Leveling Up: From House Hacking to Building An Investor-Friendly Brokerage w/ Craig Curelop

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] Real quick, guys. If you want to take your real estate investing business from 6 to 7 figures in the next twelve months, and you wanna do without being a slave to your business, then you have to check out our scale community. You can get the full details at collectingkeys.com/scale. But very basically, it is a community of like minded investors who are working to become the absolute top tier investors in their market. Along with three coaching calls per week led by Dan and myself, we also have a whole bunch of videos and materials that go into all the different SOPs that we use to run our business on a daily basis. This includes how we manage our sales team, how we hire, how we do our marketing systems, how we get the best assignment fees possible, how we do renovations, how we do all the different kinds of creative financing. And if you are serious about taking your real estate business to the next level, it is absolutely something that you should check out. So go to collectingkeys.com/scale, see all the details and see if you're a good fit.

Craig Curelop: [0:59] If you got 900 people each doing one or two deals a year, that's a lot of deals for you.

Mike DeHaan: [1:02] Mhmm.

Craig Curelop: [1:02] And so just worry about recruiting. And so that was my mindset for a while, but I will say every agent that you onboard inevitably does take time. It does take effort. Yeah. And so if they're not producing, I mean, you kinda have to do them a favor and be like, you're not producing, maybe real estate isn't for you.

Mike DeHaan: [1:26] What's going on guys? On today's episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast, we have Craig Sherlock, whose name you might recognize from back in the day at Bigger Pockets. He was involved there probably two thousand eighteen, nineteen, honestly when I was first getting into real estate. And he was kind of famous for being the young gun over there that was into house hacking and a bunch of different things. Because you haven't been following along with him, he has since grown a really, really successful investor focused real estate brokerage that currently is active in several markets around The US. And in this episode, we dive into kind of how he built that out. A lot of talk around hiring and systems and managing and actually building a business around real estate. And it was overall just a really, really solid entrepreneurial conversation. You can check out Craig at a bunch of different places. He's at the f I guy on Instagram. He also has his own podcast, which he posted at end of the show. And don't be afraid to reach out with him. He is a really, really solid guy. He's a personal friend of mine and actually lives locally here to me as well, which is always fun. I like to play disc golf stuff with him.

Mike DeHaan: [2:30] But overall, he's super relatable. He's really, really solid entrepreneur, and he loves to connect with listeners and other real estate investors. So anyways, really good episode here, and enjoy this episode with Craig Chulop. Alright, guys. We are here today with Craig Chulop, who is the house hacking guy from BiggerPockets back in the day. It's funny, I remember hearing Craig way back super early in my real estate journey, Now he's a good personal friend of mine, so it's always kinda funny when like, I don't know, you put people on a pedestal when they're on a podcast, and then you meet them and they're like, hey, here Just are like me.

Craig Curelop: [3:07] Just dudes doing things, right?

Mike DeHaan: [3:09] Exactly, And you sort of have your claim to fame, guess, being like the house hacking guy, you go to brokerage, just kind of that as your niche. And you know you wrote the book for House Hacking for Bigger Pockets, but obviously you're a much more dynamic entrepreneur in real estate investor than that. So super excited to have you on the show, man. I would love to dive into what exactly you're doing with your business. So I guess for anybody that hasn't heard about you, give them like a let's look at what your business looks like right now, and then let's go into what you sort of did to get there.

Craig Curelop: [3:41] Yeah. So right now, as we stand, kinda like q one of two thousand twenty four, I've got a team of investor friendly real estate agents, largely in the Denver market, but also expanding up into Coeur D'Alene, Northern Idaho area, as well as in Southern California. And so, got a team of agents here, got a handful of investment properties myself that I've accumulated, many of which through house hacking, but probably half through house hacking and half not through house hacking. And so yeah, that's kind of where I'm at today.

Mike DeHaan: [4:11] Yeah. Cool, awesome. And then so I guess going further back, you got involved with BiggerPockets and all those sort of things. I guess were you doing real estate before that or like what was your sort of origin story to get into the zone you're currently in?

Craig Curelop: [4:26] Yeah, so it kind of all started with a job that I hated, which is probably where a lot of people are now, or were not too long ago. Good. And I found real estate as kind of the tried and true way out. So I found Bigger Pockets by just reading some books, and listening to the webinars, and the podcasts, and all that, and was like, okay, this is it, I'm all in. And so I went ahead and I applied for real estate jobs all around the country, mostly in Florida actually, making like $8 an hour back when that was the minimum wage. And I applied to two forty nine jobs in Florida for $8 an hour. Wow. After making over $100 a year for like my first two years of my career, because I wanted to get in. But I was fortunate in that I applied to one job in Denver at Bigger Pockets, and I got that one, which was a much better salary, and we're exactly where I wanted to be. Yeah. And so I spent a couple years at Bigger Pockets, and at the time Bigger Pockets was not kind of the behemoth it was today, there was probably like twenty, twenty five employees, almost all of which had real estate or had passion for real estate. One of the only people that did not have real estate on the scene was the founder at the time, but nonetheless he was really, obviously knew a lot about real estate, and so I was around those guys for a long time. Kinda just befriending Josh and Brandon and Scott and those guys, they obviously got me into investing in real estate, so I bought my first property you know within a couple months of moving to Denver and then continuously bought every year that I lived there.

Mike DeHaan: [5:54] There you go. And so that was all doing the house hacking strategy right? I mean I think I remember hearing you talk about how you would like live in a living room and have a curtain. Were you at that ashamed of a level?

