Real Estate Rock Stars

Mike: Welcome to the flipnerd.com podcast. This is your host, Mike Hambright, and on this show I introduce you to expert real-estate investors, awesome entrepreneurs and super cool venders that share our industry. We publish new shows each week and have hundreds of previous shows and tip videos available to you, all of which you can access by visiting us at flipnerd.com or visiting us in the iTunes store.
By the way, flipnerd.com is the most robust social platform in existence for real-estate investors, where you can find off-market wholesale deals in your market, find great local vendors to help you and your business in your market, and socialize, learn and grow with others in our industry. There is truly nothing like it. If you’re not already a member, please visit us at flipnerd.com today, where you can set up a free account in about 30 seconds. Everybody is doing it – the cool kids and even the nerdy ones. So get on over to flipnerd.com. And now, let’s get started with today’s show.
Hey, it’s Mike Hambright at flipnerd.com. Welcome back for another exciting VIP interview, where I interview some of the successful real-estate investing experts and entrepreneurs in the industry to help you learn and grow.
Today I’m joined by Jim Huntzicker. He’s a Chicago real-estate investor and the founder of realestateinvestoracademy.com, a real-estate coaching program. Jim has been involved in hundreds of real-estate transactions, and like me, he loves to meet other people, so he recently 29 rock star real-estate investors, some of the biggest names in our industry and put all the transcripts in an ebook that he’s just started sharing with the world. We’ll talk a little bit about that.
He came out of these interviews with a ton of lessons learned from many of the top real-estate investors in America including Doug Clark of Flip Men, Than Merrill, Chief Denney, Kent Clothier, Larry Goins – heck, even yours truly was involved. But if you enjoy my show and you like to meet a lot of other people and learn from their experiences, you’re going to love today’s show because Jim is going to share a lot of lessons learned and experiences he had from interviewing these folks. So before we get started, though, let’s take a moment to recognize our featured sponsors.

Advertisement: RealtyMogul.com is an online market place for real estate investing, connecting borrowers and capital from accredited and institutional investors. Get a rehab loan fast and close in as little as 10 days. Rates start as low as 9%.

We’d also like to thank National Real Estate Insurance Group, the nation’s leading provider of insurance to the residential real estate investor market. From individual properties to large scale investors, National Real Estate Insurance Group is ready to serve you.

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.

Yo, Jim, welcome to the show.

Jim: Hey, Mike, thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here, man.

Mike: Yeah, Yeah. So it’s interesting because in your process of creating the ebook, I bet that you had a lot of the same experiences that I do. I’m a veteran real-estate investor, I’ve done hundreds of deals, and then you start talking to people and you quickly realize that you really don’t know a whole lot. You probably had the same experience right?

Jim: You know, its wild. I’ve doing for seven years –and you know I’m primarily a rehab reno, so I knew I would learn a lot in this experience. I learned more than I ever, ever imagined. It was so much a great experience, just really awesome. I’ve done a couple hundred deals myself but there are guys in this book that have done 3,000 deals, so I’m nothing. This guy did that in one year.

Mike: Yeah, I mean its crazy. In fact, that’s part of the opportunity of real-estate investing is that there are a lot of ways to make money. I think that’s part of the challenge a lot of people face is it gets overwhelming in how many ways there are to make money so.

Jim: Yeah. There is a lot of take-aways that I’ll go through here but one of the big ones is to just pick something and focus on it. So many people get into real-estate investing and they go to a REIA event and they hear about wholesaling but they want to rehab. But they don’t want a wholesale, they want a rehab because there is more money in it and they’re like, “What’s a subject two?” or, “That sounds cool too,” or, “How about a lease option,” or, “You can wholesale these options? I think I want to do that.” Like a lot of entrepreneurs, we get that shiny-object-syndrome and we start going all over the place because there is so many different ways you can go.

