804 » Live Podcast with the One and Only… Max Maxwell

Joe: Hey, what’s going on, guys? Joe McCall, Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast. I’ve been bugging this guy for at least a year, at least a year, Max.

Max: I don’t know about that.

Joe: Oh, come on! But I’m so excited to get Max Maxwell on the podcast today. But before we jump in and start talking to Max, I just want to let you guys know a few little things here. This is the Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast. If you’re listening to this on iTunes, I want to encourage you to please leave a review and subscribe to the podcast. Let us know what you think of the show.

Joe: And also, I want to announce my special new book. I love this book. I just wrote it. Well, I’ve been writing it for the last couple or three years. Just came out with it. It’s about an inch thick. I’m blown away. My last book, you’ve heard me talk about it here, it is Wholesaling Lease Options. I worked really hard on this thing and it’s only a quarter of an inch thick. I was super disappointed.

Joe: This one’s an inch thick and it’s called REI Secrets. And the way I designed this book guys is that each chapter is about two or three pages long and it’s just kind of like a daily reading of daily nuggets of real estate investing wisdom that will help you get more leads and close more deals. So, you can get this join the waiting list right now REIsecrets.com and maybe when you’re listening to this later you can get it. It’ll be free. Just pay shipping and handling and I’ll send it out to you. Okay. Max, how are you man?

Max: I’m doing well man. I’m doing really good.

Joe: I’m excited about getting you on the show. I’ve been watching you for almost two years now and you’ve exploded out of nowhere. I mean it was just, I remember it was, I watched one of your first videos shortly after you came out with it because it created a lot of buzz. You said, Hey, I’m going to document my process of how to create a million… Was it a hundred thousand a month or $1 million a year?

Max: Yeah, $100,000 a month. That was my goal.

Joe: And I remember thinking, what is this guy doing? I hope he makes it, but I hope, I hope he makes it. And sure, enough you did man and you’ve built a huge following. I sometimes refer to you as the Gary Vaynerchuk of real estate.

Max: That’s my guy, Gary. Yeah.

Joe: Yeah? I seen you in a video with him once too. But I really respect you, man. I mean like what you’ve done and how you’ve helped so many people, the way that you, that you teach and that you share. There’s nobody else doing it like you are and you’re just, you’re a beacon of bright light in the real estate space and I’m glad to call you a friend and glad you’re on my show, man. Thank you for being here.

Max: Thanks for having me, man. It’s been, it’s been awhile. I’ve should’ve been on here a long time ago. It’s so busy sometimes running all those, you know, all the behind the scenes stuff that happens, but it’s a lot that goes on.

Joe: Max, will you just give us a quick background of your story? You got a really cool story, but will you share with everybody who has not heard it, kind of where you came from, what were you doing before you got into real estate?

Max: Yeah. You know, I was in the marketing world, I was in experiential marketing and I was on the road probably 240 days out of the year and I just wasn’t satisfied with that, I mean the job was fun. I mean, I went to the biggest and best concerts and biggest and best shows and, you know, I negotiated a bunch of deals for, you know, corporate stuff. But something left me unsatisfied and I wanted to go out and create a new company that solved a problem inside of that experiential marketing world; needless to say, it was an app. We got most of the app done and we hit a pay wall. We didn’t have enough money to finish. So, at that time I moved back home while I was working on the app.

Joe: And then how old were you at this time?

Max: I was about 29, 30. Yes, this was a few years ago.

Joe: How old are you now then?

Max: I’m 34.

Joe: Cool. Good for you.

Max: So, you know, so I tried the app thing, it didn’t work and I was paying rent with credit cards. I was doing everything I can to try to get this, get this app off the ground and, and boom, it didn’t work. So here I am, rock bottom left a decent job. Now I’m back home and I’m like, well, I can’t pay my rent. My lease is up. Guess what? I got to leave.

Max: So, I had to move back in with my mom. And, you know, that’s a humbling experience to do that 30 years old after you’ve been away since 17. I joined the military at 17 years old, so I haven’t been home since that, you know, I’ve been just a free bird running around doing my own thing. And to have to do that 30 years old was, you know, pretty crazy.

Max: So here I am broke, I don’t have much. And, you know, I wanted, I had a real estate background before where I was a real estate agent after I got out of active duty when I was 21. And so, I knew a little bit about real estate and I knew it from the side of being an agent and it, you know, so I wanted to get myself back into real estate, but I want to be an investor.

