Shadi's journey began in 2019 when he entered the real estate arena through wholesaling. Fast forward to today, and he's successfully expanded into flips, wholesaling, and a growing portfolio of rental properties.
Shadi's journey began in 2019 when he entered the real estate arena through wholesaling. Fast forward to today, and he's successfully expanded into flips, wholesaling, and a growing portfolio of rental properties.
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 do this show with people who are changing the game of real estate all over the country. For anyone who is in the Jacksonville market or thinking about getting into it, feel free to reach out to us. We're always happy to point you in the right direction. And we are still a very active buyer in the Jacksonville market. So feel free to send any deals our way as well. This week on the show, we have Shadi Tamimi out of Orlando, Florida. Shadi, welcome to the show.
Shadi:Thank you for having me, Mike. Appreciate you having me on here.
Mike:For sure, man. So for people who don't know you could you just give everyone a little bit of background of how you got into the real estate business and how that's led you to where you are today?
Shadi:We actually started in end of 2018. I first learned about wholesaling November 2018. Beforehand, when I first turned 18, I got my real estate license. I just told myself, I'm going to be a realtor. I'm going to sell houses. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with real estate. I just knew I wanted to get into it. So I was at the time studying for civil engineering, never planned on even using it. And just, getting a degree and November 2018 learned about wholesaling through YouTube. So I'm one of those people. And I was just intrigued. I wanted to get into flipping, didn't have the capital for it. So I knew that Wholesaling would be a good stepping stone for that. At the time, I thought Wholesaling would just be something I start with, and once I get some capital, I'll get into flipping, and that'll be my main channel. So my middle of November 2018, didn't really have a good budget just started an internship in civil engineering, so I was just like, Great, I'm gonna use all the money towards marketing, budget was like five six hundred bucks a month and wholesaling. And what does that budget get you? Aside from that I was really targeting mailers. So direct mail was the main thing that we were doing At the time I didn't think that paying 45 cents a postcard was something I could do after school and after the internship, every day, I would just come home and print out the mailers, personalized with their name and address, like copy paste from the excel sheet, put it into the letter and just mail it print it out. Letters, we'd have them handwritten. A hundred mailers a week or so, send them over to the post office and see if we get anything. It took us seven months to get our first deal. It was really working hard instead of working smart, it's didn't really have that much funds and trying to make it work with whatever he had. It was a definitely an interesting journey. For those seven months, it was just wake up at around seven or eight. Go to the internship. I was part time, so I would work from around 8 to 12. And then after that, I'd go to UCF college. I was going to and it's going to go through my classes during class. Of course, all I'm doing is just getting the list ready or doing whatever I have to do to get class, get work done and then get home, eat dinner. And then from that time until three to four a. m. it was just printing those mailers every single day. I didn't really know what sleep was. I didn't know even what water was. It was just energy drinks. So it was a bad phase. It was this bad. When I would go to sleep, I'd have the light on and no blanket. Just so that way, the next day I'd make sure I'd wake up three hours later. I don't want to get too comfortable. I don't want to get into deep sleep. Those days, everyone knew me that I just don't sleep. It was my reputation, so definitely came a long way from then.
Mike:Yeah so where did you get your first deal and how did you start working smarter as opposed to just harder? Like you said before?
Shadi:definitely. 1st deal came in May 2019, and it was$5,000. So that's$5,000 I ever made. After that, we just started really reinvesting the money. I just reinvested every single penny. We've started sending out a little bit more mailers. I hired one cold caller for that year. I think we closed about five or six deals that year total. So we grossed about$91,000 first year. And to think of it, our first deal really came in May. So we, we got$91,000 in those seven months, which was a great start. With one cold caller and me as acquisitions and dispositions and everything else. And then just every single month after that, just reinvesting. That was the biggest thing. I didn't really take profits. Just reinvested every single penny into it.
Mike:Gotcha, and I guess at what point did you decide to build a team?
Shadi:Good question. So COVID came 2020. No one wanted to sell and every deal that we had under contract basically fell apart. Buyers didn't want to pay even if the deal made sense just because we didn't know what was happening to the market as and sellers didn't want to sell. So, I don't want to say I took that year as a break, but the first couple of months in March Side track, February 2020, the month before COVID, I got married. The whole motivation behind, getting into wholesaling was really, let me get some funds to get married. February 2020, we get married, March, COVID comes. There's no more business there. It's all gone. So the first couple of months, we didn't really do much deal here and there off of PPC just a really small budget in PPC and May of 2021 is when I've hired my first lead manager, which was going to grow into my acquisition manager So by May of 2021 we had two acquisition managers I was really focused. I was training acquisitions, but also dispositions. So I was doing dispositions at the time, and that was it. That's just that team and then three cold callers and one. Oh, I was still doing SMS at the time, so before I even hire an SMS, BA and then after that, we just started growing. And after that first acquisition, it really just opened that door to hiring. And 2021 end of 2021. We probably had three lead managers in the end of that year. And two, I think it was two or three acquisitions at the end of that year, and I was still doing Dispo. So it took me a long time to really hire for
Mike:Did that first acquisitions hire actually work out for you?
Shadi:She's still with me. She's actually one of the best on my team.
Mike:That's kind of a rare, that's a rare story. Tell us how you did it.
Shadi:no, it was definitely beginner's luck. She is a really hungry individual. But aside from that, I think it's because I didn't have anyone else to train on the team and she had all my time and all my energy. I think that's what really helped her grow, pretty quickly. Everyone else at the time it was training in groups and just figuring out what's the best way to train. But that first hire, that first acquisition was definitely, until now, the best acquisition hire I have,
Mike:Yeah, let's talk about that. So what is your process evolved to now? To train your acquisitions reps? It sounds like you made a lot of improvements on that
Shadi:Definitely. We went through a lot of turnover in 2022. So training, firing, and all this stuff, so it wasn't fun. We had to find an easier way to do it, right? Right now we have set up a course. I have some of the course set up in Teachable. But then we transitioned over Google Drive. So everything is in there. What recordings on how to use the CRM. How to fill in your KPIs if they had to fill them in. Dialer, how to use that, how to comp, all these different things, all broken down into videos. There's PDFs on how to update everything. I like flowcharts a lot. So anytime I want the team to see something, I just visualize it in the flowchart for them. And after that, we have them go through when there's new hires, we have them go through a quiz. I just made on Google quiz or Google forms. And it's about 50 questions, just really asking questions based off the videos that they watch, that we sent them about sales, about the CRM, about just mindset as well, like in sales. Cause that's the, one of the biggest things are you coachable? Let me find a good way to figure out if you are before we, invest more time into training you. Are you going to have a mindset to know not to judge a seller? Which is one of the biggest things that I see as an issue. Sometimes you see a seller is asking next amount and you just assume they're not going to take your offer. So we make them go through those questions. If they get less than 80 percent on the quiz, then they're out. We just. That's
Mike:that's post hire or free hire.
