The Ultimate Guide to Real Estate Marketing & Construction Sales Secrets

Michael Stansbury (00:01.281)
Hello everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Mike Stansbury, thank you for joining us with me today from Arizona, Christian Bowman. How are you, sir? I’m excellent, man, I’m looking forward to get into it, your origin story and all those things. But first, we gotta let everybody know at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their businesses, to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted.

Christian Bowman (00:14.2)
I’m good man, how are you?

Michael Stansbury (00:31.333)
and allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. Christian, one of the things I know about you is that you’re two weeks away from being one year in the business for yourself. Tell me, how’s it feel?

Christian Bowman (00:47.256)
Good man, it’s been a crazy journey so far. A lot of ups and downs growing, scaling, just a ton of learning in this last year. So excited to kind of share with everybody watching kind of what is possible, I guess, and hopefully people can surpass what I’ve done.

Michael Stansbury (01:03.705)
Yeah, that’s great. I I really appreciate that attitude of sharing. What I really want to know first is like, what’s your origin story? What were you doing maybe before, even before you were in real estate or working for somebody else, what did that look like for you? Yeah, tell me about that.

Christian Bowman (01:18.894)
So before I got into real estate, I was doing sales for a construction company. I did like asphalt concrete sales at a high level, right? So I was fortunate to, I had no experience in that when I started it, met the owner of the company. They kind of taught me everything right off the gate. I had a great sales manager and was able to really see how a big company scales fast. So when I started working for them, we were doing somewhere around 50 million a year.

In the two and a half, three years working for them before we sold to an equity firm, we were up to 150 million a year. So crazy increase and being a part of that, seeing the systems of processes taught me a lot. Leaving there after it got very corporate, right? As they do when you sell. Yeah, so I’m like kind of got tipped off like, hey, this is what’s going on.

Michael Stansbury (01:56.773)
Wow.

Michael Stansbury (02:10.275)
when they get rolled up, yep.

Christian Bowman (02:16.438)
I don’t blame you if you do something else kind of so it’s like okay what do I really want to do when I was working construction I was reading real estate books as far as like the burr books and bigger pocket stuff and random just like starting to get my foot in the door and real estate right and like how can I make this thing work I think the first thing I heard about was house hacking right that was like a lot of people get introduced to that immediately and I was like that’d be pretty cool so how do I buy my first rental right

And that’s kind of got my curiosity going. I started from there, I started interviewing with different people in real estate, reaching out to people on LinkedIn, going to all the meetups here in Phoenix, like the REIs and everything, and just kind of seeing what people were doing, like what I was interested in, right? So it was like interviewing people that were just flipping, interviewing people that were raising huge funds, right? Raising 100, 200 million dollars for a big fund. like…

That’s pretty interesting. And then I met a guy who had a big portfolio and that’s kind of what I wanted to go into. Or that’s my idea at first was like, yeah, I want passive income. I want to get my time freedom back. How do I do that? And so ended up going on his team and he owns a couple hundred rentals here here in town. And I think he owns like 16 states. So pretty good portfolio and

Working for him, I got to learn a lot about raising private money because he basically buys everything without his own funds, he does private money and then he’ll do like a DSCR loan out of it and keep using that same money over and over and build a big portfolio. I’m like, that’s super cool. So that’s how I started learning. He did like a little bit of wholesaling. Some of those like techniques as far as like when wholesale with you when you do innovations and.

subject two and seller finance. So I got to learn a lot of the creative aspects before kind of doing it on my own this year.

Michael Stansbury (04:14.425)
Okay, so that was a good little foundation, but you learned sales, right, in paving, and they went from 50 to 150 million, so that was probably a neat little multiple for the owners. So I love that you got to see that in real time, and were the owners just sharing what was going on, or were you just curious about it? How did you find out all, I mean, I guess you knew the numbers, but what, yeah, tell me what that looked like, because I always like to get a flavor for, I like our audience to get a flavor of.

of what it’s like to get gobbled up by a PE firm.

Christian Bowman (04:47.534)
So kind of what happened with them, we did it really strategically. It was a plan, like they bought the company, there’s three owners, they bought it, I think about 12 years ago now for like two or three million. So they did really well on their investment, right? They did a great job. A lot of it was marketing, putting the right CRM systems in place, the sales processes, and then a big piece of it was,

Michael Stansbury (05:01.775)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Bowman (05:17.602)
getting big enough where you can go after all the ADOT work and all the county work, right? Because the state of Arizona has huge budgets of, every, hey, this year we needed to do this, this and this. All these roads need to be redone. So getting into that, I mean, just multiplied kind of what they’re able to do. We were primarily paving, right? We did some dirt work and stuff like that, but they kind of brought, somebody brought the idea to the owners.

