The Rebellion: Episode 11 | How to Wholesale off the MLS w/ Ryan Zolin

Welcome everybody to episode 11 of The Rebellion. I am Tyson Smith. I'll be your host today. And we have an amazing guest today, somebody that's been one of my personal friends since I got started in this business and somebody who's absolutely killing it doing very similarly of what I do, but through a whole different perspective. And I'm so excited for him to come on, show you how he's been able to build his business, what he's currently doing, and how it differs from what I'm currently doing. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome Ryan Zollan.

What's up? What's up? How's it going?

So, Ryan, you know, you can tell your story a lot better than I can. Can you kind of explain just from like a bird's eye view, number one, of what it is you're doing in your real estate business? And then I'd like to hear about how it is that you got to that point.

Sure. Yeah, I'm 24 years old. I'll be 25 next February. I got into real estate at 18, and what I specialize in is I find deals on market. So in the realm of real estate investing, what I always teach people, just like the infamous saying is, the hardest part of being a real estate agent is to find a client. The hardest part of being the investor is to find the deal. So I honestly, I mean, I tried doing what your strategy is, direct to seller, and it just wasn't made out for me. It goes to show you there's a million different ways to skin a cat in real estate. And for me specifically, the thing that I realized was while the hardest part was finding a deal, the hardest part also for me was to keep systems in place and keep a budget. I ran out of money. Yeah. So I ended up in the on-market and real estate agent space. So we primarily work with other real estate agents and get our deals on the MLS. So that's kind of like our forte. As for how I got started, I mean, that's a whole long story. I started just out as a traditional real estate agent on a team making cold calls 10 to 12 hours a day.

And when did you start doing that?

I was literally fresh out of high school, so I was 18. It was like 2, 3 months right after that.

And what sparked your— like, what made you decide, hey, I'm going to do this instead of going the traditional route of going to school or anything like that? You're like, nah, I want to get right into it.

Yeah. Yeah, honestly, I grew up in like an entrepreneurial, um, household. So that was one, was that I wanted to work for myself as my own boss. But two was that I really didn't have it in the cards for me to go to college. It just wasn't like— I had a terrible GPA. 1.8 is what I graduated with. Um, I had the ability to do what most people in my school did, which was go to community college and then go to university, but, um, that just didn't spark my interest.

So, so just to set the record straight, 1.8 GPA in high school, and now you're already a millionaire at the age of 24. Correct.

Yeah, I hit that status officially like right at early 23.

But look at that, guys. I mean, it just goes to show that really, you know, this is what this podcast is all about, is there is this blueprint that I think has been pushed on so many different kids our age of, hey, here's what you need to do, here's the way to success, right? And everybody's waking up at this point that Oh no, that really doesn't work.

Yeah, sure. No, it's, uh, in my opinion, I think that it's a system and I think the system's broken. Um, school teaches you to be the employee. This is how you have to do it. You have to follow the rules. You have to show your work. You have to make sure that was your own thoughts, even though it was exactly what we told you that you were supposed to write down. Um, I was always the kid in school that raised my hand and asked why. So like, I don't care if I got the answer from cheating off the kid next to me, or if it was just, I was able to use my resources, or even if I just took a guess and I had a 25% chance and I got it right. Regardless, I was getting shunned as the one that wasn't doing it the right way. And it was as I started, like, of course, like I mentioned, being an entrepreneurial household, it was always just different conversations at home. It was talking about business, talking about hiring and firing employees and how to scale on top of obviously just my curious personality in school. It was like I just was open up to a different world. I didn't really see the point of going and following a traditional system. And then my dad really instilled that in my head too, saying, I'm not going to pay for college unless you go and be a doctor, a lawyer, attorney, engineer, or teacher.

I love that, honestly. I feel like, um, you know, I don't have kids. I know you don't either. But when I do, I hope to have them one day, I'm gonna be on the same boat. I'm like, "You're not fucking going to school to go get a business degree." Right.

I know. I had a bunch of friends, uh, that used to— from high school. They all went and got religious studies degrees, and they got, um, like, just complete bullshit.

And you're like, "What is that gonna do for you?" "What are you gonna do?" Well, when you look at this, I think it's crazy that an 18-year-old kid can pull out hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment to go learn something that will eventually provide them with a job so they'll be able to repay that loan.

Right.

That same 18-year-old kid. And also, they're putting $0 down.

Of course.

Imagine if that same 18-year-old kid went to the government and said, hey, could you give me a loan to buy this cash-flowing fourplex so that I could go ahead and start generating income and build an asset for myself?

Right.

They'd say, fuck you, dude, give me 20%.

So, I mean, that's, that's why the 3.5% down became a thing. They want to make it entry-level affording affordability for first-time homebuyers and the first-time homebuyers for somebody that can qualify. Qualify, they can go in and be able to purchase it with little to no money out of their own pocket because they typically don't have a lot of money. So it's made for an employee system and I get it. It's a great concept, but I'm on the same page with you. If you're 18, 19 years old, what I would like to tell people is rather go and take that chance and get a loan and go and find your parents instead of them giving you, hey, I'll pay for your college, I'll pay for this and reward good behavior, good grades, whatever it is. How about instead they go and they buy a duplex? You rent out the units to your friends that you have in college and now they give it to you as a graduation present as long as you keep those same good grades. Rates. Like, it's just different.

That is, that is actually so the move. And, um, the thing I love about it too is, is I see nothing wrong with giving an 18-year-old the power to go do that. Because I know there's a lot of people like, oh well, what if they fuck up and they, they buy the wrong investment or anything like that? And it's like, dude, they, they will learn so much more from that than they ever will from sitting in a classroom for 4 years.

For sure.

Like, that will teach you the game.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, skin in the game. And also, they need to be able to like have an understanding as to what they're doing and lessons learned from failures are usually the best lessons.

Oh yeah. I can't remember exactly. Do you— are you familiar? I— where I— I can't remember where I heard this, but somebody said that like, um, lessons aren't learned like on the peaks, they're learned in the valleys or something like that. Like, for sure.

I, I don't remember the quote exactly, but I know which one you're talking about. And I mean, it's true though. I mean, most of the lessons and the battle wounds you have are what defines you. You can go in and say, yep, not gonna do that again, or X, Y, and Z happened, and I at least know how to better, better equip myself for it going forward.

Absolutely. So at 18, you decide, okay, I'm doing my own thing. You've seen obviously, hey, there's some realtors out there who are killing it. I want to get into that. And what happens next?

So, I mean, honestly, the only reason I went traditional side was because I was the young dumb kid that didn't know any better. I've— I saw a bunch of Cody Sperber's ads of the We Buy Houses, the flashing the check in front of the Chase Bank Lamborghini, all those ads. But I just didn't know what I didn't know. I thought the only way to get started in real estate was by getting a real estate license. And also too, what was— remember in indoctrinated to me was you have to go to school after you get out of college or after you get out of high school. So I was like, all right, well, if I get out of high school and I have to go to school, and in my opinion, the only way to get qualified to do real estate is by going to real estate school. Let's do it. And then the beautiful thing that happened next was what I don't think a lot of people in the public realize, real estate school is fucking cheap. Like, it literally cost me less than $2,000 all in for getting my license, the schooling, I had to get personal mentorship because of how dumb I was inside the real estate school. And then on top of that, getting, like I said, all the fees and dues paid. So I mean, for less than $2,000 and less than 3 months of effort, you could be a licensed real estate agent. One house sale, even if it was a $200,000 house, 3% commission is $6,000.

Right. I mean, and everybody in the world, everybody in the world can go save up $2,000. You can go get a job at McDonald's and within, you know, several months—

not that I ever recommend this either, but for those that like to take a chance and bet on themselves and go get a credit card, this would be a better chance with 0% interest for 12 months, 18 months, whatever you can get, and go make payments on a $2,000 loan.

100%.

And I really don't advise spending money you can't afford to lose. But like in that case, if you're going to be the type that bets on yourself, this is the route to go because you have little to lose and so much to gain in upside.

Yes.

So I did that. I went to real estate school, like I said, and I just joined a team. I think I joined the industry with a lot of what I, what I teach people now is like ego and entitlement. And unfortunately, I feel like I had a lot of that at a young age.

I think everybody does.

