Welcome to The Get Real Podcast, your high-octane boost and in the trenches tell-it-like-it-is reality therapy for personal, business and real estate investing success with your hosts, power-preneurs Angela and Ron. It’s time to get real!

Angela: Hey everybody. Welcome to The Get Real podcast. This is Angela Thomas and I’m here with Ron Phillips. Say hey Ron.

Ron: Yeah, it’s a good day, it’s a good day.

Angela: It is. So today we have an awesome guest. We have Caleb Pearson with us. Hey Caleb.

Caleb: Hey, good morning.

Angela: Hey, thanks for being here. So a Caleb is one of the best realtors in South Carolina from what I can tell. He has a, he has an awesome business, does about 200 retail deals a year. And he’s also got a fix and flip wholesale side where he does about 60 deals a year. And he’s been named a realtor of the year. How many years in a row, Caleb?

Caleb: Oh, well, we’ve had the number one rematched team in South Carolina for three years in a row now three years in a row.

Angela: Three years in a row, wow.

Ron: And I think more importantly, Caleb is one who sold me my house then I am right now sitting here.

Angela: Oh really? I didn’t actually know that. That’s cool.

Caleb: The nice backdrop behind him that was me.

Ron: That was Caleb. So you guys all of this plus the pool right there that my son is currently playing in, interestingly enough.

Angela: He’s playing in that makes him sound like he’s really young. But I know he’s not.

Ron: you know he’s, he’s almost 16 but he’s full on playing. I mean he’s there, there’s a basketball hoops up and he is…

Angela: Awesome.

Caleb: The rough life of the Philips, it’s 10:30 on a Friday.

Angela: 10:30 on a Friday out in the pool.

Ron: Yeah. You got to love it.

Angela: Rough life.

Ron: I may go join him right after this. So…

Angela: Yeah, so Caleb…

Ron: The pool is calling.

Angela: I know, I know. We got to we got to hurry up. No. So Caleb, I know I met you a few years ago, but I don’t know you super well. So do you mind taking us kind of way back where you, did you grow up in South Carolina? Tell us about where you came from.

Caleb: No, I actually, I’m from about 45 minutes an hour outside of Virginia Beach went to college in Virginia. Played college basketball up there and never had been in Charleston. I live in Charleston, South Carolina now. Never been to Charleston until spring break of my senior year in college. I had a business degree, no real job lined up. So I call my mom and I said, hey mom, I’m moving to Charleston for the summer. And moved down here. Like I said, no job. Figured it out. I did timeshare for like three months until…

Angela: Oh my gosh. Cool.

Caleb: Until someone was like, it was actually really, really good sales training. It teaches you how to…

Angela: Ron did it to.

Caleb: Did you Ron?

Ron: Guilty as charged.

Caleb: It teaches you how to put someone in a box and not let them out of it as far as sales training goes. So I did that for like three months and then I had a lady there that came in and she said, you’ve got to quit working here. She said you would crush it in real estate. So she set me up with this lady that had been in the business for about 25 years here in Charleston. And she kind of took me under her wing for two years, year and a half, two years. And from then we’ve just started building our own team and here we are today.

Angela: That’s awesome. So you just had a mentor, like walk up to you and just throw you in the business. And I mean…

Caleb: Yeah, I mean, I got going, got a little traction as far as the timeshare goes and she said, you would do much better in real estate. You ought to just hop over there? And the checks are bigger. So I was like, all right, perfect. Count me in.

Angela: I’m sold. Let’s do it.

Caleb: Count me in. I’m there.

Ron: Plus the, your, your GM doesn’t kick over chairs and swear at you and stuff. So there’s always that. I mean, it’s always a good thing. I don’t know about you…

Angela: Yeah. Ron’s got some stories from the timeshare thing.

Ron: I had a really professional timeshare organization I worked for who was a really good. This was reminiscent Alec Baldwin in, oh my gosh, I forgot the name of the movie. Glen Garry Glen Ross. Very, very reminiscent of that. Yes.

Caleb: I could go home once I got into real estate, I could go home with the good conscious.

Ron: Yeah man, I didn’t know we had that in common. That’s kind of fun.

