Build a Business That Runs Anywhere | Podcast: Jake Burhans x Tyler Brissenden

No, so this is, uh, this is your second time on this podcast. Yeah, so first time was in Florida, and then was that over a year ago probably by this point.

Yeah, I was in my, I was in my place down there in St. Pete, and yeah, I think it was when I had first gotten there, so I remember like the background was my kitchen, so I, I hadn't even like set up my office there yet, so must have been in, yeah, over a year, probably September '23 when Which is, uh, we were in a heck of a different spot then than we are now. So it's crazy. It's crazy what can happen in a year.

One year.

Yeah.

If they— one year with the foundation of what, 3 or 4, would you say?

Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of interesting because we, we've been going for just over 2 years full-time. Like we've been full-time in the business, but we had knowledge for like 2 years prior to that of like what we were doing. Yeah. We had never put our full effort and energy into it. Um, So yeah, we did have a little bit of a base, but being full-time, you had 2 years. But momentum is a real thing. Momentum is absolutely a real thing. Even looking back a year ago, they say if you don't look like— I heard someone say one time, if you don't look back, you know, a year prior and don't think like, what the hell was I doing a year ago? You know, then you're not like progressing enough. Yeah, you're not changing enough. So a year is a long time, man. Like, you think back a year, it's like It's crazy.

It doesn't feel in the moment though. I mean, it can, you know, like, like, give long days or whatever, but, but no, when you look back on it and you're like, well, I, I, it is a long time in, in essence, but I feel like when you're, when you're a part of it, when you're doing the day-to-day actions every single day, you kind of feel like, like the day itself goes by way too quick. I mean, you've obviously done it. I want to get into delegation a bit because you've obviously done a bunch of dealt. That was probably the biggest thing that you did this year was, was just scaling the team. So I'm sure that your days started to become a little bit more organized and more manageable. But no, I mean, it's like, seriously, like when we were growing up and all our parents were like, oh, like there's just not enough hours in the day, whatever. I'm like, this is stupid, Colin, it's 24.

Yeah, it's easy enough, right? Yeah, that's a real thing, the hours flying by. And that's like, that's a thing that I began to feel when I was— I started to build the business, or we started to build the business. I don't know if if it was because I was so involved in it. I don't know if it's because I liked doing it, but back when I worked construction or did hourly, like landscaping, things like that, all you were doing is looking at the clock. Yeah. Count down the hours, like, wait until you're out. When's lunch? When's your break? When's the afternoon break? When are you getting out? But here it's like, yeah, you know, 5 o'clock rolls around like that, and then Saturday or Friday evening or Friday afternoon rolls around like that every week. You're never like, oh my gosh, it's only Wednesday, right? You're like, Wow, it's already Wednesday. Or wow, it's already Friday. Right. And you're just kind of ripping through, never, never kind of enough time. It's kind of good though, because I mean, you're always involved. You're never bored.

Never bored.

I heard someone say they were bored the other day. I was like, I don't know the last time that I've been bored.

You're like, how? How are you bored?

Because I'm either, I'm either building the business or doing or learning because I just love to learn.

Yeah.

Or I'm like recharging, you know, or I'm doing something to recharge. I'm outside, I'm whatever I need to do. But it's pretty much just between that. It's like recharge the batteries and you're working, working, working. Your batteries kind of get drained. And then just that constant—

it's always like everything is just a support. Like, I— especially at this point in our business, it's like everything's a support to growth. Because even in the downtime, the downtime is for the purpose of, like you said, recharging. Like, and, you know, I kind of picked up on that when— so when we started to bring on a couple, a couple other team members to be able to sort of take on those roles. That because it was at one point, it was always like admin tasks, but then I'm pulled away for a meeting, and then I'm pulled away for this appointment. You're just all over the place. And so, you know, I kind of watched you, you do it a little bit too, um, and I was like, well, like, I've started to notice how much yourself and a few other guys are able to really niche down on the things they know that they're good at. And I'm like, when I, when I can focus on that with more than, than the, you know, couple hours per day because I'm pulled in so many directions. I'm like, that right there I can understand would be sort of the biggest key to the foundation for scaling because, you know, now you're, you know, and you've talked about this, like your day is pretty organized. I remember like going down and visiting you and you were, it was, you're like, okay, so it's Saturday and so this is the admin tasks, like I'm going to be doing, you know, I do admin tasks at night in the morning and, you know, on like a Saturday or Sunday.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I've always been structured. I try to be a little less rigid now. I've kind of fallen into a fault of being too rigid. I'll be too rigid with my schedule sometimes where it's like, hey, this is— this structure is here to help me, not hinder me, you know? So if I need to adapt a certain day or work on something a little bit longer or maybe skip something for the day, that's okay. It's not the end of the world, right? Because I would fall in these traps like, this is my schedule. If I don't do it, I feel terrible about myself and just throw throws everything off. I'm like, this is just making my life worse, right? It's not making my life better. So I started to be a little more flexible with those things. So yeah, Saturday's admin, but maybe I don't do admin on one Saturday, but at least it's on my Google Calendar. So every Saturday, that's the plan, right? Yeah. And most of the time I will do that, but it's okay to kind of deviate from that, right? Um, but yeah, having that structure, and you talked about, uh, not being pulled in so many different directions, I think the essence of scaling is one, you have to have the kind of the system just to know what you're doing, which is very simple. You can get that from anyone. And then it's just about hiring people and you're just, you start out with the lowest dollar per hour things and you kind of work your way up with that. It's like when we were doing it, we started with only outbound marketing, meaning we only did cold calling and texting. The first thing we did was hire a cold caller, right? Hire one BA. Right. And then you hire a couple of VAs, right? And then you have so many leads coming in that you can't— you're— I'm playing lead follow-up manager and closer. Yeah, right. Too many leads to follow up with. Okay. You have 2, 3 VAs cold calling. Now you hire a follow-up specialist, a lead manager, an appointment setter, and they're the next level in the funnel. So top of the funnel is, you know, 3 cold callers. Then you have the 1 lead manager and they're going to filter through all those leads and only set up the best opportunities for you, who's now just the acquisition rep. Yeah, right. And you're closing. So your calendar every day is going to be be the hottest leads. You'll have your pipeline to follow up with. Additionally, you're going to have, you know, 3 to 5 new appointments on your calendar from that new lead flow coming in. So that's your day. You log into your CRM as a virtual wholesaler, right? Log into your CRM, talking to sellers. You have 3 to 5 new appointments, and then you're going to do your, your follow-up as well. And then at that point, you can eventually get an acquisition rep. To fill your spot and you pop up to sales manager, right? And then you're overseeing everything. And once you're in the manager spot, so that's kind of like the funnel, right? Say you have for an outbound marketing channel of cold calling, you'd have, say, 3 to 4 cold callers, 1 lead manager, 1 acquisition manager. But now you can add on to that. You could, you can have essentially 2 acquisition managers with 1 lead manager. Yeah, right. And then you have the sales manager and then you can start to add other marketing channels. So say we have 2 acquisition reps, um, and you want to get them more leads per day, I can add, right? I have calling and texting going into that outbound funnel, but then the next funnel you can build is just Facebook marketing, right? Or pay-per-click. And all 3 of those funnels are going to go down to the acquisition rep. Um, that's pretty much just how you scale. So how we track right now is I want to get both of my acquisition reps right now to have 3 to 5 new leads on their calendar a day because outbound's been down a little bit. So I'm kind of optimizing that. Um, But then basically say we have 10, 10 new leads coming in a day between inbound and outbound. Not, not leads, sorry, opportunities for the acquisition rep. If I want to get 3 acquisition reps, I have to make sure that I have 15 opportunities coming in a day, right? I want 4 acquisition reps. I have 20 new opportunities coming in a day. And now to clarify real quick, an opportunity is like basically an appointment set. So what an appointment setter would put on the calendar of the acquisition rep, an opportunity. So a lead from outbound isn't an opportunity, right? A lead is someone who's looking to sell, right? Then the lead manager has to qualify them and say, hey, are they looking to sell at a discount? Are they motivated? Great. That's an opportunity for the acquisition rep. That's outbound, right? You're reaching out to someone. It's a disruptive marketing. There's typically a lot of follow-up because they're not necessarily ready to go right now, because if they are, if they were ready to go, they'd be coming in from PPC or Facebook. They'd be out there searching, ready to sell. So the Facebook and the pay-per-click leads that hit our system, we essentially count as equivalent to an opportunity that's set from the lead manager, right? It's already pre-qualified. Yeah, it's already pre-qualified because they're coming to us. So all of those leads, you know, an opportunity set from lead manager, a just a simply a lead from pay-per-click or simply a lead from any inbound marketing like Facebook, those are all on the same level. Acquisition reps are going to go out and, and get those leads. So that's kind of the benefit of, of those marketings. Different marketing channels is pay-per-click and Facebook is a lot more expensive, but you don't need any overhead. No cold callers, no lead managers, none of that. But you got to make sure you have good sales guys and processes so you can capitalize on that. Um, because you know you're spending $200, $300, $400, $500, $600 a lead. So you want to make sure you're, you're doing well.

