Well, today I have an extremely special guest and he's special for multiple reasons. But the biggest of them all is he is my first cousin from Baltimore, Alex Van Brooklyn, who is a an ex Marine who got into this business full time four years ago. And I got to tell you something about Alex. I'm not saying this is because he's family. Alex is somebody who when he listens to what somebody's saying, he asks questions. He actually takes in information and then he executes like an absolute beast. Now, he's only been doing this four years. We're going to go through his story of how he started, how he's growing and now how he's Scaling. He has 13 freaking employees within the last year alone. He also has a freaking, very unique marketing program, extremely unique. Like there's not a lot of people out there doing this. His system is called Bandit Signs on Wheels. It was the primary driver of all his deals for the first three years of him being on business. He's going to show you exactly what the program is, what he did, how he hires. He's going to give you all the secrets. And all you need to do is exactly what he did, execute like a freakin beast and start making some money.
He used the VA loan to buy his first property in North Carolina and then when he was on deployment, rented it out. It was great and wound up selling it and made 18 grand, 20 grand on it.
So in twenty sixteen, he didn't have a huge amount of cash and bought a property from a wholesaler, overpaid unfortunately for the property, and he learned a valuable lesson when he did the entire rehab himself.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/victorbravorei/
https://www.facebook.com/alex.vanbreukelen
Billy [00:00:00] What's going on, guys, Billy Alvaro, Unstoppable, B.A. and this is Episode 25 of Unstoppable REI Wealth.
Billy [00:00:07] Well, today I have an extremely special guest and he's special for one reason, multiple reasons. But the biggest of them all is he is my first cousin from Baltimore, Alex Van Brooklyn, who is a an ex Marine who got into this business full time four years ago. And I got to tell you something about Alex. I'm not saying this is because he's family. Alex is somebody who when he listens to what somebody's saying, he asks questions. He actually takes in information and he executes like an absolute beast. Now, he's only been doing this four years. We're going to go through his story of how he started, how he's growing and now how he's Scalling. He has 13 freaking employees within the last year alone. He started scaring the crap out of this business. Now, he also has a freaking, very unique marketing program, extremely unique. Like there's not a lot of people out there doing this. You're a bad science. Well, he has a system called Bandit Signs on Wheels. It was the primary driver of all his deals for the first three years of him being on business. He's going to show you exactly what the program is, what he did, how he hires. He's going to give you all the secrets. And all you need to do is exactly what he did, execute like a freakin beast and start making some money. I'm Billy Alvaro, this is episode twenty five and get ready to get yourself to the next level piece.
Billy [00:01:31] Welcome to unstoppable real estate investing. Well, my name is Billy Alvaro, a.k.a. the Unstoppable B.A., a former billion dollar mortgage banker gone bankrupt, turned professional. real estate investor, where each week you'll learn the tools, strategies, systems and secrets myself and other highly successful real estate investing entrepreneurs use to start, grow and scale their businesses, creating massive profits and how you can, too, and will teach you how to put those profits to work so you no longer have to get ready to finally experience financial freedom and generational wealth. Now let's get started.
Billy [00:02:14] All right, everybody, welcome back to another episode of Unstoppable REI Wealth. I am your host, Billy Alvaro, a.k.a. the unstoppable B.A. and like no other. Today we're going to be bringing the heat. You know, the show is all about bringing value. If you're starting growing or scaling a business, you're going to get so much frigging value, especially out of today, because today I have a special guest, which I'm going to hit on in a second. Listen, if you've been watching this and listen to this podcast, I want you to go in, give me some likes, give me some love, give me a subscribe and tell people about what you think we've been doing on this podcast because we've been bringing value and I've been getting unbelievable responses, by the way, stuff. We go over on this podcast, if you want any of the tools, tips, tricks, strategies, systems, the secrets that we have that we offer, go to Billys secrets, dotcom billys secrets, dot com. And on there you have everything, especially driving to dollars lists if you want to run MLS, if you don't have the MLS, every tool, tip and trick, we have guys on there offering their radio secrets, their TV secrets, their Mailing secrets. Like if you want it, we're using it. Why not piggyback on us and get on the train and start making some serious loot? So today I've interviewed a lot of people on this podcast. Today's very special for me, and it's the reason I'm interviewing my first cousin, Alex Van Brooklyn from Baltimore, his mother, my mother, our sisters. And he's been in the family. We've been I'm fifty one years old. So we've been family first since the war. And so without any further ado, as a member of the cuz. Welcome to the show, brother.
Alex [00:03:50] Pleasure to be here, man. Thank you very much for having me on. It's an honor to be on your show right now. It's going to be good.