Angela: Yeah, it is. Yeah. So I kind of told everyone briefly, you know, what your main business is. You know, you do a lot of retail sales and wholesale and flipping. What I mean is that I heard that you have a new product to, is that, do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Caleb: Yeah, so we, I guess I’ll go back from the start. So I’ve probably been on thousand listing appointments in my career, probably more than that. So I’m sitting…

Ron: I’m sorry man.

Caleb: Yeah, well there you go. So I’m trying to work towards finding a better way. But I was meeting with all these sellers 20, 30 a month and one or two out of that 20 to 30 was always super, super motivated. So I was selling a lot of deals to these investors and making other people a lot of money and I just realized, well, if I’m meeting with this many motivated sellers, how many other motivated sellers are there that are in the MLS that we just don’t know about? I was hanging out with a buddy one day and I was telling him about my idea and we built this app called.

Caleb: If you go to ZoomOffersNow.com the app, it’s called Zoom Offers. Basically you can go in and let’s say you’ve got 5,000 active listings in the MLS. You don’t, you don’t know, nobody knows who’s really, really motivated out of that 5,000. We just know that all 5,000 of them have raised their hand and said, I’m willing to sell their house. Would you agree to that?

Ron: Yup.

Caleb: What I found is a lot of these people that are really motivated, they still want to overprice their house, but they would take way below what they’re priced at. So I want to know how can I get an offer in front of all 5,000 and at least get the conversation started without individually typing up offers. So we built out an app to where if I want to make an offer on all 5,000 active listings and three clicks, I can, I don’t have to have an assistant sitting there and typing up every offer. It’s just I can break down, I can search the MLS based on criteria, bedroom count, price, days on market square footage, and narrow down to what my buying criteria is and then offer an offer on all those at one time. And then just sit back and wait for counter offers. So I mean, we picked up some really good deals with it, so I built it for myself.

Angela: Yeah, yeah. You saw a problem in your own life and fixed it. That’s awesome. So Ron and I have been down this road a few times trying to, I mean we have brilliant ideas all the time. Ron would say he has, you know, only brilliant ideas. But whatever.

Ron: It’s pretty much true. It’s pretty much proven out, Angela. I only have brilliant ideas. We just don’t have enough time or resources to implement all of the brilliance that I have, so.

Angela: Well, yeah. And I’ve also been thinking lately, because Ron and I are both kind of, you know, where the, we come up with all the ideas. What am I trying to say? What’s that called?

Caleb: A visionary.

Ron: A visionary, thank you. Oh my gosh. Sorry. So yeah, we’re both kind of…

Ron: We have Caleb on for a reason today.

Angela: Thank you Caleb. So we come up with ideas all the time, but you know, as we’ve been trying to build our own software recently and stuff, we’ve kind of realized we’re missing some pieces of the innovation thing and there’s some pieces that are really hard for us. So do you mind telling us a little bit about that journey? Like, how you decided that was an idea to actually run with and how you got from there.

Ron: Yeah. Take us before that. Even Angela like or Caleb like we got like I was just saying, before you get to the point where you’re actually ready to roll, talk to us a little bit about the innovation process. Like you, you’ve identified that there’s a problem, you didn’t immediately like the next day go, I think I’m going to build an app for this.

Angela: I’m sure it doesn’t go idea. And then implementation, like there’s something we’re missing.

Caleb: Yeah, I mean it was, they went from the frustration of making a bunch of people money to realizing that, I don’t know who’s motivated out of that 5,000 active listings in the market. How do I figure out who’s the most motivated in there and get the conversation going the fastest.

Ron: So were there iterations in this man? So you, you get this, you got a problem. And I think all great products, all great businesses come from a challenge, right? So then a challenge, there’s always opportunity. So you, you are feeling this pain point, you realize there’s got to be a better way to this. What’s the iterations you go, okay, I need to figure out how to get in front of these people. Did you go through like several different ideas? Was there a some process you went through? Did you just sit down one day and think this through? How does it work? Here’s the reason I’m asking Caleb because there’s a bunch of people out there. I think a lot of people come up with ideas and then that’s pretty much where it ends, right? I’m trying to figure out how is it that we can help these people who have these brilliant ideas move them into a product and what’s the process of this?

