Welcome to the Real Estate Game Changer Show. I'm your host, Mike McKay, and each and every week we do this show with people who are changing the game of real estate all over the country. Personally I'm based in the Jacksonville, Florida market and we still are actively buying in Jacksonville. So if anyone listening runs in any deals down here, be happy to look at those or help you out in any way. If you're thinking about getting into the Jacksonville real estate market, don't hesitate to reach out. So this week on our show, we have Naman Taylor, and he is a nationwide virtual wholesaler who also flips houses in the Fort Worth Texas area. So Naaman and welcome to the.
Naaman :Thanks brother. Thanks for having me. This is gonna be awesome. Let's get to it. I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to share my story on here and talk to your audience.
Mike:For sure, man. Yeah. Let's dive in. So, talk about a little bit how you got started in the real estate business.
Naaman :I love sharing my story cause I think it's very impactful for a lot of people. The beginning part of my journey started unlike everybody else's. I didn't read Rich Dad, poor Dad and then like, just discovered real estate. I was living in Germany about three years ago when I was an active duty army and everything is shut down. So, I was in my barracks room trying to figure out like what was going on. It was all very slow, everything was a little scared. So I started to educate myself on real estate. I started watching YouTube videos from like bigger pockets, anything I could get my hands on. And for about three months, I just spent a ton of time to episodes, educating myself, understanding the concepts. Cause I didn't have any sort of investing background, any kind of sales background. I had bought a couple houses with my VA loan, but not in the sense where I was like looking to flip'em, where I was looking to wholesale'em, where I was looking to rent'em out and make a bunch of dough. It was really just, I needed somewhere to live. So I bought a house like most people. So it started 5,000 miles away where I did my first Burr property here in Fort Worth, Texas, where I am now. When I was living in Germany. So after 200 plus episodes and three months, I pulled the trigger on my first deal.
Mike:So you did that remotely. You were still in Germany?
Naaman :Yeah, we did it all virtually. I interviewed people here in Fort Worth. I hired like a mentor that cost me like a hundred bucks an hour. I talked to him still to this day and I always thank him cuz it's so crazy that at the time I fought a hundred dollars an hour was such an expense to pay, to get educated because I didn't have an investment background. I didn't have any high level skills. I was just a soldier, so I hadn't paid for any real education yet. I thought college was basically the only way to learn how to do anything. I didn't realize about these mentorships and masterminds from people. This was all brand new to me back then. So I heard this guy for a hundred bucks and I was like, this is a lot of money. He's give somebody for an hour. I was like, this guy's not a doctor. What the heck? But that hundred dollars ended up changing my life, man. When you don't know anything about real estate or any mentorships or anything like that, all you know is how much a dollar is valued to you. You don't really understand the value of money to other people or what an education actually costs. Right now I pay, a hundred thousand dollars a year in education and masterminds and taking courses and classes. Cause I'm like, this is how you get ahead. So at the time in my barracks room in Germany, paying that a hundred bucks felt like so much money. And that was one of the ways that I was able to figure out how to bur houses virtually 5,000 miles away in another country.
Mike:Yeah. That's awesome. So you did your first one, did it totally remotely. What happened then?
Naaman :Yeah, I was able to tap into my mentor's network because it's so crazy. A hundred bucks. I was able to tap into tractors. The wholesalers he was working with, the banks he was working with, like everything, and it was truly a blessing. And that's why I'm such a go giver myself these days. Cause, what one man did for me a few years ago, I wanna do it for more people. So we'll coach people for free, we'll, connect people that I know need help with one another. Cause as you're just one person away from completely changing the trajectory of your life. Virtual wholesaling was a simple thing for me to wrap my mind around because I had virtually bird properties first. So a lot of people have a hard time doing things virtually. My first 15 deals were all done for my barracks room in Germany,
Mike:Okay. So you do that first query, you tap into his network, which obviously was huge value. Did you jump into wholesaling right after that, or was there a step in between?
Naaman :A lot of steps because the market was very different in 2020. So I was buying houses,$60,000,$70,000 in Fort Worth. Now though, if you find a house for 60, 70,000 now, you've just got a steal of a deal, like you're rolling in the dough, you can get a contract at 60 k. Back then I didn't even know what wholesaling was, to be honest with you. I didn't know he was connecting me with wholesalers. I was like, I don't, these are the guys that have the houses that I fixed. This is how ignorant I was to the rest of real estate. I only knew what I knew how to what I learned from bigger pockets. They don't promote wholeselling, like at all. It's all about everything else in real estate. So when I was buying houses from wholesalers, I didn't even realize who they, I was just like, these are the guys that got the bad houses. This company I was buying from like New Western, honestly at the beginning. So I was like, Hey, this company just has the crappy houses. It's cool. And I was making money on these deals and burn em out. And I was leaving maybe a couple thousand dollars in each house and some of'em I wasn't leaving any money in. And it was working out really well to the point where I called all my friends and I was like, guys, I figured something out. You guys should all do this too. And a few of em did. And those friends that did those deals with me in the beginning, we've made a couple hundred grand together now just from appreciation or selling houses or reinvest together now. And some of my friends said no, when, you know they don't and they still don't own real estate. But that was all part of my journey because those were the steps in between my first burr and then getting into wholesale. Cause the market started to go banana. And I couldn't get any more good deals from the guys with the houses. They kept sending the deals and I run my calculator, my math, my bigger pocket math, and I'm like, these deals suck. I've only done 10, 15 deals. And I'm like, am I doing this wrong? How is everybody else still doing business? I'm like, this doesn't make any sense. And so I ended up wanting to get into acquisitions because of that reason alone. I went backwards. The backwards way most people go, most people think wholesaling is like the bottom way of starting into real estate. And truly, it's probably the best way to be in real estate. Because if you have an acquisitions company and you can actually close deals, man, you're unstoppable. Cuz now you can either wholesale it, flip it, or keep it for yourself. I don't have to rely on bad wholesalers to send me deals or realtors that's send me deals. I can always count on my own acquisitions to find my own houses. So we started, training in wholesaling and that's how I like my first trip to Jack's was to go walk around with cash geeks and figure out what wholesaling really was. Cause I was trying to do it and I was terrible at it cause I'd had no education. I had watched 200 episodes on Burring so I could, bur I watched zero episodes of how to wholesale and I thought I was gonna figure out how to wholesale. So I flew down the Jax Beach and I did a weekend learning how to wholesale from do Gee And again, one trip changed the trajectory of what I was doing again cuz now I was able to wholesale nationwide. So that those were the steps in between, we tried to figure it out on our own. Sucked went and got some education and we started doing deals.
