The Hard Truths of Building a Real Estate Empire | Bill Allen

All right, Science Flipping Podcast listeners, as always, this episode is brought to you by Rocketly.ai. If you're looking for a seller lead generating system that has automation in AI bot and has sellers coming to you, then Rocketly.ai is your choice.
Make sure you head over to the website, fill out an application and schedule a demo now to see the power of Rocketly.ai. What is up, the Science of Flipping family? I am back with another incredible guest.
It's an honor to have a good friend of mine who is a retired Navy pilot. He's still a pilot, not in the Navy.
He's done over 1,000 deals. He has over 1 apartment doors, very active, very structured, systemizes with processes.
My friend Bill Allen is here. What is up, dude? What's up, Justin? Thanks for having me, man.
Dude, we're going to have a good time on this one. So everyone needs to stick around.
This guy is the cream of the crop when it comes to doing what we do here in the investing space. So let's first talk about just the journey from military to entrepreneurship.
That's where I want to start this. And then let's get into the doors and the systems and processes.
Cool. Yeah.
The military, man, it set me up for success in ways I didn't even like really understand. I think the discipline and like accountability that I had there really kind of set me up.
But I was very much like a government lackey of like W-2 employee, punching a clock, not thinking I was an entrepreneur at all. Sure.
So, I mean, I did 20 years in the Navy and I started my business while I was active duty. So got married, we got pregnant with our first son and I had like a rental property or two.
You know, I'd move around a lot. I moved 18 times in the last 20 years.
So yeah, real estate didn't really seem like the thing that you would get into if you move all the time. You know, I started kind of renting houses.
I wish I bought from the very beginning. If I did it all over again, I would have.
But, you know, I had a couple of rental properties. Started in 2009, I bought a house that I lived in.
And then I rented it out when I left. And then when I came back from England, I lived in England for a year.
When I came back, I bought a rental house in Maryland where I was living then. And then we got pregnant.
I got married then and we got pregnant. And I had three mouths to feed on one salary.
And I was used to saving like 60% of my income and putting it in the stock market at the time. And I didn't like the way that was feeling.
I didn't have the excess that I used to have. So I was like, I got to figure out a way to make money faster.
And that's kind of when I started. I flipped my first house.
I had a realtor that said, yeah, I was going to buy it as a rental. The realtor said, you can make money if you sold this.
She wanted a second commission, right? And it worked great. I fixed it up and I sold it, made $43,000.
And that was like half of my salary as a pilot in the Navy. I mean, that's the power of having an investor-friendly agent.
I mean, that really is, right? Like, I know she was probably self-serving in that recommendation, trying to get two heads. But at the end of the day, you know, you and I have done enough deals.
Like, when you have a good agent who knows the game, they can be worth their weight in gold. I mean, honestly, right? Yeah.
I totally agree. I'd love to say that she was that, but I think she was just really money hungry.
She had no idea what she was doing. She was like, oh, I've seen this flipping.
In the back of her head, it's like, I've seen people flip houses. This can probably work.
You should do it because she was a small time agent. It was a little town in Southern Maryland and she didn't have like a bunch of investor clients, but she definitely was like an early mentor of mine because of that.
You know, she, she helped me, she helped me find a rental in that area. When we first moved there, I didn't know the area at all.
And then she helped me find houses and she was on the lookout for me too. And when I had that one going on, I was like, go find me another one.
And, um, we didn't find one in time. And then I ended up moving to Pensacola, Florida, and then finding one there a few months later.
And then I flipped that one. I made $45,000.
And the first one, I was like, this is probably just luck. Like, I can't do this again.
I got to prove it. And I'm very hardheaded.
I'm very like, if I can't prove to do this again, I'm going to quit. And I almost quit.
Like, it took me six months to the second one. And, uh, we made 45 grand on that one.
And that was kind of like one a year. I was doing one a year for the first couple of years until I got around people that were doing a lot more than that.
Sure. Well, you and I are in similar rooms, similar tables, you know, all that kind of good stuff.
So, uh, you know, when you get around those people that can show you like, Hey, you could go bigger than you're currently going. It becomes a lot easier for us to, you know, press gas on and go for it.
And I know you, I don't know if I've ever told you this, but I, uh, I was so cheap. Like I wouldn't even buy a book.
I never went to an event. I never went, I never bought a course.
I was like binging BiggerPockets free forum.

Like I was on there like a keyboard warrior.

Like I want all the free stuff.

I had a library card and I would wait like two or three months until somebody turned the book in that I wanted to rent it

instead of like for free,

instead of going to buy it at Amazon.

So that was kind of my MO in the beginning.

Like I was deathly afraid to spend money.