For sure. I came from just the ego mentality of thinking that I was better than what I was at a lot of things and entitlement, feeling as if the world owed me something. And when you mix that into an industry where if you close a deal a month, you're considered to be killing it, that was not a good mix for me at a young age. So traditional real estate was good for a while I was there, but I made a lot of big leaps and big jumps pretty quickly in my career that a lot of people, I feel like they just wouldn't. So like I went and I found a guy that was a mentor of mine after I was on the team for a few months, took me under his wing. I gave away half my money for a year. And then after that year of us being mentor-mentee, when we were a top team at the brokerage, we became business partners, went and grew a team to like 20+ agents at 19 years old. And then that was when I was kind of introduced to this concept of wholesaling through Templeton Walker. And when Templeton was telling me about wholesaling, it was just like the gears started going in different directions and it started getting me to think differently about how to do real estate and how to work essentially just smarter instead of harder. Yes.

So one thing I do want to ask is, I know pretty much every single person will hear the advice at some point, hey, if you want to be good at something, you need to go find somebody who's doing what you want and, you know, figure out a way that they will mentor you. How did you find your mentor? And then obviously you came in with value. You said, hey, I'll give you 50% of everything I make. Yeah, but how did you find this person?

So this was the one connection that I had in real estate through family friends. It was my father's friend. I don't even know how to explain it. He— so my dad's company that my mom and dad moved us out from Illinois to start was a restaurant repair company. It evolved into not just restaurant repair, but now HVAC work. But the point is that there's a Hungry Howie's right across from ASU, and the owner of it is Jeff Dorsten. And Jeff, he has my dad take care of his restaurant equipment over at the pizza shop. And my dad was like, well, Jeff was always just a smart guy. He was doing a lot of business transactions, commercial deals, but he did it all through having a real estate license. So when I was stuck at the position of being at Keller Williams where I closed a few deals, had them under my belt, but I got paid like $900 for those deals. I'm like, wait a second, trying to do the math in my head. I'm like, 3% commission. One of the deals was $400K. I suck at math, I know, but like, I think that's more than $900.

So something's off here.

Yeah. So I took the skill set that I had, which was the main reason why I joined the team to begin with, was because I came in with nothing. So for people that are listening, they're like, I don't even know where to get started. I didn't have any money coming in. I didn't have anything other than that one connection, which also too, That guy is technically a customer of my dad's, so he really doesn't owe my dad anything. I had to go in and I found out after I had started getting mentored by him, he thought he was just meeting to give me like a little pep talk. I walked in, I was like straight to the point in business, like I was talking about, and I walked in, I said, hey, the skills that I learned from the team I was on, I learned how to sit in on the phone and cold call for 10 to 12 hours a day. I learned what a CRM is, a customer relationship management system, and I could go in and I could work a database. And I understand it takes 6 to 12, even 15 touches before I could get an actual potential yes. Okay, well, now I also know that I could bring a skill set of I'm willing to put in the time, effort, energy, and I'll even be like your assistant that will go and do whatever it is you need to free up your time so you could spend more time with your family or the pizza shop, whatever it is you have to do. So I brought in a bunch of value. And then the icing on the cake was that instead of asking for anything from his deals, I said, everything you do stays the same. I know I'm taking time out of your day, but the only thing I want from you is your time, because when I bring you deal, or at least what I think is a deal, the time you're giving to me, you're taking 50% of my deal. So really, he had nothing to lose and everything to gain. He very well could have told me to pound sand, but I was also pretty, pretty persistent in that meeting. I was like, this is what's gonna happen, here's how we could do this, what do you think? And I was fully prepared for him to say no. I mean, I just got paid $900 for 4 deals. In my eyes, I'm like, he could just tell me like 20%, 30%, and I probably would have said yes. But yeah, I went 50/50, just went in with confidence, and he saw the value because I had a skill set. I came in with at least something under my belt with experience rather than nothing.

Yeah. And I think it's a lot that you recognized everything that you had learned from your time in that KW team, like saying, being able to recognize, hey, here's what I learned, here's how I can help you for sure. And then again, I think that the confidence and the persistence is like, that's something that can't really be taught. It's just like you got to believe in yourself when you're going into these kinds of meetings where you're about to make an ask from somebody.

Right. For sure. I mean, dude, you have to. And that was the biggest thing was I knew value. I mean, I knew what I walked into a conversation. I mean, this was a good thing and a bad thing. But when I was going in real estate school and interviewing brokerages, they always made it seem like they were the ones interviewing me. And I was like, it wasn't until like my 6th or 7th interview. This is how stupid I was. I was putting on the suit and everything, going and thinking that I was getting interviewed. They want to make it seem like they're interviewing you, but in reality, as the agent, you're interviewing the brokerage. So a lot of them were telling me like about the top producers. And I always got like the glimpse of how much money was truly out there in the world, just from being in these rooms of real estate. And it just made me start like thinking about things differently. And I'm like, okay, well, everything that these people are doing, they have more value than I do. So everything that I do in any room that I'm going to get in, either I'm going to have to be a sponge and shut up, but I'm going to have to prove my worth and as to why I deserve to be in that room. Or two, I could go and be of value and try to bring whatever it is to the table, even if it just means that I'm the guy that has the least amount of value. So there was like this happy medium of be the quiet guy, but also be the outspoken guy that just has like the opinion. And I learned to play the balance pretty well at a young age. And then more importantly, the lesson I learned was the ego and entitlement side. Through the midst of transitioning to traditional, traditional real estate to the investment world, there was a lot of personal stuff I was going through. And there's a lot of things that I just wasn't in the right headspace. So it was like, as all that went on, I had to learn the lesson of losing ego and entitlement because I lost everything. I mean, I lost friends, I lost money, I lost pretty much everything I had. and I was back to square one, 3 and a half years in the industry when I was just told I was crushing it for 3 years prior. So it was like a really bad reset, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Well, and, and I think that has something to do with your perspective on it. For sure. Is, I mean, people, a lot of people are gonna view like, oh, hey, I'm, you know, I've lost everything or I'm hitting rock bottom. And it's like, okay, well there are lessons you can learn from this, right?

Sure.

I mean, I, I'm of the opinion you should never waste a good crisis. And when things like that do happen, when you are losing friends, you're losing money. Yeah. Of being able to recognize What happened here? Why is this? And where do we go?

Oh, absolutely. And I mean, dude, I could have had the victim mentality. There was a lot of things that while it could have been two wrongs make a right, even like I knew that what I was doing in one situation was right. And I knew in one situation it was like I could have been doing better. And so like you had said with learning lessons, I mean, that's the philosophy that everyone on my team has and myself included, is we don't lose, we win or we learn. And in this case, I mean, there was a lot of learning lessons, but that's also what made me even more fearless the second time around was as I started building and evolving and the market was booming, I mean, I was literally like untouchable. So that's why I think we blew up the way we did and the industry and the reputation got to where it's at was just by always doing the right thing and the learning lessons that I had to go through. While some of them cost a lot in friendships and actual monetary value, there was a lot of cool things that ended up happening where now we're working on bigger and better things that I never would have even imagined possible had I not gone through some of the storms that I had to go through.

Absolutely. So tell me about that. Can you kind of explain what it is you are doing right now and where it's headed?

For sure. I can share a little bit. So right now we're working— Agent Investors was launched at the beginning of this year. It was in April and it was right before the market kind of started like getting into like this, like whatever you want to call it, that it's in right now.

And what is Agent Investors?

