From Corporate to Real Estate: Frank Dixon’s Inspiring Journey Revealed

Dylan Silver (00:01.194)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Dylan Silver. And today on the show I have real estate wholesaler, thousand deals more than that completed over the last five years with Evolve Estate in Tampa, Florida, Frank Dixon. Frank, welcome to the show.

Frank Dixon (00:21.464)
Dylan, I appreciate you having me on.

Dylan Silver (00:23.924)
It’s a pleasure to have you and I always like to start off at the top Frank by asking guess how they got into real estate.

Frank Dixon (00:32.182)
Yeah, so just to start from the beginning, I went to school at the University of Florida, Go Gators, and I got a degree in business, and then I took the traditional route of getting the degree and then going into the corporate world and getting a corporate job. So I started out doing that right out of college. I got a corporate job. It had a nice little cushion to it, but…

in the first week of training or the first one or two weeks of training you know I thought to myself there’s gotta be more than this like I don’t want to spend the next 40 years of my life in the corporate world in doing this there’s gotta be a bigger vision and a bigger thing for me so from there I kinda just went and researched you know how can I become wealthy basically

Dylan Silver (01:31.083)
Yeah.

Frank Dixon (01:31.374)
trying to figure out a bigger vision for myself because that is kind what I got to it in the first week or two weeks and upon doing some research and know, Googling how to become wealthy real estate kept popping up literally real estate this, real estate that so I kind of jumped on that train and what really got me hooked was I kept seeing bigger pockets so I started listening to their pocket

I started listening to their podcast on BiggerPockets, basically interviewing investors that started out from nothing and created a life for themselves that sounded intriguing. So yeah, I started listening to the BiggerPockets podcast and I got hooked on real estate ever since. So that’s pretty much how I got into real estate was, you know, yeah, just through BiggerPockets and listening to their podcast and stuff like that.

Dylan Silver (02:23.933)
bigger pockets.

Dylan Silver (02:28.33)
What was the transition like from going corporate to then real estate? was it, did you work for someone else for a time being? How did that process look?

Frank Dixon (02:40.62)
Yeah, so I worked in the corporate world for two years, but I basically started, you know, I basically got the real estate bug in the first month or so into my corporate world position. But yeah, I got the real estate bug early on and then I pretty much worked that job for two years and on the side I was just devouring content. was, you know, learning everything about real estate. I was super bought into the ideal of real estate.

And I always had the vision while working my corporate job of how can I turn this into a full time thing. So that’s kind of the timeline there. It was a two year period with the corporate world. And then I just kept listening to podcasts, reading books, all that good stuff. And then I was living with my brother at the time that was actually in St. Petersburg. And the office that I worked for was in Orlando. So

Dylan Silver (03:34.987)
Hmm.

Frank Dixon (03:38.606)
Every day I would commute two and a half hours from my brother’s house in St. Petersburg to the corporate office in Orlando. So it would be four to five hour round trip daily.

Dylan Silver (03:50.58)
So this is while you are transitioning from the corporate job or you had the corporate job at this point.

Frank Dixon (03:57.026)
Yeah, so this was very beginning at the corporate job. So that’s kind how got into my first deal basically was I started listening to the podcast and then one podcast was just like, here’s a simple way to get into your first deal. Go buy a property owner occupied, put three to 5 % down and that’s an easy way to get into your first deal. So I ended up buying a condo for my first deal ever kind of six months into my corporate career. And then I kind of ran from there.

Dylan Silver (04:21.93)
Yeah.

Frank Dixon (04:25.995)
And then, yeah.

Dylan Silver (04:28.054)
So that condo, you use it as a long-term rental?

Frank Dixon (04:31.906)
Yeah so right now it’s a long term rental. At the time when I was working my corporate job I didn’t have a lot of money to purchase a property. So I only had probably like 2-3 thousand to buy a property which is not a lot. So I found it as a property that I could move into because I was driving from St. Pete’s, Orlando so I found it in Orlando and yeah sure enough I ended up finding an agent to help me get the deal and then I bought it for hundred and…

$28,000 with 3 % down or something like that on a FHA loan. And then, and it’s funny because I didn’t have enough money for the down payment on that property, so I had to ask my boss for like a signing bonus of some sort, because I never got a signing bonus when I started with the company. So I ended up getting a $3,000 signing bonus to help me, to help get me into the deal and so that I didn’t have to drive four hours every single day. So yeah, it was, I did live in it.

Dylan Silver (05:06.281)
Wow.

