Elijah Rubin Shares How He's Sold Over 750 Properties for $250MM+ in Volume

Steve Trang: Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Real Estate Disruptors. Today, we got Elijah Rubin with Wynn and Young Millionaire Society, and he's here to share how he sold over 750 properties for more than 250,000,000 in sales volume. If this is your first time tuning in, I'm Steve Trane, broker and owner of Stunning Homes Realty and 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 thumbs up.

And before we get started, I started this show because I wanted to give back to our community. I've struggled before. You were telling me you started this fourteen years ago. I'm sure there were some struggles along

Elijah Rubin: the way. Yeah.

Steve: And 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. Here's the cost to you.

If you get value out of the show, please tell a friend. Either tag a friend below, share this episode right now, or tell them your best takeaway from today's episode. That way, we can all grow together. Don't forget, this is a live show, so please post your questions for Elijah to answer. And are you ready?

Elijah: I'm ready then.

Steve: Alright. We'll start real simple. What got you into wholesaling?

Elijah: What got me into Real Estate Wholesaling? Well, time go back many decades ago. No. This is back in o four. My sister was working for a ex football player.

Mhmm. His name and at the time, I I worked at every call center in Arizona at a long time. Right? And so I remember that he was, during the off season, he was collecting money from his football buddies, and he would buy properties at the auctions. Oh, wow.

So I just got done reading Rich Dad Poor Dad. I'm all grew up. I'm ready to do something with entrepreneur side. And I, my sister introduced me because my mom is from Trinidad, and, his wife was from Trinidad. So she introduced me to him.

I started buying properties and looking for property deals, and he introduced me to the whole world of you could buy properties, auctions, start wholesaling deals. Didn't quite know how to do wholesaling as he was paying me a thousand dollars to buy a property at the auctions. Long story short, bought the first one after, like, four or five months. And after I did that first one, oh my goodness, I started started reading everything I can about it, really locking in. And then, probably about two months after that, he stopped answering the phone.

He stopped taking the calls. I mean, completely ex girlfriend treat me. It just ghost me. Right? I'm like, oh.

I mean, I'm I'm because my sister got fired because I guess, the older Trinidadian then, like, the younger Trinidadian being around anymore. Yeah. So I got fired. And so at that time

Steve: Unified association.

Elijah: Exactly. I'm like, but I'm like, hey, mom. I'm a guy. What do you mean? So I thought I was gonna be fine.

Yeah. Wasn't fine. So I end up finding, I used to back in the day, I used to take the Arizona, Arizona Republic, newspaper. And every Sunday, I used to circle the fourth sale by owners. Mhmm.

And they used to be, like, six, seven pages. And so from there, I went and got, I circled, that's how I create the leads, got a hold of one person, this lady in the East Valley. And, I went back down to the auctions where I be I outbidded a couple investors. I'm like, if I find a deal, can I bring it to you? Not quite understand the whole dynamics of wholesaling, but, I got one lady who said agreed to sell, and she decided to, she said she's willing to sell it.

Called my investor. He said he was willing to buy it and got that first deal done. And after that, it lights out.

Steve: So you're tying up for sale by owners.

Elijah: Yeah.

Steve: First one. To investors. Mhmm.

Elijah: That was the first one, East Valley.

Steve: This was 2005 ish.

Elijah: Yeah. Exactly. At the end of 2004, beginning 2005. Yep.

Steve: Wow. So there were still opportunities on it for sale by owners.

Elijah: Yeah. Because everybody during that time, the market is going up and up and up. Yeah. So people are just waiting for, everybody thought they could sell it on their own. We don't need a realtor.

So, hey, I negotiated it.

Steve: Yeah. Okay. So, so you had that rise 2005, but then, obviously, things took a shift at some point.

Elijah: Yes. And so before I got into, doing sales, I well, I did, and during high school, I was doing concert promotions. Mhmm. And so when I was doing club promotions, I used to have a street team. So the street team, I had, like, 15 guys passing out flyers, and so, yeah, you get you pass out 10,000 flyers.

You might have 500 people at the club.

Steve: Club promotions. We're talking Scottsdale.

Elijah: Yeah. Scottsdale, West Valley. I remember at the time, I'm only, like, 20 years old, but I'm still, you know, negotiating my way into clubs. You're already hustling. Yeah.

I'm already hustling. I'm finding out ways to create create more opportunities for myself. Right? So after cashing up that first check, things are going good. I'm doing deals.

I'm making the money. I'm burning it as fast as I'm making it. Then because I'm half Jewish. Right? Yeah.

My yarmulke started tilting, so I knew the market was gonna shift. I knew it was coming. I just didn't know what to do. Right. So this is around, like, o seven, o '8.

Right before o eight happened, it started slowing down. So I told some of my guys who used to be on my street team guys, hey. Come over here. The market's gonna shift. We'll start door knocking.

And so I made my own door knocking team, about five guys. I started door knocking knowing the market was gonna shift, and I was absolutely right. O eight, the market collapsing, and that's when we really started going after, pre foreclosures and short sales.

Steve: Mhmm.

Elijah: So what

Steve: are we doing with all the short sales?

Elijah: So I I should've known a wonderful man named Steve who did was killing the short sale game back in the day, I which I didn't. So I was giving a lot of my short sells to this guy, Dan. Oh, Dan shark Sharpen sharking. It's been many years since I had talked with him, but, I was feeding him a lot of my short sells. Do started doing a lot of loan modifications.

Steve: Yeah.

Elijah: That was a bad idea.

Steve: That was a different time.

Elijah: Yeah. Different time. Took a lot of time and effort, headaches all the way around.

Steve: So, we were joking about this earlier, but you saw that I promoted, you know, check out the baby face assassin at wholesale. You're telling me when you're up in, San Francisco, what are people saying?

Elijah: Yeah. So people walk up to me like, hey. Are you Steph Curry? Like, yeah. Yeah, man.

Yep. I'm Steph Curry. You know what? I need a donation. I need a donation.

You got some houses to sell? So Yeah.

Steve: Just gotta trim this up a little bit.

Elijah: Just gotta trim it up a little bit. Depends if he's injured, then he grows it out a little bit more. You know? Right.

Steve: So how did you end up this niche? Because I had people say, you know, for a while now, you got a you got a burnt house. Call Elijah. How did you end up in that niche?

Elijah: So, how did I become the fire damaged king? Yeah. So well, this probably goes back about four years ago. So I'm doing a lot of my father was, a labor law lawyer, and so he worked with the National Labor Relation Law. And so I started telling him, hey, dad.

When you decide to be done with this, become a probate attorney. Like like, we're Jewish. We don't we don't retire the, our knowledge. Like, let's leverage the knowledge. So he's like, okay.

So let me think about it. Let me think about it. So I knew I had to learn more about probate deals. So I started talking to more probate attorneys about opportunities. Well, I started realizing those probate deals were sitting vacant.

And then so I started doing a lot more city violations where those city violations were probate, but a lot of those end up on fire because people was I mean, houses sit vacant for a while. People go in there and cook up their meth, cook up whatever they're cooking in there, and the house would catch on fire. So I'm asking, like, I start looking around and say, who buys these things? And nobody was buying these. So I went up.

