Military to Millions in Wholesale Real Estate with Jeremy Beland (SS#10)

What is going on? Welcome everyone to Spotlight Thursday number 10 here with Jeremy Beeland. Holds a special place in my heart. Did my first deal with Jeremy, so way back in the day, about 3, 3 years ago, exactly. Started— feels, feels not that long ago and really long ago at the same time.

Well, thanks for having me here, Jake. And, uh, yeah, I mean, 3 years, um, what can happen in real estate in 3 years? And your success to this point is, uh case in point on that. But, you know, 3 years is not a long time in life, and what you guys have been able to achieve, it's been pretty awesome. It's been fun to watch you guys grow.

Yeah, no, I appreciate it. I remember when we were just getting started, I remember I, uh, I was still in college, obviously. I called you up and just kind of trying to get some consulting on what to do. You had spoken about how you got started with Tom Kroll and stuff. Yeah, we were in the initial stages. I was just starting to make calls, but, you know, just the consistency, that's all it is. Over time.

Yeah, well, I'll tell you, when you were on our podcast, you talked about your story about cold calling and how it took you 60 days of basically hammering the phones every day until you got your first deal under contract. And I think that's a very valuable story that you shared that day with us and a lesson that it's not easy. It's a simple process, but it's not easy. And the fact that you had the consistency to do that and be able to achieve that is pretty remarkable. And it's the reason why you're successful still doing this and why many people quit. Um, so, you know, that story, it was much more valuable than people realize.

Yeah, I know, I appreciate that. Um, yeah, the, the business will— it'll, it'll chew some people up and spit them out for sure. You know, I've seen people come, a lot of people come and go, you know, and they just quit easy money and, uh, they realize a lot more work than they think.

It is, it is.

But today's about you. I appreciate compliments, definitely. Today's about you, and I mean, you You've been in the business for 7, 8 years, made millions over that time, obviously. I want to start off here, first question. Everyone wants to run the virtual wholesale model, and you had made a post about it the other day. I don't really understand what that's about, but how do you excel at running a wholesale business in your local market?

Well, we just believe on being the authority in your area, right? The local home buyer. We've tried virtual. When we went into Western New York originally many years ago, we tried virtual and it was not pretty. And what we found was our success came when we had boots on the ground. So although we've opened up in different markets and today, you know, we're in coastal Florida with Dan Toback, we've all started having boots on the ground, belly-to-belly appointments is what we find works the best. Virtual, in my opinion, is— I don't know how to describe this without being insulting in any way.

I mean, be truthful. I'm curious of your opinion. People are curious of your opinions. Obviously, you're successful this way.

Yeah, there's a lot of people that are having success virtually, right? But it's truly a sales job, right? It's a cold calling job, and it's a high volume business. It sounds great in theory, right? And as we know in this business, Jake, you've been around a long time, there's a lot of things in this business that sound really cool, right? Everybody's doing it now. Let's hire the VAs to do cold calling for us and all these other things that come and go. But You know, you and I know you do virtual. Virtual is not easy. It requires being on the phone a lot, and to be successful at it requires to be really good on the phone a lot. And a lot of people don't understand that you have to spend most of your day on the phone and being really good at that. And that takes a skill set, which I know you practice and work really hard and invested a lot of your hard-earned money into getting better at. But with that being said, virtual has a high cancellation rate. You're looking at, you know, and I believe you go to one specific market. Some people like trying to hit multiple markets all around the country. And I just think that sets you up for failure because you're put in a position where you have low buyers, at least little amount of buyers, putting you in a position where you don't know the market really well. You really aren't able to provide a lot of value to the seller in this aspect. You're gonna have a high cancellation rate because you're probably not gonna get the numbers to work for a seller and a buyer. You're gonna probably get backdoored a lot more on some of these deals. And you're gonna have a high cancellation rate, right? So you're gonna be doing all this effort, but when you're belly to belly, you know, like I could do $1 million a year by doing 30 to 35 deals a year. That's all I have to do. And I have big spreads because I have built out the systems to be the best in my market. So we have the same great sales skills that you have developed, but we develop on a belly to belly basis. So we're in the people's houses, we see the house, we provide value. There's not this screen or phone between us, right? So we're really build this rapport, really able to get into different things, and we're able to get the properties at a deeper discount as a result of it. But on the disposition side, I've built out a vast network of cash buyers if I just truly want to wholesale, never mind have the ability to take properties down, flip them, wholesale, novations, double close, buy and hold rentals, because I know this market really well. So I have all those resources so I could do flips and wholetails. Like, my wholetails this year, right now in 2024, we're averaging $62,000 a deal, right? You— it's really hard to achieve that if you're doing virtual. And more deals isn't necessarily better, it's just more work. And if you're doing, you know, you know, if you're doing $10,000, $15,000 a deal, that's great, but how many deals is it going to take you to do a million when you could do $30,000, $35,000, $40,000? So that's why the— I love the virtual. It's The lifestyle's a lot better. We can work part-time from our homes and still achieve million-dollar businesses, and we have for like the last 5, 6 years.

