Welcome back to the Discount Property Investor podcast. Our mission is to share what we have learned from our experience and the experience of others to help you make more money investing like a pro. We want to teach you how to create wealth by investing in real estate, the discount property investor way. To jumpstart your real estate investing career, visit freewholesalecourse.com, the most complete free course on wholesaling real estate ever. Thanks for tuning in.

David: All right guys, welcome back to the discount property investor podcast. I am your host David Dodge. Guys, remember, I feel like I say this in every podcast episode, but you make your money when you buy, you get paid when you sell. I can't say this enough times. That's really the whole philosophy behind discount property investor and our entire branch is that you are buying at a discount and really as a wholesaler specifically, all we're doing is we're trading convenience to the seller for a discount and if they're not willing to give us a discount then you shouldn't be willing to trade them convenience. The convenience that we offer is crazy and unheard-of if you compare us to the traditional side of the real estate, we are the liquidity makers here, right? So, today's episode, I want to bring on a good friend of mine, Alex Pardo. Alex has his own podcast, his own mastermind. He's the man, welcome Alex.

Alex: No, thank you for having me David. Always a pleasure connecting with you and it's- I love doing these things. It's just fun to hop on here and talk shop and business and real estate and personal development and everything in between, so it's an absolute pleasure.

David: Can you hear me alright?

Alex: Yup, I can hear you fine. Can you hear me?

David: I can hear you great. Alright, good deal. Well, let's jump in man, thank you for coming on the show, I'm grateful for your time. So again, you've got a lot of stuff going, you have your own podcast, you have a mastermind that's thriving. I want to talk a little bit about some of the real estate that you're doing, some of the deals that you're working on, what kind of strategies are you using right now and also, you know with the recent pandemic, have you had to make any pivots or any shifts in your business? I know I have.

Alex: Yeah, yeah. Well, why don't we start there? Why don't we start with the pandemic and the shifts? Absolutely, we've had to make some shifts and I think you know, as you know, I think every entrepreneur- most businesses you have to adapt in order to succeed and to thrive, and this pandemic kind of threw the entire world, forget about the US, but it threw a big curve ball to everybody. And we were pretty- because of some of the communities and masterminds I'm plugged into, I feel like I kind of had my finger on the pulse from the jump, right? and we quickly controlled the narrative right? from a mindset perspective. I was in constant communication with my team, constant communication with lenders [audio cut] right? with sellers and everybody in between, our title company, even today several months removed or not removed, we're still in the middle of this but obviously it's been now two months behind us. We're in this new reality, you have to make sure lines of communication are open and you have to just be transparent, forthcoming and be very direct with people. So yeah, we had to pivot, we had to adjust I think overnight, we went from a seller's market to a buyer's market, at least I'll speak to South Florida here. And we- when we were having conversations with these buyers, we saw that they quickly, within a week or two, they start to tighten their buy box and their criteria. Many of our top buyers who have bought multiple properties just became more conservative overnight and I understood why. And they started- the prices they were paying, you know, 60, 90, 120 days ago, they were adjusting those prices now down about 20 to 25% and what was interesting David is that the sellers didn't react nearly as quickly as the buyers, at least in our experience. Sellers 30, 45, 60 days into this, we're pretty much still asking what they were asking three months prior. Now is when we're starting sellers- we're starting to see sellers become more in-tune with the reality that hey, this is a different market and things have changed. So yeah brother, we definitely had to pivot and adjust, our contracts have gone up, so we're getting more contracts. The challenging part has been selling some of our contracts, so out of every four contracts we would get, pretty consistently we'd sell off for ourselves 75% of them. So, we're batting somewhere between 75 and 90% as far as when we lock up a deal, it's pretty much we're finding a buyer and getting to the closing table. Now, quite honestly, it's about fifty-fifty so while our contracts are going up, our BC contracts have gone down. We don't typically assign too often, we more double close, so we'll contract with the seller which is the A to B transaction and then we will find a buyer and then do the what's called the B to C transaction and we'll double close.