The yamaka started tilting again. I'm like, I got I got a lane here with not a lot of people in there. So I started I got with a couple of claim adjusters. I got with a couple restoration companies. Start picking their brains and start understanding that when a fire happens well, I mean, you got so many people come out to these houses.

You got the board up people. You got the fencing people. You got the restoration people. You got the, the demolition people. Then you got the firefighters, your insurance people.

These people are shell shocked. That's like one of the worst tragedy a family can happen. And you got nine people hawking on them. Well, I realized there there's only there's no one person that's kind of organized all these pieces. These are all different vendors people come together.

So I started to realize that I could go after these properties. Not only can I buy the property, but I can help add value to the client by not only getting all the resources and tell them who these people are and use my my referred people? Mhmm. But I found out that there's insurance money part of it. Mhmm.

And insurance money, oh, that's, like, that's part of the secret sauce because the insurance companies only give them a fraction of what's really owed to them. I could go back and get them additional money that was really owed to them on top of them, keeping all that originally was paid to them. Plus, I'm able to get additional money that they didn't even know was gonna be available to them and and give them part of, for a profit share together with it.

Steve: So you're you're fighting on behalf of the homeowner against the insurance company.

Elijah: Exactly. I'm able to be, a citizen's champ. I guess I get to be their, you know, their Rocky Balboa, go round for round with insurance companies. And because a lot of times, 85% of the time, they're only getting 85% of the money that's owed to them. And if you look at a house that might be appraised for a 100,000, if you look at that appraisal, the cost to build approach is a 150,000.

Our homeowner doesn't know that how a cost to build approach even works or how does that play in their negotiations.

Steve: Right.

Elijah: So they might give mister Smith only 80,000. I could go back in there like, hold on a second. You owe mister Smith a 150,000. And if you saw during the o eight, during the great collapse, AIG, they can't go under. They're too big to too big to fail.

Mhmm. So it's never the dollar amount that matters to insurance companies. Only how one that claims stays open. And so once I realized that my adjuster knows that, I'll be my claim adjuster to the table. He keeps 50% of any new money he finds, and I get 50% of what he find he captures.

If he doesn't get a red penny, they don't pay him a dime for his time, so there's no cost to the client. So he does a forensic audit. Mister Smith used owed 80,000. Well, hey. You really owed a 150,000.

That additional what's that additional $70,000 that's left off the table? We're gonna capture that for you. He goes and negotiate with the claim adjuster. Only one in five family members even uses a claim adjuster. So they realize, hey.

Really, this will litigate this all year if we have to. Remember, if they have too many open claims, their insurance gets downgraded, and that's how they go out of business. So they'd rather just pay this, make it go away, and make it up on other four suckers who are just gonna listen to whatever they say.

Steve: Or take whatever they want. Mhmm. Okay. So let's just say I am not in Phoenix. Right?

Because Elijah's the king of Phoenix.

Elijah: Sure.

Steve: Stay out of stay out of No.

Elijah: Hey. This is more than enough. There's abundance for all of us.

Steve: But let's just say I'm in Dallas. Okay. Right? And I wanna start I wanna be the fire guy in Dallas. What do I do?

Elijah: So what you do what you wanna do is a couple different things. Now different states have different, policies with regards to insurance claims. And and understand insurance money is a big piece of this. A lot of people don't know how to operate around there. However, just to to go ahead and go after one thing I would do if I was gonna give somebody advice to start becoming the fire damaged king in their state.

Right? What I did because these aren't as easy list to get as I could just go get a preforeclosed list. Yeah. These are hard to get. Sometimes certain counties, you might be able to get what's called incident reports.

Mhmm. Even though sometimes they they, crop blank out the address, they make it very difficult. Why I like this niche because now everybody could just hop in.

Steve: Right.

Elijah: So what I did is this. What I recommend everybody else they listen to, this is something easy to do, cost a couple dollars to start with. But I I I learned this from my promotional years. People do business with people they like. Right.

Alright? So make yourself more likable. Well, when a guy takes a girl out to dinner, she likes them. Right? Because you pay for dinner.

Yeah. Same type of mindset. So I'll take three restoration company guys, all the dinner, all doing all together at the same time.

Steve: Oh, okay.

Elijah: Three board up guys at the same time. Three fencing guys at the same time. Because at the end of the day, I don't see competition. We're all comrades servicing the same community. Mhmm.

And so if they you're already talking to my client for me. So because you already have the phone number, the address, you're already talking to you, they trust you, and they're already dealing with you. If they don't want your services, if they don't have the insurance to cover your services, or if they elect to go a different route, refer them to you. And if you end up buying the property, build on a consulting fee for them and make it a win win. And that's how I'll start right off the bat.

Steve: Okay. Anything else? Another thing I

Elijah: would do in addition to that, there's also ways you're able to go and, connect with some other private, and public, claim adjusters Mhmm. Because they are also talk to other other people as well. At the same time, sometimes their insurance doesn't they're gonna know more on the insurance side. If the insurance doesn't plan out, there's gonna be a motivated seller. And so if you could build relationship with those people specifically, they're gonna give you a good source of ongoing deals that you constantly come, and you could go to, adjusters.

Basically, there's claim adjusters, like board meetings, quarterly meetings, and just make relationships.

Steve: Right. And then there's a book that you wrote about firehouses. Yes. So

Elijah: How to survive how to survive a fire damaged property. And so what that's more for, it's not really for all my real estate young gurus out there. It's not really for teaching how to get into the niche. No. It's really kinda positioned me as a expert, so I give this to the homeowner.

Steve: Well, that's what I was gonna say. If you are okay with it, that's the blueprint. Go. Take Elijah's book. White label it.

Change the change the content to what's applicable to your area. Mhmm. Give that to the homeowner. 100%. Your authority.

Elijah: What just a second. Once you're able to get out in front of the homeowners, for sure. And you're more than welcome to reach out to me and anything that way is like to be a blessing. I'll operate from the mindset of each one, teach one. So if I could give the value and give the knowledge and they create opportunity, you generate some additional deals, you know, send me a testimonial letter.

Right? That's all I need, but for sure. Because once they know that you're a voice of authority Mhmm. And there's gonna be very few people in this in this in this space that's gonna tell them all the various pieces they could connect together, they're gonna know you, they're gonna like you, and they're gonna refer other people to you.

Steve: Right. And I think the power of branding, of being the guy I mean, we can't talk about anything. I I can think I can't think of anything off the top of my head that's more niche than fire houses.

Elijah: Yeah. Right? It's a fiery proposition.

Steve: Yeah. So, I still think you should go with what I was talking about earlier about the king of crisp. But

Elijah: King of crisp. Alright. Keep it crispy.

Steve: So the other thing is we're talking about, you know, the testimonials and the giving back. You put out there in the universe, I wanna have a big deal in 2018.

Elijah: Yes.

Steve: And then you just did it. Yes. Talk about that.

Elijah: Okay. So, well, we had, we'll be around some of the, you know, the some of the other titans in this industry. I mean, Arizona is a real estate guru capital. Here in Florida, we got a lot of them out here.

Steve: Right.

Elijah: But then there's real players who are really doing it, like Carlos, like Sal Mhmm. And Alex. I mean, the the all in family. They're really getting into numbers. They're doing numbers.

