How to do $1MM in Net Profit in 1 Month

Steve Trang: Everybody, thank you for joining us for today's episode of real estate disruptors. So we've got Jesus Toledo with eighty twenty REI, and Jesus flew in from Miami, Florida. Have a hot one of his clients is netting a million dollars in one month using their data. That's really an unfathomable number.

Jesus Toledo: I'm on a mission

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Jesus: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Steve: I'm looking forward to this. We've known each other for many, many years, so I'm really excited for this. First question is is what was your life like right before you got into real estate?

Jesus: Oh, right before, I was in an ecommerce, business.

Steve: Okay.

Jesus: I moved to United States, eleven years ago, so 2012.

Steve: Uh-huh.

Jesus: And my wife and I were we I had another business before when I moved, so I had a online poker business back in Chile. And my wife was trying to figure out what to do. She saw an opportunity to start an ecommerce back in Chile. So we were sending brands that were not in Chile, that were in United States, to Chile and selling online in Chile. Long story short, we merged that company, and I was I was working for another company that was the merger between our company and the other one.

Mhmm. And I kind of wanted to sell something bigger. We realized that ecommerce, the margins are very thin Mhmm. And we're making a few dollars on each transaction. Right.

And that kind of, led me to reach out to my now existing partner and say, hey, man. Let's do something. Let's do something bigger. Mhmm. I we'd rather reach that for that, and then Right.

We we got into real estate.

Steve: So ecom is a high volume, low margin business?

Jesus: Yes.

Steve: Is there a lot of risk in that business?

Jesus: So it depends. The truth is in in America, most of the ecommerce is they make any anywhere between 40 to 60% more close to 50% margins. Mhmm. So they buy something for 10. They sell it for 20.

Steve: Right.

Jesus: And that's great. In South America, our margins are not that close. We have vendors that will give us a 25% margin. Mhmm. So it was very thin margin.

So I would say there is a risk in there. Know your margins before you go into any industry, before you go into ecommerce.

Steve: At ecomm, it's kinda has this get rich quick feel. At least the people marketing marketing it. Is that an accurate description?

Jesus: Not at all. So well, it depends. Again, it all depends. Obviously, you can source products from China today and and and have huge margins. There are opportunities for sure.

I I don't I don't take that. Our journey wasn't that way. Mhmm. Like, we started my wife and I my wife started it. I had my I was running my online poker business from here

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: In Chile. My wife started selling online. And when I saw she was selling a a decent amount, say, well, let me help you. Let me see what we can do here. Right?

Because there was no ecommerce. No. There was no specialized baby ecommerce in Chile at the moment.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: So we I started helping her, and we started growing, growing, growing. We were reinvesting everything into the business. I had my other business to support us. However, we never made money. We ran negative on that business for seven years until we eventually sold that business.

Steve: Were you at least profitable when you sold the business?

Jesus: No. Never.

Steve: So it was like, was it is this,

Jesus: So our partners, so about a year after we started, another company launched, they raised money. So we started we we started that business. They raised, I don't remember exactly, a few hundreds of dollars to start their business, and they grew really fast.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: Right? So we were number one, and they quickly took that place from us. Mhmm. And by the time we merged, they were eight times bigger than us. Yeah.

Right? So we ended up merging. I stayed working with her. My my wife had her of her son, so she she didn't keep working. I kept working with the company.

Mhmm. We were constantly raising money, raising money, raising money to keep going, growing, growing, growing. We got to a point. I think we were selling $6,000,000 a year, give or take. No profitable.

We're very close.

Steve: So it was not get rich quick?

Jesus: No. Not in our experience. Right? I do believe there is opportunities. I've been away from the ecommerce for the last Sure.

Seven years now, but I do believe there is opportunities. But it is take it with a grain of salt. Right. It's very few people that become successful, and you need to be very careful with the category that you choose and make sure that you have good enough margins.

Steve: So I know we're supposed to talk talk about real estate.

Jesus: Yeah. Right?

Steve: So I apologize to everyone here. But, you mentioned poker. And, you know, I was a failed professional poker player. Right? Like, the the moment I turned 21, I learned about poker.

It just happened. Well, I mean, we went to Vegas, learned about poker, got addicted. Right? And I was playing literally every weekend up until about when I got married and my wife said this is no longer a thing. Right?

And so I I I was, you know, no pun intended, all in on poker. You have a background in poker.

Jesus: Yeah.

Steve: How did you get into it, and what what did you learn from it?

Jesus: Oh, how I got into it, like you, I wanted to play. Mhmm. Difference unlike, in in The United States. In Chile, we had no places to play. Mhmm.

So I actually organized the very first poker tournament in Chile. And the idea was I was playing three different home games with two different groups. I just wanted to get all these three groups together and and play the tournament and win the tournament. That's all I wanted. So the words start spreading out, and we got a 126 people because there was exact number of people that we could do in three shifts.

So we did we did day one a, day one b, day one c Mhmm. To run the tournament in a local bar. And all I wanted was to win the tournament. When we were approaching the tournament, I can't play and organize it and try to win. It was gonna be a little messy, so I decided not to play and just be the organizer.

It was me and my partner at the moment. And and that moment separated me from being a professional poker player to be a professional organizer

Steve: Right.

Jesus: Of poker.

Steve: When was that?

Jesus: 2001, maybe.

Steve: 2001.

Jesus: No. No. 2006. 2006. '6.

So before Moneymaker.

Steve: Okay.

Jesus: It was right before Moneymaker.

Steve: Yeah. So I got my addiction started around, like, 2001. Right? Because this is right when I turned 21.

Jesus: Oh, okay. I mean, I got

Steve: to witness the whole evolution from, like, cash games and limit poker to eventually no limit. And, man, if I had if if no limit was prevalent, I might have just stayed in poker. Right? But there was still a lot of cash cans when I when I when I had to had to call it. So 126 in a tournament, what did that evolve into?

Jesus: So, hey, it was super successful. We didn't know anything about hosting tournaments. Right? Like, there was not a lot of content. Nobody knew.

We did a pretty good job without knowing much. So we got very aggressive and had high goals, so we set up a tournament for 300 people. Mhmm. We rented the place. We at that time, online poker was just starting.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: We got adverse poker, which was one of the first, very few first, to sponsor that tournament. And funny story, we had to make the tables ourselves, like, manufacture. I think we did 20 tables Oh, wow. Of poker. Nobody there was no we had to import the tips.

Like, granted, this is Chile. There's not a lot of, poker culture. So we started building that. We got to 300 people to buy in.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: And three days before the event, we got a letter from the casino legislation in Chile saying that we couldn't have the event. Oh. So imagine that us having all this money from other people that already spent building the tables by the the sponsorship money that we got, We returned everybody's money.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: And Everest Poker, we they they sent us money for the sponsoring the event. We ended up saying, hey. We used the money to host the event. We don't have the money. How can we make it up?

Right? And we have that conversation with them, say, hey. No problem. They were super understandable, and they say, no problem. Let's work something together online.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Let's bring all these people from live poker to online. And that's how we shifted to an online poker community and hosting everything online. And that was the best transition that we did because we were an uphill battle with the casinos and everything. So we started partnering with casinos and hosting online qualifications for the casinos. So we actually hosted the first poker tournament in a casino, co organized with the casino.

Steve: Oh, so, eventually, it all worked out?

Jesus: It all worked out. Yes.

Steve: How many, people were, playing? Alright. What was your biggest tournament? How many people were were participating in it?

Jesus: Well, also, you you will host, free tournaments like the free rolls. You probably paid some online in the thousands, couple thousand people. The paid tournaments, I think, on record was 300, in a on a paid online poker tournament that was exclusive for our community. Right? So it's not something that anybody could sign up.

Steve: Mhmm. Was this a profitable venture?

Jesus: Yes. It was. It was. It was a profitable business. I I got to travel a lot throughout South America.

I came to cover the the the world tiers of poker with Full Tilt. Eventually, we ended up working with Full Tilt.

Steve: Oh, gotcha.

Jesus: Yeah. And, yeah, it was a profitable business. It was good. It wasn't as big as I thought it was gonna be. Mhmm.

So that was one of the biggest lesson that I learned in there was, one, learning to delegate. The first five, seven years of that business, I thought I had to do everything. Mhmm. I'm an engineer. I didn't know how to write.

Mhmm. I was writing blog posts. Right? So think about that, the inefficiency Yeah. Of me trying to to do that.

So that was one of the biggest lessons to learn to delegate and be okay that an 80% of somebody else is better than a 100% done by me. And the truth is, once you trust the people, they will do even better than what you did.

Steve: Right. If you have you find the right person, you empower them. Yes. Did you sell it or did you shut it down?

Jesus: Well, so we went through another merger there. So we had one competitor in that space. We at the biggest point, point, I think we had, like, 50,000 active members on our forums and community. Mhmm. We had classes.

We had a pro poker team. We were sponsoring people. It was amazing. I had a blast. Yeah.

We're riding limousines because the poker, they're very flashy. It has to be. Yeah. They had the first Hummer limousine in Chile, one of the poker rooms, and they were sponsoring us. So we were riding with that.

So it was very flashy at times. Had a ton of fun. Then we merged with our biggest competitor. Mhmm. Was a fifty fifty merge.

We're very close one one and two, one and two. We're always putting hairs who was the first one. And, eventually, me and my partner were regional partners. We sold to those two other partners, and they took over that business. They're still running it and and doing well.

Steve: I'm only asking because I know, like, a couple of those, online, poker, I don't know, operations. It's turning the complete Ponzi schemes.

Jesus: Oh, well, depends. Yes. It can be. Ours was based on a community. Right?

So we were working with Full Tilt PokerStars, Party Poker, the biggest brands.

Steve: I know, but wasn't one of the big ones the one that was a Ponzi scheme?

Jesus: Well, Full Tilt. Right. Full Tilt. So we lost a ton of money with FullTilt. Yeah.

We we did the first televised poker tournament with FullTilt, co host with them and the casino. It was amazing experience. Mhmm. And we fronted a lot of those expenses with the casino because we had really good relationship with with, Full Tilt. And when we aired and some of the payments were due, they shut down.

We're talking about hundreds of thousand dollars Yeah. Back then. And in Chile, it was a lot of money. Mhmm. So, yeah, it was it was tricky.

Steve: Yeah. So you talk about delegation. For the poker side, the op the playing poker, where have you found playing poker has translated into real estate?

Jesus: I saw the evolution of online poker.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Right? And you probably saw that too. Yes. I I mean, I saw the full evolution maybe in a shorter period of time because you were playing live poker, but Mhmm. We played live poker tournaments.

Steve: It

Jesus: was a bunch of older folks and very few young people. Right? And then online came in, and we were playing one table at a time online, which was faster than playing live.

Steve: Way faster.

Jesus: Way faster. But then I saw the evolution of how data came into poker Mhmm. And transformed that where people could play 48 tables at a time. Yeah. I I heard some numbers now.

They're playing even more. I but imagine having four monitors, 12 tables per monitor, and all their decisions were data driven All math. Because they had every single hand of every single player that were playing there, because you could buy databases of of hands Mhmm. And see the stats of the players and make decisions exclusively on how they played in different situations. Mhmm.

Right? So I think the biggest translation of that is what I think is gonna happen to real estate as well is data is gonna take even bigger importance in the decision that we make. It's already taking shift.

Steve: It's taking a large hold.

Jesus: Yes. But when I started it, there wasn't a lot of data talks Mhmm. At the moment. Right? You just go buy a tax delinquent.

It's an absentee list, and that's it. Now we're having way more advanced, and I think there's a lot of room to to improve. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. It's scary what's happening with machine learning and AI, with with data we can pull. I can say for me myself personally was the biggest benefit I have on top of game theory, right, and, like, you know, making optimal decisions. Mhmm. It's just reading people.

