How To Go From Wholesaling To Flipping Real Estate with Carlos Jimenez

What's up, you guys? Welcome back to the New and Experienced Investor Podcast. Today we're talking about going from wholesaling to flipping and then scaling your business from there. Uh, it's gonna be a show you definitely do not wanna miss. I'm one of your hosts, Alex Barnett. I'm the new guy.

I'm Andy Holmes, and that makes me the experienced one.

Heck yeah. We're back at it again. We do have an amazing guest with us today. He's a real estate investor who uses, um, his virtual assistants and AI to scale his business. It's pretty cool. Um, so, uh, you know, before we bring him on, I just want to talk about our upcoming meetup that we have August 25th. We're gonna have Natalie Elser at Hangar 24, 6:00 PM. Uh, she is a tax wizard. And so with the new big beautiful bill that came out, we want to get updated on all the tax stuff that—

It's important.

Yeah. Yeah. How to keep that money that you guys are making in real estate. So it's definitely a meetup that you're going to want to be at. I also like to remind you guys, make sure to share this podcast far and wide with any new or experienced investor in your life and jump in the chat because guess what? We are live right now. So jump in the chat, ask those questions. You get full access to us and our guests today. We're super stoked to have him on. So yeah, it's, it's gonna be a good one. Let's stop dilly-dallying around. I just wanna talk about, so the last meetup, were you at the last meetup?

I was. Yeah.

Yeah.

So that one was really cool. Normally I'm stuck behind the camera and I was like, I just was like, you know what? Let me just not do that. And I kind of walked around and actually networked with people. Yeah, it was, it was good.

There was a lot of people there.

Yeah. There was a lot of people there.

It was really good.

Yeah. Yeah. So got some private money lenders lined up.

We got some, Other, other partnerships?

I don't know who, who's like one of the best people that you've met at the meetup. Hmm.

I've met so many, you know, different types of, you know, people do the different things, investors and wholesalers and, you know, accountants and attorneys and, you know, everyone. I don't know if there's a particular one in general. I just meet, you know, someone interesting, at least one person interesting every time that, you know, I build a relationship with and Yeah, it's a really good opportunity for networking.

Yeah, exactly. So if you guys are stuck behind your computer and you're thinking you're going to make these awesome relationships just in the virtual world, when you actually get in front of people and make that connection, that's really where the networking goes to a new level. So definitely make it out if you haven't already. It's completely free. And it's just a good time. And what's great in the summer is we have the best weather.

So yeah, great location.

Yeah, yeah, it's awesome. So yeah, I want to see you guys there. So let's go ahead and jump into it today. We have Carlos Jimenez here with us today. Carlos, how's it going? Thanks for joining.

¿Qué pasó?

¿Qué pasó?

Estamos aquí. Joe speaks Spanish, right?

A little bit.

A little bit.

How we doing? Good, man. Good, good.

Thanks for having me, guys.

Absolutely.

Love being here.

Yeah, heck yeah.

Third time?

Third time?

This might be the third time. Season 3, third time. So it all lines up.

Let's do it. Let's do it. No, I'm excited. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, cool. If you guys want the full in-depth story into Carlos's life, go back to the other podcast. Maybe just give him a brief introduction to anybody new and then let's jump into it.

Yeah, no, definitely. I've been in real estate for 5 years, but before that I grew up in a very small town in Mexico, moved here 16, 2009. Did basketball, wanted to make it to the NBA because I was tall, but I just wasn't that good. So I had to start working after college. Started one business and then due to COVID shutting it down, I was pretty much forced to pivot into real estate. Made some phone calls, met Joe, which was pretty much life-changing. And now I'm here. So.

Heck yeah. So yeah. And then you started off wholesaling. Now you're pretty much doing everything. You got short-term rentals, you're doing flipping. What are some tips that people can, I guess, you, that you have for people that start off wholesaling or just very entry level and then scale into some of the more sophisticated exit strategies?

Yeah, good question. I think the biggest thing, it's really figuring out what the end goal is, right? A lot of people, there's 1,000 ways to make money in real estate, as you guys know. But the clearer you get in what that end goal might be, whether it's in 5 years, 10 years, is it retirement? Is it income? Is it cash flow? Cash flow? Is it just having a bunch of equity or is it, is it being able to do a bunch of tax write-offs, right? And get those benefits. Like what the actual angle is like, do you want to retire yourself and your wife or do you want to save up for your college kids and their kids and et cetera, et cetera. Once you get clear on that, then you will really be able to determine what you need to do today. And what I mean by that is like, if I want to be able to live off of $10,000 in cash flow, My goal today shouldn't probably be to figure out wholesale wholesaling, right? Because I want cash flow. Like, I don't care about a $20,000 assignment. Like, sure, it must be nice, but I want retirement ASAP from $10,000 a month cash flow. Then I need to I need to buy one rental, and then I need to figure out how to do two, three, four, and then how to maximize that cash flow, right? So to not make it long. Really know what you want to do. And well, Carlos, I don't know. There's a thousand ways, like you said, just try different things for a certain period of time, maybe 3 or 6 months. See what you like, see what you're good at it, and then align that with your goal, with your end goal, with your long-term goal, and go to work.

Love that.

And so, one thing that you've kind of, when we hang out, you talk about is scaling and building a business that you work on instead of working in. What are some things that you do to scale your current business?

Again, it comes down to the vision, the end goal, the long-term goal. If I don't know what the goal is, then how am I going to scale? I'm just going to be putting people in place or maybe not hire anyone at all and just going all different directions. So again, everything goes back to where do you want to be in 5 years, right? Or 10 years? What's, what's the long-term goal based on that? Then I'll, I'll know what systems, what people I need in place. If I want to do 100 flips in a year, well, how many agents or how many acquisitions people, how many cold callers, how many, how much marketing ad spend will take, right? And then you can figure out from today, like, okay, I have this amount of people making phone calls. I have this amount of people reaching out to agents, et cetera, et cetera. So the way to scale is really by whether it's a small operation at first or you start with a partner or whatever, really having clarity over who's in charge of what, who's responsible of what. And start creating SOPs and systems for that, standard operating procedures and systems in place for, for those things. Even if it's small things like emailing agents or calling agents or analyzing deals, whatever that might be. Once you create those things, then you can move on to the next thing and then hand that off to somebody. And then little by little, you start putting people in place, systems in place, and that's how you scale.

