If you write an offer and you just send an offer into the abyss, that’s nothing. By handing off acquisitions to someone else, I was able to grow my business so much bigger. Hire someone who’s either better than you or has a potential to be better in that role. And I think those are kind of the keys is like he had a lot of the pacing, he had a lot of the mimicking, the tonality changes, the direct questions, open-ended questions. He had a lot of that. So we just geared it to be more specific to real estate. I think the thing that we’ve done well is continuing to advertise when income has been less. There’s so many tools now to really reengage old leads. One of the things that we’re doing is kind of a pro tip is

What’s going on guys, welcome back. Today, we are blessed with the presence of Mr. Josh Axe out of a z. Josh, thank you so much for coming on.

Thanks. No, appreciate it.

I want to start by kind of going backwards a little bit. I know you’ve been in the business a while, but how did you originally get into real estate?

Yeah, so I started in property management. I was working for an addiction recovery program as the program director and I got engaged and the company I was working for, it’s in philanthropy, so they’re not really making money. So I’m like, well, hey, I need some more money. And they’re like, well, we could give you $200 more a month. I’m like, well, I’m getting married, I need to have a house. And part of my pay was room and board, so we couldn’t agree on numbers. And so one of the board members, his son had a property management business, and so I got connected over there and they were awesome. They paid for my real estate license, did paid training, whatever. I just grinded through the courses like 30 days later I was licensed and my role was signing up owners of rental properties for the property management company. So I had that firsthand look at like, oh wow, these real estate investors are getting paid every month and we’re doing all the work. Damn, how do I get some rentals?

That’s awesome. So how did you get from that to where you’re at now?

Yeah, so I mean when I recognized these guys are making four or 500 bucks a month and we’re doing all the work, how do I do that? How do I get some rentals? So literally I went on Google and I’m like, how do you buy rental properties? And that led me to BiggerPockets, which is a podcast and forum based website. And so I started poking around on there and started listening to the podcasts every day. And they would interview people who were in the rental game, who were wholesaling, who were fix and flips, who were syndicators. So they kind of interviewed each different type of person. And I listened to, one was with Michael Corals and he had done a thousand deals at that point. And so one of his methods was direct mail. So I’m like, okay, well he’s done a ton of deals and I really liked his cadence of speech and his tonality, and he was really intentional about how he spoke on the phone with sellers and his process and wasn’t a wholesaler. And so there were some things that he did that I really liked I was attracted to. And so I found out that he had a podcast as well. So I started listening to his podcast. And so I really dove into the different people in the industry that I related to the most. And their business model was most what I wanted to do. And that was a little bit later on, but when I was working for the first company, they changed my commission structure and we were signing up 50 to 60 properties a month, and my bonuses were based on how many properties I signed up, and once you hit the next tier, you’d get a big bonus. And so I did that for a few months and they’re like, alright, well we’re going to change the commission structure a little bit. And I’m like, damn, really it’s going to be like 1500 to $2,000 less per month for the same work. And so I’m like, well, that doesn’t really make sense to me. So I switched companies and it was another one local through a family connection. My wife’s cousin worked at one. They’re like, well, we’d pay you 10 grand a month if you came and worked for us and did the same thing. So I’m like, hell yeah. But then they weren’t getting any leads. They weren’t doing any paid ads or anything. So I’m like, oh man, this is way worse. And that’s when I really recognized though the value of leads. If you control the leads and if you can get your own leads, you’re in the ultimate control. And so I actually started sending mail way back then, but it was to list someone’s house. And so they had one of those Pitney Bowes postage machines. So I would literally take 200 envelopes and I would just be scanning. And I wasn’t really considering, man, the broker’s just paying for all this, but I was like, all right, I’m just sending some mail. And it was like, I think 40 cents at the time, whatever. And so anyways, he’s like, Hey, why is our postage bill so high? And I’m like, oh, shoot, whoops. But anyway, so I did that and did that for a while, started making some money there, and then I was also selling the properties that they were managing. So I’d reach out to all the owners and see if they were curious in a market analysis. And so kind of just started understanding more of the sales process of real estate, getting comfortable with title and how transactions work, how to value properties, all that. So those are kind of the foundations of getting to where I am now. And then learning about the direct mail and really diving into that, that’s where I feel like things really elevated for me was when I got really good at direct mail.

