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Beating Big Budgets: Competing with Institutional Buyers with John Medina · Big Talk About Small Business

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: What are the one to two things that we could do right now that's gonna help us the most?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's gonna be hire a really good salesperson that that that is gonna be a really good fit for us.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and we we're not gonna settle, we're gonna make sure that we get the right person, plug them in, and then the next thing it's gonna do, we're gonna start giving them leads to ramp up the to ramp up the the the pipeline.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_06: Talk about small business.com.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_06: And we've got john medina in here with us today.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_06: John, where are you where are you calling in from?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in a town called San Pedro, which is in in Los Angeles.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm like in the port of Los Angeles, next to Long Beach, so to speak.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: So nice.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're down here in the port.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a little Houston.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: We don't get humidity down here.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: I know in Ohio you guys get humidity all the time, right?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: You guys are once.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_06: No, no, we're in Arkansas.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_06: We're in Arkansas, dude.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_06: Same thing.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_06: But no, I love LA.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_06: I go out there four times a year, minimum.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_06: I'm on the board of a company in LA, and I I love it out there.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's great.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_06: It is.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_06: Love Southern California.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_06: Should have moved out there when we were like 18, Eric.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, yeah.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_06: You know, I'm in trouble, man.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_06: I know.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_06: Never gonna happen now.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_06: No, it's those times are over for us.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's that's long done.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_06: But today, today we're gonna talk about John's business.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_06: And it's uh John Medina buys houses.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_06: That's pretty simple.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_06: He's done over 400 of them.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_06: Tell us about your your business, John.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_06: How'd you get into this and what is it?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, good question.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's why I'm here.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I I kind of started out as a plumbing contractor, right?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I was a I out of when I was like 19, I got into plumbing.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: I was in plumbing for a while and I figured it out.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: I went on my own.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I've always kind of been an entrepreneur.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Even even around here, I've always kind of had jobs with you know, uh being an entrepreneur.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I just you know decided to go on my own when I was like 24, and I did plumbing for oh man, I I could just kind of give you like you know, for 20-something years I had my own plumbing business, 25 years, and it was it's successful what I was doing with it.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden, uh, you know, I was saving some money and I wanted to buy some rental properties.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I just want to buy one, I wanted to get as much as I could with the money I had.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I started poking around with this, you know, like how to buy houses at a discount.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: So ran across a guy named Bruce Norris here.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: I went to some apartment owners association thing, and I like what he had to say.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I uh I tried the Rich Dad at the beginning.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: I went to one of their classes around here, but the Trump University was next to it at the big hotel by the airport.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I didn't like what they were selling, so I passed on that.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I hooked up with this guy, Bruce Norris, and he just I went took a boot camp and I started learning how to like buy properties around here.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So um bought some rentals like I wanted to, and back then short sales were kind of big, so it was kind of easy to buy like 2012.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I started buying buying these uh properties.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Wow, this is kind of fun, you know.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: So plumbing got a little slow, and I noticed that I was putting more time into buying rental houses and looking into flipping them than I was in my plumbing business.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: So you know what happened?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: You're kind of you're losing focus on what you're on what you're doing.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: I I still focused on it, but it just kind of started dying off a little bit.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I figured out, man, I told my wife one day, I was like, man, I think I would flip I could figure out I think I could flip houses and do just as good or or be more, you know, kind of make it make a pivot.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I just made a pivot like 2014, January 1st, 14.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: I I shut the plumbing transition out of plumbing, and I just started flipping houses.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it was kind of like uh some of the rentals I had to sell to get some cash to keep going.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, that's what that's kind of how I got in this business, and and and here we are now.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just it's just kind of keeps evolving.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_04: So um hey John, at what point when that when like what was the trigger that you really felt confident about making that switch, though?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_04: That's a pretty big decision, right?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_04: Because you had a yeah, yeah.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I just started getting comfortable doing it.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: I and and back then, I'll be honest with you guys, it was it wasn't that hard.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: It was like nobody wanted to buy properties at that time like they do now, right?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: So there was the barrier, it was like the competition was low.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, short sales was like I I had a buddy that, like a guy that I met, that a local realtor in the next town over called Wilmington, where the prices are a little lower, and he had all these people that with connections, so it was real easy for him to go to a guy that was like you know,$200,000 off on their equity and say, we'll buy it for$200,000 and uh go to the bank and get it approved.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I was buying houses, I didn't really have to, it was kind of like a no-brainer, and I was making money on them too, you know.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: So it was like I just figured, man, I could pull this off.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: I just had a like I just had a lot of I've always had a lot of confidence in myself, so I said, I'm just gonna go for it.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I I'm a I'm a prayerful guy, so I I pray a lot, and and I I I that that's another story, but my spirituality kind of kicked in.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just one day, you know, I was contemplating, you know, what I should do, and I just man, I just remember, I just had this feeling like this is go for it, like just don't don't look back.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's kind of a real simple answer.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: I just felt and I felt educated, like I felt like I could I could do this.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: I took another course too, where where I was learning how to talk on the phone in the top in the meantime, too.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that started shoring things up.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like I had a guy showing me like how to talk on the phone, how to get deals, how to talk to people, and and uh how to send postcards and the marketing piece of it.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it just felt good and I said, man, I'm going for it.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the plumbing business was kind of dying dying out, so I'd have to ramp it back up.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I just didn't feel like putting it.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: I did that for a long time, you know.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, I was more a natural plumber than I am a house flipper, believe it or not.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was really naturally good at plumbing.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: I it just came really easy to me.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so uh, but I just kind of got burned out a little bit, and I thought I'd try something new, and here we are, you know, no, no, no looking back.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_04: You know, what point on this, Mark?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_04: Like I like to think about, and it seems like the trend in today's time is you plan, strategize, build spreadsheets, pro formas, business plans about the perfect thing that you want to do, and it's got to be all put down.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_04: But the more that we talk with entrepreneurs that you know like John, and like even our own experiences, a lot of times the entrepreneurial journey is you're just an adventurous person.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_04: You explore, you're interested in things in life, like things intrigue you, you right, you know, and like to John's point, he's sitting there he's in the plumbing business, yeah, and then he starts he finds this little thing that interests him, and then he just self-learns um and and then starts getting into it.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_04: Next thing you know, I mean, you're freaking you're you're cutting one out one out and doing another one.