Brandon Simmons Shares How He's Moved 350+ Properties for Over $4MM in Fees

Steve Trang: Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Real Estate Disruptors. Today, we've got Brandon Simmons with Flip to Freedom. And he's here to share how he's moved over 350 properties for over $4,000,000 in fees. If this is your first time tuning in, I'm Steve Trang, broker owner of Stunning Homes Realty, cofounder of the OfferFast app, the one app you need for wholesaling, and I help people become real estate entrepreneurs.

If you're excited for today's show, please give me some waves, give me some hearts. And before we do get started, I started this show because I want to give back to our community. We struggled before. I struggled. You struggled.

Of course. We've talked about it offline. And so we wanna shortcut that struggle for as many young leaders as possible. So I don't charge a dime for this show. I don't make any money doing this.

So here's all I ask. This is the cost to you, for listening to the show. If you get value out of this show, please tell a friend. Either share the episode now, tag a friend below, or tell them their best takeaway from the show later on. That way, we can all grow together.

And don't forget that this is a live show, so please post your questions, down below and Brandon would love to answer them. Of course. You ready?

Brandon Simmons: Yeah. I'm ready.

Steve: Alright. First question. This is a simple one.

Brandon: Okay.

Steve: What got you into wholesaling?

Brandon: Well, I've always kind of had an interest in real estate. One of my favorite books is Rich Dad Poor Dad. I think a lot of people have read that.

Steve: A lot of people love it.

Brandon: And, and that got me into thinking about real estate as investing.

Steve: How old how old were you?

Brandon: When I read that, I was probably my early 30s. Okay. And, so basically what happened was we moved to to Arizona Uh-huh. In 2010. At 2009, I moved here, and then the family followed me a couple months later.

And, I heard about this podcast, Flip to Freedom. Sean Terry was on it. Just started the podcast. Properties with little or no money down and that was all in. I wanted to try it out.

So that that's what got me going.

Steve: So the podcast was a big hook for you?

Brandon: It was. Yeah. Sean and whenever Sean first started the podcast, he literally just used his iPhone, recorded it in the car. You can hear the air conditioning blowing and stuff. I remember meeting up with him.

There's about five or six of us that would meet up at like a Paradise Bakery. Yeah. And, we were all just brand new, hungry to get a deal done. And he I think whenever I signed up for the Flip to Freedom Academy, Sean has thousands of members now.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: But when I signed up, I think it was, like, the thirty fifth or thirty sixth person to sign up. Wow. So yeah. Cool.

Steve: Okay. And so the the podcast was a big pull for you?

Brandon: Definitely. Yeah.

Steve: Okay. What were some of your early struggles? I mean, I guess, were you always with Sean? Did you do it on your own?

Brandon: No. No. I I did stuff on my own for a while. It took me about eight months to do my first deal. Okay.

And everyone remembers their first deal.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: Right? As as like your first kiss. Yeah. You know, and that's what I remember the most. I was working at Wells Fargo, working full time.

I was working six days a week, at least sixty hours a week.

Steve: What were you doing?

Brandon: I was, oh, in the mortgage mortgages. As a loan processor and underwriter. Yeah. One of those guys. And, I didn't have a lot of time to do marketing.

I didn't have a lot of extra money to spend on marketing. So I started to just email people off of Craigslist. And then and then I would send text messages and call them from my car as I was driving home at a forty five minute commute. Oh. Yeah.

Yeah. And I struggled. I mean, there was months and months I didn't do I didn't there's no deals coming in. I didn't really kind of hit the marketing like I should have. Yeah.

But I remember about, it was about thirty days before my birthday. I wrote down on an index card that I wanted to make $5,000 by my birthday, which is November 16.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: And I gave myself thirty days to do that. I ended up getting that deal done. Me and Sean went fifty fifty on that. I ended up cashing my first check for $5,500

Steve: Cool.

Brandon: The day after my birthday.

Steve: You missed it.

Brandon: One day. You know? But I got an extra $500.

Steve: Well and I think there's a great lesson. There's two great lessons there. Right? The first one is that you made a commitment to yourself. You told the universe what you wanted.

Right. And you got it. And then second thing is there's a lot of people there that can't afford to market and they feel behind. In reality, you don't need money to get started.

Brandon: Not really. I mean, it takes a lot of action. Right? Massive action.

Steve: Massive action. So that's cool. Knowing what you know today, what you do differently?

Brandon: Oh, I mean, I know so many different marketing ways now and, everything from cold calling, ringless voice mail, direct mail, online pay per click. It just depends on your budget and what you want to do. But I would I would start getting the phone to ring today. Yeah. Instead of just waiting.

But there's nothing wrong with doing a cold calling. That's what I was doing, this cold calling.

Steve: So Right. Call me Craigslist and Yeah. Following up with people. Yeah.

Brandon: Craigslist, Zillow, for rent, for sale, all those.

Steve: Yeah. We're gonna talk about all those fancy tricks later on. Okay. So we kind of talked about how you connect with Flip to Freedom. So is the podcast you listen to it and you reach out to Sean.

Brandon: So here's what happened. I was I was still doing deals on and off on my own. And, Sean had a sales guy. He he had he had a small, small company, just a couple sales guys. One of the sales guys, was giving a talk at Toastmasters.

Steve: Oh, okay.

Brandon: And he had a heart attack and died. Wow.

Steve: Yeah. So don't go to Toastmasters?

Brandon: No. I I guess not. Yeah. He's a super nice guy.

Steve: Okay. And you knew him?

Brandon: Yeah. His name was Steve. He everyone loved him. He's not he was fit physically fit. Like, I mean, he's it just was one of those freak things.

Wow. And he passed passed away and Sean called me up and said, I want you to come work for me. And I had the golden handcuffs on handcuffs on. I I had a good job. I was getting paid well.

I had insurance and benefits and all the all the stuff you like in corporate America. Right?

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: I was like, oh, no. I'm good. You know, I'm I'm happy. He's like, no. No.

