How to Build a $100K/Month Real Estate Wholesaling Business with Max Maxwell | BP Business 15

welcome to the BiggerPockets business podcast show number 15 welcome to a real-world MBA from the school of hard knocks where entrepreneurs reveal what it really takes to make it whether you're already in business or you're on your way there this show is for you this is bigger pockets business [Music] hey there everybody I am Jay Scott co-host of the BiggerPockets business podcast here with my amazingly awesome and beautiful co-host and wife that was so sweet thank you honey how you doing today Carol Scott I'm a little tired I was up and I actually I have to I have to confess I slept in today I didn't get up until 3:30 I'm slacking slacking AM or PM are you kidding me you've known me for 12 years clearly we're at 330 a what's better than three IIIi can empathize I was up early this morning too I think nine no no I was up at 8:30 this morning oh yeah I'm feeling really bad for you there darlin I'm tired but but I won't complain yeah good good strategy my friend so we have a really great show today but before we jump into the show I know there's some people out there who may be interested in being a guest on the bigger pockets business podcast yeah we want you or some of the people in your network so if you would like to be on our show if you'd like to be considered or know someone else who would be great go to BiggerPockets dot-com slash biz guest that's bi z gu EST BiggerPockets comm slash biz guest we'd love to hear what you're all about and see if you could be someone we could talk to awesome now let's get into our show we have a really awesome show today we have a guy on the show his name is max max well for those who aren't familiar max is a real estate wholesaler and for yunnan real-estate folks out there we will talk about what a real estate wholesaler does but max has built a real estate investing business he's doing upwards of a hundred thousand dollars a month in income he's built this business by putting in place systems processes hiring virtual assistants basically he's put his real estate business on autopilot and a lot of the tips that he gives today talks about not just how to put a real estate business on autopilot but how to put any business on autopilot and if you stick around towards the end of the interview he gives some really good tips on negotiating and a whole of other great stuff so this is a fantastic show I'm really excited to jump into this so without any further ado let's bring on mr. max Maxwell how you do max I'm doing well sir how you doing I am doing great we are thrilled to have you here hi max thanks so much for coming on with us today I appreciate being here this is awesome honey how excited are you to have max Maxwell this is awesome so I have listened to a lot of your podcasts I've listened to some interviews you've done and you've really figured out and we're going to talk about this in the episode but you've really figured out the system's the process is the scaling of your business and I know there are a lot of people who are listening to this who are looking to do the same thing so I'm really excited about this episode I'm excited about honey have you seen max Maxwell signature it is the coolest signature it could totally be this freestanding brand I just want it splashed across shirts and everywhere have you seen this it's not seen this we'll make sure that goes in the show notes I think nature is really cool too yes you have a great sense of throws ridiculous my signature certainly needs some work axis totally lame Max rocks the signature situation okay funny story about that but we'll talk about it later okay perfect so I want to start out with so we have a really diverse audience so we have a whole lot of real estate investors in our audience but we also have a lot of people who aren't real estate investors they're more generic business people or they're getting ready to start businesses outside of real estate you are one of our hard core real estate business owners and guests so Before we jump into your backstory and our business discussion can you get a little give us a little bit of information about your specific business niche so you're a real estate wholesaler and I know there are gonna be some people who are listening to this that don't know what wholesaling is so can you can you tell us a little bit about what wholesaling is what exactly that means yeah I mean it's really no different than wholesaling groceries or wholesaling cars or anything like that we just decided to use real estate because the margins are a lot better and everybody needs a house but but particularly we get something a house under contract at a certain price and we either truck I'm going to sell that contract or purchase it and sell it pretty much quickly right after we purchase it so basically buying something on selling it higher and we don't even deal with the retail side meant much it's more of you know and to end business the business where we're selling directly to guys that are flipping properties or guys that are holding properties for personal investment purposes so you're basically playing the middleman you're buying low selling high and just kind of doing an arbitrage play where you're making some money for the services you bring to both the seller and the buyer I mean in any business and I think the way the world is going right now the middleman is the guy that actually makes the most money yep awesome okay thank you for that great so am i understanding correctly that you have managed to systematize your business to the point where you're making something like you're bringing in a hundred thousand dollars each and every month wholesaling at least yeah that's fantastic I'm sure I'm guessing that didn't happen overnight so before we go into how you got there I think this is really important that we hear your back story right I'm guessing you had a first job at some point in your life and maybe well sailing house I have a feeling it's not so give us another backstory we're show us where the average entrepreneurialism came from max whoa I don't know where it was born from but I know like you know my uncle who used to own real estate and he would show me around and I never understood how he owns so many houses and ever since I was just young like it was it was a way of making your own money was going out at a young age you know I have immigrant parents so that come from a very hardworking background of you know thread of parents and it just kind of was in me but my first real job on the books outside from when I was younger so when I was younger before I had my first official job I worked at a tree farm I did concrete hard labor it like it was fun though my next-door neighbor on the concrete company and I was able to work with him in the summer so I can buy my jet skis or whatever I wanted to play with on the lake but my first job job where I actually collected money in w-2 was the United States Air Force at 17 years old awesome to fly planes I actually do fly planes now but I was not a pilot in the Air Force I actually learned how to fly maybe three years ago now Oh awesome you do it recreationally is a hobby yeah just small small towns four seater planes just lie whatever I can so this