How To Use Cold Calling As Your Primary Deal Source with David Pupo

David Pupo: [0:00] And I go, But you just told me like you like closing and you're pretty good at it. Why would you replace yourself first? Like, you gotta get all the other things that you just told me are things that are bottlenecks in your business. Like, get those delegated out. Because if there's anything that you need, if you hire somebody out in your superpower and it goes wrong and you're not good at the other parts, then you're gonna start sinking. Right?

Speaker 2: [0:26] Welcome to the Collecting Keys Real Estate Investing cast with your host, Mike DeHaan and Dan Austin. From wins, losses, horror stories, and tactics for optimizing your business, Mike and Dan take a real uncensored deep dive into the ins and outs of running a full time real estate investment and wholesaling business.

Mike DeHaan: [0:49] What's going on, guys? In this episode, the collecting keys real estate investing podcast, I'm on my own without Dan. He was busy doing some other work stuff, and I need to let him run with it because it is tax time when we recorded this and things are getting weird. So well, not weird, like a bad way, weird in a good way. But anyway, on this show, we have David Pupo, who is a just traditional wholesaler out of Florida, who has built a really awesome business focused on cold calling and generating, you know, a wide range of leads across single family multifamily, and, you know, doing wholesales flips, novations. He runs just a real traditional investment business. And I love a lot of the stuff he says, because it is not rocket science, it is something that is easily repeatable. He focuses on getting his metrics right and consistency with his business. And you know what, he crushes it as a result. And his thing that he's working on right now is how exactly he can shift his business away from how it was sort of pre COVID where he was in an office into a virtual model, free up his time a little bit. So he dives into that. But ultimately, everything that he gets into is the perfect example of what is easily possible when you build a direct to seller business like this. So tons of great takeaways, tons of great ideas that you could take put in your own business. And at the end of it, he also has a little way that he catches offers that's super beneficial, and helps you get a leg up on sellers that are kind of, you know, neglecting your cash offer, or just not really interested in working with your team. So anyways, guys reach out to him, he made it very clear that he would love to connect with people that want to learn more about him and his business.

Mike DeHaan: [2:23] He also is has a prominent disposition process in Florida. So if you have any deals that area reach out to him as well. And he would love to help you sell your deals. Besides that, guys, if you want to start learning learning how we generate off market leads and start doing deals, go to collectingkeyspodcast.com/free, you can get our free five step guides are generating off market leads. Besides that, follow me on Instagram. I'm at Mike underscore invest, hit me a DM. I've had a lot of fun chatting with people recently as our show has started to rapidly grow. I've been connecting with tons different investors and super cool to see what everyone's doing. So honestly, don't be shy. I'd love to chat with all of you. So I'd say enjoy the show with David guys. He has a wealth of knowledge and there's other things to share. So enjoy the show. Alright, David Pupo from Orlando, Florida, wholesaler, investor, and everything in between. You got a lot of good stuff going on, man. So excited to have you here. People who don't know who you are, why don't you give a little rundown of your background and everything that you have going on right now?

David Pupo: [3:20] Yeah. Absolutely. Hey. Pleasure. Pleasure, Mike. Thanks for having me on here. As you mentioned, name's David Pupo, real estate investor here in Orlando. The company is called Florida House Buyers, but we've we're now more than just outside of the state of Florida. We touch on just about every state in the Southeast for our wholesaling operation. We've made it now more of an intention to be able to now purchase a lot more multifamily this year. So we're going after a little bit bigger fish with that, but we're keeping the wholesaling operation really, really systems operated and just really lean, and it's been it's been actually a pretty good ride so far from the beginning

Mike DeHaan: [3:58] of twenty twenty three. Nice. I'm impressed that you got Florida home buyers. I feel like that's one that should that would have been bought by somebody in, like, ten years ago. Yeah. It did. You did?

David Pupo: [4:08] Yeah. So what happened is that LLC lapsed over here in in the state of Florida, and we snagged it. Right? But the domain the domain is still gone. They they wanted, like, a lot of money for it. Yeah. So we just did my floridahousebuyer.com. There

Mike DeHaan: [4:23] you go. Yeah. It's funny, right now just with, because I think games gotten so popular, right? People are coming up with like everything, and you know, try to put together like a business name for a wholesale business, you're like, okay, you know, blue stag, home buyers. Shit. No. It's taken. Like, you just pick random Yeah. Adjective, random animal, verb, whatever, noun, and it's just like, there's nothing there, but you've actually got a good one. Yeah. That's cool, man.

David Pupo: [4:48] Not only on the LLC but it's the domain part that hurts a little bit more too. Right? That one that one's been a little bit tougher. Right? Because we our marketing entity that we use to go into the other states, as you can imagine, as us, like, trying to acquire properties in Tennessee, Florida house buyers isn't probably the best marketing entity. Right? So we had to do we buy houses fast, like dot us. There was no .coms, no dot cos that were available. Or if they were selling it, it was an exuberant amount. And I was like, no. Dot US. Right? So it's tough to get them all lined

Mike DeHaan: [5:21] up like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's just always something. But it's funny because those are little details too that people will get caught up on. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. It all comes down to your general marketing execution anyway. No, that's cool. So I know you're on a it's a wholesale operation. So it started, you said you're starting to produce a larger multifamily. What's your business look like overall, though? How many deals are you doing? What's your team look like? I know we talked just before the show that you've been acquiring some assets, you've got some small multifamily that you've been figuring out. So give us a big picture about what's working for you.

