781 » Getting Deals Under Contract At The Workshop… Same Ole, Same Ole » REI In Your Car

What’s up everybody? Joe McCall, REI In Your Car.

Wow… I’m excited and exhausted. What an awesome, awesome two days, huh? About once every four to six weeks, Gavin and I do a coaching workshop with our private clients. We keep them small intentionally. We’ve got maybe 12 people that come to each one on average. And we just spent the whole two days doing a little bit of teaching, but a lot of doing, setting up the systems, doing the marketing, talking to sellers, making offers.

We did a lot of role play, like you know, looking, pretending like you’re the seller, I’m the buyer, whatever, investor. A lot of role plays, which is really hard, you know, believe it or not, it’s like harder to do role plays than it is to actually talk to real sellers, but it’s good practice. Um, and then we made a lot of, we analyzed a lot of deals, right?

So, we looked at, I don’t know, six to eight deals and just said, all right, here’s the property on Zillow. Go make a cash offer, make a sandwich lease option offer, make a lease option assignment or wholesaling lease option offer. And then we walked through actually filling out some contracts and, oh so much fun.

And one of our clients from Las Vegas, her name’s Mindy, she did some little bit of marketing and got a seller that said “Yeah.” The seller was actually a realtor also, the homeowner is a realtor, and the seller was open to a lease option. So, we actually called the realtor, the homeowner and talked to her. And Gavin is really, really good on the phone. Just one of the reasons why I asked him to help me in the coaching side of things because he’s really good with mindset and sales training.

Cause, if you have a crappy mindset, you can’t do this business, right? And so, Gavin’s really good at kind of helping people with that. And he used to be a professional golf coach, so he helped a lot of golfers with mindset, which is huge in golf, but he’s also really good at sales and is good at training our folks on how to talk to sellers and what to say to them. And I’m decent at it. I’m not, I’ve never been really good at it, but Gavin’s really good at.

So, Gavin actually got on the phone with the realtor, answered her questions, answered a couple of objections and the seller said, yeah, sure, let’s do it. And it’s a sweet deal. Mindy should make around, I’m hoping, $15,000, worst case, $10k. She should make about $15,000 on the deal. It, it’s just amazing. So much fun. People left like excited.

I didn’t start doing deals, and I’ve said this horror story a hundred times so I’m sorry if you’ve heard it before, but I didn’t start doing deals until I started taking action. Go figure. Right? Like I was a professional student for years. I bought courses, I bought coaching, went to all the boot camps, spent probably at this point—over three years—probably $30,000 to $40,000 in education and… Geez, I mean, what a disaster. Like, I believe in education. I believe in investing in your education, investing in yourself, into your business. But it was worthless unless you do something with it.

Like one of the things we talked about is, if you’re not talking to sellers and making offers, everything else is just stupid. So, I told the story of how I did my first deal. My back was against the wall, I was hemorrhaging cash, facing foreclosure on my house. I remember sitting on the driveway watching my kids play, riding their bikes around the cul-de-sac and I was hemorrhaging cash. I knew I had to figure something out. I owned, you know, like 12, 13… I don’t know, maybe 15, 16 different properties and I had no margin for error on these properties and I would, you know, vacancies were killing me and it was just a disaster. I was in way too much debt, living beyond my means. And I was, I needed to figure out this wholesaling thing. So, I said, I’m just going to buy one more course. Like I needed to buy a wholesaling course.

So, I just bought one more, but I promised myself, like I swore if this, and I remember talking to my wife, if this doesn’t work, if I don’t do a deal in three months, I’m quitting. I’m going to give up real estate. That’s where, that’s how bad it was, right? Like I needed… I either needed to focus 100% on my job or my career climbing the corporate ladder or 100% on real estate. I could not do both. That’s where I was and because I was trying to do both, I was trying to be a jack of all trades, but I was a master of none and I was ignoring and neglecting my family. And so, thank God my wife’s still with me, that she’s had all this patience with me over the years, I have a lot to be grateful for and thankful for. My wife’s amazing and I love my kids and I love my wife. I’m super blessed. Thank you, God. Alright.

Anyway… so, making every mistake possible, I said finally, I’m going to do with this guy says, and it was Chris Chico, my man Chico Suave from Florida. He had a course called Absentee Owner Profits or something like that and I didn’t like his postcards. I thought they were ugly. I didn’t like his contracts. I thought they were too simple. I didn’t like his scripts, how he did his deals. I thought, this can’t be this easy. It has to be complicated because I’m an engineer. I knew, I wanted to know all of the answers. I wanted to have all my plans laid out in excruciating detail. And Chris, his philosophy is like, and I remember reading his stuff and he said, listen, if you, if you need your hand held and you need everything explained in excruciating detail, leave… this isn’t for you.