Caleb: So I mean I think that’s a good question. Fortunately I had a little bit of capital because our businesses were doing well. And I’m sitting, you know, sitting with the right person at the right time. And I was telling him about my idea and he just said, well why don’t you build it? And I mean me being young and naive a couple of years ago, I was just like, oh shoot, I’ll try it. So we just ran with it and we threw a bunch of money at it and then it ended up costing me three, four times what I thought it was going to cost you to build.

Angela: We’ve experienced that. Wow.

Caleb: Oh my God, I’ve got so much money into this thing, but it works now. And I mean it works like a champ. So then we started tweaking it and we saw what the issues were with it and we just use it in our business. First deal we ever did on it, we made like $55,000 grand on it. So that put a big chunk in what I had invested into it and then eventually our, I mean it works it, I just said, well this is going to work in any market not just Charleston really. The bigger the market it is, the better it works because it’s just a numbers game.

Angela: Right. So you’re testing period. Because I think after you have an idea and you decide that it’s one you want to move forward with, there’s kind of a testing period right where you, you know, see if there’s actually a market for it, if it’s something people want. So your testing period was basically throw a bunch of money at it and take it to market and see who’s interested, right?

Caleb: Yeah.

Angela: I mean do any market research or anything before that or?

Caleb: Zero.

Angela: Zero, okay.

Ron: Yeah. Caleb was the market and I think that’s another thing where you’re in the business and you recognize a problem that’s a pain point for you. Odds are there’s a bunch of other people in the same business and have the same pain point. And I think one of the things that I don’t want to gloss over here, I think that’s really important in this process that you went through Caleb, is you had an idea. I think a lot of people have an idea and they’re like, this is my idea. Nobody can know about this. It’s super secret. I can’t tell anybody about it. Because if I tell anybody about it, then they’re going to they’re going to take it away from me and…

Angela: They’re going to steal it.

Ron: I think one of the cool things that you just said was, I was in the right place at the right time and I told the right guy, and now here, now I have a product. Where would you say if you hadn’t told somebody about it and they encouraged you to do it, would you have done it?

Caleb: No. It would’ve just been an idea.

Ron: Yeah. And so I think that’s a big deal, man. And I learned that the several years ago, that the more that you put something out there, the, the easier it is for it to come to pass. And I think a couple of things, right? Because you saw an opportunity that was there and then, you know, you told some people about it and one of them was like, dude, you should build this thing, man. This has got legs, which gives you the courage to spend the money on it, try to try to make this thing work.

Ron: I think it’s a big deal. And the other thing too, I think that it does mentally, at least for me, is it allows me to see the opportunities and the ways to do it. If I’m talking about it, if I’m actually putting this thing out there verbally, I don’t know if you experienced that, but I wanted to make sure we didn’t gloss over that because you actually told somebody about it. They encouraged you to do this.

Caleb: Yeah, I mean he had some developer friends and I mean we sat down with them for, well you’ve done this to sat down with developers and you sit there and tell them your ideas. It was unbelievable that I could talk it out and they knew nothing about real estate and they built it like exactly like I envisioned it and…

Angela: That is unbelievable.

Caleb: It was really impressive and it was so easy to use. Now it did have bugs in it and we ironed it out with over asked how long we tested it. We tested it for like a year before we hooked it into any other MLS and any other markets.

Angela: Wow. That’s, yeah, that’s great. I mean, Ron and I haven’t had that same experience. For some reason our ideas don’t come out like don’t make sense to programmers or something. So maybe we should have you interpret for it. No, I’m just kidding.

Ron: There was another key thing Caleb said that he got, he got in front of a guy who was the right guy who knew the right developers. Not all developers are created equal. So the ones that we’re working with currently they cost a little more. You’ve probably experienced that too, Caleb.

Caleb: We’ve upgraded our developers since the beginning.