Mike: Absolutely. Hey, before we kind of dive into talking about some of the things you learned and some of the people you talked to, why don’t you introduce them to yourself. Tell us a little bit about how you got started and a little bit about your background

Jim: Okay, I’m Jim Huntzicker, I’m a licensed real-estate agent, which is where I started. I was an agent first, and I started working with investors. My father is actually an agent too, and he worked with all our friends and family, so I was kind of screwed when I got into the business in that regard. So I had to figure out somebody to work with right?
I followed real-estate investors, so I started working with them and it didn’t take me very long to realize that I was in the wrong side of that coin because I’m helping these guys, I make a little commission, and they’re popping $30,000 a pop. So I quickly realized after about a year of working with those guys that I should be working as a real-estate investor myself. I thought, because I was an agent, I could very easily become a real-estate investor because, “I’m an agent, I’m licensed, and I know how to do this,” and, boy, was I wrong.
So, through lots of trials and tribulations and figuring things out, I did start rehabbing properties. Because I was an agent first, I had the MLS and so I’ve always used the MLS as my primary deal source. My market here is I buy around $225,000 to $250,000 – the purchase price – and then we sell them around, anywhere from $400,000, to $500,000, to $600,000. So it’s a higher price point than most people would be comfortable marketing in but that’s where I live. That’s what I learned and that’s what I know. Good or bad, it is what it is. So, I’ve used the MLS to get 75% of my deals for the last seven years, and so that’s what I’ve been doing.

Mike: That’s incredible. I actually mentor some folks in the Chicago area – I grew up in Illinois – and Chicago is a unique market; and there are some other markets like it where you can actually still find quite a few deals on the MLS. I mean, where I’m at in Dallas, not so. There are probably some people that would totally disagree with me but, those are the people comfortable doing a lot of thin stuff that I’m just not comfortable doing. But, yeah, Chicago is still one of those markets where you can do really well in the MLS right?

Jim: Yeah, absolutely. I have students I teach one on one, and I have students all over the country too. There are guys that have never used the MLS before and have only done private seller marketing and they’re like, “How do you do that?” I give them a couple of tips and they’re like, “Holy crap!” Then there is markets where it’s like, man, I can’t seem to do it and I can’t . . . It’s work, it’s not a piece of cake but there are tricks and tools on how to work the MLS and how to do it. There is no question, all over the country there’s tighter areas where the MLS is very difficult to get deals from.

Mike: Yep. Yep. Awesome. So why don’t you tell us some of what you got out of creating your ebook and interviewing so many guys – and gal, I should say gal.

Jim: Yeah, Lenny Patton on lease options is . . . I set out to get 15 guys, by the way, and I figured I’d reach out to 50. You’d get less than half, there are big time guys that wouldn’t have time for an interview, and the response was phenomenal. I couldn’t believe it and it was really, really top-notch guys that are very busy in their businesses. But what I found is a lot of them actually, don’t work that much because they set up systems. Don’t get me wrong – but a lot of them have time because they have systems in place.
I’ll go through some of the apps and the websites they use to track their teams, which a lot of these guys said the same apps and it was just incredible information. I heard it from five, six, seven, eight different guys, the same app that they run their entire rehab business with and they control three or four different teams and businesses in different parts of the country with this same website/app. So I’ll go through that here.
But the biggest thing I took away from this was, like we just mentioned, to focus on one thing. Pick something. Most people should probably start with wholesaling. It makes sense because you can do it with very, very limited . . . where you can’t get hurt. You can literally do a wholesale deal with no money. I know everybody wants to be a rehabber because there are bigger checks in it but there is risk there, you know? With a wholesale deal, you can risk $100, $0 if you do it right. But either way, whatever you want to learn and do, you have to pick one avenue.
There are guys in this thing, there are rehabbers, there are wholesalers, there are lease option guys, there are wholesale-lease options guys, there is guys who do apartment complexes. There are guys that do tax liens and HUD homes. You name it, there is somebody in this book that does some very specific form of real-estate investing and that is mostly all they do.
Over the years they might have expanded into other areas of real-estate investing, but this is the guys who are at the top level, the guys who do 1,000 deals, 2,000 deals, 3,000 deals. They have mastered one form of real-estate investing and have gotten really, really good at it. Guys that have been doing seller-financing – a guy out of San Antonio had done like 1,300 seller-finance deals. Very, very impressive stuff.

Mike: Is that Mitch?

Jim: Yeah, exactly. So Mitch is in here. I learned so much from him because that is a world of real-estate that I never knew. I know about it, I’ve heard about it, but I didn’t know the details. He talks about how he knows that stuff. I learned something from every single interview that I did. I talked to him for two hours off-line because I was like, “You got a minute? Because I could use to talk to you a bit more.”

