Exposed! The Ponytailed Hustler Who Ditched Our Flyers for Sidewalk Zen 🚶‍♂️💔📉

What's going on everyone? I know why you're here today. You're here for Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Storytime: Tales from the Trenches. And guys, I got a doozy for you today. I got a story that will blow your socks off because it still makes me laugh to this very day. That we got duped. We got tricked by our flyer guy, okay? And if you've ever hired someone and just trusted that they would do the work that you pay them for, you're in— you're gonna love this story because we did the same thing. We said, oh, we're paying this guy, he's gonna do what we say. We're gonna find out quickly what will happen in the real estate industry if you pay someone to do something and you don't check on them and you don't check their work. So I'm just reflecting. This is a journal from, uh, you know, my beginnings in wholesaling, so you guys can see exactly what it's like to start in real estate investing. And if you do things like I did, what to avoid. That's what this story time is for— Tales from the Trenches. Still in the trenches, and I like being in the trenches because that's where you learn the most. But learn from my experience, and that's why we're here today. And, uh, I'm reminiscing about the time, like I said, we hired a flyer guy, uh, to, uh, flyer for us, and it didn't work out as well as I thought it would. But we're going to be telling you guys exactly what not to do and about the story, and I got a gift for you at the end of the video. If you're subscribed to our weekly newsletter, you get free gifts every single week. Every story that I tell comes with a marketing list, comes with a calculator, comes with something specific that will help you in your real estate investing journey, just like it helped me. I got thousands and thousands of resources that are in my drive that are just sitting there. So I said, let me give them away, but let me give an engaging story that will help you use these and know how to use these, spend thousands of dollars all for your benefit. So just subscribe to the newsletter, just go to painlessflipping.com and you get all these resources and especially the gift that I'm going to be giving today. So let's dive right into this story. All right. So as you know, this is live. I'm not over here, uh, pre-recording this stuff and editing it. This, what you're watching right here is live. All right. Later you can watch the edited version, but here You can ask questions, you can, you can share your experiences. I want to know what you've been through too. This ain't just about me, it's about our journey. All right, so before I get into the story about how we got duped, how we got lied to by the one of the guys we hired, and how we handled the situation, how we tracked him down in our car, saw that he wasn't doing what he was supposed to do, I'm going to tell you. But first, let me drink some of my herbal tea real quick. So I get kind of parched in these stories, so This is really good. If you've never tried it, it's like a berry, berry blend herbal tea. All right, let's dive right into this story, everybody. So if you don't remember from the last episodes that we've been doing, I think it was maybe 2 episodes ago, I talked about how we got a deal for $19,000 from flyering houses. What we would do is we go to neighborhoods and we wouldn't just target pre-foreclosures or probates or divorces or specific lists. We would actually just farm. We would just go knock, knock every door. And if the— actually, if the house looked like it was distressed, we'd knock it, try to talk to the seller and see if we could buy it. But if we didn't knock the door, um, we would just leave a flyer. And this is what we were doing. And we did a $19,000 deal recently when I first started. And, uh, we got some money, you know, from doing the deal from a flyer. And we thought to ourselves, hey, you know what, this is actually a really good marketing strategy. Let's go all in on this. Let's hire some people out. So with the $19,000 that we made, we decided to hire out some people. So me and Corey at the time didn't just have to be the only ones flyering. Okay, so that's exactly what we did. Hey, real quick before I keep going, I just want to make sure my audio— I'm sure my audio is fine, but I got to make— I want to make 100% sure. So give me one second. Oh my gosh, I had my audio. I had my audio on the wrong output. Goodness. All right. Okay, the audio is set on the right thing now. Hey, this happens. Technical difficulties. All right. Sorry about that. If you're watching this live, this is just what happens. I had my mic on the wrong one. Gosh darn it. What's up? If you're watching this live, give me a shout out. Like this if you're like, hey, I like this. And if you don't like it, like it anyway. Because it helps the algorithm get this in front of more people. And that algorithm, it's a, it's a son of a gun, I'll tell you what. That dang algorithm, you know, I don't even know what triggers that algorithm, but hey, just like it. Okay, cool. All right, my bad, the mic wasn't, the mic wasn't set. Dang freaking mic technology. All right, I'm gonna start over. So for, for the people that are hopping in you're getting a treat. You're getting to hear this all over again. Congrats. Um, get my iPad up. All right, here it goes. Here it goes again. So if you didn't check, uh, so if you didn't join us on the last episode or the previous episode where we talked about how I did a $19,000 deal by flyering homes, we, we would just flyer every house in the