How Ramon Made $24,000 As A Beginner

What's going on, everybody? Tyson Smith here, and I am here today with Ramon Moreno, a member of my Inner Circle community who had just closed a $24,000 profit wholesale deal using what he learned in the Inner Circle community to go ahead and flip a house that he never actually owned, never had to pay for or make any repairs to. Welcome, Ramon.

Hey, Tyson. Hey.

So you said that you had wholesaled a little bit before joining the Inner Circle. Can you kind of tell me about what your experience was like Then, yeah, so I was kind of just like lost in the dark.

Like, my dad had been doing it for a little bit, but I see him, he, he was like, how do I say it, like he didn't, uh, I didn't see like the systems and processes, and I didn't really have anyone to like teach me exactly what I needed to say over the phone. He was like a lot more kind of like, um, how do you, like referral type. Okay, like maybe agents bring him deals, stuff like that, like friends or agents, Facebook. Stuff like that. He didn't like really do too much like marketing, like the direct-to-seller side.

He wasn't doing that.

Yeah, and that's what I kind of wanted to focus on. Um, so I was doing just a lot of cold calling, not really getting too much of anything. Um, had a lot of like concerns about like, how do I even close these people? Like, what is closing? Yeah, is there a way I'm supposed to be doing it? Um, I was just kind of like throwing offers out there, not really negotiating at all, just like Oh no, okay, bye. All right, yeah, um, but yeah, dude, I got the program, whatever, joined Inner Circle, got the script. Just was like, all right, if I'm going to do this, spend $5 grand, whatever, um, I just got to like make sure I fucking— I do what I need to do. Yeah, so got the script, pulled the list, whatever, um, and just went balls to the wall, started calling, worked word for word on the script. And it was crazy to me, like, I think it was like my 700-something call because I was tracking everything. I, I just use a— I just use my phone.

Yeah.

And I hand dial everything, which is— there's better ways to do it. I know I can like get way better at this, but, um, I'm probably doing like 30 to 40 calls an hour or something like that. And it was just me, my phone, a list, and I'd, uh, I just take tallies.

Yeah.

Of like every single conversation I had. Just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then on like my 700-something call, I talked to this lady, Celia was her name, the sweetest old lady. She's just like, yeah, I've got this house. It's— I saw it was on a— it was a foreclosure, right? She's like, I want nothing to do with this place. It's just a problem for me. I don't care if I make nothing on it. I just don't want the responsibility of having it. And it was just like, I think once you call long enough, you'll eventually talk to someone just like her, right? Where they just want to be done with the problem, right? Um, so hit her with the script, whatever. What's the best price you give me? She's like, anything. I don't even know what I owe on the property. She's like, I think I owe about $100,000. I was like, okay, I'll just give you $110,000, whatever. Got the contract signed, and I don't know, it was just— it was mind-blowing. She just like gave me the price, everything. Um, And then just went through the motion, got the contract signed, had to take it to title, whatever. The—

did you get it signed in person or did you use DocuSign?

I signed in person when I went to go walk the property. I went to go walk the property with her, um, just built a relationship with her, whatever.

Yeah.

And then, um, did that calculator, said I could sell for $165,000, sold it for $165,000, um, but the payoff ended up being like $138,000 or something. Oh, got you.

The amount she owed was more.

So you were like, hey, well, yeah, I thought it was gonna be like a crazy home run, which is still $25,000, like, pretty, pretty awesome for me. But, um, yeah, it was a— it was crazy. Just everything lined up perfectly. There were some problems with like title and closing and stuff like that, payoffs. And, um, yeah, I ended up hearing that the, uh, the guy that I sent it to ended up selling it to someone else And I think the last price on it was like $235,000, which is pretty crazy.

Wow. So that could have been a $100,000 deal.

Yeah, dude.

I mean, exactly like you said earlier, they're out there, right? There are people, and people don't understand, you know, because they put themselves in these other people's positions. We're like, why would anybody sell their house for less? But exactly like you said, she was like, I don't want anything to do with this. I just want it gone. Yeah, you know, and that's where we can step in. So you made $24,000 on that deal. How much of your own money did you have to spend actually buying the house, fixing it up, anything like that?

Not a dime, right? Not a dime.

Yeah, so that's the crazy thing about this is I always thought that you needed a bunch of money to get into real estate, but especially doing it the way you did— you pulled the list, you grinded, you worked through it, making the cold calls straight off your phone.