Agent Investors is a community. So it's a community and course that I launched in April that basically teaches real estate agents how to become investors. And it also teaches real estate investors how to work with agents. So I'm the one guy that I think will get up and tell people that I have a product that may not be the best in the industry. And I think it's good that I lead with that because It'll all make sense in a second. The reason I say that is because I feel like everyone that has something to sell is going to tell you why theirs is the best and they're going to try to sell you on it. Uh, for me, my strategy is the best for me. And I think to a lot of people in my community that take it seriously, that are actually still doing the business at a high level, this strategy is their like bread and butter. This is everything they do. But what I will say is that for a lot of people that watch shows and a lot of people that are still trying to get into the industry and join communities, what I'm realizing is a lot of them actually aren't doing deals. So what a lot of them are trying to do is get to the point to where they could do deals. And what they're doing is they're spinning these wheels, but then they're stuck in analysis paralysis. There is all these different gurus, shiny object syndromes and strategies, whatever you want to call this stuff, to where you could go and get lost in analysis paralysis in the industry, whether it's direct-to-seller, creative finance, Wholesaling 101, fix and flip, buy and hold, traditional agency. The list goes on. I mean, I'm just like 15. So like we just listed off like 7 or 8 without trying. How do I know where do I get started? I think you have to reverse engineer everything and figure out first off, what's your plan? So what's the plan? What's the goal? And if you know what your end goal is, then you can reverse engineer this much easier. So if you can figure out the goal, hey, I want to have financial freedom. That's what most people say. Okay, well, let's figure out what financial freedom is to you because to everybody it's also different in this variable that if you only need $5,000 a month to live and you have one cash flowing property that's $5,000 a month, are you technically financially free? Yes. So figure out, is it more than 5? Is it 10? And it's all specific to your situation. Then from there, how do I get my foot in the door? Because while I mentioned all the different strategies, there's obviously people that are qualified to teach those strategies at the best of the best level. So what you need to do is get your foot in the door of the industry and then figure out how to get your foot in the door in that strategy. So what I did was I got my foot in the door through traditional real estate through a mentor. And then for the investment side, I had a connection through Steve Trang, who was a mentor of mine, who was also my broker on traditional agency. I had a good friend, Templeton Walker. And then two, or the three, the third part was that I invested into a mentorship. I went and I paid $6,000 to Jamil Damji and Josiah Grimes and Astro Flipping, and they taught me everything about wholesaling. So then once I was able to identify the even playing field of what wholesaling is, I found my strategy of working on market deals. How I found it wasn't all that great through failing and running out of money, but what I did find was the success. And more importantly, I got done with $0 out of pocket. So when I ran out of money and my back was against the wall and I closed the deal for $30,000 through an agency relationship, cost me $0. At that point, I was like, I can go and invest money again, or I can go and keep consistently doing my strategy. So that's what we did. Did it for our first year as that main strategy, did $250,000. The year after that was $750,000. And then this year we're at, I don't know, we'll hit probably about $1.2, $1.3. And $1.2, $1.3 will be across all the companies, traditional fix and flip, wholesale, and then our rentals. Agent Investors is basically the community to get people's foot in the door. And I want someone to understand that like the agency method and working with real estate agents and on-market deals is the best place to get started. Because you're not losing any money. You're just putting your time into it, and time you need to put in to show how serious you truly are to get started.

Absolutely. It's relationship-based.

That's it.

Yeah, it doesn't cost you any money. It costs you time.

Time.

Now, so the thing that I like, I admire so much, Ryan, and I respect so much about you is just to like— so for me, everything that I do is something that I've learned from somebody else. Like, I am the master of R&D, rip-off and, or, uh, what is it?

Off and duplicate.

Yeah, rip-off and duplicate. Somebody— I see somebody who's doing something, I'm like, okay, that works, that makes money. How I do that exact same thing in my way.

For sure.

You did something where you like, you blazed your own trail. Like you were like, this is something that really nobody was talking about until you started doing it. And now everybody's talking about it.

That's the agent outreach and MLS method. And I mean, I'm not the one that invented it. It's the same thing like what you're saying about the rip off and duplicate. I mean, honestly, I just found a lane. The double dip is the thing that I'll like put my stamp of Ryan Zolan on. And that was honestly an accident. I mean, I tell this story, but I did it with my transaction coordinator at the time, Kyle Holder. We closed the deal, it was like $15K assignment. And he just reached over, he's like, "Hey, what do you want to do about this commission?" And I'm like, "Wait a second, timeout, timeout." $15K wholesale commission was like $9,000 or $10,000. I'm like, called up Steve, I'm like, "Yo, we did this and this." He's like, "Did you disclose? Did you use the Arizona purchase contract? You signed off on a Benzer, you did the assignment contract, everything was by the book?" And I'm like, "Yeah." And he was like, "Congratulations." And I was like, "Is this a normal thing? Is this legal?" He made a few phone calls, called me back. He's like, "Yeah, I mean, I think people have done this before too, but no one really knows what it is." And so that's where I essentially created the double dip where you could on a deal because you're a licensed real estate agent representing yourself as the buyer. And then you also can get an assignment fee as the equitable interest, right? You have as a buyer to wholesale the deal. So we just turned around, started like basically doubling our margins. Everyone in the industry was like thriving in this booming market, making $10K, $20K, $30K if they had a really good deal, $50K+. And we were turning around making $50K just doing basic like minimum assignments off the MLS.

Oh, and also you weren't paying for marketing, correct?

Correct.

So, so if somebody, if somebody listening right now and they're like, okay, hold up, let me get this straight. Ryan can show me how I can start finding real estate deals where I'm not having to spend thousands of dollars every single month on marketing. I just needed to dedicate my time to building relationships, meeting new people, telling them what I'm looking for, you know, and kind of being a matchmaker of sorts. And with this method, not only am I making wholesale fees, but I'm also making commissions simultaneously on the same deals.

And I mean, it's a beautiful process because what happens in a market like this where if you can't sell deals higher than you have them locked up, sell them at cost. It's the same thing as being a traditional agent. Now you get the commission.

That's— see that when, when, when you explain that to me, that's like, okay, hey, look, we know that this can sell for $320,000. That the seller's asking $320,000. We'll buy it at $320,000. I'll make the commission. wholesale it to somebody at cost.

Commission means like $9,000, $10,000 on that if it's 3%. I mean, when you start doing the numbers, I last year and I don't like typically sharing numbers, but last year I did over just over $300,000 in commission. I showed one house and it was a house that I ended up buying as a rental myself. So I made more money as a traditional agent than what most agents make usually in 2 years combined. And I did that without showing a single house, without working with a single client. So that's the name of the game with our strategy. That's not even counting the wholesale fees. That's not even counting the fix and flips. That's not even counting the rentals, the other investments. So when you can really find your lane and double down on your craft, I mean, I got really good at just being an investor, even though I almost want to call it like an investor agent, but it's how to be the agent investor. So that's what we launched.

So sick. So somebody listening right now, they want to learn more. Where's the best way for them to learn more about this program? Reach out to you.

Agentinvestors.com is the best place to start. You can set up a call. What we always do with the team is my people— we're not salespeople. If just like how I said a minute ago about finding your craft, there's times people come in and they're like, I've got $10,000 to spend and I want to learn creative finance. Okay, well, look, to be completely honest with you, I'm not the guy. Like, you should go take that money and invest into another mentorship or pay somebody to just teach you that is already doing it at the level that you're trying to get to. So what I would always recommend is just see if we're a good fit and then also join the community for free. We have a free Discord, we have free YouTube videos, we have aistarterpack.com which gives away a free list of realtors, free script, free trainings, free coaching stuff. So I would start there. And then aside from that, just get in the community, dip your toes in. You don't need to jump 2 feet in right from the start. See what you like, what you don't like, and then find the right home for you. I think it's really important being around the right people.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So, um, I know we talked about this a long time ago. It's something I never even got around to doing, but I want to get my team, um, to where they're making offers on the MLS. And I was talking to Austin Zaback about this as well. Um, so in order to do this, do you need to have a license?

Um, you don't need one. It just depends. So typically on the agency side, there's 3 different representations, representations, what we'll call it. There is a traditional deal, which is where there's a buyer and a seller, a buyer's agent and a seller's agent. There's the dual agency, which is what a lot of the investors are familiar with, which is where you go directly to the listing agent. They represent both sides. You could do that one without being licensed. The third, which is the one that I like to get most of our deals at, is unrepresented. If we can't go traditional, traditional will get the commission, which is the double dip. Unrepresented is where the buy side commission goes back into the seller's pocket. So if the commission for— again, I use $200,000, it's easy numbers— $200,000 deal, if there's a 6% commission agreed to between the listing agent and the seller, 6% commission is getting paid whether— so however it's usually 3 and 3. So 3% would go to the listing agent, $6,000, 3% would go to the buyer's agent, $6,000. You can go unrepresented and put that 3% back in the seller's pocket where the listing agent doesn't take it either. But that $6,000 goes back to the seller. So they're incentivized to take a little bit less of it off.

