00;00;09;19 - 00;00;26;16

Unknown

Welcome to the Profit First for Real Estate Investing podcast. Every week we bring you top investors and experts sharing how they create Clarity cash flow and consistent profit. This episode is brought to you by simple CFO. Profit first. Profit always. Let's go.

00;00;26;19 - 00;00;43;26

Unknown

Welcome back to the Profit First I podcast have Ken Barton today. And Ken I'm super excited to learn more about Office.com and what you're doing, because I got to sit next to you in a room in a mastermind and you show me some pretty cool things. So Ken, thanks for coming on the podcast today. Thanks for the invite, David.

00;00;44;00 - 00;00;56;29

Unknown

It's awesome. Yeah, the family mouse format has been really effective for our business as well. But yeah, we've been all for now. I was just looking at it. I keep missing, you know, because, like, time is relative when you're building a startup, so you're just like, everything goes so fast, but we're almost at our one year anniversary.

00;00;56;29 - 00;01;15;18

Unknown

Officially, the company launched last, like, late February, so almost there. But we didn't really have any traction for, like, three months, but, yeah, like, we we are almost one year old. Awesome. Well, then why don't you. Did you were you always in real estate or like, did you just find real estate or like, were you in data or were you?

00;01;15;18 - 00;01;31;09

Unknown

I don't know, tell me your background. I want to know a little bit more about Ken. David, I have a complicated story, so, I better, Yeah, I, I would say I'm a contrarian by nature, so I don't like to go the normal path. I just find it boring. I need to be challenged, like I'm a.

00;01;31;11 - 00;01;49;05

Unknown

I was always an absent child. You know, if I go back to, like, my my youth. Youth. But now, like, for example, my degrees are in Mandarin Chinese. I speak fluent Mandarin. Everyone. Y'all. Y'all. Yeah. And you saw what I'm like. I can literally prove it. Like, I'm very fluent in Mandarin, I lived there, I lived in China for five years.

00;01;49;07 - 00;02;02;09

Unknown

Because when I got to university, I'm first generation college. I went to a community college. Right? Because, like, I didn't think school or grades mattered. So I got like CS. I was like, that's a lot of math to do. Cool. I'm gonna go run my pressure washing business and make $2,000 a week. And that's what I did.

00;02;02;11 - 00;02;16;14

Unknown

You know what that was? A majority of my high school was like finding ways and like, thank goodness I, I wasn't bored now because I want to be like a drug removal guy. I would have done that. I would go for the entire blue collar. I would have had no higher level education. I would've said, absolutely not.

00;02;16;15 - 00;02;31;08

Unknown

You know, it's just like very money obsessed, those younger guys. For me, money is always freedom. And so, I when I got to university, they were like, oh, you can do business courses. And I'm like, I've literally already done this. Like I had to learn accounting when I was 16 because I had to like, file taxes because I made $10,000.

00;02;31;14 - 00;02;47;01

Unknown

You know, like all of this seems really also, YouTube could teach me this. Like, it's it's not useful, right? Like, oh, this is kind of boring. And so in the end I started remembering. So I was like, I love Chinese food. I want to do something or do something in university that I can't do anywhere else. I want to like and be impactful.

00;02;47;01 - 00;03;06;10

Unknown

You'll see that the through light of my entire life is, I'm not very complacent, and I'm kind of allergic to complacency. And, I'm not comfortable doing something that's very simple or like, average or boring. That's not exciting to me. I need to be challenged. Otherwise I'm not personally satisfied. And so, like the early stages of Mandarin.

00;03;06;11 - 00;03;21;11

Unknown

And then I learned very quickly, if you're going to have a job, you know, it's nice, have someone else pay your bills. So, like, as a real estate guy, I think that's always the thing is, like, people are like, oh, I love real estate. I'm like, me too. But I also love other people paying my bills. And, I learned very quickly technology pay is really well.

00;03;21;13 - 00;03;38;17

Unknown

And people in technology, they have really high value products. They have infinite inventory and they have no delivery dream product to sell. And by the way, their commissions are usually double digits, very high commissions. And so I got into sales and I ran a sales team in Shanghai. I ran a sales team in Berlin, Germany for two years.

00;03;38;19 - 00;04;00;02

Unknown

And I've been all over the US from New York to Chicago. And now I live full time in San Francisco. But yeah, I've been in sales for more than a decade, so $40 million of software. That's been delightful. Awesome. So then how did you get to the real estate world? Like, what brought you or like, what motivated you to get involved in offer and all the real estate technology?