They’re like, hey, I’m going to get you in with this company, this company, this company, kind of the top couple companies in their specific niche as far as like, one person’s really good at seal coding. One person’s really good at just concrete work. One person’s really good at chip seal. And they brought everybody together. So I think when that happened, they got a decent return for those kind of like, hey, we’re going to put you guys all together. And they got a good amount of funds.

I think they had a contract as far as they had to stay on for two years to kind of keep everything rolling. So they re-bought back into the bigger company to run theirs inside of it. And then two years later, they all got bought out and they’re able to keep all the land that they owned and they leased it back to the company for the next 18 years. And it was very, very smart what they did. Yep.

Michael Stansbury (06:22.767)
Right?

Michael Stansbury (06:38.229)
Always keep the real estate, that’s right. There it is. So that’s what I was fishing for is like, okay, how did these folks really win? And so sometimes the winning definitely is the money upfront. They created a business and sold for a multiple, but they also got to keep another asset of it. So I love that. All right, so now fast forward. You work for this other gentleman and you’re obviously doing well for him and you see something, you see, okay, wow.

and doing all this work and this gentleman here is making about a hundred thousand plus a month. Tell me what that looked like and then tell me about the jump.

Christian Bowman (07:18.21)
Yeah. I mean, working for him, I, didn’t have any phone sales experience, head sales experience, nothing, and then nothing in real estate, right? I knew a little bit about it in general. Like my dad’s flipped houses before and we’ve owned like lodges and stuff in Alaska. That’s where I’m from originally. And, so I’ve been around it. So I know the terminology pretty well know kind of the process. This is how that goes flipping a house, but really nothing on the sales side, especially when you get into like wholesale real estate, it’s really sales and marketing.

You don’t really have to have a ton of knowledge in real estate in general until you start buying yourself. So, kind of learned under them, learned the sales, how to talk on the phone, kind of. It was very similar, you’re still building rapport, going through a sales process. I was very used to that. It was just like a different clientele that I was talking to, right? Fast forward a few months, started like crushing really good there. was making the guy I worked for 100,000, personally, was making him 100,000 a month.

And we had a few other acquisitions, a couple dispositions people, transaction coordinators in house. And his main thing was to buy and hold as much as could. So he was cherry picking the best deals for his portfolio, which makes a ton of sense, right? So.

Michael Stansbury (08:32.067)
Right? Yeah, when you have access to all the deals you get to get more margin.

Christian Bowman (08:36.972)
Yeah, so I saw that model. like, okay, cool. Just, you know, I was only getting paid a small percentage of that every month though, right? I was commissioned only you eat what you kill, but you see how much you’re making somebody else. You’re like, man, like I could definitely do this. And it was just like not huge disagreements, but like when you’re getting paid commission on just the wholesale part, but he’s mainly doing buying holds.

you’re not making a ton of money on that, right? Cause you’re expecting, if we were wholesaling this and we’re getting the cash back, okay, my commission checks would be pretty big, right? But that wasn’t the model there. And he was, he’s in his late sixties. So he just has a different mind frame than I had, right? He’s like, Hey, this is generational wealth. This is for my family. My mindset was like, Hey, I want to scale this thing. Like, how do we blow this thing up? Right? I don’t think we’re in the right markets. Cause usually buy and hold to get your best ROI, right? You’re, you’re in the Cleveland’s you’re.

Michael Stansbury (09:09.411)
Yes, yes.

Christian Bowman (09:31.736)
Kind of in those C class markets where you’re buying houses under 100,000, your cash flows, you know, that 2 % level. Yeah, everyone looks at the 1 % rule, but there’s a lot of markets you can get that 2 % rule, and that’s kind of what he was looking for. So that’s kind of why I made the jump to do it by myself, because I really wanted to scale a company.

Michael Stansbury (09:43.34)
Absolutely. Yep.

Michael Stansbury (09:51.333)
Okay, so now what does it look like day one? You left and now it’s day one to maybe 90 days in.

