All right, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Game Changers show. I'm your host, Mike McKay, based in the Jacksonville, Florida market. And each and every week we host the show with people who are changing the game of real estate all over the country. Anyone who is in the Jacksonville market or thinking about getting into it, feel free to reach out to us, if you need help on anything we also still are a very active buyer in the Jacksonville market looking for deals. So feel free to send any of those our way as well. So this week on the show we have another local Jacksonville guy, Trevor Augustus. So Trevor, welcome to the show.
Trevor:Hey, thanks for having me.
Mike:For sure, man. So for the people who don't know you can you tell us, how you got started in the real estate business and then kind of how that led you to where today?
Trevor:Yeah, definitely. Before I started real estate. I think it's important to say this I had a crazy kind of upbringing where I got in a lot of trouble as a kid from probably the age of like 12 and on I got in a lot of trouble. I was in a lot of little juvenile Detention centers and halfway houses and kind of a rough go of it. Trying to find my place in this world. And I'd say I was around 18, 19 years old. When I kind of had a chance to start over. I dropped out of high school in 11th grade, I was living with people I shouldn't have been living with selling stuff I shouldn't have been selling, getting in trouble, all that kind of stuff. And then when I was around 18, 19, I had a chance to move back in with my mom. And just kind of start over. And, I went up and got a job at the orange park mall, started working there for a little while and I was doing good and it was about six months into it that my new stepdad at the time mentioned, that he had a friend who was hiring and I was like, okay, well, what's he do? What is it? He's like, you know what? I don't really know what he does. But it's something to do with real estate and this guy's a millionaire. And so I was like, all right, yeah, cool. I'm in. And he's like, all right go in for a interview. And so I went to this place here in Mandarin for an interview. It turned out to be the office of Ron LeGrand and this was his business partner, Ray Rock, who is not as famous, but he helped Ron start his infomercial business with the educational content and stuff. And so I went in and I applied and I found out it was a telemarketer job. He had like a, get rich with no money down infomercial on TV. And I was like a telemarketer just reading a script, answering the questions and selling this 50 course with a book and like some tapes. And I'm 18. I literally know nothing about what I'm even selling. And then I think I was there for a few months when this lady sent me a fruit basket and she said, thank you. We just made 70, 000 from that course you sold us. And I was just like, what the heck is going on here? This is so weird. And so I weaseled my way in to one of his bootcamp seminars that cost a few grand where you actually learn in a classroom setting, so yeah, that's how I got into this. I started working for him. I went to the seminar. I did not know what they were talking about. It was a five day seminar and it was all about like mostly creative financing. It was like subject to stuff, lease options. Get the deed. And I really did not know what they were talking about, but I did notice one thing I noticed that everyone who went up there, this was like 1998, 1999, late nineties. I noticed that everyone that got up and told their story about success, they all started the exact same way. They'd say like, well, I put out the signs. And then they'd say how many deals they were doing. And so I left that seminar after five days. And the only thing I knew is I had to get these signs. And so like, ordered the buyers and just put them. And so that's literally how I got started. And then just taking those calls and then I was able to do my first deal from there. So that's the introduction I had into real estate when I was literally 18 years old.
Mike:Yeah, and then you started putting out signs. You got your first deal. Did you keep putting out signs or what happened next?
Trevor:So super interesting. I was getting those calls, getting those deals. There was a teacher who taught one of the bootcamps for Ron LeGrand. He goes by the name willpower. Some people know him. He was running a yellow page ads in the phone book and he was getting tons of leads and he had a bunch of leads he didn't want cause he didn't want to go in the hoods and stuff like that. He only wanted pretty houses. Nice houses, nice neighborhoods. And so I actually bought a stack of his old leads off him, a big old stack for a grand, I think it was. And I started calling them and that's actually where I got my first deal was his discarded leads. And basically it was this lady over off Commonwealth. She had gotten married. They moved in with the husband's house. Her house was a piece of crap off McDuffin commonwealth. And they had tried to sell it. They couldn't sell it. It was two or three payments behind. And I just asked. There was kind of that magic question when you're trying to get a deal subject to, the existing mortgage was like, will you sell the house for what you owe? And she just said, yes, why don't you come over and tell me more about it. And so I went over to their house and I'll never forget. It was like eight 30 at night. Cause they got off work late. I'm like 18. I'm wearing like an Adidas hoodie. And I go in their house and they got like all these little kids and I'm sitting on their couch and their kids are literally like climbing on my back. They're hanging on me and I'm like playing with these little toddlers. And I brought in the course, the manual, the three ring binder, I brought it in case they ask questions. And so like, they were asking me questions and I would literally flip to the answer. What was cool is they thought it was professional. Cause they thought it was our company manual. And so I'm like, yeah, I'm kind of new. Are you familiar with Ron Legrand? So he's funny, but he's like brash, kind of the way he talks is very matter of fact, very brash. And so, the question was basically, well, what happens if you don't make our payments? Or something like that. And so I'd have to turn the page. It was like, he literally had the objection. What happens if you don't make our payments? And his answer was, well, who's making your payments now? And the answer was like, nobody. And their answer was nobody. So like, they looked at each other and they were just like. Yeah, I guess he's got a point, you know, and they signed the deed and they gave me their freaking house And that was the first deal.
Mike:Wow.
Trevor:That was my first deal I got the deal subject to I took over their loan And then I couldn't sell it. I actually moved into it with a friend of mine. But we were 18 year old kids and we moved into a house, our own house for a 400 payment. And so it was kind of awesome.
Mike:Yeah. So did you focus a lot on creative finance after that, or what was next for you?
