How to Invest in Real Estate No Money, Just Hustle

 

What You’ll Learn in the Podcast:

● Peter’s unusual start in real estate, from working in credit cards then mobile homes to eventually doing traditional real estate.

● What personal characteristics does it take to partner with someone like Peter.

● Why Peter doesn’t judge people he is going to work with at first and let’s them prove themselves, or not prove themselves.

● The reason Peter chose the model where he has a lot of partners around the nation, where he gives them the resources to succeed without the resume to initially back it up.

● How Peter makes his partners his family, and why.

● What Peter likes most about being in real estate (hint: it has to do with money & time).

● What a good hiring process looks like in real estate. ● What to understand about inbound vs outbound leads and why web generated inbound leads are the best.

 Summary and Highlights:

As you may know, the host, Jason Lee,  is the founder of the real estate agency in San Diego : JLM Real Estate.  But he has never come across a real estate investor as quirky as Peters Vekselman.

In this episode, we can listen to Peter’s tale as he tells us how he jumped head over heels into real estate, paying the dearest price of all. What better occasion to learn from such a guest how to invest in real estate with no money while still coming on top just by hustling it out and working hard!

Peters Vekselman: A short bio

Peter Vekselman is a real estate investor and coach who became an entrepreneur because he could not get a job after graduation. Before working in real estate, he dealt with credit card processing and merchant services. At that time, Peter founded a company franchise and later sold his portion when the company became too big for him to handle.

The moment of revelation came when he read Deals on wheels by Lonnie Scruggs. In detail, this book introduced the notion of mobile homes to Peter. Soon after, he contacted the author. They started up a mobile home dealership in the state of Georgia together.

As suddenly as their adventure began, the back-end financing fell out of the industry. All the top funders bailed. So, Peter jumped into real estate because he thought mobile homes and houses were pretty the same. He learned the hard way they were not.

Peter got broke. But he managed to get back on his feet in the next 20 years, growing as a real estate investor and helping other investors along the way.

What 3,400 Successful Deals Can Teach You

Peter’s real estate investment company does one thing that the competition does not dare to do. That is, partner with people all across the U.S. and strike deal after deal. Why is that strange, you ask? Because Peter’s company relies on their partners for tracking down bargains and, in return, provides coaching, accountability, and leads. And, of course, capital as well.

Later, when Peter sells a unit, the partners get half. So, it is a 50-50 deal with extras. This is why Peter invests most of his time by spreading the message to allow his business model to get even more profitable than it is now.

The hustle and the drive are all that it takes to make money. In other words, the capital comes second. To get into real estate, grit is key. You can always rely on investors for the money.

There Is No Secret To Real Estate

Real estate is all about finding the deal. The rest is just marketing. But the most valuable thing for beginners is marketing done right. In other words, you have to keep making contacts with owners and leads. That is how good realtors make money, especially in the beginning.

Of course, as a real estate agency grows, things may become complicated. But you can always learn how to do due diligence and inspections more efficiently. The most critical step is creating a model, a series of systems in place for you to tackle each process and procedure at a time.

Episode 10: How to Invest in Real Estate No Money, Just Hustle

Watch the Podcast | Read the Transcript

Transcript

[Intro] 00:00 
Welcome to the multi-family millionaire podcast. The show that interviews multi-millionaire real estate investors and top producers in the real estate industry. If you’re looking to create passive income and achieve financial freedom so that you can do what you want whenever you want, you’re in the right place. Our goal is to simplify and make real estate investing easy for you. For more information, you can find us at www.JLM.realestate.

00:30 

Jason Lee: All right, everyone. Welcome back to the multi-family millionaire podcast. Today I’m joined with my interviewee, Peter Vekselman, Peter, how you doing today?

00:38 

Peter Vekselman: Good. Thanks for having on Jason. Good to be here.

00:42 

Jason Lee: Yeah, for sure. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for your time. And before we get started, I always like to ask about kind of the interviewee story, kind of your background, how you got into real estate, all that good stuff.

00:57 

Peter Vekselman: Yeah. My background is I’ve always been in some type of a business and not really by choice, but just cause I’ve wasn’t good at school. I graduated couldn’t even get an interview anywhere, much less a job. So I’ve always been an entrepreneur in different industries and my last industry before real estate, which is what actually propelled me to real estate was actually believe it or not merchant services, credit card processing. I had started a company franchise at successfully across 15 states, and then the company just got too big for me. It was too much of a corporate deal. So I sold my portion and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with myself, honestly. And then one day somebody handed me a book by Lonnie Scruggs and it was a book was called deals on wheels and it was about mobile homes. I knew nothing about mobile home and I thought it was most fascinating.

