Full Transcript
26421 words
Full Transcript
26421 words
Speaker 0: The guy that owned it or thought he owned it was in jail. I I was just calling random people that were associated with him. It was happened to be his ex girlfriend that called me back. I was like, what is this about? I was like, here's what's going on.
She's like, that is my ex boyfriend in jail. What do you want me to do? I was like, can you help me though? She was like, alright. Title work comes back and there's several issues.
The list pendants on it from his one of his family members. We could find out he only owns half of it. Now we have to go find the other half of it. This guy's grandmother's ex husband's ex wife. Very clean.
That's very clean.
Speaker 1: The complication was that this was a fifty year old issue.
Speaker: These people didn't know each other at all. One was a brother and sister, other was brother and sisters. They didn't even know each other or the property or anything.
Speaker: Got it. And so but
Speaker 2: you guys started specializing in these deals?
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: So what does that entail? Welcome, and thank you for joining us for today's episode of disruptors where millionaires are made. Today, we have Chip Ferguson and Zeman Pasha with Smooth Closing. And Chip and Zeman flew in to, from Austin to talk about how they went from a one man show to 450 deals. Guys, I'm gonna mention to create millionaires.
The information on this show alone is enough to help you become a millionaire in the next five to seven years. If you'll take consistent action, you'll become one. And right now, you've got a 100,000, 250,000, or more just hanging out inside your CRM. Resurrect all your old and dead leads with objection proof AI calling agent text cash to the phone number 33777 to unlock the money that's just hanging out inside your CRM. Ready?
Speaker: Ready. You're good at that.
Speaker: Oh, lots of practice. I still screw it up. So you guys don't that weren't watching or don't know, that was the second take.
Speaker: Alright. So let's talk about
Speaker: what was life like before you guys got into real estate. So I'll start with you and then, Zaman.
Speaker: Sure. I mean, so I used to basically, I started playing poker for a living online, in college. So that was from even freshman year started. But by junior year, I was like, this is my career.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: After graduating, I did that till 2014. So I I had about a ten year online poker career. That was good. Solely poker? Solely poker.
I've never, yeah, never had a job. I taught tennis to little kids in
Speaker: high school. Yeah. That's it.
Speaker: But yeah. But, yeah, just online poker. That's it. You know, found it interesting from, like, a statistics. That's kind of where I come from, that world.
You know? So, just found that interesting. You know, did that for ten years before getting into real estate in general. But
Speaker: yeah. Why? I mean, poker sounds sexy. It seems sexy other than movies. Right?
Yeah. You watch Rounders. Right? Classic. Yeah.
Why did you stop playing poker?
Speaker: The economy of it just kind of was going down. I mean, like, the I get was, you know, at the time, like, when I started playing, it was like the gold rush of online poker because it it was 2003. This is, you know, for I'm dating myself, obviously, but it's like, this was the best time ever to get into poker. You can teach someone to make a lot of money in, like, a matter of weeks. Yeah.
After a while. But then it just started kind of it's been harder and harder, regulations, more everything.
Speaker: Mhmm. You
Speaker: know, when your income isn't going up like, your income should be going up, in my opinion, at a certain age. And when it's not going up, you should be, like, looking for something else. Alright. That's gonna be all.
Speaker: Yeah. And I'm asking that because, like, I also tried going the professional poker route. It did not work out well for me. I never really got into online. I always played, in casinos and so on.
Speaker: You would have loved online.
Speaker: I did it. I didn't have the patience for it.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Like, I could I could sit at a poker table for hours. I was telling Elias the other day, like, my longest session in poker was thirty hours straight.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I could sit there and just grind. But, man, like, sitting on the table like, sitting on with, like, multiple tables going, I just didn't have the patience to I I know I should have.
Speaker: See, I don't have the patience to play live.
Speaker: I have the patience
Speaker: to play 30 games at a time for twenty four hours. Yeah. Then you're playing, like, I don't know. I forget how many games that is, but if, you know I
Speaker: mean, imagine the dopamine is probably hundreds. Crazy.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You're just it's constant decisions over and over and over again. And that was yeah.
It's literally patience is what you need for live. I lacked the patience Yeah. To do that in a good way. So online, here's that because you're playing 30 at a time all day. Always.
Speaker: So, and then I want one thing I wanted to talk about, as as I think will be helpful later on in this episode is you we met at Collective Genius.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And we were talking about our mutual poker background. Obviously, yours is a lot more lucrative than mine. But one of your strategies was bomb hunting. Yes. So for those that are uninformed on poker, what is bomb hunting?
Speaker: I mean, this is kind of the difference. To me, it's like, you know, some like, at the time, I was like, look, I and this is also another reason why you should not do a career. Right? If you wanna stop getting better at something, get out of that career, in my opinion. Like, I always wanna get better at what I'm doing.
So instead of, like, hey, you know, I wanna be the number one poker player of overall talent. Like, that switch my goal was not that anymore.
Speaker: It was
Speaker: like, let's just make as much money per hour while living a great lifestyle of convenience. Mhmm. So I just would play I would just wait for the worst people.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: That's it. I mean, like, they would have tracking of, you know, how much someone is down or up or whatever. This is all, like, essentially public record. So you would I would sit, and if somebody halfway decent or good sat, I would just not play them. And then I would wait for someone bad.
I mean, it made total logical sense to me.
Speaker: Oh, for sure. Statistically, it makes total sense.
Speaker: Yes. As a and that's kind of like a that's like canary in the coal mine.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Like, if you're like, hey. I don't wanna get to be whereas other people are like, I wanna be number one of overall talent.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Like, great. Go ahead and do that. Like and that's what you should do if that's your career. But that was kind of yeah. Yeah.
Only the worst people. I don't understand why this is complicated. Well But this is your poker strategy,
Speaker: and I'm gonna bring this up because this applies to a different strategy later on
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Inside your house buying business.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, it's like, you know, sometimes it's like, you know, you wanna, like, you have to be buying from people who have a motivation. You know? It's like if they're going on if they're if money's getting the most money, like, go on the market. Like, that's just what you should do is go through that.
Mhmm. You know, and that's totally fine. But, yeah, poker is just I don't know. It was just that was, like, the last two or three, you know, three or four years, something like that. Yeah.
And
Speaker: it kinda Well,
Speaker: I guess what I'll go I'll just get into it now. So the reason why I'm bringing it up is, like, your success in poker was, like Mhmm. Let's find the right audience.
Speaker: Yes. Exactly.
Speaker: Right? Like, what who do I wanna play against Right. In poker? Right. Which is very impactful when buying houses is the marketing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right? So, like, where I argue, that realtors get wrong
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Is they just market to everybody. Exactly. Right? Yeah. But for you, you wanna market to the people that actually want your business, that actually want to sell their house for cash.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, and from a data stand I'm again, going back to the statistics, it's like, I wanna market to the people who are most likely to sell their house. Like, if you just bought your house yesterday and we spent money marketing to you, I would be that would I would leave my mind. You know? It's like because that just doesn't make any sense.
Speaker: Yeah. Because, your strategy because, again, I was gonna talk to it later, but we'll just get to it now, was that you were, for a time, statewide. Mhmm. Right? Right.
And so part of that was how do I find the most motivated people in all these different cities versus, like, going really hard in one city.
Speaker: Yeah. I thought that was a good idea at the time, like and it worked fine, but it has its own challenges, which is that it's, like, you know, you're not in someone's house when they're four hours away. Yeah. But, yeah, I I you know, we would come up with, you know, our algorithm of, like, who we'd market to. And I was like, well, luckily, we're, you know, in Austin.
We're so close to millions and millions of people. We just ran the same play essentially over and over again in different cities, and that was, you know, all virtual, basically. Again, just calling in other areas and stuff like that. So, yeah, it was it was kind of, like, you know, similar, like, you know, run the same algorithm for different city.
Speaker: Gotcha. With that is also having the amount of leads, the amount of
Speaker: choice Yeah.
Speaker: Was was almost a negative. Yeah. Like, not not focusing in on certain amount of leads was a negative for sure.
Speaker: Yeah. So how about yourself? What what were you doing before you got into real estate?
Speaker: I did not play poker for a living. I am the bum you'd be hunting. I actually played poker, like, two weeks ago, and I bought in. It was, like, $100 buying. Lost it all.
Mhmm. Only person that bought in again for $50. Lost it all. Yeah. Anyways, so I did civil engineering.
I did civil engineering in college. Studied I was at USC, so not far from here. And then did I worked for a general contractor for about
Speaker: four
Speaker: or five years. And this is my my probably my most fun story. There was a day I I'm in the office. There's a trailer, like, on-site. And, I'm there, like, looking at the drawings with the superintendent, helping the superintendent figure out something because they couldn't figure it out.
Mhmm. They did nothing. Superintendents do nothing. It's it's true. They just they're there because they're they have thirty years in the in the game.
That's it. That's it.
Speaker: You just have to
Speaker: tell the owner they're there. So then the, someone higher up just in the company comes in just yelling at everyone. And they this person was known to do
Speaker: this. Mhmm.
Speaker: And then they finally yell at me, and I was like, I'm tired. So I yelled back at them. I was like, alright. Now my time has come at this company. So I started applying for jobs.
I applied for, like, three or four.
Speaker: How old were you?
Speaker: This was I was 24 or five. You're probably five. Yeah. And so I applied to the job at Chip.
Speaker: The note here is, like, don't come in and yell at Zama.
Speaker: Yeah. Don't don't do that. Don't do that. I will I'll make
Speaker: a jump cherry on a limb in my life. I mean, like, that'd be insane.
Speaker: That'd be crazy. I said, why are we yelling at anyone? It's saying this. But yeah. So I applied with Chip, and this was I applied, I think I applied one day, and then New Year's Day, New Year's Eve that morning at 7AM, they called me on-site at 06:30AM for the saw cutters to come out for the slab and whatnot.
Speaker: New Year's Eve.
Speaker: New Year's Eve. Right? So I'm already pissed that it's New Year's Eve. 06:30AM. I'm the only person on-site.
Saw cutters don't show up till 08:30, so all I'm doing there is email. You know? Like so I wrote a long email to Chip. I was like, hey. You gotta talk to me.
Like, this makes no sense. I don't do what you'd want me to do. This is not the I don't have sales history or anything, but talk to me. He finally called me three days later, which happened to be my anniversary. And so we're going to dinner, and then he called me.
And I'm like, yeah. We're going to anniversary dinner. And so he's like, I'll just call you later. That's fine. I was like, no.
We're gonna talk right now. I've been waiting, like, seven days for this. We're gonna talk right now. There's nothing else I'm gonna talk about at dinner. Like, there's nothing more interesting, so let's talk.
Mhmm. So we talked. We met, and then that's it. We we started from there.
Speaker: That phone goes, like, that was when, you know it's like because I was like, that's exactly what I would say. You know? It's like it's just, you know like, I would be like, let's let's let's talk now. Let's talk now. Let's talk now.
Speaker: What time? You know, whatever.
Speaker: Like, why why put it off?
Speaker: And then remind me again, what is your, predictive index profile?
Speaker: I'm a maverick. You can go either way with us. Yeah.
Speaker: Alright. So definitely don't yell.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: Well and it's it's funny. Right? Not that I talk so much about myself, but, like, one of my jobs, like, I showed up at, I wanna say, like, 08:30 or whatever and or 08:35, right, as an intern. And, like, I'm I I walk up at my at my desk and, like, my boss is there. Right?
And this is an internship.
Speaker: Yeah. Right?
Speaker: So I'm, like, twenty two. And, like, she just starts yelling at me. I was like, I'm here before all the other interns. Why are they yelling at me? Right?
And after she was done yelling at me, I went right to her boss. I was like, what's going on here? Yeah. Why are we yelling at people?
Speaker: Yeah. Exactly. Why are we yelling at people? Engineering as well?
Speaker: This is engineering.
Speaker: Yeah. I don't get it.
Speaker: Why are we
Speaker: yelling at people? That would
Speaker: be a good motto. Why are
Speaker: we yelling at people?
Speaker: This isn't through life. Yeah. Why are we yelling at people?
Speaker: Yeah. I
Speaker: don't I don't get it. So alright. So, you join, Chip. So what were you doing out of the gate? Here's what nobody's telling you.
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It runs your lead management, qualification, call reviews, and sales team management so that the only thing left on your plate is closing deals. It's the same system that took Nick Perry's cost per contract to $450 and cut his team from six lead managers down to two. And here's the promise, 10 signed seller contracts in your first ninety days or you don't pay. Our top clients pull a lot more than that, but 10 is what we guarantee. If you're doing at least three deals a month, click the link below and talk to our team.
Speaker: So, we actually trained for a little bit. We trained, I would say, for four weeks before over the weekend. So I had the weekdays to just go over the script and practice and whatnot. And then getting started, we were in a little WeWork type place in Austin. Just like a tiny office.
We would just go call for call. Right? So it was I was acquisitions. I've never done this before. But I was acquisitions, so we just do one on one.
Just keep going. I I had already learned the script, so now it's just time for practice. Mhmm. We were doing cold calls, old mailer leads. They were actually, like, 300 leads in the CRM that he hadn't touched.
Speaker: This is before objection proof AI. Right? Right.
Speaker: You know what I mean? It's like where you could go in there. The AI.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. It's like this is like when you have when you're the downside of marketing in all these cities is that you have a lot of follow-up to do Uh-huh. And not a whole lot of energy to do the follow-up. Yeah.
And so, yeah, we had a lot of people who would like I mean, we had three probably 300 people who are leads that never even called.
