From Creative Hustles to Real Estate Millions

Dominic Felix shares his 12-year real estate journey, from call center sales to building Cash Geeks and Simple Cell. Discover his insights on sales persistence, cold calling, leveraging AI, and navigating nationwide deals. Learn innovative strategies like novation, dispositions, and using social media to build community and close deals. Don't miss this power-packed episode!

Transcript

Mike: 0:00

All right everyone welcome to the real estate game Changer 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, uh for anyone interested in learning more about what we're doing in my business we're doing a free live training on Tuesday at three pm Eastern about how to stop losing prospects early so we'll go over some really cool sales tactics there. Ah something you interested en reach to me on Instagram this week on the show we have another Jacksonville investor don feel exm welcome the.

Dominick: 0:42

What's up Mike how you doing man thanks for having me on and um you know i think it's it's incredible that that you're doing this man and that you're just bringing so many people on that helps so so many people out there so thanks for for doing this man.

Mike: 0:56

Man i appreciate you being on ah for the people who don't know you. Ah, you wanna share with this a little bit about ah, your real estate Journey over i guess about the last seven years since you've been in it maybe a lo longer.

Dominick: 1:12

Yeah yeah so um, you know I've had my License probably the better part of twelve or thirteen years and I've more heavily practiced real estate probably closer to seven ever since i started cash geeks with the Gonzalo ah for people that don't know me whats up my name es Dominic Felix am. A pretty aggressive entrepreneur i do like to succeed I'm I'm super persistent in a lot of things that i do I'm always that guy that you know first one in the office maybe not all time last to leave but i like to spend a lot of a lot of my time on my craft and whatever projects I'm working on and i do like to see things through to the finish i. I can't stand things being incomplete or unfinished ah, but yeah man i you know it's just so unusual you know getting into business for yourself um, i didn't plan to become an entrepreneur i kind of fell into it all i wanted and and this is probably close to over Twenty years ago before i started my first business all i really wanted was a Career change at that time right so i was a. Uh, call center sales individual i was doing retention sales which i think is one of the most difficult sales positions that are out there and i was making between seven eighty thousand dollars on any given year and i did that for about four years. Ah, you know it just got repetitive. It got consistently the same and I'd wanted something different maybe not so much bigger o better just a change and maybe a little bit more of a directive Career path and i decided. Um you know i i don't know if it was my dream but i just you know i just made a decision to become a firefighter and then i realized you know if I'm gonna do that you know I'm gonna take half a salary pay cut because firefighters in Jacksonville at that time they were they're starting at about thirty thousand dollars a year and then i thought to myself you know how am i gonna make that difference up what am i gonna do and i decided to start a small business you know start a law maintenance company and i did um i uh you know i got a commercial Lawn mower and I've got all my equipment looking all all good and pretty out there and within like seven weeks i just drummed up enough business and enough clients to replace my my job at that point in time. And i didn't. Uh, replace it i i kept everything going for year so that year was like a pivotal year for me and it kind of showed me what i was capable of because i was working fulltime in the call center em i essentially doubled my salary because i built a customer base that brought in another seventy five thousand dollars for the year doing grass. Uh cuts on the side i was also going to fire school i was also taking EMT courses because you have to be a certified EMT while you're going to fire school that was the year i got married to my wife. And my wife was pregnant with our first born so there was so much that went on in that year was kind of mind blowing in in hindsight it was it's really tough to see how i got through it it was a lot of aggressively long days but it just you know stuff like that you know it like one of those things where you know sometimes you don't know what someone's capable of until you put them in that position to see if they can con uh succeed whether they believe in themselves or not um and that that year taught me a lot about myself

Mike: 4:46

That.

Dominick: 4:49

so um, i the funny thing about that question. Mike is it took. Me, uh, probably twelve years to understand what i learned in that year. And I'm gonna tell what i mean by that right so you know maybe not twelve years let me let me remind it gonna say seven years I'm gonna tell you what i meant by that you know. I started my first business i built it to be a really good um large s. Size business and you know i would find myself in rooms with other entrepreneurs or at tables with clients and things like that and it was almost like i didn't belong there. I felt like people were smarter than me Brighter than me i felt a little bit like an outcast and the reason i felt like that is because I'm not socially awkward but I'm not socially paired up with a lot of the common things that people are into like Sports or the news or politics right and those seem to be amongst the most common Conversations that are out there right so i don't fit well in those Conversations. Um, so a lot of times when I'm at these tables or a part of these groups and someone's talking about the cowboys or the jaguars which i do like the jaguars. Um you know I'm just I'm just kind of outcasted. Um, i also you know I'm not highly educated what i mean by that is i just don't have a College degree and one more specifically with this example is i was at an industry event in my first business it was the um. A Mortgage field services event and i was with a lot of my clients and a lot of my competitors in my first business and they were all having these what appear to be high level Conversations and talking Sports and i was kind of quiet on the side kind of like a shy individual however my business was blowing away my competition and that really kind of put me in a position to question myself like how are you at this table right now and it wasn't until i read the book um thinking grow rich by Napoleon Hill that i kind of realized what i had above and Beyond a lot of other people and that's just it's just persistence. It sounds typical we've heard that stuff before you know if you watch podcast and your in like self development it sounds typical but it it's super true man i mean it might take me a little bit longer to get something done I'm just not gonna stop until i get it done or i do it better well above and Beyond anyone else that's doing that in particular thing

Mike: 7:31

Gotcha interesting and then you know over the years you've been in different you know obviously we know each other but you've been in kind of different areas or iterations of real estate wanna talk about some of the pivotal moments that you had along the way.