That’s awesome. And I know you’ve had a very intriguing life. What was your life like before getting into real estate?

So like I said, I was in addiction recovery, so that was the industry that I was in. I was a program director place here in Arizona called the John Bacan Academy. So the reason I was the program director is because I actually went through that program. So I’m recovering heroin addicts in October of 2025. This year I celebrated 15 years of sobriety.

That’s awesome.

So before that, I was homeless, destitute, my family had kicked me out. They’re like, enough of your shit. We’ve tried everything. And it was a good move on their part. And looking back, I had helped probably hundreds of people get into treatment programs. And a lot of that was through talking to their families and saying, listen, if the person has hot food every day, a place to sleep and a cell phone, why the hell would they get clean? They can just go in and get their drugs and come back here and no, life is too easy. So I would tell the parents, you need to make life a little tougher and kick them out because the reality is they could overdose anywhere. How much worse would you feel if they’d overdose in your house and you’ve enabled ’em

Yeah!

Allowing them a safe place to live to die in your bathroom? And that comes from experience of parents telling me that it’s happened. So that was my life before, and I’m super grateful that I found a program that it’s 24 months minimum. So you live there, work there, you’re there for 24 months. And it was at the time the Navy Seals of Recovery programs, and I had done others prior and it was like, if this one doesn’t work, I’m just too far gone. And so anyways, it’s worked so far. So you’re never fully recovered. We’re on that straight and narrow.

Do you ever just kind of sit there and just think how drastically different your life is now all the time from back then?

That fact doesn’t miss me. I understand that my life and the statistical likelihood of me being where I am is so small that it’s like, okay, I recognize the, I wouldn’t really call it luck, but the rarity of what that is.

Yeah. First off, I’m very proud of you. I mean, we’ve known each other for a while. I mean, it’s awesome to see where you’re at and knowing the back, obviously I’ve known about the backstory, but not super in depth. But yeah, it’s just incredible. And for those people listening, kind of explain where you’re at now because obviously from going from homeless and heroin addict, for those that don’t know what your business looks like today, paint the picture of where you’re at now.

So we buy and sell homes in Loser and Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania. That’s our bread and butter business. We hold some rental properties there as well. I’ve bought and sold hundreds of rentals and also on top of that, hundreds of houses I don’t keep as good a track as I should. I mean, all these people come up and they’re like, we’ve done a thousand houses. And it’s like, I actually don’t know. For me it’s kind of like, what’s the next best deal? Hey, that’s great that you’ve done a deal last week. As soon as that money hits, it’s like, all right, well now we need to look for the next one so I don’t get caught up in my wins. And it’s like we have to keep moving forward. But last year we did 74 houses. They changed some rules on us in PA where we were doing some wholesaling, some assignment of contract. And this year in January, they switched those rules. So we pivoted to fix and flip, which has been a tough transition because there’s a lot more decision fatigue, there’s a lot more, there’s definitely more risk. So when you close on a house and take title, you have to get insurance, utilities, that’s your deal. And in the last six months, we’ve had title issues. We’ve had the county sell a property that we bought prior to it going to auction. And so now we’re suing Loser and County to reverse the sale because we closed on it, got a mortgage, hard money loan. The whole deal had a recorded deed, but it’s kind of an archaic county and it can take two to four weeks for your deed to show is recorded at the county. And when we overnighted the funds, the county received ’em but didn’t deposit. And so that’s kind where the issue was. So it still showed us delinquent taxes on whatever, September 18th, even though they received the funds from us on the 17th. So they sold the property at auction even though we’ve purchased it. So anyways, that’s what we do now is we do fix and flip and then we buy rental properties as well when they make sense. So I think we’re looking at some different ideas for expanding the business. Fixing and flipping is really tough, especially from 2,500 miles away. I have a really great team. My team is incredible. We have an acquisition manager, property manager, operations manager, executive admin, marketing. So we have a team, we’re small, but we do a lot of deals for what we are. And I think this year we’re on track to do like 55 or 60 flips. Our profit per deal has went from 21,000 to 43,000. So it’s good overall. But the challenge of all of these houses, and there’s so many issues that come with fixing and flipping that we could go into, but I don’t think we have enough time for that

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Have you done any whole tailing or any, honestly, just close on it and then

Yeah, we’ll double close for sure. The law is pretty specific though in that it’s kind of intention too. So for example, if we get a property under contract and we advertise that property prior to us closing, as far as my understanding of the law, that is considered a wholesale transaction even though we’re double closing.

