One Simple Shift Built a Real Estate Wholesaling Empire and a Dream Life with Chris Logan

[0:00] Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate. I’m Matthias, an agent and investor. And I’m Erica, a licensed therapist. Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing. Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors. Ready to level up? Let’s do it.

[0:23] Welcome back to the REI Agent. It’s Matthias here. I was reminded, I just interviewed Chris Logan, and I was just reminded about being relentless, kind of when you’re getting started, especially kind of keeping the end in mind and not getting bogged down by the in-between or the getting started. That’s such a hard thing to probably to understand, to realize.

[0:56] This is a very future-minded. I kind of have my head in the clouds, and I’m thinking about, like, you know, down the line, like, what can be, all that kind of stuff. So I sometimes, you know, that part of the journey, like the grind phase where, like, I’m trying to get something started. You know, I’m working in real estate sales. My first start in 2014. You know, it took me, like, three years to really get rolling. But it didn’t ever discourage me that I wasn’t there yet, if that makes sense. I didn’t expect to, like, pick up my business and just take off immediately. And I was also working at a job, so I wasn’t, like, completely – I mean, I was in it. I was working and doing everything I could while also working at the job because we were also paying off debt at the time.

[1:42] And that was also kind of the top goal was to pay off the debt, so quitting the job didn’t make sense at that time. But anyway, so really just focused on what could be, like, in the future, like, where I was going to be. I was going to be a real estate agent. I was going to be successful at it. And I was going to do all the things that I needed to do to be able to become successful. So I was, you know, trying to help top agents as much as I could so that I could be benefits to them, that I could then get some good business, but then also trying to mimic what they did to be successful and just kept going. It’s that grind phase that really probably can halt some people. We probably had the opposite of that happen through the pandemic, where people getting in kind of saw success really quickly.

[2:34] It was a lot easier to get business. And then once things slowed down a little bit, that they might have, you know, it might be a bit jarring to, like, have such easy success and then to have to kind of learn how to be mining your database to reach out to past sales, et cetera, if you weren’t practicing that during the pandemic. So, yeah, I think regardless of if you have that at the very beginning or if you’re maybe kind of going through the grind phase now, it’s just important to kind of see where you’re going to be and to kind of not get bogged down in that, like, you know, you’re not there yet. And to focus on what you will be and to understand the steps that are needed to get there and just kind of fall in love with your grind, keep showing up.

[3:25] You know, it’s true of the gym, too. Like, you know, if you have a goal of lifting a certain amount or whatever or running a certain speed, you can lay out the steps to getting there. And if you just fall in love with the grind, you’ll get there before you know it. And if you’re not disappointed, you’re not sure you’re disappointed, you’re not there yet every day and you’re just kind of enjoying the process, this is the best mindset to be in. But, yeah, so Chris Logan is on the show. He is a wholesaler. I think it’s one of those maybe taboo topics with real estate agents or misunderstood or – and we kind of got into it a little bit. I think I realized that, you know, the model of, you know, percentage versus two different contracts like the wholesalers do is probably one of the fundamental reasons that it’s a bit of a disconnect.

[4:17] But he talks about how there can be really good synergy between agents and wholesalers. We also talk about how it’s important to be focused kind of on one rather than the other. I think there’s multiple reasons for it, but also – but probably one of the biggest ones is to kind of, you know, niche down and be focused on one area. And those are kind of two different areas of real estate. So just as you wouldn’t necessarily be, you know, a condo specialist and a, you know, laundry mansion specialist if you’re really trying to niche down in an area, it probably doesn’t make sense to be a wholesaler and a real estate agent if you’re really trying to focus on one. Or trying to focus on building a successful business.

[4:59] It’s better to kind of get more narrowed down and focused. But anyway, so this was a really good conversation. If you don’t understand wholesaling as well, or maybe you have a bad taste in your mouth about it, I think listening to Chris will help with that. So without further ado, here’s Chris Logan.

[5:21] Welcome back to the REI Agent. We are here with Chris Logan. Chris, welcome to the show. So Matthias, thanks for having me here today, man. I’m super pumped to be, you know, with you here on the show and just providing value to your audience here today. Yeah, super exciting. It’s a good topic. If you are not, if you’re hearing this and not seeing this, he’s got virtual wholesaling made simple as a tagline here. I think that in the real estate sales world, we often, there’s a thing that comes with investors in general, and I think wholesalers in particular. So I think it’s good that we just take that head on and we just dive right in. But before we, I guess maybe before we do that, let’s just hear about how you got into real estate to begin with.

[6:03] Yeah, yeah, great question. So I got started like most people do in real estate with just a desire to want to get into real estate to change my life. Because a lot of us, when we’re first getting started, I think that’s a big thing that we gravitate towards, right? We look at real estate and we translate that into freedom because we see what it’s done for other people. And then you see books out there, people on TV, the HGTV shows and all that stuff. And you’re just like, man, like that could provide an amazing future. So it all started for me when I was at my church. And I was telling one of my friends that I was looking to get into real estate. He was super successful. I didn’t know that he was in real estate, but he’s like, the first book that you want to read is Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, right?

[6:45] So I got that book and I started reading it at night before I was about to go to bed. Needless to say, like it took a long time to go to bed because I finished the entire book in the same night that I got it. Because it was just like, it was blowing my mind. There was concepts in there that I was not taught growing up. And it flipped the whole model of go get a job, you know, to nine to five, you know, save up money in a 401k and retire at 65 years old. Like, you know, it just it flipped that whole model on its head and talked about how like that’s backwards. And that’s what keeps most people broke. Right. And so most people are not investing in real estate or they’re just making money and they’re buying doodads or liabilities.