I’m like, okay good, I’m just going to do what this guy says. And I remember I sent out some postcards to the same lists that everybody else was sending to, the same postcard everybody else was sending, you know, using. And this lady called me and it wasn’t even for the house I mailed her about, she had this three multifamily, a three family out in the sticks, about an hour and a half away from St Louis. And like I didn’t have any buyers out there. I couldn’t get comps on this multifamily. It’s like a small town of 5,000 people or something. And the lady, the homeowner, kept on calling me. She said, I don’t want to sell that house that you emailed you sent the postcard about, I want to sell this other property.

So, she like called me three, four, five times. I don’t remember. And I just kept ignoring her cause I didn’t know what to do. I was frozen, I got analysis paralysis. I didn’t have any buyers; I couldn’t get any comps. I didn’t know if I trusted Chico’s contracts. And Chris Chico and I are friends now by the way. And I’ve had him on my podcast two or three times. Super cool guy.

If you ever talk to him or see him call him Chico Suave, that’s his nickname, a nickname I gave him. And also ask him what’s his thing with Richard Simmons? Like why does he like him so much? Just tell him that. Okay. So anyway, uh, is that it’s Richard Simmons, right? The, the, the, the aerobics guy from the 80’s. So, Chris Chico, during Halloween he’ll sometimes dress up as Richard Simmons and he looks like a spitting image of him. He gets the wig on and he gets the tight short shorts and the tank top.

So, the seller is like, please… begs me to make an offer and it had expired the year before for $140,000 and I said, you know what? I don’t know, $50,000. I’ll offer you $50,000. And she says, okay. I find out later, like this lady was motivated, motivated, and why was I such the dork idiot to take so long to figure this out. Like, thank God she called me three or four times. I hope to see her in heaven someday and I’m just want to shake her hand and give her a big old hug.

Anyway, so now she’s elderly. It’s like, she’s in her seventies and I’m worried like her family’s going to say that I took advantage her and all that. So, I made sure one of her sons was with her and I wanted to meet her in a public place. So, I said, all right, let’s, there was a YMCA in the area that I knew. She knew where that was. I said, let’s meet at the YMCA.

And so now I’m freaking out and I pull out all of the contracts from all of my different courses and I didn’t still, I still didn’t trust, I mean I do now, but I didn’t trust then Chico’s contract because there was only one page, right? Like it’s gotta be at least six pages to be valid. Right. So, I got the big six-page contract from wherever and I went through all the different pro courses that I had and I grabbed all the different weasel clauses and contingencies that I could find and I put them in the contract.

They probably had so many of them they probably canceled each other out, you know, and she, I gave her the contract, I was nervous. Her son was there, she didn’t even read it. She went to the last page and signed it. And I said, all right, uh, cool. And her son said, cool dude. And it turns out like she had really bad health problems and her kids were drug addicts and she just needed the money for, I felt, I felt bad, but like I was really helping her. Like no one else wanted to buy her house. So, I offered her $50k, she signed it.

Now I’m freaking out. What do I do? Here’s the thing, I knew what to do all along. I was a professional student. I had all the courses, I knew what to do, but I was like paralyzed in this fear.

So, I stuck a sign in the yard and I advertised it for $65,000. I don’t remember why or how I picked that number, but I advertised it for $65,000. Got a call that day or the next day from the sign. I think I still even, I even listed it on the property and I had to delist it like that day because I was getting so many calls from the sign.

And the guy called me and it was a realtor and I thought, oh no, it’s a realtor. It was serious, like, and he said, hi, my client’s interested in this property. I said, Oh, well, uh hmm. Uh, so I, I said, I said to the guy, um, well, I have to tell you something. I have to be honest with you… I don’t actually like own this house. Right? I just have it under contract.

And the guy says, that’s fine. He said, tell me the story. I said, well, I found this lady and I, you know, um, I hope it’s okay… like, I got it under contract for $50,000. And he says, okay. I said, um, really? He said, yeah. I said, well, I can’t pay you any commission. He says, don’t worry about it, my buyer will pay me some commissions. Really? He said, yeah. I said, ah, well, okay, well, uh, I don’t have a title company. I don’t know what I’m doing. He said, I will just use my buyer’s title company. It’s not a big deal. And this is like in small towns, Missouri. I said, there’s title companies out there? And he said, yeah. And then I thought, oh no, if there’s a title company out there now they’re not going to help a wholesaler do a double close or an assignment or whatever.

And he said that, don’t worry about it. I said, well, give me their name and number. So, I called the title company and I called and I said, uh, I need your help. Like I got this deal under contract and I don’t even own it yet. I hope that’s all right. Like I just want everybody to know what’s going on. I got it under contract for $50,000, this guy’s agreed to buy it for $65,000 and I don’t know what I’m doing and I, you know… can you help me?

