Wholesaling Real Estate Story Time: We go BIG and get a GIANT OFFICE
In this episode of Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Real Estate Storytime, Nathan recounts his rapid rise and subsequent lessons learned while scaling his wholesale real‑estate business between 2018‑2020. He begins by disclosing a recent rib dislocation, then dives into the pivotal moment when he and his partner Corey gambled $30,000 on 0 % interest credit‑card marketing to generate leads, a move he now advises against but used to break out of debt. After achieving early success, they attended a pricey VIP wholesaling conference in Arizona, where exposure to a high‑energy, well‑funded operation reshaped their mindset: set big revenue goals, acquire a larger office, and hire staff. Acting on that, they upgraded from a $900/month coworking desk to a $2,000/month “air‑hangar” office capable of housing dozens of desks, hired a door‑knocking associate and other staff, and dramatically increased lead spend, including nationwide pay‑per‑click campaigns. Nathan reflects that the rapid expansion outpaced their managerial skills and KPI tracking, leading to operational strain. The core takeaway is that big goals require incremental, deliberate practice and disciplined growth rather than a sudden leap. He closes by promoting his done‑for‑you service at painlessflipping.com, encouraging viewers to subscribe for more stories and practical guidance.
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What is going on, everybody? Forgive me today, guys. I'm gonna be a little, uh, I'm gonna be real. I'm always real, but I gotta tell you guys something. I'm not coming with the gusto. I'm not coming with the fire, the super excitement like I usually do. I'm so excited because I love talking about, you know, Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Storytime so I can tell you guys about my journey. But I dislocated my rib yesterday and it hurts really bad. But hey, the show must go on and we got to keep on keeping on. But that's, that's why I'm not coming with the energy like I usually do for Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Storytime because my rib hurts. But I am thankful that it didn't break. It just dislocated, moved. It's moving around a little bit occasionally. And it hurts. But hey, again, show must go on and we got to keep working. We got to keep doing our thing. So hey guys, welcome to Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Real Estate Storytime. Again, if you had just popping in, I'm grateful that you guys are here. My rib hurts. It got dislocated, but we're coming in. We don't stop. We keep working hard. And today we're going to be talking about how I got out of debt. I was freaking— I took the gamble. Like, if you guys been watching the other previous episodes, we took the gamble, put a bunch of money on, uh, $30,000 on market of marketing on credit cards, 0% interest credit cards. And we were like, hey, we got it. We got to go get some leads. Not saying that you do that. That's what I did 4 or 5 years ago when I was struggling. I don't do that anymore, but I'm telling you the real, the real story of, of how I got started in wholesaling and what I was doing. And here it is, the journal. It's real. It's raw. I think we're in the year 2018. No, sorry. 2019, 2020. Um, anyway, got it all recorded here. So guys, what, what are we going to be talking about today? So if you've been watching the other previous episodes, um, we start, we start doing well now. We, we're doing pay-per-click, we have, uh, some cold callers, we're doing texting, we're getting leads. We had a Driving for Dollars lead that we did. It was like a $42,000 deal. But why, what, what was the sudden change in getting deals and things working? Well, we got better at negotiating, we got better at navigating conversations with sellers. We got better at qualifying leads and knowing who to talk to. We got better at bringing leads and knowing who we're better— who to work with. Another thing is we did not focus on dispositions, really. We did not worry about building relationships with buyers at this point. That's not saying that that's a good idea, but that's what we did. We started just focusing on sellers. We're like, let's just master one part of the business, let's just talk to sellers. And we joined up with another wholesaling company that had a big buyers list, and they were pretty much displaying all our deals for about a year. They just started selling all our deals, and we were just finding properties, and then they would sell them for us. So that's where we're at in this part of the journey, and we start doing well. We were in a hole. We were— we get— just to give— go back on what was happening in Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Storytime. We were in debt, you know, we weren't getting any deals, and we gambled $30,000 on credit card debt, and we just said, hey, we got to pay for leads. Let's, let's freaking go for it. So we did it. We started getting deals and we started making money and we're feeling good. We're feeling like the business is going well. So what do we do now? This is exactly what we did. And is this something I would recommend you to do? Uh, no, I would not recommend this, but this is what we did because this is what was recommended to us. We would just listen to some people and, you know, did what they said. And you guys get to decide whether you think it was good or if you would do it or not. So we— this is, this is the thing I don't think is that big of a deal. We started doing well, so we went to what's called a WeWork or a VIVO office, if you guys have ever heard of that. At the time, we were working in my house and at Corey's house, and we would just switch off every week or every day. I can't remember. And we were like, well, dude, we're doing well. Let's go get like a legit office and let's like, let's start leveling up. So we went to a VIVO office and we got an