$5K First Deal: My 15 Near-Fail Lessons 😅

All righty, how's everybody doing? Oh, about to get started. Let me tell you about my first 5K wholesale deal and how it almost fell apart 15 times. I might be over-exaggerating. Nah, it was actually 15. It might have been even more. It was that bad. My first deal that I did when I first started wholesaling, guys, it was not pretty. And I'm going to be showing you guys what you need to do to get your first $5K deal, $10K, $15K, $1K. It doesn't matter. You need that proof of concept. And that's what I got from doing my first deal, even though it fell apart many, many times, but I was able to keep it together. So you're probably all sitting here wondering, why should I listen to this guy? Who is this guy? My name is Nathan Payne. I've done over $2 million in assignment fees, and I'm gonna show you guys 3 reasons right here why you should watch this video. All right, so 3 reasons to watch this video. Number 1, I'm gonna show you how I found this deal. Okay, so if you're all here sitting struggling to know how to do deals, I got your back. All right, also, I'm gonna tell you guys how I kept this deal alive even when everything went wrong. Everything went wrong on this deal. It was not pretty, it was not looking good. You guys are about to find out exactly how I kept this together from falling apart, because we all have that happen, right? We all have these deals that are falling apart left and right. We're blowing it. It's okay. All right, been there, done that. I know how it feels. It's stressful, but that's what we're gonna be going over. Number 3, the third reason you should watch this is the biggest lessons. I'm gonna share with you the biggest lessons I learned from closing my first deal and things you should not do, things you should do. All right, so let's dive right into it, everybody. So my first deal, I got it from cold calling. I know you guys hear it a lot. You guys hear cold calling, does it work? Does it not work? It's tried and true. Okay. You're calling someone directly. You're getting them on the phone and you're asking them if they want to sell their house. Now, when I first started wholesaling, it was about 6 years ago and I was nervous. If you guys are nervous, hey, I totally get it. If you're nervous, you don't have to act cool and tight and be like, oh, I'm not nervous, Nathan Payne Payne. I'm cool, calm, and collected. That's fine. If that's how you are, congratulations. But when I first started, I was nervous to make calls. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know where the conversation would go, but I just knew that's what they said to do, so I just started making dials. Okay, now do I suggest that? Now look, there's way better ways to go about it than just hammering the phones and not knowing who you're gonna reach out to, but we're gonna get into that. But that's how I got my first deal. I was cold calling. I was using the Mojo dialer. Anybody know— you know what that is? It's a multi-line dialer that calls multiple people. You just input— you put a list in it. And I was calling the expired listings list. I was hammering that list. I was calling it for, I think it was up to like 2 months before we got this lead. And his name was Donald, okay? This guy, his name— he was from Croatia. And basically, he— on the expired listings, he listed his home for sale and it did not sell. And he was also in pre-foreclosure, but it didn't sell when he listed it. So he was like, whatever, I'm just going to let the bank take it. I don't care. And we were dialing through the expired listings list and we were like, hey, you know, do you want to sell your house? And he's like, yeah, maybe, I don't know. Like, you could just see he was reluctant to talk to anybody. He just didn't think it was going to happen. So me and my business partner at the time, Corey, we drove over to the house, set up an appointment, and we sat down with the guy on his couch. And he was, he was in a pretty depressed state. You know, I think he had just broken up with his wife or his girlfriend at the time, and he was just like, was gonna let the house go. Okay. And what we did is— this was not, by the way, coming from like as a new investor, being not knowing really what to say. Like, we did not just go there, lock up the house under contract, and it was just bada-bing bada-boom, done instantly. This took several appointments where we would go and visit Donald, and we basically became his friend, you know, because he was going through a hard time. So we would go, we'd call him, and and he wouldn't necessarily be awake, right? So we go like, okay, he's sleeping throughout the day, let's go knock on the door. So we knocked on the door, be like, Donald, we know you're sleeping, wake up, we're here, we're here to talk about the house, and he'd open the door. So this took several times of me and Corey going to the house to try and negotiate this deal. Eventually he was like, all right guys, so if you want to buy the house, what would you pay? And we didn't really know what to offer, so we just offered something low, right? And again, that's