The Rebellion: Episode 12 | Wholesaling to Flipping to Rentals to AirBnBs w/ The Viking Boys

Hello everybody, welcome to episode 12 of The Rebellion. This is Tyson Smith, your host, and today I have on some people who have been huge role models for me since I met them. They embody really everything that this podcast is about. They're crushing in real estate, they do their own thing, they really completely live life on your own terms. You guys do exactly what the hell you guys want to be doing. It's something I really admire. Both have beautiful families and you guys are both the shit to hang out with.

Um, hey, we appreciate that. Hell yeah.

Well, no, seriously, guys, these two— so we met at Josh and Tiffany's event in Ohio. And how long ago was that?

Probably like a year and a half ago.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it was. We met through the mutual connection of Jack Iman, who he was supposed to come on the show this week.

Once we came back. Once we came back there.

Love that guy. Oh, he's the best. And then I just started kind of seeing all the shit you guys are doing. I'm like, holy fuck. So in comparison, you guys know that I wholesale real estate. Jake and Luke over at Viking Invest— oh wait, another thing I want to talk about, how stoked I am, is what you guys have built with your office. You guys have the most badass office in Arizona. Like, that is—

hey, we appreciate it. Yeah, it took a lot of time and a lot of effort doing it.

A lot of Pinterest.

Yeah, lots of Pinterest. Absolutely. But, uh, it was— that was, that was actually probably my, my most fun project we've done. Like, just in the sense, because, you know, when you do like a flip, obviously it's super fun. But like when you're doing your office, you're in there every day, right? So it's like, you know, we really wanted to make sure we killed it on that.

Well, and here's the thing that I think that you guys totally get too, and one thing that's always been my philosophy is my office is like, that's my playground. That's where I'm going to hang out. My domain, baby.

Yeah, like, like dojo.

Like a lot of people, like, I guess the common thing is they, you know, like, oh, gotta go to the office or whatever, and it's like a shitty place. Mine is like the fucking shit. Like, I love going there. This is where all my shit is.

No, exactly. That's exactly what we wanted to make it literally. So it's like we've got, you know, And some people don't agree with it, but I mean, we've got a big screen TV on with ESPN on all the time. We've got music playing in the background. We've got surround sound throughout the entire office, so it can literally just play everywhere. So that's obviously, we're trying to set like a vibe of the office where it's like, it's fun to be there. You know what I mean?

Absolutely. And I mean, I still haven't been there yet. I only saw when it was under construction. I haven't seen the finished product.

You were there when it was Kavala, when it was the— Yeah. When it was the— The Euro shop.

I've seen it from that up until like when it was all like everything was torn out.

Yeah.

And I just haven't. And then I've seen like obviously all the plans, then I've seen the videos now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I need to—

it's 10 minutes from here. We'll go after this.

Seriously?

Perfect, perfect. But anyway, can you guys kind of introduce yourselves, uh, both of you, and kind of explain, um, what you guys do?

Heck yeah. Luke Rodvold here. Jake Landis. Uh, so we're Viking Real Estate. Um, we've been, we've been in business for 8 years now. We started by wholesaling and, you know, we've kind of just taken that regular path that I feel like a lot of wholesalers end up taking. We start with wholesaling, you know, you move into flipping because obviously, you know, the thing is, is you in order to— you can't— it's really tough to just jump straight into flipping. You got to have money to work with. So typically when people get enough money, then they kind of jump into flipping. And from that point, we moved into, you know, rentals, buying, buying, building our rental portfolio. Doing Airbnbs, and now we're kind of at that point where we're doing development now.

Crazy.

Heck yeah.

Through the gamut of everything. And that's the thing is you have a crazy high-level understanding of all different ones. So talk about wholesaling. It sounds to me like the way you're talking about this, it's not a focus at all anymore. But you guys are still wholesaling, or no?

Yeah, we will. I mean, whenever we can. Wholesale a deal right now, it's a little tougher, especially here. A lot of investors have pulled back. So we literally just look at every single deal with what's the best exit? What's going to maximize this deal? If we wholesale it and we can make $50,000, perfect. If we're only going to make $5,000, but we could flip it and make $50,000, perfect. Easy for us.

Gotcha.

Yeah, we're definitely maximizing every deal right now. So it's like, exactly like Jake said, we're not going to wholesale many deals right now if it's to make $5,000. Deals are— because they're more scarce to come by right now. It's— it just makes the most sense to maximize everything. Yeah.

Well, and so are you guys still flipping right now?

Oh yeah, we are.

Okay.

And did this ever slow down? Did it stop? Did you guys just getting back into it, or like, what's the—

right, screeching hard?

It slowed— it slowed down, as everyone knows. Um, no, we, we talked about it. We looked at our deal board back in, in March or April. We had, we had 47 deals on our deal board, all flips. And yeah, all flips. Holy shit. In Mar— it was either March—

do you know about how much money that is that you had out in into these flips?

So the way we do it is hard money loan. We bring on a gap partner for the down payment and rehab funds.

And what are these typically, like 10% down?

Yeah. What we were getting before was 10% down, 100% rehab.

It's back to 20% now.

Yeah. OK, so I mean, at an average cost of what, let's say like $300K, and you had 47 of them, that's like—

$15 million or something like that.

Yeah. Super fun.

OK. Yeah.

Super fun.

A little stressful. And then obviously you're counting on— those dollars, you're working these deals for, you know, we're gonna make this amount, roll it into the next one. And then when that all stopped, cash flow is crazy, right?

For sure.

So, so before I interrupted you, it's, it's March, April, or what would you say, March? And there's 47 people. Okay, 47 deals on the board and they're all flips. What happens next?

Honestly, we got out of I would say like 90% of them, like at the perfect time. Like they weren't—

we did—

we weren't getting multiple offers like we were, you know, the last 2 years. But we were able to still hit kind of where we were running the numbers on a lot of them, which is really, really good. It was like perfect timing.

Excellent.

Because the numbers had started to drop, but they hadn't quite dropped yet on a good majority of them. And the other thing is too, you know, you got to understand, if we had 46 that were under contract or that we had, that's, you know, either in escrow to buy in escrow to sell or currently being worked on. Gotcha. Right. So like they're all at different stages. It wasn't like 46 that are like under construction. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like they're all at different stages, you know, of the life of the deal. So, so I mean, obviously the ones that were in escrow to sell, we still move those ones no problem. Right. Because the market hadn't quite taken the dump yet. The ones that were, you know, being worked on, those ones we probably ended up, you know, making a little bit less than what we would have liked to have made on them, you know, because the market went down a little bit. And then the ones that we were in escrow to buy, those were the ones where we're kind of like, okay, like we're starting to see the writing on the wall. We should probably make some decisions here. Do we need to wholesale some of these off now? Do we need to cancel on some of these? But we're not big on canceling. Like, we hate to cancel. I'm not sure. I remember that when we were at Josh's thing, but they were like, yeah, you know, what percentage of, you know, what percentage of you guys' deals do you guys cancel on? And Jake was like, zero. And people were like, okay, yeah. And we're like, no, we don't cancel. Like, we don't cancel on people. Right.

So if we give you a price, that's what we're doing.

Yeah, we'll make it work. Yeah, exactly.

So the good thing is we run the numbers to where we would flip it, you know what I mean? So we're not really banking on the wholesale. Like if we can wholesale and make good money, perfect. But if we can't, then we're going to take it down, take it down.

Right, exactly. Right. So obviously, so if, you know, if the numbers change a little bit, you're just making, you know, at that time, you know, we just made less on the flip.

Yeah.

So, but I mean, again, we, we're direct to seller. So it's like when you're direct to seller on a lot of your deals, you're getting them deeper, so you have more room to work with.

So yeah, well dude, I mean, like, back to what I was saying before, like, what you guys got, where the way I've seen that you guys just like build your lives and what you hold dear, like, the fact that you're like that, like, that, that's a core value. It's like, we're not fucking— like, if our word is that we're gonna perform at this price, we're not fucking canceling on you.

For sure.

I love that. I love that how much fun you guys have. Like, dude, you guys don't know Oh, Luke has like videos of him like closing deals and he's playing Madden. Like every single day I'm watching his story and he's talking about how many like head-to-head games he's won in Madden.

Damn right, damn right. I was on a 9-game— I was on a 9-game win streak. So I only play online, I've been doing it for a long time. So, you know, people are like, how do you do that? It's— it becomes second nature once you do it that, you know, that much. Um, but, uh, I was on a 9-game win streak. Was that 2 days ago?

