Listening to your business is more than just paying attention to profits and losses; it’s about attuning yourself to the subtle signals that indicate where your company needs attention and growth. Join Jason Lavender as he sits down with Alex Peransi, a seasoned real estate investor, to delve into his inspiring journey through the world of wholesaling. Alex shares pivotal moments where he listened to his business’ signals, leading to strategic growth and success in wholesaling. Tune in to gain insights into navigating challenges, scaling effectively, and maintaining ethical standards in the competitive world of real estate investing.

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Listening To Your Business With Alex Peransi

Our guest is Alex Peransi. He is an amazing investor located in the heartland, smack dab in the middle of the country, and flies over the country, Wichita, Kansas. He’s an amazing wholesaler and investor who has scaled his business exponentially over the last few years and rode the COVID wave. Honestly, he expands on so many of his life lessons in his business. Your business is going to tell you what it needs if you will listen. You guys are in store for a treat.

 

 

It’s Jason Lavender here with an episode of The Flip Talk Podcast. I am so excited to be here. Don has graciously invited me to come in and expand the value that he’s been providing for years and years and years. We’re excited to bring you additional episodes of The Flip Talk Podcast. That’s exactly what we’re going to do here. I’ve got a special guest, Alex Peransi, a boss investor here in my market in Wichita, Kansas.

Alex has been around the block a few times, has taken his licks, some bumps and bruises, and has come out on the other side and has a tremendous amount of value and experience, and has a lot to say about different asset classes and different investing strategies. Without further ado, Alex, for those that don’t know who you are, tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your background. I always want to know what were you doing before real estate and what got you into real estate.

Jason, thanks for having me on the podcast. Excited to be here. About myself, I know that I’ve shared my story with you, but for the readers, I’m originally from New York. I moved to Wichita back in 2003 raised by a single mother. We moved here, didn’t have a lot of guidance, and didn’t know what I wanted to do. Just went down the traditional path, went to high school, graduated from the local university, and then got into the corporate world, different positions at Côte Cargill.

A lot of the bigger corporations that are here have a good amount of experience in accounting and finance and how business is run from a large standpoint. I took that experience. I got into real estate investing back in 2019 and I did this part-time for about a year. Over the year, I was able to wholesale my way out of a full-time job and then became a full-time investor back in 2020.

That’s the peak of COVID. The virtual model was big at the time, just because people were afraid of what would happen if they got around other people. Wholesale in a challenging period, did well and grew a company of just myself and one virtual assistant. Now I have a team of over 10 people that work with me.

We do wholesaling, flipping, novations, sub-two creative financing, and pretty much every strategy under the sun. Now we’re exploring other asset classes. Just trying to get out of the single-family space and keep that wholesale business active and that direct-to-seller marketing pillar of my business going while we look at other opportunities.

Did you just buy a hotel?

No, I posted that for just entertainment. I needed attention. When I posted that, I was actually with a seller. They were living at the hotel. I got a contract sign at the hotel.

I thought you bought a hotel. We were going to talk about that.

One day.

That’s for sure. Coming from you, I believe it. Something that I talk about a lot is people who are newer to investing, newer to real estate leveraging the skills that you already possess. I know you did that. You came from a corporate background counting and finance. You took those skills and doubled down on them in your business.

The first thing you did wasn’t go buy a bunch of tools and learn how to swing a hammer and do all that, because you weren’t going to be able to double down and succeed on that. I think a lot of people jump into real estate and they don’t realize that they’ve already got a built-in skillset, assets, and life experience. They’ve got real estate superpowers that they need to be doubling down on. You did that with your accounting and finance, and straight into wholesaling.

I know my place isn’t swinging a hammer. For reference, I installed a garbage disposal a couple of years ago, that took me three hours. That takes a plumber, maybe 30 minutes. You don’t want me flipping a house. It’s tough. You focus on what you’re good at. Double down, as you said, and you can grow a lot faster than trying to master all the different trades that go into being an investor.

 

You’ve got a team now and the smart way to do that is to focus on what you’re good at and then hire competent people that can do it as good or sometimes better. Maybe not always as good, but I always say I can do it 80% as good as I can. That’s perfect for me because we can fill in the gaps. Let’s talk about that.

