Ben Toaff, is a real estate pro who has been successfully wholesaling houses since 2016. With a remarkable track record, Ben is closing in on an impressive milestone of 10 million dollars in career assignment fees. Currently ranking in the top 0.1% of wholesalers nationwide, Ben has his sights set on becoming the best in the world.
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All right, everyone, welcome to the real estate game changer show. I'm your host, Mike Mckay in the Jacksonville, Florida market and each and every week we do this show with people who are changing the game of real estate all over the country. For anyone in the Jacksonville area we are currently looking to hire some acquisitions reps. So anyone looking to get into that role with sales experience, feel free to send me a DM on an Instagram. This week on the show, we have Ben Toaff who wholesales nationwide, Ben, welcome to the show.
Ben: 0:31Appreciate you having me out here, Mike. Thanks for the invite and looking forward to sharing with the crowd.
Mike: 0:36Cool. So for the people who don't know you do you want to share a little bit about how you got into real estate and how that's kind of led you to where you are today?
Ben: 0:45Didn't really intend on being an engineer, but that's what I studied nevertheless. And I moved to Miami. I was kind of a big dreamer. I wanted to go to, you know, a fun city. I always dreamed of moving to Florida. So I moved to Miami when I graduated. And I don't speak Spanish very well, although my Spanish is decent now. But back in the time, I didn't speak any Spanish. So I had a difficult time securing a good sales position when I graduated. And I ended up getting a job going door to door at businesses trying to sell photocopiers cause I wanted to get into sales. And I sold my first photocopier after about 90 days. I got the commission check for 200. and I quit the next day. I wasn't interested in making, you know, working that hard to make 200. Then I started to look into real estate because my brother was a mortgage loan officer. And he said I should become a real estate agent. So I got my license and I kind of realized that there was a lot of heavy competition in South Florida for that. And I was just a little bit intimidated, you know, how am I going to compete with all these people with these big networks and things like that? A lot older than me. And, I just felt like it was going to be an uphill battle. And then I saw some videos on online talking about wholesaling, flipping houses. And, there was a couple of videos in particular where there was two guys who were talking about how they're making 50, 60, 000 a month, and they had just started and to be totally frank, they sound like complete retards. And I was just looking at this like, wow, if this is real and these guys can make that much money doing it, like there's absolutely no chance that I can't. You know, figure out how this is done. So I I, went to a dream meeting, like a I'm sure you've heard of Ria's I've been to the Dade real estate investors meeting and they were talking about it, showing the deals on the board and the HUDs and stuff like that, and I ended up joining their mentorship program back in 2016. And yeah that's how I got started.
Mike: 2:49Okay, and did you jump right into wholesaling, like, when you got in the business or did you
Ben: 2:55Yeah, that was a, that was just specifically their mentorship was on how to wholesale properties that were listed on the MLS. That's what they were teaching. And it took me about three months to get my first deal. I went, I canceled three contracts prior to getting the first, the fourth one that actually sold. And, you know, I was just putting in reps. I was just putting out offers and making a lot of calls and I didn't really know what I was doing, but it was like imperfect action that led to that first deal, which kind of put it in motion. The fact that, cause for me, once I got the first deal, I realized, okay, this is possible before that I was kind of, you know, even though I see everyone else doing it, I was a little bit skeptical.
Mike: 3:37Okay. So you get your first deal and then where do you go from there? Okay.
Ben: 3:42So yeah, I got my first deal and I ended up, it was a house in Fort Lauderdale. I actually shagged my girlfriend in the backyard when I was getting the pictures and then ended up selling the next morning. And that was, I'll never forget that house. And then my mentor told me to go back and get a price reduction. I ended up getting, you know, back and forth in the game, 1500 bucks. So I made 8, 500 and I was like, I had to split it with my mentor, but still the spread was 8, 500 and I was like, wow, this really works. And then a couple of weeks later, another house in Miami ended up making 10, 000 on that one. I'm a confident guy, so at this point I was like, okay, this is easy. Like I'm going to make millions and millions. Like I was already like in my head, it was easy. And then I moved, I don't know if you're not from Miami, but there's this building called the Flamingo. It's in South beach. It's this big building and it used to be the biggest party building in Miami. And that was like, you know, everyone in that building was having a good time. I was 24 at the time. So I moved to that building and I ended up just. Getting really distracted and didn't do any deals for six months. And then I got into this big argument with my roommate. And he was saying, Oh you're a frat star. You do this party and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're not serious about your work. And so I needed a new roommate, but he was kind of right. I wasn't very serious about my work at the time. And so. He kind of motivated me and I ended up convincing my best friend to move from Israel. He quit his job to move from Israel back to Miami. Well, he was from Philadelphia. So he moved from Israel to Miami to become my business partner. And I knew that I, once I had someone working with me, that I would be a lot more motivated to kind of be accountable every day. Cause it was, you know, I had him counting on me, and I was counting on him, so I had to pull my weight. And so once it brought him down, the second day that he was working with me, we ended up getting a lead an off market pocket listing from a realtor where the spread was 40, 000. That was on the second day. And so that was the third deal we did. It was like almost 40, 000 in spread. But yeah, that was, and then that was, that's kind of how that started. We ended up doing 400, 000. In our first year, and that was just strictly calling realtors. You know, literally every morning we would just call all the realtors, send tons of offers to realtors, follow up on the offers and drive out to houses that were listed because we wanted to seem like we were really interested in the houses. So we would drive out to them, meet the realtors of the house, look at the houses, those kinds of things. And we ended up doing 400, 000 that year with no overhead because we had no marketing expense. We had no. Employees, none of that. I mean, it was just straight pretty much profit for the most part. And yeah, that's how it got started. And then my business, I ended up buying him out of the business. Cause he wasn't really, he didn't really like it as much as I did. I was very, as soon as I started to get those checks rolling in. Like consistently 10, 20, you know, 30, 000, you know, checks. I was just, I was addicted. I was addicted. I was just hustling 24, seven, running around, getting houses. And you know, that was my life. And then I bought him out of the business. I gave him 52 grand to walk away from our business, which was very generous to me, but I mean, it was my best friend, so I didn't want to, you know, I wanted, I didn't want to ruin the friendship. So, I gave him 52 grand and then the next month after he left, I felt, you know, I was really motivated cause I just given him 52 grand. So I ended up doing 90, 000 that month and in January of 2017, no, sorry, January of 20. This would be 2018 at this point, I believe. And and now, and then I realized, okay, I, you know, I have this down and that's when I opened up my first office and I started to hire some people to work for me.
Mike: 7:30Yeah, so talk about that transition to, like, doing the transaction yourself to then, like, hiring people who are then I assume we're hiring acquisitions people to go out there and, like, find deals for you.