Craig Curelop: [6:04] Yeah, that's that's where a lot of people know me as the as the start. So yeah, I mean at the time, right, the only way that house hacking people knew about it was to buy a duplex or triplex or quad. There wasn't all this different Airbnb your basement and rent by room and all that, I mean there was And but no one knew about so it was the duplex thing, so I found a duplex and the only way that I could make this duplex work, because like this was the time where multi families worked last year, but not this year, kinda thing, like the market was increasing. And so I was like, okay, I'm just gonna make it work, and I figured, hey, at the time I was 24, I was single, and I was like, know what, this is gonna be a fun start to my story, and I mean, I'm willing to do it because I just know it's for a year, and it's gonna give me, you know, a leg up, and do things that other people aren't willing to do. Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [6:54] Not really. I mean it makes sense, you said I'm 24 and I'm single, I wanna stay single, so here we go.

Dan Austin: [6:59] You and Scott Trent must have been boys, because like he's also, I don't know, I see you guys a lot in the similar senses, and I read his book and it made me feel bad about buying everything that I've ever

Mike DeHaan: [7:09] bought in my life.

Dan Austin: [7:10] Can't remember what the book, what was that book called?

Craig Curelop: [7:12] Separate Life. Separate Life, I was like gosh. Yeah, Scott has become a good friend of mine and we're still in touch and yeah, we've got a lot of the same mindsets and I don't think that's by coincidence, He was my first real estate mentor, whether he likes it or not, whether he knew it or not. Right. But, and that's kind of the funny thing too, that your mentors often time don't even know your mentors. Yeah. If you're mentoring them.

Mike DeHaan: [7:32] That's true. Yeah. So, started with the house hack, did a couple properties like that, what transitioned you into the agent sort of direction as opposed to just being like a full time investor?

Craig Curelop: [7:44] Yeah, so I got my license actually in 2018, which is much earlier than people realize, and it was initially just to do my own deals. I was actually, I denied a couple people who wanted to work with me as an agent, because I wanted to be like all in on the investor side of things. But then one of my good friends asked me, and I like enjoyed hanging out with him a little bit more than the other people that may have asked. And so I was like, alright man, I'll help you buy a house, whatever. And so I went in, I helped him buy a house, and then I had a $10,000 commission check. And I was like, oh, that was an easy $10,000 commission check. And then I had more people kinda ask me about helping them buy house hacks in Denver, and I realized that there weren't really any, maybe there were one or two, but they didn't actually invest themselves, like investor friendly agents in the Denver market. So I kind of just tried to own that niche, and in 2019, I started doing, after being a little bit more intentional, I started doing pretty consistently, like two deals a month. At that time, you can do that math, I was making about $20 a month, and you know, that was like three times my salary at BiggerPockets. And I was kinda like, okay, I'm doing this part time.

Craig Curelop: [8:55] And I didn't even know that was good. I actually talked to David Green, and I was like, yeah, I'm thinking about leaving, but I don't know if I can, because I'm only doing two deals a month. And he's like, if you were doing two deals a month, you would be the best agent on my team.

Mike DeHaan: [9:09] I was like,

Craig Curelop: [9:10] oh, maybe I'm better than I thought I was, right? Yeah. And so then I decided to do a little test run, where I essentially took a $0 paycheck from BiggerPockets for three months by just investing, I just put all of my paycheck into a four zero one ks, and in three months that would have essentially maxed out my four zero one ks. And once, I figured, hey, if my personal checking account is larger after these three months, then I'm probably pretty safe to quit. And if not, then whatever, I maxed out my 401 and I'm pretty darn close. And so, sure enough, after those three months I was good to go, and I put in my notice and that was that. That's good logic.

Dan Austin: [9:49] So Yeah. I got a question for you on why we're talking about the the agent stuff. What would you call an investor friendly agent? Because what I think of an investor friendly agent from what I've seen is it's like some young person that's willing to put a bunch of offers out there that are lowball offers and work their ass off for one deal once in a while.

Craig Curelop: [10:08] No that's not what, that's not what Yeah, we're trying to so an investor friendly agent is someone that invests, number one. And number two, can look at properties from the investment lens and be able to help you more than just help you find a deal, typically they're on the market, which is kind of the dark hole that you guys don't believe in, but on the market properties, and figuring out how to make them work in a way you know, to cash flow. And the great thing is, is like you don't need the best deal. Like I'm not gonna sit here and argue with you guys about who gets the best deal, like you guys probably get better deals than us, you work a heck of a lot harder for them. Yeah. Right? And so, when you're just starting out, and your deals I suspect are a bit more complicated, and so, when you're just starting out, I think it's wise to just buy something, have it make sense, do it kind of the easier way, kinda have that be your training wheels, and like a house hack just makes sense. And so, we would help find the deals, help analyze them, help them find tenants, put the listing up, give them any contractors needed, recommend certain rehab projects that they could do, what's the biggest bang for their buck to increase the rents, add bedrooms, update bathrooms, some stuff for like remediation, like the little things like putting the bathroom fan and the light on the same switch so there's no molds, like stuff that like a regular agent probably wouldn't know about. There's probably like a 100 of those little things that we could go through and just be like, this is what you wanna do to the house to one, increase rents, and two, prevent further and you know, other issues. Right, increase revenue, reduce costs, that's the goal.

Craig Curelop: [11:46] Bingo. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [11:47] Yeah, so I guess for all that additional assistance you provide, do you like have extra costs associated with it? Or are you just actually doing your job as an agent and earning that $1,520,000 dollar commission that you're gonna make from buying that house by providing value and not just doing three forms and sending the person on their way.

Craig Curelop: [12:08] Yeah, and I think that's the thing, right, is a lot of agents get a lot of crap for not providing value, and in some ways it's true. But yeah, exactly right, it's like, the game has changed, or it's like a lot It gets harder and harder, which is good, competition is fiercer. But yeah, we actually provided value of like, we can walk in a house and actually explain things to you. Also we're gonna negotiate and write the contracts and do what a typical agent would do, but that's the additional plus for working with us.