Dominick: 7:46

yeah ya i mean so. You know indirectly i was always interested in real estate you know i grew up with not a lot of money with a single mother that had seven children and she didn't work so we had some really tough times Growing up and there were times where as an eighteen year old and a seventeen year old and a sixteen year old i was the one putting dinner on the table which was uh you know that's you know we can go down another rabbit hole if we want to um. But the pivotal moments yeah so what i would see a little bit around me was the people that did have money they might have owned one two or three homes or two homes on that block across the Street and for some reason that that was probably my only exposure at that time to people that had some kind of money some kind of you know additional money that most people weren't used to and i highly admired that and it always made me want to at some point get into real estate or acquire real estate or hold land or things like that so during my first twelve years with my first business in the middle of that process o that experience i got my real estate agent License because i said if I'm gonna start buying and holding real estate maybe i can capitalize on the Commission by getting paid to buy my own real estate so that happened during that was probably about twelve o thirteen years ago. Yeah so that's a pivotal moment i bought some real i got my License i started buying and holding Rentals and then that taught me you know that you know you almost can't not really can't but you know i wasn't making a whole lot of money on my Rentals it was very difficult to find Rentals that cash flow so i did wanna get passive income to replace active income or at least give me that security that if the active income was gone the passive income would take care of it and that lesson taught me that that's an extremely long road especially i guess with single family or with Limited income

Mike: 10:00

What was your what did you do from there what was your next pivotal point.

Dominick: 10:06

so um like in real estate o just in general.

Mike: 10:11

Ah, lets talk about real.

Dominick: 10:14

Let's talk about real estate. Okay, so the next pivotal moment was um was i guess learning about wholesaling um, because with my first business as that started to go in a different direction because of a market shift um and i did some experi uh some um some research on what I'm going to do next. Um, i thought about wholesaling because when i was buying real estate about about Twenty one Rentals in a year one year and one of my purchase experiences was from a local wholesaler here in Jacksonville before i knew what wholesaling was but being this big bad businessman that owns all these Rentals now. Um, when he sent me the assignment agreement i wanted to just not act like i didn't understand what it was right it looked like for the most part. You know it seems like a legit transaction is going through a title company I'm gonna sign off or whatever the case may be um i didn't really quite understand zero day inspection in my mind it was like all right until it closes i have a chance to go through and recheck out the property and um you know make sure it's a solid play well when i did more research and i got a wdo inspection and stuff which um you know it wasn't what i discussed with whoever put me under contract at that time um, i found that it was just like riddled with termites and it was just too in too bad of shape for my confidence level at that time to proceed with the transaction so i wanted to cancel and i tried to cancel and they like it's fine we let you cancel the Ernest money deposit and it's a it is a wholes we know here in the local market. Am and uh, you know we're friends to this day we weren't friends at that time and he was able to you know he he agreed to give me half back. He gave me half back. He kept half at that time and that was my first exposure to what wholesaling is so later on when i started doing my research on what other business I'm gonna get into and i really deeply looked into wholesaling it seemed way more complicated um than i thought you know it was a it was very intimidating at that time so i didn't quite rule into getting into it. Um, until i met Gonzalo. You know and then one i 11 i met Gonzalo and we had lengthy discussions you know it was like all right Gonzalo has a good amount of wholesaling experience directly and i have a really good amount of business building experience and that's when we engage together to start a wholesaling company with this big dream of starting this big huge army wholes company.

Mike: 13:05

And that. To be pretty big i mean you Guys were also focused a lot of hedge fund stuff when that was really going. Ah, what were i guess what were some challenges that you Faced in terms of having i mean cuz at one point i think you Guys had thirty forty people maybe more working

Dominick: 13:25

Ah, we got

Mike: 13:27

Twenty. Okay,

Dominick: 13:28

it was just under thirty im pretty sure.

Mike: 13:31

what were some challenges you face to get to like the amount of transactions that you Guys were doing there.

Dominick: 13:38

So in my first business um, i had about Twenty five to thirty individuals right and we were doing about five uh five million a year and i was keeping about Twenty percent of that right but we never had a sales division right in that business and i know we didn't go into the details which we don't have to but in that business i was the sole individual salesperson to that had to get these big national contracts for field maintenance work um for the vendor base that i had right um i didn't ever think about hiring a salesperson for that i never thought about getting salespeople on the team for any reason now building a wholesale company is entirely different it's heavily sales dependent and if you wanna grow and expand there's only so much you can do as an individual. So when we you know it was a huge learning curve on hiring really good or really great sales people so that was that was an enormous challenge right um, we did get better at it gradually over time one thing that i thought was really good was the system that we had the company the system and the operations and we built that so well that it kind of made it a little bit easier on sales people rather than having to be super talented o super creative o super Arty. Ah, so we had a very well defined process ahm that if they followed it they typically can do well as long as they're. Ah, persisten en consistent.

Mike: 15:18

What did you learn like when you hiring sales people that ultimately a great sales.

Dominick: 15:28

Ah you know i think you know and i keep leaning on consistency and persistence they just have to have um, a really good history of um, being at Jobs for a long time you know you want someone that's gonna show up on time every day and be there and put a full days working and that's just good old fashioned being responsible right so i think that's huge it shouldn't be overlooked. Um. Rely on someone that's interested in eager to learn more than someone that's irres responsible and that may have done great in sales but you know they may not stick around for a good long time or they may just call out sick a lot i just need someone that's going to be there and that's going to be consistent um and one of the things that we we do and you know obviously we're reasonable with it but one of the things that we challenge new hires with is like all right for the first ninety days we don't really allow any days off right we need you to come in for the first ninety days on time and to show up every single day so if you're late or you miss a day unfortunately we can't continue to keep you after that now if there are any emergencies that come up. That you know and that's more of a judgment call that are justifiable you know let us know we're human beings we totally get it but we like to just you know imprint that in the beginning up front to let them know listen this is a serious decision we want you on the team we want people that wanna uh develop themselves and grow with us ahm we want them to take a deathly serious

Mike: 17:05

What did your hiring process look like when you were building that sales team when when you got to the point you know that the hiring process was working well.

