Flipping Houses —25 a Year, Remotely

Steve Trang: Steve train. Jump on the Steve train. We real estate disruptors.

Steve: Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Real Estate Disrupters. Today, we've got Alex Camacho and Will Wall with Alex Camacho Buys Houses. They flew in from Mexico and Los Angeles to talk about flipping houses remotely from Hawaii and Mexico. If this is your first time tuning in, I'm Steve Trang, sales trainer.

Every month, we help hundreds of people buy more houses at deeper margins. If you wanna join us on our training calls, DM me the word sales on Instagram. I am on a mission to create 100 millionaires, and the information on this podcast alone is enough to help you become a millionaire in the next five to seven years. If you'll take consistent action, you will become one. And this show is brought to you by our sister company, Investor Lift.

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And we do have two newer shows, pardon the disruption on Thursdays and certainty talks on Fridays. Be sure to check those out. And this is a live show, so please ask your questions for Alex and Will to answer. You guys ready?

Alex Camacho: Let's go. Yes, sir.

Steve: Alright. So first question is, what got you guys into real estate?

Alex: Well, I got it back into the way back in the mortgage business. I got, you know, into the business when, you know, I was in banking and then I went into the mortgage business. And then, you know, the great depression happened, the great debacle. And, you know, I was kinda younger. I was in my mid twenties and, didn't have that many mentors or good habits or good relationships and, kinda lost it all during that time.

And then, I got led into real estate by becoming a real estate agent. And I saw that there was a lot of investors during that time that were making a killing. They were flipping a bunch of houses in SoCal, houses I had seen where it's a lot more a couple years before. And so I got that kind of bug planted in in me that I thought I I could be a great investor. I didn't take action for some years, though.

I kinda got back into lending, did some Airbnb arbitrage, and did a couple of things. But I always had that seed, Steve, that I think I could be a good real estate investor in House Flipper. And so, I started to kind of research back in, like, 2016 or so how I can get involved because I was making some money with Airbnb arbitrage. And so, once I started to do some research, BiggerPockets came up, your podcast came up, and I started to do some doing research and a lot of it said that, hey, go work for a mentor, go work for another investor, go find somebody who's doing what you wanna do. It's a very common message.

So I took that I took that and I ran with it. I found a job working for an investor, that was essentially doing what I wanted to do, flipping, you know, twenty, thirty houses a year, making great money, keeping the small, medium, multifamily. I loved his business model. Worked for him for, like, a year. Learned a lot, but really didn't make that much money during that time because, you know, I was paying my dues.

Steve: So you got your teeth kicked in in mortgages.

Alex: Absolutely. Yeah.

Steve: Maybe some people are kinda experiencing that right now in mortgages. Yeah. But that's you became a realtor, and it sounded like for multiple years.

Alex: Mhmm.

Steve: And then at some point, BiggerPockets, and this show kind of kicked it off for you. So then I'm guessing it's been in the last few years then that you start actually looking to flip houses.

Alex: Yeah. Well, at the beginning of 2017 is when I started with the

Steve: So 17.

Speaker 3: So you were

Steve: a realtor for, like, nine years eight, nine years?

Alex: Well, only for about four or five, and then I kinda like I said, I've got back into, like, the mortgage wholesale side of things. Got it.

Steve: And then

Alex: I I worked into an Airbnb arbitrage kinda model for a little bit, and that's what led me to have some income to say, hey. And maybe this is the time for me to become an investor.

Steve: Got it. Okay. How about you, Will?

Speaker: Well, you know, I actually got my license when I was 18 years old, Steve. So I was in, you know, my high school classes, sitting there reading the real estate, you know, practices and principles, you know, right underneath my math books. And I had a job, you know, working great, you know, realtor down in La Jolla, California, and we were just, you know, doing great. And then college came around, and, obviously, I I kinda put my, you know, license on the shelf, finished up school. And like Alex mentioned, you know, I I kinda just figured out, like, hey.

If I had a mentor that really kinda coached me in real estate, this could take off. And and that's when I kinda connected with Alex, here during the pandemic and was able to say, hey. You know, why don't we partner together and see if we can grow this real estate business together?

Steve: Got it. So you're in La Jolla. Mhmm. So at one point in my life, you know, I lived in La Jolla. Yep.

It was a wonderful, beautiful city, and I decided that I couldn't afford that to live there as a student. So I so I came back home. So one day, I'm gonna go back to La Jolla. Maybe.

Speaker: You and me both. Yeah. Once we can afford it. Right?

Steve: Well, you're in LA now, so it's not too bad.

Speaker: Not not much of a difference in price.

Alex: Yeah. So

Steve: alright. So you decided to work with Alex. So then, I guess, let's go back to your story then. So, you decided to get back into the investing side. What was the first transaction you did, you know, getting into whether it was flipping or or wholesaling?

Alex: So the very first flip that I acquired, that I worked on, I was working for the other investor. I was just beating you know, hitting the phones hard. I was essentially just an inside sales guy and telemarketer for him. And I was pounding the phone for, like, a good sixty days or so. And then right around that ninetieth day, I found this foreclosure lead.

I had been following up. And then, yeah, he ended up purchasing the property and he wholetailed it because we got such a great deal on it. That's one thing I really learned working with him, just how he was able to negotiate and and get these deep discounted deals. And then he just cleaned it out. I think maybe spent about $5 and sold it and quickly made about $60.

And, that's when it was, like, that proof of concept for me.

Steve: I didn't make much.

Alex: I was making, like, 2,500 a deal from him.

Speaker 4: But it

Alex: was, like, oh, I knew I could do this. Like I

Steve: know it's real. Yeah. Where was this?

Alex: This was, I was working in Burbank at the time, and the property was in Long Beach.

Steve: Okay. And so, your first few deals, you were working on someone else's team?

Alex: The first 60 deals.

Steve: First 60 deals.

Alex: Yeah. Yeah. So I was working for him for a year, and then I and I got recruited by a bigger I would say it's almost like a mini hedge fund type of company where they were acquiring and buying about 200 properties annually across SoCal. They had different business models, but I worked for them for about a year and a half. And I was, after

Steve: this fact into that, the reason why I'm asking this question is, like, there's so many people, you know, in in this industry that are very, in independent. They wanna do everything themselves and, you know, a, they don't wanna hire a coach, which is something we'll talk about later on. But, b, they don't wanna work for anybody else either. They wanna do everything themselves. But you work for somebody and did your first 60 deals underneath somebody else.

Yeah. So talk about the value of that to someone that's listening to the show.

Alex: Yeah. Of course. So learning this business kind of on from a book is simple to understand. But when you're talking about all the moving parts of investing and and wholesaling and and sales, marketing, all that, that's very difficult to do without, like you said, either having somebody like paying a coach and then running with information that you learn from them or working alongside or for an investor. There's nothing wrong with it.

I read this book that I talk about often called Mastery, by Robert Greene. And he talks about this apprenticeship phase, and I saw it as that. Like, hey, I have to be, you know, if I wanna be a master real estate investor because that was my goal, I have to somehow, you know, learn that from someone else and go and I did have sales skills. You know, I did have so I took that job initially, but, yeah, I was making about half of what I normally make. But it was the learning that was seeking and think people think that they could just understand the concept of doing real estate investing, and

Speaker: all of

Alex: a sudden they could just jump into deep end and do it on their own, which is not really and we we all know that's not that's not how it works.

Steve: So you're saying that there's a difference between watching it on YouTube and reading a book and actually being in the business.

Alex: Yeah. Absolutely. Got it. Went and did that for a second company. And that second company, I learned a lot more and that different business model, and I had I did make more money, allowed me to save more

Speaker: Mhmm. To

Alex: eventually, you know, do it on my own.

Steve: So you went to go work for a second company. You said they were buying a little bit more. So what was that experience like?

Alex: That that was also a big learning experience because they were buying volume, and they were set up to buy 30 houses a month. And so not only was I seeing a lot more volume for the acquisitions that I was bringing in, but I was able to see the stuff they were buying. And they had more systems, more procedures, more things kind of in place because they were a flipping company. They weren't wholesaling. So they're actually taking the deals down.

And, so I just got to learn more structure. And because of that, it allowed me to also perform better because I had assistant, I had, you know, support, and then I was able just to focus on acquisitions and get great at it and just, you know, everyday, you know, make offers, talk to people, and just focus on that. And in that year and a half, I worked for them. I helped them acquire about 54 houses in SoCal. And and it was it was I could not be doing what I'm doing today without having had that experience.

Steve: So I've heard for many years that it is really difficult to do business in at least in, you know, Huntington Beach, Orange County, Los Angeles, San Diego, whatever. So what market were you guys in? Yeah.

Alex: We're starting in California.

Steve: Oh, Oh, were you guys, like, inland? Or were

Speaker: you guys, like

Alex: Well, we're barely in core Los Angeles. Like, South LA, East LA.

Steve: So then what would you say to someone that says, like, you can't do deals in Los Angeles?

Alex: Well, I say that they're just full of crap because Yeah. They're not putting in the work to actually do it. They're just, you know, letting other people influence them without trying themselves to do it. Yeah. Or find other people that are doing it and then getting alongside them.

Steve: That makes sense.

Speaker: Market's a great example of that too. Like, Arizona, you have a lot of competitors out here. So, you know, although the price on our properties in California are a little bit higher, you know, the competition out here makes it just as difficult. So I agree with what Alex said. You know, if if you put your mind to it and say, hey.

I'm gonna go get the deal. It really doesn't matter where you are.

Alex: Alright. And you typically know your areas if you grew up in these areas more than other areas. So I see a lot of people that wanna go out of state, which there's a lot of value to that. But I think they give up on their own home state if it's expensive, you know, very quickly. I I think that's the wrong way to go, because you have a lot of resources, you have a lot of knowledge, and you could leverage that.

And you don't maybe need to do as many deals. Like, our spreads are typically larger, so we don't need to flip a 100 houses a year. Yeah.

Steve: Make, you

Alex: know, millions and stuff.

Steve: And that's what I like a lot with you guys' model. It's like, you know, the deals you guys do instantly, like, 6 figures. Right?

Alex: Yeah. There's a lot of them we get to do at 6 figures, or close to 6 figures because it it we're dealing with higher purchase price Right. Than maybe in in other parts of the country.

Steve: So then you work with a second company. It was good. And then at that point after that, you went on a fun your own?

Alex: Yeah. That's when I went on my own. I saved a couple $100,000 and, I had the knowledge. I had the, you know, the all the experience. They didn't really wanna let me take a management position or something a little bit more senior than I wanted.

Mhmm. And so we left Amicably, you know, got a lot of deals and and made them I made them well over $1,000,000. And so we left on great terms and, you know, I I still ended up, you know, staying in touch with some people there, but that's when I started my company about three years ago.

Steve: How come you wanted to go in a management position?

Alex: Well, I just wanted more, control or more ability to influence, like, what I saw was working with, like, off market, and they were just buying off of, you know, the, the the option. And they were also buying on the MLS with our department and some from wholesalers. But we hadn't really tapped into the off market. And I wanted to get be more in charge of that because every time they gave us some great off market leads, like, we I slam dunked them. We got some deal.

We got them better deals than we were buying on the MLS. Yeah. And they didn't wanna scale that up. There was kind of, like, there was there was not there wasn't enough, I think, opportunity for me, upside, and I had already learned enough. And I saved enough.

So I was like, well, if you don't wanna let me kinda drive the bus, all good. You know? But I'm gonna go drive my own bus then.

Steve: Alright. So you left and, and and did this on your own. So when did you, what year did you go off and do this on your own?

Alex: 2019.

Steve: 2019. Okay. And then when did you guys partner up?

Speaker: Probably about 2020, right, in the middle of the pandemic.

Alex: Okay. Year, a year and a half into it, I, you know, Will came on board.

Steve: Okay. So tell me about that journey now that you're doing this on your own. Because you already have you already understand how this business works now. So did you what was what was your first deal, and what kind of struggles did you have?

Alex: Well, the first deal on my own, so that there were still struggles because what happened is since I had worked for other people, they bought the properties in their name. Right? And they're Yep. Buying entity. And they're not I was not on title.

I just had an agreement. They would pay me, you know, commissions or they would pay me bonuses based on what we agreed upon. And so when I went to I found a couple of deals on my own off market. Well, they the hard money lenders didn't wanna lend me money. Even though I had good credit, I had money in the bank, I had I had experience, you know, kind of quote unquote.

So I ended up having to partner up on a couple of deals, like joint venture where I gave up half of the equity. But my then my, equity partners, they they brought in the money. I didn't have to actually use that money that I have saved. And I did a couple deals that way. And then the hard money lenders then began to lend to me Yeah.