David: Got it, got it. Okay, so I felt like I've seen similar however, what I've done is I've basically taken some of the buyer criteria that I'm getting on the B to C side on the back end and I have applied that towards my contract. So, I think I've approached it just a little differently. What I've created, maybe it's a beast that I've created I don't know but I've gone in at a lower rate. So, you know when we're doing our MAO formula and if you're new, the MAO formula is our maximum allowable offer calculator basically, I do it on the back of a napkin. It's- you start with your ARV * 70%, you take out your repairs, you take out your wholesale fee, right? Well, just like you said my buyers are no longer paying- well, it's starting to come back, which is really great you know, we're in the 9th week I believe give or take.

Alex: Yeah, yeah.

David: So it's starting to come back but I knew for the previous six, seven weeks that our buyers weren't paying 70% anymore, they were paying like 55 or 60 cents on the dollar, so what I did is I basically reduced my offers and it also reduced the number of contracts that came in the door, but it also anchored really low, so even though that I didn't get a bunch of business right away like you said that your Ab's have actually gone up, mine have gone down. However, what I've done is I've created a lot of leads that I see motivation in, that we put into the follow up funnel and we've anchored really low so now the hope started to go back to those people and make better offers, but still be below the 70%. You know what I'm saying?

Alex: I do, I do.

David: I kinda see that coming, that the buyers were going to be reducing their offers, so I just said: let's reduce ours at the same time. So, we have a little bit different school of thought, but either way we're both doing deals and that's what matters right?

Alex: There's multiple ways to skin a cat.

David: There's multiple ways to skin a cat so- I have a couple students right now that are just getting started right now Alex and one of the things that I'm constantly talking about is just make offers, you know, just make offers. My team probably averages- I think we did the math last night, we average about three offers a day every day, that's 7 days a week and you know, we're doing on a bad month 4, 5 deals and on a good month, you know, 10 or 12, but we're making a ton of offers. So, you know, one thing I like to say is: the number of offers that you make is directly correlated to the amount of money that you're going to make in this business. If you're making one offer a week, well you're going to get a deal, but it might take you 4 months, right? Maybe 6. You start making one offer a day, you're going to get there a lot quicker. If you're making 2 3 4 5 offers a day, you're going to get there even quicker. So, I'd imagine that you guys are making several offers a day as well.

Alex: Yeah, 100% man, it's a numbers game. This is a contact sport, sales is a contact sport. It really is you know, it's interesting I was having a conversation just last week with somebody and they have they been hit pretty hard by this pandemic and they didn't have a seasoned wholesale business. They were kind of early, this year's when they started getting it off the ground and they experienced some success but like, when the pandemic hit, it was almost like lights are out. Hey, I'm having a hard time moving anything and I- the first question I asked was: well, how many offers have you sent in the last couple weeks? And the answer was three, I said that's not nearly enough. You got to put more out there, you know, imagine going fishing and you don't have any chum in the water, you don't have any bait in the water, like what marketing are you doing? How many opportunities do you have? So, wholesale you know, it's kind of like a- this is a marketing business. It's a people and marketing business, and you have to get really really good at marketing. It's about generating leads, having leads come to you so you have opportunities to send offers. Without opportunities, it's hard to send offers and without sending offers, it's really hard to close deals.

David: Really hard to close. You know, it's really hard to sell something when you don't have any inventory.

Alex: Yeah.