Mike:was your biggest takeaway from that weekend where you came down to Jacksonville and what changed It? Allowed things to work?
Naaman :yeah. The buy box that they gave me, they were like, Hey, if you go find houses in this city at this price, we can JV em and sell em at this price. So we immediately just left and started marketing in the cities that they had hedge funds buyers in, and we did a deal with them within 30 days of leaving. But I remember being at the weekend event, and I, this is how much I didn't know. I didn't even know that I could renegotiate my contracts. I was like, oh, I have this house. It's almost a deal that my buyer wants this much, but the seller wants this and they're like, Dude, just go do a renegotiation. And I'm like, I can ask for less money, or I can ask him to pay less money with the contract that we currently have. And they're like, yeah. That same day, when we took our break, I went and got$5,000 off and that gave me a$5,000 fee. During the weekend. I was like, I just need that addendum paperwork right there. You're like, yeah, boom. Done. That's the power I made all my money back that weekend. I was like, I paid like four grand to go to the event and I made all my money back. Plus I made some money from going to that weekend so that let me know everything I needed to know about educating myself in real estate, like even paid education. Cause to that point, I hadn't paid much money to learn anything
Mike:So, you're jumping you're doing wholesaling. Were you mostly focused on that hedge fund model for a long time?
Naaman :I was until I hired my next mentor. My next mentor that I hired was Kent Clothier, and he taught me the reverse wholesale model and told me that selling the hedge funds was not a great way to do business and that I should reverse wholesale to people and learn a market and go deep and get relationships with buyers and make sure that they're real cash buyers. So I did all that instead, I still was working with those guys, but we had done maybe like five or six deals. We made some cash and I was able to try my own thing. But from the cash that I made from just doing JVs with them, I hired another coach. I was able to start building and do my own marketing. So that's why I tell people, don't frown on JVs, cuz they can be the stepping stone that can help you get to the next level. And that's what it did for me. So I hired Kent. We did a personal coaching for four months. And then I built my wholesale business based around his model of reverse wholesaling.
Mike:Got it. But is his model trying to go deep in one market because you mentioned you're nationwide.
Naaman :Yeah. What we did was we tested the theories out between both, but because we still had the connection with CashGeeks, we still marketed for them and did JV deals with them. But we went really deep into we started out in Little Rock, so we were just reverse wholesaling houses to his company. Like, Hey, let's just figure out how to do as many deals as we can with Kent. He said, Hey, we need to buy houses in Little Rock. We just went super deep into Little Rock. Hey, we need to buy all the houses from all the wholesalers. Here's the criteria. We went super deep there and then I just took the same model and now we've adopted it here in Forth Worth
Mike:got it. Interesting. And you also flipped some properties in Fort Worth as well. When did you start doing that?
Naaman :So we always flipped houses ever since we burned. It just really depended on when I was burying houses, if I couldn't get most of my money back. If I had to leave more than 10 grand in, I was just flipping the house. Cause I didn't want to lose all of the equity that I had or all of the cash that I had to continue to fit the business model. Otherwise I would've, only been able to do four deals if I had to leave like 10 Gs in there every single time. If I had to leave 10 grand or more in the deal, I just flipped it made a little bit of dough and then kept it moving. But if I could leave like five K in, then I would keep the house. Cause, I want to control a$200,000 asset for five grand. That's what I'm interested in. But it didn't always work out that way because the people I was buying deals from didn't send me deep enough deals. So we flip some properties. Ever since when I first started, if you can brrrr a house, you can flip a house. That the only difference is whether you refinance it or just list it. So we've always flipped. Now the volume of flipping increase this year because we want to do way more. Just because there's always retail buyers. Here in Fort Worth, everybody's not always buying our wholesale deals at where we wanna be at. So we're like, Hey, let's just flip some more houses. Or if they're good flips, we'll brrrr’em we'll keep'em. So I like that model a lot. Holding real estate is really easy. Awesome. At making money. You can't keep up with it when you're super transactional. You can't keep up with appreciation. So, you can make way more money holding houses than you can, doing as many deals as possible.
Mike:Yeah. Talk a little bit about that. So I know a lot of people who, either they wholesale or they flip, it's like kind of they do one or the other, they always kinda struggle to do something else. So, the guys are a wholesaling. They're like, I'm like, how many rentals you got? And they're like like one. And I'm like, what do you wholesale, like 300 houses? How do you decide, we wholesale this one, we flip this one, we're gonna brrrr, this one. What's that process look like?
Naaman :dude, that's a great question, Mike. So that's different for every person. So, I wanna be a real estate investor. That's how I started my journey as a real estate investor, not as a wholesaler. So the problem is a wholesaler's not actually a real estate investor, and that's why they don't have any rentals. That's why they don't do any flips, so they don't actually invest in real estate, they just sell contract. You can sell contracts for of anything, just so it happens that it's houses. So you think you're a real estate investor, you're not. That's the difference in why people only wholesale or why they only flip or why they do the brrrr strategy. There's a lot of guys that are wholesalers that don't even understand anything about houses. They have no idea how to flip a house or keep a house or what the requirements are or nothing. They just know if I can look at this number and get it as low as I can, there's a margin in there for me to sell it to the guy that knows about real estate. And there are people that have been with us for years that know nothing about real estate investing that are great wholesalers. So the difference is making a decision to not just be in marketing and sales, but to actually be in real estate. And I think that's where you're gonna find the big difference in who does what and what industry.