Yesterday, I think.

Yesterday, yesterday. And I went down to the wire with this guy. He was up 21-0 on me, and I was like, oh, he got up 20— he got an early lead. I threw a pick 6 right off the bat. Things were unraveling. I stuck in there though. I hung in there, came back.

This guy's a fighter.

Yeah, yeah. Uh, got it. He ended up getting another field goal, so it was like 24, and it was like—

I had—

I think I had 17, so I was like— I was down a touchdown. I had 10 seconds left, and I was down to go beat him, and I was gonna go for 2, and I have a 2-point play that will beat anyone, so I would have won. And he picked me off. No. And that would have been a 10-game win streak. And a 10-game win streak in online Madden is really tough. Like, that's like really, really tough. But anyway, just had to tell that story.

The grit. The grit, man.

Absolutely. Call me Dan Campbell over here, right?

So how do you guys get to the point where— before, like, how did you guys meet? How did you guys start doing this? How did it all unfold? How do you get to the point where it's like day zero to, okay, we have 47 deals in escrow right now that we're flipping?

Jake and I have known each other since we were like 5. So, you know, we both grew up in Prescott. So we played on the same soccer team. I think we were the Gray Zombies or something like that. Something like that.

Blue Bombers.

Yeah, yeah.

That's pretty metal.

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, so we, you know, we've known each other since we were young. And we always knew, like both of our parents were very entrepreneurial. And so we always kind of knew that we wanted to, you know, follow in their footsteps in the sense of doing something entrepreneurial. Um, you know, when we moved to Phoenix for college, uh, he went to ASU, I went to NAU, but I went through SCC, so I went to like the extended campus. Uh, we worked at the, at the Hyatt bartending and serving when we were going through college and everything. And then, um, you know, point in both of our lives kind of hit where I was like, what's that next, that next step, you know? And so Jake went on a team, and I went on a team, and, um, you know, both the teams that we were on just kind of ended up like, you know, kind of, uh, fizzling out. Yeah, fizzling out. Exactly. Yeah.

And so these are just traditional teams, like you guys are being realtors, or—

I was a realtor on a traditional team, and then Luke was—

I was with Brent, uh, Brent Daniels.

That's right.

And, uh, Dustin Monger. And so, and then their partnership had ended up breaking up, and then I was kind of like, uh, the, the kid who had divorced parents.

I was like, um, oh shit, okay, Jake, you want to go start our own?

Literally, that's exactly how it started. I mean that.

So how long, how long were you guys, did you guys spend on these teams? Like, would you say before, before, like how long were you cutting your teeth before?

Probably a year and a half to two years.

Okay.

Year and a half.

So you guys had some substantial experience.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

I mean, we did, but like we had no experience like running a business.

Yeah. What's not in building a business?

Yeah. Because like we were on, uh, like for the traditional side, we were with Keller Williams. So Keller Williams, what do they have you do every single day? Hit the phones. You're calling expireds, you're calling all this. So I mean, in that sense, like, yeah, that was a big stepping stone and that helped kind of get over that fear. And then Luke, obviously with Brent and Dustin, that's all they did.

All we did was call.

Yeah, right. But so, so here's the thing that I've been looking at, and I think that people gloss over when they're wanting to get into real estate or get into wholesaling, is that they think, okay, yeah, you just get really good at wholesaling. So you get good at these like skills, like you know, being on the phone and comping and all of that. But there's this whole other like giant animal over here that is running a business and being able to do this correctly, making sure that, you know, your cash flows are being used appropriately and that you're not like burning money and you're saving money for taxes and like all these other things.

We've made mistakes in all of that. Oh yeah, it's part of the game for sure.

For sure. For us in the very beginning, like we didn't have any money. Yeah, we had no money.

So right, right.

How we got started was we literally would pull lists through the title company. They would provide the phone numbers. All we could afford was literally like a couple Mojo lines, a couple hundred bucks a month working out of Luke's house.

Yeah, yeah. And literally just freaking pounded the phones. Yeah, pounded the phones, played Madden for 6 hours a day. Yeah, literally make like 150 contacts a day. So that's why when people are like, oh man, I'm having a really tough time, like I had, I made 20 contacts yesterday. I'm like, get the fuck out of here. That's not a big deal. Like, yeah, but I'm so tired. I'm like mentally drained. No, that's not mentally draining, making, talking to 20 people. That's nothing, you know? So I think there's like, there's, there's a, I think that the problem is wholesaling, I think a lot of times can get this aura that it's like very easy, like, because people see quick money and they're like, oh, it's real estate. Oh, let's jump in and do it. But like, until you've actually been there and grinded and actually done the work, you know, that's when you actually respect the people that make it in it.

Oh yeah, I mean, people talk, they're like, oh, I mean, I could sit down and just talk to people all day long.

And it's like, oh, okay, okay, go ahead and want you to do it for an hour and tell me if you still want to do it, right?

Well, that's the thing is like cold calling can, um, like it can really empty your cup, right? So that's why I think it's so important is finding something that, that kind of balances that out. So you have Madden, right? Cuz if you can do the same, you enjoy playing Madden, and then it like takes away the—

I look forward to going into the office to play Madden and cold call, right? It's great, you know. So, and that's the thing is that most people, like you said, they like despise it. They have— there's like this cloud over it of like total mental block. Yes, exactly. And the first person that says like, get lost, or the first person that says don't ever fucking call me again, they're like, no, this isn't for me, right? It's like, oh, okay, sounds good. There goes another one.

Yeah, we're not downplaying it. I mean, no, that does suck. Oh yeah, getting that over and over and over.

But you just gotta You build calluses.

Yeah, how bad do you want it?

You build calluses.

I mean, and yeah, it's way different. I remember when I first started and it's like, that shit hurts. But now you get to the point where it's just like, you don't even think, it just rolls off the back. Yeah, but I think it's so important to find something that makes it more enjoyable, and whatever that may be. You had Madden. Something that I found really helped me was going live on TikTok while I was doing it. Okay, I'd go live on TikTok, so then I have people watching and talking and I'm interacting with them in between calls and like You know, they're like, oh, fuck that guy. I'm like, yeah, fuck that guy. Like, that's entertaining, you know?

Exactly.

But finding something that makes you enjoy the work, that's like— that, that I think is just— that's a superpower.

Absolutely. Yeah, that's huge.

And then it gets to a point where literally, like, like you were saying, you love fucking going in the office. We talked about this all the time. We don't even feel like it's work.

No, right?

That's why our wives get so mad. They're home with the kids and they're like, oh, you're gonna go to work and hang out with your best friend?

You guys are drinking beer? We've got taps in our to us. Like, you guys just drink at the office with your friends, play Madden? No.

Well, you guys have literally— that's what I'm talking about.

You guys have built the fucking life.

Like, it's like, it seriously looks like you sat down, you're like, all right, like, what exactly do we want? Well, okay, we want to make a bunch of money. Okay, yeah, let's do that. And we want to be able to like fucking do the shit we enjoy, like the fun stuff. It's like, you know, some people, you know, there's these hardos out there, like, you can't fucking play video games. Yeah, that doesn't advance where you're going. It's like, no, I still want that. And then also you like, you get to hang out with your fucking childhood best friend. And I bet that—

and build a business with them.

Exactly. And everybody else in your office, the people I've met, they're all fucking G's. Like they're dope people you want to hang out with for sure.

Absolutely.

That's literally like so big to us. We wanted to build a culture with people that we actually wanted to be around.

Yes.

I've seen you post this before. Like if you're a cool person, like if you're not a cool person, don't fucking apply. No.

Yeah.

Like if you're a fucking boner, that's my first thing in the interview. I'm not talking to you about, okay, so where's your sales experience? Resume. What do you know about real estate?

No, no, I've never even looked at a resume.

Yeah, what the fuck?

What do I give a shit what you lied about?

Yeah, exactly.

Oh yeah, you were in the real estate club?

Really? How was that? Were you president or vice president?

Yeah, that shit's lame.

Yeah, were you in ROTC? You better have been.

Oh God, Luke is in the chess club.

No, absolutely. Yeah, big chess guy, chess master over here.

It's probably why you're so good at Madden.

I wasn't.

He's like— this guy's like Bill Belichick on Madden, I'm not gonna lie.

No, I—

but yeah, I've seen it and you put up the results. I'm telling you guys. Okay, also, if you guys like— you guys need to go check. They're two of my favorite people that I follow because like I said, they're always doing fun dope shit. Um, where are you guys at on Instagram? What's your guys's names?

