Evan Manship & Clay Manship Share How They’ve Done 200+ Deals Several Years in a Row For $200k+/mo

Steve Trang: Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Real Estate Disruptors. So we have Evan and Clay Manship, two brothers who flew in from Indianapolis. This year, they've done over 200 transactions per year for several years in a row with over 2 and a half million in revenue. Was that last year?

Clay Manship: Yeah. Last year

Evan Manship: was yeah. First year we got over two and a half.

Steve: Yeah. So pretty good numbers. If this is your first time tuning in, I am Steve Trang, broker and owner of Stunning Homes Realty, founder of the OfferFast Homes app, the only MLS for off market wholesale properties. Alan, I'm on a mission to create 100 millionaires. So if that's something you wanna do, let's connect on Instagram.

It's at steve dot trang. If you're excited for today's show, please give me a wave. Give me a thumbs up. And as a friendly reminder, I don't charge a dime for this show. I don't make any money doing this.

So here's all I ask. This is what it costs for you guys all to listen to this show. I've been told by a consultant I need to get to 505 star reviews in iTunes to hit some of my crazy goals. So please do me a favor. Go into iTunes, subscribe, and give me a five star review.

If you can write what you like about the show, that'll be even better. And this is a live show on Facebook and YouTube, so please ask your questions for Evan and Clay to answer. You guys ready? Let's do it.

Evan: Rock and roll.

Steve: Alright. So first question, I'll start with Clay, is what got you into real

Evan: estate? What got me in the real estate?

Clay: It's an only hour long show, but

Evan: Yeah.

Clay: So so the the abbreviated version of how I got in real estate started with, back in school. You know, we, I wanted to be the the landlord that laid on the beach and drank Mai Tais all day long. Taking a step back, I wanted to be the guy that was in investment banking. I wanted to wear the suspenders and drive a Ferrari and make a lot of money and realized pretty quickly that I didn't wanna work a hundred hour weeks. And so red rich dad poor dad, which seems to be the, the quintessential, cliche.

Right? Red rich dad poor dad wanted to be the landlord laid on the beach and learned that was a tangible thing. So, real estate seemed to be the vehicle to get me into, that passive money lifestyle. Myth. Right?

I mean, he's still very active in what

Evan: we do today.

Steve: Hell, yeah.

Clay: So, that's what got me into into wanting to be in a real estate, you know, whatever, eight, nine, ten years ago.

Evan: Yeah. And it's interesting. You know, we we were lucky enough to as a part we went to a giant public high school in Indianapolis, you know, graduated with 800 kids or something in our class. It was a piece of what, you know, was required for every finance

Clay: or if it's folks that

Evan: were gonna study finance or accounting or economics, whatever, we business folk, required class, required coursework in the in the high school was a course called financial planning. So something that In high school? Required piece for people studying finance and economics in high school. So we were Which

Steve: they offer wish they require that here.

Evan: Yeah. Right. But obviously required across the world, across the globe. And and so we were certainly fortunate to bump into that class. But, you know, that class was, you know, how to balance a checkbook, God forbid.

And, it's simple accounting, debits, credits, but a piece of that, of your required reading for that required coursework was Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Clay: Mhmm. So it

Evan: wasn't, here's a book. You should read it. It'll change your life. It was we have a quiz on chapters one through four in the cash flow quadrant, on Tuesday. So, you know, we had that beat into our minds kind of by sheer happenstance.

Yeah. And it changed it completely changed the trajectory of us, you know, professionally and and personally for that matter.

Clay: Yeah. We we learned pretty quick. In in high school, we were focused on instead of having a job that paid 6 figures, that's like the magic number. Right? Mhmm.

To escape that and think once we make that money, what are we what are we doing with it? And so that was kind of what escaped it and got into real estate.

Steve: Gotcha. And then for you, same thing?

Evan: Well, as we come to find out, Steve, there are very few differences between playing. You know, went to the same college, studied the same thing, roomed together all four years. You know, we up until a couple months ago, you know, we lived right next door to each other and matching identical twin houses. So run our company together, work

Steve: You guys don't live next door to each other anymore?

Evan: No. Actually, Clay just moved across the street. My wife and I got a house in the suburbs. So, yeah. But, you know, we're we're as identical as it gets.

So down to reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad and, you know, having the idea to to buy our first couple pieces of real estate. I mean, we've been the same across the board, and, God forbid, here we are.

Steve: And then, at some point, you guys worked for a hedge fund.

Clay: Yeah. So so our backgrounds are both in commercial. I I graduated and and wanted to go out and do anything other than go back home.

Evan: Right?

Clay: I didn't wanna go back to Indianapolis at all.

Evan: Mom doesn't like this part of the store. She doesn't.

Clay: And so I was applying for gigs in, Phoenix, in LA, in New York, in Chicago, and, wasn't getting the jobs I wanted. And so I applied for one job back home, happened to be at a hedge fund in Indianapolis, got that job, and was working in the commercial real estate group of that hedge fund.

Speaker 3: Mhmm.

Clay: And I've had a similar story. Yeah.

Evan: I mean, we we thought that post college, you know, you can only be so alike for so long. And we figured, you know, from age, you know, one day on on the earth to, you know, the day we graduated high school wasn't long enough, and that that was kind of the imminent twin divorce, if you will. Right? I'm gonna go to Seattle, and you're gonna go to Miami, we'll see you at Thanksgiving. And that was, you know, kind of what built up in our minds and what festered with us forever in college.

And, it was bothersome, you know, applying for all these different gigs all over the the country, and it was, you know, life had planned it. It was just hilarious how we both applied for one gig in Indy. Clay got his. I got mine. Clay was, you know, underwriting, like you said, kinda large scale commercial debt stuff, and I worked for a property tax consultancy group, underwriting and valuing.

This is right out of school. I was 23 years old, and somehow, someway, they trusted a finance grad to underwrite, you know, large multifamily stuff and commercial, industrial, office, whatever.

Speaker: So Right.

Evan: It was neat. Clay kinda studied the the financing side of things, and I had the, the background of kind of valuation and how

Steve: that worked. So if I

Evan: could find value and he could find money for it, it was a kind of a match made in heaven.

Steve: Oh, there you go.

Evan: To, 22 year old schmucks could could could ask for.

Clay: Well, and and part of this and sorry to hijack it. What part of what I did is is on top of being in this commercial group was analyzing the the net worth statements of borrowers. Mhmm. Yeah. So you got these guys buying $1,020,000,000 dollar buildings, and you see I was there for two years.

And from quarter to quarter, they're going from 10,000,000 to 12,000,000 to 15,000,000 in net worth.

Speaker: And compound

Clay: that with Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I knew damn quick that I need to be on versus on this side of

Speaker: the table.

Clay: You know? And and it wasn't hard to figure out. Yeah. So combined with our our kind of our educational background and then practical experience, it was a no brainer to start buying real estate.

Steve: Okay. So when you guys started buying real estate, was it straight in the wholesale? Or, I mean, what was that first move?

Evan: Our our first deal was was kinda funny. You know, we

Clay: horrifying? It was scary? Let's stick with funny.

Evan: I'll say Let's stick with funny so the viewers stay. It was funny in the fact, you know, it was 2013, October hell, Halloween of 2013 is

Speaker: when we

Evan: closed on it. Yep. We bought it together, naturally. We identified this house off the MLS, and it was 2013, so you could cherry pick deals off the MLS like crazy. Yeah.

It's a $24,000 house, and we conventionally financed it. We found some bank to lend us whatever $17,000 or whatever it was, and our our mortgage payment was $93 something.

Clay: And, you know, at least

Evan: at $6.50 or $700, we bought it with a tenant in place. It was paying like clockwork, so it was it was hilarious. You know, we kinda got to thinking, why isn't everyone doing this? This is the easiest thing in the world. You know,

Clay: how do we continue

Evan: to do this? But, I graduated college with a $112,000 in student debt, and he graduated, like, a 111, so where that thousand dollars went. I have no idea, but we both graduated with a lot of student debt. So when we bought our house, you know, it's kind of funny that they didn't lend us someone with that much debt, but, you know, we spent every penny of expendable money we had to finance that house. We bought a house.

It was cash flowing, but at that point, it had no no additional funds to do anything we wanted with.

Clay: Picture the swag in this story, Steve. We we two college graduated dudes, finance degrees, living at home with mom and dad, k, paying, you know, $50 a year, but owning a house and not living in

Speaker: it. Mhmm.

Clay: Right? So our first house we bought with $8,000 we scrounged together for a down payment, lived at home with mom and dad, and we opened we had that we had that house. Right? That was our first buy and hold. It was our first strategy.

We didn't jump into wholesale. I wanted to be the landlord on the beach.

Speaker: Mhmm. Right?

Clay: So the only way to do that was to hold, properties. That was our first play.

Steve: Yeah. So then when did wholesale enter the conversation?

Clay: You wanna go for this or me?

Evan: No. Be my guest.

Clay: Cool. So we I love this story. We we so, again, we we bought one, and then, about a year or so later, we we, we bought another one. So we owned two houses in about three or four blocks of each other in Downtown Indy. And our next step naturally was a duplex.

We had two singles and wanted to buy a duplex. And, we put it under contract. You know, it was on the MLS. We put down 500 in earnest earnest money and, nonrefundable earnest money. We wanted to be competitive with our with our offer, which, you know, we learned was cool.

Right? And, so we put down $500 in earnest money, went and walked through the property, and it was just a hole. Man, that thing was just need a lot of work. The pictures look great. House was in

Steve: terrible shape.

Clay: Yeah. So we have this house. It's on the MLS. We have $500 earnest money down, and we look at each other and say, I'm not buying this thing. It's not gonna happen.

But I we can't afford to lose $500. How on earth are we gonna lose $500?

Evan: A catastrophic amount of money for a couple of 20

Clay: We're scared.

Evan: We we didn't you

Clay: know, we're like, how are we gonna do this? And so we picked up the phone and started calling everyone in the area. We know we knew how to go into because of our corporate backgrounds, we knew how to go into into public record. And so we went into public record and and searched who was buying stuff up and down that street. And I'll never forget we made 24 phone calls, all nose, and then I'll that says 25.