I love that. One thing that's great about, you know, all this AI stuff coming out, like before, like I hate creating SOPs. Um, I know I need them. And so I've started, you know, kind of detailing certain actions. But now you can kind of make a list, like you said, like, okay, whenever we get a flip under contract, we gotta do these 5 things. We gotta, you know, close and turn on the utilities, get insurance, whatever it is.

Mm-hmm.

You can make a list and then just pop that into ChatGPT and it'll like, make you your whole standard operating procedure right there. Are there any other tools that people should be using in their business like right now?

Yeah, I mean, my favorite is complementing ChatGPT with a VA, with an actual human being that will be able to monitor or implement those SOPs created by the bot, by the ChatGPT, right? I'm also looking into AI agents right now. Not sure if you guys have dug into those yet, but it's pretty amazing what these things are going to be able to do and are already doing. So I'm implementing my SOPs, giving it to the VA, then the VA using ChatGPT, and then trying to connect it to our tools, whether that's GoHighLevel for CRM or Notion for task project management type thing. And then have the VA oversee the ChatGPT and the tools and the automation so that everything goes according to plan. Because there's still error, right? I mean, we have human error. So these tools and these, at least right now, they're still having some errors and making some mistakes. So that's why you want that VA to really oversee. But those are pretty much the tools. Notion and GoHighLevel right now are my favorite. GoHighLevel for CRM automations, whether you're doing outreach or you're doing text messaging or landing pages or web forms, whatever it is marketing-wise, all of the tools that you've ever heard before, Mailchimp, Trello, whatever, it's in HighLevel. And the Notion for task management and working with the team and being super on top of like the status of projects and tasks and completion dates and all of that stuff. Those 2 are my favorite right now for sure. And with AI, like rocket fuel to your business.

That's great. Like some skills that you have to learn. Like I, like last year I was focused on scaling like the wholesaling operation, you know, and it was like I just threw money at it, threw money at it and just kept spending, kept spending. And we saw a decent return, but then, You know, you gotta be training these people. You gotta be having these daily meetings. You gotta be doing all that stuff. I, I don't particularly like that. I don't, I don't like having to have a meeting every day at 9:00 AM to like get everybody riled up and all that stuff. What, like, how can I become a better leader?

Yeah, uh, great question. And, and, and I work on that every day. It, it is definitely tough. Managing people, trying to keep them motivated, trying to keep them disciplined, trying to hold them accountable at the same time. But I think the more you strive to developing other leaders, then that's how you really create a multiple effect, right? You start with yourself, then one person or 2 people under you. And if you can really develop them, then that's when they can then go and do it for another person or 2 or 3 people, right? Well, how to develop better leaders? I think really great question. I really, I really think you really, really comes down to trying to sell the dream and at the same time showing them that you're Going at it with them. One thing that has been a game changer for me with my teams is I started being super transparent with financials, with vision. There's this book called Traction, and it has you do this thing called a vision tracker organizer where you plan out your next ten years pretty much. I kept that all of that for myself up until. 2023, 2024, and all financials all for myself, right? Like nobody knew like exactly like how much we're making, how much we're bringing in, how much does each deal bring in, what, et cetera, et cetera. But I read another book and it said to like really just be transparent because when you share this stuff with your team and they get to see, they really get to see like everything that goes behind it. And everything that the business consists of and the operation, and then you tag that onto or attach that to their own personal stuff and their own personal goals, then now there's vision and there's a common— there's synergy there. There's a common target. So now I get to understand Alex's goals and I share with you where we are. Now there's— okay, we're on the same page right now. We're aiming at the same target. We're aiming the same goal. So that was really huge for me and my team because they were to fully— they were— they got to really understand like how does a business work and everything that goes into it. And then I got to really— I really got to understand where they're trying to go. So now I'm like, okay, here are the business goals, here are your goals. How do I get you here? How do we get the business here so that the business can take you here? You know?

Yeah.

So really getting on the same page there was really game-changing for me.

That's great. I mean, I'm sure like your sports background and like being a coach and all that stuff has helped too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Just competitive, the competition aspect of it, the teamwork aspect of it. Because you really do need people to scale. Yeah. Any industry, any niche in real estate, like you need your transaction coordinator, you need your title rep, you need your escrow officer. You need your lender, you need your, your private money lenders, right? You need your construction guys. Like, it really takes a team. So that's, that's, that's probably building a team that, that everybody's got each other's back and everybody's aiming at the same target is probably the same— not the same— the biggest factor to, to growing and scaling.

Nice.

Yeah.

Well, then obviously, you know, everyone is kind of money motivated too. So what kind of structures do you use with the people working under you? Are they hourly? Are they getting a percentage on the, you know, purchase or a percentage on the backend? Like what kind of different structures do you use for your, your, uh, people under you? Yeah.

So it kind of varies, um, uh, with kind of the position, like with, with agents, obviously we, we try to incentivize them with, uh, listing properties, with representing us as the buyer. Or double ending a deal that we're going after on the market. With acquisitions people, we do like $5,000 per deal or 20% of the profit, whichever one is greater. Then with our VAs, we do small— for us, small bonuses on top of their hourly rate, but it's a big bonus for them.

Yeah.

They're overseas, but kind of varies. And again, from the beginning, it's like, how much you want to make a year? How much— how many deals you want to do? Like, we need to really figure out if you're trying to generate this amount of income, how many deals that's going to take, and then set the KPIs and set the measurables in place so that they know how to get there. Like, you're helping them how to get there, right?

Keep them motivated.

And they know, like, oh, if I get 3 deals, then I'll get X amount of dollars for a new back or whatever it might be. Right. Right.

Excellent.

Yeah. Yeah.

I want to see a different perspective too, because Andy's kind of lone wolf style, which you can do in real estate and still make a crap ton. 1,000%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what's your perspective on that as far as building a team, managing people, all that kind of stuff?