Like I never spent money on anything. I was so, so so cheap so it was a huge change and shift in me to to join a 25 000 mastermind back then in 2015 i mean i went from never spending a dollar on education like self education to 25 000 it was so you and i both run coaching programs what could you tell that person that might feel the way you do or did not, not that you do now, but like, there are plenty of people listening to this right now or watching this on YouTube or Instagram that are like, I do not want to pay 10 grand or five grand for coaching.
I don't want to, right? What can you tell that person looking back now, well over 10 years, you know, to help that person get out of their own way? Well, I would say like, obviously it's the first thing that there, that anyone that's listening to both of us is going to say is, oh yeah, of course you're going to say that. Like you, you have your own programs, you sell education.
And so like, let's erase that. I would say that I'd give you the same advice if it was like eight years ago and I was a paying member of a mastermind group, you know, that I was paying for education.
And the shift has to happen in the biggest, like the biggest change that I had was my dad was somebody who said, son, it sounds like you don't believe in yourself. And he's like, do you believe in this guy? Do you believe in their program? Do you believe that, that do it? I was like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
And he's like, well, then it sounds like you don't believe in yourself. And that hit me really hard and really deep.
I was like, no, no, I believe in myself. He's like, well, then why don't you just jump in? Like, you made $45,000 on the last project.
You said, if you pay them that, join this group over the year, you'll definitely do one more of those. If you do one more of those, you're making $45,000 more.
So wouldn't you pay $25,000 to make an extra $45,000? And I could not argue that in that conversation. Just reason.
Totally. And that was the logical, that was, I mean, dad making it logical and also hitting me

where it hurts in the, like the integrity, the person that I am, the fact that I always

want to win. Like I, I, I try to like, you know, do the best that I can.
And I believe in myself. And so he hit me kind of like below the belt a little bit.
And then to take it a step further, it's almost like I got to the place of, I've invested so much in my education.

So I was very, I was educated.

I'm a mechanical engineering undergrad. It's almost like I got to the place of, I've invested so much in my education.

So I was very, I was educated.

I have a mechanical engineering undergrad, aeronautical engineering masters, and the

government paid $1.6 million to send me to the UK for test pilot school.

So I have all of this, like $2 million probably in formal education, but zero in self-education.

And I'm a, like now looking back, that has been the best investment that I've ever made has been in myself. Where else would you invest? And I was also comparing the $25,000 investment, which I call an investment now.
But at the time, I called my dad. I was like, I could buy a Honda Civic for this.
And so I was comparing it to a liability. It was very interesting to where my money mindset was and kind of my educational mindset was then.
It was very much like walk the path. So a lot of W-2 employees, a lot of people that went to college, a lot of people that kind of are in that path, like the government path, the school system path, the non-entrepreneurial path, and now we're getting interested in it, they see it all as cost, not investment.
And so now I look at it totally differently, where I see my school and college and all this stuff as a massive cost, where you're not making money while you're going there. You're racking up a bunch of debt.
The cool thing about a program like this is you're making money while you're learning. That's right.
And so it's a, it's a awesome, awesome tool and opportunity for people. So you just have to like shift your thinking a little bit and honestly, believe in yourself.
Like a lot of times when people are not willing to do that, they're like, what are you going to do for me? Yeah. And that's, that's what they always want.
So that's kind of the shift, big shift that I had to make. It's a huge shift for all people.
But what you kind of brought up also was where your background of your formal education in the military brought you into a place of, if I can systemize this and put some structure around it, I can rinse and repeat it. You're essentially at this point starting to become a nomad, 18 cities, 20 years.
Right. So you have to start to rely on like a system that you can run anywhere.
Right. I mean, is that, is that something that you had to start to force yourself to build out? Yeah.
You know, so the guy that I was listening to, I was listening to his podcast and he always talked about systems and processes. He's like, I can't even screw in a light bulb and I'm flipping a hundred houses a year.
And he was like, I have all these systems. There's all these things.
And that really resonated with me because as an engineer, you like build stuff out, design the systems process. It's like, you know, it's very mathematical.
It's scientific. And so to me, that sounded like, like even the title is podcast, right? The science of flipping.
flipping it very interesting to me because when it's down to a science and a process, it can be repeated with the same input and output that you get. So just like when I flipped that first house, I was like, okay, if I can repeat this, then I know I can do it 10 times, 20 times, 30 times a year, not just once.
And so I was able to go from one house a year to 67 houses after joining that

program. So in eight months, I did 67 houses the next year.
And my goal was to do 12. So I didn't

go set out to do 67. The next year we did 135.
The year after that we did 187. And it was like,

I didn't set out to build a company that size. I just took one foot in front of the other.

And you're right. It's always been something that I'm interested in and built.
But when I look back now, I've had a system for everything. Everybody has a system right now.
The way you get dressed, the way you take a shower. Do you start washing from your feet up or your head down? It's just all a system.
It's your system. And whatever results that you're getting, you do feet up? No.
Who does? I want to know. Oh, I have no idea.
I have no idea. But I bet there's somebody that like shampoos their hair before they actually use the soap to wash their body.
Like there's just, it's just, I mean, I could use a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead of the shower if it makes people feel uncomfortable. It's just like anything that we do, like the way you get in the car, the way you drive to work, like the way you make your breakfast.
And you're pretty repeatable. Like you do the same thing over and over again.
Like the way I make my eggs, what I use to make the eggs. Like it's just every single morning.
It's kind of my routine, right? And so whatever results you're getting is the results of the system that you have. So if you don't like the results, it's not the fact that you don't have a system.
It's the fact that you do have a system is just broken. It's not working.
And so when I started thinking like that, I was like, okay, well, however I do something, if I just try to figure out how I did it, then I could actually have somebody else do it the same way. If I give them the training and onboarding and a little bit of management and accountability, but I can But I thought I had to do everything myself.

