Shakin' Hands
Welcome to 'Shakin' Hands,' the podcast where entrepreneurship meets fascinating stories from the most intriguing minds today. From proven business practices to groundbreaking ideas that challenge the status quo, Shakin' Hands' is not just about the handshake that seals a deal but about the shared experiences and values that unite us all. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned business owner, or someone who loves a good story about overcoming odds, Shakin' Hands' promises to deliver compelling content that shakes up the conventional and celebrates the extraordinary.
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Host: Jack Moran
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Shakin' Hands
Ep. 47 | Wholesaling Secrets No One Talks About - Devan Carroll
Real estate investor Devan Carroll, founder of Deventum Properties, joins Shakin' Hands to share his journey from startup hustler to managing millions in transactions. He breaks down key strategies for wholesaling, flipping, and scaling, highlighting the power of off-market deals, mentorship, and efficient systems. He and Jack discuss persistence, networking, and delayed gratification in building long-term wealth.
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Host: Jack Moran
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He got kicked out. And so, yeah, I saw him in LA, and I'm like, you got to maritime. He's like, yeah. I'm like, why are you at the airport? And he's like, I got kicked out. I'm like, yeah, right now. Like I knew it. And I'm like, don't worry about it. Like all my buddies that got kicked out. Like, we're back within a year. And he's like, how do you know about this? And then we started shooting this shit. And I ended up like offering him a fucking job. That's funny, but he's like a freshman. He didn't even hit me up. Yeah, my one buddy's doing it. He's laying, like, fiber optic cable on the ocean floor. Really? He's been doing it for, like, holy go. Like four weeks on, four weeks off. Is he, a welder? No. He's, Or he's a diver or. No, he I'm pretty sure he's in the captaincy. So he's up there? Yeah. I got a deckhand or what? That's sick. I'm fucking wired to set my morning coffee. Yeah, I held off this morning. Oh, is this your office and you use as a studio to or. So it's my office. I use it as a story, actually, just to hear it. And somebody said, oh, nice. I was over another place then. This is cheaper and nicer there. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I grew up. It's nice. So we have some work to do. I'm building out these, like, walls over there the entire time. I want to have time. Yeah, that's kind of. I think so I don't remember did Luke was the only can I for this. Yeah I know Jason and Luke one of Luke through Jason. And then Luke's doing my content. I just started, so. Okay, so you just made his first post on Monday and been going since. So nice. Doing good. Do we got 11,000 views on two reels this week. Really? That was pretty impressive. Holy shit. And like the social media thing, dude. Like it's super effective in real estate. Just raising capital funding deals, you know, finding new talent. And, I mean, I just put it off for two years, like, I just don't want to see myself up there. I don't know, but I did it, and it's good. It's helping already. So yeah, that was like kind of one of the original reasons for this was like having like some long form content. I just can't be like, filming reels all the time. Too busy. So I'll do like an hour, you know, podcasting, get 50 sound bites out of it. Exactly. What were the reels? I went for a roller. Let's like this one big project that I'm doing. And over in, old village, it's a new construction project. So, like, we knocked the house down, and now it's just dirt a lot right now. So I mean, it appraised at $1 million. So my hook was, you know, have you ever seen $1 million worth of dirt and then kind of just explained the financing process, deal structure there? And then the other one was another project I'm doing over by some creek, just a huge renovation, $450,000 right now, pool big and all that stuff. So just a little walk through that land deal. Is that the one that Jason was telling me about? Is that the same thing you guys are doing? Because he said he had a raw land deal that he is doing, and, we don't do much together, honestly, just bounce ideas off each other. He's more like the retail space. I'm strictly off market investment. Like, I do, virtual wholesaling. So I was nationwide. Now I narrowed it down to like, six states that we just, you know, go to the properties. We never have to go. We have people boots on the grounds there to do it all for us. And then, you know, we just signed the deals, so we're not closing on it or just assigning it straight up. How'd you get to know real estate? Are we are we going right now? Yeah, okay, I didn't I wasn't sure. So for me, it was I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. At Clemson, I, was kind of handed the entrepreneurship club. It was like a small little club that we would just have alumni come in and speak at Lilly on game day. Weekend would come in on a Friday, come speak to the group. There was just one guy, Steve Edwards, that he was kind of like a big real estate developer at Clemson hotels, Walmart shopping centers, all that stuff. And, he was the coolest one. He lived there. He's a pilot. He's an author. He does Iron Man. He does it all this badass stuff. So I really connected with him. And then I was like, well, how do I get into real estate at a college? Like, I don't have any money? So I knew I wanted to be in Charleston. Took, like, a bogus recruiting role, you know, making, like 40 5KA year. But it got me to Charleston, and I was like, I'll figure it out. So one thing after another was in that role for like four months and just hated it. Miserable trading my time for money, making no money. And then I started reading. Just started reading books. And it was Rich dad, poor dad. Have you read that one? Of course. Yeah. So that's like where everyone gets their start. Yeah. I mean, as cliche as it is, that was the one that really did it for me. And it was just like, I mean, I read a few other books. And just to come to nominated, it was all these millionaires, you know, who do the real estate, real estate, real estate. So I was like, well, if I start in real estate at this age and I had to stay somewhat consistent by the time I'm 50, I'm going to be worth something, right. So that forced me to reach back out to Steve. Hey, Steve, how do I get involved? And really, three main options. You know, you can go the retail agent