Turnkey Real Estate Software for Dynamic Business Growth with Jesse Burrell

Speaker 1: 0:00

There’s a lot of intelligence around all the properties that they’re marketing to, and we were also very lucky because we didn’t stop until 2021 or then the 2020 wholesaling, so we’d already really made a lot of money and we just kept pouring all of our profits into developing the products that we had.

Speaker 2: 0:17

Welcome to the Passive Income Brothers podcast.

Speaker 3: 0:20

Here we take the fear out of real estate investing, using real life stories of everyday successful investors. Let’s go Welcome to another episode of the Passive Income Brothers podcast. My name is Tim Lying and today I’m joined by two rock stars, one of which being my brother, greg. How you doing today, buddy?

Speaker 2: 0:35

Tim doing fantastic. It is the summer of 2023 and summer is going great so far, and I’m really excited today that our guest is just a fantastic person and entrepreneur within the real estate world and I can’t wait to introduce you guys.

Speaker 3: 0:52

So our podcast so far has been really largely centered around multifamily, about self storage, syndications. But there’s a couple of times in our journey Greg with this podcast and we brought on people that have done just a lot of things within the real estate space and we have talked about ad nauseam that there’s a million ways to make money in real estate and we just do it one way. But our guest today has done it in multiple ways. So I want to welcome everybody Jesse Burrell from Batch Service to the Passive Income Brothers podcast, how you doing today.

Speaker 1: 1:22

Jesse, awesome, tim, greg. Thank you guys so much for having me on.

Speaker 3: 1:25

I’m excited to get into it today, so a lot of times, greg, jesse, people don’t know where to start right. They know they want to be in real estate. They kind of feel that gravitational pull towards really want to do something. I’m just not sure what to do. Even if I wanted to do it, how do I find leads, how do I find money? How do I find the asset class that I want to get involved in? And I think Jesse today has really kind of solved for a lot of those unanswered questions. So, jesse, could you kind of bring the listeners way back when and kind of let us know how did you get started in real estate, why real estate? And then we’ll take it from there. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:00

I kind of fell backwards into it. I have always been, I guess, a little bit interested. I feel like everybody has some type of interest in real estate and what really happened with me is I was graduating college and I actually went to ASU, arizona State, for PGM, which is professional golf management. Huge golfer, love golf. And once I dove into that and had my internships I realized that I wanted to figure out a way to be a member at a country club, not work for one. It took my passion out of golf. It just wasn’t fun working at a golf course. It operationally, the stress, especially in Arizona I was working at some of the best golf courses and you didn’t make any money for all the stress that you had. And I also before that had been working at a restaurant and one of my friends that was a bartender there. She started working for an investor in flipping houses and then they also had they managed a property management company as well. So this guy was basically his name was Nick, he was Israeli and he lived in California came here at the bottom of the market in about 11 or 12. And he would flip homes and at the same time he had a lot of friends in Israel that wanted to invest. So he would go buy them, fix them up, sell them to them for a profit and then turn them into rentals. And soon after that started exploding and I knew I didn’t want to do golf. I was kind of trying to find a sales job. I wasn’t sure what to do and we were just talking like catching up, hanging out, and she’s like, well, we’re going to be hiring someone. She’s like you’re a hustler, like you just want to check it out and see if you like it. And I was like, sure, and that’s literally how I got into real estate. It wasn’t super intentional, but once I got into it I was pretty addicted, to be honest with you guys, and I was basically an acquisition rep. I was going and finding the flips and at that time I could go on the MLS and you could find some pretty good deal and pre foreclosures. They had a lot of short sales back then, so those were kind of tricky to negotiate and they were super nice and they really wanted to help me understand the process from start to finish. So I had to start learning how to write performers up for them for flips that I was identifying and for me. To be able to do that, I had to go to a lot of the projects and start understanding what rehab costs were, and I mean, that’s a big part of the puzzle. So it’s like if you always buy right, you never lose, even if some problems come up. And I was really, really lucky to have some smart people really teach me how to understand how to underwrite properties, and that’s what really made me great as an investor and also an agent, because I do have my license currently not active because I don’t use it very often but that was the biggest thing is everyone just wants to turn into the seasoned investor and I think it’s really good to go learn from someone for a little while. And unless you have a lot of money, because you’re probably going to burn it up, and if you start buying properties before you really know what you’re doing, it could cost you a lot of money. And I’m very, very grateful that I had some great mentorship when I got started.