00;04;00;04 - 00;04;22;23

Unknown

David I call it the elliptical of, like, compensation. So like, you know, like lips go like the like obviously the stairs everywhere, like, always went like this, right. And so it's the same thing. Get a job, make commission, make money, get taxes. Boom. Good job. All the way around the circle. And so, you know, like every other person that like realizes their tax bill starts I'm just like watching my tax bill grow every year.

00;04;22;23 - 00;04;44;00

Unknown

And I'm like, this is terrible. And I can't use that, you know, and like, it's a W-2 job, I'm like, I'm not going, you're in business. It's take it right out. So like, I see, like, oh, I made all this money. Actually, I made a small portion of that. And so I started reading. That's me. Like, I read a lot of books, and my solution was, I need to figure out my number one problem at the time was taxes.

00;04;44;03 - 00;04;59;05

Unknown

I was good at making money, good at growing my like, whether it's a job or a business, like growing that piece. But I had to figure out how to, like, build wealth. I think I probably heard one of those clips online that says, you got to make money while you sleep, otherwise you're not gonna be effective. And that really stuck with me.

00;04;59;07 - 00;05;22;20

Unknown

And so of course, I read for support and I started reading, and I'm an audio of a person. I'm actually like really very passionate about audiobooks. I'm not a fan of I can't I'm you'll see. For me, talking super ADHD can't sit still. I believe ADHD is a like superpower. I can handle 19 things at once. Were like, I know a lot of people I work with can only handle like 2 or 3 and I'm like, okay, slow down can slow down for this other person, but like, I can keep going.

00;05;22;22 - 00;05;39;19

Unknown

And so I actually read 12 books on real estate, everything. You know, Bernie Brandon's like br like I wrote it all. And then I was like, okay, I didn't have the money. That was my whole problem. This is a really fun story. So during the pandemic, I had contacted by someone who works for me previously.

00;05;39;22 - 00;06;01;07

Unknown

He's like, Ken, I can't tell you who that is. It's not an MBA. But, a professional athlete needed a business plan. Okay, this is a funny story, David. Because I don't know anything about concentrated solar power. Okay? This is a renewable energy. It's basically diversity images. It's a huge. Towers shine light on all these solar panels.

00;06;01;11 - 00;06;19;11

Unknown

Gets a bunch of heat. No idea. My friend calls me an ex-employee. He says, can I have a client who has a lot of money and wants a business plan, and he won't buy it from me, but he'll buy it from someone smart. And I think you should charge him a lot of money for this. I said put him on the side with me.

00;06;19;11 - 00;06;31;06

Unknown

I mean, I've been sales for a long time. Like, let's let's go. If someone's pay a lot of money, do something. I know how to arbitrage like that. I know how to do this game. And the reason why this is pertinent to the story data is I have a knowledge now. I was like, okay, I want to go buy real estate.

00;06;31;06 - 00;06;44;25

Unknown

Didn't have the cash, you know, and I had some cash, like obviously, you know, commissions and the tax elliptically you get money. But I didn't have the money. I wasn't ready to like make the jokes and have to flush. I wouldn't feel safe enough. And it's always been, you know, like, I'm not going to talk about production. Just my parents, you know, like, it's just me.

00;06;44;25 - 00;07;16;02

Unknown

I'm like, I need to own this. I'm. It's like kind of me. And so long story short, David, would you like to guess how much I charged this, professional athlete for a business plan? For concentrated solar power company, 25,000. Keep going. 50,000. Keep going. David. 100,000. Keep going. David 200,000. It was $185,000. Wow. There we go.

00;07;16;03 - 00;07;36;20

Unknown

And what's amazing about that is talk about wholesaling. Talk about arbitrage. Right. What's amazing about that is, I felt so guilty because I'm like, I don't know how to do this. Like, I this is before time. Do you remember internet like that didn't exist like that. So that was considered interesting time. But what I did was I called my friends who are PhDs in energy science, and they're like, we love conference for power.

00;07;36;20 - 00;07;53;16

Unknown

There's all these things, there's all these problems with it. And basically, I paid each one of them $1,000 to create a separate business plan. And I just, like, kind of pulled the other pieces that I liked. And he was elated. And so that's how I have some money to invest in real estate. Like I was like, scoff.