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's actually fun, like that's part of the entrepreneurial journey is that you're doing things that you're enjoying to do.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_06: It is true.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, I just had coffee with a young woman this morning who was a student, and uh and we were talking about that, and I and I told her, she goes, Well, you do so many different things.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_06: Uh and we were talking about specialization and attorneys, and yeah, and how you know you don't want to fool around with people who really aren't specialized.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_06: She goes, Well, you're you're like a generalist.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_06: Like I worked in the architecture and engineering business my entire career up until 2004.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_06: That was all I did.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and I, you know, and then truth is I made more money doing that than I did doing all this stuff that we do now.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, however, it's more interesting.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_06: Just because you can make money doing something doesn't mean you want to do it all the time, right, John?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the thing.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's that's I mean, you need it to keep going, but it's it's interesting that, yeah, you you, you know, I don't know.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm kind of like I said, I'm 59 now, so it's interesting.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: I had this coach, Dr.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Jeff Spencer, that would kind of he call it the life lens, and what in your 20s, you're trying to, you know, you're really trying to make something, and you get to be about in your 50s, it's kind of like giving back, and that's what you're kind of looking to do, and that's kind of where I'm at.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: I I the one side of me, it's like I I have this, you know, through my you know, my Christianity that I that I live and breathe.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: I I I have a big heart for people, I see people, I want to help people, you know.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: But on the other side, it's like, well, I gotta, I gotta kind of watch the money side of it too, because I can't help everybody, right?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, yeah, so the money piece of it's big, but but then again, it's it's not what drives me because I think once I ever time that I chase money, I end up getting in a lot of trouble.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'm not sure.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_04: No, and that's that's a fair point.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_04: I think that's a big thing that, you know, like the the trend is it's about how much what's your exit gonna be?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_04: What's your your wealth, you know, how are you gonna grow this to where you're having all kinds of you know revenue or you get bought out for 12x, the multiple.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, all those things are exciting and fun, and I think that you know there's that goal for that, but you know, in most cases, it's like what what you experienced, John.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, like you started meddling in something and you found it kind of interesting, you know, and it wasn't about the money.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_04: You just like when you said it, when you were talking to your story earlier, you like that was almost a byproduct, like, oh, I'm making money in this too.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and so it kind of opens up like, oh, I can do what is interesting to me and I can make money.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, now you're you have freedom.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_04: You know, my business partner JS, yeah, bull, right?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_04: Great, great, great guy.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_04: But when we exited our company and he we had like a he had like three months of kind of settling down, and he's like he goes, you know, he was really doing a lot of introspection, and he was like, you know what?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_04: I really appreciate about the entrepreneurism eagles is I have freedom.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_04: Eagles, that's really not the money, it's not all these, but you have freedom to kind of do what you want to do with the time, John, to your point that you have on earth.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and then you know, and that's kind of where things are taken.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_04: I just I find this this discussion always interesting.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_06: It's always the case.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_06: So, John, back on your business though.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_06: So you buy these houses, uh how do you find them?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_06: And then what do you do with them before you sell them?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, we find them by like um advertising like SEO on the internet.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: We do SEO, we do a little bit of ad words over the years.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: I've done it all.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: So generally in my space, you know, people send mail, they they they have a website, so that some a lot of guys don't do SEO because it's like a slow thing, you know.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: But we do it, we've been doing it for a while.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we do it in-house now.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you don't want to do SEO, you turn on AdWords, right?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because AdWords you can pay to get to the top, and that's a whole other thing.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, Facebook ads, and then what's great now for being in business so long, we get a lot of referrals too, right?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we do.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: So we we do some marketing generally, you know, on our own.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: We can buy leads from people too if you want to do that.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a couple different lead sources, but then it just becomes like a sales process.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you got to have a sales process to you know to intake the calls and run people through it.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, once you get through the sales process, if there's a deal, you go ahead and get the deal contract.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Once we get a contract, we could um there's a couple different exit strategies.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: You can, you know, if we get a contract and it's something that that we don't want to particularly take down ourselves, rehab it, we could sell it to you guys for a profit um and end it there.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know, if we don't if it was local and it makes sense to us and we have the you know the the crew available and it looks like something that we really want to dig our uh you know longer project, so to speak, we go ahead and rehab it, meaning put the work in, fix it up, and turn around and sell it.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of you know, is that making sense?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: We got a couple different yes.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_06: So you do whole they call that wholesaling when you get it under contract and then you sell it before you close.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: We assign it to people, yeah.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_04: How does that business work?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, why what value?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, in all honesty, and this isn't being negative, but what value is your company doing in that transitional sale like that?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, what happens is is we get the contract with with, you know, we're we're belly to belly with the person or or you know, virtual.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we get the contract with the with the with the client.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: We we we we stay with them all the way to the end.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: So they don't even know that if bottom line is if we assign it to you guys, they don't even meet you guys.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: We we do the work all the way through.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: So we what we promise at the at the beginning, we we fulfill at the end.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: They don't we just switch the buyer out.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: But what's the benefit for the for the seller?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Generally, sellers have have some sort of distress, so it could be a probate situation, it could be um uh they could, you know, or even probate or inheritance, right?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: They want to sell the house as is, and if they sell the house as is, they can walk away from it, they don't have to do anything to it, they can just leave leave everything.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Take what you want with you and leave the rest behind.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so there's a lot of value in that.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, some people don't they live out of state when they live here, they don't want to touch the memories, they just want to be, they kind of just want to be done with it, right?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Some of these houses have major distress as far as you know, there's animals, and you know, I mean, it's just a smell like you would believe, hoarders.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a it's a niche market for people that that need your services to kind of like, and they want we hear this a lot from people.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to be done with it, and and you're able to provide this service to walk them, handhold them all the way through the process.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: No showings, you pay cash, close quickly, or on the timeline they're comfortable with.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you're you're offering these benefits that a transitional real estate deal um might take a lot longer.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now, nothing we do list houses for people.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Ricky, my I have a partner, Ricky.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: He he does the sales, he's a licensed real estate agent.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: We we have some deals right now where people came to us, they want the most money.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: We're honest with them.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: So one of them is a family members, my wife's cousin, and I'm down, it's not far from here, a couple miles away.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm down there, I got two dumpsters going out already.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: I got my guys there clearing clearing the trash out, helping her because she wants the most money and she should get the most money.