How to Automate a Real Estate Wholesaling Business | Billy Blackburn

Billy Blackburn (00:00)
Yeah. I have it written down in my office, but it’s just action is progress. We get stuck at the starting line a lot and want conditions to be perfect, want to have the perfect thing before coming onto a podcast. I want to have everything polished, but I really think that just taking action is the right move in any circumstance. When it comes to building a network and surrounding yourself with people that are doing the things that you wanna do, I think you just gotta—

Meghan Escobar (01:54)
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Real Estate Pros Podcast, hosted by Investor Fuel. I’m your host today, Meghan Escobar, and I have the pleasure of sitting down with a gentleman by the name of Billy Blackburn, owner and founder of Feebe, which is a wholesale CRM for investors, for investment brokers. Is that right?

Billy Blackburn (02:14)
Yeah. Yeah. It wears the mask of a CRM, but really the heart and soul of it is a one-stop shop for wholesalers, wholesale shop in a box, so to speak. Anything from lead gen, contract underwriting, all the way to getting to the closing table.

Meghan Escobar (02:27)
Awesome. I am definitely gonna let Billy dive deeper into that as it’s a—it’s an incredible tool that he’s designed and created, especially with the evolution of the AI and the opportunities that are out there, just really kind of weeding, digging through the weeds, if you will. And so I am definitely excited to have him here. I totally believe that our audience will walk away with some great insights as our audience is pretty big on the wholesale side of things and investment side of things. I’m excited to have you here. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here, Billy. Appreciate it.

Billy Blackburn (02:58)
Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Meghan Escobar (02:59)
Absolutely. Diving into this, for somebody who might not be familiar with what wholesaling is or what—what Feebe is or who Billy Blackburn is, can you give us a thirty-thousand-foot view of what your main focus is these days and maybe the markets that you’re operating in?

Billy Blackburn (03:17)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I’m Billy Blackburn. I’ve been in real estate my whole life, you could say, but as a career for the last 10 years. My dad was a developer growing up; it was in our blood. Flipping properties started with buying and selling cars that morphed into houses. And after 10 years of working every side of the real estate life cycle between retail agent, investor, multifamily, single family Airbnb broker, owner, operator, independent contractor, have come full circle to building a business that runs itself. That’s the goal when anybody gets into real estate is that mailbox money to have your recurring revenue and—and yeah I’ve used all my experience these past 10 years in all these different roles to build something that works for me to operate my business at a high level. And now it’s turned into something that could provide value to a lot of other people in similar positions.

Meghan Escobar (04:10)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I love it. And one thing that really caught my attention when we—when we were talking is when I asked you like what’s the strength of the company or something that you would want someone who knows nothing about it firsthand. And you mentioned that it’s built by the people. It’s built by the people for—for the people, something along those lines. Can we dig in that a little bit?

Billy Blackburn (04:34)
Yeah, no, what I meant by that is it’s built by the people that are using it. A lot of these one-size-fits-all proptech services or companies or tools are built heavily by really skilled designers and coders and developers. And—and I think kind of the double-edged sword of that, of my position now is that I don’t have any of that. This was all built at this point by me. We are recruiting some—some partners that are a lot more adept in the tech and development space than I am, but that’s—that’s what makes this a beautiful thing. It’s not something that went through the filter of a hundred different developers to see what the most efficient way to do it was. Frankly, I’m not sure if it’s the most efficient from a development side. My overhead and the amount of time it’s taken me to—to get to the level that it’s at now, you know, probably could have been done a lot quicker. But the beauty of that is that every little piece of this software was built with the intention of making my business easier. And by that I mean taking the busywork out of the everyday tasks that a broker or an investment broker or a wholesaler has. From sourcing the deal to underwriting the contract to writing up the contract to scheduling your follow-ups, managing your earnest money, and everything in between, all that takes time. And more than half of our time as—as agents or real estate professionals is spent doing things that can be automated. What Feebe aims to—to be is not an AI software. People get confused with all this AI stuff going around. I don’t want it to be confused. Feebe is not an AI software. Feebe is not a—an AI tool. AI was used to—to build it and to create this beautiful thing that is my baby, but it is fully independent, operates fully independent of any sort of AI company or software. And it’s a purpose-built tool for your business. It’s not this one-size-fits-all program. We get in a lot of trouble with those, but the way I positioned us is Feebe is the last agent that you’ll ever have to train.

Meghan Escobar (07:10)
Yeah, that’s awesome. And when I asked you about like the next biggest opportunity and who your avatar is, it—you—you had some guidelines there, but also mentioned that you want to get this into as many hands as possible. That can actually help. I’m assuming that goes hand in hand with—but you also mentioned that there’s specific guidelines of who this specific product or is for. You wanna kinda unpack that a little bit?