So this is an amazing negotiating tool, I'm sure. So how are you communicating that? To the— because you would be talking with listing agent, correct?

So when you call for an on-market deal, the first thing we start off with is property condition. I want to talk to them about everything aside from the price. So, hey, by the way, this fireplace, is this original? Was this permitted? You all start asking all the right questions to where you could find out that they have an original AC, they have original roof, they have water damage that was patched by home warranty, but there was no receipt of work being done. Like, you have basically justification for a lower price. So if I can get the condition to be X, Y, and Z to where it fits whatever narrative I'm trying to say, okay, well now I can go to the next situation, which is the seller. So seller situation leads to what their motivation is. This is a beautiful house. Why is the seller selling it? They're not ever just going to tell you, oh, to move. Agents love to just talk. So when you get them on the phone, and especially right now where their listings aren't selling, they're very excited to talk about potentially selling it. So, okay, well, the seller already has a house up north and honestly, I mean, the photos on the listing, you could see there's furniture inside. It's actually vacant right now. They moved out. They're already living in the new house. Before I even went to submit an offer and talk about terms or price, we already know the seller's out of the house, meaning they have 2 mortgage payments. That's not fun. 2, we know the price or the condition of the house is not going to justify the price that they're asking. 3, we know it's sitting on market with no, with no other offers. So now I have 3 points to where I could go in with leverage and I could go in and say, well, look, I know we talked about the water damage. I know that you said the fireplace wasn't permitted. I know that the roof is original. AC is probably have to get just like a little bit of adjusting to it, whatever. Based on that and the seller needing to sell this house before the end of the year or ideally looking to, I can't be anywhere near that price of X, Y, and Z. I'm going to be closer to this over here. I can offer you creative terms. I can do whatever it is to, to subside the price, but you got to give me the terms. Or otherwise the cash offer is what it is. But at that point, I've at least built a relationship. They've understand— they've understood about my business and what I do. And more importantly, they trust me because I broke down the numbers for them on everything that we have. And then at that point, even if it's not that deal, I end it by saying, if it doesn't end up being this deal, I want you to feel you can call me before you list a property like this in the future. Then at that point, you build a database. Like right now, we've got like 2,200 agents in it. Out of those 2,200 agents, you're really looking for 10, 10 to 15. I mean, if 15 agents bring you 2 deals a year, you're doing 30 deals for $0 in marketing, $10K a pop. I mean, I again suck at math, but like, that doesn't suck.

Right? That's some good money for sure. So I believe that in a negotiation, the person with the more knowledge is typically going to get the better end of the deal. So I love your process of starting out, you're just getting more information about the entire situation. We want to know about the condition of the house. So we can use any of that information as leverage during our negotiation. We want to know about the seller's situation. So it sounds to me like from what you said, some things we're really looking for are like, hey, do they have another property that they're making another payment on?

Yeah. So biggest motivating situations from a seller, one, they need to sell this house in order to buy the next. That's going to be 90% of the people in the world. Most people cannot afford to take two loans and go buy two properties just with the jobs they have. So if they need to sell this house in order to buy the next one, the first note I always make in this case and everyone on my team, they know this, it's like drilled into them. You cannot go and get a deal under contract and rely on any kind of price reduction. That is our main strategy that we will never go after. There's a lot of people that teach that for MLS. You go in, you get it up 10, 15K higher because you beat out that other offer. You get an inspection done or you just walk it with your partners and then you go in for a price reduction. Absolutely not.

These are scum.

These are people's livelihoods. And what I always like to challenge people to ask the question of is when you go and sell a house and if you're younger and you haven't done this and you go ask your parents, when you go under contract on a house, what do you do? You start planning, you go and you get another house under contract, you start packing up your house, you get utilities off your name, you start telling people about it, you start emotionally detaching from this house and attaching to another. Then you come in, you say, I need X amount of dollars less. What if they can't qualify for that next house? What if all of a sudden you cancel on them and they have to go back and tell all these people and rearrange all their scheduling? Yeah, I would probably hate wholesalers too, to be honest with you. So first off is they might be going and needing to sell that house, move to the next. 2, my favorite, this is the best one, is when they need, or when they're basically building another dream house. They don't need to sell this one, but whether it's a new build or it's a house that they're already just so emotionally in love with, they don't give a shit about this other house. So you can usually go in and get a pretty good price reduction as long as it's logical. 3, a lot of older people moving into a smaller house that's one story, moving into an older assisted living facility. 4 would probably be just downsizing, and then 5 would just be relocating to a different state for a different market. Got a job, stuff like that.

So first we're finding condition of the property, then we're finding motivation, and what's the next step?

Price after that. Because at that point, I mean, we're very justified to tell them our price isn't going to match where they're listed at. And also, if it's listed at X price of, let's say, $300,000, it's been sitting for 30 days, they have no other offers, they're not getting anywhere near $300,000.

Right.

So even if that were the case and they were just a little bit off, let's say $275,000 is where they need to be. They would have had offers at $275,000. So if they're sitting on the MLS with no offers right now, my favorite target to go after is currently days on market. Yeah, if it's sitting, go after it. Why not, right?

I mean, and here's the thing, it's free to make offers. It doesn't cost you any money.

Costs time, man. That's it. That's it.

So if I understand you correctly, phase 1, we're information gathering. We're coming on, we're talking to the seller, we're building that— or the listing agent, right? We're, uh, we're building that relationship. We're finding out about the property, about the situation, about what their goals are with the property. And then after that, it sounds like, okay, we're taking a look and we're seeing where we need to be. So you're getting off the phone, you're looking, you're taking all the information you just learned, you're looking around at the market, you're running your comps, you're figuring out where you need to be and why, right? You're running those numbers. Then we give the seller a call and basically present that information to them.

Correct. Yep. Just call the agent. Call the agent. You're going to say to them, yeah, the agent. And you're like, hey, you can definitely tell you're a direct-to-seller. It's all good.

Yeah.

So you call the agent and say, hey, this is where it's going to be. Typically, I start calling and I figure out as I go on the phone, I'm just at the point too where I can comp properties in less than a minute. So I'm on the phone with them. If I'm on tax records on one tab and I've got the photos on the other side, I can usually put together the— I can paint the picture to myself pretty easily when I'm on the phone.

Oh, you're a master. I mean, I've— I went to your office and kind of watched how Ryan comps and the way he's doing it, and he's just quick.

I just try to take the emotion out of it. And when you can add the emotion to your leverage side of understanding what their situation is, As long as you don't abuse that power, you're not doing any harm. So to us, I go in, I comp the property fast. It is what it is. I give them our number, take it or leave it type of thing. The only thing I'm adding right now is that right now our offer today is not our offer tomorrow. I just want you to understand whatever I'm offering you today is probably the best offer you're going to see from me. I don't mean any disrespect. It's just the market's going in the wrong direction. Agents that get offended and upset about it or like get really like mad, they're not doing their job the right way either because they don't understand the market is transitioning. And if the market's transitioning, it's your job as a real estate professional to be the expert expert of that and understand it. You need to be able to basically communicate that to your clients so that they understand. And right now in this market, a lot of investors, like I'm sure you know, their prices are just stupid low. I mean, we're at 50% right now, baby, on most offers on the MLS. Oh yeah. So if it's listed at $300,000 and I'm at $150,000, the best option I have on the table honestly isn't even cash offer, it's creative finance. And if I can go in and offer them terms and take over a 2.5% to 3.5% interest rate, okay, yeah, now I'm in a conversation. Right.

Um, dude, so what do you say? Uh, well, first thing I want to talk about is for the longest time I was so against— so I'm direct to seller, so I'm not dealing with agents. When I'm, when I'm speaking with somebody, um, they're not— their house isn't listed on the market, and, uh, I'm having a very, very similar conversation as what he's talking about, where he's having the conversation with the listing agent. I'm having that same thing with the seller, and for the longest time I was against running through their numbers or like, hey, here's why my offer is where it's at. Since I transitioned and I'm kind of explaining— the way I like to think about it is I'm explaining my pain to them. So I spend the first part of the conversation learning about their pain, the reason why they're moving, why they're selling their house, where they're trying to go. I want to understand their situation. Immediately after that, I start telling my situation of like, hey, look, as an investor, I've got to be here because of this, this, and this. I got to feed You know, I've got an office of people, I got to take care of people. And so we have to make some money. So that's why we're here. And then from there, it makes it a much less emotional conversation for sure.

