How to get over the ‘get started’ hump in real estate investing

Mike: Welcome to the Flipnerd.com podcast. This is your host, Mike Hambright. On this show, I will introduce you to VIPs in the real estate investing industry, as well as other interesting entrepreneurs whose stories and experiences can help you take your business to the next level. We have three new shows each week, which are available in the iTunes store or by visiting Flipnerd.com. So without further ado, let’s get started.
Hey. It’s Mike Hambright with Flipnerd.com. Welcome back for another exciting VIP interview, where I interview some of the most successful real estate investing experts and entrepreneurs in our industry to help you learn and grow. Today, I’m joined by Justin Wilmot [SP]. He’s a wholesaler that operates in multiple markets and teaches others how to operate your real estate investing business in 10 hours a week, through his 10-hour wholesaler program. But when Justin got started, he struggled for a couple years to really get out of the gate as a real estate investor. Today, we’re going to talk about how to get over the “get started” hump and start your real estate investing business.
So we’re going to talk about how to get out of the gate and get going. There will be a lot of lessons in here that are good for veteran real estate investors too. So listen up. Before we get started though, let’s take a moment to recognize our featured sponsors.

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Please note, the views and opinions expressed by the individuals in this program do not necessarily reflect those of FlipNerd.com or any of its partners, advertisers or affiliates. Please consult professionals before making any investment or tax decisions as real estate investing can be risky.

Hey, Justin. Welcome to the show.

Justin: Mike, how you doing, buddy?

Mike: I’m good. I’m good. Good to have you on.

Justin: Thanks for having me. I’m stoked to be here.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. So it was interesting to hear kind of how you got started. Looks like we both basically started in 2008, when the proverbial stuff was hitting the fan and, just kind of, persevered through that.

Justin: Yeah, we got in at the right time. Right?

Mike: Yeah. Hey. It was a great time. It’s funny how a lot of people think, “Well, I’m not going to get started now because the market is too good, or I’m not going to get started yet because the market is too bad.” So the market is pretty good right now. There’s a lot of folks that . . . It’s interesting that there’s a lot of folks that are trying to get in now. I mean, everybody is an investor right now.

Justin: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: It’s funny how that happens when the market is at its peak. People are trying to get in.

Justin: I know.

Mike: When I got in, when you got in, people were running away.

Justin: I loved it.

Mike: I didn’t really know, but it’s like, man, I’d love to have 2008 back.

Justin: Yeah. Yeah. Me neither. I’m 29 years old, actually about to hit 30 in a couple days.

Mike: All right. Awesome.

Justin: But yeah. So I didn’t know what market trends were whatsoever. I just knew I wanted to get started.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: You know? I had a yacht management company that was on its way down because of the real estate markets. That timing was actually perfect for me because my niche at the time was wholesaling HUD properties, and then I went on to fix-and-flips. I was the only guy bidding on REOs in my county.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: One other guy.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: So life was pretty easy at that time. For example, it’s kind of funny. A property could be listed for $100,000. We would go in at $50,000. Right? I didn’t know any better. I didn’t think that was . . . I always heard this one quote, “If you’re not embarrassed of your offer, it’s not good enough.”

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: So I was like, “Okay.” So that’s what I would do. Right? The bank would come back, and they would just like . . . They would come back at $99,000. I’m like, all right. We’re so far away. I said, “Well, let me come back at $52,000,” just to see how this works. I did. This was the very first REO I ever bought to renovate. They accepted it. I was like . . .

Mike: Oh, wow.

Justin: So I started doing that again and again and again. I ended up having a favorite bank that would just accept it most of the time, so good old Fifth Third.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: They were easy to work with.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, tell us. You mentioned a few things here when you got started, but I know from our discussions before we got started here today that you kind of struggled like a lot of real estate investors. You maybe got the education bug and just thought, “If I read one more book or go listen to one more training program or whatever it is, that that’s going to give me the confidence or whatever it is that I need to get started.” I think there’s a lot of people that find themselves in that situation, where they just continue the education because they think that that’s going to help them get confident, when you and I both know doing it is what actually gives you confidence and experience. But kind of talk about that a little bit, about your experience and what you share with others on kind of how to get out of the gate.