[7:26] Right. And it keeps them stuck where they are. And that I really resonated with that message. So one day I was at my girlfriend’s house and I was checking my email and I saw a banner ad back when those are a thing back in the day that Robert Kiyosaki was coming to Tampa. And I was like, man, I just read this guy’s book. I have got to meet him, shake his hand, tell him how much he’s changed my life just from my mindset growth that I’ve gotten from this book. So I asked her to come with me because I didn’t want to go by myself. And I get there and he’s nowhere nowhere to be seen. Right. Obviously, he wasn’t there. But what I did take away from the event was something even more valuable. So it was like a three day event.

[8:10] And at the last day, we learned all this stuff about real estate. And they threw all these different strategies up on the board. This whiteboard. Right. The speaker at the front of this huge whiteboard and this hotel ballroom. And he’s like, here, you can make money in development real estate. Right. You can make money by creative real estate, by doing like sandwich lease options and all these creative ways. Right. To buy real estate with no money down. But then they got down to this one strategy that I just really identified with. And that was wholesaling. What he said, basically, you could take a piece of paper and flip that piece of paper for tens of thousands of dollars. You could do it multiple times a month and you need good credit to do it.

[8:49] You didn’t need to have large stacks of cash in the bank to be able to get involved in these deals because you’re not physically buying the house. I was like, man, that makes sense. So I looked at my girlfriend, who’s now my wife, and I was like, we got to do this. So we went to the back of the room. We signed up for another two or three day boot camp they had in Miami. And we went there and we learned the ins and outs of wholesaling. So fast forward from that, we eventually decided to hire a mentor on that journey because learning this stuff just from a boot camp was kind of a lot to put in place. And then two years, we were wholesaling locally. So we were like driving to sellers houses, meeting sellers and all that.

[9:37] And then two years before COVID, we decided to go virtual, which is a huge blessing. Right. So now we were doing all these transactions over the phone, not meeting these sellers or anything. So when COVID happened, like everybody else was scrambling and we had one of our best years ever. So, you know, fast forward from there, we run a fully virtual wholesale business. We do deals in multiple states across the country. We’ve done over 600 deals, scaled our business to over seven figures. And now we find a lot of passion in showing others how to do what we did and live the lifestyle that we have. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for that intro. I mean, that’s Robert Kiyosaki has changed many people’s lives.

[10:16] Yeah. And I was actually just recording a podcast earlier today. And I find it funny. I heard once, I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard once that the story is complete BS. It’s not true. It was, he created it to sell board games as like, you know, the get out of the rat race board game. But yeah, I mean, the power of a story, I think that’s where, that’s the beauty of the book is it’s relatable. It’s not just like this abstract concept. It’s like, yeah, it’s a storyline that you can digest more easily. Well, the big thing I think I got from it, right. So whether his story is legit or not, like the thing that I think I got from it and what I love most about it is how simple, like you kept everything.

[10:56] Right. So that’s something like I’m really big on. Right. Because like a lot of people overcomplicate stuff and it puts a big barrier in front of them from being able to learn and to actually be able to use what they paid money for or to use what they’re trying to get started with. Right. And so that holds so many people back. But when you can make things simple, like Robert Kiyosaki did for me in that book. Right. And gave me a pathway forward. I mean, that can change people’s lives. And so that’s, that was like the biggest thing because I’ve tried to, before that book, I tried to ask people for like investing advice. They’re like, yes, you can do the S and P 500 and you can do this, that, and the other, and invest in these things.

[11:35] It was so complicated. I was like, man, I don’t, I don’t get it. You know? And then when he kind of broke it down in that book, I was like, I understand it. And then I felt empowered that I could actually make this happen. I can make real change in my life. Totally true. Yeah. I love that. Okay. Well, let’s, let’s, let’s get into a little bit more in case somebody’s listening that doesn’t know what a wholesale is. Yeah. Can you explain what that is? Sure. Yeah. So wholesaling real estate, okay. Is, um, is like, first of all, let’s talk about wholesaling is not. So a lot of people think that wholesaling is a real estate business and it couldn’t be further from the truth. Wholesaling real estate is a sales and marketing business.

[12:17] Almost has nothing to do with real estate outside of the fact it’s like the widget that’s involved in the process. Okay. So here’s how it works. Basically what you do is you do marketing. Okay. So whether that’s making phone calls, sending pieces of mail, you know, knocking on doors for some people who are local, we do it virtual. So we don’t do that. We, we prefer picking up the phone, but anyway, you’re calling sellers who are in motivated distress situations, right? Maybe they’re behind on their payments. So they’re facing pre foreclosure. Maybe they’re behind on their taxes for two years or more. Maybe they’re going through a divorce. They’re going through a bankruptcy. Maybe they have a lot of violations on their property from the County because they haven’t been keeping up the property.

[12:58] And it’s like an eyesore. So we want to find these properties, these worst houses in the best neighborhoods, right? And get in touch with the owners of those properties. And we want to make an offer on those properties. Okay. So I’ll give you an example. Let’s say we make an offer to a seller for $150,000 for a property we found. Now we made that offer for 150,000 because we know through our other types of marketing we’ve done, we’ve come across a buyer who’s willing to buy properties in that same area for $170,000. So we put a contract in place for that seller for 150,000. And we fill out another piece of paper called an assignment of contract, which allows us to sell that contract we have with the seller to that buyer for $170,000.

[13:41] And then we walk away with the money in the middle. The difference between the price of the seller and buyer, that $20,000. Now, it doesn’t always end up being that amount every single time. There’s a range that you can make, but that’s just an example of how it goes together. So you want to think about it more like a glorified matchmaker. You’re matching a motivated seller with a buyer who wants to buy, and you’re just collecting the money in the middle. That’s it. Didn’t invest any of your own money into the deal. You didn’t involve any loans. There’s no risk to you at all. It’s just like an amazing thing because you can be paid very well for putting those two types of people together. Yeah.