Mike: Yeah, Mitch is awesome. He is actually just releasing a new book as well and I’ve had him on the show. He is the only person I’ve had where we were so into it . . . you know, we usually go about a half hour, and 30 minutes into it, we hadn’t even gotten half way. I had to pause and I was like, “Mitch, is it okay if we keep talking for a half hour? I’m just going to cut this up into two segments.”
A lot of people probably don’t realize that I don’t just do this show for the world. I love to share it, of course, but it’s a learning experience for me. I really enjoy getting to talk to people and meet people like you and just talk. Real-estate investing for the most part, as you can probably agree, is kind of a lonely world if you’re not doing stuff like this or part of Masterminds or coaching people or other things to where you can kind of interact and learn from each other.

Jim: Without question. In fact, one of the tips I got from this, and I kind of fell into this years ago when I started teaching at REIAs. I didn’t intend that because I had this mentality, too, where it’s like, “Okay, I learned this stuff, I know how to do it. I’m making really good money. I don’t want anybody else to know what I’m doing – this is only for me. Nobody else can find out my tricks,” as was if I’m the only who knows how to do this stuff.
I’m a rehabber, so once I started teaching to meet new wholesalers at the REIAs, I would go to the real-estate investor clubs and I would teach there just about rehabbing. I didn’t sell anything at the time. I was just looking to meet wholesalers, that is all I was doing. But once I started teaching and talking about what I was doing, people would come up to me and share and give me deals, people had these deals that they weren’t sharing and all of the sudden they were giving me deals because I spoke at the thing and I taught for free. It was just awesome.
But most people, yeah, you couldn’t be more right. In this business, you get into it and you start making some good money and you’re like, “Okay, I’m not telling anybody what I do. I’m just going to keep making this kind of money. I like these big checks.” What I realized through trying to meet wholesalers is that sharing actually brings you more deals, kind of having that abundance mentality.
Networking is another huge takeaway that I have from all of this. A lot of people have said “networking”. You’re like, “Networking for deals, does that even make sense? How does that work?” and going to REIAs, talking to people – not even just REIA’s – anywhere. You mentioned in the article, you’ve got to read it to see the whole thing here, but Mike talks about going to his HOA meeting with his shirt on that says “FlipNerd” or his company name or whatever was on there, and it wasn’t even about real-estate per se, but it was like, “Oh, what do you do for a living? Oh, here’s one house,” two years later, “”Here’s another house.”
So you never know where you’re going to be able to meet somebody. When you talk about a mail man, he’s going to know about vacant properties. That was so eye-opening to me. I’m like, “My mail man! My freakin’ mail man! I can just pay him. Hey, man, here’s a couple hundred bucks, just remember me and then I’ll pay you $1,000 if I buy a property from you. How about that? If you tell me about a property that I buy I’ll give you a $1,000.” That was huge for me, huge. As soon as I heard that, I couldn’t wait to get off the call.

Mike: How do you implement it . . .

Jim: So, anyway, networking, you never know who can bring you a deal, so that was a very powerful point to all this is having an abundance mentality and sharing. It is a very lonely world being a real-estate investor, especially if you don’t get out there and talk much. I’m an introvert, people get to know me, especially if we’re talking about real estate, and you see how fast I talk and everybody who knows me says, “There is no way you are an introvert. It’s just not possible,” and my trainer who is like, “Dude, there is absolutely no way you are an introvert.” I talk a lot, when I’m nervous I talk a lot, and at the gym, I don’t love it there so I talk a lot because I’m stalling.

Mike: You don’t have to do any real work.

Jim: Right. I’m a terrible networker is what I’m getting at, because I’m an introvert. If we’re talking about real estate, I can go all day long. But still I’m not one who likes to go out and start conversations, so I really had to go out and do that and find ways to do that, but it’s such a power thing once you do. So for me it was speaking, it was getting out in front of these groups, and then people would come to me. It was like forced networking for me and that was the way that I had to do it because just going somewhere to chit-chat is not my thing. I’m not a good chit-chatter, I’m not a good small talker.
So I didn’t know if this was going to work this way but I was speaking to these wholesalers and I realized, “Wow, this is awesome.” People are coming to me. It was easy then. It’s a really cool experience to have that abundance mentality, it was really powerful.