Max: But here is the problem. I didn’t have any money. And all I knew was you needed money to buy rental properties, you want to get rental properties, create passive income, then you can have, you know, wealth down the road and you can retire well, well snooping around on internet. And an old friend, his dad is a real estate guy here locally. He gives a speech about, you know, real estate investing and how he acquired properties and he mentioned the word wholesaling. I went home and I just started diving deep into everything I could find wholesaling. I found everybody possible and I just started listening to podcast every single day for about three weeks straight. I mean, all I did, I stayed home. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t have money to do anything. And I just engulfed myself.

Max: And the first thing I do, I remember it was September 11th, 2016, the first day I got out of the house and I went driving for dollars. And I got my first contract September 28th, 2016 and I’m like…

Joe: Wait, wait, wait. This is 14 days… This is two weeks later.

Max: Yeah. It took me three weeks of studying hard. Right? I got obsessed with the topic. September 11th, I started driving around neighborhoods, actually went back to the old neighborhood I lived in on the same street I grew up on. And bam, there was a house that was grown up, grass, tall bushes tall, it looked vacant. And you know, I skipped traced.

Joe: So, you didn’t have Deal Machine.

Max: No, it wasn’t invented yet. None of that stuff. You know how we used to drive for dollars back in the day, you would have Apple maps open, then you would have Redfin open and you would tap on the house on Redfin, you would screenshot it and then you would go home and type all these things in later. And that was just a short three years ago. So, we came very far, very quickly.

Joe: I interviewed a kid on my podcast once, he was 18 years old and he’s a son of a successful real estate investor, but his dad didn’t give him anything. He just like told him to go read these books and this is what this kid started doing. He wanted to do deals. So, he started driving for dollars and with no money. Right? In between, like from in between wrestling practice in high school or whatever. Right. And he would work. He was, he would bag groceries at the grocery store and he started going around looking for vacant houses and just go into the Google searching for the person’s phone number, calling them from his cell phone.

Joe: And then in between, while he was driving for dollars, he would get bandit signs and start putting them and he would put his cell phone number on the bandit signs. I mean, the kid didn’t know any better. Right? And sure, enough within like, and this was in a very competitive South Florida market. And within a couple months did like 50 something thousand dollars. And this wasn’t like 20 years ago. This was just like a year ago when the market is competitive. Right? Just getting out there and not making excuses but making it happen. Right. Oh, cool. I love hearing the stories like yours then.

Max: I love that word competitive because it really, it’s really the… Competitive is that word it means whatever it means to the person saying it. I think everybody has a different definition for that. When it comes to this business.

Joe: I look at competition as potential partners. I partner with people all the time on deals, not like forming partnerships out of business, but on a deal by deal basis. We’re looking at a deal that we’re wholesaling in Tampa right now and you know, I could put in the work and trying to find the buyer, trying to find the lender, trying to find the, the title company and all of that. But I just called up some friends that I know who do wholesaling in Tampa. I said, hey listen, I got a potential deal. You want to partner with me on it? You know how much time… I’m splitting the profit. Right. But you know how much time we’re saving by just doing that? Anyway. Good. So, you started driving for dollars, did your first deal, how much did you make on that deal? Do you remember?

Max: $14,000—I remember exactly. 114 Plainfield Drive.

Joe: Very good. Good for you man. And that was three years ago. And what’d you start doing after that?

Max: Two weeks later I find my second deal, I was on Craigslist. Guy said he wanted to sell his house and he wanted $10,000 for it. I was like, a house for $10,000? And I drove out there, met him, well actually I tried to negotiate with him and I said, let me get nine. And that was it. He was like, no, I’ll call you back. And that as soon as he hung up, I said, I’m stupid. I picked up the phone, I called him back. I said, look, I’ll do $10k. We did $10k and I sold it for $17k.

Joe: Was he a wholesaler himself or did he actually own the house?

Max: Yeah, so he bought a house, thought he was going to fix it up. He lived in it for five years with his wife, fiancé, whatever it was, and they just never fixed it up. So, they had bought a new trailer away from the property somewhere else and they needed the money just to maybe pay it off or buy some furniture or whatever it was. He just never renovated the home. He bought something that needed renovation and he never did himself. So, he was just passing on his personal problem.

Joe: Nice. There are so many deals out there. So many deals, people, I don’t know why people get freaked out and worry about the competition and, okay, so, and keep in mind guys listening to this, Max was getting started three years ago. People, you think that the market is competitive now, it’s always competitive, right? I remember back three years, I’ve been in this now 10 years, right? But I remember people back 10 years ago complaining about the competition. I remember people complaining when the market was tanking at the very bottom. People were complaining about the competition. They’re always going to have something to complain about. Not enough sellers, not enough buyers. Not enough money, not enough deals. You gotta be above that. Cool. All right, so then you did a couple deals after that and then did you start… Fast forward to when you did that first video on YouTube, Max.

