Wholesale Buyers On Autopilot?

[00:00:00] Are you a real estate investor that’s ever had a hard time selling one of your properties?

Welcome to real estate investing secrets. We’re all looking for freedom and the opportunity to live better, more fulfilling lives. But most of us were trained our entire lives to work for someone else and chase their dreams.

How can we use real estate investing as a vehicle to achieve financial freedom? My life is dedicated to answering your real estate investing questions and helping you build an investing business that allows you to change your. And the world around you and to enable you to turn your dreams of financial freedom into a reality.

My name is Mike Hambright from flipnerd.com and your questions get answered here on the real estate investing secrets show.

Dylan: Hey Paul, welcome to the show.

Paul: Hey, thanks for having me, Dylan. I’m glad to be here.

Dylan: Absolutely. So this is called the real estate investing secret show. I wanna welcome everyone.

Who’s watching and listening. We have had over [00:01:00] 1500 episodes of this show. Make sure that you subscribe, go back and listen to all the other shows and watch the shows that we’ve done. There’s tons of great real estate investing secrets. That’s why we call it that, but we are on the flip nerd podcast.

Network. So I’m excited to have you here, Paul. And, um, we were just spending a few minutes together, kind of getting to know each other a little bit. I got to meet, uh, one of your reps at, uh, a recent investor fuel meeting. And when you popped on the screen, I’m like this isn’t the guy I met, but you know what let’s, let’s let you dive in a little bit.

Tell us about your company town square and what you do for real estate investors.

Paul: Yeah, thanks. That’d be great. Uh, and yeah, Kevin, our, uh, director of sales. He’s my , he’s my childhood best friend, still my best friend. And we’re, he’s a little bit bulkier than me. He’s a little bit bigger than me and, uh, I’ll admit to it, but he has the same hair.

I’ll say I had the man bun first. um, But yeah, I, I’m excited to be here. We started town square. I say we that’s. My co-founder. His name [00:02:00] is Mitch Tracy. He’s our CTO. Um, we started town square back in the middle beginning ish of 2019. So we’ve been at this for quite some time over three years. Uh, well, over a thousand days, , uh, trying to figure our way through the world of technology startups and.

Really the world of real estate, uh, as a, as a provider, as a service provider. So, uh, we started town square originally back in 2019, after I had done some wholesale deals, I was a real estate agent. I started what is now one of the largest real estate photography companies on the east coast. My wife now runs that business.

Um, And yeah, I met Mitch, uh, in the midst of learning how to code. I taught myself Python, uh, and a couple plugins for Python so that I could build an algorithm to predict who was going to sell their house next. And it worked out great for me. I purchased two of my biggest [00:03:00] real estate accomplishments. I bought a house that took me two and a half years to buy, but I bought a house from that algorithm that cost me a dollar after two and a half years.

Uh, and then I turned around a week later and sold it for, uh, $86,000. So that was a big deal. Um, and then from that same algorithm that I built, I, uh, I purchased a house. Uh, my wife and I turned into a rental and then we house hacked. It, flipped it and then sold it to our tenants, uh, for a, a big profit. It was really, really amazing.

Um, so I showed Mitch that success and I said, look, man, like, you know, a lot more about coding at the time. Mitch was a very, very senior developer at a big database company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And. I said, look at these things that I’m doing, you know, so much more than me. So you should come with me and improve this algorithm.

We’ll start doing more deals. We’ll build a rental portfolio. We’ll do some wholesale. We’ll do some [00:04:00] whole tails. So on and so forth. And lo and behold, he quit his job in the middle of 2000, 19. Uh, little did anybody know that the pandemic was right around the corner? Beginning of 2020, uh, we had 95% accuracy with that algorithm, meaning we could predict who was going to sell their home in the next 6, 8, 12 months with up to 95% accuracy.

And a month later, the pandemic hit , uh, and it messed up all of our data. Fast forward a year or two, we went through a couple different iterations of town square and the platform moving totally away from the prediction side and then into what it is now, which is a dispositions platform, uh, a selling a deal selling platform for real estate investors.

