$200,000+ In One Month! Dominick Felix & Gonzalo Corzo On How To Do Huge Numbers In One Market!

Steve Trang: Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Real Estate Disruptors. Today, we have Dominic Felix and Gonzalo Corzo with Cash Geek. Sup? And they flew from Jacksonville, Florida to share how they earned 200,000 just last month.

So So they're for round two. If this is your first time tuning in, I'm Steve Trang, founder of the OfferFast Homes app, the only MLS for off market wholesale properties. And I'm on a mission to create 100 millionaires. One question I get a lot is how to become one of the 100 millionaires. So please allow me to answer it here.

The information on this podcast alone is enough to help you become millionaire in the next five to seven years if you take consistent action, that massive action, consistent action, and you will become one. So when you're a nugget, drop in the comments below and identify your biggest takeaway and focus on just that for the next seven days, and you'll be well on your way. If you're impatient like me, you know, when I cut two or three years off that time, let's schedule a call at disruptors dot com. We'll see if we can get you there just a little bit faster. And I did create a checklist for the perfect seller appointment.

This script that my team uses when we run our seller appointment. So if you're interested in purchasing it, please go to disruptors.com/checklist. And if you get value today, please tag a friend below or share this episode right now. That way we can all grow together. And this is a live show, so please ask your questions for Dominic and Gonzalo to answer.

Let's go. You guys ready?

Dominick Felix: We're ready, man. Alright.

Steve: Let's just jump right into it. So 200,000 last month. What what how did this happen?

Dominick: Dude, it was a it was a super busy month. You know, g put it really, really cool recently, you know, through our growth pattern. I think last time we were here, we had just recently hit our first $100,000 a month. Yeah. You know, and it was epic.

It was a big celebration. The team was all excited. We were super, freaking excited. And, we hit the $100,000 a month. Right?

And then the next month was just slightly under, then the next month was just slightly over, and then it got to the point where it was consistently over and then consistently in the mid $100,000 range. As of late, we've been in the upper $100,000 range, and then our first, month over $200,000 was last month. It was $231,000, so we which is super epic. And to to think that that's just specifically just wholesaling

Gonzalo Corzo: deals, you know, we're not flipping. We're not wholesaling.

Dominick: I think the last I think the last time I sent you a a group of HUDs, there was one, like, retail listing in it. It was a brokerage related deal. But this was, like, really just wholesale. There might have been a co wholesale deal in there or something like that, but it's really all wholesale related. You know, it's our lane.

Steve: Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah.

Dominick: I mean, it's our lane, and we decided to just stick with it and not veer into other realms. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but that's just what we're very fond of.

Steve: Yeah. You were gonna say? Really intentional. So I think one of the things that the reason why it's impressive because I I I I put in here, like, it's just one market. Mhmm.

You know? And it's not that you guys are in other markets. Right. But you guys crushed it in just one market. And, you know, we've had a lot of people come on the show, and they've hit some big, big numbers.

Speaker 3: Mhmm. Right.

Steve: Mhmm. But usually, it's around, like, six or seven markets.

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Steve: So to do that much in one market is really, really impressive.

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Steve: Yeah. What would you, I mean, it's been about a year since you guys are on

Gonzalo: the show. What would you guys attribute is the biggest thing that pushed you in that direction? So I

Speaker: would say number one is growing our our sales team

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: Our acquisition team. And then number two is expanding our disposition team. Right? So the last time we were here, we had one disposition sales manager, and now we have two disposition sales managers.

Steve: Okay.

Speaker: Last time we were here, we had three acquisition managers. Now we have four acquisition managers and a sales manager, that we're currently training up the sales manager.

Steve: To manage the other four?

Speaker: To manage the other four.

Steve: Gotcha. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about the responsibilities. Like, what is that guy responsible for?

Speaker: So it's funny because we

Steve: Especially if it's a new role.

Speaker: Yeah. It's it's a new role. So right now, they're kind of like a fifth acquisition manager.

Steve: Got it.

Speaker: So right now, they're getting acclimated to our our systems, our processes. They've been in sales for two decades. Yeah. But they're not in line with the real estate, realm and and wholesaling specific.

Steve: And this guy came from outside the industry.

Speaker: Correct. Mhmm.

Steve: So I I I'm just curious, you know, if I was in your acquisition team and you got you brought in someone outside Yeah. To manage me, I might be like, dude. Like, you just totally looked right past me Yeah. And went outside. Yeah.

Did you guys have that challenge?

Dominick: We we figured that challenge.

Speaker: Going through it right now.

Steve: So So let's talk about it. What's going on?

Speaker: So so the the reason why we brought them on is because, and and the reason why they're training right now as an acquisition manager. Right? So right now, their goal is to hit the same numbers that our acquisition managers are expected to hit. So he's not doing any sales manager responsibilities at the moment.

Steve: Okay. So he's brought in to be the sales manager, but before he can officially take that helm, he's gotta prove himself.

Gonzalo: Correct. Correct.

Speaker: Correct. Correct.

Steve: Gotcha. And

Speaker: we do that partly because we feel like he needs to get acclimated

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: But because we want the other guys to have that sense of respect that we already feel is there on our minds Mhmm. You know. But this exactly what you're saying, you know, like, dude, I've been here for six months, you know, a year. Yeah. And, you know, why why am I not becoming sales manager?

Steve: So what was the answer to that question when they asked you that?

Speaker: The the the answer is, you know, it's it's just because you're good at at closing deals doesn't mean you're good at getting other people to close deals. Mhmm. Right? And so we wanted to bring on somebody who has experienced coaching other sales people

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: To reach their goals. Right? So this, sales manager has been in, Citi, Citibank. Mhmm. And one of the things that kinda sold me on him was he was responsible for coaching the, the retention sales, callers.

The bottom 20%, the people that were in 20 or below, it was his job to coach them to get them up on their numbers.

Dominick: Gotcha. The other 80%.

Gonzalo: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. And so we wanted to bring on somebody who because we we've tried it in the past having somebody who's in the industry.

Dominick: Mhmm.

Speaker: Right? But they didn't have that managing experience.

Steve: Gotcha.

Speaker: And it's it's tough to when you're in that group, we all, you know, I'm I'm saying we, like, I'm one of the acquisitionists. Right? We all kinda started together. We're all in this together, and now I'm responsible for bitching you out. I don't know if we're allowed to cuss or not, but, you know, telling you you're slacking.

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: Right? And you're

Steve: my boy. Yeah.

Speaker: You've been, you know, chit chatting, talking crap about the job, whatever, and now I'm responsible for your numbers.

Gonzalo: Yeah.

Speaker: So there was a challenge with that.

Steve: Sure. And that makes total sense. Like, that's one one thing we see a lot. We saw that in engineering and we see it in sales. It's like you take it, you know, someone's a good engineer and promote them to manager.

Well, they were never a good manager. So now they're just a crappy manager and and and you can't be using engineering skills anymore. And and it's the same thing with sales. Like, you take a sales guy and you put him in the manager. Okay.

Now he's a crappy manager, and now you're not getting a sales offer from him either.

Speaker: Exactly.

Steve: So you guys already went through that hurdle once before.

Speaker: Yep. Awesome. And so we're we're seeing that the way to go, it's it might not be the best way, but it is the way that we're taking is bringing somebody who has crap ton of managing experience.

Gonzalo: Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. No. It makes a lot of sense.

Speaker: Acclimating them to real estate wholesale. Yeah. And that's why right now they're just on the phones negotiating, you know, hitting the trenches just like everybody on the sales floor. Gotcha. And we think it's working well because everybody's excited when he's closing deals now.

You know, he's got his properties under contract. And so everybody's kind of excited for him, and everybody, once broken down why he has the role, understands why he has the role. Gotcha. And and we've kind of painted it in a picture where if we all want to see the business get to where we're pitching you guys on where we want it to be, it's going to be with getting out of our comfort zone and having people pull us up. And so the only way to do that is by bringing in individuals who have the skills that we don't want to take the time to learn.

Steve: Yeah. Absolutely. It makes total sense. So one of the biggest challenges we see consistently in our industry is finding and keeping the acquisition guys. So you went from three to four and a lot since, you know well, I didn't meet you, but since you guys were out here last.

Right? Is it the same three, or did you replace some of that three? Different. Different. Yeah.

Speaker: Okay. Yeah.

Steve: So let's talk about that. How are you finding them and then how are you retaining them? So let's start with finding them. How are you guys finding these guys right now?

Dominick: So it I think in most cases, it's relationships. It's through people we know. It's through networking. It's through groups. A couple it's the funny thing is two of our top sales guys Mhmm.

