hey what's going on guys this is daniel one half of the Kwak Brothers, today i
have such a very special guest mr bill allen and
no... He is not related to Tim allen if anything he's
the real santa claus because he's making seven figure flipping houses
but in this video we're gonna talk about how this man went from zero
to 7 Figures in a year in flipping and wholesaling
uh predominantly you know you're in the flipping space so thanks for being with
us bill it's it's an honor and a pleasure for
you to join us thanks for having me daniel it's gonna be fun
yeah absolutely so let's go ahead and get right into it so where were you at i
know a lot of people you know they start their journey
um you know in multiple different ways right maybe they have a friend who talks
about real estate or maybe they saw a billboard
or maybe they saw an ad you know like those carlton sheets old ads and
late night television how did you get involved with real estate investing
so i was in the military so when i was in college i had a commanding officer
tell me um and that's that's the guy who runs
all of the navy people at georgia tech where i went to school
he said i bought a house everywhere that i went and i always made money
so that was kind of in the back of my mind but i just i focused on my studies
on soccer on um on you know getting into the navy
and going to flight school i became a pilot and then um you know
there was a point where i just wasn't seeing my
my my net worth go up at all like i was very slow so i was in the stock market i
was an index fund investor and i was watching my net worth like
every month i would check my net worth and i just wanted to become a
millionaire one day right i figured it would be when i'm 60 or 70 years old and
as long as i was smart making you know six to eight percent
per year then i would eventually pick up to be a millionaire
and um for me i just i was moving all the time with the military
i was a navy pilot i was moving and i bought a house and i started watching
hdtv and youtube videos of how to fix up the
house and like do redo tile and redo the bathroom
fixed up the house and then when i moved out i rented it out and um
i was making a couple hundred bucks a month from that and then i did it one
more time and i said wow this is actually my net
worth is starting to increase the equity is going up so
that was it i just kind of like jumped in i didn't know what i was doing
um i didn't necessarily get any training i was
um you know watching youtube videos i was reading on online forums and stuff
like that so uh but that's that commanding officer
of mine in the back of my head he was speaking to me every time i moved
on i was renting and then i read it again i read it again
ready like four different times until i was you know 23 24
i said i think it's time for me to try this out and buy a house and uh and i
did and just kind of kept it i kept moving
around and kept buying another house in different cities that's awesome
so you know it sounds like so you watched he tv you know you watch youtube
videos you went on online forums you know obviously there's a lot of
people who do that right now you know they're on this youtube channel right
now watching this video and they're on online forums and whatnot
but you know i'm sure all those people who do that necessarily
don't succeed right if anything there's a very minority of amount of people
that actually do and accomplish what you accomplished what was that first
step like i think that's a lot of that's a question that a lot of people
ask what was that first step like doing your first deal what are some regrets
some mistakes what are some things that you've learned
well uh so there's a lot in there right so you
i don't know that i was necessarily successful in the beginning either
you know i was i was definitely jumping in but it took me a lot of time
to learn all this stuff like i'm an engineer and so i like to understand how
things work and i was learning learning learning and
i'd say the one thing that i wish i did was just take some action a little bit
earlier even just small action it didn't have to be
huge but um but what i really learned then in that first house was
um i paid retail like i just found a house on the mls i paid retail
i fixed it up and then i rented it out and the numbers worked pretty well
but when i look back now with knowing what i know now then
i would never have bought that house like right now i wouldn't buy it
but it worked out okay for me at the time right i moved out rented it out
built up some equity and then i eventually sold it i sold the
house you know five six years later and i made some money and i moved now i
move that money to the things that i do now
um but my recommendation to anybody isn't to
to think that you have to know everything and learn it all
and be you know 10 years in the future to get the best deal that you can today
i i just i just bought something you know and uh
i was living in it so i liked the house uh there was an opportunity to rent it
out and the rental rate was pretty good when i moved out
but i would never buy that house today and it's okay i made money on it it was
a great learning experience and um so my recommendation like knowing
what i know now that you asked i would say like i love the fact that i
know that i don't pay retail for houses anymore
like everything that we buy right now is off market or discounted or distressed
or something like that and that's where we can really make big
money in flipping or even on a buy and hold or a wholesale
deal yeah and i'm sure this is a question that everyone's just dying to
ask you right now if they're in front of you face to face is how do
you find those type of deals where you get
you know discounts off rental retail price and you know you find them off
market how how do you do it the first thing
that you have to understand is that it's a
you can't put yourself in the situation of the seller so like you can't
