500 Flips Later: The Marketing Secrets That Built My Empire with Brandon Rickman

The Real Estate Investing Club

Join our community of RE investors on Skool here: https://tr.ee/JoinTheClub  TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Episode Introduction & Guest Welcome 5:20 - Brandon's Journey From Construction to 500+ House Flips 11:27 - Advanced Marketing Strategies: Direct Mail vs Cold Calling 16:48 - Pay Per Lead System That's Crushing It in 2025 22:13 - Education Recommendations & Collective Genius Mastermind 24:25 - Single Best Advice for Younger Self: Never Sell Properties 27:23 - The $2M Land Development Deal That Went Horribly Wrong 29:19 - $128K Profit From Worst House Ever (No Renovation Required) 31:04 - How to Connect With Brandon & FlipGenius Resources  🏠 DISCOVER THE MARKETING SECRETS BEHIND 500+ SUCCESSFUL HOUSE FLIPS 🏠 In this power-packed episode of The Real Estate Investing Club podcast, host Gabe Petersen interviews Brandon Rickman from Simply Sold Atlanta and FlipGenius, who reveals the exact marketing strategies and systems that have generated over 500 successful house flips! 💰 Brandon shares his journey from working construction with his builder father to building a multi-million dollar real estate empire using advanced direct marketing techniques and systematic deal flow generation.  FROM CONSTRUCTION WORKER TO REAL ESTATE MOGUL 📈 Brandon takes us through his incredible transformation from learning construction skills as a child to building one of Atlanta's most successful house flipping operations. Starting with just one dilapidated house in his neighborhood, Brandon and his wife scaled their operation by joining masterminds, learning from investors doing 50-200 deals annually, and implementing professional systems that most small flippers never discover. His story demonstrates how proper mentorship and systematic thinking can transform a side hustle into a full-time empire.  ADVANCED MARKETING STRATEGIES THAT GENERATE CONSISTENT DEAL FLOW 🎯 Learn Brandon's multi-channel marketing approach that includes direct mail, pay-per-lead systems, cold calling, and text messaging campaigns. He reveals why direct mail has been his most consistent performer for 15+ years, how he structures postcard campaigns versus professional letter sequences, and why hitting the same database with multiple marketing channels dramatically increases response rates. Brandon shares specific costs and conversion rates for pay-per-lead systems that are currently generating deals at $150-200 per qualified lead.  Join our community of RE investors on Skool here: https://tr.ee/JoinTheClub

Transcript

00:00all right we are back with another episode of the real estate investing club i hope you guys are

00:11having a great day a great week wherever you are and whatever day it is for you as always it's

00:18friday on the podcast so we're bringing that good friday energy to you we have a an exciting day

00:23because we got brandon rickman with us here from simply sold atlanta and flip genius brandon has

00:28done over 500 flips so if you guys any of you guys out there you want to you've watched hgtv

00:34you want to do those flips you love uh you know the the glamour of it this is the episode to listen

00:39to um he also does self-storage which is one of my favorites as you guys know and he has uh another

00:45business that is not real estate related we probably won't go into it but it's uh it's always fun to

00:49you know touch on that in these episodes too so brandon i'm excited to jump into this thanks for

00:54hopping on yeah thanks gabe thanks for having me i'm excited to talk with you today and uh

00:59uncover some of our similarities some of the things we we've done uh in the both uh self-storage and

01:07all the real estate world oh everything right on well hey we always uh we always like starting with

01:12stories on the podcast gives a little color to where you know everybody has a unique story in real

01:17estate so um why don't you take us to the beginning of your story and just tell us how you got started and

01:21then how you got here yeah so my dad was a builder um so growing up my brother and i were both always

01:28around construction and real estate uh from an early age we were going and sweeping out houses and

01:33cleaning up property sites and then eventually he taught us everything from digging digging footings

01:39pouring concrete um installing roofs installing sheetrock and so we kind of learned from the ground up

01:45my brother went in the commercial side he's a commercial developer i stayed on the mostly on the

01:50residential side um although now we're doing some some self-storage but um kind of got into flipping

01:56really when my wife was a school teacher teaching math i was working for another builder in town i

02:02obviously had a background in construction so i knew that side of the business and we just really

02:07wanted to make some extra money we never really set out to build a big real estate business or anything

02:11just wanted to make some extra money to have a little little extra you know try to leave the