Billy Blackburn (07:36)
Yeah, yeah. I guess the best place to start would be letting your—your listeners know the birthplace of Feebe , right? What this all started out as and how it’s evolved into what it is today. Like I said, for the last 10 years, I’ve been in—in real estate working for different brokerages. I mean, I started at Keller Williams. I was in retail. Then I was sourcing deals for an investor I worked with, a gentleman that was buying 200 houses a year. Learned how to write up contracts really fast, learned how to work with investors, learned how to underwrite deals, then hopped on with one of the biggest wholesale brokerages in the country, quickly ran up the ranks with them, was their number one acquisitions agent company-wide for a couple of years in a row, a point one percent producer in Arizona. And just kept climbing that ladder, went from that to running my own office to having a team of up to 20 agents on the sales and the acquisition side. And—and March of this year, as that business model came—came crashing down, when you’re paying your agents 10, 20 percent of what they’re bringing in because the cost of operating your business is so high, it’s just not a place that people want to stick around for a long time and not a business model that is very sustainable. Taking all of the junk out of the middle and just getting back to the basics of how can I find the best deals and provide the best value for my investors? And that’s where Feebe started. Built from the ground up my brokerage Fourth Phase Realty, a play on words—I call it Fourth Phase because I feel like this is my fourth phase as a real estate professional. I’ve done wholesale, I’ve done the flips, I’ve done the multifamily, the Airbnbs, I’ve done the brokerage thing. And now this is my fourth and final phase. This is where I really think that I can make a difference. And Feebe started as a way for me to source deals directly off the MLS. I had a software that I had built a few years ago with a partner that helped us find the best opportunities that we would want to flip when I was back in Arizona. And that would basically scan the MLS and say, “Hey, these are the best-priced deals in neighborhoods that are prime for flips, a lot of investor activity. You should take a look at these.” It might surface a couple hundred deals over 12,000 active listings in—in that market. And it was great. It didn’t take any of the work out of underwriting the deal, but it—it was a short list for MLS deals, which there’s plenty of opportunity to be found right there on—on your local market’s MLS. I had built—built that and I was finding deals for myself. And then I thought, okay, once I get these deals in—in one centralized place, let me offer on them in a way that makes sense rather than, “Cool, I have my spreadsheet, I have my deal. Now I go back into the MLS. Now I gotta run comps. Now I gotta underwrite it. Now I gotta contact the agent.” It slowly built over time, again, just for my business, like, okay, I can make a hundred offers a month. Let me set follow-up reminders. I built that. Let me house these deals in one central place where I could look at all the comps as soon as I open up the deal. Okay, I built that. Let me look at the cash buyers in this market as I’m underwriting the deal. Then I built that. And all—all things considered, from finding the deal to finding the investor that it’s suited for, I uploaded my whole buyer’s list and the buy box for each one of those investors. Now before I even contract a deal, I know exactly who I’m gonna sell it to on the back end. Being able to see full—the full life cycle of a deal before I’m even sending an offer, that’s what Feebe has evolved into and what it was built from. And I had a friend of mine I was showing this to and he mentioned that he wanted to use it for his business. And that’s when the light bulb went off that, wow, if I could operate at the same level—yeah, if I could operate at the same level as a solo operator as I was running an office full of 20 people, then this is something that—that could help scale existing operators or—or solo operators like myself, which is why we built the three different tiers: the Basic, Pro, and Enterprise accounts. And the Enterprise is a C-suite level software that you could implement in all of your offices if you have multiple, and Pro if you’re an operator that has a few agents working for them. And then the Basic is for the solo operators like myself.

Meghan Escobar (11:14)
Nice. And how long have you been, I guess, promoting this?

Billy Blackburn (11:58)
Frankly, this is the first time I’m—I’m stepping into the promotion side of things. I’ve been building it silently myself for probably the past eight months, and right now we’re on the cusp of getting some funding for the development side of things. We’re in multiple states right now, but yeah, we’re about to start ramping things up, starting to do some marketing and things like this.

Meghan Escobar (12:19)
Getting it out there. Awesome stuff. And for you, I’m—I’m always curious because you’ve been in the game a long time. You talked about how you started with selling cars, then morphed into housing. And you—it sounds like you come from a family of entrepreneurship’s in the DNA. Where—and I always like to bring this to the forefront because I don’t think it’s something that’s talked about enough, but every operator I know has had a moment where things did get real or they had to pivot really fast. Yeah. Throughout your entrepreneurship journey, do you have one of those moments that you’d like to share with us?