Ron: Good developers just, they cost more money, right? So if you’re bootstrapping this thing and you don’t speak, yeah. I mean, no offense to any of the programs out there, but if you don’t speak geek, nothing’s going to happen, right. If you’re not multilingual, it’s not going to work very well. And unless you get with a team that actually has people who are, you know, bilingual.

Angela: There’s one other thing there, Ron, and we were talking about the different, the different areas at Disney. You know how there’s the, uh, there’s the imagineers and the engineers and the, what are they call the other one, the implementers. So I forget…

Ron: I think they had a really cool name.

Angela: Yeah I forget what they’re called, but it sounds Caleb to me, like you imagined it and you also engineered it. You designed it, you knew exactly how you wanted it to work and look, and you were able to explain that vision to the programmers who then could build it, right. I mean, I imagine you didn’t just tell them your idea and then say, make it look how you want or make it, you know.

Caleb: I mean they kind of gave me a format of how it would look and then I made a couple of little tweaks and they did such a good job with it. Now again, it did have bugs in it until we got the new developers on board and that now it’s like pretty streamline and runs like a champ.

Ron: Yeah. I’ve seen this, it’s really, really cool. And it is really well done. Even the user interface. I mean they did a really, really good job. I’m assuming that your user interfaces is a, with the new, with the new programmers?

Caleb: It is. Yeah. It’s just, I mean it’s simple. It’s just you click on what you want to offer on, you can set your own save search criteria’s. I mean you can even set it to where it automatically offers for you every day when new listings hits your criteria, hit the MLS.

Angela: Wow. Cool.

Caleb: And then you just sit back and you field counter offers so that you make your money in the negotiating. So if you’ve got a good negotiator that’s taken the counter offers, you can make some, it’s, it’s another marketing channel, just like direct mail.

Angela: Yeah. But it’s a great way to bring in leads that are way hotter than they would be from direct mail, right. They already have an offer. Yeah. That’s really cool.

Ron: That’s really, that’s really, really cool, man. And so talk to me about how you’d, so you, it sounds like there was, there’s a bunch of innovation that happened here in your business, right? Not just this product. It sounds like to me you were doing really, really well at retail sales. You go in and you finally start to realize that guys are making offers on properties, that they’re getting ridiculous deals. And you want a piece of that, tell me how you morphed from retail sales agent broker best in the state to this new business, which is your rehab business, which I think is a precursor. This is a precursor right, to the new product that you have.

Caleb: Yeah, I mean, it was just, I was seeing how much people were making or how much money I was making others and other investors. And I mean, once I learned the money side of it, I realized it’s not that difficult. So it was less work. You didn’t have to deal with as many, you didn’t have to deal directly with the sellers who don’t want to listen to you half the time. The only challenge with the rehabbing is that as you know, the contractors.

Angela: The only challenge just a little thing.

Caleb: That is the biggest challenge by far. So I got into that side of the business honestly, just because the checks were bigger and you didn’t have to do as many deals. The over was less then my retail business.

Ron: So there’s a lot of people who listen to our show who are either in the business and they’re trying to grow Caleb or they’re really not in business. They got themselves a job. You know, kind of like being a realtor or you know, they’re a small rehab or where they do everything kind of themselves. So how do you go from, how do you go from learning the real estate business to growing one of the, excuse me, one of the most impressive real estate brokerages in the state of South Carolina to adding yet another business.

Ron: Because you didn’t, it’s not like you moved from being a real estate broker and doing a couple of hundred transactions a year and just shut that bad boy down, right? You started this other business that things still running. How does the growth happen between each one of those pieces that allows you to be able to do all of that? Because now you’ve got a third business, right? And they’re all still running. And I can still get ahold of you on the phone. So apparently you’re doing something right here. Tell everybody how that process works. How do you get from, you know, one man shop to owning three businesses and you’ve got several employees that are helping you run all of this stuff. How does that work?

