RJ Bates III, affectionately referred to as the Viking Wizard by his students, started his real estate investing career in 2014 after attending a real estate education program that put him $65,000 in debt. RJ contracted his first deal he found on the MLS and wholesaled it for a $7,500 assignment fee. That was the end of his former life and the beginning of his venture into becoming a real estate investor. Since that moment, RJ has become an influential figurehead in the real estate investing industry. He has successfully purchased and sold over 2,000 properties all across the USA including wholesale deals, rehabs, rentals, owner finances and short term rentals. One of his passions is being the host of The Titanium Vault Podcast where he interviews the top real estate investors. He has won back to back Closers Olympics earning him the reputation as the King Closer! Finally, RJ and Cassi DeHaas, his partner, have started their education platform called Titanium University.
If you’re new to my channel my name is RJ Bates III. Myself and my partner Cassi DeHaas are the founders of Titanium Investments.
We are nationwide virtual wholesalers and on this channel we share EVERYTHING that we do inside our business. So if you’re looking to close more deals - at higher assignments - anywhere in the country… You’re in the right place.
Who is Titanium Investments and What Have We Accomplished?
Over 10 years in the real estate investing business Closed deals in all 50 states Owned rentals in 12 states Flipped houses in 11 states Closed on over 2,000 properties 125 contracts in 50 days (all live on YouTube) Back to back Closers Olympics Champion Trained thousands of wholesalers to close more deals
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With over 4,000 Videos, this is the #1 channel on YouTube for all things Virtual Wholesaling. SUBSCRIBE NOW! https://www.youtube.com/@RJBatesIII
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RESOURCES FOR YOU:
If you want my team and I to walk you through how to build or scale your virtual wholesaling business from A to Z, click here to learn more about Titanium University: https://www.titaniumu.com
(FREE) If you want to learn how to close deals just like me, The King Closer, then download the free King Closer Formula PDF: https://www.kingclosersformula.com/close
There are six different types of pieces in chess: the king, the queen, the rook, the bishop, the knight, and the pawn. Every one of them moves differently. Every one of them has a different purpose. Every one of them matters. And being great with one piece does not make you great at chess. You have to understand the board. Wholesaling real estate works the exact same way. And that's why I'm starting a new series called King Closer's Chess Board. Throughout this series, I'm going to take the six different pieces in chess and compare each one to a specific function inside a wholesaling real estate business. I'm not giving you the entire board today. We're going to build it one piece at a time. And I want to start with the piece that looks the least impressive. The piece beginners probably respect the least. The piece you have more of than anything else when the game begins. The pawn.
And in wholesaling real estate, the pawn is lead generation. The more I thought about this comparison, the more perfect it became. Because nobody gets excited about pawns. When people think about chess, they think about the queen. They think about checkmate. They think about some incredible move that completely changes the game. Nobody is sitting around telling stories about how badass their pawn was on move seven. Wholesalers are the exact same way. Everybody wants to talk about closing. Everyone wants the perfect negotiation script. Everybody wants to know how to overcome objections. Everybody wants to know how somebody locked up a property for $150,000 when the seller originally wanted $220,000. Everybody wants to see the $30,000 assignment fee. But almost nobody wants to talk about what happened before any of that was possible. How many calls were made? How many texts went out? How many pieces of mail were sent? How many doors were knocked? How many conversations happened? How many people said no? How many people hung up on you? How many leads went absolutely nowhere? Because that part isn't sexy. That part is the pawn.
