Scaling a Virtual Real Estate Business: Key Hires, Exit Strategies, & More w/ Ryan Weimer

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

Dan Austin: [0:57] a good fit.

Ryan Weimer: [0:59] I wasn't close to necessarily losing the business, but the business could have been way further ahead if it had been my primary focus and I just like put my head down and focused on hiring. So that was a whole skill that I didn't have hiring. Right? Like, that's a whole different animal.

Mike DeHaan: [1:19] What is going on, guys? On today's episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast, we have Ryan Weimer, who is one of the more legit, like, verified legit operators that we've had on this show in quite some time. I mean, we've had a lot of legit guys on the show, but He's legit. This dude's doing, like he's very legit, but he is doing a business that is super, super similar to what Dan and I run. And so we gotta have, like, a really fun, like, in the weeds conversation. We talk about how he sort of grew that business, how he transitioned out of his engineering career, how he scaled up to currently in 2023. He what do say? Did 40 something deals in the first quarter? Like, 43, 44

Dan Austin: [1:58] in q one of

Mike DeHaan: [1:59] this year. At q one twenty twenty four, I said 2023. And he has, a pretty big operation, all while currently living in The UK and doing this thing virtually.

Dan Austin: [2:07] Yeah. Which is pretty incredible. It is. But he does talk about the struggles, and for those of you out there that are struggling, listen to the episode very closely throughout. He talks about not making any money for a couple years after making a pile of money, and all the things that can happen in between, and and how as an operator, and that's how you know he's a true operator. It's like you gotta suck it up and work late in the evening sometimes. There's things you gotta do in this business to to stay to keep your business going, to keep your employees paid.

Mike DeHaan: [2:32] Yeah. Especially, because he's based out of Boise, Idaho, which if you were living under a rock in 2021, 2022, you might have not heard about it. It was, like, kind of the most insane market that was going on through the run up a few years ago. And he made a ton of money, lost a bunch of money, and he still managed to hold on, keep grinding through. And there's so many awesome lessons in this episode. So anyways, guys, reach out to Ryan after the show. He's a super nice guy. Very, very engaged on Instagram, and he is more than happy to talk shop with all of you. So don't be shy. Remember, people come on these shows because they want you to engage with them. Besides that, we appreciate you all listening, and enjoy the show with Ryan Weimer. We are here today, guys, with Ryan Weimer out of Boise, Idaho. Well, at least that's where you invest. I actually don't know if that's where you live anymore. But, dude, I'm super excited to have you on the show. So back when Dan and I were getting started, you were kind of like one of the first people that I saw from a distance that I actually knew of because I was working for a hard money company that you get a lot of loans from us. And I was like, who's this guy that is just slinging all these deals in Boise? Because back in like twenty twenty twenty twenty one, where that market was part, and you see me like every single week, we're be reaching out to get multiple hard money loans from us. And so dude, I guess, before we kind of go into the backstory and have all you've done, give us a little bit of a breakdown about what exactly your business looks like right now and what exactly it is that you do.

Ryan Weimer: [3:53] Absolutely. So fast forward now, we actually just set a record. We did 44 contracts signed in q one of twenty twenty four. Wow. That's awesome. So first three months of this year, we've signed 44 contracts, which we've never even done close to that before.

Mike DeHaan: [4:09] That's great.

Ryan Weimer: [4:09] So fast forward now, we have 16 team members. We have about half of those are VAs that we have in house, then we have three lead managers, three acquisitions. I have a COO who's the main integrator and then like a junior integrator underneath him. So that's what the org looks like today. Man, we are missing out on so many deals though and we can talk about that because like every single week we're diving into our CRM and looking at how much we suck.

Mike DeHaan: [4:42] Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Weimer: [4:43] And I think it's it's like a healthy combination of holy crap, we're kicking ass, but look at how many deals we've lost to other investors, to other people.

Dan Austin: [4:52] So That's awesome.

Mike DeHaan: [4:53] Our businesses are actually super similar, like, in size because I think we have what? We have 14 team members, and we did 42 for q one. Nice. And so we're, like, very, very parallel. That's funny.

Dan Austin: [5:05] Two lms for as like, we're just like, yeah, really, this is this can be a good episode.

Mike DeHaan: [5:10] Yeah, we got TC. We got dispo. Very cool. So obviously, you scaled a ton since I first saw you come on the scene in 2020. What did things look like before that? And I guess, did you come from a real estate background or was this kinda like a newer I thing for

Ryan Weimer: [5:24] was a mechanical engineer. So I graduated college. I got a high paying oil and gas job as an engineer. I was living in Downtown Denver. I had it made and then I got laid off. And I had to like rediscover myself. I cold turkey moved out to San Diego because that's what young single guys do and when they don't have a plan or know who they are Yeah. Right. And they have figure themselves out. Yeah. Got another engineering job and I was traveling all over the world. Like it was a sweet gig. I went to Asia a I went to Europe a bunch, all over The US. I was traveling like 70 to 75% of the year. So it was pretty wild travel schedule. But that got old and I got passed up for a promotion that I was already doing like half of their job plus my own. And that was really the click where I was like, I've been laid off once, I got passed up for this, I don't have any control here. And I was a salaried employee too. I didn't even know what sales was. I didn't know that there was a job or a way that you could make money equal to the value that you bring. Like that concept I just didn't even know about. So it didn't matter how hard I worked as an engineer, was still getting paid what I was getting paid. And so sooner or later I discovered bigger pockets in real estate, bought my first rental property off the MLS and that's when I got into the weeds of, oh you mean going direct to seller, I can get way better deals. And that really started this journey of for three years, I was working as an engineer and doing cold calling myself before I was able to get enough deals and income to replace my engineering income, at which point I quit because with an analytical brain, right, like I was not brave enough to believe in myself to just quit cold turkey and go all in. Had to Sure.