And then the 2026 call was, to a guy named Steve who was our first wholesale buyer.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Clay: So we we put it under contract, $50, I think, and sold it for 63. And so what was going to be a $500 loss turned into a $13,000 gain overnight.

Steve: Yeah. And

Clay: I say overnight, but we put in a lot of work into that deal. But Mhmm. It was all we wholesale the deal off the MLS.

Evan: And and that's how competitive the market started to be. You know, we wholesale the deal off the MLS. Mhmm. And, you know,

Speaker: I think

Evan: it was listed for, like, 80 or something. Yeah.

Clay: So, yeah, so we got

Evan: a contract accepted at, you know, a pretty ridiculous price, 50, whatever it was, but, 2332 Guilford was the address. I'll never forget it. You know, when we when we closed that deal, you're sitting there holding, you know, 23 years old and you're a $100 in debt, you're holding a $13,000 check, you know, 15% of your student loan debt just disappeared instantly over over, you know, some some pretty we we we we grinded to find that deal. We grinded to negotiate it, and I'm a licensed guy, so it was easy to go back and forth, at least pretend like

Steve: you know

Evan: what you're doing. Mhmm. But,

Steve: you know, we got that CCIM next year.

Evan: Yeah. You're right. No. Those letters actually paid for themselves. But we, we got a little bit of luck, but a lot of hard work.

And we we we saw, you know, that $13,000. We went out to a happy hour afterwards and took the family out for dinner. I know we thought we were rich. It was it was great, but, that that $13,000 really blazed the trail for for what we do now.

Clay: Yeah. It proved concept. Mhmm. You know, like that first rental house, we bought it on, Halloween, and then November 1, rent was due.

Speaker: And so I

Clay: got a $650 check on that day at Pruv concept, so there's something to this. Mhmm. That wholesale deal on Guilford Pruv concept. And so, okay. We're we're on the right path.

We've already made mistakes. We're gonna keep making mistakes, but we're making mistakes in a way that allows us to learn and and move forward.

Speaker: Yeah.

Clay: And that was really our first wholesale deal.

Steve: Gotcha. And then what was what happened after that?

Clay: Kevin I mean, kept making mistakes. No. I I I think the Rootiers deal is is probably what

Evan: it had to have been what it was. You know, that we at that point, we, you know, we wanted to continue to scale, you know. We we still own, what, 16 or 17 properties now. And at that time, you know, we finally had money to put down on conventionally financing property. Mhmm.

And we had we had learned at that point that there was a way to if you could take cash or raise cash, that you could essentially wait, rehab it, recycle it back out, and have cash flowing assets with no money, no money into it, building a balance sheet, cash flow, and maintaining liquidity, all three of these cool things. And, that $13,000, you know, while it would have been nice to pay off the student loans at that point, was a a leap, you know, a lily pad, a trampoline. You know, it it let us kind of scale into these new cool things and start acquiring more deals. So, bought a single family house, for $30. And for those of you watching, $30,000 can buy you a decent house in Indianapolis still.

Certainly could back in 2014. So when I say I was bought a $30,000 house, it wasn't some section eight dump. It was actually a decent place. Eighteen thirteen Routiers, r

Clay: o u t I e r

Evan: s, for those of you watching. Neat little house, bought it, paid off our our hard money investor, and then we had our first BRRRR deal, kind of, by accident. And this was before people were, writing books about it or bigger pocket you know, bigger, pockets articles or whatever. It was just kind of a thing that we did, and that $13,000 really paved the way for us to scale.

Steve: So you guys are, like, learning a lot of things, like, basically inventing things on your own that

Clay: Don't be carried away. We honestly

Steve: Well, as far as you guys knew.

Clay: Yeah. I mean We're

Steve: inventing things.

Evan: There's no sexy acronym for it. It was just buying cash and then recycling it back out once you add value to it. Yeah.

Clay: In a lot of this way, we understood what arbitrage was Mhmm.

Speaker: At a

Clay: relatively young stage. We we knew that markets were inefficient in real estate. And what this led us to is, okay, if we can identify this BRRRR strategy and do 50 of them a year, 20 10 of them a year, right, we just gotta find the right product. We gotta find the right stream of inventory.

Evan: Yeah.

Clay: And so correct. Yeah. We kinda jumped into this birthing. But on top of that, we realized if we can create a pipeline that brings this stuff in, we can get to that that landlord on the beach beach pretty darn quick. Yeah.

It's not gonna be as long as we think. And so that's what led us into, kinda sending out yellow letters and postcards, door knocking, kind of the entry level wholesaler stuff. Yeah. We we had that the the

Evan: the house that we bought, you know, we had that 12 or $13 kinda sitting around, and we had to partner it with some additional, you know, bridge money to take down the house and then rehab it. And, you know, we didn't know a bunch of rich people at the time who could lend us money. We're a bunch of schmucks and 24 year old kids that didn't have any track record. So, you know, we had to, you know, find someone to have some level of belief in us, and, you know, we comb through bigger pockets and held a phone book for part of it into these meetups and couldn't find anyone that, you know, would lend us this money. And 30, you know, $20, whatever it was, was a lot of money, back then.

Shout out to to Jeb Brilliant, our first investor. He's the one that I credit with kinda what started our company. His name is Jeb. He's from Long Beach, and I found him in BiggerPockets. I like saying to people who haven't met him online.

So that's weird. But I met I met this guy named Jeb online, whether it was stupidity or he was just super naive and but he believed in us.

Speaker: And

Evan: said, yeah. Sure. You know, secure me with a promissory note and a mortgage, and I'll fund you the difference for the house. So we bought the house, rehabbed it, you know, put it in our portfolio after we we refinanced and paid him off. And, you know, we knocked on his door and said, do you wanna lend us money again?

You wanna do us, as an a deal, you know, two or three houses down? Found this one in the MLS too. He said, well, you know, I'm happy to lend you money. I'll lend you money all day long. But more than that, I want to do what you're doing.

I want you to kind of teach me how you're building this portfolio. We're 24 year old kids and had no money, and we're building a real estate portfolio. We're probably four or five properties at the time. He said, I wanna do it in what you're doing. So much so, and I believe so much in what you've already done.

You find a house, and I'll just buy it directly from you. I trust you. So,

Clay: Cash buyer.

Evan: Cash buyer. Cash buyer. So that was our second wholesale deal was was Jeb. We found him a house just by our first batch of of yellow letters and was shoot you know, fish in a barrel back when yellow letters could work. And, found him a house, wholesale sold it, and that's kinda what and so I I was told that that approximately.

'14? Yeah. Late fourteen, maybe. Yeah. Mhmm.

Steve: Give or take.

Clay: And I always laugh is is how'd you get into it? And it's always a story. You know, I don't have this I wish I had a straightforward answer for you, but a lot of this stuff happened because we started off in the position we did. We didn't start in the industry by wholesaling. I think that's a trap a lot of people fall into as they read these books.

I get on YouTube University. Mhmm. And I

Speaker: think

Clay: it's a good place to start, but you have to know the fundamentals. Yeah.

Speaker: And a

Clay: lot of people don't. And we had the blessing of of starting off as buying hold guys and then having an investor and working in commercial. Background. Yeah. The background.

Right. You know, the handful of things. And we understood it pretty well. And if we could control that inventory supply, control the supply, we're in a good spot.

Steve: Yeah.

Clay: So that's how we got into wholesale and real estate. It was completely out of necessity and kind of by accident.

Steve: And when did you guys quit your job?

Clay: I quit my job on 10/06/2015. So when we were first doing this, I still had my my full time gig. Mhmm. And I knew that, I wanted to get out. But the way I was compared is make sure the boat is close enough to the dock before you step in it.

Right? You don't wanna fall off into the water. And so that whole call it a year between 14 with Jeb all the way to when I quit my job, and 15 was was just making sure the boat was close enough.

Evan: Yeah. And we probably we could have probably done a little bit, you know, earlier than we did. Mine was 03/07/2017. But same story, you know, we wanted proof of concept. And, you know, Clay quit his job first, and I was, you know, kind of the backup plan in case this whole thing happened.

Right. At least one of us had had a job or something.

Clay: But Yeah.

Evan: It was neat. So we we, eventually, after, you know, working as hard as we did and finding investors and wholesale only couple properties, we at some point, you know, we were just making more money from from five to nine than we were from from nine to five. Yeah. I just said, screw it. Let's just double down what we're good at until we did.

Steve: So one of the things that, was like, like you mentioned, you know, some of these guys are kinda getting in Yep. And they they go straight in the wholesale, and they don't have the foundation,

Speaker: right,

Steve: the fundamentals. So their struggle is gonna be different, right, because of of of starting their business. What were some of your guys' struggles? How's it different in your background? Or was it just

Speaker: Smooth sailing.

Clay: No. It's probably smooth sailing. I don't know. What our struggle, I guess, would have been, we we're always action takers. Right?

So that that's always something that and it's cliche, but doing the wrong things better than doing nothing, in my opinion. So as far as struggles, I think that we struggled to, to really scale quickly. You know, we took our money and kinda sat on it, wanted to protect it instead of grow it.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Clay: And, you know, it makes me wanna shake my head looking to where where we probably could be. Have you done the last three years, six years ago. Right?

Steve: You're not

Evan: alone. Yeah. That's it. Everyone was buying in 2015. Yeah.

Clay: So I I I don't think that's a struggle, but, we were we were always good about,

Evan: and I think

Clay: a lot of people struggle too because they're not surrounding themselves with like minded people. Mhmm. It to to be vulnerable was a weakness of mine and say, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Right? But Steve Trang does, and I need to go just associate myself with people that that are around that way.

Mhmm. I was too proud. Right? And that's maybe where a weakness and maybe that that affected the business kinda short term. But, that's where one

Evan: of our struggles was at

Clay: least in the beginning. What what do you think about struggles?

Evan: I I don't

Speaker: even know

Evan: where it started. It all seems like one big one big struggle bus to some degree. I mean, we're 24.