Max: That was actually a few weeks after my second deal.

Joe: It was a few weeks? You’re kidding me! That soon?

Max: Yeah. I recorded it in the mall parking lot and I think, well let me say… well, it was probably a few months, sorry. It was a few months after and I was consistently getting one, two, three deals a month. And I felt like personally I was hitting that plateau. I know it sounds crazy, but I went from broke to making, you know, anywhere from $10k to $20,000 a month. And I’m like, but I was like, I gotta, I got to get more. And I took that time and recorded a video in the mall parking lot in a car. And I said, I’m going to document my process on how I’m going to turn this into a $100,000 a month business. And I wasn’t thinking to be a YouTube star or anything like that. I was thinking simply to document it so I can show it to my friends so that when we go out, they can critique me and stuff like that and keep me accountable. That was it.

Max: And from there it just kind of, it blew up. And about six or seven videos in, I had one go viral, on how I bought a piece of land for $250 bucks. And then the questions and everything started coming in and I was like, wait, people are so interested in it as, but nobody is just talking about it openly and freely. It’s behind a paywall. So, I said let’s just keep going.

Joe: Nice. Yeah. You were one of the first guys, you know there’s been podcasts and YouTube videos for a long time, but I think you were one of the first guys, Max, that really kind of just pulled back the curtain and said, here it is. This is the, this is the bare bones. It’s, there’s no secret magic pill. It’s just hard work. What made you decide then to go, you know, you’re doing deals…

Joe: Well, before I go into that, talk about what your business looks like now. You’ve been, you know, you’ve got a full-time operation, you got a lot of people working for you. What does your business look like today?

Max: Yeah. So, it’s kind of the same that it was except for we scaled. So, we’re doing more deals, obviously; we’re consistently hitting, you know, lately we’re growing. So, I’ve actually, I haven’t been hitting, I haven’t hit 10 plus deals in about two to almost three months now. Just being completely honest. And that’s because we’re growing. We have a new 7,000 square foot office that we’re building out now and I’m shifting my focus again on real estate, same wholesaling. I’m just doing something a little different and with bringing on more people, this new office is going to hold 75 people. So, we’re just shifting. We’re doing training. A lot of my sales people now are now training, are now learning to do something a little different. I haven’t really let the cat out of the bag exactly what I’m doing, but we got an office in a high rise, 7,000 square feet, and we’re looking to be open around November 15th.

Joe: I love seeing that, man. I love that. That’s one of the things that I wrestle with too, a lot. I mean I’ve been, I started doing real estate full time in 2009 and then I started traveling because people started asking me to teach how to do this stuff with lease options that we do. And I got to a point where, man, I really love teaching and I was even doing some done for you marketing services at the time and I was starting to do some coaching and I really had a passion for that, having the opportunity to teach and make a difference in somebody else’s life. I imagine you’re kind of the same maybe. Where do you get more excitement and thrill out of? Seeing a student do their first $5,000 to $10,000 deal than doing your own $20,000 to $30,000 deal?

Max: Absolutely. I think now at our level we just do consistently we’ll do good and those checks are going to come in. But I think what’s cool is when you see people’s story on how I just did, I just did my first deal. Here goes my $18,000 check. I only used to make 18,000 a year, you know, and people realizing the power within themselves is one of the most gratifying things. It is. And meeting people in person. And when I travel, people approach me and say, man, you have no idea what you’ve done for me. And I’m like, no, I didn’t do it for you. You did it for yourself. I just showed you it was possible. It’s just, it’s a gratifying thing.

Max: There’s not a time I travel that I don’t bump into somebody and they’re just so happy. And you know, I have that Facebook group, it’s got like ninety-five thousand, ninety-two thousand people in there. Every day there’s somebody in there changing their family tree and that’s just posting a check and saying, I did it. And that’s why I like to say you’re one deal away. Because what happens is when you get that first deal, no matter what the size is, it could be $2,000 or $20,000… That shows you that what you’ve learned and completed is real. And now it’s up to you to repeat it and scale it.

Joe: Yeah. There’s something so fulfilling, just having the ability to help other people do it and not everybody understands that, you know, people think, why don’t you just do your own deals? But I can see where you’re going, cause you’re starting to grow. Your business is starting to grow. You’re starting to hire a lot of people. You’re starting to take on a lot of overhead. A lot of opportunities are probably coming your way and you’re even buying horse farms now. I wanted to ask you about that.

Max: I love that place!

Joe: Okay. So, I wanted to ask you like what, what made you decide… You’re starting to do deals. How long did it take you to break through that $100k a month wholesaling profits?

Max: It was, I remember it was December of, I think it was November of 2017 or December of 2017, I believe. It was December. Yeah. It was the first month that we hit $100,000 and it was like, it happened.