Dominick: 17:13

so for some reason and i don't know if you go through the same stuff Mike you might but for some reason with a lot of positions we get a good amount of applicants applicants but not with sales. Right with sales we get a fair amount of applicants but for some reason it was always a big challenge for us to get a high volume of applicants uh applicants that we can go through to find the great ones that we think are great inside of the resumes that we get or the applications that we get right so the way that we used to do it is we um would run our own ads across multiple different platforms and then we would also have staffing agencies run their ads on their platforms and we would funnel sales people into group interviews right so we'd get these group interviews of anywhere from five to Twenty five people at a time. And we'd ask a handful of questions and 11 again i haven't been in cash geeks for maybe it's over two years maybe closer to three years now so i may not remember all of the specific questions. Ah, but we would ask a handful of questions and we'd look for people that are willing to volunteer or people that answer questions that ah that you know are more impressive than the way that other people ask them and we look for people that ah you know respond really well if we call on them and things like that so if we're gonna only do five six or seven questions for our big group then you know it helps us find the people that stand out amongst the rest now 11 we do that we call it a first interview but it's really part of the process that really gets them to the real interview which is the second interview which is the in-person interview now on the second interview. It's been developed over time um, it's kind of like a graded it was about Twenty questions and it was a graded interview um and then on top of the Twenty questions that we ask if anything that they say um drives us to ask more information or go in a different direction we'll do that also but we'll bring it right back in line with the typical questions and the reason we wanted to do that and score the different questions is because we might have a gut feel about people and we really may wanna hire them and then we may have another person that impresses us and then a third person that impresses us but we're only gonna choose one sometimes the questions help uh break that tie. And it's like and it helps us you know remember that they answered this question really correctly because when you have you know Twenty eight people on staff and then you're interviewing a lot of people and there is a little bit of rotation people coming in people going out you may not perfectly remember everything that goes on during the day and everything that happened on those interviews and you may not make the decisions right then and there that day it may be later that day the next day o a day after that and then you have to go back and review it and then it reminds you how well that

Mike: 20:33

Gotcha and then so that zoom interview you did that group one. Ah, you were did you find that were you mostly looking for people to volunteer or did you find that sometimes you had to call on people

Dominick: 20:46

ah we were mostly looking for people to volunteer.

Mike: 20:50

mmm yeah. That's a it's interesting that i think that's that's a super interesting way I've never heard of right you want someone who's gonna be like. Oh you know i don't care what everyone thinks I'm gonna talk right

Dominick: 21:02

Correct correct

Mike: 21:05

yeah so they get to the in person interview then what what was next after that.

Dominick: 21:09

so there's the first interview there's the in-person interview. Ah, there's a short discussion if it gets to the point where we feel like we need another interview, eh mostly means we used to do it but it mostly meant at that point you know we just can't rule to have that person come in and join the team if we're unsure about it then it's a no. Um, so the next point would be to hire them so one thing that also helped us with the. Oh, i forgot to mention on the the second interview if they do well and so far we would rule or we close to ruling to hire them on the second interview as long as we know it's not a no hire. We put them on the auto and we make them do cold calls on the second interview i forgot that that's a that was a huge part of it for us now that always can always tell if they're a great sales person because that's a cold call and it's a really short script and it's not too difficult pero it really did tell us that they weren't afraid of the phones there people that i felt interview well and 11 we brought them to the dialer they just said it's not for them

Mike: 22:20

Oh.

Dominick: 22:21

correct they said it's not for them there's other times they would get on the and they would just they talk to people and they would just suck. The cold call script that we had it wasn't too long it wasn't too difficult so it was like here's the cold call script I'm gonna leave it with you for ten minutes study it memorize it as best you can I'm gonna have pet our technology guy come in with a headset and a laptop and he's gonna run the dialer and you're just gonna talk to the people um yeah. So the first time you know one thing is they said it's not for them because they're just too on the spot and really nervous the second. Uh thing that could happen like i said was um, they would just fall apart on the phones and other than that you'd either do. Okay, o you do really great yep.

Mike: 23:13

So ah. Obviously now you're doing something different you wanna talk about the model that you're working on today.

Dominick: 23:22

Yeah the model that we're working on today you know it's funny because it's just it's just an evolution right. The company that we built with cash gigs was really great for its Purpose right it was built in a way to where it revolved around like you said primarily hedge fund properties it was eighty it was more like an eighty Twenty Twenty percent of it was good old fashion the eighty percent was pulling data specifically that target their box right so it worked well in that market nada that we're not in that market anymore it's for us a learning experience right so when we hire sales people use the same scripts it Works. Okay, but almost not. Okay, as model for mi right now is not working so now it's like what does work what's the new thing what's the new path. And uh for us right now it's multiple exit strategies right and it's also jumping back in directly on the phone on the calls into the sales to continue to refine it make it better um bring a bunch of cash in right that's always important for businesses um and uh, you know perhaps not build the company out the same way that we did with cash cakes right em. Beca and it's funny because with the process that we're going through right now it's multiple exit strategies rather than just locking up one way for hedge funds and what i mean by that is good old fashion discounted cash now you know we're all hearing about innovation strategy that's been around for a a couple or few years now that's coming more and more familiar to people so we're doing a lot of that that's probably Sixty to seventy percent of what we do and then uh subject to um or creative deals mostly it's all subject to um with regards to what we're locking up so we're transacting deals in those three methods and the way that it and we didn't really direct it to go this way but the way that it's going is almost like all right now instead of building a team we wanna be like the lebron James of what we do. Be incredibly good incredibly great like I'm mainly involved in dispositions right and sam and Lewis are involved in acquisitions but we wanna be the best in the country right we wanna be way better than anyone else and what's happening is it feels so far all signs are pointing to we can very likely make as much as we made with cash geeks net more with just us three doing the sales so what we're starting to do is we're starting to build support staff around us to support i don't really wanna say mundane Tasks but Tasks that are not related closely related to sales you know your Tasks all the support stuff all of the paperwork take that off and just keep me on the phone talking to people right because that's our gift you know um. When I'm talking to buyers i want people to get a great deal i want them to have a success and i wanna transact more with them but they need to feel that the deal is tight i almost can't come down like I'm gonna just ride it really closely so that i can not mess the deal up not drive them away and just try to keep them as close to my number as possible o es close to whatever the real number that i think should be in should should that it should be as possible because. They should want the same for me if I'm gonna keep bringing deals to them we gotta eat you know we've gotta do well and the sad thing is Mike it's a doggy dog world out there everyone wants everything as low as humanly possible and rightfully so you know if they wanna win and they wanna stay in business in a weird way i want that for them too but i need something fair on my side and as the business owner i care about that the most now I've always been an Advocate on empowering others you know to take the responsibilities and grow the team which i still will do but this market Mike is a really sensitive market right and it's really gotta be picked apart it's gotta be learned and it's blowing my mind that we can do so well on the phone as individual business owners. And produce almost as much income as Twenty eight people ah with just the small team that we have that are just highly highly talented isn't that crazy

