Episode #12 – The Habit of Wholesaling Houses

Episode #12 – The Habit of Wholesaling Houses

Welcome to EarlToms podcast. Today we’re going to talk about the habit of wholesaling houses. This is probably the most important aspect of this business, because without good habits or habits at all, you’re not really going to be successful or get anything accomplished. So what we’re going to do is I’m going to give you what I do on on a daily basis. It’s going to differ from what you do in a day. It’s important to get the same habits, the same routine in your business because there’s so much in real estate that changes by the minute, by the hour, by the day that if you don’t keep your routines grounded, you’re always going to be basically spinning your wheels. Not getting a lot accomplished because you’ll have this seller that says I could meet you here. You’ll have a buyer that says, Hey, we’ve got to go do this closing. All of a sudden, you get on the phone call, this seller says, Hey, I could meet you in an hour so you have to run and go meet them and it just winds up hurting your business in the long run. I’m going to tell you what I do on a daily basis. Every day is pretty much the same. It took me probably a year to really get this habit, these routines. I feel off if it doesn’t happen this way now. Some may say that you know it’s not possible to keep the same routine every day. That’s actually a true statement. If you do certain things on Monday and you do different things on Thursday, that’s fine. But keep that same pattern every single week so that you can actually go through this business and be successful and not waste your time and waste your money. So with that, let’s get started with what I do on a daily basis.

The first part of it is your sleep. If you’re not going to sleep at the same time or somewhere near the same time every day and waking up at the same time every day, then your day is not going to be as productive as it possibly could, because sleep is so important for your body, for your mind, for your health in general. Typically, I go to sleep every night between 11 and 12 and I wake up at 6:30 every morning. This morning I woke up at 5:45. I guess I was ready to get up. My body said, get up. When I get up, I’m not one of those that has a hard time getting up. When my eyes open, I’m up. That’s the way I’ve always been. Not everybody is like that. So if you need to lay in the bed for a little while, gather your thoughts, that might be what you need to do. I remember years ago Ray Lewis, the linebacker for the Ravens. He always said the first thing that he did in the morning, when there was no noise or anything around him, that he would sit there in his own mind and think to himself what he needed to get accomplished that day. He did that every morning before he actually got out of the bed. He said that helped him keep the keep goals and keep getting the things that he needed to get accomplished in his day, actually get those accomplished.

What I do when I wake up because I have a dog. I take him out for a walk. Let him do his business first thing in the morning once I wake up. That helps me. In some ways that may be the Ray Lewis part of it. When I’m out walking him and I can think because there’s not a lot of noise or anything going on. The only thing I’ve got to pay attention to is whether my dog is pulling me on the leash. It helps me kind of go through what I’m going to do that day. Once I get the walk finished and get back inside, I go ahead and make some coffee. That helps me get started while I’m drinking my coffee. I also drink a fruit smoothie every morning because you would be surprised the amount of energy that you lose the way that your brain functions, your attitude, if your body is not healthy. I use that as basically my antioxidants every day. It’s kind of getting the bad stuff out of my body. That’s important to me. That may not be important to everybody, but while I’m drinking my coffee and my smoothie in the morning, what I wind up doing is I’ll start looking at the news of the day. What happening? What’s going on in the world? A lot of people can’t start that way because truthfully, now the news is really just depressing for the most part. I still like to know what’s going on, because that helps me in the business. Just like I read yesterday, now we’ve got a president that says, let’s pull all of our money with the the Social Security Fund, the retirement fund out of anything that pertains to China. I think it was some somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 billion. We’ve already had tariffs. Now we’re going to start reducing our financials with China. Is that something that’s gonna lead to more economic distress on top of the Coronavirus? Or is that actually going to help the United States create more jobs? Those kind of things are still to be determined. But knowing those kind of things, you can kind of start getting an idea of what’s going on in the United States and the world because what goes on in the world, what goes on in Washington, D. C. has a direct impact on real estate. Whether you’re an agent or a wholesaler, what goes on in the world and Washington D. C. has a very big impact on your business. What I wind up doing once I’ve done my catching up on the news is I check my CRM. I’ll check and see what my daily task are on there to get an idea of what I need to do for that day. Whether that’s phone calls, inspections, call a seller, call a buyer, or have a closing. What’s going to wind up going on in that day, and that helps. That helps with your habits, with your routine.