route, where you're going to be commission based only, you know, you're working for a brokerage. You're going and just cold calling out the ass. I mean, that's what you're going to do anyway. Or there's, you know, hiring a mentorship, a coach, you know, where you have to pay, or just go into YouTube University and just bootstrapping it. So I decided to invest in a mentorship. I looked at a few of them. I had like 11 grand to my name at the time, and I spent a ton of it on this course. And I, you know, continued to work in the role because I needed money. And then, after hours, get home from work, walk the dog and just grind. These training modules described the modules. So fast forward two months. I had a good foundation. I knew you know, how to underwrite properties. So the market had to do this stuff. But I hadn't done a deal and I don't have money to market. So that was like I was like, you know, I just need to get out of recruiting and get into real estate full time. So my mentor from that coaching program forced me to like, go, you know, put myself out there, go to real estate investor events, meetups, all this stuff. And that's where I met Nate Hirshberg, who, really is responsible for all of it. Pretty much he, you know, was running a virtual wholesaling operation, virtual flip, actually. And I started out with him as a lead manager about three and a half years ago. Just smiling. And Dylan, you know, making 150, 200 calls a day, worked my way up to an acquisition to manager, and then eventually, CEOs. So I was a CEO for a year and a half. You know, we scaled it to multiple six figures and assignment fees on a monthly basis. And then as of January last year, I fully went out on my own same business model. So to break that down a little bit, starting with the, like, the course modules, was that beneficial or waste of time? No, it definitely was. I mean, I'm a big advocate of paying for proximity, you know, like if if I mean, I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here. Right? Real estate's been around forever and it always will be. Right? So, just paying for proximity, you know, it could take it could take me, you know, 5 to 6 years to get where I'm at now. But, you know, putting myself in the right rooms, paying for access to the people that have been doing this and have learned the hard way, just really learning from their experiences. And, hey, don't try this marketing channel. Try this marketing channel or, you know, don't do this market, do this market. Just things along those and just shortening the learning curve. If, like the process you went through, you happy you went through that process or you wish you had taken different steps, or if you could go back, would you have, you know, taken some different steps and kind of fast track the process or. Yeah, 100%. I mean, no, I don't think I would because, I mean, just the just delayed gratification. Majority of real estate investing is delayed gratification. Some people will say wholesaling is not. I mean, it is you get, you know, your fee in 30 to 45 days. But if like to truly build wealth through real estate, yeah, that's delayed gratification. So, and another thing too about wholesaling is 90% of wholesale companies fail in their first year because it's risky. You know, I mean, you have a lot of overhead in marketing, and it's not easy. I mean, you're convincing people to sell their house to a stranger over the phone for $0.70 on the dollar. Your average person buys and sells a homes two times in their life. So the other thing too, is 99% of the US, their largest asset is their home and the equity they have in their home. Right. So for these people, I still don't know how it how they do it or why they do it or why it's even a thing. But the fact that these people, you know, sell their largest asset, you know, over the phone, you know, for $0.70 on the dollar, I mean, there's motivation, there's a reason to it. But just that trust factor is kind of crazy to me. Yeah. That was my next question. What is that like buzz word or like key point or, you know, prodding point that makes them move over the edge? Why do they do that? Why are they motivated to. Yeah. So aka our most commonly talked last year was tired landlord. So these are and it's tired landlord tired landlord meaning that they have rental properties and they've kind of let the property go. They're renting it out below market rent. They need to replace the roof for the Hvac and they just don't want to deal with it. And a lot of our clients are actually retired veteran to, you know, we're stationed somewhere, bought a house on a VA loan, got sent elsewhere, decided to rent that house out, then bought a new house, and next thing you know, they got 8 to 10 properties that, you know, it's cash flowing, but these 8 to 10 properties are in 6 or 7 different states. And obviously they're not going and checking in on them. So, you know, the time comes or this is like it's been their cash flow. It's what they've been living off of for a while. But the time comes where, you know, they need to sell and fully retire. So we get a lot of portfolio deals from veterans. A lot of, just, you know, distressed divorce situations, probate situations, inheritance, foreclosures and stuff like that. How are you guys prospecting and not having to just call random people and hope you get in touch with a veteran, like, are you like, you know, tailoring down those lead lists like, so that you're getting more targeted and, yeah. So I mean, the data management part of it and it kind of depends on your marketing source. So like cold call and SMS, you can target your marketing, right. You're going to go and you're going to pull data. You can use a so-called prop stream bachelor's. There's a bunch of them out there. But what these are going to do is you can I mean, they have preset lists for you, but that's what everyone's calling on, you know? So we get we do have more niches that, you know, work for us. But essentially, you know, you can filter this down to age of, you know, the demographic of who's living there, how much equity they have in the house, property values, zip code specific code violation, you know, water shut off list, tax delinquency, all these things that are going to indicate that these people have, you know, they're in some level of distress. Therefore they may be able to justify a discount to get out of the present situation that they're in. What's the difference that you see between someone who, like, succeeds and fails at wholesaling real estate? I just think consistency I mean, it's not glorious, you know, it's I mean, your average purchase price last year was like $150,000. So, I mean,$150,000 house, you know, it's around here. You got to go probably up to. I mean, there aren't even any in North Charleston anymore, you know? So, I mean, your average, you know, it's just not glorious there. It's not the million dollar houses, a mount pleasant or downtown that's like, well, this is cool. I'm happy to put my name on this. It's like a little fucking two bedroom, one bath, in the middle of nowhere that, you know, it's just a brick ranch. So it's not glorious and it's it's. I mean, people will tell you to fuck off on the phone. People will tell you to get a real job, tell you that you're a scammer, like all this stuff. So it's just you gotta have tough skin for sure. The other thing too, is like, you know, you'll do everything you need to do, right? You know, you get the lead, you get the under contract, you get pictures back, you assign it to a buyer, and then title search comes back and they have liens that outweigh that, you know, exceed the purchase price. And then, you know, nothing happens. You know, the is canceled. Then. So there's a lot of things out of your control. But it's just stay consistent and trust in the process. It's the biggest thing for sure. I think like a lot of people, when they start doing cold calling, they get emotionally attached to those like rejections. How do you, like, separate your, you know, separate your emotions and not care and just make that next call? Yeah. I mean, for me, I'm not calling anymore, luckily. But I did obviously call for like a solid two years. And, you know, it was just onto the next, you know, if this guy thinks if this guy is going to tell me I'm a loser and, you know, they'll never call him back and to get a real job, who the hell do I care? This is the dude who lives in a $200,000 house who is in financial distress. Like, why the hell do I care what he thinks of me, let alone he's never going to meet me? Who the hell. What the hell do I care? You know, and then it's like, you know, then it's the deals that do work, which is what keeps you coming back, right? You know this, and it's always so funny. Like the big deals, the 30 K, the 50 K, the 60 K deals are the easiest ones from start to finish. It's like the five K is the seven K's that are an absolute nightmare to deal with. Yeah. On all every aspect of the process. What is the input to output usually like like how many calls to. Yeah. So like it depends on the source right. So like outbound lead sources cold call SMS. You know we are literally just cold calling them straight up. You know we're filtering the list. You know, we have probable reason that they are in some level of distress. Therefore they could justify a discount. But so our you know, we've cold callers in the Philippines, in Egypt offshore which you know they qualify the leads for our team in the US, our acquisitions managers and then you know, they work the lead. But like for cold call it's one. And so one in every 77 leads that we get for cold call which isn't actually is actually a profitable deal. 77 leads or 77 outreach leads. Outreach is a we don't we can't run it off that that would be too granular. Yeah. So how many, like, calls leads to a lead? We have 20% connection rate, so I would probably say about 200 on on they run a multiline dialer. So, they're calling, you know, three lines at once. If one person picks up, they get out of that call, then the other ones dwindle out. So it's also like 1500 calls to a close deal. Well that's that's crazy. Yeah. And I mean it's a numbers game at the end of the day. And that's why the consistencies are so important. Yeah. I've never I have not personally done any outsourcing on cold calling. I guess I've had like some limitation with my own head thinking that like having people that don't speak English very well, not having high success rate on the phones, what's that process been like? You know, getting ramped up and getting a process down for having offshored cold callers? Yeah. So it's, and that's how it's and. Well, number one, out of all my marketing sources, Cold Call is the best way out of ten zero. I on that last year. Our next was like an inbound source which was seven x. But like our calls per lead for cold calls, about like 77 bucks. Our cost per lead for, like, pay per lead is like 3 to 400 bucks. Right. But to answer your question about just the quality of them is a lot of them are they kind of wrote these big call centers? I've probably used about ten different companies by now, kind of just experimenting. I've also brought cold calling in-house, you know, one time where I was like, oh, you know, this will just be way better if I have circled colors that I can manage and I can train on my own time. And then it just it's just too tedious at the end of the day. But, you know, when you interview these cold calling companies, you know, it's just it's more about professionalism. Some of them are very bootstrap. Some of them are like literally corporate companies with thousands of cold callers. But they cycle those cold callers through. So like I pay for with one company, I pay for four spots, another company I pay for six spots. So like ten total callers doesn't mean I have the same for the same six every day. They're rotating them on a weekly basis because turnover as high as well in those roles. So like the call recordings that you review when you know you're vetting them are isn't going to be the exact same color that you're going to have, right? The next day, the next week, or even ever. So it's really just like we just track, we, you know, have me and my director, of operations, we have a meeting, you know, once a week to review cold call campaigns. And we're just looking at the high level metrics. You know, we're looking at connection rate. We're looking at the abandoned rate, and then we're looking about, the number the amount of wrong numbers as well. Super important. So like there are certain metrics that are important to us, because we've learned throughout, you know, the past three and a half years that you can't control the exact quality you're paying these people, you know, 4 to $5 an hour. That's what you're going to get at the end of the day. But knowing that that marketing source has worked for us a year and year again, we're going to continue to do what's the abandoned rate? Like once a person's picked up and you've connected with them, like, you can't get Ahold of them again, or what is that? So it's for the multi-line dollars. So like, say that, you know, we're running, you can run up to eight lines at once. So, so that you're on five lines at once and you're on the phone, you know, basically two people answer