I think the only other thing to add in is just not giving them time to think about it. If you can set an upfront agreement with them, and I learned this from Steve Trang, if you can set an upfront agreement to where if you say, I need to talk to a spouse or a friend or think it over, I'm going to just assume it's a no.

Yeah.

Aside from that, if we can agree that all the terms make sense before we get off the phone call, Is there anything stopping you from saying yes before we, before we stop talking today?

Oh yeah. See, that's how I know that like a salesperson is worth their fucking salt, is when one, they're not afraid to be like, to walk away from the deal essentially, because it's really scary to say that to a seller, to a listing agent, if you never have before.

For sure.

Is to be like, hey, look, um, when we're having this conversation, I'd like to get a yes or no here.

For sure. And on the agency side, I mean, I can't expect them to speak on behalf of the seller. A lot of times they even say absolutely not, they won't entertain it, and they come back a week later and say, hey, the seller wants know if you're still around. So what we do is we just say, hey, our offer's around for up until 10 o'clock tonight, 11 o'clock tonight. If you have any questions or anything, feel free to give us a shout back. Tomorrow we're gonna have to rerun our numbers. We pull a new report as to where the market is every single day. So, um, just letting you know, fully transparent. If you have any other questions or anything, I'm an open book. I just don't like giving offers and people going and shopping that offer to someone else, trying to nickel and dime over $5K. Yeah.

So, so, um, obviously the real estate market has shifted a ton.

For sure.

Um, you know, last year, like you were saying, we were very easily making like— I give the deal— if I, if like, I remember getting an assignment fee and we assigned a property, this was last year, and, um, I remember it was like a $30,000 assignment fee and I was like, oh, like damn. Yeah, you know, like I was like, oh, that like I didn't really even give a shit unless I was making at least $50,000, $60,000, $70,000.

Yep.

And, um, now that is not those times. Um, we're still getting some big rips, but But for the vast majority of deals, the assignment fees are way down. The market is changing. Selling deals is a lot harder.

Yes.

What do you say to somebody who might be looking to get into this industry, but they're kind of scared about where the market is?

So I think this is like where my psychopath answer comes out a little bit. But now is the best time. And I know a lot of people will tell you that about like buying houses and the investments and all that. Like the best time is now. Like, no, I'm telling you in all seriousness. The last 2 years were probably the worst time to get in real estate. While it was so easy to— for sure, while it was so easy to go and make money, nothing was real. Like we were talking about that $30K deal a second ago. Okay, well, I mean, dude, I'll tell you right now, my team would be jumping up and down if we got a $30K rip right now. Like our best that we've pulled in the last 3 months was like, I think $11,000. Yeah. And that was one that I'm like, okay, there's no way that that should have bought— buy and hold investor. So someone typically pays higher anyway. But if $11K is something we're jumping up and down at, I mean, we were pulling 70, 80K rips the beginning of this year. Yeah. So it's now just like you said, completely different market. Now is the right time because it really is even playing fields and also nothing worth having comes easy. So while right now it might be a little bit harder to go and dig for that gold, I promise you there's not a lot of people that were actually digging this whole time. A lot of people were just walking and stumbling and falling into it. And now it comes to actually who has the skill set. And I'm even in this category too, where I haven't seen a market go down, you know, I mean, I joined in 2016 and the only thing I could really say to like like my age in real estate is when I joined, Obama was in office. Aside from that, I saw Obama in office to where it was normal to see a property sit on the market 20 to 30 days. And I feel like a lot of the stuff that I had as traditional real estate experience is going to be applicable to where the market is at today. You're going to have to spend money in marketing. You're going to have to actually spend money on learning how to sharpen the tools. You're going to have to go out there and actually be a little bit more consistent and do the work rather than just having 15 people call you and say, I'll take whatever, I'll take your property at 95% of ARV, whatever it is. Right. So yeah, no, it's, it's a great time. Most important thing is just getting in the right rooms. I think a lot of times where people are going to get distracted, just regardless of the market, is comparison. You go on social media and you're like, oh my gosh, Tyson's over here flexing at the gym and going and doing all these things and I can't even just get one deal. He's over here crushing it, doing 15 different things. That's going to hold you back. You can't compare your chapter 1 to your chapter 10. So I would say, like, as long as people have the right mindset going into it, get in the right rooms, have the right mindset, be consistent, you should be fine.

Yeah. Well, and I think that the really cool thing about what we do is that whether the market's going up or it's going down, there's always still that arbitrage for us. We just have to adjust as the market does. So when the market's going up, we offer more. When it goes down, we have to offer less.

For sure. And that's the beauty about real estate is that if you are an investor, you are technically recession-proof as long as you are your own client. And that's what I liked about transitioning from the traditional side to the investment side was is that we are recession-proof in this market. So right now, like you said, the market goes down, okay, we're not making $50K per deal anymore. We're turning around and we're doing twice as much work to make half the amount. But the beautiful thing about it is that we're buying lower and selling lower. We weren't dependent on a buyer client or a seller client to utilize us to represent them to sell their house. Yeah, that's where agents are not recession-proof. They're reliant on a client, which is a variable that they don't have control of. With us, the market we don't have control of, but we have control of our offers and how many we send out every single There we go.

I love it, man. And just to, like, be fully transparent with people. So last year we did over $1 million in assignment fees in my wholesale company. This year we're at like the same point. So we're over $1 million right now. But it's like, I mean, I went from like in the year before that, I remember I was doing— I did like something and I started not like during the beginning of the year, but I did like $400K. So I went from $400K to over $1 million and now I'm at $1 million again. And it's like, that can be disappointing, but honestly, I'm really fucking stoked because I knew that we worked for that.

Like, well, dude, I mean, also the market shift happened and the fact that you guys are still going and performing. I mean, we honestly, the market shift happened. The only thing that saved us was that we had other streams of income and also we're in other markets. Cause I'll tell you different markets definitely got hit differently. We have students across the entire country and, um, I like Seattle, for example. They didn't get hit till like a month ago. Yeah, there's a student in my program that was closing $100,000 months for the last like 3, 4 months, like just normal, but very, very low-key, keeping quiet on social media. And then next thing you know, he comes to one of our coaching calls, he's like, dude, a buyer backed out on me. I'm like, whoa. I'm like, okay. I'm like, and I had to like, you know, like be there for him. Like, okay, well, everyone else in the group for the last 3 months has been like crying on these calls, so glad that You're not glad, but like, okay, you're caught up with us now. So let's, let's go through, go back first off and watch all the previous trainings. But then two, let's pivot. Let's understand how to attack this market because what people can always say too is, oh, the market's going down. Yeah, you're not closing 20 to 30 deals a month anymore. But most money is made for people that are investors in a down market. Most money is made on the buy and the buy that is the best is typically made in a lower market. So if you can go in and as the market's declining, As long as you're buying right and you still have your spread that you're comfortable with, you're good to go. Yeah, you may not be making again 6 figures on flips anymore, but I know people that were going around that were literally buying flips that had $30K profit when you're running the numbers, and by the time it was going to sell, like go to sell it, it was a $75K to $80K rip.

And you're like, oh, I remember I was looking at all my numbers and I was like, I came back and I was like doing the pocket watching game and I'm like, fuck dude, if I would have flipped that, like, oh for sure, we would have like 2 or 3x our numbers.

But But look, hindsight's 20/20.

Yep.

Right.

Um, dude, that's, that's, that's great. Um, so one thing you pointed out was that like investors do make money in the down market for sure. So, um, I've been doing this, um, I'm getting close to 3 full years now and I've kind of like looked at what I've done and I've been able to make, like I've been able to make a lot of money, uh, relative, but, um, I don't own very much real estate. I own one note. And I was talking to Cody Sperber, actually. I ran into him and I got to meet him and I was talking to him and I was telling him, look, my goal is I want to be doing $1 million a month. And we start kind of having that conversation. And basically he made me realize, like, that's not what you want. You want to make more money, but the way you're doing that is not by wholesaling more. Yes, well, let's get your numbers up so you have more money, but sure. My focus going forward is I'm going to be buying real estate 2023 for myself, not myself, but for the company, right? Yeah. We're gonna be holding onto it.

