How Wholesale Real Estate Made Me a Millionaire (My Story)

This is not going to be another one of how I made my first million story. This is about how I made it, lost it all, rebuilt it, and then discovered the one thing that completely changed my business. And it is not what you would think. You see, most wholesalers who are doing $20K per month to $30K per month think they got all of this figured out. And that's exactly where I was. Multiple 6-figure months, 6-figure deals, and then boom, I was close to going bankrupt because I had 15 properties, nothing was selling, and I knew that I had to make a change. And here's the crazy part. During that rock bottom moment, it led me to take control over the one of the most important things in my business, which was my inbound I was able to cut my cost per contract by over 50% and reduce my marketing spend and still hit the same revenue. And the secret, it wasn't working harder, it was learning how to do my own marketing. So if you're an established operator who's making decent money but you feel like you work way too hard not to make the money that you want to make, or maybe you hate your business, this story is for you. So I grew up in a small border town in Mexico in the south of Texas. I was born in the States, but I was raised in Mexico for the first 12 years of my life. And growing up, I had a great childhood. I had great friends, I had all the adventures that a child would want, and I was fortunate that my dad was a great provider. Writer, but growing up in a border town in Mexico, there isn't a lot of opportunity. I was actually pretty average at school, and one of my biggest passions at the time was soccer. So living in Mexico, I was surrounded by a lot of the things that you hear in the news with the cartel and the drug dealers and all the danger, but I was lucky that it never affected us personally or directly. As I was growing up, I never had the direction or self-confidence that I could be great at anything, so I just blended by. And usually people in Mexico start drinking when they're very young, they start doing crazy stuff. But I was fortunate that when I was 12, my mom and my dad separated, and we came to live to the States in a border town in South Texas called McAllen, which is where I live. And I didn't have the best relationship with my dad as I was growing up, and it indirectly pushed me to work harder once I was older. I had to learn English and adjust to the new life here in the States, which was a polar opposite to what I was used to. I found my big first passion when I was a freshman in high school, which was going to the gym and lifting weights. And the way that I came about it was when I was a freshman, I was in the wrestling team, and I remember that I was in a match, and I remember trying my hardest trying to pin the other guy, but I had no strength. And during the match, he accidentally hit me with his head. I started bleeding all over the mat. And feeling that helpless really made me look internally, and I decided to go to the gym and get strong after seeing my older brother get fit. So I figured, hey, I should follow his footsteps. I went all in, and that was my first passion. I was able to go from 130 pounds to 165 pounds within a year, and I became obsessed. You know, I was eating 6 meals a day, I was training every day, I was watching YouTube videos, and I became obsessed by it because it was the first time in my life that I ever experienced some success that had nothing to do with my pedigree or where I came from. It had more all to do with just my own ability to work really hard. And I knew that if I work hard at it, I could achieve my goals that were in my own hands to do. So that became super important. And becoming strong and falling in love with the training really developed my mindset and discipline. And I would pack my meals to school. I did everything by the clock. And it also gave me the confidence that I could work hard on things and get results no matter the situation. And this helped me later on. In the coming years. During high school and college, I got good grades. I got my first job working at the gym in the front desk when I was 16. I would help with memberships, clean the toilets, do all that stuff. And then after that, I went to college and I remember that they wouldn't even hire me as a server. So I was a busboy for a whole year. I worked at Red Lobster and other restaurants until I became a server. But you know, that was kind of like my life for the first 2, 3 years of my life that I was providing, you know, for myself to be able to afford food and stuff, right? And I did manage to finish college in Austin, in with a marketing degree. And looking back, I had like no context on business at all. In fact, I would say that those years were wasted. I could have put that time into getting a real job from the get-go right after high school. But even then, I still graduated with good honors and good grades. But around 2017, which is when I graduated, I still had no idea what I wanted to do. I hadn't applied to any internships or anything or had anything lined up when I graduated. So I decided to move back home. And this is around the time where I started dating my now wife. And I remember feeling so lost and depressed