And I was just like, I'll learn everything.

So I spent all my time trying to strengthen my weaknesses,

which is what we're taught as a kid,

instead of strengthening my strengths

and kind of hiring out or delegating out these weaknesses.

And that's some of the shifts that I had to make.

Because in the beginning, I mean, doing one house a year,

I was doing it all.

I mean, I finished the 1,000-square-foot basement on my own in six weeks. I did everything but drywall.
You were actually doing the work. I'm doing the work.
Yeah. My dad was an electrical engineer.
He didn't live like an hour and a half from me. And I was like, hey, dad, can you show me how to wire this basement? And he came down and me and him wired the whole basement, like created a sub panel, pulled all the wire.
He showed me what to do. He left.
did it all myself no electrician but just me wow while i had a full time job i was like doing this on the side this episode is brought to you by my friends and today's sponsor lamisu leads.com the real estate industry's only enterprise level call center if you're like me and you're tired of underqualified leads junking up your CRM and wasting time and money, you need to do what I did. And that's reach out to lamissuleads.com.
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There's so much to unpack here. I think everyone needs to hear this story.
Like all these stories, like doing this part-time and making it work and creating the sacrifice. Because at this point, you have at least a kid, right, or two at this point, don't you? Yeah.
So that 1,000-square-foot basement, that first house. So the first rental I did, I was single.
The second rental that we bought, we had just gotten engaged. And then we got married shortly.
I got it. I closed on it like the day of our wedding.
It was like the day before our wedding. And then, so now we're married and we started finishing that basement ourself.
And then my wife got pregnant while we were working on that house. So we had our baby

like, uh, during my second, my second flip, I think we had the baby. But nonetheless, I mean, I think people have a hard time having a W2 and just doing a flip that they're hiring out the work.
You were actually doing the work. I mean, there's just so much to say about like, what is priority gets done right.
And to you, this was going to be a priority. And so where I want to take though, is the ability to go from, you know, one deal into you said you did 49 or 47 the next year, 67, we did 67.
I mean, that's a big, massive jump. Like I did two deals and then I did 20 deals.
I thought that was massive. Um, how did you find the contractors? How did you system? Was it all in your city that you were living in? Or was this virtual, right? Yeah, so I did.
Yeah, that second house that I, that second year, I flipped that second house. It was in Pensacola, Florida.
So it was on my way to work. And, you know, I remember one day, like the contractors didn't show up.
And on the way home, I'm in my flight suit on the way home doing tile. Like I'm doing the grout because they didn't grout, they didn't show up that day.
So I spent, I called my wife. I was like, I'm not coming home till like two o'clock in the morning, probably because this has to get done to drive for the next day for the next person that's coming in to do the work.
And so I just, they're in my flight suit, like doing grout on tile. Like I, I, I can still remember that.
So, so I've, I've sold that house. I joined the mastermind program and that's when my mentor, his name was Andy McFarlane.
So Justin Williams and Andy McFarlane were the two guys, but Andy taught me to hire people. I was deathly afraid to hire people.
Like I was not comfortable with that at all. I was very much, I want to do this on my own.
And, uh, my goal was to flip 12 houses that year in, in 2016. And, um, 2016.
And I did that. I flipped 12 houses, but I wholesaled 55.
So it was all in Pensacola, Florida. And it took me four and a half months to get my first wholesale deal.
And I was spending about five grand a month. Yeah.
So, and we can unpack that for sure. I was making a lot of mistakes.
Like I just wasn't, I was trying to do it myself from the beginning. I was like, I'm not hiring.
I'm not hiring someone, not hiring somebody. And I was flying 10 or 12 hours a day every day, Monday through Friday.
I was working one weekend a month. I had to take an airplane somewhere or fly locally for a week, the whole weekend.
And so I was like, I was getting crushed. It was like, you know, 70, 80 hours a week, a lot of times.
So I was working in my office from like 4.30 AM to about 7 AM. And then my son would get up at seven, have breakfast.
And then I'd go to work and then work all day, fly all day. If it was raining and we cancel a flight, I could sometimes get some work done at the office or go, go look at a property or run to Lowe's and put a lockbox on something.
And then, and then when I got home, we did dinner and I played with my son, Will. He was like a few months old, six months old at the time.
And then my wife would go watch TV and I'd go in the office from like 8.30 to 10.30, like every day. Every day.
That was my first year of business was just, I told my wife, I said, look, I'm going to be absent for this year, but it'll set us up for the rest of our lives. And so I think that's a lot of the problem that most

people have is they're not willing to make a sacrifice for the future. And so definitely

there was a time sacrifice there. And then you mentioned like contractors and things like that.