You know, you, you kind of talked about the other day, and I won't, you know, go into the numbers we talked about, but it kind of opened my eyes. I'm like, yeah, well, you know, the, the lead cost is is like 10 times more on the PPC, but the cost per contract is like a third. And, you know, obviously, like, like you said, I mean, if you bring— if you're bringing 20 leads, or if you, if you need 20 opportunities a day, what does that look like on the outbound side for leads?

You need so many leads per day, like crazy. You need like— if you had 20 opportunities you would be needing like, you'd need to have like 20 cold calls, right? Like 10, 15 cold calls. It's all funnel, right? Right. So say, I don't know what that ratio is. I'd be curious to know actually how many leads lead to an opportunity, right? It might be, it might be 10 leads.

Yeah, I think ours right now are like, like I want to say probably 8. No, I wouldn't say 8. I'd be like 4 gross leads to a net lead for us. But that also has a lot, a lot more to do with like you know, sort of the data that we're pulling as well. Like, it's obviously different. And that's one of the things I want to get into too, because, you know, I know that you guys have kind of gone more towards an Ovation model, um, and that's been beneficial for you. But, you know, like, the app, you know, for instance, the absentee list is probably not going to be as motivated as a truly distressed list. But, you know, everybody else is reaching out to the truly distressed list as well. So it's a net lead, might be a net lead for 5, 6, 7 other wholesalers because they're all targeting those. So it's not really net because you don't stand much of a chance.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it is interesting with that. And now a net lead for us is— and everyone uses different terminology. That's why it's, you know, yeah, yeah. Because our, our cold callers are going to, you know, generate a lead. A net lead means that it actually is a lead, right? You have those lead managers in place to essentially qualify that. And as soon as you know it's a net lead, you're trying to get it on the plate of someone who can actually close the deal. And that's what we would call an opportunity in that sense. But I think calling and texting, you know, you can be anywhere from maybe 40 leads to a contract.

You're right.

Right. If you're like good, upwards of like 50, 60, 70 leads. If you're not as good at closing those leads to a contract. Whereas pay-per-click, it's 10 leads to a contract on average, right? 10.

Yeah.

Facebook leads, not as much. They might be like 20 leads to a contract. So just, it's crazy marketing.

Yeah. And, you know, like, like, so you guys have obviously changed your model up. And one of the things that I kind of wanted to ask you is going from like that typical wholesale model, so more like a you know, more like a B2B kind of model. I'd call Novations more of a B2C model, right? Because you're looking, you're looking for those consumer buyers versus the investor buyers. And so was that— obviously, I have a pretty good idea that has nothing to do with the buyers. It has everything to do with the market and how this, the selling market looks. And so a lot of sellers aren't looking to sell for a price or put together a deal that's anything worth an investor's time. So what was the biggest shift that you saw or the biggest need that you saw and which ended up turning you into Novations pretty much full time?

Just, it's just in this market or the way the market has been, it's kind of shifting now. But the way the market had been before, you just finding those true cash deals with the high motivation, the beat up property, though, and you got to get it such a low price for it to be a wholesale deal. Just statistically speaking, it's about, you know, this came from one investor who's been in the business for 20, 25 years. His statistics showed that about 10% of your leads will be true wholesale deals, right? High motivation, low property condition, where in 50% of the leads you're just never going to do business with, right? Right. They're just, they're not motivated, right? They're, the property's in too good of a shape. It's just not a good fit for you. But 40% statistically fall into this novation category. And the reason there's you know, it works so well because you can give a significantly higher price to the, to the buyer or sorry, to the, to the seller. And I think it's been so popular because people don't necessarily want to— they know that they're still leaving money on the table because if you, if money is all that you care about, then you go list the property, right? Right. But you go through that process, you go through the process.

Okay.

You're interviewing realtors, right? And the realtor is going to come out. They're going to tell you what to spiffy up. You're going to spiffy it up. It's going to be a whole process. You're going to get it on the market. You don't know how long it's going to stay on the market. There's a, there's a little bit more, there's a significant amount more uncertainty when you're going through that process. How long is it going to sit on the market? 4 or 5, 6 months, right? Then you're paying the commissions out of it, all that stuff. But you do all that stuff to get the absolute highest price, right? So price is all you want. You go list it, right? You're not going to do a deal with us. But, you know, if you're willing to wait. So say we give someone a low cash offer right around— I was giving this example to you and Alex. Maybe our offer is at $220,000 and the seller wants $275,000.