Uh, Jake_Landis22.

And that's L-A-N-D-I-S? Yep.

Luke_R-O_— okay. Yep.

Yeah, you guys gotta check it out. They're having fun over there.

Heck yeah.

No doubt about it. So walk me through the process of what it was like when you're like, okay, we are going to buy this thing, we're gonna buy this office and we're gonna build it exactly the way we want.

That was big for us 'cause we've talked about it before but we were in an office in Tempe. You never came to that office. No. No, yeah, 'cause we met you after that. So we were in a small little office in Tempe. We had just gotten done with, we had a really bad employee, speaking of bad employees, We had a really bad employee that was siphoning leads from us. He was closing behind our back. And so fuck that guy, just so everyone knows. Just so you know who you are. Absolutely. Which is funny because he went to like multiple other, you know, obviously didn't work out with us, believe it or not. And so he went to multiple other companies and like, you know, it's like, hey, can I work with you guys and stuff like that? And obviously we had a better name than he had at the time. And so they were like, He's trying to work with us. And they're like, no, he can't work with us.

We did what you did. The karmic debt you're going to pay for shit like that. Like, you can't get away with that. Yeah.

One of the best things— I'm just going to make this— he went on to start a coaching program and he would tell people that he was doing X amount of deals, X amount of volume, and he was using our fucking numbers. And he was saying, that's—

I swear to God, he used Viking Real Estate's numbers and he would say, well, last year I did $2 million. And so obviously I talked to a couple of people that actually signed up for his stuff, and they're like, yeah, he said he did $2 million. I'm like, no, we did $2 million. He did maybe $30,000.

Fucking loser.

Jesus.

Oh man, insane. But anyway, um, what were we just— oh yeah, yeah. So anyway, so that Tempe office, so like he was with us there for a couple years, and so we just had like a bad aura, like a bad vibe with that office, because I told Jake, I was like, every time I come in here, I just I just think of him, because it was like every morning you'd come in and he was there, and so I just had a really bad vibe with the office, and so I was like, we need to sell this thing, man. I don't want to be here anymore. I want to get a new office. And so Jake 100% agreed. We're like, yeah, for sure. And we wanted to be closer to our houses anyway. So randomly, we started putting feelers out there for other office spaces and stuff like that. And we drove by, I live in the islands, and so I drove through the islands regularly, and there's like a strip mall in there and there's an office building that says for lease. So I drove by and I'm like, you know, I'm going to give the guy a call and just see, you know, what he'd say. So I called him. I was like, hey, just curious, would you ever— cold call— would you ever consider, you know, possibly selling the building or if you even own it? And he's like, yeah, I do own it. But obviously I also knew because I drove by every day that this, this building has been empty for like over a year and like That's prime real estate. Like, that's some expensive real estate. So, you know, this dude's losing out on some serious money right now. Um, so yeah, it's 3, it's 3, uh, 3 businesses. There's a, there's a sushi bar, there's a sandwich shop, and then there's this empty building that was the Euro Shop.

Greek restaurant.

Yeah, the Greek restaurant. So, so the Greek restaurant was the one that was vacant. So, um, you know, he's like, yeah, I would consider selling. He's like, but this is my flagship property, so like, you know, it's gonna have to be a good offer. We're like, okay, sounds good. So we went back and we ran the numbers. We got the rents on what the other buildings were getting and whatnot. And we ran it and it made sense.

Yeah, we asked him what he wanted and he told us the number and we're like, okay, let's just minus out commissions. And we literally didn't even really negotiate much.

Yeah, because it came out to be like a cap rate that made total sense for us to buy it. And we're like, I don't, you know, sounds good.

I know.

And not to mention, how far is it away from both of your guys' places, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, right? Like, like you ride like a— what is that thing? Yeah, not a Vespa, but it's like a—

it's a Razor Rambler. Yeah, a little two-door or two— a little two-wheel bike. Yeah, so sick. Little automatic one. But, um, but yes, I mean, um, you know, once we— so once we found out that we were getting it, we sold— we put the, the office in Tempe up for sale, sold that one actually to a buddy of ours. Uh, do you know, um Scott Bauer. Scott Bauer.

I don't think so. The name sounds really familiar. I might follow him on Instagram.

HSBC Holdings.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, he's a good guy.

Yeah, he is. Okay. So he bought, he bought that office. We just obviously did a 1031, took those funds and put it into, into this office building.

Obviously.

Yeah.

You want to explain to somebody just in case people are watching? What do you mean by that?

So 1031 exchange is you take your funds from an investment property or, you know, it could be any property And if you don't want to have to pay taxes on the capital gains that you made the money on, you can go ahead and transfer that into a new property, right? Put that down as your down payment, you know. I mean, obviously there's, you know, instances where you're gonna have to put more down, or, you know, you might not have to put the whole amount down, whatever. And so we put that down on that, and that was part of our down payment for this building.

Gotcha.

Small part, unfortunately.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, a small part of it.

Well, dude, I mean, I, I think it's so cool, and that, that's been a big goal for me, you know. And, and I like the place we're at, and it's cool, but I want to be able to do what you guys did. And I want to be able to throw all the shit that I want in there. I want to have a fucking gym in my office that I go into and like, you know, in between calls I'm fucking hammering bench.

Hell yeah, you know, right? No, for sure. So, and then, uh, you know, like I said, we, we looked at all the numbers and it was like, um, you know, what we did when we were building our office out is we put in all the things that we wanted, right? So we knew exactly we wanted to have us, we wanted to have like a sales, you know, floor basically for all the, for all the sales guys. We wanted to have like kind of like a bar area. It was important to us. So we did a bar area, we did a sales floor, and then we wanted our offices to kind of be front and center, like looking at the sales team, you know what I mean? So we kind of know what's going on. Um, and then we ended up basically doing like where we have like a kitchen in the back, and then we have a boardroom, and then we have multiple offices all around the outside. And we have a, um, we have a mailroom, which I'll let Jake tell you guys about. It's pretty cool.

Yeah, so, but the reason why we did that was so we could sublease these other offices. Obviously our plan is to grow into them, but we're like, look, we basically just got the sales team, you know, TC, nothing crazy because the space is 3,000 feet. So yeah, we kind of divided it up like our side is maybe 1,500 feet and then we did a bunch of these other offices. So right now, I mean, there's—

and how many, how many of these other suites are there?

There's one, six.

Yeah, six.

Okay. Four and two. Yeah.

So outside, so everybody understands, outside of their offices and their sales team and their little boardroom and everything, is 6 other offices, 7 if you include the mailroom.

So we rented 2 of them out to our GC. We've got a lending company in one, we've got other agents and other ones. So, and then that mailroom though, what we did is we've got a room for where we can have 500 mailboxes. We can have 500 mailboxes in there. There's another company that we haven't posted much about that we're going to be, you know, kind of launching here soon. But basically it's going to be like P.O. boxes. So there's a separate door on the backside with access with a PIN code. So you can put in, you know, if you're like a, say, you know, you have a, you're a business owner that's got, you know, your business that you're running from home. So you have a lot of people that maybe they don't want to use their home address for their business because it's not super professional. So you can use an actual like office address now. So we're going to have options where it's like you can do a mailbox, you can do a mailbox and boardroom access, and then you can do mailbox, boardroom access, and you can have live answering services for whatever your business is.

Wow.

Yeah.

And the reason why, I mean, there's so many small businesses that I mean, like when we first got started, we didn't have enough. No, we didn't have money to rent an office. One, right? So what this is, it's called virtual office space. So you get a professional office address. Someone Googles your business, pops up with this address, you look credible.

Well, and that's what's so important is you think this is so necessary for the Google My Business. Yes. Which, by the way, Google My Business is a huge part. We just barely got a $90,000 wholesale deal because of Yeah. How we ranked on Google My Business. Yeah. But that aside is you, you can't just, you can't throw a PO box on that. Like you need to have an actual office address. So their, their address, so you guys understand, like is going to be like a regular address and with like a number, but it's not PO box.

Like, and it's not a house address, right? It's going to show like, yeah, they look at it and they say, oh, it's in like an office suite 5 or whatever it is. And the big thing is too, is they have access to boardroom, you know, to the boardroom. So it's like If, you know, one of these businesses— like, one of our guys right now is a financial advisor, financial planner. So he's like, you know how nice it's going to be for me now to— if I have any clients, I can just— he goes online and he books out the time that he needs the boardroom. And so he has a sick boardroom that he can use anytime that he wants, and he can bring his clients to, even though, you know, he doesn't— it's not his, you know what I mean? But he can use it whenever he wants.

