Blueprint for National Wholesaling

Mike Hambright (00:00.786)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. Today I’m here with my good friend and the one and only Elijah Rubin. This guy is a rock star. What we’re going to talk about today is national wholesaling. So we probably all know folks that have done this over the years. It’s got its own set of unique opportunities and challenges that we’re going to talk about today. If you’ve been used to just kind of wholesaling in your market or operating in your market and you go nationally, the grass might seem greener and there is a lot of opportunity out there.

but it’s got its own challenges too as we talked about. we’re gonna talk about that today with Elijah. These guys are operating really for the most part nationwide. There might be a couple of states you guys are trying to avoid. I don’t know, but I guess at the end of the day, you’ll go anywhere if the deal’s right. So Elijah, welcome to the show, buddy.

Elijah Rubin (00:38.028)
Right.

Elijah Rubin (00:42.08)
about the numbers. Yes, thank you Mike. Thank you, man. Excited to be on here and talk with the whole Fuel family. I love it. Thank you.

Mike Hambright (00:48.796)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We love having you in Investor Fuel too. You guys add so much value and got a lot of energy too. So appreciate that always. Yeah, man. Hey, tell us a little bit about your background. You weren’t always investing nationally and I know you got some history doing some other things too, but tell us how you kind of got into real estate investing and how you got to where you are today.

Elijah Rubin (00:57.614)
Thanks.

Elijah Rubin (01:10.84)
Sure, sure. Now, I’m in Phoenix, Arizona. You know, I think I’m the only Trinidadian Jew in all of real estate. I’m the only one. I mean, my 21st year, I started back in 04. You know, so I started off door knocking first. I started at the auctions, then did the door knocking, got into probate after the 08 collapse. You know, really figured out a unique niche of buying fire damage properties. Branded myself as the fire damage king and had a…

Mike Hambright (01:18.066)
Hahaha.

Elijah Rubin (01:38.958)
coaching education program for a little while. And then created Closed Olympics, segued from over there and that led us into partnering with Lead Zolo to do nationwide leads and about partner Mike Lima and our team, Jennifer. And now after fast forward over 21 years, done over a thousand plus properties, know, done a lot of different, learned a lot of lessons as well as helped a lot of people and definitely grateful for the experience.

Mike Hambright (02:04.104)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (02:08.282)
Yeah, yeah. At what point did you go from just kind of the local guy to start doing stuff nationally?

Elijah Rubin (02:15.63)
So probably about two and a half years ago, almost three years ago, because of the partnership with LeadZolo, we’re able to kind of get this unique opportunity where we’re able to get nationwide leads, where we’re able to partner with them, kind of cut down some upfront costs and partner with them on the whole thing. We’re trying to build a hundred million dollar portfolio together. And so there’s a big audacious goal over five years. basically about three years ago, we really kind of formulated a process.

Yes, last year was real year. We really did real nationwide. mean Usually we do about 50 to 80 deals a year and those all Arizona I mean like 90 % of them I’m not do a fire damage deal here and then California different market But once we start to nation wide I did like maybe three deals in Arizona and another hundred plus all nationwide. So there’s definitely a lot of lessons

Mike Hambright (03:06.216)
Yeah, and right around that time is when interest rates change where things just generally got harder for everybody, right? And Phoenix is always a challenging market. It’s like Dallas, like there’s a couple of investor hotbeds. And I guess you guys kind of started thinking about maybe the grass is greener if we change our model up a little bit as well,

Elijah Rubin (03:27.054)
I mean I always thought about I mean you hear me you go to network man. man. These deals are here I’m getting these like man. That’s also much better by the same There’s always so many motivated sellers in your market, right? So you’re thinking there’s more over there, but The grass is greener, but there also comes with some other Lonnie lot of expectations

Mike Hambright (03:36.274)
Right.