Yeah, right.

We let them know, hey, you know, our cash offer is going to be too low at $220,000. We do have another program called our Concierge Service. We let them know, hey, we reach into our retail and investor network. We have thousands of buyers off market and we basically bring someone to the table. Buyer pays us a fee out of their pocket. We can net you the $275,000. So it's, it's everything that is the same to you as a cash offer. We need a longer timeline, right? We need 60 to 90 days to close it. And the reason that is the case is because if we're going to go take this deal and assign it to someone who's looking to live in the property like a first-time homebuyer, they're using bank financing. And for the bank to have enough time to get set up and buy the deal or fund the deal, we need that runway. But I think people— there's a little bit more certainty in the Novation because we are getting it at a price that we're very confident in. Yeah, right. So if we're going to lock it up, lock up a deal, you know, there's a whatever, I don't know, percentage like 80, 90% chance it's going to close at that number because that's how we're underwriting it. We're underwriting it conservatively. So it's kind of an in-between where like they don't have to wait 4 or 5, 6 months to sell their house and go through the whole process of on market. But they, but they don't get this really, really low offer of the, of the traditional cash offer. It's like this in-between. Yeah, right. It's like, hey, I'm willing to wait 60 to 90 days. I don't want to wait 5 to 6 months to get my money. Right. And I don't really want to deal with the showings and all the things that are done. So why don't we just settle on this kind of in-the-middle number where it's significantly more than the low cash offer, but not as much as the listing price, and we'll get it done. That works.

Well, it's kind of like that concept. Like, people would much rather a guarantee. Like, I've always said I prefer a definite no than a possible yes. And, you know, then that might be the pessimist in me. But I think a lot of people think that way. They'd prefer to just guarantee something. And so with, with Novations, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, if all they care about is price, and they're super optimistic that the market's going to bring them that price, then awesome. But number one, you have a realtor who is in the middle negotiating on your behalf. And half the time, I mean, you gotta remember, the realtor's paid based on the price of the house. But Also, they also have to take into account the amount of marketing dollars, the amount of time they're spending per deal. And so if they look at it and say, yeah, you know what, like, we're not getting the price I told them they'd probably get— I— and realtors can't guarantee you a price in the beginning. So now the realtor might, might turn around, and this isn't me dogging on realtors, but just being realistic. And a lot of scenarios too, it can end up being like, you know, this deal's— this, this property has been on the market for a while. And so, you know, I think we do a price reduction, things like that. And that always falls on the seller.

Seller.

But in terms of you and how you guys operate, it's like when you guarantee the seller a certain number, that's— they can go to sleep knowing that they're gonna go home with that. There's no risk that it's going to be— go be any lower, right? And so, you know, I, I don't know, I think that a lot of people can appreciate that as well. It's just knowing they get to go to bed knowing exactly what it is that they're going to get, even if it's not as good as what they could have gotten.

Yeah, I think there definitely is, is value in certainty. Now, to be clear, I know you're not saying this, but like when we— because we're very— the thing I like about the Novation is it's very transparent, right? They know exactly what's going on and we let them know, hey, we're reaching into our network. We're very confident at this number. That's what we always say. Yeah, right. So it's never 100% guaranteed, but it's more, it's more certain than, you know, potentially listing on the market. What's also nice is if it is too high of a number, like maybe they're just like stuck on some number. Like, we think it's a little bit too high, but, you know, we'll spend our time. And because I always let them know, like, we're making a commitment on our end. Like, I have a whole team dedicated to marketing this property for the next 45 days. That's money spent for everyone to do that. Right. So we're not going to agree on a number that we're not confident that we can move. We're not just going to say, oh yeah, let's do this number. Right, right. Especially on acquisitions. If I get a property under contract, that's just not a good deal. This position is going to be like, what is this? Yeah, yeah, right. What is this? I'm not wasting my time on this, you know? Yeah, exactly. So you got to make sure you're getting at a good price. But I think that's— and here's the other biggest thing too with the novations is people are on the phone with us because they want a convenient play, right? They know we're an investment company, right? They know we're an investment company, right? They know we have to make money on the deal, right? If, like I said, if they— if price is their biggest concern, they go list the property. But the way that this unfolds is like you're on the phone with these people for an hour, you're on the phone with people for an hour, you build, you know, somewhat of a relationship. You get to kind of like each other and you get to the end of the call and now you're down to making offers and it's like, ah, the cash number is just, it's just too low, Jake. But, you know, I like you. I want to do business with you, but I just, I can't do that number. Yeah, well, we actually have this other program, you know, our concierge service, and it can get you the number you're looking for. Okay, great. Let's do that. You just need a little bit of extra time, 60 to 90 days. Fine, that works. Let's make it happen. Right. So people are always like, well, why would they— why wouldn't they just list the property? If you're just going to list the property on the market, why would they let you do that versus a realtor? Well, it's because, like, I've built a relationship with them, right?

Yeah.

We've been on the phone for an hour. It could have been multiple hour-long calls and they're like, I just want to do a deal with Jake Burhans. But you're the cash offer. Just doesn't work for me. Right, right. Okay, great. So if you have this network investor program, whatever it is, you can get at the end of the day, like, if you can just give me my number, I'll give you 60 or 90 days. Yeah, it's like, great. And then it's a win-win, right? So I think to answer that question, why don't they— why would they not just go with the realtors? Because they've already eliminated that option in their head for whatever reason. They don't want to go through the longer process. They don't want to deal with a realtor or whatever the— whatever their belief is. So I think that's why that fits in there. It's just a tool in our tool belt. So it's not that we've necessarily pivoted to it, but like 90% of our deals are probably structured that way just because it's been so popular in this market where sellers are asking so much for their properties. People, you know, and people still think their property value is up here even though interest rates have changed things and it hasn't really caught up yet from the COVID era. Yeah. So wholesale deals have just been, have been hard in the high interest rate environment. But talking to our business coach and some other people and, you know, with the kind of election results and whatnot, I think it's going to be favorable for real estate. So everyone's saying, I mean, it's pretty, pretty obvious from a business perspective. So So that's one good thing that came out of that. And we're excited to see, yeah, our business coach is really telling us this could be like coming up next couple of years could be back to like 2021, 2022 wholesale where they were moving deals in 24 hours.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

24 hours just selling deals. Crazy.

I remember seeing, I mean, that was, those are some of the years where like, you know, some of the bigger wholesalers, they were doing like 600, 700 deals a year.

Yeah.