dude's got jet skis he's got airplane you've got the life man you've got this figured out and notice he know just tell us a little bit about that booth you're standing in now you were just telling us before the show started yeah so last year when I decided that content was a very important part inside being a media of being an entrepreneur I decided to invest into a 5,000 square foot we're actually 13,000 but we took 5,000 of it and made it into a like a studio so we have a 20 by 20 psych wall to podcast rooms a set design area a edit Bay pretty much I can do I can run a news broadcasting Center out of here only because I understand that each company that I own and participate in has to be a media outlet themselves so I just invested that myself that's awesome I'm gonna get back to that okay so let's go back to your story you're in the Air Force what's next I was in the Air Force I did my first four years and decided this was it for me getting shot at for 20 grand was it really that fun yeah I met some good people some people that are friends now still with me you know but you know I I wanted to do something different and I got out and actually I went right into real estate and this was around 2004 2005 and I got a real estate license as a broker and decided that was fun for the first year and a half and then I decided that wasn't cool either what about it wasn't cool I didn't like driving people around on Saturdays and Sundays to buy a house that they never intended to buy right a year yeah oh that's jump it was a terrible job I enjoyed it I loved what I learned I think that's the lesson everything that I did I learned something too got me where I am today and so I love that real estate side and then I opened up a property management investment company and I enjoyed that better I enjoyed the numbers I enjoyed finding something that was less value turned to something that was worth more and then making an investment property for somebody so the flipping house well I really I was doing the management side of it but then I found one big guy that wanted me to actually assist him with flipping some of his properties and I was kind of wholesaling and not really knowing what wholesaling was but I was finding houses that were broken fixing them and then giving it to him as an investment portfolio property on it so you started in real estate 2004-2005 and that's kind of been your main business focus for the last 14 years no no there's more yeah 2008 happen and I thought real estate was dead I left I got out of the game and I didn't I didn't come back I left in about 2008 when I moved to California and I didn't pick up real estate again into 2015-16 I want to go back to that too obviously we know we know we all know what happened back in 2008 on a mass level right but I love hearing those nitty gritty stories was there was there a single incident or a single week or a single month or a single something that was just so bad for you personally so bad for you and real estate so bad for you and your business when that was like I am so out of here what was the straw that broke that camel's back yeah big mistake about 90% of my business was from one guy was a thirteen and a half million dollar portfolio all North Carolina properties so we're not in California so thirteen and a half million dollars in property is a lot of property I'm okay but I managed his entire portfolio he was 90 plus percent of my business and he's seen the ball coming down the hill and he started selling so I remember the day that he wanted to start dumping his portfolio and that was the day I had to start laying people off that were on-site managers and apartment complexes and stuff like that and it was just like wow where we're going downhill no fun some really hard lessons learned there a lot of people don't realize I mean you can have the best customer in the world generating a ton of money for you but when you are relying on one customer that customer has control over your business you don't have control over your business I didn't realize it at the time but like I said these lessons built Who I am today that's awesome okay good I was just gonna say lessons built who you are today and that said we always liked we loved about our failures right even if it's nothing that we personally did intentionally obviously that was a failure there there are failures I think every single day we have a mini failure we have bigger macro failures and I want to get more into some of those later as we're talking more but I think they're so crucial to building your business and not being afraid to try new things and just fail the heck out of all kinds of situations so you get new ones going on absolutely I'm with that so 2008 you're one big customer kind of goes away and you realize I have to move out of real estate was your what was your next move I didn't know I I went from ride to high horse at least what I thought was a high horse at that time too pretty much broke because I was living above my means I didn't see the end of the real estate come in so you know at that age at 21 22 owning a company and doing well I got I had everything I thought I needed and when that collapsed so did everything I went from having everything to where my car was in repossession what was everything max tell us what was that lifestyle what was what what kind of lifestyle were you living at 21 I can travel on I could take one-way flights to New York and go shopping and and not worry about the day I was coming back I had multiple cars all on payments which was stupid I had I had had more fun than I worked and it caught up to me and it was all at once it was what she do where'd she go I packed up and moved to California went to go sleep on my cousin's couch he played professional soccer in LA and I just was like I need a new beginning so I went over there and lived for a little while and then I started working in the marketing world and that's kind of where I started to really find what I really loved was marketing okay they most of our businesses you have to market and sell in order to survive so I started doing what we call experiential marketing activations and setups for big companies like horizon char Boyle Hershey's Legos and started doing their their act nations in setting up their stuff and organizing their their marketing for the exponential side of things what is the exponential side of things what do we talk give me an example from one of those companies you're talking about yeah so it's like a couple things you can go as large as for Verizon what we did was they had a sponsorship with college football and we did their activations at the games so we would have we would organize okay there's X amount of games this year we're gonna deploy X amount of people with tents and new vehicles and show off your branding show off new products all that type of stuff so that all the way to state fairs - you know conventions and conferences the large ones all these guys had sponsorships so we would we would be their experiential side their experience side with their customer great so it sounds like you are getting in front of a lot of people building relationships with a lot of people building rapport with a lot of people to ultimately activate those customers does that sound about right