Steve: We

Dominick: don't we don't do any coaching or anything anything paid right now. We do a show, you know, every week, where we just wanna stay relative to the community and talk about wholesaling because we like it and it's fun. But prior to this, you know, over a year ago, we had a coaching group that we did for close to about a year.

Speaker: Yep.

Dominick: And then someone in that coaching group was just very fond of wholesaling, just always wanted to be in real estate, be a part of a team or whatever. And that individual, he's our top, within the last couple of months, he's been our top acquisition manager. He came and he joined the team. And then another individual that started a wholesaling company didn't really get off on the right foot. But, however, you know, from there, he went off on his own sales journey into other sales, positions in other companies, learned about our position and came then worked for us just because he was just very fond of real estate and wholesaling and wanted to be a part of, you know, a group that's, you know, expanding.

So those are our kind of our two top sales guys. And then the other individuals are people that know those guys. Right? So we've done we've and then we do a lot of just organic, interviewing and, you know, home base and and Monster and and ZipRecruiter and all that stuff, but it just seems that the people that are truly have their hearts in real estate, specifically in wholesaling, we've done better with recruiting those. Sorry about that.

We've done better with recruiting people, that wanna be a part of it, truly a part of it rather than people that have sales experience but don't really know what real estate is. You know? I think they really like the idea of, growing with a company and building something and being a part of real estate because real estate's really attractive.

Steve: So they already knew you or knew about you guys

Dominick: Correct.

Steve: Before they even applied.

Dominick: In most cases, yes. Gotcha.

Speaker: And one guy brought his brother. Right? So now his brother is an acquisition manager. He's doing awesome. And then part of the challenge is figuring something out for the acquisition managers because they might feel like there's a you know, you you get every single day you're getting no's, you're getting you're getting strung along, deals fall through.

So you're getting beat up every single day

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: Right, as an acquisition manager. Obviously, there's wins, but most of the time you're just getting beat

Steve: up. Right.

Speaker: And so it's figuring out and painting the bigger picture on what can be next. Right? So for one of the guys, like, we had to figure out, they became our field manager. Right? Going out to the properties.

He used to be an acquisition manager. Now he's a field manager. Right? Because he was getting to that point where, like, I've been closing for a year

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: You know, and I feel like I'm good at it, but I wanna grow with the company. I wanna do more. How do I, how can I add value to you guys while still being a part of your group? Yeah. Mhmm.

Gonzalo: And

Speaker: so the we had to kind of rearrange the position and now he's a he's a field closer. So he goes out to the properties, takes the pictures, does the inspections, gets the contract signed in person. So it's also figuring stuff out when they're getting to that kind of cap of, hey, I'm thinking I'm getting tired of this job.

Steve: You're a little burnt out.

Speaker: I'm getting a little burnt out. You know, what what is next for me or am I just gonna quit?

Dominick: What's interesting about what he's saying is that, you know, in some cases, these people have the essence of visionaries. Right? Like, they want to grow in whatever position they are, whether whether they wanna start something on their own. But if they decided to work for us now, they're working for us. They've been with us for a year or so.

They wanna continue to grow. And, you talked about a little bit when you're talking about, the the sales manager position. They didn't get that. Why didn't they get that? Why aren't they growing in those, you know, in that aspect of it?

So they do wanna grow, and we do do continue to have to talk to them and and instill faith in our process and where we're going. And part of what we have to tell them, like, is, listen. This is not the only sales manager position that there's going to be. Like, we want to build squadrons, and we want to go into more markets, and we wanna grow this into being something terrific and great. So just because we implemented one leadership position doesn't mean it's going to be the last leadership position.

You know? Everyone's gotta have patience, including us, because we've been eating shit for the last three years. And just because we're having great months right now doesn't mean we're not reinvesting. We're not investing into leadership roles Mhmm. Marketing, new ideas, technology, new systems, things like that.

Like, you know, wholesaling. People get into wholesaling because they wanna build cash flow. They want money now. Right? Right.

But if you're building it like a true business, you are investing real money into this stuff. It's not cheap.

Steve: No. It's not cheap at all. And I think that's, it's a very solid point as far as the guys that are in this role tend to be entrepreneurial in nature.

Speaker: Yes.

Steve: And that's been one of the biggest problems is, you know, I know for me in many, many years is, even on the traditional real estate side is you train somebody, you bring someone in, and you and you coach them up, and they're successful. Mhmm. And now they're like, okay. Thanks for everything. Yeah.

And then they

Gonzalo: go to compete

Speaker: against you.

Steve: And there's nothing wrong with that. Like, you can't Right. You can't, you know, like, clip someone's wings so you can't grow. Correct. But that's just a natural path Right.

Of of a

Dominick: salesperson when they come in. Right. But

Steve: salesperson when they come in. And so, in fact, you guys met Max last time. Yeah. He was my inside sales agent

Dominick: Oh, okay.

Steve: Before he left and came back to to partner.

Dominick: Oh, that's awesome. So and that's just something that happens all the time. So the cool thing about what you're saying just I I don't I wanna interject really quickly because, I don't know if you've ever read a book called Good to Great by Jim Collins.

Steve: Of course. Yeah.

Dominick: So I'm reading it for the fourth time now.

Steve: Amazing book.

Dominick: I just reread books that I'm very fond of pretty pretty frequently. And, they talk about, like, if you're gonna train strong people in your company Mhmm. Then you have to train them up and be ready for them to move on. Like, you just have to expect for them to move on. Like, they're either gonna grow with you or they're gonna reach their ceiling, and you have to be okay with them going elsewhere at some point in time.

Yeah. And that's some of the conversations we've had with people on our team. Like, listen, if we can't build new positions quick enough for you to grow with us, we're totally okay. Just be straight up with us. Talk to us.

Let's just exit strategy, be comfortable for everyone, or stick around and let's just work it out to to get you to where you need to be. Yep.

Steve: And I'm sure we're getting some questions here about how are you guys compensating, your acquisition guys. Because, you know, there's all sorts of different compensation models.

Dominick: Yeah. We have a sick a sick plan.

Speaker: We don't compensate them. That's why they're leaving. No.

Steve: Yeah. No.

Dominick: So So we give a base.

Speaker: Yep. Base.

Dominick: We give a base and then we also give a bonus.

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Dominick: Right? So the basis so we have a range that's in our minds, it's roughly between 24 and 36,000 a year base salary. Right? And then the bonus is between 57%. We have it tiered based on how well they do on the front end negotiation.

Right? So if they do really well, they can get as good as a 7%, bonus by the time it closes. And if they do just, very close to the maximum we're about to pay and we do get to close it, that'll be closer to 5% of of a bonus. Right? So they're making between $6,070,000 a year.

You know, and if they're, not hitting 60, it's just very close to the 60. Gotcha. Yeah.

Steve: And one thing that I I heard you mention in reinvesting back in the business, you mentioned leadership, which is a topic I'm very passionate about. Mhmm. So what kind of leadership are you guys investing into? Okay. What programs or what are you guys looking into?

Dominick: Cool. So, sales manager is one of the first lead one of the leadership positions that we have. We also have an HR manager, accountant individual. He's kind of an all encompassing office support person, and then there's g and I. Right?

So one of the next things that we're looking at is an operations manager. And the way that we look at sales manager versus operation manager is pre acquisition contract and post acquisition contract. Right? We just had we've had long discussions since kind of the way that we operate. Right?

There's, like, a clear divide of what happens before the acquisition contract and what happens after the con the acquisition contract. What we try to do in our company is we try to as soon as the deal is is locked up and closed, and it's not perfect, but as soon as it's locked up and closed with the acquisitionist, we try to take it off their place so they can just deal with nothing with sales and new acquisitions. Right. Right? So we have an acquisition support person.

We call it a liaison. And then g is really kind of like an operations manager, to where he helps with taking that off of their plates and really just pushing it over to the disposition side of the company. Right? So we have the sales manager for the acquisitionists, and one of the next leadership roles is probably gonna be operations manager, which is gonna kinda be a sales manager for the disposition side of the business. Yeah.

Gotcha. That makes sense.

Steve: So, you know, for people that are watching this show, you got, you know, both of you guys. Who Who wears what hats? What are you guys responsible for?

Dominick: Gotcha. So so I'm the CEO, and g is the president. Mhmm. G does a lot more of the operational side of the business, which is g twenty twenty. G twenty twenty Gonzalo.