Perception. Yeah, perception.

Exactly. So it's super nice.

So Well, so I just love— so you guys took—

Islands Luxury Suites.

IslandsLuxurySuites.com. All right, check it out, guys. Um, the thing that I love is you guys took this property and so you see, okay, it's already producing income from the sandwich and the sushi bar. Yep. And then obviously we're going to be in here.

Yep.

But then how can we get some other income? And so not only— I mean, the, the 6 suites is like a no-brainer, but when you guys explained to me about this mailbox thing, I was like, What the fuck? First I was like, what do you mean? Like, why does somebody do that? And then when, you know, we started explaining the addresses and then when I started realizing from Google My Business, I was like, it's important. You have how many mailboxes?

We have room for like 750, 750, 750. And then what? How much it costs? So it's, it's $99 a month for the, you know, for your actual mailbox. And then like Luke was saying, we have a second tier. Which is, you know, an answering service. So kind of same thing. When we first started, we didn't have receptionists, we didn't have money for any of that. So we're like, okay, what is someone— something else that new business owners are going to need, you know, to look professional? With our answering service, they call your number, we will answer the phone in your company name and say, oh yeah, perfect, let me take a message. And you pass the message on.

And not us personally.

Is it 24 hours?

It's right now, it's business hours. Yeah, but, but we're probably gonna go 24 hours.

So something that I've been really doing is for my, like, my Google PPC is like, PPC, like nighttime is the shit.

Yes, people are on the—

for sure.

Yeah, people are there fucking, they got the bottle of whiskey and they're like, fuck, I gotta sell my fucking house. They're looking and doing that on the line, right? Whereas, and also you got a lot of people who, when they're getting started in PPC, they're like, hey, I'm gonna be available to take these calls from like 9 to 6. So that's when they're running their ads, where it's a lot cheaper to run overnight and you're going to get more motivated people. But my thing is, I always want— like, one thing about my company is when somebody— so let me, let me, let me start from the beginning here. Yeah, I fucking hate when I call somebody and I call a business and I got to talk to a goddamn robot.

Yeah, I know.

Listen to our automated press 1 if you want, press 2. No, no, I— one thing I always want is when somebody's dealing with my company they're talking to a person, right?

Right.

So to have like an answering machine where somebody calls in, no matter what, you're getting a person, even if it's, hey, let's get the information.

Okay.

And then set up a call. Let's get them into a calendar link that the VA can do and schedule on my acquisitions person's call. Like, you know, that's exactly what we do. So that's, that's, that's so gangster. Yeah.

It's kind of like a fractional receptionist, right? It's kind of the same thing like that we were talking about, like people that can't afford, you know, to have a receptionist.

And that's for most people, right? Most people can't afford a receptionist at $50,000, $60,000 a year, especially when you're first getting started.

Well, you just don't need it either.

Exactly.

Like, I can't even tell you how many years we went without even like a TC, right?

For sure, because we just fucking did it.

Well, however though, getting a TC is like, oh yeah, no, it's life-changing.

Yeah, for sure. But yeah, so we're gonna, uh, those options are $100 for just the mailroom, uh, $200 for the mailroom and the boardroom access, and then $300 for mailroom, boardroom, and and live answering services.

What a deal.

Yeah. I mean, literally think about it. $3,600 for the year compared to 50, 60 grand for—

Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Well, that's not even including office space, just receptionist.

Right.

So kind of like a fraction of receptionist.

Yeah. I love it.

So much value to the marketplace there.

So yeah, that's got some potential to, to create a little cash flow. So right now with the building, even with the units we have now, we're literally net zero.

Mm-hmm.

Owning this $2 million building office space that we built out, sick, literally cost us $0 a month.

So fucking dope.

So we're pretty stoked about that. And we locked in, we just put a long-term loan on it from the very beginning.

Yeah, we got lucky.

Which sucked because we trapped a lot of money with the rehab and everything. But we're so happy we did it because we're at 3% interest.

Oh, which is— yeah, I know, dude. It's just when everything's 7% right now.

Good things happen to good people, man.

That was just fucking luck.

But well, luck and the The shitty thing about it, like Jake said though, we trapped.

Well, yeah, you guys had to have some fucking money to get in there.

We trapped some cash into that building.

That was the only negative about building it out the way we did. I mean, the way we looked at it was like, okay, we're gonna want to do this stuff over time or later on. So we're like, are we really gonna want to have to like move out, renovate this place again later? Or can we just do it right, right now from the get-go?

And the great thing is, is it's a $2 million building. We owe a million on it.

Really?

So I mean, like, we've got some serious equity in it, but like, it's— but yeah, obviously that hurt. That hurt because we trapped all that cash in it right when the market was dropping. So we're like, uh, why do we not have any cash right now, right? Oh, it's because we just sunk $900 grand into this building.

How do you deal with that, like, with the stresses of being like, oh shit, like, I just did that, and then all of a sudden the market's going kind of like scary.

You deal with it, man. You know, you do whatever you can. I mean, so we're like, we're very, um, we're very open. We'll tell you exactly like what's happened with us. I mean, what we did is what saved us when the market took, you know, the, the turn is we still have, you know, we had probably 6, 7 properties that we lost some serious money on, and we still have 2 left. We have 2 left that we're gonna lose big money on, uh, that we're almost, you know, finished. We're almost out of it. We're almost out of the weeds. But what we did, because obviously when that happened, money stops coming in, right? Like everyone else, your flips aren't selling, your wholesales completely— the faucet is shut off. And so what we did, what were we— again, this is where we— I don't want to say we got lucky, but, but, you know, for all those years that we were doing well and making good money, we lived so below our means in the sense that every dollar that we made and our wives were not happy about this, but like every dollar we made, we shoved into rental properties. Yeah, like legit. They're like, how come we don't— how come you guys don't pay yourselves more? Because it's all in those fucking properties right there. And so it's like, we have, you know, 40 rental properties. And so, you know, that was hard to do, like, you know, with not really paying ourselves a ton of money for all those years. But the thing that was awesome about it is that when the market did change, you know how easy it was for us to just be like, okay, let's go pull some money against our properties. You know what I mean? So that's what we did. We basically went and got a loan against two of our properties. Like, you know, not even, not even all of them, but just against two of them. We pulled out $400 grand or something like that. No, $300 grand. And we're using that money, you know, we've been using that money over the past, you know, the past 6 months to basically kind of like, you know, carry us through with like the, the bad, the bad losses that we had in some of those flips and stuff. And so But again, it didn't even, you know, it sucked. But at the same time, we didn't really feel it. You know, I mean, you just pulled money against a couple of properties because we didn't even want to sell them. We're big advocates of like, you know what people say, you know, what is it? Don't, don't, don't wait to buy real estate. Buy real estate and wait. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, we don't want to ever sell our properties. Our goal is to literally just keep them all.

Buy, refi.

Exactly. Exactly.

If you do sell them, you got the capital gains because it's not like we're buying anything else to keep. So it's like, okay, I'm going to pull out like we're talking about, you pull out $300 grand, like you sell that, okay, we can make that similar to $300 grand, but you're paying taxes on it, 30, 40% on the freaking taxes.

So yeah, and then obviously our rental income has been huge through this time too, you know what I mean? So it's been, it's been nice.

Well, this right here, I want everybody to, to be able to really— I mean, I know myself, I'm taking this as this lesson of being like, dude, the delayed gratification. Yes. Of— because dude, the last 2 years were a fucking party. Yes, we're all ripping 6-figure wholesale fees. Like, it was sick. But all of a sudden, you know, the music stops, but you guys probably hedged against it. And that's where I'm like, oh, fuck, bro, I've just been wholesaling. I've never been buying any properties. Like, I had this realization and I'm like, okay, well, now it's time. Yeah, yeah.

There's kind of two ways to look at it. I mean, dude, the market's been so inflated, so you could almost— you could have dodged a bullet. But yeah, you know, wherever this market's gonna go now you can buy and get stupid good deals.

We'll see.

Yeah, well, but here's the thing is I don't want to fucking— exactly what you said, I don't want to just sit there and wait like I'm just on the sidelines. It's time to start taking action. So either way, look, we have the skill set, we know how to find discounted deals, so we'll hedge ourselves that way by just having a bunch of built-in equity because of mispriced assets. And we're off for sure.

