Friday, October 2, 2020

Jake and Austin Deraaff

https://www.jayconner.com/jake-and-austin-deraaff/

Here on today’s show, I have amazing guests who actually twin brothers based out of New York City. They knew that the traditional route was not the best option for them. So they quit college and found an online course on making money in real estate WITHOUT any money!
After being told that they COULD NOT make it in real estate, they committed themselves to be successful.
In 7 months, they were able to do their first wholesale deal. This gave them proof of concept which gave them permission to take massive action. This led to 3 more deals. Then 30 deals. Now they’ve flipped about 60 houses so far!
Their mission is to help people build long term wealth through real estate investing.
With that, please welcome Jake and Austin Deraaf.
How they got to $3,000,000 in Wholesale Transactions both LOCALLY and VIRTUALLY.
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Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. Without using his own money or credit, Jay maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $64,000 per deal.
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Jay Conner (00:12):
Well, hello there. And welcome to another episode of Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner. I’m Jay Conner, your host then also known as the Private Money Authority. And if you’re brand new to Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner, We talk about all things that relate to real estate investing from finding deals, funding deals, rehabbing, flipping, wholesaling, and even more important than that is automating the business. So you’re actually running your business and your business is not running you. So here on the show, I have these amazing guest and experts come on today is no different. But before I introduce my special guest today, I’ve got a very, very exciting announcement for all of you who are tuning in here, either on iTunes or Google play or any, or our YouTube channels or Facebook live streaming ever. How you’re tuning in here to the show.
Jay Conner (01:22):
And that is, I just recently launched my new monthly membership, which is called the Private Money Academy membership. What’s so exciting about it. First of all, with all the benefits is that you actually get me live two times a month with a live Zoom group coaching call for all the Academy members. And so what I’m extending to you as, since you are tuning in you’re on the show, I’m going to be giving you a full free trial to the membership and it’s a 30 day trial and you can check it out go on over after the show to Jay Conner, JayConner.com/trial, Now what’s so exciting besides the two live group coaching calls, where we talk about anything in real estate investment that you want to always have special content I prepared for the membership.
Jay Conner (02:22):
But we also have in the membership site, we’ve got content that’s being updated every month with all kinds of resources, for private money and et cetera. We talked about finding deals and all different subjects. So again, get on over to www.JayConner.com/trial, And I’ll see you on the inside of the Private Money Academy membership. Now, today my special guests are actually twin brothers and they are based out of the big Apple after 24 long months in college they were suffering, and they knew that the traditional route was not the best option for them as far as getting on their way to a career. So they quit college. They dropped out of school and they found an online course on how to make money in real estate with no money down.
Jay Conner (03:26):
After being told by every friend and family and colleague that they could not make it in real estate. They still took a leap of faith and they committed themselves 100% of the way to doing whatever it took to be successful. So after their first seven months in the business, they still had not closed a deal. They finally made it to their very first closing of their wholesale delivers the wholesale deal. Well that gave them the element of poof, changed their lives, gave them a proof of concept and gave them permission to take massive action into what we call this real estate space. So shortly after that, they did three more deals and then soon became a close to doing 30 deals. So today, as of today’s show, they flipped and wholesale, Oh, around 60 houses. So far now some of their flips have been promoted even by local magazines in their area.
Jay Conner (04:27):
Another goal was to earn 250 units by February, 2021. And they’re well on their way. Their mission is to help people build long term wealth through real estate investing and to give their partners safe and secure returns with that. I’m so excited to have you on the show, my friends, Jake and Austin Deraaff. Welcome Jake and Austin, Hello.
Austin Deraaff (04:55):
What an introduction. Wow! couldn’t have said it better.
Jake Deraaff (04:57):
Thank you so much for having us on, Jay. We appreciate it.
Jay Conner (05:00):
Absolutely! Well, I appreciate you all coming on. I mean, you know, the big twin brothers, you know, at the ripe old age of 14 years old, it’s just amazing how far you all have made it.
Austin Deraaff (05:14):
Still going strong
Jay Conner (05:18):
So anyway let’s see, here we are in a high end real estate investing mastermind group, right?
Austin Deraaff (05:25):
Yes sir.
Jay Conner (05:27):
In fact, that’s how we met. Hey question. Do I get to see you in person in a couple of weeks? Are y’all doing that virtual thing?
Austin Deraaff (05:35):
We’ll be there.
