https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHEPdlzwQkY
Pace Morby talks with contractors Lambros Ballas and Ramon Gonzalez about what kills real estate deals: communication breakdowns, payment disputes, and project delays. They cover how to vet contractors, manage draws, and use technology to keep projects on track.
Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Get Creative. We are here in the sub two offices hanging out with contractors Now. One of the hardest things to ever find in your journey of doing real estate, whether it's fixing and flipping new development, whatever it may be, even handyman services, as you're buying rentals, is going to be a contractor. In fact, you can get a really, really great deal screwed up by hiring the wrong contractor. A bad contractor can make a good deal turn into a bad deal. So today we're going to be talking with two gentlemen that are nationwide contractors. They are not in Alaska. They are not in the. In the Dakotas. They are not in Hawaii. They're in the main metros nationwide. I'm going to say that again because there's always people that say, but what about my state? Not Hawaii, not the Dakotas. That's north and South Dakota and not Alaska. We're so sorry, guys. Tell people to move to your towns and maybe they'll start doing business there, but they're everywhere else. So you guys can utilize these gentlemen, make a decision whether their answers are good enough for you to hire them. And we'll put a link in the description down below for you guys to hire them and get free. You guys do free estimates, right?
Correct.
Amazing. So the gentlemen that are with us today, we've got Lambros Ballas.
Correct.
And we've got Ramon Gonzalez. And you are? Dominican.
Dominican, Yep.
Okay, amazing. All right, so you guys are doing construction all over the country. You guys are obviously working primarily with fix and flippers. Why do you. Why would you think. And I was a contractor for 10 years. So these questions are gonna maybe hurt your feelings, but probably not. Why do you think people hate contractors so much?
You know, I think from initially, from their first point of contact when they're trying to get a quote. Right. They're trying to get a quote and they're saying themselves. Why does this contractor hate giving me a quote so much? It seems like. Right. They abhor it. So it takes them three days or four days just to get it, to get them to go out to see the property. And then another three or four days to receive the quote. That's sometimes six, seven days. That's a deal killer all around. Especially if they're working with a wholesaler.
Right.
So that's kind of an initial. They don't send pictures or videos. We deal with a lot of out of state investors and wholesalers. And one of the challenges they have is not knowing what's going on on their deal. If they're local. That's great. They can get in the car and drive over there. But most of them are not. So then how are they going to know what's going on? The way that we handle that is we do picture and video updates. We use slack and Monday.com, we do Tuesday calls, you know, we do Friday weekly updates. So that, that kind of solves that kind of problem. Not knowing when they're going to be showing up to a job site or not being there for a week. I mean, these are the types of things that people experience. Right. Those are just kind of the initial.
Thoughts outside, I think another big one on top of that. And those are huge. Like just getting an estimates, like.
Oh yeah.
When I first jumped into construction, I realized that if you just pick up your phone, you beat 90% of your competition. Because contractors just don't pick up the phone.
Yeah.
And the reality is, it's because most contractors don't scale past maybe them and like one other person or maybe two other people. And so they're doing the estimates, checking the job sites, doing the payroll, collecting the bills. They're doing everything.
Yeah, right.
And so of course they're running around all day, all day long. They get home to their house at 10 o' clock at night, finally see their kids and they push the estimates that they went measured. Yeah, they keep pushing them off.
Yeah, yeah.
I was in that predicament as well until I hired an estimator. But that is so true. But I think one of the bigger ones on top of all of that is the communication of I'll be done next week, but then they're not done for four more months. It's just like the continual perpetual. I promise I'm gonna be done. I promise I'm gonna do the thing. It's going to get done. And you feel like you're babysitting contractors as well.
Yeah.
Right now when you show up, you do the estimate, you show up. You guys are using technology like Slack Monday, dude, like 95% of contractors are. You're, you can't, they can't even compete with you already.
Yeah, yeah.
Because they communicate only through text.
Yeah, it's true.
They're impossible to get ahold of. So you guys have a pretty sizable team, I imagine.