David Pupo: [5:51] Yeah. So the the real estate operation, we did six deals in January. So it started off pretty hot. We do a lot also with being able to help out on, like, JV dispo. So if people, you know, dispositions, so if people aren't able to locate buyers, especially if it's here in Florida, I mean, we have a really good stronghold in Florida. So people have properties that are here in Florida and they need help with selling the deals. I mean, we just sold two this week from people that we work with all the time. And that's also been able to be now kind of like a waterfall for us, right? Now people are just getting used to being able to, well heck, give it a week and then if can't they sell it, they still give us a week to be able to sell it, thankfully. So so the wholesale operation itself, though, it's all virtual. I used to have a tea, all in house tea, and I'm actually starting to pack up that office because I'm not renewing the lease because I'm the only one in Nice. And that's crazy. When I started wholesaling, I thought, and I started off with like a real estate brokerage that was very like, well here in Florida, like short sales, foreclosures were still kind of a thing when I started, right? Back in 2016, 2017, they were on the back end, but they were still being done a lot. In that world, like it was just like, everybody always had to be in the office and like Brian, Brian, Brian make a lot of phone calls, right?

David Pupo: [7:11] So I was embedded with that kind of thought when I built the first version of my wholesale company, right? And so when me and my partner split, we only had three other in house people. We ended up letting go one of them. One of them left just because the partnership blew up, and then the other person just kind of decided to resign. So what we did is then we restructured it and slowly but surely, I started realizing who not how mentality, right? Started finding a virtual assistant that could handle this, a virtual assistant that can handle that. Two, that could be our lead managers, right? And then we have me still as a closer, and then we have two people in dispositions, and then we have a transaction coordinator, right? So we've been able to delegate almost everything except for the closer, That's a 100% on me. You know, that's my superpower, and it's hard to relinquish it.

Mike DeHaan: [8:00] Mhmm.

David Pupo: [8:01] So I I will hopefully agree and omit that one, but everything else we've been able to systemize and get really great processes. Nice.

Mike DeHaan: [8:09] I mean, I think what you said there is an important thing though, right? Where you say that's your superpower. Mhmm. Because I know there's a lot of people that I've met that have been in your similar situation where they're looking to build their business, they're looking to bring in staff systems, all that sort of stuff. And the first thing that most people try to get is like an acquisitions manager or a closer. Yeah. Because that's what like all of the general books, mentors, gurus, Coaches, whatever say you should get is you should bring in sales. But if you're good at it, you should hold on to that for as long as you can because and outsource the other other stuff that you're not good. Right. You know, like, like you said, like the maybe the TC or the marketing or all those sort of things. And I think that's an important part of the entrepreneurial journey is being honest about that with yourself and bringing in people that are gonna fill the gaps that you struggle with and don't enjoy rather than, like, what you're feel like you're supposed to do.

David Pupo: [9:03] Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I had a younger like wholesaler here in this market, that exactly what he was pitched, Mike, to the tee, hey man, make sure you go get closers and stuff like that. And I asked him like, you know, what other things have you hired out so far? He's like, nothing. And I go, but you just told me like you like closing and you're pretty good at it. Why would you replace yourself first? Like, you gotta get all the other things that you just told me are things that are bottlenecks in your business. Like, get those delegated out. Because if there's anything that you need, if you hire somebody out in your superpower and it goes wrong and you're not good at the other parts, then you're gonna start sinking. Right? Mhmm. At least if you have the superpower, most of us that started off with wholesaling, not everybody, but most of us have liked the idea of being able to do the closing part, right? Being the closer. And I think that you gotta keep that going as long as you can until I'd say you got at least like a three to four month wiggle room. I'd say you got, you know, reserves kind of there. Cause you gotta trade them, right? It's gonna take some time. We would love to be able to think that these people are gonna be able to immediately hit the road running, but realistically, training two, four weeks, and then they start getting contracts, and that's gonna take another two to four weeks.

Mike DeHaan: [10:18] Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that that all takes appropriate planning and knowledge to even I just have the wherewithal for that. So okay. So so you have your virtual business built out. What's your general, like, lead gen and lead flow look like?

David Pupo: [10:31] Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of people were chasing, like, list stacking and stuff like that. And I gotta say, was never a big fan of it. We still primarily do cold calling. I've danced around with a lot of different marketing. And as we were kind of talking about earlier, right, There's a 7 figure wholesale operation, every type of marketing that there is, right? But what I realized is what did I want to be able to also grow the wholesale company was to also acquire the multifamily, right? So if I was just doing a wholesale operation and nothing else, I would say in PPC. That's still, I think, you you pay a little bit more for it, but if you're efficient, you're at least a contractor like 10 to 12 and you're killing it. And that's a great model. But I wanted to start being able to pull in the multifamily, right? And I've had several of those PPC advisors telling me that avatar is a different person. Do not go, I need to sell my 20 unit. You need to go find them. Yep. Right? So that's why I've stuck with cold calling for my model right now.