[14:18] Yeah. And so it’s obviously different than what an agent does in terms of finding a buyer or whatever, or connecting the two parties together. I guess let’s talk a little bit about why or what perceptions people might have and why you feel like that’s not valid. If you’re a licensed agent and you’re talking to a wholesaler or you hear about it, there’s some stigma there. So what have you heard? I mean, are you familiar with those? I’d imagine. Sure. Yeah, no, absolutely. For sure. Sure. So I’m sure we both can agree that when you’re talking about realtors in general, there’s a percentage of those who are probably not very good at what they do, and they give being a realtor a bad name. Yeah. Right?

[15:09] Maybe what they’ll do is they’ll tell someone they’re going to crawl over a broken glass to get their property sold, right? But at the end of the day, all they’re doing is throwing the property up on the MLS and just waiting passively for phone calls, not doing anything, right? Right. So it exists in both sides. And then on wholesalers, right, a lot of agents are like, oh, a lot of wholesalers are bad. They take advantage of people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here’s the thing. Like, just like anything, you have a certain percentage of people who are not committed to doing business the right way. And you’re going to have that percentage that can ruin it for all, right? And so the biggest thing that I feel like wholesalers have to keep in mind when networking with agents and agents have to keep in mind when networking with wholesalers is one person, how one person acts does not mean everybody else is like that, right?

[15:55] So having an abundance mindset, not like an abundance mindset, like how can we work together, right? Like how can we create synergy? Like how can I help you, you help me type of thing. And when you do that, it can be amazing. I have a lot of agents that I work with that brings us a ton of great buyers for our deals, buyers that are outside the country that I’d never be able to get on my own. But agents can help us get more eyeballs on our properties. And in wholesaling, that’s the name of the game. Sometimes other wholesalers say you don’t want to work with other wholesalers because you can’t. No, like other wholesalers could have buyers for your properties that you don’t, right? So it really comes to like how you approach business.

[16:34] But one of the biggest things that I find that gives wholesalers a bad name is some of them are just in it for the money. That’s all they care about. They could care less about the seller situation, helping them solve their problem. It’s just, it’s dollar signs for them and that’s all that matters. So for me and our team, what sets us apart, just like agents can be set apart how they do business, is that we actually care about solving the seller’s problem and making sure that we are the best fit. I mean, we’ve told sellers sometimes, hey, based on what you’re asking for this property, we’re not going to be the best fit for you. But we do have some realtor partners that we work with that can get you top dollar for your house since it seems like that’s what you’re looking for.

[17:16] You’ve got a house that’s in great condition, right? Yeah, because if a person, yeah, the house didn’t need work or they had money to do the work, they had time, they had a luxury of time, etc., putting it on the market would make sense. Who you’re typically working with is likely people that don’t have all those items, usually they need to sell really, really fast. Yeah, exactly. Like we’ll be the first people to tell sellers, like if we feel like that’s the best move for them, hey, that’s the best move for you. Happy to refer you to a great realtor that can help you make that happen, right? But the majority of the sellers that we work with, right, probably 75% of the sellers that we work with are people who are not in that type of situation and don’t have that luxury, right?

[17:57] They’re a situation where they want two things. A lot of realtors feel like, why do people work with wholesalers, right? Why wouldn’t they just work with a realtor? Like, you know, why don’t they just list their property? They’ll get more, right? So when it comes to working with a wholesaler, sellers care about two things, right? And what I typically find is those two things are speed and convenience, right? So they want someone that can move forward right now, right? The typical wholesale deal takes anywhere from two to four weeks to wrap it up, right? In a market like we’re in today, where properties are sitting on the market for a long time, you have, you know, 60, 90, 180 days sometimes a property sitting on the market.

[18:41] But, you know, closing in two to four weeks, if there’s a significantly motivating circumstance, can be really attractive to those sellers. Also, with a wholesaler, they can sell as is, whereas. They don’t have to clean the house. They don’t have to make it show ready because some of these sellers are kind of like embarrassed about the condition of their property and having people over, right? So some of them also are not really even considered safe enough to put up on the MLS, right? And so there’s a huge opportunity for wholesalers to work with agents because sometimes agents have investor buyers they can bring for their deals. And there’s a huge opportunity for agents to work with wholesalers because sometimes in agents marketing, they’re going to come across these opportunities or they’re going to come across somebody who really needs help, right?

[19:27] And, you know, they have two options. They can either say, no, that’s just not for me. That’s not the type of properties I work with. Or they can be a resource. Totally. Totally, right? And so then, like, you know, where they could be like, you know what? I actually have someone that I can connect you with. And I feel like he’d probably be a better fit to work with you, right? So cool if I pass your phone number along, right? That’s a total win because if the wholesaler is licensed, right? A lot of them aren’t, but some states it’s now required, right? So if the wholesaler is licensed, they can work out some split on the commission or the assignment fee, right? But if the wholesaler is not, then, again, he refers people to the agents that have goodwill.

[20:08] Maybe they can hook them up with MLS access or something like that. Or they can find some other type of win-win. But there’s always synergy if you’re willing to look for it. Yeah, I work with a wholesaler that will give me – he’s given me a couple referrals over the years. Nothing, like, formal, nothing. You know, there’s just been, like, hey. But, you know, he also knows whenever there’s a property in my buy box, like, I act. I move fast. Yeah. And that’s what wholesalers love, man. Wholesalers love that. If you’re a buyer that can move quick and you have the resources to be able to do that, you don’t play games, you’re easy to work with. Wholesalers love easy. Because these properties are often, like, I mean, they can often be pretty nasty and can often scare a lot of people away.

[20:57] Yeah. And to have somebody that comes in, you know, able, willing to buy cash, no inspections, that kind of stuff, and not renege, close in a couple weeks. It’s, yeah, it’s good to have those buyers. And so that’s a valuable thing to him as well. Totally. Yeah, for sure. I guess one of the things that I have heard that has left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, even though I understand wholesaling, is when I hear a wholesaler, and this could be one of those not best actors, making an exorbitant amount of profit on a property. Where, you know, like, it’s, it’s like almost, I don’t know, like, it would almost be, let’s just say that it’s like a piece of land that’s, they got in a contract for very little, and maybe almost doubled what the profit, or what was being sold for, almost doubled it in their, like, wholesale fee.