Dan Austin: [12:36] Yeah, think the the value that I see from agents, like the most value is the negotiating tactics and in your case when you're trying to help somebody buy an investment property, it's like what is the best ROI of your money when you put money into this deal? How can I make the offer so compelling that the seller wants to go with us, but it also structures the deal on your side that your return on cash, or your cash on cash returns, or whatever it is you're negotiating on is in their best interest? 100%. Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [13:03] So you did that obviously by yourself for a little while. How did you transition to building a team? You know, and we obviously have a wholesale off market business. We have a team that we've built out around that. I would imagine a lot of the fundamentals about building an effective realtor team are similar.

Craig Curelop: [13:21] I would imagine, and I think that we probably have gone through a lot of the same struggles. So again it started off with just me and I did like a 100 deals my first year, right? Like that's, was, I was running around like a chick with my head cut off, and it was a perfect storm of it being 2020, where I couldn't travel or do anything, and nothing was open, so all I could do was work with COVID. And then obviously with the low interest rates and everything like that, but at the end of that year I was like, man, like I could maybe do this for a year or two and ride off into the sunset, but that wouldn't really leave anything, so, and also I wanna like the challenge of building an actual business. And so I started to hire a couple of agents under me, and I started passing my clients off. And they would lose them. And then I would say, you know what, I don't wanna have agents anymore. And then I would go back to just being an agent myself. And I would be like, and I went through that cycle of passing leads off to not passing leads off for about six to eight months, and then I was like, finally something hit me where I was like, sometimes you kinda gotta cut the grass to let it grow, right?

Dan Austin: [14:22] Yeah.

Craig Curelop: [14:22] Like, in this process, you're gonna lose clients as you're training people up. You're gonna lose that, and that's kinda just the cost of training, and cost of doing business, but without that, I cap at 90 to a 100 deals a year. I could never do more than that. And so, you know, now we're able to do more than that with, you know, more people.

Mike DeHaan: [14:43] Yeah. I mean, and that that's so true, right? People learn through failure, and I think that's one of the hardest things for new entrepreneurs.

Craig Curelop: [14:48] We see that a lot with people that are

Mike DeHaan: [14:50] in our scale community is they'll come in and they're like, man I brought on a new acquisition manager and it was their first day and man they really screwed up this call. Like yeah, it's their first day.

Craig Curelop: [14:58] Exactly.

Mike DeHaan: [14:59] Like you remember your first call, the one that we reviewed on our training like three months ago? Yeah, it sucked. Right? And they just had the exact same experience that you did back then.

Dan Austin: [15:09] So how do you recruit these agents? Like what's the strategy? Because I mean there are probably some bad apples out there like when you're looking to scale a team, is there specific things you're looking for to bring them on or are you like, I can make anybody a good agent?

Craig Curelop: [15:21] So yeah, we like to see, at this time right, we were only working with investors so at that time you had to have an investment property and so because of that criteria, most of our agents actually were just clients of mine that were excited about getting into it and they wanted to do it. Yeah. And so that's really how we started. There was that, and then it was mostly just through Instagram or going on podcasts or whatever, people just hearing about us, and it was all inbound stuff, which again I was fortunate enough to have somewhat of a platform to leverage. But yeah, I mean that's kind of where it was at that time. Is there a reason why, so I'm trying

Dan Austin: [15:57] to understand this because Mike and I, like you had mentioned, we're in a different part of the real estate space, so I don't know much about growing a brokerage or a team. Is there a reason why you would say no to people that wanna be on your team?

Craig Curelop: [16:07] The main thing before was if they didn't have an investment property, but I still wouldn't say no. I would just say get an investment property.

Dan Austin: [16:14] Well because I mean if like 300 people wanted to be agents under you and they all did one deal a year, you would be better off, right?

Craig Curelop: [16:20] Sure.

Dan Austin: [16:20] I mean is that how it works kind of, so I guess that's what I'm getting at.

Craig Curelop: [16:23] Yeah, so that's how some teams run And there's a very successful guy with our brokerage that I talked to, and he just said, just get a bunch of people, run them through like an evergreen type boot camp thing, and then like if you got 900 people each doing one or two deals a year, that's lot of deals for So just worry about recruiting. And so that was my mindset for a while, but I will say every agent that you onboard inevitably does take time. Yeah. It does take effort. And so if they're not producing, you gotta, I mean, you kinda have to do them a favor and be like, you're not producing. You need to make an income for you and your family. Maybe real estate isn't for you. And so I've had a couple of those conversations, but what we've actually instilled was just a thing where if you don't do a deal in the last three months, you start paying like a $100 a month to the team, and you kinda just kick yourself out. Like, no one wants pay a $100 a month for nothing. You self select.

Mike DeHaan: [17:21] Yeah, I

Craig Curelop: [17:22] don't love being the bad guy, so that's kind of like my way of not being the bad guy. Maybe that's a wimpy move on my part, but you know, I don't care about the $100 obviously, but I just want people to make decisions. Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [17:31] Yeah. I mean it's, that is always like a knock that I've had on the realtor model though is, I mean obviously you're approaching in a way where you want them to be successful, but like talking about the guy that you know, it's like just recruit a bunch of agents. I mean like, because also too, I know there's brokers that have these like desk fees and these different things, and like that's where they make a lot of their money. And then what they do is they incentivize people with being like, oh well you you sell four deals, like you get all the commissions. It's like, well yeah, but you also know that people aren't going to necessarily do that. And so where they make all their money at the brokerages as a collecting those desk fees or collecting a little bit, they do get off those successful people. And it's like, I mean, that's where it turns to a pyramid scheme very quickly. Because then they also have people underneath them that are, you know, adding people on their downline. Mhmm. The next thing you know, it's like, oh, look at the shape that this team's being built out. It's very literally a pyramid. Right? Yeah. Hey, we really appreciate being a listener of the collecting keys podcast. Did you know that we also are on social media and on YouTube?

