1st Year In The Program – Lost Job – 1st Deal in 45 Days – 3k Profit

Read Transcript for “1st Year In The Program – Lost Job – 1st Deal in 45 Days – 3k Profit”

 
George: George Wyatt, Chicago, Illinois. The first deal I did was a $3,000 deal. It took me a little while to get started. I felt I had to know everything and learn everything, and the fastest learning that I did was picking up the phone. That deal was everything Joe taught us not to do. So it wasn’t the traditional easy deal. I was a little nervous and shaking while signing the contracts. But it gets easier. That was memorable, and everything not to do.
 
George: Well, like I said, I had to read everything and know everything, so it took about a month and a half to get the memo signed. The seller wanted more than it was worth, rent wise. So it took probably about 45 days, but we kept going back and forth and lowering the rent and when it got to where the rent was lowered to where it needed to be, we moved it in 3 days I think. I probably had 10 hours in that deal, which if you figure out, by the time you meet with the sellers, get the memo signed, do your showing, and send some emails, it was easy work and it basically works out to about 300 dollars per hour.
 
George: The best deal I’ve done was $10,000. The down side of that deal, which I’ll never forget this deal, is that I didn’t raise the selling price enough. I even went back to the seller to ask them if they’d take less. They said, ‘No, this is what you told me you were going to give me.’ What I’ve learned is to raise that selling price high enough and you can always drop that down because this person – we had two people competing for the house. And the girl asked me, ‘How can I knock the other competition out?’ And I said, ‘Well, you’re neck and neck. You both have about the same income. You both have about the same credit. Both of you are going to take about the same amount of time to buy.’ She said, ‘Well, if I came up with $10,000, would that knock them out?’ I said, ‘I’m sure we can make something work.’ So that was memorable. But I did give the seller $3,000 out of the 10. Because that’s what I told him I would do and I want to stand by what I say I’m going to do. He was very happy; he got a good person in the house. And they’re probably going to close in the next few months I think. That’s pretty exciting. The reason it was even memorable is because the guy that moved in the house should be dead – he had pancreatic cancer. He had to file bankruptcy because he had so many medical bills. He lives life to the fullest now and never thought he could own a house. That was exciting.

Interviewer: You got to help somebody?

 
George: That made me feel good. So it wasn’t as much about the money as much as that this guy thought his life was over. And now he lives life like it’s his last day on earth. So that made me feel good.
 
George: I want to say it was on Facebook, on the right side where they have the little ads and it says that you could buys. There’s some type of investor. So I clicked on it to see the list of homes and so that’s where I found him. But I am a seminar junkie and I’ve got burned a lot. I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars for programs that don’t work; 30 day money back guarantees where you can’t find the people, etc. So this time I did due diligence for 3 months. I looked for everything I could find, on Google, etc. – anything – Joe crump scam; any of that. I couldn’t find anything. So I said, ‘Well, that’s got to be pretty good.’ And I’m blessed that I did find him. I think the guy is down to Earth and very true to life. I’ve been in the program for a year and the mentorship for 6 months. I can send him an email today and usually within 24 hours, he’s back with me, so I implore somebody to find a mentor that’s on the phone with them every 2 weeks and answers any questions and any emails. He has a way of teaching, and I tell this to a couple of other students – I had a math teacher in high school – the smartest man I ever met in my life. But he couldn’t teach. So I think that’s a gift – that somebody can teach what they know because he couldn’t teach math. This guy truly cares that you succeed when with most people, once they have your signup fee or whatever you want to call it, they’re done with you – they’re moving onto the next. And then my other thing was, ‘Okay, Joe. I’m buying in. We’re at the back of the room. Where’s the next piece of the pie?’ Because with most people, they just get your appetite wet. But he gives you the whole package. I admire that and I don’t know anybody else that does what he does. And it’s the first time that I made money with any of the courses, so I like that. This is my one year anniversary.
 