Christian Bowman (10:00.366)
So day one was figuring out like what markets I wanted to be in, how I was going to do my marketing, like how I was going to reach sellers, building out my website, hiring a marketing company to do. So right off the bat, was running, we were running PPC the whole time I worked for somebody else. And so was very comfortable converting those leads at a high level. Think.

for the other company, was about one in seven. So every seven leads that came in, I got one under contract. So pretty good, I would say industry standards, like one in 10, you’re doing pretty solid. And so I was like, well, I know how to run that model. So that was like, hey, copy and paste kind of what you guys talk about, right? It’s like, you don’t have to recreate the wheel. It’s like, what’s working, make some changes to it, what you think it might be better and run it. So I ended up going PPC marketing and I had enough saved up over

time that I started spending $10,000 a month right off the bat, which is pretty solid when you’re just doing it by yourself and you haven’t built a company before. It’s like a pretty big risk on my part.

Michael Stansbury (11:05.103)
Yeah, yes, yep.

Christian Bowman (11:07.902)
So,

Michael Stansbury (11:08.655)
How much highway did you have for yourself? So if you had 10K, did you have like 60, 80K in the bank? Okay.

Christian Bowman (11:13.934)
Yeah, I had 80. So I was like, in my head, kind of what you mentioned is I want six months of runway just in case. It’s like, I know usually it takes two to three months, even if you get something under contract now, there might be title issues, it might fall through. It’s like, give yourself a few months of runway. And so I knew I had six months at least. So was like, hey, I’m fine with spending 10 a month, especially with the experience I had. like, I’ll make a good return.

Michael Stansbury (11:39.673)
Right. Yep. You will. Yep.

Christian Bowman (11:41.1)
So did that, they built my landing pages, built out my CRM system, right? I’m like, hey, I’m gonna build out a good CRM system just so I don’t have to hire like a follow-up manager or anything like that. So I built out all my own like SMS text campaigns in it and where it’s like, I want something automated where, especially when you’re solo, it’s like, where’s your time best spent, right? It’s not doing TC work, it’s not following up with a bunch of people if you can build softwares that do it.

being on the phone is how you make money, right? If I’m on the phone on acquisitions, getting stuff under contract or copying on dispositions and selling it to another investor, that’s where I’m making money and so that’s where I wanted to stay, because that’s where my skill sets are.

Michael Stansbury (12:24.675)
Right, yeah. So day one, day and maybe 60 days in, you’re spending 10K a month and tell me about the first deal and what did that look like and then tell me about six months in.

Christian Bowman (12:40.718)
So yeah, month one was like 10K spend, nothing, right? It’s like, okay, second month, another 10K in. had one closing, so I think the end of that first month, I got my first contract. Closed like middle of my second month and like.

Michael Stansbury (12:58.915)
And let me ask you, because this is really interesting, so what markets were you fishing in?

Christian Bowman (13:04.609)
So I spread my, like now looking back at it, I’ve changed a bunch, but back then I think I did things the hardest way possible. Like you just, don’t know what you don’t know. So I was in like 12 different markets and I didn’t have any buyers on any of these markets yet. Right. I’m just like, well, we’ll see what happens. I could find a buyer. Yeah. So, I was in like every major Metro in the sunbelt basically. So I was running like the North Carolina’s like Charlotte Raleigh.

Michael Stansbury (13:11.683)
Right.

Michael Stansbury (13:16.195)
Okay.

Michael Stansbury (13:20.163)
Yes.

Roll the dice. Okay, that’s hilarious. Great risk.

Christian Bowman (13:34.734)
I was Atlanta, DFW, Houston, Phoenix, Vegas, kind of everything in the sunbelt. in my head, I mean, the weather’s always good. So you’re looking at the weather and like, okay, well, the houses aren’t going to take a beating. They usually stay a little bit nicer. And then people are flipping year round there, right? It doesn’t slow down. So my head to wholesale and like, that’s kind of what made sense to me.

Michael Stansbury (13:55.275)
Mm-hmm. Right. Right.

Christian Bowman (14:03.072)
Anyways, looking at it, it’s like a bigger picture. But yeah, started in all those markets. I’m like, okay, we’ll just see what happens. Cause I kind of wanted to keep my cost per lead down when you’re running PPC. If you have it spread across more markets, your cost per conversion is going to be lower. You’re paying less for your leads. So with that 10K budget, that’s only getting me, it’s still in those major metros. It’s like a $300 a lead.

Michael Stansbury (14:21.39)
Okay.