After, like, deal number, two or three that I did with another joint venture partner.

Steve: What was the split on those?

Alex: I actually gave away 50% of the equity, but then we were able to, like, they ran the project, the project management, because it's an area I don't like at all, I'm not great at. And then, I just assisted all all the way around, brought the deal, and got 50%, didn't put any money in too. So it did kind of it was a win win, but I did give up great deals. I think both of them almost made 6 figures, so I gave up a lot of equity.

Steve: But Yeah. Well, you absolutely did. Right? But the reason why I'm bringing this up is because, again, for the guys that are listening right now, hard money lenders are pulling back.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Steve: Right? You had to put more down payment now. Interest rates might be higher. Credit might have to be higher. Right?

So it's a little bit harder to lend right now or to borrow as hard money. Agreed. But you have access to, you know, friends and family that have capital. You can split it fifty fifty. Right?

If you don't have access to private money right or hard money right now, you can get private money. Or if you don't have if you don't have cash in your own pocket, you can get these fifty fifty joint ventures. I mean, that's how I started when I Mhmm. It was a lot more than two deals when I first started. And credit was trash and didn't have cash.

I was doing a lot of fifty fifty deals to get my business going. Yeah.

Speaker: And lean on those other people to help you. Right?

Alex: Right. Absolutely. And I think another point point on that is that a lot of people don't get started in this business or they think that they they they need money. And although that is somewhat correct, you do you can get great at the deal finding part of it for not that much money. And then you could, like I said, take down some deals and then split them with other people.

But just make sure that you cause I also had some bad experiences with that too where, you know, I was well, that I wasn't on title. So then one of the properties like my partner wanted to keep, for example, and I knew he was gonna he was more of a buy and hold it and I was, you know, at that point a little bit more on the flipping side to build capital. So I knew he's gonna wanna keep it because it was a duplex. And, you know, I ended up, you know, making about 10,000 less than I probably would have because we kinda disputed a little bit on, like, what is the real value Mhmm. He's keeping it.

I'm not he's getting all the extra benefits. So there were some there and then later on after that, what I did is I just made sure that all my work is in order. I had, you know, agreements. I had stuff that and before, it was kind of a handshake thing. So, you know, just a lot of learning.

I made a lot of mistakes.

Steve: Yeah. Well, that's the reason why we had the show. What's that?

Speaker: Lessons learned. Yeah.

Steve: Lessons learned. And again, this goes back to, like, I mean, we're talking about it here. But, like, until you actually do it, until you're in the weeds. Yep. And you make these mistakes, alright, then you really learn it.

Mhmm. Right? Absolutely. So, The joint venture. Yes.

They did a joint venture, but you said there are a lot of other lessons learned. So what were some other lessons learned in that time period?

Alex: Another big one was, I, ended up buying another course, a wholesaling course Mhmm. To get better at the off market at the beginning part where it wasn't around yet. And I had a kind of a smaller team, but I I wasn't really a great leader. And I made those mistakes. It just kind of putting just cheeks in the seat.

Alright? You know, just like, hey. This person is motivated. They'd send me a DM on Instagram. They seem like they're they're pretty smart.

Like, yeah. You're operations guy. You know? You're you're acquisitions. And so at the beginning, I made a lot of mistakes on that too where I was expecting kind of, like, higher results from kind of, you know, c players, b players, like, people that were just not, you know, like, at at the at the higher caliber there.

And so, I started to work a lot on my leadership there. But part of the reason I I I mentioned the wholesaling course is because I also made a mistake where I bought the course and I wasn't really ready to implement because I had the weak team. I was weak leader. I had too many things going on. And so I think people make that mistake too.

They they pay for an expensive course or they actually sign up for coaching or whatnot. But then they don't implement the stuff they're learning. They're not ready to really implement. And I made that mistake too where, you know, I made some deals happen through that that, course, but I certainly didn't get the best return on investment because, again, I was just able to we can implement implementation there. And then, also I just didn't I wasn't good at training people.

I would just bring people on and then I wouldn't really have some type of organized structure for them to be onboarded. And so, like, they got re again, part of the weak leadership. So that was a a couple more mistakes I made there.

Steve: And then how did you guys connect?

Speaker: Well, I think, obviously, you know, you you guys talked on it before. Right? The apprentice model. So, you know, something for me that was just super attractive was not getting those bumps, not getting those bruises that, you know, people like you guys have already gotten. Right?

You've already taken those l's. You've already taken those lessons. You've already gotten the hard money lenders on board. You've already gotten the the the track record. And so, you know, for me, I was selling and I'm still selling, Los Angeles Chargers season tickets.

And so I'm going through all the different real estate offices in LA, and I'm I'm selling agents. I'm getting them bought in on seats so that they can use it for networking, you know, for giving out to their, you know, title reps, mortgage reps, you know, everybody who helps them with their business. And once I went through all the real estate offices, I started going after investors. That's what I found Alex and was like and we had known each other for five or ten years, before this. But when I really kinda started following in on him, I was like, wow.

You know? And I'm going into these real estate offices giving, you know, presentations on the stadium, and you look up on the leaderboard and and it's like, wow. You know? These guys are making these gross commissions earned of, like, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars from these top agents.

Speaker: Mhmm. And I

Speaker: would target those top agents to sell them seats. And then when you're talking to them, they're like, yeah. We're not doing this all off of, you know, retail volume. A lot of this is investment volume. Mhmm.

And that's when, you know, the light bulb kinda went off like, hey. If I can find an investor that's already doing this, help them grow what they're already doing, you know, we could get something together. And that's what Alex and I kinda came together and, you know, we're able to do.

Steve: Did he close you?

Alex: Actually, I closed him because the first thing I was I was looking for someone acquisitions at first just to help me out because I was moving to Hawaii. So I was like, oh, and I know I know Will. Like, he is a closer. Like, he he's a salesperson. And I talked to him many times and we're acquainted through other you know, through the Hollywood scene before.

And and so I was looking for someone to replace me because I knew I wasn't gonna be able to, you know, buy the deals the same way, as, you know, if I'm gonna be in Hawaii. So that's how he came on board. But, you know, with, like, traction and But you didn't buy the season tickets? No. I didn't buy the season tickets.

Speaker: No tickets.

Alex: He went he took me through the whole song and dance, so he didn't close me back. And then I closed him. He started closing me, I closed him.

Steve: Alright. So he came to you, saw you season tickets, and then you convinced him to change careers.

Alex: Yeah. Well, he was already interested, but I I did convince him, like, hey, man. Look. Because I knew eventually he was gonna go do it on his own anyway, so I was like, I might as well find this guy. You know?

Like and that's kinda how it worked out. Alright.

Speaker: So you

Steve: had the head start.

Speaker: Yeah.

Steve: Okay. So then what was the beginning like? Because, you know, Alex is mentioning he was not quite the leader he he is today. Yep. So what were some of the, challenges when you guys first started working together?

Speaker: Well, I mean, you know, one of the biggest challenges is, you know, Alex moves out to Hawaii. Right? And so, up to this point, I maybe gone on five, ten appointments with Alex. And it's like, alright, man. You're gonna be able to do these appointments on your own?

And I was like, of course, me being the new guy, I was like, yeah. Yeah. I can do this on my own. And, you know, little did we both know, like, this was gonna turn into about a a three to four month period of time where the business did not have an acquisition. You know, we were still working on our our active deals that we had in the pipeline, but we went about four months without an acquisition.

And that was, the you know, probably the biggest struggle for us was, hey. Is this something that we can still do? Can we still acquire properties with Alex living in Hawaii and me being the kind of the main guy here on the floor on the boots on the ground doing the acquisitions?

Speaker: So you

Steve: guys are having difficult conversations?

Alex: Yeah. A lot of Zoom meetings. Yeah. Yeah. I was like To

Speaker: the point where you almost were coming back from Hawaii almost.

Alex: Yeah. Well, I remember vividly coming back and thinking I was gonna kill their first deal because, like, they got a deal. And I'm like, oh, this is cool. Like, I didn't actually, like, lock it up myself. All I did is, like, send the EMD.

Oh, and I I was excited, but at the same time, I was concerned. Like, what if they missed something? And I'm that guy that flies in and then tell tells them, like, hey. This is we gotta cancel this deal or we gotta renegotiate because this the numbers are off. And sure enough, they didn't miss anything.

But it took, you know, almost four months where we're just beating our heads. I didn't know if it was gonna work. He didn't know if it was gonna work. But we kept making the offers. We kept on, you know, having the meetings.

We kept on trying to get better. And then finally, we got that deal. I'm I'm sure he remembers the the property. I still remember it. And, that was kinda like, hey.

We got something here now.

Steve: So for clarity, what are you guys' roles within the organization?

Speaker: What I initially started as acquisitions. Right? And, again, you know, you guys touched on this. Sometimes it's worth it to take that entry level role. Right?

Alex was working in acquisitions. He had already done that. He had already grinded his teeth, and, you know, gotten that experience. And so for me, it was, hey. Can we get some acquisitions going?

When I, you know, first started with Alex's, you know, hey. You did 10 houses. You did 12 houses last year. What if we were to double that?

Speaker: Mhmm. You know?

Speaker: And then it was, okay. Well, what what if we could do that? And, again, we're at four months in, and we haven't gotten any acquisitions. So, you know, the reality starts to set in like, hey, man. We might not double that.

We might actually have that. You know? And it was, hey. This is gonna be a tough conversation to have. So once we got the first couple of acquisitions going and, you know, again, you'll you'll notice this.

Alex wanted to get into management positions. Then we kinda both had a conversation where it was like, hey, man. You're actually pretty good at acquisitions, but you have some other skills as well. And that's when we kinda said, hey. Why don't you kinda take over the COO role and kind of, you know, operate the business and push the business forward?

And, you know, Alex kinda took over the the CEO role of of more of the executive side of things and the face of the business and and really kinda developing our big relationships that help us grow.

Alex: Yeah. So the way I I would say this is Will really kinda helps run the operations and at the same time, heads, you know, acquisitions. And then my role mainly revolves around, you know, the higher, you know, relationships, the social media, you know, also, you know, CEO's job, a lot of it's financial. So, you know, dealing with a lot of the on the financial part of what we do. And then, just making sure that, you know, we have, like, a direction that we're going because, you know, we recently bought our first multifamily here in Arizona, which I'm really proud to say.

I I love this market. And, but part of all that was that, hey. We've actually started making some money here with the flipping. Do we wanna own a bunch of single family houses in Southern California? We're we're holding some for sure.

We got some great burs, but, higher level, we're like, no. Like, and so I have to work on that higher level stuff too. We're like, hey. What are we gonna do with this? You know, because allocation of capital is extremely important, you know, once you start making some.

Yeah. So I focus a lot on that. Like, hey. Where are we going with this? And then, so, and he's also great at social media as well.

And he's, you know, a a great ambassador for the brand and whatnot, and he's built his own. I mean, it's funny. We joke around a lot. Like, when we met you at the Ryan Pena course, I'm sure we'll talk about that or the mastermind. Like, you know who he was, but you didn't know who I was.

Speaker: Yeah.

Alex: It was it was fine because, like, you know, he's built his brand up, and I I want all my team to, you know, to also kind of, like it's it's been a valuable tool for us, social media, so we continue to double down on it everybody.

Steve: Going back to you saying there's four months, right, where you guys weren't buying anything. Was it because of COVID, or is it because of something else?

Alex: That was a little before COVID. So it wasn't because that was because they weren't getting deals deep enough, or they weren't getting the deals that really fit our buy box. Mhmm. Because we mostly mostly, you know, flipped. So, that's why we we were kinda, like, just beating our heads, like, hey.

No. This deal is not good enough. This deal is not good enough. And then

Steve: we kinda got one. What was the situation before, and which and what changed?

Speaker: Well, I think the biggest thing for us was really when I first got into acquisitions, a lot of people have this happen as well. They'll see how many different acquisitions models there are. Right? It's okay. I could cold call.

I could text message. I could drive for dollars. I could go door knocking. I could call, you know, MLS agents. I could do those.

And I tried to do all

Steve: Could you imagine?

Speaker: 10 of them at once.

Steve: Yeah.

Speaker: And, you know, again, I'm I've never even had an acquisition from an MLS agent. I've never had an acquisition from any of these sources, and I'm going all in on all of these sources. And it just obviously didn't work out. Right? And so I think what really kinda shifted it for us was going back to the basics, which is, hey, there's deals already on the MLS.

If we can target those deals on the MLS and get them under contract, then we have an opportunity to kinda move forward.

Steve: And that's the direction you guys ended up going? Correct. Yeah. Gotcha.