Ben: 7:41Small draw just to, you know, get someone in there. And I wasn't very selective about who I hired. Cause I, you know, I didn't fully understand like what I was looking for, I was just trying to get someone warm bodies in the door, if that makes sense and, you know, went through a couple of people, but, you know, I made it work and then. But I was, what I was doing at the time, I was giving them a really high commission split. And cause I wasn't willing to pay, I wasn't willing to pay, you know, a salary. So I was given a really high commission split, which is not what I do now, you know, and then. We're doing that MLS model for a couple of years and that we, the second year we did 750, 000, off the MLS, it was like me and like two other people I was hustling and I was hustling, I was working, waking up five in the morning, you know, going to the gym five in the morning and then heading to the office eight in the morning, working sometimes from eight in the morning till nine at night, nonstop on the phone, I had, you know, four shots of espresso, I was vaping my ass off. You know, I was on literally on three phone calls on a phone with a realtor on the phone with a buyer selling the house. Then I was speeding up 95 to Broward County, going 120 miles an hour in my car in the express lane to look at a house. I would pull out the I had a retractable ladder. In my car. So I would pull up the ladder. I would go on top of the roof of the house to make sure there was no leaks. And then I would send the, sometimes I would send a no contingency offer for the house, you know, cause it was super confident that if I got it at that price, I could sell it. And I want, you know, so I would go on the roof cause I got bit in the ass one time when I had a house that ended up having a roof leak cause I didn't know about it. So I, as I was always checked the roof, and then yeah, I mean, that was great. And then eventually, you know, I saw there was a guy named Raphael Vargas. And I started to see his, like his, like, Instagram ads and stuff like that. And he was talking about like, you know, millions of dollars in wholesaling or whatever. And so I went to his event and that's when I started to get into the off market stuff, and that was like, you know, a couple of years later and that, that's how it transitioned. And then we started to. To hire cold callers. And we, at first we were like, it was still cheap. So I used to try to get all my acquisition agents to cold call. So I would hire like 12 acquisition agents and we'd have them all on Zen call, just pounding the phone, just dialing, like trying to generate leads and close them. And then which was crazy. And then. And then eventually we started, I had some, you know, some Filipino VAs and then the VAs was going good. So then we, at one point we had 20 VAs and we had five acquisition agents or five or six at the time. And we would just send out tons of, you know, text messages, voicemails, that kind of thing. And cold calling. And we would. Just live transfer all the leads, like any lead that had like a seller that was willing to hear offer. We would live transfer it. And the, we would, the speaker would ring in the office when they had live to transfer it. And I would, who's picking up the fucking phone? I was, it was crazy. It was crazy. And then, so with that strategy, we were able to do like about one and a half million, but what I realized was this is not. You know, what I realized at the time is like, wait, only like I have like six agents, but only like two of them are actually like consistently closing deals. So I'm like, why don't I just fire all the other ones and then just give all the leads to them. So that's what I did. And so then we fought, I fired like pretty much all my agents except for two of them. And at one point we had two acquisition agents and it was me, two acquisition agents and a transaction coordinator. And I was doing Dispo as well. So I would underwrite all the deals and then I would do Dispo. And all these deals were like in South Florida, Tampa, you know, Jacksonville, they're all pretty much Florida deals. And we were doing great. We were doing great with that model. Like we just, we were doing good. But then that's when I started to get into, you know, everyone's talking about PPC, Google ads. And then, so we started to run Google ads. And I remember we ran it with like one agency, AdWords nerds, and they were like complete trash, that agency is terrible. And then so we got no deals from that, and then we started running with this other agency, and like our second or third call, we mainly get calls from the PBC at the time. Our second or third call, we locked up like a 20, 000 deal, and like the third, and like it was a one call close, it was like so easy, like compared to like cold calling. So I'm like, you know. This was exciting because it was like so much less work than like the cold calling. And and then, yeah, that's how we got started. And then we just started to ramp up the budget on our PP, on our PPC, you know, we do a thousand dollars a day and then we do 2, 000 a day. And then. I got
Mike: 12:25And you're nationwide at this
Ben: 12:27no, at this point we were not nationwide. We were doing like, we were doing like basically like Florida and then North Carolina and Texas. Like we're just doing a couple little markets. Like it wasn't that many markets. And then I heard, you know, I'm sure you know, Robert Wensley is I got, you know, I heard about Robert and I got on a call with him and he was telling me about. You know, investor lift cartel or whatever. I'm not sure if you know about that, but we're part of the cartel, but that's basically like the, you know, we have like four and a half million buyers on there, but I was one of the first like 50 people on there and that completely changed my business because. We had buyers in every single market, pretty much our most major markets. So what happened then is we just opened up our PVC, but Robert was like, yeah, if you want to do more deals, you just have to scale your marketing. So, I mean, I literally took it like way too far. I was spending like 10, 000 a day on Google ads at one point. Like it was crazy, like 10, 000 a day. Like we were spending like, so this was like. You know, 200, 000 a month. I was just burning cash. It was crazy. But what would happen was, is we would get deals in like California. And, you know, Washington state and we would lock up contracts in one call and we would sell them the same day for like an 80, 000 assignment fee. It was wild. It was great. And we'd have like multiple offers. So we would just lock them up on our contract and then we'd get some photos and then we'd blast down a vestral lift and it was just. It was like, I was just so addicted. Just like, I wasn't even like a smart business operator. I was just spending way too much on marketing, but I was just so excited to just get these assignment fees and just, it was great. And then, so, Yeah. And then that's how I was running my business pretty much all, you know, up until about halfway through last year when. When the market tanked. Cause, so, sorry. 2021, that was all we did. We did like,
Mike: 14:20Yeah.
Ben: 14:21did 3. 7 million in assignment fees in 2021. And then 2022 the market tanked. Or, sorry. When did the market tank again? I'm getting so confused. This was 2021, 2021, the big, the end of 2021. Yeah, the end of 2021 is when it kind of started to like go to shit. So, you know, our deals weren't selling anymore and then, you know, a lot of my buddies were telling me, okay, well, we got to do innovations. And so that's what we did. And then we started to move to innovations and it took us like About three months to figure out, like really how to like work the innovations. And once we had that figured out, well now, like, now that we were doing ovations, we went even wider because at first we were only doing like core markets. We were doing like California. You know, Texas, Arizona, you know, but only like the best parts. And then once we had innovations locked in, you know, cause the, why do you go on PPC to lower your lead cost? You know, we've done deals in fucking Inwood, West Virginia. We made 20, 000. I've done deals in I've done deals in the middle of nowhere. We 000 like we just did one in Welch, Minnesota. We made like 59, 000 so basically we Once we had those innovations locked in, we just went super wide on the marketing to try to drive down our lead costs and increase our profitability. And yeah, that's what we did. And so that's pretty much what we do now. We, you know, we do a little bit of cold calling, you know, very minimal, probably 5 percent or less of our deals come from cold calling. But 95 percent of our stuff is coming from Google ads. And we've done deals. I think today we have a closing in Michigan. So it'll be our 30th state that we've done deals in.
Mike: 16:07And how do you, how are you like managing all like the different, you just work on the national title company or how are you handling like the transactional
Ben: 16:15So
Mike: 16:15that comes with that?
Ben: 16:16that's something that like wholesalers don't talk about the most important position in your company, you know, if you're going to scale is transaction coordination. And most wholesalers don't have a transaction coordinator. I have two transaction coordinators are full time in office. One of them is a licensed Florida title agent. And the other one is, you know, has like 20 years experience closing deals at title companies. So I've got, you know, great transaction coordinators. So my transaction coordinator is, you know, they're, the files are coming in. They're introducing themselves to the seller. They are getting the seller's disclosure filled out right away over the phone with the seller. If we have a Novation attorney, in fact, they're getting it notarized. And then they're setting up the showings with the seller. They're setting expectations with the seller. You know, they're doing everything. We get in touch with our sellers every two or three days. As soon as a seller, you know, if they seem like they might back out or something like that, we're filing a notice of interest on the house so, to make sure that, you know, we don't lose the deal. And yeah, the seller racks out and it's a juicy deal. We start a lawsuit, I mean. We start a lot of lawsuits. I mean, probably not as much as we used to, but probably we start two to four lawsuits a month, I would say.
Mike: 17:32Wow, okay, and how many, like, so how many deals are you guys doing a month under this innovation model?
