How to Become a Millionaire Before 30

Abdullah Ghaffar: 99% of people, they're scared. I'm scared to take that leap. Like, oh, what if what if my, what's my boyfriend, my girlfriend, my my father, my my family, my friends? What are they gonna think of me? I feel like you only have you only live once, you only have one life.

So as long as you wake up and God gives you a breath, you gotta show up. You know, my dad used to work three different jobs, drive taxi cabs. We used to work at a restaurant, you know, wash dishes and bathrooms and also deliver newspapers in the morning. You know, living in that one bedroom apartment with three younger brothers and my mom, I really didn't get to see him a lot. You know?

Knowing that, hey. I need to make something happen over my life.

Steve Trang: Okay. And so you got to grow up watching the parents work really hard, multiple jobs. Exactly. And you were saying they weren't really around. Exactly.

Where does real estate fit into all this? Everybody, thank you for joining us for today's episode of real estate disruptors. So we have Abdullah Ghaffar with National Fast Offer, and he flew in from Chicago to talk about how he became a millionaire before the age of 30. That was my goal when I started. I missed that one terribly, so congratulations on doing that.

Guys, I am on a mission to create a 100 millionaires. The information on the show alone is enough to help you become a millionaire in the next five to seven years. If you'll take consistent action, you'll become one. And the show is brought to you by our sister company, Investor Lift. Get access to millions of cash buyers across the country.

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Abdullah: Thanks for having me out here, man.

Steve: Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm looking forward to this show. So first question is, what was your life like right before you got into real estate?

Abdullah: Gotcha. So well, my parents are immigrants. Right? Mhmm. So when I started off, I was in a one bedroom apartment.

You know, my dad used to work three different jobs. He used to drive taxi cabs. He used to work at a restaurant, you know, wash dishes and bathrooms, and also deliver newspapers in the morning. Right? So, you know, living in that one bedroom apartment with three younger brothers and my mom, I really didn't get to see him a lot.

You know? So I was there till eight years old. So just knowing that, hey. I need to make something happen over my life. You know?

And then as soon as I went to high school, you know, graduated that, went to college, and then I got into information technology. So I got, you know, into IT. I got my business analyst certification. Mhmm. So yeah.

Then I got my BA, job. So I was making a $125 a year. So I was doing fairly well for myself. But yet again, I was in corporate America, and I was just a slave. And after making a 125,000, even paying your own rent, you're, you know, living a, you know, decent life, expenses after taxes.

What are you really saving? Mhmm. And, you know, I was doing that for two years and I had nothing to show for it. You know? Yeah.

So it

Steve: was like, that's what I

Abdullah: was doing. So I quit that, and I didn't really have a good time with it. So I quit that, and and I just became a pizza delivery driver. So I was, you know, driving for Little Caesars.

Steve: Right. You quit the job, deliver pizza? Yeah. So you didn't deliver pizza on the side? No.

Okay.

Abdullah: I quit that a 100%, quit, and then I just went, you know because thing is I was in Kansas City, Missouri Mhmm. For that job opportunity. You know? So I left my family. I'm born and raised in Chicago.

So I left that because I didn't really find good opportunity there. Mhmm. So but I had a really good opportunity in Kansas. So I went there, left my family. I was living by myself and and all that good stuff.

You know? It has its perks, but you miss your mom's cooking. You know? For sure. So So

Steve: you said, immigrant family. So where's your family from?

Abdullah: Pakistan. Pakistan. Yeah.

Steve: Gotcha. Okay. And so you got to grow up watching your parents work really hard, multiple jobs.

Abdullah: Exactly. And you

Steve: were saying they weren't really around.

Abdullah: Exactly.

Steve: Gotcha. So, you go deliver pizza. Where does real estate fit into all this?

Abdullah: So while I was delivering pizza, I was on YouTube. Right? Rather than listening to music, I started watching YouTube channels, you know, YouTube videos Mhmm. And getting into real estate because I've learned that the most millionaires are made in real estate.

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: Right? As everyone knows. So I was like, how do I get into this? The route I was gonna take was, you know, becoming an agent, getting my license, all that stuff. So while I was looking into it, I found Brand Daniels Mhmm.

TTP. Right? The loudest guy in this space, I believe.

Steve: Image on terror are the two, the loudest people inside our space, which is awesome. I wish I was the loudest now.

Abdullah: He got me started. So I watched some of his video. He said just talk to more people. That's all you have to do. And just buy a list from PropStream, which he had his own referral code, right, affiliate code.

So I was like, you know, let's let's buy it. It was like a seven day free trial. Mhmm. So I got that and, bought some list for, like, $300. I got started with $300.

Alright. Right? So I got I bought a list, and I just started cold calling myself on my free time. And eight months in, after eight months, I got my first deal. I made which made me $2,000.

Steve: But it was 2,000.

Abdullah: 2,000. So eight months, I'm I'm I'm dry. I got nothing going on. You know? So after that, I was like

Steve: Were you delivering pizza this whole time? Yep. Okay.

Abdullah: I'm delivering pizza. Right? And I'm barely making anything. You know? I was just like

Steve: describe the struggle here. Were you back home in Chicago?

Abdullah: Yeah. Back to my family.

Steve: Were you living with your parents? Yep.

Abdullah: Living with

Steve: my parents. College, had a 6 figure job, quit that, went to go live with your parents to deliver pizza and do real estate on the side.

Abdullah: Yep. So I didn't graduate college completely.

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: I got into the IT industry. So I got my business analyst certification.

Steve: I see.

Abdullah: Yeah. So I got my cert. And with that cert, I got the opportunity to get into the IT industry.

Steve: Okay.

Abdullah: And then but I left that, came back home, right, which is like, hey. I'm downgrading now where I have my own place, got my own car, got my everything going on for myself, left that, come back home, and deliver pizza. So

Steve: How was that conversation?

Abdullah: It's not it's tough with your family. Like, what are you doing? You know? Every day, they're like, what are you doing with your life? I was like Yeah.

Steve: Because we had, we had Sherrod in the show last week. Right? Sherrod met, with Ari Simply. And, so, if I remember correctly, Indian descent. So, you know, Asian descent.

Right? Like us. And, it's I was like, how was that conversation with your parents when you quit? And you they were like it was like, I mean, they were supportive.

Abdullah: Now what They didn't

Steve: understand it. They thought I was crazy, but they were supportive.

Abdullah: Yeah. My friends are straight, man. So yeah. So it was tough. Every day, I'm something to hear, you know, something new.

Right? It's the same old stuff. Right? But it's like well, you get used to it. You know?

You're like, hey. I'm living my life. I'm living for myself. Right? I do want best for my family, but I I know there's another way out.

You know? I don't wanna go back to corporate America and just slave my life away. Because what it is, yeah, you'll make money, but you get stuck in that system. Mhmm. You know?

So

Steve: Yeah. Once you're locked in, it's hard to get out. So eight months in, you do your first deal is $2,000. Tell me about that first deal.

Abdullah: So that first deal, it wasn't even about the money. It was about the concept. So I approved the concept. Right? I know wholesaling works.

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: And throughout the eight months, I was getting contracts. You know, I was, like, two, three months, and I had one deal. And in the beginning, you don't even know what to do. How to open up escrow? How to put EMD?

Who puts the EMD? You know? Mhmm. Like, you're putting a $100 on EMD. So you know?

And then who do I contact? Which title company is even friendly? You know? So this whole it was a mess. You know?

So I lost a few deals that way. But eight months in, that contract that I had, I kinda understood the process. Okay. Hit up the attorney. Give them that agreement.

Put the EMD. Right? The buyer puts and then you can start marketing because you can't market a property without a contractor. So how to get all the understanding? Because I'm like, oh, you wanna sell?

Cool. Let me ask someone around. You know? Let me try doing something, put off fees in marketplace or something. You can't really do that.

You need us, you know, actual agreement so you could market the property. So all this but once I got the process done, right, prove the concept, and then after that, I started scaling the business. Mhmm. Right? I started my second year, I made 40,000.

Steve: So your first deal was 2,000. When did you officially start trying to wholesale?

Abdullah: It was back in, like, 2017.

Steve: 2017. So you started wholesale in 2017, and then you do your first deal. It's $2,000. And this first deal that closes, you have multiple deals that didn't close. So what was it about this deal that made it work?

Man, it was the homeowner wanted

Abdullah: to sell. Right? And luckily, I actually JV'd with somebody. So he made 2,000. I made 2,000.

And he just got it. He's like, hey. I have a buyer, you know, after, all the proceeds, after paying attorney fees, closing costs, this, we're making 4,000. And it was, like, $50.50. You know?

So it was, like, it was the stress situation. You know? That's how we get paid to solve problems. It was cold calling.

Steve: I was

Abdullah: cold calling myself.

Steve: What list?

Abdullah: It was, absentee. Absentee. The PropStream? Yeah. PropStream.

Steve: Gotcha. Okay. So you do your first deal. Yeah. It's real.

What happens after that?

Abdullah: Once you know it's real, once you know something works, you go all in. So that's what I did. I was like, okay. Cool. Whatever money I have saved up, whatever money I have, okay, let me invest into the company.

You know? Because your biggest investment is yourself. Right? So you guys say, hey. I gotta invest in myself.

I gotta invest in my business. Right? Because at 2,000, I could've went done, you know, anything with it. Right? You could've gone, gone on, get some nice steak, you know, take take some you know, take out the family, do this, do that, and then back to being zero.

Right? I took that money, reinvested it, got more list, started cold calling, you know, and got my brother on. Me and brother were started cold calling. Mhmm. Second year end, we made 40,000.

We did a few deals. Third year, we got cold callers. Right? So now we're okay. We're like, hey.

If you wanna expand this because, you know, everyone has those lazy days. Right? Yeah. And the day that you wanna go on vacation, the day you wanna, you know, take a little break, guess what? Mhmm.

When you stop working, the business stops working. Right? Right. So I was like, how do I automate this? How do I get, you know, leads coming in without me being present?

So, you know, coming from the IT industry and learning systems, processes, and people, I'd brought that and I brought it to the real estate space. Mhmm. Right? So I put, systems in place. Right?

Put a CRM in place. Because before it was just all cold calling using Google Sheets. Right? Yeah. Then we got a CRM in place.

Then we got processes. Like, what's our SOPs? What are the roles and responsibilities for our company? What am I gonna do? What are you gonna do?

Right? What are our employees gonna do? Right? So he's like, okay. I could pull the list.

I'm like, hey. These are tedious tasks. You know? We need someone else to do this stuff. We need to focus on the bigger picture, money producing activities.

Right? Where it's like where it's acquisitions. Where it's like, hey. Getting on the phone, talking to warm leads, building rapport, negotiating, sending the contract, and popping it off to investor.

Steve: Who's helping you with all this?

Abdullah: Me, myself, and then my brother came in after. You know? It's me and my brother. We're we're the only ones doing it.

Steve: I mean, are you learning all this from YouTube? Did you have a mentor along the way? YouTube University.

Abdullah: You know? It's free. And back then, you know, you really don't have that much capital. You know? So in the beginning, it was all YouTube.

And then I started investing in mentors. You know, once I made it was, like, my third year in business. I started investing. Gave

Steve: Three years. Yeah. Gotcha. Why was it three years?

Abdullah: Because I thought I could do it myself. Right? And you could do it yourself between extent. Right? You can make ten, fifteen thousand dollars a month yourself.

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: But if you wanna do hundred k months, you need someone that's already there. Because what it is, like, if you find a mentor that's already doing it, you just skip those hurdles. Mhmm. Right? And now I'm actually, you know, a fanatic when it comes to mentorships.

Whenever I get into a different business like Airbnb, I paid someone that already has a 100 doors. I'm like, hey. Help me skip those hurdles because I'm gonna spend I'm gonna lose more than a $100,000

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: Just learning these processes. Right?

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: So it's like Airbnb, rideshare. I have 73 cars for rideshare. Same type of concept. Any business that I do now, I get a mentor right away because I could just skip those hurdles.

Steve: What happened if you didn't close your first deal?

Abdullah: I would have been delivering pizzas. You know? I don't know where I would be. You know?

Steve: Yeah.

Abdullah: But, now where I'm at today.

Steve: So you do I mean, you got your first deal. It's real. You go all in. Did you quit your other job, the delivering pizza at that point? Because it's only $2,000.

Abdullah: Yeah. So, yeah, I did quit because I was like, hey. This is real. I need to go all in. And I had a few $100 saved up.

You know? My brother was working at Dunkin' Donuts, so he had a few thousand dollars saved up. And we're like, hey. We have enough capital to where we just sit down and just call all day. Yeah.

Right? So, this deal, it was small deal, the $2,000, but our next deal was, like, 8,000. Then it was, like, 6,000. Then it just went higher and higher. Right?

Steve: What market was this all in?

Abdullah: This is all in Chicago.

Steve: All in Chicago. Yeah. And at this point, were you a licensed realtor? I guess the regulations hadn't come at you. What were some of the biggest struggles in those first few years?

Also

Abdullah: Man, it's just staying consistent. You already know how it goes, man. It's like hitting those phones every day for months, for eight hours a day, for three, four, five, six months. You know, even the eight months that I was doing it without getting a contract, without, you know, closing something, it's tough. You know?

Yeah.

Steve: So How'd you get through it?

Abdullah: Man, to be man, to be honest, it was prayer. You know, it was prayer. My parents praying for me. Right? Because they're like, hey.

I hope you do something with your life and Mhmm. Not do, you know, pizza not deliver pizza. So they're praying for me, and we're really big into faith. Right? So it's like we pray five times a day.

So it's like me praying myself, like, hey, God. Help me, you know, improve in my life. You know? Give me the knowledge to Yeah. Exceed in this business.

So

Steve: You still pray five times a day?

Abdullah: Oh, yeah.

Steve: You have

Abdullah: to, man. Always thankful for everything we have. You know?

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. What are some of your biggest victories from when you started where you are today?

Abdullah: Man, it's a blessing. Now I have over eight companies. Right? We're doing each company is automated. Right?

They're doing anywhere from 6 to 7 figures annually. I have over 30 rentals. I'm doing fix and flips. You know, everything, man. It's a blessing.

Just life in general. You know?

Steve: Any concerns? You're trying to do too many things?

Abdullah: Man, not really. You know? Because I feel like you only have you only live once. You only have one life. So as long as you wake up and God gives you a breath, you know, because the biggest blessing is us waking up tomorrow morning because there's no guarantee.

Right? So that's it's inevitable. We all gotta die. Right? So it's like what they say in my religion is that, hey, if you wake up and you just show up, that's it.