I called him next morning, researched his name called him, said, man, this most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen. He goes, well, I got a seminar coming up here next weekend. So jumped in my car, went to visit him that next week bought my first mobile home. Three years later, we had the largest mobile home deal dealership in the state of Georgia. And then literally within overnight that business came to halt because the backend financing fell out of mobile homes.

You know, all the major players, Greentree, Greenpoint, MHFC. They just, they bailed. So we couldn’t get financing for our backend buyers. And so really Jason, this was just kind of a natural, you know, I thought mobile homes, real estate, it’s all the same thing. I learned very quickly. It wasn’t, but I thought it was. And so I jumped into real estate and proceeded to lose everything I had made up to that point in my life, but then straighten the ship out. And here I am 20 some years later.

02:41 

Jason Lee: So how did you go from mobile home parks to investing in other asset classes after that kind of failed? Because of the financing?

02:50 

Peter Vekselman: Yeah, well it definitely didn’t fail. We were at the top of the game. The whole thing just kind of, there was no backend financing for our buyers, so we had to move on and how I did it is cause I literally thought real estate is the same thing as mobile homes. I mean, you know, logically a lot of people still think, you know, but it, it really is not, it’s a totally, totally different business. I jump head over heels into this business, started applying the same thing we were using there, here, it did not work. I literally, within the seven months lost everything almost was pretty much living out of my car, you know, made myself like that. And it took me than three years just to get back to zero.

So literally I could have worked at McDonald’s for the first three years of real estate and done better and made more money than I did. But I went through the school of hard knocks, you know, learned a lot of things along the way. And got if nothing else, you know, I got really tough is what I did. I got really, really tough. And like I said, a couple decades later, 3,400 deals later, we’re rocking out right now.

03:50 

Jason Lee: It’s a lot of deals. Yeah, I mean, I think your story’s great because I think, you know, those first couple years, you know, years, one to three, you’re kind of struggling, but you’re learning right. You probably learn much more than you did than ever in those first three years to start in real estate. And I’m just fascinated by your story because you know, to where you are today to where you’ve started, it’s crazy. Can you elaborate on what you’re doing today and kind of what your day to day looks like at this point in your life?

04:19 

Peter Vekselman: Yeah, well today the models are very unusual models. As a matter of fact, you know, this is probably the question I get asked more than anything else about explain the model. And as far as I know, I’m the only guy who the only real estate investment company that does this, but we literally now partner with people all across the United States and we do real estate deals with them. You know, we even remained our company, that partner driven real estate investing. I don’t do my own deals, although I did tons and tons of deals by myself. But then we, for a lot of various reasons, we switched over to the partner model. And so what we do, I need local partners and we need local partners cause as you know, you need boots on the ground, you know, real estate.

I don’t care what anyone tells you still a localized game if you want to really sell in a particular market. So our partners become that, they become our boots in the ground. But what we do in turn for our partners is really cool because we provide what I call now, the pillars of success, you know, there are certain things that everyone needs. If they want to be successful in this business, they need coaching. They need accountability, they need leads. They need access to information and technology. Obviously you need capital. And  that’s exactly what we provide.

We coach our partners on a daily basis. We generate leads for them in their own markets On a daily basis. We provide technology for them to be able to make decisions about certain opportunities or non-opportunities. And then I provide them all the capital to do these deals with. And then we just throw them back in the market and sell them and split the profits right down the middle.

The local partner takes half and we take half. So that’s what I do now as an investor, I don’t very much get involved in a day to day operations anymore. I have an incredible team. I mean really I’m so proud of my team. I could tell you that, you know, this is a team that support, this is actually a team that supported me when I was an investor, you know, from acquisitions to closing department, to all of that. Now this whole team now basically supports my partners across the United States.

You know, from a coaching perspective, from a technology perspective, from a lead gen perspective, from a back office, as you know, nobody gets in this business cause they want to get into the back office business, but business is a back office, you know? And so my back office becomes their back office from a closing perspective, coordination perspective, contracts perspective, and all that. You know, my day to day now is pretty much focused on growing the model, growing the business, putting the right people into our teams, you know, aligning ourselves correctly, to be able to, you know, get bigger and spread the message more and more.