Mike DeHaan: [11:35] Yeah. So you're doing like mass cold calling then, or is it like just super targeted?

David Pupo: [11:39] No. We have six cold callers. We're pulling like over 60,000 leads every single month. So it is we target stuff that have higher equity

Mike DeHaan: [11:47] Mhmm.

David Pupo: [11:47] Because we like to be able to see if, say, that cash offer doesn't work for them, what other options can work.

Mike DeHaan: [11:54] Yeah. That's solid. So, you know, so you so those that's for the multifamily stuff. You're still pursuing it with like that cash offer sort of mentality. Mhmm. And trying to get things up those heavy discounts. Because that's something that we found as these started to pursue these larger multifamily assets is, you know, it you're at a different avatar. They don't need to sell it. Getting something out like like the cash offer sort of pitch isn't what they want. What they want is like a guaranteed close, you know, an easy sell, save on the broker commissions. But also too with a lot of those assets, because they're so large, if you buy them at like 90¢ on the dollar, you can still make good money. You still have decent upside. You don't need to be getting things at 70% minus repairs like we do on the residential side. Right. But it sounds like you're actually still going for that same traditional wholesale discount, or am I am I off on that?

David Pupo: [12:41] With the multifamily? Yeah. With the multifamily, we we don't hit it as hard. Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [12:47] Yeah. Okay. So because on the on the cold callers that you have, you said you have six cold callers. First off, are those all in house, or do you have, a service that you use?

David Pupo: [12:54] We use a service. Yeah. We use CallGeeks. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [12:57] CallGeeks? Okay. Cool. They they And so are those people are they hitting just only multifamily, or are they hitting for your wholesale as well?

David Pupo: [13:05] They hit wholesale as well. So they do both. Okay. Right? So I've been that was part of being able to have the training.

Mike DeHaan: [13:11] That makes more sense.

David Pupo: [13:11] Yeah. Yeah. So I wanted just one marketing medium that brought in all these types of leads.

Mike DeHaan: [13:17] Gotcha, okay. So do they have like different scripts for the different kinds of sellers, or is this all just like purely engage the conversation and then your team takes it once it comes in?

David Pupo: [13:27] The cold calling team doesn't change the script. The lead managers do. Lead managers do. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. Because at the end of the day with the cold callers, they're just if somebody raises their hand, yeah, I guess, like, I'm interested, Then when we get it into the lead managers, I call my lead managers, like, they're the ones that are like the massagers. Right? They're going in, they're finding out a little bit more about what's really going on, just more than the basics of a price, a timeline, an address, nobody's really sharing their motivation that much with the cold callers, right? You need to be a little bit more of that massage therapist, get in there a little bit deeper, and find out what's kinda going on.

Mike DeHaan: [14:05] Yeah, well, that's such an important point, though, with any form of marketing. And you know, we do mostly direct mail. That's what we started with. We have found that it gives us a great sort of way to cycle our, you know, our lead flow, the people that call in, they've chose to call in, the motivation is generally pretty high. But when we talk to people, and we coach people in our instant investor program about direct mailness for things, everyone always fixates on the copy. And they're like, what is the best copy to get people to, like, tell people what you're trying to do, right? They're always thinking that it's like a, like a sales pitch from like a, I don't know, like a coupon or something like that you get in the mail. It's that's not important. It's all about engaging the initial conversation. And then honestly, once they're engaged with your company, they're talking to your lead managers, your acquisition managers, that's where, you know, you give them your message. Right? And like, honestly, once they start talking, they don't even care about the initial contact anymore. They've completely forgotten about that, and then they are now building a relationship with your business. Cold calling is is much the same, know, we had same with texting with, you know, everything in between. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [15:08] So that's cool. That makes sense. So the cold callers are dialing everybody, the lead managers, you know, take everything. At what point do the lead managers pass it off to, I guess, you being the closer?

David Pupo: [15:21] Yeah. So we wanna be able to make sure, like, from and then this is like brand Daniel stuff. Would love to be able to say I came up with it, but I didn't. Right? It's really making sure that I have my four pillars, right? I wanna know what kind of price point we're talking about. I wanna know what these people's motivation is. I wanna understand the timelines that they're working on, right? And of course the overall condition of the property. If I'm getting those four things, I tell them, listen, for you able to bring that over to me, I've been able to start conditioning and practicing with those lead managers to now be able to not only propose like a cash offer, but the idea, open up the idea for say like a novation style agreement or a creative financing agreement as well. So if they're showing any open mindedness to those other two approaches, so I just tell them to be able to bring it over to me and I'll have that conversation with them.

Mike DeHaan: [16:11] Yeah. Okay, cool. So as you're doing that, what's your typical lead flow look like on 60,000? Like, actual lead flow, not like people that, you know, engaged in the cold callers submitted because they were like, oh, they had a conversation with me today. 60,000 dials a month is a lot.

David Pupo: [16:27] That is a lot.

Mike DeHaan: [16:28] So it must be I imagine it's somewhat significant. Yeah.

