Building The REI Dream Team With Culture

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Jarred (Host)

You’re listening to the Wholster Real Estate Wholesaling Podcast. I'm your host, Jarred Sleeth, and I'll be interviewing real estate investors and other industry professionals about their stories, strategies and best practices for investing in today's market. This podcast is brought to you by the Wholster app., the leading mobile platform for real estate wholesalers and investors to buy and sell off market deals. Now available on the App Store and the Google Play Store.

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Jarred (Host)

All right, guys, we are here on episode number seven. Lucky number seven of the Wholster Real Estate Wholesaling Podcast. Today we have Josh Nicodemus out of Destin, Florida. Josh, how are you today?

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Josh (Guest)

Good, man. How are you?

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Jarred (Host)

I'm doing great. A little early for me. This is the earliest I've ever done one of these. I got up I got up before the sun today, so.

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Josh (Guest)

Makes you feel any better. It's an hour earlier here in central time.

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Jarred (Host)

Yeah. Yeah. You're wait. You're in Central Time? I didn't even know. I didn't know that.

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Josh (Guest)

Florida is a wide state, so the left side of it is central.

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Jarred (Host)

Okay. Oh, wow. So I'm in Central, too, because I'm in Austin. Anyway, I'm glad. Glad we're here. Glad to see your face. It's been a while. And, Josh, you have a really unique business and let's kind of start at the beginning because you got into real estate through wholesaling. Is that right?

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Jarred (Host)

So how did you find wholesaling and where did that take you from there?

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Josh (Guest)

Yeah, absolutely. So my my sort of discovery, you know, I was I was in a running a construction company, a home remodeling business up in Maryland and we... Long story short, you know, I we wanted to move to Florida. This is kind of how all this started. Like we just like the area we'd been visiting. So it was like Thanksgiving, maybe 2015 or something.

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Josh (Guest)

We started, you know, I was driving home from Florida, back up to Maryland, and I started listening to podcasts because I thought, you know, if I could keep doing this kind of work, you know, the home remodeling stuff, which I loved, but if I could do it, like flipping houses instead.

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Jarred (Host)

Mm hmm.

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Josh (Guest)

You know, that would be a lot easier for me. And I could do it from anywhere. And so I didn't want to start a new remodeling business. I wanted to get into real estate, flipping houses. So I started doing what everybody does, and I started listening to podcasts. So I had a like a 20 hour drive and I just binged.

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Josh (Guest)

I found wholesaling Inc

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Jarred (Host)

They’re out of Florida, right?

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Josh (Guest)

Yeah, Yeah. Tom So back then it was Tom Krol, you know, and now it's passed on to like Brent, you know. Smith But yeah, I found Tom Krol and then I was hooked on the podcast and just binged the whole thing and didn't know anything about wholesaling, did kind of what a lot of people do. I was like, Well, I don’t need to pay a mentor.

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Josh (Guest)

I'll just, you know, I'll just listen to podcasts and do what he says. And I did that for a little bit. And then I determined like, No, this is not working and I need to get a whole, I need to get a mentor. So and at that time, I didn't even have the money to pay him. So I just put it all on a credit card and kind of like, like, well, now I have to make this work, right?

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Josh (Guest)

So hire, you know, Tom Krol at Wholesaling Inc as a mentor and things just kind of skyrocketed from there. You know, did maybe a maybe a dozen deals my first year and then like 40 the next. And I was doing all this part time, so I was still running my construction company and wholesaling nights and weekends and getting up at, you know, two in the morning on Friday morning and putting out Bandit signs and just all the all the crazy extra hustle that went along with trying to do this on the side and taking phone calls, you know, all day while I'm trying to swing a hammer.

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Josh (Guest)

So, yeah, that's how I kind of got into wholesaling, did that for a couple of years on the side. And then in 2018, um, sold my half of the remodeling business to my partner and went full time. And at that point we started, you know, getting into flipping houses and that was sort of like a realization for me that, you know, after doing it for a couple of years, I'm like, Yeah, you can make really good money wholesaling, but it's sort of like knowing yourself.

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Josh (Guest)

And I and I realized that I was not enjoying it. I really wanted to do the construction part of it because that's what I love and that's what I know. So at some point, you know, 2018, we started shifting away from wholesaling and towards flipping houses full time. And the wholesaling was super, super important for us because it taught me how to find deals, how to analyze, you know, how to talk with sellers, all those kinds of things that are super important, even if you're not a wholesaler, you know, as a flipper, you know, those are super important.

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Jarred (Host)

Right.

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Josh (Guest)

So, so yeah, it's been, you know, kind of since then we've grown a team and we have moved to Florida and, and I brought down some guys from my team up in Maryland and found some new guys here. So yeah, we've just kind of been steadily growing our house flipping business and, and shifted that into other things as well.