Speaker: Raise their hands, said, I want to sell my house.
Speaker: And I was like I just would look at the notes and be like,
Speaker: It's like, this is the laziest. You know? I was very burned out at
Speaker: this point. I think you called most of
Speaker: the mailer leads. I was like,
Speaker: two children. Yeah. Yeah. I would the the yeah. The cold calls is because they were, like, so unqualified.
I was like, I can't. Like, that's, like, literally forced my end. Yeah. We had a whole bunch of, you know, actually my faults, like, kind of gave you a good practice.
Speaker: You know? There you go. No. And that that's a good point because it's like, I had those 300 leads. First week, we got one deal.
It didn't end up working out. Second week, we got three deals. Out of those old leads, the AI
Speaker: They were on call.
Speaker: They were like a
Speaker: I mean, that could've been six months later. Like, it was like, they were still like, I would love to sell this house, and I was like, I'm not calling you back.
Speaker: You know what I mean? So Crazy. The AI is like the you're making is like that. It's it was definitely better than I was back then. So there's something to be said there.
So that's it started as acquisitions, and now I'm sales manager. We still do a little bit of acquisitions as well myself. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Okay. So how long were you was your business running before you were like, I need help? It was nine years. You did it for Onyal for nine years.
Right. So entrepreneur.
Speaker: I just I don't like working with you know, it's like it took I just liked being able to work for myself. Mhmm. And then I just hit a ceiling. That's kinda how I always think of things. Like, hit the ceiling and, like, if you wanna go farther, you have to change what you're doing.
Mhmm. That was it. I did, like, 36 one year. I think it was 2021. Did 36 deals.
This is, like, flipping and wholesaling and everything. The next year, I went all out again, did exactly 36.
Speaker: I was,
Speaker: like, well, I think I figured this out is that my limit is 36 deals. So if we're gonna go any farther, we've gotta hire. And then first year was when we did 72 or 75 or something like that. Yeah. I was, like, okay.
Speaker: 36 is a lot for one person, though.
Speaker: I was dude, I had I mean, man, I had a kid. Like, I was like, I had I had a newborn. I was like, I was I mean, but that's like, I just work all day.
Speaker: But 36 deals for for an individual Yes. Is a highly lucrative and profitable business.
Speaker: Right? Yes.
Speaker: Right? Like, 36 with a team. I was
Speaker: like, Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: I don't
Speaker: know how we're doing here. You can be super profitable. You'd be super not.
Speaker: Right? This is also Austin in 2020. Like, I'm, you know, I'm a genius because the market's, like, going up so much. You know what
Speaker: I mean? Awesome. It was wonderful.
Speaker: Right. It's like, this is what I'm doing. You know? It's like, whatever. But, yeah, it was it was definitely I mean, I was working all the time, which was fun.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: I like doing that. Yeah. But, yeah, you can't do any more than that.
Speaker: Okay. So 363636. Bring his mind in. 70 plus. Yes.
I guess I mean, this might be an obvious question, but, like, what was the biggest difference?
Speaker: I mean, definitely just the funny part about and this is, like, if you're doing it on your own and then you start working with other people, you see, like and this is for sure, like, any job is, like, you see what other people do and you're, like, that's way better than me.
Speaker: You know what
Speaker: I mean? Like like, so immediately upon doing the sales calls, like, I it went from, like, I was doing 30 to and then, like, he was on the sales calls, and I think I barely got on any. And we did 72.
Speaker: Yeah. It
Speaker: was, like, just it was, like, that's what that you can immediately that's what that's supposed to look like.
Speaker: And you're training him on sales? Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. But it's like you just keep talking. You know, it's like, whereas I, you know, am, like, exhausted after you. You know, it's like that's what that's the difference. So you see, like, that's and you immediately, if you can recognize, like, that's what that's supposed to look like
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: You kind of have a, like, a, you know, epiphany moment. Yeah. That's that's what changed is that you find the right person for doing it, and then I can slide into what I do, which is, like, figuring out what we're doing.
Speaker: You know? So, we talked about Maverick over here.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: And then you're an individual. Right. So I guess real quick, we'll talk about for those that are unfamiliar. So what is a Maverick?
Speaker: I I like to think that we're pretty nuts. Like, you could go either way. Yeah. But it's a great sales profile. We're very social.
We're very independent, flexible. What are I mean, you're better at this than me.
Speaker: Driving. That's why you could you just basically, you just are super independent. You can talk all day. You don't need a huge plan before you're starting, and that can go great and it can go badly. Right?
And if you're, you know, if it goes great, you're great. Go either.
Speaker: Don't need a lot of direction. No. Like, just go do this.
Speaker: Yeah. I don't like the direction. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. So if we say, hey. Just go over there and go do this. Go this
Speaker: is what I want done.
Speaker: And you'll either, like, knock out of the park or, like, completely run it.
Speaker: Yeah. No. I was I actually my crutch is right there. I was looking at it, and all day, I'm, like, just kinda, like, using my shoulders to hold me up. And I just realized there's other holes that make him go higher up, so you don't have to do that.
I didn't read instructions.
Speaker: Yeah. I was like, what is it? Crutches. Yeah. Everything.
Speaker: No. I do not like insurance.
Speaker: That's a perfect example of an art.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And then individualist.
Speaker: Individualist is independent, so I've worked for myself, but not social.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: So it's like talking all day drains me. And then very steady, you know, which is I can sit and do the same thing, AKA play a bunch of poker all day online Mhmm. Over and over and over again without getting tired, and then flexible as well. So, like, I just kind of ready, fire, aim
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, or whatever. So it's kind of like the difference is mostly social and the social and being able to do the same thing over and over again without getting bored.
Speaker: Yeah. And where I would say, potentially, the the the all the leads that were untouched
Speaker: Oh, yeah. The because I'm just triaged.
Speaker: It's the, you operate in your time frame. Yes. Like, it'll get done when it gets done. Yeah. Whereas Mavericks tend to be like, I want this done now.
It's like Yeah. Like, I don't know about you. Right? So, like, for myself
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If I didn't have someone managing my emails, I don't know how many tens of thousands of 100 emails I would have.
Speaker: Oh, man. We're different there, dude. I got zero.
Speaker: You have zero unread emails.
Speaker: Oh, I one. How do you know if you got an email? I don't understand this. Like, no. Zero unread emails for years.
I can't do that. I that's my one, like I but, you know, it's like maybe it's like OCD or something wrong. Yeah.
Speaker: No. No. No.
Speaker: No. We can't have an unread notification.
Speaker: So but that's where so that's where I saw potential. Yeah. But the other part is the social. Right? Like Yeah.
Because and I'm talking about this because I'm an individualist. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Where I don't transfer enthusiasm. Mhmm.
Speaker: Right? Like Yeah. I don't get it. Like, hey. Let's go do this.
It's like, well, what do you wanna do?
Speaker: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I I had such a funny thought. This clicked in my head when Zaman and I went to a networking event.
Mhmm. And we were there for, like, three hours. Mhmm.
Speaker: And we
Speaker: walk out of the event. It's, like, 10:00. I'm exhausted because I just talked to 20 people, you know, something like that. And I'm like, alright. I'm gonna go home and go to sleep.
Zivman, like, runs away from the event. Like, he's like, I'm gonna go like, he, like, got so much energy from talking to all these people. He needed that energy.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: And it's like I was just like, nope. My battery's out. Like, I'm done. I was like, that's that just kind of was, like, the example. And I was like, that's what that is.
Speaker: Yeah. I think I social. I was on x and I saw, like, I think it was a Babylon, bee kind of deal. It's like, you know, they figured out, like, for introverts when they go to hell, it's just a networking event. Exactly.
Yes. Yes. It's just a networking event forever. Okay. So first year.
Right? Knock out of the park. 70 plus deals. Yeah. And how long ago was this?
Speaker: It's 2023.
Speaker: 2023. So then what happens following year?
Speaker: We kinda hit the same amount of deals. It was we did nothing different. We tried to hire a couple people without using PI. We we just do didn't know what we're doing.
Speaker: Are
Speaker: you guys still statewide at this time? Yes. Yes. We tried
Speaker: to build it out at that point. Yeah. Increase the number of deals.
Speaker: Yeah. But it it was we kinda just plateaued there. From what I remember, at least, it was about the the same amount of deals, same amount of revenue, and then we just had hired these people. It just didn't work out at all.
Speaker: When when you say it didn't work out, what happened?
Speaker: I we just didn't hire the right profiles for the for these roles.
Speaker: We didn't know what that would be.
Speaker: Yeah. We didn't know.
Speaker: We just go there. Would have taken the PI at this point anyways.
Speaker: Yeah. We just we didn't know how to process, essentially. Yeah. We we we didn't have a process to hire. It was like, hey.
This guy applied. Let's go to dinner. That's nice. Yeah. Cool.
We like him. Yeah. Alright. And then, like, with our process then turned into, like, hey, Chip. I think we should ask them, like, make a call where they're here.
Like, really throw them off. Like, we do that. Yeah. Like, because it was good. Alright.
You're here. Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know. Yeah. It's like especially because it's like when you get lucky on the first one, then you just think, well, obviously, we're just geniuses.
Speaker: We got all figured
Speaker: out over and over again. Yeah. I mean, who needs any of this? You know, whatever.
Speaker: But I mean, you knocked it out on your first hire. Yeah.
Speaker: Exactly. That's what I mean. I'm a
Speaker: genius. I should just hire everybody just the same exact way.
Speaker: And I
Speaker: we went I mean, it's like take them to the same place that I took them on. Mhmm. The same coffee shop. It'll work out. You know, it's like this is silly.
So it didn't work out? No. So Of course not.
Speaker: So that guy didn't work out. Mhmm. And then
Speaker: Several. There were some I don't even remember anymore. There's yeah. There's a few people that didn't work out.
Speaker: Yeah. I'll I'll
Speaker: Well, also, to the to the okay. We were in a room smaller than this. Probably, what, a 150 square feet? Mhmm. We
Speaker: have no process whatsoever.
Speaker: And then, like, the support side in Guelph Drive.
Speaker: Room. Yeah. I worked out in Guelph Drive.
Speaker: For sure. Like, nobody nobody wants to work there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, in that room with us. Mhmm.
Speaker: So it wasn't their fault either. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So now what changed to break through the next plateau?
Speaker: I think the year after that, we we we hired a couple of decent hires. Mhmm. That was almost more dangerous than the really bad hires because it was like, I think this can work. Mhmm. And then you keep that going for months.
Speaker: Or it should work.
Speaker: It should work. Yeah. And then then we did hire one guy. He's really good. And he just does foreclosure.
And he can sit there and get foreclosed all day. And that that I think that along with us looking for, like you were saying, not really bum hunting, but looking for the right deals rather than just spreading across Right. Everything. But looking for the good ones really saved that year because our mailers were tough. So hires, we were not hiring right.
This is also when we started doing training with you, which really helped. Yeah. And I I don't know. If it wasn't for us actually upping our training
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Getting moving into this curative stuff, I don't know if we'd be doing pretty Right. Which if we were really okay last year instead of that year.
Speaker: And you can tell again, like, just having the right it goes back to the people. Like, all the times, like, Vince then our for foreclosure guy named Vince is, like, he just, like, having no experience doing this whatsoever. Like, we trained him on it. We kind of know foreclosures pretty well because I Yeah. Have I've that was a lot of what I was doing, like, 20, you know, seventeen, eighteen.
Like, I've kind of leaned into that when I was doing it, by myself. But it's like we trained him on it, and he is just getting deals. It's like that those are big deals that we would just do over and over again, and that would, like, you know, help us in general.
Speaker: Well, he's not one of the best. Like Yeah. He's one of the most active people. Right? So we have our He is.
Yeah. Our objection handling calls on Wednesday mornings.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he's often one of the ones raising their hands. And for me, like, a great indicator is someone who's gonna have success
Speaker: Exactly. Right.
Speaker: Is someone that asks questions.
Speaker: That is exactly what I look for in the office. I'm like, who's on their phone? Who's on their laptop? Who's looking? And who's asking questions?
Yeah. It's, like, literally levels. The person asking questions is probably gonna do best. Someone who's just looking at the screen, like, uh-huh. Uh-huh.
It's, like, they're gonna be okay. The laptop ones are usually the bad one. Or they're really good, and they're, like, I don't care. I'm not listening
Speaker: to you.
Speaker: So I could go
Speaker: either way. The worst is the it's pretty straightforward. We had somebody do that. I reviewed a contract with somebody who we had hired. Mhmm.
Like, this is an in Texas, we have a nine it's a 10 page
Speaker: The Trek?
Speaker: Yeah. The Trek contract. Yeah. I reviewed this whole contract. It was, like, in thirty, forty five minutes of me being, like, here's this and this.
I was, like, any questions? Like, no. It's pretty straightforward. I was like,
Speaker: I think we're dead. I was like, I think that's it.
Speaker: You know, it's like, you know, one question. Yeah. It was that was funny.
Speaker: Yeah. It's funny, actually. Ian has his his his red flag. It's like, if an interview, someone has no questions Yeah. He's like Yeah.
Like, it doesn't matter how much he likes the guy. I mean, it's it's consistent. Like, there was a guy who's like, man, this guy's, he's he's crushing his interview, and he's like, do you have any questions? Like, nope. And he was like, that's my only red flag, but it's a nonstarter for me.
Yeah. It's a long time ago. I don't
Speaker: have any questions. We didn't hire
Speaker: the guys. Like, you have no questions about the role, no questions about the company. It's like like, you know, it's pretty straightforward.