David: You know, you got to have something under contract, and I love that you said that you guys close 75 to 90% and I love the transparency. You know, we're probably right there with you, I would say. Maybe even a little- maybe even closer to 75 than the 90 and it's okay to get a property under contract and not make a deal out of it, if you try and you did your best right? Like I tell that the sellers all the time, I'm overly transparent. You know, I tell them: hey, we bought 90 + houses last year, you know. One because we have a lot of partners that we work with which opens up the door to them knowing that maybe a partner will fall out of line down the road and there's the transparency approach but also that we try, and we care right? So, when we get a property under contract, we do everything we can to either close on it ourself or find a buyer that will close on it and make a little piece in the middle. And if we can't do that, then sometimes we're able to go back and renegotiate, but if we can't, we drop those contracts for whatever reason or they drop us, the odds of that person getting upset with me is so low cuz I set the expectation from the beginning and I'm sure you do too. I just say: listen, I'm going to do everything I can, I personally can't buy 90 houses in a year, right? I can't do that, but I can if I bring a network of buyers that I work with and partner with, and I've never really had a seller like question that too deeply to like, get to the to the root of wholesaling. It's more along the lines of just: let me go to work for you and try to get this done and if I can then it's going to be a win-win and if I can't, then we'll try to find another solution. You know it's so weird that I call somebody and I'm like the deal doesn't work, sorry goodbye. You know, it's like: what else can we do to help you? And that's- you know this kind of leads into, I think the main point that I want to make here Alex is that you know most of the time and this is such a crazy thing to think about but most of the time, the house that you meet the seller at or the house, the subject house that you're working on if your virtual, same thing the house in question here, right, usually isn't the problem. It's something underlying right? It's something else and that's just kind of like a domino in the solution to get that person's problems fixed and when you can solve that problem, usually your solving other issues, you know, it's just kind of rare to me, I would say maybe 10 to 20% of the time, the house itself is the problem. You know, it's kind of rare, usually it's like death, divorce, disease, job relocation, you know something else right?

Alex: And I think one of the things I'll pay you back on what you're saying, and I completely agree with you is I see too many wholesalers, too many investors, stop with the first question. One of the most important questions, you can ask a seller is why they might even be interested in selling that property? And too many people accept that surface-level answer and then move on to the next part of their script. You got to dig deep, you know, you can't [audio cuts out] sale, right? It's something that we kind of live by internally here so if a homeowner is not motivated and if they're not dealing with some level of [audio cuts out] your point usually is circumstantial, very rarely- I shouldn't say rarely but it's more often than not-

[overlapping speech]

David: That's a good way to put it.

Alex: Yeah, it's not necessarily like I'm a property disrepair situation, usually it's something else. It's already-

David: And again, I was thinking maybe 20-30%, something along that line because you do have the foreclosures and the pre-foreclosures and the tax delinquencies and the code violations and that's obviously property-related right?

Alex: Yeah.

David: But more times than not you know, I don't know maybe 60% would be a better scenario, 65% but it's not the property, it's something else that's going on with their life, so you got to get to the core. You gotta find out the reason that they're calling you, or the reason that they're still on the phone if you called them and if they're giving you information about the property and it's- me, it's like I don't even like, think that people should take sales classes when they're wholesaling. I think they should just read a couple books about making friends, you know.

Alex: How to win friends and influence people.

David: Yeah, this is a peoples business, right? So just make a friend, go out, ask questions, listen, you know, shut up when they're talking and listen to them, make a friend, and figure out what the root cause of that problem is, and then house can usually help them in some way, shape or form. I love it man.

Alex: You know what I think about it? I think about when you go to the doctor and you know, the doctor asked: okay, so what's up, you know, why are you here? what's going on? And you tell the doctor, you know hey, my knee really hurts. The doctor doesn't just take out his prescription, give you a prescription, send you on your way. He'll start to examine your knee.

David: He checks your lungs; he checks your heart. Yeah.

Alex: He checks you out, they check your vitals.

David: Maybe your knee hurts cuz your ass is fat. You gotta get on some weight loss pills or something.

Alex: Maybe

David: It could be another reason, I love it, I love it.

Alex: Yeah, it's not a question and then you're on your way, here do this and that's what I see too many investors and wholesalers do, is hey, why are you selling and their moving on to the next- like, you got to diagnosis the situation and you got to figure out what the real root of the problem is so that then you can present the solution.