We,

Dylan: yeah. Paul, let me stop you there. Yeah, let’s break down just a little bit more. Like what, what does dispositions mean? Sometimes we’ve got some newer folks who watch and listen, so, so explain what dispositions is, uh, when we’re talking. Real estate [00:05:00] investors just a little bit, if you

Paul: would. Totally.

Totally. Yeah. So I even backing up a little bit farther, zooming out a little bit more. I think about my real estate investments. I think about my previous real estate investing business in three key pieces. And for the past 10 years, really, since the market has been so hot dispositions, which is the third piece has really been forgotten, but the piece number one, the first.

Is the data marketing going out and finding the lead. So I, I chalk that up to data and marketing, you know, maybe you use, I don’t know what software, uh, but regardless you use some software that is purpose-built for real estate investors to market, to homeowners, for them to purchase that property. The second piece of a real estate investor’s business.

From my view is the organization and the acquisition, arguably the most important part, um, where you get the deal under contract, you purchase the [00:06:00] property, you organize all of your leads, usually done inside of a CRM, but then. The last piece, because it’s been so easy to sell deals over the past 10 years, like I said, dispositions disposing of the property selling the property has really been forgotten.

And that’s what town square is. That’s what my business is, is we’re helping real estate investors, professional real estate investors have an easier time with that final arguably the most important piece of their business in selling their properties. Yeah,

Dylan: absolutely. I think, um, if you were following me around with a camera the last five years, I’ve been in the biz a long time.

Right. And, and I’m a big relationship guy. I’m a big networking guy, but relationships in business to me mean everything. So I’ve built quite a few relationships as to where I could wholesale to these, to these investors partner with them. JV doesn’t matter. Right. I have, I have a conduit with, to these investors and I would.

I’m not kidding. Get at that pulpit and just preach at every [00:07:00] event I went to at investor fuel other podcasts and say, you guys have to concentrate on dispositions a little bit. It’s easy right now, but it’s going to get tough. So to me, it’s really crazy when, when I’m at Kevin and, and I looked at your business model and I was like, oh my gosh, Because this takes that outta my hands.

This means that I’m always gonna have those relationships, but we were talking a little bit earlier off camera and for the investors who are doing deals and who are wholesaling, how would you like to be able to literally press a couple buttons, get your property, your, your wholesale in front of. You know, who knows how many hundreds or thousands of investors who’ve raised their hand and said ’em interested.

Yep. And a lot of times those, those investors are willing to pay a little bit more than your local guy, because as you know, the closer you stand to the fire, right? You, you think that, that you understand it all. That’s right. But if you wanna, if you wanna be a profit, you have to go at least 90 miles where you’re from.

Cause if I go and speak 90 miles from where I’m at in Metro, Detroit people really, really are impressed. But if I do it right [00:08:00] here in a regular meetup, they’re like, man, I’ve been sealing Dylan for 20 years. so. So, so back to the dis the, the platform, you know what I really like Paul, is that you have invested, you’re not a software geek who said I’m gonna take advantage of the real estate market because, um, because it was hot, right?

Yeah. And the real estate market was hot literally for a decade or more depending where you’re from, but a solid decade. Yep. So what, what challenges did you have, um, in your investment? Side to, you know, to selling wholesale and, and for on that disposition side, what were your challenges and, and how did that kind of morph into what town square is today?

Paul: Yeah. So whenever I was an agent licensed agent selling properties on the market, Or I’ve done ground up new construction and trying to find the right agents to work with the new construction builds that I’ve done, or whenever I was doing wholesaling and whole tailing, the, the same problem kept cropping up and it was.[00:09:00]

Really getting my deal, getting my property, getting my sale in front of the right people to partner with. Whenever you’re an agent, it’s a little bit easier because you put it on the MLS and then you can send it to agents in your office and they can help you with it. But still. Getting, uh, high quality agents to look at my properties that I had under contract, getting high quality wholesalers, to look at my deal, to potentially send it to their buyers and selling my new construction properties, uh, to high quality buyers that, you know, might not see it, cuz it’s just something that they’re scrolling through on Zillow.

The, the issue that kept coming up was getting my deals in front of the right people and what I found. To be successful after banging my head against the wall three different times with three different properties in three different markets, wholesaling, uh, ground up development, and we call it, we call it brain damage.