neighborhood. We would go to neighborhoods that were a little bit older, built in the 1970s, and we would leave flyers on there. Doors saying, hey, we bought a house recently in the neighborhood, looking to buy more. And we would get calls. We'd get calls from people that are upset saying, don't leave your trash on my door. We get people saying, yes, I want to sell. So that was one of the marketing strategies I used to implement, and we would get a lot of deals later on. But when I first started, that $19,000 deal was the first. And if you are subscribed to the newsletter at painlessflipping.com, we actually give you that exact template of what it says, what it looked like, the paper to use, all that. But anyway, So where we are right now in my journey is we just made that $19,000 and we're like, well, let's hire this out because I don't want to be flyering all day. There's other things I can do. So let me leverage that marketing money and let me hire some people. So the next thing we did is once we decided to go all in on the flyers, we, we hit Facebook. We went to Facebook, just made a bunch of posts on Facebook saying, hey, we're looking to hire flyer guys, we're looking to hire flyer distributors. And we made those posts on Utah Jobs for Sale. Like we went to all those little groups. Of people looking for jobs. And we had many applicants that were interested in what we were offering at the time in 2018 was 5 cents a flyer. It was, it was like 5 to 10 cents a flyer. If you drop the flyer, that's 10 cents. And then you— and what we would say is you could do like 100 an hour, or you could do a certain amount where it came out to be like 7 to 10 bucks an hour depending how fast you went. And like I said, we had multiple applicants, but, um, we, we found the chosen one. We found the chosen one, or so what we thought was the chosen one. What ended up happening is making through it all, making up all those posts, making those posts, people would come into the broker's office we were working at and we would interview people to see if they wanted to fly her. We had like a stay-at-home mom that wanted to fly her while she, uh, she pushed her stroller, her kid in her stroller. She did that. She did that for a day and she's like, this job sucks. I'm not doing it. And we're like, okay. Um, but finally, like I said, we found the chosen one. In comes a guy named Rob. All right, Rob comes in. Just imagine long blonde ponytail, tall lanky guy, and combat boots on, white tank top, giant combat boots, black. Looked like he had been walking for thousands of miles. Like, it just— the boots were worn out, but he was— he was— you could just tell the man knew how to walk. All right, and what ended up happening is he's like, guys, I love walking. I walk everywhere. Okay. That's, I enjoy it. I really have fun walking. And you're telling me you can pay me to go walk? I'm in. And we're like, okay. I think we found the chosen one. We found the right guy. He loves to walk. He's got the boots. He's got, he's got the ponytail that waves in the air as he walks and bounces every time he steps. He's the one. So we hired him. We said, you're in, you're in, buddy. You're the flyer guy. And what we did at the time is we had this old ghetto Garmin watch. Okay. It was a watch that like you could track like where you walked. I think people use it for like riding bikes and like tracking their, their pace and everything. But we gave it to him. We said, okay, you got to wear this watch when you go out and flyer. We're going to give you the flyers. You're going to go and just go to neighborhoods and flyer, leave them on the doors, and you're going to do this for 8 hours a day. My man was ready. He was ready to rock and roll. We believed in him. So we told him exactly what neighborhoods to go hit. And he started his journey, okay? The first day he goes out, he comes in— well, we hired him the next day, he's ready. He comes in, ponytail and all, white wife beater tank top, and he's like— and mind you, this is in the middle of, like, the middle coming to, like, almost the end of the summer where it's, like, the hottest here in Utah, blazing hot, okay? And he's coming with the tank top, jeans, and the combat boots, and he's ready to roll. So we give him about 100, 200, 300— maybe it might even been, like, 500 flyers. And we said, okay, knock goes out. Here's some tape to put them on the door. Go do your thing. And my man, he goes. And I didn't think about him putting on sunscreen. I didn't— I wasn't really worried about his skin, uh, but he went out. And the next day, the next day he comes out and the man is red as a lobster. This guy got straight burned to a— unfortunately, I won't say crisp, but he got burned. He had sunburn. He was red. And he was hurting. He was like, guys, I can barely move. I was there for 8 hours flyering that neighborhood and I got burnt. So the guy had to take a week off. Oh my gosh, a whole week he took off because his sunburn was so bad. And we're like, hey man, are you gonna come back? And he's like, I'm finally ready to come back. He texted us. So eventually Rob comes back, he's ready to rock. He comes back and guess what he's wearing this time? A man is wearing a giant bucket hat with a cape on the back. He's wearing a full-blown, like, long sleeve. He is not going to let the sun get him this time. Rob is ready to flyer. So we're excited. You know, he loves walking. He told us he loved walking. He's got— now he's equipped for the sun in the summer in Utah. He's not going to get burnt. And we start getting phone calls and we're excited. We're getting calls