Speaker: You know,

Evan: we're 20 oh, no. It's 23 when we bought our first house. We're 23 years old.

Clay: So we had no no clue what

Evan: we were doing. But Clay's right, you know, kind of, you know, again, much like Jeb, whether it was we were naive or stupid or lucky, I mean, maybe a combination of the three, but we, we jumped. We made some dumb mistakes, leasing to when we were managing our own properties.

Steve: Oh, my.

Evan: At one point, at the climax at the climax of our portfolio, we probably had 50 or 60 properties, not a cent into any of our deals. It was awesome. Right? The the portfolio is churning and burning, but, you know, oh, I'm not gonna manage my my own properties anymore. I'm I'm above that,

Speaker: you know.

Evan: I'm gonna hire the best property manager ever. Well, we still gotta manage a manager that's managing 60 properties, and that's a full time gig. So, you know, that that was a that was a struggle. You know, identifying appropriate people, appropriate placement was was constantly a struggle. But, you know, it's it's going to be a struggle.

There's no way to jump directly into

Speaker: it and

Steve: not be a struggle.

Clay: So yeah. So today. Right?

Speaker: Yeah. And, you

Evan: know, we're getting ready to go to head to Portland tonight with a bunch of guys who've been doing this for thirty, forty years, and it's still a struggle for them. It's just, you know, making sure that struggle's decreasing, I suppose.

Steve: Right. So how is your operation different than some of the other people in the Indian market?

Clay: How how was it different? Well, our first and foremost, our our our we we've got a set of core values. Our first core value is value first. And whether you're you're you're working with a customer or you're working with a seller or whatever it is, it's whether you have personal values, we're always serving. So, value first comes first.

And a lot of people when they're wholesaling don't understand how to get to value. They didn't work in property tax. They didn't work in the commercial space. They don't have a c fancy CCIM next to their name. Right?

But we're always starting with value first. So what I always tell newbies when they're starting out or or even experienced guys is if if you're not providing ultimate value to your buyers, you don't deserve to be in business. Mhmm. And believe it or not, that's a conundrum that most people can't overcome, I think, especially in today's market. A lot of people in Indeed don't care necessarily.

They just wanna throw some contracts together and sling stuff.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Clay: And we're big time value guys, and that that's a good place to start. On top of that, and I'll let Ev talk more about this, but we are we're we're a buyer focused group.

Evan: Yeah.

Clay: And so we are always on the offense when it comes to finding sellers to sell. But, really, we're competitive advantage we have is we are always on the offense when it comes to finding buyers to buy. Mhmm. And we are we have a full time you know, we've got a dispo guy, and we've also got an entire arm of the company that is built out to seek out cash buyers all the time. And and that's kinda what EP heads up.

Evan: Yeah. And, you know, if there's a fundamental difference, it's it's that, you know, everyone can get on here and talk about skip tracing and data and all this. And then not to say it's not important. Obviously, it's it's Clay's baby. He's an exceedingly good job with that part of the company, but, you know, we have three full time employees that do nothing but focus on marketing the buyers.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Evan: And, that sets us apart tremendously. You know, we don't have a a buyer that makes up 25% of our business or even 10% of our business. I mean, they're

Speaker: Oh, really?

Evan: They're they're they're they're a ton of,

Speaker: you know,

Evan: it's a Gatling gun, and it's all different. So, you know, we we we maintained that to be true for a long time.

Clay: I looked at I looked at it before we before we came on the air, and we've we've done a 148 transactions as of today so far this year. 121 were two unique buyers, if that tells anything about yeah. About kind of the the scale of of and and it's because we're always shopping out. Mom and pop buyers in today's market are going to pay top dollar.

Steve: Yeah.

Clay: We try to not work with hedge funds so we

Evan: can avoid it because they're gonna gut you on stuff.

Speaker: Mhmm. Yeah.

Evan: They want it their way, and that's it.

Clay: Mom and

Evan: pop buyers don't.

Speaker: But, you

Evan: know, if we're providing value to Clay's Point, you know, in our new office, we just finished up. We were getting a big mural painted or whatever in the city of Indianapolis, the map of Indianapolis, whatever. Right up there on the front says value first. Mhmm. In giant red bold font, value first.

I want my guys to see it every day when they walk through, value first. If you provide value, it doesn't matter if someone's a full time real estate investor, a flipper, a buying holder, a freaking t shirt with four zero four zero one k money sitting around, right, or four zero three b money sitting around. You know, they're gonna buy.

Steve: Yeah. But as

Evan: long as you're providing value. So that's what the the the chief difference in our group is, those two things.

Steve: So let's talk about it. So you say you got three guys actively looking for buyers at all times. So what are their responsibilities?

Evan: Not necessarily been looking for buyers. You know, we, we put on a lot of events. We're hosting, an enormous, at least for us, enormous, essentially an investor symposium is what we're calling it. Mhmm. The first weekend in November.

So November 1 and November 3, we're hosting a lot of our out of state folks just to come in, teach them about Indianapolis and kinda how how the market works, things that have been working, things that haven't, you know. I hate calling it a mastermind, but, you know, a group of people that do the same thing and trying to seek value from each other. Mhmm. And we we think that's get you're getting

Clay: a 100 people from out of state, or even in state coming in to talk about how they can spend money with you.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Clay: For those watching, if you're not doing this and you have any business of any scalability, you, you know, you need to have a mental examination. You gotta be doing it.

Evan: And so, you know, that's external marketing. So it's not necessarily identifying buyers but more or less cultivating people, make sure that there's a way that we continue to add value to these people. So, Sadie, if Sadie's watching, Sadie's one of our marketing interns, and Sadie, is essentially responsible for implementing these, these strategies and putting together these events. So alongside me, you know, it's a $17,000 event over a weekend that we're putting together, and it's completely free to every out of state investor who works with us. So, value.

Right?

Steve: You know? So are you guys more in state or out of state investors?

Evan: It really depends. I'd I'd I'd still say more in state.

Clay: It's about $60.40. Yeah. It's about $60.40. It's at I looked at it again. 61 percent out of state.

Evan: Oh, out of state. Okay. I was gonna say that.

Speaker: On on

Clay: the date again. 61% out of state as of for this year.

Steve: And so these people are buying it. Mhmm. They're buying it for their buy and hold portfolio?

Clay: For the most part. And we got a couple that are kinda, you know, you got properties that are kinda in between flip and and rental. But, yeah, I'd I'd say 80% of the properties we sell are rental grade properties.

Speaker: Yeah.

Steve: I mean, that's huge. Right? Because you can definitely have a way higher margins

Clay: Oh my god. Yeah. For the buy

Steve: and hold guy.

Evan: It's massive. It's absolutely massive. And and that's again, in in Indy, you know, especially because, you know, projects sell themselves. You got a $60,000 house that's, you know, one of the best neighborhoods in the city, and that's just Really? Slight slight at Indy, but We can buy you can

Clay: buy a house in Indianapolis for the price of a VCR. Mean, a nice used car, right, is is what Indianapolis is. So but it's true. I mean, the the the amount of headache and stress and and negotiation and contractors go into selling a flip house. I mean, we sell about half of our property sight unseen.

Evan: Mhmm.

Clay: This is a it's a pro form a. Bam. Done. Right?

Evan: And people always wince when I say, you know, how much you you can buy a house for in Indy. And it's not necessarily a slide against, like, the the property values in Indy, but more or less, a non decline in his data team that what we can identify it for, how cheap we can get something because you're, you know, you're buying a $60,000 house, which makes you roll your eyes. But it's probably worth a $100,110 when it's all ready to rock and roll after, you know, quick paint carpet deal.

Steve: Okay. So then the people you're selling it to are still doing the rehab.

Evan: Sure.

Steve: So, okay. And right now, you guys are sourcing the properties. You guys are doing it all in house, and you guys moving the properties. That's all everything's in house.

Clay: Yes.

Steve: You guys aren't servicing, like, because you got a buyer's list. You got this portfolio. You know, you guys aren't helping other wholesalers move their price. You guys aren't doing joint venture.

Evan: It's it's something, honestly, that's

Clay: a it's an opportunity for us. And I would encourage anyone watching from Indianapolis that we love to do that. We used to do a lot in the past Yeah. And just haven't in, you know, recently. But, yeah, we we love JV deals.

We love to do that and just haven't done it recently.

Speaker: Okay.

Evan: Yeah. We we were Clay's data I mean, we're we'll we'll spend $3,040,000 dollars a month on on external stuff.

Speaker: So, I mean, Clay's data alone keeps us

Evan: pretty busy. Yeah. Clay's data alone keeps us pretty busy.

Speaker: Yeah.

Evan: But, not to say we turn that away. Just it's, you know, we've got a handful of things to mess with on our own.

Steve: So how are you guys buying? Because, again, this is, like, this is your competitive advantage. How are you guys finding these people to add into your your your your database?

Clay: On the buyer side or on the seller side?

Steve: On the buyer side.

Clay: Go ahead.

Evan: Well, the buyer side is interesting. You know, we we hired, again, our our external guy, for a long, long, long, like, probably a year ago. And Aaron what Aaron does is essentially piece together, marketing mediums, and it sounds rudimentary, but Aaron's job is to go out and facilitate, you know, work alongside these investors that we find find or have found. Hey. Can I come in there and take pictures of your house?

Can I come in there there and, you know, see what you're doing? You know, get an update on this,

Speaker: that, you

Evan: know, they can interview you? Mhmm. And put together content for stuff we've already done. So it it works kind of it's, bifurcated benefit to us, you know, obviously, you know, it shows that we're interested in seeing the project from a to z and making sure that they're bringing as much value from that that Mhmm. Towel of the property as they can.

But at the same point, we can take those pictures, those photographs, those interviews, and piece them together in little case studies for for future folks. So we furnish those on, you know, Facebook, YouTube, whatever, as, you know, 123 Main Street flip, you know, out of state investor, you know, we're we're here we we care about you. We're here long alongside the the whole ride, but, you know, here's how it's worked out, here's what we sold it for, here's what neighborhood it was in, yada yada.