Interesting.

Yeah,

Sorry. Even if you’re closing on it, if you intent or try and market it prior to it, still they count it as a wholesale. Interesting.

Yes, they can. And so that’s where it’s like there’s not case law precedents right now to dictate what is or isn’t allowed. And I don’t want to be the guy that they test, they’re going to make an example of someone I’d prefer. It’s not me. Fair enough. So that’s kind of my thought process with it is

That’s fair.

I don’t want to take the risk. It’s not worth it.

Yeah, no, that’s fair. As far as the whole tail goes and just doing lipstick stuff, that doesn’t really apply though, right?

No, we do those too. Yeah. I mean in the deals that we’ve done, I would say maybe 25% of those fall into that category. Gotcha.

What was the main problem that you were trying to solve when starting this business?

Yeah, I mean just good leads. Do you mean from the perspective of I want to start a business to solve a problem? Or what is the challenge that I faced in running my business? Those could be two different questions.

More the original when starting the actual company itself.

When starting the company myself, what was my biggest challenge or what market problem was I trying to solve?

Your biggest challenge. Okay,

Got it. Yeah, I mean good deals. And I think also processes. I was terrible when I started, and I think most people are, when you start a business, you’re like, I’m going to do this. And then you’re like, oh, I’m doing really good. And then you look back at yourself five years ago and you’re like, I was so bad and I didn’t even know it. I would let sellers phone calls, go to voicemail, and then, because I wouldn’t answer intentionally, and then if they left a voicemail, I would know they’re a motivated seller. Oh, please give me a call back. And if they said, please call me back, I was like, they’re really motivated. That’s a good lead. And I would tell other people in the industry, they’re like, you don’t answer your phone. Are you stupid? What are you doing? And now I’m like, definitely was stupid. The number of deals that I missed out on because I didn’t answer the phone kills me to think about. So for anyone listening, answer the damn phone. And if you can’t answer it, pay someone to answer it, always answer the phone.

What would you say to the people that don’t take the three minute rule super seriously

Calling within three minutes, maybe? I’m not familiar with what you mean. The three minute rule,

Every three minutes that you don’t pick up or call them back, it significantly drops your chances of getting that deal. I think it was like 30 or 40% every three minutes.

I don’t know that statistic to be example or to be like, I don’t know that rule. I’ve never heard that. But we have a standard that we do call within three minutes not knowing that that’s a rule. And I have a call center that takes my calls and then I have a, well, they also do outbound calls too. So whenever a lead comes into our website, they will call that lead within three minutes, and I think it’s within 60 seconds, but I don’t want to quote that being incorrect, but it’s very quick within them submitting their info. Our speed to lead is really good. You really do lose so much. And I’ve had other investors that I network with, take it a step further, and I kind of like this. They lock up deals over the phone, and we do that too, but a lot of times they won’t let the seller off the call unless they get a firm know or they get a contract. And I’m like, that’s good because when you get a no, then you can solve for no. But if you write an offer and you just send an offer into the abyss, let’s nothing. But it’s like they’ll sit on the phone for an hour and a half and they’re like, okay, well no, I’m going to send the contract or the agreement to your email and we’re going to go through that. Is your email ready? Yeah. Okay. And then they’ll send it and they’re like going line by line down the agreement, and then it’s like, all right, cool. Now let’s get it signed. Well, I’m not going to sign. Oh, you’re not going to sign. Okay, well we’re going to need to cancel this agreement. We typically have another call after this, and we have a rule that we can only buy one house a day. So when you decide that you’re ready to sell, so are you saying no, you don’t want to move forward now? Well, no, that’s not what I’m saying. Right. So they’re forcing the no. So when you get to the no, it’s like, well, no, I don’t want to do that. Okay, well, can we talk about why not? Let’s not correct for us to move forward. So they pushed that issue and they’ve had a lot of success. And those are people here in Phoenix, which is very, very competitive.