Mike: Yeah. So, let’s talk a little bit about . . . I think I probably detoured you a second ago. You were going to talk about some kind of productivity apps and tools that people use to make their business more efficient.

Jim: So the apps, these guys, the question that came up in these interviews, I asked all these guys one question by the way. Here is the question I asked everybody, including yourself. I said, “If you had to start your real-estate investing business over from scratch today, without much money, knowing what you do now, what would you do first and what marketing strategy would you focus on?” So that was the one question. That is probably why I got so many of these bad dudes that were producing at a very high level because you know it was one question, very simple.
Then I slipped one more question in right before they called me. I said, “I’m going to do one follow up question. Could you just share one productivity habit or tool you use on a daily basis that helps you produce the results you do?” These guys say splash cold water on their face, there’s goal settings, there’s apps. Guys said a variety of different stuff and, honestly, to me personally, that productivity section was more powerful to me than anything because it’s like, “Man, look at these guys producing. These guys have done 3,000 deals. What does he do? What’s his number one productivity tip?”
A lot of guys did say an app or also a website. The one I kept hearing over and over again – I’ve never heard of this one, quite honestly, I’m sad to say, but I already use it – is Trello. It’s just for lists and organizing. You can assign tasks to different people on your team, or you can just keep it on your own. Awesome. I’ve already had, like, six lists. It’s very incredible.

Mike: Yeah, we use that for some things actually, so yeah.

Jim: Yeah, it’s on my desk everyday now and Podio was another one. Podio is one that I’d heard of but I’d never used it. But so many of these guys just kept saying, “Podio, Podio, Podio.”

Mike: Yeah, that’s our CRM as well, yeah.

Jim: From your Masterminding, from your networking stuff, I’m sure, is where you hear about this stuff, but I’d heard about it, so I finally implemented it recently and wow. The accountability for the team and the on-site pictures can be sent and uploaded into the thing, it’s just incredible. Very, very impressive.
So, Trello, Podio, and then a lot of these guys are running crazy big businesses, guys are doing millions and millions of dollars in business and you know what they use for the background of all their systems and their email? Gmail, and they use Google Drive. So they use all these free Google products. People think that since it’s free, it can’t be good.
There’s one dude in here who is doing millions and millions and tens of millions of dollars, crazy big, he’s the best guy in here, and you know what he runs his team with? Google Drive. It’s free. He doesn’t use it because it’s free because they can afford to buy whatever they want. They use it because it’s very effective. It’s real-time. You can make a change into a document and its real-time, when somebody else opens it. He’s like, “I can’t find another system that does what we need this effectively and this easily, so I use Google Drive.”
So Trello, Podio and Google Drive and Skype. Several guys said they could not run their business without Skype. Skype is no secret to anybody, but some of these guys said they could not run their business without it because they use it to communicate because they’re virtual.

Mike: Especially virtual assistants or a virtual team. Yep.

Jim: Exactly. Mark Evans, he does stuff in Ohio. He’s a turnkey cash flow guy, he sells turnkey cash flow. and he runs virtual real-estate investing. I say “virtual” in air-quotes because, he explains it very well in there. People here are like, “You can’t do virtual. Who sells that virtual stuff?!” and he’s like, “Here is what virtual is,” he goes, “I used to live in Ohio. I run a business in Ohio. I started a business in Ohio. I built it so effectively,” and he talks about the e-myth, “that I can now run it virtually from Florida, where I live.” That’s what virtual means to him.
It’s not like never going to a market and flipping deals there, which people do. I know there’s guys who do that. It’s very difficult to do and challenging but you can do it. But what virtual meant to him, and I’m glad he explained it, because I think it annoys a lot of people quite frankly – I know it does – “Virtual!? Who can do that? Virtual real-estate investing.” He has a book on virtual real-estate investing, but he explained it as, he has built a business and stepped away from it and now from Palm Beach Florida, where he lives, he runs his business in Ohio, in Georgia, I think Michigan, and all over the place.
But that’s what virtual means to him is he just built a successful business. It was a good takeaway. because I always said “virtual” too and I was like, “Okay, cool,” and then he explained it and it was like, “Oh, that makes a lot of sense.”