Ryan Weimer: [7:17] It had to be very methodically planned out and calculated.

Mike DeHaan: [7:21] Yeah. That's funny. And it's amazing how regularly we see that, like, transition, like the engineering to real estate. I would say

Ryan Weimer: [7:28] that often,

Mike DeHaan: [7:29] that's probably like the most common reoccurring, you know, sort of like career change that we see people that become successful real estate investors. But very rarely do we see people that go and do that by cold calling themselves because you don't normally come with like the salesmanship. And you said you didn't even have that as a background. Right? And like, that is a very, very brutal process. So did you were you just like taking your licks? Or like, did you like get training? Or like, what was that? You're just got your I'm assuming you just got your ass chewed for like a few months at the start of that.

Ryan Weimer: [8:01] Yeah. So really what it was is it was like and this is what I tell people starting out or people that, cause I do some private one on one coaching and small group coaching too, is it's like number one, it's either gotta be money or time to get good deals, right? Like you can pay to have inbound leads come in that are super motivated. You don't need to be the most skilled person, definitely helps. But you can close deals that way. But like for me, I was living in San Diego, which was expensive. So I was doing Boise virtually and I was just, I need to do something that's free to take my licks to build up my skills. Like I didn't want to pay and lose money on marketing to build up the sales skills. That's why I think outbound is definitely the best approach for somebody to start out is not just because I know it's a lot of work but like you develop your sales skills at the same time. And so it was really, there was a deal like maybe two or three weeks in a foreclosure of me cold calling. Like it happened pretty fast which is not typical. And I didn't get the deal. I didn't have enough urgency on the follow-up and like an hour after I called them for a follow-up they had already signed somebody else. It was like over a 6 figure spread and that was really the deal where I was like, oh my gosh, this is possible. And it helped me push through the pain and just getting my teeth kicked in on a regular basis.

Ryan Weimer: [9:22] Because like you said, as an engineer, I was shivering, I was sweating, I was stuttering. I didn't know what the hell to say on a cold call. Are you kidding me talking to strangers? Yeah. But seeing the prize at the end, was like, oh, I just need to gamify this in my mind. So I would just mark down tallies of no's on a daily basis. Like how many no's can I get to in a day? At first it was let me get to five no's in a day. And then I stacked, stacked, stacked, built that up to where I got to four fifty no's and finally got my first deal. So it took about eight months. There you go. I mean,

Mike DeHaan: [10:00] eight months like fully just grinding like that. I feel like it's pretty good. Yeah. We typically tell people because we have our our scale community and we do more of like a mass marketing approach.

Dan Austin: [10:09] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [10:09] Usually through direct mail and like outsource cold calling stuff like that to a little bit faster. But the faster that we tell people is three to four months, you know, and most people they like their idea of fast is like next week, but that's not realistic.

Dan Austin: [10:21] So you said you got 450 no's like today doing outbound. Like, what do you expect like an outbound agent to to do? How many no's do they have to get?

Ryan Weimer: [10:29] Well, let's see. We're we're about one in 57 outbound leads as a contract. Okay. And then we close about 70 to 72% of those contracts right now. So Right off.

Dan Austin: [10:41] Right on the average.

Mike DeHaan: [10:42] Yeah. I just love it. It's it's so fascinating to me that, like, I know you're a legit operator. I've personally confirmed this. We have people that come on this show that are legit operator, the people that I can tell are blowing smoke very quickly. And the ones that are legit, the numbers that we all have are always so incredibly similar. It's so weird. Yeah, all the time. So you kind of see that 70% close rate seems to be pretty average between it seems to be like 50 to 70 leads. Typically, tends to lead to a deal. And then even your team size to deal volume is very, very similar as well. Yeah. So that's awesome, man.

Ryan Weimer: [11:16] Yeah. So I would say, like in our database, it's typically like a 10 to 15% contact rate for established outbound leads. Right? So that's after prospecting. Right? They're a qualified lead, they're in our CRM and our lead managers are calling on those typically. Sometimes our acquisitions people. So they get a hold of every one out of every, I don't know, eight to 10 of those people just extrapolate that out on how many no's they have to get to to get a signed contract. So it's about eight to 10 times 57. Nice. Yeah. So Yeah. Gotcha. Cool.

Mike DeHaan: [11:51] And then so, obviously, you have a big team now. Took you eight months to get that first deal. What time frame was that? There you got that first one? Is that 2018, '19?

Ryan Weimer: [12:00] That was 2019.

Mike DeHaan: [12:01] Yep. 2019? Okay. Cool. And because then by the time I was introduced to you, that was late twenty twenty when you started to do stuff at the lender that I was at. So what did that scaling up period start to look like? And were you mostly flipping? Were you wholesaling? What was your primary strategy?

