none of my friends can hang out with me in the middle of the day because they’re all working too, (That’s right) And I I almost started like a, you know, a dinner dance business. I even opened up, almost opened up a ballroom dance studio. One of the weird facts about me, I used to would be one of the nation’s top amateur ballroom dancers. It was such an interesting fact, I was going to do that, but it didn’t feel right. I remember almost closing on a building, and at the closing table, I said, You guys are going to hate me, but I feel like I need to back out of this deal. And then just a few months later, because everybody wanted to know how I did it, right? Few months later, some partners and I got together, we said, to create a company to teach people, Hey, let’s teach them how to get out of the rat race. So, 2007 I came out of retirement. Focus all on the mission. I mentioned, like, how, why I had to retire twice. Notice I came out of retirement in 2007 and at the same time I had, you know, some real estate happening as well, but I also cut off a lot of my streams of income to do that business. I dropped them because one of the partners said, focus, all in is our mission, our passion, right? Which is stupid. Why would I cut off my streams of income if I teach people how to create passive income? I don’t know what thinking at the time, but (You were young). What’s that? (How old were you?) That was I was, see, I was 30 at that point, yeah. Or 29 turning 30, yeah.

Justin: Okay. Young enough that you haven’t gone through what you just now described, right? Those are all lessons that you can only connect those dots. Looking back at the time, you’re like, yeah, all in, let’s go burn your boats. But then looking back, you can say, you know, 14 years later, you’re like, or whatever, 16 years like, wait a minute, that’s not the idea. The idea is, have multiple streams of income. What was I doing? You know, those are those lessons.

Chris: And I mean, it all worked out. I mean, I did go from millionaire to upside down, millionaire during the recession. You know, I had a dig out of a million dollar plus debt hole. I was actually in the place where I had no savings left, no credit left. My credit score looked like an SAT score, if you just got your name, right? So it was, like, in the high four hundreds, you know, it was, it was horrible. But, like you said, like, it’s those lessons you learn, right? I learned about liquidity. As a business owner, you’ve got to have more liquidity than you probably think you need to have on hand, like, you’ve got to have cash sitting there. I learned also have multiple streams of income, not just one source of income, for sure. You know, even though the real estate game, like, I I wasn’t focused so much on cash flow anymore, because I had so much cash coming in, I was getting sloppy and lazy, you know, I was, I was like, You know what? It’s okay if this rental doesn’t, you know, passive cash flow anymore, because all the appreciation, I mean, the market just goes up, right? Like, that kind of crap. And, you know, so I got caught with my pants down pretty badly. And, oh, by the way, the new business we started was focused on teaching flippers how to create passive income. So in 2007 all of a sudden, flipping just stopped like a rock. I mean, it was came to a screeching halt. I mean, we, our business, is going broke. I was going broke personally. It was just like the “Perfect storm “in the crappy George Clooney movie way, right? That’s, (Yeah) what was happening. But you’re right. I mean, so here’s what happens. Like, just like everything I you kind of notice the theme on my life as I like to have integrity. I couldn’t teach people how to get a rat race once I was back in it. And so I stopped teaching that in 2008 and then I started teaching people actually how to get resourceful, how to find money, because the. One thing I always heard business owners say. They’re like, Yeah, but Chris, it sounds awesome what you’re teaching, but I can’t even find the money. In the back of my mind, I’m thinking, your situation is better than mine. I wouldn’t say that verbally, because I don’t want to scare them off, but I would just tell them, like, well, listen, if I can help you find the money, will you pay me? They said, Well, yeah. And so I started like this, like, very rudimentary, but eventually started creating a whole system of, how do you find and free up cash flow, even especially if you’re a business owner, right? Started doing that, and we were almost bankrupt in 2009 and then by 2010 we pulled it out. We were making over 5 million a year, just because that started to take fire, especially with like chiropractors and dentists. You know, some of those niche markets.

Justin: In the practice was essentially what so if you’re talking to a dentist, what are you showing them? What are you telling them to do?

Chris: Yeah, at that time, I’ve now added more stuff to it, but at that time, it was just what I was doing, which was how we find cash, right? So start tracking your money, doing things like that. What are creative ways to pay off debt? That’s not just like the, you know, the Dave Ramsey method, like ways are based on rate of return versus just, you know, in fact, I’ve seen other guys teach it out there called the cash flow index. That’s something I created in 2008 when I was going broke myself, you know. So the cash flow index is like a way to pay off debt faster than just going off interest rates, right? I start teaching like ways save on taxes. We had the CPAs, we partnered up with that we would connect them to and attorneys and things like that, that we a lot of times free up, like, tens of thousands of dollars a year just in taxes alone, you know, so just all these things to kind of help improve the cash flow situation. I mean, one business owner, I remember, he was 62 years old, and he had a half million sitting in his crappy IRA, right? Like, just sitting there, and he didn’t know what to do with it. And at that time, I was a teacher about investing. Now I talk about how you can actually use that money to go, you know, do like real estate investing, but passively, right? But at the time, I wasn’t doing that. And so I remember looking at this whole situation, his cash flow, money coming in, and what was going out. And I said, Hey, listen, if we refinance your mortgage, and then even do, and then to use some of this money from your IRA to not just help you refinance, because the values came down, so we had put a little extra equity in but then also pay off these specific loans. And while leaving these other ones alone, if we do that, we can use a hundred thousand of your IRA money to free up $4,200 a month, or $50,000 a year. (Yeah) He’s like, but Chris, how do I retire? Listen, what’s the whole point of retirement? Right? You want income, right? Yeah, this gets you freeing up 4200 a month. Like it’s income, (Right). How do I retire? I’m like, Oh my gosh, like 50,000 a year from 100 grand. That’s a 50% rate of return on your money. Does that make sense? No. Finally, it’s his wife. By the way, it’s almost always the wives that like, say, like say, This is common sense. What are you talking about? This is no brainer.

Justin: Because it was a one time 100 grand investment, and for in perpetuity, he was going to be making $4,200 a month.

Chris: Exactly. It didn’t matter how many different ways I described it, he was like, I don’t get it, because he was just so locked in by that brainwashing of financial advisors that he could not touch that money. It was only meant to stay there forever, and that was the thing that kept him in bondage. And by the way, his business for three years in a row, was slowly becoming less profitable, and he was burning out. He was hating his business at that point, even though he had been very profitable before, he started seeing a downward trend. So we did that a month later, he freed up exactly 4,200 bucks a month, just like we said, right? Well, guess what happened? And this is the thing I love about when you improve cash flow, even outside of your business, it creates this other ripple effect too, right? Because what ended up happening is that he started to relax. He wasn’t as uptight about money anymore. So naturally, when he started meeting with patients when they’re coming in potential new patients. He wasn’t, he wasn’t desperate for money. He wasn’t like, please pay me. He was like, Hey, here’s what I offer. So he relaxed, and naturally, his closing ratios went up. So he started making in just a few months, two to $3,000 more a month in revenue, just because he relaxed. So in total, that 100,000 you know, think about it. Most financial advisors like me, if you make 10% you’re doing amazing, right? 10,000 bucks off that 100,000 but instead, like you said, into perpetuity, he’s making over like, 75,000 a year. 75K to 80,000 a year from that 100 grand decision that he made. And that’s the one thing his wife said. She’s like, Listen, honey, it’s only 100 grand. You still have $400,000 you can invest, you know, and do other stuff with, right? And so that’s not even investing the money, right? Which 400 grand you can easily make a 10% return off that in a passive investing world and make another 40,000 a years so in total, right? He could easily make, you know, over 100,000 a year extra cash flow just from the little bit of money that he had there.

Justin: Well, let’s even just talk about, I think there’s plenty of there’s plenty of people watching this, listening to this, credit cards. Credit cards, you know, 19% 24% whatever. You know, (Yeah) and you have 10 grand, 100 grand, name, the number. Let’s keep it round figures to make it easy. Let’s say you have 100 grand worth of credit card debt as a business owner, and you have a way to effectively pay that off. Let’s just say you sell some assets. You sell some retirement, you know, stocks, crypto, something, right? But then you start to buy back or pay yourself or replace it at the same rate of your credit card. That is where you start to really see the exponential component of compounding, right? I mean, I think a lot of people get short sighted with like, you know, I don’t want to use, to your point, this guy didn’t want to use his 100 grand. He didn’t see it. But if someone has 100 grand in credit card debt, and they could take a HELOC at 9% or they could, let’s just say, sell some assets that are just they’ve done well over time. You didn’t really intend on selling. Well, there’s always going to be dip in markets, so pay that off and buy back in at a percentage that is way better than your credit cards. Talk a little bit about that. I mean, I would assume you would be an advocate for people doing things like that.

Chris: Yeah, it’s always comes back to the cash flow, right? That’s the big thing. You know, cash flow is what creates freedom because, and it’s really depend upon you as a steward. You know, I teach people, there’s spenders and there’s savers, but the one thing they have in common is they’re both in scarcity, because spenders, you know, they’re always just, they have to always hunt and kill whatever they want to eat, right? But savers, that’s the more deceptive one, because everybody honors them, right? Especially the gurus out there, like, oh, cut out that latte and, you know, and, you know, live on rice and beans. So that’s 50,000 a year, right? You know, they tell you all that crap, by the way. Isn’t it ironic that Dave Ramsey, who created all of his wealth in business and real estate, tells you to buy mutual funds. I mean, what a crock of crap, right? You know. So anyways, little side rant there. We can talk about Dave Ramsey another time. But anyways, but you’re right, like it’s really about you as a steward. A steward is saying, What’s the best and highest use of this money in my life right now? That’s what a steward does. They can stay in that abundant mindset, not in the scarcity like savers or like spenders, because savers can never save enough. They never pay off their debt fast enough. It’s never enough for them. Just like that guy that got caught with a half million, he couldn’t get out of that saver scarcity mentality. He had to move into a steward, investor type of mentality, which is, to your point, right? That way you’re thinking. And so sometimes paying off the credit card can be an awesome rate of return. You know, it could be great, but there’s other times that keeping that credit card balance might be okay, uh, give you example. This popped in my head here. But I had one, one client that he was he was down. He had no money, no cash, right? Nothing in checking, nothing in savings. He was depleted. His business was struggling. He had all he had left was a thousand dollars on his credit card. That was it. He had already used up some of there thousand dollars between his limit where he was. And I said, All right, here’s the deal. You can either decrease expenses, which we’re already working on, and you can only decrease them so far. You still have to spend money, right? It’s like, we got to increase income. I said, What’s one new patient worth in your office? He’s like, it makes me usually between $2,500 and $3,000 a year. I was like, perfect. I said, What if you took the thousand dollars of your credit card and you went and did, like it was right near Christmas time, like, what if you did, like, a little Christmas party, invited all your patients, tell, encourage them to bring other people from the community, maybe even bring, like, massage therapists and other people in too, where they can advertise their services, and invite their people to come in and you can advertise your services. Like, what if you even, we can use that thousand bucks, because obviously, if you get one new patient, you make two and a half times that thousand bucks. That’s a 250% return. He’s like, I guess I could, but I’m just so scared, that’s all I have. I’m like, do it. Let’s try it. He did it. He got five new patients. So it wasn’t like he even had 50 new patients, but five, that’s worth to him 12,500 bucks from $1,000 investment. That’s awesome, right?

Chris: There’s no bigger I tell people the best investment, in my opinion, if you have to make one investment, it’s invest in yourself, right? Invest in growing your business, to your point, a little holiday party, a thousand dollars, but he invested in himself. Showed a good time, talked to a couple people, shook some hands, and it brought him five people. I mean, that’s it’s marketing 101, right, get exposure and as long as ROI the ROAs, right? Because I would say that’s marketing if he has a three or 5x ROAs like that. I mean, that’s insane. He had a way higher ROAs, but then you rinse and repeat, he should be throwing monthly cocktail parties, right for $1,000 a month to go get five more people every single month.

Chris: Exactly. Hey, even if its quarterly, if he did want to, like, you know, burn himself out. Fine, whatever. But yeah, you’re right, exactly like that right there for him was, like, the best and highest use of that money in that moment right now. I’ve had people where they’ve gotten insanely profitable in their business. They’re making lots of money, and now they’re saying, okay, I can only invest so much money in my business. I’m getting this return you know, this diminished return if I keep pumping more money in, right? So, if I max my ROI on my business? I can’t throw all my money back in, by the way, you should never do that, especially when you’re mature business. Early on, fine, but once you mature as a business, you need to take some profits home, right? Because that’s where I’ve learned, especially, you know, with 2020, and everything happening that’s where having those multiple streams of passive income help. That’s where you want to have diversification of income streams coming in. So if you get shut down, you’re okay, by the way, I can tell you this as a business owner. This has been true in my life, because eventually I did dig out of that million dollar debt hole. It wasn’t easy. I had to, like, scrimp and save and work hard to do it. But by end of 2016 I retired. I was able to retire again the second time, and I took two months off, went to California, got bored out of my mind again, and I came back. Because the thing is, I just can’t retire, right? I can’t and maybe it’s a spiritual thing for me too. Because, I mean, not just that you get bored, that I could go find a hobby or something, but I really believe that, you know, God’s blessed us with a lot of gifts, right? And if I’ve been blessed with this kind of experience where I was able to get out of the rat race twice, especially after overcoming a million-dollar debt hole, maybe I have something to offer the world, right? And I believe they have that ripple effect to give people. Hence the name of company, Money Ripples and that’s where I said, you know, what, what am I doing with my life? How am I being a wise steward of not just my money, but even my time and my talents, to give back to people and use those God given talents and that’s kind of why I kept doing the podcast. I had on my podcast now for 10 years, for that very reason. It’s like I love teaching, I love giving back, and I feel like it’s almost like a duty that I have.

Justin: What’s the podcast? Everyone can go. Everyone right now needs to go subscribe to this podcast. What is it?

Chris: Yeah, we did years of marketing, and we come with the name Money Ripples, podcast after Company name.

Justin: Money Ripples levels podcast on Apple, on all the platforms. Make sure your following Chris Miles. Sure, I tend to agree, my friend is you have a gift. You have a financial mindset that a lot of people don’t they may be great dentists, but they don’t know what the hell to do with their money. They may be great lawyers, but they don’t know what the hell to do with their money. And you know, people like you, there need to be good. People with the right, you know, the right intention, right, not just worrying about a commission on a sale. And to really help these people you know, to be able to help with their financial literacy. To your point, whether it’s real estate, whether it’s lending, whether it’s, you know, insurance policy, there’s just so many ways that you don’t need to have your typical financial advisor, stocks and bonds, mutual fund type of investment.

Chris: You really don’t. Yeah, there’s so much of a bigger world out there and a better world with their and like I said, come back that point, the Forbes 500 right? They’re all business owners, but if you look even millionaires, what they have in common, a lot of them do have businesses. But even the ones that don’t, they’ve got real assets. They got things like real estate that’s a part of their portfolio, even if they don’t know what they’re doing even accidentally. They create wealth, right? I mean, what better place to learn how to get your money to work harder for you? So you have to work so freaking hard for it, because you never, ever want to get caught in the entrepreneur rat race where you make millions dollars, and everybody thinks your life is amazing, but you know, in the back of your brain you’re like, if this role was shut down today, I’d be just as broke as everybody else, right? Like, I would be in my own rat race I still am, and that’s why I think every entrepreneur needs passive income. You need to have that that place, not just for freedom, not just for options, but it gets you to a place of power. And when you come from a place power, you know you don’t need that one customer, that one client, just like me and my business Money Ripples. My whole team knows I can shut it down anytime, because I don’t need it, but because I’m on a mission, they feel a little bit more certain, right? But that power, knowing that I don’t need the money, that comes across, and I’ll tell you, I’ve seen so many people, when they get to that place, their business explodes because they don’t need the money. You know, it’s, it’s that weird, weird thing is that when you’re not that hungry anymore.

Justin: It’s indifference, when you’re not desperate, you can actually make a real change, right? You’re doing it for the right reasons.

Chris: Yeah, you don’t have that business breath, as I call it, right? You know, where you’re just wreaking, you know, the other person that passes out the cards at all those, you know, networking, chamber commerce events, and you’re cutting people up, giving paper cuts because you want those, those cars passed out. And, in fact, you’re so desperate, you can give them a stack of cards, like, here hand them out to somebody else, like, please, I need business. No, that’s a crappy way to live like you come from a place of power and confidence, you’ll get more business.

Justin: There’s no doubt. There’s no doubt everyone this man knows what he’s talking about. I want everyone to be listening to Money Ripples follow Chris miles. Where else can we point everyone to just get in your world and understand more of how you think financially, why things make sense. Where can we point everybody?

Chris: Yeah, like you said, the Money Ripples podcast is great, but anything Money Ripples at Money Ripples on social media. Moneyripples.com great ways to learn.

Justin: What would be final question, what would be your top three investment strategies, for someone who’s running a high performing, high revenue, high income earner, what would be your top three that you would, you know, obviously, you’re not doing an audit of everyone’s financials, but just a generic answer of like, hey, if someone’s making multiple seven figures, they have high income, here’s three great you know, investment strategies.

Chris: Yeah, I would say this again, you know, no investment recommendations and all that kind of stuff. But if I were to say in general categories, one is, like I said, owning real estate doesn’t have to be in your backyard. I like turnkey rentals, where somebody else manages the property for me, so it doesn’t distract me from my own passions and time that have in my business. Two is, you know, I would, I would definitely look at something like hard asset, other hard assets, like maybe gold, silver. I even have ownership in like, oil, well wells and things like that. So, commodities right? So you got real estate, you got commodities, and you can actually have investments in actual, like, production of oil, well, like, type of businesses and whatnot. And then the third thing is, is having a cash, having that war chest, right? Like having that cash available, and that’s where I use it’s not an investment, but it’s a saving strategy, which is called Infinite Banking, or as we call it, Max ROI infinite banking, so that we cut the cost as low as you can go to get the higher returns on your money.

Love that everyone make sure you go to https://moneyripples.com/, Money Ripples podcast, my friend Chris Miles is here serve you guys. That is the end of our podcast. We will see you on the next Entrepreneur. DNA, peace.

Mastering Pre-Foreclosures with ‘The Short Sale Queen’ | Nicole Espinosa

All right, Science Plipping podcast listeners, as always in this episode is brought to you by Rockely.ai if you’re looking for a seller, lead generating system that has automation in AI bot and has sellers coming to you, then Rockely.ai is your choice. Make sure you head over to the website, fill out an application and schedule a demo now to see the power of Rockely.ai.

Justin: All right, Science Plipping podcast listeners, as always in this episode is brought to you by Rockely.ai if you’re looking for a seller, lead generating system that has automation in AI bot and has sellers coming to you, then Rockely.ai is your choice. Make sure you head over to the website, fill out an application and schedule a demo now to see the power of Rockely.ai.

What is up? Science of Flipping family? Welcome back to another episode of the Science of Flipping podcast. As always, I have an incredible, incredible guest, a professional real estate investor, but specifically, this is the short sale queen, y’all, we got Nicole Espinosa in the house. How are you, girl?

Nicole: I’m good. I’m excited to be here in your studio.

Justin: Yeah, this is fun. So, we need to hit this hard, because I think in the real estate space, there is a niche, the short sale, the pre foreclosure. It is where I cut my teeth, frankly, back in 2007-2008 when the world was coming to the financial end. But I think a lot of people don’t talk enough about this, because there’s still a very, very lucrative niche. There are still plenty of people that have a lot of financial pain, that are dealing with this in their own personal lives. And you are the go to girl that I would tell everyone needs to be following you needs to go to your YouTube Short Sale Queen. For all you listeners, go follow the Short Sale Queen and YouTube. But let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about the state of the real estate economy right now. What you’re seeing as an active investor in the short sale space and pre foreclosure space, why don’t we just dive into that?

Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. So, thanks for having me, of course here. Yeah. So really, what we’re seeing right now is, so when you got in 2007 2008 actually got in 2009 so we got in the worst time ever. So everyone was leaving. We’re we’re getting in right, which I think speaks to, like, our personalities and what we’re doing. (Right, right. Little bullish on it). Yeah. We’re like, Okay, you go that way. I’ll go this way (Totally). But unlike 2008 and 2007 we’re in a different kind we have a different kind of borrower, a different kind of seller that’s distressed. So we have now, with the pandemic, with everything that had happened, anybody from 2020 and there’s two types of people in foreclosure right now. 2020 to 2022 or now 2023 those borrowers that purchased are now upside down and they over leveraged. Because if you remember couple years ago, it was, you know, everybody’s overpaying, and it was almost like a flex like, Oh, I got the deal 100,000 over asking like, okay, (Sweet), sweet. It’s like the opposite of investing, (Right). So, you had a bunch of homeowners that made these emotional decisions because of what was going on right and now they’re coming to us and saying, Hey, I need to sell because I have a financial hardship and they owe more than the house is worth. And so because right now, with the interest rates that increased, we have buyers that have less purchasing power. Yeah, so if it’s already hard enough for investors, for regular, traditional sellers. Imagine people that have to sell, that don’t have that flexibility.

Justin: Yeah. Well, so you’re talking specifically. The vast majority of people that you’re seeing in your business and your students in your community are homeowners that bought in 2020, to 2023, or in trouble?

Nicole: Yeah. So, we see two types that and people that are, there’s, like, no middle ground. It’s you’ve either just bought or you’re like, 15 years behind. (Yeah, yeah). There’s no, like, middle ground here. (Okay). So, those are the type of sellers that we’re seeing right now. They’re distressed.

Justin: And so, but what would you say to the people who are thinking, Yeah, but didn’t they get a 2.8% interest rate. What’s your point on that?

Nicole: Well, it’s irrelevant, right? So the terms are irrelevant. Their situation is now, of course, this has opened the door for so much creative finance subject to but what’s happening and what people need to understand, because most people approach Pre Foreclosure with logic. There’s nothing logical about a seller and foreclosure, (No, it’s all emotional) right. And so, someone that is, you know, emotional intelligence, you know, when someone has no logic, their emotions are high, like you have people in this situation that are not thinking about equity. They’re not thinking about, Oh, I need to do something. They’re thinking, I need to save my home, right? So if anyone doubts, or is like, Hey, where’s there’s no foreclosures, or is there opportunity in my market, just go look at the amount of people that got foreclosed on the month before.

Justin: Where would someone go find that data?

Nicole: So, you can look in the county records to see the active foreclosures. Now you can purchase, you know, pre foreclosure lists, auction lists and all that, but you can go for free on that. You just have to do the research yourself. (Which no one wants to do) No, and it’s not sustainable, but if you just want an idea, right? Like, just see how many are active. And these are all people that need help (Right.) And so logically, you’re like, okay, and even I know a couple of people have said this years ago, like, oh, there’s so much people have so much equity, they’ll just sell if they’re in foreclosure. And I was like, wow, you have never worked with someone in foreclosure before to say a comment like that, because I work with people days before a sale date that have hundreds of thousands of dollars of equity.

Justin: What are they doing? They’re trying to figure it out that all the way to the day before. They’re trying to figure it out is that what’s happening with them?

Nicole: Oh, they put their head in their sand. And so anyone that’s listening to this, that’s ever talked to someone in foreclosure is going to resonate with what I’m about to say. You talk to someone in foreclosure, you see the paperwork, you’re like, Okay, or the numbers, and you’re like, you have $250,000 of equity. And the first thing they tell you is, I’ve gotten this taken care of. That’s the number one objection. And they literally think I had a conversation with the bank, I talked to somebody, it’s gonna be fine. The foreclosure, it’s in three weeks, it’s gonna be fine, (Yeah). And then all of a sudden, four days, three days before, they’re still in that situation, and nothing panned out, and the bank is not calling them back, or never postponed it, or they got denied for the loan mod they were waiting on, (Yeah). And now it doesn’t really matter about the equity, because that’s if they can’t stop the foreclosure, they lose everything (That’s right). And so, what where people go wrong is that they approach these sellers with logic and saying, Hey, no, you need to sell. What’s wrong with you? Like and they’re arguing. And when you argue with someone that’s delusional, you’re never going to win, period. And you automatically put yourself in a you versus me, instead of meeting that homeowner where they’re at so that you can help them come to terms with what’s going on.

Nicole: You should just be a sales coach. Yeah. I mean, because the reality is this, what you are talking about is salesmanship is the reality. You’re not really talking about numbers and math. You’re saying you need to connect with your potential client, with your prospect, right? (Yeah). And I think your point is, too often people worry about the mail formula, what’s my cash offer going to be? (Yep), but they’re not actually saying what is the problem that I’m trying to solve? And let me listen to that, right?

Nicole: 100% . And they think like, they say, Oh, they’re delusional. I’m like, yes, they are. And that means, if you know that, then how do you connect with them? So 100% it’s sales, and it’s crazy, because when I started my education in the beginning, it was like, I want to give you all the tactical things, and I realized none of that really mattered, because the huge missing piece of what’s not taught is how to connect with these people is how to meet that person where they’re at, is how to get them to arrive to the reality. Instead of trying to sell them, you’re educating them. And then your confidence is, I teach this to my students, that the mindset should be when you’re talking to the sellers, I’m the best thing that’s ever going to happen to them, and they just don’t know yet. And if I’m not, if they don’t know that, if they don’t know like, their house is on fire and I’m the only one with the water to put it out, like, I’m gonna approach it completely different than then, oh, well, you know, I’d love to help like and not confident, but if that’s my mindset going into it, then I’m gonna have a sense of urgency. (Yeah). I’m gonna have a sense of urgency because I know their house is on fire, and I know that they just can’t see that, and I know I can help. And so it’s just a completely different mindset than, hey, this is Nicole. I’m, you know, wanting to buy her house. I see it’s an auction, and they’re like, click.