David Pupo: [16:31] Yeah. So we average 60 leads. Each cold caller K. Gets about two leads a day. So times that by, of course, that they're all having like ten weeks, so you got 60 for that. And then we're going from 60 to about 15, give it about to 13 on the amount of properties that we would go to opportunities or appointments, right? And from the opportunities is where we set the appointments, and then from the appointments is where we're going into the contract set. So that's pretty much our sales funnel and being able to get to about two contracts about a week, right? So our lead to contract right now is around 37. It's not bad. It's not too bad, right? Yeah, it's not too So that's how we've been able to kind of reverse engineer, right?

Mike DeHaan: [17:16] Mhmm. Yeah. And those KPIs, I mean, as you know, you've been around this for a while. Probably, I would say it's probably the most important part of this business to figure out for longevity, because it allows you to project what sort of success you should expect as you increase your marketing, reduce your marketing, you put in X amount of work, you probably like what's your typical deal size? Also? Yeah, just about $1,515,000. Perfect. So you know that, know, for every 37 leads that come in, you can expect to make up 15,000. And then if your business is like most wholesale businesses, those 15,000, they kind of like, keep the bank account full, allow you to scale give you a paycheck. And all of it, though, is ad scores fundamentally hunting for like those bigger deals where you're

David Pupo: [17:57] right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Nice.

Mike DeHaan: [18:00] So that's cool. So as you sort of built that out, what have you found has been like your kind of secrets to success with a lot of this? Because one the things I love, I love the way you've built is what I would say is like the most was the right word, it is the most typical sort of wholesale business you can think of, like, what you're doing is you're executing at a high level, but you're not trying to do anything to you.

David Pupo: [18:21] Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [18:22] You know, you're now have like some sort of bullshit that you're like, Oh, this is like my magic thing that I pretended to invent, but just stole from somebody else. Yeah. You have a repeatable business, you're executing well, what do you think has been your secret to that success? Is it just consistency, or do you have something else behind it?

David Pupo: [18:38] I mean, yeah, consistency is always everything. And I think you alluded it to it earlier with the KPIs, man. KPIs is where last year, I went next level with it. Next level. Absolutely was able to get dashboards built out.

Mike DeHaan: [18:53] Nice. Be able

David Pupo: [18:53] to start meeting with my CPA. If it's not every two weeks, it's four weeks. So we're having we were having those conversations, and it's probably a blessing in disguise. When I had a partner, I was willing to oversee a lot of things, but I also had like the, okay, he's taking care of it thought process, right? So once him and I split, it went all back on me, right? So I had to make sure I'm looking underneath the hood on everything and making sure everything was humming. And I found out, unfortunately, that a lot of things weren't, right? So I had to be able to come in and be a mechanic on my own wholesaling operation. I started just being able to finesse and fix every single little thing here and there. And my KPIs were the immediate way that I could get things going in that right direction. And right, that superpower of me being a really good closer helped out a 100% on that too. That's awesome. As you're going

Mike DeHaan: [19:46] through this, you're doing the wholesale stuff. How do you normally approach that? Like, are you doing 70 minus repairs? You said you mentioned that you have a strong dispo process. Are you, doing a lot of reverse wholesale? I know especially right now as the market's turned, that's been a common topic for people. I would

David Pupo: [20:01] say that we do like the reverse wholesaling. I would say really, if we're really here in like the surrounding Central Florida area, my buyers list is still very strong in it, but we've been able to build out a disposition process that quite frankly, it doesn't really matter. Doesn't matter be able to just be in one area and it's been able to get consistent results, right? So we're making sure that so we use investor lift as like our first real know, if we had to think about like a blitzkrieg. Right? So I thought about that. The first wave is gonna be something really heavy with investor lift. Going through our godmook, going through our emails, and just being able to first target that area. Right? You actually get success with investor lift. So I would say that we're at like 30. If I had to give you like out of 10 deals, Investor Lift probably sells about three of them.

Mike DeHaan: [20:51] Really? Interesting. I mean, that's better than most.

David Pupo: [20:53] It's really on the other sides. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [20:55] Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if that's just like, oh, because there's a heavy interest in Florida. Most people I know that have used investor left to talk, said it's a giant scam. Just nonsense because everything just gets, you know, washed away in people's inboxes.

David Pupo: [21:07] Yeah. Yeah. But that I mean, it's very critical to be able to have a twofold attack there, right? You can't only just rely on email because you're falling into the same Yep. You're falling into the same thing that happened when everybody jumped on Mailchimp or Constant Contact. It's the same exact thing. It's just a mail server, right? So you gotta be able to approach it with multiple facets. That's where we've been able to get a consistent repeatable process with dispositions, is then now going into our god mode, being able to text buyers through there, right? Then we're very heavy with batch leads. So with batch leads, we're also finding a lot of the cash buyers in those areas, right? We're calling them and testing them in through that area, right? And then we're also being able to utilize like Craigslist or like Facebook Marketplace. So we have four ways of being able to find buyers, and it is a really great consistent model to be able to follow.

Mike DeHaan: [21:54] Nice. That's awesome. I think it does help a lot too that the Florida buyers market is just so crazy. We've started doing some stuff down in Jacksonville. Yeah. And compared to like where I'm at up in Washington State, just the availability of buyers, the interest of buyers is like next level, she have tons of out of state people. There are people with her that are like career investors. I mean, one of the issues that we encountered up here in Spokane, over the past year was we went and we pulled like lists of all the investor purchases that had happened over the last you know, year just as March slowed down. And we were one of the base ones. Like really? Yeah, we're trying to dispose. Yeah, old crap. In a market where we're the key buyer. We don't want that.

