How Real Estate Investors Break the $500K Revenue Plateau | Amanda New

Amanda New (00:00)

My husband and I are salespeople. We had run sales teams, we were salespeople ourselves, we were trainers, blah, blah, blah. We were running our business like salespeople. We were not running our business like business owners. And what I mean by that, when you think of the stereotypical salesperson, they’re usually a hunter.

Usually put me in coach, let me hunt, let me kill, let me go do my thing. But admin, follow-up, money? Nah, I just need more leads. Just give me some more leads and I’ll crush it. So every time we hit a roadblock in revenue, we just increased the budget. And the problem is you can’t outspend bad processes and bad management of your finances.

Meghan Escobar (01:12)

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Real Estate Pros Podcast. I am your host, Meghan Escobar, and today I have the pleasure of sitting down with an incredible young woman who, like a lot of us, started a business at the start of COVID.

Amanda and Adam are the founders of The Cash Offer Company. I’ll let her tell her story, but I had the opportunity to sit with Amanda and talk about what they’re doing out here in the investment world, in the real estate world. And I’m excited for you to be here and share this with our audience. I definitely think they’re gonna be able to walk away with some great insights from your journey and the way that.

you are positioning yourself as a professional in your business. So again, Amanda, thank you so much for joining.

Amanda New (01:56)

Thank you for having me.

Meghan Escobar (01:58)

Absolutely. Diving into this. So the most important thing is who are you? Right? for those who might not be familiar with who Amanda is, who Adam is, what The Cash Offer Company is, Might given us a thirty thousand foot view of what you guys are focused on today.

Amanda New (02:14)

Yeah, so my husband and I, Adam and Amanda, we are based here in Richmond, Virginia. we are the proud owners of The Cash Offer Company we have been in business since summer of 2020 peak COVID, perfect time to start a business. we started out solely wholesaling. That was our background, that’s what we had learned in anticipation of opening the business.

And now today we are probably about 50/50 wholesaling and flipping. We have a rental portfolio, we got an Airbnb. anything you could do with the house. we now have probably done it. So now we do a little bit of everything, but mostly wholesaling and flipping.

Meghan Escobar (02:49)

Nice. I love that. one thing that really, really caught my attention when we were chatting was where you’re transitioning into. So I love that you mentioned what you guys are starting, but you also mentioned, some of the opportunities that are coming across for you right now, stepping away from the wholesaling and making space for the coaching approach. So do you mind talking to us a little bit about?

What that is, ’cause I think that’s interesting.

Amanda New (03:16)

Yeah, so I think one of the beautiful things about scaling the business is the objective is to get your time back, to go and use that time for whatever you want to go use it for. so for us what that has turned into is most of my day-to-day I’ve been able to delegate out. We’ve got admin, we’ve got project managers, we’ve got the people. So when we sit back and say, Okay, now what are you gonna do? because you got some time on your hands.

is really talk about coaching and helping people along the way because we didn’t get here in a vacuum. We didn’t just hatch a beautiful business. someone helped us. if you look at my background in prior life in prior jobs, in prior lives, I’m a coach, I’m an educator, that’s what I’ve always done. so I’m just really excited to be able to help people in this space that I find are underserved.

and really get them to where they wanna be, and scale in a way that’s healthy.

Meghan Escobar (04:05)

That’s amazing because that’s one of the most important things as an entrepreneur and a business owner is time, isn’t it? the only thing we don’t get back. We can always create more money, we can always create more business ideas. But time is pretty precious. I love that.

Be proficient with time is not necessarily an easy thing to do, especially in this climate where there’s always on the go, always something to do. What do you think it is that helps you guys keep that running smoothly?

Amanda New (04:33)

So a couple of things. We are in a unique position that I work with my husband, and usually tell people that and they’re like, I would never do that. And we’ve worked together our entire married life. We used have the same job when we first got married. And so to us it’s our normal. But when we started this business, we’re like, we’re gonna crush it. We’ve already worked together. And that’s not at all what happened. lots of what I would call high volume, low productivity conversations.

so we have to figure out what works for us. And I think it’s true universally. So take the husband and wife equation out of it. we have very clear roles. So, Adam manages these four things in our business. I manage these four things in our business. And when any of those things slip, we are held accountable to the thing that we are responsible for. So I think that’s just really important that I am not the one that has to fix everything.

