#6 0 to 250 deals a year in 5 years with Nick Perry
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Itunes – www.TonyJavier.com/itunes
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Guest Bio: Nick Perry on the line out of Austin, Texas. Nick started his real estate business 6 years ago and has grown it dramatically. He invests nationwide now with his wholesaling business and does over 250 transactions a year. Hear how he got started and how he went from nothing 6 years ago to building a nationwide real estate investing business, which is not easy.
More about him – www.TonyJavier.com/nickperry
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Show Transcription:
Tony (00:04):
All right. Welcome. We’ve got Nick Perry on the line out of Austin, Texas. Nick started his real estate business six years ago and has grown it dramatically. He invests nationwide now with his wholesaling business does over 250 transactions a year. And I’d love to hear how he got started and how he went from nothing six years ago to building a nationwide real estate investing business, which is not easy. Most people are trying to find their first deal and Nick’s doing an average of almost a deal a day. I’m sure he’ll get there, here pretty soon. So thanks for jumping on Nick. How was your day so far, man?
Nick (00:38):
Yeah, I think you hit it right on the head, man. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. Right. Uh, so anybody that’s looking to get up to that point, uh, it’s definitely a journey, but, uh, you gotta have a thick skin and be ready to, you know, just, just tackle whatever comes at you. But when I started there, wasn’t great podcasts and content out there, like there is now. So, um, yeah, hopefully I can, I can share some things that, uh, shortcuts, some of that pain and, and, and, you know, the learning curve that goes into it.
Tony (01:10):
Yeah. So you expanded nationwide. So tell us about that. Again, most people have trouble finding their first deal and then even if they find their first deal, scaling it to a sustainable business is another thing. So tell us about your journey, how you started in the market that you started with and how and why you expanded in other markets.
Nick (01:28):
Yeah. Happy to do that. So when I first started, you know, I live in Austin, Texas originally from Northern Virginia, but, um, I started my real estate investing career in Austin. And, uh, you know, it was doing all the typical, um, marketing you do when you start up handwriting letters on your kitchen table, uh, doing hundreds and hundreds of bandit signs, you know, every night going in, uh, you know, knocking on doors, cold calling, uh, all those, you know, free to, you know, cheap ways of marketing. And I had very little success doing it because Austin is a very competitive market. So it took me 11 months to get my first deal. Um, it was an uphill battle. I think I went on like Uber. It was like 104 appointments before I got my, my first deal. And, um, then, you know, I started ramping up my marketing with the money for my first deal and putting it into a direct mail PPC. And I really, I had a good job at the time i was doing inside sales at Indeed.com. I was making like 200 grand, 225 grand a year they’re in. So I would just take all the time that I had in the evenings and all my, all the time I had on the weekends, uh, to pursue my real estate, investing a dream. And I took all my commission money from my nine to five, import it into, uh, into, uh, the real estate investing business. But to, to elaborate on how I went from just doing Austin and nationwide is in Austin. It not a great wholesale market. It’s a lot like San Diego where you’re going to have a super high cost per deal. So I noticed it was costing me anywhere from 8 to $15,000 to generate a closed deal in Austin in the amount of leads that you have to go through to get that deal. it wasn’t really shaken out numbers wise. And so I started marketing down in San Antonio. I started marketing in Houston, some of the two Cheri markets of Austin, some of the suburbs and was having success doing it. So I would, uh, you know, put out my marketing and juicer San Antonio and a bunch of appointments during the week. And I’d spend my weekends in Houston or San Antonio, which is two, three hours away from Austin. And I have five or six appointments every weekend and I’d go and do one or two appointments on Saturday, stay the night and, you know, Houston or San Antonio dude, two or three appointments the next day, drive home with a couple signed contracts and that, and go to work at my nine to five on Monday. And so that’s kind of how it started. in 2016, 2017, I was really getting into online lead generation. So pay per click advertising, SEO. In my SEO. I was crushing uh, across a lot of keywords back then. And, uh, I was optimizing to get more leads in Austin, San Antonio, Houston but what ended up happening was I started getting leads all over the country, pretty much everywhere besides where I wanted to generate leads.
Tony (04:45):
Did you do the SEO yourself, or did you hire a company to do that?