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Josh (Guest)

So now we build new construction a little bit, you know, some spec homes, a handful of those a year and and slowly building a rental portfolio.

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Jarred (Host)

Okay. So you got your hands on a lot of different things.

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Josh (Guest)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean it's sort of the in my opinion is sort of the natural progression. I think, you know, everybody, everybody starts with something and a lot of times that's wholesaling and then you start to think about passive income as a whatever however passive.

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Jarred (Host)

“Passive” right. Yeah.

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Josh (Guest)

Now, now that's a myth

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Jarred (Host)

Yeah.

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Josh (Guest)

But yeah, it's, yeah, it's been great. We love it. Yeah.

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Jarred (Host)

That's awesome. So you started off wholesaling what for the guys that are just starting out wholesaling that, that maybe want to use wholesaling as their gateway drug to real estate investment and that passive income, Right? Um, do you recommend going the mentor route?

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Josh (Guest)

I do. You know, I think there are people that can do it without if you're really, really driven, which I was, I was very driven to do it. But there was something about like paying for something. The information's all out there. It's all free, right? You can go on YouTube or listen to a podcast and get everything you need.

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Josh (Guest)

But there's something about having a mentor that sort of, you know, drives down on you and puts you in your place and keeps you accountable. So the accountability piece was really important for me. And like when I paid that, whatever it was, I was like six grand or something. I paid for my first mentor. When I paid that, I was like, Man, I have to make this back up now.

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Josh (Guest)

Like, I'm not in a position to just throw six grand away. And so there was some that kind of created, like, a fire in me, right? A kind of a drive that, like, I have to make this work now. So, yeah, I mean, it worked for me, you know, It was. It was worth it to me.

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Josh (Guest)

And I would recommend it because, you know, you're basically buying time, right? You're buying somebody else's experience, so. Right. Yeah, I think so.

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Jarred (Host)

Yeah. I like that. Um, I think the idea of buying somebody else's experience, it's like reading books, right? You're learning from somebody who's already done it and taking all the time and energy that they spent, spent to learn something and you're just learning directly from them and kind of extracting all the good bits.

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Josh (Guest)

That's it, 100%. Yes, the ROI is in like I'll say that first six grand that I made, you know, probably 20x that in my first, you know, year, year and a half. And so if I hadn't hired a mentor, there's no way I would have made it happen, certainly not as quickly as we were able to make it.

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Jarred (Host)

So had you done any deals before you hired the mentor?

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Josh (Guest)

No, no. Because what happened was, you know, I put out these bandit signs and I would get calls and I didn't know how to talk to people. I didn't know what I was doing. And so there was this lack of confidence because, you know, they're like, well, so you can buy my house. And I'm like, ah, I think so.

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Jarred (Host)

I think I can buy your house (laughter)

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Josh (Guest)

I've heard that I can. I don't really know how it works, but we can figure it out. Well, you can imagine that doesn't sound very good. You know.

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Jarred (Host)

Imagine that on the bandit sign. I think I can buy your house. Call me.

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Josh (Guest)

Exactly. Yeah. This. You know, it was like, I can't, you know. Yeah, I just didn't know how to talk to the people. So there's basic information that was missing. And so, yeah, as soon as I hired the mentor, it was like it started moving very quickly from there. So.

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Jarred (Host)

Okay, got it. So you're wholesaling, you're getting into, um, from there, construction. Yeah. And to doing your own flips. So you're, I take it you're using the skills that you got and you learned in wholesaling to purchase these houses and then you're not wholesaling and you just doing the deals yourself.

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Josh (Guest)

That's it. Yeah. At some point we shifted to we were still doing all the marketing that we were doing when I was wholesaling. The difference was and at that point it was sort of a slow transition. So I was still, you know, maybe I would wholesale stuff that I didn't want to flip and then we kind of cherry picked the ones that we wanted to do ourselves.

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Josh (Guest)

And, and that worked out really well. Those, those, those marketing skills and the talking, you know, how to talk to people and the scripts and all that kind of stuff becomes ingrained in you is really important to learn that kind of stuff. Even if you're going towards flipping and not wholesaling, all those skills are just, you know, it just, it was super important for me to learn so.

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Jarred (Host)

Right. Yeah. So rentals too, you're picking up rentals at this point?

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Josh (Guest)

Mm hmm. Yeah.

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Jarred (Host)

Starting to grow that.

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Josh (Guest)

And slowly building a portfolio, just buying, you know, five or six a year and getting ready to close at the end this month on our biggest one, which is not a nothing crazy, but it's, you know, $1,000,000 plus five unit on the beach and so that's really exciting and think we're going to Airbnb that so we have one other Airbnb that's been well this year so we might do a little more Airbnb kind of stuff, too. We're in a prime location for that so taking advantage of that.