02:16nine to five or at least not live paycheck to paycheck and we found a house in our neighborhood

02:20that we lived in it was dilapidated went knocked on their house and found out the husband had passed

02:25away the the wife was moving into an assisted living facility and couldn't take care of the house

02:30so we made them an offer we bought it and um went to the bank and got a loan we put down our

02:3610 or whatever we had to and then did all the work out of our pockets and actually did the work

02:41ourselves so my wife and i were painting and uh tiling and doing all the work ourselves to try to

02:48save money which in the long run of course probably causes more money and more time than needed

02:52the first flip that was our first our first program nice nice yeah the first flip i did um or first and

03:01the second flip i did i did it you know with my buddies we we were doing the work and i distinctly

03:06remember uh we couldn't do the electrical and so we hired an electrician to do that and i remember

03:11walking through the flip with him and he was looking around you know we had done the work up to this

03:17point he was looking around at the tiling and he's like whoever you hired for the tiling you should fire

03:21them and not use them again because they did not do a great job and i was like well shit that point i

03:26realized yeah i should be hiring everything out and i should not do any work myself right um nice man so

03:33you got started you you you really weren't aiming to build a business like a standalone business you're

03:39just looking to get some extra money um but it obviously it worked you guys did the work yourself

03:44you made some money and you realized hey we could just keep doing this um how did you scale from that

03:49point forward yeah so we we probably did a deal or two a year on the side for the first few years my

03:55wife eventually quit teaching because we started making more money from real estate than we did from her

04:00teaching job and so she quit got a real estate license um we were doing some new construction

04:05back then as well so whenever we'd buy a lot or sell the house we were paying that three percent

04:10commission so we said well if you get your license we can keep that three percent on both sides um so we

04:16were working together in the business and back then you know this was 20 years ago 20 plus years ago

04:21um a lot of inventory not as many people flipping houses and so we were able to find the inventory

04:27inventory um at a decent at a decent price and get enough inventory where we could grow and scale

04:31and really i think all of that changed when we um started hanging out with people who were doing more

04:37deals um we joined a mastermind group and uh got some coaching and some mentoring from people who were

04:43doing you know 50 deals a year 100 deals a year 200 deals a year and really got a vision for that was

04:50possible you know before that it was kind of we only knew what we knew at the time and so

04:54having other people who were doing it at bigger scale kind of gave us a vision that that was possible

04:59and and and we also started looking at more um off-market properties so doing marketing to find

05:06off-market properties we hadn't done that in the past it was all word of mouth or buying through the

05:11mls and so once we discovered outbound marketing and that we could buy off market um and had the

05:17vision for growing and scaling and that that was possible that's when it really started compounding

05:22and we started doing more and more deals yeah yeah it's crazy how um how much having a group of

05:29like-minded investors who are you know a couple steps ahead of you how much that impacts what you

05:35see in your business like it if you have those people around you you all of a sudden like your your

05:40horizon expands and you're you're like okay this is actually possible this is something i can do

05:45and that's literally it's just by proxy of just being next to these people understanding what

05:50they're doing hearing their conversations um it's crazy how that works and that's why i always

05:55suggest people when they get started like join something some kind of mastermind some kind of

06:00local meetup anything where you're surrounded by people who are doing the same thing that you're doing

06:05because that will make you go further than most other things that you put your money into

06:10yeah absolutely and i've always uh you know i've i've done a handful of flips like flipping is not

06:15mostly what i do but i always have a lot of respect for people who do you know 10 20 50 flips a year

06:22because that is flips are hard it is a full-time business you have to have good contractors good

06:28systems everything um so people who get to the point where they're doing you know tens of flips every

06:33single year i i have a lot of respect for that um it usually it comes down to the system so if you

06:39if you could kind of pinpoint the things that you did in order to scale and get to that point what

06:44would you what would you say are the things i think the biggest thing for us so um you mentioned our

06:51other businesses so uh we had a couple of consumer products businesses that we had started and we're

06:56manufacturing products selling them to everybody from walmart to bass pro cabela's gander mountain all

07:01that kind of stuff and um i had an investor who was a full-time real estate investor but he was an

07:08investor in my company he was a good friend of mine for a long time so i ended up selling those uh

07:12consumer products company and cashing out and he asked me what are you going to do now and i said

