From Wholesaling to Winning: Steve Cohen’s Journey to Investor Success

Mike Hambright (00:01.464)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show today. I’m here with Steve Cohen of investor boots and he helps real estate investors with services that we’ll talk about a little bit throughout the show here. But we really want to talk about today is just how to make your life easier as a real estate investor. You know this already, if you’re listening to this right now is you thought you were going to flip houses and but but it’s death by a thousand cuts, right? There’s a million things you have to do administratively. There’s a bunch of stuff you have to do for the government. You got the tax side. You got all these little

administrative burdens that just come with being an entrepreneur if you weren’t used to that, that it feels like you end up spending about half your time doing stuff that’s really not adding value to the business and certainly isn’t the life that you started the business for in the first place. So today we’re gonna talk about how to outsource some of the things that you’re doing in your business to build a better life, to allow you to live the life that you started this business for in the first place. So Steve, great to see you buddy.

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (00:54.646)
Hey Mike, thanks so much for having me, I appreciate it.

Mike Hambright (00:57.174)
Yeah, yeah. And it’s kind of funny. talking about how life gets in the way. Right before we started the podcast today, Steve was at his office and he’s like, the fire alarm’s going off and I’m going to have to run home and do this from home. So that’s that’s the life of an entrepreneur. Perneur, right? Is there wasn’t a real fire, right? It was just a fire alarm. But we’re proverbially putting out fires like all day long, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so no problem. So.

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (01:13.036)
No, it’s the fire alarm.

Exactly. So you might hear a little echo in the background and that’s why.

Mike Hambright (01:24.3)
So yeah, we want to talk today about, know, I think when you started as a real estate investor, you realized that there’s all these little things that it seems like I have to generate a lead. I’m going to get a house under contract. I’m going to talk to, you know, help the seller out of their situation. I’m going to find somebody to buy it. But academically, that’s how it works. But there’s like a million things in the middle from dealing with lock boxes to notaries to every little thing. And maybe just tell us a little bit about your story, about kind of how, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs,

find their way into their business from a need that they had in their business. And that’s your story too, right?

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (02:00.12)
Yeah, you I was so excited about becoming a wholesaler. just, I absolutely love the business model. And I started, I started with my friend, one of my high school best friends, and we were getting started and we were just perfectionists. So we were picking our team. had picked acquisitions people we know, disco people we knew, we had a transaction coordinator, awesome bookkeeper, CPA, attorney. I mean, we had built out this list. We bought our leads.

And when it was time to go in and get boots on the ground and go out and get photos of these properties or set up a lockbox and do all of these essential tasks that we needed done, it was like, no matter how good the team was, picked, we were having to rely on people that we were, we were literally on Craigslist. We were going on Facebook and we were trying to find people. So it was a big realization for us that it was like, smokes. goes back to the old cliche. You’re only as good as your weakest link.

And it really made us sit down and rethink everything and how we were going to be able to get reliable sources to help us nationwide. wanted to be nationwide. So we had reached out to one vendor we found and long story short, it turned out he was going out of business. He had about three or four states cornered where he was offering photo services and lockbox setup. We ended up calling him back a couple of weeks and he sold his list of vendors to us.

And here we are that we’ve grown that list to over 300,000 now. And that’s how we got started in this space and actually transitioned from wholesaling to providing nationwide boots on the ground.

Mike Hambright (03:42.04)
Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, there’s so many things from like taking before pictures, taking after pictures, getting stuff notarized, like running a document somewhere, recording a document with the county. Like there’s so many things, picking up lock boxes, putting on lock boxes, picking up your sign, you know, all that stuff. As you know, that’s your business model, but.

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (04:01.634)
Definitely. Even if the seller lives an hour away from the property and they have the key, being able to send somebody an hour away to drive the key down and put it in the lock box comes in so handy. So you’re not having to worry about all those little, like you said, all these moving parts that are involved in these transactions.

Mike Hambright (04:20.472)
Yeah, yeah. You one of the things that I think simplifies things for real estate investors is, you know, outsourcing those things, but it has to start with a very, documenting a very clear process of what happens because, you know, what has to happen from end to end to get a deal done.

