Award-Winning Wholesaler Speaks – Brent Daniels 

Episode 518: Award-Winning Wholesaler Speaks With Brent Daniels 

 

At least 95%, if not more, start out in this industry wholesaling. For those of you who are just at the beginning of the journey, Mitch Stephen has the perfect guest for you who can help get your foot in the door. He sits down with Award-Winning Wholesaler in Phoenix, Arizona, Brent Daniels, about all things wholesaling, laying down its foundations to the kind of mindset you need in order to grow in this industry. Brent also takes us along his journey, how he started, and how he came out of wholesaling towards success. What is more, he then discusses automation, leadership, marketing, as well as his offering that aims to teach investors the ins and outs of getting their first deal and how to get going. So stay tuned and discover the amazing wisdom Brent has in store in this episode.

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Watch the episode here

 

I’m here with Brent Daniels. He is an award-winning wholesaler out there in Phoenix, Arizona. This guy does a ton of business. This is going to be a great conversation because a lot of people in this industry, 95% at least, if not more, start out wholesaling. It’s a great way to get your foot in the door and earn while you learn. It’s a lot better to learn with the pro next to you or be associated with something than to go out there on your own. Here’s the problem. You go out there on your own, and if you fail a couple of times in a row, you could be out of business.

It’s critical that you get off to a good start and the fastest start as possible. I almost bombed out of the creative real estate investing business because I had a few things happen. To think of the multimillion-dollar career for many years, I would have missed out on because I didn’t get the right people to help me have a reasonable chance of success. I was out there on my own, learning by hard knocks. It’s not the way to go. You’re going to pay somebody to help you or pay the street to let you flounder around. The street will kick you, spit on you and try to ruin you the best it can. With no further ado, how are you doing, Brent Daniels?

We have talked about this on the beach in Tulum. We’re both part of the Multipliers Mastermind. I’m excited about this. There is a lot of mystery around what wholesaling is and what wholesaling can mean to your business if you start out with that as your foundation. All wholesaling is, is the art of finding discounted properties.

There are a couple of different ways to go about this. You could go traditional marketing, which you’re paying for people to call you to have those conversations if you’re sourcing yourself. The second way is probably the most common way with people that build big portfolios or people that are busy in life. They’re not real estate entrepreneurs full-time. They get referrals from friends and family, mostly from real estate agents or people that are looking for deals for them.

The third way, the way that I promote, is to be super proactive, go out there and approach every single distressed property owner in your marketplace and ask them if they would consider an offer on their property. You will find about 1 out of 200 people that you talk to, the timeline, price, terms of the contract and the agreement are going to line up and you’re going to be able to get a discounted property.

That’s the numbers behind it. It’s an exciting business. You’ve been doing it for many years. I’ve been in it for many years and seeing the evolution that technology has taken on when it comes to not only the tools that we can use in real estate investing but also the resources that we have available now. We did not have this years ago. There’s no excuse not to go out, be proactive in your marketplace and find good deals.

When I started, it was a whole different world. You could get in the classified ads in the newspaper in 1996, 1997 and 1998. If you started by 12:00, you have a perfectly good deal and you can do it seven days a week. If you screw it up, you got two deals. You didn’t know how you’re going to buy them. There were some advantages back then. I bought my first 100 deals on credit cards because the houses in the lesser parts of town were $10,000, $15,000 or $20,000.

There were some things that aren’t the same as they are now. It’s much more competition. Prices are higher but there’s technology now that never existed. There are resources. The amount of knowledge out there can be garnered for free. Some higher echelon or some personal attention that can be garnered with a little bit of pay is night and day.

This technology that we have is global and you can automate now. Everyone goes, “Wholesaling is a job. You’re going to have to do it over and over again.” I say, “Jobs can be automated.” You can take wholesaling and make it into a freedom machine, but it’s a different level. That’s what you’ve done. You’ve got a machine working.

I always make the sports analogy. You can also do it with music as well, where you’ve got somebody like LeBron James. He has a job. His job is to play basketball. Are you going to look down on him because it’s a job? I don’t want a job. At some point, will he transition to be in the owner’s box? Probably. You have to do your job for a while to earn the right to be in the owner’s box. You don’t come out of the gate and you go, “Here’s a made-for-you business, fully automated. You don’t have to have any experience, connections and time for this. It’s ready to go for you.” That doesn’t work.

Wholesaling is the art of finding discounted properties. Share on X

I don’t know how you feel about it. It’s BS. That’s not real. You have to put in the work so that you earn the right to have a business. You can’t assume that you have the right to be a business owner because you live in this country. You have to earn it. You’ve got to be able to do something with it. Whether you’re investing financially or your sweat and efforts, you’re going to have to invest something into this thing.

Most of the time, in my experience, people are coming with not a lot of funds but with a lot of passion and real willingness to drive, learn and grow. That’s what is exciting about this business. Once you learn how to find discounted properties, you can do anything. You can fix and flip, build your portfolio, develop or be the bank. There are so many different avenues, but it starts with finding discounted properties.

If you trace back almost every successful businessman story, he started as a grunt. He learned the business from the ground up, doing all the crappy little things that had to be done to make that business run. That’s how come they know how to run the business. If you’re a wholesaler and you’re doing deal after deal, you’re learning how the business works. How did you start? Let’s go back to the beginning, Brent Daniels 101.

