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(00:44): Show excited today. Today's a little bit of a special edition of wholesaling. We're going to talk today directly to an experienced rehabber. Who's done some wholesales. Who's looking to really make a transition from doing more rehabs, to doing more wholesales and doing some more automated cash flow, all the benefits to the wholesaling side, right? And I love this story and this background, because it's a lot like my story and my background. I've rehabbed hundreds of houses, nearly a thousand houses. And at the point where I was getting ready to just have a mental breakdown and call it quits, I started really stumbling into wholesale and doing more wholesale and realizing the systems, the processes and the cash flow, the cash exchange and revenue creation through that company was so, so much better than rehab. So perfect guest for today, we're going to do a little kind of quasi coaching session, and we're going to see if we can take this guy live from where he's at now to a different place over the next 30 days, and do some actionable items here. So I want to welcome my guest today. Vidal Gonzales, what's up the down. Welcome to the show, man.
(01:45): Awesome. How are you doing, Joe? Fantastic. Yeah, thank you for having me.
(01:50): So I want to go through some stuff just to give you everybody, our listeners kind of a background about yourself. I know you're in San Antonio, Texas. You've been there off and on for a long, long time. Right? Tell us a little bit about how your team set up right now. What kind of deals you've done so far this year? Right now? It's July 1st and we're recording this. So we're about halfway through the year. How many deals have you done? What type of deals, what your team structure looks like and that type of thing. We'll go from there.
(02:12): All right. Well, awesome. So, well, I hadn't really, I haven't done as many wholesale deals. I've done a lot of rehabs. I've ha I have a lot of rehabs. It actually started off 2017 really quickly. The beginning of 2017. I don't know what I was thinking, but I said, I'm going to buy a house a house a week. And I'm going to rehab who in their right mind is going to do something like that. Well, me at one point, but then I figured out that that was crazy. Yeah. It's freaking insane. I mean, you got a mortgage, you got interest, you got taxes, you got property, you got labor, you got materials. You got freaking everyday. You're going crazy. So I did that for 27 weeks. How about 27 houses in 27 weeks? Yes. We just talked about before on the call, rehabbers need rehab and I've pretty much almost went to rehab.
(02:58): So I have been rehab the last three and a half years, but nonetheless, so I still have been working on actually some of those rehabs, but I'm working on some other ones too. So this year I've done. I don't know how many other kids that light up. You go back over here. I don't know how many deals I've done. I 10 20 a bunch and most of them rehabs. So I've done a couple of wholesales, but mainly, really mainly focusing on knocking out these Don rehabs and then guess what happens? COVID what the heck is up with this.
(03:24): Yeah, no. I mean, listen, I think we're all dealing with it in different ways. And I think it's interesting and this is not to knock rehabbers, right? I want to be very clear. I was a rehabber for years. I have good friends that are rehabbers. I'm not saying that you shouldn't go out and rehab, but I just feel like the wholesale game is a better game, right? It's a more predictable game. It's got a whole lot less risk. There's a lot of cash flow upside. The revenue is great. And your team structure has to be completely different, much, much easier than trying to manage 25 projects for subcontractors and general contractors and materials schedules and physical schedules and all that kind of stuff. So again, we're not here to knock rehabbers just to talk about making a transition or at least adding more wholesale deals to an existing pipeline. So they'll talk to us about how first and foremost, how you get your deals. How do you guys locate them? What kind of marketing plan do you have in place right now? Let's start from there.
(04:15): Well, how we get our deals is pretty much there's. There's no secret what is ever, when you first start out, anyone out there, I need new guys out there and UBS are going to call it beginners, driving for dollars. We've heard that we've heard about direct mail. We've heard about other wholesalers. We've heard about list. There's so many different ways. There's really no one way. That's the thing. Referrals. How many referrals do you get, Joe?
(04:42): So you guys are doing all of these things. What is your typical marketing spend each month?
(04:46): Well, yes and no. Yes and no, I'm not doing them all, but that's some of the ways that we find them, a lot of the referrals are they just come in, you know? Cause you have clients you've talked to from years ago and then someone just call you like, Hey, I have this property.