Shadi:That's basically, we interview them, we hire them, we let them know there's a one week of training by the end of that week of training, they have to go through that quiz. If they pass, that's when they start calling. If they don't pass, sorry, we're just not a good fit for one another. Wish you all the best.
Mike:Yep. Okay. So before that point, how are you deciding who to hire and who not to hire?
Shadi:Good question. So it's tough, but we post a lot of job ads off of Indeed and such. My whole team is virtual. Everyone works from home. Most of them are from Egypt. So my acquisitions and my follow up managers are all from Egypt. I actually was out there in, yeah. I was actually out there in July. Yeah, they're all out there. I went out there in July. I actually just take them out to dinner and meet them for the first time. But, it was pretty fun. But, hiring them, I mean we use Indeed. Put a bunch of job ads. We put them out inColombia, Egypt. Their English is strong, but we haven't really hired anyone from there yet. At the moment, but trying to see how that goes right now egypt is our bread and butter have all the requirements for the job. And then after they put the resume in, you're going to get a bunch of people that apply and we get sometimes people that just having their experience that they're a chef that apply and such. So what we do is we have them actually send us a recording and have a couple of questions that I asked them. What are your goals? What kind of sales experience do you have? Send me a voice recording or a video recording in English. They don't have to have real estate experience. It's actually, I've seen it better with, they don't have a real estate experience just because I could train them the way I want them. What kind of weaknesses do you think you have in sales? And I want them to be honest about it doesn't disqualify them. And where do you see yourself in our company? So we asked those couple of questions. Beforehand in our job, it explains what our company does, our business model and such, and all the qualifications and all the things that they're going to be doing for us. So once they send that recording, I just see what kind of person I'm talking to. I look at tonality. That's a big thing. So I've had some people, they answer everything a hundred percent, amazing recording based off of the answers, but the tonality is not there. If you're falling asleep while you're talking to me on the phone, I don't want to sell to you. It just doesn't work out. It's not a good first impression either. We don't go with that. Tonality is the biggest thing, like I said. Accent, so we want someone that's pretty clear when they speak in English, of course. And, I want someone that wants to grow with the company, that's one of the biggest things that I've seen our team. Love about working with us is I always tell them after they're hired, you guys are not going to be someone that's just on the team and that's it. I want to consider everyone as part of the offer charm family. We go over our core values. I want to make it look like a community. I want everyone to work together. We don't have the acquisition against acquisition. We have a leaderboard, who's doing best and such in that way of competition in a way you could say but everyone works together. Someone can't get ahold of a lead. I know a lot of acquisitions don't really do this from other companies, but let's say one acquisition on our team can't go to hold of a lead. They have no problem contacting the other acquisition saying, Hey, can you help me get ahold of this guy?
Mike:How did you build that culture? Where that's okay. Cause I know a lot of companies, it's everyone's a lone wolf and then they run into issues where it would benefit everyone to help each other, but they don't want to. Like, how did you build that
Shadi:It just really came down to really caring about them. That's what I saw It's not just about okay cool clock in and clock out if I'm on the phone in the meeting For example, and I see someone on our team's just not I'll have them stay after the Monday meeting because every Monday we have a meeting with the team, look at their numbers for the past week look at the performance that everyone did the past week. Any updates in the market? Past year, there's been a lot of changes with interest rates and such. So we discussed that anytime there's like a big change. So that way they're aware of what to say. If the seller mentions anything. But it really just comes down to everyone showing that they care in the beginning of our Monday meeting. The 1st 5 to 10 minutes. Everyone just talks about their weekend. We all have a laugh. I know some people like to just be straight to business, keep it very strict, but we just took a different model and it's worked out for us.
Mike:Yeah. So let's say you get someone. They do the recording. You kind of like what you see tonality and all those other things you mentioned. What's the next step before you hire them?
Shadi:So after that video that they send us, we do hop on an interview. They can go through it. And in that interview, that's when I asked them more questions. We jumped more in depth about their goals and about everything. I introduced myself personally Introduced the company more in depth just a little bit more details than what we have online sometimes I like to just see how they react. I like to see if they knew something about the company before I mentioned it So last interview that we had actually a couple days ago for a new lead manager. She just said oh, yeah, that's awesome I actually saw on the website that you guys do this and that or I saw in the reviews that you guys have on google That someone said this about you. So it shows that she's already investing And looking into the company she's going to join, she's not just joining any company. So I appreciated that for example.
Mike:Anything else that you're looking for in that interview outside of this. Absolutely.
Shadi:To be honest, the top three things I really look at is tonality, are they coachable? And I ask them straight up and I just tell them exactly what we're expecting, set the expectations from the start. And just them being hardworking, it's not an easy job, you're on the phones for eight hours a day, calling sellers, acquisitions, you're not really getting cursed out or anything, but you're getting rejected a bunch of times, as so I really just let them know what to expect from the calls and we just take it from there.
Mike:Yeah, and did you say before that your lead managers and your acquisition reps are, are overseas? Is it both? I think that's really interesting because I know a lot of people have been able that I know have been able to succeed, including us with overseas lead managers, but a lot of people seem to get stuck. With acquisitions that they can't crack the code, right? I'm not saying it's clearly possible. But I haven't been able to crack the code. How do you guys feel that what you've done has allowed you to crack that code where a lot of other people have failed?
Shadi:So I look at the lead manager as like a trial period. The junior varsity and you're going to varsity. I just see how they're doing. Anytime we hire someone for lead manager, I tell them straight up. This is not a job that you're going to stay in. If you do great, and if you meet expectations and hit your goals, there's an opportunity for growth and, the sky's the limit at that point with the amount of bonuses because they get paid salary and bonus lead managers get a small bonus for every contract signed, but the acquisitions get a pretty decent bonus when it comes to a contract that's closed. I've just look at our lead managers after about a month or two. I'll see how their attitude is towards everyone else, for example, because we've laid off people just because of their attitude, lead managers, for example, they were great and I saw the potential in them as an acquisition, promoted them as acquisition. And then they had that mentality of these are my leads. No one touched them. I'm going to take the new lead because I responded to the text first, which, it's not a bad thing. It's just not a way our model is working. It started affecting other acquisitions performance. So we could afford that. But in the lead manager role, I just I focus on tonality. I see the consistency. So that's really a big thing. You're following the script right now. Your tonality is amazing right now. Is it going to be amazing in a month from now? What I do is we have a couple of meetings every week. So we have Monday meetings. Those are at 12 PM every single Monday, no matter what. We look at the KPIs, like I said, for the people acquisitions and lead managers are on that team. we'll just, like I said, talk about the market and such major changes.
Mike:what are the KPIs that you're holding lead managers and acquisitions accountable
Shadi:so lead managers, we're looking at calls to revived ratio and talk time. So talk time for the lead managers are a little bit less than acquisitions just because their conversations are about five to 10 minutes long, usually. But we want to see them have at least about 10 to 15 revived leads a week per lead manager.