Mike:Yeah. And so your preference is always, if you can, to keep the house, if you don't have to leave that money, and you're always gonna keep it if it's less than 10 grand, for example.
Naaman :No, it depends on the season that we're in our business. So sometimes we wanna stack cash because we wanna market more. Sometimes this house is just in a place where we want to hold houses, so not every house that we pick up, even here in Fort Worth isn't an area we want to actually hold in. Originally it was buying housing. I was just buying in Fort Worth. Now I own five houses that I'm like, I don't even wanna own houses there, but I already have'em, and then we'll pick up a flip and I'm like, Hey, this is where I wanna hold that. What we picked it up at, and the price that we're gonna be all in that make sense? Fort Worth? Or do we need to flip it just cuz we're gonna have to leave 15 grand in. So you come up with your own criteria on what it is for you. Cuz some people, they got$50 million they we'll leave 20 grand in every deal. They don't care, they just wanna hold the houses. So it's a different strategy for where you are in your business, what season that you're in.
Mike:It makes a lot of sense. And obviously, do you have concerns too that you only wanna flip a certain amount at a time? Just cuz of capacity? I know that's something, sometimes a concern that people have, they don't want to have five flips going on at once. Is that something that you guys look at?
Naaman :No, not for me. And that's because we have great contractors and we have enough money for holding costs, so it doesn't really worry me to have 10 flips going. I hired dcs to do most of my flipping, so I don't do a lot of hiring subs and managing work sites and stuff like,. That's how I did it from Germany. I just hired a GC and they do all the work and then they just let me know in six weeks when it's all done, Hey, sir, it's all done. We're ready to get paid. Flipping is so easy for me, that's how I like to run my flipping business. My wholesale business is harder than my flipping business. Even though it's like you would think it'd be harder. It's not just because of the way that I do my transactions in flipping hire GCs don't manage subs. I pay a little bit more on every rehab, but that's why I like to come through my acquisitions company.
Mike:Yeah. I think that's actually a good topic to dive in a little bit on, cuz obviously hiring a GC can be a really hands off thing, but you gotta make sure, you've hired the right guy with the right expectations. How are you going about making sure. You're hiring the right GC so you can be this hands off with the process.
Naaman :Dude, really good question. A lot of people are gonna get a lot of value from. I like references from other people, and I don't pay anybody until the job is done. If you're a real general contractor with a real business, you don't need my money to actually do this job, and if you're a real contractor, you'll just put a lien on my house and I don't pay you, and you'll get the asset, which is more valuable than a check. And any real general contractor or investor knows that. So if I can explain that to them, maybe this is me being good at sales and closing people on this kind of setup, but that's how I do all my deals. I don't pay anybody until the end. I don't float 30 grand on a$80,000 rehab and then just get ran off on. That happens to way too many people. And I think if you set expectations early and have them understand your way of thinking, and you hire the right people, they'll do it. I've had$80,000 rehabs done without a penny on my pocket, and then I pay when it's all done. It's trust, it's integrity, it's credibility. They're vetting me the same way. I'm vetting them.
Mike:And so you're not doing any draws even throughout the process. Not even halfway through.
Naaman :That saves me money,$250, draw from your hard money lender, they wanna do three, four draws is another grand. Add it to the top, to the bottom line. Just, hey, this is what, this is the scope of work. Get the rehab done When it's all complete, we'll do an inspection and then I'll pay you out
Mike:Wow. That's great. I remember I had a conversation with someone here locally two weeks ago, we're having dinner and he's like, he's got a great contractor. Works on, he's like, you know, you'll find that if you get the right guy, it's actually really easy. It might not be as hard as everyone makes it seem.
Naaman :I was lucky though, because I paid that a hundred bucks. I found the right guys on the first time.
Mike:So you get a property, you decide you're gonna flip it, someone on your team walks through. Does the scope of work with the contractor, what does that process look like? Kind of start to finish? Cause I think a lot of people don't really understand that, that well, and it'll be helpful to the audience.
Naaman :I'll explain it from the very beginning, like a deal that we just did. I'll give like a case study from a house we just did in Houston. So the lead came in ppc, which is like pay per click inbound lead called the lead. We went back and forth over the phone for two weeks about price and closing timelines, and it took maybe four or five calls, to lock this up. Well actually I locked it up on the first call, but then it took more calls to do a renegotiation after we figured out how much work it needed to be done and everything like that. I locked the deal up at like 210,000 as a wholesale company then we wholesale the deal to our flip company, made a small assignment fee on it, and then we came in, did the scope of work, our contractor walked it with our realtor. Cause we didn't need a ton of work, so we had our contractor and realtor there at the same time. So the realtor was like, Hey, this needs to be done. This needs to be done in order for us to reach, enlist the top of the market. So they go together. I don't even need to be there. This is done in Houston, Texas, by the way. I've only been to Houston like once and I've never seen this house either. So they go in there. They both go together, do the scope of work do the, this needs to be done to get top of the market. They come back, the contractor gives us the bid price. If it's a good bid and it works, our numbers great. If not, we try to renegotiate the bid with the contractor or get another walkthrough with somebody else. So numbers come back. Good. We do the scope of work. It's all done. Rotor comes in. He lists for us cuz he, we're gonna do volume with him and he is a friend, had a little bit of a discount. So it increases our profit margin again. And then property goes up three a's on market. So that was like the last deal that we, I probably should make a case study out of it though. And have like real numbers and like timelines and stuff up there. But we closed on it in like a week. And it didn't take long at all for us to close on the property from start to finish, though. It was probably like a 10 week project. I think we made about 35,000 on that flip.
Mike:Nice. And that contractor, since you're not from Houston, was he just a referral from your realtor there, or how'd you find that guy?
Naaman :Yep. From our realtor. He is a really good realtor. And so he had a good connections there in Houston to get us the connections that we needed for a little bit of paint, a little bit of patch, a little bit of carpet. A couple things here and there that needed to be done. It wasn't a major rehab.