[21:56] Which, I mean, if you’re talking $5,000, that’s one thing, but if you’re talking like, you know, $75,000 or whatever, that’s a very different kind of situation. So there’s, there’s been times where I’ve heard of an exorbitant fee, but I felt like that’s just, you know, like, that feels a little bit not great to me. Yeah. Just because I don’t think that the seller, in that circumstance, has any idea what they’re selling it for. And sometimes the seller doesn’t have any idea that the contract’s going to be sold. Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s, that’s, that’s a great thing. You know, so there’s, there’s a lot of ways that you can do this, right? So there’s the story of the, the plumber where, no, it’s the plumber, it’s FedEx, I think.

[22:42] Anyway, I’m going to butcher this, but there’s a story of FedEx where like they had their shipping facility and everything came to a grinding halt. Like their, you know, supervisor, floor supervisor comes down and he’s like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. We’re going to lose so much money because we can’t get these packages out to people and everything like that. They’re like, call the guy. So they call the guy who’s like the electrician who’s specialized in fixing these things. Right. And he says, he’s like, I need you to fix this because we’re, we’re losing all this money. We got to get this fixed. And the guy goes, okay, no problem. So he, he, he takes a minute, looks around. He sees like this one pole hanging.

[23:18] He goes over to it, tweaks it, fixes it. It’s back up in like five minutes. Right. The guy goes, oh, thank you so much. This is amazing. You know, how much do I owe you? Right. And he said $10,000 or he said something like that. Right. The guy’s like $10,000. He’s like, he was a hundred dollars screw. Right. But not. Yeah. The 9900 was like knowing where to like fix it. Right. So there’s a couple of different ways you can look at it like that. Right. So that’s one way that you can look at it. The other way to look at it. And I think this is a perspective that a lot of agents don’t have because they just don’t understand because they, they’re not wholesalers. Right. Sellers will come to them and they will say, Hey, I’m willing to sell my property to you for 150,000.

[24:00] Right. Now the wholesaler looking at that deal. Right. You know, I don’t think anybody would do this. Nobody would come to like the wholesaler is going to look at that and say, yes, I can do it or no, I can’t. Right. And the seller is going to be like, okay, either way. Right. Now let’s say the property value of that was like double what the wholesaler got under contract with them. Right. The wholesaler is not going to be like, Hey man, you know, your property is worth a lot more. I’m going to give you more. Right. Like nobody does that. Like if you go to buy a car and you say, Hey, you know, I like this car. They’re not going to tell you like, Hey, well, you know that I, that’s a bad example.

[24:45] But my, my point is, is like, no, one’s going to come back and say, Hey, like, you know, I could give you like $150,000 more of this property or a hundred thousand dollars or whatever the case is, just because this, we’re not like a wholesalers are not like an appraisal service. Right. They’re coming to us because they need to sell their property and quick. They have an asking price. It either works for us or it doesn’t. And then we move on. The primary goal though, is getting the sellers like what they need for the property. Because I think that something that people have in the back of their mind too is like, Oh, well, you know, the properties were so much more, but it’s like, if they wanted to go the route of an agent to where they could maximize that value and that was their goal, they would do that.

[25:25] But in a lot of cases, these people have to move very, very fast and they just need the money in their pocket. And so that’s why they approach a wholesaler who can help them do that. Yeah. And you know, I think at the end of the day, that’s another we’re talking about it. Probably one of the fundamental differences is the percentage versus just like, you know, the way that they’re two different contracts work on a, on a wholesale deal. So, but yeah. So tell me a little bit about, yeah, your, your marketing that you’re doing. So I would imagine like buying lists and sending mailers and calling and this is, and how do you pick your markets? Yeah. Great question. So the, the primary way that we reach out to sellers and like the best way by far is picking up the phone and cold calling.

[26:14] It is like amazing because you could be talking to a motivated seller this afternoon, someone that needs to sell their property fast. Right. And so, so that’s the way that we really prefer to do it. I started doing it myself. And then what we ended up doing is hiring other people eventually that could make calls for me. This is like an overseas VA that’s making the calls. We grew that to like 10 people and we have a call center and all that stuff. But, but it’s a really easy way to scale because you get your deal yourself, then you hire someone else to make the calls for you. And then as you get leads and deals, you can gradually start adding more people on and just like growing that. And that’s kind of like our model we’ve had the most success with.

[26:54] So when it comes to lists, a lot of people really overthink the lists. It’s any type of list that has motivation, right? So if it’s a seller that is, you know, facing foreclosure, if it could be also one of my favorite lists is the tired landlord list. So this list is a list of, you know, landlords, they’ve owned their properties for like 10, 15 years. They’re tired of tenants and toilets. They tried to time the market. It didn’t play out. Right. And now they’re just like, I got to sell this stuff so I can retire and just enjoy the rest of my life. Right. And so a lot of times what I like about these sellers is they’ll not only have one property, but they’ll have two, three, four, five properties.

[27:34] And that can be a very attractive thing. So we can help them by getting them what they need for the properties. And then from there at the same time, make great money in the process. Well, the headache deal often with those is, and the thing that they want to offload is getting rid of a bad tenant, right? Like having that eviction process. They know the house is destroyed. It’s a tense bad. They aren’t paying rent. Yeah. And they want to get rid of this and they don’t want to be able to. Yeah, totally, man. And that segues perfectly from the last point we made as far as wholesalers and fees. Like I truly believe you make an amount that is in proportion to the size of the problems you solve. A lot of the problems that wholesalers go through and solve, realtors wouldn’t want anything to do with it.

