Buying 100+ Houses/Year in 4 Hours/Week Using Teams, Traction, and (Get this…) TikTok with Ryan Pineda

Brandon:
This is the BiggerPockets Podcast show 407.

Ryan:
The more success we have, how do I stay humble and not let the success get to our heads? First off, anyone we hire must pass all four of those core values; if they don’t have those, we ain’t hiring them. I don’t care if they’re the best sales guy in the world. I don’t care if they have the most experience. If they lack one of those, they cannot work for us.

Pre-Roll:
You’re listening to BiggerPockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you are here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you’re in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online.

Brandon:
What is going on, everyone? This is Brandon Turner, host of the BiggerPockets Podcast here with my co-host, Mr. David Greene. What’s up, David Greene? Happy weekend.

David:
What’s up, Brandon Turner. Thank you for that. It’s been a good weekend. We got a little bit of clear air again finally, and I got a lot of time to do some thinking. Today’s show, as the result of somebody who did a lot of thinking, we had Ryan here on it was 272 or 292.

Brandon:
292. Yeah.

David:
It was 292, and we both loved him so much we asked him to come back on. His business has blown up since we last talked, so there’s a ton of gems to pull out of this one.

Brandon:
Yeah, it’s true. Ryan actually was one of the members who came out to Maui about a year and a half ago. You guys have probably heard me talk about the Maui Mastermind we did out here, which was just a group of 18 high-level investors sharing and doing life together and set some big goals. Anyway, Ryan was one of those guys that came out, and we had a great time with him. I got to see him first when he was on the show back on 292, then a year and a half ago with that, and then now today, and just to see his growth has been just phenomenal. They’re still flipping over 100 houses a year; but now he’s got onto some other really cool high-level stuff including, of all things, TikTok. You’re going to learn today how Ryan is raising money via TikTok. No dancing required. You’re going to love that.
He also talks a lot about the mindset. He’s had to shift from being an entrepreneur like, “Just do stuff and have fun,” to being a business owner, and how that actually provides more freedom and more excitement and joy in life for you and your team. He talks about growing his team, hiring people. We talked about so much good stuff, and today it was really, really… it was one of the shows that’s just like fine wine; it’s better the longer you get into it, right? It just gets better and better and better. This show, I really, really enjoyed our conversation with Ryan, so let’s get into it.
Before we do, let’s get to today’s Quick Tip.

David:
Quick Tip.

Brandon:
You want to take it, David?

David:
Yes. Today’s Quick Tip, you actually briefly mentioned it, is related to Ryan’s recent success. He talks a lot about how he’s used online platforms to further his business, but what you don’t know is that Ryan got the ideas to do that from in-person meetings in Mastermind that he’s a part of. By talking to people in different groups that he was in, they gave him ideas to do the things like getting on TV and starting the TikTok that all connects his business, so our advice to you is to join a group of people. Find a Mastermind, find a RIA, find a BiggerPockets meetup, whatever it is, but get around people that think different than you. Get out of the virtual world; get into the real world. Share, be transparent, be vulnerable with what’s going on in your life, and take in some of the advice you get, and it just may be what you’ve been needing to get over the hump that you’re facing.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s so good, man. I love it.
I think we’re ready to get into today’s show. Anything you want to add before we start this thing?

David:
No. Let’s do it.

Brandon:
All right. This is Ryan Pineda from Homerun Offer. Make sure you listen to his actual TV commercial. We’re going to play it later on in today’s episode, so hang tight for that as well. Let’s get to it.
Ryan, welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. Man, good to have you here.

Ryan:
Happy to be back.

Brandon:
You have been busy since the last time you were on the show. You were on what, episode… I think it was 292 a while ago where we talked all about couch flipping and working in baseball. You were with the Oakland A’s, right? Doing something like that. We went through that whole story which is cool, and people should go listen to it, it was amazing and one of my favorites, but today you’re doing something a little bit different. Today, you’re really taking your business to a new level, and that’s why today we want to talk with you not necessarily like, “How do you buy a duplex? How do you flip a house?” We have a lot of great shows on that, and your last one we went and discussed that. Today, I want to know how you were able to do that. What’s the mindset? What are the actions? Who are you hiring? How do you even know what to do in there? Then, I want to talk about TikTok as well. Yeah, I’m excited about this.
Let’s start with TikTok, all right? Because I’ve got to get this out of the way.

Ryan:
Okay.

Brandon:
I’ve been looking at TikTok for a little while now. This is where teenagers go to dance and do their little shaking their stuff, and I’m like the old grumpy guy who’s like, “That’s just a stupid social network.” All of a sudden, it started to get more and more popular, so then I download it and I quickly get obsessed with it. I’m scrolling all day learning stuff because there’s educational content, there’s dancing people, and then just funny stuff. It’s super entertaining. Then, I’m like, “This is just sucking me into it,” and I deleted it from my phone. Then, I put it back on my phone, and take it off, and put it back on again.
Then, I’m like, “I’m going to start a TikTok. I’m just doing it,” and then I’m like, “I don’t have time for that,” and then I look and you’ve got what 300,000 TikTok followers, something like that, which is nuts. So, I’m like, “Let’s talk to the guy and find out.” First of all, what the heck are you doing at TikTok? How do you have 300,000 following you? Should people be doing that in real estate right now? Should David be dancing? These are all the things I want to cover, and then we’re going to get into some more real estate topics.

Ryan:
Either way, David should definitely be dancing, whether he’s on TikTok or not, but I got on TikTok during the pandemic. I actually started the TikTok five months ago or so, six months maybe. To get that amount of followers in six months, I was stunned too because I’ve been in Instagram forever and trying to grow that is really hard. During that time I also started YouTube, and it’s been a wild ride, man.
But I think TikTok is so good because I was the same way as you. I’m like, “This is kids. This is stupid,” and I actually had a buddy who was like, “Dude, you need to get on it. No other real estate investors are on it. Nobody’s on it. If you just do it you’ll grow quick,” and he was right. It was just because there’s not a lot of competition it’s easy to grow; and like you mentioned, it’s super addicting.

Brandon:
Yeah.

Ryan:
I don’t know about you, but I’m not very much… I don’t watch a lot of social media. I put out a lot of content, but I’m not consuming a lot. But TikTok, dude, you can get sucked into it and just watch for hours just because there’s so much crazy stuff that goes on.

Brandon:
Yeah. It’s completely nuts and how much… you just start swiping. All these social networks are really good about sucking you in, but I feel like TikTok just perfected it.

Ryan:
They’re the best.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s where the audience is at. Does it help in your real estate in any way? Is it just fun, it’s a fun hobby? How do you see that thing progressing? How is that working currently for you, and where do you see that headed in terms of helping your business?

Ryan:
A lot of people won’t believe this, but it has helped tremendously. One way that anybody can benefit from it is I’ve already raised money from it. A lot of you are like, “How did you raise money? Fricking kids are… they don’t have money.” Well, what happened was a lot of YouTubers are on TikTok, and a lot of these YouTubers are young people with a lot of money. Long story short, this YouTuber with 15 million YouTube subs DMed me. He’s like, “Hey, I saw your TikToks. I want to get involved in real estate. Can you help me out?” and I was like, “Sure. Here’s the ways we can do it together. What do you want to do?” and sure enough he became a private lender for me. He’s already lent on three deals, very good interest rates, 100% financing. He’s super young sitting on millions of dollars, doesn’t know what to do with it, so that’s already one way it’s paid off.