So it was a lot of referrals, like locally going to meetups, RIAs, using Facebook. I use Facebook a

lot to find people, go through bad ones, find other ones. And money was the big problem for me.
But inside that mastermind group, I met a partner. I met a guy in San Diego who he had no desire to do houses.
He had a couple million dollars and he didn't even show up to the meetings. We just got connected.
We hit it off and he ended up being a 50-50 partner of mine on projects. So we did JVs.
We didn't partner up on a company, but we did JVs together. And I was buying at the courthouse auction.
So there's 12 houses I did. Six of them I bought at the courthouse steps in the beginning of this 2016.
And then I started marketing for myself. And that's when I had to hire somebody.
I couldn't take the phone calls. I hate talking on the Um, so I got to a place of like, I can't do this on my own.
Like I just accepted it. And I'm also paying a guy $25,000 who's telling me to hire somebody.
And I'm, I'm saying no, like that's a, that's a dumb move. Really dumb.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, so, um, were you rehabbing all 60 something of those? Those are all rehab flips? No. Did you do wholesale?

Only 12.

12 were rehabs, like 12 flips that year.

And then 55 of them became wholesale deals.

So the wholesale business, when I joined that mastermind group, I thought wholesalers were

like scummy, sleazy people because they kind of were in my area.

Like I just didn't trust any of them.

They were all like, it was a lot of retrading, a lot of like, it just seemed like used car salesman type stuff. And Pensacola is a pretty small area.
It's like 350,000 people. The only people I knew that were doing any real estate were kind of at the RIA meetings and they were doing, you know, maybe four or five deals a month.
That was like the biggest player that I knew in the area. And, and then, and so I said, you know what, I need to start marketing for my own flips.
And so I started mailing to my areas that I wanted and I got a bunch of trash,

like stuff that I just didn't want to deal with. It was rental properties or junk or things I

wouldn't flip. And so what I did was I, there was this, there were these wholesalers and I,

I would give them the leads. And if they close the leads, then they would pay me a referral.

That was my plan. And I was like, okay, I don't want to build a wholesaling company.

But Andy McFarlane was a wholesaler in Salt Lake. And he was a standup guy, like really ethical, amazing human being, just kind of person that you just aspire to become, right? And so I said, okay, well, maybe wholesalers aren't as bad as I think.
There's some really good ones in this group by first exposure to kind of great people that also run a great wholesaling business. So that's when I said, all right.
And they weren't closing my deals. Like these guys were just not closing deals.
I was wasting a ton of money on marketing and I got frustrated. And I said, you know what? I got to stop complaining about not buying, people overcharging and not being able to find deals.
And I just got to become the source because I was sitting around going, I can't find anything. There's no deals on the market.
These wholesalers are marking up prices like outs into insane prices. I can't pay what they're asking.
And I was just complaining. And I was like, why am I complaining? Why don't I just be the solution? Yeah.
And so that's when I, that's when we started marketing heavily for, uh, for deals in my area. I, I built, started building a wholesaling company and I really enjoyed it.
I liked it more than flipping because I was tired of- Do you have the contractor part? No contractors, no retail buyers, no home inspectors, everything has to be perfect. I still enjoy flipping houses.
I like some of it, but I tell you what, I could do without home inspectors. I can do without appraisers and I could do without retail buyers and retail agents.
And that's pretty much the entire business. That's it.
That's the whole thing. And trust me, I'm in the middle of the thick of it with a contractor right now that I'm like, God damn, why do I keep getting into this? But you know, the flipping side, the thing is, I think there's a lot less risk in flipping than there is wholesaling.
And I think that's counterintuitive to what other people say all the time. Because as a wholesaler, you put out money ahead of time.
You invest in marketing and put out money ahead of time without anything to show for it. You don't have a hard asset that you can tie it to.
At least in a flip, if I raise capital and I have built-in equity inside the house, at least I can sell the house at the end. I have something.
Or or I can hold onto it. I can rent it out.
I can do a lot of things with it. And so that's where I see, I think they're both great business models.
Like I like them both. I do both of them.
But if I was gonna start today, I might consider starting and flipping, especially if I have the ability to raise money and manage a project. And if I was really good in sales and I understood marketing and sales, I would obviously 100% be a wholesaler.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's funny that you say you would start with the flipping. And the only reason why I probably wouldn't agree with you, I see where you're going with that, is the brutalness of all the things that you did say.
Contractors, city, the city requirements, just stuff that like, man, I don't want to deal with that. Even if you dialed it and you bought it right you raised capital you didn't use your own money the arv's right and then the city stops you because x y and z reason you're like wow that sucks right yeah i'm and i'm taking i'm taking a budget into it like i'm actually taking you're going to spend money now if i was going to hustle and grind and get a deal, like I had time, I totally agree.
A hundred percent. I would say, and it's, this is interesting.
Like there's a path for everyone. I think if you think about your skillset and your superpower and what your, what tools you have available to you, that's what, that's what I think you should use to pick your path personally.
Cause like, like for me, like I had the ability to, I had some money myself. I was, and I did start as a flipper and I'm happy I did because I mean, I, it worked for me and I'm not a good marketing and salesperson.
Like I know marketing now, but I'm not like, I'm not good business to customer sales, sit on your couch for three hours. I'm very much a red.
Like when I walk into a house, just give me the numbers, give me the details. Let's do a deal.
I love, I love doing the dispositions on the wholesale business, like business to business, me talking to another flipper about how much money they're going to make. But I was not good, like three hours on the couch on a Saturday when some, some hoarder just wants to like hang out with me to feel good and doesn't tell me what the price is.
And then when I give my offer, he says he'd rather burn the house down than sell it to me and proceeds to walk to the front door and point to every house in the neighborhood and what it's sold for. When he told me for three hours, he had no idea what the real estate prices were.
Like I almost burned that guy's house down on my way. That's right.
You know? And so it's just, that's not my thing. No, and that's, I think it's an and conversation rather than an or.
I don't know if someone has one or the other. I think you go both.
And I think it's predicated. What I would tell people, I think it's predicated on the deal itself.
What is the deal's best potential? Um, and then what does your bank account look like? I, you and I are at a different place in life, right? But I always try to bring it to the people, maybe just getting started to some extent. You know, if, if you are a little bit more flush and you have some savings, then I would tell you, if a good flip is in your pocket, take the flip, do the rehab flip, right? Now, if you're like, dude, I'm, you know, on thin ice financially, I would say, go get a check, right? Get the certainty, get the confidence.
You can flip your next one, right? You know what I love about this conversation right now, like the last five minutes, is hopefully everybody that's listening understands that when you get some experience, you have an opinion. And so like you can, you're just like, well, I disagree with you.
Like, and you have an opinion and I have an opinion and they're all stated in fact and we earned them with blood and time and money and wins and losses and all that stuff. And that's what you pay for.
We talked about like a coaching program or a mentorship or like you pay for that speed. Like you buying the opinions of somebody who's earned that right to have an opinion.
And as you're coming up, like there's no possible way I could have even had this conversation for probably four or five years of my career in real estate is in marketing. I didn't know anything in sales.
I don't know. And now it's like, okay, this, I know where I stand.
I know what, I know what worked for me. I know what will work for others.
And this is my belief. And it's really cool to see that and to have somebody else who you're talking to, obviously I highly respect you.
And, um, and we will sometimes be like a