Please just give it a try. Just come on over. I'll make it worth your while. And I was really, debating whether to do it. And I remember I was talking to my little brother who's taller than me.

Mhmm. So I I called up my brother, Jeff, and I was telling him what's going on. And he says, I will kick your butt if you don't take that job with Sean. Cool. And, I talked to my employer and they they they said, if anything happens, you're always welcome to come back.

Yeah. So I took the leap of faith, never looked back. And what year was that? That was three and a half years ago.

Steve: Oh, so not even that long ago. Yeah. Cool. Very cool. Okay.

So I I kinda I kinda comb through a lot of the the Facebook groups, you know, forums. Not forums, but, like, a lot of questions. And there's some themes in there. And so I wanna kinda get them answered from you. Sure.

So if I was brand new today and I need to find a mentor, what should I do?

Brandon: You wanna find someone that's already doing deals. Mhmm. Whenever I moved to Arizona, I I decided to find a realtor to help me buy a house.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: And I went through, a group, but I wanted to find a a realtor that was also an investor because that's what I want to do is I want to invest in real estate.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: That realtor ended up becoming one of my best friends and still one of my best friends today. And he's been one of my mentors. And so one of the things I think of is I you gotta get clear what you want and what direction you want to go for and just copy those that are successful already.

Steve: Right. Find someone's already doing it.

Brandon: Yeah. I mean, right? Success leaves leaves clues. Yeah. That that whole motto that Tony Robbins always chants and stuff.

Yeah. That's true. I mean, I got hooked up with Sean. I remember Sean Terry calling me up the first time before we did the deal and everything. Mhmm.

Before my first deal with him. I I got a hold of him. I tracked him down somehow. I don't know how he got his number. And my wife and my kids, we were all at Chick fil A over in Gilbert and we're eating dinner and I get a call.

I answer it and it's Sean Terry. And I'm like, oh my gosh. Sean Terry's on the phone, Jennifer. I gotta take this call. And I remember telling my wife after that that I think everything in our life is going to change.

Yeah. No, it didn't happen overnight and it took years before I ever actually, you know, started working with Sean. But I knew that things were were happening. Momentum was coming. Like, I could see something was changing on the horizon.

Right. So, I think, I think you could just look out who's already having success and find those people. And most of the people that are really successful want to help people.

Steve: Yeah, they're givers.

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.

Steve: Okay. So how would you go about finding a mentor? Because, like, I know so we know what kind of mentor we want. How will you track them down if you're not in the circle

Brandon: yet? Facebook is great. There's a lot of Facebook groups. There's podcasts like yours.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: I I found Sean through a podcast. Right. And then, here's what's interesting. Do you know who Jesse Itzler is? I know the name.

So Jesse Itzler is a billionaire and and he he owns Atlanta Hawks and stuff. He came to speak at one of our events. One of the things that I took away from whenever he gave his keynote was he cold calls. If you want to get a hold of somebody, don't be a chicken. Get on the phone and make a phone call.

Yeah. And that's it. That's what I did with Sean too.

Steve: Right. Yeah. Well, that makes complete sense. And I can reach back to you later on what we're gonna talk about as far as taking action. Sure.

Okay. So then finding a mentor, that's obviously one of the things you want to do. Mhmm. What would you give a new guy? I mean, you're kind of coach ready.

So what are the first five things someone should do if they want to get into wholesaling?

Brandon: Well, I think the thing is you've got to start talking to sellers.

Steve: Mhmm. TTP. Talk to

Brandon: people, right? Brent Daniels. I love Brent, you know. And he's he's so energetic and enthusiastic about it. And it's it's it's that's the simple recipe.

Start talking to people today. Start talking to sellers. Start talking to other wholesalers. Right. Or investors.

Find out the best areas of town where they're doing deals and ask them about, you know, how to find buyers. I'd get on the phone. So it's literally a phone call. Like, if you have your smartphone, you have the most important tool you have. You need.

Steve: As a supercomputer too. Too.

Brandon: It's yeah. Exactly. So, I can get on there. I can find out. I can start calling sellers.

I can start talking to other wholesalers and you can find those people on Craigslist and stuff like that, right?

Steve: You know? Right.

Brandon: I would call up title companies that work with investors and ask them who their best buyers are, who who who does the most transactions with them.

Steve: Oh, that's a good tip. Yeah.

Brandon: I mean, I got I just got four new buyers this week just because I asked two title companies for recent buyers.

Steve: Yeah. So I gotta go do that later on.

Brandon: Yeah. After this. I mean, and so those are the basic things. And then if you want to figure out what type of marketing budget you have, if you're going to start direct mail or you're going to start doing ringless voice messages or sending text messages. I used a Google Voice number.

Yeah. I just started texting people. What there's a great website. It's top secret. I don't want to really give this out.

But if you go to fiverr..com fiverr.com, you go there and you can find someone that will send 50 text messages for, like, $5 to sellers off of Craigslist and all of a sudden your phone will start ringing.

Steve: Oh, wow. That's awesome. That's a that's a huge tip. Yeah. And it works.

And one of the, what I told one of these guys, they were asking this question yesterday, right, as far as finding a mentor. I said, look, find who the players are Mhmm. And just offer them, like, I'll just JV with you. I will bring you deals. Just tell me how to find deals.

And they're like, well, they won't respond to you. I was like, well, that's because they gave up on you. So you got to believe in yourself. Right. And prove to them that you get the grit and the compassion to go after it.

Because someone comes to me, it's like, I wanna learn. Awesome. Go do these things. Yeah. Maybe you go do these things and you have questions or I never hear from you again.

Mhmm. Either way is fine.

Brandon: It's a test. Yeah. I get I mean, I get bombarded with people.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: I get people calling me, texting me, and I'm polite. And I talk to everyone pretty much. Yeah. You know, I I talk. You never know

Steve: who who's the best person you can talk to is.

Brandon: And, if they will take action, then I will do the next thing for them.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: I will help them with whatever's next. If they don't take action, okay, they weed themselves out.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: It's that simple. I think also if you're looking for a mentor, there's a lot of people that are takers and not givers. You need to you need to be a giver first.