To put a bow on that last thing, comparison is the thief of joy. Too many people compare themselves to where you’re at, Mitch, or where I’m at or somebody that has been through and taken the lumps and had to pay that stupid tax a lot and have to do a lot of different things and has the experience. Don’t compare yourself to somebody else. The worst is when you compare yourself versus what you think you should already be.

That’s when you start having problems as an entrepreneur when you go, “I should grow 50% a year every single year and go crazy with this thing. That’s my expectation.” Now, you’re making that comparison. It’s good to have goals, but you’ve got to work this thing up and understand the business. You’ve got to understand that there are certain paths that you have to take to be successful in this thing. If you get around with great people and have great mentors, you’re going to be able to do that faster.

Let’s go to a grip one-on-one like, “Here he is, out of the box.” Who are you? Where have you been? Where did you start this career?

In 2003, I got this guy, Rich Dad Poor Dad, which apparently sold 40 million copies of this. Most of us have read this thing. I’ve read Rich Dad Poor Dad. At that time, you’re young. You’re in your low twenties and that’s an interesting transition time for anybody. You’re going through college. Now, you’re going to go out into the workforce and try to provide value for the first time. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I read this and I was like, “Real estate, that’s what I got to do.”

At that time, I thought you had to get your real estate license to be able to be a real estate investor. I didn’t know. None of my family and friends were in real estate. My friend gave me this and we got into it together, but that’s all we knew of it. I got my real estate license and started doing that. I did well. I got super cocky and lost it all in 2010-ish because I leveraged everything. I’ve got the Mercedes, Range Rover, five giant houses, rentals and all these things.

I’ve got a judgment on myself personally on a personal guarantee because I had an office space that I had agreed to a ten-year lease with the personal guarantee in January of 2008. This was a 9,000 square foot spot in Scottsdale. This is high rent, big space. By the end of the year, we couldn’t afford it. They slapped the judgment on me for $742,000 and I had to claw my way out.

I had an old sand-colored Lexus ES 200 or 300, I don’t remember what it is, that my dad gave me. It was ten years old. I would drive around town and see ugly houses. I would write down the address and knock on their doors. I would try to find the phone number for them, call them up and see if they would consider an offer. I went to one house on the end of the street. The gal didn’t want to sell it, but she was the caretaker for a vacant house down the street.

 

She got permission. She gave me the phone number for the owner. They lived in New York and I had the name, address and phone number. I called her up and we made a deal. I realized, “If I get the name, address and phone number of the ugliest houses in the city, I can make an absolute fortune. I know I can do it. I know if I get a hold of them, I can help solve their problem with this property.” That’s what happened and that’s where TTP came about. That’s the Talk To People. That’s the philosophy and mantra. Every single day, go out there and talk to as many distressed property owners as they possibly can.

Random people, if you tell them what you do, “I buy houses, junkers, problems, mobile homes, lots and land,” someone is going to say, “My aunt or my grandma or I have something I’ve been trying to get rid of or need to get rid of. Can you help me?”

We’ve made $280,000 from referrals from posting on social media that I buy houses. That’s over the top 5% income earners in our country from turning a camera around, being loud on social media and telling everybody what I do. You could talk to 100 people one-on-one and build those relationships. You can also turn your phone around and tell the whole world what you do. It’s incredible.

Let’s go back to that fatal flaw in the beginning because so many people make this mistake. They think the good times are going to be forever. I picked the seller financing strategy where I buy houses with OPM and sell with owner financing because it’s a very durable strategy that will boom in the hard times. It will boom if you have it set up right.

I call it pent-up demand. They get a little money and run out to buy all the toys they’ve seen other successful people have. They think that that lets the world know that they made it. It can scare the living hell out of private lenders and potential partners if they go like, “This young punk right here has got some lessons to learn because he is taking and buying $150,000 cars and living this lavish lifestyle. He hasn’t gone through the storm yet and people can see it.” I drove a used truck for fifteen years before I finally bought a new car.

At one time, my private lender and a potential partner who ended up being my partner was courting me to be his partner. He was a wealthy Cuban businessman. He asked me, “Why are you driving that truck with 250,000 miles on it? You could drive anything you want.” It’s the day that he decided to go with me. I said, “I’m not interested in cars. I’m interested in freedom. I don’t give a shit about the car. When I get where I’m going, I’ll buy whatever car I want. Right now, I’m not there.”

We’re both fortunate that we built up our businesses like we have. Now, I’m in that space where some of my best students are asking for funds. They’re raising funds. I tell them, “I’m going to do this for a year, but I’m going to tell you this. Over the next year, I’m going to be auditing. I say that word because it’s a scary word.” People reading this are like, “He said the audit word. That’s so scary.” I said, “I’m going to be auditing your social media for the next year. If I see that you’re spending more than you’re investing and posting, we’re not going to renew it for another year.”

You have two options when you make money, are you going to spend or invest it? It’s these young guys and gals that are young and hard-charging. If they slip into that game of competition over cool stuff and clout and looking great with all these toys, it’s irresponsible. If they buckle down and invest their profits as opposed to spending it, one, they’ll always need me on some level, but they won’t need me. They’ll be able to fund their own.