absolutely I'm capturing that correctly so how did you take that and translate it into your next move so my next move was I realized a big funnel in this world we would deploy we would have a 14 million dollar budget from Verizon and we would go from state fair to college football games and we needed what they call brand ambassadors to work that weekend event and we were hiring them from Craigslist America and Facebook groups so it was you had this 14 million dollar budget and then you're hiring people from Craigslist to represent a billion-dollar brand and that was a bottleneck so I created a company called fast foam which means fast brand ambassador and it was a technical is an app where it was a marketplace app where essentially where we would go sign up all the brand ambassadors in the world and we would go get all the marketing companies that needed on-demand staffing and we would merge them and make the price in the middle once again trying to be in the middle and we would earn between two and four dollars an hour over thousands of employees every single weekend and we got the app about 95% built was in beta testing and we couldn't get funding in North Carolina so all of my money all of my credit cards I make all out now again you have invested in that project I think personally I had around $30,000 which was a lot of money to me and then I had another 60,000 in investments from outside investors so we were at $90,000 which wasn't know we're not the right amount of money to build an app and then we fail and I hit rock bottom again and you're in your mid-20s at this point right I am I am pushing 30 you're pushing you're getting really old all of it to mega failures you're almost 30 oh no end of the world yeah oh my gosh I felt like it I was at a point where once again I didn't have I didn't even have a car that had a payment on good thank God I had a 2004 Volkswagen with the bad starter and at 30 years old I had to move back in home with my mom okay living with your on your cousin's couch to being on your mom's couch how would your mom like that house how's your mom feeling about the whole situation the mom and Mees got to ask how do you cope with that well I my mom was happy to see me right because I've been gone for so long I'll make you cookies there you go jamaican mother so she loves to cook food but you know there was a point where i lived in my i went rock bottom i went to go live with my cousin's couch in la i got i built myself back up riding back a high horse quit a nice paying w2 job just create a company create that company I hit rock bottom again and now I have to go back to a couch well not a couch but my mother's house it's there I'm at bottom again so max why why don't you just get a job why do you keep starting companies why don't you just go like when just go work a job dude like how hard is this I don't know it's it's something in me I think that's a question that a lot of people can't I'm just unemployable you know I I don't fit the mold of what where I should be like I don't I didn't go to college I barely graduated high school so if you look at my resume I don't fit in where I'm actually capable of doing like I can I can turn companies around but my resume doesn't say so so I want to touch on something and I saw it in your backstory doing some research you had mentioned that you're dyslexic mm-hmm big time and so I imagine that that's cause struggles throughout your life as well and and made things difficult one of the things I've found is that people who have these struggles that are thrust upon them whether it's a learning disability or it's a something in their in their childhood whatever it is they're not they they're forced to take a path where they're not following the rules and they get accustomed to not following the rules and essentially we as entrepreneurs that's what we are we're people who don't want to follow the rules and I found that exactly exactly that and and so the reason I bring up the dyslexia thing is I have a good friend one of the best entrepreneurs I know and he's dyslexic and he once said to me that if he hadn't have had dyslexia had he gone done well in high school gone to college zero chance he would have been an entrepreneur he'd be sitting in an office right now behind a desk working a nine-to-five job and so I think what a lot of people don't realize is these struggles that we face oftentimes give us opportunities that normal people don't get or they don't take advantage of so so they're really a blessing in disguise I agree 100% it it gave me I had a weakness on one side but it gave me a strength on the other side yeah and dyslexic for most people I don't know is I see numbers and letters backwards how you can clearly tell me I can literally read something on the screen and when I say it it's a backwards so one thing I do I picked up when I was younger I found out I was dyslexic in high school but one thing I picked up is I actually read people's lips so whenever you're talking to me and if you're face to face you'll notice that I'm staring at your mouth I can literally see the words coming out of your mouth like literally in physical form I can see them come on your mouth and it helps me like get the conversation straight because if not I will hear things that you didn't say in sense of like in order and you know what I love I love the fact that a lot of people like we could be talking to you right now would be they would have started their story with I was dyslexic and that's an excuse for this an excuse for that you don't even mention it no I know yes something's something that would stop a lot of us from even trying to achieve business success and you don't even mention it like it's not a big deal I love that yeah I I don't mention because I don't think about it it's something I bring up and I told people because I know there's other people out there that struggle with it that really don't like to tell I didn't read my first book I was thirty dyslexia stop that you know it made me I did not read a book from cover to cover till I was 30 years old right so that was four years ago and that that uh I think that's good and bad I mean I love it though I I think it's great that I didn't read my first book 230 because when I read it I was ready to receive the information that was in it and that book changed my life that is awesome what's the book we've got it now it's cliche but it's Rich Dad Poor Dad that story in the book gave me the idea that I gave me the thought that I was thinking about everything the wrong way okay so you shifted your mindset because of that book yeah it was just like hey look at the different look at things different and when I did it made me click so with all my past failures and experiences and then reading that book it started to have me piece things together and look stop looking at the failures as failures and as lessons sure so it almost gave you it almost gave you permission right to to like take those experiences those quote-unquote failures you had before look at them in a different way and be like wait a minute here I'm just gonna take that shift my mindset about how this is happening and rock out a new thing there you go so what was the new thing ah real estate and I was broke I didn't have any money so a friend of mine his