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: But she she's in a position to where she doesn't need the money right now, and she could wait.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I got a I got a ten thousand dollar bill sent on my desk here somewhere for all the work that we've done.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I would meet with her today and say, you know, you owe me 10 grand for the work that we did, and now we could put on the market and sell it, and she's fine with that, you know, and she's she has 60 days to wait or whatever to get the money because she doesn't need it, so so sure, you know, yeah.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: We we opt them both, you know.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_06: So so do you maintain your crew of workers full-time or are they all subs?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: I have some uh W-2 guys that work for me that that keep busy all the time, and then I bring in subs for like the cabinets and maybe like you know, uh different people.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so back to my my plumbing uh business.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: When I exited my plumbing business, I kept all my lines of credit and I kept I kind of kept the corporation.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm still kind of set up as a contractor, and I have a general contractor's license now too.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I could I could kind of the the deal I have with my partner Ricky is that we have John Medina buys houses that that's that's one entity that buys the houses, and then I have a uh a company, MPC Inc.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: which is a construction company.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I run the construction through the I run the construction through the MPC Inc.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: that I own with my wife.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: So then what we do is we build build the either we we we basically the John Medina buys houses is the client, so I run everything through the through the the construction company and I build it back to the uh with really no profit because we're just we're just kind of uh you know, just that's how I pay the bills and everything.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: So and that with my with my plumbing background, that helps me fix up the see that's that's where my advantages is because I have construction background.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people get into flipping houses, yeah, and they don't know they don't have the construction background.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where that that that really paid off for me.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's why it was kind of an easy switch for me.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I John, I for what it's worth, I also bought and sold and had a big rental portfolio and did a lot of redo at a general contractor's license, employed my own carpenters, laborers, and in-house design.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_06: So I've been there doing what you're doing.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_06: Now we were operating at the high end of the market versus where it sounds like you're more in a lower end or volume end, I would say.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's Los Angeles, so it's funny when you say that because it you know the probably the the the average cheap.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Million bucks were now, right?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the houses that take spite for for 200 are now like 600.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, so yeah, it's interesting.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: But put that in perspective around here, you're right.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: I I've done hiring houses.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not I don't want to do like a uh I'm not really into the 1.5 million dollar houses.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: I I I like doing there in Los Angeles, there's a lot of houses that were built like after the war, you know, World War II.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's been a lot of wars, right?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: World War II, and and they they they're there's you know they raised foundation, they're stucco.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um sure they're they're about a thousand square feet and they're everywhere.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: I do really good on those houses because they're easy to fix and the foundations are generally good, and and and and the construction code at that time was pretty good, even with the earthquakes and everything.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: So they've lasted, they've lasted the the test of time, you know.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a hundred-year-old house that got wood siding and it's the foundations are screwed up.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: I stay away.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: I've because I've I've learned my lesson on those, especially recently.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: That they don't there's too much work that needs it.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I just it's a hard no.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'll wholesale those things all day long to somebody else that wants to take the take the risk, right?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of like like I've gotten pretty good at saying no, especially lately, the way the market's kind of the market's adjusted, still a good market out here.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's just the market's adjusted to where prices are not going up.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have bidding wars, but the but that like everybody's experiencing everywhere, the the inflation on on the on the materials has gone so high, you gotta be really careful because if you you you could you know you buy these houses, you know what you're getting into half the time.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: You have a budget of I don't know, 50 grand.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now that 50 should be 75 or maybe 100, and now you're up to 150, you're done.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_04: You're not making a short like when you do go investigate one of these houses, like on that point, are you able to walk it and and have a good idea about what it really will cost?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_04: Or I mean, are you always is there always a big a pretty significant element of risk to that?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I was wondering if do you you always go look at it, or do you just buy um strictly okay?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: I've done it all.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've bought sight unseen across the nation.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: I've done it now.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's like pretty, especially you know, this year, it's like no, we we why that's kind of why we've any type of rehab we do, we want to do it in a pretty we cut the radius down so that I can manage it better.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I'm kind of the manager of it, right?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I try to look at it.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we even get a home inspection just to know where we're at if we're gonna buy it.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: We don't we don't go back and ask for you know we're just looking for major things that need to go on because right now, if you if it if you don't catch if you don't crawl into a house and you don't see a major foundation, there could be a major foundation issues that the buyer, when you go to after you flip it to sell it, they're gonna catch it and they're gonna want a discount, even though there might not even be a problem.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna, you know how it you know how uh when you sell property, it's a realtor's job to get get their client a discount.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now you're negotiating and it's crazy.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we try to catch all the stuff before.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I I I'll generally try to do a home inspection most of the time now, catch everything, and then then really type my numbers off based upon what I find.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's that's the best way to do it now.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_04: So in your example, I mean, like we talked about a lot of the uh I guess the the uh beneficial parts of your business, but I mean, have you kind of come across some significant challenges in your in this in this business?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_04: Like uh, I mean, can you tell us a couple of your your bigger horror stories in this?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there was a lot of them.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's yeah, it's not easy business, but like you know, most things in life aren't easy, right?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: Especially if they pay well.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, there's always I mean, there's oh my god, I think like what comes to mind is like you know, back in 2022, you couldn't do no wrong, right?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: You buy something in 2022, it was like you know, if you got the products were a little easier to get back then, and it was like for some reason more people were selling or whatever was going on, maybe was what we were at in the market.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: But we bought a property at like out by Palm Springs, which is about two hours away, is this place called Landers.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably probably close to Joshua Tree, which is a national park out in the desert.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we bought it from a guy, and he had like it was five acres, you know, and people were building Airbnbs out there, it was booming.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: I made the Wall Street Journal for this.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's how great I was, right?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: But it's I wasn't that good at the end because that I'll get to the end part of it, why I got the Wall Street Journal.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: But, anyways, this place was booming, and we and we bought this property.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: It had it had about, I estimate, about 12,000 tires around the perimeter tires.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my, you know, like like the kind of like guys that kept the bullets out because people shoot out there, he kind of carryed it.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: But, anyways, we told him to get rid of the tires and we'll buy the property.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he got rid of the tires, but what he did he buried buried him in the ground, so he went with the buried him in the ground.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then we're kind of done with with getting the house fixed up.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: The neighbor came over and told my guy, hey, you know, the guy that lived here before, I mean, these are five acres, so they're kind of spread apart.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's no one, yeah, there's no one on this on this dirt road, kind of a lot of empty land, but I happen to have a neighbor of all my luck, right?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: So the neighbor comes over and says, Hey, the guy buried the tires.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, as he told us that, we have to get rid of them, right?