06:55

Jason Lee: Got it. So it sounds like to me, if someone has the hustle and the drive doesn’t have the capital and the resources to really get into this business, you’re kind of that, that saving grace kind of the person who starts that journey if they want to get into it. So if I’m someone that knows nothing about real estate, but I have the drive, I want to be successful. How does the process start if I want to, you know, start partnering with you in some deals?

07:19 

Peter Vekselman: Well, number one, that’s exactly right. You know, when people say, well, who exactly is that perfect prototype someone that’s coachable, it’s somebody that’s got the hustle and somebody overall that wants to level up in life. You know, they’re not happy with what they are, whether it’s financial lifestyle, the combination of their, of, and that really in essence becomes my ultimate partner who we’re looking for. You know, we have a process that people learn about us. Find out about us, talk to somebody here at the company to make sure they’re a good fit for us.

And once that’s all to go, Jason, I’m telling you it’s a quick start. I mean, we, nobody partners with us and says, well, you know, let’s just pick it up in the next couple months. Those conversations never take place. So literally within the first day or two, we onboard our partners.  And then as you know, cause you understand real estate, it’s all about finding the deal.

So which means it’s all about marketing. You know, a lot of people spend a lot of time in this business and have nothing to show for it. And it’s because they’re not focused in the things that make you money and you, and I both know, especially in the beginning, it’s all about marketing and lead gen you know, contacts with owners and all that. So that’s where we kind of, that’s the focal point of where we get our partners focused in on and doing.

08:32 

Jason Lee: Yeah, I think that’s definitely the perfect kind of prototype that you’re looking for. I mean, I’ve realized that a lot of people in real estate they get started, but they realize how hard it is in the beginning and they end up backing out. I know when I first started, I started with, you know, six other guys at the company and maybe two made it and I saw about five more come and go. Is there some kind of trait or some sort of interview process you go through where you can kind of tell that this person’s going to make in real estate. Even though you see, they have the hustle, they have the drive, but you know, are they going to have that consistency to make it through your program and to actually bring you deals?

09:07 

Peter Vekselman: Man, if there was that magic wand, I’d have it by now. I don’t think so because, and you know, you and I both know the us in the beginning of any relationship, it’s all the highlights, right? I’m this, I’m that I’m superhero, I’m the best. You know what I mean? So everyone’s going to put their best foot forward. So no, I don’t think we found the perfect prototype. You know, it’s like hiring somebody, people say, well, I know how to make the perfect hire. And I don’t think that exists either. I don’t care what kind of test to give the person I don’t care what kind of resume they bring to the table. Those are things that stack the deck in the right direction. But they’re sure I could tell you, you know, I think you said, what part of California are you in?

09:45 

Jason Lee: I’m in San Diego. 

09:47 

Peter Vekselman: Okay. Well, you know, we were talking about one of my favorite partners. I don’t know, I’ve never said that favorite partners, Seth, you know, out of Modesto, California. I met him when he was 26. He didn’t know anything about real estate, probably if I was a betting man, I’d bet against him. And here it is three years later, we’ve done over 120 deals together. And if Seth was on this call, you’d be like, wow, this guy’s a superstar, but he wasn’t a superstar three years ago. So I’m out of the business of judging people. You know what I mean? It’s just, we give them opportunity and you know, some will some won’t.

10:20 

Jason Lee: It’s amazing, kind of playing devil’s advocate here. If you’re about to do your first deal with a partner. And let’s say they bring a house to you that looks like it has a lot of upside and you’ve never worked with, you know, this partner that you’ve hired on before. And obviously, you know, buying a property takes a lot of  logistics, you know, escrow title, the business plan to finish it, having the right contractor, having the right lender. Do you provide all that stuff? And then all the partner does is just provide you the opportunity. How’s that kind of work.

10:52 

Peter Vekselman: Well, remember it’s not even that we actually generate leads for our partners. We don’t just say, Hey, go find a deal. Cause it was just that simple, Everybody go find deal. We get involved on the acquisition side with our partners too, but we have a lot of checks and balances in place. We have a lot of checks and balances in place. You know, the truth be told the very first year I went to the partner model. I lost a lot of money because we didn’t have what you just said. We didn’t have the right checks and balances. We didn’t know how to correctly, you know, I was already investing across the us personally. We had the checks and balances in place for our own teams, but we didn’t have the checks and balances for a brand new person starting.