Justin: So how to get out of the gate . . . For me, it was . . . The one thing I feel like everybody needs, and they have it to some degree . . . I will say some have it more than others because others just haven’t found a way to really tap into it, but I believe it’s the one thing that keeps you going, no matter what, when stuff is super hard and everything is just hitting you in the face. It’s ambition. Ambition is at the core of motivation. Right? You know? We talk about being motivated and pumped up, being thick-headed to continue to keep moving forward, even though you have a bunch of no’s and rejections and all this and losing deals you finally get the courage to get. What gets you going afterwards, and that’s the deep internal ambition. So for me, I feel like when you tap into that and then tap into fearless action-taking, no matter what, by knowing that every single person like you and I that are doing deals are not special. I’ve never graduated college. I did two years at a local community college and just dropped out. Most people that I know that are very successful in real estate have never gone to college either.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: The one thing that we all had was just pure thick-headed, “That’s it. I’m going to keep going until I meet my goals.”

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: We’ve been shot down. We’ve been rejected. We’ve lost deals. You just have to always push. So it comes down to that ambition. Can you tap into your true ambition? Not just motivation, not being just motivated and pumped up.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: Because . . . You ever heard that quote, “Motivation is like bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.”?

Mike: Yeah. There you go.

Justin: [inaudible 00:07:04].

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: Yep. So I feel like that’s very true. Not everybody has the power to cultivate the motivation every day. Right?

Mike: Yep. Absolutely. Yeah, I think that it’s interesting, some of the things that you said, because I think that most people that I know too are not . . . It really has nothing to do with education. It has to do with kind of hunger to be successful. I know a lot of people that have been really successful. It usually came . . . For a lot of people, it came to a point where something happened that was bad, and failure was not an option at that point. Not that everybody had to have a rags-to-riches story, but . . .

Justin: Right. Right. Tragedy and accidents.

Mike: In my case, I had started . . . I tried to start a company before I got into real estate investing that really just burned through my wife and I’s savings, and we had a new baby. It was just like failure is not an option. You know?

Justin: Yeah.

Mike: Can’t do it. I’m a new husband. I’m a new father. I got to make this work, and we made it work. Then you get to a point to where you’re like . . . You realize kind of early on, maybe after you do five, 10, 15 deals, like this isn’t really hard at all. It’s just a matter of . . . Then it’s a matter of really kind of operationalizing it and making it . . . systematizing it and making it a business.

Justin: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting. See. That’s the thing. There’s always a chase.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: Right? No matter what. Even when you’re beginning, your goal is to get a deal done.

Mike: Do one deal. Yeah.

Justin: Yeah, you got a deal done. Great. Then you might have . . . Hopefully you hurried up and started getting back on the bandwagon to get more deals going or more leads coming in, but maybe you didn’t. Maybe you’re like most people, and you feel so good. You got your first deal done. Then all of a sudden, you spent through that $30,000, and you’re going, “I better do another deal.”

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: Right? Then you start to click in your mind. Okay. I need to build a system and always get deals, deals, deals coming through. Now, all of a sudden, you say . . . Your seasoned guys . . . You’re doing two to three deals a month or maybe a little more, but you’re trying to break that barrier. I feel like a lot of times, it’s that system-building that makes the difference. But without really putting in a lot of desire to build that system, you’re just not going to do that because there’s sort of like a comfort level. Right?

Mike: Yeah. Yeah.

Justin: So I feel like that kind of has a little bit to do with people scaling from one spot in life to the next. The question is comfort equals . . . See. Look. I think the thing is people always want to get to a certain point and then go lay on a beach all day. Right?

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: With an umbrella, and that’s it. That’s it. I’m going to go play golf all day. I’m going to go drink pina coladas all day. But the truth is people that are really hungry and that are driven to succeed don’t ever stop.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: There’s always that chase. So enjoy the chase. If you don’t enjoy it, it’s going to be tough to be really, really successful. So you might come into real estate with a goal of wanting to be a millionaire by 35. But if you don’t enjoy the real estate chase, you’re not going to have that desire because it’s going to keep going. Once you get to one spot . . . Okay. Now, you’re goal was to get two deals. You did two deals a month, and now you need to hit four. Okay. You did four, but now things have to happen to hit that four. You got to build systems. You got to understand that there’s things you need to do, and you got to enjoy it to some point because it’s not always going to be fun.