Brandon:
That’s cool. That’s awesome. That applies to just in general social media. It doesn’t have to be a $15 million person. If you put content out there into the world and let the world know that you are doing real estate, or you like real estate, people are on social media like, “Oh, that guy does real estate. Real estate is cool. I want to do real estate,” and so they’re going to find you. I’ve raised I think… I don’t even know where I’m at right now. I think we’re launching fund three now pretty soon. We were at $16 million, we’ll get another $20 million in the next fund we’re going to raise, and almost all of it has come from either social media, or some people who listen to the podcast, but really even the podcast people came through social media because I don’t broadcast that I have a podcast very often. Yeah, so social media is huge for right now.
David, what do you think on that? You use social media as well. Do you get that for clients for the [inaudible 00:08:43] world, or is it more of a hobby for you?

David:
I’ve never used it for raising money; that’s always been something that people that know you and have a relationship with you do. I don’t know that a lot of people have reached out and said, “I saw you on social media. I want to buy a house,” although that happens occasionally. It’s more for the people that were tweeners and they were like, “I kind of want to reach out, but I don’t know if I’m ready.” This helps push them over the edge. When they hear you talk about it, when they see how somebody else was able to do it, it gives those people that were on the fence looking over saying, “I wish I could go play at that party.” They feel comfortable to walk through the gate and say, “Hey, guys. Can I come swim? Can I come hang out with you?”
I feel like social media, when you use it correctly, is a window into your life that helps people see transparently what you’re like. When it’s used incorrectly, it creates a false image of yourself that’s nothing close to what you are, to make other people feel bad about the fact that they can’t come hang out at your pool, and that’s always the way that I’ve looked at social media. You’ve got people that are using it to say, “Don’t you wish you were cool like me and you could come hang out?” and people that use it to say, “Hey, look. You’re invited. The water’s warm. You should come jump in.”

Brandon:
That’s a really good point.
Ryan, you’re doing the social media. You got TikTok going. You got YouTube going. Your videos are phenomenal. Where is that headed? Where do you see yourself headed with social media? Just doing more and more of that? I guess what’s the future look like for you in that regard?

Ryan:
During the pandemic I think everyone thought about their future. It’s like, “Is this something that’s going to be here in the future? Is this career? Where is house flipping going? Where’s real estate going?” Traditional real estate, too. I think agents should all be like, “Man, how is this going to play out with all the new tech coming?” The way I saw it, it became very clear that the world was headed towards influence more so than anything else. I looked at Kylie Jenner. She doesn’t have to start a new business from scratch. Any business she starts at this point will dominant just because of her influence, and you see the same thing with anybody. Like Brandon, you want to go raise a fund? If you weren’t Brandon Turner from BiggerPockets, it would have been very difficult; but because you have influence, raising the money has been very easy for you. You know?

Brandon:
Yeah.

Ryan:
I looked at it and said, “Well, I’ve got multiple businesses.” It’s not just house flipping. We’ve got a lot of different stuff. It’s like, “If I’m going to start new businesses in the future, how do I give myself the best advantage to do that?” and it’s just really through influence. I just think anything at this point, if you have influence, you can do whatever you want, really.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s such a good point. Just building that personal brand that you are somebody who knows what they’re talking about. People like you, people trust you, people want to do business with you, and that pays dividends for the next hundred years of your life when people know, “I can trust you.” So, just getting out there.
Let’s dive into the last year. Since last you were on the show, what kind of growth have you seen in the last couple years since you were here last? What’s your business doing right now? What are your focuses? What are you focused on? Still flipping?

Ryan:
Yeah. We’re still doing 100-plus flips a year. I would say mainly flip, but now we’ve mixed in more wholesale than we were before. Still got the brokerage. Still do real estate education. I’ve got a tax company now, so we do a lot of different people’s taxes. And then I’ve been really working on the personal brand side of things because it just impacts all of those businesses. If I put out good social media content, like I said, I can raise money to go flip more houses or to go buy rentals. It gets more people for our tax company, and all these other things. For me now, with the businesses established and running themselves, I’m not too involved in them. I can work on the big picture funnel. I know you love funnels, Brandon. It’s like the funnel is the content and the personal brand.

Brandon:
I do love funnels.

Ryan:
How do I funnel them in to the rest of the ecosystem? You can’t delegate content. It’s like it’s me.

Brandon:
Yeah.

Ryan:
That’s what I’m spending most of my time on these days.

Brandon:
How do you get people that you can trust? That’s the hardest thing for most people when they’re thinking about, “I want to delegate more. I want to hire more.” What’s that journey been like for you, bringing in the right people to run those different divisions, I guess you could call them?

Ryan:
Yeah. We were talking about this a little beforehand. I actually hired a business coach earlier this year in January because I was like, “Look, we’re getting pretty big, we’ve been winging it this whole time just figuring it out as we go along. Let’s try and get somebody who’s actually like some corporate structure.” Because I think a lot of us entrepreneurs, we don’t come from a corporate background, we’re just winging it, and so he gave us some structure. A great book that I recommend is Traction, and that’s what he teaches, the principles on Traction. He came in and said, “Well, Ryan, you’ve got these different businesses. You’re going to need different department head for each business,” and then in fact for me, I need somebody who’s overlooking all the businesses as well. Basically, I need a COO of all the companies, and so my sister is actually filling that position, and she’s doing it great. If you want to talk about trust, it doesn’t hopefully get any better than your sister or family, so she’s overseeing everything on all the company levels.
But I would guess right now we currently have 50-something agents at the brokerage. My tax company, it’s just me and my partner; he’s a CPA so that’s easy. On the house flipping side, we probably have about 10 employees now between project manager, sales guys, my COO marketing guy, so they’re all doing their thing. Then, on the education side and what I call my personal brand side, we probably have about five people between video guys, editors, membership director. Man, there’s a lot of employees on all these different companies. You can see them in the background all running around back and forth, and it hasn’t been easy to build it for sure, but the business coach has definitely helped.

Brandon:
Yeah. I want to dive more into this because this idea of the business coach, we just did it as well. We actually have our first call. We’re implementing the EOS system, which is from Traction, across our entire business as well. What was that like, for those people who don’t even know what that means? You mentioned the department heads and a COO role. But when we say EOS or Traction, I just need to get the author probably on the podcast soon, but what does that mean for you guys? What does that look like tangibly?

Ryan:
I don’t even know what US state. It’s entrepreneur something.

David:
Operator, probably.

Ryan:
Yeah.

Brandon:
I think operating system.

Ryan:
Yeah.

Brandon:
Entrepreneur operating system.