Stuff like that where it's like, of wholesale deals. Yeah. And that's the thing too, like, I know you brought up earlier about the, the motivation, like how it's been limited motivation, um, or, or you just haven't seen the motivation from sellers. Is it because there's no motivation, or is because the market has made so many people so delusional that even if they are motivated, they're like, yeah, but I know I can guarantee somebody's gonna pay me a higher price, so I'm gonna you pretend I don't even have this, this distress of any sort.

Yeah. You know, I think, well, there's always people that are motivated because what causes motivation? It's like life events happen, right? You go through a divorce or you inherit a property or the property just needs a lot of work. So they're always out there. So I think that's kind of a bad way to say is like there's less people that are motivated. I think we just maybe weren't coming across them. I mean, there's a lot of different things that affect the market.

You know, biggest thing I've always found or found lately was the relocation thing. Yeah. As rates went up, the motivated sellers were still there, but the purchasing on the back end, like the reason them finding a new place to go was— that was always the biggest hurdle. And so I like, like you kind of like what you just said, it's not that there wasn't motivation, it's that motivation often wasn't high enough for them to sell because their relocation was almost impossible.

Mm-hmm. Well, yeah, that's people living in the property. That's why if you target the absentee owners, though, that, that's like their extra property. Yeah. You know, there's a tenant in it or it's just vacant and going after those people. But there's always going to be— interesting too. It's like there'll always be a place for wholesale in the marketplace because no one else wants to deal with that. No, no one else wants to deal with that. Right. Because here's the reality. Fix and flippers, they want to flip houses. Investors, they want to invest in houses. Right. Realtors, they want to list nice properties. Right. They don't want to deal with all these crazy seller situations. They want to list nice properties. Right. What do towns want? Towns want nice houses on nice streets, but they're not going to do anything about it. Right. They're not going to go talk to the seller and help them sell their house. Yeah, right. So think about that. You have fix and flippers, investors, realtors, right? All those people want to do their job. And we're in there doing the hard work, the dirty work. Right. No one wants to make 50 to 70 cold calls, get cussed out on the phone, screamed at, and just spend hours and hours and hours and hours trying to get these deals done for these other people. Right, right. And they try to kick— and they try to shame the wholesale industry, you know. So it's like, if you don't believe it, go to a wholesaler's inspection.

Yeah, when they're dispoing the property, there's— that's one wholesaler and probably 80 or 90 buying parties.

Yeah.

So there's more fix and flippers and builders and, and investors in general by probably 50 to 100x than there are acquisitions guys. And so Yeah, and you know, like, obviously we started our own acquisitions side too, but that was not necessarily for the same reason you guys are doing. You guys are doing it to actually scale and build a business. We're, we're doing it because we're like, well, we fix and flip and we build, so we need our own leads too to keep this thing, to keep this thing running and to be able to like actually project out. Because my biggest thing too is like, it's like if, if you can't if you can't build something predictable, and you, like, you guys have built a predictable lead funnel and, and, and deal funnel, so you guys can actually look and project, okay, if we do X and Y, it will equal Z, and you can— you actually have numbers to support that. And so for a lot of these fix and flippers and builders, it's next to impossible to actually grow their business without some sort of predictable lead funnel because you're always living the fear that, that the next deal's nowhere to be found. And so, you know, you're absolutely right. And I think that a lot of time too, it's like— and I'm not saying I'm super experienced in the acquisition side, but I see a lot of people who are super inexperienced in the acquisition side, and they're doing it because they need to grow their business. But, you know, when we talk about like the dilution of the acquisitions industry and see how people react to people like us because they're so used to the, you know, the asshole who called them 2 weeks ago and blew them off 3 times. That gives us all a bad rep. And, you know, I think, I think like you said, it's the dirty work of the deal. It's the deal procurement that's really the toughest part.

And I think it's too— no, and I get why people— because there is a lot of bad apples in the wholesale industry because a lot of people are very inexperienced and a lot of people just don't know how to be professional. Right. People don't know how to be professional. They don't know how to have ethics. They don't have standards or integrity. And these basic human characteristics and morals that you would think everyone would have, they just don't. And they get on the phone and they have no idea what they're doing. They don't understand the consequences of their actions and all these things. So, you know, if there was more regulation, standardized processes so that people would act in a professional manner, I think that would help the industry as a whole because at the fundamental root level, the wholesale industry provides a great value for the sellers.

Yeah, right.

And for the other vendors in the industry, right? Realtors, because they're selling the house, fix and flippers, and then people living in that house. Right. If you think about us, we get a deal done. Think about everything that's happening when we do a deal. Okay. We're reaching out to the seller, right? They're getting, they're getting some sort of problem solved in addition to money, right? Because there's always a problem, right? If there's no problem, they're listing it on the market to get as much money as they can. Right. The reason they haven't done that is because they have a problem and no one wants to solve their problem. Right. Because realtors just want to list. Flippers want to flip, investors want to buy. And that's, and that's what it is, right? So we're in there doing the handholding, doing all these crazy things and helping them move and calling the uncle to get this signed and have a duh-duh-duh, you know, lining up transportation, just like these crazy things to get the deals closed. And, and realtors do that all the time, actually. But, you know, we just specialize in those, in those really problem properties.

Well, you guys are experts too at knowing. Yeah. Like you're structuring these deals. For the seller situation because you recognize that the— like, like, I look at it like similar to land, like what's the highest and best use? So, you know, for land it's like what's the highest and best use?

Should I build a multifamily?

Should I, you know, subdivide it in a few lots? Or should we go commercial with it? Um, and things like that. But, but for you guys, you look at it like, okay, what's the highest and best use of this situation? We could sell this to a fix and flipper and we're probably gonna they're probably going to pay this number. We could sell this to a buy-hold and they're probably going to pay this number. We could, you know, whatever. But you guys can look at a deal and the idea is like, as much as a lot of sellers think guys like us are out to get them, it's actually the opposite. Because when we go in, there's no use in trying to, in trying to bring in a property that's not well suited for the right buyer because we're going to have a shit show of a time trying to get rid of it.

Yeah.

If it's not, if it's not the right property for the right buyer, then why would we ever lock it up? At a certain number with certain terms that didn't make sense for that buyer.

Yeah, it's interesting though. For us, that makes sense because like we have, we have a good mind and like underwrite, know how to underwrite and all those things. But for like you said, the people who are inexperienced who just maybe watched a couple of YouTube videos, they're on the phone like putting someone under agreement. That is where there's kind of a risk in that, you know, kind of an issue. Give someone who's, you know, 18 years old, it's kind of crazy. 18 years old, and just putting someone under agreement has no real ability to buy the property. I just think like when you're getting into something like this, you have to, you have to understand what's at stake. Like you're buying someone's home, right? Probably the biggest sale of their life. Like you got to understand the seriousness of it. Right. And just do some basic education before you hop into these things. Partner with the right people when you're getting started. That's the biggest thing you can do is just partner with someone who's doing it professionally at a high level. Right. And just learn from them, learn how to do business the right way. And it's not about wholesale, it's just about doing business the right way, right? Having the right values, you know, having character, and just providing a value and a service.