Let everything else is in God's hands. Right? So it's just like me waking up, and I'm like, yeah, I wanna do this. I wanna start my own CRM. I wanna you know?

So I'm like, okay. Cool. Let me hire a developer. Let me do something. You know?

Just me waking up every day's progress. Right? So it's just like so I feel like I'm just getting started at 28 years old. Mhmm. So, you know

Steve: I mean, it's kinda crazy what you've done in in in by 28 years old. So, you talk about, you know, eight different companies. Actually, before you go through eight different companies, you never kinda joking before the show. Yeah. They jumped through some hurdles.

Yeah. For those that are listening and enlighten them on the hurdles you had

Abdullah: to jump through. Man, all types of hurdles.

Steve: What time would I like to get onto the show?

Abdullah: Oh, man. This is not an easy show to get onto. Right? Only the realest of the realest disruptors get the opportunity to come speak, you know, especially with you. So it took me about a year to get on, you know, sending over my deeds, my clothing statements, and, you know, it it was a process.

But I'm glad I'm here. I'm blessed to be here speaking with you.

Steve: I'm glad you're here. I appreciate you being here. But, like, just to kinda, like, reiterate, like, I could just put anybody on the show. Right? I could.

And, you know, they could pay we could charge a larger fee and all this other stuff. But, like, for me, it's so important, right, that to have the right people of the right character come on to the show. And, like, this is 2023 now, so we're we're doing a little bit better now with the quality of the show. But, like, it's first few years we left some people on, and in the middle of the show, I was like, dang it. How'd this one slip through?

Yeah. Right? So, yeah, we go through the strenuous process. Because I I say that because we're gonna be talking about now. So you've got eight different companies.

Right? And you kinda you kinda went through each one of them. So let's start. What was the very first company?

Abdullah: It was real estate wholesaling. That's where everything started from. Mhmm. Right? So that real estate wholesaling gave me the opportunity to build capital to get into other businesses.

Mhmm. Right? And then after that, I got into rentals. I bought my first rental for, like, ten thousand dollars in the South Side Of Chicago. Right?

South Side Of Chicago. South Side Of Chicago. Place where you can't really you know, Us agents, we can't really walk around. You know? Yeah.

It's it's dangerous. You know?

Steve: So I've been in Chicago a couple of times, and it's fascinating to me because I'm I mean, in Phoenix. Right? Like, East Valley, we're pretty good. Like, this pretty hard to get in trouble in the East Valley, around walk through the wrong part of the streets or around parts of town. But But when I was in Chicago with some friends, they're like, yeah.

We don't cross this street. Like, really? Like, it's just a street. It's not a block. It's not a city.

It's like, we don't cross this street. Wow.

Abdullah: Yeah. That's what it is in Chicago also. There's No.

Steve: I'm saying that's Chicago. Yeah. That's when they were when they were when we were walking around Chicago, like

Abdullah: third. Yeah.

Steve: Wherever he was renting, he was like, do not walk over there. I was

Abdullah: like Yeah.

Steve: How do you feel safe living over here? He's like, they don't cross the street?

Abdullah: Yeah. Wow. Okay. Each street's a different gang. So they're like, in Chicago, suppose, like, sixty third is fighting with sixty fifth.

They're like, you know, it's like every block is fighting with each other. It's it's crazy. Insane.

Steve: Yeah.

Abdullah: It's dangerous. You

Steve: know? So you're buying $10,000 properties in Chicago, South Side Chicago. What are you doing with these properties?

Abdullah: So, man, in the beginning, we're just buying them and putting them section a rentals. Right? So we're buying them, and then we're finding contractors or just like handyman, right, in by Home Depot and telling them, hey. Would you, like, you know, do this job for us? We just wanna basically fix it up so we could put it on rent.

Right? My first property, again, hurdles. You know? It didn't really go so well. You know?

I got robbed by contractors. And then once I did find someone to do, like, the drywall, the paint, now we have a tenant in there who's not paying because we didn't really go to Section 8 right right away.

Steve: So the contractor robbed you. How did the contractor rob you?

Abdullah: Man, we told him, come on. You know, fix up the property. Yeah. We could do it. I need 2,000 upfront.

Yeah. I'll get the materials. Yeah. No worries. And next thing you know, he doesn't show up.

Steve: You get $2? Yeah. That's 20% of that purchase. Yeah.

Abdullah: So yeah, man. Especially back then, you you know, we didn't really have that much capital. We're like, hey. We're putting all our eggs in one basket. Mhmm.

Steve: And, Okay. So now you learn how to vet a contractor or you get better vetting contractors. Yeah. And then tenants did what?

Abdullah: Tenants didn't pay. Yeah. Tenants so it's like the whole eviction process. You know, that's another $23,000 to hire attorney, do this, do that. And this

Steve: is Chicago, though. Like, don't they have, like, really long tenants' rights?

Abdullah: Oh, dude. It's the worst. Landlords have no rights. You know, it's all tenants. So it's like So how

Steve: long does it take to evict that guy?

Abdullah: It was, like, a year.

Steve: A year.

Abdullah: So it took a loss You

Steve: bought a property for 10,000, put 2,000 into it that walked out the door, and you how much more did you put into it?

Abdullah: Few more thousand.

Steve: Few more thousand. Find a renter, and then they don't pay anything.

Abdullah: Yeah. So Per year.

Steve: And then you pay more a few thousand more.

Abdullah: You get them out.

Steve: You get them out. So, like, all into it before you even make a dime of revenue, your 20 k into this property.

Abdullah: Yeah. Even more, man. Close to 30. Like, so because we're making money throughout the, you know Mhmm. Time of wholesaling.

So we're building capital or feeding our, you know, the capital that we're getting to this property. Mhmm. Open, praying that, hey. This gives us a, you know, good turnaround. But,

Steve: yeah, man. So Section eight now?

Abdullah: Yeah. Only Section 8.

Steve: So you saw this property? Yeah.

Abdullah: I still have this property.

Steve: Okay. So for those that are unaware, what's Section eight?

Abdullah: Section eight is basically government housing or is affordable housing where the government actually pays you direct deposit, guarantee income every single month. Right?

Steve: Yeah.

Abdullah: So it's a guaranteed way of making money rather than going the tenant route Mhmm. And, you know you know, dealing with, you know, it's it's a headache and a half. There's good tenants, but Southside Chicago, you know, it's really hard to find a good tenant.

Steve: Yeah. So your first property is in Southside. I'll be second property.

Abdullah: Southside.

Steve: So even through this experience?

Abdullah: The reason why I bought in Southside because I can't really take interest. Right? In my faith, I can't take loans. I can't take interest. Everything has to be cash.

Steve: So So explain this concept for those that are unfamiliar with this. What's it first of all, what's it called?

Abdullah: What what is what the The

Steve: concept that you can't pay interest.

Abdullah: It's we can't pay interest. The concept is, hey. Don't take interest. Mhmm. That's what it is.

It's reba. You know? So don't take But

Steve: there's gotta be, like, a a a term for it in in in your faith. They're not?

Abdullah: No. There's no term for

Steve: it. Okay. It's a

Abdullah: it's like we call it

Steve: sued. Mhmm.

Abdullah: Sud is like in our biggest, like, hey. Interest. Mhmm. You know? You can't take

Steve: So you just don't take loans. Okay.

Abdullah: Take loans. You can only buy what you could afford. Mhmm. Right? So it's like the reason why they say that is imagine you have given you that $5,000,000 worth of properties, took loans on $5,000,000, you have a few assets, you're the man of the house because our ladies don't work.

Right? Suppose you have a wife, you have kids, now something happens to you. God forbid something happens to you and you're no longer present. Right? Guess what?

All that loan gets transferred to your wife and kids. Now they're responsible to make payments, take care of the business. If they don't know what to do, guess what? Foreclosure, now you put them in jeopardy, credit's messed up, Stuff like that.

Steve: And we see that. I mean, we buy some of these properties from them in these situations. Yeah. I thought it was more along the lines of kinda like, The Richest Man in Babylon. Right?

Have you read that book?

Abdullah: I have not.

Steve: Okay. So, basically, the concept is, like, back in those days, if you borrowed money and didn't pay it back, then you were put into slavery. Right? Like, you have to work for me for free for, like, this long period of time to pay off this debt. So, like, if you didn't pay that debt back, you became a slave.

Abdullah: That's basically what it is here too. Right? So if you take debt from United States, right, from the government, now if you don't pay them off, guess what? You're a slave to them. Mhmm.

You have to work.

Steve: And the

Abdullah: thing is supposed to take a $100,000 loan. Right? Mhmm. You're not paying them a $100,000 back. You're paying them 200,000 within a thirty year term.

Steve: Right. You

Abdullah: see, you're paying double the amount. So it's like that's against our religion too. You can't you can't take interest and you can't give interest. You can't give someone, money for a percentage. You know?

So

Steve: So second property, are all your properties now in South Side Chicago?

Abdullah: Yeah. They're all in South Side Chicago. I still buy in South Side. Yeah. Okay.

But now I'm buying, like, a little nicer properties

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: Like, towards, like, you know before buying, like, South Shore, Englewood, now, like, you know, as you know, everything just went up. Right? Everything appreciated. So it's, like, even in the South Side, properties are worth 250,000 to 300,000. So the properties I was buying for $2,030,000 are worth quarter million dollars.

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: So within the past five years. You know? So Yeah.

Steve: And it's crazy. You can't leverage it. You can't

Abdullah: You can't do the BRRRR method. You can't pull out.

Steve: So do the SRO loans. It's just straight. It's right there.

Abdullah: Yeah. Okay. It's good cash flow. You know? It's just Excellent cash flow.

Yeah.

Steve: Alright. So you got 30 of them. 30 something. Okay. And then from there, so you got your wholesaling.

You got rentals, which is now, I imagine, doing pretty good for you. I guess, there's a personal question here. If you took everything off the table, could you live off the rentals alone? Yeah. So you got financial freedom right now already.

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: Now you're also doing fix and flips. Yep. So talk to me about your fix and flip operation.

Abdullah: So the fix and flip operation but coming back to the rentals. Right? So the way you manage the properties in the South Side Of Chicago, for anyone that wants to get in, like, hey. I don't wanna take interest. I don't wanna take loans.

How do I go this route? So once I started wholesaling, I started building capital from there. From there, I put it in rentals. And then as soon as you have a few rentals, I would say about, like, four or five rentals, then you hire a property management company. Mhmm.

Because you don't have time to manage these properties yourself.

Steve: Oh, definitely.

Abdullah: You're a business owner. So then I had a property management company manage all these properties, and they still manage it till this day. Only charge me, like, a $100 a month. Right? Or they charge you, like, 6%, whatever the case is for management.

And now I just delegate all that. So they talk to all the tenants. They basically get it, you know, how to prove. They basically get the vouchers for you know, make sure everything is qualified, everything is good with the tenants, and just keep them occupied. Right?

Steve: They're dealing with the tenants. They're dealing with the government. Make sure the the money is direct deposited.

Abdullah: Exactly. So just them alone are basically, you know, managing the whole rental portfolio. Yeah. Right? And then getting coming back into, fixing and flipping the question that you asked.

So fixing and flipping, you gotta know your numbers. What it comes down to is knowing your numbers. As a wholesaler, you know, if you buy at a good price, that's when you make money. Mhmm. So us buying the properties are too good to be sold.

If I buy a property for $60,000, ARVs 300. Right? So I know the property needs about a, you know, $100,000 worth of work. So if I'm in it for $1.60, you sell for 300 after paying closing cost commission, even real involve a realtor, a realtor, you know, commissions, I'm still making a $100,000 on a spread. I'm taking that one down.

Mhmm. Right? It's because of the capital I built from wholesaling. So now,

Steve: it was a mission too,

Abdullah: you know, like I said, hurdles. Right? Same thing, finding a good GC is the hardest part in Chicago.

Steve: Chicago is

Abdullah: a great fix and flip market. Fix and flip and rental, it's phenomenal. Also, only not so much because of regulations

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: But you could still do innovations in Chicago. So, you know, with the realtors. We do a lot of innovations there, but now I'm doing it at a national level. So we're in, like, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, Florida, you know, all the Midwest states, and then also some other states as well. Yeah.

So come back to fixing and flipping. If you have a good team, if you have a good, you know, contra a GC Mhmm. And he has a good team, you can make for not a good amount of money. So now we're doing about eight to 10 a year, and I only do 6 figure flips. So I only buy deals that I acquire from my wholesale business.

Mhmm. So if you're, you know, a GC, if you're, you know, wanna buy rentals, if you wanna do fix and flip, if you wanna do, you know, build your portfolio, whatever you wanna do, you need to start with wholesale real estate because you are the main source. You're going direct to the homeowner. Mhmm. Direct to the seller, acquire that property.

And then if it's a good deal, you know, first, if you don't have capital, build your capital that way. Once you build your capital, now you're like, hey. I have a $100,000 saved up. Now let me indulge in this activity of fixing and flipping and double up my money.

Steve: Yeah. So

Abdullah: that's what we did.

Steve: Okay. So eight to 10 flips a year. So nothing crazy. And then they're all same part of town?

Abdullah: Yeah. All over South Side Chicago, West Side Chicago. I only do six circuit flips. Mhmm. Right?

So I have to make at least a $100,000 on this flip. So if I even do eight to 10, you know, close to a million 800 to a million dollars, and we're trying to ramp it up because right now we have two GCs that work for us Mhmm. And we're just supplying them. Right? It takes about anywhere from, like, two to three months to do the flip.

So now we're actually trying to ramp it up to, like, four or five GCs so we could do 20 plus flips on a, you know, on a yearly basis.

Steve: How much are you paying your wholesaling company on these deals?

Abdullah: How much am I paying my wholesale company?

Steve: Yeah. So you're flipping eight to 10. How much is your flipping company paying your wholesaling company?

Abdullah: It all depends. If if I'm taking down these deals myself, I'm not even paying my wholesale company. Mhmm. I'm just like, yo, I'm I'm buying this myself. I'll pay my acquisition because how I have it structured, my I don't make the calls myself.

Right? So the warm leads come from my co callers. Mhmm. They go to my acquisition. Right?

My acquisition is working for 15% commission on that assignment. Also, you know, he gets a little salary for the monthly basis. So So if I'm knocking that property down, which they know, if I'm knocking down, I'll give them 5 k. So I would say, you know, my wholesale company wouldn't make anything. It's just my acquisition would make 5 k because they know I'm making a 100,000 on this deal.

And if I wholesale that, I would make, you know, $2,030,000. So Right. You know.