Mike: Right. Right. So I know . . .

Justin: You agree?

Mike: Just from our conversation earlier, you talked about how one of the things that got you out of the gate . . . I think one of the things that, in terms of the context you were just talking about of knowing that you need to build systems, kind of having the foresight to know that, “I did a deal. What do I do next? How do I rinse and repeat? How do I rinse and repeat over and over again?” is having a mentor.

Justin: Absolutely.

Mike: Yeah. So talk about that a little bit in terms of how that kind of got you over the hump of getting going.

Justin: Well, for . . . Yeah. For me, a mentor . . . I had done so much research, online research and bought courses. We’re talking before my first deal. Right? So like 2006, when I was really needing to get into something new. I had always had a passion for real estate anyway, but it was . . . That training wasn’t enough. So I finally buckled down, spent pretty much the last money I had available on a credit card and hired a coach and said, “Look. I’m going to go all in here, no matter what. I’m going to do whatever the heck this guy tells me to do. I trust him. I know he’s doing deals. So if I at least align myself with him and do what he tells me to do, I’m going to do it.” Well, in all reality, when I got . . . There wasn’t a whole lot of stuff when it came in. I was into the program. It’s not like it was a whole lot of crazy information I’ve never heard of in my life, but it was the way it was laid out. It was like, look, it’s a simple thing. Then the question is: Justin, did you do it today?

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: Well, no. You know, I got . . . Like most people, “But I was doing this.” You think it’s more important. Right?

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: When people think systems, they think of belts and wheels and all that.

Mike: Right.

Justin: But he’s like, “No, no, no. A system is getting a person to do one repetitive task for you daily or weekly or monthly.” Right?

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: So if it’s recruiting an REO agent to continue to send you in deals that meet a certain criteria, that’s a little bit of a system. Right?

Mike: Right.

Justin: Right? So people don’t really implement that. So he was like, “What did you do today?” The one thing that he did to me, he kept saying, “Justin, go to your local REA. Justin, go to your local REA.” All right, Patrick. All right. All right, buddy. I will. I will. The next week, “Justin, did you go to your local REA?” No. No, I was doing those other things that you said were important.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: Then I finally was like, “All right. He obviously means it, and I put out my last money. I better listen.” I just told myself I’m going to do whatever he tells me to do. So I went, and nothing happened the first time.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: But again, I have ambition, and I dig deep. I don’t ever give up, no matter what. So I went a second time. People . . . Put yourself in my mind frame at that time. I was a 21-year-old kid with a failing business, though it was a very successful company at one point, very successful, but with a failing business that . . . I knew nothing about real estate that was . . . In my mind, I was, “What value can I add to these guys?” You know? I didn’t know what a REA was. I didn’t know it was a room full of both newbie and experienced. I’m just thinking it’s a room full of badass or bad-to-the-bone investors. Right?

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

Justin: What am I going to do there?

Mike: Right.

Justin: So I did it. Sure enough, I met a HUD broker there. From there, I flipped a lot of deals with that guy.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah, you never know. Networking is critical. You never know. You never know who you’re going to meet, whether it’s a REA club meeting. There’s lots of different types of events. I mean, it could even be non-real estate events that you meet people that can add value to you somehow.

I mean, everybody could potentially be a bird dog or tell you about a lead. I don’t mean like a traditional bird dog, like I’m going to hire people to just go out and farm areas for me or hang up door-hangers or anything like that, but I mean a mailman could be a bird dog for you. Just say, “When you’re handing out the mail, if you ever see a house that looks like it’s had a fire recently, let me know.” Anybody could do that.

Justin: Absolutely.

Mike: So I’m going to screw up this quote, but it’s something like, “Activity equals productivity.” I don’t know. I should have thought about that before I said it, but I think that’s right.

Justin: [inaudible 00:14:38] man.

Mike: But basically just getting out and doing stuff. You know?

Justin: Yeah.