Billy [00:03:56] So let's get the audience to understand how long you've been doing this business. So give us a brief background of who you are and how long you've been in the business.
Alex [00:04:04] Yeah, so I bought my first property. Believe it or not, I don't even know if I told you this in 2004 and in 2004, I was on deployment. I knew that I had this this idea in my head that I wanted to buy rental properties. I wanted to do this real estate investing thing. So I bought a property, Jacksonville, North Carolina, while I was on deployment. My sister was actually the POA close on the property for me and had that as a rental property until 2013. I sold it. So that was like my very first entrance into anything relating to real estate.
Billy [00:04:35] Did you use the VA loan to get that?
Alex [00:04:37] I did, yep. We used the VA loan to buy the property. I bought it at eighty, stayed in there while I was in North Carolina and then when I was on deployment, rented it out and it was great and I wound up selling it. I think I made 18 grand, 20 grand on it. I'm not not a huge deal, but the area down there was a little bit rough. But that was the first property that I actually bought after that. I mean, it was a long span in between there and in my business. Now, we actually got started at the beginning of twenty sixteen when I got retired out of the Marine Corps. So that's when I got my, my actual start in the industry.
Billy [00:05:09] And so when you started four years ago, did you have besides that one deal that you did, a VA loan like you had no experience? Zero.
Alex [00:05:17] The only experience I had is when I first got to Baltimore in twenty seven, I was like, oh, real estate investing again. I got to buy a house, I got to buy rehab. So I bought a crack house in East Baltimore.
Billy [00:05:29] And from what I hear,.
Alex [00:05:31] There were a couple of them.
Alex [00:05:31] And when I bought this in November of twenty seven, so I way overpaid for the property was a shell that a full gut rehab on it, a beautiful rehab that we did and we moved into the property. So we lived in a year and it was an absolutely terrible neighborhood. But we did have one of our blue light cameras in front of the house when we first moved in. So it was a good experience because it gave me firsthand knowledge of Baltimore City, of the very interesting dynamics between Baltimore City, the residents, the community associations, the communities and the city government, how it works. Well, being actually there, boots on the ground really allowed me to have a good understanding of how Baltimore City worked. And then we did one more in a real good neighborhood that we actually just sold last year. And we did that rehabbing. And after that, we didn't touch anything until 2016.
Billy [00:06:21] And I remember it was right around fifteen, sixteen. You actually came out Long Island. You had lunch at that that diner opened up. Pick my brain for it could have been what, two and a half, three hours. Yeah. Right.
Alex [00:06:35] Yeah. We had the whole family. I think my sister was even there with us.
Billy [00:06:38] They came in afterwards. It was all with us. And then your sister, your mother came in afterwards.
Alex [00:06:43] Hundred percent.
Billy [00:06:45] So that meant that was really the beginning, that point of where you started getting into this investing area like full time.
Alex [00:06:52] One hundred percent.
Billy [00:06:53] OK, so when you first got in, because this is important for people who were starting to want to go through the story of starting growing, because now you're at the stage, you start the scale, the beginning process. Did you have money that you were investing?
Alex [00:07:05] So in twenty sixteen, when I had first gotten out, I didn't have a huge amount of cash. I bought a property from a wholesaler. That we went in, I overpaid for the property and I did the entire rehab myself. I mean, I was underneath the house working with the electrician, running the wires, running the plumbing with the plumber. I think the only thing I didn't do was the drywall and the HVAC work and man, the best lesson I learned from that is that I never want to do the work myself again. The amount of time and energy that went into this. There was no physical way that I could replicate that and I could do that at any kind of scale at all. So that was one of the only ones that.
Billy [00:07:45] I think one of the lessons there, though, is it is important to understand what the process is rehabbing a house. Yes. Got a lot of guys going into this business. And because they don't get the process, they don't know what they get ripped off or they just don't know what they don't know. So I think what you did was actually smart because you went through you understand now what the process is, what it takes to put it together, and you can kind of talk the language of these contractors. But not doing it again was even smarter of it's a waste of your time like it is now.
Alex [00:08:15] And I've always tried to explain it to everybody, like, oh, well, you do get in there and do the like. Absolutely not. I know enough about the rehab work and all the different levels that I can get in there. I can manage a project, I can take a look at a project and go walk through, walk through any project, any single family house out here in this area and look at it. And like, yeah, we have issues here where I know if my electrician is getting over, I know if my age that guy is getting over the plumbers doing shoddy work because I've seen real shoddy work before.
Alex [00:08:42] So that was helpful. We all.
Billy [00:08:45] Have you got any sort of money problems now? When did you what is your model look like? Are you a buy and hold the fix and flip a wholesale guy? Like what does that look like now.