Mike:What's a revive lead?
Shadi:It just means it was converted over to an acquisition. So it's someone that's either asking below ARV or around ARV, so they're not asking like a hundred K over they have an asking price, of course. So we always get an asking price before we convert it over to an acquisition. And are they willing to sign or move forward with a purchase agreement today, if we agree on the price? So those are the top things that we look at after that sent over to an acquisition.
Mike:If someone gives a price that's within the range, and they say, they would actually sell if they basically got an offer they liked today, then that's considered a move over to acquisitions for you
Shadi:Exactly. And then after that, the acquisition really goes through their conversation. Their conversations are usually to 45 minutes with a lead. So start to finish, 10 to 15 leads a week. Yeah. So it's about two to three leads a day basically.
Mike:Okay. And are they setting an appointment or are they just pushing over?
Shadi:They are. They're setting a call back. For example, let's say they're talking to a lead right now. Our acquisitions just let us know what times they're going to be working today because I also have it as an open schedule. We have it open from 9 a. m. to about 7 to 8 p. m. Eastern time. They don't work that whole time. They could take their breaks in between that. Basically, they just need to get in there eight hours. We just see when they're, they just coordinate on when they're calling. Schedule a call back and the CRM set that appointment for the acquisition and they could see their calendar. So that way they don't actually double book any leads and the acquisition just knows right there. They get a notification to call that lead.
Mike:Got it. So lead managers aren't really diving into reasons for selling or anything like that. You leave that up to your acquisitions reps?
Shadi:They do. They talk about condition. They talk about reason, but they're not diving as deep. They're usually on the phones with the lead for about five minutes. Five to seven minutes average. So condition of the property, just really go down a couple questions. Um, have you done any remodels? Have you remodeled the kitchen or bathrooms the last three years? Yes or no. Uh, have you done the roof recently? When was the last time the roof was done? When was the last time the, electrical was done and plumbing was done, for example? AC. We just ask those couple questions. And then about motivation, let's say they have tenants in the house. Okay, great. How much are the tenants paying? They have a mortgage. They try to ask what the mortgage amount is. If there are tenants in there, it's great. Are they paying on time? Is everything going well with the tenants? But they don't really build as much rapport as an acquisition is going to be. So when it gets converted over to an acquisition, those calls on average about 35 minutes when we're listening to the recordings they can be up to an hour. We're talking about, they get on the call with them. They set the expectation. We don't even tell them we're going to make them an offer today. We tell them I'm here to see if your property qualifies for an offer from us today. If not, I'm gonna give you a reason why we rejected it. Then they give them the seller their contact information just so that, build that credibility company's information as well. And then after that's when they really dig deep into. The condition of the property, how do you like the neighborhood? When it was electrical panel replaced? Do you have septic or sewer? If we don't know that already do you know if there's, copper wiring, aluminum wiring in the panel, like we go really in depth and even though when we make the rehab estimates, we don't need to know all that information we're making an offer, but it helps us differentiate from everyone else. Because no one else is asking that. What's everyone else asking? Okay, great. Have you remodeled the inside of the house? Oh, do you have tile or carpet in the rooms? And that's really it. We're going in there. We're talking about the exterior of the house first. And then we tell the seller, okay, can you walk me into the house? As if I walked into the front door, tell me exactly what I'm going to see. And then they go into depth, they're looking at every single small thing and in any opportunity they have to build rapport, they take it.
Mike:Gotcha. So, your lead managers, they got to revive those 10 to 15 leads. And then what other KPIs? You said something about talk time. Is there a certain amount of talk time. you have to
Shadi:It really just comes down to the amount of revived leads. I just make sure that they're there. Let's say they have 10 revived leads. I want to see a minimum of about 50 minutes of talk time. So an average of five minutes or so. It should be a little bit higher, but I want to see basically an average of when they're talking to these leads, that they're talking to them at least for five minutes. I don't want them to try to convert a lead when they've only talked to them for two minutes or so. Now for acquisition managers. Those numbers are a little bit more tight. We're looking at calls. We want to keep it under 100 dials to get it for the day. Offers, non negotiable, three offers a day. They're usually around three to five offers a day. If they're anything below that, then we know something is wrong. Something we need to work on and then of course our average right now for offers to contract ratio is about 10. 5. So one contract per 10 offers.
Mike:Okay. Got it. So they go through, that training and then everyone's lead management is the way that you vet them almost again. I familiar with how people structure compensation in like us for acquisitions, but like, how do you structure that for people overseas?
Shadi:overseas we just pay a little bit more than the lead manager salary wise it's about, I'd say about a 20 or 30 percent raise over what a lead manager would make salary wise. But the bonus, per contract closed, they're making about 70 percent of their salary in one bonus. So for example, let's say they're making 700 a month, 800 a month, which in their currency would of course be enough to be in that country living and pay for all their bills. Their bonus is probably going to be about 400 to 500 per close contract, so we have some in each of that. They got paid like three to 4, 000 in bonuses just in one month.
Mike:it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money in Egypt.
Shadi:it's a lot, it's a lot. They're doing great. And some of them are single and just live with their families and some of them, they have kids and they're able to provide for their families. So they're living really good. When I went out to Egypt, I got to meet them as well. And I got to see they're living in good areas. Newer areas, cleaner areas. So it's pretty cool to see.
Mike:Yeah, and then where are all these leads coming from for these reps.
Shadi:calling and SMS. Those are our top two. 2020 SMS was our number one marketing and we were making about a 25x ROI on SMS in 2020. I don't know if it had something to do with COVID or what, but that was the numbers. Ever since then it's been cold calling. Until today, cold calling is just going to be our biggest revenue stream. SMS, just because the cost is so little, the ROI is always higher a little bit, but. I'd say cold calling brings in about 70 percent of our revenue.
Mike:Okay. And how many acquisitions reps, do you have currently?
Shadi:So at the moment we have two acquisitions. So my sales manager, he's actually acting as an acquisition, Amir. Basically, when we have more acquisitions as such, he trains them, he helps me manage them, train them, make sure they're hitting their numbers. And then other than that, we have another acquisition and we're trying to find another acquisition. We're in the process of hiring one more. Lead managers, we have two. They're actually newer ones. So they just finished training and they're going to start calling. So at the moment, two lead managers, two acquisitions, two dispositions, and two admins.
Mike:How many cold callers do you need to, and what does that team size get you in terms of contracts per
Shadi:Now where we have seven cold callers. So on average, they bring us about, I'd say about three leads a day on average. Of course, they're not as hot as PPC would be, but. We're looking at per month, on average, we're about 15 contracts a month. And the contracts to close ratio, it was around 50 to 60%. We're up in that. Now it's about 75% or so now. So it's been great. That's about on average, we're less than a hundred deal. We're at a less than a hundred leads per deal. Beginning of the year, we were at around 140 leads per deal.