So yeah, no, it's all really good. I mean, it's all— it's just a different model, and you absolutely can build so much better rapport with the sellers in person. There's just no competing with that versus on the phone versus they see you, they feel your energy, all those things. When you're in person, you can— you can get it done a lot better. Not to mention the social capital you build up in the area, the brand you build in the area. It's all the deals you're doing in New Hampshire, you know, so people begin to know you. You're getting referrals from other sellers probably.

And all the time, realtors, other sellers. And dude, you know, up here in New Hampshire, we're like over 100 positive Google reviews, testimonials, Facebook reviews. We're the highest positively viewed company by far. So when we go into our appointment and they start doing research on us, there's us and then all of the competition. And a lot of times, because we have proof provided so much certainty over the years. They know we can perform, and we get houses for less money than our competition because they feel confident moving forward with us, even at less money than trying to get more money out of somebody else. They're not sure if they can pull through the whole deal. So there's a lot to be said for that. And I'll tell you another one other thing that concerns me right now about virtual, and I don't want to open up this tangent and rabbit hole, but the laws just came out in South Carolina where they have banned wholesaling. This is coming. Wholesaling, I honestly believe for the first time in my career here, 'cause I've been hearing for many years, it is coming where it's going to change. They've already changed the regulations on texting, the cold calling, the DNC stuff has been getting worse and worse. We know a lot of people in this industry that are getting heavy fines from texting and cold calling. Those regulations are gonna get tougher and tougher. Now with the marketing of wholesale deals and everything else, If they ban wholesaling and you're a virtual model, you're freaking screwed because you can't perform anymore. But if you're a local home buyer, I can still go in and physically buy properties. Now, I guess you could do that virtually if you want, but that's a lot riskier in my opinion than just being able to— I'll still buy 30, 35 houses a year. I'm just going to— I'll use more private lending and I'll take down the deals that make sense and I'll totally resell them. On the market. I honestly, if it goes illegal, I'm going to make more money because all my competition is going to go away. But I think now's the time that you still have time to get into this business, learn how to wholesale, get really good at acquiring off-market properties. But you can't be a wholesaler forever. You're going to need to start figuring out your next level of exit strategies because this transition is coming. And if you take too long to get in front of it, um, you're going to be left out to dust.

Yeah, I agree. I wonder when it's really going to come though. I understand it was illegal in South Carolina, but I feel like it's another few years at least, you know, like before it's, it's in all the states. Like, I don't know when it's going to come to Florida. We're in Florida, North Carolina, and New Hampshire. But, um, yeah, it's interesting. I'm not necessarily worried about it either, just because, you know, we can— as long as we have boots on the ground, we have connections in those markets that we're in we can get out there and we can just— we'll just fix and flip, you know what I mean? Like, it doesn't matter to me. Like, we're just— at the end of the day, it's important to understand that it's a— it's an off-market real estate acquisitions business. That's really what it is, correct? Selling is just the exit strategy. So say that gets taken away, all right, whatever, I'm still getting properties at a discount, flip them or wholesale them, whatever you want to do, you know. But you need to have the skill, you need to be at a point in your business where you're capable of doing that, you know, right?