Mike Hambright (03:43.697)
Yeah, yeah. And we’re going talk about we’ve got a stacked conversation today to talk about. I know the reality is, is Dispo is a whole another animal when you’re trying to do it in far off lands, right? And so and people where you kind of take for granted, especially you that’s been doing it for a long time, you’ve got a lot of relationships in Phoenix that help you. But all of a a deal pops up in Des Moines, Iowa or somewhere else. You’re like, I don’t know anybody there. So or not many people. Right. So yeah. Well, let’s kind of jump into we want to go through this a little bit methodically, just like

Elijah Rubin (03:54.094)
Yeah

Elijah Rubin (04:07.918)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (04:13.756)
difference is in talking to sellers when it’s all over the phone and it’s all national and you’re in a far off land. Let’s talk about how to approach sellers differently than what you might do just locally.

Elijah Rubin (04:24.322)
Well, one of the best things I like about LeadZolo and PPL, Leads and almost any other lead source, know, cold calling, mailers, know, door knocking, they fill out a form, they wanna talk to you. So now I’m able to kind of have a different conversation and let them know like, you fill out a form on my website, are you still looking to sell this property? So maybe we get a couple micro agreements really quick, get them in yes pattern with me.

Well as open up, you know that 10 second window. Who is this? It opens a 30 second window a minute window like yeah. I did fill out the form yeah. Yeah, I do want to sell property great. What were you looking to get for it? You could ask these questions that you can’t really ask in any other any other type of lead source because they’re like Well, you called me or you make the offer anytime they kind of play any of those games I’m able to say like listen most people very serious about filling out forms want to sell they know what they want I don’t have to guess what they want. It’s not like you might be a little curious right now

about so not too serious and be able to kind of do a takeaway close allows them to say, no, no, I am serious, here’s the number and now we’re able to really start negotiating. But like I said, like you had mentioned earlier, it’s in Arizona, you tell me the major cross street and a square footage, I know where I need to buy that property and I know who I’m gonna sell it to. Like I go in a different market, I’m like, I think it’s a good deal, the cops look like it’s a good deal. So you’re kind of going off of what you feel the numbers are, not 100 % sure.

Mike Hambright (05:39.89)
Right.

Mike Hambright (05:49.905)
Yeah, and when you’re when you’re talking to folks now You you you guys are I presume you get a fair number of rural leads, right? Yeah

which the challenge with that is those are always easy to acquire and you just have to get them deeper because they’re harder on the Dispo side. I don’t to, I know we’re gonna talk about Dispo, I don’t want to steal the thunder, but how do you set the expectations with the sellers that you’re buying, you’re generally buying houses in this model probably deeper than what you would in Phoenix, I guess, because Phoenix is so competitive. You’re almost like at an auction trying to figure out how you can justify paying a little bit more if you have to,

Elijah Rubin (06:19.694)
For sure.

Mike Hambright (06:28.144)
Yeah, so how do you set that expectation with a seller? mean, does it come up that you’re not local and, you know, do you set the expectation that sometimes there’s a chance the deal might not work out because you guys have to bake that into your model so that you’re not having to close on houses and far off lands you never even heard of before, right? So talk about some of that, how that’s a little bit different maybe.

Elijah Rubin (06:36.366)
Yeah.

Elijah Rubin (06:49.11)
Yeah, we definitely try to proper expectations upfront and let know like, hey, know, it’s all about setting expectations, treating people with dignity, let know what’s expected of them, what’s expected of us, what’s expected outcomes. And then what happens if those expectations aren’t met? So there’s no misunderstanding. So we definitely let them know, hey, we’re buying this property, we are a nationwide property, I’m in Arizona, you’re in this many hours, so if you call me at this time, I’m not gonna answer.

Mike Hambright (07:00.774)
Yeah, right.

Mike Hambright (07:05.789)
Yeah.