Mike: 28:26

Yeah I'm actually curious so what i mean I'm not really involved in the the disposition side i mean you know we flip a lot so we've got kind of Realtors handling that but I'm

Dominick: 28:38

right

Mike: 28:38

curious to hear like what is kinda your strategy whether that's you know how you're getting it in front of buyers or just the Conversations that you're having like what is your strategy in this market that's so different than two years ago

Dominick: 28:52

you know sam and i do sa do sales into different ways and they both work really well so I'm glad you asked that question the way that i don know if this sounds shitty but the way that i like to do sales es. I like for people to really win or feel like they really win i step on and they got over me i don't need them to know that I'm the win I'm the best person i made a fifty grand spread on this let me let you have that emotional win so that i can feed mi team and i can feed, mi family right but not really lose if that makes sense so it's really all in that level of persuasion on that phone call and it's in the tonality in the little small indicative things that we say in those Conversations. Ah. So part of what's been coming up a lot is um mentioning to the uh to the buyers or the Investors that like one example is we really we had a deal in Savannah Georgia right it was a duplex we really did feel like it deserved to sell around the four fifty range right we had it for three fifty right so it was a really great deal we had it as an Novation we put it up on the market and um you know people just came in aggressively in the mid to upper threes and then one person came in at four and they they were at four but they wanted. Uh, a five day inspection period and typically i don't like to allow inspection periods um, but i think i vetted them decently well. Um, they use one of those. Uh jwb LLCs. So i felt like they were real Buys and they weren't trying to flip it they understood the concept of putting emd a fair number in a really fast period time so i just vetted them really well i felt they were real buyers and that i you know with all the questions that i asked i felt like there was a very slight chance of renegotiation but then again they may be too busy or they just may not so i did take the Gamble cuz it was it was the better offer out of all of now they did come back on day five with a renegotiation right and um and this is an example of what I've done several times but they were at three eighty two five. Um and uh, then i have a Conversation with them just saying you know i just thought we were good i thought you understood that i priced it already with an aggressive discount um based on its condition um, i had no idea you were gonna come back at that low of a number like that's super surprising and then they justify why right and when they justify why i mentioned listen you know we've talked about that already you know we've talked about all that stuff you told me you wanted the number that we previously agreed on because of all that stuff already are you saying you're repeating the same stuff to me where you not being truthful when we initially talked about it so it goes in that direction I'm like listen you know we've already made an aggressive reduction. Um, it's gonna be very difficult if i have to revisit the seller and i don't wanna ruin this deal. Que then none of us will have a deal you know and you know how these deals go you know how these Investment deals go these wholesale deals go we've all done a good amount of deals at this point it feels just way too sensitive to go and revisit the seller so during that Conversation they came up to three eighty five and then they came up to three ninety but the problem is um and it's not a problem is like a lot of people might just say. Okay to three eighty two or to three eighty five or to three ninety um, but you know if you agree too fast it's like. Oh you were lying the whole time i just wanted to make them know or make them feel that i just don't know you know so i got to the point and i think i did it in a good gradual way to where i really didn't wanna budge from the four. They just got to the point they just they didn't wanna mess the us they felt bad for us and then they wanted to cancel ah and i said listen let's not cancel let me work on it I'll get back with you in ten or fifteen minutes and then i agree to the three ninety we signed off and went to close but you know those Conversations you know if you keep doing that on a consistent basis over time they'll beat people up and people will wanna give up sooner but you have to stay consistent with it you have to fight because if you take all the emotions out of it and you realize oh that was just ten minutes for ten thousand bucks or fifteen thousand bucks it's enormous it's life changing and i look to look at those decisions as if if you're making fifteen thousand dollars in ten minutes. If you can do that every ten minutes that's a forty million decision we just made or Twenty whatever the math comes to over the course of a year like i and it's just a silly way to look at it but that's what justifies to me like that's crazy money in a short period of time um, so we should treat dos Conversations with care and with you know interest and desire and you know put your all into it because it's just words you know at the end of the day and you should care enough about it to to give.

Mike: 34:44

Yeah it's interesting you say that I've had a you know a similar Conversation with the Guys on my sales team you know they'll get a deal and they'll maybe they'll come back and they got it let's say ten thousand dollars below for example and I'll take them up to the whiteboard I'll say job got a ten thousand dollars how much longer do you think that took they're like oh its like ten minutes extra just sitting there uncomfortable i put it on the board i said well ten thousand dollars extra spread you know you made a fourteen hundred dollars extra for ten minutes of being uncomfortable how many times you think you can do that this week and then they start doing it more

Dominick: 35:26

I love that i

Mike: 35:28

very

Dominick: 35:28

absolutely love that i absolutely love that yeah but i think it's why is that not important on the disposition side it should be yeah it should be because if we can et you know five six or seven gram more on the acquisition side and two to five k more on the disposition side over the year that will save some people's entire business Mike some people might in like little adjustments or bumps make an extra two hundred fifty thousand and that might be their profit and you might either break even or go outta business because you're not doing those little things.

Mike: 36:05

Mm. How are you treating cause i know you're doing innovations and i know you're just doing straight wholesale too. Uh like how are like how do you treat those differently or are you just kind of treating it similarly

Dominick: 36:20

So that's a super question and um you know i come from uh a history of doing a tremendous amount of hedge fund deals right and i use that experience to our advantage so when we talk about a cash deal. Um one of the biggest things and you Guys probably practice this a lot too is just try to get a number out of the seller right have a Conversation find out about the motivation care about what they're going through relate to them build a friend. To see if they can reveal a number right if you can tell in that Conversation that they really believe that they deserve that number and it's miles apart from the cash deal eh you almost have to deliver the information in a way where you're not gonna wanna take this deal right i have a if I'm gonna have to buy this for cash I'm gonna have to go through x y and z I'm gonna go through all this stuff i don't wanna offend you I'm not sure if it's gonna be right for you because my partners are gonna want it at this number xxx. Oh yeah there's no way I'm gonna take this whatever and we justify why we see if we can bridge it and if we can the Brilliant ideas listen we work with a lot of institutions we work with a lot of Investors and they just buy properties in bulk and they typically can pay a lot more than we can. Right so if you wanna just give me a few minutes we have a system we can run it through and we have some people we can check with to see if this is even closer anywhere closer to the number that you needed at right and if it is we come back to them and say listen if you want if I'm gonna close cash i can close typically in like two weeks two or three weeks if you give me if i can get your number if you give me Sixty to seventy five days or whatever the you know the timeframe is based on that Conversation um, i can very likely get my Investors to buy it and then we tell them most of the time most of the time based on our preliminary reviews we know that we can get it done so that's about eighty percent of the time the other Twenty percent of the time we'll just get retail backups for you. So we'll get prequalified retail people that we feel that we know can buy that house ah and then 11 they agree to all of it and we're contracting it we also go over a power to let them know how we're getting those retail backup offers with the EMB listing and stuff like that