Yeah, exactly the, the thing that, that really ended up working was. [00:10:00] Networking and working with people that built the trust that is necessary for real estate to be successful networking with those people that have built the trust with qualified buyers, um, and proving myself to that person that in between the, the person that I JVD with or the developer that I worked with, or the real estate agent who ended up bringing the buyer to my property.

Figuring out how to network with those people and show that I’m a real player. And that I have a real deal, um, was, was the biggest thing. That was the most difficult thing for me, but it made the biggest impact on my business. And that has really, really had ripples into the creation of town square and what we’re trying to provide to the real estate investor market.

Because, you know, I said with the MLS. Okay. You post a property on the MLS. Other real estate agents know about it, but you have a good wholesale deal. You have a good investment property that you’re trying to sell. If you don’t have 400 people in your phone or [00:11:00] 4,000 people on your buyer’s list after working for 10 years to build that buyer’s list or 20 years like yourself, Dylan, like where do you go?

What do you do? How do you leverage other people’s contacts and get in front of the right buyers? And that’s what we’re trying to build at town.

Dylan: Well, I, I think earlier, before we went live, you, you gave me a little peek into something we’ll talk about later. I don’t wanna forget about that. I think I’m seeing around the corner what it is, because I, I honestly, like, I really do consider myself a disposition person.

So like what you’re talking about, that’s the part of the business I love because when you buy a house from somebody, you usually don’t buy multiple properties from the same person. Right? So, so that relationship is kind of a one. Sometimes we buy more, but, but realistically, you know, I’ve bought hundreds of properties, maybe 10% of them I bought and you know, more than one property from maybe even five or seven only.

Yeah. But on that dispo side, those are my guys. Those are my girls. These are the people who I’ve been running EA also since 2006 in Metro Detroit. So these are the people who are my members and who I’ve gone, you know, to dinners with [00:12:00] and, and watched their projects or went out and hung out with them. So, you know, that’s, that’s a big relationship.

That’s a big part of it. Yeah. And, and, you know, talking about like, The business changing. So we’ll, we’ll go into your digital nomad story a little bit. I think that’s super duper cool. Right. Awesome. So the business is changing. You are a licensed real estate agent. Um, I consider myself what’s called like a hybrid agent.

So I run a nationwide team of investor agents and we buy, we sell, I have a Facebook group with a ton of people in it, because like you said, you have to use leverage, but as this business changes, you have to be willing to change with it. And if, and if someone told. Three years ago that there would be a dispositions platform.

And I may be able to make more money with less time by dispo through there. I would be like, wow, that’s crazy. But even more importantly, and I, I wanna, I wanna go through what it’s like to, to use your platform just from like a, a high level. But back to what I foreshadowed, what I’m thinking you’re saying is Dylan knows a lot of cash buyers in Metro Detroit.

I, a lot of them, right. And I have real [00:13:00] relationships with, with dozens of them. So if Paul’s going to. Do some wholesaling or do some virtual wholesaling, which a lot of investors do today. You put a house under contract, right in Metro Detroit. And you’re like, how am I gonna get rid of this thing? You can go to the Facebook groups, which work, but if they don’t know who you are, they don’t, they don’t give you a lot of credence, especially around here and in some other areas.

So, so, you know, are, are, am I able to, to leverage my buyers through your platform?

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. So you hit the nail on the head. Um, uh, there’s, there’s four key things that you can do with town square. Uh, and we can definitely come back to the digital nomad story and where we’re at, but speaking specifically of town square and continuing the dispo conversation, uh, There’s four key things you can do on town square.

You can upload your buyers’ list and you can send your deals directly to your buyers and give your buyers an improved professional, uh, transaction experience. Your buyers can sign up for a [00:14:00] free town square account. Which they don’t have to do to submit an offer to you, but they can, you can chat with them directly through the platform.

You can exchange documents and you can sign documents in a very professional way with your buyers, giving them an elevated experience. Um, So that’s the first thing you can do. The second thing you can do is send your properties to our marketplace. Our marketplace is a work in progress. We’re trying to have only high volume, extremely professional buyers on our marketplace.

In other words, We don’t really want your everyday buyers on your buyer’s list to be looking at our marketplace. We want the institutional buyers of the world looking at our marketplace so that we can bring institutional demand to the off market, rather than having them just focus on the MLS property.