Nick (04:48):
I did it myself. You know, I went down the wormhole and watched every year, YouTube guru on SEO back in 2016. And I had some consultants that helped me out and things like that, but, uh, I did emotionally myself spent way too much time I’m doing it. Um, and, uh, yeah, that’s what happened was I started getting leads everywhere and I would throw them out. Right. I would just, if they weren’t Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, one of the major NSA’s in Texas, I discard them. And so, um, there came a point where I was like, you know what, uh, I was already starting to get to the point where I was closing some of my Houston San Antonio deals over the phone at this point, I was like, well, what’s the difference. As long as I can find a buyer in one of these other markets, like, why do I really care where it is? So I started taking a shot on those leads that I was actually just growing out. So I think the bursts, like super far away deal, I did it in another state was in like Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, middle of nowhere. Right. I got the property under contract. It got under contract, like 18,000. I caught a few of a, a few people from, uh, like just on Zillow, some realtors. And they’re like, yeah, I know some investors. And they were able to help me connect the dots. I made $12,000. And then I was like, alright, well, there’s a proof of concept right there. And it was kind of off to the races. And then that’s how, you know, from there we built an entire business model based on that.
Tony (06:16):
So now at this point you don’t have dedicated markets. You go to, you just kind of do SEO online marketing, and it just goes out everywhere. Or do you actually pick certain markets and build a team out in those markets?
Nick (06:27):
Now we’re literally nationwide. So we blanket the entire country. Now there’s certain markets where we have campaigns specifically set up because we’re more profitable in certain counties than other counties. Right. So we target our dollars into certain regions of the U S but we also blanket the entire United States as well.
Tony (06:54):
Cool. So how do you, how do you structure that? So you’ve got, you’ve got 9 employees right. And so I imagine….
Nick (06:59):
Yeah, it’s like 9, or I think we’re at like 10 or 11 now.
Tony (07:02):
Okay, cool. So like, you know, leads, come in, you have your team work on those and they find you lock up the deal and then you find buyers in those locations. So it’s pretty, you don’t have to close on it. You said you have wholesale some deals, right? Typically get them under contract. You find another buyer. Um, you know, if you have to, you contact a real estate agent help you help you close the deal. So really you don’t have offices set up in other locations. Do you guys work virtually or do you have an office in Austin that people
Nick (07:32):
I’ll kind of show you my set up? So I’m at my office right now. This is my office. And then, uh, this is much Salesforce we’re walking out to right now. Some of my guys are still at lunch, but you can kind of get an idea. We have the ping pong table and all of the acquisitions around here. This is, uh, our dispositions department. So these are the guys that are reaching out to investors and, uh, real estate agents all over the country, moving, moving our properties.
Tony (08:09):
That’s awesome, man. This is the first podcast tour I’ve ever done, man. That’s cool set up you got there.
Nick (08:17):
Thanks man. Yeah. Put a lot of hard work into the office. The guys like it. Um, it works out good.
Tony (08:24):
So what do you say? What would you say? Like the biggest thing from going from nothing back six years ago to where you are now, if there was like one or two, like key lessons or things that you could share with our audience that got you to this point, what would you say those, those actions, those steps, those tips, whatever it is that you have that got you to where you are now?
Nick (08:45):
Yeah. It’s really hard work and tenacity. I think most people starting any business, grossly underestimate the amount of sacrifice you have to give up. And if I wasn’t so deranged, I don’t think I would be able to, to make it through all the pain. You have to have that internal drive to succeed at all costs, no matter what. And you’ve got to have almost that, that chip on your shoulder or you know, that fire within you to, um, to be able to make it that you can’t go into. I know this, this sounds like really generic advice. I’m not telling you guys anything groundbreaking, but you cannot underestimate the amount of work it’s going to take. I think we’ve heard this probably all in other lessons is you underestimate what you can do. Um, you know, it’s like you can, you, you overestimate what you can do in a year, but you grossly underestimate what you can do in 10 years. And in my case, I’ve been doing this six years and you know where I’m at right now. This was, this was a far off dream, you know, six years ago when I was, uh, handwriting letters from my one bedroom apartment in the hood.