the phone at the same time or within like five to 10s of each other that the one who answered second is abandoned. And then you have to read and try to get back in contact with them. Gotcha. Okay. So abandoned rate means, you know, these people are answering, but, you know, we're running too many lines. We have to run less lines on certain lists. And you obviously write the scripts for them. Right. Do you are they using your company's name? Okay. No they're not. Basically, it's a very vague script. You know, so they're just identifying, like, a proxy. Exactly. Yeah. Their job is just identify if this person has some level of interest in selling, you know, immediately in 30 days and six, it is hell, even over a year from now, because a lot of these landlords, the landlords, you know, there were rentals, cash flow and the tenants paying the roofs good. The it's is good at the time that we reach out. But they've identified that it's, you know, it's in a zip code that we like. You know, it's a it's a solid, you know, bed bath County. It's just it's within our bio box. Right. So therefore they're going to pass that lead over. And then we're going to follow up with that lead until they are motivated to sell. You know until they have to replace the roof, until they have to replace it back, until their tenant stops paying, until that motivation comes up. Like, for example, a cold call from one that lead enters our system to when we actually get it under contract is last year was an average of 181 days, and then after the 181 days, it's an average of 45 days to actually see the profit from the contract. So are you are all your guys that are under your payroll. They just eat what you kill? I give my guys have two options. So it'll be, you know, a small monthly stipend with a lower commission percentage or commission based only with which obviously a much higher commission based. So how do you guys manage cash flows of your pants? Someone up front. And then guarantee their production on the back end if you have a long sale cycle like, you know, 180 days. Yeah. So the stipend just goes out on the month, the 15th of each month. That's, you know, a one time if they go to this type of model, you know, they're just getting it one day of the month, in full. And then commissions are paid up for deals. So once the deal closes they're getting their commission. Gotcha. So I'm saying like it. How are you keeping accountability on these guys to to make sure that you get that ROI on them down the road. So they have an accountability tracker? I'm really I'm a huge goal setter. Like we have this huge gold tracker. I just reverse engineer everything. The whole sales process, goal setting, everything like that. I'm not a huge advocate of that. So they have an accountability tracker, you know, every day. You know, they know based off what their goal was on how much money they wanted to make this year. You know, in our, you know, in our goal setting meeting, I can reverse engineer to determine how many calls I have to make on a daily basis, how many appointments I have to set, how many offers they have to make, how many contacts they have to get. And then I can match that together with their conversion, their sales performance. So, you know, one guy convert to closes at 20%. The other guy closes at 35%. Okay. That's a little bit different. So you kind of have to you know, the guy at 20% estimated more calls on the guy at 30. Obviously. So we have an accountability charter. We do a stoplight report, a green day, meaning they hit all their numbers, yellow day, meaning they hit three out of five and a red day. They hit, you know, less than three out of the five. So they're going in. They're manually entering that in at the end of every day. So it's right there. It's in the top of their mind. Shit. Today was a bad day. Today was a great day. Hell yeah. Are they five different KPIs that you're looking for. What are what are the. So the first one is just overall calls. The second one is going to be conversations where you consider a conversation, anything over two minutes. If you call someone and they say, oh, you know, I'm not interested in something, that's not the conversation, right? You got to have, you know, a legit conversation at least over two minutes and with some sort of next step, some sort of action item. Right. After that we do, appointment set, which is meaning that, you know, you're setting an appointment for yourself to then make the offer, setting the offer call and then offer completed because you'd be surprised how many sellers go ahead and give you all the information, tell you they're motivated, and then it comes to make, you know, to do their offer call and they're nowhere to be found, you know, right. The day after day after day. So appointment completed. Which is offer made is the same thing. And then contracts and then total talk time. So we want our guys talking at a minimum of 100 minutes a day, throughout their 65 calls. So how are you auditing? Like, something like, conversations like you can obviously look at 300 calls and see if there was a next step action item. Yeah. So like a majority of it is tracked within our CRM. You know every call is recorded. There's a call like so like I could filter and go through it and it would be pretty easy. But my guys, you know, they're actually all, you know, good friends of mine and our preexisting relationships, which is cool, I trust. So I just hired my first stranger, which is interesting. But they, they, you know, I trust their opinion on it. They're not going to lie to me, because at the end of the day, you know, it's if they're if they're lying to me about their numbers or lying to themselves and it's going to show in the end of the month and the end of the quarter and the end of the year. And so, like, you know, I was having this conversation with someone the other day about how, like, there's kind of two different styles of accountability, like systems, which it seems like you're fall. And then there's like culture accountability. Like if you have that like mindset, you know, of these goals and you know your responsibilities, that can be a boundary or a parameter that like leads to that accountability. Do you guys do anything like culture driving or is it mostly systems based? Yeah. So definitely just like structure and systems wise, I would say we're definitely a little bit heavier on that reason being is because it is virtual. We are a virtual company, right? I'm here in Charleston. I have two other guys here in Charleston. But like my director of operations, he's in Philadelphia, my director of acquisitions, he's in Dallas, Texas. Two of my arms