David: You know, what I learned something valuable a long time ago, I think it was when I had Tom Kroll on my show and he was saying that if you can't get to the why, ask the when, and it'll reveal the why and it's something that I've kind of taken with me and it makes so much sense. I was doing that prior, but I didn't realize I was doing it but if you ask somebody why they need to sell their house, I mean to me, I don't ask it right away, I usually will build a little rapport so I don't get denied or rejected that answer too often, but sometimes you will and you'll get people that'll just say: hey, thanks for calling, you build a little rapport, hey why do you need to sell? You know I'm very transparent, I tell people too that I'm an investor, I don't pay retail however, I can help- I can give him a crazy level of convenience and I just need to get a discount and not to be crazy, but I'm not going to do it for free. That's what I do, I trade a discount for convenience, but I'll ask them why they need to sell and sometimes they won't want to tell me. They'll be like well, it's not your business. You know it's similar to me saying: what do you owe? Again, I get it out of people most of the time but sometimes they'll say it's not your business. So, what you can do to get to the why if you ask the why and they deny you is ask when. And again, I'm gonna plug Tom Kroll cuz he's the one who taught me this right? So, ask them when, so here's an example: hey, why didn't you just sell? It's not your business or you know, don't worry about it, it's my problem, not your problem or whatever that might be. Hey, no problem, I'm not trying to get involved in your business, I just want to be able to offer you the best solution that I can, I want to help right? So, when do you need to close? You know, can we close in 2 months or do you need this money next Wednesday? Oh, you need it next- Okay, no problem. I can probably get it to you next Wednesday. I can't make you any promises but I'm going to do my best by- you know, just out of curiosity, why next Wednesday? like, can it be next Friday? No, it's got to be next Wednesday because next Wednesday, my car is getting towed off the lot. Ok boom, now I just got the why right? Out of asking - So, I just think that there's a lot of great reasons to build a rapport because it prevents you from, you know, not getting those answers as well. Let's talk about some of the deals that you're doing if we can.

Alex: Yeah, yeah yeah.

David: I'm curious to hear about what you're working on right now.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely man.

David: Are you in the South Florida market?

Alex: Yeah, I'm in the Miami market, been here since I started this business in 2005. I've been doing this 15 years-

David: How far away from your house are you investing?

Alex: We're all over Miami, so Miami-

David: So, 25,30 miles every direction basically?

Alex: Yeah, pretty much and here's the thing about-

David: About the same as me.

Alex: Yeah, and the truth is that I started buying rentals in Cleveland about two years ago, about a year-and-a-half ago so with technology, you know, you can do deals anywhere. Now, I always recommend if people are getting started it's- I think it's just more convenient, it's easier when you can go out, drive the neighborhoods, get to know the market so always recommend people start locally. If you're listening to this, watching this, getting started, start locally unless you're like in just some small, tiny town with 200 people, that's a different story but the truth of the matter is you can do this business virtually, you really can.

David: Yeah.

Alex: Yeah, we do deals all over Miami. I'm so fortunate that I have like some rock stars on my team and I have a very small team now. We we're having this conversation a year ago, I had a team of eight. I've realized I've kind of gotten a little bit away from my vision and my business vision so intentionally and purposely, I wanted to get leaner, so we've taken our team, over the course of the last 12 months, from 8 people to 4 and I have just three rock stars that I'm so blessed that do a lot of the heavy lifting as far as the lead processing, the acquisition, the dispositions, and the TC side of the business- transaction coordination. But yeah, right now we're involved in 4 deals that we already have buyers on. One of the things, one of the tips I'll share with people is we just recently did this and I should have been doing it before, but do you ever get inspection reports on properties? Cuz we pretty much never did unless it was going to be like a rehab or something like that. If we were wholesaling it, we'd never pay the 250,300 bucks for a licensed GC to go inspect the property.

David: Yeah, sometimes it can be four hundred bucks but yeah, absolutely man.

Alex: Sometimes it can be 400 bucks well we uhm- we have a property under contract that it's a pretty tight spread. We're gonna make like $5100 on it which in our market for us, that's about a quarter of what we typically make.

David: How much were you making? I didn't hear you.

Alex: We're making 5100 bucks on this deal.

David: Got it, yeah.

Alex: So, we usually make somewhere between like 18 and 23 on a deal, on average in South- [audio cuts out]. So, this property's in disrepair, we just paid 275 bucks to have a licensed general contractor go out there to provide us with a 20-to-30-page PDF and the repair estimates came out just north of a hundred grand. Now, -

David: What'd you guys guess it would be?

Alex: Realistically, I think it [audio cuts out] the experience can do it for probably 50 to 60.