Tony (09:55):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, it takes a lot of hard work in the beginning. I was the same way, man. First, probably 10 years of my business, man. I worked 60 to 80 hours a week. Now my philosophy has worked smarter, work less and grow my business without having to work as much. And it’s funny cause I did a podcast recently with someone and they said entrepreneurs, which kind of like you and I, most entrepreneurs are similar where we worked so hard. It’s almost like we have a mental illness. It’s like something happened on our lives. Like we had to work hard to like prove something. I don’t know what it is, but like, um, so let me ask you this. So like six years, are you slowing down? Are you speeding up? Like what?
Nick (10:36):
We’re just getting warmed up, man. What are you talking about? I’m 31 years old. Like we’re just getting started. So, um, like right now, you know, I think we’re getting to the point where we’re one of the top wholesaling companies, but that’s not, I want to be the number one real estate investor of all time in the world, hands down. Like, you know, we’re not one of the things that I came into the real estate was like, I want to be the best, best of all time. Like if you’re going to do anything in your life, like you might as well strive to be the best at it. Right. If you’re going to play a sport, try to be the best at it. So, um, what’s that entail for me? It’s like, Hey, we’re, you’re, we’re, we’re starting a commercial division right now. Uh, we’re gonna start acquiring multifamily commercial property. And that I’m excited about that because now I get to go be a beginner again and, and start building that up. I’ve got a really great team and a COO that’s running my operations from a wholesaling business. I’m still actively involved in it, but I’m excited to go start doing commercial and, and, you know, climbing the ladder of, um, of doing that next.
Tony (11:47):
What are your goals with that? So actually tell me about your goals with the real estate investing in the, in the houses themselves. Um, like do you want to share any goals? Do you want, is there anything that you like are striving for in specific, like that would make you feel like, okay, I’ve met my goal. Like this is what I’m striving to do.
Nick (12:06):
Yeah. You know, right now it’s, um, you know, I used to have a, um, goal of like, Hey, how many people can we bring on how much you’re a top line revenue can we make? But for me now it’s about running a healthy organization. Yeah. I red line the shit out of my business for years and I made a lot of money, but I didn’t keep a lot of money. Right. So now it’s all about how much, how much are we bringing in to the bottom line? And obviously I have you huge goals of continuing to grow this over time, but not to the point that it’s, it’s, uh, unhealthy, um, uh, growth, right? So I want to continue to strategically have scale up marketing. Uh, when I really started doing big numbers, I levered down on credit cards and, you know, went like 200 grand in the hole and my deal shot up and you know, my business took off, but yeah, there’s just a lot of stress and anxiety that went into that.
Nick (13:09):
So now it’s about operating a healthy business and growing it sustainably so we can be here for a long, long time. So that’s my goal in the single family space, um, is to run a healthy organization, good balance sheet, you know, good profit margins, make sure all my people are well taken care of. And then on the commercial side, you know, it’s to be, you know, the best of all times. So you look at guys like Tim Brock’s and your Grant Cardone. And you know, I think we’ve got an organization and a team of guys that can go in and duplicate a lot of their systems and, um, really adopt a lot of their philosophies to be able to, uh, take off and hit the ground running with that. So that’s my next venture. Um, and you know, I mean, you look at, uh, your goals for that. That’s a whole nother realm. You’re talking you’re the guys that are top of their game. There are multibillionaires. So that’s, that’s what excites me about that.
Tony (14:13):
I’ve got a commercial real estate guy. I got to connect you with. He, uh, he started his commercial real estate business. I would say I’ve known him for 20 years. I think about 10 years ago, he started his business. It took him like probably five or six years of hard, hard work to even start doing like, you know, any kind of decent deals. Now I get emails from him cause I’m on his investor list. I’m invested in a couple of his deals and I think he’s over a $100, $150 million in real estate. Just, I mean, a lot of that’s in the last like three, four years. So I got a good connection point, man, I’ll connect you with him if you’d like to he’s he syndicates all his deals, man. I get emails now he’s like, I’ve got a $10 million deal. That was a big deal. At one point now he’s trying to do like 20, 25 million, $30 million deals. So it’s another world, man. It’s awesome. It’s a lot of, uh, you know, a lot of opportunity. You just add another zero to, to the, to the end of it. And really it’s a lot, a lot of people say once they get it scaled up, it’s about the same amount of work to do like a high level house split as it is to just raise money and do a deal on the commercial real estate side. That’s, you know, 10 times bigger.