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'd have to just I didn't know about it, I could have sold it and got rid of it.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: No one knew they were kind of there because they were in the ground.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I had to go back and take those tires out of the ground myself because back to my plumbing, my plumbing knowledge, right?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: I I could work a tractor and I had to hire people and stay out there, and that's a nightmare.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you you know, it's like we don't really want to, we're not as trusty as we used to be.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_04: I'm just sitting here thinking about this, like digging tires out of the dirt has got to be one of the just the most annoying freaking jobs of all time.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_06: And then you gotta pay to get rid of the tires.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean like 80 grand because they're hazardous waste.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then I had to like get a hauler out there.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: We could talk all day about that, but that's just one of those things I just realized, and that's why we could start saying afterwards, we're not like doing rehabs, you know.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: We'll wholesale that all day long, which we probably should have done.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: But at the time, you know, things were booming.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when you're when you're in a position where everything touched turns to gold, that's like where we're at, you just think like, wow, this is this easy.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you just kind of just got that was one of my mistakes.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably that's one of the things I should have just exited on, you know.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_04: Kind kind of the Mike Tyson's famous statement everybody has a great plan until they get punched in the face.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_04: Amen.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: I I just told that to my wife the other day, believe it or not.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I got a teenager, so we're going over that.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Why not you know, especially with a T8, right?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: You never know what's gonna happen.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyways, yeah.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_06: So, so how do you find these buyers in the wholesale situation?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_06: I've always been wondering about that.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_06: I have people tell me they do this, and yeah, I've never done it.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_06: I bought a lot of stuff and sold a lot of stuff, but I never wholesaled anything.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_06: How do you find the buyers?
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's like what we call dispo, right?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we've kind of made that we're not a big dispo company, so when we wholesale the people, what we're looking for is here in Los Angeles, especially, we have some pretty good clients that that have they have to buy, they're like uh hedge fund money, believe it or not, in LA, right?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: They have big big group of they have a lot of money and they got to buy 20 houses a month, and they they pay more than us because they can, especially since they have, you know, so if we get a house at a decent deal and we think we can make a spread on it, we just call them up and we try to just deal with them directly.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Back to the story about like we walk these, we walk the people from the beginning to the end, and we want a good five-star review.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: We want to trust, we're trusting people that are gonna get this done because if we blast so so typical wholesalers, what they do, especially if they're not in the area, they get a property under contract, usually it's too high because they don't walk it, they don't they just lock it up at the price that people say, then they blast it out to the world, right?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: You could you could buy a list, you could, you could, you know, you there's there's ways to get a hold of these people through through through certain uh uh uh uh platforms that were were, you know, uh investor, for instance, is one of them.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: They have a bunch of cash buyers in their area and they have an algorithm to find them, and you can blast it out on that uh over that over that uh website, so to speak, and and they find people.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: I get calls every day.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think I got three of them since I'm on the phone with you because they know I'm a cash buyer.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: So Pete, you're constantly looking for cash buyers, and they blast it out the world and they see the most money they can get for the property.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: But back to the money is not always the best thing, right?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because what happens is these properties are tied up, some of these people are in foreclosure, they need it, they need to hit these dates to close.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, now they they give a contract to a guy and they're locked in on it, and now they're shopping it to the world, and and and these guys don't perform, right?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: So what you and some of them do, but what you're trying to do is you're trying to get the you're you're you're trying to get the most for this property.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: If you're at 100 grand, you're trying to get 120, you want to get maybe 140 if you can't.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: So you put it out there to people to let them bid it up, and and and that's how these guys show up.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: But there a lot of them are not credible.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of them are there's a lot of guys out there that are just trying to buy properties, or they might be trying to get it under contract with you to sell it to somebody else.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Daisy Chain, right?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it's very, very difficult.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and I'm I'm trying to think about the the value from the investor, the buyer at the wholesale side, right?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_04: The value I think is is like if they work with you, you've kind of gone in and and you've you've been able to capture this good deal and extend the timeline.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_04: Get the get the original seller out of distress, now it's under yours, and so you can kind of and it's valuable for the investors because they can they can actually purchase that deal instead of they know it's a deal.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_04: They know it's a deal, right?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, extend them collect you've got to have a deal from the beginning.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: So if I get at 100, I'm gonna sell it 120.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: They're okay paying that 20 grand because they're used to going on like dealing with realtors, they're trying to buy a lot of properties, and they and their whole thing is that their volume, they're trying to buy 20, 30 a month, so their their volume is high, they're trying to keep that machine going.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: They don't they they do their own marketing, but they need so many deals that their their margins are thinner at that, yeah, you know, at that at that level.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And what you just have to be careful for if you are wholesaling, that you find people that are going to close.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because see, we take it really serious.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: When we make it when we make a deal with somebody, we communicate with them the whole time.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: We don't ghost them.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: We want to make sure that they're there.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: We have a transaction coordinator that talks to them just about every day to make sure that these deals are that that that they're moving along and there's no hiccups in them.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then there is a hiccup, we communicate with the with the seller so they know where they're at.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes the hiccups come on their end because they have title issues, or there's they say they own the property, but it's it was their aunts, is they don't understand the process.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the process, right?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it's all about communication and it wholesaling works really well if you communicate well.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um, a lot of these guys they'll go ahead and get a contract for a hundred grand, but the house is really worth 80, they can't sell it, and they ghost to people.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Then they then then the the the seller's calling us and saying, Hey, I've been dealing with ABC, they're not calling us back.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: And and and right, you know, it happens all the time, and then it's like it's so it can get ugly, you know.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_06: Now, I imagine sometimes these wholesaler, these people that you've wholesaled it to don't close.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_06: So do you close then on the deal?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_06: Well buyer?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a good question.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: We we won't we don't get to that close to where we have to make like we'll we'll cancel way before.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, if you get to the closing table and you're I every state's different, California's an escrow state, right?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like if you if you get to the you know, you get to that date where you're supposed to be like you know, closing, yeah, we it we know it's a deal, we'll close on it anyway, so to speak.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: But back we we catch that way early in the process.
• 27:04
  unknown: I see.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: We we we had that we're always trying to, we don't want to get to the close, we don't want to get anywhere near that closing date if we can't close.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: We have to cash the close.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: We've closed, I've closed many a times, obviously, because I do rehab houses, right?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: But you want to right you want to catch all that stuff at the beginning.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: And back to the how do we find these people?
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: We're only dealing with vetted people.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't really to kind of get to do business with now, we want to we're gonna really check you out.
• 27:27
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• 27:32
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• 27:38
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• 27:40
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• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Wednesday, like like in California, it's in LA County, they don't do the money, it needs to be in there like like today or tomorrow.