Joe: So, it was about what, a year and a half after you started?

Max: It was about a year, a year after we started because I started September and about October, November, November, December, we got the hundred thousand, and it was just like, and it was, it barely made it. It was like $104k, you know? And I remember I was in LA, Francis was here and he called me, I was in Runyon Canyon and he was like, we just sold a deal for $17k and I said, oh my God, that puts us right at where we need to be. So, it’s just amazing. I just, and then, you know, we’ve hit it consistently for a long time.

Max: Here recently we’ve started to pull back a little bit on kind of our strategies of marketing, what we’re doing. But anytime you’re growing, you’re going to go through a little loafer and, you know, I still love this business. I, there’s nothing you can’t… I just, it’s amazing man. You know how amazing it is.

Joe: It is. Now why… Well, we can talk about that later, but when did you decide, Max, to go more of the Gary Vaynerchuk route of getting somebody to follow you with a camera, documenting your business? Was that just something that flowed naturally from what you were doing or did you decide, you know, what I want to do, I want do that, I want to, I want to be able, this is how I’m going to impact and influence people? Was that, you know, did you fall into that by accident or did it just happen?

Max: You know, at first it was unintentional. I love watching Gary V and about video number seven or eight, I went to Best Buy to buy a battery for my camera and I jumped into, I run into this guy named J Rock, well, his name is Jajuan. And I said, Hey, do you know who Gary V is? He’s like, yeah. I was like, well, do you want to be J rock? I’m sorry, D Rock, which is J Rock, Gary V’s, photographer, videographer. And he’s like, yeah.

Max: And I was like, so I hired him there and he was part timing between Best Buy and with me because the camera, holding the camera, and actually doing the business got to be too much. And I was like, you know, if I want to keep this up, I said, hey look, let’s just go part time for a month. Let’s see how it goes. And if you like me and I like you and this works, let’s just keep going. So here we are. You know, he’s still with me. He’s been with me for a long time. I think this coming February is going to be two years with me.

Joe: Talk about Instagram then. So, you were kind of doing, was its YouTube and Instagram at the same time or did you go with YouTube first and then say, you know, we want to, I want to figure this Instagram thing out?

Max: I always had it Instagram and then I started becoming more intentional with going live and I would go live every single, like three days a week and I would go until the timer ran out with Instagram. And it was cool because I think it’s the most intimate way to talk with somebody because it’s just one on one.

Max: It’s me and them and they ask questions and I answer. And then, you know, I started, I said, well, this is cool. And I would say, well, maybe if I meet them in person, can I do it if I meet them in person? And that’s when I was in Maryland one day for a meeting. And, I ended up doing my first meetup, in 2018. Pop-up… I call it pop up… Real estate popups. And essentially, I go to a city and I say, Hey, look, I’m here. Meet me here at this certain time. And, we’ve been doing that and it’s just been, those are fun too, right? They’re just free events.

Joe: That’s crazy. And nobody pays you to be there.

Max: No, it costs me money. Right. So, like first class tickets and then whatever venue I’m at if I’m somewhere, it’s just, it’s a cost for me. You know, this year I’ve traveled over 250,000 miles just flying across the country. But it’s cool because you get to meet these people you see on Facebook all the time.

Joe: And it gives you good B roll footage.

Max: It gives you great… So now when you’re going out, you get to record it and the people that didn’t get to watch it, they get to come back and watch it as if they were there. So, this stuff now, it’s intentional, right? I have four people on my staff that just deal with my day to day business, on just the brand side. I have a 5,000 square foot studio. You’re sitting in like one of my rooms now. And we purposely put out content, but you know, I still like to go out and do real estate every single day. So, somebody always following me with a camera and you know, I’m used to it now. Definitely used to it.

Joe: I was watching a video you’re doing today, one of the 30 that you have about your Uber driver recognizing you.

Max: That’s always fun.

Joe: But yeah, I saw this guy, somebody was filming from the front looking to the back and you have this camera guy next to you. Was that David by the way?

Max: Yeah. So yeah, David and J Rock or David and Matt who travel with me, two guys.

Joe: So, you get used to that?

Max: Yeah, there’s the camera in my face all day long from the time I get to the office between 8:30 to 9 o’clock until six o’clock and they’re just, it’s just a job. And then they know what to chop up and put out. And then sometimes we do produce videos when I want to cover a topic about, you know, money or anything like that or breaking down a deal. So, we’re kind of very intentional with stuff now.

Joe: And you’re not married yet are ya?

Max: No.

Joe: Okay. Cause I don’t think your wife would allow that, but I’m just saying it every…

Max: You know, I think about settling down a one of these days, but I still have another empire to build, so I’m gonna wait until I get married for a little while.