not necessarily like the best way to go about it, but that's what we did. We were just like, We knew the house was worth about $250,000 fixed up. That was ARV, after repair value. So then we were like, would you take $185,000? And he's like, sure, I'll take $185,000. Sounds good. So we got the deal locked up. So the story doesn't stop there, right? Like, it's not like it was just a beautiful rainbow happened and we got our $5K check. No, this is how the deal fell apart almost like 15 times and I'm about to break it down for you guys. So once we got the house under contract, we thought, oh well, what do we do now? We need to find buyers. Oh snap, we've been spending 2 months, 3 months on trying to find a deal. We don't have any buyers. Now I don't know if any of you guys that are new to this, if you've ran into that situation where you've spent all this time trying to get the deal and not have buyers, but we were in that situation. Not the best situation to put yourself in, but, uh, and this is why, why almost fell apart many, many times. So We get the house under contract and we're like, well, how do we dispose of this thing? And we, we didn't really know, so we just started going to real estate investor meetups. They call them REIAs. In Salt Lake, they call them SLA-REIA, but Real Estate Investor Association. I think that's what it is, Real Estate Investor Association meetings, right? So we went, we printed out a little packet, and we took it to the dang meeting, and we're like, hey, does anybody want to buy this house? And everybody there's pretty much a noob, so everybody just looked at our packet and was like, I don't know. I don't have any money. I'm just here to learn. So it didn't really work out. We didn't find anyone there. I was like, well, let's try Facebook. So I started posting in a bunch of these Facebook groups. Finally, I found some guy named Roger. RIP Roger. Love you, man. Unfortunately, Roger has passed away, but he bought my first deal. Roger Gixxer, you're awesome. He actually even gave me his MLS access when I was new. Um, but anyway, RIP, we love you, Roger. Hope you're doing well in heaven. Um, he bought— he's the one that bought our deal. But basically, before he bought our deal, I reached out to him. I was talking on Facebook, and I was like, are you interested in the house? And he's like, uh, maybe, I don't know. And I was like, well, what would you pay for it? You know, we started talking a little bit more about it, and he's like, I'll pay $185,000. So he offers $185,000. That's what we have it under contract for. Now, at the time, before I had talked to Roger about this deal and locked in working with him, I was at the time working with a broker. A broker was letting me work in his office. His name was Justin, cool guy. It didn't work out in the long run because I was young and it just— that's a story for another time, why that partnership or that relationship didn't work out. But we were at the broker's office and I was telling Justin like, hey, we have a cash buyer here, I think we might go through. He's like, nah, nah, nah, Um, let's blast this deal out. I know I have all the emails to the real estate agents here in Utah. Let's blast that deal out to all the real estate agents in Utah and let's see if they can bring a buyer. Now guys, I was new. I didn't know that sending a wholesale deal out to real estate agents is not a good idea. I was like, oh yeah, let's get— send it out. So he sends it out to about, I think, maybe 15,000, 20,000 agents, I believe. And, uh, not a good idea because all of them started calling and being like, hey, can I bring my families over this house? And these were agents that didn't understand understand what wholesaling was or what cash offers were. They thought this was just a house that was for sale, right? So they started calling us being like, hey, when can I bring my family? When can I bring all the people that I represent over? And, uh, it was a mess. And they just started showing up to the house. Donald's like, what the heck is going on? We even had an open house, like, to show the house, and we're like, hey Donald, uh, we got some people that want to see your house. Can you, um, go to the dog park? He had like 2 or 3 dogs. We're like, can you go to the dog park while we show this house? He's like, ah, sure. So We bring a bunch of people through. We got families coming through. We got a bunch of agents that are representing people. They don't know what's going on, but they're looking at the house. They're like, man, this house is disgusting. They didn't know what they were getting into. Neither did we. So after that fiasco happened, we get a call from the Board of Realtors. Okay, so I'm telling you how this deal almost fell apart like 15 times. I'm not playing. We get a call from the Board of Realtors. They call me and Corey in, and I sit down with a guy. They take us to an office. This is in like Salt Lake City, in like the downtown office, like big buildings. And this guy calls me in, me and Corey, and he's wearing a suit. Everybody's wearing suits, and me and him are showing up in just