And then, there's this group called Seven Figure Flip Group. Mhmm. And, we went to a mastermind and just being around people who are getting numbers to that next level, you just and just make sure you know that you're able to do it. Now don't get me wrong. Selling $250,000,000 worth of real estate, doing 750 deals.

I'm happy. I'm proud of it. No question about it. However, I more than willing did a third of the deals to make double the money. I don't want like, I don't work how hard I had to work to get those deals.

So just seeing people knocking $2,300,000 deals, knock them out at a time, I'm like, woah. What am I doing wrong here?

Steve: Alright.

Elijah: So I decided at the beginning of the year, like, alright, Elijah. You have the ability. You're you're uncanny closer. You're able to make relationships. You can find hard deals.

Let's use your skill set for bigger deals. You have to do at least at least one 6 figure deal this year and then and then beyond. So I started to get into land developments. I knew land developments was a big piece. I saw other investors that knocked numbers out.

I like the creative ways of structuring, come very creative thinking and deal structure. So I I decided I reached out to a couple of my investors. I asked them, hey. Who do you know who's really big in land developments? Well, I have this one guy, Jack Martin, used to be a big investor with Bakersfield Investments out here.

Big investor. He only does mobile home parks now. That's all he does. He doesn't touch any wholesaling. He even blew up.

So he's like Yeah. That little stuff we don't touch anymore. I'm like, cool.

Steve: No time for the small stuff. Yeah.

Elijah: Bring it here. I'll take those crumbs. Bring it over here. Yeah. So he ends up connecting with this engineer.

And this engineer, John, him and I met at the beginning of the year. We went back and forth. So after talking for a while, I'm telling him, like, John, I'm a closer. Give me your hardest deal that you ever like, you had that you know you have a guaranteed buyer for. I want you to have a builder for it, but give me the a hard still that you can't close and let me work my skill set.

So he's like, oh, I got one. I got one for you, Elijah. Here you go. So he tells me about this 10 acre deal off 11th, 11th Avenue in Southern. Mhmm.

Ten years ago, he closed on a 10 acre deal and sold it to this builder. And so he's been chasing this deal for over ten years. Mhmm. Now he's saying it's a Chinese family that they won't negotiate, and every time they negotiate, it keeps going up and up. I'm like, hey.

I'm half Jewish. I'm used to hard negotiations. Alright? So I'm fine for it. So I end up I'm like, give me as much details you have on it.

We went back and forth. I got the phone number. I skip traced him. He's been calling this lady's, work number. I got a cell phone number.

Mhmm. So I ended up talking with her. I was gonna I I was gonna, I paid for a massage for her. I built relationships. I wanted to add value first.

People do business with people they like. Right. So we talked about her, her accountant business. We talked for almost three months straight, me and her. Mhmm.

Then she finally passed her. She's like, alright, Elijah. I like you. We're willing to sell the property. We still haven't talked price three months already.

Build a build a rapport with her. Then she connected with her brother. Now there's five ears now, so I had to talk to all the other family member. They wanted 1,200,000.0. We went back and forth.

I finally got them down to 800,000. So I got them down to 800,000. I went to, the engineer. The engineer, John, he went back and he re he looked at how many lots we could get, about 50 lots subdivision out of it. We turned around.

We sold it to one of his builders for 975,000. And so we made $98,000 on the deal. So $22,000 less than a $100, but, hey, I'm I'm counting as my 6 figure deal.

Steve: It's not 6 figures. Why are we talking about it?

Elijah: Oh, oh, you know what? But but let me tell you why it wasn't. Because I took 3,000 on my side. That guy Jack Martin Yeah. Who connect me with them, never said he wanted anything out of it.

I took $3 out of my out of my side, and I sent them a a cashier's check for $3,000 Very cool. Because of my appreciation. Because if you invest those little seeds Mhmm. That's that's one person he gave me. Alright.

What can be more people you can send me if you just go above and beyond? So I would have made a 101, but I only made 98 on that one.

Steve: And but because of that, I mean, you and I were talking about a deal. We were talking about a deal before we walked in here. Mhmm.

Elijah: You know,

Steve: I got this piece of land. Well, it's a house, but pretty much land.

Elijah: Sure. Sure. I saw some of the pictures.

Steve: Yeah. So, you know, because you're doing this, there's more opportunities

Elijah: Absolutely.

Steve: For right as well. Uh-huh. And then we were talking about, incredible follow ups. So we're we were talking about success story earlier. Talk about that one.

Elijah: So follow ups. Oh, man. And I think that's one of my, I think my two of my superpowers of my my polite persistence Mhmm. My critical thinking ability, and my follow-up game is mean. I mean, I'm telling you, because I and for all you guys starting out there, this is a very good gem.

Gem alert. Gem alert. Alright? Be willing to take the l upfront. When I say be too willing to take the l upfront, be willing to take the loss.

Let other people say, faith. Oh, it's my fault. That phone hung up. You know what? Knowing that they hung up on me, I'll call my back.

Like, oh, I'm so sorry my phone hung up on me. I never would want you to think I'd be rude or disrespectful and just hang up on you like that. I pull I have great upbringing just like you. I apologize. I apologize.

And so I'm willing to cover dinner first. I'm willing to buy whatever I need to take first l to let people know, like, hey. I'm willing to invest into relationship first. So be willing to take the l. So if you're willing to take the l and you go into every relationship, every opportunity, hey.

If I have to cover it first, cool. I'm already know I'm gonna do that. So in the follow-up side, what I end up doing, I had this lady I had a guy from, he works with the city. He send he he sends me referrals of people he's about to put city violation on because I've been doing these for so long. He's like, you buy all these.

Let me just start sending them to you, and we work out a swallow relationship. Yeah. And so, what he end up doing, this lady, about about a year and a half ago. Alright. She has a property.

We go back and forth. We're talking about the property. I'm calling her, like, at least once every other week talking about it. Then she's like, hey. I have a I have a really bad pinched nerve.

I'm gonna be down for about three weeks. Call me back in three weeks, and we could talk about the property. Like, just like clockwork, I call back in three weeks. What she do? She sells the property.

I'm like, I've been calling you for six months, talking to you for six months. But you know what? It's my fault because I should have called you every two weeks. Now I have every three weeks of gas. So because I didn't do that, ain't she still that pinched nerve?

I sent her a massage. Got her a massage at MassageMD. And because of that, she felt but she's like, wow. You didn't get mad at you getting you didn't throw hissy fit on me. She's like, okay.

Well, I have another property. I was a neighbor of this lady and she and because we were neighbors for so long, she made me the personal representative of our estate. So she's like, she's willing to sell this one, but she's not ready yet. So I literally follow-up once every two weeks for almost another year. Wow.

So this is about a year now. So I know our stories about our kids, where she's traveling to, her arthritis. We know her her shopping finally just about two months ago, she finally said, alright, Elijah. I'm willing to sell the property. So I end up getting it for about 150,000 and turned around and sold it for 190,000.

Just wholesaling

Steve: it. Follow-up.

Elijah: The follow-up king. The follow-up so during the nighttime, I'm the follow-up king. I mean, during nighttime, I'm the fire damaged king, and during the daytime, I'm the follow-up king.

Steve: Very nice. Very good. It's a good lesson for a lot of people trying to get into this business. Yeah. Right?