Christian Bowman (14:30.114)
is kind of what you’re paying. So I was only getting a lead in a day. So you still have a lot of time, right? So you’re only getting one lead in a day. So, you know, I’m downloading lists from PropStream of like 10,000 people trying to run like a high equity list where people have owned their house for five years or longer. They have 20 to a hundred percent equity. And then I was cold calling myself through those thousand records and like keeping myself busy basically.

Michael Stansbury (14:33.423)
Okay.

Michael Stansbury (14:52.271)
There you go. Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

Christian Bowman (14:56.014)
Because I left my job, I’m going all in on this. can’t just have nine hours a day where I’m not doing anything.

Michael Stansbury (15:02.309)
And the only way to create minimum is to take action even if it leads to just it’s just the action itself. So yep. Yeah, keep just saying.

Christian Bowman (15:10.476)
Yeah, so sorry doing that, but yeah, close my first deal on a PPC lead and the first one. I think as like a smaller lead now, but it was like 7500 bucks that closed my second month. So was like, well, I almost made back a little bit of marketing this month, right? You’re still negative like 1300014000 at that point. But everything started to build. after I got that first contract, I think it kind of gave me proof of concept on my own again and it’s like.

Okay, now they started to kind of rolling in. it’s like, okay, a week after that, I got two contracts. Okay, the week after that, I just kept like stacking.

Michael Stansbury (15:45.455)
And you are doing all your stuff is over the phone, obviously. All virtual. And so I’m always interested in the process. So are you getting them to take pictures and send them to you too? what is your process there?

Christian Bowman (15:48.886)
All virtual, 100%. Yep.

Christian Bowman (15:57.966)
Yeah, so I try to have the seller take all the photos for me if possible. I’ll walk them through like on the phone, hey, put me on speaker. Do you have an iPhone yet? Turn your phone sideways and like I’ll walk them through that. If they come back really crappy or they can’t do it, I’ll use a company called Investor Boots. They’re nationwide. You pay them, I think it’s around 150 to 160 bucks to get photos for you and video walkthroughs. And they send basically notaries out there to do it for you and they’re nationwide. So you just set up an appointment.

Good to go pay 160 bucks, it’s done for you.

Michael Stansbury (16:29.091)
Yeah, great, great. But your over the phone skills were coming in handy, right? Yeah.

Christian Bowman (16:33.582)
For sure, big time. yeah, started that and yeah, I got my first closing. I’m like, okay, proof of concept. And I think I just kind of got some traction from there, right? It’s like I was putting in the hours. I was tracking all my KPIs, right? As far as my talk time per day, how many calls I was making, how many offers out I was doing, right? Because I think running any sort of business, you have to have those KPIs.

Michael Stansbury (17:01.689)
Yes.

Christian Bowman (17:02.766)
Right, because that’s how you make any business decision. You’re like, hey, am I bad on the phone? Do I need to improve my skills? Is it the marketing’s maybe not great? Am I even putting enough effort out there to get a contract? So the KPIs I was running at the time, I was trying to get at least two hours of talk time was my goal. And usually, per call, it’s about an hour long call for me. Through my whole sales process is very common.

Michael Stansbury (17:14.029)
Yes.

Michael Stansbury (17:29.601)
And the benefit here I always like to tell our audience is these are PPC leads, they have raised their hand. So this is not a cold call. This is somebody that’s very interested in trying to get their house sold, and that’s why you’re spending an hour on the phone, right? Okay, yeah.

Christian Bowman (17:44.43)
Yeah. So yeah, I mean, pretty motivated, right? These people are Googling, my house fast. They’re filling out a form on your website and they’re going to sell their house and it’s kind of who gets it first and who has a quality conversation builds rapport with them. Right. It’s really speed to lead. Like even I look at it now, like when my rentals has like a plumbing issue, I’m going to Google a plumber and I’m just going to hammer through until somebody answers and I don’t really care the price. If it’s like, Hey, they can get it done today. Um, that’s who I’m going with. Right.

Michael Stansbury (17:57.223)
Yes,

Michael Stansbury (18:13.635)
Right, yeah.

Christian Bowman (18:14.892)
So that’s kind of how I look at it on PPC. So.

Michael Stansbury (18:17.955)
Yep, and you were doing PPC, not PPL. You weren’t doing any PPL.