Nick (15:21):
Exactly. So, you know, I’m really excited about that to go back and be a beginner again and, and get that scaled up. You’re outside of that, I owned a trucking business as well. So I’ve got the semi trucks, uh, so continuing to add more trucks to my, my trucking fleet. Um, that’s also something that’s exciting. That’s a great thing about wholesaling is, you know, you can strategically allocate capital once you have have money. I mean, this is like the only business that you can do from go from dead broke and be able to, to build yourself up to, you know, be in a millionaire. I don’t know, a whole lot of other businesses out there that you can do that.
Tony (16:04):
Yeah, no doubt. Anyone on the commercial real estate side. Some guys do one or two deals in and they are millionaire. So a lot of good opportunity there obviously. So cool man. So what, um, what kind of marketing method is would you cause that’s like the biggest thing, like right now, it’s so competitive in so many different markets, uh, besides SEO, what would you, what would you recommend people dial down on where they’re trying to, uh, find, find more deals and scale up?
Nick (16:29):
I mean, I spent 60 to $80,000 a month on pay per click advertising. So that’s where the majority of my marketing budget goes. We also do, um, cold calling SMS a little bit of it, not as much as we did back in 2019, just cause we get a better return from PPC. Um, that’s something that I’ve, uh, taken upon myself to learn, you know, over time, back in 2014, uh, you know, I stalked Dan Barrett with ad words, nerds down. And uh, I skipped out on a work trip in New York city to go meet him in Connecticut and uh, got him to agree to mentor me on how to do PPC and, uh, uh, he did. So you have paid them a little bit of money. He mentored me and showed me the principles on how to be successful in pay per click advertising within our space. And then, you know, I just continued to build on that knowledge and educate myself. And so I still manage our PPC to this day. You know, I’ve outsourced it to agencies before and multiple agencies to see if they could do a better job to me. And every time it’s been a disaster. So I advise everybody that asks me about PPC is take, take the time and the initiative to learn how to do it yourself. Um, I haven’t found a good agency that can, uh, can really do it to, you know, to scale and in a cost effective manner.
Tony (18:01):
Right. So you dial in and you do it yourself. You don’t have anybody on your team do it, you dial in and do it all yourself.
Nick (18:06):
Yeah. You know, because with PPC you gotta make a lot of counter intuitive judgment calls and things like that. And you’ll learn, you’ll learn those as you may, at that much work at all. You know, I check it on my campaigns. Um, I could check in on them once a week or once a month if I wanted to, I’m a nerd when it comes to online advertising. So I’ll get in there and you know, I’ll have my, have my coffee in the morning and check on my campaign and see how I did yesterday. I need to make any adjustments, I’ll do it. And then it’s off to the rest of my day.
Tony (18:43):
How do you track that stuff? I mean, we can get, we might get a little too Brandy or a little granular with this, but I know there’s a lot of experienced real estate investors that are going to be listening to this, but so how do you, how do you dial down on that? Cause obviously there’s like cost per click. There’s cost per lead. There’s um, you know, the tracking you have to do for the conversions, um, you know, there’s all kinds of different instrument details. I don’t know how far you want to go down in that, but what are some main metrics that you look at on your, uh, on your PPC campaigns that can help out?
Nick (19:12):
Cost per lead is the main driver, right. So, you know, I’ll, I’ll buy as many leads as I can at a certain price, right? So being nationwide, my lead costs are a lot cheaper than, um, if you were just marketing in San Diego or if I was just marketing in Austin, it’s the way the algorithm, um, favors the locations. The more narrow you target, the higher your cost per lead is going to be the more broad you are, the more, the less it’s going to be, because Google has more people to show your ads in front of it and it wants to spend your money. So being nationwide, my cost per lead is around $60. Um, and that’s, that’s what you say. Wow. It used to be way cheaper when I was like the only one like it was, no, it was like $8 when I started doing nationwide PPC now it’s $60, but I’m still happy with it. So yeah.