Because it's really simple, but

Elijah: it's not easy. It's not easy. And because it's it's so much you have to either be organized, you have to be willing to make time for it, and you have to understand the value of, hey. Even by making that phone call, that text message, even if you didn't talk to them, they've seen your effort.

Steve: And it's

Elijah: kinda like planting the seed, the bamboo tree. You may have to water it for five years, but on that fifth year, within nine weeks, it sprouts up 90 feet.

Steve: Alright.

Elijah: So it's just that mindset of just constantly watering it.

Steve: So knowing what you know today, would you do anything differently?

Elijah: Yes and yes and yes. Don't get me wrong. I'm grateful for every experience learned, every loss I I I absorb something from. Mhmm. However, I a couple of two big pieces I for sure would, give as far as advice to a younger me or to those out there.

One, you don't need real estate partners. I had I I I had a lot of I call it the homie management style. Mhmm. I had a bunch of homies who were cool with me. They didn't have skill set.

They didn't have more knowledge. I didn't have more relationships or critical thinking ability than me, but they were my friends. And because I'm making 6 figures a year, I'm like, well, hey. I don't I figured out how this the the when he scratches you let's do them with me. Right.

That didn't work. And if they don't have the mindset personality, you could partner up on deals, but don't partner up with people unless they have more knowledge, more relationships, or more or more skill set than you.

Steve: So it's like the MC Hammer business model.

Elijah: Yeah. Exactly. And it broke. So that that that piece for sure. And then the second piece I would have I would definitely recommend is to make sure, because I'm because I have Jewish side of me, I just did not wanna invest in real estate.

And so that's the reason why I'm fourteen years in the business, not multi multi milled out because I I just told the first five years, I put $0 in the marketing. Mhmm. $0 in the marketing, $0 in the mentorship. I wasn't gonna pay for it. If it wasn't free, I couldn't do it myself.

Really? I wasn't doing it. And because it's because the way the market was, I still making $200,000 a year. Who's that? Who tell me I'm doing something wrong?

Right. But it's pseudo it's it's fool's gold. Because if I invested in some relationships, if I went into a event like the way all an event is on September, if I went to events like this and learned real knowledge and real skills and paid for mentors, I would expedite my learning curve. So it took me a long time to learn, one way, and then I was learning the wrong way, and I was looking to slow route. So invest in the marketing, invest in yourself as you could get double the return.

You just won't see it at first. But Right. Or or else you can spend fourteen years and still and still on the clump up.

Steve: Right. Who knows where you'd be today?

Elijah: Yeah. For sure.

Steve: So if I were brand new

Elijah: Mhmm.

Steve: And I was looking for a mentor, what would you tell me?

Elijah: So what I would tell you, I would say I would write down all your skill sets. Write down one list of all your skill set that you know that people told you your value. I like to call it your USP, your unique selling proposition.

Steve: Right.

Elijah: Right. When you walk in a room, what separates you from everybody? That just gives you your your own skill set. Then I would write down everything you could possibly do for an investor. I'm talking about everything.

Now you might not because you're starting out, you might not know all the other aspects, but think about what would you do for your cool uncle or for that one person who you always, like, wanted to hang out with. What'd you do? Would you wash their car? Would you go driving and get cheesecake for them? Would you get their their Starbucks coffee every morning?

What can you do to add value first?

Steve: Yeah.

Elijah: Find ways to add value first because that's gonna make you more valuable. And people like people you like people like doing business with people they they like. Make yourself likable. Talk about things that they talk about. Find out what books they liked about, what podcast.

Send them articles. Send them interview clips. Find a way to make yourself likable. And once you're able to do that, then they're gonna find more inclined to give you the more knowledge, let you take you in on meetings, bring you on events, and that is hands down so that I would start off. If I'm brand new, wanna get my mentor, Dallas could put you in a winning position.

Steve: I love it. One of the things that I saw, it was in, I think, one of the groups. And the guy was like, you know, I've been getting fired over and over again. Right?

Elijah: Mhmm.

Steve: And that's what was going through my mind. It's like, this guy's not adding that value. He's like, I'm overqualified. No. You're just over defensive.

Right. Exactly. You're not absorbing whatever they're telling you. If they're telling you something, if they're not using words, then their actions are telling you something.

Elijah: Yes. If they learn, you can what what's a good saying is that, if you don't learn to humble yourself, life will do it for you.

Steve: Right. Notice the signs. Yep. Okay. So you're doing these Facebook Live negotiations?

Elijah: Yes. Facebook Live negotiations. I mean, it's definitely, like, the new technology because I'm I'm 35, but I feel like I'm going on, like, 68. You know? Because the real estate gives you those dog years.

You know? It gives you those dog years. And so, shout out to Mike Michael Powers who worked, he's with the my acquisition director with the Win LLC team and Jennifer Coronado, my operation director. They're like, Elijah, we hear you make these calls. Like, what you say these people are are unbelievable, but I've been doing sales literally for over twenty years now.

Like, literally, of, I mean, twenty years. And so what I do, it just it's natural. It's like, you go and shoot the shot, I'm shooting a shot. You know? So, like, like Steph Curry, he's just he has that muscle memory.

Right. Well, I realized so I started, so Michael's like, Elijah, can I just put one call on Facebook Live? Let's see what type of response we make. I'm like, alright. I mean, just don't mention the whole name.

Right? And the whole address, people start taking the deals. So I I put one on on Facebook Live, and I was talking with sellers and just seeing them hang up on me, but I take the next call and seeing the interaction of everybody was like, woah. I can't believe you said that. Woah.

You hung up and you took another phone call. You don't have to go smoke a cigarette, bro. So it made it where it's, I'm humanizing this. It's not because you see these people on Instagram hopping out the jet, hopping out the Maserati, just picked up a bag, closed four deals? Well, yeah, that's cool, but how am I gonna get to that?

Mhmm. This shows you, hey. You can make a phone call. Next call. Onto next call.

Put it on my level. Hip hop instrumentals in the background. I set my own vibe. I'm a have a good time. I'm laughing.

I don't take it too personal. I'm on to the next one. I'm be I'm making relationships every day. Yeah. And then I'm able to kinda do something like, one of my mentors, Eric Thomas, ET the hip hop preacher.

He does his thank God it's Mondays. Well, I'm able to give my good word of the day from Elijah brother Elijah, and I give them, like, a little little gem, a little tidbit that they're able to add value to them. Yeah. Then I do my pre call affirmations just so they can understand. Every time I get on phone, I do my pre call affirmation, and that's why I'm getting people to answer the phones, getting people locked in.

And don't get me wrong. I went, like, 20 episodes, like, no deals. I mean, people are hanging up on me. You piece of crap. How dare you make this lowball offer?

But I think people like to see, am I going to get conquered or I'm gonna create? Right. And so they like and seen that happen every day, and then I finally got one deal. We knocked out $27,000 on that one deal. And so we have everybody go to, watch my Elijah I Rubin page.

They get notified of the call. Well, if people are like, well, how can I connect with you more? Like, we'll go to my consistently closing Facebook, my closed group. Mhmm. And by, so we went from, like, 200 people in the closing group.