Speaker: Yeah. I
Speaker: think that's one of
Speaker: those things that they teach
Speaker: you in college. They're like, make sure to ask a question at the end.
Speaker: You don't do that.
Speaker: It's like, yeah. Yeah. My thing is, like, if you have a resume that's more than a page, I'm like, nobody told you this before. It's like, come on.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Alright. So, so you feel confident about hiring now?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Alright. So More confident.
Speaker: More not yeah. Not not objective. More confident.
Speaker: So what is the hiring process today? Right? So, like, let's go from beginning to end. Right? So you, you guys need a salesperson.
Right. What do you guys do?
Speaker: So we do an initial interview, which is about fifteen minutes
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Of just one on one. I just do those because I'm just, like, looking for that gut feeling again.
Speaker: Well, even before that, they'll, like, wait
Speaker: a minute.
Speaker: They apply. Right. So we yeah. So we set out a job ad for it, which we now, thankfully, using AI, we, like, tailor the job ad for what we're looking for.
Speaker: Mhmm. You
Speaker: know? And, you know, what type of salespeople we're talking about. After people apply, we do an initial interview.
Speaker: Split that split test that too. There's, like, different descriptions for the same role. Mhmm.
Speaker: Yes. We call it territorial sales manager or whatever. You know, like, several different names that will, I guess, hit differently with different people Yeah. Or whatever we're looking for. So we review that.
We do an initial, like I said. Then after that, we usually do a multiple in office at that point. Like, now we're kind of at the multiple in office so that we are still looking for red flags. Yeah. You know, like, give them a couple chances.
Give these people a couple chances to mess up. Mhmm. You know? And they do mess up.
Speaker: Yeah. I think one of the big things that, for me was I I think this is a big movement in what the kind of applications we're getting and the talent we're getting is, we were unsure of how much that position would make. So this is specifically the sales acquisitions role, and we were unsure because we had bad hires before that. So we're like, there's no way they could make this much. Right?
But it's like, if I look back at when I was doing it, I was like, I don't know if they coulda hit that. So we put the number that we thought they should be able to hit in our job description. Mhmm. And immediately, the quality of, like, people applying just went way up. And that person is hitting what we said they would, maybe even a little more.
Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. That is a different So putting the on target earnings on a higher side, you're saying you increase the potential earnings.
Speaker: Yeah. Not basing it off the bad hire, but being a little more optimistic.
Speaker: Had a great person in this role, what
Speaker: would they hit?
Speaker: That's what that's what I think somehow we did not think of that. Right. We did that. Yeah. We were like, what if our past hire is done that didn't work out?
Well, they made this. You know, it's like, well, no. If you had, like, a rock star in this role, like, you know, they're gonna make this much and put so put that in there. And it's like, yeah. If they don't make that much, that kinda tells you it's also maybe not working out.
You know? It's like, if you're making this, like, low amount,
Speaker: it's not working.
Speaker: This isn't working. Yeah.
Speaker: So And we're we it wasn't it's not it was in accordance with, like, industry standard on ROI on your spend. Right. It wasn't like, oh, you're gonna hit a 10 x. It's like, no. We're not gonna have it.
So Yeah. It was it it fit those two. So I was like, why not just market for that? And the talent we got in was just reflected that.
Speaker: So what are you guys looking for in talent?
Speaker: What are we looking for specifically? At this point, we don't know if we're looking for, like, someone with experience in sales, someone that doesn't have experience. It we haven't had I mean, I'll I'll tell you this. Doug have you had Doug Hopkins on this?
Speaker: Yeah. It's been a while. He's overdue.
Speaker: Okay. Well, bring him back because he he said this at CG, and he just said, I've hired so many people. It's still a coin toss. Mhmm. So we come up with, like, you know, oh, we're looking for this, and we're looking for that.
And still, I feel like it's like
Speaker: I do love Doug. I don't think he's a process guy. Okay. Well, what
Speaker: do you look for, Steve? I'm not a process guy. I'm the maverick.
Speaker: I feel like you can have like, you can align on values, which is, like, you know, what are what are we trying to do? Yeah. Right? Like, Carlos is our personality type. Like, we're not Wolf of Wall Street.
That's just not us. Mhmm. You know? And then in terms of, like, to me, it's like I I think we kind of, honestly, like, where we are, you know, it changes all the time. Mhmm.
Obviously, what we're thinking on what we're doing. But, like, I kind of had a thought or, like, in the last couple months, which is, like, you need someone who has the long term vision of the company. Yeah. Right? Like, are they gonna put the company before themselves, like, self be selfless in general?
That's, like you know, and you're kind of modeling it after, like, traits of the other people like Saman is exactly like that. Like, from day one, it's like he's like, oh, we gotta you know, just thinking, like, a long term view as opposed to just being, like, in a selfish view, which is, you know, when you're at a company for a very little part period of time, I could see somebody doing that. Yeah. So, you know, just being selfless, but also just aligning with what we're trying to do, you know, personality wise. Like, as good as super and so when you have the buy in, that just helps everything.
Speaker: Like, culture wise, yeah, that is super important. We actually talked with someone recently, and we're like, this guy seems like a killer, but I just don't see the culture fit. It's like, I think I that's a good point. One of the things we're looking for nowadays is, like, can we spend eight hours, nine hours with this person every day?
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: If that's a no, it's like, doesn't matter how good they are. Every day.
Speaker: Yeah. Every day.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: What what what do you do, Steve? Because you had some great hires. So give us give us some knowledge here. So, I
Speaker: mean, we're looking for closers right now, and our process is I mean, they gotta fill out the job address. They go to disruptorsjobs.com. Right? They gotta fill out the ad. And then they have to take a PI, and, like, they get auto texted, auto emailed.
They have to take the PI. And for sales right? Because we have it for different roles as well. But for sales, if it's not captain, venturer, or Maverick, like, we don't even talk to them. Mhmm.
Right? And it's not that I love Mavericks. You guys are impossible to manage. Yeah. But you guys make good closers.
Yeah.
Speaker: The best.
Speaker: Right? Yeah. So, like, it's just, like, one of those things, like, it's it's there's gonna be painful days, but it works. Right? Or Persuader.
That's the other one. Right? It's like but but, like, the team knows, like, if it's not one of those four, like, the funnels Yeah. Shot. Right?
So then there's that. And then after that, we do the role play. So we use objection for VI. Right? So they have to do the role play.
Speaker: If
Speaker: they don't get at least a 70 in the role play, then, like, we're not even gonna talk
Speaker: to you. Wow. On average
Speaker: try. Wow.
Speaker: Yeah. So they have to know your sales process. No.
Speaker: They just have to demonstrate empathy. Because we use the easiest one.
Speaker: We use
Speaker: Linda Johnson. Okay. You're not
Speaker: using Dick Duane? No. No.
Speaker: Screw that guy. No. No. We're using
Speaker: Linda Johnson.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: I wanna take it. It's hard to take.
Speaker: And then, after that, we gotta have a cog. So, ours is two eighty, which would cut out a lot of people. But Yeah. You know, Matt Vibrock has, helped us source some talent. And we talked about it's like, Ian and I are kinda
Speaker: like what's the word?
Speaker: I won't say we're monsters, but, you know, like Yeah. If you're slow, it's just gonna be bad.
Speaker: Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker: It's just gonna be bad. So, like, there have been, like this this guy's clearly a talented salesperson. Yeah. But going back to, like, the eight hours thing.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Right? Like, if I have to, like, talk to you like, if I have to answer these questions over and over again, like like, knowing myself, if someone asked me a question once, I can I'm happy. Yeah. Let's talk about this. Right?
Yeah. Ask the second question, I start getting irritated. Okay? And you ask me the same exact question a third time. I go to summarize, like, we need we need someone new in this role.
Speaker: Is that impatience good or bad for a sales manager? I don't know. Alright. It's just to do that.
Speaker: I just know, like, I cannot answer the same question from the same person to interrupt. Right now, if you ask me a question and you never asked me a question before and then, like, a couple hours later, Chip asked me that same exact question, I got no problems. In my head, I go, like, I probably should have recorded that.
Speaker: Process that. Yeah.
Speaker: Right? But beyond that, like, you've never asked me that question before. I'm happy to answer that question. Until you understand it. Or you see on the direction, I'll answer that same question over and over again from other people, right, if I've never answered for you before.
Right? But if someone on the team has asked me a third question, like, hey. Like, where do I get this particular thing? It's like Mhmm. Hey.
We need to get that job ad going.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Maybe post it just.
Speaker: Just in case in case.
Speaker: Yeah. Just in case.
Speaker: Yeah. And the last thing for me right now and this is this is over the top. It's not a requirement, but, like, working genius.
Speaker: Yeah. We do. We're doing those too.
Speaker: Yeah. I want galvanizer and tenacity. Galvanizing for, like, the cheerleader. Right? Like Yeah.
The Tony Robbins, like, let's go let's go knock this out. And tenacity, like, you're actually gonna do your job.
Speaker: Yeah. You can tell the tenacity is.
Speaker: The tenacity is a tough one.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tenacity is a tough one. But, you know, I was looking at it in our company, you know, all the people, like, that are just, like I'm not saying that there's not a lot of people knocking up their their their roles, but there there's a handful that are just crushing in their roles.
And it and these are not salespeople. Yes. Right? But the the the the non sales who are just knocking out their roles are a d and a t. Yeah.
So discernment Yep. And tenacious. Right? And then, you know, Amanda Dean, who, like Right. A coach.
Love her. Right? Like, if she didn't require so much money, I would hire her. Right? She's a d and a t.
Yeah. So, like, for, like, just getting things done, d t is the best. For sales, I want Unity, which which, by the way, I have no g Yeah. Or t. Right?
This this is not me at all. Right.
Speaker: Right. Right.
Speaker: Those are exhausting. Have no t. Yes.
Speaker: Our our e encouragement was very low.
Speaker: Yeah. You know, we're
Speaker: like, get it done. I don't know. Just do it.
Speaker: Yeah. Like, why are you asking me how
Speaker: to do your job? Yeah. Why are you why can't you figure all this out
Speaker: on your own but
Speaker: then still work with us? Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, that's I mean, that's the other thing too. Like, we had we we fired someone recently. Not at the company, but, like, at a different role. And, my wife's like, why are we letting this person go?
I was like, because when I pay you, I expect the job to get done without me having to check-in on you.
Speaker: Yes. Mhmm.
Speaker: And that's the t. Right?
Speaker: Right. Yeah. Finish it. That's the like, literally, can you finish the task?
Speaker: If I have to check-in on you, then I feel like I shouldn't have to pay you.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Yeah. That's very transactional. Again, it probably makes me a monster, but that's what I look for. Makes sense. Yeah.
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And we got an amazing keynote speaker, the author of Second Command and Vivid Vision, Cameron Herold himself, who's built $300,000,000 companies like one-eight hundred Guy Junk. And on top of that, we got Facebook, Slack, and Salesforce, and they're gonna be sharing what they only talk about in their private meetings. So if you wanna find out more, comment REITech, and we'll get you signed up for a live event. So, but we so we're talking about, like, you know, getting to 450 deals. Like, what are all the I mean, there's been shifts.
Right? So, like, you guys were multiple states, and then you guys went Austin and or not on into Austin, but, like, you guys focused on Austin. And for me, this is a big deal because I've heard over the years, over and over again, no one can figure out Austin. Right? Like I don't get that at all.
Like, there are major players in Dallas. Yeah. There are major players in Houston. Lots of names in San Antonio. It's always interesting.
San Antonio does seem to have, like, gurus like we do out here in Phoenix.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right? But there are a lot of names in San Antonio, But, like, Austin is always the one, like, no one can figure out. That's what I think is
Speaker: weird too that there isn't like, we're probably the biggest or one of like, if I aren't our biggest, we're, like, first or second of, like, direct to seller home buyer companies in Austin already. It's like, that's crazy to me that no one has just taken I don't I think it's like hedge funds were buying a bunch of, like, very specific things.
Speaker: Even before hedge funds went crazy in Austin. I mean, like because, like, I'm talking about, like, you mean at eighteen. Right? Yeah. Like, eighteen to nineteen.
Yeah. Like, people were like, Austin, we can't figure out Austin. It's like, I don't know why. So I never went I had never interest in Austin.
Speaker: Yeah. I guess it's like I mean, Austin, a lot of the, like, high end. That's the difference, I guess. Is that when we're buying you know, it's like a lot of the houses in Austin, like, yeah, we're not buying the ones that are, like, $800,000 house, like, fixer uppers or something like that, and then flipping it is worth, like, 2,000,000 at the end. Mhmm.
That if you were, like, doing high end stuff, like, that would probably be more difficult. You know? But it's like you can still, like I mean, 2018, you can still buy houses in some parts of Austin for, you know, $100,125, 150, 200,000, whatever. Like, obviously, like, there's a massive disparity in price. I'm guessing the people who were trying to do it were probably, like, trying to buy, you know, the high end stuff.
And they're like, wow. It was really hard. It's like, they all have realtors. Yeah. They all have realtors.
Like, all those, you know, people. You know, and so they're just gonna go in the market, you know, and there's not a lot of stress.
Speaker: So then are you what what is the population in Austin?
Speaker: Austin Metro has gotta be, like, 1.5.
Speaker: So, like, a huge market still.
Speaker: Yeah. It's huge. Absolutely huge.
Speaker: Yeah. So so you have no idea. So this has been a mystery for me, but you guys don't have any
Speaker: answers. It's just like I don't think we're doing anything different than like, we're doing the things we see at CG. Yeah. You know? It's like, what is everyone else doing?