Mike: I haven’t had Mark on my show yet. I know who he is, I know of him. I’ve had a lot of other people that do a lot of virtual investing and they invest in multiple markets. It’s been a big eye-opener for me in terms of interviewing people because I thought the same thing. I’m like, “There is no way. I touch and feel everything. I approve every deal myself because I’m on the hook for it.” If you’re wholesaling, it’s very different.
As I started to kind of think about it, really over the past couple of years, I have literally done over 300 buys, so 600 transactions plus, probably more than that. I’ve been to a title company maybe 10 times. Those were kind of random ones, like somebody wanted to use their title company and I couldn’t use my own team. They weren’t as friendly to me or what I was doing.
But lately I close deals literally from my iPad and my Chase app, I wire money, and my own market. It’s like, “Well, okay, it doesn’t really matter where I’m at.” Literally, we went to other countries. My family and I went to Iceland for New Year’s recently and I bought and sold houses from Iceland, six hour time difference, on my iPad.

Jim: You responded to me from Iceland. You sent me a text message from Iceland and I’m like “Really? Awesome, thank you.”

Mike: So when you really start to think about it, virtually it’s in my own market. I think there is still some challenges with reviewing deals. Especially if you’re going to rehab, you want to know a little bit more about what you’re getting into but, like you, I’ve had some of the same eye-openers, meeting people and how they’re doing things, and I think that the type of stuff that we’ve been doing recently that I interview and you interview for your book – and even people listening to this show – what I hope is they get a lot of eye-openers out of it. People should go get your book to learn what some of these people have said because people who have done a lot of deals, there is a lot to learn from them.

Jim: Yeah, again, I knew I would learn a lot; but I learned a lot more than I ever expected in so many awesome ways. It was inspiring and motivating. I couldn’t wait to get to the next interview every time. I got personally so much out of it. I knew I would learn but I got motivation and I got inspiration. Talking to these guys at such a high level, it was such a cool experience. Literally, our conversations are in transcriptions, you can read the entire thing. There is actually, the course that I’m coming out with, “MLS Domination”, the audios are going to be available and there is a bonus. That’s going to be the only way to get those audios is in that program, so you’ll be able to get the audios, there is a way to get those. But just awesome, awesome stuff.

Mike: Yeah. So, tell us some of the biggest tips. When you asked the question . . . what threw me for a wrinkle was, “What would you do if you had to do it all over again, with little-to-no money?” Most people get started in this business with no money. It’s a lot easier if you have money, I think.
As you know, I bought a franchise, I paid for a franchise. From the very beginning you pay for advertising. That’s how we generate leads. My business is unique in that regard, but quite frankly, most of the guys you talk to over time, you’ll hear them teaching people how to run your business like a franchise, which typically means making investments in it. So that was the wrinkle for me. But what are some of the big lessons you learned out of people that said, things they could do with little to no money?

Jim: Well, the biggest thing was networking, going and meeting people that have deals and asking them to sell their deals. Co-wholesale, I guess you could call it. You’ve heard and I know there are books on that. Pat has a book on that. But, literally, forget co-wholesaling, go find guys that have deals to sell and ask if you can help sell them, and if you do, if you bring a buy ask if they’ll pay you half or something.
There is a guy, Matt Theriault. Matt is a great guy, he’s a war vet, he was overseas. When he came back didn’t have much money, he had no money and he had bad credit. So what did he do? Now, it’s a hustle, this is not a piece of cake, but his first month in the business he went and co-wholesaled other people’s products. He didn’t have to go market for them, because other people already had them, the buyer’s he just had to go meet and talk to. So literally with no money, in his first month, I want to say he made 18,000 in his first month. He’s never looked back and he’s done hundreds and hundreds of deals since.
Those weren’t even his deals and he sold those deals by hustling. He went to one REIA, he found guys that were selling deals and they were like, “Hey, I have some for sale.” He met that guy and then he went to another REIA down the street or in another town and he said, “Hey, here is what I got.” He made his own flyer and upped the price or had a split deal, none of his own money, just his time, and he made $18,000 in his first month.
So networking for deals, literally, and guys have different versions for that, but that was one way that was very powerful to get deals with very little money. Another way with having MLS access and getting another agent on your team, the MLS, that’s the deals. What I call the MLS is, I know you probably think the MLS stands for the Multiple Listing Service, but it actually stands for Motivated List of Sellers. It’s the biggest list and everybody on their wants to sell right?
Just like any other form of advertising, with the MLS, if you send out a blanket of direct mail, most of those people don’t qualify for what we do. Would you say 90% aren’t going to be able to sell it for what we want, maybe 95%?