So you can post the property to our marketplace. That’s the second piece Paul, let’s give

Dylan: let’s give him an example of an institutional.

Paul: Yeah. So the biggest one in the country right now is a company called [00:15:00] progress. Residential progress is backed by, uh, Pretium partners. They have over a trillion dollars in assets and they want to buy over 10,000 single family homes a month for the next three’s and that a trillion

Dylan: with the tea, everybody for the listeners out there who aren’t watching a trillion with a tea that’s right now that’s a buyer I want in my stable.

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. So we don’t have them on town square yet, but maybe one day. Um, but that’s our goal. Our goal is to bring those big guys to the off market so they can access the properties that you or I, or any other investor has to sell. Um, so yeah, that’s the second thing you can do. You can post your properties to our marketplace, so send ’em to your buyer and send them to our marketplace.

Now come the last two things, which. By far the coolest and by far the most important things in terms of setting us apart from anyone else in this space, the second, or I’m sorry, the third thing you can do on town square is like, you alluded to Dylan. Let’s say I have a deal in Metro Detroit. And I have, I don’t know, three [00:16:00] Facebook groups I can post it to.

And maybe I have 200 buyers that I’ve got off of prop stream or whatever other software that I use to get buyers. That might not work. So what do I do? If, if I know it’s a good deal, what I can do is I can go to town square and then I can find you Dylan with your account and your buyer’s list. And I can say, Hey Dylan, I have 1, 2, 3 main street.

In Metro Detroit, I’d like to send this to your buyers. Will you permit me to send this to your buyers? If one of your buyers comes back, I’m willing to sign a JV agreement. I’m willing to partner with you on this. I’m willing to split my fee. I’m willing to split my profit with you. If you can provide a buyer to me, you have the opportunity on town square to.

Analyze me analyze my deal, analyze my contracts and determine if I’m up to snuff enough to send this deal as if it’s your own to your buyers. In other words, what I’m doing with town square and this hypothetical scenario is I’m leveraging the [00:17:00] Goodwill that you’ve built with your buyers so that I can put my deal in front of those people that I wouldn’t otherwise have access to.

I’m sacrificing half of my fee or half of my profit. I don’t care. I wasn’t able to sell it myself on Facebook or anywhere else. So that’s the third thing we call that post sharing. So the last thing is really more catered towards the more successful, more established real estate investors. And we call it, uh, buyers list hosting.

So. It kind of ties into that third thing you can do. If you noticed you in that situation, Dylan, you just sit back and people like me send you deals. And all you have to do is specialize in dispositions. You just host your buyer’s list on town square and people like myself that want to leverage that good relationship you have with that top buyer in Detroit, we come to you, you get.

50% of my wholesale fee or 50% of my profit. And you didn’t have [00:18:00] to spend any money on marketing. You didn’t have to spend any money on acquisitions. All you had to do was join this network of investors that we have on town square and host your buyer’s list to be found by other investors. So there’s a big incentive for big successful established investors to join, to essentially open up a brand new revenue stream in their business.

Dylan: Yeah, you, you, you know, you’re gonna have to learn how to monetize multiple different ways as this market shifts. And, um, I’ve been around through, you know, a few different market cycles and it’s always going to shift. It’s shifting up, it’s shifting down, but you know, today we’re, we’re near the top, right?

It’s a little bit Frey as we like to say. So. Um, what, what I’ve always talked about is being able to on acquisitions and you hit the nail on the head. If you can’t, it doesn’t matter how great of a marketer you are. If you don’t have someone sitting down or on the phone or texting, or however, the heck we’re buying from private sellers today, if you don’t have someone who can get a seller to agree to a house, to sell a property at a discount, you’re in trouble, right.

Once once that, that, [00:19:00] um, that acquisition’s done now, as it flips into that disposition, I think you guys are, are building or have built something to, to put people in the driver’s seat to where now you might be able to make a little bit extra money, like you said, just on your list. And a lot of these guys, myself included.

So my, if I really scraped everything together and probably 30 to 50,000 email addresses, some of us haven’t opened in years and years, but after running a and. Like 10, 15,000 people come through my doors all these years. I’ve got a good buyer’s list. Right. So, so how can I use that? And it’s almost going back to the, the affiliate days, you know, where people are always pushing different email courses or whatever, but now this is real value because my buyers and, uh, we don’t, we don’t.