Ben: 17:40So last year was the first year in my company history where we did less than a year before. We did a lot of deals, but the problem was our average deal size did go down because of the market. So we did 3. 1 million. As far as like the exact revenue, I actually have our sheet right here. Let me see. Closed deals. Closed deals. Here we go. How many did we get? So last year we did right around about a hundred and like 75, 180 transactions closed on wholesaling. And I bought like, and sold probably another 30, 40 houses. Like, you know, cause we also do a lot of whole tailing. I do flick fix and flip as well. I buy a lot of rentals to try to offset my, you know, taxable income. So, yeah. We did a, you know, about 175 deals last year. Just, that's just like wholesaling innovations.
Mike: 18:30Yeah, and are you doing, are you almost like, almost exclusively innovations at this point? Are we, you still like, cause some people have kind of made the full switch, right? Or are you
Ben: 18:40Yeah. We're like 80. We're like 80%. We're like 80%. So, we'll, we will pitch the seller and, you know, if they're really motivated and they want like a quick close, then we just like beat'em up on the price and we get it like super low. But yeah, we're like 80%, I would say 80% of the time we're trying to sell it on the MLS.
Mike: 19:00Okay.
Ben: 19:01Correct. Yeah. I mean, you can't survive otherwise. There's no one out here in the market that is doing well now without innovations. It doesn't exist.
Mike: 19:11Yeah, so, like, I guess what's the pitch? What's your pitch to the seller? People like different ones, right? But like, what's, you know, how do you position it to them? So they're like, it kind of works for them. They like the
Ben: 19:24You know, we're investors, we buy houses, but not every house fits our, you know, fits our, you know, fits our buy box. We have a large network of investors and other buyers that we work with and agents that we can utilize to get your property sold. You're not going to have to. Commit to a six month listing agreement like you would have to with a realtor and we're going to cover any closing costs and repairs necessary to get the property sold. So, you know, you're still going to be able to get the property sold relatively quickly. And you're not going to have to deal with all the legwork. We're going to, you know, we're going to walk you through the process and do, make the, you know, make the process a lot simpler for you. So, I mean, that's, I know it's kind of brief, but that's the main thing. I think that more important than the pitch is the rapport that you bring with the seller. So, if you really take the time to, You know, nurture the relationship with the seller of the phone. They don't really give a shit who buys the house. They're more just looking for a solution. So as long as you can build that rapport with the seller and you can present them a solution to getting rid of their house, they don't really care who buys it.
Mike: 20:30Yeah. And then how are you, how do you guys handle it? And like, like showing, cause I know some people like, Oh, like maybe try to do it when specific windows for the innovations. Others just say, we're going to throw a lock box on
Ben: 20:41Well, the house is vacant. We'll get a lockbox. Usually if it's owner occupied, you know, obviously we work around the owner's schedule. You know, sometimes the owners are really cool about showing it. Sometimes they're difficult. It just depends on the deal. If it's vacant, we're going to lockbox. And it just, it depends on the deal. Sometimes we get deals where we don't have a lot of buyers. So then we have to renegotiate with the seller, or sometimes we get deals where we have like tons of buyers and we have to like squeeze them all. We try to get them all in as fast as possible. It just. Every deal is a little bit different. It just depends on whether it's owner occupied or vacant. There's no like exact science to it.
Mike: 21:19Sure. And you said, like, it kind of took you basically three months to make that transition from just kind of straight wholesale to this, like, for the people who are maybe thinking about making this transition, or maybe they are like, what are some of the pitfalls you ran into along the way? And like, how did you overcome them?
Ben: 21:37the number one pitfall is. The sellers back out a lot when they see the price so much higher than you got it for. Cause even though you tell them or someone else, they don't necessarily understand that you're going to mark it up 30, 40, 50 grand, right? So they kind of get a little sketched out about that. That is a big one. I think that it's important to be very transparent with the seller up front, explain to them that we're going to list it for more. We may or may not get that price and we're going to cover all the fees that way. They're not. Thinking like, okay, you're just making 40, 000 net, right? And then that's important. So you got to really be, you know, you don't want to like spook the seller when they see the price that much higher. Like you need to make sure that the seller really, they understand that you're going to list it for more. Cause if they don't understand that, then they're going to get a flaky seller most of the time. Another thing is that you, what are the other hurdles? I mean, I think that you have to find the right title companies because if the title company doesn't know what innovation is, they'll blow up your deal. I mean, it's happened to us and it's still a work in progress to make sure you have the right title company, especially when you're going into, you know, 30, 40 states, you know, every, you got to really find the title companies. Like you got to know what you're doing. Otherwise they're going to blow up your deal. Like they're going to say the wrong thing to the seller. We just lost a deal in New Jersey where, cause we had a 70, 000 spread locked in and the attorney sent the purchase agreement, the AB to the seller, sorry, the BC to the seller with the buyer's price and seller backed that right there. So, you know, that that's important that your title company knows how to. Kind of maneuver the deal that's super important.
Mike: 23:20Are you doing the true innovation where you're doing the replacement of contract or are you just kind of doing a double close? Because you said, a, B, B, C. That's what
Ben: 23:27No, we're not doing a double close. No, we're No, well, we have an AB contract and we have the BC because the BC replaces the AB.
Mike: 23:36it. Okay, but then isn't the seller signing of the 2nd contract then? Or no, are
Ben: 23:42No, we signed a second contract because we have the attorney. In fact, the seller signs the closing documents
Mike: 23:47Closing. Got it. Okay. I know different people go about that different ways. So
Ben: 23:51No, we signed that we signed the purchase agreement and then the seller signs the closing docs
Mike: 23:59Gotcha. Gotcha. And then what were some other like hurdles
Ben: 24:03anyone on here by the way? I'm just kind of curious.
Mike: 24:06oh, we we have one person watching live right now.
Ben: 24:09Okay, cool. I wonder how many I have on mine. I can't see it right now. go ahead.
Mike: 24:15Yeah. So what are some other hurdles that you may make people might run into when making that transition?
Ben: 24:21I think the number one thing is the transaction coordination and just making sure that you're getting in touch with the seller, you're being transparent with the seller, you're getting in touch with the buyer, like you have to communicate with a lot of parties. On a wholesale transaction, it's a little bit easier because Your time frame is shorter. You don't have to, you know, you just, you know, a lot of times the house is vacant, you're just selling it real quick to an investor. The investors kind of like they get it. They don't have inspections with novations where you're dealing with financing and banks, your transaction coordination has to be super tight. And I think that a lot of smaller time wholesalers that, you know, they work on either solopreneur or they have like a smaller team. That's the part that they're struggling. They're scared to like make that investment into hiring like a real transaction coordinator and they just try to do everything on their own. And when you're dealing with innovation, there's a lot of moving parts. You have to get the AB contract. Then you have to get the BC contract. Then you have to make sure that you're, you know, usually you file it at a Y and then you have to get the AIF notarized usually, and then you've got to. Get the property listed and then you also have to get the seller's disclosure and then you've got to get the innovation indemnification sign. So there's a lot more paperwork than a traditional transaction. So not having a legitimate transaction coordinator is going to make it a lot more difficult to kind of, complete these closings. If I was a newbie wholesaler entering the market today, I probably wouldn't want to go in like this is, I would be intimidated. It's a lot harder than like wholesaling was like five years ago, like five years ago, there was about one third, the amount of competition there is now. And you could pick either, you know, it was very easy to pick up deals.
Mike: 25:59Sure. Yep. And are you like trying to get a lot, like, are your acquisitions guys trying to get a lot of that paperwork on the front end, or are you kind of just having to get the purchase agreement, have the TC immediately take over to
Ben: 26:11The acquisitions just gets the contract in the AIF and they just get it on DocuSign and then our transactions takes from there. Our transaction coordinators are phenomenal. We have the best transaction coordinator in the country. I'm certain of it. A hundred percent. I
Mike: 26:24Yeah.