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Jarred (Host)

So yeah, glad to hear Airbnb has been treating you well. I've I've heard this year has been a bit of a struggle for some other folks.

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Josh (Guest)

I've heard that too. And I, you know, I don't have anything to compare it with because we listed our first Airbnb like four or five months ago. So it's I mean, it's booked solid. So I don't know if that's, you know, that may be unique. I'm not sure. We don't have like a whole bunch of them to say, you know, or have a long enough track record to say that it's gone down.

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Josh (Guest)

It probably has. And a lot of places I've heard that it has, but it's been good so far.

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Jarred (Host)

Yeah. I mean, if you're booked and the numbers are good. I mean.

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Josh (Guest)

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Jarred (Host)

Great, good for you. I haven't tried the Airbnb out yet. I almost did. I had a, um, was actually in Florida, Treasure Island, down the Gulf south southeast side or west side, rather, and had this thing under contract last year and appraisal came in low. I couldn't get the seller to renegotiate it and we ended up letting it go.

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Jarred (Host)

Yeah. Yeah.

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Josh (Guest)

Okay. If you ever wanted to do it in Austin, I'm sure that's a hot spot for it too. I know my my business partner loves Austin, so they go there and they stay in Airbnbs and they always talk about how there's so many cool ones there that are like real modern, you know, different style than we're used to.

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Jarred (Host)

So yeah, yeah. Austin's a really interesting place for different types of housing. Yeah, a lot of unique styles here. Their Airbnb rules I think are, are pretty strict. Um, I'm not too familiar with them, but I think they're pretty strict as far as like how many you can have and how you can own them and that sort of thing.

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Jarred (Host)

Once you go outside the city limits, it's a little bit different. But um, okay, so passive income, um, it sounds like passive income plays a part of your business.

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Josh (Guest)

You could say that. Yeah. I mean, we're, we're going to be at the end of this month after that five units will be at 20. And so out of those 12, no, 14 of those are long term and they're they're great. You know, some of them are better than others. But, you know, they cash flow, all of them.

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Josh (Guest)

We have not had any nightmare tenants. I mean, for the last, you know, two and a half years or three years that we've been renting these properties, we think we've only had one turnover. So everybody's been staying in the property and taking very good care of it. My brother manages the properties for us, so I have a trusted property manager in house and it's yeah, it's worked out really well for us so far.

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Josh (Guest)

It's, it's not enough to, you know, quit my day job of flipping. It's, you know, I think we'd have to get to probably at least 50 units to be totally, you know, not have to work every day. But yeah, I wouldn't do that anyway. I love what we do, so it wouldn't matter if I had 5000 units. I'd still be working every day.

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Speaker 1

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00;14;09;12 - 00;14;22;25

Speaker 1

Experience the convenience of buying and selling off market properties with mobile technology so that you can spend more time on the activities that grow your business. Visit our website at Wholster.app and download Wholster today on the App Store or the Google Play Store.

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Jarred (Host)

Yeah, so it's really clear that you love what you do. And I can see that in your social media and you've gathered quite a following. Actually, I think the last time I looked at about 70,000 Instagram followers, does that sound about right?

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Josh (Guest)

I think it’s at like, it's like 80, 86, now.

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Jarred (Host)

86. Wow, You're growing fast because that was only a couple weeks ago.

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Josh (Guest)

Yeah. Yeah, It's been it's been wild. And it's funny because that's that's kind of shot up the last few months. But it's nothing different. I've been posting the same stuff for four years, you know.

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Jarred (Host)

But your content. Your content's really good. I sat and watched a video of you caulking windows for like 10 minutes. I just got sucked in. I don't know.

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Josh (Guest)

Yeah

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Jarred (Host)

I just watch you caulk anything. You caulked a toilet the other day too, and I watched that. I like the caulking.

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Josh (Guest)

It's funny. Yeah, some of it is. Yeah. For whatever reason, it's interesting to a lot of people. Not everybody. But yeah, it's a it's caught on lately, so it's funny to see that happen now.

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Jarred (Host)

How did you get into making that sort of content?

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Josh (Guest)

That's a good question. I actually don't know how you know, I kind of avoided social media for a long time and, you know, everybody around me had like it's before Instagram, but everybody around me had Facebook and I'm just like, I don’t need that I don’t want to mess with that, that I didn't even want I was one of those guys like the last guy you knew to get a smartphone.

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Josh (Guest)

I was on a flip phone forever and I just didn't wanna do it. Yeah. And then for whatever reason, I just started posting stories daily, just kind of the day to day stuff. And, you know, not, not much of it has really produced most of it's just day to day stuff. And I started getting a lot of feedback about it, people saying, Hey, man, I love your you know, I'm only on here to watch your stories.

