From $50K in Debt to $76K in 90 Days 💸 | Nathan Payne’s Real Estate Comeback Story

One thing everyone can relate to is we've all felt the sting of hitting rock bottom in some way, shape, or form. Today we are going to dive into Nathan Payne and how he went from rags to riches by making one simple flip to his mindset. Today we are interviewing Nathan Payne, aka Real Estate Nate, from Salt Lake City, Utah. He's the owner of Utah Home Acquisitions, coach and mentor of Investorthrive.com, and he is one of our very own Batch Affiliates. So with further ado, I give you Nathan Payne.

Thank you.

So who is Real Estate Nate? Okay, what should we know about you when it comes to The journey of becoming a successful wholesaler and real estate agent.

So I started like from the bottom, you could say, right? I had some sales skills. I was a door-to-door sales rep. I did door-to-door sales while I was in college and then did a little bit after, like 6 years. I ran multiple teams, but then I was kind of tired of moving around. So because it's like a very transient lifestyle, right? You go in the summers, you knock in an area.

It's not easy.

Yeah, it's difficult. I mean, you're literally knocking on a door, a random person's door, every, every like 10 seconds, I guess, if they don't answer, and trying to get a sale. Um, so I did that, and then I was tired of moving once I got married, so I, I went right into, uh, real estate. My buddy who, uh, my business partner Corey, his dad had been doing real estate, and I said, hey Corey, like, your dad's been doing real estate, you tried in college, you're working at a tech company now, let's, let's go all in on this wholesaling thing, let's try it. So I guess in a nutshell, it's who I am. I'm just a guy with zero knowledge of real estate, went in and freaking figured it out.

So we all know real estate investing, it's not easy, right? It's a grind. It's a grind. Wholesaling is a grind. There's a lot of hustlers out there. So for all the people and individuals that are struggling, right, we all know we go through that struggle. I'd like to know, how do you approach failures and setbacks? In your business?

You know what, I love a good failure, you know, really, because it happens all the time. Like, it's gonna happen, it really is in business. I mean, you point me to the guy who really just knows exactly what to do and never like fails, I mean, it's not going to happen in my opinion.

Yep, amen to that. And learning from your failures too, right? You know, if you fail over and over again and not learn from it and apply—

exactly right—

then you got a problem. So That's key. So you sent out a bunch of mailers, lost a lot of money.

Lost a lot of money. Yeah.

Pivoted.

Yeah, pivoted. Now I'm putting that money in pay-per-click. Even with texting. Texting right now for us, we were doing a lot of it and it wasn't hitting as well as cold calling. So we shut down the texting. We say, hey, let's just put that money into cold calling. It's working better. So you're always improving and growing. And, and who knows, like, you know, cold calling might not hit in 6 months or in a year.

Yeah.

Then we'll pivot. But if you're not willing to move with the ebbs and flows of the market and what's working, you get crushed, in my opinion.

A lot of people, I feel, and I think we've all been victim of it, is that we don't try to fail. Right. Or you're scared.

Right.

You're scared to even take the leap of faith because you're scared of failing.

Exactly.

But you got to fail because that's the only way you learn. Right. At the end of the day.

And that's something I think that's who I am. Like, if I hear— if you say, hey, Nate, you know, I tried, uh, I tried this and it worked for me, I'm gonna go try it. Yeah, I'm gonna try it. Like, because that's, that's who I am. And I meet a lot of people, as I told you, investors. I have a coach, so I talk to them and they're in analysis paralysis. They're watching— I've watched tons of videos for 2 years. I'm like, well, have you tried just getting on the phone? They're like, no. And that's what it takes. And that's how I started. I said, when we first started, we just started knocking doors. That's what we did because I was good at it. So it's like, let's knock doors and ask people if they're gonna sell. We got a deal from that when I first started. That's how we got one of our first deals.

So we briefly talked about your mastermind, Investor Thrive. As a mentor, right, what is the best advice you can give to someone starting out as a wholesaler or real estate investor?

I would say take, take action. Imperfect action, right? You're not going to go out there and make your first cold call. You might, you might get lucky and that person want to sell, right? But You gotta take action in order to learn. That's what I would say, 'cause that's what it takes. You just gotta get in there. You gotta throw your hand in the ring or whatever the saying is and get in it.

All out massive action.

Yeah.

Right?

Massive imperfect action, 'cause it's never gonna be perfect. Perfect, yeah.