Jake Deraaff (05:35):
We’ll be there.We’re flying down.
Jay Conner (05:38):
Awesome! My wife, Carol Joy, and I we’ve already got our plane tickets so I can’t hardly wait to see you in person. It’s, I’m looking forward to it. I know people are ready to like get out of Dodge, Right?
Austin Deraaff (05:51):
That’s true.
Jake Deraaff (05:52):
Amen
Jay Conner (05:53):
So I love your story. So I know you want to share this. So actually, how old are you all Austin and Jake?
Austin Deraaff (06:02):
23.
Jay Conner (06:04):
23? My lands to know what I now know when I was 23 years old mercy! could I have not owned the world? Like you’re on your way to do it. So we know part of your story. So you started out in college you know, you went to college for you know, a couple of years or so, and you figured out that wasn’t working. So did you actually go out looking to learn about real estate investing? Or how did that come along?
Austin Deraaff (06:38):
So, yeah, it was actually funny. We actually, you know, we always liked making money. We used to flip shoes, flip electronics with everything. And then one day I was with Jake and we found this course online by Cody Sperber The Clever Investor. And it was how to make real estate with how to do real estate with no money down, no credit, no money. Well okay, we have no money, no credit, no license. Let’s try this out. So that introduced the wholesaling. And like you said, it took us seven months to finally get proof of concept. But once we got the proof of concept, you know, we take massive action. Like we get obsessed very quickly and that can be a good thing or a bad thing. And our scenario was a good thing, cause it was absolutely for our business. But it took us a while, but you know, we got it done.
Jay Conner (07:19):
That is awesome! So you took that course and so give it, just give us like a summary as to, so when did you do your first deal?
Jake Deraaff (07:31):
We did our first deal in may of 2018.
Jay Conner (07:35):
Okay. 2018. You did your first deal.
Jake Deraaff (07:39):
I’m sorry. March of 2018.
Jay Conner (07:41):
Okay. So we’re a couple of years down the road. So share with us what that journey looks like from the time you started. I mean, first of all, you went seven months without doing your first deal. What do you think was the cause of that? And then what happened that really started to catapult your business? So just give us a summary of what’s that journey look like since you started.
Austin Deraaff (08:06):
Yeah. It’s like any other business, you know, most people probably would’ve quit after month three or four, but you know, we had times where we want to stop and this doesn’t, we thought it didn’t work. We kept going after it. But the problem, we didn’t get the first deal. It wasn’t even about what we didn’t know. I’m sorry, what we did know it’s what we didn’t know. Like we weren’t really good at marketing. So we were doing very little strategic and the consistent marketing. Like we would put up band-it signs, talk to attorneys, do all these things, but not consistently. But once we started to do consistent efforts in marketing, we actually saw results. So I think the biggest thing was consistent marketing, you know, implementing what we’re reading and learning and stuff like that. A lot of people just reading on YouTube, but they don’t take action. So we start to take a lot of action and then, you know, results started to happen.
Jay Conner (08:52):
I got you. And so in a couple of years I think you said you’ve done like 30 deals so far, right?
Austin Deraaff (08:59):
Yep.
Jay Conner (09:00):
That’s fantastic! So one of your goals is to have 250 units by February, 2020. When you say a unit, are you talking single family houses? Are you talking apartment doors or what’s your definition of a unit?
Jake Deraaff (09:17):
Apartments.
Jay Conner (09:18):
Apartments? Have you already started in the commercial space?
Austin Deraaff (09:22):
Yeah, we have 16 units right now and then another 10 in contract. So 26 units are going to be at the end of the month, about 26 units and the rack, you know, marketing and try to find commercial buildings. So hopefully we have, you know, close to that number by the time the year ends.
Jay Conner (09:36):
Are you focusing more on commercial now or single family houses?
Jake Deraaff (09:40):
Single family is our bread and butter, but we are starting to look more into the multi-family space
Jay Conner (09:46):
I got you. So in your single family space, are you doing more wholesaling or flipping or what’s the percentage of those deals was like?
Austin Deraaff (09:55):
We have a couple of different buckets in our wholesaling flip business. So we wholesale and we wholetail we fix and flip. I would say if we did, you know, at a hundred percent, I’d say about 60% is wholesaling, 20% is wholetailing then 20% is flipping.
Jay Conner (10:09):
All right. So most people know what wholesaling is. Most people know about flipping is let’s make sure everybody understands what’s wholetailing.