Alex: And the initial part, he was just, you know, doing what I was doing because a lot of my deals were from the MLS. And despite what people say, there there is deals there,

Speaker: but you

Steve: just have to get after it. Gotcha. Okay. So, you're living in Hawaii now at this time. Yes.

Right? And we're talking about, like, you know, flipping 25 houses a year remotely. And, you know, some of the challenges that that occur with that. So the first one, you're like you had to dot all the i's, cross your t's yourself, verify all the data.

Alex: Mhmm.

Steve: So after the first deal was smooth and it was good, did you still have those issues, or it was, like, the trust grow? Like, how did you handle that?

Alex: Yeah. That continued to to grow because it was, like, the trust would verify, like, okay. We're we're I'm buying this house. Like, are we gonna make money? Does it fit the business model that we have?

And then so the guy that started we started to get that consistency where we're we're back to where we're, you know, buying a couple houses a month. And then, you know, the trust continue to grow because I was looking at numbers. Although I was remote, keep in mind, I worked on seventy, eighty deals you know, before I moved to Hawaii. And I I grew up in Southern California. So, like, I know these areas, like, the back of my hand.

And and I know my numbers very well because I, you know, I'd love the acquisition side. So the trust kept going, but also they kept getting better. That's what the point is. Like, the I got became a better leader and they became better at everything they were doing. And then we all start to elevate and say, okay.

Well, now we're consistent getting deals. Now we have a real business here. And then we are able to attract some private lenders. We're able to attract some other team members to kinda join the team through continuing to, like, show what we were working on. Because around that time too, we started our own kinda weekly webinar, because we didn't see it happening.

We didn't see or like a weekly investor meetup slash webinar, because we didn't see anybody in Southern California doing kind of that. So we we thought, hey, we should do this because we wanna connect with other people around. What we're doing is starting to work. And, you know, that we've grown our we like to call our deal makers tribe

Speaker: Mhmm.

Alex: That way. And we have, you know, a great Facebook group there. And it it just it started to kinda really balloon after teams started getting more acquisitions, getting better at what they're doing. And we've always continued to reinvest too, like, in the masterminds courses, all that stuff. So, you know, I give them access to everything so then that way they can continue to grow too.

And that's one thing. When I was getting started, I didn't like that. I worked for other people, but it really felt like the people I work for only wanted me know just enough to make the money, but that was it. And I don't have the same mindset. I want everybody in my, you know, organization to be, you know, eventually to be able to own real estate to for it to impact their lives as well, not just help me make a bunch of money either.

I I want, you know, we're always buying a house. Heck, we own several properties together. He's part owner of the 18 unit, but he also worked his butt off for a year and a half

Steve: with me. So why Hawaii?

Alex: Great question. Why not? It's Hawaii.

Steve: It's nice, but you've seen a little, what's the word I'm looking for, hard charging? And what I noticed in Hawaii is they drive the speed limit or or slower.

Speaker: Or slower.

Steve: So it's a completely like, there's island time, and then there's, like, you know, what we do here in America. Right? Like, the 48 states. The two to very different speeds.

Alex: Yeah. So I would say the two main things was, getting out of the pandemic in LA and then, proximity to Brandon Turner, one of my mentors. I went on vacation, to Hawaii around the time as soon as I quit the second company I was working for, I wanna take a long vacation. I went to Hawaii. We ended up meeting Brandon.

He invited me to a mastermind that was, like, literally ten days later, and I said yes. I came back. That's where I met Ryan Pineda, where I, you know, built that relationship with Brandon and several other amazing, entrepreneurs, investors. And, I kinda left with the thought of that that second trip to Mastermind. Like, man, there's a lot of ugly houses here too.

Like, you know, you imagine Hawaii, you think, like, it's perfect, but there's a lot of fixer ups fixer ups there too. So I left thinking like, well, what if I could flip houses in Hawaii? But it was just kind of a seed planted. But then like a year passed by and then the pandemic hit and then, you know, Brandon hit me up and say, hey. You know, if you'd, you know, open to maybe, you know, working and doing some deals over here in Hawaii, why don't you you know, you love it.

Come out here. So it was kind of like an open invitation, nothing too formal. And then we kinda worked some things out, but, ended up he decided to kinda focus more on, obviously, bigger pockets and, the open door capital and whatnot. But he left the door open for me to go out there, be a little bit closer. And, you know, there's also other investors in Maui.

But you're right. Look. Maui has been pretty slow paced, but I do travel back to LA. And then, about a year ago, I started living part time in Mexico. For kind of that reason to you that, you know, Maui, Oahu is a little bit better fit for me overall with pace wise because there's more to do.

But, like, Maui is special. So, it'll be close to my heart. But right now, I am kind of transitioning to moving a little bit closer back to LA because we have grown the business to a point where it just makes more sense for me to be there, not not so remote. But I the main reasons were because I was getting out of LA. It was a it wasn't a cool place to be during the pandemic.

And then I

Steve: don't think anyone liked LA during the pandemic. I think we had, was it Havasu? It became a really hot spot

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Steve: During the pandemic. Alright. So then, let's talk about, you know, flipping remotely. So you're the visionary living in Hawaii. Will is executing within LA, but you guys are also in four states.

Do you guys do you guys start in LA and then and then start adding states? Or, like, do you guys, like, immediately go in multiple states because you went multiple marketing channels.

Speaker: So Yeah.

Speaker: Well, no. It's the multiple marketing channels are mainly in LA. But when Alex, you know, landed in Hawaii and we had boots on the ground now, you know, now we're able to say, okay. Well, what if we were to get a property out there? Mhmm.

So Hawaii kinda spearheaded our our growth into multiple states. And then actually, you know, when Do you

Steve: guys live in Hawaii?

Speaker: Yeah. We have about four active we have four active projects on three different islands right now. So we have one of the big islands.

Steve: Different islands too.

Speaker: Yeah. Oahu and and Maui. So it's multiple islands, multiple states. You know, if there's a deal and and it needs, you know, repairs and needs work done, you know, it's typically something that's within our expertise, but we're gonna try and get into that.

Steve: Yeah. Let's talk about that.

Alex: So the way I would describe it is that we were, you know, California based and then I moved to Hawaii, so we did some deals there. But we figured that the market's a a very unique market and we'll take deals as, you know, I think that will make the most sense for us or things that maybe we wanna keep, but we're really not looking to scale that. And then we bought in Arizona because we we found that to be the best for our multifamily kind of targets and goals. And then we happen to buy something in air in Las Vegas recently that just kinda fell in our lap. And no, we've got other things that have come up potentially there, but The predominant I'm saying more accurately to say three states than four.

Steve: Yeah. Predominantly LA and and Hawaii. Yep. Which are nice markets to flip in. So Yeah.

Let's talk about operations. Right? We're talking about how to flip 25 houses a year remotely. So, like, what are two or three key processes and systems you need in order to be able to flip that many that many houses.

Speaker: Yeah. I mean, a a big part of ours is our virtual team. So although Alex is in Hawaii, Mexico, I'm in Los Angeles, we do have a large team base that is virtual. And this goes well with our business model. Right?

Alex and I are not together all the time. We do a lot of Zoom meetings, so we're able to bring in other team members that can do those Zoom meetings for us. So, the first one was, as Alex mentioned, project management wasn't really his cup of tea, and I'd be lying if I said it was mine as well. You know, I still to this day don't know whether to use a hammer or whether to use a screw and a a, you know, a drill. It just it doesn't work well for either of us.

So the first thing that we had to do is say, hey. Let's take note. Let's take account of what we are good at, and let's figure out what we aren't good at. And let's go ahead and bring those people in, those qualified people in. And, you know, Alex will talk about it as well.

But we wanted to bring in a plus players in those specific roles because that's how we were gonna elevate our team overall, was bringing in the right people in the right seats.

Alex: Yeah. So, what I would say about that is the first thing is we run kind of the traction model Mhmm. And where we have a all team meeting, every week, a level 10 meeting. And that's been kind of the cornerstone for us because it it sets the tone for the week. Everybody has kind of quote, unquote, their marching orders, and everything's pretty clear on what your goal is, our goal as as a company and all that.

So I think the level 10 meetings that we have, like, every beginning of the week we had them on Mondays, but we recently transitioned to doing more on Tuesdays because so much happens on Mondays. So I think that's one big one. And then also that weekly webinar I discussed earlier or meet up, it kinda helped unify the team a lot because we had this kind of all purpose of like because the level 10 meeting is internal. Right? Where where make the team is, you know, knows what they need to do.

Everything's very clear. Everybody's aware of what's happening in the company as a whole in that meeting. And then the webinar is more an external thing where we're working together as a team to make an impact on the, you know, what we're doing for our community and for the, you know, where we're doing business. And I think that's those two things have helped us kind of stay together because we're all in different areas. And so, you know, just having that clear vision of this is what we're building a company.

We're gonna be flipping this many houses, and then what we're doing with this with this many houses, this much profit, we're gonna position it for these type of, you know, acquisitions like the multifamily. So, you know, as though being a visionary seems to be, like, cool, but it's hard because you're leading other people on the division that you're setting is dictating like how, you know, part of their life. So I think that's not something to take lightly and I think, you know, very deeply and I I consult with a lot of my mentors too because, you know, you don't wanna lead people to failure. Right? Right.

So I think that that that's, but to to just give a couple of tools or things that I think have been very helpful for us, I'd say those are two big ones.

Steve: So going back to you were saying the virtual team.

Speaker: Yep.

Steve: So virtual as in virtual in Los Angeles or virtual, like, virtually around the world?

Speaker: Yeah. Virtually around the world. I mean, we have, virtual team members down in Mexico, in multiple different states down in Mexico. Alex traveling down to Mexico obviously allowed him to kinda connect with some of these people in person.

Speaker: Mhmm. And

Speaker: then we've also gone in out and and gotten some team members out in The Philippines as well.

Steve: So then the project manager is where?

Alex: That's, I think, an important piece we should mention. Being part of the, Brian's coaching program, I saw that he mentioned that there was this business model where you could just pay project managers, like, a flat fee, and then you don't necessarily have, like, a a payroll employee that you're paying, you know, $5,060,000 a year. Because for us, like, since a lot of our projects are not like, you know, the you know, LA is big. It's it's a massive territory. So having somebody drive, you know, two hours from one project to others is not a good use of time.

So we we start to implement that where we picked handpicked a couple, solid project managers that we pay them a flat fee, and then their job was to make sure that the property once they got the property, they had a full scope of work going and that they had that project basically from when we bought it to when it listed, and then they would get a a fee for getting that project to the finish line at least to listing stage or burst, you know, refinance stage. And then we'd give them a bonus once if it hit all our numbers as well. So I end up paying a lot more project management overall, but I just we don't have the so much of a headache or having to manage somebody that's kinda running around with it like their chicken, like a head cut, you know, with their head cut off.

Speaker: So

Steve: this guy's a independent contractor?

Speaker: Kind of. Yeah. These guys. So it's multiple guys that we have in in different regions of LA.

Steve: Mhmm.

Speaker: And then now we have one virtual project manager that manages all of those people. So she is

Alex: down at the top. They provide they provide direct support to the project manager So that way, they're, like, negotiating with contractors. They're doing the things that actually move the project forward, not, like, sitting there looking at receipts and stuff. Like, they're handing it off.

Steve: There's one person who's virtual. Mhmm. And where is she?

Speaker: Well, it's actually two. So we had to get her an assistant. She's down in Mexico. And then it became too many receipts, too many, you know, data points for her to handle. So we got an additional person out in The Philippines that kind of helps more with the back end paperwork so that, again, our our Mexican counterpart can actually directly influence and help our project managers here in The States.

Steve: I love that your VA has a VA. Because I remember I said that in a in a in a call once, and they're like, how can your VA have VA? It's like Yeah.

Speaker: She has an assistant.

Steve: They do. It's virtual

Speaker: as well.

Steve: If they're superstars, they need it. So you have a VA with a VA, and she's supporting the four project managers. And those guys then are just marketing or or managing subsections of LA. Where they're going to the properties, driving the properties, dealing with the subs.

Alex: We have well, there's we have a project manager for the Arizona property. Mhmm. And we have a project manager for the Hawaii property. And then we have, three project managers in LA. So And they're all

Steve: and they're all independent, so they don't need you. Like, you're not feeding them directly. They get other projects they're working on.

Alex: Yeah. Yeah. So they work on other one of them is the avid investor. Sometimes we'll, you know, we'll partner up on a deal in there. Sometimes he'll lend us money on a deal.