And Adam’s not the one that has to fix me or me fix him. But we do have to explain ourselves and we have to start dialoguing when something isn’t working the way it’s supposed to work. but then they have to go and execute. Whoever’s responsible is the one that goes and does. So I think having a collaborative approach, but then ultimately the responsibility of the execution of the plan being very siloed, has helped tremendously. for example, at this point, my husband, if we end up

having a property that we flip. He puts the property under contract and never walks it again. He is never a part of it after that. he’s been in multiple houses. He’s like, wow, this looks really good, guys. He had never been in there. So he knows nothing about the design, the budget, nothing. we keep it that way. it just makes his brain freed up to go be great at what he is responsible for doing.

Meghan Escobar (06:13)

Love that. So it’s almost like you guys have got to a point in your personal, professional relationship that you know where your strengths are, where your weaknesses are. It’s properly delegated and we’re not crossing that line.

Amanda New (06:27)

No, yeah, we don’t. it has to be something pretty big for us to crisscross any part of our business that is not our responsibility.

Meghan Escobar (07:15)

That sounds like a smooth operator. Operation. So Amanda, operator, entrepreneur that I know has had a moment in their journey where things got real or a deal had gone sideways. And you guys have been in the game for six years now. is there any specific moment that you could go back to that

Brings you back to that memory that you could share with the audience.

Amanda New (07:40)

Yeah, this coaching journey starts with this moment that happened about three years ago. So we high-five each other, we were generating about half a million dollars in revenue, and it was just the two of us. And so when you take out marketing expenses, that’s a pretty nice life. And then we got real stuck. We were stuck at that same revenue level for a couple of years. I was pregnant with our second daughter, and I was the one answering the phone.

So when people would call us, it was me. And so we quickly realized the revenue was drying out. So previous channels don’t work anymore. margins were getting compressed, and I was not gonna be able to answer the phone much longer because I was a gajillion months pregnant. So it’s like, what the heck do we do? So we ended up linking up with a consulting company. They came, sat at our kitchen table, and they’re like, Wow, you guys have no idea how to run a business. We’re like, Cool.

That sounds about right. they straight up were like, So how much does it cost you to acquire a lead? And I was like, I don’t know. They just show up.

Meghan Escobar (08:41)

you

are bringing in half a million dollars thinking you guys are just crushing it.

Amanda New (08:46)

yeah. And they’re like, what? how do you even own a house at this point? it was wild. But fundamentally, by background,

my husband and I are salespeople. We had run sales teams, we were salespeople ourselves, we were trainers, blah, blah, blah. We were running our business like salespeople. We were not running our business like business owners. And what I mean by that, when you think of the stereotypical salesperson, they’re usually a hunter.

Usually put me in coach, let me hunt, let me kill, let me go do my thing. But admin, follow-up, money? Nah, I just need more leads. Just give me some more leads and I’ll crush it. So every time we hit a roadblock in revenue, we just increased the budget. And the problem is you can’t outspend bad processes and bad management of your finances.

so they were like, Yeah, you should probably keep track of this stuff. And we’re like,

Meghan Escobar (09:35)

Numbers.

Amanda New (09:36)

Got it. And I will say in that time, that was March of twenty three. By December of twenty three, I’d given birth. We had hired a lead manager and the business was on pace to 3X what it had been doing up to that point in nine months. And it was all because we went from the very beginning and looked at every single facet and said either it needs to get cut, it needs to get expanded, or it needs to be monitored. everything.

developed a process. It started running the business like a business. And then magically things got a lot better. But I did not know that I don’t know what I don’t know. And what I find is that people that are in that same space also don’t know that stuff either. so hopefully they don’t have to make my mistake and spend five figures to fix it. it’d be a lot easier if someone just told you how to do it instead.

Meghan Escobar (11:01)

Amen to that and I think that ties into another thing that we talked about is

Surrounding yourself with the right people. Right. And it’s so interesting because people could probably listen to that story and be like, how did you not know what you were doing? You were bringing in half a million dollars. people might look at that situation and be like, you were successful in my eyes. But hiring somebody that actually knows how to run the business, now look what you just said. nine months later, we’re 3Xing our business. And so had you never taken that initial step to sit down with somebody who knows more than you?