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Josh (Guest)

You know, your ladies at church, you know, they love it, that kind of stuff. And so, so funny and for whatever reason, you know, so that just kind of stuck. And I just kept doing it and just post a little bit of daily life stuff. And some of that's construction. Some of it's not. But yeah, that's it's just kind of it's kind of taken off a little bit now.

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Josh (Guest)

Yeah, I don't know, just it just kind of accumulated a little over time.

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Jarred (Host)

Yeah. Yeah. I think that stuff tends to snowball. And so one of the other things that comes through in your videos is how close of a relationship you have with your crews. Let's talk about that a little bit, because I've, I notice over the years, um, one of the toughest challenges that investors face is keeping and maintaining good people.

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Jarred (Host)

Yeah. And I can see that you've done a really good job of doing that. So what's your secret sauce?

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Josh (Guest)

Yeah, so are situation's a little bit unique in that about half of our guys are family and people, some people think that's crazy, but I've got my brother in law is my business partner. One of my brothers is our property manager. One of my other brothers is a project manager and then another brother in law. And the nephew works sometimes.

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Josh (Guest)

And so I've got a bunch of family in the business and then and then the other guys, you know, we treat like family, whether that, you know, some of them I brought down from my business in Maryland, some of them we just found here locally. And it's you know, it's it's spending a lot of time finding people that we think will fit the culture.

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Josh (Guest)

So we actually pay a lot less attention to experience. And we actually almost prefer to have guys that are less experienced. And so we can train them the way that we like doing things rather than trying to beat bad habits out of them that they learned elsewhere.

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Jarred (Host)

Right.

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Josh (Guest)

So yeah, I mean, and then we take company culture very seriously. So we, you know, we, we try to do like a monthly, you know, get together after work for a beer and kind of sit down with all the guys and knock off a little early and talk about how things are going and get get complaints out there, get, you know, where we're having snags. Once a year

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Josh (Guest)

we go and we rent a cabin on a lake and for a long weekend, usually towards the end of the year in November. And we'll talk about goals. So business goals. And then I give them all a goal sheet for the personal goals. Like I want to hear not just how they're, you know, not just how businesses is, I want to hear

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Josh (Guest)

about their personal lives and how they are doing and what their goals are for their personal lives. You know, how much money they want to make, how they, you know, whether they want to you know, a lot of things come across like, you know, I wanna date my wife better, you know, I wanna buy a new car or I want to, you know, get in better physical shape or read this many books.

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Josh (Guest)

There's all kinds of things. But you really get to know your people that way. And that's been a huge, you know, key for us. And then we do quarterly accountability meetings, you know, kind of off site. So we talk, you know, we get together once a quarter and, you know, we all of these written goals and then we kind of sit down every quarter and talk about them like hey, how are you hitting

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Josh (Guest)

You know, are you hitting your goal? Are you not? What's holding you back? You know, and so there's a lot that we do to try to foster this sort of, you know, healthy company culture. So, you know, there's a there's a group chat, you know, a text chat, you know, where guys are shooting off memes all night, all night, you know, after work, giving each other a hard time and making fun of each other.

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Josh (Guest)

But in a lighthearted way. And so, yeah, there's a lot of little things that we do to try to make it fun, you know, company golf trips. You know, we all suck at it, but we have fun, drinking beers and driving the carts and whackin balls, you know.

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Jarred (Host)

That's the that's the fun part. Yeah.

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Josh (Guest)

That's. Yeah, if you're bad at golf., you can at least have fun doing that. So. Right. Yeah. So there's a lot of little things we try to do to keep culture, you know, alive and happy.

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Jarred (Host)

So that's really that's really awesome. I don't think I knew that about, about your family.

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Josh (Guest)

Yeah, it's a lot of fun. So it's, it's, it's a two edged sword, right? So, you know, things have to go where sort of forced, things have to go well, because I'm going to see them at Thanksgiving and it's going to be awkward if you know, someone has to get let go or so it's sort of you know, forced to make it work.

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Jarred (Host)

Hey, it sounds like you're a guy that works well under pressure.

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Josh (Guest)

It seems like it, sometimes.

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Jarred (Host)

Put yourself under the pressure for the the wholesaling mentorship. Uh, now you got the family putting pressure on you and you're. You're crushing.

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Josh (Guest)

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I appreciate it. Yeah. We try. We try.

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Jarred (Host)

Yeah. That's awesome. So you're doing right now it sounds like you talked about before the show, 6 to 8 houses at a time.

