146: Super Successful Wholesaler with 24 Year-Old Ryan Dossey

On this week’s episode of the InvestFourMore Real Estate Podcast, I interview Ryan Dossey. Ryan is a super-successful wholesaler and an investor. Ryan got started in real estate at a very young age and has found incredible success. He is only 24 and has set up a wholesaling business and bought many rentals. Ryan has also helped me with my direct marketing and runs a company that takes motivated-seller calls for investors.

One of the biggest reasons I have not done much direct marketing was because I did not want to take calls, but his company takes the calls for me, vets leads, and gets as much information as they can for me to follow up with. We talk all about Ryan’s past, his wholesaling business, his rentals, his direct marketing, and his company, Call Porter, on the show.

How did Ryan get started in real estate?

I ask every guest how they got started in real estate, and many of them have similar stories. Ryan says that the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad was a huge reason he got into the business. Many of my guests say that book was what got them interested in real estate. Ryan and I talk about the book, how motivating it is, and ironically, that it does not teach you much, if anything, about real estate. Ryan was also interested in cars, and he noticed that many people with super-nice cars were in the real estate business. Ryan decided that he would get out of his sales job and get into real estate as a wholesaler.

How did Ryan start wholesaling houses?

Ryan has a sales and marketing background, so he was not afraid to talk to people. He learned as much as he could about wholesaling and hit the ground running. He took out $1,200 from his credit card to buy some yellow letters and ended up wholesaling his first house about 90 days after he started in the business! He ended up making $12,000 on his first wholesaler deal, which was about half of what he made all year in his sales job.

Ryan and I talk a lot about getting started as a wholesaler. There are many people who teach wholesaling as the way to get rich in real estate with no money. Ryan admits you can wholesale houses without a lot of money, but you will need some money, and you will have to work very hard. You also have to treat real estate as a business. Ryan has done a very good job setting up his wholesaling as a business that basically runs without him.

How is Ryan buying so many houses?

Ryan’s company has done 27 wholesale deals so far this year. He estimates he gets about 30 to 40 leads per day from his direct-marketing campaign. Ryan and I also talk a lot about his direct mail on this episode, but one thing that allows him to handle so many leads is his company: Call Porter. Ryan was getting a lot of calls from motivated sellers, and he decided to hire someone to take calls for him. He had other investors who heard about the woman answering his calls, and they wanted to use her as well. Ryan decided to make a company out of answering calls from direct mail.

I use Call Porter for my direct mail campaigns, and it has worked great. The sellers who are not motivated or want to be removed from the list are weeded out before I talk to them. I know that every call is being answered by a live person. I know that person is trained on how to talk to motivated sellers and get as much information as possible.

Call Porter is taking on new clients, and you can find them here.

Conclusion

Ryan is a super impressive investor and businessman. It is even more impressive that he has accomplished all of this and is only 24. We also talk about his rental properties, how he finds them, how he finances them, and many other topics on the show, so make sure you listen to it.

Call Porter

[0:00:14.0] MF: Welcome to the InvestFourMore Real Estate Podcast. My name is Mark Ferguson and I am your host. I’m an active real estate investor. I flip 15 to 30 houses a year. I've got residential and commercial rental properties. I'm an agent with nine people on my real estate team, who've sold thousands of houses over the years. I talk about what's going on in my career, as well as interview other amazing agents, investors, landlords flippers, wholesalers and companies who can help those people succeed.

I want to give a quick shout out to my sponsor Patch of Land. They funded a flip for me in six days. I e-mailed them on a Sunday afternoon, they responded in less than 15 minutes. They have rates below 8%, work in 45 states, will fund 85% of a deal and fund the repairs as well. Great company who I love working with, Patch of Land.

For my podcast listeners, I have a special discount page for my products investfourmore.com/discount. That's investF-O-U-R-M-O-R-E.com/discount. We've got coupons on all my coaching programs. Some of those programs involve calls with me, consulting, video training and much, much more.

All right, let's get to the show.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:47.7] MF: Hey, it's Mark and we're back with another podcast. Today, I have an awesome guest for the show, Ryan Dossey, who is the founder of Call Porter, which is actually a service I use myself as part of my direct marketing. Besides that, Ryan has been an incredible investor, wholesaler and what really annoys me is he's only 24. Ryan, thank you so much for being on the show. How are you?