Ryan Weimer: [12:18] It's been a lot of failure, honestly, to to get to this point, especially with hiring. In the early days, it was a lot of flipping just because the market was on fire. Right? It was during COVID in Boise, it was insane. It was like 20% appreciation a year for like 2020 and 2021. And then obviously in 2022, 2023, we did the opposite almost. But in the early days, was a lot of flipping and wholesaling. And then I was still had my engineering job for a portion of that. So I was doing a lot of berries too because I could qualify for conventional financing. So ironically, I actually think I probably kept too many properties as rentals and I got pretty cash strapped in 2020 I was like equity rich and cash poor because I didn't

Dan Austin: [13:05] Yeah.

Ryan Weimer: [13:06] As an engineer, I really hated people management and I didn't really realize, oh, well Ryan, if you suck it up and change your mindset and grow this like a business, one good acquisitions person for us now can make over $1,000,000 a year in revenue for our That is way more than one property can deliver as a rental. So that was a huge mindset shift for me lately. In that twenty twenty two to twenty twenty three period, man, we took quite a few losses on flips. We have had and still do have some developments going on right now. Some of those have gone exceptional, some of them have gone terrible. So I think it's really about getting through that twenty twenty two to twenty twenty three period because a lot of people dropped out in our market.

Dan Austin: [13:55] Oh, yeah. Yeah. We've heard that story about several investors in the Boise area kinda have that same arc where they're like, yeah, we lost a bunch of money going into 2022 on on projects they had had already purchased. Mhmm. And then just kinda then spending $20.23 digging out of

Ryan Weimer: [14:08] that hole. Yeah. Luckily in our business, we were pretty much median price point and below. Mhmm. Nice. So that segment didn't get as affected. We did do a couple, like, in the 700 to 1,000,000 range, a couple of flips, and we got hit bad on those.

Mike DeHaan: [14:23] I bet. Yeah. It's funny. Being market adjacent, we, you know, we're obviously on that same timeline. We were fortunate that we had wholesaling as, like, a primary strategy, so we didn't we weren't left holding too many bags. We only lost on two. We had one where we lost a little tiny bit. We lost, like, $5. Then we had one where we lost pretty big. We lost 75. But the big red flag to us, we we sold these little, like, lake cabins up by one of the, like, kind of nothing lakes here that no one

Dan Austin: [14:48] really goes to lake sheds. Yeah, they

Mike DeHaan: [14:50] were like sheds. They're basically like Lowe's sheds, lake sheds near a lake. If they were a lake adjacent.

Dan Austin: [14:56] Yeah, they

Mike DeHaan: [14:56] were like on the water. And we sold them for like one for like $2.50. And the other one for like $2.30. These And things were like 400 square feet. I'm like, this is not okay. Like we need to

Dan Austin: [15:07] Wow, move on. Yeah, and we sold them for a big profit. And then somebody else tried reselling them after we sold the tone. So you're like, okay, yeah, we're it's a problem now. Yeah. So yeah. I wanna ask you a question though. Back to to you doing the flips and stuff. So you were doing this from San Diego in Boise. It's not like you need to drive there. How did you manage the flips and the burs virtually? Because that is like a lot of the folks in our community, you know, they're looking at going virtually and flipping and burying is part of everybody's what they wanna have in their repertoire, but doing it virtually is challenging. So if you could touch on how you did that, I think that'd be super helpful.

Ryan Weimer: [15:39] Yeah. Initially, was I've just found a stud investor agent, a stud investor realtor that doubled as my project manager. Now I still had to hire the contractors and pay them and everything, but he would stop over there maybe once or twice a week and kinda keep tabs on the situation for me, which was huge. Because I didn't have enough money or enough wherewithal to hire a project manager yet to manage a lot of those. So but I was only doing at that time, like, maybe one a month, maybe two a month at max.

Dan Austin: [16:13] So with that then, were they was that agent able to also just kind of bring in people into your network, like, hey, we've got this plumber over here, this contractor, and kinda help with that stuff too? Because that's kind of hard part too is finding the trustworthy and reliable contractors.

Ryan Weimer: [16:27] Yeah, a 100%. That's exactly what happened. And then what happened was I started doing like two or three a month and it quickly scaled beyond what that realtor could help me with. And that's when I got kicked in the tush a little bit because I had, man the contractor thing is tough because I had one or two good ones and what I did was I just put like four or five flips under one contractor he got overwhelmed real fast. And so two or three of them would just sit for weeks and weeks and weeks. But I knew that he did good work. So I was in this position where like, well do I wanna essentially start over on those couple with a new contractor and like go through that the like stealing out each other and all the things I don't know about them and all the risks and the the unknowns. Mhmm. That's something that a lot of people don't really think about. Right? It's like your contractor bench has to be deep Mhmm. If you're gonna take this on.

Dan Austin: [17:21] It really does. Yeah. That's a that's a great point and to speak to that, and I would just like to hear your opinion is when you were stacking up flips and essentially building up flip inventory, were you doing that because you wanted to keep your contractors going, or were you doing that because you were afraid to turn down opportunity?

Ryan Weimer: [17:39] Yeah. The latter. The latter. Like, I was the guy that why would I wholesale this and make 30 k when I can flip it and make 90? And what I didn't realize is as soon as one or two of your timelines get pushed, all

Mike DeHaan: [17:55] of a

Ryan Weimer: [17:55] sudden now you're just in a massive cash crunch. And it's like, oh, that's why people take the quick buck sometimes. But it was hard, man. Like in that COVID time, properties were set. We were getting 10 offers first weekend all over asking, right? And so anything that I possibly could, I wanted to keep as a rental to avoid paying taxes or I wanted to flip. And so it's easy for me in hindsight to say, Oh, I should have wholesaled more. But man, at that time, it was like, it was almost dumb not to take possession.