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Josh (Guest)

Yeah, that's our average. So, our, our crew is comprised, we have three crews, so every three crews run a job at a time. And so what typically happens is each crew will have their primary property that they're working on and usually they have you know, they've got like two of them that are sort of like they just finished one and they're moving on to the next one.

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Josh (Guest)

And while that one's under contract, you know, they're going to go back and do repair items or, you know, inspection items. But basically every crew has about two going at a time on average in various stages. So usually there's one that they're really focused on. So typically 3 to 4 that are like heavily into construction. And then there's another two or three that are, you know, either under contract to buy or under contract to sell.

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Jarred (Host)

Okay, okay. And how many of those are rehabs versus spec homes? Sounds like you're down some spec homes, too.

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Josh (Guest)

Yeah. So I don't count the spec homes in those in that count. So that's that's like probably, you know, five or six to maybe sometimes seven rehabs at a time. And then the spec homes I manage on the side basically outside of what. So those crews don't manage the new construction. I manage those. My spare time. So yeah.

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Josh (Guest)

So those you know, and we might have one or two of those going at a time, you know, three max spec homes are, are really interesting. We're learning a lot but it's not something we've done a ton of, you know we're volume five or six in in right now so.

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Jarred (Host)

What do you like most about new construction.

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Josh (Guest)

Um you know I like you know, there's something about, you know, ground up construction where you can see, you know, dirt to door knob, right? Dirt to fully on everything is done that there's some there's some sense of accomplishment with that you know is like I always feel confident to rehab houses because I've been in that remodeling business for so long that there's not as much a sense of accomplishment with that.

00;23;00;26 - 00;23;23;16

Josh (Guest)

But when you haven't built a house from the ground up and you see it happen, it's cool to to kind of have that, you know, sense of accomplishment. Right. And then the the profits are just wildly above what rehabbing does, at least so far. Um, we, we, you know, the profits are pretty good. So there's that part of it too.

00;23;23;16 - 00;23;28;19

Josh (Guest)

There's a lot of other headaches that come along with it. So yeah, it's more difficult than rehabbing in my opinion.

00;23;30;12 - 00;23;32;17

Jarred (Host)

It’s more difficult. Okay. Okay.

00;23;32;17 - 00;23;56;14

Josh (Guest)

Well, from a, you know, from a administrative standpoint, it's a lot more paperwork and a lot more hand-holding subcontractors. Cause in a rehab, our crews do almost everything, so I'm not relying on other people as much. Um, with new construction, we have to have, you know, electricians, plumbers HVAC guys, uh, you know, there's a lot more subcontractors involved.

00;23;56;14 - 00;24;01;12

Josh (Guest)

And you know how that is. I mean, subcontractors are sometimes good and sometimes not so much.

00;24;02;02 - 00;24;20;03

Jarred (Host)

Right. Um, one of the things that I always liked about new construction was that there's less surprises in the actual building piece. Um, and the sequencing of the job is a lot cleaner.

00;24;20;28 - 00;24;44;21

Josh (Guest)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, and that is a nice that is a nice thing about it is you really shouldn't hit surprises, right? I mean, not very many. And, and when it's all said and done, you really shouldn't have much to worry about right here. You know, it's brand new and usually a warranty comes along with that. And so yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of great things about it.

00;24;44;21 - 00;24;49;01

Jarred (Host)

So you have totally separate crews for your new construction, it sounds like.

00;24;50;12 - 00;25;14;20

Josh (Guest)

So we have subcontractors. So what typically happens is I manage the project up through drywall, so from foundation, through framing and all that, that will all be subcontractors. And then we'll bring along one of our crews in to do the finish work. So we'll do all the paint, tile, cabinetry, that kind of stuff, all of anything from drywall in uh, we’ll do so.

00;25;14;20 - 00;25;17;24

Josh (Guest)

So I shouldn't say they don't manage them, they do manage them, just at the tail end.

00;25;18;02 - 00;25;36;01

Jarred (Host)

Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. One of the messages that I wanted to touch on that I see you talk about a lot is the importance for people to learn trades. Can you tell us something about that? What makes you passionate about that message?

00;25;37;05 - 00;26;06;01

Josh (Guest)

Yeah, you know, there's something you know, there's something that's been going on the last, I don't know, maybe 20 or 30 years where at least this may not be the case everywhere. But I felt this pressure when I was, let's say, getting out of high school. And, you know, I was one of my only friends, you know, me between me and all my friend group and peer group, I was like the only one who went into the trades and everybody else was like going off to college and not there's nothing wrong with college, you know?

00;26;06;01 - 00;26;21;08

Josh (Guest)

But it was kind of like this. I had this real vibe and even pushed on a little bit by my parents to say, like, Look, if you don't go to college, you're kind of going to be a loser, right? You're probably not going to make very much money. You're probably not going to you know, it's hard on your body.

