David: Alright guys welcome back to the Discount Property Investor podcast. Hey, Mike! How you doing, man?

Mike: Hi Dave, I’m doing great this morning. It has been ages.

David: It has been a while since we have done some recording.

Mike: That is part of the episode today; we are just going to talk to what we have been up too, right?

David: Yeah. We got the new intro music.

Mike: We did, hopefully you guys liked it. A little change up, we are calling it Season 2, because obviously if you look at our publishing schedule; we took off for a few months. We took off for several reasons; one, podcasting is a lot of work.

David: It is a lot of work.

Mike: Putting it out every week we didn't realise how much effort went into that. Again, it is something we are happy to do; I think we enjoy doing it.

David: Absolutely.

Mike: It's fun to come in here and chat with each other, chat with guests, share content with everyone out here. But again, it's a lot of work. So we took off three or four months.

David: I think we stopped right before Christmas. Today is the 1st of March, sorry second of March.

Mike: Probably won't publish this one for a little while, just because we want to get a couple cued up for everybody so we can consistently publish again. That is out goal; to release weekly once we start going again. That is the plan, but I guess the reason we also back off, so let's talk a little bit about a company and what's been going on there then.

David: Absolutely.

Mike: We had kind of a our annual retreat. This was back in November and we were looking at everything we were doing as a company. There was just so much going on that we weren’t having as much success in each area that we wanted. I think that's the easiest way to say it.

David: Absolutely, you nailed it.

Mike: We're making money, but not having the amount of success we wanted in each area that we were trying to focus on.

David: We were not making eight million dollars a week each; I was pissed off about that.

Mike: Again, that's why a lot of us get into real estate to make eight million dollars a week.

David: Right.

Mike: So anyway, we have, how many businesses do we have? We have probably six or seven different companies set up, each one with a different focus. Four principle partners in the business, so each one of us was focusing on one and a half, well not even. We all had our hands in everything.

David: Yeah.

Mike: So it was just a little bit overwhelming.

David: It was, it was very overwhelming.

Mike: Again I think our problem we soon discovered, our problem is we can't keep up with that much stuff. It is a struggle day to day just to know what's going on in each area of the business. So we had our management retreat back in November, we focused, well we kind of modelled it on the book, 'Traction', the entrepreneur operating system, we have mentioned this in the past. Kind of our take away, our new motto for this year was divide and conquer. Because we are not conquering all eight areas, the seven areas we are focusing on. So we are scaling back and focusing on basically four different business units, because there are four managers. One of us is kind of the lead on it and one of us is the backup for it, we call him the visionary, or the integrator on each of those. That way we each have a focus area. Something we can really focus on and be held responsible for, for each one of the business units. So this year we are focusing on four different areas. One of them is wholesaling; one of them is rehabs, that is broken into rehabs and rental. The next areas we are focusing on is coaching, the last one is our retail brokers business. So those are really the four areas we are focusing on the four of us. Again, you heard coaching in there, so that involves our podcasting again, because we really do like this portion of it. I know the other guys like it to and they are involved in that in some capacity as well. So that is kind of the plan, that is our divide and conquer.

David: Instead of having all four of us work on all four of those topics of business units; we have divided it up and given one person a lead on each of those units. As Mike said, there is obviously help and secondary people involved. Each person now has a role, and kind of being the executive, the chief...

Mike: Absolutely.

David: ... on that particular... too many chiefs sometimes and not enough Indians. That's what we have done; we have divided it up and said, hey you focus on this, you focus on that. That is another reason we have taken some time off of podcasting, because we have been working on those business units. Especially when it comes to the coaching businesses. We have been coaching students, we have tons of students all over the country at this point. Every single student we have had done a deal if not deals.

Mike: We backed off from recruiting new students for a little while, because we are making sure all our students are doing well, and they are. Every one of them is doing deals. Basically across the country we have students now. Some in smaller markets it is a little bit more difficult. You know who I’m talking to if you're listening. It is a little bit more difficult to get those deals done, get them to the finish line; that's the most important thing.

David: Right.

Mike: So yeah it's pretty exciting. So let's talk about our roles, Dave.

David: Sure.