Steve: Okay. So talk to me about the challenges wholesaling right now in Chicago.

Abdullah: So there's a lot of, there's a law where you can't wholesale more than one property, right, if you're not a licensed realtor. So I'm not licensed, but how we do it is we have someone on our team that's licensed. Mhmm. Right? So he's the one that basically lists all the property, wholesales for us for, you know, for a fee.

You know? He's happy to work for 2%, 3%. So, you know, he makes few thousand dollars. We make a few thousand dollars. Right?

So he doesn't have to pay any money for marketing. He doesn't have any expenses. When it comes to that, he just utilizes his time.

Steve: So you say you pay you you pay him a a fee. So what's the fee you're paying him?

Abdullah: So all depends. If it's a novation, he gets his regular 3%. Right? Novation, whatever the, you know, is the 3% commission is. And then, also, it depends.

Right? If it's, like, a smaller spread, we'll tell him, hey. We're only making 10,000 on this deal. You know, I'll give you $2,000 for this or 2,500. Is that okay?

You know? Because once you build that relationship with them, then they work with you. I made them over, you know, half $1,000,000 just off the past few years. So he's like, you know, he's willing to work with me. Right?

So

Steve: Yep. Okay. And then you're also in Airbnb.

Abdullah: Yeah. Still. Yep. Airbnb. Because thing is there's two ways to do it.

Right? You could either go the regular rental. Right? Through a regular rental route. Right?

Where I'll give you an example. If a property is making a thousand dollars. Right? If the property is making a thousand dollars or $1,500, a two bedroom, one bathroom, it's gonna make you about $1,500 in Chicago. Now if we take the same property and put it on AirDNA, that will tell you the comparables of other properties Mhmm.

They're, you know, they're making, you know, x amount of money. So now if that property, if I put on a regular rental, is making me 1,500 and I compare that to my Airbnb, and if I see, you know, significant growth, like, I'll make two two x or even five x the amount of money. I have some properties that are making two x, three x. Right? I even have a property that we're doing Airbnb arbitrage as well.

So we're even making five x. So on a property that I was I'm paying $5,000 a month, we're making $25,000 a month from that property alone. Mhmm. So you need to compare and contrast because some properties are not really good for Airbnb, but you gotta look at the comparables from AirDNA.

Steve: Yeah. So So you're having success with this still? Yeah. Because I'm hearing a lot of people struggling with Airbnbs.

Abdullah: So right now, there's downside to it too. So right now, last month, this month, and, you know, like, around the around this time when it's, like, New Year's, Christmas holidays, and stuff like that, some units are doing good, some aren't. But what we do, we go to travel nurses. Right? There's a website where you basically go to travel nurses, you list the property there, and then now you have travel nurses renting out your property for two to three months, and that takes care of the, you know, of the rent.

Steve: And this is, again, this is such probably a stupid question. Everyone might be getting tired of it, but Southside Chicago.

Abdullah: Yeah. Southside Chicago.

Steve: You're doing Airbnbs in Southside Chicago.

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: So are these, do these properties have any intangibles that make them stick out?

Abdullah: So the way our tier designer, he does a phenomenal job. He does, like, you know, like, he'll have, special types of setups. Right? But the ones that we own are in Southside Chicago that we're doing it. But now we actually open up Airbnb arbitrage where we don't even have to own the property.

So we rent the property. We have it, like, around the Logan Square area, Hyde Park area, you know, where, like, Obama Library and all that good stuff is. Right? So now we're just renting from there, and we're just putting on Airbnb, you know, Airbnb and just making two x. After paying rent, we're making as much as a landlord.

Right? So that's where we see, like, a little bit more success because those are high end areas.

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: And just to, like, acquire a property, there's, like, half $1,000,000.

Steve: So there are a lot of people I'm hearing that are struggling with this. Right? And so I've never really gotten too deep into Airbnb. It's just I always kinda looked at as, like, well, I don't like the downside of it. And the downside for me is, like, you know, if the, city or the county or the state or the HOA says, hey.

This is not Airbnb anymore. I don't wanna deal with that.

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: Right? So I know I lost a ton of money on the table. So I'm not, again, I'm not as well versed in Airbnbs. So what do you do with your Airbnbs with your Airbnbs that other people aren't that are struggling at this moment?

Abdullah: What I recommend, you gotta stand out. You gotta make it unique to where it's like I'll give you an example. There's some where you can make it to, like, a lover's type, right, where basically with how we promote it. We have, like, flowers in a heart shape. We have candles.

We have it for, like, couples. We have, like, kids section. We'll, like, make into, like, cars. You know? So our interior designer will make it, hey.

This is, like, a boy's room, girl's room, family room. So, like, the way you base it you gotta make make it, like, niche based.

Steve: Right?

Abdullah: Like, hey. This is a certain crowd who's gonna buy this. This is, like, people that wanna have their anniversary or these people. And then they'll pay a thousand dollars a night Mhmm. For those type of things.

You know? So even if you get a few of those a month, it rents 3,000. You get three bookings at a thousand dollars. That that pays rent. Imagine if you get five, six, seven bookings.

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: You know, two x. So

Steve: I know, we we went down to Orlando for, Disney World, my family. So we went to we went to Family Mastermind, ClickFunnels, and then Disney World. And while we're there not Disney World, Universal Studios. And while we're there, you know, a friend of mine, Leon Barnes says, hey. You know, check out these Airbnbs.

They're designed. Like, they're Harry Potter world and this and that. I was like, dope. Like, I will check it out. And I did.

I was like, money these guys are commanding

Abdullah: for this insane. Yeah.

Steve: Is not what I wanna pay.

Abdullah: Yeah. Right?

Steve: Because I think it was, like, a hotel in Orlando, it's stupid cheap. It's, like, a $115 for, like, a decent hotel Yeah. A night. Right? Because it's a it's a resort it's a it's a tourist town.

It's not like you go to Orlando to hang on Orlando. Right. You go there to go to theme parks. But then I was looking at these, you know, the Harry Potter World Airbnb is like, I don't wanna spend $400 a night. Yeah.

But someone will.

Abdullah: Yeah. Yeah. You have kids. Right? Suppose You have

Steve: three kids. Yeah.

Abdullah: Three kids. You have a daughter?

Steve: Three girls.

Abdullah: Three girls. Right? You have three daughters. So imagine they love princesses. They love Barb.

They love, like, you know, what they love. Right? So it's like that attraction of pink. Right? Pink, red, like, you know, like feminine colors.

Right? So if now if you have a, you know, like you said, niche base where it's like you have princesses. You have, like, you know, barbieed up. Like, daddy, I wanna, you know, live in this one. Can you please get me this one if you do show it to them?

And they're five, six years old. Like, hey. Look. What What do you think of this one? Okay.

You know? And now for you as a father, you wanna give them a good experience. Right? So you're, like, you know, it's only once for here at Disney World. I'm already spending thousands of dollars.

What's another $400 a night gonna you know, compared to $200 for a hotel. So Yeah.

Steve: For me, it was worth it. But I see the value there.

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: Right? Like, for someone else, it's definitely worth it. Yeah. For us, it I just I just didn't see the value there. Because the other thing too, right, I maybe I'm just too, what's wrong?

Not, I mean, stingy. There's another word for it, but, you know, penny pinching. Right?

Abdullah: Mhmm.

Steve: But it's that, miser. Right? And we used to miser early, but you're never in the place. Right? Like, you're always at some event or you're at some restaurant or this like, you're never in the property.

But, like, I'm glad to hear this working for you. So uniqueness standing out on the photos. I imagine there's some techniques for superhost strategies and this and that.

Abdullah: Yeah. Yeah. We're super host, and the way we do it is photography is everything. You know? Like you said, you need to have good pictures.

Right? So it's like we hire the best of the best. Just our photographer, we're paying them a few $100. You get a photography done for $50, $100, you know? But we're paying them over $350 just for quality pictures.

Right? Yeah. So, like Unless

Steve: you're advertising. Yeah.

Abdullah: That's what it is. Same thing with wholesaling. If you don't have good picture, you're not selling that property.

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: Right. So

Steve: And then somewhere along the way, you started a property management company. Yep. Talk to me about this.

Abdullah: So this is actually pretty interesting. Right? So we just basically opened up a storefront of property management, and we actually white labeled another property management company. So now as brand owner, right, as us me having a brand, dealing with property, selling it to investors, now we're also pitching, hey. I know you're buying rentals.

If you need these managed, let me manage them.

Steve: Right?

Abdullah: So now only I'm gonna supply you these off market deals in the South Side Of Chicago, right, or anywhere in in Illinois, I'm also gonna manage it for you.

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: So we're pitching that. You know, as soon as they buy three, four properties, homeowner and, like, landlords, they know, hey. This is a headache and a half.

Steve: Alright.

Abdullah: Right? I can't after you get to a certain amount, and then, you know, they're working nine to fives or making good money and they're diversifying their portfolio, right, into real estate. But then once they get into real estate and having rentals, they know, hey. This is like a full time gig. Right?

Mhmm. Dealing with tenants, this, that, oh, there's some always some type of issue coming up. So because I'm, you know, landlord myself. So I saw that problem. So then I was like, hey.

Let me white label this. Mhmm. Put my brand on the line and then also sell them the properties as well as bring them in for, you know, property management. So now we have about 140 doors or something, you know, that we're managing. Yeah.

Steve: Logistically, like, I know how it works with, like, software. Yeah. Right? I think, FreedomSoft is, like, one of the biggest ones. Right?

Actually, even PropStream, for the longest time, was constantly white labeled. They didn't even come out until, like, 2019 or 2020 Yeah. To be their own company. So I understand the concept for software. It's just a different URL, a different logo.

Yeah. And that's it, and all the emails just come from that company.

Abdullah: Yep.

Steve: But it's just software. Yeah. There's no very limited customer service. Yeah. Right?

Like, when you call the company, I would imagine it wouldn't say this is PropStream. They would call, like, this is whatever the white label was. Yeah. How do you guys deal with that in property management white labeling?

Abdullah: Because this

Steve: is the first time we're hearing one white label property management company.

Abdullah: So we have virtual assistant that handles everything. Whatever comes in, sends it over to the actual property management. They have a admin also. So my virtual assistant's communicating with their admin and just getting things done.

Steve: Gotcha. Yeah. Okay. So you just have a singular or multiple one one one point of contact or multiple points

Abdullah: of contact? Point of contact.

Steve: One point of contact. And so she is the face. Yeah. As far as customers are concerned, she is more or less the end all be all for the property management company. Yeah.

And she is really just managing another property management company. Yeah.

Abdullah: It's pretty simple. Right? It's just like whatever complaints are coming in, pass it over. They'll take care of it. Mhmm.

They also have their own construction company. So suppose you need something fixed. Suppose, like, the HVAC problem or, like, a faucet broke. You know, you need might need new vanity, whatever the case is. Let them know.

They'll send someone out there, get it fixed. Cool. Mhmm. Build a landlord. Let them know, hey.

This is what it is. You know, get it done. Yeah. So Yeah.

Steve: That's a pretty smart move. I haven't heard anyone do that. Right? Like, we will will white label, all sorts of different services, but property management, that's a new one. I have never never heard that one before.

And then with all this stuff you got going on, you do a ride share thing.

Abdullah: Yeah. So ride share.

Steve: Is ride share before or after the Airbnbs and the and the property management?

Abdullah: I did ride share. I started before Airbnb. So ride share, I started with, like, two, three cars. Mhmm. Right?

So I had my brother managing it, helping me out, and then I got my dad involved. I was like, hey, pops. You know? Like, this is you know, let's try this out. So now we have our own repair shop, right, where we basically only do our own things.

We have one mechanic, repair shop, and then my uncle, right, and my dad. Right? So it's like three people in the whole office. Mhmm. And how we do it is we don't do it the Turo route.

A lot of people think, oh, right. Sure. Turo. That's not, you know,

Steve: that's not what we do.

Abdullah: Yeah. So, you know, that's not what we do. What we're doing is we're buying fuel efficient vehicles. Right? Toyota Camrys, Toyota Priuses, you know, under $10,000.

And what we're doing, we're marketing it on Facebook Marketplace. We're marketing it on our own website. Right? Letting people know, hey. Are you looking for an opportunity?

Wanna make a thousand and $2,000 a week, right, working for yourself? You know? If they say yes, cool. We get them approved for, you know, Uber Eats, food delivery. We give them all these options.

Right? Mhmm. We tell them, hey. The vehicle's approved. Right?

Just all you have to do is use your you know, make an account, input the insurance, input your driver's license, just log in, and start working. You're gonna make a thousand dollars. If you put in the work, you're gonna make a thousand dollars. And these vehicles are fuel efficient. So you're you know?

And we're put charging, like, $2.25 to $2.50 a week. Right? So we're, you know, charging fairly a low amount.

Steve: This is kinda like a biz ops opportunity.

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: Right? Is that what this is?

Abdullah: Say that.

Steve: Yeah. So I was like, hey. You wanna make some extra money, but you don't have a car to do this with. Or I guess you were saying this car is approved for Uber Eats. So you already registered the car and got everything approved.

Yeah.

Abdullah: So everything because we include the maintenance, insurance, everything.

Steve: So it's not the driver profile. It's the car's profile.

Abdullah: Yeah. The

Steve: Is that how it typically works with those?

Abdullah: No. You you need actual user. You need your own profile. Mhmm. Right?

So we tell them the vehicle's good. Right? Vehicle's fully a 100%, insurance. Right? Full coverage.

We have maintenance on you know? And you get the vehicle. Right? Everything is good to go. So that way, you don't even have to use your own car because it gets expensive.

If you're driving your own car, you know, you got maintenance. You gotta pay for your own insurance, plus wear and tear, tires. Because you already know when you do ride share every month, you gotta get a oil change. You got something going on with your tires. You got something going on with your car.

You're putting it to abuse. Right? So it's like, we're like, hey. Don't worry. Because we have a repair shop, so it costs us pennies on the dollar.

Right?

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: So we're supplying them the vehicles. They're utilizing their time and making anywhere from 1,000 to $2,000 a week. Right?

Steve: So you're using your auto repair company kinda like, a lot of these flippers that own their own construction company.

Abdullah: Yeah. You

Steve: can do it a lot cheaper than them, and that's where arbitrage comes in.

Abdullah: Exactly.

Steve: It's fascinating. Yeah. So where'd you get this idea?

Abdullah: And, we just started, you know, started with two cars, and, we just like, hey. Let's rent them out. Let's see if we can rent our cars. Because, you know, my dad, his friends and stuff were doing, like, taxi business. The taxis are drying you know, dying out.