Right? I got a lot of practice just looking at a person and figuring out how they operate and then making decisions based off, like, the that's what they did this time. That's what they're doing that time. I'm just It's predicting. Yeah.

Train, yeah, train my my eyes to see how you're breathing, how you're playing with your chips. You know, when you put your chips in this way, you put your chips in that way. And I I believe that training my eyes to look at that for years playing poker. Now any any facial interaction, anything that you do in the living room means something. What did that mean?

So alright. So sorry, guys. We had to geek out in poker. Like I said, you know, I'm I'm I'm I I was a giant, giant poker nerd. So getting into real estate, what prompted you to get into real estate?

Jesus: Well, so like I said, I I have merged my ecommerce, and I was working there. And I had a two year window for my socks. And it wasn't because my two year window was was was finishing. I just didn't feel the passion anymore. I was tired of selling things and being in a business that was not profitable.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: I was used to always making money with my business, and this is, well, not happening.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: And I read Reach That Poor Dad. I told Felipe, my partner. We've been friends since high school, and he was living in Miami as well. I say, let's do something together. Let's do a change.

Read this book, and let's go to a local re event. Yeah. And we went, and the rest is history. Right?

Steve: When was this?

Jesus: 2017. 2017. Well, 2016, and then we were both, like he was finished.

Steve: Not that long ago.

Jesus: Not that long ago.

Steve: So he's also Chilean?

Jesus: He's also from Chile. Yeah. He was my brother's best friend in high school. And so we were always hanging out, and then we became I I always joke with my brother. I stole him.

Yeah.

Steve: Well, I don't know if you know this or not. You might wanna look out, but he's an extreme maverick.

Jesus: Oh, I I know. But it's funny because everybody who looks at Philippa's profile, because he's an extreme, extreme, extreme maverick, says, how do you guys get along? And we got along really well.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: Like, I I believe the level of respect that we have for each other allow us to understand us and and just be okay with with how we are.

Steve: Yeah. So what we're talking about here is predictive index. So, actually, how would you explain what a maverick is?

Jesus: I can't explain what Felipe is. So Maverick is somebody who is very independent, who like to do things their own way, and typically do not have a lot of patience.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Right?

Steve: Right.

Jesus: And not really good with details either. Right? Yeah. I'm very different from that. I'm a collaborator.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: And my my profile is a collaborator, so I like to hear other people's opinions, and I like very process driven and very detailed. So There's a

Steve: certain amount of irony of having a a maverick that doesn't care about data owning a data company.

Jesus: It is. It is. It is. But that's how that level of respect that we have. Right?

When we started wholesaling, I never got into sales.

Steve: I'm not a sales guy. Yeah.

Jesus: He is I would look from an engineer perspective and and and and help him

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: But not to that. And he never obviously, we like, I we always joke. When we started doing the first data processing for for our own wholesaling operation, we joke we were like Moneyball. Right? And I was the nerd, beta nerd, and he was just, oh, what do you think about this?

He was giving me ideas because Mavericks are really good big ideas.

Steve: I have a vacation. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

I mean and he and he's an incredible salesperson. I I I love having him on our calls or on our sales training calls because he has a perspective. Right? He he can add something. I mean, he he's geeking out on sales as much as I am.

So he adds so much value there.

Jesus: Oh, and and and I'll say this is a shameless plug to you is Yeah. Felipe has gone through several several mentors in sales. He's like you said, he has geeked out, and he loves your sales training. Yeah. He absolutely loves it.

He talks everybody that we talk, he recommends it.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate it. I mean, he he he's he's an incredible guy. So, so thank you for that.

So 2017, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, go to Riaz. What comes from that?

Jesus: We're starting to figure out what we're gonna do. Uh-huh. Right? At that time, MLS was still a thing, doing deals from the MLS. And Felipe is he when he goes all in in something, he knows everybody in the industry.

He knows everything. I think it was Joe McCall's

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Course. He got a hold of the MLS hacks.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: I think it was was basically making offers on the MLS.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: And we had access to to to the MLS. My mom was a realtor, so she also helped me got into real estate. A little bit of that was because my mom was in real estate. And so I got access to the MLS, and I was playing with it, and I saw an opportunity to export all the realtors. Right?

So Filippo was telling, man, watch this. We need to do this. And I look at the the the training that Joe McCall had, was a great training, by the way. He said, you need to do a 100 offers, hire VA, do a 100 offers a day, and just go crazy on it. I say, well, that's not very efficient.

Right? Like, I'm always trying to optimize things. What if we go in, do a search with relevant keywords on the MLS, and try to trim it a little bit and export all the realtor's information, just send an email and call them? Mhmm. Right?

So we send one email. The the first user we did, we send one email, I think it was a thousand people. We got so many calls. We got three deals out of that. Wow.

Like, part of it, we had no idea. Right? We were just trying to figure it out. We had a mentor that was holding our hand and helping on on all the real estate related transactions.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: But because Filippo was such a good salesperson, he was able to manage those and and and get us the first few deals.

Steve: Gotcha. Okay. So seems like then you took information. You guys executed right away and got deals right away.

Jesus: Well, with the tweak. Right? Yeah. It's the optimization. And that's kind of a from poker and from businesses, always looking, what is the eighty twenty?

Right? Like, what is the 20% of efforts that gonna give me the 80% of result? And and and that was kind of what the eyes that we always look at things. So yeah. But action is the most important thing that you need to do as a business.

If you're starting something is, here's something. If it resonates with you, if your gut tells you that's right Mhmm. Just go and take action. Don't don't wander too much. Just go in and take action.

Steve: So pretty quickly, right out of the gates, you guys have three deals. So then what was it like after that?

Jesus: Well, those three deals were on, like, huge spreads. Right? That's what we learned from that experience. One, it's very difficult to manage the expectations with realtor, especially us being newbie. We burned all those three relationships right away because they realized we were wholesaling, and we didn't tell them.

So it was very, very weird. And we didn't make a lot of profit on those deals. However, it got us into this, and we learned. So we hire another mentor, Alex Bardo, actually.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: And he taught us all the off market.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Right? He showed us the ropes on the off market. And we're hearing that the profits in there in Miami was $20, $30, $30,000. And we say, well, that's much better. We did, I think, on average, $7 on each transaction or $5 on each transaction on the MLS deals, which is not bad at all.

Right?

Steve: Right.

Jesus: But we wanted to go into bigger because I got into real estate to make larger spreads per transaction, so I didn't wanna do that one. So we started playing with how we go off market.

Steve: What

Jesus: are the best data? Let's start with data. We always start with data. Right? So what is the list?

So we got a bunch of lists. My thought was always, if I get it where everybody else is getting Mhmm. We're and most, we're gonna get same results as everybody else is getting. Right. Right?

So we went directly to the source. I didn't wanna buy from any vendor. I wanna go directly to the source. So we figured out ways to get it on our own county. How do we get the data?

And that was also a big lesson of understanding what are the important distresses for a seller to make and what how those distresses work. That's something that I always tell when when we talk to a a a person who's trying to get a deal. Know your market better than anybody else. Mhmm. What are those data points?

How tax delinquent works in your market? How preforeclosure process is? Because it varies from market to market, and you wanna make sure that you understand that. So once we got that data, we started really processing it to optimize our marketing of choice with cold calling.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Because Felipe has had a background in in in call center. And and we wanted to optimize that. They don't wanna call hundreds of thousands of people. How do we can we call the fewest together? And we put all these data together, and I was about to skip trace the files.

And I realized, wait a second. There's problems that are in tax delinquent and absentee and preforeclosure. I don't wanna skip trace them three times. It doesn't make any sense. Let's remove the duplicate.

But at that moment, the light bulb came in. Philippe and I were sitting, like, in the desk like this, and you say, wait. What if instead removing them will prioritize them because they're in multiple lists?

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: Right? So it was kind of our first version of of stacking. Mhmm. And that's how we got into off market. Cold calling was our biggest channel for a long, long time after that.

Steve: In 12 markets?

Jesus: No. No.

Steve: Into your market.

Jesus: In Tree. Yeah. That's how we got into off market.

Steve: So that was all in the first year?

Jesus: That was all in the first year. Yes. Yes. Like, our very I I would say the second time we got a list, it's when we realized this. So the first list was probably tax delinquent list, if I'm not wrong.

And then we started getting more. So So we went with the tax delinquent. Felico was taking action calling, and I was trying to figure out what's the best next list. Mhmm. And that's how we came across that process.

Steve: Gotcha. So first, you do an email to a bunch of realtors, then you go and start pulling lists, from the county. And then, I mean, what was that experience like?

Jesus: Learning. A lot of learning. Trying to figure it out. Miami, fortunately, was very online friendly. Mhmm.

So that's a big challenge for some some counties out there. It could be very challenging to get that information. But, hey. I went to the court houses and, hey. How can I get this?

Like, really taking action. I don't know anything. Just trying to do this. Can you help me? Alright.

And people will, hey. So use your computer. Here's how you download it. Mhmm. Right?

It it's literally doing that or on the phone Mhmm. Until we got what we wanted.

Steve: Right. And then use the start list stacking and still cold calling. What was the result of that?

Jesus: Our second off market deal was the biggest deal that that we did, like, for a couple years after that. And I didn't know what we were doing or what happened back then. I only realized a couple years later when I looked back, we got this property that was on a bunch of lists. Mhmm. Like, I think it was divorce, tax delinquent, and preforeclosure, which doesn't make a lot of sense.

But the truth is in Florida, there's a lot of zombie mortgages. Mhmm. So they gave up on the property, so nobody's paying taxes on those. So they had those three things. And Felipe gets ahold of the seller.

One call, close. Like, one call, close because the seller didn't know he owned the house. He thought he didn't own the house. He was talking to nobody. Felipe was the first call he got in seven years about the house.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: And he locked it up the contract. Yeah. And at that moment, we didn't know why this guy nobody's calling him, why nobody's talking to him. Right? Well, we'll take it.

I think that's the only reason why we got that deal because it was a very complicated deal. Mhmm. And we offer very little. We got it done. We we took care of a lot of things for him as well, so we added a ton of value.

Heck, he didn't think he owned the house. Right? So for him, it was free money. Money. Yeah.

It's foul money. We ended up making close to $90 on that deal, 80 something. And you that was when they'll say, hey. Here's something. Right?

Like, let's let's go into this this off market thing. But what we've learned afterwards, the reason why we're the only ones talking to him is because his property has a bunch of unformatted data points.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Right? So for I I believe it was years of ownership I mean, the the year built and the number of bedrooms. So it was blank on county records for number of bedrooms, and it was blank for the year built on the property. So when you pull list from most vendors, you do not have the option to pull blanks or unknowns or unformatted. Sometimes it's a wrong format.

Sometimes it's most of the comp properties have year built four digits. Right? Nineteen fifties. But some, they have year and month and then mass is the data. Yeah.

And they don't show up anywhere. So that's how we call now they we call them the hidden gems.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: There's still 20 to 40% of data across America Mhmm. That is unformatted Mhmm. And you cannot get it from a traditional vendor.

Steve: That's what hidden gems is.

Jesus: That's a hidden gems.

Steve: Yeah. Because we one of our deals, we did a whole video about it.

Jesus: We thought it was a hidden gem deal.

Steve: How? It was, it was a text, to a guy in Tucson. And, yeah, we got him on the phone, and we thought we're gonna make, like, $152,100 grand on this. We only made 30 on it. But still, right, it was

Jesus: They probably had very little competition.

Steve: Yeah. So it it was great. We were it it was a pretty it was a fairly smooth transaction. Right? And the guy, like, was a former politician, gave this good testimonial and all this.