dad is in real estate and I went to his house we were having a conversation and he was talking about how he became financially independent through real estate and for me it was still didn't click because of like how can I get there I'm not bankable I'm not financeable how does this happen and he mentioned the word wholesaling and how you can pretty much sell things without actually owning the object but controlling it without any money and I was like so I went home in three weeks I went to youtube University and I call YouTube University is just like you become obsessed with something right you can use YouTube for two things you can go down a dark hole of cat videos or you can use it to literally get a quick lesson from Harvard and that quick I mean there's actually Harvard videos on there classroom videos there's everything I tell I tell I mean her up to but I I taught so many I hate to date myself but I tell so many like younger people and stuff and I'm like you are all born into this amazing amazing amazing time like I listen to Jays 94 year old grandmother tell me all the time she's like you have no idea I can't comprehend any of this and I'm like well you know what I can't comprehend everything that's happened even over the past 10 years there's there just so many incredible tools and resources available now so it's awesome that you were able to dive in there and graduate from YouTube University and really get educated on this new venture there's really no excuse not to be able to to get started in anything you want to get started in and I think that's that's the lesson here that there's enough free information out there that people don't need to go to business school people don't need to have a business mentor people don't need to spend a ton of money on coaches yeah just go get started go do it I think that's the main thing because so why tell people that you don't need a mentor and I don't mean you don't ever need a mentor because I have mentors of course I mean you don't need a mentor to get started because people use that barrier oh I need a coach I need a mentor to not do anything when reality is you just need to know the first step don't worry about step 10 get going and I learned how to drive $4 which is simply riding around and looking for been to properties and finding the owner calling them and see if they want to sell it that costs nothing except for taking gas absolutely that's how you start your wholesaling business yes just started okay I went to all my dreams okay so now a lot of people in this business and the whole saying this is I mean a lot of wholesalers and they get to the point where they're doing a deal a month or two deals a month or even three or four deals a month and they are ecstatic they feel like they've made it they they're there they're maxed out there maybe work in 20 30 40 60 hours a week and they're just like I made it I'm gonna keep doing this I'm gonna keep making money and and that's what they do forever at some point you decided this isn't enough I need to grow this business I need to turn it I can do take it from a hobby or it kind of this investing thing I'm doing and turn it into a real business to scale it so what was it in you that that kind of led you down that path to I want to turn this into a real business and what did you start doing to achieve that so one of my mentors it that that one that actually introduced me or just said the word wholesaling he told me to have a goal because what would I the part would picture I first seen is that he owns over 200 doors and he's and he doesn't have to be he he doesn't he doesn't need anything he can be done and just relax for the rest of his life and he gave me a statistic how if 100 people start working at the age of 25 by the time they turn 65 only 1% are considered wealthy which is like five point seven million dollars in network yeah four percent can take care of themselves right that means they don't need Social Security they don't need any government assistance yeah and other ninety five percent either dead or depend on friends family of government assistance and live it's it's horrible staggering that statistic tells you that I need to build wealth yes a wholesaling as an ATM machine it's just a job it wholesaling yes I have a business but it starts over every month at zero right so I need to learn how to build well so he told me look you need to put goals and you're doing a lot of volume you need to start buying properties and getting the tax benefit of that and then start creating that passive income right now you have a very active income it has that's when he said come up with a goal for every seven houses you wholesale by one and that's how we started last year and it's just become a rippling effect so basically you're wholesaling business is the the feeder to your wealth building business which is your your rental properties my wholesaling business is a very high paying w2 job that I don't know how long it will last but if I'm smart with it and with the money that it brings then I can create passive wealth for a long time you're trading your time for dollars and as soon as you stop putting in your time you stop getting the dollars and that's where the rental properties come in you put in the time the effort once and and the dollars just pain annuity forever and ever correct I would like to know max back when you were when you were really doing this by yourself take us through a typical deal right take us through what that process look like maybe even what some of those numbers look like and that so start with that and then build out to how you shifted things how things changed and systematized so you could begin growing so go back to that when you were doing it by yourself what that what one of those deals look like how that worked yeah so typically so I'll go back to my first deal we bought a house I put a house under contract let me say that I put a house under contract with the intention to buy and then so my sold my equitable interest for $14,000 and I that was my proof that this is real and so I started doing that by myself on a regular and what that looked like on a day-to-day is I would make two hundred phone calls every single day a hundred in the in the morning and a hundred in the afternoon and you know you yourself would make two hundred phone calls in a day on my cell phone hah ah that makes my head hurt thinking about that how many how many hours a day were you realistically working making this to Hunter film cause um so in the morning time I would start like 7:30 8 o'clock in the morning start making phone calls right because I want to catch certain people before they get to work certainly right and then so I did that all the way to like 11:00 because I want to catch people when they're what when they're watching prices right and all that stuff as well then between like 12:00 and 2:00 I would do my research and that's why I would spend my time at the courthouse in the probate in the taxes and I was really educating myself and really putting the pieces of the puzzle full of problems because we're in the problem-solving business so I need to find out where the problems were so I was in a divorce room and in probates room in the bankruptcy rooms trying to figure out what problems can I solve and