It just, like he said, it kind of depends on what your goal is. And what you need to get there. And so for me, I kind of fit my goal and me and my wife with what we have available as far as time and ability, and those two kind of just match up. And so that's just what makes us happy. It gives us a little bit more flexibility on scheduling. And that was like another question that came up.

You don't have to deal with headaches of people clocking in and making sure they're showing up.

Right, yeah.

I mean, yeah.

have done management jobs in the past. And like you were saying, it's kind of not necessarily my favorite thing to worry about having a morning meeting every morning and all that type of stuff that comes with managing people. But obviously, if you want to scale to a certain degree or more, if I needed to scale to a bigger operation, then that's going to be necessary. Or hire someone to do kind of that job for you. So yeah, I mean, it really just kind of depends on your goal and how you can make that happen.

Yeah, and what's kind of cool with the flips is you do build a team for 4 to 6 months, or you know what I mean? Or each project is, let's say it's like 12 weeks, and you're coordinating and staying on people's butt. But then it's like, then once they're done, they're kind of done, and then you're taking over again. Right, so that's, yeah, small delegation.

And you're not necessarily tied into using those same people. If you want to use a different contractor the next one, I mean, you can. I mean, it really is kind of a per-job, per-property type of relationship that you build with those people. And I find that works for me.

Love that. And wouldn't you say that you went that route because you and your wife probably talked about it, and they were like, well, yeah, I don't want to manage 20 people. These are our goals. These are our kids. We want to spend time with each other and Travel or whatever it might be, right? Like, so again, like it goes back into like having clarity over what the angle is.

Exactly.

So yeah, I agree with that. There's no reason for Andy to hire 10 acquisitions people if he had no desire to manage 20 people, you know? Right. So again, like for anyone listening, like you get super clear and it's not just money really. Like it's like, cause I know agents, like you said, Alex, that make half a million a year or $750,000 a year. But they're working 100 hours a week and they don't see their kids. They don't see their spouses. I guarantee if you ask them before they were making that type of money, what the goal is, it wasn't work 100 hours, don't see my family. It was probably make $750,000, but it really isn't about that. So just super clear on that vision. I know I said it like 10 times already.

No, no, because yeah, it's so easily like you can get Like you start with that vision, you then you start going down the road and then all these things happen and you're like, I just need to put in more hours. Just need to put in more hours. All of a sudden you, you, you just built a job for yourself that's like 80 hours a week.

Yeah.

And that was the complete opposite of financial freedom.

Yeah.

Which what is what you were going for.

And most people in real estate are going for, like, they want to replace their, the W-2 job, but you're not trying to replace it with another job. Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, in real estate, you know, there's some aspects of it where it's, you know, 9 to 5 Monday through Friday, but a majority I would say of it can be done Anytime. And so yeah, if you're trying to just pump more hours, you can really, you know, load yourself up and, um, like, like you were saying, not have a lot of time for anything else really. Um, what's, what's kind of your like day-to-day, like how many, you know, what's your, you know, morning routine? You wake up and immediately start doing real estate till you go to sleep or, you know, somewhere in between?

Yeah. Uh, uh, almost. Uh, I'm, um, I'm, uh, I was gonna say I'm a workaholic, but that kind of sounds bad.

Like, well, yeah, if you follow me on Instagram, I love working. According to your Instagram, you're walking around Dana Point with your shirt off for like 9 hours a day.

And closing deals and calling agents, yelling at agents. Um, yeah, no, I, I, I love working, and, and I've— I really think I, I was called to just be a business guy and try to impact my community in that way. Um, I'm not— yeah, but to answer your question, Andy, I, yeah, wake up, I try to have some time for myself within the first hour just so that, uh, because I already have anxiety and I'm always stressed out, so I don't wanna— it's hard for me to like wake up and not look at my phone and there's already 50 notifications, right? So I try to like not touch my phone until, I don't know, 8, 9 AM, start my workday at 9 AM, and then probably Probably work until about 9 PM, but I do squeeze in workouts through and during the day and go out and like Alex said, walk walk to the beach or whatever. And the beauty of us real estate investors is that, like you said, we can work from our phone, right? Yeah. And which could be bad too because you're now you're in bed at midnight and you're answering an email or whatever, right? But yeah, no, I I love I love working and. I pretty much anytime I'm by myself, I'm working. And then when I'm with my girlfriend, she's like, stop working. And then I have to— I don't have to, but she makes it easy to like stop. And yeah, but yeah, I have a hard time stop getting to stop working.

Real estate can be— it's great. Like it's, it's a lot of fun and, you know, it's got a lot of things you're always learning. And so, yeah, it's hard to do sometimes.

Yeah.

Yeah, last week, last week we were trying to look up a deal and I think I emailed Michaela like 10:30 PM or something about a property or something. Uh, and people are probably like, why are you emailing me at 10:30 PM? Um, if you're trying to reach me, uh, probably until midnight, I'll answer most of the time.

Well, some of the ways you can buy, you know, your time back is, you know, like you do, is get a virtual assistant. Now When you jump into real estate, that, that, that term gets— get a virtual assistant— that gets tossed around all the time. And people know that eventually they probably got to get one. What's the best way to utilize— let's say you only can afford one virtual assistant. Like, what's the best way to utilize them? Yeah.