And the title company… I remember this so clearly, said, yeah dude, relax… it’s not a big deal. They didn’t say, dude, I, but their like “relax”. And I said, oh, okay. All right.

And so sure enough, two weeks later, like after my closing costs and stuff like that, I made like $13,000 and a couple hundred bucks on my first wholesale deal and I could not believe it. Like are you serious? Like this really works. It’s not supposed to be that easy. I thought everybody thought wholesaling was illegal and immoral and fattening. And I was here, I was working with a realtor, working with a title company that doesn’t do wholesaling, in the sticks with like what wasn’t supposed to be this easy, right Chico? Chico Suave like.

And so, I remember thinking, holy smokes, I’m that dude with the check now. Like, I remember watching the webinars and those guys speaking on stage and showing these checks of their students doing deals and thinking, oh, that’s a bunch of bs, that’s fake! You know, I remember looking at the checks closely and seeing that the check was a couple of years old and thinking scam. Like, come on. Why is that check so old? Come on! You guys do that too, don’t you? Or am I the only one? Maybe I am. Maybe I’m the only one.

And so now I’m that guy with that check and I could kick myself too because like, I never took a picture of that check. I don’t even know what happened to it. They might’ve wired it to my account. No, I had a check. I don’t remember, but like maybe someday I’ll find it, but uh, wow. It worked. It works for me. It worked. Like this really does work!

I remember being just flabbergasted. Here I was, this professional student for years that had spent tens of thousands of dollars on my education, being shocked that I actually could do a deal and I could actually make $12,000-$13,000 on a deal from a stupid postcard.

Oh, so anyway, I was so excited that kind of started my whole journey of wholesaling and it still took me years and years to dig out of the hole that I was in, but started wholesaling… Probably about a year and a half year later I quit my job and started doing lease options. That’s what helped me quit my job.

So, I was telling that story to everybody today and it was, it was cool just to see their faces light up. It’s kind of funny but a lot of people, and I know a lot of you listening can relate to this, the story of over analyzing things and being afraid to take action and thinking that you have to understand steps seven and eight and how everything works before you start doing steps one two.

And one gentleman who was here from Israel, he brought his son. It was so cool hanging out with him, talking to him. We actually had lunch with him and my family, he went to my church on Sunday and we took him to lunch after church. It was pretty cool. He was here early and he’s an engineer also and he’s a super smart guy and I could tell he was struggling like…

He said, Joe, it would just be nice if I had a process diagram of how everything works, like if the deal is this, then do this. And then if it’s not, do that and if they say this, then do that… If not, do this. Like, he wanted a whole flow chart process diagram and it’s like yeah that would be cool. Right? Now, I use to try to do that, but it just overwhelmed everybody and it didn’t do much good and every deal is different.

So, I think after telling that story, he even kind of like, Oh, you know what? That makes sense. And he complimented… He said, I really appreciated that story, I needed to hear it, at the end.

So, here’s my whole point. Here’s my whole point guys. You can’t build a business sitting on the fence, okay? It just can’t happen. You can’t drive a parked car. You need to get that car in gear. You need to put it in drive. You need to get off the fence. Listen, if you’re not talking to sellers and making offers, everything else is stupid, right?

Get away from the computer. Like, I’m going to tell you to do something like that I’m doing right now. Like, stop listening to podcasts sort of. You can still listen to mine. Stop watching YouTube videos. Stop buying courses, except by mine. You know what I’m saying? The next course you buy, the next podcast you listen to, the next YouTube video you watch, implement. Get up there and make it happen. You don’t have any more excuses… get off your butt. Everything else is stupid.

If you want to make money in this business, the time is now. This is it, right now. All right? If I here in person, I would turn around and I’d kick you in the butt and… well, nicely. It wouldn’t hurt. But I would do whatever I could to like push you out of your comfort zone. That’s where the growth happens. It’s outside of your comfort zone.

All right, so I’m home. I gotta go. Listen, if you want to come to our next workshop, I’m going to give you a website right now. Write this down: coachjoe.net. CoachJoe.net. Go there. It tells you a little bit about our program, how we work with folks, and we’ll set up your systems, do your marketing if you come to our next workshop. Next month, we’re doing a little mastermind… All of our current students who have been to our workshops come back and we just mastermind on business and stuff.

So, I’d love to work with you. Gavin is a great guy to work with. You guys would like Gavin, if you don’t know him already. And I mean, I’m telling you man, we got deals under contract today. We got leads, we set up systems. We had people there… the youngest was probably, I don’t know, I’m going to guess 21, 20, early twenties… oldest 70 something. I better not guess that. And I was… It was really, really good.

All right guys. Whew. This is a long one. I appreciate you all. We’ll see you later. I got to take my daughter to gymnastics. Bye Bye.

CoachJoe.net, CoachJoe.net.