Steve: Absolutely.

Brandon: And ask ask those mentors or potential mentors, what do you need help with?

Steve: Right.

Brandon: How can I help you? And I mean, they'll they'll open up their their whole business to you Yeah. If you're willing to serve them too.

Steve: Yeah. So That makes a lot of sense. Okay. So another question I saw last night when I was combing the forums was creative financing. So, I know we're gonna talk about it later on, but do you have any creative financing books you can recommend?

Brandon: Yeah. Well, there's there's a lot of coaches and mentors out there. So, when it comes to lease options, so there's there's seller carrybacks. Yep. There's wraps or agreement for sales or land contracts.

Those three things are all the same thing. They're just called different names in different different states.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: Basically, just wrapping the existing mortgage. And then there's lease options. So, I love Joe McCall and Gavin Tims

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: And Claude Diamond for lease options.

Steve: Okay.

Brandon: One of my mentors and one of the guys I got one of my favorite books from on lease options was from Michael Cabaneri and he's not even I don't even know if he coaches anymore or anything like that. He still has a website and, I think you can get his whole full, his whole program for $99 or something.

Steve: Okay.

Brandon: And it it went over everything lease options. It was it was cut and dry, very simple. It had all the contracts. He learned from Claude Diamond. Claude Diamond is like the grandfather options.

But other books would be Wendy Patton and and I I have all these books and so, my wife wants me to donate half of my library to, you know, Goodwill because it takes up so much room.

Steve: I Yeah. Okay.

Brandon: Winnie Patton's awesome. She talks about subject to and lease options. And you know, Sean has has great training. You don't, it depends on how you learn. You know, you can some people won't pick up a book.

Some people will listen to audiobooks.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: Some people will want to see video and follow that whole thing. So, I love all of them. I do videos, audiobooks. I have a Audible account and have so many books on there.

Steve: And I've gone through the Flipped Up Freedom Academy, and it's great great stuff.

Brandon: Mhmm.

Steve: Okay. So so let's talk about each of these kind of creative financing options. So Sure. Let's break it down real quick. So the first one was seller carry.

Brandon: Seller carry back.

Steve: Okay. So explain elaborate on seller carry.

Brandon: So a seller carry back basically and this is the, these are really simple explanations on

Steve: high level and then the whole play on how to break.

Brandon: I'm not and I'm not an attorney or anything like that but I'll kind of tell you. So, so you're going to set

Steve: your own risk.

Brandon: Yeah. Use to set your own risk. Seller carryback is a where someone owns a property free and clear. And they're willing to carry back the mortgage. They're going to act like Wells Fargo or Chase Bank and they're going to create a mortgage note, deed of trust, whatever it is in your state and carry back that loan for that balance.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: This is how I bought my last couple rental properties.

Steve: Alright.

Brandon: I found a realtor that owned One Free and Clear. I found another guy that owned $30,000 Whenever I bought my last property, the guy came to close with $30,000 What? And did a carryback for it.

Steve: Okay.

Brandon: And I put zero of my own dollars into the deal. Yeah. So you can get really creative if you know how to work it out.

Steve: Okay. So let's do that real quick.

Brandon: Okay.

Steve: Alright. So now, I'm homeowner. You're at my house.

Brandon: Okay. Sure.

Steve: And I own it free and clear. Right? So Mhmm. Well, so the first thing we offer is cash.

Brandon: Of course. Cash. If you wanna get your big discount. Yeah.

Steve: Right. So what we offer as far as cash goes? First number you throw approximately.

Brandon: 60. It depends on the percentage, but it's usually around 60%.

Steve: Okay. So it's 60. I was like, Brandon, that's just not gonna work. I got you know, I need more. I know it's worth more.

Okay. And then you say Well,

Brandon: it's a seller's market. Right? Everyone wants top dollar.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: So I always ask questions. And the what I love about seller financing, it's non confrontational.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: Well, what do you want?

Steve: I want 200,000. What it's worth. And what it's worth? Okay.

Brandon: Have you considered listing the property?

Steve: Yeah, but I don't want to deal with people walking through the house and stuff like that.

Brandon: So what I usually do in off the role play for a second is I kind of go through different pain points and I try to get them thinking about why are they not using these steps. And then I then I offer the seller financing. Right. So why aren't you listening? Okay.

You don't want to listen because of what?

Steve: People walking through the house with odd hours and I can't trust, you know, like a realtor is gonna steal my refrigerator or something.

Brandon: Okay. I mean, but you can get the most money by listening to it though, right?

Steve: Yeah. I could. Okay.

Brandon: What about renting it? You can rent it.

Steve: I don't want to fix the water heater at 02:00 in the morning.

Brandon: You don't want to, like, fix toilets on July and stuff like that either?

Steve: No, I want to enjoy my barbecue.

Brandon: Okay. Well, you can just put it on Zillow for sale by owner. Have you thought about doing that?

Steve: Yeah, but then I'm just gonna get bombarded by a bunch of realtor calls.

Brandon: Well, I mean, how how are you going to get $200,000 if you're not willing to jump through the hoops with some of these things?

Steve: So I called you.

Brandon: Okay. Well, let me ask you a question. What if I could figure a way, what if I could figure a way that you can still get what you want for the house? And if I can create something like that, would that be something that would work for you?

Steve: Just pay me the money I want. Okay.

Brandon: And we

Steve: can work out that way. So, if

Brandon: I can give you $200,000 for the house, you're cool with that. That's awesome. Okay. So I do things two ways. It's either I buy houses cash at a discount or I buy them on terms.

And so typically when you buy a house and we're giving you full asking price, we just need you to kind of help us out with that and help me with a carryback or what we call, you act like Chase or Wells Fargo and you keep the and you're gonna you're gonna get interest on this.

Steve: Mhmm. It's

Brandon: gonna be an investment for you instead of just putting the money in the bank. Right? And then

Steve: So I'm gonna get 200,000. I'm gonna make money every month?