Ben: 26:24to pay as much as me. So we'd a hundred percent have the high the, like we, cause I know that like, that makes my life easier. Like we're not having good transaction coordination. Like my makes my business like doesn't work. Like I was just in Argentina for two and a half weeks. My team was functioning pretty much at like 98 percent without me. I had, I got, I had a, I had 150 grand in closings this year wired into my account before I ever stepped a foot into the office.
Mike: 26:50That's great.
Ben: 26:51Yeah. So, I mean, that doesn't happen without good transaction coordination. Yeah. What were you saying?
Mike: 26:56So, outside of the two transaction coordinators, what does the rest of your team currently look like?
Ben: 27:01So we have five acquisition agents off market. Then we have one that calls realtors. So six acquisition agents. And then we have one followup specialist. She's a VA from Nicaragua. She follows up with our leads, warms them up and, you know, live transfer them to our acquisitions. And then we have two cold callers. In house we have three dis in house, I mean, like, they live in the Philippines, but they, like, work for me directly. And then we have three full time disposition agents and two transaction coordinators. I'm in a pro I just hired a bookkeeper. She starts on Monday, full time bookkeeper. And I also am in the process of hiring full time tech support. Although that's been a fucking mission, to find a good one. I've been looking for a while, to be honest. But yeah
Mike: 27:50like, stuff
Ben: 27:51someone to handle, like, you know, your CRM, our integrations, making sure that all of our, you know, KPIs are getting tracked, track our marketing, how much we spending on ads, how much are we generating revenue from each of our campaigns? You know, is our cold calling set up correctly? Do we have the, you know, basically monitoring our marketing and all the backend and then implementing any changes we need on the front end, like with our CRM and things like that. And just tracking our KPIs and our sales team and our cold callers. Super important role. And I mean, it's the kind of thing that like I used to do, but I just, I don't have time for it or the patients,
Mike: 28:28Yeah. What's your kind of seat in the company right now? Besides me? I mean, you're the
Ben: 28:32Um, I'm like a mascot. I'm, I'm, I'm just basically like, uh, like I like the company functions without me. I mean, like it does, like, I don't really do that much anymore. I mean, I come in the office, I check in with my transaction coordinators, you know, I scream at my dispo agents, Hey, you guys got to sell more dogs. not really scream, but like, I just tell them, Hey, you got, we got to move from the houses. You know, I'll check on my acquisition team. My team is like unbelievable. Like I have the, you know, I have the best acquisition team in the country. Like I have my acquisition agents, you know, I have three acquisition agents that have been with me three years so that they know exactly what to do. You know, I have, you know, three acquisition agents. Two of them have over. You know, over two and a half million in sales for my company, you know, in their career. And the other one has, you know, over probably over 1. 8, 1. 9 million. So I've got in my office, like my acquisition team, they've got like 8 million in career sales. They know exactly what to do. Better than I do better than I do with acquisitions. I'm not. I don't have patience for that. So I just know what I'm good at. What I'm really good at right now is I know how to find the right people and put them in the right seats. And that's the difference. I'm an operator. Like I operate my business. My main function is just looking for my next hire. And screening them and then putting them in the right place. I don't know, a lot of people, when they get into this business, they're like, Oh, how they think about it. How can I do this? I don't think about it like that anymore. It's about who can I get to do this for me? That's the whole thing. That's a C that's the transition, how you transition from a, you know, like a a solopreneur to like a real owner operator I'm just. Looking at the business from the top, making sure every department's functioning and then getting the next hire in the next seat so I can grow my company.
Mike: 30:34What do you feel that, like, you do differently? That's allowed you to hire like, that level of talent versus other people in the industry who might have a lot of turnover or, you know, struggling to build a sales team. Silence.
Ben: 30:45Well, I'm not scared to offer a salary. I just hired another acquisition agent. He started like three weeks ago. He's, he was a top performer at another wholesale company and a company called Property Force. They're the largest wholesaler in the country. So Well, they were not anymore, but they, you know, so I just hired one of their top performers. I, you know, I was willing to give him a, you know, a significant salary. He's got 48, 000 salary. I don't, you don't really see many wholesalers willing to offer, you know, 40, 50, 000 salaries to an acquisition agent. You know, they're trying to get people for pennies on the dollar. I would rather pay. More and get someone good that's gonna close, you know, he locked up a house in Colorado on his second or third day Where we're gonna make I think like A hundred grand on his third day. So like that it's for me, it's worth it. Like, cause if I'm going to pay for Lamborghini leads, you know, if I'm going to buy the most expensive leads, I need Lamborghini closers. So that's different. It's a different game. Like I'm willing to pay. And also like when people come in to my team, they're like, okay, wow, this guy's legit. Like they run Google ads. He's got two transaction coordinates. He's got three dispo to go to more other wholesalers. They don't have that. That set up so that it's not like, if you're a top closer, you don't, it doesn't, it's not legit. You're not like, you're not like, okay, if I go here, is this really an opportunity or not? And it's also like, I have my closers that have been with me for years and they've made great money working for me. So when they come in, it's like, okay, this guy's been here. I've got, he's got this other closer. It's been a three years. This guy makes, you know, high six figures every year. It's like, I'm showing them. It's not like, Oh, you can potentially make six figures. It's like, no, you will make, you know, high six figures. If you're a good closer to this company, it's not like, it's not like, I'm not like a startup wholesaler where they're coming in like, Oh, does this guy really know what he's doing? It's a very different, it's a very different, you know, set up, if that makes sense. But, when I first started and I didn't have that kind of infrastructure, Pete, people saw how committed I was. I was grinding and I was jumped the office early and I, and anyone that came in to interview me, I'm like, yeah, I want to be the biggest wholesaler in the country and. I would say that straight out and they feel that they feel like, okay, this guy's, he's not fucking around. Like he's serious. They feel that passion. They feel like this guy's got the vision. All I got to do, you know, if I want to be successful in my career, I just got to get on board with him and just, you know, put my best foot forward. And he's gonna, he's gonna lead the way. He's going to give me the opportunities, the pieces that I need to succeed, you know, so that's, you know, that's kind of, that's kind of it. Most wholesalers are just trying to do it on the cheap. They're trying to get people for as little as possible or commission only, you know, they're not, they're scared to offer a draw. They're scared to buy expensive leads. They're not, they don't, they're scared to invest in their business. I'm not scared to invest. I don't, I'm not in this for the short run. I don't care about what happens in the next 60 days. I care as I care about what's going to take my company from 3 million to 10 million, you know, that I care about. I'm here to, I'm here to break, you know, what's that saying? Like take names or something like that. What's something like that? Something and take names. like,
Mike: 34:14I don't know what you're getting
Ben: 34:16yeah, talking about, yeah, basically like they can see that I'm serious about what I'm doing at this company and that I'm not just, you know, a fly by night.