Speaker 2: 4:49

Jesse, I am really excited that you’re on the podcast today for multiple reasons, real estate being one. But now that we know each other, help with my golf game is going to be especially important. I played the other day and some people call it a fade. It should be more classified as a slice or scud missile. But anyway, we’ll get to that at another time. And kind of sounds like a lot of people that listen to this podcast and listen to a lot of podcasts. They’re the daydream investor. We like to call them the daydream investor because when they’re bored they’ll jump on realtorcom or Zillow and see how much their house is worth, their neighbor, and oh, I should really buy this. And no one really takes that next step, like you did, you know, like, oh, you’re a hustle, hey, let’s get into this next thing. And I think a lot of people know about the growth that’s available within real estate and, like Tim said, the million different ways you can make money. But I think one of the most important principles in real estate is you make money in real estate when you buy. When you buy right, you always have a chance to make money in a matter of time, or loans or anything like that. So when you took your first step into real estate and, like a lot of people do, fix and flips, wholesaling different things like that what kind of led you to the next phase of becoming an investor after you got started?

Speaker 1: 6:10

Yeah, so obviously I mentioned Nick, who was my first mentor. He pulled out pretty early so he thought the market was gonna shift in like 2014 and I also knew that I didn’t have my license. So I was just really looking for deals. So I got my license. He ended up kind of downsizing that and I basically just went hunting for properties on the MLS and started selling them to him and made a lot more money doing it that way, because I had a little network of Investors that were looking for the stressed properties and at that time the only way I knew how to do that was find deals on Market. I soon learned my mind being blown was wholesaling and finding off-market deals going direct to seller. I was so, so confused, you guys. I was like how someone selling a house that’s not on the MLS, like I was literally lost. I was like this makes Absolutely no sense. I thought it was like a legal, like I had no idea and this was well before all the gurus Flooding, youtube flooding everywhere and I was lucky enough to have Sean Terry in our backyard in Phoenix here really explaining what it was. And then the person that brought me in she ended up partnering with me in the business. Her Names Danielle Kroll, and then this other guy, jarrod Vidalis. They are now married, which is great because I brought them together, but we basically pulled some money, opened up a wholesale shop and started sending out 20,000 mailers a month and started going direct to seller and we were really, really lucky to have some quick success. But yeah, it was basically back then. There’s mailers Door knocking and then I found a little creative way back then. There’s like hub zoo auction comm. This was before all the hedge funds were buying there and I was able to really pick up some deals on these online auctions. And our first really big wholesale deal was in Arcadia, arizona, and we actually picked this house up and this goes back to my underwriting skills. I kept looking at this property. It’s like this is a really, really good deal. Like I ran the numbers like 20 times. I bring them to my partners and they’re like holy shit, you found something. And we ended up making over 250 grand like our third month in off of this deal and that was really the life-changing money for me to wear. As I guys told you guys in restaurants serving tables and in golf, I never had more than a few thousand dollars in my bank account, being able to have that life-changing moments where I don’t have to worry about my rent, I don’t have to worry about going to a nice dinner and how am I gonna pay off this credit card bill. I didn’t have to worry about filling my freaking gas take up, and once that like mine shift happened and you could kind of take a breath there, it was just balls to the wall and we just got after it.

Speaker 3: 8:40

To be honest with you, Well, jesse, the hairs on my neck are standing up and I think some of the listeners are probably having the same reaction, because we can feel the transference of wow, like having that first big hit of capital infusion. You’re like whoa, like this is incredible, like for me. I’m a New York City firefighter right, I got 18 years doing that. I’m a former ER nurse. I traded my time for money. That’s what I thought I was meant to do right, paycheck every two weeks. Then I got into real estate and I owned a three family and I owned it for two years and I doubled my money and I was like holy cow, like you start to feel that and you’re like, well, I can create a business around this and I can help other people do it, and it’s like infectious and it’s my addiction. Now, real estate right. But the thing I want to highlight is you get paid in proportion to the size of the problem that you can solve for somebody else. And by doing cold calling and door knocking and Funding those off-market deals when you can find something and this is for everybody out there who was looking at wholesaling fix and flips You’re just hitting the off-market strategy right, once you learn the math, right, because there’s an equation there. There’s something called after repair value the ARV right. So if you can buy something that’s a Michael on the MLS for 300,000, but you can buy for 200,000 because they’re in distress, because you can close in cash in 30 days, because you’re not going to do a home inspection, because you’re not going to have a Harvard Clause or anything like that, that’s attractive to people, right and Say you can put a 30 grand into it or 50 grand into it, because you have this special formula that you are trained to Underwrite on, you can really find value out there by solving somebody’s problem, closing in 30 days, giving them the cash right, whether you’re wholesaling the deal, keeping it for yourself, double closing, all these different types of Opportunities out there. And I just want to also highlight that Jesse said he was surrounded by smart people, and Jesse on this podcast, we also are very big proponents of coaching, of masterminds. Greg and I have paid for coaching. We’ve paid for masterminds. We’re in multiple masterminds. We are into personal growth and development. We’re into hopping on calls, people who are just starting out, because that’s how we got started. So when you were talking about being around smart people and having your mentor, nick, and learning from somebody in the business. That’s how real estate works right. Somebody’s always going to be one rung above you on the ladder and they’re always going to have their hand down or they should have their hand down to help that next person up. How did I do with the ARV stuff? That’s not really my wheelhouse. So, jesse, how did I kind of do with that math equation?

