How to Buy Properties with $100

Steve Trang: Everybody, thanks for joining us for today's episode of real estate disruptors. Today we have Jen and Joe Delafay with CF Playbook, and they flew in here from Bradenton, Florida to talk about how to buy properties for a $100. Guys, I wanna make sure you 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, guys, if you get value out of the show, please hit that subscribe button. Don't keep us a secret. That way we can all grow together. You guys ready?

Joe Delafay: Let's go. Yeah.

Steve: Thanks for having us.

Jen Delafay: Thank you.

Steve: Well, thanks for coming on. I appreciate it. I I got a chance to finally meet you guys face to face, back in September, I believe. Right, in, in in Tampa for the family mastermind, something we do together. So first question is simple.

What was life like right before you guys got into real estate?

Joe: Jeez. So I did this twenty four years ago is when I got started. So at that point in my life, I had a job working for my buddy. I was 22 at the time. And just like any other 22 year old, I was just, you you know, trying to figure out what life was like.

I never went to college. Mhmm. I was going to do to be a chiropractor, and I was one of the guys at the last minute I chickened out. I was thinking to myself, do I really wanna, like, touch people my whole life? So I took the notorious one year

Steve: That's a interesting way to describe that profession.

Jen: Yeah. It

Steve: was just

Joe: it kinda creeped me out in the beginning. And, I didn't grow up with a lot of money, so I knew I was gonna pay my own way through school. Mhmm. And thinking, am I gonna pay all this money to touch people? I don't wanna do that.

So I took that one year off from school. I'll go back, you know, when I figured out my life and never went. Luckily, I got some great jobs. But at this point in my life, I was at my buddy's house one day, and we were just hanging out. And he bought a course on wholesaling on TV, some late night commercial.

It was Ron Legrand. Mhmm. And this was the year 2000 when there wasn't really you know, YouTube wasn't out yet. Google wasn't really what Google is now. And, we're hanging out, and he had this course, and he never opened it.

It was, like, brand new still in the cellophane wrapper. And he said that they had it for a while. He bought it. They never opened it. It was just sitting in his closet.

So I'm sitting here, like, in shock that I'm even holding this thing.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: And back then, $300 was a lot of money.

Steve: Yeah.

Joe: So I begged him to let me borrow it. And, I wasn't gonna take no for an answer because we're buddies like that, so that's what happens when you're good buddies. And he let me borrow it. And there were some VCR tapes, some audio cassette tapes, a book, and I promised one day I'll give it back. Just let me borrow it.

And I still have it and never gave it back. And we're still good buddies.

Steve: So And don't listen to this episode. Yeah.

Joe: Of course. Shout out to Ron. But that's really what got me started even into real estate, in the first place because, you know, I always thought you need a lot of money Mhmm. And you need to be savvy and to to buy and sell houses. I didn't think that just from reading a book and a couple cassette tapes, I could actually do this.

Steve: Right. So So your buddy bought the goods, bought the information, bought the course? Yeah. They really take a lot of action with it.

Joe: Zero. He didn't even take enough action to open it.

Steve: Yeah. And so, I know this is kind of early in the show, but, you guys also do some coaching.

Joe: Yep.

Steve: Do you guys have this experience with some of the people that have bought your products?

Joe: So we are very hands on Mhmm. With our clients that we work with. Yeah. So we check with them all the time. Mhmm.

And for us, I don't want you spending money Mhmm. If you're not gonna take action. So when we have these initial calls, the discovery call Mhmm. To see if we're a good fit, and they are too. The biggest thing is, you know, once you learn something, it's that's great, but it's about taking action.

Yeah. And that's really the difference of most time the doers and and the don'ts. Mhmm. So I kind of make sure that we're having the right fit, that once we give you the small little steps on what to do, don't dump the whole thing about it once and get them overwhelmed. Mhmm.

Give them a few small steps. Let them take that action. Let them have that little bit of a win, and then you give them the next steps to do. And I think if you don't overwhelm them and give them some really easy tasks to do, it kinda prevents that from happening.

Steve: Yeah. That makes sense. So, and he says Ron LeGrand. Mhmm. You guys have also got a chance to hang out with a family mastermind?

Joe: Oh, yeah.

Steve: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So what's that? What was your first interaction with him, in face to face?

Joe: This was, well, I do a deal back then 2020 or 2000, and we did some since then. But I had a job, so I was always working. So I never really had any time off.

Steve: Yeah.

Joe: So I learned a lot. We actually hired one of him and one of his coaches to teach us, but we'd never physically met until a couple of years ago.

Steve: Right.

Joe: There was actually, the family mastermind was holding a small event in Jacksonville, and Ron was holding something in his office. So they're like, come on up to the office. Mhmm. So I've we've gone on, like, podcasts with him before and things like that, but never face to face. Yeah.

So when we got to see him finally where I drove to Jacksonville for a few different events, I got to see him. You know, they always say don't meet your idols and your hero, but he's just the guy. Right? And and he is awesome. So he's really One

Jen: of the times he was interviewing, he'd I heard him. He was like, I like that couple. You know? So when I got to meet my family, like, I just went right up and gave him a big hug and, you know, he's just this is raw. And I don't know.

He's so giving and caring. He'd come off a little gruff at times, but, like, he really wants people to succeed. So yeah.

Steve: Yeah. He's a legend in the space. I didn't know who he was when I saw his ads a few years ago. Or because you know the name. Yeah.

I didn't know who it was. I was like, why are these VHS ads on YouTube? Yeah. Right? Yeah.

But that's what they were running, and it probably worked. You know? Yeah. So you get the the the the VHS. You get the cassette.

You start watching it. What was the information there that helped you close your first deal?

Joe: Just even the idea that you can wholesale Mhmm. A house was shocking to me. I didn't know. I thought if you're gonna buy a house, you have to go through banks, and you're gonna have to if it's a fixer upper, you have to do all of the work yourself and hire contractors or swing the hammer yourself. So this was like, nope.

You don't need any of that. Mhmm. You could just wholesale a house. You get a good deal under contract, and then you find a cash buyer who's looking for good deals and would love to have this. Yeah.

And, so that's exactly what I did. I just put into work what they said.

Jen: Well, even how you found that property, it was kinda cool.

Joe: Yeah. Because once again, there wasn't, like, social media or things like that back then. So alls I did was I called the code enforcement officer for every town in my area, and I just said, my name is Joe Delafave. This was in Rochester, New York. This is where we lived at the time.

And I just introduced myself, said I'm looking to buy a house in the town because I like the town. You have any that are on, you know, your list of houses that are, you know, a problem. And every one of the code enforcement officers are like, no. Can't help you. Click.

Mhmm. Can't help you. Click. And then in one town, town called Henrietta, the one gentleman, his name was Terry. I still remember it.

And he's like, I actually do have this house. Mhmm. And it's a problem. The gentleman who owned it moved to California. It's sitting here vacant.

People broke into it. The power's off. I'm like, check, check, check. Like, all of the things. I'm like, yay.

And he, gave me the the he connected me with the the guy. Mhmm. And when I called him, he was like, I would love somebody to buy this house. So that's how I found that first deal and put that deal together.

Steve: So you bought it or you contracted at least. So talk to me. Like, what was it like in what was the experience in in locking that property up? Because your experience or your knowledge base at the moment is just straight wholesale.

Joe: Mhmm.

Steve: So talk to me about what you did with that property. When you started your real estate business, it was with the dream to change the world and make an impact. The reality is you might not be near that. If you're like many investors, you might be frustrated. You just can't succeed in getting your salespeople to do what they know that they should do.

They operate on their own terms. Meaning, they don't follow your process that you know produces consistent results. So each month feels like a roller coaster because revenue is coming in inconsistently. How relieving would it be if your salespeople did follow your proven process, were receptive to feedback and training, and could be held accountable to the results that leads to their success and your success. Would your company stop riding in the roller coaster of revenue, frustration, and mental drain?

And that's why we brought in Wren Bartlett. He's built a business that's wholesaled a 100 plus houses a month. The people he brings into his business are bought into the process. They have a deep understanding of their role and are excited to be held accountable because as a business owner, he truly knows their deeper why so that we can demonstrate that our company is here to provide for their true purpose. If you'd like to finally stop dreading managing people who don't follow a process, produce inconsistent results, and aren't bought into your company, sign up for our sales leadership program to end the emotional stress of inconsistent results and finally have a fulfilling business working with people you want to be around.

Joe: Yeah. So what we did was I got under contract for $25,000. That's how much it was back then, which was a great deal. And, the seller was thrilled. He was gonna actually put a little bit of money in his pocket, pay off his mortgage that he was just making this payment on this house while it sat there vacant.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: And he owned his own business in California, so he didn't have time to come back to New York to fix it. I got under contract for 25,000. I did what the course said. I found a cash buyer. I actually knew somebody who was a contractor who was looking for a deal.

Yeah. So I met him at the house. I did exactly what it said. Don't show him the house. You don't show junkers.

There's nothing you can tell the contractor. He won't already see. So I just wait I waited in the driveway. I'm like, there you go. Go ahead in the house.

He's like, do I need a key? I'm like, no. This door just pushes open. Just go push the door open. I had under contract.

He walked through. He comes back out, says, what do you want for it? I said, I want 40,000. He's like, would you do any better? I was like, I really want 45, but because I know you, I'll do it for 40.

He was like, done. Mhmm. And then what the course said is, okay. If that sounds good, how soon will you have the money? He said, I could give you the 40,000 today.

I was like, slow down. Morris did not teach me this part. Right? So what we did is we did it. We put it under contract.

We did a double closing. Mhmm. So I bought it, and then within half an hour later, my buyer was already waiting in the lobby for me to sell it to him. So the first house I ever owned, I was just turned 23. I owned it for half an hour.

Yeah. Made, like, $15. It was, like, $12.07 clear after closing costs and things.

Steve: How did you fund it?

Joe: The attorney put up the money for us to purchase it because he knew that the certified check was in the lobby.

Steve: Got it. So the closing attorney Mhmm. Fronted the money Yep. For the transactional funding.

Joe: Yep. And didn't even charge me a dime for it.

Steve: Really?

Joe: Correct.

Steve: And did you know this attorney before this transaction? No. No. He was

Joe: like, kid, I can't believe you did it. And I'm like, I remember walking through the closing. After it was done, he was shocked. I was more shocked. I remember I'm walking through the parking garage, and I don't wanna sound cheesy, but I literally jumped in the air for joy.

Because if you came from where I did and been through all the things that I did, cried over that deal because, you know, it's not gonna close. Now I've made it close. All the things that happened. There was a lot going on. Mhmm.

I was jumping for joy, and I was so, like, disoriented. It took me probably twenty minutes to find my car. Like, I didn't even know where I parked. They had no clue. And it's cold.

It's the middle of the winter. I'm walking up and down all these floors, but it was pretty awesome.

Steve: Gotcha. So I guess what's in it for him was that he was getting a closing out of it or double closing.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Steve: Okay. So call the all the, code enforcement people. Sounds like selling it was pretty easy.

Joe: Mhmm.

Steve: The inhabitants in there, I guess, they were out by the time you

Joe: It was already vacant.

Steve: It was already vacant. Oh, yeah. Okay. That was the first deal. How did you keep that momentum going?

Joe: I messed up. I completely messed up. I did what everybody tells you to do and had a job, the JOB, which stands for just over broke. Mhmm. And don't matter what job you have, you're usually just over broke.

So I I really was focusing on my job, which I was in the car business. Mhmm. I got into sales for a couple of years, but then I was in finance. So I'm moving up the ladder. I'm making 6 figures.

I think life is great. I'm still looking at deals, but there weren't as plentiful available because of I don't maybe the Internet just wasn't as big in early two thousands. The market was getting a little warm at the time. Mhmm. 02/1945.

So fast forward from that year, 2000 to 2008 when I made Jen.

Jen: He was just waiting for me to really get into real estate.

Joe: That's all it was. My job moved up the ladder.

Steve: So you didn't really do anything to keep momentum? Nothing. Like, you you crushed it in your first one.

Joe: Yep.

Steve: And that was it.

Joe: Well, I had another deal under contract, and my due diligence period, I messed it up by one day. Mhmm. And so my buyer who bought the first deal, I didn't get to deliver on that second deal. And after that happened, plus my job, I just got in here 23 years old. So you just got that big old check, and you're making good money at your job, so I'm out.

Steve: Things are suck enough to change.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Steve: Yeah. So So then what what brought you back into it? So

Joe: I was always interested, always still looking. Mhmm. But I meet Jen in o eight. She's a teacher. I have my job in finance.

She had her own house when we met. I owned my own house when we met. And in o eight, the market was dipping. Mhmm. And it was crashing slowly, but it was crashing.

And in Upstate New York, now the deals are just popping up. Now we could find them just on the MLS. And we're buying these single family homes out in the suburbs for, like, $3,040,000 dollars. They were fixer uppers. They were all over the place now.

So what we were doing, which I didn't even know, but we were burning before it was even, like, called BRRRR. All I found was this strategy to where we're finding these fixer uppers. We'd renovate them. We would rent them out. We'd refinance it, even take extra money out tax free.

I'm like, holy cow. I discovered something that nobody else knows. Right? Mhmm. And then we were doing about one of those a year or so.

Mhmm. And that's kind of where our business just kind of like a slow mom and pop thing. You know? All my friends at work are like, why are you focusing on real estate when you have this great job? And I'm like, well, you never know.

This great job might not be here forever, and you always wanna build your side hustle. Mhmm. So we were kind of just quietly doing that in the background since o eight together.

Steve: Yeah. So you mentioned that it's not like it was today where it wasn't as plentiful as far as the opportunities.

Joe: Correct.

Steve: So one thing that it seems like, from looking around back then, right, that we didn't have batch script tracing. We didn't have PropStream. Any of any of these tools. Right? But if you found the seller, there was no competition.

Jen: No.

Steve: Right? Like, you could basically buy it for whatever. Mhmm. So now it's the flip side. Now everyone's talking to the same seller, and then whoever can you know, I think whoever's got the best sales skills gets the house.