Mike:Okay. Those acquisition managers, are they allowed to take the new leads, too, or do they have to go through a lead manager
Shadi:No, that, that's a good question. They can go through new leads. They can go through them. So they'll check basically his estimate and just see what kind of price point they're looking at. Or for example, I just have my admin helping comp. And if we just find any hot leads that are, someone asking a hundred K less or 70 K less, we'll just push it straight to the acquisition, especially when they're a fresh lead like that.
Mike:Oh, because the cold caller is asking that. Those questions, too.
Shadi:Yeah. So that's the information with the cold caller. We'll have the asking price. If someone doesn't have an asking price, then they go through a drip that we have in our CRM, they get texted for, I think, 20 days now, and basically just different ways of asking about this asking price until they respond. If they don't respond with an asking price, then we'll actually have a few days a month where we'll go in there and we'll just start throwing out offer ranges. We don't even have a solid offer and just see where they're at. So we got a couple of contracts like that as well.
Mike:yeah, it's funny how that no one has a price until you have a price, right?
Shadi:Yeah, exactly. You'll be surprised. Some people you'll think, Oh, this guy doesn't have an asking price. He's not motivated. And then you talk to him and it turns out he's asking a 100K lessons estimate or 100K lessons ARV and this is a great deal. A lot of people miss on those. just skip
Mike:for sure. They skip them. What's your guys like kind of funnel look like? And what I mean by that is like, how many people get to that week of training and then how many people make it through that to lead manager? And then how many people make it through that to act ultimately being acquisitions.
Shadi:Last year, it was like 30 percent of lead managers that were going through the quiz would fail the quiz. And then we would just be left with two, let's say, so let's say we had three people going through it, two of them would get through and then they'd start calling within about two to three weeks, we'll know if someone's going to last with us or not. If they get through those two to three weeks of calling and they're still with us, then chances are they're going to stay with us for a while. Anyone that stayed with us and went through those two to three weeks. They usually stay over a year with us, either something happens that they just had to leave or performance just changes. But I would say the biggest thing that we see, all comes down to them not being coachable. We're not willing to change their habits. I've had times where we hired a lead manager two, three weeks in, Hey, John, you got to change this information. And the way you're saying the script, you're not following the script. Here's the script you're supposed to follow. Follow it. Okay. Sounds good. I'm gonna do it. We'll role play. He follows the script so he knows how to say the words. A couple days later, we'll get on the report. I'll listen to recording two days later. Not following the script, another meeting and it'll be a meeting with all the lead managers, for example, and I'll tell him, this is what you should do. You're not following the script. And there was two lead managers that this happened with, and I just kicked them off on the spot. One of the guys just said, Oh he heard what I said. And then he said I think that this way. It's better. And I said, okay, cool. So you think that's, I think you should just leave the team. At that point, I was just fed up with it. And he's what do you mean? No, that's not what I meant, sir. But I was like, no, you're done. So it really just comes down to being coachable. That's the biggest thing that I've seen. Our top acquisition right now, the reason that her results are so amazing is she was coachable from the start. She always asked questions. I'm begging them to ask questions. Please ask me questions. If they have a couple of questions, we'll hop on zoom call. If I can't just message it, but the number one thing that she did compared to everyone else was she was hungry. She was asking questions all the time. She wanted to learn more than she needed to. So, Hey, the seller told me this. What does that mean? And then I'll give her the answer. She'll dig into it. So for example, seller told me that for example, flood zone. What's flood zone? Okay, good question. This is what flood zone is. Okay, cool. How do I find out if a property is flood zone or not so it doesn't happen again? But others, what's flood zone? Oh, it's this. Oh, okay, cool. And that's it. It was really just trying to understand from start to finish compared to everyone else just trying to figure out what they can answer the seller with. That was really what differentiated the really successful people on our team from the, I guess you could say the just, okay, they just want to be lead managers and they're good with that job and they're not really trying to grow or excel to the next job.
Mike:Yeah. How many he'll make it to lead manager pass a quiz? That then make it to acquisitions. What's your kind of ratio
Shadi:So right now it's tight. I would say one in maybe 10. One in eight to one in 10, something like that. Yeah. Because when it comes to acquisition, you could train someone on lead manager, teach them a script. It's on the basics of real estate. They just need to know, the basics of terms to know what's closing costs. What's the title company? What kind of houses they're looking at but when you're talking about acquisition, they need to know a lot. I need to teach them from start to finish everything and it's harder when you're virtual because For example my dispo team right now. I just tell them. Hey guys Let's go see this house and we go and see it and I explained to them in person, it's harder when they're virtual, such as like I'll go on Google, we'll meet a meeting, all the question seller asked me about wood, this or whatever. And I'll be like, okay, cool. This is how you do it. I'll Google and I'll show them how you can find out if a house has this or that. Or for example, county records doesn't show if it's wood frame or black. Lead managers, they don't really need to know. That information to that depth. Whatever they're converting it, but now acquisition needs to know when they're comping. So I'll show them, this is how you see the wood frame home. This is how you see a block one. If the county records doesn't give them that information. So it's going to take a lot of my time and a lot of my sales managers time to train them. So we're really picky on that, but I have a good feeling about the two lead managers that we have right now. Their qualification when they first joined in, it was a little bit higher than the typical lead manager that we've had joined, just older, a lot more experience, like 10 years in experience, customer service management. So I have a really good feeling that they might beat that 1 in 8 ratio and they might actually make it 2 in 2. So we'll see how that goes.
Mike:Okay. So you've got that. And then your Dyspo team is local though. You said,
Shadi:Yeah, Dispo teams out of Orlando.
Mike:what made you decide to keep that local while making acquisitions and international position?
Shadi:You have to trust the person definitely, but I felt that with dispositions, you need to trust them on a whole different level. You guys are talking to the buyers. First of all, I need them here in case they need to show homes. We don't really do much showings like group showings where they actually go show the house Most of the time we actually have our buyers go out there themselves and just go see the house it's worked out for us Thank God we haven't had anyone try to go behind our back yet, but just yesterday, for example, we had a house was probably about 20 minutes away. And so I was just like, all right, guys, let's go. I'm going to show you guys how to show this house. And it's just a process that I want them to learn how to build their relationships with the buyers. Cause that's really the biggest thing for me is relationships, especially with the buyers. I like the idea of texting a couple guys. Hey, I have this deal in Jacksonville, Mike, you're the guy I text there, but you want this deal? Yes or no? No, not really. Or yeah, I'll take it. And that's it. Actually, we have an investor like cartel mode and such, but I just liked the idea of selling to the same buyer again and again, building that relationship. You and I met you at a meetup and at an event and we became friends after that. I liked that idea of selling a deal to a friend of mine instead of just a random person every time. We're both making money and what do I have to lose? So I want them to be able to do the same thing, build that relationship with their buyers, meet with their buyers. For example, one of my disclosures, she met with the buyers that she was talking to on the phone. So now she can develop that different relationship with them. And then just like I said, with trust, we have our team overseas signed non disclosures and non competes, but how strong is that? It's a U. S. non compete form, but here in the U. S., it's a whole different ballgame.