Speaker 1: 11:09

Yeah, that’s pretty spot-on. You really want to go look ARV. So what that really means is you’re going to look at the houses that have been remodeled or flipped it could be by the owner, occupants or by a flipper and say, alright, the really nice ones, what are these going for? And, as you said, it’s three hundred thousand dollars. Okay, how much money is that going to be? To put in like I was down to the point to where they were so diligent. It’s like what’s insurance costs? What’s the hard money costs? Like, what are all those hidden little costs that you’re going to have there? And let’s run worst case, perform us and make sure that we’re getting the return that we want. So it’s truly a math equation, and the biggest problem I see with new investors that are overly eager to get their first deals or Contract their first properties is they don’t understand that you’re solving a problem, that someone’s in true distress. They get someone that says, hey, I want to sell their house, but they’re not in distress, and those two people are very Unaligned because this person necessarily wants top dollar for their property. They don’t actually have a problem. When people are going off market and getting these good deals, it’s normally because someone has a time problem, someone has a money problem, someone has some type of issue that needs to be solved and what you’re really trying to do is uncover Someone’s problem is you’re really giving them a service of convenience and a lot of the times you have to understand that, basically a lot of the time I’m like I’m really not a fit for you, mr Seller, like you should go on the MLS, get top dollar. I’m happy if it’s a market I know here’s a great realtor if you don’t have one, if it’s local. At that time I listed a ton of properties for people. So, like I always went in with the mindset to how could I help you sell your home for exactly what you’re looking for? I could be your realtor, I could be your buyer, I have the people and even if I’m not gonna be any of that, I always had tons of resources and I got a lot of referrals. They needed the AC guy to fix property before they’re done, a roofing guy, let them use one of my contractors. I’ve always just been from the process of how could I help people, and it’s gonna come back in abundance, and that always was my mindset is not how could I make money. It’s like, how could I help solve these homeowners problems? And I was able to be very successful by coming from that mindset, because one I truly believe that and it’s just authentic and they could feel stuff like that, that I’m not trying to put one over on them or I’m not trying to give them unfair price and make the maximum amount of money. I’m like how could I make sure that this is a win for you and a win for me?

Speaker 2: 13:37

what’s interesting, I’m starting to see a pattern here, tim, of Adding value and helping people right and kind of. When you put those two things together, the math equation really starts to add up because if you could refer an HVAC guy, you’re building your network of people that can add value to someone’s life. Some people inherit a house and they’re from out of state, so it’s not always true distress it’s how could I get these people a good amount of money? They don’t have to deal with the house and different things like that, but you’re adding value. So how long were you kind of you know in this world of fixing and flipping In wholesaling? How long did you do that for Basically?

Speaker 1: 14:15

2014,. And then ironically and it’s really not have anything to do with the pandemic but it was basically the middle of 2020. But we had already planned to kind of wrap down the investing arm of our business because which we’ll get to soon, I’m sure is the software just took off so much and it basically was just too hard to run too many businesses and we really wanted to grow this one and diverting attention could get hard. And we also felt like once we got to that we’re really hosting a lot of people’s data and a lot of different things, we’re like should we continue to compete against the clients we’re trying to serve or should we just go serve them? And I felt like there’s a little bit of a conflict once it got to a point of how big it was and how much of people’s data as we were holding and could see, and once we brought in a dialer, like we could see a lot of stuff and not saying we would ever do anything because I would never jeopardize a business like that, but people started asking a lot of questions and it just kept getting harder and harder to even run both businesses. So we just came to the conclusion that we’re really just going to go serve this investor community, not compete against them, and the only things we really do now, as I said, is some syndication stuff, some hard money lending. We’re really not actively wholesaling or flipping today.

Speaker 2: 15:35

Yeah, so I mean when you were wholesaling and flipping. Six years, six and a half years of kind of that experience is invaluable. Never learn that stuff in a classroom. You learn by doing. You learn by surrounding yourself with the right people, which is fantastic. So, as you made that pivot that you kind of mentioned before, can you tell the listeners of? You took all that knowledge and you saw a need for investors, fix and flippers, wholesalers what did you do with the software and when in with batch service?