Christian Bowman (18:21.75)
No PPL, just straight PPC. I’ve tried PPL with the company I used to work for and it was so-so. You know, there’s pros and cons about it, but I prefer running my own campaign and owning everything. So I own my own AdWords, I own my own Unbounce account, my Zapier account, my landing pages. I want complete ownership of what I do, just in case if I want to switch or bring it in-house, I can do that.

Michael Stansbury (18:23.877)
Okay.

Michael Stansbury (18:48.473)
Yep, yep. Well, it’s all in house, right? Yeah.

Christian Bowman (18:51.266)
Well, my marketing wasn’t no, I hired out a company to do that for me. Yep.

Michael Stansbury (18:55.167)
okay, gotcha. Perfect. Okay. All right. Well, awesome. All right. So now we got some traction and momentum and what did you change up as far as markets were concerned? Like when you, when you looked. Okay.

Christian Bowman (19:08.502)
I was all this ran at the same still. So the first couple of months kept running at the same. I was able to find a buyer in that market. And again, it’s like your comps are your buyers, right? I think that’s the easiest way for anybody to start. like, worry about one thing at a time. Worry about getting a contract first and then worry about finding a buyer. Right? So got that property under contract, literally just started calling the comps. I looked on Zillow. Hey, what sold in the last year? What’s flipped?

Michael Stansbury (19:24.804)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Bowman (19:36.078)
Okay, great. Let’s look at this. Hey, at the time I didn’t even know how to find the investor on there. So was calling the listing agent who represented the investor because their phone number is right there in the listing still. So I was just basically hopping on the phone with them saying, hey, I have a great off market property right down the road from, it looks like you helped a flipper. And they’ll go into my cool. How long did that take? And just kind of see their expertise on the area.

Michael Stansbury (19:44.494)
Right. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Christian Bowman (20:02.59)
And then I was just telling them like, yeah, I could pay you a finder’s fee if you’re able to connect me. And that’s how found my first buyer.

Michael Stansbury (20:08.847)
How about that? That’s beautiful. Yeah.

Christian Bowman (20:10.656)
So, well, yeah, knew that, you know, the flipper knows the area. did really great on this one. I can see what he bought it for.

Michael Stansbury (20:15.896)
Yeah, yeah, so the first time I ever got into, the first wholesale deal I did was back in 2014. I didn’t even know what a wholesale was. I was just a fix and flip guy and I bought a house for a great price, like I crushed it. And so I’m out there actually with my guys and we’re cleaning it out and just for fun, I was like, you know, I wonder if I could sell this to somebody just as is. And I put the For Sale By Owner sign up and then another investor that I know,

was driving down the street at that time. He stops me, his name was David McLemore. And he goes, hey man, did you just buy this house? Like yeah, he goes, I bought one down the street. He’s like awesome, he’s like are you done with it yet? And he goes, yeah, I’m close to being done. What do want for this? And I just threw out a stupid number. I was like, oh, I’ll take 120. I’d bought it for 50, right? And he goes, I’ll take it. I was like.

Christian Bowman (21:07.512)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Nice.

Michael Stansbury (21:14.085)
Really? He’s like, yeah, I bought the other one down the street for 120. I’m gonna sell it for 210. And I was like, okay, let’s go. And so, but here was my problem. So here’s my problem. I thought I just got lucky. I’ll never do this again. Cause I wasn’t on the internet. didn’t know anything about, was just fix and flip guy, fix and flip guy. And then later on it just hit me. Oh, I could do this for a living. And without a lot of the headache. But anyway, you’re doing this

Christian Bowman (21:20.546)
Yeah, they’re perfect.

Christian Bowman (21:36.664)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Stansbury (21:43.869)
and you find you’re, you’re fine, you go out and do the, you do the 10,000 square feet thing and you look at, okay, this guy paid for this, bought this, flipped this, he’ll probably buy this one, and he did. So.

Christian Bowman (21:55.266)
Yep, So that’s how I find a lot of my buyers today. I just think it’s the greatest method. And it’s like everyone’s been doing it forever, but it’s so true. like, you can see 10 flips in that area. I’m going to give every person I call and see who’s interested, get some walkthroughs out there. And that’s still probably my best way of finding buyers today.

Michael Stansbury (22:16.761)
Yeah, and most of these are most of these are wholesales and assignments, correct? Or double closes or what’s that look like for you?