(04:57): Let's get more dialed in though. What are you guys doing consistently for marketing? Because referrals are inconsistent. Do you do a thing each week? Each month?
(05:06): Each month? Yeah, we do direct mail. Okay. Blasting text blasting, text messages. Okay. And I got VA's call. No's get, you know, buy list. I love lists. Okay. This thing right here is probably one of the worst things that we have out there for people and technology for frying your brain and wasting time and achieving nothing. But at the same time, this thing right here is our ticket. Because if you get on the phone and you make the calls, you're going to get some deals. If you don't get on the phone and don't make the calls, you're going to be broke. Absolutely. That's the bottom line, especially in wholesale. And because you have to be on there, whether the VA's, whether you get a VA and you get them to qualify the leads and get you some good leads in your call and stuff, but you still got to close them. And if you don't have the VA, you gotta make 50 million calls. So I think the important
(05:58): Thing that we're trying to dial in though, is the numbers are important. The consistency is important, right? So are any of these, you're doing SMS, you're doing direct mail. You're doing cold calling. Is that all happening each and every week, each and every day. How many SMS is, are you sending? How many cold caller calls are you guys making? Like what does it look like inside the team? As far as direct mail? I'm not really doing that much right now. Direct mail last month. I didn't, I have some, but I haven't sent it out yet list getting the list and with a dialer column, Tom, weeding them out and then following up on them as far as text blasting. Same thing about, you know, you get the list and blast it. So you're blessed in the same list. You're cold calling. Yeah, exactly.
(06:39): Call them. And if they don't answer what you do, you call them again. And if they don't answer, what do you do? You text last time? Are you guys doing ringless voicemail? Are you doing RBMs? Yes. Okay. So write this down. The one thing I want, I want to get consistent on is I want to get your RPMs and your SMS lined up. Right? So in other words, my team sends 1500 to 2000 RBMs and SMS every day. Okay. Inside of that space, it's very, very important how we do it because a lot of people, they kind of, you know, the, an SMS campaign and it's not an alignment. They'll strap an RBM. So I want you to guys to drop an RVM that basically says calling about your property, local investor. And I'm wondering if you're interested in the cash offer, but the most important thing you can do after that 30 seconds later, a lot of the programs that time delays, we use roar.
(07:26): There's a lot of different programs that you can use. 30 seconds later, you drop a text that says, Hey, I just left you a voicemail. Okay. Got it. Why this is so impactful is think about any type of anybody you've ever tried to get ahold of. In fact, if people try and get ahold of you and your phone rings, and then you get a text 30 seconds later, you're 10 times more apt to call that person. Most people don't even look at their voicemails anymore. Don't check into that stuff. Well, we forget, we get busy. Life gets in the way, everything people start calling and everything happens. That's right. So now they have a voicemail and they have a text from you, right. Then I want to go into the cold call session. So I want you to start with the list. Always take your data from the top level, you're going to obviously skip, trace and scrub it.
(08:03): Right? We'll do RBM SMS. We'll do that. Sometimes we'll do that twice in one week before we start cold calling that same list. Okay? So the process is very, very important as far as getting the extraction out of that, that lead that you guys, because the data, it looks let's face it. That that is probably the most expensive part of what we do anymore. You know, the direct mail used to be very expensive. Now it's a matter of how much can you spend on great debt? What separates the beginners from the really consistent performers I find are the people who are taking that data to the nth degree until they can create a great list. And then they're spending precise timing on how to engage with that list. [inaudible] Yeah. Worrying as much about SMS. And for some people I'd recommend just cutting direct mail out altogether because it's an expense. And if you actually track the data, it's not performing anywhere near as well as it was even two years ago. And essentially you say that that's why I pretty much
(08:56): Haven't sent anything out. I've got a list of private about check this out. I printed 6,000 mailers letters, the company name and everything. I probably sent out maybe a hundred since then. I'm like, I don't want to Frick and do this direct mail piece. I don't care if I'm going to send it to some, someone who's going to send it out for me or I'm going to send it out. Yeah, you got the 50 cents. You've got the 40 cents and the 30 cents and the 30 cents. And that it costs the same. I'll just buy a lead.