But he's just like it's a it's kind of a hybrid relationship that developed where he wanted to flip more, because he hold a lot, and then we wanna hold more in it. And then he he is in Antelope Valley, an area that little bit remote in in in Southern California. So, you know, that's worked out very well. And then we've kind of groomed another one of our project managers, that he had the the the profile, the the type of personality profile for a project manager, not acquisitions, And he's been an absolute stud. And then then we also, have someone else that kind of more in the Joshua Tree area, and that's kind of remote.

So we partnered up on a deal, and then we end up buying a couple properties that he's managing. So really, it's, since rehabbing property is a real pain in the neck. You know, you the person that's in charge of getting that, you know, project to the finish line is very important. So I don't mind paying them a little bit more and and then maybe having some pay more payroll employees. I like that business model for us.

It's worked for

Speaker: us. Yeah.

Steve: Got it. So then we're talking about the tools. Let's talk about sourcing. Like, how are you finding these deals to to flip?

Speaker: Yeah. I mean, you know, again, if you look across our portfolio, a lot of our transactions are coming from the MLS. Mhmm.

Speaker: But a

Speaker: lot of ours are coming from social media.

Speaker: You

Speaker: know, we have, like Alex mentioned, the Facebook group, the webinar. We just hosted an event in Los Angeles, a massive real estate investor networking event with over 250 people that were out in interested in investing. And at some point, those people will get to a deal. They will get to a project, and they will need help with it. And as long as we're there and we've been providing value throughout, you know, we've seen a good good deal flow come to us from just people within our network, within our tribe that have seen our success and have heard us talk about our success and have said, hey, Will.

I I don't want those bumps and bruises either. You know, can we partner on this deal and get this thing to the finish line together?

Steve: The building of community.

Speaker: Yeah. Community has really been important for us.

Alex: So, I mean, we have, I mean, we've done the off market. We've done the cold call. We've done text messaging. But in the last six months to eight months, I'd actually, with the last year, I would say, the majority of our deals have come from, you know, wholesalers, relationships that I've had in the past, m MLS, social media, networking. It's all kinda combined.

But, yeah, part of it has been that we've and I I heard this from somebody in a mastermind before, and I I I ran with this. Like, you you need to become, like, a buying entity. You need to become, like, a known buyer in your area. That seems pretty obvious, but it takes some time. You know, there's a lot of people in your market.

So, you know, it's a that's a long game. Right? That's what social media is. So, we've kinda doubled down on it because we've seen it work. But, yeah, we've, and we also have a very specific buy box.

Like, we're not trying to go do a bunch of ADUs, or we're not trying to do a bunch of the new development. We're we're great at flipping entry level single family houses across SoCal. There's a lot of price points there, a lot of territory to cover. So that's what we do. And we rarely we'll take a heavy rehab here and there.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Alex: But that'll have to be much deep discount a much more deep discount deal because it's gonna take some bandwidth from the the kind of cookie cutter stuff that we're kinda doing already. So, we've, you know, took our buns buns and bruises, and we'll take on some heavier projects. But we're we're good at certain business model. We just kinda lock in on that. And people kinda know, like, this is what they're looking for.

So they think of us because we're also kind of constantly out there.

Steve: So one thing, I actually I was actually on a call right before this where I was, consulting with a guy. He's talking about he just had, he just wrapped up a very ugly business divorce. Right? And, you know, I've said this in the on the show many times. Right?

I think partnerships are really hard really hard to manage, and, you know, it's really difficult to keep everybody happy. I'm also one of the biggest hypocrites because I have way more partners, I think, than most people I know. Mhmm. So how do you guys maintain a good partnership?

Speaker: Great question. I mean, you know, I think the biggest thing for both of us is every year, we kinda sit down and we talk about both the company goals, our individual goals, and where we both see the company going. So, you know, we've had conversations where Alex has said, hey, Will. You know what? I I I could see myself exiting the company in a couple years and and, you know, kinda just letting you take over.

And then we've had conversations going the other way, which is, you know, hey, we could really grow this into something really big together over the next couple years. And, I think as long as at every stage of the partnership, you reconnect and you realign and and you make sure, hey, your goals are the same as my goals and we're both hitting both of our goals. And if we need to adjust any of those goals, we can do that together. That's been one of the biggest things on on our end, I think, keeping our partnership happy.

Alex: Yeah. I I would agree. I would, say that, we we come across this term kind of roles and goals and we talk about it often, because, you know, our roles are evolving. The role he has is different than when we first met. So it's my role.

So I think as long as we're both feel like we're we're making an impact, we're we're we're accomplishing our goals. Like, one of his big goals was to buy his own property, house hack it, and I'm happy, you know, that we he's got that done. He's right at the finish line and on getting that done. And so and he's helped out, so much with managing the team that I don't frankly don't really wanna do that much of because it's not really I don't like managing people that much or and he's much better than I am. So I think, and then when we talk about revenue and we talk about that, like, there's a constant conversation that because just like I left that other company was I probably would have stayed longer if had they just, you know, given me kind of a couple things I wanted that really frankly I deserved from all my production, but they didn't see it that way.

So I have a very open, you know, possibly with Will. Like, let's talk about it every year. Let's if we need to talk about it sooner, we talk about it sooner. Because for me, it's not about, you know, just all numbers and zeros and all that. It it's about what we're actually building and if it's benefiting all of us and we're gonna both get to our goals.

If that's gonna be together, let's do it together. If it's gonna be somewhere, you know, where we go different directions, then we'll just talk about that and be amicable about that. But I think we both recognize that we can kinda build something better together than apart because I do things that he doesn't do well and vice versa. And then, I'm not greedy and he's not greedy. We're not, like, you know, county pennies.

Like, oh, hey. You know, you know, I paid paid for that. I paid for that. And that's what I liked about Will from the beginning that it was all about getting the results, getting the work done. And then, like, we know we'll make money.

And he didn't he never complained about I'm making money at the beginning. A lot of people that wanted to work with me did, and not just those people that didn't stick around because when the hard work showed up, they left. But Will kept on showing up. That's why we're here.

Steve: Yeah. And I think there's a lot of valuable lessons there if everyone is watching. I mean, me personally. Right? Like, I just went through, Max and I, we parted ways.

It's an amicable, breakup. But Yep. You know, listening to you, I'm like, you know, annually, like, let's compare. Like, what do you want? What do I want?

What's what's the direction for the company? And we didn't do that. So that's totally on me for not, you know, intentionally, doing that. So

Speaker: And sometimes you get lost. Right? You think everything's going good. It's like, hey. We don't need to do that.

But like Alex said, sometimes it isn't annually.

Steve: Yeah. Right.

Speaker: Sometimes it's midway through the year. It's like, hey. Do we need, you know, do we need to discuss something now? And as long as we kinda make sure that we have the right alignment, you know, we've gone through obstacles before, and we'll, you know, we'll continue to go through them.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. I think part

Alex: of that being the remote has made me be more conscious about that. And I not only with him, but with the rest of the team, checking like, hey. Do you still like working here? Do you still like? And, you know, we've, one of our, long term virtual assistants, she's going in a different direction, but it's amicable.

And, you know, because people roles change, so you can't expect people to be happy forever. But you gotta check-in with your team and see where things are at because if they're not engaged, and that's also, affecting productivity and and morale and all that. And I I noticed that recently Will had gotten a little bit he he was frustrated with some of the results of the, you know, virtual team was doing. And and then it was reflecting and we had to kinda kinda group up and say, hey. Hey.

Where are we going with this? And we gotta, you know, kinda get things back on track.

Speaker: And we

Alex: were you know, we do that constantly.

Steve: Yep. And then the other thing I wanna talk about was, private capital. So you guys have raised over $3,000,000 private capital. So I was saying earlier, you know, for a lot of guys that can't get hard money, right, like, hey. You can just go fifty fifty with people.

But you guys didn't, on top of that, raise private capital. Talk about that, that journey.

Alex: Yeah. So, I was using my money for for, you know, forever that I had saved up and kept to use, and we're flipping houses. But when it got to a point where we were getting more opportunities presented to us, then we were able to, you know, to actually fund ourself. And that's where we went to, you know, turn to certain, you know, initial early on, money partners that came in and said, hey. We wanna invest with you.

I for a long time, I didn't wanna take any private capital just because I wanna prove that you know, with my own money that I I would could do this, and I'd work for other investors. And it it's cool not only working for other investors. You're making less money, but you're also using their money.

Speaker: Mhmm. And

Alex: and so I think sometimes you forget that because when it comes to wire that money to close escrow, it's a different field.

Speaker: Yeah.

Alex: Right? And so, I did that for, I'd say, a good dozen or more deals, and then, we we started coming across. You know, Will came on board and, like, hey. We gotta raise some more, you know, private capital. And for me, it's like owing money to people, you have a responsibility, a duty, and all that.

So, I didn't wanna do too much of it. It was just like, let's, you know, let's friends and family. So we started working with friends and family, that reach out to us that were more kind of they wanted to invest with us. And then once we kinda tapped out those resources, you know, we started to, like, you know, do a little bit more of a process where we were actually searching for private money. And through coaching with Ryan and all that, we just learned that, hey, these are the proper documents that you're gonna have.

This is kind of the expectation. This is kind of the returns and and or what we typically pay people. So we just gotta process around it and got more intentional about it because we realized, like, hey. We're kinda not we're kinda capped out of a certain, amount of houses if we're not able to bring in more capital.

Steve: Yeah.

Alex: But yeah. So we we we love our private money, lenders. We,

Steve: Well, how are you adding, like, how are you adding more private money? What what are some activities that you're doing to find more private money?

Alex: So social media is one, big one. Also, the meetups that we host and people that are getting started, we provide also not only, like, obviously, provide them return on what they make, but then also we provide them access to the business, the training, to the team, to all the transactions we're working on. Kind of like a open book policy because these are private lenders from different you know, they're all different. Right? Some of them wanted to get into flipping.

Some of them just wanna, you know, invest passively and let their money work for them. So, we really provide full access to us so then that way we can kinda help them grow and then we're going in addition to, the money side of things of, you know, interest and returns and all that. Yeah.

Speaker: But on that note, I mean, like, you know, it's something that we always talk about. And and, you know, Alex and I are constantly finding out, like, what are the bigger rooms that we can put ourselves into that have these bigger players in them. Right? Like, how can we get into that that ballroom or that, you know, gala or that soiree that's happening in town where, you know, there's gonna be other big people in that room that just intrinsically, you know, you can end up doing business with. Right?

So I think it's you know, we always say in in business we're looking for deals, we're looking for contractors, and, you know, the most important of all those is we're looking for money. Right?

Steve: Yeah.

Speaker: So it never stops. And and we're always constantly kinda looking for for money. When we purchased our 18 unit here in Arizona, that was when we actually found out, like, how good we were at raising private capital. I mean, Alex and I were able to raise, close to $1,000,000 in in less than a week to get this enclosed when, you know, our biggest raise before that had maybe been a couple 100,000 in a week.

Alex: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The

Steve: other thing too, you guys just mentioned, you know, Ryan Pineda. So, when I first met you guys, it was at a future flipper event.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Steve: So talk to me about mentorship and the value there.

Alex: Yeah. So I met Brandon, I'm sorry, Ryan originally at the mastermind at Brandon Turner's event, and I was already a fan of his. So I had already been following him and saw what he's up to, but then we got that personal connection. Couple, like, months later after the mastermind, with Brandon Turner, he calls me up and wanted me to bet out a deal in LA that he randomly got. And so I I gave him the information needed, ARV and all the comps, and then he, presented me the option to buy the property buy the property, and it fit our box.

So we bought it and, he made a huge wholesale fee. We made a huge rip on it too. And it just was like, alright. Cool. Well, not only do we do this mastermind, but we kinda made some money together.

So that that helped, you know, build that bond there. Right? And then, like, another four or five months later, he launched his program. He started bringing the students and, you know, say he told me that he wanted to help you get to the next level. And, you know, we was we had already made money together.

And, like I said, I already respected him because he was doing kinda kinda something similar that I wanna wanna do kinda really build the business. And so I joined this program about two years ago. It really helped out with the leadership side, the structure side, you know, little kinda nuances. Right? Like the the project management we just talked about.

All these little nuances that you learn along the way from other people, other courses or masterminds are super valuable, but you gotta implement them. And then, you know, about a year and a half ago or a little bit more than a year and a half ago, and Will joined, right right right away, I put him in as kind of, like, my partner with, you know, in within within the mastermind, within the course. And then so he started coming along with me into the masterminds and stuff. And and we've gone to pretty much every, everyone every quarter because of the connections we make, the community that's being built out, and just kinda staying on that cutting edge of, like, what's really happening in our industry. It's been super valuable.

So, I don't know if we'll have anything to add to that.