David: Okay so the report's gunpowder. I love it, so go on I don't know where I'm going with this.

Alex: Bingo.

David: We do this sometimes too, it's great.

Alex: So, this particular- the reason we decided to go down this route to pay the 275 bucks, even though we already [audio cuts out] going to make 5100 hundred bucks- the seller has an attorney and this attorney's very difficult. Can you hear me David?

David: Yeah, I can hear you great.

Alex: Okay sorry I just got an internet unstable message.

David: You're good.

Alex: The seller has an attorney, this attorney has been extremely difficult for my transaction coordinator to deal with and we knew that if we went back for a price reduction, it wasn't going to work without any ammo. We needed a reason as to why we needed a price reduction. Here's the thing because of Covid, the seller didn't disclose to us that the property has a pool and when the inspector went out there, the pool was going to easily take 15-20, 15-30 grand in repairs, right? If you wanted to like-

David: See my cat jumping up on the- hahaha.

Alex: I do see your cat popping up back there. Bring the cat on the podcast.

David: Yeah, I don't know what's going on here bro. So yeah, go on I'm listening, I'm listening.

Alex: So, man the point is, the seller didn't disclose several things to us. The seller didn't want to allow us access to the property because of Covid, they didn't feel comfortable. We tried every- [audio cuts out] to try and make them feel comfortable, we couldn’t so we finally got access to the property to do this inspection and we discovered a lot that the seller didn't disclose so we have plenty of leverage to reasonably go back for a price reduction. We're expecting to hear today, but I'm very confident. I wish I had the final result, but I don't. I'm very confident this inspection report that we paid $275 will easily get us a 10 to 20 discount on this property, 10-20 thousand dollars.  

David: So, you're spending 300 bucks to, you know, get a $10,000 discount on property.

Alex: Or more.

David: Or more, yup. So, one of my favorite strategies is to not even pay for the report and just have the buyer do it right? Then just take the report from the buyer straight to the seller and renegotiate based on their costs.

Alex: Yeah

David: You know, but either way sometimes getting that report is so valuable just because they're going to go through and they're going to nickel-and-dime every 2 by 4, every piece of drywall in there, that's their job, right? And their job is to get you a report that's 50, 60 pages long, right? And you know, it's not to say that those things don't need to be done but the cost to fix those is most likely going to be cheaper when you have your own guys doing it or your own crew.

Alex: Exactly.

David: Or your able to manage the material cost, you know, so and so forth. Absolutely love that strategy Alex.

Alex: I wanna highlight something. I don't think there's a right or wrong, you just have to figure out what works for you David, but we've never been a company that goes back to get to renegotiate and we trade as they say or try to get a price reduction in every deal. We'll only do it if the seller didn't disclose something to us or a particular situation. I know plenty of guys that- and are we leaving money on the table by not going back and asking for price reductions? We probably are, but for us we've just made a decision that you know, there's only certain instances of circumstances in which were going to go back and renegotiate, and this was one of them that we feel comfortable doing so.

David: Yeah, no, absolutely man. I feel the same way. You know, we'll go back and renegotiate if the seller leaves something out or doesn't disclose it or if the deal is just super super thin for us, you know, we see some opportunity there. At the end of the day, we still want to make it a win and I know you do too.

Alex: Exactly.

David: We still want to make it a win for the seller. The buyer wouldn't you know, he's always seeing a win if they're sending offers, right? And you know, we're making a little bit in the middle so I just- I love that man. So, you guys got some wholesale deals under your belt, that's uhm let's talk a little bit real quickly about your virtual. So, you're doing wholesaling in the market you live in which is Miami, but you mentioned what's the- Cincinnati or something like that or?

