On Episode 6 we will be talk with 1701 Homes which Includes Bryan Kunka & Todd Albery about their Real Estate business. There Long term rentals as well as short term rentals. How they buy and what they are doing in this market to make sure they are making a great buy.

This is for everyone out there who want to know about Metro Detroit Off Market real estate. We will be interviewing people every week and taking questions from everyone in the comments or they can come on video with us. we will post the link in the chat when the LIVE starts for those who want to come on video with us.

If you want to JV with me on any deals in Metro Detroit market Contact me though

E-Mail: RandyBuysHousesMi@gmail.com

Phone: (586) 307-4765

Join our free facebook Group

www.facebook.com/groups/metrodetroitoffmarketrealestate/

www.YouTube.com/@randystedwell

www.instagram.com/RandyStedwell

www.twitter.com/RandyStedwell

All right we are live how's everybody doing today hopefully we are all having

a nice good Monday um I have a great great

um couple of people on here and so it's just getting set up and they are from

1701 homes and it is Todd and Todd

Albery and Brian I and I'm probably a butcher that last

name sorry about that um so we are here this is uh real estate

talk with Randy Stedwell as you can see uh we go here a lot well now it's every

other Monday uh at 8pm we're staying consistent we're being out there and

we're gonna bring uh new people on every single podcast to interview talking

about real estate uh we brought on lenders we brought on uh you know

wholesalers we brought on fixing flippers we brought in anything to do with real estate we're talking earlier

all about real estate here in the chat go ahead leave your comments

uh if you have any questions ask them we will answer them Live while we're here I

will integrate into what we're talking about so try to keep it to what we're talking about and uh without further Ado

I'm going to bring up Todd and Brian how you guys doing today

doing well I like uh I like Brian Kuka I'm gonna uh

I'm gonna use that he uh he made an age joke the last time we were talking about

uh I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna use that Kuka in all kinds of ways I am

sorry no thanks Randy that was great how do you say your last name

um so with that being said so what we'll do is um kind of give you guys a brief you

know beforehand we start off with beginning middle and kind of like beginning where you're at now then where

you're at now and what you plan on doing the future now at any point in time here

please let us know our audience how we can help you as well so so we can kind

of go along that Journey with you um so with that being said why don't you

you know so your guys's company name is 1701 homes okay and I know there's a

special meaning to that but uh why don't we go into first off how you guys met what made you

decide to go into real estate and then what made you go into real estate together

I have known this uh kunka character for gosh probably over uh over a decade or

so and uh he and I both kind of had the privilege to to lead Dan Gilbert

companies Brian was part of the uh bisnamu which is a kind of a university that Dan created for entrepreneurs very

very cool and uh Brian was leading the company there and I was I was able to lead a

company called quizzle uh with inside the Quicken Loans family of companies for a while so

uh Brian did uh I almost called it picket fence right

pick it report and and uh he he and he

did that for a while and then came over uh to join us for quizzle ran the biz Dev team within quizzle for a long time

and we were we were on a similar track with Credit Karma and we we gave out free credit reports and then used that

data to help people make financial decisions a lot of those decisions were revolving around some of the products

within Quicken Loans and Beyond so that was fun did that for a little over a decade Brian was a huge part of that

uh we sold in 2015 to a company called bankrate.com who then a couple years later sold the

Red Ventures and uh Brian was kind of sneaking away near the end and he kind of left first

and uh started doing some real estate which I plugged into uh from an

investment standpoint at first and then uh he was having way too much fun so I

decided to come join and buying and fixing up houses and flipping and all that good stuff okay so the narrative is

always it's always nicer how you like couch it when I when I snuck away I snuck away because I was let go uh from

bank right now so okay well hey hang on though in all

fairness to Brian they were moving everybody out to New York and uh in

North Carolina which I think Sarah was almost ready to go to North Carolina by the way so uh and and by the way as as

Brian was sneaking out they were coming looking for some incredible stuff that he had built along the way to borrow and

take for the new companies so uh okay don't let him sell himself short

the way I see it is is even if they let you go it's still they they may have closed that door but it opened up a

brand new one for you no time myself we've we've just always

been super entrepreneurial with with everything that we've done we've always kind of approached business uh and we

just try to have a lot of fun and we just love building things so part of the reason why he and I get along so well is

you know we definitely have um we view the world very similarly uh we

we learned we spent over a decade inside of Quicken Loans and you learn a lot about

um culture uh inside of Quicken Loans like they you know for

you know good bad or ugly inside of Quicken um or rocket mortgage now

um you know like a lot of people kind of say the same thing like oh you know they they work you hard there well you know

they tell you they're going to work you hard and then everybody's just kind of like surprised by this like oh my gosh I want you to work nights I want you to

work weekends but one of the things that Dan Gilbert did an amazing job of uh and

kind of the leadership is they had you know this you know thing called isms which is basically company philosophies

and they're brilliant you know they're they're fantastic uh and they spend so

much time effort and energy and Company culture and with Todd and myself spending 10 years inside of Quicken

Loans or rocket um and really like seeing what it means to really walk the talk uh for company

culture I think that's where he and I like became very quickly aligned like we we naturally we're both naturally big

thinkers um and when you take a a combination of

like hey we we both have a love of like real estate technology you know mortgage credit that type of stuff everything

kind of surrounding the house uh we think big and we say share the same like

cultural uh values um you know that's a good recipe and so

so how did you guys keep from most people have when they partner up they

have issues um okay works you got the honeymoon phase okay and uh I like to say that

because it's like a it's a basically a partnership is a marriage you know

um and so you got that honeymoon phase where you both work and you're both cranking it out but then every now and

then you you come across where one's not doing as much or one feels like it

they're they're they're picking up basically doing everything and the other ones concentrating on other things and

things like that how did you guys is I don't want to say avoid that because I

don't know if you had that issue um but I guess avoid that or or resolve

that if it did have that issue it's awkward right now Randy because we totally have that issue

and we really haven't talked about it and I've just been carrying Brian no I'm

just kidding if any if anything it's probably the reverse Brian's been absolutely

phenomenal you know no I'll I'll say we we've known each other you know for so

long I think we knew pretty well what we were getting into we knew each other's shortcomings and strengths and all that

kind of stuff and it's funny some of our some of our shortcomings are similar and

a lot of our strengths are similar too we're actually probably too similar to be in business together we we probably

don't do enough yin and yang um and we're both kind of Visionaries and

stuff like that and and but uh but at the same time we've done I think a really good job

we've got an amazing team and so we found people that kind of fill those gaps and who are absolutely amazing

and and fill some of our shortcomings and we're both pretty aware of of you know where where we're decent and where

we're not and we're pretty honest with each other you know Brian said we like to have fun I mean we we in this

business if you can't you know if you don't like challenges and you don't like to laugh and and and at the

Ridiculousness of every single day uh you're not gonna last long in this business so we we think it's pretty

funny we have a good time as a team uh you know even when we're in the thick of it and your houses are going sideways uh

we're still able to laugh and and have a good time and figure things out I mean you got a bunch of as long as you've got

a bunch of people that are dead set on figuring it out whatever happens and not focusing on the negative but just you

know hey okay now we know you know let's go and let's fix it that's kind of fun if you you know we both been Sports guys

and been on teams so that's kind of what you do on a team you know you get some adversity and you band together and

that's usually the team that wins so we've been really fortunate to find great people so in the beginning did you

guys hash out and say hey I'm gonna do this part you're gonna do this and kind

of like okay I'm gonna be how should I say the the coach of this side of the

business of handling this you're going to be the coach of this and you know

kind of advise each other and you know give advice or did you just kind of like Let It Flow

yeah I don't think we did that Todd I think uh you know the the one of the things that that we kind of talk about

um early and often is handcrafting the business and handcrafting the business is really like you know when you're when

you're doing something new when you're doing the flipping business like you need to touch it you need to feel it you need to get involved with it

um you need to do certain things to understand like yeah you know like sometimes you clean a filthy house to

understand what you're actually asking of your cleaners sometimes you know like you you just do a bunch of this stuff to

like really like understand what you're up against and as Todd and I like

started this business um had a third partner and you know the third partner had the background in the