Justin: Right. What? So, let’s even talk not going through the whole script. And you have an incredible community teaching people how to handle all this and go through all that again. Make sure you check her out on YouTube, Short Sale Queen on Youtube and follow her all over social medias. Nicole Espinoza, Short Sale Queen. So, what is the beginning part of that script? If I’m the homeowner, and you do reach out to me or whatever, however I get in your world? (Yeah) Are you coming in with the confidence to say, Hey, I know you’re in some trouble here. I know I can help you. We just need to be patient together. I done this a long time. There are solutions to your pain. I’m happy to provide them to you, if you’re okay with me, like, what? How does that go? What is the talk track of that?

Nicole: Yeah, so most people get stuck. And there’s like, three different phases of cold calling, which everyone tries to avoid, right? They all try to avoid cold calling. And I’m like, you have to have to cold call in the beginning, because why would you spend so much money on direct mail and then practice on these paid leads? (Right) No, get your reps in. Know how to talk to them. You can’t market to someone you don’t understand, right? And then if you for some reason, if someone does call you back, they hang up, and your cost per lead just went up tremendously because you’re practicing on these leads, right? So when you’re approaching these sellers, you know, the biggest struggle for most people is getting past those first 10 seconds, I can’t even say 30 seconds, the first 10 seconds, right? Because of the way that they introduce themselves. So as an investor, when you’re approaching it and you’re saying, hey, Justin, so, hey, listen, 123 main, you know, I wanted to write a cash offer. I wanted to see, you know, I see you’re in foreclosure. And immediately, when people think about real estate investors, what do they think? They think I don’t want to sell, first of all, and second of all, you’re trying to scoot me over, and you’re trying to lowball me. And that’s not what I want, right? Right, but it definitely doesn’t say you’re on my team. It doesn’t, definitely doesn’t say you want to help. It just says, and that’s just the intro, (Yeah), right?. So, in the beginning, what you know, what I teach is, first of all, remember, this is just a conversation, (Yep), human being to human being. So how would you call your family member? How would you call your friend? You’d say, Hey, Justin, it’s a poll or Justin? (Right, right) Super casual (Yeah) and I’m not saying that you’re not going to tell someone you’re an investor or a realtor or whatever. I’m saying, don’t lead with that, okay, because you automatically are having this person write you off, (Right), instead of giving you the opportunity to tell them about the solutions and get passed those barriers. And so I always tell people, I’m like, Okay, first of all, keep it casual. (Okay) Once you get passed that, and they’re like, Okay, you know, that’s where a lot of people struggle. Okay, great. So now you’re in the middle, and you’re like, Okay, you’re trying to build rapport or keep them on the phone long enough. Like, why should they care? Right? The longer you can keep the person on the phone, the more their walls are gonna come down, and the more they’re gonna tell you, and the more they talk, the more you’re gonna hear what the truth is, (Yeah), what is their pain points? Why are they in this situation? And so, you know, once you go passed, you know, Justin, like, Okay, who are you? I keep going, they could literally tell me, go to hell. And I’m like, I know it’s just frustrating, you know, like, no, I agree with everything they’re saying. (Yeah). They could tell me the sky is black, and I’m like, You know what? I see that, but I also see some blue, so, yeah, I can kind of see where you’re coming from, because I’m not arguing with them, (Right). I know they’re delusional. I know that they’re in denial, but now if I can start poking holes in that certainty, that denial, that delusion, then I get them to come back into reality, because they’ll tell me, oh, the banks, the bank, I already got this taken care of. And I use that example because that’s like the number one objection. Like, I gotta say here, I’m good. Leave me alone. They don’t really you

Justin: So almost you beat the objection by saying, hey, I’m sure the banks have told you this is gonna be easy. There’s an easy resolution. We hear that all the time. So, you basically overcome that immediately, so that I can’t even use it.

Nicole: Yeah. I mean, and even they’re gonna tell you that regardless, so I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna agree with them, and this is the key, I agree with everything that they say, (Okay), right? Always. I don’t ever disagree, because I want to be on your team, (Right). I want this conversation for you to feel, for you to go from random cold caller to I’m working with Nicole. Nicole’s got me. That’s what our clients say. Like, oh, Nicole’s got me. She’s, I don’t want to work. No, I’m good. (Yeah) That rapport, that confidence. So, when they say that, and I’m agreeing with them, like, say, for this objection, specifically, I keep going, because they’re thinking, okay, great, you’re going to get off the phone. And I’m like, no, I keep going. Okay, awesome. Justin, so what did you end up doing? And it always throws them off guard, because they’re like, I thought you were to gonna leave me alone. Now, (Yeah), right? like, that was my “F” off thing that I said to you. So again, the more that they say, the more I get to say things. So if you keep going with that, it’s like, okay, well, I talked to my to my lender, and I filled out an application, so they’re going to help me with the loan modification. Awesome, but the only thing that I’m worried about Justin is it still shows that it’s up for auction. So did you did you tell Wells Fargo, or, you know, whatever that you know, did you get a postpone? Did you request a postponement? And they’re like, well, and then this is where I get to show my expertise. Is where I get to (Show value) keep going and show value. And then even I even teach, like, how to talk to the bank with them, to really create that validity of like, okay, I’m not asking you for anything. I’m not selling you anything. (Yeah). Let’s figure out where you’re at, and then I’m going to be the person that’s going to help you with the best reason.

Justin: So, you’re definitely not trying to do a one call close. This is not that type of strategy. Or are you? (I my goal is) you can, (You can absolutely)right? But is that your intention? Because as someone so I’ve bought a lot of short sales, but I do it typically because either it’s quite literally about to go to the auction, I actually have the cash. So people come to me and they know I can close. I’m not targeting them. So, I’m actually asking questions, because it’s actually a niche I don’t target for my own marketing. (Yeah)

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Justin: When I think about giving the value, I would think you’re gonna also say, Hey, here’s the thing that you’ll probably want to ask the lender the next time you have a call, here’s the three or four or five things that I think you should ask, here’s why, here’s what you should be looking for. What’s going to happen is, and I’m guessing, I’m paraphrasing for you, but they’re going to realize I haven’t asked these questions. I got to call the bank back, but now you’ve offered them so much damn value because you’re in support of them. Just saying, these are the things you should be asking for. This is what you should be looking for. That would essentially think that they’re either gonna call you right back when they realize the bank can’t do what they needed to get done, (Yeah) or you just have an easy way to follow up. Is that kind of?

Nicole: A 100% and that’s absolutely the mindset. And so you said the one call close. I always, I’m always driving the bus. I am always in control. And if you say, if you lose control, or if you say things like, let me know, you’re sending them back out in the wild, (That’s right). And these people, they want someone to tell them what the next steps are. And so, everything you do, you make it easily digestible. Step one, this is what we’re gonna do. Because right now, the reason why they haven’t taken action, the reason why they haven’t done anything, is because they’re so overwhelmed, they’re shut down, right, right? They cannot see out of their situation. So, if I do you know powerful clarity is like you know that in your business, you know that in your decision making? Well, if you can provide clarity for that person, they’re like, okay, tell me what to do next. (Yeah). And I’m almost like talking to their subconscious, because it’s like, I’m giving them this level of comfort because I’m like, okay, we got this. Let’s go. Let’s step one. Oh, but what about this? No, don’t worry about that. We’re gonna take this in steps. So, step one, let’s talk to your bank together. Let’s figure out if they did approve the loan modification, because if they did fantastic, then let’s look over the terms, make sure it makes sense.

Justin: So, you even offer that right? Because again, back to I’m just off offering value. Let me make sure I help you. I want everyone to kind of stop for a second, because what she’s really saying, really, truly boils down to just expert salesmanship, but also customer service. And the rich is the rich, because when you walk in the rich, you literally feel like anything is like they’ve got every little thing you possibly ever need. I think everyone needs to realize what you’re really saying right? The second is, it’s not as much about the tactical it’s not as much about the numbers. It’s not what you can offer, what the rehab cost is. That’s all irrelevant until you get the homeowner to get to a place of like, oh, I need to do something. And Nicole has been so great, I’m gonna do something with Nicole. Essentially, is what you’re saying.

Nicole: A 100% and then I’m also walking them through where they’re not gonna ghost me, they’re not going they’re gonna have so much clarity that the next investor that’s gonna call them, that’s going to pitch something, they’re like, Oh no, that’s not going to work because of this, (Right). Because they’re so educated, of like, Oh no, it doesn’t work because of this. So it removes doubt and that overwhelming of like, all the decisions I need to make, no, no, we’ve arrived to the same point together. I didn’t convince you. You, I gave you a safe place to say no. And then you walked through everything and realizing, okay, this is what my reality is, right? And I genuinely want to help, (Yeah), right? I know the money is going to come. You can both help people and make really good money. (Yeah of course) my whole business is a testament to that.

Justin: The more you make more money by the more value you serve, right? (100%). So, the intro to that in our world of real estate investing, like the general script that we would try to teach is something like, Hey, Nicole, you know, if you’re outbound calling or a lead comes in, just want to introduce myself. My name is Justin. I’m here at, you know, HDRI Holdings LLC. We’re a buyer across the nation for single family assets. We either fix and flip them or buy and hold them. My job is to figure out, you know, where you stand in terms of selling. If we can be a right fit, great. If we can’t, that’s also okay. I can point you in the right direction. But right out of the gate, you know, we’re looking to buy a home. Do you avoid that right out of the gate. What is that first quite literally, like, 10 seconds, 15 seconds of intro?

Justin: Yeah. So that works really great when someone is not distressed. But if you’d make that approach, you’re going to get, like, the five to 10%. I want to teach you how to get the 80 (Okay), right. What? Because the reality is the 80% Percent do not want to sell, (Yeah), period. So, if you approach that and you use that script, they’re gonna say, Thanks, Justin, I appreciate it, but I’m good. (Yeah). I don’t want to sell. I’m not selling my home. Like, why are you? Why do you think I’m selling? Right? And you’re like, Oh, well, I see you’re in pre-foreclosure. And now it’s almost like they feel exposed.

Justin: Of course. Now you’re like opening the wound, like they don’t want to be in foreclosure, they don’t want to lose their home. And you’re like, lose their home, and you’re like, Oh, I see you’re about to lose your home. So how can I help?

Nicole: Right. And so, this is why I say most people approach it with logic, because even the people with the best intentions which I get it where they’re like, okay, but I’m offering them a solution. I’m not doing anything. But that’s not the way they see it. (Right). The way they see it is, I fell behind on my mortgage because I had a financial hardship divorce, you know, got sick, like, whatever that is, and now you’re coming to me because you see that I’m in distress, and you’re trying to take advantage. (Yeah). And so as long as you are putting yourself in a position where it becomes a you versus me, you will. It doesn’t matter how great you are and what you have to do, like we’re to offer they’re never gonna hear it.

Justin: Do you bring up the house at all in that first 10-15 seconds?

Nicole: No, not at all. I’m literally just making about them. I will literally have a conversation for 30 minutes. I have their social number, their loan number, their property address, their life story, and they’re ready to sign a contract, and they’re like, oh, by the way, who did you say you’re with? Yeah, and that’s how you know it’s a good conversation. (Yeah). Because the reality is, they don’t care about you, right? They don’t. We feel, as human beings, like we have to qualify ourselves. We approach and especially, I see this with realtors a lot, where they’re like, wanting to be super professional, and they feel like, I need to tell you, or anybody that’s been in the business for a while but hasn’t really done a lot, and they love to start conversations off with I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and it’s like, cool, right? I don’t care. What does that have to do with me, right? Because we feel almost like I have to, I have to show you my worth and my value. And I’m telling you, look at it the opposite. Show your value. Show your worth through your knowledge and make it about the prospect. And the reality is, you and I both know people love talking about themselves, so if you give them a safe space to go on about their life story and all this stuff, you’re gonna get the information you need to be able to give them the solution.

Justin: I would assume, somewhere in your world, people can get a script from you. Where would they go to do that?

Nicole: You can go, if you go to YouTube, I have all of the links. I have them on my website. We give free scripts.

Justin: I love it. Make sure you go there, because if you guys want to know exactly what to say and how to say it, she’s giving away gold

Nicole: Cold calling and door knocking, (All of it), all of it free.

Justin: So, do you say you’re with a company looking in real estate at all? What is like? Literally, the scripted 10 seconds. I mean, it’s the first 10 seconds, like, how do you introduce yourself? Because for us, again, we’re targeting the wide, so short sales and niche. I go wide because I want all of the opportunity. (Yeah). So, I just go directly to say we’re looking to buy assets in the community. We love the market. We want a bigger footprint. Not all properties work for us. That’s totally okay. We fix and flip, or we buy and hold, just depending upon the asset. Would love to have a conversation about your interest in selling, if you have any. If not, that’s totally fine too, right? So we kind of give them the ways out.

Nicole: I love that. You just did the whole script. That’s how you know, it’s like in you, oh, you just did the whole thing,

Justin: Yeah, if you keep going, but yeah. And so do you do any of that? Like, is any in that first 15 seconds? (No) Nothing.

Nicole: It’s so simple. Now there’s two different scripts like, well, the script has a lot of different ways that you could do it, right? But it’s all pretty much the same. And the reason why it’s different is because I would approach someone that that’s in pre foreclosure, which means that they could have months, totally different than someone that has an auction date, yep. Because if someone has a foreclosure date, we don’t have time to play around with this. Like, I’m going to be very direct, (Yeah), right? And they know (That’s right). So, someone in pre foreclosure might be more in denial. So, I don’t want to be so direct, (Okay), so the script on someone that it is direct, like, you have a foreclosure date in two weeks, right? I would say something like, Hey, Justin. Or I would say, Justin, yeah, oh, hello, hey. So, listen, a really quick 123, main, it still shows up. It’s for auction. Were you able to get that stop?

Justin: I think we got it all handled.

Nicole: Oh, perfect! So, it’s so what did you end up doing?

Justin: And this is where I don’t know the answer. What they would say? What would they usually say? (So usually they’ll say), Oh, I see you’re just, that’s right, that’s it. (That’s literally that simple). I see there’s a forward closure date for May 1, April 16, as a recording this, right? So, it’s like, yeah, I see that.

Nicole: Super simple. And just to get the conversation going for them to say something, right? So they’re gonna say, in that situation, they’ll say something like, Oh no, no. I know. I’m working with my bank. I’m like, Oh, great. So are you doing loan modification? Like, what are you working out? And I keep going, right? And, of course, tonality is huge. I I teach tonality and NLP, and all that. But that’s again, it’s not because you’re not attacking, you’re not questioning, you’re you’re, again, trying to keep it to like, you’re my friend, like, I care, right? (Yeah). And so, you know they’re gonna keep talking. And again, if someone has a foreclosure date, like, this is where I’m like, Okay, well, Justin, even if you’re like, really hard headed, like, those are the best ones, right? The ones that are like, Screw you, “F “you.

Justin: Like every man ever.

Nicole: Yeah. Especially the whole woman man thing too. It’s like, I gotta tell you, I know everything, and I’m like, okay, great, no problem. Yeah, you do. So, can you show me why this still says, you know?

Justin: Remember I’m the expert. You don’t know me yet, but I’m the expert. You don’t know what you’re doing, I got this.

Nicole: Right? So instead of like.

Justin: I feel like this is husband and wife conversations too. Guys should just be listening to you right now on this and be like, just say, yes, honey, I’m I don’t know what I’m doing.

Nicole: Well, it’s funny you said that, because on my Youtube, I’ll see comments, because I still see, like, the comments. I try not to, but, like, I still see a comment, so I’ll try to respond, and I’ll have people be like, Thanks for the marriage advice.

Justin: Totally, I’m literally sitting here, like, are you just talking to every husband in the planet right now? Just listen to your damn wife. She’s always right.

Nicole: It’s always a wife that’s like, the driver where it’s funny.  But back to So, yeah. So that person was like, Oh, what are you doing or whatever. And if they’re like, super hard headed, I’m like, oh, oh, absolutely. Well, it sounds like you know what you’re talking about. Justin, like, that’s great. So the only thing I’m Worrying about (Male ego). Right? So, exactly, and so okay, but Justin, can you tell me why it still shows up? Because it’s, I see this on the list. You want me to send it to you, right? You see I’m doing there. I’m like, validating him, (Yeah). But also poking doubts, poking holes and doubt into his certainty. (Yeah) Right? Because objections are just a smoke screen of uncertainty, (Yeah) right? They’re telling you this because they’re not even sure what you’re saying is something that that’s gonna work for them and all of that. And I have a whole training on that, and so anyway, so at that point, this is where it gets real, right? Because I know that. You know that, I know that this that you’re be asking me right now. (Yeah) actually trying to filter right now.

Justin: No, you don’t have to filter. Let them fly.

Nicole: But, but no, like, so you know you’re trying to bullshit me, and I’m to I know that it’s a sale date, and so now I’m giving you a safe place to be like, Oh, well, I gotta check. Like, okay, Justin, I would check right now, because the foreclosure gets in two weeks. And if it’s not 100% I’ve seen so many people that wait till last minute, and the longer you wait, the less options you have. And so see how I just changed the whole narrative of the conversation so it can go any direction.

Justin: Well. Now you’re giving a lot. Well, what? What else can you know because the word options now, now I’m thinking like, well what are my options?

Nicole: Exactly? And anytime we say that, we’ll even have on the script, you know, you have so many options? Please don’t let your house foreclose, like on the texting script, and that, in itself, gets so much for so many responses, because people are like, they’ll literally just say what you just said, (Yeah), well, what are they? (Of course) What are my options? What are you talking about?

Justin: And then you want to get them on the phone if you’re texting, right? So you can have this conversation (Exactly). This is incredible. So, what happens if this person is 90 days out, you know, it’s more pre foreclosure, (Yeah) not auction date. How does it change?

Nicole: So, it’s, I don’t mention the foreclosure date, or I don’t say, like, may 2, or anything. Like, I’m not as aggressive. But if it’s, you know, 90 days out, I’ll see something like, have you gotten it taken care of? (Yeah). And so, it’s more generic, and it’s like less.

Justin: They probably always say yes. I’d say a vast majority Yes. I got to in the habit.

Nicole: Exactly. So that’s where I go into the next like, great. You know, what did you end up doing? Or that’s a good I’m so glad because you showed up on my list. And do you see it? So it depends either way, kind of like, fill out the conversation, but on the script, there’s like, two or three different responses to that.

Justin: And you never mention an entity. You don’t say, Hi, I’m Nicole from so and so. LLC, (No) that’s amazing, that you can just keep vomiting all over and giving you all these answers, and you’re like, all they know about me is, my name is Nicole.

Nicole: Literally I don’t even say my last name. (That’s phenomenal). Like most of the people, I’m not kidding, 30 to 45 minutes in, and they’re they don’t know my last name, they have no idea who I’m with, but I have made them feel so comfortable, and most importantly, I’ve made the conversation about them that they want to tell me.

Justin: Well if you, you’ve obviously studied sales a long time, right? But what everyone needs to understand is that’s the only conversation that matters, is what’s in it. For me, every conversation ever is like we are a part of a mastermind together in that entire room of 300 people. When you’re talking to someone else, the other person is thinking, what’s in it for me during this conversation every time, and I can feel it when they’re talking to me, I’m like they’re trying to figure how, like I can serve them right and but that’s every human connection is what is going to be affecting me in this conversation. So always keep that in mind, regardless of the scenario. Let’s dive a little bit more into options that sellers actually have, that you know, the state of the market, the real estate market. How many people are out there right now that are really in this type of pain? What type of options are you able to come up with? How many you know? What are the ways to target these people? Was talking to a little bit of the granular like, this isn’t I can’t imagine this is nearly as big as like when you and I first got started, in 2007-2008. But maybe it is. Again, I don’t target this niche. I target wide. So I’ll go, like, the whole United States versus just this is it still a pretty big niche?

Nicole: Absolutely. First of all, remember, we’re hyper focused, right? So we don’t need to cast a large net, because the leads that we have like, we get a higher return because we’re solely focused on these people. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in the economy, there’s always going to be people that need help. Yeah, right. And so, you know, short sales, one exit strategy, people are over leveraged. They owe more than the house is worth, but they have so many more options especially.

Justin: Where is that? If I can ask, where is that? Where do people like? I feel like I feel like the market is appreciated for over a decade. Where in the hell is where someone owes more, I guess, if they refi out and, you know, wanted to go buy a boat, so they over leverage themselves.

Nicole: I get that all the time. Because really, especially in what you’re doing, you’re so removed from like this side, (Yeah), but what you don’t see, it will, first of all, let’s remove the idea that the market has any indication of whether someone’s going to be upside down. Just take away, because even though it absolutely influences where there’ll be more it has nothing to do with someone’s personal financial situation. (True). So, I’ll give you an example the people that we’re working with, they not only overpaid, right? So they bought in 2022 they overpaid. Well, yes, of course, the market, you know, balancing out, you know. And yes, house is appreciated. But right now, especially in certain areas, people are not able to sell what they could and all of that. But that aside, because it’s not that much of a dip, right? You have people when the reason why I say focus on someone’s personal financial situation is because when someone’s behind on one thing, they’re generally behind on everything else, totally. So, this is why it doesn’t really matter about the market, because you can be in the best market ever, in fact, when arguably, after 2008 and we were in like, 2011, 2012 we were, like, going up drastically.

Justin: Crazy amount of appreciation for sure.

Nicole: And yet we had a crap ton of short sales. Because people, if you think about it, City liens, HOA liens, second mortgages, taxes, I mean, all of that, plus, if they’re not maintaining the home. So it’s as is. I mean, it’s not hard for someone to be upside down when you start, you know, with all the debt and the liens and all of that, yeah, because, again, it’s their personal situation. And so when people look at it, especially, you know, people drive me crazy. Are like, the analysts that they’re like, Oh, well, the economy is so great. Like, you know, is there something in family that actually did that? Actually did that. We kind of, like, went head to head on this panel, and it was really funny. But he was just like, well, you know, the numbers say that we’re gonna appreciate so much that we’re not gonna have anybody that’s really gonna need help. And I was like, wow. Like, you’re so disconnected from reality. Like, because that’s because, if that’s the case, then how can we help over 100 people a month (Right) and we have an entire community of people that are doing it.

Justin: Totally and you’re just you and your market and your sector, (Yeah) and that’s not to your point, the community. And then just everyone else is going through it.

Nicole: We’re across the country we’re nationwide (Right). So, we get a full a pulse on all the states, not every single one, but the majority. So, we get to see, between us at the short sale queen, plus all of the members in our community, the investors and realtors in all different markets, what’s going on and the influx. And so that’s where the short sells are, is like the people that personally they it, you know? And then think about this too, the people that we didn’t even talk about the forbearance. And so, after 2020 we had 10.1 million people that stopped paying their mortgage. (Of course, yeah) 10.1 million people. And the way it was packaged was, hey, don’t worry about it, the bank’s gonna help you. Like, I went on a ran on Facebook that went viral, and I was like, Guys, stop telling people to stop paying their mortgage for the love of God, please, like we are the professionals, like we’re supposed to be, especially as realtors like, because I’m a realtor too, right? I’m both. And so people are looking to us for advice and looking up to us, and you’re telling them, oh, don’t worry, just call your bank. Well, what happened was, you know, the President kicked the can down the road because he just got an office, and he’s like, I don’t want foreclosures attached to my presidency. So, what did he do? Postpone. Postpone. Postpone. So, forbearance is supposed to be a temporary pause on your mortgage payment. So for the people listening that don’t know what that is, historically, lenders have only offered forbearances for two to three months, because if someone. Is behind on one payment, they’re definitely not going to or struggling to make one payment. They definitely can’t make three or four at once, (Right), right? So, the forbearance option was strictly for people that were, you know, behind, but like, in between jobs and like, they’re gonna they just need time to catch up (Sure). Well, what we decided to do was extend it for over a year (Sweet). So, all of these people stopped paying for over a year. Well, once you stop paying, you adjust your lifestyle accordingly, (Of course) even if you didn’t legitimately have a hardship. And then you factor in the people that did have a hardship lost their jobs and could never catch up. So you have a wave of people. Now, it wasn’t 10.1 million, right? It went down 5 million, 3 million, but you still have millions of people that are now we’re seeing like, oh well, so what happened? Oh, well, you know, I did it forbearance, and then I got a $50,000 bill from from the lender, and I couldn’t pay it, and so that I was forced to go into a loan modification. And now they restructured my loan. I was at a 2% interest rate, and now they want to put me at 8%. Because whenever they they restructure, they put you at the current interest rate. (Sure) There’s all those people that you’re talking about, the worst thing they could do is fall behind, because now they’re at today’s interest rate.

Justin: So that’s interesting. I would have thought, again, not being in the niche, I would have thought they would have just restructured. So let’s just say the 50 grand they were just tacked it onto the back of their loan. So instead of owing $100,000 they owe $150,000.

Nicole: So the thing you need to understand is that the loan modifications are the best thing for the lender. The lender is a financial institution, so there’s never a situation where there (Who always), I want to help (The bank). Yes, (Right). In fact, if you want to learn how to market. Look at the way the government markets programs. They are the best marketers. They say things like, we’re going to put a forbearance plan and a COVID relief for you. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to restructure your loan. Don’t worry. We’re going to add we’re going to extend your loan from 30 to 40 years. Don’t worry. So, I may not be the smartest person in the world, but if I’m in a mortgage for 20 something years, and now I have a 40 year mortgage, I don’t really feel like you’re helping me here. (No, it’s a lot more interest I’m paying). I mean literally, the lenders now have these notes that are performing because now you’re current, and they get to add all of this extra money on their books, like this is amazing for the lenders. Look at their portfolios now they’re like, you had a $200,000 loan now it’s gonna be a four. I mean, that’s crazy (Right). And so, and they do it a couple different ways, like, you know, FHA, not to get into too much, but like FHA, they’ll create a second mortgage. So, it’s like a non performing loan. I mean, there’s just so many ways that they can structure it. But most of these people that do loan modifications end up in a short sale because none of that debt is forgiven. They restructure it and add the interest payment, the late fees and all of that, and now when you go to sell, you’re essentially paying into something that you can never get out of.