Mike DeHaan: [18:27] Yeah. Back then really was just like such an exception to that rule. The people that kinda came up through that period, you either realized that it was insane or you no longer exist. Right? Because you're still expecting that sort of outcome. It's just not realistic. But man, when I was at that hard money company, we had people whose loans would be defaulting. Like, they're like, hey, your loan is getting called due. And they're like, foreclose on me, it's gonna take you six months, my property is going up 10% every month right now. So I get that is way more than all your penalties and fees are. So I'm just gonna eat it and I'll pay you off when it's

Ryan Weimer: [18:59] Yeah, just keep riding it.

Dan Austin: [19:01] Yeah, exactly. It was insane.

Ryan Weimer: [19:03] Yeah. And I think there's a lot to learn about that too. Like We were getting properties deeper than anybody else too because we were one of the only operators in Boise that was doing off market at a higher level. Because back then people were I knew flippers in that environment that were still buying quite a few deals off the MLS and flipping them and doing well. So now we've kinda used that to our advantage in that as soon as November, December starts to hit, we will look to get properties on like a ninety, a hundred and twenty day close it helps the seller align with spring and summer selling season or maybe we'll catch another extra percent appreciation during that time period.

Dan Austin: [19:48] Yeah. Oh, very smart. That's really smart. Yeah. To kinda reduce your risk there by buying it. It's hit a crappy time of the year where there's just less buyers. Christmas. Totally.

Ryan Weimer: [19:57] 100%.

Mike DeHaan: [19:58] Yep. Yeah. So you started to build that out yourself. You had your realtor on the ground. You're working in engineering job. What were, like, the first sort of key hires that you started to make in order to be able to scale?

Ryan Weimer: [20:11] Yeah. First one was definitely a virtual assistant. Multiple. Like, one to do admin and then one to start doing We were doing texting at the time. So doing some texting, I was still cold calling, like calling the prospects. Nice. And then it was an acquisitions person after that. And then it was a second acquisitions person. I don't think we had a lead manager until about a year and a half ago. That's something that we just finally got just because our the leads in our database is just a stupid number so we've never had the bandwidth to do enough follow-up. Yeah. But then I had one of the acquisitions people leave, And I was the classic entrepreneur of getting shiny object syndrome and like, oh, let me go do some development deals and let me like There's just so much opportunity and I just wasn't saying no to enough things. And so once he left, I was just ill prepared because now I was back in the acquisition seat and I did not have the bandwidth to do that. So there was a period there where like I wasn't close to necessarily losing the business, but the business could have been way further ahead if it had been my primary focus and I just put my head down and focused on hiring them. So that was a whole skill that I didn't have hiring.

Ryan Weimer: [21:22] Right? Like that's a whole different animal.

Mike DeHaan: [21:24] Yeah. And it's hard. Are your AMs, are they I guess, is your business, do you still operate exclusively in Boise?

Ryan Weimer: [21:31] Yes. Oh, nice. We go statewide, but it's, you know, 80% of our deals are in the Trader Valley.

Mike DeHaan: [21:36] Man, you're getting four forty deals in a quarter in a single market. Like, that's that's legit. That's next level. Yeah. Are your ams, are they local there? Or are you still doing everything virtually? You just have like runners on the ground?

Ryan Weimer: [21:48] They are. They're in person. Our lead managers are half in Boise and half virtual, so we allow them to be potentially virtual since they're primarily on the phone. But if we do an appointment like an hour outside of Boise, that's kind of our rule of thumb of now it's gonna be a virtual appointment, and we always do a Google Meet or Zoom because it helps with conversion rates. Yeah. Cool. Nice. That's cool.

Mike DeHaan: [22:11] 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? 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 man 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 this 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 continue to grow our audience. We really, really appreciate it. Well, anyways, enjoy the rest of show you guys. We appreciate you all. So like you said, your lead managers are sometimes in Boise. So you have American lead managers?

Ryan Weimer: [23:02] Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Oh, interesting. That was a big takeaway from our mastermind is like, you can have VAs do it, but man, you're like the dollar per hour that you're probably giving up in the cheaper salary, it's just it doesn't pencil. Like if you hire an American based person, you're gonna convert more contracts and you're gonna get set your acquisitions people up for deeper deals.

Dan Austin: [23:23] Sure. So with that being said, what skill set for your lead managers, like US based lead managers are you hiring? Or what's their background?

Ryan Weimer: [23:30] Yeah. So our three things are humble, hungry, smart. We will not hire a realtor or a prior realtor. That's absolutely a no go for us. You like you can't teach an old dog new tricks kinda thing.

Dan Austin: [23:42] And if they sucked at being a realtor, they're not gonna be good at off market real estate.

Ryan Weimer: [23:47] A 100. Man, it's interesting. About a year ago we were like, let's get an A player, somebody that's a really high level inside salesperson, proven track record. And we've had a few of those that didn't work out just because their expectations of success were too quick. They came in with a lot of experiences so they think they're just gonna have instant success. So now we've kinda skewed our inside sales people which are lead managers to this younger, I don't know anything but my personality profile is a fit for a sales position type of avatar. And then our outside sales, our acquisitions people are more of this. Tenured type of salesperson, maybe they're in car sales, maybe they've sold solar as one of our favorite crossovers. Right? If they've been knocking doors and had success at that, like, is a this is an easy job for them.