What do some of your first deals look like going from yourself, juggling a career at the beginning, and then hiring a VA? What were some of those initial lessons that you learned as you first got started? I always was talking about a first deal. It’s probably a dumpster fire. I don’t mind, but talk about some of the early days as far as your career went.

I wish I could say my first deal was a dumpster fire, but it was easy. I believe it was fate for me to find this deal and work through it. As I mentioned earlier, I was working at a speedy cash at the time as an analyst, I would work part-time. While I was at work, I would send out different marketing campaigns and then respond to them during my lunch break.

The tax foreclosure sale was coming up around the time when I started. I deep dove into that list and I targeted a few properties that I thought had potential. I didn’t know what I was doing at the time. I didn’t know how to talk to people. I didn’t know much about real estate. Started knocking on doors and calling people. One of the sellers that I found on the list, had been behind taxes for five years. The house was vacant, she lived out of state.

All of the major distress points that I think people look for at this point. I found her via social media because all her phones were disconnected. We got in touch. We put the deal together in a matter of a week. I posted the deal on Facebook, got it listed, ran a bunch of cash buyers through the property, and I got lowballed a lot, as most wholesalers do when they don’t know what they’re doing.

I ended up finding a family that owned a house close by, and they wanted to move their daughter in. That’s who I sold the house to, was a conventional buyer. Ended up making $40,000 on my first deal. That’s what got me hooked. I reinvested all that money into paying off a lot of bad debt that I had so that I could start with a clean slate. I was doing Dave Ramsey at the time. I was saving up. It’s a good program, but I wouldn’t recommend it when you further your career and invest, it got me started in setting myself up for success when I quit my job about a year later.

I had a conversation with a couple of investors the other day about Dave Ramsey. I love a lot of his stuff about bad consumer debt, but honestly, you either love or hate Dave Ramsey. I think that’s how he intends it to be. Something you said though, that first deal, you were willing to do what others weren’t willing to do. I think that’s a key takeaway for somebody that’s jumping into real estate.

Be prepared to dive in and be willing to do what others aren’t willing to do. I don’t know if you’re a door knocker right now, but I’m not, I used to be, and it served me well just like that. I was willing to do what others weren’t. I think that’s huge as you’re getting started and kudos to you. That $40,000 lick on the first deal, that’s amazing.

More often than times when I ask, “We lost money or we learned a lot,” that’s usually the takeaway. That’s awesome. Go through that first deal, you reinvested. That’s amazing. What did that reinvestment look like in the subsequent months and the year ahead that ultimately allowed you to quit your corporate career and go full-time? What did that phase look like?

I like to take risks and I do take risks, but at the time I was very conservative. The first thing I wanted to do was pay bad debts and student loans. Most of that big deal that I did, I paid off debt just to provide myself with security because I knew I planned to quit my job at some point. I didn’t want the stress and weight of debt on my shoulders.

I did that and got my debt paid off. Then I started to save up an emergency fund. I built up a fund to get me by for at least six months. If I quit my job, if things didn’t work out well, I had a family to provide for, so I was safe. Then at that point, I started to invest back into the business. I was doing deals, hustling, just using my time and the free resources I had, sent out text messages and bought lists, obviously, and paid for a dialer.

That’s all I was doing was texting and calling people and a super cheap, affordable way to get into business and layering that with driving for dollars. Using that just pulling about 200 properties, finding it at ugly houses in the neighborhood. A pro tip for me, I’ll throw this in there. If you’re driving for dollars and you see houses that have abandoned cars or cars with expired tags, those are good properties to look at, expired tags specifically. Those are the properties that I got some of the best deals on when I was doing that over time.

 

The main things that I reinvested in though, were just savings and guerrilla marketing just be able to afford after that point, once I did another five deals, then I hired a virtual assistant who helped me with some of the administrative tasks while I was at work so that I could maximize my time. That’s when things took off, like off of the races. I was able to get ahold of more people. I was able to go to appointments during my lunch breaks or after work. Things were busy, but it was a very slow progression that worked for me and I wouldn’t do it any different.