Mike: 34:25Yeah, are you recruiting most of your talent away? Like, like actively going out and recruiting them from other places? Is that where you're finding the best people or
Ben: 34:34Yes. Yeah. A hundred percent. But I've also, like, I know how to set up my ads on Indeed so that they attract those talent. Like, it's all about how you position it. So it goes on Indeed, the way you set up your ads, you put, you know, you put, I put my salary, I put my commissions, and I put my description. And then you can actually look at the resumes on Indeed, and you can send them a job invite. So you can, like, go, and you can search a company name, and then you can Send, like, send your job link to all, like everyone that's on Indeed. And you do the same thing on LinkedIn. So I've gotten people from LinkedIn, I've gotten people from Indeed, and you know, I'm going after like the specific people that I need. But also like, it took time to figure out like what I'm looking for. Like when we look for acquisitions, it's very different than dispositions. When we look for transaction coordinator, it's very different than dispositions. Every position you have to know what. Exactly. You're looking for,
Mike: 35:32So you're doing a lot of like outreach, so like you're browsing the resumes on Indeed by the companies, you're looking at LinkedIn you're reaching out to those people and saying, Hey, I'm hiring, you know, are you open to
Ben: 35:42but I mean, a lot of them apply to my jobs, but it's, I've done both, I've done both. Like I've gotten like some, I've done both. Yes. But when I was first getting started, like in trying to get like my first couple of guys in the door, yes, I was doing a lot of that. Now I'm more in the position where I'm positioning my ads, where my job offer is more enticing than the other people out there hiring so that. You know, I'm getting the best applicants available. And then once I had that applicant, cause people don't apply to one job, people, they apply to 20 jobs. Right? So once I have that applicant. You know, I know what I'm looking for, and if it's what I'm looking for, I'm willing to beat what they're offering. I mean, you know, I'm willing to offer more than other people. My transaction coordinator, I pay her 130 fucking grand salary. Like no one does that.
Mike: 36:34Yeah, I don't want to pay that.
Ben: 36:37Yeah. So, I mean, but when I, when she replied to my job, like that, I wasn't offering that, but she kept, you know, I was going to lose her and I, but I knew this transaction coordinator, she's gonna make me millions. Like I knew it was certain. Like, I was like, this is, I was like, if I let this girl go, it might be another year before I have an opportunity to hire someone this good. So, you know, I just did it. And it's worth it. It's fucking worth it. And when you pay people well, they're not going anywhere. I mean, it's possible, of course, but it's not likely.
Mike: 37:06Yeah. Yeah. What you say, like you kind of craft your job description a specific way to attract like the right candidates. You may want to give an example or some tips that you do like on for an acquisitions rep, for example.
Ben: 37:20Yeah, so, my, here, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna pull up my my acquisitions thing right here. Uh, here we go. Yeah. So my acquisitions here, I'll just here. Do you have a, can I share my screen on here? Is that not an option?
Mike: 37:39Well, a lot of people listen on audio, so it's probably better if you just talk through it.
Ben: 37:43Okay. Okay. I mean, it says like inside sales, wholesale, real estate acquisitions, base 50 K plus commission, 60 to 200 K total compensation. That's my job title. So I mentioned the fact that it's. Yeah, that's my title. Correct. So I mentioned the base in the title because I want them to notice that I'm willing to pay a base. And then in the description, I basically say that the basis between 24 and 50, just depending on your, you know, how qualified you are for the position, but I mean, I put the 50 K, which is the high end in the description that way. I at least get their attention and they'll apply, if that makes sense. Because a lot of people won't even apply, like they won't even read the description. They'll just apply. But once I have their resume, I can now, at least I have the opportunity to speak to them if it's a really good candidate. But if they don't apply, I don't necessarily get their resume.
Mike: 38:37Right. Yeah. Huh.
Ben: 38:39So yeah, that that's how I, that's how I position it. I mean. There's more, it's more, obviously there's more steps with now I have to get on the phone with them, explain them, you know, why it's a good company, et cetera, and then go from there. But at least I get the initial lead.
Mike: 38:54is there anything else you do to attract them? Besides like the title? I mean, obviously, it's like, well written the job description. I'm sure any tips you can share with people.
Ben: 39:02I mean the description I mentioned on the thing in the description that my company has done millions of dollars in sales because I don't want them to think that it's brand new. And, you know, I mentioned how it's in office because I don't want them to think that it's a remote position. Cause a lot of people are looking for that and it's fucking annoying. I'm not looking for remote. And, yeah, I mean, my job offering is just so much stronger than pretty much everyone else out there for the most part. There's not a lot of people in wholesale real estate that offer that much base, especially in South Florida. South Florida is a shitty job market. Like people don't like, there's not a lot of good jobs out there, like in South Florida. People, it's not like New York city, like in New York city. My job offer would suck because there's companies out there that pay a lot of money, but like in Miami. It's a great job offer, if that makes sense. So,
Mike: 39:57yeah,
Ben: 39:57you know, the number one thing is I'm positioning my title and my salary to be competitive with other top companies in the area.
Mike: 40:05and are you finding that, like, there's people actually, like, looking for a sales job in wholesaling, like, they come because of that title, or are they just kind of,
Ben: 40:14Yes. Yes. Well, you get a lot of like real estate agents, but you also get a lot of, you know, you get a lot, I guess sometimes I get wholesalers that are like newbie level wholesalers. I hate those people usually. Like, I'm not looking for like, I'm not looking for like newbie wholesalers who like. You know, went to seminar and then like tried to do wholesaling on their own and failed. I'm not, that's not what I want. What I want is I'm looking for someone who worked for, preferably a wholesaler, but I mean doesn't necessarily need to be a wholesaler, preferably a wholesaler, but they have a track record of staying at the same company for a couple years and having, you know, having success. Other thing I like to hire for acquisitions is I love women. Women for acquisitions is a cheat code because everyone has a bunch of dicks in their office and no one wants to talk to a dick. Everyone wants to talk to a woman. So if you have, you get women on the phone. Cause who sells houses, right? Like are most of your sellers, men or women?
Mike: 41:13Most of the sellers are women
Ben: 41:15Yeah, the decision makers, when it comes, the decision. makers, when there's, who's who is mostly men, it's mostly men, right?
Mike: 41:22I don't know. It seems like the wife always has the final call. My experience.
Ben: 41:26Now, usually, the guy is usually the guy, it's usually, I mean, the wife, they always blame it on the wife, but the guy is usually the one making the decision, I mean, like, the financial decision. So, when you, when a guy calls in, and then you have a girl calling, to, you know, Pitch the sale or whatever, or to close the deal, their guard is down. I mean, they just trust women way more than men. It's they can't help it, especially if they sound sexy in the phone is done. So that, I mean, women have an unfair advantage on a, on in, in that closing, like for dispositions, I prefer a male because they're, they have to be tighter, you know, more strict on the price and that kind of thing, but acquisitions is all about rapport building. So with, when the. When women tend to do, they tend to have, I mean, we have men that do great, but women tend to have an easier time. Like our rookie of the year Cara, you know, she had no experience. She did phenomenal. She did like 700 K in sales, you know, first nine months, never did this before. She sounds great on the phone. Women also, they have more like, they're just more women tend to be more socially intuitive than men because women. Are constantly, you know, they're being hit, like they're being always being hit on by men, right? They're all constantly being hit on by men. That's just how it is in the world. So they're constantly having to, they're just more socially in tune than men. Men, if you're a random guy and you don't talk to anyone, no, one's going to make an effort to talk to you. But if you're a woman, you're just constantly getting, you know, bombarded by men, whether on social media or in person. So you, they're just naturally more socially in tuned. It's a, they have to be. So when it comes to sales on the phone, it comes more naturally to women than men.
