After an adventurous career navigating the world's waters, Andrew made a bold transition in August 2022, diving into the realm of real estate. Now, he specializes in wholesale deals in Jacksonville, with a keen focus on navigating through messy title situations.
After an adventurous career navigating the world's waters, Andrew made a bold transition in August 2022, diving into the realm of real estate. Now, he specializes in wholesale deals in Jacksonville, with a keen focus on navigating through messy title situations.
All right, everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Game Changers show. I'm your host, Mike McKay, based in Jacksonville, Florida, and each and every week we do this show with people who are changing the game of real estate all over the country. And this is a live show, guys, so if you have any questions, please put them in the comments for our guests to answer. If anyone is in the Jacksonville area and looking at getting into real estate, we are currently hiring sales reps. If you have sales experience, uh, reach out to me, send me a DM on Instagram and we can talk. And this week on the show, we have Andrew Oros, Andrew, welcome to the show.
Andrew:Thanks. Nice to be here.
Mike:Cool, man. So for the people who don't know you, could you share with us about how you got into real estate and how that's led you to where you are today?
Andrew:Okay, um, I don't know. Our, our journey was a little different than I guess some people's. Um, we used to run private yachts. And so I was a yacht captain for, uh, since 2015. So, uh, really honestly, I wasn't even, real estate wasn't on my radar at all. We were focused on running yachts, being safe, uh, navigating the seas. So I was never, I spent more time at sea than I spent on land. So real estate for us wasn't really a thing until probably 2020, 2021. And we did the typical, uh, rich dad, poor dad, binge, bigger pockets. You know what I mean? We would download it all. And then on crossings, go into Europe. We would just watch it for 12 days straight. Like, okay, this is, this is cool. But in practice it was it was pretty challenging while being on the boat to still run a business because we never had consistent service Uh, we would be in a different country every two weeks. So it you're pretty falls to the walls. So But in 2022 Um, my fiance at the time said, this is enough. I want to have a normal life. And we walked off the boat one day, we packed our truck and we drove to Jacksonville and the rest is history. We started wholesaling the first day we got here.
Mike:And, like, had you guys done, um, any, like, real estate stuff before you guys got here, or are you just kind of, like, watching stuff and learning about it online?
Andrew:We went to YouTube university and we learned once we got here, we had, had never done a transaction before.
Mike:What made you decide to pick Jacksonville, of all places?
Andrew:We went to Two or three months before we actually walked off the last boat. We went to some Like hype conference in arizona. It was one of the I can't remember. I can't limitless That's what it was called. It was limitless real estate. It was one of uh, rich dad poor dads like it was his Big one out in Arizona. It's just a two day event and they had the top five markets in the US and they said Tampa and Jacksonville on the top two and we're used to Florida. We're used to South Florida because of the boats. We would do a lot of shipyard times in Fort Lauderdale or West Palm Beach. So I'm like, well, let's do East Coast better waves and Jacksonville. It's Florida. We know Florida. There we go. That was, that was all the thought we put into it, to be honest.
Mike:Fair enough, gotcha. And then you want to talk a little bit about like where your business has kind of come from.
Andrew:Yep. So, uh, we didn't actually get here until I think September in 2022. So towards the end, um, since then. We've pretty much become a full self sufficient wholesale operation. We've got a team of five. Uh, we didn't do our first actual closing until January of 2023.
Mike:Okay.
Andrew:and and since then I think we're probably around 65 transactions since then so going from zero to that. I mean a lot of people have done a lot more, but we're we're on our way
Mike:Yeah, what do you guys think allowed you to kind of ramp up to doing? I mean, that's like, what? 30 more than 30 a year, maybe 40 a year. What what allowed you to ramp up to that? Like, relatively, I mean, pretty quickly, in my opinion.
Andrew:We're just obsessive. We don't have friends. We don't have we don't I mean we had a dinner with you guys a couple weeks ago That was the most social we had been in about four months So we just go to the gym man and we just work. We put in 12 hour days every day and it's either trying to learn something new we don't know or trying to work a seller.
Mike:Yeah. So what are some of the things that you obsessed on that you think like really catapulted you the most? If you had to pick maybe one or two.
Andrew:In the beginning it was data. Um, at least me personally, Um, I really got I'm a big advocate of REI SIFT. We that was pivotal for us. Um, we didn't know how to organize everything. We had Google Sheets before. We had a dialer, but we didn't know what was where and up and down. Um, so just going through the basics of even how to organize data and where data comes from. and starting from a really good base, I think was the best. The key to us getting the deals that we do,
Mike:Hmm. What did you do to put, like, I know everyone's got a different strategy. Um, what did you guys use to build like the base of your data?
Andrew:we were really focused on straight to the source. So everything for us comes straight from the County. Um, and then from there, just trying to stack it as best as we can. We're, we're very, we're very small and niche operations. We don't have a big team, so we got to get the most bang for our buck on every deal
Mike:So were you like uploading the whole tax roll in first, or you were just taking people on the niche lists and then kind of stacking more niche lists on top of them or?
Andrew:we would. We still do. We get every single list that we can and try to build a. Uh, a scope or probability of what would convert, um, even to like, I, until this year didn't have any sales experience. Um, everything's self taught. So for us, we figured out pretty naturally who I could close better in terms of demographic versus not like I do much better with people over 50, anyone under 50, I don't really close very well. It's not my style naturally. So we would focus on that a little bit. We would focus on like, Hey, you know, certain zip codes. I don't close that general demographic very well. So we would just try to from data, put ourselves in the best opportunity. Target rich environments is what we called it.