normal clothes. And he's like, can you take a seat at this table, guys? And we're like, sure. And he puts a tape recorder on the middle of the table, and he says, you mind if I record this conversation for evidence? And I'm like, I guess. I don't know what's going on. I don't even know what the Board of Realtors is at this point. And if any of you guys do not— if you don't— if you're new and you don't know what the Board of Realtors are, it's like the people that regulate and are in charge of the, the, the NAR or whatever, like the National Association of Realtors, or— and this is the Board of Realtors there in Utah, I believe. And, uh, so he sits and starts asking, it's like, you guys can't market this property. And this was 6 years ago. Uh, they're like, you guys can't market this property, what are you doing? And he could just tell we didn't know what was going on. Like, we were brand new. This was like within months of starting cold calling. And we're like, look, man, I don't know what, what we did wrong. I don't know what's going on. But, uh, We're just trying to sell this deal. And he's like, okay, whatever. Like, you guys don't do it like this. Don't send it out to agents. I'll let you go with a warning. And we're like, okay, sounds good. So we left and we knew not to blast out your wholesale deal to every real estate agent in the state of Utah. That's something you should— I should have known, but I did not. And that's the thing with wholesaling when you're brand new, a lot of things you don't know. That's why you need a partner and work with people who do know so you don't make mistakes like I did. And that's why I'm giving you the story so you guys can learn. So anyway, get rid of all the agent fiasco, all that stuff, and we go back to Roger. RIP Roger, we love you, man. But Roger's like, $185,000. I said, Roger, can you pay a little bit more? I got it at $185,000. He's like, no way, that's the most I can pay. So we go back to Donald and we say, hey Donald, I know we've had a lot of people come through the house. At this point we had like 2 or 3 or 4 showings and we were telling him to leave every time and he was getting annoyed. He's like, what's going on, guys? Like, why do I gotta leave every time? Time. So that almost blew it because we were sending so many people through. So eventually we're like, look, Donald, we got it at $185,000. It's not a good deal for us at $185,000. We gave you the wrong offer. Can you come down a little bit? We have someone that will buy it at $185,000, and so we can make a little bit of money, so we can get you some money. Can you come down a little bit? And he's like, what do you guys want me to come down to? And I was like, we just threw out the offer that we thought was fair, what he would accept. We just I was like, can you come down to $180,000? He's like, yeah, sure. He was cool about it. He didn't care. He was about to let the house go. So maybe I should have asked for $170,000, $175,000, whatever. But now I did $180,000. He's like, sure. So we signed a new agreement. We said, hey Roger, we got it down to $180,000. Can you do $185,000? Can you still do $185,000? He's like, yeah. We're like, perfect, perfect. So we, uh, we assigned the contract to Roger. You think I'm, you think I'm done right now being worried about this deal? I'm brand new. I know how it feels, guys. I was nervous that anything would happen that would blow this deal up. So we actually set up a time where like, hey Roger, the signing for the house to like sign the documents to sell it, it's at Vanguard Title. We're gonna meet you there just to make sure you get there and just make sure everything is safe. We show up at the title company and we sit in one of those like windows where you can see into the boardroom or like wherever their closing happens. It's almost like an interrogation, right? Like where you can have the glass and you can see like what's happening. That's what we were looking at, at it, just to make sure he would sign because we didn't want to like send him and then him decide not or last minute. We thought all these things would happen, so we went there and we're like, hey Donald, yeah, we just wanted to make sure you would sign. So we watched him and He signed. We're like, oh my gosh. And I have a picture of me holding the check, the check where it's $5K. I got a smile from ear to ear like this, so excited because I finally did a deal after doing about 3 months. But we're going to take it back really quick, guys, because if you're watching this and you're brand new, you haven't done a deal, you saw how many problems I had when I first started. And I didn't have like any mentors. I didn't have anybody to kind of guide me. I just tried to figure it out and I almost blew it 15 times. And there's a bunch of other times that I didn't to tell you about, but this video, I can't go too long, all right? Because I can go all night. But the deal almost fell apart, and there's so many things to learn from this. Number 1 is, if you're just trying to find deals and you don't have buyers or know how to find buyers, you're going to be in trouble, right? At