Bird Dog vs. Wholesaler: What’s the Real Difference?
This is a YouTube video titled "Bird Dog vs. Wholesaler: What’s the Real Difference?" created in July 2025. The content features a detailed monologue by a speaker named Trevon explaining the distinctions between bird doggers and wholesalers in real estate investing. The speaker uses analogies from basketball and everyday examples like Walmart and Instacart to clarify roles and responsibilities in wholesaling. The video is educational, aimed at teaching viewers about wholesaling strategies, deal flow, and investment concepts. There are multiple other speakers who interject briefly, but the main content is a single speaker's instructional talk.
Lets jump into the difference between a bird dogger and a wholesaler.
Okay?
A wholesaler, the first thing you need to understand is the wholesaler is the person who receives the first contract. I need you to remember that the wholesaler is wholesaling. Guess what? The bird dog is also wholesaling. But there's one massive difference between the two. The two people. Shaquille o', Neal, when he was playing with Kobe. Would it be better for Shaquille o', Neal, Neil to bring the basketball down the court or Kobe? Okay, interesting. But they're both playing basketball, right? Okay. So even though the bird dogger and the wholesaler are both wholesaling properties, the difference is the position that they play on that court. The wholesaler is the one that goes and gets the contract first. Meaning they are communicating, negotiating, following up. They are doing all the hardest parts of the job. That's where I started. I started as a wholesaler direct. I did not do a deal on market for six years of my career. I was all off market. I was in three living rooms a day, okay? Meaning people would call me, hey, I saw your postcard. Would you come and buy my house? Absolutely. When can we meet? And that is why I drive a Prius 13 years ago. Well, the main reason I drive a Prius is because I as a contractor, I drove around town all the time. But I was like, oh, this is great. I get three appointments, appointments that are all over town. And I was spending money to get in people's living room and I would buy their house at a deep discount and I would then wholesale it to my buyers and I'd make $20,000 per house. My average month was like $100,000. My costs were about 40 grand. And I would walk home with about 700 grand a year. Just as a solo operator back 13 years ago, okay, I was direct to seller. Okay, that's off market, direct to seller. And I was the one. The contract, like I literally went into the living room, presented the paperwork and I helped them walk through the contract. That is a wholesaler, okay? We are the ones that are sending out the contracts to the agent or to the seller. Wholesalers do both, both on market and off market.
Okay?
A bird dog never communicates with the seller and never communicates with the agent. Their deal comes from the wholesaler. So think about this. Walmart sells egg, okay? So they're a wholesaler of eggs, okay? They don't produce eggs. They don't go make eggs. They wholesale them.
Make sense?
So Walmart's a Wholesaler, you buy eggs. Correct. All right. Have you ever bought anything on Instacart? Instacart is a bird dog.
Okay.
They're the go between, between the wholesaler and the buyer. Let's say the buyer's like, dude, I'm too busy to go to Walmart. I do not have time to talk to a wholesaler and see what inventory they have right now. I'm so busy on my project, I'm just going text my bird dog. Hey, do you have any deals you can find me? That's Instacart. Instacart is the bird dog. Walmart is wholesale. Does this, is this starting to make a little bit of sense? Okay, so if somebody says, I'm a wholesaler, could they be saying I'm a bird dog and I go direct to seller? Yeah, it's like saying I'm a basketball player. You go, okay, cool. You play basketball? What position do you play? So like somebody goes, I'm a wholesaler. Awesome. What do you do? Like, where are you getting your deals? Well, I don't do business unless the seller and I both win. I'm not going into a seller's house, giving them a fake number, thinking I'm going to be able to potentially wholesale this deal. I go in knowing that this is a good price for both you and me and I will fulfill my obligation to you. That is a good wholesaler. The bad wholesalers are the ones that never pay for mentorship. They never learn how to do it. They're just on YouTube and they think anybody trying to sell a course is a scam artist. And so they're in their mom's basement, okay, and they're sending out offers to sellers left and right, locking up contracts, going, well, if I lock up 10 contracts with sellers, at least one of them is going to sell. Think about what they just did. They went, they got 10 sellers to commit to selling their house. What happens when the seller commits to selling their house? They start stop marketing it to anybody else.