that's when I started collecting data between the time of like 12 and 2 and then after 2 I would come home compress his dad I put it on Excel sheets to be skipped out at night when I was sleeping and started at around 5 o'clock I would call from like 5 p.m. to 8:30 at night and that's where I would do my hundred their hundred there now do I talk to talk to 200 people a day no I would probably reach around 40 people a day right 30 to 40 people a day whether they told me to go kick rocks or yes I'm interested in so in the house as long as I got 40 people that owned a property on the phone that said no yes or no I was happy because I started to build up this pipeline and as I consistently did that I started to realize I was building this pipeline and then I would get call backs and then the follow-up scan where I would call somebody that I talked to three weeks ago that said maybe or that they would think about it I would call them now and they would be more inclined and then another conversation in two days and then the next day and then own an appointment and then oh I got this house so it would work like that in succession so I was working when I first got my first check and I started working like crazy I actually had to wear night a night guard in my mouth because I did not want to go to sleep it was I was dreaming and and gritting my teeth at night wanting to I wanted 7:30 to hit so fast so I can start making phone calls again for the next day because I knew that one yes was like 10 grand and I was getting shot at for $20,000 couple years ago so you got to understand the difference is that I could make a phone call for ten or get shot at for 20 kind of a no-brainer yeah and this is a common theme among the guests that we're talking to it really is it's about consistency and there's a saying in in business and entrepreneurship 90% of success is just showing up and it's it's amazing how doing the same thing day in and day out and the first day no results second day no results third day no results I often tell people I meet two types of people in the real estate business I meet 95% of people who they've never done a deal and they'll never do a deal I mean zero deals that's that's that's their their reality in real estate the other 5% are gonna do 10 20 50 100 a thousand deals I never meet anybody in this business that does one deal because if you have the motivation if you have the work ethic if you have the the commitment to do one deal that deal is gonna take you a while but as soon as you do that first deal you're gonna get to the second much quicker you get to the third to the fifth to the fiftieth or the hundredth that much quicker and so I I think you said the a lot more concisely than I did but it's really it's just showing up doing the work day in and day out and letting the snowball form and not giving up before it does correct and and that's why I say you're one deal away I use that term a lot love that and it means that not going to gain financial freedom from that first deal or you're gonna prove to yourself and maybe others that have been doubting you that this is real and you are now going to try to do this over and over again make it repeatable and now you changed everything you knew about time and money for the rest of your life that's great okay so so you're doing deals now and you've realized I can make ten thousand dollars a deal I can make fourteen thousand dollars a deal like you did on your first deal and at some point you decide that's not enough I don't want to make two hundred calls a day even though I might be making ten or twenty or thirty thousand dollars a month that's not enough for me I need to do something different I want to do more I want to do bigger and so what did that look like you when did you when did that kind of that mindset set in that that I can scale this thing yeah so that's when I kind of started my youtube channel and I wanted to hold myself accountable so the first thing after reading books and listen to podcasts cuz there are this whole time I'm still educating myself because I don't know anything I really don't know anything I just know enough to where I've made some few dollars I started educating myself in the first I heard somebody say I don't know who it is I don't want to give credit but they said fire yourself from something that you don't like to do or you not that great act and I fired myself from collecting the data right and and doing the excel sheet and and all that stuff so I first hire I had was a remote employee from the Philippines which I lucked up on she's still with me today and she did all my excel all my data collection from online and everything and did it while I was sleeping so that when I wake up in the morning I no longer had to do that before I got started making the phone calls when I wake up I can now start dialing great and I think that's I want to touch on that a little bit more for all people in any type of business right I think it's you said something that your your coach or your mentor told you that you said was fire yourself from something you're not good at would you agree and honey do I know you and I still still to this day even with all of our businesses everything that we've done we still struggle with this is people it's sometimes just hard to identify and admit there are some things I'm just not good at right you even remember back in the day when we started all the stuff oh I'm so good I'll tell you but you remember back in the day when we started our businesses right like you remember when we would just I would do something and then you would decide you were just as good at that so you would redo it and then I'd go and then I would redo what you just redid and you know back and forth and it turns out neither of us were good at it and neither of us were good what we weren't good at but we just had a hard time realizing that was the case so I think it's it's I just think it's super important no matter what type of Mis business that you're in realizing there are things that you just are not a pro at and figuring out a way to supplement that and it sounds like you supplemented that with with your assistant in the Philippines who crunches your data yeah and and one thing I would say is before you completely outsource it at least understand it us understand it up to where you can teach it because if not you're just passing through chaos right just because you hire somebody that is supposed to crunch your data it doesn't mean they know how to do it exactly the way you want it or we're doing it prior sure well so learn it don't got to be good at it but learning no I don't know it's about where did you find your person where do people find these people once once they do learn what needs to be happening where do they find people to do I found my virtual assistant on up work up work okay and she turned out to be a rock star she's actually like the hiring manager at a large call center in the Philippines and then from that day forward any time I needed a new person on the team she would go out and hire them so that's a great process within a process right there so while you're building out your systems and processes you are systematizing and process it your systematizing your processes around hiring more people through your virtual