Ryan:
Right. And it’s really great, man. For us, it’s what keeps accountability and structure. We have a huge organizational chart so everyone understands what they’re responsible for. Just to break down one company, we’ll talk about house flipping since it’s relevant for most: you have the COO, so the COO is in charge of managing the whole company. My COO’s name is Sean Bob, believe it or not, a very respectful name. Under him you have acquisition, you’ve got marketing, you’ve got project management, you’ve got transaction coordination, and so somebody has got to be responsible for those roles; in most people’s companies, they’re everything. Especially if you’re by yourself, you run all these different departments, and for us we’ve got different people in each one because we’re a bigger company and we’ve got a lot of volume. He’s got to put the right people in those roles like, “Okay, who’s in charge of acquisitions? Who’s in charge of managing the sales force? Who’s in charge of marketing? Who’s in charge of making sure these projects get done on time?” I think it just creates this accountability that is very apparent.
Traction also teaches about having these Level 10 meeting, is what they call them, and so every week they are having meetings to make sure that, “Did all of these things get done? And if not, why? Who’s accountable for it?” That’s what I think it creates. It’s just extreme accountability and there’s just no discrepancy. I’m like, “This is your job.”

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s what I love about EOS, or Traction in general the book. It’s just taking all these things that are going everywhere… and people who are listening can’t see my hands moving like crazy here… but there’s always pieces. If you’re an entrepreneur, you know what I’m talking about here; if you’re a real estate investor, you know what I’m talking about. It just takes all of them and it just says, “Okay, let’s line them up in a row. Let’s make sure everyone’s accountable for something. Let’s make sure that we’re regularly reporting on what that is. Let’s make sure we’re just doing this organized.”
When I first brought it to my team here at Open Door Capital, there was a little bit of not pushback, everyone was open to the idea, but it’s like, “Ah, that’s what they do at Fortune 500 companies. We don’t want this crazy structure. Why can’t we just have fun? Why can’t we just do this?” and what I found is there’s such freedom in structure, freedom through structure, and what I mean by that is… the same thing with managing tenants, right? If you have a bunch of tenants and you’re just like, “Yeah, let’s move them in whenever you want to. You don’t need a lease. If they feel good, put them in.” We all know that would be a terrible idea. Instead, the easiest landlord in the world is the more structured you are. It’s like, “This is when they move in. This is what their lease says. This is what happens if they don’t pay rent.”
It’s a structure that leads to freedom, that leads to passivity so you can not work so much, and that is what EOS did for us and continues to do, and as we bring in the consultants to really tighten up our operation, and the cool thing is you can do this stuff even if you have an operation of one person, right? If you have one person on your team, it’s just you right now, you can still start to systematize and organize, right?
Anything you can add to that? If you’re listening to the show right now, or if there’s a person listening who’s just getting started, how can they start thinking this way, what you’ve learned over the last few years? How can they start thinking in that direction?

Ryan:
It starts with reading the book, right?

Brandon:
Yeah.

Ryan:
But I think it starts with going from hustler to actual business because I think we all start out as hustlers. We’re all just like, “Hey, I want to buy a house. I want a rental property. I want to flip. I want to wholesale,” and we do the one deal, and that’s great. You can do one deal with just pure grit and hustle, and you could 20 deals a year with pure grit and hustle. I did it by myself. Back in 2016 I did 20 flips, no employees, no systems, just did it. But when I first came on the podcast in 2018, that was the first year we ever did over 100 deals, and I’ll tell you what: you can’t do 100 deals with just hustling. We’ve started just figuring it out as we went along, but man we lost a lot of money on the way just doing stupid things that now we know we shouldn’t have done. It wasn’t until this year when I was like, “You know what? We need to pay to make sure that we do this right.”
Because I had heard of Traction years ago, I just couldn’t implement it on my own, and I was like, “I don’t want to do this.” Same thing you said, “I want to stay fun. We don’t need all this structure,” but you need it. You really do.

Brandon:
Yeah.

David:
With all these people that you’re now hiring, do you have more problems, and you have more paychecks that you have to issue? How did you figure out how to balance if having more people was more problems and less money, or if it was actually better for the business?

Ryan:
That’s a good question. I think it depends on your personality because I’ve met a lot of people who just… they cannot manage and they’re like, “I don’t want to manage anyone. I want to do it all myself. I’m happy doing 10 deals a year by myself and making almost 100% net profit,” versus the more you hire, the lower your net profit goes, but in turn it should free you up to have more time, and that’s the idea if you’re doing it right. I can tell you for me, I very rarely spend time on my house-flipping business. I would say maybe three or four hours a week just watching it, making sure they’re doing what they’re doing, and this is a business doing over 100 deals a year, and so I’ll take that; I’ll take lower margins. I try and delegate the headaches and have the department heads deal with the headaches, but you’re always going to deal with it; there’s just no other way around it.
For me, it’s just figuring out, “How much stress and problems can I handle?” Because if I have more companies and more things going on, it’s going to inevitably lead to more problems, like you said.

David:
That’s what I’ve been telling people. The song Notorious BIG never made is, “More People, More Problems,” because that’s one of the things that I’ve found. As you grow you get more people, and if you look at… When people talk to us about, “What are the challenges you’re facing in your business?” it’s almost always geared towards the people in the company. If you’re doing this this well, I’m sure that you’ve figured out a way to solve that problem with some success. What have you found that works for hiring? How are you getting the right department heads to be running these companies with minimal supervision from you?

Ryan:
I love that. I just did a YouTube video on this, so probably by the time this airs you could find it on my YouTube. But there are four things that I learned from my business coach that are essential with hiring, and the very first overarching one is defining your core values, and so our core values are right there on our wall for everyone to see, okay? And I’ll just go over them.

David:
Yeah, please.

Ryan:
The first one is Serve Others. If you’re not willing to serve others, we don’t want you. We don’t need any selfish people. The second one is Train Daily. As an athlete, I want people that want to get better every day. I don’t want people who are content just doing their same nine-to-five for 30 years; that ain’t who I’m looking for. The third one is Play Fair, and so playing fair means just like integrity. I want you to have integrity. I don’t want to be snaking deals from people, and all this. We’re going to try to do it as best as we can to just have integrity. Then, the last one is No Ego, and that one is mainly for me. The more success we have, how do I stay humble and not let the success get to our heads? First off, anyone we hire must pass all four of those core values; if they don’t have those, we ain’t hiring them. I don’t care if they’re the best sales guy in the world. I don’t care if they have the most experience. If they lack one of those, they cannot work for us, so that’s the first filter to get through.
From there, there are three other things: the first one is your personality, the second one is your experience, and the third one is your desire. With personality, we talked about personality test, and that’s one thing I had no idea about; but once I got into it and started learning it was like, “Dude, if you just have the right personalities in the right roles,” which Traction talks about the right people in the right seats, it makes things so much easier because you can have an introverted person trying to do sales. They can have some success, but they’re not naturally good at it, and they’re just not having fun doing it. Versus you have an extroverted person who’s social, who’s good at it: they’re going to love their job, they’re going to be better at it, you’re going to need less training. Personality plays a huge role.
Real quick on personality, they have the DISC test. For us we use Predictive Index, which is very expensive. For a small business they may not afford Predictive Index, but you can definitely do the DISC test and get an idea of personality. Experience is super simple, that’s your traditional resume, and unfortunately that’s what most people look at. They’re like, “Oh, you’ve got experience? Cool. We’ll hire you,” and it’s like that does not work. They need to fit your core values, and they’ve got to have the right personality. Just because somebody has done something for years doesn’t mean they’re good at it, so you’ve got that.
Lastly, it’s just the desire. Is this person coming to work for you just to get a paycheck? Are they still looking for another job while they’re working for you because it’s just for the time being, or do they legit love what your company is all about? Do they want to be there for the long haul? Do they love what they’re doing? I want people that fit all of those things. If I can get people to fit all of those things… which is not easy, but if I can… I know I’ve got a good employee. Because the most costly thing you can do in your business is a wrong hire.