Speaker: Yeah. No. I mean, like, I I know, you know, Steve, you're a part of CG. You're a part you pay mentors.

Steve: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: You are a coach. You are a mentor. So I think it goes both ways. Right? Like, you know, as Alex and I mentor these, you know, people that are coming to the webinar, that are coming to the the meetups, to the masterminds that we're hosting, you know, on the other side of that, we have to constantly be getting better and better as well.

So, you know, when we identify something in our business and it's like, hey. Maybe we're not as good at sales. Well, you know, who do we go to? We go to Steve and we go, hey. You know what?

We need to get our guys the Steve Train co coaching program because we need to improve our sales process.

Steve: Yeah.

Speaker: You know, when we see social media is blowing up, we say, okay. Who's the biggest social media coach out there? And we go and we, you know, you know, hire on Ryan Majin because we wanna be doing the same social content that everybody else is doing. And at some point, you just have to decide, like, you're either gonna figure it out yourself

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And that takes away from the bandwidth of you doing your best activities. Like, my best activity wasn't figuring out how to do sales. You had already done that. So I didn't need to have to go through that whole journey of finding out how to do sales. All I needed to do is pay a couple thousand dollars, take a weekend of my time, and that just, you know, truncated five, ten years of your sales experience into a weekend for me.

Yeah. So again again, it goes both ways. Like, as you grow, you also have to continue to grow.

Steve: So we're about to play this commercial. But before we do play this commercial, just kinda, you know, yeah, just warm them up for it. So how did coming to our event help you guys with your business?

Speaker: And, I mean, we we came to your sales training. And I would say within, you know, arguably the next three months, we probably went from that four month dry stretch to, like, acquiring 11 to 15 deals in the next three or four months. And that's over the course of, you know, one one mentorship, one training program, one weekend

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: You know, getting better.

Steve: So 11 deals. Your guys' margin is a little bit larger. So safe to stay over half million dollars worth.

Speaker: $5,000, you know, $10,000 turning into end of half $1,000,000. Like, I I would be at the bank first person in line every morning if I could make that investment.

Steve: Alright. Perfect. So, we're gonna go into the audience's questions. Before that, we're gonna take a quick commercial break.

Alex: His sales training is unbelievable. Right? There is other sales training in theory. Going through this stuff with how he breaks down his business is this is, like, invaluable, because there's no other way to get this type of like, this type of access with someone who's such an open book about every little thing that is completely applicable to my business.

Speaker: Anyone who wants to bring that business to the next level, anyone who wants to close thirty, forty, 50% more of the deals, I mean, there's no one who wouldn't benefit from being better at sales.

Speaker: I

Steve: mean, anyone in real estate, anyone I mean, anyone that has any entrepreneur that has a business, not all the information may be pertinent to you, but time management, knowing how to work with people, having sales skills, because I think we're all in sales and marketing, and it could pertain to anybody, honestly.

Speaker 5: I would have to say it's asking questions. That's the biggest thing. You don't wanna give an answer right away. And if you're able to, answer their question with another question. And also that along the process, it's gonna be very uncomfortable with talking to the sellers, asking the questions that you need to, and digging for paying.

But that's gonna come with experience. So

Alex: if you're struggling, I think this is David that you need to come to to make sure that you take your business to the next level. His sales training is

Steve: Alright. So on Instagram, we got, Gav Bear, and he is newly married. So he wants to know, should he rent, or should he try to buy a house and rent out the basement?

Alex: Well, I'm a huge fan of the house hacking strategy, which is if you don't know what it is, simply put, you buy a duplex, you live in one, you rent out the other, and you there's a whole bunch of versions of that. So I'm more a fan of that if you if you can qualify for a low down payment loan. If I were to go back, I see this very often. I would buy the biggest, most beautiful fourplex that I could afford on a low money down, loan

Steve: FHA financing.

Alex: In, you know, primary of Southern California. That's what I would do first.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. I I read about that in Robert Green's book, multiple streams of income. Right? Long, long time ago.

Never executed it, but it was, like, before it was, you know, house hacking. You know? These these gurus talking about it many, many, many years ago. You have the same opinion?

Speaker: Yeah. I would agree. I mean, I I'm personally buying a house sack. I'm not, you know, recently married, but I've been dating for, you know, eight or nine years now. And so I could see myself being in that shoes, you know, in a couple years down the line.

And the main thing for me was before I got married, I wanted to make sure that I had a house. I had that stability. And so, you know, I I would agree that if you get a house hack, then you could have somebody else helping you pay down that mortgage. And if you're a newly married couple, if you're, you know, newly expecting a child and you have those other expenses coming down the line, having that other person help you out with your your mortgage expense goes a long way.

Alex: And and a quick quick story on that, I actually house hacked my apartment, and I did own a little bit. Right? I did Airbnb on the other bedroom. It was a two bedroom, one bath apartment, and it helped me become an investor because I was not paying that additional 1,200 rent. It was being paid by the Airbnb, and so I would be able to save more money and all that.

So there's so many ways you can do that. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve: And it's it it sounds more complicated than it really is. Right? Because, like, when I was living in La Jolla, I was renting a three bedroom apartment, and I got the master and I my two buddies rented other two rooms. Right? That's for more all intents purposes.

What house hacking is is just you're getting a mortgage versus you're splitting the lease, a few different ways.

Alex: Yeah. You

Speaker: know? And, essentially, you guys were paying that guy's mortgage, but he just didn't even need to live in the house because you guys were paying that stuff.

Steve: Yeah. No. Pretty much. Right? So, now the the challenge then is he's got newly married, and if his wife's okay with it, cool with it.

That's that's great. Challenge is if, you know, we try to buy it today, a fourplex, and getting the wife to agree to living in a fourplex might be a challenge.

Alex: And that's why I said the biggest because the there's a fourplex where there's tiny units, and there's fourplex where it's almost like four houses on one lot. Yeah. Right? Or, like, a 4,000 square foot fourplex that, you

Steve: know That's a good point. Right? Because I I remember

Alex: didn't think, like, a a multifamily, and I'm just next to my neighbor. No. There's some there. Like, you buy a duplex where it's a whole different lot. You know, they're over on that side.

It's, like, two different houses. Yeah.

Steve: I remember now thinking back in the Orange County, my wife's family. Yeah. They live in a duplex. And I was like, this is a duplex? This is not.

Speaker: These are two separate units.

Speaker: Yeah. This is

Steve: not a duplex. But, yeah, that's a really good point.

Speaker: Duplex sometimes has a connotation of, like, the shared wall. And like Alex said, you could have a fourplex with four buildings or own four garages just on the same parcel.

Speaker: Yeah.

Steve: You know,

Speaker: it's it's then that would work.

Steve: It's a great point. Mubarak, Hussein on YouTube wants to know, are you guys doing virtual wholesaling?

Speaker: Not much virtual wholesaling because, you know, again, our model just we because we have expertise with the project management, you know, because we're able to get those project managers in different areas, we don't wholesale much. Most of the deals that come to us already fit our buy box, and our buy box is is a flipping business.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: So by, you know, by virtue, we're not wholesaling much. Now we do wholesale deals that we get under contract that don't fit our buy box

Speaker: Mhmm. But

Speaker: that might fit somebody else's buy box. But, again, we're mostly targeting those deals that do fit our buy box. So it's not that we're running a a virtual wholesaling business, although we do some virtual wholesale.

Steve: It's wholesale where you don't buy. Correct?

Alex: Exactly. And I think that there's a distinction to, like, different business models, which one, you know, are you gonna run. And for us, it is more of what we're talking about, the flipping and then keeping some and then wholesaling some as opposed to just pulling big list and then just going really broad and then just wholesale whenever you get under contract. Kind of like different business models.

Steve: So, question for me is, has your guys' buy number changed in the last couple of months?

Alex: Yes. Yes. It has.

Steve: How have you guys mod modified your buying, calculations?

Alex: Yeah. So we believe on certain areas that we're seeing in based on we track inventory. We track, religiously every single day on what's happening across the markets that we're doing business in. And in some markets that we're seeing a lot of much higher increase in inventory where, say, for example, we had to buy at 70% of ARV. Now we're gonna have to buy at 60% of ARV, and we're gonna increase the the rehab budget a lot more because of inflation.

So, really, like, we're buying now closer to 60 55 to 65% of ARV. Where before, we would buy some deals up to maybe even 75 because it was a light rehab and, you know, it was gonna be quick back to market.

Steve: So for

Alex: us, it it is we have adjusted our numbers on the ARV and on the rehab cost. And so if it doesn't fit that box, then we're okay with buying less property right now because we are seeing a transition. And we have seen retail buyers falling out of escrow on several of our properties and asking for huge credits that we haven't seen, you know, in the last you know, before this correction on is that we're seeing. So we're making adjustments based off what we're seeing on the sales side as well.

Steve: And then what what do you guys have going on? Have you seen, I guess, have you, like, gotten stuck with any any purchases that, you know, like, you guys were, like, kinda stretching to make it work? Or

Speaker: We I mean, we we definitely have some properties that we still have in our portfolio, and and, you know, we're working on exit strategies on those. You know, we have a couple properties that we have listed that that maybe haven't gotten the, feedback that we would have thought they would. Mhmm. But I don't think that that's necessarily anything to do with our business model. I think it's just more of, you know, the economics of the world are shifting when inflation goes up.

You know, it's not just us that feel that. It's the the everyday buyer that feels that as well. And so their cost of living is going up, and that means that, like, you know, Alex and I talked about this the other day. You know, it it kind of and we we talked about this because David Green has a great book on investing in a recession. And, you know, Alex and I were talking, like, it seems like the market kinda truncates from both sides.

Right? Like, there's gonna be downward pressure at the lower price points and pressure at that upward price point because that family that could barely afford a $1,500 mortgage before certainly can't afford a $1,900 mortgage now.

Steve: Right.

Speaker: You know, so it's gonna it's gonna really put pressure on both sides.

Alex: Yeah. So we we've definitely seen it, but, you know, we have multiple exit strategies on properties and then some of them, instead of making what we thought we're gonna make, we're gonna make less money, or the ones that are just taking a little bit longer to sell them, you know, a week. Instead of taking a week, to sell, it's taking, you know, a month. So, you know, one more month of holding cost. So it's not like that we're we're gonna lose money on these deals, but it is helping us now identify where the market is at in those particular areas.

So then we can now reflect if we are gonna buy in that area again. Well, now we kinda know from the sales side what's happening. So track a lot of data to make sure that, you know, any buys going forward, are kind of a recalibrated to where the market is at and going.

Speaker: And I'd almost say it gives us an advantage having inventory that we're currently selling because, you know, a newer investor right now might be like, well, where is the market going? And we actually have those data points

Steve: Yeah.

Speaker: Right in front of us. So as we sell one, we know, hey. Now we know this is where the market would come down to is right about here. Right?

Alex: Yeah. And when we use that often too with the wholesalers and or the, you know, agents, everybody that we're working with and negotiating deals with where where I tell my acquisitions guys, like, hey. Right now is a great time. You have a lot of leverage. You have a lot of facts in your favor.

And so, you know, you but you're gonna need to make more offers. You're gonna need to get into more opportunities to get the same amount of deals. So if you're not willing willing to work twice as hard to make, like, half the money, that's a bit of an extreme kind of statement. But if you take that approach in this market, then you'll get the better discounted deals. And, that's what we need right now.

You need to be ultra conservative if you're flipping, and that's what we're doing.

Steve: Yep. And then, Gary Citarian on YouTube. What is an example of a typical JV corporate structure? So if you are doing a deal with someone else, you partner up on a deal because you have one guy who took it under his title.

Speaker: Mhmm. So if

Steve: we're to do it correctly today, do you have two different LLCs splitting the expenses and splitting the equity? How would you do it today?

Alex: Well, yeah. Tip the joint ventures that we do now, typically, they'll still be one person on title, but then we'll have a very specific and I mean very specific joint venture agreement that's notarized. So then, you know, it's it's something that's specific. Like, hey. If our goal is to flip this primarily, we'll consider hoteling it.

And if worst case scenario, we have to hold it, this is how it's gonna work out. So I think we're just very specific in our language, and then we get, you know, those documents. Now, we do have another, structure where we're just kind of on the same LLC. That one isn't as common because it was just, like, one deal off. It's you know, we'd rather just have the you know, we don't wanna complicate things sometimes with the hard money lenders and everything.

So, we try to keep it more simple on that. Like, my Hawaii house, for example, one of the houses there is a joint venture, and my partner's on title. But we have a very, very kind of specific joint venture agreement, along with, you know, some other stuff that, you know, that is guaranteeing that, like, I'm gonna get my share of that property. So I think you just you need to have all that kinda dialed in if you're gonna do a joint venture. Just make make sure that everything's very specific because you're dealing with real estate.

