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(00:45): This is an exciting interview. I finally was able to get Larry Lomania and Adam Ballsinger on a call to talk high level about their wholesale company. And just to kind of set a couple of parameters, we just talk and fellows here a minute before the call about what we want to go over. What's important. What's working, what's not working. You guys have an amazing success story. I'm gonna let you talk about it here for a second, about where you've come from, where you've gone, and you have, I think one of the definitions of entrepreneurism is people that are able to fall and get back up, get punched in the face and get back up. And I haven't known you guys for very long, but the few short months I've known, you've been consistent. You're on the calls. You're doing everything you can to be consistent. And there's been some tough months, especially through COVID, but now we're also experiencing some amazing months.
(01:28): So I want to give you guys an opportunity to just kind of talk about what's been happening for you guys and how you started to build that philosophy that you have behind you right now. But let's start by kind of giving the Watchers, the viewers, a little bit of background about who you guys are. I'll start my name's Larry [inaudible]. I am full time wholesaler in the Philadelphia area. I also own a small heat and air conditioning company, but I'm trying to focus my attention towards the wholesale side of things been wholesale for about four years and going up and down throughout the four years recently, we've been really hitting a stride with what we do marketing and the deals we're acquiring monthly. Yeah. I mean, what else do you want to know? A little bit deeper and we'll look at a little bit deeper than that, Adam, you want to chime in.
(02:17): Yeah. So I've been full time now in real estate for about seven or so, maybe even a little over seven years and I'm starting out doing fix and flips. And that was really kind of always the intent was blow out a ton of fix and flips the stack, the profits from the fix and flips and buy rental properties, right? Like that was the goal 10 rental properties and I'm retired. Right. And you know, I think that stuff sounds really good initially. And then like you get in and you do a couple fix and flips and you're like, man, these aren't as profitable as I thought they were. I gotta do more than I really thought, you
(03:00): Know, we were really, we were doing okay with fixing flips. We weren't setting the world on fire, but we weren't losing money. We were making money. But if I wasn't clearing six figures like super comfortably, it was kind of like, why am I doing all this additional work? I could go work for somebody else and sell software or whatever, and hit six figures. So was always trying to figure out how to do more volume. And Larry and I had actually, we met through some networks, working stuff, real estate networking stuff. We actually pay for the same house, flip being education through one of those national gurus. So that's yeah, yeah. We met and actually Larry and I, he was doing a lot of our HVAC work Larry's team and we would be kind of shooting them a lot of times like, Oh, what's going on with you?
(03:52): How has your fix and flip going, how's your fix and flip business going? And we both kept saying the same thing, man, we're just starting, we're going to get deals. And so we decided to team up a little over four years ago when we were going to Mark for our own deals. And we yeah. Did a couple of wholesale deals. We wound up doing a 30 K deal off of an abandoned sign. It was like the easiest deal. I think we have probably done since we started. And we both were just kind of like, what the heck are we doing killing ourselves, trying to manage contractors and all this other stuff to make 30 grand on a fix and flip, like we can just wholesale and just do more volume and not have to deal with contractors anymore. Dealing with contractors as a side note was the bane of my existence when we were doing fix and flip.