Brandon:
That is so true. I would rather delay hiring somebody for a while than go through the pain of hiring the wrong person because getting rid of a person is so painful and difficult. Not just the idea of firing; that suck, too. But just like leading up to that, even knowing you’re getting there. Here’s what I’ve found in every business I’ve hired people for, whether it’s BiggerPockets or real estate: sometimes I don’t know if they’re bad or if it’s me for a long time. In other words, they’re just not performing well and I’m like, “Did I just not give them clear enough expectations?” and I want Jacko Willink can take extreme ownership of it, and I’m like, “No, I think it’s really them. Am I just not understanding the role? Is it the economy that changed? Is that why they can’t find any deals right now?” or whatever the thing is, right? It’s not usually black and white that they were terrible at first. Now, looking back and I can look at all of them and be like, “Oh, there were so many red flags and so many problems,” but in the moment you’d overlook that, and so you lose opportunity of months or even years of working with a bad hire.
My question for you: I’m wondering where do you find people and begin that funnel, trying to get a lot of people interested in your job position? Are you hiring friends and family? Are you avoiding friends and family? Where do you get your applicants from?

Ryan:
I actually talked about that in the YouTube, too. There’s really three ways to find employees: you can find them sphere of influence, which you just mentioned, and for me that’s my number one source. If I can hire somebody from my sphere of influence, they’re always going to turn out better than some random person that I don’t know yet. Sphere of influence can be one of my employees knowing somebody else, we can go two people deep, and I’ve hired a lot of people that way. I would say almost the majority is sphere of influence.
Once again, we talked about social media in that top funnel. If you have a big social media presence, hiring people is much easier. Because whenever I have a job, I’ll put it on social media and I’ll say, “Hey, we’re looking to hire a sale guy,” whatever, and I’ll get a ton of people who message me like, “Ryan, I’d love to work for you. I’ll move from Mississippi to come work for you in Vegas,” it happens all the time, and it’s like they already know me, they know what I’m about because they follow me, and so I don’t have to worry if they want it or not. These people want it and that makes hiring way easier, just having a personal brand. But if you’re not going to go sphere of influence, let’s say you’re not on social media, you need to get on social media, but if you’re not you can go the old school way. You can go LinkedIn and Indeed. Those are going to be the biggest job recruiter sites, and put an ad, and do all that stuff. We have hired people that way as well.
The other way that many people don’t do or even know about is through a recruiter. You could hire a recruiter to go find this person for you, and the recruiters are a professionals. They hire people for a living. You don’t have to know anything about personality, about desire and all the things I just talked about, they’ll go do it all for you, but they’re going to take a pretty big commission. I’ve seen them charge anywhere from 10-20% of the employee’s first year of salary. If this person is expected to make $100,000, you’ve got to fork out $10,000-$20,000 to this person for finding them.

Brandon:
Yeah. Which for the right person it would obviously be worth it, if they bring you the right person. Again, people sometimes look at these numbers like, “I would never pay that.” It’s like saying you’re going to be able to make $50,000 on a flip, “I would never pay $10,000 to a wholesaler to make $50,000 on a flip.” Really? You wouldn’t? It’s just business, right? That’s why I pay my tenants to leave when they’re jerks. I offer them money instead of evicting them because it’s cheaper in the long run. It’s just business to me, right?
One thing first I want to bring up. You said about the social media thing and I found that so true. Obviously, guys who have YouTube and podcasts, that’s good, but you can start again with your own Facebook, like put out there, “Hey, I’ve got this job position opening,” because your sphere of influence has their own sphere of influence. If you have 100 friends, you’ve actually got 10,000 friends, or friends of friends, because everyone’s got 100 friends, and it’s usually a lot more than that. People are like, “Oh, yeah. My brother-in-law is out of work right now. He might be perfect for that role,” so putting it out there on social is huge. But what this really illustrates is the funnel, right? It illustrates that the wider you funnel… I love funnels, right? At the top of the funnel, if you had 10,000 people clamoring to work for you, you could really, really focus in on the one person out of 10,000 who’s amazing. If you’ve got three people applying for your job because you threw it up on Craigslist, and two of them don’t even show up for the interview, and you’re like, “Well, I’ve got the one guy,” what are the chances that that’s going to be a good person to work with? It’s terrible.
Thinking in terms of funnel, this is the same thing as for real estate. If you had 10,000 potential houses that you were direct mail marketing every month, or you were whatever, you’re calling, whatever you do to find deals, which I want to get to today a little bit as well, but that’s a whole lot better than if you had four houses on your list and you’re just bugging them every month, “I can’t figure out why I can’t make any deals.” Because your funnel sucks. [crosstalk 00:30:17].

Ryan:
Well, I’ll give you an example, Brandon. Today, I signed a new contract for a deal from a guy I’ve never met. He just followed me on Instagram. He got a deal in Big Bear, California, where I have Airbnbs, and he’s like, “I know you’re one of the only people who buy up there. Will you take this deal?” and it’s like, “Yeah. If I flip this deal I’ll make $50,000. This is a great deal.” But if I’m not known, I lose out on $50,000. So, it just comes back down to: if you’re an entrepreneur, the most important thing you can do is have a personal brand because you’re going to need it for your business, for raising money, for getting deals, for hiring people. There’s no limit to how valuable it is.

Brandon:
That’s a good point.

David:
Ryan, let me ask you this. Brandon, you said something I think is really big for me, and I bet it’s big for other people. One of the reasons that we fear growing is that what we really feel is having to fire somebody. We don’t know how to get out of this relationship that was the wrong one, very similar to why people have a hard time buying a property in the first place is they don’t know how to get out of a deal if they don’t like it, so they just don’t ever get into it. I’ve often had the same experience that you had, Brandon, where I’m stuck, it’s not working out, and I can’t tell, “Is this my failure that I didn’t coach them right or I didn’t make it clear enough? Or is it their failure that they didn’t figure it out?” but either way I know it’s not working. I just don’t know if I feel right about letting him go, so I hang on too long.
Do you have anything you can share, Ryan, about what you’ve done to solve that problem? Or was there a thing that you had to figure out about firing that made it easier to get out of a bad relationship so that you could say, “Now that I know how to get out of it, I’ll just go big and start looking to hire the best people I can”?

Ryan:
Right. I think there’s two things to know. The first one is from your perspective as a business owner. You’ve got a business to run. I know we all have relationships with our employees; but at the end of the day, if you let a bad employee stay on, they could bring your whole business down and take out the rest of your employees, too. You have to be responsible for everyone in your corporation or business, whatever, “Hey, I like this guy, but he’s not getting it done. He’s got to go,” because for the good of everyone, not just me. That’s the first thing, is taking responsibility for the whole company.
The second thing is when you start implementing these things like Traction, there’s weekly accountability. For instance, let’s talk about a sales guy, because Brandon you’re talking about deals. Their weekly score card, is what they call it, would have certain metrics they have to hit every week, and so one of those metrics might be, “Hey, I need you to make 20 offers this week. We’re tracking every single offer you make. I need you to lock up two deals this week,” one deal this week, whatever it is, “And you’re going to keep doing that every week,” and if they’re consistently not hitting their metrics, they’ve got to go. It’s very clear, “This is what you have to do”; and if you don’t do it, there’s no uncertainty on why you got fired. Every week you’re being told you’re not doing what you’re supposed to do.
I heard a good quote, it might have been from my business coach actually, and basically he said, “We don’t fire people. People just prove that they just can’t handle it. The numbers don’t lie.” It’s clear expectations, really.