Oh yeah. Why do you think so many investors overlooked that part

Could be laziness. It is interesting. I talk to people here in Phoenix, and a lot of ’em are too. They have too much control, I think, and they haven’t allowed their team to fully take on some responsibility. So I have a couple guys in mind that I can think of, but in 2021, we were doing texting, which we don’t do now, but everyone was doing texting. It was an awesome lead channel. It got abused like most do. But I hated doing it, and I hated all the people that were mad texting back, like, go F yourself, you suck, whatever. And then you get some good lead zone and you’re like, alright, so this does work, but I just don’t like the constant barrage of negativity. And so I had a buddy who was going to get his life insurance license and sell life insurance. I’m like, before you do that and you’re miserable, no offense to those who sell life insurance, but before you do that and be miserable, let’s try working together and I’ll give you three months. I’ll pay you a salary for three months. If you don’t make me money in 90 days, we’ll let you go and you can go and do that anyways, but I will pay you really well if you can stay. And that was January 1st, 2021, and he’s still with me now. So he killed it by handing off acquisitions to someone else. I was able to grow my business so much bigger because I was a bottleneck. And so many investors that I talked to are the bottleneck in their business. They can’t talk to enough sellers in a day and run their business. It’s so common. It’s like, well, no, I need to make the offer. I need to make the offer. It’s like, okay, well if you’re spending four or five hours a day making offers to sellers, which if you had good lead sources, you would be talking to that many sellers or following up or whatever. You can’t do that if you’re trying to run your business too. It’s like, are you trying to be a salesperson and have a job or are you trying to run a business? There’s a difference. And so outsourcing, hiring for acquisitions has just been insane. The trajectory of my business doubled or tripled for sure.

What would you say to people that are a, scared to hire acquisitions and B, once they do hire them, they kind of have ’em on a leash and at some point you got to let them make a mistake and learn from it. What would you say to someone in that situation?

Yeah, everything is scary until you do it. Your fears are typically unfounded and you have to train them. And with my acquisition manager, him and I were friends too, and the roles were clearly defined. And he would sit 15 feet away from me in a different room, but there was no doorway. So I could hear him on every seller call for a year this straight for a year, every day monitoring his calls, listening to him, coaching him. I was doing I running the business and he’s taking the seller calls. And it was just really dynamic where every call, Hey, man, this guy said this. It stumped me. What should I have said? Or some of his calls he’d be on speaker, and I’m like, Hey, when the seller said that, that’s a window into motivation that you need to press on. Why did they say that? That’s a weird thing for them to say. And so I am giving him the cues that I’m looking for, which I’m not perfect, but I’ve done enough seller calls to where someone will say something and you’re like, hold on. That’s not a normal thing A seller says, can you explain that? Can we talk a little bit more about that? Yeah. And then they’ll say something like, well, it’s hard to give me an example because I don’t do the seller calls now, but oh, well, I need to have this done by this date you. And it’s like, okay, so you need to close fast. Got it. But it’s like I would think, well, hold on. Why do you need to close that date? What’s on that date? Well, the house is in foreclosure and we’ve already moved and whatever. Or we’ve had one where it’s like, yeah, the house is going to get bulldozed by the city. And I’m like, that’s important for us to know. So thankfully he caught that one. But initially it’s like you wouldn’t know to ask the question until someone trains you to. And so for the people who are considering hiring for acquisitions, you need to train them enough to know the cues to look for and spend that time with ’em. And I think personally, it’s better if they’re in the same room and I’m doing what I’m doing and I can listen to them, but I’m truthfully terrible at, I’m not going to go through seller calls from a week ago, two weeks ago, or whatever. I don’t have the time for that. And I also respect my enough and know that he’s a hustler enough that I don’t have to do that. So hiring a player, hire someone who’s either better than you or has a potential to be better than you in that role. And I think those are kind of the keys is like you got to give ’em enough rope to hang themselves. You have to trust ’em fully. They need to be loyal. They need to be willing to learn. And I think those people, when you need ’em, you’re like, this guy’s hungry. This guy will hammer phones for 14 hours a day. And my guy does. He’s the best. I can’t say enough good things about Kyle.

