Episode #179 – Tripling Your REI Business By Driving For Dollars with Zack Boothe, Part 1

You're listening to the REI marketing nerds podcast, the leading resource for real estate investors who want to dominate their market online. Dan Barrett is the founder of AdWords nerds, a high tech digital agency focusing exclusively on helping real estate investors. Like you get more leads and deals online, outsmart your competition and live a freer more awesome life. And now your host Dan Barrett.

(00:43): All right. Hello everyone. And welcome to this week's episode of the REI marketing nerds podcast as always. This is Daniel Barrett here from AdWords nerds.com. And if you need help finding more leads in deals for your real estate investing business online, you know where to go. That's AdWords nerds.com. You can go there, talk to our team. We would love to speak with you. So this week, oh, I have such a cool interview with you and a little bit different from my usual focus. This week, we are talking to Zach booth who is here from driving for dollars mastery. That's right this week, we are talking about driving for dollars. This is the most offline type of marketing I think you can actually do. But Zach's story is absolutely fascinating. He went from a successful window cleaning business to having a viral YouTube window cleaning video to then getting into real estate investing and building a massively successful real estate investing business off the back of driving for dollars.

(01:53): And Zach has since transitioned. He's still investing today, but he is also coaching people walking through his process and he is very forthcoming. Like he'll hear in this video, I ask him like a basic question about how driving for dollars works. And he basically gives us this step by step process. He uses to source leads and deals. Now, look, I am an online marketer. I love online marketing, I believe in online marketing, but I am not an absolutist. I believe whatever works for your real estate investing business is what she should do. And Zach gave me a really fascinating look into the world of driving for dollars. He's got an incredible mind for business. He has an infectious level of enthusiasm and he's a great interview. So I am super excited for you to hear this interview with Zach booth, from driving for dollars mastery, let's get straight to it.

(02:49): All right. This is Daniel Barrett and I'm here with Zach booth from driving for dollars mastery, Zach, welcome to showman. Super happy to have you here. Thanks for having me, man. It's good. Usually what I'll do is I'm gonna start with your backstory and I do wanna start there because I feel like it's important to give context. There's so much stuff I wanna cover, especially the, some of the stuff you've been doing on YouTube, which I think is really fascinating. And I'm going to throw the link out there right in the beginning of the episode. So people can just put this in your brain. We're gonna come back to this. This is DFD mastery.com, select driving $4, DFD mastery.com/forty N 40. Those are the numbers four in four. We're gonna come back to that. That's gonna be in the show notes and everything. Wanna throw that out there. So people have that in their brain. Before we get there, let's start with you, man. Tell me for folks that don't know, you don't know, driving for dollars mastery, don't know your coaching, your real estate. Give us a little bit of context on who you are and what you do inside the context of real estate.

(03:49): Yes. Yeah. So what I do currently as an investor, my main core business is, is essentially a, a wholesaling operation, right? So I'm in the business of marketing and finding investor opportunities. Uh, and that's in small multifamily to single family homes is what I focus on. I find properties at fat discounts. The majority of my deals, uh, we, you know, we're finding four to six deals a month. My average deal size is about $42,000. Um, and that's accumulation of what my profits and my wholesale for profits, but that's about how much I make per deal. But I, I wholesale. I, I buy and resale known as whole telling I, I flip and I, uh, cherry pick my favorite ones for rentals, right? Like ultimately, that's why I got into this business last three years in a row, we've done over a hundred or over a million dollars in, in gross revenue with about a 40% profit margin.

(04:40): So that's my, my core business. And then what I'm doing there, you know, how I've found financial freedom from being a window cleaner to that. You know, I teach other people that exact process, that exact system to start from scratch. So, you know, I have a team that helps me with the real estate business. I couldn't do it without 'em, you know, and be the full-time coach that I am. But my personality, who I am is a coach is a mentor. It's funny. I did a, a personality test last night, actually it's like 16 personalities. And it told me everything I already knew. It's like profession, you would be an amazing coach. You care about people. And I was like, yeah, I know. Like I know, you know, it's funny cause I actually Real estate best thing.