Austin Deraaff (10:17):
Yeah. So wholetails are great, especially in the market that we’re in. So basically when you’re able to identify a property that you can buy at a wholesale rate. And at that point, what we do is we clean it out. We close on the property and if it’s in the condition where a bank would be able to loan on the property, that’s when we’ll relist it back on the market and get that full market value.
Jay Conner (10:37):
I got you. So in your businesses Austin what hat hats do you wear and Jake, what hats do you wear?
Austin Deraaff (10:47):
So I focus mainly on the sales and marketing and any type of like finances, again, the financing. So sales, marketing, and financing, and then I’m on the dispositions, operations and hiring.
Jay Conner (10:59):
I got you. So you got to divide it out. Was it any of it? Was it any kind of a challenge when you started out and to figure out who was going to do what?
Jake Deraaff (11:07):
He’s the born salesman, So he was on the acquisition team from day one. So
Jay Conner (11:13):
Is that why Austin smiles more than Jake?
Jake Deraaff (11:16):
Probably.
Austin Deraaff (11:18):
Built him for it.
Jay Conner (11:20):
I hear ya. So when you got started, what were some of your biggest challenges that you’ve faced and lessons learned?
Austin Deraaff (11:29):
Good question. So I think the biggest thing, like any entrepreneur is like, is it gonna work like seven months felt like seven years? Because you didn’t see a check and you’re like, you have to keep telling yourself everyday. It’s going to work. It’s going to work. It’s going to work. But no one around us even knew what wholesaling was like, if you’re in Phoenix other places, it’s common to wholesale. But were in New York, no one even knew what it was. Even most of our attorneys didn’t even know what the word wholesaling was. We have to like reinvent the word in our area. So like, it was just, we had no one, not a lot of support. So we had to build our own inner belief system. So, and that’s the hardest part was telling ourselves It’s gonna happen. It’s just, when is it gonna happen? So we kept going and kept going. But I think if we would have had someone in the beginning that, you know, maybe the coaches have guided us and we were more consistent on marketing. We probably would’ve got a deal done a lot faster, but you know, life, the lessons you learn and the money you make. So that’s our philosophy.
Jay Conner (12:17):
Exactly. So while were talking about marketing, you know, the two main things that people want to know that are real estate investors, whether they’re brand new or they’re seasoned, the two things they know want to know more than anything else is where do I find the deals and how do I fund the deals? Where do I find the deals and how do I get the money? Those are the two most popular questions. So in today’s market for your single family houses, let’s focus on that on single family houses. What are your best marketing methods that consistently? And that’s a word you used a few minutes ago. Very, very important word, consistent leads If we don’t have consistent seller leads coming into the pipeline in the funnel, we’re not in business, we’re out of business. What are your favorite methods now to get consistent seller leads?
Jake Deraaff (13:06):
So our goal Do a lot of different marketing strategies. So we always continuously have leads coming in. So the stuff that’s been working for us has been direct mail, band-it signs, cold calling, texting door knocking. And we’re just we’re we love to network. So we’re always getting deals with realtors, other wholesalers and even attorneys.
Jay Conner (13:24):
So in all those activities, what does your team look like? Like, do you have virtual assistants or what? Like you just mentioned a bunch of things that are like sub businesses or marketing efforts you know, in and of themselves, door-knocking, that’s a business model right there texting outbound calling. So how do you get all that done consistently?
Austin Deraaff (13:50):
Yeah. Good question. So right now we have someone who does texting. Like his only job is just, you know, drop the text and answer the text. So he focused on that. We have, we have a van assigned team and then we have about four or five drivers. And what we did was we picked the one that had the most leadership qualities and made him the leader of the team. So he’s a leader of the van assigned team, same with door knocking and then cold calling and keep it in house. So all of our acquisition guys would make outbound calls daily, so led to keep everything. We don’t do any, any like Philippines cold calling, but we do work a lot of VA’s to help us out.
Jay Conner (14:23):
Got you. So when it comes to door knocking what types of properties do you door knock?
Austin Deraaff (14:31):
Pre-Foreclosures people who just passed away or inherited a property. We’ll get like a bunch of lists, Jay. And what we’ll do is we do something called list stacking. And if you’re new in the business, that’s something I would really recommend because you can get deals that are very cheap. So you basically get a bunch of different lists. Pre-Foreclosure probate, high equity combined into one list, whoever is on multiple lists, put it on a new list. And then we hit those doors. Cause if they’re on three, four, five lists, there’s something going on that you might need to know.