Elijah Rubin (07:16.002)
Come at this time, I’ll probably will. And then we kind of walk them through the process of, hey, once we sign a contract, then we’re gonna do our underwriting. We trust everybody, but we verify everything. All right, and so we’re need to verify it. And when we connect with our transaction coordinator, we let them know, if you want this to close on time, it’s super imperative that you get us access to inside the property and we get pictures. If you don’t have pictures, we can’t complete our underwriting. As we do our underwriting, if we find something that you didn’t know.

Mike Hambright (07:28.444)
Yeah.

Elijah Rubin (07:46.03)
and I didn’t know and it wasn’t disclosed or it was unknown, we got to come and revisit this number. Is there anything you need to tell me? And so they used to say no, no, no. And then, but if we do find something, I set all that track up front. I’m like, remember I told you about the underwriting? We found out about this and you didn’t know about it. I didn’t know about it. But now that we discovered it, we need to readjust this number.

Mike Hambright (07:48.264)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (08:07.002)
Yeah, so your offer, you’re making an offer upfront, so your kind of initial underwriting, if you will, and the offer is based on the information that they told you. So if they said, no, the HVAC system is perfect, and you get out there and it looks like a rusted out piece of junk that needs to be replaced, you’re like, well, I didn’t count on another five or six grand for that, right?

Elijah Rubin (08:27.662)
Correct. Correct.

Mike Hambright (08:28.176)
Yeah, so you don’t nobody likes to do it but you’ve set the expectation up front of like I’m using your information and you guys might have to retrade that after you find out that you know, they misled you or Didn’t tell you the truth on something, right? Yeah

Elijah Rubin (08:43.852)
And some people just don’t know. Some people, they inherited a property. I haven’t been there in two years. So some of them, just don’t know. But we let them know there’s a cost for the unknowns. And we’re undiscovering that for you. Because if I find out the next investor, we’re all going to be at this number anyways.

Mike Hambright (08:48.881)
Yeah, yeah.

Mike Hambright (08:58.32)
Yeah. So I know investors do different things, but do you send some boots on the ground out there to take pictures and inspect it ultimately, or you’re just relying on them taking pictures, or maybe you’re relying on your ultimate buyers to come back to you and say, Hey man, you didn’t tell me about this. And you’re like, well, we didn’t know about that. like, who, who’s ultimately finding out the, the, the truth. Yeah.

Elijah Rubin (09:16.376)
Sure, sure.

real deal. So we had to do a lot of trial and error on this one, but and this is a pro tip for you guys. Everybody watching this, heads up on this part, all right? This is really helpful. I mean, I promise you this is gonna save you thousands of dollars. If you’re doing virtual deals, we reach out to realtors, we’re talking to investors and some people are like, that’s a good deal. I’ll take that deal. So you don’t want that happening either. So using 123notary.com

Mike Hambright (09:26.034)
Yeah.

Elijah Rubin (09:47.214)
Nationwide notaries one two three notary.com You can find just as or and if you do have nobody in that area Just Google in that zip code notary in the zip code. I find notaries Will go ahead and pay him $50 $100 of his super far

not only will they go and take pictures for you and they’re talking about 30 to 50 pictures for you, they’ll put a lot boxes on there. If you need something to get signed, they’re able to sign it. And we do one more thing special, but I’ll say that for a little later, what we do with these notaries. And you don’t have worry about them trying to take the deal because that’s not what they do. They just here to sign paperwork.

Mike Hambright (10:22.6)
Yeah. So you’re just you’re finding notaries who are like mobile notaries anyway. They’re used to having the drive to do something and you’re like, Hey, I don’t need you to know. Well, are you you might have be having a meet with sellers. But yeah, but like while you’re there, I need you to do some extra things that you might not normally do. You cool with that? Is that that’s it? Is that what you’re doing? Yeah, that’s cool.

Elijah Rubin (10:29.102)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah Rubin (10:35.276)
Sometimes, sometimes.

