The DealMachine Real Estate Investing Podcast

179: $150k First Year Side Hustle

David made $150k in his first year of wholesaling real estate. He is now in year three so we asked him how he was so successful in his first year, and how he's able to keep earning more in the years to follow. Key Talking Points of the Episode 00:00 Introduction 02:01 How did David get into wholesaling real estate? 03:38 Why is David more focused on the acquisition side of wholesaling? 06:03 Where does David and his partner find their leads? 08:06 How do David’s conversations with sellers go? 09:38 What are David’s appointments with sellers like? 11:41 How did David start building his buyers list? 13:33 How many deals has David done through the years? 14:24 How has wholesaling helped David have more time for music? 16:06 How does David manage his wholesaling business? 18:01 How did David learn about the AI Dialer in Deal Machine? 19:15 How much time does David and his team spend cold calling? 20:11 Where does David make his calls from? 21:21 How has the AI Dialer helped David get more appointments? 22:58 How can you get connected with David? Links TikTok: David Modesto https://www.tiktok.com/@sonoftheshepherd Instagram: David Lecko https://www.instagram.com/dlecko Instagram: Ryan Haywood https://www.instagram.com/heritage_home_investments Website: Deal Machine https://www.dealmachine.com/pod Website: Heritage Home Investments https://www.heritagehomeinvestments.com/

Duration:: 23m
Broadcast on:: 22 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Key Talking Points of the Episode

00:00 Introduction

02:01 How did David get into wholesaling real estate?

03:38 Why is David more focused on the acquisition side of wholesaling?

06:03 Where does David and his partner find their leads?

08:06 How do David’s conversations with sellers go?

09:38 What are David’s appointments with sellers like?

11:41 How did David start building his buyers list?

13:33 How many deals has David done through the years?

14:24 How has wholesaling helped David have more time for music?

16:06 How does David manage his wholesaling business?

18:01 How did David learn about the AI Dialer in Deal Machine?

19:15 How much time does David and his team spend cold calling?

20:11 Where does David make his calls from?

21:21 How has the AI Dialer helped David get more appointments?

22:58 How can you get connected with David?