Dylan Silver (05:17.196)
Wow.

Frank Dixon (05:30.382)
It’s a two-bedroom, two-bath condo. And then, you know, at the time, your rent or your mortgage is your biggest expense, and I wasn’t making a ton of money starting off my corporate job. So I thought, okay, let me rent out the second bedroom to my brother. So that’s what I did to help alleviate my living expenses so I can generate more money to help, you know, to help invest into my real estate dreams and aspirations. So I rented out the second bedroom.

Dylan Silver (05:42.102)
Sure.

Frank Dixon (06:00.536)
for, you know, six to seven hundred bucks, which basically covered my mortgage on the property. So I did that for a little bit and then eventually ended up moving out and now I rent out both bedrooms by the room and it’s been a property that I’ve owned since 2019.

Dylan Silver (06:20.17)
And so I don’t want to gloss over the commute. So you were going from Orlando to you mentioned Tampa or St. Pete area every day for six months for half a year. So it’s like four hours in your car.

Frank Dixon (06:33.4)
Yep. Yep.

Yeah, and it was probably a little under six months, but yeah, I was doing that pretty much every day. And if anybody knows about Orlando, Tampa, it’s I-4, which is a popular highway, which has a lot of traffic. yeah, it was a lot, but at the time it was all that I knew. I had to do what I had to do in order to keep things moving.

Dylan Silver (06:43.244)
I’m caught four five, yeah.

Dylan Silver (06:56.374)
What was that like?

Dylan Silver (07:02.987)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (07:07.264)
Well, I’ll tell you what, Frank, I didn’t do anything close to that. But when I went from I’m in North Dallas, and it was about a, I’d say, a 50 minute commute there in the mornings, and then an hour and a half commute back. And I, in order to get my real estate license, I did eight hour days. And then I also did 14 hour days at the real estate school for about a month. And at the end of that, it was a long day, don’t get me wrong, but the commute would just

Frank Dixon (07:07.382)
So.

Dylan Silver (07:37.418)
destroy me because I was like dragging I’d have to pull over sometimes and so you’re doing that every day for for months and months and months you must have been waking up I like you know the crack of dawn

Frank Dixon (07:39.298)
Yeah.

Frank Dixon (07:49.454)
Yep, I had to wake up early and had to go to bed early.

Dylan Silver (07:54.136)
man, so you’re doing that, you get the first condo, you’re living in the condo, and you’re listening to BiggerPockets, working the job. Did you then sort of put real estate on the back burner as far as doing deals until you left the corporate job, or were you actually doing wholesale deals while you were at the corporate job?

Frank Dixon (08:16.174)
Yeah, so that was on the back burner. I was always learning, listening, like I said, listening to podcasts, reading books, all that good stuff. But the corporate job was pretty demanding too. I was a project manager and it was 60, 70 hours a week. So that was pretty demanding at the time. So it was tough in order to try to do deals on the side. So that’s the only deal that I did while working the corporate job. then once that ended is when things picked up.

Dylan Silver (08:21.708)
I have to do both, yeah.

Dylan Silver (08:29.707)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (08:45.844)
And then going from the corporate job to then real estate wholesale, were you working for yourself? Did you start Evolve? Were you working for other people? What was that transition process like?

Frank Dixon (08:56.012)
Yeah, so I worked at this job until 2020, COVID. So I got laid off in 2020, which was a blessing in disguise because it kind of forced me to get into, yeah, to get into real estate. So I tried doing it on my own at first. Didn’t really go that well. I had so many questions. I had no idea what I was doing.

Dylan Silver (09:07.403)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (09:10.838)
take it real slow,

Frank Dixon (09:22.252)
I just lacked confidence in everything that was doing. Whether it was cold calling sellers, trying to get a property under contract, how do I reach out to the title company? Do I call them? Do I email them? Like what happens when I do get a deal under contract? So I just had so many questions and I was trying my best, but it got to a point where I was like, okay, if this is something that I’m serious about, how can I shortcut my learning curve?

Dylan Silver (09:32.522)
I had the same issue with that. Yeah, yep.

Frank Dixon (09:51.726)
And from there, I did a lot of reflection and I figured out, let me find somebody who’s crushing this, let me go work for them or try to provide value for them in some way so that way I can learn for them and pretty much shorten my learning curve.

Dylan Silver (10:06.282)
And how did you find that person or that company?