Speaker 1: 16:10

Yeah, I mean basically when it started by two partners now their brother and sister names are Annie and Evo but they had their own wholesaling company, I had my own and we basically just JV’d up on. That was when, at 2018, cold calling was the huge thing. And then, soon after, texting came. But we were just trying to find the most accurate numbers to help our business and I was like dang dude, like in, evo found like a couple of really good sources and I was like this is really helping my business. And he’s like yeah, I’m reselling it to people too. And I’m like, OK, well, like I’m the networker, I’m kind of that guy that’s the connector. And I was like well, I think I have some friends that may want this. Maybe we can make a couple extra bucks on the side just finding good phone numbers for people. And he’s not a negotiator. So today he’s not on the sales side of things, he’s on the product side, but basically he’s like you could have half all the profits. I was like done. I was just like, ok, I was like so you set up the whole app and found everything and I get half for selling, and I just sold the shit out of it. To be honest with you guys, because I was excited it was helping my business and before we knew it, we’re like, ok, like we have something here. We created a partnership with that specific product and just started growing that. We’re like, okay, well, people are getting phone numbers right, but where?

Speaker 2: 17:27

are they getting phone numbers? Jesse, can you tell people specifically what you have? You’re being very modest right now. You have a massive software system. Tell people exactly what you have and how it’s helping people. You give the name out.

Speaker 1: 17:40

Yeah, what I was trying to get to is what we’re starting to do is people were sending in lists of distressed properties and we’re giving them back to phone numbers. But what we started asking ourselves is where are these people getting lists from? Then they’re going and dialing it, then they’re going to text it. So what we did is from there we created batch leads as we started putting everything into one place so there could be one ecosystem for these real estate investors to really just go do all of their off-market needs, from pulling the list to getting the phone numbers, to sending the text or to making the phone calls. It’s also a data management tool to where they have all their lists in one place. If a property sells, they know if this happens. There’s a lot of intelligence around all the properties that they’re marketing to. We’re really lucky to have a lot of big influencers that were our friends and came up with us and helped promote us. We were also very lucky because we didn’t stop until 2021 or then the 2020 wholesaling, so we’d already really made a lot of money and we just kept pouring all of our profits into developing the products that we had and listening to the clients and also being a client ourselves Our product roadmap, it was very easy for us to understand the challenges people were having and how to help them solve them. Before we knew it, I looked up last year and we had over 250 full-time employees and I was like what did I get myself into, dude?

Speaker 3: 19:04

I love that To break down batch leads. Prior to a proprietary software like this, people had to pay for lists. You had to go to the listsourcecom or you were talking about hubzoo and auctioncom, and there’s all these different data sources that were independent of each other that you could go out, you could purchase a list and they might give you the homeowner’s name, but a lot of times it was in an LLC or it was in some sort of entity. You couldn’t pierce it. So then there was companies popping up that were called skip tracing companies, right, that was kind of a pierced the LLC and find out who owns it. Then they’d find out their address or their email address or their phone number or all of the above, but it was very kind of what’s the word I’m looking for. It was separated, right. There was really no data aggregation software. And then batch leads comes along. I was telling Jesse before we started recording that I lost about three hours of my time on his YouTube channel, just blown away by the way, that they can aggregate data from off market sources, from the MLS. They have a phone dialer called Batch Dialer, so you can actually find a property on a map right by doing a search and you can instantaneously call the owner of the property. I mean super powerful stuff. You can send text messages. You can do drop voice mails Because in today’s day and age nobody answers the phone or not. A lot of people answer the phone if they don’t know the number right. But when they get a voicemail they’re gonna listen to it. When they get a text message, even though they don’t know the number, they’re gonna look at that text message, right. I mean, that’s just the way that this world works. They have comp tools where you can actually look at a property on your screen and you can instantaneously see and filter searches based on comps in the area. I mean all this powerful stuff. And I’m probably. If you need a sales guy for Batch Leads, I think let’s talk, because I was super blown away. But so wholesalers or people might know what wholesaling is if they’re a first time listener, but a wholesaler if you spend the time and your resources by looking at a software like this, subscribing to a software, building a list in maybe your area and now you can drill down to what’s called a motivated seller. Right, are they getting divorced? Are they in pre foreclosure? Are they in foreclosure? Are there? Is it a short sale? Are they an absentee owner at a state absentee owner? Is it a vacant property? I mean, there’s all different types of what’s called a motivated seller and you could be their solution by taking that property off their hands at a negotiated price. Right, but if you’re a wholesaler, you can get that contract, get that property under contract, and then you can assign. It’s called assigning the contract. So if I get a property under contract for, say, $300,000 and Jesse’s a buyer, I can now tell Jesse hey, jesse, I have this house. Oh, you’re interested in it. Cool, I’ll assign this contract for you, not for 300, but maybe for 312 or 315,000. But that’s still valuable to Jesse. He didn’t have to do the contact, the outreach by any of that stuff and now he and his team maybe they have a renovation team, maybe he’s a fix and flipper, maybe he’s doing the birth strategy. So this is how this kind of ecosystem works and a software like this makes it incredibly powerful. Jesse, fill in the gaps for some of the tools that I didn’t mention for Bachelors.

