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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There's one person inside a wholesaling company who can make everybody else look like a genius. And that same person can make everybody else's job an absolute nightmare. They can hand dispositions a contract everybody wants, or a contract nobody wants. They can give transaction coordination a clean transaction with clear expectations, or they can spend the next three weeks explaining why the seller was promised something nobody else knew about. They can protect your margins or destroy them. They can create leverage for the entire company or put everybody else in a position where they spend all day trying to rescue a deal that never should have existed. And the crazy part is this is not the most powerful function in the business, but it might be the function whose decisions affect the board more than any other.
A rook can move across an entire open rank or file. A bishop can control long diagonals. Even the knight has a type of movement the king cannot replicate. The king is actually extremely limited. Generally, it moves one square at a time. But despite those limitations, the entire game revolves around its position. That is exactly how I see acquisitions. People hear King Closer and assume the closer must be the superhero of the wholesaling company. No, acquisitions does not generate every lead. It doesn't know how to underwrite every single opportunity. Should not be responsible for handling every title problem. Should not have to find every buyer. It does not need to do everybody else's job. But acquisitions is standing at an incredibly important point on the board because acquisitions is where opportunity becomes commitment. Up until that point, you have a lead, a conversation, a potential seller, an analyzed property. Then acquisitions makes a decision. Do we put this under contract and under what terms? That decision affects everybody who comes after it. And that is why a great acquisitions person is not somebody who gets the most contracts. Let me say that again. A great acquisitions person is not somebody who gets the most contracts. A great acquisitions person gets the right contracts. There's a massive difference. Because if I told my acquisitions team, hey, I'll give you $1,000 for every signed contract you get today, and I don't care what price you get it at. Well, we can probably get a lot of contracts. House is worth $200,000, put it under contract for $250,000. Seller wants three years to close, no problem. Property burned down yesterday. Send the docu sign. Look at all those contracts. Are we good at acquisitions? Of course not. We just created a pile of liabilities for everybody else. And I see wholesalers do a more subtle version of this constantly. They become so emotionally attached to getting the contract that the contract itself becomes the objective. Seller wants too much, maybe Dispo can move it. Numbers are tight, maybe there's a buyer. Property condition is worse than expected. We'll figure it out. Then the contract gets signed. Everybody celebrates and dispositions opens the file and goes, What the hell am I supposed to do with this? That is the king walking directly into check. Because in chess, the king cannot just go wherever at once. You have to understand what squares are safe. You have to understand what your opponent controls. You have to think about the consequences of the move before you make it. Acquisitions has the same responsibility. Just because you can get a seller to sign something does not mean you should. Can this deal perform? Do the numbers work? Are expectations clear? Does the seller understand the agreement? Does the timeline make sense? Did underwriting support the price? Is there enough room for a legitimate exit? Did we promise anything that creates a problem later? Those questions matter before the signature, not three days later when dispositions can't find a buyer.
And this is where acquisitions and underwriting have to work together. Remember the bishop from episode three, understanding, seeing the angles. It helps establish what the opportunity is actually worth. Acquisitions should not ignore that because they really want a contract. If underwriting says we need to be at $170,000, and the seller says, I will not take a penny below $210,000. Well, you have a decision to make. Maybe there is another legitimate strategy. Great, explore it. But if there's not, sometimes the best acquisitions move is to not make the move. Walk away. Follow up. Stay connected. Let circumstances change. That is why we built the night before we ever got to the king. You do not have to force every conversation into a contract today. Sometimes follow-up is the correct move. That's what understanding the board means.