And that It takes, as you know, years to develop that skillset, right? It takes a couple years to get really good at acquiring off-market deals consistently, having your marketing dialed in, having maybe your systems of boots on the ground, and having the ability to exit out of properties in other ways outside of wholesaling. So if this does happen 3 years from now, you have 3 years to get into this business and start honing these skills. 2 years from now, if you decide that you're just gonna pull a Distress List and cold call and text all these places around the country and it's going to be this get-rich-quick scheme. It's not going to work. And, you know, and a lot of these people already dying out because you can't text anymore. So, you know, your virtual model is a little bit different than some of these other people that I talk to, which basically I'll talk to them, they're like, yeah, I'm calling 20 different places, I got a deal in Ohio, I got a deal in Texas, I got a deal in Idaho. I'm like, well, you have a contract, I don't know if it's a deal. But, you know, and how many deals have you closed? Well, we closed 2 last year. Okay, awesome. Good for you. You made $8,000.

Yeah, you gotta focus, focus, man. That's the biggest thing. Yeah, it's hard to— yeah, absolutely. So I guess getting into your systems, like you said you had built up the systems and the team, what does your operation look like now in terms of what are you doing for marketing? What's working well in New Hampshire? How does that lead come through the funnel? You know, acquisition goes out there, what does it look like?

Yeah, so we've tried, uh, all the different things over the years, but what we found that works best for our models is basically we have our acquisition guys take the calls. So, you know, we've had like some inside sales associates and we just found that, you know, our trans— you know, our conversion rate from call to appointment went down drastically, even with some great training. So, the way we do it is we have inbound and outbound marketing channels. I'll talk— share with that in a second. The phone rings, our acquisition guys are the first ones to take those calls. They go through our call script to generate motivation, equity, blah, blah, blah, and they go on the appointment as quickly as possible. Our process is always the same. We try to lock up every deal as low as possible and give great value. We don't get hung up on numbers. We don't give ARVs. We don't give rehab numbers. We don't give any of that crap. We just lock it up as low as possible. And then internally, we decide what the best exit strategy is. You just mentioned earlier, I always get categorized as a wholesaler because this is how I started in this business. Everybody's like, Jeremy's a wholesaling company. Well, I'm an off-market acquisition company, like you mentioned. I have multiple exit strategies. Wholesaling is just one of them, and actually it's probably the least one that we do today. But, you know, if there's a year like last year where interest rates rise and I don't want to flip a ton, I can wholesale more, right? So I have all these different exit strategies, which I think anybody who's a wholesaler really needs to start transitioning to that, not just because of what's coming, because you make more money doing it, right? And you pigeonhole yourself as a wholesaler, you're leaving money on the table. Um, so that's what we do. Our 3 best marketing channels, um, over the years up here in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, has been direct mail, SEO, and PPC. Those have been our bread and butter since 2019.

Okay, awesome. Yeah, so pay-per-click, uh, for anyone who doesn't know that, that's people, you know, Google Ads searching, hey, I gotta sell my fast, uh, sell my house fast now. And that's what we've come to find out too. You know, it's kind of, that is the king one. It's obviously costs the most money. So when you're getting started, you can't do it. We're looking to get into more of that. How long did, quick question, kind of a selfish question, I guess, but with the PPC campaigns, how long did it take you to get dialed in there? I know it's back in 2019, but take a few minutes, a few months to get running on those? Or you saw—

No, you know, we joined Bateman Collective back in 2019. You know, we're doing SEO through Carrot at that time and then they took over the SEO. And the PPC at the same time. They said it could take up to 6 months, but we started getting deals right away because we were one of the few companies at that time doing it. And then since we've been really working, since we had Carrot since 2017, our SEO was pretty decent to begin with. We were top 10 in all categories, but with their help in all these years and investing all this money every year, we're basically number 1 in every keyword you can imagine through New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and all of our primary areas of those markets. But that's a very long game. So, right now, our number one marketing channel is SEO. Since last year, over half of our deals have come from SEO since late last fall. PPC, you know, it's good. It's not as great as it once was last year that we were seeing it go up to almost $700 per click, right? Which is super, super expensive. Now, you mentioned it's not good when you first start. I think, honestly, if you're not experienced and really good, you should be careful because those costs a lot. And if you burn 10 deals, you know, you are not good and you screw up 10 deals a year or 10 deals a month in PPC, that could be $25 to $100 to $7,000 in marketing spend just gone, right? So, I think if you're an experienced person, much like you guys are and we are, PPC is great, SEO is great. Direct mail is always great to build the database. It's always very consistent. So I love it. We tried PPL last year at a great level. It was our number one marketing channel by far, had a huge return, but it was way too inconsistent where we'd have many, many months without any deals at all. And I know it's all the rage right now, but it was too inconsistent for us and people kept bidding us up, bidding us up, bidding us up, and it just was more of a headache than it was really worth. So now we just focus on PPC, SEO, and direct mail.