Mike: 38:53

right and then on the dispose side let's say like you're talking to Investors directly versus like maybe talking to agents with retail buyers how does that Conversation sound different.

Dominick: 39:06

you know the funny thing is it comes up all the time it comes up all the time like what is this because what we're gonna do if we put it on the market we're either gonna use a flat fee listing service or make a realtor relationship en list it. And i like to field the calls right i like a lot of them to come into us into the office because we're just gonna take care of it a lot better based on our direct direction so everyone's not everyone but most people are curious like what it is this it says a for sale by owner or it's listed with the service like what's the scenario going on here it looks like it's an investor what's your position who are you are you the seller or you not the seller so that's come up a lot and essentially we used to complicate by explaining the process and now we've simplified by just saying you know we have a power of attorney with the underlying seller associate we're an associate of the seller and we have a power of attorney and it just allows us to list it and make decisions on pricing and stuff like that. En people most all the time they just accept it they're fine with it and then we just explain to them it's just like a regular transaction too you just make your offer and we just go to close just like any other transaction so we just try to like be passive with it and just act like it's not a big deal en most of the time it's it's totally fine and uh people don't probe.

Mike: 40:28

Yeah and then on the negotiation side though you know obvious we just kind of you shared that recent story with that saity with an investor are you treating the negotiation a bit differently if you're dealing with a realtor with a with a retail.

Dominick: 40:44

Uh am i treating it differently so i do mention to them we've price it aggressively because we try to pre account for the current condition that it's in so just take that into consideration when you Guys are putting your offer in that if you think you wanna deduct for a roof or flooring o Cosmetics o whatever we've done a lot of that on the front end are you Guys okay with this number just make sure that you talk to your buyers so we do try to prevent it we can't really like what I've learned in this new market is if you do that too aggressively. Um it will chase them away cuz retail buyers are very emotional so it's more of a hybrid of getting your point across and letting them know there is a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel if we really need to figure something out

Mike: 41:33

Mm.

Dominick: 41:33

you know we're not gonna be unreasonable.

Mike: 41:36

yeah you still want them to put the offer in to get the Conversation really going

Dominick: 41:40

Ya ya

Mike: 41:42

gotcha gotcha and then. Um, i think we should touch a little bit on it we haven't yet es you're doing a lot of kind of community stuff a lo that you're building this community as you Guys are doing your business right and and you're filming a lot of live stuff i think it's super interesting do you wanna kind of share i guess first of all why you decided to do that.

Dominick: 42:05

yeah so you know you you always you put a lot of time into so this is gonna be my third wave of getting involved into a business building a business I've been successful a couple of times before building a multimillion dollar business so i know that I'm capable of it. Ah, but when businesses come and go and you have to start from scratch you know there's always so many different ways to do things. Um, I'm starting to want to put a lot more of an influence on. Um a social community and a social brand right cuz i just feel like regardless of what happens with businesses those will always be around and you know as interested as i am with building businesses and making a good amount of money. Really at the end of the day i don't care about money i genuinely do like helping people i tend to lean a little bit more toward the act of um building a community uh i guess her mosy says it a bunch of times right give give give give give until people ask i don't wanna build anything that or just selling en i don't wanna say poisoning my brand but i think being liked is is just important to me it just feels good it feels great I'd rather be that individual than being proud of Growing a base of haters because it Gives me attention right so um, if i build a little bit more of a personal brand and a really good community that genuinely is self-policing and can produce deals for themselves and us here in the office i think it'll be an ultimate win.

Mike: 43:50

Ya and for the people haven't seen the stuff you're out like how are you going about building that community.

Dominick: 43:57

You know so far it's been pretty org organically right so ah, we're just trying to i mean you see the green screen behind us we're trying our best to as we do our calls and we feel our calls hit the record button with the OBS interface connection that we've got set up and as we record the calls we put them out on our social profile so tiktok Instagram and Facebook right and we have a lot of ind things set up that can point people toward the fact that we have a Facebook group the Facebook group es called all lead su right and the concept of all lead suck is you know it's sad to say but not only wholesaling and real estate in general but also for most entrepreneurs people are in. Out of business for themselves and way more people fail than succeed a people on the leads and the lead flow right i hear it ah, i mean dude we've been doing this you've been doing this for years now Mike we kind of grew together in this industry in this market and you know salespeople will come and go and a lot of people will blame it on the leads and if you stop blaming it on the leads and you start looking at yourself more you're just gonna be way more successful it's just a it is just the way of it you know it's just what we've experienced. Ah, so it is just kind of a play on words you know naming it all lead suck. Um, just because it's cool fun and attractive and then our job is to oppose that fact.

Mike: 45:36

Gotcha what is? Um, I'm curious. What is OBS i i haven't. Heard of that before.

Dominick: 45:42

I don't know what it stands for it's ah, it's a program that's on r. PC that kind of is hooked up with a camera that allows me to record the videos just we can show to you next time in your office they go into a video file every time so a hit start it start a hit stop that video into a file and we have the social media editors here they'll take dos videos and then they'll clip them and edit them and then they'll put them up on social media now what it also does es for podcasters you can simultaneously record and go live with multiple different groups on social media like you can go Facebook live youtube live um and there's a handful of other things that you can do with it so it does that it probably does more i don't really know.