Right. So it's slightly different. Like, we've completely, we've done a one eighty on on the access of deals. Because I I'm not sure necessarily if there's more deals as it is just access to deals. Yeah.

It has vastly changed.

Joe: Well, I think it's never been easier in the history of humans to communicate now

Steve: Right.

Joe: Than it ever have. I mean, I could talk to somebody all around the world within, you know, minutes now. Yeah. Where that way of communicating back then, it wasn't there. So

Jen: On the education and then also the community. So, like, now because when we first started, it was kinda weird. I'm like, I'm a landlady. Like, what is that? You know?

And then once I got into Instagram and I started finding people that were doing similar things, it was, oh, wow. Like, this is this is the thing to do, and you, you know, start collaborating and connecting and

Joe: Right.

Jen: Grow from there. And I feel like that really helped us a lot once we continued and Sure. Grew.

Steve: So you talk about Burr. Right? Like, you you you happened onto something, and you were doing a one a year. So you still weren't you guys still weren't actively looking to grow this. So what was the impetus then that actually caused you guys wanting to go 100% into real estate?

Jen: It's COVID. Yeah. It was literally February 2020, and we, were working with a new mentor who was really into social media marketing. And I was very comfortable social media. I was like, I could do this.

I could talk to the sellers. I can, you know, learn all these. My goal was to when the kids went to school full time, our little guy was going to kindergarten, our daughter would be in second grade. And I was like, I'm gonna bring you home, Joe. Like, you're gonna get out of this car business, and he gets a promotion.

And I just remember my heart, like, broke. I was like, no. Like, that's the opposite way that this is supposed to go. Right? So that was in February, and come March, we all know what happened, and New York shut everything down.

So I'm like, holy cow. Like, now is the time. We're gonna make this happen. We're gonna, you know, burn the boats and make this. It's do or die.

Like, there's no turning back.

Steve: Were you still a school teacher at this time?

Jen: No. I walked away to raise our babies, and the car business hours were just insane. Decent money, but he was never home. So Yeah. I I was there making sure everything ran at home.

Steve: Gotcha. So COVID was the thing that gave you guys a push that you guys needed because things were good enough.

Jen: Comfortable.

Steve: Yeah. Mhmm. And was it Jim Collins, right, he talks about good is the enemy of great. Mhmm. Right?

Like, you just didn't suck enough again Yeah. To take more action. So COVID happens. New York overreacts.

Jen: Oh, yeah. Totally.

Steve: Right. What happened to your car business, or what happened to your job?

Joe: It's still there. You know, well, what happened was I just get this promotion. The dealer group I work for, I'm now the finance director

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: Head of all finance. We just bought 12 new locations. We they did, not me. And they wanted me to help open them up and go do all these things. So I

Steve: do 12 locations?

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. And train all these finance people, hire them, train them, all these things. I think

Steve: that would take more time away. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Jen: That's

Joe: why Jen was depressed. It came with a good chunk of change. Mhmm.

Jen: And I supported him. We went and bought new suits. We were you know, I was gonna be that supportive wife.

Joe: But in the

Jen: back of my head, I'm like, I'm gonna make this thing happen

Joe: on my own. Even wore some of those suits, like, never worn, because literally three weeks, two weeks later, COVID happens. Mhmm. And when

Jen: The dealership closed. Send everybody home.

Joe: Yep. They they close it. They send everybody home. And we're just sitting there kicking back and forth the idea. And I'm like, oh, no.

I looked at my text messages, and I'm telling my friends. I was like, I'll be back in a few weeks. And she's the whole time she's like, you're not going back to work. There's no shop. It's now is the time we're gonna do this.

There's never a great time. There was

Jen: one moment I falter, and I text our mentor. And I was like, I don't know. Like, maybe we should just get the refund. This might not work out. And he's like, you can pause some of the marketing or, you know, turn it down a little bit, but do not quit.

He's like, this is the time to go all in. I was like, okay.

Steve: Yeah. Let's go. So did you like, they closed the dealership.

Joe: Mhmm.

Steve: And, obviously, they get compensation based off of volume. Like, did they let you go, or did they just No.

Joe: I reached out to the owner and just said, hey. I appreciate it, but I'm not coming back.

Steve: Okay. So you submitted your notice.

Joe: Oh, yeah.

Steve: Okay. Yeah. I mean, because I was just kinda curious, like, how things happen. Because, like, in Arizona, right, like, COVID never happened.

Jen: Right.

Joe: Right? Yeah. Down south, a completely different experience than we had back up north. I mean, you the kids, not really, but, you know, they're on these laptops going to school. Yeah.

Jen: His kindergarten year ended up being on a laptop virtual school.

Joe: Right.

Jen: That was crazy.

Steve: Yeah. The because I I I make this joke every once in a while. You know? We had we hosted a live in person event Mhmm. In August 2020

Joe: Oh, jeez.

Steve: In Phoenix.

Joe: That was against the law in New York. Mhmm.

Steve: Right. And the the the joke was come to Zona for the Rona. Right?

Jen: Because heard that. Yeah.

Steve: There were no restrictions. Yeah. Right? So okay. So you submit your notice.

Joe: Mhmm.

Steve: So now the clock is really ticking. Yeah. Alright. So then what was your first action after that?

Joe: Well, the neat thing about it for us was back in 2016, we were at the bank. We were refinancing out one of our properties. And my friend at the bank says, Joe, at ten Mortgages, we cut you off. Mhmm.

Steve: So you

Joe: need to figure something else out if you wanna scale your real estate business. And we knew we wanted more than 10 properties. So I went back. I was looking on YouTube. Once again, I find Ron the grand.

This time, Ron is talking about how to buy what he calls the pretty house business. How to buy these turnkey houses without banks, without using your credit, and really not much money. And I was like, oh, yes. That's what I want. So I went, like, down the rabbit hole, watched every video.

My poor wife

Jen: Every date night in the car listening

Joe: to Ross. The whole time. If you were in my car for 2,016 and 2,017, all you are gonna hear is Ron DeGrande. If you wanna hear the radio, drive yourself. Not gonna happen.

Jen: And it made no sense to me at the time. It was, like, gibberish to me. But he was like, I get it. He rewind it. Okay.

Yeah. And I'm like, okay.

Joe: So I think the catalyst, what made us be able to to walk away from my job feeling confident is because so we hire Ron and one of his coaches to teach us. Within maybe a couple months, we do our first creative finance deal. This was a free and clear property. Turnkey. Didn't need a thing.

We bought it with a $100 down. The seller gave us a 0% mortgage. We had a $500 payment. And I'm looking at her like no more junkers, and we get to do this with a 0% mortgage and a $100 down. I was like, yeah.

That's what we're doing for now on. Mhmm. No more banks. Yeah. So once we did a It's

Jen: way easier than burring. Just everybody knows.

Joe: Oh my gosh. It was the best thing ever. So after we started buying real estate that way, then we had one that had a mortgage on it. We bought that with a wrap because that's what our coaches taught us how to do. So we already did a couple of these creative finance deals.

And so when COVID happened and we made that lunge to go full time Mhmm. It was go. I think the scariest, most difficult thing is now that you know, when you're having your full time job, I'm like, boy, if I could ever do this full time, I would be, you know, doing all these things.

Steve: Right.

Joe: Well, now that you have all these hours in the day, you're like, well, where do I do? And it gets a little confusing, especially when it's the wintertime. You're in a house with two little ones, a dog, and, you know, you're trying to just make heads or toes. Is the world ending? Right?

You know, now it's COVID. So what we did was we just started hitting the ground marketing. We hit the ground marketing, and this was in the beginning of a global pandemic. Mhmm. And so we were marketing on social media using Facebook, and we are generating leads.

We're generating leads. We're messaging sellers on the call with sellers. We were buying properties virtually because you couldn't go into people's houses back then. Mhmm. So we would get the, you know, the Zoom walk throughs and do all of those kind of things.

And we are buying turnkey houses with, like, very little to no money. Mhmm. So that was really it. We hit the ground with marketing. We were talking with sellers.

We were very active. Social media, thanks to my wife, because that was all her idea. I had no I take zero credit with any of that. Yeah. And just sharing what it was that we were doing.

And, I mean, pretty quickly, we did a handful of these deals. Mhmm.

Jen: And we realized too we couldn't just do creative. We had to learn with wholesaling. That was really imperative to help the marketing and all of that too.

Steve: Yeah. So, so you see Ron in 2016, and you see that he does creative finance. Mhmm. You mentioned in the beginning in 2000 when you first went through his course, it was wholesale. Did he call it wholesale in that course?

Joe: I think it was, like, the ugly house business or something like that. It was, like, fast cash make, like Cash because I

Steve: don't know exactly the history of when wholesale became a term.

Jen: Mhmm. Right.

Steve: Right? But I don't think it was Mm-mm. A commonly accepted term in 2000. That's why I was just kinda curious. Yeah.

Joe: I don't I know it didn't say wholesaling on the cover.

Jen: Yeah. The title is not

Joe: fast cash, make money without banks and real

Steve: estate. Quick. Yeah. Yeah. Fun stuff.

Yeah. And then finance director, is that what you said? Yeah. So, you gotta be pretty good at sales to get the finance director. Yeah.

I remember I was, helping my in laws buy a car. Right? So it was me and my wife going and buying it for for them, like, their money and everything. Right? But I'm trying to be the good sign in law and and help with the process.

And I tell my wife as we're walking into the finance department. Right? Okay. Whatever they say, the answer is no. Right?

I just want you to know all the guys that were good on the floor are in there. Mhmm. Right? So I I prepped her for that. And as we're going through, she's like, I wanna say yes.

Like, no. The answer is no. Right? To get the director, it had to be another level. Yeah.

So talk to me about your your studies in the sales to go from selling cars to finance department to director.

Joe: My first job back in the nineties, not my first, but one of my first jobs, was, a job where I answered some ad in the newspaper that just talked about manager and training. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. But I go to this office. They say, okay. We'll hire you, but first, you need to learn sales Mhmm.

Which I was selling perfume and cologne out of the trunk of my car. I know. And

Steve: How old were you?

Joe: 19.

Steve: Perfume and And cologne out of the trunk of your car.

Joe: Yeah. And I would drive all over the country. So back then, I was in, like, 35 different states. I

Steve: was trying to picture myself, like, seeing a 19 year old. I was like, yeah. I'll buy that.

Joe: Oh my gosh. I see you somewhere. I'm like, hey. Do you like you like cologne? And he'd be like, sure.

Like, I got a whole trunk full. We're having a big sale. I gotta close out, and I would just sell them. And I set the I worked hard. I worked with a great guy out of Dallas, which I eventually got to move down there and work directly with him and learned so much at a young age.

Yeah. He was my first real mentor. Mhmm. And I think that's what really helped me was having somebody fantastic like that, listening to Zig Ziglar Mhmm. Sell your way to the top and all these other things.

And, at a young age, I'm listening to Think and Grow Rich, how to win friends and influence people.

Jen: He introduced me to personal development. Here, I was an English teacher, like, looking back.

Joe: Well, he was, one of his neighbors was Zig Ziglar.

Steve: Oh, okay.

Joe: So when you're around these guys and you go to dinner with them and you're just some, you know, young guy, and you're around these, like, heavy titans of the industry, and you're learning so much. I was a sponge. Yeah. And I always knew I wanted to be wealthy, but I was the one who grew up poor. I was the one that had holes in my shoes.

I had, like, three or four shirts. They had to last me all week at school. I was that kid. Mhmm. And, so now I'm in a Rolls Royce going out to one of the fanciest restaurants in Dallas, and the my boss is spending $2,000 on dinner.

I'm like, $2,000 on dinner for, like, six of us? Like, my head exploded. Right. And they're drinking couple $100 bottles of wine. It was just a whole other world for me.

So that's what really had me hooked. Mhmm. And so when my boss told me, like, listen to all these audio cassettes, like, be a student of sales. And if you can be a great salesperson, that will open up so many more doors for you. Mhmm.

And so I think it's just always been my lifelong pursuit of just trying to be the very best at whatever it is I'm doing.

Steve: Yeah. I was, on TikTok. Right? And I was watching this video. It's Patrick by David.

Joe: Yep.

Steve: He was basically saying, it's like, if you give a sales guy three books, right, sales negotiation, money, and psychology. Mhmm. You'll never see him again because he'll be making so much money.

Joe: Mhmm. Yeah.

Steve: Right? He'll be off off to the races. Yep. And it sounds like you went down this journey.

Joe: Yeah. I just hit it. And, well, the other thing too is I always had a work ethic because I saw all these other people when I was really young have all of this stuff. Mhmm. Cars, clothes, all the things that I didn't have.

And I was like, you know what? If you just show me the way to get to that, I will work my tail off till I could have that. So it's

Steve: mean, like, you had close exposure? Because everyone sees it from afar. So you had close exposure where where that triggered you?

Joe: Oh, yeah.

Steve: Okay. Yeah. And, you know, I think looking back, right, that's the same thing I had. Like, I still remember, you know, being eight years old. And, the guy at the time, he had not done this yet.

He was on his way to creating the largest hard money company in Phoenix. Right? And I still remember, like, being at their house their guest house. I was like, mom, dad, why is their guest house so much bigger than our home? Yeah.

Right? But that guy was willing to mentor my dad, unfortunately. My dad was not the action taking person. Yep. Right?

He was the one that bought the cassettes and bring them home. Wouldn't do anything.

Joe: Yep.

Steve: Right? Well, it actually didn't didn't do nothing. Given to me, it's like, go listen to this. Like, dad, not gonna listen to these things. Right?

I'm watching cartoons or whatever.

Jen: Mhmm.

Steve: So but, yeah, I mean, that exposure opened your eyes, and so it showed you a path.

Joe: Yeah. And when I got to move into the guy in Texas guest house when I moved down there, and he lived in a 6 and a half million dollar house Mhmm. And his guest house was way bigger and way nicer than the house I grew up in. Right. Same kind of experience.