George: Me and Joe struggle with this. Maybe I’m a little bit of a control freak but I started getting really busy. So he said, ‘George, you need to automate.’ So I hired somebody on Elance. They didn’t do anything for two weeks. He said, ‘Get somebody else.’ She just didn’t work – let’s put it that way. So I am still trying to do everything myself. My wife wants to get more involved so she’s going to be my new virtual assistant I guess. I don’t know – she’s not too virtual; I see her every day. It gets her involved. She’s excited about this whole program. She’s really excited when she sees the checks, which I am too, but I don’t get too excited until it’s in my hand because we know that not all of them actually work out. I have automated but I’m not as good at it as I should be. I don’t do too many calls. What I’ve learned with automation is I do send out a lot of emails and I wasn’t as good (I’m really good at it now) but I wasn’t as good as saving those emails and putting them on my auto responder. Now I’m very diligent about that, and actually two days ago – I don’t know how it happened or where it came from – but I got an email with a memo signed. And it had to be from one of these people that said no or maybe; I don’t know. So I put the email in my auto responder and I called her and I’m meeting with her next week or Wednesday I think. That was kind of cool – it came from the clear blue, just dropped from the sky. I’ve had about 5 deals happen like that. And that’s pretty exciting when you just wake up and see it’s there and think, ‘Is that real?’ So that’s exciting. That was pretty cool.
 
George: It’s been a roller coaster ride. I’m not going to say it was easy. I’m not going to say I got rich. It’s something you have to work at all the time. And I work 7 days a week at it, maybe not so much some days, but I always do something for the business, whether its signs, whether its sending emails, whether its answering calls, talking to buyers – something happens every day. I was going to do this alongside my job but when I signed up, I lost my job which gives me the time to do as much or little as I want. I create my own hours; I’m my own boss.
 
George: A job opportunity came up about a month ago; project manager (which is what I used to do) and I turned it down. I didn’t want to be answering to somebody. I mean, I can ramp this business up to be as busy as I want to be or as slow as I want to be. And if I don’t work tomorrow then I don’t work tomorrow but if you don’t – Joe guarantees you one thing – if you don’t do any work you don’t make any money. So I would like to make more money just like anybody else. But it’s been tough. I’m not going to say it’s been easy. It’s easier than digging ditches. But it’s a people business and if you don’t like to talk to people, I don’t know how you could ever succeed at this business. So I will say that.
 
George: I met some really great people throughout the times I’ve been here. And that’s one great thing – you meet some good people that are doing the same thing you’re doing. So my goal this year is to do more of the hierarchy stuff that Joe teaches. He teaches you to do this first to try and get some cash flow going. So I’m trying to fully automate the rent to own and I’m going to try to focus on getting my own houses this year. My goal is 10 houses by the end of the year. We’ll see how that goes but I think I have the knowledge. I know I have the support of email and phone calls from other people that are doing what I want to do. And it’s kind of nice that you build a network of friends and people that you can talk to. You don’t need to know it all. It’s like I heard one time – I think it might have been one of the CD’s I heard. I can’t remember. That ‘When I turn a light switch on, I don’t need to know how it got turned on other than the light went on.’ So that I kind of take that philosophy that if you do something to make it happen, the pieces will fall into place. And I think even with the rent to own, people get intimidated by all the contracts. But when you do it once, it’s pretty easy. It’s not that hard. And if it is that hard, go back and look at the video and it teaches you how to do it. But you don’t have to know all of that – you just have to start doing something.
 
George: To do the work. You paid good money to be here. Joe will tell you where to start. I know when I first started it was hours and hours of tapes. He sends you the boot camp tapes and cd’s, all the books, all the Push Button stuff and I thought I had to do it all. But until I picked up the phone, that didn’t mean a hill of beans. My advice is to do what he tells you to do, and if you don’t do anything, you’re not going to make any money. I’m a testimonial to that because I gave up probably three months into it. And I’d already signed deals and I’d already made money, but I think somebody hurt my feelings or was mean on the phone or maybe I had a continuation of a few of those. You can’t fix the world – you don’t know what’s on that person’s plate at any given moment. But you’ve got to realize that they have one house and you have a wealth of houses out there. I mean, there’s many, many, many people in trouble right now that you can help. And if you look at it in that point of view – and some of these people are going to be bitter when you talk to them because they’re not in a good place right now. If you can help that person, you’d be surprised how happy and how they turn it around, and if you could just comfort them a little bit and offer them your service… Because you are very knowledgeable whether you realize it or not after you take this program. I’m amazed of what I know. I was afraid of these big guys but they don’t know as much as I do right now.
 
George: I got better at real estate over the years. I used to build houses and I’d do 3 to 5 of those a year. I did some rehabbing and project management in office buildings. But this is a whole different way of thinking outside the box. And I didn’t know this part of it. I’m very thankful that I’m with Joe.
 