Yep.

So Pace and Cody were both talking about, apparently the, there's some TREP report came out and it was talking about all of these multifamily properties that were purchased in 2020 and 2021 when interest rates were sub 3%.

Yep.

And all these deals were purchased bridge loans were acquired to fund the properties, and they were all underwritten with those expectations that we could refinance out at these pre-2022 interest rates, right? So they're talking that there's going to be this massive opportunity, multifamily heading into 2023 in the multifamily space. So I'm doing everything right now. I mean, I spent probably 6 or 7 hours yesterday just just diving deep into multifamily. And I'm gonna do the same thing today. I'm gonna keep doing it. I'm like, like, uh, fucking a fat kid in a candy store right now with this multifamily stuff. The, the thing that I'm really excited about is like how creative the deal making can really get.

For sure. Um, I, I think you're spot on too right now in the multifamily game. I was talking to Steve about this for a while because him and I were having conversations about similar things. I'm like, I want to buy real estate, I want to go to all these things. And I don't know why, I mean, over the last 2 years I bought a few doors. I've got I've got one in Tucson, one in Gilbert, then my primary. So I've got 3 houses in real estate in my name. And what I came to realize was, yes, again, hindsight's 20/20. I wish I bought more just because money was as cheap as it was. But I will tell you is what I learned in the multifamily game when talking to Steve was it was a bubble that was going to pop. You were buying things at such a stupid low cap rate and such a high price point that it just didn't make sense on any aspect other than you just had money to spend and you're buying it to buy it. Right. So a lot of times, like what I think is going to, or a lot of people are saying in going to this near market is that I think that multifamily is actually going to be the strongest opportunity to go and buy. It's going to be multifamily, it's going to be development, it's going to be like any commercial complexes.

Yeah.

Where people are going to be on the bridge of losing it all, whether the economy goes down and tanks and a recession happens and they need money out. I think multifamily and where you could go and buy those kind of properties, that's going to be the biggest opportunity. So we're doing the same thing. That's kind of one of our other things is that we're working on development right now. We've got a few projects we're working on funding with some of our relationships we Dude, that's really exciting.

So I mean, that's, that's exactly another thing when it comes to funding where I'm like, okay, let's figure out how I can raise some money for this. So you've done a great job. I mean, you're building all kinds of crazy relationships and partnerships. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. So I can't talk about the company that we're building yet around it. Um, we have some NDAs and stuff that we designed, but we've got relationships with the NFL and NBA where we are pretty close to partnering and being the premier education platform. Form for the leagues. So what they— it was ironic because we've got connections through a guy on my team, Brandon, my acquisition guy, and we started tapping into these relationships and going out to dinners with them. And, um, what we found was that the athletes are very anxious. They just don't know what they don't know. And then we were finding that a lot of the leagues— I can't name which one's specific— but, um, they would have the athletes do 10, 12 hours a day of physical manual labor, and then they would throw in one little finance class for an hour long at 6 o'clock at night after you spent all day working out, looking at the playbook, doing what you had to do for work. By the time that hour comes along, you're just—

not to mention, I mean, I gotta put myself in their shoes. I'm making that kind of fucking money, I'm thinking, oh, like, I don't need this shit.

And then they've got financial advisors. They've got— the thing that I realized though is that, um, because they don't have the financial literacy side, which isn't their fault, it's not taught anywhere in the public school system, them, even at the collegiate level, let alone at the athlete professional level. So what we realized was we started bringing deals to the table. And so then somehow we got into a conversation with the commissioner of the NBA and the player development people with the G League, the WNBA, and the NBA. We get on a call, start pitching them about the deals. And for whatever reason, you could just tell like they were kind of out of it. And I was like, what's going on? They didn't care as much about the deals. They cared about the value and education And so we were like, okay, well, we have a coaching platform. So now we're just kind of plugging some pieces in and working some things out. But we're leveraging a lot of the relationships that we have through those leagues and the relationships from the guys on the team. And we've gotten some really cool experiences, but now we're working on some pretty big development stuff. So the one we're working on right now that hopefully can get funded here soon is going to be the Jared Vidalis. It's a 70-unit out in— I think it's like Arcadia.

Yeah.

So we're working on—

oh, I wonder because now my dad knows Jared. I've never gotten to meet him. Him, but holy shit, I follow him on Twitter and like out of all the guys in Arizona, which there are so many brilliant people who really know the space, that guy is fucking sharp.

So we had a lot of people that were basically talking to the ideas about and like trying to figure out what the best lane was to follow for athletes. And honestly, we went to one lunch with Jared and it was just like mind was blown. Yeah, I always knew he was kind of crushing it behind the scenes. I know a lot of his background stuff in the industry and what I found was just the genuineness from him. You could see like the authenticity just really bursting out. And more importantly, he's excited about it. When somebody has a passion and a desire to actually do what they're doing, I don't care what anyone says, that person's going to be the hardest worker, but also the most like fair, the best person to work with, just all around the best opportunity for us to follow. And so what we are building with him, um, honestly, I think this is the part I can't really get into much, but with him and a few other people in the industry, it's going to be It's gonna be something cool.

So, um, if I understand this correctly, because one thing I love is when I look at, um, a lot of people talk about like, hey, making money matter, where it sounds to me like you are creating a platform where there's a huge problem with professional athletes losing all their money, right?

85% lose it after— within, uh, it's within 2 years of leaving the league. Um, the average freaking length in the league is like 4 years, and that's just the length of usually a rookie contract. And most of them, what people don't realize is because everybody's got their battles. But for a lot of these athletes, they, one, are going and buying a bunch of liabilities instead of assets. Two, they've got a lot of people they're taking care of— friends, family, um, whoever it is that's in their circle. And then three, they're actually not making that much money when you factor in that they're taxed at the highest bracket and their financial advisors take a pretty big chunk out of what they make, and then taking care of all their people, and then on top of that buying the stupid shit. When it's all said and done, I mean, it's easy to go broke, dude, like for real.

And I feel like there's an expectation at that level. It's like, why aren't you fucking driving that car? Why aren't you?

We're eating at Applebee's. Like, yeah, but like, that's literally what it is. And so social pressures for sure. And so we're trying to change the game and just be like that resource for them. And it's not even just for the athletes. It's honestly for the younger generation. I feel like our generation is— I don't want to say fucked, but like, we are basically the sheep of the world. And obviously I think I'm getting so like old.

Like, do you, do you? I mean, I know that we share the same thing where I'm looking like down and it's like, also I'm like a kid for real. But like, I'm looking down, I'm like, what the fuck is going on down there? How old are you now? How old are you now? You're 24. I'm 24. And Kyle, so when's your birthday? I turned 25 in February.

February 7th.

I turn 25 February 11th.

There we go.

Look at that.

That's Aquarius. There we go. So no, but, but like really though, like we're like 24 going on 50 and it's a lot of it is, I think the people that we've surrounded ourselves with and our experience in real estate. I mean, I always joke, I wear a hat now because my hair is going to be going gray and going away here soon. But like, I just want to change the game. I want the younger generation to understand. I'm not the guy that's saying I have all the answers. I'm just the guy I'm not going to say got lucky. I got in the right rooms at the right time and everything happened for a reason. One promise I made to Josiah Grimes when I joined Astro was, look, dude, I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm lost and confused. But I can promise you one thing. The day I figure this out, I will give everything I have back to this community. And I wasn't even just referring to his community. I was referring to the entire real estate community, my community, my world, the entire world. I want to change the game for just financial literacy as a whole. And so that's where I think that this whole real estate game goes for us is not even just in the education space, it's more of just like the guidance consulting. We can go do some deals. But also what you were saying about Cody with wholesaling, wholesaling, I think is foundational. I think if you can get your foot in the door and get some capital, get some active income through wholesaling all day long, keep that. For me, my active income is still going to be wholesaling. It's going to be traditional real estate deals as an agent. But then on top of that, that's where you have the passive income going through your investments you make into assets. So I think it's really important to share even like the financial freedom process that Brent and I created together. We were doing a show Millionaire Before 30 last year and the 5 steps to financial freedom. This is specifically for people that are just trying to even get their first deal. First off, the first step is literally just doing a deal. Number 1, do a deal. Number 2, go full time. So go full time after you've done a deal because Brent says this perfectly. You transitioned from faith to fact. You have proof of concept that what you do and what you believe in actually works. So do a deal, go full time, kill the debt, stop paying for consumer debt and investing into stupid bullshit you don't need.