Trevor:Not really. I would do a couple deals and like I really didn't stay consistent with it. For those first few years. I started going on the road with him where I was kind of like his back of the room sales guy selling his boot camps and stuff. And I made pretty good money doing that. So I would travel with him and I started DJing. I used to DJ like raves and stuff. And I would throw parties and concerts and stuff. So I really would do like one or two deals a year. And then when I like really needed money, I would like always go back and crunch down and do a deal, but then I'd take it for granted and forget about real estate for a year or two. So probably in those first five, six years, I maybe did five or 10 deals. So the market reached its peak in like 2005 And then while I was working the seminars, I met a guy who was doing short sales. And that's when those became hot. So for about three years straight, I was putting out signs saying, sell your house in nine days, where I was by someone's house and I would have them deed me their house that needed a short sale. And I would spend six, nine, 12 months negotiating the short sale. And then once I got the short sale at a price I wanted, I just put it back on the market, sell it, take the profit. And I did literally like two or 300 of those. From like seven, Oh, eight to like 2012, I was doing 30, 40, 50 a year of those specifically, and then I would say around 2012, I was on the radar for like the banks and they really put a crack down on, letting me buy those short sales. They started saying I couldn't resell it for like a year. I don't, they wanted me to sign papers that I wouldn't resell it. And so I kind of got out of that again, and then I got into internet marketing. Just trying to pay the bills, working in SEO, working with friends in the information marketing business. And in that time when that short sale stuff had stopped working, I actually went back and got in trouble again for selling weed. And that was like super scary because it was in Louisiana and I was facing 30 years in prison. And it was super sketchy. And so I spent three to five years fighting that case and getting through. My plea bargain was house arrest and I got through it and all that. And then I would say around 2015 is when I got back into real estate full time. This time, and I've been full time, I would say eight, nine years since that. This has been my best streak of like sticking with the business and really taking it serious. And I've got kids now, live in the suburbs and turn my life around.
Mike:And I know, like, you've kind of different strategy than a lot of people in the business. Did you kind of start with that idea in mind that he wanted to not work that many hours a week and focus on like SEO? Or did that come at a later point?
Trevor:well, I was in that business of like the guys who teach flipping houses, like the guru business the information marketing business. I was in that world I'd met a lot of people with Ron the grand, in the seminar business. So I knew a lot of teachers who were teaching real estate. And so that's how I met the guy who taught me the short sale stuff. He started the short sale service and I never really went into it, like trying not to work much. And any key to success I've had is because I just started so young. I kind of just followed the courses and I didn't really care what happened. I didn't expect anything to happen. I would literally read the script. I mean, you heard me say, I brought this stupid manual into people's houses. And I think because I started so young and kind of naive, and just like, I didn't know what I didn't know. So I just follow the course. I would just follow these courses. And so I've ended up with all these educational courses on how to wholesale, how to take subject to houses. I would say since 2015 I've really gained the experience of being a real cash buyer of closing deals, taking down deals, renovating deals. And in a way it's kind of made me lazier where that's all I want to do. If it doesn't fit that box, then I'll kind of not do it. And the reason why I'm able to not work very much right now is because this year has just been slower. My lead flow slowed. I haven't been able to get as many good deals this year. And so I'd rather not lose money than take a risk. So this year I've just been coasting because I was able to pay off my house and buy my kids mom a house and I've got You know, some private lending stuff going IRAs and solo 401ks. And I was able to do really good from 2015. I really rode that wave up to 2022, let's say. And now with the rates jumping up in the market, kind of going slower, it's not like it's bad or anything, but deals have really slowed down for me this year. And I've just really taken the opportunity to spend all the extra time with my kids, not for stuff and just enjoy life. I've started writing a book. I'm kind of like thinking about starting some other businesses. I'm like, what else could I do? I'm still buying houses. I bought a house last week and I'm renovating it. I went and made an offer yesterday and they want to sell. So I'm still doing, Let's say a deal a month, let's say, but I'm used to doing four of a month. And so it's a big slowdown for me.
Mike:Yeah. But even before everything kind of changed with the market, I mean, you still weren't working 40, 60 hours a week.
Trevor:No, I wasn't. And a lot of that stuff was JV stuff. So I did probably, I don't know how many deals, we both know Kyle Pascoe X he's the man here in Jacksonville. And so I did a lot of JV partnerships with him where I would basically do the acquisition, he would handle the renovation in the cell. And so all I had to do was show up, get the deal. Lock it up, hand it off and then wait for my check. And so a lot of the deals I did like that. And when I was even doing my own renovations. I've got two crews now where I just completely trust the guys. To run it, it's got to pass inspection. If it doesn't pass inspection, you guys fix it. And so I'm definitely pretty lazy, honestly. I'm really pretty lazy and I try to use that as my advantage. One thing I tell myself is it makes me feel good about being lazy is have you heard the story about the lion? Like in the mouse walks by like a lion, will not chase a mouse, a lion sleeps all day a lot of people say, Oh, I want to be a hustler grinder. I'm a lion in business. I'm a beast, all this stuff. A lion sleeps most of the day. And they'll really only go chase something. If it's a big game, a mouse can literally walk right in front of a lion's face. It's not worth the calories that he's going to exert to chase this little mouse. It's not going to fill them up. And so I really like to operate like that. If it's not a home run deal or an easy deal, I don't mind doing singles little small deals, but it's gotta be easy. Carpet paint, quick flip. If it's not like kind of a no brainer. I'd really just rather not do it. And so I really have been able to only do stuff that fits my skill set. And I've learned the hard way that I'm just not good at picking out lights and paint colors and doing any of the handyman work. I'm not going to do it very good at all. So it's just my skill is in marketing and acquisitions and that's pretty much it. I try to let other people do the rest.
Mike:Yeah. So I guess the question that comes up a lot in real estate is how do you find two crews like that, that you can just trust to handle the whole renovation for you?