Elijah Rubin (10:41.792)
Yeah, we just don’t have we need you to take pictures of nothing to use by this time We already got the contract so they usually don’t have to do anything else Give me 15 minutes your time You’re already in the zip code and here’s 50 bucks for your time. And if we do need to use another notary you’re gonna be our person

Mike Hambright (10:46.086)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (10:54.832)
Yeah, that’s cool. That’s cool. Have you ever tried to Jimmy John’s driver to go out and take? Yeah.

Elijah Rubin (10:59.31)
That Jimmy Jumbo I had postmated food before and had them take it and to get the guy to on the call so I have done that before.

Mike Hambright (11:08.102)
Yeah. So I know one of the lessons you guys learned is like, every deal is not a deal and your time is really valuable, right? So kind of the opportunity cost of your time when you’re running as many leads as you guys are to try to find deals all over the country. So what are some lessons learned there? Because I know you guys, sometimes if it if it doesn’t smell great, you’re like, it’s not worth the effort, right?

Elijah Rubin (11:29.87)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, once again, we had to learn some valuable lessons on this side, too. Like said, I think we did like 260 contracts last year, and we had 160 of them cancel. So we had to learn at the cost, because first, like, no, no, just lock it We’ll find out what the buyers say. Like, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, honey. Don’t do that, because we had to learn the hard way, because each deal, we don’t close.

Mike Hambright (11:33.361)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (11:49.02)
Yeah.

Elijah Rubin (11:55.438)
It costs us about $5,000 of our opportunity cost, our team’s time and our team’s capacity that you don’t calculate at first. Like, oh, just lock it up, it’s fine, it’s paperwork. You’re spending that money, but you’re costing your team money and your time. So when we look at yeah, distractions, you’re just bogging down the system that these aren’t deals that you could just say in upfront, that you can under it in upfront when you got pictures back, whatnot. And so.

Mike Hambright (12:05.605)
Right.

Yeah, it’s a distraction. It’s a distraction.

Mike Hambright (12:18.461)
Yeah.

Elijah Rubin (12:22.298)
We started looking at opportunity costs. I mean, we looked at that as $800,000 worth of possible, our team’s time capacity that we lost. So we got really serious about it. If we don’t see $15,000 worth of profit, if it is not a clear path to profit, meaning that there’s not enough buyer activity, there’s not enough population, we simply would not work that deal. We’d pass it off to a JV partner, someone who’s maybe local, let them do that deal, and we can look at a percentage of it.

Mike Hambright (12:30.566)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (12:47.41)
Yeah.

Yeah. And does that, from an underwriting standpoint, does that, do you just basically say, we’ll do the deal, but we got to get it deeper than we would have in the past because we know that it’s going to be, you’re out, have an opportunity cost, right? So, I mean, if you got a good enough deal on it, like you’re willing to do that, but if you’re not going to go chase it, if it looks like a mediocre deal.

Elijah Rubin (13:11.35)
At first we were thinking about that, but then we saw like you can’t even get deals for 5,000, but there’s only five people in that whole county, no one’s buying it. So no matter how good it is, so you have to have some population. We used investor base, so we’re looking to see what activities there are. Are we gonna be able to sell this? And a good way to think about this is think of the end in mind first. Who am I gonna sell this to? Is there enough margin? Is there enough profit here that somebody will be willing to buy this, and if they’re not, until we get the Ted Schneider model where you just buy it, he buys himself.

Mike Hambright (13:19.325)
Yeah.

Elijah Rubin (13:41.264)
which eventually we want to do, you know, but for right now that…

Mike Hambright (13:43.463)
Yeah, that is the difference, right? Is like a lot of those rural areas, the great play there is to owner finance those off, but you got to have deep pockets to take those down, right? And so you’re just trying to wholesale them and there’s not a lot of wholesale activity. In some markets, probably zero wholesalers, right? So yeah.

Elijah Rubin (13:49.88)
Yeah.