(04:43): I absolutely hated it. So yeah, so we started wholesaling. The first, probably year was super inconsistent. He would do a little bit of marketing and then stop. And then we would do a little bit more marketing. And then, so we were on that. Yes, rollercoaster. And I think last year was the first year that we both really kind of committed to wanting to grow the joint wholesaling business. And so last year was our best year by far, we felt like we were really just kind of scraping the surface and we were having difficulty going from, you know, it's funny in business, there's like steps that you go through, right? Like almost like your evolution of what you think can manage as a business owner. So yeah, we went from inconsistent to like one or two deals a month. And last year we were probably averaging around like typical month for us with somewhere in the 30 to 50 K range. And we were having a heck of a time getting over that. So that's what led us to teaming up with you in the syndicate. And since then we've seen a pretty dramatic increase in what we're able to do. I love Amanda, you know, what's cool about these things. We've known each other now for bonds to be working together. I would say we're pretty close
(05:58): As far as deal, you know, talk, we'd thought we talk five days a week and you know, deal flow and all that kind of stuff. And it's cool. Cause sometimes you need to do these types of interviews. You learn stuff about people, you feel like you're close with. Like I had no idea. You guys actually met at a real estate event, a real estate seminar type thing. And that's how you guys got kicked off. I always kind of wondered how you were from different areas and got connected, but no, I love that piece. And I think the thing that's really interesting too, and I think it's a good synergy is the most of our viewers, people that know me really well. They know me as the flip King, right? Like I don't talk about, I don't use that name anymore because you know, we gave up on the flipping stuff and moved a hundred percent into wholesale in the real estate side.
(06:33): But man, it's a grind. Like, I mean, we were doing 80 plus deals a year, a couple years ago. And we were like, man, when's it going to feel like we actually have money? You know? Like the money would come in and big chunks just go right back out the door and big chunks. You know what I mean? And that's when it occurred to me, I mean, I think everyone has their own story about how they transitioned, but I used to do events and, and hold round tables in my office and I would have 90% rehabbers and 10% wholesalers. And the wholesalers would come in talking about all the cash we were making, the rehabbers would just be religious about, I do rehab. That's what I did. I used to say jokingly, like I think rehabbers need rehab. You know? Like we're so addicted to buying shit that, you know, looks like it's going to make us money and her role, the dice.
(07:16): But this wholesale game is just so much more simple, right? Yeah, of course it's difficult. There's pieces that are difficult to it, but the risk is lower. You're not borrowing money. You know, you're double closing or, you know, you can do an assignment fee. And so like you said, there's a $30,000 deal. Most rehabbers go their whole career and don't make $30,000 on a deal. They might say it on Facebook, but that's not how it really works in the real world. Right. So what do you guys think are some of the things that let's put it this way, you made 30, 50 K a month last year. COVID slowed a lot of us down, but now you're on track and you guys, you know, how much do you have assigned right now in the pipeline? Currently we have assigned in a pipeline, a hundred K give or take a couple hours and I'll be Mitt this for you.
(07:54): You told me before the call was like $99,800. You said a hundred year call this morning. Cause you wanted to make sure. So now you've got to get $200 a sign. But the point is you guys are sitting at a hundred K most money you've ever had in your pipeline assigned. Yes. Yeah. By far. Awesome. So what do you think are some of those, the strategic moves that you did together? Things more dialed in, in the last three, four months? My biggest attribute to it would be hiring. We hired a couple really good acquisition guys. And now we had to fire a couple of people throughout the process. And we're still constantly trying to find some new ones too. So the number one thing that had helped us grow so far is hiring. Love it, love it, man. Are there some takeaways from how you're hiring or how you're doing the process? And I noticed you said we're still hiring, which I think is also, it might not sound exciting. You guys, because of the mindset piece, but so many people I find they hire one person and they're like, all right, good. My hiring. Stuff's good for now. You know what I mean? What's that mindset that's keeping you in that game to go. So in my mind, I'm always wary of people we hire that are doing good. When are they going to leave? Right. If they leave then.
(09:07): So we don't want to, we don't ever want to get lazy in that aspect of it
(09:13): The hard way last year, by the way, it's funny because what you said, a lot of people do you hire your interview, you interview in, you hire that one person. You get that one person that's on board. And then you're like, alright, cool. We're straight. I don't want to say we kicked our feet up because that's not really true, but the urgency for finding additional people wasn't there. You know, we were more focused on like, do we need to redefine systems because things aren't executing perfectly with the one person. So maybe we need to like look at our systems before we bring on more people. Because if it's a little wonky, now it's going to just get worse later. And we were kind of, I guess we were probably making excuses for ourselves as to why we didn't need to hire again. And then our person left abruptly and we were like, crap, hi and drag to square one.