Jay Conner (14:57):
How did you train your door knockers
Austin Deraaff (15:00):
By doing it with them, Just like people try to automate that It’s really hard. You have to describe a deal with them, show how it’s done, record yourself, doing it, and then, you know, have them consistently do it.
Jay Conner (15:11):
So let’s talk about door knocking. So you knock on a door give us your tips on how to successfully door knock. What’s the mindset. What’s the talk off points. How do you build immediate rapport? How do you keep the door from being locked in your face? And what’s the scripting sounds like.
Austin Deraaff (15:35):
Yeah. Great question. So we actually started to do was before let’s say we have a list of 50 properties before we go out and actually physically knock. We’re going to send them a handwritten note. Hey, this is so and so we bought a couple of houses in the area. Would you ever consider selling? And now we go to the doors and say, Hey, you know, we’re just knocking. We actually left you a letter. Do you happen to get it? So I’m like, yeah, I got the letter. Awesome. Are you guys considering selling? Me and my partners bought a couple of homes in the area and we love to make an offer. So we kind of go in there with like a warmth, we sent a handwritten letters before and then go out to the house. So it’s not like it’s a cold conversation.
Jay Conner (16:11):
Do you think the age of the person helps as far as who’s doing or the age of the person doing the door knocking?
Austin Deraaff (16:19):
Yeah, All of our guys are under 30. We had to keep them yet kind of it’s for us. It’s been working well, we have everyone that works with us is younger. So that’s why it’s been working for us.
Jay Conner (16:32):
So younger people are perhaps less intimidating when they’re knocking on the door, right?
Jake Deraaff (16:38):
Exactly.
Austin Deraaff (16:38):
Yeah.
Jay Conner (16:39):
What’s your favourite way to find your team members?
Jake Deraaff (16:43):
We use a lot of wisehire.com indeed.com.
Jay Conner (16:47):
I love wisehire. My favorite reason for wisehire is you’re like already, automatically plugged in to all the other ones just by going into wisehire.
Jake Deraaff (16:58):
Yeah. It’s great!
Jay Conner (17:00):
Do you use any of their tools such as personality, self profiling tests, et cetera?
Jake Deraaff (17:06):
Yeah, we use the PI. Predictive Index.
Jay Conner (17:10):
Yep.
Jake Deraaff (17:10):
Yeah. So that’s definitely helped us out. We actually hired Sharper Solutions Gary Harbor’s team. And they’ve been helping us out with some hiring as well for some of our key candidates.
Jay Conner (17:21):
I got you. So how about, what’s your advice for young real estate investors, young entrepreneurs wanting to get into the business, like, you know, from your experience, what’s your advice to give them
Jake Deraaff (17:37):
Well first? Yeah, there’s a lot of different things you can do in real estate. So what I would tell them is figure out exactly what you want to do. Do you want to flip, do you want to wholesale? Do you want to be an agent? Do you want to do creative financing deals? Do you want to be a landlord, figure out and identify what you’re looking to do. And once you figure out what you’re looking to do, just keep failing forward, hanging around the people that are, that have what you want or that are doing what you want and just continue to fail and just keep going. Because if you keep going and you keep learning, you’re just going to keep growing. And that’s basically what we did.
Jay Conner (18:08):
So would you say you all have a company mission?
Austin Deraaff (18:12):
Yeah. Our mission is to help as many homeowners as possible. Our goal is have 150 homeowners for the year. If we can do that buy a lot of apartments, you know, we’re happy where we’re at. We’re happy at that number.
Jake Deraaff (18:21):
Yeah.
Jay Conner (18:22):
Well, you said a word that’s very, very important to me and that is that word help. So the reason I asked you about the mindset or how you’re, you know, looking to approach and particularly when you’re door knocking or whatever, myself and my team, we take on the approach of, we are servants. We’re out here to help people we’re out here to serve people. As a matter of fact, when people respond to our marketing and they’re in foreclosure, one of the first questions we ask them is, do you want to keep your home? And I’m in a very, very small area. My total market is only 40,000 people. And so we asked her, do you want to keep going? Yeah, I want to keep your home. I said well, we’ve got a checklist of 10 different ways that you might want to check out what, of course we tell them, we’re not attorneys. We can’t give you legal advice, but we’ll ask him, you know, have you talked to your mortgage company about a a loan deferment program or what have you, and if we give somebody an audio that helps them save their home, there’s nothing in it directly for us. But I do know through the law of reciprocity, what goes around, comes around and the more people we can help get, what they want. We don’t have to worry about ourselves. Would you agree with that philosophy?