Mike: Just to share with the listeners here is what is going on in our company. I cut my teeth wholesaling, that is where I started. It's a passion of mine, that because of the state of the market and how our company evolved; I have kind of taken a backseat in our wholesale business. As the leads came in, we had more and more people help work the leads. So it is one of those things where I slowly backed out of that business. Again, I think it is one of those things you really need to know yourself well enough to know your strengths and weaknesses. I can wholesale with 90% of them.

David: You can wholesale with the best of us.

Mike: But I know that my partners are even better at building that rapport more quickly. They have more skills. So again, I am going to let them do it and back off of it. Again, if push comes to shove I am happy to jump back in. Just like any of us, we are happy to join in any area of the business. Again, I am moving out of that wholesale role.

David: So you have moved into a new role, let's talk about that.

Mike: Exactly, so I have talked into the rehab role. So Bill, one of our other partners, kind of share the rehab business as we call it. We really water it down because our rehabs are really broken into two different types. We call them wholetales; we have talked about that before.

David: Quite a few times.

Mike: And rentals. So wholetale again if you haven't listened to us before, is basically we are buying off market for the most part, and then we just do a paint, carpet, very light rehab, then we re-list it, re-sell it retail to an end consumer.

David: Have we done any on market wholetales, or have they all been off market?

Mike: We purchased, they were listed, then rehabbed it?

David: Some rentals we have done listed?

Mike: So far we have not; we are looking at a couple now.

David: That’s a good point though, you know? You still want to seek those off market deals, guys. That is where you are going to get the most equity and the biggest spread.

Mike: Oh heck yeah.

David: Direct to the seller.

Mike: Look at the background, guys. Discount Property Investor. That has always been our message that you have to buy at a discount. You can't be buying at retail prices and making a good spread on your end result. So again, I have moved over to the rehab business, that's my primary focus. I support our retail side as well. We have done kind of an interesting thing there. We have a new broker in. Dave, what are you up to?

David: I am taking the lead on wholesale. I am working on acquisitions, trying to get out in the field as much as possible, get in front of the sellers.

Mike: Because he's a stud guys.

David: Get out there.

Mike: Look at the face if you are watching this video.

David: Build that rapport.

Mike: Who are you going to pick?

David: Get out there, get in front of the seller, try and get that deal, try to negotiate the deal down. Again, I am just working acquisitions, I am also taking the lead on the coaching business and trying to help grow that side of the business as well. My main focus is divide and conquer, is acquisitions, is get out and wholesale deals for the business, help find that next wholetale deal, help find that next rental property we are working on. Again, just acquisitions. Our other two partners; we will briefly touch on those. Ray is taking over with the dispositions. He is still working acquisitions, but he has taken lead on the dispositions. Once we get that wholesale deal, or that wholetale deal, I guess rentals not so much. But a wholetale deal, he is a broker as well, so he is very well knowledged and versed on the broker side of the business. But he is our main point of contact with our buyers at this point. We have kind of transitioned away from using a virtual assistant, to using an actual person that is involved in the business, and is one of the key players in this business.

Mike: Yeah that is something. That is a hard lesson we learned too; was outsourcing things that shouldn’t be outsourced. I think that’s one of them because again, the buyers want to talk to us. They want to have that relationship with us. We learned that lesson; not a huge hit, but made more sense to have one of the principles talking with these people, spent time building relationships with and all that.

David: Yeah, that's a good point.

Mike: It was a lesson we learned and really one of the last things we would want to outsource.

David: Last but not least, Mr. Bill. He has been focused a lot on rental properties. I mean since... I don't know if we ever had a single rental when we did our last episode back in... late November.

Mike: I think we might have got stuck with that one up in North County that we were trying to wholetail. That's a great rental for the price, let's just keep that thing.

David: At this point we are 3 months in 2018, we have eight or nine.

Mike: We are moving full steam ahead.

David: Eight or nine rentals as a company now. Two or three coming online in the next month or two. So our goal is to add two or three rentals a month to our portfolio. We are rocking and rolling. Divide and conquer has really helped us out.