So he does a lot of the moving parts of both sales manager and operations manager. Mhmm. And, and I support backup for g as well as project management, and we work together on big decisions for the company. Yeah.

Steve: So he's handling operations and sales. Yep. You're managing

Dominick: He don't get me in trouble, g Steve. I don't do anything. He No.

Steve: You boss g around.

Speaker: So so when when it comes to negotiating the deals and locking the deals up in their contract, working with the sales guys, that's what I do. Mhmm. So Dom works with the marketing side and our company automations.

Steve: Mhmm.

Speaker: We call him a project manager.

Steve: Yeah.

Speaker: In the world of real estate, people think of that as like a construction manager who goes to the projects. Yeah. We don't do that. But the project manager just works on Podio, create pulling lists, skip tracing, creating different automations in the system, different workflows. And I know I might be getting a little technical, but,

Steve: That's fine.

Speaker: With Podio and and, different integrations with Zapier and Globeflow, automating the system, basically.

Gonzalo: Yeah.

Speaker: So Dom takes care of that end, takes care of hiring the virtual assistants, pulling lists, make sure we have a consistent lead flow. Right? And then Dom also handles a bunch of the employee stuff. Mhmm. Right?

Hiring. Hiring, getting the employees in trouble. Right? Correcting them.

Steve: Doggy, like write ups.

Speaker: Yeah. Good cup, bad cup.

Steve: Yeah. Right?

Dominick: And a lot of backup for g because, like, on the sales side of it, like, it can become pretty overwhelming, especially, like, we're aspiring to scale. We're doing a lot of transactions. I think we did 21 last month. But 21 means that you might have started with trying to do 30 to 35, 35 to 38 or whatever, and not all of them work out. Right?

So So there's just a lot of moving parts and a lot of activity. Right? So he'll be over helping someone if someone else needs assistance, and I'm back up for that as well.

Steve: Gotcha. Okay. So the other thing you mentioned was that you're you went from one disposition to two disposition people. Yeah. How has that helped you?

Speaker: So that has helped us tremendously, especially during the COVID outbreak.

Steve: Mhmm.

Dominick: Right?

Speaker: Because a lot of our our biggest issue during COVID was the buyers. Right? Buyers stopped buying. Buyers were backing out. Buyers were lowering the amount that they were offering.

Buyers are no longer buying tenant occupied properties. You know, a flipper in the past would he'd buy it, kick the tenant out, you know, whatever. Now they're like, alright. It has to be vacant. I can't evict.

I don't know how long it's gonna be until I can't evict or whatever. Yep. So it's been a struggle trying to or at least it was, right, trying to position deals to investors. And we had a ton of buyers, but you get comfy working with the ones that you know. Mhmm.

You know, this guy's gonna buy it. You know, let's send it to him. And so now when that their usual buyers, you know, they're maybe paid they would have maybe paid a $100 for this deal three months ago, now they're offering 85. Yeah. You know, it it takes a while before our acquisition adjustments kicked in to, you know, because we lowered the amount that we were locking deals up under contract, but that takes a while to kick in.

You still have these 20 properties that you have under contract. What are we gonna do? Yep. And so it's it's worked awesome being able to be more proactive with dispositions. Right?

Before, we were a little more mainly reactive. Right? Because it was only one person. It's my wife. Mhmm.

So she was

Steve: Couldn't yell at her.

Speaker: Yeah. Can't yell at her. And so she will she's been with us since day one as dispositions. Right? And she did disposition transaction coordinator, and she's awesome.

So she's allowed my wife to focus specifically on dispositions.

Steve: Mhmm.

Speaker: But when you're trying to scale and grow, obviously, you get overwhelmed every single day. Right. A new deal. And in fact, like, they just messaged us, yes or last week, we had eleven, twelve properties under contract with, disposition. Right?

Dominick: Yeah. Yeah. Within a week span, it was like 10 locked up on the disposition side or 11. 10 within, like, three a three day span.

Speaker: Yeah. So in the last three

Dominick: days, we sent 10

Speaker: new properties to title.

Steve: So we dispositioned person. They're in charge of, obviously, moving the properties. Are they also in charge of prospecting for buyers?

Speaker: They are in charge of Not really. Not really.

Steve: Okay. So who's doing that?

Speaker: So we were taking more of a reactive approach to prospecting for buyers. Mhmm. So we get a lot of influx. So whenever we get a deal under contract, we put it out everywhere.

Steve: Mhmm.

Dominick: Right? Social media. Tons of different websites, connected investors, bigger pockets. We cast a really big web, so it drives, a lot of people to opt into our list. Right?

So we're getting, what, two or three a day Yeah. Two or three a day new buyers. So we have thousands of buyers on our buyers list in our market, and we're getting two or three every single day, that are opting into our list. And that doesn't include the people that see our deals that just call in, that negotiate or whatever, you know, and then they continue to to inquire and call and that haven't opted in as well. Gotcha.

Gonzalo: Yeah. And how

Steve: are you guys finding your disposition person?

Speaker: Disposition person was another person that wanted to be in in wholesaling. And,

Dominick: funny because Yeah.

Speaker: When we when we were doing our or when we were having our coaching

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: You know, we we did free office visits so that we'd allow people to come into our office for free for, like, a quick little twenty minute tour. We'd give them a little tour, and then we try to, you know, sell them, hey. If you wanna learn more, come to our event or whatever. Right? And this was actually one of the persons that came in to do the tour.

And they had came to do the tour probably a year before we hired them.

Dominick: And then one thing I I actually didn't remember is at the time his name is Charles, by the way. Shout out to Charles. When he did the tour, I didn't remember this, and he told us this later after he hired us. He said, I told you, man. What happens because he lived in Tennessee.

He's like, hey, man. He goes, I'll just quit my job. I'll move to Jackson. I'll work for you guys right now. You know, would you guys take us on?

And we weren't ready to take we weren't hiring at that point. Yeah. But it was flattering. You know? And it just so happens that x amount of months later

Gonzalo: Yeah.

Dominick: You know, we're hiring for a disposition agent, and he had already lived in Jacksonville. I guess he knew his, you know, his wife had family out here in Jacksonville, you know, in Jacksonville and stuff like that. So, they moved to Jacksonville. We were hiring, and he saw the post. So he came in for an interview.

That's

Speaker: awesome. Yeah.

Steve: So, another question these guys must be asking is what, to get to 200, you know. Well, a, I appreciated that you guys sent the, the HUD in a well packaged

Dominick: Oh, did it come through good?

Steve: In a in a good, Google Drive where I can just click through the HUD. So I really appreciate that. Normally, I just get an email, and I have to kinda, like, figure it all out. So I appreciated that. Okay.

What, what lead source has been most effective for you guys in in Jacksonville?

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Dominick: Secrets. You guys are getting the secrets now.

Speaker: We charge for this, bro.

Dominick: So so cold calling is is just the main one of the major lead sources for us. Yeah. Cold calling. We're we're heavy on cold calling. You know?

Yeah. We've got about 11 agents. One of the things that we're looking at doing now is just picking up another four or five agents.

Steve: Mhmm.

Dominick: Because now that we're going into another market and we're starting to see success, and a clear path of how to succeed in that second market, now since we're and then we're we we still see a lot of potential on on doing more in the market that we're in, by the way. Yeah. Like, we're not done with expanding inside of our market. There's a lot of things that we're gonna just zero in on. But at the same time, we can expand as well.

So, when we go into the other market and, we we've only pulled a small amount of data. There's so much more data that we can pull into that in that market so that we can start doing more sales. We're gonna be able to expand now. Gonna be able to hire on more salespeople and build on the team.

Steve: Where are you guys finding these agents?

Speaker: Cold calling?

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: Dang. They want all the secrets.

Dominick: You know,

Speaker: It's it's it's interesting. It's interesting.

Dominick: Yeah. So, basically, we we do it organically. We mess around with Upwork here and there. We hadn't really had a ton of success with it, but, really, we've had more success on Craigslist. Right?

But not only just Craigslist, it's it's Craigslist in the countries that we target. And we mainly have been targeting, like, Central and South American countries.

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Steve: And

Dominick: we've had a good experience. A lot of people, that live in Central And South America, they spend a good part of their lives in The US. Yeah. You know, it's either they came over as as kids, you know, after they were born. They weren't quite legal.

They spent, you know, their grammar school time, middle school time in in The US and just moved back and whatever the case may be, however worked out. I I feel like half of our of our agents

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Dominick: Have lived in The US for a good period of time. And the other ones that haven't, they just they they get our culture. They can talk you know, it's not just that they've learned English so they know how to speak it. It's they get how to have a conversation with an American. Yeah.