Yeah.

And then you got that deal. So now that you've closed that big deal, what— where do you see your business in wholesaling real estate? Where do you want to go in the next, let's say, 6 to 12 months?

Well, I think if it was just me, like, being consistent with my phone, whatever, not scaling anything, I think I could probably do— I just kick ass, whatever, balls to the wall. I think I'd want to be doing like 2 deals a month consistently on my own or whatever. Um, but eventually I want to— I just want that consistency, you know, like I want to be able to do 2 deals a month consistently. However, start marketing, um, take whatever money I got from this deal, $5,000, whatever. I don't know what would be smart, but—

well, that's what we're going to talk about.

Cool.

All right, so first of all, I just want to say, I mean, it's very impressive that you're sitting there making these calls one after another on your phone, right? 700-something calls. Where most people are going to give up before they ever make 10, right? But you stuck with it, got it done, made $24,000. You want to hear some good news?

What's that?

You'll never have to do that ever again. In the beginning, it sucks because you have to make it through the trenches. You have to make all those cold calls because number one, you have to develop your skill set, right? But those 700 calls, even though you didn't get paid for every single one of them, you only got paid for, you know, that one— what you didn't get paid for with money, you got paid for in experience, practicing with the script, getting good at it, learning how to identify, you know, what a motivated seller looks like. These things are going to compound. So now, not only did you get paid in all of that experience and skill, but now you also have some money to, as you said, pour gas on the fire. So that, those two things with also me just knowing that you have the work ethic to go get through that period means that you're about to blow this out of the fucking water. Okay, so you said, oh, maybe take $5,000. I'm telling you right now, you won't even need to do that. Is what my recommendation would be to you is we need to figure out a way where we can increase the amount of time that we're talking to those people who may be motivated to sell their house, and less of the time dialing, trying to get somebody on the phone, wrong numbers, things like that. So this always changes. It's never like, uh, it's, it's the right thing to do all the time. But right here, right now, what my recommendation would be to you is to start mass texting. Because this is something that you can do that's very high leverage, low cost for how high leverage it is. And it's going to allow you to maximize your time, like I said, actually talking to the people we want to. Because here's the deal, you're going to be able to take that same list of foreclosures or whatever it is, you're going to be able to text, let's say you pull a list on Virtual Flip Leads, you get all the, probably in Tucson right now, there's probably somewhere like 1,500 properties that are very likely to be sold to an investor. And you text all of those people and you say, hey, my name is Ramon. I was wondering if you'd be interested in getting a cash offer on your property. You know, no repairs, no closing costs. Let me know. And then out of that, you know, 1,000 people are going to say, you know, go fuck yourself, Ramon. You know, 250 people are gonna say wrong number. 150 people aren't gonna reply, but you're gonna get 50 people who say something like, what are you offering? "yeah, I'm interested," or "I'll sell it for X," right? Whatever their price is.

Mhm.

Those are now 50 people we have identified who've raised their hand and are interested in getting more information. So now instead of having to make these 700 calls, likely you're going to be able to find at least 1 or 2 just from those 50.

Yeah.

And that can be all done in 1 day.

Mhm.

Okay. So later on, I mean, I'll show you exactly what I would recommend you do. Really, you know, it's just a matter of getting a Virtual Flip Leads account and getting, uh, the right mass texting setup. And plugging and playing there. And that— those two things alone, I mean, that's where getting 1 to 5 deals a month, depending on how consistent you are and how good you are with your follow-up, is super possible every single month. Um, there's this big misconception, I think, especially today, where people think you need to dump a ton of money in marketing. And I made that mistake early in my wholesaling journey where all of a sudden I looked and in my business, you know, it was costing me between $60,000 and $80,000 a month to run it. Because I'm spending so much in my PPC and my Meta ads and I'm getting all these PPL and I've got 20 cold callers and I'm having to pull data for all of them. And I've got, you know, 3 acquisitions managers and a dispo manager and a TC and a sales manager and all these different people. And my business got so bloated where it's like, man, you know, I made $100 grand, but I really only made like $20 for— and how much, you know, BS I got to deal with. It's like, okay, that's not so great. So what I wanted to learn is how can I maximize the dollars I spend? right? And now I'm much more of a fan. I'd rather somebody only spend $1,000 a month, get, you know, 2 to 3, 4, 5 deals where they're, you know, doing somewhere between $50,000 and $80,000 a month, but they're keeping $40,000 to $70,000 a month, right? They're keeping a lot more of that money rather than do some of these things which absolutely work. And there's, there's a time and a place for them when you get to a certain level of scale. But as a solopreneur in the beginning, I think it's very possible to where you're making somewhere around $1 million a year with just you texting and then maybe needing to get a VA to help with some disposition stuff. But that's something that we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Once you're texting me and you're like, "Tyson, dude, I've got 7 deals under contract right now. I don't have time to follow up with all my leads." Then me and you will talk and I'll be like, "All right, here's how we're going to get a dispo guy to help you sell some of these." Okay?