Okay. Let's just go do that. We're actually doing it. And I think the I I don't know. I don't know why people are failing back then.
Speaker: But it's probably great for you guys.
Speaker: It's good that nobody else is there. Understand
Speaker: it. It's like this it's this number, like, you know, it's like numbers. I think maybe it's maybe it's because, like, the housing market went up so much Mhmm. That, like, no one I mean, for a while, like, no one was in foreclosure ever.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: So if you were hunting only foreclosures, like, yeah, guess what? Everyone I you know, like, everyone's above water because their house doubled since they bought it. So maybe this is I don't know. But I don't I don't really understand.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, Austin was, like, the hottest market. Right?
Speaker: Absolutely. For years and years.
Speaker: Yeah. So, anyway, so you guys made a pivot Mhmm. From being in multiple cities and being statewide to focus on Austin. So talk to me about that transition.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, I think it was just, like, we realized we could not some of it to me is, like, it was, like, laziness. Like, we're just honest, like it's, like, I don't wanna go out to the house. Right? It's, like, I wanna see if I can just close this over the phone.
Mhmm. It's, like, you're just getting complacent, lazy, kinda.
Speaker: Yeah. I
Speaker: mean, not literally lazy, but, you know, lazy. Shortcuts. Yeah. Shortcuts. It's like, hey.
Why are we taking shortcuts? Like, let's actually go into the house by you know, just like I used to do. I mean, and this is, like, when I was doing in home appointments, it was not good. Like, I'm not gonna sit here and say I'm, like, the closer of the year.
Speaker: That's what
Speaker: I was gonna say. That it was a good plan for when
Speaker: you were doing it. Exactly. It's just
Speaker: like like he described it to me was low hanging fruit. Just pick up all the low hanging fruit in all of the different cities in Texas instead of trying to battle everyone for the stuff in Austin. Right? Mhmm. Which made sense at that point.
Speaker: Yeah. And it's like, I would not when I was doing it myself, I would be like, if I'm coming out there, we're signing a contract at this price. Like, again, what you described is, like, we're gonna do it on my terms. It's like, if I come out there, we're signing at this price if I want to. Right?
You know, and I, like, really hammer that home. It's like, this is, you know, not the way you should be doing it. Sure. So then it was now we're doing it the right way. So so it's like short of you know that's the point is that it's, like, it's kind of, to me, doing it in the in all the markets where really you're only getting the easiest deals, but, like, you're losing out on quite a few deals.
Like, you can't do you just can't do it that well without having someone living in that city going on appointments. Mhmm. Appointments, you just get it. Yeah. This is the way to go.
Speaker: We we also looked at the numbers on each city. Yeah. Mhmm. And it Travis was just the best. And I don't know we don't know exactly why, but Yeah.
I mean, there's a bunch of force multipliers. Right? We were actually there. We're maybe more confident on the phone and saying, oh,
Speaker: I know where you're at.
Speaker: It was the best anyways. So Harris was the close second, so we kinda kept Harris going, but that also died
Speaker: off. Yeah.
Speaker: Houston. Sorry. And so they'd only made sense. But, again, we picked that up from other people. Like, we heard people say several times, like, go deep.
Don't go wide. Mhmm. Right. They were just like, whatever. They don't know.
We went deep and it worked.
Speaker: Well, it's a consistent theme in Collective Genius.
Speaker: Yeah. Yes. You walk in and you're like, I think I've got this all figured out. And then you walk out and you're like, I have nothing.
Speaker: You know? Like, literally, I
Speaker: think we're still doing, like, all of our, you know, marketing in all of our cities when we joined. And then, like, within six months, we're like, and scrap that. Yeah. Because that's just not what anyone does, like, you know, at a high level. You can do it, and you're just the average it's just not gonna work.
Speaker: You know? And then we started in home appointments as well. Right. Based off of that now we're here, let's go on most of these. And that's helped as well.
What was that
Speaker: texting, cold calling when you were statewide?
Speaker: Oh, no. It would be cold calling.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: There's some direct we were in direct mail.
Speaker: Yeah. Mail mailing and cold calling. Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I was You're doing direct mail statewide? Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah. I'd what I would do is I would do the, like, on the postcard, it would be on the back of it. It would be like a local landmark. Yeah. Right?
This is so original. You know, it's, like, so great. But, yeah, it would be you know, we'd do that, and and they'd call and they'd be like, when can you be here? I'd be like, I'm I can't make it out there right now. Let's just we should just talk over the phone.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: It's like, no. It's like, this is this doesn't work well. Yeah. You know? But, yeah, we were trying to make unique branded to the to the virtual markets, but
Speaker: I
Speaker: don't know. I don't I wouldn't I would never go back.
Speaker: Yeah. So you switch it up. You're I'm assuming you're spearheading the in person appointments.
Speaker: At that point, it was. I wasn't for it. I was like, I love doing it over the phone. For you
Speaker: and Tim to be lazy.
Speaker: Yeah. I was like, this is great. Just do it over the phone. Lazy. But we we started doing more of the in in person appointments.
And then, we hired Rebecca who's Yeah. The she has twenty five years of sales experience, car sales. Mhmm. It's a little bit different, but, you know, it can be applied. And that's where it, like, really took off.
Mhmm. Right. Because she because now she didn't she wasn't trained to, like, do it over the phone. She was trained to go out and do it. Bad habits.
Speaker: Yeah. She didn't have the bad habits. Right.
Speaker: Alright. So you got Rebecca. You got Vince. Right. So you just so since then, you've been hiring.
But every hire has always been in person. You mean in terms of Outside of you two, once you're over the phone, every hire you've had since
Speaker: Oh, you mean in terms of what they are doing Yeah. In person?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, previously, we had hired people who were doing virtual. Yeah. And those were ones that didn't work out. But since we've, you know but it's like they're you know, now that's any hire we make now is gonna be in person.
Speaker: So a common debate we hear, right, is in person or over the phone. Mhmm. Right? Like, maybe not as prevalent today, but it's been a debate for a while. So you guys obviously have existed and both.
You've done Right. Let's just focus on just Austin alone. Right? So what's the difference been in Austin virtual or in person?
Speaker: In terms of, like, numbers, I wouldn't know. But you can just tell I mean, personally, going on appointments, I think at one point before Rebecca was hired, I was counting how many appointments I go on and how many I got, and I was, like, seven for nine. I was like, what how are you doing that over the phone? So maybe I wasn't going on enough appointments. But to me, at least, for someone that can talk to someone, fill that report right in front of them, and it's it's great.
Like, it's super easy for me to do that. There was no reason for me not to go in front of them. So just again, I'm a maverick. I'm subjective. Feeling wise, it felt a whole lot better.
Numbers, I have no idea. Yeah. It was obviously better.
Speaker: But looking at the data
Speaker: Yeah. You it's a bet you they trust there's so many intangibles, but they trust you more. You're a person. Like, they if you're just closing stuff over the phone, like, the amount of times you get ghosted because they're like, well, you just live in my phone. Mhmm.
Guess what? I'm not gonna ever answer your call again. Yeah. And you're gone. You don't exist.
Speaker: Mhmm. You know,
Speaker: it's like when you're in person, you are showing up. You're a real person. You know, you can buy their house. You hear their problems. Like, their you know, it's like their appointment is, like, two hours long.
Yeah. Like, you're a two hour phone call? Like, I'm not that's me, but I would never have a two hour phone call.
Speaker: I guess the the reason we're not able to give you, like, an actual, like, data difference is because we changed a lot of things right when we did this. Like, we went we went local. We did appointments. We hired Rebecca. There were several things that changed.
So it was it was a bunch of all of that, but, obviously, the and we wouldn't be doing that if it didn't help.
Speaker: Alright.
Speaker: But I don't know the exact difference. You couldn't close that
Speaker: many over the phone. Like, you just are not gonna get them. Like, they're just being there in person and showing that you are like, I mean, it's it's a huge transaction.
Speaker: Mhmm. They're
Speaker: like, people are it's I'm shocked that people would sell their house. So it was about, like, in hindsight, you know? The first time
Speaker: I heard that concept, years ago,
Speaker: I was
Speaker: like, this is insane.
Speaker: Yeah. And then you try it and it works and you're like, let me try that and then it works and that's that's the dopamine hit is I didn't even leave my house. I bought that house. I didn't leave mine.
Speaker: What it took for me was buying a house from someone who was out of state.
Speaker: Yes. Right? Exactly.
Speaker: So, like, oh, we can't meet in person. Alright. Let's talk over the phone. I was like, wow. That was really easy.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or, like, were you, yeah. You couldn't even go in the house in the first place.
And it was, like, well, what was to stop me from just buying that other one without ever going out there? And then next thing you know, you're just on your computer, like, no. I can't go.
Speaker: Yeah. And I think that's what COVID is a lot of people do. Right? A lot of a lot of wholesalers, COVID Mhmm. Kinda gave everyone that realization
Speaker: Yeah. That
Speaker: you can just buy the house over the phone. Right. But then, eventually, people were too addicted to that and Yes. Couldn't switch back.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't too addicted to it. I was like, I really have to go on this
Speaker: ten years without addiction.
Speaker: Yeah. It was
Speaker: a hard I mean, I I did it in person and, like, sporadically, but it'd be a lot of, like, you know, if I like, can we just do this over the phone, please? And then, you know, whatever. But yeah.
Speaker: So we're talking about so in Austin, how many deals are you guys doing a month right now in Austin?
Speaker: About 10.
Speaker: Yeah. 10.
Speaker: 10 deals a month. And then so for you, you started off as a salesperson. Mhmm. And now you're managing salespeople.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Let's talk about that journey.
Speaker: That has been, I think and, again, I'll say this. I don't think I'm the best sales manager because I am not patient. Right? The fir you know how you said the first question they ask, you're like, okay. I'll answer that?
To me, if that first question was not worth asking, I'd be like, I'm not I'm not answering that. Go figure it out. Yeah. So I I don't think I'm the best sales manager, but I am able to at least, be an example of what in terms of how to say what to say. Mhmm.
I'm able to do that part. Yeah. Right? I'm able to transfer that to them, in terms of managing the KPIs and, hey. Are you you know, let's go listen to your calls and I'm not the best at that.
So don't take my advice on being a sales manager that that's you. But, the the the biggest thing I'd I'd honestly and I'm not glazing you here. That's a new term if you don't know what that means.
Speaker: I've got For the
Speaker: young ones out there
Speaker: I've got teenagers.
Speaker: Yeah. I've just learned that too. But it's there was a big step up from when we were just kinda just doing it on our own, reading Chris Voss. Like, okay. That helps you a good amount.
Then I would read some other book or watch some podcast, whatever. Yeah. And then actually doing the trainings with you is is is is that much bigger of a step because it's exactly what we need. It's not Chris Voss that's, like, teaching you these strategies that could be used for anything Mhmm. Anything Mhmm.
Which is great. Yeah. But now it's like, okay. How do you apply that exactly here? And here's a talk track to do that.
Mhmm. I will say we took some of that, and we said, okay. Let's do it our way, and let's do it this way. But that gave us a start to say, okay. This is this is how someone that knows what they're doing is doing it.
Let's go try it Mhmm. And then tweak it as as we need. And that's that's that's what I've been able to teach them. Yeah. Like, this is what I do.
Do exactly this, and you'll be fine. Right. You wanna change that? That's on you, but do exactly this because this is what I've gotten from Chris Voss, from Steve Trang, and all these other books I've read Yeah. And these podcasts that I've watched.
So that that I'm able to do.
Speaker: So you're able to model the behavior you wanna see? Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because I think there's there's different, styles of sales management. Right?
Speaker: So you're
Speaker: like, I'm a bad sales manager. No. Like, there's just different sales management styles. Right? Yeah.
Like, what we have right now with Tyler, like, what he can do is, like, he can go and, like, he'll review every single call. I don't know how you guys energy. Right? Like, he he doesn't just review every fathom call from the sales team. Right?
Like, he's just, like, constantly checking, like, where are we with
Speaker: every sees dropping.
Speaker: Yeah. He but, like, he's obsessed with, like, seeing and, like, he, like, he loves, going to go high level. He loves tracking KPIs while also still being a closer. Right? Like, there's there's that person who can go, watch things.
There's a person that can have difficult conversations. Mhmm. And there's the people that can model the behavior. Like, you can't and I can find one that, like, checks all three.
Speaker: Yeah. Right? So you just Bradley Tyler does.
Speaker: He does a pretty good job. He's a he's not a maverick. He's a persuader. But, like
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: We've had to, like, hey. When you talk to your team, you know, like Yeah.
Speaker: Let's demonstrate
Speaker: a little more patience, a little more empathy. Yeah. Yeah. Right. You can't you can't just talk like this to your team.
Right? We had that.
Speaker: Yeah. And, like, I mean, what it is for Zomontu is that, like, I mean, it's, like, he's also he's, like, bearing the lead with humility, which is basically, like, no one studied it more than him. Yeah. Right? So he would just go home, and he would be listening to it all day.
Mhmm. You would be, like, you know, work, like, five hours a day after you do the calls. You'd be, like, podcasting.
Speaker: That that is something I tell every new hire. I'm like, hey. Yeah. If you wanna be in the top 1% of anything, you gotta do what they're doing. And I would tell them, like, I would work, go to the gym, go to dinner, go to my room, either watch a podcast.