flipping and the in the real estate side so Todd and I were just here

um you know from the scalability side like how do we scale how do we build process and procedure and that type of

stuff so we start started learning that way and we both kind of jumped in um where needed

um third partner was not a partner person um so at the end of the day he was kind of more of a lone wolf

after you know less than a year we decided to kind of separate and we kept

moving and at that point that's when we started kind of dividing and

conquering a little bit more um Todd kind of handled like more of the

CFO type role uh I kind of do more of the project like you know like

construction type stuff and finding some houses and and over coordination

we had we had a project manager that was not the right fit

um you know wasn't you know we look for servant leaders and yeah and it just

wasn't you know was it wasn't the right fit for one reason or another so um

so when that happened it started like the need of the business started becoming more and more clear and he was

kind of handling some of the money stuff um so he kind of went deeper there uh

and you know I'm super grateful he did because the money stuff is neither of

our like passions uh yeah but when you're talking about the flipping

business I mean it's it's a third of the business I mean the way you break down if you've got houses you got money you

got Crews like yeah a third or third or third like you need to spend all of your

time you know equally on those on those things and if you are off on one of them then it just kind of really throws stuff

off so um so yeah so over the course of time when there was a need like cops in and

you know he's still he's still handling that stuff focusing on that to this day

um you know probably much to his Chagrin but he's done a fantastic job jumping in and and kind of doing that but now as

we've as we've kind of grown the business we have a flipping business a wholesale business a short-term rental

and a long-term rental business now what's happened is he and I have kind of divided and conquered in that way and

he's focused more on um short-term rental and wholesale and I've kind of focused on our long-term

rental with Detroit and are flipping but flipping is still the main

you know it's the dog everything else is kind of the tail right now so we all come together for the flipping business

as well so so over time it's become a lot more clear on how so what did you start off

what'd you guys start off doing obviously you didn't say all right we're gonna do all three and hit at it so how

did you break into it did you break into it with the wholesaling the flipping um like how did you like what was your

guys's I want to say what was your guys's first deal like I don't know if you remember back then

because I'm sure it was a long time ago so it was only five years ago we we bought

it from a wholesaler bought it from Ron wall Raven house in Southfield

um and first deal was I don't know just kind of small house uh kind of kind of

no big deal uh at that time you know Todd and I were not like we were kind of hands on from the

standpoint of like I don't know how would you describe that Todd at that point like we weren't like

we were we were kind of working with our third partner and he was doing a lot of

this and he was cranking it out and so it was kind of a learning experience like hey what's going on and

he wanted to take it to another level and uh he didn't have any processes in place

so it was just every day was total chaos and and frankly he worked pretty well

frankly he worked pretty well uh in in in the chaotic mode like he would just he was just getting things done you know

um but he was looking for more efficiency and how do we grow this how do we scale it how do we have more crews

you know more trusted Crews you know do we need handyman you know what does this business really look like at at a higher

volume and we pretty quickly did like 33 houses together uh so we you know we put

some real scaling techniques in place and we probably in hindsight moved

too fast you know on that but you get a heck of an education it's baptism by

fire and no one house is going to kill you you know if you're doing a bunch and and

you're getting a lot what kind of data guys Brian and nice we like to you know if you do one not saying it's

not the right thing to do and for some people it certainly is but if you do one or two houses only a year

you better hope that those are good houses and they hit um yeah you know if you're doing 20 22

ounces a year you've got some leeway today hopefully a few of them are decent and you can try some things you know

we've been able to do all kinds of different things and try some different things and go outside of where a realtor

might say hey everything white and beige and let's just be careful on that you know and we happen to have we've gotten

to a place with our team now where we've got designers who just do some absolutely incredible things who would probably

have been long gone like two or three years ago if we will say it everything's white and beige you know they're doing

feature walls and black doors and all kinds of different bronze stuff it's really cool and we've benefited from it

too so if that was yeah one or two houses we probably would have never tried that stuff um and in hindsight it helps when you

have a an unbelievably talented construction leader which you know

Nicole is and designer um so that part helps immeasurably but but still you know she was able to try

new things and get some things right and get some things wrong she she actually got more thing way more things right

than wrong to the point where we were like hey feel free feel free to get some things wrong sometimes you know let's push

envelopes which which she did she really kind of pulled Brian and I out of our comfort zone uh but that's the benefit

you get of going kind of big and getting to try different things for sure so

that that first it was I'm assuming it was a Fix and Flip your first deal that you guys did

and was there did you I mean I'm assuming

you guys made money on it and and learned a lot of lessons from that

um now it was it a lot less did you I mean how many lessons did you learn on

that on that first deal I think we've made money on our third deal but the third deal finished before

the first deal and I and I might have a little bit sideways but like the third deal was amazing the third house we

bought but the first house was first house uh selfie you're talking Melrose right

bro yep yeah so that I would say that was not a good house if we had just bought that

house done that house we'd been probably folding up the business you know about six months okay so so did you lose money

on it or did you just straight by break even what was it

it's kind of crazy it's almost embarrassing to say we don't really know I think there was a pretty darn close to break even wouldn't it bro okay yeah

like a couple thousand dollars the other day yeah so so the way I see it is and

this is what I'm trying to tell new people coming in as well is is you said you you made a tremendous

deal on your third deal okay your first deal you basically I I'll call it break

even okay um making a thousand dollars as a fix and flipper is not that bad not too good

you know we we definitely lost money on our first deal like we don't have to we don't we don't have to sugarcoat it I

think a lot of people sugarcoat this business yeah and say like yeah you know we probably broke even I mean we've

we've lost a bunch of money on a bunch of houses and part of the reason why we've we've done that we've done that

very specifically yeah and I mean we don't want to lose money don't don't care but but what happens is you know

we're trying a bunch of things and we're Gathering data like one of the one of the reasons why we did 42 houses the

very first year that we got into this business is we know that we needed data

and if you don't have data like Todd said you do one house you just you don't know if you were good were you lucky or

were you unlucky so we're like okay kind of the big thinker side of awesome okay

we really need to understand this business and coming from quizzle where we had millions of people uh inside of

the software you get a lot of data and just like really understand so we said okay we're gonna we're gonna attempt to

tackle this with a lot of data and the only way you can do that is buy a lot of houses the only way you can do that is take a lot of chances so you take

chances and they don't always work out and that's perfectly fine that's a thousand percent a philosophy of ours is

that hey you know what we are going to we're going to keep trying uh you're gonna fail forward like if you take on a

project and you lose money like you better you better win from like learning why did that one not work you know so

you do your postmortem understand why didn't that project work did I buy it too high did our cost overruns go too

high like what was the what was the scenario there for that to you know kind of go the direction that it did uh but I

think what you'll find in this business is there's just a lot of people that have a lot of like bravado like oh I've

never lost any money uh and the reality is if you haven't lost like if you're doing you know a couple houses a year

that that's perfectly fine but if you're doing it at scale every like flipper that I know that's doing flipping at

scale you're going to lose money you're going to come across a buzz saw you're going to come across a problem house uh

and realistically if you're not trying you're leaving a lot of money on the table by not losing money which sounds

crazy but there's so many houses that we buy that you would otherwise be like you

know what you're not gonna you know it might be a little too tight um but over these last four or five

years we've been able to buy a lot of houses that were tighter uh and you lose money on maybe one or two of the tight

houses uh and you figure out how to how to eke out more money than you are

anticipating so so and anyhow sorry to sorry to jump on top yeah that's all

right there's just so many people like there's nobody in this space that's just like hey like let me tell you about all

the problems let me tell you like perfect every day like we've never had one thing go wrong yeah and you know

what's today today's Monday I've had 15 things along today and and that's the key that I'm trying

to bring to everybody is that you know what you need to take action and you learn from action okay so you learn from

your mistakes if you haven't made mistakes you haven't learned anything and this is what I tell people all the

time I not only learn from my my own mistakes but by talking to you guys I'll

learn from your mistakes too so by by bringing in asking you guys questions

hey and it and if you're not that type of person to go out there and put your

put your business out there uh you know you're gonna make more mistakes because

you have to be out there to you have to learn from other people's like hey I I

got in this situation and and then you got to be able to take risks you you know you're not a flipper if you're not