[0:02:12.3] RD: Oh, very good Mark. I appreciate you having me.

[0:02:14.3] MF: Yeah. No, I joke about your age, but you really have accomplished a ton for how young you are. You've helped me out a lot in my business in different things. Can you start us from the very beginning about how you got started in real estate?

[0:02:26.8] RD: Yeah, absolutely. Actually, I think this was part of how I originally found you. I'm actually a car guy. I've always been into exotics. Unfortunately, I'm not the guy who like a Toyota Camry, gets me out of bed in the morning. You look at millionaires, people that drive the Lamborghinis, Ferraris that kind of stuff and one of the key things you typically see is real estate.

I believe I actually stumbled on a blog you had on BiggerPockets about buying your Diablo. I think if you look back, there's even a video of me begging you for startup clips. That was probably back when I was 20 or 21. I was working in a – I call it the cubicle farm dead-end high-pressure sales environment. A co-worker actually handed me a copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad and said, “Hey, I think you'll like this.”

We grew up pretty typical, pretty Western, Midwestern, middle-class. Dad worked a ton of hours, mom worked at the local church and just somehow always barely met. It was a huge eye-opener for me of like, my gosh, your money can actually work for you. What does that even mean? That was I think my initial hook into real estate.

[0:03:47.7] MF: No, it makes sense. It's funny, because that book really got me motivated too about real estate, even though I was already an agent and involved in the business, but it's a really motivational book, but there's no information on it about to actually how to do it.

[0:04:00.1] RD: There's absolutely none. It's epitome of a fluff piece. I’m like, “Oh, my gosh. I'm still fired up. What do I do with this newfound passion?” It’s like, “Nothing.” I mean, I guess maybe the goal is you pay them 50 grand for coaching. I don't know.

[0:04:17.1] MF: Right. I bought every book I could find from him and they're all exactly the same. I was like, “Where's the information?” I mean, it's out there, but it does its job of motivating you. Yeah, there's good stuff out there; they'll actually teach you how to do it too.

[0:04:32.0] RD: Yeah. I enjoy it, I think cash flow quadrant got you a little deeper, but even then it was like, “Okay, I want to go from an E to a B, to an I,” and then it's like, “Okay, great. How do I do that?”

[0:04:48.8] MF: Right. Cool. How did you do your first deal? How did you get involved in real estate from your corporate job or sales job?

[0:04:57.7] RD: Yeah, good question. I always tell people take points from what I say, but don't do what I did. I think a huge key that helped us be successful in wholesaling was my background was already that sales and marketing. I think a lot of people try to wholesale and don't have that skill and fall flat on their face.

Me and another co-worker, I put $1,200 on a credit card that I effectively maxed out and has no way of paying off to buy some yellow letters. In our first month, we did our first deal, wholesale that I think after closing costs and everything, it was something like $10 or $12,000 net. At the time, I was making 24 grand a year.

I'm sitting there holding a check for 10 grand that took me three hours of actual work and then thinking about how often I loathe my job on a day-to-day basis as I'm sitting there wasting away for eight hours. The huge eye-opener of just, like this actually works, we've gone from concept to action, to the actual profit, I've been hooked since.

[0:06:10.6] MF: How long do you think it took you from the time you said, “Hey, I'm going to wholesale – I'm going to be a wholesaler,” until you actually did that deal?

[0:06:20.1] RD: Realistically, probably under 90 days. Some people call it an asset. My wife would probably argue that's a liability, but I don't have any problem betting on myself, or betting on my companies, or betting on my beliefs. More times than I can count, we've thrown that hail Mary pass and it always seems to work out. Whether you want to call it leaps of faith, or whatnot. People talk about analysis paralysis; that's not my problem.

[0:06:52.9] MF: I'm the same way. I like the idea of jumping into things and figuring them out as you're doing them, instead of analyzing everything and then sometimes never doing it all. No, that’s –

[0:07:04.3] RD: Well, I've always heard that new experiences, new marketing, new adventures you're going to have new challenges and you're not ever going to know what those are until you get into the thick of it. That's why I find communities like yours InvestFourMore and other ones so valuable, because you can hop in and then get to the point of, “Crap, I don't know what to do,” and have people that have been there before bail you out and show you the way.