David Pupo: [22:38] Yeah. I think that's a bit of cannibalism if I ever heard of it.

Mike DeHaan: [22:40] Yeah. Yeah. So we had to adjust, you know, and that's one of the big reasons we started going virtual too was, you know, the key buyers had sort of dried up.

David Pupo: [22:48] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [22:48] Yeah. So no, that's good. So I guess was you're building those that disposition process? How do you nurture those as well? Because disposition is relationship based as much as, you know, deal based and everything else? Do you have like a nurturing process? Do you run a meetup? Do you do? I know I know I know you do a little bit of content. That probably helps as

David Pupo: [23:06] well. Right. Right. So here in Central Florida, I still yeah. I I do a lot of content. I do a lot of events around here in Central Florida. Nice. It's something I I I used to be like a a board director for one of the local RIOs. Like, so I've been really of that mindset from the get go. Like I learned a lot from other people at the RIOs. They helped me out a whole bunch. That's where a lot of my private lenders still to this day come from. Our self directed IRA clients, our private lenders have come from those RIOs, right? Because they've been able to see my career scale up, get some success. They've seen some of the setbacks and they've also seen me learn from those setbacks, right? So it's been a really great process to be able to be in these kinds of communities here. We started a couple of our own to be able to, you know, teach others, and then we have like our nurturing events that we go to to make sure that, you know, people are still active and still engaged in being able to buy.

Mike DeHaan: [24:00] Yeah. And that's super important from a positioning standpoint as well, especially in a competitive market. A lot of people tend to discount this because, you know, they've been listening to bigger pockets forever. And everyone says like, oh, if you have a good deal, like, the money will find you. But honestly, that's not true. If people don't trust you.

David Pupo: [24:15] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [24:17] And that's something that we've done. And we've tried to make a point of doing generally is, we try to make our deals that we're trying to sell visible to everybody. Even if we already have a buyer, we're buying it ourselves. It's not even available for other people because it shows that momentum in your business. Yeah. And instantly, you get more credibility from the random people.

David Pupo: [24:36] Yeah. I think what I can add to that too is why it's so great to have it so process oriented. Right? Mhmm. Because if your people are very process oriented with it, then that means there's not a whole bunch of variables. Right? If you can be able to eliminate a lot of variables and they have a consistent model on how they're approaching, the buyers will sense that. If you're a little bit sporadic, if you're a little bit green behind the ears, if you don't know exactly what you're talking about with buyers, they can sense it, right? Because like if you called me right now, I go, Hey, are you a buyer here in Orlando? And I go, Yeah. And then you start try talking to me about a property and you tell me it's like worth $800,000 and it needs $200,000 in repairs. I'm like, Dude, the average sales price here in Orlando is like $3.50 to 400. Am why are you talking to me about this, right? Yeah. Like you're just, you immediately lost me. So you gotta be able to understand what's going on in any market, right? And then if your people are trained up and we go through that every single day, I have thirty minutes for dispositions and I have thirty minutes for acquisitions every single morning. Nice. And I ask them, what are some of the obstacles you're across? Right?

David Pupo: [25:44] What is it something that somebody tripped you up on? Let's go over it. Let's do a role play on it. And that's been what really helped out with the RT.

Mike DeHaan: [25:53] Nice. That yeah. That's just good. Awesome. You mentioned before the show that something that you've doing a lot is like this, you said it was a three offer method. It is it that you found this work pretty effective for for making offers with sellers. I thought to hear kind of what that entails. And, you know, I'm sure there's some good tidbits that a listener could take from that.

David Pupo: [26:12] A 100% right now. Right now, in this current market, man, you gotta be able to understand you can't be just a one trick pony. Uh-huh. Yeah. If you're just solely going out there and making cash offer, cash offer, cash offer, you're just leaving so much money on the table, right? Because what we're being able to see, and this is why our leads of contract are so, like, so efficient because we're being able to make sure when we're talking to sellers, they're staying with us. You know, after our first offer, say our cash offer, more times than not, a seller goes, well, what's your offer? And if you make an offer and they don't like it, alright, well, for your time. Click. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [26:49] Yeah.

David Pupo: [26:50] So that's why our lead managers, like I've mentioned, like I've made sure that like, Hey, is that seller open minded to an innovation style agreement where we get them a little bit more money? But you know, it's gonna take them sixty to ninety days. Are they okay with that? Right? Or creative financing, If you're so fixated on your price, Mike, are you willing to give me my turns? And what I'm gonna be able to do, Mike, is all this equity that you have built up in your house, we are now gonna convert that, and you are now gonna be the bank of Mike. You are the person that I pay every single month with interest on some of the ones, sometimes we do, you know, negotiate principal only, but I'm paying you as opposed to, I gotta go get a mortgage from Bank of America to pay off your mortgage, and then I have to pay them. Why don't you just collect the interest? How's that set? You know? So you get them open minded very quickly on something like that. So the three offer, cash starting always anchors the expectations, and if they accept it, awesome. You know, of course, we'll never restructure anything. We make sure we win at the end. You know, it doesn't matter what offer they pick. So the cash wholesale deal, right? That's offer one. Then we make, you know, a gentle into the offer two, which is called our steering wheel offer, right? Because I wanna be able to guide them. And this is what usually guides them into that third one, hopefully, because that's usually our favorite offer, right?