and we're setting appointments because he's leaving the flyer saying, hey, we want to buy your house. And people are calling. Some people are calling mad, but that's just how it is. Send mail. Flyer, send anything, people are going to get upset in this, in this industry of like, you know, buying houses. Or I'm sure they'll get mad at anything. Like if you're doing landscaping, they'll probably get mad if you leave something on their door. Anyway, Rob's doing well. And the watch, I'm checking the watch occasionally and I'm seeing that he's going to where he's supposed to be going. And, you know, 2 or 3 weeks goes by and the calls die down. You know, the calls aren't going, and I'm checking the watch. Maybe not. I'm actually not checking that much because I'm like, okay, why would the guy not be walking anymore? He's saying he's picking up the flyers. He says he's going, but the calls die down. And I say, Coria, it's kind of weird, you know, we were getting a lot of calls before. Rob's still going out there, but our calls have freaking diminished. They've dwindled a ton. And you know what's going on? He's like, have you Corey says to me, Nate, have you checked the Garmin watch? Have you checked online to see his, uh, location? I say, man, I'm sorry, I've let that slide. I trusted the guy. I thought— I didn't even think to check anymore because I was like, I thought he had it. I go and check, and the line that the Garmin watch shows, that the trajectory of like where he's been walking, it's just straight lines on the sidewalk. And I go back, I look a little bit, and he's It's just straight lines, you know. It's— he's not going to the doors according to the, uh, the, uh, the watch, the, the— that shows the, the, the journey or whatever, right? The GPS. And I'm like, man, it looks like he's just walking on the sidewalk. He's been doing this for a couple weeks when the calls started dying down. There's no way he's just going out there for 8 hours a day and just walking the sidewalks. That's a waste of time. That's why I said to myself, And Corey's like, maybe there's something malfunctioned with the watch. Maybe the watch isn't working. I said, let's— you know, I got an idea, man. Why don't we, why don't we just go follow him? We know exactly where he's at. Let's go drive over there and just go see what he's up to. So we hop in the car and we drive to one of the neighborhoods in West Valley. He's flyering, right? He's flyering. And, uh, we're driving through the neighborhood where he's been there for a couple hours. We don't see a single flyer on the door, not one tape, nothing. Zero, nada. We see him, he's laying in one of the church parking lots. He's just laying on the grass. We're like, we saw— this is kind of fun, we're like detectives at this point. We knew he wasn't doing it at that point. We knew he was just messing around with us. So we, uh, we just parked the car and we watch him, and the man's taking a nap for about 20 minutes on the grass, just under a tree, just sleeping. Like, okay, all right, he's napping, that's fine. I guess that's cool. So he eventually gets up. He gets up and starts walking. We're like, okay, okay, here we go. We caught him napping. What, is he gonna start flying? And guess what? There's a video. We have video evidential evidence. We got proof because I got him. I started recording him. We'll throw it in the video that gets edited here on YouTube. But we catch him just walking. He's missing houses now. He's not flying houses. He's literally just walking past all the houses he should be flying, the houses that he says he's flying that we should— we were paying him for, for the last couple weeks. He's just passing them by. And Corey's starting to get fired up. He's like, man, I'm about to go pull up on him and tell him we caught him. I said, no, no, no, no, we'll get him. We'll get him another way, Corey. Let's go. We know he's not doing it. Let's see how long he keeps this lie going for, because we're not going to pay him obviously anymore. Let's— because he's lying. Let's go back to the office. So we go back to the office and I'm like, hey, he's going to come back for his next batch of flyers. At this point, we don't care. Let's see how long he says he lasts with the flyer, the 500 batch we gave him the last time he came in. So he comes in a couple of days later. He's like, hey guys, can you imagine this? Just lying like this. He says, hey guys, I just finished the other batch of flyers. I'm ready for my new batch. I'm ready for the new stack. And, uh, this is how I played it. I was like, hey, Rob, Robert, it's kind of weird, you know, we haven't been getting any phone calls from any of the flyers you say you've been holding out. What do you think's going on? He's like, I don't know, man, I don't know what could be going on. I've been flyering. And that's what he said. He's like, I've been doing it. And I was like, hmm, you know what, We actually— and I, I wanted to give him the opportunity to just admit it. I didn't want to say, hey, we caught you, buddy. I wanted to give him the opportunity. So I said, that's interesting. We actually drove one of the neighborhoods that you said you flied. We didn't see a single flyer on any door. What do you think could happen? And this is what he says. He says, maybe the wind blew them all off. It was probably the wind, or maybe everyone picked them up by the time you saw them. And I was like, oh, okay. So no calls, maybe the wind blew him off. Listen, man, and I couldn't take it anymore because he was, he just wouldn't fess up. So I said, we actually, look, man, we actually