00;07;53;17 - 00;08;14;00

Unknown

And this man wired me that he'd like to get started, like all this. Why are you the 60 K today? No contract, nothing. You know, we we just started with that. And I was like, what a wild experience. So that's what opening up to like the ability to invest in real estate because again like I'm so scared I didn't know like and now look at myself years later I mean debt is a superpower now, you know.

00;08;14;00 - 00;08;28;17

Unknown

But at the time I was like scared. And I hadn't even bought my own house yet. I'd always been renting, so I was a big cities. But that's what started my journey, and I did. I did the good old fashioned br, you know, I bought a duplex in downtown Orlando, which is actually interesting. I was so scared, David.

00;08;28;20 - 00;08;42;13

Unknown

There were two single family homes on one lot. And, I mean, I literally found it off market because I was like, driving around. I found this thing that said first sale in the yard super gross. I really you look at property, it's like roofs look rough. But I was like, this is what they say you're supposed to buy.

00;08;42;19 - 00;09;03;08

Unknown

But the fear I had was I was worried. They were like bamboozling me into buying one of these houses for 75 K instead of both, you know. Yeah. And it's also during the pandemic. So now, now I think it's worth about 450 K that that property there's a downtown Orlando. Like how like nice it is. But yeah 2020 I bought it for 75 K.

00;09;03;08 - 00;09;25;28

Unknown

Thankfully, I call the city a million times. Are you sure? Are you sure it's a duplex? Are you sure? I'm not getting, like, cheated here. And I bought that. I met some local guys for renovation. Like, I was there every day. It was amazing. Yeah, it changed my entire life like that. And I literally, I will actually say, I've never bought a property that I have not personally walked around, felt the walls like I don't think I ever would.

00;09;26;00 - 00;09;37;29

Unknown

I have a good friend of mine who does some remote flipping and I'm like, you are a wild animal. I would never do this. I just don't trust anyone. I just like it's not like I even the contractors that I'm there with. I'm like, guys, you literally are not doing anything that I asked you to do. What?

00;09;37;29 - 00;09;51;16

Unknown

What's not, you know? So anyway, how I got into real estate was reading a lot. I got that first property, I started making content. I started like it wasn't very interesting, but, like, I was, like, kind of telling my story, my journey. And then I had some friends start watching and say, hey, can I want to do that too?

00;09;51;19 - 00;10;12;08

Unknown

And especially when I started talking about the tax deductions, nothing else really mattered. I mean, they that I'm sure, you know, you and I can talk about this all day, but like the tax deductions were how I raise my first $1.5 million from a crypto friend of mine because he made $6 million a year before in crypto. And his problem was he actually liquidated it and he put it into a bank account.

00;10;12;10 - 00;10;26;11

Unknown

And so now he he called me and he's like, Ken, I need to go lose money really fast. And I know real estate's one of the ways you can do that. I don't have time to learn this. Can you please deploy this for me? And that's how my portfolio went from ten units to 50. Because, of course, I got paid for in everything, right?

00;10;26;11 - 00;10;42;07

Unknown

Yeah. And so, yeah, it's it's a long way to say it, but like, I've been in real estate, I was about eight years now. And I'll be honest, even today I'm actually, like, really pulled back, just because there's a lot of issues, but, like, I want to be in the flow of funds to real estate, but not necessarily ownership.

00;10;42;08 - 00;10;59;29

Unknown

I don't I'm not someone who really enjoys the minutia and like the specifics and the small stuff. And I think, my favorite examples, Tommy horror out of Columbus, Ohio. Like what a shining example of of like a proper real estate investor. I'm a big fan of him and held his children like I used to live in Columbus, Ohio for two years.

00;11;00;02 - 00;11;13;27

Unknown

It just like he's done everything he's like. He learned all the things that are problematic and companies around them to solve them. He, like, owns that market. But I live in San Francisco. But this is not a market. You can go like flipper play in very easily. And I also don't want the risk of like, oh, you need a new roof.

00;11;13;27 - 00;11;33;07

Unknown

Cool. It's $115,000. Like, I don't want this one. This is not for me. Yeah. I, I like the business side of, like, connecting pieces and also the enterprise value of building something that can be sellable one day. But that's a very long way to answer your question. Awesome. So then that's what led you to offer then and, like, start and getting inside of there.

00;11;33;10 - 00;11;50;02

Unknown

Okay. So yeah, let's come back to offer. So I was I was buying real estate. I realized pretty quickly off market is the way to go as a buyer okay. You know if you can buy them from wholesalers, they're they literally find these deals like all they do all day long is find deals at a discount. And like, I think I bought 70% of my portfolio off market.