Keyword right there, utilize. Because I think a lot of people get virtual assistants and don't know how to maximize their time. Right? So I was talking to a friend yesterday. He's an investor and he wants to get a VA. And I'm like, okay, what's the main thing you want him to do? Well, I want him to cold call. Right? And I'm like, okay, great. But what are you trying to accomplish? He's fairly new. So he started— I always ask, I love asking about long-term goals, vision, all that stuff. Right? I like to dig in, and he starts sharing with me, and I'm like, okay, well, that's the problem because you want a VA to cold call, and you know real estate cold calling is hard, right? So if that person or that VA doesn't get a deal within one, two, or three months, then you're probably going to cut him out, right? But that's not the best way to utilize a VA. The best way that we're providing right now business owners, real estate investors in how to use a VA. It starts with identifying the lowest value tasks that are consuming your time and then handing those off. So admin stuff, emails, inbox management, calendar management. I want to make you— there's this thing called a time audit or time inventory. Don Martell from Buy Back Your Time, Hormozi, they'll, they'll talk about it. Basically you do for a week or 2 weeks, uh, an inventory of your time every 15 minutes from the moment you wake up to the moment you, you go to bed, you write down what you did, right? Then at the end of those 2 weeks, you're gonna highlight every single task in green or red. Red if you hate doing it, if it drains you, or it's a low value task, right? What's a low value task? Uh, something that a $10 task, like answering an email to a scammer messaging you about how to grow your YouTube. That's no value. That thing made me zero money and it took me 3 minutes, 5 minutes, right? You highlight it in green if you enjoy it, you're good at it, and it's a high-value task, right? So you do that for every single task and you start identifying the ones that drain you and that are not worth your time pretty much. And then you start delegating those. So everything from your personal, your business life, like for example, like my assistant, she's a VA. She's been with me for like 5 years. I just gave her my car registration the other day. She pays that. She pays HOAs for properties. She handles all communication for the Airbnbs. She pays electricity, bills, like stuff that like I hate doing and it doesn't make me any money. It just takes money from me, right? So I hate doing that. And then on top of that, she like oversees like 10 other people, right? And not because she's amazing. She's amazing, but because we equip them with the tools, AI and everything that we equip them for so they can handle all these things. But to answer your question, like business owners, real estate investors need to really identify what consumes their time. And it's of low value and high value. For example, Alex, you are great at closing a deal on the phone, right? Like you have no business opening the mail and, and paying property taxes because that probably by the time you get through all the mail, that's 30 minutes. And then you go online, you log in into the tax assessor, and then you pay one property, you pay 2 properties. That's a whole hour, right?

Mm-hmm.

How much money can you make if one hour you're talking on the phone with hot leads? It's $100 grand right there, right?

Yeah.

So it's not worth your time to do a low-value task with something that you can hand off to somebody else where you pay them those $10 an hour, $20 an hour, right?

Right.

Another, another way to look at it is figure out how much you make per hour. And for real estate investors, it's a little tricky, right? Because it's not a W-2. But if you, if you average out like a flipper, you, Alex, Andy, like, or, or Retail seller, if you figure out, if you average it out to twenty grand a month, right? Okay. Well, I work forty hours a week, so break that down, right? That's your hourly rate. Anything anything below that, you should pay someone else to do it. So if your rate is a hundred dollars an hour, any other task that is not worth a hundred more, you should be willing to pay up to ninety dollars an hour. So then you can make $10, but then now you gain another hour to make $100. So you essentially made what, $110 with somebody else taking over that $90 task? And then you do that over and over and over. There's a— I recommend this book, 10X Is Easier Than 2X, which talks about that. But does that make sense?

Yeah. Like 10X Grant Cardone.

No, no, no. 10x Is Easier Than 2x.

Oh, okay.

By Ben Hardy. Now, Grant Cardone's 10x is great too, but this whole concept of like 80/20 rule, it comes from—

Oh, okay. Gotcha. Yeah, that's so true too.

Yeah.

You know? Yeah. Because, because, sorry, I love this stuff. I'm going to keep talking. Let's say if I make $20 an hour and I'm thinking of this example, it's not real estate related, but I think it will apply. I was talking to a coach. He's got like maybe 50 kids in his program, right? And he was telling me like he was complaining like, man, like I coach like 10 games in a weekend, but then if I bring another coach, I'm making less. And in my head I was like, dude, think about this, right? If you make $50 an hour and then you hire another coach, in your mind you're paying them $20. So now you're making $30. Right? However, if I make $30 there while he's coaching there, I'm paying him $20, and then I go and make another $50, then now I'm making $80. That's the simplest way to put it.

Right.

Why wouldn't you be willing to pay $20 to make $80? But people don't see it that way. People might think like, oh, a VA, like $9 an hour, like, oh, this is super easy, man. I can do it myself. Like 100 tasks of $9 an hour, like that takes How many hours of your time? Yeah, like do what you're great at and do what's high value. Like that's really going to help you scale, help you grow, help you close more, close more deals, make more money. Like if you're a landlord, like you should not be talking to tenants. You shouldn't be talking to tenants. You shouldn't be fixing toilets. You shouldn't be scheduling the plumber to go do a repair. You shouldn't do any of that. The VA can do that. You should focus on how to get more rentals. Right. How do I raise more capital? How do I buy a duplex, fourplex instead of one single family or a 10-unit one? Right. So.

That's so true.

Makes sense.

And I guess like to do that, you kind of have to be organized, right? Like, so like for example, you're paying the bills, all that kind of stuff. How do you lay that out to a VA?

You just give them all the papers, like you scan it in in one Yeah, I mean, it depends on the thing that you're handing off or you're delegating. But SOPs, SOPs for everything you create. I use Loom. I love Loom. So make a video, show them how to do it, show them how often it needs to be done and steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Yeah.

Here, done. With every little thing that you come across or that you want to delegate.

Yeah.

So that way you're not just delegating And you create, whether it's a spreadsheet or a Notion or like any project management tool where you can keep, you can track it, you can track status and stuff. We use all of those tools and then just instruct the VA on however you want them to do it. But yeah, you have to be absolutely organized.

So. And I guess patient too, because, you know, like, yeah, it will take time. You know, when you're like teaching someone and they're, you know how to do it perfectly, 100%, you're like, all right, do this thing and they're like taking a little bit of time to learn it. You're just like, just give me it back, I'll do it.

Yeah, exactly.

Like being able to get over that and having the patience, making sure they do it. 'Cause then once they pick it up, that's off your plate now.

Yeah, 100%.

So you don't have to do that.

Yeah. 'Cause so many people think like, no one's gonna do it as well as me. Or they'll get impatient like you said, and they'll be like, oh, I might as well do it myself. But it's, um, from, um, Again, on that book, Buy Back Your Time, Don Martell says is is a hundred having somebody else do something that you don't want to do, even if it's at eighty percent well done or whatever you want to call it, it's a hundred percent awesome. Why? Because you're not doing it. Even if it's not a hundred percent right, like just because someone else is doing it, like that's already amazing. You know. So yeah, the fight against that that mentality, I guess, of like, oh, I'll just do it myself, or no one's going to do it as well as me. Yeah, you won't ever be able to, to grow.

