In real estate, you are your own time manager. You do your own time, you set your own time. Only difference is if you don’t do it, you don’t get paid. I always say you can’t motivate an unmotivated seller. It is what it is. You can’t help somebody that doesn’t need your help or doesn’t need your help. The response rate in the South Florida, very competitive Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach County market, no matter what you do, try to make a short answer. Yes, it’s different, but it’s not because of the marketing piece or the marketing strategy. It’s just that the market is easier because of the hyper competitiveness. As a wholesaler, just having the right words to be honest with the seller about you being a wholesaler because people shy away from the unknown. If they don’t know, people don’t, they want to shy away from.

Welcome to the Real Estate Masters Podcast where we bring you the top real estate investors in the country. If you also want to be in the top 1%, you are in the right place. Listening to podcasts like this is exactly what helped me to scale my real estate investing business to seven figures, flip over a thousand houses and more importantly, step out of daily operations of my business over a decade ago so I could start and grow other businesses. So get ready to learn from the best and start building a business that works for you and not the other way around. Enjoy.

What’s going on guys? Mario, first off, thank you for taking the time and being here with us today. I know you’ve been in law enforcement for a long time. Going from law enforcement to real estate, what do you think the biggest difference is between the two fields?

Well, basically your time. Obviously in law enforcement you have certain amount of hours that you have to make a week. It’s not a nine to five. It could be a 12 to 12 or 10 to 10 or 10 hours data, whatever it may be and maybe more depending on the situation you get into. But in real estate, you are your own time manager. You do your own time, you set your own time. Only difference is if you don’t do it, you don’t get paid. If you do it, you get paid and at times handsome, just depends. So that’s the biggest thing. I always tell people that if I were paid the same in real estate, which obviously is not, but if I would pay the same in real estate that I would get paid in police work, I would obviously do real estate regardless. So if actually, if I would get paid less in real estate, I would do real estate before doing police work. Love police work. It’s been my passion. It still is, but obviously the safety issue and the whole thing of being home more with the family and obviously making a better life for me and the family lies in real estate.

Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. And how did you get into real estate in the first place?

It kind of happened where I moved in with my girlfriend at the time, now wife, and she had a property. I moved into her property that she bought. I moved in with her and then we got married and all of that. And instead of selling that property, when we upgraded for another one, we ended up renting it. And then at that point, well, we moved into that property. Then we moved into another property and we rented the previous two. Our third property was our dream home, the one we wanted. In that mix, I was watching a Facebook ad of a lot of the gurus and the Facebook ad, something clicked because something had happened within the police work, police department that I wasn’t too happy with. And I was like, “I have to move. I have to do something else.” And I was always interested in real estate because I already had the first two rentals, but I really wanted to get into it deeper. So I signed up for the course, cost me an arm and a leg back then for me, but signed up for the course and started wholesaling and everything has been going on since then, wholesaling and flipping and then buying rentals and so on and so forth.

Awesome. And then for the people listening, just what does your business look like today exactly?

Well, I currently own a portfolio of around 13 properties. It’s only one multifamily, so it’s 14 doors. I actively have also a wholesale division. My main thing though is the Burr strategy. I look to buy, renovate, rehab, repeat the whole night. That’s my main strategy. I started off wholesaling a lot, obviously to build up the capital. And I currently, I’m in two markets. I’m in the Broward County, Florida market and in the Dayton, Ohio or Montgomery County, Ohio market. So I have a handful of my portfolio over there and then a handful of my portfolio here where I live in Broward County. And just wholesaling and some flipping, very little because burn flipping is almost the same thing. It’s just difference exit strategy at the end. And then just looking to buy as many rentals as I can as fast as I can so I can sit down and do nothing and get a cash flow and equity.

Awesome. And you said you’re wholesaling in both markets or just in the Florida market? Both

Markets? In both markets. Both markets. It’s kind of a cherry pick type of strategy where if I really like the deal, I will take it down myself. It’s actually been that I was more likely than not like all the deals for the most part. But then the other ones, depending on where I’m at as far as my current projects or how much capital I have out to renovate or buy or whatever it is or waiting for refinances, I might just wholesale. Gotcha. It’s in both markets.

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What was the main problem that you were trying to solve when starting getting into real estate?