you can't like a lot of people come to me and say why would anybody sell their
house for 50 cents on the dollar and i'm i'm here to tell you that we do
almost 200 of these a year and it works like it happens so
it's possible get out of that mindset to start with so
then what we do is we we go look for those deals um there's distress
some sort of distress has to be present it has to be a distressed person
or a distressed home typically to get those kind of discounts
and if you look at it kind of like a pawn shop like when people walk into a
pawn shop right they know that they're taking their
diamond ring into a pawn shop and they're not going to get full price for
it right when you walk into a pawn shop you
know that that's going to happen and so when people call
us they know that we're not going to pay full price and retail for it
but when you walk into that pawn shop what else do you know you know that
you're going to walk out with cash in your pocket right and that's what you
need so for us it's the same way like we really are looking for people who need
us it's got to be a win-win and so we
market we do some of we do a lot of direct marketing so direct response
marketing whether it's postcards uh phone calls
text messages uh online advertising on google
on uh youtube right here anywhere right where are people looking for you or
where can you look for people so we're marketing directly to them
telling them what we do and then offering that opportunity to
work with us and what they're doing is they're trading equity in their house
for ease and speed of transaction so something that happens really fast
same thing you do when you walk into a pawn shop
like you're really just trading like you need the cash today and so something's
going on so then what life event could people be
going through that they might need cash fast
it might be a divorce it might be that you're behind on taxes it might be that
you haven't been able to pay your mortgage or you're about to get
foreclosed on or your tenant's not paying rank or you
have to evict or all the things that are happening right now
in today's environment of distress that allows us to help somebody out of their
situation where they know that we're making money
but they're also also moving away from their problem we're solving problems
so that's how we do it i mean we can get really technical on it but big picture
like first step understand that the people that are working with you there's
people out there that need your help and they need a real estate investor to
come because nobody else is going to help them
and when you can solve another person's problem that's where you can make money
and it's a win-win it has to be you're not ripping people off
you're not screwing them over they're walking into your pawn shop right they
know like they're they know and it's they
don't have to do business with you there's other opportunities but
we started buying off market i'd say i've probably only bought about 10
houses off the mls in the last few years and we bought you
know four or 500 directly from sellers with no no agents
there's also networking there's also other ways agents will send us deals as
referrals and things like that um but you know just realizing that a
seller needs needs you yeah 100 you know and i love
that you first started out with the mindset because it has to be a mindset
shift in order for people to achieve those
results i want to take a quick break here because you know you're talking
about a lot of great techniques a lot of great ways
to find off market phenomenal deals i'm sure you get that question a lot i
certainly get that question a lot on how to find great deals
but in order to find great deals you got to go to a great youtube channel
and your channel is a great youtube channel so i want to have everybody
right now you know if they want to find out more if you
want in your mind right now you're watching this video
and you're like wow i wish i wish bill would kind of unpack that a little bit
more i wish bill would talk about how to find great deals a little bit
more well he doesn't have to because he's already having all of that in his
youtube channel and that's seven figure flipping guys
that's the number seven the word figure the word flipping uh i'm
a subscriber currently so join me guys in subscribing so go ahead
and subscribe to his channel right now uh and of course then you can re-unpause
this video into the next question which is bill you
know you got a great way to have all these leads come in but obviously you
have to have an infrastructure to be able to handle uh all those leads
and of course you can't do you can't be doing seven figures and
flipping and wholesaling like the way you're doing now
unless you have that infrastructure so talk talk us through a little bit about
that how do you create that did you hire somebody how did you go from you know
zero to seven in terms of infrastructure well so when i started i was still
flying active duty for the navy so i was working 10 or 12 hours a day
flying airplanes from the navy down in pensacola and as i wanted to build out
this company and i was sending a bunch of postcards at the time right that was
my only means of marketing was sending postcards to sellers
and my phone was ringing like crazy we'd get you know 20 30 calls a week
and i couldn't answer them you know i was i was flying so my first person i
knew i needed somebody so my recommendation to anybody is what
is your weakness like what is where do you not i didn't
have time and so i needed to come bring somebody in who could answer the phone
set those appointments that i could go on and look at my calendar and look at
my schedule and manage it basically like an office manager and
lead manager so that was the first person that i hired
so i brought them in and then they started setting appointments for me
because i wasn't having success in the beginning like it wasn't like
i sent out some cards and i was instantly making seven figures i