So let me ask you, because I got to imagine that you set up Optimize REI for that purpose. I mean, I know you want to like, I know, I know you're, you know, out to kind of, kind of teach, you want to build a community, of course, which makes sense. But To a degree, I mean, there's a lot of education in that group. Would you say that that stemmed from recognizing how many bad apples are in the industry and saying like, okay, well, if I at least can get a community of a few hundred or a couple thousand people or whatever and kind of build the community based on the right ethics, the right morals, the right approaches, you know, I guess where did the value from Optimize REI start?

That's a good point you bring up actually, and I think that is Yeah, it's a really good point you bring up, actually. I think that is a potential benefit of it and should be a focus going forward is teaching the right way to do things right for other people and having that influence. I just created it because I like to just teach things. Yeah. Like I just, I just wanted to like—

you learn more when you teach what you learn.

So yeah, I really just created it because, you know, I love just talking about this and I just wanted a platform like digitally that I could start to bring people together and just share my experiences of what I've been going through. And just do it over Zoom. So that's kind of how it started. And I was trying to put as much resources and things in there as I can with that. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I mean, it's an awesome group. And like, we met somebody in there the other day who hopefully at some point we end up doing a deal with. Yeah. So, you know, obviously the community feel or whatever, but no, I mean, I think that, yeah, I think that having like a niche approach in there and you know, hopefully, especially if you get enough guys in the area and enough wholesalers, enough acquisitions people in the area that you're doing deals in, then you can— I mean, the hope is like to have enough of an impact to pick up their, the way they operate too. So the, the, when sellers are being called now, it, we kind of all hope that if we're all on the same page because it's— I think you and I talked about the last time, like, the collaboration over competition. And I don't think people realize, like, there's been so many opportunities where you and I— or actually Isaiah, for the most part, because it's a deal invest— but, you know, we've almost collaborated on multiple times. We have on a couple deals this year too. But, like, just because we do the same or similar things doesn't mean that it does not— all of our obligations to make sure that we don't tarnish the name of each other. And that can be by going about it the wrong way. And so now tarnishing the industry in and of itself, which in turn hurts the people involved in it. And so I'm a big believer in it's everybody's obligation, regardless of who you are, regardless of, you know, what, what the competitors in the industry, how far they are from you, and you know, how many deals you guys each do together. There's no need to bring down the entire, the ethical and morality level of the industry, just, you know, for inexperienced purposes and things like that. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I, I agree. Getting everyone to operate on the same level and operating with the same mind essentially about it. That's what you're doing. Like say you had, say it was a New England group. I mean, there's kind of people in there from all over, but say it was a New England group and you guys all kind of followed the same values and the same principles in your operations and business. That have a net positive effect on the community, on our— the view of the industry and all these things. Yeah. Um, so it's just basic stuff, man. It's just like, be a good person, like, do the right thing, and then you get you really far. And it's like, uh, that's what it— that's what makes it really easy to kind of stand out and do well.

Yeah.

Like, if you can just operate the right way, it's just— and, you know, I feel like it's so natural. Maybe it's not, you know. I guess it depends on how you're raised and all these different things. Um, but that's, that's part of, of, uh, the community as well, is like instilling those values. To me, that seems so basic and just like, how, how could you act any other way and sleep at night, you know?

Well, I mean, a lot of the things too, and like one of the things that I've noticed, and I've noticed with some of the people on the team who are in the acquisition seat, it's like, you know, we can tend to get super frustrated for a seller blowing us off or for the seller talking to us a certain way or just like, you know, switch— going up back and forth and switching up and and things like that. And, and I actually have found it easy because we've grown up in a pretty entitled era, and so we kind of think that like everyone and everything owes us something. And so when we don't get what we feel like we're owed from this person, we tend to get frustrated. But I think the morality and the ethics actually come into play when you are getting frustrated, and then you start to recognize, well, first of all, this seller owes me nothing. This was an outbound lead. I pique their interest. Yeah, this is a huge— like, like, you start to put yourself in their shoes. It's a huge sale. This is one of the three pillars of life: food, water, shelter. Yeah. And so you're trying to— you're trying to mess with whether you think it's beneficial or not. You are still trying to mess with one of the pillars of life, let alone the fact that it's probably where they grew up, you know, raised a family in. There's so many certain— there's so many areas that you need to actually look at when you're you know, when you're dealing with sellers and, and people in general in the industry, but like especially sellers. And so I've noticed a lot of that, I think, comes from more of an entitled, entitled spot, and people think that the sellers tend to owe them something. And so no, I mean, we'll get off this topic because we could sit here and talk about morals all day long.

Yeah, it's an interesting point, the morality. That was like your morality— you don't have morality until you have something to lose, you know. Like if there's nothing to lose, you're not being, you're not having integrity or you're not having morals. It's when you have something on the line, like you're not gonna make $20,000 because you're doing the right thing. Right. That's when you have morality.

You know?

Right.

I mean, it's not when you have, you don't stand to lose anything because it's like, well, it's, that's similar to like when, when Jordan Peterson said, um, I don't know if you ever heard his quote. I'm, I'm probably gonna butcher it, but in essence it was like, there is no morality. Like if you're not capable of any sort of harm. And that doesn't mean like— I'm not talking physical harm, but if you're not capable of, of being harmful whatsoever, then there's no morality in not being harmful because you have no ability to be.

Yeah, you don't have the capability. You don't have the capability to begin with. Yeah, yeah.

And, and, you know, so, so absolutely. And I think, um, kind of switching gears, but it kind of on the same, on the same topic, we talked earlier about how you, you guys scaled a lot this year. You brought on a lot of team members. You mind sharing how many team members you think you guys brought on?

Yeah, so we— well, last year, uh, at the beginning of this year, I was in January, I was still the acquisition rep. I was like the only guy closing deals. Uh, so at the beginning of this year, we had 3 cold callers and a lead manager. So we had 4 additional people.

Yes.