Elijah Rubin (13:59.714)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mike Hambright (14:01.21)
So let’s talk about cancellations a little bit, because obviously nobody likes to cancel deals, but some of it is the expectation you set up front that this may or may not work out. And I know you guys are, you know, you just said you’re kind of passing on a bunch of deals you might have otherwise. So how do you set the expectation upfront that the deal might get canceled without becoming that investor kind of, you know, honestly, douchebag that’s just locking stuff up and, and then in their mind, like I’ll cancel it if I have to, like you go into these not wanting to cancel anything, but

Elijah Rubin (14:25.165)
Okay.

Elijah Rubin (14:30.573)
Not at all.

Mike Hambright (14:31.164)
But it might, it might happen and you have to set the expectations with the seller on that.

Elijah Rubin (14:36.018)
We definitely try to set expectations up for it. we’re just, mean, you know, Mike, myself, the reason why we work really well together, we’re closers with character integrity. We like to treat people the way we like to be treated. We do understand there’s gonna be circumstances where we can’t keep these deals. So what we do, so what we do, what we’ve done to keep down cancellations is really created a three-step underwriting process. So you got the first step, MAO, you get your first initial MAO.

We’re really looking at the numbers. Well, actually let me take a step back because now we have so many leads that come in nationwide We created a lead optimizer position and as lead optimizer He Lily goes into leads and vets the leads to make sure there’s no populations over 10,000 population There’s over at least 20 actives over at least 10 solds in this area. So we know that there’s some activity So that’s one thing that helped us tremendously So I’m not bogging down my guys and my guys like I gotta get something locked up. So they lock up anything

versus you only see deals that are impossible to close. So that was one thing that tremendously helped lower our cancellation rate. Then getting good MAOs, getting good MAOs out, so us getting good numbers and fast within 24 hours to them. So that’s the first round of underwriting. Then once we get pictures back from the notaries or the sellers, they send us pictures, that’s the second round of underwriting where we know, we need to either.

We’re price right, we’re gonna put it out to marketing. We’re price wrong, we need to renegotiate or hey, we’re way off, we missed a ball on this one. But let’s cut ties, we’re not wasting the seller time, they can find somebody else, we can connect them with the realtor, put them in a better position versus what other people do, wait to two days before close, ask, oh, sorry, I gotta cancel, which we don’t do that. And then the third one is once we get buyer feedback.

Mike Hambright (16:15.612)
Right, yeah.

Elijah Rubin (16:21.806)
We think the cops look good, we see the activity, but the buyers may see things that we didn’t see. The notaries didn’t pick up, they might know the area differently, that dirt road that has potholes on it and it ain’t gonna be fixed, stuff that we would never thought about. Well, sometimes we have to come back and negotiate a better price on those situations.

Mike Hambright (16:34.898)
Right.

Mike Hambright (16:38.854)
Yeah, yeah, or attempt to, yep. So what role do you kind of relationships and JVs play? Because you’re obviously wholesaling a lot of this stuff off. You’ve got, you talked about notaries, but I know you’re building all sorts of relationships with people that can help you in different markets across the country. Like talk about the role of relationships to this business model.

Elijah Rubin (17:00.128)
Yeah, I think it’s super important, know, in this type of market, when things get really tough, I think it’s super important to have quality relationships. And the best way to cultivate good relationships is go to high-level masterminds like Investor Fuel. But if you don’t have the ability to do that…

Mike Hambright (17:17.703)
Yep.

Elijah Rubin (17:19.822)
Go to your local Rias. Go to your other people and reach out to people in bigger pockets. I am a big fan of adding value first, attitude of servitude. You know, how can I add value to you? What can I do to help you? And if you help enough people get what they want, they’re gonna help you get anything you need. And whenever you have a call, they’re ready to take your call, because they know you’re not asking, hey, can I borrow a loan? Can I pick your brain? You know, they know you’re here to add value and they’re eager to return it.