Mike: Nothing is going to happen if you’re sitting at home, thinking about doing something, for sure.

Justin: That is the God’s honest truth, man.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: Getting started, kind of getting over that hump, stopped with the shiny object syndrome.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: You know? If you’re listening to us, and you decide you want to go this route, you decide you want to go that route, or whatever route it is that you choose, do that route.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: Every time somebody moves on, I feel like they’re stealing from themselves. Right? Then you’re just going back in time. You know? Forget the money that you spent. Of course, that matters, but you’re really stealing time from yourself, all the time you just spent on that one thing. Now, you just stole it. Boom. Gone. Because your mind is going, “Well, I heard this is . . . I should do this or try that.” Get good at something. Pick something. You know?

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: Most people in this space always wonder, like people that teach and stuff. Are they honest? Is it real? Does it work? In my experience and my circle, it’s all been real. Now, I’ve seen a couple shady stuff on Facebook and all that, just duplicate of whatever. In my space, most of the bigger people . . . They’re all . . . It’s all real. It’s all processes that they have done or currently do in their business.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: The question is, are you doing it? When you do, do it, to a certain degree, and you got a little bit of resistance, did you quit? Did you say, “Oh, this doesn’t work.”? Am I going to try this? Am I going to do that? Am I going to start commercial now? Am I going to try building airplanes now? You know? It’s like you have to really just . . . Everything else . . .

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: I call it horse-blinders. You have to put horse-blinders on.

Mike: Yep.

Justin: You know?

Mike: Yep. Yep.

Justin: Nothing else exists.

Mike: Yep. So talk a little bit about, I mean, I know you have a system in place, a general philosophy of how to do certain things in your business that allow you to truly run a business and not be a slave to your business like a job. I know your passion is to surf. So you’re doing it so you can be a surfer dude.

Justin: That’s it.

Mike: Everybody has reasons. More time for their family, more time for charity, more time for playing golf, just whatever the heck it is. Maybe you need more time because you also have another job or another business on the side of it. But let’s get into talking a little bit about kind of your general framework for how you can run an effective business, but not have that necessarily be a 40-plus hour a week type business with lots of employees and other things.

Justin: That’s awesome. That’s another reason why I love doing these interviews, because hearing you say back, kind of reverberating, which is what I’m all about, working less. But earlier in the conversation, I’m talking about you’re always on the chase, which is true. Right? We’re always on the chase.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: But to a certain degree. Right? When you get to a certain point, and you’re managing a team, you still have to do certain things and work just a few hours a week, but you got to enjoy those certain things because those certain things are actually now the more critical steps. Right? Whether that’s networking with your attorneys or facilitating closings. Mike: Right.

Justin: Or going to events that you put on or whatever it is. You need to . . . That has to be something that you enjoy.

Mike: Right.

Justin: So in order . . . So yes. So the ambition and the passion for what you do should be there, so that you can continue to get better. But then the point is build a team, so that you work less. Work smart. Build more value in the marketplace and work less. So that’s what we’ve put together, where we do a lot of what I do now virtually. I stepped a little bit out of the fix-and-flip stuff. I still do some, but I moved on to virtually partnering with other wholesalers, so building buyers’ lists in other virtual markets, what I call pipelines. So pipelines would be joint venture wholesalers and a buyers’ list. People that . . . Other investors that want properties, whatever they are, right, rentals or flips. We go out, and we start working with these other wholesalers in that area. If we have somebody that’s looking for something like that, we’ll go ahead and put that property under contract and sell it or sell it over to our buyer. So that can be very systemized. For me, that’s what I’m all about because I don’t like to work a lot. For me, I wasn’t as . . . You’re very advanced, and you do an awesome job with what you do with the fix-and-flips. There are other people that do that. Not to say that I couldn’t figure that out to implement that.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: But I just found a different way that allowed me to give me outsource all of it.

Mike: Sure. Yeah.

Justin: You know? I bring in an operations manager. An operations manager is nothing but really a partner in your business, and you’re giving them a percent of your business to really build these pipelines for you. So you pick a market, build these two pipelines, and go and start doing work. You know? They’re responsible for that work. They’re responsible for the lead generation, the phone calls that come in. Now, we have two virtual assistants that do phone calls for us. So for me, I can be in [inaudible 00:19:33] one OM and two VAs.