going to take any risk you know there's always risk in in this business no matter what so

that's a great point and Brian is a master um every once in a while joke when she's

seeing one of his Facebook lives or something to be like oh my God are you okay with him saying that you're

what if your investors hear that and I'm like totally like it's more than okay it's the reality of the situation yeah

everybody knows it everybody knows it's not perfect but um you know what I think and you just you just kind of mentioned

it but I think you do yourself a disservice when you're not honest at all because then nobody you know if you're

kind of like hey everything's great with me you know we're doing we're killing it how are you doing like the other person's gonna be

like oh yeah I'm killing it too instead you know Brian's really good at sharing some of the the the the tougher stories

or the things that are going wrong and next thing you know that person's opening up they're going oh yeah I had this happen and pretty soon you're

talking about how to fix that stuff you talk about real issues not like the Facebook yeah everything's perfect and

here's my beautiful family picture you know all the time it's kind of like

you know it's just kind of a moment of honesty when you when you open up other people tend to open up too kind of like

you're saying so yeah most definitely and when when you put yourself out there

to people there's only a handful of people out there that will try to bring you down and the only reason they're

trying to bring you down is because they're down so um you want to ignore those people and

just stick with the people who wants to help you and who or just share their story with you and now you can learn

from their story so and that's another reason why I wanted to do this podcast

out and put every put all this out there so people can learn I don't pretend to

be a guru I'm in wholesaling that's what I know I'm not a flipper I've never done a flip out I've never flipped a house

myself I will one day um but I I don't pretend to know that so

that's why I bring people like you guys on um or lenders or anything like that and ask you the questions and selfishly I'll

use you guys in the future so you know um now I do have a couple questions here

from the audience and so we'll go from the the Facebook one is from uh David

call Junior um it's from the Facebook group so that's why you don't see the name on

here but I had it pulled up on the side so uh he said uh hi Todd and Brian I am

it can't always work out uh have you ever I had to let anyone uh and

basically let anyone go um you know have it work out for both parties

um and have you uh happy to have you shift get right

shifting on the fly so let me let me jump on it so we know Dave really well

thanks

okay go ahead right we know we know Dave we know Dave super well he's awesome yeah so so we were working we were

working with Dave uh probably last year and he he's just kind of kind of joking around saying hey did it ever not work

out for both parties uh we we were working with him and and uh you know at

the end of the day like we did go our separate ways uh but we love Dave Dave's

awesome he's got a beautiful daughter he's a good dude he's learning learning this wholesale business he's working

with uh Todd Chun uh right now helping him out uh I don't know what to to what extent he's he's working with him but

Dave is one of these guys um Let me let me tell you a little story about him

um and so Dave is one of these guys that uh he was a wholesaler throughout an

opportunity um for a house in Harper Woods I met him out there he had a partner at the time

uh and went out there talked with him and man Dave and I had a great

conversation we we're only at the house for I don't know maybe 30 minutes or so and then afterwards

um you know I was talking with him we had told him what our price would be which was less than what he had on our

contract for he renegotiated it uh and then he and I had a fantastic conversation talked with him probably

for an hour uh you know about life's challenges and ups and downs and and

he's been through some adversity and and man he is one of these guys that was just so inspiring to be able to like

fight through and battle through the adversity that he's kind of faced in in uh in his life and uh it's like hey you

know what like I want to be around good people and at the end of the day like you know he he's doing his thing he's

learning I feel like we go down parallel paths in this business like sometimes we work together and we're together uh and

other times you know we work near each other so Dave and I like you know we

like he'll still send me opportunities and and uh from that we we had a house

in Harper Woods that that Dave brought to us and from that meeting we we uh he

introduced us to one of our main Crews uh that has been fantastic you know so

we've worked with John and Tony for the last couple of years now uh

just from you know going to look at wholesale houses and having conversations like we're able to work

with him for a while we were able to you know buy a house we're able to find a new crew so it's conversation so he's

he's over here joking around on on the side here but it's just most definitely like Dave's a really

really good guy and and real quick on that I mean we talked about the fact that we try things

right we try a lot of different things yeah so we were you know we were trying to do some outbound and stuff on stuff which is really hard Dave did a

phenomenal job with it he's incredible at talking to people it we were we just weren't ready for it as a business we

weren't we just kind of realized we weren't ready we didn't have we didn't really even have the resources and

people around Dave to make it work to to do outbound you know we thought hey this is this is an opportunity we're going to

give it a try and uh and we didn't Dave was great and our company just kind of wasn't ready for it but that's you know

those are things we do we try things yeah and we bring on great people so most definitely and you know that that's

a good thing like like I said I met Dave a couple times you know and uh he is

working with Todd um on that and but yeah he's a great guy

awesome person to be around so if you ever get a chance to to meet him in person at the meetups by all means have

a good conversation with them I learned from them so I so I got the

I get a question so Jeff G from YouTube is asking how far behind are you

guys on your bills and I think what he means is just like I'm not 30 or anything like that

you know do you guys have that type of thing set up I don't really I'm not

gonna lie the second I saw that question I immediately texted Nicole who is Jeff G do we owe him money right now

yeah so so that's we we don't know I mean the the

uh we can answer that that question I will talk about you know right right now like it's a really good you know really

good time like the market changed last year okay so so our business has been

humming along and then come July August of last year things the market changed dramatically we anticipated that

interest rates were going to go up we didn't anticipate that they were going to go up basically overnight um that's never happened before uh in

the history of rates like that um so if you take a look I was listening to

um the chief Economist of Nar and he was sitting there talking National Association of Realtors and he was talking about how like it's just been

unprecedented for rates to jump that fast so we were anticipating that uh and

we we've been kind of sitting there waiting for the market to change and once the market was going to change we

were going to hop deeper into long-term rentals and short-term rentals became a thing but one of the things that

happened is um you know we probably purchased 4 40 houses last year in the first six months

in the last six months we maybe only purchased five and it's caused cash flow issues even

going into this you know the beginning portion of this year um still haven't bought a ton of houses

and the way that our investment work is is when we purchase a house we get 100

of the purchase price we get 100 of the rehab uh so if we buy a house for a hundred we need fifty thousand to fix it

and it's worth 200. um we get a loan for 150 at closing and 50 000 comes into our

pocket um when we're not buying houses then we don't have cash coming in kind

of at the same speed as what it used to and then when we're selling houses they're taking you know two months

longer than they were our entire you know existence so recently over the last

few months um we've had you know cash coming in has slowed down dramatically and Todd has

been amazing at threading these needles talking to everybody like it's a true lesson in leadership on how to handle

like like difficult times like it's not always like rainbows and unicorns in this business

and what you'll find most of the time is that most people when uh things are

going poorly or badly they just they just like shut up they don't say anything they hide they're embarrassed

of it they don't talk about it uh and one of the things that you know Todd and I from day one uh we've talked to each

other about you know the real problems you know the The Good the Bad and the Ugly of this business and you

when you do that when you have real conversations and honest conversations um and then you share that with the team

and you share that with your contractors then everybody understands but if you don't say anything if you go dark on on

somebody like most people tend to do when they don't know what to do and that

person's brain goes to the deepest darkest places that it can uh and and Todd just doesn't allow that he does a

phenomenal job so when when Jeff said hey how far behind are you on your bills

what do we owe you Jeff so so based on this next question that he asked I he

might know you I don't know because I don't know who Jeff G is by the way um but he says how many how many of the

lake houses are actually on the water and not a block away

yeah they're all on the water that's what I figured but I just want a map so

I I don't know the um I don't know if there's if there's

anything deeper behind that question but okay all of our lake houses are directly on the water that's awesome I mean I

would yeah I wouldn't assume that's a nefarious question I I think you can say lake houses and they have Lake access

and and there's there's nothing wrong with that but um and this is a vision Brian had like

years ago and we're just kind of finally we're kind of finally jump jump into it and the Market's been really nice to

make the ship instead of doing like 50 flips this year or 52 we're going to do 26 and 26 or you know maybe even a

little bit less but we're going to convert you know 26 over to short-term rentals maybe we we we're we're kind of

on a nail it and scale it so we may even slow that just a little bit because this uh the short-term rental business is not

a passive uh business it's pretty active and there's a lot of management that comes along with it

so we want to make sure we get it right but uh one thing that I think we've done a really great job is finding really

great houses that are on water and you know one of the one of the things that's out there that people have

told us is the number one thing that folks want especially when it's kind of a lake house of sorts even if

it's like access but they want to lake house they want they want peace peace is what people are searching for in these

short-term rentals they just want to go somewhere and feel at peace and there is something about looking out at a body of

water whether it's I mean we've got you know we're on beautiful all sports lakes and then we've got some stuff on just

some I guess would be called a pond but you know yeah you could still swim in it but it's beautiful but it's just

beautiful to look at and so we have not gotten houses that are a block away

we've gotten them all right on the water which I think is key for some of the

rates that we're able to yeah and and that's the good thing is like I remember I grew up here in