I don’t think we use parental advisory and I don’t swear much anyways, but buyers are horse, right? Yeah. So my best buyers will literally buy from anyone, including you. If you have a deal right now, my best friend buyer is like, oh man, I’m out of money. Cuz this Paul Guy found me. Right. And he sold me a really good deal and they have to [00:20:00] be that way because.

When you are a real estate investor, if you’re a buy fix and flip person, you have to get that inventory. And it’s the toughest part of our, it’s really a really tough part of our business. You know, we, we don’t wholesale steel, so we know where we can get these roles of steel and then buy into the discount, resell it to someone else.

We have to find the property. We’ve gotta close on the property. We’ve gotta sell the property. So you guys are trying to take one of those variables out for us as, as investors so that we don’t have such a tough time selling. And mark my words, it is going to get tougher to sell because most investors who’ve had an easy time as the market.

Again, turns just a tad. You’re gonna have to buy at a deeper discount, but you’re also going to have to have those relationships and you don’t build relationships like that. Not 20 year relationships, you literally right. The best time to, to, to plant that, that, uh, that tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is right now.

Yeah. So building those relationships is great and what really is gonna happen. If, if you are going to sell to my [00:21:00] buyer, you’re now gonna know who that person is, and you’re probably gonna create a relationship with them, but that’s okay because I wouldn’t have gotten half or whatever percentage that you agreed to JV with me to help sell this guy a deal anyways.

And again, myself having a license. What I do with my wholesale buyers is I always say, Hey, you gotta list this baby through me. Right. So I, I monetize it another. And, um, especially when it’s a fresh rehab, you know, as being an agent, not that hard to sell, even in a tough market, if something’s priced. Right.

And it’s beautiful. Yeah, yeah.

Paul: Yeah. Two, two things. I, I don’t mean to interrupt your train of thought. No, please. Two things that I think are super interesting that you hit on. Um, you know, we are trying to create software and we are trying to create a newish. I mean, I’m doing quotes here for anybody who’s listening, but we’re, we’re creating a newish kind of platform.

In reality, Dylan, we’re just bringing offline processes that happen in the terrestrial world. Every single day. Online, you probably get more than three emails a week or a month from [00:22:00] people trying to JV with you because they know that you are the guy that has access to good buyers. So we’re just bringing Matt JV process online in a way.

Investors professional investors are used to. And then the, the second thing that you, you said that I want to touch on is that in this hypothetical situation where I’m bringing you a deal, and then I get access to your buyer, to the contrary, we’ve built a bunch of safeguards into town square, such that whenever you send my deal as if it’s your own, so that your buyers trust you.

When you send my deal to your buyers and Charlie, the buyer comes back and raises his hand and says, I’ll pay $190,000 for this Dylan. I get a notification in town square that Dylan has provided me with a buyer, but I don’t see that buyer’s first name, last name, phone number, email address until right. So you can’t get that’s right.

That’s right. So that you maintain complete control over your [00:23:00] buyers throughout the entire process that takes place on town.

Dylan: And, and, you know, Paul, nothing’s perfect. You know, I’ve been in the, in, in the business for a long time and in every business, right. There’s, there’s always gaps, but for the most part, you know, I think, I think you guys have it figured out that’s the best way to do it.

You protect everybody. And, um, you know, if, if my list is good and people are coming to me, then hopefully they’re not going to try to try to be sneaky because it’ll cost them a lot more money in the long run, you know? So. Yep. Yeah, no, that, that makes a ton of sense. So. It, can you give me like a 92nd, uh, view of if I, if I, if I log in, right, I’ve already put all my info in and I have a wholesale property and I don’t wanna dispo it myself, but I’m gonna go to town square for the first time.

Run me through what I’m gonna see as an investor.

Paul: With the property. Yeah. So first thing you do is log in, you’ll see our marketplace on the marketplace, uh, for a bunch of different reasons. You actually don’t see any deals because [00:24:00] we leave the marketplace closed to protect people’s buyers so that your buyer can’t get a deal from you.

