Transcription
This is Rob Kurum. He did what 99% of real estate wholesalers will never do. He exited his wholesaling company at just 24 years old. He built a multi-figure operation, $29K average deal size, then handed it off and exited the business for good.
Most people in real estate talk about wholesaling as a hustle, but Rob, he turned it into a system, and that's why someone actually wanted to buy it. But that's just the start. Today he's in Miami building apartment communities, raising capital, and playing in the big leagues.
In this video, we're diving into how Rob scaled and exited his wholesaling company, the system he used to generate over $30,000 in average assignment fees, why being local beats virtual wholesaling every single time, and the reason why he's building a software that could replace human lead qualifiers. So, buckle up. Literally, we're riding shotgun in the Gwagon with Rob Kuram. Let's go.
This is the second part of the cyber talks, but in this part, we're going to be doing detox. So, in this second episode, I'm going to introduce you someone that actually exited a wholesaling business. And usually, this type of businesses don't even exit. They don't even sell. They're invaluable. There is no value to them. But here my brother Rob was able to, the second Rob in these episodes was able to actually sell it. Oh yeah, this is what exiting a wholesaling business is. But now we're going to go on the passenger side and ask him a few questions so you can learn. Let's go.
All right. Dude, this is beautiful. Can I show it? Yeah, go ahead. Oh, dude. Look at that. Beautiful colors inside. I've never been inside of a Jeep. All right. But first time for everything. All right. This is what my girlfriend wants. Slam it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Bro, the chairs are literally grabbing me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They hold, they they hug you to make sure you don't fall. They hug me too. But this is what wholesaling gives you. Can give you actually an excellent wholesaling company can give you even more. All right. And today we're going to explore. First of all, this is Rob. What's up, Rob? How are you guys everyone? What's your last name? Rob Korum. Rob Korum. So Rob was actually a client of ours in a way. He's still a client. Actually, he's transferred the ownership of being a client of ours running Facebook ads for his business offer side and now there's new owners of that company. There's a reason why he sold that company. A lot of people don't do this. So he built a multi-figure wholesaling operation and then he sold that company. Like tell me a person or an individual or group that has sold wholesaling companies. Not too many. If you go and type in YouTube or in Google, there's not many people out there. You've heard maybe names like Eric Klein that came in to disrupt the industry to also kind of do really well, build a seven-figure company, wholesaling company, and then sold it. This guy is 24 years old and he still lives in his parents' house. No, I'm kidding. Nah, no. We moved to Miami. We're in a high-rise now. High-rise. Building multi-family, like crazy stuff. All right. What is it that you're doing right now, brother? I'm building apartment communities. We're building housing, multi-family. This is big players now, big leagues. From wholesaling real estate, sourcing deals and playing the acquisition, the never-ending acquisition game to now sourcing bigger deals and actually raising capital so that you can get more money. But let's talk about real quick here, brother. I mean, we're going to go grab a coffee real quick here in Pur Pur Vida. But dude, tell me about the success of your business. How what made you so successful? First of all, why, why were you so successful when you worked with us? Why do you think gave you a slight edge? I think the edge was that we were very attentive to our leads and we had a process to manage them. We had a system. We were able to handle the inflow of those leads that you were giving us, and we managed them better than we possibly could. And then that's the that's what's necessary, right? You got to make sure that you leave nothing on the table and you do absolutely everything possible to work the lead, get a hold of the lead, schedule the appointment, qualify the lead. You know, you got to make sure you leave nothing on the table and then you can pretty much guarantee that everything you're doing is correct. The outcomes are going to be good. Yeah. So, you got to build the system. You got to build an entire funnel, an operating system. And a lot of people when they're growing, when they're running a wholesaling company, they don't even think this way, right? He thinks in standard operating procedures, he thinks in playbooks, handbooks, he thinks in systems that can be used by people and then the people help build the business, right? And then you ultimately help them even build better. So let me ask you this. So, you were closing about $29,000 in average assignment fees from wholesaling operations and you're also like keeping some of the deals that you were getting from Facebook ads as well. You were you you closed at 20, I think it was $28,000 in an innovation deal. I remember it was on the YouTube channel or something like that, but like what makes you have such a big like deal size? Really, it's it comes down to the relationship that you build and the trust that you build. I think the stronger the relationship that you have with a seller, the more willing they are to work with you on your terms, you know. Imagine you just cold call someone, ask how much you're going to sell their house, they're going to say a million bucks, you know. But what if you're best friends with that person? You know, they're going to be willing to listen to your offer, understand where you're coming from, and then potentially give you the house for what you want it for. And that's what happened to us a lot of the times. You know, all of our sellers became friends of ours and told their friends and their family, and so that helped us significantly. It's kind of organic marketing in a sense. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people actually they just stay within the $15, $20,000 or less per deal size. Why? Why do you think that happens? Honestly, I think it's I really do. I don't think that all leads are you have the same chance with almost every lead if you average it all out. It all comes down to how you approach the lead, how you manage it. I don't think there's like a channel that's going to give you bigger deals than the other or a marketing channel or there's no like easy answer for that besides the fact that the people who have great systems and great processes. And realistically, if you're local, you should have higher averages than national guys. You know, the guys that are doing virtual wholesaling will 100 times out of a hundred have less deal size than than we do because we were local. We didn't do any deals over the phone. We built, we were friends with all the people we did deals with, right? We made friends with them before the deal closed and we were in their living room signing contracts, you know? So that's why that's the biggest reason why our assignment average is double anyone else in the country, of at scale. That's huge. So you build a local operation and you also build a brand on the other side, right? Yes. And this company now is transferred to an even bigger operator now, two operators that they have a vertical integration with a flipping and real estate construction, what lenders do. Yeah. Lenders. Yeah. I was the perfect buyer for their business. A perfect buyer for the wholesale business when they had it. Yeah. Yeah. Because and then a perfect buyer for their business. So, all right, let's talk about a little bit of online leads because a lot of people, they love to talk about online leads, but they don't know how to do it. They don't, they suck at doing online lead generation and then closing these online leads. So, what was key there? Like tell me a little bit more about you. You just got to trust the professionals at the end of the day, right? I'm not a marketing guy. I don't know how the Facebook algos work. I don't know how PPC algos, you know, from Google algorithms work. And you don't need to. You're not supposed to, you know, you're you're a business owner at the end of the day. You choose what business you're in. Are you in the lead management business? Are you in the marketing business? Or are you in the real estate business? I chose the real estate business because you can scale it, right? And you can grow and do more and more deals. But you can't get caught in the weeds hyper-focusing on fine-tuning these channels. It's irrelevant. Give somebody a couple grand a month to do it for you and do it the right way, and focus on building your sales process, right? Focus on being able to manage those leads, not generate the leads. You know, the generating the leads is the easy part. It really is. Generating the leads is a standard, right? It's a standard thing to do. And the pros have figured out a standard way to do it. So, just get, you know, let them handle it and then you figure out the variable stuff, which is the lead management, right? It's very lead management is very fluid and it requires a lot of time and energy and that's where you want to keep your energy, safeguard your energy, be selfish with your energy because your sellers need it, otherwise they're not going to do a deal with you. Yeah. So as a seven-figure operator, you had two acquisitions, you had three lead managers, right? How did you systemize that lead flow in order to maximize the leads and leads don't fall through a crack, but also, you know, they have a great sales process and then they're not blaming the leads, but they're actually just keeping everything together, accountable. Yeah. So it's round robin, so specific leads get assigned to specific people and that would be their lead and they're responsible for taking it to the finish line, getting the appointment set. Once the appointment's set, it goes off to acquisitions and then it's up to acquisitions to get the deal done, you know, and it's no responsibility of the lead manager anymore. So, you know, just defining the process, defining at what point in the process do you switch, that's very important. Defining what point in the process do you switch and what point does the torch get passed from one section to the next. And once you have that figured out, there's a lot less room for miscommunications, leads slipping through the crack. Everyone is going to have a person assigned to them at all times. Yeah. You want to go up to the place? Yeah. Where should I park? Right here. I was going to say that I saw two. You did parking. The GT talks. Now we're going to Pur Puravida, which is a restaurant here in Miami. If you guys don't know where we are, we're here in Miami where, you know, if you move to Miami, you'll find it's a bigger market. You'll find big players actually in Bickle. That's why he decided to move here because he wants to compete with Gran Cardone. He's not, he's not competition. So you said you were uh so you generated the leads. You had the lead managers actually call them, but they also book an appointment. Do you do everything in person, like a phone, in-person appointments, or was it? Yeah, we did all in-person appointments and offers in person. And that's how we really had the greatest. What do you usually achieve? What do you want to achieve in terms of closing ratio for whenever you go one to four? One to four. So him for one or four appointments. Every house we walk inside, one of them. Every four houses we walk inside, we need a deal. Wow. That's pretty good. Yeah. I mean, it's I mean, there's qualified appointments that are people in our market and the acquisition managers are people who live in our market as well, familiar, born and raised in these markets, you know, it's a very local business and that's why, you know, I encourage people to not just look at the national scaling remote wholesale. It sounds good. It really does sound good, but I promise you a local business will outperform a nationwide remote business that you're thinking of setting up. You'll have more control over it locally. You'll have a better chance of getting your first deal faster. And you'll have a better chance of making a larger assignment piece in general. Yeah. And also at the same time, like the fruits of your labor of building a brand and people send you deals because you're doing things locally, it's you saw it, dude. Like you saw yourself like at some point you had agents and sellers referring you people. They knew that you were the guy to go to. Right. Right. A lot of deals came from referrals. A lot of deals. A lot of deals. Okay. Because we're active, you know, we actually close on these deals too. That's another benefit of being local too, is you get, you have the ability to purchase and renovate, you know, and keep as rental properties. I know a lot of people trying to get into