So we took, you know, I lost a lot of money in that first year. But now years down the road, we’re hitting on all cylinders. We have checks and balances in place from how to screen them, how to qualify them, how to do due diligence, how to do the inspections, obviously any repairs if they’re needed. You know, we went through the school of hard knocks as probably most people do to set up this model. So we have a lot of systems in place for all of this.

11:53 

Jason Lee: Got it. And then if I was, if me or someone else that’s watching were to want to join and partner with you, is there any upfront cost to that?

12:01 

Peter Vekselman: Yeah, we have different levels that people come in at different levels. And then, you know, we discuss that within each individual person that starts up with us, but we do have different levels that we bring people in on depending on what we offer back to them.

12:17 

Jason Lee: Got it. It’s a great model kind of switching gears here, Is there a reason why you decided to choose this model real estate? Cause I feel like I haven’t really talked to anyone before that, you know, has a ton of partners around the nation and teaches them, coaches them provides all the legwork to get them started. Just kind of curious about that.

12:35 

Peter Vekselman: I don’t think there is. How I got into it is we initially, you know, I’m from Atlanta. We initially did it for many years here in Atlanta and then I personally just wanted to get beyond Atlanta. So the very first place we went to was Jacksonville, Florida. And we set up a physical office there with physical people and for the next two or three years, we just dominated Jacksonville. And I did the same thing for me personally, across 17 different locations across the United States. We had a lot of things centralized, like marketing was coming out of Atlanta, but we were in physical locations, you know, investing across the states. And then I did what anyone else who successful does, you know, you don’t just kind of get to certain levels and say, well, let me just maintain it.

I’ll try and figure out, well, how do I get beyond these 17 cities? Cause you know, in the bigger your marketplace, there’s a big downside to it, but there’s also a big upside having a big marketplace there’s, you know, more to choose from. And that’s where initially, initially at that point, the partner driven model concept was born. Now initially, initially, like I said, we made a lot of mistakes because we didn’t have the right checks and balances. We had the right checks and balances for our 17 locations. Cause there were our people, they were, you know, we were paying them and all this, but when you just take a random person across the states and you start, you know, doing the things we do like fund the purchase, fund the rehab rely upon their information to gather numbers.

We weren’t prepared for it. And so first year was a bad year. Not a, it wasn’t a bad year. It was a bad financial year. But in that year we figured out how to put the right checks and balances in place for everyday people to come in. So the model, the inception of the model was just because I wanted to do more deals. I mean, that was it. And to this day, you know, I want to do more deals, but the whole dynamics has changed now. We’re really, really my we’re. Some of my best friends are my partners. We travel with my partners. You know, we had a I’m in my, in town place right now, but 45 minutes from here, I got an amazing lake house with just a drop dead gorgeous view.

We just had a month or so ago 15 of our partners spend the weekend with us up at the lake house. So really has, this has crossed the line of just people that we don’t know that we kind of do deals with. Like maybe happens a lot of times, this has really become a family. You know, this has really become a family. We know our partners, I know all my partners and we get really close with our partners. We had about 180 of our partners here just a couple weeks ago in Atlanta. So it’s really become a way of life for us. Like I said to such a level, I don’t even do my own deals anymore. You know, here you take an investor and I know how to do real estate deals. You know, before we started the partner model, people were always like, what were your numbers beforehand? Well, you appreciate this.

You understand real estate. We were generating a thousand seller calls a day, a day into our, you know, I had almost, I had frontline full-time negotiators negotiating these deals. So I was a pretty decent investor even before this. But then it was all about me and about the deal. And now it’s, it’s all about the partners. It’s all about the partners and having people, helping people level up and get to those next levels. So that’s where we started and that’s where we all are now.

15:53 

Jason Lee: Yeah. I think it’s a genius way to expand your company and to expand your deal reach because you know, I own seven apartment complexes down here in San Diego and I would love to reach out to Tennessee or Chicago, Seattle, those other markets. And the reason why I’m scared is because I don’t want boots on the ground there, right? So once you have relationships forming all around, you know, the world or the country, it’s powerful. So it’s good stuff what you’re doing. I really like it.