(10:09): So we've hired consistently since January. And I think we knew that we needed to be more aggressive with hiring and interviewing, but it was really, I think the help of, of your guidance and your coaching that really solidified that for us. You know, you get to a point where you're like, what are we missing? Is it this? Or is it this? Or is it this? And you're trying to decide like, well, which one of these things, could it be in reality? It's the answer is probably it's all three, but like which one do you do first? Right. And so I think it was you coming in and really kind of like, you know, when we first got started with you, that was feedback of yours pretty regularly was it's not a one and done thing. So I don't have the figures in front of me cause I'm in the car, but we've probably brought on seven or eight people so far this year, like actually brought them on, train them and we have two right now, acquisitions people.
(11:11): So, and this might even sound bad and it's not meant to be. It's just like, it's so hard to interview for sales. You almost need to give somebody a shot to see what they can do before you can figure out like, is this going to work? You don't propose to somebody on the first date. Like you date them for a little bit first before you decide it's going to be long term. So I think that that's like a really good kind of like correlation or way to think of hiring salespeople. It's almost like you need the, you always need to give them like two weeks just to see if they can cut it. Yeah. You know, it's like going to the gym
(11:46): This morning, I got my ass kicked, but that doesn't mean I can take off the rest of the month. You know what I mean? Like you have to consistently work that of getting great people in the door so that you can cultivate them and learn with them. But it's also, you know, like we use our probationary period or a 90 day period. It's being a great leader, setting, great expectations, helping them grow, giving them the tools they need. I'm going to backtrack for a second on something you said, which I kind of call like the Apple mentality, right? Like the analogy I use is like when Steve jobs, one of the stage and I'm dating myself big time now, but packing 15 years ago, he walked on the stage and he held up an iPod and he was like, this thing holds 2,500 songs. Right.
(12:25): And they sold a billion dollars in iPods overnight. Now I'm sure in the back of Steve's mind, he was like, dude, I know I can put this into an iPhone. I know I can make a phone out of this. I could make it do other things. But if he waited until he had the iPhone, they would have never made anything. They would, would've never sold it. They wouldn't have created the culture they created behind the iPhone. So I think it's the same with our systems and our tools. We're always thinking about why I need a better system before I bring people in. When really it's the opposite mentality. You bring great people in and they'll help you force you to build better systems to accommodate them. Right? So it's like the antithesis of the motivation to go hire people. Like normally people wait until they're pulling their hair out to go find talent.
(13:05): It's the worst time to find talent because you don't have extra time to go recruit right. Interview, talk to salespeople, bring them on point. So how do you guys maintain that consistency? And I want to move on to some other topics here, but on that hiring side, you're constantly moving. Right. Are you guys interviewing every week or are you just putting the feelers out there? How are you guys growing consistently? I would say that, that it's not a scheduled thing in my mind. I like to keep three people in rotation, three people going at the same time minimum. So when one person drops out, we have two now, so we're iron, right. You know, we're going to expand and the net three is going to turn to six. So right now we don't have any science behind that, but you're doing it instantly, right? Yeah.
(13:46): Yeah. I mean, it's almost factors into, to like, what's our bandwidth for being able to actually train somebody. So a couple of job postings ago, we brought on two people at a time and that took more time and energy for us to train those two people. So it's like, if you've already got two people that you're training, even if you want a third, can you handle that additional time? And that additional responsibility like we've got to do. I think one of the things too, we've done a better job at getting better as coaches, but it's like, you got to give yourself enough time to really pour into people. If you think that they're going to be any good, you can't just slap crap up against the wall and hope that it sticks. You've got to really invest time and effort into training your people.