Right.

No, absolutely.

Right.

Well, it's a total mindset thing too, because I think people, they do the low tasks to fill up their day and they're like, oh, I'm so busy. You know, like some people get addicted to being busy and like doing busy work. But rather, if you could, even if it's thinking of big picture stuff, How much more money could that bring you in? If you sat there and you're like, I took this task off that took me an hour and I'm just gonna sit here and kind of think about the next moves. You don't, sometimes you don't get that time during the day to actually think.

Yeah.

And come up with big—

Yeah. You're in the weeds. You're in the business.

Yeah.

You're not working on the business like we hear all the time.

No, totally. So that's, uh, that's pretty eye-opening. I've attempted the VA thing a few times and it's obviously like a me problem. Um, but definitely, it's, it's definitely something that I, I need to implement, even if it's like, like somebody brought up doing like fractional VA. Like, even you don't have to do— get them the whole week. Maybe like Monday through Wednesday you have them handle a bunch of stuff. You know, they're, they're working half the week. But yeah.

And, and that's the thing, like, that's another like big objection that, uh, I get is like, oh, I don't have enough to give a VA. Like, trust me, if you're still grocery shopping, You have something to give to the VA. If you're still picking up your meds, if you're still doing your own shopping, like literally, like grocery ordering, and anything that you can think of, like just hand it off. Like you can go on a date, you can hand off going on a date with your wife. Right. Yeah. All right, Alex. But anything else that requires Wi-Fi, you can pretty much hand off or delegate and you shouldn't do it in my opinion.

Yeah.

But again, it goes back to goals.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, what are, maybe share some of your goals. What are you seeing for the next 5, 10 years?

Yeah, no, I love that. Definitely want to exit my basketball academy in Wow! I don't know if I want to publicly say the number and then and then yeah no that's fine yeah you don't have to say the number but I know I knowing you maybe I will and then you can give me crap in ten years when I didn't do it okay is that gonna be a ten-year exit uh yeah okay five-year five-year okay yeah we're gonna do five-year um wanna get to a thousand units by twenty thirty nice um want to be able to provide 100 jobs to 100 VAs.

Cool.

Yeah, very, very passionate about giving back. And it's life-changing money for them. And I really don't see them like virtual assistants. I see them just like us, like, or they're just somewhere else, right? They're just in another country. But a lot of them have ambitions and goals and they want to help their families out. And they're very hardworking, very loyal. So That's one of that's one of the goals, and wanna get a bigger house in Dana Point so I can yeah keep working and but then now go home to a bigger house and then have all of you guys over.

There you go.

Nice.

Yeah, no, there's tons of goals. I wanna come up with a book, Amigo Make a Million. That's the that's the title for now. Sweet.

That's the YouTube channel too, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just a very. I want to create a thousand Latino millionaires. I want to help a thousand Latino homeowners. I think there's a there's a lot of education that that is missing in the community, in my in my community, and I'll share this. Someone I know shared with me recently that they they they let themselves get repoed. Their car. They they let their car be repoed on purpose because somebody recommended to do it. And and in my head, I'm like, it's it was sad. But in my head, I'm like, who's gonna recommend that?

Right?

Like obviously goes on your record. It's like if if I tell you, like Alex, you should just get yourself get foreclosed on. And and we see it too. Like when we're cold calling or with homeowners, that's what they say. A lot of the times they let them.

Yeah.

Oh, I'll just let it go to foreclosure.

Right.

But going back to what I was sharing is, is like there's a, there's a lot of misinfor— what do you call it? Misinformation.

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

And, and a lack of education in the Hispanic community. And I'm, I'm passionate about just trying to make an impact that way and trying to educate and, and, and show our people, especially immigrants here, that they can achieve financial freedom, they can achieve homeownership. And they don't have to work until they're 80 because they have to.

Right.

A lot of— I mean, that's what I've seen growing up or since the moment I lived here. Like, they all come here to have a different life and for the American dream. But what does that dream actually look like? Right? Like working until you're 80 because you have to? Like, so very, very driven by that. That's— so that's part of Part of the goals for sure.

I love that. Is it possible to have a team and not do daily morning meetings?

Yeah, just do, um, just follow the, the Traction, um, outline or, or agenda. It's from the book again, Traction. It's, it's, uh, you have a weekly pulse meeting, um, every Monday.

All right.

And basically you go over your You review your rocks for the quarter. Your rocks are like your goals for the quarter, and you go over your KPIs, your scorecard, to see if you're on track to hit those rocks. And then if you're not, then they have this thing called an IDS list, which is like an issues list, identify, discuss, solve. And then you gather your team and you're like, okay, we're not on track for this.

Why?

There's an issue. Okay, add it to that list. Okay, you're going to assign a person responsible of that issue and you're going to assign an action item to that person. So the next week that we meet, did we knock it off? Yes. Okay, check it off, check it off the list or delete it. And then the next thing. And basically you're always reviewing every single week your rocks and you want to make sure that you're on track. But this is where what I was saying earlier about being transparent with all the goals and everything and the financials, because now everyone knows Okay, we did this amount of leads, this amount of calls. We didn't hit our goal of putting one deal under contract this week. Why? Maybe we need to double our calls, right? Or maybe it's not the calls, but our follow-up. Or maybe it's not even the follow-up. We are great follow-up, but we suck at sales and closing. So it's our conversion rate, right? So how do we bump up our conversion rate? You need to get better at sales, right? And you'll have to probably most likely increase your volume too so that If you're not very good at it, then the more volume, the more volume you're doing calls, then the more connects, the more conversations, right? So just what was the question? Where were we going with it?

I don't want to do a daily morning meeting.

Yeah.

Yeah. That meeting is going to change your life.

Okay.

Yeah.

That's good. That's good.

Yeah.

I just like, and I have templates for all this. So if anybody asks or DMs or not just you guys, but on the YouTube or comments or something.

Okay.

Yeah. That— because I used to do, um, um, every 9 AM, every 9 to 9:30 meetings.