• 27:53
  unknown: Right.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: LA County, they still have to walk in the courthouse.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Orange County, which is the next county over, they they they do stuff like virtual, same day close, so to speak.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: LA County's too big, they haven't got caught up.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're 100 years behind.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: So you better like today, if you're closing on Friday, you better make sure we would never get to this point not be able to close.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're gonna make sure that we wouldn't, we would, we would have, you know, some of these deals are 14 days, you know, seven days we could do, but it has to be really, really, really tight.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: But these guys can close the seven days because they're not a they don't need to go to the bank, they have money in they have the money in an account.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_06: These people that are buying 20 or 30 houses a month or whatever, they're throwing them into a rental portfolio, aren't they?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_06: No, isn't that their point?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, they're flipping them too.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because out here it doesn't it's hard to make money on rentals out here because they're you know you're spending a million dollars on the rent site or three, four grand.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it it's not like yeah, the that's what you guys deal with in that part of the country, it's way different.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_06: So yeah, you got like a two-cap out there or something.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, cap rate.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: Back when I started, there was I forgot the name of these companies, but they were buying everything for rentals because the price was so low, and that's the problem now.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: They own a lot of inventory here in Los Angeles for rentals, and they're they they they bought up a lot, they don't sell them.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's part of the inventory problem.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's guys that have that own a lot of a lot of houses here that are not selling them, you know.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, you know, it's just uh it's it's it's not tricky, you just gotta communicate well.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_04: Does the wholesale buyer, I mean, when if they flip them, so do they go in and rehab them?
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they rehab, yeah.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: So they're they're the guys with the crews, and they got all these, they got eight crews, they got so they're trying to keep these guys busy.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, you know, yeah, I don't know, they they're just big machines and they they want these houses.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Don't get me wrong, we we do we do rehab houses.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, we do rehab, you know, all day long.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's just that that sometimes the price point I need to be at for me doesn't work for me, but it works for them because they have their margins are thinner.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: And believe me, the people that we're that we're doing business with, I mean, go out and John Mardina buys houses, you'll see we we got a 4.8 rating.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: People, so we're not doing anything shady here.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: We tell the people we're gonna we're gonna bring our partner in to look at the house and and and and we're gonna partner with this guy, and you're gonna get your money.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: As long as you tell them that, you're good.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: If you're trying to hide all this stuff and be sneaky, it doesn't work very well.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_04: Starts feeling squirrely, people get scared, they back out, they don't sign at the closing table, and it makes you look like an idiot, right?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, yeah, that's that's what you get.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: See, back to the money piece.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: If you're trying to get the most money for every property, you're gonna have those problems because people are gonna make you promises they can't keep.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_04: That's right.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd rather I'd rather take the for sure money and just know that it's good.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'll take my my bit that I know I'm good with, so I don't have these problems down the break.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_06: Sure, absolutely.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_06: Well, what you're talking about with these guys that are buying a lot of houses.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, I felt like that.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_06: We weren't doing that kind of volume, but I I always felt uh when I got the feeling that we were had to buy to keep everybody busy and deal with the overhead infrastructure that we had, that's when your decision making starts eroding.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and I didn't want to be in that position, you know.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_06: It it it it that's when you start buying stuff that you really shouldn't buy just to keep it going.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: I've never done that.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: I got a couple of my books right now that I made that mistake, and it's a it's a tough pull to swallow, but then you just have to say no is no and you move on.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like uh like when I worked for this big plumbing company years ago, I didn't work very long for people, but I worked for this big union shop here in town in Los Angeles, and they did a lot of value.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was like we don't when they say we don't we don't we uh we don't make any money on the jobs, we make it up in volume.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: That was a joke, right?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: But the owner was making money, but that was kind of the thing.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: There was a volume going on there, sure.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: And they always had cash coming in and they had a lot of cash going out, but but you know, I know they made money.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: That was kind of the joke about it.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: And every time I've made a bad decision on one of these houses, I bought it out of desperation, thinking that that that it was gonna um, you know, I needed something, I bought it, and it and it and it turned out horribly.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I'll tell you one thing, guys, is back before this correction happened, you you would get you would make an extra 50 grand sometimes because people bid up the house when the rates were low.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: You weren't a genius.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you put the house up for 800 and all of a sudden you got 850.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: But you had 10 people showing up to buy it, 15 people, and and it within two or three days because the interest rates were three percent, people could afford them.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: So so so you're gonna make 25 grand on this property, all of a sudden you made 75.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Not because you were not because you were good, we got lucky.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, once the luck ran out, and the houses that were 800 started being 750, you lost you didn't make any money or you lost money.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you think that's where we're at now is the market's still moving.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's still people that want these houses in Los Angeles.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: Believe me, there's you don't have 10 people showing up, but if you price it right, like my partner Ricky, uh here in town, there's a there's a there's a there's a uh uh condos called the gardens where people want to get into, and he put it up at 800 grand.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: He he had a guy come in at 805 cash, and I think it he got him in the escort within three, four days.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: So this just goes to show you there's people that want to buy these things.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: There wasn't 20 people, but there was enough interest to two or three, and and there's still a market there, right?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, but if you would have probably priced that at 850, you probably would have been sitting in the market for a while, you know.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: You have to price it right to get to where you need to be.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a retail sale, so there was no the owners took their money and bought something else.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's just you gotta kind of be nowadays, you gotta be dead on, you gotta know your, you know, when you're flipping a house, you have to have ARV after repair value.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta be pretty good about that, and you can't inflate it, and then you have to have your repairs really good, and then you're what's your margins in between?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: How much you want to take off of all of this, you know.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_06: And uh we we always say you make money when you're buying, and you make money when you're selling.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_06: And I, in fact, in my class last night, I just went over that exact equation.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_06: What's the max value we're gonna get out of this per square foot in this location?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and then all my carrying costs and my transaction costs and my fix-up costs and my profit, and that's what I can pay for it, what's left.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and and and you know, I think that unfortunately HGTV has done the world a disservice.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_06: So many people think they can do this and make money on it, and they never talk about things like real estate commissions or interest carry.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, have you ever noticed that?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, all day long, yeah.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, my houses were on there before.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't, I wasn't, I was on a show where they showed our property, so I wasn't like, you know, they didn't have my face, but it was funny.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: They put our like there was three in the neighborhood, and they came in and they shot it, they messed it all up and did all this kind of stuff.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I mean, they don't talk about that.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's just funny how that all that, yeah, yeah.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, everybody could do it.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just uh no the the I think the biggest piece is what you get the money for.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: So these guys that buy, you know, these the guys that are buying 2030 houses that you know, they're I think they they pretty much have they probably have like uh you know, like a REIT or something like that where they're getting they're they're paying a lot less interest than than than you know what other people are paying.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: Or I I get I get kind of what I call soft money, I don't get hard money.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: I got a buddy, that's another thing.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: I got a buddy that I can call up.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he's I know him I was friends with this with his son in uh in in junior high high school, and his name's Bob, he's like 84, so he's he's a like he's like a dad to me, so to speak.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: But he's got a lot of money.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: I can call him right now and say, Bob, I need a million bucks.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: He'd be like, Okay, well, you know, yeah, I just have it.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: We have the same bank.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, at one point before they they they they went to the corporate bank, I would fill out the wire forms, I have it on my screen here, and I would just get it, call the managers, put a million bucks, send it to the, you know, like like I didn't sign his name, but it was just that simple, right?