Taxis are nowhere to be saw on anymore, except, like, maybe New York City and some, you know, major cities, but everywhere else is Uber. Like, I came here in a Uber. Right? So, like, who orders a taxi now? So I was like, man, I know there's a lot of people.

And the thing is one of my friend, he actually told me that he's like, hey. I need a car so I could make some money on the side for Uber and stuff. So that's what we actually got it for. We got it for him, and he's like, I'll pay you, you know, every month. I'll rent a car from you.

So I was like, okay. Cool. And not only him, though we got like, hey. If I see an opportunity here with him, I'm like, we're we get paid to solve problems, right, in wholesaling. So I got that mentality.

I was like, hey. How do I solve problems? Mhmm. Like, what's your problem? You got something going on?

Let me see if I could solve it. Right? So I saw a problem. He need a vehicle and make money and, like, cool. So just solving his problems, just getting him a vehicle, and I'm making money in the back end.

Mhmm. So I then I found one other person, then I found another person, then I started marketing it. And then we got more people. Then we're like, hey. Is this legal?

Right? So and then I hired a attorney. As an attorney, I need a actual agreement. That's where I could do this legally. And then we got commercial insurance.

We gotta make sure, hey. You can't just do some personal insurance. Because once you get over 10 vehicles, each LLC has its own. Every 10 vehicles per you know, it has to be dedicated to one LLC for lawsuits and, you know, litigation and stuff. So we're like, okay.

Cool. So now we have seven different LLCs. Actually, eight LLCs now. Each one has 10 vehicles in there. Right?

And then having the correct contract to where it say, if you don't pay us in a week, we can actually repo the vehicle. Mhmm. We could report as stolen. So having that contract and that that contract cost me anywhere from, like, $2,500 from, you know, from my attorney. Yeah.

And that contract allows us to, you know you know, have 73 vehicles now.

Steve: Yeah. The $2.50 a week, a thousand bucks a month, 73 of those. Yeah. What is the margin or something like that?

Abdullah: 50%.

Steve: The 50%? Yeah. That's after paying the repair shop and everything.

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: Okay. So that's pretty good.

Abdullah: It is.

Steve: And you got that one with your brother and your dad? Yep. Gotcha.

Abdullah: Yeah. Cool. And everything's tracked. So let me show you. I don't know if the the audience can see this and us We

Steve: hardly from the see, but go ahead. So

Abdullah: this is the app that we have. Let me log in. So this is the app, and everything's tracked. Right? Mhmm.

To where

Steve: Yeah. That guy's just Uber twenty seven.

Abdullah: Yeah. This is Uber twenty six. Cecil.

Steve: Yeah. So So we

Abdullah: got all these guys in Chicago. It tells us how fast they're going. So this guy see how fast it tells you how fast you're going, where they're located. Mhmm. You know, all that good stuff.

Steve: And that's an app that someone else that they wanted to follow this path of having, multiple cars to rent out.

Abdullah: Exactly. So this software was for actually, for taxis, people that want taxi companies. Right? So we're like, hey. So we found a software that you could just try you could track anything.

You could track your Turo cars with this. You could track your Uber cars. You could track your own personal car. Right? So it's called TeleTrak Navigator.

So we use them, and it's, like, $17 or something a month. So

Steve: How much effort is involved in running this one?

Abdullah: Not much, man. Mhmm. Because the thing is everything is pretty much automated. So I have my mechanic. He does all the repairs.

Right? Mhmm. For lease collection, it's Zelle. They could do, you know, it's you know, Zelle is everything now. Or they come in in person, check, you know, cash, whatever the case may be.

Mhmm. And, so for one guy, we have one guy for collections. Right? And, if they don't pay, they already know what's the consequences. Right?

They're just gonna get repoed. So for them to make money, they need that vehicle. Mhmm. Right? So they're like, this is our my lifeline.

Steve: My bloodline. It's a business investment for them.

Abdullah: Exactly.

Steve: And then somewhere along the way, you mentioned also the right, the auto repair component.

Abdullah: Yeah. So You're also an

Steve: owner in the in the auto repair.

Abdullah: 100%. Yeah, man.

Steve: So Why auto repair? Because because that's not that's got nothing to do with wholesale.

Abdullah: Yeah. Everyone has a vehicle. Everyone wants to get it repaired. Mhmm. So, like, you know, why not open it to the public as well?

And what it what it comes down to, the game of business is the same game. Right? Systems, process, and people. Right? Yeah.

So once you market anything and you have the correct systems and processes and people in place, you could, you know, run the run the business. So

Steve: that's Sure. Sure. You could. I I don't disagree with that whatsoever. Like, I think, we see a lot.

Actually, Stratton Brown, he posted something, I think, this morning or yesterday. It was that, you know, wholesalers don't get rich wholesaling. Right? Wholesalers make money wholesaling.

Abdullah: Build the capital from there.

Steve: And then they start other businesses. Yep. You have, I think, a similar problem I have, which we have an addiction to starting businesses. Yeah. Right?

And so, I guess for myself, I justify it. I'm not saying this is right. I just justify this. Right? It's like they're all in the same ecosystem.

Yeah. Right? They're all within real estate except for sales. Sales is the first one that's outside of real estate. But that was just because we went from real estate sales trainer to, you know, just sales trainer.

So everything is kinda, like, evolved and, like, the the it's kinda like the blob. Right? It just kinda gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

Abdullah: 100%.

Steve: But auto repair is very different to wholesaling, fixing, and flipping.

Abdullah: No. Makes sense.

Steve: Alright. So how how how did you get into auto?

Abdullah: So like you said, when I started when I started wholesaling, I looked for business around there. So virtual assistance, CRM, wholesaling, fixing and flipping, rentals. Everything was in that real estate space. Yeah. All those make sense.

Yeah. All of the stuff in there. But then I'm like, hey. Let me see what other businesses are there. Mhmm.

So and then once I start seeing some profit because thing is I started, my own marketing company. I started a print shop. I started a cell phone shop. So I, you know, just playing around.

Steve: Right? So these are the these are the winners? These are the winners. These are

Abdullah: the seven figures, you know,

Steve: high stakes. These are the ones that are still on the cops table.

Abdullah: Yeah. So the other ones, you know because that because I started maybe like you said, you have addictions. I started maybe, like, close to forty, fifty companies. Right?

Steve: So these are the ones that are still here. So there are 40 failures that we haven't mentioned yet.

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: Okay. So before we get back to here, what are the major failures along the way?

Abdullah: Man, there's a lot. Cell phone shops. I made some money, but, you know, it's not

Steve: as much. Time.

Abdullah: Yeah. Not worth the time. Had a print shop, you know, we're making signs, ecommerce, you know, all types of random stuff, you know, partner up in, like, in a restaurant. Restaurant's the worst business to get into, you know. It's just consumer so much time and the margins are just so it doesn't make sense, you know.

A lot of leftover stuff.

Steve: What are the margins in restaurants?

Abdullah: It's it's like 20%, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It's low. And then you have a lot of waste too.

It's like, hey. If it doesn't sell, guess what? It cuts in your profits, you know, cuts in the margins. So it's like it's, got out of there.

Steve: So looking back, the one that you regret the most is cell phone or restaurant or other? Man,

Abdullah: I don't regret anything. Right? I'm I'm blessed to even have the opportunity to get into those business. And I feel like every business gave me the opportunity to learn something. Right?

So cell phone sales. I learned how to, you know, orchestrate, how to communicate, how to perform. Right? You know, and I still, like, learn, like, different languages, like Spanish. I learned Spanish in my cell phone shop because we're in, like, an Hispanic neighborhood.

Right? So learning that, and just, like, you know, having, learning about phones and stuff. Right? Same thing with, restaurants, learning how to cook a little bit, You know? I had to get behind the kitchen, you know, behind the stove a little bit.

Yeah. You know? And then I even had a, you know, construction business too where I used to have my own. I used to do property preservations and stuff. So we don't do that anymore.

Now we hire contractors to do it because it's a lot huge liability. You need to have licensed bond to have your own construction company. Right? So we don't have our own construction company. We just outsource other GCs.

Right? So I even had that. So, I mean, along the way, you just learn. You live and you learn. Right?

So

Steve: Property preservation is one of those businesses that I can't imagine ever wanting to get into, because when we used to do all those foreclosure properties, right, because I used to list properties from banks.

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: And I made these property preservation people. Right? And they're the ones that had to go in there and change the locks.

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: They had to go in there and, like, haul out people's stuff.

Abdullah: Yep. It's big money there.

Steve: There's big money there. There's also, like, you know, the guy that was shot, I think it was a surprise around here, but it was on the West Side of town. Right? Because, like, you have to go change the locks to secure the property. Yeah.

Make sure no one's going in this property when they ask what's going in this property. Yeah. So they would board it up, change the locks, whatever. Some people don't take kindly to that. Yeah.

So that's, like, come on.

Abdullah: That's dangerous business. Yeah. I was doing it, like, West Virginia, and I had to do it myself. You know? I was like, hey.

You know? I had to get I had one employee. It was me and him. Mhmm. I was like, okay.

Let me get into it. Let me see how much the money we can make out of this. We made some good money, like, 10,000 a month. You know? I was like, oh, it's a good month after paying him 3 k.

They were doing decent, but then it was just too much time that was being consumed. I was like, I've been doing better things.

Steve: Oh, yeah. The I mean, it's it's it's important work and you get paid well, but that's not a business you can scale.

Abdullah: Yeah. Time is money, man. So it's like we all have the same amount of time in a day. Mhmm. Right?

And it's it takes the same amount of time to make $10,000, and it takes the same amount of time to make a $100,000. Right? Depending on what you do. Right? You could be targeting a list.

You can talk into a seller and making small assignment fees, or you can be talking to a seller and making huge assignment fees. Right. Depending on what you're doing. Mhmm. Right?

Because I know some holsters that don't touch anything under 20,000. Like, 20,000 is like I know some holsters that don't touch anything under 50,000. There's certain markets that you could get into that are 50 k spreads like, Washington. Right? Seattle.

There's 6 figure spreads there. You know? So if you focus on that market. And then Indiana, under 20 k spreads. You know?

So it depends on which market you're playing with and, you know, what tactic you have. So learning that, I was like, yeah, time is money. So it takes the same amount of time to make this or that. So let me see I would put my, you know, time towards something that's gonna give me a better return, a better ROI.

Steve: So and then somewhere along the way, you started VA staffing company.

Abdullah: Yeah. So And that's different than a

Steve: co calling company or is it the same company?

Abdullah: Same company.

Steve: Okay. So what what what what prompted you to do this?

Abdullah: So virtual staffing. Right? So what I did was in my you know, in in the in the time being of being in co calling, it was, like, four years in, and I was getting co calls from Philippines, from Fiverr, you know, just utilizing other systems, other, you know, other companies. And I wasn't getting that quality that I want, you know, because I had to train myself. And then even after training them, they might quit because they don't like doing this, and now they're finding me a replacement.

It was like a whole headache and a half.

Steve: So I

Abdullah: have to retrain and do all this. I was like, man, I get there's a better there has to be a better system.

Steve: So you're talking about in this situation, you you were using agencies?

Abdullah: Yeah. I was using agencies. I was using Fiverr, Upwork, you know, stuff like that for cold calling. Right. Right?

Because cold calling is a $4 an hour job or even less in some, you know, some countries. Mhmm. You can pay them $23 an hour. Right? So I'm like, for me to cold call or for anyone to cold call, it's it's not worth it.

You know? It's like tedious task.

Steve: Right. So I'm

Abdullah: like, I gotta be talking to the warm leads, the money producing activities. So I was like, I gotta be in the acquisition seat. Right? So either it's inbound leads, PPC, Facebook ads. Right?

Or you have, you know, direct I feel like cold calling is the best way of doing direct marketing. Right? Going direct to the homeowner, telling them, hey. I'm a local investor in the area. Are you looking to sell?

Right? If they're getting a yes call now, I'll talk to them. Rather than spending eight hours cold calling and getting rejected.

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: You know, it's what it's well worth it for me to talk to more more motivated leads. Right. So I flew down to Egypt because I met this one guy from Fiverr Mhmm. And he was an acquisition for me. Right?

I was like, hey, man. I wanna get good quality people. Can you help me? He said, yeah, man. I go you know, you know, he got his bachelor's degree there.

He's like, dude, I know all the people here. We go to libraries and market there. I can marketing colleges and this. I'm like, yeah. Give me 10 callers.

You know? Because I got you. Few weeks in, he got me 10 callers. I trained them. Everything is good.

I'm making, you know, I'm getting two warm leads per day. And, you know, I'm like, hey. This is working. I'm making just off 10 callers. I was making over 50 a month.

Just off assignments. Mhmm. I'm like, okay. Cool. And then I was like, hey.

Let me get a few more. And then I was like, hey. You could supply me with the co callers, and they're performing, and I'm training them. So I think we have something here. Right?

So once you start posting checks online, like, hey. I just made 20,000, $50,000 weeks. You know? Like, last week, we made 50 k on assignments. Right?

Like, hey, guys. This is just an example. Right? Mhmm. Once you tell people, hey.

You know, there's another way to make money. Right?

Steve: And they're

Abdullah: like, yo, how do I do this? I'm like, dude, I kinda have the formula. I've been doing this for six years. Mhmm. But the correct systems, CRM that I'm using, the same SOPs that I have.

Right? The same marketing channels that I'm using, the same list that I'm targeting, a to z, you can make the same amount of money because all you're doing is copying and pasting. Mhmm. You do coaching yourself. Your students are just copying and pasting what you're doing for your business.

Right? So I'm like, yeah. And, you know, us as, business owners, we're like, hey. Coaching is one aspect, another stream of income, but also you're helping people change their lives. I have students that used to work at airports that did stuff that I did, pizza delivery driving, this, this, and now they're making $1,015,000 dollars a month to where they could provide food for their family and, you know, do bit bigger and better things for themselves.

Yeah. So just seeing that, I was like, you know, that's now that's the purpose right there. Mhmm. Right? So I'm like, okay.

That's my that's my purpose. I gotta help other people. So now I'm out here trying to make I'm trying to change a 100,000,000 lives. Before I used to pray for $100,000,000, now I'm praying for God. Give me the opportunity to change a 100,000,000 lives.

Mhmm. Right? So with that being said, I started a staffing company, started providing other people to train cold callers that I use, that I train. Now I have other people that I've trained, and now they're training these co callers. And I have other, other influencers are training these co callers, and now we're supplying people co callers, right, for $4 an hour.

Mhmm. And they're just bringing warm leads for them. Right? And now they're focusing on acquisitions, which is money producing activity.