Mike DeHaan: [18:30] You should go and shoot us a follow on those as well. You can find both Dan and I on Instagram. I am at Mike underscore invests. Dan is at investor main Dan. You can also find short clips from the show at collecting keys podcast on Instagram. And if you wanna see our faces talking while you're listening to the show or you wanna check out some of our crazy animated adventures we've been putting together into some funny little web cartoons that sort of show the crazy stories that guests tell on the show, then you should go over to YouTube and check out the collecting keys channel. Shoot us a subscribe over there. It really helps in human grow our audience. We really, really appreciate it. Well, anyways, enjoy the rest of the show you guys. We appreciate you all. How do you encourage people to be good investor friendly agents and not just come with you to take advantage of your own brand? So when we started, the people who started with

Craig Curelop: [19:20] me in the beginning, we'll just say are doing very well now because we had nothing really set up in place. We had push leads coming in, like leads that were, I am pre approved, ready to look at houses this weekend, and put offers in. Right? Those were the leads I was passing off and we were getting a fiftyfifty cut. Any broker, any team today that passed a lead off like that would probably, like a team that's actually profitable, would probably get a $70.30 cut. And everybody was profitable in 2021. So those guys that kinda joined up then, right, there was nothing in our contract that says our leads are our leads, and if you depart with our leads and close on them, no, we still get paid for them. Not under the contract with that, so we had people coming on the team, they were here for a year and a half, did 20 deals with us, and then said, you know what, I don't think I need you guys anymore, I'm gonna go off on my own with all of our clients. Right? Yeah. And like, that wasn't their fault, like anybody in their right mind would do that, that's my fault, that's how we structured it. And so, yeah, that was like a massive, probably a 7 figure mistake,

Mike DeHaan: [20:20] Now

Craig Curelop: [20:21] in our contracts we've kind of buttoned that up, And so, yeah, that's just some the stuff that you learn as you go.

Mike DeHaan: [20:27] Yeah. That's tricky. And so you know, everyone was making money in 2021. How did all your stuff look going through kinda like the shifting in the market? Because this is a big thing on the wholesale investor side is most companies disappeared, honestly. On the direct to seller side, especially in 2022. Like our main competitor here in Spokane posted multi 7 figure losses and as by all intents and purposes fallen off the face of the earth, I know a lot of agents got out of the game. You obviously sound like you did pretty well, you even almost thrived since then.

Craig Curelop: [20:59] Yeah, we definitely 2021 was our best year and then we've gone down slightly in 2022 and in 2023, and so I'm not gonna paint a picture of like we're this beautiful thing, but we did go down nearly as much as the market went down. And so that transition was tough though, because my buddy took out an SBA loan in like 2021, early twenty twenty two, and I was like, oh, I'll do that too. And so I took out this SBA loan for like 350,000, and I was like, sweet, I'm gonna hire some people, and we're gonna really grow and scale. Like mid twenty twenty two. And then the interest rates dropped, and all this stuff happened, I hired people, so the deals weren't coming through, my overhead was extremely high, and we were running out of cash pretty dang quick. Really? And so, I kind of had, I mean I talked to a lot of people, Mike, you were one of them, Dan I might have talked to you too. And I probably talked to like 10 people that I knew, like some of my close, who I thought were my closest friends, at least. I called them my closest friends, I don't know if they called me their closest friends in return. But like they were kinda business minded. And the one general thing that everyone told me to look at was look at your overhead, and I had four people on staff when I really only needed one. And so I went through this process of like, okay I knew I had four and I knew I needed one, but I actually didn't know which one. And so I like really went in and I evaluated every single person. And I mean two of them were obviously not it, but I was really tossed up between these last two, the girl that was with me the longest and knew the team inside now, or the new girl who showed a lot of promise, but like I didn't really know her. Okay.

Craig Curelop: [22:42] And so as I thought about it, it was became obvious to me that I had to look at rid of the old girl, and keep the new girl. And so it was a hard conversation, because I was super close, like everyone that's on my team, we're like family, you know? And so I had to let this girl go, yeah it was tough, but you know, she gotta do what she gotta do.

Dan Austin: [22:57] That's part of being a business owner entrepreneur, right, you have to make the right decision because if you make the wrong decision it affects the whole team, you know? Yeah. Not just you, so you have to make, you know, the hard decisions are sometimes the right decisions to make and letting the person go that you don't want to, but you have to, it's just part of it.

Craig Curelop: [23:12] Absolutely. We did it in a graceful way. So we we started it with, she was making, you're gonna laugh when I tell you this, she was making a $100. Yeah. Probably like double what she should be making. And then I was like, okay, we're gonna have to drop your salary. I felt bad firing her totally, so we dropped it to 60. And then I was like, looking at her calendar and what she was doing, and I was like, we have to just let her go. And so I let her go, but I gave her like six weeks to find a new job. It wasn't like this typical two week, like we really did let her out gracefully, because I'm also, while you can't hurt your business, I think there's, there was like a moral integrity kind of thing that you gotta have, where it's like, just, I'm okay hurting myself to benefit somebody else if I told them something,

Mike DeHaan: [23:58] even if it

Craig Curelop: [23:58] was like I wasn't even thinking about it. I think like holding up to your word, even if it hurts you, is extremely important, just in life and in business. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [24:05] So with that, I just the question I have on on that, like, what did you do to determine, you said you looked at her calendar, was it like dollar productive things? When I'm just kind of trying to understand why you would, you know, for our listeners understand when you're in that tough situation with a staff member and you're making that choice like, what for you was it that she was doing that wasn't the right things?

