Ep 180 - Our Journey Episode 10 - Acquisitions

Hey, everybody. Flip and Danny here, founders of the Freedom Real estate group family of companies. And welcome to another episode of our podcast, which is called Freedom through passive Income. That's right. Our Journey. Welcome to another episode. And this is part of our 12 part series, our Journey. And this one's called Our Journey. Can I say that again? Acquisitions. This is our acquisitions.

Yes.

And so then. And then there's something special that's gonna happen because now the next two days are the next two live episodes. And then there's something special that's gonna happen soon in the next couple of days, or you're gonna. You'll see. Anyway. But we still have two more episodes in this journey. Oh, sorry. I love it. You're the one titled it. Anyway, so this is our acquisitions episode. And again, we talked about starting out on cruise ships. And then, you know, we went into art auctions. And then you did insurance and mortgage. And then we both went into real estate. And of course we were realtors, which that sucked. And then we went into real estate investing, and we did mortgage assignments, short sales, sub 2, sub 2 reps, seller financing, wholesaling. And then we discovered turnkey. And then we did start a turnkey. You're like, hey, let's start a renovations company. That sounds like fun. You know what? That wasn't fun enough. Let's start a property management company. So. So here we are, still licking our ruins from the property management company. And we had to. Again, our hand was forced. We had to start an acquisitions company.

Yes. So Flip was our acquisitions company. He was the one in charge of buying all the properties. And he and I, we always talk and laugh about the fact that we had this kind of push, pull relationship of he's in charge of getting the properties, I'm in charge of getting the private money. And so he'd be like, danny, I got a lot of properties. You need to go get more money. So I'd be calling people and then I. I would make all those calls, and inevitably I'd be like, flip, I got a lot of money. You need to buy more properties.

And so just to let you know too, that the amount of times that I told her that we needed more money. Ubiquito, Right? And the times that she told me that we need more properties, muy grande. And not only was it her, but also, Tiffany, I'm looking at you, Tiffany, if you're listening, Tiffany, I'm looking at you. Anyway, so both of them would tag, team Flip. We need need more properties. And so I'm like, Flip, we need more properties.

Crap. He had nobody under him. It was Flip's sole responsibility. He was our entire acquisitions department. And so there was a time where you got all of your properties from wholesalers. So he built just great relationships with wholesalers out in the market who was going out and hunting down deals. As soon as they find a deal, they know that new that, and they knew Flip would like it, they would text Flip and say, flip, I've got this deal under contract. Are you interested in it? He would do the evaluation and ultimately buy it.

Now rewind back to the episode. We talked about wholesaling and about one of the things I said in there is that we found the three biggest buyers in Phoenix.

Yes.

So when we got something under contract, we had it sold by the time we drove home, because, well, you knew the three biggest buyers.

Yes.

I've got more money than I knew what to do with, and I'm one of the biggest buyers in this area. And I told. I don't know how many of them. Call me first. I'll buy it. I'm easy to work with. We'll close in two weeks. Just call me first. I still had to call them. Yes, I still had to call them and hunt them down and email them and text them. Do you have anything available? Oh, yeah, I do. Would you like to know? You want me to send them to you? Yes, I would like you to send those to me. I just couldn't believe it. I called the contractor. As knuckleheads, these guys are true knuckleheads. And I just couldn't believe it. And I was. And it just got to a point. Then all of a sudden, hey, we need more properties. And I'm like, hey, do you got any properties? Nope, I don't have any. I'm working on some, though. I'll let you know. Oh, boy. I heard that more than I can possibly tell you. And I called all my guys, and we got nothing. And I'm like, okay, at this point, the well is dry. We need an acquisitions company. We need to start marketing asap. We need to go back to the roots of what we did back in the day, and we just need to start killing it. And we needed an acquisitions company, and we needed it now. And that's when Cash for Ohio Houses was born.

Yes, exactly. Right.

See, we've got. Yeah, that's our logo is right here.

For those of you listening, he's showing.

Our Cash for Ohio Houses baseball cap. And then it's got Cash for Ohio House on the side here. But this is. This is our. That's our acquisitions company. And. And so when we went through a few of them, they're not as much of a character as the. As the. As the renovations people, but close.

The team members that we hired.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're close. Yeah, yeah. But they're not as. As crazy as the innovations people. Yeah.

It was another tough business to build.

Oh, yeah.

And it was just finding properties to buy is not the easiest thing to do in the world. You know, it's. It's. You got to get, you know, that, you know, read a sales book. You got to be willing to take 100 no's or 99 no's to get the one. Yes. That is very much. And many times our acquisitions guys are sitting on the phone getting yelled at or cussed out because, you know, people are upset that we send them a letter to ask if they wanted to sell our house or whatever it is. And, you know, I understand, because there's a lot of people marketing to certain areas and certain types of houses, and people who don't want to sell probably just get irritated and they take it out on our guys. So it's just not one of those positions that if you're not in it and you're not driving and you don't understand the gig and the potential for the money that you can make in that gig, if you're really good at what you do, you can burn out pretty quick. And so that happened with a lot of our team members. There's a lot of burnout. Even though we attracted a lot of great people because we were the end buyer, we're like, you're gonna come work for us. We're the end buyer. You don't have to find a property and figure out who to sell to. You're gonna find the property, you're gonna sell it to us. But it was still. It was a tough build, but now we've got a really, really great team. I would say that two of them are here in house, and the rest are in the Philippines. Right. We've got a lot of people just on the phones, and you're killing it. Yes. Yeah, it's just a really, really amazing acquisition team. We're so, so incredibly proud of them. It's not an eas, and the market recently has been really, really tough to find inventory. So it's just. Yeah, it's been. It's been a roller coaster ride for that. That company as well, just not in the same challenging way as the renovation company and property management.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So a couple things I wanted to point out or touch on that you had said is one of the guys actually that we had working with us at the time, this is a couple years ago, he was getting really down, you know, about not being able to get something under contract. And so all of a sudden, one day, he walks into my office, and he just had a smile from ear to ear. He's like, I got it. I'm like, what? He goes, I found this book and I started reading it last night, and, man, this thing is so amazing. I'm like, what's it called? He goes, just go for the no. Or go for the no. It's one of those, too. He just loved the book. So of course we brought it, put it in the office, and so that helped him out, because you get a lot of no's.