Alex: No, Cleveland. So, there's a particular- so, one of the guys in my mastermind who I've become friends with has a very large rental portfolio in a particular part of Cleveland. You know buying properties, I've looked here in South Florida. I wanted to build a rental portfolio here in South Florida, dude Addie area, which is basically like a war zone. You're dropping 100 grand on a house in just a horrible area like horrible. Miami is just a little bit of a different market you know-

David: Yeah, so it doesn't make sense. You can't get properties out- 1% rule or-

Alex: It's very difficult, it's very difficult. Now, post-Covid that may change admittedly, but when I was looking a year, year-and-a-half ago those numbers didn't exist man. It just didn't make sense to drop 200, 250 grand into a property that rents for 13,1400 dollars, at least for me that didn't make any sense. So, yeah man, I launched a direct mail campaign, I did some market research, I narrowed it down to three ZIP codes in a B neighborhood that I wanted to be in. An area- basically a B is an area that pretty much any of us would comfortably live in, we can walk down the street at night with our family, no problem at all. And you know what I- one of the biggest mistakes I made David, and I think this would be valuable for anybody watching and listening, I've been in this game now 15 years, the first probably 11 to 12 years, I got kind of addicted to the money that you can make in this business as a wholesaler and yet I wasn't taking that cash and putting it into assets, right? and I know you've done a very good job of building your portfolio through the burr strategy and the burr method and all that. I didn't- I made that mistake where I was just wholesaling, wholesaling, and wholesaling.

David: You like to work.

Alex: It's a lot of work. I built a team, and I built a system, so I wasn't- but it's still a lot of work. I still got to manage the team and all that kind of stuff, and then I finally just wi- you know, I got wiser and I started taking a lot of that cash from the wholesaling business and I started buying properties in a particular part of Cleveland so fortunately, I have him as my boots on the ground, were very, very, very good at marketing. So, check this out, look how different- how markets operate so differently. So, about a year-and-a-half ago, we launched a direct mail campaign, it was about 7,000 postcards. I got four deals from that 7,000-postcard campaign. If I did 7000 [audio cuts out], I would probably get nothing. It's just a different market, you know what I mean? Different seller, different- in Miami at that time, I would have had to send fifty thousand, hundred thousand postcards to possibly get four deals on- it's just that- it's very different markets so yeah, man, I wholesaled some properties and started building a small rental portfolio, and now that's something we're still doing. We're still looking for opportunities in that particular part of Cleveland.

David: Hell yeah, man, I love it man. The thing about wholesaling to me is it's a means to an end. I love it, I'll probably never stop doing it just because I can put together a team, you know, we're probably going to be expanding into some other markets here soon but really though it's a means to an end. It's a job, it's a high paying job, it's a fun job. I got an appointment today in an hour, gotta go pick up some permits this afternoon and stop by one of the rehabs, so it's something that I enjoy doing, right? It's much better to me than then having a boss and what not, but it's still a job, right? Like my boss is the sellers and the buyers, I got to keep everyone happy all the time so it's actually- in a way, I have 50 bosses so do you, not one right? But I like that approach better but again, it is a job, it's a means to an end and-

Alex: It's not the end-all-be-all, at least for-

David: It's not the end all be all, right. Like, the flips are great too and we don't even you know, so like in St. Louis, you're saying 18-23, you know I'm- my teams probably averaging maybe seven or eight thousand average wholesale deal so we're definitely a lot lower but our cost to get a deal's a lot lower too. You're saying you have to send 50,000-100,000 postcards, we got to send maybe you know, 2000 or 3000, 4000, 5000 it just kind of depends, right? so it's a whole lot lower.

Alex: That doesn't exist in Miami.

David: But the thing is though, is the cost of the properties that we're wholesaling sometimes are a lot lower. You know, we might be buying a property for 20, 30, 40 grand. So, in terms of the percentages that work the market up, it's pretty relative.

Alex: Yeah, it's super relative.