least know how to find buyers. Finding buyers is a great— it's super important. To be honest, you're going to pass up on a lot of deals because you don't have buyers in place. Now, I know it's extremely hard when you're first starting out to have a ton of buyers, 'cause you don't really know how to network with them. But that's what I try to teach people, and not try, that's what I teach people is how to have those relationships with buyers so they can help, so you can do more deals. But having buyers is super important. Another thing is, you know, being transparent with the seller is very important as well. Like we weren't very transparent. We were just kind of like, hey, do you mind going to the dog park? We're just gonna, yeah, we just need to show this. Like we were just trying to get like fishy about it, you know? Going now, knowing what I know now, I would have just been way more transparent, let him know exactly what's going on, and it would have made more sense. He wouldn't even had to leave, right? Because I do a lot of showings right now where we wholesale deals and the seller stays there because we set the expectations for the buyers and the sellers. So we're not worried. You do not have to go to the closing table. I do, I'd say, 99% of my deals virtually. I never show up to the closing, the title company, to sign or to watch them sign. Not necessary. So a lot of this being worried comes from not having experience, okay? I know if you don't have that experience, it's hard for me to say, hey, don't worry, because that's just what happens. I get it. I came from a background of a lot of sales experience. I had a lot of experience with working with people, but I was still nervous because this was a new, a new area for me. So I get, I get it. And I wish I could take away all the issues and the roadblocks and all the things that you're gonna face, but unfortunately, when you first get started, you have to go through some pain if you want the long-term gain, you have to go through short-term pain. And that's why at Painless Flipping we work with people, because we do the deals with you. We'll close deals with you, right? We'll hold your hand. And the benefit of working with you for me is we— I get to do more deals. The benefit for you is you don't have to fail like I did a thousand times and almost lose deals, or walk away from deals that are deals but you just don't think they're deals, or maybe they went with someone that's more experienced. So, um, Let's take it to the biggest lessons to learn to help you close your first deal. I know it's not fun, but it's massive and perfect action. You got to hit that cold call, you got to text, you got to take that action. You have to talk to the people, the pre-foreclosures. You just got to go, guys, and you're going to fail. But if you can align yourself with someone like me or someone in like a mentor or someone that can— has experience, they will help you get deals a lot faster. You might not make 100% of the wholesale fee if you're working with someone, but you're going to do it way faster than if you try to figure it out on your own. That's one thing I wish I would have done. I wish I would have gotten someone that would have had experience. Now, my business partner at the time, he told me he had experience and later found out he didn't have that much experience as much as I thought. This is fine, you know, not to say anything bad. This is great, great learning experiences. But if you want to overcome a lot of those issues that I had of like being kind of sketchy with buyers, walking their properties, not having cash buyers, not knowing what to offer, renegotiating, almost falling through. You know, you can get past a lot of that stuff by having the right people in your corner. And thankfully, that $5K deal was able to— it didn't do much for me. Like, $5K, we split that between me and Corey and a couple costs. Like, that's not a lot of money, okay? I get it. Like, but if you don't have a business partner, maybe $5K is more, right? But it enabled me to know, hey, This is real and I can do this and it's, it's a repeatable process. I just need to have more conversations. Now I can guarantee you that I was passing up on tons of deals as I was cold calling, as I was negotiating. I got tons of stories of how I almost blew it 100 times, but the deals just worked out because I was persistent. Okay, so that's why I want you to know the biggest lesson you can learn is persistence wears down resistance. Okay, long-term gain requires a short-term pain. Painless flipping. We're here to take that pain away. But anyway, that's it, guys. I just wanted you to know. So let's do a quick recap. I hope these 3 reasons were worth watching. If they were, please like, subscribe. Just actually just like the video, because liking and commenting actually helps me just get out in front of more people. So like this. So let's recap how I found the lead. I was cold calling the expired listings list with the Mojo dialer. Okay, nothing fancy, just hammering that dialer. How did the deal— how did I keep the deal alive? I was persistent. I