Links

TikTok: David Modesto

https://www.tiktok.com/@sonoftheshepherd

Instagram: David Lecko

https://www.instagram.com/dlecko

Instagram: Ryan Haywood

https://www.instagram.com/heritage_home_investments

Website: Deal Machine

https://www.dealmachine.com/pod

Website: Heritage Home Investments

https://www.heritagehomeinvestments.com/

Hey, everyone and welcome to the deal machine real estate investing podcast. Today's guest went from being a struggling musician to a real estate investor and now because of the flexible schedule he has and the freedom to do what he wants when he wants he can be a skilled musician again. So today we've got David Modesto and we're going to talk to him. My name is Ryan Haywood. Back in 2019, I got started doing real estate through a wholesaling challenge for 30 days. 14 days later, I got my first deal. I've gone on to do over 450 deals in my time. Thanks, Ryan. Yeah. And I think one cool thing about David is he actually made $150,000 in his first year. So a lot of people may be saying, man, I'm kind of slow to get started. But the great thing is they started making 200 calls every day, you know, from the get go and that's a huge reason why they have the success to 10 deals that year, 15,000, you know, is what they made on each. So that's a big takeaway. I wanted to get early in the episode. And if you guys don't know, my name's David, I actually co-founded deal machine eight years ago. We've helped people close over 10,000 of their first deals in all 50 states. And we bring you this podcast to share exactly how they were able to get that success. So I know you're going to learn something from this episode. How much did you make on your first wholesale deal, by the way? So my very first wholesale deal, that was a couple of years ago already, I made a $15,000 of all saliency. Oh, that's pretty good. 50. So it's definitely, but I would say better than the average for a first deal. Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't bad. Where was that? That was out in Florida. That's where you live. Yeah. I'm originally from Miami. Okay. Got it. I want to know a few things. The first thing is like, what drove you into doing a wholesale deal in the first place? So you know, I had nothing to do with all sailing, like I was not involved in any way. And then randomly, a buddy of mine contacted me after having met who is my current partner in wholesaling. And they just kind of just put it on the table and they're like, hey, man, this is what we're doing right now. There's potential here to make money. It's easy to learn. So I was doing like a bunch of like gigs at the side at the moment, you know, at that moment, I was a struggling musician, I guess you could say the typical story. So I was like, perfect. This is I have all the time in the world to dedicate to this, to learn it and, you know, to give it my all. So we picked it up as a team, all three of us, eventually one partner kind of decided to go his own way. And so my other partner and I remained and we've been all sailing ever since. Wow. Okay. So when you say a partner, does one of you do like, um, does one of you do like marketing? One of you talks to the seller or do you guys just both kind of operate independently? How do you split up those duties? So I basically focus on acquisitions, they focus on getting it sold. Oh, yeah. So you, you find the deal. You're doing the marketing. You're talking with the seller. And then they're the ones who find the buyers and they sell out for hopefully a bigger spread. So you all split the spread 50 50, uh, the difference. Yeah. There you go. Okay. Got it. Very cool. And what do you find the most interesting about the acquisition side? Why is that the piece that you do talking to people? Okay. Talking to an endless amount of people, you know, I saw the video. I forget the name is, it's one of you guys, one of the, um, one of the team. He was, he had that video where he, uh, he was going over kind of like the basic skills required. And one of the things that he ambered out was like, Hey, you get on that coin and you make a friends. Right. You know, and so that's like my model. That's what I focused on. And I don't even focus on like the house or the property. I just go in there, you know, looking at the relationship yesterday, man, you could, you guys could probably see it on the dialer history there. I got on a call and I was on that call for over an hour and 45 minutes with this guy on the dialer. Yeah, brother. And I guess at nine o'clock, the dialer cut off and the, and the call drops. So I had to call this guy back from my personal phone and we talked for like another hour. Oh, that's so funny. So you know why it does that at nine o'clock, right? Because of course there, um, there are, uh, I guess there's rules. There can't be any telemarketing calls after nine o'clock. So we built it so it would just cut that off. Honestly, as an investor, it doesn't even fall within telemarketing because you're not selling anything. Right? You're your other friend if they want to sell their house, but just through an over abundance of caution, that's why we built the dialer to close off at nine. Honestly, we should make a little bit of adjustment so it doesn't, uh, cut your call off in the middle of it. So sorry about that. That's so funny at the first time that it did that, but it's, it's new, right? So it's like a month long to where you guys doing cold calling before we just launched that. Yes. Got it. Yeah. I've been doing cold calling. Basically my home all ever since I've been wholesaling. Yes. And you said about a year ago, right, or two years ago was, it's going on three years. No. Okay. Well, congratulations. Thank you, bro. A lot of people. I mean, it's hard to start a business. So that's very good