Mike:Yeah. And then was there anything else that you were looking at in that data? Like besides people you could close well for like who to spend your time on?
Andrew:Um, in the beginning, no, we did have a stent where it was six months where I would go drive for four hours every day and I would just drive for dollars. And that started to build our data profile better. Um, whereas if we had a motivated house, we just had to find the right owner in terms of everything we've worked. There was a problem with the house. It was the ugliest house in the block. And if we could just match up a motivated seller to that house, we were done.
Mike:So a lot of that was like building your own list from, from driving out there and then tracking, was it just tracking those people down then? Or.
Andrew:Uh, running it through skip tracing and then learning how to give trace and we use skip trace at a couple of different places. Um, Naya is for context. So my fiance is Naya. Her mom is an asset recovery specialist. And so they have, yeah, they have a lot of resources that we normally wouldn't have had on our own that we got to leverage in terms of profiling and skip tracing. So.
Mike:are like, what are some kind of resources that they have?
Andrew:Um, informian was one of them. I don't know if you're familiar with informian. Um, but it is normal investor can't get ahold of it. You have to have a license. Um, and so we got to get more information in terms of age, demographic, family, history, family tree. Um, Who's deceased, who's not birth certificates. It's like ancestry on steroids with phone numbers and everything attached.
Mike:Got it. What are some other kind of resources?
Andrew:Everything else is pretty much prop stream. We use prop stream a lot and prop, uh, prop wire, just anything that we could get to, to fill our target house. So it wasn't, it really wasn't that complicated. It was, if it was on multiple lists from straight from the County and we had an owner who really, especially if it's vacant or not above 55, we were there. They were getting a call.
Mike:And like, were you determining the age from skip tracing or just how long they own the house, taking educated guess or?
Andrew:Educated guests.
Mike:Gotcha. Interesting. Um, and then, you know, I know you kind of mentioned offline, like you were doing like, Some kind of like you go pretty deep on these leads. I think he described his PI work. You want to talk a little bit about what you mean by that?
Andrew:Yeah. We realized last year that the best deals we do haven't, haven't been through probate They're normally totally abandoned. No one's touched the house for years. Um, and what we ended up finding over and over was that we needed, like, we would get one error. We had no idea. Um, we would get them signed. They'd want to sell the house. We would go to title. And I think you and I use the same title company that the closing agent would be like, uh, you're not done You need five more people. Otherwise, this isn't going anywhere like crap. What do you know? This is a waste of time But we realized pretty quick that we could with the with naya's mom and then a few Friends of ours that are also rei sift users that we could actually track them down Um And we started focusing a lot on that because we already had all the data. Um, it ends up being a pretty similar profile. So we, uh, that's actually what we look for now, because it's really easy to close someone when there's no competition.
Mike:Sure. Yeah. Um, when you were, when you're kind of going after those, though, if they haven't gone through probate, like, are you just looking for ones in the appraiser that just say like a state of, or like, is there.
Andrew:That's one thing you can do. Um, that's a pretty big list still, to be honest. Um, I think there's a few thousand if you just were to pull the, for Jacksonville, just to see who's on labeled as a state and, and that doesn't always mean that it still is an estate or that there's also ones that don't have a state that ours, the states, um, one of the things that we learned, and it was from an REI SIFT video, there was one of these podcasts, kind of like what we're doing here today from a guy named McLean Bobbitt, and his whole focus was going after the list no one gets. And so it wasn't, it was public knowledge to us, but pretty much when we go and we skip trace the tax roll, for example, about 10 percent of our records come back unskippable and, and that's kind of where we start looking. So instead of what everyone else is calling, I don't know about you or, you know, the
Mike:Yeah, we're on the 90%, we're doing the other stuff,
Andrew:yeah, we're just, we, we pretty much put that to bed. We pay for it and don't use it. Uh, we'll send it mail. We have one cold caller who will call through it and get low hanging fruit. But other than that, we're really focused on that
Mike:So you'll, um, are those people already on some other lists? Like some other target lists.
Andrew:Yeah. For them to even qualify for skip tracing, they have to be on something.
Mike:at least one or, or two or do you guys have a minimum,
Andrew:Uh, yeah, it depends on the list. Lists, other lists hold more value to us than others. Um, so, like, we love tax. If it's on the tax list, we're gonna, we're gonna say hello.
Mike:like tax delinquent you mean? Or, okay. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Actually now that I think back, almost every property I bought tax delinquent
Andrew:It seems to be the case, we started scraping, I mean, you can go into the county appraiser and, and, and scrape who just sold. And if you're looking at actually who's selling for a pretty reasonable amount in that zip code, most of them were on the tax list. So, even the stuff Yellowbird was doing when we first started, we would just watch their transactions and see who got the deal. How did they get it?
Mike:Yeah. What are some other like lists you guys like that are maybe kind of unique that other people aren't even thinking of?
Andrew:I don't, I don't know that our list, the county list, most people pull, I mean, if you pull a probate list, you know, everyone's calling it, you pull code violations, tax, that's not anything new. I just think we're pulling the same list, but going after the data no one else is, you know, if you do that on every list and go after the 10 percent that no one else can skip trace, you're kind of on your own.