(09:21): Well, it cost you more time than money. And that's the more important in that scenario. Right? So I'd rather see you do direct mail through a campaigning service, but that's regardless. I think you don't even need direct mail. The second thing I want people to think about, and I want you to think
(09:34): Here's the, here's the rehab that darn home Depot. I gotta be here for the stupid rehab so I can press this little thing so I can buy something for my workers. Cause they got to buy a bunch of material today. Cause they're framing out a deck cause got to get this house on the market. So let me just do this real quick. It's really simple. You've seen this right home Depot, you know? Oh yeah. You're not doing it. I'll have the app. So now you've gone through rehab. Well now they just send you a text and then you just pick the credit card and then you just press approve and you see what they're buying. It's done. So good stuff that has changed the game some for us. So it still sucks. I know it's bad for your health. I know we've got to go.
(10:10): Let's go back to the data. Right? So how many calls or how many contacts are you taking to make a conversion to a contract? Give you a deal on that number.
(10:17): As long as they're qualified leads, I can probably get one out of 30. I think every 30%, you know, I've been pretty good. I would say 30 calls to a contract leads to a contract. Yeah. Really, really strong numbers. Right? So across the country, as long as I get 101 out of a hundred, at least, but if they're qualified, Hey, that's a lot different because then you can kind of work for them is you have to be able to discuss with you gotta be able to negotiate with them and talk to them, build that relationship. As you suck on the phone, if you're going to be one at every 200, and who's doing that right now, your cold callers or your team, which part, the conversation with the seller of the VAs, they're qualifying it. And I have some people I'm trying to train, you know how freaking hard it is to train people.
(10:59): It's like, people don't want to, they don't want to earn money. I'm going to say, look, you can do this. Make some college. You can make some money, but they'd rather stay at the job that they hate. And they stay at that stupid job or they want to collect their unemployment. Cause they're all freaking excited. Cause you're getting some extra money they're freaking lazy. They don't want to get on the phones. Okay. I digress. All right. So people are on the phones with your coal cars. When you say qualified, tell me what that looks like. Like you said, I'm interested in buying houses in your area. Okay. You send them a text. Right. And they respond back. Who are you? That's not a qualified lead. Right? You got to call them back and find out if they say yes, I am interested. Then at least it's somewhat qualified. Give me something to go on. Right. Maybe something where I can talk to somebody with some information that they have some motivation because bottom line, if we didn't have any motivation, so your coach finds out, they have motivation. What's the next step? Then you call them. Okay. But then they put them into a CRM or they touch CRM.
(11:54): Yeah. Podio. Podio. Okay. So another thing I want you to do, I want you to implement warm transfers. Okay. We've seen this change the game for a lot of mid-level wholesalers that went from 30 grand a month to a hundred grand a month is warm transfer. Okay. What a lot of people don't think about is again, it's standard practice. Like if you were on the phone, our attention span is so short right now. Right? So if somebody gives us a call, we're like, yeah, we'll take an offer on the property. And then two hours later, I get a call back. I'm not, I'm not interested. I might as well be a cold prospect at that point. Right? I'm back to square one. I have to have that conversation again. But if you're paying cold callers and a lot of people are, I recommend you make sure you have a system like Zen call or Zen dial.
(12:35): I think mojo has warm transfers. Create an opportunity where the dialer is connecting. They're warming up the lead, their quote, unquote, qualifying them, but they can press a button for a live transfer. And you know, my hope is that there's an acquisitions person or sales person that other started that phone. But it's a team for now. That's fine. But the warm transfer is 10 times more powerful than the warmup and then let down. Right. Because at that point now the seller's warmed up. Yeah. I'm interested in an offer. Okay, cool. I'll have the dog and do call back. Oh shit. Well, I don't want that. I want, I want an offer, right? Yeah. Figure out the warm transfer piece. It could be a game changer as far as conversion ratios go.
(13:14): And you're talking about when you're using the dialer for qualifying or were you talking about once they're qualified? Cause once you're qualified, I use it. I used to call it the dollar.