07:17i don't know i'm going to you know look for my next deal and so he said well why don't you come help me

07:22run my real estate business so i went to work um with him we ended up starting three other companies

07:27at the time but all related to real estate but he had um he was doing a hundred deals a year he was

07:34flipping a hundred houses a year so it was a big program big system um lots of people and i came

07:39into that and joined him um and helped run that business for a number of years and so you know

07:46when we first started back back to before then you know people would say well what crm do you use

07:52and i'd say what's a crm right i mean if you're not in an industry that uses a crm you have no idea

07:57what it is or um you know when we were doing cold calling like you can use um some type of program that

08:04a multi-line dialer what's a multi-line dialer i'm picking up my cell phone and calling potential

08:09sellers and so really picking up all of those different different things that people who had

08:15been there before like you said and were bigger than us and kind of learning those aspects of the

08:20business you know with a multi-line dialer you can dial 700 people a day instead of 25 people a day

08:26and so all of those different systems actually process not not to derail you here but um you're

08:31talking about multi-line dialers and i actually recently switched um my cold callers to i mean

08:37you're still using something like you know um what is it you we use just call but there's a lot of them

08:42out there like phone burner whatever um i've actually switched them to using just a single line

08:47dialer because i i feel like we burn through to we burn through leads um when you're using multi-line

08:55because people won't pick up or people will get called and they won't they won't um actually get

09:00the call because somebody else get will answer and so i just feel like it burns data do you feel

09:05do you like multi-line dialers do you do single line as well we've done both we've done single line and

09:10multi-line we we use mojo um most of the time yeah and we've we've had pretty good response with both i

09:18mean obviously if we're doing a low volume kind of thing where we're calling you know two or three hundred

09:22people a day and sometimes that's what we do it might be following up with people from our crm

09:26or you know a smaller more niche niche list that we're calling we'll use a single line dialer but

09:31if we have you know we've had times where we're uploading 50 000 leads at one time and we're trying

09:36to call through 50 000 leads so multiple multi-line dialers um at that time yeah i guess that's yeah i

09:43mean commercial and and residential is residentially you got a lot more data yeah absolutely we were

09:49sending 50 000 texts a month and um you know making 50 000 call dials a month so um once we once we got

09:56up to scale you know it was it was a machine but to answer your question specifically i think it was

10:02you know working for my friend and learning those systems and those processes the other thing was we

10:08did all kinds of outbound marketing so we did direct mail paper click paper lead wasn't as popular

10:14back then but it is now we were doing some paper lead we were doing bandit signs we had some people

10:19doing door knocking so we we kind of got to learn on someone else's time and dollar all the different

10:26outbound marketing strategies and i ran that piece of the business so got to learn all of that so that

10:31when we when i left there when we split up and we went back on our own i was able to take all that

10:36information i had gained and and put it into practice in our business so um i mean you mentioned a lot of

10:42different types of outbound marketing um i'm a huge nerd when it comes to marketing i love i love it

10:47i like doing it i like talking about it and so i always want to dig a little bit deeper on that

10:51subject um you know i've used all the ones that you've mentioned what which one of the ones that

10:57you mentioned are your favorite or do you feel like you get the best results from direct mail has

11:02always been our number one um you know it it i think all marketing channels have some some ebbs and

11:09flows yeah nobody really knows why we we try to get people i tell people when you're first starting

11:14out pick one channel stick with it become really good at it understand it and then when you have

11:19the capital because you've closed some deals and in a good understanding you can add another

11:23ultimately i think it's important to have a minimum of three different marketing channels

11:28going at the same time or more and the reason is because you know direct mail may kill it for two

11:33months and then for some reason it doesn't work well for a month or two or three and then all of a

11:38sudden ppc picks up and nobody knows why or you know uh cold calling does great for three months

11:44and and then all of a sudden it quits and nobody's ever been able to identify exactly why that is and

11:50so i think it's good to be consistent with your marketing but direct mail for us you know for for

11:5515 years probably has been the most consistent um thing that we have done and gotten deals from

12:02um we do several different things but that's that's always been our number one

12:05and so for your mailers are you is it the simple kind of postcard mailer that's just hey i want

12:12to buy your house give me a call or do you guys do a little bit more professional type of mailers

12:16or do you mix and match sometimes you do professional sometimes you do simple