Joe: You know, I’ve thought about how my wife would just kill me. Got any good books that you’re reading right now, Max?

Max: You know, lately I haven’t been, I’ve been so disconnected because I wake up, I work and I go and sleep. I haven’t had the time. What I’ve enjoyed here lately is no music and just listen to the tires on the road when I am in the car.

Joe: I’ve been doing that a lot myself as well.

Max: Yeah, I’m dyslexic so I don’t really read a lot of books. I listen to a lot of books and I just haven’t had the time to really listen to a lot of books. But everything that everybody talks about, you know, like Never Split the Difference. My first book cover to cover was Rich Dad, Poor Dad. There’s a lot of, I’m reading… before I stopped here recently, I was reading a lot of team building and you know, how to build a large, larger business with morale. You know, that’s, I think finding people is fairly easy but keeping the morale up I think is something a lot of people have problems with. So, I’ve been trying to educate myself on that as well.

Joe: Excellent. Well I was going to talk about thinking here. That’s something that I’ve been doing to do a lot more of… Just taking walks without the Air Pods, just thinking. Cause when I was working my corporate job, I used to do a lot of that. When I would get stuck or stressed or like frustrated, I would just get up and walk around the building and every time I did that something would just come up in my mind like, Oh, I should try that or I should call this person, maybe get some help with that. And I forgot to do that when I started working for myself. Super important just to spend some time every day thinking.

Max: Absolutely. The brain is a powerful thing and I think you just have to let it run some times to, to get yourself in the right mindset. Sometimes you could work through a lot of your problems in your own head and go out and just execute.

Joe: Good. Okay. How about podcasts? Are you listening to any podcasts when you do listen to them?

Max: Yeah. You know, I’ve been skipping around on podcasts a lot lately, in and out. Some of the classic ones are still there. You’ve got your podcast; you’ve got Wholesale Inc. Sean Terry’s putting out some videos and YouTube stuff as well. I try to keep it simple. I try to stay up to date because I don’t know everything and I want to know everything. Right? So, as this industry changes so much, you want to be up to what everybody else is doing and stuff like that.

Joe: You want to know something crazy? Almost every major thing that I’ve kind of become known for maybe, when it comes to sayings that I have or things that I do or things that I teach, I learned from networking, right? I learned from other students. I learned from going to events and just listening to what other people were talking about. I’ve learned a lot from realtors as well. Like, you know, realtors have been cold calling for a long time and I remember this was before Brent Daniels was doing TTP. And Brent’s an awesome guy. I love what Tom Krol and Wholesaling Inc and Cody, what all they’re doing.

Joe: But, before they even came out with TTP, I was talking to students that were realtors that were doing really, really well with just plain old boring cold calling. And, there’s other things to do with like, Podio for an example is something that it was a student of mine who, I don’t know if you know this or not, a student of mine who was doing deals, from Beirut, Lebanon, the country of Lebanon, in Oklahoma city, and I was coaching him and we were talking, we were going to partner on some deals.

Joe: Nobody was, nobody had even heard of Podio. And he mentioned to me… His name is Yasiin. He mentioned to me, he said, Hey, we should look at this Podio and I was like, nah, let’s just do Trello because we were trying to manage all these leads or something. I said, let’s just do, let’s just do Trello. He said, no, no, you gotta look at it. So, he showed me Podio and I thought, Oh, this is really cool. You know, you can drag and drop now. Podio hasn’t been updated since then either. This was probably 2012. This was seven years ago. It’s just, anyway, so I sit down with Sean Terry at a Collective Genius mastermind and I said, Sean, you got to see this thing. You got to see this. It’s so cool and said, I showed him Podio and then for the next two hours, him and I are just sitting at our computers building workspaces and building apps and stuff like that.

Joe: And he had just spent a bunch of money, white labeling big software and stopped that and started going, pushing Podio. And then I showed Cody Sperber and then I showed a bunch of other people in the Collective Genius and it just kind of exploded and really grew from there. And there was a time when I was known as the Podio Joe, but the deeper I started going into it, I was like, nah, I just don’t want anything to do with this. So, I pulled out. But here’s my point. When you network, this is why networking is so important. You start learning what’s working for other people and you start thinking of how could I implement that in my business and how can I start teaching my audience now about all that stuff?

Max: Absolutely. I’m networking and that’s why traveling is important. You know, there’s a lot of off-screen meetings that I have that a lot of people don’t know about it. And that’s just networking. I want, when I go to a city, I want to, I want to sit down with the top dogs because I want to just have a conversation with them.