Mike: 43:18Yeah. And then you had these candidates coming in, right? You like some of their resumes, like you want to walk us kind of through for an acquisitions position, like what your hiring process is. So you actually am like, yeah, this is the person like I'm going to, I'm going to
Ben: 43:31Yeah. So I screen them on the phone and if I'm interested in hiring them, then I usually will invite them into the office and then we'll have a meeting. You know, I'll ask them about their experience, kind of get a feel for their personality. I always have them do a disc assessment, a disc personality test. And, what I'm looking for on the disc test, I'm looking for the red a little bit, which is like the closer, but also I'm really looking for the green, the greeny, and the yellow. Okay, I don't know if you've ever seen a disc assessment, but you have red, yellow, green, blue, right? So red is like the pushy, aggressive style. Yellow, Is kind of like the flamboyant influencer, the influence, right? And then the green is the connecting emotional part. And then the blue is the analytical. So the blue is the least important, in my opinion, for acquisitions. Analytical is not necessarily important for sales, like on the phone. The green is very good. If they have a little bit of green, you want some green because they can connect with people, make them feel comfortable on the phone, make them feel, you know, that they really give a shit. I'm not good. I don't know what happened in green, but that's like, that's really good for acquisitions. And then the red is the closer, like they have to know like, okay, when to close, you don't want too much red, but they have to have at least some, and then the yellow. Is the, is key to cause the yellow is the bullshitting. Like that is like, how do you convince the seller to sell you their most expensive asset, their house directly over the phone for half of what it's fucking worth. That's the yellow. You got like, you gotta be able to like, just like bullshit people and like convince them, influence them to make a decision
Mike: 45:16so you have to do a desk and like, when
Ben: 45:19then.
Mike: 45:20that conversation with them, you have to do
Ben: 45:23Yeah. So we have to do the disc and then you know, I have my acquisitions interview them. And then if we still think they're potentially a good candidate, then we'll usually have them come in for like four hours. And they'll listen to spend the first couple hours listening to calls and then we'll actually do. We'll have them make some calls and then, you know, get them on the phone with some of our colder leads and just see, we're not looking for them to close the deal, but we're looking like, can they keep the seller on the phone? Can they follow the script and keep the seller on the phone? Can they. Get into a conversation with the seller because it doesn't take, you know, you don't need to know real estate to get on the phone with the seller and just talk about their dog. Right. So if they can get on the phone with the seller and build that rapport and talk about, you know, just get into a conversation with the seller and hold them on the phone, then that's it. We know that we can teach them the real estate. We know that we can teach them, you know, the closing part.
Mike: 46:16Yeah, what are you specifically looking for in the like the sit down interview like that second step?
Ben: 46:22We're looking for, you know, we, if they're too aggressive. We don't want them if they're too aggressive. We're looking for someone who's well spoken, like they're just easy to listen to and they're confident, but also just easy to you, it shouldn't be any friction in the conversation. Like it just be very easy to talk to them because that's how it's going to be when they're talking to your sellers. And if they're nervous to talk to you in the interview, they're going to be, you know, then they're definitely going to be nervous talking to the sellers on the phone when there's pressure. So. You need to, you're looking for the someone that you, that can connect with people. That's the number one thing. Can they connect and influence people? They have to be able to build that trust. You know, can they build rapport with people? Can they make a connection? And then can they influence them into making a decision?
Mike: 47:16Right.
Ben: 47:16That's what you're looking for. I mean, it's kind of vague, but that's exactly what you're looking for.
Mike: 47:21Sure, gotcha. And then what are your
Ben: 47:24Did that make sense? Was that a good description or not really?
Mike: 47:27It makes sense. It's just like, you know, it's, you know, it's, I was wondering if you kind of like a squirk part you go through, or you've kind of just done it so many times that it's kind of like gut feel almost on those
Ben: 47:37Well, the disc assessment is a scorecard. The disc assessment is a scorecard. The disc assessment is a scorecard, but you just get that feeling. You just get that feeling. I mean, it's you just know. Like, is this a good fit or it's not a good fit? Like, I don't need a super genius. I need someone that's good on the phone that can talk and is coachable and motivated. I mean. It's not like I'm offering 200 K. So it's, I'm not looking for like a rock star. I'm looking for someone who's moldable and we know has potential to become great and if they have the right, if they have the right personality, we can teach them the rest. If they don't have the right personality, it's not going to work. I can't change their personality, but I can teach them the real estate. So I'm looking for the right personality. They have to sound good and have a nice voice. It's great. A nice phone voice, you know, good vocabulary, that kind of thing. The things that I don't want to teach them and then the rest I can teach them. If they have experience working for a wholesaler, that's a bonus. Usually, although sometimes. I, you know, wholesalers, Ohio, the average acquisition agents is not very good. So it just depends. Like if it's like, even if not necessary, just because I have wholesale experience doesn't necessarily mean they're good.
Mike: 48:49sure, yeah, and then, like, what are your expectations of them in the first few weeks of being hired?
Ben: 48:56They should, should lock up their first contract in the first 10 days, 10 business days, so two weeks. Yeah, I mean, if we don't have a contract in the first 10 days, that's not good. That's not good. I would say 10 days first contract. We're looking for two hours talk time, 40, 50 outbound calls a day. Are they showing up on time? You know, are they, you know, As soon as you get someone who's like taking long lunch breaks, Like, you know, they're not motivated. Like if someone's taking like, you know, a one hour lunch break, like, you know, they're not motivated. So that, you know, those are the big things. I mean, but yeah, I mean, the truth is we actually haven't had to hire that many acquisition agents in the past few years, just because I've, I'm retained the same ones. I have the same ones, like I have great acquisition agents. So, I mean, we, you know, any acquisition agent that I've hired that lasts more than. A week or two weeks, they end up staying on my team for a year. Cause as they see, they're like, wow, like the other people in my, these guys are making money. There's tons of warm leads. They love working. They love warm leads. Like most other companies you're going to go to, they're going to have to be, you know, dealing with cold call leads and all these bullshit leads or they go through 50 leads, get a deal. And my company, they're getting like warm inbound, you know, Three, four, five inbound warm leads a day. So it's like, it's not, it's, they love that. They fucking love that.
Mike: 50:24Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a lot less sifting. And more
Ben: 50:29It's a lot less work. I mean, they just got to worry about closing the deal. I mean, like it's pretty sweet job. I mean, you just sit there, they come in, they get their leads. They talk on the phone for a couple hours. They get some contracts and my team handles the rest and they can go home and make six figures or more. It's phenomenal.
Mike: 50:47Yeah. And then you said you have three dispositions people. So you guys, are you guys doing the, I know there's two schools of thought and the novation. Some people hire a local agent, the other people do flat fee and they kind of manage it in house. So you guys, the manage it in house model then, or
Ben: 51:03so than, yeah, we usually hire flat fee. I mean, we've done local, although. do local either when I don't like the deal. So it's like a marginal deal and I don't want to pay for the flat fee. So I'd rather just list it with local agent because I don't have to risk paying that one 50. or,
Mike: 51:20not lose 150 bucks.
Ben: 51:21well, I mean, we get a lot of contracts, so I mean, yeah, like we'll get deals where. We'll get deals where it's like in the middle of West Virginia and it's like, you know, There's only like a 30 percent chance that we go that we sell this thing. So I don't want to pay 150 for nothing. So I just you know hire a local agent if it's a low priced house, you know The house is like 40 50 grand and the Commission's only like a thousand dollars. I mean, it's it's worth it. So Or if it's like a big, if it's like a big spread, then it's owner occupied and sometimes we'll hire agent. But honestly, like I have enough overhead, like I've got enough overhead. I got to pay commissions to all my team. I got to pay some of my agents. Like I don't want to pay another 3 percent or two, two and a half. So just, I'd rather just do the flat fee.
Mike: 52:12Right. Okay. So you just do it for, from a cost perspective, not necessarily like just because you're, you feel like it's better. Is it just like a cost?