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I didn't have I didn't have to go to a hard money lender to pay points and fees and all that other kind of crap that that the average guy has to pay.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, so it's the same as cash from the seller standpoint, you're paying cash for it.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just I just would use his money and just move it around and he's happy, you know.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, you know, if you can find deals like that, that's that's that's a good way to do it too, you know.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that those like those bigger investment groups, like a put them in like the alternative investment investment portfolios, right?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_04: Where they're hedging you know wealthier folks' cash, pulling it all together, and they're trying to get that return and they gotta keep that machine going.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_04: But it's better than the market.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_06: They there's some it's five percent of somebody's portfolio to have an ownership interest in that.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_04: That's right, and they're getting 12%, 13% of their return.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_04: And but there's real estate and assets backing that up.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_04: So you you're you're minimizing risk along the same way.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, you know, yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_04: That stuff's going on all the time.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_04: I think that's what a lot of people don't understand.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_04: Like, you know, it's interesting, Johnny, when you were talking earlier about communication, and and you know, and you mentioned something about that somebody gets in this business and they think it's going to be simple or easy.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_04: It's actually, I don't know that there is a business like that on the planet, but especially in your realm.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_04: No, like to when you know, everybody thinks, oh, I can buy and flip this house.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_04: I'm handy, you know, I know how to fix some electrical, or I know how to do tile, you know, or whatever.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_04: And that ain't nothing in the business part.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_04: That's like an aspect of it.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_04: It's really about some of the things you're saying, that communication standards, you know, your your you know, your margin calculations, you know, knowing what to pay.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, knowing who to go to.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, big deal.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_04: Transparency.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: What you're you know, what you just described too, it's like that's a hobby.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right?
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a hobby because you do it all yourself, right?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: You can't, I can't, I can't make any money doing this if I'm I I mean, that's not scalable, yeah.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I did at the beginning, I didn't do everything, but I used to do the demo and stuff like that.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not really Saturday, it was a long weekend, and I had some time.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: So one of my guys was working on Saturday, and I I went to the family member's house and I did some plumbing.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I but I stood up and it we don't have basement server.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: This house has a basement, so I stood there and I I changed like a stack.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: It was pretty easy with my guy.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't do much, I was only there for a little bit of time.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: But I called her up and I says, Hey, cousin, don't you dare tell anybody I did plumbing for you because everybody wants me to do, I haven't done plumbing in years, but you know, people always want you to do free plumbing, right?
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: That was the joke.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyways, it's like you know, I could do it, but afterwards, I was like, Oh hell man, I went and jumped in my buddy's pool afterwards.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, this, you know, I that was like a hot that was like a favor, so to speak, right?
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: To kind of get it done.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: But it's like, yeah, I used to do a lot of stuff myself, demo and all that other kind of stuff, but but I have that background and I kind of like doing it, but you won't make any money.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like you gotta run the business, and that's you know, that's where at right now is like you gotta like you gotta treat this thing like a business.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it is hard.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna sit here.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is not this is this isn't you know, you get a lot of no's.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean you you're caught you get more no's than yeses, you know.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're not gonna get no, you're in the you're in the wrong business here because you're gonna get you're gonna get depends on where you what your closing ratios are and stuff like that, and what kind of leads you have coming in, but you know, you're gonna you're gonna probably get 20 no's to a yes, you know, and uh sure a lot of people get way higher than that.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_06: So so what kind of money, what percentage of your revenue do you have to spend on marketing to keep this lead machine coming in?
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_06: Curious.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_06: I love it.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_04: That's a that's a genuine answer, though.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: It is, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_06: See, yeah, Eric and I would say though, that's one reason you're successful, yeah.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_06: Whereas a lot of people would never spend that, okay?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, they don't have the deal flow, they don't get all those possibilities, and the numbers just don't work out, yeah.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and here in Los Angeles, it's like it's crazy because they have big, big, you know, there's guys on uh on every not there's one company on Billboard TV, everywhere, right?
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: And they're they're spending two million dollars a month in marketing.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: And their margins are only like you know, a lot small.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what that what they what their profit margin is.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody kind of told me, but I don't want to say because I don't know if it's true or not.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, they're huge.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, and I got a call from this lady, it was a referral from an old friend that got out of the business.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: He retired, and and this lady was kind of in the business, so she was fishing for a mom.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: She says, Yeah, I called those guys, and you know, they gave me a price, and and um, uh, you know, um, and they just strictly wholesale.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: And she's like, I well, what she wouldn't tell me what it was, I guess she's holding it, you know.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, you know, so I kind of beat it out of her a little bit, but it was like, she's like, Well, I'd rather talk to someone like you because you know you you have less, you you have like less uh uh overhead and you could probably pay more.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: I says, That's not true.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: I says, We're all about the same, except they just do it a higher volume back to the volume thing.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, yeah, I I don't you got a tenant in this house, it's a condo which aren't moving, and you got in LA, you know, if you got the wrong tenant, the person there, you might have to pay 25 grand to move.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is not where you guys are from.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is, you know, there's there's you know, I'm not gonna get into the politics of things, but you know what California's like, right?
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, the tenants have a lot more rights than the landlords do, you know.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like imagine that you have to pay someone 25 grand to leave leave a leave a a property that they don't even pay rent on that that that they're that that they're subleasing that they're not supposed to be subleasing.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think where you guys are from, they'll probably just show up in three days and kick your ass out, right?
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, this is California, you know.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_06: So it's it's it's it is a lot more landlord-friendly here.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_06: There's no doubt about it.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it's much, much more landlord-friendly.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_06: Not as Arkansan as we'd like for it to be.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_06: But you know, I'll tell you, commercial real estate.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_06: Do you ever done any commercial?
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: No, but as a plumber, I I that's all I did, so I I'm a familiar with it in a way.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like I that's I did two housing, you know.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_06: I I tell you what, the the laws uh as it relates to commercial are mine by I mean, you talk about the landlord having all the cards.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_06: It's like they don't pay the rent here.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_06: We just come in and padlock the doors.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_06: We own everything in there, we even own the cash in the cash register.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I'm serious.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, if they don't the cash and the cash register, we own everything, everything that's in there, it's ours.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_06: Seriously, longer in California.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think they give them a little bit of time, but it ultimately what they make you do here.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: You can pad off the door, but you have to give them time to get their stuff out, or you have to put it in the storage.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_06: See, they didn't have to do that.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you guys are you're not gonna want to get into it, man.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: What happens right now?