Alex [00:08:54] Gotcha man so we are literally right now if you look at the hockey stick of progression, we are just on the upward trend. So for the last four years we've been kind of flat, kind of steadily moving along. When I first started out I literally, I was a guy. I'm going to do everything, I'm going to rehab properties, I'm going to wholesale properties, I'm going to buy rental properties. And that's the way my business was set up. And I was never really focused on any one of them until I guess October of nineteen. In nineteen, we bought nine rental properties, nine single family rentals of all rehabs. And by October I was like, oh wow, this is great. I have no cash. I mean, cash was gone. All cash was completely gone because I didn't do any assignments. I didn't sign any contracts in that almost entire year until the end of the third quarter and the third quarter, twenty nineteen. I looked and said, wow, I need a cash infusion. And I was kind of opposed to wholesaling, so I don't really want to wholesale properties. And then I said, you know what, I got to do what I have to do. So we started then. And I realize now that this is pretty damn simple, not easy, but it was simple. So the beginning of last year is when I really just buckled down. When covid hit, I buckle down. I said, OK, I'm restructuring the entire business. And we started building the team out and I started building out what we were doing. It brought on some really good key people inside of the business and we started marketing heavy and then we are signing every contract at this point. So I actually remove all construction, all rentals completely outside of this business. Now we have separate entities set up. So any of our rehab projects now we're actually assigning out to one of my other entities and my my rentals were signing up to one of my other entities. And I gave that same opportunity to everybody that's on the team now. So anybody on the team, if they want to take a deal down, we give them the first crack at it to be able to take that property down to really help the rehab it, keep it as a rental, whatever, whatever the exit strategy, small.
Billy [00:10:55] So so talk to us about what you're doing on marketing. How are you driving in your business right now?
Alex [00:10:59] Yep. So for the entire time, the only marketing we did is program called B.S. O.W.
Billy [00:11:08] So here he is unique. So there's a lot of different guys out there in this business and everybody kind of does a little bit of the same thing. But there's always that one thing I find that investors do a little bit uniquely like you have a very unique program. And you you talk to me about this, I think, like three and a half, four years ago, I had this idea and I'm thinking about launching like you. That's pretty fucking slick, man. Like, that's a pretty slick idea. So tell us what this is and what it's done for your business.
Alex [00:11:35] Absolutely. So I would love absolutely love to take credit for it. On the creative side, it wasn't my idea actually came from Oread Black Book from from the folks at Oread Black Book, and it's called Benetton's on Wheels. And pretty much what it comes down to is this is the way I look at the concept is everybody knows your pain at times are there? You'll put bandit signs out. It's pulled in every three day seminar. Everybody out there preaches and practices. You've got to put bandit signs out. They work, they work, they work and they do work. You get people calling off the bandits on the problem I have with them. This is this is not a knock on anybody else's business model. It's just the way we run our business. I did not want to start my business. Off by having to worry about code enforcement violations. I did not want to start my business off by doing something that I wasn't able to brand and I wasn't able to put the Victor Bravo name behind. So we looked at the bandit times and we're like, how can we do that? And then that's when we heard about bandit signs on wheels. So the concept is having a mobile bandit time where we take signage, vinyl letters and we put it on the back of vehicles. And it sounds like it works. It sounds like it's a great idea. But the reality is it only works at scale. It does not work if you have a sign on your vehicle and that's it. This is what a lot of people thought, is that, oh, well, I have a sign on my vehicle and it's not doing anything. I have a sign of my personal car and I don't know, I've gotten a handful calls, my personal vehicle. But what we did is and this is something I learned from, you know, literally in that first conversation we had, you literally pounded your desk and said systems and processes and processes. And I followed that. And so I built an entire system around the BSW program, went out and marketed to drivers. Got we at one point we had 120 vehicles on the road with our signage on the back of them. And that has been our primary marketing means for the first four years is all about inbound traffic.
Billy [00:13:24] I want to dig deeper because you said a lot of things and I want to come in a little bit deeper so other people out there could take what you've done and leverage it, steal it, put it in. So let's go through the process of how do you go about finding people that want to actually put decals in the back of their car? You have your face on this and like your mug, or is it just the name of the company?