Speaker 1: 22:14

You did a pretty good job. But yeah, I mean, it’s basically from start to finish, where you start drilling down on a list to find what you consider a motivated seller and what you consider the market that you’re in, that is, houses that if you’re wholesaling, then houses that investors or people that are doing buy and hold want. But if you’re all of that, it makes it very easy. You have a certain buy box, you create that buy box and then you start marketing to homeowners that you deem distressed. So you hit in basically everything. Is it vacant? Is it out of state? Absentee owner Like, I have a few friends that only go after absentee owner. So basically landlords, because it’s easy for them to have conversation with landlords because they’re both investors. Now, do they get the biggest deals? No, but they’re solving a problem of someone that may have a problem renter or problem tenant and they don’t want to do that anymore. But you hit it on the head. The only thing that I’d say you may be missed is you could curate lists and send direct mail also straight through our platform, which is pretty cool, but everything else you’re pretty much hands-on with comping. It also goes into mortgage information. We know what their mortgage rates are. So if you want to do some type of subject to financing, you could drill down and filter on that. We also just launched agent outreach tools, so now we have the entire US’s agents index and you could actually filter it by amount of deals they’ve done. So if you’re an investor looking for agents that may have pocket listings, or also looking for agents that work with investors, you could also see if a lot of those transactions are cash or hard money to where they’re probably working with investors. So it’s a great way for wholesalers or investors to connect with agents as well to where they can start doing more business together. That’s kind of a big trend in real estate right now too, especially in the wholesaling investor ecosystem.

Speaker 3: 24:02

Rico. Let me just hop in real quick. Leads are the lifeblood of any business. I don’t care what business you’re into. Leads are the lifeblood and for about six weeks back in 2019, when I first got into this little real estate thing I haven’t told a lot of people this. So this is going to be my confession. I was a wholesaler. For about six weeks I did one mailing and I have a picture of me, my wife and my two oldest children stuffing envelopes at my kitchen table and sending out mailers and I’m telling you it only lasted six weeks. It was very brief in my history because I hated it and I didn’t have something like this. So, instead of stuffing envelopes with your six and four year old and your wife on a Friday night, you can actually use something like this to send postcards right from the software. So you’re not looking envelopes right. Or you can send a professional looking letter, a professional looking postcard, and you could just send it. You got to pay for it, obviously, but you just send it. It’s just incredible, incredible stuff, right? Skip tracing I think we glanced over skip tracing. You used to have to pay a separate service to unlock the keys to the absentee owners or to LLCs, because a lot of investors buy under an entity right and they take great pains to hide their identity behind these entity structures. Right, this service, from what I saw on YouTube, can just unlock that stuff. Right, it unlocks and you can pay for it and you can get non-duplicate leads and they’re right there. And if you want to call them from right there, you can. If you want to set up a VA someplace or a team of VA’s, and all they have to do is follow your work, right, follow your steps to cold call these people or to curate lists, and then they can give it to you to cold call. There’s all these different methods. And because Greg and I grew up in the New York City area, real estate investing was very out of our world right, because you couldn’t really cash flow, or I thought you couldn’t cash flow in a high density, expensive market like that. But let me tell you there’s people with problems in New York City too, right, so the numbers might be a little higher, but you can solve those problems off market. You’re not going to find these types of deals on the MLS, greg. Let me throw it back to you.

Speaker 2: 26:15

I will tell you, tim, your YouTube rabbit hole must have been deep. I’m not talking about a couple of inches here on YouTube last night. This seems like hours and feet. You dug into this. I mean, your excitement is unparalleled. But I do like. I do like the confession part of this, thank you. That seems really good. And to the listeners out there, the active part of real estate. A lot of times that’s where the donuts are made. Time to make the donuts. The active part is if you find your way in real estate and you can make it a career very lucrative, right. But it’s hard to jump in. Tim was a wholesaler for six weeks, right. We kind of found our niche in the capital raising side of things and Jesse found his way through fixing and flipping Wholesaling, then built a whole company around it and I think you’ve evolved into becoming kind of a passive investor. You were active and then you’ve evolved into being a passive investor now. And I think a lot of the people that listen to us could be high net worth individuals or they own a business or they’re a high income earner and they say, hey, what do I do with my money? And that’s where city side capital comes in. We have multifamily self storage, but you have become a passive investor yourself, jesse. What are some of the things that you do right now with passive investing? And I think there’s a little hard money lending in there that you kind of walk the listeners through, jesse.