Tony (20:14):
Is it because of competition. Is that why it went up so much?
Nick (20:16):
I think so. I think so. You know, there’s, um, a lot more advertisers bidding on the same keywords around the country and ought to be aboard blanketing States and you know, everybody’s going virtual now. So I think that has a lot to do with it. Yeah. But you know, I look at, I look heavily at a cost per lead, right. So I’m looking at what’s our cost per lead? Can’t I drive more leads at this cost that’s and you know, if cost really gets too high, then you got to diagnose, Hey, why is it, you know, what’s going on here. Right. Are we showing up for search terms that we don’t want to be showing up for? Um, is there a certain keyword that’s just not converting well, you know, there’s, uh, your basic triage that you do on your campaign and you measure and just continue to optimize it. So, and that’s the nice thing about, uh, PPC is the more time you spend spend grooming it, it gets better and better as time goes on.
Tony (21:20):
Right As far as the, the deals that you wholesale. So basically you market other cities, you put the deals under contract without looking at them and then you sell them. Uh, and what happens if you can’t find a buyers ever, ever times when you don’t find buyers or do you, um, do you typically have a pretty good track record of finding a buyer for deals that you put under contract?
Nick (21:44):
This happens all the time, you know, where, um, we won’t be able to find a buyer, like I’d say 65% of our deals we close we will actually get funded on. Then the other 35%, you know, it’s either a buyer issue, a title issue or a seller issue, or my team, uh, you know, messed up on the ARV or they underestimated on the repairs and we have to release the contract. So yeah, we don’t, we don’t, that’s obviously a waste of everybody’s time and we don’t ever want that to happen, but it happens. It’s part of the business, especially being nationwide. We account in, Hey, we’re only, you know, only I tell my team only count on more than that. Every two going through, even though our numbers are better than that. I just tell them that so they’re not mentally defeated, you know, when contracts are falling apart.
Tony (22:36):
Right. For sure. So how do you decide whether you’re going to wholesale it or not? I know for us, we were talking before we started that, you know, right now the market’s hot. So when we buy a property, now that we’re wholesaling quite a few of them, depending on the area and that type of thing. Um, so we run the numbers and again, we’re making, you know, as much money on cold sales as it would, if you’re rehabbing them. How do you run your numbers on those? What’s your method on whether you wholesale a property, take it down, or whether you just wholesale it out traditionally?
Nick (23:04):
A lot of it has to do with, uh, some of the variables that you just brought up is, you know, what are the, uh, you know, pros and cons? Are we looking at it? Yeah, we can get a 10 K assignment fee on this versus, Hey, we can wholesale this. You have very easily and get 40, right. That’s a no brainer to me. If it’s in a good location, that’s got low days on market. It’s not going to cause us a lot of, uh, you know, bandwidth to get it done. Um, like I said, we’re not doing heavy construction on anything. So yeah, I think I’ve got like five or six wholesales going on right now. And the most extensive is, um, you know, we’re putting in some new floors, fixing a garage door and, uh, and doing some paint.
Tony (23:52):
Just making a livable basically.
Nick (23:55):
Yeah. Just making it livable. Uh, we’re do some cosmetic updates, fixtures, maybe a counter tops, maybe, maybe some new appliances, but we’re not doing anything above and beyond that, like I’ve said, I’ve done a lot of rehabs before in the past. I got a lot of respect for you to be able to, uh, build a business off that, you know, it’s just not my, not my strong point. I’m a sales and marketing guy. So yeah.
Tony (24:23):
Used to be, we’d make five grand on a wholesale deal and we’d make 20 to 50 grand on rehab. But like I said, now, the market’s so hot that we can, you know, it’s like, we just wholesaled one the other day. Actually we closed on it yesterday. It was a two week close and we made 20 there’s like 22 or 25 grand on it. It had, we rehabbed it. We would’ve made 17 grand. I mean, it’s just, it’s just crazy. So just depends on what you want. What’s your, you know, my team’s built out I’ve I rehab for almost 20 years. So, you know, we built that team out, but you’re right. It’s if it’s, you know, I just talking about on a podcast earlier today, it was like, you got to look at your return on time. You know, wholesaling, wholesaling is obviously a better return on time, but you know, if you could put a little extra effort into making two, three, four, or five times as much money, you just have to calculate that risk. Right.