Would you say that the year that you spent wall to wall hearing all the calls makes you that much more comfortable and affirmative in your belief that he’s doing what he does? You feel like that was a big part of it?

For sure. Yeah. So prior to working for me, he did car sales. So he got these car conglomerates, these billion dollar companies, they spend like a hundred thousand dollars sending their sales guys through the training courses or whatever. And he’s naturally so quick to build rapport. I mean, you’ve met Kyle, so

Oh, yeah, talked Kyle. Yeah,

So immediately can build rapport with the seller, super friendly. He’s awesome. And having the training prior, it was like, well, let’s just make this specific to real estate now. And so he had a lot of the pacing, he had a lot of the mimicking, the tonality changes, the direct questions, open-ended questions. He had a lot of that. So we just geared it to be more specific to real estate. And so he’s been phenomenal, really. I mean, I think it took him a couple months to get comfortable enough talking to sellers, and I think everyone should give them that grace. It takes a few months to understand your role and feel comfortable talking to sellers. And so if you are going to hire someone for acquisitions, it was over three months before he got a deal, but I would say by six months he had locked up some great deals. For sure.

Josh, what are some of the main strategies that you are seeing be a key impact in this past year?

Most people have been slowing down, and we’ve kind of slowed down a little bit, not super intentionally. I think the thing that we’ve done well is continuing to advertise when income has been less, which is hard to do. Continuing to spend 20, 30, 40 grand a month when income is not there to back it up is super challenging. And so continuing to do that, there’s a lot of pressure, but we’ve been doing that, and I think that’s kind of a key is when everyone’s scared, you kind of double down. So we’ve been working through that. And then I think you also have to pivot. We’ve had to pivot because laws have changed. And I think the reality is those laws are going to change everywhere. So the market of wholesaling real estate legally is going to change in I would say the next five years. And I think that’ll be all across the country. So I think investors who are smart are starting to see that writing on the wall and starting to make adjustments. Now. We started implementing the process in September last year, like, all right, we know this is coming. Let’s start working on better contractors, better processes. And we’ve been paid dividends because of that, and we were positioned to do that. But I would say being ready and willing to adapt to market conditions is key.

Yeah, I think what you started off with is so key because a lot of people, when the revenue comes down, they lower their budget or wipe it entirely. And I mean, from what you’ve said so far, and I totally agree with you, is leads and marketing is everything. We’re in a lead business, we’re in a marketing business.

Yeah, it is a slow death if you start cutting ad channels. I mean, that’s not to say that if an ad channel doesn’t work, you shouldn’t cut it. If something doesn’t give you a return, then it should be cut. But you have to actually track that to know as well. So it’s like there’s multiple levels to it where it’s like, well, if you’re not tracking your roas, how would you know it’s working or not? If you wouldn’t? I think my phone’s ringing more. That’s great. Is that because you have a billboard or because of realtors giving your card out to everyone they know? How do you know what the source of leads are if you don’t track ’em? And so you have to implement a tracking system. You have to know your numbers. You have to, right now, when things are constricting, you have to spend that time to really delve into all the numbers in your business, all the numbers in your rentals. For our rental properties, we went through and we said, where can we save some money? Not that that our rentals were struggling, but excuse me, how can we decrease our vacancy? How can we lower our cost of insurance? Is there other debt sources right now that are going to be cheaper that we can still build more equity? And by doing those small things that don’t take a long time, I think I increased my cashflow like 14 or $15,000 per year. So if you do that in every area of your business and create just a little bit more efficiency, but you do it everywhere, you can have a 15 to 20% bump in your net operating income just from some small tweaks. And it comes from the last 10 years in the business has been more marketing, more leads, more mail, more whatever. But everything’s kind of shaky right now. So now I think it’s maximizing the leads you have, the deals you have, the marketing you have. There’s so many tools now to really reengage old leads. One of the things that we’re doing is kind of a pro tip is we’re sending handwritten letters to our warm leads. So anyone who’s not sold that’s in our database, which we have, I don’t know, four or 5,000 leads in our database, as long as they’re not dead and they didn’t tell us, never talk to me again, we don’t harass people. If they ask us to take ’em off the list, we do. But if they haven’t said that they’ve shown an interest in selling and they’re still in our database, we send ’em a handwritten letter, excuse me. And we do that once every other month. So we’re those people who have shown the interest, and that’s a pretty solid source of our leads right now. Because if they wanted to sell before and they still haven’t sold, it’s a pretty easy thing to say, well, hey, Mr. And Mrs. Seller, you told me that you wanted to get this. How’s that gone for you? Well, you still have the house. It’s still a problem. It’s still a thorn in your side. Are prices still the same or maybe it’s come down a little bit before it comes down any further. Why don’t we agree to move forward? The market’s not getting any better, so let’s make a deal.