And that just seems to make a big difference for us because we've had Philippine agents and, agents from India and things like them. We've had bad experiences. And, and then, you know, maybe it was early on in our wholesale career. Maybe it's not because those countries don't work. It just that's the path that led us to getting to the agents that we pick right now.

Mhmm. And then now since, we're trying to aggressively add agents on another four or five, you know, within the next few weeks, hopefully, we are we are gonna, put ads out into, you know, Philippines and India, Pakistan, Pakistan, things like that just to see if there's still hope for for that size just so we have, you know, an abundance of options. But we'll just have to see how that turns out. Yeah.

Steve: I mean, I've kinda heard the same thing. Just it's hard in in The Philippines to have that same track record, same consistent success.

Gonzalo: I'm

Steve: hearing people, like, from what it appears, Costa Rica seems to be, like, the most popular as far as finding, you know, expats.

Speaker: Right.

Dominick: What are

Steve: you guys paying these people?

Speaker: The cold callers?

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: So we're paying them anywhere between 4 to $7 an hour. Yeah. Yeah. Depending on number one, obviously, their skill set and their background, but also what they're used to getting paid.

Dominick: Mhmm.

Speaker: And then after a year, like because we have some people that have been with us, some cold callers that have been with us for over a year. Yeah. So we've bumped them up on their on their wages and they also get

Dominick: And

Speaker: bonus. So depending on the amount of leads that they get after every, every month, they have different tiers. So if they get x amount of leads, they qualify for first level incentive. And if they get more more leads, then they get a second tier incentive. And so that's kinda how we're paying them, anywhere between four to seven.

Steve: And who's managing them?

Speaker: So we have one, manager in the office and she manages them all day.

Steve: Gotcha.

Speaker: So she trains them up. She listens to their calls. She answers their questions. She makes sure the leads come in and tasks out the leads to the acquisition manager. Mhmm.

She come in and tasks out the leads to the acquisition managers. Yeah. So that's that's only her role. Yeah.

Dominick: At one point in the beginning, she was an in house call caller herself, for for a long for a long time. So another

Gonzalo: one of

Dominick: the leadership positions. Another one of the leadership positions. Yeah. So she's kind of like and then we we entitle the the VA's lead specialists. So she's like the manager for the lead specialists.

Yeah. And on the same token, she's a lead manager in the sense as well. Gotcha.

Steve: Yeah. And one thing this is just as an aside because I had a debate with somebody last week. Mhmm. Florida. I've heard that you will get crushed if you do RVMs and techs just from from a TCP that the state specific laws.

I've heard that. I haven't investigated it. What are you what is your guys' experience?

Speaker: Someone has to

Dominick: talk

Speaker: to my attorney, before I answer that. No. I'm kidding.

Steve: I'm not asking what you guys do. I'm just asking what are you guys hearing out there?

Speaker: Yeah. So Florida is definitely one of those states that everybody's cautious in Mhmm. With text, RVM. We kind of just do what we do Mhmm. And try to follow it as best as possible.

Yeah. Follow the the rules as best as possible.

Steve: But is it,

Speaker: is

Steve: it, is it additional laws in Florida or the attorney general just more proactive?

Speaker: I think it's additional laws. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dominick: And then But I don't don't

Speaker: I I don't take my advice for this, you know.

Steve: Not an attorney.

Speaker: I'm not an attorney, you know. Yeah. But, from what we know, it seems that there's different laws in Florida rather than more enforced.

Dominick: But what's cool to see is there's software out there that works in a way to compensate for the laws. Right? And they claim to be, you know, safe to use in in any state in The US. Right? So they'll function like if there's texting software, they'll function in a way as if you're sending the text individually.

Mhmm. And they actually make you kind of do it individually, but you they help you to do it faster.

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Dominick: And we're using we're using software like that.

Steve: Gotcha. Right?

Dominick: So if we're gonna text, then we're gonna do it legitimately that complies with the what is it? The TCPA laws. So we're doing stuff like that. We're not doing a whole ton of RVM stuff like it. It's more like, you know, cold calling and texting.

And and a lot of the texting that we do, it's really on on the buyer side. So we're we're just getting information quicker to the people that expect to hear from us. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. We don't really do text blasting Gotcha. For sellers. We we use, call tools.

Dominick: Mhmm.

Speaker: It's the dialer that we use, and it sends out texts, as it dials. So instead of sending out, you know, 30,000 texts, we'll call the list. And if they don't pick up, then they get a text message. Or if they hang up on us, then they'll get a text message.

Dominick: Got it.

Speaker: So that's kinda how we've been doing it.

Steve: Very cool. You guys don't seem to be have been impacted by COVID.

Dominick: A little bit. A little bit, man. So so the the the funny thing is we've we've been having, gradual growth for the last couple of couple of years. You know, we've been tweaking little things, adding to the process, getting better as we go along. And, you know, we had a record breaking month in March.

Right? And then we just we just had momentum. We had the momentum. We were feeling good. We were growing.

And then COVID came in and, you know, everyone was getting nervous. And then it just started seem it seemed like like, you know, sellers on the seller side and investors on on the buyer side. Like, no one knew what to expect. Right? And since they didn't know what to expect, they didn't do anything.

You know, it's not like they didn't wanna sell or buy as they didn't wanna buy. They wanted to, but they just didn't know what was gonna happen, so they wanted to stand on the sidelines to wait and see what was going to happen. Right? So I don't know. I think we had, like, $170,180,000 dollar a month in in March.

And then we still had a good month in April. It was it was over a $100,000, and then, May started to kinda tank a little. It was more between 50 and $60,000. So, during that time frame, we started questioning, like, you know, is it us in a way? Like, I know there's a problem, but sometimes you don't wanna believe there's a problem.

Like, you know, your process has worked and you wanna push forward and you still wanna drive and you don't really wanna change anything. But then life teaches you a lesson, and it tells you to be creative and figure new things out. Now in a way, it was a blessing in disguise because it made us implement processes that help us to operate more efficiently now that the, you know, the economies are recovering a little bit and we're able to, you know you know, people are coming to terms with the fact that COVID's here, but, you know, life goes on. You still have to work with it. You still have to push forward and buy and sell.

Steve: What did you

Dominick: do last week? So one of the big things was, was the texting on the buyer side. Right? Getting information to more buyers quicker. Right?

Portraying your deals over to a bigger array of people to get more interest on them. Interest on them. Yeah. Right? So that that was, like, probably the biggest learning experience, I would say.

Before that And

Speaker: it sounds so common sense, you know, just, like, text your buyers.

Gonzalo: But we've built

Speaker: a good reputation in Jacksonville. Mhmm. Buyers. And because of the network of buyers that we've built, we have a lot of repeat customers. Mhmm.

And and the repeat customers that we have

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: Are they're paying good prices for the deals.

Steve: You know

Speaker: what I mean? And so it's worth it for us to, you know, because sometimes you get those repeat customers that are like, oh, you know, you you used to make $5 on my deals. Now you're making $15 on my deals. What's going on? You know?

And we have some repeat customers who are like, dude, you're gonna make $10 or you're gonna make $50. As long as it fits my number, I'll buy it.

Steve: You know?

Speaker: And that's kind of the the relationships that we have out there. And so you get kind of comfy just, you know, calling five guys

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: Easy sale.

Steve: Right.

Speaker: And then COVID hits. Those five guys drop their numbers, you know, or are out of it it for the next month because they wanna see what's gonna happen. So now it's alright. We've had this list of buyers for years. We haven't you know, we email blast them, but email blast, you know, you can email blast 4,000 emails.

Steve: Yeah.

Speaker: You only get 200 opens. So there's, you know, 3,800 people that didn't see the deal. So how do we get to them?

Steve: Right.

Speaker: You know, and and text blasting has been has been huge for us. And then it's also lowering the acquisition number. Right? So lowering the amount of, the the amount that we're offering to sellers, because that obviously, buyers are offering less, But that's always been a struggle for us. Not not just but more of a mental struggle.

You know? It's the the whole struggle of, like, I could make five on it, so let's lock it up instead of, I I need to make 10 on this one.

Gonzalo: Mhmm. You know,

Speaker: I need to make $15 on it. Yeah. So that's been a a a mindset shift for us is offering less and getting better deals.

Steve: What is your guys' targeted fee?

Dominick: We target to make 15.

Speaker: Yeah.

Gonzalo: Yeah. And what are you guys finding to be your average fee?

Dominick: Our average fee has been about 10 to 13.