Frank Dixon (10:10.626)
Google. think I just Google, you know, I was laid off. I didn’t have much going on. So it’s funny because I started researching project manager roles and I had zero desire to be a project manager. I had that experience so I was literally just researching jobs that I had experience in.

Dylan Silver (10:12.202)
Google. So you reach out to them from Google.

Dylan Silver (10:31.297)
Go back.

Frank Dixon (10:39.49)
you know, deep down something was bothering me. was like, know I want to be in real estate. So I eventually started looking at real estate stuff and yeah, I just Googled real estate companies at the time. My girlfriend at the time, she’s my wife now, but she was living in Fort Lauderdale. So I think I was just Googling Fort Lauderdale real estate companies and just going from there.

Dylan Silver (10:45.185)
Yep.

Dylan Silver (11:04.108)
I had a similar experience. So I was working for a company, ended up getting laid off from that company, ended up moving to basically a time period where I was determining what is it that I’m gonna do? Am I gonna go back into the car business? Am I gonna start my own shop? What am I gonna do? And I was just Googling, I didn’t think anyone else was doing this, but I was just Googling.

real estate wholesale and seeing which ones would come up first in the search. And then I was calling these places, walking. remember, this is funny. I had a kind of a decently badly broken leg at the time. And I literally was walking with a cane. So I was going to these interviews with a cane and then just talking to these guys. And they were like, how did you find us? And you know, how did you know we were hiring? And I was like, well, I didn’t really know, but I mean, we’re here now. And so ended up getting an opportunity where

I went from being a W2 in the previous job, which was kind of a limited scope to then really being in charge of so many different sides of the game as a 1099 contract for a wholesale company. things didn’t end up working out there. You know, the company faced some tough times, but I learned so much from that opportunity. And then I realized, hey, I can do this. I can start, you know, JVing on deals with people that

Frank Dixon (12:05.772)
Yeah. All right.

Dylan Silver (12:31.57)
I source the deal. And then from there, I started to see kind of, I would say the light at the end of the tunnel, like, you mentioned title companies, like, how do I interact with title companies, I was able to see the whole game. And so at some point in time, we’re pivoting back to your story here, you’re, you’re working with this company that you found off of Google. And at some point, you’re realizing I can do this on my own. And what was that, that point for you?

And was it something like, you know, I always knew that I was going to go do my own thing, or were you thinking like, hey, I’m going to stick with this operation for a while.

Frank Dixon (13:09.676)
Yeah, I think deep down it was always something that I wanted to do on my own and my intentions with this company was to go in and pretty much learn everything that I could possibly learn because it was a large company that was doing the business at scale. So I knew if I put myself in this company and surrounded myself with people that were doing the daily activities that I would learn a ton versus being on my own. so that’s pretty much what I did.

I was at this company at the beginning of around August of 2020. So I started at this company as a Dispo agent and I was literally just cold calling investors. That’s all I was doing. The ad was you can make $50,000 to $75,000 a year. If you’re good, you can make closer to that $75,000.

Dylan Silver (13:54.814)
investors. Yeah.

Frank Dixon (14:07.626)
and it was a disco agent. literally just going out there, cold calling investors, building relationships to basically get them aligned with buying our properties. So.

Dylan Silver (14:18.838)
Do you remember which tools you were using? Were you using InvestorLift PropStream? How would you find their investors?

Frank Dixon (14:25.708)
No, we didn’t have any of that. We just had an email blast.

Dylan Silver (14:30.15)
an email blast. you’re having did you have phone numbers?

Frank Dixon (14:33.462)
Yeah, yeah, we had phone numbers. So we had an investor database, of course. And keep in mind, this company was around since 2006. So they’ve been building that investor database since 2006. So we had five, six, seven, eight, 10,000 investors in our investor database and stuff like that.

Dylan Silver (14:36.725)
Okay.

Dylan Silver (14:41.888)
Mm-hmm for a while

Dylan Silver (14:48.236)
tons of investor.

Dylan Silver (14:55.562)
And so your job was then to kind of mine and create the ones that are the hottest investors, the most likely to buy and then find, you know, present them those deals. At what point chronologically here did you start thinking about, okay, now I’m ready for Evolve to take place or for me to launch my own deal?

Frank Dixon (15:13.294)
Yeah, so I started out as a dispil agent. I did really well at that and I ended up making more than the $75,000 in my first year. I made close to $100,000 my first year doing that. And then, oh, 100%. And then I pretty much got promoted to a position where I ran my own region. So I did that for two, two and a half years and I’ll be honest.