Justin: And these are the same people that a lot of them, I’m assuming, some level, have some financial pain with jobs, income, that because of the economy has shifted in the last 12 months. And so now that wasn’t a big deal while they had the job, they’re like, all right, not great, but I’ll keep paying for the extra 10 years. Now the economy shifts. Things are getting a little tighter. Now they have to do a short sale because they owe too much,

Nicole: Or what happened. 100%. And then what we also see happen with a lot of people that actually get approved for a loan mod, because a lot don’t, right, because the loan modification, you have to prove that you can afford it. You have to show financials all that you know, they’re going to determine the debt to income ratio. But what we end up seeing too is that they have a trial payment. So if the lender approves you, and it doesn’t matter the terms, right? Let’s just say they approved you, and they’ll give you three trial payments. And the majority of the people end up missing the trial payments because they haven’t been used to paying, right? And once you miss it back in foreclosure.

Justin: Yikes. So, what are some solutions that you guys offer and investors should be offering? I mean, I think this is a podcast that all investors are watching and listening to, what are the solutions? And you’ve already hit the head, like, don’t come in with mail, formula and cash offer. What are you guys doing in your own company to be a value add to the homeowner?

Nicole: So, the biggest value add is to determine, like, where their current situation is right. So if, of course, the majority, and just understand the majority are going to tell you, I want to keep the house. Like, okay, great. So here are the options to keep it. You can apply for the loan modification. If they are only two or three months behind, like, anything less than six months, they could apply for forbearance, but, but you know what? Before we go into that, tell me what’s going on. Why did you fall behind? And that question is huge, because the reason why they’re there is going to determine the solution. Because if it’s a long term hardship, it’s not short term, meaning like it’s not going to be resolved anytime soon, there’s no other options but selling. (They have to sell). They have to sell. If like they are just in a situation where, like, the money’s coming and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I say that like that, because someone always says the uncle is going to pay (Yeah) you know, I’m like, Great, let’s put a deadline on it. Yeah, he hasn’t paid up to this point.

Justin: And just to that point, you guys are nurturing that homeowner for like, they say, okay, my uncle is going to cut me in check in 45 days. I would think internally you have a sequence of following up, nurturing, calling, (Yeah) because that’s where the value.

Nuicole: 6, 7 touches is (67 touches), 6 to 7 (Oh 6 to 7) is normally when the contract signed. (Yeah okay). So, if you are even the people that you know, they’re like, already doing a loan mod or whatever, we know realistically, that they’ll probably fall behind again, and so we want to make sure that they’re in a sequence. We have campaigns for over a year that are built out. So, we use a Keap Infusionsoft. Stephanie is my operations manager. It’s just phenomenal. You met her and she I’ll have a vision. And she’s like, great. So, this is how we’re gonna execute it. I’m like, I love you. That’s why I bring her to family. She’s awesome. But we, she’s built out an entire sequence for an entire year, where it just has these touch points of checking in, text messages, emails. We have a manual for the sellers, like, it’s a book of, it’s an e-book or whatever, and it just gives them, like, all their options, the most common questions like just as much information as possible, so that when they finally do come to terms, we’re the people that they’re gonna work with.

Justin: Okay. And so, if they owe genuinely more than the house is worth, what do you do?

Nicole: So, that’s a short sale. And so, the easiest way to identify a short sale as an investor is, let’s just give like, real numbers. So, say you’re talking to a seller and this goes for not even people that you’re targeting. Like this could be anybody that you guys are targeting.

Justin: Of course, we come across a lot of them. I mean (Yeah), regardless of whether you genuinely or specifically go after the niche, (Right), or you’re like me, I just go so freaking wide with my database that I get them no matter what, right? I just don’t focus only on them. So unfortunately, you would probably tell me, Justin, get your guys to know my script, which is why you’re going to be teaching at my mastermind. And so I can’t wait to have you kind of get involved in my community and teach my community what you know, and have them get in your community. That will be incredible. But again, we come across this all the time, where they owe $220K on a $200,000 home, and you’re just like, well, I’m don’t know what to do with that.

Nicole: Well and here’s the thing, so that’s how I got into the business. So when I got into the business, I was 21 years old, and then when I went out on my own, because I worked for an REO brokerage and was worked doing REOs foreclosures. I was broke when I when I started my business on my own, I was broke. I was 24 Yeah, 23, 24 years old, and just extremely tenacious. And I’m like, Okay, I don’t have $10K to $20,000 to spend on marketing to compete with these home busters. And, you know, at the time, they were like, (For sure), it right, yeah. And so, I’m like, Okay, well, I keep talking to these investors, and they keep telling me, I’m like, what do you do with the leads that the numbers don’t make sense? And they’re like, we move on. It doesn’t fit our buy box. And that was like this light bulb moment for me in like, 2010, 2011 where I’m like, why am I trying to compete when I can be the best thing that’s ever gonna happen to you and your business, and I’m another tool in your toolbox, because you’re already throwing away these leads. To you they’re dead leads because there’s no equity there. But now these leads, when you come across a seller that you’re like, Okay, you owe 200 but My offer is 100 (Yeah). So, so even though you’ve already done the hardest part. You’ve paid for the lead. You’ve had the conversation with the seller, and the seller wants to sell to you. You walk away because you’re like, I’m sorry, I can’t do it. So the only thing now is, instead of walking away, you’re going to say, You know what, I actually have a part. We partner up with this company. This is all they do. I’m going to send you their information and you shoot it over to us. And so if you ever refer a lead, it’s www.thessqueen.com, and you shoot it over to us, and then we pre-qualify them. And now you get the first right of refusal to purchase the house through the bank instead of the seller.

Justin: So, you go through the negotiating with the bank of what they’re worthy willing to take, (Yeah), in a true short sale scenario.

Nicole: And a true short sale. So the seller, of course, is still the seller, right? So they’re the ones signing off, but they want to work with you, because you’re the person that referred it over to us (Right). So, we get the offer signed. We don’t have to list it. There’s no other competition, and we, and the bank, of course, has the right you know, is going to make the final call, but we’re negotiating your offer the bank. So now you have the opportunity to purchase at a discount when this was a dead lead.

Justin: And that’s because your license not everyone like, I can’t go negotiate with the bank, right? Because your license need (to represent the seller). That’s right? And so, it doesn’t matter in state, because where is your license?

Nicole: So, I’m licensed in four states, but we have agents through the brokerage, (I got it), and the other states that are on our team got it, and so we’re able do it that way.

Justin: And so, you figure out whatever kind of split you do, and say, Hey, let’s negotiate the short sale and whatever.

Nicole: That’s how the short sale queen was born. And so I was cold calling and prospecting, because I always tell people when you’re building your business, the low hanging fruit, but then the long term, where people are coming to you. And you know, I’m I’m so grateful, because we in 2018 where we became 100% referral. So 2018 that’s where I stopped cold calling, and didn’t have to do that anymore. And we deal. We get, I mean literally, we have, like, 110 short sales right now, like we do over 100 a month. And so, for people to it, and I have an amazing team who love it just as much as I do, and so I’m not in production anymore. I just oversee it so, but that’s how the whole Short Sale Queen was born, where it’s like, great, and I built my whole brand on my reputation. So, and people don’t even have to, like, think about it. If Nicole says she’s gonna do it, she’s gonna do it. (Yeah), period.

Nicole: Guys, I know you’re watching this and listening to this, you have to start following her. Because even me like, Oh my God, how does my team get in her world? Because whether you’re doing PPC leads, cold calling, texting, direct mail, you’re coming across short sales. I mean, we all are, (Yeah), I am just not training my team to navigate it in the way you would. So just like you said, when they owe 220 and our offers, or the house is 200 our offer is 170 we’re like next..

Nicole: Right. And that’s the thing is, like you don’t have to target these deals. You just have to understand, like you need this tool in your toolbox, because at the end of the day, your cost per lead is going to go down. And you now have a whole other pipeline of opportunities that you don’t have to do anything. You literally just refer it over.

Justin: So I can refer all those leads over to you and your team, and I’m out of it. And we find, someday find a check, and anyone listening or watching this can do the same thing.

Nicole: Oh yeah. We have wholesalers all the time that’s like, mailbox money for them, because they actually don’t want to buy it. And then we have a whole other set of investors that are like, I’m getting the best deals. Like, these are my deals that purchase. But the way our office, the way our operations is set up, is that you get weekly updates. Because my biggest pet peeve in this industry is that everyone tries to chase referrals, but they don’t do anything to keep them right. And I knew I’m like, Okay, if, if I’m going to be on a percent referral, like, I want to make sure that people know we’re on it. And so every Monday we, like, train the sellers, and we train everybody that refers it. Monday is you’re gonna get an update. And of course, you know in between, if you have questions, (Of course), but that way we can focus on the negotiations, but you still know every step of the way what’s going on. So where do people send you referrals? So you’d go to theshortsalequeen.com (Okay), and at the top you’ll see referral lead, and then you put your information, and then you put the seller’s information, and the only thing we ask is that you give them a heads up that we’re going to be calling, because we want to be an extension of the existing rapport that you’ve already built. You already did the hard part. And so, we don’t want to get filtered out with all the other people blowing up their phone. So just make a warm introduction, so we could just take it from there. You don’t have to explain the shorts all process. You don’t have to explain anything. In fact, the less you say, the better. If you don’t know, yeah, of course, because we have to do the deliverables right for whatever you promise. When I first started out, you know, I was, like, super young and ambitious. I miss my age. But when I first started out, I was, you know, salesperson, right? I’m like, oh, we’ll do it. We’ll handle it. And so these investors, they would be like, Oh man, Nicole will get you, like, 50 grand, I’m like, All right, let’s chill because, you know, I had to be the one to do it (Right) so chill like, we’re not getting the 50 grand. They’re upside down. And so, yeah, the less, the better, if you don’t know, but we will pre qualify them, and we have a 98% close rate. And the reason why is because, one, we don’t stop until it gets done, but we make sure is this a deal we could actually close like we’re not going there’s no reason for something to pop up. And we know how to what to look for and how to be able to deal with those things, the deal killers, you know, before even wasting time or money.

Justin: Guys and girls, make sure you are following Nicole the Short Sale Queen on YouTube, theshoresalequeen.com Nicole Espinoza, it has been a pleasure. You are a godsend to our entire community. Can’t wait for you to teach my world. (I’m excited) How to do it as well. Thanks so much. All right, y’all that’s it for this episode. We’ll see you on the next one. Peace.

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Excited to have you guys, this is going to be a fun training. It’s been a long time since I’ve done a training like this. This is going to be fun. What’s up? From Clarksville, Tennessee, just got my first pre approval. So excited to close on one love that. Michael Larry Jones, what’s up? Marilyn in the house? Um, alright, so this is going to be all about the four pillars of really, guys. What I’ll tell you guys, this is this business is simple, and I think, after doing this now for almost 17 years, I think we actually make it a lot more difficult. We tend to complicate things. We over analyze things, we tend to over engineer things, and we tend to really not actually find the right answers for what we’re trying to achieve, like how to find deals, how to analyze deals, how to exit them, and then how to raise private money. So this whole training is going to be about these four pillars, the four pillars that I would say to success as a real estate investor, whether you’re going to be a wholesaler, whether you’re going to be a fix and flipper, whether you’re going to buy and hold these four pillars remain the same no matter what. You need to find it. You need to understand how to analyze it. You need to understand what your exit with this will be. And then you need to make sure you know how to raise private money. How many you here are already buying rentals? I’d love to see that in the chat. What is up Facebook, I know that we just recently connected, so I’ve been trying to get this done for last two minutes. Facebook, if you are here, drop in the comment, where you are from? Where you’re looking to invest? What city you’re in? that kind of stuff. And then here all my VIPs, Douglas is buying STRs (Short term rentals). That is phenomenal. Love that. Let me just see where this is going off. Cool. This is perfect, perfect. So, on Facebook, drop, drop some comments below where you are from, and we’re going to, we’re going to take advantage of the time that we’re allotted here tonight. Douglas, how many STRs you have? Um, Alex, has someone taking notes? Got it? Uh, Drew, Chicago Metro looking to invest in about five to six hot states. Drew, are we looking for wholesale, fix and flip, buy and hold? What are you looking to do? Brother Douglas, you have 11 phenomenal 11 rentals, or specifically, STRs. I love that. Um, Drew new investor, but a seasoned mortgage banker 34 years you got the you got the seasoning behind you. I love that cool.

Well, listen, this is going to go for the seasoned investor Douglas who has 11 STRS. It’s going to go for a brand newbie. So, if you are either one of those, stay on for the whole thing. Because what I’m going to do tonight, I’ve never actually done before, frankly, and it is offer up an opportunity to spend an entire day with me in a private money master class, a raising private money master class. So, if you want to learn how to raise more private money, so that you don’t have to go, you know, fund your own flips or your own rentals, then make sure you stay to the very end. I’ll show you how you can come spend the day with me sometime in May to go for a full day master class on raising private money. So that’s happening in May. Who here would love to spend the day with me, my team in learning the ins and outs of how I’ve raised tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars in private money. Who here would like that? Hell yeah, for sure. Jay, hello. Antonio, me good. Keith, I got you Well, good. Because here’s what I’ll tell you guys, one of the major principles, not pillars, principles of this business, George, of course, is to be able to use other people’s money. I don’t think I’m saying anything new. Whether you read “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” or whether you just understand OPM or leverage, then you want to do your best to do that. I don’t care how much money I have or you have, I’m going to encourage all of you not to be using your own money to build your rental portfolio, to buy assets, to buy fix and flips, because good debt is good debt. Who all agrees that good debt is good debt, like debt can be used for the good. It’s not always bad. There’s too many pessimists out there. There’s too many Dave Ramsey followers, and if you do follow Dave, God bless you. He is speaking to a very specific type of person. He is speaking to the employee. He is speaking to someone who is essentially has a glass ceiling. That will never earn the maximum potential. And so, I am not talking to those people now. Many of you might have a W2 totally fine. I don’t mind if you have a W2. Many of my community members, many of the Science of Flipping community members that are flipping deals, wholesaling deals, they do it part time they have a W2. So that’s not the point. The point is that you want to be a part of a community that of people that want more, that know that they can get more, that you know believe they can create a better life than what they currently have. So if you are that person, if you feel like it is, it is time for you to make a move. It’s time for you to really take real estate investing serious, even if it has to be part time. Would love to see who I’m talking to here. Are you guys at that place that this is the time because real estate, frankly, it’s not going down in price. I don’t see that happening anytime in the near future? Michael says, It is my time. Jay says, full time. Antonio, My hearts in real estate. Let’s go. Drew absolutely the time is now.

As a random question here, I know I did a training to the lead Zolo audience. I would love to know who from that webinar is on tonight, on right now. I did a webinar earlier tonight to a totally different audience. I would love to know who came from there. Douglas, you came from there. I believe Thomas, you’re saying you came from that. Webinar. The LeadZolo, webinar. Jay G, I am. Love the value right on. Jay, hell yeah. James, looks like you alright. So a handful you guys came from LeadZolo. I love Drew. I love LeadZolo., and I love that you guys are here because you guys resonate with this concept of making sure you know how to find the deal. So we’re going to jump into that. But what this webinar is not going to be for is someone who’s just kind of curious, someone who’s just trying to figure out, like, if they want to do this, someone who thinks debt is bad. If you think, like, literally, I don’t want to take a loan, I’m scared of leverage, I’m not willing to invest in my business, then you’re probably not going to like that, and that’s okay. I would tell you to probably just go enjoy your night. That’s fine. But you know, if you are a part of my type of tribe, if you’re a part of my world, the community I’ve built, I’ve coached thousands and thousands and thousands of investors to do exactly what I’ve done over 17 years, and will get into me a little bit, but you have to believe that you can do this. So the first thing I want to hit real quick is a quick four, four basic principles of success. First, I would encourage you guys to write this down. First, you have to have belief. You have to believe you can be successful in real estate, even if you’re doing it part time you genuinely with every cell of your body, blind faith, belief, not going to get into religion, but that type of belief. Okay like a religious belief, I can do this. You need to have that. Who here has that? Who here has that? Don’t hand up. Say me, that is important.

Number two is you gotta take a lot of action. You gotta take massive action. We just talked to a handful of people who are on a training earlier today. They’re on this training. They’re taking action, they’re going, they’re moving. They want more, right? Who here is ready to take actual action? Let me know you’re actually going to take action in this because I can’t do it for you. I won’t do it for you. You have to. So you have to take action. Hard work is another way of saying who’s ready to actually do hard work. Tim is takes work, takes work to get to where I’m at.

The third this is where it breaks everybody. You guys ready? You guys gonna stay with me? I’ll see how many people I lose right now that jump off this. Zoom. You ready? It takes a lot of failure, a lot. Now let me see how many people fall off. You’re gonna have to fail. You’re gonna have to fail a lot, and you’re gonna have to get back up. And everyone is not built for that, and if you’re not built for that, then that’s okay. Jump off. You won’t hurt my feelings, because I want these people that are on this training, the VIPs, that are actually on the Zoom. I want the VIPs. I want you all to get rich. But more importantly, I want you to get wealthy. I want you to obtain what I have, right? So you are going to fail, and you are going to fail a lot.

The fourth pillar is you have to be persistent. You have to persist through failure. You need to keep going. That is the fourth pillar you get. Gotta get back up each and every time and keep going. There is no quit in you. I will achieve I believe it. I’m willing to do the hard work. I’m willing to fail and I am going to persist. Through it in spite of the failure.

And lastly, the fifth pillar. The fifth pillar, just recently made it to this list. You ready for the fifth pillar is adaptation, innovation. You need to innovate. You need to do adapt. Why did you fail? What did you learn? What do you do different? How do you change? So not only do need to persist. You now need to innovate. You now need to adapt. You need to do things different. You need to learn from your failure. I see we had a couple people drop off. That’s alright. This isn’t for everybody. Getting rich is not for everyone. Building Wealth is not for everyone. And if that’s you, that’s alright. You know, go enjoy your night. You’re just not going to be a good tribe member. For me, the Science of Flipping that my tribe. We are hard workers. We believe emphatically we are going to be successful. We are willing to put through the hard work. We are willing to fail. We are also willing to persist and we are willing to innovate. So if you are not that, then you’re not a part of my tribe. It’s all good. I love you the other way. So Neato. Number one, believe, like spiritual belief, that you can succeed at real estate at a big level, big level. Number two, do the hard work. Number three, fail and fail a lot. Number four, be persistent. Persist through your failure. Get back up and keep going. And number five is you have to innovate, you have to adapt, you have to change, you have to keep going and learn from your failure. So I haven’t done this in a while, guys, but I’m going to actually use a deck. So listen, these are the four pillars, but I want to tell you a little bit about me if you don’t know, if you don’t know me, that’s okay. I’ll keep it short. I found I am the founder of the Science of Flipping coaching program. I’m a host of the Science of Flipping podcast and the Entrepreneur DNA. Both of these podcasts just recently topped the top five in apple. So look them up on Apple or spot or Spotify the Science of Flipping or Entrepreneur DNA, you’re gonna love my guess. And I have flipped well over 2,600 properties and counting. I’m actively buying two to five properties a week, except for this week, I think we’re only gonna close one, seems like. And I bought three apartment complexes already this year. Last year, I bought one apartment for 584, doors. So, I’m very, very active in this business. Okay, so I know what actually works and what doesn’t work, but what I want to get to here is, is who feels or relates to any of this. This is what I feel like is the biggest problem of success for all of you, right? Is this? Who can relate to any of this? I want to make the changes. I want to invest in real estate. I don’t know where to start. I want to stop relying on my job. I’m tired of YouTube University. I’m confused. Does any one on here ever go through any of these things, or is it just me, my the one that kind of say, like, Ah, right? This is rampant in our space. And what I want from all of you here is to get over any and all of these things. Who out there feels like there’s just a bunch of noise on YouTube. Who feels like, oh my god, I go to YouTube every day. I watch 10 videos. I’m hearing a bunch of things. They’re all telling me different things. I don’t really know what to do. I feel like I know what to do, but I don’t know what to do, and I’m getting nowhere. And even for the handful of people, because I know there’s some ballers on here, I know there’s some of you guys out here doing deals. Even you are likely getting shiny object syndrome, trying to figure things out, throwing crap against the wall. You don’t know if it’s a proven system. You’re just trying. I know that too many gurus for sure while doing deals. Jay, of course, my inbox is full of videos. Well, Keith, I’m glad you’re here. So, this is, this is a source of pain for me, right? I am prideful of what I’ve been able to build in the real estate sector, and it is something that I am trying to impress empower you all to really find this four pillars of success into really achieving all this. Right? So I wanted to show you just a couple deals, quite literally funded this deal today in San Antonio. It’s actually going to be my first flip in San Antonio. Look at this beautiful, beautiful piece, three bedroom, one bath, built in 44 I bought it today, funded and close $95,000 we estimate a $60,000 rehab, and we see ARV to be somewhere in about 230 and we’re going to get to these numbers. We’re going to understand why this is important. But this is a deal I quite literally funded today, so I thought I’d throw it on today’s presentation. This is a wholesale deal that we just funded, I think we closed last week. A wholesaler brought it to us. In fact, the wholesaler happened to be an old student of mine, someone who went through was mentored by me, was a part of the community. He continues to be a leader in the community. And he said, Hey, Justin, you think you have a buyer in Charlotte, North Carolina? I said, Hell yeah, we do. I love Charlotte. Now I tried to buy it first, but the numbers didn’t work out for me. And so we went out, we put it out to our buyers. Contracted it at $250K buyer came from Investor Lift, which is a resource we use very, very expensive. At $255K we renegotiated to $245,000 did this deal because, as you’ll see, it came through a wholesaler. So the first deal came from direct from seller. This came direct from seller through Rocketly. Many of you guys heard me talk about Rocketly. Heard about Rocketly. This came through Rocketly as a fix and flip in San Antonio. This deal came from one of my members at the Science Flipping community. But again, another wholesaler. That’s how I have to define it, because you’ll see when I show you guys how to find deals, there’s really three ways. So it came from a wholesaler, just so happens I taught him how to do this thing right, and I taught him in a good way. And so we split the 10k. He took five, we took five. And onto the next deal. I’ve done a handful, actually, with Lou Kitaro, Johnny Lou Kitaro, if you’re watching bro, you’re a beast. Keep it up. Keep going. This man just is relentless on getting deals. And then this property I wanted to show you guys, just to show you, I’m really doing deals. This is a 22 unit apartment I bought earlier this year in Birmingham, Alabama. The apartments don’t quite look this bad anymore. This is a previous picture. I was trying to look for an updated picture. But as you can see, forwarded windows, not exactly a pretty site, if you will, right? But we bought it for a $625K purchase. We’re going to put in about the same amount for renovation. Gross monthly rents once we are done are going to be around $17,000 and the monthly net cash flow month over month, will be about $3,200 after refi. And we are going to be able to take 100% of all of that money, the 1.2 million, 100% will come out, because we have an evaluation already basically saying, after a after renovation, you’re going to be evaluation here. And we’re pretty confident, because we have other apartments that have recently sold in the low twos. So we put the valuation at $1.9 million, which means, effectively, we will have zero money into this deal. Now I want to stop for a second, because many of you guys heard me say, stay on to the very end to potentially figure out how you can be partake in my one day in person, in person, full day private money master class. The importance of raising private money is to be able to do deals like you just saw the apartment. How many here would love to have a, let’s call it a $2 million apartment with none of your own money in it? Like I can’t see you guys, but you better be raising your hand, nodding your head, saying, Yeah, doing something, because that’s the answer, that is why we are doing what we are doing. That is why, for many of you, you’re doing what you’re doing, you already are a handful of you I know are already doing deals. I know because I talked to you earlier today, right? And so it’s a function of if you know how to get that deal, and you know how to raise money, and you know how to not have any of your own money in it, then it’s a simple rinse and repeat, baby. That’s it. This is the goal. Literally, Keith is talking about it. Keith says you’re teaching this now. Literally, Keith Goss is here from Jacksonville, in the house where I’m teaching him right now how to go do this very same thing on 10 doors in Palatka, Florida. And so if I can rinse and repeat this, because I know how to raise enough private money to bridge that gap, so that $620,000 for the rehab is what I went out and raised so I can go start the remodel, so I can get a bridge loan in the middle of this, literally, I was on the phone today with a lender that in about three weeks, we are going to have enough progress on the valuation in the remodel that’ll get a bridge loan that will take me all the way to tenant, tenanting. Tenanting is not an easy word to say. Tenanting The deal up and going and getting my long-term debt. This is the game. If you guys remember the first two homes, the first one I’m fixing flipping. I raised private money on that fix and flip right? And so, I’m gonna buy it, I’m gonna remodel it. All of it is private money, and I’m gonna sell it for a profit. The lender gets what they want. I get the profit. We’re doing another deal. The wholesale deal. No money was needed, obviously. But the name of the game is to get rich and then get wealthy.

Who here would like to get incredibly rich while at the same time getting incredibly wealthy? The name of the game? Hell yeah, you are right. So I’m going to go back to the slides. Alright? So, there’s three ways to get a deal. I told you we’re going to go over the four basic pillars of real estate success, and this is where you might want to start taking some notes. There’s four. First, bring a buyer to someone else’s deal. Now, the reason why I highlighted the case studies of my own deals. These are deals that I’ve done, and I teach others how to do it, of course, but is because I took the second deal, I think is what we showed where one of my members contracted a deal. I taught him how to contract a deal, and then I found a buyer. Because I have buyers in Charlotte, North Carolina, we split the deal. He took five grand. I took five grand. It was a fast way for me to get a deal. Now, if you guys have buyers for other investors, and you guys all know this, who here, by a show of comment, who here is part of these Facebook groups that have like, all these crazy amount of investors with deals that like, here’s the deal, here’s the deal and like, all day long, there’s just threads of these deals? Who’s a part of these groups? I’d love to see that in the comments. We all know anyone who has any level of experience, maybe one out of 100 of those posts is an actual deal, like an actual deal. So my advice is one of the fastest way for all my newbies, is to go find real buyers, really buying in a market that you want to be in, right? And then, like myself, I’m a real buyer. I love the whole state of North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Atlanta or not, Atlanta, Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas. We just bought in San Antonio. You want to find real buyers and understand how to work with them, how to provide real value. The better you do that. Here’s a here’s a big, big, big, big secret, right? Here’s a key. The more you understand your buyers, the better negotiator you’re going to be. I’m going to say that again for you, the more you understand your buyers, the better negotiator you’re going to be. So, take that seriously, major key right there. So bring a buyer to someone else’s deal.