16:22 

Peter Vekselman: I appreciate it. Thanks, that means a lot. Appreciate it. Thank you.

16:27 

Jason Lee: Yeah. Yeah. So what was the biggest mistake that you’ve made through creating your partner driven business?

16:32 

Peter Vekselman: It Was the same mistake that each individual, most individual investors make when they get started and it’s where all the money is lost. It was not having the right checks and balances on the rehab side. You know, we thought that because we did it successfully ourselves, that we’d be able to replicate it. But really, I mean, I remember in the first year we were doing this, there was a deal that I got taken for $110,000. And it was actually by a partner. It wasn’t even by a contractor, but it was a partner who said he was a contractor. And you know, we checked him out, seemed to check out and here I was the closing that deal and bring 110,000 to the table.

So really that was the biggest thing. You know how to correctly, take somebody that you don’t quite know yet and how to correctly walk them through the due diligence piece of the rehab. Cause a lot of times it’s not even the partners fault. It’s, you know how the contractors are? At our levels, We still try to, you know, contractors try to take an advantage of us. And now you take a partner in Iowa, who’s just getting started in real estate and they’re in charge of you know, So now we co to a degree about 80, we take over that project. You know, like for instance, we just closed one in Orlando, I believe. And fairly new partners, second deal with this partner was like 400 to buy and 80 to fix.

And you and I both know 80 to fix, That’s a big rehab job, you know, and it’s never 80, right? That 80,000 doesn’t exist, you know, 80 is where it starts. So we went through a series, a series of steps with that local contractor to make sure everything was in line and everything thing was on track. But yeah, that was the biggest mistakes not having the right system set up for to qualify the rehab side, the numbers, you know, numbers, you can get access anywhere right now. You know, the world we live in right now, everything is information, technology based. The numbers is not the hard part is when you still have the people, part of it, you know, the main of between the people, part of it. That’s the hard part.

18:33 

Jason Lee: Yeah. I resonate with that because the biggest mistake I made was not vet my contractor and I lost probably over $150,000 on my first couple jobs because of that. So anyone that’s listening, make sure you vet out your contractor correctly and make sure he, or she has licensed and they do what they say they’re going to do cause it’ll make or break your numbers.

18:54 

Peter Vekselman: No question about it. And it’s funny cause that’s the thing that broke me when I got started 22 years ago. And to this day that’s still the hardest part of the business. I don’t think that kind of goes well, you just get better at it and you can absorb mistakes more when you have more. But the concept of that doesn’t change that’s for sure.

19:12 

Jason Lee: Definitely. And then on the debt side of things, how do you handle the financing when you are buying these deals? Is it mostly private money loans or are you buying them all cash, what’s kind of your Mo on that? 

19:22 

Peter Vekselman: It’s all, you know, it goes the good, the thing for our partners that always comes from my side. My partners never have to bring anything to the table. They not have to sign on any loans or anything like that. But from my end I have various sources, whether it’s my own capital, whether it’s institutional capital, I’m always bringing the money to the table.

19:40 

Jason Lee: Got it, got it. And then one question I really want to ask you is what’s kind of from your 20 something year journey, what’s the thing you like most about being in the real estate world?

19:51 

Peter Vekselman: You know, everybody gets into real estate for two things, money, and time. You and I both know not a lot of people become successful in this business, especially those that try to do it themselves. But even the ones that do become successful many find themselves in a trap of they’re making okay money, but they never achieved a lifestyle. And the thing that’s really for me, the big thing is, you know, crossing that line of not only making good money in this business, but also having an incredible lifestyle to go with it. And you know, that comes as a result of the team that comes as a result of learning how to scale things. But I’ll tell you, not every business has the side.

There’s plenty businesses out there that you could make even very good money on. But you look at the guys at the top, they’re still working their butts off. And not to say that you can’t do that in real estate either, but in real estate, if money is important, but lifestyle’s critical, this is the business to be at. And if you set it up correctly, the way I think I’ve done, it’s it’ll pay not only financially, but it’ll pay in a lifestyle and time wise tenfold, if not more.

20:59 

Jason Lee: That’s a great answer. I think a lot of people forget why they get started in real estate and they just go into the grind and never scale. And they’re in the office, you know, all day long. That’s me right now, honestly, I’m in the office probably day and night, but I’m in the process of building a team as well. I’m nowhere close to where you’re at, but I’m trying to get to that stage where I have systems in place, hire the right people. Good people. It’s tough. Can you just take us through a little bit about your hiring process and how you’ve built a superstar team you’ve built today?