It was it was a wonderful experience for all parties. It was a hidden gem. Like, I don't know what hidden gem is, but great. Like, let's let's let's do more of these.

Jesus: Well, so at that time, we didn't know. We we did more hidden gems along our journey.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Not as profit as that one. But we learned that there's still properties. Miami is one of the most competitive markets. It's not like Phoenix, but it's probably top 10 most competitive market. Yeah.

And we're talking to a seller in a prime location, perfect property that was on should be on everybody's list yet was on nobody's list.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Right? Yeah. So now we reverse engineer that, and we can find more of those. And, like, we call microscopic human review what we do with the data. We look at every single column of the data points Mhmm.

To try to see if it's one variable that it shouldn't be there, and we correct it to make sure that it gets included in our filters and and our process.

Steve: What was your engineering background?

Jesus: I studied electrical engineer. Funny story, I didn't graduate. I did, so in Chile, it was six years of engineer. I did four and a half. I saw I had three semesters left.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: And I started the poker business, and I thought it was gonna be a billionaire, with my poker business. And I I don't know.

Steve: That in common. So we started as electrical engineers. We got into poker, and we got into real estate.

Jesus: Yeah. All you're missing is ecommerce. Yeah. Well Don't do it.

Steve: I I was distracted for a bit, right, in in in '21, '22. Right? Things were great. Right? I was like, ah, maybe we'll dabble here.

It's like, it never went anywhere. So I was like, yeah. Forget it.

Jesus: So you graduated from electrical engineer? Yeah.

Steve: I have a master's degree in electrical engineering. Nice. That's that's so, like, when I graduate ASU, right, I was at ASU, I was playing poker on weekends. Right? I went to UC San Diego, to get my master's degree, and I was up in Oceanside every Friday Nice.

Playing poker, beating the older guys, you know, in tournaments for Taking their money. For their social security money. Yeah. So, yeah, I I mean, that continued, throughout. So alright.

So you figure out the hidden gems thing. At what point then? Because you guys started 2017, and you guys are knocking out a park in year one, which is awesome. Yeah. At which point was 8020 REI born?

Jesus: So, obviously, we evolved our our our data processing, right, internally, and we got really good on cold calling and texting. Mhmm. Like, we we we dialed in, like, texting. At that time, I wish there was a a taxing software. So at that time, they weren't.

So we created one, for us internally to use. So we're pairing data, cold calling, and taxing and learning how often to engage with Deep Property. Right? And dabbling with it, we hired Gary Harper. You know him?

And Susan.

Steve: Sharper. They're fantastic. Fantastic. Fantastic. Today.

Yeah.

Jesus: Yes. Me too. I just had a an event with him, June. He came to our business. So we met him through a mastermind.

He came to our business. And first time he came, he was impressed with our margins, like, how we're finding these problems. Nobody else was talking. And he he he told me later, like, I didn't know what was it. But when the second time he came for quarterly, he said, you know what, guys?

This is what you're doing with your data and your texting and your cold calling is special. And I've coached thousands of people in this industry. I've never seen anything like that. You should offer as a business. Mhmm.

And then my engineer background came, like, yeah, I really like this part of the business. Like and that's that's something excited about. Yeah. Like, Gary pointed that to me. Like, I'm really passionate about data and the lead gen.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: I wasn't as passionate for the sales and the operations side of the business. And and that was actually holding us back a little bit because my passion was just generating leads. We had more leads than we could get, and and so we started that. Gary pushed us. He literally said, hey, guys.

You have to. So thank you, Gary.

Steve: Yeah. And that's awesome. And I do think that there's a lot of, when I was figuring out PPC on my own, right, a long, long time ago, back in 2010, 2011, 2012, I love that part of real estate because there were no emotions. It was just straight. If you do this, you get this result.

Right? Direct response marketing. Right? So I was like so I was picking up books from Dan Kennedy and just learning direct response marketing, you know, like, all the clickbait hooks. Right?

You know, like, our, for example, today's title. Right? All that clickbait stuff, I learned it back for for, from direct response marketing, and I love the marketing side. Or I could like, I built my entire brokerage. I built a lot of my real estate business just from marketing, and I was just atrocious at sales forever.

Right? And so I totally get where you're coming from because

Jesus: So you got really good at sales because you had to figure that out.

Steve: I had to figure it out eventually.

Jesus: Well

Steve: Yeah. But the the marketing side was the one that appealed to me because I can generate leads all day, every day. That part's easy. It was the it it was having to talk to homeowners, that I was too understanding, and that was biting me in the butt. And so so 2017 or or 2018, Gary Harper comes out and is like, you've got something here.

You need to sell you need to turn this into a business.

Jesus: Yes. So that was late mid twenty eighteen, if I'm not wrong. Mhmm. It took us a little bit to okay. Let's do this.

Mhmm. Right? A little bit of not knowing or or not sure. And we ended up doing a couple JVs

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: With people people in different markets. Hey. We'll give you the data. We'll do the taxing and and the cold calling, and you close the deals, you you we get back. Amazing relation.

One of the best relationship that I've built from real estate was through those JVs because we made each other a lot ton of money. And then how it started. Right? So we were part of a mastermind, and and people in the mastermind were seeing, like, our cost per lead and these hidden gems that we're closing. Dude, how are you guys doing this?

Oh, we just started this. And that's how we started, offering it Initially, it was just for us and then evolved, and it became a data plus taxing

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Originally because we had to develop the taxing part of it.

Steve: Right.

Jesus: But we always pair with the data. Right? Like, when we started, we realized too, like, this is one of the most important things that we learned from that is the way that you talk to us, Heather. So let me ask you this. Two leads come in.

Mhmm. One, they fill out the form and says, I'm pre foreclosure, and I I need to move out immediately. Mhmm. And you have another one just asking how much you're gonna offer. Mhmm.

Who are you gonna call first?

Steve: The one that has all the pain points.

Jesus: And and if he doesn't answer, you're probably gonna follow-up with him way more.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: Right? So we took that approach to prospecting. Mhmm. Right? So once we had the data, we started segmenting it and creating different marketing plans for each one of them.

Right? So how often we texted, how often we called really made the difference. So our software, more than a taxing platform, was a marketing coordination tool

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: To allow us to have all the data in one place and create marketing plans so we could execute on it. Right? And what we learned on that was that telling people what to do Mhmm. Is very different than helping them do it.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: Because you we could give them all the game plan in the world.

Steve: Right.

Jesus: Here's how you do it.

Steve: Here's the perfect playbook.

Jesus: Perfect. It is tough to execute because real estate is a is it's easy to understand. It's simple to understand, but it's not easy to execute.

Steve: Yeah. Exactly.

Jesus: Right? And it's a sales. Right? That that's the one thing for anybody who's starting to or wants to scale their business, focus on Salesforce. Mhmm.

This is a sales business. It's not a marketing business.

Steve: Right.

Jesus: Some people say it's marketing and sales. I say it's as more than anything, it's sales because you can outsource marketing today. Right. If you focus on sales, you're gonna be successful. Mhmm.

Then so what I was going is they need to our investors need to focus on that, the operations, the sales, the fix and flips. And those are the things they had to focus. So we started offering a white glove service. Let me do the data. I'll do the taxing.

I'll just push a qualified lead to you. Mhmm. Right? And that started growing, growing, growing, growing, growing.

Steve: Yeah. So I didn't hear about you guys, I wanna say, until, like, maybe 2021. Right? 2020. And it was too late.

Right? Like, because this is where this is a time when texting started going down. Right? Because we were using Roar for some time, and that was grossly inconsistent. Like, sometimes it was amazing.

Sometimes it was nothing. Right? Because they weren't shifting with with the way things were going. And there were there were multiple texting platforms. I mean, Launch Control launched around that time.

We were using TextMagic, I believe, as well. But there's all these other ones. And, like, as as some of these were, like, getting in and in, less and less effective, and we're asking what's going on, like, what's working? Everyone's like, eight twenty. I was like, yeah.

Like, you guys could have said this years ago. Right? So you guys are obviously figuring it out. How were you staying ahead of the constant changes whether by the carrier or by FCC or whoever.

Jesus: Yeah. So one of the reasons why you didn't hear about us because we were a white glove service.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: So we had to have people to execute the taxing and the lead qualification. We had taxing in a two tier system. Mhmm. Right? So we could only onboard clients as fast as we could hire and train people.

Mhmm.

Steve: And

Jesus: that was a completely different business. Like, we at one point, we had a 150 remote employees, mainly taxing and qualifying leads for our our our our clients, And we had a waiting list of 50 people waiting for us, and we couldn't. We literally couldn't onboard more because we're gonna hire faster. So that was a distraction a little bit. And the way that we capped it is we had a dedicated team of data scientists and engineers Mhmm.

Reverse engineering what the carriers were blocking

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Or letting pass in order to prevent the messages from going out that were more likely to be blocked by spam.

Steve: Right.

Jesus: Right? So our first dabbling in in AI was, I think, was 2019 when we saw that trend of the carriers starting to get into it or 2020, maybe maybe 2020. And we started, okay. Let's get ahead of this. Right?

Let's we have millions of the highest of our volume, we were sending 20,000,000 messages a month. Right? So that's a lot of data points. So 20

Steve: in case you guys didn't hear 20,000,000 text messages a month. Yes.

Jesus: So so we're only myself with high level people Yeah. That could help me solve that problem. It wasn't something that I could do it on my own. And just keeping the health of the deliver rate will will allow us to be one of the latest ones to leave. So Twilio was one of the the vendors of choice.

We were one of the only ones at the end that were still on that vendor Mhmm. Because we took such a really good care of our delivery rates, and that's why our clients were successful, as well to to be able to to stay for longer. That's how we stayed ahead of it. We figured out the KPI that they were looking at, error rates or spam rates. Mhmm.

We prevented that. We can stay ahead.

Steve: So you could see it on your side which ones were marked as spam?

Jesus: Well, at the beginning, yes. And then they started giving you false positives. So it got really tricky. So we switched our model.

Steve: Because it says it's delivered, but it's not.

Jesus: Yes. Right. And then they said it was spam. It was not.

Steve: Right.

Jesus: So we started seeing those false positive because they they probably knew. I don't know. But we then we switched. Right? So here's a big switch that we did.

We started instead of predicting who's gonna be blocked as spam, we started predicting what text message is gonna generate a response. Mhmm. Because if he got a response, it was delivered. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. So we built, like, our own algorithm that generated thousands of variations. Before chat g p t, this was very archaic, but we had, like, segments of the text. It was not spinning words. It was spinning phrases Mhmm.

That allowed us to generate millions of variations of each text message. And out of those, we knew which ones were generating more responses, and it will change every single day. Right? So it was a constant learning and improving. Don't get me wrong.

We had fires all over too. Right? Sometimes one of the whatever the model didn't get it right and we're being blocked and we had to revert that. It was it was a lot of work.

Steve: I mean, one of the biggest mistakes we made was ending texting in 2020.

Jesus: You stopped texting before.

Steve: We stopped texting in 2020 because it was whack a mole. Right? We're like, hey, Roar. What's going on with this? Hey, TextMagic.

What's going on with this? Talking to Jesse Burrell at at Batch. Right? Hey. This isn't working.

Like and so we're, like, we're trying everything. And at some point, you just felt like we're playing whack a mole. Right? Hey. This works today, but it doesn't work in two days.

This works right now, but this doesn't work anymore. At that point, we're like, this effort is not and we didn't have a vendor partner like you. Yes. So at this point, we're like, okay. Well, now we have to work with Twilio.

Okay. Well, like, this is not something that's in our wheelhouse. Like, the the effort required to to interact with Twilio was not generating return on effort. Like I said, I wish I'd known about you at that time.

Jesus: But let me let me tell you. Maybe it wasn't a big mistake. Like, if you look at it from a different perspective, it forces you to create other marketing channels.