(13:22): Yeah. I don't care if they're cold. If it's a cold list, if it's a quote unquote warm list, I don't care if they're doing follow up calls to old leads, whatever the case may be when that VA is on the phone to warm up that lead. I want it to be in front of someone that can close them immediately. Got it sounds like it's you at this point, but inevitably it should be the sales person. Right? You don't want any time delay between them saying, I want an offer and okay, let me get you a senior advisor or let me get you our, you know, our manager, let me get you, whatever. However you want to call it. Right. And then boom, right into the transfer because people lose interest instantly. I mean, let's face it. They probably weren't that interested to begin with you cold call them.
(13:58): Right. So it's, as soon as they say yes, I want an offer. Boom. I want to have a conversation and immediately go into that conversation. Okay, cool. I think you'll see, honestly, think you'll 10 X, the conversion ratios of cold caller too. Cause think about it. I mean, anyone who's running a big CRM Podio platform, how many warm leads or qualified leads sit in that system for follow up for forever before you ended up getting them back on the phone again? Yeah. That's the second piece. All right. So walk me through a little bit of how you have your conversation with your sellers. It sounds like you're pretty experienced in talking to sellers. What happens when you get that call back or that solid call from them?
(14:36): Call them, build a relationship, you know, get to the point. That's one thing I think a lot of wholesalers and lottery, a lot of people on the phone. They, Hey, how you doing today? How are the kids? Do you really care? Well, yeah, it comes off as disingenuous. Exactly. Look, it's all cool. Hey Bobby. And I'm calling about the house, you know, you spoke to Carlos. So talk to me, tell me about it. Simple. Let's get to the point. Let them talk. God gave us what two years. Right? So we listen. Absolutely. They're going to tell us, you're going to, they're going to tell you exactly how to buy their house. Exactly. It's a beautiful thing. If you just shut up and I know I got a problem with that too. You might even same thing. Cause we like to talk because we're so used to being on this darn thing.
(15:22):
But we need to do that. Build a relationship, but let them talk. Cause they will tell you. And then I don't know if you've ever, I remember telemarketing back in years ago and one of my first gigs, I was a musician and so I played guitar at night. So I needed to have some type of thing that actually made me money. So I did telemarketing and we had a big sign that said he who talks first loses a hundred percent. So you gotta just be patient and listen, because they're going to tell you exactly what you need to do. Their pain points, their motivation, their desire to get rid of it. When, how, who, they're going to tell you exactly what you need to do. If you just listen. Love it.
(16:07): So let me ask you how many times when you're on the phone as a seller, say like I got to go, how many questions do you have? How many, you know, you just give me the offer
(16:14): All the time. How do you handle that? Well, it's just going to take a couple minutes, but you know, it's impossible for me to give you an offer. How can I give you an offer? If I haven't asked you some questions, I just need to ask you a few questions. So let's get started. Got it. I mean, that's a simple way, you know, you take control, take control back. Cause they're trying to take control of the conversation because I don't have no time. Well, cool. You don't have any time. When do you have time? You want me to just keep eating? Look who was it? I forget who it was. Who I learned this from tennis. Imagine you're playing tennis. They say, I don't have enough time. Bam hit it right back over to them. I'll give you that time. Well, I'm not really sure Pam will. Well, when will you be sure. Yep. Well, you know, I'm not really ready. Well, when will you be ready? And you just keep hitting it back because if you don't hit it back, you lost the point strong. You got to hit it back. We got to keep hitting it back. Strong sales, sales
(17:00): Stuff, strong sales stuff, but yet, and the challenge is a lot of people don't have that, that aggression, that ability to be confident enough on the call. So I'm going to give you something that, and this may not be pertinent to you, but our listeners, for sure this is going to be pertinent because I see this happen to our callers all the time, where they're on the phone with a qualified buyer or seller router. And you know, the seller gets frustrated, hangs up. So we changed it up simple sentence. You can say at the beginning of the conversation, right? Hey mr. Seller, you looking for an offer. Absolutely cool. This call is going to take about seven minutes. You got some questions I gotta run through and you know, then we'll be good to go. I'll get you an offer. So that little one sentence in such a game changer, because what we're doing is we're setting expectations, right?