As soon as I close that 27,000 deal and, like, 2,000 people go to consistently closing, they're locking in. And now we have people from all types of industry, not just only real estate. We got insurance guys. We got Diamond Jewelers, auto jewelers, auto insurance guys, people because closing's closing. And at the end of the day, it's a it's a transfer of enthusiasm and being able to go from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

Alright. And I'm like a walk in resolve that if I could do it, so can they.

Steve: Well, another thing too is I think a lot of people look at the successes, and we wanna celebrate the successes and the checks. And that's cool. Right? I mean, that's not a bad thing. Mhmm.

But people want the success without the pain.

Elijah: Right. Right? It's possible.

Steve: So you're capturing the 95% that that sucks. For sure.

Elijah: For sure.

Steve: And that's what they need to see. If they're gonna try to if they're gonna try to blow up, they're gonna try to get your success, they gotta also copy your pain.

Elijah: Right. You have to be able to go through pain. And that's, I think, what's so hard right now with the especially with the the Instagram world and the Facebook world. I mean, a lot of this generation, they want that microwave success. Mhmm.

Is it ready? Like, nah. I ain't ready, man. I'm I'm cooking this up fourteen years. I'm still cooking up.

And just understanding that from every call I'm learning, for every relationship I'm learning and find ways to correct and continue. But understand you have to go through as many no's to get to yes. Right. But and if you're if you're if you're struggling with taking no's, start putting a dollar amount to every no you take. And then then then that no's worth x amount of dollars so you know, hey.

I gotta get to 30 more doll 30 more no's so I can make 20,000.

Steve: Right.

Elijah: And so I think you shift that knowledge. But them seeing me gaining taking the phone calls, getting beat down, and still taking on the next call, still waking up the next call is no issue. I think that's a good a key piece to see that if I could do it, they could do it too.

Steve: Right. So what would be we were talking about the mentor. Mhmm. But, you know, again, you know, you're starting brand new. What are some things you would do today

Elijah: if you're starting brand new? Some things I'll do today if I'm starting brand new. Great question. What I would start, I would, definitely go to all the meetups. I'll look up, meetup.com.

I'll go to that whatever local Riaz you're into. Biggerpockets.com has a lot of, resources to meet with other people because the three things I feel like, especially starting out, you can never have enough of. And it's and it's across the board in any industry, but specifically real estate pays you the most. You can never have enough knowledge. You can never have enough relationships.

And you can never have enough critical thinking ability. Yeah. And the more of those three you have, the more you make. So to start that up, spend I'll I'll spend at least I like to call it blocks of time. I'll spend at least five hours a week, blocks of time, maybe hour a day of just learning because the more you know, the more you grow.

So I'll be learning I'll I'll learn the jargon. I'll learn how how contracts work. I'll read other posts, and I'll I'll how other people do marketing. And then I'll go to, networking events and make sure I collect as many cards as I want, and I'll set a goal of at least they wanna collect at least 10 business cards because there may even cards you pass out. Nobody's following up with you.

Alright? You just started. Alright? But you wanna capture their cards because now the ball's in your court. Now you could follow-up that polite persistence.

Alright? I have to send a phone call, send a text message, slide down them if you have to. Yeah. Do whatever you gotta do. Get in front of them.

And then the next part, and this is a key part, take action. Yeah. I call it the one third, two third formula. One third at a time, you need to be learning. It's important to learn because if you don't know, you don't know what to do.

However, two thirds of the time, you better be doing because you're gonna learn more from you doing than you ever do from just reading a book. Right. And so what can you do, especially if you want a Jewish friendly budget? You don't wanna spend too much dollars. You don't know what you're doing out there.

So what you wanna do, I'll I'll do what I call I have I want sessions. So I'll take those cards, and I do I have this deal. I want this. What do you have? What do you want?

Mhmm. Then I'll make sure one player every every Friday took one player out the coffee. You go forward a coffee. Coffee. Don't do lunch.

You can't you gotta you gotta graduate to lunch. Right? Do a coffee. That's $34. You drink a water, pay for the coffee, and pick their brain.

Have your your questions preplanned. Don't freestyle and bumble. Mhmm. Have your questions preplanned so they know that you respect their time. Right.

That you you mean business, that you're serious about yourself, and you value their time. Then spend a seven block of time out there driving for dollars. Drive for dollars, see what opportunities you could bring to the table, and they don't do nothing I call which is called Craigslist hunting. Craigslist hunting and people think it's still dead and because of how saturated it is, but Craigslist hunting will allow you to take keywords. You take, like, you take a less of 15 keywords.

Yep. Must sell, fire damage. I mean, anything that motivated sellers, and then you type those in there and you look at those two times a day. Then your goal is to get a thesaurus, and now you wanna come up with 50 words to say those same words in a different way. I bought two houses, one house for $5,000 on Craigslist.

I own another house I bought for 5,000 on 3rd Street in Camelback Wow. For $5. Not rims, a house that I've that I rent out to this day still. And I and I and I'm walking with my acquisition director because I want him to create more self opportunities just outside what our VAs are providing. And so I'm like, you know what?

Let me see. Yeah. It's been a couple years since I Craigslist Hunt. I spent one hour, Steve. One hour.

I found of one seller had had two lots that we have locked up right now in escrow. Nice. So it works in this market now still still works. So those are the three things I would recommend. Like I said, build build your knowledge, go to events, and have meetings with the relationships, and create opportunities via Drive for Dollars and Craigslist onto it.

Steve: Those are some huge gems. Huge gems. So you're passionate. That much is obvious. So this question is gonna be a little weird.

What are you passionate about? Because it seems like everything.

Elijah: Well, I'm really I'm I'm really passionate about empowering others around me. Yeah. I'm I'm in I'm into impact over just income. Mhmm. As we was talking a little bit about one of our mentors, ET, the hip hop preacher.

Steve: Yeah.

Elijah: And, like, he's the closest thing I feel like to Martin Luther King we have of our time in her presence. I mean, I remember about four years ago, I, I went to one event, and then and we're in the VIP backroom, and I'm he's standing across he's standing across the room, and some lady came up and they're talking. And and so she start she gave him a hug, but before she comes, she's starting to cry. But now, like, oh, it's Justin Bieber's here. I'm crying.

Oh my goodness. He's famous. No. She started crying. He hugged and embraced, and it was I don't know what they talked about, but you just saw, like, some type of breakthrough.

So that's some type of I don't know. He said some family member or he helped, some, some, her relationship happened, something personal breakthrough happened, but it's the language of the heart. Yeah. He just became a heart occurrence. I'm like, that's the impact.

That's what Gandhi had. That's what Martin Luther King had. That's what Jesus said. He's the impact you can live on that's gonna establish a leg makes you legendary. And I understand it is possible to be that way if you are more interested in the, impact than just income.

Yeah. So when I see the light flick on in other people's eyes and they see that, woah, I could do more with my life. I could have more and operate from the minds of abundance and tricks on. I'm I don't think there's much in life more than that piece right now. Love for sure.

I can never get over that.

Steve: Are you trying to emulate that?

Elijah: Yeah. So I think through, through, the Young Millionaire Society platform, it's my wealth creation platform where I'm able to help people from all walks of life, find the real path, find the real purpose, and help them, keep that light path. I mean, keep that light on their path for them. And so I'd like to be able to help them do real estate, be able to say, hey. There's another alternative.