It is financial. In police work, you can live a comfortable life-ish, but as time passes and obviously cost of everything increases inflation and all of that, to live comfortable, to live good, to live for you and your family, you need more money. A $100,000, let’s just say a year job or career doesn’t cut it anymore. If you want to live comfortable or maybe a little bit more above comfortable, let’s say. So that was the main thing. And then my time, you can make a hundred and something thousand dollars a year being law enforcement police, but you’re going to have to work 12, 16 hour days every day, six, seven days a week and you’re not home. You’re not with your family. I have two daughters, two young daughters, I have a wife, so definitely the time and the money.

What do you think the most common misconception is about what you offer as far as a viewership from the community itself?

What do you mean? Explain that a little bit.

The most common misconception that you think non-investors see you as an investor.

Basically that I’m just here to low ball. You mean like sellers or just people? Yeah, that I’m just basically here to low ball and to steal properties and stuff like that. So my strategy may be different from a lot, but I give the sellers or just the people that I’m an investor, I buy properties. “Oh, okay. So yeah, you steal properties from people, or you this, you’re that, or you’re a shyster, you’re a salesman, or whatever. “My strategy is if I can help you, I’m going to help you. But if I can’t, I’ll let you know it doesn’t make sense. And on top of that, I like to explain why you want 300, but I can only do 200, for an example. I like to explain exactly why and I show them the numbers. Isn’t some people it’s an emotional thing that they just see the number, don’t really understand the explanation and then some just don’t and that’s okay. I put a lot of content on my socials and I always say you can’t motivate an unmotivated seller. It’s just it is what it is. You can’t help somebody that doesn’t need your help or doesn’t want your help. So the misconception is basically that investors are out here to steal properties or whatever, or that investors are out there to take away the American dream of owning home ownership. On the contrary, there’s different types of investors obviously, but on the contrary, those fix and flip investors like me or wholesalers as well, depending as long as everyone does it properly, legally and ethically, we’re providing housing for people that want to live in a nice house. So we’re helping the seller that doesn’t want to deal with the property for whatever reason. We’re helping the contractor make money to feed their family. We as a wholesaler say we’re helping a buyer find a deal as they end buyer on the end after renovation, we’re providing them a good product, a nice product to be able to live in and enjoy their family. So those are the misconceptions, but there’s misconceptions about every industry, everything, about everybody, doesn’t matter what. So it just comes with the territory.

Speaking of marketing, I’m curious what you’re doing to find most of your properties.

Well, today, I am going to say this, since I started, I’ve tried everything. I think I’ve tried, well, almost everything, not everything. There’s a lot of million ways to do it, but I’ve tried cold calling, door knocking, drive for dollars, texting, PPL, PC, Facebook, everything you can think of. What really fits my personality and my way is direct mail. I know it’s the tried and the tried and true method amongst others, but the tried and true method of getting deals is just harder for most and you have to kind of bite the book at the beginning until it starts ramping up and then it continues on its own as long as you maintain it. So direct mail is mainly now I also do agent outreach, reach out to all the agents in the area that I really like to buy and let them know, “Hey, I’m buying. I’m an investor looking for something that I can fix and flip or buy and hold that needs some renovations. Here’s my number, here’s my socials, here’s my social media. Reach out to me if you get something and I can make it easy to work with you as long as the deal makes sense.” And I also reach out to other wholesalers. If they have something that’s in my area that maybe I didn’t pick up or I didn’t see and the numbers work, then I would buy from them as well. So I have also wholesaler outreach marketing channel, that’s basically what

I’m doing now. I love it. You’re in two very different markets. So I’m curious to know if you see different results with different marketing in those two markets because I’m in a ton of mastermind groups, ton of events, you hear people in different markets from all over the country and direct mail works in this market, but PBC does it and vice versa in a different market. Have you seen a difference in those two markets to be able to tell like, “Hey, direct mail works better in the Florida market versus the Ohio market.” Have you noticed a difference or are you kind of seeing the similar results in both markets?

I don’t think it’s a difference in my case and from what I see, it’s a difference of if this works in this market or this works in that market. But from my experience, the Ohio market, Midwest market is always said to be the best market to wholesale and buy rentals and stuff like that. So the response rate is much higher in any marketing channel from what I’ve seen for the most part in the Ohio market. The response rate in the South Florida, very competitive Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach County market, no matter what you do, no matter if you do PPC, direct mail, if you do TV, if you do radio, if you do whatever it may be, it’s still hyper, hyper, hyper competitive and I guess the attitude of people or the personalities of people are different. I think that’s the main difference. So try to make a short answer, yes, it’s different, but it’s not because of the marketing piece or the marketing strategy, it’s just that the market is easier because of the hyper competitiveness.