Craig Curelop: [24:23] It's more that she wasn't doing. You know, I kind of see what her tasks are in the day and then I see how much time she's got to do them. And it was just like an insane amount of time. And I would see like a three hour block for like a gymmassage session. Sure. And I would see a block for like probably two blocks a week, like something like that, the workday. I'm just like, we're going under, so like what are you doing?

Dan Austin: [24:47] Know, the ship's sinking and you're getting a massage.

Craig Curelop: [24:49] Yeah, what's going on? And so it was kind of an obvious decision to do that, and then I found out later, which just confirmed my decision even more, is that the new girl I hired, her name is Julie because she's awesome, so I'm happy to say her by name, she was like, yeah, had all these ideas, but the other girl kept kind of just saying, oh, look, let's just put that on the back burner, or let's just kinda do that later. And she was like, what the heck? And so it became quite obvious Yeah. Who to get rid of

Dan Austin: [25:20] and It's confirmation when that happens, right? It's like the bloodbath afterwards, the employees are like, thank God, this is what was going on, but I didn't wanna tell you because I didn't wanna be that person.

Craig Curelop: [25:29] They were the tattle tale. Yeah, exactly.

Mike DeHaan: [25:31] Every time. Every time. We've had several high profile people in the business, like Google we brought on to be like, you know, work directly with us, kind of like own different departments of things, whether it's on the creative side or it's on the real estate side over the past, you know, couple of years. And so far we've had one that's really worked out. And as you know, he's now been with us for just over a year and a bit. But the other ones that we've brought on, you have so much promise, you have so much direction, then we do exactly what we're talking about. You go and you look at the time that they're spending doing things, go and do they even actually do a lot? And then you get rid of them, and the entire team has never failed and goes, thank you. Yeah. Jeez. This was such a problem. How did you not see us? Why didn't you tell me? Yeah. Yeah. Like tell me that it's an issue. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [26:20] You didn't know.

Craig Curelop: [26:20] It's crazy. Yeah. It's crazy. It's funny too because I did like, when I let this girl go, everyone thought like it was kinda a big deal, because like Yeah. Everyone's like, my gosh, the team

Dan Austin: [26:28] is She'd been around a while.

Craig Curelop: [26:29] Yeah, we actually had a couple agents even leave because they thought the team was going under because of it. And then like six months later, eight months later, I was like, So now that we're six, eight months past this girl leaving, are we, have we kind of held up to our promises, have you noticed anything change? And they were just like, oh, I forgot she was even with us. And everyone just laughed. It was like totally a thing. So I would always say, you know, if you're looking to cut expenses in times where things are tough, you gotta look at the recurring expenses, like, that's gonna be the biggest thing you wanna cut.

Mike DeHaan: [27:04] Let me

Dan Austin: [27:04] ask you this, so your team is virtual, 100%, right? So this employee was virtual and that's Mike and I's team and that can be challenging, sometimes it maybe takes a little bit longer to to understand where, I guess where the bloat is in your business, is there? Any advice you'd give to people dealing with that in a a virtual environment of like how can you not let that happen to you?

Craig Curelop: [27:25] So what we do every day now is first thing in the morning, we have like a five minute meeting as to like what you're doing, what everyone's doing that day, and how how can we help if you need anything. And so just kinda having that checklist of of knowing what each person is doing, and then actually seeing it, I think has been pivotal for us. Right, mhmm.

Dan Austin: [27:43] And do you do like employee one on ones, weekly, biweekly, what do you do with that?

Craig Curelop: [27:48] We have like team meetings kind of for different things, like one is like a creative marketing meeting, the other is like more of an ops meeting, etcetera. We don't really do one on ones. The girl that I work with like hates the cheesy one on one stuff, and so we'll do a one on one like once a quarter. Sure. And I'll just give her props when she's doing good, and if she's doing bad I just let her know right away, and so there's never any surprises on these things. Right, and you

Dan Austin: [28:13] guys probably are working together a lot anyways throughout the day, you know, in the week. Yep, absolutely.

Mike DeHaan: [28:18] It's funny with the virtual businesses, because I like kinda what you said there too, Craig, about how you do what people prefer. I feel like so many people, they try to treat every single person that comes into the business the same. And I mean, maybe that works if you're like a massive corporation and you're gonna have no wiggle room, I guess. But like when you're a small business, like realistically under 50 people, you can have individual methods for how you train people, how you work with people, how you sort of set expectations. And that's like part of having human beings involved in anything. Yeah. Right?

Craig Curelop: [28:55] Yeah. And I think it's it is important because like to know and like love and trust a person that, like if you just got two or three employees or whatever, like that's kinda where we're at, and it's a place I like to be, like one is our VA, who is literally like our family, we treat them like family, and Julie, who is our person, like we treat her like family, and like, retention is one of the, like churn is one of the biggest expenses a company could have. Yep. Yeah. And by eliminating churn, by actually just treating people right and doing what they want, like Julie could go off and make more money somewhere else. She's got a master's degree in something, I don't know, but I know she's got like higher education. She's like, yeah, but I love this job because I've got a lot of autonomy, you actually implement my ideas, we talk a lot, and I can work from home, and like super flexible. So like, that in itself probably saves me 20 to $30 in a year Mhmm. Because I'm able to have less meetings with her. Yeah. Now, if she wasn't doing her work, different story. Right? Then we have weekly one on ones.

Dan Austin: [29:57] So Yeah, I like that, and she just, that's the advantage to a people, it's hard to believe this, but money isn't the only benefit. It's a huge driver, it's probably the number one driver for why people do things and work for other people, but there's these other things like you just mentioned, oh, can work from home, I like working with you, people value value those other ancillary benefits, but also just circling back on the conversation that that we've had is like, I really like the idea of like meeting them where they're at and being the leader they need. Because when you only have a handful of employees, you certainly can adapt, and you certainly can give people a customized like experience as an employee. You don't have that 5,000 employee company where you have to have all these rules because the lawyers came in and said, this is how we're going to avoid getting sued.