office to work out of and it was like $900 a month for an office for me and him for desks. And we were like, okay, let's go. And we started feeling a little bit more professional, like we were doing something. And, you know, we kept on doing deals and we were doing well. So we were like, man, how can we keep doing better? We always want to get better. So this is really funny and this is what happened. So we saw that there was an event happening, a wholesaling real estate event in Arizona. And it was like, let me think of— I can't remember exactly. I think it was November, around November time. It was a wholesaling real estate event and we called. It was like supposed to be really big. I'm not going to say the event name because I don't want to trash them. I'm not going to trash them, but I'm just saying, if I say anything that's negative, I don't want anyone to, you know, go after them or say anything. But basically, we wanted to learn how to do better. And we're like, let's go to an event. So it was a 2-day weekend event in Arizona. And we called and they were telling us that the tickets were going to be like $5,000. And I was like, is that worth it? At the time, we were willing to do anything to just get better. And it was like, it was pitched as like it was going to help us build our business. So I was like, yeah, I don't know. I was kind of going back and forth with the guy and he was like, look, I can give you guys VIP access. That means like you'll, you'll come to our office. You'll see exactly what our office looks like. You'll get to meet the owners of like who are throwing this event. And I was like, oh, okay. We're, we'll actually get to, you know, shake hands with the guys that are throwing this event. We'll go to their office. I started thinking that was, that was pretty valuable because For me, my mindset has always been you got to get yourself around people you want to be like. So it's not so much the education at that point that I was that interested in. Obviously that's good, but I wanted to meet, meet the guys that were where I wanted to be. So we ended up getting the VIP access. It was actually a little— it was more expensive. It was like $7,500 for me and Corey at the time. And I was like, let's do it. We're going to get to meet these guys. We're going to get to go to their office. Let's go do it. Now, thinking back right now, that's actually was really valuable because I'm actually cool. I still talk to these guys, we're cool. I've seen them recently actually. And, um, so what ended up happening is me and Corey, we fly out to AZ and, um, we go to this weekend event. The— on a Friday, I think it was on a Friday, we, we go to the office and this office was— their office was totally different than I ever would have imagined me running an office. It had like rap music videos playing on TV screens. It had a bunch of cubicles of guys wearing like gold chains and they were just like hustling. It was kind of a— it was an interesting environment. It was like Wolf of Wall Street. I've actually never seen that movie, but it seemed like these guys are just hustling. Again, rap videos, just girls dancing on the screen. I was like, what is going on in here? But they were calm, motivated sellers and they had this thing locked in. And yeah, then we ended up meeting the owners of the company and Um, that's what we saw. We saw that they had a big office and they had a lot of people working for them calling sellers. So in my mind, I was like, well, that's what we got to build, just, just from seeing what they had built. And so the next day we go to the, um, I think it was actually a 3-day event, 3, because we got VIP. We get— we went Thursday, that's when we went and saw the office, then Friday, Saturday was when we had the, the education. And they, uh, You know, they had everybody go to the event where they taught you everything. So anyway, it was really— they overloaded us with a ton of information. But basically what I learned there and what they told you, they were like, hey guys, if you believe, if you believe you can, that you can do $4 million, $1 million, you can do it. Just set high goals. That was really what I got. So from leaving from that, I was like, man, Corey, we need to just set bigger goals. We need to go for bigger. So we set a goal for $4 million from going— we're like at $250,000 or like $300,000 at that point, uh, in revenue. Um, and we were like, well, we got to go bigger. So that's where we went. And then they also said like, you gotta, you gotta believe— not only believe that you can make more money, you gotta set— you gotta get a bigger office, you gotta, you know, get more leads. And, and guys, What did that require? That required spending more money. So they had built a business and they had the skill sets to run that business. And for us, we were like, well, we believe we can do it, but unfortunately we just didn't have the skill set to run what they had. They'd been in business for years and we had been in business for like a year or two. So anyway, we get back from the event, we're all pumped. I'm stoked. I buy a giant banner. That's— oh, that hurts my rib. But buy a giant banner that says like $4 million is the goal for revenue. I put that up in our office. We end up— we had one little office that was like $900 a month. We ended up because of what they said, we were like, let's get a bigger office, man. We got to believe in ourselves. So we go to the Veebo office and we're like, hey, what's the biggest office you got in here? And they're like, well, we have this giant one that's— it's a giant like room. I don't even know how big the room was. It was just like a giant, giant room. And they're like, it's $2,000 a month. You could probably fit in that room probably like 50 desks, like 50 cubicles. It was huge. But, and it had its own conference room in it. And it was, I can't even, I can't even think of the word to describe like the room. It was like, it's like an