Mike:Yeah, it's interesting. I've always found that people who are great at what they do tend to know other people who are great at what they do. Even great contractors know great GCs. They don't, they know great plumbers, great electricians cuz they're not gonna work with guys who are subpar.
Naaman :I would encourage people to leverage your network more than you think. You might think that you don't have the people, but you're just one person away who has the people, and people love helping people. Everybody, especially in this industry, because we always need each other. I got a deal in Jack's. I'm calling all the Jack guys I know in Jack's who can walk this, who has a dude that can do this. Now I know another person in Jack's, I can hit up for some help. That's how it goes. Anytime I get a deal in the city with another wholesaler that I know, I go, I just tried to JV it. Cause I love making money with people. So I go, Hey man who you guys got buyers out here? Like, let's go. Let's do this deal. A lot of the time they can make more money JV in the deal with somebody that's local than you can on your own getting the assignment. If you buy yourself, they know who's paying the most for me.
Mike:Yeah. And certain people know certain buyers. Cash Geeks has got a great buyer's list. I mean, I've still, even JV some deals with'em cuz they have the best buyers in certain neighborhoods.
Naaman :Hundred percent. I could wholesale a deal in Jacksonville, but I'm just gonna call, I'm just gonna call you guys and who's the best buyer for this?
Mike:Yeah. It's helpful to be deep in the market so, you say nationwide Virtual wholesaling. A lot of people say that, and they mean some people do the whole like everywhere, PPC thing. Other people are like, oh, we say nationwide, but we really mean five or 10 markets that we're in. What do you mean when you say nationwide? Virtual wholesaling.
Naaman :Our is turned on in 150 cities, so we're in a lot of places. And then when we were heavy cold-calling last year, so we were cold-calling basically any city that had over a hundred thousand population and pulling really small, motivated lists and finding contracts that way. So we were playing a little bit of a different game than everybody was last year. This year we've condensed it down a little bit more to get a little more targeted because we wanna also flip a lot of houses. So we've narrowed it down to a lot of cities that we just wanna flip in. So we're doing a lot in Oklahoma, lot in Texas, still in Little Rock, a lot in Florida, like the places where deals are still popping and happening. That's where we're doing deals at.
Mike:So talk about one part you just said there was, you were kind of getting, you were cold-calling targeted lists in those areas. So talk about what you mean by that.
Naaman :Yeah, my friend RJ Bates teaches nationwide Virtual Wholesaling. So that's who I learned. I love just taking everybody's class and course, so I went to his titanium crucible in October of 2021. And now he's actually a business partner of mine. So we went to his course in October, 2021. Learned how to nationwide virtual wholesale. Because I wanted to learn how to reverse wholesale, how to wholesale nationwide, all of that. I wanted all the information so I can make great decisions inside of my company. So what he teaches is to pull these early, small lists through like batch. We use batch these little small lists and base it off of the motivation. So we'll pull like 2,500 records at 3000 records. But it's all based off of a certain criteria of. Stacked with motivation, like inherited probate, absentee owner vacant. we're just getting different little tags. So we'll do that in every city that has over a hundred thousand population and it'll pull list. And if you can get a list of 2,500, that's a good list.
Mike:Yeah. Got it. So you're taking that and a very specific type of property and then narrowing it down. Is that just kinda like the property that might sell the best if wholesale?
Naaman :an absentee owner vacant property that has tax liens on it. They're selling that house. We're looking for motivation, not a specific kind of house. We're searching motivation, so we're all, and we're like, Hey, do you wanna sell your house? The answer's always yes, because they don't live in the state. It's vacant and it has some sort of deficiency to it. So there's some motivation that we've purchased by skip tracing this.
Mike:Yeah. People talk about how, and maybe it's just a limiting belief that people had, how it's difficult to comp these properties when you're in so many different markets. How have you guys approached that?
Naaman :Yeah, we'll use realtors, we'll use prop Stream, batch Zillow, there's so many ways to comp a property. But those are some of the main ways, that we do it. And then we use dispo, we use investor, so we have cartel and mode on investor lift and we can push 7,000 emails at a time. Like it's really changed the game, that gave me the confidence to go nationwide whenever we were able to get investor lift, because, you could find buyers in any city pretty quick. Versus before we were reverse wholesaling because I was like, man, it's hard finding buyers, dude. We're in this one city and we're sending out like direct mail. We're cold calling, lists, we're talking to all the realtors. Boom, investor lifts 7,000 emails. It's like, yeah, that changed the game for us. So it gave me the nerve, I'll say it on the podcast, gave me the nerve to pull, start running 10 20 grand PPC nationwide, start pulling list everywhere in the country. Cuz I knew I could just hit a button in dispo to that city.
Mike:Yeah, sense. And talk a little bit about what your sales process looks like. Interesting. Everyone's got a little bit of different take on this, but it's always on. It's fascinating.
Naaman :I love phone sales now. I've done it for so long. Now I've gotten so good at it. So it starts our sales processes, intro setting expectations, urgency, motivation, conditions roadblocks, setting expectations, the offer. We take'em through that. That's the process. You go down. Seven steps. Boom. You're gonna go through this process and then what we've identified are the most common objections in each part of the process. And we just train like crazy on those.
Mike:And is that something that you're getting a lead, you're trying to do that all in the first call or what does that process look like?
Naaman :Yeah. So I train my closers right now to identify towards the end of the call whether or not this is someone that they think will sign today. Everyone will sign today. So we don't always reveal our offer at the end of the phone call because they're not ready. So if no one's not, I'm gonna say, Hey, do you mind if we set up another call? so we can go over the offer together. Cuz usually someone needs to talk to somebody or they wanna talk to their lawyer. So, we don't even give'em the numbers. Because the pay from the offer is something that we're gonna go over together and with all the people that can make a decision that way we don't just pitch our offer out there, put our offer out there, and then they go shop it around to the next wholesaler or the next flipper or whoever, whatever they're doing, right? So if this it's really up to the closer to make a decision. Is this someone we can close right now? Then we'll go through our sales process and give'em the offer. If not, we'll set expectations for what to expect on the next phone call and we'll set a timeline to call'em back, whether it's 30 minutes from now or tomorrow. Hey, well what's a good time when we can get your wife on the phone? Ah, she's working tonight so you know, tomorrow's gonna be a much better time. What time? Tomorrow's gonna work best so we can go over the offer together with everybody. Right now we don't the offer, the husband goes talk to the wife. Now we're not able to manage the sellers. Because they're just doing their own thing at the kitchen table. Not interested in that at all. Let's all get on the phone together, or, if you feel like you can make a comfortable decision right now, we can go through that.