Trevor:So I don't know if this is a coincidence, but they're both military veterans. And so there's definitely a strong like character and honor, in these guys now, I'm not saying the military doesn't have guys that. You know have bad character or anything like that But, they happen to both be that and I would say like how i've done it with both of them I've done it the exact same. I usually start with one specific job first. It might be like, change out all the wood on this porch or Report the slab on this thing or change out the kitchen cabinets. I'm gonna give them a job where the labor on it's less than 1, 500 bucks. So do that first and then okay, cool, That was cool. Now, let me see you do the drywall I'll give you another four grand if you do the drywall and change out the fireplace and like we started with probably three to five jobs In this like thousand, 2000, 3000. And then I slowly built up, and then once we did a couple houses like that, then it's like, okay, yeah, this one's gonna be 40 grand and I'm not giving them 40 grand upfront. I might give them 10 to order materials. And then I like to do things in thirds, instead of like half and half. Most contractors want like half upfront, but you can lose a lot given someone half upfront. That's enough for them to walk away and be happy ripping you off. They'll happily steal your 50%. So to me, that's too much. Like I'd rather just give them like 25% down and then I want to see a good amount of the works done and then we'll give them another 25% or a third. I do a lot of thirds So it's like show me you've done a third of the work Or even a half of the work once you've done half the work Then i'll give you the second third and then i'm paying as needed like I know the guys we trust each other At first i'm always going to hold something back Like even if you know them you trust them. You just never want to write a check that like It's going to kill you to lose. So start small.
Mike:Yeah, that's good advice. Starting people on a small job, a little bit bigger because you lower your risk a lot with that and you get to see how they work.
Trevor:And they get to see how you work. So they get to see, do you pay fast? Are you easy to work with? Are you highly critical? Do you hold them accountable? What's your personality? Do you guys text each other? Do they not show up? Are they a week late? It's like a dating period and we're going to date with a bunch of 500, 1, 500 jobs. For at least three to five jobs like that before we're rocking and rolling. And by then, like I know their families and been to their houses. And I just was the real estate agent and I helped my contractor buy a house this year. So it's definitely building the relationship from there but you pitch it to them like that. You want to make sure I'm good to work with too, that I'm actually going to pay you and pay you fast. Cause they're worried about you as much as you're worried about them. If they're good.
Mike:Yeah. And I guess, how did you find those guys initially?
Trevor:So the first one it's one of those apps and I don't remember the name of the app right now, I think it was thumbtack. I actually think it was something that so the first one I found on thumbtack The second one was so my neighbor was renovating his house. He bought a house two doors down for me He was renovating. I went up and asked him. Hey, man, do you renovate houses for a living? He's like, no, I'm just a homeowner. He had just bought the house. So I hadn't met him yet. He's like, but I did meet this guy. I was selling my tools recently. And he said, he just moved here. He's a contractor from New York, bought a bunch of tools for me. He's like, I never met this guy before, but he seemed like a good guy. You're welcome to try them out. And I actually tried him out and he's a military guy too. He contracts for the Navy. Does contracting on the side. He's got his crew, he's got his family working for him. And so, one of them was thumbtack and the other one was a referral from a neighbor, but it was like not a solid referral. I definitely had to test the relationship, but give them a tile job, give them a bathroom, have them change out a vanity. Don't give them everything at once, start small, learn each other and build up that trust. Just like dating.
Mike:Yeah, for sure. And then, with the amount of hours that you were working before, even just doing acquisitions, I mean, four to five deals a month is very solid. How many hours a week for people who don't know, where would you say you were working when you were doing four or five deals a month?
Trevor:Maybe four or five hours a day, I guess, for five days a week. So maybe 25, 30 at the most. And it's really just taking the calls and then going to the appointments that sound good. So I do a lot of prequalifying on the phone to make sure that I'm only going to go to a deal. That I have a high likelihood of signing up, meaning I'm going to give them a ballpark price of where I think I'm going to be. I'm going to make sure that we're at least on the same planet. And I literally say it like that to them, Hey, let me look this up. Let me see what I think my ballpark ranges, I'll tell you what that is. And if you think we're on the same planet, then I'll come out and I'll give you an exact offer. And if you like it, great. We can write it up. If not, no hard feelings. I'll leave his friends and I'll point you in the right direction of someone else, but I'm really only going to houses if we're on the same planet with that ballpark price. And so I do a lot of that, like pre screening on the phone. And I was only taking inbound leads. So like all my leads are either SEO. Or I stopped PPC two years ago, but before that it was PPC and PPC I can close to two out of 10 and my organic SEO. I closed like one out of three. So I really don't have to talk to too many people to get deals.
Mike:Yeah, for sure. And what else do you do to prequalify people besides that ballpark range?
Trevor:I've got a property information sheet and the property information sheet, it's just a guideline like the main thing is I just want to talk to the seller I try to talk to them as long as possible. My goal is to talk to each person about 20 to 30 minutes And so we can talk about anything they want to talk about and then I've just got the property information sheet in front of me So I know I can kind of hit the points as we're going I don't want to sound robotic like what's the address of your property? What's the city and state? Why are you selling? How much do you think it's worth? What do you owe? I want it to be like a naturally flowing conversation where I'm sliding that stuff in there at the natural points where at the bottom it says, does it have a pool? If they're telling me it has a pool early on, I'm going to check that off. I'm going to jump down to the bottom. So I'm always jumping around the page and I've just got a few questions on here about like if you had the house of praise, what do you think it'd be worth? And then I always like to ask him, like, how'd you come up with that number and just figure out, like, where are they getting their values from? Are they getting their value from Zillow? Because that could be ammo for you. Zillow could be really low sometimes. And then you could say, okay what's your asking price? If I were to pay all cash and close quickly is that the best you could do? And then I'll always add on. So you're saying if I don't give you 200, 000, you won't sell the house and like really just go ahead and put it to them and start working it that way. But I'm working it in very naturally. I want them to talk as much. You know, you raised your kids there, that's awesome. I'm going to tell you that I'm raising my kids right now. Like, congratulations. Your kids are all grown up and out of the house. Like to me, that's a feather in your cap. It's hard raising kids. I can't imagine like the feeling of doing it. So congratulations, you actually did that. I'm going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about whatever they're talking about. And then, so what's it like, like now that they're gone is. I just want to downsize. Well, what's that mean? Is it just too much to clean? Are you lonely in the big house? I want to figure out like why and the more you talk to them about like Their personal situation and you're not just a robot like asking them, well, how much is your mortgage? And even that i'm going to say things oh, so you've owned the house for 20 years Have you paid it off yet? Or do you still have a mortgage? i'm going to say it in a way where it's with the flow of the conversation And so I'd say that's a big key is really working, having a property information sheet to work off of that keeps you focused and lets you get all the information you need, but that you're not glued to it and that you can let the conversation go wherever they want it to go, because the more they talk, especially about themselves and about their situation, the more they're going to trust you, the more they're going to open up. They'll even feel guilty at the end. Well, man, I've been talking the whole time. Tell me about yourself. Oh, well, you know, I bought four or 500 houses and I'd love to buy yours and whatever, but it's like the more you can get them talking, you can build that rapport, you can build that trust. The more likely you're going to close the deal. And you could solve their problem. You can learn like, okay, if this isn't a deal for me, maybe it's a listing you can think outside the box. Maybe you've got a friend or a partner or someone else might want it. I'm always getting texts from real estate agents. They're looking for off market stuff and try to line up stuff the best you can. So I really just go in trying to help the people as much as possible, trying to talk to them. I want to learn about their situation because the more I know, the more I kind of trust myself to like, Oh, okay, now I'm connecting the dots. This might work. And so I think that's probably like the main thing with talking to sellers.