So, you know, been crazy. Yeah, been crazy. But that's how we— that's how we got through, honestly, the, the The shitty 6 months. Okay, so good deal.

Yeah, so look, you guys are massive. You guys know how to wholesale, you guys know how to flip, you guys have a fucking sick-ass rental, uh, portfolio, you guys have Airbnbs that are sick, um, and you guys are doing development. What's next for you guys?

Larger development. Yeah, that's our plan. Like, when we talk about it, because, you know, we, we sit down and talk regularly of like, okay, where, where do we want to go, what do we want to do We, we don't want to go the route of like too, too wide in the sense of like, I feel like sometimes when you have too many irons in the fire, it's, it's easy to take your eye off of certain things, you know what I mean? And so it's like we want to, to go heavily into very like large, large multifamily. And like when we talk about like, you know, because we'll talk about like what we're passionate about and like when we talk to each other, um, we're, you know, it's so sweet, you know. But no, like, so when we talk about that stuff, we both say we want to do large multifamily. Yeah. So, you know, I'm talking 50-unit, 100-unit, 200-unit, you know, stuff like that. That's the stuff we want to get into.

Okay, dude, that's, that's right where I'm at. Yeah, I like— so I had this realization within the last month that I'm like, this is, this is what aligns with myself. This is what I want to do. Why am I waiting? Yeah, I'm sitting there waiting. And so then I fucking— I was like, fuck it, I'm not doing that anymore. So I started— I'm getting education, I'm learning more about the space, I'm learning more about the underwriting, everything like that. But I'm not getting stuck in this learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. The whole other time I've been calling brokers, talking to people, talking to other wholesalers, saying, hey, send me this.

I want this.

Send me this shit. And I've been underwriting deals and making offers.

Yeah, that's what you got to do.

Yeah, exactly.

Fucking do it.

And we've been getting our feet wet, you know, obviously with some of the smaller stuff. So we did like a new build duplex, new build triplex. We're doing the 10-unit new build in Sedona. And then we got a 32-unit. New build in downtown Prescott. So it's like we're kind of like slowly, you know, we've kind of slowly worked our way up to kind of some of the stuff that we're doing now in the sense of learning how to manage it. And like the first, the new build duplex that we did, like dude, that thing should have taken 9 months to build, maybe a year. It took us 3, 3 and a half years to build it. It's like we had— it was such a learning curve because it was our first one we've ever done, and it was terrifying when we decided to move forward with it. I remember we were like Man, we're crazy. Like, we shouldn't do this. This is a really bad idea because we just bought a piece of land. Yeah, exactly. We just bought a piece of land and then just, you know, we didn't know anything about building at all or, you know, any of that. So we brought on, you know, we had— we went through, I think, 4 GCs over 3 and a half years. Uh, and that's why, obviously, part of the reason why it took so long. But we got— again, we got lucky in that sense too, because, because it took us so long We were originally thinking that each unit would rent for $1,200. We have each one of them rented out for $2,500 now. Oh shit. Yeah, let's go. Doubled.

Yeah, but dude, I love that this attitude of being like, well, I mean, we don't really know what we're doing. Yeah, fuck it, let's do it. Exactly what we want to do. That's what we've always done, right?

Like, how are we gonna learn?

Well, that's the thing is I don't ever want to be the guy who's pussyfooting around talking about, oh, I wish, I wish I would have done that.

Yeah, yeah, fuck it, dude. I wonder where I'd be if I did that.

At least gonna do it, and if I fuck up, at least I'll know that like I did it. Yeah, exactly.

Or you'll know what you learn from your mistakes. I'll know Next time, don't do this, do this instead. And that's what we learned. We learned on that first one, pay the extra money for a good GC. We were trying to save money by a guy. We had a quote that came back from a GC that we never should have used. And we probably knew we never should have used him.

We knew.

Yeah, we knew. And I mean, like when we say it was so bad, we're talking, we had to rip the tile off the showers 4 times because he kept just doing it wrong. We're like, dude, this is a tile shower. Like, we're not asking you to build the Taj Mahal here. Right. So we ended up getting, you know, for this, the triplex, we ended up using a different GC, which a good one, the guy that built our office out too. And he's been solid.

Okay, dude, the thing I'm like amazed with talking to you guys is it's like, yes, obviously there have been mistakes made, but you guys have just done it so right. Like where you start out and like you do the right things along the way. Like you start with the duplex and that's, it's not like, okay, well let's go build out fucking 105 units right here. But it's the duplex and then that leads you in to be able to do, you said 32 units in Downtown Prescott. Yeah, so sick. But with that, and then with everything, with the, the— you're the whole time you're putting away money into these rental units. Like, you guys are fucking geniuses, dude.

We're not that smart, I promise.

No, we're really not. We just, we just, uh, I don't know. I think, I think we're, we're both very, um, disciplined. Yes, we're both very disciplined. Like, we really are. And I don't know, I, I don't know where we get it from.

I don't either.

I think part of what we get— I think part of what we get it from is we said our parents were very entrepreneurial, but our parents also lost everything in 2008.

Yeah.

So like, we both witnessed that. We witnessed our parents doing very well go to nothing, you know what I mean? To having nothing. And so I think that's a huge part of it. When we witness that, it's like, okay, don't make any stupid mistakes, you know? Take chances, but make sure they're calculated risks, you know what I mean?

Dude, that's—

and I mean, hindsight is 20/20. We feel like we could have done it in half the time. Like, of course, but you know, you just run into those issues and you learn from them.

Yeah, well dude, I mean, that's really exciting. Uh, so I guess I want to talk to you about something that I just really saw you guys post— the House of Viking. Yeah, what is that?

Uh, House of Viking is our new community. It's an online community we're doing, um, gonna go over everything real estate, um, from wholesaling to flipping. A lot of it's honestly going to be stuff that we've learned You know, so wholesaling, flipping, you know, Airbnbs, Airbnb management contracts, you know, design for flips, you know, cold calling, you know, in a sense coaching, like helping you, you know, helping you kind of avoid certain mistakes that you're probably making in cold calling and stuff like that.

More like high-level cold calling.

Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah.

Not instead of like the entry-level stuff, kind of when you get past that entry level.

Right. Right, right.

He's the master at it.

And then, you know, some developing stuff like that. So I mean, it's going to be, it's going to be basically a real estate umbrella. We just, we feel like there's so many coaching programs out there that, that focus on one thing, right? I know we talked about a little bit, but I mean, that focuses on, you know, just cold calling, or it focuses on, um, you know, it focuses on just creative deals. Exactly, just creative, or, you know, just a dispo, or, you know, just mailing campaigns and stuff like that. And so We just feel like, you know, when people get into every one of these, for them to actually buy into all of them, dude, you might be like, if you're talking $5,000, $10,000 per coaching program, you're like $50,000, $60,000 if you want to like try to get like a little bit of knowledge on everything. And it's not a little bit. I mean, they're, you know, these are niche programs that are good programs. But at the same time, what about the people that don't have that kind of money? Or what about the people that, you know, maybe only have a couple hundred bucks to spend a month? Or the people that want to know everything about real estate? Like, I want to learn about flipping, I want to learn about wholesaling, I want to learn about, you know, Airbnb, stuff like like that. So that's kind of what we, we feel like— there's nothing out there like that. So that's why we're going to jump into that.

Well, I feel like that totally— I mean, obviously I don't know firsthand, but I feel like that fits really well in your guys's vision. Yeah, you guys need a fucking rockstar community. Like, like, you guys have the— you guys, like, dude, I'm so like impressed with what you guys have built. And literally, this— I like— one thing that's really important for me is creating your own reality, right? Like, you are the master of your destiny and you can make your life be the way you want.

For sure.

Prove that. And I think that for you guys to take your time and show other people is a very honorable thing.

Heck yeah. I appreciate it.

Really, I mean, what we wanted to create was— because there's so many like masterminds out there, but masterminds, as everyone knows, you know, they can be $10 grand a year, $20 grand, $30, up to however much. But we found ourselves like during this downturn, who are we talking to? We were talking to people that are way more experienced than us, that have done thousands of deals, been through downturns. And we started thinking about, you know, all these other folks that are, you know, let's just like us that were in the market the last 5 years and they've just crushed it, you know what I mean? We felt like there's, you know, a lot of people that don't have someone to go talk to.

Exactly.