00;11;50;02 - 00;12;06;22

Unknown

Some of the worst deals I've ever done were on market, you know? Oh yeah. Because if you think about it, it's like it's like the leftovers or the things that hit the market space. Just what's left over after the the Pro investments have picked over the really good stuff. So great example, another duplex in Sanford, North Orlando.

00;12;06;27 - 00;12;22;00

Unknown

This is during the pandemic. I was with my parents to take care of them, in Orlando. But, I mean, I bought a duplex in North Orlando for 90 K, and I think I sold it, you know, I refund at first, but then I sold it two years later for 300 K, but like buying it straight away for $90,000 of course.

00;12;22;00 - 00;12;55;22

Unknown

Never lost it. So that off market experience was really interesting. And as I started going out into the market looking for off market platforms, there was only one that I actually ever found, which was investor list. And I always like to say like they're my competitor now, of course. But my experience in Buffalo was really simple. I use it for exactly one month, and when you call or we click like contact seller on investor list, what it does as a user is it takes your phone number, an email as a buyer and then blasts it out to every post within 500 miles saying, hey, this guy's actively buying in this area.

00;12;55;24 - 00;13;10;22

Unknown

Which, I mean, it's kind of true a little bit. But that means that as a real estate investor, you know, we're always on the phone like we don't have the ability to turn our phone off. And I think at its peak that month that I was using investor left, I was getting 2 or 300 calls a day.

00;13;10;25 - 00;13;25;10

Unknown

And this is before the I call it. This is when they were just using Vas. So that was impactful to me because I was like, okay, I can't actually use this. And so then I just I was still investing locally. And so like I got back on the phone, like I just got into more meetings and stuff. That's how I found the wholesalers.

00;13;25;14 - 00;13;40;10

Unknown

But that was only one side of the market. I'm assuming. I'm like, I'm a buyer. These sellers must love this. Like I'm a small buyer. Like it's just not. It was a really bad fit for me because I can't afford I mean, I imagine trying to run a business from your phone and you can't turn your ringer off so you get 2 or 300 calls a day.

00;13;40;12 - 00;14;07;22

Unknown

I don't know if it's contractor or I don't know if it's a wholesaler. So I made a deal of, you know, raw land in New Mexico. And I'm like, why are you calling me? I oh, who gave you my information? So that's when we think about a marketplace. That's the sell side. But the buy side was really interesting because I when I moved to Columbus, Ohio, to use my last boyfriend, I, was there and I was recruited by a company called Emperor Title.

00;14;07;24 - 00;14;25;09

Unknown

And they are, a venture backed title company. And what's interesting about them is mostly what they deal with is off market because because no one serves wholesalers, no one cares about them. They're too difficult, so challenging. And so and poor Emperor deal with about 2000 individual wholesale teams every month. And I was their head of sales, or at least got brought on in frequency.

00;14;25;12 - 00;14;36;13

Unknown

All they did, their head of sales, like a lot of it, was just like investor communication because I was the most prolific investor they'd ever hired. Their title company doing the investors had no idea how to invest in real estate. It's pretty funny. So I really was like a lot of like, yes, I know they're doing it wrong.

00;14;36;13 - 00;14;54;12

Unknown

Sorry, sorry, I started I literally had to like tell our tenants companies. I was like, that's not how real estate works, like sometimes. But what was interesting was I learned it in a title. Not only did I, as a buyer, have a really bad experience with this, like the only marketplace I could find, but the sellers hated it and that's me.

00;14;54;12 - 00;15;17;11

Unknown

You know, you have a business day that when you, you, you meet a marketplace that both sides hate the service. It's kind of like original Comcast or like all the TV providers hated Comcast, all the all the users. I mean, that's what it is, right? That's what really creates the Netflix of the world. Like bonds, new companies is like distaste and distrust and disenfranchisement of a current provider.

00;15;17;13 - 00;15;37;26

Unknown

And so that's why always been so successful is we basically built the middleman. We made it exponentially less expensive. We're still like, honestly, dude, even today, a year in, we're still figuring out the best revenue model that makes sense for everyone. I think the challenges today free is paramount. It's really nice to do things for free. But then, of course, it's hard to grow a platform for free.