(05:18): Yeah. Like I, I love real estate because it's financial freedom and it's allowed me to pursue something that like fulfills me at my core. Right. And so I'm, I'm so grateful for not only the money from real estate, but also that freedom that's come to pursue something that fulfills me, like nothing I ever discovered before. And the funny thing is I had hints in the past of this, you know, YouTube window cleaning videos, for example, blew up one with like 20 million views or something stupid like that. I never knew that I had this like gift of teaching and coaching and helping, and I kind of discovered it accidentally. So it's, it's been a, it's been a, a fun journey professionally,

(05:58): For sure. Let's touch on the window cleaning thing, because this is like one of the things in your background that's like really unique. You essentially had this like sort of viral video hit on, on window cleaning, which is really fascinating. So take us back like storyline wise, to that point in your life, what were you doing? And then how, what was the transition from that into getting into real estate? Like how did you, how did you even know that real estate investing was a thing that you could potentially

(06:22): Do? Yeah. Well it helped that I hated window cleaning. So so I got away so here we go. Let's let's back it up. Right? So I started my first business night, 17 years old on my 18th birthday. I went and got my business license on my birthday, got my, you know, license bonded and everything. That's what I wanted to do for birthday. Couldn't get that stuff till you're 18. So, but at 17 I had employees, I wasn't licensed, I wasn't insured. So I couldn't get the bigger contracts. The reason I was so motivated at 17 is my dad said, uh, you get $200 a year for clothing. Well, buy your food and housing rests on you when cosign alone for a truck, nothing at 16 years old love. My dad taught me to work. He grew up really rough situation. He fell very far from the tree.

(07:04): Very dedicated, very perfectionist worked at the same job since he's 19, he's like 62. Now he's he's found financial success, but he demanded that I was a man. He demanded that I took ownership of my life and, and there wasn't a lot of, uh, silver spoon feeding for sure. And so, you know, from the time I was 11, I worked in, uh, the family lawn, mowing business at 15, I left that and started doing finished carpentry and framing houses worked in Nova Scotia, Canada for a summer. And then I got cut off financially. And um, he's like, you're a man. And this is like, when you were turning 18, is that like what the trigger was?

(07:41): Or no, 16, 16. I could drive. He's like, you're a man now I took care of myself at 14. You could take care of yourself at 16. So I was like, okay, uh that sucks. I remember, I remember we went on a family trip and, and like the whole family went in, in my, you know, my younger brother and my parents. They went in to get like big gold and stuff. I was like, dad, can you buy me a drink? And I remember there were 99 cents, a big gold, you know, 44 ounces. And he is like, Nope, you're on your own. Oh, like, oh my gosh. And I remember I didn't buy that 44 ounce drink for a dollar because I was like, I need my money more than I need my drink. Right. Yeah. It's fascinating. Right. Because the second you have to spend your own money. I'm going through this. My kids are six and eight. So they're earlier in this process. Right. But like, they're going through this whole thing where it's like, they'd be like, Hey dad, can you buy me that? And be like, no, why don't you use your allowance or whatever by that. And they're like, well, I don't wanna spend my own money on it. like, what makes you I'll spend much money on it. It's Very different. Yeah.

(08:36): Yeah. Oh, it's amazing. Yeah. So like, I I'm, I don't want anyone to think that I'm talking down on my parents. I freaking love 'em. I admire the heck out of them because it's, it's so much easier to do the dishes yourself than teach your kid how to do the dishes. It's so much easier just to give your kids handouts. They don't annoy the hell out of you than just, you know, give them whatever they want. So they they're, they're amazing. They're adventurous. They're uh, crazy people, you know, my mom's 62 and still hunts with the bow and arrow. Right. They're off in Idaho, just chasing stuff. Like, yeah. She's, she's incredible. I'd fly fish with her as a kid. And you know, she taught me how to fish and so really cool parents, really cool upbringing. Um, but it wasn't easy. Yeah. Right. There was a lot of expectations.

(09:17): There was some confrontation because of, of, you know, how strict my, my parents were. But so I, I had to figure out a way to quit trading time for money. You know, I, I went to Nova Scotia, Canada. I worked 80 hour work weeks for a summer, came home and bought my truck cash cuz he wouldn't co-sign alone. And uh, bought this old Nissan 95 Nissan pickup, uh, two wheel drive and threw a ladder over the top, put a towel over the, the hood, you know, and got a ladder. And I started washing windows. I had no idea how I just had to find something. And when I was at, uh, at that place up in Canada, we took care of this really nice beach home. And they had us do all the general maintenance. So I washed the windows. I was like, man, this is kind of actually way harder than I thought it would be. I bet people would pay money for this. So I went home and opened the yellow pages to see if there's window cleaning companies. You know, this is back before YouTube university. Right? So I opened up the white, the yellow pages and uh, I found some window cleaning companies and I call him, I was like, Hey, my dad needs a bid for window cleaning. My dad would never pay that for that kind stuff. You know, he would tell his sons to do it. but you Dunno your dad, that's how you phone off.