Getting your, your student loans, your car.

Absolutely.

What is that? Is that like the credit card?

Yeah. So to me, credit cards, it's going to be any kind of like student loans. It's going to be car payments. It's going to be anything that's excessive that you really just don't need to be paying for. So do a deal full time. Kill the debt, invest into assets. Now you're financially free. That's the 5 steps to financial freedom. And it's really that basic. But it all starts with doing a deal.

Yeah.

You need to be able to first have that concept. I'm not even just talking real estate. You want to go detail cars, get your first customer and detail your first car. Do you like it? Did you make good money? Can you do this again? That's it. It goes to any kind of industry you want to go and make money in. You just need to have proof of concept first. Yeah. Before— and a lot of people too, where they bet on themselves is that that they jump into the industry two feet in and then they don't do a deal for 6 months. I mean, that's one of my biggest red flags that I feel like people just kind of like brush over, whether it's the entrepreneur space or even just real estate. If someone's telling you that you need 6 to 12 months of reserves saved up, do some research, understand that even some of the people that I know that are extremely successful, it took them 8 to 12 months to do their first deal. So if it's going to take that long, you might not be able to go 8 to 12 months without getting paid. So keep a job, do this part-time, but actually do this part-time. Yeah, like that's where most people also don't do right is but they don't budget their time accordingly. So if you're not time blocking and breaking down, okay, I have a 9 to 5 here, from 5 to 7 is family time, 7 to 9, you should be working on your business. Like you need to be building and getting that side hustle up and going because once you do a deal, then the second step is going full time. How can you replace that active income that you're making through your job with what you could be doing with your other passion, hobby, side hustle to make that your career?

Right. Well, and I think that once you do start to time block your time, you realize how much time you're spending on stupid shit.

Oh my God, dude. I'm guilty of this even right now. Waste probably like 3 to 4 hours a day.

Oh, easy, easy. Like, I can think that, oh, I'm so fucking busy, all this and that, but the moment I look at my, my, uh, screen activity time on, on my phone, 6 hours, whatever, you're like, oh shit, yeah, shit, let that go. Like, you're wasting— so not you specifically, but everybody, we waste so much time on dumb shit where I think that, um, and also I think just building the habit of saying, hey, at this time that I know is open, like you said, if you work from 9 to you need to budget time for your relationships, your friends, your family, things like that. But then if you can say, all right, like I now have 3, 4 hours here that I can spend afterwards on doing this, and I'm going to, I'm going to spend that time on doing this. And I think it's like the concept in James Clear's Atomic Habits, which I'm sure you've read, phenomenal fucking book. But he says he's like, make it specific and make it known, right? So say at this time, I'm going to do that. That.

Yep. I love that.

And I think that people would be really surprised at if they do that consistently, how quick they're able to get to number 2.

For sure. And I think the only thing that I ever put like as a stipulation in there with consistency is that real estate, and I'm talking specific to real estate here, I'm sure it's entrepreneur as a whole, but I've only been in the real estate space as an entrepreneur. What I could tell you, it is so easy to get lost and confused. And so when people are telling you to stay consistent and just keep going, keep going, hustle, whatever. Most people are doing the wrong work.

Oh yeah.

And that's what pisses me off is like the consistency side. If you're consistently doing the wrong thing, you're not growing. Like, and that's where I think that it goes back to getting in the right rooms, getting with the right mentor, the right community behind you. Because if you actually take right consistent action, it doesn't even need to be 2, 3, 4 hours a day. It could be 1 hour a day as a side hustle. And dude, there's been like times where I've made more money working less hours because I was very intentional about the time I was—

I love it. Absolutely. And, um, just to make sure that the water is absolutely crystal, crystal clear here, there's no fucking mud in the water with what we're talking about. That time, um, being spent doing the right things, not performative things. The right things in your situation are looking on the MLS, making offers, talking to agents, things like that. In my world, it's calling sellers. Same, same type of thing. It's having those conversations.

That is money-making activities.

Yes. It's not, oh, let's spend some time on my website and logos and LLC creation.

Don't get me wrong, these are all important things. But what most people don't understand is the analogy where you're always like, oh, you got to walk before you run. I'm like, timeout. I like to put my twist on pretty much all these different things that are in the right. You have to crawl before you walk, before you run. The crawling is doing the fucking work. Yeah. You think I like— this is such a shitty analogy, but like Like, you think a human could just start walking from the minute they're born? No. The crawling is the eating shit. It's going and doing the fucking work. Get out of your head. Stop worrying about analysis paralysis or what other people are doing and how you need to do this, this, and this. My favorite thing is when I started wholesaling, everyone was like, Bandit Signs. Like, what the fuck? Like, everybody was doing Bandit Signs. Okay, well, I didn't. What I was doing, I was calling the Bandit Signs. I was like, okay, well, shit. Like, these people are putting down the ground, they're saying, hey, I've got this property. I'm calling them Okay, I've got deals. And so this was a strategy that's taught me through Jamil and Josiah. But I was like, damn, this is just mind-blowing. And again, I was taught that by being in the right room, consistent action, working smarter than harder, the crawl before you walk, before you run, do the work. You could worry about building it all as you go. My first few deals, Ryan Zollin was the buyer, not 34 Holdings. Yeah, I didn't give a shit. I set up my own LLC and I just figured it all out as I went. Also, I didn't have the money or the experience to really know what I was supposed to do. I didn't know I had to file it as an S corp. It's an LLC. Okay, sounds good. Like, I just— I created it as I went. Yeah, the website. I'm an idiot. I followed the video instructions and everything I found, but like, it was like, holy shit, I could see the analysis paralysis somebody could have in a website. Absolutely. All the different freaking—

every single thing. Like, and then once you add in on top of all the different niches of, okay, I'm doing this wholesaling thing, but dude, that Pace guy is saying some really cool shit over there. I need to go see what that's all about.

Oh, and then, and then Ryan Panetta's over here flipping. Yeah, shit. Well, now I got to go learn learn how to flip, and then this person's over here talking about creative finance with multifamily and this and that. It's— before you know it, you haven't even gotten started and you're stuck in a loop of just information.

Yeah.

And it's horrible.

So, um, so to give you guys an example of what we're talking about here, because this is something— this is a lesson I've learned, is just dive into shit and start doing it. So like, I— we talk about, hey, I'm interested, I'm gonna start buying some multifamily units. I started doing it, and now look, I've been learning, I've been coming through, taking courses and doing that, but So my first thing is I'm getting on the phone with fucking every single broker that has listings for sale in Arizona. And I don't even know that I'm going to be buying in Arizona, but my whole thing is I need to start doing shit. So I'm fucking calling them and I'm telling them what's going on. I'm saying, hey, my name is Tyson Smith. I'm going to be buying some multifamily. What do you got? And I'm just starting to have the conversations because what you said, you don't know what you don't know.

And you don't know who you don't know. I mean, what if they pull a pocket listing out and all of a sudden they've got 15 different deals for you?

Absolutely. And guess what? You'll never know if you don't ask. Ask.

Absolutely.

They're not just gonna come find you. They're not gonna come look up, hey, Ryan's only— he might be interested, let's send the DM to him. No, you got to go fucking find it.

That's it. And remember what I said, the hardest part of being an agent is to find a client. So when you're calling these brokers, the hardest part for them is for their phone to ring. So the minute you call them, they're not cussing you out saying screw you, stop calling me. They're like, oh, I knew my freaking ad on the, on the bus would work, right? I knew the Zillow payment, whatever, like all these stupid things for marketing that they're paying thousands of dollars every month for, they don't get their phone ringing like that. So when you call and say, hey, I'm real, the most important thing, and this is what drives me crazy about our strategy, don't be the person sitting there, hello, my name is Ryan, I work with 34— like stop following a script, get on the phone and talk to them.

Burn your fucking script, man.