00;15;37;29 - 00;15;55;01

Unknown

But the good news is we've kind of figured it out. I mean, we signed some agreements this literally this week, and it's all around debt and so that's like the inception of offer. It came from us learning that both buyers and sellers were not happy. And so you build something new. All right. I have to pause the episode real quick.

00;15;55;01 - 00;16;14;25

Unknown

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00;16;15;01 - 00;16;35;25

Unknown

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00;16;35;27 - 00;16;59;00

Unknown

So if you want predictable profit instead of living, deal to deal, head over to simple cfo.com and book your financial clarity call today. That's simple cfo.com. Stop living in confusion and start keeping the money you worked so hard to earn. Now back to the episode. Cool. And then that's what offer is it. You're connecting the buyers in the sellers together and a lot of that.

00;16;59;02 - 00;17;22;19

Unknown

Would you say a lot of the people that come to use your service are like what wholesalers or fixing flippers or people looking for those off market deals? Because you're also a how are you sourcing those off market deals too, and getting, I guess, the sellers on the system as well? Yeah, I'll be honest with you. The cool thing about us, if we're mostly word of mouth, like I have a zero advertising budget spend right now, oh, it's gonna change very soon.

00;17;22;23 - 00;17;44;10

Unknown

We're about to go in like we were raising more money. We're going to funnel more money into, advertising, but also have talk. I mean, they're on discord, they're on community. It's around school. They're just talking all the time to each other. On what works. And of course, when a wholesale deal moves, it's it's making five, 1020, 50 K I literally had a client who made an $800,000 assignment out here in California.

00;17;44;12 - 00;17;59;28

Unknown

Nice. You know, you make someone, even 50 K like they're gonna talk about you. So, yeah, most of office growth is entirely organic. So that's really cool on the seller side because I, because I have it up over here and I'm like, you've got a lot of properties and you've got a lot of it looks like a lot of activity.

00;18;00;04 - 00;18;17;06

Unknown

And it's crazy. That's just word of mouth at this point. So I'm sure putting some money behind us is going to make it explode. And that's where it sounds like you're very focused on the experience of what a seller and a buyer experience is from that platform, and making sure that they have a great experience. It that's what I'm picking up on.

00;18;17;09 - 00;18;34;02

Unknown

Would you say that that's going to be a focus, even if you're going after money as well too? Yeah. I mean you have to as a business, you have to go after money because like, you can't like I have right now. Three engineers on staff, a chief technology officer and like, operations team to keep everything and keep the keep the gears moving.

00;18;34;04 - 00;18;55;18

Unknown

And so even though, like, I can kind of sustain off of like, other things and not the company, it has to make money. And that's the thing about where we're at in the internet now is with the rise of AI, everyone wants everything to be free, and or they'd rather ChatGPT their own solution, which is fine. One of the reasons why I'm building in the marketplace space is because you can't beat up a marketplace of buyers and sellers.

00;18;55;21 - 00;19;15;07

Unknown

But to clarify your question, yes, our sellers are 95% wholesalers. They will get properties under contract. A lot of them actually are. Well, what's that what I'm seeing these days. And like I learned this from Bateman and some of the other ad firms. But basically now previously you only have the wholesalers buying the leads and these are buying off market people like raising their hand, saying, yes, I want to sell my house for cash.

00;19;15;09 - 00;19;33;18

Unknown

Well, we're seeing now as more flippers are going directed, rather spend the 5 or 10 K, then pay the 1020 K to the wholesaler. So they're actually buying those leads directly and the ones they don't want to keep, they go post on offer. Great. You know, it is entirely free to post. We've been playing a lot with the system.

00;19;33;18 - 00;19;55;28

Unknown

So they, like I say, free with an asterisk and that, we need to make some money from our wholesalers, so it's entirely free for them to post. There's not even a credit card, but we only give them two viewers and two buyers. Meaning if you go on to the platform, click contact seller off the buyer, you know, and then the viewers and people who like authenticated into our system, meaning phone authentication only cell phones, no VIP, no landlines, and also email authentication.

00;19;56;01 - 00;20;10;17

Unknown

And will give you that information. So, like, you can chase them, but they pay 200 bucks a month, you know? Yeah. And our average wholesaler, you know, they move a deal to make 5 or 10 K, so, like, it's paid for itself in a single deal. But yeah, like the experience of the buyer and seller is really important.

00;20;10;17 - 00;20;25;21

Unknown

The challenge that we're experiencing, as you can imagine, this is getting enough buyers in the right place and also getting enough people to buy boxes. We're nation wide. We didn't want to like, say, oh, we're only in this area because it doesn't make sense. You know, there's not that many wholesalers in a certain density. So you really need to be valuable here.