Speaker 1: 27:55

And I do have a lot of opportunities that I designed to help out and I think I actually do have a lot of opportunities to do it Because I’m a entrepreneur. So I have these wealth managers that work with me on all of it by insurances, my trust, my allocations of how my portfolio looks. But I have some, I guess, vc or Angel investing in a handful of businesses. So that’s when you stroke a check to a startup now and then I also. I still hold some real estate. So I have a note on a manufactured home that I cash flow from, and then I have a couple other rental properties that I just have on too. But I sold most of my real estate at the top. I knew it was peaking and I didn’t even 1031 it or do anything with it. I just ate the taxes because I’m like I’m not going to trade high for high, I’m just going to hold on to cash, sit back, get with my wealth managers and really decide where’s my next place for it. It was definitely a hit, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. As I said, I could allude back to the beginning. If I’m not confident in purchasing something, then I’m just not going to do it, because if you don’t buy right, then that’s when mistakes happen, and so I know well.

Speaker 3: 29:03

I was going to say we have three criteria and we learned that from our mentor. You got to buy right, you got to manage right, you need to finance it right, and in today’s day and age that hasn’t changed. Right, that’s the three-legged stool, right there, just real quick, hard money lending. For those that don’t know so, say you are intrigued by Batch Leads, right, batchleadsio? And you’re like man, I really want to do this. I want to get my first property under contract, I want to own some real estate and I’m going to put the legwork in and find these deals, but maybe you don’t have the capital right. This is where hard money lending can come in and somebody like Jesse can say look, if you find a deal, show me your math, show me your after repair value, show me what you’re going to do. Do you have a team in place, whatever, and they might lend you, say, the full amount or 90% or whatever, some sort of agreed upon amount, and then some of the CapEx budget for you to go do those repairs right, and it might be a six month loan, it might be a 12 month loan, but it might be a little bit expensive, I don’t know. Last time back, when I was a wholesaler for six weeks, it was 10% plus two points. But if you can fit that into the math, right, if you can take the time, do the legwork. Find the property, you put a team in place, find somebody like Jesse who has a hard money lending business, you can do this right. And then you can refinance with a bank. Take Jesse out and now you have your first property right. And then you’re going to be infected with real estate and you’re going to want to rinse and repeat and you can find somebody like Jesse to do deal after deal after deal after deal. And on the other side, if you want to be like Jesse, you can now start collecting passive income right, and then you take the first position on the property in case they can’t perform. You take the property over, you get rid of it, you keep it, you burry it. There’s so many different options. Jesse, how did I do unpacking the hard money side of our life?

Speaker 1: 30:51

You did great. It’s someone like me, because I have most of my hard money and with the fund, because I don’t have time to actually underwrite deals right now. And the hard money I do lend out to people or to people that own hundreds of units and it’s more of a rolling line of credit to where I have some notes on some of their multifamily for collateral, but I don’t have time to go look at deal after deal. So I’m doing this simply. But someone like me there’s a lot of people, so it’s called hard money or private money. Private money is normally better because, like, I can’t go charge two points because I don’t hold a license to like legally lend so you guys would know better than I would but when it comes to lending, I can’t charge any type of points. Now I could lend money and have an interest rate to it, but I can’t charge points or do docking fees or do.

Speaker 3: 31:38

That is something called user user laws in each state and you have to abide. I’m not the guy for you either, right, but you’d have to understand what the state’s user laws are for lending money and stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 31:50

I’m going to need you to stay in your lane on that one Tim User laws. I mean holy cow.

Speaker 1: 31:55

Yeah, but yeah it’s. There’s a lot of people that have money sitting around and I know a ton of people that love to help people with deals. But you were pretty right, tim, it could be anywhere from 10 to 14%. I’d say for someone new or doing their first one, it could be 12 to 14%. But if you don’t have the experience from what I learned is if you find the deal what you should do is normally like those first couple is you should JV with someone that’s a flipper and say, hey, I found the deal, I’ll give it to you. It costs 50, 50, the profits, but what I want to do is learn the crew, learn what you’re doing. Show me how we’re successful in this. So then, when you go to a private lender or a hard money lender, you’re saying, here’s the deals that I’ve already been a part of and done, and then someone’s going to be a lot more comfortable to lend you that money. You have to remember that this private money or this lender, they’re going to hand you hundreds of thousands of dollars. You better know what you’re doing and not mislead them, because this is a lot of money for these people as well, and I’ve seen a lot of people online act like it’s no big deal to go raise private money and they haven’t done deals yet. And I’m like, dude, what are you teaching these people? Like it blows my mind sometimes Like these are people’s could be a big piece of their net worth to where they’re trying to get some returns or some passive income on their money and saying go raise money when you haven’t done anything. Go use private money. Like in my eyes, back to like doing what’s right, that is an absolute no-no. You should really go learn with someone and make sure that someone’s there to help you and hold your hand, because there’s a lot of problems that could arise and unless you’re putting a bunch of money down but if you’re new and raising private money, you probably can’t put down 20 or 30% on that house. So that’s just my opinion and that’s some of the stuff that I’ve seen online that doesn’t make me very happy, because it’s very misleading and stuff could go awry very quickly and if you don’t have that money, you’re really going to mess with the private money investor and it can really hurt some people and everyone wants to see that happen, I think the name of this episode could be Drinking Out of a Fire Hose 101.