Imperfect action. Imperfect action, yeah, I agree. Let's go back in time, right? I feel like every person would love to just go back in time and take that knowledge that they have and be able to use it, right? So if you were to go back in time, and give yourself that upper hand, right? If you could start all over again, okay, from the beginning, what would you do differently?

Um, that's a really good question. It's really hard to say because I feel like what I've learned from those setbacks is like, has made me who I am, right? And so if I were to get rid of those things, I don't know if I would really understand what I do now, right? But okay, let's really try hard.

Um, I mean, I love that because it's a process.

It is a process.

You become who, who you are because of the process that you go through.

Yeah, like for example, like we were solely wholesalers, right? That's like all we did for a long time. But now we do fix and flips, wholesale, rentals, like because we understand the process from going from— I feel like wholesaling is a great avenue, but I don't think that's your end goal. Like you want to do multiple avenues, multiple exit strategies. So, but without doing that, I probably wouldn't have felt comfortable doing venturing out with what we're doing now. So if I had to go back, I probably would've gotten a mentor sooner, like one, like a higher level mentor, just so he could, because that's what they're there for, right? They're not going to make you succeed. You have to take the action, but they will help you avoid the pitfalls.

Yep. That's true. And they can help you with your learning curve.

Exactly.

Right. There's so many people, especially with the internet out there, it's unreal how much you can learn from somebody. And how much it'll help you at the end of the day with your learning curve, right? You can take what somebody took over 10 years, right? They learned in 10 years. And I'm telling you this because I've done this myself, right? 10 years of experience and they put it into a course, right? And you can learn that course.

Exactly.

I would say in what, 3 months to a year, right? And then you got to apply it. So instead of going that 10 years and going through all the mistakes, right? You can learn from their mistakes and take a year, learn it, and then apply it, which is amazing.

Exactly.

I agree with that. So I'm a marketer. I love marketing. Ultimate marketer right there. I've been doing it for a very long time. So what advice would you give to the viewers out there on putting out content consistently?

Like about, Wholesaling or like about building your own brand? Yeah, just in general.

Yeah, brand building. Because I see a lot of real estate agents and wholesalers, they have this thing in their head where they're like, oh, I want to do YouTube or I want to do TikTok and I want to get information out there, but I don't know where to start. And I then have learned that by putting yourself out there, right, it gets you a lot of deals, right?

Yeah, it's worked really well. Like it's helped us raise private money, like for our deals, like because people are like, oh, Nate, you're doing deals like And when I reach out to them, they trust me because they see that I'm actually doing what I say, right?

Yep.

Through my posts. I would say if you want to build a brand or let people, you just have to get started. Like I started a YouTube channel like 6 months ago and I just put out things that I thought would help people, like would serve people in this industry, like that would help them grow. So I don't know if anyone cares or thinks it's good, but I was like, hey, I think it's helpful. So I think if you start posting or putting out stuff that you think it helped you or helps others and no one watches it, whatever, just stay consistent. It'll, it'll work out.

Absolutely. And it really gives you credibility and makes you that expert, right? So think about the people that aren't putting out content or don't have a YouTube channel, right? And then somebody searches their name versus Nate's name, right? When they find Nate on YouTube and they see that he's giving out all this knowledge, right? Who are they going to go with?

Yeah, like, luckily Nathan Payne, like, there's no one else on YouTube with that name, so I do come up first if you type in my name.

Yep.

And I started the year out with like 40, 39 subscribers, and I have 396 right now, which is like, you know, it's not that crazy, right? But I know through consistency I'm going to get to 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, like, over time. Consistency is the key.

Correct. So great. Yeah, that's— I believe that everybody out there should be putting out content. Pick a channel and then focus on that one channel, get good at it, and then you can hopefully either hire somebody or bring somebody in-house to then post it everywhere, right? It's all about your omnipresence, right? And the more channels you're on, the better. Yeah, that's one thing that I—

the cool thing about YouTube as well is if you make a video, you can cut it into shorts or smaller clips and then put it everywhere. So that's what we've been doing.

Exactly. You do a show like this, right? You can chop this up 100 times. Put it everywhere. And put it everywhere.

Exactly.

So you're very strict with family time, okay? I try to call you after work and you just won't do it. Yeah, I try, yeah. So what are some of the tips you can give about work-life balance?