Mike:I think you said one thing that's kind of unique there too, which is you try to spend 20 or 30 minutes on that call. Is there any like other reason behind that besides just kind of building that trust and getting the whole story?
Trevor:Yeah. You're just not going to get much if you're just talking like price and numbers. because the best deals in our business aren't really numbers based. Like if someone's just numbers based, give me an offer. How much can you pay? Our huge selling point is not that our offer is like the highest offer. So our huge selling point is the convenience and the solving of the problem and that and the taking the weight off their shoulders. And you really have to listen and let people talk before they're going to feel comfortable sharing that with you. Most people will start off with their guard up, and they may not even realize they've been telling themselves a lie that they're in a bad spot. I was at a house yesterday where the guy told me on the phone, you know, this is, I said, I don't know if I could buy your house is really nice neighborhood. I was like, I don't know if I could buy your house. I don't pay retail price. I usually buy fixer uppers foreclosures, stuff like that. He's like, well, this isn't a project house. This is a really nice house and all this stuff. I just. Keep talking. Let him talk. Let him talk. Ended up going over there, dude. The house needs 40 grand and work. And he's like, it's not a project house. It's like a beautiful house. And it's like, dude, your floors are completely shot. The whole house smells like cats. The cabinets are falling apart but in his mind, he was in the defensive to like, this isn't a fixer upper, he just didn't see it that way. But you have to keep talking to people before they're going to open up, they just don't open up right away. And so I really just try to not have an agenda. And I do try to stay on the phone up to 30 minutes is kind of my goal. When I'm talking to people, it's a weird goal. I know, but there's something about it where I'd feel like if I'm not in a hurry that I get so much more out of it. And at the very least, like you do get to connect with a human being. And this may sound corny, but like I work from home alone half the time. I don't mind talking to people. It like makes me feel good. I'll walk around the house and I'll be in a better mood after I talked to someone. And so I think it's the right way to handle it all the way around.
Mike:Yeah. And then I know you do a lot of SEO stuff, I actually remember when I came down to Jacksonville, I was like, just curious who's ranking for all those search terms, and I know you were up there, what made you decide to go that route versus all the other forms of marketing that people use?
Trevor:It was really by chance. So like when I had gotten out of real estate a little bit, from like 2012 to 2015, I was working with a couple of local internet marketers. They're kind of local legends in a way, Brian Hanson and Francis of Lola. They're two good friends of mine. And I just started working with them, cause I was looking for my next thing to do and I'd been out of real estate for a few years and they had a really good information marketing business. They were making websites for people. They were doing coaching on like how to get traffic and get leads and build your funnels and all that kind of stuff, which was new to me. But one of their clients ended up being real estate guru and they created this coaching program to help these people launch their websites and create the funnel to get leads from sellers. Well, they kind of handed the project off to me. And so, I kind of look, crash course learned, like, building these websites for people, setting up the pay per click. campaigns, making sure they were getting the leads. But what was crazy is all these people were brand new and they were buying like these expensive, like 20, 000 coaching packages, but they really did not know how to do deals. And they were all over the country and like other States where, I mean, I could do my best to try to help them, but I wasn't really that active in the business at the time. And plus I didn't live in Milwaukee or wherever they lived. And I just kind of had this epiphany. I was like, wait, now I know how to build websites. Now I know how to market and get leads. I've done hundreds of deals. I know how to do deals. I was like, I'm going to do this. And so I just kind of built the website, the JacksHomeOffer. com ran some pay per click to it, got some leads, and then I just started experimenting with like the SEO stuff that I was learning from Brian and Francis of just like doing blogs and doing press releases and then doing the the backlinks and all that kind of stuff. I just flooded it all to my site and this was 2015 and like over the next two, three years I was able to rank really good. And I was on the first page for a lot of the big terms. We buy houses Jacksonville and all that stuff. But to be honest with you around like 2019, 2020, it got extremely competitive. A lot of other local housebuyers here started doing SEO packages. With some big SEO companies and they shot right past me and I would say over the past year or two I've watched my Organic rankings slowly tank like they've been slowly dropping and I would say about six months ago I realized I was on like page three for a lot of terms that I used to be And the top five on. And so this year, since like my leads kind of slowed down, I've had more time. I've kicked it back into gear. I've hired bloggers. I've got some people doing backlinks for me and I'm watching the rankings and I'm actually coming back. So I'm like getting to the top of page two. I should be on page one on a lot of stuff probably in the next month or two. So it is one of those things that if you take it for granted, It's competitive. These guys will come take your launch money from you if you're not watching and you're not staying on top of it. And I did get a little lackadaisical but luckily I know how to bring it back. And that's what I've been focusing on for the past six months. So that's a lot of the reason why my lead flow went down this year.