on you for having that success, been able to do it for three years. And, um, so is that a typical type of deal for you guys where you, cold call the lead and your, your partner would sell it and you'd make $15,000 and split that? Yes. Awesome. Cool. That's nice. You guys found a little sweet spot there. Absolutely. Get your leads. What do you look for to get to call 2,000 people? That's a lot of leads. You get your leads lists, governmental lists. Okay. What are the examples of the government list, um, water shut off. Okay. That's the list I'm calling now. Yeah. Where do you get the water shut off list? If you don't mind me asking, I require email of the government official. Okay, not the water company, but somebody in the county actually might have been the water company. It might have been the water company. Yeah. It's either, it's either, yeah, either, either the government official in the county or, or the water company depending on whatever the city's doing. In this case, I believe it was the, the water company. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Yeah. No, that's a great strategy because I hear it a lot on different podcasts and stuff that I listen to, but in my own market, I've never been able to do it. So I have an email of the water company and they're like, no, dude, we don't give away that type of information. But what I found out is in deal machine, there's actually a lot of different lean types. So lean is when somebody doesn't pay their bill, they put a lean on the property, meaning if they sell the property at any point before they take any money, they have to pay these people they owe for various things. And there is a utility lead, right? Which is kind of where the water lean would fit in. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's what I love about deal machine. Yeah. Yeah. So now I kind of answered my own question, but I mean, if you can get it straight from the actual water company, I would do that too. I just can't do that in my location. So I've got to go the lean route, but that's so great. Your city will respond and give you guys that list. So what do you do that? You just upload it to deal machine and that's where you match the contact info and just start calling. That's it. Love it. What's the start of your conversation though? So you get them on the boom, like how do you first off, how do you build the friendship or the relationship to the point where they're where you have that conversation about this house that might be distressed? How do you break that? How do you blend those conversations in? How do you have that conversation? If you have a distressed house, you're interested in selling it. How do you do that? Well, I just get on and I don't like to waste time in the initial, like the initial first sentence has to immediately, the first two sentence is enough to say who you are and why you're there, otherwise you're getting hung up on. So I just call when they pick up, I'm like, Hey, is this the owner of blah, blah, blah, the address? Uh, they're like, yes. And I was like, and I'm like, great. I was just wondering if it's for sale, boom. And then that said, set off, like, you know, I wasted no time. I didn't ask how you doing, you know what I mean, which is usually you get like thong. So I had to train myself, because even at the beginning, I'd be like, how are you doing sir? I was just wondering if I was for sale. I had to like train myself to eliminate completely the how you doing useless out of here and not needed. Yeah. You're straight to what you want. And then let them filter information from you. So for you, you tell them your name, you at do you tell them their name? Brother, sometimes we're like 45 minutes into the conversation, they still don't know my name. Nice. All right. So you're asking, you asked from the person that owns the property. You ask is the house for sale. They say, yes. What's next? I just want to confirm with you how many bets and baths. So you actually go into some detail on the actual property itself. Yeah, immediately, immediately. How much I guess, how much information do you guys do appointments? Do you go and actually look at the property is all of it remote? It depends. So like right now I'm in Amarillo and the properties that I was seeing out here, I was able to go to in person, but right now I'm calling in Corpus Christi, which is like nine and a half hours away. So it's going to be all remote, you know what I mean? And I'm and I'm straight up like I don't I don't pretend to be the end buyer. That way, when I when it comes time to send the people over there, I don't run into roadblocks, you know, having to like pretend you're my partner or whatever, you know, what do you tell them? Hey, my team wasn't interested in my I presented this property to my team and they weren't jumping at the bits, but I showed this to one of my investor friends and they're wanting this. And then sometimes I'll even telling them, Hey, look, they're wanting it at this particular price. What can we get this on this so that I can make some money on this? Interesting. So you kind of you kind of give them the the this is what what I do. I'm your deal finder. How do you how do you explain that to the seller? What on it is? I say that, you know, initially I'm calling to work in inquire about the property for myself. Then when I have all the information, you know, I've showed it to my team and they're not that interested, but I have some guys who are and I can help you get the soul. I'll act. I'll act like a sort of middleman. And either I'll explain to them, Hey, I'm getting it under this. What can we get it under so that I can make some money or I'll just tell them, Hey, he's willing to pay this, he's going to pay me a finders fee, but that's completely