(17:39): We're letting them know upfront. This is going to take seven minutes. Right? So when we're 10 questions deep into the thing, how many more questions? I only have a couple more questions I told you it's a couple minutes, right? So the expectation set and we're going to be on the phone for a minute. This isn't going to be like here, here's my address. Send me an offer. Right? I need to know more about your property so I can help get that offer over to you. So set expectations on the front side is a game changer on the backend. A lot of our objections and our problems come from not to setting great expectations,
(18:06):
Right? Yeah. Yup. I agree in the setting expectations too. I I'll tell him that it's going to take a few minutes, seven minutes or so do you have the time right now? And I ask him so that way I get them so they can't get out of it because if they say, Oh, well I don't have time. Okay, great. When do you have the time back to the tenants? Get it back. When do you have the time? And then let's say, say, yeah, I got the time. Great. Well then they're not going to give me any grief about the questions because they agreed to it. And then since we're listening, they're the ones who are gonna take more than seven minutes. I mean, that's one of the call takes half an hour because they won't shut up. Right.
(18:40):
Unless you're from the Northeast, because then they're going to shut you down pretty quick. So I don't know. They might want to come up here. All right, cool. One of the questions I asked to get on this call, and I don't want to be respectful your time here because we got to cut it. You're in the little couple minutes. If you could pick one of your biggest challenges in scaling your company, what would it be? And your answer was procrastination, right? So what are we procrastinating about? What are we what's holding you back today. If you had to do one thing,
(19:05):
What we're talking about, get on the phone more because you know, I get so caught up with other things. And I put that on the side and I know I just got to put that in the forefront. I got to make the calls. And also I need to find some of these people who don't want to just collect unemployment. It's unbelievable. I'm saying, look, I can hand you the keys. This is exactly what you need to do. I've made a lot of money. I can show you how to do it. You got to get on the phones. You gotta be consistent. You're going to have to do these things. Can you do that? And I cannot get people to commit. They'd rather sit there on their TV, watching the TV, drinking their beer, collecting unemployment, or after they worked at another job would say, Hey, instead of maybe doing something that could change their life and their family's futures.
(19:52): So let me ask you this. What would you say if I told you I've hired some of my absolute best employees in the last 90 days?
(19:58): I believe it.
(20:00): So here's what I believe that is missing from the equation. You have to be an amazing visionary and cast a great story. Right? Right now there is never been a better time with the most qualified talent that you've ever seen in your life sitting on the bench because they were furloughed or they were laid off or they had to shut the company down or, you know, Hey, just, just wait for two or three months and it'll come back. Right? Yeah. I think some of the best talent in our country is sitting home and I strongly disagree that they're lazy and they want to collect unemployment. Those people want to work. They want to come out of the hustle they want, but we have to paint the picture as the visionary, right? We have to show them what's available. We have to guide them and coach them doing the right thing, which is the best thing for their family.
(20:46): The trick to that is if you don't believe the shit that you're selling, they won't either. Right? So a lot of wholesalers, I'm not saying this is you have a dollar. I'm just saying, I hear this a lot. A lot of them don't believe in their own hype. A lot of them don't believe they can create the lead flow. A lot of them don't believe that they can create the deal flow. A lot of them don't believe that they can do 10 deals a month. So it doesn't come off in your gestures when you're talking to new people. Now, again, I'm not, I'm not directing this at you. This is a common, common thing I'm seeing right now. People are so nervous about the economy and COVID and all the bullshit going on. And they say, man, I don't know if I'm qualified to be a leader. I don't know if I'm the right person to take these guys to success and see them. Right? So a lot of that is internal. It could potentially be internal again, not directly to you, but if you're having that experience where it seems like target
(21:35): Picking on me, Joe, I'm going to cry and go crawl.
(21:39): Absolutely, man. No, I love it though. No, but reflect on your own vision for your dreams for the company, right? Sometimes we're disorganized and that stuff comes out through our subconscious, right? So say I want to do X amount of deals per month. That's what it's going to be. What's the marketing going to take? How many leads do I have to generate and what bad-ass motherfuckers do I need to have in my office? They're going to close these deals with me and help me, help them succeed.