Two, they’re going to be way better business people because they’re going to have clarity and discipline. When you have clarity and discipline, you’re unstoppable. If you have clarity that you want to do something and don’t have the discipline to keep and invest that money, it’s not long-lasting. You’re a firework. You’re shooting off. You’re doing great and you look great, but you’re going to blow out and it’s done.

That fake it until you make it idea, people can take that a little too far. One thing that aggravates me is that there are many people out there talking about, “You can be a millionaire and I have a course.” I know for a fact they’re having trouble making their car payment. That pisses me off. It’s like, “Can you at least get down the road away before you start talking about making people millionaires? You haven’t made yourself a millionaire yet.”

Once you learn how to find discounted properties, you can do anything. Share on X

I want to tell a little story that I’m from and I want you to chime in on it. I bought my first set of mini self-storages, but it was a set of boat storage. It’s where they parked their little fishing boat right outside the entrance to a state park on a lake. I bought fifteen units for $8,500. I recognized how great a cashflow this was. There were no carpet and sheetrock. There was nothing in it. I was renting these little spaces for $45 a month. I can add on real easy 1 or 5 units or whatever I had in my pocket. I didn’t have to go out big. I could keep adding when I had something.

I bought a bunch of other little mom-and-pop places that would seller finance, whatever I could afford, 25 units here or 30 units there. It’s nothing fancy. It’s Class C or Class D little storage places out in the middle of nowhere around the lake where I live. My wife and I would take $2,000 out once a year so we could go on a week’s vacation to reward ourselves for putting up with that business and dumping everything it made back into that business. For twelve years, we took $2,000 a year out of it. Now, I own 1,300 doors and they owe me $100 a month. I don’t owe anything to it.

With 1,300 doors, you owe nothing?

I owe nothing.

Are those storage units or livable houses?

Storage units, 10x10s, 10x20s and 10x15s. It’s $130,000 a month. I’ve got to pay property tax. I’ve got to have insurance, some electric and some water. I got a manager. I built that business for over 30 years, taking out way less than it may and letting it roll. I could have been driving a Lamborghini years ago. I still don’t own one. One was a discipline to stay away from it. Now, I don’t need a Lamborghini. If I want to drive a Lamborghini, I’ll rent it for a week or a month and then I’ll turn that bastard in and say, “That was fun.”

I could get one on Turo on my phone. I could go on the app Turo and get a Lamborghini for the week. What are we doing? Why are people buying these things? You could get one that you don’t have to take care of. It’s clean and it smells great on an app.

The oil change on a Lamborghini is $4,500.

When I see some people who want to show that they’ve often come from a bad background or maybe they didn’t have a good childhood growing up. Maybe the parents weren’t around or it was a tough upbringing and this gives them fulfillment. Some people have to go through that as therapy for whatever else, but then once it’s out, get it out of your system and do your thing. If you love that stuff, then go for it. I’m saying that you’re going to go further financially if you invest your money instead of spending it on depreciating things.

When you first started out, you’re out there banging on the doors. You’re doing everything yourself. You’re the acquisitions guy, marketing guy and private money-raiser guy. You have all the hats. Let’s talk about some of the easiest things to delegate so you’re freed up to do the important thing, which is write contracts.

 

To me, one of the easiest things is bookkeeping. People underestimate how important bookkeeping is because you can’t produce your path financially if you get behind in bookkeeping. You’ve postponed your ability to find some tremendous funds a long way out. I’m guilty of that. As a matter of fact, I’m going to pull my pants down and show everyone my heinie.

Finally, 27 years later, I started to straighten it all out. It took years for $240,000. We retraced every deal. We went back and thought that was enough. Finally, I can produce a financial anytime I want. I had to hire people. We hired a comptroller and it’s that big now. I’m buying about 100 and owner-financing about 70 of them. On any given month, we’re collecting on 300 mortgages.

We would love it to get to 500 but we can’t get to 500 because, every time we buy another twenty houses, 10 or 15 people pay us off. It’s not a bad day because when people pay off their notes, there’s a big chunk in the middle that’s mine. We’re stuck at 300 because of the erosion of notes. I’m using these notes as cashflow. Do the math on this.

I know there’s a bigger guy down the street. There’s probably one sitting right across from me I’m talking to right now. It’s not about, “Am I the biggest or the best?” I’m telling you where I’m at for better or for worse. I got 300 mortgages averaging $500 positive cashflow per month. That’s $150,000 a month coming in. You got about $50,000 for the overhead, counting my salary, my partner’s salary, the office and all that stuff. We let the other $100,000 roll every month.

What do we do with it? We buy storage facilities. We have to buy something that’s forever. You take the one-time cash events like house flipping and wholesaling. You take the temporary cash events like getting a down payment and collecting payments for 7, 8, 9, 10 or 15 years. It’s temporary because notes run out. You have to take all the money from all that you’re making. You have to survive and pick a lifestyle that you want to support. Hopefully, it’s not up to the limit of everything you make.