Mike:And for people who don't know about SEO, why are backlinks important to moving up the ranking?
Trevor:It's all like mumbo jumbo to me, to be honest with you it's Google. So Google just has an algorithm for everything and they have like a weighted system for all the different inputs to determine what website they should show first. And so some of the things they're looking for are, the age of your site, does it have credibility and history? What did your reviews look like? And then one of the signals in their algorithm is like your trust factor, there's a term for it. I'm just going blank on it right now. But it basically the more websites are willing to refer their traffic to you, the more credible Google sees your website ads. Now obviously people game the system and they flood it with all these rinky dink websites that are just made up that don't mean anything, but Google's looking for like what's its domain authority. You can check like what websites have the highest domain authority. So if let's say NBC news does a story on you and they say Jack's home offer is the best local home buyer in Jacksonville and they run a story and they send NBC news traffic to your website. Google sees that as, okay, NBC says they're good. If someone wants to sell their house in Jacksonville, I should probably show that because Google wants to be seen as The best search engine. That's the only way they can still stay relevant is if people go on Google and they type in sell my house fast or how to tie a tie and they get a good answer quickly and Google watches all that stuff. So what Google will do is types in, I want to sell my house fast. And then they can send them to your website, but then they back off your website. They're like, ah, this isn't what I'm looking for. And they back off. You actually lose credibility. Google keeps track of all that. If someone's leaving your site and then they have to type it again, sell my house fast in Jacksonville, you're going to be noticed as someone who did not solve the problem. So they're going to be less likely to refer you for that term again. So that's why your site has to be easy to understand. And you want to have a quick capture. Where you can get their name, address, and at least make them feel like they've taken a good step towards solving their problem of selling their house fast. And if they'll stop searching, like if you'll call them real quick or you'll send them an automatic email back and they stopped searching for a while, Google keeps track of that. And they say, man, this guy solved that searcher's problem and so now you're earning trust points in google's mind and so The backlinks are just a way to like I don't want to say game the system But you're getting all these other people to give you social proof It's like if a girl sees you as mr. Popular She's like, oh that guy must be cool because you have a lot of friends and you're talking to people And so it's a lot like that.
Mike:Yeah. So, how do you go about building backlinks that are any strategies that people use?
Trevor:I mean the organic way is just to let's just to ask somebody If you can blog on their website for free. So let's just say you've got a, some kind of business where you do cabinets and I say, Hey Mike, how about I write a blog for you about how changing out your cabinets will make your house sell faster and I'll write this article for free. You can post it on your website. And all I ask is at the end of the article, it says, if you'd like to sell your house fast, click here. And then it'll send the traffic to my website. That's the most organic way to get a backlink and then you can scale that. And so obviously there's these huge teams of outsourcers and you can go on Fiverr and you can pay thousands and thousands of dollars for teams to reach out to people on your behalf. You can set up out outbound marketing campaigns. I mean, you could do it big. But to start from scratch, the most organic way is to just ask a local business. If you can write a blog for them and just put a link to your site, in exchange for writing that blog.
Mike:Yeah, and it sounds like you have outsourced. That's it's not you're not doing that on a day to day basis. You're not reaching out and trying to get to
Trevor:I do like to write kind of my own blogs and I'll do them on like Google business, like Google my business. They have like a little update section. They're trying to be like Facebook where you can literally post like an update. I'll try to do like a little thing on that just to show Google that I'm active and like, Hey, look at me. I'm still in business. Send me traffic. And then yeah, I do have a couple of bloggers and then they've built up their network of people that will let them post articles on other websites and they'll do the backlinks. And so you can pay 20 bucks, 100 bucks, 200 bucks, just depending on the domain authority. The big thing is to watch out because a lot of these, there's like white hat SEO, which is very clean, organic. They're real sites. And then there's like black hat or gray hat SEO, where you're kind of dealing with like these website farms where they've made a bunch of fake sites and then they just try to send each other traffic and game the system. You don't want a lot of that stuff. Although it really does work for a while, but eventually I think Google kind of catches onto it and you'll get penalized eventually, but there's just, it's a whole game of like quality versus quantity. And I choose to try to do more quality because I don't want to be in it for the long run. And I think I've built up a good, long history of good age on the website. The website's eight years old. I've got, not a ton, but 30 or 40, like five star really good reviews. And, that really helps with your Google Maps listing. So if you can get some good reviews. And you can put your address on the Google, my business website. I think that's the easiest, quickest way to get some SEO traffic. It's just to try to rank locally. When you hit map and you see like who's close to you for a business, that's probably the easiest one to get started with. If you're going to do blogging and like link building and stuff like that, backlinks, it can take, for me, six to 12 months to really see the fruits of that labor. I know there's people out there who can do it faster and I don't know how legit they are. That's kind of the game you're playing. And if you're trying to do a deal now, like tomorrow, SEO is not going to be your first strategy, but if you'd like to build a longterm asset, then SEO is, I think the best bang for your buck longterm. And people know the difference. So like if they type in, we buy houses Jacksonville, those first ones all say promotion or advertisement or whatever it says. People know those are like pay per click. People know that you paid to be there. You're not organically the best listing. Maybe I'm giving people too much credit. Obviously, a lot of people still click on the paper. Click listings because they do work. But I think a lot of people just scroll down past those three that are obviously ads. That's what they say. They say ads. And then, you know, after that, like Google's recommending what they feel are the best organic websites available. And so that's where you want to be. And I've noticed that when we get the leads from the organic, Just the conversion rate is through the roof. I don't have exact data on this, but for the most part it's 25 to 50% conversion rate. It's two to four leads a month. I'm getting one or two of those.
Mike:Yeah. Pretty good.
Trevor:Yeah. And that's how in the long run, if you don't want to work a lot, like that's how you don't work a lot and still do deals.
Mike:Yeah. And then for people who are to the stage, I guess, maybe they're ranking a little bit in generating those inbound leads. Do you have any tips around handling those leads when they come in? Besides what you've already covered?