And so many people have asked us for so long, like, oh, what are you going to do coaching? What are we going to do coaching? Like, we are not coaches. We do not want to do any sort of coaching, but we wanted to create something where literally iron sharpens iron and you have this community where you can get better and you can learn literally every single aspect. I mean, even we'll go into super, super— we'll go into a ton of detail on like our sales process, you know, everything, sales training, everything like that. But we're going to just break it up. So, I mean, let's say if you're brand new to real estate, perfect, we'll go over wholesaling, we'll help that, your sales. But let's say you have been in the business for a long time, you've wholesaled the last 5 years, you want to get into flipping, you want to actually be the investor. Yeah, but you don't know how to build a track record. You don't know what to do. Like Luke said, design, right? Huge right now, for sure. And then kind of on to like the actually building a legit rental portfolio too.

No, exactly. And, you know, again, I know we talked a little bit before, but, you know, we've got people that are going to be in this community that are just getting started, you know, and then there's, there's, there's going to be people that are also have done multi-millions, you know, in a given year that just want to, you know, learn more about, you know, a certain aspect of real estate. You know, so maybe they're really, really good at wholesaling and flipping, but maybe they don't know anything about Airbnb, you know, so they want to say, hey, I want to learn more about this. Like, how, how do I start, you know, building some cash flow from Airbnbs? How do I know what's a good buy? How do I know how to design that thing? How do I know if it's a good area or not? You know, stuff like that. And so we've gone through the wringer for all that stuff. You know, we've, we've had Airbnbs that haven't been good. We've had Airbnbs that absolutely kill it, you know. So we've, we've learned a lot from obviously from just our previous experience Well, and here's the thing, I'm the biggest advocate of—

I don't want to have to go beat my head against a fucking wall to figure out these mistakes on my own. I'd rather go to Jake and Luke and say, hey, look, dude, I'm, I'm really interested in that shit you're doing. And now you guys have a platform available where somebody can and they can come learn. So it's— so, I mean, look, I know I want to be a part of this. Who else wants to be a part of this? If they do, where do we, where do we go to, to check that out?

It'll go, it'll go live in about a week.

Is maybe, maybe, yeah, maybe in like 3 or 4 days. Yeah, perfect.

Well, this will, this will air in like a week.

Yeah.

Oh, hell yeah.

So, okay. And where do they—

so houseofviking.com.

Houseofviking.com. Yeah, we're gonna metal ass name. That's right.

We wanted to stay away from, um, from like a, a Facebook group because like I'm in like 10 Facebook groups on for real estate.

Fucking hate Facebook.

Well, dude, they're just, they're all like, they all run together to me. Like, to me, to me it's like, you know what I mean? It's like they all like you just get these updates on your Facebook and it's like, it's all the real estate groups and then it's like people posting deals in there and stuff like that and it's like, I'm not interested in these deals.

They're not even a fucking deal.

Exactly, yeah. So it's like, so none of those, like I'm just not interested in those, you know? So we wanted to make sure that we did it like away from Facebook. We wanted to have like our own website that's like, this is where the community is. So we'll do Zoom calls, you know, once a week where we're gonna literally pick a topic and just, dive into it.

It's going to be a badass format. Yeah, I think everyone will really, really like it.

How are you guys building that out?

Uh, so we're not very good on the tech side.

Oh, come on, I got an iPhone 2 here.

I showed Luke his calendar the other day on his email.

Yeah, he did.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, no, we're bad with that. I mean, I'm really bad.

I'm like, you know, I mean, obviously I still write my leads on paper But we have a company we've worked with a couple of times helping us build out a few things and they're super, super good at integrating and building out, you know, SOP, standard operating procedures for everything. Super detailed.

We'll give you their information too on House of Viking too.

So yeah, it's Megan and Stephanie with the SOS Advantage.

Okay.

They do a really, really good job.

That's very interesting because that's some shit I need, you know, for sure. It's funny I'm talking about this because I've been— I've had to build out several websites over these last couple of months, and I did exactly what you guys did with the GC. I went and found the cheapest fucking guy, and now I'm just having to rebuild them.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like, goddamn it. Like, why did I— why did I do this?

At least a website's cheaper than a duplex.

Yes.

Yeah, it's the $500 I pissed away.

Right.

We recommend them. They do a good job.

For sure.

For sure.

Um, but yeah, so like I said, in these, in these calls, we're going to just pick topics. We're going to say, hey, we'll analyze your deal for you, you know what I mean? If you're, if you've got a deal, and this will be nationwide, you know what I mean? So we're going to have a lot of students that have already reached out that are saying they want to be a part of the community, is where they're saying, you know, hey, I'm in, I'm in, you know, wherever, Alabama, you know. And so we've got systems in place where we can analyze deals in different states, obviously. And so we'll do analyzing deals, we're going to do, um You know, like I said, analyzing cold calls, kind of helping you. Like, you know, if you submit a cold call and you're like, oh, this is bad, you know, like, you can't be saying this. This is, you know, this is what you need to switch up. This is what you need to change. Um, so I think a lot of people need help with stuff like that. We're gonna be going over it, like I said, you know, uh, designs that we've been doing for our flips, which is why a lot of our flips are still selling fairly quickly versus other ones that we've seen. Um, so just literally just absolutely everything, dude.

That's that in itself right there, which is talking about the designs, because I've seen your guys. So here's the thing, I look at obviously a lot of houses every single day, and you can tell like the cookie cutter, like the fucking, you know, white, gray, LVT.

Thank you.

You see that shit all the time. Your guys' shit does not look like that. Like, yeah, like you can almost— like you could show me like 5 flips and I'd be able to pick out which one they did for sure, because it's the fucking sick-ass one that actually has like character.

Exactly. And we agree, and that's— and that's why we feel like our flips sell quickly. You know, so we have a lot of people that say, like I said, that have reached out like, how do you guys do this? We'll show you.

And it's, it's you, right? Like, it's you who's doing all the design?

Yeah, everyone thinks we have a designer, but this guy.

Well, dude, because here's the thing is you got— you are really fucking good at it. Because I also see people who, they, they try and be different and it's tacky.

I was like, shit, I know where you are.

Like, that's crisp.

Um, when we talked about— I almost went into, to interior design and I almost went into architecture. Those are two things that I contemplated going into, uh, when I was, when I was getting my degree, but I didn't do it really, but we're doing it now, doing it now.

Your 18-year-old self was like, yeah, I want to be an interior designer.

I'm not even kidding. Yeah. My wife was like, you're definitely gay. I was like, I swear I'm not. I just like interior design.

Come on. It's cool.

So yeah. So I really, I thoroughly enjoy it.

That's awesome, dude. And, uh, I'm glad that you do because it's fucking— you're, you're good at it.

I appreciate it.

Um, dude, that, that's really exciting. Um, House of Viking, I know that I definitely want to check that out.

Absolutely.

Um, so you guys are gonna have people like Tyson Smith in it. You're gonna have guys like Tyson Smith that are gonna be big ballers, but guess what? He's gonna be like, yeah, I want to learn this, I want to do this, you know? So that's what's kind of cool.

That's what I'm gonna be doing. I'll be picking you guys' brain about these development projects.

Hell yeah, exactly. Jump in on some together.

And the best part is we're literally making it affordable for anybody.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Literally anybody. There's going to be a monthly option. And there's also going to be a yearly option, which we're actually running a founder's special for the first, I think, 45 to 60 days. And that'll be if you pay up front for a year, you'll literally be locked in at a stupid, stupid discount.

Nice. I think it's even up front for a year or if you just sign up in the first 45 days, right? Yeah. Yeah.

No, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

—go away. That'll go as soon as that 45 days or 60 days is up, then that will never be back again. So you'll, you'll be locked into that founder's, you know, price every single, you know, every year versus what the price will go to.

It'll be half the price.

Very nice. And are you guys ever gonna do any in-person events?

We talked about maybe doing like something at our office, you know, maybe once a year or something like that, where it's like if you guys are, you know, maybe just getting like had like a whole community get-together. You guys just had to—

gotta have a party there, dude.

We will, we will. We were talking about that the other day because we— before the casino night, which you weren't at. I was in—

I was in Texas.

That doesn't work. I don't care. No, it was a lot of fun.

Did you— did you get to meet, um, any— anyone from my team? My team went. We met your—

well, we, we met your dad last year.

Okay. There. Did you guys meet Mitch— Mitchell? I don't think so. Oh shit, man.