Mike: Right.

Jim: The MLS is no different. Most of those deals are not for us. You’ve got to cherry pick the best ones. It’s time, but there’s literally no marketing money in that either. You’ve just got to know how to do it.
There are lease options. Robert Brand talks about his big thing right now is lease options. He is doing $300,000 and $400,000 houses and he’s doing lease options. So it’s none of his own money, no loans, no hard money, no private money, no loans of any kind. It’s none of his money, he doesn’t do any rehab on any of the houses of any kind. There is no wholesaling. It’s paperwork. You’ve got a guy learning the paperwork process, but that is what he’s doing. He’s doing lease options for $300,000, $400,000 houses.
I was very impressed by that. He’s done lots of forms of real-estate over the years. But his current form, what he’s doing right now, is that. It’s very impressive. You’ve got guys like Than Merrill talking about the MLS and you’ve got guys like Doug Clark, the guy from Flip Men on SpikeTV. When he got in the business, he did subject twos. He got very good at subject two, the existing mortgage, and how to work that deal and that’s still what he teaches today.
An overwhelming thing that guys said too was to find a mentor, whether you have to go work for one. If you can’t afford to buy one, go work for one. Offer to work for someone for free. If you can’t afford to pay one, a lot of these guys will charge $10,000, $20,000, $25,000 for their one on one coaching or their Mastermind program or whatever it is, if you can’t afford that, then go find a guy in your market, find the biggest wholesaler, find the biggest rehabber and ask what you can do for him, for free. Then he’ll teach you as you go.
You’ll find a mentor. Big, big, big thing because if you try to learn this on your own, you could spend 10 years and just be spinning your wheels still. So learn from somebody who is doing it already.

Mike: Yeah, and even if you do pay, I think what a lot of people don’t think enough about is the opportunity cost of their time. Okay, you’re going to do something and you’re complaining about the money, but how much money will you lose by taking 10 times longer to learn it and miss out on a bunch of opportunities in the meantime?

Jim: Without question. My first program I paid $10,000 for. I had no money at the time. I had no business getting into it, I thought. I put it all on my credit card, and knowing what I know now, I would pay $30,000 for that because it taught me everything I needed to know. I still go back to that. By the way, that was seven years ago, I got into that program. I still go back to that to that site for different resources. It’s like, “Oh man, they really updated that,” or, “I don’t have this.” It’s one of those things that I go back to because I don’t know everything and I don’t pretend to.

Mike: Awesome. Well, Jim, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about the programs that you have. I know have a product coming out that is the MLS Domination product right?

Jim: Yeah. It’s the MLS Domination product. I’m a licensed real-estate agent in Illinois, that’s where I started. I started as an agent so I have a really good understanding of the MLS. So as a rehabber, that’s why I use that as my primary deal source.
Once I got into one and one coaching regionally for a big national chain and then I got out of that, but I liked it so I got into one on one coaching on my own. So I was teaching these guys one on one on my own and I was charging a lot of money for it, and they were happy with it. What we kept going over – we would do two calls a month – and we kept going over MLS stuff.
I’m thinking, “Man, this is big money.” For us to go over what I thought was low level stuff, but, no, they were happy with the calls, don’t get me wrong, I just thought we should be going over much higher level business building stuff during our phone calls. But we’d come back to the calls and they’d say, “How do we do the MLS thing? Remember that REO thing, we talked to that REO agent? And what did you say that REO agent that got you that deal?”
We had an estate sale agent. “What was that trick that you used?” Because with estate sales, very often I’m not the highest cash offer that they accept. That’s not because my money is greener. It’s because the dialogues that I have with the agent initially . . . when the thing lists, I submit my offer, I say the right stuff to that agent that makes them want with my offer.
They come back and they say, “Oh, you’re not the highest cash offer. Would you like to increase your offer?” I say, “No. I told you I gave you my highest cash offer. This is the best one I can do. You probably have a couple offers that are higher than mine and those are probably from inexperienced real-estate investors,” and maybe they’re not, “but the odds are I know when I can pay this amount.” “The odds are I know I can pay this amount. The odds are they’re going to go do the inspection, they are going to come ask you for some ridiculous inspection credit and you’re going to be two weeks later,” and I might have spent my money, maybe my $245,000 that is good today will only be worth $240,000, if I even have that money anymore because I have to go spend it on something else.
“So I could pay you $240,000 today, that guy that offered you $255,000, what if he asks for a $20,000 credit because he says there is foundation leak?” So I waive the inspection. So it’s just dialogue. It’s the right stuff to say. All the time I buy estate sales and I’m not the highest cash offer. That is not by mistake.
You kept going back to all these dialogs and I put together a product to give to my one on one coach students. Literally that was the only reason I was creating it was to say, “Okay, you sign up for my one on one coaching program. I’m going to give you what I call the MLS Domination.” I didn’t come up with a name for it because I didn’t have anything at the time. So once I created the product I was like, “This is an awesome product,” and I, through the product creation process of learning how to get it online, I’m like, “I should make this even better and just sell it to the world.”
So, I have an active role in the course because I answer questions and I’m actively in there doing stuff with people. It’s going to be open here in about two weeks. I think you’re going to be releasing this in a week or so. The course will be open for a week. We’ll be closing it down here, I think the week of the 16th. But it will be open for a few weeks for people who want to come in. It’s just teaching people how to use the MLS.