Once you kind of have that mentality and people start knowing you for that, then you can start pairing up with these quality relationships and I have a deal and we had a in Lubbock, Texas and we’re like, hey, awesome, you’re Mr. Lubbock’s Texas. Hey, let’s give you, hey, let’s you work the deal because our disposal is not gonna work as well as you are. You’re gonna know if the numbers are right, you’re gonna know if there’s buyers in this area, you’re gonna know if we bought it right. You’re gonna collapse our conversion cycle down tremendously. And that allows him to do this and then in return, guess when he has deals he needs to help with?

It reciprocates. And I think that’s a huge competitive advantage. If you get out of mindset of scarcity, no, this is my deal. I don’t want them to take it. Mindset of abundance, add value, create quality relationships, and they can pay off tremendously.

Mike Hambright (18:15.356)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Hambright (18:27.954)
Yeah, that’s awesome. And what are some lessons you’ve learned? Because if folks are going to do this as well, they’re going to be up against are using local title companies. Do you try to find a national title company, which sounds good, but has challenges as well, right? just some of the like, guess what are the relationships that must be local? And what are the relationships that that you found that are national in scope that are good that work well?

Elijah Rubin (18:51.894)
Yeah, think title companies, I think it’s super imperative to get a local title company. know, these, we did the national one time and they’re good in certain states, but not good across the board. You close title has been pretty strong, you know, and we use them a lot.

But I think when it comes to title company, super imperative to get somebody local who knows the area, knows the market, and can get things turned around faster if there’s an issue. Notaries, obviously, I think to be local, notaries are one player thing we do. And for anybody who gets ghosted on sellers or get ghosted on buyers, another pro tip, using a mobile notary, if they don’t answer the phone, we pay the notary $50, $100 just to go drive to the house, knock on the door, and pass the phone to them.

Like I got someone wants to talk to you. And we literally close four deals that way. You know, so that’s another tip.

Mike Hambright (19:36.553)
Yeah, wow. Yeah. Yeah, that’s interesting. Okay. And let’s talk about some lessons learned on the Dispo side. So this I think that’s one of the bigger lessons, right? And certainly in the even the past two and a half years, Dispo has gotten harder because a lot of there’s not not as many buyers like just in the marketplace, money is more expensive, like all those things. So

Elijah Rubin (20:04.301)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Hambright (20:04.39)
What are you know, not if you kind of take out like hey, the markets changed, but in this model, what are some lessons you’ve learned from a Dispo standpoint?

Elijah Rubin (20:08.674)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah Rubin (20:13.102)
Yeah, we like said, a lot of, think any teeth kicked in a little bit. We were like, wow.

Mike Hambright (20:14.854)
I know you’ve learned some hard lessons, yeah. Especially when you’re in Phoenix, you’re like, hey man, we can buy, we can sell, right? But then you get off in Biloxi, Mississippi and you’re like, it’s crickets, right?

Elijah Rubin (20:22.639)
yeah, Phoenix, I mean…

Elijah Rubin (20:26.862)
A little bit more challenging. So we had some challenges with some of our Dispo guys. The problem is on Dispo, especially with all the technology and everything. I send out the blast, I’m waiting for the emails, inquiries to come back, and that’s cool and when markets are good, but when markets are hard like this, you gotta pick up the phone.

Great deals will sell themselves, but you’re selling me having great deals, right? So you have good deals or decent deals, which they’re not gonna sell themselves, which you gotta sell them. So big believer in TTP, red dance, talk to people, pick up the phone, talk. I think that’s a big piece. think building buyer profiles, especially nationwide.

Build up these relationships. already on the call. Take time to find your buy box. If they’re not the right buyer, get their buy box of all the players. And then what we do, like I said, we use Invest Lift, Investor Base. One thing I do like to do if those don’t yield any really good buyers, a little technique I like to do while I train our guys, we go to PropStream.