But here's what people misunderstand about pawns. They might be the least valuable individual pieces on the board. That does not mean they are unimportant. In fact, pawns help determine the entire structure of the game. Where your pawns are positioned affects where you have space. It affects what you control. It affects which pieces can develop. It affects where you are strong. It affects where you are vulnerable. Sorry, I struggle with that word, but I wrote this damn script, so I have to say it anyways. And your lead generation does the exact same thing to your wholesaling business. Your lead flow determines what the rest of your company is capable of doing. You can have the greatest acquisitions person in America, but no leads, they're useless. You can have an unbelievable dispositions department, no contracts, well, you have nothing to sell. You can have the best CRM, the best automations, the best scripts, the best team meetings, the best KPIs. But if your business is not consistently creating opportunities, eventually everything behind lead generation starts starving. And this is where wholesalers make
a massive mistake. They think lead generation is something you turn on when you need deals. That's not how this works. The market aggressively, calls are going out, leads start coming in, they get a contract, and then suddenly everybody gets distracted. And now we're worried about title, we're looking for buyers. Now we're posting the deal in Facebook groups. We're talking about what we're going to do with the assignment fee that hasn't even hit the bank account yet. And while everybody is staring at that one contract, the pawns stop moving. Marketing slows down, calls disappear, follow-up gets sloppy, daily activity falls apart, and then the deal closes. Everybody celebrates, but two weeks later, RJ, I don't understand what happened. Our pipeline is empty. I understand exactly what happened. You stop moving the pawns. The pipeline you're looking at today is the result of the activity you did weeks or months ago. And the pipeline you're going to have weeks from now is being built by what you do today. That's why great operators do not lead generate based on emotion. They don't prospect harder because they're scared. They don't stop because they're busy. They don't take their foot off the gas because they just had a great month. They understand that lead generation is an operating rhythm. The pawns keep moving. And there's another important thing that pawns do in
chess. They create space for the more powerful pieces to operate. That matters enormously in wholesaling because lead generation doesn't just create leads, it creates leverage. If your acquisitions person has three opportunities this month, every seller feels important. Now you're scared to lose the deal. You start forcing negotiations, you start chasing sellers, you start convincing yourself that bad numbers might somehow work. You start saying things like, maybe dispo can figure it out. That is what scarcity does to your decision making. But give that same acquisitions person 30 legitimate opportunities. Well, now the conversation changes. If a seller's expectations don't work, you can respectfully walk away. If numbers don't make sense, you don't have to force them. If somebody wants retail, great, go get retail. We can move on. That confidence didn't magically appear because somebody watched another sales training. The pawns created space. Lead generation gave the rest of the business room to operate from strength instead of desperation. That is why I laugh when people constantly ask me, what's the best closing line? What objection handler should I use? What should I say if they want more money? Sometimes the best negotiation strategy in the world is having enough opportunities that you're actually willing to lose on this one. That starts with lead generation.
Now here's where this analogy gets even better. In chess, a pawn generally advances forward toward the opposite side of the board. And if that pawn reaches the furthest rank, it gets promoted. That little piece that started as the lowest value piece on the board can become a queen, rook, bishop, or knight. Think about how similar that is to a lead. You start with almost nothing. John Smith at 123 Main Street and a phone number. That's it. You don't know whether John wants to sell, you don't know what the property looks like. You don't know his situation. You don't know his timeline. You don't know his asking price. At that moment, it's just data. And then you call. John tells you he inherited the house. He lives four hours away. It's been vacant for eight months. The roof leaks. The place needs work. He doesn't want to renovate it. He doesn't want to deal with showings. He just wants the problem gone. Now the pond moved. You understand motivation. You understand the condition, the timeline. You understand what problem he is actually trying to solve. You have another conversation, you make an offer, you negotiate, and you reach an agreement. Now that name and phone number that looked almost worthless when it entered your CRM becomes a contract. That contract closes. Maybe it becomes a $10,000 assignment fee, maybe $30,000, maybe even $50,000. The pawn gets promoted. And this is where so many people screw up wholesaling. They want the promotion without moving the pawn. They want the seller who answers the first phone call and says, Thank God you called. Zillow says my house is worth $300,000, but I'll take $150,000 and I need to close Friday. That's not a lead generation strategy. That's a lottery
ticket. Most homeowners you contact are not going to need your solution right now or at the right price. They shouldn't. You're looking for a very specific circumstance where speed, convenience, certainty, or solving a difficult problem matters more than maximizing price. Finding those people requires volume. It requires consistency. It requires conversations. It requires hearing no a lot. And that does not mean your marketing is broken. That means you're playing the game. So if your wholesaling business constantly feels like feast or famine, I want you to stop looking for some complicated explanation for a second. Ask yourself one question. How many quality conversations are we consistently creating? Not how many records you bought, not how many software subscriptions you have, not how many hours you spent studying me closing, not how many new marketing strategies you tried this month. How many real conversations are entering your business? Because that is where your position starts. And that is the foundation I want you to understand as we build this series. Wholesaling is not one skill. It's not just acquisitions, it's not just marketing, it's not just dispositions. There are multiple pieces on this board, and every one of them has a different responsibility. We're going to break down each one, but none of the more powerful parts of your business get much opportunity to do anything if
you never create a position for them to operate from. That starts here. Lead generation is the pawn. It creates your structure, it creates space, it creates opportunities. And if you keep advancing it, something that started with almost no value can eventually become one of the most valuable things on your board. So before you buy another course, before you rewrite your script, before you blame the market, before you decide your leads suck, look at the board. Are you actually moving your pawns? Because eventually moving forward is not enough. A seller tells you no, a deal goes cold, something gets in the way, and there is one piece on a chess board that has a very unusual advantage. It is the only piece that can jump over other pieces. That matters a lot more to wholesaling than you might think. We'll talk about that one next. Until then, move your pawns because you don't win chess by being great with one piece. You win by understanding the entire board.
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