Mike: Why don’t you talk a little bit about . . . So if you had to do over again . . . Let’s say you were starting over, because we started off saying, “Hey. We’re going to talk about primarily people that are looking to get out of the gate.” Of course, there’s a ton of veteran real estate investors too. I mean, I know people that do a lot of volume, and they need operational help too. They need help to kind of take themselves out of the business a little bit. But if you had to do it over again, for the new folks, the newer folks that are out there listening or the folks that maybe have been doing it for a while but want to ramp up, talk about some of the first places they should look at, in terms of kind of outsourcing or designing a business that can run more efficiently to where they’re not the basically road block in everything that they do.

Justin: Great question. First off, I think . . . I’ll bet that when a lot of people heard you just say that, the first thing they’re thinking is, “I’m not there yet. I’m trying to do deals. I’m trying to get my first deal.”

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: So I would say change that mindset now because employing somebody is nothing esoteric. It’s nothing that you’re not capable of doing. You know? One book that people should read is “The E-Myth Revised” by Michael [inaudible 00:20:46]. Right?

Mike: Yeah. Yeah.

Justin: I think that helps people wrap their mind around how they can actually manage somebody and recruit a person to do that. But I would say if you’re looking to do your first deal . . . Is that more of the question? Like if you were going to . . .

Mike: Yeah, when you’re kind of newer on. One thing that just came to mind as you were talking about trying to do more deals . . . Well, one thing that I know a lot of newer folks do is . . . From a marketing standpoint, they’re all over the board. They’re not structured. So I mentor quite a few people. So one of the things that I tell them is just, “You set a date on your calendar.” If you’re going to order direct mail, you have a system of saying, “I’m going to hit them every 90 days,” or whatever your number is, “And this is my list.” Just figure out what the dates are for the next year, because you can do that now. So you’re not thinking . . . Inevitably I’ll talk to people . . .

Justin: Free.

Mike: That were supposed to send their direct mail out two weeks ago, and they’re like, “Oh, man. We haven’t done that yet.” It’s like, “Well, you’re killing your business. Why would you do that?” Yeah.

Justin: Put it on Google Calendar.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. So just simple things like that. A lot of it is just kind of getting systems down.

Justin: Yeah.

Mike: Even if you still do it yourself, just the fact that you’re kind of structured and have processes in place to help make your life easier.

Justin: Yeah. One simple tool, system, what you’re just saying there, that made my life better but a little bit more frustrating is Google Calendar.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: So what do I mean by frustrating? Well, I set up every alert option it has. You know how you can do . . . It’ll email you when 30 minutes before a task is done. Then it emails you when a task is due. So let’s say we said, “Send out direct mail campaign at 10:30 Monday.” I have it email me 30 minutes before, I have it text me 30 minutes before. But not only does that happen. When I get an email, I get a text. So I get two texts and an email. So it’s a little extreme, but that’s my personality. I need to do that for myself. Right?

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: I need to be annoyed. Even worse, if I’m working and typing, and something is due in 30 minutes, it actually pops up on my screen. So I can be in the middle of an email, and all of a sudden, boom. I’m looking at my calendar, and I don’t know what the heck I’m typing anymore.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: But that’s a system.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: You know? That’s a system. It changes your life because, like we said in the beginning, it’s about doing the small little things. You know? That’s a . . . Actually sending out that campaign is what’s going to make you money.

Mike: Right.

Justin: Right? So if you keep putting it off . . .

Mike: Yeah. Building those systems really is the first thing, the first step towards outsourcing.

Justin: Yeah.

Mike: So you make it more efficient for yourself, and then you figure out . . . Okay. This needs to happen the same way every month or every quarter or every week or whatever it is. Then you’re like, “Huh. So I’ve kind of got that figured out. Now, I just need to tell somebody else to do that on those timeframes.” You start to remove yourself from it, and then somebody else . . . I mean, we use, in my business, there’s a ton of task tools out there. So every time I hear somebody say, “Here’s the task tool that we use,” it’s like, yeah, that’s one of like a million of them. But we use Asana, A-S-A-N-A, Asana.com. I think we have an upgraded account, maybe, but it’s like $50 a year or something. You could do pretty much everything you need to do, for the most part, with a free account.