Brandon: Exactly. Yeah. Okay. And usually what I ask them is there's a lot more questions I kind of go through. Right.

And kind of feed through this. And I know we're doing a quick role play. But what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to find out their motivation, what their hot buttons are, and I really focus on that. Because usually, they're they're more focused on that. And then it's amazing if you bring in your little handheld calculator on your iPhone or whatever

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: And you show them how much interest they're gonna make.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: They're they're ecstatic credit union is like 1% right now. Right. You know? So we're giving them a ton of interest. And it depend you can create it where you're doing principal payments only.

You can do a principal and interest or you do interest only. So you can get really creative on what you need to do.

Steve: Alright. Okay. So that's seller carry.

Brandon: That's seller carry back.

Steve: Now the next so we went That's no loan

Brandon: in place. Yeah.

Steve: Alright. So the cash was that's a no go. And then now I have a mortgage. So what's the next

Brandon: step? So if you have a mortgage in place, and typically the way it is in Arizona or the way that we typically do our deals, if it's not an FHA loan, then we try to do what's called an agreement for sale, which is also called a wrap. You do an exact wrap. So imagine the loan is like a like a beach ball. Okay.

And you just wrap it like you put a blanket around it.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: So it's exact same payments, exact same interest rate. Everything's exact same except you're just creating a new loan. That's the wrap or the agreement for sale. It's also considered like installment sales. It's how they used to sell land, like farms and everything back in the day.

Yeah. So it was an installment sale. And the way it works and the way we set them up is the loan does not transfer over until the that existing loan is paid in full. Mhmm. And we usually, negotiate these deals for three to five years at least.

Mhmm. The longer, the better. Right. Especially for investors. And if you're flipping those or signing these, investors love these.

They eat these up. I mean, because it's an easy way for them to get loans without having to qualify for a loan.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: Because most of the time as a real estate investor or landlord, you can only get like four loans. Maybe if you're lucky up to 10. Yeah. But you can do tons and tons of these.

Steve: Right. So. Okay. So how do you present it to me?

Brandon: It's the same same process. Basically So everything's

Steve: the same to the part where I can't do the seller carry?

Brandon: Right. And and and but here's the negotiations. So depending on the seller carryback and depending on the wrap, your biggest negotiation is down payment. You want it you you want to give them the least amount out of pocket as possible. Okay and because whatever that cuts into your profits when you assign it.

Right. And also if you need to do fix it, if you're going to keep it in your own portfolio. Yeah. Yeah. So that's where the negotiations is.

So I usually ask a question like, so if we can get you out of the loan and you don't have to worry about making payments anymore like that, you know, we're, you know, I usually ask, where are you moving to?

Steve: Moving with my kids.

Brandon: Okay. And do you have I try to find out what expenses are going to cost. You know, how much is it going to cost you to move? And so, typically, our max that we ever give someone, one of our acquisitions guys, was notorious and he would basically get zero down.

Steve: Or

Brandon: maybe no more than a thousand bucks.

Steve: Alright.

Brandon: And then we could turn around and assign that for $10.13, $15,000 or whatever. Yeah. So that I mean, it's it's that's where the negotiation comes in is how much of a down payment you're gonna give them.

Steve: Okay. So and then so cash didn't work. Seller carry didn't work. RAP didn't work. What's next?

Brandon: That's the lease option.

Steve: Okay.

Brandon: And that usually works really good for the FHA loans. And those are also really good for the really, really tight deals. Like where there's hardly hardly any equity at all. Like, I'm talking like even up to zero equity.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: So the all these creative seller financing deals, if you use terms, you can still create a deal out of it. Yeah. If you do it right. Right. So I had a deal in Mesa.

They basically owed what the house was worth and I was able to negotiate a five year lease option.

Steve: And

Brandon: we just did an assignment. Now, here's what's beautiful is some and a lot of times you find these as landlords. Yeah. The rental properties, they just want someone to take over. They just want someone to rent the property and then you basically offer, if I can rent the house for a year or two and then buy it, would you be okay with that?

That's the question. That's the whole script right there.

Steve: Okay. Are you gonna be calling me to like fix things?

Brandon: No. So typically, what we negotiate is we we depending on how we set up the lease option, if we stay in the middle or if we just assign it, we put that $300 or $500 whatever that first, repair cost is.

Steve: No

Brandon: more than $300 or $500 per month of repairs. And then what we do is we usually have them get a home warranty. So, if there's any big ticket items, the home warranty covers everything else. Right. And so this is really a hands off rental for the for the landlord, for the seller.

And these are really easy to to negotiate if you set it up correctly because they're already wanting to rent the property. Right. They don't want to be a landlord. And and if you're if you're taking away that stress and sometimes, one of our buddies, Andrew LeBaron, what he does too is sometimes he'll even sweeten this sweeten the pot by offering a little bit more on the rent.

Steve: Yeah. So

Brandon: you're giving them everything they want. Here's the negotiation. What do you want? Okay. Here you go.

Yeah.

Steve: Can I rent that from you? Yeah. Right.

Brandon: And usually, the negotiations is how long you can get it for. And a lot of times, they want some of that lease option fee that you get from the tenant buyer. Mhmm. Usually, it's three to five months. And so you can do two things.

And I get this from Claude Diamond and shout out to Claude Diamond on lease options here. Yeah. Is if they are asking for, you know, option fee up front, don't give them an option fee. Give them prepaid rent because that prepaid rent means you don't have to pay rent for those couple three months. Yeah.

And then all of a sudden, you get all that back from that tenant buyer.

Steve: That's huge.

Brandon: So that can save you a lot right there.

Steve: I never thought of that. That's a good one. Alright. Gotta write that down later on. Okay.

So I see you a lot on Facebook Live. So tell me about that. What's the strategy behind that?

