Goodbye 2023
Tldr: Built a real estate business with 2 major flaws, started some other hustles, failed and learned a lot, but have gained more clarity on what I want my life to look like
The Year Begins
2023 began with massive action.
In the latter half of 2022 I had heard of a real estate wholesaling business and I wanted to give it a shot. It was pitched as “be in real estate with no money and no license”.
Should have triggered a red flag but I pursued anyway.
For those who don’t know, this business relies on getting houses under contract at a very steep discount and then assigning (aka selling) the contract to an investor at a higher price.
I partnered up with 2 others, and we began working on this business every single day. 1 of them dropped before February.
Me and my partner that remained kept working on the business. We actually had leads coming in and successfully closed a deal for 9.5k in Memphis Tennessee.
Despite some success, there were 2 major flaws in the business model:
No recurring business. The business model relied on homeowners’ selling their houses at a discount (usually due to a distressed situation). Once this transaction was complete, getting more business from the owner was very unlikely.
No referrals. Unlike the vast majority of businesses, this business model had very little referral potential. Ever hear of someone say “Hey, you should sell your house to these guys at a steep discount instead of listing on the market”. Yeah, me neither.
Apart from these, I also felt that the business model went against my morals since it relied on low balling people on their homes and pretending to be the buyer when in reality I was a middle man.
Pivoting Away From Wholesaling
I quit wholesaling in August 2023. At the time, I was interning as a software engineer in NYC.
Balancing a 9-5 and real estate wholesaling was rough.
It all came to a breaking point when I spent an evening in downtown Manhattan reflecting on what I’ve done with my time and how I needed to pivot to something more sustainable.
I reflected on the skills that I had: programming, and extensive knowledge of real estate.
I decided to then combine the two skills by becoming an “integrator” for a land wholesaling team. Similar to real estate wholesaling, except they worked with raw land exclusively and in my opinion, much more ethical.
I helped them automate sales processes and set up their marketing campaigns in exchange for equity % on closed deals.
I received my first $500 from that 6 weeks later and now they have 7 deals in the pipeline.
I also decided to create a service for automating marketing to expired listings (expiredlistingscout.com) and an ai cold calling service (callcue.ai) with the real estate knowledge I have.
Overall, the latter half of 2023 was me applying my tech skills in real estate.
What I Learned From 2023
These are some lessons I learned and will write more detailed breakdowns of each in future editions:
Outbound marketing is one of the cheapest, fastest, and most consistent ways to generate business from day 1. Having the willingness to cold call, email, and door knock when others shy away will get you business they won’t be able to get.
B2B is more straightforward and easier to reason about than B2C.
Knowing and being good at sales is important not just for business, but life. You’re selling more often than you think.
Distribution is more than product. Build it and they won’t come without marketing.
Goals for 2024 and Beyond
After 2023, I now know what I want my ideal business life to be. Some principles I want to have in 2024 are as follows:
Async as much as possible.
Having to be in a quiet place with good wifi at a certain time for a meeting or work takes away my freedom of location, so not ideal
Any meetings must be scheduled
No meetings before noon.
I have found that going to the gym early and going straight into deep work has worked the best for me. Having meetings in the morning destroys any momentum for the rest of the day
Marketing first
I spent too much of 2023 building without marketing. I now realize this and in 2024, I want to pivot to marketing first instead of building. I believe this applies to SaaS and other businesses
Build Businesses with referral potential
Getting referrals in the wholesaling business I built in 2023 was almost impossible. Any business I build moving forward must have a good possibility of referrals (which 99% of businesses do thankfully).
Build Businesses with recurring revenue potential
Another problem with the wholesaling business was that repeat customers were non-existent (a person sells their home maybe once or twice in their life). Having repeat customers increases their LTV.
Do what makes me proud
At the end of the day, I want to build businesses that not only make money, but also make me proud. I want to be able to explain my business to my grandma and not feel ashamed of how I’m making money.
What’s up with ‘10 to 100k a month‘?
‘New Learnings’ honestly didn’t make much sense.
So I decided to rebrand this newsletter.
‘0 to 100k a month’ makes sense from the get-go. It also reflects a new goal I have for myself in the next coming years.
Going from $0 per month to $100,000 in revenue per month in my businesses combined. That’s 1.2M in revenue every year.
Will it be easy?
No.
Will it happen this year?
Probably not.
Will I share what I do and my monthly income as I embark on this journey?
Absolutely.
I intend to be as transparent as possible, sharing my bets and where I am placing my time to achieve the 100k revenue goal per month.
What I’m Doing Now
Currently, I have a small portfolio of bets. Only 1 has made money but I have confidence in the others. I will go into more details on each one in the next edition.
As always, thank you for reading and see you in the next one!