Justin: Yep.

Mike: We have certain checklists, like this is our monthly general tasks. When a new month comes around, I have my admin. We’ll pull over and start a new list of 50 tasks that different people on our team have to do, and they’re already assigned because we have that in the template. Hey. On the third Thursday of every month, Mike has to do this. Most of the tasks are hers. In all honesty, we have a few virtual assistants. It’s like this is what we do for our general business. We have task lists and templates for our rehabs. So when we get a new . . . We just bought a house today. So she’ll start a task that says, “These are the things we do prior to closing or at the time of closing. These are the things we do when we’re rehabbing it. These things need to happen.” It’s from, “Put a lockbox on it, to turn the utilities on, to take the lockbox off.”

Justin: Yep. It sure is.

Mike: Close the file. You know? I mean, and everything in between.

Justin: Yeah.

Mike: It’s the same thing over and over and over again. It just takes a while to get to that point, but those things really help make your business much more efficient and really makes your life easier because almost nothing slips through the cracks anymore.

Justin: Yeah. Anybody that’s on your team . . . It becomes the same thing.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: It’s not going to change any. I just thought of two other sources, Teamwork.com and Basecamp.com.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: Same thing. Yeah. It’s funny when you’re saying that because I’m listening to you say that. I use Teamwork and Base Camp right now in what I do now, but I was thinking, “Dang. I should have been using that when I was doing a lot of fix-and-flips because it probably would have made my life a lot easier.”

Mike: Yeah. Yeah, it helps. It really helps. From a management standpoint, if you do have a team or you have it outsourced, it helps you hold other people accountable. I mean, they know that . . .

Justin: Yeah.

Mike: Anybody can see it. Are they behind . . . Are their tasks red?

Justin: That’s the thing.

Mike: Or are they green? You know?

Justin: Yeah. Yep.

Mike: So yeah.

Justin: That’s the thing. Everybody sees what you’ve done. If you didn’t accomplish that task and check it off . . .

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: Everybody knows you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing, which is a pretty cool part of that.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah.

Justin: [inaudible 00:25:41]. And they’re free.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin: Basecamp.com . . . The free version is just as . . . Well, the paid version is actually pretty good too, but whatever. It’s super cheap.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah.

Justin: $50 a year or something.

Mike: Yeah. So talk a little bit about . . . For people that are hearing this and thinking, “Wow. I need to put some systems in place, or I need to do this,” where do they start? There’s certain things that probably none of the people that are listening to this that are real estate investors, new real estate investors, veteran real estate investors, there’s some things that should probably always be the last thing to outsource, or maybe you never outsource it. I’ll just throw out an idea here. You should never outsource your cash management, for example.

Justin: Yeah.

Mike: Okay. But then there’s some things. It’s like you should never . . . There’s some things that you should . . . There’s like the first thing to go for everybody. I don’t know exactly what that is, but you just have to think of your kind of . . .

Justin: The first thing to go . . .

Mike: What’s that?

Justin: Great question. Yeah, great question.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah.

Justin: For me, what I’ve learned over time, first thing to go is lead generation. Stop. You know? Stop it. Because at least, that can be a broad question because what I do now, what we call 10-hour wholesaling, is a little different than if you were lead generation for fix-and-flip stuff.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: In what you do, you already have lead generation in place, but you, actually, it’s outsourced for you.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: So yeah, I’d say that’d be one of the things. If you’re new, and you’re trying to wholesale a property for the first time, one of the great . . . One of the best things you can do is send out a yellow letter campaign to inheritance lists and to absentee lists. Can you do that yourself in the beginning? Sure. But what I would recommend is, if one good thing, is decide . . . This is a really good question because now it’s really hitting me. If you’re not good at something in that process, get rid of that thing.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: So if you suck on the phone, right, you don’t like talking to motivated sellers, get rid of that task.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: Give it to somebody on like Patlive.com. Give them a script, and let them do it, or get your OM in place, which happens to be no money out of pocket. You’re paying them strictly on commission. Who likes commissions already? Real estate agents. So you find a real estate agent that’s not doing very well. They’re new. Get them on board.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: So everything works out good that way.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: Get rid of that task that you’re not good at or that you know. So be honest with yourself. Right? Say, “What is it that I know I’m supposed to do, but I know I’m going to keep putting off because I hate doing it?”