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, a little jealous of us anymore, John.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, but we don't have your weather, John.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's right.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_05: That's fair.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_05: We don't have your weather.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's called the weather tax, guys.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I tell people.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_05: It is.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_06: I it's all there is to it.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: But it's funny, it's hot as hell.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's humid here right now.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: I live by the ocean, and like I live about like I'd be a quarter mile from the ocean, and whatever he did in my house like eight years ago, I put air in there.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: And because you just because you just did it, it was you know something to do.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: I've had the air on.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: I never I mean, I used to have an ocean breeze coming through.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's humid, it is freaking humid.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the Midwest humid.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: I it's not as bad as what you guys deal with, but it's like, yeah, we've we're kind of experiencing this tropical stuff right now, and it's kind of it rained on Sunday, it poured on Sunday.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_06: Pour that's good.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_06: Well, you need it.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_06: You guys need the water bad.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it just goes down the street and into the ocean, they don't capture any of it.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's funny.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: It just all goes back to the ocean.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_04: So anyway, you it's funny because you said you had the air on.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_04: Like, you won't catch anybody around here not having air on in the summertime.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_04: Like it, like it's a uh it's it's a oh I know, I've been there, yeah.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I shot off at eight o'clock last night because it was like, you know, it's like, oh wow, it's getting cold in here, you know.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_02: But lots of weather, right?
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it is.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's I mean, I can look outside right now, the sun's shining, and it's a it's a I guess if you want to go to the beach, it'd be a good beach day.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have that, you know, I'm not I'm not 15 anymore.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: I could do that, but you know, I gotta work.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, so so so John, like uh you know, one of the things that we hear from from our audience is like you know, founders that are trying to scale up, right, their business.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_04: Have you uh have you experienced anything that where like when you had to make some pretty key decisions uh you know about scaling up and how you adjusted as the founder or as the the primary person in the business?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm kinda it's interesting, we're in that position again, because we're looking to hire a salesperson right now.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: And we're trying to and I don't like that word scale anymore because it seems like always got me in the most trouble.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: That just makes my brain just want to go crazy.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we're trying to rank back up a little bit.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same word, right?
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: But you guys understand it.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, there's so many challenges in all this stuff.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: So we're at a point right now where Ricky's doing all the sales and he's busy and he's not, it's just hard for him to sit at his desk all day.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: And and get to all the calls.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: So now we're interviewing people, and and we got a headhunter looking for somebody.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: We talked to a guy yesterday, wasn't a good fit.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: But we know, tell you what, that's interesting.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: We know what's a good fit now and what's not a good fit.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, just by interviewing the guy and some of the things that he said, it's like, wow, we've experienced this in the past.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's a hard no, let's wait for the next person.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: Where before you probably would have hired the guy because you just need somebody, right?
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, when you're scaling, uh and in the story of the the tires, that was the scale moment where we we were trying to, we were doing really good then.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: We wanted to do more.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and it and and you you put your foot on the gas when maybe we should have had our kind of maybe we should have been had our foot on the brake a little bit.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm very, very, very uh uh when we're trying to when we're trying to go back to that word scale right now, we're trying to do it methodically and and and and do it slow down a little bit to make sure that we're gonna get the right hire.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: When we get to the right hire, we want to make sure that we make sure that we have the right marketing going out, that we're that we're just not trying to go too big too fast, right?
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's uh trying to go too big too fast, it is you end up blowing up from my experiences.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_04: I've I've been through I've loved when you first answer that question, like you say ramp up instead of scale, because when you say scale, your mind starts like you literally start thinking, calculating like year, two years, five years, ten years down the road, and you can see it as an entrepreneur, and you start kind of puzzle piecing this, like uh you know, your your journey to that, and it makes you whereas really you just need to look at the very next step, is why I think what you meant by ramp up, like you need to increase a little bit, take a start.
• 46:01
  unknown: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting because when you said the spreadsheets and all that, I'm I'm I fell for that.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I had every spreadsheet in the world, this is what you're gonna do.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: The next thing you know, it's like it never worked out, right?
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, exactly.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, from my I've been in every mastermind in the world in this business.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, you know, like back to the 25% on the marketing, it's like you need to buy, spend this much on you need to spend this much on marketing to get this many leads, to get this many deals, you know, this many leads to get this many offers to get this many contracts.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know how many times that works out?
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: Zero, at least for me.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's like so I have this coach, Dr.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Jeff Spencer.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: He's awesome, he's a great guy, and I got this chart on the wall.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, when you're in the survivor mode, you're like chasing dreams, you're like full court press.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm reading from his thing, cover all bases, you're hyper-focused, and you're using individual hacks.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: You're in the survivor mode, right?
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm trying to stay out of the survivor mode because you're trying to survive, right?
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: But he he has what they call like he has what he calls a champion's mind, full potential.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: You're trying to get to you're answering callings, you're you have a soft offense, but this is the biggest thing is that you do one to two things, and that's my biggest thing now.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's like even in parenting, I'm like, what my wife and I talked about this this morning, but what are the one to two things we could do right now with with with uh with we go to this all the time.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: So what when it comes back to the business right now and trying to ramp up, what are the one to two things that we could do right now that's gonna help us the most?
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that's gonna be hire a really good salesperson that that that is gonna be a really good fit for us.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: And and we we're not gonna settle, we're gonna make sure that we get the right person, plug them in, and then the next thing is gonna do, we're gonna start giving them leads to ramp up the to ramp up the the the pipeline, the capacity.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: Stay with them to to uh they need like 20 20 leads a week.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna buy them or get 20 leads a week and have them work those and then keep adding 20 leads a week, and then probably about a month, it might take them a month to ramp up to start getting deals, and then hopefully it will become more steady after that.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: But it's gonna take some time for them to get those deals built in the pipeline.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: Plus, the stuff that's coming in already from our website.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, there'll there'll be some we can throw them a few bones in there stuff that's that's that's some sometimes the website leads are kind of hot, so there might be some deals in there if you answer the phone and you follow self process.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, so I just say the one to two things is the biggest thing for me now.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I'm not trying to get get way ahead of things and and and think about you know way down the road right now because just don't know what's gonna happen, you know.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Plus the economy is so weird.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not I never use the economy for excuse, but I mean you know, there's bombs going off everywhere, and there's you know, the you know, who knows?