Mike:Yeah. So you'll run it through, skip tracing, instead of calling what everyone else is calling, you'll go to the things that return no result, is it no results? Or is it, and then I'm just curious, maybe just walk me through the process. So I.
Andrew:There's two ways it can end up on our list. So I did say we do have one cold caller on a dialer who runs through. Um, and with RAI SIFT you can track like if all the numbers are dead or wrong number So we actually also know through calling through and updating the list as we call through that Hey, we actually don't have any correct numbers here. So those will migrate over those are less But pretty much anything that's on any government list will run through the skip tracer, we'll take that 10%. Um, some of them are on 4 or 5 lists, some are on 6 or 7, some are on 2. Naturally, you just start with the ones that are higher stacked.
Mike:And then you run them, try running through multiple skip tracers before they make it to that phase with you guys. Or is, uh,
Andrew:Sometimes we'll run it through 2, just to check if we have too many. But, if we didn't get a result, there's normally a reason. Especially if you have all these other indications of distress, it's still worth a look either way.
Mike:what is usually the reason that these phone numbers don't show up associated with these properties?
Andrew:You know, I, I don't know. Uh, I wish that I knew actually, I don't know, but for at the moment it's working and we learned it from someone else and we're just kind of running, you know, if it's not broken, I'll fix it. You know what I mean?
Mike:fair enough. You don't need the reason if it's working.
Andrew:Yep.
Mike:So, you know, okay. So you go after these 10 percent of people, like how many people would you say? Like you're actively. Going after then.
Andrew:Even in just Duval and Clay, there's a couple thousand that we're pretty heavily invested in.
Mike:Okay. So it's, it's, it's not, it's not too small
Andrew:we're actually actively hiring because we need more help.
Mike:Huh? And then obviously you, you know, there's no phone numbers, the easy way from this. So then, like, how do you get in touch with these people?
Andrew:That's where the, the PI work really starts, um, which is why it's so important to filter who you go after. So we end up on the initial, we call it go, no go. So once they get on our list, we're not going to stop until we get an answer. Um, we kind of run our whole CRM through SIFT and we build out the SIFT line boards to be able to track and be able to efficiently move properties through the conveyor belt. Um, but, but once they land on that zip line board, um, we go right back to the county and we verify everything first. Are they actually the owner? Are they dead? Um, what is owed? Was there a data problem? Should they not even be on this list before we waste any more time? So we get around 20 minutes to just do a quick profile. Uh, we have a checklist and all process that we follow down through, um, looking at court records, looking at the property appraiser site, reading the actual deed. It can be as simple as there was a, just a problem on the property praiser site where they actually legally sold it and the property praiser just had it wrong. So
Mike:the new. Then you would, if you read the deed that's on the property appraiser site, it, it would be right there, just not up, up in the text part. It would be wrong. Oh, interesting. I didn't realize that. Okay.
Andrew:Correct. Uh, with the other thing we really, we actually learned this from Al Nicoletti. Do you know Al? You know. Al. Yeah. So we go to the gym with Al and so I like to pick his brain in the mornings when I can. He gave me this tip. He said, go to the deed first, because you can also see marital status sometimes. So at the time of signing, you can figure out where they married or were they single, um, specifically with people who are married and you're starting to dig into the hierarchy of who would be next of kin. Marriage status is really important, uh, for, the statutes of Florida, depending on who actually gets that property next depends on if they were married and single. So sometimes. Yeah, go ahead
Mike:or
Andrew:at the time of death, but if you don't if you don't know anything about them You just have a name and a property you got to start building out or were they married or were they not? That's the first question. Did they have children if they didn't have children? That's when things get crazy That's when we start getting to 14 20 heirs that need to sign on a homestead because instead of going down it goes up to the parents and out to cousins That's when it gets really crazy,
Mike:Got it.
Andrew:though, because most of these, there's no will when it's been abandoned for three years and no one knows about most of the time, we don't have a will.
Mike:Got it. Would you say that like the majority of ones you're going after do have some kind of like death involved? Like maybe it's not public on the appraiser, but like you find out after at some point.
Andrew:Yeah, yeah, we oftentimes will have two or three deaths involved down the trees.
Mike:Oh, like down the, down the line of errors.
Andrew:Yeah, we'll be actually calling about grandma's house and the only people left are the grandchildren.
Mike:Ah, okay.
Andrew:So it's not uncommon for us to have to initiate two or three or four probates.
Mike:Two or three or four. Okay. Wow.
Andrew:Yeah, we just did one this week where we have three. That deal we just finalized yesterday.
Mike:Well, Al probably loves you. Three probates. One client.
Andrew:We're consistent, that's for sure.
Mike:Got it. Okay. So they're like, so you try to like, get the airs contact information, but are you always even able to find their phone numbers? I mean, I got to imagine. Yeah.
Andrew:you skip trace them just like anyone else. Once you have an address and a name, you're pretty much rockin
Mike:Okay.
Andrew:rollin The challenging part of the conversation is oftentimes they don't even know the house exists. So You you often can come off more like a scam. Hey, you own this house. You didn't know about where you're entitled to all this money, right? Hey, i'm trying to give you 80 grand here. Just sign this paper. Don't worry about anything By the way, we need your social tomorrow at the title company. You know what I mean? Like you doesn't go quite like that, but that that's where the challenge comes in. do you know what I
Mike:overcome that?