Caleb: Good people that all align with your core values and not looking at people as an expense, looking at people as an investment. But if you get the right people in the right seats, which we’ve done and we’ve had people come in and they’d been the right people in the wrong seats that we’ve moved from the Caleb Pearson Brokerage over to the home buyer side. But we knew they were good culture fits and we knew they had good work ethic and it’s just been, I mean it’s been constantly making small tweaks over the years and the home buyer side pretty much run by runs by itself. The brokerage side, I do a lot of the sales but I don’t do anything on the backend. We’ve got great admin staff. So I mean I would just say having good people on the Zoom Offer side, the developer is phenomenal now and he handles most of everything on the back end. I might take one or two calls a week on that so. We have a sales guy. So I think people and leverage. Does that answer the question?

Angela: Yeah. Do you mind telling us like how you found those good people? Because, I mean we have found some, I mean we have some great people that we work with, but we’ve also hired some not so good fits over the years.

Ron: I’m going to go out on a limb here and say everybody that Caleb’s ever hired has worked out phenomenally and he’s never had a problem.

Angela: Yeah. Never, right.

Caleb: Yeah, exactly. Never had an employee problem.

Angela: No, but there’s a chance he’s doing it a little better than us.

Caleb: So we do have a process companies that we hire anybody, they come in, they interview with three people on the team. They have to get three yeses, then they get an interview with me. I run through a series of questions…

Angela: So that’s four interviews.

Caleb: Basically, yes. So they have to go through a vetting process with the team. So it keeps our culture tight.

Angela: Interesting.

Caleb: Anybody that has any maybe or I don’t know about this guy doesn’t work.

Angela: Wow, that’s cool.

Caleb: Most of the people we hire though come recommended from somebody else that’s a friend that…

Angela: That’s been some of our best hires too. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Cool. So you also said leverage. Do you mind talking about that? Growing your business? What did you mean by that?

Caleb: So have you ever read No BS Time Management by Dan Kennedy?

Ron: I haven’t man.

Angela: I don’t think I have either I’m going to write it down. No BS Time Management.

Caleb: You have to read it. I read that book and it just changed my life. So basically everything that we, that I do, I try to figure out how I can leverage somebody else to do it. I mean, I haven’t leveraged my time the way that Ron has.

Angela: You’re not swimming at 10:30 in the morning. Come on. No, I’m just kidding.

Caleb: No I’m not to that point yet.

Ron: Come on over. We’ll make a swim right now. Come on over.

Caleb: I do try to put the right people again in the right seats and, and leverage them and then give them all credit.

Angela: Awesome. Awesome.

Caleb: That’s good. I’m telling you, it’s really good. All of his books are phenomenal.

Ron: Hey, nobody has any excuses. Because as you’re listening to this, you could have just bought the book because as Angela and Caleb were talking, I bought the book, right. And I’m actually hoping most things so it can be done. Just go get it and add it to your reading list and make it happen.

Caleb: That’s one of my all time favorites.

Ron: Okay, good. And I’ve not read it man. I’m always looking for good books, so I will get that one and read it. So you’ve got these three businesses. Let’s talk about, I’m very, very interested as you know, I’m really interested in the software piece. Tell us a little bit about who this thing is built for, right. So we already know a little bit about your pain point, what you were trying to accomplish, but um, let’s say I’m a guy out there who has, or I’m getting into the flipping, wholesaling rehabbing type of a business. Who’s your product for in that, in that sphere? Who does it fit?

Caleb: So I guess if it’s three, we have three people that have fits. If it’s somebody that’s doing wholesaling, we’ve got a couple of people around the country tied into a few MLS that are just putting the contract, putting the houses under contract and then selling it off and taking the, the difference, fix and flippers would be the second. So people buying, rehabbing, putting houses back on the market and then buy and hold and it’s, it works really well and most people that are doing buy and hold will pay a little bit more. So they are actually, the people that we have that are doing that around the country are picking up more deals. But we’ve got one guy down in Birmingham that told me about 12 last month through the app.

Ron: Wow.

Angela: Yeah. That’s cool.

Ron: Well I want to know who that is after this. So tell me who that guy is. Because I know a lot of people down in Birmingham. That’s interesting. Okay, so it doesn’t make any difference then. Like I like they, they some that some of the products out there that are made are specifically for people who are doing, you know, x volume. You need to have a business that can handle, you know, why? Otherwise this really isn’t a product for you. You’re, you’re saying if I’m in that business, I’m doing anything at all that all this is going to do is, is augment my sales or my purchases, my acquisitions.