(22:01): Right? Yeah. Got it. I think that's true because I'm working on, on, on quite a few things and I have the vision. I'm the, I am the vision kind of guy. It's like, I don't want to do any work. Yeah. You figure it out. I don't know how to do this. You do it. This is what I'm looking at. This is, I see this let's make this happen. I mean, think about it when you first started doing whatever, whatever. I don't know when you started in real estate. But when I started out, my background is accounting. So I was an accountant. Yup. And I had a child and then I had another child and then I had another child and then I was about to have my fourth. And then I got laid off from my job accounting job. Yep. Making 60, 70 grand a year.
(22:42): Good money. Right. And what did everyone say? Oh, and then I got custody of my two kids. That's a hold on thing. So now I have, I'll go from one child to four kids to be laid off in less than three weeks. Yep. All right. So you know, what do you do? No one believed in me. I said, I'm gonna do real estate. I have a vision. Like you said, this is what I'm going to do. You're going to do real estate. Are you serious? You got a wife and four kids. You don't have a job. I'm going to do real estate.
(23:10): I'm going to freaking make this stuff happen. I'm not going to be denied, but you have a wife and four kids. You have to get a job. I'm going to get a job. Forget that for what? So I can get laid off so I can work for someone else. So I can get a little incremental, 4% increase, 4% increase. That's just in place. And that sucks. So yeah. You know, I cast that vision and no one saw it. Fortunately, my wife actually kind of stayed with me and said, okay, darlin, whatever you do it, you put the food on the table so far. And so I kept pushing that and then slowly but surely people would come on board so much that when I was doing my company and I had an ex business partner who yeah, like we've never had ex business partners.
(23:51): Have you, Joe X does as partners. And that guy let's say he took advantage of my situation. So he kind of screwed me. But nonetheless, everyone who was working on his team came with me. Yeah. Because I let you say, and I like what you said, the cassava. And I was like, this is what we're doing. This is what we're going to do. I just need you to get out there and make it happen. And it worked and they listened. So yeah, you're right. I need to get back to that because there are a lot of qualified people out there who right now want to work. There are a lot of lazy come on. That's true. But there are a lot of qualified people who just need to be pulled from there world right now and have their eyes open and go. Maybe I can do that.
(24:35): You better town on the bench, but here's what I want you to do. And I'll wrap this up that last three minutes that you just gave us, that's your vision, right? Crafted journal. Write it down, take notes on it, practice it in the mirror. Right. Get so good at it that you share it with everyone that you come in contact with. Cause great visionaries. Don't just know their story. They know how to tell their story and then they know how to guide people.
(25:00): Okay. Wait, wait, wait. Say that again.
(25:02): I know I can't, I don't know how to just great visionaries know their story, but they know how to expand upon it. Right? They don't have to tell people what it is and then they know how to get people to go with them. Right. You know, God what's Tesla. Elon has been on the verge of bankruptcy for a decade, more two decades. Right? Every time he does something, he goes all in and what happens? He gets amazing people to follow him. He has the top engineers in the world taken pay cuts to come work for space X it's a visionary thing. Right. And when you have a great vision, amazing people will want to come in.
(25:36): Yeah. Awesome.
(25:37): So that's what I got for you today, brother. I appreciate you being on. That was a fun interview. I think that the listeners are going to get a lot out of it because truthfully we hit some of the key components to really accelerating your business. And I want you to stay in touch with me and let me know how it works for you. You're in a syndicate type business. We operate as a wholesale syndicate my team of operators around the country. So you're familiar with that and you know, I'd love to see your results from taking some action on these things to talk about that. Oh definitely. We'll talk, man. I actually have a podcast too. So I'm going to want you as a guest. Awesome. Sounds good, bro. Let me know. Send me over the link. We'll get it started. Yeah, definitely. And, and continued success in JZ. Same, same to your brother. So with Donald Gonzales, appreciate you being on the show today, man. Thank you. Hey, thank you, Joe. You have an awesome day.
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