wholesaling and real estate. I think wholesaling is the golden egg, right? They make that consignment fee, that cash, you know, that nice cash flow, that no risk, right? But the real gold in real estate is ownership. And so use wholesaling to get into ownership. And so actually building locally will allow you to get into ownership quicker and easier. And it doesn't take a whole lot of money to get into ownership. If you're buying deals right enough, you should be doing the BRRRR and leaving no money in the deal. Every house I bought, I didn't leave anything in it. You know what I'm saying? So it's not like I had $100 million I deployed. You know, I made, I created the equity that's in the deal. So you also did you also buy things creatively whenever you sell? Yeah. And that's another beauty of taking out properties is we definitely did. I did a lot of seller finance deals, a lot of subject-to deals and kept a lot of those. The terms are just so great, you never want to get rid of them, you know. Oh yeah, dude. For sure. Hard to sell. Like, okay. When you hired us, what is it that made you come in and work with us at the end of the day? And they stick with us. You guys have a real team and a real company, a real business, you know what I'm saying? So you got it figured out, you know, and that's what I like. I like to work with people who got it figured out, you know. So you're not a one-man shop, you know. I never spoke, you know, me and you never talked through the. That's a real B. This is a real company, by the way. You when you never talk to the owner and you get the greatest service ever, that's how you know he built a real business. You know, for two years, for two years, he never had to deal with me or talk to me or manage my account or do anything from start to finish. From the minute that I got acquired as a customer to my account management who's never involved. That's a real business and that's a business you want to do business with, right? You want to do business with these kinds of businesses, you know, scalable businesses that have a lot of data they that are tracking and history that they can look at to fine-tune their targeting. You know, that's what you want to do. People have been in business long enough to have enough experience and enough that they have national data across all of their clients and that's important. So these small guys that are maybe operating less fees and stuff, I mean, they all, I talked to 20 people, you know, and a lot of small guys, you know, one-man shops that are doing this, you know, they cost less obviously, but they don't have the benefits that a scaled and larger company has when it comes to data. That's right. So if anyone that is, let's say that they're on the fence of actually working with Hessle Media, you scaled a company, you got deals through Hessle Media and then you exited your business. What would you say to them if they're looking to scale a company with Hessle Media? Yeah, like they, but they're on the fence. If they're on the fence, I would just say go home. You know, you're going to, how long are you going to be on the fence for at the end of the day? People on the fence never make it. They never make it. So, get off the fence and get to work and pull out your wallets and and place your capital in the right places with the right people to get the right returns. At the end of the day, that's it's as easy as that. Alex Mosa said this, "If you feel 100% confident about something, it's already too late." Too late. There needs to be uncertainty. Otherwise, you're too late. That's right, bro. This is great. All right. So, I want to know real quick here. Like, would you ever help another wholesaling company kind of put together their business in order to make it exitable? It really depends. I mean, I don't think I would. I don't think I would get into the coaching consulting. I think I would do it for people I care about, you know? I wouldn't even do it for money. I wouldn't turn it into a business or coaching consulting or no. You know, if there's somebody in my network that I really care about, you know, and I think I could help them with my advice and experience, I would, but no, I'm not in it. I'm not in it to monetize my experience, knowledge. I did it. I'm on to the next chapter. My time is valuable to me and I only give time to the people I care about. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. You get only give me $100,000 to coach them for six months. I would say no. You heard it from someone that actually learned how to scale a business and then found a way to exit a business, a real business, a real brand in wholesaling real estate. This is one of the most valuable GT talks that you ever, ever, ever would have. And as a matter of fact, like we created another podcast episode that we talked about how to exit a wholesaling business and how to get into multi-family or how do you get to the next stage of your life, like actually cash out that business that you would never have thought that would have actually just be stuck forever. So just think about it as a real business and operator. And here's my brother Rob, who is in Miami. You guys can follow him on social media. How can they? So you can check me out on LinkedIn, Rob Korum. My last name is spelled K H O R R A M. I'm not really big on social media. I just got a friends and family, private Instagram, like Twitter, Twitter followers. Yeah, I got nothing to sell. And he's also building, I think you're also building a software or something like that, right? Yeah, I'm working. I'm in the works right now. We're in the beta version of it. We're working on a text blasting software that's automated with AI chatbots. So it's able to communicate, qualify, and prospect thousands of leads per day. Better than a human is the goal, right? I wouldn't do it if it wasn't better than a human. So that's in the works and I'm excited. Initially, I was building it for my company. Very. Yeah. And then I ended up selling. So I said, "Hey, this is a great model. There's a market for this. Let's just take it elsewhere." Yeah. So, you heard it first from us. We're building something great. Like we're into multi-family. We're already developing here in Miami. Like this year we're going to have over 100 units already. And the things are coming after wholesaling. A lot of things you can build. It's just a matter of building systems, creating great people, like bringing the great people, having a real operations and our operating system. So, me and Rob right here, Rob is the best.