I'm not a big reader, so I'd listen to audiobook, watch a podcast, watch a video, whatever it is Mhmm. Until, like, midnight.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sleep, go back, do the same thing for, like, a year. Mhmm. So, like, how much ahead of you in mind now? Like, do you gotta do that if you wanna be good at it? From the beginning.
Speaker: You wanna
Speaker: be competitive.
Speaker: Right. Yeah. Right.
Speaker: Yeah. So when you said earlier, like, when you brought in Zaman Mhmm. Right? So he could take care of sales thing because, like, okay. That guy's doing it right.
Yeah. So you're able to remove yourself from it. Right. And so you could focus on your other parts. Right.
What are you doing in the company? Strategy.
Speaker: I just wanna go back to strategy. Right? Like, it's just like, again, this is the, like, poker this is all like a hand. Right? It's like, we just wanna I just wanna do strategy.
What are we buying? What type of stuff are we buying? Are we, you know, like, where are we going? Mhmm. Are we gonna you know, how are we gonna get there?
Right? If we're gonna go to being a company of two people to 20 to 30 people or whatever, you know, what blueprint are we gonna follow? How are we gonna like, discerning Mhmm. Going back to the to the working genius, my number one is d. And so it's like, I just wanna discern where we're going.
Right? And so I and I also for me, it's like, that way people can know, like, we're gonna be doing this forever. Right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, that's the it's like that that's because that's basically as an individual, it's like our strength is steadiness.
Speaker: Mhmm. Right?
Speaker: So it's like, yeah. If I'm not, like, the greatest salesperson in the world, well, guess what? I'll still be here
Speaker: in
Speaker: thirty years at least. You know? Like, whatever. Like, so you gotta, like, lean in your strengths. Mhmm.
That's my strength.
Speaker: In in terms of strategy, that year that was really rough, I I didn't so when we were doing, like, the curative stuff Mhmm. I didn't even know what that was. Mhmm. But luckily, Chip brought that up in that year, and we were like, sure. I'll give it a try.
And then we call, and we just get massive deals off of that.
Speaker: Mhmm. Right.
Speaker: And that, like, saved the year. So did foreclosures.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So somehow, in terms of strategy, you did have the right timing on that stuff. Right. That was really good.
Speaker: Right. I could have been flipping when the market was going way down. And then we'd be I'd be, you know, not here right now, you know, or whatever.
Speaker: But, you
Speaker: know, it's like so that's the it's like, can we you know? And, of course, like, I feel bad because I, like, had a couple flips not work out, you know, but it's, like, in hindsight, a million times worse is that we just pivoted to not, like, flipping as the market was crashing.
Speaker: What's curative? What's the curative stuff?
Speaker: Well, to a lot of people are doing curative in a very, difficult way, which is how we started. We were looking for title issues and several errors and buying 1% of properties, and you can still do that and try to get it to the finish line. We haven't been able to bring one of those to the finish line.
Speaker: When is, like, 20 people?
Speaker: Well, no. 20 is great for us. 20 is, like, jump on that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'm talking, like We own, like, 3% of some properties where it's, like, this is just over
Speaker: a 100 heirs. Yeah. It's like, what do we do now?
Speaker: It felt so good in the moment.
Speaker: Yeah. And how it's
Speaker: a waste of money.
Speaker: It's a win. Yeah.
Speaker: It's a win. And then
Speaker: It's a win. No.
Speaker: But we're getting it at, like I mean, we're we're getting it at good numbers that's, like, okay. It's worth going and dealing with this stuff. Sorry. To move go back, what is curative? For us, curative is we're looking for tax, delinquent properties or tax lawsuit phases.
I don't know. Different states have different things. In Texas, there's a tax lawsuit. When they're in that phase, there's properties that people have just forgotten. Nobody lives there.
The person died, didn't have children. Now it gets blown up and goes to their family members and their aunts and uncles, and they obviously have no idea. So a curative is trying to go and figure out how to cure this title Mhmm. And deal with the title issues that are there. Now a lot of times, you'll get deals that are maybe four errors.
Amazing. But then you can also go and you're finding out that half of it has 80 errors. Yeah. But that is curative for us. I know different people do different types of stuff.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, it's like solving title. I mean, you
Speaker: know, as a investor, it's
Speaker: like some when you're buying properties right from the seller, sometimes you get that title commitment email, and it's like, oh, god. Here we go again. You know, where it's like, oh, this is this problem and this problem. And, like, back in the day, I probably would have been like, well, this is gone. Right.
You know, like, oh, I can't how am I gonna cure a deed from, like, three sellers ago?
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: You know, what's up with that? You know, whatever. So that is a that's and that's kinda how we, like, backed into it a little bit on that. It's like we we had some problem properties. I you know, I can't think of this specific example of, like, one that we, like that was like, hey.
We've fixed this when we kind of, like, opened our eyes. But you just go and you're, like, well, I don't wanna lose this deal, so let me call this seller, like, who you are not even seller, like, a previous owner from forty years ago and get them to, like, fix this title when they sold it. You know. We I remember there was one where a guy sold a house or he sold this lot for a boat.
Speaker: A $2,000 boat.
Speaker: And the guy, you know, and it was, like, okay. You know, I have this lot and the lot wasn't worth very much. But I was, like, okay. I've you know, he was like, if you can figure out so he had already tried to sell it, failed, because it was he sold it without a deed. He sold it, like, a bill of sale.
Speaker: He
Speaker: sold his property. It just didn't do the right way. So then he just said, hey. If you can figure out this title problem that I have, I'll sell you this lot for, like, like, $2,000. And it was worth, like, 25 or more.
So I was like, okay. You know, let me just go this is back at our original place. Mhmm. Like, I I was like, yeah. Let me just mess around with this for a bit.
You know? It's like, mess around. Call the previous person. He remembered this transaction from twenty years ago. He's like, oh, yeah.
I can I'll sign whatever you need to because that guy did you know? So that seller wasn't really willing to make that phone call or didn't know how to approach it. Yeah. So I saw that problem and got a great deal on a lot. And I was like, so that was kinda and I was like, okay.
Like, you can actually do this and, like, fix problems.
Speaker: Yeah. You
Speaker: know? And before, we just whereas, like, before, you just let it go.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I don't wanna deal with that.
Speaker: Yeah. My favorite one is is is this 1.3 acres in Austin that we got. Two lot it's two lots. It's split on two lots. And, the guy that owned it or thought he owned it was in jail.
So it's like, if you're calling that guy, good luck. So he then I I was just calling random people that were associated with him. It was happened to be his ex girlfriend that called me back. And I was like, what is this about? I was like, here's what's going on.
She's like, that is my ex boyfriend in jail. What do you want me to do? I was like, can you help me, though? She was like, alright. Hold on.
So hers his sister ends up calling me and says, hey. Yes. We actually do wanna sell that property because he owed he had a a few liens on it. So we contracted it, started title work, title work comes back, and there's several issues. There's, a list pendants on it from his one of his family members.
Speaker: Mess. Just like the mess of messes.
Speaker: Yes. And then so we we we find out he only owns half of it. So now we have to go find the other half of it, and this one ended up being pretty clean to where it was this guy's grandmother's ex husband's ex wife. Very clean. That was very clean.
Ex wife's kid.
Speaker: This is, like, somebody got divorced. Somebody got divorced and then, like, left and and the two parties split. One person left it down to their kids, and then their kids thought they owned it. But, actually, like, the person who got divorced, like, they never fixed that issue. So those people unknowingly had inherited, like, half of the property, basically.
This is clean. It's like, this is clean. This is pretty clean. This person, this person, but, you know, it's like, that's just kind of you know, it's like there were there was something and that's like they had tried to sell it before.
Speaker: Yeah. They tried to sell it. They couldn't figure it out. They tried to get a loan on it. They couldn't do it because of these issues.
Yeah.
Speaker: They heard me. Like yeah. It was just, like, they had tried.
Speaker: They were about to get it was about to get foreclosed by the attorney that had a lien on it. Right. So we we helped them out real quick, getting it done. And took care of the family member that had this list pendants and stuff like that.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And you're able to find every person? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Pay them all out.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. We have we we have a guy who's an individualist. Mhmm. Because because like you said, you can sit down and do the same thing all day or with poker, and he's to me, he's the best at doing this.
Like, he will find people where other salespeople, we tried, like, having do this, could not find a single person in that family, and this guy would just, like, find everyone. He'll get to the actual person we're trying to reach. He's crazy at it.
Speaker: Yeah. It is that that's a good profile for doing that. Because you can just sit there and work on one property, like, all day. And then but you also won't quit. Yeah.
You know, it's like you just keep going. Keep going. Like, I'm speaking for myself or I will do that. You know, I'd be like, oh, let's just keep calling and calling and calling, and I'm just gonna keep working on this for, like, however many days. And, you know, and you don't even have to talk to that many people because
Speaker: nobody answers. Yeah. So
Speaker: how many people were there there total?
Speaker: In that deal on the 1.3 acres? Yeah. It was pretty clean having only four people.
Speaker: Okay. Going back fifty years. Yeah. That was the complication. Was that this was a fifty year old issue.
Speaker: These people didn't know each other at all. One was a brother and sister, other was brother and sister. They didn't even know each other or the property or anything.
Speaker: Got it. Yeah. And so
Speaker: but you guys started specializing in these deals?
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: So what does that entail?
Speaker: Well, like like you said, it's someone sitting down looking for people. You're looking for these really hard to find people, people who don't wanna answer the phone because they are either behind in taxes. They've got bills. And you've gotta reach them or their family members, their friends, someone that can help us get in touch with them before they lose this property because they will lose this property because either in foreclosure or tax lawsuit phase.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: So they're going to lose the property, and they're a lot of times, we get people that are like, oh, it's in foreclosure. It's like, it's gone. It's like, no. You can still sell this, get your money out of it. Mhmm.
The tax lawsuit, these people would never be able to figure out how to get in touch with their great grandfather, whoever's kids. Right? It's like they'd never be able to do that. So Yeah. We're actually, like, figuring these problems out to help a lot of people.
Speaker: So then, I guess, we're talking like the niche. Mhmm. It's that you're looking at tax foreclosures or tax lawsuits, and then you're looking for the ones that are like, okay. This one's kinda hairy. And if it's hairy Not too hairy.
Not too hairy.
Speaker: Medium hairy. Yes. Medium is great.
Speaker: Medium hairy. And then you guys get to work, talk to one person, and then that one person leads to the rest.
Speaker: Right. Right. Well, but then the foreclosure, we're not necessarily looking for the the scary ones. We're we're looking for foreclosures, we're just go talk with everyone. Right?
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: A lot of times, it's like they just needed someone to reach out to be like, yes. I do wanna figure this out. Right? Yeah. But, yeah, in the tax loss, it's a lot of times you're trying to reach a lot of people.
You're trying to reach their family, their friends. It it ends up being pretty convoluted.
Speaker: Hard to reach on purpose. I mean, like, these are, like because I mean, you know, I know you've had, like, Res VA on or, you know, and Sean, like, the like, that's our company that we use for cold calling, like, bulk. It's like, their phones are ringing off the hook all day. You know what I mean? Like, it's like you gotta not, like, give up.
You know, it's like calling the keep trying to call the people who, like, the the circle, all their circle. You know? Because they're, you know again, you're never I don't care how many times you sit on the dialer. You're never gonna reach that person in person.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: They don't take cold calls. Right. It's like you're not connecting with them ever. No. You have to have to reach them through an intermediary, which is basically a relative.
Speaker: Yeah. Right. And we had, Crazy Uncle Carl here years and years ago. Right? You guys know Carl.
Speaker: Yes. Similar to that. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. And his thing is, like, he'll just go wherever he thinks they're gonna be hanging out. Right?
Speaker: Not there yet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: So he'll he'll, like, he's, like, he'll find out what bars I like to go to, and he'll just go drink at that bar until he sees them.
Speaker: Wow. So you never give up. There you go. You just keep going.
Speaker: Never do it. You just I don't know why. He's definitely not into it.
Speaker: He's not.
Speaker: No. But I don't know. He's he's an interesting profile. That'd be a fun one to guess. Probably still I don't know.
I don't I don't think I'm Maverick. So I
Speaker: could see that though.
Speaker: Okay. So, like, that was the the so going back to this. So Yeah. Talking about strategy. So you like strategy.
Absolutely. And then you also said you're a d. What's your other one on working genius?
Speaker: It's d and
Speaker: not t.
Speaker: But He was pretty low for both of us.
Speaker: No. Mine's, like, me my worst were g and e. But it was, I forget the others.
Speaker: That'd be either I or w? I. Absolutely, it was I.
Speaker: Because I yes. It's Inventor. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Because I can sit there and think like, if someone brings me a problem, I'm like, let's think of 20 ideas. Yeah. Right? Or whatever. It's like that that's what and, you know, you can see this, like, in your personal life when this happens, when it's like so I'm my one of my bad ones is w, like wonder.
I can't identify the problem. But if you tell me what the problem is, I'll just like, I can go on with, like, how okay. We could do this. We could do that. We could do this.
You know? So it's just funny mixing with somebody who's a w, and then they're, like, thinking of ideas, but they can't do that. You know? It's like
Speaker: Well, that's I mean, so I'm also I and d. Right. And so, like, the the the great thing is having Summer as my operations manager. She'll ask all these questions.
Speaker: Yeah. She doesn't have the answers.
Speaker: She should really ask or just keep asking questions. Yeah. And that's what I need. Yeah. It's the fuel.
Because, like, oh, yeah. Let's do this. Let's do this. Let's do this.
Speaker: Let's do this. Let Yeah.