(14:38): So it's like once we get somebody out of training, then it's like, okay, we can hire again. And then the process kind of starts all over. So the last job description that we had up, we hired one acquisitions person and we also brought on a dispositions person, first dispositions person. We weren't even looking to hire for this positions. It was just the background that this particular person had. I thought they'd be better at this bow than acquisitions. And so it's taken a little bit of time to train that person on this boat because honestly we weren't really ready yet. Like we didn't, it's funny talking about those systems. We didn't really have those systems totally in place. So it took a little bit longer for us to get this person trained up just because we were a little Helter Skelter, you know,
(15:32): Now you have the person and the systems, right? So like in other words, the person forced you to get better at the system.
(15:38): Totally, totally. Yeah. Yeah. And I think too, like, so for us, we really struggled with what's enough communication. What's too much communication with our team because we're all virtual, you know, we focus on the Philadelphia market, but whether we want it to be virtual or not, COVID kind of forced it. Right. So we had initially just been doing like one phone call a day with our acquisitions team. And we're to the point now where we have a morning and an afternoon or evening call with acquisitions and then a separate morning and evening call with dispositions. So we have just between the acquisitions and dispositions teams, we have four calls each day,
(16:25): Those break those down for a second. Cause I think that's a really important part with how, first of all, it's how we run the syndicate, right? You guys are on a call every morning for accountability talking high level numbers. And that call generally goes, how long? Five minutes, minutes, five minutes. Right? Like we have a hard stop at 15 minutes, but usually it's five to seven minutes somewhere in that timeframe. So do you guys take that and do you, is that how you handle your acquisition disposition calls throughout the day? I think that most of our acquisition calls go more than five minutes, typically 15 to 30, but we try to keep them short. Sometimes we got to work through a couple of things.
(16:58): The morning calls on acquisitions is more accountability. We're talking numbers from the day before. And then sometimes Larry or myself will do like a raw try to get more motivated, more of like a short kind of like a sales meeting type thing. Right. And then afternoons, it's more like, Hey, are there any scenarios that we need to go over? And then that's a really good opportunity for us to coach our whole team through various situations that are gonna pop up. So we don't have to have the same coaching conversation with every single acquisitions person, because they're all on the call at the same time.
(17:37): You keep saying this word that I love because I don't even think they realize you're saying. And so few operators speak like this and I'm not taking credit for it. I think he probably got some of it from listening to me, but like I think many people try to manage people and you keep saying the word coach, right? I'm coaching, I'm motivating. I'm working on, you know, overcoming objection, handling skills. I'm working on those. Like the coaching aspect of being a great leader is so undervalued and underused in most industries, especially the wholesale industry. We think that we just put robots on the phone and they do their job. Right. But you're being a true visionary. You're coaching your team to success. Can you talk about that piece a little bit?
(18:15): Yeah. I mean, I think that if your goal is management, then you are kind of limiting the people that are going to want to work with you. I want people that are killers that are self motivated, that are driven, that are problem solvers. You know, they're making calls from home. I can't have somebody that I have to motivate every day to get on the phone and do their job and make money. Right. Like I don't want that. And so I think that when we're up top and we're trying to direct and manage you wind up being more of the person with the marionette puppet that you have to be there to kind of like get them to perform. Right. And Larry and my goal is to pull ourselves out of the wholesaling business in the near future. And the only way that we can do that is if we have people who are capable of operating autonomously, problem-solving figure it out.
(19:14): So like we actually, so it's funny. Cause we were joking around about being like a couple hundred bucks shy of six figures. So our dispositions this week, I'm putting more responsibility on her, allowing her to do more kind of decision making on her own I'm coaching. This is how you want to handle this. This is what you want to do afterwards. Follow up with me, let me know how it happened. Right? So there was a situation that arose where we had a deal. We had a showing scheduled for earlier this week, we had an offer come through sight unseen. And the coaching conversation with dispositions was, Hey, let's get the offer. Formally, let them know we'll vet the offer and we'll let them know what we think. And apparently the communication that took place, there was an implication made by us that we would accept the offer if it was made.