00;20;25;21 - 00;20;39;21

Unknown

There's a nationwide wholesaler who want to get deals out there. And like me, for example, I have a lot of problem with the way people currently approached by boxes because, I think it's very stagnant. Until you go to an event or till you learn something new, you're like, okay, I want to change. Like now I want, I want to try something new.

00;20;39;27 - 00;20;56;15

Unknown

But you very rarely as a buyer will go in and like, update your information everywhere so no one knows you're looking for that. The way awful creates buy boxes is, like, very logical. But also like beautiful. We just use your user behavior. So we learn very quickly as you like. David, if you clicked around off right now, I can jump in.

00;20;56;15 - 00;21;11;05

Unknown

I can go search your email and I can see what our system believes. Your buy boxes. And you know, we use I do that. But it's really just watching user behavior, just like social media does. Instead of asking you to go fill out a form, you can fill out the form. But we think, like your behavior is far more useful.

00;21;11;08 - 00;21;33;00

Unknown

But to put a cap on it, the goal of offer is to become the CRM or MLS is a better term, like the MLS for investment real estate. Like if Zillow is for buying a house office or buying an investment property and that is the plan going forward. Awesome. Now, I like that because and it seems like you've got a lot of good momentum, a lot of good things happening.

00;21;33;00 - 00;21;53;13

Unknown

And if you're listing this as a profit first, all I podcast, you know, we talk a lot about making spending and keeping your money. And this is another way to make more money because it's like for a very nominal investment, blasting your properties out. Like we had something like this back in the day when we were using one of the CRM way back when, and it was clunky and it was awful.

00;21;53;13 - 00;22;08;19

Unknown

And it's like, this is where this would have been a godsend. Like we were moving 20 to 25 properties a month, and having a system like this would have been amazing. And but honestly, if you have 1 to 2 deals, it just opens up your buyer pool. So it's like this is where something's going to be very valuable.

00;22;08;19 - 00;22;27;03

Unknown

So I see this from both perspectives, whether that sell or whether that buyer, it's like it's getting a, ten year. You're making it. So when people learn about real estate, they have less and less excuses of getting into real estate. It's like you're literally saying, here's the buyer, here's a sell. You know, like, what do you want to look for?

00;22;27;03 - 00;22;45;29

Unknown

What are you what are you doing right now? And how are you jumping in here? So I love that. Then for the experience investors, sounds like this is just another place where it's like, hey, I could get here, I could put my properties here, and this is now another resource for you or for them to be able to say, okay, I can am now on this and the MLS for real estate investors.

00;22;45;29 - 00;23;09;03

Unknown

So I love that and I love your story. It was very I the whole thing. Just that you did say that was going to be a funny story. That was great like that. You charge him 185. Okay. Like, I see you as that ingenuity. Like I'm just going to make it happen. And like some of those things that you talked about that I feel like they're baked into the system to, you know, like you're going to figure it out.

00;23;09;03 - 00;23;26;18

Unknown

If someone has an issue, how are we going to solve it? Oh, you say, instead of just telling us and having to update the buy box, no, we're going to read what your buy box is. So that way when you actually get send something, you'll actually look at it. And it's not just something that you're not looking at, you know, because that was just what you selected six months to two years ago.

00;23;26;18 - 00;23;42;12

Unknown

And you're like, oh, everything's changed. And I just forgot to update it. So I love all of that. Sounds like you've been in sales all of your life and you've just known like that, making that money, that is revenue in first position, which is another thing that we're teaching here as well too. So this is just been a lot of good stuff.

00;23;42;17 - 00;24;05;24

Unknown

I want to make sure I do put up this website here off of.com. So if you're looking at just o for.com so o for.com offer.com, it was expensive by the way. So please talk about it because that was an expensive domain. So is it because did you have to buy it from someone that was holding it ransom or from someone that was using it?

00;24;05;27 - 00;24;24;19

Unknown

That's just holding it ransom? That the whole game now is like there's a whole I mean, think about it from a real estate investment standpoint, like it's genius. Yeah. She bought it two years ago for $15, you know, and we ended up buying it from her. And for $15,000, that's a pretty good return. So it's a wild return.