Steve: Yeah. But now we're using launch control. We're getting deals again. Right?

Jesus: Well, that's another lesson. Right? Never stop a marketing channel. Right? So we we made the same decision as you as a vendor.

Right? So 2021, some regulation changes start happening locally in in Florida, and and we had a a

Steve: We have Florida, like, is the one maybe it was you guys, but Florida was the first one that's like, this must stop.

Jesus: Well, they they made some changes, and and they were running ads on TV saying, are you getting tax message from real estate investors? Send it to me. I'll get you $1,500 or more. Right? So there were attorneys running ads to do class action lawsuits against texters.

Right? Yeah. So our attorney looked into it, and he said, guys, like, this is the first time. I'm okay with risk. You guys know this because he advised us all the way through.

I think it's time you guys are a local based Florida company. There's gonna be a lot of eyeballs on you. I will highly recommend. And to be honest, it was also getting really hard to get by the carriers. Mhmm.

It was taking a toll on me personally and physically, mentally, And it was a company

Steve: you're service oriented.

Jesus: Yeah. I am. I and and I have high standards of how we deliver our services, and and we couldn't not do it right. Right?

Steve: Right.

Jesus: And and when the attorney told me, it was kind of a, moment.

Steve: Well, it's but it's for Florida. Right? I mean, like, federally, like, the striker or whatever they called it, like, whatever they signed like, when when Trump signed that in, in 2020, I was like, wow.

Jesus: The the skew is taken. It's skew shaking something like that.

Steve: Stir and shake.

Jesus: Yes.

Steve: Or shake and stir. Yeah. Like, between, like, shake and stir, strike, and all the other stuff.

Jesus: That was that was for cold calling, and then they came up with the 10 DLC new regulation. And then everything started to change and change and change, and it got harder and harder and harder to get the messages delivered.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: And now I don't know how lunch does it. Kudos to them. Like, I know Aaron. He like, I don't know how he gets the message delivered. Good for him.

But it is a tough tough. And

Steve: Right.

Jesus: We decided to shut it off. Like, it was two thirds of our business.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Again, we had a 150 people relying on this. Two thirds of our business was around taxing.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: We decided to, hey. It's time to stop. Fortunately, with the people, we didn't let them go. We found them a new place. Like, we're very fortunate to be a part of Collective Genius and some other groups.

We had these people were highly trained, very reliable, and we we everybody sign ups in our office. They have two monitors. We we do them an office upgrade as soon as they they're hired. So all these amazing resources. So we found a home for every single person who we had to let go because we're not texting.

We found them another company to start working with them.

Steve: I remember I remember seeing you post that inside the the CG Facebook group. So that's the texting side.

Jesus: Yes.

Steve: How is your data I mean, like I said, you know, a million dollars for one just one client in one month. Right? How is your data different? Because there's a lot of data providers. Right?

Like, there's evolution in me right now. I can't remember Jerry Noren has a new one, that's free.

Jesus: It's like prop Wire or something. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Prop Wire or something like that. Right? Like, it's crazy.

Right? So you get you get Jerry Noren's guy who's free for prop prop wire, which I think is probably gonna kill PropStream. Right?

Jesus: Yeah.

Steve: Well, I mean, the owners don't care. They already got their payout. Right? So you got, you know, you got, a PropStream. You got, what's the one that's, PropertyRadar?

Jesus: BatchLeads. BatchLeads. Name it. Yeah.

Steve: Right? And then and then there's tiers, and then you got, you know, investor machine. You got, Audantic. You got, DataFlick. Like, there's just so much competition.

How what are you doing to separate yourself from the competition?

Jesus: So a couple of things. And and and and I think the biggest one is because of our journey with data and marketing in one unit Mhmm. And the amount of volume so we tracked at one time with we surpassed 2,000,000,000 in total calls and text messages done for our clients. Right? And everything that we did was paired to a data point.

Yeah. Every response that we got was paired to a data point. Mhmm. So what we experimented through having that closed feedback loop because remember, as a data provider, you provide data. You don't know what's happening after that.

It's very hard for a client to give you back, like, oh, this property I closed or this property was a lead. This property responded positively. It's very difficult to get that from a client. We had the whole feedback loop closed. Right?

So we knew what responded, what was a lead, and, eventually, what closed. Mhmm. So we were able to really master how to segment the data and how frequently to call and text Mhmm. Them. Right?

Right. That's a big differentiation because I believe in order for you to maximize your ROI or generate more leads through outbound, data is a it's an important part. It's probably it's probably the foundation, but it's only 30% of the equation. Mhmm. 50% of your results, if you wanna optimize what you're doing, is the strategy that you build based on your data.

And that's what we do that I don't believe anybody else does Mhmm. Is having that background and allowing us and, actually, that's something that we'll give for free in our our website, and we can talk about it later. We will share a way for you to segment your data and how to plan your marketing based on the tiers of data that you have. Gotcha. That really makes a difference.

We tested from texting a preforeclosure owner every single day Mhmm. Or three times a day for seven days to tech texting once a month. Mhmm. All the different data points that you can think of, we tried different frequencies to try to maximize the responses. Alright?

And then we found the eighty twenty, and we ended up creating a three tier system. So we have our data is segmented in three tiers, and then each one of those tiers has a specific marketing cadence

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: That combines texting, cold calling, and direct mail. So I think that's one of the big important part of us is that we're not just a data provider.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: We help you build a strategy. We give you a game plan for your strategy, and the last 20% is the tactics. Right? Right. It's what postcode you sent, what script, what text.

We have all those resources. So we give it for free for our clients too.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: We have a texting script, a cold call script that we spend tens of thousands of hours Mhmm. Trying to master to get more leads. Mhmm. And the funny part is, what was your average? Do you remember your lead to contract from texting?

Steve: It was something stupid. I mean, it was, like, better than, one in seven.

Jesus: No. Lead to contract from taxing? It was probably higher.

Steve: So I mean, I was it was It

Jesus: was the cheapest channel for sure. It was the cheapest channel. For sure. But on conversion wise, it's typically

Steve: I think 2019. It was

Jesus: Well, early, yes. So late twenty twenties or, like, late twenty twenty, early twenty twenty one. Yeah. If you look at today, average is about Oh, it's horrendous. 75 leads to a 100 leads per contract.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: We were consistently delivering 25 leads per contract for our clients because of the scripts, the 20 of tactics. Right. That qualification, extra qualification of leads before you push through your sales team was very important for us. So I think that knowledge separates us.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: And the second part is we've been playing with machine learning, like, from the taxing times. Mhmm. And then we translated that into data. And and the most important thing and like you said, AI now with Chargebee became a commodity. Right?

Like, there's not a conversation that you have around business that doesn't mention Chargebee t or Yeah. Some AI component. But the truth is AI is not new.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Right? Like, you just had to have a ton of resources to be able to access it, like computer resources and other things.

Steve: Language model is newer. AI has been around forever.

Jesus: Forever. So what so I don't wanna sit here and say, oh, our model is better. I think it is, and I'm confident it is that we because we do. But I think one of the most important things that we do is that we're very careful of what we train our model on. Let me give you an example.

If I train, any model to predict and I'd only give them as a positive as something that you need to look for as a transaction, all you're gonna create is predict transactions. Mhmm. Right? If I give absentees, what most people consider an absentee is an an an opportunity, it's not. Right?

A lot of the absentee transactions are not. So we're very careful what we call a deal when we're looking at the data so we can train our model with the most accurate data possible so we can predict more accurately. Yeah. And and that's the part that gets me the most excited is I have an amazing team of engineers. We hire we I'm I'm from South America.

So for us, hiring globally, it's a part of our unique ability as well. Yeah. So we hire Ivy League engineers, former McKinsey consultants to join our team. And and our new model is actually called Gaia. We're super excited about it.

It's 40% better than our third generation Wow. Of of the model that we already had. And it's just that I think it's the the way that you train the model, what you feed the AI, what is the correct case, it's what makes a difference.

Steve: It makes a huge difference. I mean, I learned that from, PPC marketing. Right?

Jesus: Oh, for sure.

Steve: If you say Google, this is the one that worked. We focus more on that, and the cost per lead goes down. Or maybe the cost per lead goes the cost per lead is higher, but the cost per contract goes down. Right? So we can say, we like it when they Google these words.

Let's spend as much marketing dollars on these words.

Jesus: If you give one wrong, it can mess everything. Yeah. Right? Right. If you give one generic word that is not in there, you're gonna mess your budget.

You're gonna close Yeah. The same thing with data. Right? Then Google runs machine learning and predictive analytics forever. Right?

Right. With that. They're reverse engineering the results to generate more results like that. The same thing. But so what you feed is the most important thing.

Steve: Yeah. So, I mean, this might sound like a completely foreign language, but super tight feedback loops is what we're talking about here. Right? Like, the better the data, the better the closer you can tie the these data points to an appointment or a closing, the the more we can train is like, okay. Look for more of these and this not spend as much effort on these other things.

Jesus: 100%.

Steve: Yeah. That's great. I I I love that. So, one of the things that, you and I were talking about was areas for improvement, things that you wish you could do a little bit better. Right?

Actually, before we get into that, guys, we were just talking about, you're offering that for free. So 8020ri.com/disruptors.

Jesus: Yes.

Steve: Right? If you guys go there, whatever what, Jesus is just talking about for free, you guys can can check that out there. Okay. So, I was going with

Jesus: Arizona opportunity for us.

Steve: Yeah. Arizona opportunities for growth. And so you said that here's what I like about about you. You're talking to your clients on a regular basis. You got 97% retention rate, which is outrageous outrageous that you have a 97% retention rate.

Like, I think industry churn across the board is typically somewhere around 20%. Right? To have a 3% churn rate is just

Jesus: Thank you.

Steve: Ludicrous. So, congrats to you. And I bring this up. And because you have these two things, continuous you're continuously striving for improvement, and you have this obsession with your clients being happy, you do this quality call. And what you learn from the quality call is that you could do a better job in self promotion.

Jesus: Well, exactly. Actually, exactly like that giveaway that we're giving, right, for for your audience. Some of our clients think we're just a data vendor Uh-huh. Because they we don't we are improving, trying to do a better job at communicating that data yes. Our data is great.

Mhmm. But if you don't execute on the game plan, it's not gonna be there. So that's why we build that guide, one, for our clients and then to use it as well, make sure that everybody knows how to use the data. And we actually have a simplified version, like, just tier the data with if you're starting. Because we typically work with bigger companies who are doing 40 deals a year or more, in the in the high hundreds.

Right? Yeah. But for somebody who's just starting out, there's a simplified version that you can tier your data and create a simplified marketing plan to execute it. So the part of ever improving for us is even though we're I I believe we do a decent job, a good job at at account management and customer success is we need to be promoting more. I'm not so salesy.

So we don't push and sell. Oh my god. This is the next best thing that we're gonna come up with. We're always developing and improving, but we keep it too quiet. Mhmm.

Right? So we need to ramp up. We're actually bringing in new account managers who help us that to improve the communication with our clients and have even more touch points and make sure that everybody is aware of all the new things that we're developing. Right? Just to give an example, we're we're starting a direct mail done for you service.

Right? We have a a a CRM, and not everybody knows Right. That we launched these services Mhmm. Even within our community. So, yeah, that's part of of my main focus of improvement as internal, like, in the business is elevating a little bit our customer success and product communication to our clients.

Steve: Yeah. So what are all your different offerings today?

Jesus: Obviously, our data that comes with the strategy and the tactics should help you really maximize your return on investment. Like, our our commitment is working with our clients all the way to get to five x minimum on each marketing channel. Mhmm. That's what we call success. Yeah.

Right? So and and that's not something that happens on one onboarding call. Mhmm. It's a process. It's an ongoing process.