[28:19] Right. We’re talking like $150,000 and code violations on a property. Right. We’re talking like seven family members where the owner passed away. The beneficiaries are like seven different family members. They hate each other. And you almost have to be like a mediator to calm everybody down and like a counselor almost type of thing. Right. So there’s things like that. There’s crazy situations where the owner of the property is in jail. And, you know, there’s just there’s so many. There’s a property I went into. My wife and I went into one one time and there was a hole in the wall. And I said, hey, just curious, what’s this hole in the wall? Kind of had an idea what it was. He’s like, oh, that’s that’s a bullet hole.

[29:07] I’m like, oh, OK. Kind of looked like that to me. And they said and I said, what’s what’s going on with the bullet hole? He’s like, yeah, I think I tried to shoot my roommate. He’s no longer here anymore. But, you know, that’s what that was. As a live person living. You say he’s no longer. I’m just curious. So when you say he’s no longer here anymore, like, what are we talking about? He’s going, no, no, he’s alive. He just got out of jail and he’s he’s fine. He lives somewhere else now. And I’m like, probably a good idea. Agents would be out of their fat. We got the deal on their contract, man. We got that thing sold. We made some great money on it. Chris, as you’ve gone through these properties and been wholesaling for a while, have you been tempted?

[29:46] Have you kept any for yourself? Have you done any burrs or flips yourself? Man, you know, what’s funny is we yeah, we’ve we’ve bought we bought a good amount of properties. But one thing that I wish we would have done is bought properties a lot sooner. And the reason for that is because I go back and look at properties that we wholesaled like 12 years ago. And maybe at the time, like we sold it for one hundred and five thousand. That thing’s worth like three hundred and fifty thousand now. So there’s one thing I could go back and do. I definitely would change that and I would buy properties a lot sooner. We’ve flipped properties. We’ve done we’ve done a lot of flips. But then we realized that that.

[30:26] Track for our business, it wasn’t what we wanted to do because we can make as much wholesaling or more wholesaling properties and flipping. And we don’t have to manage contractors. And yeah, just headaches and still get a great deal to our end buyers. So, yeah. Yeah. That could definitely be true. And I’ve I’ve known of I mean, yeah, people will buy things off auction or all sorts of maybe even buy from a wholesaler and then just turn on the sell again. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve heard things like that in the past. But yeah, I mean, I think like if you’re depending on your end game and you’re coming across all these properties, coming across those tired landlords who potentially own things outright, there’s a lot of opportunity for building up your own portfolio.

[31:13] Totally. And, you know, trying to build up a rental portfolio so that you can, yeah, be have more passive income. Get back to that Robert Kiyosaki dream. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Like that’s something that I’m really passionate about sharing with other people now. Right. Is that you start out wholesaling. Right. Because wholesaling, it gives you a foundation of sales and marketing. It helps you like get a good feel of the business. Right. And on your journey of wholesaling, you’re going to you’re going to come across a lot of different types of properties. And we recommend wholesaling for a minimum of 12 to 18 months, not doing any other strategies, not buying properties for yourself or anything like that.

[31:47] And at the end of 12 to 18 months, you’re going to have a great understanding of what a good deal looks like, what a bad deal looks like. So you can make more confident buying decisions. And that way you don’t have to risk like hard earned dollars on a flip that went sideways because you underestimated the repairs, overestimated the repairs, underestimated value, overestimated value. And you’ll just have a better grasp on the business. And so wholesaling can provide that phenomenal foundation to kick off that and really prepare you because one of the biggest mistakes that I see people doing, they get into real estate, they watch HDTV. Right. And they will buy a property and renovate it. No mentor, like no guidance.

[32:26] They’re taking their retirement funds, borrowing from their 401k, putting into it. And I know people that have lost money on three to five flips in a row and they’re like, man, maybe I got to slow this down. And that can totally take them out of the game. Right. And so why risk that? Why not wholesale, get that down, understand what good deals look like, what bad deals look like. And then from there, stack some cash. And then by the end, you can make more confident buying decisions. So those situations don’t happen and you can just really set yourself up right. Yeah. And I think that brings me to another point. You talked about it like kind of like a good starting point. I think that usually if you’re looking, if you’re primarily motivated to get into real estate in the investing space, usually wholesaling is where people start.

[33:14] But if you’re just kind of interested in real estate in general, maybe selling real estate as an agent is where people start. And it’s kind of like either way you can do it. And I think I would also say that especially if you are looking to work in your own market, I think there is a bit of, I think you’d be very careful. I think it’s better, like you said, partner with the wholesaler as opposed to do both. Like I think it’s a little bit tricky. You can kind of look at it like it’s like, I mean, it’s this wholesale versus retail, right? I mean, that’s how you really can boil it down. I mean, like we are, you know, we are the Kroger, the Costco, whereas a wholesaler would be providing a booth for the Kroger and the Costco.

[34:01] And I think that like, you know, like, you know, you can work with investors that will flip the product from the wholesale and then sell that, you know, on the market. But it can be a little bit tricky to, I think, let me describe this the best way possible. I think it’s like more, you want to make sure what your reputation, what you’re putting out into the community, if you’re working in your own local community, is consistent and it’s not confusing to people. So that’s maybe one of the ways that it could get a little blurry if you’re trying to do both. Yeah. So I feel like, you know, piggybacking on what you said there, I feel like you have to have a dominant business model, right? A model that always takes the lead, right?

[34:42] So I’m licensed, but I also wholesale. But my retail side does not take the lead, right? My wholesale side takes 100% of the lead. So if you’re an agent, you just have to decide which side of the business do I want to take the lead? Because, you know, you could take down listings that don’t work out for wholesale deals because you’re doing a lot of marketing. You’re going to come across a lot of that opportunity. But one of the smarter ways that I like to look at it is doing what you just said, where it’s like if you are an agent and you want to take advantage of some deals that are not like listing material, like you can’t list them because they’re in too rough a condition, build a great relationship with a wholesaler and hand that off to them, let them do it.