Mike DeHaan: [24:41] Yeah. Absolutely. Cool. And so you built that up. You had it all virtual. What was I would say like you got through that big hiccup in twenty twenty two thousand twenty three. What was that like with the team? I mean, because they obviously see that and and I guess, on that same note, how do you pay all these guys because you're doing mostly flips? Because if you have all these losses on these deals, but you now have payroll, I know a lot of people they pay off of gross revenue for flips. But if you're losing your ass in every single one, I mean, that's an additional liability I'm expecting that you're probably paying.

Ryan Weimer: [25:13] That is a big no no. You could definitely cannot pay a commission on gross revenue. It has to

Dan Austin: [25:18] be off of Right?

Ryan Weimer: [25:20] So that's something that you need to set up or change strategically if you have the wrong setup there or else you'll get burned for sure. But, yeah, there's no no doubt about it. Like for 2022 and 2023, I didn't take a salary and I had to sell some of my own personal rentals just to keep things keep cash flow in the door. Right? So like, it's just one of those time periods where it's a do whatever it takes type of moment. So Those are the

Mike DeHaan: [25:46] things people never talk about when they're doing this kind of business. Right? Because you were doing deals, I'm sure. Like, people probably from the outside were like, that guy's crushing it. You're like, I'm not making anything.

Dan Austin: [25:55] I'm pawning properties.

Mike DeHaan: [25:58] Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I'm a motivated seller. You wanna

Dan Austin: [26:00] buy some resale? Yeah. Funny thing is about that is people don't realize, even if you look like you're doing good on the on the outside, the owners aren't always taking the fat salary. In fact, more owners, if not, are taking very, very little salary for their business, especially these days. Mhmm. You have to do that.

Ryan Weimer: [26:15] Exactly. Like, especially with the turnover that we've had in hiring. Like, I sucked at hiring.

Mike DeHaan: [26:20] Riddly.

Ryan Weimer: [26:21] And I was not a good leader, you know? So like, if you have people that are leaving the business, and this has been a big ego check for me, is the reason people are leaving or are not working out is number one, my hiring process sucks and I'm not able to identify A players from B players and C players, so I need to fix that. Number two, I need to be the type of leader that attracts A player caliber people. So it's a me problem. Like I have to be a thumb guy, not a finger guy. And it's a me problem to fix. Like if my team is not adequate, it's just a reflection of me as a leader. Right? And so that's why I wish in 2020 and 2021 I had just sat on some cash because I could've hired better people. I could've invested more into marketing. Like I think we're kinda past this window of one of the better buying opportunities that we might have in the next decade, that's my opinion, because everything's still under built. And that was a big pullback. So man, yeah, hindsight's twenty twenty, but like, it all it's all a reflection of you as a leader.

Mike DeHaan: [27:28] Yeah. What are you using mainly for hiring right now? Like, where are you finding your people? Just like traditional Indeed, or are you using like local groups, networking? What does all that look like?

Ryan Weimer: [27:39] Yeah. I would say local Facebook groups and social media are definitely, far and away, are two best sources. They might not produce the most leads, but it's just like inbound and outbound leads for prospecting. Right? Like social media and Facebook referral leads or people that reached out to you from a meetup or whatever are gonna be far more qualified because they've been following your page. They know who you are. They see your videos. They see your face. They know what you're talking about. They know what you're about. So that far and away has the best success rate. Referrals from other people in our company, obviously that's a really good source. And then we use WiseHire for everything else. So WiseHire, you post a job on there and they post on Indeed, LinkedIn, all these other sites as well. And they have kind of cool, not really a CRM, but I like the way their software is set up where it's organized of applicants and you can move them into the different rounds of hiring.

Mike DeHaan: [28:35] Yeah. It's not the understated the value of like that personal brand and that reputation, right? Like, honestly, even for us, having the podcast now for two and a half years, the quality of applicants that we get are just higher because people can go and like research you, even if they haven't heard about you, they can go and see like a ton of content material, they can see who they're going to be coming to work with. That goes a really long way as opposed to working with like, FCY homebuyers like random company, right? Yes, exactly. That you've never heard of before. But no. That that's awesome. So one other thing is these 40 you said 44 deals you've done in q one. How many of those are gonna be flips versus wholesale versus rentals versus whatever else random stuff people are doing these days?

Ryan Weimer: [29:18] Yeah. Now based on lessons learned previously, we're flipping at a very low percentage. I think we're only gonna flip about 10% right now. Nice. And usually it's because it's either too big of a wholesale or too big of a novation or whatever. And so we wanna actually close on it and then resell it type of thing. We're not doing any massive fixers like anything over like a 50 k reno budget. We would just rather wholesale. Like to squeeze the extra 50 k or 40 k of profit after six months, it's just not worth it. Like, we'd rather get our cash conversion cycle back and just redeploy into marketing.

Dan Austin: [29:57] I mean, we're talking about the deals you're doing. Boise is still gotta be a competitive market. Like, what are you doing that is able to you're able to do 40 something deals in the first quarter? Because I know, like, if we went down there or somebody else went down there, it would be a struggle to get 40 deals in a single market in q one.