Caleb: Yeah. It’s just another way to pick up more deals. I mean, depending on how much capacity you have to do, how many you can do a month. Like we’re picking up one or two a month. Sorry, go ahead.

Angela: No, no, no. I was just, I haven’t actually seen it. I was just curious. Like you said, those three different, you know, fix and flip, wholesale, buy and hold, are there like filters and stuff so you can find deals that kind of fixed fit your genre or where you’re working, you know?

Caleb: Yeah. So every filter there is the MLS square-foot, bedroom bath, year built, lot size and pretty much every filter. You can narrow it down and then it’ll pull up how many active listings are in that search criteria. And then you can click, click, click, click, click and offer on individual ones. Or you can just click submit all and offer on all of them. At whatever percentage? So let’s say you offer at 63% on the dollar. Well it’ll auto populate the prices. 63% on dollar, put it on the contract, it’ll sign the contract for you, put it in an email and email it to the listing agent. All in like two, two clicks. It’s pretty slick.

Angela: That is pretty cool. Wow. So like just the buy and hold one, like what are they looking, cause I mean it’s a little bit different. You’re not looking for houses that need work. Is it just a higher price range or, sorry if this is a dumb question.

Caleb: No, we just seen that they’re offering closer to list price closer to retail. Then the wholesalers and the fix and flippers.

Ron: Wholesalers are going to offer 60, 70 cents on a dollar and they’re probably offering 8,5 90 cents on the dollar or something like that. Right, Caleb?

Caleb: Yeah.

Angela: Oh that’s really cool.

Ron: How’s this broken up? We’re actually in the process of trying to figure out how ours works in this particular way as well. But do you, do you have like if I buy into your system and is says a specific market, do I own the market or can multiple people have this in the same market? How does that work, Caleb?

Caleb: So we used to do exclusivity, but we found that everybody just uses the app differently. So now we don’t do exclusivity in the markets. Kind of like direct mail. There’s multiple people doing direct mail in every market. But some people just do it better than others. Same with this.

Angela: So you can have several fix and flippers in one town putting offers on the same houses and they just, you know, they just, the seller just responds to the one they like, right? I mean,

Caleb: Correct. Yeah. We don’t have many markets where we have multiple people in yet.

Ron: Yeah. As we develop ours, we’re trying to figure this piece out too. You know, part of the, part of the innovation piece of this is trying to figure out what the, what the sweet spot is for whatever product it is that you’ve made. And as we develop ours right now, we’ve had multiple conversations with, we actually have a, we actually brought on a coach to help us kind of develop the business side of that particular product, which has been really helpful. But that’s one of the things we’ve gone round around with him, you know, do we do exclusivity or do we not do exclusivity? Because there’s a lot of people that we know like, like you Kayla thing, they offer it in multiple cities, you know, and then they switch them up all the time too. It’s not like they stay in one city either. A lot of the guys that we work with anyway.

Caleb: Yeah we we’re, go ahead Angela.

Angela: Oh no, no. I was just saying, do you mind sharing like how you, how you switched from exclusivity to allowing several, I mean, what happened there?

Caleb: I mean, we just looked at it and financially as a business owner, you there aren’t, but so many MLS around the country and once they’re all filled, then you can add more users. And then we had multiple people from multiple markets asking or multiple people in the same market asking for the product and they were just going to use it differently. Not to go off track, but some people even use it, they figure out what the institutional buyer in their market, what their buying criteria is, and then they just try to get to the deal faster and then wholesale it to them.

Angela: Interesting.

Caleb: Because the institutional buyers are usually slower making decisions..

Angela: Were your original users upset by that and did you lose people during that transition?

Caleb: I don’t think, I don’t think we’ve lost anybody from it. We caught it. We caught it pretty early.

Ron: Yeah, I like that actually. And I’m a fan of the competition anyway, so I think it’s fine. I’m not exactly sure how ours is going to pan out, but we lean more that direction ourselves on what we’re doing. Okay, so cool. So Caleb, if somebody’s interested in taking a look at this or, or seeing what we’ve been talking about, where can they work and they go again, I have to keep told, told us.