Speaker 2: 33:55

With Real Estate we kind of went all over the place with wholesaling and fixing and flipping, and then the software side of Real Estate. It’s a really wild story, jesse, and kind of one of just becoming an entrepreneur and making Real Estate work for you, continuing to solve problems, continuing to add value to people, and it’s an absolute great story. And at the end we’ll ask people how they could get in touch with you. But right now I want to shift over to our three questions or thoughts that we ask every one of our guests and just a little short answer. And the first thought is Jesse, what do you say to people investors, people new to Real Estate that say investing in Real Estate is too risky? What do you say to those people?

Speaker 1: 34:40

It’s just everything in life is risky. Honestly and let’s go back to my beginning I don’t think it’s very risky if you buy right and you understand how to underwrite a deal, like now. Unforeseen things could happen, but that could happen for any part of your life If you learn how to buy right and underwrite a property and really understand your rehab costs. To be honest with you, real estate is the least risky thing I’ve ever done. I’ve done over 500 deals between fix and flipping and wholesaling. I think I’ve lost one time and that’s because I turned it into an Airbnb and then decided not to Airbnb it and added extra bedrooms and made it too nice for the area and I think after everything, I lost like $1,100. That is my one loss. Compared to how many millions of dollars I made, I’d say that’s not very risky.

Speaker 3: 35:32

That’s a great batting average right there. I’ll take that all day and I really think I just want to stack on top of what you said, jesse. It comes down to education, right. That’s where these podcasts that come in, that’s where the books come in, that’s where the meetups, the RIA groups, it’s getting around folks that are doing the thing that you want to do. Jesse didn’t invent real estate. Gregoride did not invent real estate or how to do it. We’re simply playing by the rules and we’re learning from folks that did it before us. So I love that. I’m going to make a pivot, greg, to a Jim Rohn quote, and he says that you are the average of the five people that you spend the most amount of time with, and I think in real estate that means a lot. So, jesse, what does that mean to you?

Speaker 1: 36:09

It means a lot and when I was real big into real estate, I was really lucky to have my five people push the heck out of me. Pace Morby I don’t know if you guys know who that is, he’s huge. Jamil Damji owns Keegley and his Paces partner. Brent Daniels, another guy. Steve Trang, another guy. Like our Phoenix crew was strong and we were ambitious. We pushed the hell out of each other. Our goals were huge. We helped each other reach them. We had bi-quarterly meetings to where we had to bring our numbers, break them down to each other, show where we’re going, what we did right, what we did wrong, how could we help each other? That was like I could look back at the last four, five, six, seven, eight years. The most life-changing time for me was creating those lifetime bonds with them and being around some of the most ambitious people I’ve ever met, because I am quite competitive myself and we all push the hell out of each other. And seeing where we’re all at today shows why we are where we are, how we were around the right people, because it’s truly incredible you get around people to where you think you’re doing good If you’re around. I’m getting on a tangent here. I apologize, but no, keep going. Keep going. If you’re around people that you’re always bigger and better than all they do is make you feel good and you get complacent and comfortable, you are in the wrong circle of people Not saying you can’t be friends with them or be around them at all, but you better go find people that make you feel like you are not doing enough, and I could personally tell you, pace Morby always makes me feel like I’m not doing enough. That dude is truly a crazy person and works his ass off, so I love being his friend because he always makes me wanna do better and be better.

Speaker 2: 37:51

Jesse, I can both Tim and I can second that, because we were at a conference a year or two ago multi-family mastery four or five, the Jake and Gino community and Pace Morby was one of the last speakers of the weekend and he knocked my socks off. I mean absolutely knocked my socks off. He was so matter of fact. But I mean he basically said but you just said I’m not doing enough. And you could do that. Whether you’re in the real estate business, whatever business you’re in, you could always do more. And Pace really, really kind of got that message across. So if you’re friends with him, I mean you had to raise your game or just to get ready for those bicoardly meetings, you had to raise your game and be ready for those meetings. I know that much.