Michigan I'm from Ferndale actually so I grew up in Ferndale I went to all Ferndale schools and to me it was okay

all the written I I lived on the Poor Side it turned out by the way so uh all the rich kids they they take go on the

weekend with the parents and go up north to the lake on the Brit on the you know with the boats and all that and never

got a chance to do that or ride four-wheelers or do ride dirt bikes whatever

and so I always thought that was like the coolest thing to do and they that's like okay you made it when you got a

lake house you know when you got a place up north you can go to and things like

that so Randy Randy you made up for it because uh you moved North I did a

little town called Clarkston which is right next to that one of the America's greatest cities Waterford oh yeah most

definitely I may or may not have grown up in uh but uh there are a ton of Great Lakes in you know Clarkston I think

you're very aware of the one year yeah actually my subdivision uh we have access Lake access to one of them yeah

it's a block away but I don't consider my house a lake house so yeah I think

there's a big distinction there for sure yep so um actually Dave from uh YouTube uh

wanted to piggyback on the discussion about um purchasing and the rehab plot price

and things like that and to sum up what he's asking is the funds that you get for the purchase price and the uh rehab

are you genome for just that property or use you use are you using that funds for

like uh for the other properties that you have as well

does that make sense yeah yeah totally I can take that it is it is a this

is a crazy cash flow business and we're constantly um working on different houses we P we

set that money aside for that house it's there for the house if there's a need here and there it doesn't mean you don't

you don't borrow from from one to the other because you you need cash flow to

do business and to get houses listed and stuff like that um but our investors know we pay we've

paid every investor back a hundred percent of the time we're on house 200 and something right now uh so we've got

an amazing process going we've got phenomenal investors uh we give them investor updates they know what's going

on in all those houses we work uh super closely with our real estate agents who are part of that investment team in in

different ways and um but but it you know it is a cash flow business so there

are times where you know an unbudgeted item will come up and you

got to take care of it and you're and you're not whole until the house sells you know so you're in that crunch time

on it every every flipper knows you're in that crunch time where you put the money in and you're waiting for it to

sell to come back out it always happens we've sold 100 of our houses it will happen and sometimes it takes an extra

minute um but it actually never really did we sold houses pretty quickly back in the

day it's taken you know normally we listen to Friday and everybody this this isn't necessarily

um just us but we listen to Friday we're talking a real estate agent on Sunday with multiple offers so that's

how it always won for the most part now it's taken you know a couple more weeks and but regardless you're still locking

into a 30 45 day 60 day more sometimes based on FHA and stuff we are way you've

sold the house you're just waiting for the money to come back and he clarified the reason here is because exactly what

you just said about the the the the cash flow the Crunch and with the market slowing and things like that and uh so

he he also commented saying thanks for the clarification you have to be careful at the same time

you know when when you're doing a few houses like like last year our average like we owned uh third in between 30 and

35 flips at any given point in time um you know we don't have 30 to 35

different bank accounts uh so all that money is going into the bank account some projects you go over on some you go

under on and you know when when you're in scale mode uh I don't know if this is

gonna go the right way up into the right and I don't know like that's okay either

way we get it I'm gonna go up into the right with this way for me so so when you're going up and to the right like

what happens is as you're adding more and more houses like you finish the project now you're waiting you know that

two months for that house to sell you're just sitting there waiting for that money to come back and as you add more

houses like it's constantly like just throwing money at all of these houses the only time that you know I've heard a

lot of people that have done a lot of flipping at scale and really

you know we we were at uh Wendy Patton's event last week yeah there's a lot of people that do

this at scale that don't ever feel like they have money because you're constantly throwing it at all the houses

so really the only time where you feel like you truly have money is on the downside when you're starting to sell

off all you know when you go from a position of like Hey we're gonna do you know 50 60 70 houses a year and now

we're going to go down to 12. well now when it starts to go down that's when all that money that you continue to

invest starts to come pouring into the business so we're five years in the business the other part where where it

starts to pour into the business is just over time as you you know continue to do profitable houses uh and then it just

you know that that always adds to the coffers but but it's a challenging business to do Flipping and scale it

requires a lot of cash a lot of access to cash and it's one of Todd and my superpower I would say is that we do a

really good job with our financial investors to be able to make sure uh that most of the time we have enough

funds to be able to purchase houses to be able to continue like keeping the business going so kind of with that Alex

killbro uh said he asked where do you guys get your funding from and I'm assuming private investors is that right

yeah yeah it's private investors and then somebody up top asked how did you fund the first three Deals yeah um so

kind of piggybacking off of that like so one of the advantages that we had is we

partnered with somebody that had experience and because he had experience we were able to piggyback off of his

experience with private investors so Todd and myself both had a little bit of money from our corporate days uh that we

put into the business um but you know it's definitely not a ton we're able to buy a house or two

with it um and then you know so you start with your private investors and this is what

I would recommend for anybody that's trying to like get off the ground with this stuff like partner with somebody

like be around a project so you can actually say hey this is you know I've been around this flipping business I

have done this project and then one of the things that we do Nicole on our team uh who's here she says hi team what up

Nico uh he is Awesome by the way uh how's it going Nico

she and talk about secret sauce uh that girl is on fire uh she can sit here she

could take this entire 90 minutes she could probably talk the entire week [Music]

about everything flipping and uh absolutely amazing um like yeah Randy if you're looking to

do a flip someday we will connect you with Nicole and you'll be all set I I would love to so so she she's just a

wealth of knowledge but one of the things that we do is with our with our investors we have these investor Decks

that we send out and we share them quarterly uh but it as a new flipper

that's just getting off the ground if you partner with somebody even if you're a wholesaler that wants to be a flipper and you say hey can I come along for the

ride on this deal can I help see how the decisions are made then you can start to show some before and afters like hey I

was a part of this project in this regard I saw the you know I was at the table uh you know to be able to hear how

the decisions were being made and here's like just a little PowerPoint an investor deck that shows befores and

afters and then you can talk you know in an educated you know manner with these

investors you know then it shows them like hey you know what you're talking about I get

that you don't you know have a tremendous amount of experience but what you lack of an inexperience you're

combating that with like a professional presentation you're showing that like hey I've done this you've been there and

you've seen it uh and you know that type of stuff goes a long a long way just the

professional side of the business uh to be able to fund these and then over the course of time

you know I'm not gonna go too deep on this but this list right here these are

all investors for us oh wow okay so um so it's a lot you know and over the

course of time you start to um you know grow that and you nurture those relationships and all that type of

stuff yeah so I'm actually one of my buyers that I'm working with uh it's

funny because I've sold him more than three Deals but um three Deals recently and one of them

he got he made a nice profit and because I was a wholesaler on it I had it on the

before photos so what did I do I I went through it I did a walk through video I

did I interviewed him and I actually posted up on my YouTube channel so if you haven't watched that video it's up

there on YouTube and uh we are watching or were he has

two more flips he's in the middle of and he keeps sending me these progress photos and videos and walkthroughs and

it's it's like dude that's awesome like the the decision that he made and what

he did to do that and it is really crazy crazy so we're going to do the same

thing on the neck on the next two as well so it's uh it's really cool to

learn the process from from a flipper doing it like I'm in the trenches with him I'm not making the decisions