12:19yeah we mix it all up we mix it all up so we do postcards a lot of times we have done the google

12:26image postcard where it puts an image of the house on the postcard um we've done those we do some

12:32that are personal it's got a picture of my wife and me on there hey we're a local real estate

12:36investors looking to buy your house we've done just the generic we mix in letters too so we'll do

12:41formal letters that go in envelopes and kind of mix that in um and i i explain to people too um if you

12:49think about it's easier to explain with um with cold calling and texting as a as as two different

12:54marketing channels it applies to direct mail as well but different people respond to different things

12:59and so like if if i'm if i'm only texting my leads there are people out there who don't text

13:07they have older phones they might be older and not even have a phone they have only a landline they

13:12don't have a cell phone or it's a flip phone um and and there are people who clearly want to text

13:17more than they want to talk on the phone and so by doing both calling and texting the same database

13:22i get both groups of people the people who do want to text and the people who only talk on the phone

13:27and so it's similar with direct mail some people will get the postcard we've had people who will

13:32put the postcard in a drawer and call us a year later and we buy the property from them a year

13:36after we sent it then we have other people it's crazy when that happens i've had uh on self storage

13:41side i used to do a lot of mailers um and i stopped for a little bit because i felt like it

13:46wasn't getting as good as results as other channels um but then i would have people you know i hadn't been

13:50doing mailers and i would have people call i was like hey i got your mailer six months ago and i've been

13:55just sitting on it and i'm thinking about selling now so i thought i'd give you a call

13:58so yeah that stuff it's a slow burn you don't think it's uh sometimes you don't feel like it's

14:03working super well but it's it's there people have them um you're in their mind and so 10 you know 10

14:09months down the road they might give you a call yeah absolutely and i think to the like with the

14:14postcard some people get the postcards and they'll call or they'll go oh that's trash that's cheap and

14:19they'll throw in the garbage but then you send them a letter and they go oh this is a real

14:23company this is a professional company they open it they read it and then they call so you never

14:26know who's gonna who's gonna respond to which type of marketing channel and so we actually

14:30when we buy data we will send them direct mail we will text them and we will cold call them so

14:36that's three different channels of marketing we're hitting the same data three different ways just

14:40just in case they respond differently to different types of marketing uh what platform do you guys

14:45use for cold texting uh smarter contacts smarter contact interesting um yeah i i it's been a while

14:53since i've done cold texting but when we did it it worked really well for a second and then it didn't

14:57work really well and so we you know tried different channels um but i had never used smarter contact i

15:03feel i think we were using a lead lead sherpa something like that yeah um yeah yeah we'd use a launch

15:09control as well um it's another one but yeah smarter contact is the one one that we've been

15:15using i do think now texting is not near as easy now as it was six seven ten years ago it's a it's a

15:21fairly inexpensive way to get into the marketing side of it and so a lot of people have done it so

15:27it's a little more difficult but still we still get leads and deals from it yeah so yeah let's talk

15:33about today your business today what you guys are doing um might as well start with marketing what is

15:38working what are you guys focusing on today when you're reaching out to to owners we're doing more

15:43ppl right now than we have in the past so paper lead um slightly different than paper click obviously

15:50as you know paper click is um people are putting in need to sell my house fast and it's your uh your

15:57ads or your pages are popping up in google you try to get ranked as high as you can so that when they

16:01click on it they go to your website ppl is third-party companies who are actually doing that and then

16:06when they get a lead that's in your market they will send it to you um it's usually a less expensive

16:12option um as far as a cost per deal goes um obviously it costs more on a cost per lead basis than ppc but

16:19um they they are asking a series of qualifying questions to make sure that the person owns the

16:25house that they do want an offer they have some motivation for selling and then they they turn it

16:30over to us so by the time we get it we already know that the people want to sell they want a cash

16:35offer they have a reason for selling they're looking to sell in the next 60 days and so that's

16:40that's done well um recently we're doing more of that than we are ppc or anything else

16:45interesting and how much uh do you generally pay per lead and paper lead with that channel

16:51uh it's usually uh about 150 to 200 per lead that's actually cheap um it might be because of the the

17:01market i think i looked here in tacoma seattle and it was like 400 500 bucks per lead and i was just

17:07like i don't think i want to do that um yeah most of those companies charge by obviously by the area

17:12and so we have all the different counties that we select and some of those counties we can get leads