Alex [00:13:47] So right now, the only thing that's on the back of the vehicle is that we we kind of did a beta test on a couple of different verbiage on this. We we landed with full asking price for your house. That was the original message. We changed it up a couple of times, but it worked for us because it gets people to raise their hand and say, oh, I want full asking price for my property. That's right. And we do get some retail leads out of it. But we also have gotten a lot of short sale leads out of there. We have about almost 30 properties in the pipeline right now that are all short sales that will be closing at some point over the next six months. So with the signage, it's getting people on has been difficult over the last four months. And I think that's one of the things that I'm figuring out now. We have to figure this out as we go. Our primary means that we were recruiting drivers was Craigslist, Craigslist and Facebook. Craigslist has effectively shut us down. I don't know what changed. I don't know people reporting our post as MLMs or what it was. But Craigslist has effectively shut us down. And every post we're putting out there on Craigslist is getting flagged, is getting taken. So we I'm not going to sit back and think, oh, well, that's the end of the program, which figured out know the way forward. Right. Facebook, one of the things we're realizing is the algorithm on Facebook. I think we screwed ourselves because we were putting a lot of links. Almost every post were links going out to another site. So apparently instead of Facebook, you want to keep that traffic inside of their head.
Billy [00:15:08] So if you have any links going outside Facebook, they flag and they shut you down to anybody.
Alex [00:15:13] Yeah. So it's just in the last couple of months now where we've had a major slowdown in the number of new vehicles. So we're down to right now where we have eighty two vehicles on the route where we've lost almost 50 percent of our vehicles. So we're starting a new program. We we literally just started in the last two weeks. We kind of looked at the problem set and we said, all right, how do we address this problem? How do we get more people on the road with more signs on the back of their vehicles, but still be able to provide them with a benefit? Because the only way these people are getting paid is when we were closing the deal. So we tracked the signs. Every sign has a three digit code on it. So anybody calls in the first question that was asked to say, what is the three digit code? And we pay everybody happily, pay everybody out. We get a call from the vehicle. So we sat back, we looked and we like, how was that?
Billy [00:16:01] I hear you're paying for a phone call. Not for a lead No need for.
Alex [00:16:05] No, no, no. Not for a phone call. Not on the screen right now because we get a lot of phone calls.
Alex [00:16:15] I drive. I just cut me off. Who told me to go? Yeah, yeah. We don't pay per phone call, but we're closed. Deal reasonable. It's just a referral fee that we get would give over to them. Got it. So we sat and we looked at the problems and we said, all right, how can we provide more value to our drivers and get more signs is out there? So you know what? I've been doing this for four and a half, almost five years now. I've gained a good amount of knowledge. I've got a lot of people in my network that have a tremendous amount of knowledge tremendous amount of experience, both locally here in the Maryland market and nationally. So I said, you know what? We're going to start an education company, so we literally two weeks ago we started Victor Bravo education that we started a program called Victor Bravo Basic Training. This is not like a seminar program or anything else. It is specifically geared towards finding drivers. So the way I looked at it is we have a lot of people that want to learn about real estate investing and there's a lot of resources out there. So we're going to start creating content and we're going to start putting all of our content on a closed Facebook group admittance into that group. And we're going to do weekly question and answers with all the drivers in their admittance into the group, only costs you sign on the back of your vehicle. That's it. So in return for the value we're going to provide, we get a sign on the vehicle, we get advertising and they're going to be able to still they will still pay them for the deals that we closed. And and hopefully we can help them out, because the way I look at it is those drivers, those however many people we're shooting right now for one hundred and fifty new drivers that are in the program, they will be out of those hundred, 150 people. I can almost guarantee one of our next hires. There's no two ways about it, because we are going to get somebody in there that wants to learn and wants to know more about the industry and not just drive around. And they're going to want to look at property. They're going to want to go to what they're going to be one of our next hires.
Billy [00:18:01] I love the concept, bro. I love the cars, I love how you're morphing and you grow with this whole thing. What does it cost you to put on the decals in the back of the vehicle?
Alex [00:18:11] Twenty five bucks.
Billy [00:18:14] It's a no brainer. So you have people that go out to their cars and put it on. They have to drive both.
Alex [00:18:22] So we we had a full time installer that was also going to find a property for us. But we have an in-house guy now that's taking the entire program off my plate and is running with the entire program. So for right now, he'll be doing the installs. We have a physical office down in Joplin, which doesn't mean much to you. New York is up there. But but they can come down to our office. That way we can do a meet and greet. We actually put together a nice little package for them with a bag, like a little coat. And I don't even know what is in there.
Alex [00:18:49] A bunch of little gifts, things for them. Yeah. Yeah.
Alex [00:18:52] So as they sign up and then I also have a book, I don't know if I told you that. So I have a book called Bad as I know the name of it is How to Say How to Sell Your House Fast in Maryland or something to that effect. And it's a very basic concept book on how to sell your house. So we give them a free copy of the book and we get them out on the road.