few degrees off. It's really cool to, to just be able to have that conversation and say, okay,

I see your, I see where you're coming from. And I totally do.
Like, and I frankly, I would say,

if you have money in your bank account, I'd be investing that in like places where I earn 20,

30% return and I'd be raising up money and not using any of your own money. And I bet you'd

agree with me there too. I agree a hundred percent with you.
Yeah. A hundred percent.
Yeah. And it's funny because I have members, and I'm sure you do too, they'll be like, oh, I'm going to go buy this flip, and I have the 100 grand I saved up, and we're going to buy it.
And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, baller. That money should go earn 10%, 12%, 15% on an investment, use other people's money to flip the property, right? Yeah.
And your money should never be sitting. I know you and I are going to agree here and we totally agree with that.
Don't take your money to go flip a property. All day, every day, use other people's money.
It could be bank lines or credit. It could be cash advances from credit cards.
That's really risky. So I don't totally advocate for it.
I'm just saying in general, general right other people's money or bank's money whatever you want to call it i'm actually interestingly enough tomorrow i'm doing an eight hour webinar take that uh all about how to fund your deals right um in every avenue you can do it so it's going to be eight hours so i'll be fun um let's talk about the processes go on though. I think this is where my superhuman power is more on the side of the sales and the marketing.
Your superhuman power is more on the processes, system, structure. Let's talk about that.
This is really a strength for you. Again, I can bring it back to you.
You said Ian? Yeah, I was going to say that the best tool and like exercise that I ever did was when I first got started to try to figure out what I should hire out and what I shouldn't hire out. Because, again, remember, I was like definitely afraid to hire anyone.
I didn't think anybody could do it as good as me, which is a total joke now looking back. And I don't think it's overly egotistical to think that.
If you're really good at what you do in certain areas, then you just never really had somebody else do those things for you. But what I realized is like 100% of somebody else's time, even at like 50 or 60% ability, is better than my maybe 90% solution and ability and like 20% of the time.
Dan Martell says it's 100% awesome. Yeah, that's right.
Right?