I know. Yeah, I don't think so. I'm not sure. Lost. But, uh, but yes, we went to— we were at our office before we went over there. Okay, pre-gaming a little bit, and we're like, damn, we need to throw a fucking rager here. Like, we've got beer taps, we've got a bar area, we've got literally surround sound that bumps. Like, it's, it's loud. Like, it gets really loud. We're like, we just move some of the tables over and we'll have like a dance party right here. That's good. And you can't— because they got the lighting. I know, I know.

I'm telling you guys, like, I'm not just like blowing smoke, like their place is fucking sick. It looks like it's so modern, it could be a club.

Yeah, I'm— we need to— and at nighttime when all the lights are on, it kind of looks like a club. We're like, man, people probably go by here, they're like, that's exactly what he said, like in real estate.

I'll tell you what, I'm gonna go, I'll stand, I'm gonna wear like a black t-shirt, I'm gonna stand at the door with a little rope.

Yeah, charge cover. Please do, please do.

We'll get, we'll get bottle service.

Or you do it back like high school. How many chicks you got with you? There you go, there you go. 3 minimum, 3 to 1 ratio. Sorry, man.

3 to 1 ratio, or else it's $100 covered. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So sick. We gotta set that up, telling you. You guys do, for real. That'd be fun.

Awesome, man. Well, that's really exciting. Um, I know that I'm super excited to see what you guys do with that. Um, the final thing that I want to ask you guys is what is the goal for next year? Like, I know that you guys always are doing big shit. What do you guys want to get done when it is— because right now it's, it's the end of the year in 2022. When, when we talk again in next December, what are you guys like? Well, yeah, we did this, this, and this for sure.

I think a couple things. One of them, obviously, it's gonna— the market is gonna determine a lot of like— because a lot of times we set some of our goals with like how many units we want to add or stuff like that. Yeah. And so a lot of that I think is going to be determined off of interest rates and stuff like that because it's like, if they stay where they're at, I don't want to buy any properties, you know what I mean? The interest rates just don't make sense. But if they drop back down, you know, then that'll change. So we haven't— we're, we're gonna, you know, I'm sure we can think of some things, but we're actually going to have our 2023, uh, planning and meeting. We're going to go up to Prescott and do that in the next like probably week and a half, 2 weeks. Okay. So we haven't really gone into, you know, details on exactly what the— what that's going to look like for us yet.

What does that look like? You guys guys' planning meetings? Just like you two, like, sitting across from each other and matching jammies? I wish. Onesies.

Yeah, the— with the little bunnies you put the hood on.

So we, we do like a, uh, a yearly kind of planning with each other, like one-on-one. And then we also do one with the team where we literally go over what the goal is for the team. Literally, we— it's— we follow like, uh, like the Traction plan. Yeah, yeah. Um, we literally just go over exactly what we want to achieve in Q1, Q2, and that sort of thing. We do, we do, uh, like 90-day sprints. Okay.

Last year what we did is we went up to Prescott, um, us and the team. We went, we went golfing at like 7:30, 8 in the morning. Uh, we were done, we had lunch, we went and just checked into one of our Airbnbs. Um, and then we all kind of, you know, got ready, went to a couple bars, had a couple drinks. And then we went to Founding Fathers up in Prescott, which they've got— we're friends with the owner there. He's a really cool dude. If you've never been to Founding Fathers in Prescott, you've got to go. That place is amazing. So he's got like these kind of like really cool meeting rooms in their bar. So speaking of another— I'm going off subject now, but this guy— so their bar, it's got like 150 beer taps. You get bracelets when you get there, you scan it, and then it just tracks however much you drink. Oh, what? Crazy.

Wait, does it tell you? Yeah. Like you drink. Yeah, so you drink 67 ounces of beer.

No way.

Yeah, it cuts you off at a certain point. Yeah, yeah.

And then they've got, they've got a haircut, like a, you know, a barbershop in there. They've got a dojo, they've got a full gym in there, they've got a speakeasy. Like, it's sick, it's sick. That's what I want. And they have these separate meeting spaces. So, uh, so we rented out one of the separate meeting spaces, um, and we, we held our, our, our team kind of like get-together in there. So we had our whole team up there They have— they had a server for us, so they're just coming, you know, giving us drinks or food whenever we need it, which is super cool. Um, and then we just game plan. Sat there for 3 hours, you know, planned out absolutely everything that we want to do, got everyone's goals for the year. Like, what do you want, you know, atel, what do you want to do? Like, you know, and we did personal goals too, like, oh, okay, I want to— I want to get down to 15% body fat, or whatever, I want to do this, I want to, you know, so kind of go through absolutely everything. Um, and then once we kind get everything locked in and written down and everything, then we just— we go have a good time.

All right, that's fucking sick.

Yeah, so last year after we went, we went, uh, we went to Whiskey Row and we just, you know, we were out there until, you know, 1 o'clock, had some fun. And then there's a Whiskey Row and it's, it's actually Whiskey Row. It's actually called Whiskey Row. It's not just— it's not Diericks Bounty. No, not Diericks Bounty Whiskey Row. It's like, it's like the row of all the historic bars. So all the bars are from like the 1800s. It's like 1890 and something. It's what they named— oh, it's what— yeah, it's what they named it after. Exactly. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Um, but so we did that, and then we went back to the Airbnb, you know, hung out in the hot tub and, and watched nature documentaries till 5:00 a.m. That's a good activity.

I, I love smoking some weed and watching nature.

That's what we did. That's what we— yeah, you hit the nail on the head.

That's a good time right there, dude. Also, I want to talk about the, the sickest flex in the beginning of that that sentence was, yeah, we checked into our Airbnb. Yeah, it was your guys's Airbnb.

Yeah, we got a, we got a few of them.

I know, dope.

So just, so like, it was same thing, you know, we have a, we try to make a fun atmosphere for work, and so we did the exact same thing with our, with our, uh, our planning. That's awesome, man.

The team loves it. Of course they do.

They want to be a part of it. Yeah.

Okay, but that's the thing is, is you guys have created this fucking whole system that is Viking Real Estate, and it's, it's The whole thing is so clearly embodied from top to bottom, right? Of like, we're here to have fun, we're gonna fucking crush, like we're gonna have big goals and things like that. And you know, and also like it's clear that, right, you guys aren't fucking working with a bunch of boners. Like people you like to hang out with and want to go do that stuff.

For sure, for sure. I mean, I think that's what, you know, how we know we're building a good culture as well is that we posted for a, um, a project management position like a week ago, I think we had 25 people reach out. Really? You know, and so it's like, that's just a good sign. Like, if you've got a bunch of people reaching out about, about when you open a position, that's a really good sign. And these are like legit solid people. I was like, Jake, there's like 10 dudes in here that like I literally would love to have work with us. Like, love to have work with us. We're just not at a point where it makes sense yet, right?

So, well, dude, that's the, that's the best thing I think also about like social media and showing people this kind of stuff. Like, for me now, when I want to hire, it's easy. It is to be so shitty. And like, I'm like going through like Indeed and LinkedIn and there's a bunch of fucking— yeah, now like I've got fucking like cool people because they see me. Yep. They, they, they— you— um, when I put myself out there, people feel like they know me. So yeah, so they know what's going on. And obviously if they reach out based on that, and they're going to be somebody that I'm probably going to get along with.

Exactly. The last 3 people that we hired were all from social media.

Yeah, I think everybody in my office is.

Yeah. It's crazy. It's a powerful—

you can see what, what they're like too through their page. Exactly. I think I like this person. I don't know, right?

Yeah, that's— I mean, what's one of my requirements? Like, when I'm— so when somebody like is interested in working with me and filling out my form, I don't have like a resume or anything. It's like, all right, give me your Instagram handle. Yeah, like, what are your other social media?

You say Republican or Democrat? There we go. Are you gonna—

well, no, I mean, I like— so in my office, bro, I mean, we have a very high performing fucking thing. Like everybody, like we talk about working out and that's what I—

Yeah, exactly.

Like it's a bunch of people who are like myself.

Absolutely. That's what we want to build. No, there's no doubt about it. You want to work with people that are like you. Yeah, exactly.

Heck yeah. That's awesome, man. Well, hey Jake, I know I cut you up.

I mean, do you think, I mean, you know, I guess we haven't really— For 2023? Yeah, we hadn't really planned on too much, but I mean, I know we talked about, you know, a little bit, but—

Yeah, so we're really dialing in our construction side. Yeah. For the flips, we're, we're really trying to get, you know, just absolutely dialed in where we can run a shit ton of projects without us having to. Yeah.