[Speaker] Yeah, man. I know that there's like way better ways to be doing everything than just Yeah, but that's, that's why you're—

that's why you're successful is because even though you know there's better ways out there, instead of worrying about how to do it perfect, you just executed. Because guess what? Done is better than perfect, right? The fact that you just went through and you made the calls even though you weren't worried, you're not— Tyson, what's the best dialer I need to get? Or am I calling the right lead? You just, you just did it. Yeah, you're just like, hey, if I reach out to enough people, I ask them if they want to sell, I'm going to find that person. I'm going to find the cilia. And boom, you did. And now you made it through the trenches, bro.

Yeah, dude.

And like I said, now you have the experience, you have the money. It's absolutely time to throw gas on the fire. So what would you say is the biggest breakthrough, um, that joining the Inner Circle helped you with?

I think it was, uh, like the accountability to myself. Like, uh, I was like, okay, I just— I'm committed to this. I think, uh, I heard early on in the year where you spend your money, or if you look at where someone spends their money, you'll see what their priorities are, where they're gonna go, right?

Yeah.

Um, so that was kind of just like the little push I needed. I was like, all right, I'm just gonna take like, uh, extreme action, show myself that I'm 100% committed to this, and just make myself accountable some way, somehow. Um, and then just the structure, whatever. Uh, it was that, the accountability, and just like the, uh, the cold call tracker. I never tracked any of my— yeah, any of my calls. I was just kind of shooting in the dark, like I said, and doing the tallies, making it like a game for myself every day. How many tallies can I get? Whatever. And then tracking them, seeing the number add up at the bottom. Um, I think that was the biggest thing for me, is just how easy it made it to keep myself accountable.

Well, dude, the accountability thing is huge, right? It's funny, um, it reminds me of the story, uh, that a, a person that I really look up to, he tells story about him going to wrestling camp. And he's at this wrestling camp and he's all excited. And, um, uh, he really like took it— like one of the coaches really took a shining to him at the wrestling camp, right? And later that evening, he was like alone in his, his little bunk or whatever, and the coach knocks on his door and he answers it. And the guy comes in, he's like, hey, like, you're, you're crushing it, you're doing really well, like you really have what it takes. Here, I have this tape, you really should watch it. And it was a tape of some other you know, prolific wrestler. He's like, you really should watch this and study this. And he left it. Then he said, all right, now give me your wallet. Took his wallet and he's like, okay, hands it to him. And the guy takes all the money out of his wallet, closes the wallet, gives it back to me. He's like, okay, you just paid me everything, all of your money for this, right? He just like stole it from him. He's like, he's like, now I know you're gonna watch that tape. Right? Because you're financially invested into it, right? You're gonna have to go get your money's worth. And it learned a lesson where he's like, yeah, absolutely, that, that caused me— now he ended up giving the money back, whatever. But it was the, the idea of, okay, I gotta get my money's worth. Well, that's where so many people— it's funny, like, I don't know if you've seen, I do a lot of free classes and I teach people exactly how to wholesale. Everything out there that you need is out there for free, right? Whether it's on my YouTube channel or whatever, it's out there. But people don't take action on it because they haven't invested anything into it, and they think that, oh, like, this is just the free stuff, maybe there's something secret, when it's not.

It's not, you know, the script you say on the phone on all your free videos every time, the same exact script.