Speaker: So we

Steve: put Here's the performer, here's where the actual performance is.

Evan: Right. So we put a little pretty bow on the on the property when it's all said and done, and then that, you know, returns two x, three x on. The people are talking to us, and it continues to build.

Steve: But as far as outbound touch, I mean, are you guys, like, cold calling these guys?

Speaker: Because I

Steve: know you guys run a big cold call center, which I thought we were gonna talk about, but We

Evan: can talk about it. We can talk

Steve: about it. Yeah. But, this this part here is you know, that's where you guys are different. Like, you know, cold calling is obviously a big part of the operation. Yep.

Are you guys cold calling buyers?

Evan: Are you guys pulling lists? Well, if there's anything that the folks watching I want them to leave with is is India is not as sexy of a market as LA, Vegas, Phoenix No? Seattle, whatever. So, you know, the people who are looking into your often held, if not always, buy and hold folks. Yeah.

Okay? So, you know, they they've got a a vast array of different hillbilly Midwestern cities to choose from as far as where they wanna put their money when they're out when they're priced out of their own market. We work with teachers and attorneys and, you know, cops and people from all over the place, just normal folks who are don't want can't buy an investment property in Vegas, Phoenix, LA, Seattle, whatever. So a lot of it is just, you know, exposing yourself and identifying yourself as, you know, hey, we can be a resource to out of state folks.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Evan: And, we've been in a we've done I don't know if it's just, again, sheer luck or or if we've just doubled down on something that was an opportunity for us, but we've we've been extremely fortunate to, kinda knock it out of the park a couple times with some some serious hitters from out of state, and it's grown kind of organically.

Speaker: Mhmm. So at

Clay: least Lot of word-of-mouth. Just to wrap some nuts and bolts around this, a lot of word-of-mouth because we've done well by these

Evan: guys Yeah.

Clay: For several of the track record. Right. And it went from

Evan: small track record like Jeb. Right? Jeb is from Long Beach, and Jeb, you know, lent us money, got his money back in six months, and bought his house, and he had, you know, $30 in equity in it.

Steve: One but

Evan: in One job turns to 10 jobs, turns to a 100. Yeah.

Clay: And and quite I mean, again, just to put some substance to this, we give a shit. Mhmm. I mean, we, you know, we we're we're calling six months after you buy a buy and hold to see if you got your money

Evan: out. Mhmm.

Clay: If if not, tell me where

Evan: we went wrong.

Clay: Where how do we can we be better at this?

Evan: Yeah. We've got that. This is

Clay: a simple phone call after this builds on its you know, just people are shocked by that. And Evan Sadie recently started sending out plaques. If you've done a deal with us, we'll send you a plaque. It cost $33. Plaque with a picture

Evan: of the garage. So the door, picture of the property, address, or whatever, and, like, that's returned Crazy. 40 x on the money. Crazy.

Steve: I love it.

Clay: So it yeah.

Evan: So just little things like that. We have a full time guy dedicated to making sure that, you know, the project goes from a to z, and it sells or it rents or whatever. Right? And just having that constant touch has has worked wonders for

Speaker: us from

Evan: a buyer's perspective.

Clay: So word-of-mouth is big. We're also big on on bigger pockets is is obviously a big one for us. Facebook groups, we're just touching people.

Evan: Yeah.

Clay: It's not it's not really a hard sell. Hey. Are you are you a cash buyer?

Speaker: Mhmm.

Clay: It's a, hey. How can we be resourced to you? What are you trying to accomplish in Indianapolis? Yeah. And once we get them on the phone, it's

Evan: I mean, they're gonna work with us.

Steve: Gotcha. So one of the things that we use to validate people is we ask them for settlement statements. Cool. And that wasn't an issue with you guys on the settlement statements. That was really easy.

But, also, my data research, you guys bought a built bought a building for your company.

Clay: Yeah.

Speaker: Not a

Steve: lot of people are buying buildings. Right? Yeah. The money they're making for their business. So talk about what what your vision is with the building.

Evan: Well, I was I was on the phone with a guy, from LA, a physician from LA who's an investor of ours, earlier today. We were top

Clay: of the list.

Evan: Phil. Oh, it's Phil Chu, if you're listening. Hi. But Phil, you know, was asking some questions or whatever about this and the other thing, and I caught myself saying, you know, we we almost take offense to being compared to the traditional wholesale shop.

Clay: There's no almost. We do.

Evan: And and and we we we don't Yeah. We can't be polite about it. Yeah. We do. We we we take offense to being like a traditional wholesale shop and, to the point where, you know, certain certain way the this industry operates, you know, it's easy to look bad or shady.

Mhmm. That's no secret. So, we we are trying to legitimize every last little piece of what we do to make it, you know, not make it seem, but, you know, put the best foot forward to, you know, serve as a legitimate resource to people. There's a legitimate need. There's a market for what we do, and we wanna further demonstrate that.

There are licensed brokers, managing brokers, people who, you know, work in their basement or mom and dad's basement, whatever. Right? We are not like that. We don't want to be that. Yeah.

So, you know, buying the building was a a no brainer for us and the idea that we could double down for our guys, serve as, you know, here's a not a gift, but, you know, we're investing in our team, investing in our our, our city, investing in our investors, if will. Yeah. It's continuing to to to to be the best for for them. So 6,000 square feet of

Clay: It's it's funny that our answers are different in that regard because his is is focused towards buyers. What are buyers

Speaker: gonna think?

Evan: Yeah. Yeah.

Clay: And mine's focused towards, our sellers and our team. What's our team gonna think?

Speaker: Mhmm.

Clay: It's a lot and people ask me all the time, how are you recruiting these killers, these sales guys? How are you how on earth are they doing what they're doing?

Evan: Well, they went to our team, by

Speaker: the way. Yeah.

Evan: And no better time. Cash offer team.

Clay: Kick ass. Well, they people wanna come work for us. Why? We got a sexy building. We're gonna give you swag.

We're gonna we're gonna wrap your car. We're gonna you know, what? We're gonna have you we got we got pool tables and kegerators in the office. Of course, you wanna come work with us.

Steve: Mhmm. Right?

Clay: And there's no one else to to newbies looking forward to how you know, people trying to make their first hire for acquisitions or whatever. Why do they wanna come work with you? Money is available

Evan: anywhere. Right? Mhmm.

Clay: What's the brand mean? What what are we gonna do outside the office hours? So we like each other. Right? And so that building is really just encapsulates all that into one.

Yeah. It's a 6,000 square foot building that's solely dedicated as a nod to my team. That's it.

Evan: Yeah. And we we wanna be the Maserati of the industry, and there's no, you know, there's no better way to do that than, you know I

Speaker: think you

Steve: meant to say Ferrari.

Evan: Ferrari of the industry. You

Clay: gotta give me a Maserati kinda shoot.

Evan: Indianapolis style. I want a Maserati, though.

Steve: Okay. So the other thing we were talking about, offline was you're trying to do the birthing in commercial as well. Yep. So what tell me about that journey.

Evan: Well, we're not commercial guys. You know, like Clay mentioned, you know, we we kinda grew up in the commercial realm, but we we don't go out of our way to invest in commercial. We we do it. We own a handful of just stand alone retail things, but stuff we find by just sheer to get out of accident. Yep.

And we, we bump into it. And again, value first is our our chief core value. So if we find a retail thing we can buy for

Clay: Like I say, no.

Evan: Dirt cheap, hell no. I'll buy it. I'm a buy it, you know, storage facility on Mars if I need to or whatever. As long

Steve: as the numbers work out,

Speaker: you're first.

Evan: Numbers work out. So so that's really where it starts and stops, and I don't wanna be more boring about it than I need to be. But, you

Speaker: know, if

Evan: we can buy something at 50¢ on the dollar, then Mhmm.

Speaker: It

Evan: doesn't matter what it is. Gotcha. So a handful of little retail things.

Clay: We got a warehouse,

Evan: near Downtown Indy, and what am I missing? Barber shop? Oh, yeah. A little barbershop. Cute little thing, like, a block from his house.

That was fun.

Steve: But, obviously, helps having a commercial background. Right? So, like, you're you we were joking earlier about the CCIM certification, but you are you do have a background in commercial.

Evan: Yeah. You know, our first two gigs were or our only two gigs were were in commercial, but, you know, more or less. CCIM is certified commercial investment member for those of you that aren't familiar with it. It's like a I I equate it to the CPA of of, commercial real estate. Anyone can be a commercial real estate broker.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Evan: Anyone can be an accountant, but to be a CPA or to be a CCIM is completely completely different. So, to have that ability to go through and to train with some of the brightest minds in commercial real estate, you can apply that knowledge to residential

Speaker: Mhmm. And just

Evan: how to manipulate financing and whatever else is is extremely important. So, to honk my own horn, I I I think it still reigns it still reigns true. I was the youngest, pinned CCIM in the state of Indiana's history. I don't know if that's still true or not, but Probably

Steve: not true anymore. Yeah.

Clay: You're not true though, though. Just something for your listeners to to take away from this, Steve, is in we didn't start doing commercial stuff. We did it because we understood it. Yeah. And we understood it and could apply that knowledge because we had a track record.

I mean, asking somebody for a half million dollar private loan ain't gonna work if they're second deal. Right? We started off with a $20,000 loan, and then we did two and then 10 and grew into it. So for for if you're just getting started or on your first couple deals, there's no shame in having a track record. Just getting your foot in the door with some of these guys, making them money, and and working yourself into that.

I mean, we're Yeah. Seven, eight years into this now, and and there's still things we don't know. But we rock that because we're building a track record.

Steve: Absolutely. How much are you guys a 100% wholesale?

Clay: Do you

Steve: guys do any flipping?

Clay: Yeah. We do flips, probably 80% wholesale, and that includes our wholesale stuff too. So we we probably take down, whatever, a third of the properties that we wholesale. Mhmm. So we'll do 20

Evan: or 30 flips this year. It's not our specialty, but,

Speaker: you know,

Evan: if there's a lot of meat on the bone, we'll we'll hang on to it, do it ourselves. Yeah. So, for 20. Rehab spook him off. So I've gotta

Speaker: do I

Clay: hate rehabs. Hate hate flipping houses. What does mean EVJ EV is talking about?