Brandon: No strategy. I just for me, I just like to tell people what's going on. Because I'm in my job previously before transitioning into coaching these dispositions and the COO of Sean's real estate side of the business.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: So, I was responsible for selling all of our property. So, a lot of times, I'm in front of a property or, we're doing an auction or we're having people show up and we're trying to bid the price of the property up.

Steve: Yeah. In the auction effect, little bidding against each other.

Brandon: Yeah. And then I'll get people before I do the do the auction or before I do the open house or the inspection period. I will I will put it out there. I'll kind of do a a little walk through of the house, and I try to solicit offers that way off of Facebook Live. I've sold so many houses off of Facebook and Periscope.

Yeah. Just by doing that. Periscope. Yeah.

Steve: I didn't even need to be using Periscope. Yeah.

Brandon: No. I don't I haven't really used it in a long time. I I mainly use Facebook live now.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: But Periscope was really hot, like, what, two years ago.

Steve: For a little bit. Yeah. Okay. So you're doing the Facebook live. I know that I mean, dispositions is I mean, that was what you were doing.

Right. So if there if we could rank, you know, your top three ways of moving a property, what would be those three?

Brandon: So it's really, really simple. And, shout out to Larry Goins on this because he has a great book on real estate day

Steve: trading.

Brandon: And this is one of the ideas I got from him was you do a whisper campaign. Basically, you mean you do a quick phone call

Steve: to

Brandon: a couple of your top buyers.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: Or maybe it's just an email to them. So you're getting like your top five, ten, fifteen, twenty, buyers that are really active to get a look at the property before you do anything else. And I try to see where they're at. And I can really gauge how hot a property is by the amount of phone calls I get and stuff. Yeah.

So then the next thing I do is I do a text message. So I have a VIP text message list and I send out a text message to maybe 1,500 or so cash buyers that have already bought properties from us.

Steve: Okay.

Brandon: Typically, there are already people in our database that have already bought something from us. So they're on our VIP text message list. And then we do our email blast and the email goes out to our entire cash buyers list. Now one of the things there's you can sell a property really quick and just take the first offer or you can try to push the spread

Steve: Right.

Brandon: And try to solicit the highest offers and that's usually what I do.

Steve: Alright. Okay. So and Max has a question. With doing these lease options or wraps, have you ever seen any of these loans get called on a due on sale clause?

Brandon: Not yet. It is a it is a possibility.

Steve: It's always a risk. Yeah.

Brandon: Yeah. It's always a risk. Typically, on the wraps, on on lease options, it's not usually an issue because it's it's a lease and there's not usually anything recorded unless you go file and record a memorandum of the option.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: If you're keeping it for yourself, I'd record it, record an option on it. But if it's just a lease option, if there's nothing recorded or nothing to trigger that due on sale clause, it's usually not an issue.

Steve: Alright.

Brandon: And again, I'm not a realtor. Check with your title company. Check with your

Steve: attorney. Check with everybody.

Brandon: Yeah, check with everybody but no, I mean, it really, here's the thing is, are they getting their payments?

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: And if we set everything up through a note servicing company or through the through our title company, as long as the the the banks are getting their payments. Right. They're not stressing out typically. Yeah. They don't have time.

Steve: Yeah. So, okay. What does I mean, it's kind of a complicated question, but what does your organization look like today?

Brandon: It's small. It's not crazy. So, Sean's the ownerCEO.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: Okay. So we have a couple acquisition sales guys that actually go out and meet with homeowners. We prefer to do face to face meetings and they go lock up the properties. I typically have been selling the properties. Yeah.

So there's three sales guys, you know, on that. And then we also have our leads managers and what we call the folks that kind of take the phone calls for the leads. Like, any any type of marketing that goes out

Steve: and someone

Brandon: calls in Mhmm. They're they're and they're answering the phone and they're taking all the information down about the lead.

Steve: So

Brandon: we have like three people that take those incoming calls. Mhmm.

Steve: And

Brandon: then we also have some cold callers.

Steve: Okay. So Interesting. Alright. So what else was there? So Matt Potter wanted to know, what is your top lead source?

Brandon: Right now? Yeah. Because it changes and fluctuates a lot on what what we've been doing. So our number one for a long time was pay per click. Then we did and we had a ton off of direct mail.

But everyone seems to be going and we're going that same direction where it's more ringless voice message.

Steve: Mhmm. Well, Sean's the one that's pushing that. The reason why it's popular is because Sean keeps telling everyone about it.

Brandon: Yeah. So he I mean, probably four out of four out of eight deals are gonna be ringless voice message deals for us.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: So that's probably half of our deals, and cold calling. And cold calling's like a mix of that with the ringless voice message.

Steve: So for our, less experienced wholesalers, what does ringless voice voice mail mean?

Brandon: So there's a system and there's different, softwares out there. Yeah. You you know,

Steve: it

Brandon: started out with sly broadcast and sly dial Mhmm. Where it doesn't ring your cell phone, but you can drop a voice message in there. And then all of a sudden, they're like, what the heck? And and now they're coming up more and more. Like, people are starting to get frustrated.

Right? So it just depends on on how to filter through that. And the way that we have it set up is people will call back and they leave a message. And so it's either like, you know, f you, take me off your list, don't ever call me again, or, yeah, I wanna sell my house.

Steve: Right. Those ones we call back.

Brandon: That's That's the ones we call back. Or they'll call and not leave a message. Yeah. So call those back as well.

Steve: Okay. So Very cool. And then, I know I mentioned you at one of the Flip to Freedom events, but also come to came to a couple of your meetups. So let's talk about the meetups. Sure.

Why do you do them?

Brandon: Sean so this is all Sean. Sean is really big about being very transparent and open and giving back to the community. Yeah. He actually started the whole Flip to Freedom idea as a way to kind of help train new investors to help bring deals and stuff like that. But but one of the things I've always known about Sean is as soon as something works, he tells everyone about it.

Yeah. I mean, I remember.

Steve: He's a giver.

Brandon: Yeah and he had, I think he was paying like and he'll probably correct me on this, but I think he's paying like less than $10 pay per click, maybe up as high as 30 or something. And now you can pay over $100 on pay per click.