Yeah, it's a good size. I mean, like our quoting team, for example, all they do is quotes. They're specialized in that they understand. Like our quoting form. When people request a quote, we're asking them what type of investment it is, Is it a Fix and flip. Is it a co living space or a pad split type investment? Is it a multi family? What type of grade of construction materials? We ask them for information. Hey, if you want to include some comps of what you're looking for. So that this way there's always going to be sometimes revisions that have to happen. But at least this way we're a lot closer to. Because every investor might have a different opinion of what they consider rental grade or contractor grade to be.
Okay, so what kind of question should a customer ask a contractor to make sure that they're the right contractor for them?
Well, the first thing I would say is are you licensed and insured and can you provide something to me? A couple references wouldn't hurt. And then check out their Google reviews.
What do you think the same insurance workers come, you know, experience like you say, a lot of contractors, they have all the hats, they have the accounting, they're the salesman, the project manager. So we have to make sure that they know about accounting. Because a lot of subcontractors, they use the money for this house and then they don't have money for the other house and it can be burdened for the client.
Yeah, it becomes the biggest problem I think with clients and contractors is they give the deposit to the contractor, but the contractor is so far behind on his accounting, so he doesn't know where all his money is. And so he's basically collecting new deposits to pay for things that he should have been done with three weeks ago. And then your money basically is gone. It never goes to the actual job. That becomes huge. Right?
Yeah.
And if somebody's licensed, bonded, insured, has workman's comp, which is like there's regular insurance, then there's workman's comp.
Right.
If you have all of those things, serious chances are you're not going to walk away from a job and screw somebody over 40,000 bucks because you can lose your license. Yeah, right, right. And then you lose your license. That means you lose your, your ability to basically do most jobs. Right, right. Because most people won't hire you now. Okay, what other, any other question somebody should ask you guys, hey, I want references. You guys will give me references.
Yeah, of course. And I think another important question is, you know, especially for the first payment, Right. What trades are going to be done with that payment? You know what I mean? How far along should they expect to be? Because obviously most investors are working with hard money. Right. So they have to kind of go and report back to say, hey, this is what I did. With that money, they're gonna go and take pictures and verify. They need to have an understanding of what that's gonna look like for them because that's what's gonna give them peace of mind. Uncertainty for people is confusing.
Yeah.
Them knowing that from the beginning, it creates a real good expectations all around.
Yeah, it's a big deal. I mean, I do a lot of lending for people and they have, in order for them to get a draw or another chunk of money, they have to show us that they've completed certain things to get more money. And their contractors, it takes their contractor a week just to get photos and videos because the contractor doesn't think in systems and the contractor is bothered by saying, well, why do you want me taking photos? Like, don't you want me just spending my time doing the work? Yeah, it's like, well, no, dude, I need you to do the work, but also show me you did the work so I can get you more money so you can do more work.
Yeah, yeah.
You guys have figured that out? It sounds like.
Yeah, yeah.
Cool. Okay. When should I run away from a con a contractor? Like, what are some red flags that a contractor would throw up that you should just walk away from?
Well, I always say kind of from the beginning. Right. If they're, if they're telling you that they're going to come and do a quote and then they're not there that day or something happened, that's number one. I would say Google reviews license and insured anything bad on the bbb. I mean, those are the simple things that anybody can kind of look at. But a lot of times people forget to look at that stuff, you know what I mean? And that would really save you a lot of time in communicating with someone that you probably shouldn't have.
It is, it does seem silly that people don't take the three minutes to go and verify that people actually have a significant amount of Google reviews and also Better Business Bureau and all of those types of things. But I guess people don't know exactly where to look. I don't know. Would it be simply just googling the name of the company?
Yeah, for sure. Like if you Google our company, you see we have nice Google reviews. Obviously I would assume that somebody that was not providing good service, their reviews would not look like that and the consumer or the investor per se would be able to kind of surface that kind of right away.
Right, right, right. Okay, now from the. Let's go to the opposite side. As a contractor, you've dealt with hundreds and hundreds of clients. What do you wish a client understood about your side of the business that they just simply don't understand?
So that's a, that's a really good question. I would say the one thing initially on the investor side specifically, and this goes more towards newer investors, is that they don't always understand that depending on what hard money lender you're using, we actually help our investors facilitate all the administrative work for their hard money lender. We'll actually take our scopes and put it into the specific box that their hard money lender requires. Make it easy for them to try to shave off a couple of days, because that's what happens. But basically, in between each draw, if it's $100,000 rehab and it's five or six draw payments, right. There could be a week added to each time. And they don't necessarily know that. One of the things that we've introduced is we have a program called Kickoff Cash where we'll actually inject through our partners, 25 to $30,000 into a deal to remove any delay in between the drawers. So that this way we're.