Right. And then even documenting, well, if we need this, like this is who to call or this is who can help with that or whatever. And I think for a lot of real estate investors, especially some of the small people doing, you know, two or three deals a month or less, they tend to not have a big team. So a lot of it’s just in the owner’s head, right. As to what to do. And so, you know, I think part of it is just having a very clear, like SOP standard operating procedure for what exactly has to happen so that you can, as a real estate investor, you can outsource that to.

even a virtual assistant or an admin in your office that knows exactly like, hey, we need this document signed or we need to do this with the key or here’s how we get the key from the seller to the house if you sign a contract online or whatever. And so would you say that a lot of the customers that you work with have clear processes and so they know exactly when to come to you or is that something that they kind of struggle with?

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (05:34.69)
You know, there’s a good mix. I’d say once you start working with us and you understand how much time you can get freed up, then you really understand where we can fit into your current SOPs. It’s the guys that are just getting started a lot that we find that are still struggling and spending a lot of time again, going on Google, Craigslist, Thumbtack, into Facebook message boards. know, we still have…

We are bringing on clients that are calling up real estate agents asking for favors and then splitting some of the assignment fees. So we have a really good mix, but again, we try to come in and there’s so many ways to really just free up your time. If you can free up an hour extra time a day from this administrative work and just be on the phone or even spending time with your family, I just think it’s so worth it at the end of the day.

Mike Hambright (06:07.681)
Right.

Mike Hambright (06:30.254)
Yeah, yeah, God forbid enjoying your life more, which is why we all started this, right? But we tend to be, we tend to either be cheap or just scrappy or like, I’ll figure it out. And as you know, especially for people that operate in multiple markets, like they have to go find all those relationships on their own. And sometimes you’re relying on one person and then all of a sudden they’re sick or they fell off the face of the earth or something happened. so, you know, I think

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (06:35.383)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (06:58.328)
Part of, was talking to a friend today that has been in the business for a really long time and we were just talking about.

this kind of general business maturity after you’ve been in the business for, you know, I’ve been in the business for 16 years now, right? You start to like realize like, I’m willing to pay more for convenience. At some point you have this break. You’re like, okay, this isn’t the cheapest way to do it, but I know that it’s going to make my life easier. And there was a time in my life where any sort of service I would go out and I’m like, oh, sort by like cheap from cheapest to most expensive. And I’ll be honest now, and I’m not saying that your service, I know your service isn’t the most expensive by the way, but

I’m just talking about the convenience of everything almost everything I buy now or I look at a service online I literally sort it from most expensive to least expensive because I know it’s just gonna save me time my time of not having to fiddle around with a bunch of people that don’t know what they’re doing or That I’m gonna be chasing my tail to try to get them to do what they said they would do

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (07:55.02)
Yeah, mean, kind of check for speed. I remember when somebody told me that early on in my entrepreneurial journey, but look, one thing that came out of the pandemic was DoorDash, the Instacart, you know, all of these services that you could just order on your phone and you didn’t realize that at the time, didn’t, you almost didn’t have a choice, but you’re freeing up your time. You know, you’re paying a little bit of a premium.

But that time you’re getting to spend back with your family where you’re not grocery shopping or that time you’re getting to spend calling more leads or you’re not asking people who’s got boots on the ground in Ventura, California. There’s something to really be said about that because again, as we all know, the most important thing we have at the end of the day is our time.

Mike Hambright (08:38.252)
Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I think if you look back at your, most people look back at their career and if they have regrets, it’s they wish they had found a way to make their life simpler. Like they wish they hadn’t spent all bunch of time doing stuff that ultimately had to get done, but it wasn’t worth them spending all their time to figure it out.

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (08:56.812)
Yeah, I struggle with that myself right now. You know, I have a four year old at home and I even daily I’m like, man, how can I, how can I get an extra hour of time every day? How can I buy back my time sometimes? So yeah. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (09:05.89)
Yeah. What’s that worth to you? Yeah.

Yeah, and then there’s always, you know, there’s obviously a ton of people asking free Facebook groups too. Like, hey, does anybody know somebody that can do this? Right? And what I’ve seen, there’s obviously, I’m in a bunch of Facebook groups. I try to not spend a lot of time in them because it’s like the blind leading the blind usually, especially the big free ones, you know? I’ve seen people give advice to people that I, like sometimes I know that person. Like that person has no idea

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (09:17.752)
Thank

Mike Hambright (09:38.784)
what they’re talking about and somebody else is taking their word for it. And so on some level you get what you pay for, right? Yeah. And then even worse is like, if you’re trying to find somebody that’s reliable, like you don’t want to be the guinea pig with your own money. So you should work with, you know, somebody that knows that’s worked with somebody over and over and over again. Right? I I’m sure that through your, through investor boots, part of the services.