obviously but like he's telling me what he's doing and the reason why

you know so what makes it easy yeah so

and I think you already asked this and this one from Jeff G about the flipping over 200 houses and not having

a lot of reserves or whatever I mean you pay back your your investors pretty well

in order to have that and I'm sure you guys have reserves somewhere no

I do think though I do think Jeff's asking a really great question and

I'll bring it back up here yeah it's funny I think it's it's a question I've

asked myself 100 times too but here's here's the situation so you

were doing all these houses you know the majority majority go well and so you've

got money coming in and we are when you're scaling you are reinvesting uh a

lot and what we've started doing in the last year that's really impacted cash

flow is these these short-term rentals and we don't have a perfect Funding Solution in place yeah with short-term

rentals but we put about you know a hundred thousand dollars and we're starting to go out and find some great investors who want to be a part and and

and and kind of come and come in on a property and say hey I like that lake house I will put in a hundred thousand

dollars and it goes on top of that house but right now we've done like seven now we're actually working on more but we've

got five launched on seven it's a hundred thousand each so you and they're just they're locked in the house I mean

they're they're in that house they're not coming out until you're kind of your attorney start getting the money back

slowly it's very different than flipping flipping you get the money back more quickly not as quickly as you do Randy

with wholesale but and we do that as well but but we've you know we've spent a lot of time when

you're scaling investing in the company we love the short-term rental business but it is an unbelievable cash crunch to

the nth degree like we haven't quite seen before and we're figuring out maybe my favorite thing that we did near the

end of last year was take our incredible bookkeeper with REI books um Dirk and Joni and uh we've moved Kirk into a

fractional CFO position where he can help me I mean we've been threading needles all the time to make the cash

flow work um but we're starting to do some real forecasting and stuff like that so we know when houses are closing when that

money's coming back and what we need to legitimately do these short-term rentals because if you know we're going to do 26

like not real good at math here but if we do a hundred thousand per house that's 2.6 so that money can go you know

2.6 million that money can go pretty darn quickly and it's a great and it's a great buy like everything's good we

still the house appraises for a great amount it's all in there but we're still on top of the loan that we're getting we're

putting you know you know yeah of our own money into that deal and

there it goes and it's just stuck there for a while so so you know you kind of

skimmed over this wait you called it a fractional CFO now I've heard this

term one time before and I've heard it from one person pace morby

and I heard it from him that's the first time I ever heard something called

a fractional CFO so for the people who don't know what a

fractional because I've only heard it one other time so for the people who don't know what a fractional CFO is why don't you go ahead

and explain what that is yeah sure it's pretty simple it's it's like it's like a

fraction of their time right can be can be whatever you know we got four different businesses so it's a it's a

decent fraction sometimes but it's taking uh our bookkeeper who's got you know Mad Skills Beyond bookkeeping and

and could be a CFO anywhere and wants to kind of stretch his brain and and and

and dive into the business and understand it he's a great team fit and phenomenal person he and his wife both

and so we pull him into a little bit more than just the bookkeeping where he's creating cash flow reports so you

know obviously doing all of our P L's and our balance sheets stuff like that that's the basic bookkeeping but taking

that and putting forecasts on top of that and running projections and and allowing us to go real live time with

you know our budget versus actual while houses are going and stuff that so it's allowed us to take our projects to

another level you really have to be doing that when you're operating at this kind of volume otherwise you're just spinning with houses and numbers and

stuff like that so that's been uh it's been a really important part and a big step for us this year is to have Kirk in

a fractional CFO yeah but it's just kind of like a part-time CFO he could be a CFO for us you know in like two or three

other companies at the same time got it so it's not got it so that yeah that

makes perfect sense and and that's kind of how it was explained as well I just wanted for everybody else to know what

that was because I like I said I've only heard it ever one time and I was on a YouTube video so

so it is out there you can do it uh you don't need to play a full-time CFO

especially if you don't need one for a full time so um and then I this is this question

comes from Andre Kingston I you know is there a market for short-term rentals

for Hunter Havens versus the lake house lake houses and things like that

I mean I kind of understand that question do you guys do you guys do

yeah so so yeah I mean he's just asked it from my understanding it basically

you know is there um it do short-term rentals work for hunters

yeah and and the answer there is maybe you know like it just depends like

you know it as an example we have we are we have a JV partnership

this is a lake house but the example still works we have a JV partnership with a house in Battle Lake Minnesota

one of our investors it was their it was their childhood like Cottage that they went to

nobody lives in Minnesota anymore but they don't want to get rid of it so the house is free and clear so since we are

deeply involved with this business we run uh the Airbnb for them uh and like

it covers they're not like they're you know like covers the taxes covers the maintenance of owning it they're happy

so yeah so from that standpoint if you have a house in the woods and it's paid off like a thousand percent you'll be

able to figure out how to rent it there's different levels of airbnbs think of them like Hotel brands uh I

gotta stop using that example it's a great example but I gotta figure out my hotel Brands and go with the uh go with

the the stores the Walmarts and I always think of restaurants like you got your Mortons

you know and you got your yep you know what I mean like so what what what brand

are you so if you if you're on a cabin in the woods um you know are you gonna be like a

luxury Cabin in the Woods are you gonna be a budget Cabin in the Woods uh and then it's just a math equation because

you know for us what we do is we take a look and we try to say okay if can we

get 60 occupancy you know on average net net throughout the year for this particular property what's the average

daily rent that we can get for this particular property and does it cover

like all the like the bills um and leave a profit for us uh to to

the number that we're trying to hit so you can absolutely have like a hunter's

cabin uh that makes sense um you know it just depends on the price you know it so that's kind of a hard one

if you have a specific example we could kind of talk to yeah yeah exactly so I

can I don't have an example but and I completely understand that and over here in Michigan and going up north for

hunters I think it would definitely work um you I think the marketing just needs

to be out there for that so but I think especially here in Michigan

you don't have to you don't have to subject it to just Hunters because you

can use it all year round you know just because it's not on a lake it use if

it's up north it still has um you know the fall leaves and if it's

you know relatively close to the you know in town or or the lake you know

things like that so I you know all of that I I think Jeff kind of asked a

question that I kind of glossed over what the actual question was um he said how many lake houses are

actually on the water and not a block away uh yeah and originally we took that as like hey all

of our houses me um because that's the prism thing I should be thinking through Jeff's lens

right now um it sounds like he might have a house that is a block away

um yeah that can absolutely work you know if you have Lake access like it could we've chosen to purchase houses

that are on the water because we feel like that you know we we try to do like a high-end uh you know stay for our

folks and we think that kind of adds to it uh definitely try to find special unique properties uh I've definitely

stayed in Airbnb that was not directly on the water and guess what you walk over there it's a little bit cheaper on

your average daily rate you know so so you have that and then the other thing that that he kind of asked

was about the the rentals um you know and I think you're getting ready to go there sorry about that

that's fine you know the way that our funding was set up our funding was not conducive you know

we didn't pay cash for all these properties we used private funds to be able to

buy these house Fix and Flip them so we have short-term money on these uh and that was just the our our on-ramp into

the end of this business we did not have uh we didn't have long-term rentals uh

you know our first partner didn't have those uh so we didn't learn it that way

so we learned how to flip houses so that was kind of the approach we took um and it's kind of challenging and even

now like we have a lot of experience it's hard to go from flip which is

short-term money to long-term rentals and even short-term rentals both both short-term rentals and long-term rentals

require long-term money and to be able to make that like you know pivot uh it's hard it's not

easy yeah because the thing is is that when you're using short-term money like if you're going to want to keep it

you're gonna have to use the burst strategy well there's also a seasoning period behind that and you also gotta

make sure you know with how the loans are going right now it's like well when

you get it the rates might be four percent but when you're selling it the rates are like six percent so you know

you don't really know um sometimes it may work and sometimes that's an exit strategy and you have to

buy them enough right to uh and this is the way I've learned that the when I'm

selling a house I have to price it enough where my buyer you guys uh would

have multiple exit strategies okay if it's fixing flipping great

if that's not working if it's not selling in time you know what I'll refinance it out get my money I'll use

it as well you know or a short-term rental you know whatever the case may be and so it's

just different strategy and you may not use that on all of them or some of them

but you know it's just a tool in the tool belt you know Randy I will say I

read that question from Jeff and uh I love his questions because

these are the same questions that I ask myself and I would I'm like literally if

I could go back I would love to go back through all our houses and say that one will rent that one we should have rented

that one we should have rented yeah it's also um but you're right I mean ideally if

you could do the burst strategy which is buy you know rehab refi and then rent it

and leave no I mean the bird strategy is trying to leave no money in the house you're getting yep by the time you you

know refi it you get all the money back with the rehab because the appraisal

rate was so high right I'll tell you and then you can you can run it out and it's all positive cash flow so if we could do

that every time you would certainly do it otherwise you're still leaving money into the rentals however I totally agree

with Jeff if I go back in time right now I would love to pick like I don't know if you'd be 100 ounces but