I don’t know. I want to make sure I’m speaking the right people. How many here are brand newbies? Don’t be shy. Let us know. It’s all good. Everyone starts somewhere. How many are brand newbies? Because I’ll tailor some of the conversation a little bit towards you guys. But if there’s only two out of the however many, I won’t belabor the point, why does the two people that are brave enough to mention you are a newbie? Three, now, what’s up? What’s up? Keith, Antonio Larry, Nido, all right. Appreciate you guys speaking up. Listen, speak your truth. Let’s go. This is where you’re at. Everyone starts somewhere, right? If you are looking to start, the fastest way to get it is certainty. The fastest way to get a check, the fastest way to get confidence is going to be wholesaling. Right? Wholesaling. Now I’m not telling you to go out and build a wholesaling business, per se. Here’s what I believe in, guys and many of you guys saw this from earlier today. I believe in being a well rounded, dynamic real estate investor. What does that mean? It means you are a tool belt. You’re all the tools in the tool belt, not a one trick pony. If you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I want you to fix and flip. I want you to buy and hold. I want you to wholesale. I want you to do all of it, and most importantly, through your progression of experience, I want you to be an expert at raising capital, so you will never need dollar of your own to go build your wealth. That is what it’s about. Okay? So for my newbies, for those that have not yet done a deal, I encourage you to start off by wholesaling. Just a couple. If you love wholesaling, you get addicted to the cash flow, and in the speed of it, awesome. Keep wholesale. I still wholesale. I’ll do somewhere between five to 20-25. Wholesale deals a month, every single month, totally virtual, right? I have a totally virtual business. It is a process. It is a system. I can teach anyone how to do it. And you do not need to be in your own backyard. Just out of curiosity, who believes that you have to start in your own backyard? Like that’s where you have to start? Okay? I don’t. You are right. I need some fast cash flow. I’d like to move in a multi-family. You don’t, you don’t need money Drew. That’s the point. You can go to multifamily today if you just know the process, if you know the system. So again, can not to belabor the point, but bringing a buyer to someone else’s deal is what’s going to create certainty. It’s going to create the confidence that’s really the fastest way to a deal. Now is the only way of you absolutely. Not, okay. So another great way that I started at, if you don’t know my history, I started by agent outreach. I know now that’s a pretty big thing. You hear a lot about it. There’s YouTubes a lot about it, all that kind of shit. But when I was broke, busted and disgusted, back in 2007 I mean, broke guys like this is the repo man took my car broke, okay? Broke, living on a couch. I the only way I knew to get a deal back in 2007 was to call realtors. And by the way, back in those days, they didn’t have Zillow, if they did, it was nothing that we’re aware of. Like today, I basically had a cold call Realtors from realtor.com Hey, I see your listing. By the way, I didn’t even know if they had a listing. It was just part of my script. Hey, I see your listing. Would love to make an offer. I’m an investor locally here in Phoenix, and want to see if I can buy this home for good investment property. That was my script over and over and over again, all day long, I was broke and I knew how to find a deal right? Now it took me nine months. It took me nine months to get that deal, but I found it right and so for you newbies, the ones that had the gumption to say you’re a newbie, there is a true, tried and true process to go find your first deal. These three are for you, but they’re also for the veterans as well, because nothing changes. I would be focused on all three of these. Okay, focus on all three. Now, you may have to separate some. From time to time, a lot of my community members choose one, like a lot of my community members use me to sell their investment properties, because they’re only focused on contracting properties, either through agents, typically with privy, or through direct to seller marketing using Rocketly, things of that nature. But do them okay? So working with agents number two is huge. Privy has been an absolute game changer. If you don’t have it, you should. I can get you a discount. I think the promo code they gave for my community is Science 2024. Science 2024 for privy, it’ll give you a discount, but you can go on privy and go into like 150 different cities have something like 150 different accesses to MLS to make offers with realtors on their listings. Now the key take note here. The key to this is not just simply making an offer on their listing. It is building the relationship with the agent. It’s building the relationship with the agent. If you do that over time, long tail, right? Don’t worry about the immediate gratification. Everyone hears about immediate gratification. How am I gonna do it right this second? And it needs to happen right now. Listen, if you’re that type person, you’re not the right person for me. Anyways, you’re not thinking with a vision. You’re not thinking with the long game. You’re thinking with the short game, right? Don’t do that. Think with the long game. Who here I want to see who thinks with the long game. Like you realize you’re not going to get to where you want to get. Today, it’s every day making progress. Like I’m going to be a billionaire. I didn’t tell you when I didn’t tell you by how old I mean for the long game. And by the way, if I come up 50% short, that’s a half a million. Let’s say I come up 80% short, that’s 200 million. Think I’m going to be okay shooting for the Billy of course, but too many of you guys are so worried about the immediate gratification, stop the nonsense. I’ve done this for 17 years. I have a process in a system that works. Who would like to learn the processes and system that has kept me in this business, making money, doing deals, buying rentals, raising money for 17 years. Who would like that process? Step at a time? I’m interested. Jay G, I would just two people would like that type of process. Come on, speak up every step. Me. Carla, guys, this is it’s tried and true, what I’m teaching guys tonight. This is it, direct to seller marketing, by the way. Larry Jones, what’s up? Louie, Louie, is that how you pronounce it? Reynoso Louie, Reynoso, I want to make sure I pronounce that right. I like how it’s spelled. George, of course you do. Mufasa, What’s up, bro, of course.

Alright, now let’s talk about direct to seller marketing. There are a bunch of different types of direct to seller marketing, but you must be doing it. Let me show you right now. Let me show if I can do this. We do Rocketly. If you don’t know rocket you need to know rocket Lee. But I’m going to show you what we do and how many leads we are inbound bringing right now. Let me see if I can. This is my internal Rocketly. So, I’m assuming you can see my screen. I just want you to check the date. Today is April 23 is it not? Look at these leads that have come in. So I’m going to see, well, I’ll keep it at 20 so all these. Their seller leads today, all inbound from my online marketing. There’s 20 of them that came in today. Let’s go to page two. How many are on page two? That’s 40 so far. 40 seller leads came in and do my online marketing today. Now I’m not I can do a different training about marketing, but I want to see so far how many man we have. So this is page three, which means there would be 60. So halfway down page three, so let’s call it 50 leads. So far to this very moment, 7:33pm, Eastern. 50 leads has come into my CRM that my AI auto Bot email conversion and sales team will be calling out, bounding and connecting with. This is not about but I do want to show you guys and show it off. This is the AI Bot that’s working here. This is not a human. This is our AI Bot having this conversation with this seller. Shelly, long, up to 6:01. Is 7:33, an hour and a half ago. Okay, this is incredible, right? Just absolutely incredible. But I’ll tell you guys to not go in the deep end of what you need to be doing. Rocketly.ai is incredible. It is what we are doing. We’re spending like 70 bucks a day. Is phenomenal. But is that the only way to find no LeadZolos? Incredible. That’s a great place to find your leads. There’s cold calling, there’s all sorts of leads. I have a process in my um, membership, The Science of Flipping membership. By the way, I’ve had a couple people say, How did we join the membership, and I’ll get to that just so I’m not ignoring you. But thank you for your interest. I will get to that here shortly. And I also want to tell you you could be potentially invited to the full day in person masterclass on raising private money. So where was I? Rocketly is built off the high level CRM platform. I built those, yep, they’re not targeted in one location, Drew. They’re across the nation. And I’ll give you a good reason. Why is because you will get cheaper leads and you will get more so my business is built off diversity, right? So, Drew just to talk about why it’s not just in one city or even state, because I can do innovations, I can do buy and holds, I can do fix and flips, and I can wholesale. I pay about $40,000 a year for Investor Lift. So, I can wholesale across the country, because I have about 5 million active cash buyers. So go national, bro, go national Drew. And Drew I’m sure I’ll be talking to you, but and we can talk about Rocketly as well. I think drew you were on our earlier call today. So if you just want to go to Rocketly, it’s probably going to be way more informative. I don’t want to spend too much time today on this call, but, yeah, do that all right.

So, here’s what I tell you, in my community, The Science of Flipping. That’s what I was talking about. I know people are asking about being a part of it. How do you join it? Blah, blah. So one of the things we teach is what I call a Buy Sell strategy. And it is direct to mark, direct to seller, marketing at no, marketing cost zero. And many of our members are doing deals with this Buy Sell strategy, because you don’t need a big marketing budget. The thing that I think most people assume is, when you see direct to seller marketing, you assume it’s going to be, you know, $10,000 a month in Pay Per Click advertising, $10,000 a month in direct mail. You know, have to hire a cold calling company. Their fee is going to be two grand a month plus blah, blah. Like, you don’t need to have these really big budgets. You can. I have a pretty big marketing budget. I’m ahead of the curve, right? I’m actively doing a whole lot of deals. I’ve done this for 17 years. So for all those that want my system, we’re going to talk about it. But guys, you have to understand first, you need to be working with buyers for other people’s deals agents, because they have deal flow and then direct to seller. You have to be doing all these now the second pillar, write this down. Second pillar is properly analyzing a deal for a flip. And that word is not analyzing, that’s a lays, apparently. Apparently, I spelled that awful so a lays a deal for a flip, but it’s analyze. Is the word I’m supposed to go here. Now. This is my actual Buy Box. This is actually a spreadsheet I use, my company uses, my team uses, to analyze a deal when we’re going to go make an offer. I give this to my community members at the Science of Flipping. I give it to them. Why? Well, first of all, if they’re going to be wholesaling, I want to buy all their deals. I want them all. If they’re going to wholesale, I want to buy it. Secondly, they can just cut to the front of the line and learn what a real buyer me would look at as a deal. So, let’s look at this example. This is a screenshot of a deal we analyzed earlier. If we were to buy a property at $65,000 put $30,000 and do it with. An ARB of $150K it rents for 1,100 bucks. It would net us. Now, if you’re looking at this, you have a hold time of six months. You have all the cost. Everything’s accounted for seller commissions. If we sold, etc, all the costs, we would profit in our pocket, $35,000 so why is that red? Well, because Justin Colby is a Bougie flipper. If I’m going to take my time to buy a home, remodel home, deal with contractors, deal with lending, deal with cities, I want to net $50,000 in my pocket. But at a show of comments right here, let me see the comments who would flip a home, buy remodel and flip a home for $35,000 net in their pocket. Let me see in the comments, me, Keith, immediately, Antonio, I would, I would Tim, I would, I would Louie. I would Natalie. I would. So listen, that’s a perfect segue into understanding your buyer, because the truth is, I would wholesale this. I wouldn’t buy it, but you guys drew Tim, Natalie, Louie, all of you guys would buy this. I’d go make five grand, 10 grand, whatever, and you guys would make 30, right? But I wouldn’t want to buy this. So you have to have a diverse exit strategy. We’ll get to that now, that same property, the very same property. Given the what was it $1,100 a month in rent. These are what the rental numbers look like. Every month I would be losing $23 based around a long term loan at 8% okay, I would have a whole lot of equity $46,000 which is really important, and I would likely be able to do a cash out refi of 8,900 bucks. Now the key would be is, do I need to cash out? Could I get a smaller loan, potentially, and maybe actually cash flow this? Yes, but I’m not cash flowing anything that’s not $300 a month. I don’t want it. So this really only has, for me, the only exit. Remember, property, analyze the deal. Allies, again, allies, not analyze allies. Property, analyze the deal. Um, so for me, this is a wholesale only. I wouldn’t buy for a rental. I wouldn’t buy it for Facebook or Facebook. I wouldn’t buy for a flip. So I saw a comment in here about it’s not streaming on Facebook, which I know, Leia, I don’t know why, or wouldn’t stream on Facebook, but it wouldn’t. So I’m streaming it on my page, my Justin Colby page, and so I would rather wholesale this instead see exactly Drew. So understanding that is huge. Which leads to the next point. What are your exit options you wholesale fix or flip and buy hold? Now, while that may not be life altering, Justin by saying, Okay, well, those are probably the only three exit strategy. I know that. But this goes back to how you’re analyzing the property, right, and how you are finding the deal. What is a deal? How do you know it’s a deal? Because there was more than a handful of people. Drew Is the only one that would probably wholesale this, but there was more than a handful of people that said they would fix and flip it. Well, if I know Keith would fix and flip Antonio, Drew, Tim, if I knew exactly what they were looking for, if I knew exactly that they would be buying it, anything above $30,000 net to them, they would buy it. Then I can go in and offer all the way up to $30,000. You become a better Acquisition Manager, the better you are.

Now I’m going to stop for a second. Has this been pretty good so far? To understand you need to find it, you need to analyze it, and then you need to understand the exit. Because if you analyze it correctly, you understand your exit. Lastly, I’m just going to share with you this last slide, raising private money. There are three ways to raise private money, and I’m going to keep this short, inner circle, outer circle, social circle. Your inner circle is the obvious. Your inner your friends and family. Now most people, most people think they have no friends or family with money. Incorrect, incorrect. There’s trillions of dollars sitting around in retirement accounts that every human knows. People with retirement accounts, they just don’t know how to leverage it. Outer Circle, your co workers, your friends at the gym, your network, your masterminds. You hang out with them. You might have a cocktail with them, but that’s it. You don’t invite them to your birthdays or whatever. Your outer circle and your social circle. Now, the reason why this is so powerful, and you probably don’t even know it, is because none of you, none of you, by show of hands, how many of you guys have raised over a million dollars? Raised over a million dollars? Let me know if you have here. Would love it. Irwin, my family is broken. I have no friends. Irwin, brother, you got to change your lifestyle. Don’t know what to tell you there. That’s pretty extreme. Keith, no, no one’s no one is, um, no one has raised a million dollars. Except for me, no one is doing this. No one is going to the inner circle, outer circle, social circle, because you’re not giving them the opportunity. You’re not giving them the opportunity to lend you money they don’t know. You even have an opportunity to lend money. Raising private money is simple. It is very simple. You got to show them an opportunity. You have to show them what’s in it for them. You have to show them how they are protected, and you have to show them when they’re going to get their money back, that is it. You got to show them the opportunity. You got to show what’s in it for them. What are you going to give them? What interest? What’s the upside? You got to show them how they’re protected, and you got to show them how to get their money back. And if you do that, well, then you will raise a whole lot of money, and this is why I have the next slide.

I thought about doing a full blown in person, private money master class, and I talked to the team about it this week, and I said, I’m going to do it, but I want to offer more than that. I want to bring people into my community. And so the private money master class is going to be very limited, but I’m looking to to really enhance the individual who needs to find more deals, get consistent deal flow and start to raise money so they themselves can be fixing flippers and buy and holders. Out of the comments below who would like to become a fix and flipper and a landlord, buy and hold investor? I would Jay. I’m sure I’m all in. So here’s what I want from you guys. There’s going to be an opportunity, but I want to be coaching you. I want you to be a part of my community. I want to be buying you deals. I want to help you find more deals. I want to help you raise more money. If you want to be a very small select group that I’m going to do this private money master class for an entire day in person. It will not be virtual in person. And if you can’t make it, don’t ask me the dates, because they’re not set yet. If you can’t make it and you decide to join, we will make sure to grant you that ticket to the next one. Okay, go to www.justincolbycoaching.com. Every single one of you, all 32 of you, said you are committed to real estate. I believe I can do it. This is my dream. I know I need to be in real estate. My heart is into it. You’ve all had some sort of commitment of your belief. Don’t fall short now. Don’t fall short with jumping on a call with me. Justin Colby Coaching will lead you to an application. That application is going to come directly to me. Why? Because I’m going to be personally inviting the handful of people who are the right fit to come to my one day private money master class, as well as bring them inside the Science of Flipping Community for three months. So you’ll have three months of eight calls a week, working with me and my leaders, but you will also have the access to the private money master class. What I want to do is find the right handful of people. This isn’t some big ass event. This is for the right people who really believe it. All of you said you did. All of you said I have the belief. Well, this is where the rubber meets the road frankly. This is where I get to call you out. And for some of you, you’re going to drop off the call and get scared. Good. So be it, because the rest of the people are going to try to say, hey, I’m willing to put the hard work in, which is the pillar number two, I’m willing to fail, and I’m willing to persist and get up off the mat, and I’m willing to adapt and innovate. And some of you are going to get scared and don’t want to fill a nap and all that. So be it. I wish you the best of luck. For those that really believe this, who here really believes they could go really big in real estate, they could really do a lot of income, they could really build an incredible amount of wealth. Who here really believes that? Because if you do then jump on the phone with me. Let us have a very honest discussion. It will be me. Won’t have a sales rep. You’re going to literally be talking to me about this. Okay, go www.justincolbycoaching.com I will personally reach out to you like I said, there’s not going to be a middleman. I’m looking for the handful of people, okay, I’m looking for the handful, the right handful, the people that believe in themselves, that the believe that I can help them get there. I can help every one of you still watching this. And I love that, all 30 you guys right now, you’re still here. You’re not one of those sissies that walk away. Like, I’m just gonna get off this call now Justin scares me. No, go win a big life. You deserve it, and now I’m gonna get a little passionate, because every single time I do something that I know I can make a massive impact, and people don’t take me up on it, it frustrates me, because I can make a massive impact in your life.

It’s not about just getting rich, it’s about creating your life. Does everyone hear me on that? It’s not about getting rich, it’s about creating your life. You are the only one that can do that, and I have the sauce, the strategy for real estate, I can help you get rich, but not only, I can actually help you do what everyone wants to do. Who here that wants to build a legacy? Do you guys want to build an actual legacy? Throw in the comment below, everyone’s talking about, I want to leave something to my kids. I want to leave something for my grandkids and so and build a legacy. Well, get off your ass and talk to someone who is actually doing the thing you want to do. There is no one here that has done 2,600 deals or more, except for me. There’s no one here that bought three different apartment buildings this year already, except for me. Like I have it and I want you to have it, I will help you raise and learn how to raise you still got to do it millions and millions and millions of dollars if you want it, but you got to make the choice. I’m the one already doing these deals. I’m the one already buying them and wholesaling them and flipping them and buying the apartments and buying storage facilities. When you guys fill out this application, I would love to see it in the comments below.

Generational wealth, absolutely, I know I’m hitting a trigger for a lot of you guys. Jay G has already filled out the application. My man, let’s go and here’s the reality of it all. You guys don’t have to do any of it, but all of you guys said some form of you don’t know what to do. You’re getting lost. You don’t know if you could do it. I’m tired of relying on my job. I want to I want more. You’ve all said that all these things relate to you. Well, this is the right moment to really put it up. Put up or shut up, or here’s the opportunity, here’s the other opportunity. And I’m seeing I’m pushing people away, which is totally fine. Here’s the other opportunity for you live your average life, and that’s it. Be okay with it, but I don’t want that for you. You don’t deserve that. You deserve an epic life, but it is up to you to create it. I can help you do that through real estate. So what I’m saying is this, if this has been impactful, go to www.justincolbycoaching.com, and fill out the application. Have a call with me, and if you’re the right fit, I’ll invite you to be a part of the private money master class, as well as 90 days of the community at minimum and we will spend an entire day helping you learn how to build out this business. Now within this we’re going to keep focusing on finding deals. We’re going to keep focusing on analyzing deals and properly analyzing deals. We are going to help you build a bigger, better business and get consistent deal flow. Who would love consistent deal flow? Yeah, just everybody. Just everybody.

So, when you are done, I’d love to do this. Drew I would when you were done filling out the application, let me know you did it. Want to give you a shout out. Drew’s in, Jay’s in, these are people that are serious about what they’re trying to achieve. When do you think the the best time to buy real estate is anybody who wants to chime in? When do you think the best now. Now Drew, Drew’s on it. The best time was in 2009-10, but the very best time is now, right. Like, that’s it. Like, if you guys think the interest rates are going to drop your your wrong, there’s not going to have a massive drop in interest rates, because here’s what would happen if they did the housing prices would spike spike, and they’re already at all time highs. They can’t do it. So we’re not going to have 3% interest rates. Maybe in 18-24 months, it gets back down to fours. But that’s 18-24, months. Go buy real estate. Now I’m going to teach you how to raise the money. I’m going to teach you how to find the deal. I’m going to teach you how to analyze it. Go do it now, today, run this system I run, and you’re going to not only going to make a lot of money, but you are going to be building and accumulating wealth. Drew says next two years will be the greatest time, in my opinion. And especially multi absolutely Drew. Let’s go buy a bunch. And by the way, here, here’s the last part, because drew just triggered me hard. DREW You just like I want to develop business partners in all of you. I want us to be doing deals together. I want Drew and myself to go buy another three departments this year. Before this year is over, I want that for Drew. I want it for absolutely everyone on here. I want all of us to be doing deals together. I want us to be buying storage together. I want us to fix and flip together. I want us to be a part of a fun together. I want to develop business partners. I want to buy your homes if you’re going to wholesale them. I want to be your buyer. I only buy homes for my community. If you’re in my community, I’ll buy it if you’re not, I won’t be your buyer. Don’t bother asking, what’s my Buy Box? See, I’m only buying from my community.

So guys, I know you just spent the whole night with me. I want to say thank you. I realize you have kids, you have wives, husbands, people that want to be with you on a Tuesday night, but instead, you focused on your business. So I applaud you. You are part of my type of tribe. This is my type of tribe, because I’m right here with you guys. You guys are committed, right? You guys are ready to do this. You’re taking action. Who feels a little lost out there, like a little lone wolf, like I’m alone, there’s no one here for me. I’m not totally sure what to do. I’m a little lost. I’m alone. Does anyone else have that feeling, because tonight shows differently. You’re a part of my tribe, and I want to encourage you guys all to keep pushing forward and truly get into my community and truly take advantage of this incredible community that’s going to give back to you, pour into you and help you along the way. I’m a Blind Mule. Object to the desert. Keith, you’re also very funny. Good to be a stand up.

Alright, y’all, that’s all I got. I appreciate you guys. Go enjoy the rest of your night. Go to Justin Colby coaching. I will personally be reaching out personally to schedule a call with you, and let’s see what other kind of cool effects we can get before we leave, I appreciate you all. Justin Colby coaching, let’s all show up to that private money master class, in person, live, fill out the application first. I’ll hand choose you guys. We’ll talk soon. Bye.

The Power of Social Media | Ryan Pineda

Today I sit down with Ryan Pineda as he shares his journey from professional athlete to becoming a leading real estate investor and influential entrepreneur. Broadcasting from his office, Ryan discusses his initial ventures in couch flipping, his transition to real estate, and how he scaled his businesses to achieve multimillion-dollar revenues. He emphasizes the critical role of social media in business growth and introduces his passion project, Wealthy Way, which aims to teach entrepreneurs how to achieve financial success without compromising their quality of life. Through his experiences, Ryan provides valuable advice on mentorship, the importance of documenting entrepreneurial journeys on social media, and the potential of new technologies like NFTs and blockchain in real estate.

What’s up everybody. Welcome back to entrepreneur DNA podcast. I am with a friend of mine, someone who is absolutely the epitome of what the show is about. Mr. Ryan Pineda is here, and in fact, I’m at his office right now as you’re probably watching this. What’s up, brother?

Ryan: Good to see you, man,

Justin: Dude. Thank you for allowing us to rock this podcast in your office for the Wealthy Way.

Ryan: I know we should probably switch seats, but it’s all good.

Justin: Dude. It is totally all good. So let’s have the question that I ask all of our guests here, which would be for someone who’s either an aspiring entrepreneur or maybe just became an entrepreneur, what would be your one first piece of advice to that entrepreneur?

Ryan: I’m sure this is the generic advice. So, I’ll give you the generic advice, and then I’ll give you the non-generic so generic advice would be okay, whatever it is you’re doing, go get the mentor. Go get the coaching and whatever it is, right? You’re going in real estate. Go get a real estate coach. You’re in selling shoes. Go get somebody who sold shoes and learn from them, like trying to figure it out on your own. It’s just, it’s gonna take forever. It’s not worth it. That’s number one, the non-generic advice from me. Anyways, from what I have learned as an entrepreneur is document the journey on social media right now. You know, a lot of entrepreneurs are thinking, Well, man, I’m busy. I’m starting my business, and I haven’t done anything. I’ve improved. I’m like, I don’t care. Just start putting it out there on social media what you’re doing, because it’s going to be worth it.

Justin: Yeah, I agree you and I have a fun story about that that we were able to even talk about on your podcast about social media. But I firmly believe social media is not just the way of the future, but it has to be a must in your business. As anyone, I have a friend that is a surgeon, and he blew up his TikTok that now he is able. He’s a plastic surgeon, (Right) He’s able to charge more than anyone else in Scottsdale by a figure of 3x and he gets it. And the reason being very similar to you. He took advantage of the infancy of TikTok here in the States. He believed in it. He knew it was gonna work. Crushed it. He has four point something million people now who follow him (Wow). And he’s a plastic surgeon, not necessarily an influencer. (That’s cool), but it drives now. He can 3x what he charges, whatever the numbers is. He’s like, Dude, you look at my competition, they’re literally three times less than what I charge, and I’m booked. He’s solid. (He’s a celebrity surgeon now), which is great, right? But that’s the power of whether it’s TikTok, Instagram or YouTube or whatever (Right). Now listen, I wanted you on here badly because you have a huge history in the real estate space. You are one of the leading influencers and investors across the nation, so that is incredible. But not only that, you have so many other different businesses that I want to kind of dive into, and I really want to highlight Wealthy Way for you, because I know it is just such a passion project for you, and I want to make sure that our audience knows about it, knows what it is. So we are going to get to the wealthy way. All right, cool, before we get to the Wealthy Way, talk to us a little bit about the journey, about you know, obviously, if no one knows who Ryan is, he did start out as an athlete, and we don’t have to go through your whole story. But you definitely, from what I’m aware of, you started out in the real estate space, and from there, you have now developed multiple streams of income. What’s been your success to doing something like that, where you take one vertical and then have expanded in totally different verticals, right? How did you make those jumps?