Trevor:Well, so my website is a carrot website. I'm sure everybody's familiar with carrot websites. They're the most popular real estate investor platform you can get. So it's really just about having a step one, making it really easy, letting them type in their name, their phone number, and I think the address. So just get a few things first and that step one is done. At least you get that lead and then I have to set up, give me a second. I'll think of the app, the name of the app. You probably know it more than me, but like that gets emailed to me and it gets texted to me. Right away. So I have an app that automatically forwards those website leads and I get a text message and I literally stop what I'm doing and I call that lead. Like I call him in 30 seconds. They're usually filling out step two when I call him. You're like, Whoa, that was fast. I'll say, yeah, I'll say I'm the owner, I get the website leads routed right to my phone. If you don't mind, I'd love you to fill out step two. So I have, and I don't forget anything we talk about. But I wanted to call you quick and just make sure you didn't have a 911 situation. What's going on with your house? And I'll start talking to them right there. And I think having someone knowledgeable, that clearly has experience that can build that trust. Right away. At least for me, I haven't really tried it in any other way. So I'm not going to say one way is better than the other, but for me, since the SEO leads is not high volume, I want to take those leads. That's the highest and best use of my time because I don't want to be kicking myself if someone else messes it up. So a little bit of a control freak there, but I just think that's where my skillset and that's where my time is best spent is handling that. I could be wrong. Maybe someone else could do it just as good as me, but that's my system
Mike:Yeah. And then, I know like kind of a lot of people in this business, try to really scale their business and really want to ramp it up and do all that. But you've intentionally chosen not to do that. I think that's an interesting thing to talk about and why you chose that and kind of how it's been working out for you.
Trevor:Yeah, that's 100 true it could be like maybe there's a like an honest answer of just like not my personality or I didn't succeed in like the leadership, the management, the building, the culture, the hiring and firing. And I have hired quite a few people. I probably, hired and fired 10 or 15 people over the eight years. It's usually just an assistant, but I'm really just not that great at the hiring, the delegating, the building of systems. I've tried to do it many times and, I don't even have an office. I'm like in my. Informal dining room right now. And so, yeah just for whatever reason hire people. And I just don't feel like the momentum. I end up trying to teach them everything I know. is really what happens. I like, Oh, and then this, and then I'm not doing anything. I'm not like, I'm just spending all my time teaching this person. And so it's really probably just a personal, deficiency where I'm just not great at scaling and creating systems and doing it. And from 2016 to 2022, I was doing between 30 to 50 deals a year. A lot of it was JV stuff and just handing off the renovation side. And I find that if I do what I do and I focus on the acquisition, I let the title company do what they do. I let the renovation crew or the JV partner do what they do. I really didn't need to build a big team and a big system and get a big office. And I've got friends that do all that and They'll tell me candidly sometimes dude, wish I didn't do that They'll be like, what are you doing? I'm like, oh, i'm just sitting on the porch. I don't know. What are you doing? You're like, oh my god. We just had a meeting with 25 people. So maybe i'm not reaching my full potential. But again built up a life that I like i've exceeded where my direction was heading, you know with what we talked about and like some of the trouble I had got in and I'm living in a nice house. It's paid off. I bought my kids, mom, a house. I've got a couple of rentals. I've got private lending stuff going. It's doing a deal or two a month now. I don't really need a lot else like my kids are young. I have them four days a week and I try to turn off my phone and spend my time with them. And. I don't want to spend all day every day doing real estate. And so that's really just what it comes down to.
Mike:Yeah. Think something a lot of people struggle with, I'd say personally do is just like. Feeling like they should be doing stuff. Did you ever experience that and if you did, how did you break out of it and say, no, I mean, I'll just work my 15 hours a week and that's fine.
Trevor:Yeah. That's a really good question. I obviously feel guilty if I'm sitting around and doing nothing, but I guess, because I was 18 when I really went to all these seminars and I learned, I guess I got a credit wrong the grand from this, he really taught that you can't make a seller motivated. A seller has to be motivated enough to call me and then motivated enough to talk to me and then motivated enough to want an appointment and motivated enough to hear my ballpark price and want me to come and then motivated enough to take the deal. It's kind of like attraction, like with girls and guys and dating, like attraction is not a choice. You just are attracted to who you're attracted to. I really see deals like that. I don't try to force deals. I don't try to talk anyone into anything. Like I really feel like the motivated seller that needs me. I'm there for them. If I'm not the best fit, like I'm not going to spend all day trying to force it. And so I think the key is probably to like do other things. If you're feeling like it should be doing more in your business, but there's really nothing like super important. To do you should go to the gym. You should go out to dinner. You should call a friend You should have some fun with your life because I have found that when I stressed like I can think of like Examples really coming to me right now where because i'm kind of in the position i'm in I will go a couple months, two, three months without a deal sometimes. And then all of a sudden I'll get four or five deals in a month. But like when it starts to hit that second month, third month, I'm feeling, Oh my God, is my business over for life? Is this done? Like doomsday? Am I never going to ever do a deal again? Every single time I'll just like take my kids to the beach or something and like turn my phone off Almost every time i'll get a voicemail from like a seller that called me back from four months ago It's happened at least three to five times that I can think of right now When you just let go, like as long as you've done the work, don't get it wrong. Like you can't just manifest and law of attraction yourself from nothing to like a deal. But if you've put in your work, you've done your marketing, you've called back your sellers, you've left your voicemails, you've done like what you're supposed to do that day. And I believe in setting like small goals for that stuff. Like it doesn't have to be a lot. You know, your business better. And I'll be honest, I know nothing about like the outbound marketing business, like the outbound calling or outbound texting. I know it's the numbers based business and you've got to send a lot of stuff. But what I would really say is like figure out your goals, set your numbers, literally do like your system and then Let yourself trust in the process that you've built because if it's not enough then, you're gonna probably have to do something else anyways. I just don't believe that like keep trying and trying the same thing, if it's taking too much effort I don't know like I know i'm kind of talking in circles, but am I making any sense at all?