00;24;24;19 - 00;24;45;15

Unknown

But also, we don't have a choice. I mean, we wanted, like, a short domain, I will tell you. So we're we're in the we're in the technology space. Right. And like, there's some things that really speak to your seriousness as a startup. Your domain is one of them. If you're a.ie your IP and it's going to be really annoying in the very soon future if you're IO, no one outside of tech knows what IO means.

00;24;45;18 - 00;25;06;11

Unknown

We are consumer grade. You know we're made for investors and like we know there's, you know, 5 to 10 million investors in United States. And our aim is to get like penetrate 10 to 20% of that market, you know, in the next year or two. So we had to go for that. But, David, can I take the conversation back to like, where we're at now just because I want to talk about lending and financing?

00;25;06;14 - 00;25;21;20

Unknown

Yeah. We it's a customer obsession. It's pretty important to us. We really think about the buyers experience. That's why it's always been free. You know, we had some people say like, hey, you're charged buyer's like 20 bucks a month to access this. And I'm like, buyers are hot girls. Hot girls free for free, you know? Yeah, like like me.

00;25;21;21 - 00;25;39;00

Unknown

Yeah. We do not want to slow down the influx of buyers. I'm very happy. I can show you a chart that shows you on an average day right now, with no marketing, we're adding 25 to 50 net new buyers every day. Seven days a week. Yeah, like. And what's wild is so many of them are middle of the night at the time.

00;25;39;00 - 00;25;53;24

Unknown

You're looking at real estate. Your time you have over your kids are down. You know about some time to think, okay, how are we going to grow. And you know, we have a mobile app. People love it. People come back to the mobile app via push notifications. But let me tell you the thing that we really learned, you know, wholesalers are our boom and bust industry.

00;25;53;26 - 00;26;10;13

Unknown

Some weeks they make 40 K and then we go to much of that income. So like it's they're a very, they're very like subscription phobic. So that's been a challenge for us in that like how do you fund your and grow your business if they won't pay it? Obviously I just said buyers won't pay. So it's not like Amazon like I don't know.

00;26;10;15 - 00;26;27;29

Unknown

And by the way, if you guys don't know I watch this podcast. You quite literally cannot transact real estate online. There's a lot of companies that have tried and talked about it, right. I can tell you from being the reason why I joined in for a title that lasts like my last full time role was because I thought that, like, import would figure it out.

00;26;27;29 - 00;26;46;04

Unknown

Oh absolutely not. There's 7 to 10,000 counties nationwide. Like, it's this is not going to happen, I think, in our lifetime, just because no one cares enough. And like, there's way too many people who have built out systems that want to go slow and the banks want to go slow, and everyone like the instant idea. All of that is a hard no.

00;26;46;11 - 00;27;08;26

Unknown

That's not going to hide. They want a slow that's they want the third party objections. They want the delays because that helps them like manage cash flow. You know, we're moving lots of money with real estate. So what we learned for our business from David's, from like a business point of view, is entirely based around lending. We learned that like debt is actually the most important piece here because, I've never I mean, it's not true.

00;27;08;27 - 00;27;23;28

Unknown

I bought my first property off cash because I was scared. Blank was, you know, I was really scared. I was like, oh, by the way, I did the rehab at all. Cash. I got literally all that money. I was like, okay, a little property, which is, you know, a terrible idea, like, as I as I know now, but I was just so scared.

00;27;23;29 - 00;27;38;08

Unknown

I was I was like, honestly, I was I was really nervous about that work for you. So yeah, I guess, I mean, I could have done four properties, but like, you know, it was successful. It was like a focus. And I it was a it was a paid MBA. You know, I walked away with like $200,000 in that deal.

00;27;38;08 - 00;27;56;29

Unknown

Like it was really amazing. Here's what I will say. Here's what I will say. Lending has been really impactful for our business. And the thing is, debt is the probably one of the biggest reasons why I think people like real estate, the leverage you can leverage so much. And I think, there's a lot of mystification around debt.

00;27;57;06 - 00;28;10;21

Unknown

People don't know how much debt you can get people to know what's the appropriate amount. And so if we think wholesalers are the people that are arbitrage, you know, they basically say, hey, I got this property for 90, can I sell to this person for 110? Like, that's, that's their value is really just market making and making the money in the middle.

00;28;10;26 - 00;28;33;22

Unknown

Lenders are ten times worse. You know, most lenders you connect with are quite literally a broker of a broker or a broker. And so there's so many mouths to feed in the middle. And what we learned is a lot of our buyers are just get exhausted by chasing the wrong broker. And like these brokers that aren't proactive, I've experienced this day that if you bought real set, you know, like you don't get an A-plus with the lender every time.