David Pupo: [28:12] So steering wheel offer is probably something like a novation or maybe a creative financing deal where we're being able to give them some interest on the deal. It depends of course on the equity, right? So we gotta be able to see what their mortgage kind of looks like. Are we doing a subject to with them with like hybrid, you know, where we pay off their mortgage and then we're also paying them a mortgage, right? So we gotta know what's going on with that. If they're at a 100% equity or something like less than 20%, we will bring them up to a principal only cash offer where it could be at their asking price or heck, it could even be more than their asking price because it is principal only. Right? So we're being able to make sure that our monthly payments are only going to principal. So we're in a really great situation.

Mike DeHaan: [28:59] Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Principal only is huge. We've done that on several deals, and it it makes the IRR on the deal, like, game changer, especially if it's like a turnkey property.

David Pupo: [29:08] Oh my gosh. It's amazing. Yeah. It's the holy grail. If you're being able to get a principal only deal, it's the holy grail. It's amazing.

Mike DeHaan: [29:15] It is. Yeah. It's it's huge. I like that steering wheel that they talked about. So I was gonna ask you how you pitch innovations to people. That's something that's come up pretty regularly just right now with the market conditions, and a lot of different listeners have asked about that. Because you know how it is too. You get on the phone with the seller, and you're like, well, you be up into innovation? They go, what the hell is that? Right. And I feel immediately stupid because I don't know what that is, and I no longer wanna Yeah. Work with

David Pupo: [29:40] So I've learned this from other coaches. Once again, I'm not somebody who's like a crazy reinvent the wheel person. Right? So my coaches and mentors in the novation game have been Ace Morby, Eric Brewer, and Corey Geary. You know? Mhmm. One's in Pennsylvania and one's in well, Corey and Ashley Pace are both in Arizona. Yep. So it's learning that you don't say the word novation. Yep. Because you are right. You immediately throw them off. Right? So you kinda have to make sure that you're not trying to talk like nuclear physicists to somebody who doesn't understand the nuclear physics world. Right? Why would you do that? Because then you're gonna make them feel stupid, and then they feel rejected, and they're not gonna go with you, right? So you have two different ways that they go with it, right? Some of them call it like a concierge offer. I think Eric calls it like an equity protection program. And what you're essentially just being able to do is you're just putting a nice little wrapping and a present on that same exact vehicle, right? At the end of the day, it's the same thing. We're marketing it out to buyers. We're getting you a higher net offer. It's just gonna take sixty to ninety days.

David Pupo: [30:42] Are you cool with that?

Mike DeHaan: [30:43] Yeah. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, we recorded with Eric Brewer last week. Mhmm. He was telling us about the the equity protection program. And then Yeah. Add even another part onto it. You know, if you do have like an innovation that's gonna need a little bit of work. Basically, what you do is you save it for what do you call it? Like his his like staging or like his like sale preparation program, but they only do it after inspection, like in everything sort of booking to close. But it's all about just like packaging it in a way that is appealing to the end seller.

David Pupo: [31:12] Yeah, man. Hey, learn from all these other marketing companies. Right? You know, they don't tell you all the ingredients on the back of a Coca Cola bottle. Right? They just tell you it's called soda. That's it. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [31:22] That's it. I think they they do tell you the ingredients, but don't tell you what's in all those ingredients. But not that anyone really cares anyway, and that's the most important thing. Awesome, man. So that's good stuff. I love what you're doing, dude. Because like, you are a true, like wholesaler, you're running the business, you're doing all the stuff that you're supposed to do. And surprise, you're having success with it because you're consistent. You know, and that's the number one place where people drop it. Awesome, man. So we're gonna dive into the end of the show here. We always have three questions that we finish out for the show. So the first question we have is always the group favorite, but it is what is your craziest real estate investing story? And this can be a big win, big loss, crazy seller, the only rule is you're not allowed to talk about finding a dead person in a property. We had a little span where we had, like, six of those in a row, it got super weird.

David Pupo: [32:13] Yeah. Oh, man. That's good. Because I would say that our model's now gone a little bit virtual, so I haven't had to walk in. Yep. But like back on the day was when I was throwing out a lot of bandit signs and being able to show properties and be able to do, like, drive for dollars and door knocking. That was kinda like the inside hustle. There's been a 100% times where I've walked in and there was, oh, man, somebody that just breaks into a house. I'm I'm blanking out.

Mike DeHaan: [32:39] Like a squatter.