Evan: One of the unique things that we have, you know, our I call him our external marketing, but he's kind of a quasi project manager as well. He kinda babysits all of our crews. So we'll flip 20 or 30 houses this year, but we won't touch, see, smell. I mean, how we won't even walk inside

Speaker: Mhmm.

Evan: But maybe one of them. Yeah. So, Aaron, handles a lot of project management simultaneously that he serves as, you know, external marketing, you know, to kind of Yeah. Publish what we're doing, which works.

Steve: Yeah. I'm with you. I hate flipping.

Clay: My man. I see. I can't do it.

Steve: But I do look forward to connecting with Ryan Shalaba, getting them a little bit better.

Clay: He's a smart dude. Yeah. Shout out to Ryan.

Steve: He's gonna be on the show in in December. Yeah.

Evan: Yeah. Ryan Ryan's I'm I'm looking forward to picking his brain tonight. Yeah. Someone that can take that and scale it and do it as well as he does.

Clay: Cool. Yeah.

Evan: God bless it.

Steve: So what does your company look like today?

Clay: So our company, our wholesaling company is called Midwest Cash Offer. Check us out. Midwest Cash Offer dot com. I kinda run it, you know, Ev is there here the here and there, but he's kinda on the sales side. So we can call me the visionary, CEO, whatever you're comfortable with.

We have a COO, Josh, and, also we have a total of 12 employees, which includes an intern. So 11 full time folks, in the office. So we got four sales, one dispo, a data manager, which is I'll talk again, that's my neck of the woods, so I'll talk on and on about that. A project manager, an intern, and then the two of us.

Evan: Yeah. That's what what four VAs and a Yeah.

Clay: VA. VA. Seems completely So kind of the VA squad, they're well, let's see. There are 15 of them plus five lead processors, so, like, 20 virtual assistants in The Philippines.

Steve: Oh, they're all in The Philippines? Correct. A lot a lot of you guys were were in India.

Clay: No. So, that's that's kind of the reason we bought this building. Again, if you wanna go back to that is is we're all occupying the 3,300 square feet on the 2nd Floor, with, by the '20 by the 2020, we're gonna have all of our cold calling operation local to Indianapolis, in the 1st Floor. So we've kinda got plans for that.

Evan: We've got 2,000 square feet on the bottom of our building that's completely vacant for that reason, for the potential to build that out.

Steve: So Gotcha.

Clay: Yeah. But currently, the coal coal operation is Philippines. Yeah.

Steve: Jacob Farr has a question. Is what's been your guys' biggest obstacle?

Clay: Biggest obstacle?

Evan: Man, that's a that's such a weird question to hear. Our biggest obstacle, getting to this point I mean, hell, we go through obstacles all the time and the building was a pain in the ass. We, I mean, up until we got this new building, it's fun to talk about now that it's done, but, you know, we we have the 12 guys on the team, the guys and girls on the team. And we up until this past week, we were we were all functioning out of an 1,100 square foot converted daycare building in, a very questionable part of town. So, that was a challenge.

That was a big challenge trying to make sure recruit new talent to a converted daycare

Clay: in in the hood.

Evan: So, being a being being seen as a legitimate, you know, a resource has been is a challenge, I think, for all wholesalers. Mhmm. Because you'll get somebody that's working out of their basement, and then he'll be

Speaker: able to

Evan: do the clipboard and the laptop and do what we do, or at least say they do what we do. But to be seen as, you know, we're not like those guys. You know, we're not just looking for assignment fee to pay down, you know, credit card debt or whatever else, you know, but we're we're legitimate capitalists. We're trying to, you know, execute and and and and, on on value that we identify and make sure that everyone continues to make money.

Clay: So I think I think the biggest obstacle for for me and and, again, I'm just trying to think of of what we would have said three years ago as this was kinda scaling out, is consistency. Is is there a month where you're not gonna make a penny, right, when you're trying to do that first deal or second deal or whatever? And continue I'll never forget to continue to shell out for direct mail money. Right? And, you know, going into yelllettershq.com, shout out Todd Swaggerty, and sending money away, it was tough.

Right? Not not knowing what you're gonna do. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.

Clay: And so, you know, that was probably my biggest obstacle was a mental obstacle. Just you have to do it. It's like waking up north of the gym in the morning. You just have to do it. Yeah.

And once you make that commitment, that obstacle kinda went away. But that was I remember that feeling like it was yesterday.

Steve: Yeah. And Cody Casley wants to know, what's your guys' favorite disposition strategy?

Evan: Go ahead of yeah. Disposition sales is really my end of things. Favorite disposition strategy, if you take care of the underwriting on someone's behalf, you know, especially you know, my my background is property tax.

Speaker: Mhmm. So I

Evan: bump into properties all the time that are over assessed and it kills the pro form a. Right? But if you can have some distinctive strategy with under you know, whether it's, you know, how to implement the best insurance strategy or how to, you know, put, you know, appropriate the best debt or, whatever. You know, just make pick pick something that'll pop out on the pro form a, but, you know, my background is property tax. So I I see, you know, properties come through that I can easily identify as, you know, this is three months away from being, you know, $30 a month in taxes as opposed to 280 or whatever it is now.

Mhmm. You know, underwrite it this way, and then then then all of a sudden your numbers make sense and you get a sale. You get a motivated buyer at that point. So, identifying motivated buyers, was something that we've found to be extremely true is is equally, if not more important at times than having been finding motivated sellers. The I I hate the word motivated seller.

It grinds me a year ago. Motivated sellers, you know, you need equity simultaneous motivation. Motivated buyers just need motivation. So if you got somebody with a money burning a hole in their pocket, you know, ten thirty one folks, whatever, you know, if you can identify something that makes sense based on their numbers and serve as a true resource to to getting there, much less curtailing something that they've already underwritten it doesn't make sense, you show them how it doesn't make sense, all of a sudden you're a hero. Mhmm.

So, understanding how the system works with the different, you know, different types of insurance, your property taxes, understanding the the rental market extremely well to where you can put that together for them and just furnish something, that's extremely important to being able to, dispose of property effectively.

Clay: Going back to the question, I I I wanna address this. I think, our big our best disposition strategy to date has been to create urgency. And that's just summing up what you said in one word. Right? Urgency.

Evan: Right. Yeah.

Clay: Right? So when when we send out a property via email, we don't text blast. We don't do any of that fun stuff that's that's sexy nowadays. It's all email. So I think we still use Mailchimp.

Yeah. You know, it's simplistic. Right? But when we send out a property, our average property sells in twenty two hours. Mhmm.

50% are sight unseen. Right? That's because we've trained our buyers. We don't do highest and best. We We don't do we don't ever negotiate wars.

Right? We don't do we don't get people. We'll we'll get back to you in forty eight hours. No. The price is the price.

It's like going buying a gallon of milk. Right?

Speaker: Mhmm. So

Clay: when you see stuff from Midwest Cash Offer, and and if you're you're another wholesaler, train your buyers. Work to curtail relationships and train them to act the way you want them to act. And that's what we've done really well.

Evan: And and a a phrase that I love to use specific to dispositions is, you know, if if we have to negotiate, if we gotta talk about timing, talk about price, talk about getting somebody else in there, you know, I'm not doing my job well enough. Clay's not doing his job well enough to get the right to get the to to sell that thing or get that thing so low where you shouldn't have to worry about this. So it's something I see the concern, what's what's a buyer gonna say to that? Right. If by definition, that's the way it should all work.

So, something I love is saying, you know, if if we get a top price, it's, you know, I'm not doing my job well enough, and that seems to work pretty well.

Steve: Very interesting. Arnold Camarara, probably killing that name. What's the commission split for your acquisition team?

Clay: Yep. So, commission team gets, so they have a couple of things. They get 10% net of the deal. So we call it HUD to HUD. So we double close almost every single transaction.

So whatever the net is on the a to b, the net is on the b to c, let's call it $10,000. They're gonna walk away with 10% commission, on that deal. On top of that, they have revenue goals every month. So if, this month, it was a $100 per guy. So we have four.

Right? And so if you get if you exceed a $100,000 in revenue, your your commission structure is going to double. And so it's a great carrot

Evan: to throw out in front of

Clay: them and say, you know, work. And as we had three three I mean, Warren didn't hit it, but Zach and Jeris both did this

Evan: quarter. Yeah.

Clay: Right? So, I mean, they've they've exceeded their their expectation and got that double commission. So 10% net, and then we throw them spot bonuses and some other fun stuff here

Speaker: and there.

Evan: Yeah. 10%

Steve: net and then double of the three

Clay: It it doubles if they exceed that revenue goal. Correct.

Steve: So it's 20%. So

Evan: I mean, so if somebody hits, you know, 1.5, you know, they're getting 20% on $500,000.

Speaker: Right.

Evan: That that that delta.

Clay: Gotcha. So our our in just in the spirit of full transparency, one

Speaker: of our

Evan: I need to say this.

Clay: He's gonna

Speaker: hit me.

Evan: We're just talking about We,

Clay: Zach Zach made $19,000 this month. Mhmm. Right? So as a as a senior acquisitions guy with our group. Right?

So he's making great money or all of our guys are. It's it's it's a function of them knowing that and dedicating themselves to it. But, yeah, it's it's that's been a great piece for us is is tying it to what the company's making.

Evan: Yeah. And we don't take out any, any any marketing costs or any any level of risk that we assume is is the business owner. Mhmm. So, you know, some of their competition does that. I've never understood why, but, you know, we're the business owner.

We take the risk, you know, the profit that we're pulling. You know, that's what that's what they're getting paid on.

Steve: Yep. Yep. Makes sense. And, Jeffrey Smith. What's up, Jeff?

He's a, someone I know really well, and he's saying that he holds all of us in indie, and you never got back to He was referred to you by Scott.

Evan: It's by

Steve: Scott Utes. So Pretty much Scott Utes.

Evan: Blast. So put that on

Speaker: the blast.