David:
In a sense maybe the standard fired them.

Ryan:
Yeah.

David:
They didn’t quit, but they just didn’t hit the standards so they realize, “This isn’t working for me. The boss doesn’t have to fire me.” They just self-select out.

Ryan:
Yeah. The scoreboard tells you. It’s not even me just judging you like, “Dude, you’re just not getting it.” This is you’re not hitting it. There’s nothing to talk about.

Brandon:
You know what’s so powerful about what you’re saying is that we’re just taking… we’re not judging people just off their outcomes, right? To go to a baseball analogy, you’re a baseball player, “Hey, man. We just lost five games in a row.” I meant that would suck, but they’re not necessarily going to go fire the pitcher because he had five bad games in a row in maybe a year, and I could be totally off on this. But they’re like, “You haven’t showed up to practice in four days. You haven’t been throwing anything. You’ve been drinking every single night and sleeping in until noon.” It’s the lead measure that you’re now judging. You’re not judging their lag measure; you’re judging most of their lead. The lag measures should produce the results; and if not, then maybe they’re doing the wrong lead measures, the things that get them there.
But that’s why EOS is so powerful, because it holds… and any management system you do, it doesn’t have to be EOS… but it holds people accountable to those things that should move the business forward in their division, and you can see, “Are you not doing well because you didn’t make enough offers? Well, why didn’t you make enough offers?” and “Well, I didn’t have any property to make an offer on,” and “Okay, are you not doing enough marketing?” and “Well, I didn’t do any marketing.” Okay, well there’s the problem, “Your job clearly says, ‘Do the marketing,’ so let’s work through that together. Next week, what do you want to do for marketing?”

Ryan:
Yeah. I actually just thought of the phrase he used. It was, “I’m not firing you. Your performance no longer allows you to work at this company.” Like it’s just, “This is the standard; you’re not meeting it.”

Brandon:
That’s good. Yeah, that’s really good. It’s a little less, “I don’t like you.” It’s just like, “This is the standard. These were the metrics. We all clearly saw this coming because you’ve seen the same thing week after week in these meetings that I’ve been seeing,” and you let the metrics speak for themselves.
David, what do you think? You hire a lot of people. You’ve dealt with good employees, bad employees. What’s your overall thought on hiring people?

David:
I went through eight assistants that didn’t make it before I got… My first one did, Christa; my next eight didn’t. It was very difficult. Once I found one that worked, the next two to three I kept on. Part of the problem was that I didn’t know what I was looking for until I saw someone successful. It’s very similar, Ryan, and you could relate this to a scout who watches baseball players. You don’t know exactly which one you’re going to say, “That’s the one we want,” until you’ve seen enough of them come from the minor leagues, make it to the big leagues and do well, and you’re like, “That trait that they have or that thing they do, that’s going to translate well into whatever the next role is.” Part of it for me was just the experience that I didn’t have of what a winner is going to look like.
The second piece that I’ve noticed was that once I had my second and my third people on, their attitudes were really good, and then it wasn’t me versus all the employees, and that was what I found in the beginning. It was, “They come in. I want them to work harder than they want to work. I expect more of them than they expected of themselves,” and so I ran into that problem that Brandon you just mentioned, “Is it me or is it them? What’s the problem?” When I had three other people or four other people, five other people, that were all on the same page as me, they felt uncomfortable not being there, and they either self-selected out or they raised their standard just out of the cultural pressure, if that makes sense.
I think one of the things I learned, whether I did it the right way or not, was that it was very slow to get momentum going; but once you got momentum going, it probably becomes much easier to hire because these people come in and they see what everybody else is doing, and then they figure out right away, “I don’t want anything to do with this. I’ve got to work 40 hours a week? This is crazy,” right? Versus the people that see that it’s jumping, everybody is getting things done really quickly… we’re thinking quickly, we’re coming up with solutions quickly… and they are drawn to that environment. Would you say, Ryan, it’s been a similar experience for you?

Ryan:
Yeah. To take your baseball analogy further, we have a big TV right on our wall, it’s like an 80 inch TV, and it’s a scoreboard; it legit says how much profit our company has made, who actually made it, who got the deals, how we’re doing this quarter, how we’re doing this month, how we’re doing this year, and it cycled through all of our statistics. Every day these guys get to go walk by it and see how they stack up, and in baseball there’s no hiding. When you walk up to the plate, everybody sees your statistics right there, and they’re like, “This dude’s a boss,” or “This dude sucks,” and if you suck you’re going to get released at some point because there’s somebody else that will do your job for you. Somebody else always wants your job in sports. That’s how it goes. Super competitive.
My sales team, which should be your most competitive people, your sales force, they can see how they stack up to each other all the time, and so I want to create that competitive environment of like, “Hey, we’re all seeing the same leads. You’re not getting any special treatment. Why is he doing twice as much as you?” We make it super competitive here.

Brandon:
Let’s talk about this for a little bit. How does your business structure? Let’s go with just the real estate investing side, the flipping side. Walk us through the [inaudible 00:39:20]. A lead comes in. How are you doing your marketing, what are you doing for leads, and then where does it go? If you have multiple people working sales, who gets which one? Is it the lead that they brought in, or do you get leads in general and you filter them out to whoever is doing best? How does that look like? What’s the funnel look like for you?

Ryan:
The system we have is something we started this year in February. Right now, as far as marketing goes, I’m actually doing something way different than everyone else. I’m going the marketing route of the lawyers. I’m doing TV. I’m doing billboards. PPC. I bought my dad a suburban and we put my picture all over it. We’re doing the brand marketing of… we’re trying to build a long-term brand here that people see, so that’s been our main marketing. Now, we also still do the other forms like cold calling and texting, but TV and stuff is way more expensive, and all that. Granted, I hired somebody who’s got experience in TV, so they already produced the commercial, they knew exactly what worked, and it’s worked great for us. I just like it because it has such a high barrier to entry that I’m not going to be competing against all these people who can just go cold call. This guy gets cold called by 10 different people; there’s not 10 different people doing TV. Long story short, that’s what we’re doing on the marketing side.
Now, when a lead comes in, we have what’s called ISAs, inside sales agents, so we have two of them, and they’re pretty much just always on the phones getting our Web form leads, and they’re just handling all the intake of leads, and their whole goal is to either close the deal on the phone or set an appointment; that’s it. They’re not going on appointments. They’re not doing anything. They have the ability to fill it out. If they’re setting an appointment, then we have one guy who goes on appointments strictly for cash offers, and then we have another guy who I call him the 50/50 guy. He’s a licensed agent. We’re not sure if they’re going to take cash or if they’re going to want to go listing, and so we send him on ones we’re unsure of. Then, we have a third guy who’s just purely a listing agent, we know they’re not taking a discounted offer, so we just send him in. That’s how all the leads flow in.