Steve: So how does it work? Right? So these are VAs that are expecting $4 an hour

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: In Egypt? So we're paying

Abdullah: them anywhere from $3.03 50. We're not our margin's anywhere from, like, 50¢ to a dollar. Mhmm. Right? We don't really care about the margins on when it comes to that.

Mhmm. We care more about the value that we're providing our our investors. So now we have 400 virtual assistants. Mhmm. We're helping them, or we're helping that country with, you know, with, you know, helping the helping the virtual assistant provide food for their families.

So they're doing well. We're making a few $100 every month. You know, it's cool. Our investors are making few thousand dollars, right, utilizing this. The other end investor who's buying the property is making, you know, having having a lucrative deal.

The homeowner is being helped. The wholesaler is being paid, compensated. So everyone's winning in this situation. Right. Right?

It's a win win situation where, like, hey. Let's scale this.

Steve: Right? Well, I'm asking this specifically because I'm seeing a few different models now, right, with the, virtual, agency ish model. So there's, like, the you pay me, like, an agency. You pay me $4 an hour. Well, not $4.

You pay me $10 an hour, and then I'm gonna pay this other guy $3.50 an hour. Right? Like, that's the model today. You see a lot of agencies doing really well with this model.

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: And I'm seeing other people now move away from that model and move towards, hey. You pay me $2, 2,500 per trained VA. And then you now

Abdullah: Own that VA.

Steve: Right. And you don't bother me anymore on this VA. And every time you need a new 1, $2, 2,500, whatever. So I'm seeing this model exist now. So I'm curious.

What is your model for, for the VA and then for the your client?

Abdullah: So our model is now we have over 400 Mhmm. Of virtual assistants, and I have some doctors that are working for us because all of their currency is messed up. Right? So you're as a virtual assistant paying you getting paid in USD is you're making more money doing cold calling sitting at home or sitting in our office than actually being a doctor or being attorney, being a police officer. Right?

So what we're doing is we put them on a dialer. Right? And everything you don't get one dedicated co caller. Because I have guys that have six years experience, ten years experience, twelve years experience, or even two years experience. Everyone that we hire, they're all educated.

So they have to get a college degree in English. Right? So we only target people from, from in the libraries. We target people in, schools, colleges, stuff like that. So as soon as they graduate, they come work for us.

Mhmm. Right? Because we're paying them more money than everyone, you know, whatever their profession is. Right? So once they graduate, once they're qualified, we train them.

They get onboarded. Once they're onboarded, they get dumped into a dialer. So everything is on, they don't have the same client every day. So we switch everyone around. So the same credentials, how it works is the wholesaler will buy data.

Right? They'll buy from PropStream. They can buy it from KindSkip tracing, wherever they buy it from. Mhmm. Right?

Once you buy the data, they input it in a dialer. It's called ready mode, or we could, you know, input it for them. Once they input it, we supply whatever however many cold callers they want. Supposedly want two cold callers. We basically put those two cold callers, on the dialer, and then what they do is just they call.

And all the metrics are there. So they're guaranteed to get two warm leads per day. And the metrics on cold calling is you get 60, you know, warm leads on a monthly basis. It takes about twenty eight to 30 warm leads to get a contract.

Steve: So you

Abdullah: should get about two contracts a month per cold caller. Right? So everything all everything's all tracked. All the metrics are there. Talk time, how many hours they worked, a to z, how many were answered, how many were declined, how many went to voice mail, how many were wrong numbers.

You see all the metrics on ready mode. So that's what we use for it's a CRM slash a dialer.

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: Right? So that's what we do. Like, hey. You want it full time, 45 a week? Cool.

We're gonna give you forty five hours on this dialer. Mhmm. Right? So sometimes, you know, a virtual assistant gets sick or whatever the case is, take them out, new virtual assistant, and everything is like, you could hear all the calls. You could listen to all the calls.

You could do live transfers, a to z.

Steve: So this is even different than the two models we talked about. Because, like, again, the agency is just arbitrage for a person. Here, you're kinda, like, plugging into a bank of VAs. It's, what's the word I'm looking for? It's almost like, I mean, they're interchangeable Yeah.

More or less.

Abdullah: Interchange. There's a word for it too. I forgot what we called it. There's There's a word for where we, you know, interchange them where you don't have to set VA. Right.

You know, it circulates.

Steve: Yeah. But you get you get a certain number of hours of VA calling.

Abdullah: You're just paying for the hours. Like, how many hours do you want? You want a hundred and eighty hours? Okay. A hundred and eighty hours is gonna cost you $720.

Mhmm. Right? So that's what it is. They pay for that.

Steve: And then

Abdullah: they get hundred and eighty hours worth of calls for the those four weeks.

Steve: So how is this beneficial for you? And I'm asking this question because we were just saying a moment ago. Right? Like, same amount of effort to make a $100, a thousand bucks, a thousand bucks an hour. Right?

It's the same amount of time. I'm not seeing anything here that's, like, super lucrative. So what am I missing? We're making because we have 400 now, so we're making about

Abdullah: 400 an hour. Right? By 400 an hour profit

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: Times that by, you know, hundred and eighty hours, we're still making close to 100, you know, a good amount of money. Right? You know, we're still making, last month at net profit, we're we made, like, 80,000. So it's like we're still making Mhmm. Money.

And plus we're helping other people. You know?

Steve: Well, I get the helping part, but it's also your bandwidth.

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: Right? So I'm just looking at this as far as, as a bandwidth. How does it make sense? Because, again, like, I'm I'm looking at these different models, so it's always fascinating. I have zero desire to be in this industry.

Yeah. Right? Like, having to service and and we've talked about this on other on other episodes. Having to manage a cold caller as well as manage a client and experience with that cold caller has two different people that I have to talk to on a regular basis to make them happy. Right.

I want no part of that.

Abdullah: Oh, same here. I don't deal with anyone. I don't deal with the client. I don't deal with the co callers. I don't deal with the managers.

So we have I have a CEO. I'm not even the CEO of this company. I have a CEO who hires managers, who hires quality control. Right? So every 25 callers, we have one quality control that logs in, listens to all all the calls.

He's picking out, you know, what calls to do. Right? And then each manager is in charge of a 100 seats. Right? We call them seats per seat.

Mhmm. So he's managing that. The CEO is managing the whole operations. The The only thing I'm doing is I'm jumping on once a week and I'm training mass. So, you know, on Zoom, you can have 400 people jump on.

So I'm doing once a week. I'm doing a one hour, two hour training. Mhmm. I'm going over, hey, guys. Remember, we're not talking about the roof.

We're not talking about HVAC. I don't care how old that stuff is. I need you to be direct. Right? Because the acquisition's gonna take over that lead and actually do the, you know, the r r r methods, which is relax, relate, reduce, right, which is building the report, negotiating, sending the contract.

He's gonna do all that. He's gonna get it locked up. What you guys need to do is come in. Hey, mister Seller. We're local in the area.

We wanna buy some properties. Are you interested in selling? Cool. You are? Awesome.

Just wanna confirm the beds and bats. Cool. Three bed, two bed? Okay. Awesome.

Well, you know,

Steve: it looks like a good piece of property. Why are

Abdullah: you looking to sell it? Get the motive. Okay. Cool. That's what it is.

Awesome. Send it over. Now my guy is, like, coming in. He does a twenty eighty rule where he talks about the property 20% of the time. He said, okay.

Yeah. I know you spoke with my colleague, Sarah. She said, it's a three bedroom, two bathroom. Is that correct? Gotcha.

She said you were looking to sell because of this reason? Gotcha. Okay. Is there anything else we should know about the property? And then go into it.

Okay. Well, is it the price or something else? You know, how soon do you wanna sell? And then he gets into all that good stuff and Alright. Gets you locked in.

And if it's a good deal, the numbers make sense for both of us. The numbers make sense. Right? It's not not just it's not rocket science. It's just being consistent with it and getting, you know, property under contract for a discount Mhmm.

Right, and targeting distressed list and popping off to investors for, you know, to a cash buyer and making $10.20, even a $100,000 on a, you know, assignment.

Steve: Alright. So someone wanted to find out more about that.

Abdullah: How would they find out about it? For cold calling, you can go to a kcallers.com. You can also DM me at I hustle bro. I'm on every single platform. Mhmm.

I hustle bro on Instagram, on x, Facebook, TikTok, a to z. Right? So or you could go to a kcallers.com, fill out a form. One of the managers is gonna reach out to you. I think that's the best way.

Go to the website, fill out a form, and then have them, you know, take care of you.

Steve: Okay. So we're talking about multiple businesses. Some that are successful, some that did not work out. There's a lot involved in trying to run all these different companies. And you're young, but I don't see any gray hairs yet.

Right? So how are you able to run multiple businesses?

Abdullah: Man, like I said, it's just thankful that God gave me another day.

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: And just by me waking up just by me waking up is the biggest blessing. Everything else is a plus. Mhmm. Right? So like I said, the reason why I could run multiple companies is by having systems, process, and people.

To delegate and automate any company, you need these three things.

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: So any company that I get into, first, I understand the concept. Okay. What what do I have to do here? Cool. Now what are the roles and responsibilities?

How can I delegate these tasks? I'm not gonna I'm the chairman. You know? I'm not the one that's even running any of these companies. So I'm like, okay.

Cool. I need one guy to do this, one guy to do this, one guy to do this. I need you know, whatever the case may be. Mhmm. Then I find the people with the capital that I've built.

I don't get into anything if I don't have any capital. You can't start a business without any money. Mhmm. Right? You need you need capital.

Right? So I'm like, okay. I gotta have to allocate a 100,000 to this business. Okay. Cool.

My wholesaling, my rentals give me the opportunity to allocate funds to my other businesses. Right? So then once I get into it, cool. Now I have to hire people, put these guys, you know, find qualified people, the right people

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: For these jobs, and then go out there and do sales and marketing. Right? Hire a sales guy. Marketing, I use the same agency for everything. You know?

That agency does everything for me. So

Steve: How are you finding these people?

Abdullah: Virtual assistants or They were already employees. Yeah. Most of the things I use virtual assistants for. Right? Because it's affordable and they're qualified and they're all overseas.

Also, I use, like, Fiverr, Upwork, Indeed. Like, if I have any people in office Mhmm. Then I use Indeed. You know, I use LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a phenomenal tool.

You can get really qualified people there. So

Steve: so So at a high level, everything's gonna make sense. Right? Get the concept. Makes sense. Determine the rules and responsibilities.

Maybe that's not counterintuitive. Maybe not everyone does that. But then hiring the right people and doing sales and marketing. Right? At high level, this all makes sense.

So even if it makes sense, there are significant challenges with each one of these boxes. So understand the concept. Walk me through what are you doing to understand a concept of a new business. Take, for example, auto repair. Right?

Like, what what are you doing to understand the concept?

Abdullah: Market research. Mhmm. So I'm looking up Google is a phenomenal tool. Google, YouTube, talking to other investors, talking to other, auto repair shops, paying them for their time. He'll pay you a thousand dollars to teach me, you know, what I need to know.

Mhmm. But, okay, yo. You need a AutoZone account. This is a a business account. This is where you're gonna get wholesale this.

For body parts, you need this. Just like navigating. Like, everything that I do now, I hire a mentor. I pay for people's time. Mhmm.

Because suppose I wanna suppose I wanna get into making a podcast. You have a phenomenal podcast. It's one of the, you know, industry leader. You know? So I suppose I wanna get into a podcast.

I'll be like, hey, Steve. Let me pay you $5,000 for an hour of your time because I know you're not cheap. Right? So I'm like, for an hour of your time. Because what you could do is take someone out on dinner.

That doesn't work nowadays. Like, you could buy your own dinner. You really don't need anything from me. Right. But if I give you 5 k for an hour, you might you might consider that.

Like, okay. You know, I'll give you give you a shot.

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: And now I'm like, hey, what do I do? What what kind of equipment do I need? What do I do? You might be like, I don't even know what equipment that you need. Talk to my guy.

Yeah.

Steve: Manny, get in here.

Abdullah: Yeah. Hey, Manny, get in here. This is all the equipment that we have. Mhmm. Cool.

But I paid you to get access to Manny. Mhmm. You know, to get access to his information. Right. Cool.

Now I have this. Manny's my, hey. You need a guy then. You need a choreographer. You need this, this, this, this, whatever the case may be.

Right? And then same thing for your equipment. Same thing for what systems, what softwares are you doing?

Steve: That's actually the first question came in. It's like, man, what does it cost to put all this together?

Abdullah: Yeah. Right.

Steve: That's the first question you asked when it came in.

Abdullah: So, like, because I'm looking to put one together. That's the next, stream of income. Right?

Steve: Right. So I

Abdullah: was like, okay. You know, I have kinda I have an influence. I have, you know, I work with some, you know, heavy hitters in the industry and just bringing them on my podcast. And I could bring a lot of value to my audience. Right?

So, you know, with that understanding, anything that I do, you gotta find people that are doing what what, you know, what you wanna do and what have when things that they have is what you wanna have. And that's how you basically skip those hurdles.

Steve: So step one, interested in interested in business.

Abdullah: Market research.

Steve: Before you even put, before you even start it, you're talking to operators that are doing it.

Abdullah: Exactly.

Steve: And then figuring out, are you then, like if after talking to operators, like, okay. That's a stupid idea. I am out. 100%. So you've eliminated business ideas before Yeah.

After doing your market research.

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: Okay. So you do market research, gather intel, which is really smart. And then, there's actually something I talked to Sharad about, last week. I was like, hey. If I wanna sell something for a $100,000,000, what do I do?

And he's like, well, here's what I'm doing because he's trying to sell something, right, for a significant sum. And he's like, I'm just talking to people that sold their business for a $100,000,000. Like, that's so obvious.

Abdullah: That's it.

Steve: It's so obvious. Right? So, so you do your market research, and then you define your roles and responsibilities. How do you go about defining your roles and responsibilities?

Abdullah: So once you have once you have a market research, once you understand, hey. Is this gonna work or not? Right? Like, the Turo idea. Right?

I was looking into getting g wagons, some, you know, July, you know, some Mercedes, you know, some some nice They look

Steve: great on Turo.

Abdullah: Yeah. They look good. Right? But the thing is the turnaround time. You're they're getting rented off for two, three days.

Now you have someone have to clean you can't really scale that. If you have 70 cars, you have to clean 70 cars every few days.

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: You know? And these are high end vehicles. Right? You have a certain, like, mileage on it if you lease it. And if you if you purchased a vehicle, you're looking at mill millions of dollars just to purchase these cars.