had a good relationship with the seller where we were friends, and I built that rapport by really trying to help them out of the situation he was in. If you care about the seller's outcome and the benefit of like what happens to them more than yourself, they're going to trust you. And I had that trust. And even though I was new, I didn't know I was going like exactly what to do step by step, we had that relationship, we had that rapport. So remember, Even if you don't have all the experience, if you care about people, it will translate to you doing deals. Okay, the biggest lesson to help you close your first deal is you're going to run into some pain. You're going to run into some problems. It happens even on deals that I go through. But aligning yourself with someone that knows what they're doing, even if you have to give away some of your deal, I would say that's worth in the beginning to make sure you do it right. If you're like, nah, I can do it all by myself, I don't need anyone's help. That's fine. I'm just telling you, for me, I wanted help and I had a lot of issues because I tried to figure it out. Okay, so guys, if you like this video, again, give me a, give me a thumbs up, give me a like, and I would appreciate it. And everybody, if you like this stuff, join my free Facebook group for step-by-step training on how to get your first deal without the chaos I went through. Okay, my Facebook group is free. It's called Flipping Wholesaling Real Estate Simplified. Um, I give away free courses. I give away a free 90-day action plan and free training every Thursday at 4 PM Eastern Standard Time. If you like videos like this, we got tons of training. And I want you to engage with people because how do you do deals? You network with people. Okay, and that's actually what the training is on this Thursday. We're gonna be talking about how to use your inner circle to do deals. And I did an $86,000 deal from networking with people and letting people know what I do. So if you want to do big deals, uh, with zero cost to yourself You need to be able to network. So come to the training, join the Facebook group, and just DM me. Um, and I'll send you the link to the training call. Uh, does anybody have any questions before we wrap up? I appreciate everybody that's stayed with me on this live. And do me a favor, like I said, just like this video and leave me a comment saying, um, hey Nathan, uh, that story was good. That story was trash. It just give me your feedback on that story. Have you felt like that? Have you ever been in a situation where you've, um, dropped the ball? A lot like I did and almost lost the deal 15 times, just comment. I'd love to interact and learn from you because, uh, again, my goal is to help you do more deals. And why do I do this? Because I know if I can help you guys do more deals, I can do more deals. And I enjoy teaching. It's what I like to do. Any comments? Any questions? If not, just give me a like, and I appreciate you. That's it, guys. Doesn't look like a lot's coming through, which is totally cool. Maybe you guys can be a little shy today. Maybe my software's not working, my stream is not working, you guys can't see what I'm— maybe I can't see your comments, who knows. I'm hoping it's that. Let me look. Let's see. Oh, okay, we got one. We got Realtor Reynoso coming from the Instagram Live. He says, I just picked up a foreclosure. Let's see if I can close it. So Realtor Reynoso, I love that. Thanks for saying that. Um, will I get direct access to you in the course? So Chris Williams is asking if he gets direct access to me in the course. I sell a JV course for $197, and it's all it is, is the course, and then you get 30 days of access to my community, my paid community and school. Direct access, that direct access and like working with me one-on-one, Chris, is for the apprenticeship. That obviously requires a larger investment of yourself, of your time, and of mine. But no, so the course is just the course. Let's see, give me one second, everybody. Hello? Okay, I hope— I think you guys can still hear me. My AirPods are I think they died on me. So Realtor Reynoso is doing a foreclosure. Congrats, foreclosure. Congrats, man. I hope that works out. We just stopped a foreclosure from happening. One of the clients I work with, Carl, on Monday— yesterday. So very exciting. That's probably a little bit high-level stuff if you guys don't know what that means. People, when they don't make payments on their properties, sometimes they, they go to foreclosure, right? They lose their houses. But you can stop that. The auction date, at the auction, you can stop their house from getting foreclosed on, and you can say, hey, I'm gonna buy the house, don't foreclose on it. And you can get deals that way by helping people and also stopping foreclosures. All right, everybody, well, that's it. I'm gonna wrap up. I'm gonna go eat dinner with the family. Love you guys. Hope this was helpful. And yeah, just love to hear, hear your feedback on the story. And if you've been in this situation I, I've been now, or if you were, love to hear it. Talk to you guys later.