Speaker: And then it works out. And then we have Ian to galvanize everyone. It's like, alright. This is a great idea.
Speaker: Like, we
Speaker: call him Wags. Wags the troops. We call him Wags, right, from billions. It's like he'll just he'll he'll inspire everyone Yeah. To get it done.
That's bloody. Alright. So then what what is you know, we talk about
Speaker: strategy. Mhmm.
Speaker: We're we we've connected through Collective Genius. So, like, what how are you taking or or distilling? Right? All these things that you're you're you're pulling from the mastermind and figure out, like, which here's what we're gonna do as an organization.
Speaker: Yeah. That
Speaker: to me is just straight the discernment. I mean, like, I I I have to it's like you can kind of tell the stuff. You have to be able to tell the stuff that we're gonna be good at. Mhmm. We won't be good at this or something like that.
Right?
Speaker: I'm just filtering it out. I was like, okay.
Speaker: That's not that's not it. That's not gonna work. Yeah. That's not gonna work. We'll try it.
You know? Oh, this let's try it. Oh, this did work. You know? I mean, and that's it.
To us, like, what we've learned the most is, like, you know, you go into it, you're like, I'm doing a lot, like, you know, this is everybody's like, oh, we're already marketing as much as we could. Like, no. You're not. Not at all. You know?
And and it's like, you know, you so that was one thing that we took from that big time as this earning, like, hey. We could actually take our spend on direct mail from this to this. You know, it's been, like, three times as much. You know? Whereas my limiting belief at the time was, like, hey.
We I think we maxed it out. You know, that I mean, you know?
Speaker: I think it's also, like, looking at other companies where the values align. Like, we're not just taking advice from, like, anyone. It's like we're looking at which companies do our values align with and take the advice from them and model after them. There's companies doing three, four hundred deals a year. The way we wanna pick the ones we wanna, like, model ourselves after, and we we take, you know, whatever they're doing and apply it.
Speaker: Yeah. It's like we wanna model ourselves after the companies that have the same values, as opposed to, like, a turn and burn company or something like that. So, yeah, I don't I don't care how many deal. I don't wanna do the deals like that. Yeah.
It's like so you do a thousand deals. I'm not doing a turn and burn thing. It's like, we're gonna do this, like, the way we're we're gonna be in business for, like, thirty years now. You know? Right.
Speaker: That's what we wanna do.
Speaker: So just find the companies that you like, do what they're doing. I'm not even that complicated.
Speaker: Yeah. You say it's not that complicated,
Speaker: but there's a skill there.
Speaker: Yes. There there yeah. Yeah. They're
Speaker: they're simple, but not easy.
Speaker: Yeah. Exactly. That's where you come
Speaker: in. Yeah. You help us get that skill.
Speaker: So
Speaker: then what are some of
Speaker: the biggest challenges? Right? Because we talked about, like, you know, the salespeople didn't work out. Yeah. But, you know, again, ten days a month.
And then and from again, from what I've heard Mhmm. A very difficult market. Right? So what are some, like, nightmare scenarios or things that went bad? Like, oh, man.
Like, we did we did not see that coming.
Speaker: I mean, I don't ever worry about the things that I cannot control.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Right? Like, so it's like, what if the market goes up or it goes down? It's like, I can't what am I gonna do about that? Right? Like, I mean, it's like we can't control that.
Speaker: Right? So so I
Speaker: try to block all that out. Now, obviously, you can kind of see maybe where it might be going, but I'm not gonna you know, I'm just a very objective person. It's like, we I can't control that. But, like, in terms of the challenges, it just always goes back to trying more amazing people. I mean, to me, you know, this is like I don't know.
I'm always, like, doing sports analogies, which I can guess you can relate. But, you know, it's like, did anyone was Golden State, like, hey. We got Durant signing. Like, I don't know if this is gonna fit. So we kinda got, like so maybe somebody's in position.
They're like, no. It's Kevin Durant. They just go. We'll make it work. Yeah.
We're gonna make it work. Yeah. This is that's the mentality. It's to me. It's just like, you would you know, a couple of things.
One is, like, you just always will find a place for an amazing person. The second is, like, going going back to, like, kind of a game theory thing is, like, what is if some other company did this and they were like, hey, we're gonna have this person and this person and this person, how would I react? I'd be like, please don't do that. Mhmm. And it's like, if they don't want you to do it, then you should definitely do it.
So if you're asking
Speaker: if they if you're asking them, this is what I wanna do, and if they don't like it, then you wanna do it.
Speaker: That's like that's just funny. I've thought about that's, like, how you have to play poker a lot is, like, is, like, what do they not want me to do here? Mhmm. That's probably a good idea to
Speaker: do it.
Speaker: Like, you know, in you know, don't be an evil not in an evil way. Obviously, but, you know, it's like, just that's a good way to determine whether something is a good idea for the most part. It's like, what would you what would they not want me to do here? Yeah. So it's that's it.
It's like if somebody hired, like, all of the best possible people, yeah, then I would not like that if some other company does.
Speaker: So let's do that. Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, I don't know.
Speaker: How much has poker played in your, business?
Speaker: Just from that, I would say. It's, like, just how I think Mhmm. Basically. It just basically trained me for ten years to, like, think in that way because you can't be if you're not thinking about what other people are thinking about Yeah. Or whatever, but you're putting yourself in their shoes.
What are they gonna do in this situation? Mhmm. You know? And you can do that with a negotiation. Right?
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: why would they be doing this? We're talking about this earlier today. It's like, you know, a situation it's like like, you should just tell them to go do this. It's like, they wouldn't they would never behave in this way Mhmm. If what they're saying is accurate.
Alright. They just kinda, you know, that is not accurate.
Speaker: So, I mean, I I would say for me, the the biggest thing for poker where it translates to business is that I am not attached at all to any outcomes. I I am completely detached from outcomes. Yeah. I was like, did I do the right thing at the right time? Right?
Speaker: Results oriented. Yeah. That's what that's called.
Speaker: Well, not results oriented. Right? I'm like, did that make you
Speaker: results oriented is bad. Yeah. The results oriented is bad.
Speaker: Yeah. So, like, if I made this choice a 100 times Mhmm. And it worked out 60% of the time, that was the right choice. Yeah. Right?
So, like, I was I was talking to, Elias yesterday. We're talking about, like, how I'm wired versus how my wife is wired. Right?
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: I am super excited when I shove all my chips in. Yeah. Like, that's why I'm excited.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right? And I really don't care whether I win or lose the hand. Doesn't matter. I'm just excited when I shove all my chips in. Mhmm.
And that's how I have to make my decisions. Like, I'm excited about it. Alright. Given the lay of the land Yeah. Here's all the data we have.
This is the best choice.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: And then we live with it.
Speaker: Right. Yeah. That is like there's a in poker and whatever, like, I mean, any type of there's ex in statistics world, it's expected value.
Speaker: Expected value.
Speaker: Right? So it'll be like, okay. I I'm it's not binary of zero and a 100. It's like, on average, I win this. It's like you just have them and that just helps you kind of, like, make the right decision over and over and over again.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, obviously. But if you're on the right track, it works out in the end. Right. No person can get unlucky for twenty years or whatever. It's like you just keep
Speaker: It'll work out.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah. It's like so that's how I think about everything at this point. Yeah. For better or worse.
Speaker: You go against that. Depending on the size of the decisions you're making, you could go unlucky for twenty years. I could see that happening.
Speaker: It'd be a very small sample.
Speaker: Yeah. You because as soon as you don't make those decisions every day, you're making them every five years.
Speaker: Yeah. But then you have to So
Speaker: you might not have you might not live long enough to have that integrated.
Speaker: So I think what I learned since then is that if I do make this decision, can I live with the consequences? And if I can't live with the consequences, then I cannot make that decision. Right? So that's the that's the last caveat, which is, like, you know, never put yourself in a position where it's game over.
Speaker: That's a good one.
Speaker: Yeah. I like that.
Speaker: Well, you just talked about going all in. Yeah. I get it though.
Speaker: Yeah. But I mean, like, it it was hard for me, right, when I shut down our our house buying business. Right? It's like, this is Yeah. This is a major decision.
Right? But it's like, well, you know, can I live with the downside? Like, I can live with the downside. Right.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: But go going back to the challenges real quick, you talk about the talent. It's also you get that talent, but if you don't have the process set up for them, they're not gonna like you. They're not gonna like you a lot. So, like I said, process is not good for me. I'm not not a process follower, but I had a process that I was following.
At the end of the day, it's all in my head. So I just try to put that into paper, process mapped it, whatever it was, built a team around that person. And that that was the second challenge. It's like, we can get that person now. Make sure that they're only doing what they are good at.
Mhmm. For example, like, some people you ask them, like, hey. Put this in the CRM. The most simple thing ever. They cannot do it because that's just their profile.
Right? They're they're not gonna be good at it. So we end up, like, hiring a VA just to do that for them so that they can just do what they're good at. Yeah. And that that was a challenge for me being a maverick.
I was like, just do it. Right? Just figure it out. But it's like, no. You gotta have the processes.
And I I think that's where it's a lot of times, I wanna, like, just be weak and go I think if you get a talented enough person, they'll just figure it out.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: But it's like you can't always come across those talented people, so you've gotta have a good enough process to where you can plug in people that, I mean, for people out there that probably watch your podcast, like, they're one man shows. Right? They're trying to do it themselves Mhmm. Who might not be just naturally have that instinct that I'm talking about. Right.
But if they have a good enough process, they'll still get a deal. Like, you're still gonna get a few deals. If you have a good enough process, anybody's gonna get deals. Yeah. I mean, we more we know that more than anyone because it's, like, not to put them on blast, but, like, the guy who I said is really good at what what he does, he's four years out of China.
Mhmm. Like, he went to UT. So his English isn't, like he's not all the way there with the English. Mhmm.
Speaker: But he's killing it.
Speaker: Yeah. Like, if you just have a good enough process, stick to it. Over time, you will get some deals.
Speaker: Yeah. So, getting someone to go do it and you are like, well, go figure it out. And he said it was hard for you to put up with, like, why can't they just figure it out? Right. Yeah.
What did you have to do so that you could, you know, not be so angry?
Speaker: Amanda had to yell at us. They yelled at us a
Speaker: lot. Get someone to yell at you.
Speaker: Yeah. Like, I was
Speaker: like, I'd pay someone to yell at me.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. Literally, like, this was they were like, you have to do this.
It was like putting us on a pit. They were like, you guys don't have any process. Figure out your process.
Speaker: Someone put you on a pit?
Speaker: No. Someone's hair.
Speaker: Us. Now once once they, like, you know I mean, once someone shows you, like, this is what, again, to me, I always default back to, like, what is normal what is what are other people doing that you're not doing? And so they just come you know, somebody's coaching you. They're like, this is everyone else is doing this except you. Yeah.
You know? Do it. It's like, alright. Well, that that's enough. That's all the evidence I need.
Speaker: That's fair.
Speaker: Yeah. Like, I'm not we're gonna sit here and read them at the wheel. I'm just gonna do it up. You know? It's like I
Speaker: was arrogant enough to be like, nah. I'm resistant to it, obviously.
Speaker: I'm still resistant. But, like, you know, I'm resistant to it. But it's like, hey. It's like, it's your own choice. If you don't do it, you're not gonna get there.
Like, you always said this with, like, businesses, you know, like because you're you always bring it into, like, huge businesses. You're like, there's absolutely no way that, like, you know, this random comp like Apple or something doesn't have a process for doing that. They're not just, like, we gotta only get rock stars. You know, it's, like, at, like, the Apple Store. You know, it's, like, they're gonna, like they have a process.
Otherwise, like, because they're just hiring a lot of people.
Speaker: Yeah. They'll just fail.
Speaker: They just yeah.
Speaker: It's like Yeah. There's no way they're
Speaker: all rock stars. Right? All rock stars
Speaker: at Apple.
Speaker: That that can't be the game plan. All rock stars. It's It's like you have to be able to
Speaker: And that's where it took me back to, like, the engineering of it. I was like, okay. So this is just like a whole it's just engineering. It's like, I always think about, like, the McDonald's movie. Uh-huh.
What is it called?
Speaker: Anyways The founder.
Speaker: Founder. The founder. Where they're standing in the tennis court, and they've drawn everything on the thing. Like, even Gary talked about this. It's like, that's what you're doing.
You're just like, throw everything out. Mhmm. Put them in their position. You put the potato in, the fries come out, falls in the fryer. That's all you're doing.
Speaker: And I
Speaker: was like, oh, that makes sense. Yeah. I was like, alright. I gotta do it.
Speaker: Yeah. So then where do you draw the line from, like, rock stars to, like, someone that can follow a process? I'm asked that question. I don't have an answer.
Speaker: Yeah. That's the hardest question I've ever heard. Let's see. I I
Speaker: think it's honestly, like, a lot of it goes back to again, do they align with everything you're doing? You then coach them up. Like, you know, you're not, like if you're hiring them, you wanna work with them. Obviously, by definition, you're hiring them. You wanna work with them.
Yeah. So as long as they're aligned with everything, like, why not pour it? That's, like, the most fun thing ever is pouring into somebody who wants to learn it, and then they won't have that problem. I don't know.
Speaker: My my opinion on that is, like, you have certain things in your process that are, like, you have to do this, and the others are, like, if you don't do that, it's it's gonna be okay. Mhmm. But I'd like for you to do that, and you gotta put up with that. You're not gonna find a rock star that's just gonna do everything you need them to do exactly like you need them to do it. So it's like, if I can put up with the small stuff, but you're doing the big stuff Mhmm.