Christian Bowman (22:23.246)
Yeah, pretty much all wholesale, especially as I started. You know, I was able to buy some properties and when I worked for somebody else, I bought 10 properties working for him. And those were all using private money, doing DSCR loans, getting the private money 100 % back out of it because I’m buying it so deep. And then just doing lease options on my rentals is kind of what I do. so I was in different markets. Yeah.

Michael Stansbury (22:43.727)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Stansbury (22:47.301)
Yeah, okay. In different markets or in the same market? Okay, wow, yeah.

Christian Bowman (22:53.198)
And then, yeah, with that off the bat, was like, well, I really want to scale this company. I don’t really want to buy a ton, right? I was like, I want the assignment fees. I need to pay back my marketing. So that’s what I was like more nervous about starting out. And month three was my first like good month, I would say. So yeah, second month only 7,500 bucks. But it was like proof of concept. And I started rolling from there. Third month, I had about $60,000 close. So like,

Michael Stansbury (23:02.881)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Bowman (23:22.414)
Okay, cool. This is working like this is great. I paid back all my marketing. I’m in the green now, right? I have a little bit of wiggle room now, so I immediately spent a little bit more money on marketing. I threw an extra $5,000 down in marketing, so now I’m at 15 grand a month. And again, I’m always betting on myself, right? I’m like to scale a company. It’s like what do I need it? I’m not going to go blow my money. I’m not going to go buy a new Rolex. I’m not going to go buy a new car. It’s like how do I scale this company and build it the correct way? So it’s like well, I want to.

double down on marketing, right? I can handle, only getting in a lead a day. Okay. How do I keep myself busy? So I did that. And I think that’s when the traction really starts. Usually when you start getting deals, they usually take, you know, 60 or, know, well, anywhere from 45 to I would say 90 days to close, depending on how, how much, how many days you’re putting on your purchase contract.

Michael Stansbury (23:56.867)
Yeah, yeah, right.

Christian Bowman (24:16.654)
Usually I put like 30 or 45 sometimes 60 days depending on the property if it’s rural if it’s you know, I think I can get rid of it fast and Yeah from there month four is like my first like big month So month four alone I closed over a hundred and thirty three thousand dollars So that was crazy to me. I’m like is this real life like hey, this is this is insane

Michael Stansbury (24:42.181)
Right, And then it got real real for you. And so now you’re two weeks away from the anniversary of your start and kind of where do things look, how are things looking now?

Christian Bowman (24:56.622)
So pretty much stayed close to that 100 every month, sometimes over, sometimes a little bit less. You know, during that journey, was like, okay, well, month four after I had my big month, I actually hired a business coach. Again, it’s like, I’m gonna keep investing into myself, right? So I hired a really good guy in the industry that was doing great at wholesaling, doing three million a year, wholesaling with a team.

Michael Stansbury (25:14.437)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Bowman (25:22.838)
he actually, I think he’s the only person I know that’s exited a wholesale company. and actually sold it. don’t know if you know Eric Klein at all. Yeah. He was in North Carolina forever and he just moved out to Phoenix about eight or nine months ago, but huge guy in the industry. Like, so I, for the last company I was with, we had a sales training. So I’ve been on his sales training since I started. And so I was like,

Michael Stansbury (25:30.713)
Eric Klein? What market does he, was he all over?

Michael Stansbury (25:39.343)
Yeah.

Michael Stansbury (25:49.71)
Okay, cool.

Christian Bowman (25:52.11)
Hey, he just moved to Scottsdale. got in touch with them and so we made like a basically what he didn’t have any programs at the time at that level. He was like teaching people kind of how to do your first deal and how to scale to 100 grand a month and I was already already passed that right? So I’m like how do I get to 500,000 a month? How do I get to 600,000 a month right? Because that’s the numbers he was kind of doing. I’m like. So I ended up spending a lot of money up front for coaching right? So I’m like I can just.

Michael Stansbury (25:55.877)
beautiful.

Michael Stansbury (26:05.753)
Yep. Right.

Michael Stansbury (26:13.893)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Bowman (26:20.78)
I think I can figure out how to do things better and so that helped me get even more time back. So I started outsourcing, I hired a TC company to do all the paperwork for me because I’m like, I don’t want to do that. That’s not the best use of my time. So I started outsourcing once I started making that money, hired a business coach to learn the stuff I didn’t know.

Michael Stansbury (26:41.475)
Right, which is very smart. That is the meta thing to do is to, hey, I’m making all this money. Some people go this, I’m just going to keep on making a lot of money. And no, it’s all about sharpening the skills. You can only become, you got to become something different to handle that type of capital. But I love it. Yeah.