Steve: Gotcha. Okay. And then, before we even jumped in the air, we were talking about business building, that that was one of the things you guys are gonna be

Dominick: focusing on as well. What does that mean exactly? So what we wanna do is, our dream, right, is to build squadrons. Right? And a squadron would consist of the exact amount of people that could, handle leads from a specific market size or combination of of market sizes, that can flow equally throughout the the people in the squadron.

So when you look at our team, it's it's like an assembly line. Right? We have project management and lead generation. Right? So they generate you know, they're they're putting together the the lead source and they skip trace it.

They load the dialers. They handle the virtual assistance, and they're bringing the leads in. Right? When the leads come in, they they disqualify the ones that we know, and there's signs that we look at that we know we're not gonna get a deal with or most likely we're not gonna get a deal with this individual. The remaining leads, they hand over to the acquisition managers.

Mhmm. And the acquisition managers, you know, they have their follow-up schedules and their routines and their rules that they have to go by with handling the scripts and the conversations and the offers and the contracts and things of that sort. So they're gonna lock up those deals. Once they lock up those deals with the sellers, they pass them on to the acquisition liaison, which in a sense is really, like, kind of an acquisition assistant or support person for the acquisition managers. And that person is gonna handle, like, for us, we pull the deeds.

We get a lot of information. We call the sellers up. We get all the lease information. Is the tenant month to month or when does the lease end? All of that information.

And they're in charge of setting the initial appointment and the initial walk through. And then they're also a support person for dispositions for, setting showing appointments for that property for our investors. Right? So that individual handles that. From that person, it goes on to a disposition liaison, which in a sense is a support person or an assistant for the disposition side of the business.

And they're gonna do a lot of the buyer marketing and the email blast Mhmm. And posting our deals in all different websites and, things of that sort, support other support things that we have in line for the disposition managers. And once all that's done, then a lot of interest comes to the disposition managers by way of email, phone calls into the office, and things of that sort. And then the disposition managers also will mass, text blast targeted investors for the properties depending on the category the property falls into, you know, buy and hold or flips, things of that sort. And then once they contract the deals with the investors, then all of that information, you know, all the paperwork from the the the acquisition side and the disposition side goes to the transaction coordinator, and then they take it from there and try to take all the burden away from all sides of the business right numbers?

What's the right number of acquisition, managers versus the right number of disposition managers, acquisition liaison, disposition liaison, liaison, disposition liaison, the right number of VAs, how many leads need to come in that a VA can handle, and then how many VAs transitions to an acquisition manager and so on and so forth down the assembly line. So we're getting close and we're not perfect, but we feel like we have the numbers pretty close. And then once that is, you know, as close as possible, as we're going into our next market, we're starting to see kind of a morph of a second squadron being built inside of this first squadron. So what that's gonna create is, you know, adding more sales managers, adding more dispositions, adding more support people, and then ultimately separating the teams. Right?

So, you know, team one might handle, you know, all of Jackson on half of San Antonio, and then team two is gonna handle half of San Antonio, and then we're gonna come into Arizona. You know, we're gonna kick you guys out of Arizona.

Steve: Good luck.

Dominick: Probably not. Probably not. But you get where I'm going with it. You know? And then they'll handle a certain you know, it's really all in the number of of leads that we can pull in from, you know, the the markets that we're in to I can see why

Steve: that team. I can see why Dominic's in charge of the the project management and Yes. And the whole organization.

Speaker: I'm just a wholesaler, man.

Steve: That's awesome. That was really cool. Alright. So let's get to some of these questions. You guys have been awfully patient with us.

So you got some love over here from Leo. Let's see.

Dominick: Awesome, Leo.

Steve: Why would you really do

Dominick: so early once a return to keep these guys? So what is the most challenging thing for you in this business? So I think one of the most, like, what's be gonna become and and we're starting to see that the most challenging thing is to build leadership roles. Mhmm. Right?

To choose the right people for the leadership roles. You know, we don't really know we have experience, hiring and training people that can work for us as leaders. But to hire people that can lead the other individuals is gonna be a really challenging thing. We don't have a whole lot of experience in that. I had another business before this.

It wasn't a big thing that I've worked toward. You know? I was always the leader. But now that, you know, you've been in business for a long time and then, you know, we're we're in personal development and, you know, we wanna grow something great, it's gonna be, you know, true leaders build leaders. Right?

Steve: Absolutely. That's how you can't

Dominick: one of our main

Gonzalo: You can't

Steve: build a great organization without building leaders.

Dominick: Correct. Correct.

Steve: Yeah. One thing that you touched on earlier, was coaching where you guys said you were trying to coach for a little bit, but you guys don't do that anymore.

Speaker: Correct.

Steve: Talk about that because a lot of people Yeah. You see it. You know, anyone someone has a little bit of success. Like, I'm a coach now. Yeah.

And they kinda, like, transition away or whatever. Right. Right. So talk about, what tempted you to do it

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Steve: And what's what caused you to say, ah, forget it. Yeah.

Dominick: It's a great question.

Speaker: So a lot of it kinda got started because we were getting asked a lot. Locally in Jacksonville, I, were very involved in the community. Mhmm. Right? So we try to go to as many networking events as possible.

Any opportunity that there is to teach a class, we'll teach it. I I was vice president of the local, RIA.

Steve: Oh, really?

Speaker: So I was on the board for two years, then I was VP for one year. So our name is out there in in the local market. And then there's, you know, every single three months a new networking event pops up. Right? And so we're big on, because one of the reasons why we're so active on networking stuff like that is for recruiting.

Mhmm. Right? Like, most of our people

Dominick: It sounds

Steve: like it's been very effective.

Speaker: Yeah. Most of the people that that come work for us, they they know about us. They know about our business before they even come work for us.

Steve: Yeah.

Speaker: And so, because of that, we were out there, and we started getting a lot of people asking us questions. Hey. How do you do this? You know? Can I can I, spend a day at your office?

It's kinda how it started.

Dominick: Mhmm.

Speaker: Somebody asked to spend a day at our office, and we charged them for it. And what we did is we let them sit with each department. Right? So they would sit with the, manager who manages the, the virtual assistants. So they sat with them for an hour.

Right? And they watched all that. And then they sat with an acquisition manager, and they watched them. Then they sat with, the acquisition liaison, watch what they did, then sat with the disposition liaison and transaction coordination. And it was cool because we were we were able to bring these people in.

We sat with them for about half hour in the morning, kinda, you know, teeing them up on how the day was gonna go. And then the team would kinda handle the rest of it.

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: So it seemed kind of lucrative for us. Right? Because we're like, hey, one person, you know, they'll pay us thousand bucks to hang out with us for one day. And not a lot of people were bringing people into their office. A lot of people do trainings, but they don't bring them into their office.

Right? Or that there's a lot of coaches out there, but they're not really doing it.

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: Right? And so there's a handful of people out there that are crushing it, crushing it, still have massive operations and are coaching as well. But most of the coaches out there had their success and are now just focused on coaching.

Gonzalo: Mhmm. Right?

Speaker: And so we saw that there was a little niche in the coaching industry of of wholesaling where there's not a lot of people out there saying come to my office, shadow my team. You know? Mhmm. So we felt like we could be effective with that. And so it started off with one person, then we're like, hey.

Let's start promoting it online, you know, or social media. Hey. This guy's at our office for the day. If you guys are interested, you know, hit me up. And then people were contacting us.

And that led to another thing. And then I don't know where we were doing, you know, events, at our office with four or five people shadowing one department.

Steve: Yeah.

Speaker: Then, we took the conference room table out and had 16 people in there. And then instead of them shadowing at their desk, we'd have the

Dominick: We put a workstation in our conference room. So we'd bring the workstation monitor there. To in front of the people.

Steve: That's awesome.

Speaker: And then we were like, shit. Let's rent out a hotel room, you know, because this thing is working.

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: And then we recreated that whole event in a hotel room. We had 80 people there. And then we were going down the path of, alright, let's start a mastermind group, you know, because people will pay more for that. Mhmm. And there's a desire for it.

There's a need for it. And we're big believers, you know, every year we join a different mastermind group. So we're big believers in it. We do it ourselves. But and it's funny because we're growing in our office.

Right? And where we're at in our office right now, we had to tear down walls. We had to kick our landlord out of part of the building, so that we could take over some space.

Steve: Mhmm.

Speaker: And in the past, we didn't have all the space that we have now in our office. So Dom and I, it's funny, but Dom and I used to have, like, very serious conversations in, like, our storage room closet because that was the only place we could go where

Dominick: it was super quiet. Come out smelling like mop water. Right?