And I'm living in this place just for, you know, the handful of months till I could, you know, find my own place, and my jaw hit the ground. I'm like, people actually live like this. Mhmm. Shocking. And it it does something to you.

Yeah. And it should. It motivated the living snot out of me to be like, okay. Like, this is what I want. Once you have a filet, it's hard to go back to, like, you know, ramen noodles.

I love ramen, but, you know, it's as far as how I look at it that way, I knew I had that taste.

Steve: Yeah. Well, I think it takes two pieces. Right? I mean, there's the exposure, but also has to be the right people. Because I think ninety ninety five 90 to 95% population, they see this.

They're like, okay. Whatever. Right? I think it has to be, like, incredibly broke and then driven, and then seeing a path is what opens that door with is what clicks. You mentioned social media.

Joe: Mhmm.

Steve: So you you, you're talking about community, Instagram, this and that. What was your journey like with social media?

Jen: So being a teacher, I was off of it. Like, even when I, you know, met him, I was kinda like, early on. But once I stayed home with the kids, I really wasn't I mean, we had a couple rentals, but I wasn't really into that quite yet. And so I was trying to, you know, do little side hustles, MLMs even, some vitamins, some jewelry.

Steve: It works.

Jen: It does I didn't do It Works. No. But, that's, you know, along the same lines. And he looks at me. He's like, if you apply this to the houses, you know, we can make more money.

And I was like, point. Okay. Okay. How many necklaces will it take? Right?

So when we stumbled into the social media aspect of it, I was like, okay. We just gotta put ourselves out there because what we did when we stumbled back into Ron in 2017, we had our rentals, and we turned them all to rent to own. And I just went full blown. We created Facebook pages. We were on there live showing off the houses and just reaching the community in the masses in Rochester, New York where we had these properties.

And I saw, wow. Like, if we could reach all these people, flip the script, and let's find the sellers. Like, our mentor is gonna teach us, and that's really when we took off.

Steve: So twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen is when you started? Mhmm.

Jen: That's when I started taking I started taking it really seriously in 2015 because we think we had five properties at the time, and all of the tax bills went to one of the properties, and so I never paid them. And it's just unlike me to not be on top of those things, and he was trying to buy another house, and he's like, well, these are all holding me up. You know? We realized I'm like, this is a legit business. And so that's where I realized I needed to step up and really truly help.

But then I also wanted to go sell vitamins and jewelry for a little bit there, but he was very patient with me. And I think that's really important.

Steve: Well, it sounded like the patients went both ways.

Jen: Yeah. For sure. As it has to in a in a marriage and as you're building companies and businesses, but, you know, I know a lot of people say, well, my spouse isn't on board, and that's okay at first, but just, you know, stay on that path and involve them and you'll find the right seat for them. I I do believe that, especially if you're in the right partnership and you can see that vision. Because for us, we hated not seeing each other and being around each other.

Being a teacher, I was up early and out of the house, and he was at the dealership late nights. And I'm like, well, I finally meet the guy I wanna spend my life with, and we never see each other. Like Mhmm. That was just awful.

Steve: Yeah. How did your leveraging social media turn into, or how did it help with the house business?

Jen: Because when you can reach that many people and then also be authentic with it, like, if you go live on Facebook, can't fake that.

Joe: Mhmm.

Jen: Right? The peep like, the sellers can immediately build rapport. How do I know you're not a fake? Well, go check out all my videos, mister Seller. Like, I just helped Susie down the road or, you know, check out this story, and that happened.

And and in 2020, I just shared how I was an accidental landlord when I owned my own house, and then I meet him. I moved out of that house. Now I'm not living in my own house. I'm getting half of what the mortgage payment was. I kinda had a renter, kinda didn't.

Now what am I supposed to do? And I shared that story, and that seller came back, and he's like, that's me right now. I'm an accidental landlord. Like, let's let's do this. So sharing those stories immediately helped, and it was, like, not even trying because I don't have the sales experience, and I don't have all the training he has.

But I just being me and and sharing stories about myself, and then I kept sharing more stories about other sellers we were helping, and it just blew up.

Steve: So can you attribute a significant amount of business to your social media, postings? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because because, we actually had this conversation in our, annual meeting, couple months ago, and they're, like, talking about, like, oh, I wanna create content about this.

It's like, we're not creating content around this. Right? I overruled them. Looking back, I might have been wrong listening to this. But my point was that homeowners aren't on social media looking for help with their house problem.

Right? They're more going to Google, where they're gonna look at either, a pay per click ad because our avatar loves pay per click ads. Right? Or they're gonna search, and they're gonna find a Google review or Yelp review. So, the only person I know besides this conversation is RJ Bates, and all he does is just post his phone calls with homeowners.

Right? It's a very fascinating way of doing business, but it clearly works for him.

Joe: Mhmm.

Steve: So for you, you're posting stories about your experience as a landlady and then other homeowners' experience has resulted in other people reaching out to you and say, I'm that person. I need help.

Joe: Mhmm.

Jen: Yeah. We run sponsored ads, and they'll say, I pay full price because with terms and creative finance, we can. But they always wanna check up on you, and I think immediately of a seller in in the Boston area who she was talking to a lot of people.

Joe: Mhmm.

Jen: But when she found my page and she knew I love cooking because I shared recipes and I shared pictures of the kids, like, she trusted us. And she was in a really tricky situation with a tenant not paying and,

Joe: you

Jen: know, the whole nine. So, you know, it was social media because of what we shared that chose she chose us.

Steve: Do you have is it still about the homeowners? Is your your social media content today? Or is it because, again, I'm going back to, like, we all have some sort of ego to some degree or another. Right? We like the likes.

We like the follows. Right? We like the engagement. Are you still posting content in regards to homeowner stories at the potential cost of getting more likes and follows and so and and so on. Mhmm.

Right? So you are.

Jen: Yeah. And I think too, you have to know your audience. So, for example, like my Instagram, I'm not targeting homeowners there. I've never met a seller. I've never bought their house.

I might find a rent to own buyer once in a while. Right. But those are mostly my investors. Those are other people that might wanna learn creative financing or collaborating with. But my Facebook business page, that's where my sellers are because a lot of older folks have Facebook and older folks have homes for sale.

And so when they are on there, they see me with my sign saying I could pay full price. They reach out. But that page isn't talking about investing. I don't use words like subject to or rep mortgages or anything, even seller financing. I just say, if you're making two mortgage payments and you can't make them anymore, like, give me a call.

You know, we can chat about it. I can help you.

Steve: So your Facebook page is geared towards the homeowners, and your Instagram is geared towards the investor Mhmm. Community. Is that right?

Jen: Yeah. Gotcha. Absolutely.

Steve: Yeah. And I I mean and that makes total sense to me. Again, like, when they're talking about, like, putting seller content on Instagram, it's like, they're not on Instagram.

Jen: Yeah. They're

Steve: too old for Instagram.

Jen: You need to know your audience. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. So, going back to COVID, your forced take action, you're posting social media. How quickly when you guys pivoted to, like, alright.

This has to work. So you guys were buying homes.

Joe: I think, like, the next month, maybe.

Jen: We started

Joe: talking to a few different ones.

Jen: We started talking right away. And then, of course, in lovely New York, it took a couple months to close. So my sweet husband here, unbeknownst to us, had a collapsed lung. So we have our first official closing where we are buying on creative and the sellers are moving to North Carolina, and I finally get him to go in to you could tell your story.

Joe: Yeah. I mean, I legitly, I thought I had a back spasm, back pain. I'm doing a teleconference with my doctor. He's like, oh, it's just a back pain. Just have your wife rub it and massage it.

I'm like, okay. Well, two weeks later, it still bother me. So I have a stomach issue. I go into the get a MRI for my stomach, and the technician comes out, and she's like, Joe, we have to not let you go. We need to talk to your doctor's office about the findings first.

I'm like, findings? What did you find? They're like, we can't tell you. Well, they can't get ahold of my doctor.

Steve: Can't tell you.

Joe: No. So they tell me to go home.

Steve: Was it because it was, like, a radiologist where they

Jen: Yeah.

Steve: She's actually a doctor.

Joe: Right. Yeah. Just a tech. So I go home, and, well, what we were doing on our buying page where we're speaking out to sellers, we were going live that day.

Jen: I had it scheduled in the calendar, Steve. So we had to go live on our Facebook page to tell sellers how we could help them.

Joe: So, legitly, I just got home. She's, like, freaking out saying, hey. Like, this live, it's time to go. So the first live that we do on our buying page, I'm inside. I'm freaking out.

Jen: We're terrified.

Joe: What's what's wrong with me. So we do Okay.

Steve: You just told you were just told that you have the refinancing.

Joe: There were findings. Right. So I I go home. We do the live video for probably, I don't know, fifteen, twenty minutes or so. Then after that, I call my doctor, and they're like, your left lung has collapsed.

I'm like, well, is that what's wrong with me? This has been bothering me for a few weeks now. And they're like, yeah. You need to go to the emergency room. So I go to the emergency room, do the whole chest tube thing.

Don't do that. Mhmm. But either way, I'm in the hospital, and we have a closing. And our seller's leaving. This is we bought this house in turnkey shape.

We put a couple grand down. Our sellers are moving from New York to South or North Carolina, and they need to close on a certain day so they get their funds. I can't leave the hospital. So the first day in New York where they're now allowing one person in the hospital, this was, like, the first day they the the governor allowed it.

Jen: At noon.

Joe: At noon. Jen is waiting downstairs with, like, the closing docs at, like, 11:30 waiting to come up to the room. I'm FaceTiming with my attorney, signing the paperwork, doing all this stuff. That's how we end up closing our first deal.

Jen: Like, talk about all the persistence and, like, felt like so many obstacles. And I remember thinking, like, holy cow. Like, we but we have to help these sellers. Like, this is, like, our livelihood now. You know, it was so much pressure.

And looking back, I'm like, what the heck?

Steve: I think the more important question was how did how was the live?

Joe: How was that?

Jen: The live? Well, we shared it into some groups and definitely so with social media, you get the I call it rotten tomatoes thrown at you, you know. So I think they thought we were, you know, fake because we were wearing our sunglasses, but we were just, like, you know, hiding our eyes, I think, because we were just freaking out sitting outside. But yeah.

Steve: You guys are outside.

Joe: Yeah. We went we just filled it right in our backyard right out of June. Went to the hospital. I was there for about a week. Got me good as

Jen: But I think that's why we're successful. It's like no excuses. Like, you do the thing you need to do no matter what.

Steve: Right. Well and I think that's there's a lot of truth to that because I think there's it's so easy to make excuses. It wasn't meant to be. Mhmm.

Jen: Yeah. We don't.

Steve: Right? Like, the stars were aligned against us or whatever.

Joe: Well, then go rope one of them stars and put it into place. Let's go.

Steve: Well, yeah. Well, that's the that's the determination. That's the persistence. But, again, what I was saying earlier, like, you know, 99 90 to 95% will see opportunity, and they'll find a reason why it won't work.

Joe: Yeah.

Steve: Right? Whereas you guys are fine. Like, there's no acceptable reasons as to why this, why this can't work. Right. Right?

Okay. So that's your first deal. Since you submitted your notice, was it then consistent after that?

Jen: Yeah. Mhmm.

Steve: We

Joe: are hitting about one a month ish.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: And our coach at that time named Nate Armstrong, great guy. Thanks, Nate. But Nate told us if you're gonna do this full time, you need to hire people. You need to hire some help. Mhmm.

After that phone call, I still remember sitting on our front porch. I pull up my phone. I go on my Facebook. I'm like, we're hiring. No experience necessary.

Willing to train. And we had people reaching out to us right away. And so we end up hiring a couple guys, like, 19 year old, 22 year old bartender. One guy worked at, like, McDonald's. Not too long after that, we hired a few more people, like, teenagers, like, twenties and, you know, teens.

And we showed them exactly what it was that we're doing, what we need them to do. And so they started doing that, and that's what really our we flipped the switch. And we went from doing one deal a year to doing now a couple of deals every month. Mhmm.

Steve: And

Joe: that's when everything really started to change for us, because now we're finding deals that we're wholesaling. Mhmm. We're finding some deals that we're doing a fix and flip. We're buying some of these creative finance deals, which we love because these are turnkey houses and nice neighborhoods that we're buying with, like, a $100 down. So we were really trying to be well rounded, not getting shiny object syndrome of, oh, and now I need to do this.

Like, just stick in your lane to what works. Make money. Work hard.

Steve: So you found a bunch of people organically through your social media postings.

Joe: Yeah.

Steve: And those people mostly work out?

Joe: I mean, to a degree. Every one of them did a deal. Mhmm. Helped us do deals. I think one of the guys who realized he doesn't like talking to people, well, that's a problem.

Mhmm. Yeah. You know, some of them get shiny object syndrome, wanna start creating, you know, trading crypto or doing whatever, so they decided they wanna go do that. And some of them I mean, one, she still works for us. She was in high school working for us, and now she's 21, and she's been working for us ever since.

One, we're great friends with, but we knew she wanted to quit her full time nursing job Mhmm. To do this full time and wanted her husband away from his corporate job because he was never home. Mhmm. So she asked if she could work for us for free. And we said, no.

We'll pay you. Mhmm. But we'll teach you what to do and knowing that she's not gonna be with us forever. But she was with us for two years. Years.

Yeah. Britney was just amazing. Did a lot of deals, and then now she's doing very well for herself. And her husband was able to accomplish all of their goals, and now they're doing this full time too.

Steve: So he was able to quit his corporate job. Oh, yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. That's cool.

Yep. So one challenge I see from, some investors that focus on creative is that it's hard to teach creative to our team members. What was your guys' experience? You know, you're you're giving a perplexed look like that doesn't happen. So what was your guys' experience then in teaching creative to your team members?

Joe: Well, generally, it's to be a teacher.

Jen: Well, I think you have to wanna teach, first of all. So you have to ask yourself, like, do I have the patience and desire to sit here and you know, it's like anything. It's gonna take time. Like, teaching anyone anything, I think, is, it's a job. And he's trained a bunch of sales guys.