Steve: Oh, yeah. You know?

Brandon: Oh, yeah. On the same keywords. But back whenever he did it, it was so low. Then all of a sudden, he started sharing it, and then those same keywords went up on price. Yeah.

Steve: And I I we were joking about this, you know, Sean and that old lady. Like, I'm before I That video's been

Brandon: around forever. Right? Before I even

Steve: knew who Sean was, because I was doing pay per click also before it got really big.

Brandon: And and

Steve: I was like, who is this guy with this old lady?

Brandon: He says, he says she's brought in so many leads. He's he's so grateful for that one old lady video.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. I know. I bet. I bet.

Okay. So, what is your favorite for skip tracing?

Brandon: You know, that changes too. Basically, I started with just white pages and everyone has everything from TLO, Skip Genie. There's some great guys that we're in a mastermind with. They have their own skip tracing services and stuff like that. Shout out to Sal and to Carlos.

And Jared Vidalis also has skip tracing. Basically, you're just trying to get phone numbers, right?

Steve: Just

Brandon: trying to attach phone numbers. There's Data Zap out there that can append phone numbers for a lot of your mailing lists and stuff like that. So, if you're just if you get a mailing list and you want to get the phone numbers with it, there's companies like DataZap and all these other skip tracing companies that are probably even better than than some of these other ones.

Steve: Alright. Okay. Do you have any interesting war stories? Oh, wow. Where to start?

Which ones Well,

Brandon: I I remember I was going up to a house. We bought a house for $8,000 Wow. In Phoenix. And it was like a shack that was gonna really fall down. And I was really it had a gate around it and a fence around it.

And it's one of those places, you know, there's junkyard dogs in in the in the yard.

Steve: Okay.

Brandon: So I rattled the, I rattled the fence and everything. And, I have a concealed weapon. You know, I have I have a pistol I carry with me sometimes. So this is one of those times I was carrying my gun. Yeah.

So I rattled the gate, and nothing no dogs come out or anything like that. So I start walking up to the house because I need to put a lockbox on it and and do all that stuff. And all of a sudden, I hear those woof, woof, woof. And I take off, off, and I just pull out my gun. And I I thought I was dead.

I thought I was gonna eat in a life. Well, I was fine. It was the dogs next door.

Steve: So But it was a heightened

Brandon: Oh, I was I was freaking out. I was just so nervous. But, yeah. No major war stories. I mean, we've had a well, I guess there is a we I've had to deal with drug addicts and prostitutes.

Mhmm. We had one house that we bought that they basically were running a brothel out of it.

Steve: Wow.

Brandon: Hoarder homes are fun.

Steve: Love hoarder homes.

Brandon: We have like a dog hoarder home. We had like 45 dogs removed out of the house. Oh, wow. Here in Tempe.

Steve: Okay. There was one in the news just a couple of days ago.

Brandon: It may have been the same sellers. I don't know. Yeah. But you know, I mean, those are some nasty ones. And if you go into a house that's been vacant for a long time, don't open the fridge.

Steve: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I've learned that. So I was, I was trying to wholesale a deal with Jamil. Yeah.

And, I sent him the photos. And this lady was so high. His girlfriend was so high that she couldn't even get out of bed. So I'm just taking photos, and I get a text back from Jamille. I was like, why is there a woman half covered?

This photo is like, what do you want me to do? Couldn't move her.

Brandon: So one of one of the houses one of the houses we bought, it was a guy that was just a it was a hoarder home. It was one of those nasty places that never got cleaned up. Like, the kitchen probably wasn't cleaned in like a decade and there's junk everywhere. Nasty, dirty house.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: The guy was living there. There was like nasty house with, they had a room with like cats and cat pee all over the place and stuff. But the guy was watching porn nonstop on the TV. And so he had a big screen TV and the porn was going on. And, our sales guy, Rafael, took pictures of the house.

And I didn't look through all the stuff, and we sent out that link with the pictures with the with the porn on the on the TV. You're like, oh, no. I can't believe that one out. So, we had to delete that picture.

Steve: Oh, that's too bad. Okay. And then what are some of your favorite tools?

Brandon: I'm a big software guy and I love to be able to use my telephone, my my iPhone. So we use Podio, an InvestorFuse. So everything's kind of the Podio app's great to keep track of our CRM. We can check out contracts. We could check out phone numbers, emails.

So I can just call right from my phone.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: Some of the some of the apps that I've been really falling in love with. One is called Land Glide. And shout out to Carlos Reyes and Sal Shakur on that. So, basically, if I'm trying to sell a house and I'm I'm at the house, I can pull up. It'll geolocate me where I'm at.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: And then I can look around and I can find all the all the owners that have LLCs.

Steve: Okay.

Brandon: And then what's really neat about in Maricopa County, you can just click on the LLC. You can get that name. You get the address. And then if you go on the website for the county, the tax assessor's office. In Maricopa County, all landlords have to register the rental properties.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: And they put their phone numbers on the registration. So you just go on the website and you find their phone number and you can call that landlord right there.

Steve: Yeah. That's

Brandon: huge. I love Land Glide. There's there's some really simple ones. Zillow Rentals. Mhmm.

You can take that and you can draw a circle around the location you're at and it'll pull up all the rental properties and those are all landlords that are buyers a lot of times. Yeah. So you just call them and ask them if they're looking for any more homes.

Steve: Or frustrated landlords.

Brandon: Or frustrated and they could turn into a lead. Right? Yeah. And buy a house from them.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: So I use a lot of apps like that. As far as other apps, I'm trying to think of ones on oh, PropertyRadar. Yeah. PropertyRadar is great right now for foreclosures. If you're trying to find because what happens is, our sales guys, we make them go on appointments.

Mhmm. And then, we also have them drive the neighborhood fifteen minutes before an appointment and they're looking for vacant homes, homes that are in foreclosure, anything that looks like that they're in distress.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: And and then one of my other favorite apps, I forgot about this one, DealMachine. DealMachine's awesome because you can take a picture of the house all from your phone. You can pull up. It'll pull up their phone number, their email. You can call them right when you're in front of the house and then you, if they don't answer, you can send them a postcard right from your cell phone.