Andrew:it really comes down to building trust at the beginning Um, the nice thing is we are real people, so we've done as much as having to do a FaceTime call, having to like, show the legal documents, showing stuff from the lawyers, saying like, yeah, this is, this is where it's at. Um, having a good title company has been the biggest resource for us. Um, the closing agent that you and I use has helped us close a lot of deals just by her being involved. Um, they can call her and they feel much more comfortable because it's going to an attorney's office. Thank you. That helps a lot, especially in this scenario.
Mike:Yeah. Gotcha. Um, and I know one other thing we're talking about with dinner a few weeks ago was, um, you had mentioned some stuff to me about return mail codes that I had really never knew. Frankly, maybe share some of those those tips that you share with me with the audience.
Andrew:Sure. So we started doing direct mail probably eight months ago. Um, and it could be any direct mail piece, but what we found out on a fluke was that oftentimes two things can happen. One, the postmaster or the post, the mailman who was delivering it to the door will often write you a note. Um, so the first time we figured out this was even an option was we got one of our return mails back. We looked at it and in Sharpie, there was like, she's been dead for three years. Go find someone else. And we're like, Oh, that was pretty clear. So, and we actually, we did that deal.
Mike:Ah,
Andrew:that in September of
Mike:you gotta send that guy 500 bucks for Christmas,
Andrew:I owe him something, you know what I mean? I don't even know who it was. Uh, then we started looking and realizing that the post office, not only post office, so vacant data all comes from the post office, so green slips, and that's kind of why we started using it is because we could get potential vacant properties faster. Because we're only mailing stuff that's on our list anyways. We're not going out and pulling a big bulk list. We're really just testing the data that we already have. And seeing if we can get, one, a response. Two, any indication of if it's vacant or not. Is it a rental? Like, you can kind of start getting all this from your return mail. Whether it delivers or not. And we've started seeing stuff like no mail receptacle. Which was actually a code in the return address. Um, and we were seeing vacant and we were seeing deceased. Um, so we were starting to realize that if there's no mailbox at the house, then we might have a problem here. Um, just as much as if it's already deceased and we didn't know. You know, it didn't show up as an estate when we traced it. We didn't get a death record possibly back um, we It it's a new possibility of getting to deceased before other sources might have
Mike:Sure, yeah.
Andrew:So what we do it matched up really well. And so now we just do mail a bunch of mail.
Mike:To so, like, when people get added to, like, your few thousand person list, you just mail them right away. Are you to kind of do the thing? Well, after your kind of initial resource that you mentioned, do you mail them right away? Or do you kind of follow that process where you try to call them 1st? And if they don't answer, you can mail them.
Andrew:little bit of both depends on what list Um, we do a little bit of first to market stuff like they talk about in rei sift And so those ones we mail right away, but everything else is really just mail We kind of have a flow, kind of have a rotation, because we're not, you know, we're not sending out 25 mailers a month, or 25, 000 mailers a month. You know what I mean? So we just kind of rotate through our zip codes. So if it's that time of month, or if it's on that zip code that month, it's getting mailed.
Mike:Yeah. Gotcha. And then, um, you were saying before, like kind of when you have those lists, you add them, like they get on your SIF line, right? And then there's like a bunch of like research that you do. So you were saying you spend like 20 minutes on each record before they even go into, have you got that like outsourced, like a VA or something? I mean, that seems like a lot of heavy
Andrew:You know, it, it's something we're actually working on. We got this from you. So thank you for that. We watched that Jonathan Weissman podcast you did and we bought that book and we took that sales boss process and modified it to our hiring process for our, our, our finders. And so we're,
Mike:Sorry, what's a,
Andrew:Are researchers are researchers and cold Yeah. Um, so we took that from the asset recovery world. They're normally called finders because an asset recovery world, every like California, for example, has a list come out every Friday of all the bank accounts and stocks that have, you know, they're a part of an estate that are unclaimed. And so, There are companies, asset recovery companies, that have finders, which is basically like private investigators to go Find the heirs that are owed those assets and it's very similar to what we do. We're just doing with properties instead of bank accounts
Mike:Interesting. And then I'm just curious how it works in that business. Do they get a percentage of it? Is that, is that how
Andrew:Yeah Yeah, they file, they file a paperwork and get 10 percent or 5 percent it's negotiable, uh, for whatever the account was.
Mike:Wow.
Andrew:So if you come across, some of the accounts are huge, 2 to 5 million, 10 million dollar accounts. And so the company can get 5 percent of that, whether it's NVIDIA stock or whatever it was.
Mike:Yeah. So you hired these finders. What I, I'm curious what specifically
Andrew:We, We, trained, we self trained, yes. Um, so we pretty much found cold callers. Uh, one is from Mexico, one is from Egypt. Um, who were really, really good cold callers. Very little accent to no accent. But their disk profile was very heavy in the C. So they were very analytical. It's a pretty natural fit.
Mike:And so, like, what is their, like, I, I guess, like, do they just split their time? Like, what does their flow look like
Andrew:Um, they get 20 minutes to qualify or disqualify the property through research and calling.
Mike:Oh, so they
Andrew:they're kind of on it.