I was a seventh and eighth grade English teacher, so I have a lot of patience. And what we've we just learned to refine the process, keep it simple. But it was every single day, a couple hours a day. But we had that time to give and and really share what it is we're looking for.

Joe: And I think it's just like anything else. You you what you put into your people, you'll get out of it. Mhmm. So we were really heavy on training. Train, train, train, teach them the small little steps of what we needed them to do.

I don't need them to build, like, the biggest thing. Just do your small job and do it well.

Steve: Right.

Joe: And if you could just do these simple tasks and do it well, the rest of everything will work fine.

Steve: What were the simple tasks they had to focus on?

Joe: So I'm gonna drop a little bit of a dime right now for your audience, but one of the first things that we discovered was how to do lead generation. Mhmm. And when I first got our first creative finance deal, we had to do a direct mail piece. Mhmm. Direct mail could be expensive.

And especially if you're gonna do it consistently, it could get up there. So we found this Facebook hack of how we could generate tons of off market leads for free using Facebook groups without spending any money. Mhmm. So what we were doing is we were having our our team join Facebook groups, and they were, and they would go make a post inside the group. And it would say so you might wanna write this down if you're listening.

Does anyone have a house for sale that's not market ready? I'm looking to buy one in the next two to three weeks. Mhmm. Make that post. Make the background of the post so you can make it, like, blue or green or the emoji, whatever you want.

Even we make it, like, blue or green. We put that into groups. And you'll have people reaching out to you with off market leads in abundance. Mhmm. So what we were doing, our team, we'd have four or five people.

Well, they would all go out and put it into five groups that day. So now we've got this magic blue post going in 25, 30 different groups a day. Mhmm. We're getting incoming leads for free as well as we're running sponsored ads. Right.

And then the system that we developed was when a seller reaches out to us, that's an incoming warm lead. All we were doing is we we have a script that we developed, which is just asking a handful of questions.

Steve: Right.

Joe: Tell me about your property. Why are you selling it? How soon do you wanna sell it? You know, what's the condition? We even get questions like, would you own the mortgage?

They would tell us. What do you want for the house? They would tell us. Would you be open to seller financing? They would tell us.

And everyone, if they say yes, no, or maybe to seller financing, we still ask if we were to pay out cash and close when you want, what's the least you'll take? Mhmm. So now on every deal, if it was that fixer upper, I can make a cash offer on it. Mhmm. If it was that turnkey house in a beautiful neighborhood and they wanted top dollar for it, I can make a seller finance offer on it.

So every lead, we can make an offer on. Mhmm. And when I was first wholesaling, if somebody reached out and said, Joe, I have a $400,000 house and it's turnkey and I want 400,000 for it, I'd be like, no. Go list it with a with a realtor. Mhmm.

Now I make those offers. I'll buy it for 400,000 and we work out that deal. So our job for our team was to just generate leads, sift through them, bring us the motivated sellers.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: Get rid of the time wasters, the one that, you know, wanna sell my house in five years, but I wanna know what's worth now.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: Get us the motivated ones. Let's see if we can make some deals out of it, and that's what they were doing.

Steve: Yeah. One of the bigger challenges what we found, again, going back to the the the creative investors as far as, training their teams, was the understanding of the different Do you guys teach your teams all the different ways of doing creative?

Joe: Oh, yeah.

Steve: Mhmm. That's

Jen: why we came up with a playbook because we sat there, and we were like, wow. Like, it just depends on the deal. Sometimes you it could work for wholesale or it could work for terms depending on what the seller is saying. And so, yeah, it does every deal is unique. So I think you you can't put all that pressure on yourself.

He he's at this level because he's been here doing it for so long. So when you first start out, you can keep it simple, and you might we definitely look back and, oh, man. We should've done this or that deal. Mhmm. But I think I think, really, it it comes down to knowing your areas and comping, I think, more than anything, is what stumble like, I see people have struggles with.

Yeah. In my experience.

Steve: So how do you help someone with comping?

Joe: Welcome to the the principles of how to do it. Sometimes we might do a few properties with them so they understand what that looks like even more than a few, but we we show them. This is how you comp. You know, finding comparables, same style house, same square footage roughly and within these parameters. And then just working with them how to comp a property, that almost seems just as hard to teach as teaching somebody how to do creative finance.

Mhmm. Because when you figure out creative finance and there's really the four levers, and you can learn how you could tweak these levers to make your deal happen

Steve: Right.

Joe: It is a little bit more in-depth. Mhmm. But once you could kind of wrap your head around the concept of that, my gosh, you can make deals. And I could pick myself and Jen and put us in anywhere around the country, and we'll start making deals pretty quickly.

Steve: Yeah. I look at the the creative terms. You're talking about the four lovers Mhmm. Kinda the same way as, like, the four boxes at the dealership. It's like

Joe: Yep. Foursquare.

Steve: Alright. The Foursquare. Yeah. So for those that are not enlightened, you wanna explain what the Foursquare conversation's like?

Joe: Yeah. So the Foursquare, when you're buying a car, you're gonna have your price, you're gonna have your down payment, your term length, and the monthly payment. Mhmm. And so, you know, if you wanna shift one to the other this was a principle that we didn't do, but I knew of salespeople who were using Foursquare. Mhmm.

And, you know, if you want your payment to move, you know, move this box over and put more in that box. So it was really just a form of negotiating Mhmm. Is what Foursquare was for the car business. And for us, we look at the same kind of Foursquares. Right.

It's

Steve: the exact same thing.

Joe: It's the same thing. So it's the price of the property. It's the down payment. It's the monthly payment and your term length. Right.

So it's no different ideally. Right.

Steve: But it's not as much pressure.

Joe: No. Right? Not at all.

Steve: Because the Foursquare is like, alright. Like, here are the four things. I if you can pick the three. Alright. I just need to sign here, and then I'll go get my manager to approve this.

Yeah. Right. And you have to sit there for, like, twenty minutes.

Joe: They're, like, $18 down. You're like, wait. What? Yeah. So yeah.

Steve: So a little bit less pressure the way we do is, like, well, what's important to you? Yeah. And then we can do that if you can agree agree to this. So now you two have been working together. So you guys are married for some time, patiently dealing with one another, and then you guys jumped all in here.

So what are each of you two responsible for in the house buying business?

Jen: Took us a little time to figure that out, to be honest. There's a couple times I would try to hop on seller calls, and, like, after he got out of the hospital, I felt like I gotta do something. Right? And I it was just not my seat. I didn't enjoy it.

He loves talking to sellers and analyzing deals and copying properties all day long. That's what he would he would do.

Steve: Deal making?

Jen: Yeah. Deal making for sure.

Joe: Jen says that she's the meat, and I'm the bread of the sandwich. Right? So she's the stuff that keeps it all together. Uh-huh.

Jen: Yeah. I'm more of the operations. I guess, if you were to label it, he is more visionary and sales, and then I'm back end, you know, just making sure everything's flowing. Still in, like, the we have a transaction coordinator, but I make sure things are properly handling amongst all parties.

Steve: Oversight.

Jen: Yeah. CRM, making sure my man tech manager, she's on board with everything. We just recently hired an executive assistant, which has just been a lifesaver.

Steve: Just hired.

Jen: Yeah. So that was a long overdue hire. Definitely don't wait as long as I did.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, it's almost four four years now that we're into COVID.

Jen: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah.

Jen: I I'm it was hard to delegate. I don't know. You know? So I try to do it all, and you just can't. And you need to learn to find the the people that could even do it better than you because she

Steve: definitely resistance?

Jen: I think it because everything was in my head. I just did things. And so to get it out and she's so she creates all the SOPs, the standard operating procedures, but to just pay I'm still sitting over there every day at, you know, times trying to just get what I was doing, because we don't even have a property management with rent to own. There's nothing really to manage, but I was the one taking in all of the making sure tenants were paying and yada yada. So it was

Joe: a lot. Also, Jen's attitude is fine. Just let me go do it. Mhmm. That's always been

Jen: her stubborn.

Steve: Her her

Joe: good thing, but also could be something that's, you know

Steve: Give them the curse.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jen: But you're you stall out. You can only go so far by yourself.

Steve: Yeah. We know that logically. Right? Yeah. But still, even we know that logically, there's still resistance.

Like I said, you know, there's four years. Like, February is when you guys when your notice is February Yeah. '24 now. Yeah. Alright.

So you just recently hired. It was there's a lot of resistance to it. And And I'm asking this question not to pick on you, but there are people that are listening that have the same struggle that they know they need to delegate. Their coach might be telling them you need to delegate, and yet they resist. Right?

Because, you know, they're better at it or they wanna make sure it's done right and so on. So what was the thing that got you to finally pull the trigger?

Jen: I think I I just hit that that point of just discussed. Like, I wasn't I'm not able to do what I enjoy. I'm just felt very stuck. And in order for us to move forward, I I knew I just had to find the right person. And, ironically, this happened twice now, I was actually looking for a babysitter.

So, she had reached out to a post, and I was like, hey. Are you still available? Because I had an opportunity to meet with somebody, and I didn't have a sitter lined up. So I was super frustrated about that. And she's like, well, I'm kinda I'm graduating, so I'm looking for a full time position.

I'm like, what do you graduate? Business management. Okay. Well, I have a position we met, and she just she's amazing, and we hit it right off.

Steve: So Gotcha. So it wasn't really any external pressure from somewhere else. It was really just, like,

Jen: you know, non person. Coach was also, like, you need an EA, you need an EA. So I've listened and finally did it.

Steve: Yeah. Was it a matter of quality quality of work?

Jen: Mhmm.

Steve: So, because your operations and your over and your oversight, you're making sure that everything happens. Right?

Jen: Mhmm.

Steve: So there's a there was a someone that used to work for me, and, I always call her Mussolini. Right? Enduringly. Right? Because the trains always ran on time.

Now was it clean? Were people happy that the trains ran on time? Not really. But we always closed on time, and there were no excuses. Right?

Like, the lender might get frustrated with the follow-up. The clients might be, irritated with the amount of follow-up to make sure they submitted the documents they need to submit so we can close on time. So feelings were kinda messy, but we always closed on time.

Joe: And that's what's most important.

Steve: And that's what's most important.

Joe: Mhmm.

Steve: So was would that describe you? Yeah. Yeah. It's and and and and, again, I'm I'm belaboring this point for everyone else to listen to. Right?

It's like the getting her to document things, every time I asked her to document something, it was always like, is Steve trying to replace me? It's like, no. Like, I want you to be able to take a vacation. Mhmm. I want you to be able to, like, us not have to call you while you're with your family.

Right. You can't document this. Then we're always gonna call you in emergencies. We're naming emergencies, just like challenges. Yeah.

Right?

Jen: Well, it freaked me out. I was like, if something happened to me, like, I'm the only one that knows, like, the seller's mortgages and where everything is happening. Like, that's, you know, that's just irresponsible too at that point. So there's definitely some intrinsic self talk there. I'm like, okay.

Like, get over yourself. And now she's better. She's way more organized. Like, we have filing cabinets that are just, like, you know, beautiful Google, everything. So she's

Steve: Eventually, you do find someone better. Yep. But there's a long time where, like, no one can do this

Jen: Mhmm.

Steve: Like I can't.

Joe: Yep. Well, we found the right fit, and that was also key.

Steve: Yeah. So how do you guys separate

Joe: work and life? Poorly.

Jen: You don't.

Joe: Well, I mean, it's one of the I gotta say I'm lucky. When I had my car business and I was at the job, my boss said, hey, Joe. We really can't have you talk about real estate at work because that's a distraction. You wanna talk about the basketball game? You wanna talk about the football team?

The baseball, the whatever. Talk about that. But don't talk about real estate at work because we see that's a distraction. So now that I get to do this for a living Mhmm. Like, I feel like, oh my gosh.

Like, the kid on Christmas morning. So for me, it's really difficult because it's also, like, I love to do this. So we have a beautiful house in Florida. I'll be out back sitting at the pool, and I'll be on my iPad on my day off looking at Zillow because I just I enjoy that. There's something weird about me

Steve: Yes.

Joe: Which is cool. We'll be on a date night. And Jen would be like, well, did you get that solar? And I'm like, yes. I talked to this.

Right? So that that happens. We're really working the lines, especially when we're with our kids because we homeschool our kids.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: So there are times where we're on a field trip or we're doing some schooling. Like, the phone goes away. Like, if you need I don't have an Apple Watch. Nothing like that. Don't want it.

Once we're doing these things, that's what's most important in that time.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: So it's really just setting your boundaries, and we're getting better at that.

Jen: He's better than I am for sure. I have the Apple Watch, so I blame that. But yeah. No. I feel like I'm very much on a lot, but just still, you know, we're always learning, trying to be better.

Joe: Lot. You'll be it'll be like 09:30 at night. She'll be sitting on the couch. I'll be playing something like Madden. And I'm like, you got your lap what are you doing?

You got your laptop out. She's like, well, I'm setting up the procedures for I'm like, honey, it's 09:30 at night. Like, you should be relaxing now. She's like, I know. I just wanna get this done.

Jen: I can't relax till I have the thing done.

Joe: Or when she's in the pool, she's legitly, like, in the pool. But on the side, there's a laptop, and she's working. And I'm like, once again so it's just having fun what you're doing. You have to really enjoy it, but also make that time where you're not doing it.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, I could say for sure, like, this is the same exact situation I have with my own wife. Right? So, we're not in the same business anymore, but we were kind of in that I was a realtor and she was a loan officer. And, man, the conversation at the dinner table was like, I just wanna enjoy my dinner.

Yeah. Like, I don't wanna tell my realtor right now. I just wanna enjoy my dinner. It's like, well, there's this there's this and there's that. I was like, I get it.

Yeah. But I just wanna focus on dinner. So it is a challenge. Right? Separating.

And that's why I was asking how you guys are doing it. So when you're with the kids, everything's put away.