So, you know, what's gonna happen if someone wants to keep it or what's gonna happen if you don't get your pricing? You have to hold it. So those things need to be included inside of your agreement, I I believe, are very important.

Steve: Yeah. So that's really smart. I've never done any of those things, but, like, it's really smart.

Speaker: I'll I'll jump on that too. You know, I think with the joint venture side of things, right, like, Alex and I talk about the roles and goals for us with our business. Well, this is somebody that's joining into your business for this particular project. So you really wanna lay out what are your roles? What are your goals?

Is your goal to get two or three, you know, joint ventures under your belt so that you can now go to a hard money lender and say, hey. Look. I've I've done deals.

Speaker: Mhmm. Well,

Speaker: great. Then if that's your goal, then maybe we're gonna take some other goals on our end and say, well, our goal is to make more profit on this deal than if you were to, you know, take a fifty fifty split with us.

Steve: Yeah.

Alex: Yeah. And that's helpful too because recently, I I think of this deal that we're doing right now in Maui, this house that we're flipping there. I originally was gonna be a joint venture, and we had, you know, super specific joint venture agreement. But at the eleventh hour, he had some issues with, you know, the other partner had some issues with, their family and whatnot, and he has to be bought out. And, you know, when I looked at numbers, I'm like, okay.

Well, he offered me a fair buyout of a $30,000 basically fee that he was gonna take. And but us having a very specific joint venture agreement allowed that conversation and that to all turn out well because, his role was gonna be project management. And he's saying, well, I can't fly to Hawaii no more. I'm like, well, if that was your role in this, you know, joint venture agreement, now you can't do your part of your role. You bought the deal when you were gonna project management.

I was gonna fund everything. Now you're not doing your part of it. So now we have to kinda pivot, and then that's when he was well, that's when we discussed, you know, okay. What do you want? A fair buyout then.

And he, you know, he offered he offered me 30 and I took it. Because then I, you know, saw more upside on on doing that. It was very fair. So but having that specifically laid out allowed us to say, okay. Well, you're not gonna do that anymore.

I'm not gonna do that. So let's have a conversation then what are we gonna do from here because we were at the closing table.

Steve: Yeah. That's it's really smart. On Instagram, does anyone, does anybody have an acquisitions position in Honolulu or, yeah, Honolulu, Oahu? Are you guys hiring anybody over there?

Alex: We're not currently looking for acquisitions people, but send me a DM. I do know several investors that, you know, are in Oahu that potentially might be a better fit.

Speaker: Dada. Dada. You know, I know a couple that we could think of that that are looking to scale their businesses out there and, you know, if you're the right fit,

Steve: it would work.

Alex: Yeah. Sounds good

Steve: there. I've heard and this is just totally, like, hearsay rather than any due diligence on this. I've heard that it's more challenging in Hawaii because you they they prefer to sell to their fellow Hawaiians. So have you guys ran into that?

Alex: Yeah. Absolutely. So, there's definitely there's those challenges that when you're dealing with, you know, more of local, Hawaiians and I mean, it's a difficult situation. It really is because if you look into the history of things, you know, it's you'll you'll understand why they

Speaker: go through

Alex: those different ways. But Mhmm. If you're not local, then, not only when it comes to business, but in other ways too. You know, visiting locations, all that. So you feel that kind of, like a vibe of you're not you're not as welcome.

And and people think of Hawaii, they think the aloha, they think of just paradise and whatnot. But we all think of it paradise. We go there, but they imagine all the people there that had people just come in and off their island constantly. And so I kinda get both sides, but it I can't say that it's it's easy to deal with like that because I I'm trying to make the island better. Right?

Like, I we we say that we're making the world better one house at a time. Mhmm. But if they're they're they're unhappy that we've been owning property to begin with, then I can't help that, you know? So, yeah, there definitely is some of that that you'll you'll, you know, in doing business. It's a unique, state to do business in.

But there's a ton of appreciation. So, like, our deals have appreciated crazy. So it it just every market's different, and it's challenges and it's opportunities.

Steve: I think of, like, you're saying, that's what you see on pictures, and then that's, like, when you live there. Right? Because, like, visiting there is, like, oh, like, there's a lot more to what you just see on TV. Yeah. And it's kinda like social media.

Right? Like, on social media, you only see the best. Right? When you you don't see the ugly parts of Hawaii on TV.

Alex: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And, I mean, there there's a it's it's a fantastic, location, fantastic market. But, yeah, doing volume there is, like, not easy and it's better just to kind of I think for us just be very selective on the deals we do there.

Because also the labor is extremely difficult and the material sourcing. So there's all those additional challenges when you're actually rehabbing as well.

Steve: What's the, difference in cost of materials over there versus here?

Alex: Well, we used to run, like, about $50 per square foot in Southern California. And in Hawaii, we noticed that it was almost double that.

Speaker: It's almost double.

Alex: So it's it really is crazy. I'm like, what? Like, it's a thousand square foot house. It's gonna cost, like, you know, 150,000 to rehab when LA, that would be $70.75. So it's like Yeah.

It's just and it's like the same kind of size house. It's just it's just a labor cost are insane. And, you know, just to The material cost We've actually had to fly cruise in from the, you know, the Mainland from Southern California and other parts of of, you know, of The United States to help us rehab properties in Hawaii. And it's common because, like, the guys that are good are very busy. They're too expensive.

Speaker: Electricians on island and they're both booked out for eight months. And you're like, okay. So I can't get an electrician at my house then for eight months? Well, that's not gonna work.

Alex: Yeah. So a bunch of additional nuances with that, and, we just had to make it work. You gotta figure it out.

Steve: Yep. Gary wants to know, have you done any nighttime manta ray diving in Hawaii?

Alex: No. I haven't. I've heard of that on the Big Island, but I have not. Yeah. It's a little scary being in water at night.

Steve: So property warehouse in YouTube are for your flips. Are you hiring GCs, or are you bringing them on staff payroll?

Alex: No. We typically have the project manager, and they, sub it out. And they, you know, they work with all you know, so they're acting kind of as our GC.

Steve: And Brian Davila wants to know about garage grinding.

Alex: What is that? Garage grinding. What's up, Brian?

Speaker: I don't

Alex: know what that is.

Steve: He's saying to ask Alex about his days in the garage grinding.

Alex: Oh, okay. Okay. He's mentioning that. And then we we talked about this a little bit this podcast. I bought what I it was my best deal up to date.

Now I've done better deals than that. But I bought this house subject to, I took over the mortgage. It was creative finance deal. And then I did a whole office set up in my garage because it was a huge garage, and it was already kinda set up as, like, storage. So I built this, like, kick butt office, that I mean, it really felt like it was a actual office.

Nobody knew it was my garage. I started my, like, my Instagram and everything from there. Later on, when I showed it, everybody was like, oh my god. Like, you were, like, grinding in your office in your in your garage? We didn't even know this.

So I think that's what he's mentioned it. But it was great because I did Airbnb on the two bedrooms and the it was a four bedroom, two bath house. It was just me and my girlfriend at the time were living there. So we'd be in the back part of the house, and then we Airbnb the front. So we cut that deal up so many different ways.

And then I held on to it for almost a year and a half and sold it for, like, almost no, like, taxes. So, like, it made, like, 6 figures

Speaker: on it.

Alex: But all that kinda started. A lot of my my company and my start in in social media and some of the stuff there in that garage.

Steve: That's funny. And then do you have a joint venture with the GCs, for that you're contracting out?

Speaker: So we've thought about that before, and I think, you know, when you get to a certain point in business, like, we're doing the project manager model right now, right, where we have project managers that handle the scope of work and handle, you know, the subcontracting on all those deals. But at a certain point, you know, and this comes back to our our overarching theme of roles and goals. Right? So if a contractor were to approach us and say, hey. My goal is to help you guys grow your business from doing 25 flips this year to doing 50 flips next year.

And my role in doing that would be to, you know, speed up your guys' construction timelines, help it so that you guys don't have any of those construction issues, pretty much mitigate any issues you would have on the construction side. All you guys would need to do now is worry about acquiring and funding these, And that would eliminate that you're looking for deals, contractors, and money. You know? So if if somebody were to approach and say, hey. I can eliminate one of those things.

You'll never have to look for that again. Then that would be something that that we've talked about would be of interest.

Alex: Yeah. I we've looked into it, but it hasn't turned out yet. I know other investors that have done it and partnered up with their GCs, but we haven't. Well, what I do wanna say though about partnering up with people, because sometimes people will approach you with the partnership, but it's really favored in their side. Right?

I think one big thing for us is constantly having this mindset of, like, it has to be a win win or, like, we're not doing the deal. And that has to do with buying a property, that has to do with partner of someone, something specifically. Because I've had people offer me money to lend, it put them they want. You know, they're they're gonna lend $50 and they want half the deal. It's like, I'm sorry, dude.

Like, that's not gonna work out. But if you're gonna, you know, fund the whole deal and put up a quarter million dollars, then we have a discussion. Yeah. But, you know so sometimes you'll get offered in business and in this business, like, bad deals. So just make sure that you're analyzing it.

It's kind of a true win win, however that context might be.

Steve: Yep. Gary's follow-up question on YouTube. Is there any advice for any up and coming acquisitions of people? What should they focus on?

Speaker: One acquisition strategy?

Steve: What should or a any advice for anyone that's in acquisitions? What should they be focusing on?

Speaker: One acquisition strategy. Don't do what I did and and try to do a little bit of texting, a little bit of driving for dollars, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Like, just focus on one thing. Like Alex said, if you just sit down and you grind and you get on the phone and you make six hours worth of phone calls and you do that for a couple of days in a row, you're gonna be much better than you were the first day. If you spend, you know, thirty minutes doing some text, thirty minutes doing some driving for dollars, you're just never gonna get to that a plus level on one of those marketing strategies.

Alex: Yeah. Yeah. I would say that acquisitions that you need to focus heavily right now understanding, like, the just the perception of the market and then also the real data. Because those two things will help you negotiate deals. It's like, hey.

I understand this is where things are up, but, hey. This data says this. But just having ammunition in your conversations, I think, is extremely important, because people are like, oh, yeah. The market's kinda there. But if you talk to somebody about the market and you're not giving them actual real numbers or you're not actually disclosing to them, like, hey.

This is what we're seeing, then, it just you're just you're missing an opportunity to, you know, to potentially, like you say, encounter you know, uncover pain, because there's gonna be a lot of pain right now in this market and a lot of opportunities in that, for people to help, you know, for you to help homeowners and to, you know, put good deals together. But and I think you really gotta look deeply right now at your skill set and then, you know, find out, like, what's really happening in the market. And I I I'm on my team with, like, real numbers on what's happening. So, you can justify these kind of low offers that we're having to submit right now that, people are maybe thinking they're a little bit crazy, but that's what we're seeing. So

Steve: that's fine. Yeah. So another question from Gary. He's put this out for me, but I wanna start with you guys first. A deal of a lifetime comes around once a week.

Do you guys find this to be true?

Alex: I do not. I think that the deal of a lifetime comes around maybe every month at most or every quarter. I I don't think I don't every quarter. I would say.

Speaker: I would agree on the deal of a lifetime. However, every day there's a deal. You know, like, Alex and I talk about this every day when you wake up. If you wake up with the notion that there's a deal out there, I'm gonna go find that deal. There's no set script or set, you know, rule book that says, hey, because Steve's been doing it this long, he's gonna get that deal.

Like, you know, there's a deal out there. Now that might not be the life changing deal Mhmm. That comes to Steve's lab, but there's a deal out there every day that you can go get, and that deal could change your life.

Speaker: What do

Alex: you think, Steve?

Steve: So for me, I think maybe not once a week, but I believe it's once a month. I mean, I get these things that are offered to me, on a fairly regular basis. Like, are opportunities. Like, a year ago, I go with, like, you know, giving up an arm and a leg for it. Today is, like, it doesn't I can't do it right now.

Alex: Yeah.

Steve: Right? Like, just don't have the capacity. So I think the big thing is the capacity, the ability to do it. Right? Like, if I bring a deal to you right now that's, I don't know, fire damage, crazy deeds.

Right? Like, 20 errors. Like, today, like, I can't do this deal. I don't have the resources. But if you had the resources, right, if you knew how to find all those errors, if you knew how to negotiate all those different situation, how to deal with the city, with the fire, figure out the insurance situation.

Like, if you had all the skill sets, then it's an easy deal. Yep. But for us, or at least for me, it's like, I don't know what to do. Yeah. That's not a deal for me.

Speaker: Find twenty years right now. I'd rather rather not.