Right? Or Lambo and stuff like that. You get 10 Lamborghinis. You're out a few million dollars compared to the fuel efficient side. You know?

So I was like, yeah. This is my capital. Right? This is what I allocated. I allocated 50 k.

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: 50 k is not gonna get me one of these cars. No. Right? 50 k is gonna get me these cars, like, 10 of these cars, right, or five of these cars compared to one car here. And this isn't gonna make me from the operator.

You're saying, hey. I make 5 k a month here Mhmm. Off of one vehicle. Right? And then I have a turnaround time.

This is my turnaround time. This is my roles and responsibilities. And I'm like, dude, you can't really scale this because even if you have a one guy does all the cleaning and stuff, if he's out or, you know, something's going on with him and then the mileage, you know, it was like the whole Single point

Steve: of failure.

Abdullah: Exactly. So I was like, you know, let me try this route. Mhmm. Here, I could bring my family in too. Right?

And, you know, I have my own shop and my pops, you know, and my my amigo, my mechanic, my uncle. It's more doable, you know, and it's more scalable doing this. So, you know, knowing that, hey, if this works, cool. Now how much are you gonna allocate? Okay.

What are the roles and responsibilities? How are you gonna replace yourself from this role, from this business? Because every business I get into, I'm like, I gotta replace myself. I'm not doing this. Mhmm.

This you know? As a business owner, you already know. Whenever you start a new company, you're like, okay. How do I replace myself from here? Yeah.

How do you

Steve: exit it? How do you get yourself out of it? So, so we we touched on podcasting, but let's just start experiment again, with another, another, idea. So I'm sure there's no shortage of other business interests you got at the moment. Yeah.

So besides podcasting, what is another hot business interest for you at this at this exact moment?

Abdullah: Man, there's a lot. Right. On private equity. Right? So I wanna get into to so the way this is one of my, one of my friends.

He does private equity. Mhmm. And he told me, he said, you can't sell a business if you're running in the business. Mhmm. So there's certain businesses.

Right? There are certain spaces like the podcast space. Mhmm. Right? The branding's you're having your own brand space.

You can't really sell that

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: Because you are the brand. You Right. You know? People watch real estate disruptors because of Steve Trane, you know, because he's you know, I wanna see him talk. I wanna see him ask questions.

He's a real disruptor. Mhmm. Right? So selling, you know, real estate disruptors is gonna be is gonna be hard because you are the brand. So there's certain spaces that you can't really sell out.

Right? So I I'm aware of that. I'm like, okay. Personal branding, can't sell that. My own pocket, I can't sell that.

There's other businesses and other spaces where you can't sell. Mhmm. Right? So for me to sell my businesses, I was like, hey. I need to automate it and delegate it to where it's like, okay.

I could exit this, right, where I'm not present. Because real investors, they when they invest, right, there's multiple ways you can invest. You can invest in assets. You can invest in, you know, businesses. And when they invest in businesses, they look for, a automatic a system where it's like the the term was, a fully automated process.

Mhmm. Right? So they look for something where it's like it's already automated and it's already cash flowing. Don't get me wrong. Yeah.

Having your own podcast, having your own brand, these are phenomenal cash flow

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: Businesses. But when you wanna exit a business, you need to have it to where it's it's a fully automated process Right. To where you don't even have to be present, and then you could sell it for 10 x, five x the amount of revenue that's bringing

Steve: They're going back to the private equity component. So that's the next direct, potential next direction?

Abdullah: Buying businesses and selling businesses.

Steve: So buying, like, buying Like,

Abdullah: supply supply supply buy You're

Steve: fixing and flipping businesses. Yeah. Okay. So you already found someone in the market research with?

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: That's your buddy in private equity?

Abdullah: Yeah. He made over a $100,000,000

Steve: Okay. In

Abdullah: this business, in this space. And he works with he's still doing it till this day. Right? So what he told me is, like, I'm actually getting in on with him. Mhmm.

So he said, hey. We need a few 100,000. You know, we'll get in he said 300 meet 3 he's bringing out 300, and I'm bringing 300. And then I have another guy bringing 300. With 900, we're gonna acquire something.

Mhmm. Or he's gonna do his due diligence. And then after that, he's because it's like same thing with commercial res you know, commercial properties. Mhmm. You buy a property, you restabilize it, and then you pop it off.

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: Same thing with the business. You buy businesses from, you know, mom and pops or even businesses that aren't mom like, actual, you know, regular, you know, fully operating business, right, with the correct, structure. You buy it, you see how you could add value to it, and then you could sell it for twice as much, three times

Steve: as much. Yeah.

Abdullah: So that's where we're getting into it. And I feel like selling businesses is better than is is good money.

Steve: So you got a buddy. You pick this brain. Are you finding other people do market research with, or is that you're good there?

Abdullah: He's doing he's he's the guy.

Steve: You know? So he's already doing it. Okay. And then roles responsibilities. But since you already got a partner here, right, you're you're you're joining him.

Rules and responsibility part is kinda figured out then. Yeah. So you don't really need to

Abdullah: I'm following his lead on this one.

Steve: Okay. So then scrap that one. Let's take that off the table.

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: What other business ideas are you excited about at the moment?

Abdullah: Man, there's a there's a lot of things. What I wanted to do, my goal was 30 businesses under 30. Mhmm. Right? So I'm sitting at, like, you know, 10 right now, ten, eleven.

But, but thing is not just having businesses, having successful businesses. Right? You need companies that are doing at least 6 figures net profit, 100 k minimum net profit a year. Right? That's what I consider somewhat successful and at a at a automation level.

Right? Has to be to where okay. I'm making a 100 k without me doing anything. Yeah. I feel like that's, you know, it's good.

That, you know, it has to have potential scaling. Right? Because there's, like, for the restaurant, you can't really scale a restaurant because you can only have so many people come in.

Steve: Yeah.

Abdullah: Right? So I need businesses like a CRM or a virtual staffing company or or wholesaling or, you know, fixing and flipping. Companies that could be scalable. Right? For fixing and flipping, I just need more GCs with more crews and acquire more off market deals.

So how do I acquire off market deals? I gotta scale my cold call service. Okay. Cool. I need 50 cold calls from my own operation.

I need 10, acquisitions. So each acquisition has five cold callers. Each acquisition brings me about anywhere from eight contracts a month. Right? Eight contracts a month.

I have 10 of them. I'm getting 80 contracts. Yep. You know? Now 80 contract, even if you sell 30% on wholesale, I just have to buy more properties for myself.

Mhmm. Now if I'm buying more properties for myself, I'm scaling my fix and flip operation. I wanna scale my wholesale operation, I just gotta get more acquisitions, more cold callers, spend more money on marketing. Right? So it's just like different tactics on if the if the business is scalable or not.

Right? So once you have that understanding, you get in. That's when I get into it. Right? Right.

So there's some businesses where I'm like, yeah, I can't really scale this. That's where I exit or Mhmm. I just sell out or I just close it down. You know?

Steve: So, you mentioned, to me earlier, before the show that you've got, like, these clients right now. They're using you for for for cold calling. How did you acquire these particular clients?

Abdullah: I can't say any names because it's confidential. Right? Right. But how I acquired them was all through social media.

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: Right? Once you have a brand, other people that have a brand, they will trust you. And then me getting on stages, me getting on podcast, me showing that, hey, I'm a credible source. Right? Because you gotta you gotta be, hey.

You gotta show, your track record. You know? It's not just you you know, there's a lot of fakes out here. Right? Where there's fake, you know, faking, putting fake Lamborghinis, you know, they don't even own.

Yeah.

Steve: Rent it. Rent it. Rent it. Rent it. Rent it from your, your your your teletracked thing.

Abdullah: Yeah. Yeah. So that's what they're doing. Right? They don't even have any track record.

I know wholesalers. I don't even own any properties, neither do they flip any properties Mhmm. Or even wholesale. They might wholesale one property of their, you know, once a year and then, you know, made that $10,000 and just showing off that $10,000 check. We do, you know, we do that on a consistent basis to where, hey.

You need to show your track record. Mhmm. Right? And then once you social media is the reason why I got all these, you know, heavy hitters, people that are doing seven figures, 8 figures that have multiple businesses. Yeah.

It's because of social media I acquired, people for my white label service.

Steve: So then that's how I want branding then. How did you develop how did you develop your brand?

Abdullah: So I didn't know anything about branding. Right? I was like, okay. How do I build a brand? So I hired a market agent.

First, I do market research. Right? Same thing. Then I find someone that builds brands. I have the marketing company I'm working with right now, I'm paying them about 8 k a month, and they're the ones that run, you know, different branding, like, you know, different, people different, people's brands.

Steve: So I'm

Abdullah: like, okay. Cool. If I wanna build a brand, if I wanna do something, I need to hire this person to build my brand.

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: Right? So same thing with businesses. Right? You're if you want your business to do well, you need to build a brand for your business. Right.

Same type of concept. Right? Where if you gotta hire people,

Steve: marketing people. To get online and build a brand, we didn't just go on and do lives.

Abdullah: No.

Steve: You actually hired someone and say, okay. You're you build brands. Build my brand. Yeah. What was that initial cost?

Abdullah: A lot of money. Yeah. A lot I started with, like, 4,000. I didn't build a brand until, like, last year. Yeah.

It's, like, the first year of me posting consistently. We post once a day, twice a day. Right? Us actually being active, in in this space. Right?

Me going live, doing Instagram lives, bringing all their influencers, getting invited to speak on stages, podcasts, all that good stuff. Yeah. It just happened this year. Before that, I was like, hey. I gotta build my track record.

I need to make sure my business, everything are stable to where if I exit, right, if I leave my businesses, I know it's still running. Right? Yeah. So, you know, with that being said, it was, like, it was at a time where I was, like, okay. I think I'm ready to take this next step.

Steve: So you pay this group or whoever four k, then what?

Abdullah: And then that's that's basically good. They're like, hey, this is what we need to do. We got make reels. We gotta talk about this. What's your back end story?

What's this? I tell them a to z. This is what it is. Okay. Cool.

Let's make a story behind this. Right? Because a story sells. People do business with people they like. Right?

So I'm like, hey. You gotta basically be likable on social media. I'm like, oh, how do I do that? He said, your story is unique. Mhmm.

You need to basically put your story out there. And the ones that are gonna like your story, they're gonna do business with you.

Steve: Yeah. Right? So I

Abdullah: was like, okay. You take but now everyone's gonna do business with you because they don't like, I don't know, Middle Eastern. They don't like immigrants. They don't like this or they don't like, you know, wholesalers. Like, realtors don't like wholesalers.

Right? Stuff like that. But you

Steve: know, realtors love wholesalers. Now if you make you know, if you're making more money, then Mhmm.

Abdullah: Right now, the interest rate is so high. Realtors are not really making money. So they're coming to the wholesale side. Right? But all that good stuff.

Steve: Okay. So the way you've been able to build your VA staffing company was through social media, and social media was built by you first saying, hey. This is something I wanna do. Let me go do some market research, find some people, hire them, and then you just kinda follow their lead.

Abdullah: 100. It's due to social media, all my companies grew up 10 you're 10 x, five x from where they were. Mhmm. You know, like, even my wholesale company, I have people reaching out to me saying, hey, I had this off market deal. Hey, you wanna JV this?

You want hey, you wanna do this? Same thing with coaching. Coaching went skyrocket. Right? I have a 150 students now all through social media.

Mhmm.

Steve: I

Abdullah: have over 400 virtual assistants without a single dollar of ad spend. Yeah. And it's been a single dollar ad spend. It's all through social media, through Facebook, through word-of-mouth, through other investors, us using investor lift, reaching out to people on investor list because we do deals with them. Like, hey.

I know you're buying deals. Why don't you, you know, start acquiring your off market deals? You know? So having, you know, having, one guy doing outreach like that, dude, just all free. Nothing.

No paid advertisement. Right?

Steve: Well, and I think this is a powerful message for everyone that's listening. Right? It's just the importance of doing social media because, obviously, I've been doing this. Right? I started the podcast over five years ago now, so it's May of of of eighteen.

The five and a half years that I've been doing this. And I've been saying this, like, create content, create content, put yourself out there, but people still don't. Yeah. Right? And you didn't really it sounds like until about twelve months ago.

Yeah. So what was the did you have a belief that I shouldn't be creating content? I'm not qualified to create content? Like, what was the what was stopping you before from creating content?

Abdullah: I feel this goes for the 99% of people. They're scared.

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: Right? Because 99% of people are consumers. There's only 1% that are creators.

Steve: That's crazy when you look at the numbers.

Abdullah: So it's like and everyone's scared to take that leap. Like, oh, what if what if my, what's my boyfriend, my girlfriend, my my father, my my family, my friends, my college friends, my high school friends? What are they gonna think of me if I put content out there? You know what I'm saying? They get scared.

Like, oh, I don't wanna, you know, sound this way. I don't wanna do this. I don't you know? So it's like 99% are scared to put out content. I try that's what it is.

But if you wanna scale your business and if you wanna, you know, build your brand because once you build your brand, you can sell anything. Right. Like, I'm selling all eight different businesses on my social media. Mhmm. Right?

I have people coming for all different things now. Because they know, hey, I do this. I do that. Oh, you need it. You wanna get into this business?

Hey, reach Abdullah. Oh, you wanna co call her? Reach him. Oh, you wanna do wholesale deals? This is JV with him.

You know? If you wanna learn about wholesaling? Okay. All types of stuff. Right?

Yeah. Because you put content out there. So that's how you do business. Even if you don't have like, you could be a barber. Right?

You cut hair. Mhmm. And if you want more clients, if you consistently post different haircuts, different this, you're gonna get more clients that way. They're gonna see your, you know, your product. What what social media is to showcase your product.

That's all it is. You can do whatever.

Steve: People that pay attention to your stuff will also pay more. Yeah. For your services.

Abdullah: 100%. It could be anything. Clothing brand. You could sell, you know

Steve: I saw that Ryan Fineda just started up launched a clothing line.

Abdullah: Yeah. Right. It's like

Steve: it's it's crazy.

Abdullah: That's it. That's yeah.

Steve: That's what it is. So just repeat it again. The message for someone right here that's on the fence of creating content but hasn't done it yet, what would you say to them again?

Abdullah: You gotta build your brand. You know? It's like because 99% are consumers, 1% are creator, become a creator. That's what I recommend. Because if you wanna start your own business and you wanna leave your rat race job, right, you gotta start creating content.

That's how you're gonna build more connections. The reason why I feel like I became I'm I accumulated more money. I think my network, like, doubled tripled this year alone because of creating content.