And that's I think it's a key for us who have our our retention rate that we have. Our second offering is we partner with Chris Young. He's the founder of eighty twenty CRM. Mhmm. He created a Salesforce solution, that uses all the native tools of of Salesforce to not only run your operation, but also allows you to run your marketing.

So you can have all these marketing plans that we're talking Mhmm. Inside your CRM. Mhmm. So imagine one system where you can host your data, host your marketing plans, and then all the operations after they become a lead as well. Right?

So that's why we invested. We saw an opportunity that everybody's going to Salesforce. We wanted to offer that Mhmm. For for the more advanced investors, obviously. The other thing is we're working on this.

We're super excited. We call Direct Mail on steroids. We we haven't come up with a name yet.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: It's just really leveraging what we learned from texting

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: And and and targeted messaging into direct mail. Mhmm. Right? Like, we're working on AI generated tools to, for example, create if I know the owner is a 55 year old male

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: White, I'll send them image in that postcard that resonates with that audience.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: Right? And if I know they are going through some financial hurdles, my testimonial of a client in there is addressing that pain point. So we're trying to lever all the learnings from texting and cold calling into direct mail. And we are we have some beta users in there. We're super excited about it, and we're working on that.

We're gonna be announcing that really, really soon.

Steve: That's that's just insane. Anything else, or is it just those three?

Jesus: For now, yes. That's, my passion is starting businesses and starting those ideas and finding somebody who can take them. Right. That's really what I love is being in the weeds in the beginning of the business and then having somebody run off.

Steve: Yeah. But, I mean, you just kinda look at what we said just a few minutes ago. Right? Tighter feedback loops. If you know the results of the leads, then you can say this is the best data for us in this county.

Right? In this state, in this county, in this city, these are the best data points. Give me more data that have these data points. So if your CRM is communicating with your data and you're using your CRM well

Jesus: That's our next evolution.

Steve: Basically, you're you're gonna make so much more money that everything else is free.

Jesus: So today, our clients, we we do what we call market reverse buy box.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Right? So our process starts with the buy box, making sure there's eighty twenty. Our our name is eighty twenty. We are because we're huge fans of the eighty twenty principle. Right?

Which is 20% of your efforts will create 80% of your results. So what we learned is by looking at thousands and thousands, dozens of tens of thousands of deals is there's always an eighty twenty. Right? I'll give one example. It's a simple example, but it will resonate.

And I'll challenge anybody who's listening to this. Go back at your deals for the last year or two, and you will find that 80% of your revenue came from less than 10, if not 15%, of the ZIP codes in your market.

Steve: Mhmm. Oh, absolutely.

Jesus: Right? So why target the other ones? Yeah. Let me rephrase that. Why target so aggressively the other ones?

Mhmm. You still might wanna engage with some properties there, but it's less frequent. It's a different strategy that you have to build for them. Right? So, so when a client comes in, we help them with the buy box process, really understanding the eighty twenty of their deals that they've

Steve: closed.

Jesus: Mhmm. And then we look at the market. What's happening in the market today? So we call market versus buy box. We pull out all the deals that we tidally selected to make sure that we're only feeding our model really good deals and look at it and see it's an opportunity box.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Right? There might be some ZIP codes that you don't do deal because you thought that ZIP code was bad, so you never pull data for that ZIP code. Mhmm. Right? If you're not pulling data, you're never gonna get deals.

Right. So we look at the market versus buy box as an opportunity box. So our next evolution of that is once we have everything fully integrated and we're working on integration with other CRMs as well because we don't wanna limit our clients who have to use our CRM. Mhmm. We're highly encouraged, though, because it's gonna be it is already.

We have, several clients' amazing feedback on that. But the idea behind it is, what if I can take deals, opportunities, and leads and feed the model Mhmm. With different weights. Right? A deal is obviously more important.

An opportunity or an appointment is a little less important, but it's still important. Mhmm. And a lead is has less weight, but I'm giving more data, better data, and closing the feedback loop that you were saying Yeah. To strive for even a better, solve. Because you you nailed it.

Like, what works data wise in one market not necessarily means it works in another one. We learned this long, long time ago. We our first versions were, like, a weighted stacking system.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: And we learned that in some markets, tax delinquent was way more important than absentee and then this and that. I mean,

Steve: you you listen to this podcast, like, oh, absentee list. This is the way to go. Right? Absentee is the future.

Jesus: And in some markets, it might be.

Steve: Right. And in others,

Jesus: it might not be the best option.

Steve: Right. So the the ability to to to figure out reverse engineer deals. I mean, I remember one time I had this epiphany. Right? Like, because, like like I said, I was doing my own Google pay per click marketing as a solopreneur.

Jesus: That's awesome. That's awesome that you went through that route. Like, the it's so many lessons that goes into that.

Steve: Yeah. And I'm looking. It's like, I am in this area, it seems like, every other week. So I went back in a to my pay per click campaign. I was like, alright.

Let's bid 25% more in these ZIP codes, and let's remove 25% in these other ones I'm not even going to. And it got to a point where I just cut out these valley. Once we went once open doors started coming in and then just kicking our butts, we just removed East Valley. Like, I can't even compete here. Right?

Jesus: Why why spend an adult advertise here. Yeah. It's smart.

Steve: Yeah. At the

Jesus: end of the day is and and and that's something that also is important. It's not a one time thing.

Steve: Right.

Jesus: It's a constant monitoring. Right? And that's something that I believe is well, it's it's something that we have. It's one of our core values is we're limitless. Mhmm.

And and that means to us is we're constantly looking to grow and and and and and improve. Because what we developed the very first time that we created our first model granted, I'm very proud of this because it was me and Felipe sitting across and saying, hey. Let's tack this list. But let's give them weight, obviously, because, I mean, we figured out that really quickly that an owner occupied or high equity is nothing compared to a preforeclosure Yeah. Like, as far as distress.

So why would we treat them equally? So we came up with this weighted model. Right?

Steve: But it

Jesus: was me and Fadi be having a conversation with this. What do you think foreclosures?

Steve: Theoretical.

Jesus: Yeah. Expert knowledge, a little bit of conversations, and trying to figure it out. So but you know what? When we did machine learning to see how these weights behaved in the markets that we were very familiar with, we were very close.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: And we didn't get that wrong. And until this day, a weighted model on distresses is an important part of our model. Yeah. So we have, like, three components to our model. One of them is still is, and it's an important one, a weighted distress system.

The the only difference now, it varies per market. Right? So depending on the market, weights varies. But then we we have machine learning that look at other data points that are not necessarily the stress, like demographics, education levels. There's a bunch of other things that we look into Mhmm.

To really feed this. Yeah.

Steve: How much are you using, personal biometric data?

Jesus: Not that much because there's a thin line in there, how much data you can get there Yeah. To to use for marketing purposes.

Steve: Right.

Jesus: Yeah. It's a it's a thin line in there.

Steve: Yeah. Because there's there's there's elements. Right? There's, like, pulling public records. There's pulling and then there's there's, like, indications based off of their, their habits, their spending habits.

Right? Like, the one that I took from, from Chris Richter was like, you know, I can't confirm this, but, you know, if you go home after work on Fridays and, go to 07:11 and buy cigarettes in in lottery tickets, you're probably more likely our avatar than someone that goes home and has quality time with your kids.

Jesus: That's probably very true. Yeah. But those data points are are there's a thin line in there on how much you can really use for marketing purposes. So we we do everything within what's what's possible

Steve: in that law. So let's see here. We've covered a lot of this. So okay. The headline.

Right? So Phil Green. We love Phil.

Jesus: Yes. Right? Amazing operator.

Steve: When that guy speaks, you should listen. He he's he's one of the sharpest, guys, that I know, if not the sharpest. As a matter of fact, I remember when I first joined Collective Genius, which is how you and I eventually connected. I joined Collective Genius, and I'm looking around, And I was like, man, this Frank Cava guy, this guy is

Jesus: Frank Frank is amazing.

Steve: Yeah. This guy is is an absolute monster. He literally has an SOP for everything in your business. Right? So I'm looking at Frank Cava, and I'm still looking at this Phil Green guy.

I was like, that guy's doing a million dollars a month? That's obscene. Right? And so, at at some point, you guys were working together. So talk to me about, the what is what is working that was able to get him a million dollars.

Jesus: So the the story with Phil and and I I would say this. Phil's a brilliant mind, amazing operator. But on top of everything, he's a true giver. We were talking about before this.

Steve: Yes.

Jesus: And, honestly, I don't think we have grown that fast if it wasn't for him. Like, we we're kind of the underground vendor. Right? Because we were working we're limited on the amount of people that we could take in. Sure.

So we started working with Phil, and I remember I did the sales call. I did the onboarding at that time. He was probably top initial, like, first fifteen, twenty clients. I don't remember exact number, but he was there, like, in the the very few first few ones. And I remember talking to them and, like, oh

Steve: my god. These guys are sharp.

Jesus: I don't know. I can serve them. Like Yeah. They're sharks. They no.

And sharp.

Steve: I know. They're sharp. I'm saying, but they're sharks.

Jesus: Sharks and sharp. Like, I I I thought, damn. Like, I'm gonna need to step it up here to be able to add value to them. Yeah. Right?

Steve: I would never wanna compete in those discussions.

Jesus: No. Not competing. Just serving as it it was. And and and it was beautiful because we created this relationship where they all always giving us feedback

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: And great feedback, and we implement it really quickly. Right? So we were always learning from from from them. And we do that with every client that give us feedback. We love feedback.

Like, I absolutely love the the feedback that that we're talking about. So we got in, and I think they were dabbling on taxing. I don't remember. They already had some data, but they didn't have, at that time at least, a really clear plan for using the data in the outbound marketing channels, right, like how to do it. Mhmm.

And when we started doing it, we showed them they loved it.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: And so we took their taxing in. At one point, they I think they had, like, 20 texters Mhmm.

Steve: For

Jesus: them. That was our highest plan, by the way. 20 texters is a crazy amount of volume. Right? So take with a grain of salt that million dollars Mhmm.

Because it requires 20 texters to get there. However, they're monsters that sells you. Right? I don't think everybody with 20 texters can get there. Mhmm.

They are.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: Right? So we took it. We took the data. We improved it. We built the marketing plan to make sure that we're targeting the right people at the right time.

Mhmm. And we were passing on the leads, and it was surprising how quickly they were converting, converting, converting, converting. I remember Phil calling me and say, dude, we their average margin is a little bigger. I think it was 20 something contracts, 23. We just got our twentieth contract from just you guys.

You guys are amazing. Yeah. Hang up. Yeah.

Steve: He he's, I mean, sharks. Right? That's what I said a moment ago. I believe a superpower is ideation where he has brilliant idea after brilliant idea.

Jesus: And execution. But here's his power too is he's able to ideate and bring it to and I think now they have evolved. And I would say today, between him and Eric, Eric is is his right hand and

Steve: Another genius. Genius.

Jesus: She Yeah. Is finding the right people.

Steve: Yeah. Well, I believe that that's, as an organization, superpower.

Jesus: They are.

Steve: Yeah. As an organization, that's that's that's their competitive advantage. And I think I talked to Phil about this. Right? Like, he he reads principles every single year.

Right? He uses data to back up the recruiting practice. Right? Like, one of the things we talked about, we use predictive index. He uses, another one.

Jesus: Perception.

Steve: Perception predict.

Jesus: Yes. Right?

Steve: And then And the Myers Briggs. And Myers Briggs.

Jesus: And a couple others too.

Steve: Right. But, you know, like, per Ray Dalio and principles, right, like, if you have enough, profiling tools, you don't even need to have an interview. Right? Very possible. So I I believe at their point, their at this point in time, their interviews is only to make sure that their data is correct.