Ben: 52:22I mean, I think that my, I have three dispo agents. So I've like, I think that they're going to care about closing the deal just as much as like a local agent is. So I would rather, I almost trust my team to take the calls more than like a local agent would.
Mike: 52:37Sure. And
Ben: 52:38I don't, I don't.
Mike: 52:39come in and all that.
Ben: 52:41Yeah. I mean. I mean, I don't think that a local agent necessarily adds two and a half percent of value. Cause that two and a half, I mean, if it's a 400, if it's a 400, 000 house, that's 10, 000. It's a lot of money.
Mike: 52:54for sure.
Ben: 52:55Yeah.
Mike: 52:56And then, Yeah. Like, I guess, like, I mean, you've made shifts in the business over the years. I mean, you started off all sound on the MLS, then you kind of started off going, you know, direct to seller outbound marketing, nationwide innovations. Like, what do you, I guess, what do you see in the next, like, 12 to 24 months?
Ben: 53:16For me, you know, I'm trying to, I'm trying to, I'm in the next 12, 24 months. I mean, I'm going to have an it person in here. My backend is going to be airtight. You know, we're going to know all our KPIs cause I'm not KPIs that I'm not so tight on that. You know, I'm not so organized on like my, like numbers. I'm trying to get more organized on that. And I'm going to bring. You know, my PPC is gonna be in house. My PPC is gonna be in house. Right now we use, we outsource it, but my PPC is gonna be in house. And I'm gonna promote my lead acquisition agent to CEO of my company. So he's gonna be running the day to day, you know, kind of what I do now. And I'm just going to be looking at the business from the very top. Like I'm not going to be, I'm not even going to know the addresses or the areas of the properties. And we're going to scale. And then if Donald Trump wins the election, we're going to go to, we're going to go to 10 million plus without a fucking doubt. Without a doubt. I mean, at this point, because I already know that if Donald Trump wins the election, the market's going to be red hot again, like going back into that red hot market, the way it was a couple of years ago, you know, using novations, using sub two, using whole tailing, you know, using a wholesaling, using investor lift, all these strategies that I've learned. I know that if I can do three, three million plus. You know, with four acquisition agents in a shit market, if I get a hot market again, we're going to go to 10 million without a doubt.
Mike: 54:55and then you'll kind of go back to putting integrating some more of those strategies that we were doing before, as opposed to being mostly innovation.
Ben: 55:03No I'll still be mostly innovation, but the difference is that the properties will sell, they'll sell in two days as opposed to sitting on a market for 45 days. So it'll be way easier. And then we're gonna have hedge funds come back into the market. So then we're gonna be able to sell properties to hedge funds. And the hedge funds, they buy off the MLS usually. They actually prefer to buy they pay A lot of the hedge funds, they prefer to pay more on the MLS. So we're gonna novate our properties, sell them to hedge funds for all cash, close in 30 days. Like, my cash conversion cycle's gonna get cut in half. Cause right now, if I put a dollar into marketing, I don't get it back for 90 days. Or more if I put a dollar in marketing in that market I get it back in 30 days 45 days or whatever. It's way quicker. So That allows me to grow my company way more my because my cash conversion cycle gets cut in half I mean, we'll do more wholesaling for sure in a hot market, but Wholesaling is it's not the best. I mean you're leaving a lot of equity on the table for the investor Usually I don't want to leave equity on the table for the investor. I want the fucking equity I mean, I'm the one that paid for the lead. So I mean, I'll take the deal down. I'll flip it. I'll buy it with a hard money loan. I'll wholesale it on them and I'll list it on the market after I close. Like anything where I got a big spread, I'm closing on it. Like I close on a lot of houses right now. I have like nine houses that I'm trying to sell on the market. So, and they're all over the country. I've got houses in North Carolina, you know, houses in, in. I just sold one in Arizona. I had one in Vegas, had one in California. You know, I buy and sell houses. They actually buy and sell houses all over the country. So anything that makes sense we're taking it down. If we're not usually, if it's a, if it's a, if it's a really good deal, we don't usually novate it just because I don't want to risk anything going wrong. I'd rather just take it down.
Mike: 56:56Yeah. That's a lesson that I learned in the hot market. It closes as
Ben: 56:59yeah.
Mike: 57:00humanly possible
Ben: 57:02Yeah. You don't exactly. And people will come or they always do. So, you know, you gotta just take it down. So, yeah, we, I mean, I use, I leverage hard money and I buy it myself and then I turn around and sell it. I also buy a lot of properties with my ir. I have a self-managed IRA. So I flip properties with that and then it's like tax free, which is amazing'cause I just, this goes back in my ira, so I don't gotta pay that. Those huge taxes. And then I just pay the commission to my acquisition agent from my IRA. It's amazing.
Mike: 57:32Right. Right. Well, we're getting kind of close to the end here. But for, there's always two questions I always ask at the end of the show. One is for kind of the newer people. So if you could go back in time, give yourself one piece of advice when you were looking for that first deal, knowing what you know now, what would you tell yourself?
Ben: 57:54I was looking at that first deal. I mean, that's like a long time ago. I guess, I guess, like, I don't have so many regrets about what I did on my first deal. I think it's like when I was getting my company off the ground. Like I, you know, looking back seven years in the business, five years is running. This is a, you know, with people under me, like I would be more in the beginning. I didn't buy enough properties. That's definitely something like I made the mistake where I didn't buy enough properties. I passed off deals to other people that I should have just closed on myself. And that's definitely big. Like if I go back in time, I probably would have made another million dollars by just buying deals that I sold to other people. So that's one big one. And then another one is, you know, you know, go like I would have, like, I would have been more aggressive with my hiring and like investing into my employees and going for the best possible employees like earlier, like I would have, when I first started hiring my first transaction coordinator, like I was trying to get somewhere like 40 grand, 30 grand. And I was like, looking back, like. Like, if I had just gone and just gotten someone that was good for like 80, like in the beginning, like that would have saved me so much time and so many lost yields. 100 percent worth it. So going back, you know, hot, make that higher. Don't, you know, if you're doing deals and you, if you've done a million dollars in wholesaling and you want to grow your company, you got to be willing to invest in, in the people on your team. Cause you can only, you can't do much without a good, without like legitimate people on your team.
Mike: 59:38Yeah, for sure. Cool. That's a great piece of advice, actually. And the other question I always ask is what is the craziest or most uncomfortable situation you've ever experienced in a real estate deal?
Ben: 59:52Oh God. In, in, in a real estate deal. I mean, there's a lot of them that come to mind, but about a year and a half ago There was a property in North Carolina that I was intending on buying as subject to the existing mortgage. And what happened was, is the seller we found out we couldn't take it sub two because it was, the loan was already like, it was too late. So, we had to close on it. And the loan was gonna, the property was gonna auction the next day. Literally the next day. I sprinted to the bank with about two hours for a close and I wired 295, 000 to pay out the seller's mortgage so that the property wouldn't get foreclosed on. And then I closed on it the next day or a couple days later, I gave the seller five grand. First of all, I was retarded what I did because the seller could have, you know, if he didn't sell to me, I would have been out 300 grand. So, that was retarded.
Mike: 1:00:49without it even being in your name yet.