David Pupo: [32:40] Squatter. There it is. Actually had that happen when I was showing the property, and the squatter took the back right room, and I did not bring any firearms and had any weapons on me. And I noticed that one of the doors was locked, and they were like an Indian couple that invested a lot in the other areas around there. And I was like, uh-oh, I have these two people here, and I'm about to do it. And I just asked them politely, hey, do you mind just either going into the kitchen or stepping outside? I don't have the key for this for this door. Right? And so what I did so they did do it. I literally, like, spoke underneath the door, and I go, hey, man. I know you're in here. I know this door is locked. I'm just gonna do this. I'm gonna give you $20 if you just open this door and walk out the door. I'm not gonna call the police. I'm not gonna do anything. I'm gonna offer you actually $20 to just simply leave the house right now. And the guy said, yeah. That's fine. And so he opened up the door, and I gave him the 20. I'm like, please just leave. I'm trying I'm trying to buy this house. And it worked. I was scared to death, man, because like I said, like Oh, I bet. Yeah. When you have, like and this is an area where you certainly have some drug addicts. Right? So you're just like, oh my Please just don't be on something where they're acting absolutely crazy. But luckily enough, the dude was it was like 09:30 in the morning where I when I showed this, but the guy was just kinda like waking up, and he was like, yeah. Cool.

David Pupo: [34:06] I'm fine. Alright. That sounds good.

Mike DeHaan: [34:07] There you go. That's like the cheapest cash for keys ever too. Oh my gosh, man.

David Pupo: [34:12] It was so great. Because I said like, hey, I don't wanna call the cops. I don't wanna get anybody involved. Yeah. Just take the $20

Mike DeHaan: [34:17] and go. And he was completely Yeah. Nice. I mean, it's pretty good. That's funny. Yeah. We've yeah. We've we do a lot of cash for keys, they're never quite that cordial or that friendly.

David Pupo: [34:28] No. They certainly Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [34:30] Nice. No. No. That that's good. Alright. Second question. What is the number one tip you would give to either a new investor looking to get started or a small time investor looking to take their business to the next level?

David Pupo: [34:42] Yeah. Yeah. So I get this one a lot because it it is really critical. Right? It is just so so important to be able to start understanding what you want, right? Do you wanna be able to grow a wholesaling company? Then just focus in as much as you can on wholesaling, right? What really derailed me, I say like in the first like year, year and a half, was trying to throw in this thing, that thing, this technique, this marketing technique, this strategy here, and you just, you lose momentum really quickly being able to do that. Right? So one of my mentors says it in like the most perfect way. And since then, it's just stuck with me. Right? You know, call it a sunny day. You have a magnifying glass. The only way that that magnifying glass gets hot enough to burn anything underneath it is that you have to keep it in one spot focused, right? It can harness that energy behind it on a sunny day. But if you're waving that magnifying glass around, nothing's gonna get hot underneath it, right? That's your same thing. That's your energy, right? So focus it. You know, if you're gonna get in on wholesaling, go in on wholesaling. Keep your head down, focus on how many people you're talking to every single day, how many appointments you're setting, and how many contracts you're sending out. If you start focusing on just being able to do that every single day, you're gonna get success.

Mike DeHaan: [36:00] Yeah, I think that's huge. I think to add on that as well is, even if you don't want to be a wholesaler, but you want to be a successful real estate investor, just a slightly step back from focus on the marketing and sales. Yeah, you know, and then, you know, just like determine an exit strategy that you want to do. And even if you only want to look for rentals, maybe understand you're gonna have like a little bit more cash that needs to go into the front portion of every property. But if you can figure out marketing and sales, like the upside on this in this industry is insane. Yeah, don't I know how you were. But like, for me, my goal when I started was to buy rental properties. And wholesaling kind of came around an accident because I was like, well, I don't have the ability to take down this property, or I have more properties than I want to buy, or I don't want to buy this particular property. And so we started wholesaling just as part of the business, part of being a full time real estate investment business. Right. Wholesaling is a tool as much as it is a, you know, industry. Right?

David Pupo: [36:51] Yeah. A 100 A 100%. And, yeah, I couldn't I couldn't agree more with that. Right? You just gotta understand what you're trying to attack, man. Is just so critical, whether it's flips, rentals, or anything like that. Just be able to focus on it. Have your agents and just have one offer submitted every single day for a rental. Yeah. Cause it's a very similar strategy for me. I was like, I do want, and that's why now I'm so happy to be able to start getting into the whole model, right? Buying actual property, because for a long time I wholesaling deals. I was getting great checks, but I was like, damn, it would have been really great to be able to keep it. Right? Especially since I was wholesaling prior to COVID, it's been wholesaling it in now. Right? And prices for a lot of these properties I sold doubled, if not tripled. And I'm just like, man, that was a lot of money missed. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [37:40] Oh, yeah. I mean, I even kept a ton. I kept 30 properties that I bought over the you know, since I've been in business for the last three years. Nice. But there's there's so many of them. Was like, man, if I just kept like 10 more, I'd have an extra couple 7 figures on my net worth right now.

David Pupo: [37:53] It's the

Mike DeHaan: [37:54] way things have gone.

David Pupo: [37:55] But,

Mike DeHaan: [37:56] hey, you know, live and you learn, and it's a lifestyle business. Right? It goes it goes for the long term.

David Pupo: [38:00] Yeah. And there's always another train coming. Yeah. You know, that's that is a good way to think about it. Call it the sweat equity. I mean, heck, you're also making some of the money too. Right? But there's always another train coming. You're getting better skills because you're you're right, man. If if somebody can just focus on these two things, and you're you're gonna have a very successful business. It doesn't matter if it's all in wholesale. Right? Lead gen and those conversions of leads. That's it. If you could focus on a one two punch, lead gen and a conversion of leads, I mean, that's every business, right? Yep. So if you understand how to get that very basic philosophy really going, I mean, you're gonna be in a good spot.