When it comes to the word success, everyone’s got their own definition for it. Everyone’s got their own way of chasing it. How do you define the word success? How do you chase it in your business and in your life, and how do you find the motivation to keep going after it?

Success to me is being able to do what I want, what I want to do it with, who I want to do it with. And that means financial freedom. A lot of times that means time freedom. So success is, anyone can define it. Some people can be happy on a farm in Arkansas and they’re happy as can be. Farm and corn. It’s not the life that I want. That could be success to them, and that’s great. I like nice things. My wife likes nice things. I like fast cars. So for me, it’s being able to buy the cars I want, do what I want with those cars when I want to do it, being able to spend time with my family, go to Disneyland, do the concierge package, which is incredible. If you haven’t done that and you have kids, it is the best. You don’t wait in lines. It’s insane. So highly recommend that. But those kinds of things where, and then you can invite others to share in those experiences too. Being able to give people a ride in a nice car that they’ve never had the chance to ride in. Being able to take friends and family to Disneyland is so rewarding and so fulfilling, especially when I put my family through so much with my addiction to be able to reward ’em with like, Hey, no, we’re going to go to Disneyland, and not only are we going to Disneyland, we’re going to do the craziest shit you can do at Disneyland ever, where you don’t wait in a line and you can get to any restaurant you want, and you ride so many rides that you’re like, I don’t even want to ride rides anymore previous. And that’s normally because you’ve waited in so many stupid two hour lines, but literally you’re walking through the exit on some rides and you literally just, long as it takes you to walk up to the exit, you sit in the ride and it’s your turn. It’s crazy. It’s so cool. And there’s nothing better. So those kinds of experiences to me feel like success or going to a restaurant and taking my family out or my team and not having to worry about, well, how much is this bill? No, it’s like you don’t even have to think about it. It’s put the card down. You’re not worried it’s not going to break you. Those things to me are like, I never had that. It was always like, well, we can’t get the steak at the restaurant. Too much money, right? No, we can’t get an extra side. No, we’re going to get the salad bar. That’s the cheapest way to eat at Sizzler in Utah, which is for some reason where we always went, whatever. And so success to me is being able to not have to make those types of sacrifices. And I try not to live above my means, but I like nice things because I can’t.

That’s great. Now it’s all the sides. Bring ’em all out.

All the sides.

Cool. Well, let’s say the business goes away. You get to keep your knowledge of everything you’ve learned over the years. Everything goes away, Kyle, the whole team, the whole business, everything goes away. You were going to restart from scratch today. What would you focus on first to rebuild?

Not real estate.

Really.

Yeah.

What would you go into

Maybe roofing. I think roofing right now is a very unique opportunity. There’s a lot of storm chasing in roofing, which you can make a ton of money. But I think building a business around that, and I say that because, and I would encourage you to ask this question to the people you interview. If they were to sell their business today, what’s it worth? You could ask Tony. You could ask any of those guys. Anyone. What could you get in cash today for your business? I’d probably argue close to zero, maybe a year’s worth of revenue maybe. But the likelihood is probably zero, because you take the operator away, you take me away, you take whoever’s driving the business, you take them away. There’s not much left. However, in roofing, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, you have a business that’s cranking out two, 3 million a year. And those industries, hedge funds are buying those crazy, right? So I think you have a better long-term play because I’m looking at, okay, well, I’ve spent 10 years in this business, what can I sell for? I have a buddy 10 years ago who lived in the same neighborhood 10 years ago, we started a restoration business and built it up, built it up, whatever they just sold last year for 80 million. What’s my business worth?