Ryan Weimer: [30:13] Yeah. The short answer is we have more exit strategies than everybody else. And the long answer is yeah, but that requires an immense amount of time, effort and training invested into your salespeople because like if you're a cash only buyer, you're only gonna have a solution for this many people. If you can do cash terms, novations, installment agreements, then all of a sudden you're gonna just have more contracts to be able to get. You fit that check mark for more sellers. Now you gotta be careful with that though because when I started, I threw cash and terms right at our acquisition managers from day one and it was like an implosion. Because they were like, oh, what do I do? Analyze the deal, where do I need to be numbers wise? And they didn't focus on asking the pain questions to the seller, what their motivation and timeline is. So like now we will only let people do cash, cash, cash for six months. And then after six months we train them on terms. After six months of that we train them on novations. And look like we're just constantly drilling that into our daily trainings with the team about what our sales process is so that they get it. And it's taken a long time to get there.

Mike DeHaan: [31:36] Yeah. Yeah. And that's such an unintended consequence too of people that are like building this team. They haven't experienced that yet is because people naturally pursue the path of each resistance. So they go on the do a cash offer. There's like, I'm not gonna do that with like, well, would you want to sell it to us on terms? No? Oh, well, I'm gonna refer you to a realtor. Can you do that instead? And they just start, like, grasping for any way to get the deal done when you're completely right. I love how you said it. They don't ask the probing questions, which is, you know, very realistically, they might accept your cash offer. It's just not gonna be today. It could be thirty days. It could be sixty days. It could be six months from now. But being able to really pinpoint like what opportunity makes sense for each seller. And this is like a big knock that we have on like the sub two community and that whole thing too, right is like, you have all these people that are like, I only do creative financing. It's like that doesn't really make sense for 95 of sellers, like honestly. Right?

Ryan Weimer: [32:28] Yeah. I think there's a danger too if at least we experienced this firsthand that our people did. If you can always pay the most on a creative finance deal, like you're just sabotaging yourself from getting better deals. Because you're just jumping to that in your head. Well I can just pay you more than anybody else and like that becomes your pitch and your offering. And it's like woah, woah, woah. You are negotiating against yourself and you're you're totally screwing the pooch. Yep. Yeah. Agreed.

Mike DeHaan: [32:57] Exactly. Well, there's offering to pay more so then they can go and find some other sub two circle jerk or who's gonna go and like pay even more than that. So it works out great. But they're gonna make their little $6,000 spread and move on with their day. But no, man, that's awesome. So one more question for you on on your systems, because you have a lot in the pipeline. So you're only gonna be flipping about 10%. What is your dispo and TC process look like? Because we're learning this firsthand right now. That's a lot of sort of different balls in the air that you're trying to keep organized.

Ryan Weimer: [33:28] Yeah. So now we're doing a lot of innovations.

Mike DeHaan: [33:30] Okay.

Ryan Weimer: [33:31] I would say, like, half or more of our deals are innovations. Wow. And that's been sort of this revelation of the MLS is the best buyers list. So anything that we can get on the MLS, we wanna get on the MLS. So our dispo team and our TC, like the TC app, the TC has quite a bit of work on the novation side, but DISPO doesn't have a lot of work on the novations because we use a realtor. We don't use, like I know some people that do novations that use a flat fee listing service and then they have a DISPO team that are like calling on people. And I guess it really just depends on what your area is. Do you have a because it took us two or three bad realtors with novations to get a good one and we had some really bad stories and experiences with that. But then finally, when we got that right person, we could do it. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [34:24] So What does that look like? I mean, you're saying half or more deals or novations, like, why is that? And like logistically on your offers with your AMs, how does that work? Because they're going in, they're seeing the seller situation, and they're going to apply the tool. Novation just happens to be the tool, and we know how the Novation goes, where you essentially sign with them at a certain price, then you maybe or maybe don't add value, and then you sell it at a different price. Like, Can you explain that? How is that and why is that working so well for you?

Ryan Weimer: [34:52] Yeah. So just to dumb this down, for those of you that don't know what a novation is, basically you are getting the property under contract at a certain price and then you are listing it on the MLS for a higher price. And then you are incorporating the agent fees, commissions, any repairs that come up on the inspection report, whatever into that spread. And then whatever is left over is what your take is. So novations is a hack because number one, you can sell to an owner occupant which will pay more than an investor, right? And number two, a conventional loan can actually fund your marketing fee instead of a wholesale fee, I wish it can't. So those are the reasons to do innovation. In terms of how we pitch it, it's really we have to beat up the cash offer into the ground for them to really understand what the value is and well what if there was a way we could get you a higher price? And I, like many people had this objection in my mind of like, well why wouldn't they just list it with the realtor? You're literally doing the exact same thing as a realtor do, right? You would be shocked at how many people, just the mere thought of them listing their home with a realtor and like even being involved in the negotiations and the back and forth about like, hey these people offered this, what do you wanna counter? They're offering you cash but it's closing in twenty one days and you have to like that that just the thought of that stresses people out. And it is amazing how many people would just trade 20,000, $30,000 just to have their hand held through that process. So that's why it works.

Mike DeHaan: [36:32] Yeah. When you explain it that way, right, it makes a little bit more sense. I mean, we've been kinda ripping on innovations recently because we've seen this rise of like the smooth talker who comes in and basically finds like the old lady who has no idea how much their house is worth, and is like, yeah. I'm gonna list it for you for this, and then they go and they make $60. The old lady makes 10, and they didn't do anything to the house. They didn't even take equitable interest by, like, you know, doing an assignment or something like that.

Dan Austin: [36:58] Yeah. Took zero risk, you know, took zero risk at all by putting their name or anything.