You have to take everything extra and buy into a forever model, which would be apartment complexes, strip centers, or something you’re going to rent forever. I chose boat and mini storage and semi-truck parking. That’s how we continue to grow. At some point, it gets exponential where you have all that you need to live. I can’t spend much more than $275,000 a year. I can only eat and drink so much. I don’t need a bigger house and more cars. I don’t need anything.

That might come a little bit with being 60. I have done and lived a lot on my own. I have already done it all. Now, it’s starting to get exponential. You’re building wealth legacy income for your family, charity or whoever is important to you. Tell me if you’ve gotten there yet, Brent. At some point, more money is good. It’s the Monopoly game that you play and that’s how you measure, but you need more of an emotional reward than you need a monetary reward.

My emotional reward is finding the right people that are ready and teaching them how to quit their job to become financially independent, even on the most modest level. Maybe you make $4,500 or $6,000 a month at your job. Once you replace that with some cashflow that’s coming in, come hell or high water every month, you get to walk away from that job. It frees up about 2,600 hours a year so that you can become who you’re supposed to be.

You need more of an emotional reward these days than you need a monetary reward. Share on X

Who are you supposed to be? You may not even know what you want to be. Maybe that 2,600 hours the first year is figuring out who you want to be. For the rest of your life, you have that. The number one objective for anybody starting out is to forget about the million-dollar goals and the big houses. Your job is to replace your income and free up 2,600 hours a year. That’s all it is. For a lot of people, that’s under $10,000 a month. It could be the key to opening up millions for you because gaining 2,600 hours a year that you decide what you do with is huge.

I truly believe this. This is from talking to a lot of people and being around for a while now. We have different brains. We’re wired differently if you want to be a real estate entrepreneur and entrepreneur itself for sure but want to have that freedom. Understand that 2,600 hours is a choice. We’re programmed, “You go to school and college. You sit in rows, get a job and work in cubicles. You die and you’re in a row and it’s a cemetery. It’s a whole thing.”

There are certain people that have these weird brains that are like, “Why are we doing this? There’s so much going on. Can we go out and provide value in different ways? Can we do it ourselves?” That’s what being an entrepreneur is and I truly believe we have different brains. Anybody that’s interested in this, we have different brains. Lean into that. Understand that you’re going to be different.

I remember after reading this. I gave it to all of my cousins, parents and everybody. Nobody read it and cared. I started getting somewhat successful in real estate. I went back. Nobody read it and cared. Now, with two multimillion-dollar businesses, I put it out to everybody. Nobody cares. You have to have a certain type of brain that is excited about doing these things. You don’t let the fear of the unknown, fear of failure and fear of not having security stop you from taking the action of doing the things that you want to do. Having those 2,600 hours a year where you get the opportunity to engineer how that goes is huge.

I read this statement that said, “Financial freedom happens when your passive cashflow exceeds your wants and your needs.” It was a revelation to me. It haunted me for days and I was dissecting that sentence. I first replaced passive income with the word cashflow because I don’t believe anything is passive. There’s no such word as passive.

Some things I want passive, but what are you going to do? There’s only so much vacation time. You can turn it off. At this point, maybe I’ll be different later in life or whatever else.

It would be like, “I’m going to go play golf, but I’m going to have this guy hit the ball for me.” What is the point of the game?

This is such an exciting business. I can’t imagine all of a sudden being like, “I already won. I’ll go try to find another game.” I enjoy this too much. It’s a lot of fun. You could be the magnet in your world to bring in a lot of interesting and creative people, do something special out of nothing and pull it out of thin air or out of the ethers. To be able to do that is artistic in some way. It’s exciting and it’s building businesses. It hits every part of the brain that is exciting and gives you energy.

You get to the point where the real goal is, “I want to do things that give me energy instead of things that drain me of energy.” It’s not even time management. It’s energy management. You can have all the time in the world, but if you’re sick, that sucks. If you’re tired all the time and you’ve got millions of dollars, that’s not great and fulfilling. You might get some happiness but certainly not joy. This is an energizing business. This is something where you can put yourself in a position to get a lot of energy out there and be a magnet for incredible, creative people.

Let’s talk about how you freed yourself up in the wholesaling business. You’re out there doing everything, wearing all the hats. Did it start to wear on you? When did it dawn and you’re like, “I need to work my way out of this business and see if I can operate this business from 10,000 feet?” Tell us about when you first started that.

 

First off, I’m going out there, trying to find deals and trying to figure this thing out. I didn’t even know what wholesaling was. I have my license. I was getting a 3% finder’s fee from my cash buyers. I didn’t even know that I could buy it myself or lock it up and sell it to them. There was a little bit of a learning curve. In there, I wanted to get so overwhelmed with pipeline because I needed the net profits. I needed to get out of this judgment. I had to settle that thing for $56,000. I had to save up and do that. I had to pay that judgment off and get that off my plate. I had to fight and claw, pay off some other debts, get my head above water and then get the credit and everything cleaned up.

Finally, after a few years, I’ve talked to 45,000 people on cold calls, real property owners here in Phoenix, Arizona, before I hired anybody to make calls for me. That was the first step. I got a phone prospector that I hired to help me make some calls and generate leads. I brought on two acquisition managers, Julie and Billy at that time, and then grew from there. I brought on a disposition manager. I’ve got a tight team. We’ve got a good net that I take bulk of it, but then I give huge bonuses for my team at the end of the year. Everybody seems excited about the business.