Joe: Well, our kids are also in our business.

Steve: Okay. Talk about that.

Joe: Well, they we host meetups in Florida. Mhmm. Our kids are there.

Steve: Oh, your kids are in the other room right now. Right.

Joe: They they go everywhere with us. So when we were hosting our first meetup, our babysitter that never worked out, she canceled, like, half an hour before she was supposed to come over. Typical. So Jen was like, alright. We're bringing him with us.

So

Jen: Again, like, no excuses. We're just gonna make it happen.

Joe: So the kids come to our real estate meetups. However, my son, he just turned nine. But for the last over a year, he has his own YouTube channel, and he loves to have cool, like, little stuffed animals from, like, video games that he plays and his YouTube channel. So when he wants a new one, he's like, hey, dad. Do you need any work done?

I'm like, why? What's up? He's like, well, there's this new stuffed animal I want. I found on Amazon. It's $12.

So do you need some follow-up done? I'm like, yes. I do. Mhmm. So he gets into he takes my iPad.

He goes into our CRM, and he follows up with people. And all he does is he strikes up conversations, gets these sellers who've maybe ghosted us a while. We've got thousands of people in our CRM, probably 10,000. He just goes in there and messages them their first name with a question mark. That's all he does.

Mhmm. Moves on to the next one. And he'll knock out all of 2023 within, I don't know, three, four days. And he knows once he does that, he'll get his toy. Mhmm.

Our most popular

Steve: video be underpaying him.

Joe: For sure.

Jen: Oh, yeah. They were hitting us up, you know. Oh, they were.

Joe: They both were. And my daughter is a negotiating machine already. She just turned 11, and our most popular video on our YouTube channel is when she was 10, and she's locking up a seller finance deal.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: While I'm in the kitchen making dinner, I'm, like, cutting up an avocado. Mhmm. So, like, we we get them involved, and we have our acquisition manager, Lexi, comes over once a week. When she comes over, my daughter, Brooke, sits there with her laptop right next to Lexi. They're both in the CRM, and she's Lexi's assistant.

So at 11 years old, 10 years old, like, a nine year old, they're in our business. So they're you ask my son what he wants to be when he grows up. He's like, I wanna do creative finance. He's like, but I'm doing that now. So I guess I'll just do what I'm older too.

Mhmm. So I think that's the great thing about it is showing them work ethic. We homeschool them, so teaching them what it's like to also learn all this great stuff about what school's like, but then also too how to make money and how to be wealthy. And you don't have to wait till you're super old to get started. Like, get started now because my daughter and son both have expensive taste.

Like, most kids do, they want the iPad, they want all the stuff. Well, like, here's how you can make that. Right. So just setting that a great example, I think, is huge. Mhmm.

Steve: Yeah. And I think it's pretty cool that you bring them with you. You know? We had Chris Roode. He was on the show.

He's gonna be on the show again at some point, and he does the same thing. He just takes them everywhere. I think he's got four kids, one that's moved on who has an adult, and then, like, I think four kids, and they just, him, his wife, and then the kids go everywhere. Grant Cardone. Right?

Like, his daughter I wanna say Alyssa, or something like that. It goes with them everywhere. Mhmm. Right? Just goes to the event.

So they get to see front row what it's like being in the business.

Joe: They've also go to the houses. Mhmm. I mean, one of our crazy stories, and there's always a lot they always name the houses, but my daughter at the time, this is years ago. She was four. Mhmm.

Steve: So

Joe: you're talking seven years ago. One of our houses, our tenant moved out, and we were converting it over to a rent to own. We did a walk through, like, weeks before they moved out, and everything seemed fine. They had a lot of stuff there. But once they moved out

Jen: Yeah. We both walked in and walked out. Fine.

Joe: I go there with my daughter and the contractor, and we walked through the downstairs of the house. Now we're on the Top Floor upstairs. My daughter and she's saying this, but she looks down. She's like, dad, I've got bugs on my legs. And I looked down, and on one of her legs, she had about a 100 fleas running up her legs.

On the other leg, she had another 100 fleas. I looked down at me, same thing. So like a cartoon, I was, like, up in the air running, but I wasn't making anywhere. Then we, like, ran so fast. We're outside, taking off our clothes, wiping all the fleet.

It was disgusting. So long story short, she's been in it. Him, he's been in it since they were born or in her tummy, going to all the houses, doing all of the things. So it's just the way they've been raised.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, you say that, and I just have a fond memory. You know? One of the properties that we bought, to keep was, one that we stopped by on the way to the hospital to deliver the third kid.

Joe: Oh, that's the way to do it.

Steve: Right? Because it was like, we feel like we're we're we're there, but we're not there. I was like, let's kill some time. And my wife's like, well, why don't we just stop by this this property?

Joe: Her idea.

Steve: Yeah. It's her idea.

Jen: Oh, wow.

Joe: Well,

Steve: that wasn't wasn't me. I was like, let's go to the hospital.

Joe: She's like, yeah.

Steve: You know, I feel like we're close. Like, let's just stop here. I was like, okay. And we did. And it's it is a fond memory Yeah.

Of that happening. So alright. So we're talking about buying houses for a $100. Yeah. So that sounds outrageous.

Joe: Does. Right.

Steve: So I think there's two things we gotta talk through as far as, first is the mechanism. How do you actually do it? And second, how that process actually works logistically. And the second thing is how do we find these houses?

Joe: Right.

Steve: Right? So step one, logistically, what does that even mean? So how do you buy a house for a $100?

Joe: So I'm just gonna go over a recent example if that's okay.

Steve: That'd be great. That'd be easiest that way.

Joe: Yeah. So two weeks ago, John and myself were filming our podcast like we always do. And during the podcast, us recording, my phone's ringing, and it's a seller. Mhmm. And the seller reached out to us.

She's got a property on the suburbs of Buffalo, New York, and her name is Becky. And Becky says she wants to sell her house. It's built in 2013. She's already bought another house, and she's struggling. She's struggling because she's now making two car or two house payments, and she's living paycheck to paycheck.

And she's like, now that I'm paying this $2,000 payment at my old house I'm not living at anymore, it's financially crushing me. Mhmm. So when I chatted with her on the phone, I said, what do you want for the house? She's like, I'm I know it's worth more, but I just want $3.60. That's my number.

And she says, I've had other investors who are giving me some lowball offers. I'm like, how dare they?

Steve: Of course. These vultures.

Joe: Yeah. And I'm like, so what kind of offers are you getting? She's like, like, in the low threes, even in 2 hundreds, like, in the 200 something. I'm like, wow. That's terrible.

How dare they? Mhmm. I was like, I could pay $3.60, and I'll do it with seller financing, which means I'll buy it. We'll close on it with an attorney. And then your loan that you have, what what kind of payment do you have?

She's like, it's, like, 1,900 and some change. I said, at what interest rate? She said, two and a half percent. That's when Becky went from Becky to Becky with a good rate. Mhmm.

Because she had a two and a half percent rate. So I said, I typically buy with no money down. Okay? And she said, that's fine. Mhmm.

So I said, well, I gotta give you a $100 for the deposit. A $100. There it is. Mhmm. And we'll buy it.

We'll cover all the closing costs. So when we buy a property of the $100, that's just the down payment. There's still closing costs involved. So on that deal, we'll probably spend $56,000 on closing costs. But now we own a turnkey house in a beautiful neighborhood that needs not a thing, where we're gonna spend a $100 down, $56,000 in closing costs.

We'll put an insurance policy on there, and we own a deal now at a two and a half percent rate. Now the property rate now values about 400,000. So we've got some free equity on the deal besides. So these are the deals I like because there's no fixer uppers.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: I'm not managing contractors to go tear off the roof, and then they didn't get it done on time. And then the one contractor, you know, takes the money and all this stuff. Like, there's none of that goes on with that. So this is why I really thoroughly enjoyed this. So

Steve: why or not why. What do you do with this house now that you own it?

Joe: So we're closing next week. And so what we do is, yeah, cross the fingers.

Jen: Cross the fingers.

Joe: Chasing down the TC to make it done on time. Mhmm. But so once we do is, we actually do rent to own. Mhmm. So with our rent to own method is what we do is we buy it, we close on it, we own it, but we're gonna offer this as a rental with the option to buy it.

The reason why we love that strategy is because once our renters move in, they give us a really large nonrefundable option deposit. Mhmm. So So if I have to spend a $100 down to buy the house, say, 6,000 in closing cost, a $1,500 insurance policy, maybe, you know, utility bills to keep the heat on because it's cold up in Buffalo right now. Mhmm. And it might even take me a couple months to find the right renter.

So I always sock aside three months of payments. Mhmm. So if I need on that deal legitly $1,213,000 to close on it total, that's fine because I know when I find my renter, they're gonna give me a check for $20.30, 40,000 to move in. Right. So we've actually are gonna get paid to buy that house.

So the reason why we love rent to own is because you get a chunk of cash upfront like a wholesaler. You get the monthly cash flow like a landlord because our payment's 1,900 and some change all in with tax insurance that runs for probably 2,600 to 2,800 fairly easily. So we'll cash flow decent money per month. But we don't get the phone calls of the maintenance and repairs because our renters are the ones doing all of that. And they know it, and they love the fact they could do that.

So you get the monthly cash flow, and then, eventually, some of them will eventually buy the property. Mhmm. And once they do, that's when you get the big back end check. Like, if you flip flip the house Mhmm. Only difference is you're selling directly to your renter.

There's no real estate commissions, no short term capital gains now because you've owned it for a while. Mhmm. You're writing off depreciation the whole time. So we kind of found this metric of, you know, not getting the crazy landlord calls.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: Not having to hire management companies to do this or us to manage the property if there's a broken doorknob. Like, if there's a broken doorknob, our renters just go put a new one on there.

Steve: It's their home.

Joe: It's their home. Mhmm. So

Jen: And we help them become homeowners, honestly. And it sounds so cheesy, but, like, when you actually help these people, it's, I don't know, such an awesome feeling

Joe: to be able to

Jen: to make them American dream. Right? Own a home.

Steve: What's the price for them, for their option? For this example of 4 of, $3.60, you bought on terms, market value is around 400,000. What is the end buyer on the contract for?

Joe: So their their price would probably be, I'm guessing, on that house about $4.29. Mhmm. So because in we give them up to two years to buy it.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: If they don't buy it in that two years, alls we do is we just renew the terms. We don't kick them out. They don't lose their money. All we do is we just might have to have an adjustment of their rent, bring it to market rates, and same thing goes with the price of the house. So if the value has gone up, that property we just renew it for that.

So what we're going to do is if today's value is 400,000, I have a feeling in two years from now, it's gonna be worth in the low fours.

Steve: So I'm

Joe: gonna price it at $4.29.

Steve: Right.

Joe: Because it has to appraise. That's the key. Right. You can't charge them, you know, a million dollars for the house because it won't appraise for that. Right?

So you gotta make sure you set it right. However, what I found is always go high because you

Steve: You can adjust down,

Joe: but you can't go back up.

Steve: Or you can adjust up.

Joe: So with that being the case, you know, $4.29, maybe even $4.40 now that I'm sitting here talking with you about it.

Jen: That used to be a a little bit of a discussion.

Steve: And What's that?

Jen: I would think, oh, you're pricing it way too high, and then he he did not price it too high or high enough. And so I've learned to just let him come up with a number.

Steve: Yeah. It's you can adjust this is a a a one way adjustment. This there's there's no two ways.

Joe: Yeah.

Jen: No. And here's the

Joe: other thing too I've learned over the years, especially from the Well,

Steve: there's the experience from all this. Right?

Joe: Yeah. Well, when you're finding the right renter too, what their biggest concern is yeah. They they're concerned about the price of the house. I get that. Their biggest concern is what's the monthly rent.

Jen: Mhmm.

Steve: If

Joe: they're a payment shopper, everybody, when you buy a car, house, it's all about payment. If I could sell you a $10,000,000 house, and, like, Steve, your payment's a thousand dollars a month, you'd be, like, calling the wife, say, honey, we're moving into this $10,000,000 house for a thousand bucks a month. Let's go. Pack your bags.

Steve: 100%.

Joe: So it's all about the payment. So, ideally, when we do rent to own, our renters, as long as they could afford the monthly rent, they're not even too focused on what the price is. Mhmm. You gotta make it adjusted quarterly, but, we don't charge, like, astronomical rent. We find out what the market bears, and that's what we charge for it.

Steve: Is there a fee? You're saying you're you know, the revisiting every two years, is there a fee to renew the option? No. No. So you're just revisiting the terms?

Mhmm.

Joe: Yeah. So for an example, say, in that situation, somebody gives us, say, 30,000 to move in. Mhmm. That's their nonrefundable option deposit that locks in that price for two years. If they don't buy it in two years, no big deal.

We don't kick you out. We're just gonna give you another one year lease with the new price. And if you don't buy it out in that year, no big deal. At the end of that, we're just gonna keep on doing it. Mhmm.

There was an old infomercial back in the day that said set it and forget it. Mhmm. And that's what I like to do. So our renters, I don't know them. If I were to walk through buy them in the supermarket, they would never know who I am or who I who they are because we don't knock on their door.

We don't bug them. They have their house. We treat them almost like as if we were the bank already. Mhmm. And Wells Fargo doesn't knock on your door like, hey.

How do you like the house?

Steve: Right.

Joe: So that's what we do. We treat you like almost like a homeowner. Mhmm. And then if and we have a screening process

Jen: Yeah.

Joe: Before they get in there to make sure that they're actually gonna be able to qualify for mortgage at some point.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: So if you make $15,000 a year in a part time job working at the gas station down the street and you wanna buy a million dollar home, it's probably not gonna happen. Right?

Steve: Right.

Joe: So we wanna make sure that they can have the right debt to income, payment to income. All of these things will line up, and that's what's important. Even if they have banged up credit because of a divorce or illness, death in the family Mhmm. We'll still work with them on that too.

Steve: Gotcha. Okay. So then the second question was, how are you finding these deals? Because, again, buying a house for a $100 sounds ludicrous.