Mike:Yeah. Otherwise your 30 minute conversation with'em gets boiled down to, Hey, so honey, what'd they say? How much?
Naaman :Yeah. You don't get to hear all the cool stuff and all the things I've dropped on your husband all day to try and give him the sign. You don't get to be a part of that and just become a real quick No. We gotta tie the emotion to the cell so we lose all control of seller management and emotion when we let'em off the phone. We wanna get a decision right now. Not tomorrow, I think about it. No. Don't think about it. Let's talk about it right here. Let's think about it together right here.
Mike:So how many guys are on your acquisitions?
Naaman :Four follow up specialists and three closers right now on the team. And we train every morning together. We go through each person's script, we role play, we train on overcoming objections. And it's a lot of fun because some of you can clearly tell how good some people are getting just off of one or two trainings. One or two trainings it's like, wow, they got so much better, and I train a team of closers. It's a cold call company I train with called r e I call center. And I train like 30 of their acquisitions people. And it's so cool, to train with them and then just correct one person while we're roleplaying. And then forever he's gonna make great phone calls that way. Like I, that it's fulfilling. So I'm supposed to come home for an hour, I'm there for two cause I'm having such a good time training these guys and they're loving it and they're actually taking it serious. It's the same thing with my guys in the morning. We're supposed to do like an hour, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour. They're an hour and a half training. I just love it. I love to train on phone sales and overcoming objections. So, if anybody needs some training or anything like that, I just, I love doing very passionate about it.
Mike:That's cool, man. And then what's your structure look like? I know you've mentioned like some people talk about lead managers, others talk about follow up specialists. Some send it to the acquisitions closer first, other have it filtered. What's your setup with that?
Naaman :I manage most of the acquisition side of our business. So we have different types of leads that come in. We have Facebook, Google, and YouTube leads that all come in. And then we still have follow up specialists that are reaching back to all the data that we've pulled in the last couple years to follow up with those code call leads to see if they're still interested in selling. So the four follow up specialists are just reaching out all day long, looking for leads that they can recreate to pass off to the closers. The closers have 50 dials that they're supposed to make every day off of leads that have come in through PPC or prior code call leads have been passed off to them. In addition to that, we're getting about 10 to 15 leads inbound each day from ppc, whether it be Facebook, Google, or YouTube that they have to answer on the spot. So that's kind of how that's set up.
Mike:So when the lead first comes in, it's going to a closer. First it's not going.
Naaman :a closer if it's ppc, because if we can do a one call close, let's do that. Let get them on the phone talking to the person that can contract them. But if they come in from a cold calling then they'll cold call from a cold caller to a follow up specialist to a closer. Cause that's a different lead. We wanna manage that lead a little differently. If it's just inbound, you're talking to somebody that's gonna contract you immediately.
Mike:Yeah. Say that again. Cause I think that's really a really important distinction that people don't make the differentiation on of how you treat those cold call leads, outbound leads, different than those inbound leads.
Naaman :Yeah. The way we market and the marketing cold call is outbound. PPC is inbound. So the cold-call leads are getting passed through to get qualified. So they're getting qualified from the cold caller. The main thing that they need to answer is, do you wanna sell? Yes. So then we will get passed over to a follow-up specialist to determine does this property fit? Is it within a certain number of how much we wanna pay for a property? And do they actually really want to sell? And are they qualified to sell the property? If yes, then they get passed along. If no, they get piled and put on a follow up. With an inbound lead, they fill out a form within five seconds of that form hitting our CRM. They're being dialed so they don't fill out no more forms and then we talk to them on the phone about selling their property.
Mike:That is key. When they're doing ppc, if you don't call, they're on the next.
Naaman :There's no loyalty in this game. So this is what happens all the time. People go online they Google how to sell my house fast. My a will pop up. Or someone else's ad will pop up, they'll fill out the form and then nothing happens. And they're right. Okay, fill out another form. So fill out another form. And they hit enter and then nothing happens. And so now they're just like, they five forms in. You wonder why you gotta compete with so many people. Cause your speed to calling back that lead is just awful. As soon as that thing goes, Bing, man, I'm on it. They like, wow, that was fast. They go, Hey, we try to be efficient here. So you have five to 10 minutes so I can talk to you about your property
Mike:It's true though, man. I was doing this earlier. I had a property that my normal insurance broker wasn't able to cover. So I had to just go in, look on Google for other options, cause my normal people couldn't cover it. And guess what? I called the first guy, didn't answer the phone. Guess what I did? Hung up. I didn't leave a voicemail. Called the next guy, didn't answer the phone. Hung up, called the next guy. If any of them answered the phone and said, we'll do the policy. I wasn't actually that sensitive on price today. I was like, I just need a policy. 2020 500. Don't really care. Just need it done by the end of the day. And like, that's our, that's the seller, right? They just want it done.
Naaman :Yeah, man, I've had people fill out that form and they're ready to sell. Write this second. And I'm like, whoa, okay, gimme one second here. Cause I'm taking'em through a sales process and they're like, we just wanna sell it. This is how much we want. And I'm like, oh no. Okay. I don't even gotta do all this. What's a good email to send this contract too?
Mike:So you guys running your own PPC or you're doing like those pay per lead type models.
Naaman :So we have an ad spin different companies. So they run the PPC for us and we just pay an ad spin like 10% of ad spin fee to them for running the ppc.
Mike:Got it. But it's your ppc. It's not like a paper lead.