(20:14): So we got into this, like he said, she said, and of course Larry and I got roped into this like argument basically between our dispositions agent and the cash buyer. And we're sitting there going, you know, do we tell the cash buyer to pound sand? Because we knew that we could potentially get a couple more grand on the deal or do we honor our word and move forward with the understanding what the rest of the team that our word and doing what is right. And doing what we say is more important than adding an extra couple hundred bucks or a couple thousand bucks to a deal. And so we went with the ladder, we said, okay, fine. If you were under the impression that you got the deal, it's yours, here's your timeframe. This is how we're going to handle this. We shortchanged ourselves six grand by making that decision. But we empowered our dispositions person to be okay, making that decision. She was beating herself up yesterday and the day before over it. And it, the conversation was just look, it's cool. Mistakes happen.
(21:23): We'd rather have you
(21:25): Make a $6,000 mistake because you feel okay making decisions then needing to check with us for $60 decisions. Right. And so that's our goal with how we're trying to build this whole thing is to do it with that kind of like thought process in mind,
(21:45): There's so much power in that and it's so much, and that's just, that's just the definition of integrity, right? Like being able to follow through that way as being a great leader in our companies, we have this rule that if it's 70%, it's a go, right. Which basically means if you're 70% sure that you move forward and then, but there's a catch 22 with that, right. As being great leaders, as you've experienced just now your people are going to make mistakes. And here's the interesting thing from a lot of operators perspective, we make mistakes all the fucking time and we don't even really pay attention to it. We're like, ah, yeah, whatever. But then we have our people under a microscope all the time and they can't fart. You know, they can't fucking make a hundred dollar mistake or they're gonna get yelled at. And that's a prime example of look, she might've made a quote, unquote $6,000 mistake, but here's the thing.
(22:28): Now she's more bought into the culture. Now she's more tied in, she's bringing you other deals. Maybe the buyer does more deals with you because of your integrity and giving them the deal and they go forward and do more stuff. Right? So there's so much power in empowering your team, but there's so much challenge in doing so because when they do quote unquote up, right, you can't yell at them. You're not allowed to go in there and say, you screwed up when you're empowering them because essentially you're just crushing the entire idea behind it. Right. They're never going to make another decision again, if you yell at them. So I applaud your guys and your integrity and doing it that way. And I'm telling you, you will see 10 X, the results from her just as a result of backing her and making her feel confident.
(23:06): In fact, when you go back to her and say, make it up to us and get us another 10 grand today, right now, all of a sudden she makes up for it. So I applaud you guys for doing that. I think a lot of people don't do that type of thing or they don't even think about it truthfully. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. I've been living at 70% rule since you've been telling us about that, that 70%. It's pretty powerful. It's a tough place to live, man. But the truth is like when you start to empower them more and more, I mean, we were saying this before the call. I mean, I run multiple businesses. I just no way I'm capable of doing that. If I don't have people empowered to go out there and make decisions and execute and come back and say, Hey, you know, we went hunting and this is what we call, right?
(23:42): Like those are my favorite conversations is that we did deals without actually getting involved in the deal whatsoever. Right. So yeah. I applaud you guys for that. So let's talk just high level. You guys are obviously success story within our group. You've you've, you've come, you've conquered. You're at two X you're twice. The amount roughly of where you were on average last year. And I'm thinking you're probably going to guys are going to, if you're going to 10 X that over time, what are some of the benefits of the group? And you don't have to say it to blow me up the other people in the group, the value you're getting that, the give and take a friendly competition. Since you guys are up there in the top right now you can talk about the front of the competition. Cause I thought somebody said, kiss my ass in the call today.
(24:17): Right now. That was you, you know, but like talk about the comradery, the group and what you see the culture growing because you guys are out the startup group, right. There was only five or six groups in there at the beginning. And now we're starting to grow a little bit. We've proven the concept. What do you think works the best and what do you think we could still grow on? I think the more people we get in there with like minded, I think it will benefit us just by for sure. The accountability aspect of things, right? Every morning we're talking about what happened. We don't look at to go into call in the morning and say we had zero contracts, hours, zero contracts. And nobody likes that. So it forces us to make sure that we're not saying them numbers. So that's the biggest benefit of this group. So far being able to hold ourselves accountable and talk to people that have the same interest as us each morning. I love it. I love it. What would you change? What would you add value to? So you're saying add value for people. Alright, cool, Adam.