Alex, I know a lot of people think or process through as they jump in, what that first hire that they make is, and when they make that hire. You said it was an administrative assistant. You’re a wholesaler, you’re working a job in real estate with the idea of letting go of one and grabbing on the other. At what point did you know that you got to have an assistant and what were some of the first things that you were delegating to that assistant?

At any point in your business, your business will give you a sign or a message for when you need to scale. The sign for me was, wasn’t able to answer the phones. I was getting to the text messages a lot later than I needed to. I’d go on appointments or I’d call people and they had already sold their properties. I said there’s something that I need to change about the way that I handle my lead intake so that I can get more deals done.

The first VA I hired, her name is Anne. She did a lot of my tracing. She pulled my lists, she set up those campaigns and she was the one responding to those text messages. Then setting appointments up for me to go on afterward. That was my sign, I wasn’t as responsive as I needed to be. As an investor, you don’t get ahold of people within my world. Them is within the first five minutes. They’re either going to write you off, think you’re some scam or potentially work with someone else. That’s the last thing you want.

If you don’t reach out to potential clients within the first five minutes, they may write you off, suspect a scam, or choose to work with someone else. Share on X

That’s true. Too many people just in life in general, if you’re not responsive, you don’t get back to somebody, especially if you’re in this business, you’re in sales or anything related, speed to lead is great. You’ve got to be responsive. For crying out loud, pick up the phone, and return the phone call. You’re halfway there.

For those who don’t know Alex, I’d say his bread and butter, although he has mastered a lot of different strategies, he’s well-known for his wholesaling. Can you talk about, as you began to wholesale, we talked about your administrative assistant and delegating things off your plate because things were slipping through the cracks.

What did it look like when you knew you needed to hire an acquisition manager? You knew you needed transaction and Dispo. Talk through the process of building out a team. You said you’re 10-strong now. What do the profits look like? What are some of the lessons that you learned in building a team? Some of the wins, some of the big losses.

I think this is important because I think not everybody needs a big team. It depends on your goals. Sometimes investors will drink the Kool-Aid and they’re trying to live somebody else’s business and it may not be theirs. I know I’ve done that before, but from your experience, talk about what building out a team looks like from that first VA to that second, the third hire, and where you’re at now.

Just thinking back to when I started after I hired my first VA, I ran strong with me and Anne for about a year. At that point, once I hit my goal, I decided to quit my job, then I ran acquisitions full-time. I was acquisitions, dispositions, TC, everything under the sun. The business will tell you when you need to hire people. Things started slipping through the cracks. I was missing opportunities.

I wasn’t disbowing of my properties in a timely fashion. I didn’t have the opportunity to network with people and build those relationships that will help you scale a wholesaling business. I decided I knew where I was good. I was good at acquisitions and Disbow, but I thought that I could scale an acquisition company a lot quicker than Disbow. Disbow at the time was fairly easy over the last two years.

I didn’t feel that I needed to hire that out. I didn’t hire an acquisition manager intentionally. It was by accident. I was working with a young man, Zagan. He is still with me on the team to this day. He’s an exceptional individual. He had his own wholesaling business. He was wholesaling with a business partner. Things weren’t working out well for him and there was a deal that he had. He posted it, but couldn’t sell it.

I offered to JV with him. I helped him sell that deal and we started to build a relationship. One of my mentors in Collector Genius gave me some very simple advice because I told him I was stuck in my business. I didn’t know where to go, didn’t know what position to hire. I was telling him about Zagan and he said, “The people that you should look into hiring are probably already around you and you’ve not even looked at.” You weren’t even aware enough to pay attention.

That got me thinking and the first person I thought of was Zagan. I reached out to him. It was a real gradual progression, but Zagan joined my team roughly two and a half years ago when he’s been a rock star at acquisitions. I was still doing Dispo and TC at the time. My next hire is transaction coordinating. That was not my favorite thing to do. It’s not sexy. It’s boring and it is tedious, but it’s a very important piece of the puzzle because deals were falling through the cracks simply because of title problems, issues, lien releases, and so on.

As a wholesaler, you think that when you send your contract to the title, the title office is handling a lot of the back end for you. Which they are, but there are key pieces that they are missing. That’s when someone reached out to me, they worked at a title company, they saw I was doing deals and they asked me if I had a position for hire.