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (09:46.978)
Yeah, absolutely.

Mike Hambright (10:04.662)
to vet out people that are good and you’re gonna try to send as much business to those people because they’re reliable, right? And the ones that sucked, like you’re like, take them off the list. Like we don’t wanna work with these people, Yeah.

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (10:15.512)
Definitely. Everybody’s bonded. They’re insured. They undergo yearly background checks. So it’s kind of like if you go and you find online and you find a taxi driver, what are you going to get versus going on an app like Uber and finding a driver that’s going to get rated? He cares about his rating. That’s the similar business model that we have. know, our field agents get rated after each assignment.

They know that a bad rating is going to affect getting any future orders from us, stuff like that. So there’s definitely something to be said about having trust, really reliable system in place in all areas of your business.

Mike Hambright (10:45.218)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (10:52.77)
Yep, So for your service, would you say that, do you work with a mix of people that are, obviously there’s a, over the past, you know, handful of years, there’s been an uprising of the national real estate investor that might be buying a house in the first, for the first time in…

Des Moines, Iowa or some market that they will probably never do another deal in. They don’t know any contractors there. They don’t have a notary there. They don’t know maybe even what title company to use versus the people that are like where I’m at in Dallas, they, I do all my deals in Dallas. so talk about kind of how you help those two different investor types.

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (11:29.696)
Yeah, so we have a really diverse mix. have the guys that love to just be in their backyard, their city, their county, their state. And we have the guys that want to just sky’s the limit. Let’s go nationwide and see where we can go with that. So we definitely have a really diverse mix of just people all over the board. Some like, some love to just stick to what they know. And then, you know, when some realize that they

that they’ve just had tunnel vision this whole time and it can be nationwide because there’s a resource for them to just click a few buttons and get boots on the ground. So yeah, we definitely have a diverse mix of clients all over the board in those two areas. I hope I answered that question.

Mike Hambright (12:17.708)
Yeah, yeah.

No, for sure. And I think your probably biggest solution really is speed, Is like people need to get, there’s like three or four things I need to get done for this house. It could be a notary. It could be lock boxes, a locksmith. It could be any of those things, right? It’s just as an investor, you can go far around with trying to figure all those things out and spend an afternoon doing it. Or then remember two days later that you forgot something or you build a relationship with somebody like you. That’s like, can help with all those things. And by

way to do you need this or that too because it sounds like you might need those things right?

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (12:52.598)
Yeah, definitely. what’s great is since I still am very involved, I love talking to the new clients. It’s almost like I have to talk to everybody that’s new because I kind of still want to hear what’s going on and what people are doing. And I’m amazed that I still hear that people are spending 40 minutes, an hour, an hour and a half trying to locate that hire schedule people all over the country.

And definitely something we bring to the table is speed. Again, we want to help free up time and time is so important. So speed is, I always say time kills all deals, you know, and speed gives you such a competitive advantage in the industry. You know, if you’re in Phoenix, Arizona, calling a seller in Tulsa, Oklahoma, you know, who’s going to win the deal? You in Phoenix or?

or the guy that’s able to get boots on the ground same day in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s always the guy that’s gonna be able to have a representative show up to the property within hours.

Mike Hambright (13:57.369)
Yep.

Yeah, I think and think one of the great things about your service is like there’s always the investor like me that does most of my deals in Dallas. I’ve done hundreds of deals here. That’s mostly where I operate. But there’s always somebody that like lives in Dallas that contacted me for a house they grew up in, which is somewhere else in the country, right? And historically I’m like, we can’t help you there. Or maybe I know somebody there and I’ll send them over there. But with being able to have boots on the ground to go take pictures, to look at things, you know, the investor mindset and what they’re looking for to be able to help with

orchestrating that from afar is like you don’t have to throw away those leads now these leads are so valuable it’s like you know what I’m gonna with the Dispo tools that are out there like investor base and some of the tools like that it’s like I can have boots on the ground and I can find a way to Dispo that easier than ever before with just an uprising of the tools so I think it’s I mean it’s a great service

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (14:48.79)
Yeah, and we’re getting ready to integrate with Investorbase actually on the Dispo side because they just found so much value in, again, their clientele being able to get nationwide boots on the ground to get professional photos. And they wanted to really roll out the red carpet for their clients. They wanted their clients to be able to get great photos, not just seller photos. They wanted their clients to be able to get 2D floor plans, walkthrough videos.