David: In Arizona or Southern California or New Jersey, for example, that house maybe 400 grand at their buy, 500 grand. So, for them to make a 30- or 40-thousand-dollar profit, the percentages are relatively the same. It's very difficult to make 18 grand on a house you buy for 18 grand. It can be done but you know, it's a lot more difficult so we do more deals, but the spreads are a little less over here on Earth, but that's why I love the fact that we can market direct to the seller. It's a means to an end for me to get a property that I'm going to enjoy fixing up with my team or a property that I can rent out and I can make some long-term wealth, some passive income. To me appreciation in my market is just kind of icing on the cake, I don't bank on it, you know, so [overlapping speech] around the country or buying- I had a guy on the show yesterday Alex and they're getting negative ROI on their return like- negative cash flow, but they're banking on appreciation. I would never do that in my market, maybe in your market you would, it's a little different but never would I do that. It's always bought for cash flow and if we can make appreciation along the way, great. At the end of the day though, the game is somebody else is paying off the debt, you know, so you're building wealth slowly, you're not paying taxes on the wealth your building, you only pay taxes on the income. It's like, why would I wake up every day and focus on more income if I just pay more tax? Instead, I'd rather have more assets that other people are paying off. I mean, it's just a no-brainer to me.

Alex: Yeah, people listening, they just need to ask, start with the end in mind. That's advice that was given to me by a coach many many years ago. Figure out what you want, why you want it, and then reverse-engineer the process of the quickest path and the quickest way to get there, you know. So, for most of us wholesaling, it's a transactional business, it's a high-paying job, it's a means to an end, it's not the end-all-be-all but figure out what you ultimately want and then it's clear [audio cuts out] design a plan to help you get there.

David: I love it man, I love it. Alex, thank you so much for coming on and sharing about your business, about your team, about some of the deals that you're doing. Where can people find you? just talk a little bit about you know, your social media channels as well as the mastermind. I'm curious to hear how that's going.

Alex: Yeah, thank you, I appreciate the opportunity. So, you mentioned at the top of the show I also host the podcast called The Flip Empire show, which is really a passion project. Absolutely love it, been doing it four years now, I do 2 episodes a week.

David: How many episodes do you guys got out?

Alex: 400 and- probably 420 or so.

David: Damn, you guys have double, this is episode 179, I think? give or take.

Alex: Dude, that's amazing.

David: Yeah, it's good though.

Alex: It's crazy, I was on Facebook live this morning and I read some stat that most podcasts like die after like the 6th or 7th show because- brother it takes-

David: It takes- Yeah, it takes a lot of plugging away at it to get it up and running man. Think I might have lost you.

Alex: Can you hear me?

David: There you go, you're back. I got you.

Alex: Okay, sorry about that. Well, it takes a lot of consistency and by the way, if you lose me again, let me know cuz I think my internet's having some issues here.

David: You're good.

Alex: But yeah man,400 something episodes by the way, I don't know if you saw Joe Rogan, hundred-million-dollar contract to move exclusively over to Spotify. The top podcasts are out there so there's something to this man, I think there's going to be ripple effect for a lot of content creators, which is awesome. But yeah, so The Flip Empire Show, if you guys head over to flipempire.com/podcast, you can subscribe there and then you mentioned the mastermind, you know, I've derived so many benefits and so many connections from just masterminds and coaches I've been a part of, that about a year ago, I got together with a really good friend of mine Steve Cavanaugh.

David: He's a great guy. I've met Steve several times, interviewed him several times. Great guy man, I really like Steve.

Alex: Thank you, yeah awesome dude, awesome dude. We put together 'ascend' which essentially is a mastermind and coaching community for entrepreneurs essentially that want to ascend their life and their business. So, that's going amazing, we're basically full at capacity and it's- that's really David where my joy and fulfillment comes from. It's from getting to work with the entrepreneur's, we do real estate as a vehicle, it's a tool. There's really not even an emotional connection to us closing deals. It's great because we're helping sellers and buyers and the money, we make but it's not what really fills my cup, what fills my cup is the podcast importing into people's lives.

David: I love it man, I agree. So, that's the ascend mastermind.

Alex: Yeah, so ascendyoursuccess.com. If you have any-

David: ascendyoursuccess.com and then The Flip Empire Show.

Alex: Yeah, yes sir.

David: Guys, you gotta check it out. I've listened to several podcasts that Alex has done, great podcast host, great content, so definitely go check that out. Where would we find you on your socials?

Alex: Yeah, so let me see @AlexPardo25 on Instagram, /AlexPardo15 on Facebook, and what else? and then YouTube.com/AlexPardo.

David: How's YouTube coming along? You having some success over there?