Billy [00:19:11] So you're leveraging the tools and all the tips and tricks that are out there. You're leveraging them. But the most important thing you're implementing like an animal and that's separate from a lot of guys, analysis, paralysis, they want to do everything. They focus on everything to get nothing done. And four or five, eight, 10 years goes by and it's still in the same sequence.
Alex [00:19:28] And that would mean I'm I am the worst guilty party of that. From twenty sixteen until the beginning of this year, I was by myself and I was trying to do everything and I was trying to do a little bit of everything. And it was not until I was forced to get laser focused and I realized that I can't do everything. So I built a team out and we have right now we're sitting at almost 13 people. They were 13 people total on the team between in-house here and the VA that we have. And we're going to keep growing.
Billy [00:20:00] Yeah, I remember those conversations we had. You were stressing out over doing it all and had a hell of a drug. But I got to tell you, man, you listened. You executed. Yep. I'm watching you grow. I just want to caution you the whole scaling. Please watch your frigging numbers. Like, you know, I have guys all over the country that we interview and they all share the same story and say the same thing. It's not what you're grossing. It's what you're netting. And a lot of guys, it will go on stage. We'll tell you they're making eight million dollars a year. And when you find out what their net is, you want to throw up because you're like, what are you doing?
Alex [00:20:37] Get a job. If you only making one hundred about the net gross.
Billy [00:20:40] You just make sure you watch your numbers strongly. You want to have this conversation a couple of months ago. That's what the numbers make sure you watch the net bottom line up margin. It's extremely important, right. So you got a killer system. It's working. It's driving in deals. So that was your main marketing process for three years?
Alex [00:20:58] Yep. That was the only thing we did at that. And then I was doing some of my own driving for dollars just going out, finding properties. You know, it's that whole concept. Oh, you go find a property and you research it and it's effective. And those are some of the best deals that we've ever gotten. Yeah. That you cannot scale that doing it yourself. It's physically impossible to do so. We also started building that out over the last eight months. So we use the machine and we had two full time drivers that were out on a property for us. At one point they were submitting five or two properties a week scale. Back now to where we're putting in about two hundred fifty new properties a week and we've kind of saturated the entire market around us. So we might make some adjustments there and go out and put them out on direct mail. So we have all postcards going out and we're skip tracing all of those contacts and have a cold call team that are hitting them on the phones nonstop.
Billy [00:21:51] Yeah, it's a process. You go through the system. And by the way, your machine, if you guys are listening, if you go to Billy Secrets Dotcom, I worked out a special offer with the machine. I don't know if it's 50 percent off your first month of a free month. I can't remember the offer that they have, but it works. Our guys, we always use it. We use it. The machine just you understand, it's a process where on your cell phone you can basically drive around neighborhoods, find vacant properties, will probably look dilapidated. Take a picture. It tells you who owns the property, what they own the property. You hit another button, it gives you good cell phone numbers, your home number, your email address, if it's a probate estate tax deal and then you hit another button and it automatically starts sending out the marketing pieces. So it is again, it's a tool that you have in your arsenal, in your belt. And if you're not going to make a million dollars on one thing, you got to do a bunch of different things. But you got to get one thing started in your business, get it implemented, get it executed, systematize it handed off, and then focus on the next thing. That's how you scale when you first starting out your start phase. Like Alex, like myself, like every freaking entrepreneur out there, you're going to do everything yourself and to be. Especially you strapped for cash, you're going to do it all and it's actually a good thing because you get to understand the whole process of the business, right? Just like when you started the first rehab, you didn't want to go out there and you cheat on me, but they go through that process. You learn what it takes and that's important. I think if you can own a business, you're going to get into this business. You have to understand how all the pieces work for you to go out there and actually execute properly.
Alex [00:23:26] Yep 100% type deal machine's been great man.
Alex [00:23:29] I have no complaints about this. Some other products out there that do similar things and they're good as well. We just decided to go with deal machine because it works, you know, and it was simple. And that was the biggest thing. At the end of the day, man, I'm I'm still just a knuckle dragging. I'm a I'm a Marine by trade and like, I need simplicity. I cannot have something that's going to be too crazy and convoluted in the process is all I need to be able to keep it simple. And that's what deal machine really did, is it kept it simple for us. We got out there. I started using my cell phone, take a picture, get the properly researched and just start attacking the property.
Billy [00:24:05] So so now you're in the you're in the phase where you start in the scale. So you have 13 people. It's a lot of people, big organization, full time or not, VA or not. That's an organization. So let's break down what their organization looks like. What do you have people and what seats and what are they do it.