were driving, we were following you, and one, one of these days, and we saw that you weren't doing anything. We saw you taking a nap and just walking the streets. How long have you been doing this for? And then he just completely broke down and he was shaking like he just got caught because he did. He was nervous and he was like, uh, because he was in our office. I didn't— I don't know if he thought we were gonna attack him, we weren't gonna do anything, but he was nervous. Oh gosh, they caught me, he's thinking. And I was like, how long you been doing this for? He's like, I don't know, guys. I was like, well, you look, man, we're obviously not going to pay you. You've been— you've been lying to us for a long time. Um, we're not— we're not going to do anything to you. We're not going to hurt you. Chill, buddy. Don't stop shaking. It's all good. Um, but do you at least have the flyers? Do you have the flyers we gave you? Because we can use those since you didn't use them. And he's like, oh guys, I'm so— I threw them away. Like, you threw away like the 2,000, 3,000 flyers we've given you over the last couple weeks to flyer? He's like, yeah, I threw them away. I'm like, I'm about to charge you for those. I didn't say that, but in my mind I was like— after we— he left, I was like, man. Anyway, so he, he obviously— we didn't have anything left to pay him because he had been lying for a couple weeks. And I was like, well dude, you at least have the tape we gave you. 'cause we'd like the tape, you know, 'cause we're balling on a budget that time. We're brand new. He's like, nah, I ain't got the tape. I'm sorry, threw that away too. So we're like, dude, okay, well, obviously you're fired. You're obviously fired, buddy. Um, you know, I'm not— I never— I don't think I get angry, uh, very quickly. Uh, maybe others would say different, but I was just like, okay, thanks, man. Like, you're, you're fired. I guess I, at that time, I hadn't really fired anybody. Really. So like, because in Dish Network, when I did door-to-door, it was mainly people just quit because they couldn't handle it. He— this guy didn't quit. He was going to keep going forever all summer if we didn't catch him. So I was just like, you're fired. I guess you can just leave right now. I guess that's what happens when you get fired. And he was like, okay. So he left and me and Corey were just like, dang, man. Well, we probably should have checked a lot sooner when we weren't getting calls on the Garmin watch or just went and followed them., before, so none of this would have happened. Now look, I think it cost us maybe like $400, $500 of paying him, uh, before we reconciled and figured everything out. But, uh, yeah, we got lied to. And that is looking back, I think it's a funny story because, um, yeah, just like I just trusted that the man would do what he said and I figured no one would just be walking 8 hours a day coming in for batches of flyers every 3, 4 days. When normally that's when you'd be done. I just figured I, you know, I trusted, but I did not verify. So, you know, the lessons that I learned from this is that even though a person can come in and look the part, you know, the walking combat boots, said that they love walking, whatever they say, you have to verify. You don't know how many people we've hired that they talk a big game Oh, I'll close every deal. I'm the best at this. I love talking to people. I love this or that. And then you hire them and they're the complete opposite. They don't do anything they say they'll do. It's— it happens all the time. Okay, so you have— you can't just trust. You have to trust and you got to— well, you can trust, but you need to verify. So that's one of the lessons that I learned. Another one was that you got to have an app that you trust as well, like the Garmin watch. We were always questioning whether it worked or not. Now, I use software and apps that like, you know, it exactly tracks like whether you're zigzagging or you're going to the door or not. And that's what I want to give you guys is for subscribing to the newsletter at painlessflipping.com. When you receive this story, I'm going to give you a 7-day free trial to the app that I use to not only track when I'm driving for dollars, I'm tracking when, you know, when people are flying for me. But it also does many other awesome things. Like you can skip trace right from there. The cool thing about the app is, um, you can mark houses that look crappy while you're knocking or walking or flyering, and you can actually skip trace them right there and call them while you're right in front of their house, which is a great move because we've done tons of deals through driving for dollars, looking at distressed houses. So I'm going to give you that app, 7-day free trial, and it will help you succeed if you decide to do the strategy. Guys, I talked to another guy, I was at a mastermind the other day. He does about 20 to 25 deals from knocking pre-foreclosure doors. And when you, uh, people in pre-foreclosure, probate, he does this. And then obviously if they don't answer the phone, he leaves a flyer. So this is a strategy that works extremely well, especially if you're on a lower budget and you want to save money. It works like magic. The only reason I don't implement as much, because I don't want to manage that kind of team at the moment, but I tell you, if you are brand new, This strategy of flyering and knocking is, is money, especially if you're really targeted and you have buyers and you do it the painless way. You're not just going to random neighbor you don't know anything who