Literally, especially on the agency side. What you need to understand, they're human, you're human. I just told you I graduated high school with a 1.8 GPA. What I didn't tell you is that I cheated in the real estate school to get my test passed and everything, and I paid like— so horrible. But like, I got to where I got to by just having the right connections, and it was nothing related to skill within the real estate school. So if what I had to go through, I was able to skirt through, the person you're talking to on the other line, you have to assume if there's 80,000 agents, you think every single one of them went through the right training, the right mentorship, the right rooms? No, a lot of them they got into this and then they had the ability to choose, do I give away 50% of my commission to learn, or do I go and do 100% brokerage and I'm now self-employed and I'm doing it on my own? That person is still stuck in the crawling stage. But when you call them and they're the expert, you gotta understand, from human to human, they might be dumber than you. And I'm being that with so sincereness. Like, I do not want anyone to feel like I hate agents, and I feel like I'm allowed to because I'm an agent. But like, I want everyone to understand, on the agency side, a lot of them are not qualified. So when you call just be human. Hey, mess up words, laugh, have a good conversation. The amount of times like I trip, like I'm walking around my house, I trip over my own shoelace or I stub my toe, my dog barks in the background. That makes you even better.

Absolutely.

It sounds crazy.

Makes you more human.

That's it.

That's what it is. And I love what you're saying, dude, about, look, you're having a conversation. It's a human connection.

That's it.

Like you don't need a script to talk to the person at the grocery store.

It's this right here.

Yeah.

You just conversation.

You're talking and look, you know your goals. Is you want to buy a property. So ask the questions that'll get you there.

Like, and my favorite is maybe don't do this on commercial, but for single-family homes, you're calling an agent. I'm an investor, I want to buy a house. Okay, what are you looking for? To be honest with you, I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? You're looking to spend money? Yeah, I mean, I'm an investor, I do some wholesaling and stuff. But to be honest with you, I'm looking to buy my first deal. I just don't know what I want. They're the expert, not you.

I'll be, I'll be honest with you. That's kind of exactly what I'm saying right now. Basically, what I'm telling people is like, look, I'm going to be buying—

I was—

what I'm looking for is a great deal. I'm looking for a great deal that I can get out of in about 5 years. There's some value-add opportunities. Well, how many units?

I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.

I was just— I'm like, well, how are you going to pay for that? I'm like, look, dude, I've got people. I'm going to find them.

I've got hard money lenders, private money lenders. I go get traditional financing. To be honest with you, I'm not sure because it's just going to depend on the deal. If it's a 50-unit that's worth $100 million, I'm not going to come out of pocket on my own. Are you familiar with OPM, other people's money? Yes. Okay. That's what I like to use as an investor. I think if you were in my shoes, you'd probably want to use other people's money too. Yeah. So when you start breaking things down and being real and obviously, yes, it comes with experience and the more you do it, the more comfortable you'll get. You got to start somewhere.

Yeah.

My favorite thing is like when people always say, oh, just start with one, start with two phone calls or three. Yes, that is a great mentality. I didn't have that luxury when I got into real estate. My very first day I was sat in a corner by the team, was all in a nice little office. I was in the back corner, dress shirt, dress clothes, tie. With a headset on like this, and I was making calls for 10 to 12 hours a day while they listened to me.

Oh man.

So I never even got to have that limiting belief of, am I bad on the phones or is this not going to work?

Baptism by fire.

Literally go through it. Literally. They just threw me to the wolves. And I, I mean, as much as I want to tell you, like, I appreciate it. I didn't even know that I needed to appreciate it until after I started hiring people and they were like, I don't want to make calls. I'm like, what the fuck do you mean you don't want to make calls? Like, you know, you don't want to make money. Like, it is And so, yeah, I mean, dude, it's a marathon, not a sprint. And it took a lot of time and effort, but here we are.

Yeah. Well, that's my philosophy now when I'm training somebody, somebody starts on my team, it's all right, just go ahead.

That's it.

Here's the thing. Here's where you press start and it makes it the dial. Just go try and buy some house. Well, just try and buy some houses.

Yep. They have a general understanding. Like, here's how we calculate. Here's what you're looking for. Or here's at least the base that you need to get as an understanding. And then we'll pivot and transition that off.

No, it's doing the experience. One, you're going to answer a lot of your one, you're going to ask your own questions in the beginning, and then two, you're going to ask the better questions.

That's it. So I love when people ask hypotheticals. What if this happens? Well, until it does happen, don't ask.

Yeah, there you go. Like, has that— like, we cross that bridge when we get to it. That's one of like what people are, you know, always DMing me and asking, hey, I need this or that. Like, hey, my favorite thing is, hey, can you give me a contract? I'm like, well, do you have a seller who's ready to sell their house at a discount? No. Why do you need a contract? Well, when I do, Well, when you do, send me a DM. I'll be right here. I'll send it to you for sure. All right, let's, let's get there first because you're worried about the easiest fucking things.

Gotta crawl.

Finding your investor-friendly title company is not hard. Getting the contract is not like— all this stuff is— go do the hard thing, which takes the work, which is finding a deal. And then all this other stuff, you'll be amazed at how quickly it all works out for you.

Well, and especially, this is the best part, icing on the cake to that, is that the minute you have the opportunity I promise you, you'll find the answer in less than an hour.

Yes.

Because, you know, the minute that you have that opportunity, okay, you're going to drop everything because they need a contract. And maybe that means you could get in on the deal. Maybe they go and they buy a course from me. Maybe they join our community, even if they don't buy anything or the deal doesn't work out. The thing I love is just getting people into our community.

Yeah.

Have them be a part of our meetups, be a part of our free coaching, be a part of the Discord, be a part of just the community that watches and learns and follow our journey and we'll follow yours. That's what this is all about. It's literally community. Yes.

So, so one more time for the people who do want to join this community, what's the best way for them to find you?

Yeah, check out agentinvestors.com. Aside from that, you can always just check out my Instagram, Ryan Zolin, R-Y-A-N-Z-O-L-I-N. Aside from that, I mean, don't spend money you can't afford to lose. I'm really just going to drive that home. Like, I would love to have you in our community. We have free resources to get started. But aside from that, like, just literally start. Just start.

Absolutely. There's tons of— you, you have so much like free content out there that I'll show you guys more than enough to get going for sure.

And I don't I don't like— I'm— this is where I'm really just a bad salesperson to our course, but like, I don't need the money from the course. I'm good. I've got my other investments and stuff, but I want people to feel like everything we do is just truly genuine and authentic to who we are. I want everyone to succeed. I don't need them to join our community in order for me to succeed. I want them to succeed in our community if that's the best fit for them. Aside from that, if there's other communities, join those other communities. We're always still around, but we're blowing up and building some beautiful things within Agent Investors.

Absolutely. That's amazing, man. Guys, so if you haven't already, go ahead, check out @RyanZolan. That's R-Y-A-N Zolin on Instagram. Go check out his website at www.agentinvestors.com. And, um, Ryan, thank you again. Thank you so much for coming on. It's been an amazing conversation, guys. If you're watching on YouTube, go ahead, click that like button and subscribe if you haven't already, and, uh, hit the bell so that you can be alerted the next time that we, uh, post one of these episodes. I'm going super hard on YouTube content right now, dude. I have like 10 videos all lined up waiting to get edited and I'm about to be like the long-form content. I'm having so much more fun making it because I feel like I can actually teach somebody like a lot of stuff. Like TikTok is all fucking bullshit. It's like, hey, let me give you the fastest tip that hopefully you'll stay for the entire time of the video. So it's algorithm. So more people see it. Whereas in YouTube, I just don't give a shit. I'm just like, here is what I can show you if you're interested in learning and it's the full fucking thing.

I love that.

So go ahead, do those things. If you're on Spotify or Apple Music please follow or whatever the fuck it is on the thing and share it with somebody who might be— might benefit from hearing this conversation. I know that a ton of people— one of the biggest things when I'm speaking to somebody and they want to learn how I wholesale real estate, the biggest thing is like, hey, look, you know, how much money are you spending in marketing? It's like, well, I spend quite a fucking bit, but it doesn't need to start that way. And there are amazing strategies out there. Like what Ryan is saying, that dude, all it requires is you to dedicate your time. So there are solutions out there. Um, I hope you guys check out that and you guys get some value. Ryan, thank you so much for having— for coming on, and we will see you guys next time.