Say, Hey, what’s town square. And then go and look at all the other deals that are available in Detroit. and then start buying other people’s deals and say, sorry, Dylan. I’m all tapped out this month. I can’t buy anymore.

Dylan: Yeah. I love that. That’s great.

Paul: It’s blind. Yep. Yep. So the marketplace is blind until you pay for a certain level of account and then you have access to it.

In other words, we’re trying to keep the marketplace exclusive to the highest quality buyers who are willing to pay for the marketplace. So you see the marketplace, then you go to my posts inside of my post. You click the new post tab. Inside of a post, you can add as many properties as you want. So you add one property usually, but if you had a portfolio, you could add 10, 15, a hundred properties.

You put in all the information, all of the photos, you set up, your showing, and then you click publish right before you click publish. You see two very important numbers. The first number you see. The number of [00:25:00] contacts, number of buyers that have been uploaded by other users that this property would fit.

So if you upload 30,000 buyers and I have a deal in Detroit, that number says 30,000. In other words, I know that there are 30,000 buyers that have been provided by other users. That I could leverage. And then the second number is the number of buy boxes. Buy boxes are the ways that these high volume, high, high quality investors that are on the platform looking to buy deals.

It’s how they filter out the deals. So you see the number of investors that have been provided by other users and the number of high quality high volume buyers. Once you click publish, you can then go into the post and click on your marketing tab. Inside marketing is where you can send your deal directly to your buyers.

Next after that, after you’ve send it to your buyers, you click sharing and then inside the sharing, you can send it in this case. I would send it to you, Dylan, you get to analyze me. We get to chat directly on the platform inside of a feature that we call rooms. All of [00:26:00] that takes place. Ideally within five minutes, you could do it all within five minutes.

And then you look at me, you accept my deal, and then you send it off to your buyers. So I accomplish those three things. Ideally within five minutes. It’s

Dylan: like, it’s like JV, um, internet dating, which that I’m, I’m told to, to, to have ever been on any of those apps, but it’s kind of funny. so I do have one question for you, Paul, that you didn’t cover.

Sure. Um, what if I forget my password?

Paul: So I’m very, very, I’m very proud of our support service. Yeah. Kevin, the other guy with the man bun, he runs our support. You can always contact us in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. Somebody is always online to answer any question you have.

Dylan: Yeah. And that’s just the stuff.

Listen, you’re you were a real estate agent. I don’t know if you still practice anymore, but no, no people have a, so you, you did real estate in cold weather states. Were you ever in a cold weather state when you were licensed? Yes. Okay. [00:27:00] So we have a really hard time teaching in, uh, real estate agents and some investors, even right.

Wholesale buyers, how to open, um, lock boxes. So it’s kind of like, it’s kinda like forgetting your password, right? It’s like, why don’t we just go to Google and ask those questions, but, uh, You know, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a whole different podcast, right? Yeah. yeah. So when we were talking earlier, I wanna, I wanna get a little bit back into you before we close this thing out.

So tell, tell me, tell the, the, the listeners and, and viewers a little bit about, uh, Your your whole digital nomad lifestyle and, and kind of where you’re at right now in the world.

Paul: Yeah. So I’m currently in Bellingham, Washington. I’m about 30 minutes from the Canadian border. Um, and my wife and I were fortunate enough to have our own businesses that have afforded us the ability to travel around.

Um, so we’re currently. To figure out where we want to settle down if we want to settle down, but we’re spending a month or two or three in Airbnbs, primarily where there are mountains, trees and, and [00:28:00] rivers. I, uh, I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where it’s very industrial. I would imagine it’s very similar to Detroit and I very beautiful landscape.

Yeah. , it’s not the Rocky mountains. It’s not the Pacific Northwest. I’ll leave it at that. So that’s what I’m doing. And I’m, I have a, a fold out banquet table that is my desk that I run the entire business on. And I, our, our entire team is totally, uh, remote. Nobody reports to an office. And it’s been that way since day one, because Mitch and I had to work through, COVID totally separate from each other.

Um, and it’s been fantastic. I I’m super happy that we settled down in this way. Uh, at least for the business.