by not having direction. And I went from being in the best shape of my life to not lifting for about 2 years. And within a couple months of moving back home, I got my first real job as a car salesman. And if you know anything about car sales, you know that you pretty much live at the dealership. And I remember the first few days being terrified about cold calling people or answering the phone, and I still managed to do okay. And during this job, I had my first experience of bad management. I remember that no training was provided. They expected you to just go out there and sell a car. And later on, I realized that proper management and boarding and training are key if you're trying to make your employees produce results. So I did average, and then I went to another dealership, and at this dealership things were a little bit better. I managed to sell 8 to 12 cars, and I was making $3,000 to $4,000 a month. I remember that whenever I would get to the dealership, I would feel so hopeless, and I would say to myself, what the heck am I doing here? I knew that I was not supposed to be there, and I would look around the older men that have been doing this for years, and I knew clearly that that was not what I wanted to do. And that drove me into my first taste of entrepreneurship. I hated my job and I was okay, I need to do something else. So I started selling solar. That's my first independent job. So I would get a commission for this company, but it was my first taste of doing outbound and inbound marketing, you know, talking to people and making a little bit more money than I would at, you know, the car dealership. I did that for 2 years and I think the car sales really helped me talking to people and develop my, my sales skills. Also working at the restaurant and talking to multiple personalities, I was able to make over 6 figures doing solar around 2020, 2021. But in 2022, that's when the interest rate was super low and everyone was crushing it with real estate. And I always had an interest in flipping houses. So that will take us into how I got into real estate. So in 2022, I hired my first mentor. I remember that I put that on a credit card and I decided to go into real estate. I quit my solar job and, you know, I was ready to take on the world, excited and committed. And around March of 2022, that's when I bought my first flip and I bought my second one. Like, I'm month after, I raised money to flip the houses. And just as I was in the middle of the projects, the rates started to increase. They went from 2% to 7%. My dad had some health problems that required my attention, and I had a contractor who stole over $40,000 from that house. And as I was going through all of this, you know, the rates were, you know, keep on getting worse. And what I hoped I would sell the house for, the values plummeted around 15 to 20%, which was my profit. And I knew that I needed to get additional income. So during this time, I started direct-to-seller marketing. I remember launching my first SMS campaign in 2022, and which was a couple months after I bought my first flips. And I got a deal where I bought my first house for $70K and I sold it for $150K. So I made like $70K in profit. And as soon as I got that money, I knew that I needed to learn how to do this on a consistent basis and learn how to wholesale. So those first two flips resulted in a loss, you know, I offset it with that new win with that hotel that I did. And like I said, I knew that I needed to scale this further. So I hired my next set of coaches and mentors who taught me how to build systems, how to reverse engineer my marketing so that I could consistent deal flow. And I remember paying around $25K for that coaching, and I made the ROI within 3-4 months of just working with him. And fast forward a year later, that full year wholesaling, I made around $800,000. And while I still had the results, I did a lot of things wrong. I still was not tracking my KPIs. I didn't know how to hire. I remember hiring my first employee, and he quit within like 2-3 weeks because I wasn't doing the onboarding for the training. And I figured out that I was a bottleneck. And even though I knew what I needed to do to transition from hustler to CEO, it was so hard because I was just not doing the stuff. And I see this often hurt a lot of people. A lot of the times we know what we need to do, but we don't do it. It isn't until we experience enough pain that we're finally tired of feeling stuck and finally make a change. And fast forward 2023, 2024, I joined multiple masterminds. I still did pretty well, you know, just a few years into real estate. I honed in my systems, my sales, reverse engineering, you know, with my appointments and the sales process, how to hire, onboard, train, all that stuff, right? But what happened was the market continued to get worse and I continued to buy some flips that turned south, so I kept on losing so much money, but I was still making enough revenue that I could cover the losses. So, you know, the first few years I felt like I was doing this on hard mode because I was just carrying on, on the losses, having to pay the investors back. So I felt like I started on the left foot, and some of those losses I'm still carrying them today. But the turning