Evan: Name again?

Steve: Jeffrey Smith.

Evan: Jeffrey. Jeff. Sorry. This position's guy.

Clay: Yeah. That's that's on me.

Evan: That's on me, Jeffrey.

Steve: Alright. So now we're on record blasting Clay.

Evan: Yeah. We'll just We'll go down.

Steve: YouTube, Facebook, iTunes We'll

Clay: go down the list.

Steve: Everywhere. That's

Evan: right. Jeffrey, we're gonna get that tattoo.

Speaker: And then we'll value

Evan: you first and then get back with Jeffrey directly underneath it.

Steve: So to explain how to train your buyers, John Gage. Did he explain how to train your buyers?

Clay: Yeah. So, just really quick, kinda talking about that. What what we do is, first and foremost, it's usually negotiation. Right? It's it's, it's, hey.

Can we get that at a lower price? Or, hey. Can I get my property manager, my contractor, my grandmother, my whoever in there? And the way we tell people is is think about it. When when you're when someone's responding to an email blast we send out

Evan: Mhmm.

Clay: A, they're clearly interested. Right? And and and, b, why why are they saying what they're saying? Right? So when we respond to these people and say, hey.

We'd love to get you in there, but that property is going to sell before you make a decision. I you know, it's just I don't wanna waste your time as the buyer. Mhmm. That mentally pins something in here to them where they they're insightful and say, well, if that's gonna be the case, is it worth taking this risk, throwing down some earnest money, and then I can get inside. Right.

Evan: Right? We're not

Clay: trying to lock anybody out. Nope. But I'm not gonna I'm not gonna let a parade of people walk through waste my time and my team's time.

Steve: Seller's time.

Clay: Right? Seller's time. Right. And we we I think we need to we've got a business like ours that's we're doing, whatever, 20 deals a month, 15 deals a month. I mean, we're doing a lot of volume.

We have to keep these things moving all the time. Yeah. And so we just don't we that's step one to training people in my mind is is when sellers are responding to you I'm sorry. Buyers are responding to you. Why?

Evan: Yeah. Why is

Clay: it what are they actually trying to accomplish with what they're saying? Saying? I think that's probably what Udeko is.

Evan: Yeah. Why why do you need inside? Tell me tell me what specifically why do you need inside? And then that's been, obviously, extremely, beneficial to us because, again, we get to see stuff from from a

Speaker: to z.

Evan: And and oftentimes, you know, like Chris said, 50% of our properties are sold sight unseen. People that live 2,000 miles away. Yeah. So, being able to establish ourselves as a true to God, vetted, a plus, top tier, blue chip resource paired with the ability to, you know, get those questions answered has has been effective in training.

Clay: So whoever asked that question, you'd be shocked by by, I guess how easy it is. You'd be shocked by your ability to to control that that side of

Speaker: it Yeah.

Evan: Is what I've we found. People don't need to see properties. They don't need to see the inside. That's my that's why I leave it.

Speaker: Yeah. I

Steve: like that. So going back to, you know, I like I said, originally, when I had you guys coming on the show, I was like, oh, for sure we're gonna talk about cold calling for, like, an hour. Right? Because that's what I know.

Evan: Talk about it for an hour.

Clay: I can't. I'll blab on

Steve: about it. So let's talk about right now. You guys are finding deals. How what's the best way that you guys are finding deals at the moment?

Clay: Yeah. So, let's let's

Evan: really yeah.

Clay: He just gotta believe. So in 2017, we did I think our top line revenue number was, like, 1.6 or maybe 1.7 and, 100% direct mail. Well, all of it. Right? This was direct mail.

And, that felt good. And then 2018, we started doing no. I'm sorry. It was 2016 was 01/2007. And then '22 yeah.

And then 2017, we started doing, cold calling. And, that you know, just looking at the metrics, I'm a huge KPI guy. So cost per deal, cost per lead, leads per deal. Right? And all these key metrics that go through it, cold calling was just obliterating direct mail.

It was never close, and it's never gotten any closer. Right? So fast forwarding to today in 2019, cold calling still if you put all these lead source in Nextiva, PPC, SEO, organics, direct mail, cold calling in our market still is is maybe not the gold standard, but it's the one that we have the most dialed in. We are really good at it, and, we spend the most time on

Speaker: it. Mhmm.

Clay: So, cold calling has gotta be our, bread and butter,

Evan: if you will.

Clay: Yeah. And and we we do it the right way.

Evan: And Clay can talk more about this, but it took a long time to build out a cold call center that was, you know, compliant from all federal standards. Mhmm. Spent a lot of money, a lot of time, and talked to more attorneys than we probably should. But, doing it the right way, doing it's, you know, relatively easy. Hire some cold callers.

You can find a dialer that that shoots out numbers, and you're you're

Steve: on you're

Evan: at least here on the board. Right?

Steve: Well, I think that's a really good point. Because right now, TCPA is kind of this thing, like, hey. You know, we're kinda talking about it. We're not really talking about it. Right.

Clay: Well, it's it's unpopular. I mean, it's yeah. It's and I could talk at length about this because I'm I'm passionate about it. And Jason Nickel is another resource that Yes.

Speaker: He

Clay: is. Lead lead Sherpa. He he and I kind of bounce ideas off each other frequently when it comes to TCPA. Yeah. And, for those who don't know, TCPA is tele teleconsumer Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

And it's a federal law that that dictates how you can and cannot communicate, with consumers when it comes to, outbound messaging, whether it's calls or whatever.

Steve: So let's talk about how are you guys what what measures did you guys have to take to be TCP compliant with the amount of cold calling you guys doing?

Clay: Yeah. So we, it kinda wrapped this this back to what you were asking earlier. We have a colds a a cold cold call center now with 15 agents. Mhmm. Each agent, makes about 5,000 dials a week.

Gotta do the math. Right? So we'll do, like, I don't know, 3,000,000 dials this year. So that's a lot of people we're touching. Right?

With this involved, we have to make sure we're not scraping any knees and pissing people off. So, that means we have to comply with federal state laws. Right?

Speaker: Well,

Steve: especially because you guys also are using your brand too.

Clay: Absolutely. And and and and so and we're not I'm not gonna back down from that. We we're doing it the right way. If you wanna come at me, come at me. We're gonna, you know, we're so be it.

As far as what we do, you're it's all about your dialer and how you're dialing. So for us, we don't use an automated dialer. A lot of these MoJos, ZYN calls, you know, I can name them all. They're all auto dialers. You press a button, it spits out numbers.

Not federally compliant.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Clay: And so Who

Evan: are the folks we've talked to?

Clay: Correct. They're not a lawyer. I don't come at me. Jesus. No.

Evan: You can go around and around and around with this. For for the people we talked to, the money we spent said that's not the appropriate

Clay: measure. Correct. So we a friend of mine in in in Indy, owns a debt collection agency, and he ran into the same problems. So we together kind of, hodgepodge this dialer that's, similar to lead Sherpa, and it's a click to call. So in essence, we have a VA all day long that's clicking nonstop, and that's where it's originating our call.

So we do it completely compliant for TCPA regulations, and that's that's been our biggest uphill climb this year is how do we get around these obstacles.

Speaker: Yeah.

Evan: Maybe that's the obstacle question. Maybe that's

Clay: the answer I should have given was this damn cold calling nonsense.

Steve: So is that is that a custom built?

Clay: It is a it's a custom suite off of a previous Yes.

Steve: Gotcha. Gotcha.

Clay: Okay. So the framework is kinda in place. We just put different things in in there to make it work the way

Evan: we need it to.

Steve: So who are you calling?

Clay: We are, I guess, anyone and everyone would be the right terminology there. We, what works is the same list that you guys are already talking about? Divorces, high equities, seniors. We get messages all the time. Hey.

What's what's working for you guys? Everything because we're the most consistent you can do with it. Like, if you would ask me right now, I could tell you what list we're gonna be dialing in March 2021. I mean, I could tell you to the line item, like, who is gonna be dialed. Right?

And we're just ultra consistent about it. And so, my answer to that would be the same lists that are always talked about. It doesn't it doesn't change. I would I probably should know what what the best list is, what we're doing, but I have no idea.

Evan: It's And that's where the data manager comes in too. Right. We we we have someone on our staff full time who is actively managing these lists and and and can, you know, effectively communicate. You know, here's our, you know, here are numbers based on a b c. You know, here's what I think we should do.

And Clay's just, you know, stand off at this point. Right? So we have between him and our COO that's, you know, monitoring all this. You know, Clay is kinda high level on this stuff, but the data manager is really in the weeds.

Steve: So you're the data nerd?

Clay: I am.

Steve: So you're tracking the KPIs? I am. Every day? Every day. In fact, we have a

Clay: in our office, we've got an 82 inch TV that has a kind of a quad split, and we've got KPIs on every board in live time. So it's synced up to our our monitor where you can see cost per deal as leads are coming in.

Evan: It's really

Steve: Is it plugged or is it something?

Clay: It's a clip tech clip clip tron. Yeah. I I can get whatever it is. It's it's very similar to to to Plecto. Yeah.

Steve: Okay. So then cost per lead cold calling. Yes. What did you guys cost? I'm sorry.

Cost per transaction cold calling.

Clay: Yeah. So cost we call it cost per, cost per deal. Cost per closing, whatever you wanna call it, is just $5,000. And that's Cold calling.

Steve: That's for data. That's everything. Skip tracing. That's correct.

Clay: That's out the door. And the VAs. And the yeah. Correct. So that's labor.

We call it labor cost, and then service cost is what we call it, our dialer cost and skip tracing and all that stuff.

Steve: But not the not not the 10%.

Clay: Correct. Yeah. Yes. So commissions are outside of that.

Steve: Okay. Alright. Just curious. Yep.

Clay: About a thousand bucks on our average for those watching, our average spread on transactions is 12,000 roughly $12,000. $12.12 5 or something

Speaker: like that. Yeah.

Evan: And we we've got, you know, our our our director of operations, sit there and actively monitor these boards, and he manages the sales team. And, you know, he kinda plays, you know, I picture him kinda playing Jeopardy when that board starts to get too high with no deals, whatever. You're the first person on somebody's ass. See what's going on. Yeah.