Alex: Honestly no and that's because I recently launched this- so man if I could rewind the clock when I launched the podcast, I would have done video and audio like you're doing now. The first 300 plus episodes, it was just audio, so I never even thought to like, it's just a dumb mistake.

David: Yeah, you know YouTube is a tough beast man. To get subscribers on YouTube is much harder than to get followers on any other platform in my opinion.

Alex: I would agree.

David: But yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, I'm glad that you're doing these in video and audio now and getting them up on both channels, you know.

Alex: Yup, exactly.

David: You probably get about 25% of our listens or I should say view, however you want to look at it from the video channels.

Alex: That's fantastic. How long have you been doing YouTube?

David: Say that again.

Alex: How long have you been doing YouTube?

David: My personal YouTube is kind of new, I only have like maybe 1900 subscribers are on my personal, but I've been pushing it hard for like the last month or two.

Alex: Good for you man.

David: And then the podcast YouTube probably got 800 or 900 and we've never not done video. I mean, I've probably done two or three podcasts in my entire life that were just audio. All of it typically is video as well so, you know we got a ton of content out there which is great on both channels but yeah YouTube is tough man, it's a different beast out there but you know, consistency just like anything, just like our marketing, just like our deals, you know. Consistency and just putting it up.

Alex: And you know what I want to encourage people to do as we start to kind of wind down here? You're watching this, you're listening to this, you're very unique right? You have a voice, you have a message, share it with people, you know, because you can help others and I find so many people are- don't put themselves out there on social media when they have content they want to share their truth because of they're scared or they're insecure, they're fearful of how they might come across and look, I would challenge you to get past that and it's easier said than done but share your truth, you know, share your message because there's only one of you.

David: Making content has so many advantages so like one of the things about a podcast- let's switch gears here for just a second but one of the things about the podcast that I absolutely love is it's a trojan horse. I learned this from Mitch Stephen, you familiar with Mitch?

Alex: Yeah, thousand houses?

David: Yep down in San Antonio, great guy took me on his on his ranch and we went boar hunting and he basically taught me how to monetize the podcast which is slow but it's starting to work and it's great but one of the things that he had taught me is it's a trojan horse and what he meant by that is, you know, you typically aren't going to be able to get on the phone with 30- for 30 minutes to an hour with people that I'm interviewing or that you're interviewing, you know, if you call them enough, of course you're going to be able to get them, but are they going to want to talk to you? Are they going to want to open up and tell you about their business? No, they're going to want to charge you, typically right? They're going to want to get you in the program or whatever, which is totally fine, time is money, I have my own program, right? But what you can do is you can interview people on a podcast, so I highly encourage everyone to podcast right? You can interview people and you can get a free coaching session with these people. So, I got 175 episodes and I look at it like I got 175 people that have given me 30 minutes to an hour of their time to coach me on what I'm doing compared to what they're doing, what's working for them, you know how they structure their organization. I mean, it's the value that you can create for yourself but also share with others is immense. It's amazing.

Alex: Know there's so many benefits to podcast and that's just one of them, and the ability to expand your network, it's almost like an easy button to be able to connect with people that you may be otherwise wouldn't have had a chance to connect with.

David: Absolutely and, you know, just to learn about other markets around the country and what people are doing. It's amazing, I love it. Alex, thank you so much for coming on the show. Guys, go check out Alex on his socials, go check out The Flip Empire Show and ascendyoursuccess.com, that's the mastermind. Alex is good people; I love having him on the show. I'm grateful for your time this morning. Alex, any parting words for the listeners, the audience, the viewers?

Alex: Yeah, guys get clear on the vision that you have for your life, that's the foun- that's like a foundation to a house to me. Get clear on what you want for your life and then design a business to support that lifestyle. So many people have that reversed David, they're always hustling and grinding and deal chasing and money and then life is being sacrificed. The work that we do with Ascend always start at the vision for your life and then build a business to support the lifestyle, not the other way around.

David: Man, I love it. It's so true- just love it. I can't even repeat what you said exactly but the word is, it’s perfect. Alright guys, signing off. Thanks for watching thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.

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