Mike: I really do, I feel like we are a lot more focused when we have that silo, that area that you are in charge of. It is much easier to be accountable to yourself and everyone else. You are the one in charge of that, well then you better do it. Same thing, why don't we have any rehabs being sold this month? Well it's because I didn't do it well enough. It is very important to... so the next thing we wanted to talk about was what we were working on for podcast...

David: So season 2, that's kind of what we have called this new... bringing the podcast back. Season two after taking a break, it just kind of fit. But what we really want to focus on in this new season is more cast studies; more what we are doing in our business day to day. It is going to be a little difficult with the podcast; however we are going to do our best to make it work with the podcast. If you watch us on YouTube or the video... whenever we record these we do audio and video. Obviously...

Mike: That's a really good point; I don't know if anyone listening the podcast or everyone listening knows that we are recording in video format every episode. Every episode since we started we are doing in video as well. Those are published on YouTube as well as our website.

David: Facebook and website, all that good stuff. Anywhere you can find it online. But the point is, we are going to do our best too... because we have expanded our business into rental properties and wholetales and rehabs, as well we wholesale. So wholesale is the means to an end for us. It's quick money and that's what we do primarily. However, most seasoned real estate professionals and investors know that wholesaling pays the bills, it's a job. The goal is to have that passive income, hence rental properties. Also with the flips, these rehabs, we call them more wholetales because we are not really going in at this point and spending $50-60,000 rehabs. We are trying to do the $20-30,000 or even less, even $10-15,000. We call them more wholetale; we are buying wholesale, we are fixing them up, then typically listening these properties and selling them retail, because we can get the biggest spread. So the difference between doing just the wholesaling business, and now adding the rehabs and the rentals; is we now have more revenue streams. We are kind of building a long term wealth system, versus more of a day job.

Mike: Well in each one of our areas that we focus on, is actually generating revenue now. Which makes it a lot more fun. We are not making eight million a month but we are getting close. Six and a half million a month so pretty good.

David: That's right.

Mike: One day.

David: Now that we have the ability to showcase what we are working on, we are going to use that. We are going to help get that message out, we want to use this podcast to teach people. That has kind of been the initial goal is to spread the word and spread the wealth. So we are going to be out in the field, we are going to be doing before and after and during on these wholetales, on these flips, on these rehabs, as well as in these rental properties. We are going to talk about what makes a good wholetale. We are going to talk about what makes a good rental. In our market and other markets. We are going to be showcasing what we are doing from start to finish on these projects. Teaching people this business from the inside. We have been in this business for years and years now. We want to help people, teach them, show them.

Mike: So Dave and I are relatively young, but we have been at it for several years. Our partners have been in it for even longer. We have a wealth of knowledge we have tapped into. We really do want to share our opinion on what the right thing to do is and how we are making money. So it's fun. The videos, again I think we are going to try and focus pretty hard to make sure that plays well for our audio listeners. So when we go though the properties we will do our best to describe things for the listeners as well. So you don’t have to check out the video, but we want you know that the videos are out there. We are also going to publish some of the videos probably only will be in our courses. Or we will put them in our courses, maybe out for free as well. But again, getting really specific on things. At that point it is kind of important to watch.

David: The podcast is great for people on the move; it's audio, you can listen to it in our car, in the gym. If you really want to get the most out of what we're providing here in season 2, and probably moving forward with future episodes. The best value you are going to be receiving will be from watching the videos. You are going to be able to see hands on what we are doing with these properties. We are going to be out in the field with video cameras, mick'ed up. We are going say, hey here today we bought this thing and it needs all this work. We are going to come back in two weeks and take another video. Talk through it, say we have done this, here is the material we used, here is the cost. We are happy to show all the information.

Mike: You know what we should do? I am just thinking out loud. When we record a video, one that would be better to watch in video. Maybe we will put that in the title or in the comments, the actual link to the YouTube video or whatever. That way people can go find it, I think that's a great idea.

David: Let's do it.

Mike: Just so you guys can easily access it one way or another back and forth.

David: Season 2, we're back! We are excited; we are super excited to be back. We are going to be a lot more hands on in this next season. We are going to be using our knowledge to give back to our community. So we thank you guys for listening. We are excited to bring all this new content to the table; it's going to be awesome.

Mike: Thanks for listening and look forward to talking to you guys soon.