Joe: Yeah.

Steve: How are you guys buying these deals?

Joe: So how do we find them is what Jen was mentioning earlier.

Jen: Facebook. Yeah. The Facebook. The sponsored ads.

Joe: Every way works Yeah. Especially if you do it enough. However, our niche that we found that works really well is Facebook. You could either join these Facebook groups for free. Mhmm.

And especially if you're first starting out and you just want free lead generation, you could generate all the leads you want for free. We turned it into a little, more of a business, and we need a little bit more horsepower behind it. So we run sponsored ads. Mhmm. And sponsored ads are the same thing we'll put in these groups.

It's just now it's all the time.

Steve: I see. So it's the same message. Same message. There's nothing fancy with the with the ad.

Jen: No? Really. But I think the big thing too is to take the comments seriously because somebody might put in the comments 900,000 and it's yours, and they legitimately have a $2,000,000 property worth that on Marco Island. And she was dead serious, and we did that deal. Yeah.

But a lot of people will, you know, not even respond to comments or just ignore them, and you can't like, they're treat them just like they called your phone, and you just never know.

Joe: Yeah. So that's that's a true story what happened. Some lady saw our Facebook post and put on the post 900,000 and it's yours. I'm like, well, it's a lot of money for a house, but let's get in the DMs and ask her what's going on. It's a property.

It's worth close to $2,000,000 in Marco Island, Florida, which is right outside in Naples. It's like the sixth most affluent place in the country. She wants $900,000 for it because on the water, it still needed some work. Built branch built '91, not terrible, but it still needed to get done. So when you think like, hey.

This would only work in some areas, but not all areas. It works in the high end stuff. It works in the middle range stuff. It works in the tough areas too. Like, this stuff works everywhere.

So that's why I liked it so much because when we were doing pulling lists, doing mailers, doing things like that, you're not the only one pulling that list. You're not the only one selling the mailer or co calling them. Where on Facebook, you're many times almost almost every time, we're the only one they've talked to.

Steve: So, I've paid a few of mine on Facebook when I used to run a lot of ads was I would run an ad, you know, to sell a property.

Joe: Mhmm.

Steve: And someone would comment, and then some ridiculous realtor would come along and, like, try to steal that prospect.

Joe: Yep.

Steve: Right? So I don't spend money on advertising, and someone else is coming in and trying to snipe my lead.

Joe: Mhmm.

Steve: Do you guys have that at all with your guys' ads?

Jen: I have a few between. It's mostly just a bunch of people just calling me names, you know, or telling me I have one picture where I'm wearing ripped up jeans, and they're like, oh, you can't afford my house. You can't even afford jeans without holes in them. You know? Just comments like that.

Joe: Kinda like if you only knew what those jeans cost.

Jen: Right? But it does happen, especially on the free ads. I would say people are even, you know, he puts them out there, and I saw realtors or other people just trying to snipe other people's potential deals. So you have to be speed to lead there. You're very cognizant when you're posting and what's coming back in.

Steve: So Facebook ads. So then it goes back to what we're saying earlier in that you have, you're posting content on your Facebook business page to target homeowners. So when they see that ad Mhmm. And they click on it, it's like, what is this about? And they see, like, oh, here are all the success stories.

So instead of a landing page, Facebook business page. Mhmm.

Joe: Right.

Steve: So, so I think that's probably a a key piece. Not to say that someone couldn't start running Facebook ads today, but be intentional to who you're, you're you're where you're sending them to. Right?

Joe: And

Steve: you've been building that foundation for a long time.

Jen: But we didn't have much when we started. You know? And we liken it to a a store. If you go into a mall I mean, malls are whatever now. But back in the day, you know, there's a store that has the cool music and the vibe, and you walk in and, like, people are there to help you and greet you.

And you're like, okay. Cool. Or you walk into a store, it's, like, dead silent, and it's just, like, not cool stuff in there. So if you're running sponsored ads and you haven't made a post in years, I would definitely say start posting something. You know?

Put some stuff out there. But when we started, we didn't have much, you know, and even just holiday stuff or, you know, local restaurant you like or, hey. Check check out this beach or whatever's in your local area where you're doing business, it goes a long way.

Steve: Yeah. So get intentional. Build a Facebook business page. Put the testimonials or stories if nothing else. The the postings really aren't super complicated.

Who wants who has a house they wanna sell in the next two to three weeks off market?

Joe: Yeah. Mhmm. Well, the the key to the Facebook post and groups, well, really your own page, is about being personal. If you're just gonna put up stock photos, like I buy houses, like, you know, whatever, like, sure. I guess that works.

But the reason why people feel like they could like, know, and trust you is because there's so many videos and pictures.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: And when they could get all these videos and pictures and they could see what what you're about, they feel like you're an actual regular person.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: They feel like, okay. Well, I could see them, and I like this. I could trust them.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: Why? Because there's videos of Jen talk about, like, here we are looking at a house. Maybe we bought the house. Maybe we didn't. Mhmm.

But she's sharing the content on her Facebook page consistently.

Steve: Right.

Joe: Not hiding behind stock photos. I did one in 2019 that should be good for life like now. Mhmm. And it's just like anything else. You gotta give it that great vibe.

Jen: And that live button, like, it goes so far. And it was really, Stephanie Betters, her team, the the social media, they were all about, like, just keep going live and build that credibility, and I'm so glad that we took that advice all those years ago.

Steve: Are you guys still going live on it?

Joe: Mhmm.

Steve: Oh, yeah. How often are you going live on it?

Jen: Not as much as I should be. I try I try it for once a week, but Mhmm. I I honestly, it's probably every other week.

Steve: What's the purpose of the live?

Jen: Again, to kinda share some stories, how, you know, a situation a seller might have just been in, even just like a life update. And, you know, as when I when I go live and I would see the sellers that were helping out, like, one in particular, the Tuggles was their name. We were struggling in that deal for a little while, trying to find a buyer, and I just was so intense. Like, I'm like, we have to find a buyer for them, and we ended up really being able to help them out.

Joe: We took the deal down ourselves. Yeah. And that's when we bought with seller financing. Mhmm. And alls we did is we bought it with seller financing.

We just we didn't even clean that one out. Yeah. Now I found a a realtor in the area who had a cash buyer already in place.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: So we closed on it within a short time after. We did a double closing Mhmm. And, save the Tuggles from their situation.

Jen: To make, like, one or two mortgage payments? Yeah.

Joe: I think it was two. It wasn't much at all. Mm-mm.

Steve: No.

Joe: I think it was one because of how quickly we closed on it. It wasn't much at all. And, really, it was a great story for them. So then you just go on your social media and say, hey. I just helped out some sellers who are looking to sell their house.

Mhmm. Talk about the story. Post it. Yeah. Alright.

And so now what happens is you'll have so many different situations. Accidental landlord. Somebody got relocated from the job. Somebody inherited a house. Right?

So all these situations that when you're actually talking to sellers, that's the content

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: That you're going to be using on your page.

Steve: So any

Joe: of these seller stories and so what we do is we just let you know, we talk about what when we're gonna talk about. She goes on there, and next thing you know, it's somebody will make that connection. Say, that's happening to me. Mhmm.

Steve: Right.

Jen: Because they might see the sponsored ad, and then they're gonna go back to the Facebook page.

Steve: Right.

Jen: And then they might even try to find who you are. So always be, you know, putting your smiling face out there. Don't have a cat picture. Even though you may love your cat, like, your profile should be your face.

Steve: Yeah. Your profile should be your business.

Joe: Yep.

Steve: So you guys do a lot of creative financing. And I noticed you say finance. Right? I always pick an Eddie Speed for that. Right?

Mhmm. Creative finance. But you do a lot of creative financing. One thing that we're seeing a lot of, and there seems to be kind of a tide kinda turning at the moment I see on social media on the concept of buying a property subject to, right, where equity is tight or cash flow is tight. So what do you recommend to your clients that are looking at, subject to properties that are either skinny in cash flow or low on equity but has an excellent rate?

Joe: Okay. So great question. If it has no equity, but I can cash flow, I love those deals. Mhmm. I love them.

Great rate. I can cash flow. Has no equity. Those are my bread and butter deals. Love them.

Love them. Love them. Now the ones that you don't cash flow on, am I getting a lot of free equity, or am I not? Right? Mhmm.

But if I'm paying and I'll go over a great example. I've got one right now. The guy's got this house in Columbus, Ohio. They bought it for $5.00 5. They decked this whole place out for Airbnb.

It looks gorgeous. They bought it just last year, 2023. Running an Airbnb, realized we don't wanna do that anymore. It's time to sell it. They put on the market at $5.30.

It's not selling. They have been to a $5.30 between closing costs and furnishing the house. Well, it doesn't sell. They've got it now down to $4.75. Still would have to pay a commission to the realtor, things like that.

It's still not selling. So they reach out to us. Say, we would we ask the magic questions on Messenger, on script. They answer. They said, yes.

We would be open to terms. Great. We get on the phone with them. $100 down, not a problem. They want, I think we were able to buy it for I think it was 4 sixties, what they were hoping to get for it, which is still a significant loss, and it's fully furnished.

I said, sounds like a deal to me. The house is gorgeous. Well, what's the payment? Well, the payment's 3,400 with the tax insurance because they have a 6.8 interest rate. And I look, so what does this house rent for if I were to just turn it into a rental?

It rents for 2,200 and maybe 2,400 tops. I will lose potentially a thousand dollars a month to make that deal. I'm not making it. Mhmm. If it don't make dollars, it don't make sense.

Steve: Right.

Joe: So, I gotta find a way to make money on the deal somewhere, and there's none to be had on that deal. So that's very unfortunate. And I think we'll start seeing more of those because I have a lot of sellers where they reach out, and they have a 678 interest rate. Mhmm. And that payment is a thousand dollars, sometimes $2,000 more to own the house than it is to rent the very same house.

Steve: Right.

Joe: So those deals are gonna be really hard. However, I've got one right now. We're working on Saint Pete, Florida. I think we could break even per month. They have a pretty low interest rate, but I love the area.

Mhmm. Love the area. I think it's really developing, and it's gonna continue to develop. It's close to the water, all of things. So if I could buy that deal and just break even on a rental but do rent to own, so at least I'll get $2,030,000 dollars for my renter to move in.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: And if I could even break even per month, I'm okay with that. I figure write off depreciation, do that. But the key especially if you're just starting out, you need cash flow. Mhmm. You need cash flow.

If that hot water tank goes, the furnace goes, whatever, you're gonna want cash and reserves just in case they miss a payment. Yeah. Because just because you bought a property, either a seller financing or you bought it on a wrap or you bought it subject to, that loan might not be in your name, but it's your obligation to make sure rather you're collecting rent on time or not, it's still your obligation to make sure you're paying that payment on time. You definitely need to have some reserve set aside Mhmm. Just in case life happens.

Like, nobody could predict that COVID would happen. Mhmm. Right? So even when COVID happened, some of our renters didn't pay on time for a little while. Some lost their jobs.

New York, people were getting closed everywhere.

Steve: Right.

Joe: We still made our payments that every lender on time never missed one beat. So that's the key is you need to make sure it's cash flowing, is imperative.

Steve: In this instance where you bought a property that was not cash flowing, but you really like the area, was it a situate like, what was the equity situation? Was it also you're just betting on future equity?

Joe: Yeah. So this is one we're actually working right now. I think Lexi is writing it up today.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: The seller has it listed at $4.25. He owes $3.80

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: And just wants what he owes on the house. So we're gonna buy it for $3.80 for what he owes. We're gonna put a $100 down on that one. The payment p I t I oh, man. I'm just drawing a blank right now.

It's about $3, and I think it would rent for about that. Mhmm. So I'm really banking on that because it's in our backyard. I know Saint Pete really well. I have a feeling that area is just gonna continue to boom Mhmm.

And you're buying it right.

Jen: Yeah.

Joe: And the house is turnkey. Here's the other thing too. Like, this house was renovated before this gentleman bought it. It needs nothing. And they even just put in a brand new pool and hot tub, like, all in ground pool, and they spent some coin on that.

So it's Yeah. It's a nice house.

Steve: Gotcha. Any concerns at all? Oh, I guess, how many properties do you own that are subject to?

Joe: Mid twenties. Mhmm.

Steve: I'm seeing more people talking about the due on sale clause occurring

Joe: Mhmm.

Steve: Recently. What are you guys' thoughts or concerns

Jen: on that? The hot topic more so than usual, I feel like.

Steve: I mean, it's it's trending right now on Facebook.

Jen: Hashtag trending.

Joe: So here we do. We we don't actually buy subject to. We buy them on a wrap. Mhmm. Very similar.

There's some small differences. Sure. But we prefer buying on a wrap. However, you gotta make sure you're doing a couple things right. Everybody's always worried about the due on sale clause.

Number one, make sure that you're always paying the payment on time. They're a bank. They're a lender. They want their money. If you could just do that one thing, that obviously help tremendously.

Number two, you wanna make sure the insurance is set up the right way. Having the seller's name on your new policy because you're gonna need a new policy. You're the owner. But having the seller's name on there is additionally named insured, not just additionally insured, actually, additionally named insured. So their name is on the front page of the policy.

Make sure the lender has that. So if you have the payments paid on time, you have the insurance done the correct way, that will help eliminate a lot of that. Now there's always the case, you know, it could be a small bank or credit union who could do that. Mhmm. However, there's one I was talking with a a title company in Florida recently, and the lady's been doing it forever.

And she gave us this great idea, which we're gonna start implementing. So what we do is when we take deed to the property, we put the deed into a land trust.

Jen: Mhmm.

Joe: Now in your trust, you have the beneficiary, and you're gonna be your trustee. Well, the trustee is always one of our LLCs. And, typically, the beneficiary is a different LLC that we own. Well, what she's saying to do is if people are worried about the due on sale clause, you could have the seller's name as the beneficiary Mhmm. And then just have that assignment to your LLC also inside the deal.