Billy Blackburn (12:50)
I mean, there’s definitely been a few, but I’ll—I’ll talk about the one that’s most relevant, which is the most recent one. For the last two years, I was building someone else’s business. When I left that first brokerage I was wholesaling for as an acquisitions agent, they wanted me to start my own office. They wanted me to stick with the company, and like we spoke about earlier, I took a look around and saw the people that were 10, 15 years my senior and—and realized I didn’t want the life that they had. I stepped away and I moved to Texas to—to start my own shop. And I ended up joining forces with a buddy of mine that I’ve known since—since high school. He’s been in real estate as well, and my old broker who also had left our last company. It was an interesting couple years to say the least. I mean, I had someone I considered my best friend working for me, and a good friend of mine was the CEO, someone I used to work for. And that—he was a little in—in over his head, and quickly we—we grew very fast. We got 10 offices in our first 12 months, and we were—we were ramping up. We were doing well. I mean, I wasn’t really making much because, again, the business model, unless we’re doing three, four hundred thousand dollars a month, as a—as the broker, I probably was making like 30 grand. But doing my own deals as an acquisitions agent, as a sales agent is where I continue to put food on the table. But throughout that struggle, realizing all it takes to operate a brokerage like this at the highest level and all of the pieces that aren’t necessary, in February, rent stopped getting paid. The CEO was—was lying to people about paying the leases, and then—and then checks stopped coming, agents stopped getting paid. And at that point, everything just came crashing down. And that’s also around the time where my fiance lost her job—she was a private chef. And all within two weeks, we’re both out of work. And I have 15 displaced agents that I’m trying to give opportunities to, but I’m realizing I don’t want to just build the same thing that just collapsed. I’m—I have no interest in—in running a wholesale brokerage under the same terms and splits that didn’t work for us before, didn’t keep people happy. And then about a month later, I find out my old business partner started his own shop and recruited all those agents, and he was doing that months before. But it’s easy to be bitter, but I really just looked at that as a sign like, okay, I’m faithful. I like to think that the universe is pointing me in the right direction. And—and I realize this thing that I’m working on, which ended up being Feebe, is what I wanted to go all in on. And about a month after that, I find out my—my fiance is pregnant. We got a baby on the way. Now we’re both out—yeah.

Meghan Escobar (15:10)
Mm-hmm.

Billy Blackburn (15:12)
Thank you.

Meghan Escobar (15:13)
Way that universe does conspire with you, right?

Billy Blackburn (15:16)
Yeah. And I’m working on this and I’m trying to think of a name actually. And to bring it full circle, Feebe is actually what we’re naming our daughter, PH. And I—there’s all these different proptech companies out there—there, PropStream, HouseMan, all—all these play on words about property. And I just wanted something to be completely different. And it just came to me. This business is built on—on assignment fees and—and I’m seeing Feebe as your wholesale real estate assistant, the last AI—the last agent, last agent you’ll ever have to train. It just made sense. Feebe is my baby and my literal baby.

Meghan Escobar (15:49)
Literal. Okay. Incredible. I love that. And we—we talked a little bit about this, too, when it comes to building your network. You—you mentioned a few relationships that kept you going and having a mentor and things like that. Billy, like, what’s made the biggest difference for you when it comes to building your network?

Billy Blackburn (16:07)
Yeah. I have it written down in my office, but it’s just action is progress. We get stuck at the starting line a lot and want conditions to be perfect, want to have the perfect thing before coming onto a podcast. I want to have everything polished, but I really think that just taking action is the right move in any circumstance. When it comes to building a network and surrounding yourself with people that are doing the things that you wanna do, you just gotta go to the places where those people are—are active. I mean, going to, yeah, the events, but finding the opportunities and bringing value to those people that you want to work closest with is going to be your—your—your fastest way in the door. We spoke about this a little bit earlier. The goal of networking isn’t just networking. The goal of networking is to—is to build a community. And if your—if your goal at a networking event is just to shake as many hands as possible, not really dive deep and find someone that you could work with or spend some time with at a meaningful level, then—that’s—that’s been my goal. Then the way that I do that, sure, the networking events are a big part of it, but I like to go after people that I really admire and respect and find a way to add value to their business. And, frankly, being on this side of the business, being an investment brokerage, I’ve had the good fortune of being able to put really great opportunities in front of really great operators and help them through those deals and learn from them in the process. So that’s been a blessing. But yeah, people are everything. I wouldn’t be able to build this business without a mentor that I met five years ago in—in—in Arizona that showed me how he was sourcing deals and the systems he had in place. And yeah.

Meghan Escobar (17:31)
That’s awesome. Yeah, it’s definitely something that you can’t fake, especially in this space. I really appreciate you sharing that. And before we do wrap things up here, if somebody listening in wanted to reach out to you, learn more about Feebe or collab with you, what would be the best way for them to reach you? Is that through social media, email, phone number?

Billy Blackburn (17:48)
Yeah. My—my social media is Billy Blackburn. You can find me there or Billy Does Real Estate. Or [email protected] is our email. But go ahead and check us out—just getfeebe.com. Our landing page gives you a little rundown of what it is that we offer and the type of people that we work with and what we’re looking to do.

Meghan Escobar (18:06)
Yeah. Perfect. Love that. And I really wanna say just give some appreciation here for your time, you sharing your perspective, you sharing your story. We definitely need more people in the space that are doing things the right way. I wanna thank you again for being here and bringing some value to our audience.

Billy Blackburn (18:22)
Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Meghan Escobar (18:24)
Absolutely. And for those of you that are tuning in, if you got any value from this, please be sure to hit like and subscribe. We have more conversations coming in every single day with owners and operators just like Billy Blackburn here who are out here building real businesses in real time with real people. We will see you on the next episode.