Mike:that time. Ah,
Andrew:there, because once it's you can't revisit it like you can't do the research and then call in the afternoon, because you're gonna have to reread the research. It's too technical because you might be calling, you know, the The granddaughter it gets way too technical way too fast So we have a really organized way to take notes that everyone does the exact same way So anyone can step into that record and know what's going on Um, but it's much easier to just have that call as soon as you do the research and at least get an answer
Mike:So they're going in, doing the research, doing mixture of calls and, and research and then like, what happens though? Like, I get, there's gotta be times where they call and like, maybe just don't answer the phone. Do they just. happens then
Andrew:It goes right into a follow up process, just like any other lead. Um, so we just have, yep, you'll call it the next day. We have a call cadence. So sometimes touch a record twice a day. Sometimes you only touch it once. Sometimes it'll rest for two or three days, but it's kind of our REI CIFT cadence built
Mike:Gotcha. Is that
Andrew:that's just all. this.
Mike:Sorry. Go ahead.
Andrew:It's just all the, the automation sequences that we built.
Mike:Okay. I would, that was a benefit. Yeah. So you can automate all that in REI SIF at this point. Okay. Gotcha. We only kind of use it for the data holding functions and pushing into call tools, so we're not using it to that ability.
Andrew:It has its limitations. I think there are better CRMs out there. But for what we do, it works well
Mike:What was, I'm curious, what was the part that you took from Jonathan's book that you applied to those, that role?
Andrew:onboarding during the hiring process. So the, the pressure interview and the performance interview was a my eye opening to us.
Mike:Interesting, what did so what is the pressure and performance interview and for anyone who's listening this doesn't know what that is. We had Jonathan Westman on the podcast a while back and you can kind of learn about it there or read his book sales boss. But what is the pressure and performance interview look like for someone for this role?
Andrew:For us, if they pass the pressure interview, um, the pressure interview is just really a questionnaire that we have live with them. It's not too crazy, but if they pass that, they'll get a basic process and they'll get homework of a property and then the information on how to find it. Basically the workflow. So they have to go on their own with the tools that we give them and do the research on their And then we can actually grade if they found this property.
Mike:and they show,
Andrew:So we.
Mike:live or they show up to the next interview with it
Andrew:They show up to the next interview with it done and then we move right into cold calling that script So we we put them right into a cold calling training live So they have to come with the homework and the research done And then we do the cold calling live with multiple normally three or four in a session
Mike:Interesting, and are you hiring people that have like, um, somewhat of a researching background? And Amanda, you said they have that C in DISC.
Andrew:We Interviewed a lot of different especially from latin america. We interviewed a lot of um, uh, law based people. Um, yeah, a lot of, uh, paralegals is who we were kind talking a lot to, and it seems to be a pretty natural move.
Mike:That makes that actually makes a lot of sense because they just used to looking through kind of that stuff and doing research all day long.
Andrew:Mm And you're looking at the same documents. Most of the information you're getting is coming from a court record of some kind.
Mike:Yeah. Huh. That's super interesting. That's fascinating. Um, gotcha. And, um, so you kind of like, I guess what that kind of segues into actually is, you know, we were talking offline a lot about, like, you end up with a lot of messy titles. Cause you're going after people that. Yeah, obviously they didn't even know the house exists. There's probably some issues. Right. So how do you guys handle resolving messy titles?
Andrew:It kind of, like you said, came pretty naturally with the territory. Um, I think we're still learning daily. It seems like every other week we have a title issue we haven't handled before. Um, last month we actually had a legitimate missing person on title we had to resolve. full on silver alert,
Mike:Whoa. How did you resolve that?
Andrew:our title company, um, the closing agent that you and I share is really at this point, we've gotten, we haven't been stopped yet. The only thing that stopped us is not being able to find an heir. And we work through that most of the time now too. Um, which kind of goes into if anyone else Struggling to get a deal done because you're missing an air or two, or you don't even know where they are. Like if maybe they're out of the country and you don't know how to get ahold of them because they're in Canada, give us a call. Um, at this point we haven't, there's not been anyone we haven't been able to find. You can't always give them a ring. Sometimes you got to get creative, you know, send a FedEx package to their door. They're going to open it. So,
Mike:What, um, how, how do you, like, if there's actually like a missing error that can't be located, how does that get resolved? I've never read it.
Andrew:uh, you still got to get ahold of them, skip trace them somehow, get them on the phone and get them signed. That's normally how it gets resolved is you're, you're getting held up because you're missing a signature because it's a homestead in Florida and you can only get, you know, 66 percent of this deal. Um, it's much easier as a wholesaler to a flipper to own a hundred percent,
Mike:Yeah.
Andrew:you know, so how do you get, that's the goal. Get a hundred percent, get everyone signed.
Mike:Yeah.
Andrew:the simplest way is find them and get them signed.
Mike:Yeah. Okay. What happened with the missing person one? How was that resolved? Did you find the guy?
Andrew:Nope. She is a true missing person. We had to go to court. Um, we had to do a partition and we had to do the due process. It took six months. Um, and we still got the house done.
Mike:For people who are listening and don't know, can you tell them what a partition is?
Andrew:It's, it's kind of like a quiet title, but basically we had to go to court and state why the property needed sold and that they released the rights of the missing person and they no longer had rights to the house off of a court order.
Mike:And then, like, what happens in that case? Do you have to, like, put just some money, have to go into escrow for that person? They get a percentage when it sells, or they just have kind of forfeited their rights because they haven't participated for a certain amount of time or.
Andrew:In our case, I believe their rights were forfeited, but to be honest, I don't fully know. I just know the title of the company said we are ready to close and we closed, so.
Mike:Fair enough. Another example, if I don't need to know why it works, so, yeah. Yep.