Mike:Yeah, I think that is a key thing to you mentioned. We're the same way where we sell to a lot of the same buyers and it's just, that people will perform. We probably get 2030 wholesaler emails a day. But I have my assistant going through them, but I only really look at the ones that are from people that I know if you send me something, I'll actually be like, Oh, no, send it to me. Don't use screen. Send it to me directly. And I'll look at all right. whatever because you're so busy. look at someone's stuff.
Shadi:especially with all the email blasts that you get, every day I can just tell you like the amount of names I have memorized in my head. But I, like you said, I probably get like 50 to 60 emails a day from wholesalers and I'll buy deals if they're good. But I still, I look at these deals and I see one or two bad deals. I just give up looking at their emails anymore. It could be bad. I could be missing out on this stuff, but If I see your ARV is inflated by a hundred thousand, I'm not looking at your emails anymore. I'm just swiping through them, But for example, let's say you sent me a deal or someone else I know that actually ran their comp sent me a deal. I'll actually look at it. I'll run the numbers. And that's another big thing that we have for Dispo too. Numbers are not inflated. You can be the judge of that. You can be, are they inflated or not?
Mike:I thought I bought deals from
Shadi:Yeah, yeah, so that's my biggest thing. I don't want it to be everyone's numbers are inflated That's the complaints I get so many times from buyers and that's what pisses me off more than anything when I look at a deal Oh three two eight two five one of those it goes. I know really well. I'll look at it. Okay, cool This is a solid deal. Let me look at the comps. It's 10 minutes away from me I'll do this flip and then it turns out ARV is off by 80 K
Mike:yeah.
Shadi:just wasting everyone's time.
Mike:Sure. And then your email start getting ignored. Just like you said.
Shadi:Yeah, exactly. I don't open those people's emails anymore. So
Mike:Yeah. Right now, like what's the makeup of your business in terms of the types of deals that you're doing?
Shadi:I'd say about 80 percent wholesale and flipping. It really just comes down to the numbers. I kind of cherry pick the wholesale deals for flipping. So for example, this year we didn't flip any deals. Every single time I looked at one deal and I was just saying, this is a juicy deal. We could flip it. I'll wholesale it and I'll make around the same amount that I was supposed to make as a flip. So it just doesn't really make sense. Take it down with the market risk right now, properties are staying on the market a little bit longer. We were just talking about that, it's not worth it for that extra five or 10 K. So right now, I switched to my business model where it's just going to be 80 percent wholesale and anything that I do I'll just start buying it as a rental.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah, makes sense. It's interesting that you started when you started in the business. You're like, I just want to start in wholesale and I want to get flipper. What was the inflection point? You said, eh, maybe not.
Shadi:When I did a lot of flips in one year, this was 2021. That's when I decided that it's not for me. I don't like it. I never did. The checks were nice, but, what happened was my systems weren't as strong as they are now. And I didn't have a really good crew, so I was at my flips almost every day and I had three to four flips all in different sides of town, like this was crazy. When I decided to flip, I didn't flip one house and try to figure it out. I bought three and then I closed on the fourth one like two months later. I was like, all right, cool. I'm going to figure it out with all four. And I didn't even have a crew. I was like, I'll find a good crew. It's all good. We'll figure it all out. And one house was in the 500, 000. I didn't buy it for that. It was worth about 500, 000. And then it was a small condo. And then another one's three 50 and another one, like 300. So It was stressful and different sides of town, 40 minutes to an hour away from each. And it messed up the wholesale business really, because it was a couple months after I hired, so we stopped seeing wholesale contracts come in. And every single time I was like, let me fix it. I'd have to be in a flip. So the revenue came in from the flips at the time, but it wasn't worth sacrificing wholesaling at the time.
Mike:Yeah. That's a really good point, man. I wouldn't be doing flips if I didn't have a crew that just did it without me being there. I've got one going on now. I haven't been there in a month. It's an eight week project. I get the progress pictures every week. It's moving along. It's the same guys who do all my stuff. I would not touch it if I had to be there managing subs. I just can't
Shadi:Yeah, for sure. And that's the process that we have now, but now I'm just going to use that for flips and that's it. like I said, unless I really see something worth it. To flip where let's say in wholesale, it's supposed to be like 30k and I can make 80 or so in flips and I'll do it. But if I'm making in a flip$50,000 or$60,000, I can make 45 in a wholesale. I'll just take the 45.
Mike:Yeah, for sure.
Shadi:Yeah.
Mike:What's your target assignment fee, or I guess what's your average assignment fee
Shadi:Average right now is about 21, 000.
Mike:That's pretty good, dude.
Shadi:Yeah. Yeah. It was last year. With the Market. Of course it was crazier. It was like 35 last year, so it went down but it's still pretty good. I know a couple of friends that are like around 11 or
Mike:Yeah. 11, 12, 15. A lot of people are 15. Yeah, that's great. What do you attribute that to? Is it, it's all a lot. It's some could be acquisitions or dispositions, but
Shadi:Yeah, it definitely does attribute to both negotiating is one thing, of course, and acquisitions really big on that. One thing that we do with sellers a lot is just try to bring them back to reality. Listen, love, you want, for example, it just happened yesterday with a lead seller wanted like 190. We were at 183. I think at most we could pay like 189. And I just told my acquisition, she already did this. That's what's funny. Like I told her what to do. She's I already did that. We're good. I just told her, listen, I'm just telling them we could do one 90, but there's always a chance that we might have to reduce the price because we didn't see the house and the rehab estimates already high. So it's just building that credibility. We're focusing a lot on our Google reviews. So we're able to really leverage that. Hey, you want to see our Google reviews? Here you go. You could see that every single person that sold to us and left us a review, they were happy with our business. A lot of people go through bad experiences, right? So it's really just the biggest thing, differentiating ourselves from those others, we've had some people even take lower offers with us just because they can see our credibility compared to someone else, which I felt. In our business. There's not a lot of people that focus on that. We're focused on Google, on SEO, Google ads, which is great for lead gen, but no one's really focusing on google reviews.
Mike:Sure. Yeah. Are you guys also doing SEO and PPC still? Or have you just stuck with the outbound?