are in Vancouver, Canada. Two of my assistants are in the Philippines. So, you know, majority of it is systems. I mean, culture wise, you know, we do strive to do, one trip a quarter. So, like last year, we went to Scottsdale. They came to Charleston three times, and then they're probably come to Charleston this to this quarter as well. So fly everybody in and that. So at the time that we got together but eventually you know, building that team out in person is is the goal. And what is, like the best use of your time within the company? Yeah. So that's a great question. And like, right now, Jack, who's my director of job, like, he, he's dialed in. He's been with me for about a year and a half. Started again from lead manager at ground up to, you know, not running the company. For me, you know, is really learning new new construction and developing and as well as these, like, really big renovations. So like the standard wholesale operation like that, like Jack and run that. If I died right now, you know, Jack could run the wholesale operation and we would go do 2 million next year. No, no. No thought about it. Just because we've built the right systems and processes and, you know, he's he's a beast. You know, he he can run it. So for me, like one project in particular, at 1080 Cottingham, it's right next to some creek. That one, you know, just a great deal. You in the corner of a deal. We could have a sign that all day for probably 100, 120 grand and just been done with it, you know, taken our money and walked. But me knowing the area that it's in and me having the connections and the contractors to do, you know, a $500,000 renovation and, you know, turn that 100 K feet into a potential 7 to $800,000 profit two years down the line. Makes a lot of sense. Right? So, really just me adding to my toolbelt, you know, doing, just very, very, heavy value add opportunities and then that's one thing. The next thing would be raising private capital. So like right now I mainly use hard money lenders where I'm paying about 14%, you know, monthly interest on these notes. They're short term notes. So I'm paying super high interest if I can go ahead and raise private money at eight, ten, 11%, hell, even 13% a point off of $1 million loan is a lot of money. So raising private capital, which is why I started all the new social media stuff. And lastly is development, like the one that we're doing in Old Village. I have no business doing that myself. I can't qualify for the $2 million loan that I need to build it. So I partner with a builder. Again, that was a deal that we could have assigned for a $100,000 fee, but we took the delayed gratification route to then learn how to do, you know, development spec homes in the old village. And again, you know, make, you know, pretty much quadruple ex what we were going to make if we, if we assign it just, you know, 18 months down the line, what's the biggest oh shit moment you've encountered in this entrepreneurial journey filled in the company? I mean, I've been very fortunate knock off. You got the systems in place, so you're saying like, oh, shit. Like I messed up or like, oh, shit, this is cool. I would say I messed up. Yeah, yeah, I think, well, this one wasn't really this. That was the biggest adversity that you've hit with building this company. Yeah, I think probably just, Dude, I've been really fortunate. Nothing really comes out of me. I mean, we've had, like, a few times where, you know, I feel like the biggest. It's the tiny deals. Like, we have a deal right now with this guy. There's no money to be made on the deal, but the guy has brain cancer. It's really taken so much of our time. And, like, this guy doesn't have much longer to live. So, like, we're just. We're losing money on the deal because we like over overhead cost of per contract. For us, it's like 4500 bucks. We were going to make 50, 200 bucks. So a few hundred bucks and now we just, you know, we gave it all to him. So we're losing money on it. So like it's like damn, like this sucks. But we help someone out. You know, we're not making any money, but, hey, you know, helping someone who's who's in a bad situation. I've had people I've been, like, snaked on deals a few times, you know, just, you know, sketchy investors going behind your back when they work properties. But, you know, knock on wood, never been sued, never have even been tried in any way like that. Yeah. In due time. Oh, I, I took my first loss on my first new construction project in Goose Creek. Yeah, that was probably. Yeah. We didn't account for tap fees. It was $8,000. The property sat for an additional two months. So paid a lot more interest, and we lost about nine grand on that one was, the nine grand worth the lesson learned? Yeah, 100%. No. I have some question. Just, like, kind of selfish information. I'm doing, like, a real estate development internationally. And we have had some difficulty getting us investment to Latin America. Although it's like, you know, in my opinion, the conditions for a really good deal, engaging with those people and having that influence and, like, not just like chasing and begging for the money, has been an issue. What would you say you're how would you approach a deal like that? How big of a deal we talking? We secured a $36 million option. Wow. On six, 600 lots as our inventory. Oceanfront property. Nice. And is that a US based company that's leading it or. No, no, it's literally just me and one other guy. Oh, wow. Okay. I think track record would like deals like of that size. And just like being in Latin America, you know, obviously there's different economies of scale with that. I think a lot of it is just credibility. And your track record, you know, if you can show these investors, chances are if you've done it before, you have the investors at once successfully and they want to invest in you again. Therefore, it's not the, you know, the biggest hurdle to raise additional capital. But starting out like as your first one, that's a big one, obviously. So we did the first. We did the first one. It was a smaller property, in another location, much lower demand on that location. We just use an Instagram ad and, you know, sold 80% of the inventory. But that was like more natural market like. And now we're trying to do, like more of a large scale digital marketing push. But I find that what I've learned is that when we, if I market for real estate, we're kind of put ourselves at like a, I don't want to say submissive, but like, I say, like we do elevate ourselves when it's like it almost is like a timeshare, you know, like come down and to Panama to look at real estate. Then we're like, selling