Mike: And without really knowing your program at all, you think can probably agree, what I said earlier ,traditionally, I haven’t bought many houses off the MLS but when I say that, it’s hard for me to go look at active listings and see a deal and make an offer on it. But you’ll probably agree that a big part of dominating the MLS is building relationships with people that get MLS type deals. My guess is you probably get some deals before they ever hit the market, right?

Jim: Lots of them. I love estate sales, my favorite deal in the MLS because it’s maybe the most money. But those don’t come out very often, but they are my favorite deal. But the pot of gold in the MLS is the smaller REO agents, the guys doing 10, 15 deals a year. The big ones, there’s a way to work with them too but the smaller ones, you contact that guy and say, “Hey, I just looked at your property. I can pay list price or over list price,” whatever you can pay. “Can you represent me as a buyer’s agent also?” and this is a guy you’ve never met before.
They’ll say, “Why would you do that?” and I say, “I’m a licensed real-estate agent but I’m an investor. I make my money on the back end of the deal and I need to build relationships with guys like you. So if you are able to double end the deal like this, all I ask is if you get more of these deals, you bring them to me. You can always double end the deals with me.”
So what do you think they do? Now, they have to hit the market but anybody watching or listening, you see those deals that hit the market and you’re like, “Aww,” and then it goes under contract one hour later. Do you think anybody ever had a shot at that ever? That was already sold before it ever hit the market. They have to list those deals because the bank has to see them go active. So they list it, they take a screen shot of the active listing, and they mark it contingent, because it’s already sold because they sold it for list price.
So there is all these ways to build . . . that goes into networking, right? That goes back to networking and that’s what it’s all about is how to build a relationship and the biggest key here is how to work those spot REO agents. But there is so much stuff in here that covers how to get deals in the MLS.

Mike: Yep. Awesome. We’ll as links in here for the MLS Domination and the Real Estate Investing Rockstars, all of that down below the video here for those that want to get access to it. Anything else you want to summarize here?