I think it's really important in this job to have a good work-life balance because like, you know, sellers could, if you get due leads, they can come in at any time. But you really don't want to like give a, give up on what you're really working hard for, your family, to lose that, right? So I try to do a hard stop where it's like, hey, and I'll let people know, right? So for my students, I'll just say, hey, I'm available from 9 to 5 every day. You can ask me anything you need in that time and I'll get back to you. After that, I'll get back to you as soon as I can the next day. So if you set the expectations, everyone's okay with it, right? And, um, I think that's, that's been helpful. Like I told you, so you, you know where I'm at. And if you tell me your schedule, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm gonna respect that. So, uh, I know it's probably a little bit harder for, you know, incoming leads. So we have people we hire, our leads managers or acquisitions people, and we say our expectation for hiring you is to get to the leads when they come in, right?

Yeah.

So they take that on, they understand what they need to do. So I think it's just setting the right expectations for everybody.

There you go. There you go. And then that's— I mean, mindset-wise, right? Like, we're all serial entrepreneurs. I get it. Like, we want to work 24/7, 365, because we all have goals. I mean, we all want to achieve those goals, right? But can't forget about the outside life and why you're working, right? Why you're putting in the work.

And that helps too, is if you understand your why of why you're doing all this. Like, money's great, and building a legacy and all this stuff is, is what, you know, we're trying to accomplish. But at the risk of losing what's really important, you got to really balance that and don't lose sight of that.

Yep. And they always say, right? The saying is you got to have a why that will make you cry. That why, I mean, that why is when you hit those failures, it's going to keep you pushing on and on and on and on, right? And when you want to give up, you just think about that why and boom, back to the plate. So the CEO of Batch Service, all right. He has a non-negotiable, okay? And that non-negotiable is he will never miss a workout ever, ever. So do you have any non-negotiables in your personal or business?

I don't work on Sunday. That's my non-negotiable.

Oh, beautiful. Yeah, beautiful.

I try to keep that. That's the Lord's day. I have faith in, like, a strong faith. So, um, yeah, that's what that's doing.

Um, so if you were going to give advice to your younger self, okay, what would that advice be?

Uh, my, my advice to my younger self would have been take more action, because in this industry, in most industries, you find out like, how do I do more deals? Well, I got to do more, right? That's, that's what it— and I didn't know that when I first started. I was like, you know, I'll work, I'll call maybe when I was cold calling when I first started, a couple hours a day. It's like, well, if you want more deals, you got to get more, more calls out. So that's, that's what I didn't really understand. And now I understand it's like more deals, more action.

What about with hiring too, right? More deals, more action.

Hiring is still something difficult, right? Because you can sit down and hire someone that says everything right, you do all your due diligence, and they just don't pan out. Like, let me give you an example. We had this guy came to me, says, I want to wholesale, but I have no money. So I was like, okay, I could just spend all this time like trying to get them ready, but And we actually did, we trained him for like 2 weeks before he got the phone. First time he hit the phone, he's shaking. He was really scared and he quit the next day. So we put 2 weeks into someone who, if we would've just put him on the phones the first day and just say, let's see if this guy can hang, it would've saved us 2 weeks of all us training him.

Yep. So, yep, that's true. And you always gotta have a revolving door of recruits, right? Because you bring on 10. 1 to 2 is probably going to work out.

Yeah. And that's— that was how it was for door-to-door sales too. You could have the best, slickest looking guy, just sweet, like the slick talker, and you're like, man, he's going to be awesome. But he hits that door and he's scared. It's something he's not comfortable with and he quits. Yeah. So it's really hard to know.

Yep. Absolutely. So you're an investor. You like to invest.

Yes.

If you were going to create another revenue stream, okay, what would you create?

So we're actually creating it with some developers. It's a platform where people can post their deals. Like, I don't know if you've heard of Sunday.com.

I have.

Yeah. But like, that's, that's really like where you can, I would say, take this to the next level. Like what, what wholesalers do is they go to sellers and they say, hey, I'm marketing to you, I would like to buy your house. But if there was a platform where sellers could go to to be like, hey, I need to sell, pretty much Sunday has it, right? But like something like that where it's like, hey, I would like to sell my distressed property quickly. That, that would be like the next move because we try to reach out to people. But if there was a place that they could go and they knew about, that's what we're trying to create, like a community, a community, and also where investors can go because there's an issue with wholesaling and is in its dispositions and selling your deals. You have to reach out unless you have like a great buyers list or great connections. You really have to reach out like cold to buyers and be like, hey, buy my deal. But if there was a platform where buyers could go to and be like, hey, these guys always have great deals, then your deals would go on the platform and without having to market and try to find people, they would all— buyers would always be looking. So Sunday, like I said, is got it. But that's like, that's really what would take off. So another revenue stream is a platform for investors, buyers and sellers to go to a marketplace.