Ryan: You know? I tell entrepreneurs this all the time, that you have to keep going through the ladder of the next big opportunity, right? Because at some point the current industry or market you’re in becomes capped. And so my journey as an entrepreneur has kind of been jumping to the next step. So when I got started, okay, not talking about my baseball career, I was a pro baseball player for many years, but that didn’t make me money, because I was just making 1200 bucks as a minor leaguer. Okay, I had to do things on the side. So the first real successful entrepreneur journey I had was flipping couches. And so, you know, I start flipping couches, and you know, it goes from 1,000 a month to 2,000 a month to 4,000, 6,000 I got, it’s up to 8,000 a month. (That’s real income). Yeah, that’s real money, (Yeah). And I was like, This is great. I’m killing it. Well after about a year of doing that, I realized, man, this is kind of it. This is how much I can make doing this. Now, granted, other people, since I’ve talked about couch flipping and kind of made it famous. They figured out how to make 20-30 grand a month, but still, like, there’s a cap it is. That is what it is. And so I started to look at other opportunities, and I fell into house flipping. And I said, Well, house flipping something that, man, if I could just flip one a month and make 20 grand, I’ll be making a quarter million dollars a year. That’s amazing. And so, you know, by year two, I got to making over 200 grand. And then I said, Dude, this house living thing could get even bigger. I could make over a million dollars. And so, you know, year three, I made 750 and then year four, made $2 million and I was like, wow, this is great. And you know, over the years, I’ve scaled it, and you know, we’ve been anywhere two to 4 million. In and this year, you know, we’re, I think we’re somewhere above 4 million. But, you know, at the end of the day, I realized house living even had a cap of, like, Man, this is kind of it. (Yeah). There are guys I see doing 10 to 20 million. And, you know, there’s the hedge funds and Zillow that are doing way, but they lose money, right? (Totally). So, you know, I’m like, this is kind of it, and I don’t really want to go expand this to other markets and everything else. So what’s the next stepping stone? Well, on my entrepreneurial journey, I start getting into social media. You know, this was about two and a half years ago, and I said, I think this is the next frontier to not only itself make money as an influencer, but to draw all the traffic to all the other businesses, right? And so, you know, I go down this journey, you know? And let me, let me also add this. Each time you go to a new step, you always have to sacrifice something from the previous step. And so when I went from couch flipping to house flipping, I had to completely give up couch flipping. Even those making eight grand a month is a great business. Right? When I went from house flipping to social media, I didn’t give it up, but there was a transition where we definitely made less money because I wasn’t the one closing deals. I wasn’t involved as much, and so I was willing to accept that transition period until I trained up my replacements so that I could pursue the social media thing, which, at the time, wasn’t making any money, right? (Right), Right. Anyways, it ends up working out the way I thought it would, you know. And it allowed me to start building these other businesses that are much more scalable, more profitable, better cash cycles and everything, you know. So, I get into the education business. And, you know, education, you know, now makes anywhere from one to 2 million a month. And, you know, I start building different verticals in education, and I still believe I haven’t even come close to hitting the education cap. I think that we could definitely get education to three to 5 million a month, right? And so, we still got a long way to go with that before I’m like, Okay, now, what? (Yep), right? But even then, even though I’m still growing those types of businesses, I have other businesses as well. I’m looking at, okay, what’s the next step above that, right? How do you get to a hundred million? How do you get to a billion? And you start to see these different verticals. And for me, it all leads back to tech. You look at all the richest people in the world as basically tech. There are some, you know, I think there’s only one guy who’s not like tech, and it’s the Louis Vuitton owner. I always butcher his name, Bernard Arnault, I think is his name. And it’s like, well, he’s basically tech, because this t shirt costs 10 bucks and he charges 3000 for it. So no doubt his margins are tech margins. (Yeah, no doubt). So, you know, I’m thinking about it. I’m like, Well, I do believe that crypto and real estate are going to merge. I think that this blockchain thing is going to be massive. And so, you know, I create my NFT types, and you know, it’s the number one NFT. (I was just going to say, congratulations making the number one. NFT). Yep, number one. NFT, in the world at launch. And you know, it’s been ultra, ultra successful, despite everything going on in the market, sure. Um, so, you know, I’m looking at that and I’m saying, Man, these are literal nine figure, billion dollar opportunities, if I execute correctly. And so, you know, that’s kind of the next stepping stone for me, is like, I’m in the tech space and doing that stuff. But here’s the thing, everything that I have is is always going up to the next stepping stone. So, you know, for an entrepreneur, listening to this, I just would say, don’t try to jump to step four. Like, hey, yeah, let’s get to eight grand, 10 grand a month. Okay, now let’s figure out how to get to 20, 30 grand a month, and then 100 grand a month, and then maybe you get to a million a month. Like, you know, most people that would be very happy to make 20 grand a month, (A 100%) 100 grand a month.

Justin: Like most people, like 99% of world would be excited to make 20 grand a month,

Ryan: But I just kind of get bored being at a cap. I’m like, What am I going to do next? And it’s not that I want to take over the world or be the biggest and baddest. I’m just like, literally, I want to see what I’m capable of.

Justin: You’re a classic entrepreneur. (Yeah) There’s always something else that you can go out and conquer, and you believe you can conquer it, so you go attempt and try. And I’m sure there’s been failures on your part. I know there’s been failures on my part. Doesn’t mean we stop or quit. I think you highlighted something that we were just briefly talking about. Like people want step four. They want to be Ryan Pineda on step four. (Yeah). Right? But they’re not willing to be Ryan Pineda on house couch flipping. My point being is they want the 10 years Ryan Pineda, where you’re making the money, Ryan opinion is making now, they’re not willing to go through the journey to get there. They don’t want to take step one. They want to go to straight step four. That’s the frustration I see in the entrepreneurship world. No, everyone wants to arrive. They just don’t want to have to take the journey to arrive.

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Ryan: But you know, here’s the thing, I will say, You definitely do have to put in the hard work and learn the hard lessons. And you know, you’re gonna go through ups and downs and failures and everything else. I’ve failed many, many times, but I will say, if somebody watches me today and they know my story, they know everything I’m saying, they should be able to do it way quicker than 10 years, you know. So maybe they can get to step four really fast. Maybe step one only takes them a couple of months, where it took me a couple of years. Then, you know, step two takes them, instead of six years, it takes them two and then, etc.

Justin: And that’s the function of learning from someone like yourself, you get to cut to the front of line, right? I mean, that’s the reality. Is you, you’ve done it. So you can say, here’s the mistakes I made. Don’t do that. Do this instead, right? So talk to me about the different ventures that you have done and why you choose the different ventures, right? As I said, you’re a leader in the real estate space. If everyone doesn’t know that, obviously you can go follow Ryan anywhere, and you’ll learn very quickly. But there are ventures that are way outside of real estate. We just talked about tykes, for example, which is NFT. There is a connectivity there, because you do believe some of this crypto and some of this stuff is going to connect to real estate, but we can go into the Wealthy Way you have the education we just talked about. And so what makes you go down these paths and choose them as a way to a make income, but also as a venture that you really believe in and want to go down?

Ryan: You know, I was actually thinking about this the other day, so I just created a website for our, like, parent company. And so, you know, our parent company is just called the Pineda Company, right? And so you could just go to pineda.co and that just shows all of our businesses. And it’s actually more so of a recruiting website for anyone looking for a career, because we’re just hiring so frequently. But as I was like, developing the mission statement for that website, I’m like, what is the central theme to all these different businesses, like you mentioned, we got a ton of them, got a CPA firm, like, we got E commerce stuff. I’ve got a women’s mastermind. You’re like, how does this guy have a woman’s mastermind? Like, he’s a dude, you know? So, like, I started to think, like, what is the central theme of everything I’m doing? And the reality is, all the businesses have basically been around helping people make more money in one way or another and live more fulfilling lives. And the Wealthy Ways about that, the masterminds are all about that. You know, at the end of the day, if I can help people make more money through these different ways, and then I can also teach them to do it in a way that is fulfilling and not just work, work, work, go, grind, grind, grind. Then that kind of resonates with me, because I that’s what I’ve done. I’ve just figured out how to make money in lots of different ways while still maintaining balance and having fun. You know, I golf this morning. I’m golfing Friday. Golfed on Monday. You know?

Justin: I hope you’re getting good, bro, you golf more than anyone. I know that’s not retired.

Ryan: I’m basically retired now. But, you know, no, I think, like, even golf, golf is a thing where I made it a business. I was posting the other day, you know, I have this thing called golf with Ryan, the stupid entrepreneur thing, where I’m like, I don’t know, people might just pay to golf with me. I don’t know. Like, let’s test it out. And in the last year, golf with Ryan has made almost. 300 grand. And I’m like, man, you know, this is a pretty like, at this point, (That pays your membership, your club, right?) Yeah, at this point I am a pro golfer. Yeah, you know, (You’re getting paid). That’s the definition of pro, but speaking wise, skill wise, I do think I could also, at some point play professionally too, like, and that’s not just like, some random thing, like, I know what it takes to be a athlete, (Yeah), so I don’t know. I just like challenges, man. But why would I get in these other verticals? I think I just enjoy, like, helping people make money. I enjoy the challenge.

Justin: Is there anything wrong with just going for a money grab as an entrepreneur, where it may not be connected in your place?

Ryan: I think for me, that was couch flipping. (Okay). Like, couch flipping was a 100% that I’m like, This is literally just about making money, (Yeah), you know. And I think even house flipping was that way. I’m like, real estate didn’t interest me in the way that I know a lot of people are very passionate about it. I was not. I’m like, I’ll flip houses. Can that make money? Cool, let me do this.

Justin: It’s self-serving in not a malicious way. But flipping houses makes Ryan Pineda, Justin Colby a lot of money doing it. There’s not necessarily the altruistic. I’m helping others by doing it. I guess you could paint a picture. We’re making neighborhoods better and cleaner. (Yeah). You could paint the picture, of course.

Ryan: Right. But what I will say is, yes, these, this was kind of the path that everyone has to start on, starting out right. Now, if you’re fortunate enough where you can build a business that, not only like is really, truly evolved, revolved around helping people and making money, great. But you know, couch flipping? Sure, every business exists because they solve a problem, they help people health. House flipping does do that. But, you know, for me, after I got through that, I started to realize, man, there are other businesses that are a lot more fulfilling and make a lot more money, just kind of like what I talked about on the ladder. Like, I would much rather teach all these people to flip houses, because it’s way more fulfilling, plus it makes way more money. So why would I not do that?

Justin: So, wouldn’t you agree that? That is a not going to say the right word, but like, there’s a transition right when you first get into entrepreneurship? I know I did because I was broke. Broker in a joke. I know you came from starting to make some money, but you become an entrepreneur and you’re like, I need to make a lot of money. Now that’s kind of the motivator. But as you start to make a lot of money, you can transition into, well, that’s not nearly as fulfilling is helping. Because I know that that’s happened to me where I got into real estate in 2007 I didn’t become an educator until 2014 because I was about like, I want to serve me, which is making the money, yeah, but then it became to your point where you’re like, Okay, that’s it’s cool, but I want something else that is more fulfilling and that that happens when it happens. And that’s why you’ve gone into education. We want to start talking about Wealthy Way. But that’s at least for me, isn’t there some level of like, I would make the argument it’s okay to come out and spend the first year, 2, 3, 4, 5 just let’s go make a lot of money. Because if you know, if your cup is full, right, that’s how you’re able to give the others. But if your cup is not full, very challenging to be able to give to others. (Yeah, a 100%) So let’s get into the Wealthy Way. I know it’s one of your newer ventures. I know it’s definitely, probably the most passionate you are about, probably all your projects, maybe, maybe not. But let’s, let’s talk about the Wealthy Way a little bit. Tell us a little bit about it right now.

Ryan: Yeah, you know, the the mission of the wealthy way is to, you know, help people not go broke trying to get rich. Because, like that. I just see it all the time, man, like in the pursuit of getting rich, as entrepreneurs, we go broke in other areas of life. We give up on our health, we get out of shape, we stop going to church. We have no faith. We you know, neglect our wives, our husbands, whoever our kids. And you know, you just kind of put all these things to the side in the pursuit of money. And it’s a very easy trap to fall into. And I’ve seen it time and time again, and so the more I saw it, and the more that people kept asking me. They were like, Ryan, how the heck do you run all these businesses and then you golf this morning, and you did it again, and you’re still, you know, I see you holding Bible study every Wednesday, and you’re doing, like, how? How’s that even possible? And I was like, Well, I’ve been asked this a million times. When I get asked a million times, I just create something that gives the answer the solution. But instead of charging for it, like a lot of my other education, I was like, You know what? This one’s like, actually super important that everyone gets, so I’m gonna just create everything for free. And so, you know, I created the Wealthy Way, which is kind of this brand, and I’m building everything around it, essentially with what I do, because I want people to know this, because nobody’s really known for this. Most entrepreneurs on social media are really a part of the grind culture. And you know, hey, in order for you to get ahead, these are the things you have to do. And I’m like, I don’t know. I’m passing a lot of people really fast, doing it my way. So I’m going to teach people a different way, the wealthy way, right? And, you know, the way it started was last year I created this course. I also spent six figures developing software for a morning planner so that people could be accountable and create goals, and the goals and everything the way you use the planners based on the course, so that you know exactly why it works and how it works. And I use the planner every day. It’s what keeps me accountable. It’s a planner I’ve actually created for years, and I’ve used myself because I didn’t like any of them, but it started out on a Google Sheet, and that was how I tracked everything. And I did that for years, and then my tech team created it into software, and now we’re building it into a mobile app and other things. But, you know, along with that, I created another course, which we’re releasing free. I rebranded my podcast to the wealthy way. And you know, I got a book coming out December 13 for the wealthy way that I’m super excited about. And you know, the whole mission is, like, literally, everything I do within the Wealthy Way is free, yeah? And I tell people this all the time, like, there’s no upsells or anything, like, I haven’t I have no problem selling you on anything. I will sell you, and I will tell you it cost a lot of money to work with me in whatever fashion. But the Wealthy Way truly is no upsell.

Justin: Yeah. Well, I think that’s the altruistic thing that I think is needed in our space. We just were talking like there’s a lack of it, because everyone is trying to get money. Essentially, that’s what most entrepreneurs is the grind go make a bunch of money. So I applaud you for coming out with something like this, I think it’s needed for all entrepreneurs. Doesn’t matter your vertical real estate or otherwise. If you could give advice to an entrepreneur who may have that dream but may not see the financial future for it, right, Wealthy Way would be a great point, right? Where it’s a passion, it may not create as much money. Would you what advice would you give to that person? Do you follow the passion? Do you try to make money first so you can give to that passion? Where do you go? Like, what’s the right starting point for someone?

Ryan: You know, I think there’s something called the hedgehog concept in a book called “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. That’s really good, and it just basically takes these three circles, and this is how you determine whether or not what you’re doing is, you know, basically going to be your maximum opportunity for you, right? So the first circle says, you know, are you passionate about this? The second circle says, Can this be an economic driver for you? Third circle says, Can you be world class at this? Okay? So if there is any activity that you do that fits all three of those circles, it’s right in the middle where they all intersect, then you’re going to be extremely happy doing it. You’re going to crush it, and you’re going to just love everything about it, right? So it’s like, for me, we were talking about education, right? Am I passionate about educating people? Yeah, that’s why I make content all day. I love it. Okay? Am I really good at it? Yeah, like to think I’m pretty dang good at it, right? There’s that. Can it make me a lot of money and drive my economic engine? Yes, it can. Boom. So education fits all three boxes. Therefore, it’s something I should definitely be focusing on doing heavily. You know, house flipping was that way. I was good at it. I like it. You know, it can definitely make a lot of money, but for most people, they’re stuck in a career that maybe only fits one of those, right? It makes them money, but they don’t like it, and they’re not even that good at it. They just, they work the job. Or maybe they’re passionate about something, maybe it’s music, and their dream was to always be an artist, and yet they don’t do it, because they just can’t make money doing it right. And so my point is, if you’re starting out, if you can find something that hits all three boxes, you’re gold, but the odds are you’re probably not, at least initially, and you’re going to find yourself over time. And so if you work a job right now that you’re pretty good at, maybe you’re not super passionate about it, but it makes you money, you can keep doing that while you pursue these different hobbies and things that you know you’re calling, you know. For years, you know? When even when I was flipping couches, I wasn’t making, I mean, I mean, I was making pretty good money, but it’s not like I loved that, you know, it was just kind of a job. I was serving. I was doing mission trips, you know, we were my wife, and I used to do Sunday school. We did that for years for kids, and it’s just like that stuff was where I got my fulfillment when couch slipping wasn’t fulfilling me. So I think that you can still get your fulfillment and other things outside of your work.

Justin: I agree emphatically, and I probably take the argument that if you follow something that you really enjoy, you can find a way to drive the economic right? To the point of social media. Social media pays now, (Yeah). So, if you’re a great artist, musician whatever it may be, maybe it may not make you money out of the gate, but you can find ways to drive the economic engine because of how society is these days, right? And you can find a way to drive money. YouTube is a great example, right? YouTube pays great content providers for great videos. So well, let’s wrap it up with just the simple question of the best piece of advice you’ve been given that has changed your entrepreneur direction?

Hmm, you know, I’ve had a lot of good advice recently. What has changed my direction is a good question. You know, Cardone told me something a couple of months back that stuck out, and it was something I kind of knew but needed to be reinforced. You know, a lot of times we need to hear something over and over again before we take it serious. And, you know, he basically just said that, like, dude, marketing is it supersedes everything, unbelievably. And I was like, okay, like, explain. And so he started to explain how his number one job is to market like crazy, get on social media, talk, promote his events, raise capital, all these things. And I started thinking about, I’m like, yeah, that that really is the biggest thing. When I look at all my businesses and their success, it’s because of the amount of marketing I’ve done through content and everything else. And you know, if I really want to impact people and reach more people and grow my businesses and get more opportunities, it can be simply summed up into, how do I become a better marketer? How do I create more content, give more value? And if I just do that. Everything else falls into place. I don’t even need to think about the rest.

Justin: Love it. Love it. Well, dude, thank you so much for gracing the podcast. This is gonna be incredible for all entrepreneurs. Doesn’t matter of the vertical, if you don’t know Ryan Pineda, make sure you are following him. And most importantly, I think you want them to go to the wealthy ways  at https://wealthyway.com/ .

Ryan: Yep. We can get all of our https://wealthyway.com/

Justin: Right on Brother appreciate you being on.

Ryan: Cool. Appreciate you, man.

Justin: Peace.

In today’s episode of The Entrepreneur DNA, Chris Miles shares his journey to financial freedom and retirement before the age of 40. He emphasizes the importance of understanding how money works and using it wisely. Chris discusses the pitfalls of traditional financial advice and shares his own strategies for achieving financial independence. He highlights the need to get lean, get liquid, and get out of debt. Chris also introduces the concept of infinite banking and explains how it can be a powerful tool for real estate investors. In this conversation, Chris Miles discusses his experience with infinite banking and how it can benefit real estate investors. He shares his personal story of being misled by an insurance agent and explains how he took matters into his own hands to create a better strategy. Chris highlights the importance of having cash available from day one in an infinite banking policy and the advantages it offers in terms of liquidity, tax benefits, and collateral for loans. He also emphasizes the power of leveraging life insurance policies to fund real estate investments and the potential for double-dipping on interest. Overall, Chris provides valuable insights into how real estate investors can optimize their financial strategies using infinite banking.

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Justin: Yo, The Science of Flipping podcast listeners, what is happening. I am back with an incredible guest today. This is a long time real estate investor, someone who understands how to raise money, understands how money works, and how to properly invest their money and your money. Mr. Chris Miles is in the house. What’s up, brother?

Chris: What’s up Justin? Good to be back on well, back with you again on a different show.

Justin: That’s right. And so you’ve retired twice since so far in your life, and you did that all before you were the age of 40. Let’s quickly talk about that journey so people understand, like you can retire, if you understand how money works, if you use money the right way, if you have the right business model, but then also, you know, what are you going to do after you retire? Right? So talk a little bit about that journey.

Justin: Yeah, when I was raised by my parents, I mean, I even spent five years in a trailer park, you know, like, I was raised by very middle class parents, but they’re always felt like they were broke. We can’t afford this. What do you think of money is, you know, like, we think I have made of money. Money doesn’t grow on trees. My favorite one was my dad when he said, You know what, Chris, like, I want to have kids. Or, you know, I want to have kids. And because I prioritize that I gave I got rid of that dream of a Corvette, you know, I was like, well, that’s awesome. Thanks for, you know, I’m gonna be talking to some hypnotherapist about that when I get older, you know. But so anyways, you know, like, money was always a scarce thing, and so I thought I never wanted to be that way. And so even when I went to college, I realized that it was like the entrepreneur. It wasn’t the entrepreneur way to do it. It was more of an employee mindset. And so I actually dropped out of college with just one class before I got my bachelor’s, looking for some career to do, some kind of business to start. And the first one I got into was being a financial advisor. Not knowing it was so easy to get in is because all you have to do is pass a test not be a criminal, right? Like, that’s all it takes to be a financial advisor (Great!) expert in people’s lives, (Right). Well, as as time went on, I remember sitting down with my dad, and I remember for the first time seeing his finances, and he’d paid off all of his debt. I mean, this guy was like, Dave Ramsey’s older brother, that Dave Ramsey looked up to said, I should teach this guy, you know. So he paid off all of his debt, including his house. In 18 years, he ended up like, you know, stuffing money in his 401K everything, good boys and good girls should be doing, right? Well, as I looked at his money, I said, Dad, you’re 61 years old. If you want to retire today, you better hope you die in five years, because that’s when you’re gonna run out of money. Okay. Well, what do I do? Chris, like, I can’t do this anymore. He’d already had, by the way, he already had, like, heart attacks by his 50s. He had strokes in his 40s. I mean, this guy was on his way out and so I’m like, I don’t know, I don’t know what to do, because you did everything right from my teachers, financial advisor. And of course, when the students really the teacher appears. A few weeks later, I called up one of my friends who left my business. I actually trained him of a financial advisor, but he left to go do something crazy called real estate investing. And I’m talking to him, he’s like, so Chris, tell me, how many of your clients are actually financially free, where they don’t worry about money? I was like, well, they all worry about money, even the ones that retired still worry about running out of money in retirement. So none, none are that free. Okay, Chris, well, how about this? If anybody’s got this, right, it should be you guys. So how many of you guys as financial advisors are financially free, not off the commissions you’re earning, but actually doing these mutual fund investments? As I was really honest with myself, and I knew a lot of advisors, I said none. I thought maybe one guy was but I found out later, once he got fired from that company, he was scrambling trying to find him work again. He was just, he was just all is they say in Texas, all hat and no cattle, right? (Yeah). And so, I found out pretty quickly. I’m like, Well, none of these guys are free. Like, there’s your problem, Chris. I said, All right, I’m open, but you know, what should I do? And he’s like, Chris, you just got an argument with me that stocks were better than real estate. You’re you’re not open. I’m like, No, honestly. Like, you’ve got me here. You’ve got me to admit I’m wrong. Give me something. He’s like, all right, Chris, if you’re serious, if you’re serious, go get this book called “Who took my money?” by Robert Kiyosaki. It’s a lesser known Rich Dad, Poor Dad book, which, if I sum up the three hour audio book for you, mutual funds suck. Okay, (Got it). Yeah, you read the book. (Yeah). And then, and then he says, Now listen to this AM talk radio show, because this pre podcast, or this is, like, 2005, 2006 he’s like, go listen to this. This, this radio show with these two real estate investors. And so I started listening to it, and what shocked me is they didn’t even have time talk about real estate. They talked about, like, Founding Fathers and principles, and, you know, principles of wealth, thing creation, all that kind of stuff, right? And I’m like, Okay, I’m mean I’m up. Well, I finally, I went to a seminar that one of these real estate guys put on, and they start ripping to shreds the financial advisor right to the point where by the end of that night, I said, I gotta quit. I’m out. No more financial advising for me. I’m just gonna go teach ballroom dancing and do mortgages, because and mortgages was an easy business in 2006 and and I was also a ballroom dancer at that time, so I thought maybe I would just teach that at the local university. (Yeah). Well, any case. But the thing that drove me nuts, even though I quit doing that, I just knew that there’s guys in their 20s and 30s that these guys are, like, real estate flippers that were like, making killer money. (Yeah). I’m like, I gotta know how these guys are doing it, because it seems like whatever they’re doing is magical, right? Because my little financial advisor brain, you know, even after four years of doing that business, was like, Oh no, you accumulate a bunch of money and then you live off it, like a little starving squirrel, right? (Yeah). You just snip up those nuts, and then you live off of them, hopefully, till, hopefully the winter you outlive the winter, or whatever you know. Well, that was the problem is that I couldn’t fathom. But when they start telling me about, like, hard money lending, you know, and you could get paid now that’s either some guys paying like, two or 3% a month. It was insanely rich the hard money of lending back then. (Yeah, yeah). Needless to say, it wasn’t hard to get out of the rat race when you’re getting paid, you know, two or 3% a month on your hard money, you know, that you’re lending out to investors and whatnot.

Justin: So, you started lending. That was kind of your intro. It was gentle. And, by the way, guess who always wins the banks so that that was you, like, started with the cream of the crop, but that was your kind of softer way of entering versus dealing with contractors and rehabs and in all that other noise.

Chris: That’s right, yeah. Like, I took my first, my very first starter home, and I turned that into a rental. Funny enough, it was like my first official flip that I then got back again. So I ended up selling it to an investor at full appraised value, stripped out all my equity, and then turned around and leased it from the owner, the investor, and then subleased it out to a renter. And so that was…

Justin: I love that creative. That was way before people were thinking about creative financing. I love how you think, bro.