Let’s talk about that. The first thing is how to make the money come in the door and then you have the money coming in. Sometimes, you got to give up some of that money and take a step back to hire a guy to train them. That’s painful and a lot of people don’t like to do that, but if you’re ever going to get free, you’ve got to get used to getting it all coming in and then taking a cut and pay to get some people.

What you find out is, you think, “I have $10,000 a month coming, but this guy needs $3,000 a month. Now, I’m only going to make $7,000.” That’s not what happens because this guy, for $3,000 a month, only has to focus on one job. He is much better at it than you. He is not as good at it as you, but he is better because he is focused. You don’t end up making $10,000, $15,000 or $17,000 because one plus one equals three if you get the right people and train them right.

I was in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. I had a guy, Lee Arnold. He is a coach out there and he’s got an incredible flipping business. He always says whenever he looks to hire somebody, he wants a 1 to 7 return. “If I pay them $1,000, I want $7,000. If I pay them $10,000, I want $70,000 out of their efforts. The amount of value that they can provide to the marketplace to our community, that’s what it needs to be.” It’s put into the position where, “Do we have enough opportunities for this person to be successful?”

As soon as you hire somebody, you have their financial responsibilities in your hands. You better be confident and have good direction. You better know that you’ve got enough opportunities for them to win. From there, how do they progress, get better with their skills, get more comfortable and get more efficient? You start building that. There is a dip anywhere from 90 days to 6 months, for sure, as you’re starting to develop your business and get those people into that position.

That’s probably one of the hardest things. I went to a mastermind called Collective Genius. I was burnt out. I was going to fold my business up in a box and walk away from $1.5 million a year because I couldn’t do it anymore because I was doing everything. I couldn’t make myself do it. I thought, “I don’t care if I buy another house again ever. I’m burnt out. I’m going to take that attitude. I don’t have to devote a year to try to figure out how the world does systematize my business.”

I spent $30,000 and I had the money. I went there almost predetermined to drink all the Kool-Aid. I was not going to give myself to a bunch of fools, but once I decided that they weren’t fools, I was going to drink the Kool-Aid. I was going to let them unwind and rewind me the way they wanted to. I was not going to talk. I was going to accept what I had to tell them about my business and where I was at. I was going to shut up, listen and be a student. I was going to do what they said, even if I didn’t think it would work.

It took about fourteen months, but I haven’t seen the last 500 houses I bought and the last 500 people that bought my houses. I’m hearing the notes from a lot of them. What happened was exactly that. I thought and I’m picking a random number, “Out of $1.5 million, I’ll give up $700,000 in salaries and find some good people. I won’t be making $1.5 million, but I’ll still be making $700,000-plus in my retirement.” That’s not what happened.

What happened was I didn’t have to give up all that because they taught me how to pay people upon success. Ninety percent of my office doesn’t get paid until the money hits the table. The borrowed money comes to buy the house. It’s not my money. I started making more than I ever made. These people were making $150,000, $200,000 or $250,000 a year that are working for me.

Don't let the fear of the unknown, failure, and not having security stop you from doing the things that you want to do. Share on X

The dynamic is that when someone can sit in a chair and focus on their tasks, they’re much better at it than someone who is probably technically more proficient but doesn’t have time. Every seat in my office is that way and it turned into a multiple. I make more money than I ever thought. I took a cut for a year or so.

What I figured out was I had tried to go and automate my business four times and failed. The reason why was when I was trying to automate, I never gave myself permission not to buy 100 houses. I was trying to automate and fix my business with what was leftover of me after 200 transactions, which was 100 in and 100 out. There was nothing left of me.

That sounds like a nightmare.

When you decide to go automate your business, you’re going to have to have some money in the coffers and cashflow. You’re going to have to eat through and sit back. Some months are going to roll by where you’re not going to do nearly the potential that you could have done. Not only are you spending money but you’re not making some money. It’s a big number. What is your freedom worth?

What is the vision that you have? What do you want to accomplish? I don’t think a lot of people know because, in the beginning, we want our head above water. As we start getting, we start standing up taller. We start being able to make some moves, hire and create great teams and companies. What do you want to do with it truly? It’s internal, external and philosophical, every story and everything that goes in our heads. We’re always going through these three things, the way we feel about it, how it affects the people around us and the external.

Is it helping humanity? What is our purpose on Earth? What are we supposed to do here? All of those things, you have to look at it. It doesn’t have to be something that is somebody else’s. It’s going to be uniquely yours. The beautiful and tough part about being a leader is that you need to figure that out for yourself. You can’t regurgitate what somebody else thinks your vision should be because then, you’re living a lie in itself. There’s a lot of self-work and self-development that goes in there. There’s a lot of being around incredible people and upgrading all the time. It’s a constant evolution when you become an entrepreneur and that’s what I love.

We all know people that once college or high school is done, they get their trade. They’re going to stay in here and do the same things over and over. That’s their life. I can’t live that way. I’m sure people reading can’t live that way. You’ve got to always constantly be putting good stuff in and plunging all the BS out because that’s dumping in our brains all day every day, and surround ourselves with incredible people and then life is so good.