Jim: Well, yeah, what I’ll go through real quick are the other productivity items. I showed you some apps, but the biggest overwhelming thing was time blocking. The guys at a very high level, hard core, one guy did every Friday, phone off. His Friday is his planning day, his systems day. John Cochran, he does not talk to anybody on Fridays. Hardcore time blocking. But most of these guys did about two hours a day. No email, phone off or phone on airplane mode.
There is a great app called “Focus@Will” that you can put on your phone or your computer. When you put the app on it plays whatever music you want – I have really slow classical – but it doesn’t let your phone ring, it doesn’t let your email open. You can put 60 minutes, 30 minutes, 120. It’s awesome stuff. So that is a big app that a lot of these guys use, but time-blocking anyway, like specific two hours or three hours a day, where you don’t let yourself get interrupted.
The importance of goal setting, this is a great one from Than Merrill. I thought this was great way to explain it. He does very hardcore weekly goals and he resets them every Sunday night. His goal of setting his goals is to actually hit 80% of his goals. You say, “Why would you want to hit 80%?” Because if you hit 100% then you set the goals too low. He wants to set his goals high enough where he actually can’t reach all of them so he can reset them for the next week. The goal is not to complete all of them. It’s best he could, if he did do 100% of them.
I’d heard that at some level before but it was just powerful to hear a guy that produces on his level, he wants to hit 80% of his goals for that week because he didn’t want to under sell himself on the what he could actually accomplish. He wanted to set it a little too high. It’s really cool stuff.
And then systems. You pour in some systems, and that led into the apps ands the websites. But using those systems and having those systems in place, the time blocking was probably the biggest one. I started doing that about a year ago. It changed my life, literally. I was trying to figure out how to spend more time with my kids and at home and I’m like, “I’ve got so much to do.” I’m an entrepreneur. I always have stuff going and the minute I started time blocking three hours a day with no phone and my wife is the only one who knows how to get a hold of me during that time. If you call me and my phone is off, only emergencies. I have gotten so much done in that two or three hours a day it is wild. You’re not checking Facebook or emails, no texts are popping up, no phone calls or radio. If you just do two hours a day, it will change your life. It’s very, very powerful stuff.

Mike: Absolutely. That is something I struggle with myself for all the same reasons. I have a ton going on and you start to feel like, when you put yourself out there like you do or like I do, you start to feel like, ” I have a lot of people depending on me now. I need to be available for when they need me.” But the reality is there is nothing that is so urgent that it can’t wait for a few hours.

Jim: There is no fire.

Mike: Yeah. And if there is a fire by the way, there is probably nothing you could do to stop it immediately anyway.

Jim: Well, nothing that can’t wait three hours at least, right? That’s the way I look at ti. Because I had that mental block too, and once I got past that mental block, there is nothing that can’t wait three hours except for my kids and my wife, which is why they are the only ones who can get a hold of me during that time. But that is emergency time only.

Mike: So you want to publicly share how the people can get a hold of you or no?

Jim: I actually have a line in my office that nobody knows except my wife. She’s the only one that knows that number. For me it was like, “My wife, my wife,” that was my mental block. “Beyond people needing me, what if my wife needs me during that time?” So I was struggling with that. That’s why I set up a line in my office, I turned off the other one. There’s one line, my wife is the only one that knows the number to it. Then I feel comfortable because I had to get past it somehow. I have three year old twins and I’m a freak about their safety, like anybody with their kids so I’m always worried. I’m that dad. That was a mental block for me, and that’s how I figured it out. She never calls by the way.

Mike: Well, yeah, it’s just a peace of mind that it’s there if you need it you know? It’s the airbag in your car. You probably drive it forever and ever and never need it but just the comfort to know that there is some safety features there right?

Jim: Yeah exactly. But time blocking at least two hours a day has changed my business life and I’ll do it forever. It’s awesome

Mike: That’s awesome. Hey, Jim, thanks so much for sharing and for those listening and watching right now, we are going to add some links down below here for how to get to Real Estate Investing Rock Stars. Get the ebook, it’s going to be full of some great information from just what Jim shared here with us today and literally 30 full interviews so there is a ton of information there that we didn’t even get to today as well as how to get to the MLS Domination program that Jim is about to launch so, Jim, thanks for your time today.

Jim: Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Mike: Yeah, buddy, we’ll talk again soon.
Thanks for joining us again for today’s flipnerd.com podcast. To watch or listen to more great shows, please flipnerd.com or visit us in the iTunes store. To access the most robust social platform in existence for real estate investors where you can find off-market wholesale deals, great vendors, literally in your market and to socialize with other likeminded individuals, please visit the one, the only, flipnerd.com. If you’re not yet a member, you can set up a free account in about 30 seconds. It’s pretty much the coolest site that’s ever existed in the real estate investing industry. So get on over to flipnerd.com.
Thanks for joining us again for today’s flipnerd.com podcast. To watch or listen to more great shows, please flipnerd.com or visit us in the iTunes store. To access the most robust social platform in existence for real-estate investors where you can find off-market wholesale deals, great vendors, literally in your market and to socialize with other likeminded individuals, please visit the one, the only, flipnerd.com. If you’re not yet a member, you can set up a free account in about 30 seconds. It’s pretty much the coolest site that’s ever existed in the real estate investing industry. So get on over to flipnerd.com.