Dylan: So for any, um, budding, uh, digital nomads out there, the wannabees is what, what’s your best

Paul: tip. So my best tip is if you’re going to do it, as soon as you pull up to the destination where you’re staying, whether it’s for a day or for two months, get [00:29:00] out your stuff, that’s going to, uh, allow you to work.

First and then unpack your clothes. if I don’t have my desk set up and I don’t have my clothes unpacked, then I’m, I’m in, I’m in shambles, you know, the food, the grocery store, all of that stuff. It can be taken care of at another time. But if I establish my base, that is what am I going to wear? And where am I going to work?

I’m good. .

Dylan: Yeah. So this show is called real estate investing secrets, but sometimes we dig extra deep and we talk about digital nomad secrets. This is that’s that’s for the first time ever on this podcast, I believe anyways. And no one’s gonna go through all 1500 previous shows, um, to check , uh, no fact checking on, on this show.

So, um, so something I like to talk to, or, or ask you about, um, every single, uh, guest who’s been on here. I’m big, big, big, big, big on networking. Mike Hamre, who has founded flip nerd. It’s something he talks about almost at every live event is the importance of networking and that he would never be where he is.

I definitely wouldn’t be where I am when you and I get to meet, [00:30:00] we’re gonna be long lost buddies from this, from this little podcast, like we’ve always got these couple jokes that we talked about and, and there’s now a connection. Yep. So why don’t you talk about, even from town Square’s point of view, and even from, from just you as being an entrepreneur, you know, how important is networking to you?

And maybe you have like one quick story you

Paul: could share. Yeah, totally. So, uh, it’s by far the most important thing in my entire life, honestly, um, hands down. So I was a terrible student in high school and a terrible student in college. I think that I graduated with less than a 3.0 GPA from college. It was bad.

It was real bad. And the only way that. Built. I had a digital marketing company that I started before my photography company, the only way that I built my photography company and the only way that I’ve been successful as an investor. And hopefully we’ll find success through town square is through marketing or I’m sorry, through networking and marketing myself to people that need my [00:31:00] services or people that are at least willing to, to listen to me.

Ramble. About what I’m working on. So the, the biggest impact that networking has had on me was that very first deal that I did whenever I predicted who was going to sell with my algorithm, I networked with my landlord, who I was renting a house from at the time. And we got into real estate investing conversation.

Uh, I told ’em, I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I have this house I was trying to buy. And he said, let me know. As soon as you get. And I got it under contract. I ended up purchasing it, like I said, for a dollar. And then a couple weeks later I sold it to that guy for $86,000. So if it wasn’t me putting myself out there and talking with my landlord, who’s this superior to me, uh, you know, I’m renting from him.

What do I know if it wasn’t for me putting myself out there and talking to him about real estate investing and real estate in general? Uh, I wouldn’t have been able to set my career on the path that I’ve been on thus.

Dylan: That’s awesome. What, what tip would [00:32:00] you give to, uh, to newer investors who are just getting started in and they need to get out there and network.

Paul: Yeah, I would say, just go and start talking to people and don’t act like you need to know everything or don’t act like, you know, everything. I just recently had a phone call with a guy that just graduated high school, and I’m going to ask him to work with us now in a couple different ways, because he didn’t come into the conversation saying, here’s what I’m doing.

I know everything. He came into the conversation and said, I need help. I want to hear what you’ve done to be successful rather than trying to prop yourself up. As I know everything, nobody knows everything. Even the best people in the entire world don’t know everything. So that’s what I would say is talk a little bit, but listen a lot more and don’t act like, you know, everything.

Yeah, that

Dylan: that’s awesome. I think we talk about a value exchange. A lot of guys bring that up to, and they say, when you show up to a meet up or re another, another air quote, unfortunately for those listening, but, um, don’t, don’t expect people just to help you for free or [00:33:00] listen to you, try to give value.

And that, that, that bit of being, you know, your tip of being humble heaven, some humility and. Listening more than you’re talking super important in today’s world of fake it till you make it. I always talk about the guys in the Mercedes and the, and the, they got the giant Rolex on and because they fake the LA ambo investors.

Yeah. You know, they’re, and they’re faking it before they’re making it and that’s okay if that’s, if that’s how you roll, especially in your benzo, like that’s cool. But the guys who are really the value investors and, and you look back and you say, wow, they’ve built something huge. Yeah. It’s because. They it is, you know, they, they listen more and, and they look for value and it’s not just all flash and the flash is okay too.