00;26;21;08 - 00;26;44;26

Josh (Guest)

There's all these things, you know, that sort of this this background that I was hearing. And, you know, I think that's slowly changing. I think now at least I'm seeing more of, you know, the trades being sort of a viable option for people that, to me, you know, there's there's pride in working with your hands. There's pride to work in the trades.

00;26;44;26 - 00;26;59;06

Josh (Guest)

You can't be a dummy. You know what I mean? I think there's sort of like, oh, you know, if you can't go to school, you'll be a dumb plumber. You know what I mean? The plumbers I know are making two or three hundred grand a year. You're making good money. And you you're not going to get through that. You know, you're not going to get licensed if you're a dummy.

00;27;00;25 - 00;27;19;24

Josh (Guest)

And so to me, there's a lot of pride in working with your hands. It's a very fulfilling job. You know, at the end of the day, you can physically look and see what you've done. And, you know, the trades are, you know, that, I can tell will not be replaced by AI, you know, there there's going to be an increasing need for them.

00;27;19;24 - 00;27;46;07

Josh (Guest)

And as there have been less and less trades people going in, the less people going into the trades over the years, that makes them increasingly more lucrative. So whether you're doing it like me, so for me, I'm a tradesperson, but I do it as an investor for myself. Or if you're open to a company doing, you know, say you're electrician or a carpenter or whatever, a lot of good money to be made in those trades because there's less and less of them available and

00;27;46;14 - 00;28;07;29

Josh (Guest)

If you ever tried to hire somebody to work on your house and you find out that they're booked out six months or the price is way higher than you thought, that's why there's these guys are slammed with work because and they're able to charge much higher than, you know, it used to be so so yeah, I'm passionate. I'm passionate because I love it, you know, I just love the work.

00;28;07;29 - 00;28;15;09

Josh (Guest)

I love what I get to do every day. It's fulfilling for me. And and to be honest, there's there's some pretty good money to be had in the trades.

00;28;16;07 - 00;28;30;16

Jarred (Host)

Yeah, no kidding. I started out in the trades myself. I no longer work in the trades, but, um, that is how I got my start, too. That's cool. What did you do? I was in the automotive industry.

00;28;31;17 - 00;28;32;19

Josh (Guest)

Oh, that makes sense.

00;28;32;19 - 00;28;46;08

Jarred (Host)

Yeah, Completely different industry than real estate. But that's what I did out of college. And it turns out it wasn't for me. Fell in love with real estate. Yeah. Oh, God.

00;28;46;08 - 00;28;50;13

Josh (Guest)

There’s nothing like being under a hot car, you know? Yeah. It's not easy work.

00;28;50;20 - 00;29;11;28

Jarred (Host)

It was hard. It was really hard. Um, I felt that it was hard on my body, leaning over the cars. Every, you know, like, mostly all day. And so my back hurt all the time. I was always dirty. I'd never had clean fingernails. Wooo...

00;29;12;21 - 00;29;13;24

Josh (Guest)

Just glad there’s somebody else out there doing that, right?

00;29;13;24 - 00;29;26;13

Jarred (Host)

I am very thankful And in you'd think, Well, Jarred, you went to automotive school. You should you know you probably save a lot of money working on your own cars right? Nah. I still take my stuff in.

00;29;27;00 - 00;29;39;11

Josh (Guest)

Well, there's something about knowing yourself, right? And knowing what you enjoy. And, there are some people that just they live and breathe that stuff and they love it. You know, they work on cars all day as a job and then they go home and work on their own stuff all night. Yeah.

00;29;39;11 - 00;29;43;02

Jarred (Host)

Yeah. No, that. That wasn't me. It is a passion.

00;29;43;02 - 00;30;00;10

Josh (Guest)

Yeah. And that's fine. That's that's totally fine. Like, I know, I know my limits and and what I don't like doing. I love the trades, but I don't love every trade. I'll, I'll hire out roofing all day, you know, because I don't enjoy it, you know insulation? Ugh, hate that stuff. So I really, if I don't have to touch it

00;30;00;10 - 00;30;01;19

Josh (Guest)

I'm not trying to. So yeah.

00;30;02;11 - 00;30;21;13

Jarred (Host)

Exactly. Yeah. And so one of the things I find interesting about watching your videos again, I keep going back to your videos because they're just so good and I think people can learn a ton from them. Um, you're out there in it with your crews. You're doing the work side by side.

00;30;22;22 - 00;30;41;00

Josh (Guest)

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, my job is obviously to, you know, as the owner of the company, I'm in charge of finding properties and doing all the administrative stuff. So all the financing and all those kinds of things to make sure the bills are paid. But that's not a full time. That's not 40 hours a week for me.