Let me fund. Let me fund that.
You can talk about it.
I do that stuff all the time for people.
Oh, really?
Yeah. What I do for people is I actually fund 100% of their purchase and their closing costs, and then they get. I give them their first draw money up front.
Okay.
So like, people walk right into it. Like, let me be your financier on all your stuff.
Like that sounds great.
I will fund all your first draws. My team's quick on the second, third, fourth draws, whatever. I'm sure you have other people you've worked with, but I will do 100% of purchase, closing costs and their first draw.
Yeah.
All up front. So your clients are not in the deal. Literally any money out of their pocket. Yeah.
Nice.
Okay, cool. So I, when I was a contractor, I wish customers understood how significant a change order. Yeah, Change order impacts the ultimate schedule. Like, they think, well, dude, all I did was change the grout color of the shower. It's like, well, no, you didn't. You asked me to go get a grout color that's not available.
Right.
Which now takes two weeks. And if I can't get the grout in in two weeks, then I can't clean the house. And if I can't clean the house, I can't do all my cleanups and my pick and my touch ups and I can't do blah, blah, blah. And I also, as a contractor, Would put my carpet in the last day. Yeah. And like we're putting in ceiling fans, we're putting in everything else and then the carpet comes in. That's how I would operate. And I just got so sick and tired of also paint touch ups. I don't want to send a paint touch up guy until the house is clean.
Yeah.
Literally, I want the house cleaned and I want a guy going through the house knowing that the house has been cleaned, dusted, this, that and the other, and they go do touch ups. A customer thinks, oh, I just changed this one thing. No, you didn't. You created a domino effect which caused a three week delay that now I have to take my crew from your house and go somewhere else. Because you chose a grout color that's not, not on the thing. But you want that. Even when you tell the customer, hey, it's going to take three weeks, you lose the momentum. You lose the momentum.
Right.
And now you have to allocate those people to other jobs.
They need to work every day.
Yeah, right. They need to work every day.
Right.
If they're not working, they're not making money. So it's not like I can just sit there and wait for the grout and, you know, whatever else. They're sequencing things or I wish customers knew that an estimate is also not the gospel because they will change their mind. Like, let's say we open up some walls and now they see the house in a different way. They go, oh, wow, this is bigger than I thought. Maybe we should add another bedroom for the pad split. Maybe we should add a kitchen or maybe we should do this and the other. Okay, great. You're adding extended timeline and you're adding money. That's not me, the contractor, that's you.
That a lot of them don't understand. They're always trying to blame it to the contractors.
Right.
Like also new investors. You, because you come from the contracting world, you understand it. They change orders. Is always happening in construction. Sometimes it can be decision by the, by the client, but sometimes surprised that you didn't know it was there. For example, you remove a drywall and the framing was rotten. You have to remove that.
Right.
So I guess for the best way for us to do that is like trying to communicate the client and, and educating them, you know, because sometimes they don't understand that.
Yeah, 100%. Now the other thing I wish would happen with a customer on that side hiring us is I wish they would understand that the last two weeks of the job are actually the hardest part Right. And that's when all the detail work gets done and all of those types of things. And that at that point, they should not be changing their mind on stuff.
Right.
And so you'd have customers that come in. We're almost at the tail. Tail end of the job, and then they change their mind on what? Can we just paint this one wall an accent color? Hey, can we do an accent thing? I'm like, oh, my gosh. I got five other jobs I got to jump onto. So that was a big one, too. But I would say one of the biggest ones was the timing of the money. They don't understand how important that is for a contractor.
Yeah.
You know, I can't go run a. Go on a car, a road trip from Arizona, California, on an empty tank of gas, and a contractor can't go do all this work on an empty bank balance. And so what happened was, is I would get customers. I used to. Do you guys ever do 203k loan projects?
I think we've done a few.
Okay, so 203k loan project for people that don't know is a homeowner buys a house, and they get a loan from their bank to get the renovation done. But the bank is not a hard money lender, so they don't move fast.
Right, Right.