Andrew:We're here to find a deal and work on the acquisition.
Mike:Cool. So another thing we're talking about offline, uh, which is, I know you guys recently have been doing a lot of sales training, uh, with a lot of Sandler stuff. You want, we want to talk about that and how that's impacted your business.
Andrew:Yes, that not not to ruin your question at the end, but that would probably be the one thing that I would, I wish we would have done that two years ago, man. Um, we haven't even been doing it for that long. And it's already, it's pretty amazing what it can do is, you know, and it comes down to, I guess, a lot of things of, of doing this business is the more skill we gain, the faster we move. Um, and that I think was our biggest hold back for the last even year.
Mike:what, like, what specifically have, have you, like, taken away, like, maybe the biggest impact in the shortest amount of time?
Andrew:I think it'd probably be two things. One, having upfront contracts in every conversation is huge. Um, and the second would be just the skill of reversing and actually uncovering the true motivation. So sitting on that pain and actually understanding the full why not just the smokescreen that they throw in your face
Mike:yeah, for people who don't know what upfront contracts or reversing are, you want to explain them.
Andrew:Sure, a front contract is basically stating the rules of a game. So, you know, you can say Naturally, you're going to have some questions for me on this call today. And obviously i'm going to have some questions for you Can we agree that this is what we're going to accomplish in the next 20 minutes?
Mike:And what do you notice by setting that up? At the, you know, the beginning of the conversation or any point in the conversation, like, how does that change the dynamic?
Andrew:Well, it can help us disqualify pretty quick Uncertain individuals. What's your offer? What's your offer? They don't really make it very far. Um, but when we do set ground rules, it seems to build even deeper rapport and trust, and we can get to the nitty gritty way faster.
Mike:Yeah, 100%. And then reversing for people who don't know what reversing is.
Andrew:Reversing is asked or answering every question with a question. Uh, the biggest thing for us is we are so, we get so excited about taking these really prompt properties and fixing So we love to have, we have all these solutions, we have all these things we can do with lawyers and this and that, we can, we can fix all your problems, but often we get put in a box very quick because we don't actually know the true problem. So for us, it helps us actually uncover what's really the problem here and it's not normally the house.
Mike:for sure. Um, what else have you guys been working on in the last, like, few weeks?
Andrew:Since we last talked with you, Trying to implement more hiring structures so that we can really start bringing better quality people. Um, our admins been extremely busy with, uh, scripts for onboarding and training and, and hiring scripts. Modifying everything to the Wiseman training or Wiseman philosophy. Uh, everything else has been meetings with Sandler. We've got like two or three of those a week. Um, and our coaches here. So, and then just doing deals, So we spent a lot of time talking to sellers or going on appointments.
Mike:Bye.
Andrew:I mean. I've got four just tomorrow.
Mike:Four appointments in a day? Damn, man. It's great.
Andrew:Saturdays are the day,
Mike:Saturdays are the day. That's what I tell the guys. Yeah. What is, uh, what's your guys criteria to go out and actually meet someone at a house?
Andrew:They got to make it through that 20 minute call.
Mike:Okay.
Andrew:A lot of people don't make it that far. Um, I mean, during that whole call, we talk about, we go through, we do a pretty heavy qualifying. Um, so by the time we're going on an appointment, we already know the price probably works and there's a lot of pain there and we know exactly how they're going to be making a decision.
Mike:Got it. You guys are getting a price on the initial call with them, on the 20 minute call. Interesting. Okay.
Andrew:So, and it's normally not a price we give, it's normally what they want. So, and if we think it'll work,
Mike:Yeah.
Andrew:that's where we're at. We don't give our offer till we're at the property.
Mike:So you just kind of ask him, what do you, what do you, what are you guys looking for? Walk away with
Andrew:Yeah.
Mike:Yeah.
Andrew:And we don't move on until we know.
Mike:Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Um, I know we were talking about a little bit offline about, like, kind of being in business with your, your partner, your fiance. You want to just maybe, uh, share a little bit about that with the audience.
Andrew:I think that's honestly one of my biggest blessings. However,
Mike:Hmm.
Andrew:I love her to death. She is probably the most driven person I've ever met in my life. We did those disc tests. We actually did a very in depth one and she's off the charts. She is so high D that it's, it's insane. Um, I think the challenge for us is because we work and live together, we pretty much, all we have to talk about is work, but it's also our favorite thing to talk about. So for us, it's, it's great. Cause we get to spend all of our time together. But it definitely is interesting when you disagree on what to do with a property.
Mike:Yeah.
Andrew:I don't know how you guys must experience that.
Mike:Um, we don't have any disagreements on what to do to do with properties,
Andrew:That's fair.
Mike:definitely. There's, you know, there's definitely some different viewpoints on other things, but, you know, we're pretty straightforward on what to do with the properties. Um, cool, I'm trying to think what what other stuff that we that we talked about that would be good for the audience to to hear about. Um, I don't know what kind of stuff comes to your mind. Oh, you know, you were talking about hiring. Who are you guys trying to hire?
Andrew:Uh, we're looking for more finders right So it, uh, we would hire from anywhere. Someone wants to do a local, we'll teach you the whole process. We actually, I think we systemized it really well. Um, the, the nice thing about that for us is I don't know how many, how many calls do you guys have to make to get a lead? How many properties do you have to call?