But, um, substance is really where, where you need to be. So I think that that was really, uh, some, some great input there. So Paul. Um, as, as we’re closing out, what’s the absolute best way for people to find you, to find town square and kind of to, to see what you’re up to.

Paul: Yeah. So I’m, I’m pretty old school.

[00:34:00] My, my friends make fun of me. Uh, I don’t have Instagram. I don’t have really Facebook. Uh, you can find me on LinkedIn. um, you can also send me an email. If you’d like my email is just Paul town, square.com spelled T w N sqr.com town square without the vows. [email protected] and then you can find town square on Instagram and Facebook and all of those places.

Um, and the best way to get started is just to visit, uh, town square.com. T w N S qr.com. Uh, one thing we didn’t go over if you want to Dylan, if not, no big deal, but one thing we didn’t go over is the pricing. Um, oh, please. Of, of town square. Go right

Dylan: ahead. Yeah.

Paul: Cool. So break it down. So anybody who’s awesome.

Yeah. Anybody who’s interested? Um, you can check out town square. There’s a 30 day free trial. Um, we have a basic free account where you can just post properties to our marketplace and your buyers can [00:35:00] sign up and use a totally free account. Remember, they don’t have to have an account at. To submit an offer on your property.

Um, that’s by design the, the cheapest account, the first level for a paid account that allows you to send your deals to your buyers is 150 bucks a month, and it will totally replace your MailChimp or constant contact, and it will totally replace your need for DocuSign. Um, in any signing software that you use, that’s called pro uh, next up from there is our elite plan.

That’s $6,000 a year. Uh, and then our highest tier, which has unlimited everyth. I can get into the limits if we need to, but, um, unlimited everything is our ultra plan for $12,000 a year. Um, the limits that are placed on the accounts are just the number of contacts that you can upload and the number of deals that you can share with other users.

You’re never limited on any level of account to the number of deals that you can share with your buyers directly. So, yeah, that’s, that’s town square. Um, [00:36:00] and. Anybody who’s interested can use the code flip nerd to get 20% off any membership.

Dylan: Awesome. We’ll have all that stuff in the show notes. We take all the notes.

So you guys don’t have to, and down below, if you’re watching or listening, make sure you go to flip nerd.com. You guys can get that special discount that Paul put together just for our Watchers and listeners. And Paul, I gotta tell you. What you guys have built is something that’s, that’s very exciting. I think this is where this is part of where anyways, where real estate investing is going to go.

And, um, I talked to you a little bit earlier about one of our good friends. Who’s an investor fuel member. His name is Matt Andrews, and he talks about, um, sometimes real estate itself. Isn’t the thing. But it’s the thing that gets you to the thing. So I think, uh, you’re at your thing, man. Town square

Paul: looks awesome.

Thank you. Thank you very much. And it’s a, it’s a privilege to be here and talk to you, Dylan. I, I couldn’t be happier and I hope that some people sign up, but even if they don’t, uh it’s okay. Otherwise I really enjoyed the conversation. no,

Dylan: for sure. And you’re gonna get tons of great [00:37:00] testimonials and, and real user, um, experiences from our investor fuel group, you know, so, um, That’ll definitely help, uh, get the word out because I know a bunch of, uh, investors have already members have already started using the platform.

So, um, this is, this is what I wanna tell everybody who’s listening right now. If you guys aren’t subscribed yet to the real estate investing secrets podcast, all you have to do is subscribe. Just click the buttons below. If, if you’re listening, you guys can just go to iTunes. You can go to Spotify anywhere that you can listen to a podcast, make sure that you leave.

A big, shiny at least four star review. I think we deserve a five star for this show, but if you haven’t given us review, we’d love a review. Share the show out there. It’s what kinda gives us the, the power and the fuel to keep doing more and more of these shows. And, um, as always, we’ll catch you guys on the next episode.

Thanks for listening to today’s show. There are three ways I can help you start or grow your real estate investing [00:38:00] business. If you’re a new investor in just getting started, the flip nerd investor coaching program is the most effective program in America. I’ve been coaching and mentoring new real estate investors for 10 years.

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