So the draw is like, 60 days. So I used to do these renovations for homeowners where I would submit my draw, and they wouldn't pay me for 60 days. And I. I'm like, that's not fair to me. Now I'm. Now I'm not your contractor. I'm your contractor and your bank.
Yeah.
And that's not okay.
Yeah.
And on. On top of it, you were negotiating, trying to get my price low, and now you want me to be your bank and be the lowest price. That's not okay. So I stopped doing 200 3K loans because that took up so much of my bandwidth. And you would get customers to go, why aren't you working on the job site today? I'm like, I told you. Yeah, I needed money. Well, pace, the. The bank's taking forever. Can't you just do something?
Yeah.
Can you drive your car on empty gas? No. So that was something I wish customers really understood is the draw schedule. And what you guys do is so important because you're helping make the draw schedule go faster.
Yeah. Yeah.
Which fuels that tank way faster. The car can keep going and moving along a lot faster.
Okay.
Customer calls you up and says, all right, Lambros, I need to know how long is this renovation going to take? Is there a rule of thumb or a guideline that you would give them that is pretty accurate.
So generally what we say, because that's one of our common questions, is every 40 to $50,000 is approximately four to six weeks.
Okay. So I go from $50,000, I'm going to be somewhere around six weeks.
Correct.
I add another $50,000, I'm going to be at 12 weeks.
Correct.
Okay, cool. So it's basically just every 40 to 50 grand is between four and six weeks.
Correct.
Love it. Okay, that's pretty good. Rule of thumb.
Yeah.
My thing, what I did is I used to tell people $1,000 a day, which is about the same. It's kind of roughly the same. So you spend 30 grand, it's a month, you spend 40 grand, we're at six weeks. Yeah, right, yeah. Then when you change your mind, every $2,000, every thousand dollars, you change your mind. It's a two day penalty. It's not just the price, it's also a two day extension. Right, right. And so people really need to understand that, that, that is the rule of thumb. Now what should people be doing when they're making their payments? Like what is a good payment schedule to a contractor? Is it 75% up front?
I think that they should definitely check the Google reviews if they're going to thinking about doing that.
Okay.
But what we usually do is we don't, for us, we don't have the kind of written in stone. You know, we usually, it depends on the size of the rehab. If it's a, let's say it's a decent sized rehab, 80,000 or 100,000, it's probably going to be five payments, maybe six payments and the first payment might be 15%. So usually what we do is we might do the first payment 15%.
So reasonable.
Dude. And then the second payment might be a little larger just so that they feel comfortable that we're kind of, we're actually showing up and doing all the stuff that kind of needs to get done. So for us we kind of get it along the way.
15% up front is perfectly reasonable. I love that. Then you get a draw based on your completion, not on, hey, I need more money.
Right.
Correct.
Like you know that you're, if you're asking for money from your fix and flipper, you know that they have a hard money lender asking for photos.
Correct.
And so you're helping facilitate that. You're not going to ask for money when you don't think you've done the work.
Yeah, for sure.
You know how many people get burned from this exact thing?
I understand. Believe me. We hear it all the time.
You guys probably clean up a lot of people's messes.
We get a lot of business from hard money lenders, especially hard money lenders sometimes where they're just brought it in house because they, it didn't pan out. But yeah, we do. We, we definitely get a lot of that. For sure.
Yeah. When I was a contractor, I would get calls from Flippers. This is what I'm sure this has happened to you guys too. Fix and Flipper would ask me for an estimate. I showed up on time, gave them an estimate within 12 to 24 hours. Pretty quick. Sometimes it was, if it was a weekend, maybe it was two days, whatever. I was more expensive.
Yeah.
And so they went with the guy that took five days to get the estimate and was cheaper.
Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So what do you think happens?
They get burned.
They get burned. And who do they call? Me. And I, I, I'd say 20 of my business when I was a contractor was from. I lost the estimate. And when they told me, hey, we're going a different direction, I go, no problem. I'm always here.
Yeah, of course.
Call me if you need me. And then my reputation grew really big because they would just call me because they went with the cheap option. Okay. So I love the payment terms because I think the number one thing a customer can do to get burned on a flip is overpay their contractor too fast.
Yeah.