It's just an inch to your means. Yeah. I love real estate, but by the time I'm 55, I wanna own my own island. I wanna and I wanna have my own underwater city. I want my own cloaking device.

Well, for me to do something like this with big audacious goal, I have to help impact a lot of people. So real estate is just a platform I'm using so I can make a bigger impact and help and inspire and empower a lot more people.

Steve: So can I have a house on that island?

Elijah: Oh, but we're building a we're building a tabernacle in your name. Alright? You know what I'm saying? We got a floating castle. We got segways.

To get you from wing to wing. So we got

Steve: you covered. Alright? So, your relationship with with, the hip hop preacher, like, how's how's that

Elijah: impacted you? So ET the hip hop preacher, doctor Eric Thomas, that's been one of the biggest, I'll say transformations in my life because and it's like laws of attraction. Yeah. I mean, because, I mean, doing the club promotion world, I I mean, I did everything else. Like, society tells you, the more girls you get, the more cool you're gonna be, the more times you're out there, the the darker you can get, the better life is gonna be for you.

And I and I experienced all that world, and I saw what got me. Got me DUIs. It got me in better, substance less in in relationships. It put me in a position where I was still empty inside, and I and I didn't know what to go to and what to chase. So then when I saw, ET the hip hop preacher, you have to succeed as bad as you wanna breathe.

I'm like, man, this guy has he's sincere, has a lot of substance without jeopardizing his swag. I'm like, that's perfect. Oh, man. I love this scoop, but I didn't ever think he'll come out to Arizona. I just think that was ever happened.

Well, there's a a big, real estate guru in town, and he happened to, be bringing him in town, and and I haven't known him over the years. So he kinda took a little real estate deal for me. Not take it, but my yamaka tilt. We're both working on trying to go after the same seller. It didn't work out.

So I called him up. I'm like, hey. It didn't feel right. So can you do a personal introduction for me for ET and, take me out to take me out to lunch? We call it water underneath the bridge.

Mhmm. It's like, cool. Come on up. So he makes a personal introduction for me. I end up talking with his business partner, who's 32, young dude, and this is the first time I ever paid for any type of speaker consulting, any type of consultant of any sort.

Can you remember I told you that when I called him at the beginning, I just don't like at that time, I didn't like investing in myself. Mhmm. Well, so this is the first person I did and having him in my circle, seeing how he operate I mean, him waking about 3AM, him, giving the eleventh push up mentality. He's a multimillionaire, irons his wife's clothes still at this time before he leaves. He irons his wife's clothes.

The the when people just stop in and just say, hey. ET, what you did for me to this world, tell you one quick story, and this is the type of impact he had. He had a, he has a building in, in Michigan. He calls me up. He like, Elijah, I have this building.

I need your help. I'm like, I'm just a Trinidadian Jewish boy in Arizona. You're calling me for you need my help? Like, whatever it is. Yes.

Yes. Whatever it is. And he's like, well, I need the amount to buy this, this building, 13 acres, 30,000 square feet. They want $1,100,000 for it and I wanna go, to I wanna buy it. I wanna turn to one of my churches.

So he goes to Chase, tries to get it as a church. Well, they don't offer Chase Chase does exactly. They don't they don't they wanna foreclose on God. Right? Yeah.

So they don't go to the church. So he's like, Elijah, what can I do? So he ends up talking with the doctors. The doctors are just about five doctors. One of the doctors' daughters was addicted to opiates, you know, OxyContin.

It's really bad. Well, just from her watching ET's videos, she never met ET. Just from watching the videos, she overcame the opioid addiction and got clean and changed her whole life. So once the once the doctor found out the ET was buying it, they went from asked for 1.1. They sold to him for 600,000.

Took a 50% discount because the impact in the work he put in years earlier. Yeah. So long story short, he had 300,000 to put down. He came to me. I was able to get my dad to do a self directed IRA and had my dad fund the deal.

So now, like, I funded this to do with the house where he went from living in buildings, eating out trash cans, and he owns his own building, doing his own charter school, have his own church out of there. So Cool. They extremely told my life a lot better than having somebody like that in my circle for sure.

Steve: And if you guys have not watched this, YouTube, like, go to YouTube, do a search for Eric Thomas ET hip hop preacher, and, you wanna be rich as much as you wanna breathe. That's a powerful video.

Elijah: Yeah. No. For sure. That one right there. I think the the I think oh, I've got the name of the guy who did it, but I think it's, you you wanna succeed as bad as you wanna breathe when, like, 30,000,000 hits around the world, and that would made them viral.

And that's why I kinda put them on

Steve: the world scene. Yep. Alright. So what does your organization look like today?

Elijah: So my organization as of right now, I have my operation director, Jennifer, that she's kinda helping overall operations and make sure that she's my integrator. You guys haven't read the book Traction, get the book Traction. I'm telling you. I slept on it many, many years. I had it for four years.

I finally implement started implementing it, like, a year ago. So she's my integrated operation director. I got Michael as my acquisition director, so he handles a lot of the VAs. We have four VAs in The Philippines making phone calls. We have three VAs on the, marketing admin side to help out Jennifer, and we negotiated with my nanny, to make sure that we buy in as my office admin support too so we have a multi multi pronged approach there.

So

Steve: Very nice. So you got acquisition guys.

Elijah: Mhmm.

Steve: How many acquisition guys?

Elijah: So we have four acquisition, front end callers and one acquisition director.

Steve: Okay. And these are the ones in The Philippines?

Elijah: Yeah. Mhmm. Okay.

Steve: How about dispositions?

Elijah: So dispositions, Jennifer right now is, doing both operation director and some of that, but I'm handling most of the disposition. Most people know me and call me logically. Can I get the deal? But I can you negotiate that a little bit more for me? So I work with them.

So you're

Steve: I've got a deal. I'm talking to a seller, and I can't close it. I call you. This is what's happening right now?

Elijah: So right now so if you have a deal and on the on the seller side so alright. So when you say disposition, I'm thinking of when you resell the property.

Steve: Yeah.

Elijah: Alright. So exactly. So alright. So if you have a deal and you called me as a regular seller, and are you you're saying as a seller, you called me?

Steve: I'm talking about as a wholesaler because I I was trying to

Elijah: Or just go to yes. Exactly. Alright. So if you're a wholesaler, you have a buyer that's gonna sell one of our properties. And and so, yes, you would call me, Elijah.

Hey. Can I get this for can can I do you have anything built in there for me? I owe a little a lot of reason why a lot of wholesalers like to move my deals, I used to build in a three to five thousand dollar consulting fee within my price. So So because I remember when I was wholesaling, oh, mark it up. Mark it up.

Well, bro, if I mark it up there and they Google it, they see I marked it up $3. I'm not gonna get another call from this guy. So I always built in fees within my price for other wholesalers.

Steve: I like the way you work because I have the same problems too. I see. Yeah. Okay. So, what states are you in?

Elijah: So right now, I mainly do Arizona and California. Those are, like, the main two states I'll stay in. However, I'm gonna be ramping up going in Chicago. I got, through ET, have a really big investor out in Chicago who's buying a lot of property, buying holds. So we'll be in Chicago, do a little bit of Texas, but most of the our investors are really knocking out a lot of the Southwest right now.

Steve: So and then top lead sources. I mean, we talked a little bit about some of your referral partners.