Joe: Which is another reason why I love doing podcasts. You get to talk to people that are really doing deals and learn from them. It’s like getting free coaching.

Max: Yeah, I learned when I like, when I do my events, when I do live, I learn from when people are talking. And I love doing my popups because people ask questions and I’m like, well, well how do you solve that problem? And boom, there goes another idea.

Joe: That’s awesome. Okay. What does your dispositions manager do? How do you find one?

Max: My disposition manager sells the deals once they hit, once we get them under contract, they sell our contracts to our… You can find one, it’s not, they don’t have to be a great salesperson. They have to be a well-organized and consistent person. So, you don’t need to go out and necessarily find a salesperson to do your dispositions.

Joe: Do you ever or know investors that buy houses out in the country? Rural areas?

Max: I can’t say that I know somebody that consistently buys in rural areas. I’ve had one or two; I recently just bought a farm myself, you know, something that came across my desk and did that. I don’t… I’m sure there is somebody out there.

Joe: Oh, there’s somebody in your neck of the woods. You’ve heard of Larry Goins?

Max: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Joe: So, he’s in the Charlotte area and he’s intentionally ignored the Charlotte MSA and goes all of the crack counties surrounding him and is doing really, really well. He gets probably two to three times the response rate on his direct mail, just doing straight up direct mail, not even doing cold calling. Not saturated. So much less competition. People in small towns are friendlier, they’re more willing to negotiate.

Joe: He does all of his deals over the phone and he uses a mobile notary to send to the seller’s house to get the contract signed. Yeah, it’s really good. And a lot of the deals… We’re doing some deals in Birmingham, Alabama right now and some in Georgia and all virtual; doing them over the phone. And I think a lot of people will be surprised how easy it is to do deals in small town.

Max: Very easy.

Joe: How often do you go for a price reduction on the seller? Do you do it even if you’re making money on the assignment? Let me provide some context to this. I think some people teach that you should always go back and renegotiate a lower price right before you close every deal. What’s your philosophy on that?

Max: No. If you need a, if you need a reduction, get it. It doesn’t hurt to ask. Just being greedy and going back for more, no, I wouldn’t just do that, you know, that’s not a bad practice. I’ve talked about this before. I think people take it to take it real literal, right? I said, yeah, go back and ask for a reduction. It doesn’t have to be on every single property. If you’re making money and everybody’s being… Don’t be greedy because, you know, pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered.

Joe: By the way, speaking of, we flipped some land as well, right? And there’s the saying in the land flipping business: there’s a pig for every barn. Have you heard of that one?

Max: I haven’t heard that one.

Joe: No. That’s a good one. That’s another one. How do you handle the low times when you first get started… mindset?

Max: You know, I’ve always had my eye on the bigger prize, right? And you’ve gotta consistently, you know, when you get into this real estate investing world, there’s not a lot of people in your immediate area that are doing this. So, you need to, and that’s why I spent a lot of times on podcasts and listening to those things because it kept reminding me that it was possible and that it was the only a period of time that I was going through. But if you’re listening to other people that doubt you and , you know, your what are you up to now type of people, you know, stay away from those people and really just invest in yourself and try to be around more like minded people and you won’t, you’ll get out of those lows quickly.

Joe: That’s totally good advice. Listening to podcasts, interviews with people doing deals.

Max: Yeah. It keeps you motivated.

Joe: What’s going on right now with ringless voicemail, text blasting, cold calling, do not call lists, bandit signs.? Like, what’s your philosophy, Max? Kind of where you draw the line of yeah, I can do that. I don’t do that. You know what I mean?

Max: Yeah. So, one thing, I don’t do blast texts. We do TCPA compliant text messaging. So, we created a software over a year ago called REI Rail and that’s where we do ringless voicemails. Inside that software we also created TCPA compliant text messaging. So that is one, every time you press a button, it goes out to one person and that keeps it compliant for now. If they change the laws, we’ll do it.

Max: RVMs and text messaging and cold calling are the three main things that run my business. They’re very cheap, they’re easy to do and they’re easy to track. So yeah, I love those three things.

Joe: Are you doing any direct mail right now?

Max: Yeah, actually I am. So, my business runs on a conveyor belt. So, what happens is I start with my cheapest method of marketing when I gather lists. And that could be RVM and then we move them into text messaging. So, we will do our three different RVMs, three different totally different messages. We’ll do about three or four different text messages. And every time we move from a different marketing style, the list gets smaller because we take the responses out and then rehash the list and then go to the next one, the next one. So, at the end, all the way at the end, the list should be much smaller. So, if you start with 10,000 and you’ve got no’s, yeses, maybes, leave me alone, all that stuff… You should get all the way to the end where you’ve got zero response and you’re going to take that list and you’re going to check it against the non-deliverables. Right? So, I use Yellow Letter HQ. You have the not… They’ll tell you what will not be delivered, right? So, you separate those. Then you send the letters to the ones that you know will get the mail.