Why are you doing this now? Beyond the money, what is your higher reason?

People love going the whole family thing. I don’t. My family would live with me in a van parked by the canal. They would be happy. They would do it. It’s not that. I hit the lottery being born a White American male. There’s nothing that I did to earn that. I just was. I’ve got a lot of potential and things. Internally, I have a big motor and I want to see how far I can go with it. It’s the constant pursuit of learning more and providing more value to the community.

It’s about more than the money now. It’s about like, “What impact do I have on something besides my family and me? Where does this go?” It helps if you can find a higher reason for your business besides profit. I didn’t invent this, but I looked at my business and said, “What could be the higher reason for this business?” I am changing renters, who would never be able to buy a house, into owners. That is a noble cause because 85% to 90% of the Americans in the United States find the bulk of their net worth in the equity of the home they bought 20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago.

 

That’s where their stability came from, the roots grew in the ground and the memories were made. A lot of good stuff happens there. Neighborhoods are better with owners than renters. I’m taking $20,000 houses, doing a $30,000 rehab and getting a new tax value for the city at $100,000. I’m increasing revenue all over the place and increasing people’s lifestyles. That’s the house flipping business.

The educational business, Dave Ramsey does the primal scream when people get debt-free. Dave Ramsey would have hated me. I bought my first 100 houses on credit cards. We ring the bell at my office when people figure out how to replace their job and take control of their 2,600 hours. To me, that’s a noble cause because if I change that man’s life or woman’s life, I have changed their children’s life, grandchildren’s life and parents’ life. I’m changing a whole bunch of lives. That’s where I’m at.

The way I see it is when it comes to the coaching side, which is the majority of my efforts and energies go towards that now because I’ve got an incredible team on the real estate side. We’re in a beautiful, unique time in history that I’m excited to be a part of. This is the vision and the why as a coach. You can have somebody that comes from the worst background, not a lot of money, but they have that hustle gene and that fire in their belly to succeed. If you give them enough shots, address, names and phone numbers of properties that are in bad shape or vacant, they can change their lives and I’ve seen it.

I interview people twice a week, every single week. Describing this and breaking this down, I see it. It doesn’t matter if you’re from the South, North, West Coast or East Coast. It doesn’t matter where across the entire country. I’ve had students in Israel that are making six figures a month. You used to have some wild talent to make it out of certain situations. Now, you can go through real estate and build wealth that maybe your family has never had and I get to be a part of that.

I get to guide a lot of those people to be able to make sure that they don’t make the mistakes, that they’ve got back-up and that I am one of those five people that they’re spending the most time with. That is incredible. You see these kids making $25,000, $35,000 or $75,000 at 23 years old, 19 years old or whatever else, wholesaling properties. You think with a start like that and with being able to expand your mind into thinking bigger and crossing that bridge. We start in this business and it’s all faith-based, “We believe we can do it. I have the faith that I can do that.”

Once you make your first dollar in real estate and you cross that bridge to it being a fact that your efforts, voice, talent, skills and energy can get you a check in this business, it can be a lifestyle and it could change your whole family’s financial future or destiny, whatever you want to call it, from being proactive. I’m going to scream from the rooftops and tell everybody about it. I’m going to be as loud as possible because there’s more than enough inventory. In the US Census 2020, over 11 million properties have been vacant for over a year in the United States. There are more properties than there are investors.

We’ve talked about some pretty big numbers here. You and I have done a decent amount of volume. Remember, you don’t have to do a whole lot to change your whole life. You can do a few properties a year and change everything.

You could do one a month and you’re in the top 5% income earners in the world. Everybody wants to jump from, “I’ve never done a deal,” to, “I want to be a millionaire.” I get it but how about let’s make our first $10,000 and then let’s shoot for the first $50,000 and the first $100,000? That’s life-changing money.

Some of the most unfortunate stories I’ve ever heard are the guys that went out and made $150,000 on their first deal. I’m like, “That’s his first deal. That’s horrible.” It’s great and I get it, but sometimes it’s a recipe for disaster.

It’s Newton’s law. He has been talking about it since the 1600s, “Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion unless they’re acted upon by an outside force.” Unfortunately, in our business, the outside force sometimes is huge checks. It stops us right in our tracks. We start thinking too much and we stop acting. I know we’re all over the place for everybody out there, and this has been a fun show. I hope that you’re getting something out of this.

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As a real estate entrepreneur, there are three parts. Mitch, you could tell me if you disagree or agree with it. I break it down into lead generation. That’s your ability to find these opportunities. Converting those, getting them under contract and getting those assigned, whether you’re buying or assigning them or whether you’re buying it to flip or hold it, and then exit strategy. You’ve got lead generation, conversion of those leads, and then your exit strategy, buy and hold, buy and sell, or assign those in wholesale. Anything I’m missing there, Mitch?

I have the same thought. There’s acquisition, funding and sales. In order to get an acquisition, you have to be a marketer. You’re talking about lead generation. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in. If you’re not a marketer, you’re sunk. A marketer goes without saying. You have to be able to market. You’ve got some giveaways, and I bet you have addressed some of these three things. I want everyone to go to 1000Houses.com/Brent. What are you offering these folks?