Yeah.

And then I would do like 2 hours on Monday, start, start of the week, and then end of the week on Friday.

Oh God.

So that's already like, like 30 minutes every day. That's 2 and a half hours plus 4. You're talking about close to 8 hours of meetings.

Yeah.

Right. That people probably don't even want to be in it.

Yeah.

So yeah, just Mondays, an hour and a half.

Okay.

Yeah. Game changer.

Just cuz like I enjoy being able to at any second just do what I want.

Yes. I love that. That's the best part.

Oh, that's it.

So even if I have like one meeting at like 9, if I'm not feeling it, like I'm just like, uh, I don't know, guys.

Yeah.

So maybe my, that's the best part of leadership style can be like, here's what we need to work on. I don't care how it gets done. Just make sure you handle it.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

And that's why you have— that's why you have your scorecard. So the scorecard is another component from the book Traction.

Okay.

But basically it's all your measurables, all your KPIs. So you literally can tell them on Monday, like, all right, here are the rocks, here are the goals, here are the measurables for the week. Don't talk to them again until Friday. And then on Friday, it's not a meeting. It's you review the scorecard and then you're like, okay, this person Hit the calls. This person hit the deals under contract. Blah blah blah blah blah blah. If they didn't, then you get on them. You you keep them accountable. You hold them accountable, right? If they did, then great. You didn't talk to them the whole week. They you're on track with your on your with your goals, and everybody's happy, right?

There you go.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

So I have a question about. So obviously, in the last I don't even know you know six months or so, we've seen a shift, and I know you do a lot of deals in Southern California. You have your, you know, hand on the pulse. What's kind of— what are you guys seeing as far as on like the acquisition side? What's different when you're calling sellers? What's not different? Uh, you know, are values going down or are they just, you know, less common? Like, what, what are you guys seeing?

Something not different is that sellers are still delusional.

God bless them.

A lot of them.

A lot of them. A lot of them, they're still hitting you with interest rates are going to come down at the end of the year. Like, my house is worth $1 million, which that never changes. Most sellers always think that their house is worth more than what it actually is. But what we're actually seeing in the market is kind of depends on the pocket or the area of the community. We have one property in Lake Elsinore that within a few days we had like multiple offers, one of them over asking, and then we closed it right away.

Right.

And at the same— yeah, flip. At the same time, Another property in Redlands had already been sitting for like 45 days, and it kept sitting, and we dropped the price like two or three times a little bit, and they ended up selling. Right? But I mean, you would think like Redlands, if you know Southern California, you would think that Redlands would be way more sought after than Lake Elsinore.

Yeah.

But and then another one in LA that we closed earlier this year, after the fires, like we thought it might just sit there and. But that one was a quick one too. So I guess it kind of depends. We're trying to be a little bit more conservative on the offers to take a small percentage off of the ARV just to make the spread a little bigger and just for protection. And we're being very mindful of Main Streets, very mindful of those type of turnoffs because We can see that buyers are more picky for sure.

A little bit more picky.

Yeah, for sure. They know they have the leverage. Like this Redlands property, they asked for appliances. Like Ryan texted me and he's like, oh, like we're going to get it done, but they want appliances and they want the roof done. So we had to get the roof done like within 48 hours right before closing.

Wow.

So we got the roof done, they got appliances. And I'm like, crap, like they want Netflix for the year too? Like, come on. But they know, they know they have a little bit of a leverage. Yeah, yeah.

You know, like let's just get rid of this thing. So give them what they want.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Trump says he's coming down to one percent interest rates. Thoughts?

Trump is crazy. Who knows?

Who knows?

Yeah, yeah. One one thing, one thing when it comes with like market fundamentals, real estate fundamentals, like especially now that I'm learning the multi multifamily side of things is like. I'm not a nerd on all that. I just, I just asked the people that, that know, like, or are nerds. I'll ask them. And I think that has worked for me well. Like, I'm not an expert. I've said this before. I'm not, I'm not the smartest guy. I'm not an expert on anything really. Like, I just really surround myself with people that know, like, like Joe, like he's a wealth of knowledge, right? Like, I'll just text, call, like bug him. Surround yourself with people that know and you'll, you'll most likely be okay. But yeah, I mean, with the current market, you're never— I don't think you're going to be in a bad position if you're offering conservative and you run your numbers and you're disciplined with your numbers, whether it's a rental or a short-term rental or a flip. If you're good with your numbers, you're disciplined. that means you'll have plenty of equity and you'll be most likely okay. Yeah, yeah. And if, and if something happens, then something happens. Like, that shouldn't keep you from investing, right?

Are there any particular areas that you're, you know, more conservative or less conservative, kind of, you know, in the Southern California regions? Or is it, you know, any hot spots or dead spots, I guess you could say?

Uh, yeah, um, I think the desert. I think we've seen the desert to be slow, right? Um, yeah, Joshua Tree died. Uh, yeah, Palm Springs, different pockets.

I know.

Um, that whole Indio area. Yeah, it kind of just, just depends. But yeah, I feel like the desert was probably one of the most affected.

Probably.

Yeah, Orange County is Orange County.

Right.

I think people, like even where we live, Alex and Dana, like properties go pretty fast.

Oh yeah.

And they are overpriced, but they still go like maybe a little bit under asking, but they still go. And obviously it's location, right? I think that's the first thing everybody hears when they're trying to get into real estate. Location, location, location. Right. So there's still truth to that.

But yeah, they're still moving $2 million houses over there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

People got money.

I'm trying to get one of those for a million.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, really.

I know. It seems like there's a lot of price reductions, you know, if you run reports in the MLS and that type of stuff, but not necessarily a drop in value is what kind of I see it as.

Yeah.

Just people, you know, you can't just name a price and someone walks through the door and says, okay.

Yeah.

They want to get to it.

Yeah.

It'll be interesting. I mean, it's all cyclical.

Yeah.

So it's going to be fun on the way back up.

Yeah, I mean, if he does drop interest rates, like, it doesn't even have to be one. Like, you see—

Yeah, I think that's his anchor price. And then hopefully it'll settle somewhere between where it is now and 1% and everyone will be happy.