Uh, actually, yeah, we had 3 cold callers and a texter. And a lead manager. So we had 5 people. Those are overseas virtual assistants. And then we went through a bunch of different acquisition reps. You know, had 2 for a while, didn't work out. Then we were up to 3. Now we're down to 2. My goal is to get a third one. So now we have 3 acquisition reps, 2— sorry, 2 acquisition reps, 2 lead managers, 4 cold callers and a texter. So it's like 9 on the acquisition side. I'm 10 as a sales manager. Then on the dispo side, we've built out as well this year. We've added 2 disposition agents, a disposition assistant who does like the marketing. We got an operations specialist, and then we just hired a TC today, actually. Oh, nice. And then we have another admin assistant. Yeah. So I think we have like 18 or 19 people right now. So Yeah, the biggest things we did this year for scaling though is bring in the 2 sales guys and bring in the 2 dispo sales guys. Yep. Operations person, uh, dispo assistant, and a TC were the biggest, biggest things.

Those are the biggest like, like time savers for you guys, I got to imagine.

Yeah, that's— I mean, that's how we were able to go to Europe and do what we were able to do for 2 months because, um, you know, if we had to be on the phone Because when you're an acquisition rep, you got to be on the phone, you know, 7 p.m. at night, sometimes 7:30. Like, my guys are on the phone till 8 p.m. a lot of nights. Yeah. 8 p.m. getting deals.

Probably on the phone right now.

Yeah, they very well could be. One of my guys, Eric, he just sent a thing in the chat. I think he sent out a contract or something right now. But Eric was up till 11 p.m. the other night.

Oh, geez.

Trying to get a deal done, you know, like that's what it takes. Like that. You got to be relentless in these things. But yeah, because when we were in Europe, we would work 3 to 11 p.m. So we could pretty much go 9 to 5. Yeah. And it would be okay. Like we could pick it up the next day because they could just— they'll figure it out for the evening. But when you're talking to sellers all day, you can't do that, right? They, they can only talk 7 p.m. or later. You got to be available. So we did get some time back for sure, but it's way more hectic. Like our work is way more hectic because as a manager, you're like the quarterback, like the glue that holds everything together. So it's just constantly like— I like to think of being a manager as a pilot looking at his dashboard and every person and department is like a gauge, right? And you're just constantly scanning the dashboard and making sure that gauge is like where it needs to be. And if it's like redlining, you got to pop in, fix something, get it set. And as soon as it's set, you pull back out. You're looking at your dashboard again. Okay, how's texting doing? Good.

Cold calling?

Oh, oh, you have some trouble there. Let me pop in, fix it. Okay, get back out. How's lead management doing? Doing good. Listen to the call. Let me send him a Slack message. Okay. How are the reps doing closing? The sales guys listen to the call. Oh, he's losing, he's losing. I got to hop in, get on the phone, right? Then you're back out. Okay, great. Then you're dealing with the operations, looking at the KPIs. Okay, what's going on with the sheet? So you're like doing so many things, right? Just like constantly, but, but, but, but, but. And obviously my position now is a mix of sales manager and just like kind of like C-suite or like owner type of deal, right? Yeah, sure. Because I'm looking at— I'm doing marketing. I'm essentially like the marketing director and the sales manager, marketing manager and sales manager, because then I'm managing the Facebook ads, the pay-per-click marketing, um, in addition to outbound and lead gen.

So marketing campaign manager that handles a lot of the intricacies of that.

Intricacies, yeah.

But you're kind of like, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, you're directing, like, you're directing the decision-making. Like, the bulk of the decision-making sort of has to come from you because you have— I mean, I saw you guys' tracking sheet the other day. It's, yeah, insane the amount of tabs that you have. But, but I get, like, like, it's funny because I think a lot of people would look at that and be like, why do you need all this? I, I completely see why you need every single one of those sheets, because each one tells you a completely different story. Yeah. And, and it's up to you to finish the ending on each of those stories. And so, yeah, I mean, you guys, you guys grew a bunch this year, going from what, 5, 6 guys to 19. But I can imagine, like you said, the gauges, like you're almost, you're almost like a city firefighter. Yeah. Consistent, consistent fires being put out. And if you're not, then you're on inspections making sure that these houses are being built right. To make sure that the problems don't occur again. So what do you think? I'm just interested to know, like now that you've kind of gotten rid of a lot of the, you know, the tedious stuff. Per se, like, like the, you know, the people you brought on for delegation purpose, how do you feel now? Do you think, are you, do you have more fun with the business than you used to? Do you have less fun with the business or is it a different kind of feeling?

It's, it's cool to see, like Isaiah and I were looking at our accountability, our organizational chart today and filling in things. So basically when you start out a business, you have an organizational chart which details each position, right from CEO to COO to sales manager down to like everything. It's like a whole, um, chart. I forgot what you call that, uh, like a flowchart. Yeah, like a flowchart, right? Where it's like a box, you have a line. Yeah. And it branches out like a family tree type of deal. And we're going in there like, oh yeah, we hired this out, we got the operations person, we just hired the TC, we're making them green because they're color-coded. Oh yeah. It's like when I, when I'm in the position, it's blue, and Isaiah's in the position, it's orange.

Yeah.

And it used to be all blue and orange because we're wearing all the hats, right? And as we start to scale things out, we're like, boom, that's green, that's green, that's green, that's green. So, um, Like I said, it's just a different position. Like a manager is, is a huge thing in this business. Like Isaiah and I say, when we hire managers, that's a sink or swim thing. Yeah. Like they're either going to keep that ship going or they're going to freaking smash into a rock and just sink the ship because, because how, of how involved the manager is. Like we thought when we became managers that it was just going to be like, yeah, your manager, you just tell them what to do. They'll go in, they'll get it done. Like not at all. Like you have to be in there every single day. Like you're the glue that holds everything together. You're the person that brings the energy, drives the culture, develops the culture, holds everyone accountable, keeps people motivated, has the hardest conversations that no one else can have with sellers and with people within the company. You're just doing all the hard— the most— the least fun stuff, honestly, but it can be the most rewarding. So it's definitely a lot more challenging. I think fun's a tough word to say. Is it fun or not fun? But I think it's much more challenging. Yeah. You're not doing as much of the tedious stuff, but you're doing the harder things.

It's a little bit more fulfilling, you'd probably say.