And when somebody calls me, goes, pace, my flip didn't work out, I immediately go, your contractor took your money and then he went really slow and you burned through your hard money. And now you all your profit margin is gone.
Yeah.
And you go, how'd you know?
Yeah, yeah.
Because that's like 90% of the battle.
I understand.
Okay, so got your calculation. What about questions that your cut? What are like some top questions your customers ask you guys? Over and over and over, same questions. How much money do you want up front? How long will it take?
Yeah.
What are some other questions?
Kind of is the standard ones, you know, like our experience, all the timelines, how many crews we have, how we can handle the construction.
Yes. About our licensing, you know, in specific states, you know, things of that nature. You know, we, we have a network of just over 500. We call them our certified project managers. There are boots on the ground, guys. We manage everything out of, you know, we're based out of the Atlanta area, but they're all licensed. And the way that we work with them is they're the ones that communicating everything kind of back to us. But we're actually the liaison between our client and them so that this way we're getting everything that they need. We're making sure that we get the picture updates and the video updates and things of that nature.
Okay. That's a lot of people to manage.
They're not all going at the same time, of course. You know what I mean? So it's not as bad as you think. But we have a whole team that helps us with that. Every account has a senior project manager, and each senior project manager has two junior project managers. The two junior project managers help to facilitate the communication back and forth. And the senior project managers are the ones who are experienced heavily on the construction side. So they could be looking and ascertaining, hey, this needs to be adjusted or, you know, fix that or that sort of thing.
Okay, what are the states that have the most fix and flips going on right now for you?
I don't know the exact number, but I would say definitely Georgia. I mean, we started out originally in Georgia network, so we're kind of.
Forget about Georgia. Georgia.
So Georgia.
Texas.
I would say Texas.
Florida.
Yeah.
North and south.
We have some. Yeah.
Where's more A lot of fix and flips going. Arizona.
Yeah, we're just getting heavy into it now.
Okay, what about California? Got much going on there?
We have a couple of things. We haven't really been promoting it. It for us. It's a Nate. You know, we work with a lot of wholesalers, so if a wholesaler's promoting a lot of deals in that area, then the business kind of comes that way, you know, just organically. Yeah.
Okay, cool. But Georgia is your main stronghold, just like you say.
Georgia is the first one. Then we have a lot of in Texas, and then follow Florida, then Florida.
Okay, got it. Love it. Yeah, those are like, hot Mark. It's so interesting. Just so many people are moving there. So there's a lot of renovations going on. There's a lot of growth happening. So even for us, I just bought two RV parks I couple of days ago. Texas. There's just so much opportunity there, which is awesome. Okay, so what does your agreement look like?
So our agreement is probably one of the longer agreements that an investor would see. I mean, a lot of contractors don't even have agreements.
Oh, yeah.
They'll just send an invoice and that's it. Right. So my best advice that I would give to Someone, if they're looking to hire a contractor is if there is an agreement, and hopefully there is, take that agreement, put it into ChatGPT or Grok and say, hey, how am I exposed with this agreement and what should I ask for to be in this agreement? So it's a pretty simple way to kind of figure it out the way that AI is nowadays. But our agreement, I don't know exactly how many pages it is. Honestly, it's probably about eight or 10 pages. There's a lot of clauses in there to specify what happens if there's a change order, things of that nature, our responsibilities and our percentages that we charge if there is change orders and our timeline and the quote as an example. So that's kind of what our agreement looks like.
Okay, how is the customer protected? Let's say that you're 10 days late or let's say you're 45 days late. Do they have any penalties of late?
We have actually, we rolled out not that long ago. We call our timeline guarantee. So we have a little bit of skin in the game. So if we're delayed on the timeline, we give them a few thousand dollar credit. Right. And if we're done early though, on the flip side, you know, it's got to be kind of two way street.
I like this.
There's a bonus structure and that goes direct to our project management team.
I love that.
Yeah.
And that money, you can even save it by not paying mortgages, you know, so it's a win, win for everybody.
Yeah, I love that. I mean, what you're saying is that, you're saying, let's say that there's a bonus to you guys for finishing on time.
Right.
Well, I've had contractors finish six months late and I still paid my full bill.
Right.
But they didn't pay my six months of hard money. That was $3,000 a month, so it cost me 18 grand. I'd rather go to a contractor and go, if you can finish on time, I'll pay you $3,000 extra.