air hangar. It was huge. But we're like, We want that one. Yeah, we want that. You know, $2,000 from $900, we're like, we believe. So I end— we end up investing or paying for this giant hangar of a room, air hangar, and, uh, it's, it's big and it echoes because there's— it's so big and there's just me and Cory at the moment. So then, so we start believing. So we get the big office, we start hiring because that's what they had. They had a bunch of people. So we're like, we need to hire some people. So we hired our buddy, we hired another guy named Jose that was going to knock doors for us, and we start going towards the goal of what, um, you know, what we saw, because our minds were open and that's what we believed that needed to happen. And but again, guys, unfortunately we had never run a business like that with a ton of employees, and we started generating a lot more leads We started paying for more leads because we're like, we got to pay for leads for our guys. So you can see where I'm going with this. It was a good learning experience, but do you think it ended up well for us to just immediately go from like 10 to 100 or 1,000? Like, just go that big of a leap? You need to have incremental growth. And I, I don't think it's bad to have big goals, but we just went all out, right? Right. We started generating and spending more money on marketing, bigger office, more employees. And, uh, you know, I'm not gonna go because it does— it's not like we immediately did that and then we were done. We actually— it worked for a while, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna let you guys know more about what happens in the story on the next episode. But basically, that's where we're at in the Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Storytime. We got out of debt, started doing well, went to an event saw what other bigger wholesaling companies were doing and we're like, we got to do what they're doing. So we copied them, got a giant office, started generating tons of leads. But being a year, 2 years in business, not understanding how to run a company very well with KPIs and tracking and meetings. How do you think that ended? Well, you got to stay tuned for next episode. We'll see what happens. But we did get, just to let you know, we started getting more deals and we started turning on nationwide pay-per-click. Now that is going to have some interesting stories for you guys when we talk about the nationwide pay-per-click saga because it gets wild. We even hired a marketing guy because we're like, we got to market like crazy. We got to start spending money. So that is today's story of Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Storytime. If you like my stories, let me know. Give me a thumbs up. Give me a like. Subscribe at painlessflipping.com. We have a done-for-you service that helps you do deals. We do the hardest part of wholesaling for you. You submit, you basically, you come in and if you don't know what to do with the deal, we'll tell you exactly what we would do. We give you the roadmap to exactly what you should do for if it's a wholesale, hotel, fix and flip. We give you the roadmap on what actions we would take and you have the opportunity to go do it yourself, take our roadmap and go crush it, or just say, hey Nate, would you want to work on me this one with me? And then we can take over and we can JV and we can take over the negotiations and help you out with the deal. But obviously it's got to qualify. It's got to be something we want to work. But we will tell you exactly what we would do on each, on the leads that you're working. And that's what we do at paintandslipping.com at our done-for-you service. But if you just want to subscribe and learn about the emails and what, and the stories, just subscribe and we'll give you, we'll send you more of these stories so you guys can learn from my experience. So what's the takeaway from today, everybody? Just because you believe you can do $4 million or $10 million, It takes incremental, deliberate practice and it takes incremental growth. Just because you believe you can do it, I don't want to shoot your dreams down, but it takes time. Okay? So just because I tell you to turn on leads, if that's what I'm not telling you that, but if you were to just turn on, you know, spend $20,000 in leads, hire a team like you have to be able to manage that. So that's although that might be what other companies are doing, that is not the immediate solution to build a million-dollar plus company, okay? And that's what I did not really think about when I first started. I was like, well, that's what they're doing, let's do it. I can do whatever they can do. But, you know, I did not develop the muscle or the skill set to be a business owner or a manager at that point. I was just doing business myself. So I learned the hard way that you got to take it slow, okay? You can't just jump into the deep end. You do learn a lot, but you also can lose a lot. Okay. So anyway, this is Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Storytime. Again, like, subscribe, share this if you enjoy it. And if you want more episodes, go to the YouTube channel. We put it, we put this on a playlist of all the stories that I've told so far. So if you want to catch up, go watch them all on the Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Real Estate Storytime, uh, Tales from the Trenches. That's what we're doing. I'm in the trenches, baby, still. And it's fun. I'm helping people out in the trenches. That's actually my calling in life. And what I enjoy. If you are struggling, go to painlessflipping.com. We have a done-for-you service. It's not coaching, it's not a mentorship. I'm not going to tell you, you know, what I think you should do. I'm going to actually show you what I would do. Okay, that's what, that's what we provide, and I'm excited to do it. Peace out, everybody. Have a great weekend.
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