Nick (25:12):
Absolutely. And you know, we’re, we’ll probably continue to do more and more. We’re actually starting to take on more there’s wholesale projects. Um, but we have to be selective, like you said, with, with our time. And we got to, uh, also look at our capital allocation as well, right? Like, you know, how, how quick are you going to be able to get a, um, a return on your money? Like what’s the velocity of capital into your business? The cash conversion cycle in this business in general is terrible already. You know, even in wholesaling, this is not like a SAS business where somebody swipes their card and we’re getting paid, right. So you gotta be cognizant of those things as well.
Tony (25:54):
Cool, man. So what else do you want to share? Anything else you want to dive into? What are some other, uh, Oh, actually I was going to ask you, tell me about your team. Like it’s, you know, it’s one of the biggest things with entrepreneurs that I hear is like one of the toughest things is finding good people. And for the first 10 years of my business, I felt the same way. It was like I was pulling my hair out, finding the wrong contractors, the wrong people to work in my business. And for me, I just had to step up my game on paid people more. I’ve found higher quality people. Um, I screened them better interviewed, and I found better processes to hire. So for you going from zero employees, six years ago to nine employees and running a pretty good sustainable business, how would you say that you were able to, to build that so quickly?
Nick (26:44):
Well, I worked at indeed as a senior account executive, so my job was talking to, you know, vice president human resources for, you know, medium, to, to enterprise level businesses. So I got, you know, a behind the curtain view on a lot of the best practices for hiring and I was consulting them on how to, to hire as well. So I lived and breathed that HR, um, before I was in real estate. So I already came in with kind of a leg up when it came to your hiring and attracting your top talent. And, uh, I kind of adopted the same principles that I learned at indeed into my real estate investing business. So, you know, we, um, outsource a lot of our recruitment, which means, you know, we have, you know, me and my COO, we’re not sitting there doing a lot of preliminary, uh, phone screens or interviews or posting jobs. That’s a, you know, five, $10 an hour task. So, you know, we’ve, you know, $15 an hour, most tasks, you can get you, if you have a position that you’re hiring for, don’t I would highly advise anybody that’s listening to this find somebody, I don’t care who it is. Your sister, your aunt, you know, anybody, that’s got some common sense that doesn’t mind working, maybe a couple hours a day. This could be a very part time dang. You don’t need to make a big deal out of it and go hire a recruiter. But if you know somebody that wants a few part time hours, tell him, Hey, I need you to find me an acquisition manager. This is what I’m looking for. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Here’s the ads. I need you to just make sure that they’re uploaded fresh on indeed. Make sure we’re getting enough applicants coming in. And then when these applicants come in, I want you to talk to them, tell them about the position, interview them phone, screen them, see if they’re even worth our time before we go any further. But that right there, that if you can outsource that whole top of funnel and recruitment, it saves a drastic amount of time.
Tony (28:57):
It’s like 90% of your time going through the applicants and prescreening them and getting rid of all the garbage.
Nick (29:02):
Correct? Correct. So pay, you know, pay your brother, your sister, your neighbor that’s got a kid that’s in between. Jobs are going to college, pay them 10, 15 bucks an hour part time and say, Hey, I need you to help me out with a project. Can you help me out? And then tell them, I need you to help me find somebody and very easy. Like, you know, we just, uh, finished, uh, hiring a few people. Brandon’s mom, my COO mom was doing it before then I had my sister doing it. So anybody with common sense and a few hours and an internet connection can take care of that whole recruiting top of funnel for you. And then once they pass you over the warm, uh, candidates, don’t even have them come into the office just yet, have them just schedule a phone screen for you. So say, Hey, if they’re good pop a calendar invite on all my calendar with their resume attached and tell them to call me, tell them I’m not going to call them and make sure they call me on time.