[0:07:35.0] MF: I've been there a number of times myself. One other thing I want talk about real quick before we get going into more in-depth stuff, I think wholesaling is taught is this get-rich-quick scheme, don't need any money, it's really easy. What are your thoughts? I mean, obviously you had to borrow $1,200. It's not like you can do it with no money. What are your thoughts on that?

[0:07:55.4] RD: I think two separate points. You can get into wholesaling and get your first deal done with a few hundred dollars. You find somebody, a guy like you, a guy like me, somebody who's actually buying deals, preferably rentals, because I don't know about you, but I'll pay more for a rental based off of cash flow and rent-to-cost ratio and all of that, that I would for say that same deal as a flip, but find somebody like you, somebody like me, hit them up and say, “Hey, I want to source deals for you.”

Agree to some a flat fee for the first few, three to five grand, have them tell you, “Hey, here's the area I'm looking for rentals in, here's a similar property I bought,” and then just go buy a list, go door knock, handwrite them letters. I mean, so I tell people you can get started with a lot of money and kick it off with a bang with direct mail campaigns and live answering and retargeting and SEO, or you can invest some sweat equity, handwrite letters, or go out door knock and you can still get your first deal done.

I don't necessarily believe that it requires a ton of capital, but I think if you're not putting in capital, you're going to put in time. As far as it being the next get-rich-quick scheme, I can't count how many wholesale coaches turned into Bitcoin salesmen and are now back as wholesale coaches.

Here is the thing, it's one of those if you do it well, if you treat it as a job, as a business, as a company, you can do extremely well with it. I want to say we already have something north of 27 deals in inventory just this year so far. The people who are never really going to get there are the guys who hustle on my grind, solopreneur, I'm going to work 18-hour days. That doesn't work. It's never going to build to what they want it to.

[0:09:54.4] MF: Great advice. I've seen that myself. You go to the real estate meetings and meetups and I feel like there's 10 guys there who are wholesalers, who are getting into deals and maybe 1 out of 20 of them actually ever do it, because they're just – they don't have the commitment, their business isn't set up, and maybe they're taught something that doesn't work by some other people.

Then at the same time, there's guys like you or other people I buy houses from here in Colorado, we're doing 10, or 20 deals a month and have built an incredible business out of it. There is opportunity, but it's definitely not as easy as some make it out.

[0:10:29.2] RD: I think professionalism is the big thing that I see missing. You can't roll up in something that it's not going to start when you try to leave in the same t-shirt and khakis, have sent them a third notice, your cash offer is expiring kind of a threatening piece. Show up, offer them 65 cents on the dollar, and if they say no, count that as a dead lead.

If that's your approach, guys like me, guys like you, I mean, they can't even compete; we're showing up, we're branded, we're professional, they're getting follow-ups from us, they're getting thank you post cards, they're getting added to follow-up campaigns. I think anybody that's considering getting this started, by all means jump in, but treat these people with absolute professionalism. You have to put the people before the profits.

[0:11:25.0] MF: Yeah, for sure. All right, so you went from doing your first deal out of a salesman to really scaling things to a really big level for your age and you've even told me before, “Hey, you're not even doing that much work in the business right now.” How were you able to scale it and build it into a business?

[0:11:44.6] RD: Probably a large piece to that is called porter is the live answering piece. I was checking our CRM today and I mean, I've been averaging 30 or 40 new leads coming in a day. The last week and a half, we had some larger marketing campaigns that went out. There's no way I could handle all of those leads myself. The loss of time, loss of energy, all of that.

That's a huge piece to it of I almost have my own private MLS in our CRM, where I can look at deals, the motivation, their asking price, and they actually booked appointments of folks who are motivated. We do have an acquisition manager who runs those calls and then we actually partner with a local guy locally, who has a dispositions manager who actually sells all of the inventory that I don't want.