Naaman :yeah, it's our thing. I do the paper lead thing with I speed to lead. And then we buy home fast. A couple different models, people that sell leads. Sure. But I like to just do the ad spin. It's cheaper cuz your cost per lead is gonna be like one a hundred. You're getting some junk in there, but when you get the good stuff, a hundred bucks versus like$400 for a Fort Worth lead
Mike:did you say you have multiple agencies that you're working with on that or just one?
Naaman :Multiple. Yeah, because we run'em on different platforms. Because someone's good at Facebook doesn't mean they're good at Google.
Mike:Got it. Got it. So you got like a Google guy, a Facebook guy, YouTube guy.
Naaman :the expert and how do we pay the expert to get us the leads that we need?
Mike:Talk a little bit about YouTube. You're the first person who's truly brought that up. I know a couple people have used it for remarketing, have talked about it, but no one's really said it's a real lead source for them. So it'd be interesting to hear about.
Naaman :Dude, it's hilarious. YouTube is the third largest search engine in the world behind Google and Google images people. YouTube, how to sell my house fast, and then what happens? An ad pops up. People watch TV on YouTube. Now people go to the news for YouTube now people go to, how do I stuff for YouTube now? So all the time you gotta watch those ads. You gotta at least wait five seconds to skip the ad, yes or no. So if you're watching and streaming all these videos, ads are being popped up. If you need either already been retargeted or you typed in how to do this, and so the ad pops up and the lead comes in. I've had so many people be like, yeah, I was just on YouTube looking up this and I filled out your form. And I'm like, boom, YouTube baby. She's like, yeah, I watch all my news on YouTube. So it's a great search engine for people and I get a lot of really quality leads from it.
Mike:Interesting. Yeah, it seems like it's not a crowded space as much either. Like some of the other, I know PVCs got a lot of competition, but I don't hear many people talking about YouTube,
Naaman :Yeah, quick plug here. My boys over at Lead Zoho, they're the ones that I use and they're freaking awesome. I love working with those guys. They're amazing. So shout out Lead Zoho. They're the YouTube killers.
Mike:Talk about Facebook. Cause a lot of people tried that. We've tried it with not that much success. And then I know other people who've tried it with a fair amount of success. do you have a different approach than other people? Or is it just the fact that you get back to people right away?
Naaman :yeah. I just understand what it takes to close a deal. So we're really good at our sales process. It's a numbers game, numbers is the language of business. So I know that it takes me this many Facebook leads to get a deal. So I understand how much money it takes me to market on Facebook to actually convert to a deal versus like, oh, I spent two grand on Facebook and nothing really happened. Our Facebook cost per lead is like$20. So 20 bucks versus Google's like 120, so you gotta understand it's gonna be a cheaper lead, but it's just gonna take more leads to convert to a contract. So we've had success with it, but you have to understand know your numbers so that way you can make your budget make sense? That's how you build a predictable, scalable business. Hey, I understand it's$20 a lead, so I need to spend this many thousand dollars to get this many leads because this many leads gets me this many contracts.
Mike:For you, what are those kind of numbers across those platforms? Facebook, YouTube, Google, ppc.
Naaman :I don't know how many contracts it is exactly off the top of my head, but our number per lead is like 20. So we spend about$4,000. So that gave us a 200 leads per month. So it's not nearly as bad as like cold calling. Cold calling is one out of 50, 60, 70 leads to try and get a deal, right? If you're really good those are real numbers. If you're really good, if you're not so good, it's gonna be like a hundred. people educate themselves but they don't have a real business to understand these numbers. They like, they heard someone else say it. So that's what they say. It's actually a lot more for cold calling. Facebook we're probably getting like one out of 35, we're kind of, cuz there's a lot of junk in there.
Mike:Yeah. You use lead forms, you get a lot of junk. Yeah.
Naaman :Especially on Facebook, so the quality of lead is much lower. But one of my friends is really killing it. My man's Sterling. I feel like he gets like one out of 10 on Facebook. He's always posting this. I don't know. He runs his own ads, so I think he just has a better way of doing it. But for us, we got a lot of rural stuff on Facebook. That's a lot of what we get. Cause the people that are on Facebook filling out the forms are just usually a little more uneducated and older. So they live out in the middle of nowhere in the country. Versus Google. I feel like the person that's Googling this is a little more sophisticated so that's why that lead is a little bit better. We're getting about 200 leads and I'd say maybe like five or six of those turn into contracts. And then probably half of those close
Mike:Yeah. So you're 200 leads a month from Facebook alone, or that's across the inbound channel.
Naaman :That was Facebook. When people put a marketing budget aside. So the most we ever spent on marketing in a month was like 25 grand. And we just, you know, we depicted it between Facebook, Google, skip tracing, and YouTube. Right? So between those four, we just took our 25 grand and divvied it up and then watched basically a five-way split test on which ones performed the best.
Mike:Yep. So you said you're at one in 20 for Google PPC and one in 35 for Facebook leads to a contract
Naaman :Yeah. About that. It might be like 18 or something like that, but yeah, 20 basically. A lot of people say they're one in 10 and one in seven and all that. And I'm like, come on man, you guys are killing, you guys are killing it.
Mike:It's not bad. I mean, one in 35 on Facebook. If they're 20 bucks a pop, that's, that's phenomenal.
Naaman :Yeah, your cost per lead's gonna be way down. So if you're looking to have a cheaper budget, Facebook works for you. Some of my friends, they just wanna make 10 grand a month wholesaling. So like that's good. They're just gonna do Facebook and it's cheap and they can take their time and they can nurture their leads. And some of my friends wanna do 200 a month, so I'm like, dude Facebook ain't for you. You need to be on YouTube and Google and local.
Mike:And then that's also nationwide. Everything is nationwide
Naaman :Yeah. Your cost per lead is gonna be lower. This is something I learned from just running these ads with different agencies, your cost per lead is just gonna be way lower if you run it nationwide. Model versus local. That's why you can buy the lead. If it's like just one lead at a time, it's gonna be 400 bucks and that's normal. Cause if you were just running it locally, your cost per leave would be probably like$300, to be honest with you.