Yeah, that's phenomenal. SEO, that's great. So you guys have really put in the work there and optimized it over— I mean, that's a really long-term play, right? There's no instant results with SEO.

No, no, we got lucky. We've been working— I mean, now we're talking almost 8 years, so that's a long time to be in it. It's performing well now.

Yeah, that is incredible. And then what is— I guess, what does your team look like? What's the makeup of your team right now to be able to—

nothing fancy. What—

how many deals did you guys do last year? Were you guys on track for this year? Then what's the team that allows you to do that?

So last year we did 78 deals between our two markets, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Florida. Uh, Florida has slowed down quite a bit this year, uh, in the Treasure Coast. It's definitely going through a huge transition, um, much like New Hampshire did early in last year. It seems like that market of Florida is a little bit behind. We've seen the prices of houses go down 10% literally since last fall in our market of Florida. Um, so the ARVs have dropped significantly. The sellers are still in denial about it because they've seen houses sell for over 10% over asking for like the last 5, 7 years. So it's been a huge change. A lot of the flippers there are, are been struggling. It's just, it's really slowed down a lot. So, you know, we're not going to have a great year in Florida. Thankfully, we have Dan, so it's still going to be okay. It's hard to know where things are going to end up, but here in New Hampshire, you know, we're still going to— we do 35, 40 deals here in New Hampshire every single year, you know, and we do anywhere from $1.5 to $2.5 million depending on the exit strategies. We have an acquisition guy, Dan, in Florida, an acquisition guy, Eddie, here who's coming up on 5 years next month with us in New Hampshire. So, I mean, he's a rock star. Um, you know, we have a disposition guy up here with Tucker who works as a project manager and our realtor as well. He's been with us for many years. Have a few VAs that do different things. Um, and then we have Karen, our business manager, and, you know, my wife and me kind of run the business.

Yeah. So it comes down to the quality. It's like, you know, good marketing to bring in good quality leads and then having good capable acquisition managers to go get a good good spread.

100%. Yeah, you know, we've, we've had a mindset, mindset change over the last couple years. You know, I, I've been in this process of grow, grow, grow, scale, scale, scale, go into different markets, got to hire more people, got to hire, hire. If you're not scaling, you're dying. And I don't know if it's the ego in this business or it's just that if we don't feel like we're growing and having this big business, we're not in the right trajectory of success that we should be. But we've changed our mindset on that, and we actually feel like less is more now. So, you know, because we're so good at our exit strategies in both markets, we can average— and we, in Florida and New Hampshire, we've averaged $35K a deal for like the last few years. You know, so we don't— we do 3 deals a month, we make $100K, right? So we could do that part-time, all make a really good living, but also have a great lifestyle. You know, when I was scaling and all this other stuff, like, you know, my cost to just keep business operations and marketing going were extensive. And if you didn't, you know, if you had one or two bad months of deals that didn't close, you were just sending, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars out the door. It was a lot of sleepless nights. So, you know, now we're just, you know, we're just, we feel like it's just better to just stay in our warehouse and just do 30, 40 deals a year. We're going to maximize the exit strategies, take down the deals we want to take down to keep long-term. Um, You know, Eddie gets to golf, you know, throughout the week and live a great life and makes good money. Me and Shelley get to spend a lot of time doing what we want to do. It's just, it's just a better lifestyle. We all do really, really well. I don't, you know, we'll continue to grow in some aspects, but I'm done with scaling in many markets and just hiring salespeople. It's not what I want to do anymore.

Yeah, that is an interesting thing to kind of step back and understand about yourself, right? Because we do get caught up in this egotistical thing of like, I want to scale, you know, let's go to $2 million, $4 million, $6 million, $7 million business. But for what? Like, what is the point? You know, the point is to make an income so you can be financially abundant, and you want to buy and hold properties. So as long as your business is doing that, you know, stick at the $2, $3 million a year. That's plenty of, plenty of money, right? You're getting the rentals, you're getting your things, and you're slowly try to focus on quality over quantity and just optimize for lifestyle. That's kind of our thought process. Like, let's just get to a point and then optimize for life.