(10:20): Yeah. But I call him, I was like, Hey, my dad needs a bid for window cleaning. I was helping him out. Can you come get me a bid? Then I met with the guy, talked to him, asked him questions and learned how to bid. And then I went door to door for my parents' house, cuz I couldn't even afford gas at the time. I was like, I was down to like my last 40 bucks to buy the window cleaning equipment and everything else. And I had gas and, and insurance payments coming up. School was starting soon. Anyways, I went to work and built this window cleaning business and in about a decade, uh, took a couple years off in those 10 years. But I grew that business for about 10 years. Uh, two years off to serve a Christian mission in Brazil, learned Portuguese and served, which was an incredible experience.

(10:56): Met my wife, fell in love with Brazilian culture and really expound on like my perspective and understanding of the world's really, really a good experience. But I grew that business for 10 years, man. Um, minus the two, but uh, yeah, that's kind of how it started. And I, I created, you know, you asked about the, the viral YouTube videos on window cleaning, uh, that I did well, I had so much high turnover, no one aspired to be a window cleaner, maybe two years, max I'd get outta someone most times like six months average, I was sick and tired of showing people. I how to clean windows efficiently and effectively. Right. When I washed, I could make over a hundred bucks an hour, 10 years ago. That was quite a bit of money. Right. You This just because you were, you had a process that was efficient, you could get through more windows.

(11:38): Yeah. Yeah. I was very, very fast and you know, I often would make seven, $800 in a day by myself washing. Right. And anyway, so I was teaching these people this, but they, you know, all these different complex movements and you, you know, scrubber in one hand S squeeze you in the other, right. Just going crazy on the windows. And uh, so I did a bunch of tutorial videos on like, Hey, these are the techniques. This is what you do. This is how you do it. And I created like six or seven videos and one of them just blew up as like 20,000 comments. And it became like the window cleaning tutorial video. Like that's what that was the, and, and a lot of it was just timing. There was no fancy editing or anything, but it was kind of the first time it showed me that I was really good at showing and teaching and, and explaining and encouraging people. Right. And so, um, that was, I actually bought that window cleaning YouTube channel back, uh, after I sold the window cleaning business, cuz I wanted that

(12:37): Want to find motivated seller leads online, but don't know where to start download our free and motivated seller keyword report today. AdWords nerds have spent over $5 million this year researching the most profitable keywords for finding motivated seller leads. And you can grab these exact keywords when you download our report at www dot AdWords, nerds.com/keywords. So you've got this business, uh it's it's obviously doing well. Right. It's growing. You understand it. You've been doing it for a decade basically since you were 17. Right. So what was the transition from that into real estate investing like D was real estate on your radar as a thing where you're like, I know I want to do this. Like how, what was your into the industry? Because I think a lot of people would say, well, obviously the business acumen transfers, but there's not a lot of like, at least it doesn't seem like it like knowledge transfer in the sense of like, well, I know how to do comp or I know, you know, what's a good deal, bad deal. So what was that transition like for

(13:44): You? Yeah, so it was on my radar for sure. So when I was 14 years old, I was, uh, you know, my dad worked as an engineer and um, after work we would go mow lawns, me and my older brothers. And, uh, we worked our tails off, right. Like till nine, 10 o'clock at night, every night. And, and a lot of the times the weekends, unless we were out in the mountain somewhere, we live in the Western us and the mountains are our thing. Right. So I was, I remember I was 14. I was mowing lawns and picking weeds and working with my dad. And I remember seeing these giant mansions and I remember asking my dad like, why doesn't someone mow our lawn? You know, like, why is their lives so different in ours? How much money do these people make? And I haven't had all these questions about money and, and like their status and the things they had and what they look like. You know, they obviously went to the gym, we didn't go to the gym, you know, we're all, you know, rednecks from, you know, my grandfather had one tooth and a gun to his name when he died, you know, like it was just a whole different world. And, and I didn't understand it. And, and he said, oh son, I don't know, ask my rich friend Clint. I'm like, Clint's not rich. He drives a beat up old truck, you know? He's like, no, he's rich. He's just cheap . And so I went to Clint,

(14:46): But two are probably connected. And so, Oh yeah. Maybe there's something to that guys. Maybe there is, you know, know. Yeah. He's freaking, I love Clint too. So I go to Clint and I say Clint, like, and I found out he had apartments and now he has over a hundred apartments. He's doing big deals. Like he's, he's, he's, he's a machine, you know, he doesn't drive a beat up truck now. Right. He has horses and he beautiful place. And he's done very well for him, for himself, you know, over the years. But I asked him, I said, you know, how do you get rich? How do you make money? And he gave me rich ad, poor dad as a gift. So, uh, fantastic book on real estate and investing and managing your own money. It's a great book, uh, tells a fun story and it opened up my eyes as a kid.