17:17for 125 some of the counties our leads are 300 and we can adjust our budget that's one of the things

17:23that i love about it is from week to week even day to day we can adjust our budget up or down

17:28if we want to pick up something in the county that we live in we can raise our budget in that

17:33particular county and we'll be the first one to get the leads if we're the highest bid so it's it's uh

17:38depends on the area you're in for sure yeah makes sense um so once you guys get the leads what what

17:44is your follow-up process look like are you doing the calls or do you guys have a va team um in-house

17:50that's uh that's doing that we do in-person appointments um so we're buying all in-person all around

17:56metro atlanta that's where all our flips have come we've done we've bought um some short-term

18:02rentals and uh long-term rentals and stuff outside of our market but most of our flips are in

18:07in our own market so um lead comes in we have acquisition managers who are following up lead

18:13lead managers managing the leads and then acquisition managers who are actually talking

18:16to the seller going on the appointment negotiating with the seller in person um and then that goes

18:23once we have a property under contract it flips over to our dispositions team which is you know

18:28our dispo folks who are selling the properties if um so we do we do wholesale some of them um

18:34depending on the situation if it's a flip obviously it goes over our project manager steps in

18:39and we close on the house our project manager runs the flip for us and then we list it on the mls

18:44if we decide we're just going to sell it to another wholesaler our dispo team comes in

18:48and then they market it and find another buyer and wholesale it to someone else yep yep that sounds

18:54uh sounds like a good system um so we are running the clock down but i did want to talk a little bit

18:59about self-storage i know you mentioned uh are you doing the new development for self-storage are you

19:04buying existing facilities yeah new development so um i kind of jumped in the deep end from the start

19:10i actually looked for some some value add stuff that i could buy and just never found anything that

19:15actually penciled out for me and so this particular deal was a property that was had two single family

19:22houses on it and i bought the property and then took it through zoning got it approved got a special

19:27use permit and then once i had everything approved i went to a friend of mine who i'd known for 10 years

19:33he's developed 60 self-storage facilities and said hey do you want to come in on this deal with me as a

19:40as a gp and uh helped me do it because i've never done one before and so he came in helped me structure

19:45it obviously did all the underwriting to make sure that it made sense and then came in helped me

19:50structure the deal helped me put the deal together helped me raise the the capital that was needed get

19:55the bank loan all of that so um so yeah it's been it's been a great learning process i wanted to learn

20:01how to do it and so partnering with somebody who had a lot of experience was key yeah absolutely um

20:07yeah it's but are you guys doing it out there in atlanta it's a yes lawrenceville which is about

20:1130 minutes north of atlanta huh i've uh i've you know i've looked at tons of metros when it comes

20:17to self-storage and i a lot of atlanta the net rentable per square foot uh per capita um is really

20:25high and i feel like there's not a lot of development opportunities out there but um you guys were able

20:30to find one how'd you do you guys use radius plus to identify uh to what works and what what areas

20:36are good to develop or um how'd you guys do that yeah i use radius plus my partner his company they

20:42have in-house um underwriting team so once i run it through radius plus just to kind of get the basics

20:47then i sent it over to him um this one in particular i knew because i was buying it so cheap

20:53i knew that it was worth more than i was buying it for so it was worth the risk i could sell it as a

20:58backup option option i could just sell the land as it was and and get my money back and make a little

21:02bit so it was not very risky but this particular area you know we were very fortunate um it was uh

21:103.6 um feet per uh per capita oh that's cheap um yeah and then very low and 325 000 square feet of

21:20unmet demand in the area in a three mile radius for self-storage um and we're putting in 115 000

21:26so it's 86 net rentable so still you know lots of room for other people to come in there and it's

21:32it's on a major highway it's next door to a brand new walmart um perfect yeah it's perfect it's a

21:38home run deal so the the county actually had the property on the future land use map they showed it

21:44as going commercial and i discovered that during my due diligence so i knew that they were they were

21:49wanting this property to go commercial and then i had to you know obviously get the special use

21:53permit so it was a great deal it's a great one to start with and you know we're under construction

21:58right now so we haven't started lease up but hopefully it'll it'll pan out the way we expect

22:03it to nice well yeah i hope as well it sounds like all the numbers at least point that way so

22:08uh it sounds like it'll be a good deal for you guys yeah we're hoping so all right with that i am