Brandon:
Okay. Then, what happens from there? The same person goes out, looks at the property, makes the offer, does it, and then they carry it to closing? Or does somebody else take it at some point through due diligence?

Ryan:
Let’s just say we go on an appointment, he locks it up right then and there, that’s what we’re trying to do anytime we go on an appointment. From there, it goes in escrow, and my marketing guy who is handling all those TV ads and leads and everything, he also handles the transaction, so he’s just seeing the transaction the whole way through. My sales guys are pretty much done at that point. They’re the ones who have built a rapport with the seller, and so if we need to get someone in the house because maybe we’re wholesaling it, or whatever it is, they may call the seller because they’ve got that rapport. But ideally, my marketing guy should be taking the transaction from there.

Brandon:
Okay. That’s cool. Now, I want to say real quick before we… I don’t want to gloss over the fact that you’re doing fricking TV commercials, right? That’s really cool. And I love that you said about it, “It’s a high barrier to entry,” and we’ve talked about this on previous shows as well. Most people, when they think something is hard, they then shy away from that thing; but instead, most successful entrepreneurs they say, “What’s hard? Let’s go do that thing,” because that’s the attitude, when you say, “What’s hard? Let’s go do that.”
One of the reason I chose mobile home parks is because mobile home parks are fricking difficult to buy, and there’s not a lot of them, and the competition is fierce, “Let’s go do that because nobody else wants to handle that. Nobody else can handle that stress and that pressure,” and so the same thing is true for TV commercials. One of my guys at BiggerPockets said they had a call with a TV company and were talking about putting TV commercials for BiggerPockets, for the podcast. Nobody is doing that. Have you ever seen a TV commercial for a podcast? I haven’t. That sounds crazy hard and expensive. Let’s talk about it. Let’s have those conversations and figure out, “Could we do that? Would that work out?” Would enough people watch the commercial, then listen to the podcast, and maybe buy a book down the road or become a pro member? I don’t know, but it’s a cool thought.
I’m thinking about heavily doing radio. Have you done radio at all? We’ve been thinking about radio.

Ryan:
We haven’t done any radio. I do want to do it at some point. We started TV I think in February, that was our first month; and for me if I’m going to do it, I’m just going all in. I was like, “Hey, what are we going to do for a budget?” and I just said, “You know what? We’re going to do $20,000 this month,” so we did $20,000 our first month on TV, and they’re like… With any marketing, you can’t just base the results on your first month. You’ve got to get at least 90 days to see how this thing is going. But what I learned was with TV, the time from lead to deal was way shorter than other lead sources. Because if you’re calling on TV, you’re pretty motivated to do something right now; versus if you cold call somebody, who knows when they’re going to be ready, right? There’s a huge difference in lag from lead to deal, so TV is super short. Shortest I’ve ever seem.

Brandon:
What kind of a trend do you see, by the way, on TV so far? Have you guys been tracking?

Ryan:
Yeah. We’re always tracking our KPIs. It’s hard for us because we flip, so a lot of stuff we’ve already bought, yet we haven’t got the return yet. But I would say on closed return we’re at 3X, but we also have another 3X in the pipeline because we’ve already bought them; they’re going to sell. In my mind, it’s really like a 5X return if they don’t get what we anticipate, whatever, which for me is great because…

Brandon:
Yeah. You spend a dollar and make five dollars. I’ll do that all day long.

Ryan:
Yeah. And also on top of that, it’s not like it requires manpower; whereas with cold callers it’s like, “I’ve got to go hire all these cold callers,” and I’ve got to go do whatever.” With TV it’s like, “Do we want to spend more? Hey, can we spend more? All right. Cool,” and we’re done.

Brandon:
That’s really cool. That’s really neat. Actually, is that possible? Is it possible to play one of your TV commercials right here on the podcast? You don’t have to necessarily pull it up now. We can add it in and post later if you want.

Ryan:
I’ll play it for you.

Brandon:
Okay, let’s do it.

Ryan:
Actually, let me…

Brandon:
Obviously, people are only hearing it, for the most part, but [crosstalk 00:45:57].

Ryan:
Yeah. I’ll play it on my phone right now. I’ll put it up to the mic.
“I’m Ryan Pineda with HomerunOffer.com and I want to buy your house. I’ll make you an as-is cash offer on your house in 24 hours. Whether it’s a total fixer-upper or in perfect condition. HomerunOffer.com is the easiest way to sell your house. When you sell your house to HomerunOffer.com there’s no fees, no commissions, no banks and no repairs. Just go to HomerunOffer.com for a free no obligation cash offer 24 hours a day. That’s HomerunOffer.com.”

Brandon:
Genius. Dude, I love it. We could spend an hour just going through the-

Ryan:
The call to actions.

Brandon:
Yeah. Every single piece of that there was something in there. Like 24 hours a day, “Oh, I can call in the middle of the night. It’s okay if I watch this on late night TV.” There’s all these little things. “Oh, any condition. Cash offer.” I love it. I geek out on marketing stuff quite a bit.

Ryan:
If you saw the video you would see, too, there’s the White House on it. “We’ll buy any house,” and it shows the White House.

Brandon:
That’s funny.

Ryan:
We’ve had people call in that are so pissed about it. They’re like, “Why would you put the White House? Why would you do that? Why would you say that?” Dude, people are crazy. But we didn’t come up with that commercial. Actually, a guy named Doug Hopkins who is out in Phoenix. He’s an OG. He’s done so many fricking deals, I don’t even know. Has he ever been on this show, Doug Hopkins?

Brandon:
No. We should look [crosstalk 00:47:27].

Ryan:
You guys should get him. He did like 500 deals last year.

Brandon:
Yeah, we need Doug.

Ryan:
You need Doug. He’s an OG and he’s been on TV seven years just literally playing that same commercial. His company pretty much they’re in a mastermind [inaudible 00:47:41] called Collective Genius, and he’s like, “Hey, we’re going to open it up to anyone in here. It’s market exclusive. Who wants to do it?” and I was like, “Me. I’ll do it. Sign me up,” and so we just literally copy his commercial and do it in Vegas.

Brandon:
That’s fantastic. Really good stuff. All right. What does your business look like in terms of after closing? You’ve got projects managers I’m assuming at some level taking care of the properties.

Ryan:
Yeah.

Brandon:
And managing the rehabs. What does that look like?

Ryan:
It goes through escrow. My COO actually manages our lenders, so he’ll pick who’s going to fund this deal. We haven’t used our own money on deals in years, we raised a ton of private money, and he finds a lender, we close. During that time, we’re also getting bids. Our project manager is the one walking it before we buy it, and he already has an idea of our budget, who’s going to be doing it, and he’ll hire the GC and get it done. From there, it goes on the market. My brokerage will always list it. My broker partner over there, he’ll list every single one of our listings, and he handles it all from there. He’s the one choosing what offer we want. He’s the one negotiating repair requests, making sure it gets pushed through, I don’t do any of that, and then we close. We have one more project manager as well who checks on all the finished properties. One guy is in charge of getting them fixed up, and the other buy is in charge of pretty much maintaining them.