(15:24): So in 2012, when I was in my early twenties, after my mission, I was going to buy a duplex. I was gonna live in one side and rent the other, um, known as house hacking. Now I didn't know that I thought I came up with the idea, I'm an idiot. and, uh, so, so I'm like, this is what we're gonna do. You know, I, I met my wife on my mission and we were engaged. And, um, shortly after we got married, we bought this little duplex, lived in one side and rented the other. And I was like, this is perfect. You know, my payment seven or 450 bucks, uh, my one side rents for seven 50. I'm like, this is amazing. Like, let's just keep doing this. I swung the hammer, remodeled it myself. And then I hit all these barriers. Now they wanted 25% down my debt to income ratio.

(16:04): I didn't have a lot of history on my credit and always bought everything with cash. My dad wouldn't cosign alone. Right. So I just had all these obstacles that kept me from getting started. So, you know, from 2012 till, uh, 2017, when I made it a full-time gig and completely walked away from window cleaning, I became obsessed with it. Podcasts, books, mentors, I invested so much, we were so frugal. So frugal, I remember fighting with my wife over a $10 DVD player. I mean like cats and dogs fighting about it, you know? So it was, it was something that I dedicated a lot of years to really understanding. I had tried flipping one. It was a mistake and made, you know, lost like 5,000 bucks. And then I bought a couple more rentals, but it was such a struggle to do it. And I finally discovered something that really changed my life.

(16:51): And it's the concept that you can find a discounted opportunity and pass it on for finer fee, that there are people out there that will trade convenience for price all the time. Right? Tired, landlords people that inherited properties. And it's a blessing and it serves them to have an investor speed convenience. And when I first heard this, I was very skeptical and I got blessed with an opportunity. So I washing windows for a guy named, uh, Stan, a wealthy real estate developer, beautiful mansion, nicest guy, just so down to earth. And I asked him what he had, you know, how he'd built his wealth. And he, he told me real estate. I was like, oh my gosh. He was like an hour and a half later. You know, told me his sole story. You know, buddy buddies his face off. Oh yeah. It's like, and he is like 80.

(17:33): Just the sweetest guy told me how he willed and dealed and hustles like, man, that is so cool. I would love to at least just get two rentals this year. And he is like, oh, that's really convenient. I got these two. I don't wanna deal with them. Haven't collected months in rent in four months, property manager bailed on me. The, the, the agent wants me to deal with the tenants. I don't wanna deal with that, that crap. And, and he is like, she even wants me to mow the lawn. I ain't doing that. right. And, and so he's like, here you go, here they are. And I kept them as rentals, cleaned out. The tenants, kept them as rentals for like a year and a half and sold them for over a hundred thousand dollars profit. Wow. And

(18:03): I, and I was like, okay, like, there's something to this. I, I started looking like, I need someone to teach me how to consistently find these people and pass 'em on for a finder's fee. So I don't have to get dead or sell their finance. I mean, it's an option, but you know, how cool is it to get a piece of paper under contract or a piece of paper signed and sell that PA piece of paper for tens of thousands of dollars. And I heard it could be done, but I had no idea how to do it. So I hired Tom Kroll and it changed my life. Dude. This was, this was beginning of 2017. And within a year and a half, I was doing over a half a million a year, year three, I did 1.2 million. So it completely changed my

(18:41): Life. Well, man, I, uh, first of all, Tom K, one of the nicest, smartest dudes in real estate investing, which is awesome, but like the, the whole point of this story for me. Right. And to, to kind of take it back to something you said, right? It's this idea that different people have different currencies for which they are optimized. Like a lot of real estate investors are coming from a point where they're optimizing for profit out, they're optimizing for price. Just like you said, right. It's sort of like unfathomable when you need money so badly that someone would take a haircut on a big sale, like, right. It's like, why would you do that? That's what you need. But for so many other people, right, they're optimizing for their time or the amount of influence they have on somebody or their reputation, the amount of energy, like whatever it is.