What I do is always have certain times in the morning and certain times in the afternoon where I’ll make phone calls. I start getting those scheduled within the CRM, so I’ll get a notification. If I’m off my schedule a little bit, I’ll still get that notification that says how you need to get to this. I get this closed out. Once I looked at my business tasks, I’ve had my coffee, I’ve watched the news or read about the news, I’ll go get my shower because by then I’ve kind of woken up a little bit. I’ve gotten myself grounded. I know what I need to accomplish. So to me that shower is go time. That’s my last bit of do nothing for the day. Once I get out of the shower it’s real estate for the rest of the day. Now that’s going to change for a lot of people because some people have to shower as soon as they wake up. I’m not that person. I like to ease into my day. I have a routine with it. It works for me. The important part of it is figuring out the first part of your morning. If you get the same sleep patterns and you do the exact same thing, whether the rest of your day changes every day, you get this the same sleep pattern and the same morning routine. You’ll get more accomplished the rest of your day than if you change your sleep patterns and what you do first thing in the morning. When you wake up sometimes you  have those sellers say, hey, you’ve got to be here at eight o’clock because I’ve got to be at work at 9. Those are very rare occasions, but if that’s what happens, go ahead, get your shower and head over there. Do your inspection and then come back and do your routine. When you start straying from your routines you will see a noticeable difference in your business. But you’ll also see a noticeable difference if you keep the same routine. The first part of the morning is very important to what you accomplish the rest of your day. Now, like I said, I have a set time in the morning when I’ll do my phone calls. I don’t like to do phone calls, and I don’t like to do inspections the first part of the morning. I do my inspections mid-morning. That’s anywhere from 9:30 to 11:30 for me. That’s when I do my morning appointments, because I found over the years that if I go on one first thing in the morning, I haven’t had a chance to wake up. My mind isn’t sharp. I’m off because I didn’t have my routine. I haven’t already talk to sellers first because you may get a seller that puts you in a bad mood just from talking to him on the phone. What’s that winds up doing for me, anyway is it may cost me a deal when I go out and look a look at the property and hurt that negotiation. What I do is after my appointments, you know, even if I got told, no, didn’t get the deal or if I did get the deal. Then I come back and that’s when I do my phone calls. I do 30 minutes worth the phone calls in the morning. That’s all I do. A normal day is 30 minutes in the morning. Once I get finished with my phone calls in the morning, then I wind up going and having having lunch. Typically, I take somewhere between a 30 minute to an hour nap every day at lunch. That’s me. That’s what I choose to do. Not everybody is going to do that. But I found with me anyway, that helps re-energize me. It’s almost like in the afternoon I’m starting a new day. Whatever happens in the morning, I’m wiping that clear, and then I go and I relax. Take my 30 minutes to an hour  nap. Some days I get it. Some days I can’t because you may have more on your mind and you just you can’t get that power nap.