Right? If the data is correct, it's good. And if you look around your operation, right, like, who burns out? The people that are in whose roles are inconsistent with their profiles.

Jesus: Yes. At the end of the day, if you did a good job of finding alignment with the core values, people are gonna just gonna burn out if they're not doing something that's not their core genius. Yeah. By finding your eighty twenty, we're like, what is the things the 20% of things that Mhmm. Gives you the most energy for you to do in the day to day, you're gonna have that person forever.

Steve: Yeah. So if this is their genius zone and they're a culture fit and you give them the tools, let them run with it.

Jesus: Let them run.

Steve: Yeah. So eighty twenty obviously means something to you. So talk to me about eighty twenty.

Jesus: In what sense? Why why why Why eighty twenty?

Steve: Why are you so passionate about eighty twenty?

Jesus: Yeah. I think the first time I came across the concert was an engineer. I don't remember exactly what it was, but I I the second time that I came across was on the four hour work week.

Steve: Mhmm. Tim Ferris.

Jesus: The Tim Ferris book.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: Right? And I I I it just resonated with everything. I wanted to have a lifestyle. I already had an online business, so I wanted to have that lifestyle of the 8020.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: And I got deep. Right? Like, it's funny because the the this was created by an Italian philosophers and no. Like, economist and psychologist Mhmm. Pareto.

Right? Wilfredo Pareto in nineteen hundreds. And there's two two stories there. There's one, he was preparing for a class, and he found out that 20% of the richest people owned 80% of the land immediately. But there's another story that tells that he found out looking at his garden Mhmm.

That 20% of the plants generated 80% of the peas, I think it was. Mhmm.

Steve: Yeah. That's that's the story I heard.

Jesus: Yeah. Well, one of those two that typically is how you hear it, but the beautiful part is it applies to everything. Yeah. Right? Like, Microsoft apply this 20 they fix the 20% of the bugs that show the most.

Mhmm. And usually fix almost everything else.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: Right? On coding, the 20% of the code is responsible for 80% of the result. So everywhere that you look, you're gonna find an eighty twenty. Sometimes it's a ninety ten. Sometimes it's a a a a five ninety five, but you got the idea.

Yeah. Right? It's not efforts and results are not balanced.

Steve: It's not proportional.

Jesus: It's not proportional. And the moment you start looking to life through those lens, it's beautiful. Mhmm.

Steve: So So what is your 20% that you focus on?

Jesus: Right now, health. Health. Sleep, mainly. Yeah. Getting I mean, I'm in decent shape now, but I wanna be in better shape.

But it's sleep. I'm I'm focusing on around me being my best version of myself so I can be a better leader.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: So my businesses can be better. Right? So I'm stepping back a little bit. I I struggle a lot with sleep. I wake up in the middle of the night with these crazy ideas.

I'm solving the world in 4AM, 3AM sometimes, and I can't go back to bed. I'm working on that, creating a creating the environment. So my mantra for this quarter is creating environment. And what I mean by that is my goal is to sleep well, spend time with my family, and have fun with the kids. Right?

Sometimes we were so into the weeds in the business, we disconnect. Mhmm. We think we disconnect, but we're not. We're still thinking, and we forgot about having fun with the kids. I have a 10 and a, well, almost 10 and a eight year old.

Mhmm. I wanna have fun. I wanna be conscious of that. So I'm working on creating the environment for me to because I believe start with sleep. Mhmm.

If you sleep well, you're gonna have energy the next day. You're gonna work out. I do breath work. I do cold plunge. But if I'm start with a good night rest

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Everything else becomes easier. You eat healthier. Mhmm. Everything becomes you have better mood across the day. You will show up as a better person.

So that's my my 20% now is is that create all the environments, like, and consistent. Because, obviously, I do it, but it's the consistency part that I'm working really hard on.

Steve: Right. And it it makes a lot of sense. The eighty twenty you're talking about Tim Ferris. Pareto, I learned about it actually from Perry Marshall.

Jesus: Yeah. Right. Phenomenal book. Yeah. The sales and marketing is a better version of it.

Steve: Eighty twenty marketing. Yeah. Yeah. Just focus on 20% of marketing that works. And the other 80%, like, just when you have more when you have too much money, you can focus on that 80%.

That's when all your effort on the 20% of marketing that's generating 80% of your results.

Jesus: Yeah. Yeah. What is your 20%? What are you working on?

Steve: My 20% really is, as far as effort goes, is content. Right? Just creating content. Like, I actually don't like creating content. Like, we were like,

Jesus: do you enjoy this? Like Well, you're great at it.

Steve: I love the podcast.

Jesus: Okay.

Steve: But the the the reels and the and all the other stuff and, like, writing posts, I don't like it. Right? But Well, leverage it then.

Jesus: We'll know how.

Steve: It's an income activity. Well, they do write the script, but I still have to record it. Oh. I still have to be on the camera.

Jesus: Oh, so you're recording reels. I got it.

Steve: Yeah. Alright. So but it's that's the so my 20% effort is in, is in creating content, and then my 20% product is sales training. Right? Just that's what I focus on, and and that will take everything else.

There's so much freaking opportunity. Right? And Felipe and I had a great conversation this past weekend about it. Right? Like, there's something that, you know, we might collaborate one way or another, but that is the the one thing, the one product.

There's other products we offer, but that's the core offering.

Jesus: And what about personally?

Steve: Personally? Oh, man. 20% I don't focus on. I I wouldn't say I don't focus on it. I just do it, which is just I wake up, early to play basketball and and and and work out of the gym.

And I didn't like again, I don't what I'm saying I'm focused on the on the gym, I actually hate it.

Jesus: It sucks.

Steve: Right? Like, doing single leg RDLs. Right? Like, these it's just awful. You know?

Balancing, whatever. But the reward is I have less pain. Right? I can reach out into the back seat in my car and never have that sting that goes right out the shoulder.

Jesus: Yes.

Steve: Right? So

Jesus: I heard this this video the other day. Like, the guy was preparing his body so his sons would always be afraid of playing him any sports. Yeah. And I like that analogy. That's kind of, where I am as well.

Like, sleep, exercise should be able to and I want my kids to grow up being afraid of playing me. Yeah. I they play basketball or whatever sports they do. I don't care. Right?

Like, I wanna be able to compete with them until they're older.

Steve: Yeah. Well, I mean, that's an inspiration. Right? It's a it's a motivation. Something to definitely keep you going.

Yes. We were talking about, CG in basketball. So, you know, you are the sponsor for our CG basketball. That's right.

Jesus: The shirts.

Steve: Everyone's got the 8020. It's either white or black. Right? It's the reversibles. I remember you were one of the I think it was you and Michael Stansbury.

Is my biggest fear when we started playing basketball was, like, someone's gonna get hurt. That was my biggest fear. Someone's gonna get hurt because you got a bunch of older alpha males.

Jesus: Right? People some really good players too. Yeah. Like, d one level. Yeah.

Steve: Right? Former d ones. Well, the reason why they're successful real estate investors is because they were successful in other areas of life.

Jesus: Yes.

Steve: Right? So we got a bunch of alpha males that are, you know, maybe over the hill, and we're gonna be playing intense basketball. And I think it was the very first time we did that. You guys heard.

Jesus: So it was my first CG. First interaction with anybody is I mean, no. Because we were working with Phil, and Phil spread the word out in CG. So we we worked with many clients. Frank Calvo was already a client as well.

Yeah. And it's funny. Frank, buddy, he I love him. And we're in the same team. Two minutes in, I think I got I got two rebounds and and made one assist.

That that's all I play. Like, two, three minutes in, Frank gives me a pass. I didn't catch it. My finger completely dislocated. Yeah.

Like, twisted. I've I've had that in the past when I put it back. I tried. I couldn't. It was way jammed.

I went to the ER. I spent two minutes. That was my first interaction with CG.

Steve: And I was like, I felt bad. I was like, I don't know who that Jesus guy is, but man, I hope he I hope he recovers.

Jesus: I had to go to the ER to put it back. Still, I still can't put my my wedding finger on that not my finger.

Steve: Yeah. But the other thing too is we just had, an event last month in San Diego. Right? Oceanside work. I mentioned earlier, you're playing a lot of poker.

Right? Like, that event's right next to you. Like, I drive by that casino that I spent a lot of time at. You won a belt. Oh, yes.

Yeah. Talk about that.

Jesus: Honestly, it was an honor, man. I I, I was beyond surprised and impressed and humbled by being recognized, but by the best community Mhmm. In real estate. Like, I generally think I've been to a few masterminds, and I generally believe CG is the most go giver Mhmm. And well intended.

Like, the people, the organization, the members, everybody's there for the right reasons. Mhmm. And and being able to just share Right. And and have in-depth conversation because I didn't get to present in that event, which was I think it was the first time that somebody won a belt without being a presenter. Right.

And the funny part, I have presented before, and I don't think I ever got even closer within the belt. Yeah. So it was an honor, man. It was an honor to be able to, one, be a part of CG. Right?

Like, CG has transformed my life in many, many ways. One of the things that I I'm one of the most proud things I I am from learning in CG is Matt Oviatt was actually the one that inspired me, and then CG took me to the next level is Matt Oviatt has these things. Are are you familiar with his Impact Moments?

Steve: Impact Moments. Yeah.

Jesus: Every quarter, he'd take his team and donate and help somebody locally. Right? And we started implementing our own version of that by inspiration of him. And we saw CG, they do this build houses. They go to help people in different countries.

That was amazing. So being a part of that and and and and being able to learn and get rewarded with a go giver belt, like, man, it's it's Yeah. It's humbling and inspiring.

Steve: Yeah. The award that Jesus won was, best giver, for the event. Yeah. It's huge.

Jesus: It's huge.

Steve: That's an honor.

Jesus: It it it is. I have it on my desk. I love it, and I'm super proud of it.

Steve: And now I'm coming for that belt in the next event. Alright?

Jesus: I wanna be sure you're giving it. I will love that. You've won multiple belts too. Don't don't

Steve: I won belts, but not forgiving. So now there's another thing to compete on. Right?

Jesus: Well, but the presentations is giving. Don't don't don't sell yourself short, man. You you won multiple belts. You you well deserved. You you add a ton of value to the community.

Steve: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So I had a private conversation with someone, in a Us week or two, and they asked this question because CG is the only mastermind they've been in. And this question to me was like, is CG really, like, the best mastermind?

I was like, well, yeah. Obviously. Right? Like but I haven't been in all the other masterminds for real estate investing. I've been in a whole bunch of different organizations.

But, like, my what I said to him was like, well, you know, here's the thing. Either you're in CG or you graduate the CG. Because everyone I talk to

Jesus: They eventually go.

Steve: Eventually gets to CG. But you've experienced the other ones. So maybe you can give them some peace of mind.

Jesus: Oh, absolutely. I wouldn't look any otherwise. And and I have good relationship with some other masterminds. But the truth is CG has, in my opinion, the best organization and members. The combination of the intent of it

Steve: Right.

Jesus: It's amazing. Like, they invest so much in bringing high level speakers. Yeah. Like, we've been blessed. And I go to other masterminds outside of the real estate space.

And not that I get disappointed because everybody has their own way to run it. Mhmm. But this level of speakers for the money that we pay for being a member Mhmm. It's priceless.

Steve: Right. And we had Dan Nicholson to the last one. Right? Author rigging the game.

Jesus: There's Ben Hardy. Ben Hardy.

Steve: Ben Hardy was great. Jeff Hoffman twice.

Jesus: Jeff Hoffman changed my my way of thinking in many, many ways.

Steve: And then we had Jeremy Miner and Matthew Pollard, two different times, sales trainers. Right? And I I sent a text message to Mark Dela Torres, like, hey. Do I need to update my resume? Like, is there something you guys try to tell me here?