More fulfilling. You're doing the harder things, but more than anything, having been in this position, I've learned the skills, just like leadership and management. I had no leadership or management skills whatsoever starting out. I didn't even know what it meant to be a leader or a manager or anything like that. So those skills have, have been tremendous. And, um, yeah. And as you go forward, like just leadership is everything. It's like all about the people. And this year we've— we're not going to get much bigger, I don't think really. Like, we're not going to— like, I'll add a couple. We'll get a sales manager, hire a couple more sales reps. So maybe we cap out at about 20. I don't think we'll get many more cold callers. We'll probably just keep that outbound channel as it is, just get better people and then spend more on Facebook and pay-per-click. But say it's a group of 20 people. Now that's— that foundation is in place. We're going in with a full head of steam into 2025. And I think we're just going to— we're going to crush it. I'm just excited. We're going to crush it. And then I can only imagine once Isaiah and I are out of the management position, you know, then we're just focusing on the systems and really optimizing like all day long. We're not like dealing with sellers and none of that. Like, because right now our heads in and it's hard to like step out and work on the business when you're trying to do all the fire. So you hire someone else to be the firefighter, then you can work on a lot of other things. And I can see us going into 2026 just like full head of steam, right? Yeah. And just having the best people to execute. That's it. That's one of the biggest lessons we've learned as well. Like, it's all about the people to execute. Just finding people who want to be excellent, right? Who embody our core values, who are relentless. You got to be relentless in all you do, whether you're a transaction coordinator, a dispo person, a cold caller, lead manager, an acquisition manager. You got to be freaking relentless every single day. Do not take no for an answer. Don't give up after the first try, the second try, the third try, fourth try. Like, you need to be trying 5, 6 times. Relentless excellence, right? 1% better every day. You have to be growing. Um, you have to be able to hold yourself accountable. Um, you need to have integrity. So those are like our core values, and making sure that everyone has that, um, is huge. You know, we just want a, a group of A+ players, killers, tight group, and, you know, just doing, doing our thing.

How do you think you guys set up the culture so far?

I think we've done a great job. Yeah.

I don't know. The virtual environment's tough.

It is. I think, I think we've done a good job. I don't know. I mean, you have to ask our, ask the people who are in the company, but, um, I asked for their feedback and I know I'm the boss, so they probably just tell me what I want to hear, but I try to, I try to let them know like, hey, tell me like how you actually feel about it. Cause I want to make sure that it is a good culture. Um, but you know, we, for starters, I think The culture. I had a question about this yesterday or the other, on Friday from the transaction coordinator we're interviewing, like, describe your culture. I was kind of talking about like Slack and yeah, we do Slack, we do meetings and we do, you know, uh, we do a prize wheel at the end if you do that. But then I was thinking in the car the other day, that's not really the culture. I mean, the culture is a culture of, um, optimism. Yeah. Optimism and positivity. That's a huge thing. Like that tone throughout everything is huge, right? No sulking, no, I'm the victim, right? We're going to be positive. We're going to be optimistic, right? So that, that's a huge theme that we drive. Just being excellent, excellence in everything we do. Don't be sloppy. Yeah. Show up, be accountable, do those things. So I think positivity and abundance, excellence, which is growth mindset and all those things, and then being relentless and just being focused in getting things done and understanding that it's about the, it's about the success of the company. Even— yeah, they're all there to make money, right? Yeah. But they need to understand that everyone's there to fulfill a role for the greater team, which is the company moving forward, right? So if we're not— if everyone's not doing their job, then the company ceases to exist, their position ceases to exist, right? So I understand they're all there to make money, and they will all want to make a lot of money, and that's great. So do I. I want to make a lot of money, right? Yeah. But you need to understand that you need to do what the company needs you to do, or your position will just cease to exist.

Yeah.

Which is a hard thing to understand. Because you're in there and you just want to close deals for yourself. But sometimes maybe being a little bit selfless in a position where maybe you help someone out or you don't get paid as much as you should for the overall benefit of the company, knowing that's going to come back to benefit you with the longevity and the success of the company, you'll end up getting more opportunities, things like that. So fostering that mindset of being a team player as well. So I think the positivity, abundance, relentlessness, excellence, and being a part of a team are all things within the culture. And then tactically, and not tactically, but like things we actually do is in Slack, right? Very big presence in Slack. We're doing daily meetings every single morning, meeting with the team. So Monday and Wednesdays is acquisitions and dispositions. Sales agents, they get, they get together and that's really great because acquisitions can see that dispo is like actually working. They can see where their deals are at. Dispositions can see that acquisitions is pounding the phones, getting things under contract. There's a lot of love on both sides from both with them like, hey, you know, appreciate you doing this. And they're able to communicate. Tuesdays and Thursdays is department-specific meetings. So dispo meet, sales guys will meet. And then Wednesdays are one-on-ones. Yeah, one-on-ones with every single person. So I do a one-on-one now with every single person, even down to our cold callers.

Yeah.

So the reps, I'll do 30-minute one-on-ones each, and then lead managers, I'll do 15 minutes each, 15 minutes each, and then each cold caller, 15, 15, 15, 15. Text her 15 minutes, operations person. So I'm in— Wednesday has been meetings from 8:30 to 12:30, just meeting one-on-one with every single person in the company just to make sure they can feel like they're being heard and they can voice their opinions. And I also do want their feedback. It's valuable, right?

Well, they're the ones in the trenches.

Exactly.

Huge. I'm like, I want you— I want you guys to be very, very honest because if you're not honest, like, there's nothing I can change because I'm not in the field.

Yeah. And I was explaining to them last week, I was like, the success of this company rides on everyone's thoughts, ideas, and intelligence, not just Isaiah and I's, right? If Isaiah and I are the only ones that are thinking in this company, we're going to be severely limited. If you guys just come in, clock in, turn your dialer on, and talk to sellers, we're going to— we're only going to reach a certain amount, right? A certain, certain level. Like, I need every single person's brain firing. I want you to come in and act like you own the business. What would you want yourself to be doing in that position?

Yeah.

Right. Okay. We tell you to do certain things because we think they're effective and maybe they were effective at one point, but they're no longer effective. Don't just sit there and just be mindless, you know, speak up. Hey, this is not working actually this way. You know, I've been doing cold calling for a couple of years and blah, blah, blah. I recommend we do this. Okay, great. Even if you're a cold caller, awesome. Yeah, let's discuss it. If it makes sense, let's implement it. But really instilling in them like, hey, everyone's ideas can contribute to the direction and success of the entire organization.

Yeah.

So don't just sit back and don't say anything. Like, I want you to speak up and bring these ideas to the table. Um, cause if I can draw the ideas and the intelligence out of every single person on the team, we're going to be like a freaking rocket ship. But if that's all suppressed, then we're going to be very limited. If just, just an Isaiah and I thinking about things, cause people are smart, man. Like people are freaking smart. They have a lot of, a lot of potential in them, a lot of capability. Um, but you just need to. Make them feel valued. They need to feel comfortable bringing those things out and see that you actually do, um, take them seriously.