Chris: Yeah, that was my first deal. Funny enough, other than buying my own house, right? (Yeah), so I couldn’t, I couldn’t start easy, but, uh, (No) but, you know, like, I thought was fun. I even started doing stuff that now people would refer to as wholesaling. I started doing that with friends and stuff. I’m like, Hey, you could sell this property off, getting it, you know, get a credit partner, you know. And then, of course, go and get all the equity out and rent it back, you know, the house that they’re living in. So we’re doing things like that, a little bit creative finance stuff. But then, of course, you know, I got to that point where eventually, between those, those things and and other streams of income I’m getting in, I’m like, I don’t have to work anymore, right? I only need 3,500 a month to live. Because I only had two kids. Now, I have eight between a blended family, between two marriages. We’re like the Brady Bunch, but we had to fire Alice because there’s no room for (There you go). So anyways, so yeah, so we so basically, I was at the point where I was out of the rat race. I was 28 years old, not sure what to do with my life, you know. But I’ll tell you, like, one thing that’s interesting is that, you know, I I got to the point where, of course, the recession kicked my butt. I seriously went from millionaire, upside down, millionaire to the next recession because I got lazy. You know, I was, I was so drunk on all the money coming in, I was like, well, I’ll buy my little, big mansion. I’ll go and I’ll throw money at this or that. I started a brand new business trying to teach people how to get out of the rat race. We’re teaching flippers actually, how to get themselves out of the rat race. (Yeah). And, funny enough, they all went broke in 2007 so our whole business model was like, just going down the tube fast, (Sure) to the point where I was I went like, I said I was like, free, financially free to all sudden, now over a million dollars in debt, with no money, no credit. I didn’t have any confidence that borrow money from anybody anymore, because I’d already lost some of my family and friends’ money at this point. So I was I was kind of in a hard place, and I took a little pivot in my business. I eventually actually started teaching people how to get out of the rat race. Not they really got out of the rat race, per se. But instead of doing it with investing, do it by freeing up cash flow, like being a wiser steward of your money. So things like, how do you actually start tracking your money and being wise toward with that? How are creative? What are creative ways to pay debt? Because that’s what I was doing. A lot of people ask me, like, How’d you pay off over a million dollars debt when you were flat broke? Because I didn’t go bankrupt, so I didn’t wipe it out. I said, Well, I use, like, this strategy called cash flow index that I created, which is basically what’s the highest ROI loan that I could pay off, right? Like, which one, if I invest X amount of dollars to pay off that loan will give me X amount of dollars of cash flow with the highest ROI, right? I was looking at from that standpoint, versus interest rates and stuff. (That’s right). So anyways, I mean, I mean, I know that’s not the whole focus of this, this episode, but long story short, I was able to eventually dig out of the debt hole. I actually built a whole business model. Even companies like Wolf factory started using my stuff, you know, that I let them use after I launched and did money ripples, you know. And it was awesome, like I got to myself to the point where I was able to get out of the rat race the second time, by the end of 2016 it was actually December of 2016 I was like, I did the math. I’m like, I’m out. I have enough passing.

Justin: When you now find out. And this is one thing I think all of you out there, real estate investors, you have to understand, when your monthly expenses are covered by your passive income, you no longer have to work,right? And you found a way to do that twice effectively. Now economic things happened where you got caught right? And you had to go back into the game, and then you were able to recreate it. And so I think that’s a very common thing, by the way, for most entrepreneurs, if you’re out there, is there are seasons, and you are king of the mountain during one season, and then you are, you know, just a commoner trying to fight your fight each and every day, and that is normal. Anyone who I’ve ever seen at any level, anyone I’ve interviewed here on these podcasts that have you know extreme success has gone through those peaks and valleys. So that’s common for all of you out there listening to it. So you’ve been able to, now twice, be able to create enough passive income to effectively choose to work or not?

Chris: That’s right, exactly like I don’t have to do I honestly like, even though I have the company money ripples, I could shut it down today. My whole team knows it, yeah, just know that I’m passionate enough that I got to do something, because I can’t just sit around and do nothing, right? Especially because I feel like I was given this God given opportunity to actually do something with better, with my life, to help others too, and create that ripple effect through people’s lives. Hence the name Money Ripples.

Justin: Money Ripples. And that’s a podcast that everyone should be going and listening to. Money Ripples on Apple, moneyripples.com everyone should be going and seeing money ripples, checking it out, listening to more. Chris, keep going, brother

Chris: That’s right, you know. And this kind of is a bonus for you guys. If, if there’s anything I learned from going broke and getting out of the rat race twice, you know? I’ll tell you this is that if I were to start over again, one thing I would do is I would remember these, these three things is get lean, get liquid and get out, right? Get Lean is just like, you know, and I saw a lot of guys in the real estate space, especially because I, I mean, masterminds, a lot of flippers and wholesalers and such, and the ones that were really living a little fat and happy, both personally and in their business too, they’re the ones that had to pivot the most, and pretty much were out of business as well. So, I mean, so get lean. Don’t have to be cheap. You don’t have to live on rice and beans, cut out your latte, all that stuff. You can still enjoy life, but just be a wise steward of your money. Make sure you’re tracking it and watching it like every week, business and personal.

Justin: I would know that. I mean as as an investor yourself, and then being in these masterminds with myself and others like you know they’re not doing that. You know, 99% of these investors flipping homes, wholesaling, they are not tracking their money, probably even quarterly, let alone every single week. What? Let’s just talk about that. Let’s pivot the conversation a little bit. What do you advise all those, you know, wholesalers, fixing flippers, that are creating a bunch of this active income, they they potentially are living high on the hog or not, whatever? What’s some advice that you can give these individuals that’s helped you create enough passive income? Right? The idea is, I want everyone to realize fixing, flipping and wholesaling is great. I love it. I still do it today. It’s active income, though. But I also have bought three different apartments so far this year. I bought, you know, 28 single family doors like I’m doing both. What I want to hear from you is, what do you recommend to everyone out there that is actively flipping and wholesaling, creating the academic income? How can they think more like you?

Chris: Yeah, you gotta, you gotta think like, can I survive, even if this business is shut down today, right? If all sudden, like, the government comes out and says, You know what, you can’t do your business anymore. You’re done. Like, can you quit today? If not, then you gotta start building towards that. That’s why you got to get lean, right? You got to start tracking your money. If something does change, you need to know exactly what your burn rate is? How, what are your expenses like, every single week? You got to know that kind of stuff, right? You got to know how much money is actually coming in. We’re supposed to be coming in. You know, watch it. It’s like it’s, it’s really a natural law of the of the universe, if you really think about it, right? It’s that law of attention. Whatever you put your attention towards will expand and grow. Well, whatever you ignore will leave you. That’s like the law to atrophy, right? Because, for example, if I don’t brush my teeth, if I ignore my teeth, I won’t have teeth anymore. If I ignore my spouse, I won’t have a spouse anymore. You ignore your kids, you probably won’t have kids anymore, right? And if you ignore your money, it won’t be there either. It’ll leave you just like everything else will. And so you got to make sure you’re watching it. And that kind of goes along with that get liquid. That’s essential. The one problem in the financial world that they teach you to lock your money up in prison. Lock it up in IRAs and 401KS, you know, even if it’s Roths and stuff like that, they tell you to lock up in your house equity, you know. And I’m not opposed to people if they want to pay off their house, if that’s the case, awesome. But I would not do that unless I had so much extra cash that I couldn’t even do anything with it, right? Because the mistake I made in the last recession, in the Great Recession, back in 2008 was I threw in extra money in my house because I was. Mortgage broker. I figured if I ever needed cash, I’ll just get a cash out refi and have it done. But you know what happened? I even throw in more money. I actually finished off a basement in the new McMansion I bought threw a bunch of money into that I had now 150,000 equity. When I went to the bank in July of 2007 they said, Oh, you know what? We just changed some rules. Get your credit score up two points, and then in August you could refi. So I got it up over two points, just like we said August. I said, Here I am. You see the credit score? It’s good. They’re like, it is good job. Well, we just changed some new rules. Now you need to do X, Y and Z, jump through these hoops, and then we’ll give it to you in September. I did all that. I go back in in September, and they said, Sorry, we don’t give any more loans to investors or business owners.

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Chris: Yeah, so when I had that property, that they wouldn’t let me cash out refinance anymore, that money was trapped. And of course, you the rest is history. The markets tanked and all the equity disappeared, which is why eventually I foreclosed in that property. I tried to short sell it. It was owned by Lehman Brothers, and they didn’t want to short sell. So eventually I did get a $300 settlement for, you know, fraudulent mortgage practices from that company. But, you know, that’s the thing. Is, like it was trapped in there, I would have been better off weathering that storm, had I had that cash in hand, not sitting in equity in my business, in my mortgage, right, my house. So that’s the big thing about getting liquid, is get your money out of prison. Get it liquid, get it available to use. And it might be more than you think, especially if you’re in real estate. I mean, I remember talking about this with Steve Trang, if you guys ever, you know, follow his stuff. We were talking on his show before and and I remember he’s like, Well, how much should they have? I was like, well, at least six to 12 months of your expenses. But if you’re in business and you’re paying for marketing and stuff, I mean, if you’re just flipping, that’s one thing. But if you have a business where you do a lot of marketing as well, it might take nine months for that marketing to work, you might need 12 months of expenses just sitting on the sidelines. You might hate, because you feel like it’s not doing anything, but it’s essential. Anybody who’s made a lot of wealth has learned you’ve got to have a good chunk of money on the sidelines that’s not being invested, because you’ve got to have it there, just in case. And the person with that that money is the person that’s going to control the terms, that’s the person that’s going to win, no matter what.

Justin: Do you think they should be like quite literally holding it, or do you think they should be utilizing it, lending it, investing it at higher returns, in a safe way? What do you think they should be doing with that money?

Chris: You         know, most for the most part, holding it, right? I mean, maybe short term stuff can work. But you know, I mean short, even Short Term Lending. If it’s gone for like, six to eight months, it may not come back if it gets caught up in some crap, you know. So I like to keep it liquid, and here’s what I do, right? So, I mean, the last year has been funny, because we’ve had, like, banks, like, Signature Bank and, you know, and whatnot, where they’ve, they’ve had some failures, and then all of a sudden it just stopped, like, oh, you know, there’s been a random few bank failures here and there, but they don’t really talk about it. I don’t trust banks honestly, so you can store money in the bank. And in fact, I was a member. We were at a mastermind group together. This is last year when we’re at this mastermind and we were having a breakout meeting, and someone, someone was asking, is actually one of my clients. He’s like, well, where do we hold off our cash? Because Chase Bank is treating me like crap right now, I’ve got millions with them, and apparently that’s not enough for them to treat me right. (Right). And it’s like I said, Ron like, Listen, you already know the answer to this. You already know because what you’ve already got money sitting over here doing like, you know what we call it, strategy, called Infinite Banking, right? It’s like you already got money sitting over here. Earning better than the bank. It’s tax free, and it’s protected from lawsuits and creditors. You already got money here. Just get your money away from the freaking bank. And so even in my situation, like I have a little bit of money in the bank, course for quick, easy transactions, but I keep the bulk of my savings in a place where it’s tax free, protected from lawsuits and creditors, and I’m making more than point nothing percent, like my bank pays me right now, and I’m I’m making like, five to 6% a year tax free, just letting it sit there.

Justin: And because I have one of these policies,

I would tell all investors, you guys really got to listen up, right if you’re a real estate investors, because you want to have your money work for you while you’re sleeping. Essentially, 5 or 6% may not sound sexy to you. What can be sexy is the opportunity to borrow from it, lend it out, create arbitrage and repay yourself tax free, right? Talk, talk to the investors about that, right? You’re a real estate investor, but you think as a true investor. And what I mean by that is you don’t just think about real estate, just like I don’t, right? I have multiple, I mean, I don’t even want to go through the laundry list of investments I make. But, you know, talk to the real estate investors about this concept, because people will make the argument. And you know this, because this is your whole business, people will make the argument, yeah, but what if I need the money? So let’s talk to that point.

Chris: Exactly, yeah, I’ll tell you. So I first, I first learned about this strategy, specifically, like, right about, actually it was 2006 when I started learning real estate investing. All these real estate investors telling me about this infinite banking thing, right? And as a financial advisor, I’d never heard about it before, and it was pretty new back then. It wasn’t as hot as, like it is on YouTube right now. I mean, heck, I put infinite banking on my in my title, and all of a sudden I get more views on my YouTube video than at my other podcast, right? But I’ll tell you like, I first learned about it, and they referred me to the guy that was doing it for them, and I remember seeing it, and remember I was insurance licensed too, right? I had been, I had been securities licensed. I’ve been insurance licensed. I knew about life insurance, and so they’re showing me this whole life policy that they’re saying, Hey, you can be your own bank. You can pay yourself back, you know the whole Nelson Nash “Be Your Own Banker” book, which is a good, decent read to get an intro to it. But I was like, Okay, I read the book and everything, but I’m looking at how you design this policy. And the first two years I’m throwing money in, I have zero cash in that tax free savings account, like it’s all going to pay for my death benefit. You’re paying, making me pay thousand bucks a month to get, like, a million dollar death benefit. But I have no cash in here, not until year three, and even then, it’s just not much. And I said, Is there any way I can make it better? His answer was “No”. If you try to put even $1 more into this thing, it’ll get it’ll get taxed, like, it’ll, you’ll trigger a bunch of tax and stuff. So don’t do that. Okay, I’ll take your word for it. I trusted the guy. He was a friend. I was like, fine. Well, guess what? 2008 hits, I can’t I’m in the whole $15,000 a month, right? So, I can’t afford to pay 1,000 bucks a month. I called the insurance company like, is there anything I could do? They said, “No”, you got to pay 1,000 a month or you lose this thing. I paid 15,000 grand at this freaking Infinite Banking policy, as they talk about, and it basically got canceled. It was like the most expensive rip off term I could have ever purchased. (Yeah) Usually the kicker, though, about several months later, I’m talking with a friend who also bought a policy from the same guy, and he said, You know what I found out, you can actually have cash from day one in there. I was like, Are you kidding me? I had asked that guy point blank. He told me, “No”. So, I started doing my own research. I started doing my do my own thing, even running my own numbers with other companies, doing it myself. And what I find out, I could have actually had cash from day one.

Justin: So this guy did not know, or did he not, like, you like, why would he just not what was the story there?

Chris: So, I confronted him about it, and we actually had a two hour debate in our office about this thing. In fact, it got so loud and heated that the assistants outside the door could hear us yelling and and I said, he’s like, Well, the death benefits the powerful thing you need to have. I’m like, screw the death benefit. I want cash. You know, I’m an investor, right? And, and so, so finally, like, he’s like, Well, you know, we got to make it apples to apples. So, up the ante a little bit, right? I say, Fine, I’ll make I’ll match your death benefit, but I’m going to do it this way, where I can have cash from day one. And guess what? I beat his numbers. And after I knocked every objection, finally, at the end of that two hours, he said, Chris, I designed it that way because I could not afford to cut my commissions. There.

Justin: There you go. That’s always what for me I need to make commission, so I’m going to do whatever I can make the most commission.

Chris: Oh, yeah and this is the guy that would verbally speak. And again, this guy normally would give you the shirt off his back. I mean, a good you know, always about being a value creator, but right there, it’s like, you are in really a professional insurance agent. You’re You’re not an investor, you’re an insurance agent posing as an investor, right? (Right). And so, I was pissed. I was like, I’m gonna send you a referral again. And that’s where I spent, really, the next 15 years, like finding ways to do it, and I couldn’t find anybody to do it consistently. I mean, even the guys out there, you see these infinite banking videos, you know, I even wanted to refer my clients to them. They wouldn’t consistently do a good job. They wouldn’t do the best job where they minimize those fees as low as you could possibly go, because they don’t want to cut their commissions. And so eventually, like I finally in 2017 I took it under my own roof. I just said, fine we’re gonna do it inside of Money Ripples, because I can’t find anybody else will do it right. In fact, that’s the one thing kind of got me out of retirement. The second time was, was one, because there was a podcast host that was really begging me to do it. But two is because, honestly, like, I couldn’t find somebody to do it right. And I, my business motto is this, or my kind of, my own little personal mantra is that if I can’t be the best in the business, I don’t do that business right? Like so that’s why we only do two things. We do passive income consulting, we do the infinite banking. But I mean, that’s why I was so pissed that the industry allows that to happen. And you’re right. Sometimes the agents don’t know how to do it. That’s the vast majority. But those that teach infinite banking, many of them do know how to do it, but they won’t do it because it will cut their commissions. Or two different insurance companies pay different types of commissions. I mean, there are insurance companies that offer to pay me more money than when I’m getting paid for certain insurance companies because, well, they charge it, they pay more money, but they also charge the client more money too, right? So it’s kind of catch 22 like, yeah, okay, you can pay me a higher percentage, but the problem is that the client doesn’t get it. And so I always tell those same companies, even companies like MassMutual, I’m like, all you have to do is beat these other companies numbers. I’ll write MassMutual. I don’t give a crap, right? Like, you just give me the best dang thing I can get for an investor, where I have more cash from day one. And so when people are worried about Infinite Banking, not having cash available, I know exactly what they’re talking about, because I was in that same problem back in 2006 through 2008, right? Because my money was just going to pay for the really, for their insurance costs, which pay their commissions. So when you see people saying, well, we need, like, a 60/40, blend and stuff like that, it’s like “No”. That’s just a, it’s like a, it’s kind of like a medium point. They’re like, well, it’s still not the best for the client, but at least it’s better than the normal way. So I’m kind of meeting them in the middle. It’s like, that’s still crap. If you do what’s right for somebody, you’ll you’ll make plenty of money.

Justin: Yeah. You know, the the reality is, why this is so powerful for a real estate investor is because you can become you yourself have been a private money lender. You can, you know, lend into your own fix and flip. You can lend into your own earnest money deposits for wholesaling. You can lend to other people, of course. But you know, going back to the the real estate play, like having something like this that keeps your cash liquid and then you can utilize so it’s not actually ripping from your actual bank account, in the sense of, like, using all your money. Talk to us about, like, how a fix and flipper is best going to utilize a policy like this.

Chris: Yeah, the best way. I mean when I said, like, storage of cash. If you need that war chest, just in case. Don’t let it stay in the bank, where you get, you know, you make maybe point nothing percent, you get tax on point nothing percent. And even the high yield savings accounts, they might pay almost the same rate, but you still have to pay taxes on that. Right? I love the fact that I don’t have one more tax form to deal with at the end of the year. I don’t know if you guys are the same way, but I hate that I get tax forms from all different sources, then I got to send all to CPA. I don’t have to worry about taxes. It never gets taxed, right? It’s kind of like a Roth IRA that way. But I can actually access the money whenever I want, even from day one. So that’s one reason I use it. The other way I use it as a real estate investor too, is not just having that word chest, but it can be leveraged in different ways to. One at Walt Disney, right? I mean, obviously we know he created the happiest place on earth, apparently. And you know, there’s no…(Maybe not anymore a secret, maybe not). It’s happiest place on earth when I don’t go with my kids, sometimes I’ll tell you that much. (There you go). But it’s cool with kids, but at the same time, it’s kind of cool being an adult, too. But after he did Disneyland, that was a success. And so, he started looking at the swamplands of Florida, right? You know, this crappy little swampland area. And he was going, he was privately trying to buy it up. And he went to the banks. He said, hey, I want to get a loan so I can go and develop this. I want to create another amusement park the bankers like, you know, we loved you, but let’s be honest, he didn’t do the best, you know? I mean, that’s one time thing. Doing it again on a bigger scale, I’m not so sure about that. And so they gave him the condition to say, if you were to give us some collateral, we’ll give you some money. And so he went in. This is in his documentaries and books and stuff, he did a cash out refi from and got a line of credit against his house, and then he used his life insurance policies, the cash value from his whole life insurance policy, as collateral, so they would give him the loan. And then the rest is history, right? And even other business owners have done it too. I mean, Pampered Chef. Your wife used a Pampered Chef. It was. That was a seed money for starting it was using their life insurance policy, McDonald’s, Ray Kroc, when he bought out the McDonald’s brothers, he was paying the executives from the life insurance policies that he owned, you know? JC Penney’s done the Great Depression, paid their payroll during that period of time, and was able to weather that. Now, they couldn’t beat 2020 that got them, but they did at least make it to the great depression because of it, you know? So it’s not, it’s one of those things that it’s a good pool of money, but, like it says, protected from lawsuits and creditors in most states, 100% you could have millions of dollars sitting in here, and if you have money in the bank, they can get that money right away. If somebody sues you and wins, it doesn’t happen here. The cool thing is, if you got kids, you want to get them to college, guess what? That money doesn’t count as an asset for college. So if you’re trying to get them scholarships and financing that you could have millions in there, and it doesn’t count against you if you had, like, a 529, college savings plan. So many people will use this as a savings plan for that, even for mortgages. I’ll actually use the statement for my life insurance to show that, yes, I’ve got collateral. I’ve got money. Another way you can use it too as collateral.

Justin: Now, is that only the cash basis, or is it the entire policy?

Chris: It’s the cash, not the death benefit. It’s the cash.

Justin: By the ways, let’s also talked about that you actually get death insurance, right? Life insurance, which you know, for those of married and kids, that can be important. So let’s not totally forget there’s an actual asset, which is, if you pass your your family can be taken care of, right? So let’s, let’s not overlook that too far.

Chris: Definitely not. No, I’ve had that, seen that happen time and time again, too, but, uh, but yeah. Like, even, even, actually, the death benefit does work. If you ever get business loans, like, when you do business loans, a lot of times, they’ll ask some insurance policy, like your death benefit, they want to have a claim to that in case you die before you pay off the loan. You can always use that too. So you’re not just, you know, you’re not even using cash. You’re using just the death benefit, which is much higher amount than the cash. Another way it’s kind of a cool strategy with real estate is I had one client where he had like, 300,000 sitting in his cash value of that life insurance account. He’s like, you know, Chris, I think I’m just going to cancel and cash it out. I’m going to cash this money out, and then I’m going to use this to go buy a buy a property for my office building. And he’s like, I’m going to get renters and everything. I said, Hold on, Sparky, let’s slow down here a little bit. Why don’t we go to your local bank, your credit union, whoever you have a relationship with, and let’s just see if they’ll use this as collateral to get a loan. And so he did. He went to the bank. They said, Well, yeah, we got the building, and you got this as collateral. We love it, and we’ll give you extra money for the build out, you know. So they gave him more than what he had in cash, in the in the policy, because, again, it was a real estate property. But here’s the cool thing, the the going rate at the time for a commercial loan was about 6% they gave him a loan at under 4% was like 3.75% so he got this dirt cheap interest rate on the loan, on the mortgage. So his payment was like 1800 bucks a month for 375,000 he went ahead, built it out, got a renter that was more than paying his mortgage payments. So he was basically officing in his office, rent free. A year and a half later, he went back to the bank. He said, Let’s said, Listen, it’s all done. It’s developed. We saw the real estate as collateral. Can we take the lien off my life insurance now? And they said, Yeah, and we’ll leave the terms the same. Now, if he had just cashed out, uses cash, like every other real estate investor, he would been paying probably about 6% on his mortgage. But because he used that as collateral, he was able to negotiate it down to 3.75 and keep it there fixed rate at 3.75 I guarantee he’s not changing that mortgage anytime soon, right?

Justin: So, no. Now this really interests me, because I obviously have this policy and probably even getting more, but he didn’t use his cash or did he use his cash in this scenario?

Chris: No, he just uses collateral. So, they locked it up him in agreement that he wouldn’t use it, right? So, they basically became like the, kind of like a partner in it, in a sense, right? They became like the lien holder on it, so he couldn’t access more cash. Now, if the cash grew above and beyond the amount that they designated, which was like 300,000 he could use the extra amount.

Justin: Which it does ,right at the end of the day, thats doing 4, or 5, 6% in growth.

Chris: Exactly. It’s growing and compounding. So, yeah, you still get access to that extra cash anyways, but, yeah, eventually that 300,000 came back, and he’s able to use it forever he wants. And that’s the next part that’s most confusing for people is, you’ll hear out there, and I actually teach it too, is that you can double dip, right? You can get your money to pay you twice if you use the strategy versus using a savings account. So for example, most people there in real estate space, are in for flipping right? A lot of times you’re if you’re using your own money, you’re using your own cash, you put into the deal, and then as it comes back out, you put the replenish the cash, put it back into your account, even as your point, Justin, like you and I are doing, like we do rentals as well. You know, if we keep for more long term, create more passive income, so we can be free that way. I mean, even then you use that cash flow to kind of rebuild that saving accounts so you can rebuild to a certain point, then you can reinvest it, right? Same thing, but if you use your life insurance, you get an added benefit, because just like before, here’s you can withdraw money from from your life insurance. You can withdraw it just like a savings account. But here’s the problem, when you withdraw money out of a savings account, you lose the ability to earn interest on money. Yes, you should invest it, and you earn money in that investment, but it’s not like the safes accounts are earning interest anymore. If you deplete that save deplete that savings, you’re not earning interest inside the savings account, right? Well, what if you can get a secured line of credit against it? Because you can go to your bank, you can have a savings account your bank, you can go to the bank, say, can I get a secure line of credit against my savings account? Lock up the money in there so that you don’t touch the savings account, but then they give you a line of credit so that you can use that money to invest. Now, Mr. Banks, don’t give you the greatest of terms, but life insurance companies, they do. Life insurance companies, they give you about the same loan rate as about what they’re paying you on that money. Yeah? So if you, so say you have $100,000 sitting in there right now you want to borrow, let’s just say 100,000 even though it’s 95% you can access. Let’s just say it’s 100,000 for easy math, yeah, you borrow $100,000 you go and, you know, use that into each of your flip right? And you’re doing stuff. Here’s the cool thing, when you borrow the money from insurance company, there is no minimum monthly payment. You pay it back. However, whenever you want, the deadline for paying back loans to the insurance company is your death, and they just take it out of your death benefit. But anyways, right? And then pay the rest of your family tax free.