separate from the offer he's making you. Yeah. How did you build your buyer's list trial and error where did what did you start? What did how did you start building your buyers list? I believe we were using prop string at first, then I even contacted some title companies for a while and asked to make more of the hot buyers in your area. And then once you meet one, they kind of connected with us you more. I contacted a bunch of realtors at one point and they connected me to what's on a buyers. And then my partners have been doing real estate since, you know, longer than I have. So they brought a bunch of old buyers that they were connected with too. Nice. How'd you get connected with those partners? God, what do you mean? Like just church. Really? And just fate. You know what I mean? Like it's crazy. It just kind of just came in one day. It showed up one day and I jumped all over like, I'm telling you, I got this tall randomly out of the blue. Like it wasn't like my buddy and I had been talking about getting in the real estate with a conversation that never even come up. I just got the call one day, they met this dude who's showing me all sailing. It looks like there's potential. Do you want to do this? And then we're off to the races, you know, got it. I think my part of the one I'm working with now, he's originally from York, but he came down to Florida because he was working on construction at the time. He owned his own construction company. He went down to Florida to do some work. And then he just kind of told us about the whole sailing thing and he kind of like, you know, showed us the first couple of videos and the first couple of resources that we could start exploiting to kind of learn the scale and craft. And then, you know, here we are three years later, Hey guys, if you know you want to quit your job in the next three months, make sure you're subscribed to this podcast because we've got some incredible frameworks with step by step instruction that you're not going to want to miss. Also leave us a rating in review to let us know your favorite parts and why you want to get financial freedom. Got it. Oh, that is great. I'm so glad that's worked out for you. How many deals would you say that y'all have done in the last three years, man. So that first year we did about 10. The second year we sort of diverted and kind of like did our own things for a while. And this year we came back strong and this last one, these two that I have under contract now when they closed, they'll be number six and seven for the year. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. That's fantastic. Where are you working? Oh, you'll hear us, but you were a musician before so you obviously were making more money in this. It sounds like, right? Are you still playing music? Like do you get to enjoy that now, but more of it as a hobby or how is your relationship with playing music changed? I could do it more now. You know, cuz I first, yeah, if I don't have to show up at a nine to five. It's fun that you had the ability, you had the time because you were a struggling artist, you had the ability in the time available to put into developing wholesale. And now you can, because you've done wholesale, you have the time and availability to be an artist. So the whole, the roles have completely reversed. And now you've, you've got the freedom and flexibility to do what you want, which is great. Amen. Oh, how many shows do you get? How many gigs do you get now? Oh, brother, I don't even like, I right now, right now I'm not even focusing. I like, I guess the career aspect of it all. And I'm like, taking advantage of all this extra time to just like sharpen the skills and put in all those hours on the instrument I couldn't before. And yeah, I feel like, you know, I guess you can say because we get caught up in the rat race, we can sort of like squander our gifts and we don't, we don't make the time to really become masters at them. And I believe that whole sailing is one of the few things in life that can give you back that opportunity that you may have lost. You know what I mean? Do you have consistencies that you are, or practices that you use each week to keep your wholesale game consistent? Or do you kind of go get some deals, chill? Or is there a rhythm or a pattern to your, to your wholesaling business? I just never stop, man. I'm just always calling. I'm calling Monday through Monday. Like it's anything, you know, Sunday, I'll take an easy day, but Monday through Saturday, I'm calling all day long, you know, eight hours minimum. And that just keeps you constantly busy because you're, there's no way that you're putting in eight hours a day and you're not getting a few warm leads a day. You know what I mean? You've got to, you've got to go underwrite those, you know, call them back, make your offer. So it's like, if anything, I find myself, I'm going to have to start working Sunday. All right. Yeah. What's your average assignment fee now? Nothing under nothing under 10 to 15, and we're always going for higher than now, like we're always going for like minimum 20. Yeah. Love it. So yeah, in your first year, it sounds like you guys did about $150,000, right? 