Right?
Are you kidding me?
It's better than day 18, right?
Oh my gosh. Like it's impossible for people to understand how powerful that is until you've been in the situation that your contractor is not showing up at the job and you're four months late and it's still not done.
Even in Urquo we have like a line, it's called Certified Project manager because we have a manager in your house all the time. Because that, that way we make sure that every day is Working. Everything is happening, and we don't get behind in the timeline, so.
Good. Oh, my gosh, bro. That's a game changer.
Yeah, we got a lot of good feedback on that. You know that one?
You're a New Jersey guy. New York.
Yes. Long Island.
Long Island. Okay.
My wife gets New Jersey. She was from Queens, so she sounds more like New Jersey, but, yeah, close enough.
I love it. So Atlanta is your home.
It is now.
I love Atlanta.
Yeah.
Freaking. Both you guys are transplants to Atlanta. Like, neither one of you guys are from Atlanta.
No, no, no, no, we're not.
It's such a great market.
Yeah. My wife kind of likes it here, though, in Arizona, so we'll see.
We like in the.
Here, it's dry here.
Yeah.
You don't feel wet all the time.
Yeah.
The traffic is not as bad. Atlantis traffic is.
Oh, man.
Oh, it's rough.
Always full or highways always full.
Highway is always full. Yes. And there's a lot going on there. It's beautiful. But here in Arizona. Oh, my gosh.
The.
The opportunities here are amazing. It's super organized. It's very dry here. You can do. I mean, Atlanta is very similar. You can do renovations all year long. Long. Like if you're in Utah, it's snowing half the year. If you're in Montana, it's snowing half the year. You know, type of thing.
Yeah, yeah.
But here, Vegas. Oh, my gosh. You want to be a contractor. Those are two amazing markets to be in.
Yeah.
Are you guys doing much in Vegas yet?
A couple of things, I think. I don't know this. The exact amounts, but yeah, we have a team. Some of our teams, they go. They'll travel the state for us. Right.
Okay.
And they have crews set up in different areas. So that's how we're able to kind of just roll out quick for people.
I love it.
Yeah. Generally, we can roll out from when we do. We. We do a kickoff call with our clients where we just review everything. They meet their team. You know, we do it on slack. Nice huddle. You know, super professional, bro.
You guys are revolutionizing contracting. I'm not joking. Nobody, no contractor does this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's why they don't have. They don't have slack CRM.
The contractors that are doing this are the ones that are in the commercial world that are getting paid millions of dollars.
Oh, yeah.
That have significant margins that can afford to build teams like this. And so when I was in the residential world, it's like everybody's whittling the contractors down to nothing where it's like, you can't make a lot of money. You guys have figured out how to use technology to make sure you're efficient.
Yeah. And then the other thing we do too is we give investors a free camera system on the flip. We put it on there kind of day one. It's this way. He helps to keep the property from vandalism and keeps it, you know.
Why would anybody not hire you guys? That's crazy.
Yeah.
You get a. I get a. I get a camera. I get a dedicated project manager. I get a certified, like, guaranteed timeline.
Yep.
I get a communication channel like Slack. And Monday, you guys have skin in the game. You guys will help them fund their first trip draw. Like, what the hell, dude?
We also investors. So we always. All of these little details come from experience by himself. Us night, sleeping at night.
Oh my God.
So this, our slogan is sleeping at night guarantee. Also one time we, we were flipping at home and we have cameras and like at 2:00am in the morning was these two guys about to break in. And we talk, hey, what y' all doing there? We're gonna call the police. They start running. So all of that is safe.
A lot of the things we have. You know, when I started years ago, years before I met Ramon, you know, I had a mentor of mine. He was in the military and he was my private money guy, actually. And he did 27 flips in like two and a half years. And he did it all remote. That's when my mind got opened up a little bit. I said, oh, so this can be done like that? Okay, cool. But my first flip, which was a fourplex, probably too much for me to do on my first one, hired the wrong contractor twice. Right.
And do you know how many people I hear this from?
Yeah, it's literally very common.
My community is 27,000 members in it, plus I have, you know, a couple million followers. So I get. One of the top questions I get is like, I got burned by contractor. What do I do now? I'm like, jump in a time machine and hire a different contractor.