TTPInsider.com will direct you right there. We’ve got a toolbox of a ton of different resources, whether that be scripts, contracts or a breakdown of how to get your first deal and how to get going. We put a ton of effort and work into it. The whole team is behind it. It’s phenomenal. I encourage everybody to go check that out. Even if you’re doing business, it could clean up maybe some of the processes that are sticking points in your business or bottlenecks.

TTP is Talk To People. That’s the whole business. When it comes down to it, you have to be on your phone all the time. Whether you’re texting, calling or whatever else, you need to be actively communicating all the time, especially if you’re building up your business. The louder you are and the more people know that you’re passionate about this business, you become a magnet. Opportunities fly your way.

In 1996 and 1997, when phone bills weren’t the way they are now, I used 6,700 minutes a month on average and my phone bill was $1,800 a month. It was four times more than my house.

The secret to this is TTP. This is self-promotion here. It’s like a philosophy. You need to break out of your shell, be proactive, have confidence and go and stand tall. Go tell everybody that you love real estate and you love working with ugly houses. If anybody runs across them, that they should reach out to you. There are so many different exit strategies that you can use if you know how to source the deals. You can find money for those projects.

Let’s talk to people who think you have to have money to make money in this business. Address that. It’s a disease out there that’s horrible. It’s rampant. Everyone says, “I don’t have enough money to get in that business.”

Everybody can answer this for themselves. If you go out now and you go around your neighborhood, find the ugliest house and get their phone number, there are a million different sites that you could do it. Batch Skip Tracing is where I get it. Do you have a skip tracing, Mitch?

I don’t have one myself. I promote Skip Genie. It doesn’t matter what you use. You just get one.

You get the phone number and call them up. It says on Zillow that this house is worth $280,000. You talked to the owner. They say they want $60,000 for it. You can go to any Meetup group or Facebook real estate investing group out there and say, “I got this smoking deal. I need to have a financial partner to help me do this deal.” You will have people lined up for the opportunity.

 

There are people that have the money. They need somebody to go find the deals and that’s the fact. If you’re starting out and you have no money, your job is a deal finder. You simply go out and find it in a ton of tools in TTP Insider. You go out and find those deals. If you source those opportunities, people will be attracted to you. They will want to do business with you and the money is going to be there.

You said the key and I said it a thousand times. You almost said the exact same words, “When you don’t have money, you’re a professional deal finder, contract writer upper.” You’ve got to get yourself as much time as you can to take the pressure off of you, so you don’t have to find the money in 1 or 2 days. Give yourself 30 or 45 days. If you have any deal at all, the money will show up if you’ll let people know. If no one shows up for your deal, you didn’t have a deal.

That’s how you do it and find it without money. You find those opportunities. Find an ugly house, talk to the property owner and rinse and repeat. That’s it. I coach all around the country. My specialty is understanding the metrics behind this. If you talk to 200 owners of distressed properties, you will do one deal. You will probably do more, but you will do at least one deal. Here’s the hard part, 199 people are going to reject you or they’re going to drag it on. It’s whether or not you’re willing to be rejected by another human, 199, to get that one deal that makes you $20,000 and then do that over and over and build a business based around that.

Let’s flip the table because I love to do this with people. In order to make $20,000 or $25,000, here’s your goal. You have to get 200 noes in a row and I bet you can’t do it. Set your goal to get 200 noes in a row. That’s your goal. If you can get 200 noes in a row, you’re probably going to screw up and make $25,000 or $30,000.

Every no is $100. If I gave you $100 every time somebody said no to you, I would have to tear you off the phone. It usually takes about twenty hours to talk to 200 people. That’s what it is. If I stood there and gave you $1,000 an hour for every hour that you call distressed property owners, whether it be probate, pre-foreclosure, driving for dollars, ugly houses, tired landlords, vacant land, tax defaults, all these signs of distress and you talk to 200 people, you’re going to get a deal. It’s going to take you about twenty hours and it could be worth $20,000. If I’m there handing you $1,000 an hour to call those people, I would have to tear everybody reading this off the phone every single day. That’s the reality.

This man has painted a realistic picture of what it takes. If you’re not willing to talk to 200 people, don’t expect much. I wish it was less. I wish it was only 50 people, but I’m sorry. The truth of the matter is, the man is telling you the truth. Ask up what it’s going to take to call 200 people. It’s about twenty hours. That’s a very realistic conservative point. You may get lucky and do 2 or 3, but he is not even saying that because he doesn’t want to set expectations that way. I would much rather you go do the twenty and get two deals. That’s the real life of it.

People will spend 2,600 hours in net probably. Even if you’re making $30,000, you’re taking home $15,000. What do you want to do? Either way, you’re going to have to do something. Do you want to do it for yourself or somebody else? Do you want to build these skills? After you talk to 1,000 property owners and ask them if they would consider an offer on their property, you can talk to anybody about anything. It blends into your life.