(19:29): Right. They've got different things they're optimizing for. And if you can find that sort of trade off point where you're like, well, Hey, I need the money you need the time let's trade. That's where those kind of win-win situations come from. Right. I mean, it's such a great example of you. The story is so great, right? It's like of you just talking this dude's face off while you're like doing his windows or whatever, where he's like, he needs to trade money for time and energy and you have all the time and energy in the world and money, money. Right. That's awesome. Yeah. Such a great story. It was incredible, man. So,

(20:06): So, okay. So let's, let me, let me fast forward a little bit. I definitely want, I love this story of how you get into it and how you make it work. Because I think so many people get stuck in that point. So we can come back to that. We'll put a pin in there for now, but I am curious. So the podcast that you have, it's called driving for dollars mastery. People can go find it right now. Um, uh, you're on YouTube, you're active. So you're doing a lot of stuff right now in terms of your business. But I am very curious. You've got all this real estate background, there's a business background up the Wazo right. You could talk about anything. Why driving for dollars? Like why, of all, all the things that real estate investors have done, which tends a, a long list of like some goofy stuff. Some really smart stuff. Why driving for dollars? Like, why make that the, the kind of focal point for you

(20:56): Because it's what changed my life. So, and you know, my personality is to coach and to help people and to, you know, to the point where I know the heck outta my family, cuz I give advice that they don't want to hear right. So I've also done the pro bono coaching thing. Oh dude, the pro bono coaching to my family, just ask any of my siblings or my dad. They just love it. They, they can't get enough of it. I tell you I'll write that down. We will, uh, you know, we'll make sure our, our fact checkers will check that up.

(21:25): Yeah. I, you know, I just need to start setting 'em invoices. It'll make 'em happier. um, so anyways, I, um, the first, the first like eight months of, of doing real estate wholesaling, I, I had not even done a wholesale deal, but I was so sick of the, of, of it. And I had hired Tom Kroll and I was so confident in the process I had, you know, had that I had that a hundred thousand dollars deal purchased. I had the tenants, I had a lot of equity. I had some buffer, I had some comfort, but I had confidence. I had belief. So I went into my business partner that had bought into the window, cleaning business a few years before. And I said, Hey, it was on my birthday March 2nd, 2017. I said, Hey, I quit. I'm done. I'm walking away from a business. I built for a decade. If there's profits great. If not, that's great. If you'll buy me out, that'd be better. Right. And um, he said, you're crazy. You're gonna go hungry. It's a scam. You're not gonna be successful. Right. And he told me the same thing about window cleaning when I was 17 and yet he bought into my business. Okay. So anyways, going back to Just put a pin in that advice. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

(22:27): We'll put, we'll put a pin in that. We'll come back to it. So anyways, I went for it. I burned the bridges, you know, I burned the boats, jumped on the beach and I went for it. And um, uh, that was March 2nd. I closed my very first wholesale deal. 2017 in eight or 17th of April, 2017. So like a month later I made $10,000 on my first deal. It's definitely still in the red. I mean the coaching was nine grand plus the marketing. And by the end of the year, I did about $113,000 spent less than 10 grand in marketing. So I'm already in the first eight months made more money and I'd ever made in a 12, 12 month period working 80 hour work weeks. I was still working that kind of hours, but I was working on something that was mine and something that I believed in that I could cherry pick Reynolds and build wealth.

(23:08): Right. Well then beginning of 2018, January and February, I didn't close a single deal. And I was like, oh crap, what do I do? Right. So the way I had found my deals before was through lists that I was getting from the city. So I was trying to find people that wanted to be convenience, overpriced, tired, landlords inherited property. So I was pulling the eviction list. I was pulling the probate list, divorce list, code violation list, and reaching out to them and deals were just drying up. Like I couldn't get a deal to save my life. I couldn't get a seller. And I was freaking out. I was working. But You were, you weren't putting anything on that content?

(23:44): Nothing. I couldn't find, find a seller that wanted speed and convenience. I found sellers, but they all wanted full retail and that's not who I could serve or help. Right. I needed to find someone that what I wanted, what I did met their needs and wants as well. So it was mutually beneficial. Like you mentioned, I just couldn't find anyone. I was like, oh my gosh, what do I do? So again, I'm an idiot. I thought I came up with the idea, but it's been around forever. I thought I invented driving for dollars. How silly is that? Right? It's been around forever. So so what hap I know did, I

(24:14): It's like innocent and Tesla, you know, they're both working on their own and they come up with electricity or whatever and, and history is not as strong. So, but I mean, it's really fascinating, right? Because again, it's like, you're like, oh, I thought I invented this thing. But like when there's a, a principle at work there, something that works, you would expect it to work in multiple situations and for multiple people to sort of find it around the same time. Right. It's like, it's, it's there in reality so that I, I, I love that story. Hey guys, hope you enjoyed part one of this episode. It's just too good to limit to one show. Join us next week to hear the rest.

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