i was get i wasn't getting deals i wasn't answering the phone and i don't
like to talk on the phone either by the way
so i i'm not number one i don't like to do it i didn't have time to do it so i
brought that person in for you it might be a bookkeeper maybe
you're not very good at doing the books maybe
maybe you're flipping houses and you need a realtor to come in and go look
for properties and make offers for you or something
there's you got to figure out like in your world what it looks like
so for me it was that office manager to come in and take those calls and then i
would go on the appointments and i was an okay salesperson but i
wasn't great i wasn't great with the negotiation
i didn't really like to sit in somebody's like nasty house for a couple
hours and get bit by fleas and then tell me they'd
rather burn the house down and sell it to me
and it was a saturday when i was away from my wife and kids it just wasn't for
me and so when i hired that salesperson i heard somebody who loves to do that
and negotiate in the thrill of the deal when she came in that's when we started
to explode and i was able to bring her in 100 commission so
it didn't cost me anything to bring that person on and when she came in we went
from doing nothing for the first four months me and
me and my lead manager to doing one deal then two deals a month
and four deals a month and she was able to go into the database
and really just put houses under contract on a regular basis
so you have to kind of realize that although you might think that you're the
best person at every single job inside of this new
company that you're building you're probably not there's people out
there that are better than all of us at whatever we do
and so when i when i realized that so my team in the beginning looked like
somebody to answer the phones for me somebody to go on appointments and then
eventually we got so many deals that i was working with the title
company and i was working with the sellers and the buyers
and so i needed somebody to help me on the operational side with the
transactions and start coordinating those so we hired
that person to come in and then the only thing i did at that point was the books
and i dealt with the um the business to business sales so anything that we
wholesaled i was working with the buyers so other landlords and flippers and
things like that so but your company could look different you might be a
really good salesperson and if you are hold on to that as long as possible and
hire out the other stuff that you're not necessarily good at and
what like what do you put off that's really important that you don't do
because you hate it and there's somebody out there that
really loves doing that stuff so um you know the first year we we went
from doing i did one flip the year before we did 67
that year in about eight months and there were just four of us and that
was probably my best year in real estate because we made almost 700 000
we were on track to be doing a million we did 120 000 that december
and there's just a couple people and so i just
organically grew that side of the business and that's what i'll recommend
to any of you just organically grow don't don't be too fast
to just hire five or six people and build this
team just you know scale responsibly kind of organically grow your company
over time yeah so so know your best and then delegate the rest i like that
i love that so i think a lot of people you know including myself in the
beginning by the way a lot of people are very scared to hire
somebody else because you know they see that as a risk right they see that as
well what if that person you know they steal from me or you know what if i
can't trust that person so for you you know it sounds like you
built a great team you did 700 000 that year
you know what are some qualities you look for in hiring somebody for your
real estate company to help you scale to help you build a seven-figure flipping
business so uh if it helps anybody i remember
telling my mentor who was challenging me to hire somebody i said i
i will never hire anybody i don't want to be responsible for anyone
i'm scared to put food on their table and take care of their family and all
that stuff i don't ever want to do that and he really challenged me and finally
i broke down and said okay but i have 40 people that work for me
now in two different companies so i i was there about five years ago i
was definitely afraid to hire anybody and now the thing that fills me up the
most is that like actually hiring somebody uh
so qualities that i look for in people um you know we use this we use this
thing in our company right now called the beach test
like would you want to sit on the beach with this person for a week and
actually enjoy their company so um really i think it's more about culture
than it is about anything else like do your core values align and do you have a
good culture and i think it's really important in a
small company as you get big like i'm sure
amazon doesn't really have a problem with this stuff right but small
companies like ours we need to have we need to be really
tight and i initially talked thought about it like a family and i
encourage all of you if you're just getting started or even if you're
building your business right now to not think of it like a family but think of
it like a team like a high performing super bowl
winning team because in the family structure
you got that like you got that uncle that might
show up to the christmas uh party that you're having and get a little drunk and
drive home and that's just like uncle uncle jimmy right and but on the
team like that's unacceptable right so what i
found was when we were thinking about like a
family it was kind of like it's okay they could do that or they can mess up
but the super bowl winning team like you're gonna get cut and everybody shows
up and you want the a players on the field
all the time and they know that so my my recommendation anybody is hire the