Shadi:PPC is still there. It's just a smaller budget. Man, finding a manager that we're happy with is pretty tough, so I'll be honest. I'm actually dabbling with it myself. From the last manager that we had doing it, ever since I took it over, we actually got a lot more leads that were quality leads. So it's just right now I just haven't really had time to really dabble with it as much or adjust the keywords and adjust the search terms as much. So I'd say for the last couple weeks or so, I haven't really dabbled with an increase the budget, but we're still definitely keeping it in there. I think that is the future. When it comes to lead gen, just because you see how, just as September 1st, they started hounding down more on SMS and then they announced some other restriction today as well. They're going to keep getting on it. SMS is not the way it was in 2020 or so. Those days, dude, I was getting like 20 percent response rate and I spent in 2020 like five or six grand, but we had$90,000, it was ridiculous, but nowadays, you just, we're still at a response rate, surprisingly, like 14, 15%. But it's not as easy. The lead to conversion is just higher for sure. And then cold calling is great. It keeps the team busy. It keeps them fed. So I was getting like 10 leads, but I definitely think PPC is like the place to go. We're also going to be trying PPO. So that's what we're actually starting to this week.
Mike:Okay.
Shadi:Yeah.
Mike:What areas are, I know you guys do Jacksonville, I know you do Orlando, are you doing like all of Florida, or are you like sticking to central northeast, or what's your
Shadi:So I'd say like central northeast for sure. So south Florida, we don't touch. not. We've done a couple of deals there, but it's not my favorite. So Orlando, Central Florida area, Tampa, Ocala area. We'll touch that. And in Jacksonville, we also target Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina.
Mike:Okay. Is your focus more like hitting the distress list, or are you guys we'll hit everyone is on the house for 5 years?
Shadi:No, we'll hit everything. Just like you said, we pull this 2018 and older and we just call them all.
Mike:yeah, there's diamonds in the rough everywhere.
Shadi:Definitely. A lot of the people that we deal with, they're not people that have to like text, especially this year. I think about it and we have a couple of foreclosures and such, but I'd say, A good 60 percent of our deals were people that lived in the house. I know a lot of people like to say just absentee and that's it. And it's great. Motivation is there. They should definitely have higher motivation. But I'd say about 60 percent of our deals are people that lived in the homes. They wanted to, relocate how are you going to pull a list for someone relocating? It's not vacant yet. So just owner occupied, higher equity, we don't even weed out the equity to be honest. Because we do a lot of creative finance too, not as much as cash as such, but yeah, we do some innovations now as well. That's been a big focus for us. And creative finance, that's really just for us to buy.
Mike:Talk about something you said before, because you said we don't send people there to do showings. We just have our buyers go how are you framing that with the sellers? And I guess it seems to work very well for you. How do you go about that process to make that successful?
Shadi:It really just comes down to telling the sellers. When we get under contract with a seller, first thing the acquisition does is set the expectations. Congratulations. What's going to happen next is someone from our team is going to call you, schedule a time for our photographer to come out to the property. They're just going to take some pictures of the home. If our contractor or our partner needs to come to the property after the pictures are taken, we're going to let you know. They might just need to check a couple things in person, but sometimes they don't need to. Sometimes the photographer, pictures are enough. So we have some deals that get sold side unseen, but I'd say majority of them, we just tell them. Yeah. For you, for example.
Mike:I'm efficient.
Shadi:Yeah. And I can't blame you.
Mike:It's too hard.
Shadi:So John run and see everything else. But it's just really comes down to like we just have the team go out there it's a call to seller and schedule time, hey, our contractor wants to come out there or a partner just needs to come out there for 10, 15 minutes and just let the buyer know, Hey, you're our partner, you're a contractor, whatever it is that we saw fit for that day. And they just go out and see the property and thankfully never had any problems. I think it just really comes down to vetting and that's another thing I like about our dispo team. They vet the buyer before we schedule them for a showing. So is it a wholesaler buyer? Is the buyer having a good attitude or is he someone that's being a pain in the ass? That's a big thing too. So I don't want someone that if they're being all rude and we don't need to sell the deal to you. Okay. So we'll just not deal with them, but we won't even schedule them showing. I don't have one guy. Like he got really pissed off. Just the attitude he was giving. I just don't like the vibes that we're giving out. So we didn't schedule them showing. We still sold the deal. But we, like I said, thankfully we haven't had any issues. It's worked out for us. It really just comes down to having that conversation on both ends. Many times and I'm sure you've seen it too. Just when I can, you deal with a wholesaler and they're just. All over the place like sometimes I'll try to JV a deal, but we're dealing with it right now. My disposal, she was going crazy about it just yesterday. Dispo agent sent us a deal and he was sending us, I think the AB or was going to or did, I can't remember. And we got him a buyer. So we're supposed to be like 12k on the deal and he's making whatever amount he's supposed to make. And... He wanted 1 45 for the he wanted 1 42 for the deal. We sold it for 1 54. So we're just gonna make the difference. Great. We're gonna send the assignment over to the buyer. We tell them, send us an assignment. Oh I'm not the one with the contract. Just be honest with me. And then we couldn't even, until now, we still don't know who has the contract according to that wholesaler. No one does, and the seller doesn't even wanna sell. But they schedule, they let us into the house and we have pictures. It doesn't really make sense, but I've dealt with it so many times where, Just honesty is the biggest thing. It's so simple, but a lot of people miss on it. Just being simple and like you said, just keep it. There's nothing else to say.
Mike:That's pretty easy. Yeah. To be a buyer, like the people who I call first for buyers and friends of mine are just people I've known who've just been easy in the past that are just like sending the photo and video and they're like, cool, I'll take it or cool. I'll take it at whatever. 130. I'm like, okay, I'll let you know if that works. That's it.
Shadi:Yeah. And that's it. There you go. Instead of just going around, they're just going around the truth and such. When you make so many lies too, it's just, can't really catch up on them. What did I tell the seller again? Yeah. What did I tell? Oh, what did I tell the buyer again? Or just be honest from the start. And some people also assume for the seller, Oh, he's going to say this about time. I want to get this guy in or this is going to happen. That's going to happen. Worst case the seller tries to go behind our back. I'll just, we'll cloud title or We'll figure something out.
Mike:Yeah. And you said you guys are doing some alternative strategies to like novation. So when do you decide to do that versus a wholesale?
Shadi:for sure. Will always give a cash offer. That's always a number one. And so plan A is cash. After that, let's say sellers at 270, for example, or cash offers like 180 and they reject it. Of course, what we'll do is we'll try to negotiate a little bit, but not as much as we usually do. So let's say when we negotiate, we just put them on the hold and come back with another number. We'll put them on hold maybe one more time. If it doesn't work out and we just really don't see them budging, then we'll just say, listen up, we have this program. I don't know if you qualify for it yet, but if you do great. I'll let you know what it is. See if you're interested in anyway. So we'll tell them that we won't, innovation method, basically pitch them on that, and if they're interested, put them on hold, get them qualified for that method. And just send over the contract with that addendum
Mike:what does that pitch sound like?