Alex [00:24:21] Absolutely. So I'll put this out there for everybody as well. There I heard I used to hear people say, oh, I've got eight people, ten people, twelve people. And I've seen some business owners that have a team that never really put a solid structure behind that team. And I also watched that same team completely crumble for sure, before I ever built out the team. I had I had plenty of time to do it. I built out the structure of the business. So the way I and I built it all for the US model. So the way I built the business that was in the accountability chart, I have three branches. I have my marketing advertising branch, my operations branch of my administration branch. And I mean, my name was in every block at one point in time, the marketing advertising side. Right now I have one guy, one full time. He's my social media manager, slash, you know, videographer, photographer. And he's he's only been on team for a couple of weeks now. Absolutely crushing it.
Alex [00:25:15] Absolutely. Wanted to know if you worked.
Billy [00:25:18] Full time or part time.
Alex [00:25:19] Full time. He is full time and he's absolutely crushing it. I mean, like we're already getting noticed in some of the social media posts from some of the folks locally. He is helping me build out the entire SEO pay per click campaign right now, which is one of the main focuses for this quarter. And then in the operations branch, which is obviously the most robust branch. We have my operations manager, who is he's pretty much my partner at this point in time. And he is he has been my right hand guy for the last nine, ten months now. I have barely even talked to a seller for the last handful of months. He is making all the phone calls out right now, developing all the relationships drop in the contracts. I'm still taking care of the disposal of it. So we're getting the properties pushed out underneath him. We have two one full time cold caller, one part time cold caller. And the way we develop that is and this is contrary to a lot of people think a lot of people have cold callers that are in the Philippines or in Costa Rica or wherever it is our cold callers. I don't really particularly like the phrase cold call, because at the end of day, the relationship managers and they are the in my opinion, the most important touchpoint we have with our clients at that first touch that we have with those clients, they have to be able to immediately build rapport, establish commonalities, understand this person's situation. And the goal is to develop both of them into where they're going to be stepping in the operations side. Just start taking deals down. So we're grooming both of them right now, not just to be cool, cool, but to be able to step in and take take a lead all the way through the entire acquisition cycle. I love it. Also inside of there, we have a full marketing team, so we I'm sorry, full research team out in the Philippines. So we have three VA's. It's a full team out there. Our main point of contact is the one person we pay them. Well, now, there's no two ways about it, but the research that they do for us is hands down, like irreplaceable. I mean, she's pretty much she's pretty much full title searches on these properties because here in Baltimore City, like we could spend a lot of time wasting a lot of time on properties that have forty, fifty, sixty one hundred thousand dollar tax liens on them that we're never going to touch. So she's doing pretty much preliminary title searches on them, full comp packages that they'll put together on it, and then going through and vetting all the all the information and kind of segmenting our leads as they come in. And also a full time lead manager who I'm super excited about. So he is literally two weeks ago just retired from the United States Air Force. Yeah, it was great. And but the better part of it is we had him as an intern for the last six months, so DOD was paying to have him here. It's a program called the Bridge Skills. Program and for the last six months of his service, he came to us and did an internship and then we converted them over to a full time employee and that may have been having him is amazing. And then we're also he's taken down his first rehab here in the next couple of weeks. So we're getting a deal into his pocket and then let him we're going to walk him through the whole rehab process. So we have him. And then on the administrative administration branch, it's myself. I have an office assistant, actually, and then I have one other VA up in Massachusetts who takes care of a lot of the systems administration, process development and back end stuff.
Billy [00:28:38] So this whole scaling time, when did you actually when this all come into play? Because just about nine months ago, I remember speaking to you, you didn't have much of it.
Alex [00:28:48] I know it was me. It was me. And I had office assistant and literally it came down to I had no income at that point. It was it was the beginning of this year of twenty twenty. I sat and I looked at and I said, I have to focus on one thing. And that's when I said, OK, I'm going to focus on the assignments. And that's when we brought Mike on the team, pressure the team and we just started scaling immediately. At that point we looked at it, we realized what we could do and I went from doing almost nothing to where we should be on pace right now to to for twenty twenty one relatively no problems. We should be able to hit fifty two transactions this year and your top six. Twenty five that those are our bottom line numbers and I'm pretty confident we're going to blow down the water. We've already got five deals closed for the year. One hundred and forty in revenue. So it's amazing isn't it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, and we're looking at them like yeah. Why am I going to go slow down like no there's no need to go slow. We're going to keep pushing. We're going to keep pushing hard and. Very systematically building this out as well this quarter and focus on the SEO of the pay per click online presence, social media strategy, getting that all built out quarter two is just going to be kind of maintenance phase of taking everything we have, cleaning up some processes, making sure everything's good to go. Quarter three. We're going to be doing another big push at that point.