Once I wake up, then I’ll go do my afternoon inspections if I have any appointments that day. if I don’t have any appointments for the afternoon then what I wind up doing is spending an hour instead of 30 minutes in the afternoon making phone calls. I spend 30 minutes in the morning making phone calls and 30 minutes in the afternoon making phone calls unless I don’t have appointments in the morning. If I don’t have appointments, there’s an hour I spend making phone calls. If I don’t have appointments in the afternoon, there’s an hour I spend making phone calls in the afternoon. Unless I have appointments, I don’t make money, so I try to balance it. If I spend 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon, typically, I could get at least one inspection in the morning and one inspection in the afternoon. That may take an hour to two hours to do that appointment each morning. But if I don’t have appointments, then I spend that time on the phone trying to get more appointments to keep the money coming in. This is a numbers game. You may talk to 10 sellers on the phone and get one appointment, so if you get one appointment it’s that much more important to close that deal because you’re hitting 10%. I like to hit a 30% average. There’s ways when you’re talking to the sellers on the phone, you ask these certain questions, you get them to talk and open up. If you’re listening to them instead of having a ready response, they’re going to give you these openings that tell you what’s really going on so that you can actually figure it out. Somebody may say, I need to get $100,000 out of my house. But at the same time, they just told you they lost their job. So there’s a motivation. They won’t get $100,000 out of their house, but there’s a motivation there. So do you take that appointment, or do you just pass it up? They want too much for their house. I can’t tell you how many appointments I have been on where somebody says I need this for my house and I wind up going out there and say, if I don’t get this house from you, what are you going to do? That’s a leading question, but it makes them think to themselves, well, I might get foreclosed on or might have to file bankruptcy. I don’t know what I’ll do. If I listed with an agent, that’s a 3 to 6 month process, and I don’t know if I have that much time. So your $80,000 offer, even though it may not be what I want helps me get out of the situation that I’m in today. It’s important to maximize your phone calls and your appointments to figure out which ones are the best ones that you can go where there’s an opening. That you can actually get the deals to keep the money coming in.

So, like I said, what I do in the afternoon is the 30 minutes of phone calls. I do my appointments first then my phone calls. If I don’t have appointments then I wind up doing an hour on the phone. Once I get finished with my phone calls or my appointments, if I have them in the afternoon. What I wind up doing to spend the rest of that day is usually, maybe an hour sometimes, two. What I wind up doing is going on Facebook or Twitter to see what other people are talking about with real estate? You go to these different groups and you can scroll through. I’ve got this house under contract. Now what do I do or I need a mentor. Can anybody recommend one in my in my market? People will come in these groups and post about what’s going on in their area. Something related to real estate. You get a feel for what some of the struggles or successes other people are having. The one thing I don’t like is when people go in there and post checks. I’ve never understood that, but you know, some people do that. That’s not me. But you know, to each their own. Spending that time gives me kind of a pulse of what’s going on in different markets. What other wholesaler struggles are having, what they might have done to overcome something because it’s important to keep learning. You may read a lot of these posts and go I will try that next time or you read another post and go, They’re an idiot. Either way, you learn something because you’ve got to see somebody’s success, somebody’s failure or you remember a time where you had that same thought of, you know, I have got it in the contract now what do I do? There was a time you were just like that. You wanted to get in this business and go out there, make money, you got something under contract and then all of a sudden you realized, Oh, now I don’t know what to do. You go on those post and people will give you comments, try to help you. That’s part of what what I do every single day.

Another thing that I do during that hour, two hours at the end of the day, I’ll read different articles online about new technology or new marketing that thinks that trend is going to be coming that way. One thing that I did yesterday. Honestly, I was sitting there scrolling through, and not that I need it, because I already have plenty of programs, but I looked at it over the years, I see Mashvisor has a lifetime offer. One of the plans is I think, $99 for the life of it, and it pretty much gave you heat maps, what’s going on in different areas? It just kind of helps you analyze different markets. So if you were looking virtual wholesale now you’ve got all the auction, MLS, Zillow, in one place so you don’t have to keep going back and forth. It gives you an investment analysis. Should you flip this, should you rent it the traditional way, should you do airBNB? It gives you the ability to actually type in an address and find the owners information. That’s all part of your subscription. So everybody going out and paying for skip tracing. It’s a good idea if you’re doing it for bulk, but a lot of people that are just going out driving for dollars type in the address. I mean, their email, their phone number in the name, now you’ve got that. This is part of your subscription. The one that comes with the expert plan, which was $389 for a lifetime membership without additional charges. So you get all of that as part of your part of your membership, and I think the the expert plan was $4,000 – $5000 normally. I guess maybe because of the virus going around, they’re not getting as many new subscribers so they offer this ridiculous savings. I would have never found that if I didn’t do that. It’s part of my daily routine. Some other things that I found right now is you’ve got a lot of artificial intelligence coming in, whether that be SEO or, you know, some of these ARV’s are trying to get a little bit more intelligent in determining your ARV’s. I know propstream and some of these others are trying to say that they use AI but it’s hard to know whether they’re any good or not. A lot of that is going to depend on your market because every market changes. The more accurate your information in that market is, the better you’re going to have a good system in place that will give you accurate information to be able to do it.