Shadi:Basically saying it's like, Hey, we have this concierge program. You might not qualify for it yet, but I could definitely see, let's see if you're interested in it first. If you're interested in it, then I'll let my underwriter know and see if you qualify. If not, then no hard feelings. The way it works is we're actually, we have some exclusive buyers, partners that might be interested in the property. They should be able to pay a little bit more than us. So we're going to do is we're going to send it over to the market to them. And one of our marketing methods is the MLS. If you're interested and let's see what kind of number we can get you. And of course, we let them know if we get a little bit more than what we thought from our buyer, then we'll get them a little bit more closing. We tell them like, Hey, if there's any realtors involved, we'll pay the commissions, closing costs, of course, covered by us. So we just let them know that it's like our exclusive buyers and partners. And we've done pretty well with them. For example, we have one right now. It looks bad. It's in North Carolina, but it looks really bad and I was doubting that one. We got it for 103. It's worth about 150, 145 to 150 and we're selling it for 130. So it's something, it is a cash deal. 150, you'd probably have to get it in the condition that I'd say probably need it for 60. Sell it for 70 or 75. And it's a wood frame home too. It opens the doors to more opportunity. Definitely brings in more revenue. We're doing this other deal, this deal, we were actually trying to wholesale for the longest time. And seller all of a sudden said we were supposed to close back in like later in December. And since they weren't ready until then, all of a sudden they told me, Hey, we want to close next month. We weren't really getting good bites. It was a higher end home, mid four hundreds, which was the purchase price. Every was about like five 50 or so. And it was a pretty good condition, but It's just, no one really wanted to touch it, just in that city that it's in, it's not the best, at that price point you can get something in Orlando or in Tampa. It was like right in the middle of the plant city, Florida. I pitched it over, we were already under contract with him. And I pitched the innovation method to him, told him I might be able to get you a little bit more money for it. And he was all for it. So we listed it that way within a week. We had a conventional buyer on it. So we should be closing on that one next week.
Mike:And then you're just telling them that we're gonna put a lockbox on there so that people can come by type thing, just to make it easy
Shadi:So we'll try to do that And then of course like if they live there we have like for example the one north carolina She wanted to be there every time so all right. We're gonna have a good amount of people coming in there, that's completely fine As long as they're okay with it, we had 15 or 20 people go there. She didn't say a word. Every single time we'd schedule a show in two hours before and she'd be there. She didn't even live there too. She lived like 20 minutes away. So every couple of days she'll text me. We have the closing set for the end of this month. Every couple of days she'll text me. Hey, when are we closing again? What are my figures? So it definitely looks like she wanted to sell. You done novations or?
Mike:We've done I think two, so not too many. We are starting to implement it more though.
Shadi:I do know that you said you buy some of them and just list them right away.
Mike:Yeah, that's common for us. Yeah. The only reason I like doing that sometimes is just like less moving pieces. I don't have'em there in the house and I can just send 20 people there the first weekend and not have to worry about it.
Shadi:Yeah. That makes sense.
Mike:Yeah, but I have to buy a cheaper to do that. All right. So maybe I should be
Shadi:Yeah. It definitely opens door to so many more leads. For month, we have three or four novations
Mike:wow. Okay. So it's a good percentage of what you do.
Shadi:Yeah. I'd say about like 20 percent we're pushing on it more. So if we can get around five to six more novations every month, that's six figures alone.
Mike:Yeah, and you guys are doing some creative finance deals as well.
Shadi:We are, not as much, I'd definitely like to do more. But it's just really training on that is a whole different, room. But we do I really use creative finance to buy my own deals, our own rentals. So that's why I learned it from Pace Morby, the notorious Pace Morby. But like for example, we bought this one duplex earlier this year. This one was like my favorite deal. We wholesale the deal that he sold us. It was like a condo. And he told me that he had another deal. And so we're talking about it. It was a duplex. I was like, I'm definitely interested. He wanted 300 or 320 or something. Some number around there. And, it's worth like 320. So I just don't listen to man. I'd love to buy it, but cash wise, you're not going to like it. What is it? What is it? It's one 90. It's what, man, that's way too low. It's a duplex. So I just, I know I told you it's going to be terrible. So let's do this instead. Would you sell on terms? And I straight up told him from the start, before I even said the number, I said, it's going to be a terrible offer for you. We built that rapport where it was just like, he's not going to come at a higher price unless he really wanted it. So he's I'll sell on terms, but let's go meet for lunch beforehand. So I was, alright, whatever, let's go. Scheduled lunch for the next day. Went and saw the house, or the duplex, had lunch, and we started talking the numbers. He wanted a hundred grand down, and I was just like no way. agreed on was 275 for purchase. And$25, 000 down and then payment wise, we're trying to structure that. So the guy loves to go on cruises. He goes on cruises every single month. And so I just said, cool, how much does your cruise usually cost you? It's like about 1200 bucks. And 1, 200 a month? I'll pay your cruise every single month. And it worked. And that's what we agreed on. So I paid him 1, 200 a month, 0 percent interest. And 25, 000 down on a duplex that's cash flowing, so after his payment, we're around 1500 a month.
Mike:That's still, it's still great. And he's sitting there like drinking a margarita on a cruise
Shadi:yeah, he sent me a couple of pictures of him in the jacuzzi. Yeah. He used to be sitting in the hot tub on the cruise. I'll send it. I'll send it over to you after the podcast. He was sending me like two months after closing. He's thanks for the cruise, Shadi. He's send me a picture of him in the hot tub on the cruise. And it's like, all right, cool, man. You're living the
Mike:That, that's hilarious. yeah, good for him though. Good for him. Good for you.
Shadi:Yeah, definitely.
Mike:Yeah. So for people who are thinking about building, A virtual sales team, I guess I should say, because that's the unique challenge. Let's first start what challenges did you face along the way? And how did you overcome those?
Shadi:so the virtual team, the biggest thing I think the most important thing is. Like I said, sales, it's not for everyone. All right. Just talking on the phones for eight hours a day, making those offers lead managers as well. So the culture was a really big thing. And it's tough to make a culture when you're not really around each other. So I think what it came down to was just like on our meetings. We have a good amount of meetings, especially training cameras are always on such, but Just in the beginning of Monday meeting is like I said five to ten minutes in the beginning We'll just talk about each other's weekend. I'll throw a joke here. Someone else will throw a joke there We'll just laugh it out and then we'll go Into the conversation once we go into business everyone just understands it, you know now it's showtime And it's really transparent. I don't really do like personal meetings with each person. So for example, acquisitions, when we do a recordings meeting with them on Wednesdays, listen to the recordings. So we'll try to do that in the mornings where both acquisitions are on the call. We'll listen to each of the recordings and I'll pause and give some feedback throughout and the others can put in third for me, their input on that to their feedback. think it makes everyone comfortable with one another too. And it's, you don't want, of course, to drop all their boundaries because you need anyone to be professional, but I find it that everyone on the team is like a friend in a way, everyone's comfortable with one another. I think that's really the biggest thing that needs to be built, setting expectations. Definitely another big one. I had a tendency of being like a little too nice or a little too lenient in the beginning. So that's definitely something that I had to work on training in different ways. So a lot of, I might, I trained one person one way. I think the other person is going to understand it that same way. I found out the hard way. It's not the way, that's not the case. You gotta train the way they are, the way they learn. So just being patient really The biggest thing I would tell anyone right now is if they were doing it, any small thing that you do, make a recording of it while you're doing just screen record, or if you're talking, recording something recorded, add it to a Google Drive, you're going to thank yourself later. You're going to have someone later on ask, or for example, admin, I used to show an admin on a zoom call, or former admin, like how to do these small tasks. Once he left, I was just like, all right, cool. I don't even know where to start. He had so many tasks that he took care of for me. I don't know which one to go with first, hire the next admin. Then I made all those videos so she can always play back, and if she forgets something, it's right there. So just really making those videos is like the biggest thing, or just recruit those, record the zoom call. And just upload it to Google Drive. It doesn't have to be all fancy. None of our videos are really fancy. It just has a bunch of content really.