Speaker: So we're like, bro, you got two minutes? And then we'd go hide in the in the closet really quick and just talk. And I remember just sitting there and we were both talking. We're like, dude, should we, like we we started a mastermind group. We had four people signed up.

They had already gave us $5 each to do this three month mastermind group. And, we were coming back from a momentum event and we were super pumped because we're like, shit, there's so much stuff that we can still do in our in our business, you know. And we sat down and we were like, what if all the time that we had put into this coaching, we had put into our wholesale business, you know, like, where would we be?

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: And we feel like we're behind in our wholesale business on where it could be because for a year, we were focused on coaching. And it almost felt like we were cheating on our wholesale business

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: You know, and our staff. Because our staff, they're they thrive off of closing deals, you know, and we pitch them on we're gonna biggest and the baddest wholesale company in the nation. And that was no longer our focus. It was, but it was, you know, doing two things.

Dominick: It was, like, said but not being done.

Speaker: Yeah.

Steve: Mhmm.

Speaker: Yeah. And so we were sitting in the in the storage closet and we just made the decision. We're like, alright. Let's like, should we really do this? You know, like, we're about because once you take $5 from people and and we're we're very, very honest people, so we wanna commit.

We're gonna go out of our way, especially getting started in coaching. Mhmm. We totally undercharged for everything that we do in that we did in coaching because we were trying to build our brand, get clients, whatever. Right? And we knew that once we commit to coaching somebody, like, we're gonna do everything that we can to make sure they're successful.

Steve: Right.

Speaker: And we just knew that starting a mastermind group and going down that path is going to ultimately take all of our time away from our wholesale business.

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: And we thought our wholesale business was there to be self sufficient, but it it was nowhere close to what we wanted it to be and it's nowhere close now. Right? And so we just made that decision right there. And then we're like, alright. Screw it.

We called up the people. Sorry to tell you this, but we're just too busy to do this. We're gonna give you back your money. If something comes back up, you'll be the first person we reach out to. And we still have great relationships with those people, and we've introduced them to other mentors and our mentors, you know, like, hey, I can't mentor you, but these are the people that are mentoring us, you know, go with them.

But that's kinda how it happened. And we just saw all the numbers that we were doing. We're like, alright. We just spent, like, four months putting on this event, trying to put on this event. And we're like, alright.

Let's look at the numbers.

Steve: There's just no money

Gonzalo: at all.

Speaker: That's a couple there that's a couple wholesale deals. You know? Like, let's just put our energy back into our wholesale business. And then, like, two months after we stopped coaching and just went all into wholesaling, we hit our first 6 figure month, and we just felt the impact of us just 100% driven into our wholesale business.

Gonzalo: That's awesome. And we

Speaker: feel right now, like, we should be more down the line of where we wanna be, but we kinda took a little hiatus because of coaching. And I don't regret it because it forced us to put ourselves out there, forced us to brand ourselves on social media, forced us to do Facebook stories every day and, you know, Instagram stories and

Steve: Yeah.

Speaker: Build that following which is still important to our wholesale business right now whether it's buyers or credibility for other wholesalers that want to JV with us or expanding and and recruiting people that are watching us online. So we're still big believers on branding. That's why we still do like a Tuesday night show and we own a networking group in Jacksonville. So we're big believers of it, but we just don't wanna commit by charging people. Because once you charge somebody now, like, can't sleep at night unless you're performing for this.

Dominick: Oh, you

Steve: got it. You gotta you gotta treat their money right.

Dominick: Exactly.

Steve: Claudio has a question. Is how are you guys staying lean marketing wise but still able to produce plenty of leads for the acquisition team?

Dominick: Did he say staying lean?

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Dominick: Are you staying lean marketing So I think it's just, continuously pulling data. And then one thing that we've learned, and this is not entirely proven, some of it is theoretical, is, like, we'll pull a mass amount of data. Right? And we'll pull it quarterly, and we'll repull a lot of the same data all over quarterly, and it'll perform like brand new data. So we're big on cold calling.

Right? So when we pull a list and we dial a list, it'll perform well. Right? And if we dial through that same list, it'll perform less well than it did the first time. And then the third time and the fourth time that you go through that list, you'll get less leads from it over time.

Right? And then if we go back in the beginning of the next quarter and pull that same exact list, it performs brand new again. And my theory is, and I don't know if this is proven, I haven't really dialed it on on this data, but the theory is, like, you know, people are moving. There's new people that occupy those properties. They change their phone numbers.

There's all these different things that go on in people's lives. You know, you have 18 year olds that bought their first home, 20 you know, people in their early twenties bought their first home, now they're on the list. You know, things like that are going on all the time. So we're pulling the same dater entirely over, and then they just data. And then it just performs like brand new data.

Gotcha. And that's kind of the way that we're working with it now.

Steve: Cool. So Joanne says you have to bear with this question. He's been marketing consistently for six months but still no deal, and it feels like nine of leads, but he's been marketing to a good amount of people. If you were in his position, what would you do?

Speaker: So I I I feel like I I know the answer.

Dominick: But I'm not gonna give it. But I'm not gonna

Speaker: say tune in next week. No. It's and and maybe this isn't the the correct answer, but the answer to me is your buyer's list. Right? Because it I feel like he, Joanne might not know what his buyers are looking for or what his buyers are willing to pay for the deals that are out there.

Gonzalo: Yeah.

Speaker: And so I every wholesaler that I that I meet that wants to get started, I always ask him, you're only as good as your buyers list.

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: Right? How good is your buyers list? And a lot of people out there are just like just find a good deal, you find a good deal, it'll sell. Right? But confidence in wholesaling is everything, especially just getting started.

Steve: Yeah.

Speaker: And the fear of you not making a strong offer to the seller because you don't know if you're gonna perform or not is going to stop you from doing deals. So I I feel like and this is what made me a successful whole wholesaler is especially when when we started our business, you know, I had already been wholesaling for a couple years before I started this business with Dom. So when I started this business with Dom, we had buyers already. So, like, we did our first deal, you know, within a month or two, of once we started doing marketing because I had already done a ton of deals and I already had buyers. I knew what they were looking for.

So if you don't have a solid list of buyers and a good relationship with buyers, not confidence is everything. Mhmm. And having the ability to portray that confidence to the seller and being confident in, alright, if I'm gonna offer them 50, I know it's super low, but I'm gonna be able to perform.

Dominick: Right.

Speaker: And so most of the time you're not making the offers that you should be making because you're either scared that you're not gonna be able to sell it or you're offering too low, right? And I know this might sound weird but there's deals out there that, you know, you feel like you need it for 30, there's a buyer that's willing to pay 45, you can offer them 40 and make $5 on it. Mhmm.

Steve: You know?

Dominick: It's almost like buyers equals confidence, confidence equals deals. Yes.

Speaker: Yeah. Yes.

Steve: Yeah. And you kinda see it in some of these guys, You know? They're they're offering $100 EMDs, which I'm not saying there's something wrong with it, but you're confident in that number. You feel more confident

Dominick: in your EMD. Yeah. Yes. For sure.

Steve: Lucas Orozco wants to know, did you guys decrease your marketing expenses at all? I'm I'm presuming he's talking about COVID here. Did you guys reduce marketing during COVID? We we actually didn't.

Dominick: We actually didn't. One of the things that we we sat and had a conversation with about was we're gonna try to operate as close to normal as we possibly can, because in our minds, like, it felt temporary, and it kinda still does feel temporary. Because, you know, ultimately, you know, the masks are gonna go away, the vaccine is gonna be here, and people are gonna operate normally. People are just still, you know, contract the disease and or the the, whatever the flu, whatever it is. But we just we just said to ourselves, we're not gonna panic.

We're not gonna retreat. We're gonna continue to market the same, operate the same. We did cut cut a a couple of loose ends. We tightened a few things up. We explored new options, but we did not reduce our marketing.

Yeah.

Steve: And then, Leo wants to know, are you guy is there a certain amount of deals you guys need to do per month to breakeven?

Speaker: Certain amount of deals? Mhmm. So with it really comes down to to profit per deal. Right?

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: But we we probably need to at least make, like, $80 a month Yeah. To at least break even.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: To

Steve: cover all the margins over.

Dominick: To 10 deals, and and we're getting eight to 13 a deal. So I mean, 10 to 13 a deal. So Yeah.

Steve: Cool. And if there's one thing that you guys could change about your business, what would you guys change?