I’m assuming you’re seeing bigger deal sizes in Florida compared to Ohio, just less frequency. So that definitely makes sense. What’s a common mistake that you often see investors make that you think could be really easily avoided?

The common mistakes as far as like a wholesaler or a fix and flipper or a buy and hold or all three?

All three. I mean, any in particular if you have any.

Well, I would say as a wholesaler, like I said, I started number of almost 10 years ago now, almost a decade when I started wholesaling and obviously you get taught different things, but as a wholesaler, just having the right words to be honest with a seller about you being a wholesaler, you’re not going to just come out and say, “Hey, I’m a wholesaler.” They’re going to be like, “What is that? I don’t want to deal with you. ” Because people shy away from the unknown and they don’t know and some people don’t, they want to shy away from it. It’s just natural. But wording it properly to the seller what you are and just being honest with the right wording, that’s the whole thing. Being honest and transparent with the right wording that doesn’t scare the seller off or doesn’t scare whatever it is. So that’s basically it on the wholesale side. That’s what I see a lot. And when I speak to sellers and they’re like, “Oh yeah, this person said that they were going to buy my house, but they sent a million people to the house and they weren’t going to buy it. ” Or some of them say, “Hey, they did buy it, but at the closing it wasn’t them. And I saw that they made 10, 20, 30, $50,000 and this and that and the other.” And I tell them, “Yeah, it’s done.” I tell them, “I do that. I do that as well, but I am upfront and honest and open with every seller of what I’m doing.” So just being able to word that honesty properly because you can’t just come out and say it because they don’t understand. For a fix and flipper, just getting into deals just to get into a deal, it’s better to get into no deal than to a bad deal. Same with buy and hold.That’s kind of the basic thing in those three kind of buckets that I put an investor in.

Yeah. Especially fixing flippers that have crews on their team and they’re like, “Oh, I just want to keep them busy. I’m going to take a deal that I might net four grand just so I’m like, that doesn’t make sense business wise, but is what it is. ”

I’ve had some buyers like that when I wholesale them a property. I was like, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll take it, man.” I built a good relationship with them. I was like, “Yeah, I just need to get my cruise work.” And I was like, “If that’s what you want, that works for me because I’m able to make money, but man, you sure?” I actually tell them, “You sure?” I was like, “Yeah, yeah, I need to get them working.” I see it both sides of the coin. One is you’re kind of messing up the market a little bit doing that, but then at the same time, if they don’t have work for their crews, then their crews are going to go somewhere else.

Right. Yeah, that’s fair too.

So it’s two sides of the coin. And if they’re good crews, when they do find two or three, four properties, which happens at times, you can go two, three months without finding one good property and then all of a sudden within two weeks, you got four fall in your lap, three and you’re like, “Oh man, I need my crews.” And if they’re out there doing something else, you ain’t going to get them back.

Yeah, 100%. 100%. There’s a lot of people in this industry that are maybe doing it on the weekend or maybe doing a dealer to a year versus there’s guys that are doing a ton of volume and then there’s guys that are doing a good amount of volume with really high spreads. What would you say separates the top operators from everyone else in your experience?

Consistency, That’s it. Consistency in my opinion is consistency. When you have momentum, consistency, I think it’s one of the top. I don’t want to label one, two, three, or four, but consistency is definitely up there because when you have the train moving, you have the momentum, you want to continue it because when you let it die, it dies and then it’s like pushing a train from zero then pushing a train that was already rolling. It’s to night and day. So consistency is one thing. Number two is putting yourself around people that are at the high level that you want to be because you can hear a thousand different gurus and trainings and courses and this and that and the other, which help a lot absolutely. But until you get into the nitty gritty of it and talk to people that are in the nitty gritty of it in certain situations, you will not know everything you need to know. So consistency and getting around the right people that are at the level that you want to be or above, I think those are the biggest key point that separate the weekend warrior from the one or two deal to the six, seven figure investor a year. I love

It. I love it. When it comes to the word success, everyone’s got their own definition for it, their own measure of way of measuring it and their own way of striving for it. How do you define the word success? How do you measure it and then how do you strive for it every day?