But I... solution and ability and like 20% of the time.
Dan Martel says it's a hundred percent awesome. So that's right.
Right. You know, that's, but I, so let me ask you a different question before we get to your processes.
Sure. When someone comes to you and says, Hey, I have a WG job and I want to hire a salesperson and a disposition person.
What's your answer? Oh, I have like a lot more questions before I give an answer there. that's good and so i think that's where i'm going is i think you would probably ask a lot more questions to figure out really why because i and let me kind of front load why i'm asking you i have a hard time allowing people to hire because they don't want to do the work which is what i see more often than not even if they have a w job, right? They will want to hire someone with the excuse of the W2 job, but you are living proof as you are sitting here on this podcast saying that is not what is going to create success.
So now knowing where I'm going with this angle, what is your response to those people that like, oh, you know, I want to hire acquisitions and dispositions and all this stuff. And you say, well, how many deals have you done? And they say zero.
What do you say to that person? Well, yeah, for sure. Number one is like, the best thing that I had was I had a, I had a mentor with a business.
So I knew like all the different roles. I was tapped into like trainings and things like that, that I could use because otherwise I don't even know how to hire an onboard somebody and hold them accountable in a position that I don't even know what to expect from them.
I mean, could you imagine having never done a deal and like hire somebody to like underwrite one of the properties or try to figure out like how to listen to one of their sales calls and determine whether they're doing well or not. And so if you're not plugged into anything, if you don't have that, you definitely need.
And the other thing is you don't actually know what that experience is like. Like I had to be on the couch for three hours with that seller and hating it to know how, how much their job is going to suck for me.
Right. Right.
And then I got to go find somebody who would love to talk to somebody about their kids and their cat and their hoarder house and how it doesn't look horrible or smell like dead cats or whatever. Like I know how much that job sucks and I hate it.
And so now knowing that and being in it. So I've always been somebody who's like I'd like to do it to understand it a little bit.
But I've also also seen the problem with me is I've also seen the other side of that where people have been successful doing this, but not hiring four or five people at a time. And I see this all the time.
They want to scale up a company. They got some money and they're like, you know what? I'm going to hire a lead intake person, an acquisitions person, a dispositions person, and I don't know, admin, like office admin, transaction coordinator person at the same time.
They're like, dude, you have no capacity. And I have a W2 job.
I can't train them. I can't onboard them.
I can't spend time with them. I scaled responsibly.
I scaled one person at a time. And what I did was my cup was completely overflowing.
I wish I had a cup on my desk. My cup's overflowing with so much work.
I don't have enough time, all that stuff. And so what I had to do is I had to bring in somebody with an empty cup and I had to pour some of my cup into their cup.
And now my cup is like half full and their cup's half full. And then I started filling up both of our cups.
And then if my cup starts overflowing again, which typically my cup was always the one that was overflowing, because I took roles. That's right.
Like I hire one role and then I take on all the rest.

And if they're good at what they do, they give me more business.

So like if my salesperson is really good, next thing you know, I got to manage 10 transactions in a month instead of one.

Yep.

And so now I have more to do.

So then I got to bring in somebody else to kind of who has an empty cup to dump my cup into their cup.

And that just keeps going and going and going over time. And that's how my business kind of went.
That's how we did 67 deals. It was me and, by the end of the year, it was me and three people.
But at the beginning of the year, it was me and one person. What's that? What is the right size of a team for someone who wants to be doing six deals a month? So again, I'm very much like not, it's not so cut and dry.
I would say how much time do you have and what are you best in the world at? Because a lot of people are like, oh, Bill, you hired a lead intake person, like admin assistant, somebody who she managed, like she did a little bit of bookkeeping. She would like go around to the flips and put lock boxes on and things like that.
But her predominant job was to answer the money phone. When the phone rang, we called it the money phone, she's going to answer it.
So we're sending marketing. I'm the marketing manager and I'm the CMO.
I'm driving a ton of postcards at the time. When that phone rings, she answers it.
So her primary job was lead intake to set the appointments. But then I was going on the appointments and I obviously told you I'm not that good at it.
So we weren't getting deals for like four and a half months. We didn't get deals.
And so then three months in, I hire a salesperson to take that job, 100% commission. And so then she came in and she started locking up deals and closing contracts.
And next thing I know, now I got, you know, first it was one a month. She actually came in and like got three three on her contract.
And I was like, oh crap, I have to sell these things. And then I did the transaction coordination of the dispositions.
And then next thing you know, we're doing five deals a month, six deals a month, like you said. And I was like, oh crap, like I didn't have any time.
So when we were doing six deals a month, I had a lead intake person. So somebody's answering the phone.
I had a sales rep, an acquisitions person, and I had a transaction coordinator. So there were three people in me.
I did the disposition still. And then I also did all the marketing and all the numbers, like all the money stuff.
Like where are we going to spend money? What kind of systems do we need? I wrote like follow-up sequences inside the CRM and all the nerdy stuff that you would think an operator would do behind the scenes because that's kind of what I do. And I would do things that I could do between 4.30 a.m.
and 7 a.m. and 8.30 to 10.30 at night, remember, because I didn't have a lot of free time during the day.
And so I couldn't go on appointments. I couldn't go on a hot appointment.
That was our problem for like three months before I hired my salesperson. We were only going on the appointments that sounded really hot over the phone.
And that could wait until I had a slot available in my schedule. Like that's a horrible business model, right? When you're spending, we're spending $3,500 a month in postcards.
Well, so you answered it in a long way that I would have said the same thing. I mean, the reason why I'm saying that is we were going to the same place.
We're going to end up at the same point. I think too many people right now want to scale and they want to build this big ass business.
And I'm like, guys, that is not the game. Yes.
I will tell you emphatically, there was a moment in my life where I wanted to be the guy with the biggest shop doing the most deals and all that. And the flex of that on social media, a hundred percent.
I was like, I got the older I've gotten in the more wealth I've accumulated and the more deals I've done. I realized like it takes a very tight, small team.
And I mean, tight, like good, small, three, four people. You could be running 10 deals a month with three or four people easy yeah like agreed in motion everyone's clicking