Mike:Uh, a lot. We have, um, Louisa would have the numbers, but our guys make, or I shouldn't say guys, guys and girls, cold callers, and make about 280 connections a day each. And they generate 15 leads a week each. So what's that per day? Three leads a day. So was that 1%? A little, a little, a little less than 1 percent maybe of people they talk to
Andrew:So for us, every 15 properties, we normally end up having as a
Mike:every 15 they
Andrew:connect
Mike:connect with. Wow. What's the criteria for a lead in your guys business?
Andrew:uh, if they're looking to sell and they're on our list, actually,
Mike:That's, two. Yeah. I'm just curious. Yeah.
Andrew:so, I mean, our, our lists are so niche anyways that we've got a pretty good chance.
Mike:Yeah. Wow. So you're looking for more finders and like, is that just so you can feed more leads to you guys so that then you just kind of run the. The appointment side of stuff, like the end of the process, or?
Andrew:Yeah, I mean, we already have it where we're getting fed leads, um, but we're trying to get to the point where we have so many leads that we can bring on salespeople and continue to grow, um, because even, we're just doing DeVol and Clay, and we're very light in Clay. So, uh, it would be nice to expand because this is only one county. I mean you can do this pretty much anywhere
Mike:Yeah, uh, Louisa had a question, so I'll read it off, which is, uh, if you get them on a first cold call, does that call run 20 minutes and getting to the appointment set or is that a separate call?
Andrew:It'll be a separate call. So the the initial touch will just maybe lead to that qualifying call And then if they pass the qualifying call we'll go on the appointment
Mike:Got it. So they're handing it off to you and you're making that longer call. Gotcha. So what's your expectation for a finder in terms of, um, I know he says, like, 20 minutes, but is there a certain number of properties? They're, like, trying to go through on a, I guess, daily basis or, like, is there a KPI for that role?
Andrew:Yeah, and that you probably see it too. KPIs are are good indicators, but not always 100 percent You know, you might get three leads in a row and then you might be dry for the next 300 Um and We're really trying to get a lead a day from each finder. Um,
Mike:Okay.
Andrew:if we're doing that, that means one or two deals a week for us,
Mike:Um,
Andrew:for the company for now.
Mike:Freddie company. Yeah.
Andrew:We don't have enough finders to really know cause it's, it's still a hybrid at the moment, to be honest. I mean, I still do some on the side, Naya still does some on the side. So it's not, our KPIs aren't pure.
Mike:Sure. So how many finders are you guys looking to hire?
Andrew:We're looking for two more and we should hopefully be having one here and then by the end of the month and then we'll still be looking for another
Mike:Gotcha. And do you think that's enough to service kind of like Duval and Clay County, or do you think you'll need even, even more?
Andrew:you know, I, I don't know. Um, I honestly don't know. At the moment we're, we're still only doing around 10 percent of our data.
Mike:10 percent of your data, which is 10 percent of the 10%. Wow. And when you say that, you mean, like, getting in touch with 10 percent of the 10 percent or.
Andrew:We have an amazing amount of records that just sit and don't even get touched.
Mike:Even.
Andrew:know what it's gonna take to get through
Mike:Like, even attempted, like, no one even
Andrew:Mm hmm.
Mike:wow. Okay. Just because capacity of.
Andrew:It, when it takes 20 minutes per record, it eats up a lot of time.
Mike:Yeah. Wow. And you guys are only in those two counties right now.
Andrew:Yeah.
Mike:All right. So you could easily expand to at least two more. So, okay.
Andrew:know, you can just take on St. John Nassau and, or, you know, get real crazy and go down to Melbourne or something like that. And you're, you're rocking and rolling.
Mike:Yeah, you mentioned to, um, earlier trying to go after probates, like, before they hit the probate process. Do you only kind of get it from your existing lists? Or are you also kind of like, I know some people like scrape obituaries and things like that. Do you do any, like, other tactics or is it just kind of naturally they show up on your other distress list?
Andrew:We, we scrape everything that we think of. We can scrape. So we, we spent a lot of time at the beginning building bots. We maintain those bots. So all of our bots are in house, but we, I think we've got like three are on different scripts that we outsourced through Upwork. Um, But yeah, we, we scrape everything we can.
Mike:Gotcha. Okay. Um. Interesting. I did have another question. Oh, you mentioned before first to market. I think not everyone listening might not. not realize what that means. You want to just kind of explain that to the people.
Andrew:first to market. We got from REI SIFT, which I mean, you know, um, it's heavily breached in there. And I think there's a lot of people, even in Jacksonville doing something similar. Um, but pretty much we're, we're trying to be the first people to call every single day. Um, so we're pulling the lead every day. We're skip tracing it every day and we're calling it every day. So we're trying to be the first one to touch that person.
Mike:You know, I, the 1 thing I was always curious about with the 1st to market strategy is, I guess the exception is kind of a probate where the property has changed hands, but on other lists, like, aren't they already getting called by, like, people mass calling before that, though, or.
Andrew:I mean, I would think so, but I mean, if you did the same list for a year, like let's take code violations, for example, and we have a property that's always been up kept, but maybe the owner passed away and now it's officially on the code violation list. That would be a true first to market if you're consistently calling code violations, for example. However, there is going to be stuff that, yeah, everyone, their brother, is calling.
Mike:gotcha Yeah, I was always wondering, like, do people and I haven't looked into it that much, do people like tend to focus only on certain lists for first to market or
Andrew:I would bet the main three is probably probate, foreclosures, and code.