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: Because I got connections, because I I find I met people on social media that I wouldn't have met otherwise.

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: You know? And then they actually because the thing is when you meet people on social media, they're on the same mindset as you. Mhmm. You know? They're trying to make money as well.

Resonates. Yeah. It just resonates.

Steve: So everything is you build a business to get out of the business. What are some specific steps you've taken to buy your time back?

Abdullah: To buy my time back. I'm really big on this. I have a book coming out on

Steve: this. Okay.

Abdullah: Right? Buy back your time. Right? So Are

Steve: you sure that's the name of the book? That's not the name of my book,

Abdullah: but it's somewhere on there. We're working on I'm on chapter five. I know there's a book already out there, Buy Back Your Time. There's a book that just launched, I think it's right. This year.

Steve: It's right over there. Oh, yeah. It's like, by Dan Martell.

Abdullah: Yeah. So it's something along those words. We're still I'm on chapter five right now. We're not Okay. We still have, like, three, four chapters to go.

Okay. So we're still working on that. But it's along those words. I'm like, hey. I need to I wanna do something where it's like, hey.

Buy back your time. That's what the book's about. Mhmm. It's about my journey and how I delegated and automated all these companies to where I just bought back my time

Steve: Mhmm. To

Abdullah: where now if I go on vacation with my wife, with my family, guess what? You know, the business doesn't stop. Mhmm. Right? The business is still running.

So it's like, you know, that concept and, you know, that's what I'm looking forward to now, you know, doing that and helping people out. And I'm gonna have a free ebook for everyone. So if they, you know, stay tuned

Steve: We're going back to this the process. Like, what what what are the major steps? Because we're talking about, like, what you wanna do, right, and how how it's done at a high level. But specifically, what are some, like, two, three, or more things that you must do if your intent is to buy back your time? So you

Abdullah: need to hire people.

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: Right? So to buy back your time, there's three ways to buy back your time. Systems. You need to implement systems. Because without system systems is the brain of your business, the hub of your business.

Without a system, you you don't know what's going on for that day. Right? Your system, you know, has your CRM. Right? It has all your data.

What your to do list, has your, your calendar link. Right? What what are your systems? What what system are you using to buy back your time? Mhmm.

Right? Then what process? Like, what are your SOPs? What process are you using? Right?

Because if you without a brain of you know, without a hub, you don't really know what's going on because the brain is everything. And, you know, especially in the compared to human body Mhmm. You're you know, the system is the brain. Yeah. That's where it holds everything.

Mhmm. And the process is, like, how everything moves Mhmm. Right, to structures. So just having those two things, you could buy back your time.

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: And then having the correct people in place. Mhmm. You just because thing is we have twenty four hours in a day. Right? In those twenty four hours, you're working eight hours.

Right? Some people work sixteen hours. Entrepreneurs, you're sleeping eight hours. You're working eight hours. You have leisure time for other eight hours.

So you only have eight working hours. Right? You and me were the same. You got blood going through your veins. I got blood going through my veins.

There's no difference between us. Right? So how do I maximize my time? How do I get more out of today? Hiring more people.

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: So if I hire another person, does eight hours, now I have sixteen hours Mhmm. That I'm putting in. Hire three people. Now I hire 10 people. Right?

So now I have eighty hours for that one day.

Steve: Alright.

Abdullah: Hiring 10 peoples. Now I just even if I take myself out the business, I just oversee the business. Mhmm. I just bought, you know, I have 10 v I just bought eighty hours.

Steve: So conceptually, it's it's it's a simple concept. Hire people.

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: How are you hiring people the right way?

Abdullah: So same thing. Once we have the roles and responsibilities, right, now it comes back to the SOPs. You need to have the correct responsibilities for this. You're not just gonna hire anyone. Mhmm.

You need to hire the right person. I am looking for an admin role. Mhmm. And for admin role or or even, like, a content creation role. I'm looking for, you know, right now we're, you know, shooting content and all that stuff.

I'm looking for a content team to build, you know, make a podcast. You're just, like, follow me, vlog in, YouTube, you know, all that stuff. So I need one guy just to follow me around everywhere I go. Yep. Right?

This the budget's 5 k a month. Mhmm. I need him to know how to edit. I need him to know how to record. He needs to have his own equipment.

These are all the, you know, the the requirements I need from him. And I also need him to have qualifications. Mhmm. He needs to have college degree in this.

Steve: You know,

Abdullah: he needs to have he said be educated. He has to have two years experience. You know, like, the basic information. You know? So this is what I need.

Now I'm gonna go out there, put a job post, and find the person that fits the roles and responsibility, you know, that the system, the structure of what I'm looking for. You know? Yeah. That process. Okay.

This this is what I need. This is what I need to find. Cool. Let's go find this guy.

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: So that's the right person. Now, yeah, you have interviews going on, few interviews that you do, but now that you know, hey. If the guy is qualified at this, I know he's gonna at least fit the role. Right? And I can't con control their personality and stuff like that, but it's like, you just gotta have a good feel with them.

Right? You already know.

Steve: So looking how your business looks today, particularly, you said this year was a huge leap for social media. How did your business look today versus, you know, after your first deal when you're delivering pizzas?

Abdullah: Man, it's life changing. It's like, you know, you can't I can't even express it, man. It's just it's huge. Making 6 figures a month to making $2,030,000 dollars a year I mean, making 6 figures a year to making $2,030,000 dollars a year to making millions a year, you know. So it's just like it's it's crazy, man.

It's like a roller coaster ride. Life's roller coaster. I feel like we wouldn't be who we are if we didn't go through that roller coaster ride. Right. You know, everyone's unique in their own way.

Mhmm. Right? So everyone needs to go through that roller coaster ride, man. Yeah. If I didn't go through that, if I didn't go to delivering pizza and my parents not being immigrants and going through whoever I had to go through, I wouldn't be who I am today.

And everyone has a different story, you know. Some some are getting, you know it's difficult for people. Right? Oh,

Steve: it's definitely difficult for people.

Abdullah: It's difficult for a lot of people, man. Yeah. It's just but everyone has a story. The thing is you can't let that hold you down. You know?

Like, I could have been like, oh, you know, my parents didn't really don't don't come from anything. This is what life is. Mhmm. You know? Millionaires are not just, you know, are in our genetics.

We're not million we're not supposed to be millionaires. We're supposed to just work three, four jobs, work hard Mhmm. And, like, do this, you know. But I could've stuck at that, but everyone has the capability. Everyone has potential to do what I'm doing.

I'm no different than them. Mhmm. You know, I just woke up, prayed, thank God for another day, and just put in the work. Just showed up. That's all I did.

Steve: Yeah. You

Abdullah: know, I showed up for eight months. That's how I got my $2,000 deal. Right? I showed up for six years. That's how I became, you know, that's how I'm doing 6 figures a month in real estate wholesaling.

It's because I'm showing up every day. Even on the weekends, I show up.

Steve: How different are you as a person from the guy that was hustling delivering pizzas from the guy today?

Abdullah: Yeah. So before, I used to work in the business. Now I'm working on the business. Yeah. Right?

That's the difference. So as soon as you have everyone hustle mentality. Right? Once you're, like, working, oh, man. I'm doing it.

I'm making calls. I'm, you know, talking to buyers, talking to sellers. Oh, I'm I'm in the streets. You know? I'm I'm showing properties.

I'm, you know, talking to sellers. That's a hustle mentality when it comes to wholesaling. Right? It could be other businesses. And then once you understand, like, hey.

I wanna buy back my time. I need to find some other hustler that could do what I was doing to where I could work on the business. And once you start working on the business, that's when you actually progress in life. That's when, like, hey. Now I could go on vacation.

Now I could do other things. The reason why I took myself out of wholesaling, that's the reason why I got other businesses. If I was just a wholesaler, I could've done well for myself. I could've been me, and I could've had five acquisitions. And we're getting leads and we're all closing deals.

I could've had one business. We're doing, you know, good million dollars a year. Everyone's eating. Everyone's happy. I could've been doing this.

But I was like, hey. Look. I there's more to life than this. There's Right. Millions of businesses out there.

You know? There's a different type of purpose. Mhmm.

Steve: Yeah.

Abdullah: Helping homeowners, I thought that was my purpose. I thought helping distressed homeowners get out of, you know, a bad situation, I thought that was my purpose. But then years went by. I was like, that's not the purpose anymore. Now What's the purpose?

It was the purpose.

Steve: Per season.

Abdullah: Yeah. But I'm like, acquisitions, that's your purpose now.

Steve: Because I

Abdullah: that's what I teach them. Like, hey, guys, we don't do this for money. Kick the money out the door. Mhmm. After money.

I don't do this for money. I do this to solve problems and help homeowners. And that's what we do. If you wanna be part of my team, that's why we do it. Mhmm.

You know, if you think if you wanna do this for the money, you're in the wrong industry, buddy. You you're the wrong company. Get out of here. You know, we're here to solve problems because you need to have an emotional connection. Yeah.

You need to have empathy when you're talking to a seller. They're going through tougher times than us. Right? So it's like you need to have that Right. Empathy.

That's how you get, you know, paid the big bucks when you solve a problem. Yeah. Right? We don't even do this for money. We're like there's deals that we're like, hey.

We're not making anything out of this deal. This it was locked up too high because the mortgage is too high. And, you know, and the no buyer's willing to give anything. We're we're gonna actually if anything, we're gonna lose money on this deal. Mhmm.

You know? Or because we're not we're not trying to lose. I actually lost a few money. I was like, yo, just to help the homeowner out. But they were like, hey.

Breaking even is cool. As long as the seller, he walks away free and clear. He doesn't have to worry about anything. Buyer, he's happy. He found a good deal.

Cool. Right? That's all we're here to do. Be the middleman. Sometimes we're just here to help help the seller and the buyer.

Right? So there's times where, you know and then once you go with that mindset, God just opens so much doors for you. I made a $102,000 on assignment fee. That's my biggest assignment. Right?

We didn't even do it for the money. We're just trying to help the homeowner. Okay. Cool. You want this much?

You want this much? Cool. We'd lock it up. Once you start pushing it out, we got higher than expected. You know, we're gonna make $20.30 k on the spread.

But, dude, we got we went a $102,000 because we got overbid. Yeah. So there was some type of development going on. Amazon came. Something's going on.

I'm like, really? I don't even know. Yeah. You know?

Steve: I hear you though. I mean, I've been in those situations where, like, I mean, we've closed on deals. We lost money on it. But

Abdullah: You already know. We did it for, you know, good faith, man. We did out of good faith. We're like, hey. Let me help the homeowner out.

Steve: We made a commitment. We made a promise to them. That's what we wanted. What is your why?

Abdullah: Man, the why was my you know, the why is still my family. Now Mhmm. I do this for my family. Now, you know, I'm I'm blessed that I could give I can, you know, get whatever I want. I could help provide for my family.

You know. Mhmm. My brothers my little brothers are, you know, I remember we had to do a lot of a lot of dirty things to, you know, and I guess get buy chips and stuff, you know, because now it's like, you know, we could buy the store, you know. So Right. So it's just like, man, they're the reason.

And now, like, you know, I'm blessed that I could do all that stuff, but now there's a bigger why. Now the why is I wanna help 100,000,000 people figure out what their why is Mhmm. And help because the why what it comes down to, you need to have a why to make money. Mhmm. Right?

So now I wanna help a 100,000,000 people find that why so they could make money and provide for their family. Yeah. You know? Because that's why I got into coaching. I was like, hey.

There's a lot of fake coaches out there. Mhmm. Right? We do weekly calls. I give you intense course.

I give you anytime they want anything, my my guys, they have a, a link to my calendar link. I don't do them anymore, but I have Accusens are trained. I do whenever you need one on one support, even if you need help closing deals, any questions, book a call with them. Mhmm. Book a call with my closer.

They're trained by me. They've been working with me for a few years now. They're, you know, they're cold. You know? Yeah.

So 100% access to them. Right? So, like, 24 I my acquisition, like, twenty four seven. My closers, they're like, yo. We're $24.07 for the students.

Mhmm.

Steve: Because

Abdullah: the thing is, they get commission when they you know, suppose once the student's making money, guess what? He's gonna need help j v ing. He's gonna need me need doing this. He's gonna want list. He's gonna he's gonna want stuff.

Mhmm. Guess what? I give him 15%. Yeah. But, hey, yo, you you may we're all making money here.

Right? So if the students are making money, we're all making money. So

Steve: What's your biggest struggle today?

Abdullah: Biggest struggle? Man, there's always struggles in life, but I would say, man, it's just you're staying consistent, man. Because there's some dates where, like, hey, I'm blessed to have what I have.

Steve: Things are good.

Abdullah: Yeah. I don't have to show up. Yeah. But I'm like, but you gotta show up.

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: You gotta show up. Because the thing is I I told God, I said, hey, Even, you know, when you used to pray for, you know everyone prays. There's three things that you pray for. Right? You pray for especially when we go to, like, Umrah and Hajj, we go to, like, Saudi Arabia to God's house.

When I was, you know, we used to go there. We pray for three things. You pray for especially a single guy. Right? You pray for a wife.

Right? You pay for a pious wife, pious kids. You know, you you want you pay for that. You pay for money. Mhmm.

A shit ton of money. You know, everybody who doesn't wanna pay for money. Yeah. And then you pay for your family, right, for their health, for longevity, you know, for for their, you know, for their happiness Mhmm. And all that stuff.

Right? So, you know, we've been praying for that stuff, man. And now it's just like, you know, have all that. Right? So now it's like, okay.

What else do I pray for? Now I pray for it to help other people change it because I'm just a vessel, man. Mhmm. I I figured out that, hey. God just made me a vessel because I'm 20 years old.

Right? And God's blessed me with all these things. I'm like, god, how come you bless me with all these things while the people are struggling? What's the purpose behind this? Do I you know?

So I ask him all the time. I'm like, hey. What's the purpose? And he's giving me, like, other ideas and stuff. You know?

You already know it. As a business owner, you have a million ideas going on your head, and you just gotta execute. You know? So it's just, like, now I feel like the why is, like, to help other people. Now I'm actually partnering all my students.

Like, the CRM I'm making, I'm partnered up with one of my students that made, like, 40 k in three months wholesaling, and he's a developer. Mhmm. Right? But he's not really active, but he understands, like, coding and all that stuff. Yeah.

And he's like, dude, I wanna make a CRM. And he helped me push it. Like, dude, I'll try the CRM. If it works for me, if I like it, I'll I'll push it out there. We could partner up.

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: Right? So it's like just partnering up with people, you know, finding, new opportunities.