I measure success, great, great question by the way. And I measure success the best way to word this. Basically, there’s different avenues of success. There’s family, there’s this and that, but obviously we’re talking here about business. When you are able to have a business that pays for your lifestyle with you having to work minimal hours into the business and pays for everything you need most or anything you want and you don’t have to give too much time to it, that’s where success is. That’s where I’m striving for and shooting for in my goal in the next five to 10 years. So I can literally sit down, have my business running on a zone and then I want to say, I want to go here, I want to go there. My wife and I love to travel. I want to go here, I want to go there, I want to do this, I want to do that.That money financial is no longer a sticking point or something to think about or consider. Obviously other than health, other than relationships, other than family, which that’s without being said.

Yeah, 100%. If you were going to start from scratch today, the whole business goes away, you get to keep all the knowledge you’ve learned over the years, but the entire business, the portfolio, everything goes away. What would you focus on first? What would be the first thing you focus on to rebuild what you have now?

Wholesaling. Wholesale and real estate, finding a good deal. Everything starts with a good deal, everything.You find the good deal. Now I still have my knowledge, so that’s a good part. You mentioned that. You find a good deal, everything else, there’s a lot of avenues to go after that. You can keep it, you can find money to flip it, you can find money to keep it, you can wholesale it, you can partner up with others. Everything is based on finding a good deal. Whatever deal it is, if it’s commercial, if it’s residential, if it’s syndications, whatever maybe all starts with finding a good deal. And wholesaling is what I’ve heard many times with many different gurus, but it is, is the art of finding a good deal. Marketing

And sales. It’s all it is.

Exactly. Well, yeah, marketing and sales. I guess the beginning part of wholesaling. And if you know that, everything else is going to come into place because if you find a good deal, you’re going to find somebody to either buy it or fund it or something. You just have to go out there and network. Network, network, network, network is a big, big, big, big thing. So definitely that and obviously with the wholesaling, if I lost everything and had nothing, that’s how I can build up capital to then go into continue buying rentals. I love buying rentals. I know a lot of people have this sometimes bad taste about rentals, but if you do it properly and you’re structured and you have your reserves and stuff is good. And remember, the wealth building of rentals, it’s amazing. Like as always said, a lot of millionaires, billionaires make their money and then put it into real estate. That’s how they hold their money or they have their money because it’s just exponential growth. And I’ve seen it in just the last decade that I’ve owned rentals where I refinance a property that I bought and then it refinanced 123% more than what I bought it for and it’s only in a matter of nine, 10 years. So where can you get that? It’s almost impossible. So long story short, I would just start looking for deals.

That’s awesome. Where can people learn more about you or connect with you if someone’s interested or maybe if someone’s in one of those two markets listening to this, where can people reach out to you and where can people go?

Very easy. This Cop Flips, T-H-I-S, Copflips. I am all over every social, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. I’m even on LinkedIn and on X. So you could reach out to me there. I’m usually on top of all of the messages for now. I’m growing those channels. I’m posting content consistently every single day. So yeah, you just reach out to me there and you could find me there and reach out. And listen, I’m willing to help and talk to anybody. Whether in my market or not, that’s fine. Obviously in my market we could definitely link up and do deals or help you with your deals or whatever it is you may need. But I’m definitely open to speaking and talking or helping anyone because when I started and I used to reach out to those big time investors or gurus or whatever, it was crickets and it was tough. Now I get it. Why? Because they’re so into their business, owned into everything, it’s kind of tough and I’m sure they’re getting messages and requests left and right. I get that to a point, but I really wish some would actually respond, at least if it was a month later something. But yeah, you can reach out to me there. This cop flips.

Awesome. Awesome. Any final advice for investors that are looking to grow, scale, or maybe even simplify their business?

I love to say this. Whatever you think is going to take to hit your goal or do what you want to do in real estate investing, calculate that times 10. All the technical stuff is, it’ll come, but have the right mindset. You’re not going to make a hundred calls and you’re going to get a 20,000, $30,000 deal. You’re not going to make 50 calls and it could take 200, 300, 1,000. It could take 50 offers, a hundred offers. You got to go into it with that mindset. It’s going to take more than what you think. And it’s not just a mindset, this is a reality. It’s going to take more than what you think to do, but at the end it’s worth it after you do it and you do it again and you do it again and you do it again, it is worth it because the only way you fail is if you stop. That’s the only way because you’re definitely eventually either going to get better and things are going to be instead of a hundred offers, 50 and then 25 and then 10 and then it’s just going to start working.

I love it. I love it. Mario, thank you so much for taking the time. Everyone, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time.

Thank you for having me. Thank you.