I could definitely find you 25 houses that we would put in our portfolio all

day long for long-term rentals and and a handful of those for would be great for short-term rentals as well and if we had

done that we'd probably have some way better cash flow coming in as we go so so that that's you know that's probably

that's something I tell people now like if I could go but what would you do if you could go back in time I would definitely have picked you know siphoned

off one two three one out of five maybe one out of ten something to put into rentals just to create a cash flow

bucket yeah and I I have that too I have wholesale deals that I I wish I would

have just been able to take down myself the issues you have is your experience your timing your cash flow your whether

you can do it just your timing and life okay you know my in my case you know I'm

working at I was working on my a renovation at my personal house so that way like all my money was going towards

that I couldn't use anything for any rentals or extra projects stuff you know

um you know so it's kind of everyone has their own um path that they need to take they

learn everything as they go um and that's why I call it a tool in the tool belt whether you use it or you

don't it's still a tool there for you for you to use so

uh yeah you know the the other thing about that is like you know we we've been doing this five

years uh five years in the business and you know we we've done a lot we've done

it pretty quickly uh this year like we we recognize that we we were waiting you

know to go to Jeff's question we were waiting uh for the market to change and

you know while the Market's on an uptick it's like okay well let's let's sell these things now the Market's on the

downtick now it's like okay we are gonna we're gonna start buying these like our our

goal this year for long-term rentals we plan on purchasing in between 150 and 200 houses in the city of Detroit for

long-term rentals to try to prevent against some of this cash flow stuff uh going forward and then same thing with

short-term rentals you know so uh so that is that's a huge goal that we have but you know it's always you know to

your point like it's all timing and life right like yeah we are we're in

the position that we're in right now we recognize it and now we're trying to kind of adjust accordingly but you know

being able to do what we've done over these last five years has made us you know uniquely qualified to be

able to try to tackle this stuff that we're trying to accomplish this year um and as annoying as it is that we

don't have a hundred rentals right now you know we we recognize that that's an

important part of the future of the business and that's you know we kind of pivoted like pretty quickly to be able

to do that change their financing changed all sorts of buying criteria partnered up with people like I did a

lot in a very short period of time to be able to turn the ship in kind of a different direction and and you know

what that's what I call it's called business you adjust and yeah you see what comes

in you take what comes in and you adjust on the Fly and uh this is you know

that's why I love doing these podcasts that's why I love doing you know talking with people in business because you know

what everyone says oh this is going to be like 2008 no it's not it has its own

unique circumstances and you have to react that

way now you can take parts of it from 2008 and apply but it's not like 2008

okay I you know for anybody who uh was

around during that I was you know I was just getting into the adulthood

you know as far as well congratulations you caught you crossed over

we were rooting for you Randy good job I know right so you know I graduated high

school in 2002 and back in 2008 I think I was just becoming

a mechanic and you know I ended up getting laid off in 09

went back to school I've reinvented myself probably more times than anybody

else has in their entire life so it's crazy but I have fun doing it and I've

learned from every single thing that I've done so I you have to Randy I mean

it's it's so important to be able to um to be able to do that I mean you

listen to Todd's background like you know the banks and companies that he's kind of talked about over over the

course of time and things that we've done uh that he's done that I've done like you're constantly

you know I like to look back in these like little five-year increments and so

yes we're sitting at an investor lunch one time and and he was just kind of

talking about like he had the throwaway comment and he's like isn't that crazy how much you can actually accomplish in

five years and then he just kind of like kept his thought going and like for me my brain exploded I was like oh my God

like five years ago like we were just getting into the flipping business we hadn't flipped one house you know five

years before that you know I started working with Todd and and with Todd we wound up you know selling you know going

through two Acquisitions and then five years before that I was in a position to where I was working a corporate job uh

but it was not my favorite job had a ton of debt made like a whole bunch of like

Headway to try to get rid of that debt and then was able to start that

entrepreneurial incubator that Todd talked about at the very beginning so you just kind of look at these like weird five-year increments and I think

for Motivated people like yourself Randy where you know you're always trying to reinvent it's like you're just learning

you know you're learning and pivoting and moving forward failing forward and man that's that's how you know that's

what success looks like you know you just kind of keep doing that over and over and over and over and then pretty

soon you know I started working at Quicken Loans in 2004 that means that I am 19 years into like mortgage real

estate uh credit uh you know all that type of stuff so pretty soon you're just

like holy crap I did not intend to like be an expert in this field but you know

I can talk with you about mortgages I can talk with you about like real estate agent stuff I can talk with you about

houses and flipping and credit and like it's just nuts like everything that's surrounding this business appraisals you

just learn it over the course of time and even your job as a mechanic I'm sure has helped you doing this in some weird

way oh yeah and that's the thing like it's funny because you know I went to

mechanic school I went to WyoTech anybody who knows biotech or whatever um I went to WyoTech you know was a

mechanic when I got laid off in the Auto industry I went to become a photographer

I went to school and became a photographer did that for 10 years then got it back into the automotive industry

and on the other side and now I'm in the r d side of and I'm a technician so I'm

still kind of back in the mechanic realm and that's my day job I'm an electrical technician

you know in the r d space and then I started this business doing

wholesale and real estate completely separate but guess what it works because guess what everybody else in this area

is in Automotive and I can relate to sellers I can relate

to people who work in the automotive industry you know yeah so yeah

hey Randy one of the things that you know for for your for your listeners and

it sounds like you've done a great job of and we believe pretty highly in it is just just partnering surrounding

ourselves with great people Brian's phenomenal at helping anybody that needs help anybody that's got a question

anybody wants to ride around and Shadow him or learn from Nicole or heck I mean

we talk about Nicole a lot right now because we're talking about the flipping business we've got a leader Jen lamming who

ran our wholesale business for a while moved over and is doing incredible things in the short-term rental business

uh right now you know we're partnered up with TC Greenwood down in the Detroit stuff he's amazing love TC Ryan and

Alicia Tower doing some wholesale stuff yeah I mean and and having people like

I hear some things that you're passionate about there's nothing better than doing the things that you're passionate about Jen loves hospitality

and handyman he's running she's running the hospitality business a hundred percent she's dealing with people she's

phenomenal at that Nicole's got incredible design so like our houses don't just get rebuilt and painted and

carpeted they get they get incredible people walk in they're like wow and she started soft staging it and now she gets

to take those same houses and turn them into airbnbs and they're Knockouts you know and and you put people in their

passion Zone uh and it goes a long ways but surrounding yourself with good people and we say last thing there is we

see all of these houses and as opportunities and back in the day we

were really you know we're really good at flipping and the market just said hey it's a great time to be really good at

flipping uh so we did and like it's hard to it's hard to keep something

it's easy for me to say I go back and keep those 25 ounces right now but at the time you're like it's a great deal

like we just did a great job on it the house was amazing it's going to get multiple offers and sell for more than

we the arv that we had initially so why wouldn't you do that um yeah and now the markets just in a

great place yeah it's in a great place for renting and stuff like that so we're making that pivot and we just see them

all as as great opportunities and you put a great team around it and you know generally speaking good things happen

awesome now um I believe it was Andre Kingston who asked Maddie he contact you

tomorrow he has a few examples and this is the guy who asked about the the hunter cabin so yeah absolutely

absolutely not on that one what's your next question

uh no no call Brian no no a thousand percent I'm

I'm not just paying lip service um happy to help anybody it's um part of our isms are you know one of our

isms are we go further together wholeheartedly

so one thing Cornerstone Metro Realty from YouTube actually has is have you

experienced flipping non-residential Properties or um just going into Home Building

uh we we haven't done anything non-residential but the one one of the

things you kind of learn like we haven't done that yet but like construction's kind of construction not not to really

dumb it down uh but if it made sense we've looked at apartment buildings we haven't done one

of those yet either uh it really just comes down to um we're super opportunistic about

whatever comes across our plate and if you were to come across a commercial building that needs to be flipped or

updated or it's Unique and that you know it's an opportunity for us then what we would do is we would take a look at that

and we'd go okay like here's our here are are our people that can do these types of

jobs um you know that do our houses can any of them do this type of job and you know