As a testament to the way I was doing business, ethically more so than most wholesalers. Wholesalers get a bad rep, it’s a get-rich-quick scheme and it attracts all sorts of people. A lot of them can be unethical, but I made sure to stand by my principles of integrity, ethics and just taking care of people in general. That attracted Brae, who’s with me to this day. She’s my transaction coordinator.

She handles over 20 to 30 files a month. I wouldn’t be able to handle that volume of deals but wasn’t for her just simply because of all the issues with title and chasing down errors if they’re probate issues or getting lien releases on liens from banks that don’t even exist anymore. A lot of the stuff that title isn’t necessarily willing or even has the time to do. That was my next hire.

Along the way, I did hire other VAs. I hired cold callers to scale my marketing efforts. I’m looking at my KPIs at the time saying, cold callers are performing well. I’m getting a return on it. Let’s double down and hire more VAs. I outsourced that to a VA company. I also hired a part-time disposition manager along the way. Again, deals weren’t being sold in a timely fashion. Then I brought on another individual and he dispelled from me while he had another full-time job which worked out until it didn’t.

Slowly but surely again, just attracting more people because they saw that I was doing deals, doing business, and had a strategic partnership with another business partner of mine, Ron Brown, and we’re still working together to this day. We work together, but we have independent companies of one another. That’s worked out well for us in the long run and what’s allowed me to scale to where I’m at today.

Alex, I love that. I don’t know if we’re looking for a title on this podcast, but your business tells you what it needs if you listen. Tell me what were some of the biggest lessons that you learned in those years of scaling and hiring and pullback contraction, marketing channels work. They don’t work. You have to hire and fire people. Things fall apart. What are some of the biggest lessons that you’ve learned?

There was a good lesson I learned last year, 2023. People were reaching out to us asking us to mentor them. We brought on a couple of young guys on the team. We didn’t have a plan in place. We didn’t have any onboarding process. We just literally brought these two guys on and just had them pound the phones and start calling sellers. That worked again until it didn’t because there was no structure in place.

These guys didn’t have direction and we would try to give them time when we had it. Super busy at the time trying to project manage, Dispo, Flip, and all the stuff that goes with being an investor and managing property. One of the lessons I learned was that before you onboard anyone, you should have a plan of action.

 

That’s what inspired me to create an onboarding plan for anyone on the team, whether it’s acquisitions or dispositions. We put together a 30, 60, and 90-day timeframe where this is what you need to do the first 30, 60, and 90 days. That sets you up for success in your position. Don’t just willy-nilly hire anybody and just throw people in the job cause it’ll work. Then over time, people just start to lose their passion and direction.

They don’t know where to go. You have to have a plan in place and clear expectations need to be laid out. That was one thing that I did a very bad job at, how much time we were going to give these guys the resources. We had some people steal information from us. Now we button up our process and we get NDA signed before we bring anyone on, not non-competes. I don’t believe in that, but just a hard lesson along the way. I just don’t bring on too many people at once.

That’s been reaffirmed lately for me. I’m reading the book, Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell. One of the key principles that I’ve learned from that book, which I knew was you don’t want to hire to scale, you want to hire to buy back your time. Hire to scale, you’re going to end up being the admin of your company over time. You’re going to end up doing things that you hate doing. Paying invoices, setting up utilities, and stuff that doesn’t generate revenue. That is what I try to keep at the forefront.

That’s awesome. Harpon on what you said, you’ve got to have a plan that’s so important, and putting together a plan, buying back your time. I’m going to love those concepts. Those are key. Scaling this just for scaling sake. I alluded to this before a lot of times, investors, business owners, and entrepreneurs. We think that bigger is always better.

Bigger is more chaos. Don talks about this. You can’t scale chaos. It’s so true. I’m you bigger is not always better scale responsibly. As we talked about here, your business will tell you what it needs, if you will listen. That’s some good stuff. As we turn the corner. I can’t help but I have to ask you this. I know again, that you are heavy in the wholesaling space.