point, sorry, 2024, I made over 7 figures. But I remember around quarter 4, I had multiple 6-figure months, 6-figure deals, and there was a point in 2024 towards the end of the year where nothing was selling. I think it was around the election time, I had around 15 properties listed and nothing was selling just because of the losses. I didn't set up my budgeting correctly, so I didn't have any cash and I was in a really, really bad spot, which made me reflect and think about how I was running my business. And the current sentiment across investors is that if you get a 3 to 4x return on ad spend, you know, that you're doing pretty well. But I thought, okay, we work way too hard not to make the money that we want to make. And if you account for all the moving parts in real estate, we need to make way more money with less moving parts and simplifying the business. And the I saw it was if sales is already one of the most important components of the business and we don't outsource that to an agency, then why should we outsource our marketing to another agency? So I already used agencies before and I knew that that worked. And whenever I would see the ads, I would say, okay, I know I can make these ads and I know that I can learn this. So that is exactly what I did. The beginning of 2025, I paid someone to teach me how to run Facebook ads. I read the Alex Hormozi $100 Million Leads book, which is right here, and I actually went to the workshop a year ago and I just soaked in as much knowledge as I could. I launched them and went all in into inbound through Facebook, and I was able to drop my cost per contract from $5,000 all the way down to around $1,500 and still making $15,000 to $20,000 per deal. So the ROI on that was crazy, and we were able to save more than $120,000 in marketing this year, and we still made over 7 figures by spending less than $120,000 in marketing this year. So that was crazy, and it completely changed my business. And if I could narrow down best lessons over those 4 years is that if you are not where you want to be, as long as you don't quit and you put in the work, you're going to have success because the blueprint has already been set. You don't have to copy anyone else's business. You have to remember that wholesaling, it's all about how much money you net. And the more that you can simplify it, the easier that you'll become and the more enjoyable you'll have it. So if you're going through a down period, I know that it'll pass because you can beat a lot of people because they quit so easy. And actually learning how to do my marketing completely changed the business. And I started helping other people for free as I got results and I had proof. That's exactly when we made our coaching program, which is called the Average Ads Method. and it is the same system that we still use today to run a 7-figure business. We help other established wholesalers learn how to run inbound Facebook ads and cut their cost per contract by 30 to 50%, and, you know, do 5+ deals a month and get ownership over the system instead of renting it. And many of our clients are making $30K to $50K+ per month on Facebook by spending less than $10,000 in ads. And everything I teach basically comes from my lessons and all the mistakes and the stuff that I wish I would've done. So if you're already doing this, just know that there's a better way. And sometimes I'm often surprised that I had success, especially coming from where where I'm coming from, there's not a lot of opportunity, but I've been blessed that I've been able to be in great rooms, right? I've been to London, to masterminds. I have friends that are making $300,000, $5 million a month, and you get a lot of context into how business works, right? Because in the end, it's about solving a big problem for someone, and if you can do it quicker, better, faster than anyone else, you're going to get results. Despite everything, how real estate is going, although it's down, you can still get good results. And like I said, as long as you don't quit, you're going to crush it. Anyone can have success as long as you put in the work. And like I said, if you're going through that down period, it's going to pass. Just focus on the things that you can control today, and the ones that you can't, just figure out whatever it is to get a quick win. Because I figured out, like, as long as you can get many small wins throughout the day, you're going to feel better about yourself, you're going to be more optimistic. And if you can get some new revenue in, it's going to help you feel way better and still keep on going with the process. But learning how to do my own marketing completely changed my business, and I recommend anyone who's already doing deals to take a look into how they can do it. I have a ton of videos here on the channel kind of walking you through what we do. But yeah, like, in the end, I'm nothing special. I just followed through and stayed consistent, worked hard, and I just want to help you guys as much as I can. So I hope this video was valuable. I actually just became a father, so I'm gonna go and spend some time with my son right now. But with that being said, I'll catch you in the next video. I hope you crush your 2026, and I'll catch you in the next video. Bye-bye.