Mike: 46:31

En it like if you're on calls it will like let the people you know follow your. Call in the video as opposed to just hearing your side they can hear the seller

Dominick: 46:42

Correct yep yep yep it record both sides simultaneously yeah yeah it's pretty cool so have you heard of restream

Mike: 46:55

ah no, i haven't actually

Dominick: 46:57

okay. Ah, what are what is this that we're on now guest ecam

Mike: 47:02

ecam yeah.

Dominick: 47:04

ecamm its probable i don i don if if it can be related so disregard la

Mike: 47:13

Ah, cool um i think another thing I'd like to talk with you about is i know you Guys are we were talking in your office i think it was just yesterday or maybe the day before anyone doesn't know we're in the same building so that happens a lot. Um is you Guys are using a lot of ai and you were saying you know. If you're not able to get in touch with the lead you're kind of thrown into the ai actually maybe just kind of if you could walk people through how it Works cuz I'm not the best person to explain it.

Dominick: 47:45

Yeah so we have a CRM that's called ai speak le and the CRM is infused with um talking ai and texting ai right now you have to be careful when you're using talking ai because the leads that you bring into your CRM they have to opt in correctly right with the correct verbiage that allows you um to use ai to contact the people with ai right ah, so most lead providers have adapted right so if you're gonna send leads into your CRM most of them have pre accounted for that in their terms and conditions or whatever the pop privacy policy whatever it is that people check when they submit a form so um, when a lead comes into our system the first thing we wanna do is have human beings talking to them and not really the ai so salespeople wanna talk and we'll try wanna make the good old fashioned College tribe just calling and trying to get them on the phone. A a certain point. Um, people will put dead leads into a dead lead bucket and maybe run a dialer on them or have a followup manager go to them or have whatever process it is that they have so our process. Um is you know the first ten days or the ten days of hell you just gotta call them people at least three times a day or several times a day double tapping just trying to get people on the line right and if at some point in time they just don't go on the line we take it and we give it to the ai and the ai will try to dial and call two or three times a day and try to text and send a bait text and do all these different things through the workflows that we set up to get them back on the phone now when they get them back on the phone it can have a Conversation with them. It can do an introduction it can ask some questions and it can just try to see if there's still some interest now i don't think it's good enough in my opinion to have these really long elaborate Conversations but it can check in and it can ask a few things and if the people are interested it can live transfer the call to the sales Guys here so it might get on and say. Hey you know you Filled out a form not too long ago asking if you want a cash offer do you want me to see if i can get you that offer really quick are you still interested ya I'm still interested. Okay, hold the line a second now it'll work it'll work like an Automation or like a text to where based on the Answers it'll do something different. Right so there's a lot of if this then that conditions that can be built in so it can be as short or as long as a Conversation as you really wanna set up you just have to gauge like how long people will stick around how long your leads will stick around and talk to a robot um, so what we've experienced so far likely not too long so we just like the concept of it getting people on the phone with a very smaller amount of qualification and then get it over to a real life person

Mike: 50:31

That as it hey in cash if they give a positive response transferring do you go slight further. Okay.

Dominick: 50:40

no we don't go slightly further we're gonna build it out a little test it a little bit more over time but right now for those followups is just get them on the line see if they're interested them over to a live person.

Mike: 50:52

Gotcha and is there you know one you know we do a lot of ourselves not ai you know we've got people doing it um and sometimes you run into the issue if you're doing we are doing live transfers too where we run in person appointments in the afternoon live transfers might be going to no one if all the reps are on appointments. Um is there a way with like the ai someone can. Sales manager turn up they we've got a lot of sales in the office right now let lets crank this thing versus you know obviously with humans you can say. Hey home right like is that a possibility with the

Dominick: 51:35

Yeah man it's super robust dude it's just um, it's extremely possible yeah so you control so when you when you either purchase the CRM or most all ai platforms that I've seen that use talking ai you you can adjust the volume or the capability right so i guess if you have a ton of leads in your system and you have to keep your Guys busy and they've all opted in the right way but a lot of them have gone dead or you can't get them back on the line and you wanna run calls through them. Right you can do a call a minute you can do call two calls a minute you can do fifty calls a minute you know the more volume of calls you do. Uh the more people that'll get on the line and the more it'll transfer over to your team right and i think the capability now is about ten thousand dials and thirty minutes right so it's extremely robust it can do a lot in a really short period of time. Ah, so i think if i remember so cold calling with an depending on the that you're using so say it's one of those ten line you know va can do a thousand calls a thousands in a day and a thousand ds typically produce about a couple of leads at least that's the cold calling that I've been exposed to I've been used to it's all different ways to do it right so if you want the ai to act like two virtual assistance you just double. Do two thousand a day o four thousand or five thousand and then you can replicate it from there to emulate you know what a a human virtual a can do o more than one human virtual a can do

Mike: 53:16

And if you have one sales rep in the office unless pretend is not he she is not out they they're sitting there the which isn't realistic i mean how manys are you hour to keep that person like busy on the

Dominick: 53:34

you know you want the sales rep to get the leads in gradually um, you want the sales rep to be able like one of the simplest things Mike I've learned over the years is it's super important for the sales reps to have long Conversations right. En it might sound simple or dumb because there's so many moving parts to sales that are important but the fact of the matter is if a great sales rep can have a long Conversation thirty to forty five minutes the person on the other side they they're less likely to wanna do that with another company all over again if that's what their expectation is right and that Gives you a little bit more of a leg up we're just looking for a few percent here a few percent there of the potential for success right so i think for one sales person. Um with no junior person along with them uh and you just wanna get them right amount leads maybe a couple thousand dials a day

Mike: 54:33

Okay,

Dominick: 54:34

so like that would be like two human uh virtual assistance just getting leads over to them and maybe they'll get four to six leads or something to them and they can have good quality Conversation because the sales reps are also probably gonna do their own dials too right

Mike: 54:48

Mm-hmm. Yep yeah. and then on the texting side of it like how how do you Guys use ai in terms of texting

Dominick: 54:58

Um so uh, it's kind of the same stuff it's um a lot of it is bait texting and then if they text back that's when the ai because it's a com it's a combination of texting automations and then when the replies come then the ai kicks in to answer the replies right so it's just gauging it's the same thing as the talking but in text form gauging interest see if they're still interested and then in the CRM the Conversations pop up right so when the automations and the ai ar talking to people something will pop up in the Conversation view and then a human can look at it and they can either call them. Um. Right then and there o let the Conversation play a little bit more because if it's a lot of fu and take me off your list and all this bullshit they probably are not gonna call them and then the talking ai and the texting ai will automatically send them to DNC send them to dead or put them to rest for a while if they're just not ready right now.