So we were those those numbers are

Speaker: Oh, really?

Evan: Talked on

Speaker: a So

Steve: he's in there. There.

Clay: Oh my god. I mean, it's it's but it's put up on this board intentionally because we fell into this trap, in 2018 where direct mail really started to take a dive. I mean, anyone, you, this guy, the other guys, the competition, were all sending direct mail, and we were not on top of our numbers like we needed to. So we spent God knows how much money.

Evan: And not just money, but time. You know? We took six months to figure out, like, wow. These lead sources suck.

Speaker: Mhmm. What are we

Clay: gonna

Evan: do about it? But now, I mean, thank God we've got this new thing built out, but to this I mean, I think we're, like, a two minute delay.

Speaker: We know

Evan: exactly what's going on all the time, so we can efficient we can, you know, adjust and

Clay: Yeah. We can pivot pretty quick. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. But I think a key point here, right, is COO. Yes. Someone that's monitoring, and you got it real time. Correct.

And someone that can track track and respond. I mean, most people are looking at, hey. You guys are looking lead indicators with lagging indicators. So you're gonna look at lead indicators. You're looking at lead indicators in real time.

Correct. It's not even like, hey. Let's look at this a week later.

Clay: There there

Evan: are very very few question marks with in that regard.

Speaker: Yeah.

Clay: But you gotta think about how many people, you know and and this is our scaled up business, and this is not really entry level stuff. But, you know, we've got a data guy who's literally in charge of that. His name's Corey. Corey's on it all day long. And then you've got Josh, who's the COO, who's who's managing Corey, managing the numbers.

So we got so many people with eyeballs on these numbers that if we can't pivot quickly, we I screwed something up.

Speaker: Yeah.

Clay: You understand? And that's that's fundamental for our business as we see where it's going in the next twenty four months.

Evan: Yeah. Down to data, but also, you know, it's managing the sales team that's on top of that data.

Speaker: Right? So, you know, how

Evan: many calls are the sales guys making per day? How many appointments are they on? Just so we can see the our lead is effective to ensure that our lag is is budgeted for.

Steve: Right. So Anton wants to know what's your ideal property type?

Clay: A three bedroom, two bath brick shit house built in 1965.

Evan: Yep. 1,100 square feet in a township.

Clay: We're picking it up for 65, selling it for 75.

Evan: It's worth $1.10. Rent's worth $900,000.

Clay: Yeah. You

Evan: guys know your stuff.

Speaker: Well, I

Clay: mean, it's it's Pull the trigger.

Evan: You put $10 into it, fix it up, and then, you know, you pull your money back out, and it's it's, you'll sit there. You give it to the kids at some point. So no question marks. Brick shit has Anton.

Clay: Got one like that.

Evan: I'll buy it for him.

Clay: Send it my way.

Steve: I'm not sure he's an indie. I know he's all over the East Coast. I don't

Speaker: know if

Evan: he's in the Indian. Let's talk.

Steve: So what is your guys' you guys aren't doing are you guys still doing direct mail or you guys caught that off?

Clay: No. We so we still do it. I mean, it's just the it's the the red headed stepchild.

Evan: I mean,

Clay: it's we do we do,

Speaker: and I

Clay: had the numbers when I walked in here. I I'd I'd say of our revenue so far this year, probably 60% is is cold calling, 20% direct mail, 20%, texting. We do outbound SMS.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Clay: And, that's a rough breakdown of what we're doing right now.

Steve: Okay. So then what are you guys spending a month in marketing?

Clay: Let's call it a flat $40,000 in in and that includes your skip tracing and direct mail and cold call labor, all other fun stuff. So that's a pretty round another 40.

Steve: And that brings in about 200?

Speaker: Some of the

Evan: Different times more, but yeah. I mean

Clay: So much it was gonna 2 and a quarter million. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. And then monthly overhead. After everything.

Evan: 40?

Clay: No. 40 is a marketing cost. 40 yeah. 55 ish. 60, I guess.

With salaries, everything. Is that what you want to do?

Steve: Like yeah. Probably close to 60. Salaries.

Speaker: Yeah.

Steve: Office space. Yeah.

Evan: Yeah. The office I mean, the office.

Clay: Yeah. Yeah. 6 sixties. Whatever.

Evan: Yeah. Call it 60, I guess.

Steve: Alright. And then, Anton wanted to know what software you're using, but I don't know. Like, is that proprietary then? Does the call the dialer that you guys use?

Clay: Yeah. It's just proprietary. And so, you know, we've we've kicked around the idea of, of kinda, you know and that's the other thing too about cold calling is that our script is so dialed in, but our script is five questions. Right? So we we used to have these we used to have these way long scripts, and these and and some of the other people that sell their cold calling services are great at it.

But they got these really long scripts and and I got a cold call from one of these guys one time.

Speaker: Yeah. And so

Clay: now my guys are not gonna do that then. We're not gonna ask for your mortgage information. Right? Yeah. So our software's proprietary, but even more so than softwares are dialed in scripting ability and and live transfers and all that fun stuff.

That's that's what kicks it into overdrive. Yeah.

Steve: So talk about the live transfer. What is that?

Clay: So if we get someone on the hook and and and the way we do this and the way we talk about leads is if someone if we call you and ask if you're looking to sell your house in the next three months and you answered yes, we're not talking price, we're not talking what kind of house is it. If you say yes, a, that's a lead, and, b, we're trying to get you on the phone with someone in our under our roof, right, a lead processor, acquisitions guy now. Right? What we found was if you hang up that call, your chances of closing that deal go down 60%. Mhmm.

60. It's huge. And so we're trying to convert that person. We want your name, address, bed, basket, or footage, basement, garage, asking price. So is that six questions?

Mhmm. Right? And that's it. And we'll push it over to someone live. Mhmm.

So that alone has has taken our cold calling results from x to x plus 50%. I mean, it's it's an enormous difference, which we've found. So that was just trial and error, screwing up and then getting it right eventually.

Steve: Yeah. That's interesting because that's something that I've always kinda wondered about, you know, is Gotta do it. If you're if you're calling them back, right, it's always like, they're not available now. Right. Right?

But if someone really really ready to make a decision on the first cold call, you're saying the answer is yes.

Clay: The the answer is yes, and I I know it because I'm stuck in the data. And and, you know, on top of that, people kinda say yes out of pressure sometimes, and they get ashamed, and they they don't wanna call that call from that person again. And so a lot of folks that that we've talked to are using Mojo and, you know, some of these other dialers where you're calling back from that same damn number.

Speaker: Mhmm. And

Clay: they're not gonna pick up the phone. They go, I don't want I

Steve: don't, you know, I'm

Clay: too scared. I'm not they've got ostrich syndrome.

Speaker: Mhmm. Well, they're

Clay: gonna bury their head. We gotta get them

Speaker: now. Yeah.

Evan: And if it

Clay: ends up being a bad lead, then most of them are. It's cold calling for Christ's sake. Right? Most of them are bad leads. That's fine.

We're gonna disconnect the call, and we're gonna connect the call, and we're gonna follow-up with you in six months, and good for you. But we need to capture immediately

Evan: those leads. Worst case, you're you're you're getting the information that you can use against them Yep. In the future. Alright.

Speaker: So if

Evan: you can get that get that information in the first, you know, thirty seconds as opposed to waiting another thirty days, forty days, fifty days to get them back on the hook, if ever. Yeah. You know, that's that's, again, well worth the time and expense we put into it.

Steve: Well, the last time we were hanging out, you guys were talking about, doing everything in person. And, you know, Don Costa blew you guys' mind with with doing it over the phone. Yes. So has that changed yet?

Clay: So, I owe a lot of of, of our ability to close over the phone now to Don. Shout out Don Costa. Shout out. It's all over the place. Don was really, I've kinda had in my face about it.

He was like, dude, like, you need to change what you're doing. We

Steve: were sitting next to you.

Clay: And yeah. He's kinda slapping me around a little bit and said, hey.

Evan: We, we need to get

Clay: so yeah. So so we went from last year, a 100% of our properties were sold, or I guess acquired on an appointment, you know, belly to belly, shaking hands. Good old boy style. And a lot of that's the Midwest culture. People just wanna shake your hand, and I bought into that.

I really did. Then And we hired on it.

Evan: Like, we're like, the guys we hired are are just face to face you know, I don't I hate to call them hillbillies, but, you know, they'll sit there and just

Clay: Good old boys. Yeah.

Evan: They're good old boys. Yeah. And and we we hired based around that same premise, and then Don kinda entered Don.

Clay: Well, and I and so I I realized we wanted to scale, and now we're in Kansas City market, which is really cool. And we're doing deals there over the phone. And I I realized that it was gonna be impossible to scale this business across multiple markets unless we're closing over

Speaker: the phone. Mhmm.

Clay: And Don kinda grabbed me and shook me by the shoulders and said, we gotta get you closing. And it's just as simple as making a mind shit a mindset shift. And so we did. And so we hired based on your ability to close over the phone. And, you know, now we're doing at least a third of our

Evan: deals or just sign up

Clay: over the phone. We'll get good pictures and we'll do it that way.

Evan: Yeah. I mean, we we flew into Phoenix yesterday, just just as an example, if nothing else. We flew into Phoenix yesterday, afternoon, and we've signed up three deals over the phones till we've been here.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Evan: So we're talking twenty four hours, our phone closer. We've done three deals this week, although today or in the last twenty four hours. So it's a

Steve: So going back to my question earlier. Right? If you're doing the live transfer Yes. Are you trying to close it right then on that live transfer?

Clay: If we can. And so that's that's that's up to the so usually the way it goes is we're gonna cold call lead. And, you know, if we can, great. We're we're we we gotta filter for that information. We're passing it off to, still offshore.

So it's a lead processor. Right? One of the VAs. Yep. And they can converse just like you and I.

We're a huge on English dialect. If you don't sound like you're sitting in this room, you don't belong to the company. Right? No offense. Get out.