Steve: Yeah. I like that. I mean, it's I think, right, like, I haven't really talked a lot about prayer, and it's it's different, you know, because I'm agnostic. I don't have any preferred religion. But I was raised Buddhist.

Right? And my wife is Buddhist. And so we have to pray because that's what that's what she does. And so I said, alright. Well, what I pray for is always the same.

It's health, success, and that we can help those close to us. Because it's awesome here, like, you know, like Yeah.

Abdullah: This is

Steve: Praying for the same things.

Abdullah: Yeah, man.

Steve: Asking for the same things.

Abdullah: Yeah. God. God, make me a vessel. Whoever wants help today, please bring them closer to me. That's like, you know, and then DMs coming in, you know.

So it's like or I just get random calls or Mhmm. I meet random people, you know. Like, you know, we we go out to eat. We do this. We do that.

Especially when you have influence, but, oh, Steve Frank, what's up? And I I see your podcast. I see your content, especially I'm in Chicago. Right? So I get, like, four, five hundred thousand eyeballs on my stories and, you know, my per on a monthly basis.

Right? Especially all platforms together. So now if you're in Chicago, you're gonna get you go, you know, you go out to eat. Well, hey, bro. I see your stuff, man.

I love it. You know? And, like, you get, you know, you praise for the, hey, bro. Good stuff out there. I'm like, I appreciate it.

And that, like, oh, man. I gotta push out more stuff because I see people appreciate it. You know?

Steve: Well, you get a lot of massive dopamine hits.

Abdullah: Oh, yeah. That oh, yeah, man.

Steve: What's your superpower?

Abdullah: Superpower. Man, learning how to automate and delegate. I feel like I've mastered that, and I've because the game of business is the same game. The concept's the same thing. Right?

Yeah. Doesn't matter if you have a wholesale business, a property management business, a rideshare company, you know, fixing and flipping. It's the same thing. Once you understand the concept of business with the correct systems, processes, and people, and that's how you delegate and automate any company. Mhmm.

That I feel like that's a superpower. I could come in and I already know. Okay. Cool. How do I what do I at first, I need to do market research.

I'll do as much research as I can. I need to find someone that already did five, ten years of research. I gotta find someone that owns come back auto repair shop. They had auto repair shop for ten years. Right?

Find the operator. Right? Okay. Cool. After that, okay.

What systems do I need? What do I need to do? Mhmm. Where do I get all the inventory from? What do I you know, what's the wholesale?

What's the roles and responsibilities? Okay. Cool. And then hiring the correct people. Right?

Like, that whole thing, you can start any business, any type of business. You could name a biz a cleaning company? Cool. First, market research. Find someone that's doing it.

Roles, responsibilities, right, systems. What systems do you have to use? There's cleaning tools. Right? There's there's softwares out there.

Okay. Cool. I need this software, this software. Cool. Okay.

Roles are responsible. Okay. Cleaning lady you know, cleaning guy or lady? Cool. You need to do this.

You need this. You got you know, first thing you gotta do when you come in, remember, clean the living room or go clean the bathroom. First thing you gotta do the bathroom because it's the dirtiest. So you're gonna get worn out there. Right?

Clean the bathroom. Cool.

Steve: Now you got

Abdullah: the dirtiest job Now you come to the kitchen. Cool. Once you do the kitchen, awesome. Now you can just vacuum and do all the, you know, stuff in the rooms and the living room. You know?

So roles and responsibilities. And then having the people in place because I'm not doing the cleaning. We gotta find people that could do all this stuff. So any business that you do, we just create another business right now, you know, the cleaning company. So it's just like

Steve: Well, it's it's it's great. And, I would say I'll I'll I'll give you kudos to this because you operate things in slightly different order than I would. So it's good. I can you know, I learned something here. So for me, if I was gonna start a new business, I would just hire a coach.

Right? I'd be like, hey. I'm doing this. Let me go hire a coach, and I'm gonna hire an employee. Like, that's how I would do it.

But you're you're doing it in a smarter order where you're like, let me see if there's something I don't even wanna do. Right? Which is Test the water. Yeah. Test the water.

Right? So I need to slow down. And that's something that we talk about with certainty talks and we all club with this and that. But, you know, I I I have this tendency to go too fast, and I need to slow down. Do the market research before you hire a coach.

Abdullah: Yeah. There's things out there, man, you might not be a fond of. Like, hey. I thought, yeah, the money's good, like, development. Like, the money's good.

Steve: Mhmm.

Abdullah: But the thing that goes into it, you know, having a development team and, you know, the legalities behind having a, you know, the license and bond and ensure you know, having the right people, like, hey. This is and the money yeah. You might make $100,000 on a, you know, development or 200,000 development, and it takes a year, eight months Mhmm. I could be doing you need a whole massive team, and, like, the payroll might be $20,000. Right?

Mhmm. Okay. Cool. I'm only making 200,000, and the payroll for it maybe is 80,000. So I'm only making 120,000, you know, on this deal.

If you're making 200,000, you eight payroll is 80,000. I'm only making $1.20 on this, and it took me license. But I had so much stuff going on.

Steve: I've heard headaches.

Abdullah: Exactly. I could just fix and flip, have a smaller team. I could've done two of those and made the same amount of money of this. Yeah. You know?

So you gotta see, like, hey. Is this even worth it? Mhmm. Money looks, oh, $200,000 sounds good. If I tell you, hey, Steve.

Let's make $200,000. We gotta do this project. Come on. Let's make it 200,000. You know?

But I'm like, okay. This is what it goes. Like, dude, I could've done something else. I could've done two small fix and flips.

Steve: Opportunity costs. Yeah. What would you say is your biggest regret?

Abdullah: Man, no regrets. I feel like everything happens for a reason. Mhmm. Right? So, like, in my religion, they say everything's written.

Who you're gonna marry? When you're gonna get married? Right? How many business you're gonna start? How many kids you're gonna have?

When you're gonna die? A disease ridden. You know? So it's just like me just being, you know, part of this journey, right, that God put me in Mhmm. Is just there's no regrets.

Steve: So I'm gonna ask a philosophical question here. How do you align your obviously, as a as a multiple business owner, you're fairly autonomous and independent. Probably don't wait for a lot of other people's input before you make your decisions. You kinda do what you think is best. Yeah.

How do you align that with your fate's already been determined?

Abdullah: Man, so what it comes down to is, say, if I wanna do something because think that I don't even have partners. Mhmm. The reason why I don't have partners is because of that. Like, eight eight of the companies that I own, I'm sole owner. And then I have my brother involved, you know.

Like, other things that might like, the CRM that I'm making. You know, he's a developer. He's gonna develop it, but what I say is gonna go, I I'm gonna do all the sales and marketing. I already discussed all this. I'm like, hey.

I'm gonna be the face. You just take care of the back end. Let me do what I gotta do. Right? So same thing with that.

Same thing with any other companies. Like, hey. I'll take care of this stuff. This is the because once you have roles and responsibilities, if they're not holding up to their part of the, you know, bargain, guess what? Hey.

You're getting you're out.

Steve: That's why I get all that. Yeah. But then how do you reconcile your faith's been determined with your desire to be your own man.

Abdullah: Yeah. So maybe if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. End of the day. Right? If I want to do if I wanna impact a 100,000,000 people, and my faith says that's what the goal is.

Right? My faith says, hey. That's not what we're gonna do. You're only gonna impact 20,000,000. That's what it is, man.

Right. You know? So it's just like, I just gotta have that mindset of, hey. This is what I wanna do. And if God wants me to do this, it's gonna get done.

Right. Right? I just have to show up. That's what the biggest thing in life is. You gotta show up.

People that wanna start a business, it's gotta show up. They started like, oh, yeah. Starting a business, Sweden. You know, simple. Yeah.

Let's open a wholesale business. Cool. Let's buy some data. You never showed up to make those calls.

Steve: You know? When I asked this question because I've I I'm I'm a very strong disbeliever of faith. Right? Because we talk about it in schools and this and that. I was like, I just can't have the concept of faith being predetermined, or I have to feel like I'm controlling my life, and fate is the opposite of me controlling my life.

I just couldn't handle it. So like I said, it was a philosophical question for myself. And then what book have you gifted more than any other?

Abdullah: Man, Traction. Traction is that book. The reason why I got into understanding operations, roles, responsibilities, systems, processes, You talk about that in there. It's like how you could basically be behind the scenes and supervise companies, work on the business, not in the business. Mhmm.

That book is phenomenal. And I'm taking a little bit of what I learned from all the books, right, all my favorite books, and I'm putting into one, you know, massive book, which is gonna be my own book. Right? Which is, like, understanding of different concepts and then what I've learned by my with myself and my own struggles. Right?

So it's like so, you know, I'm looking forward to that and just bringing to the audience. I know you have some books to yourself. Right?

Steve: Yeah. I got a couple books. The only one that's really worth reading is active listening two point o.

Abdullah: Active listening two point

Steve: o. Yeah. Okay. I have another one. Haven't been published yet.

It's a biography of my parents.

Abdullah: Oh, beautiful.

Steve: So I hired a biographer to interview interview my parents. So at some point, that's gonna come out.

Abdullah: That's awesome.

Steve: And then for me, right, again, like, well, I'm an immigrant as well. Right? I came here, before. I came here from another country. But I think there's a lot of lessons from, like, the journey of my parents to come from overseas literally attacked by pirates.

Right? You know, in in in in in international waters. No way. Fleeing, like, you know, communism twice. Yeah.

Like, I I have this, a very strong bent pro capitalist, pro entrepreneurship attitude. And the reason why is that, you know, we've had everything stolen from our family twice. Right? Yeah. Communism.

So that's a book that's not out there yet, but it's gonna be.

Abdullah: Oh, man. Yeah. That's, most definitely gotta read that one, man.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I read it. Actually, someone in my organization read it, and he he actually cried.

I was

Abdullah: like, yes. That's what I was thinking. I was like, man, that's that's meaningful stuff, man. Because there's stories that people don't know about behind the scene. They might be like, hey.

Steve is this disruptor now. You know? But, hey. Where did Steve start? Where did his parents start from?

Where did everything originate from? And that story is like, wow. The reason why Steve is what he is today is because of what he'd been through.

Steve: Right? Or my parents,

Abdullah: my family. Yeah.

Steve: And it was so important to me to have it, written because my parents are older. Right? They're in their sixties. And, like, your life, you're you got you already got a social media person. Like, your kids are gonna know your life.

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: Right? It's gonna be impossible for my kids not know about my life. I'm pretty open with my opinions.

Abdullah: Yeah.

Steve: Right? So they they won't need that. But my parents and, you know, you're the oldest of four boys. I'm the oldest of six boys, right, in an immigrant family. So, I want that message passed on to my kids and my nieces and nephews and so on.

Abdullah: Love it, man. Yeah. That's awesome.

Steve: So I want you to think about some last thoughts, to leave all the the the listeners with. Probably just share something real quick. Guys, you got value today. You know, I'm hoping that you guys got a ton of value. I learned some things a couple of things today.

So if you guys are getting some of this something from this, please do me a favor. Subscribe. Share this with your friends, people that need to hear this. Go to iTunes. Go to Spotify.

Leave us a five star review. It will help us reach more people. I'm on a mission to create a 100 millionaires. Abdul is on mission to impact a 100,000,000 lives. Help us with our mission.

So what are some last thoughts we'll leave all the listeners with?

Abdullah: Well, people might think, hey. How do I work on the business, not in the business? Mhmm. Right? So you have to work in the business.

There's two things. Either you have time or you have money. In the beginning, everyone has time because capital is low. Right? So you with that time, you focus on building that capital.

You put in all your time so you could build capital. Once you have money, then you buy back your time. Mhmm. Right? And you're like, hey.

How do I how do I work on the biz not in the business? Right? And it's it's, you know, fairly simple. I would say that in the beginning, you know, there's a there's a saying for it. Right?

I kinda lost my train of thought right now. Yeah. What what was it saying? Well, either way, when it when it when it comes to me, I'll I'll let you know. I was just thinking when you were given your, you know, thing, I was like, oh, I wanna say this.

It's gonna be nice. Yeah. But what I'm saying is that to work on your business, not in your business, what you have to do is once you build capital, right, once you build your capital, then you you have to reinvest. That's what it was. So while you're working in your business, you're building capital.

With that capital, you need to put every single thing that you make in the beginning into your business. Mhmm. And that's how you automate that business. That's how you basically get to the correct systems, the processes, the people, then you start working on your business.

Steve: Right.

Abdullah: Right? You can't just go from starting a business working on it. It doesn't work that way. You know? That's basically the concept I wanna give everybody.

Hey, guys. You have to work in your business once you build a capital and, you know, don't spend that capital on buying Rolexes, Porsches, all that stuff right away. Put it reinvest in your company. Once you reinvest in your company, only then once you're stable enough, you're like, hey. I'm making $20,000 stable every month.

Cool. Let's invest. Let's double this up and, you know, hire the correct people so where I I could work on the business. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. That was a great message. And, you know, it's kinda funny. This is I got Corey Thompson, you know, roughneck, what's it? Roughneck roughneck to rough rough whatever.

Roughneck to real estate is what it was. Right? So I don't know if you follow him, but

Abdullah: Fuck to real estate.

Steve: I love this guy because he is an equal opportunity, antagonist. He just pokes the bear on all these other gurus in our industry. And he put this quote the other day, which is that all the people that have been quote, unquote working on their business for the last few years right now are updating their resumes. And I was like, it's there's power there. Right?

Like, you have to actually do the work Yeah. Before you work on the business. Yeah. Everyone wants to skip the working in the business. Yeah.

It's working on the business.

Abdullah: That's what it is. Like, I have so many students. Like, yeah. I just wanna automate it. I'm like, you can't auto you don't have any understanding of this business.

Yeah. I've been doing it for six years. My fifth year is that when I started automating things. Right? So I was in the trenches for those five years.

Right. Right? So I'm like, hey, you first you need to know how to talk to a seller, how to talk to a buyer, how to do you know, if you want a JV, I could help you with that. But How

Steve: can you quality control? You've never done the work.

Abdullah: 100%. And then they think you're gonna make a million dollars. I'm like, hey. That's not how it works. You know?

So remember, guys, first, you have to work in your business. Once you have the understanding of how to work in the business, that only then you start hiring and working on the business. Yeah. So that's I'll leave you at that. You know?

Alright.

Steve: Thank you so much. I do appreciate it.

Abdullah: Appreciate you, Steve. Thank you guys for watching.

Steve: See you guys next time. Steve train. Jump on the Steve train. We real estate disrupt us.