It's what it is, dude. Yeah, yeah. No, it's funny, uh, yeah, people do not value things unless they pay for it. That's the problem with the education system, in my opinion, in the United States, is that it's free. Like, we have— I mean, people always, they're like, oh, you know, some states we don't have enough funding, money, whatever. But if you look across the entire world, the United States has one of the best public education systems in the world, but people think it sucks because it's free, and so they don't value it, and nobody, you know, puts any time into it. They don't— like I said, they don't value it. But I really like what you said about, you know, where you spend your money, that's what kind of person you're going to be, right? If you look at the guy who's like, every single dollar they get is just going out to the bars, whatever— I used to be that guy— and it's like, well, you know, if you continue down that path, where are you going to be? I always like to ask people, I say, hey, look, if you spent every single day how you spent yesterday, would you be closer or further from the person you want to be 5 years from now? Everybody's like, well, fuck, I mean, shit, I didn't know it was a test. And it's like, well, shit, it is a test. Like, this is the one life you've got, you know. Now, now that I'm saying you need to be, uh, uh, waking up at 5 AM and hitting the gym and working 12 hours a day every single day, but it's these small actions, these small boring things like making your calls every single day, right? And if you do that compounded over a great enough timeline, you're going to get to where you want to go.

Yeah, and that's what I tell— like, people reach out to me, they see my post or whatever on in the community, and they're like, what'd you do? What'd you do? I just called, dude. Like, the fastest way to get better is by just making your calls. You'll— those invisible reps like you talked about or whatever, like, you might not know the right thing to say today, but you'll learn from it tomorrow. And yeah, just You'll get better faster.

Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the number one questions I get is, hey, what advice would you give to me as a wholesaler just starting out? And it's like, the faster you get on the phone, the sooner you will be making money. You will not make any amount of money with your eyes watching my YouTube channel or, you know, looking at a book about sales or real estate. Sure, that stuff is beneficial and it's nice, but the way you're going to learn fastest is just like the way, you know, you learned selling solar the fastest. It's you were, you know, drug your feet through the coals. You just got into it. Hit the doors, right?

Yeah, I remember one day it was like 119 degrees out, knocking like Catalina Foothills, and I was like, what the hell am I doing? Door knocking in the fucking Arizona?

Hey, well, everything, everything we've ever done led us to where we are right now, right? So, okay, so 6 months something, we would like to be doing 1 or 2 deals a month, is that right?

Yeah, 1 or 2 deals a month would be huge.

Oh, I think you're probably going to surpass that very quickly. You remind me a lot of another student we have in the Inner Circle who he said something kind of similar to me. And now he's calling me, you know, he's pissed that he's kind of stuck around that like $100,000 a month mark and he's pissed at that. Right. He's trying to get to the next level.

What problems to have, right?

Exactly. But it's funny, you know, that's the fun part about this is when you start wholesaling, you know, money starts to seem just a little bit— your idea of money starts to— financial thermometer starts to, you know, get bigger where all of a sudden when you realize, hey man, I can make $25,000 out of thin air on a property like that, you know, you start to— your financial thermometer raises, right? And it is funny because I've seen it time and time again, but it becomes a game. And every single time I see it, somebody like you who starts closing deals, they start to make a lot more money. And then it's, oh, I got to get to $100K. I need to get to $250K a month. I need to get $550K, you know, $500K a month. And there is never an endpoint. Yeah, but to me, that's the fun part, man. It's the journey is the fun part about learning what's to get you that next step. Because here's the thing, man, to go from 0 to 1, to get that first deal, it's a simple matter of learning the skills, right? Learning what to say, making the calls, right? But then getting to the next point where you're consistently doing a couple of deals a month, that point, it's learning systems, right? You already know what to say on the calls, you know, identify the lead, but you just need to, as I said, you know, leverage your time to where you're spending more time doing the more high-dollar-per-activity things like talking to motivated homeowners. Then the next point is learning how to leverage other people, right? That's where we're at a certain point. You're going to get too many leads where you can't talk to them all. You're going to have too many deals. You can't sell them all, right? Where we need to bring in other people to help. And now that's a really big skill set is learning how to hire, train, and manage good talent, right? Buy them, you know, get them bought into your vision, become a leader. And then past that, right now it's talking about how to leverage your money and all these kind of other different fun stuff. But there's always a different level, there's always a bigger fish out there. But for me, I think it's fun.

It is.

They're always chasing something.

Yeah, I think, uh, yeah, I think if you have like nothing to chase in your life, then like what are you doing?

It's boring. Yeah, it— I think of it— you ever play video games?

Yeah.