You know, the best advice, and nobody really thinks of this, the best advice that I tell people is if you're trying a new contractor and you're not sure, put it on a credit card. Make sure you have an American Express, because this way you're 100% protected. Right. And that's something that, that would prevent a lot of investors, especially first time investors that haven't quite learned, you know, how to, how to vet someone that's what saved me the first time, to be completely frank. And I was able to replicate that. And we use a very similar system today.
It's a huge trick. Not a lot of people does that. They don't know too much that way. Wow, that's amazing. You can do that. You will be protected.
Any other tricks that you have for people to protect themselves on a flip.
They can hire us is probably the easiest trick, I would say.
Love that, man. This is great. Any. Anything else that you want to tell the audience that they should watch out for? They should. Oh, here's a good question. Last question of the day. Are you seeing more activity out there in the flipping world or less activity right now? Because the economy is a little bit weird.
You know, it's impossible for. For me to answer that question because we're always seeing more because we're scaling.
Right.
Right. So I wouldn't have a way to quantify that. So I can't say for sure. If you ask me, I'm saying yes because of that.
Do you have ever have clients that have private money problems, they run out of cash?
Oh, all the time. As a matter of fact, we have a process in place now. We have a pretty decent sized sales team. We meet with every investor. We do like a zoom meeting. They get to meet their sales rep, sales rep follows up with them. And one of the first things we do is because we learned this unfortunately also the hard way, there's a lot of new investors and they don't know what questions to ask from on the lending side. And they end up in situations where they'll lose their earnest money on a wholesale deal because they didn't know that it was just a broker who didn't really know what he was doing. So now what we do is we get them connected with our lenders so that this rate to make sure, you know, we get them connected with a few, they get to pick the one that makes the most sense for them so that this rate, we know at least they're with the right lender and that deal's not going to fall apart the day before closing. Right. Because we spent a lot of time on it too, you know.
Yeah. As a lender, I actually get, I don't know, probably 10% of my business from people that go, my lender bailed on me today and I'm supposed to close escrow. Can you close? Close and I'll wire money that day. Like we'll jump in and get it done really, really quick. I get probably 10 of my business Just comes from failed lenders. Amazing man. We're definitely going to send people your guys's way. Freaking love it. Guys, go down to the description down below. We'll also, if you guys are in the sub two community, we'll bring these boys in, we'll do Q A, we'll do questions, we'll do all that kind of stuff. I imagine you probably already even have some clients that are sub 2 students of mine. I'm sure you do. And we'll give you guys a link in the description how to hire them and how to go and go down that direction. Ramon and Lambros, thank you boys for being here today.
Our pleasure.
Appreciate you guys.
I'm saying yes because of that.
Do you have ever have clients that have private money problems, they run out of cash?
Oh, all the time. As a matter of fact we have a process in place now. We have a pretty decent sized sales team. We meet with every investor. We do like a zoom meeting. They get to meet their sales rep, sales rep follows up with them. And one of the first things we do is because we learned this unfortunately also the hard way. There's a lot of new investors and they don't know what questions to ask from on the lending side. And they end up in situations where they'll lose their earnest money on a wholesale deal because they didn't know that it was just a broker who didn't really know what he was doing. So now what we do is we get them connected with our lenders so that this way to make sure we get them connected with the a few, they get to pick the one that makes the most sense for them so that this way we know at least they're with the right lender. Right. And that deal's not going to fall apart the day before closing. Right. Because we spent a lot of time on it too, you know.
Yeah. As a lender I actually get, I don't know, probably 10% of my business from people that go, my lender bailed on me today and I'm supposed to close escrow. Can you close and I'll wire money that day. Like we'll jump in and get it done really, really quick. I get probably 10% of my business just comes from failed lenders. Amazing man. We're definitely gonna send people your guys's way. Freaking love it. Guys, go down to the description down below. We'll also, if you guys are in the sub two community, we'll bring these boys in, we'll do Q and A, we'll do questions, we'll do all that kind of stuff. I imagine you probably already even have some clients that are sub 2 students of mine. I'm sure you do. And we'll give you guys a link in the description how to hire them and how to go and go down that direction. Ramon and Lambros, thank you boys for being here today.
Our pleasure.
Appreciate you guys so much.