I'm based out of Indianapolis and our market, I'm strictly after buy-and-hold deals. I keep what I want and we wholesale the rest. It makes it dreamily passive for me. Literally, we're looking at a rental I approve pics, do a walk-through, it's a done deal. The wholesale deals, a lot of the times if I'm being honest, I don't even know all of what we have. I'll just get a notification of I've got a check coming.

[0:13:05.0] MF: Nice. I know it's been really tough for me in my market as far as rentals and finding cash flow, obviously it sounds like things are still working there in Indianapolis.

[0:13:14.8] RD: Yeah, I mean, so our rental strategy here is I think a little different than a lot of the out-of-state people that invest here, a lot of the turnkey companies and even a lot of the other local investors. The majority of what we own is a class top-dollar stuff for our market. I think just about everything we own with the exception of two or three properties was built after 2005. We've got a few ’07, ’08, ‘09s. These are three, four bedroom houses, two, two and a half bath, attached two-car garages and the best school districts.

I mean, our minimum rent to purchase ratio and we want to be at 1.2 on a monthly basis. We have several that are quite a bit beyond that. Then we use some of the smaller satellite towns in our market for more cash flow place, where we maybe at a 2% rule, but I don't go into the more urban areas and there's, you can find all kinds of articles and stuff about it.

We tend to focus on a little bit more of the higher-end stuff, which does make it a little bit harder for us to find inventory, because a lot of the times the stuff we're buying, it's like these people could throw it on the MLS and make 30, 40 grand more than what I'm wanting to pay without having to do any work.

We've found our ability to close fast with no real inspection, or appraisals, more being us walking through with a contractor. I'm a licensed broker, so I'll run comps, do a rough BPO. We found that's been the key for us getting deals. I get the same wholesale deals, I'm sure you and most of your listeners get where it's like, “Holy crap. How'd they come up with those numbers?” That's not three grand and work. I mean, we get a ton of stuff we pass on. Yes, it does still work here, but we do still have to do quite a bit of digging. We mailed 5,000 pieces last week to areas where we already own some stuff and I mean, keep in mind, I mentioned 30, 40 leads coming in a day. Of those, it looks there's maybe two or three that are going to pan out. Now obviously three solid holds out of 5,000 pieces, I still can't complain that much.

[0:15:42.0] MF: Those are great numbers. I think that's something else that people – we've been skipping around from wholesaling to rentals, but it's the same idea of getting good deals. I think a lot of people think, “Hey, I'm going to send out 500 letters. I'm going to get three deals from it.” It's a numbers game, like you have to send out a lot of mails, talk to a lot of people to get deals from direct marketing.

[0:16:00.8] RD: Yeah, and the more you do, almost the easier it gets. What I recommend to anybody just getting started, it doesn't even really make sense for you, unless you're doing over 2,500 pieces a month. That's when your economies of scale start to kick in. You can send out 500, 700 pieces of mail a week, you can count on some consistent calls, some consistent lead flow.

My experience in various markets across the US, that's about the like, you can count on a deal at least every month or every other month, if you're using more targeted lists. Obviously, it's better, but even just regular absentee, high-equity seniors, you can still do pretty well if you're doing that volume.

[0:16:42.9] MF: Right. I've seen that myself too. I know I'm skipping all over, but it's funny, because I still get three or four of those third notice postcards from investors in my area. I'm just like, “Who is the company that sells this to everybody? It’s crazy.”

[0:16:57.0] RD: I think there's a coach or two. I don't know names, and because this is being recorded I won't guess, but there's a few coaches you promote them. Another one we've seen a ton of is the street card, postcards of, “Hey, I want to buy your house.” What's funny with those as we get them on our rentals and they're always aimed at the wrong house, so it's like, “Hey, I want to buy 123 Main Street,” but they're aimed at 92 Main Street. It’s like, “Yeah, that's not mine.” Yeah, again just because something worked 10 years ago, doesn't mean that’s going to work now.

[0:17:32.4] MF: Right, right. I know what you mean. Speaking of those rentals, I know you mentioned something to me before the call a little bit about not having much money into them. How are you financing and paying for these rentals that you're buying?

[0:17:43.3] RD: Good question. I do have an equity partner private group that will fund our stuff. We've also raised some private funding locally. So I'll use our first rental as an example. A-class deal came from our website, we buy houses in Indianapolis. Called us and had a family situation that was pressing her to sell. We actually had a local cardiologist we met. I think he was off of bigger pockets, who'd been through some of my projects, we talked about some deals, we're never able to pull anything together.