Billy [00:30:10] Yeah, I, I find that doing that quarter push a quarter like not hang out but kind of understand what's going on and actually see what's happening. And then another quarter push. What do you do to push this year man. It just grows your company to no end when you get a lot of traction and you push through. You mentioned something I want the listeners to understand. You mentioned us.
Alex [00:30:31] What does that about us is the entrepreneurial operating system. It was like it's designed by Eli Whitman in his book Traction. So one of the biggest takeaways I got from that was that you can only have one business system. It doesn't matter what that business system is, but you can only have one. And everybody in your organization has to speak the same languages. So whether you're using KPIs metrics, rocks, whatever it is, everybody has to be on the same page as to what you're talking about. So that when one person is saying, oh, well, our goals for the quarter and another person say our rocks for the quarter, everybody's on the same page. So I literally. I have a couple of different people have different. I said, I'm going with this and this is I started I started building about probably three and a half years ago now. And I've got my accountability chart, my vision traction, organize it at least. And I guess let me slow down. So one of the biggest takeaways I have from that or my core values, and it took me a while to develop, it's not like I threw a dart at the dart board and all these my core values, like I really sat down and said, what do I want this company to be? And and I built them out. And everybody in the company now knows the core values. It's something we go over on a weekly basis. Donor Altan meeting and it's family integrity, professionalism, trust and understanding. And we we stick to them and we make sure that everybody we're speaking to, whether it's on the seller side, on the buyer side or agent, whoever it deals with like that, we stick to our core values and that's it. And that's been a huge part of that.
Billy [00:32:03] Yeah. When you have core values and people know them, they get them, they understand, they rally around them. Is changing men's business changing, world changing. And plus two, that you have a litmus test to those people that you want to take into your organization because it all fit your values system. Doesn't matter how much they produce, they're not going to fit. They're not going to come in.
Alex [00:32:21] That's right. Not only internally, but external partners as well.
Billy [00:32:25] You know, we've had some issues with whatever whoever it is, how your company got in its times, it kind of hurt. Sometimes you have to cut ways with people that you like. Man, I really don't want to do this, but they know they're not getting they're not on the same page and their values are values is already good.
Alex [00:32:44] That's no business with bad business is one of our policies. And it's it does suck sometimes because I've had contractors that I've worked with that have I mean, the speed that they were able to get projects done that and the the efficiency that they had inside the organization was unreal. They took a lot of shortcuts, and after seeing that a couple of times and confronting them on it, they were OK with closing up a wall without putting insulation in it.
Alex [00:33:15] Yeah, I won't do it.
Alex [00:33:17] And it was just one of to say where it was like. So that relationship was severed. We've had title companies that literally challenged our integrity as an individual and as a business owner that I don't have the patience for. I we're not going to do business with them, period.
Billy [00:33:30] Yeah, yeah. We do a lot of the same things. We have people that if they're just not good communicators and they don't respond and get things done, like conversation happens once, conversation happens twice the third time, we're like, you know what? I'm not going to beg this individual to do their job. I'm not dragging you along. It's like, cut let's go to the next one. That's why we have three of everything every place. So if one drops out, one's not meeting. The goals was not meeting our needs. No hard feelings, not a personal business. We got to part ways.
Alex [00:34:00] And that's what we're trying to do. The same thing right now. We're trying to and it's it's a I think it's a good policy is having three of everything. Maybe we'll look at doing that on some of our external partners as well.
Billy [00:34:10] Yeah. You know, it's painful to grow with, especially if you're doing jobs that aren't 100 hundred percent fully committed. Like, one of the things we implemented is that jobs are permitted. We still get our own inspectors into that house to verify the work that the contractors are doing to make them hold them accountable, because if they know that nobody's going to check over their shoulder and check their work, they're going to take shortcuts. And not just at the same time, the shortcuts are going to end up costing you money in the long run because the house that was done shoddy and.
Alex [00:34:43] Yep, yeah. I don't really have much patience for it in this business in particular. So it's just that's the way we're doing it moving forward. And that's it.
Billy [00:34:50] Well cuz listen, man, this was like you've brought some serious value. You have anything you want to add before we before we go?
Alex [00:34:57] Man, it was honestly a true pleasure and an honor to be on here with you, man. I've been watching you grow for, I don't know, what, 30 something years now. And it's been real, man. I remember just to let everybody else know back in ninety six to ninety eight. And when you had your mortgage business and you were just ramping that mortgage business up, I was a stockbroker. I literally graduated high school on a Friday, started on a Monday as a broker. And I remember at that time, you know, we're talking twenty five years ago now, you and I jumping on a call. And at that point I had the glitz and glamor in front of me. I was like, oh, I want a Range Rover, I want this. But even at that time and the value that you provided to me and just talk to me was absolutely huge. And those are life lessons that have stayed with me over the last thirty years. So for everything that you provided me personally over the last five or six years, specifically related to real estate, then you're a frickin rock star. Truly, truly appreciate it. So I look forward to growing and watching you grow as well.