Right.
Think about a guy going, alright, I'm going to go off market, find me 10 girls, simultaneously date all 10 of them, but not tell them that I'm doing it and I'll see which one I like and I'm going to marry. Is that good or bad? If I go and take a girl on a date, I'm intentionally taking her on a date because I intend to. I'm looking for marriage. I also won't lead her along. I will only tell her, hey, I'm not, I'm Interested or I'm not interested. And if I am interested, this is what I want out of this relationship. That's what you're doing in the living room of a seller. Hey, I like this house. You're cool. But I can't do anything with you unless we're at this price. If we can't get to this price, it's not a deal for me. I got to walk away. So do I teach people how to wholesale, Trevon? I do. I'm one of the best wholesalers in the country. I have been for 12 years.
Okay?
People ask me to speak at wholesale conferences all the time. You ever seen those signs? We buy ugly houses. So I used to be the Phoenix territory for that company. I was the third most successful in that whole entire company success history. They have 1100 franchises nationwide. I was number three every single year I was there. So when somebody says, I'm a wholesaler, you got to say, okay, what position on the court do you play? Wholesaler is a general term of a basketball player.
Makes sense.
Okay.
A bird dog is at one position. A wholesaler. It could be like, I'm the point guard.
Okay?
The point guard means you're running point. Who would that be in a real estate transaction? That would be the wholesaler who's going into the living room getting the actual contract. The only thing that the bird dog does is the go between. Between the flipper, which would be also called the buyer, the flipper and the wholesaler. Okay, so let's talk about that. What they actually. Do you understand what a wholesaler who wholesales does? Okay, they're either direct to the seller. Those are the guys that make the most money. And if you're direct to agent, it's easier money, but smaller hits.
Okay?
When you grow up in. In the wholesale business, you want to go to the NBA, you're direct to seller. Nobody that's doing direct to agent is in the NBA.
Okay?
You're playing like basketball in China. Like, you're making. But it's unfair. Never be Michael Jordan. You're never going to be Pace Morbi in wholesale. So let's start you out with some direct to agent stuff. So it's a little bit easier. You can dominate. But are you making the same kind of money? Are you getting the same type of a claim and like, whatever? No, it's just easy, right? You didn't want to put. You didn't want to hone your craft. Could Stephon Marbury could have been better? Yeah. Like, let's think if he practiced Like Kobe Bryant.
Right.
Okay, so you understand the difference? Okay, is direct to agent. Cool. Cool. So would I immediately start a newbie in direct to seller wholesale? Do I teach it to my sub two community? Hell, yeah. I'm one of the best people at it. But do I also teach direct to agent? Why would I teach? It is because it's simpler for people that are starting out.
Makes sense.
So when people are like, wait, I'm confused. Like, no, you're not confused. You just haven't paid attention enough. The reason why I'm teaching you direct to agent is so that you always have something to fall back to. But as you graduate in the wholesale industry. By the way, am I a wholesaler? Diamond investor. Okay, are wholesalers investors? No. They do not own property. They do not flip property. They do not actually, like, invest in anything. Real estate. What are they doing? They're finding people, getting them under contract and selling the contract. You want to know how it would work in a camera world? Check this out. Somebody calls you up, Trevon, and they go, hey, I know that you do videography, and I'm getting married in a couple weeks. Can you do this video shoot for me? But you're tied up on another shoot that weekend. You would normally just say, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm booked up that weekend.
Right.
Okay, but couldn't you just go to another camera guy? You could alley oop it and charge $1000 up to him on top of what you're charging.
Right.
Okay, you just hold. You just flip the contract. That's called wholesaling. That's literally all you do. Do you see why people want to learn from me? Because I know how to just apply it directly to you. Okay, so do people come to me all the time, go, I have a deal, and then I end up wholesaling it? Yes. Am I going out trying wholesale deals anymore? No, that's not where. That's not where wealth is make. You can be rich from wholesale. You get wealthy from where we're going right now, 160 units purchase for 20 million. In five years, I'll sell it for 30 million. But along the way, I'm taking home $53,000 a month every month. That is wealth, right? That's not happening. Guess what? The wholesaler who brought it to us made 100 grand. Hey, congratulations, bro. Got 100 grand. I'll make 10 million. The person who buys it from me is usually a hedge that has so much money. So, like, do you know anybody that lives on a pension or anything like that retired from the military. A lot of people, their parents will retire at 65 and get a pension from a company. You know how that works, Right? Right.