Give us a 4, 5, 3, like that will get buyers going again.

Yeah, I know.

We should.

Get rid of that capital gains tax for primary residents too.

That would be huge.

That or, you know, just make it bigger.

So yeah, that exemption would definitely be huge.

Yeah.

Well, and that's kind of the thing, like right now when he's out there, he's like teasing all this stuff. I feel like people are waiting.

I know, right?

For that to happen. If it's going to happen, it may not. So then that's like kind of stalling things.

Yeah.

Everyone wants to, you know, pull the trigger at the right time so that they can maximize the sale price and maximize all those, you know, potential windfalls. And so, yeah, it's, I think a lot of people are on the fence.

Yeah.

It doesn't help with, you know, real estate investing.

I know.

Just real estate in general.

Yeah. Just like trogging through the mud right now. So it's fine. But sticking to the fundamentals, sticking to the fundamentals. I mean, it's the same as, you know, when people were investing like 40 years ago. It's just, you stick—

Well, like you were saying, Carlos, you gotta be a little bit conservative when things are kind of unknown or, you know, when things are the way they are right now, basically.

So. Yeah. And, and, and run your property through different exit strategies, right? Like, can you keep it as a rental? Like, or can you keep it as a short-term rental? Or can you live in it like for a year or 2? You know, like worst case scenarios in your head, like, And running the property through those, I don't think it will hurt either, especially if you're like very risk-averse, you know?

Yeah, amen to that. Uh, so this is the part of the show where we've curated a couple videos. I want to get your reaction right now, live.

Let's do it.

Yeah, grab the headphones so you can hear it down there, down below. Saddle up.

Let's see. Let's see. You got somebody twerking in there or something?

Yeah.

You got Joe twerking from his cruise from Alaska.

We do have a video of Joe dancing.

Should have showed that on his birthday. We should have.

That's a good one.

All right. This first video is Scaling Too Fast Almost Cost Us Everything.

A lot of losses along the way, but I think the biggest loss that sticks out to me was the first year in business. We scaled too fast, and I hired somebody from an individual contributor role into a leadership role that was not fit for the job. And he happened to be running and managing my entire virtual team, and my company almost went under because I lost the mindshare and support from my virtual team because this leader was not managing my team the right way. We lost the culture. We lost the camaraderie.

Ooh, to be continued. What are your thoughts about that?

You gotta get the right people in the right seats. That's from, uh, Good to Great. It's a great book. Um, yeah, because you can have great people, but if they're not doing what they're good at or where they, where they might thrive, then they're doing you a disservice and themselves a disservice. So in this case, maybe that person, maybe that person was great, but not as a leader managing 10 people, right?

Yeah.

So I think it's important if you do have a team, it's really important that you do like constant, continuous assessments. 'Cause as a company grows, responsibilities change for different people, right? So if you're doing continuous assessments of where each team member is at, what are they responsible for, what are they good at, do they even want that job, do they even want that new responsibility, do they have the capacity for it, then you'll be able to see like if they're in the right seat or not.

Yeah, maybe, maybe he just put him in there and was like, all right, he's, he's gonna take over now, and then, you know, checked in 6 weeks, 8 weeks later, and then realized the whole thing had gone to crap.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A little bit too good at delegation. Yeah, yeah, no, it's all you, you got this.

I mean, because that's kind of the goal is like, you know, even in business too, it's like you want to have a business that's kind of running by itself. But I don't know, I'm sure it's possible for some people, but you still, you're the one that is going to care the most because it's your business.

You know, you're—

so you still gotta, you still gotta be in there.

What do we got next?

All right, next we've got problems with AI in real estate.

Freaky.

Or the wheel of death.

Internet's been a little slow.

AI can't close deals yet, so—

I know.

A common current problem with this generation of AI is a thing called hallucination. Do you want to explain what that is? So the way that these AIs are built is, again, they're trained on data from the internet. One way of thinking about it is almost like a really fancy autocomplete. So the problem is that if it sees some, some words and it thinks it knows what's going to come next, it's just going to say what it thinks comes next. One area where this can be a problem would be using an AI to write a property description. And you can go now on ChatGPT and say, hey, please write me a description for a condo with 2 beds and 2 baths, and that it will generate a really nice description. But it'll start saying things like, yeah, it's got 2 beds and 2 baths, but Check it out. The kitchen was just recently updated. Whoa, AI, I did not tell you any of this stuff, which is not great. It can get you into trouble as an agent for advertising something that doesn't actually exist, right?

A common curve.

Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I think we were talking about it earlier, how there's still error, room for error from any AI tool out there. So it's good to keep an eye on it.

Yeah, and, you know, and they say that whoever gets the prompts the best is going to get the most out of the AI. So if you're just putting 2-bed, 2-bath condo, it may go off on its own. But if you list all the features and kind of, yeah, keep it honed in, I think you get, you know, a better, a better response.

Yeah. Yeah.

That makes sense.

But yeah, people are coming out with prompts and a— it, what they're able to do with it is like pretty insane.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, even now down to like the video generation and, and all that stuff, it's like it's getting of hand. It's like, uh, it's getting freaky.

The more information you feed it, the better it will be. So you still have to do work. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a computer. It's like they used to say, you know, when computers' programs were first being written, they said garbage in, garbage out. So it's really about, you know, the data that you're providing it.

Totally. Kind of a random anecdote, but I used ChatGPT to virtually stage a couple properties and it would like fill in windows and alter the original image. And everyone was talking about like the new upgrade. Oh, there's no difference. And I did some staging today and it took like the original image and just placed furniture in there. So that alone was like, it's getting better. Yeah.

I tried it out a couple times too and I had the same thing where it There was like a hallway and then I told it to put like a couch next to it and then it like moves the hallway down and then puts the couch. So it's like, you know, nice big couch. I'm like, yeah, that looks great. But the house looks nothing like that. And I even tell it like, do not modify the layout of the house or any of the original features of the photo. Just add in something and still it would do it.

Yeah.

Do not put the couch in the roof.

Yeah.

Like, no, this looks better.

All right, we got one more video.

Okay.

This is the truth about virtual assistants.

What's the biggest misconception about hiring a virtual assistant?