Tony (30:05):
You know what I do, one better. I have them do a zoom interview. I’ll give them like five questions and I’ll say, pop up your zoom, answer. These five questions uploaded into I’ll give them specific instructions, put in Google, drive, name it, a certain name, send it over to me. So, number one, I see if they follow instructions. And then two, I can tell within like 30 seconds, usually if they’re going to be a decent candidate, based on the way they interact and their confidence and that kind of thing. So that’s what I do to prescreen my applicants.
Nick (30:34):
Smart. So it’s just leveraging your time, right? Because it’s not a very fun task hiring and recruiting. I don’t know a whole lot of people that are in love with that, especially when they’re trying to run a real estate operation. Right.
Tony (30:47):
Which is interesting. Cause that’s like one of the most important things, right? You hire the right person that can completely change your business, you know?
Nick (30:53):
Correct. But when you can, you just need to, I’d say a big proponent that is outsourced that top of funnel and then know, once you do have the people in and another extremely important thing is we put everybody through a phone. So if they interview well, you know, face to face, we say, all right, Hey, next part of the interview, we’re going to actually have you hop on the phones and just have conversations with people. We’ll give you a script. We’re going to have you call some, call some leads a lot of time. We’ll have a, you know, them do a mock call with us just to see how that conversation cause everybody can interview well, right? But you put them, put them in the position that they’ve got to actually do the job. And you, you see a lie, you see people start getting really nervous and tripping on their words. You’ll get people, you know, in front of the phone and computer and you realize they’re completely technologically illiterate and you know, they’re not going to be a good fit. So that’s, uh, that’s important as well is do a mock, phone test. And then we put them through, um, personality assessments as well. And if they get through that gauntlet right there and uh, we feel good about him. Usually they’ll get an offer at that point.
Tony (32:09):
Yeah. I think references are a big thing too, man. I, I have my people call at least three references, if not five and just dive deep onto, you know, why they left their last job, how they were to work with. And once you start diving deep into that, it’s, it’s surprising how honest some people are even I’ve had, even people say, Hey, you gotta check, you know, call my friend. I worked with them and the friends like don’t hire man do not hire, you know? So I think just making those phone calls to check on their past the past references to is a big deal.
Nick (32:40):
Yeah. I agree. you know, one then we need to get better at is we’re not calling references, but, um, you can find out a lot from previous employers and contact, so yeah. Yeah. Good. No good stuff. I mean, that’s pretty much it, you know, in terms of honoring, you know, make sure that you have enough applicants coming in, you know, so, uh, Indeed’s where we do most of our recruitment. If that’s one thing we can talk about if you want it to, but essentially, you know, if you post enough jobs on indeed you, if you’re hiring in San Diego, posted a job in San Diego and post additional jobs and all the suburbs around there. So that way you have all that exposure and you’re getting more and more candidates, cause you gotta have enough candidate flow. So you don’t feel like you’re strapped. to make a decision on the hire,
Tony (33:28):
You know, how many people are going into indeed right now and applying. Cause I didn’t realize you could make over 200 grand working in Indeed, you know.
Nick (33:35):
Right, right. Well, uh, it’s always, you know, president’s club top gun. Um, so I did really well there. Uh, know I excelled at it. I don’t know if it’s still that way anymore, but you know, back back when I was there from 2014 to 2016, you can make some pretty good money at Indeed.
Tony (33:55):
That’s cool, man. Well, congrats on your success, man. Like I said, a lot of people try and find their first deal and you’re doing, and eventually, probably pretty soon, you’re going to be doing a deal a day, which is awesome. So congrats on your success. Thanks for sharing your story. Is there anything else you want to share? Um, do you want people to get in touch with you? Is there anything, um, anything else that you want to kind of give them to the listeners before we jump off here?
Nick (34:19):
No, I mean, you know, if you want to, um, reach out to me, you can find me on Instagram at @nickperryrei. Happy to help you got any follow up questions, uh, you know, above and beyond what Tony and I covered in the podcast. Just let me know happy to help.
Tony (34:35):
All right. Cool man. Well, I appreciate your time and uh, some good stuff here. So congrats and good luck with the commercial real estate role.
Nick (34:43):
Thanks man. Appreciate it.
Tony (34:45):
We’ll talk soon.
Nick (34:46):
Alright. Bye.
Tony (34:49):
All right. Sweet man.
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