[35:28] And then if you’re a wholesaler, you don’t have to become an agent. Like you could basically build a great relationship with an agent, have wholesaling be your main thing and just pass off listings. So I feel like you do have to pick your main path that you’re on, right? Because we only have 100% of focus and being a great agent and being a great wholesaler both require 100% of focus individually to be successful. Because when you start doing 50 here, 50 here, it’s like you’re diluting your focus. So I really feel like, and it’s hard to get the traction that you need to succeed the success in the timeframe that most people want to expect. So having that primary way to lead is huge. I think that’s even like maybe the better point overall is that like many people say the rich is in the niches.

[36:16] And if you’re trying to be everything, if you’re trying to be a luxury listing agent and you’re trying to be a wholesaler, it’s just like different worlds typically. So yeah, that’s a very good point as well. Another question I have is I know that in Virginia law has changed here recently where wholesalers are supposed to only be able to do or somehow only allows for like one deal or something to happen without having a license. Have you come across that in any of the markets you work in? Yeah. So Illinois is also one like that where you can only do one wholesale deal a year without having a license, right? So there’s a few different ways that you can look at this, right? So number one, if you want to, first of all, I think these regulations are great.

[37:02] Like I love them because it really gets rid of the people who shouldn’t be doing this in the first place, right? Yeah. So number one, in a territory like that, if you’re committed to your market and you really want to work in your market, then get your real estate license, right? But if you’re like, I don’t want my real estate license because wholesaling is my main thing, right? You can just pick another territory. It doesn’t matter like in another state. And I actually have a two-step process for identifying the top areas to wholesale. Cool if I share that? Yeah, absolutely, please. Awesome. So there’s two things that we look at in a territory to see if it’s going to be a great place to do deals, right?

[37:43] And so the first thing that we look at, and by the way, the great thing is you can actually find this information for free using a tool called Google that most people know about, right? So the first step is you go to Google and you’re going to type in the county that you’re looking to start. See, I find most people, when they’re looking to get started in a territory or thinking about starting somewhere, they usually have an area in the back of their mind like, oh, I had family to live there or I used to live there. I had a friend that lives there. So they have these types of ideas in their mind. So here’s how you test that territory to see if it’s going to be a good place to start. So the first thing you do is you go to Google and you’re going to type in the county and the state that you’re looking to start in and then population, right?

[38:27] And then what’s going to happen is Google is going to kick back with the results and it’s going to tell you the population size in that area. Now, you want a county with a minimum population of 250,000 people. The reason you want a population size of 250,000 is anything less than that. You’re typically going to fall into like a rural territory where you’re not going to have a problem with sellers saying yes, right? But you’re going to have a big problem getting those deals sold because there’s not a lot of buyers. That’s the reason those sellers are so open to selling so quickly, right? So at a population size of 250,000, you’re looking at more of like a major metro type of an area, okay? So plenty of buyers, plenty of sellers, like people moving into the area and lots of people that want to sell.

[39:10] So it gives you a long runway. The second step that you want to do is you want to go to Google again and you’re going to type in the county in the state where you’re starting again, same as we did just a second ago. And then you’re going to type in median home price. Now, I’m assuming everybody on here knows what median home price is, but I’ll just break it down real quick. If you picture house on a timeline, you have the $50,000 and less houses on the left. And then on the far right, you have the multimillion dollar houses. The median is the one in the middle. It’s the house that most people can afford, the most popular house being bought and sold. And it’s what everybody’s looking for, right?

[39:43] So you want that median home price to be a minimum of $200,000, right? The closer to $200,000, the easier it’s going to be to do deals. The farther you get above that, the harder it’s going to be to do deals. And we like to cap that out like around $450,000. So if you can pair those two things together, that is all the makings of a fantastic market to start in. Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. My market might be out on both ends. Yeah.

[40:15] And that’s the cool part about being virtual, right? Because let’s say, for example, that you’re having a tough time. I had a friend of mine that lives in California. He came to me one day and he’s like, Chris, man, it is tough to do deals here. He’s like, I’m spending like $8,000 to get a property under contract and get the deal closed, right? Now, think about that. If he’s spending $8,000 in marketing, get a deal under contract and get it closed, if he wants to do three deals a month there, he’s got to pay $24,000 a month in marketing, right? That’s tough for a lot of people. So instead, I was like, brother, you got to come to Florida. And he’s like, but I don’t understand. I live in California.

[40:52] You’re in Florida. How do we make that happen? So I broke down our simple process for doing deals from home anywhere in the country. And he started doing deals in Florida. He was blown away. He was starting to put deals under contract for anywhere from $500 all the way to like $2,500. And that was a huge shift for him. Same amount of effort, but drastically different result. A lot of people bang their head against the wall for too long before they’re like, man, this really hurts. And they feel chained to their area. But the truth is sometimes the best deals aren’t found in your backyard. Yeah, I mean, it’s absolutely true. And I think there’s a mental block there for if you’re looking at the buy and holds as well.

[41:29] I mean, if that’s all you want, I think just looking at your market is what this felt like as the safest thing. But if you expand, you can definitely get higher cash flow or maybe if you’re targeting higher appreciation. There’s arguments to both ends of that equation. But yeah, learning how to invest in other markets is a pretty critical thing. That’s what you’re going to do. Yeah. And to piggyback on that, there’s also other factors in markets, right? Some states are title states and some states are attorney states, right? So simply meaning for those who don’t know what I’m talking about here, a title state, a title company, the third party company that is responsible for handling real estate closings.

[42:15] And they’re a neutral third party that basically facilitates the paperwork to transfer ownership from the seller to the buyer. That’s it, right? And some states you have title companies. And I find the states where you can use title companies is the easiest state to do deals, right? But if you’re in a state like New York where it’s an attorney state, it’s super tough to do deals there because, you know, attorneys get involved. They want retainers. And there’s no guarantee the deal is going to go through. And then you’re out these thousands of dollars in the meantime. And so we typically find that the easier states to do deals in are title states. And those are the ones that we really recommend.