David:
When it came to scaling from, “I’m a hustler. I flip couches. Now I flip houses,” into “I’m building a business and I will be the person that drives leads into this funnel.” What had to change within your own mindset that made you say, “Okay, I want to do this. I can do this”?

Ryan:
Well, for me the toughest part was I never actually had a job in my life, like a real job. Baseball is not like a real job where you learn business or you have a true boss. Couch flipping, same thing. It’s just stuff I just figured out. I had a hard time managing people starting out because I had never had a boss or structure. I’m like, “Dude, just do it. What are we talking about? Just do it,” and eventually I learned people don’t just do it. People don’t know expectations unless you tell them.
Over the years of just mismanaging people on my part I realized, “I actually need to figure out how you’re supposed to manage people, but also am I even the right person for that role?” and that was the hard thing for me was because I was managing this house-flipping company; and granted, we’re doing over 100 flips a year, but so many things slipping through the cracks because I just cannot keep people accountable; because I hold myself accountable and I feel like everyone else should too, when in reality it’s not. You need somebody who’s going to stay on people every single day, and I just wasn’t fit for that role, and my business coach told me. He was like, “Ryan, you don’t realize this, but you’re holding your business back,” and I’m like, “Really?” because I built a pretty cool business, and he was like, “Well, if you actually stepped back and just did what you’re good at, your business would be even better.” He’s like, “You’re really good at building relationships, marketing, sales, building that top funnel, the big vision, but you are not good at the details and the day-to-day, so you need somebody who can handle that,” and that was when things changed.

David:
That’s so good. When you said, “Then I realized, ‘Yeah, that’s been my problem the whole time.’ I expect that you’re going to hold yourself accountable, that you’re going to have a high standard, that you don’t want to let people down. I expect you’re going to treat our clients like they’re your clients,” and then when people don’t, I’m honesty just candidly frustrated like, “I don’t know why you would do that.” Why would you think it was okay to ignore that person for a day without sending an email that says, “Hey, let me get back to you tomorrow,” and just ghost them, making them spend all night wondering what happened with the offer, whatever the case is. I think, Brandon, it’s probably similar for you.

Brandon:
Yeah.

David:
I would bet all three of us are not the best person to be managing our own teams, and that was some wonderful insight that you recognized. I just knew I shouldn’t be doing it, right? Like, “Sure, I’m a pitcher and I could hit, but do I really want to be practicing all this time trying to get better at hitting when I could just become better at pitching and let somebody else do the hitting?”

Brandon:
Other than your coach who said that, was there a point in your business that you recognized that on your own, and maybe you just didn’t act on it until the coach pointed it out?

Ryan:
To be honest, I felt like I was out of the business already until he pointed it out. He pointed out where I was the bottleneck in every single part. He was like, “Okay, who picks the lender for each deal?” and I’m like, “Me,” and he’s like, “Okay. Well, you’re the bottleneck. Who decides what deals you’re going to buy?” and I was like, “Me,” and it’s like, “Okay. Who holds all the meetings every week?” I’m like, “Me.” He’s like, “Does it sound like you’re out of your business?” and I’m like, “Well, in my mind I’m not the one checking projects and selling the deals. I’m pretty far out of it,” but I realized I wasn’t. No, I just did not realize how involved I really was, and how bad of a job I was doing holding people accountable.
We’re talking about employees, and I look back at people who are no longer with us, and I think like you, Brandon. I’m like, “Was it me? Probably.” 1) It was me because I hired the wrong person; but 2) I’d set the wrong expectations; 3) I didn’t hold them accountable. I did all these things wrong that we don’t do as often now. We’re not perfect, but we’re much more systematized.

Brandon:
Dude, can I pick your brain on something? This is going to be one of those things that doesn’t necessarily apply to everybody in the world listening to this, but I think it will apply to everybody eventually. For those of us with teams of people around us, especially we’re trying to be leaders of our teams, and we’ve got employees, we’ve got them lined up. Here is where I struggle a little bit: I feel like I have to be working not when they’re working necessarily, but I have to prove that I’m working just as hard as they are. You know what I mean? I feel like I have to run the meeting. I couldn’t get somebody else to run that meeting. I have to be picking the lender. Otherwise, I’m not bringing enough value, like I’m not justifying… Maybe I’m just not valuing my own whatever, but how do you mentally get over that, this idea of you need to be there for everything, you need to be the guy? Otherwise, if your team sees you working out at the gym at three o’clock in the afternoon they’re like, “Well, Ryan is not working hard.”

Ryan:
That’s a good question, man. I think for my team, they know I’m working extremely hard because our office we’re all working together, so it’s easy to see what everyone is doing. Just the type of work I do now is different and they understand that. Like now, my job is literally just creating content, that’s literally all I do all day now, and they know that I’m not doing it because it’s super easy. Creating content is not easy, we all know that, and they know I’m doing it for the big picture. They know that by doing this, it’s actually going to make them more successful because it’s going to bring in more private money, like we talked about, more deals, more contractors, more relationships. It’s going to just bring all these things that in turn help them.
They know I am, even though it’s my personal brand, working to help them, and they understand that no one else can do the type of work I’m doing except me, so I have to do it. But even then, they know that over the years, the ones who have been with me for a while, they know how hard I worked to build the company up to where it is today where I can step back and give people more responsibility. It’s not like I just was like, “Hey, I’m going to hire you, you, you. Cool. We’ve got this huge company. I didn’t do anything. I was just the orchestrator.” It’s like, no. I was fricking in the trenches negotiating deals, doing everything, so that we could get to where we are.

Brandon:
David, do you have any thoughts on that? I know you’ve been there as well. You lead a big team.

David:
Yeah, and I’m in a very similar situation to where Ryan’s at. I think that I’m probably not 100% dedicated just to that team because I’m doing a lot of work with BiggerPockets, and helping to grow their brand, because Josh got this thing started eight, 10 years ago, and he built up a ton of momentum that you and I are trying to keep pushing forward, so it’s not just my team that I’m working with. But I know what it feels like when you’re doing this is what you learned about in school with cell mitosis. You start off with a cell and it splits into two, right? You have sales and then operations that comes out of that first split.
Then, let’s say Ryan’s in sales and he has an operations team, and then the operation team splits into two. You’ve got acquisitions, and then you’ve got the people that close the deal when you’ve got it put together, and then the closing side splits into two. You’ve got the rehab people, and you’ve got maybe the title people or the financing people or whatever. Then, you go back to your sales side and Ryan is like, “Okay, I can’t keep up with this all,” so then that splits into two, “I need an acquisitions guy,” and then there’s me, and then it splits again, “I need a closer and I need a marketer.” What I’ve noticed is that’s the rhythm of how growth feels, is you do everything until you get this feeling inside of what’s holding you back, or you could probably speed that up with a coach or a consultant that would just tell you, “Here is what you’re being held back by,” and you say, “How could I hire somebody to do that part?” and the fear that all of us have is, “They won’t do it as good as me.”
Like I’ve said a million times, when we get scared we zoom in. You look at the thing that can hurt you every time you get scared, and you have to remind yourself that you’re not thinking about… Even if they do it 80% as good as me, 50% as good as me: if I now have all that time to put into this other dollar productive activity that’s worth more, and I can do four times as good there, it’s okay that they did the job 50% as good; it was still such a big net gain. Part of it is this emotional fear you’ve got to get over. You’ve got to quit thinking about what you lost by paying somebody to do this thing.
Then, I would say the other part of it is just understanding the language of business. How do you make sure you’re profitable? How do you know that this was the right move? How do you know that you didn’t hire a bunch of people, and now all your profit is gone, which is why I started the conversation off there with Ryan. But is that similar to what you felt, Ryan, as you’ve grown?