Mike DeHaan: [30:40] Cool. So you know, for people like us who are fully off market, most of the people that are in our scale community, would say are in our audience, are gonna be a lot of like heavily focused off market people, you have a lot of agents as well that kinda dabble in that. But like what's the best way for us to work like in parallel with you being completely on the opposite end of the spectrum? Like if so, someone is our end and we wanted to have a part of our pipeline be investor friendly agents, What's the best way for us to establish a relationship like that?

Craig Curelop: [31:11] Yeah. I mean if you wanted to work out with us specifically, you can just either go to the fiteam.com or you can just hit me up on Instagram, I'm the fi guy. But if you Like how to actually work with investor friendly agents in your area, and like how we kinda fit into the puzzle, is well one, if you need a buyer, we've got a lot of buyers. Two, we are also buyers ourselves, so if you come to us with deals first, let us know. And three, if you a lot of agents, especially if you wanna develop a relationship with them, if if anyone listening like doesn't have their license or whatever, and you wanna offer your your sellers a second or third option, the listing option could be good. And if you get somebody that would is okay doing volume, you know, you list it with them at a pretty cheap rate and you can kinda still keep your difference and you just throw a percent or whatever at the at the agent.

Mike DeHaan: [32:00] Sure. Yeah. I guess that's a that's a good question as well as when it comes to doing those referrals. This is a common question we get asked all the time when we get like retail leads that come through our marketing. For you as an agent that's obviously investor minded, you understand how sellers work, what do you want that hand off to look like? Because more often than not, what I see a lot of wholesalers wanna do is they say, oh yeah, I'm gonna refer you to my agent, and they give you the person's contact info, and the seller didn't actually wanna talk to you. You didn't know that, or you don't wanna just be calling a cold lead. So what's the best way to sort of set that up?

Craig Curelop: [32:34] The best way is to have like a warm introduction, where like, Mike, if you've got a seller that wants to list and you don't have your license, just say, totally understand that you wanna get a full market value offer on your home, I have looped in our real estate agent Craig here on the deal, he's gonna help you, you know, button up some things, get a listing agreement signed, and we'll get you on market and get you the highest and best value.

Mike DeHaan: [32:57] Mhmm. Right? And so like,

Craig Curelop: [32:58] just pretend like I'm on your team. Mhmm. They don't know that. Right? Like that would be, I think, the warmest way to do

Mike DeHaan: [33:04] it. Sure.

Craig Curelop: [33:05] And then you're warranted, like if an agent doesn't, isn't okay with a, I'm gonna walk in and get a listing agreement signed, if they're not okay with 1% on that, like they should be. Because the reason why agents get paid what they do is like 80% of the work is just getting a lead.

Mike DeHaan: [33:22] That's it.

Craig Curelop: [33:23] Alright? You've done 80% of it. So Yep. That's kind of, you know, where my head is at with that too.

Mike DeHaan: [33:29] Yeah. Yeah. Which which makes sense. And that's like how people get up in arms about how much wholesalers get on assignment fees. It's like, well, what you didn't see is the tens of thousands of dollars that we spent generating this opportunity and the, you know, three months worth of follow-up calls to figure out this per situation, and then like the pre probate sort of whatever that we had to tackle with the lawyers and family and everything else is like, yes, we do wanna make $30,000 for that, because we have an incredible amount of overhead and time and structure that's gone into it. And it is the same for like good agents. I think the people, they've really had that skewed over the past like couple years, 2021 especially, where everyone and their mom and their mom's, you know, best friend and bridge club and whatever was like all agents. And they were all making money just because like they would everyone could sell anything. You could put a cardboard box from Lowe's on the corner and make, a commission on

Dan Austin: [34:24] it. Absolutely.

Mike DeHaan: [34:25] But it's definitely important not to understate that value. And that makes sense too on the handoff because I think what we see a lot is people, they say, oh yeah, this retail lead, here you go, my agent's gonna just flat cold call you tomorrow, or like they say, here call my agent, or even worse, they'd like give the agent like a list of people that aren't necessarily warm leads, but they were just ones that they couldn't convert a wholesale deal on. And they say, here, go ahead and like work these.

Craig Curelop: [34:50] Yeah. Okay.

Mike DeHaan: [34:51] It's like, well no shit, that's not gonna amount to anything, and the agent isn't gonna wanna work very hard on that, because you just gave them a list of a bunch of random names and phone numbers, no context or expectations.

Craig Curelop: [35:00] Yeah. And if you do that, just don't expect the, you know, don't expect it to get like a super cheap, you know, commission.

Mike DeHaan: [35:07] Right, right.

Craig Curelop: [35:07] Right, like give us a cold list, maybe we'll throw you a 25% referral fee like on our commission, but we're not gonna give you, you know. Yeah and

Dan Austin: [35:15] I mean, Mike and I have tried it every wrong way possible and and I do like the idea of like that warm pass off and can you can you work with that agent and be, you know, have them be prepared and understanding like, hey, you are on my team, these are kind of the, what I would think the scripts are going to look like, here's all the notes on the lead. And even to the point if you can like, text the guy and be like, hey, got a lead, do you wanna do a hot transfer right now? And set it up super tight like that, I mean, that's not always possible, but like that to me is like the only and best way to really start converting these because Mike and I have had, I don't know what Mike, six or seven different agents we've worked with in our CRM and telling them just to do cold follow-up, it doesn't work.

Craig Curelop: [35:53] They get burned out too easy. We know there's there's plenty of other lead genning that the agents can't be doing on their own, they don't need your list Exactly. Of cold leads, So

Mike DeHaan: [36:00] Yeah. I mean, and if they want cold leads too, probably don't want cold leads that are crackheads, like let's be

Craig Curelop: [36:05] honest. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [36:06] The They easy cold leads to talk to. Yeah.