I think this is speaking directly to your avatar? what would you say to that individual who might have some knowledge about, getting into the wholesaling world or real estate world, but might not know exactly how to position themselves as a business owner? what type of advice would you give them?

Amanda New (11:54)

So that’s the challenge, is that I don’t know why I used to tell people this all the time and then thought it didn’t apply to me. But the skill set of real estate investing, whatever that is, wholesaling, flipping, landlording, whatever, is not the same skill set as running a business. The problem is that you run enough numbers in a real estate company that you think they are the same. And they’re very much so not. I know people that own a hundred doors.

And they don’t know how to run a business. They know how to manage rentals. The two are not the same. And the challenge is that initially you need to know the craft that you’re trying to get into in terms of real estate investing. But at some point, if the business is going to get any bigger or you’re not going to get sunk, you have to start learning the skill set of running a business. And I did not make that connection till it was almost too late.

And so that’s now what I tell everybody is running a business is KPIs cost to acquire a customer, taxes, bookkeeping. let’s not go to IRS jail. Let’s actually run a business with taxes, clean books. doesn’t mean you have to do all of it, but it means it is more important than you think. how do you hire? How do you retain? How do you delegate? All of that stuff is business ownership and that is a lifelong journey you’ll be a part of.

But you have to know you have to do it. Cause if you don’t, you’ll go bankrupt and you’ll sink your business and you’ll be back to working your corporate job and wondering what.

Meghan Escobar (13:22)

Do you think that if you guys hadn’t had that meeting and had all of that brought to your attention, that you would be where you are today?

Amanda New (13:33)

No, we wouldn’t even be in business at this point. Hundred percent. No way. No way.

Meghan Escobar (13:38)

Thank you for sharing that. I think that’s something that’s really not talked about enough, right? Because a lot of people in your position, Amanda, could have just gone out there and tried to market the highlight life of success about how you guys created a peak business during COVID bringing in half a million dollars and made it seem like you guys had it all together instead of saying, We have a real problem on our hands.

Amanda New (14:00)

Yeah. if you’re familiar with profit first for real estate investors where you put all the money in the different buckets, we follow that we’re very dogmatic about it. The last dollar, the last set of dollars I had left in a profit account is what we paid somebody.

Meghan Escobar (14:13)

Amazing.

Amanda New (14:14)

That’s it. I had no more money to scale to do anything. It was keep the lights on and that’s it. So if that hadn’t worked out.

that was the last money I was going to live off of. and then we would have had to go back to work.

Meghan Escobar (14:27)

I’m gonna ask you a question on that because a lot of people might get scared to say, I don’t have it to spend or so invest, right? Mindset. But

If you didn’t, then you bankrupt, you go back to corporate, right? was there part of you that had any belief that it wouldn’t have worked out? Or do you think that belief was so strong that it’s gonna work out that’s what helped you through?

Amanda New (14:54)

I have a very extremely high risk tolerance compared to my husband, who also has a pretty high risk tolerance. to put this in perspective, we had two properties under contract when we first started wholesaling. They had not closed yet. That seems sufficient. We can quit our jobs, right? She’ll be fine. in hindsight, that’s horrifying. But in the moment, we had such belief that we knew how to stand up a marketing engine and we had such belief in our

Talent, skills, abilities, we’re like, what’s the worst that’s gonna happen? We go find another job. The one we had sucked anyways. Let’s go find a different one. If worst came to worst. This flash forward a couple of years, the same thing where we sat there and said, if not this, at some point as a business owner, you gotta put all your chips in. And either it’s going to work or it’s not. But the worst is a slow bleed, death by a thousand cuts,

Like you’re walking around blindfolded until someone takes the blindfold off and says, see, this is how you do it. And then I had to believe that the money I was investing would give me a four X return, a five X return, whatever it would be. at this point, I’ve made millions of dollars because of spending that money. I need the time and perspective to now look back on it and say, yeah, that was a great idea. Right.

Meghan Escobar (16:02)

It’s scary as hell, isn’t it?

Amanda New (16:04)

So scary. But it was like, if not this, then what? if I knew how to run a million dollar business, I would be running a million dollar business. So clearly I don’t know something. And they do. So I better just listen and duplicate. ’cause I clearly haven’t figured it out. Cause if I knew, we’d be there. Right.