to the person the entire time, and it puts us at a disadvantage. So I've tried to, market like other things to get them down there and then expose them to that real estate while they're down there, because it's a lot easier, in my opinion, once they see the land and like, are experiencing the destination. It's a much easier, much easier sell. But yeah, it's been difficult to get people to make the transaction and. Yeah, and now what is like your, what's the res that you're advertising? So we're selling right now in our phase one because we just secured this option, the lots, the bank appraisal on these lots, it's about 100 grand, for depending on where it is on the property, from, half acre to an acre, lot of, oceanfront property. All the properties have oceanfront views, and we're selling them at 30 to 40% below bank appraisal. For this phase one, which we're trying to raise the money to trigger that second piece of land in the option, and then are you guys building it too, or you're selling it and you're out. You're done. No, we so we have the builder. We we're taking a spread with the builder. So we recommend them to the builder. And then within that property, I guess you could call it like, there's, like HOA standards, kind of, so they have to, like, build within certain parameters. They can't just put up like a, you know, skyscraper or. Yeah. So we recommend them to a builder. We have an architect that we're working with. And then we take a little spread on that. But like our primary focus is the lot sales and that's, that's awesome. So ideally, like your ideal, like the ones that you have sold or those people that are buying this to keep and hold for their own vacation home or more like quick investment. Hey, I can fund this project and then we can sell it and I'll make you know, X. So it's there's been, you know, different different targets that we've gone after. One being like someone who wants to borrow against the land. And so that would be someone in Panama because someone from the US isn't going to, like, work with a Panamanian bank. But we're kind of like running it as a small community in Panama that has the money to do that. So, like, we went through that market in the last development. Yeah. So that would be one. Number two is like we're branding this destination. It's a really good like, you know, it's one of the top surf destinations in all of Panama. So we're, we're branding it as like, a kind of a community, like entrepreneurship, holistic wellness, just like, you know, it's definitely remote. It's a top, you know, fishing destination and surfing destination. So those would be the people that are either going to use it as a, you know, a vacation home or, you know, as a long term, you know, place to live. So like expats, would be those two. And then, there are people that obviously want to quickly flip it, but we are putting in parameters in this first phase, like we don't want, some, you know, us selling it below bank appraisal and then they're fucking with our comps on the entire property, you know, selling it a year later when we're trying to sell that retail properties. And they're dropping the costs. Very smart. Yeah. So, so a couple different like factors that we're dealing with. And this is like we literally just secured the option in like the last month. So I'm trying to like piece together like what is my exact strategy for starting to move some of this real estate. And obviously we have timeframes on like how fast we have to get the money before the next option triggers or the like, you know, we lose the option. So after a certain amount of money and certain, you know, checkpoints. Interesting. No. Wow. Yeah, that's very cool. I don't have any experience with that. I'll be totally honest with you. But I do know, I know some people that, that do, but they've done hotels. I don't know about the option contracts though, but I don't know. I have some people, like, I could. Can I do it? Yeah. Sweet. That'd be awesome. That was kind of a fucking rant, but, What? Next question. Go get back on track. What is your definition of success? Like? What are you chasing after in this entrepreneurial journey? Yeah, I think, financial freedom obviously is is one thing. But I think time freedom to just being and being able to do what you want, when you want, you know, where you want, at all times. As well as, like affecting people, like just changing people's lives and, you know, building them up to and building my own team and just like seeing, you know, the people that I've hired and trained from day one, you know, being successful in the industry is really cool. It really is. You know, you always hear people say, but until you actually do it, it's like, damn, I thought, that is cool. I did have a huge effect on that person. And yeah, I mean time freedom and just overall happiness. You know, if you want to make, you know,$2 million a year and you could do it making working two oh, two hours a day versus, you know, 90 hour weeks. I think it just depends on obviously everybody wants the floor on that. But, everyone's definition of success is different. And for me, it's just, you know, doing what I want, when I want, what I want. And, you know, if my buddy invites me to go skiing, you know, next week in Colorado, I can go do that. That's awesome. I'll be there. So when you identify a new opportunity within the business, like you're breaking out a new busting out a new layer or a new level within the company, what is your process to like, realize that opportunity system buys it and then like. Not have to take up all your time like remove your time from it. Yeah. So obviously there's a depends exactly what it is. But like for example like a lot of it's going to be like marketing sources like we experiment with new marketing sources testing them. So we take, you know, 8 to 12% of our marketing budget on a monthly basis and use that on a new marketing channel, for example, the most recent one we did was, pre foreclosure marketing. So, you know, we hired a data. Well, we have a data manager, so we trained her up on that. I went ahead and learned it from, you know, my business coach, one of her students who does it very well, again, paid for proximity. Hey, I'm not going to go sit down and spend six months figuring this out. I'm going to go to the guy that's already doing it in a different market. I'm not going to be, you know, I'm not competition to him. I'm in a completely different market. So I'm going to go like, give this guy five grand, he's going to teach me everything, and then I'll just go ahead and implement it. And it should work in my market. Right. Instead of trying to figure