There are not a lot of people that have had that many conversations with people. It makes you a better communicator. It makes your tone, pacing and the words that you use better. It is a skill that never goes away. There are huge advantages to being proactive and helping people out. The fact is, all of these people are in distress. Statistically, 6% to 10% of the real estate market at all times is in some form of distress. Whether it be financially, physically or emotionally, it’s all baked in there.

We are helping the people that aren’t going to help themselves. That’s the trueness to this thing. People are going to sit there and either lose these houses or it’s going to get into a bad repair that they get nothing out of it. We are there to go and help these people out of this situation. You cannot force anybody to sell you their house. You can’t convince them and say the magic words. You can’t do any of those things. We are deal finders, not deal creators out there. Keep that in mind. We find properties when they’re ready to sell at the price that we’re willing to offer them and that’s how we make income.

I want everyone to go to TTPInsider.com. There’s a ton of free stuff over there. I don’t see how it would go wrong. If you don’t know what to say, there are scripts over there. Go get some scripts. I would like to thank LiveComm.com for sponsoring this episode. I have an average of four days on the market in the last 200 houses. I put no signs in the yards. There’s not one. It’s not around the neighborhood. There are no signs. It took a little while to get there and for me to figure it out. If you want to see how I’m doing that, go to LiveComm.com and watch some of the videos on the front page.

They sell smartphone numbers. They’re $2 apiece. Anytime someone calls that smartphone number from a cell phone, we capture their cell phone number. It goes into a text distribution list. We can text them any information we want. We can send out auto-reply texts. We can forward it to recordings that explain all that information about the houses while we’re capturing their phone numbers. We don’t even have to talk to them to tell them those 150 facts about the house before we get down to whether they even have any money or not. You don’t have to do that. Let the recordings do that.

I have had three break-ins on rentals as soon as I put a sign in the yard. If you put that sign in the yard, all of a sudden, people that are driving around and scoping out the hood are like, “That’s a vacant property. Let’s go check out and see what is going on.” Three times the appliance is ripped out of there. It’s a huge advantage. I would look into LiveComm. That’s cool.

It's a constant evolution when you become an entrepreneur. Share on X

We had to do it because the city inspectors got so bad. They were finding us for work that was done without a permit five years before I owned the house or making me tear the porch off because someone put a porch on them without a permit. That was one of the ways that we do it. There are so many advantages to using that technology. Go over to LiveComm.com and check it out. I would like to thank them as a sponsor for this episode. I appreciate it. Anything you want to say to the audience before we wrap it up, Brent?

Clarity and discipline. Get clear on what you want to do. If it’s to do your first deal, focus. If you haven’t done your first deal, focus on doing your first deal. Find at least 300 addresses that you’re driving around. Get those addresses and phone numbers. There’s a ton of different apps and resources. They pretty much do everything for you.

Find those properties that need some love out there. Call them up and you’re going to get opportunities. It takes that one to light that fire in your brain that says, “I can do this full-time. This could be my thing. I can build a real awesome life out of this.” I encourage you. I know you can. I interview people all the time that have completely changed their lives because of this business. You can do this. That’s my message.

Let me add one thing to it and then we’ll wrap it up. It would help if you would find yourself a mentor that has already accomplished what you’re trying to accomplish. Please, make sure that he is the person that you want to be on and off the field because there’s no separation between the two. If the guy is a bad guy off the field, it’s going to bleed over to the business.

Make sure that guy you choose is the person you would like to be on and off the field because you will be hanging around them a lot. We don’t need to pick up any bad habits. I appreciate you being on. It’s a pleasure. Brent and I are in the same mastermind, Multipliers. In case there are some men out there in need, let’s tell them a little bit about that.

Multipliers was designed to take high-level, high-functioning successful men and give them a place to go to talk so that the success doesn’t implode them. That’s where we go because there’s always another obstacle to handle. The higher you go up the financial chain, there are many more temptations that you’re able to purchase or get yourself into.

Multipliers is dedicated to 50 men at one time. These men get to talk about man problems, wealthy problems and problems that people will have when they’re in control or responsible for many people’s lives. They help men before they implode, walk out, burn it all down to the ground and say, “Let’s have a conversation before you hit that red button and blow everything up. Let’s talk, calm down and back up. How do we get a handle on this? How do we improve our lives?”

It’s important to be surrounded by people that have the same interests and have been through a lot of the same things. It’s an incredible mastermind group. Chris Arnold has done a fantastic job. It’s in beautiful Tulum. I take my wife to it every year. She gets to stay to herself, which she loves. Kids aren’t around. We get to go out at night and have a great time. It’s phenomenal. I love it.

There’s always another level to go to and always another mastermind to be in because if you don’t stop, it will never stop. Keep going on. I would like to thank everybody for stopping by to get you some Brent Daniels. Remember, TTPInsider.com. Go get that free stuff. You can’t go wrong. Thank you so much, Brent.

Thanks, Mitch.

 

Important Links

• 1000Houses.com/Brent
• 1000Houses.com/TFF
• 1000Houses.com/Livecomm
• 1000Houses.com/100
• 1000Houses.com/101
• TTPInsider.com

 

About Brent Daniels

Brent Daniels is a multi-million dollar wholesaler in Phoenix, Arizona and the creator of Talk To People a simple, low cost, and incredibly effective telephone marketing program.

 

 

 

 

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