And that's where we're at. And, you know, and I think for us, I always just felt like I had to hurry up and get there, right? Rather than saying, hey, this is a long-term game, I'm not going anywhere, I'm going to continue to do this because I enjoy it, I love what we do. I always thought like, I have to hurry up because it's going to go away and we have to build. But from my experience and other people that I've known that have been doing this business a long time, people who scale to large numbers typically tend to take home less than they do at a, you know, doing lower volume with a smaller team, but they just have way more stress and way more work, right? And you feel like, well, if I have 2, 3, 4 sales guys, I'm doing all this business, I should make more, but you don't. So it's just something to keep in mind. And optimizing lifestyle is where it's at, especially at my age, dude. You're, you're young, but at my age, I want to you know, I, I'd rather give up a few dollars and have a few more minutes of my time every day.

Yeah, I think it's important to look at— it's not just about the money. Well, first of all, something about the revenue, about the bottom line, right?

What do you—

correct. But then also factoring in how much time are you spending to get that, and also how much headache and anxiety and all this baggage comes with that. Is it even worth it? You know, a lot of times you probably make— rather make less and just have a, you know, a little more easy, easy life in a sense.

So, and that's where we're at. So, you know, we're just going to keep it at that, you know.

Yeah. And on that note, what would you say— I mean, what would you say your biggest mental hurdle has been, if you had to pick one, since getting started in 2017? The biggest mental hurdle you've had to overcome to get to where you are now?

Well, I just think it was, um, believing that I was capable of success. So, you know, as I've become a coach since last year, and, you know, we start reflecting on all that you've achieved, you know, 450 deals, $10 million in gross profits. These numbers are still even hard for me to fathom now, you know, because in my first year we got like our first deal for $5,000, struggled our way to $10,000. The second year was a struggle, third year was a struggle. It wasn't like until we started getting to that like fourth year that we really started to find our rhythm. But Even when we went into other markets, a struggle, right? I've invested a lot of money into coaching and mentors, which has been critical for my success to help me grow as a person. But, you know, I'm a high school dropout. I didn't go to college like you. So, you know, those mindset beliefs that like I wasn't smart enough, I wasn't capable enough. These guys are much more educated. They, they've lived a different life. They should be able— I could see why they have success. I don't think I can achieve it.. But that isn't the reality, you know. I'm, you know, smart enough, I'm good enough, and I've hired good people. And, you know, and I think at the end of the day, you know, I attract great people, which is one of my strong points, you know, like Eddie and Tucker and Dan. Like, these people want to work with me. They're like the best of the best at what we do, and they wanted to become part of our team. And they've been really the huge part of our success, as much as I have been, if not more. So, my capability to attract great talent has been a huge win for me. But yeah, that's probably been my biggest mindset challenge is just believing that I was capable of doing it.

Yeah, yeah, that is a huge thing. It seems so basic and almost, you know, cliché, but it's just like, it is the truest thing. Just hard to put yourself in that position and feel like that you can do it. But listen, everyone's capable of it. It's just a matter of, like you said, it's a simple business but it's not easy.

It's a huge—

right, it's probably like 80% mindset. It's got to be like, it's not complicated.

Yeah, it's just discipline and the grit of just powering through every day, right? We say internally, like, those who survive will thrive, right? Because we know, as you said, it's not an easy business. It's going to be ups and downs, and it will chew people up some and spit them out sometimes. But if you can survive all that, even survive the interest rates, survive everything, right? Survive wholesaling becoming illegal, you will continue to thrive. It's just, you know, I always just thought I had to do everything in 5 years, but I can do it in 15 because I'm in no rush. You know, I basically am retired now. I've been basically retired. I work every day, but I don't really work because I love what I do. I'm freaking on a podcast right now. My team's still locking up deals today. That's pretty retired to me, you know. Yeah, so, uh, I'm pretty fortunate. And, uh, yeah, it is, it is a mindset change. Um, that's, it's a tough one to overcome for a lot of us because, you know, with social media, all we do is see the success of other people, but what we see isn't really reality. And that's— I've been learning that as time goes on, even at my late age in life, because You know, a lot of times you'll see a family picture of somebody on, on Facebook, right? And like, oh, what a beautiful picture. But right before that, all fighting and arguing, right? Because I know, because we went experience that at one point in our life. Um, so the image people present isn't always reality, but we see the image and we compare ourselves to this image, which a lot of times makes us feel inadequate.

Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And real quick, uh, last thing I want to ask here was in terms of your acquisition managers I guess you had A for 5 years, which is incredible. That's what I think a lot of people look at. Okay, I want, you know, people that are going to stay with me long-term, quality people, high integrity, you know, high drive, high ambition. How do you— how do you find good talent? How do you retain good talent?

Well, I think a lot of it's luck, you know. We pay very well and we continue to invest in our team, you know. Even when Dylan was with us for a couple years out of Western New York, who's now on his own, you know, he did a lot of business with us. I invested a lot, you know. I, I gave a lot of sales training. I sent them to places to get sales training, whatever I could do to get them to be better. I also wanted to give them all the opportunity to, um, have their solopreneur, uh, needs met by, you know, acquiring properties and helping them, um, you know, take down properties, things like that. Um, you know, and we've built a system where everybody can add their value, work on their own schedule and make a freaking ton of money doing it, but they don't have to worry about all the headaches of owning a business. So they get, you know, there's some risk involved, but they don't have all the risks like I do with, you know, the reason why I'm bald, right, is the sleepless nights and the stress of the business. Um, but, you know, we've had a lot of people come and go too, and, um, it's, it's hard to find good people. You know, when it comes to Eddie and Dan and Tucker and Karen, our business manager, we're incredibly, incredibly lucky to have them. Um, their family, and we invest in them, and, you know, They, they mean a lot to us and we'll never stop doing that. And I wish I knew the answer to your question. I, you know, it's a little bit of luck, a little bit of providing a good atmosphere and where they could foster and grow and develop their own skills and get and have their own solopreneur and personal financial needs met. But if anybody wanted to leave me like Dylan did and want to go on his own, I wouldn't stop them because at the end of the day, you got to do what's best for yourself.

Yeah, I think it comes down to just care. Just care for them. That's it.

We do care.

Yeah, you give a crap. Try to put them in a good position, um, and that's financially, you know, lifestyle-wise, all those things. And that's, you know, people, people can— they have— people have good BS indicators, you know, so they know if you're being genuine or not. Um, but, uh, no, that is, that is incredible. Well, I appreciate you coming on. This is phenomenal.

Yeah, thanks, bro.

Your business I didn't know specifically kind of how you operated with marketing and all those things, um, but I really like how you said now you're kind of have shifted your mindset more to, hey, we're, we're good at this, at this place of, you know, $2 to $3 million a year, uh, and just doing what we need to do, right? Everyone's making money, everyone has a good lifestyle, we're taking down properties, and, and that's good. So I think it's good for people to understand that. It's like you don't have to get to this massive scale, um, don't get caught on the means. That's the means, it's not the end, right? The whole real estate, that is the means to the end of having a good life, whatever that means to you, whatever those experiences are, whatever that looks like. So don't get caught up in the means, right? Um, you know what I mean? It's not a— like, people are so caught up on the accumulation of money, like, money is not even the point. The point is what money gets you. That's what you should be focused on. Correct, right?

And that's why we call our coaching program the REI Freedom, because that means different things to different people, right? You may want to just flip 2 houses a year and make, you know, $200,000 and work part-time because you enjoy working on a house and working part-time. You may want to huge business. You may want to just do rentals, you may want to do flips, you may want to do wholesale, or like us, a lot of everything, right? Um, but you're right, it's just you need to use the power of and knowledge of real estate to customize the life that best fit for you and your family. And the cool thing is you can always change it at any point when your life changes, right? So if you need more time or more money, well, you know, you know what to do to make that happen.

Yeah, absolutely. And real quick, talk about that. Um, what do you have going on with REI Freedom? What do you guys offer? What is REI Freedom?