Dylan Silver (15:27.02)
You’re like, this beats the corporate job, yeah.

Frank Dixon (15:43.946)
Once I got that position, I really enjoyed it because I was making good money. was making multiple six figures in that position. I was running my own region. So I had acquisition agents under me. I had a disto agent under me full time. And I was basically running my own business inside of the business. And I was making more money than I could ever imagine. I was creating a lot of extra income so that I could start buying my own properties. And the company had a system where you could

Dylan Silver (16:01.866)
Yeah.

Frank Dixon (16:13.772)
buy properties through the company at a discount. At like a more discounted rate than what we would sell to the investors. Because you get the in-house discount. So I got pretty comfortable with that position, making good money. And I learned a ton with that position. I was in charge of a region. When I first was in charge of a region, we were doing around 2 million revenue a year in deals.

Dylan Silver (16:21.108)
And spread, Right.

Frank Dixon (16:42.19)
and then I was able to grow it to a little under 4 million for the year. So I learned a ton, you know, I was doing around 20 to 30 deals a month in this position and in the middle of that I didn’t have any, I kind of lost sight of going out and starting my own thing because it was such a good position. And then…

Dylan Silver (17:01.332)
Yeah, I mean, you’re basically called an intrapreneur, like you’re not doing your own deal completely, but you have a lot of the flexibility without as much of the liability.

Frank Dixon (17:13.868)
Yeah, exactly. So I think at the two year mark of that, you know, I’m always somebody that’s trying to figure out how to get to the next level that always wants to grow and try to get better. So I think in year two of that, it just became the same thing over and over and over again. And I became super comfortable on where I was and I didn’t feel like I was growing.

So at that point, I did some, I meditated on it a little bit, but I think at that point I was like, all right, what’s next for me? And that ultimately was going out and starting my own shop.

Dylan Silver (17:53.866)
And so what was the first steps of that like? you find partners for Evolve? Did you, you know, put in your notice and then, you know, do everything at once? What was, how did this process come about for you?

Frank Dixon (18:07.554)
Yeah, I think over time in my position at the company, I was able to build a lot of relationships. So I built relationships with a lot of different wholesalers, investors that were buying 200 deals a year, and I was able to pick people’s brains. So I think closer to that two year mark, once I started realizing there’s gotta be more, I’ve got to a point where…

I’ve been able to buy a few properties through the company and I have a big nest egg built up and what’s next for me? How can I take this to the next level? And yeah, so I had those relationships built up in the position that I was in because I was the guy that had all the good deals. So when I was in that position, I was kind of able to leverage that to build the right relationships for me to help me transition into starting my own business.

Dylan Silver (19:03.338)
What was the first six months or a year like with Evolve? And was it smooth sailing because you done this before with the previous company? Or was there a lot of learning curves that maybe starting a business that was tricky?

Frank Dixon (19:19.446)
Yeah, so definitely a lot of learning curves. So we started at the beginning of 2024, so it’s been about a year and a half. The first six months, we got by, I would say, is how to summarize that. We got by and we remained profitable, but it wasn’t by no means a company that was thriving. So just to give you a little background, when I first started, I…

Dylan Silver (19:28.395)
Okay.

Frank Dixon (19:48.212)
I know what I like and what I don’t like and I’m not somebody that was huge on the acquisition side of the business. So what I first did was I went and hired two acquisition guys. And then once I hired two acquisition guys, I was feeding the acquisition guys just cold call leads. So what I learned over time was that cold call leads are tough. You’re getting a lot more rejection.

Dylan Silver (20:16.212)
It can wear you down. It can wear you down.

Frank Dixon (20:18.062)
They’re getting a lot more rejection so that the acquisition guys You know when we first started, you know, we got a couple deals, you know We had a 30 pop and and we had a you know, we had some deals flowing it was it wasn’t consistent But we were getting you know decent deal flow over the first six months, but what I learned from that first six months was It’s tougher that the marketing Leads that you do get is super vital to

everything else it’s not just about getting the cheapest lead and trying to get the highest ROI on that so yeah learned running a wholesale operation just on cold call leads and texting leads was tough the acquisition guys were getting beat up those guys eventually got fed up and left because you know it was just

Dylan Silver (21:07.916)
Yeah, it’s tough. It’s a time I’ve done that role. It’s tough to do the lot of the cold leads. It’s brutal. I mean, you’re it’s demoralizing, right? Because you’re hearing so many nos and then you got a yes, right? But then, of course, when you’re starting a company, or growing a scale in a small company, you know, it’s not like there’s tons of profit to be had. So, you know, with these deals, a lot of it’s going to the bottom line. And so it is it can be it can be draining. I totally get that.