Justin: So if you take, let’s just use an example. You have 100 grand there, you borrow $30,000 (Yeah), for whatever reason, you technically don’t ever have to pay that back. There’s no interest accruing. And if you die, and we all die, so when you die, that’s when the $30,000 comes out of the death benefit, which, let’s just say, if you have a million dollars in death benefit, then you’ll get $970,000 of death benefit. Is that correct?

Chris: That’s correct, except they do charge you interest. So they do charge you interest, but the reason that they don’t really require a payment is because at the same time they’re charging you interest, and that’s growing, you’re also growing and compounding your money and interest over here, right? So usually it’s, it’s secured, collateralized, because they’re kind of both grown together. Now, if you did that, I mean, eventually you really don’t win. So the only way you could win in that situation, this is where there’s a lie out there. People will say, like, you know, there’s guys out there will say, you pay yourself back, right? You pay yourself interest. That’s BS, you do not pay yourself interest. You’re paying the insurance company interest. But the half truth that they try to, you know, weasel you on a little bit, is that, yes, the insurance company’s paying you interest on the cash that’s in that account. Because, like you said, if you have 100,000 you don’t pull any money out. It’s still earning interest on that 100,000 bucks, even if you borrow 30, right?

Justin: So, if you borrow all of it, let’s say you rip out all 100 grand. Are you still earning

interest? Yes, exactly. So you’re still earning interest on 100 grand because you’re just getting a line of credit from the insurance company’s money that they’re giving you. And yes, there are banks that will do it, but right now, the bank get straights aren’t as good as the insurance companies currently. But two years ago, I was getting bank lines of credit at 3% while I’m getting paid almost 6% on my money. I mean, do the math, it’s pretty freaking awesome, and then I’m still investing it and making money on the investment too, right? But even if it’s the same rate, even if it’s like I’m paying I’m earning six and paying six, that’s okay, because if I take the cash flow from that investment, say it’s paying me a thousand bucks a month, I’m using that to pay down that line of credit. It’s charging me less and less in interest, while on the other side, my 100,000 is compounding more and more interest. It’s going like this curve where the interest is going like this. So you can actually there’s, they’re not the same interest. There’s compounding interest and there’s simple interest. Simple Interest is cheaper than compounding interest. If you use the cash flow, start paying now that loan. What happens? You start making a spread. You start making more interest over here in your account, and you’re still earning all that thousand dollars a month on your investment. That’s reading that double dip effect. That’s why, even if somebody says, you know, if they’re a passive investor, they’re like, hey, I can get, I can do a hard money loan and get, you know, pay, and get paid 10% on my money. Well, cool, if you use this strategy, you know, over time, that could be 11, 12, 13% rate of return on your money instead, so you’re able to get money paying you in two places at once.

Justin: Well, right? Why wouldn’t someone just borrow from their let’s just use 100 grand. You borrow 100 grand, you lend it at 10% interest, but then you’re still making 1% interest, even though the money’s gone one 2% interest, right? That’s right, your point, right? You’re making the 10% from the borrower, and you’re making one to 2% from the insurance policy. You replenish it when the borrower pays you back, you have more money than if you wouldn’t have right? Because, you know, instead of 6% you made 10% Yeah, and it’s all tax free, correct?

Chris: That’s right. Everything’s running their tax free. Now, your investment it is still going to get tax. How it gets taxed? But your flipper, your real estate professional, right? You’re basically writing off all that stuff. Anyways, you’re doing that. In fact, if you’re a business starter, the cool thing is, if you use it for business purposes, you’re also writing off the interest that you’re paying the insurance company. So it’s almost like a triple dip in that sense, because now you’re now you’re getting even more leverage on that. Interest that you’ve been paying.

Justin: Are you paying taxes on that 10% that the borrower gave you, or you’re just putting that back into insurance policy?

Chris: Yes. So if it’s just borrow, like, hard money lending, if you get whatever the normal tax taxes are happening, it’s going to happen that way. Yeah. (Okay). Exactly. So. But if I do, like, a real estate deal, and I’m depreciating the asset from the real estate that I bought, right, that, you know, I’m getting all that money with all the tax benefits. So that’s the one reason why, you know, you have people out there saying, oh, put your real estate in IRA. It’s like, screw that. No, like, I lose the tax benefits. I don’t want to do that. I want to get my real estate growing again, all the depreciation, all the tax benefits I can get. 1035 is there 1031 exchange and all that kind of stuff, right? But, yeah, that’s, that’s how it really works, like, and that’s the thing. Like, if you don’t pay back the loans, then yes, it’s compounding against you, right? But if you do that whole cycle of putting the payments in to cycle the money, which is what most people are doing, they’re trying to get the money to go in, build up, reinvest, and do it over again, even short term, it works great. I mean, I did it with a guy recently. He was actually a syndicator. He had a deal that I was in that was basically, he just needed three more months time to get it sold, but he was out of operating capital. So I said, Here, I’ll give you $50,000 loan for three months. He’s gonna pay me 15% interest. I’m like, sweet. So he did, like, you know, three months later, returned my capital after he sold the apartment building, got my money back, and I just go, went and paid back for my life insurance. So I used that life insurance money that 50,000 from there. Yes, I had interest being charged, but he also paid me interest that more than did that, and I was still earning interest on that money. So I’m making again interest in two places at once to still offset that interest. So the reason that flippers like it the most, though, and I’ve noticed especially, is because the one thing they hate is especially if you’re trying to, like, do a project, say you’re, like, doing a renovation with us and everything when you’re flipping it, and maybe it takes six to eight months if you try to use your home equity line of credit, you gotta pay on that even if you haven’t made a dime. Where with this, they charge you interest, but they’re not requiring any monthly payments, so it doesn’t kill your cash flow while you’re trying to work, right? So even if the project goes long, great, it goes long. Yeah, that’s okay.

Justin: I love Listen, Chris, I could literally just sit here and pepper you, but I want the people to get a hold of you, because they’re going to have very specific questions on their business. They’re structuring all that. So, we have https://moneyripples.com/. We have Money Ripples. Podcast, Instagram, is it all Money Ripples? It is everything’s Money Ripples. You guys need to sit down with Chris his team, because obviously what you’re hearing me ask is what you guys should be asking. I’m already sitting here through this podcasting of all the different things that I need to be doing, opening up more policies, etc. Brother, I appreciate you being on The Science of Flipping all real estate investors need to know this and get a hold of his team. Hey, listen to his podcast, but also get a hold of him. I’m sure you respond on Instagram and all those things, and talk about your scenario. A couple big takeaways. I need you guys all to understand. You need to understand where your money’s at, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly. But then you also need to think like an investor, a true investor, how is your money working? It should not just be sitting. It needs to be working. And that’s why you want to get a hold of Chris brother, I appreciate you. Thank you for coming on.

Chris: Same here, Justin, thanks so much.

Justin: All right, y’all that’s it for The Science of Flipping this episode. We’ll see you on the next one. Peace.

SMS Compliance For Real Estate

Justin: All right. What’s everyone up to these days? Let me get everyone moving and shaking. Let’s make sure we can get everything live and in action, putting it in the group right now.

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Justin: All right. What’s everyone up to these days? Let me get everyone moving and shaking. Let’s make sure we can get everything live and in action, putting it in the group right now.

Justin: All right, we got some special guests in the house. We’re going to bring them on board right now. This is all about compliance y’all. I think our industry has changed enough that people need to know how to pivot, what to do, and that is what today’s call is going to be about. I have two of my partners on today’s call. Um, I’m going to get them in here. What is up? If you I gotta open up the chat for y’all, don’t I? Come on, man, come on. If you’re on Facebook, watching this live already, make sure you comment below, say what’s up. Now I can get all my VIPs, all my VIPs that are on Zoom. Go ahead and say what’s up. Let us know what city you are in. That’s going to help a lot, as we are going to be talking about compliance. So in the chat, you can talk to everybody, let us know what city you’re in, and we will get rocking and rolling. So like I said, this is going to be you know about compliance. We’ve all, if you’ve been in this space long enough, you know that texting has taken a beating within the real estate space in general, it’s been taking a beating. Used to be outbound cold calling. Realtors felt that paid. KW settled a massive lawsuit for outbound cold calling. Next on the radar is texting. There’s been a lot of challenges with outbound texting, and so me, my team, my partners here, we have found solutions. We have found workarounds. But before we tell you the workaround, before we tell you the solution, we want to make sure you stay on for the whole training, we’re going to tell you what the real data really is. So on the call, we have our guy, John Kirk, which many of you guys already know and love. Great mustache, great beautiful bald head. And then we have the big man, Pete, who is here. Pete Thorpe is here. He is all knowledgeable, realtor, investor, tech wizard and beautiful bearded man. So we are going to kind of open this up. What I want to be able to start out with again, if you are watching this on Facebook, like this right now, do me a favor like it and say what’s up to us. Let us know what city you guys are hailing from. We always like to know who is watching us. But I’m going to start out giving the mic over, really to Pete. Pete is been in the space of understanding what’s going on with outbound calling, outbound, texting, what are the workarounds, what’s the legality, what is actually happening right now? Why are people getting shut down? What is on the horizon? What challenges we see inside of my business as a high volume outbound marketer? what challenges you guys might be seeing? Again, what are some workarounds and what’s on the horizon? So Pete, I’ll start with you, and then John, if you want to chime in, John does a lot of volume. He does a lot of outbound. He’s talking directly with the sellers. He’s utilizing a lot of the workarounds we do, and it still works, is the point, and that’s why I want him on to talk about it was actively working right now, today, in any market with all these challenges, there’s stuff that is actively working. So these are the two guests. They are awesome. So, Bob, Michael, Drew, Jeff, what is up? What is up? All of you? Darryl, Ron Brendan, Mike, Samuel Brendan, what’s up? But Pete, the mic is yours for the time being. Brother.

Pete: Thank you, sir. Just coming at you from the home office. I had a little time snafu. I don’t know why I thought it was seven o’clock, not four o’clock, but hey I still made it. So, everybody has heard of A2P 10 DLC compliance, but a lot of people don’t really know what it means, because a lot of the service providers out there were just saying, hey, you need to register for this, otherwise your SOL. So what is A2P? It is basically application to person messaging from a 10 digit long code number, which is IE, your cell phone 10 digits. So essentially, it’s come about because of people spamming. And this is across all industries, not just real estate, but it’s basically due to spam messaging going out scams and whatnot, where they’re trying to move everything to say you have to have opt in in order for you to message somebody. Specifically in a real estate space, they have gotten incredibly aggressive with automated bots that are out there literally scouring your messages that go to the carriers, so AT&T, T Mobile, Verizon, all of those guys, they’ve got automated systems that basically look at your messaging, and if they don’t like it, they’ll suspend you temporarily, and if you keep doing it, they will literally shut your account down, and you can’t get your number back once they shut you down, you’re just, you’re going to which you know is terrible, because there’s, there’s no real good appeal process. There’s no easy way to get it fixed. Once they take it away, you can’t get your number back unless you happen to get super lucky and it’s not picked up in the pool somewhere. There’s, there’s all sorts of different rules around it, specifically in a real estate space, the first time you message somebody, if you have the address in there, carrier is just going to block it, even if somebody comes to your website, fills out the form and says, I want an offer on this house, or I’d like to get a valuation of my property. My address is 123, Main Street. You’re like, cool, Hey, Justin, got your request for an offer on 123, Main Street. When’s a good time to talk? They’re like, Nope, sorry. You’re, you’re fishing, you’re you’re putting out information that you want them to confirm. So all those little kinds of things in there, and they specifically don’t give you much guidance. There’s some guidance out there. They say, you can’t sound like you’re fishing. You can’t sound like you are making a fantastical claim. They hate when you say, get an all cash offer if you’re an investor, for real estate say they don’t like you saying, we can get your market above market value guaranteed home sale. They don’t like any of that language. They will just literally block it at the door. It won’t get in. And then they’ll just say, sorry, you’re violating our AUP acceptable use policy. And you’re you’re done. Anybody who is with any of the major CRMs, Lofty, which used to be Chime, Sierra, Follow Up Boss, pretty much anything that’s out there, Launch Control, if you’re in the investing space, Rocketly, you name it, you have to have A2P registration as required, and they have been slowly clamping down since about August I’d say last year. They’ve been slowly ramping it down more and more and more, and now basically they’re looking towards 2025 where the only way you can message somebody is if you have direct opt in and you have proof of it, and they’re being just super strict on what you send to them. So it is across all industries, anyone that is using messaging. This is even for existing clients. So if you want to run we’ve had one client that was running just a promotion sent out to his existing client base. And if you have more than 10% of people opt out, they say you’re violating the policy, because you must be sending spam. So it can be your existing clients. You’re like, Hey, we’re having a special offer this month for 10% off for existing clients. If they hit unsubscribe, and it’s more than 10% of that list you sent to, they’re like, well, that’s spam. You’re out. It’s crazy. So that’s had the, you know, a very chilling effect on texting in the real estate space. I mean, you’ll we’ve had people in the middle of conversations with a client, existing client, and they just don’t like the message. And you gotta kind of finagle and tweak and try and figure out exactly what to say, which you think it’s nothing. You think it’s very benign, but the carrier says, Nope, I can’t define pornography for you, but I know when I see it, that’s that’s essentially what they’re doing with the messaging. They’re like, Nah, I don’t like that. That sounds like it’s fishing. That sounds like here (Justin: Great analogy). I mean that I that’s the only thing I can think of for what it is like. I can’t define it for you. I won’t tell you everything that you can or can’t say, but I’ll just say that you violated policy and you have no it’s like trying to get a hold of Facebook to fix a problem. Good luck.

Justin: Impossible. No, I do want to stop for a second, because Pete, you already get like, five or six things that people can’t do, shouldn’t be doing. If you have questions, drop them in the chat for all my VIPs on Zoom. We know you. We love you. Drop those questions in the chat while I myself or Pete or John are talking and going over all this. This is serious for anyone. An inspiring investor needs to know this. An active investor needs, like, everyone needs to know these things. So first of all, you don’t spend your money on marketing that doesn’t work anymore, right? Like it does you no good to go spend thousands and thousands of dollars on outbound marketing that’s not achieving anything. For those that are actively like myself, an investor, you know, figuring out a workaround, figuring out solutions. We’re going to show you, John’s going to show you how we’ve gotten our work around, and what’s going on right now and is actively working. John, how many contracts have you gotten in the last let’s just say, since April 1, so call it three weeks?

Pete: You’re on mute John.

John: sorry that I’ve personally been involved in that I locked up, like probably five at least.

Justin: Five, right? So, and I say that because what we do and how we’re doing it works, right? So we have workarounds, and it’s working. So we’ll, we’ll show you that kind of stuff. But as you guys are having questions, drop them in the chat. For all my Facebook family we love you too. Make sure you’re dropping in a thread, literally, as you think it, write it down, because we will go back, we will read them over and talk through them with you guys as we’re going. So I didn’t want to stop you too much. Pete, yep, but I’ve already dropped, like, don’t put the address in there, right. Like, you’ve already dropped really good golden nuggets that people should be abiding by. So wanted to stop you just to say, repeat it, but also make sure people asking us questions.

Pete: Sure. So the biggest thing for anyone in the real estate space is every initial message has to have an opt out. You got to have a reply, stop to opt out, or unsubscribe to opt out. That is a requirement on your first message. Also on the first message, you can’t you have to have yourself identified, your company identified, and do not identify the property address. You can’t even say hey, it’s just on this one, confirm you submitted 123, Main Street. Can you you know is that the right property we’re talking about can’t do it in the first message, they will block you. Those are the big ones. You can’t say things like anything that is sort of like asking for information beyond how many bedrooms and bathrooms Do you have? They get a little they get a little cranky when you start asking for like, what’s your motivation for looking to sell? Things like that. So, you have to kind of really stay bland. What we’re finding is use the text messaging in a very generic sense to get them on the phone. That is where you’re going to convert them. It’s actually on the phone. Texting is now, it used to be you could do the majority of it over text, but now it’s just a trying to get them talking and then try and convert them into a phone call. Phone call is going to be that you’re going to get far further along in more deals. You know, it feels like the real estate industry is being targeted, and it kind of is because you had, you alluded to earlier that the KW lawsuit. There’s also a couple other people that have had to settle some really large lawsuits, you know, upwards of seven figures for either ignoring, do not call lists or for just repeatedly calling people even after they, you know, they didn’t give them an option to opt out, they would just keep calling. So that happened a lot. There’s also that company that was doing a whole lot of messaging, I forget their name. I think they were out of Florida, where they were basically saying, hey, we’ll give you five grand now, and whenever you sell your house, we’ll sell it for you. That that company also was part of a settlement in there as well. So they just, they’ve cracked down super hard, but you can get yourself registered and approved for it all. So there’s, there is a whole bunch of things that you need to do. First, they’re going to go ahead and say, you got to have an EIN you need to be an official business, and your business information needs to match the message you’re sending out, and your address that is on file for wherever your account is, whoever you have it with, has to match that EIN code. If it doesn’t, they wont approve it. That’s called your brand approval. So, there’s a whole block of data that you got to compile and send off to them, for them to go ahead and say, yep, we approve your brand. Now they need to approve your campaigns. And what are your campaigns? Your campaigns are the messages that are going out. Some people will actually some, I say, people, some carriers have said sending a confirmation of a webinar or confirmation of an appointment that somebody booked is a high risk activity. So you’re sending them a link saying they came onto your website, they went on account lead, they went on to whatever calendar application you have, and they said, I want to talk to you. It looks like you’ve got Friday at three o’clock available. I’ve booked that time, and all you’re doing is sending, hey Justin, you’re this is confirmation that we’re going to meet tomorrow at three o’clock. Here’s the Zoom link. I’ll see you then, feel like, nope, that’s a high risk activity. It’s crazy. So because of that, that is why we’re moving a lot more to leading with email. So email is coming back in vogue, which there is more compliance rules around email. That’s probably for another call, but email has come back in vogue, where you’re sending off emails first and then following with text. So the people are like, Well, I’ve seen the email in the schedule. You’re trying to get a hold of me because now he’s texting me. You’re trying to get them on the phone one way or another, but leaving with the email is really become a better way to go, just to get the get it going, and then when you start with your texting, it needs to be very generic, very kind of bland unfortunately, you can’t really have much in the way of a sizzle in there. You have to just get a generic message, get the conversation going, and then hop on the phone with people. That’s the only way it’s going to get done, because the compliance rules are a pain. You got to send four or five different examples of what your messaging looks like, and it all has to be very specific. You got to file all that paperwork, and then it could take them. It varies. For a little stretch, it was taking six weeks, seven weeks to come back. They got it back down to like a week. And now it’s kind of creeps up and down anywhere from seven to 10 days, sometimes a little faster. If you’re coming out of a an approved number pool, you can get it done a little quicker, but it’s just a it’s just like one more hurdle, one more thing you have to pay attention to and be aware of, because you could have had the same phone number for five years, six years. And if they decide you violated their policy gone and you aren’t getting that number back. So all of your marketing has that number on it. Trash, no good anymore. That number is gone. It’s in the ether. So, it’s just and, like I said, there’s very little reporting or compliance mechanisms that you can go back to and be like, look, I didn’t violate the policy. Like, everything was good. Don’t know why you flagged it, and they’re like, oh yeah, it does look okay, okay your account’s back on. Oh, but you gotta go get new numbers. So, yeah, it sucks.

Justin: Well, so Drew Kilpatrick’s asking, Will website help us with consent? And I know at one point that was a big thing. Go make sure your website gets compliant, etc, etc. Where do we stand with the consent with opt ins from your website and all that kind of stuff?

Pete: Sure. So, opt in on the website, if you have, especially when you’re sending in these requests to get yourself A2P approved, your main website might only be requesting email and a name right your or email and an address. You have to specify that on the next page there’s a phone number. So now you need to have special language for opt out. So you need to have language that says, you know, message and data rates may vary. Message frequency is varied. You agree to receive SMS messaging from an auto dialer and or, you know, from our system and from the company and from the website. Now they’re coming out, and they’re saying they want a separate, completely separate off the page from the opt in terms and use policy and a privacy policy. You have to have both of them as two separate links underneath your submit button. If you don’t have all that stuff, they’re like, no, well, guess what? You’re not approved. Even for a stretch, they were even saying they wanted all that on forms that didn’t even have a phone number on it. Look, we fought back against that for quite a while, and they finally relented on that one. Because why would you have an SMS opt in when you don’t even have a phone number on the form? It’s stupid, but that’s government for you. So what are you going to do? Awesome.

Justin: Mike is asking about new technology of Rocketly, Minute Pages. What’s rolling out that’s going to mitigate some of these risks, assuming (Sure) the bots and all are updated.

Pete: Yep. So, we do have, we basically stay on top of so using Minute Pages, the sites are already compliant. So, if you’re on a Minute Pages, website that is compliant. We’ve added the terms of service in. We have all the opt out language on every site in the place it needs to be. We know where, when we submit the A2P campaign information, we know it’s all correct. We know it’s going to go through. We’ve been doing it for months now. So on occasion you get one that you get some rogue guy, like you got a bad auditor in the IRS, and they’re after you, and you just have to go back and forth a few times with them. But we’ve gotten everybody approved. So the approval process isn’t too bad if we’re doing it through systems that we know and use already. Rocketly using Rocketly for messaging, we basically customize the messaging based on what they send. So in the very beginning, we had addresses in there, and then they said, you can’t do that. Okay, great. We took the messaging out. We changed the messaging. We’ve changed the messaging, I would say, every couple weeks, based on feedback from the carriers, where they’ve said all of a sudden they don’t like something. We’re like, Okay, we’ll go in and we’ll tweak the messaging. We’ll change it up to be something different. The automated Bot that we have in there, which takes care of conversations when users can’t, is basically trained to reply specific messages that will meet the criteria so they don’t break things. So the Bots not going to get you flagged. We’ve had people who have gone in and taken over conversations for the bot and gotten themselves flagged because they would say, offer, great cash offer and to get you an offer all in one text, and you’re like, nope, stopped. So it’s we have a lot of that stuff already baked in and built in, and we monitor it just based on what we see from the day to day activity. We are also migrating everybody off of Twilio. To be honest with you, Twilio is one of the larger culprits. Because, as everyone knows, you’ve got overseas companies and whatnot, and they just buy tons of numbers and burn through numbers. You’ll get numbers from a local area calling you, and it’ll be the same company, and then a couple days go by and it’s the same company calling from a different number, because they call it until they got burned, and they got another number, and they call it till they get burned. Twilio has that bad reputation, so we’re moving to a different provider which has approved number pools. So, it also is increasing our A2P turn time. They just have higher deliverability, and they’re much more flexible in terms of being able to actually talk to the company and say, Okay, what? What don’t you like? What needs to be changed? We’re happy to make compliant messaging, but if you don’t tell us what’s compliant, how can we comply? But don’t let us guess. Tell us what you wanted to say or how it needs to be formatted, and we’ll do that. So, this move for from a Rocketly standpoint, is fantastic, and we just got the first set of people in there. Earlier yesterday, numbers are all getting approved, so basically tomorrow, or maybe Monday at the latest, we should have about a dozen people on that new platform, seamlessly integrated with everything that we have. So it’s really won’t be much of a change for them, aside from getting a new phone number because their accounts were suspended by the carriers, and they should basically be compliant from Monday going forward at the latest.

Justin: We got a question about, can you show how Minute Pages website is compliant? Are you able to bring that up Pete? (Yeah, let me grab a). Show what you’re talking about so people can see what you’re verbally saying. (Pete: Yep, let’s see). Drew says, I have Twilio now, sounds like moving to Rocketly soon. Drew I would tell you it’s pretty much a must. I mean, it’s how we have the work around this is why I have my entire team. I have the tech guy, I have the sales guy, I like literally, have two of the people that will show all of you how to work around this. So, I would tell you drew, ye. And to all of you that are mentioning that if you want to go to rocketly.ai and demo it. So all the stuff that you’re hearing about, what we did with Rocketly, you know everything. Peter Stanchard, I’m getting a private message Q A saying, what is Rocketly? So go to Rocketly.ai and demo. Schedule a demo. It’ll be with John. You’ll see him here. He’ll spend some one on one time with you guys. You can see exactly how we have our work around that’s where John’s contracted five deals since the beginning of the month. So it works. This is how we get around it. But go ahead and show this. Pete.

Pete: Yep. So here, this is a one of our favorite folks there, Nick Vernia, 85 Property Ventures. So, he’s got his site set up here. So every you know, everything is cool. You see, he’s got request an offer here, and obviously there’s nothing here. We get a little further down on his site, though, and you can see we’ve got the language here for your privacy policy and everything else, and his consent box. And then if we actually go to what the second page would be, which is oop, hang on a second slash, yes. I happen to know the page by name, offer. Get an offer slash. More info. This is what the second page would be after somebody starts the process. Get an offer today. More info, sorry, of course, I missed the one gets offer today. I do it this way, I’ll put in my office address here, 17 West Main plus the test pages request the offer. It should take me over to his the second page, which will request the rest of the rest of the information, but it has the component underneath it that we can go ahead and get the, yeah, there’s get an offer more info. Must have missed it. Couple of questions that happen. And then down here at the we’ve got the compliance box here. There’s the privacy policy, and that this one down here is by submitting this form and signing up for text you can send to receive email marketing text messages from 85 Property Ventures, yada, yada, yada. All that stuff has to be in here. So that’s all on the pages. So we submit these for a long stretch, we would actually have to do a video where we would literally do a video of just showing what I just showed you, and send that in. We would record it, save it to a Google Drive and actually send that in to have it approved. And I would we, can we have trackers that are on that, and we could actually see that the carriers were legitimately like going in, watching the videos, saying, okay, yes, this is compliant, and coming back and approving it. But we would do that for every single client. We would shoot a video basically saying, people go to the website they’re driven here from either pay per click ads, Facebook ads, or organic traffic through SEO by finding it on, say, using the automated blog writer. And they found your blog, and they find your site, and here’s where the page they land on. They put this information here. It brings them to this page which has the consent language and everything else on it. So yes, they are compliant. They would watch the video and then come back and say, okay, yep, you’re approved based on what you provided.