Ryan:
Yeah, for sure. An example would be like the inside sales agents and the outside sales agents. Before, you were just a sales guy and it was like you take the lead, you go on the appointment, whatever, and it was like, “Hey, we’re going to split these guys up. This guy is better on the phone and following up with people and setting things up. This guy is way better in person; he’s just got that look, that charisma, whatever. I want him on appointments,” so that’s a clear example.
I think another thing that we haven’t really touched on that I have learned is super important: you talked about, “Hey, if I’m doing this task, it’s four times more valuable,” but also you’ve got to look at the long-term and the short-term of things. For example, if I were to just stay in the house-flipping business and do what I do best, which is sales: if I went on appointments, no doubt I would do better than my sales guys, just because I have more experience, I understand it, I’m the guy they see on TV, they’re more likely to do a deal with me, and I would make a lot more money; but instead I choose to go do all these videos, and it’s like TikTok ain’t paying me all this money to do all these videos. YouTube, I make some money now, but nothing compared to the opportunity cost I lose by not being heavily involved with the flipping business, but I understand the long-term of it far outweighs it. And so in a few years from now, all this work I’m putting in today that’s not necessarily making bottom-line money right now, it’s going to be big years down the road, but I’ve got to be able to sustain myself short-term because I am making a sacrifice.

David:
That’s such a good point. Brandon, you mentioned something when I asked you about your mobile home park, and I said, “Tell me how it’s going,” and you gave me the result about eight years down the road or something. You said, “Yeah, I grew my net worth by this much because eight years later this is about where it’s going to be,” which was a completely different way of thinking. I tend to, like most people, think, “Okay, I bought this property that had $30,000 of equity in it. I increased by net worth by $30,000, and plus I got $200 a month of cash flow.” But what if I fast-forwarded it 10 years, just on a very conservative growth track, and I saw what it was paid down by, what it went up by, and how much my cash flow would have increased? Those numbers are radically better. It’s like life-changing stuff.
I think if you start looking at it like, “What moves did I just make?” and “How will they affect me 10 years later?” you’ll be overwhelmed by the positive reaction, the positive response that that would bring, and that’s why you’re going so hard at this, Brandon. That’s why you facing these challenges, you’re hiring these people, you’re raising the money and you’re just like, “No, we’re going to do this no matter what,” because you’re looking at it 10 years down the road; and that’s a great point that you mentioned, Ryan, that we zoom in. We look at, “What is it at right now? Year one, this is my return,” and not looking at it year 10, year 20, year 30. Because a lot of the excuses that we make for why we don’t get started would completely crush if you put the benefit of a 30 years of growth from that one good decision on top of that excuse.

Brandon:
Boom. That’s really good, man.
Well, with that said, we’ve got to start moving towards the end of today’s show. Ryan, I’m wondering, where do you see yourself headed in the future? More and more content? Or are we going to see the Ryan show on TV? Are you going to have the Ryan TV show eventually? Where are you headed?

Ryan:
It’s interesting, man. As we look at forecasting, which we’re talking about, and that was what I was doing during the pandemic, and I’m like, “Hey, where is the world headed?” I felt like the world is headed towards content and digital. Everything is going to be on your phone, and you just see the way the world is now. It’s like people watch YouTube, people walk TikTok, Instagram, they watch it more than TV, and so it’s interesting that anyone can become “famous” on their own. You don’t need TV like it was 10 years ago. 10 years ago there was only one path to being known, get on TV or whatever, and so now it’s like you don’t necessarily need TV. You can put out your own content, produce it, create it, and I think that’s exciting and awesome that I’m in control of my fate.
However hard I want to do this, and get better at it, is a really cool adventure, because for me anyways flipping houses is great, I’ve been doing it for years, but I have no desire to be like, “Hey, I want to flip 200 houses, 300 houses.” It doesn’t do anything for me. It would just simply be to make more money.” Whereas this is a whole new ball game, and competition for me is, “How big can I do it and grow it? How many people can I impact? What other doors can this lead to?”
I’m just super focused on the content. If TV happens, it’s not like I’d turn it down, so you never know, but either way you don’t need it today. That’s the awesome thing.

Brandon:
That makes sense, man. Well, very cool. Do you have any final piece of advice in terms of… we try to keep these weekend shows a little bit more mindset related, so how can people right now who are maybe struggling, not sure what to do with the real estate, and they’re like, “I want to get started with this. I’m struggling,” what do you suggest for those people right now to change their mindset, to change the way they think? What’s helped you the most in your life? And you can just leave with some final words of wisdom today.

Ryan:
I think it comes down to routine. To be successful in anything… sports, real estate… you need a routine. If you can start by figuring out, “What’s the routine I need to do?” then actually executing it every day, you’ll have success; there’s no doubt about it. When you wake up with no plan, and I guess no purpose on what you want to do, you’re not going to do anything. Nobody just naturally accomplishes fricking all this success. It’s always, “Hey, I’ve got this plan. All right, great. I’ve got this vision. What’s the plan to get there? Okay, here’s what I need to do. I need to make 100 cold calls every morning from this time. I need to meet one new realtor every day. I need to meet one new wholesaler every week,” and you hold yourself to these routines and goals, essentially, and trust me you will have success. You will either stop doing it and have no success, or you will have success. You’ll adjust it also, have more success.

Brandon:
That’s so good. Everybody needs to rewind that last minute and a half and just listen to that one more time because that’s where it’s at. So good.
Dude, how can our users provide value to you? What are you looking for right now? What can they give you to bring you some beneficial value?

Ryan:
Just go follow me on all the social medias: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. You can just find me @RyanPinedaShow. It’s the same handle on all of them. Just go follow me and shoot me a DM, go leave a comment, whatever.

Brandon:
All right, man. Very, very cool. Well, with that said, I think we’re ready to get out of here. David Greene, you want to close up shop?

David:
Yeah. Ryan, thank you very much for the transparent look into your business. You don’t see that very often, just to be frank with you. It’s not hard to find a guru who comes out and tells you how great they are and highlights maybe the results of their success… their car, their yacht, whatever… but they never really want to open up and tell you what’s really going on in the business, or what money they are or they’re not making, or how they’re making it, and I just commend you for being willing to go on a podcast like this and share some of these details and some of these struggles because that’s what really benefits the people that are listening. They don’t need another person waving a Ferrari in their face and telling them that, “You, too can do this.” They need the training plan that you gave everybody here. This is why we brought you back, because you’re just an awesome guy, and I appreciate that.

Ryan:
I appreciate you guys having me back.

David:
Thanks, man. This is David Greene, for Brandon keep-thinking-30-years-down-the-road Turner, signing off.

Pre-Roll:
You’re listening to BiggerPockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you’re here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you’re in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online.