Well, they need to deal with a leader, not a manager. Yeah, I mean, like your typical leader versus manager. Yeah, um, I know you've mentioned this too, just, just because I'm interested. Since you guys— I mean, so you went about the sequence of your hires in a super strategic way. Like, you know, obviously you started You, you started from a place of need in, in each role, but more than a place of need in each role, I think that you guys really focused on each role needs to create the next problem, right? So like, like, cold callers need to create so many leads that I don't have enough time to follow up, so I need somebody specifically for follow-up. And then we have— we scale the cold callers and there's so, there's so many follow-ups and they're pushing so many opportunities up that I need an acquisitions manager. So So, like, because of that sequence of hires, obviously, you know, you went out and delegated perfectly, and that's why you were able to kind of create the next problem, the next problem that really were just problems to solve for growth purposes. Then you guys got to spend 2 months in Europe, and that— I know we talked about that the other day, but that, I mean, I think is like really every— like, if you were to talk to, say, 90% of people who are in some sort of entrepreneurial journey, I guarantee most of them will say, yeah, I mean, I want to be able to have the, the time freedom, and I want to be able to have the location freedom and the freedom to go and travel. Like, that's usually— so you guys got to 90% of people's dreams. And so I want to know, like, what was the impact? And not only, not only like being in Europe, because I'm sure the cultures and things like that absolutely had an impact on your perspectives, and I'm sure you brought some value back from that. What was the impact or if there was any from you guys getting to that level and realizing I can be here for 2 months in a completely different time zone and my business still moves and I don't have anything to worry about.

Yeah, I think it was, um, and, and I'll answer the question because we're obviously still working though, right? I mean, we're still working 3 to 11, so there's— we were still like working full-time, but I understand what you're saying, like the freedom to even be able to do that, to go anywhere you want in the world and just say, hey, if I can just clock in for 8, 9 hours a day, That's fine. Doesn't matter where I am. I think the biggest thing I learned from that was that I, that you just do it. Yeah. You just do it. Like I, I had been working virtually for a couple years and I was living in St. Pete and I'd always tell people, yeah, I work virtually. And like, oh, so great. You can work from anywhere. I'm like, yeah, it's awesome. You know, I can, I can work from anywhere. But meanwhile, I had never worked from anywhere else than the place I've always worked for. Right. Worked from.

Right.

I was always just in St. Pete. I'd never actually gone anywhere. Even though in my head I was like, oh yeah, I could, I could travel. But there's some limiting belief in my head of like, I can't do that. I got to stay focused like that. That's an unrealistic thing in my head. And then I was walking with one of my, one of my good friends down there in Florida and he was like, yeah, we should go to Europe, X, Y, Z. And I was like, yeah, we should go to Europe. Like, what am I doing?

Yeah.

Why am I, why am I not doing that? So it's really just a limiting belief that I broke and just made me believe that, yeah, I can, I can do it. And also made me think about like, how many other things do I just tell myself like, nah, you can't really do that. When in reality you can, you just got to do it, right? Anyone who can work remotely can go to Europe and do what I just did. Anyone can do it. But we come up with these excuses and these things of— and some of them are legitimate, but no, I can't do this because, you know, I have this going on or that going on or my partner or this or that. So if you want to make it happen, at the end of the day, you just, you just make it happen. You just do it.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you said it too, like at a certain point when you were just the acquisition, like, like you were the acquisition director, you probably couldn't have gone to Europe because no, yeah, the time frame of it. So no, I mean, you got, yeah, you say you got to spend 2 months there and kind of like, I mean, I'm sure that was a recharge too, even though you were working the entire time. Yeah, I'm sure just, just, you know, that, that entire thing was a recharge.

Yeah, it was, it was crazy. I mean, it's a, it's a beautiful area. We're in like Central Europe, so, um, yeah, we went to The rundown was— it's actually good. I learned a lot about the geography of Europe. I never really knew where anything was.

Yeah.

Yeah. We ended up going from Netherlands to Belgium. So Netherlands is right in the center of Europe on the top. And then if you go west, you go to Belgium. We went south to Germany, south to Austria, and then west. Austria is a tiny little country called Liechtenstein, which is like tiny little thing right between Switzerland and Austria. Passed through there for coffee, then went into Switzerland. The Zurich area, which is— which is—

went to one other country for coffee.

Beautiful. Yeah, exactly, in the middle.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, and then we went down into Italy, Milan, down onto the southern coast of France, probably the most beautiful part of France, like the French Riviera.

Oh yeah.

So you got, uh, Nice down there. We stayed in Menton. And, uh, Monaco is a small little country at the bottom of France, um, known for its— actually for its very like, like the playground of the wealthy. That's what it's known as, right? Everyone's driving frickin McLarens and Ferraris.

Monaco Yacht Show.

Bugatti's biggest yacht show. Yeah. The Monte Carlo Casino. They got the F1 Grand Prix there. Yep. Monaco Grand Prix. They went back across Italy into Croatia. That was our top spot. Isaiah and I, both of us, just insanely beautiful mountains right down to the ocean. Game of Thrones was filmed there. It's a little bit cheaper than the US in terms of cost. Insanely gorgeous. Then we went up to Hungary, Budapest, Hungary. That, that was a, that was a top city for us as well. Budapest, Hungary, phenomenal area. A lot of architecture there and just like sites to see different things. They have that parliament building. If you look at the Hungarian, the Budapest parliament building, it is just its most stunning freaking piece of architecture you've ever seen in your life. Absolutely wild, dude. You see it. Is that the church that you showed me a picture of?

No, not the church.

Sorry.

There's the —like you show me— well, yeah, you show me so many pictures of all the crazy buildings you saw.

Yeah, I remember what is what, but yeah, no, no, I did not show you this one. Um, that was there. And then, uh, well, on the way from Italy to Croatia, we passed through Slovenia, which is just kind of a—I don't know what's going on there—kind of just looked like New Hampshire. We just drove through there. Uh, and then Slovakia. So north of Hungary is Slovakia, used to be Czechoslovakia, split into two countries. Then there's Slovakia, stopped there for like a lunch and then kept driving through to, um, Vienna, which is on the other side of Austria, and then up into the Czech Republic, ended in Prague. Um, so Prague is another, like, another, another top city for sure. Uh, that's where the Prague Castle is, and that's another beautiful area. But yeah, it's pretty— it's not the— the plane ticket is really the most expensive part. Once you get over there, I mean, it's not any more expensive than living here. Yeah, arguably I would say cheaper, but it's just, it's kind of the same.

I'm sure. Yeah, some things are a lot cheaper. Some things are a lot more expensive. Yeah. You know, yeah, I guess before we overheat, give me whatever, whatever kind of plugs you want for— I know you got the community and everything.

Nothing. Yeah, if you guys just find my Instagram, Jake_Burhans, got a link for the Optimize REI community in there. Would love to see you guys there. A ton of professionals in there, investors, realtors, lenders, creative finance people, all sorts of things there. We do a weekly Zoom 9 AM to 10 AM on Saturday. So So whether you're just getting started or do a ton of deals, love to collaborate with you and just get some deals done.

Absolutely. Yeah. I appreciate you coming on.

Cool. Yeah. Thanks, man.