Justin: Yeah. So we have a, I don’t know who C is, but they’re asking, Are these sites optimized for Google PPC?

Pete: We have, we do have versions that are highly optimized for Google Pay per click. They are basically Minute Pages websites that are stripped down slightly, taking a few of the bells and whistles off the back end to make the page go even faster. These pages are all rated in the high 90s on GT metrics, so they’re already rated like “A+”, but we’ve sped them up even faster with some plug in tweaks, and we’ve taken a few of the plugins off to make some pages even quicker. So we do have a version of minute pages that is specific for people who are running high volume PPC campaigns. The pages load in like, like, less than half a second. They’re just like, boom, on. And for those pages too, for the for that these do have Lead Detector baked in on the back end as well. So if you’re driving a lot of traffic, you can capture 15 to 25% of it that doesn’t actually register on your site, and get yourself their name, email, phone number and property address as well.

Justin: Right. And we haven’t really even talked about lead detector. I’ll kind of let John do that. But the other thing is, is, if you’re even interested in talking about minute pages just book, because I have people asking more about Minute Pages. Book a call or demo. Rocketly.ai, John put it in the chat Rocketly.ai. He’ll show you all this stuff, because we only have a certain amount of time, and I want to kind of keep on point here, but he will show you Minute Pages, Lead detector Rocketly, how it all works together. We’re going to open it up a little bit here for John but just book a call right see the demo, and you’ll see why this is a great workaround. So to kind of stay on point here, Pete, what you know, with all the things that you just basically listed and how the websites have had to change? What have we done? Just kind of talking about, like, what are the pivots that need to be done? Like, the Twilio thing that you just brought up was huge. I mean, we literally, internally, just hit that wall, like 10 days ago, and we’ve been scrambling to find a solution, right? And so you finally have found a solution. For those of you using Twilio, or any services that you use Twilio, get ready. I mean, you were about to just go caboose, because we did and we do a lot of volume, but it is, it is coming down the pipe. So Pete, what are some solutions? Of course, Rocketly.ai is the probably the best, but (Pete: Yep) what else can people be doing?

Pete: So, this is one of the big things the carriers can tell when you are sending things via automated batch messaging. So if you are sending things out through a system that basically says, Okay, send out 500 text messages, say to these people, carriers are able to tell that that came from a from basically a giant batch. So to get around that, we’ve implemented what’s called Power SMS. So power SMS, even though it says power, what it really means is we send out the messages that we would normally send out, and then we queue the SMS messages in a block, and you sit there with your mouse and click on Send for every message. So it’s not a automated send. That is a person sitting there going send send. It cycles through each person, so you’ll hit the send button, the message will send, and it’ll go ahead and cycle to the next person. So it’s like using, almost like an automated dialer, but it’s manually. You’re clicking it, so that takes away the that fulfills the compliance that you are manually sending a text. So that is how you can avoid the carrier saying up you’re using a bot to automatically send out massive amounts of messages. So what we what we advise people to do is, while they’re going through their day, have Rocketly up on the side. They’ll have power SMS that will be queued up for the day, and just throughout the day, just kind of navigate to that window and just go, click, click, click, click, click, send off a bunch of messages. Go back to doing whatever. If you’re on the phone, you know, talking with a customer, client, or whatever, you can sit there and just click away as you’re going through depending on how large your volume is. But this, this keeps you compliant. You’re manually sending the messages. You’ll see the messages as they’re going and the one other big thing that’s out there that we’ve just implemented ourselves is all of you guys here that are investors. You all skip trace. Everyone skip traces. The problem is skip tracing only returns, maybe on a good day, 80% accurate information, 85 sometimes for numbers. And that’s because this is the best example I can give. I’ve got a phone from AT&T, if I decide to switch to Verizon and I didn’t port my phone number, my phone number is still a good phone number. You can go to tons of different services that will validate that the number for my phone is a valid phone number. Yep, that’s a good number. It’s available in a data pool. It is a good phone number. They cost like ₵.0007 to do that. But what that doesn’t do is tell Equifax. I think it’s Equifax Data Services has one phone validator is another one. Real phone validator is the other one. They validate that the phone line is actually in service and active. So what happens is you skip trace, and you get yourself a thousand let’s say you got a thousand names. I guarantee you that 30% to 40% of the information that you got phone number wise, phone number is disconnected. It’s a valid number, but Pete just went and turned his phone in yesterday, and his number is now back in the pool and disconnected and available for somebody else to buy. Yes, it’s a valid number. No, it’s not in service. And if you start texting out of service numbers, the carriers assume that you have scraped the data or bought a list. It’s not opt in compliant, and therefore they’re going to block you. So you need to make sure you are validating those phone numbers before you start messaging them, because they will catch you and they will burn you down quick. Work. So make sure you’re using any service like that. We’ve got it built into the system now. We do it for all of our skip trace stuff, because otherwise we’re going to get shut down. So that’s a huge, huge thing to make sure you are validating that the number not only is it a valid number, but it’s actually active and connected and used.

Justin: Yeah, and there’s just stuff that you guys have to understand is still coming, like they’re still gonna have more and more and more regulations. This isn’t like it’s finally done. Here’s the no no if you guys are really thinking about becoming marketers, right? So in the Science Flipping Community, I teach the first thing you gotta find the property, then you got to analyze it, exit it, etc. But if you’re going to really try to find properties, and you’re going to do outbound direct to seller marketing, make sure you’re compliant with this stuff, otherwise, you’re quite literally throwing your money away, right? Like, even if you use direct mail and you put your website on there and your website’s not compliant, like this whole thing is like an ecosystem, and making sure every layer of your ecosystem is compliant to Pete’s point. Even some of our members that use Rocketly when they jump in and take over, we have a bot, we have AI that works within Rocketly starts a communication. It has been trained and it has been taught it will not mess up and say, Hey, John on 123, Main Street, are you interested in? They won’t do that. Humans do the human air component. So we have members that are using Rocketly and then jump in. Think they know better, and then they mess up themselves and torch the Rocketly account and the phone number in Rocketly because they did that. Right? So just be aware, this is going to be a moving target. I don’t know, Pete, I mean, it, it for foreseeable future?

Pete: Yeah, 2025, is when I gotta really have the final like, clamp down, like there’s still, there’s a few court challenges going through for a couple use cases. Because obviously, you know, who’s exempted from all this, anything to do with a political campaign, of course. So anything for political campaigns, and I believe, also anything for charity. Requests for raising money for charity, those two are exempt. So everyone’s like (Justin: Shocker), yeah, shocker, exactly. (Justin: Well, guess what? politicians, right? But you know). As they’re clamping down on it you know? Google and Yahoo also put out things you need to have specific DMARC records and dedicated email domains, all those things keep coming down. And it’s in reality, all of it is attempting to cut down on the spam and the noise that’s out there, which means the people with legitimate messages will get through. They’ll keep churning at it. The people like you keep getting text messages from for you know, get your car warranty, and then it comes from the same a different number a couple days later, they’re the ones that are slowly getting burned down, and this is why they’re making people have EIN numbers tied to your account. And if you saw, I believe the regulation has been paused, but they were taking away the anonymity of LLCs. They were earlier in the year. That’s been paused because it’s got this court challenge. It looks like it’s not going to go through, but you never know. So you used to be able to hide these people would just set up shells. They would set up shell after shell after shell, and you would never know who was behind it. So when your EIN got burned, they would just toss it aside and have another one, and they’d start a new phone number under that new one you get burned, no one ever knew who the root owner was. So that root company would just basically stay hidden, and they were trying to essentially not have that happen. But obviously, you guys know, when you have an LLC, you want to keep yourself out of it so that you’re not personally liable for things. So that was kind of defeating the purpose of LLC. So that kind of challenging court that happened was towards the end of last year. The Challenge happened, really this year, this the rulings been stayed for now, but it’s still, you know, going back and forth. But all those kind of regulations are all pointed to being finalized and, like, locked into place come 2025.

Justin: Yeah, there’s a couple questions just about, what Rocketly does I see that? And then a few phone validation sites. What were the phone validation sites?

Peter: Yeah, one is Equifax data services, so just type in, like, Equifax data services, and then the other one is real phone validation, or real phone validator.

Justin: Real phone or real phone validator.

Pete: Yeah, those were the ones. And I’ve looked, I look high and low, because everyone’s like, Oh, yeah, I use this site. I use this site all the time. I’m like, yeah, no, that just validates that the number is valid. That’s it doesn’t actually validate it’s connected. So you have to, like, hunt for them. There’s only, like, two or three that I could find. And those were the two main ones. They also have APIs, which lets you connect automatically. So that’s a benefit for those. Those were the big ones. Somebody asked, Is this service for just texting homeowners? I’m not sure.

Justin: I think that’s where I was going to take it, give it to John a little bit and to take everything we just boiled in. Said, here’s all the issues that it’s happened to all of us, including myself, over now, 18 months, two years, that they’ve been starting to crack down on this. We’ve been building out the solution, and it works. And so, part of this is Rocketly, and that’s what Pete’s kind of mentioning, but John, being. In the day to day, in Rocketly each and every day. I wanted him on to kind of show how this all works, because many of you guys are investors that want to go direct to homeowner. You want to be getting the direct deal right. You don’t want to be working with agents and wholesalers. Then this is the workaround for that, right? And so John, I’ll hand the mic over to you. You can share your screen. I think you guys should be able to, right? If you did, (John: Yeah), yeah. And just kind of show the utility and what we’re seeing and how it’s not, you know, the bots not saying the stupid crap because we trained the bot and It’s machine learning, so it’ll know what to say and what not to say. So go ahead.

John: Yeah. This is a good example of that. Is that like this opener, this is one that we just locked up a $15,000 assignment. Gentleman filled out a Facebook form from the ads that rocketly created, driving the traffic to the Minute Pages website. They then filled out the form, automatic text comes out. “This is Anthony. I just received your submission. Had a few questions in order for us to provide you with the best offer. Reply, quit, to be removed. Thanks, Nationwide HB”. So, like, Pete, you were mentioning, like, no more cash offer, no nothing regarding a house. Like there was nothing in that messaging that was pertaining to a house. It was just, I got your submission. Had a few questions in order for us to provide you with the best offer that could.

Pete: As a as a grammar Nazi, this absolutely kills me. Like, I hate the sentence, how it’s how it is, but that’s the only way we can get them to go through like, I this is, to me, this is stupid as all hell. Like, I should be able to say, this is Anthony, got your request for an offer on your house at 123, Main Street when’s a good time to chat, like, dumb as all get out that I can’t say that, that I have to make it sound like I’m a kind of like an idiot. But that’s what they make you do.

John: This is a perfect, (Pete: Yeah), yeah. Well, this is a perfect example Justin of why this is way above my pay grade and understanding, you know what I mean, like for me, I need Pete to fix this stuff when this goes down for me, because I don’t even know where to start for this same is the majority of individuals that will use this system. So the support that Pete provides whenever we get shut down, if I’m saying something that makes perfect sense, because somebody requested a cash offer, why can’t I say, Hey, you requested a cash offer on your property? I’m reaching out to see if you want to hop on a phone call, you can’t do that. So this is crucial being able to adapt and evolve with the times. Justin, because it’s truly like the wild wild west where you’re being shut down for ridiculousness. And I’ve heard other people be like, I’ve never been shut down. I send all this. Just wait, brother and sister, you will have your day eventually, if you send out enough, when it comes your time, you may continue to slide under but as Pete said, the regulation is coming to a clamp in 2025 so you always want to be ahead of the times. So, this is just the Rocket Bot, Justin, that’s having the conversation in our account, literally just going back and forth with the seller, as if the seller thinks they’re speaking directly to a human, just checking off these check boxes, just getting them ready to receive a cash offer. And the conversation is extensive, you know, to the point where, you know, they end up sending pictures throughout the conversation, and it just goes and goes and goes until, you know, we hopped on the phone, got it locked up and popped it off and got it dispositioned. And that is the simplicity of the signal flow from creating a form fill, sending the traffic to the Nationwide Home Buyer website then either filling a form out or not filling a form out, obviously opting in if they fill out the form. But even if they don’t, even if they don’t click on this, which most people will not right, 90% of those folks that come to this website will come here and then abandon this website, even though they might have a need, a high need, to sell their property, we are able to capture and identify, you know, 15 to 50% of abandoned traffic via our lead detector technology that literally is embedded within our nationwide our Minute Pages websites. Mine just so happens to be titled nationwide homebuyers, but this lead detector technology lies within minute pages, websites right here where we’ll capture and identify people that came there did not fill out a form, and then here they are, right here, according to the Rocket Bot, ready for an offer, which, in itself really needs to be acknowledged, because it’s mind blowing. It’s the first of its kind. Nothing ever like this. I’ve never seen anything like this. If anybody else has, please let me know. If you’ve ever seen somebody come to a website, leave that website, have an automated AI bot reach out to that person and fully qualify them from start to finish for a cash offer, knowing they never filled out a form requesting any information. That’s what this conversation is that I’m about to show you folks here. The other one was a FORM FILL which we’re all familiar with, people filling out their form and requesting information. What about the event where somebody does not fill out a form? That’s where I think rocketly, really, you know, sticks out. And then the compliance with the texting is also vital when it comes to this, to make sure it’s not saying anything different as well. I’m sorry, that’s I went to the wrong account. Let me see something real quick. Sorry about that. Let me click on for some reason the leads are not populating. Let me pull this one out.

Pete: Yeah, while you’re grabbing that one too. These guys all. We spent better part of three, three and a half months of taking all of the traffic from Nationwide Home Buyers. And we basically aggregated all the conversations and pushed them all through the Bot to get the Bot responses trained so they’re like, real responses, you know, I go back to the pornography one we had the I go back to that only because we were when we were training. We had some questions that would come in and at one point, like, oh, you know, I really like to get a reach around, and a boss said, huh, pretty funny. We don’t offer that service here, but if you’re looking to sell your house, we can help you with that for sure. So are you looking to sell your house? Like it actually said that, that was like the wording. So it actually will. If somebody cracks a joke, it recognizes it, and it replies like, either with a laugh or like a good one, something like that, and it just tries to steer the conversation back to getting its like six main objectives satisfied so that somebody can be ready for an offer.

John: It’s got some really cool wit. It gets me and all of us cracking up, honestly, the other one was in ready for offer, but also the Rocket Bot will get form fills ready for offer. So I wanted to pull up an account that’s exclusively Lead Detector leads getting ready for offer. These individuals were on a website or one of our users left their website. And then here is the first text of correspondence. I just tried calling, but got your voicemail because the ringless voicemail went first regarding your interest in learning more about your home’s value and options. Reply, yes, for more information, no. If you’re no longer interested, thank you. Look forward to hearing from you soon. Reply, stop, unsubscribe, thanks, want to sell now, one of our users, right? So, nothing. Ghost Town, February 27, 10 days later, or 15 days later, a little bit more, “Forgot to mention previously that if you’re not looking for a quick sale, we could still help. I’d love to go over some options if you’re open to a proposition”, guys, keep in mind, these are people that did not fill out a form. They are not urgent looking to sell right this second. They’re not filling out their information on everybody’s website. They’re not looking for a cold call, and we know that, therefore, watch the messaging 15 to 17 days later, follow up. What is it with the misspelling? Right? “We offer various home solutions for selling your home that can be quicker and more flexible than the traditional market. Can I confirm you’re the owner of the property? At 115 Lisa Dr so we can proceed? “My bad, I might have jumped” look same minute. “My bad, I might have jumped ahead with. Want to sell now. We’re interested in properties like yours, at Lisa Dr are you the owner of the property, so we can discuss potential offers? Yes, awesome. Thanks for confirming. Sabrina”, what’s the current condition of your property? Any recent updates or repairs needed? “Good” one word answers, guys and you’re looking at the bot deal with a dull response better than an actual human would great to hear. It’s in good shape. Exclamation point. Have you done any major updates to the property in the last five to 10 years? “New roof, HVAC”. Now I’m starting to get some unfolding here. HVAC system, water heater, so she’s starting to give me some information, bots using emojis. Garage needs finished with misspellings. The Bots still picked it up. Garage needs. I mean, I think this needs to be emphasized, guys, because this bot is the secret sauce for me, at least, to be able to shortcut my time in my day, to be able to get on the phone with somebody who is literally ready for an offer, versus somebody that may have filled out a form and, you know, is just not ready to respond right now. So, I just let the Rocket Bot take care of that for us. And you have sellers upon I’ve never had so many sellers to speak to on demand, where I don’t even have to forge or think about where the next one’s coming from. So it’s a pretty cool system, the way it works. And then the marketing with the power SMS lies right here where Pete was talking about where Pete, how does that work? Where you upload a list right to get that ready, you throw through the power SMS campaign. You click, let’s start and then automatically, AI is going to load up a brand new message for you, like you see right here. And I can just start clicking away as the AI loads up a custom message right down here you see, Bernice is about to get a text message, and I can assign it to myself or whoever’s on my team that wants to deal with it. Boom. Probably should have done that before, but I click Send, and then the message goes out, and then you wait five seconds for it to go out, and then it loads the next one. And now somebody. Else, Doreen is about to get a text message. Watch the AI load right here. Boom. There it is, and I click send. So that’s the compliance that we’re speaking about, where you can not only hit as many people as fast as possible, but you can hit them with high level deliverability, not just from the server standpoint, but from the AI messaging standpoint, to elicit the response back that we get. So, it’s been pretty exceptional to watch this journey unfold. Guys.

Justin: Well, one thing that we haven’t even hit on, and you know, we’re kind of coming up on time. We don’t want to take too much of your night, but a lot of our outbound is what he already said, is we use email more than I’ve ever used email and real estate ever. I have coached and educated for over 11 years now, since 2013 I used to be for well over a decade saying email doesn’t work in our space of real estate, it won’t go and get you a motivated seller lead. Well, when we came up against this ATP stuff and all this text messaging compliance stuff and and then launch control stopped working for us and all this stuff, and we were scrambling to find solutions. One of the things we said, Listen, let’s really give this a real try. Will this work? And you know, John, I don’t know if you have it up, but I mean, we just did a deal. John specifically was able to take a deal from tip to tail with never talking to a seller ever on the phone. She lived in Europe, and we sold it all over email, a 100% of the deal was over email. And it is stuff like that that, if you just have the you know, I pride myself on being the tip of the spear, right? Let me spend my money, my energy marketing, figuring it out, testing things. Does this work? Does this not so part of what we wanted to do was to really give email a shot, like, did it? Does it work? Does it really not? Well, ladies and gentlemen it works. Just people aren’t giving it enough time. Email is a different type of communication style, and too often, people want the immediate text message gratification. Why do you think you have so many people out there on you know, they won’t answer a phone call, but they’ll hit you back with a text, right? It’s because it’s immediate. It’s quick. They can hide behind it. Well, email actually works, so I do see you have it up, John, but I want you to realize, guys, part of our answer, part of our solution is utilizing email at a much higher rate than we’ve ever done before, for me specifically, ever and it actually works.

John: Yeah, I mean, this entire transaction was done via email. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. Houses in Detroit. You know, we were in Baltimore, Maryland. Justin’s obviously in Miami, and she’s in France, Paris, France. And there was a $20,000 assignment. The whole entire chain was done via email. I could pull up the chain if you want me to Justin, but it’s a long chain of email. I mean, this is the transaction right here. Patricia de Metz came in through being on my website on Nationwide Home Buyers abandoned the website, automatic text message, automatic email went out right here she is right there because there was no phone number and I couldn’t send her a mailer, she wouldn’t have gotten there. And literally, the whole entire deal went over via email, and that was prior to the Rocket Bot being in existence. That’s what actually made us realize, like, holy crap, stumbled onto a gold mine with this. Let’s pour some gas on this shit right here.

Justin: Yeah, and guys, again, I was just wanted to highlight something we didn’t dive into, which is part of the answer is, how else can you communicate with these sellers? Part of what happened with that individual was actually not only that, but they she filled out a form, came to our Bot, started ignoring our Bot, we sent our direct mail piece. The direct mail piece sent her back to the website. Because of that, lead detector caught her, sent an email to start communication, and that’s how it all happened. Lead Detector, Minute Pages, Rocketly, you know, A2P compliance and email is a this whole system, this whole ecosystem, you guys, at least, at minimum, if you take real estate seriously, if you’re really interested in getting more direct to seller leads, go just demo all of this. John will spend an hour or more. I know sometimes he’s like, Man, I just spent two hours with so and so. I mean, he will offer his time if you go to Rocketly.ai and just spend some time with them. Because if you’re serious about really having motivated seller leads and getting those deals done, then you need to be able to go see exactly how this all works. John, did you have any else you wanted to show go ahead?

John: Yeah, here’s a here it is, right here, you know, this is she was on the nationwide home buyers abandoned. Here’s the AI automatic email that went out. “Hey, is this Patricia? If not. My apologies, you could blame Google. My name is John. I think you own a home of Strasburg Street, right? If so. I was hoping to have a quick chat. You have time to talk? “ She replies, “Yes, I’m Patricia, I’m the owner and I want to sell it”. I mean, it doesn’t. It doesn’t get better than that.

Pete: She actually, at some point further down in a chain too. She actually says, Yeah, I, I’m using Google Translate because I don’t speak English. We were like, This person can’t be real. And it turned out she was very real. And it just she was in from France. She bought a property to flip. It was more than she could take it. She went back to France, and she’s to France, and she’s like, just get it off my plate, all in French via Google Translate to boot.

John: We would have never, ever talked to her ever had we not had Lead Detector technology on the website and had the automation powered by the AI sent email, I’ve never sent an email out and let alone had Lead Detector on a website before. So these people would be blind to everybody who is now using this technology is now they’re now visible to you.

Justin: Yep, yep.

Pete: And so, John cut his teeth, as I’m sure a lot of you guys know and if anyone’s here doesn’t know John, he cut his teeth cold calling back in a day. So, all of you guys that are sitting there in your phone warriors, you’re hammering the phones all day. You’re going through your 500,000 you get a mojo multi-line dialing, you’re hitting 5000 people to get three or four conversations, if you’re lucky. The difference here is the AI and the outbound messaging is doing all that for you. So the only people you deal with are they’re usually at least, at a minimum, they’re a maybe to to a hot lead. All the people who are flat out knows you’re gone, Fu not selling, never selling, that just gets swept off the board in Rocketly, so you don’t even deal with the. All you’re calling, you can afford to spend 45 minutes to an hour with a lead because you’re not worried about, oh, did I miss the low hanging fruit of the next call, the next call. You know that the only people you’re talking to that day have some level of interest. So it just becomes, can you close.

John: Especially for a part time person like myself, Justin, because we know my full time job is with us at TSOF and Rocketly. So those five deals are contracted within the last 18 days, part time, fraction of a time. The system is designed to show me who wants to play right now, who’s motivated to sell. I don’t care if the spread small, if the motivation is high, I am willing to lock in and dial in and get on the phone with them, because my energy is high. It’s exciting to be able to open your notebook, go right to town and start speaking to people, instead of like, Oh, I hope somebody picks up. Like, this is like, cold call. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it works, there’s no doubt about it. But like, you’re going to get sucked your energy out of your body, trading your time foraging and hoping that somebody does pick up the phone, but then you have to validate to them why it’s worth their time to speak to you, versus the dynamic of them coming to you directly. It’s like, How can I help you? Just came to me, right? So we’ve reversed engineered this magical situation where, technically, we are going to them, but we know that they came to us first for a reason, whether we drove them there through paid ads or SEO, we know that they came there for a reason, and now it’s pretty much incumbent upon us to make sure we utilize that information. And that’s where Rocketly, kind of, you know, struck over for us,

Justin: Absolutely, guys, what I’ll do, we will give a replay out. If you want to replay this on Facebook, hit replay in the comments below. We’ll make sure you get a replay, because I know many of you people showed it up in between or late. If you want to replay again, Drew you already hit it in the comments, we’ll make sure you get it. Facebook, if you want to replay, throw a replay in the comments. We’ll make sure you get one. And then also, what I tell all of you, if you’ve watched this and you’ve seen enough, just go see a demo like literally, just have John expose the whole actual inner workings of it. If you are even just curious about real estate, then it’s worth your time to watch a demo, because this is what is a game changer. I’ve done this business now for 17 years. You gotta look around the corner, right? And so that’s what this is. We’re looking around the corner. There’s more regulation to come. This is our answer to it as a moment in time, and it should be yours too. So Rocketly.ai schedule a demo, totally free, and just feel out whether it’s a good fit for you.

Pete: One more thing before we go, somebody had asked, if we’re already ATP compliant, do we need to be as diligent with it? The answer is, 100% yes, that every single person that we have that got suspended, we’re A2P  compliant. We even had people who had approved 800 numbers, like, business to business 800 numbers, they still got suspended because they violated the AUP. So, like that is even if you are approved, and then you’re like, Well, I’m approved, so I can go send what I want now, nope, they will pull that rug right out from underneath you. So you have to stay on top of it, you have to watch the messaging. And every time they come out and start saying we see it, we see people start to all of a sudden, oh, my messages aren’t going through. We gotta go through a look, and it’ll say a carrier violation. Then we gotta go chase down Twilio and we’re okay, what carrier? What are they saying was violated? Because it’s not, in our minds it’s not like, well, they don’t like this. Okay. Well now we’ll go change that, but if you don’t stay on top of it, you’ll get burned.

Justin: Yeah, this is going to be something I’ll continue to bring up. We’ll bring Pete, John on periodically as things continue to change. But everyone enjoy your night. Go to Rocketly.ai. Schedule a demo. John, I appreciate you. Pete, I appreciate you. I know. Pete, you have another great zoom call about to hit right now, and John’s getting back on the phone. So hope this helps hit replay in the comments below. We’ll send it to you later. Everybody. Bye.