The tech world. I love the tech world.

That's it.

All right, so this is the part of the show where we learn how Nathan Payne flipped the switch. All right, so this is, this is what the show is all about, ladies and gentlemen. In life, successful people, I believe, okay, they have this pivotal moment, right, uh, where they do something and it literally changes the trajectory of their personal life or their business, and they have their breakout year. So my question for you is, what was one of the major changes that you made to your life or business that helped you get to where you are today?

One of the major changes, like one, one of them, I would say looking at others in the industry as not as, not as competition. Because I used to, when I first started this business, I, I'm a pretty competitive guy, so I looked at like other wholesalers in my market and I'm like, I will forget those guys, right? They're like, they're stealing my deals, right? And I'd look at like as competition, and I had a scarcity mentality, right, instead of an abundance mentality. But through working with other mentors, I— there's like something that switched where I was like, hey, I can do deals with these people. I have great buyers too. Like, we can joint venture. I can— we can leverage each other's knowledge. And, um, once I started not having that scarcity mentality, everything clicked for me. And I've been doing JV deals with multiple wholesalers. I've been networking with guys like you and start starting, I guess, to broadcast my, I guess, my, my stuff, right? Like, hey, I can help. And we've actually been able to help tons of people. And that's, that's the switch is when you can stop looking at this as a scarcity and there's abundance. There's so many homes out there. Everyone can succeed. And if you help someone succeed, they'll, they'll bring you a deal. For example, I have a student who at the beginning I helped him for free for like 6 months, right? And now after 6 months just helping him, he's like, hey, can I pay for your coaching? He basically is like, hey, can I jump in? So he paid, and now he— we got 2 deals that he needs help selling in Cleveland that we're gonna sell. So we're splitting JVing on that 50/50 with him. So not only did he pay for the coaching, but we're doing deals together, and he just has a 5 a 5-home portfolio and he couldn't figure the deal out on terms. So we called them and we're trying to figure out the deal. So this guy potentially, as of right now, not only, you know, did he get into the coaching, which is beneficial for me and him, but we got 7 deals we're looking at doing with them.

Wow.

And that's all from just helping, correct? Wow. So it's crazy.

And if you're a closed mind and not open to that, right?

Yeah. If you look at— if he reached out to me and I had the closed mind of being like, Hey man, I'm really busy. I got to make some calls. I got to talk to some sellers. I don't have time for that. Then I would not— first of all, not have a good friendship or relationship with my boy Mike. He's awesome. But I wouldn't look at doing more— I wouldn't be doing more deals with him.

Didn't you go from a moment where you were basically in debt and once you changed that, you were able to just right away get yourself out of debt and do like $70,000, I think it was $76,000 in 3 months?

Yeah, it was crazy, man. I was like literally in the depths of despair. Like, we were $50,000, about $50,000 in debt, and we were, we were worried, right? Because what got us in debt, just so people know, is we went nationwide on pay-per-click, uh, Google Ads. We just dumped a ton of money and we would get tons of leads. And we were at the beginning, we were stoked. We're like, yeah, we got all these people want to sell. But when you do nationwide, you're going to get a lot of leads in areas that you can't really sell the deals, right? Even if people want to sell at a discount, it's hard to move them. So we got a lot of those deals and we couldn't move them. So as the ad spend kept going, we weren't able to make the money back and sell the deals. So we got in that position, figured out PPC, by the way, we got it figured out. But in that moment, we were really in debt. And then that's when, uh, Brandon Simmons, one of my mentors, was like, hey, you got to flip the switch. You got to like look at— you can, you can— you have great buyers, you can help people. And that's when we did it. And then there was a deal in Colorado that we didn't have a buyer for, um, but because of networking, we found someone and he, he was able to buy it. It was a $50,000 deal, right? Boom, from networking. And then we did some other deals, so $76K, got out of debt, and ever since then, beautiful.

Well, I love it, I love it. So network, don't be closed-minded, right? Get out there and, and be with the people in the industry. I mean, you're only going to learn and you're only going to earn working with each other.

And I would add, you want to be around people that have that same mindset. I have noticed that there are people that have that scarcity mentality that don't want to help others. They kind of like want to just have their own back and you don't even want to be around those people anymore. So that's helped me too. I'm like, don't waste my time with those people. Like you're, you're a go-giver. You're someone that wants to help. We're together. You're right. So you want to definitely surround yourself with people that are willing to, to give.

All right. So this is my favorite part of the show. Okay. This is what I call rapid fire. So I ask you 2 questions.