21:30 

Peter Vekselman: Well, I’ll tell you, I did hiring a little bit different, you know, I’m right now 100% in an alignment business. What I mean by that is I am constantly chasing the right relationships. But interestingly enough, at the business level, I did not hire almost anyone that’s part of my team because when I built business out, I took a little bit different. It’s not a different philosophy, but I took a very deliberate philosophy and that was this. I did not want to get in the business of hiring people and building out teams. I got in the business of hiring one right person.

And from that one person, and by the way that person is Julie, she’s still with me today from that one person grew everything. And I think that’s a mistake. Well, it’s not a mistake. It’s I think it’s something that a lot of small business owners get sucked into. They think they got to do it themselves. I got to hire this guy and this guy and this guy, and I took it a little bit different. I said, no, no. I find out one person, you know, it’s like, it’s weird. No one hires their CEO in the beginning. I kind of did. I kind of did because I knew I was a long term player. I knew what my strengths were. I knew what my weaknesses were. And I knew that if I were to bring the right person, the ins it’s really an ops person.

And if I knew, if I could bring the right ops person in and I had a, this is a years ago now and you know, I give old credit to Julie. I mean, you know, she, so that’s my philosophy is that too many people try to do it themselves, not the business sounds, but I need to hire this manager and this manager and this person and this person. And the question you ask yourself, are you the ops guy, are you really, is that your strength? And most people are not ops. They just think that’s the way it’s done. Whereas I knew that I’m going to bring the right per in. I’m going to take care of that person. I’m going to back that person. I’m going to help that person support that person. Julie was an ops person. You know, she and I had a just incredible meteoric, you know, rise in this business.

23:23 

Jason Lee: Sounds like you’re the visionary, not the ops person.

23:25 

Peter Vekselman: Two different people, two different people, you know, Julie to this day is implementing, implementing, implementing, implementing, whereas I’m visionary, guiding the ship, you know, two different people. Absolutely.

23:42 

Jason Lee: Yeah. It’s very important to understand who you are. I think too many people try to take both roles and ends up being their own demise. So was there a point where you knew that you had to hire someone because you know, obviously your business was growing, you’re doing great, but you said you had your team in place. Like was she there from the very beginning or did you kind of just hire her once kind of needed to really get things growing fast and you didn’t want to deal with the hiring process anymore?

24:05 

Peter Vekselman: Yeah. When I wanted to start scaling, you know, I brought Julian after the crash of 2008. So before the crash, I had a different team, I had a full-fledged partner back then and all this, then the crash kind of brought it all to a halt. And then when I reentered the market, I reentered it with my money guy, just Bob and I, we got an office and it was time to scale. And so initially I brought Julie on from a scalability on the marketing side, cause we know it’s all about marketing. And I brought her on with that vision and then quickly realized she could, she was more than just scaling a marketing department for me. She could scale all of it for me.

24:44 

Jason Lee: Got it. It sounds like lead gen generation is something you’re really good at lead generation marketing. Very important side of real estate for someone who’s looking to generate leads, fine leads, fine sellers. How are you doing it today? And at what do you recommend for someone who’s looking to, you know, get started in that business? 

25:00 

Peter Vekselman: Well, number one, the basics are still the basics. The things that we used to do decades ago still work today, you know, direct mail and things like that. But how you want to look at lead gen is I always tell people there’s two boxes when it comes to lead gen and real estate investing. One is an outbound lead. One is an inbound lead and everything else falls in those two categories. Okay. An outbound lead is, you know, you pick up a phone, you know, you call somebody like, Hey, you want to sell your property. That’s how most of us got started. Okay.

For a lot of reasons, you know, it doesn’t cost us money. You know, it’s how you learned this business and all this, the downside of that outbound is that it’s the toughest lead cause you’re reaching out. The other box is what’s called an inbound lead. An inbound lead is when the phone rings and you pick it up and like, Hey, I heard you’re in a real estate business. You buy properties in the end. You got to understand how to do both. But in the end you ultimately want to get to a point where it’s as much inbound as possible because there’s no better lead than somebody picking. You know, that’s, there’s already some kind of motivation. We know there’s some kind of a reason.