will buy it. You got to have an understanding of, you know, who can buy the deals if you're going to wholesale into them. So let me get through the closing thoughts and then we can wrap it up. As I reflect on this journey, it lets me know that, you know, obviously I've leveled up as a manager. And if you struggle with hiring people, And you can— you need to reflect and be like, what were my struggles? Just like I'm reflecting. Well, my struggles was I wasn't really checking on, on him. I was just hoping and trusting. And if that's your management style, it's not going to work out all the time. I can tell you right now, if you just hire someone and you're like, I believe he's going to do what he said he would, not a good management process. I'm telling you, strategy is bad. Don't do that. And my last thing I want to do is I want to invite you to subscribe to the newsletter again. It has many great resources worth thousands of dollars that I'm giving to you. Subscribe at painlessflipping.com. And if you're watching this live or you watch this later, please give this video a thumbs up so it can get in front of more people. And if you have any stories that are similar, if you want to engage, if you want to tell me, you know, Nate, that was a great story. Nate, that sucked. You went way too long on the— talking about his ponytail. Doesn't matter. Go ahead. Let me know because I want to hear your feedback. It's important to me to know how you guys feel. About what I'm saying, because this is for you. It's for all of us, right? So anyway, I hope that story was fun. And go out, go flyer, go try it. In the emails, you're going to get the resources, the templates I'm using, the wording I'm using, the flyers, the apps. It's all there. You can all get it for free. And I appreciate you guys being on Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Storytime: Tales from the Trenches. And look, don't, don't be sad, or don't like, man, I, I gotta get out of these trenches. It's good to be in the trenches sometimes. You can learn. I learn all the time. That's where you— that's where you get your stripes, from the pit, you know, from being down in the pit. You can learn. Then you get out of the pit, and then you get another pit and another dip. That's how life is. That's what life is about. It's about progressing and being disciplined enough to keep going. Don't— if you stop, you're going backwards. Always progress. So thanks again for being a part of Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Storytime, Tales from the Trenches. See you on next week's episode where we're going to be talking about— I think next week's episode we're going to be talking about where I climbed through a condemned house window. Actually, I didn't climb through, but I went into a condemned house. I don't know why I went into the condemned house. I was talking to the guy who I met on the street, said he was selling it, and he's like, you want to see inside? And the house is condemned. It was all boarded up. But I was like, yeah, let's see what condition it's in. As a brand new wholesaler, I was like, let's see what it's in. I took a video, absolutely unnecessary to take a video of a condemned house inside. It's condemned for goodness sakes. It's a tear, it's the worst condition you could ever imagine. The guy climbs in through the window, but busts a board out, takes a drill, lets us, lets me in. Corey's not going in. He's like, I ain't getting anywhere near that thing. And I'm like, oh, I'll go in. I don't care., and I saw some of the craziest stuff I've ever seen. I've seen— there's like buckets of doo-doo because there's obviously no pipe. What, what was I thinking? I don't know what I was saying. I was trying to get a deal done. All right, so that's what the next story is going to be out about. Crazy. Look, why am I doing all this again? Because everybody on social media paints a rosy picture. Oh yeah, you can make all this money when you first start and you can crush it. Learn from me. Maybe you guys are smart enough to not do what I did, but if with, with hiring and all these lessons you got to learn and paying money on marketing, and maybe you struggled like I did, and that's why I'm telling you all these things so you can learn from my experience. Give me that like, like this video, and we'll see on the next episode. Hope you enjoyed the flyer video about how not to go through that process, and have a great week, everybody. This is the weekend. And, uh, see you later. Oh yeah, I got some comments, so let me answer some of those comments. If you have any questions or you want to say something, I'll give you a shout out right now. Let's see what these comments are saying. Let's see right here. Did you say— did you say garment watch? Did I say garment watch? I think I meant Garmin, but I might have said garment. I'm sorry. If that— it might be Gar— I don't think it's Garmin. I think it's Garmin. So yes, I think I have to watch this back. I don't— I might have said that. Anyway, guys, if you— last thing I'm going to say is if you like Costco, they got some— last time I checked, they got this giant cookie, got the hot dog. I love Costco. That's why if you're ever wondering why I wear Costco stuff, because I really— I'd love to retire from real estate you know, make it— make enough where I can just live off of the residual, or, you know, not have to worry about money, and, uh, go work at Costco. So Costco is the dream, and we're using real estate to get there. You got to know where you want to go so you can get there. Peace out, everybody. Have a great weekend. Peace.