So if the lender ever comes to you and says, hey, Steve, I see that you sold the property, and it's not in your name anymore. We need to see who's the beneficiary of this land trust. If you have the original docs, which shows the seller's name on there, there's nothing they could do for that.

Steve: Right.

Joe: So you just send them the docs. Obviously, I wouldn't send the assignment form with that.

Steve: It gotta be a

Joe: little bit smarter, but that's one way that would really not be an issue at all.

Steve: Yeah. Oh, that makes total sense. Now you guys are also doing a lot of this virtually. How does how do you guys how are you guys doing all this virtually?

Jen: Well, because of COVID, we couldn't go anywhere. So we just tuned in to our phones really easily, and then we realized how much time it was saving us from spending hours at sellers' properties that we end up not buying. So really creating that kind of checks and balances of asking the questions through Messenger, hopping on a phone call to secure the deal. And then if we need to do a a FaceTime walk through, we've done that before, but a lot of these are literal turnkey properties. So if they just bought them.

Like, this guy in Saint Pete, he just bought it.

Joe: Bought it.

Jen: So we don't even need to go to the house. We could if we wanted, but, you know, we're just able to do this, you know, really easily. And then if it's a property that is further away like South Carolina or Connecticut, we find really great boots on the ground, you know, finding real estate agents that have high star ratings on Google, that really are and you know the difference between someone who's willing to put in the work a little extra mile and get this deal done with you versus someone who's just, you know, not answering the phone or tells you straight up, this isn't what I wanna do.

Joe: Yeah. So we do we do some fix and flips all around the country. Mhmm. We buy these creative deals all over the country. And so what Jen just said is, like, when we're doing some of these fix and flips, like, we did a what we call creative flip, and we just did one in Connecticut.

Seller wants to sell. She wants 200,000 for her house. We bought it. We did some light renovations, and then we were gonna list it right away. So I found an agent.

She allegedly had, like, 400, like, five star reviews on Google. Laura Annes in Connecticut is the best.

Jen: Too lucky.

Joe: So she did the walk through. When I reached out to her, I said, hey. I'm buying this house, and I'm gonna turn around and sell it. I see you had some recent sales in this neighborhood. She's like, yeah.

I sell everything in this neighborhood, and I live a few blocks over. As I'm on the initial call with her, she's like, I'm actually in the car driving by the house right now. I'm in the driveway. I'm like, wow. This lady is amazing.

So she does the walk through. She's like, I have three different contractors who I've recommended do the job. I've been doing this for thirty years. She got quotes from all three. She's like, use the middle guy because he Natalie is not the highest price or the lowest price.

All three do great work, but he could also start right away. I was like, done and done and done. Mhmm. He did the work, did the renovations. We listed it with her.

Steve: We

Joe: end up getting $18 over asking Mhmm. To decide. They did a bang up job. Now we're doing fix and flips on properties we've never been to. We even did one couple months ago in Clearwater, Florida, which is about forty five minutes to our house.

Never went to it. Buy it on seller financing. We had some guys in the area who did the walk through, who did work with the contractors. We put on the market with one of their friend realtors and got it sold. And Yeah.

So if they're forty five minutes from our house or four or five states away, we still do them virtually. I don't and now if we go to a house, it's maybe once a year, and that's just to make content for, like, social media. That's it.

Steve: Yeah. Now you guys, somewhere along the way, started helping other people do the creative finance playbook.

Joe: Yeah.

Steve: What what's tell me about what that is.

Jen: Yeah. So it organically happened as we're, you know, on Instagram, I'm, you know, finding this little community, and we're sharing, you know, fun stories, horror stories. And, you know, literally, people are asking, I want to pay you money so I can get on a call with you. And so I, like, created a whatever Calendly link and linked it to PayPal. And then more people kept asking.

And so, you know, we opened up and started offering one on one coaching.

Joe: Mhmm.

Jen: I think it was '21 when we first started, and we only allowed, like, so many people. And having the teaching background, you know, we just made it really simple process, met with them once a week, and then would have, like, a group meeting and found that really hard to scale. So we loved seeing their results, loved seeing them be able to quit their jobs and make more money on a deal than they were the entire year of seeing it at w two. And so from there, you know, we really made it our mission to be able to help more people.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jen: And, the last year, we've been able to open that up into a small group coaching. And that's so much fun. I love that that the community, the energy that you can get on a Zoom with and

Joe: But we're open book. We're just showing with our clients exactly what it is that we're doing. Or when we onboard a new employee

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: That has no experience. We we teach them the same way.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: Our acquisition manager right now came to us a little over a year ago as our babysitter, a different one, owner on care.com. Best place to find your staff, care.com. If you could trust them with your kids, you could probably trust them with your business. Mhmm. So when we brought on Lexi, she was fantastic.

She was just moved to Florida, hasn't found her job yet. So she was babysitting kids because she loved kids. Well, Jen was like, oh, I think you're gonna love this girl. She sounds great on the phone. She came over babysat the kids one time.

And that night after I we offered her a job. Mhmm. So I said, we do real estate. She said, I don't know anything about

Jen: real estate. She was looking for sales. So I was like, okay.

Joe: Yeah. And she sounded great on the phone. So with Lexi, her first day in the job, I'm like, here's your desk. Pull up Zillow. And she's like, what's Zillow?

I was like, woah. Okay. It's a real estate website. And she said, can you spell that for me? I mean, that's legitly what we had started off with.

Great attitude. Wanted to learn. Now she's doing, you know, a couple deals a month for us. Mhmm. And so we teach clients like we would with them how to generate leads for free so you don't have to spend money.

Mhmm. And you don't make you don't spend money until you make it first, revenue and first position.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: So that's what really we work with with our clients, and they just became super successful. Started, I mean, writing books and doing all these other cool podcasts and things like that. So

Jen: And quickly tell them, like, copy and paste, like, these words, use your own photos, and don't try to reinvent the wheel. Because I think a lot of us try really hard to, like, make something better and spend all this time. And I'm like, don't do that. Right? Like We

Steve: gotta add our own zest to it and just Okay. Time.

Jen: Don't do that. No. Easy. Yeah. And taking the messy massive action.

Right? Like, getting uncomfortable and shaking it off if you feel like you messed up. Because for me, I remember I got thrown by a seller. He wanted an amortization schedule, and I cried to him. I don't even know what that means.

You know? And he said, but you did it. You did the call. I'm like, but it sounds so stupid. You know?

But we all have been at some point in time making some silly mistake along the way.

Steve: Yeah. Oh, we definitely. And and maybe not even silly. Just, like, way worse.

Jen: Right.

Steve: Yeah. We've we've created a lot of messes along the way. So, right now, people that are reaching out, these are predominantly, people finding you on social media. They're interested in learning how to is it build a portfolio? Like, what what is the what is their desired outcome when they initially reach out to you guys?

Jen: I would say most want to be able to buy properties without having to go to the bank. So they're open to even wholesaling or assigning a deal. They definitely most of them seem to want to build a portfolio.

Joe: Mhmm.

Jen: Maybe not all of them wanna do rent to own. Some wanna get into Airbnb with it or, you know, midterm rentals.

Joe: Well, that's really what you just hit on the head because if you're looking at properties today at today's prices and at today's interest rates, it's almost impossible to find a good deal. Mhmm. Almost impossible. So what really, they wanted to learn how to buy real estate without banks and getting these two and a half percent interest rates like Becky with a good rate and how to find these turnkey houses. And then along the way, when you're generating leads the way we do, you might find that junker that somebody's giving you for half off.

And if they don't wanna do that, they could wholesale that deal to a cash buyer. Or if they're looking for a fix and flip, they could do it, but we generally try to advise not to, especially in your first deal. Like, don't do a fix and flip on your first deal.

Jen: Oh, gosh. No.

Joe: You will learn a lot, and it'll be very expensive. So, you know, if you're able to buy turnkey properties with little cash down that that can cash flow, this has really been the key of what they want. They wanna be able to most of the time, it's they wanna walk away from their jobs.

Steve: Right.

Joe: The goal in handcuffs of, you know, the American job, well, they would want more than that. And so many of them were able to quit their jobs as an engineer, accountants, work in a law offices, all different kind of sales jobs. Now they get to do this full time because they could generate leads. Yeah. They're able to buy these cash flowing properties.

Some do implement rent to own, and then you'll have some that you could also wholesale and get a good, you know, chunk of money too.

Jen: And some find their own house, which is really awesome.

Joe: We have a bunch who found their own house, the like, the primary residence. That's really cool.

Steve: That is really cool. That's always, like, the wish. Right? It's like, man, I I wanna be able to buy one for me Yeah. On great terms.

Like, I I was completely resigned to the fact that I was not gonna buy one off of my marketing. Right? Like, to live in a part of town I wanna live in with all the requirements, like, I don't think I can find it because we don't market over there. Right? But with your way, it's more, it's not necessarily a shotgun approach, but it's an it's an area.

It's not, like, ZIP code specific, I would imagine, with with your guys targeting.

Jen: Mhmm.

Steve: Right? Whereas we have to target certain ZIP codes. Right? Like, we are very specific with our pay per click marketing that we just don't target East Valley because then we're going head to head and open door. Mhmm.

We'd rather just go head to head against other wholesalers versus, you know, someone that's willing to pay a stupid amount of money for a property. Right. Right? So, like, I've kinda given up on that, but it's cool that you you guys have students that are able to buy a property through the this specific marketing. And then it kinda sounds like with your guys' marketing, that you guys teach, you don't really need a lot of

Joe: money to get

Steve: started. Mm-mm. Right? You're not pulling a list. You're not, necessarily grinding on the phones, which, I mean, I I'm still a big fan of, but sounds like you guys that's not really the model.

It's really social media. Have them raise their hands and send them DMs.

Joe: Right. Because what I've noticed the biggest thing is usually is either they don't know how to generate leads Mhmm. Or they have a challenge talking to people. Mhmm. So with our system, the way we found is it doesn't cost you any money for lead generation at all.

Mhmm. And then with our DMs, the way we do it with our script, you're asking a a handful of questions. And so what are you doing there? You're weeding out all of the really great ones that you want, the motivated ones. Maybe they've got some pain or a situation going on.

Those are the ones you obviously keep close eye on. And all the the mean people, the time wasters, the, just tell me more about this. I'm not looking to sell my house. Like, move on. Right?

So then how do you only get on the phone with the good, happy, motivated people?

Steve: Nice people.

Joe: That's right. And so because when in the beginning, when I was cold calling, oh my gosh. Like, it works. Don't get me wrong.

Jen: You're in a direct mail. I was shocked how many people they would write nasty messages back and stuff

Joe: like that. Wrote us a whole

Steve: letter and

Joe: wrote it back.

Jen: Yeah. This will never work. No one will ever ever sell you their house, and then literally a month later, we bought one.

Joe: Yeah. So, you know, it's we found that kind of system of the training wheels. Right? Generate leads for free, message the in the DMs, Get on the phone with the good ones.

Steve: Mhmm. Mhmm.

Joe: Only the good ones. And from that, I think it gives them a little bit more confidence. Yeah. You spend your whole life talking to unmotivated grumpy sellers. You're not gonna like this business.

Jen: No. You'll give up.

Steve: What does your guys' life look like now, with your, your coaching, your buying houses, your running appointments versus, you know, pre COVID and your, director of financing days?

Joe: Well, I will say before, when we were part time investors, me still having my full time job, my days typically consisted of me waking up in the morning, scrambling the mad dash to make sure the kid got on the bus on time. I got to eat, run out the door for a meeting, give her a quick kiss. You're spending, I don't know, twenty minutes, half an hour with the kids in the morning, and then I'm gone all day from work. Meanwhile, she's handling everything at home.

Jen: Yeah. Basically, I just never saw each other. And I would maybe bring the kids up for lunch at the dealership if they were with me, maybe try to meet for dinner up there, but it was I don't know. It was awful. I just remember too, like, every Monday night was garbage night, and it was I just remember falling off the garbage, like, man, like, there's gotta be more than this.

Right? Like, everybody else seemed, like, tucked in their houses all happy together, and, like, here he is working his hell off, which I was grateful for.

Joe: Yeah. You get home at

Jen: 09:30 at night after that. Like, not even hungry. I'm like, but you gotta eat dinner. Right? But, it was just it was very stressful.

Like, he couldn't even just, like I mean, even on Saturdays, they would get pizza for everybody, but he'd be tied up with a customer. And so he'd get over and there's, like, one piece left in the corner that everybody probably touched. Right?

Joe: Everybody touched it. The pepperoni was ripped off of it, and that was, like, all was for lunch. And I'm like, this was this was it sucked.

Jen: And so now it's we have our our own little chaotic flow, I'd like to say. You know? It depends on if we've how many deals we've got churning and what kind of is happening at home, but the kids get to wake up when they wanna wake up now. There's no rushing to the bus. We homeschool, so they my daughter likes to sleep in a little bit.

Slower start in the morning. We do some independent work, and then I'll sit down with them. We have our executive assistant. We have team meetings at 10AM where we all kinda gather together, talk about what's going on. And then we've got our coaching clients throughout the week, but it's we're very busy, but our our time is our time now.

And there's just such a difference where, no, I don't have to answer to anybody. I don't have to I I was getting up at, like, 04:30 some mornings, so I could drive an hour and a half in the snow, ice to go to work. And it's just I don't miss that at all.

Joe: Well and I think the big three that we focus on now, because there is always so much going on, it's like we focus on 100% client success.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: We focus on our family, us, you know, our kids, and all the things that we get to do. And that might be like a field trip from homeschool or things like that, and our business, our real estate business. And those are the big three things that we really focus on. That relief that I don't have to I still have, like like, flashbacks of, like, Monday morning. I'm supposed to be up at 06:00 in the morning to hurry up and get in the shower to run to the door by 07:30 because I've got meetings all day.

Jen: It was crazy how long it took for that, like, brain to stop being like, oh, Tuesday. Oh, okay. It's early night. No. No.