Billy [00:35:54] And likewise, bro, I'm watching like I love that you you call. I love those conversations when I'm on the road, like, cause I got like a half hour. You'll text me like you're driving and we'll have some HEART-TO-HEART deep conversation. And what I really love about you, brother, is that you you ask really good questions. I know you're taking notes and then you go implement and then you report back to three, five, six months later, probably I did this and this was to get the idea. So give and take. I just love feeding people who actually take it and use it.
Alex [00:36:27] So I don't know if I ever told you it's not. So I really hesitated on reaching out to you to ask you about real estate related stuff, because I watch over the last few years and I was like, man, he's killing it right now. I don't want to be that pain in his side where I'm like, hey, what about this? How do I do that? How so? I made myself a commitment like four or five years ago that when I called you up on anything real estate related that I was going to do my damnedest to to take action and to not waste your time. So I appreciate all the phone calls and I appreciate all the information because it's it's valuable information. And at the end of the day, I had to realize that that your information that you provided to me would have been akin to information I would've gotten from some high level mastermind program. And I know that. So I always wanted to make sure that the time and energy you put into speaking to me that I was hopefully hopefully now I'm at a point where hopefully I'll be able to pay some of that back to him and provide value to your listeners and everything else.
Alex [00:37:22] So thank you again, Billy. You are the man,.
Billy [00:37:25] Bro. I love you.
Billy [00:37:26] Your family, my cousin. And I love the fact that you're making should happen. And just to get your memory job, you actually did say that to me. You don't want to waste my time. And I just want to you recall there was one conversation you called probably three years ago about some deal with financing and you didn't have your numbers in order. And it was like fifteen minutes on the phone that I'm like, cause I don't really fucking think like this is like, you know what?
Billy [00:37:49] I don't know what I'm talking about. Call you back.
Alex [00:37:51] I think remember exactly what deal it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Forget it.
Billy [00:37:56] They're not going to do won't waste your time again.
Alex [00:37:59] I think I know exactly what deal that was. We never, never came to fruition because it wasn't a good deal for.
Billy [00:38:05] The bro look, I value I value our relationship, I appreciate you coming on, and most of all, I'm fucking proud of what you're doing. Very proud of you.
Alex [00:38:14] I appreciate it, man. Thank you very much, Billy. I definitely appreciate your time, brother.
Billy [00:38:19] Peace out my man.
Alex [00:38:20] Take it easy, man. Have a good one.
Billy [00:38:21] How do people find you online? I don't know. All right.
Alex [00:38:24] So so we are literally just starting the whole social media thing right now. So we have Victor Bravo Dotcom, the handles on IG. Twitter is all Victor Bravo, RCI and then on top, I'm going VP. So I'm still pushing on the military side of things on Tic-Tok.
Billy [00:38:42] So it's going to be a very, very entertaining on there.
Alex [00:38:47] But yeah, we are going to still push for some more content up both on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube. We're going to bump up the YouTube channel and we're going to start putting some content out there because I love being able to share like we're doing this now. And I really have gained a lot of information the last several years. I want to be able give it back. I'm not this is not going to it's some some seminar program. I genuinely want to be able to give some information back. So we're on all those different channels. You can find us out there. And then if you're in Maryland, if you're listening and you're in Maryland and you have a property that you need to sell, you need help with, don't hesitate to reach out to us. Or if you want to learn about real estate investing in any way, shape or form or fashion, reach out to us. We'll see what we do to help you out.
Billy [00:39:28] Smart man with the plug. Brother is a very good brother. I will catch you.
Alex [00:39:33] Thank you, sir. Take it easy, brother.
Billy [00:39:39] Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Unstoppable Real Estate Investing Wealth. My mission is to keep my listener is the blueprint for success, the insider secrets for starting, growing and selling your real estate investing. You can experience it live the unstoppable lifestyle. I've made it simple for the catapult yourself to success, go to Billys Secrets Dotcom and B I L L Y S secrets dotcom. There you will find every single tool tip trick strategy system. It's great used to make millions of dollars as real estate. Everything my team uses and my guest use all in one place for you to tap into. So you can start grow and scale real estate investment.
Billy [00:40:28] I really hope you implement what you're learning, I hope and utilize these tools, tips, tricks, trade secrets.