Yes.

And then the other thing I'll remember, we talk about the team in the Philippines, and these guys are amazing. And I remember the first day that we met Francisco, because his name is Cheese. That's how it goes. And it's C H I Z, not.

Yeah. The normal. Yeah.

And I remember, you know, when he first came on, and I'm just like, you know, I had no idea what his. What his level was.

Yeah.

And it's a good thing that I had no idea what his level is, because he's amazing.

He's now, like, the supervisor of the entire Cash Flow offices.

In the Philippines.

Yeah. In the Philippines. Yeah. Yeah.

He's even the supervisor. Supervisor. The people here in the States. That's amazing. And now we even have a vice president of acquisitions. That's pretty impressive.

Yeah. Yeah. Ghosty.

So, all right, so the pros, of course, we've got more control.

Yep, Yep. And I put for the other pro that we leave you.

Oh, man.

Because I know how stressful it was for you to be manning this for this, like, the entire company for one person and you to be. And me and Tiffany always going, flip, flip, flip, flip. Me especially because I would be pretty hard on you. And I. I'm sorry.

Yeah. Well, now I'm. Now I'm the old guy. So now back in my day, I did all the work myself, and you guys only bought how many properties? I did it by myself, and I did twice that. Get off my lawn. So. But the cons, building another company again, that increased overhead. Yet another company we're throwing in there, and people at this point are laughing at us because we're building another company.

Yes. Yeah. They're like, you're crazy. Our pocketbooks going. I know, we're crazy.

But again, our hand was forced.

Yes.

We had to.

Yeah. In order to keep the other ones going. That we, you know, put our sweat and tears into. And literal tears into. And the team. Right. You can't let down the team. When you're somebody who takes the responsibility of employing other people and paying them well, that takes it to a whole new level. You do not let them down. And they become priority over you and your sanity.

Oh, and I meant to tell you that because I talked about Cheese earlier.

Yeah.

Because Cash for Ohio Houses is the name of the company, but we call it C4. Oh.

Yep.

That's. That's our lingo here in the office. And so I always used to tease them and say. And say that cheese put the C and C4.

Oh, yes. He likes it.

It's not. It's not. I'm not teasing.

I'm not teasing.

He is the heart and soul.

I swear he is. All right, so we've got our five. Are you ready?

Yes.

Risk tolerance. Risk.

Not as bad as the other companies.

Agree.

They're still a little. But not as bad.

Yep. Time availability.

24 7.

Yep. Knowledge.

Yeah. Real estate knowledge.

Yep. Inner circle.

Not. Not as. Not so bad.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah. Not so bad. Access to capital just to run the company.

Yeah.

Well, because they're. They don't have to buy anything.

Yeah.

They just have to get it under contract. And actually, there's really not much. There wasn't. There wasn't too much overhead. There is, but it wasn't too bad because, you know, we were paying them based upon what they're.

Yeah.

On their. On what they did.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've changed that structure a little bit.

Yeah, we have now, but.

Yeah, agreed. You can. You can structure things based on where you're at in the stage of your company. And I think that's an important lesson, you know, to always learn that where you're at, just create the win. Win whatever's going to work for you as you're building and as you're growing. Every company, we have done that way, and we only hired somebody when we could afford to, knowing even if we were going to have to lose some money in order to afford to bring on that person. So just be very strategic about how you build. So I'm super excited. So that's our acquisitions episode. That was company number four that we built because it was Freedom, the turnkey.

Company, then renovations, then property Management Realty Group.

Oh, this was five yeah, yeah. The brokerage is in there. So this is number five that we built. Okay. So you've heard the story of how we built these first five companies and why, what the pros and cons were. And then we went through the five things that we say, factor these into your decisions so that we can help you take you on our journey from the very start to where we're going to take you in these last few episodes so that you can not have to experience everything we had to and you can start making some decisions of. Okay, I like what they said here. I didn't like what they said here. I think I want to explore this area. And once you can answer that question, we're going to start taking each and every one of you down a certain path to help you achieve the goals or learn more about that particular investment opportunity that you want to be involved in. So I'm super excited. And so the next two episodes are live episodes. So we've got a surprise coming, right?

Yeah. Yep. But then our next episode in our journey.

Yep. Our last two episodes, it's going to start on Saturdays. Our episode 11 and Sunday is episode 12, and that's going to finalize this journey. Thank you for enduring some longer episodes than normal, but we've enjoyed kind of taking you from the very beginning all the way here. And we are grateful for the fact that a Facebook, you know, kind of post brought this idea to light because it gave us 12 fun episodes to do.

That's right. But make sure you're heading on over to our website, freedomcapitalinvestments.com to join our investor club and I don't know, maybe we'll have the swag on there. Hopefully. Hopefully soon.

Oh, yes.

Anyway, but make sure you're hitting the heart button, the bells and the whistles and the reviews and whatever and the like button because you like this series. There we go. But we like to end all our episodes with invest smart, Live happy.

Bye, everybody.

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