Dominick: That's a good question. If there's one thing we can change about our business, what would we change? Sheesh, dude. We've been talking straight. We haven't paused on any questions so far.

It's more deep than people realize. You got something for

Speaker: us, Jake? If if I could change something in our business, I would say it

Dominick: I I would wanna say not start the coaching and just go in on the real estate. But without that experience, you wouldn't have known, like, it's always gonna sit in the back and it feels like it would ultimately come back one day So

Steve: it'd be a distraction.

Dominick: More so when you're not ready for it. And now that we've gotten that out of our system, I I guess I guess I would wanna know from other parties what that experience is like, so I would rather know whether to to try it or not. And we didn't have any any experience like that. So So we basically, we tried it on our own, and it kind of put our growth trajectory on hold in a in a sense. So if I could know that information and not do it, we'd be further along in our real estate business than we are right now.

Got it. If that helps.

Steve: That helps a lot.

Speaker: And and I and I would say another thing. I don't know because, obviously, you we're here today because of everything that we've done in the past. Mhmm. You know? So I don't negotiating a better deal.

Right? And the reason was because we knew it was a quick thing, you know. Mhmm. If if we can get this deal under contract, we can make a quick $2 on it just flipping it to this guy, you know. Let's make a quick $2 on it.

Make a quick $3 on it. And that's how it was, like, the first year. Like, our first year in business, like, our average profit was, like, $4,300 per deal. Right? And so, because we we wanna have that equal balance of decent margins and decent volume.

Right? Right. Because we also don't wanna do four deals at $40 a deal. You know? It's hard to replicate that.

Gonzalo: It's part

Steve: of three p for sure.

Speaker: Yeah. And so that was a big thing for me. Right? Because when I was a one man show, like, $2, $4 deal is awesome. Mhmm.

You know? And, you know, I do one of those a month. Two of those a month is great. But now you have a, you know, you have a team, you have a staff, you have an overhead. I can't really afford those $2 deals anymore, you know, because those $2 deals almost take more time than the $15 deal.

Dominick: You're losing based on profit deal.

Steve: Yeah. For sure.

Speaker: So that that's one of the things that I think and we have this challenge with our acquisition managers, especially during COVID because during COVID, we made a drastic no. I wanna say drastic, but over time, we've tweaked it down and down and down a little bit more. And it's funny because we just tell them the numbers to get them under contract Mhmm. And they just get them under contract.

Steve: Exactly. It's that way.

Speaker: Yeah. And so that was one of our biggest things was let's lower it a little bit. And yeah. So that's something that I would say.

Steve: Ron wants to know what markets are you guys in? Can we talk about Jacksonville? Are you guys in other markets? Are you guys looking at South, South Florida?

Dominick: We're not we're not looking at South Florida. We've heard some pretty horrible things about South Florida. Miami is a tough market. So, basically, what we we're in Jacksonville, Florida, and what we, what we try to do is we try to look at the other markets and try to figure out which ones are as similar to Jacksonville as possible because that's how where we know how to operate. Mhmm.

You know, all the way down to, like, the the climate. Right? You know? And the climate during the winter. Like, winter months can be disruptive storms and, you know, icing and all that stuff.

So San Antonio seemed to be very similar in climate, very similar in medium price point. In fact, the price point's a little bit lower. One thing that was really interesting is that their their market size is about five times bigger than Jacksonville, Florida. So if we can operate the way that we operate in Jacksonville inside of San Antonio and we have a lot of room for expansion and we can build roots into that market, I think we can go a long way.

Steve: Gotcha. Very cool. And that answers Jorge's question about what market you guys going into. There you go.

Dominick: Antonio. Yep. Arizona. Everyone should go in Arizona. Everyone should definitely become in Arizona because

Steve: a lot of us are looking at other markets. There you go. Okay. So you guys have mentioned that you guys are purely focused on on wholesaling. So you guys aren't doing any flipping or any retail at all, like, just strictly

Speaker: We're closing on our first hotel deal Yeah. In September on September 15.

Gonzalo: Yeah.

Speaker: So we're buying a condo, Ponte Vedra Beach. It's like a nice beach town. And we're closing on that because during COVID, we didn't know what was gonna happen, and we didn't we had a lot of buyers backing out. Mhmm. So one of our things was, do we just need to raise money and just take down these properties ourselves?

Yeah. Right? Because we're still getting deals. We know they're deals. You know, we might not be able to make a quick 10 to 15 on it, but we gotta pay the bills.

So do we just need to take it down ourselves, put put it on the market, and then make the 15 on it, you know?

Steve: What was been crazy for us was the one of the best things about COVID was that we started buying more deals because

Gonzalo: we Right.

Steve: I saw

Speaker: that. Yeah.

Steve: So I mean, we've done we we got one that we made 70 on, one that, we're we're closing in a couple of weeks. So we're, you know, we're making 60. Like, another one we're making a 100. And it's just like, these are deals we would have wholesaled before.

Gonzalo: Right.

Steve: But because everyone's backing out, I was like, well, the deals are still really good.

Speaker: Yeah. There

Steve: you go. Yeah. So that's awesome. Well, that's yeah. That's that's really cool to hear.

Alright. So, in the last year because I always ask, like, your favorite book, but it's been a year. In the past year, what is what book have you gifted more than any other? In the past year Or a favorite book?

Speaker: To be honest, man, I haven't really I haven't really read much in the last year. I would yeah. I haven't really read much in the last year. How about

Steve: a big lesson?

Speaker: So but I would say though that one one of the things that drives me that has always stuck with me is the e myth.

Steve: Mhmm.

Speaker: Right? And, obviously, the book is awesome, but it's the one thing that stuck with me in the e myth was build your business like a franchise even if you're never going to everybody. Right? Tell this to my dad. My dad owns restaurants.

Right? And I tell him, like, your goal shouldn't be to franchise

Gonzalo: Yeah.

Speaker: If you don't want to, but you should build it like a franchise. And that has driven me in my business, 100%. You know, I don't think we'll ever franchise. It could be somewhere down in the path. Who knows?

But I wanna build it like like a franchise, and that's going to continue to, to push me. But I don't really read much, to be honest. I just listen to a lot of podcasts.

Steve: Yeah. Well, what's your favorite podcast besides Disruptors, obviously?

Speaker: Obviously, Disruptor is number one. So one one one of the the biggest podcasts and I know this is gonna sound weird because it's not really, real estate related, but I listen to a ton of Joe Rogan.

Steve: Yeah.

Speaker: And I listen to the different individuals that he interviews, and I compare their lives to my life in real estate, different things that they're doing. So just and he he interviews some weird people.

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: Right? And

Steve: He's very he's got a very broad range. He's not limited, which is what I like.

Speaker: Yeah. And and I like to listen to those things and see how they can apply in my business. Right? So so a big a big big big lesson for me that I'm trying to do now more is when you're delegating, you you forget that you need to lead from the front. Right?

And so it's hard to delegate because there's so much going on that is hard to delegate and still lead from the front. Mhmm. Like, it's hard for me to coach my acquisition managers and still do acquisition calls while trying to sell the deals, while managing employees and all that stuff. Right? So one thing that I've recently been trying to do is get more involved with them.

And I I forgot who it was that was, that was saying this on his podcast, but I found myself recently in the last month or so ever since I heard that just trying to, you know, hey. This call, I'm gonna do it, and you're gonna listen to me. Mhmm. Right? Like, just the other day, I we had to back out of a deal.

And my one of my acquisition managers was kinda scared on backing out of the deal because, you know, we we renegotiated the seller, extended the deal, and we still couldn't perform. So you gotta back out. Right? And, you know, obviously, no one likes to talk about those things, but Mhmm.

Gonzalo: It's

Speaker: the reality of of of wholesaling. And, we had the buyer back out, so now we had to back out. And so, like, normally, I just tell him, alright, back out. You know? But I could just feel that he wasn't comfortable.

Mhmm. And I know that if I were to do that call, next time he'll be way more com confident. Right? And I did the call, it was super easy. And he was just like, oh, that's it.

And I was like, yeah. That's it. You know? So little things like that I found myself that trying to do more of is leading from the front, which is hard.

Gonzalo: Yeah.

Speaker: When you're the business owner Super and you're trying to build the business, you don't have time to get on the phone with the seller. Mhmm. You know? But I've been, you know, let let me get on the phone with them. You know?

I'll take over that call. Let let let me do it. And so that was one of my biggest lessons recently, that I think I need to do more of. And it's just an excuse of I don't have time to do it. It's just I just have to find the time, you know.