So like, you know, I, I love video games. I love them growing up. Video games aren't fun once you beat it. Once you beat it, you don't like, you know, sure, maybe sometimes you can go back, play it for nostalgia or whatnot, but once you beat the game, it's over. Yeah, the fun part is getting through it, right? Um, and that's the way I see life, man. It's, it's like I always want there to be another, uh, another peak, you know, because learning how to become the person that can get up there, that's the fun part. Yeah, and that's the rewarding part, truly.

I saw some posts you made, I was like something Another day of waking up and, uh, having like every participant of the world conspired to make my life the way— something like that. I don't know. Yeah, I thought it was pretty funny.

So everybody knows about, uh, paranoia, right?

Yeah.

So paranoia is when you think like everybody's out to get you. Nobody talks about pronoia, which is what I have, where like I said, I think every single day everything in the universe on, you know, everything is just conspiring to advance me closer towards my goals, right? I think everybody's out there to help me. I missed my exits because I was supposed to. Right? There was dangerous things over, you know, at the one I thought I wanted to take, right? Um, everything, everything good happens, right? I attract that. And I truly believe these things. And honestly, it took me a while to brainwash myself into that. But I'll tell you what, my life certainly didn't get worse because I believe that.

Yeah, you know, that's a mindset to have.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it is. I mean, that's something also, that's something I, I've said to myself pretty much every single day, you know. I'm just like, oh damn, man, it's another day where everything's gonna go right for me. I have this game that I've been playing recently called, uh, I actually saw it from TikTok. I saw somebody else post about this and I've been playing it myself, but it's just the Best Day Ever game. I wake up every single day, I'm like, today's gonna be the best day ever. And I don't know why it is, but if you just truly go into believing it, you're gonna start seeing that it is gonna be the best day ever. And there's always something that's just awesome happening. Yeah, that's the way I like to live. It's better.

Best Day Ever game.

Yeah, man, you try it, right? Just wake up and all of a sudden you'll start to see if you just believe that today's going to be the best day ever, you're going to find it. Cool. So as far as the script that we've helped you learn and how to actually talk to these people, it's not that hard, is it?

Not at all.

I mean, it's a matter of some simple questions.

Yeah. You have everything right in front of you.

Every single time I get on the phone, people are like, well, I don't know what to say to the homeowners. Like, well, it's not that simple or it's not that crazy, right? You can ask them. You know, find out if they're going to— if they're interested in selling, you're going to figure out why they want to sell. Got to spend as much time as possible doing that, because the longer somebody talks about why they want to sell their house is just them selling themselves on the idea that they need to sell the house. We're going to figure out the condition of the property. This is where everybody gets it wrong right now. You can go through and you can ask about, you know, the bedrooms and bathrooms. All that shit's available online. For me, I just want to figure out what repairs are needed so I can, you know, properly underwrite the deal and I can use it as negotiating leverage. So I just ask, hey, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being we got to tear this property down, 10 being is fully remodeled, it looks beautiful, what would you rate the condition of the property? They give you a number. What the number they say doesn't matter. Then I just say, okay, what would we need to do to make it a 10? And then that's when they sit there and they list off everything that could possibly be wrong with it. Write that down. And we figure out when they want to sell, right? Because we need to know, because oftentimes when people want to get paid and when they're actually ready to move out are different. So we need to handle that real quick. And just sort of get them on board with, you know, what closing is and everything like that. And then it's just a matter of getting their asking price, which is, you know, the way we do that in the program is we figure out, you know, basically we just say, hey, based on what you told me about the property, and then we list off everything they said earlier about what the property would need to be a 10, right? So based on what you told me about the property, you know, we could use new flooring, the kitchen could be remodeled, the bathrooms could be remodeled, there's some broken windows, some shingles need replacing the roof. What do you feel is a fair prop— fair price for the property in its current condition? They'll give us a number. We're not done yet. We then we say, well, if we were to pay all the closing costs, there were no realtor fees, we bought the property entirely as is. So you didn't need to make any repairs. What would you say is the best price you could do for the property? That's like the best question ever, because oftentimes they will drop their price. And then it's as simple as just identifying all the potential roadblocks, right? We want to run headfirst into objections. We want to figure out if there are any other decision makers. We want to make sure that, hey, if we did get you that price, is it something you're for sure ready to move forward with today? And that's not just a, oh yeah, no, it's yes, I'd be ready to sign an agreement on that. And then boom, thank them for their time. Let them know we're going to call them back as soon as we're done analyzing the property and make them an offer. And that's all it is.