So our lead processes are great. And they'll sit there, and it's their job to build a little rapport and make a joke here and there and maybe gather mortgage information or pain points or whatever. Right? They're cleaning that lead up and handing it over to sales staff.

Evan: Mhmm.

Clay: And if sales staff deems that they can close it right then and there, have at it. I don't know what that close rate is off the initial call. It's a it's I guess, it's probably rare. It's probably 30%, but it does happen.

Steve: Okay. Lucas Orozco wants to know how do you recycle your list with your cold callers?

Clay: Yeah. So, I would begin by saying that this was just guessing and checking. There's no science between this. There is now, but, originally, there wasn't. We call through every list, and it dip it'll depend on your dialer.

So we call through every list three times. K? And we're just getting the what we call the bottom of the barrel. So if you start with 10,000 names on a list, we wanna go to, you know, 7,000 to go and then 4,001. K?

And once we get to that bottom of the barrel, no one picked up after three dials, we're gonna put on the shelf, and we call it season. We're gonna let it season for forty five days. Mhmm. And we're gonna go through. We're gonna go through another three times.

K? A thousand to 600 to 500 to five you see what I'm saying? You're getting one

Speaker: of the

Clay: bottom shit that's not, you know, useful. So we will take that. And even today, we we pulled list in early twenty eighteen that we are still recycling on.

Speaker: K.

Clay: And we'll convert and convert and converting. I mean, we had we had a $40,000 deal last week or

Evan: two weeks ago.

Clay: It was it was on its eighteenth call. Eighteenth. And no one picked up at any time.

Evan: February 2018 is when we started that call and just never And

Clay: we were blasting them. Finally, they picked up the phone and and sold us their house. So, maybe a nugget for your for your viewers is is there's a lot of gold if you are cold calling Mhmm. In recycling lists. And I don't care if you gotta blast people.

Right? I'm not afraid to blast people because I'm not getting sued for TCPA's shit. Right? I'm I'm just I'm having at it. Right?

So it's just by a point of emphasis, if you are cold calling, I highly recommend having some degree of procedure in place. We're gonna call these people four or five times, put it on the shelf for two months, call them again.

Steve: Yep. And

Clay: that's what ours does.

Steve: Cool. And then George Paul wants to know, he's in Indeed. Do you guys host any meetups?

Clay: Not yet. And that's something that's kinda been on, our mind is and especially with this new building going on, we'd love to do that. But certainly welcome that. But, no, we don't do anything like that right now.

Evan: If we Clay and I are huge on on on providing as much value as possible. We and we love doing it for free. You know, like, we spend a lot of time networking, and doing kind of individual meetups, not necessarily one big massive one. But, you know, we we we it's it's an intricate balance because you wanna have as much, resources and your out of state folks just the same. Yeah.

So, we'd love to get to it at some point. You know, we've got 2,000 square feet of blank, you know, blank canvas underneath us to to do what we want with. But, you know, we consider doing, like, a think tank or collaborative space, whatever for, for investors all across the Indian market just to come hang out. And we got a suite location, suite building. So who knows?

We'd like to get to it at some point. But,

Clay: either way, what's his name again?

Steve: George Powell.

Clay: George. If George, if you're in any, stop by fifty second college. We'll go get a beer,

Evan: hang out if nothing else. Yeah.

Steve: There you go. Alright. So what's your guys' favorite, best, or most interesting failure?

Clay: Best or most interesting failure?

Evan: We're gonna talk about this the whole way on the on the plane. I'm sure. Go ahead. I could've talked about this.

Speaker: Yeah. I

Evan: know. Right? There's there are thousand

Steve: of them.

Clay: Yeah. Mine's a flip that we did. And and, one of the first big flips that we did, and we lost $45,000 $46,000 on it. And, it was just from head to toe failure from from a lack of of leadership. And I own that because there's so many ways, especially in a flip, you have to be involved, which is why I hit it.

But, you have to lead through this process. And so from the the time you you acquire the property, you gotta lead your team through that. And you gotta lead your contractors to get bids and lead, you know, lead your broker into guiding, you know, what finishes it needs. And so so and I just I wanted to step back and have it be on autopilot without working to get

Evan: there. Mhmm.

Clay: And I thought contractors did what they said, and shocking, they don't. Right? I thought brokers did what they said, and they don't either. So, my biggest failure from an organizational standpoint is is, and I've learned this the hard way, is making sure that we are in tune with our leadership. And 1145 Linden in Fountain Square was my was my throwing into the into the fire for that lesson.

Evan: Yeah. And to kind of partner off what you're saying, this is like the quintessential real estate investor thing to say or salesman thing to say, you know, here's my failure, but this is how it turned into a success. Right? This is like a interview tactic or something, I guess. But, 2016 into 2017, and to kinda partner off with Clay said with this flip, we Clay and I were, we're partners.

We're, you know, the third, the third, and the third of this other guy, who, you know, we thought was the soothsayer when it came to flipping. You know, Clay and I were really good at I I could raise money like the kingdom come, and Clay could identify property like nobody's business. And we partnered with with another guy whose name should not be named, but, this dude was mister Flippitt to my understanding. Had the construction crews, had their relationships with the vendors and the material guy, had this big warehouse to store it all, and it just seemed all too good to be true. And, in the most real estate way possible, we had a guy that didn't hold up as end of the end of the agreement.

And it took, you know, all of, what, ninety days to figure out if this this wasn't gonna work the way we wanted to. And, you know, ninety days later, you know, we approached and said, hey. You know, thanks, but no thanks. And we wanna buy out your interest in, you know, the company and the building or whatever. And, you know, we're 25, 26 at the time.

We spent every dime we had. We spent $60,000 buying out his interest in the LLC. And to this day, the the best financial decision Easily. We've ever made. Easily.

They've made a multimillion dollar decision that that that have been made. So, the failure was jumping into someone who we didn't, you know, properly bet. We weren't in tune with the leadership or at least a third of the leadership with, with with our company.

Speaker: Yeah.

Evan: And, you know, he was steering it down a a deep dirty cliff that, you know, wasn't doing what we were saying. We're providing value. We weren't being a resource. And that's completely the anti the antithesis of what our our company does now. So Alright.

Anyway, this gentleman was bought out, and, we still get all the certified mail from the many lawsuits he's in, effectively now. So, yeah. So that was a great decision to to get rid of him and continue to because now I'm in tune with my leadership.

Steve: So There you go. Alright. I'm gonna leave you two a moment to think about last thoughts while I make a couple of quick announcements. Cool. So, guys, I'll be in Biloxi, October for Real Estate Roundup Live.

Go to bit.ly/rerlive, if you wanna check that out. I'll also be in New Orleans, with Chris Rude in December, sixth through eighth. Go to bit.ly/2019skill. Again, that's bit.ly/2019skill. And then, Max and I have been getting blown up about our, workshop that we did a couple of weeks ago.

So, we're doing another one. We're gonna go everything in our business, and we are charging 5,000 for the event. So if you guys wanna find out how you can come for free, please visit disruptors.com, and I'll explain to you how we can do that. And next week, we got Matt Larson from Davenport, Iowa. He does like flipping.

Clay: He does he does

Evan: a lot of

Clay: deals too.

Steve: He does a lot of deals. He does a lot of deals. So, we'll be learning about how to get better at flipping. Maybe play

Clay: I'll tune in.

Steve: Tune in to that one. Yeah. So last thoughts, I'll start with you.

Clay: Yeah. I I I think this needs to be said because I don't hear too many people say it, for your listeners. This is this is not a hard business.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Clay: It's not a hard business to get into. It's a it's a very hard business to stay in

Speaker: Yeah.

Clay: And to be good at. And so my advice to and my my parting thoughts would be action over everything, and that's an overused term, but just start taking baby steps, start making mistakes, and find a way to when you get that first check, don't feel the need to post it. Let's put it back in the account. Let's put it back to use, and let's make this foundation for your business concrete. We don't want it built on the house of cards.

So, not it's about real estate arbitrage is not difficult, and, I encourage everyone to start taking action steps today.

Evan: Extremely well said. Thanks so much for for having us, first and foremost. Love your show. Thank you. We've learned a ton from from your show and you specifically, for a while now.

So thanks for putting

Speaker: it on.

Evan: And for those of you that, that haven't tuned in or or are still, you know, questioning this whole real estate thing, Steve's an awesome resource, and his group does tremendous work. So, thanks for having us. But, kind of partner off what Clay said, you know, provide value. It's not a super hard thing to do. Pick up the phone.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Evan: Show up at the meetups, and, you know, even if you have to work for free for a couple months, to get that first thing under your belt, get a track record, that's what set us apart. Because we were 23 year old kids, didn't know what the hell we were doing. I had him I hate calling him a mentor because I haven't talked to him forever, but, a dude who I met in in in college, and he said, you know, you have three t's in every single transaction. You have time, treasury, and talent. Time, treasury, and talent.

Figure out what you can what you can provide. What can you add immediately? For many folks, at least when I was 22, I don't have any freaking money. I had no treasury whatsoever. I barely had any talent.

You know, I worked in real estate, but I didn't know what the hell I was doing.

Speaker: What

Evan: I had was time. I had the ability to go out and make these calls and visit with these people and exist at these meetups and just

Speaker: be a

Evan: sponge. Yep. So after a while, you know, you start to accumulate, you know, with time comes talent, and with talent comes treasury.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Clay: And we're in

Evan: a unique position now where we're not even 30 years old, and we have, an abundance of all three. At the risk of sounding arrogant, we have an abundance of all three. So, put in the time. The talent, the time will create talent. Talent creates treasury.

Steve: Yeah. Great. Alright. Thank you.

Clay: Appreciate it, Steve. Steve. Thanks, man.

Speaker: Appreciate it.

Steve: Thank you.

Speaker: Thanks, man. Thanks, man. Thanks, man. Thanks, man. Thanks, man.

Thanks, man.

Evan: Thanks, man. Thanks, man. Thanks, man. Thanks, man. Thanks, man.

Thanks, man. Thanks, man. Thanks, man. Thanks, man. Thanks, man.

For watching.