person first like don't even worry about the resume
until you figure out the person and then compare apples to apples like
ask the same questions what i see a lot of people do when
they're hiring is they find something that they like a lot about that person
maybe it's a sports team that they like or
maybe they grew up in the same area and your questions go in a totally different
direction than the other person that's getting the
by the book questions and at the end you go
i really like that person better you know and really you want to compare
apples to apples but you always also want to make sure that their
personality fits and their values line up with your values
because that's going to take you really far together and there's going to be
kind of like establish your core values and hire
fire reward people based on that specifically
so we know ours we got five in my company
every single person you should be able to stop them you should be able to you
go to one of our events go anywhere and talk to that person and say what are
your core values and they should be able to line them out
like that with no question that's how that's how important they are
to us i love that i love that so last question here bill what's the
last key piece of advice you know you said to hire somebody
you know you said to know your best and delegate the rest what are some
finalizing pieces of advice that you would give to
somebody that's watching this video looking for answers
and they're wanting to start a seven-figure flipping and wholesaling
business what other last key pieces of advice
would you give them well i would say one thing is just take it
one deal at a time like going from zero to one deal is so hard
like that's the biggest jump that you have to make that first deal
is it really is kind of like proof of concept
you get some serious heart from that like that will drive you
going from one to ten is easier going from ten to a hundred is easy and then
ten to a thousand or a hundred to a thousand is no problem
like it's just a couple different tweaks but really focusing on not thinking like
if you if you're sitting here going i've never done a deal or i've done one
deal and i want to build a seven figure business
like i didn't go after it to build a seven like a multiple seven figure
business with 20 people i said i'm just going to
do this one deal and then i'm going to do this next one
and then maybe a couple more and a couple more and a couple more
and when i look back it's you just go wow i can't believe that i am where i am
now but if i tried to start from zero and
look that far in the future and try to get there i wouldn't have
made it like it just wouldn't have happened
because you're you need to measure your results very specifically for where you
are today and so your the way you measure your
results are different than the way that me and my company measure our results
so look at that just keep putting those feet in front of each other like take
some action keep going and you're gonna hit a wall
you're gonna hit a ceiling you're gonna hit a point where you're like
this is hard and you're just gonna need to figure out like why are you doing
this is this what you really wanna do um what's it all for when you think
about that and you grab that y and like harness it
you'll be able to jump over the wall instead of like walk back the other
direction so i really will say the key is is to like
kind of be where your feet are like be where you
are and don't try to get into another place really really fast
and and and lose everything along the way um
so that's that's the biggest one for me i'd say uh like the other one is
is i think that it's a people business if you can really think about solving
problems and helping other people and you come at
it that way and you do it in a genuine manner
then you're going to be successful like you're going to figure it out business
whether you're flipping houses wholesaling houses doing a multi-family
buildings you're a landlord you're an airbnb
uh you're a developer you're a land flipper you're
you own a donut shop it does not matter like we really are
just business owners and when you can figure that out and just know that you
got to show up and help people you're going to do well trust me like
that's that's it don't overthink it take some action
uh get that first deal under your belt or that next deal and don't look too far
in the future that's my recommendation wow love it and
that's that's fantastic you know i mean you you've accomplished a lot in your
career so for you to give back to other people it's phenomenal so again guys for
you watching this video i want to remind you
go to bill's channel seven figure flipping the number seven the word
figure and the word flipping go subscribe not
just because we're asking you to subscribe because you're genuinely going
to find great content you're gonna find some
great answers on how to do what build it and duplicate it right success
is binary it's able to be replicated so go ahead and guys and check his videos
out i thoroughly enjoy checking out his videos as well
um so go ahead and go subscribe and thank you bill so much for joining us
and again where can people reach you besides your youtube channel do you have
a website do you have maybe you know an event or maybe you can point
to your shirt there you go the the shirt that you have on right now
yeah we've got an event called flip packing live it's uh it's in october so
depending on when you listen to this october 15th 16th and 17th
um you can go to packinglive.com and check it out and uh
the company's called seven figure flipping we uh got podcasts and all
kinds of different stuff that we do so check me out there and if you want to
get on any of our buyers lists you can just
contact me there we'd love to love to work with other landlords flippers
whoever we wholesale quite a few houses i love
it thank you so much bill thanks for having me