(25:16): And I'm not saying this because I'm on your podcast right now, but I think there's been a lot really. I mean, we switched systems. We switched our CRM based on your recommendation. When we first came in, is the CRM perfect? No, is any CRM perfect. No, it's not right. There's challenges with all of them. But the new system that we're on based on your feedback fits our business model, way better than the previous one, did your coaching and your encouragement and the way hearing you talk about the way that you guys are hiring. Got the fire really underneath us to like, okay, we've got to take that approach more. I love the accountability. I think that's a really fun part of it and the friendly competition, but honestly like sitting back and listening to you talk and to you, coach, I think helps us become better coaches to our team because we only have to be a foot ahead of our guys. Right. And so if you're coaching us, because you're ahead, we can almost regurgitate what we're hearing from you back to our team. And it's like, they think we're geniuses. You know what I mean?
(26:34): We do.
(26:36): We steal all lot of conversation topics from you when we, and we emulate them in our team. And it's because
(26:44): It lines up really well. A lot of times we're like, it's crazy that that was the conversation with the syndicate today because we can apply that directly right now to our team. So I do, I think that's been the biggest thing is almost like emulating what we're seeing from you and the way that you run your team and your companies. And it's got us more, just kind of like following in those footsteps. I love it. I love it, man. Now you guys have been awesome and you know, I love to see your growth for those that are listening in the wholesale space to understand like what the concept is all about. I've been running masterminds for years. This is the most fun I've ever had inside of a mastermind. Mostly because we're in alignment, right? We win when you win. I don't make money unless you guys go close deals.
(27:33): You know? So everybody understands the concept. My buddy, Tim brought. So he says, do you want a hundred percent of the grape or 80% of the watermelon? Right? Like the goal is to take you guys from a grape to a watermelon and we do a deal split on the backside. So it's 80-20 deals when they, when they closed 80% of the operator, 20% of the group to the syndicate and essentially, you know, looking at your guys' numbers, you were 30 to 50. Now we're hitting a hundred. I look forward to hitting 200. So, you know, of course, if I'm doing 30 to 50 and I hit 200, I'm happy to give 20% of 200 away to make the residual based off of the group's feedback and everything else. Right? So I love that, that component of it. I think anybody who is interested in and talking and listening to this and wants further information, they can hit me up directly.
(28:15): You guys can hit up Adam and Larry directly. I'm sure. They'll tell you truthfully about what's working. What's not working. What's the challenge? What's tough. You know, this is big business guys. I mean, we're building it together. I'm super stoked to be on this journey with you guys to see what we can build together over time. It's only been a few short months, but it's super exciting to see you guys grow. And I appreciate you coming on here today and sharing your story. Thanks so much for having us. Absolutely brother, cool guys, we'll get this out to the audience this week. And you know, if you guys need anything, you know how to hit me up, I'm going to hit the end button. Those you've listened. Thanks for joining us today. And guys, again, if you have any questions, there'll be some information to show notes or the email love to connect with you to get on a call and talk wholesale business.
(28:55): If you are ready to put the immense power of whole scaling to work for you, then head over to Joe evangelists.com/downloads and get your free business in a box download. Or if you're a true action taker, ready to blow the lid off your results. You can apply now to work with our team, to build a business of your dreams faster than you ever thought possible. This call costs $500 to weed out the tire kickers, a mental masturbate, a feed. The real ballers will make back many times over on the first deal. Even if you don't get selected to work with us, you'll get a full year of access to our private coaching group, a $1,200 value and a 30 minute coaching call with Joe. So you win either way, go to www dot real estate money mindset com to
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