That’s crazy.

So I don’t think I would do real estate. However, if I wanted to do real estate, what I would do is I would literally every day look at the foreclosure proceedings in Arizona. They have them posted daily. I would probably, well, they do foreclosures every single day here too. So it’s a little different in my market and pa. But in both places, I would look at foreclosures. I would say, okay, these are motivated sellers. I would go and I would knock their door. If I had nothing, no money, no budget, I just needed to get deals locked up, I would go and knock on those doors and I’d try and wholesale those deals to flippers. There’s people that do that with a lot of success right now. So it’s a tactic that works. And anyone who’s been struggling in the business the last few years, I would just say, get back to principals. Pick up the damn phone and talk to a seller. That’s what we had to do when we started. But everyone’s lost their scrappiness because it’s like, oh, well, I’m comfortable now and I have a team and I make money and whatever. It’s like, you might have to pick up the phone and start calling people if you don’t figure some shit out. I mean, there’s a lot of people hurting in the industry right now. So make some changes. Make them now before you’re forced to make them later. And I think that’s getting back to those principles, revenue first. Focus on revenue first. Don’t focus on building a team. Just get some damn deals. And how do you do that? Every market’s a little different, but find motivated sellers.

That’s awesome. Where can people connect with you? Where can people find you? If someone is wanting to reach out and learn more,

So they can find me on Instagram, the josh acts.com regular, or just the Josh ax. Sorry, Josh Ax wasn’t available. So I don’t think that highly of myself that I’m the Josh ax, but that’s what was available. So I went with it. I’m on Facebook, whatever. Just look up Josh Ax, you should find me. And then if the conversation goes from there, we can share emails, whatever. Yeah.

Awesome. Any final advice for someone that’s looking to scale, grow or maybe simplify their business?

Yeah, just hire the right people. The one thing that’s helped me this year was I hired someone and fired someone within 24 hours. And it’s because I realized that person is so unqualified for the role that I hired them for. Then I hired someone who was more than qualified and was way better at that role than I was, and it was my operations manager. She has been a laser beam of focus for my business where she’s getting in the weeds of everything and making my life so much simpler because she’s just phenomenal at her job. And so the key thing would be hire someone who’s so good at their job that they make you look like an amateur. That’s the key. You look at any majorly successful company, they’ve hired so well that it’s hard for them to mess up.

I think a lot of business owners, they maybe have a perception that they can’t really find anyone that’s better than them at acquisitions or whatever their skillset is in the business. What would you tell someone like that that doesn’t think that they can find someone that’s better than them?

They’re probably right. If you think that you’re going to believe that, I couldn’t tell you otherwise. But the one thing I would consider is you’re a business owner. You’re running 100% of your business, which has sales, marketing, bookkeeping, HR has all these different hats you have to wear as a business owner. So are you 100% good at each of those things? Absolutely not. You’re probably 20% good at all of ’em. Well, if you hire someone, and let’s say you focus only on sales, okay, you’re a hundred percent great at sales. Awesome. Well, if you hire someone and they’re 75% as good as you at sales, but they’re doing it 100% of their time, not only is their focus and drive going to make them perform better than you, but eventually, since that’s all they’re doing, they’re going to get better than you at it because all they’re focused on, so they’re going to be better from the beginning because that’s their only focus. And then once they develop the skills that the reps force you to gain, then they’re going to be even better than you were when you hired them, even though you were the top. So it takes the time and the trust to know that the process will make them better eventually, but you have to allow them to make the mistakes and get the reps in. That comes with failure, right? They’re flexing that muscle and you’re flexing the muscle of allowing them to screw some things up. But you’ve screwed things up worse in your business than they probably will because you’re not going to give them that much leeway.

Yeah, a hundred percent. Well, Josh, thank you so much for coming on today. Anyone, if you guys are interested in learning more from Josh or have any questions about direct mail, we didn’t really get into it too much, which we probably should have. But next time, for sure. Yeah, next time. For sure. Thank you so much for coming on, and thank you everyone for watching.

Thank you.