So that’s what do you want to get into? And I could tell you, there is no better, as far as I’m concerned, inbound lead than a web-based generated lead only because you could do more with it. You know, you could do a lot of inbound leads, let’s say from direct mail or you could do a billboard somewhere. You can run an ad. Problem is you can’t qualify to the level. You can qualify on the internet, you know, on the website you could put questions, motivation levels and all this.

So to answer your question, two types of leads, inbound and outbound, you start out with in outbound cause it’s free and that’s where you cut your teeth on. You ultimately want to start converting as much to inbound as possible. And ultimately, ultimately you want to get to the stages where it is web based inbound and you know, those tend to cost the most too. But again, there tend to be the, the most qualified ones in the end.

27:05 

Jason Lee: Got it. So you’re using by web based, you mean like Google PPC and like Facebook marketing, all that stuff. 

27:09 

Peter Vekselman: Any of those

27:10 

Jason Lee: Yeah. I mean that’s a huge, huge tip. I mean, I feel like outbound is great when you’re first starting, like you said, but it takes up all your time. You know, when you’re first starting like me, I mean you’re cold calling, you know, six to eight hours a day. It’s not how you want to live the rest of your life. Eventually you make more money and then you have that capital to spend on marketing to get more leads and go from there. So it’s cool. How you broke that down really well on the accounting side of things. Do you have like a set marketing budget you put aside from your profits or is it kind of just kind of a gut thing or is it very matriculated? 

27:42 

Peter Vekselman: Little bit of a gut thing. Again, it goes back to the same thing. It’s a lot of times based upon the partner, you know, you take a partner where you’re hitting the out of the ballpark, you bump up the marketing budget, you take a partner where you’re not hitting out of the ballpark. You know, you want that partner to produce some stuff. So it’s not across the board. It really is. It’s a combination of the right partners, gut thing, sometimes market driven, we all know market sometimes get affect marketing and all that. So it’s a combination of all of that.

28:12 

Jason Lee: Yeah. That’s a good segue to my next question. I mean, what is kind of your take on the current market right now and what’s going on?

28:18 

Peter Vekselman: Best market I’ve ever seen best market in my sector, single family, you know, obviously, cause of COVID I say it right now, it’s like we’re in this perfect equilibrium. And what I mean by that is in real estate, there’s always, you know, appreciation depreciation, seller, market, buyer, market, easy money. Can’t get money from anybody, but we’re in this little equilibrium point where you have this huge, huge motivation by a lot of sellers, obviously, cause of COVID and it’s only going to get greater with these moratoriums being lifted. But at the same time, as we know, there’s tons of new money in real estate too. So huge demand on the other side, whether it’s a, a regular buyer that wants to buy something or an investor buyer. So huge motivation here, huge demand here, we’re in the middle. Don’t get any better than that. Yeah. Incredible market, absolutely incredible market.

29:06 

Jason Lee: That’s a great answer. I didn’t really think about it that way cause there are definitely a lot of opportunities rising as time goes on like you said, but there’s so much, so many millennials, so many people looking to buy a house right now that it’s kind of that perfect equilibrium. So it’s well said. And how are you currently? So back to two, let’s say 2010, 2011, 2012, when the market was rising pretty quick and it was coming out of the recession. Are you seeing more activity now or versus then?

29:36 

Peter Vekselman: Yeah, this is the best I’ve ever seen it. More activity, better activity, more opportunity, more demand. I mean literally the reason I call it [29:44 inaudible] is cause it’s like all the factors, you know, money’s cheap as we know, it’s just it’s I don’t know what else could be put in place to make it a better market than it is right now. Having said that we also know that everything in real estate is temporary. You know, it’s not always going to be like this. So you got to really, this is the time to do it. This is the time to really shine and take advantage of the opportunities that have been placed in front of us. No question about it.

30:09 

Jason Lee: And what do you see changing this current market into a slower market that’s not as robust as it is.

30:16 

Peter Vekselman: I don’t know. I mean obviously if the rates start going up, there could be some slow down there. You know, if the government keeps that extent ending these moratoriums and one day says here’s unlimited money just, we’re going to pay off your mortgages. I don’t know. But I honestly for the things like that, like that are just kind of way out there. I don’t know, I think it’s going to be a fairly length, I think it’s going to be fairly lengthy ride, a good ride right now. I don’t know how long or when it’s going to end and but all in the, obviously we know it’s great now, but all indicators are pointing towards a pretty decently solid run in my world.