Joe: What kind of letters do you like to send?

Max: I send one simple postcard, the same postcard every single time.

Joe: Nice. Simple.

Max: I don’t change it up. I don’t, I’ll let stuff that… When I first got in this business, you needed seven different types of postcards. It needs to be handwritten. Font needs to be this, that… Nope, just consistent. All that boils down to which, not saying they were wrong or right, but it’s really just came down to consistency in your marketing. That’s all it was.

Joe: Good. What new software are you working on?

Max: I don’t know if it’s a new software. We’re relaunching a REI Skip next week, which is the skip tracing company we created almost two years ago now. And, long story, we just bought into a very big private data company. And then, we’re launching REI Rail is launching its text messaging platform I believe in a couple of weeks as well, too. I’m not really working on anything new, just kind of focusing on my new big 7,000 square foot office.

Joe: Let’s talk about software for a second. How do you do it? Like, are you just, you have people on your team that are kind of creating it, managing it for you? You know, I know, well, yeah… How do you do it?

Max: Yeah, so I have people that are way smarter than me. Two guys, Justin and Vincent, they are two guys, one’s in DC, one’s in Jersey. These guys, Justin is a world-class programmer and developer and Vincent comes from Wall Street. These two guys, we all come together. We have the trio right there. We create products out of our own demand. So, like before we were doing RVMs, what it… Let me do a simple of what, why we created REI Rail. Everybody knows what RVMs are. Nothing special. It’s nothing new. I’ve been doing it for a long time, but what happened is prior to we creating our own software, what happens is we would blast out 10,000 ringless voicemails and then your phones start ringing. Well, when you pick up the phone, you have no idea who called you back on what property, right? So, it didn’t allow us to break down the barrier of that trust barrier.

Max: When you’re calling somebody, and if you call me, right? So, say let’s just say I drop a voicemail to Joe. Joe listens to the voicemail. I say, I’m interested in your house. If you want a cash offer, call me back. Joe calls my office back. I answered the phone. They say, well, yeah, you just called me out about my house. And you’re scrambling now because your voicemail was meant to be organic and original. You’re like, well, Joe, what house? Well, Joe’s like, well, didn’t you just call me? That sounds like a scam. So now you have this whole ‘nother barrier, that you don’t need when you’re cold calling somebody, against you.

Max: So, what happened is we created a technology that when Joe calls back, his entire profile pops up right before the phone rings. It’s going to say Joe McCall, it’s going to say where he went to college at, where his current job is, what house we called him on. So, when Joe picks up the phone, I say, Hey Joe, this is Max. You called me back about that property on 123 Main Street. He was like, Yeah. Now we just have a totally different type of conversation.

Max: And we invented this deep trace technology, which is not a skip trace. So, basically, we pull all the information from anybody online. We gather it from all 5,000 sources and we put it in one screen in front of you. And now I can say, Hey Joe, didn’t you go to this school? Or you know Joe? Oh yeah, I was watching the Ohio State game, whatever. I don’t know what school you went to, but you say, oh yeah, I love Ohio State. Well, yeah, I knew that because it was in your bio that you went to that school. So more than likely you are going to like it.

Max: So, we created that technology so that we can have a smarter conversation with the seller. And that’s what REI Rail’s been doing for over a year. And now that, you know, we’ve been working on our text messaging platform for about six months out of that, then we’re finally ready to launch that out soon.

Joe: Good for you. So, you got two guys that help you do that.

Max: Yeah, I mean, and then we have another team behind that, right? So, you got to have customer service for your customers. Right. And so, we have, we have a lot of customers on REI Rail, so we have a full customer service team as well too. It’s a lot. It’s a lot, Joe.

Joe: That’s amazing. No wonder you need a big office.

Max: Well that’s a complete separate office.

Joe: Okay. Have you thought about just white labeling software so you don’t have to be the guy creating it and supporting it and maintaining it and all that?

Max: Yeah, I mean, I really never wanted to go the white label route. Not knocking anybody that does, but I build a product to solve a problem. And if the problem’s already solved, I’m not going to build it. You know, I’m not gonna I’m not going to build something that somebody already has, the industry already has it. Till this day still nobody has the technology that REI Rail has. And so, people see it beneficial and some people don’t.

Joe: Okay. Very good. Truly, by the way, these big events that you do, Max, why do you do them? I mean, like, it’s a lot of work and I don’t know behind the scenes what exactly is going on, but I don’t think you’re doing it for the money. Am I right?