Mike:Okay.
Andrew:Or, and tax, tax sales in Florida.
Mike:Tax sales. Sure. Okay. How does your, uh, another question from Louisa, how does your ideal team look like?
Andrew:Uh, honestly, man, after reading sales boss, I would love to have five full on sales guys getting in these banging leads. Um, our conversion rate on what we call is so good that if we can get sales guys and feed them So they, it could be amazing.
Mike:Yeah, sure. For sure.
Andrew:The goal is to get up to five sales guys and building the machine to feed them
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. And then how do you envision that? Do you envision them like running everything from start to finish? Like, kind of the way you do now, not meaning like they call the initial lead, but meaning they take that 20 minute qualification call or how do you envision building that out?
Andrew:I do, I do see them taking the qualification call just to build the rapport.
Mike:Do you feel like that gives you guys kind of advantage with the people you meet with because you're doing both?
Andrew:I do. I do. Um, I think whoever gets the most rapport sometimes wins the deal. It's never normally never about price. If they like you more, they're going to do the deal with you.
Mike:Yeah, I was never about price. Yeah, gotcha. And then kind of your vision for the next next three years?
Andrew:It's just building the processes to scale. Um, being organized is something that I'm specifically like bringing the admin for us and being organized has given us the ability to, uh, bring on more people, building the onboarding processes, building the SOPs, building all that stuff that someone else can actually take and run with, um, That's our focus for the next few years. It's, it's getting to that team and getting, it's just growing the company. That's all we want to
Mike:Yeah, and what do you see yourself doing and Naya doing in the business 3 years from now.
Andrew:Uh, I think I'll always be running the business. If I don't have something to do, I I'm not here to retire. I'm here to just work and build something big. Um, Naya, she'd have to answer that herself. I don't know what she really wants with that, to be honest. I know she loves being in the business, but there's also a pretty good possibility that she's going to be, you know, working more so on the family side of things,
Mike:gotcha. Um, and then, um, You want to talk a bit about like how you, I know you said that admin person you hired kind of your business and like, how did you go about finding that person on that high quality of a person from what you told me? I mean, that person is phenomenal.
Andrew:to be honest, I got super lucky, man. I, we, uh, we went through a couple of agencies, um, one of our, so we do a little bit of mentorship with McLean Bobbitt, who is at REI sift. And he also is really big on the, the deep prospecting go, no, go leads, which is what we're doing. Um, That's just the jargon for it. And he's like, you need an admin, you need an admin. Hey, my buddy runs an admin service out of, uh, Mexico. Try them. We couldn't get anyone good on there. Um, we started looking at Upwork. We looked in Indeed, OnlineJobsPH, and on Upwork, we just so happened to find who we've got now. Um, Lily is the best. She was a German. Uh, executive admin for the last like six years for, uh, you know, 500 plus people company. Um, and so we got lucky. She transferred to Mexico because of her husband's job and was just bored and looking for something to do. So she is way overqualified for what we're, what we're having her do, but she loves it. She loves real estate. They own three rentals in Germany. So she wants to learn everything she can about real estate. Um, so that's where the fit comes in and she's, she's a machine. I'm so impressed every day. We were on a call with her for three hours before this and what she builds in a day and it looks so much better than anything I would have made.
Mike:Sure. Yep. Awesome, man. Well, we're kind of getting close to the end here, but there's always two questions I have at the end. The first one is, is the craziest or most uncomfortable situation that you've ever experienced in a real estate deal?
Andrew:I think it would be our, our first deal. Um, at the time we still didn't even know what a qualified lead looked like. Um, and so we ended up getting a lead in from texting and within two days, this was in fall of 2022, um, the hurricane was coming through. It was coming across the west coast over top of us and this lady had a six foot hole in her roof. and and we ended up the next day before the hurricane, getting a ladder, watching a YouTube video on how to tarp a roof. And we tarp that roof. Um,
Mike:Thank you.
Andrew:it held, it held for the next eight months until we finalized this deal, which was awesome. But we ended up the most uncomfortable. What made it uncomfortable was the family situation there. Um, there was some abuse problems that we ended up getting involved with that we didn't know about. Um, then we had to navigate through to get this deal done. That was probably the most uncomfortable for us because of how personal it got. Um, and, and seeing the after effects of abuse,
Mike:Yeah. Gotcha. And, um, 2nd question I always ask is, uh, if you could go back in time. Give yourself 1 piece of advice when you were looking for your 1st deal. Knowing what, you know, now, would you tell yourself?
Andrew:I would have started using REI SIFT a year sooner. I would have gotten there way sooner that was the pivotal point in the beginning of our journey.
Mike:Cool.
Andrew:So, and yeah, second would have been, I would have done Sandler way sooner too. Sometimes it's the illustrating man. We, you can learn a lot on YouTube university, but you only get so much.
Mike:Yeah, I'm with you. Cool, man. Well, if people, um, want to reach out to you after the show, maybe they have a messy title deal. They're struggling through, or they can't find some heirs on a property. Um, how can they go about getting in touch with you?
Andrew:Just shoot us an email. Um, it'll go to me or my admin and then we'll get you on and we'll get you on a call.
Mike:What's the email? So people reach out to you
Andrew:Uh, it's just my name, Andrew, at ClearwaterHomebuyers. com.
Mike:cool. All right, man. Awesome. Well, thanks for being on the show.
Andrew:Thanks.