So, like yesterday I got finished with my day about six o’clock at night. I get an email from another wholesaler from I think they were from South Florida, maybe Tampa opted in on the website because they’ve got a property that’s I think, an hour away from where I’m at. I tell him I don’t know anybody that works that market. It’s not a major Metropolitan, so I don’t ever go over there. But I told him I think somebody lives over there. Maybe give them a call. I could be wrong, but it wasn’t a scenario where I was saying, hey, how much do you have this under contract for or things like that. With this being an hour away and me not really knowing anybody that works that market for me to try to get in on that deal was only going to hurt. The best thing I could have done for that other wholesaler was to put him in contact with a wholesaler that I thought was in that area and let them see if they couldn’t get that deal closed.  Trying to get in on a deal that you have no expertise in is pointless. You get in these groups and everybody is blasting these properties out. Don’t do that. Just avoid that with everything you can, because you’re not going to be successful doing that. If a lead comes in that you can’t work, just pass it on. It will come back and find you one way or the other.

This morning, Tuesday is really the only day that I changed my routine because I do this podcast in the morning. Where I’m at right now it’s 8:51 in the morning. So by nine o’clock I’ll be in the shower. At 10 o’clock, I’ll be at an appointment, which I will probably want to buy for myself, just literally from the asking price. When somebody offers a house with an asking price at $8,000 it’s kind of hard to pass it up. I’ll probably wind up getting that one just to hold it myself and rent it out. But I take that that 30 minutes or that hour on Tuesdays. I’m not necessarily looking at my business task as long, or I’m not reading the news as long. I condense it so that I could get this podcast going for everybody. Hopefully they can get a little bit more success in their business. But your your habits, I want to go back to in general what you do from sleep to all day long is probably the most important aspect of your business. Because if you’re not doing it and being consistent, then you’re going to struggle. That goes back to even school. If you waited until the last minute, and I know I did. But if you wait to the last minute to write a paper or study for a test. You’re not going to do as well as if you studied for 30 minutes or an hour a day until that test or you wrote a paragraph each day until that paper was due. It reduces your stress and lets you figure things out. I have one friend that every day before they leave, they are an agent, every day before they leave, they’ve got a little note pad and they write on it what they need for the next day. They don’t use the CRM, but what they do is they just right on what they need to get accomplished the next day. And as they get those things accomplished, they check him off that list. They just mark through and they don’t leave their office until that whole list is checked off from the day before. If you’re not planning, you’re not going to be successful. Plans are going to change. If you’re not making a concerted effort to stick to a plan every single day, then you’re going to struggle not only in this business, but every other business that’s out there.