And we pull buyers who own properties, cash buyers who own over 10 plus properties, who bought properties within the last two years that are not in LLCs, individual entity people. know, people who bought 10 plus properties, they know the game, they know what’s happening, and they’re eager to talk to someone like you who’s bringing a deal that they didn’t have to go and find. I say, these are landlords, they can be flippers, but who just acted that own property, they bought properties in that area and they own over 10 of them.

Mike Hambright (21:56.019)
Yeah. Yeah. You got to dig a little bit deeper,

Elijah Rubin (21:57.484)
You know, so you know they’re active and they’re players.

You dig deeper, you gotta follow up with calls and text messages. Most disabled people, like I said, they only send text messages, right? don’t, not call them.

Double-dial buyers double-dial just like we do the sellers double-dial buyers most people don’t do that and what the heck is this? They think it’s a deal right so no it’s you you are a deal right and so double-dial buyers Text message multiple text message because the squeaky wheel gets the oil and they get so many emails and so many deals coming to them how to make sure you step and stand out against the rest

Mike Hambright (22:15.464)
Hmm. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (22:33.212)
Yeah, yeah. And let’s talk a little bit about follow up like you guys have so many leads working because you’re casting such a wide net, you’re doing this nationwide. I know what happens is sometimes there’s so many leads coming in that people get sloppy follow up because there’s just there’s just more coming in the pipe all the time. Like how do you but you know the money to the follow up right? So how do you religiously stay on top of follow up and not just focus on the newly the next lead the next lead the next lead.

Elijah Rubin (22:53.837)
Right.

Elijah Rubin (23:01.838)
And that’s the hard part with acquisition guys, right? I need fresh leads, just the leads, these leads are stale, and nah, you probably just didn’t hit them enough. Especially these leads, these are PPL leads, so if they didn’t sell the property, that means maybe you didn’t talk to them, or they just didn’t like you, possibly, and that could be fine, pass it on to somebody else on the team. So when it comes to follow-up, we have a thing we call three by three method.

Mike Hambright (23:05.616)
It’s the leads. It’s always the leads, yeah.

Elijah Rubin (23:23.692)
You know, and this is a good way to make sure and I highly recommend you guys use this even if you’re doing deals locally. Make sure that you you’re squeezing the juice out of the deal, out of opportunity. So you call it, you call that first lead three times a day for that first week. Then you call them three times a week for the next three weeks. And then call them three times a month until one of you two dies.

Alright, so until they tell you to take me off this list, you gotta keep touching them. And if you willing to do that, because the average deal, people don’t realize, it takes about seven to nine touches to get a deal done. And people think I’m gonna wonk, they see Closed Olympics, I’m gonna wonk all Closed Sure that happens once in a while, but you ain’t paying bills like that. You know, it’s fortunate to follow up.

Mike Hambright (23:46.236)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (24:02.066)
Yeah. Right, right, right. Yeah, the reality is, is, you know, we used to a long time ago, think we were studs if we did one call closes and then you re then you realized if they agreed to the price that quickly, you probably overpaid, right? Cause you made an offer and they’re like, I’ll take it. And you’re like, crap. What did I, what did I miss? Can’t be that easy.

Elijah Rubin (24:21.224)
Right, definitely go paid, right. Sure.

Elijah Rubin (24:27.726)
Daint. Alright, I’m 10,000 too high.

Mike Hambright (24:32.154)
Yeah, yeah. So Elijah, good stuff, man. Any kind of words of wisdom you want to share with folks that are in their market and they’re thinking about, you know, going nationally? Any other kind of words of wisdom that we didn’t discuss here today?

Elijah Rubin (24:46.316)
Yeah, know, just understand, something one of my mentors shared with me that gave me a good framing perspective I want to share with you guys. If you do what’s easy in life, life is going be hard. If you do what’s hard in life, life will be easy.

Mike Hambright (24:59.848)
Yeah.