Right. So check out that. That's awesome. Yeah.

Steve: Very cool. We're gonna get you an affiliate link. Yeah. Alright. Okay.

So, in doing my research, you know, before you came in here, I I I saw something that you posted. And it's really important to me because I know so many people that are career students or I wanna go do this, you know, someday, whatever.

Brandon: Right.

Steve: And you just have to start. That's all you have to do is just start, and you'll fail your way there. Right? And so I saw what you wrote, and I thought that was really cool. And I thought it spoke to a lot of people that have come to me with questions that still haven't started yet.

And I think this message needs to be heard. So I printed that if you don't mind reading it.

Brandon: Sure. Yeah. I remember writing this a few months ago. Alright. So I have a confession.

I haven't always been honest with myself. I pretended to be an entrepreneur but actually I was a wantrepreneur, a fake, a phony, a fraud. I acted like I wanted to be successful. I read a ton of books on real estate, marketing and sales and I signed up for a ton of gurus, webinars and courses. I designed cool business cards.

I bought domain names on GoDaddy. But what I was actually doing is staying busy instead of taking action now. I mean real action. The type of action that actually brings results and puts money in the bank account. I remember my first deal like it was yesterday.

I was working six days a week and had had little time and money for marketing. But when I decided to take massive action, I had success. And I wrote down the five steps I took. Number one, I got clear on my intention. Number two, I wrote down my goal.

Number three, I prayed like everything depended on God. Number four, I worked like everything depended on me. And number five, I cashed my first wholesale check. So

Steve: It's awesome. Yeah. And I think this is it's it's powerful because a lot of people need to hear it. There are a lot of people that just want to, you know, someday or, you know, lucky him. He has all the opportunity and whatever.

No. You just gotta start. You just gotta go out and do it. Right?

Brandon: I I am so impressed with some of the we have some of the youngest guys in our meetup.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: Guys that are doing, like, 6 figure months.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: And I mean, talking about 21 years old, 20 years old, 19 years old.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: And, you know, they just took massive action. They just they didn't try to decide how to do things their way. They just asked, how were you doing it? They followed that same same recipe

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: And they got results. Right. They didn't reinvent the wheel at all. No.

Steve: And that's, they just found what worked and just kept doing it and doing it better. Right.

Brandon: And do it longer. Right? Taking massive action. Yeah. Having faith in And you're going to fail.

Here's News alert. You're going to mess up. Yeah. You're going to screw up at some point. You're going to fail.

That's just part of the process. Right. Just keep going. You don't really fail unless you stop.

Steve: Right. And I think this is great also for any industry, right? That's not even just wholesale. This is just any industry.

Brandon: Any entrepreneur, anyone that has a goal or you know, that's realistic. You know, I love Gary Vaynerchuk because because one thing he always says is, you're gonna die.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: So you take action. Like, don't wait. Mhmm. Just do something right now.

Steve: Yeah. You know? And I like also he says, you know, I don't have any issues with your ambition. I just question sometimes whether your actions line up with your ambitions.

Brandon: Right. Are you watching Netflix tonight? Are you

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: Or are you working on your business? Exactly.

Steve: You know? So very cool. What would you say is your biggest hurdle right now?

Brandon: Time. Yeah. I get pulled in a lot of different way different directions. And so one of the things I am trying to prove upon is is carving out and time blocking

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: And then being really, really efficient during that time. That's something I don't have down perfect yet. Yeah. One of my mentors, that's the thing that we talk about a lot, is how to time block and how to really be efficient during that time.

Steve: So I'm a very big fan of strategic coach with Dan Sullivan. Yeah. And so I'll give you some tips

Brandon: Sure.

Steve: On time blocking to be more efficient. I love it. But the biggest thing the biggest thing is you have to have more free time. Mhmm. You have to intentionally plan the free time, and then you have to intentionally plan your focus times.

And the focus times are these are days. So focus days, free days, and buffer days. And the most when you on your focus days, you're working on your top three. You don't work on anything else. And so for me personally, it's the podcast Yeah.

Meeting agents I don't know yet Mhmm. And talking to my existing agents. That's it.

Brandon: I love that.

Steve: On my focus days, that's all I do. I don't do anything else. And so you gotta figure out what your top three are.

Brandon: Right.

Steve: And then on those focus days, you don't do anything else.

Brandon: And and that's great advice. That's and, that's what's funny is that you're saying that that's what I've limited myself down to is three things.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: That's it. Because I think we get too overwhelmed with so many things on our to do to do list.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: And I you know, Tony Robbins, Dan Soll, all these guys, Brian Brian Tracy. One of the things is just being focused. And then the, The One Thing. Have you read the book, The one thing?

Steve: Amazing book.

Brandon: Yeah. I love that.

Steve: If you can break it all down down to one thing, that's awesome.

Brandon: You know, and that's the eighty twenty rule and then even super focus on just the one item they need to hit on. And I love because that helps me break it down for myself because that's the reality. Reality of my life is is I'm helping a lot in the business. Well, I have my own real estate business.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: I have my own virtual assistant. And I my thing is sometimes I get pulled in so many directions. I have to just stay focused and I will put my phone on airplane mode

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: For like the next hour or something. And I haven't I haven't given myself permission to do that in the past. Right. But now I'm doing that better

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: Trying to.

Steve: And it's all dependent on having the right people because if you don't have the right people, you can't do that.

Brandon: I know.

Steve: So I'm very blessed to have the people I have in my organization. Okay. So what would you consider to be your superpower?

Brandon: I think really simply is is I I feel like I get along with people pretty easily.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: I make friends fast. I always try to find something that I can finding find something in common with people. Whether where they're from, whether they're doing and I'm authentic. I love it. I mean, I like meeting people.

And I think my superpower is just being able to relate to people. Yeah.