Mike: 56:06

Gotcha are you using the ah, ai at like let's say someone fill a a form on your website and you know maybe it's like i don know crazy la like is ai message them at all to have a Conversation to kind of can get to if it's after hours.

Dominick: 56:27

Ah, yeah i mean it'll tell them that someone's gonna call them back early in the morning. Ah, we don't have it having too long of any elaborate Conversations i think you know one thing that I've always felt and i still believe in sales es ah that that level of Curiosity has to kind of stay there en prepare en keep the interest for the person to wanna get on the call with the sales person. Ah. so if the ai is gonna have too much of a Conversation. Ah, o reveal a little too much we don't want it to either satisfy o discourage the person on the other line so it just will just dangle certain things and that level of Curiosity or hope o whatever until the human gets on the line with them and one of the simplest things that'll do like if it's overnight especially it's like. Hey we just receive your call you know my sales. Guy is gonna give you a call at nine thirty is that okay and say yes. Perfect no and what time and they'll give a time and then we times

Mike: 57:31

Gotcha very cool and then. Um, you Guys are doing pretty much nationwide from what we were discussing the other day what made you decide to go that route. Um versus just uh doing the Jacksonville.

Dominick: 57:49

You know ah. When Gonzalo and i grew and built cash gekes we were cold call heavy right the reason we were so cold call heavy is because you can pull specific data points that are the exact buy box for the process that we had for the hedge funds that we were working with right if you do PPC Facebook at digital marketing stuff like that there's gonna be a lot of things outside of that buyback that just wouldn't make sense. For the exit path that we wanted to build on right. Ah, so my experience for the last i mean you know I've been out of cash cakes for two and a half years now but my entire experience with cash cakes for five and a half years was that it was cold calling. Ah for some reason instead of cash cakes with that model we couldn't complement it properly with digital marketing and things like that just didn't work out well for us right so now in this new comp so the company named now a simple cell right so when we started with this company. Um, we wanted to revisit. Um, because there's so many good things that people are talking about with um digital marketing leads and PPC right so we said you know we owe it to ourselves to give it a good old call try and see if we can make it work and to us if we're in the deals directly and we have these multiple extra strategies those leads were a lot warmer. Warmer than the cold leads from the cold calls um and you know we pride ourselves in being decently well at sales. Um and we just felt like we would perform well with it. Um, so you said why do we go nationwide so we went nationwide because you can test the waters on these digital leads at a lower cost. So it's like if I'm gonna go in one market or in Jacksonville and if the cost per lead for PPC is i don't know a thousand bucks seven hundred bucks um you know i don't wanna test it out and be wrong and waste Twenty grand fifty grand you know so if we're able to keep that cost down. Ah, you know maybe a hundred bucks a lead a hundred fifty bucks a lead. Um, we can test the waters in these outside markets proof concept and then we can decide if we wanna hone in on one individual market o a handful of certain individual markets.

Mike: 1:00:16

Is that typically in when you're doing the

Dominick: 1:00:23

Ah, yeah. So Louis are we still around a hundred fifty bucks a lead for the digital marketing leads i think we're hovering around there yeah we're hovering around there.

Mike: 1:00:35

gotcha ya its way cheap and.

Dominick: 1:00:39

Yeah i mean because like Jacksonville um, i think uh and this is probably a year and a half ago with just Jacksonville was like between like because it's seven i think it was seven hundred dollars costs per lead but then when you factor in the the management fee for the company it gets closer to a thousand.

Mike: 1:00:59

Ya ya what are the challenges though that you face when going the national route.

Dominick: 1:01:07

Everything everything man so and and it's cool and it's fun challenges because it exposes you to so much and i i just i like figuring stuff out right and i don't wanna do it recklessly to lose money um, but it's a really fun experience so the challenges are you you know you realize either it's very difficult to dis to dispos en lowly populated markets um and if that's the case what are the best routes to do it right and if you figure out the best routes to disposition in lowly populated markets that'll help you disposition in highly populated markets may be a little bit better right so i think it's a priceless Um, because.

Mike: 1:01:53

The the before i forget what are the best methods to this po and lovely populated markets

Dominick: 1:02:00

I mean by hands its getting a power getting a power with the seller and listing it on the open market that's gonna be the number one best way to disposition. Ah, but another thing that people probably underestimate. Ah, es Facebook you know Facebook marketplace. Has your magical buyers. Ah, so it is surpris us a couple times it's not consistent but it's something that should be done simultaneously along with other ways to market obviously most people know that Facebook groups great. You know and here in Jacksonville we have an incredible Facebook group called yellow bird or yellow connect it's finding those yellow bird groups es what we say here en other outside markets because the group is magical man en Kyle pas is a magician

Mike: 1:02:54

yeah yeah i think there's like twelve thousand people in that group i didn't even know that many i don't even think that many people actually invest in

Dominick: 1:03:00

and dude its a genuinely org organically built a very Interactive group i mean because dude I've seen it time after time and i don't wanna name the group cuz a friend of mine has it there's a group there with a fifty thousand people that gets nowhere near the activity

Mike: 1:03:18

Mm-hmm. Yeah yeah there are a lot like that ah, so what are i cut you off there i was just really what are the additional challenges nationwide.

Dominick: 1:03:31

so we talked about. Yeah acquiring in those markets are challeng too because you can you can look at Camps but we continue to get surprised on the Neighborhoods and the activities so for example we have a Novation en a Neighborhood called Lakewood ranch Florida it's just outside of sao it's kind of like you how y de Jacksonville right and we it it's still decent we're not getting a lot of activity on but we thought it was gonna be like Wildfire we're gonna list it lower than what most of the listings are going for in that area we're gonna sell well and we'll make a good spread on it right but we're not getting a lot of activity we've maybe had two or three visits in almost a month and we've lowered it gradually and we got it to the point where we can't really lower it much more. Ah and it just turns out there's there's a couple of new build Neighborhoods there that have prices that are lower than our price and they're giving all types of you know benefits bonus pluses additives concessions and stuff like that and that's killing that deal so knowing the local markets are tricky. Ah, um dispositioning it to people that you don't know is tricky building that disposition list finding those groups and finding paths and ways to sell those deals

Mike: 1:04:57

Gotcha are you using investor lift or any of those type tools at all o?