Jesus: Oh, you you no, man. You're so niche, and you know so well industry. You're good. You yeah. And I know you keep investing in yourself and keep developing.

Steve: Oh, you have to.

Jesus: You have to.

Steve: I do operate with a certain amount of, healthy paranoia. Right? Like, someone's coming for me. It's that, you ever seen, like, those near no fear shirts when you were a kid? Right?

Like, you know, somewhere someone out there someone somewhere is out there coming from my spot. Like, it was just just a saying on a no fear T shirt right back when I was in middle school, but I genuinely believe that. Right? This is business. Right?

Someone's always coming for you. You gotta iterate. You gotta get better.

Jesus: You're always gonna need to get better. And and more than anything about everybody else coming, taking your spot, because I've been in that situation. Right? I like, in the poker business Mhmm. We were the first.

So we're the first, the biggest for a long time, and we got lazy.

Steve: Yeah. Comfortable.

Jesus: We got comfortable. Yeah. We hey. What's gonna come? Like, we have 50,000 members.

What's gonna come in afterwards? And it happened.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Somebody came, and they matched us. They passed us. Then we regained it, and it became a fight. And it the the the competition that, we just had the paranoia.

Steve: Mhmm. Yeah. Healthy paranoia.

Jesus: The healthy paranoia helps you stay sharp and be there. So that's why one of the reasons why we have that as a core value of ours is always be improving. Right? Like, it's we can't settle because the especially now, the world is evolving so fast. Yeah.

We need to stay tip of our toes.

Steve: Yeah. We gotta create so much distance where where they feel like it's insurmountable. Like, if you're like like, you wouldn't ever today is like, hey. I'm gonna compete against Chevron. Right?

Like No. You would never have that thought. Trying to create that much distance. So what freedom does real estate afford you today? What what freedom will real estate afford you now?

Jesus: Real estate is amazing tool. Right? And everybody says it's the thing to get you to the thing that you want. For me, real estate is about building wealth. Yeah.

We still have a a a regular size operation. We're not a monster operation. Mainly focuses keeping rentals and and building wealth. By being involved in real estate, we can offset a lot of taxes. Right?

So real estate has a ton of advantages. I don't think we ever gonna shy away from it. Yeah. I I don't know if our passion is in building a super large operation.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: So that's how I see real estate as a wealth building, tax strategy, and and and being involved. I mean, it's really good as well to we're one of the few vendors in the space are still investors.

Steve: Mhmm. Right.

Jesus: Because it gives you a grounding to remember what it is to be there and taking that data and applying it and running the marketing and having that feedback from the team from looking from within, it's it's another good perspective too.

Steve: Well, I have people ask me, like, I wanna say, like, once a quarter. Like like, we like, it's a a serious conversation. Steve, why do you have a wholesale team? Like, because it gives me a competitive advantage. Right?

Jesus: It does.

Steve: I get to see what's going on right now. I get to experience it. Ran an ran an appointment yesterday. Right? Went to the older older lady's house.

And I'll I asked the question, what happens if you can't sell this property? Right? And we went through, like, everything everything. Right? And I could not overcome this last objection.

Jesus: What was?

Steve: The objection was, I'll just die here.

Jesus: I was

Steve: like and, like, you're looking at her and, like, she has no one close by. It's not and she's had strokes. It's not an unreasonable possibility that in the next twelve months that someone just does a health and safety check,

Jesus: and

Steve: she's lying face down. Like, it's not an unlikely scenario. Like, I don't have I don't experience feelings very often. I was like, this situation sucks. But for what she wants, I can't help her.

Jesus: Right?

Steve: And so when I asked the question, like, you know, what happens if we can't help you? Then she's like, I'll die here, and I'm okay with that. I was like, I don't know how I'm gonna objection handler for that.

Jesus: There are some situations that is really difficult to get out of. Yeah.

Steve: But but I get to, you know, like, you know, we got her from where she was like, I want three seventy five. Me doing the math, she only needs $2.65. Right? So I'm like, help me understand this. Like, all the stuff that we teach, I'm doing it.

She's like, yeah. I guess you're right. I don't need 375. I'm okay with this. And she was ready to go, and then her sister killed the deal.

Right? It's like like, I gotta get my sister on board. I was like, oh, let's give her a call right now. We we we did that whole deal. And, her sister We

Jesus: will get it eventually. Yeah. Just keep it in the pipeline.

Steve: Well, so our team has it on the follow-up.

Jesus: Nah. That's it. At at the end of the day, it's follow-up. I always say this to our clients. If you're good and you have good data, you wanna be the first Mhmm.

Then you wanna be the last.

Steve: Right.

Jesus: Right? Yeah. Because it's not just about being the first and just having you need to do both. Follow-up consistency. How many deals we closed just from follow-up?

Right? Yeah. And a know now, just a not yet.

Steve: Yeah. Oh, exactly right. I mean, she's in severe dire, straights. What is your why?

Jesus: A family, man. That's that's where I live. And and now I'm I'm getting into I'm I'm 41 now. Mhmm. I'm getting into the giving back

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Mindset that the Maslow government have

Steve: Yeah. Significance.

Jesus: Significance and impact and and actually, again, we mentioned it briefly. We we took I took my family and our entire team to Mexico with CG Mhmm. To build a home, as in one of our impact moments

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: For us. And it was an amazing experience. And I think that's why I'm trending right now is my why is making sure that my family is together and we're having fun together. My kids are the best versions that they can be. Mhmm.

Steve: And

Jesus: I'm the best husband that I can be as well, father and husband. Leading our team and hopefully inspiring more people to give back.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: Because it was my highlight of the year for sure and probably highlight of the last five years or more was being there and helping that family with my team and my family. My team, I consider them my extended family. I spent more time with them with a lot of my friends and some of my real family. Right? Like and and being able to share that moment and and seeing the impact that we did together

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Was beautiful.

Steve: Yeah. And, what Leon said was this is the first time most of your viewers met.

Jesus: Oh, no. So we have people from Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala, Philippines from all over, and we flew everybody in. It was a it was a tough flight because this is in Tijuana, so we need to get west. It's it's Yeah. Some people

Steve: travel, like,

Jesus: thirty hours to get there, Really. And we work for two days and a half to build a house for somebody. It was it was amazing.

Steve: Boyfriend, your your your team members who knew each other through Zoom

Jesus: Yeah.

Steve: But they never met face to face or you some of you might not have met face to face.

Jesus: No. I've 90% of us never met because we have some people that they get together in the local country, so we we encourage them. Mhmm. But it's funny. After we came back, those things became way more frequent.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: We build a different bond. Like, we I've I've run virtual companies forever. Like, I had offices here and there, but most of my entrepreneurial career has been virtual. And I understand that. However, this was the first time that I felt the second level of connection.

And and, actually, there's a Jay Shetty. Are you familiar with him?

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Has a great content. I'm not gonna do as a good job as explaining as he does because he's a great communicator, but he talks about the four levels of connection. Mhmm. Right? Then level number one, and this can apply to your spouse.

I think he applies it to a spouse, but I think he applies to business as well, is entertainment. Mhmm. That's the first level of of connection that you can do, and we all do this with our wives or our spouses. Right? We watch a series together, we watch a movie together.

The next level is an experience or experiment. It's doing something for the very first time.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Right? Yeah. That is the second. The third one is when you learn something together. Mhmm.

Steve: When

Jesus: you're going in the same direction. So with your spouse, it could be learning something, a coaching, parenting coach, whatever it is, reading a book together. And the fourth is when you serve together, when you engage and you serve your community. And it doesn't need to be as fancy as traveling around the world, bringing everybody from everywhere. You can be serving your local soup tea, kitchen soup.

Right? Or serving a local it doesn't need to be something huge. But understanding that and, unintentionally, we did that. So when we travel, since it was the very first time we're gonna be together, we did a lot of activities to get entertained. Mhmm.

Right? We we brought a Wim Hof instructor. Are you familiar with Wim Hof?

Steve: That was great. Yeah.

Jesus: Breath work, cold plunge. Everybody got into cold plunge with us. So experience something new. Then we learned. We brought Gary Harper to run our annual meeting and learn everybody learned together.

In Mexico? In Mexico. All in Mexico. So we did three days before the build of the house Mhmm. With experience and Gary and and the mix of things.

Then we did the build, and we served together. Yeah. So I didn't realize that intentionally we did those four level of connections, and and it created a a whole different bond with our team. Yeah. It has been amazing.

Steve: I mean, this is that kinda armor you put around your company. Right? Makes everyone unrecruitable. Why would they leave? Like, what you've the connection, the relationship, right, the the, the the trust, the rapport.

Right? Like, how can you recruit someone away

Jesus: Oh, yeah. They they yes. It's beautiful.

Steve: Yeah. That's remarkable. So on the flip side of this is what's your biggest struggle right now?

Jesus: I mean, I discussed on the personal level of my sleep. On business side is, and I'm working on this, is having a clear vision

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: For my team. I always been a guy who puts a head down and focus at most at a quarter at a time. Mhmm. I like, this is what we're gonna do and then we do it, and I'm a quick starter in Colby. Mhmm.

So I like to start things, and I don't think a lot about future. So I've been in this journey since probably beginning of this year or late last year of expanding my vision. Right? I'm an idea guy, but not a vision. There's a difference there between some people put together visionary is the idea guys.

Mhmm. But I think they're two different things because you cannot have you don't need to have a lot of ideas to have a big vision. Mhmm. Does that make sense? That makes sense.

Yeah. I'm I'm I'm more inclined to a lot of ideas and not such a long term vision. Mhmm. I've been working a lot on that, and and and your subconscious is very tricky. I think you had Larry Yacht Mhmm.

In this show. Right? Phenomenal. Like, his book on leadership is amazing by the way. Right.

Yeah. One of my favorite books. Oh my god. This is one of my top five for sure. But I went with a another retreat with him

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: To uncover your subconscious tricks that you are tricking yourself into. Right? And not planning is one of them for me. Mhmm. So it's a constant battle.

I'm aware of that now, but I need to be aware of it every single day. Because any opportunity I have, I will avoid planning. Mhmm. Right? So I I that's part of, what I'm in.

So I'm in the journey. I I actually went to a Vivid Vision retreat. Mhmm. Spent three days with a bunch of entrepreneurs led by amazing couple, Jennifer and and and her future husband. They run it and they help you discover what's your vision, and to talk about a three year vision because you can overestimate what you can do in a year Mhmm.

And you can underestimate what you can do in ten. So the sweet spot's about three years.

Steve: Right.

Jesus: Right. So we just finished creating my personal vivid vision for 2026, my business vivid vision for 2026, and I'm about to roll it out for the team. Mhmm. And but it's that mindset of being always aware that I might avoid planning Mhmm. On how to get there or looking at that vision.

Yeah. So that's my my my biggest point of focus on as a leader for our team is is that.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, that's that's great. But you already have you're already working on it.

Jesus: I'm working on it and but it's hard work because your subconscious is incredibly tricky. Yeah. It is.

Steve: I mean, we talk about unconscious biases. Right? Things that get in our way. Things that stop us.

Jesus: Oh, yeah. The the the talk, how the last CG was talking about that exact scenario. The game.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, we just had a quarterly strategic meeting, about a month ago, and they're like, what you know, what are the greatest threats to our organization? And my answer this time was us. Mhmm. Right?

Like, we know what we have to do. And, truthfully, we're making all the money we need to make. We just need to figure out how to keep all the money that we're making. Right? Removing all the inefficiencies, You know, the money that's, or losing due to churn, due to poor communication, due to, customer service experience, all across the board.

Right? We had, like, we had a situation where someone wanted to buy something from us, and we didn't get back to him in time.