Mike:Yeah, so I guess for. If someone was to say, Hey, I do want to build this virtual sales team. Haven't done it yet. It's I like the idea of this. This is what I want to do. What would be your biggest piece of advice to them? If they're just starting.
Shadi:Yeah. They're starting, I would definitely say, don't ever just assume that they're doing the task the right way. There was a couple of times where I thought the lead manager was just because I was busy and it's oh, it's fine. They can't be doing that bad on the recordings, and I'll skip it for a week or two. Then I listen to it and I just want to tear my hair off. Yeah, it's so bad. So it's and then it starts hitting you. Then you start, I'm sure you've had this before. Oh my God. Like I wonder how many deals we missed out on because of this. Cause okay, cool. I missed out, I'm paying them for their time, but now look at the opportunity costs. Average assignment 21, 000. If I lost out on two to three deals that one lead manager just cost me 63, 000. Is it really worth it? So I think the biggest thing was definitely just doing that and being a leader instead of a boss. That's another thing, too. If I expected to do something, I need to be able to do it myself. Just. That's just the number one and being patient for sure. Training, there's no such thing as too much training, but of course, like training for 10 hours a day. That's, you want it to be efficient. My trainings when I'm on with my team acquisitions, when we're like on a really in depth training, it'll maybe be like an hour and a half, two hours, but it's not four or five hours or anything. No, but keep training.
Mike:Yeah. So we're getting close to the end here and there's always two questions I like to ask at the end. The first one's kind of fun. And that question is what is the craziest or most uncomfortable situation you've ever experienced in a real estate deal?
Shadi:Problem is there's a lot. Oh, that's the, I'm virtual, but I still see houses. I've had like horror stories with flips and such, but I'd say the craziest or like most uncomfortable situation I was seeing this house in Palm Bay, Florida, it's about an hour away and the seller. Her son lived like three doors down. She just told me the front door is locked, but go to the back door. It's fine. Sounds good. Let's go see it. I go to the house. It looks like shit, but it's alright, it's all good. She told me the back door is open. What could possibly go wrong? So I go to the back door and I heard like some humming. There's like a shed in the backyard and the backyard is pretty large. I heard like a noise, like of someone singing or something. I just ignored it. I thought maybe like the neighbor has music on or whatever. So I open the door, I walk in, I see pizza and like chicken wings on the floor. I was like, it's probably like some homeless person, but I don't think it's fresh, so we're fine. So I walk in. I kid you not, this is like a horror movie at this point. So you walk into the house. I was walking in, to the right of me was the kitchen, the back door. And then you walk a little bit forward, there's a living room. And then to your right was a hallway. It was a narrow hallway, and then you had two bedrooms, and then a bathroom on the end of the hallway. Just to make matters worse, the hallway, the light in there was flickering. And all the other lights weren't working, just the fan in the living room and just that one flickering light in the hallway. So I'm just standing there and I'm like slowly walking and I start saying hello, nothing happened. No one said anything. So I start taking pictures of the kitchen, taking pictures of the living room and there's like a closet room on the left side. I opened that door and then I hear laughing, that was like a homeless person in the rooms behind me in that hallway. They were like running and they started giggling and ran from one room to the other. And that's when I was like, hell no, I'm out, I'm not buying this deal. Ran right back out, and then I noticed when I was looking, like, when I ran back out and got to my car, I was like, let's see what that humming noise was, so I walked back to the backyard, and it was another homeless person sitting in a mattress in the shed in the backyard. So, yeah. so that was pretty weird. That definitely was of the top unique scenarios that I've ever dealt with.
Mike:Yeah, that's up there.
Shadi:Yeah, but as I'm sure you've dealt with it too. There's a bunch of nasty homes that we see. So those, you know how nasty the homes are when you can't breathe and you walk out, you're like itching and you didn't know if there's something on you or not.
Mike:Yeah, I've had that.
Shadi:for sure.
Mike:The second question, man, is if you could go back in time to 2018 and give yourself one piece of advice when you were looking for that first deal, knowing what you know now, what would you tell yourself?
Shadi:The biggest thing that I've seen, like I've taught a good amount of people wholesaling and things that I can say like they've all, succeeded from the ones that I really went into it. Not every person I've taught, but just the people that actually took that first step of actually working it out. But the biggest thing was consistency. So being consistent with calling, being consistent with your marketing. Just being consistent with every single thing that helps you get that deal. That's the biggest thing that I would give myself advice on or anyone else. And until now, that's always what I preach. I see a lot of people, people that help or just people that I talk to, they'll get a deal locked up and they're going to focus on Dispo. They'll work on Dispo for three weeks and then they don't call any leads during that time. And they sell the deal. And then after they sell the deal, they stop for about one to two weeks to gather their feelings or just relax a little bit, celebrate the check or so. And then after that, they go back into acquisitions and they're just like, I don't know where to start. Once you stop the train, it's so much harder to get the momentum going again. So the biggest thing I tell everyone is just be consistent. That's the biggest thing. You need to keep getting deals. You need to keep talking to sellers, even if you don't have, a lot of people will try to I don't really have any hot leads in here. You don't know what's hot or not until you talk to them and actually made them an offer because. A cold caller, your level of calling or your experience, your skills on the phone, they're not going to be the same as a cold caller, right? Or someone just texting a template. So there's going to be so much more information. And we've had sometimes sellers, they're asking 400, 000. We'll lock them up for two 30 to 50. You don't know until you talk to them, that's the biggest thing, but number one thing for sure. I would say consistency.
Mike:Yeah, good piece of advice. So if people wanna reach out to you after the show, if they have questions or maybe they have some deals you can buy in or Orlando area, can they go about doing that?.
Shadi:Definitely. The best way if I reach out to me is going to be Instagram. It's going to be at Shadi Tamimi underscore. So best way to reach me there. I'll be able to respond to you the same day for sure.
Mike:man. This is great. Appreciate you being on the show.
Shadi:Thank you. Thank you so much, Mike. Appreciate it.