Craig Curelop: [36:08] Exactly. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [36:09] Yeah. Well it's all good stuff Greg. And then just one more thing really quick. So you said that you're in North Idaho, Denver, California, Southern California. What's Southern California market, are in San Diego?

Craig Curelop: [36:21] Yeah, San Diego. Nice. You got an agent down there in kinda San Diego, Inland Empire, that kinda region.

Mike DeHaan: [36:28] Cool. Awesome. Yeah. So, yo, I'm sure anyone in those in those areas should definitely reach out to your team.

Craig Curelop: [36:33] Go ahead.

Mike DeHaan: [36:33] Cool. Alright. So we are gonna start winding down here as we reach the end of the show. We have the same three questions that we ask everybody that comes on the show. First one is the crowd favorite, is what is your craziest real estate investing story? This can be big win, big loss, wild transaction, whatever you got.

Craig Curelop: [36:52] Oh man, a couple are coming to mind. One would just take way too long to tell you, so I'll tell you the shorter one. On my third house hack, I was doing a rehab to the basement, and you know, as you kinda get into this thing of real estate investing, doing deals, building business, you kinda start to gain a little bit more confidence. And so, I was doing this rehab, and I was pretty dang cheap at the time, and so I was like, there's two rooms down here that aren't getting rehabbed, so I'm gonna rent them out, they're super cheap month to month, and then once it's done, I'm gonna kick them up. And so I got two people in there month to month, and I didn't do background checks, I didn't do credit checks, I didn't do anything because I was like, oh, what's the worst that could happen this month to month? Well, go downstairs, and the contractor comes up and he's like, yo, there's some smell coming out of that bedroom and I don't know what that is. Mind you, this is Denver, so they know what marijuana smells like, and they know what cigarettes smell like. And so, we were like, okay, and so I went and I Googled their names, which you should probably do before you let them in, just for warning, and they were on Larimer County's most wanted list for like drugs, wow, and all that kind of stuff. And so, I called the police, and I was like, I think there's someone doing crack in my basement. And because I was in an unincorporated county, the police couldn't help me out, like they wouldn't come.

Craig Curelop: [38:17] What? And I was like, what? Am I supposed to be like, the police aren't helping me out here? Like what am I paying you for? Yeah. Where were taxes going again? Anyway, and so, then I was like, alright. So I got everybody out of the house, luckily I had a buddy that lived not too far, like walking distance, so kinda went to my buddy's house for a bit and I just said, hey, you guys have till the end of the week to get out, I'm gonna give you all the rent you've paid me, which was like a month's worth, just security deposits and $500 each to get out by the end of the week. And they did that. So I kinda did like a cash for keys type thing and then it worked out. But yeah, it was kind of a sketchy situation.

Dan Austin: [38:55] Yeah. You had the county's most wanted crackheads living in your basement. Mhmm. What did you do, like post this on Craigslist and that's how you found them? Because I mean

Craig Curelop: [39:03] I think it was Facebook Marketplace honestly, I don't remember that, it was like five years ago at this point, yeah. Wow. And that one of the stories, but you know, there's.

Dan Austin: [39:11] So what do you do now? I mean what's the moral of the story or how do you vet, because you also have like, I think in your primary you still have like an area, an ADU type situation, Airbnb, like how do you vet people out so that they're not smoking crack in your house?

Craig Curelop: [39:25] Yeah, so now you know, everyone's gotta do like a real application, background check, credit check, employment verification, like there's the whole list that you've probably heard of a million times.

Dan Austin: [39:35] You do the whole thing?

Mike DeHaan: [39:36] Yeah,

Craig Curelop: [39:36] we The do girl that's living in our basement now is actually just a friend of my wife's, so we didn't run that process on her. Right. She's not a

Dan Austin: [39:43] crackhead that you know of.

Craig Curelop: [39:44] She's not a crackhead. We're kinda helping her out of a tougher situation.

Mike DeHaan: [39:48] Yeah. Definitely doesn't give crackhead vibes, you're probably pretty safe.

Craig Curelop: [39:51] Yeah. There's definitely a vibe of crackhead is that you wanna stay away from them.

Dan Austin: [39:54] Yeah. And a smell apparently. Yeah.

Craig Curelop: [39:56] Yeah, a smell. Yeah. Crazy.

Mike DeHaan: [39:59] Well that's good you got out that one alright, I mean, I was half expecting you to say that when you went and asked me out, just said no.

Dan Austin: [40:06] And they stole your like VCR or some

Craig Curelop: [40:07] shit. Yeah, no, I still believe, yeah, they stole my DVD player and my Sony Walkman. Yeah. I don't know. There's two other stories I could've told you, they're like, we would They would take an hour. Like there's just so much crap that goes on, and we'll do it for another time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [40:20] So awesome. Alright. Second question, what is the number one tip you have for a small time investor looking to take their business to the next level?

Craig Curelop: [40:28] I would say, don't go through the phase of hiring and then taking it back yourself, and then hiring and then taking it back yourself if you can. Just know that when you make that first hire, it's gonna be a bumpy road for three to six months before you got them trained up. But the idea is that they become as good or better than you at what you were doing you can focus on these higher level things.

Mike DeHaan: [40:55] Yeah, absolutely.

Craig Curelop: [40:57] Good advice. Good Yeah. And it's a

Mike DeHaan: [40:59] very relevant one I think for people that are early on as well because it's so easy to get onto like the hire and fire train unnecessarily, it just creates so much stress for really no reason.

Dan Austin: [41:09] Yeah. And I think people think like when you hire someone that means you don't have to do work anymore and so they expect that employee be like, oh, they're just gonna do it all. It's like, no, you now become the manager of that employee Mhmm. And the coach and the mentor.