And most calls, you know, it's gonna be a five to ten minute call anyway, you know. So it's in my head like I don't have time to do this, like, let me just do the one call. Let me renegotiate the seller for my closer to listen and then that is gonna make a huge impact not only in the ability for him to do it in the future, but also to trust me, to trust me that I've I can do this. You know, you're listening to me because I've done this. You're listening to me because I'm smooth.

I can, you know, I can get us out of any situation with the seller, with the buyer, whatever it is. You know, just the other day, I had the whole disposition team and the transaction coordination team in the conference room with me talking. And I was on speaker with the buyer, because the buyer was, like, mad at us

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Speaker: Because he found out, like, how much we were making. And I had to kinda diffuse the situation. And I had, you know, the disposition liaison who doesn't do any sales, but he wanna listen to the call anyway. I had the two disposition managers and our transaction coordinator, and they were just listening to me in the conference room, you know. And so that's what I've I'm trying to do more of.

And it's hard, but it is what it is.

Steve: Oh, that's awesome. How about you?

Dominick: So Who

Speaker: reads a shit ton?

Dominick: So I read a shit ton. It's by Gonzalo Corzo. I I mean, it it it might sound typical, but my favorite book of all time is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Mhmm. And the reason it's my favorite book of all time is because before this, I built a pretty successful business.

It was a a foreclosure maintenance business, and I grew it to, and I was a part of, you know, I I ran field crews in eight states for these national companies and had a lot going on. We're doing about 5,000,000 a year, at our top. And, you know, I don't really have any college degrees. I don't have any educational, you know, whatever, to to brag about. But I would go to these these yearly national seminars and conferences, for my industry.

And, you know you know, either at the conferences or dinners afterward, I'd find myself at these tables with, you know, you know, 10 or 15 individuals. It's my clients and it's my competition. Right? Mhmm. My competition, these guys, you know, they've achieved things.

You know, they they've had their bachelor's or master's in certain realms of education or whatever the case may be. Another thing, I don't follow sports. You know? People talk about sports all the time. It's a conversational piece that just can get things going, and I don't do that.

So, they're talking sports. They're talking about their achievements, whatever the case may be. And the one thing that was different to me and them is, like, I'm, like, three times bigger than these people.

Steve: Mhmm.

Dominick: So I would sit there thinking, like, how am I even at this table, beating these people out when they seem admirable? You know, they seem, like people that should probably be 10 times my size, and I never really knew what I was doing. And when, and then also prior to that, I'd never really read any books, and I wasn't in self development. I didn't didn't really follow anyone. I really didn't really have any mentors.

So when I started getting into self development and reading books and things like that, and I picked up Think or Grow Rich, it told me what it was that I didn't know what I had. Right? And, and it's the simplest thing you you you would ever think of. It's just, it's persistence.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Dominick: Right? Think and Grow Rich told me that I had persistence. I had persistence more so than anyone around me or anyone that I've ever met. Right? So this guy might be smarter, but I'm gonna outwork him and I'm gonna beat him.

And if I can't do that now, I'll get better six months from now, and then I'll persevere and I'll surpass.

Steve: Eventually, I will win.

Dominick: Yeah. Eventually, I will win. Yeah. So it's just just my favorite book of all time. I've read it probably three, four times.

And then within the last year, and I've read just, I don't know, a a ton of books. Within the last year though, I probably read, Good to Great a couple times.

Steve: I've

Dominick: read it three times in the past. I'm on my fourth time right now. And and I find myself I'll read new books, but I'll go back to the ones that really affected me or that I really took something from and I implemented things from it. And I'll learn new things from the rereads.

Steve: Yeah. Jim Collins is great. He's got a couple of books that are really good. Oh, bless. The thing about Think and Grow Rich, I think that there's two things here.

A, the if I had just read that book alone and not read any of the books, I'd be just as fine because a lot of the other books really just resaying Yeah. The same thing as Think Rich. And the second thing is a lot of people can't finish that book, which is ironic because that book is about persistence.

Dominick: Right?

Steve: Right? So if you can't finish that book, then you're probably not gonna make it. That's funny, man. That's super funny. So I'm gonna let you guys think about, something you guys wanna leave the listeners with, and I'll just make one quick announcement.

Guys, if you guys get value out of the show, please hit the like button. Please hit subscribe. It will help me a lot. It'll help us create more millionaires. And next week, we got Jesse Burrell and evil dragon off.

They're gonna come back about how, they started as as individual wholesalers, but in teaming up, they've created something that's changed their lives. So tune in next week. We got Jesse and Evo. They're gonna talk about their journey together. So before we wrap up, last thoughts, you wanna leave the listener?

Dominick: So I I would just say, you know, just to keep everything super simple, just be very ethical in everything that it is that you do. Be very straightforward with people. One thing that I think our sales team does very well is they're straightforward with everyone that they talk to. They tell everyone exactly what it is that we're doing and how our process is gonna go. People have a sixth sense of figuring out if you're bullshitting them or not.

Gonzalo: Mhmm.

Dominick: Right? So if you're trying to portray the deal in a different way that's not really how it's gonna get done, they're gonna not trust it, and that's probably why you're not getting deals. Right? So that's that's just kind of what I'd like to leave everyone with.

Steve: And how can someone get a hold of you?

Dominick: You know, Instagram, real Dom Felix, Dominic Felix on, on Facebook. And we do a we do a wholesale show every Tuesday at 9PM eastern time. It's called the People's Wholesalers. So you guys can go to Facebook and search the People's Wholesalers and and join the group. And it's free, obviously.

Cool. Last thoughts?

Speaker: So last thoughts is if you want to make it in this industry or in general, you have to change your sphere of influence. You have to change the people that you're talking to on a daily basis. You have to change the people that you look up to on a on a daily basis. So I I would say, you know, that has made me who I am today. It's it's been the hard work and the action taking and and all of that.

But more than anything, it's been surrounding myself with people who are, you know, just crushing it in in industries. And sometimes it that takes money, you know. Yeah. It is what it is. You know,

Steve: yourself into the right

Speaker: room. Yeah. You gotta buy yourself into the right room sometimes, and that's something that we've done. And every every time I I connect with somebody that's doing more than I am, it pushes me to to do more. And that in itself will get you to where you wanna be way quicker than a bunch of other stuff.

You can work hard. You can you can, you know, like like like what Dom said about his old business that he was with. Right? His his business that he had in the past, he was at a table, and it took him ten years to get to be at those tables. And I think that and he knows this.

He coulda got there sooner if he had surrounded himself with people who had been in, you know, in in those, in that industry. And it was a little bit of a different industry. It's not like real estate where you can just listen to podcasts and there's people sharing all their details on their of their business,

Steve: you know.

Speaker: And it was a different time. But I feel like that's why we're we are where we are today is we are continuously in rooms where we're not the most successful person in the room. You know, we're we're we're trying to become, like, the people that we're hanging out with. And that's something that as you grow and as you get more and more successful, it becomes harder. Right?

Because if you've never done deal and you go to a networking event of real estate and the people have done three deals, you're already somewhere. Right? But now, you know, we're in Jacksonville. We're top dogs in in real in wholesaling. So it's hard to go into a room where people are doing more wholesale deals than us.

And so it's challenging ourselves to be in those rooms where, you know, people are doing 50 plus deals. Right? And that's hard. Mhmm. There's not a lot of people.

If there are people doing out there, they're not talking about it.

Steve: No. They're very quiet about it.

Speaker: Yeah. They're very quiet about it. And so it's it's a it's a challenge, right, to get to those next levels. But I think that's the last thing that I wanna leave people with because nobody really talks about that, but that has been the biggest game changer for me. You know, when I was 18, I was shadowing millionaires.

You know? And that's what made me who I am today. So change your sphere of influence. Stop hanging out with people who don't want to be as successful as you are and it is hard to do. It's probably the hardest thing that you are going to have to do in order to achieve success but it's gonna get you to where you wanna be.

Steve: Yeah. And how do how can someone get hold

Speaker: of you? So Gonzalo Corzo on Facebook, Real Gonzalo Corzo on Instagram. Just send me a message and let's connect.

Steve: Awesome. Alright. Thank you, guys. Thank you all for watching.

Gonzalo: Yeah. See, we real estate disruptors. Can't nobody touch us. And, yeah, we about to give you games. Shout out to Steve Trane.

Shout out to Steve Train. Shout out to Steve Train. Will it say disrupt us? They cannot touch us. And, yeah, we about to give you game.

Shout out to Steve Train. Shout out to Steve Train. Jump on the Steve Train. Jump on the Steve Train. We