Mike DeHaan: [37:02] We found some sellers recently where they're like, Man, I signed this deal with these guys eight months ago, and they they haven't sold my property yet. And then we go and we look and there's some like, dipshit investor who has this novation agreement that has a twelve month freaking guarantee, and the thing's just been sitting on the market for a hundred and eighty days doing nothing. Yeah. And it's like that's not beneficial to anybody at all. But

Ryan Weimer: [37:25] Yeah. Our guys have to wear Idaho's a single party consent state. Mhmm. So we don't need to tell people that we're recording calls or appointments. So all of our guys wear recordable watches and also record every single appointment on their phone. Or if they're meeting virtually, it's all recorded. And so one of the very first questions in our sales process is why wouldn't you just list it with a realtor? You can get more money. Why don't you just list it for sale by owner? You can get more money. And as long as you are being above board with that process, it fleshes out all the objections and you're left with the people that are like, I know you guys are gonna make money, I just don't wanna deal with this. You're not getting the people that are like, I don't really know what I signed and I'm giving up my equity and I don't know what's happening here. And so you just have to be like, and trust me, the people that do it the wrong way, they might make a couple bucks off of granny or whatever, but they're not gonna be in business very long. Either legally they're gonna get reported to the attorney general or their BBB reviews are gonna be bad or Google reviews are gonna be bad. Like, words words gonna get out.

Ryan Weimer: [38:34] So

Dan Austin: [38:35] Agreed. That is very true.

Mike DeHaan: [38:37] And it's just like every other form of this business. Right? You can be a shady wholesaler. You can be a shady flipper. You can do shady creative. You can do shady innovation. It all comes down to intent. And the fact that you guys ask that, like, clarifying question right at the start, and you make it transparent, like, that's honestly what really matters. You know, and we primarily wholesale and people always ask like, well, how do you deal with that ethically? It's like, well, they're very aware that they could do other things to make more money. More often, don't have the means to they don't want to and they just want to be able to wash their hands of it. And so we're able to provide that as a service. Now, man, that's super, super, super cool. And it's really awesome to see how you grown and, you know, pretty, like, quick timeline as well, especially the ups and downs and like that one market. I don't know very many people that could have survived Boise, especially with the volume that you were doing and having that big that big sort of, like, honestly, downfall, the big hiccup speed bump.

Ryan Weimer: [39:30] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [39:31] Right? And I think to a large part of this, if I remember, I didn't you live overseas for a while too while you're still managing your business?

Ryan Weimer: [39:37] Yeah. I'm I'm still in London, England right now.

Mike DeHaan: [39:40] Yeah. So Right now. Oh, cool. Yeah. Thanks for hopping on with us at 09:00 at night, whatever it is for you over there.

Ryan Weimer: [39:45] This is, I think, a good thing to to talk about. Right? Is it's like, what are you willing to do Yeah. Mhmm. To build this and grow this to where you wanna be, to have the life that you want, right? So me and my wife, we moved over to London. She got an opportunity here, so we're on a visa. But that is what's important to us in our life is seeing and experiencing new things and travel is a big one of them.

Mike DeHaan: [40:10] So

Ryan Weimer: [40:11] part of that sacrifice is when we moved over here in 2022, did not anticipate the bottom to fall out for the real estate market for couple years,

Dan Austin: [40:20] And so

Ryan Weimer: [40:21] you have this grand vision of like, oh, it's gonna be great. I'm gonna be working three nights a week, a week late, but the other four days I'm just gonna be sipping cappuccinos in a park in London, right? It's just it's not how it worked out.

Mike DeHaan: [40:35] So Yeah. Right.

Ryan Weimer: [40:36] The last few years, I've been working well late into the evenings every single night because it's just what it takes. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [40:43] Yeah. Nice, man. That's that's super cool. And if you wanna, like, see Europe especially, not many better place to do it than The UK because there's short stopover from everywhere. You know, they speak the language. It's a relatively easy place to live. That's super, super awesome. But cool, man. Well, really, really awesome stuff in this episode. I really appreciate all you've shared. We're gonna dive into our end of show questions here to round out this episode. So the first question, and don't worry, they're not too crazy. I'm not gonna ask you for, like, your favorite inspirational quote or historical figure or

Dan Austin: [41:15] something that you

Mike DeHaan: [41:15] should have researched. But what is your craziest real estate investing story? And just think of like the first one that comes to mind. Right? And this can be a big win, can be a big loss, can be a crazy tenant. We've had people talk about like how they've had, you know, people have brothels in their properties or they've had like, you know, crazy contractors doing wacky stuff. Just the craziest real estate investing story.

Ryan Weimer: [41:37] Oh, man. I have so many. Like there's very few things that I haven't seen. We bought an eight unit property that we still own. Me and one of my buddies from college who's actually my COO right now, Corey Miller, we own it fiftyfifty. And this area is like C class, it's not D class, it's not a war zone, okay? But it's C class, like it's blue collar people and everything and it was a heavy fixer, we got it on a slamming deal, seller finance. And tired landlord, we had to essentially evict every single tenant that was living in there. Now when we are remodeling one of the units during this turn, there's a trap door cut into the floor with a band saw. Not like a hatch that you open up into the crawl space. Somebody literally took a band saw into the middle of the living room, into the hardwood floor, a rectangle. And the contractor pulls up the rug and there it is. And we're like, okay, what is this? Is this a horror film? Right? Yeah. So he goes down there and he shines a light and there's these mounds of dirt and then care bears and stuffed animals around these big mounds of dirt in the crawl space. Right. Wow. And he's like, okay, this just got like 10 out of 10 creepy, right? So calls our property manager, they call the police. The police comes because these are like mounds of dirt, right? Looks like somebody Bodies bodies. Yes, be buried down there. Right?