Okay.

Right, you give me one answer. Okay?

I'll try to be as quick as I can, man.

So, cash or credit?

Cash.

Tesla or Lamborghini?

Tesla.

Tacos or pizza?

Tacos.

Do you kill bugs or do you take them outside?

I gotta kill them.

Gotta get rid of them. Travel to the past or travel to the future?

Past.

Street smarts or book smarts?

Book smarts.

Where is your favorite city? Not where you live.

I like Vancouver, Washington— not Washington, I'm sorry, uh, Canada.

Canada.

Beautiful.

They got really good sushi there.

Yeah, beautiful.

Last song you have on repeat?

Last song on repeat?

Yep.

Um, I've been listening to a lot of the Lord of the Rings soundtrack.

I like—

yeah, I like the Lord of the Rings. Yeah, man, when I'm, when I'm at work, I just listen to it over and over again. Right now, as of right now.

I've never heard that before, but I own every single Lord of the Rings.

I love Lord of the Rings.

And The Hobbit. So I'm right there with you.

Yeah, man. Try that soundtrack. It'll make you like it.

So scale from 1 to 10, how good are you at sports?

I'd say I'm an 8.

An 8?

Yeah.

Why? You just don't have what Tom Brady has?

No, I'm not a big guy. So it depends what sport. Like in wrestling, I'd probably say like a 9. Basketball, maybe a 7. But it depends on the sport.

Got it.

I'm pretty athletic, I feel like.

Crypto or gambling?

Crypto or gambling?

Yeah.

Crypto.

Crypto all day.

Yeah.

So do you like delivery or sit down at a restaurant?

I like to sit down.

Me too.

Yeah.

Me too. So fill in the blank, all right? Robert Kiyosaki is—

The man.

The man. The GOAT.

The GOAT.

The GOAT. So book every viewer should read.

A book every— The Slight Edge.

Slight Edge, ooh. That's a good one. I don't think I've read that one yet.

That's a good one.

And last one, batch leads or batch dialer?

I like Batch Leads a lot.

Batch Leads. So don't forget down below, guys, you can get a 7-day free trial of Batch Leads plus 5,000 property records on the house.

Let's go.

So make sure you guys go in the description and grab that, okay? We're also on Batch TV. We teach you guys how to use Batch Leads, okay? So go down below and grab that. So here's the question of the day, all right? So this is the moment the end of the show where we ask our guests, okay, Nathan Payne, if you were to leave one piece of advice behind to all the young hustlers out there, okay, what word of advice would you leave for them?

Um, actually had a podcast with my buddies and he said this, so I'm gonna take it from him because I really liked it, but he said the greater the setback, the greater the comeback. So that's just like the piece of advice is if you're gonna have a failure, and you, you overcome it or you're willing to keep going, you're going to be way ahead from that, that setback, right? So the greater the setback, the greater the comeback. I, I'll take that. It's— there's many ways to say it, but yeah, just keep going.

I love it. I love it.

Like, if it— for anybody in the audience, don't stop. Just keep learning, keep going, because that's, uh, that's the way you— that's the way you, you go through— go forward in this industry.

Amen. I love it. So how do people find you? Where do they find you online?

You know, I try to be on every platform, uh, but, uh, YouTube, you can check out my YouTube channel. As of right now, it's Nathan Payne Investor Thrive TV. Might change it to Real Estate Nate Investor Thrive TV, who knows? But as of right now, it's just Nathan Payne. Uh, you can find me on Facebook. I have a real Facebook group that's free. It teaches a lot of wholesaling and investing for free in it. It's called the Wholesaling Real Estate Mastermind. I created that Facebook group because I wanted people to have a community where they could ask questions for free. Then my coaching is— I kind of have placed it where it's like, "Hey, I'm going to give you as much information as you need so you can go on by yourself, but if you'd like someone to kind of help you along your journey and help you avoid those pitfalls and shorten the learning curve, that's when I'd like to work with you." But I'm not trying to like take people who aren't, um, I guess willing to take action and, yeah, you know, do what works. But anyway, so Facebook, Instagram, Real Estate Nate_88. Um, wait, Real Estate Nate? No, it's Real Estate_Nate88. I had to make it funky because, uh, you know, there's a lot of Real Estate Nates out there apparently. But yeah, you guys can find me on those. Those are main ones: Facebook, YouTube, Instagram. There's a lot of them, so Well, thank you for your time, Nate.

Yeah, appreciate it.

Anytime.

It's been fun. It's been good. A lot of education for all the viewers out there.