15,000 times 10 is pretty nice first year. So what, what caused you guys to split up and then come back together? I noticed you said in year two, you did your own thing, but now you're back. Personal craziness life, um, yeah, a life took some turns and, and, you know, one of the how to go this way, you're the one had to go that way, but, you know, life is so crazy that like you think it's taking you away from something, but you're learning a bunch of lessons that you then apply when you get back and it's like, Oh my God. Now I see how the two phases, all those seemingly different work connected. So it's like, you know, it's like we went away for a while and then we came back with a vengeance. And then now this dialer dropped and it's completely changing the game. So could it be better done? Yeah, very, what we're using before, why do you switch because I don't remember what I think I think so I was looking for a dialer and I'm, I'm on deal machine. I don't remember what brought me to deal with you. I think I was trying to skip trace and I see that the dialers about to drop tomorrow. So like I'm on deal machine that day before the dialer drops, trying to find a skip tracing. And I'm like, Hey, I dialer. What is this? So I start watching the videos, the webinar happens. And I watched that. I'm like, Oh my God, I would take my money. So I opt out immediately. You've certainly done and proven that you guys are serious. I mean, it's no question because we're talking because I pulled a report of who's made the most calls since we launched the thing. You guys made about 2000 calls since then it's been only 10 business days, right? So it's about at least 200 per day, which I guess in my, in my experience, that would take about like two and a half, three hours. So assuming most of your combos aren't an hour and a half, right? So you guys calling like the hours a day every business day. So it's a lot, right? Because like we're calling, then we'll get a warm lead and it's a long phone call, right? Because you're because you're making a friend. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It extends. And then not only that, but then I you got all the details on the property that you got to start doing your research. You know what I mean? So you can start getting your offer lined up. So like it'll, it'll add up, it'll add up. It just, it's such a great feeling with the browser because it's so hands-free. You know what I mean, like notes are no longer part of the equation. You can go back and literally for you. Pretty badass, actually. That is crazy. Yeah. So these are the notes for you. What's your, do you wear air pods or are you just talking to the computer? How does that work? I talk to the computer. Okay. Cool. And then are you at home or are you going to an office or I guess coffee shop might be too loud, right? So where are you, where are you guys doing the calls? I'm in my hotel room and then I've got my VA, you know, he's out, he's out in the Philippines and he's got like a, like a little like office studio in this place that he built for particularly what he does. So, you know, it's always quiet whenever I have any issues. You know, I'm on a Wi-Fi here at the hotel, so my connection's always good. So is his. We've had very, very little issues. We do notice that sometimes on the dialer, we'll get this, we'll say like, it'll be making calls and then it'll like kind of get stuck on one and then there'll be a notification at the bottom right. That'll say like error. There was an error with our phone services, something, something, but that doesn't, it seems like it's, it might be just maybe the number, something was wrong with the number or maybe there was a small error with the system, but we haven't had any kind of like connection issues where we can't hear the other person on the owner. They can't hear us. It's been very, very slow it man, like I'm blown away with how streamlined this thing makes the whole process. So if you guys are doing about 200 calls per day, have you been able to set any appointments in the last two weeks doing that? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And we have, so we have two properties that I've already accepted our offers. Oh, amazing. That's great. Yeah. So we sent contracts out, one of them signed already, the other one is having it reviewed. And then we've got a bunch of warm leads that we're following up on. You know, we have offers ready. Sometimes it's during the week. So they're working. It's hard to catch them. You know what I mean? You've got their offer ready with that phone rings and their faces on it and offer what we've given. And hopefully we get a little more amazing. I love breaking down this too because it kind of benches benchmarks me for when somebody's asking what they need to do to get started, right? They can hear. Oh, he got two appointments and they've accepted offers, but he also knows what he's doing, right? So somebody's just starting out. Like they should set a goal of making 200 calls a day. I think that's a good goal, Ashley. Yeah. So, you took a break from cold calling to call us this morning. And you've definitely made a friend on the end of this phone call. So I appreciate it. Thank you guys. One. Yeah, man. We'll love to send you a deal machine hat if that's of interest or you could pick out a phone case, whatever on me. We've got a little swag store and I'll send that if you're interested too and just wanted to say thank you. Really appreciate your time this morning. I would love that guys. You guys are awesome. Thank you for everything you're doing. You guys are changing the game. Yes. Thank you so much. Where is a social media platform somebody listening might be able to look you up, connect with you or check out anything that you've got going on. I'm on TikTok at Son of the Shepherd. I'm on Facebook too. You'll find me as David Modesto. I don't really do much on. They're just kind of connect with friends and stuff like that. So that would actually be a great place. Yeah. Yeah. Look me up. I appreciate it. Thank you guys for the opportunity. I appreciate you guys. Thank you for everything you're doing. You bet. Have a great day. Thanks for listening to the deal machine real estate investing podcast. Please leave us a review and follow along wherever you're listening to your podcast. Thanks. Bye. . . (crowd cheering) [BLANK_AUDIO]