Good enough. I'll figure out the other stuff. Don't worry about it. Or we'll change the process to build it out around you. Right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If they're rock star enough. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. So, other major challenges over the years.
Speaker: That was already a
Speaker: thought. Yeah. That was yeah. No. That I think that was that's a nice challenge to have at the end because it's like, this is what I'm calling the end is, like, this past year.
Yeah. But before that I haven't heard
Speaker: a lot about moving properties. We've talked about the acquisition side.
Speaker: Is that what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker: if you get a good enough deal, it will sell.
Speaker: Like, I can't the way it is in Austin?
Speaker: I still have a I believe that everywhere.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, it's like sell you'll sell a deal. Like, I was talking with somebody who I've just, like, a week ago, I was talking with somebody who was trying to get their first deal. Right? And so they called me, trying to add me to their buyers list. And they're like, well, I'm really trying to get, like, five or 10 really good buyers in this, place, like, an hour outside of Austin before I started making my calls.
And I was like they were like, so that way when I get a deal, I just have five or 10, like, rock, like, you know, rock solid people. I was like, you're I now you're just like, not do that at all.
Speaker: I was like, just just
Speaker: go get the deal. It will sell
Speaker: itself. Mhmm.
Speaker: That's it. I mean, like, I I this is a different time, but when I the first deal I ever got, I put it on Facebook, like, in this Ria group, and somebody called me nine minutes later. This is, like, a good friend of mine still, who I love, Aaron. Alright. Right?
He called me nine minutes later and was, like, I'll take it. Right? It's like it was a good deal. He bought it in nine minutes. It was, like, yeah.
I know that street perfectly. I'll take it. There you go. It's like the deal sells itself. Like, you don't build your list, like, before you have anything to sell.
Like, you just get the good deal and you sell it.
Speaker: What you're saying right now makes total sense. Yeah. Feels like it's common sense.
Speaker: Mhmm. But I
Speaker: don't think that's actually how it's taught. Really?
Speaker: I
Speaker: think if you listen to Wholesaling Inc, I think it's always in the beginning, I think it's about, like, build your buyers list first, which I never subscribed to. I was always like,
Speaker: no. You have
Speaker: a good deal. Like, it'll move. But I I'm also in Phoenix. Right? Like, in Phoenix, we got a good deal.
It's gonna move. Right. Like, there's there's it's impossible not to sell a good deal.
Speaker: Unless you're
Speaker: in the middle of nowhere, like, it might be result. But, also, like, if you were in a place where there's no population or buyers or something, but, like, I don't know about that. But, I mean, I was told to say, you can still get a deal on the market. Market. Yeah.
Like, just get a good deal. Like Yeah. The worst thing you can do is like, yeah. The the, you know, the hardest part is selling a bad deal. You cannot sell a bad deal.
Like, so what do you even Or you're a bad person selling a bad deal. Well, it's like it's you know, who wants to even do that? It's like, you know, but you you just, like, you just get a good deal that makes that makes sense for the buyer, and you'll find the buyer.
Speaker: Well, you know, here here here's where my my experience is. And maybe this is just an outlier because, like, New Mexico sucks. Right? So, like, when I'm like Jake. Like, when we're
Speaker: Whole state.
Speaker: When we're in,
Speaker: yeah, the whole state. Sweet. So, like, in Phoenix, like, I got a deal. Like, it just moves. Mhmm.
Right? And, like, we were locking up deals left and right in, like, Albuquerque and in Santa Fe. Yeah. And they're like, yeah. Like, I'll go drive by next week.
I was like, what? Yeah.
Speaker: When are
Speaker: you gonna drive by next week?
Speaker: Yeah. We're looking to sell it right now. So, like, or, like, when we were in, we were in Oklahoma City for a bit. And Oklahoma City, you can you can move deals, obviously, but, like, the the title companies move so freaking slow. It was unbelievable.
Like I didn't realize, like, how important for like, how competitive Phoenix is that Yeah. Like, if you're if you have crap your service, like, you're getting dumped. Right? Because there's another title company ready to take your business. Right.
Oklahoma City does not appear
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: To be that way. If it is, I can be completely wrong. But in my experience, they didn't give a crap about my business.
Speaker: Yeah. Oh, that's just the wrong title. But yeah. I mean, I think it's like, you know, you, like, you can especially going the deal of getting, like, getting a deal, selling it. What I would do for this book, going back to, like, how are we dispelling stuff, is I would be bouncing it off.
Like, so when I wholesale that first deal to that person in nine minutes Mhmm. I got another, like, deal that I thought was pretty good. Guess who I called? That person. Yeah.
I was like, hey. Does this make sense? And he would say, oh, like, you probably need that a little cheaper. Like, bounce the idea off them because that's because I was a starting. You know?
It's like, that's the value there is that once you do have a deal and you've proven that you actually actually can get good deals, they will listen to then when you bring them more, they will, you know, treat you with a respect as opposed to if you go out there and shop a terrible deal. The next deal you have, they're not even gonna respond to you. Right. Because you just waste you know, it's like these are not good. So that's what I would say is, like, you know, both in terms of how weird dispelling deals are, you know, or how I was doing it.
And then even after some months started, it's like, we'd be bounced like, especially in other markets
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: For Houston, it'd be like, hey. You know, we talked to our person who we had sold through, and we're like, is this a good deal? You know, can you move this? And they would say, yes. Absolutely.
Go lock it up. Alright. Great. We're gonna get that under contract knowing that it's gonna go you know, and you have to trust the person you're
Speaker: talking to. With them. Yeah.
Speaker: With that. They get to trust that person Mhmm. To, like, not make you get a deal under contract that that is not gonna sell. You know? Oh, sorry about that one.
You know? It's like, no. You have to trust them to do that. But yeah. I mean, that's how you can start.
Speaker: Yeah. I think the challenge now that we're actually doing, we're not JVing on our dispo anymore. We're actually doing our own dispo. Is, there's a lot of process like, we talked about this with, one of our consultants recently, and it's there's a lot of processes built around acquisitions, and we don't have any process around dispo. So going back to that process, that's still a challenge even in dispo.
It's like we don't have any process there. So we might be feeling that person that's doing the dispo, with also not giving them sufficient training. Right? I don't think we're stressing on them enough to even attend your training for that.
Speaker: Saying we have those dispo training
Speaker: calls. Right. And I don't think they've gone to them in, like, weeks because we're not, like like, acquisitions were there every every Tuesday, Wednesday. Like, why not dispo? Right?
Yeah. So it's, It happens to coincide with our billing. True. True. True.
True. Yeah. But but, yeah, the the the dispo doesn't have any processes. So building out that that is like, on the acquisition side, at least this exact sales process on, like, what we're doing in an appointment, that was, like, handed to us from what you're doing. Yeah.
Right? That was kinda when we started doing in person. We were like, okay. Let's just do what he's doing. And we took that and we did it.
This will I don't know. I haven't been to one of your disposal.
Speaker: Or It's
Speaker: also because we've hired I mean, how many acquisitions we've all have we ever hired? Right. 15?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We've hired two dispo ever. Yeah. It's not like we're in the you know, if you went back to, like, our third or second time going to an acquisitions, are we still in the process? Right. So it's, like, kind of that's
Speaker: So we talked about, like, who you guys looking to hire. Right? Like, you know, the how to get through the, what you're looking for in in in a salesperson. Why does someone work with you guys? Like, what what is compelling about you guys that they should actually go work for smooth closing?
Speaker: I'll never tell
Speaker: you about anybody.
Speaker: Alright. Never yell. Can you confirm?
Speaker: Yeah. No. I can confirm that.
Speaker: Pretty wild.
Speaker: No. I think a big thing is I don't think people understand like, when people work with like, coming from where I came from and what I was doing, I was like, people that just come in here as their first job, I'm like,
Speaker: you guys don't know.
Speaker: It's like you guys do not know. Because it's like it's it's literally this is like heaven in a job. Like, it's what do you guys do? Like no. I'm serious.
So so the other day, we we were interviewing with someone, or we interviewed someone, and she texted us saying, I've never left an interview feeling like I was met two old friends or whatever. Mhmm. Like, that's just how it is in the office every day. Yeah. And we're it's we're we have that hustler mindset, but it's not The Us.
Wolf of Wall Street mindset.
Speaker: Right? We're not coming through widgets on the
Speaker: Yeah. Companies do that too. That's real. Yeah. Yeah.
Shaving their heads. We're not doing that. So there's that hustle mindset. Two three. Shave ahead.
You go. What? No. It just it
Speaker: just, like, does it make you know, are you working in an environment where first of all, I can't this is, like, my whole philosophy from the beginning is, like, I can't imagine doing a job I'm not having fun at
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: And enjoying. That seems crazy to me. It is I mean, I'm sure it's same with you. You're like, wow. I'm just gonna work I'm gonna do whatever I want.
Right?
Speaker: Like
Speaker: yeah. It's like, why would you so it's like, to me, it's if you're coming and working with us, like, first of all, you have to enjoy what you're doing. If you're not enjoying it, that's insane because you whatever. But, you know, it's like and then it's like everyone's gonna be around you. Again, why like, going back to what I was saying about why Zman is so great at what he does is because he's just selfless.
Right? It's like, why would if you wanted to work again, like, if your competitor was like, hey. Everyone here is completely selfless and is just going above and beyond for everyone. Like, I would be like, damn. Alright.
That's a that's a that's a company that I want that we're gonna take a pee with. That's gonna be really hard. It's like, that's what we do. Right? It's like you gotta be like, we're the selfless company that is helping everybody.
Who even cares, like, about whether it's it's benefiting that individual person? It's all about, like, our is this what you know, helping out the team. I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah. It ends up benefiting you anyway.
Speaker: Yeah. Sure. Yeah.
Speaker: But they
Speaker: don't even need to. The trustworthiness is a big, big aspect of it. That's one of our core values in our industry. Unfortunately, there's a lot of just shady, shady characters. And, we've had to deal with that happening to us or to happening to one of our sellers.
Right? This is this happens all the time. Yeah. And I think, people wanting to join this industry could easily fall into one of those companies Right. That, like, Chip says, turn and burn.
Like, they're just gone one day, and you don't have a job anymore. And Chip always says this to people that we're gonna we're interviewing. He's like, I'm gonna be doing this for, like, the next forty years. So that trustworthiness has to be there. Like, we you can't have a bad reputation and be in business for forty years.
So, you know, if for someone wanting to work with us, it's like you better align with that. And if you align with that, it's I wouldn't say it's hard to find, but it's not you can easily fall into companies that don't work that way.
Speaker: Right. Yeah. They're very transactional companies.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. So we talked a lot about, like, you know, the company and so on. It's like, what are you or anything like, what is what do you wanna be remembered for?
Speaker: What I wanna be remembered for in the company or period? Like, when I die.
Speaker: Period. Period. Wow.
Speaker: Oh, man. I wanna be a billionaire on a yacht and be on my island. I don't care who knows me. What do I wanna be remembered for? I think I think yeah.
We'll all go. Take me right here. It's starting to get a weird island now. I don't know. But I think I think the one thing that's, that that if you ask me if I really wanna be remembered and be that egotistical about it is helping the people around me, my family, friends, is like, how do I make sure everyone's good with me?
Mhmm. And I think Sharp Sharper put this in a good way. It was jump just to unleash your potential to my potential, so it's j u m p. I'm always telling people, like, just take that next step. I find people all the time just stuck in their jobs that they don't like, and I'm like, dude, do the like, I have engineer friends, and they're like, like, do the PE.
Go get a different job. Like, why are you not doing that? Mhmm. I'm that person that's always, like, pushing people. And that's Right.
I think what I'd wanna be remembered at.
Speaker: It's PE, professional engineer.
Speaker: Professional engineer. Yeah.
Speaker: That's still a thing?
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you gotta do it.
Speaker: I'm not familiar.
Speaker: It's the FE and then the PE. What? Engineering training, that's EIT. FE is fundamentals of engineering, and then the p is professional.
Speaker: I never got that far.
Speaker: You never know.
Speaker: Yeah. I want to know either. I never got that far.
Speaker: Yeah. They talked about it when I was an engineer. I was like, that that doesn't seem like something that's really worth doing.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, that's, like, a good example of, like it's, like, you wanna hopefully want like, I mean, we haven't talked about, like, Toseif. Right? Yeah. So we the this one person overseas has this is actually predates them on.
Right? So I hired somebody to do calls in 2020 or 2019. This is a kid at the time. He's, like, 19 living in Pakistan supporting his entire family, like, through this. He's getting deals.
Again, he's getting he's getting deals in Austin, foreclosures from Pakistan that I am then closed. Like, he's basically an appointment center. So then, like, after, you know, Zaman comes on and, like, he's still doing you know, he's still providing leads. I get you know, he's cold calling, he's still texting, whatever, working crazy hard. He's like, hey.
It's I think he became 23 or 24 at that point. He's like, hey. It's my dream to come to America, you know, and or get out of Pakistan, essentially, and move to another so we're like, alright. Let's do consultations with, like, immigration lawyers. Like, you know, I was like it's like, because this guy is like, this is his dream, and he's crushing it.
He's like the best ever. Like, I've I talk about the struggles. It's like, I probably hired for VAs. I think I've maybe hired 80 VAs to go calling over, like, cycle. It would be, like, 10.
You know, I'd hire 10, then they'd be calling foreclosures in all these different markets. It wouldn't work. Whatever. Like, over and over again. And then but Toseev was literally the second person I hired.