Max: No, at my last event, I lost $250,000.

Joe: I don’t know if people know that. Do you, is that something you talk about on your show and on Instagram?

Max: I said it on stage, but you know, it’s cool. You know, you know, some of it was our fault, but you know, it’s big to put on these events. But what I like about it, I don’t really say I lost, I invested $250,000. What I like about doing these events is it’s a huge family reunion. You get to network for two solid days with likeminded people. And I think alone, in just having that with all the people, you know, people that don’t need to learn wholesaling comes to these things for the networking. And I think I’d pay quarter million dollars for that again this year if I had to.

Joe: Good for you. And when will your next one be? Do you have a date yet?

Max: Yeah, it’s in February. You can go to WholesalingEliteLive.com. It’s February 2020, I think it’s the sixth through the eighth in Atlanta. It’s going to be fun. It’s like a big family reunion. We have so much fun there.

Joe: That’s what WE Live stands for.

Max: Yeah. Wholesaling Elite Live.

Joe: I didn’t connect that until just now. One more question, Max. Is that cool? What do you want to accomplish in the next five to 10 years?

Max: So, by my 40th birthday I want to exit out of a company for a quarter billion dollars. That’s a very headset thing. And then I’m going to take six months off and then I’m going to come back and do something else again in the same field.

Joe: Right on. Real quick, talk about your horse farm. What, so what’s your, what’s your five to 10-month goal with the horse farm?

Max: I really just bought a horse farm… So, anybody knows I’m really into Western sports. I’m also an agent in professional bull riding. So, the PBR that’s…

Joe: Really?

Max: Yeah. I have two, I have three guys. Uh wow. One of my guys is Ezekiel Mitchell, he is the rookie of the year so far and he’s ranked 11th in the world. I found him on a YouTube video and went to go meet him over a year ago in Houston and decided that I wanted to invest into his career. And now he’s rookie of the year, 11th in the world. But yeah, so I’m in the Western sports. I love that side. I never thought that I’d be into rodeos and stuff like that, but here I am. I’m into rodeos. I love it. I went out and bought a horse farm. I wanted to give my nieces and nephews; I don’t have any kids… I wanted to get my nieces and nephews the opportunity to be able to do something different. So, I bought the horse farm. We’re out there restoring barns. Matter of fact, when I get off of here, I’m heading back there and we’re going to put down some, I actually work, I do some work. I’ve got my cowboy boots on right now. I’m laying some rubber mats in the horse stalls. My first horse JJ, which I bought a few weeks ago, will be coming to the stalls on Thursday.

Joe: You know, Tai Lopez just bought a farm. Was that an inspiration to you at all to do the same?

Max: I have never consumed his content. Know who he is, but I’ve never consumed his content.

Joe: All right, that’s cool. Max, you’re everywhere. Where do you like to send people to go to, to get more information about you? What’s your favorite channel?

Max: Find me on YouTube and Instagram. You can type in Max Maxwell on YouTube or on Instagram, The Real Maxwell. Just give me a follow and kind of everything else is from there. And you just kind of, I just, at this point I’m just documenting my life. Right? You’re either going to like it or you’re not going to like it.

Joe: Yeah. You also got a big Facebook group, Wholesaling Houses Elite. I don’t know how you manage that. Do you have somebody that helps you manage that?

Max: It’s a very intensive job to monitor 95,000 people.

Joe: I don’t know how you do it.

Max: Yeah, exactly right.

Joe: Yeah. I have 11,000 and I’m never in there. I just can’t do it. Yeah. I have a premium one for students that have bought my stuff and I’m in there every day, but okay, cool. So again, go to YouTube, do a search for the Real Max Maxwell on IG and your YouTube channel is just called Max Maxwell, isn’t it?

Max: Yeah, just search my name in YouTube and I’ll pop up and if you’re on, if you’re on Instagram, do the same thing. Max Maxwell… I come up as well and I love to connect with everybody, man.

Joe: Excellent. Thanks for being on the show, Max. Really, really appreciate it.

Max: It’s my pleasure. And we’ll do reverse roles. I’ll have you come on mine next.

Joe: Okay, come on, man. Come on. All right, appreciate that. Everybody, thank you for being on the podcast and sharing with us your comments, your questions and this has been fun. Hope to do… I’d like to have you on a part two sometime down the road, Max. We’ll talk about that. Best of luck to you, man.

Max: Thank you sir. I appreciate it.

Joe: We’ll see you guys all later. Listen, if you want the show notes, go to Real Estate Investing Mastery.com or REIMpodcast.com you can get the show notes, the transcriptions. We’ll see you guys later. Take care. Bye bye.

Max: Thank you.