Mike:Yeah. You're trying to pet it into a narrower box. So they bid you up
Naaman :Cause you're competing with everything else that's local.
Mike:And then YouTube. What are you guys seeing as conversion rates on YouTube?
Naaman :Similar to Google. YouTube, it seems like the houses have higher ARVs than on Google for some reason. I get more California, I get more like West deals than I do with Google.
Mike:Really? Wonder why. It's
Naaman :I have no idea. This is just for me, looking at hundreds of leads, and I'm like, what on Google? I barely get anything in California on YouTube, man. I'm like, man, every like 10th deal is in California I didn't even want to do deals in California and I gotta call these people and I'm like, can I get some more Texas leads?
Mike:Hey, if they're working out and you're making money on them, is it that bad?
Naaman :No, I get it. I'm here for it, but I'd rather be able to flip the house.
Mike:So what's your goal for all the sections of your business this year?
Naaman :You know, I had these goals that I wrote down at the beginning of the year and I don't know if they're going to be more or less just cause we've restructured, we decided we wanted to flip more houses in the last, like three weeks. So I probably need to sit down and rewrite some of these goals out. We had a whole plan to just wholesale and do some flips. And then as the market changed, like any other business owner that's doing this, we're like, Hey, like we're not gonna be able to wholesale 25 deals a month like we thought we were. So we probably should flip some houses or keep some of these. I don't know what to answer your question I don't know. And I don't really like making like super long term goals in this industry because, except for when we buy houses, like, I wanna buy probably like 10, 15 houses this year, at least. like minimal. But as far as like flips I just loosely say 50, and for wholesale, I dunno, we're just gonna wholesale anything. We don't want to keep.
Mike:Right. Yeah. And you said the market shift made you choose to flip more. Could you just elaborate on that a little more?
Naaman :Yeah, people stopped buying all the wholesale deals at the prices that we have at, so even some of the deals that we were wholesaling, we were getting kind of squeezed on assignments. Just cause ARVs went down a little bit and some people were just backed off and, stop buying complete, like the hedge fund, they just don't buy any houses right now. So I'm like or they want'em at 75%. I'm like, I'll just flip it. I would also buy it at 75%. Thanks. So I looked at the deals and I'm like, there's always retail buyers, always, there's always gonna be retail buyers as long as we're doing deals in places where people want houses, like it's not gonna stop. So we just narrowed it down and picked a few markets that we wanna flip in. So that we could still keep our volume rolling, right? And just do deals in places where people actually want houses.
Mike:Yeah. For. What else have you changed in your business with the market shift of the last, let's call it six, seven months?
Naaman :I was in the Army for 13 years, so we went from like an army of people to just like some ninjas. Because I started training really hard with my people because I didn't need to play a volume game. I needed to get better, so it was like, before it just calls me people as possible. Cause we can just sell all these deals. Well, that's not the case right now. You can call all people you want, some people just ain't selling right now cause they can't afford to buy on their house. The rates keep people outta houses, whatever. So you need to be more strategic about who you're calling. I really put my focus on training my sales team. They're just stealing and slow motion and slice and dice these deals apart., that changed for me. I just really leaned into more leadership and training in the last four months instead of more just like, how can we onboard? How can we get more data? More robust? It's like, no let's get more focused. Trim the fat. And that's across the board. That's across the board. I was just in Nashville I'm in boardroom mastermind and all the wholesalers and house flippers are saying the same thing. So I was like, okay, cool. It isn't just me That's like, let's freaking tighten this up some. Let's trim the fat. Let's figure out who the losers are. Let's keep the winners. It wasn't just me. So I was excited to hear everybody else saying the same thing. Cause I was like, is kinda rough.
Mike:Yeah. It's tough to run a 20, 25 person wholesaling operation in a market like this. It doesn't, pencil just doesn't work,
Naaman :Nope. So yeah that's what I've done. I want more closers and how can I make them just like way better where they can, they're just an extension of myself instead of let me just get'em through some training and make em pretty good enough to close some deals. And some guys are gonna be really good and some guys will be all right, how can I get really good people that are gonna smash the phones, get multiple contracts, overcome every single objection have the objections tattooed to their biceps to where they just know every time what they're gonna say. They just look right at me. I already know what to say. They just know what to say every single time, so that's my goal right now, is just to get all my closures just on the same page saying the same stuff.
Mike:yeah. Are you in office in Texas or are you guys all virtual as a team as well?
Naaman :Everybody's virtual. So I used to live in Lotton, Oklahoma two months ago. So when I moved, in this house, I don't even have my office is kind of set up, I just got a desk that I wanted yesterday is one of these ones that like, raises up. I'm still working on this house office thing. So before we start signing leases and getting people in house, I'm like let me settle into Fort Worth and get my name known a little bit more. So that we start having some more overhead to start making it actually makes sense. Instead of just jumping in, like, give me an office. Everybody needs to be in here. We train on Zoom every morning for two hours and then get to it.
Mike:yeah. Talk a little bit about sales management and getting those guys to the next level. I know you do the morning trainings, but what else are you doing from a sales management perspective to drive.
Naaman :Yeah. It's it's really difficult, especially when you're not in person. The in-person model works great and that's where we're gonna go. That's a hundred percent where we're gonna go. But in the meantime, the way you keep people motivated virtually we have a company lounge where we share wins inside of like a Google chat. So, we'll go in there and we'll, hey, got a contract. Like today when someone gets a contract, we'll put in the company lounge and then we just drive fire emojis like crazy and that thing. Some way to feel fired up where guys have like a gong or spin the wheel or whatever. It's hard to do that virtually so everybody can still feel fired up. You feel a lot like work when you're just sitting here by yourself. So we, we do stuff like that. We've taken some classes on how to manage people virtually really well. A couple different people. Cuz you know, coming from like mid-level management in the Army, I wasn't able to hire people and fire people. So I was good at mid-level management, but onboarding and then offboarding, I had no idea. People giving me a soldier, I gotta keep this dude. I can't fire him. I didn't hire him either. They just gave me this kid Hey, this is your new kid. I'm like, all right. And I was once that new kid just getting put in a place and then you can't fire anybody. So, I've only been out of the army, by the way, for like six months, it's been a cool transition, learning how to onboard and fire folks and stuff correctly. Cause before I didn't onboard people at all. Hey, that dude's a hustler. He can work with us. And like, yeah, you wanna be on the phones? That is not how to do this dude. But we did it and we got some success with that, but it's not the right way to do things.