He's, like, still doing it. And it's, like, we cut it all down towards just him. Right? It's, like, he'll never you know, he's got a job for life. It's, like, he's because he works so hard at it.
But it's like, yeah. You wanna see him, like, get achieve his dream. Like, that's that would be super fun, you know, or do whatever his dream is. He's in Spain now. Living it up.
Speaker: Yeah. So
Speaker: you got him out of Pakistan.
Speaker: He got I mean, he got himself out. Yeah. But, yeah, he got himself out of Pakistan and he's like, oh, I don't know if I wanna we we put him up, like, remember that when we got him a hotel
Speaker: at the we he had he
Speaker: had he had never left the country before. So he had to leave the country as part of, like, the whatever, establish a a visa.
Speaker: A little adventure there.
Speaker: He had to go on a vaca he had to leave the country to show that he would leave the country and, like, come or whatever. So we're like, okay. Great. So he goes to I forget where.
Speaker: Somewhere.
Speaker: And now they're kind of neighboring country. And I'm like, alright. Great. You're gonna, you know, I, he gets a hotel. And then day three of him being there on a week trip, he's like, I haven't actually left the hotel yet except to get cigarettes.
I was like, I was like, what are you doing? You're in a place you've never left your own country. Like, what are you doing? So we then, like, buy him we go on, like, TripAdvisor or whatever. I buy him experiences.
Right? Like, I'm like, you're going on a hiking trip with, like, all these people you don't know
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Or
Speaker: whatever. Just forcing him into this. And then he gets he goes, does it, like, has, like, the time of his life. And he's like, this is amazing. He didn't end up in the back of a police car for, like, a year and a half.
It was all fine. Right? But but it's like, yeah. Just go do it, dude. You know, like, so he just he didn't know how to do it, you know.
So it's like yeah. That's, like, the most fun thing, you know. It's like just being people, like, live their
Speaker: best life.
Speaker: Yeah. Just getting people to, like, do it. Do it.
Speaker: And what do you wanna be remembered for?
Speaker: I would say just being, like, somebody that ran a company in a legit and ethical way for, like, decades. Right?
Speaker: Yeah. It's like I
Speaker: don't know. It's like that's where it's like, hey, this person did something, and this is a reputable thing. Right? I mean, that's to me is different. You know?
I don't know. It's like that's that's the main thing. It's just
Speaker: Yeah. I think that the reputation thing is a is a huge thing for Chip and for myself. Especially. Just because the industry run is it could easily be looked on as change.
Speaker: I mean, there's some big laws. What was it? I think Missouri passed a law. Right? It's, was it, like, they had, like, some, like, crazy rider rescission?
Speaker: Mhmm. Oh, wow.
Speaker: Yeah. I'm I don't foresee regulations in Texas coming anytime soon. Mhmm. So, what is your what is the team's biggest struggle today?
Speaker: To me, right now, it's when you're adding more talent in, those processes that you work so hard on have to change.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Like, you
Speaker: add a lead manager, now that whole process is different. It's not, in theory, it's the same, but that that now you're gonna making the whole thing and make sure everyone knows that, make sure everyone's following that. To me, that's the because I'm dealing with acquisitions, that's the biggest biggest challenge right now. And then, you know, talent as well. That.
Speaker: I think it's also that you build something. Like, you're building processes that all involve you in some way. And now you've built a process where you're not involved at all, and it still has to work. So you basically this is like like SimCity or something.
Speaker: Yeah. From back in the day.
Speaker: Right? You're like, okay. Now these two other people run my process together. Did it work? You know?
And it's like, that's the hard part. Is that it's like the process will when you're running that process, if you're involved, it will always work. Mhmm. Because you're gonna just make it work. Like, I would just make it work.
Whatever. But it's like, when people who are not it sounds crazy. It's like, when people are not us are doing the process, can it still work? That's the test. Right.
It's like, you know, it's like so having that's the problem with building out the company. The hardest part is that you then obviously are having tons of interactions that we're not involved in, and then you have to, like you know, hopefully, your process works at that point. And if you don't have one, you're
Speaker: But but the good thing is we're, I guess, standing on the shoulders of giants Mhmm. Because this is all taken from other people that are really good at it. Yeah. Yeah. Yourself as well.
Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. And my struggle is definitely in that regard. It's, like, not necessarily when I'm removed from it, but then, like, the people that are in charge of it Yeah. And then they get stuck.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Now I have to pay complete attention. Right? Like, hey. Something broke. Okay.
Now let's like, we have to have, like, a full, autopsy. Right? Like, what broke? Right? Then Yeah.
It's exhausting. Yes. Right? When you had to figure out, like, now we have to come in and, like, really deep dive. Like, okay.
Why didn't this work? Whereas, like, when you're in it, like, hey. It didn't work. Okay. Well, just do this.
Speaker: Yeah. Right?
Speaker: Because you're it's you're very involved. But, like, when you're out of it and then someone else is not overlooking it and then they come to you like, oh, man. Like, this is this is bad. If you guys can't figure out, this is bad. So
Speaker: yeah. That was like that's what the only like, that's interesting from an operational standpoint is like, yeah, I don't wanna go fix, you know, it's like, oh, no. We have to do this autopsy in the process. From the sales standpoint when it's not working, that's actually kind of, like I remember the you know, we've had times where, like again, the the role that at this point that I would most do is the kind of curative role. Like, call, research, call, research.
When we had people doing this and, like, if they didn't get a deal, like, I remember it was, like, once or twice where, like, they haven't got a deal for a bit. And I just then we showed up that day and we had, like, added on their KPIs, like, then it was, like, fine. Or, like, right below it. And I was, like, guess what? I'm coming off the bench right now.
Like, I better not get a deal before you guys. Yeah. Because, like, I'm I'm just starting today. If I gotta do it for you guys, like, that's not gonna you know, like, I should not.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Like, so I got all this other stuff to do, and I'm gonna be doing your job. That was fun because it's, like, competitive. You know? You just, like, that's, like, lights a fire. Everyone's, like, let's go.
You know, like, don't let you know, Zaman's like, don't let Chip
Speaker: get a deal before you. Like, you know, you
Speaker: are a natural salesperson.
Speaker: He's a sinner. He's doing all this other stuff. Like, don't
Speaker: you know, he's, like, don't
Speaker: let him get a deal,
Speaker: you know, whoever, like, you know.
Speaker: So
Speaker: that was fun.
Speaker: But Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Operationally, maybe you can find someone who can who has the same, like, oh, the process is broken.
Speaker: No. It's not it's not fun. I don't think it's ever been fun. Right? Sales sales part is fun.
Yeah. They might be cursing, but it's fun. Yeah. But, yeah, the operation is, like, never been fun Yeah. To solve operations.
No. Alright. So, what are some last thoughts, you guys like to leave all the listeners with? I'll start with with you.
Speaker: Dang. Give me the hardest job. Alright. Last thoughts. I think, for us I mean, really, I I I don't have any thoughts on what we're doing or anything, but, I I I thank you for the process you've given us because, like, when we were when we had that rough year and chip for the strategy, just changes in strategy of, like, of what we were doing, it was, especially with the Curative stuff, using a good process is like stairway.
It's like, nobody's doing that. Nobody had that. Nobody had that in their playbook. We had it, and that really saved, like, a good year, a good chunk of our year of, like, holy crap. If we didn't do that, we'd be bad right now.
But for anyone out there, like, that's that's trying to that's watching this video, trying to figure out what to do, how to do it, like, get a good process, do it for long enough, make sure you don't lose your shirt, you will get a deal. That's it.
Speaker: That's all it is. Simple as that. It really is that simple.
Speaker: Yeah. I I think it's, like, piggybacking off that. I think it's just take action. Mhmm. You know?
Like, you can't, like, there if and you can even, like, be introspective. Think to yourself, like, am I a person who naturally is pushing? Like, I'm not, like, the most aggressive person compared I've asked to, like, you know, Maverick people who are just, like, don't worry about that. You got that. That's baked in.
But, like, you know, if you're if you feel, like, naturally, you're kind of you hold back, like, push yourself. Realize that you need to be pushing yourself Mhmm. To take action. You you can't study something for, like, a year before doing it's like it's like the who study for months and months and then haven't made a call. Yeah.
It's like, no. No. No. Just start making calls. Like, you're gonna learn.
Like, even if so if your inner self is kinda and that's what I've you know, it's like push your inner self if you need to. That's probably what for a lot of people who are who are inactive, it's they lack the pushing themselves of take to take action. Rec try to recognize that that's you.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Just just do it. I mean, like, come on.
Speaker: You know? Yeah. Like yeah. I think there's also a a part of it that's, like, I don't know what works yet. So But then just go figure out what other people are doing and do that.
Speaker: Do that. Someone's doing it. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. There's not a lot of secrets.
Speaker: Yeah. It's not it's not at home. It's all out there.
Speaker: Back in my day, you're yeah. Our days back in our days,
Speaker: you know, it's
Speaker: like it's like it would be hard. You know? Now there's, like, just literally you could there's more resources than time left in your life.
Speaker: The the funniest thing is when you see these YouTube comments on, like, these videos and they're like, yeah. Right. These guys just do this and then they're trying to sell you a course. And we personally know those people. We're like, no.
They're actually that good. Like, I know. Good. Keep thinking that because we'll keep doing it. Yeah.
Speaker: It's like again, what do they not want you to do? They don't want you to sit there. They are, you know, it's like, I hope you know, it's like, if your competitors are like, you know what? We need to really, like, we need to, like, think about this for two years before we buy one house. I'll be like, yeah.
That's a great competitor to have.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Because they're not gonna buy anything. You know? Like, just get out there. What you don't want them to do is take action. Yeah.
Yeah. Take action.
Speaker: Yes. Don't comment on this video. Well, comment good stuff. Yeah.
Speaker: It's funny to me. The I mean, I know I was that person at one point. Right? Like Yeah. If if if Instagram was around in o seven, they're like, yeah.
That would be me commenting. It's like, okay. Like, what's this guy trying to sell? Right? Is this oil
Speaker: or something? Yeah. Naturally skeptical.
Speaker: Yeah. But then he finally was like, oh, yeah. Like, that's that's actually how it works. They're actually just giving it away.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. They you can get also, you can just get something from everything. Yeah. You know, even if it's you don't have to, like if you watch a video, you don't have to adopt that entire sales process.
Speaker: Mhmm. But I
Speaker: get but you can't this is how Devon got so good at it. Again, just hours and hours. But it's like, you didn't watch an hour video and be like, okay. And now I'm gonna do exactly this, and then they watch a different hour video the next time, be like, okay. I'm gonna do exactly that.
Maybe some people would do that. Mhmm. But you're smart enough for you, like, no. I'm just gonna take this one little
Speaker: snippet Mhmm.
Speaker: And that's it. You know? And it's like and then I'll add it to this, and you're sharpening your skills. Like, that's what any person is trying to get better. You know, athletes do it all the time.
They're not like, I'm gonna
Speaker: rework my shot
Speaker: every month. They're like, no. But I'm gonna, like, whatever, you know, hold it.
Speaker: Yeah. Tiger. Right? So I'm gonna change this
Speaker: a little bit Yeah.
Speaker: On my swing. A little
Speaker: bit a little bit. Yeah. All the way.
Speaker: Yeah. It is really just free freely out there.
Speaker: It is so much out there. Yeah. Alright. Someone wanna connect with Smooth Closing. What's the best way for someone to reach out with you guys?
Speaker: Sure. Yeah. So my social media Instagram is just the chip ferguson. That's what Instagram and Facebook, that's the best way.
Speaker: Mhmm. I would
Speaker: say for me.
Speaker: I'm not an Instagram person, but if you wanna find me, it's Zaman, z a m a n, underscore p s h a. Pasha was not available. No. You got
Speaker: but no. I've you need to be messaging whoever has the I messaged
Speaker: Oh, you got it.
Speaker: Regular Chip Ferguson.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: I messaged him once a year, and I'm like, hey, dude.
Speaker: I'll pay you $500
Speaker: a charity, like, you know.
Speaker: There you go. So if you're making 50 calls and giving up, he's still messaging. Like, he's trying
Speaker: to get in touch
Speaker: with you.
Speaker: Like, his kids fishing. I'm like, you know, like, you just beat me too. You can buy your name. I'll go buy your name.
Speaker: I'll go find it.
Speaker: Yeah. I tried to buy, at Steve, and the guy Just at Steve? I I tried to get that, and the guy's like, I need like, I got an offer for 1 Bitcoin right now. I was like, alright. Well, you know Keep it.
Yeah. Like, keep it and
Speaker: Take that offer.
Speaker: Right. I think
Speaker: that someone actually did pay you, like, a full Bitcoin. Damn. Alright.
Speaker: Did you get it in writing? You just asked.
Speaker: Depending on
Speaker: when someone's watching this video, that could be good or bad. You know?
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: No. That guy got whoever bought it from the other guy, his, account got banned. Like, they clearly were doing something wrong with that account. So, let's see here. So but so that's how to connect with you guys.
If someone wanted to, I don't know, connect with the company, is there any other way to connect with the company?
Speaker: Just smithclosing.com. Smithclosing.com? Yeah.
Speaker: Alright. What's our Instagram?
Speaker: Smith's closing. That I was fascinated.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. So alright. Perfect. Well, thank you so much.
Speaker: Thank you, Steve.
Speaker: Appreciate it. Thank you, Steve. Thank you. And thank you guys for watching. We'll see you guys next.
Speaker: Steve train. Jump on the Steve train. Disrupt us.