[42:52] That makes sense. Yeah, totally makes sense. Yeah, I mean, so when you’re, what are some places that you go to to buy lists to get your data from? Yeah, sure. So there’s a source that we love. It’s called Batch Leads. Happy to give you guys a link where it can give your audience a discount. But it’s Batch Leads. And basically, they have all these lists like built into it, like tired landlords, senior owners, pre foreclosures, delinquent taxes, inherited properties, all these different types of lists, right? And then you can even stack motivation inside that software. So like later on, vacant property, but he’s an out-of-state landlord, right? So you can get really niche if you want to. But the point is that they give you the list of homeowners who could be a great fit for what we got going on, right?

[43:43] And then the best part about it is they also give you the phone numbers to call those people. Usually with other softwares, like you have to pay anywhere from $0.06 to $0.25 to get phone numbers for these motivated homeowners. But Batch Leads, when you upload your list, it gives you phone numbers and it’s pretty accurate too. Okay. And have you had experience or I mean, this is a selfish question here. Jordan, fire them off, yeah. Have you looked at multifamily data in Batch Leads? Do they have, is there any difference between residential and commercial, for example, as the quality of data or access to data? Yeah. So when it comes to residential data, like we’ve really tested it and it’s super accurate.

[44:27] The commercial data, I haven’t really dove into that side since we mainly focus on the residential side. I mean, we do some syndications and stuff, but we haven’t really marketed a lot to commercial stuff in there. But there is another software you can get on the commercial side if that’s your thing. And that’s called Reonomy. And that has some pretty accurate stuff. And then you can also do that other one called, the name’s escaping me right now. I’m invested in the stock. I’m just trying to remember what it’s called. I can’t remember. Yeah. But for commercial, I recommend focusing on a software that you can, that specializes in commercial data, because there can be some things in there that you’d want to know that maybe those other softwares can have.

[45:12] It often, you know, could be owned by LLCs and it’s not easy to find data, et cetera. But yeah, that makes sense. What is your typical conversion? Like where per lead? How much dollar spent do you typically have to spend to get one back? Yeah. Great question. So what we typically find is with our team and our systems that we got dialed in, it takes anywhere from 25 to 35 leads to get a closed deal. Right? So 25 to 35 leads to get a closed deal. Yeah. And so the amount we have to spend to get that varies. But on average, we see it’s somewhere between $1,500 to $2,500. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And that’s mainly because we have a team, like where people are calling, you know, they are combing through the dirt to find the gold.

[46:09] There are gold prospectors, you know. Right. And then, yeah, and then we’re making the calls and getting those deals under contract. Yeah. And I’m sure you have systems for following up and all that kind of stuff as well after you find a possibility in the dirt. Yeah. Well, what I’ve seen is with cold calling, it can take anywhere from three to four months to like fully ramp up. Right? So if someone’s starting from square one and they’re starting to cold call, they could expect that they’re putting two to three hours a day into it. They could expect to get their first deal inside 90 days. Right? But what’s funny about cold calling is what I’ve known this and I’ve seen this like clockwork is that they get their first deal done.

[46:50] And because of the follow-up and they were consistent with that, the second deal is like right around the corner. So they always usually get that second deal right after their first one. That makes sense. Yeah. It’s definitely the money’s in the follow-up, right? I mean, it’s the same in all these worlds we’re talking about. Like, you know, I haven’t really bought leads from the realtor side because I don’t really enjoy playing secretary and doing all this that we’re talking about. Yeah. But I think that, you know, having some systems, I know there’s also, I don’t know if this would be good for cold calling necessarily, but there’s also, you know, AI systems now that you could have, you know, an AI phone call.

[47:32] You could have an AI chat bot. And the goal not to be pretending to be a person, but maybe to like getting a appointment schedule. So having an inbound people, oftentimes inbound leads from realtor stuff, like comes in because they clicked on something and they weren’t necessarily able to talk to somebody. Right. And so they get a call from like 15 different agents like, oh, what’s happening? But if you can like, you know, have the first step, be like, hey, you know, this is just a scheduler system. If you want to get on, you know, meet in person or whatever, like, you know, here’s some availability. Yeah. And then get that appointment booked as opposed to, you know, spending me personally being on the phone with all the different people that are mostly not wanting to talk to me.

[48:15] That’s just exhausting. Yeah. Like if you haven’t been, if you haven’t been in the business for a long time and you’re brand new, I highly encourage making those phone calls yourself because most people suck on the phone when they first get started. And you got to have those, you got to put those reps in so you can get comfortable talking with people. Right. So many people are not comfortable talking with people that that’s how you build that skill. Right. And the first time you do it, it’s a little painful, like going to the gym. But the more you do it, the better you get. And it’s going to give you a higher return on all the other marketing you do down the road. I had a mentor of mine once tell me on the journey, he said, if you can’t make money from not spending money on marketing, then you have no business spending money on marketing because you’re not going to make money there.

[48:57] Right. So going back to your point with the with the AI is if that was me and that was something I was going to do, like what I would recommend probably is having some type of bot on your website where people are like chat with an AI agent or whatever. They can do those things. They could book. They were going to do that. But when it comes to making the calls, just based on some rules that have gone in place by the by the the TCPA rules. Right. Like there’s rules going on right now where AI calls are being put in the same categories like ringless voicemail. And there’s big lawsuits for that going on. Right. And so so I would not recommend like replacing a physical person to like make those calls.

[49:39] Sure. It’s just not worth the risk. But definitely using AI integrated into your business to streamline things like website reach outs, maybe even when people DM you on Facebook, your business page or something like that to help. A hundred percent. Yeah. And the thought was if there was an inbound call from an ad as opposed to an outbound, which may be a little bit of a bad. But still, yeah. It’s not something I’m actually implementing in. Yeah. It’s just an interesting way of kind of filtering maybe a way of trying to filter the serious from the not so serious. But you probably are not going to get the same results as actually talk to somebody. Yeah. Because one of the one of the things is like, you know, AI is becoming so prevalent.