Mike DeHaan: [38:36] Absolutely. And then and then with real estate too, on that same zone, if you can buy stuff at a discounted rate, regardless of what's going on in the market, you're gonna do well. Right. And there's there's always gonna be real estate. And if you can get like the the lead gen and the closing of deals figured out, like you can always have opportunities. It's not real estate. A lot of people they look at like the recessions and they're like, Man, I should have bought off 2008. Real estate isn't like it's not like Bitcoin, right? Where there was like one time where it was worth 10¢. And now it's like, that's like a lifetime thing that you missed out. As such, whatever everyone did, you know, except for that handful of geeks. Real estate is something that you always have that opportunity, you just have to put in, like you said, the lead gen and the closing on it, the acquisitions, and then you can create money and wealth and opportunity anytime that you want. Yeah. You know, and sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's harder, but it's literally always there.

David Pupo: [39:27] Some of my favorite people in going into like the multifamily are those tired landlords, man, that have owned these properties for twenty or thirty years. I don't know why, but I get like a little slight pleasure to be able to see that these people would buy something or even some lady I'm talking to right now built duplexes, right? She built them out for $50,000 and now she's selling their, by the way, that they have no mortgage on them. So she's been making just profit every single year since she built them. And now she's trying to sell each and every one of those duplexes for $350,000 Right? Wow. That's seven x from her buy to whatever she resells, and, by the way, she's owned it for, like, twenty five years. So, like, I don't even know what that compounds into. Right? So it's just that's where the wealth is. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [40:14] Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That's huge. And that's you know, everyone can be that person if they start, and they do it for long enough. They did. Awesome. Alright. So last question. Where can people find you, follow you, and reach out to you if you'd like them to do so?

David Pupo: [40:26] Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I put my my little handle or whatever they call it nowadays at dollars with David. So you can find that on TikTok. You can find that on Instagram. As you can imagine, David Pupo is not the most common name in the world. So you could probably you could find me on Facebook as well. And then we just launched actually tripleoffer.com on there. And we just did a free case study for people where we just netted 58,000 on a deal earlier on in January. And that's a free case study that we're providing. And then also, I would love to be able to see how we could provide anything for your audience there, Mike, on on anything that they need help with with being able to start getting their their journey going.

Mike DeHaan: [41:05] Yeah. I appreciate that. Yeah. So cool. So I just found you. Just followed you back. I know you've followed me for a little bit, so now we're mutual there. But yeah, man, I mean, people that listen to our show, they always are interested in reaching out to guests and things that they vibe with. So, you know, anything that you want to, I guess, plug or you come up with or even if between now when this episode comes out here in the next little bit, you can send it over to me. We'll I'll add it in as like a little outro. We'll put it onto it.

David Pupo: [41:30] So Perfect. Yeah. Not a problem.

Mike DeHaan: [41:32] Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show, David. Anything else you wanna add before you sign off here?

David Pupo: [41:36] No, man. Hey. I just appreciate you giving me the opportunity to be able to share a little bit of my experience and story with the audience members here, and hopefully they get some value out of it, right? You know, the whole thing I've loved about this real estate investment world is being able to learn and then be able to teach and give back to others. It's just honestly, it's so emotionally rewarding to be able to just help others. Because I remember at one point or another, I was completely lost with this stuff, right? But you get great people podcasts. I mean, this is how I jumped into it. It was the BiggerPockets podcast, right? Yeah. You learn from all these people, and and you're being able to just soak it in and hopefully take action on it. So it's just an awesome process.

Mike DeHaan: [42:17] Yeah. Absolutely. And I think one of the reasons that you find a lot of people that like to teach this is because it is one of those things that, honestly anybody can do it if you put in the work and you build a general system around it. And the upside like it is a life changing business once you figure it out. I mean, I know tons of people that have gone from being lower income people to like, you know, locked in a w two to unemployed even that have been able to completely change their lives because they learn to generate leads for off market real estate and they learn to close deals. And they figure out just like general access strategies for them, which there's a high demand for it. So, you know, there's there's tons of opportunity.

David Pupo: [42:53] Yeah, there certainly is. Awesome. So cool, David. Well, thanks much for

Mike DeHaan: [42:57] coming on the show, man. I really appreciate your time. And you guys, if you have any interest in wholesaling, just like a general business structure, anything, you know, related to off market real estate, you should reach out to David. He is super knowledgeable what he does. He's built an awesome business that is repeatable. It's, you know, done effectively, and he's crushing it right now. So absolutely reach out to him at all the links that he provided. Besides that, if you have any friends that are interested in off market real estate wholesaling, anything in between, please share the show with them. That is the easiest way for us to grow is if you share this with your friends, colleagues, family who are interested in real estate. Besides that, guys, leave us a five star review. Really helps out a lot, and we really appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to y'all next week.

Speaker 2: [43:40] Thanks for listening. Please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and check us out at collectingkeyspodcast.com for tips and guides on starting your own real estate investment and wholesaling business.