00;30;41;00 - 00;31;01;12

Josh (Guest)

So, any moment I get that's outside of those duties, I, I go out there and swing a hammer and get in the trenches with the guys and not that I have to, but I really enjoy it. And and so, yeah, I spend as much time in the field working with them as I can. And again, it goes back to just that sort of my, my passion.

00;31;01;12 - 00;31;15;20

Josh (Guest)

So I if I could hire out and I probably should hire out all the other paperwork stuff that I don't like and I could just time but kind of hard to give up, you know, some of that. But yeah, I get out there as much as I can because I do love it.

00;31;16;07 - 00;31;42;11

Jarred (Host)

Well, that's part of your culture too, which I think is kind of what we're talking about. Um, the, the leadership skills that it takes to do it alongside your guys rather than just sort of standing at the end of the driveway, um, telling everybody else what to do. I think says a lot about that, a lot about you as a person and helps foster that, that community that you have.

00;31;43;00 - 00;32;13;00

Josh (Guest)

Yeah, I appreciate that. And you know and that comes down, you know, and I get that from my first boss that I worked for in construction. He was a multi, multimillionaire owner of this company, and he would show up on the jobsite, grab a broom or a hammer or whatever it was, and help alongside the guys. And I always respected that, you know, And my guys have told me on multiple occasions that they respect that I am willing to get dirty and work with them because, you know, you're not you're not standing in a place above them

00;32;13;00 - 00;32;27;01

Josh (Guest)

right? When I’m on-site, for instance, I don't allow them to call me, you know, boss, then I don't call them employees, you know, we’re team members. Yeah, it's that that's what we're shooting for.

00;32;27;15 - 00;32;41;04

Jarred (Host)

I think that's a great culture. You've done, you've done a good job doing that. Um, so how do you balance your your work time with your family? It sounds I can hear some of your family in the background there.

00;32;41;22 - 00;32;42;27

Josh (Guest)

I'm sorry, man, trying to keep them quiet.

00;32;42;28 - 00;32;44;18

Jarred (Host)

No, no. You're good.

00;32;45;09 - 00;33;04;25

Josh (Guest)

Yeah. So, you know, I work. I work a fair amount and it's in stages in or in comes in waves. So sometimes we're really, really busy and I'm working evenings as well, but usually that's by choice, you know, whether it's a side project or right now I'm building a, you know, a big garage on my property. So I'm working out there at night.

00;33;04;25 - 00;33;26;21

Josh (Guest)

But, you know, I'm here, my family's here, My kids want to help. Yeah, my average my average week is really not much more than 40 hours. You know, occasionally it is, but, um, yeah, I'm home, you know, our our crews take off at 3:00. They work 630 to 3. And so I'm usually home at a reasonable time. And a lot of times I don't leave

00;33;26;21 - 00;33;44;19

Josh (Guest)

until a little later in the morning because I'm doing paperwork and that kind of stuff in the morning. (And podcasts.) Yeah, podcasts, whatever comes. Yeah. So yeah, I get a fair amount of family time. All my kids are home schooled and my wife stays at home with them. So, um. Yeah, family's certainly important to us.

00;33;44;19 - 00;33;54;26

Josh (Guest)

And, and we prioritize, you know, time with the kids and, and Yeah, yeah, it's not, I'm not away from my family, you know, much.

00;33;55;10 - 00;33;59;28

Jarred (Host)

That's really good. Yeah. You're not working till the wee hours every night.

00;33;59;29 - 00;34;18;29

Josh (Guest)

No, no. I mean occasionally, you know, there'll be, there will be times like right now I'm doing an addition. I'm on the side for a friend at church. So, yeah, I'm working a little later, but it's not, you know, I'll be home by 7. You know, or 630 and it's not a big deal. I can knock out a couple of hours after 3:00 and then at home be home by dinner or whatever.

00;34;18;29 - 00;34;21;11

Josh (Guest)

Yeah. It's a it's good balance.

00;34;21;21 - 00;34;28;14

Jarred (Host)

Yeah, it sounds like it. I mean, people that work normal corporate jobs don't have a balance like that.

00;34;28;14 - 00;34;29;07

Josh (Guest)

Sometimes. Yeah.

00;34;30;10 - 00;34;35;21

Jarred (Host)

Yeah. I've, I've worked the corporate the corporate world too, and I have. I don't miss it.

00;34;36;19 - 00;34;50;17

Josh (Guest)

Yeah, I can imagine. I, I, I don't know how I have so much respect for people, you know, like I said, I have pride in and the blue collar work that I do, but I have so much respect for for white collar folks that are out there doing that and cranking out office time.

00;34;50;17 - 00;34;51;21

Jarred (Host)

It's so hard.