[50:25] Like I use it a lot in my day to day. I’m sure you use a lot in your day to day. Right. Like what I constantly look at in trends and marketing is what is everybody doing? And then I want to do the opposite. Right. Because what I found is when the noise gets so big from everybody doing the same thing, like it’s so easy to stand out by doing the opposite. Like if everybody’s doing colors and I’m like, hey, they’re like, it’s so refreshing to talk to an actual person, you know. And so it can have just like a dramatically different impact. But no, like AI is amazing. I feel everybody should incorporate in their business for sure. And it can make your life 100% easier. And by, you know, streamlining a lot of things that would otherwise take you hours to do.

[51:08] Yeah. That’s, yeah, it’s all, I think it’s good to like to use it daily to figure out how to use it effectively and how it works with your overall strategy. For sure. Chris, I’m curious if you have any golden nuggets to share to our listeners. I know I gave you a couple options of how to take that before we go on here. But what gold nuggets are you going to share with our agents or investors that listen to this podcast? Sure. Yeah. So one of the biggest things I can tell you guys, I have a lot of people that come up to me and they ask me like, Chris, would there be anything that you would do differently in the beginning of your journey that could have helped you get results faster? Right. And the answer is 100% yes.

[51:50] Okay. In the beginning of my real estate journey, I was focused on everything, multiple different types of opportunities. And it took me like six months to get my first deal because I was focused on everything. Right. And then I read one book that really changed my life. It was this right here. The One Thing by Gary Keller. Yeah. And this book talked about the importance of focus and how, you know, if you focus on everything, then you’re going to really achieve nothing. Right. And that big results can come from small activity done consistently every single day. So when I read that book, I shut out all the distractions. I tuned into my one thing. Right. Which is wholesaling. And then not far after that, did I get my first deal.

[52:33] But I feel like that’s a big problem that a lot of people have in the industry today. Right. Everybody’s focused on like, I’m going to do, you know, wholesaling. I’m going to do rentals. I’m going to do creative finance. I’m going to do novations and this, that, and the other thing. Right. And they’re running in all these different directions and they get stuck in analysis paralysis. They’re sitting there and they’re like, how do I analyze this deal 50 different ways? And they do zero deals. You know, it’s kind of like the wholesalers who have the best CRMs are not doing any deals. They have amazing CRMs, but they’re not doing any deals. And then that even brings it back to filtering the question even more.

[53:10] So the question they ask you in this book is what’s the one thing that I can do today that makes everything else easier or unnecessary? I think it’s something like that. Right. Yeah. I take it a step further to saying, what’s the one thing that I can start my day with that can produce revenue for me either this week or this month. Right. And if it doesn’t produce revenue, then I’m not allowed to do anything else until I complete my first task that it tasks that involves creating revenue. And nine times out of 10, it’s doing the uncomfortable. It’s talking with people. It’s much more comfortable to shuffle things around on your desk, pick out new office space, you know, go buy a new computer, fiddle faddle in the automations and this new CRM and stuff like that.

[53:53] It’s much easier to do those things than to pick up the phone and have a conversation. And if there’s anything that I could do from the very beginning that would change the game and I recommend anybody else to do is that right there. I love it. That’s a really good point. Thank you. I got to ask also then the book that you recommend or the other book that you think everybody should read. We have, we have, we’re just at Port Dammie have The One Thing. Those are great. Those are both really good books. Yeah. So there’s another book that I’d recommend. It’s called The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. That’s a really good book because I noticed two things from people when they first come into real estate.

[54:33] Most people are not focused and they’re not consistent, right? The One Thing helps you with focus. The Compound Effect helps with consistency because people will oftentimes, they’ll commit to a certain result. But if they don’t see that result they want within a certain period of time, they kind of fall off and they’re like, oh, it doesn’t work, right? But the thing is momentum takes a long time to build. And when it hits, right? If you don’t stay consistent, it takes forever to get back, right? It feels like you’re climbing up a mountain just to get back to the pace that you were at before. But the biggest thing I would say is for people to completely detach themselves from the end result, right?

[55:13] Because it’s not an end result that we get what we want. The, we get what we want on the journey of becoming the type of person that can accomplish that end result, right? We become who we’re meant to be by hearing all the no’s, overcoming the obstacles, the rejection, right? Because all those things fuel our soul and make us stronger, right? And we can do one of two things in those moments where we face those obstacles or challenges. We can either say, this is too hard, you know, I’m not really willing to do this, right? Or we can say, you know what? Dust myself off, take another step and keep going. Because the only difference between me, you, anybody else, right? Is like, we didn’t stop. We just kept going, right?

[55:56] I could have given up a million times, right? On my journey. And I probably thought about it several times, right? But the key is just to not give up and keep taking steps forward. Yeah, that’s so true. I think, you know, it took me a good three years in real estate sales to really kind of feel like momentum was starting. And it’s, that’s a long time. Yeah. To, you know, get up every morning at five, answer emails. I was trying to blog and do whatever I could to get myself out there. So, yeah, absolutely. Those are great recommendations. That, shoot, man, that’s a really great playbook. If you want to get started in this business, you know, wholesale, resale, retail, I mean, those are great books to start with.

[56:41] Totally. Totally. Chris, if anybody wants to know more about you, follow you on social media, where can they find you? Yeah, sure. The best place you guys can reach me is on Facebook. I actually have a free group that you could join called Virtual Wholesaling Made Simple. You’ll see it. It’s a link in my bio. And yeah, shoot me a DM. Love to connect with people. I really enjoy connecting people who are new on the journey or are looking at wholesaling as maybe it’s something they want to do. We do free trainings in there every Wednesday at 6 p.m. And yeah, I look forward to connecting with you all. Awesome. Thanks so much, Chris. Thanks for being on the show. Yeah, Matthias. Thanks for having me on.

[57:18] It was great. Thanks for listening to the REI Agent. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week. Visit REIAgent.com for more content. Until next time, keep building the life you want. All content in the show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.