Frank Dixon (21:37.742)
Yeah, so I I hired those two guys and it was just me doing a lot of the transaction coordination and Dispo side of the business. So they eventually left to a different company that was paying a salary because at the time I was only paying commission on deals that closed and the guys that I hired at the time were looking for a salary plus commission on the deals that they closed. So it eventually didn’t work out. So really quickly I hired two people and lost two people.

Dylan Silver (22:07.052)
you know like back to zero one.

Frank Dixon (22:07.148)
So as, yeah, when you’re just starting a business, you know, it can be tough once you’re just starting and you you have this grand vision that you’re gonna hire people, it’s all gonna work out, you’re gonna scale to six figures and it’s all just gonna go smooth, right? There’s not gonna be any hiccups. So I learned very quickly how to adapt. So with that, I transitioned and I tried to hire,

I try to hire basically talent overseas in the Philippines. So I did that for a few months and then I was still doing the cold calling and texting leads. We were doing that for a few months and just wasn’t seeing the results that I wanted. First we were just doing cold calling and texting leads so they were hard to convert and then also the talent that we were using was overseas in the Philippines.

Dylan Silver (22:39.606)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (22:54.838)
Yeah.

Frank Dixon (23:05.666)
which I’m not saying there’s nothing wrong with that, but yeah, there’s just a lot of headwinds when it comes to stuff like that. yeah, did that for a couple months, you know, just getting by and in the meantime, you know, I have relationships with other wholesalers and people. So since I have my strong suit and Dispo, I’m still out hustling on Facebook groups and building relationships with other wholesalers to sell their deals. So.

Dylan Silver (23:07.102)
Language period, yeah.

Dylan Silver (23:33.953)
Yeah.

Frank Dixon (23:34.83)
I’m still working that avenue in the background while still trying to scale the operation to have leads, inbound leads direct to seller that are coming straight to our acquisition guys. So I’m still out there hustling, getting deals. And then over a few months, I start to realize, okay, this outbound lead generation and with a combination of hiring overseas wasn’t really working that great. So October of…

Dylan Silver (24:00.236)
year.

Frank Dixon (24:04.334)
2024 is kind of when things, when the light turned on. And that’s when we transitioned into inbound marketing. And since we started inbound marketing in October of 2024, we’ve just seen a lot better results and a more clean and efficient operation.

Dylan Silver (24:20.99)
Inbound marketing is expensive, it was a tough pill to swallow initially. But then once you do it for a couple of months and you start to see the returns and you decide to say, OK, well, I can justify this. But certainly, it makes sense. You want to keep the operation running as efficiently as possible. And when you’re starting out outbound or overseas without the inbound lead, that’s kind of a progression. Of course, ideal world may be

We don’t have to buy inbound leads, but you mentioned all the things that can come along with it. It can be highly demoralizing. There can be turnover. People can kind of get burnt out from it. And then, you know, it’s just a very, very tricky thing. So, you know, for folks who may be thinking about doing wholesale or maybe they work in a job and are looking at doing wholesale deals on their own.

Frank Dixon (24:51.352)
Yeah.

Frank Dixon (25:05.058)
Yep.

Dylan Silver (25:16.236)
What would be your feedback to folks based on your journey, what you’ve learned and general advice to people who may be interested in wholesale?

Frank Dixon (25:24.844)
Yeah, I think my biggest piece of advice if you’re just starting or you’re trying to break into wholesaling is go find somebody who’s already crushing it and learn from them.

And if that’s a company that you can go work for and learn for, great. If it’s a mentor that mentors you one on one, that’s great too. But I think my biggest piece of advice is just find somebody that already knows what they’re doing so you can shorten that learning curve and get the results yourself that much quicker.

Dylan Silver (25:57.952)
Frank, we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go to learn more about your business and maybe reach out to you?

Frank Dixon (26:05.004)
Yeah, Instagram. People can find me on Instagram. FrankJDixon3 is my Instagram handle and that’s probably the best place to reach me. You can DM me or whatever. If you have a deal that you need help selling or anything like that or if you just have questions or want to chat about real estate in general, I’m happy to do so.

Dylan Silver (26:25.91)
Frank, thank you so much for coming on the show here today. Congrats on your success and to your continued success.

Frank Dixon (26:32.5)
Awesome, I appreciate you Dylan, thanks.