30:52 

Jason Lee: No, I agree. Same with the multifamily world. Do you focus on any other assets besides single family homes or is that just like the so that you focus on?

31:00 

Peter Vekselman: I’ve done pretty much everything. Houses, departments, commercial land zonings, but no, right our lane, our bulls are right now is single family. No question about it.

31:11 

Jason Lee: Got it. And in the single family home space, where are you seeing the opportunities right now? What kind of, is there certain markets where you’re seeing more volume or is it kind of same throughout. 

31:21

Peter Vekselman: It’s again, cause I’m a partner driven model. I’m a people driven model. For me, It’s all about the right partners. You know, every day I get to ask that question, you know, pick the market and I’m like, no I’m picking the person for me because the uniqueness of my model, it’s all about the person.

31:38 

Jason Lee: Yeah. There’s opportunities every market, right. It’s just about, who’s going to go get those opportunities.

31:41 

Peter Vekselman: That’s it. You better believe it. 

31:43 
Jason Lee: Well kind of wrapping up here, Is there any advice you have for someone who’s watching the show right now and wants to get started in real estate?

31:51 

Peter Vekselman: Well, it’s the same advice that I give to everybody, no matter what they want to do, you got to align yourself in life. It’s all about alignment. It’s not how good you are. It’s not how smart you are. It’s not how much of a hard worker you are. It’s all about how well you are align yourself with people that are more successful than you. Alignment in my opinion is the ultimate shortcut to success. You know, there’s always two rows to travel. One road is you’re going to do it yourself. And the other road is you’re going to follow the pathway of somebody more successful. And I don’t know doing it yourself has ever been a shorter path than following someone more successful.

So, and especially in real estate, because real estate is really, it’s not just kind of a hit or miss, it’s a financial game. I mean, you sneeze the wrong way in this business, you could lose $10,000. So, and let’s face it. Not everybody gets in real estate as unlimited capital. Most people don’t. So this is a very upside business, but it’s also has a huge downside. So in more than anything, I think if somebody wants to get in real estate, aligning themselves with the right person, team, organization is the way to do it.

32:55 

Jason Lee: That’s huge. And what are some books you’d recommend for someone who’s looking at some started in this business?

33:01 

Peter Vekselman: Oh gosh, I never read a book in this business. I’ve never, honestly, I don’t know. I read general books. Like I think, you know, general great book is like, who moved my cheese? Because you have the opportunities kind of change, but a real estate book, honestly, I don’t know. I’ve never read a real estate book in my life.

33:18 

Jason Lee: Gotcha. Gotcha. Any books that have change your life  just in general?

33:22 

Peter Vekselman: Well that one, like who moved my cheese I think is a phenomenal book. Yeah. Yeah. It talks about how you have to learn how to invent and reinvent yourself. And boy, that is so true in the real estate business. And that is also so, so true overall in many business, got to learn a bottom line opportunities change even within the real estate segment that I’m in. I always have to constantly reinvent myself and that’s a big, big, big piece.

33:45 

Jason Lee: Yeah. That’s extremely important. You got to adapt to your environment. You got to always be on your toes. It’s huge. Cool. Well, Hey kind of wrapping the show here. Is there anything that you’d like to say or where the audience can find you after watching the show?

34:00 

Peter Vekselman: Sure. Well, if somebody wants to learn more about my partnership program, they can literally go to our website, www.partnerdriven.com. Somebody wants to learn just more about me and how I do things and my philosophy things, how I spend my dates just on me on social media, like Instagram, go to instagram.com/petervekselman. And it’s a quick way to learn about me and it’s also quick to touch base with me specifically about the partnership program directly.

34:27 

Jason Lee: Perfect. Well, Hey, thank you so much for your time, Peter. And hope to talk to you soon.

34:31 

Peter Vekselman: I appreciate it Jason. Thank you. 

34:33 

Jason Lee: Thanks Peter.

34:35 

Thank you for joining us on the multi-family millionaire podcast. The show that interviews multi-millionaire real estate investors and top producers in the real estate industry, we’re here to help you create passive income and achieve financial freedom so that you can do what you want whenever you want. We’ll catch you next time on the multifamily millionaire.

End of Transcript