Meghan Escobar (16:22)

I love what you just said because it’s either gonna work or it isn’t. What’s the worst that could happen? I love that perspective and it’s so powerful because I think people get so caught up in the well, if it doesn’t work out, then I’m just gonna fail. and then what? they just go back, get a job, right? here’s the guarantee. If you don’t try.

You’re a hundred percent gonna fail. Yeah.

Amanda New (16:44)

Yes. part of the reason why we knew we wanted a real estate investing company back in the day. But what really was the catalyst is that we had very fancy corporate jobs. We had titles, we had all these things, but we were traveling every single week out of the month. And then my husband, March 12th of 2020 the day of the world shut down, got unceremoniously laid off from a company he’d invested eight years of his life in.

Meghan Escobar (17:05)

eye opening, isn’t it?

Amanda New (17:07)

Yeah.

So we always knew that corporations don’t really have a lot of loyalty to their employees. But the day the world shut down, he was fired for managing an outside sales team because why do we need an outside sales team if no one can go anywhere? Right. So if I can’t rely on that ladder, I gotta make my own. I gotta climb some ladder because this one’s not working. And so I think that also really opened our eyes to how much

a lot of times companies don’t care about who you are and what your life needs to look like.

Meghan Escobar (17:36)

That’s right. Yeah. nobody’s gonna care more about your life than you. Right. So amazing perspectives, I really, really enjoyed this conversation and I absolutely love what you’re doing, pivoting into the coaching side of things. I do want to talk a little bit about that before we let the audience know where to reach you. So you told me a little bit about the perfect avatar for you, but share that with the audience to, let them know

who is it that you can help when you do get that ideal client, what’s the focus for you?

Amanda New (18:06)

So for us, really what we’re coaching at this point is what I call the acquisition model. So that front end all the way from marketing all the way through to getting the house the property under contract. I want to teach you how marketing interplays with itself, how it impacts your lead gen how it impacts your appointments, all of that. my theory

is if I can get you to master that front end, you can do whatever you want to do on the back end. You can be the biggest flipper, the biggest wholesaler, you can rent, you can do anything you want. But if you’re not in control of the front end, then you’re not in control of your real estate investing journey. And you’re always gonna be waiting for someone else to bring you a deal or someone else to tell you when to buy or you’re gonna be relying on the MLS. And that just slows you down. If I can teach you this part, you can do whatever you want on the back end. So I really

am excited to be working with people that maybe have done a few deals but can’t figure out how to consistently bring the profit in. maybe they have bought a couple of rentals and they want to scale a real portfolio that they can leverage. Let’s do it. but we need to manage and control that front end in a way that gets you to what you’re trying to accomplish in your budget, in your timeframe. And I am extremely confident that

If that sounds like something you need help with, that I can help with because that’s what someone did for me.

Meghan Escobar (19:26)

this is somebody who’s gone through that process, who has nailed it, who has mastered it. And back to the conversation that we had why try to recreate and reinvent the wheel? Work with someone who’s already done it. And clearly Amanda has. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your time, sharing your story, and more importantly, your perspective in the way that you are positioning yourself as a professional in this space. I think it’s really important.

that you’re somebody who actually cares. that’s what I’m seeing and feeling. So

I think we need more people in the space who are doing things the right way. and I love that for you. So thank you for joining. Yes. what would be the best way for someone to reach you? Is there a website? Is there a email, booking link, social media, all the above?

Amanda New (20:09)

So we have a website called talentedinvestors.com it’s our Facebook group, it’s our affiliate links, it’s a book a time with me to talk about what you need. it’s all of it in one spot. we do also have a free Facebook group called Talented Investors That Share. it’s 8,000 members strong. It is there as a free resource. we talk about anything and everything, real estate investing in there. I go live in there.

but yeah, talentedinvestors.com is really the main focal point and it’ll get you everywhere you need to be. You can book a call, we can talk shop and we can do what we can do to get you where you wanna be.

Meghan Escobar (20:45)

I absolutely love it. So we will also be sure to provide all of those links and into the blog below. So you can just click and connect with Amanda right away. You don’t need to go even Google or search or Facebook search or anything like that. So we will be sure to provide all of that for the audience below. But thank you again for tuning in. And for those of you that are listening, if you got any value from this, please be sure to hit like and subscribe. We’ve got more conversations.

Coming in with operators, just like Amanda, who are out here building real businesses in real time with real people. We’ll see you on the next episode.