So we all need to figure out whether you do something different every single day. Make sure you put it down that, hey, Monday, I’ll drive for dollars and Wednesday I go on appointments. Tuesday I look for the next possible technology that will help my business. Wednesday, I’m looking at a different marketing. See what’s working. Like, say, Amazon is going to work with the wholesaling houses because if somebody is, all you need is somebody to technically make a purchase. It’s the same action. If you see an ad or you know some way with marketing and what’s working as far as somebody buying something off Amazon, you figure out what that motivation is and translate it over, whether it’s going to take to get them to either sell you their house or buy the house that you’ve got under contract. It’s going to be the same thing. So you stay up to date on the technology that’s available, plus the marketing that’s working. What people are thinking is going to be the next wave of success. We’ve had a lot of people say these funnels work. Funnels do work, but you have to figure out the right funnel, the message that is being conveyed. I run people through a funnel, and it works. This week alone, I’ve already gotten five replies from emails from old leads because I’m staying in contact with them. It’s a nurturing process because they’re not always going to get the deal the first time. They all say that for somebody to sell you their house. A lot of times you get, they have to touch it five times. If you’re just making a phone call marking them off your list. If you don’t get that deal, people like me are coming behind you and stealing it from you because they may have been asking $100,000 in the very beginning and then all of a sudden the Coronavirus shows up. They need money, and I go out there and I got it for $80,000 because I stayed in contact with him. If you’re not doing that, you’re missing opportunities, but you don’t have to spend a lot of time with that. All you have to do is automate it. It’s available to everyone, and it’s not very expensive to do it. The only thing that might really cost you money is having the emails or having it set up for you that might be what the cost of it. But after that, it just kind of runs by itself. So make sure that you’re making an effort to do the same things every single day or every week. Even if you have to be like my friend that makes the list out. If you have to make a list and it may not be on a daily basis, but let’s say that you want to get certain things accomplished for the week. Sunday night, right? Make a list of what you want to get accomplished for that entire week and every day when you get something accomplished, you check it off your list. But don’t wait until Thursday to look at your list because you’re not going to get it accomplished. You’ve already had business going for three days. It’s going to be super hard to get that list accomplished that you made on Sunday night because you’ve procrastinated to be able to get it done. That’s why I suggest that you figure out what you’re going to do on a daily basis. Leave yourself a little bit of time for things to pop up. That’s going to change. But you make an effort to accomplish the same things every single day, even if that means that you have to work an hour later or you have to get up on our early. Make sure that you keep that daily routine consistent, accomplished. When you start doing those kind of things, you’re going to see what difference it has in your business. And most importantly, you’re going to see the difference that it hasn’t your bank account. That’s really what we’re here for is to keep the doors open, be successful and increase the money that’s in our bank account. If you’re not making money, you’re not in business, so that should be your priority.

Having the same routines and having the same habits is how you get to that point. Go through the trial and error. Expect to fall flat on your face. Get up, brush yourself off, learn from it. Move on. Do those things and you’re going to start seeing your business be more successful. You’re going to feel better about yourself because you’re going to know that you’re getting more accomplished. You’re closing more deals, you’re making more money, and it’s going to give you that confidence that you didn’t have before. You need confidence in this business because we’re truthfully in sales. So having confidence in sales is one of the biggest keys of being able to close the deal. Whether it’s seller or buyer, your confidence is key to being able to close that deal.

So with that, we’re going to draw to a close for today. Just make sure you go through, find a way to develop daily routines, daily habits. It gets kind of boring because it’s repetitive. Once you get to that point, you’ll start seeing a difference in your business. Also once you get to that point, you may start running out of time, but you’ll know you’re running out of time before it’s too late. If you need to go hire an acquisition manager, a property manager, somebody to handle dispositions for you, you’ll see that before it starts coming and you’ll be able to get them trained the right way before it winds up being too late. Just make sure you’re going to make an effort to develop good habits. Productive habits. Get a daily routine, a weekly routine, whatever works for you so that you can be successful in this business. I appreciate everyone listening to this episode. If you have any questions, feel free to ask it on EarlToms.com. Again, we’ve got extra information on the website. We published an article last week about the yellow letters. You may want to check that out because that saves a ton of time using their service. You may not even be aware of it, but go check it out on the website at EarlToms.com. We’ll see you again in two weeks with another episode.