Mike:Yeah, a lot of sense, actually. I had a saying for a while and it was true, which is every time I go on vacation, I buy a deal. I'll just like my phone will ring and I'm like okay, I'll answer it. And I'm like, wait a second. I haven't done anything for two days.
Trevor:It's so crazy. And the moment you think you're going to get a deal just because you do that, like you won't, but like it's when you truly forget about it. It's like working out. You have to rest. There's yin and yang. It's like tennis. It's like dating if you call the girl too much, she's just gonna be turned Needy weirdo and you just can't overdo it. You have to let like the universe or your business Kick back to you because the truth is if it doesn't kick anything back to you Then what you're doing is not working and then you really have bigger problems.
Mike:What other shifts did you make, in your business kind of as the market changed, let's call it about a year ago at this point, or maybe a little longer?
Trevor:So I was slow to realize it was changing, I did start speculating a little bit. I was buying houses like, Oh, it's worth 300. Now it's going to be worth three, three 30 and in six months when I'm done with the rental. And so I was doing that and I made a lot of money doing that. So like, it's all good, but there was one deal where I bought, I think it was It's probably about it like July of 2022. I knew it was tight and it was a little tight and I had always said I'd never lost money on a deal, literally hundreds of deals, never lost a cent on a deal. And I would brag about that. But this deal, like I ended up losing, I think, 27, 000 or something like that. And I was like, okay, the market's different. And so it took me losing money on a deal to be like, all right, I'm not going to buy expecting things to go up anymore. And so I did so good on that model that like, it's not a true loss. Because you just subtract it from all the money you did make. So it's not the end of the world. But I would say that's what really kicked me into gear. I tried to sell that house in like December. It wasn't selling. Had to take it off the market. It actually kept smelling like smoke even after my guys painted it So I had to call in like a much better painter to like prime it properly What's the primer called? Oh, this it's a good little tip There's a special primer that ended up working really good. I'll think of it in a second. But anyways, I lost some money on the deal and I just decided then like okay, I'm gonna stop forcing deals That are tight because I was doing tight deals. We could do tight deals and the market was saving us, right? And so That helped me realize at the beginning of this year. I finally sold that house in january lost 20 something grand I don't know exactly but lost 20 something grand on it and then just decided. All right, i'm going to be super picky Like I've only bought one deal from a wholesaler this year when before I was probably buying five or 10 a year from wholesalers. So like almost all wholesaler deals to me seem too tight now. So I've really scaled back on buying from wholesalers. You know that I'm like, I don't know, bro. Sorry.
Mike:Yeah, that's cool. Someone buys them.
Trevor:Someone buys them. Exactly. Exactly. But I'd rather do no deal than like. Worry about it at all.
Mike:Yeah. We're kind of the same way on that. We don't flip that's much, but do the 1, a month or so, I just, I don't want to do the thin ones. Cause I'm like, then you gotta negotiate with the contractors and all that, and it just makes it feel a lot harder than it has to be.
Trevor:And with the rates going up like everyone's asking for you to help pay their closing costs And that's the unseen everyone's saying. Oh, the prices are stable, and they are they're pretty stable Like they haven't really gone down in jacksonville But if you look at each deal on a deal by deal basis You can go in the mls and you can see what the concessions were and that's not really calculated When they say, sellers are still getting 97% of asking price. Yeah, for the purchase price, but the 20 grand concession that you gave isn't showing up there. And so I think that's where we're seeing, the market kind of pushing back. And so that's where you really have to be careful. If you're buying a tight deal, you're like, okay, it's a$300,000 house. I'm going to make 20 grand when it's done to me, that's tight because. You give stuff you have Closing costs you get your butt kicked a little bit on the inspection. You can lose your whole profit That's not even 10% You can take a 5% haircut on the house and you just made nothing
Mike:Yeah. What's your criteria for what you consider a deal that you would do in the changing market of today.
Trevor:So like I want to make 30 on a low end flip. So like if it's a$200.000 house, I want to make 30 grand on that and then anything else I want to make at least 10% like the bottom. And really it's more than that. Like if it's a 300, 000 house, like I will do them for 30 still. But I have to love the house, love the neighborhood, think that Reno is going to be super easy and just feel super confident about the deal. The least confident about the deal. I actually want to go up from there. But I would say over 300k, like sales price, I'm looking at 10% profit and up. So like on a 500k house, you want to make 50 grand as like a baseline starting. Cause again, you do one or two price adjustments. You give someone a little bit of closing costs. Your reno takes two months longer than you expected with your hard money costs. You're really eating into your profit quickly. When I started this business and I'm close to getting back there, but when I first learned like from Ron LeGrand, his system was you pay 70% of the ARV. Minus the repairs. Okay. And that's how I did everything. I would say all the way until 2018 when the market just got so competitive and you had all these local flippers willing to do deals for 15 grand, but the houses were selling so fast and so easy. There's literally no risk that it's like, okay, I'm going to throw that out the window and I'm willing to do to get rid of that formula, but if you really want to be safe, and especially if you're a wholesaler and you want to be safe getting a deal, like that formula is the best formula to live by. It's just, you're going to get less deals in today's market because it's so competitive. Other investors will offer more.
Mike:Yeah, any other changes that you've made outside of just kind of being a little more conservative with you're willing to pay per property.