assistant that you got through up work so you're at this point you're really realizing the value in sumit izing everything to scale mm-hmm so I at this point now I've fired myself from collecting the data and now I can focus on doing things in those three hours in the day where I was going to collect data three to four hours I am now doing more marketing whether that's on Craigslist on Facebook we started putting out bandit signs and the bandit signs started in call volume right so now I'm getting calls that I can't even answer I'm starting to like filter my customers through listening to their voicemail if they're motivated or not so I said I'm blowing a lot of money here I need a full-time person that answers the phone so I call Alexis which is my first virtual assistant and I said I need somebody that answers the phones and I'm gonna train them she got the person her name is Lika she's still with me today great all my inbound calls come through Lika and she is so trained now she probably does it better than I do she enters the data to podio and then she passes it to my us-based team that then picks up the ball and moves from there but at that point I now freed myself from answering the phones and we now had a process where we can now collect the data in a CRM so that we can follow up more importantly because the monies in the follow up in any business right and now we're rocking and rolling even better and now the beautiful part here is you've trained somebody to deal with your data you've trained somebody to take your leads so you might be able to take 200 calls in a day if you wanted to not saying you want to but maybe you can take 200 calls in a day or you can hire somebody to take 200 calls in the day where you hire three people and take 600 calls of the day or you hire a hundred people and take 10,000 calls in the day whatever it is exactly it becomes a numbers game so guess what the next place I fired myself from I no longer wanted to make these calls every day I just wanted to go to the appointments so now I hired Alexis hired Paul which is still with me today and he now makes 600 calls a day because my last technology he's a triple line dialer and all that stuff like that so now his sole sole firket sole focus nine hour today is to do outbound calls that sometimes turned into inbound calls which Leica answers right now all I'm seeing is qualified leads where I need to have that initial pre appointment call with them who are the what you max are the one who who takes that pre-appointment calls that so all of those all those other things happen and then you are the one who personally takes that pre appointment call why are you why are you that why are you doing that and I I'm not trying to lead I'm just going to say why I think I could just even tell from your podcast the way the way you work the different things you've done that just building that relationship is so absolutely crucial I'm just going to answer the question for you because so evident from your personality so evident from just the way you know the way you come across on your YouTube channels and everything else that establishing that you is that first point of contact in building that trust building that rapport building that that information gathering together and building that trust I really think that serves you incredibly well in your business I appreciate it and that's that's it it's twofold so one I want to introduce myself to the customer and really get real boil down and see if I can really solve a problem before I waste my time and their time going to their house and then I also establish that rapport with them and now we're going up say hey you've talked to my associates they they got you here I'm the guy that's gonna come to your house let's just have a quick conversation and now okay great the appointments tomorrow too I'll see you tomorrow too so I was still that bottleneck yep I was still that bottleneck but I didn't have to do all these other things so now my time is spent real carefully on generate revenue generating activities yep I am now I only do the things that generate revenue which is now going on these appointments and getting these contracts okay so now you have four people in your business I'm sorry it means it are up there alright you've got four people in your business you have somebody that's dealing with the data while you're sleeping you have somebody who is making outbound calls for you basically generating leads somebody who is taking inbound calls so somebody who is is doing the the lead follow-up and you you're taking appointments and actually negotiating deals so we've got four people in your business right now you're doing it sounds like a whole lot more transactions touches lead generation tasks with a whole lot less of your time correct you're headed in the right direction here yeah so I'm utilizing I'm taking advantage of the US currency with the great workers and the great work ethic that people have in the Philippines and I am now maximizing my dollar and finding great employees at the same time so each one is a base salary of around two two to twenty a week okay which is double the salary of an average person that works in the Philippines call center for American company that's awesome when wind so we pay great and we do bonuses as well so now I'm consistently doing twenty or thirty thousand dollars a month and I have a team but I also have some freedom at this time now that's nice so now I have to do CEO thirty thousand foot level stuff I need to figure out how can I go out and spend time in the evenings between five and seven and meet new buyers what what networking events can I go to versus crunching data at night what networking events can I go to and meet new buyers and find out what they like and find out what they don't like and that's what I was doing excellent generate more and more and more so what are their networking things are you doing in addition to physically going out for example I know we talked a little bit about your YouTube channel you talked a little bit about your vlog which I still have the hardest time saying that vlog right nog you get the merch and you smash that like button and all that it's just fascinating to me this whole new crazy world I love it but what are some of those other things that you're doing from to really build that brand even more to take on that 30,000 high level view to really be the CEO to really grow your business what are those things that you're spending your time on now instead instead of answering the calls and crunching the data and all the stuff that you did back in the day when you are first growing a great question so one of a person that I look up to and have for four years now is Gary Vaynerchuk and I actually just had him speak at my event which is like crazy that's awesome very short amount of time but Gary talks about building a brand for yourself so I actually brand me more than I brand my company so that whatever I decide to do I am the brand so what I want to sell peanut butter and jelly sandwiches tomorrow or I want to keep doing real estate the brand follows me I would totally eat a max Maxwell people just for the record so you know just just building your personal brand and becoming that authority figure is it is important to