I think we have a couple that could probably handle commercial stuff right now and then if not then it's like okay

you take a look at your network and you go okay well who do I know hey bro you

don't have to look any further we've got a we've got one of our construction teams right now masstop construction they're unbelievable with Mason and crew

and uh he has been begging to do a commercial project he's like what he's like why do you guys do these these

these families single-family homes you're crazy go to the construction we'll white box it it's so great we'll

rent it out the people come in they'll pay for their own construction for their little shop within your your big

building that you're renting out he he thinks we're absolutely nuts to have not done that so we will do it at some point

and we've got a crew that is like uh phenomenal that is all about that's one thing I find interesting about

commercial is that you can rent it out to somebody and and they're going to pay for the renovation and you don't have to

okay yeah now awesome so with that being said we

kind of already got into where you're at right now and I kind of want to sum it

up a little bit you got your Fix and Flip which is what you guys started off with uh you got your short-term rentals

which we already talked about for the lake houses one thing we didn't talk about is about your wholesaling business

so why don't you go over that for a little bit and like how are you getting your wholesale deals what are you doing

in you know because as far as your inbound or are you just jading with people with Buyers or anything like that

yeah this has gone through a couple of revolutions uh so and we've had maybe a revelation within a revolution so

we started totally internally just kind of doing ourselves Jen lemming ran it she was phenomenal and then we we found

these things called short-term rentals and and she was like born to do them so you know Jen's like how can I get move

over to here and so we've done a couple turns we brought a uh uh we brought another leader in to

to run the wholesale internally and we did um oh I stuck it somewhere I was going

to show you a picture of our um what I do with that dog on it our uh our postcard with Brian's beautiful family

on it but uh we have done uh we've done posters front and center

you know what happens in the office a little bit so it looks clean if you look here and here it's really not clean but

I cleaned it so that you know I would it would look good for you Randy but in cleaning it I knew where it was before I

cleaned it no I don't how often does that happen is it on your nightstand Todd is that where you put it oh man

they're everywhere dude they're we got an entire refrigerator with just friends family on it so do you before you go to

bed you kiss your wife and then look over there

but uh so we so we did that spin and and we just you know we were doing pretty

good I in fact I was just running through the numbers with a super small team um barely even trying we did like

30 deals two years ago and we did uh even 15 last year as we were just kind

of almost not even trying to wind it down no went over went a little over 200 Grand uh with that business but we were

also pumping a lot of money into it and we were putting some money into the marketing too so that was hardly all

profit um but uh but near the end of the year we kind of realized we just weren't as

good at the sales process as we wanted to be and we found an incredible mom at

Pop Shop uh Tower home buyers Ryan and Alicia who are doing some really cool things had some great processes in place

and we've really converted over Ryan we've put you know a couple va's around

it we've put a great Acquisitions person a great dyspo person we've got some

offer makers and we're doing right now 100 text uh okay we got a great process

around it and we're starting to really get some traction on that front but we just started that you know a couple

months ago so we're just starting to put those in place starting to see the fruits of that and then we'd like to

build and scale and get you know we've got a goal to get into a second Market to share whether it's Grand Rapids or

Ann Arbor but we kind of want to nail and scale it first here in Detroit and we've we've another goal that we have

for 2023 is to really figure out our tax our Tech stack so we're going from like

REI reply from twilio and some you know smaller quick hit stuff that's great and

Nimble to like left Main and Salesforce and

launch control and stuff like that where we've got a little bit more power and data and we're putting it REI sift

in place and stuff like that so we can really get control of the data as we're doing a lot of data and Skip tracing

right now so we're Solutions big company around it it ends up being a different different Tech stack and Company and you

need some more people to kind of fill those gaps but when you've got a great process you can you can kind of build

around and you got a great team and Ryan and Alicia are phenomenal so yeah who are you using for your skip tracing

Services you know we were doing some uh some ja stuff that was like three Cent

and six cent and it was doing okay and we were comparing it and we just moved over to IDI and like I say that we just

moved over what we've been doing batch leads as well um the IDI data for

10 cents is pretty solid I so far so good yeah that's good I've been I've been

using lead Sherpa um as well and things like that so I I

found out that I didn't have good data coming from the like they're really

inexpensive places so um but I did want to say that if you

ever do need my little pitch here if you ever do want a JV on anything I I do

have buyers in the in the Tri-County areas I have buyers that are looking for

Metro Detroit in the suburbs all the time so

for sure so um so with that being said I you know

you're kind of what is your goal or what do you think you'll do this year on

wholesale deals you know will you hit that 30 will you are you trying to do like a couple a month or five a month

yeah we were just going through we were just kind of set up uh you ever used you ever use the the traction methodology

and book to kind of set goals and stuff like that we we just got I thought Brian was going to hold the

book up there we go uh we've just been kind of

running our team through goal setting I mean we just did it I might not get this perfect but uh our goal is to do about

800 000 this year okay that breaks down in q12

I think it's 86 uh hold hold it up again and see

traction right look look at him look he's got it open like he's actually reading it too I know right

there's just pictures on the inside of those the pictures of my family on the

postcards that's all I just I don't know that's awesome so our goal in q1 Randy

is is 86 uh thousand dollars our goal by the end of the year is to be ramped up

in October uh sorry September October November December is a little tricky month as you probably know yeah in uh in

wholesale so the goal is to get the I guess we're at 82 for the first quarter and then 86 000 run rate per month at

the end of the year which is a run rate of a million and we've got kind of a plan to get there it ends up being 800

000 for this year and then it starts to really scale from there once we get to a run rate of 86 000 a month

honestly now it's about it's about 80 deals total this year okay so now I got

a quick question was how did you overcome or react when uh

twilio uh for the texting and change their their requirements did you just

try to go on the Fly did that bring some down time for you since you do mainly

texting you know it was probably pretty fortunate timing for uh Ryan Alicia and

Sarah homebars because we already had launch control in place that's our texting mechanism

they're they're they've got their own deal they've got incredible

guide posts and guard rails in place to help you

really make sure you're getting the right messages out to the right people and you're not and you're not getting in

in spam and they're super careful on that and you're creating all kinds of spinners and stuff like that to send the

right messages and different messages uh twilio you know can't real launch

control and there's no commercial for lunch troll just what we use but they cater to the real estate business so

they understand real estate to the nth degree twilio is is just a service for everybody and yeah so they they're

they've done nothing specific I'm not ripping on twilio it's just the case that was so we flipped over to launch

control it's been great we've got our va's running like I said we were already doing it on our side okay so we just

basically converted everything um over from REI reply and twilio to

launch control that's awesome yeah I've only dabbled in the text messaging

I mainly a component of cold calling myself so

you know I'll have a NVA call call to get the initial set up and then I will do the follow-ups myself so