Yeah, that's closing, right? Like, in my head before getting into it all, like watching you and your videos closing, whatever, I had like such a crazy concept of like I thought it was like you had to do like magic on these people or whatever, right? Um, but seeing you, it's like so simple. It's just lowball them, work up a little bit. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy, dude.

It— I think— I mean, I myself, I remember thinking that too. Like, I was like, oh, there's got to be some kind of formula, and, and there's all these things about tonality and, and, you know, these clever little, uh, you know, objection handling stuff that people do.

Yeah.

When in reality, sure, there might be some stuff like that and that might help, Mm-hmm. But at the end of the day, dude, it's just going through the reps. And I think the biggest thing that people do, they mess themselves up, is they talk too much. I think as long as you can just say what you need to say with like confidence, which that comes with time, right? That comes from putting in the reps and you just keep it concise, right? Like, so for instance, let's say somebody's asking $200,000 and I offer them $90,000 for their property. I don't want to say Hey, you know, we got ahead. We approved your offer. We approved your property for an offer where, you know, we buy as is, paying all the closing costs. There's no real estate commissions. Our approved offer is $90,000. And that's because of this, this, this. No, I say it's for $90,000 and I wait, right? And I don't respond until they, you know, prompt me to where too many people, they start talking and justifying themselves and that comes off as weak. I really feel like you just need to say as little, be as concise as possible, which is something, you know, I'm still even working on myself, getting better at. But that to me is the trick. It's just following what works, you know, not trying to reinvent the wheel here. Just do something that works. If you know, if we do it enough times, those inputs are going to give us the output we're looking for. And that's that. Um, cool. When— well, do you have any questions for me on anything that you might need help with to get to that next level? I know that I I told you we're going to talk. I'm going to send you some stuff what I think are going to be some good moves you can make that are going to make it super easy for you to start doing, you know, just a couple deals a month. But is there anything outside of that that I'd be able to help you with?

Um, I think the biggest thing for me is just like, I want to— controlling the thing upstairs, right? I want to— you got to like control your mind so that you can do whatever you don't— you got to make sure you do all the tasks you need to do, whatever. I want to You started when you were 22, right? If I'm not mistaken. How much did you do? I think it was some crazy number, right?

Like, so my first year I was 22 is my first year graduating college. I got started in May, and between May and December I did just shy of $400,000 in assignments.

Where was your mind at to be able to do that? To like, was it just, I need to just wake up and grind?

Like I'll tell you what it was. I knew what my purpose was, and this isn't some bullshit, you know, purpose people talk about, you have to find your why or anything like that. You know what my why was? It was an absolutely beautiful bombshell babe, 10 out of 10, that I had just met. She's now my wife, right?

Congratulations.

But thank you. I met this girl and I was leaving college. She still had another semester there, but, uh, you know, we started dating I asked her to be my girlfriend after hanging out with her twice. And luckily she said yes. And I was like, "I have to become somebody," right? This is a beautiful woman. Like, she's fantastic. She's the most perfect woman ever. She could have whoever she wants. She's not gonna be with a slouch. And that brought within me just a different kind of level of like, "I have to turn this on." You know? Like, you should never underestimate how much an absolute baddie will get you to get out of bed and start getting to fucking work. I can see that. Yeah, so seriously, that's what it was for me, man. I was just like, I'm not gonna— like, I'm gonna be the kind of guy I need to be to, you know, be worthy of a girl like this. And that's what— that's really what it was.

That's pretty funny. What were you doing? Like, what was your day-to-day? It was just you and Batch Tyler, or—

yeah, well, so in the beginning, man, when I was first getting that first deal it was on MojoDialer and we were calling. So back in the day, like batch leads was in its infancy. There was none of that. Basically, it was doing like any kind of data websites at that time. There was no interface. Basically, you'd go to some website and then you'd have to like pay money, like for whatever, like $500, and then they would send you a certain amount of records and you would just tell them like, hey, I want the pre-foreclosures, this, this, that. And it was just that. And then you'd send it to another website to get it skip traced and it would give you like 10 phone numbers for each number. And honestly, True People Search was still like just as good at the time. But yeah, then it was just plugging all that stuff into Mojo Dialer and it's just every single day, 1,000 calls a day until I got that first deal.

Mm-hmm.