00;34;51;23 - 00;34;56;24

Josh (Guest)

That to me is more difficult than anything else. I just it's it's not easy.

00;34;56;28 - 00;34;57;19

Jarred (Host)

It's hard work.

00;34;58;02 - 00;34;59;27

Josh (Guest)

Yeah. Yeah.

00;34;59;27 - 00;35;11;26

Jarred (Host)

Um, so the last thing I want to ask you about, you mentioned that you put together a free resource for people that are trying to get into the business. Um, can you tell us about some of that.

00;35;12;21 - 00;35;30;07

Josh (Guest)

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, for the last few years, I've had people reach out to me what seems like daily and ask me questions about how to get started or whatever. And I'm like, You know what? I'm going to be asked this and I have to answer this question every day or a few times a week. I might as well put together a course.

00;35;30;07 - 00;36;01;28

Josh (Guest)

And I had friends that were kind of pushing me like, Man, you should be mentoring people. You should be, you know, monetizing this and all this stuff. So I did I, I ran a small mastermind with a, you know, probably six or eight people and charged for this course. And I spent many hours putting together this course. Basically everything you would need from start to finish, whether you wanted to wholesale you know how to set up a your your LLC all the way through the marketing and the scripts and how to talk to people, how to deal with title companies and then through, passed that you want to rehab properties or you want to buy

00;36;01;28 - 00;36;19;18

Josh (Guest)

rentals, how to manage contractors and and how to analyze deals and and all the basically everything you would need to know. I put it all together in a course and I was selling this alongside of my mastermind about a year ago. I decided like, you know what, I still don’t have a passion for this. I don't want to be doing this if I'm not passionate about it.

00;36;20;25 - 00;36;39;09

Josh (Guest)

And up until recently I totally forgot that I had created this course and had a number of people reach out last week saying, hey, you know, asking me these questions again. I'm like, You know what? I forgot I had this course. Why don’t I just give it away? You know, it's just sitting there and it's worth thousands of dollars, you know, people paying thousands and thousands of dollars for this information.

00;36;39;22 - 00;36;51;20

Josh (Guest)

And in a way, that's all put together in a concise manner. And so, yeah, I've got this course, and I'll make sure I get you the link to it. And if any of your listeners want it, they can have it for free. And yeah.

00;36;51;21 - 00;36;53;27

Jarred (Host)

Yeah we’d love that. That’s awesome.

00;36;54;15 - 00;37;11;13

Josh (Guest)

In my opinion, I think it's a very valuable resource that it should be used. It's all there. It's, you know it. If I were going to write a book, you know, it's the same things that everything is in there. Everything I know just about is in there. So and yeah, your listeners can have it for free if they're interested in that.

00;37;11;20 - 00;37;24;19

Jarred (Host)

That's super generous. Josh, appreciate that. Yeah, well, um, if you guys want to get a copy of that course, we're going to put the link to that in our show notes, so you can download it for free.

00;37;25;13 - 00;37;26;21

Josh (Guest)

Take it for what it's worth.

00;37;27;01 - 00;37;50;02

Jarred (Host)

Yeah No, that sounds really good. Well, we like the education side of the business. Um, I guess one of the things that I like a lot about this business is helping new people get into it. And I think it takes it takes a lot of people to make success in this business. Like you. You cannot do this business by yourself.

00;37;51;07 - 00;38;15;04

Jarred (Host)

So when you have a great support network, like I had a great support network, clearly you've had a great support network. That's what makes people successful. So I'm I'm passionate. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no such thing (as self-made). I'm passionate about that too. So, yeah, we love that. We appreciate you your willingness to put that out there for folks and we'd love to get that in our show notes.

00;38;15;12 - 00;38;35;03

Jarred (Host)

Josh, it's been awesome to hear your story and I love to see your success. I love watching your videos. You guys seriously have to go to Instagram. We're going to put that in the show notes, too. He's got if you want to watch a master caulker haha. No, he's got a lot of other really interesting stuff, too. So it's not just caulk.

00;38;36;12 - 00;38;46;22

Jarred (Host)

So yeah, we'll get that link in the show notes. And Josh, thanks again for sharing your story and supplying your your course for free to our our people And I’m sure, sure, they're going to love it.

00;38;47;21 - 00;38;49;07

Josh (Guest)

My pleasure, man. Thanks for having me on the show.

00;38;49;13 - 00;38;51;00

Jarred (Host)

Yeah, absolutely. Talk to you soon.

00;38;53;05 - 00;39;10;03

Jarred (Host)

Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Wholster podcast. If you want to stand out with your wholesale marketing or easily find more off market deals, leverage the convenience of a mobile app and download Holster today on the App Store or the Google Play Store.