Alex: Yeah. Exactly. Because most great deals are created. They're put together. And one of my best deals in Hawaii was created because of all the experience I had.

And I was able to negotiate with that savvy seller and his lawyer. And I was able to present a seller financing option that I in the past, I wouldn't known how to present.

Steve: Right.

Alex: And I was able to figure out all these little things. But when you're in the game long enough, you're more likely to hit a home run. Yeah.

Steve: That's why I

Alex: look at it too. It's like, you're not gonna hit a home run maybe every unless you're, like, a home run hitter. But let's just give an example. Like, if you're in the game long enough, you'll get a home run. And and but the point is though, you gotta stay in the game.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. And you have to have the capacity, the the resources, the wherewithal. There's a lot of different pieces in if that's the case, then it will and it might just be as a deal for a lot of a lifetime for other people, but maybe not for us anymore. Yeah.

Right. That's true. Alright. At what point do you change your strategy from flipping to holding and why? Is rogervia on Instagram?

Alex: Great question. We get to ask a lot. So for us is we're building a flipping company, but we're keeping specific assets, and then we're using that, you know, profit to buy longer term mass assets. So for example, I didn't own any real rentals until those last couple years. I probably could have owned a couple along the way, but then it would have limited my growth on the, you know, the company and the team and and and building a real business.

Right? So I think you need to make a decision, you know, and and it's individual for everybody. Right? Like, okay. Are you gonna be an investor?

Are you building a company? Like, what's your goal? So people would ask me, like, oh, why don't you own more rentals? Why don't you keep it more? And, you know, my responsibility well, right now, I'm I'm playing the long game.

I wanna build this thing up, and then I'll be able to buy more, you know, assets. And now I have an 18 unit, along with, you know, another five or so rentals that we have. And now, you know but that's happened really in the last, like, eighteen months. So people are really trying to own and have all this passive income really early on, and I think that's kind of a mistake sometimes. Unless, I mean, maybe you're just you're working a really good great nine to five, you're making a lot of money, and then you could acquire a rental every year or two years.

That's a different model than what I'm running. So I think you have to pay attention to what's your long term goals and then how how that fits into the business model you're doing in this real estate investing space and not get hung up on, oh, this person has this many doors and I don't have that many doors because, you know, you could easily fall into that game. It's a

Steve: really easy job to fall into.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And I and I love it. Right? Like, decide what you want.

Do you wanna be the guy that has doors? Do you wanna be the that has the income? Do you wanna be the guy that has the passive income? Like, what investing strategies that you're looking for? You know, like you said, Alex, like, you passed on a lot of opportunities that we could have kept over the year or two.

But on the flip side, we bought 18 doors in one hit. You know? So if we would have held 18 single families along the way, that would have severely limited our growth, and we ended up getting 18 rent checks on the first of the month anyway. Yep. It just took a little bit of

Speaker: a little bit

Steve: of a little

Speaker: bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit

Alex: of a little bit. A great Airbnb or this is a great, long term hold. This is we like to hold properties that's built after nineteen nineties in the Antelope Valley because we just found, like, those require a lot less maintenance. They get rented out, you know, a lot easier, and we like that asset to hold on to that. So I think that's part of you identifying that too for your buy box and hold box.

Steve: Yep. So, starting with Will, what is your why?

Speaker: Yeah. I mean, I I think ultimately the why. Right? It it really kind of fuels me. Right?

So my why happens to be my family. Right? I grew up down in San Diego, single mom, and, you know, just watching what my mom did for me and for my twin brother, really motivated me to say, you know what? Hey. I wanna be, a pillar in my family.

I wanna be a rock in my family that my family can depend on, that can be there, for not just my my children, but for my parents, grandparents, and, you know, generations to come. So, you know, when I get up every day and I I go to battle and I get to the grind, the number one thing on my family or on my on my mind is is how do I put my family in the best position to to move forward.

Alex: Awesome, Aster. So my big why is freedom. It's, I am a big fan of designing the life of your dreams and then going out there and implementing that, and to some degree, I've kinda kinda done that. So being able to spend, these priceless moments with my family, like, in Hawaii or or, you know, doing some type of retreat or something with my team or being able to fly one of my team members that's, you know, done a special job to Hawaii or to Mexico. And just having that, ability to to choose, like, what I do with my time and who I spend my time with and what I do with all that is a big big reason well, the big motivating factor for me.

And right alongside that is my family, my mom and dad. They work you know, they're immigrants, you know, from Mexico. They came here. They allowed me to have an amazing opportunity to, you know, be here. So I'm very grateful for that.

So, you know, taking care of them is is extremely important. So I'd say just having the freedom and the choices that, having more resources and where that passive income or more active income or what real estate provides is something that is my big why is that freedom. And then my family, my mom and dad, and you know, I'm being closer to my brothers.

Steve: What's your biggest struggle right now?

Alex: Right now, it it's I think this eighteenth unit has taken them a good amount of capital along with, you know, kind of the additional we're we're rehabbing seven of the of the vacancies that we have of the 18 units. So we saw value add play. So I think, just that, a large amount of capital investment we've had in that one has also, put a little bit of less liquidity in for some of the other projects we have going. So I think, you know, on one side, it is kind of a challenge. On the other side, we operate much more resourcefully.

Right? Where I think when things are all constantly on the upside, you tend to be a little bit more wasteful or maybe not looking at all the, you know, the maybe we're we're we don't need this additional charge of this and that. So I think it was really right now, just the capital allocation that is is is right now being a little bit of a challenge. But, you know, we have four properties that we're right about to sell. And so that the challenge is constantly changed.

Like, in three weeks from now, that probably won't be the same answer.

Steve: Yeah. But right

Alex: now, do that.

Speaker: No. And I love that. Right? Like, I I think the challenges will consistently change. So if you had asked us this question, you know, a couple months ago, it would have been completely different than it is now.

And I think, like Alex said, in in the future, that'll probably shift as well. But echoing what Alex said, I think the biggest struggle or challenge that we're having right now is, again, we're doing business in multiple states. You know, Alex is traveling. I'm traveling. We're doing virtual stuff.

So really taking a step back and and making sure that the team is all structured and going in that same goal and knows which way the goal is because we've had the goal, you know, kinda shift. Like, hey. We're acquiring properties. Now we're looking at this multifamily. So making sure that everybody still knows the alignment.

They say, you know, when an airplane goes a degree off course, it can get that plane over, you know, 80 to a 100 miles off its destination. And so, you know, when you see the the market shift and you see these other out you know, outlying sources come in your main business, it's it's do we want to go that far off of business and how can we quickly realign?

Steve: Yep. How will you know when you're successful?

Speaker: Love that one. That's a great question. I will know personally when I'm successful when I do not have to work, but I can make the choice to work. Right? So when I know, hey, you know, it's done.

Like, I I could I could walk off into the sunset right now, but I would find success being in the position to say that I could do that, but that I still want more.

Alex: I would say I I feel successful now because of some of the impact I've made on other people in our tribe and people that we've helped get their first deal. And, you know, we don't have a formal coaching or ment you know, paid coaching or mentorship program. But I really derive a lot of satisfaction pushing people to get their first deal or to grow their, you know, their past that first deal because I remember what it was when I first started. And then, what I've been able to kinda do in these five years, I feel like, you know, a lot of people could do so. I I feel successful now.

There's still a lot of goals that I have. But the reason I say that I feel successful now is because I get the DMs. You know, I get people that, you know, that it makes my day. I'm like, hey. You know, I've been watching for, you know, a year, and then I I started to make some offers where I did this and fill in whatever that is.

And getting those messages are are are very fulfilling because you've, made an impact or you you're able to influence other people to improve their life. And for me, that that's super valuable because just

Speaker: trying to

Alex: pay it forward, especially because I feel like, overall, it was very difficult for me to get this information. And and so I'm almost like, I I got this secret, so I wanna let it all go and give everybody a chance to also, you know, improve their life through real estate investing. So yeah.

Steve: I can see that means a lot to you. Was there a time where you're having a hard time getting that information from from other people?

Alex: Yeah. Like, when I my path along the way of working for other investors and just this constant feeling like, hey. They're just, like you know, they would, like, kind of lie to me sometimes, like, about what they spend on rehab or they wouldn't want me to learn something specifically. And it was always kinda like this feeling of, like, man, you guys are just kinda using me. And I didn't like that.

And I don't want anybody to ever work with me to feel like that. Like, I'm just, you know, kinda using them to get, you know, increase my wealth or something. Right? It's like and so, yeah, that's I'm passionate about that because I I feel like this business also is like the good old, you know, the good old boys club where where right It

Steve: wasn't a really long time.

Alex: Had the information. And now with the Internet and, you know, all the other stuff that's happening, there's a lot more information out there. So I think that that's why I'm passionate about it because I felt, like, along the my path that, like, I was like the underdog. Like, people didn't really want me to come up. People didn't wanna give me all the information, but I was constantly in search.

I was constantly learning. And I've always put the learning above the money. And now, like, now I don't have to worry that much about that side of things because of how much I learned, and then now I'm just sharing that.

Steve: So I can take action. Awesome. What is your superpower?

Alex: I thought about this because I I know I knew that you're probably gonna ask this question, but I think creating connections is something that, I'm I'm great at, the genuine ones. I think people resonate with, the way I kind of approach, the business. And so I think building connections has been one of my superpowers. Yeah.

Speaker: And I'll echo that. I mean, you know, probably my superpower would be bringing life and energy into the room. Right? Being in being in that room with people and being able to create, you know, influences, create introductions, create business deals, create team members through your energy and your activity.

Steve: Yeah. And I've definitely experienced that, right, being being around you. What is the greatest lesson you have learned?

Speaker: From real estate?

Steve: In general.

Speaker: In general. Man, the biggest lesson I have learned is to do onto others as you would want to have done onto you. You know, a lot of times in business, you'll find that opportunity, like Alex said, where, you know, you can kind of, you know, hold somebody else back. And, you know, like he said, he left those opportunities because that wasn't how he would have wanted to have been treated. Right?

So I, you know, I I think that that's the golden rule for a reason. Right? And, if you treat people a certain way, you'll just happen to notice that that kind of reciprocates back to you.

Steve: You You know,

Speaker: if you're really happy with everybody, you'll just start to notice, like, oh, like, everybody's such in a, you know, a happy mood. If you notice, like, man, I really wanna drive a red Ferrari. You know, you're gonna drive around and you're like, dude, I've seen five red Ferraris today.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: You know, because you're putting that out there. And so if you put out quality interactions, quality, communications, and quality, you know, creations of of relationships with people, I think that will ultimately lead you to success. So if you do on to other people how you would wanna have done to you, I think that's the the biggest lesson that I can take, out of life so far today.

Steve: Yeah. I think for me, the variation of that, right, when someone's like, man, like, everyone's a jerk, it's like,

Speaker: that'd

Steve: be a reason

Speaker: for that.

Steve: How about you, Alex? That's a

Alex: great question. I think what comes to mind is that change, that you have the power to change your not only yourself, but your environment.

Speaker: And I

Alex: think too many people settle for the life that they'd be given or the cards or, you know, input, whatever challenge that you have, and they just use that as an excuse, to not take action.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Alex: And I think, that my life has changed because I was very purposeful of where I wanted to go, and I was always willing to put in the work. So I think it comes down to you to just taking that mindset of, like, I can change, I can improve, I can do better, I can do this. And then, you know, your environment will slowly change because your actions will change. So I think, for me, that's very important because if I'm next year the same person I am right now, Steve, then I've completely failed. You know?

Even if I'm the same person next month than I am right now, I think I've failed. So I'm constantly looking up how I can get better because I know that I have faults. I know that I I have a lot of things that I can, you know, get better at. And so, I think that's very important to recognize, like, where are the changes in your life that you can implement right now, that could make those those improvements and and then get you to where you wanna go. So changes.

Steve: There's a lot of pressure on yourself for personal development. Yeah.

Speaker: I'll check-in with you next month then. I expect a a bigger, better

Speaker: version of you. Alright?

Steve: I want an essay. I want a five paragraph essay on on what where you've grown.

Speaker: Yeah.

Steve: What was your what has been your favorite best or most interesting failure? Failure?

Speaker: Mhmm. I would

Alex: say for in some regard, it's like the Hawaii, you know, operation as a whole. I feel like, you know, we haven't quite hit where we wanted to go when we originally, you know, got there and and the deals that we did there. But it's been such a magical experience to to to live in Hawaii, to enjoy the the beautiful place that it is, get to know the vibe and areas. So, I think on the business side, we've kind of failed in some ways. Even though we got some great deals and we haven't lost any money, I can't say that we failed failed.