everything's working you do not need oh i got four acquisition people i have four junior setters i got three people on the back end for dispo i have no no what are we doing here like tighten the ship right because you just don't need more unfortunately in my opinion i think it's all for the gram i think it's all for the flex they want to have a big business but again in in my old wisdom and less hair uh you know i've realized that isn't what it's about right it's about having the right a team that can just do a lot more efficiently versus and you're all about efficiency right that's your name of your game create efficiencies and you don't need a lot of people. Yeah, I totally agree with that.
In fact, I would say you want to get to the point where the business is hiring the next person, not the other way around. And I see it's normally the other way around.
It's like, I'm going to hire so that we can get to the next point where it's like, I really want, I got to the place of, okay, hey, and I wouldn't say you want to wait until you're completely overloaded. Everybody's overwhelmed.
Every, like the whole ship is on fire and you're hiring somebody because when you hire somebody, it's going to take your time. You're going to have to take time away from the things that you're doing to train them up, onboard them and get them going for at least a month.
And so what usually when I hire somebody, I'm like, it's going to be more work for me to hire them in the beginning. Thank you for saying that.
Yes, dude. By the way, I want to just like highlight that bold italicize it.
What people don't understand is when you hire, you're not saving yourself time, at least out of the gate for the first six months, nine months, you are training them, you're attaining them, you're managing them, you are leading them, your role change from maybe acquisitions to management and leader of acquisitions, it doesn't mean less work. So thank you for saying that.
It frustrates you. Obviously, I'm getting heightened because I just don't, you know, God, guys, what are you talking about? Yeah, it's more work.
And it's okay because it's going to pay off. And that's why you can't hire two or three, four people at the same time.
Because what people want to do is they want to say, oh, you've been in sales before? Oh, great. Okay, you're hired.
I'm not exactly sure what you should be doing, but go over there and make some sales. And I'm going to be over here doing less because now you take my leads.
It's like, no, no, no, that's not how it works. Like when I hired my salesperson, I took a week off.
I took a week of leave from the military and I didn't fly for a week. And I just told my lead intake person, I said, set as many appointments as you can over those five days.
And me and her are just going to go run appointments nonstop. And I don't care.
I don't care if it's retail. I don't care what they want.
It doesn't matter if they have a house and they're willing to let us into it. We're going to go look at it.
And I just remember looking at all kinds of crazy stuff, talking to just unbelievable amount of people. And what was really cool is two and a half days in, I was like, okay, you feel like you're getting this? And she's like, yeah.
She's like, I'm going to do it a little bit different than you do it. And I was like, all right, you take the lead on the next one.
And then she ran it for like a day with me. And I was like, true, I hired the right person because she's doing stuff that I didn't even know I could do.
And she was doing so well that she just took it. And I was like, all right, you got it.
But then I was still listening to her calls. I was still giving her feedback.
I was now as coach, I was coaching her. And because you can't see what you're in.
So now I could take, hey, what I knew, what I had experience of and say, hey, your ARVs are off or your rehab estimate was off, or I think this offer was too high or too low and here's why. And now I can help her with her numbers, like the stuff that I'm really good at.
And I'm not getting in her Cheerios a lot on her sales techniques and tactics. So she was way better than me at that.
So how can I then fortify somebody? How can I be like Pippin to the Jordan, right? How can I just plug in there? And so that's the game. And then if you do that like over and over, and then if you had a team of 20, like you have to go back and build the culture and be the leader.
And you talk to each one of those people. It's really challenging.
We just had to kind of like bring down the size of our seven figure flipping company, the team, because, because we did this. We scaled up for a lot more members.
And when that didn't happen, I'm sitting there going, oh my gosh, my overhead is insane. I can't make money this way.
And if I can't make money, we can't continue doing what we're doing. Nobody's going to have a job.
And the business is not me. So it's the worst thing ever is to have to start letting people go because we did the same thing.
We just got kind of ahead of our skis. We're going to scale up for the future.
When the future doesn't pan out the way that we think, it's that we look around like, oh man, like I was, I sometimes I'm making payroll out of my own personal bank account. A hundred percent you are brother.
And I've done the very same thing. And dude, there's so much here.
So good. We could go forever.
I have to highlight what you said again. You know, there's, there's people that really know this business and Bill is one of them, right? We are both here because we have the scars to prove it.
Even to this moment, there are things that he is doing that he's going to be able to educate future seven figure flipper members on about scaling up and the experiences he just talked about because he's gone through them. He's done the thing that most people want to be able to go do.
And he has to wear those scars. But that is why you want to be a part of Bill's group.
That's why you want to be a part of his community of seven figure flipper because he's gone and done the thing that you want to go do. Right.
And I just, there's not a lot of people in this space that I can talk the way about that I'm talking about Bill because he's eaten his shit sandwiches. He's done the thing.
He's had the scars. He's learned the lessons, right? Like, that is why you would hire a Bill, a Justin.