Okay.
Your dad have a pension. Okay, so Scott's dad got a pension. How does Scott's dad have a pension? Like, where does that money come from? Let's say the state of Arizona has firefighters. How does the state of Arizona afford to pay for firefighters and police officers? Pensions. They take the. And they invest it in, like, my stuff, okay? All the pension money that's gonna go to the firefighters, the school teachers, the everybody that works for the state, they're gonna get a pension. That money has to be in an account. Would it be smart for them to just keep that money there getting eaten up by inflation? Okay, so here's what they do. They go to a company like Blackrock. You ever heard of BlackRock? They give their money to BlackRock at like 6%. Following me. BlackRock goes and buys my real estate for 9% and they make a 3% arbit. So that BlackRock is not overly concerned with making 20% like I am. BlackRock is willing to make less money because I've already stabilized the asset. I bought an asset that's old. I renovated it, I raised the rents because now I have a cleaned up, nice renovated property. And I now am making a lot of money on this property. And I decide, hey, I'm a small fish. I am a small fish compared to, like, people in the world. To a wholesaler, I'm a freaking blue whale, okay? But to Blackrock, I'm a guppy. They don't even know I'm there.
Right?
So I will sell that property to a Blackrock. Once my tenants are all, like, the rents are all raised, the renovations are all the way done. I stabilize the asset.
Does that make sense?
So does Blackrock, who only makes 3%. Like, arbitrage. Do they want to go and do big renovations and raise rents or they want something that's already turnkey? Okay, so do you see who my buyer is? You see all there's levels to all this stuff?
Right?
And so where people go, oh, I want to get into RV parks. I want to get into multifamily, like, okay, cool, me too. But like, where are you right now? What a bird dog does is a bird dog finds people who already have deals.
Make sense.
Instacart doesn't go to the farmer with the eggs. Instacart goes to Walmart, who's already worked out that negotiation with the farmer. Everybody's making money off of each other. Instacart saves me a tremend amount of time. I am happy to pay the instacart fee to avoid all the time of going to Costco and smelling people's farts as I go through the aisle. I'm happy to pay the $60 Instacart fee to avoid all the bullsh t. Okay, the bird dog is the instacarter, right? Walmart, buyer of eggs, bird dog, instacart. Have you ever had any friends that you've stopped talking to not because you don't love them, but because you got busy in life? Have you ever had a friend that is the go between that goes, hey, let's all get together. That's a bird dog. Okay, because you guys stopped communicating for I have too many deals. I don't currently have a deal right now. Then a bird dog pops up and goes, hey, guys, we should get the band back together. The bird dog's like, I don't need to be the main friend, but I can always get the party back together. I will go out of buying houses every month. I will stop buying houses where even if you sent me the greatest deal on the planet, I will say no to you. But you know what I will do? I'll say, hey, Trevon, I have too many deals. Do you mind if I just bird dog this to somebody else? I'll alley up it. And so that's essentially what's happening is think about in a videographer standpoint is that the videographer that gets the call from the bride says, I'm too busy. Well, he could say, I'm too busy. I don't want to do the thing, Sorry, go find somebody else. But if he's a smart businessman, he alley oops it for a thousand. And then what happens if that person's like, I'm too busy. They could say, sorry, Trevon, I can't help you, or, hey, I know a guy, and they mark it up 500. How many times could that happen? Like 10 times? It could, right? I'm sure it happens. Okay, so this is happening everywhere. Why is real estate any different? I mean, think about all the houses that we pass on a daily basis there. There's literally 17 million landlords in the United States. That's 17 million of me. You think there's any shortage of deal flow in this country? No, it's just whether you can open your eyes to the opportunity or not.