Mike: Right. Yeah. I think people need to kind of reflect on a combination of what they’re not good at and, like you said, what they don’t enjoy. Nobody is doing . . . Nobody is in this business to not like it. You know? You’re doing this for a reason, to get your life back, financial freedom, time freedom, whatever it is. So don’t become a slave to your own business. You know? It’s really important.

Justin: Absolutely.

Mike: I think that there’s a ton of people though that just have a really hard time letting go of certain aspects. I’m in that category, for sure. You don’t want to outsource so much that you lose control, for sure.

Justin: Yes.

Mike: There’s a balance there, but I think that’s where kind of systems come into place.

Justin: There is a balance. Yeah. I agree. There’s a balance. That’s probably when you get to a certain point like us. It’s like what . . . Where do we stop? Or how can we . . . We have to get used to that feeling of being able to lose some control and allowing other people . . . For me, that was . . . I think my desire to be more than financially free . . . Because the fix-and-flip stuff did really well for me too and still . . . Like I say, I still do some locally.

Mike: Yeah.

Justin: But my desire to be able to just not have to work as much trumped that feeling of, “I need to hold on.” So for me, I taught my first operations manager this system. I just . . . I think I trusted him so much that I just said, “Go for it,” even though I’m the one spending the money on the campaigns. Right? If he’s screwing up those phone calls, I’m losing money.

Mike: Right.

Justin: But I just was so motivated to say that may not be an extremely smart decision because if you don’t hire the right person, then, yeah, you could be losing money. If you spent $4000 on your mail campaign and put somebody in place and said, “Have at it,” but you don’t know exactly what they’re capable of doing closing those leads, yeah, you could be screwing yourself.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Well, hey, Justin, we’re kind of at the end of our time here. Why don’t you take a moment and just share some kind of general guidance, like summarize what we talked about here because we kind of jumped around, talking about a number of things.

Justin: Yeah.

Mike: But for folks that are really kind of looking to, have been maybe buying education or reading books or are doing a few deals and need to take it to another level . . . Just to get folks kind of out of that gate of brand-new or low-volume, and I need to kind of find a way to ramp this up, just give some general guidance on kind of final words here on what you’ve learned and the advice you would give to people.

Justin: Yeah. So my opinion . . . We can only give what we know as our truth. So my truth and my belief, and I’m lucky to hang out with some really successful people that happen to have the same beliefs, is take fearless action, no matter what. There is never a better time than right now. There is no time. You’re never ready, in my opinion. You’re never ready. Right? You can compare that to when . . . For me, my wife is like, “I’m ready to have kids. I’m ready to have kids.” I’m like, “Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.” You know? I really could have kept saying, “Not yet,” forever. You just got to do it.

Mike: You didn’t take fearless action?

Justin: I did take fearless action. Yes, I did. Yep. That was really good. But that’s it. Just take fearless action. There’s never a right time. It’s just do it, I’m telling you. Most of the stuff that you’re reading . . . If you believe it, like if it has good . . . There’s positive around it. Most content out there is pretty legit. It’s hard to say that. Take action on those steps. When you meet resistance, keep going because . . . Expect resistance. Enjoy the chase. For the people that are seasoned, start outsourcing the stuff that you don’t like, so that you can start advancing to further places.

Mike: Yep. Absolutely. Hey. Great advice. Justin, thanks so much for joining us today. Appreciate it.

Justin: Hey, man. It was awesome to talk to you. Thank you for having me here.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Please, stay in touch. We’ll talk again soon. Okay?

Justin: All right. Awesome. Talk to you soon.

Mike: All right. Bye-bye. Thanks for joining us on today’s Flipnerd.com podcast. To listen to more of our shows and hear from incredible guests, please access all of our podcasts in the iTunes store. You can also watch the video versions of our shows by visiting us at Flipnerd.com.