It's like, okay. You know, like, Wednesday was late night or, you know, and all of a sudden now we're just with each other. And so And

Joe: living in Florida, I mean, it feels like you're on vacation every day almost.

Jen: Yeah. We were crazy. We moved from New York to Florida in forty five days.

Steve: Yeah.

Jen: So I don't recommend that, but moving to Florida was the best decision ever. Yeah.

Steve: I can definitely support that. I mean, reading the news, I was I was I was telling my wife, like, if Texas succeeds, we're definitely going there. Right?

Joe: Yeah.

Steve: But if not, then then maybe Florida. Who's homeschool who's homeschooling the kids?

Jen: Mostly me, but he definitely steps up and does, he likes more of the history science and then Math. Oh, yeah. Math. And then, homeschool meetups. If I I try to schedule, like, one outing a week.

A lot of the they have so many outings. So sometimes I feel bad that we can't go to everyone as we're growing.

Steve: Different homeschool as in the community of homeschool Yeah. Yeah. And kids.

Jen: There's a lot of unschooling. I don't know if you're familiar with that.

Steve: I'm not familiar with that. No.

Jen: So there's there's, like, no real curriculum. You just kinda do what you want with your kids.

Steve: That sounds terrifying.

Jen: I'm not saying I support or don't, but we don't technically home unschool. We definitely, you know, have curriculum curriculums we follow and

Steve: It's only the no stuff.

Joe: Yeah. Like, how to read and write. But, you know, the neat thing about it is with my job, I never got to go to any of these things Right. Ever. Once in a while, if there was a thing going at the kid's school, I would get to leave the whole time there.

My phone's blowing up, and then I go back to work, and there'd be a nightmare stuff while I was gone for forty five minutes. So now Jen schedules something once a week, and a lot of these, like, I get to go to because she's busy. So here I am, like, the one dad with all these homeschooling moms.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: And we're at some, like, nature park doing field trip and all the cool stuff. So it's really neat that I get to be a part of it because what I've learned from some of the most successful, most wealthy men that I've ever met, and I've had some I've been around some really good people, the biggest regret they always have is they weren't there watching their kids grow up. Mhmm. Mhmm. And I can't tell you how many times I heard that from these guys.

So I was always thinking in my life, how do I have that balance? Yeah. How do I have the balance of doing all the things being, you know, really successful in your business, but also not missing a thing? Mhmm. Because you only get 18 Christmases and 18 summers and all the things with your kids.

And after that, they become you know, they wanna go do their own thing. So I get that. So the fact that our kids right now are nine and 11, and we get to do all of the stuff with them, I feel like I hit the lotto. How do you

Steve: deal with the weirdness? I'm asking this personally. How do you deal with the weirdness being the only dad on these trips?

Joe: Yeah. That part is a little strange to me. There's some cool moms there. Mhmm. There's some cool moms.

Most of them are doing their mom thing, so I get to kinda do my dad thing. But I I enjoyed going for the kids. So I'm

Steve: Me too. But, like

Joe: grown up kid.

Steve: I don't have anything to connect with the kids. I don't have anything to connect

Jen: with the mom. I honestly feel weird too at times, to be quite honest, because they'll be, like, they'll be all playing we went to, like, a birthday party, and they're all playing in the park. And the moms are all chatting about stuff, and I am, like, trying to get this deal closed. And so I probably look like a jerk, like, playing on my phone, but legit, like, I'm trying to make sure, like, this thing is happening.

Joe: Yeah. And I think maybe just I don't know if it's my own thing, but I could talk to people in anywhere. Yeah.

Jen: You're really talkative.

Steve: Yeah. That I'm not. So I struggle. I try to figure out how to deal with, like, try to, like, be friendly, but, like, nothing in common.

Joe: Yeah. Well, because also too in the same time, I had, like, we're having a good time, but I'm like, are these moms thinking I'm weird? Yeah. Right. And then they're probably due, and I'm okay with that because whatever.

I feel

Jen: like at this point, we just realized we're different. That's what it is.

Steve: It is what it is. Definitely. I I just try to see what try to figure out the the awkwardness. What is you guys' biggest struggle today?

Joe: I guess just more of how to set the right boundaries, I think is probably, I would say, one of my biggest obstacles because, you know, I'll I'll have a client reach out at, you know, 08:00 at night, and I'm so dedicated to them being successful. Like, I wanna answer everything, but I also need to spend time focusing on my wife. Mhmm. And so I need to make sure that I work my very best to, you know, have that client success, but set up the boundary to where these are off hours now, and these are my wife's hours that I'm gonna spend on her. So just I guess, that's been one of my struggles that I feel like I'm getting better at.

And I'm always worried about better at it? I just put my phone down. Mhmm. I just put that thing down. I don't like I said earlier, I don't care the Apple Watch.

So if I put my phone down for two hours and I put it in the other room, it's on the charger Mhmm. Because my phone's always dead by noon. It's a new phone, but just I'm on it. If I'm away from it for two hours, you can't get a hold of me for two hours. That's just what it is.

My phone ringer is never on on my phone. It is always on silent. Because if it was on, it'd be dinging and ringing all day long.

Steve: Yeah. I've been I wanna say do not disturb since, like, 2016. Yeah. Exactly. Right.

It's and, like, people get frustrated. It's like,

Jen: you need to for your sanity. Yeah.

Joe: Yeah. Because it also too it it gets to a point where, like, things get so hectic. If you don't start laughing, you're gonna just start pulling your hair out. So I have to sit back and be like, holy, you know, whatever, because this is wild right now. And I will actually just take a minute and kinda giggle about it because if you really let it get to you, it could drive you crazy.

Steve: Oh, and I have a team that will be driven crazy, and I always say the same thing. They're probably tired of it by now, but, like, one's ever died because of us. Yeah. Bad things happen. Sure.

Jen: Mhmm.

Steve: But no one's ever died Yeah. Because of us. Right. How about yourself? What's your biggest struggle?

Jen: I think to piggyback on that, it's the scheduling, the calendar, you know, just knowing there's things I want to do that need need to be done, and then already seeing the like, it's all filled up already. And I'm like, I need I need to get better control of my my life, essentially. Like, how do I open up more doors? And I think that's gonna happen by taking a step back Mhmm. And getting some more people in the right seats, you know, as you continue to grow, like, our coaching business.

Like, we it's us, and we have our team members running some support calls, but we need to grow that too. And so with that comes growing pains.

Steve: You need to grow it.

Jen: Yeah. We do. We want to grow it. I know.

Joe: Well, I mean, we also have a waiting list of, like, four or 500 people who are just wanting to get on call to even see if they could get into our coaching program. So it's a little it's been

Steve: Yeah. I mean, you have a coach. Mhmm. Yeah. I imagine he's kinda talking through these challenges with you guys.

Jen: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Joe: Genuinely, like, messaging him. Oh, yeah.

Steve: Yeah. And and, and Tom is is incredibly kindhearted. And I think he has the same problem as you where he just wants to help so much that he

Joe: can't

Steve: Yeah. He can't say no.

Joe: Yep.

Steve: What what is, what is your superpower?

Jen: Oh my gosh.

Joe: Don't look at me.

Jen: I was like, I don't even

Joe: I know, but I'm not gonna say it.

Jen: Oh, boy. Well, I guess I am I am patient, but I also have my my limit for sure. But I try to be as authentic as I can and just share my journey honestly, and inspire other people, I'd say.

Steve: What's your superpower?

Joe: I think people. Mhmm. Gary and Susan Harper.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: I had to take the PI test. And my is it b? I don't know. I forgot what letter it was.

Jen: B was off the charts.

Joe: Off the charts. Gary's like, woah. Like, I love connecting with people. And so the thing about real estate, which is cool, yeah, the checks are great. The houses are cool.

All the things are great, but the connections that you get to make, rather you're helping other investors or even, like, where we are right now, I mean, this is, like, on a whole other level. Helping a seller out, helping a renter turn into a homeowner. All these connections that you do in your life to leave that legacy behind, not like I'm trying to leave it behind, but just I think it will happen. Mhmm. I think that's probably my most favorite thing is just the people.

Steve: Yeah. I've never actually met with someone whose b was off the chart. So that's you?

Joe: Yeah. Awesome. Like crazy.

Steve: I've never met one. I've seen someone with really high b's, but I've never seen one with a b off the chart. C a off the chart, d off the chart. Right? C off the chart.

I've never seen the b off the chart. So Gary

Joe: and Susan were both like, woah, when they saw that.

Jen: Yeah. You had, like, no patience whereas I could sit for, like, two and a half hours and then you're

Joe: I could sit for, like, three minutes. She could sit forever.

Steve: So

Joe: as far as some of these things go, I can see why.

Jen: He that's why he loves the meetups and talking to people. And sometimes I like them, but sometimes I'm like, oof, a little bit of introvert.

Steve: Well, you're absolutely energized by people. Right? So for everyone that's listening. Right? So we're talking about predictive index, and the b is the, extroversion component.

Right? The the the wanting approval from others wanting, the being around people energizes you.

Joe: Totally.

Steve: Right? Whereas there's nothing for me.

Joe: So we do our support calls on a Zoom, and we do the Thursday night support call is at 08:00 at night is when it starts. And I always have in the back of my head, this is gonna last for maybe an hour to hour and a half. Yeah. Right. Three and a half hours later, it's 11:00 at night.

She went to bed, and I'm like, like, I get and then after the support calls, maybe I was a little bit tired before I got into it. After the support calls, I am so jacked. Mhmm. So jacked. Like, just I don't know.

That's where my energy comes from.

Steve: Yeah. You love people. You inspire people. Right? Yeah.

And I'm exact opposite. I'm getting the feeling that you're the same way. Yeah. Okay. So flip that.

What's her superpower?

Joe: She's the, like, organizer of it all. I always keep saying that Jenna's the sun, and we're just a bunch of planets that revolve around her, And that's really what it is. And so she's the one that is the not only just family glue, business glue, she's the glue of everything that we do. Mhmm. So great.

I could talk to sellers. I could, you know, train people. She's the one that schedules the stuff. I mean, just a plus per hour.

Jen: EA schedules stuff.

Joe: Well, that's why our schedule is already full next week. Yeah. She does a great job.

Steve: I'm guessing strategist or, analyzer. Is it

Jen: I forgot what mine was.

Steve: Yours is? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What's his superpower?

Jen: He just has a way with words. He makes everybody feel comfortable no matter what situation he's in. And if there's good news to deliver, he's really amazing at that. If there's bad news to deliver, he delivers it really meaningful and well. The velvet hammer approach.

I mean, it's just like, if I'm, like, really worked up about something, I will ask him, like, how should I respond? Because the way he can say it, even though I took pride in my writing and I love, you know, having a way with words, he just has the ability to kinda diffuse situations and deliver any sort of news the way it needs to be said without ruffling feathers and but also coming across, like, this is how it is.

Steve: Mhmm. Firm. Mhmm. Right. Velvet hammer.

I mean, I love that. That was, the my first mentor, that was his nickname. Right? I mean, he could get anything whatever needed to be said, you sent him in. Everyone's on the same page.

People were unhappy, but they weren't upset. Yeah. Right? Like, I don't like this outcome, but it is what it is.

Joe: Yeah. So if you got a hammer, put a little piece of soft red velvet on it, make it feel not as bad.

Steve: Yeah. Exactly. And that's such a critical skill. Yeah. Particularly in sales and people and everything else.

Joe: Yep.

Steve: If someone wanted to get a hold of you guys, what is the best way to reach you guys?

Jen: I would definitely say check out our website, creativefinanceplaybook.com. On there, you'll find all of our socials. We have an awesome Facebook community. We'd love to have you over there. If you wanna get on a call, just hop on, the wait list there, and we'll get you on as soon as possible.

Instagram and Facebook.

Joe: Yeah. Joseph Delafave, Jen Delafave, or just call me on my cell phone. Once again, my b. I love connecting with people, so I always my cell phone number is (585) 207-2240. That is my actual cell phone number, and, yes, I do pick up my phone.

Steve: Yeah. You're you're crazy. Yep. Yep. The last person I did was Pace.

Joe: Oh, jeez.

Steve: Alright. And, and, he still gets calls to this day. I can imagine.

Jen: I bet.

Steve: So yeah. Insane. But the high b,

Joe: that's what you love. I just love the people. Yeah. So

Steve: What are some last thoughts you'd like to leave all the listeners with? I'll I'll have you start.

Joe: So if you're just starting off or if you're already doing it, you probably already know this. But if you're just starting off, the the best things that I always say is to generate leads and to talk to people. We wanna make this business sound big or scary or whatever it is, but it really just boils down to learning how to help people with their real estate problems. So the more education and the more things you more, you know, tools in your tool belt, we'll help them. I think that's beneficial.

So with real estate investing, it's not a get rich quick overnight. I don't care what anybody says. Yes. You can make a lot of money. Yes.

You could do void quicker sometimes in your day job. But when somebody's, you know, trying to explain to you that this happens, but it happens over time, and each individual little win, each individual step will help get you closer to what your goals are. So, do it. Take action. That's the biggest thing.

Yeah.

Jen: Well, really, you know, give yourself the grace. It like Joe was saying, it does take time, and I think sometimes we really compare ourselves, especially with social media. We see everybody's highlight reels. But put the blinders on, figure out what it is that you're trying to accomplish, and go all in on that one thing before you start joining all of the different courses and groups and all of that. Like, just focus on the one thing, get really good at that, and then add another tool.

I feel like we try really hard to be great at everything, and then you're really not good at any one thing. And so for us, like, I'm really glad we learned rent to own. And then as we did that, we got really comfortable with seller financing, and then the next was the rep mortgages. So, you know, allow yourself the time to grow and learn, and don't beat yourself up along the way. Count those wins as small as they may seem.

You know, just making a Facebook post, that is a win, guys. Yeah.

Steve: Yep. Absolutely. So thank you very much Thank

Jen: you, Steve.

Steve: For coming on. Thank you. It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you guys for watching, and we'll see you guys next time. Steve train.

Jump on the Steve train. We real estate disrupt us.