Elijah: Mhmm.

Steve: Do you have any other lead sources?

Elijah: Yes. So I do some, obviously, probate attorneys are good sources if you could build some relationships. Then my father became official probate attorney. So I go with them to network and invest on how how to work a room, make sure you collect as many business cards. And then we go through, like, you know, you have have property radar.

You have list source. You can do, I organically create my own city violation list, by pulling them from county recorder's office along with the probate list as well. We, use the driving for dollars. Link, shout out to Sal and Carlos. I I had, swagger jack a little bit from them Mhmm.

About just marketing letting other people know, hey. You wanna be affiliate, driving for dollars, put these on there. And once I did that, we have over 250 leads that just came in just for people to send opportunities. So that's a great way to create opportunities when people know that you could close deals.

Steve: So how does that work? So I'm driving around, and I see this house dumpy.

Elijah: Mhmm.

Steve: Right? Garage kinda sitting a little funny.

Elijah: Yep. Yep.

Steve: Right. And I just text you the address?

Elijah: So what we do, is so if you see a jalopy property out there, we actually take a picture of the property, and then there's a link. So you you if you you just call, you reach out to me, we'll send you a link. You click on the link. You type an address. You type in your phone number.

Any notes you want to, it automatically gets added to our list. And if you buy the property, we work in a consulting prop a consulting fee for you on every property we buy. Mhmm.

Steve: And what's that? So it's anywhere from between 500

Elijah: to $5,000 depending on what the profit margin is.

Steve: Wow. That's really generous.

Elijah: You take care of people, take care of you. That's how they water the seeds.

Steve: That's true. Any interesting war stories?

Elijah: Well, it's fine you mentioned that because, Alex and I are working on something. I definitely wanna talk to you about it too. We're working on we're gonna be doing these, deals over drinks. We're gonna have a couple of drinks just talking about our crazy deals and lessons we learned from because, 750 deals and, like, I close, like, 89% of those. Like, that's sellers.

I'm I'm going to design signatures, so I got crazy types all types of crazy deals. But just to give you guys one of them. I tell you when I just closed too. So this deal is, is on 7th Avenue in, Magnolia. So that's gonna be just North of Broadway, South of the I 10 Freeway.

Pretty rough, pretty good. Alright? Hood r Us. And the hood's been good to me. The hood's been good to me.

I buy a lot of rough properties over there. That's why I did 750 of them. Right?

Steve: No. Just keep driving.

Elijah: Just keep driving. Keep passing it. But my my model is, like, I'll buy a house in Haiti at the right dollar amount.

Steve: I don't

Elijah: mind my money living there because I'm not living there. Uh-huh. But so, so this is a city violation lead. I got a hold of him, talked with him, seller. He's a pastor.

Alright? So he's a pastor. And so I, go and talk with him. The guy's 70 years old, but he's telling me he's tall, pretty active. So go to the house, and there's, like, some I'm not gonna call them crackheads, but they're crackish.

Alright? So so Symptoms. The symptoms, like, not all the teeth there, you know, I mean, a little but but they but they're in the house to keep an eye on the house. Not quite tense, but keeping an eye on the house. Yeah.

So we're in the house, and we're talking. And so I park in front of the house, and, the gentleman, there's a big sign, like, mother fers don't park here. Well, I'm thinking, like, that's not a real sign. I mean, come on. Like like, who like, that's not that's not statutes.

You know what I'm saying? And I'm on the street. It's not I'm not in your parking lot. Right. I'm on the street.

So him me and the pastor are talking, and one of the the roommates come and say, hey. The the neighbor's tripping. You might wanna move your car. I'm like and the pastor's like, no. You'll you'll move your car when we're done talking.

I'm like, you know what the pastor said. We'll move it when it's done. So we end up, so we're done talking. We negotiate the price. I go outside.

And so this guy has a tow he has a tow yard next door. So he he has my car boxed in. So he has one tow truck on one side and the other truck on the other side, so I can't get out. So, obviously, he wants to talk. Alright.

So I can't move my car. So I go and knock on it. I so I'm gonna go and walk over and knock on the door, and this gentleman comes out. He's like, hey. Hey, homie.

You don't read that sign over there? You can't read. I'm like, hey. Take it easy. Take it easy.

I could read, but I didn't think that's a real sign. No. That's a real sign. You need to I need you to move your car. I'm like, hey.

You're a businessman. I'm a businessman. I see that you got a business. I'm here trying to buy a house, and I might be your neighbor here. Now I know that you don't want us to park there.

I see what I can do to help out. Well, see, you guys are like, listen. Over there, they're dealing drugs. They're doing everything over there. I'm like, the pastor?

Are you sure the pastor's dealing drugs? I don't care what he's doing over there. So now at this time, pastor Felton walks out. So he walks out, and he's like, is he messing you with you? I'm like I'm like, relax, pastor.

It's okay.

Steve: Yeah.

Elijah: He ends up, walking over. He's like, he hit your car. Like, he didn't hit the car. It's not that's not my nice car. This is a drive around car.

It's cool. Mhmm. He ends up getting mad. He's like, that's not right. You shouldn't hit his car.

And so now the Latino man man is just screaming out like, shut the hell up. Old man is cursing at him. I'm like, I'll whoop you I'll whoop you ass right now. I'm like, woah. Take it easy.

Take it easy. So the pastor comes around. And so I turn around talking to this guy. Next time I turn around, I look and see the pastor. The pastor has a big old four by four in his end about to whack the guy.

So the so next thing you know, I I tell the pastor, like, woah. Woah. Woah. Hold on a second. So the Mexican dude pulls out a knife.

Like, come on, homey. I'll cut you right here. I'll cut you like a fish. I'm like, I do real estate. What am I doing?

This is not what I came up to sign up for. So now the neighbors are coming out. The neighbors are coming out with with their with their phones, like, world starts on a world start. And so Everybody loves Wasserstone. Everybody loves Wasserstone.

So I'm like, I'm not gonna get caught. But I don't wanna take I don't wanna turn my back on him. He has the knife out. Yeah. And and so I look past it and in fact, I'm like, listen.

I'm about to pay you 6 figures for your house right now. You like, don't argue with fools because from a distant people can't tell the difference. So listen. You you have people who depend on you. I need you to walk away.

So I saw I looked in his eye, and he finally downgraded Mustafa. Calm down. And he end up, walking away, and I end up talking to the guy. And it's crazy. The guy asked me if he could buy the building for me.

Like like like, three weeks later, but, like, no. I'm not selling the property. I have to about to gut me in, gut this guy. So we end up buying the property for 90,000, sold it for 112,000, but, almost got stabbed and hit by a four by four. Cost of

Steve: doing business.

Elijah: Exactly. Just cost of doing business. Another day in the life.

Steve: So what is your biggest struggle right now?

Elijah: Biggest struggle right now. I think it's for a lot of us too. I think program I think our programming gets in our way a lot. Mhmm. I mean, how we were raised, how we thought, what we think is okay, what got you here isn't gonna get you there.

Yeah. So what got me to this level I'm I'm thrilled. I'm happy for. I still do things a lot of old school route. Mhmm.

I won't listen fully to what my integrator says. I I'm I'm putting myself I'm I'm giving my integrator authority to fire me as being a visionary. Fire me because I'm essentially, my first responsibility is the owner of the company. And first owner of the company, rule number one, make a profit.