I'm looking I'm going to be looking to scale things um as I go

it's not to say I I'm at a good place now it's I'm working my processes out doing with a day job it's very hard so

yeah you know but yeah because people love those dinner time phone calls Randy

that's great oh yeah when you're done what do you use to use like Mojo dialer

or something like that to uh so we use call tools so I love Paul tools because it doesn't

go to my phone like if I'm not there to answer it like it'll go to a voicemail and then and then I'll get an email

right away with the recording so I don't even have to log in to call Tools in

order to hear the voicemail all I do is it comes straight through the email listen to the reporting and I can choose

to call back I can choose later or anything like that and then what I do is

when I do my follow-ups I don't use call tools um call tools is mainly just the initial

and then I have it Go the anybody who says yes they want to sell I have it go

to my podio so um then that goes on my podio and then

I'll follow up and I actually have a Google Voice um set up which is this number right

here so you can always reach me no matter what that goes straight to my cell phone so and

that's how I follow up is to my Google Voice number that's awesome now that's a great system

and podio was great we started on that and then we moved to investor fuse which is a kind of a different version built

on top of podio and then recently moved to to Salesforce so just it kind of brought everything

together a little bit better for all the different things that we were doing that's awesome so now do you guys have a

physical location or is everybody remote yeah we have about 30 of them right now

that's called all your properties you know we can we can meet at Airbnb as

we actually have a place that we've been using kind of as an office right now it's it's our one house it's kind of

funny it was the first thing I thought of when I saw Jeff's first question because we do have one house

that that it's it's uh Cooley Beach Road and it is uh it's actually the lake is

on the other side of the road uh we never call it a lake house but it is right there and it has Lake access and

all that kind of stuff um but that was kind of the first thing I thought of and we have used that as a as a kind of a rallying point because

it's it's kind of central it's in Commerce uh or White Lake and it's just kind of right there where everybody gets

together next to that amazing town called Waterford yeah

well I you know I'd love to meet your team in person one day and and maybe top

strategies about your whole family team um you know uh whenever you have time and no rush you know preferably some

right now

we like to do it out on the jet ski right it was definitely

so that sounds good well yeah I would love to connect with you and have those discussions or any I think that'd be

great that's that's one thing uh our team uh does a great job of but we could

always do better and and we're looking for you know we're part of we're part of uh great Mastermind groups and stuff like

that but we are looking for great local people who know the business incredibly well and look at a team and partner and

do something pretty special in Detroit here so I'd love to uh kind of join forces with you for sure yeah most

definitely and love to love to work with you I love to work with anybody really so and and kind of bringing that on a uh

Johnny Dapper um actually said he's an I.T professional Johnny I you can read the

whole whole sentence here but basically had the gist of it is hey if you want to

book a a one-on-one call with me I'm offering free one-on-one calls for

people who want to talk about real estate um wholesaling or just in general

um give me a call my number's here at the bottom and or my email scroll at the bottom as well and we'll schedule a call

the only requirement I say is we record it and I can put it on my YouTube channel that's the only reason I do it

for free so and uh so I'm doing is anybody out

there who wants to do that wants to take me up on that my number's at the bottom here my emails at the bottom hit me up

and I'm always happy to help anybody else out we'll record the call just like we're doing here and take it from there

hey I know you're right but lastly I'll say with Johnny in that message he's an

I.T professional um like I said earlier we love to take people who have skill sets and passions

and use them there's so many different things that can be used within real estate it's kind of bizarre it's almost like oh yeah every passion has its

little way into the real estate business but i t for sure I mean there's this

thing called integrators and they're basically Brian Brian's done a big talk

up on a big stage somewhere he's kind of a big deal I'll just ask him he'll tell you but uh he did he did do a really

cool talk about it being an all-connected business where there are so many different things that Connect

into real estate and and I.T is certainly one of them so Brian you probably have a good discussion with

Johnny on that even and you know Randy there's all kinds of things oh yeah connected all the time

most definitely so Dave Dave said this one thing he wanted

to get out he said one last thing my disability and the things I was able unable to never uh unable to do uh never

mattered to 1701 family and Jen and everyone else treating your utmost

respect and dignity good people no doubt 100 that's a testament to you guys and

what you guys built Dave took his disability and he used it as a superpower he's uh he's an amazing human

honestly I honestly I didn't know he had a disability just meeting them so yeah you

never you never would he's phenomenal yeah so real quick yeah we are coming to like

an hour and a half setting here I want to get to the point where you guys are going in the

future and where you guys want to go to and then how can anybody here who's

watching help you meet that so uh okay so basically our goal this

year uh we want to do uh in between 150 and 200 houses in the city of Detroit uh

specifically on the West Side typically brick you know that we're looking that are

worth a hundred and ten thousand dollars or more uh we want to fix those up though uh so so we're trying to do 150

to 200 long-term rentals uh we're trying to get to about 80 wholesale deals which you know like

like we're we're you know that might be more challenging uh on the side of this group but if

um you know you have any wholesale opportunities you know we're building on a pretty robust you know dyspo and process and

all sorts of stuff so we can do that we're also trying to purchase 26 Waterfront and destination uh Airbnb

short-term rental properties so we're trying to be within 90 minutes of Metro Detroit and if we're looking for special

properties if you've ever walked to a property and you're like oh my God like this is special and it can be unique

like it could be an old like Firehouse or it could be an old school building or

you know something that's just like on a special piece of water like we're open for all of it ideally

those are fixers we'd love to fix them um that kind of works best for our model and then the other 26 properties we're

trying to do is flip properties typically in the suburbs and we're all over Metro Detroit

so we kind of go where the opportunities are um yeah and you know we just kind of

kind of tackle it that way so awesome so that's that's what we're

looking for we're looking for those things and then of course we're always we're always raising uh private funds

as well so most of our private funders you know they they fund a hundred thousand

dollars uh you know some of them fund more uh we got some bigger people that fund a lot more but you know anybody

that's interested in kind of going for a ride and learning kind of the inside baseball of this business

we're happy to talk with you about being an investor in 1701 homes and kind of everything that we're doing and with

those you know we always you know offer the inside baseball of what's Happening you want to learn about short-term

rentals we'd love to talk with you about short-term rentals we can invest your money there we can do it in the flipping business like really whatever

you know they are like excited about like we try to like augmented earlier try to put people with their passions

and you know if we can help people that are looking to invest uh kind of learn

along the way then we do that stuff as well that's awesome hey Randy some of our

most fun days in the business over the years have been taking investors and doing house tours like you know and

seeing houses at different stages and they get to ask questions one of those things you know you can invest and it

can be totally passive and that works too but we're also super happy to throw in a car and go see them and usually

they like to we've had investors take you know we'll take them to houses that were like half order houses and they're

taking stuff home and you you know ladders and and what you know whatever there's so much stuff that comes from

the real estate business but we've had some really fun days and are happy to you know whether you're invested or not happy to take anybody around on the show

most definitely and that's the good thing about this you know get your name out there you

know investors investors want to they want to feel a part of the deal you know

especially the type of investors who they don't really need the money but

they need a place to park their money you know what I mean by that is you gotta I mean you got people that make a

comfortable living and they they got extra cash they just don't want to sit in the bank well they they would just

want to make a a nice return on it but they want to feel like they're a part of something and I think that's what you

guys do that's what help you know you help make them feel like they're a part of something you know they can brag to

their friends hey I you know I'm a part of this flipping game here you know so

you know it adds some credibility to them as well so I think that's really

cool now if anybody wants to do that if anybody wants to be a part of that

you know or just want to sell you any deals or anything like that how would they get a hold of you

so you can have them they could reach out to any of our socials everything social is at 1701 homes uh Facebook

Instagram all that type of stuff uh my phone number is

313-434-5019 they can uh text is probably best there

313-434-5019 uh email is Brian b-r-y-a-n at 1701 homes uh and reach out that way

so or just go on to Facebook you'll see me there send me a message um and that's how you get in touch with

me or us awesome and if you can't get a hold of them for some reason get a hold of me my

number and emails all the way down here I'll be happy to get a hold of them for for you for a fee I'm just kidding I'm

happy to connect people there it is all the time

you know so with that being said you know I'm gonna have you guys uh bring you guys down and stick around for me I

just want to talk to you um and with that we will uh we're gonna

end this podcast and you know one thing I always say uh when editing podcasts or

all these is you know let's all do deals together that's it hey man amen brother

all right everyone have a good day thanks Randy

Real Estate Talk w/ Randy Stedwell Episode #6 | 1701 Homes W/ Bryan Kunka & Todd Albery →

REAL ESTATE TALK W/ Randy Stedwell

Featured Posts