Once I got that first deal, immediately hired 3 virtual assistants, got some more data, gave it to them. I kept cold calling while I waited for them, but then, you know, all of a sudden I was getting tons of leads in from them where I didn't have to cold call anymore. I was just calling leads from them. And but then at that point, bro, it was just everything I could possibly do. It's like, okay, hey, we got to try this RVM thing. RVMs are really big. Do you know what that is?

It's like, uh, voice messages, right?

Yeah, it's ringless voicemail. So they're illegal, gray area. I don't do them anymore, but, uh, basically, uh, it just drops a voicemail into somebody's thing without you actually ringing them. So you can send out like a million of these things at once. Yeah. So you get a lot of really mad people, but it's a great way to get in front of a lot of people at once, you know, doing things like that. But basically, bro, I started relentlessly just investing. Anybody I saw that I thought was making a lot of money wholesaling, hey, how much money I got to pay you to show you— show me how you do what you do, right? And so I'm, you know, getting all these mentorships. I'm learning about Google PPC and Facebook ads. And, you know, learning how to manage VAs and how to do cold calling the right way and where people are getting their data from, right? How they're doing their skip tracing, what lists they're pulling, how they're running a team, right? How— because then at that point, you know, I started hiring salespeople and I need to learn how to do that. I'm like, okay, how do I find the best talent? How do I, you know, teach these guys how to do what I do right without it taking as long as it took me, right? Building my buyers list, making connections there. Everything. It was just— I became obsessed with it. I became obsessed.

How did you make those connections with the— sorry, but how did you make those connections with those buyers?

So, dude, in the beginning, man, meetups were a really big thing. Now it's not as necessary, I don't think, anymore. But I mean, there is no shortage of REIA, like REIA, these, you know, real estate investor associations. They have these meetups, man. They'll rent out a bar or restaurant or something, all get together, and there's tons of flippers and Airbnb guys and you just go to these people, shake their hand. Hey, what do you do? Right? Hey, I'm this, I'm a landlord, I'm here, I'm flipping. Right. And just kind of figuring out who are the players. And then at that point, right, I can establish myself because this is where it's easier. Once you start actually doing some deals, I can show my value by being like, hey, I have this deal, right? This is why I mean, not that I necessarily think it's a bad thing, but like a lot of beginners like, hey, should I find buyers first? And I'm like, no, because if you call these people, right, if you call me you're like, hey, like, I'm getting into— like, I'm looking for discounted properties. I come across them all the time, you know. What's your buy box? I'm gonna say, what do you have for me right now? They're like, uh, no, we just— we're gonna get exactly for you. I'm like, hey, you don't have shit. Like, no. Like, I'm not gonna waste my time with that. Where if you call me and you say, hey, Tyson, I see that you've been purchasing properties over here. I actually have one that's worth $450 grand. I'm selling for $320. Would you be interested in taking a look? I'm like, yeah, absolutely, man. Let's talk.

Yeah.

You know, so and then, you know, whatever, even that deal doesn't work. I've seen, hey, this person has deals. They let them know, hey, look, here's my email, you know, send me anything you got in the future, whatever, right?

Yeah.

So it makes it that much easier to start building these connections. Like, that's another thing, man. Once you get your first deal and you're shopping it out to buyers, you're going to have a bunch of people who see, okay, you know, Ramon has value, he's got these properties, and now they're going to take you a lot more seriously when you call them. Right. And you can say, have these conversations. Hey, look, I know that deal didn't work, but what is it exactly that you're looking for? Let me go find something specifically for you.

You.

They've seen you've already gotten the deals, so they know, okay, this guy's not just a tire kicker, he's not somebody just getting into it, he's serious. Um, but yeah, man, those meetups were huge. And then it was just, bro, once I started doing, you know, I've got, you know, 30 houses under contract at a time, it's just then people start reaching out to you and it's, it snowballs.

All right, if you could, uh, go back and give young 22-year-old Tyson some advice Uh, say he's here today, whatever, 2025. Um, landscape has changed a little bit, right? It's not the same as it was back then. What would be the roadmap you give to young Tyson?