Angela: Yeah, you did in the beginning. What was it?

Caleb: Yeah, just go to ZoomOffersNow.com.

Angela: ZoomOffersNow.com.

Caleb: Click try demo and put your information in and then we’ll send you a quick demo video and it, it’s not complicated.

Angela: Awesome.

Caleb: It’s pretty easy to understand.

Ron: It’s a really cool program. I’m interested to talk to your guy in Birmingham, see how that’s how that’s working.

Angela: Well, thanks Caleb. We really appreciate it. Sounds awesome.

Caleb: No, thank you guys for having me on.

Angela: Yeah, it’s been great. So everyone listened to this checkout ZoomOffersNow.com, and you can also subscribe to our podcast or leave us any feedback you have or questions or other topics you want to hear about. Uh, just visit, GetRealEstateSuccess.com.

Ron: A one more final thought is that anybody who’s listened to this podcast long enough, Angela knows that Charleston is an absolutely fantastic place to live.

Angela: Yeah, true.

Ron: Caleb’s not going to move any of those people into my neighborhood because that would be, that’d be messed up. I don’t want anybody in my neighborhood with, we have enough people here now. Um, we don’t need any more people, but there’s lots of other really cool neighborhoods so call Caleb too. If you guys are planning on moving to Charleston.

Caleb: We’re moving you to, we’re moving you to the beach.

Ron: That’s right. But until then…

Angela: Somebody can move into your house once it’s available.

Ron: I love it. This office could be yours.

Angela: All right, cool. Thanks Caleb. We appreciate it.

Caleb: Thanks guys. Take care.

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We’re pleased to have Caleb Pearson on the podcast. Welcome, Caleb and welcome, audience. 

Caleb’s a great guy who sold Ron the house he’s living in now in Charleston.

Caleb is a superstar realtor in South Carolina, doing about 200 retail deals a year. His team’s been the top Remax team in the state for 3 years in a row. He also does about 60 fix & flips a year.

Caleb grew up about an hour outside Virginia Beach and went to college in Virginia. He now lives in Charleston… been there a while and loves it. He learned retail real estate from a mentor. 

His newest product is an app called ZoomOffers.com. Caleb and a friend developed it. The app allows a user to pull MLS listings based on certain criteria and make an offer to all those homeowners at once.

After the offer goes out, he simply waits for counter offers to come in. The people who counter offer are ready to sell. The app basically finds motivated sellers for him.  

Ron and Angela have great ideas for improving business practices, but can’t quite seem to build out their concepts. They pick Caleb’s brain for the process he used to get from need to solution.

Partly it was talking to the right person at the right time. Also, Caleb had some money to use for the product. Of course, developing the app cost 3 to 4 times what he expected to spend.  

Caleb did no market research because he was primarily building the app for his own use. Testing the app and working out the bugs took about a year. The app works just like he envisioned it. 

ZoomOffers.com is easy to use and can be automated to send out offers to sellers of homes within your criteria as soon as the home is posted on MLS. It cuts out fruitless seller contacts which frees up time.

When the counter offers come in, it’s up to Caleb to use his negotiating skills to close the deal. Using the app is cheaper, easier and more targeted than any other marketing tool out there. 

Caleb’s fix and flip business has had quite a growth spurt since he began using ZoomOffers. It’s more lucrative than selling retail real estate and it’s easier too. The only problems come from contractors.  

If you’re paying attention, you realize that Caleb is now running 3 businesses. He’s got retail and wholesale real estate… plus ZoomOffers.com. How does he do it? 

Caleb still does sales on the retail brokerage side and admin do the rest. People who need little supervision buy fixer-upper houses for him, and he hired a salesperson for ZoomOffers.com.  

What’s inside:

  • Guest, Caleb Pearson, figured out a way to capture only motivated leads. 
  • Caleb runs 3 businesses and says hiring good people and putting them in the right job is key.
  • Caleb is a star in retail real estate, but makes more money with fewer deals as an investor.  
  • ZoomOffers.com app works for most investors… wholesalers, flippers and buy & hold investors. 

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