Elijah Rubin (25:00.046)
You know, so doing a whole something, first start like, oh my goodness, all the leads to comps, the paperwork, the contract, the escrow, it felt like it was gonna be a lot. But once you figured it out, you see, oh, assignment, the paperwork, the title company handles that. Oh, it’s a lot easier once you get in the water, right? Same thing, so if you’re thinking about doing nationwide, don’t go all the way nationwide. Maybe pick three or four markets to start with. Show that you get evidence that I could do this. That if Mike could bake a cake, if Elijah could bake a cake, why can’t you?

Alright, and the same things out there. So trust yourself, trust the process, respect your progress. And don’t get caught up on the Instagram, I need instant gratification. If you really want longevity, 20 plus years, really start respecting valuing long-term gratification. Knowing that it’s not gonna happen overnight. And then one other thing I’ll give you guys too, especially if you have a team with acquisition guys and disposition guys and times are tough and you might have a bad month or two.

Mike Hambright (25:27.602)
Yeah, for sure.

Mike Hambright (25:37.096)
You

Elijah Rubin (25:57.292)
For you as a leader, as well as your team, I really say this, when you let them know, hey, you’re not laying a brick, all right? You’re not laying a brick, you’re helping build a cathedral. So what you’re building is something bigger than just what you see every day. So every day you’re showing up, you’re part of something bigger. And once they understand there’s a purpose here, and there’s something valued here, now they’re growing something together, not just showing up for a job to get paid.

Mike Hambright (26:19.41)
That’s great. That’s great. Awesome, man. Good stuff. Well, I appreciate you sharing some insights with us today.

Elijah Rubin (26:24.91)
For sure, no thank you for the opportunity to share with the family. Cool.

Mike Hambright (26:27.44)
Yeah, yeah. If folks want to learn more about you, you guys, what you got going on, tell us some places they can go connect.

Elijah Rubin (26:37.753)
Sure, by all means, you could always reach out to me on Instagram, Rubin, R-U-B-I-N, Elijah Rubin on Instagram and Facebook. You can check out my Elijah Rubin YouTube channel. I’m doing a closers diary, so this deal we closed for 125,000. We’re kind of breaking down what I did, how I said it, a little piece of the audio call. So if you have, you know, if you’re struggling on what to say and how to say, you can always look at those. I am the fire damage king. So if you get any fire damage deals nationwide, you need help with them.

in markets that are 250,000 plus, reach out to me. Let me see how can help serve and add value. I’m a big believer, like I said, serving your way to the top.

Mike Hambright (27:15.214)
Awesome. Good stuff. Yes. If you listen to this, there’s some great insights here. You need to follow Elijah, his partner, Mike Lima is also these guys are in investor fuel. Amazing guys. You guys won a biggest giver award a couple of times now for just coming in and adding a ton of value. Yeah.

Elijah Rubin (27:28.044)
Yeah, we got two, I’m going back for my third, I’m going back for my third. That’s such a cool award, get it. Once I saw you could get that award, I’m like, what? I’m like eagerly looking to like, what can I answer? What link can I send? What podcast can I refer? That’s such a good way to get everybody engaged at your master’s, I really like that.

Mike Hambright (27:34.726)
Yeah, yeah.

Mike Hambright (27:38.898)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (27:43.536)
Yeah, I appreciate that buddy. So glad to have you guys in the group. So awesome. If you’re looking to start.

national wholesaling. There’s some great tips here for you guys. You know, it’s a lot of us have shiny objects in them. We think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. There’s a lot of opportunity out there, but there’s a lot of opportunity in focus as well. So not saying you shouldn’t do it, but there’s some challenges and hopefully some of the lessons that Elijah’s learning shared here today will help you kind of climb that learning curve even faster. Awesome guys. Appreciate you for joining us on the show today. Have a great rest of the week. We’ll see you on the next show.

Elijah Rubin (28:15.982)
Bye!