Craig Curelop: [41:20] There's a saying out there that I don't always take the advice of, but I should. Where it's hire slow, fire fast. I'm sure you've heard of that. Yeah. Right. And so just do that.

Mike DeHaan: [41:29] I tend to come from the opposite sort of standpoint. I'll say hire fast, fire slow. But I like to preach people, especially when they're trying to scale, that you gotta hire fast and fire faster.

Craig Curelop: [41:38] Yeah, that works too.

Mike DeHaan: [41:40] You also gotta give people a shot though, right? Because I think there's this whole thing where people spend an incredible amount of time trying to find the perfect person. And really what you should look for in my opinion is culture fit and the willingness to learn in a legitimate interest in what you're doing. That is going to matter more and probably give you better results in the person that comes in and is fully qualified. Who also, honestly, the person that's super super qualified, you're probably not gonna be able to pay them enough for them to be interested when you're starting. So you gotta find someone that's willing to make a little bit less, put in the extra time and deal with some turbulence.

Craig Curelop: [42:13] Yeah, one thing I'll add on to that too is, I guess there's that perspective, my perspective was the, not necessarily take a long time to find somebody, but make sure you really need somebody, like especially if you're in the beginning stages because you don't wanna start operating at a loss or have too much overhead. But like, take a look at your time. I actually have my ops person right now doing a, for the last week, she's been documenting every fifteen minutes of her time what she's been doing. Good time study. Yeah, you do that time study and you figure out, do it for yourself, what are you doing? Oh, okay. And if you find that you're answering emails, booking calendars, doing all this kind of stuff, that you really, like super low dollar per hour activity, then you need to hire, and hire fast. Got it.

Dan Austin: [42:59] Right? Well you also might find like, hey, if I just optimize some of the stupid stuff I'm doing, like checking my email 23 times a day, you might not be, you might feel a lot less stressed out, you might find that, and I know Mike and I do time studies quite, know, every year we've, I just finished one, and you kinda see like, okay I can bump this or I've gotten better at this or I need to shift this over, this really isn't something I need to be doing, how do I delegate that?

Craig Curelop: [43:21] Yeah. Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [43:22] Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a, there's this thing where people that are, especially in a corporate environment, they think that doing work is, you sit down at your desk, you check your email, maybe you have like a Slack you check, you go and you look at Zillow or you like think around with a spreadsheet for some reason. You decide you want some coffee, so you get up here and get some more coffee. You come back, you check your email again, you get a phone call that you spend thirty minutes like having small talk and you call it networking. Right? And they do this and they do that for months and they're like, man, my business is really struggling. It's like, you're not freaking doing anything. Like, honestly. But it's like, I understand you did that for ten years as a corporate employee because you were trying to fill the time that they required you to be a butt and c. But when you are an entrepreneur, you no longer get to do that.

Craig Curelop: [44:06] Totally. Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [44:08] Alright, Craig. Last question. Where can people find you, follow you, and reach out to you?

Craig Curelop: [44:13] Yeah. You can go to thefiteam.com is our team page. If you wanna just reach out to me personally, The Fi Guide, and we've got a podcast of our own for kinda earlier stage investors called Investify. So all those locations are great.

Mike DeHaan: [44:27] Yep. Nice. Both both Dan and I have been on that show. Yeah. You do a really great job with Allie, who's also a previous guest that we've had on this show.

Craig Curelop: [44:34] Yeah. Allie actually just decided to resign, So

Dan Austin: [44:39] What? Sad news.

Craig Curelop: [44:40] I know. Yeah. Can you can all everyone listening to this can go yell at her. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [44:43] At Ali the agent on Instagram, go and tell her how dare you abandon her. Isn't that like her third

Dan Austin: [44:47] podcast she runs? Does she have three different podcasters? Two.

Craig Curelop: [44:51] She's definitely on another one with Shelby, she was just like, love you Craig, but the audience that I was catering was just not who she cared to reach to. And she was just reevaluating some stuff at the end of the year, and was like, I mean it made sense, hard feelings,

Mike DeHaan: [45:07] I still love Ali, but

Craig Curelop: [45:08] it's fun to give a crap, so do it. Do you

Mike DeHaan: [45:10] have like a backup that you're prepared for?

Craig Curelop: [45:13] Yeah, right now we've got our lead agent Chad, he's kind of co hosting it right now as a little trial period. We might bring a couple other people in to see how it does, and then eventually keep it solid.

Mike DeHaan: [45:25] Cool. So if anybody's an aspiring podcaster, hit up Craig. He's currently desperate for a new co host, but just so you know, he hires slow and he fires fast.

Craig Curelop: [45:35] Yeah. There you go. So it'll take a while. Yeah. I'm working on Dan right now.

Mike DeHaan: [45:40] Exactly. No.

Dan Austin: [45:42] That's the last thing he needs is more stuff. Yeah. Exactly.

Mike DeHaan: [45:45] Yeah, awesome. Cool. Craig man, really really appreciate you coming on the show and I've really enjoyed getting to know you and developing a friendship with you over the past.

Craig Curelop: [45:52] Likewise guys.

Dan Austin: [45:53] Yes. I appreciate it Craig.

Craig Curelop: [45:54] Awesome, we'll talk soon. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [45:56] Awesome. Yeah, well thanks for listening everybody. Go and hit up Craig at all of his various places, the fi guy on Instagram at andthefiteam.com. And yeah, he obviously is more than happy to engage with you. He's been out in the public sphere for a while, and this is what he does. So don't be a stranger. Hit him up. Let him know what you're doing. And if you are in the North Idaho, Denver, or Southern California markets, his team would love to take your referrals that you are getting off the market that you're running. So thanks for listening everybody, and we'll talk to you next week.