Mike Hambright (14:53.73)
Nice.

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (15:18.328)
And essentially just hand off to their buyers as many assets as possible so they can make fast and confident decisions without having to step foot into the property. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (15:29.846)
Yeah, that’s fantastic. Yeah, those are those guys are good friends of mine. I would say, you know, the tools, it’s amazing when I first started my when I first started in 2008, there was not a single CRM in the real estate investing industry. I mean, we were using some other contact manager and kind of bastardizing it for our industry or Excel or like all sorts of stuff. Right. And and there were just no there just were very few. There were no services like yours. It was all like you just have to go hustle and find ways.

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (15:42.456)
Thanks.

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (15:47.222)
Man, I can’t even believe it.

Mike Hambright (15:59.712)
to kind of make things work and so it’s been amazing kind of watching the evolution of this industry over the past you know 15 or 16 years for sure.

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (16:07.926)
I can’t imagine running it off of an Excel spreadsheet, but man, kudos to you.

Mike Hambright (16:11.886)
Yeah, yeah, Cool. Well, Steve, maybe can you just share like your top, the top services that real estate investors use you for? I’m guessing it’s to be able to go and be eyes on the ground and go look at houses. And maybe you could kind of share what the top services are that you help investors with.

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (16:14.443)
So.

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (16:31.852)
Yeah, you know, I always, when people talk about the top services, I always use the analogy of like, if you’re an investor in this space right now, you’re typically operating a business with a manual crank screwdriver, you know, just manually cranking away. And then investor boots comes into town and we’re able to show up with the ultimate platinum deluxe power drill. You know, and we have every drill that imaginable. We probably have some drill that you never thought about using before.

So we’re able to go out and provide photo service, lockbox service, we’re able to do showings, courier service, we can get documents recorded, room measurements. Those are all of the in-house services we provide. We also have a network of pro service providers. So we’re able to handle locksmith orders, maid service, clean out service, lawn service, junk removal, licensed home inspections. It’s really…

A comprehensive suite of services all under one roof.

Mike Hambright (17:36.27)
Yeah, that’s awesome. I didn’t think about those that have short-term rentals. Like, I’m sure you work with a bunch of those folks that need repairs or need to do things for their short-term rentals. Yeah.

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (17:36.979)
Yeah.

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (17:43.556)
Yeah. Yeah. Our clients are anywhere from wholesalers, property managers, fixing flippers, sub two community people. Um, you know, we do 10 turns, move out inspections. Um, you’re able to get as creative as possible with our services to this morning. We went to, uh, uh, big bear, California. I’m looking at my dashboard and one of our field, one of our clients shipped.

photos, batteries, and a blanket to a field agent, and they replace the batteries in the door lock, set up the photos in the home, and put the blankets on the couch. It was an Airbnb. So it’s like, you can get as creative as you want, and as long as we’re not breaking the law, we’re happy to do it.

Mike Hambright (18:22.231)
Yeah.

Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, guys, if you’re if you’re if you know you’re spending a lot of your time doing a bunch of baloney that doesn’t really add revenue, but has to get done. I mean, that’s that’s part of the administrative burden of being a small business. Stuff has to get done, but it doesn’t have to be you. You should definitely check out investor boots. So we’re going to have in the show notes here, guys, links for you to go learn more about them. But, Steve, anything else you would recommend for people that are looking to maybe get started working with you?

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (18:53.058)
Look, we’d love to just help free up your time and just show you guys a nationwide resource for these essential services that you guys need. And again, it just all comes back to freeing up your time and helping you guys break into new markets that you never thought were possible.

Mike Hambright (19:10.636)
Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, it opens up opportunities. You got to look at it. It’s not an expense. mean, if you’re not valuing your time, these things, things like this seem expensive. But if you’re valuing your time, that’s the most valuable asset you have and you need to rethink things for sure. So Steve, thanks for joining us today, Yeah, great to see you and everybody. appreciate you. We’ll see you on the next show.

Steve Cohen, InvestorBootz (19:29.814)
Mike, I appreciate you having me. Thank you so much.