22:14going to push us into the quick question round are you ready i'm ready let's do it it starts with

22:19education could be any form could be a mentorship program you've been a part of a book you've read a

22:23movie you've seen conference you've gone to i just need two recommendations one for general life

22:28wisdom and then one for real estate or business uh i'll start with the real estate or business so

22:34that mastermind that i was in for a long time is called collected genius oh yeah it's one of the

22:40probably the first uh mastermind that started for real estate um i started it in 2016 so long time

22:48ago but great for mentoring coaching friends business partners all that kind of stuff so

22:53highly recommended it's all over the country there's investors from all over the country

22:57um personal you know i do a lot of reading i read a ton i read a lot of books um mostly um business

23:06books or kind of development self-development books not self-help so much but you know how to how to

23:12develop yourself develop your uh your thinking your mindset and all of that so i would say reading is a

23:18huge part of personal growth for me you got a single book that you could point out um at least on the

23:24personal growth side uh yeah of course the bible uh is the biggest one for me um i've read it uh

23:31multiple times and always gives great wisdom and insight um so that was definitely my my preferred

23:37i'd say the second one was a book called true faced um and it was a short read i read it 15 16 years

23:44ago multiple times and it was really um about living authentically so it was about removing the

23:51mask um that we live behind and living authentically with people and you know letting people know who

23:57you really are and and you know being authentic and up front with people and um kind of changed my

24:03my paradigm changed my view of life and people and is really deepened relationships in my life and so

24:08that's been a huge uh change for me very cool yeah that's a good recommendation um all right next

24:15question is for your younger self let's go back to the brandon who was just getting started um you know

24:20way back when when he was working with that i think you said a construction company go back to him look

24:25him in the eye give him one piece of advice moving forward don't ever sell any of the properties that

24:31you buy it's funny that uh you know multiple people have said that um and it's always a hard

24:38i agree you know obviously the longer you hold on to the more money you'll make with appreciation

24:43um but sometimes i feel like it is uh i guess it depends on the situation because sometimes you can

24:50use that capital to get into bigger deals um but yeah that's really good advice especially for your

24:56younger self there's definitely some deals that i wish i would have held on to uh but it's a it's a 20 you

25:01know hindsight's 20 20 thing right right and i think too i tell people now like because i agree

25:06the cash flow um from from flipping houses as an example is huge or if you get a big offer for a

25:12self-storage or a multi-family it might make sense to sell it but for for single family i'll tell people

25:17if that's the case flip three buy one to hold flip three buy one to hold um that way you're getting

25:23the cash from flipping the houses and then you're buying long-term assets as well there you go all right

25:29next question is about the u.s it's a big place there is a lot of opportunity out there give me

25:34the single metro you're most excited about investing in today it'd have to be atlanta uh it's my backyard

25:40i grew up here i'm from atlanta i went to college elsewhere but um grew up in atlanta you know i think

25:47atlanta is one of the only major metros that you can still buy property at a decent price you can

25:55i got a property sent to me yesterday that was eighty thousand dollars uh oh really there's

26:00out atlanta was getting up there like you know average purchase price is like 350 400 something

26:06like that it is it is but there's still pockets of atlanta and in especially south of downtown

26:11atlanta um there's still areas where you can buy so if you're buying rental properties you can buy them

26:16for 100 120 130 000 and spend minimum 30 000 and have a great rental property um you know our target

26:25for our flips is in the 350 you know the 400 range for retail sales price but if you compare that to

26:32any of the other major msas you're you know there's no way you can buy a house in new york or san francisco

26:38or any of the other major metropolitan areas seattle um you know for for 100 150 000 and atlanta has

26:46obviously the the world's busiest airport and then we have lots of major corporations fortune 100

26:51companies like you know you got home depot delta a lot a lot of big companies here so

26:56personally i i uh i think atlanta's is uh the best market to invest in but i'm a little bit biased

27:03no i've also heard good things about atlanta so uh it's a good recommendation

27:08all right next question is about lessons learned not every deal that we get into goes the way we

27:14expect it in fact uh many times it's not if not every time something goes wrong uh but that's when

27:20we get to learn a lesson so what was a deal that went a little sideways for you and then what was

27:24the lesson you pulled from it oh man there's so many of them i could i could write a book on all the

27:30mistakes that we've made and the lessons we've learned over all these years but um i think trying