Steve: Yeah. So

Elijah: if my if I'm not making profit, if I'm not doing all the things I need to do, I have to trust my integrator and follow the process. Like ET says, trust the process. Don't rush the process. Mhmm. And I find myself always reverting back.

I'll go back to sticky notes. I was a sticky note king for a little while, and I'll write down sticky notes about, like, no. You can't do that because if I leave the if I lose the sticky notes, then how can I transfer this note to somebody else? How can I pass the lead? How do I find that information?

And so I see myself reverting back to that sometimes. So that's something I gotta tighten up.

Steve: And what is your superpower?

Elijah: My superpower, for sure, like I said, I think, my my negotiating abilities, I think my, critical thinking abilities, I'm very creative. I think outside the box, I I could I hear problems, but I see solutions. Mhmm. And then I think I have the ability to connect and relate with almost anybody from all walks of life.

Steve: So all the expensive skills. That's great.

Elijah: Try to. Try to.

Steve: What's the greatest lesson you've learned?

Elijah: One of the greatest lessons I've learned that's a good question. One of the greatest lessons I learned is to stop playing small. Mhmm. I played small because because, I mean, from what society tells you, from what your background, like, I'm doing the properties in the hood. Like, are you like, are you sure you could just do these nicer houses?

Are you sure you could do California? And so I just, early this year, I did, the first $100,000 deal. I didn't make a 100,000, but I did a $100,000 deal in California. Got out my got out my own fear. Got out my own programming.

Yeah. And was able to buy the house for, like, 400,000 in California. Turn out sold for 500,000, bought split it three ways. So be care be very intentional with what you at your universe for. I said I wanna do a 6 figure deal.

No. No. I wanna keep 6 figure from a deal. Let's make it. Right?

But Yeah. You have

Steve: a genie out there.

Elijah: Yes. You you drop that genie. Be very clear what you want. It's gonna give you what you want, but just don't play small. Don't let your preconceived notions of who you thought you were Mhmm.

Control who you currently are.

Steve: Yeah. That's powerful. So what is your favorite, best, or most interesting failure?

Elijah: My favorite or most interesting failure? One of my I think my my favorite most interesting failure would probably be when I was, I got several. I got several of them. I got several of them. I'll go with this one.

I'm five years old. Mhmm. Alright? And my sister and I would take, rocks in my mom's, we'll take rocks around the neighborhood. We'll take my mom's nail polish, and we'll we'll we'll paint on the rocks.

Alright? And then we'll go and we'll sell the rocks for a dollar to $3 to the to the neighbors, and my sister would manage it. I'll collect the rocks, and I'll go and sell them. And so even at five years old, I was selling rocks at five. No.

But those are legal rocks legal rocks. Yeah. And so the biggest lesson learned is to negotiate your terms upfront. Yeah. Because she would pay me in candy and kept the money.

So I didn't know. And, like, I like, give me the cash. I don't want I don't want the candy. Don't pay me Kit Kats. Give me the cash.

So that's one of the first things I learned at five years old.

Steve: Know your negotiation terms upfront. Clarify. Documents.

Elijah: Yes. Document, clarify, and make sure you have a sworn agreement. No head nod contracts. No head nod contracts.

Steve: Alright. And then, what book have you given more than any other book?

Elijah: Oh, I've really been heavy on giving out traction to a lot of people, but hands down before you get the traction, I think you have to have the mindset Mhmm. Because you can relearn all this stuff. But if you don't have the mindset, it'll fall off. And I made easily $25,000 the second time I read it and applied it the same year. And it's called Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T Harv Eker.

Yeah. Yeah. Because it just give you an understanding how programming works. Your programming controls your thoughts. Your thoughts control your feelings.

Your feelings control your actions. Your action control your results. Your results define your legacy. If you don't like your results, your legacy, you could re engineer it

Steve: Yeah.

Elijah: And change it like a doll. You could change your programming. And And once I saw you could do that, it felt so empowering. And once you see it happen and you see other people around it, wow. It starts changing things around you.

Steve: Yeah. It's an amazing book. And then I would just add on to that too, the traction. The my coach told me to read it two years ago, and I did. I read it.

Elijah: Oh, you did. You did.

Steve: And I did absolutely nothing with

Elijah: it. Yeah.

Steve: And then, a friend of mine recommended I read Rocket Fuel.

Elijah: Yep. I read that one.

Steve: So I read Rocket Fuel. I was like, oh, this is the same guy's attraction. Let me read traction again. It's like, oh my god. How many things did I screw up by not doing these things?

Elijah: For sure. But I understand the value of what you're so you're a visionary?

Steve: Yeah.

Elijah: It's see, it's but you need an integrator Right. To help implement a lot of these stuff. And I had the wrong people in the wrong seats and go in the wrong direction. But because you make two, three hundred thousand in this society, you're gonna find who could tell you anything. Right.

So make your adjustments.

Steve: And I think the other thing too is it it helps your integrators deal with you Yes. Because you and I are screwed up.

Elijah: Flawed tremendously. Yeah. And and we have the squirrel squirrel squirrel squirrel looking around all different objects. And if you do that wet that whiplash, even that the whole team has to be able to move and being able to trust your integrator to implement your vision Yeah. And to fire you if need be.

I think that is a very big revelation. Like, woah. Okay. I gotta follow I got I because if you're the main cog in your will, you're the main cog in your will. And and and that That's true.

And and they're gonna make you move. They're gonna remove you from it. I like that.

Steve: So who should we who would you like to see on the show next?

Elijah: Who would I like to see on the show next? You guys had some pretty good and some pretty solid people on here. I think, his name is Chris Ortevaris.

Steve: Mhmm.

Elijah: He's in, entrepreneur organization, the accelerator program with me. He's a realtor. He's a builder, and he's an investor. And, he's starting to do bigger projects. I was just talking to him about you as I talk about how I like things we're doing about your networking event you did.

So Chris worked a very solid person. I'll be more than more than grateful to make a a connection for you. Alright. Yeah. That's I appreciate that.

Steve: Alright. So we talked all about a lot of wisdom, a lot of knowledge, and and and items of value that you can definitely give to our listeners. How would they get a hold of you?

Elijah: You could get a hold of me. There's a couple different ways. One way, you could go online. Elijah I Ruben as my fan page. And by clicking on that, you'll be notified when I make my Facebook live calls.

And once I get to a 100 episodes, I'm only gonna do them randomly because it takes a lot to do them every Monday and Wednesdays at 05:30. They could go to my consistently closing group, consistently closing on Facebook. And then you can always reach out to me via email, which is Elijah@Wynn,wiin,LLC. That's Elijah@Wynn,wiin,LLC.com. And that's the best way you're able to kinda connect with me.

Steve: Awesome. And, again, guys, if you like the show, please share this episode right now, and please join me next Wednesday at 02:00. Chris Mayfield thinks it'd be a good idea to interview me, so I'm gonna be the subject next week.

Elijah: Yeah.

Steve: So don't forget to, check it out, and then also visit the website, realestatedisruptors.com, to find out more about our upcoming events. Thank you so much. Appreciate you, sir.

Elijah: Appreciate you, sir.

Steve: Alright. I'll talk to you guys later.