Well, first I would say is keep taking the social media thing seriously. My life as a real estate investor, as a business owner, everything has gotten a million times easier because I have a following on social media. And it doesn't matter what business you're in, having a following helps so much for anything, bro. I could post on my story right now, hey, I'm looking for a flip in wherever, wherever I wanted one, and I would be able to find one, you know what I'm saying? Um, so that's number one. Number two is spend the most amount of time doing the thing that's going to make you the most amount of money, right? So the highest dollar per hour activity, which for me My strong suit is sales, right? I'm good at getting on the phone and closing people. And it's not because I'm super talented or anything like that. It's because I say the damn words on the script. I say them enough times and it works. Um, and that if, you know, if I continue to do that where I spent, I wasted a lot of time on reading books and learning and it wasn't wasted, but it's just not the things that make the most amount of money, but learning all these crazy real estate strategies and learning about all these other different asset classes and and financing strategies and all these different things that really aren't making me any money. Cool, it's good to know about, but the more I spent talking to sellers and talking to buyers, the more money I will make, right? So that's the biggest thing. And it's just, hey, grind until you cannot handle the amount of leads you're getting and then start to replace yourself. So the biggest thing for me is I always wanted to be a business owner, right? A true business owner, not a really highly paid employee.

Yeah.

In the beginning at wholesaling, you're really just a highly paid employee. You're just working for yourself, right? But you are the one who has to get on the phone, make the calls, close the deals, find the buyers, talk to the title company, deal with the title issues, get it closed, right?

Right.

You eventually start hiring people out and, you know, it's just one piece at a time, right? Eventually you start, you get a dispo guy, maybe you get an acquisitions guy, maybe you get a, a TC, But carefully do this, right? Once your, you know, profit is much in excess of what your current expenses are and, you know, do it slowly and do it one at a time, right? Don't try and hire everybody at once and then try and teach all these people their jobs like I did before I ever had SOPs for it. Which leads me to my next thing. Build SOPs on everything you do, right? So in the beginning, now this is super easy because we got AI to do a lot of our bitch work for us where record your call, right, where you close a deal, then uploaded the transcription. You can feed that into Otter AI, or if you record with Loom, whatever, you'll get a transcription of it. Upload that into ChatGPT and say, hey, this is a call I made where we got the positive result, right? We were able to close the deal. I need you to create an SOP, a standard operating procedure, that I can give to an employee to teach them how to have more calls like this. Boom, right? And then edit as you see necessary and revise it, whatever. But if you do that for everything you have to do— for instance, you have that title issue where the payback came is being higher, right?

Yeah.

If you had a transcript of that, all the conversations you had, you could turn that into an SOP, and you slowly build this library that'll allow you to be able to hand something to somebody and be like, here's how you do your job. Yeah, right. And obviously it's still going to need some input from you and whatnot, but it's going to make that so much easier. So if you systematize everything, you spend the time doing the things that are going to make you the most amount of money, and you take social media seriously, then you will, you know, those— what took, you know, where I've got in 5 years, maybe we could have gotten there in 2 and a half. Um, but those are the things that I would, I would highly recommend my 22-year-old self to do.

Gotcha.

Cool.

I don't even have social media.

Well, look, it's not required. It's not like I'm saying you have to. Um, but smart the way you put it.

I mean, it makes sense, bro.

It's, it's steroids for any kind of business, you know. Um, and also it doesn't have to be you, right? Um, but like when people are talking like partnerships that they want and stuff like that, oftentimes just like two friends, you know, and they're just buddies and they're like, okay, yeah, that's where we're gonna be partners. Yeah, right. It's like you need to find somebody who has skill sets that are unique to yours, right? Maybe you don't want to sit there and be on camera and do all of that. But if you find somebody who does, who likes it, they're charismatic, that's where there can be some synergies. But, uh, it is something that— now I'm, again, I'm not going to say it's for everybody, but for, you know, if you are willing to do it, it just makes everything easier. I have a built-in customer base for anything I want to sell. If I need resources, connections, I boom, I can talk to so many people like that. Yeah, which is such an advantage in today's day and age. But yeah. All right, man. Well, listen, dude, I appreciate you driving up here. This has been fun. I hope it's been helpful for you. The last thing I want to say is if you had one thing to say to somebody who may be on the fence about joining the Inner Circle, right? They're interested in wholesaling. They want to get their first deal, but they're just like, "Ah, I'm not sure if this is going to be worth it." What would you say to them?

What I told you earlier, I think. Where you spend your money is who you're, who you're going to become. So make the investment. I think it's a, it's a good idea.

Right on, man. Cool. All right, well, thank you so much.

Yes, sir. Thank you.