00;28;33;24 - 00;28;54;17

Unknown

And so often started getting into lending because we learned that there are lenders who are willing to give up to 100% financing. And here's what's really interesting about that, David, if you go to like, a lot of the major, masterminds, one of the biggest things they sell is access to lenders that will do 100% financing. And the reason why people don't talk about this is it's scary.

00;28;54;17 - 00;29;09;06

Unknown

As a lender, they don't want to do it, you know, or at least like they're they're scared of it, but they're happy to do it with people who are experienced and have 750 credits for us and have some cash on hand. It is fun to see that you're not a total newbie and that you don't like. You know what?

00;29;09;06 - 00;29;31;10

Unknown

You're doing. But amazingly, offer's really good at finding those people because we have the thing that they all want, which is the investment real estate, like the discounted properties. And so we really found our revenue model relatively recently, since December in lending. And what's really cool is we're quite literally connecting buyers with 100% financing. That's it only works with this, this very specific asset class.

00;29;31;10 - 00;29;48;17

Unknown

So that's me distressed. So the probably has to be cheaper already. The value has to be higher. So all those things but like the beauty of offer is you can go on offer right now and find properties that are 20, 30, 40% off, off like, you know, public market and of course are not always the best areas. Like they're not good condition.

00;29;48;17 - 00;30;08;07

Unknown

You got to work on that. But like it's a really nice discount and so what's what I'm really proud of is we launched our lending operation in January. I think we had 200 loans in flight. And now every day we get new people wanting to get loans again, all organic growth, all we're getting to our lenders and most importantly, we're now getting referrals.

00;30;08;10 - 00;30;28;17

Unknown

People saying, I love this. I'm so excited about the opportunity to have 100% financing, 100% of purchase, and hundred percent of rehab, and that's really been the cornerstone of our business because you know who will pay you? Lenders. Lenders will pay you to connect with them. Buyers will pass, wholesalers won't pay us. It's the lenders. And so as we figure that out, we now have a really nice business.

00;30;28;24 - 00;30;46;16

Unknown

But the beauty is we're able to go like take that money we earned and now we can put it into marketing, which builds the actual marketplace larger. And that's what 2026 is, is getting I mean, dream scenario would be getting to a million users. I don't know if we're gonna hit that, but that's the that would be the pillar.

00;30;46;19 - 00;31;00;13

Unknown

I mean, that's where the game changes. That's where everyone knows what it's of all these buyers. And I think you heard me at the Family Mastermind that I want to do a Super Bowl commercial. Yeah. Which is funny because Super Bowl this weekend, but that's like explaining how big I think this could be. Like, the average American wants to invest in real estate.

00;31;00;13 - 00;31;19;15

Unknown

They'd like to have access to this, but you need exposure. People don't know it exists. Give it another marketing. Just know this is great and you're really giving them access and you're giving them access from whether it's day one or day a thousand for them, you know, like in the real estate journey. So I really love what you built and then the financing being built into it.

00;31;19;15 - 00;31;37;10

Unknown

I love that as well too, because everyone's always looking for that financing like you were saying, and even paying for access there. So it's like, sounds like you're putting your heart and soul into this, which is great in this. This is a tool for someone who's whether you're down the road or whether you're just getting started. So Office.com, I'm going to put it back here one more time.

00;31;37;13 - 00;31;59;26

Unknown

Offer.com ofac.com, go check it out and check out everything and it's free to go. At least go check it out. Look at the website. Look at the properties. Look at all this stuff. So I love what you've built Ken. And I love what you're building and building out. So this has been great. If you also are listening to this podcast and you're like, this is great, but I'm a real estate investor and I'm making money, but I can't keep any of it.

00;31;59;29 - 00;32;17;11

Unknown

Head over to simple cfo.com. We want to make sure you're keeping the money and not just going out there spinning your wheels. You need revenue in the door, but you need a system to protect it. So that's what we do. Simple cfo.com. Ken, this been awesome. Thank you so much for being a great guest today. And again that's off a.com ofac.com.

00;32;17;11 - 00;32;33;01

Unknown

Go out there. Check it out Ken thanks again. Thank you. That's it for today's show. Be sure to subscribe, review and share this episode. If you're serious about financial systems and keeping more of your profit. Visit simplecfo.com to take your free discovery call today.