Steve: Very cool. Yeah. And then what I mean, this is I already know the answer to this, but what book have you given more than any other book?

Brandon: Well, I think the answer would be The Go Giver. Yeah. Right? We we're both in a little mastermind and the premise behind that mastermind is is that book The Go Giver. Trying to figure out how how you can serve others first.

And it'll reciprocate. It'll come back to you. And that little book, I think, is one of those books that's changed my thought process. That's what Sean preaches. Yep.

You know, he's sometimes we get frustrated in the business because he lets out these ideas and these marketing things that are working. To everyone else so quickly that we're like, oh man, like.

Steve: Just let us take advantage for like three months.

Brandon: Yeah. Let's, you know, and so everyone else is doing that same mailing list or the same type of marketing piece and Yeah. But that's just how he is. And that's that's what's amazing. That's the example that's been set for me.

Yeah. Is have an abundance mindset. Mhmm. That there's no such thing as there there's more than enough. Like, we're in the same room breathing air.

Like like, all of a sudden, you get mad because I'm breathing more air than you. Like like, you're acting like you're gonna run out of air. No. We there's plenty of air in this room. Right.

So there's abundance all over the the whole universe.

Steve: Yeah. And so you had given that book to me. And for me, the longest time I was like, you know, people couple people say, like, you know, you need to read this book. I was like, I don't really need to read it. Right?

I'm already a giver, but I wish I read that book sooner. So, the number two for me was the most powerful one, the one that I needed to learn the most. And that was that your ability to succeed or, you know, go to whatever level you wanna go is completely dependent to or proportional to the number of people you can help. Right. Right?

So I will pour a lot into people, but I wasn't pouring a lot into enough people.

Brandon: Right. It's one thing to give value, but how many people are you giving value to? Right. That's why this podcast is amazing because now it's giving you a larger reach.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: More people to serve.

Steve: That's why that's so exciting about it. That's why it's a top three activity.

Brandon: Right.

Steve: Okay. So what is what was your favorite, best, or most interesting failure? The more catastrophic, the better. The more catastrophic.

Brandon: I've had a lot of them, so it's hard to just dial down to one. I think that's that's part of it, Just having failures is my wife. Okay, so here's one of the realities is I switched jobs like it was going out of out of style. I mean, I was Entrepreneur at heart. My wife, I feel really bad because she gets so stressed out because all of a sudden I quit another job.

I would always have a job and I always got a job like instantly, but I I job hopped all the time. And I think that created some instability in our family for a while until I settled down Yeah. A little bit and I just got focused. Part of it, I think, was because I wasn't happy or I didn't have that clarity of what I wanted.

Steve: And

Brandon: once I got clear, like, then all of a sudden, it was all real estate. Everything. Read, sleep, breathe. Real estate.

Steve: Yeah. So

Brandon: In fact, I talk real estate so much. My wife has a code word to tell me that I'm talking too much. And so she starts talking about breastfeeding. That means I gotta stop talking about real estate.

Steve: That's awesome. That's a good tip Yeah. For for the, you know, some of the mom listeners out there. So okay. And then what lesson would you want to impart?

And we talked about a lot of different lessons. But what lesson, like, if there was one thing that someone walked away from this Mhmm. Needs to hear, what what would be that lesson?

Brandon: Just take action. Just don't don't even think. Don't don't even allow yourself to think because I'm I analyze things a lot. I overanalyze things. Don't be stuck in that analysis paralysis.

Right? Just take action and do it. If you mess up, who cares?

Steve: Right.

Brandon: Just just move on. So you lose a little bit of money. So you lose a little bit of sleep. So you have a little stress. You'll figure it out.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: Just just take action right now. Yeah. Whatever that goal is, do something towards it today.

Steve: Very cool. So that's it. Well, actually, I take that back. There were a couple of questions here. Brian Sammons wants to know, what does your business look like a year from

Brandon: now? Oh, a year from now. Cool. Yeah. It's it's pretty simple.

Is, I'm doing a lot more coaching.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: I'm doing a lot lot of more real estate deals virtually and within my own market here locally. So my business is multiple streams of income from coaching, from my own deals, outside of Arizona and inside of And I'm traveling with my family. Yeah. My daughter's going to college up in Idaho. I'm going to be able to go visit with her.

Steve: Can't we be old enough to have a kid in college?

Brandon: Yeah. And then, you know, I have family in Indiana and Kentucky. I have family in California. So we just want to go visit family. We want to go on a cruise or on a vacation, and money still comes in.

Steve: Yeah. Very cool. So that's where we're going to wrap it up. So what would be the best way for one of our listeners to get ahold of you?

Brandon: Shoot me a Facebook message. Mhmm.

Steve: That's

Brandon: probably one of the easiest ways.

Steve: Is there a particular Brandon Simmons they should be looking for on Facebook?

Brandon: The bald guy. Does it look for the bald guy with the suit and tie right now?

Steve: Okay. Awesome. Okay. Yeah. And then, guys, again, if you like this show, please share this episode right now.

And then next week is the July 4, so we're not gonna be going live. We might have a special episode if you're okay with me releasing the negotiation thing we did yesterday.

Brandon: Okay.

Steve: So maybe we'll have a special podcast episode of just me doing some power negotiations with Scott Bauer and Rafael Cortez. It was a lot of fun.

Brandon: Hopefully, the audio turned out. I don't know.

Steve: Yeah. We'll see. But then the week after that, we got John Glush. He's the number he's a top five agent in Phoenix. His team is doing massive amount of deals.

I think they're doing over a 120, 150 units. I don't know what the exact number is, but it's something super crazy. He's gonna open up the door or pull back the currents on what's working for them. And then, also, don't forget to visit our website, realestatedisruptors.com. You're gonna find out of our upcoming events and all the video replays, transcriptions, and all this of this show.

So that's it. Thank you, Brandon. Appreciate it.

Brandon: Thanks, Steven. Appreciate it.

Steve: And then thank you guys for checking out the show. I appreciate you guys as well.