Dominick: 1:05:03

you know. We probably should look more into different ways to use investor lift because with cash geeks we had investor lift ah and we didn't have a whole lot of really good success with it and en simple cell we've also used investor lift through other people ah and have not had too good of an experience with it and i don't think it's investor lift it's probably we're not using it in the most effective way especially without direct control on ways to use it maybe finding buyers with different ways to reach out to them but listing our stuff on investor lift. Um, we've not had the best experience

Mike: 1:05:44

fair enough yeah well. Um we're getting close to the end here and there's always two questions i like to ask at the end of the show

Dominick: 1:05:52

Okey.

Mike: 1:05:53

the first is what is the craziest o most uncomfortable situation that you have ever experienced en real estate deal.

Dominick: 1:06:04

Ah so what comes to mind first is and i don't have a lot of time to think through it because you know i probably with caskes and with the business that we're doing now it's probably over twelve hundred wholesale deals but what comes to mind is a recent deal where. Um, you know and it's typical it's not anything outlandish or outside of what people might normally hold on so ringing it might they don't hear it

Mike: 1:06:42

It's a live transfer.

Dominick: 1:06:44

did you hear

Mike: 1:06:45

no I'm joking

Dominick: 1:06:47

okay. No i lost your screen is it here give me one second there we go. Okay, sorry about that ah, yeah. So we just have um, we have a deal in an outside market o we had one and we sold it successfully thankfully uh, but it was in Columbia, Missouri and it was a nice house and a decent subdivision cookie cutter subdivision so it's one of those things that if you buy it right flip it sell it it would just be smooth it was going into foreclosure in about two weeks and i have another screen i have to close and the seller was on meth dude i literally had three sellers on meth simultaneously. Uh, three deals trying to dispos with sellers on meth simultaneously so this is one of the meth sellers. Um, i didn't realize it was so popular out there dude. Ah, so it was just super difficult to. Get on the line keep her on the line she so she she had this house it looks nice from the outside but it's completely trashed on the inside she was living in the garage and not in the house right and the house was completely trash dog feces all over the place multiple buyers told me that when they went inside this house they couldn't step through it at all and avoid dog feces so dog feces would get all over their feet what this Lady would do is she would stay live in the garage with her dog and when her dog had to go to the bathroom she let him in the house i don't by the life of me understand why she didn't live in the house and have the dog go shit in the garage. So so that's that's the way her life had evolved um, but you know people just they couldn't see past the condition to see the opportunity and we thought we had a price right so we thought we were gonna make like thirty forty grand we got squeezed all the way down to like five grand and it was really tough to renegotiate her because she wasn't of sound mind to understand why we had to be at the price we need to be at because if we do five thousand dollars deals where costs per deal can be anywhere from a variation of Twenty five hundred to four thousand dollars i mean we're gonna be at a business doing five thousand dollars deals right so really got to probably like a day before. Where i think it was morning of to come her to agree to a number that was it was a fourteen thousand deal at the end of the day and have the title company go they had to close like the title agent from the company had to personally visit and we really had to grid to get this done they close on a car on the car hood outside of the front of the house que no one could go inside that house and she wasn't reasonable to go anywhere o meet them or go company even though it was only two miles away and she drives. Ah go there and the and the buyer also wanted less so it was just really difficult to convince all parties to get to a number that was fair and really made us be profitable on the deal and get it done and then she also wanted all types of post occupancy so we were able to get like two months post occupancy down to two weeks um and she was trying to get Hotels out of it it was just like a lot of unreasonable requests but we finally got through it and we finally closed and we finally made a positive spread

Mike: 1:10:30

nice well not nice but I'm glad it worked out at the end of the day

Dominick: 1:10:34

ya.

Mike: 1:10:36

so the second question i always like to ask for the people who are newer watching the show is if you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice when you were looking for your first deal knowing what you know now what would you tell yourself.

Dominick: 1:10:54

So if it's people just looking for their first deal i think um there's two things that immediately come to mind don't be nervous apprehensive or afraid to talk about numbers that make sense right because if you don't. Train yourself your team or other people they will train you right so if you have a two hundred thousand dollars property that you know deep in your heart you need it at seventy five thousand dollars and i say two hundred thousand we're talking about arv you know you need it at seventy five thousand dollars you need to know and believe in your heart that that's the price you really with high confidence wanna talk about and wanna shoot for and justify really well why you need at that number and just try to talk to them and bring them to terms that make sense on that number and then follow up right follow up and be persistent with it and i not only talking to people that are having Conversations with sellers but if you're buying off the market with Realtors or whatever the scenario es be persistent follow up and then justify your number right en great salespeople will do it in a way. Where people won't be pissed off at you because i think that there's a lot of Investors o really i don't wanna say weak flippers but flippers that are losing out just because they want to be firm at their number and act like assholes and you know they want people to you know crawl and come to them i don't think that's the best way to go about things you know you can deliver a message in a really great way as to where if you don't come to terms people still like you right so you can just justify it have a great tactful Conversation be persistent and follow up and then you'll get that deal

Mike: 1:12:45

Ya

Dominick: 1:12:46

or you will get a. deal

Mike: 1:12:48

Yeah i think that's a great piece of advice persistence kinda seems like the theme throughout the show today

Dominick: 1:12:56

that's all i got Mike i don't have much in this world but i do have that.

Mike: 1:13:02

i like it well dom if people wanna reach out to you after the show if they have questions or maybe they're interested i know you Guys do like a lot of free trainings online or you're always streaming your your calls like how can they go about connecting you or finding that information

Dominick: 1:13:17

I think they can go to Dominic Felix on Facebook o they can go to at real do Felix on Instagram you know look me up post

Mike: 1:13:26

cool Awesome man thanks for being on the show.

Dominick: 1:13:29

right Mike thanks for your time man thanks for having me on.