Get in the communities from these people. Bill is one of the greatest, right? So I'm endorsing him for that reason.
That's why I'm getting like, talk to Bill because he's been there. He's done that mistake.
He can say, don't do that mistake. Don't go hire four people.
I did that. I over built out my money got tight because I couldn't pay everyone and pay myself and make money for the business.
Like those are experiences you have to go through. And, you know, Bill is going to echo this, but don't try to figure that part out yourself.
Get a part of seven figure flipper. Be there because Bill can hold your hand and do it.
So I needed to highlight that. Right.
Because there's just not a lot of honesty, I think, in our space about what it really does take to build a business, not just go make some money, but build a business. Yeah, and I think that's what we're trying to do.
Actually build something that can run, not actually completely without us. I mean, it's possible, but with us being in our genius zone and everyone else being in theirs.
And so you're building a Super Bowl winning team. It could be a small team.
It could be a larger team. But your team is really, really important, the people you surround yourself with.
And that's a coach, a mentor, the people that you hire, your contractors, the title companies, everybody. You said something that we can tell people what not to do.
The challenge is, I'm not convinced over like eight years of doing this now that it's possible for them to listen all the time. And I'll just be honest, like you actually are going to have to go through something to believe it.
And what I think we can do a really good job of, like Justin and I can do a really good job of, is like cushioning that fall a little bit So like, if, cause I mean, if, if I'd say don't touch the stove, don't touch the stove, don't touch the stove. It's hot.
Like you, you, and you've never touched the stove. Like you, you're cooking things on it, but eventually you're going to touch it.
Like eventually you're going to touch it. Maybe you just tap it.
But, but you know, if I tell you, like, if you put your hand on that stove for an extended period of time, it's going to melt your skin off and all this horrible stuff, right? You're, you might tap it to see if it's hot, but you're not going to really like burn yourself bad and really hurt yourself. But I think we all have to kind of touch the stove a little bit.
So like, even if you're just listening to this, like I would never, like I heard Bill, I heard Justin, don't scale up too fast. Like you're probably going to do that at some point.
You're probably going to make a mistake. And that's not, I don't think a coaching program is like, it takes out all of that completely.
What I think it does is it really allows us to cushion the fall and go, oh, I remember when they said that. Like when you're in it, it's like, I remember when they said that.
And this is what it feels like. And you notice it way earlier than you would if you didn't have it.
So I want to make sure that we just mention that because it's so easy to be like, oh, I'm going to like pay somebody to be in their community or to have a coach or a mentor or a mastermind and think that's going to like eliminate any of the problems we're going to have. It's just not true.
And the more, the sooner we realize that, the sooner we can accept the fact that we're going to make mistakes, regardless of who's in our corner. It's kind of like how we get out of them, what advice we have, what wisdom we can impart to them and they can take from us.
And so you're going to touch the stove. And I just want it to be on low instead of high when you do.
And I think that's where we come in. And I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
I'm like, why do I. Why are they doing that? My students, members, the community, I did three presentations over a year on this and you still did it.
And it's like, they're going to have to. It's just not nearly as bad as it could have been.
Or they've learned like 100 times more from it because it really sinks in. We have to let it sink in.
It has to sink in at some point. I hope that makes sense.
The Disney World, Disneyland, like the Fast Pass versus the GA ticket. Yes.
Like you don't want to sit in the loop-de-loop back and forth line, but there's still a line even during the Fast Pass, right? So you're going to be sitting in a line. There's no just walk right onto the ride.
Just you want to minimize the line. You want to minimize the pain.
You might touch the stove, but you're not going to put your whole palm on it and push down. I couldn't be more with you guys.
I couldn't say enough about Bill, 7 Figure Flipper. Bill, where do we want to point everyone to you, to follow you, to find you, to be a part of your ecosystem? Yeah.
Well, I have a podcast called 7 Figure Flipping. You guys can check that out.
And then I would say we have a main website, sevenfigureflipping.com, but our flagship program is a runway program. I'm an aviator.
So it's like all that stuff in the beginning, it's like, let's get you off the ground and get going. And so the number sevenfigurerunway.com is a simple questionnaire, great place to go to see kind of an assessment of where you're at.
And then it sets up a totally free, 100%, just like console call, which is not like arm wrestle you into something, sign here, any of that stuff. But we use a lot of personality profiling to see where you're at and where you need to go.
And if it's like just listen to podcasts for free, that's our advice. You know, just what's the best step in our world if you're interested at all.
So sevenfigurerunway.com. Sevenfigurerunway.com.
Dude, I could appreciate the time, the flexibility, the knowledge, the wisdom, the scars, all that good stuff. Guys, he's an amazing man.
You'd be honored to be in his group, part of his world. Appreciate you being a friend of me.
And dude we'll we'll circle back very shortly yep i appreciate

it this was fun i love talking about this stuff especially when we can go back and forth a little bit it's good all right science flipping fam we are going to be done here but stay tuned to the next amazing guest we have on the next episode we will see you soon peace Too many tools. peace So you can work faster, smarter, and for less.
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