it out, figure it out, figure it out. So literally just like copy and paste, like don't reinvent the wheel. It works for him. It works for us. Will it work for us? And as of now, you know, it's doing pretty good. But my big thing is, I can't expect my employees to do it if I don't know how to do it, so I have to do it first. And then we just film videos on everything. Everything is documented. And, you know, they always, always have those trainings to go back on. What is what is. I lost my train of thought. The. The. Company forgot where I was going to go with this. What was my last question? I asked, when I implement something new into the business, how do I break through? Oh, yeah. What is one thing that you have? That's the first time I've ever brain farted like that on the podcast. But what is the what is the biggest thing that you have learned through this process? That you didn't know when you started out that you wish you knew now? I think just the importance of, like, synergy and relationships, I mean, real estate in general is such relationship business. But like, I'd like to saying your network is your net worth is. So I've seen it become so true, so true, so true. And just having someone reach out to me, like just catching. I was catching up with a buddy that I hadn't talked to in a while. Like same industry, you know, we're both busy, and, this deal was, it was a it's, 90 acres up in Lexington County, and I'd marketed it for 4 or 5 months. And, you know, we ended up having to cancel. You know, I lost some money and x, y, Z and I, and we end up, you know, getting a coffee. Hey, I'm doing, you know, I'm working with this, and now they're looking to buy a lot of land. I'm like, oh, I had this under contact. Like, you think they'd be interested, so. Oh my God. Absolutely. Like, this is exactly what they're looking for. You know, calls them, they offer them 1.4. I had $850,000. So that's a big spread right there. And that's just like me not having out, like the buyers out there somewhere. I just didn't find them within my time frame. Right. Yeah. And, you know, next thing we know, I call the seller back, and he's like, he's pissed. He's not. I mean, I was explain to him why it didn't work out. You know, he got an AMD. So I didn't screw him over by any part. But he wanted the property to be sold. So I came back and said, hey, you know, we can do the 850. You know, I found my partner, let's do this. He's like, I'll do 900. I'll be all right. We'll do 900. Something like a deadly then like, if I hadn't gotten coffee with Scott that day, then, you know, it wouldn't have happened. So, just synergy, you know, building good relationships and it goes full circle in lending, even just, like, have you read the book The Go Giver? No. So just like, the more you give, the more you get in the long run. So I'm a big advocate of that. Like if there's a deal where, like, someone's pressing me for a few extra grand or, you know, a few hundred bucks, I'm just going to I'm going to let them have it. And then just knowing that that's going to come back, you know, in the long run, what do you think of the like the principles or characteristics of a good relationship like, and how do you identify, a relationship worth pursuing in business? I think it definitely, obviously has to be. Transparency is the biggest thing. Like I'm overly transparent with everything. Every guy on my team knows the margins of the business. I know what I spend on marketing. They know you know each other's comp plan, not because it's directly advertised, but like, we're comfortable to talk about that stuff because, you know, I think it's important. I don't want anyone to, you know, have a cold shoulder to think that, you know, they're being misled. But definitely transparency. I think that's number one on the pedestal for me. And then obviously, you know, there needs to be value given on both, both sides of the relationship. If I'm just if you're just pouring value and value and value to me, it's not really an equal relationship where you probably end up walking away at some point. Right. Unless you see potential, but then it's more of a mentor mentee type relationship. I, I remember the question that I was going to ask that froze me up. If you had $1 million of guilt free capital, how would you deploy it? Guilt free, within your company? Because you have free money? You said a million. A million. I would probably. I would start a whole I mean, I already have my I don't I've don't, holdings defend them properties and the Phantom. Yeah. So my name is obviously Devin. I was reading oh, okay. Big theories, big most theory of momentum explaining how you basically leverage momentum in the business world to, you know, double down, especially in sales, just leveraging momentum. So put Devin and Momentum together and got to, gotcha. Okay. But yeah. So I would basically I would start a small fund. I'm just what I'm trying to do right now, Tiverton Capital, which is the main reason behind all the social media I'm starting to do. But I would do I would put it in, you know, the random capital called a debt fund, lend to myself, lend to other people. What have you found to be the keys of raising money? I see everyone trying to raise money. Not many people doing it successfully. I'm not. I haven't done it successfully. So, I mean, I, I've, you know, watched videos. I've talked to a lot of people about it, but, it's starting small. You know, I have, I have, you know, borrowed private money before, but it's all, you know, I guess I have raise capital. Right. But it's been from my grandfather, from my, one of my acquisitions guys made a bunch of money in tech sales, and he's left on a few deals, too, as well as my parents and, you know, some other close friends that have lent on stuff. But, you know, that's, you know, the real, true private money lender is the guy that, you know, has unlimited resources. So you could call two, three days before closing and he trustee, he's not even going to look at the deals again. Here's a 200 grand. I'll see you in six months. Yeah. I don't think you'll have trouble because you have granularity in your data and like which is control for them. I see like a lot of guys that like, try to raise money from our private equity partners, like they come to them with a vision and that has very little control. Like they want to see an execution plan correlated to data that has like a per unit due diligence that's attached to like something that's already happened. Forward projections, ours is very simple. These are the terms of the deal. This is what we've done. This is what we know. It's it's going to work out. Yeah, yeah. These