But what I wanted to do and compare to actually what happened, I think it was a very interesting but fun failure that, ultimately grew all of us. And, you know, we have property that you'd like to go to Maui. Let me know, Steve. I gotcha.

Steve: I mean, I have my eye on that Clint Eastwood house. Do you know who I'm talking about? Mhmm.

Alex: Closet Miller.

Steve: Did it listed recently? Oh, no. It's not listed. It's just, like, it's just out by itself. It's far out on the water.

Right? I mean, it's just, I can't remember what hotels it is. Like, Princess one of those five star hotels in Maui, right, for our ten year anniversary. And it's like this one house that's just out by itself, surrounded by nothing but beach in all directions.

Speaker: I don't

Alex: know where that's at. Wow. I can't believe that.

Steve: So that's confusing. I could find figure out what to say that.

Speaker: Well, my biggest failure is not knowing where that house is because when you get that thing under contract.

Steve: Yeah. We'll we'll get

Speaker: it in

Alex: a couple weeks when we go to Maui.

Steve: So what what about you, Will? Favorite, best, or most interesting failure?

Speaker: Yeah. Favorite failure for me was, you know, I actually before I got started in the Los Angeles Chargers and the NFL job I have and before I I got started with real estate, I was actually a nightlife, VIP host, a nightlife promoter. And, I'll say probably one of my biggest failures was my exit from the last night club I worked at. I, you know, had a great relationship with this this, night club. And when my father had a heart attack and he's per to perfectly fine now, so everything is, you know, good and and recovered.

But when he had a heart attack, the relationship I had with that nightclub deteriorated, and it deteriorated very quickly. And I think, that was ultimately one of my biggest failures was not knowing or not being able to see how to stop that from happening. Mhmm.

Steve: So what did you learn from it?

Speaker: Well, I learned, obviously, you know, like what Alex said is that sometimes people don't have your best intentions at their heart.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Right? Sometimes there are people that are looking out for themselves first and you second. And so that provided me the opportunity to say, you know, hey, where this might have felt super secure, it really wasn't. Right? Because the two cards were played, and and the security was not there.

Steve: Yeah. And I think there's a lot of people maybe listening to this podcast that think they have a safe job

Speaker: Mhmm.

Steve: And, might need to hear that message. Yeah. What is, what book have you gifted more than any other Will?

Speaker: Man, biggest, book for me, probably gonna be Split the Difference. You know, when you talk about a sales book, the guy's an FBI negotiator. And when I read Split the Difference, it really set my sales career in a different trajectory. It was, hey, you're not pushing a product, but you're more asking questions to find a solution. And if the solution happens to be your product, then you have a win win situation there.

And if it is not your product, then that's not a bad thing either. Yep. That just means, hey, you guys aren't doing business together. And and you can amicably say, hey. I appreciate your time.

I appreciate your pitch. This wasn't for me. Let's go different ways.

Steve: So let me shoot a hypothetical of you. Yeah. Alright. So let's just say I convince Chris Voss to do an event with me. Right?

Day one, I talk about sales. Day two, he talks about negotiations. What's a reasonable price to charge for that?

Speaker: Reasonable would be I mean, I think

Steve: restate that. Maximum price. Yeah. Because,

Speaker: kinda, because I was gonna say reasonable and and what it's worth, they're two different things there. Right? Like, reasonable would be anything, you know, over 50,000, I would pay because, again, that's two days, back to back days with arguably one of the better sales trainers and arguably one of the better negotiators in the country. Right? So, you know, Alex and I have have, I think what do we spend on on coaching and mentorship this year?

Close to $50,000. I mean At

Alex: least 40. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. At least $40,000. I mean, like, I think somewhere in between, you know, 5 to $25,000 is is, you know, gonna be pretty fair. And I would say it really depend on how big the room is. Right?

Is it Yeah. 25 people that have that one on one time?

Steve: If I do that, I'm gonna shoot for at least a 100 people.

Speaker: Yeah. Or exactly. And even if it's a 100 people. Right? I mean, like, a 100 people, you're gonna have a one on one connection with Steve.

You're gonna have a one on one connection with boss. You're gonna have a one on one connection with four to five, ten, 15 other people in that room. Like, what is what are those connections worth?

Steve: Yeah. So it's good to know because I just found out that I'm super connected with a guy that's friends with him.

Speaker: There you go.

Alex: That's a fantastic book.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. What about you?

Alex: My, most gifted book would be the book I mentioned earlier, which is Mastery by Robert Greene. I read it perhaps it was at that pivotal point where I was just, you know, this when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And I I already liked some of his other writing, but what it did for me was it got me into this mindset of, you know, you have to really if to become a master or something and be the one of the greats, you know, ever, there's these, like, paths there that other people have already done. And the what I liked about the book so much was that it gave examples of previous masters, like, you know, Leonardo da Vinci and then gave examples of modern day masters. There was this other jet fighter guy that was in there and, some lady that designed, cattle equipment for, for cattle and other types of breeding, you know, livestock and whatnot.

But it was just so interesting that they all had, like, little different paths, but there was something kind of in common that they, you know, that they all did. And and just I approached mentors differently after that. I approached, like, the the grind differently after that because I listened to the book and I also read it. And, it's just very deep. It's a very meaty book.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Alex: Not easy to just, like, read, like, you know, some books are easier to read than others. Yeah. But Robert goes very in he goes in detail with a lot of stuff and a lot of his books are written off of historical figures and data and things like that. So he really does his research. And so that that book was just, like, one of my favorite books I recommend to a lot of people.

Because even if you don't try to become a master real estate investor, like, it gives you the perspective, like, what can you go out there and be, like,

Speaker: one of

Alex: the best in the world at?

Steve: I'm gonna have to check that out because, you know, 48 Laws of Power, very interesting book. And there's some things in there that maybe is best people don't know.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Steve: But, yeah, I'll have to definitely check out that book. Yeah.

Alex: It's different. It's because 48 laws of power, I think, is a lot of flack because the the some of the laws conflict with each other and kind of, like, almost, like, manipulation and things like that. Right? But mastery is different.

Steve: Alright. I think. Yeah. Yeah. So Check

Alex: it out.

Steve: Question from Gary Citarian. So he's asking this for me, but I'd love to hear it from you guys. So how often do you how often do you celebrate your wins? Truthfully, another one of my failures, I don't celebrate wins enough. You know?

My team got me a trophy as soon as we were there to to celebrate, you know, our our our year so far, but I don't celebrate my wins enough. And it's sadly one of the things I I I still do need to actively work on. So for you, how often are you celebrating your wins?

Alex: Well, I kinda I'm kinda spoiled in that regard that I kinda designed my life in a way where I get to do cool stuff pretty often and I kinda plug it into my schedule. Actually, I plug it in every week on Sundays, like, two or three three cool things that I wanna do for myself. And that could be going on a hike in Hollywood Hills. That could be going for a snorkel, you know, in Maui with if I'm there. That could be going to visit my aunt if I'm in Mexico.

Steve: That's doing cool things. That's different. Right? But, like, how often are you celebrating, like, wins? Were there team victories, accomplishments?

Alex: I'd say we we do that at least once a quarter because, like, for example, one of our things is, if you once you get your first acquisition with us, if you're in the acquisitions department, then we'll we'll fly you to Maui and have, you know, got team trip there. So, we we do it quite often. I say we do it at least every quarter.

Steve: And we're

Alex: pretty good at it. Yeah. Let's

Speaker: go. Come bring us that deal. We'll we'll we'll fly you out

Alex: to Hawaii.

Speaker: I'll echo what Alex said. I mean, for our acquisitions team, we're constantly doing the the Maui trips and and celebrations. But, for example, like, you know, on our weekly team meeting, this this week, we probably spent about thirty minutes of the meeting just going over how big of a team win our recent meetup was.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: You know, it wasn't Alex and I. It we we basically both showed up. You know, we got there a couple you know, an hour before the event started, but it was the team, everybody behind there. And so we spent a good half hour of our entire, you know, all hands on, all staff, you know, level 10 meeting just kinda going over how cool of a win that was. And, you know, obviously, there are bonuses that we'll give out to some of our virtual team members that can't, you know, be a part of those celebrations in person.

But but celebrating the team is very important for us because, you know, again, we want to work with a plus players. And what we found is that people that are a plus players wanna be celebrated in public and in private. Yeah. Right? Like, that's just something that that they want.

Right?

Alex: Yeah. Recognition is extremely important because for some people, that's almost as important as compensation.

Speaker: As financial gain.

Alex: Yeah. Because, if you're not gonna pay someone well, like, for example, if you have somebody that's interning for you or somebody's getting started, they're probably not gonna make a ton of money. So if they do a great job of stuff, you should be recognizing them because, they're not getting the other side of things. Right? Right.

You know, and I also look at the other flip side of that where, like, hey, if you're getting paid extremely well, then maybe you don't need as much recognition because you're getting the paycheck too. Right. But now we're all wired a little bit different. And I think that for me, recognition is important. And once again, I probably would have stayed at that the company longer if I would have gotten just a better a little bit better compensation package and more recognition.

Steve: Yeah. That was absolutely true. So I want you guys to think about what you wanna leave the listeners with, while I make a couple of quick announcements. Guys, if you guys got value today, please like, subscribe, share, comment, leave a five star review on iTunes. And then we do have our sales disruptors coming up in a couple of weeks.

Will and Alex got a chance to check it out and, you know, got half $1,000,000 worth of value. So, you know, if if you guys are willing to invest in yourselves, check that out. We got part in the disruption tomorrow, and we got certainty talks on Friday. And next week, we got Forest Blackburn who helped Tarek build his wholesaling business. Right?

So if you wanna learn from the guy that helped Tarek build his wholesaling business, check out check us out next week. Alright. So last thoughts, I'll start with, Will.

Speaker: Yeah. I mean, I I, I'd spoken about this at our meetup that we had, you know, last week in Los Angeles, but, the one big takeaway I would give is, you know, not giving up when you're three feet away from gold. Right? Like, you you know, we had it in our business. Right?

We hit that four months. It was, hey, man. Like, is this working? Is it working? And if we would have given up right there, like, would we be here today?

Steve: Yeah. You

Speaker: know, and it's it's it's you're three feet from gold. So my biggest piece of advice to anybody listening in today would be, you know, if you are putting in the grind, putting in the work, don't stop. You know, give it that extra day. Give it that extra call. The power of that one extra call, the power of that one extra connection, the power of that one extra meetup, you know, it really can create alignment and and growth for you that you'd never understand if you give up.

Alex: K. So one big thing for me is is taking action. Right? Four a little more than four years ago, Steve, I was on the other side of that camera watching you interview amazing people. Now I'm on stage here actually being interviewed.

And why is that? It's because I took daily action. You know, I became obsessed about being great at something. You know, and you I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about being great at something.

And so to do that, you have to put in your reps. You have to go out there and take steps and you're gonna go through adversity. But the thing is, if you're clear about where you wanna go, it'll help you deal with that adversity. And we live in an incredible country where you have all the opportunity in the world. So take advantage of it.

Don't squander, you know, your talents. Like, I knew I was great on on certain parts of this business, so I leaned into that. You might be great somewhere other part of the business, but just lean into it, take action, get around the right people, but there's no excuses for not succeeding. Because we all can make excuses. We all have them.

But I never made an excuse. I grew up super poor. I grew up, you know, humble beginnings, but I made it twice already because of action and then just being obsessed and be wanna be great at something. So, hopefully, you guys can go be out there and be great, and and our message, you know, resonates with you guys.

Steve: Yeah. And I I really appreciate you sharing that. I mean, two of the things I love hearing, and I think I heard the other one earlier, is that you you saw the show. You watched the show. You listened to it.

It's like, man, one day I'm gonna be on it. You guys did that. Congratulations. That's awesome. And for me, I love like, that's one of the most fulfilling things for me.

The other thing Josh said is I owe you guys plaques. Alright?

Speaker: Okay.

Steve: Is that accurate?

Speaker: Yep. Yeah.

Steve: Right. That's the other thing. So, guys, if you're watching, you know, like, I you know, put that on your vision board. Do whatever you guys have to do to inspire yourself to motivate yourself because, like, for me, like, that is the the the thing that's most fulfilling for me to hear. Hey.

We wanna be on a show. Now we're on a show. Hey. I wanna be a millionaire. Now I'm a millionaire.

Like, that for me is incredibly rewarding. So thank you guys for for sharing that with me.

Alex: Absolutely, Steve. Thank you for your time.

Speaker: Steve.

Steve: Thank you, guys. Thank you all. See you all tomorrow.

Steve: Shout out to Steve Trane. Jump on the Steve Trane. We real estate disruptors.