We invited him out for coffee, sat down and said, “Hey, hypothetically if I have this deal and was offering 8% interest only for two years, would you be interested in funding this kind of stuff?” He's like, “Wow. Yeah, that's a good deal if you can find those.” We left the meeting with a, “Hey, would you fund something like this?” Then we called him the following day and I said, “Hey, that deal I mentioned actually panned out. I've got it under contract. Here's the address, here's pictures, here's comps, are you still interested in funding it at 8%?” He said, “Shoot. Let's do it.”

On that one 8% interest only, we bought it for a 102, we put 8 into it, so we're all-in for about 110 comps, or 160, 165. Right now we're actually in the process of doing a cash out refinance with a local private bank. They’ll hold the paper in-house five, five and a quarter interest, 20-year term based off of the appraised value. That's our model is the bird deal, so to speak, but you pretty much take that and repeat that model over and over and that's pretty much been our rentals.

[0:19:26.5] MF: Nice. I've done a similar thing with some of mine and private money can be an amazing resource, that is for sure. There's so many different things I know we can talk about; private money, rentals, wholesaling, business set up, but getting back to what I think one of the most valuable things for me right now is Call Porter and people answering calls for me. Can you introduce us to that and how it started and what exactly it does?

[0:19:55.4] RD: Yeah, so what we noticed was there wasn't any an answering service just for real estate investors. There's lots of bulk answering services that will take real estate calls, but the folks that are taking the phone calls were $10 an hour reps with no understanding on real estate, jotting down some notes and saying, “Hey, I'll have the investor call you back.”

I mean, we tried some of those. We tried letting our calls go to voicemail, we tried picking them up ourselves and it's not scalable. I shared a great quote today that's if you're an entrepreneur, your number one job is to get out of the way. I think it goes back to that mindset. We hired a gal who worked out of a commission collections type role, the folks who don't get offended. A lot more expensive than at $10 an hour employee and had her start taking our calls.

This was probably over two years ago now. Then a couple buddies were like, “Hey, you're not having to take your calls, can she take mine?” We actually just grew organically like that for about a year, before we officially branded and launched as the Call Porter service. Our staff are all US-based. They come from either collections, commissions, retentions, or customer service.

Big thing we focus on is all of our calls, we want to be based off of the how to win friends and influence people approach. It's not let me ram you through this hundred-point questionnaire. It's what can you tell me about you and your situation? I want to understand how we can help you. It's much more conversational rapport-driven, as opposed to just cramming them through a funnel.

[0:21:43.4] MF: Right. No, that makes sense. For me, I mean, you mentioned some things about when you're answering the phone, if you're letting it go to voicemail, if you set up a Google number where it has a long message, I've tried all those. We have a joke in my office about if you want to get a hold of me, don't call me, because I don't answer my phone. It’s like e-mail or text me and it saves me so much time.

Answering the phone just was out of the question. I have a lot of people calling me as well who find my number and who I don't need to talk to. Then voicemails, people don't always leave voicemails. If you can get a Google number and have them leave a voicemail and then call back people who don't leave a voicemail. but it's like, “Hey, why are you calling me,” type of thing.

Yeah, having the live calling has been so nice for me. I can scroll in there, look at who called me, I get a notification, see the notes, it's just made direct marketing feasible for me, where before one of the biggest reasons I didn't do it was because I don't want to answer the phone, or deal with the calls. It's been awesome for me.

[0:22:43.5] RD: Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, that's – at the end of the day, I'm an investor first and foremost, and I think I'm also one of our larger clients with the amount of marketing I'm doing and what I tell all of our clients is you better believe the quality is there, you better believe we're managing these people with the amount of money I'm spending on direct mail, SEO, pay-per-click, stuff doesn't fall through the cracks.

Our average call right now is answered in under seven seconds. Somebody calls in, pick up, hang up, they were on the phone, maybe it rang once, we automatically call all of those back. I mean, it's a lot of stuff that even guys who are taking their own calls aren't doing. I can't tell you how many times I've heard, well they must not really be motivated if they didn't leave a voicemail. Or even some of the coaches that teach people to let stuff go to voicemail, they'll be like, “Yeah, anybody who didn't sit through your nine-minute voicemail probably doesn't want to sell.”