going out and finding it's actually helped me find a lot of cash buyers people that trust me and see my work ethic visually and hear it they know that I'm trustworthy by listening to me and following me it's helped me get some of the best employees that I can't because they trusted my grant they believed in me so building that personal brand is is a big side a big uptick of growing your actual business I started hosting free meetups I started telling people locally in my community how to do the same thing I was doing and a lot of guys like you're creating competition now you're seeing it wrong you'll get the big big picture I'm creating an army of people that are willing to learn and may even come to me and bring me deals absolutely and that's how you look at it you know so and we've we've done deals I'm doing a deal tomorrow making like twenty five thousand with somebody that is locally in my market it's not great so you're out there and it's just all self-perpetuating right you're you're keeping yourself out in front of people you're you're helping people learn how to do this on their own you're changing lives and in return and it's it's a byproduct but it all just works very organically right it's just people are people continue feeding you deals so it's like you're putting good stuff out there good stuffs coming back to you and it just keeps growing and snowballing and becoming bigger and better tell us more about your conference that you just had so I set a goal this year to put on a conference the largest wholesaling conference right there's so many conferences about like apartment buying single-family rentals and I wanted to do something big I wanted to put on the largest wholesaling conference not just because of justice I did the largest but what would it feel like if we had 1,200 wholesalers like-minded individuals in a hotel for three days and just the atmosphere created we created a new family members we created all types of things where I mean we now you can now go back to your perspective area where you live but you now have a family of 1,200 individuals across the country that are in the same thing as you so we did that event it's two and a half three days and we had Gary Vee as the keynote speaker which was awesome and we just met people and changed some lives and show people how this works and and really help people scale their current business as well too so fine congratulations sounds like a huge success yeah awesome so you now have a business if I recall I know your goal was a hundred thousand dollars per month and you're doing that you have again your your your data person you have inbound person outbound person you now have somebody who handles your your your acquisitions and your disposition so actually working with buyers and sellers so how do you decide where to spend your time in the business what do you decide you decide what the highest and best use of your time is the highest and best time from what I did so I recently hired my older brother as my CEO so I can spend more time on the road and out doing things and and and generating and meeting people my goal is not to be the biggest wholesaler in the state or this country it's not it's just not that doesn't that doesn't make sense to me so I want to grow a billion dollar company and only way I can do that is going out and meeting other people now it's going to be in the real estate field of course what I need to go out as a CEO and be able to generate more things learn so I go to conferences to learn so I could bring that back to my team so we can grow we have just a it's just a snowball so my job is to make sure I get all the outside fluence and bring it into my company and grow something finding new partnerships finding people that I can partner with to create things being in this business for a short time not even three years I see a lot of technology it needs to be developed and I've linked with developers to where we created a business to where we're creating software's and we're creating tools that help real estate investors across the world and so that's so I out of wholesaling the ATM machine I've been able to create passive income I've been able to actively go out and start new businesses it's my vehicle to being an entrepreneur where I really have four businesses now just from learning how to wholesale just fantastic wine I want to touch on one more thing is that I feel is I was talking a little bit about just you're building rapport in your relationship building and so far and so on and so forth that has been so successful in your business and I think I think another one of those when we're asking about the things in which you spend your time is it's just the whole your whole art of negotiation and of course that's a little bit near and dear to our hearts because we just we just recently released our book I'm negotiating real estate but I read it I started to you so we were as we were you know watching some of your videos and so on absolute I want you to talk you know near the end of this I want you to tell people where they can go to watch them it is absolutely awesome how you document yourself on YouTube doing full-on negotiations so that you can see so that people can see how that really works in really the art of negotiation and the skill behind it where I want to know where did that come from how did you become such a good negotiator did it grow organically did you have a specific experience that led you to become a good negotiator is it is it try era or what is it what I mean what tips whatever tell tell these listeners something about negotiation why it's important in your business a tip whatever because you are a stellar rockstar at it so I appreciate that it did not come overnight it's something that is really trial and error you learned some so sales is pretty much the same across any industry there's some very principle key foundations you know like listening more than you speak really trying to hear the customer try to solve a problem those are some key foundations of what it is and then you also gotta have a hard line never be desperate when you're selling or buying anything right and and in when you are desperate it shows it smells and people it makes you very vulnerable so and be honest if the numbers just don't work it don't work and people can appreciate that that hey look it's a great house just way too much for me I mean I can do this but there's no way I can do this and I respect that well negotiation takes time I say put yourself and learn some key principles and it can be you can learn how to sell cars or you learn how to go door-to-door for AT&T or whoever whatever companies you want but learning some key principles and then really be in a people person like it's the difference of winning the deal is literally trying to understand what this person's objective is what are they really trying to get out of this negotiation you're solving a problem that's it what is the problem can I meet you somewhere can we let's solve the problem that you actually want a lot of people say hey look I want $100,000 for my house why what are you gonna do with it right and then you start to break down the problem and then you get to the underline thing as well you know I need a new car and I want to get a boat okay what