27:36to time the market is impossible um that's probably a lesson that i've learned over 20 years because

27:41we've been through a few cycles we had a land development deal that we did um in 2008 2009 we bought

27:48the land subdivided it um we were going to sell the lot so it was a typical land neighborhood

27:54development and um everything was lined up perfectly for us to to do really well on it um we had some

28:02delays with the county not approving things we had some problems with our architect we had to change

28:07uh to a different architect in the long run it it delayed us about four or five months in being able

28:13to sell the property and during that time the market tanked so that was right in the 0809 crash

28:18and so we ended up instead of you know making a million and a half dollars we ended up taking back

28:25a note with the bank so we didn't have to file bankruptcy and paying that note over a 10-year

28:29period so we agreed to just to do a short sale with the bank and we took a 10-year note at three

28:35percent interest and so basically paid for another house for 10 years to get out from under that deal

28:39so you can't ever time the market um no matter what you do no matter how hard you research it

28:45you just can't time the market yep yeah that's why i have a hard and fast rule that i will not buy a

28:51deal unless it cash flows in today's numbers i'm not uh i'm not about i mean appreciation is great

28:55and value add is great i love that um but it can't be the only thing you're banking on um you need to

29:02it needs to make sense today or else i don't know why you're buying it um you really cannot time

29:08things like that yeah i love it all right uh that is um you know that is the struggle that you went

29:14through let's go to a deal that went perfect uh one of the one of your favorite deals take us to it

29:19how'd you get it how'd you find it and uh what'd you do to it to fix it up yeah i mean my favorite

29:24deal is is the self-storage deal right now um and we're not we're not full cycle on it yet but

29:29i wanted to get into it for years i love self-storage i love the business mall and certainly i love the

29:34the economics of it um as far as a single family world the worst house that we ever bought was the

29:40house we made the most money on and it was in a good area but the house was completely run down

29:46no power no water um they were using the restroom in the on the back porch um to people still lived

29:53in the house and the pipes in the floor had busted and drank when they still had water and had flooded

30:01the basement and they didn't ever go down in the basement so they didn't realize it and then

30:05eventually they cut the power off i'm cut the water off and so it was completely molded out it looked

30:11like it was gray paint on the walls it was actually oh geez yeah it was so bad that i wouldn't even let

30:17my wife walk through it i was like you cannot even see this one it's disgusting and so anyway we we

30:22bought it and closed on it and then cleaned it out which took about eight dumpsters to clean out

30:29and then i just threw it up on the mls as is i didn't do anything to it but clean it out

30:33and we made right at 128 000 selling it as is so didn't have to flip it didn't have to spend the

30:40time and effort energy and you know made 127 000 and change on it easy i love it um yeah it's crazy what

30:48uh you know just taking the garbage out does to a property um the perceived property value there and so

30:53that was a great deal for sure all right that leads us to the very last question this is for

30:59the listeners you've given us a lot to think about i'm sure people want to reach out get in contact

31:03with you uh this is a two-parter where can they find you and then what can they expect when they

31:06reach out yeah so we're um our website's flipgenius.com um so they can find me there my email address is

31:15brandon b-r-a-n-d-o-n at theflipgenius.com um run uh facebook and youtube and instagram tiktok all that

31:26at brandonrickman at the flip genius so um you can find us anywhere there and then you know i'm happy

31:33to help any way i can you know if people are wanting to reach out about uh how to raise money

31:38for multi-family or self-storage deals obviously i've done that raised a lot of money for single

31:42family stuff so any way that i can help with regard to single family um flipping or wholesaling

31:48i'm happy to help or even you know as we get into the self-storage stuff anything i can do to help

31:53they're happy to happy to share my experience and some of my bumps and bruises and maybe help other

31:59people avoid those themselves there you go i'll put that link in the show notes so if you guys want

32:04to reach out just click the little more in the description it'll pull down the full description

32:07and there you can find brandon's link all right man that wraps it up thank you very much for

32:13hopping on the show thank you gabe i appreciate it absolutely for everybody who's with us today

32:18thank you guys for showing up you are the reason we do this so if you guys have any questions reach

32:23out to me gabe at the real estate investing club.com if you guys want to support the show just leave us

32:27a review other than that i hope you guys have a great week keep rocking real estate and i look

32:32forward to seeing you on the next episode

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