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even get into that.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't follow it.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_06: There's a lot, a lot of uncertainty, one could say, and yeah, I think you gotta you gotta factor that in.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_06: Never it's never certain, no.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_06: Certainty is a myth, right?
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_06: We all know that.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, but there's times it seems like it's there's even more uncertainty, right?
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_06: And yeah, right, yeah.
• 48:57
  unknown: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's like there's nothing, nothing's guaranteed, that's for sure.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, but I love the discussion on that, John.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_04: I appreciate you sharing it.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_04: Because, man, I'll tell you, like for our listeners, like I had a guy the other day, by the way, you know, only we got a couple minutes, we gotta shut up, uh, shut it down.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_04: But sitting at the coffee shop, John, right?
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm and I'm just working on my computer, and a guy walks up to me and he's like, hey, and he introduced himself.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_04: He goes, You're Eric, right?
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_04: And he goes, You have Big Talk.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, Yeah.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_04: And he's like, Man, I'm an entrepreneur here in town.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_04: He's I can't remember what business he said he had.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_04: He goes, but I'll listen to your show every time.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, man, that's good.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_04: I'm glad to hear that it's you know, that you're enjoying it.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_04: And he's like, what I really like about it is that it's not this theoretical hype stuff.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_04: Like, you guys are talking about things that I, as a founder and entrepreneur, as an entrepreneur, let's not say founder, am experiencing in my business.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_04: Too, but it goes to your point, John, about everyone's being shown like there's some sort of mathematical formula to success.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_04: And there's not.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_04: I am with you.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_04: I have like a 0% threat rate show so far of trying of reading, I could I could read an entire book about something, write it all down in an outline, freaking talk to myself in the mirror every day, and then practice it, and it does yields nothing.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_04: But I can say, to your point about the one or two things, when you really settle down and you think, what is it that I need to do this week?
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_04: The one or two things, and what are the most important things?
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_06: That's what I always say.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_06: Those are the things you got to get done.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_06: And then you'll have a good day.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_06: If you don't deal with those important things first, you'll you can rationalize and do 12 not that important things.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_06: Well, it's not satisfying, and you don't advance your business.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_04: And I do agree with, and we don't get, you know, but Cubby's principles, the quadrant one, eight, uh one, two, three, and four.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_04: That's common sense.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it is.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_04: Like, but the the important things are not always the urgent things.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_04: And that's the sneaky one that I found, John.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_04: Like, whenever I have, and I've been practicing.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_06: It's no true.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_06: The urgent always it it's it comes in, it just keeps side sidelining your importance.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_04: It does.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_04: I it's what I've been working on lately is one-on-one meetings with my leadership team that are not urgent because you could go months and never have one and you don't see any impact, but they're right.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_04: Because, like, but I mean, but in every case and every business, every day, every situation, every economical environment, those important things move on.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and your job as an entrepreneur is to be the grounded one to think about what is it that is important.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what's interesting too, is you guys like you brought up was like the urgency.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: If you jump on the urgency right away, you know, uh you generally acting from fear, and that's your worst place to come from, right?
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: I know every time I made a bad decision, it was from because I was fearful instead of being courageous, right?
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_06: Sounds true.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like sometimes now I have to, you know, I have it on my wall too.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's like slow down.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that it's funny, it's other things that I you know, like you know, keep showing up, slow down, and take the next small step.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's something else.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_04: That's good stuff, right?
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, yeah, and I have to tell myself slow down a lot.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like because I you can see I can get going, man, I'm ready to go.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_01: But it's like it just gets me in trouble.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: I start, yeah, I start making, you know, even with my wife, right?
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you guys don't be like my wife, I gotta be very careful on what I say to her.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: She's great, you know.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_04: But ladies, the ladies are good at training us to slow down a little bit.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, stop.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_04: Mount to 10.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_06: Do not react, gentlemen.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_04: Do not react.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_04: Chill out, dude.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_04: All right, so hey, John, we gotta we gotta go, but before we do, any last words for the audience, like anything that they can do to connect with you, or anything that you want to let them know about yourself and what you have going on, that'd be helpful.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, and and and thanks.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: This has been great.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: I you know, for your audience, I keep I'm gonna start listening to you guys.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: You guys are real, man.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: You guys are you guys are breaking it down and to people the way it really is.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: You guys aren't selling anything, you know, you're not like selling the dream here.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: You guys are just talking about like this is this this is this is not easy.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna say that.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to start flipping houses, I'll be the first guy to tell you it's not easy.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of information out there, you can learn it and go for it, man.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a smart guy, just do it.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: But but make sure that you, you know, make sure that you you get with the right people and and and be realistic about it.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: It takes time to build a business.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, if you want to reach out to me, uh, you know, I have a website, johnmedina buys houses.com.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh even I'll give you my email, John at John Medina Buyshouses.com.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little long, but yeah, that's uh Facebook, Instagram, and all that other kind of stuff I'm on.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I'm anybody wants to reach out.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to do some deals with people too.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: They have something awesome.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_06: Awesome.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_06: Hey, we really appreciate your being on the show, John.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_04: It's good for the West Coast to connect with the central US, man.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it's always right.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, oh yeah, for sure, man.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: You guys, yeah, I I I you know, you I think you guys got the secret out there.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: Over here, it's all crazy, you know.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_06: I don't know about that.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot slower over there, it seems like, you know.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_06: We just talk slower, yeah.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, yeah, which is what I'm you know, I I like that.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_06: So this is Walmart country we're in.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_06: It's it's pretty crazy out here, truthfully.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_04: It's definitely changing a lot really fast.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_04: It's probably like yeah, you know, like with I mean, my concern is is that it is like LA about you know 80 years ago or something.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_06: New Dallas, yeah.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_06: Like DFW in 1985.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's a little ski.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um the Californians are leaving to yeah, they're coming.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, they're coming here.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but there's no, but there's no, but there's no there's still no housing here for people to live in.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it's funny.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you know, people and I just read something yesterday that the job market airs through the roof.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's plenty of jobs around here, but it's just so expensive to live, right?
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we that's another episode.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: So but thanks you guys.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you guys.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, thanks, thanks, John.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_04: We really appreciate you, man.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_04: It's been fun, it's been a lot of fun.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_04: Have a great rest of the day and week, John.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_04: And this has been another fabulous, fantastic episode of Big Talk about small business.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_06: Thank you.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for tuning into this episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to head over to our website, www.bigtalkaboutsmallbusiness.com, and click on the Ask the Host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_00: Stay connected with us on LinkedIn at Big Talk About Small Business.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: And be sure to head over to our website to read articles, brought episodes, and ask questions about upcoming shows.