Jesus: Oh. So

Steve: he bought some he bought something else. That hurts. That's $24,000 sale. That impacts the bottom line.

Jesus: Oh, a 100%. It's it's way better to improve a 5% conversion than whatever five times on on your lead gen. Yeah. Like, the conversion is

Steve: Yeah. And so all it was was that we had the the person that was responsible for it was on vacation. Right?

Jesus: No process to cover for.

Steve: Well, we have a process. We just didn't have enough, salespeople

Jesus: True.

Steve: Inside our education side. Right? So, like, if we run our education business, like, we run our wholesale business, never leads never slip. Right? So it's like we everything we're doing on this side is time to start doing on this side.

Yes. Right? So that like I said, we know who the enemy is. It's us.

Jesus: Oh, a lot of the times, it's our subconscious. So our greatest power is also our weakest our biggest weaken weakness. Yeah. Right? And finding that balance on because being a go take action, it's one of my biggest trends.

Right? Like, I don't question much. I know something. I go and do it. But at the same time, if I don't raise my eyes and look at the future and plan, it's hard to lead the team Mhmm.

With that. Exactly.

Steve: Well and then I imagine probably you and I have this similarity as well. Our ability to solve problems at any given moment.

Jesus: Because of it We create problems.

Steve: Or we create problems, but we don't plan as well because we get away with that planning.

Jesus: Well, okay. Then then so your subconscious create problems for you to solve them. That's the the the toughest part. Yeah. Because you're a problem solver.

I'm a problem solver.

Steve: I got

Jesus: I I generally not concerned about things because I know I'll figure it out. Right? Like, that's my confidence and my, like, my subconscious telling me. However, the problem is and that's a strength. Mhmm.

But when I subconsciously go in and create a problem for me to solve Yeah. It's a problem.

Steve: It is problem.

Jesus: Or or if you get bored or if you don't have a problem to solve, you start looking.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Right? So Oh, yeah.

Steve: That we we fill our space our headspace with more problems.

Jesus: So being aware of that and trying to work on it has been a a big work. And I'm proud of it. I'm making progress, and it's taking time. I'm finally gonna present, like, a good vision for my team. Well

Steve: and the thing is you're aware of it now. Right? So I would say probably a lot of people that are listening right now aren't aware that they have this problem. Yeah. The first is they've been doing it and is aware of it.

Now that you're aware of it, how do you stop yourself from doing it?

Jesus: Yeah. I I so Larry says you will never stop. Mhmm. You're just gonna be aware sooner.

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: Right? Right. So that's the work. And knowing once you become aware, act on it.

Steve: Alright.

Jesus: Don't let your subconscious beat you.

Steve: Yeah. Don't let it run wild.

Jesus: Yes.

Steve: Yeah. How do you stay motivated?

Jesus: I'm intrinsically motivated. I love, like, I love winning. I love competing. Now my my competition is with our styles. Like, I think we're not I'm trying not to look outside.

I think we're creating our own category of services and just being the best we can be at serving. And that motivates me, like, having a call with a client and and learning what they want, and that is inspiring. I think what another part that's keeping me very well motivated is bringing in high level talent

Steve: Mhmm. To

Jesus: the team. That has been one of my weaknesses in the past. I'm really good at I was really good at bringing people and telling them what to do. Mhmm. Because, again, I wanna solve all the problems.

Mhmm. Right? So unconsciously, I'm hiring people to just do what I told them. So whenever they have a problem, come to me.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Think about that. Right. Right? So now I'm aware. We're bringing people more to create strategy and empowering them.

Steve: Mhmm. I

Jesus: I'm super excited about that. Like, that keeps me motivated. Seeing my team, like, the other day, we were discussing something. I don't remember exactly what it was, but I was so impressed because I we have a COO who has been in a year with us and our CTO now. He's fairly new.

He's been with us for four months. They both detected the problem, created a solution, and they presented to me. And, oh, dude, you guys did exactly what I was gonna tell you to do. Yeah. That's perfect.

I'm so proud of you. Yeah. That keeps me motivated now. Yeah. Having the ability to see other people execute at a higher level than me.

Mhmm. It's it's it it it's really motivating me.

Steve: Oh, it's great. It's a very rewarding feeling. How are you measuring success?

Jesus: I think energy levels is my success.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: I wanna be my vision, my my personal vision is I spent 80% of my time on things that only give me energy. Right? I'm not there yet. I'm working on it. Mhmm.

I wanna be my success is is gonna be that. The freedom to do the things that really give me energy. I'm measuring that. I'm measuring how energized I feel after a work day, after a weekend, after things. And that way, I can measure my successes.

Energy is everything that we have. Like Mhmm. That's why I I I wanna focus on that.

Steve: I like it. What is your superpower?

Jesus: I don't know. I I guess, many. I'm I'm I'm an action taker. I that's one of my superpowers, which are, I think looking at things and finding ways to optimize it. Like, I give this example at the beginning, like, the the MLS hacks.

Mhmm. Say, well, that's inefficient. Let's do it list slightly different. Mhmm. One email generated us three deals.

Right? Like, finding those opportunities to improve is what I really like doing. I'm very passionate about product and optimizing it. And Yeah. That's the part that I really love optimizing.

I think it's my superpower.

Steve: Yeah. Solving complex problems or, I guess, put another way. Like, I'm just going back to, like, my engineering days. You know? Like, they they they would have this problem, and everyone's, like, getting really deep into it.

And they're like, well, we gotta do this and this and this. Like and for me, like, the the when I knew I had an advantage was, like, they're all solving this problem in this complex way. And you look at it as, like, intuitively, it's like, oh, just just do these two things right here.

Jesus: Direction. Yeah.

Steve: And this will fix this problem. Nice. So, man, that's what you're talking about is, like, you can look at a large set of data. It's like yeah. It's just these two things right here, and we'll optimize everything else.

Jesus: Yeah. And then I love looking at so a a lot of my ideas come from me. I'm actually sometimes looking at other people's solutions too. Mhmm. I like, I I like making decisions with little information.

Yeah. Like, you've got like you said, intuition is a big part for me. Mhmm. I I guess that could be one of my superpowers too. It's like my intuition.

I there's a quote. I don't remember who said this, but you never regret following your gut. Yeah. If you think about it, every time that you didn't listen to your gut, you you probably regret it. So being aware of that too is is is is good.

I think

Steve: Chris Voss says it.

Jesus: Yeah? I don't remember. I I I I don't like to take credit for things that I didn't create. So but I don't remember.

Steve: What's your biggest regret?

Jesus: I try to think that I don't have regrets, because if you think about journey of your life, this is a message for everybody. The first thing is you're right on time. Right? Everything that you fail is lesson. As long as you look at it as a lesson

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: I think, it it is I wish I could have started reading sooner.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Like, for example, I had reached that poor dad in Portuguese version because I I was raised in Brazil. On one of my vacation, I went to Brazil. My friends were reading. I didn't but I bought a book. So I I had reached that poor dad for decades.

Mhmm. Never I I looked it through it, but I never read it. Mhmm. And until Audible came around and it changed by creating the environment, Audible was easier for me to read and I started reading. And that was a big change in my life the moment I started reading books.

So I not a regret, but I wish I would have started reading sooner

Steve: Yeah.

Jesus: And finding mentors. Right? I I believe there's three ways that you can learn. And and I spent too much time on the first one, which is learning from your own experiences. Yeah.

Right? So you can learn from your own experiences. You can learn from other people's experience through books, through courses, without interaction. Like, I'm talking about no interaction with the person, but you can learn reading history books. There's a lot of ways that you can learn from other people's experiences.

And the other one is through a mentor.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Right? My journey into reading other's people's experience and mentors was light. Yeah. But, again, right on time. Right?

Like, I the way that I look at it is I learn enough that I don't need to try to figure out everything on my own. Yeah. Because I did like, my first couple business was just me trying to figure it out with my partner, my wife, whatever, whoever was around me, but just us that circle it's too small. So much out there. There's nowadays, obviously, things evolve, but there's not a lot of things that are new.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Right? Like, business principles, they're all the same. Oh, yeah. Need to hear it at the right time Mhmm. To resonate with you.

And, oh, that's exactly what I need to hear. But you heard it seven, ten, 15 times before. Yeah. But it's at that moment. So being exposed to those content with people that are higher level, equal, and even helping, you learn so much from helping too.

Right? Yeah. So, yeah, I would say that's probably my

Steve: biggest regret. And what was your which failure brought about your biggest lesson?

Jesus: Many. I I love my failures, man. I I love love the first one that came to mind was the the one that I mentioned in the beginning. Trying to think that I was the person that had just to do everything. I'm not delegating.

That was maybe a five year journey of me doing me and my partner doing everything on the on the business and not having an employee making money and not investing in people Mhmm.

Steve: To

Jesus: help us with the things that we didn't like.

Steve: Alright.

Jesus: Like, the the eighty twenty principle I wish I had known back there is find the things that you love and do more of those and find people that are good at the things that you don't like. Mhmm. They will love doing those, and they will do way better than you. Right? Yeah.

They're

Steve: more excited to do it.

Jesus: Yeah. That that was a a a a a big failure for sure. Like, in my business, that business didn't grow as fast because of that for sure.

Steve: Right. Well, we were the, the the bottlenecks.

Jesus: We are. Yeah. Yeah. We need to step out. As leaders, that's the biggest thing you need to step out as being the bottleneck.

Steve: Yep. So I want you to think about some last thoughts I wanna leave everyone with. Guys, if you got a lot of value today, again, 8020rei.com/disruptors. A bunch of whole there's a whole bunch of free resources out there. Go check it out.

I mean, I I I'm hoping this message that Jesus is sharing is resonating with you guys, and if you wanna see his his offerings, I highly highly recommend, checking it out. So what are some last thoughts you wanna leave everyone with?

Jesus: From what perspective? Personal? Business?

Steve: You Whatever message you think our audience needs.

Jesus: I guess so if most of your audience is is is investors. Right? Yes. Depending where you are in your journey, learn your market regardless of that. Mhmm.

Have somebody in your team if you're a large operation. If you're starting, learn your market. Know the data, know how it works, the processes. So when you talk to a seller, you're an expert Mhmm. And you can provide a solution.

Because this is not about the property. Right? And and focus on sales. Really, really. Like, I'm a data vendor

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Telling you to focus your business in sales. Right. And for you to do a good job at sales, you need to understand how things operate in your market.

Steve: Yeah. And your the how your how real estate works in your market.

Jesus: In your market. Every possible distress. Right? Because that way, you know how your probate process imagine like, a lot of people target probates. I like targeting people before they open probate.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jesus: Imagine the value that you watch with family when you help them and you fund the money when they don't have funds to pay an attorney to do the probate. Mhmm. Not forget about the benefits of controlling the deal, just how much value added to them by knowing and being an expert and holding their hand throughout that process. So there's a lot of value there. If you do that, if you know and you know how to help, sales will become easier, your business will become easier, and you will gain a ton of knowledge, for

Steve: your business. Yeah. Everyone wins in that process.

Jesus: A 100%.

Steve: Perfect. Someone wants to get a hold of you, how would they best do that?

Jesus: Depends. If they're interested in eighty twenty area data or eighty twenty CRM, reach out at 8020area.com/disruptors. That's the best way. We're gonna fill out a form, and my team will reach out to you. Eighty twenty CRM as well, dot com.

Personally, I'm not super active on social media. I'm more of an introvert. I'm working on that too. But it's Jesus Tolo number 23 on Instagram and Facebook. You can connect with me there.

Steve: Alright. Perfect. Guys, again, if you guys got a ton of value, share, subscribe, helps us reach more

Jesus: people. Absolutely, man. Thank you so much.

Steve: It was an absolute pleasure. Awesome.

Jesus: Thank you so much for joining us.