Christian Bowman (27:01.484)
Yep. And I actually started scaling a team. started scaling, started hiring a couple acquisitions guys, a Dyspo person, a TC really fast too. And that was like my own downfall, right? This is the first company I’ve ever owned myself. first people I’m ever hiring, first interviews I’m ever having. like, this seems, my whole thing was like, I don’t care if they have experience, if they have, if it’s a good culture fit, that’s kind of what I’m looking for. think I’m like, yeah. But I’m like, I could teach the rest, right?

Michael Stansbury (27:25.507)
Right. Coachable and teachable. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Christian Bowman (27:30.954)
But I definitely just try to do it way too fast. I, you know, I had early success with wholesaling by myself, right? And I’m like, well, like I could build a team pretty fast then. So like in a matter of a month, I had a full team, like, and it was just constant training and, know, two hours of sales training in the morning, working a full day, and then two hours at the end of the day, me listening to every single person’s call. So I can do sales training the next morning to help everybody, right? So I was running 12 to 16 hour days, seven days a week at this point.

Michael Stansbury (27:59.941)
Hmm.

Christian Bowman (28:01.026)
just working my butt off, right? And realized pretty fast, like after two or three months, I’m like, this isn’t for me. I like the solo-preneur style. I was hitting, we were hitting the same amount of numbers with the team. So I think we’re still between 100 and 150 a month, but now I’m paying out $60,000 on commissions a month. Now I’m paying out $30,000 in marketing and trying to manage all these new people at the same time that had no experience.

Michael Stansbury (28:12.569)
Yes, yeah. Yeah.

Christian Bowman (28:31.894)
I was just freaking so time consuming, so stressful. So I ended up kind of letting my team go and I kind of just let them know like you guys need help if you’re going to do it by yourself. You know, just just let me know and I’m willing to help you. But I like I ran through every single month. I’m like. It doesn’t make sense for me as a business owner, right?

Michael Stansbury (28:44.153)
Yeah.

Michael Stansbury (28:50.243)
Well, mean, so that’s the thing is like, what kind of business do you want to run? What do you do? And can you do it on your own? I’ve got a very small team. It’s just me and my son. And we got a couple of VAs and we’re very profitable. So that’s, and that’s the key word. And I don’t work a lot. And so, you know, that’s the thing is like, what do you want? What’s your vision say? And then, and then you figured out from there, but it’s great.

that you figured it out pretty quickly, but you made the move pretty quickly. Within a year, you’ve been able to do all this stuff. And so what is next year gonna look like is gonna be wild.

Christian Bowman (29:20.312)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Bowman (29:30.998)
Yeah, so yeah, two weeks from a year now and just an assignment fees. I’m almost at a million dollars like $30,000 short right now. So pretty solid first year. I started flip doing flips now too and I think I’m doing it the smart way. I hired out a contractor to be a 5050 partner with me on the flip side of the business and so he handles everything. I literally source the deal.

Michael Stansbury (29:42.166)
Solid. Yep.

Christian Bowman (29:58.912)
And we split it 50 50 on the back end. I don’t worry about it. I just get a check in three to six months. So for me, it’s like a no brainer, but

Michael Stansbury (30:03.557)
Okay, yeah, well, I would never say somebody’s doing it the wrong way. If it works and you got a good relationship, it’ll work. It’s trial and error. just try it, so I love it. Well, Christian Bowman, what a wonderful, I wouldn’t say it’s a roller coaster. I’d say a little bit of a roller coaster first year, but it’s definitely, trajectory is on the way up.

Thank you for being on the Real Estate Pros podcast. Where can people find you if they’re like, hey, I wanna reach out to this guy, what’s his socials, what’s his business name and all that stuff, where can we find you?

Christian Bowman (30:46.38)
Yeah, Christian C Bowman is on Instagram. I’m building a brand now for myself. And so I’m going to be putting out a YouTube video every single week about just real estate investing, a little bit of finance. And that’s just going to be under Christian Bowman on YouTube. yeah, just honestly reach out to me on Instagram, DM me if you guys have any questions. Would love to help out if I can.

Michael Stansbury (31:12.43)
All right guys, you heard him. So check out Christian on IG and YouTube. Thank you for being on the Real Estate Pros podcast. Guys, information about him is in the show notes below and folks have a great one. We’ll see you on the next Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Mike Stansberry, have a great one.