Here's another thing I think destroys acquisition teams. Scarcity. Remember what we talked about with the pawns. Lead generation creates space. If your acquisitions person has two legitimate seller conversations this week, they become desperate. Every opportunity feels like it has to work. Now you start negotiating against yourself. You stretch numbers, you chase sellers, you accept terms you should not accept. You start thinking, I just need to get something under contract. No, you need your pawns moving because a king without enough support becomes vulnerable. I hate that word. Give that exact same closer a healthy pipeline. Now they can actually negotiate. Seller wants something that does not make sense. That's okay. We do not have to fight them. We can say, based on what you want, I honestly think listing the property might be the better option. And mean it. You know why that closer can say that confidently? Because there are other opportunities on the board. Lead generation effects acquisitions, follow-up effects acquisitions, underwriting effects acquisitions. The pieces protect each
other. And the king has another interesting characteristic. When the king is attacked in chess, you can't ignore it. If you're in check, you have to respond immediately. That is exactly what happens when acquisitions create a bad contract. Everything stops. Dispositions can't sell it. Okay. What happened? Price is too high. Now acquisitions has to renegotiate. Seller is angry. Now TC has to manage expectations. Buyer walks. Now Dispo has to find another buyer. Closing date is approaching. Now everybody is scrambling. One bad decision puts the entire company in check. And now every department is forced to respond to something that should have been prevented earlier. That is why I hate the mentality of just get it under contract and we'll figure it out later. You absolutely need to take calculated risk in the business. Sometimes you will not know everything. Sometimes markets do change. Sometimes buyers surprise you. Sometimes a deal you were confident in turns out differently than expected. That's just real estate. But there's a difference between taking an intelligent risk and knowingly creating a problem because you wanted the psychological victory of saying, we got a contract. A contract is not a victory if your entire company has to spend the next 14 days trying to escape it. And this is why acquisitions is also responsible for expectation setting. Your closer is not simply negotiating price, they are establishing the relationship that the rest of your company has to inherit. Think about that. If acquisitions tells the seller we could absolutely close in seven days, and nobody checked whether seven days is realistic, who deals with that later? Transaction coordination. If acquisition says, Don't worry, we'll buy everything in the house too. And nobody knows they said that, who deals with that? Operations. If acquisition creates an unrealistic expectation about the price, closing process, or access, the closer gets the signature, everybody else gets the consequence. A great acquisitions person thinks beyond the signature. They are thinking, can the company fulfill what I am telling this person? That is professionalism. And it also makes you a better closer. Because great sales is not convincing somebody to do something that makes no sense. Great sales is understanding the seller's situation well enough to determine whether your solution actually fits. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Your job is not to win every conversation, your job is to make the correct move. That is what makes the king analogy so important. The king is valuable not because it dominates the board, it's valuable because its position determines whether the game can continue. Acquisitions is standing at the point where all the work we have already done either turns into a viable agreement or becomes a mistake everybody else inherits.
So if you lead an acquisitions team, stop asking, how many contracts did we get? Ask, how many contracts closed? How many had to be renegotiated? How many fell out? How accurate were we on price? Were seller expectations correct? Were our notes complete? Did underwriting support the agreement? How much margin did those contracts actually produce? Because contract count by itself can lie to you. I would rather have an acquisitions person get six contracts that all make sense and five close than somebody bragging about 15 contracts while 10 of them fell apart. One person is playing chess, the other person is collecting signatures. And after six episodes, look at the board we have built. Pawns, lead generation. Without opportunities, nothing starts. Night, follow-up. When circumstances get in the way, stay in the game. Bishop, underwriting. See the angles and understand what the opportunity is actually worth. Rook, transaction coordination and operations. Clear the path and move the transaction toward closing. The queen, dispositions. Use versatility, buyer relationships, and multiple strategies to monetize the opportunity. And finally, king, acquisitions. Make the agreement that puts the rest of the board in position to win. Six pieces, six different responsibilities, one business.
And now you might think we're finished. We're not. Because there's still one incredibly important part of this analogy that we've not talked about. For six episodes, I've told you what every piece represents. But there's somebody else involved in every single game of chess. Somebody has to decide which pawn moves. Somebody decides where the night goes. Somebody decides when to use the queen. Somebody has to look at all six pieces and see one board. And if you own a wholesaling company, that is a part of this analogy you probably need to understand the most. That's where we're going next. Until then, stop judging your acquisitions team by how many signatures they collect. Make the right move. Because you do not win chess by being great with one piece. You win by understanding the entire board.
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