What do you know? What's the steps that are you saying? Like your SOPs are just really good or like, that's what we're building out the relationships with the, with the contractors and the subs and everything.

Or so honestly, I mean, up to now we've never had a project manager. Yeah. Luke and I have been direct with every single contractor. Look, if something goes wrong, we're getting the phone call, right? Something needs to be done. We're getting the phone call. So, and we're the fucking bottleneck, you know, to get to the next level.

I mean, as we said, yeah, it's Jake and I banging our heads against the wall because we have so much coming through the two of us.

So what we're really, really dialing in, like Luke just said, we, you know, we actually— Josh on our team was one of our sales guys. He wanted to actually move over to the project management side. So it was literally perfect. He's killer. Perfect for it. Yeah, super detail-oriented. He'll crush. So that's really what we're building right now. And I think going into 2023, like Luke said, we don't really have a big goal on keeping a bunch of stuff just because of the current interest rates. Like if they come down or we get like a stupid deal, or maybe we could, you know, sub-2 something, keep the original loan in place, then we'll snag it.

But I think really I think mainly it's gonna be dialing everything in because I think that, you know, for a long time now we've been, we've been doing good numbers and we've been, you know, we've been, uh, we're happy with the numbers we've been doing. We've been, we've been happy with where we're at, but at the same time it's been the two of us doing everything.

Like, the efficiency is not— hasn't been there, right? Right. And that's what we are going to dial in so it's literally like a well-oiled machine. Exactly. And we can be able to do 50 you know, flips constantly, right? Between, you know, what we're purchasing, what's on the market, what's in construction.

Exactly. So, so how do you measure that? How are you going to know that at the end that we're dialed in? Is it like, like for me, like I'm always like stress levels. Let's look at my phone bill, like how many inbound calls. Exactly.

No, it'll just be kind of like, I mean, we'll just fucking know. Like, we'll get less calls from the contractors. Everything's going to get done faster, cheaper, cheaper. I mean, it's, it's on no one but us.

Yeah, take full accountability. Yeah, no question about it.

Certain projects go an extra 2 months, and, you know, if you're $500,000 in hard money, it's $5,000 per month. So we just lost $10,000 that if we would have ran it efficiently on one project, it would have been on the market. You do that times whatever 10 flips you have going on at a time.

I mean, it's a lot of money. Big fucking money. Wait, it's a lot. Gotcha.

$50 grand a month you're just losing just like that because you're not being, you know. So that's—

I would say that would probably be the biggest thing, dialing in that, dialing in all the other systems so we can— so we don't really know where the market's going. I mean, everyone's got their own opinion.

Anyone who says they know, they're lying, right?

We, we kind of think it's gonna, you know, still come down. A bit. Yeah, I don't think it's gonna like crash crash, but I think it's gonna come down. Yeah, and the one good thing is right now so many people have pulled back. Yeah, so many actual flippers have pulled back and wholesalers and wholesalers and flippers are leaving this.

I stopped marketing in Arizona.

No, we did too.

So all we do is buy other people's deals right now because there's so many.

Well, and you get to set the price. So it's like, all right, let's just fucking buy this shit at 50%.

Yeah, no, it's true. It's crazy. So, so yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, and I think that that's something though that we should all be— if we're staying in this industry, we should all be stoked about that. We should be fucking happy because guess what? If we had whatever, say we had 20,000 whole, you know, 20, probably 100,000 people that were in our realm, you know, of wholesaling and flipping. And now that number is 5,000, dude. And it probably is like no joke because guess what? Most people aren't doing the things that you're doing. Most people aren't doing the things that we're doing. Most people are that average wholesaler that's, that's, you know, trying to learn how to do it. And then when you take— when you lose your $5K earnest from having to cancel, that hits you hard, right? That hits you hard, right? Or if you're doing a one-time flip and you lost $50 grand on your flip, a lot of people aren't bouncing back from that.

I'm not doing that shit again.

No, exactly, exactly. So, so with that many, I think there's gonna be a not, not is going to be, there already has been a mass exodus of people out of the real estate, you know. And I think that's why, um, you know, I think that's why we're going to be positioned well for 2023.

I think so too. I think so too. I'm, I'm fucking excited for it.

Yeah, for sure.

But also, I really like the point you guys said is like, hey, we don't really know where the market is, so it's like, it's hard to put like goals on like adding units or like a monetary thing because, right, a lot of that, right, dictated by what's going on in the market.

Well, it was easy over the last couple of years because like things were pretty constant, you know what I mean? With things being fairly constant in the sense of where interest rates were and everything, and if anything, they were just coming down a little bit. So it was easy to say, okay, well, yeah, if things stay the same what they are right now, we want to add 30 units, we want to add 20 doors this year, or 30 doors, or, you know what I mean? Whatever it was, it was easier to say that. Where right now, with the interest rates being at 6.5% or 7% on, on, on, uh, investment properties, no, I don't want any, I don't want any right now, right?

It's impossible to get the numbers to pencil, right? It's literally nearly impossible. It is.

Unless you're just getting fucking— no, like, you'd have to buy a house like 30% on the dollar. That's like—

and that's not happening. No, it's not.

I mean, so, well, the way I visualize this is we spent the last 2 years in a bulk, bro. It's just get more, more, and more. We're just bulking up. We're putting on muscle. Yeah. But now it's time for the cut, and we're trimming the fat. We're getting the process dialed in, and you're looking like Tyson Tyson Smith.

Yeah, exactly.

That's tough to do too.

By the way, this guy is fucking—

he's an animal. Well, it's— I— it was because of the connection that you put me on with, um, Matt. Matt.

Yeah, yeah, that guy's awesome. Yeah, he came on the show. Oh yeah, I saw that, dude. He's so fucking smart. That's so smart. And he just makes it so simple. Yeah, like made it so easy, dude.

Yeah, so what we're talking about is, um, Jake did a 75 Hard and was fucking like insane. I went, I went over to your guys' office to get a haircut. Yeah. And I'm sitting there talking to Jake and he's got like veins like fucking popping out of every single part of his arm. I'm like, holy fuck, bro, like what you got going on over here? How the hell did you do this? He's like, well, yeah, I got this guy and he's helped me with nutrition and everything. I'm like, all right, sign me up. And I immediately was like reaching out to him and I was like, all right, bro, you know, game changer.

Yeah.

And well, it's crazy, once you find somebody, it's with just like we're talking about in real estate, like with you guys. So when you find somebody who's an expert and you can come learn from them, it makes it so much easier. So when I was able to find Matt and I was able to find somebody who's like knew what the fuck they were doing, has done it before, like, take the guesswork out. Yeah, because, and here's this, here's the thing, just like in real estate, we're in fitness, is the, the, it's not like this, it's not linear. Yes, like there are going to be fucking peaks and valleys, and to have somebody to be like, that is normal, right, right, just to tell you that, like, you are on the right path, you just have to keep doing it. Yep, exactly. It like, it makes it— that level of accountability is like the difference between somebody who's gonna quit and fall off and keep going.

For sure.

No, no, there's no doubt about it. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, thank you guys so much for coming on today. Again, guys, if you guys want to see all that they're doing, you can find Jake, and that's @Jake_Landis22. Yep. And you are @Luke_Ro. Yep. Underscore. Yep. Luke underscore RO underscore. Yep, that's where you can find them on Instagram, guys. If you guys are watching this on YouTube and you haven't already, please go ahead and hit the subscribe and then the bell so you'll be alerted when the next episodes drop and also just new videos. I'm really pushing this super hard. I'm pretty much recording one YouTube video every single day, and I'm gonna keep doing that because one of my goals is I want to hit 10,000 subscribers on YouTube. There we go. And now my thing is like, look, you can put a fucking number on shit, but my actual goal is I'm gonna make at least 2 videos every single week. There we go. Now I'm fucking doubling down and making more right now, right? Right, right. Fire me.

But the holiday is coming up, you know. Yeah, there we go.

That's just more content. But, uh, yeah, so go ahead, uh, subscribe, like this video if you haven't already. If you guys are listening on Apple Music or Spotify, um, I'm not really sure what you do on those apps, but do the rating or whatever it is you can do So let's get this out to more people so that they can see and they can learn from these two wonderful gentlemen. Um, this has been episode 12. Thank you guys so much for watching or listening. Thanks for having us on.

Heck yeah, absolutely.

Thank you guys.