No, that's not it at all. Interestingly enough, we actually did an internal study last year. We cold called around 5 or 600 of the top-ranking we buy houses companies we could find on Google. We went through by state. Our experience, less than 3% of them actually picked up the phone. We called from a local area code number, so it didn't look like it was another business calling them. There's no way they knew we weren't just an absentee owner wanting to offload property. We tell people all the time, you want to get ahead of 97% of your competition answer your phone, or pay us to do it.

[0:24:21.5] MF: That's awesome. It's very true. Like you said, there are some of the really good wholesalers around here who do a lot of deals. We've called them to see how their system works, what they do, and it is a four-minute long voicemail. It's like, “Holy cow. How do you sit through this whole thing?”

Something I've noticed, people who are selling their houses through direct mail, through direct marketing, they're not using the MLS, they're not reaching out to real estate agents, they're not making their home in perfect condition, they're not motivated to be super outgoing, reaching out to people, they need people to come to them, right?

[0:24:58.1] RD: Absolutely.

[0:24:59.1] MF: If they're not leaving a voicemail, that might even be a good sign. I mean, that's why sometimes have to send six or seven letters to people before they'll call you back. Yeah, it takes a lot of legwork on our end to get those really good deals.

[0:25:09.7] RD: Yeah, one of the I think the biggest things we hear our acquisitions managers hear and our clients hear is on deals they're actually buying is I sold to you, because you actually picked up the phone. We had a deal come in last week, where we ended up I think it was a 102,000. The guy had another offer for a 140, but liked us, liked that we were reachable every time he called.

He explained it as a 100,000 in hand is better than a promise of a 140,000. The guy actually sold for 40 grand less to us and said it was because we picked up every time he called. I tell people most motivated sellers, most people who are willing to sell at a discount for cash didn't really get there, because of like life was just going great for them. The stars are aligning when your husband leaves you and you get behind on your taxes and then there's a flood, right?

A lot of these people need that guidance, the hand-holding to walk them through the process. If they can't reach you and they feel they need you, “they're not going to sell to you.” They're going to sell to the next guy who picks up the phone, or who's willing to put in the work, view them as a person as opposed to just a profit.

[0:26:31.9] MF: Right, exactly. Yeah, there's a lot that goes into it. I think, like you said just connecting with people and talking to them and listening to them is one of the most important things you can do and when doing the direct mail off market properties.

[0:26:48.0] RD: Yeah, and especially if you're – I mean, we've got clients that they're incredible on the phone, their background is actually in taking calls, and then we've got clients who they’re introverts and they don't like talking to people. I think the big thing is just having that friendly smiling front desk, feel if there's somebody here to take your call, that goes a long way with people that are contemplating selling. What they're told is their biggest investment at a loss.

[0:27:19.3] MF: Right, very true. Cool. Well, Ryan amazing stuff. We've gone through quite a bit with your rentals, your wholesaling, Call Porter, financing. Can you share with us just a couple tips for people who are maybe just getting started wholesaling or investing in some point of what are a couple tips that should help them succeed, or have helped you really build your business?

[0:27:41.8] RD: Yeah, so first one and it was probably one of the hardest lessons for me to learn, but also one of the most profitable for me to learn is just consistency. If you're going to do this, if you're going to market to sellers, if you're actually wanting to make a go with this, you need to be consistent in your prospecting, in your follow-up and in your systems.

Many wholesalers will do a big drop of mail, “Oh, my gosh. I have so many leads.” Pause the marketing, work there leads. “Oh, my gosh. I have to get this baby to contract.” They get it to title, they get paid and then they realize, “Crap, I have nothing in my pipeline again.” I think that's lesson number one is build out the systems, the staff, the processes even to where you are or can be consistent. I think that's my first one.

My second one is probably going to be not selling yourself short. Then several large Facebook groups with hundreds, tens of thousands of members of investors, flippers, wholesalers all around the country, these guys will come on and awesome, just did another deal and post a picture of a $3,000 check. I don’t know about you Mark, but for me that's like, “Oh, cool. I covered my marketing costs for two days.”