type of car what type of boat and these and then you start to realize you don't need a hundred you need 50 all you really need yes I will get it for you and you're making the negotiation about them it's not about you too many people go in to negotiate with this attitude I want I need I'm gonna get it's not about you know if you give the other side what they want what they need what what what they're gonna get it'll come back to you you'll get what you want but you need to focus on them people like things to be about them and if you go in with that attitude give me what I want that's gonna come through so you go with the attitude I want to give you what you want and that's that that'll that'll that'll be paid off in reciprocation and and never be afraid to walk away absolutely walk away just walk and I always come back funny how that happens right exactly that's why it really does so what do you think Jay is the time to do four more I think we're gonna do the four more so max Maxwell we have four more questions for you you ready I'm ready so what was the worst job you ever had and what lessons did you learn from that job oh man the worst job I ever had it was the combination right so this is gonna be sonic whooshing I've been the worst job ever happens United States Air Force really thank you for your service Wow thank you but I enjoyed it and did that make sense and that's what I'm saying it does right it's that double-edged dichotomy thing going on yep I enjoyed I enjoyed the travel I loved the people I met I loved the lessons that learned me but man was it a terrible job you know jumping out of things getting shot at shooting things really that great of a job actually and you did that one for everybody else not yourself correct we thank you for that so my question is what is the defining moment where you realize that you really had an entrepreneurial itch I think when I started when I got jobs that I thought I wanted when I got out of the military I was turning down offers from other companies because I had a top-secret security clearance I I was I was leaving like a 24 $25,000 a year job and turning down 60 $65,000 jobs to try something and I think that's when I realized that okay I left this military for a reason let me fail my way to success and really being on the job and seeing the problems if you ever work in corporate you see problems that you just want to solve and you can't be quiet about it you go to your managers and the upper level and they're like shut up and you can't so it's frustrating and you have to leave because you can't sit and watch the problem just manifest in front of you we have no idea what that's like doing hello idea what you know I get so max there's a lot of bad advice that I hear in the real estate world and the business world so can you give me an example of some of the worst advice you've been given or that you've heard from other people with your real estate business or your business in general and how you would correct that advice there's a few you know there's there's a lot of I think people miss interpret to fake it till you make it model love that yes it people take it as in to like literally fake your presence or what people think of you if that's not what it means it doesn't mean look like success before you're a success it means believe you are successful before you were successful do the things that success people do prior to you getting there and faking it and believing that you are they are ready so when you have a conversation with somebody you show that confidence of that you believe you're there and it's so this faking it to your making it's not saying go buy our Mercedes because that's what the top realtors drive or it's not with top sales guys drive that it's more of believing in yourself faking it like understanding say yes say yes more than you say no is believing and then faking it till you make it I love that I have the fourth question what is something max that you've splurged on but it was totally worth it mmm a Lamborghini really yeah a Lamborghini Huracan nine year olds gonna be very very good what color is that black sweet and I don't even talk about it that's it was something that was on my wall as a kid and it was something where I wanted to get it and it was nothing to do with I want to get it to show it off because you don't nobody sees it it's not on Instagram it's not anywhere and it's just it's just there because I always wanted it I don't care if nobody ever knows I own it I just wanted that and that's great we all need those those signs are those reminders to ourselves that we've worked hard we've earned it and it's a good reminder that you need to get up tomorrow and you have to keep going yeah because the day you stopped doing that until you've generated that that cash flowing machine that's passive income until that day that car can go away or the next car is not going to come so it's very dumb purchase I mean I could have bought a performing asset but it was just for you okay so so that was the for and so here's the more question where can people find out more about you you know I am I'm all over the place I'm very active on YouTube I just hit a hundred thousand subscribers I'm on Instagram just search max max well there's a few of us out there but I pop up first on YouTube on Instagram and all those other places go follow me please you know tell me that you you followed me from this this this podcast we're doing here and now I like to respond to everybody when I'm on flights but I just like to give because the the information that we have to us now yes it's readily available but a lot of people still don't know that so I'm trying to help other people change their family tree like how I've changed mine and you can you don't have to be in love with real estate or entrepreneur but get do it so you can get what you actually want to do you might you might get into real estate just so you can start your nonprofit you know whatever it is but go out and change your family tree because it's up to us to do that and nobody else that's phenomenal max thank you so much for being here with us today it's been absolutely awesome how come you have to be here glad to be here thank you so much thanks max we really appreciate it and that is our show today Carole Scott what do you think I really love talking to max I thought he just had great energy and such a powerful message about when he was able to system is his business to grow that way he's able to teach other people to do the same so ultimately they can change their lives as well and when you think about it that's really what we're all trying to do over here at bigger pockets it's a great thing so anyway thank you so much for tuning in guys can't wait to see you next time have a great week everybody [Music] you

Channel: BiggerPockets

Views: 42,924

Rating: 4.9129286 out of 5

Keywords: biggerpockets, real estate, real estate investing, investing, investing in real estate, income property, bigger pockets, business, bp business, max maxwell, wholesaling, real estate wholesale, max maxwell wholesaling, max maxwell podcast, 100k per month, wholesaling business, how to wholesale, wholesale real estate

Id: JLzCndIuZCo

Length: 59min 49sec (3589 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 06 2019