are potential roadblocks, 100%. Write up a problem note, agree on your interest and then. Cool. So, yeah, I mean, then I always do, you know, monthly check. And so just monthly updates my sis and I'll send an email to them on project status. What do you think is the biggest thing that you're trying to achieve. Like what's, next on your radar? I really want to get down like the development thing. It's so cool. Especially in the old village. Like, you know, building a $4 million house is pretty cool. And it's just goes back to my point before from, like, wholesaling is not, like, glorious at all. It's not glamorous. It's ugly houses, you know, we're buying and selling ugly houses where, you know, building a $4 million house in a beautiful part of town is super exciting. And that's something I'm pumped to put my name on and say I did that. You know, like that. That's where I want to go. Another thing too, is like, with wholesale, like, you know, our average fee was $18,000, so, like, to do it to $3 million, a 2 to 3 year, million dollars a year. You have Jesus Christ, you know, you have to go ahead and do over 100 transactions. And that's a lot of stuff, a lot of marketing a lot of overhead, a lot of employees. So like just driving quality over quantity, like in ten years from now, if I'm only doing, you know, five spec houses in the old village and Sullivan's, like, in these great areas, making the same amount of money with a lot less employees, a lot less overhead. You know, that's the main goal. How would you recommend someone who wants to get into the real estate industry as an entrepreneur, not necessarily just an employee and has no capital and no skills yet. Where do you start off? You start doorknocking. Yeah. No. I mean, there's so many amazing resources on YouTube, like knowing what I know now. Like when you said, like, do I regret paying the ten grand for that mentorship program? No, but the training modules, that shit's on YouTube, it's out there, but the community around it and the support from a coach and that is is where the value truly is. If that's what you're paying for. But if you just I mean, start with YouTube. I think wholesaling is the lowest barrier to entry. You know, you are you really little to no risk. And you're not having to bring the money to closing. Right. So that's your best bet, right? And this guy Chris Roode kind of explains, like, the, philosophy and trajectory of real estate investing as, like, wholesaling, you know, view wholesaling as you know, elementary school where, you know, you're just getting your feet wet, little to no money. You know, barrier to entry is low. Start wholesaling. You know, sort of signing some deals throughout doing so you'll obviously be networking with flippers. That's who you're selling deals with. They're making good money. You know, they're you're going to learn how to underwrite these properties. You're going to learn how to determine a renovation budget RV, see these things through. You're going to meet agents. You're going to meet all these people throughout that process. Then the time will come where you've successfully wholesale it for six months a year, whatever it be. And instead of making, you know, 18 grand on that on that wholesale deal, you can go then go ahead and flip it and make 50 to 60. And by doing so, you know, you're graduating to high school, so high school would be flipping, right. And then from there, you know, college would be development and then, you know, grad school would be becoming the lender. The lender is the best place to be in all real estate investing, because if you did it correctly and you got like, if you just learned from, you know, just inheritance or just money and you don't have any real estate experience, it's a little different. But all the lenders that I know, the people that I envy and the people that I want to be, they've started out as a wholesaler and worked their way up, you know, throughout 20 to 20, 30 years, whatever it be. And throughout that time, their lending to all their other friends, they're lending to people that they know, like and trust people that have been doing this for 10 to 15 years and there's little to no risk. They're getting a solid return. And and it's collateralized. Exactly. And it's it's backed by real estate. And God forbid something goes wrong on one of those projects you have to foreclose on, you know, one of your borrowers. You're picking up the you're making more money than if they saw it through. So it's almost like it's a nightmare of a process. But if, God forbid, you know, you have to foreclose on a, on a borrower, you know, you're going to end up making more money because you already know how to do all that stuff, and you have all the systems and processes in place. That's good advice. Last question that I have is how do you find or how do you identify or pick the right mentor for you? And then how do you get a mentor to help you out? I think a ton of people are interested in like finding mentorship but don't know how to go about it. Yeah, I think it's and this is like something that, I guess I kind of use the wrong word mentor like Nate, the guy that I worked for for two and a half years. He was a true mentor. Like the difference, you know, the difference between, like, a mentor and a coach. Not like, talked about that. So, a mentor is someone that you work with. You're not paying your mentor to teach you your work. The the mentor is investing in you because they see potential. And then as long as you succeed and their training pays off and you, you know, take in their knowledge and you execute on it, that's then when they, you know, see, you know, a benefit or result, a profit from you, their mentee, a coach is a transactional relationship where you have something that I don't have, you know, something that I don't have. I'm going to pay you so that you teach me that. And it's just straight transactional. So I think, like, a mentor needs to be it's obviously a very genuine person. A mentor is someone that you're really working for. And working with a coach is someone that you're just paying, you know, paying for a course, paying for, you know, an hour, an hour long meeting, whatever it be, a mentor. There's no limit to, you know, how often you're going to meet, you know, if they truly see potential new, they're going to pour into you 100%. If, people are interested in your services or want to hit you up, to get more information, where can I find you? Instagram the vent. Deventumrei. I, I'm I'm personals on there too, so. Instagram to be best. Oh, yeah. Well, I appreciate you coming on. I was has to appreciate it. Thank. Nice. Oh,