Yeah, REI Freedom is our coaching program where we teach people how to start an off-market acquisition company, and/or people that are, you know, like yourself or some of other people, um, we— that have already been doing it that want to hone in their sales skills. We focus, um, on teaching you how to get the business up and running and But we give you a year-long sales training to go with it. As you know, Jake, getting good talking to sellers, getting good over the phone, locking up properties, providing value, overcoming objections, price negotiation, that is a skill set that you have to work at and you have to work at it for a long time to get really, really good. And I know you're really good, but, you know, it's taken you time. And honestly, Jake, you're one of the better ones I've actually seen in this industry. And this is a credit to your skill set. So, you know, when we came into this business, we, you know, Anybody could teach you how to wholesale a deal, but how do you get really good at doing more deals with the same marketing and the same cost, right? And the same leads and getting those conversions rate down and getting better deals out of it. So that's what our coaching program really is on. And, you know, it's worked out well. We're relatively new as of last year, but, you know, we're over 25 students now. We just got our first student, our student just got his first deal. He's looking at making $42K. We have students that have done hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first few months with us. We have people that have brought the sales guys in that have doubled their acquisitions per month, uh, being a part of our program and everything else. So I never thought I'd be a coach. I never thought I'd enjoy being a coach, but it's actually a lot of fun. And in this chapter of my life, to be able to provide this for people and change their lives, who now can go and change more sellers' lives— like, the outreach is amazing. I get to make money and provide value, just like I do with my home buying business, but at a larger scale. Uh, it's, it's an amazing gift to have, and I feel very blessed that I have the opportunity to do it.

Yeah, it's a good feeling to, to give back. Um, I love it. I appreciate it. Appreciate those comments. I will say, you know, I probably spent, you know, $7,000, $8,000 on sales training over since I got started. So there's definitely value in paying because it's like you're just shortcutting, you know, instead of spending all this time spinning your wheels.

Yeah, you're really, really good, and it takes time. Just don't ever stop. You know, Eddie right now, you know, he's the best as he's ever been, but he's been training for 5 years. As an acquisition person. You know, it takes years to develop that skill set. People don't— they think, well, I've done sales, I'm great at it. Well, business-to-business sales and working with distressed sellers are two very different things. And even with that being said, just keep investing that time. Jake, you're going to be one of the best, you know, off-market acquisition people, uh, in this business in the coming years. You're right on the cusp of it now. Um, I've been really, really impressed with both of you guys down— you and Isaiah. Um, you guys are the real deal, and you guys care. You run a real legit business, and your skills are where they need to be and only getting better. It's really, really cool to see some local kid out of New Hampshire who got a $500 assignment for his first mobile home. These people come and go, but very few stay, and you're part of the 1%ers now, and it's been awesome to see.

I appreciate it, brother. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's been, uh, it's been a journey. There's not a lot of us in New Hampshire that are really, you know, getting after So it's a tight, tight bunch.

Yeah, for sure.

Awesome. So where can people find more about you? Like your Instagrams and other places?

Yeah, I'm all over social media, but the best thing to do, guys, is just come to our REI Freedom Facebook group. It's a private group. If you come in there, we'll give you guys our top 5 sales techniques for more deals, bigger deals with less cancellations. It's a free PDF that we'll send you. And then Danto Beck's in there doing lives all the time. If you guys want to hear from somebody who's done over 600 acquisitions himself personally over the last decade, worked under some of the best coaches in this industry for the last 10, 15 years. Um, he gives away great acquisition stuff on his Facebook Lives every day. It's just, it's a, you know, it's just a Facebook group where we don't post about deals, we don't post looking for buyers. We come there to learn and grow so we can all get better at acquiring more deals and be experts like me and Jake.

Love it. And lastly, if you give one piece of advice for someone who is looking to get started in wholesale real estate but doesn't know where to begin, what's the one action step they should take today?

Well, I honestly, I'm, you know, I know this is going to sound biased, but I think coaching, you know, that's where it started with me. You know, I sold my townhouse in 2016 and moved my kids into a crappy little 2-bedroom apartment so I could afford coaching. Um, You know, I know there's money involved. Some of us don't have money, but if you want to find success in this business, you're going to need some money up front. And if you can get a coach, you'll get your first deals a lot faster. You'll just hit the ground a lot better. You got to find the right coach that fits your needs and your fit. But I've found very few people that are successful in this business without coaching or training. So that would be my first, my first bit of advice. Find a good coach. Invest in it, be all in, 100% dedication, knowing that it's going to take you a solid year of dedication to build the foundation of something great. There's no way to shortcut it.

100%. I couldn't agree more. And get some skin in the game, you know, put some money down, hold yourself accountable to actually do something.

100%.

Yeah. All right, Jeremy, I appreciate you. Hope you have a great week.

And, uh, it was a lot of fun.