I know you’ve helped a lot of people. You’ve done tons and tons of deals, hundreds of deals. What’s your number one advice that you could give to a new wholesaler? Somebody who maybe watched some YouTube, maybe they’ve seen some content, or maybe they’ve heard about what wholesaling is and they see this as a way that they can achieve the goals and dreams that they have. What’s your number one piece of advice for a brand-new wholesaler?

I would say just set the proper expectations for yourself and don’t think that within the first 30 days, you’re going to become a millionaire. Be very realistic with yourself, but also be consistent. Take the actions that you need to take every single day to get a deal done. Every strategy works. Pick one and repeat that over and over and over. Even if you feel it’s not working, eventually it will. I think most people give up way too soon. I’ve seen people come and go in this business like you have. Just stay consistent. Do the daily actions that are going to get you to where you want to go and you’ll succeed.

Every strategy works. Pick one and repeat that over and over even if you feel like it's not working, because eventually, it will. Share on X

Consistency is key. That is paramount. As an entrepreneur, you’ve got to do the daily boring, monotonous, whatever it is, as you’re starting, just be consistent. Oftentimes, the worst thing an entrepreneur has is this shiny object syndrome, and we’re chasing a bunch of stuff where we’ll do a marketing piece, a new wholesaler can try something. It doesn’t work for two weeks or two hours, and then it’s off to something else. Then there’s something else.

Two months, three months, or six months later, that didn’t work. I didn’t get a deal. That’s all too common, but if you will just be consistent, it will pay off in spades. I guarantee it. I’ve seen that pan out on many different investors and their businesses growing from that piece. Just be consistent. Some good stuff, Alex. I appreciate your time today. Any last-minute takeaways? Any advice that you’d have for somebody who’s looking to wholesale, but when they’re ready to shift gears and grow a company? You mentioned the Dan Martell book. Anything you’re reading or any parting shots?

Just final thoughts. Whatever it is, pick something that you think you enjoy and try to stick with it. Use your skillset. Think about what you’re good at and take action. I hear a lot of people say, “Just take action and get into an activity. Don’t overthink and overanalyze.” Just think about your strong suits, write them out, and then pick maybe one or two strategies that you think there’s synergy between them.

For me, I was a data analyst. I was good at data. I looked at that and said, “I think I can take the data piece that I’ve learned from working in big businesses and apply that to a small host of operations.” If you’ve had sales jobs in the past and you’re good at acquisitions. Maybe you sold phones like I did in the past, look at getting into a position that puts you face to face and belly to belly with people. You think you’ll do better with that. Just hone your craft and everything will work out.

Many people know my story. I used to be a house painter. Back in the day, there was an apprenticeship program in trades. That’s a lost art form now in construction trades. It’s not this apprenticeship, but it applies. There’s a reason that’s a good solid model and it’s practiced around the world still to this day.

As a new investor, hone your craft. I love you saying that, hone your craft, be consistent, and work on the basics. That is the key. If you do the hard work there, something I’m reading right now is a gap in the gain. Focus on what’s important. Understand where you’ve been. Even in a short journey, you’ve got a journey and experience behind you. You’re either winning or learning, and either one is fine. I love that. I appreciate that. We’re at the end of the road here. I appreciate you joining us. How can people reach out to you, and get a hold of you? Even if you want people to get a hold of you, I don’t know, are you on socials or anything like that?

Yes. If you guys want to reach out to me, you can DM me on Facebook, Alex Peransi and you can look up @LexTheGodson on Instagram. You can also just send me an email if you guys want. I’m open to collaborating and helping people in whatever way I can. I don’t give to receive. When you reach out to me, there’s no expectation. I generally want to see people win. My belief is, “If you give value, the value will always come back to you.”

If you get value, value always comes back to you. Share on X

I can vouch for that. Alex has been an amazing friend for many years. He embodies that go-giver mentality. I appreciate that. Again, Alex, thanks for joining us. It’s been a pleasure to catch up with you. We need to grab lunch or something soon. I appreciate it. We appreciate you joining us. Until next time.

Until next time. I appreciate you.

 

Important Links

• Alex Peransi – LinkedIn
• Alex Peransi – Facebook
• @LexTheGodson – Instagram
• Email – Alex Peransi
• Buy Back Your Time