George: I did. But I bought it wrong. I put too much in it. I was going to flip it. And I was successful on a few others but then the market just tanked. But now, this is the perfect storm for the business that we’re in because most of the people that are renting now are not investors. These are a lot of homeowners that couldn’t sell their house. They don’t know what they’re doing. They’re going to be in worse shape or get themselves in trouble because they don’t know how to rent a house. They’ll listen to the song and dance from a lot of the buyers or the tenants and shortly, they just don’t even want it anymore. So if you can help them and it doesn’t really cost the seller anything, then you’re doing a lot of work for them and you should get paid well for what you do, because you’re fixing something that they had no idea what to do with. And that’s what we get paid for – for fixing their problems.
 
George: I don’t like being a landlord to be perfectly honest with you. But I set my expectations high in the beginning so that there’s no doubt of where it’s going and what to expect; ‘I don’t put up with late’ and, ‘You’re going to get charged for that.’ I will serve you five days if you’re late. And I tell people, ‘Think about it. If you had 20 people that are renting your houses, and everybody was late every single month.’ That’s the other side of the coin, too – is that they think you’ve got millions of dollars and they’re just a lowly person and they expect you to carry that burden. Well, you’ve got to treat it like a business because it’s a business. And I think that’s why landlords fail – they don’t have the knowledge that we have.
 
George: I love Joe Crump. I think he’s the best guy in the world. I’m not trying to sell anything for Joe. I’ve been in a lot of courses and a lot of mentorships and I’m almost embarrassed of how much money I’ve spent, and this is the first program that I’ve made money with. He’s a compassionate guy. He wants to see you succeed. He hates it when people don’t. But he can’t dial the phone for them. And I’m amazed at how many people have come back, and I feel bad – I’ve given my phone number to everybody pretty much at these events, and they don’t pick up the phone to even call me. And then you see them a year later and they still haven’t done a deal – I don’t understand that. Even if you do everything wrong, you can still do a deal because there’s a lot of people out there that need help. I think they want to automate – they don’t want to do anything – they don’t want to talk to buyers. They don’t want to talk to sellers.
 
George: When I started, I talked to every buyer that came in because I wanted to see what they wanted and where they wanted to live. Naturally you get the ‘I want four bedrooms, two baths on a lakefront for $400 a month.’ – You’ll get those. But it was a good learning process to talk to everybody. Now I only want to talk to people that are interested. I’m not saying that I couldn’t convert those that weren’t interested but I’d rather, if they say they’re not interested, put their email into the auto responder. And then they get mad at me. And Joe said, ‘Well, maybe you should unsubscribe them.’ And I said, ‘I’m not doing that. There’s a little button there and all they have to do is push it and they can unsubscribe.’ The reason that I say that is because they haven’t had enough pain yet. Now if I unsubscribe them, they’re going to say, ‘Man, I wish I had that guys…’ So maybe I’ve made myself a little gnat that flies around their head a little bit. But my thing is that you can unsubscribe but I’m not doing it for you. And I believe that this deal I just got was a no and they didn’t tell me to quit sending them anything, because now I’m a little different. Now I say, ‘Are you sure you want to do this? Why don’t you just rent it?’ Because I don’t want to be competing with landlords; that’s a big waste of my time. So I’m a little bit different. I’d take anything at the beginning, and I’d probably still take anything now, but I want them to totally understand what I do and Joe’s favorite line is “Here’s how I work.” – That’s a very strong, powerful message. It’s your business and you can make the rules however you want. If you don’t do it that way, you find yourself very frustrated because they’ll have you running around in circles.
 
George: But it’s like he says, ‘Sometimes these people want to make the rules just like your kids want to make the rules. That stove’s hot – don’t touch it.’ What are you, just going to let them touch the stove because they want to make the rules? He uses good analogies – you’re doing what’s best for that person. And if you’re keeping that persons best interest in mind, you’ll do okay. Money will follow. I got into it for the money, but if you’re just money hungry and you’re not helping people, I don’t know that it works hand in hand. I guess it will but I don’t think like that. I did in the beginning. But there’s a lot of pain out there.
 
George: I love doing what I do now. I love being able to wake up when I want, go to bed when I want, take these off when I want, and I’m not saying that I made what I used to make. I used to make pretty good money but my point is that my quality of life now is a little bit better. But in the rent to own, when you stop working that business, you stop making money, so I’m trying to look at more longer term stuff now to supplement, so that when you do have that slow month or you want to go on vacation that month, you still have income coming in. So that’s kind of my goal for this year is to make it more of a sustainable business to where I don’t need to be doing everything involved. I’m also thinking of outsourcing more things, maybe looking for somebody to show my properties because it doesn’t really cost you anything to do that unless you fill it. So that’s kind of some of my goals – because I can’t do everything anymore. You just get burnt out. And then you won’t do anything well. So that’s my goal this year.