Trevor:Yeah, not taking on big rentals. One of my contractors had a heart attack in the middle of a rental we were doing about six months ago. He's better now. He's fine. I could probably get it back. But I'm not liking to take on big renovations. They just keep raising the rates and I'm not doom and gloom about the market, but I'm not super excited. I'm still cognizant that the market could take a 5% dip, a 10% dip, even if it's just for a year or so. Things always slow down in the holidays anyways. So like November, December, January, they're historically slow months anyways. So anything you buy now, you renovate, you're going to be selling in the winter. And so, you might have to take five or 10% less when you put it on the market, at the end of the year, things are taking longer to sell like the average, I don't know what it is exactly, but do you know, it's like 60 days probably to sell a house now, but it's taking longer. It's taken closer to 60 days average to sell a house. And so if you get into the winter with that, so it's really just being conservative, not taking on big rentals. And I'd rather do nothing than lose money. And that's my big mantra for the year, and like, I am kind of doing nothing, I'm writing a book. I'm taking my kids to the beach. I'm like, thinking about what other business I could start. But that's like part of life. I'd rather be doing that than lose more money on deals. Wholesaling's the way to go like wholesaling is the best and my lead flows just dip. But the once my lead flow kind of kicks back in, which I know it will wholesaling is always, always gonna be your safest tried and true. Just take a little something be on the right side of the trade take risk off the table make some money. So if you can wholesale in today's market, like I really think that's where it's at I had just built up, you know in my mind where most of my deals were coming from me paying cash Being the guy who would be the end buyer take it down and like I kind of built up I don't want to say an ego But like I built up like a lazy way of like doing deals where that's the only way I would do deals Where I do think it's time to shift and do more wholesaling.
Mike:Especially for those properties that, you know, it's a deal, but just not a deal for you.
Trevor:Correct.
Mike:Yeah.
Trevor:Exactly.
Mike:Cool, man. Well, we're getting close to the end here. There's always two questions I like to ask at the end. The first one's a little fun. So the first one is what is the craziest or most uncomfortable situation that you have ever experienced in a real estate deal?
Trevor:Craziest or most uncomfortable. I have one that kind of comes to mind. It's like, we bought this house from a lady and for whatever reason, she just kept sneaking back into the house and like sleeping there after we bought it. And so like, We'd send over like the demo guys and the construction guys and they'd go in and they'd call me every day and they'd be like, dude, this lady's here, she's sleeping in the house. And I'd be like, put her on the phone. I'd get on the phone. I was like, you can't keep doing this. And like, I don't know if she had an extra key. She's coming in the window. And what was crazy is she said she was going to move to her brother's house in Tennessee and she made like$140,000 equity on the sale. So she had money. And I was like, why don't she's like, well, my brother's. Not ready for me to come up there and I was like, why don't you go to a hotel or something? And she's like, oh, they're so expensive. I don't have money for that. I'm like you literally just got$140,000 but she snuck back in this house like four or five times and like Was just sleeping in an empty house. It was crazy
Mike:That is crazy,
Trevor:So weird and then she'd leave every time. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. She's a nice lady. She's like, i'm sorry. I won't do it again She'd come back.
Mike:unreal,
Trevor:It was funny. One time she got mad. She said my guy broke her plant. She's like, I don't know your guy broke my plant. And I'm like, it's not your plant anymore. It's just not like, yeah, like take it if you're taking it. She's like, no, he broke my pot. I'm like, it's not your pot anymore. If you want to take it, if not, like, you just got to go. Like, I don't know.
Mike:Oh, man, it's a good one. The second question for newer people listening to the show is if you could go back in time give yourself, I guess your 18 year old self, one piece of advice when you're looking for that first deal, knowing what, you know, now, what would you tell yourself?
Trevor:I would say just find a good system to follow. And if you trust it and you believe in it, just follow it to the T. I don't know if it's youtube or where like all the best content is, for me I just kind of lucked into it, I worked with Ron LeGrand and I feel like I was just so dumb with business that like I just didn't even know to question anything so like if he said read the script I'd read the script if they gave this objection I'd answer like whatever the book said to do and so like I would say I'd give myself the advice I took and just don't try to outsmart it, find a system, you know works like maybe they have good testimonials or, you know, some people that have studied from them, or you like their content, it just relates to you and just do exactly what it says to do, find a system to follow. I would say to start, like, even if you have to pay a grand for a course or something, find some kind of system that's going to be. a book that you can follow and just do it, don't overly try to make it more complicated than it is because I think as we get older we put up a lot of fears the course will say You know Put a sign out in the yard or call them on the phone. And we're like, Oh no, I'm just going to text them instead, or just do whatever the course teacher says to do. That's what I'd say. Find a course, follow it and just keep doing what they say to do without
Mike:Yeah, that's a good piece of advice.
Trevor:What about you? What would you say?
Mike:What would I tell myself?
Trevor:Yeah.
Mike:I'd say keep it simple, just it's kind of what I did in the beginning actually too. Now that I think about it, the first year I was in a business, all I did was, text people or have VA text people. And when they said they were remotely interested, I would just call them and that was the system. And then I made the mistake of over complicating it for like a year and a half after that and trying to build out this. Massive team and that. And I was like, wait a second. I made less money this year when I worked more and now I'm back to keep trying to keep it simple.
Trevor:Yeah. I totally agree. Find what works and literally just. Do that
Mike:yeah, people always ask me like newer people, Jax REIA or whatever, YellowBird where do you run into people? They're like, well, what marketing channel should I use? And I go, it doesn't matter. Just pick one and just stick to it. Usually I tell them, I mean, you probably don't want to try direct mail unless you got like a 20 grand budget, cause you're going to screw up a lot of the first appointments, but you could just do that if you got the budget, but just pick one. They all, they clearly all work. And like your SEO works. My cold calling works. It just, it all works.
Trevor:You could hand write a letter and put it in the mailbox if that's all you can do like but just do a lot of that
Mike:Yeah, right. I know one guy who just knocks doors. That's it. Nothing else. It all works. So I guess that's what I would tell myself. Oh, well, this is great, but if you want to reach out to you after the show of questions, or maybe some wholesalers have some decent deals out there, how can people go about reaching out to you?
Trevor:Probably email is the best. It's trevor.houses@gmail. com
Mike:It's always amazing. You have that email. No one got no one beat you to it.
Trevor:Dude, I was like, I don't know how old I was when google came out That was I don't know how old I was maybe 18 20.
Mike:That's awesome. Cool, man. Well, this is great. Thanks for being on the show. Really appreciate
Trevor:Yeah, this was fun, man. Appreciate it yeah, good luck to everybody happy to help shoot me an email.