Speaker 3: 38:34

And Greg, that conference. Pace was the last speaker on a weekend conference and if you’ve ever gone to a weekend conference you know that the last speaker there’s about three people in the audience. For Pace it was standing room only and after he went over his allotted time and everybody had flights to catch and they wanted to get out of there, he kept on saying to the crowd do you want me to continue? And it was like yes, yes, the crowd would go crazy and he spoke, I don’t know, almost two hours I think, but anyway, Sounds like Pace.

Speaker 1: 39:06

That sounds like Pace too. He is an absolute giver. But it’s just being in that room and if you really feel like you’re just crushing it, you’re in the wrong room, like you really are.

Speaker 2: 39:17

Yeah, I think that’s where my auntie is on stage during that conference, but whatever.

Speaker 3: 39:21

I tried to stop him.

Speaker 2: 39:21

Maybe that was a different I tried to stop him. Didn’t work. Exactly. Who knows, jesse? Last question to wrap up this fantastic podcast is also from Jim Rohn and he said formal education will make you a living, self-education will make you a fortune. Take it away.

Speaker 1: 39:37

Wow, well, that’s a great quote actually, because I did graduate from college and I did take a lot of good things from that and it built a nice foundation for me. I would say Made me feel confident and comfortable enough to know that I have opportunities to go make some money. But, as I said, once I shifted into real estate and really diving into it and the thing that really changed my life, it wasn’t just the mentors or the people that I was around that was a big part of it on the self-education, but it was me going and-.

Speaker 2: 40:11

Welcome to.

Speaker 1: 40:11

Batch TV, my-, oh, that’s me, that’s me right there. But what it was was really reading every day Like I have to read or listen to an audible for at least 30 minutes every day and doing some self-development, just doing some learning. On software, as I said, we didn’t purposely go build a software company. I had to learn a lot quickly and be able to lead a team where I didn’t really know what I was doing at the very beginning. And doing a lot of learning and talking to a lot of the right people really helped me. But the thing that really pivoted for me if anyone gets anything out of this today is read and read a lot, because it changes the way you think. As you start thinking about things you’ve never thought about, it gives you different perspectives. A lot of people that write books are truly amazing people that have a lot of value to give to you, and when I really started focusing on myself, my health and just being curious to learn and get better not think I was the smartest person in the room is when my life really changed and I was really, really able to grow as a person and really believe myself. And me and my partner Evo we’re talking about. We wanna have a billion dollar evaluation on this company. And we wake up, look at each other every day and we say, why not us? Someone else did it too, and they didn’t come from shit either or they didn’t have this background. Why not us? There’s no reason why it couldn’t be us, and if we just have that mindset and we work our asses off, we’re gonna get there.

Speaker 3: 41:34

Well, that was the second time that the hair on my neck stood up, and I’m about to start doing some pushups on YouTube for everybody to watch, because I’m fired up and Greg and I often will ask each other the same question Jesse, We’ll joke to ourselves two kids from Miniella don’t do what we do, Like it just wouldn’t happen. Right? This wasn’t for us to do. Who are we to do this? Right? The imposter syndrome catches up to us a lot, even to this day. And then we’ll turn around and say why not us? Why can’t we do this? And in just under four years, we’ve crested it to almost $2 billion in assets that we’ve acquired with our partners. I mean, who in the world would have thought that I’d do that? Or Greg and I would do that? Right, I feel you, and the transference was real. So thank you for sharing that, Jesse. Well, this has been a phenomenal episode. I want to be mindful of everybody’s time and if people want to reach out to you, if they want to find more about what you do, how to get involved, where is the best place for them to either connect with you or find out more about the software?

Speaker 1: 42:32

Yeah, you go to batchservicecom, or we’re specifically talking about Batchleads. So if you want to check out a seven day trial batchleadsio, you can sign up for a week. We have sales reps able to call you, help you, teach you really what exactly the product does before you have to sign up and pay for anything. And then, if you want to reach me personally I’m not a big social media guy, but Instagram is just my first and last name Jesse Burrell should be a DM. I’m pretty good about responding within a day or so.

Speaker 3: 43:01

Love that, so we’re going to have all that in the show notes, and I also wanted to just stack on top of what Jesse was just saying and go to YouTube. It’s called Batch TV and there is a just a phenomenal set of videos and resources. And again, at the firehouse last night I lost three hours. So, anyway, that’s going to do it for this week’s edition of the Passive Income Brothers podcast, and we look forward to serving you again next week. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Passive Income Brothers podcast. We would be grateful for your support of our podcast by giving our show a five star rating and review and subscribing to our show on your favorite podcast platform. Don’t forget to take inspired action after listening to this show so that you can start building out your passive income streams. Finally, head on over to citiesidecapcom to connect with us and find out more information about how to get started passively investing in real estate.