It's not that bad, but I was one of those guys who my average check was maybe five. A friend of mine, Frank McGovern out of Philadelphia, him and I had a call and he was like, “Look, reason you're taking $5,000 deals is because you think that's all that you're worth. You want to start getting $10 and $20,000 deals, you need to start believing that you're worth it and that you can get those margins.”

So much of this is just mental and just deciding, “Hey, this is what I need to make per deal. This is what my time ultimately is worth.” Not trading time for dollars, what would be it. Then I would say lastly is creating mutually beneficial transactions. A guy I know Jerry Puckett out of Dallas used to use the expression of the grocery store model. That's if you see somebody you bought or sold a house to walking towards you in a grocery store, can you walk right up to them, smile on your face, shoulders head high, shake their hand and ask them how their kids are doing? Or do you feel you need to tuck tail and scoot out the aisle before they recognize you?

With us, we only participate in transactions if they're mutually beneficial, which is why we do things like refer deals to realtors. We've had deals, we’ve straight told people like, “I'm not your best shot. You can make 30,000 more dollars doing this.” They're like, “No, I want cash in two weeks.” Well, okay then at least I was honest with you upfront.

I think that's just making it a practice of being a man or a person of integrity, and just focusing on it's got to be a win-win. It's not always going to be a win-win from a dollars point. They may be selling at a discount for me to buy their house as a rental. However, me buying that house as a rental could save them the $900 a month they've been eating on an empty house on a mortgage with taxes, insurance and all that.

[0:30:56.2] MF: Great information. The last point I think is really a key one of doing business the right way. You never know when one of those sellers is going to have a friend who wants to sell their house too and might contact you if you did it the right way, instead of saying, “Oh, I'm never doing this again. I'm never dealing with real estate investors again.”

I've had a number of people refer people to me who I never thought I would to in a million years, but they’re like, “Oh, yeah. This guy buys houses. He treated us fair, so why don't you give him a call?”

[0:31:24.5] RD: We've had like, I'll see you a wholesaler send out a deal at $50,000. I'm like, “Holy crap, they paid way too much, or they're asking way too much.” Then a couple weeks later, the seller will find us online, they'll get a mail piece from us and they'll call us and they'll be like, “Hey, I won't take a penny less than 45.” It’s like, “Hey, somebody else already offered you that and it probably didn't work, right?” They're like, “Oh, yeah.”

I’m like, “Okay, look. I'll be real with you. We have to do this without a state investors all the time.” I had a guy send me a duplex, Cali investor and he's like, “Yeah, what can you cash me out at? I think it would be at 40 or 50.” We went through it and came back at literally five grand was what we could pay.

We act more as educators of in our professional opinion, here's what you have, here's what the situation is, here's what I can afford to do. If that works for you, great. If not, no big deal. We find that we don't even really view our offers as low balling, or shooting low, we're trying to get a good deal. We just educate them on what we think the market is doing and where they're at, and here's what we can do, if that works, great. If not, hey we're still friends. That goes a long way.

[0:32:37.9] MF: Yeah, very true. Ryan, I think that's all I’ve got. I mean, one last question for you. I'm not sure where you want to direct people, but if people want to get in contact with you or Call Porter, what's the best way for them to do it? I know I'll have a link on the show and as well, but how can they learn more?

[0:32:54.6] RD: Yeah, so for Call Porter stuff, they're more than welcome just go to the link you'll have up. For anything with me personally, I'm really only active for the most part on Instagram and my handle is just @RyanCDossey, D-O-S-S-E-Y. They're more than welcome to follow there. I post a lot of my routines, deals, properties, much more of a day-in-my-life view.

[0:33:18.8] MF: Cool. Well, Ryan thank you so much for being on the show. I know you've helped my business out a ton with your Call Porter, with your services, and helping me out just was the best practices in this business. You've been super successful, done an amazing amount of things for your age as well. Congratulations on everything you've done. I know we'll keep in touch and keep talking. Thank you so much for being on the show.

[0:33:40.3] RD: Awesome. Thank you, Mark. I appreciate the opportunity.