Mike:You mentioned some courses about learning to manage people virtually. Is it real estate specific or just kind of general?
Naaman :No. I took a two day course from friends of mine that are also in boardroom, TIFF and Josh High out of Columbus. We flew in and took their two day workshop. And it's badass dude. I love their, I can't recommend it enough. So if you're looking to figure out how to hire, fire, manage people and you don't have like a lot of experience, that is a great two day workshop to go to in Columbus, Ohio with some of my friends up there.
Mike:Yeah. You're like the fourth person who's told me that. That's a great thing.
Naaman :I love that. I'm from Cleveland originally, so, finally Columbus. I was like, sweet, let's talk to'em, Ohio folks. It's all good.
Mike:That's awesome, man. I know we're getting close to time here, but one thing I think you wanted to touch on and I should have brought this up earlier, is how family life has played into your role as a real estate investor. Do you wanna talk about that a little bit? Cause it's not a topic that people talk.
Naaman :I love sharing this part because it means a lot to me. A lot of people are gonna make a lot of money. We all figured out how to get financial freedom and it's not always the easiest ride, but we still know we're going the right way. So it's inevitable that we're gonna be seven figure earners, eight figure earners. That's what I, that's how I like to start this out. But if you ask yourself, are you an eight figure father? Are you an eight figure husband? Are you an eight figure friend? When people talk about you after you leave the room do they talk about you in an eight figure manner, or you just worth a dollar to people? Don't take it for granted. The people that are in your life because, it's so much more to business than just making money. I love their relationships. I love over-delivering the people, and I love sharing that message of being, the eight figure father and husband.
Mike:Yeah. Is there anything that you do on a daily or weekly basis to keep in that mindset or to make sure that you continue?
Naaman :Yeah. For instance, a podcast here. Not that I took any time away from my family, but I go, okay, I just kicked it with Mike for an hour. I needed to go hang out with my wife now, or I'll work really hard till 8:00 PM and I'm tired and I go, No, you're not. You don't give them the rest of you. You give them the best of you. So don't just come out here and be like, oh, I'm kind of tired. It's nine o'clock. Yesterday I worked till after eight and then my wife was sitting out there at the baby. I'm like, Hey, let's go out, get some food and do something. Let's go do something. Instead of just like me, be tired here on the couch. And boom, we had a little date night and we hung out and we came back and it was all good. I like making sure that I do that type of stuff. I was ask myself, how can I be a better dad today? How can I be a better husband today? Not just how can I make more money today?
Mike:Well man, so I know we're almost outta time here, but always two questions that we have at the end. First one's kind, fun. What is the craziest or most uncomfortable situation that you have ever experienced with the seller?
Naaman :Oh dude, it was my first deal. What's funny is my first deal I bought from a wholesaler. I was just, it was a wholetale deal, so I bought it from not my first bird deal. What I thought was gonna be my first investor deal as a wholesaler. I bought it from a wholesaler and I saw the margins on it. I was like, man, this guy's got this thing marked down. I can just buy this and list it. So I bought it from him and I borrowed the money and I listed it and the guy had a lease back in the house and he decided we had a$5,000 hold on his cash and he just didn't leave. I collected all$5,000 and he still wouldn't leave. So I was trying to get this guy out of the property and I'm like, Hey man, you sold the house. He's like, my sister sold it. I didn't agree. He's got all these, like, won't leave my house. And I'm like dude, and nobody will buy it because he said they're going over there and he's like, I ain't leaving. So I'm just eating the private money costs, cause I borrowed on like a daily basis cause I'm like thinking I'm gonna hold this house for a week. So I'm holding this thing for on month three, I gotta get rid of this house. And I had already taken all$5,000 of his money. So finally I found a buyer. But he was like, he starts to be delivered vacant. So I was like, I gotta get out of this house. So I called that guy and he's like a real tough guy the whole time. He just started crying and then breaking down with me. And I ended up giving that dude$2,000 of his money back just to get him going. Cause I don't think he got any money from the sale. And so I gave him like two G's back and I made like two G's, or the only money I made was a three grand from the holdback on the property because he got, he was in worse condition when he finally got out of there. I got rid of this property. My private money lender made more money on the deal than me, but he was crying and sobbing and weeping. I felt so bad for this dude, and I just needed to get outta the money. I just gave him two grand of his money back and got the deal done and I was like, man, this is crazy.
Mike:crazy. Well, at least you didn't lose money, right? So final question is if you could go back in time and talk to yourself when you were looking for your first deal, knowing what you know now, what would you tell yourself if you could tell yourself one thing?
Naaman :Keep paying that a hundred dollars to people. I had a crazy story being in the army and like being in Germany. I probably could have called a lot more people and people would've helped me just because of my situation and where I was at. How cool would I'm helping this guy in Germany buy houses, people wanna do cool stuff like that. But I didn't know that at the time. I would say that. And then just buy more houses in 2020. Continue to educate yourself and don't be in such a rush.
Mike:Cool. Well. If people wanna reach out to you, if they have questions or maybe they want JV a deal with you, how can they go about doing that?
Naaman :Yeah. At Naman Taylor. Investor on Instagram. And then you can go to my website, the naman taylor.com. Just get in touch and we can talk about doing JVs. Anything you need, man I love helping people. So whatever you need, you can book a free call with me. 30 minutes. We can just talk over what it is that you need. I'll do that all the time with people just to give. So anybody wanna book a free call, just go in there send me a dm. It'll send you an auto message. You can book a free call with us.
Mike:Sweet. Awesome man. Well, thanks for being on the show. It was great.
Naaman :Absolutely, Mike. Thank you brother.