Ben: 1:00:51We just had a, we just had a fucking an addendum that he was going to reduce the price to five grand and we were going to pay off the mortgage. And which was completely insane. I mean, it was big. I got very lucky because if he, cause if he had turned around and not sold it to me, I literally would have been sitting there with 300 grand down. So yeah, I paid off 300 grand and then I bought the house, you know, a couple of days later from the seller for 5, 000. And then, yeah, that's, I mean, that was pretty crazy. I would say. And my, my, my team was, you know, it was fun. But I mean, looking back, it was just dumb. I still own that house today and it's a disaster. Like I haven't been able to sell it mainly because I, you know, it's in the middle of nowhere, but I'm still going to make a profit. Like I had offers on, I just didn't want to take them yet. But regardless, you know, that was pretty crazy. Another one was when, you know, there was a deal in Tampa, We, this was like a couple years ago, like three, four years ago. It was one of the largest deals of my career. We made about almost 200, 000 on it. We bought the house from the seller. This guy was just emotional. I mean, it was a live, it was a live transfer cold call. The guy inherited the property, had no idea what it was worth, and we got it for 200, 000. It was in South Tampa. And you know, he ended up back, he was like, Oh, he calls, Oh, you guys aren't giving me a fair price. And I was like, well, you signed a contract and he was like, yeah, but you know, we'll see about that. I'm like, well, if you don't, if you don't sell the house, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to sue you. I'm not going to just let it go. And he was like, he didn't believe that. Oh, we'll see about that. And I, you know, I sued him. The guy called us crying. You're like, don't sue. He's like, I don't want to go to jail. Like, please don't just take the house. He thought he was going to go to jail. And So yeah, I mean, that was pretty crazy. Ended up buying the house for 200 and selling it like about 30 days later for 400, 3811 West Visconia street, Tampa, Florida. I'll never forget that deal. Yeah, that was a big one. That was a big one. So, I mean, those might have been, I don't know if I, those were, you know, cause you talk about emotional stuff. Like I don't really, I'm not really that emotional. Like none of this stuff, you know, I have, I, it's more for me. It's more like, it's like the thrill. It's like a thrill, like that, that fucking thrill, like, making that huge deal happen, like so quick. Like, it's so exciting for me. It's so exciting. Like, I don't get excited now unless we're making like. I would say like 80, 000, like, that's like, like, like 20, 000 deals, like whatever, do them all time. 30, 000, whatever. Like, I get excited if we're making like 70, 80 grand, like that's, that gets exciting for me at that point. Like, that's like, okay we're, this is a big deal. When I first got started, you, when you get through you 30, 000, it's like shit. But now it's like, like 80,
Mike: 1:03:39Yeah.
Ben: 1:03:40We're making money.
Mike: 1:03:41Yeah. Cool. Well, if people want to like, you know, reach out to you after the show or look at some of the content you post, like, how can they go about doing that?
Ben: 1:03:52mean, my, my Instagram is right there. America's top wholesaler. It was great getting with you, Mike. I appreciate it. Appreciate your time and you have me on your show. Yeah I'm pretty responsive on there and if they want to. If they want to, you know, follow me on Instagram or send me a DM, they're more than welcome to. Although, you know, yeah that's pretty much it. I don't think we're, so we're pretty much done. No, obviously I kind of wanted to know more about your business, but I guess it's not really the right time for that.
Mike: 1:04:17I mean, you can ask me if you want,
Ben: 1:04:19Sure, so what it tell me about your business. I mean like
Mike: 1:04:22not?
Ben: 1:04:23well, what are you I mean, what do you do? Like tell me about your what you got going on.
Mike: 1:04:28Yeah. So we're Jacksonville focus Northeast Florida, Duval, St. John's clan, Nassau County, pretty much only we right now probably wholesale about 50 percent and probably flip about 50%. I mean, we keep a rental here and there, which is a bit tough right now with the I'd like to keep more, but with the rates, it's just the numbers don't pencil so well. And the reason I was asking you actually a lot of the questions about hiring acquisitions people is we have been running the business where I've been the closer. Everyone's been working remotely and we actually just today signed the lease for an office and we're going to be hiring two acquisitions people this quarter. So the goal is to really blow it up. Yeah. Okay. Unlike the off market wholesale side probably just coming up on three years, probably like two years and nine months about. Yeah.
Ben: 1:05:14Okay, so you're pretty new in it. I mean, that's not that long. Yeah, that's good. That's good I mean, I think that you're making the right move to hire in house and because also when you get that first office When you get that first office and you get in that, and you get in your, you get up in the morning and you put, and you go drive to work, like, it's different. I mean, it's like, I'll never, like, it's just different. I mean, you're going to fucking your office, like, you're going to work, like, you're no longer, you know, working from your house. Like, it's a different level of, like, intensity. It's a different level of, like, you know, you, you signed that lease. Like, you've committed to making something happen, right? So when you go in there and then you know. You hire other people, like it changes your whole business. I mean, it's now you're not only just running this out of your house, like you're, it's another level of confidence it takes to go and do that. So I recommend you for that. And yeah, I would say hire acquisitions first. And then once you're doing like some volume, like I would say the second hire usually for me is dis, but no, sorry, not this boat transaction coordinator, I like to hire a transaction. Coordinated first, Jacksonville, you're probably going to want to get someone for like 60 to 70, probably get someone decent, for transaction coordinator and then yeah that's what I would, that's what I would do. I mean, but yeah, I mean, whole wholesaling, so you're not doing ovations yet.
Mike: 1:06:38We've done. 2, just because it, like, kind of, like, just fell into our lap type deal. Yeah.
Ben: 1:06:45So once you can like get that,
Mike: 1:06:47them.
Ben: 1:06:47That like opens up your whole business. Like the idea that like, you have to do deals like in your backyard. It's a very limiting belief. And like, it's very hard to no one that I've seen in this business has gone like really big. Without like going like beyond their backyard doesn't
Mike: 1:07:10Yeah. Yeah. So you're a big fan of obviously because you built it that way, but building out the office as like a phone sales team versus it in home appointment. Team, obviously, because
Ben: 1:07:22have to be, yeah, because it's not efficient. It's not efficient to like go out there every time. I mean, it takes so much time. Like you don't need, like, obviously like when you go on an appointment, you have a higher chance of closing, but you don't need, it's too much time. It's too much time. Like our acquisition agents, they get like two to two to four contracts a week. Like, there's no way that your acquisitions. Yeah, a week. So, like, there's no way, like, your acquisition agents can get, like, two to four contracts a week, like, going to fucking appointments. It's, no, it's prehistoric. You gotta, like, if they build good rapport, like, they got, you get it over the phone. You gotta get it over the phone.
Mike: 1:08:00Yeah.
Ben: 1:08:01And it's funny because like people don't even understand like what a good acquisition agent is like they don't have any idea like they think their team is good and then they like, like when I had my, because I know some of the biggest players in the industry, I've been this for a while, you know, I have them, I have my own mastermind where, you know, we get them weekly calls. I have some pretty big players and everyone in there doing like seven figures, you know, multiple seven figures. And like my guys they, like I've had, they've seen my acquisition agents and they're like, Whoa, like that guy's like really good. Like it's like, it's crazy. Like they, like my acquisition could talk like. You can talk to anyone doing anything. It's fucking crazy. It's crazy. So, when you get, like, a good salesperson, like, one good salesperson is worth more than, like, five shitty ones. Or five average ones. Like, and you won't know that you've gotten that person until you, like, see them. It's like, they'll do things that are just, like, beyond what you thought was possible.
Mike: 1:09:01yeah.
Ben: 1:09:03If that makes sense. Yeah.
Mike: 1:09:04does make sense. Yeah.
Ben: 1:09:06Anything else you wanted to go over today?
Mike: 1:09:08No, I appreciate you being on the show, man. This is great. And yeah, thanks for being on.
Ben: 1:09:13Awesome. You have a great weekend, man. It was great catching you.
Mike: 1:09:16Yeah, likewise.