People think that's a plug-and-play model. It's not.

Yeah.

Uh, also people think that virtual assistant will get them business. No, you get business, not virtual assistant. It's an assistant from the verb assist.

They're going to help you.

They're not going to be your rainmaker. You are going to be your own rainmaker.

They're going to take the Activities that are not income-producing activities. That's where you should focus. So you could focus on income-producing. And they're going to take the rest of those activities off the plate if, if you as the operator are willing to let go and actually give them the opportunity to take those things off your plate. That work can be outsourced so that you can continue to lead generate. What's the biggest misconception about hiring a virtual assistant?

Everything we were talking about earlier. Everyone else, somebody else doing something, even if it's not 100% right, it's 100% amazing that you're not doing it. Right. So what he's saying, you got to let go and again, stop doing the $1 value task, the low income producing activity, how he called it, so that you do the high income producing activity. Yeah.

What are virtual assistants costing these days?

You can find them from anywhere from $4 to $10, $12, even $17. Oh, there's some, there's some companies out there like Athena. They're pretty popular, but I think they're charging like $3,000 a month. Okay. Which is outrageous in my opinion.

All right. Yeah.

Which of the ones that you use, do you have a, like somebody that you use? Do you have a—

Yeah.

Well, who is it?

Yes, 10X VAs. I started the company myself because I was tired of dealing with other agencies.

Okay.

And we're about $1,500 a month, so it's about $9 an hour.

Nice.

Okay. And where are these people based?

Philippines.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, they're all in the Philippines, and we provide a customer success manager, an IT person, and the virtual assistant that gets assigned to you. So 3 people in one.

Excellent. Okay. And do you have to hire them for the whole month or like, is it—

Yeah, we recommend full-time, 160 hours a month because they want full-time jobs. They don't really want part-time and they got to put food on the table and stuff.

All right.

And so basically you're going You're hiring them or you're onboarding them, making them available and then placing them with a client.

Correct.

At that point. Okay.

Yeah. We do all the training, all the vetting, all the onboarding, all the interviewing. Then you're interested, then we're going to ask you some questions. Why are you interested? What are your needs? What are your goals for your business? What are you trying to delegate? And those misconceptions, right? Some people might think that it's a plug and play when it's not. So we start developing the SOPs. We start— there's a roadmap from the first 30 days to the first 90 days so that they can take over inbox management, calendar management, all the admin stuff, all the—

What about content? Can they do that?

Yeah, 100%. Yeah. So we have a pool of candidates that apply every single week. We have interviews. We have a pool of candidates that apply. They have skills. And then we also have them take personality assessment, uh, assessments, uh, like DiSC. Uh, we don't do DiSC, but we do one that's called the 5 Voices. But, um, so based on these results of the personality test and their skills, then we match that with, oh, we have a client that needs content editing, or we have a client that needs cold calling or whatever it might be, or customer support. Then we kind of match them like that.

Is it possible to get somebody that does like Everything? Like on Monday, I need you to post this. On Tuesday, you gotta pay this bill. Wednesday, I need you to cold call.

Yes. Yes.

Yeah.

1,000%. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Nice.

Nice. Yeah.

Yeah. So we, we require a minimum of proficiency in spreadsheets, Gmail, Workspace, Google, CRMs like Salesforce, GoHighLevel, Asana, like monday.com, project management stuff, Notion. So all of these so that they can learn how to do admin stuff, how to project manage, how to do emails, how to cold call, how to do invoices or quotes or whatever it might be.

Love that. So how can people get in touch with you if they, you know, are looking for a VA?

They can go on the website at 10xvas.com.

Okay.

You submit a form or Shoot me, shoot me a DM or we'll, we'll text you.

Gotcha.

Um, there's our phone numbers on the website as well.

And then what if people just want to get ahold of you, talk about deals or, you know, anything else?

DM, DM on Instagram. That's probably where I'm the most active.

Nice.

Yeah, let's, let's chop it up. Let's do deals.

There you go. Heck yeah. Well, thanks for joining us, man. That was very knowledgeable and it blew our minds on, you know, things that we probably need to do and implement. Definitely a task audit. I have no idea what I'm doing all day.

No, bro, I swear, like, if you do a time audit, like, you're gonna be like—

Time audit, yeah.

You're gonna be like, I'm spending that much time doing that thing?

Yeah.

You'll start seeing a lot of, like, patterns and stuff. And, like, I was scrolling social media for 15 minutes or 30 minutes. Like, you know.

You saw me do that?

So, yeah. I was on the toilet for 30. Like, come on.

I do like to watch my stories. Um, yeah.

Okay. I think the only time audit Alex has done is he always wants to use Instacart, which we love.

Yeah.

So there you go.

I know. I try to get my mom to do that too.

She won't do it.

Yeah.

VA can do that.

Oh, get the VA.

Yes.

Instacart.

Next level right there.

Yep.

Gotta step it up.

Yes, that's good. Then I'll be arriving. My DoorDash gets there right when I want it. No, I'm just kidding.

Yeah, we're gonna have a VA next week, huh?

Probably.

Yeah, you know how this goes.

You can have, you can have, uh, deliver flowers and pretend it was you.

There you go.

I'll know it wasn't him.

One time I was missing out. Do we have time for a little bit?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Short story. A couple of years ago, we did a whole trip, me and my girlfriend, in Colorado. And it was— I put a lot of effort into it, like a whole— like a lot of planning.

Nice.

And sometimes I mess with her. And I'm like, yeah, like, Micah is my assistant's name. She's like, Micah planned it all? And she's like, are you serious? She's like, is Micah going to be planning all our trips in the future? I'm like, delegation, you know?

Yeah.

Well, I did— for the record, I did plan that myself.

Yeah, keep them guessing. Yeah, that's good. Awesome, man. Well, thank you again for, for coming on.

Thank you.

Yeah, had a great time. But, uh, yeah, we'll be back here next week, you guys. And then remember, on August 25th, we're gonna have a meetup, so I will see you there.

Yeah, we'll see you there. Don't forget to like and subscribe to the channel.

Like and subscribe.

If you want some more advice on real estate investing, reach out to us one-on-one.