Ryan Weimer: [43:14] So the police comes in and they dig them up and they're like, hey, we found cat bones. Don't worry about it. It's dead cats. Right? But in that same unit, they ripped out part of the drywall and there was a mound of used tampons into the wall that someone had been Like stopping into the all these things in the same property. So that's probably one of the crazier things that we've seen in terms of like what tenants will do because you got potential dead bodies and then use tampons. It's a weird combination.

Dan Austin: [43:48] That's wild shit that even cut a a hole in the floor to just go bury their cats. There's other ways to

Ryan Weimer: [43:54] do it. There's way better ways Yeah. To do I'm sure drugs weren't involved at all.

Mike DeHaan: [44:00] No. No. Not Yeah. At I'm sure I'm sure all those cats died of old age as well.

Dan Austin: [44:05] You know what though? I bet you the landlord was not that like, the previous landlord couldn't have been that upset because like, you know, think about it, you're not supposed to flush the feminine hygiene products, so they were just being nice. And there was no feminine hygiene garbage cans, so they were just putting them in the wall.

Mike DeHaan: [44:20] Yeah. Absolutely.

Dan Austin: [44:21] You didn't have to pay for a sewer clean out.

Mike DeHaan: [44:23] Yeah. I mean and and everyone that has c class properties as well, we've all had this experience of, like, you have to go fix something and you walk in. Like, even your property manager calls tell you about something, and you're just like, I don't even wanna know. Like, just leave it alone. Yeah. I know they're gonna be there for the next eight years. And I'm just just let them do their thing. I'll deal with it in the future.

Ryan Weimer: [44:44] Cover it up.

Mike DeHaan: [44:45] Yep. That's the future means problem. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. That's a wild one. That's pretty solid. Alright. Second question. What is the number one tip you would give to a small time investor trying to take the business to the next level?

Ryan Weimer: [44:58] For me that comes back to clarity, right? Like you don't know, my default answer was yes to everything. Like in part because the market was good but in part because I just wanted to see how much I could handle. And I'm wired a little bit like that. Like I wanted to push myself to see how much I could do and ultimately like part of that sabotaged me. But it also built up this crazy amount of clarity in deciding what I want and what I don't want. Right? And I think the best part about real estate is that there's so many options. The worst part about real estate is that there's so many options. Yeah. And you have to like really decide what your end goal is because most of us are entrepreneurial. So we set a goal or a target and then once we get there, we just move the goalposts and move the goalposts. And we like keep going. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that, it's just there has to be a why behind it of like once you get here you are going to do this or like you can't just continuously push the goalposts and not really know what you're chasing. So you have to have a really defined, I guess exit plan or a defined life that you're trying to achieve and then you work backwards from that.

Ryan Weimer: [46:10] And I know that that sounds really frou frou and high level, but something that you can do today is just get out a journal and start writing down at the end of this year you want to blank and start with that. Okay, you need this many deals or you're gonna do commercial properties or you're gonna do listings or you're gonna do wholesales, right? And I think that exercise will bring you a lot of clarity on what you don't want to do. Yeah. I think I love

Mike DeHaan: [46:35] that end point on what you don't wanna do. So many people overlook that. Right? They think about where do I wanna be, but you don't have to, like, do all the stuff out there people say you can do. Can outsource, you can have systems, you can find partners, you can do all sorts

Ryan Weimer: [46:50] of things.

Mike DeHaan: [46:50] And that that's very, very valuable insight.

Ryan Weimer: [46:52] It's a

Dan Austin: [46:52] great point too. It's like, because sometimes it's hard to find clarity of what you want, but it's a lot easier to write down like, hey, I don't wanna do these things. Like, there's I know a lot more things I don't want now than I know of what I want. So just

Ryan Weimer: [47:04] I like that advice, just writing that stuff down.

Mike DeHaan: [47:06] Yeah. And it can even be granular stuff too. Like, me, I do not wanna wake up at 5AM. I used to wake up at 5AM to go to first shift at Boeing. Did that for three freaking years, and I hated every day. And the second that I left, I was like, you know, I'm not doing ever again

Dan Austin: [47:20] that 5AM.

Mike DeHaan: [47:21] Unless I'm flying somewhere and doing something fun, I do not do that. So Cool. Awesome. Well well, Ryan, where can people find you, follow you, and reach out to you?

Ryan Weimer: [47:31] Yeah. So at real Ryan Weimer on Instagram. And then on YouTube, it's just at Ryan Weimer. We're posting a lot of content on there. Again, just trying to get build up the brand to attract more talent into our organization. Cool. More private money relationships. And then I I do select few private one on one coaching and small group coaching as well.

Dan Austin: [47:51] So Awesome. That's very, cool.

Mike DeHaan: [47:53] Sweet, guys. Well, go and give Ryan a follow. Produce some good content over there too. And if you can't tell, Ryan's legit, you guys. He is a very, very good operator. And I also wanna give Ryan some props as well because when I DM'd him to come on the show, he hit me back like right away and was super flexible to book things. So he's a nice responsive guy. If you have any questions, I'm sure he would be happy to chat with you. And, dude, thanks so much for coming on. We really appreciate your time. And thanks for listening, everybody. And we'll talk to guys next week. Thanks, Ryan.