Austin Deraaff (19:34):
Yeah, 100%. What goes around, definitely comes around. Yep.
Jay Conner (19:38):
Excellent! We’re actually live streaming right now. We’ve got quite a few comments coming in from folks. So everybody that’s watching the live stream. We’re glad you’re here and and welcome to the show. So what type of advice would you give to people? You know, just in general, what, you know, when I’m asking a general question, what’s the best advice I can give to a real estate investor. That’s starting out. One of the first things I tell them is don’t try to go about this business by yourself. You need to join hips with somebody that actually has walked through the mines you know, instead of getting blown up yourself. And I believe you all got a coaching program that I know you can help anybody of any age, but for those that are particularly perhaps younger and starting out how has your coaching program worked guys?
Austin Deraaff (20:33):
Yeah, so, like I said, we have a coaching program, so we have set times customized program per person. So if you’re in a different market than us, we can still help you out. So we do across the country, a set plan, set time for the calls. But the most important thing is we hold you accountable because a lot of times you can’t hold yourself accountable. You need somebody else to help you do that. So our goal is not to do the work for you, but to give you the roadmap, to do the work, hold you accountable, be coachable and give you a support system. cause the biggest thing for us was we didn’t have support. So it took us a while to get a deal.
Jay Conner (21:06):
Yeah. how about you, Jake? Any other thoughts come out?
Jake Deraaff (21:10):
That’s pretty much it. Yeah. We’re just anybody who’s looking to get their first deal done, whether it’s, you know, locally or, you know, even out West or wherever.
Jay Conner (21:18):
Excellent. Well, you know, it’s for that reason that the three of us are in a mastermind together. I mean, it doesn’t matter whether you’re brand new or, you know, you’ve been doing this thing for a long time and you know, what was working really well, maybe two years ago may not be working so well today, particularly when it comes to different marketing methods and et cetera. So parting comments. I’ll start with you, Jake. And then we’ll wrap up with Austin parting comments that you’d like to share with my audience.
Jake Deraaff (21:51):
Figure out what you guys are looking to do and what you’re looking to accomplish and back your way into it. So if you want to do 10 deals your first year, figure out how you’re going to get that. First one done continue to network with people. Cause one of our big sayings is your network is your net worth. So show me the five people you surround yourself with and I’ll show you your, your future. So if you continue to hang around, people that are elevating you and who are going after what they want, you’ll be in it heading the right direction.
Jay Conner (22:16):
Awesome, Austin?
Austin Deraaff (22:18):
I would say this six letter word it’s called commit. So even if you don’t want real estate wholesaling, or you don’t want going to real estate, whatever business or venture you’re going to do, just commit to it. Because when we first started, we didn’t give ourselves a plan B or C, we just burned the bridge. It was either real estate or homeless. So we have to make it happen. Cause we left their parents’ house. And he said, you’re either going to college or you’re until you’re coming home and going to college or you’re not coming home. So we said, alright, we’re not coming home. So we had to really commit to it. And yes, it took a time. It took, we learned a lot in the process and one quote that I was like is “you can’t fail if you don’t quit”. So the only time you actually fail is if you quit. So if you’re continuing to prosper, continue, stop daily and continue to take action. You’re actually not failing. You’re not doing at all. So continue to take massive action. Listen to guys like Jay and you’ll be very successful.
Jay Conner (23:07):
Yeah. It’s improper for you to fail until you decide to quit. I think I heard somebody say that one time.
Austin Deraaff (23:12):
Yep.
Jay Conner (23:13):
That’s awesome. Well, listen, folks, if you want to stay connected and get to know Austin and Jake even better and perhaps work with them go on over to www.JayConner.com/closer, Again, that is to connect with Jake and Austin Deraaff go over to www.JayConner.com/closer, Austin and Jake. God bless you guys. So good to see you I’m looking forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks.
Austin Deraaff (23:54):
Thank you so much, for having us in this show. That’s the best show on the internet. So we appreciate that.
Jake Deraaff (23:58):
We’ll see you soon.
Jay Conner (23:59):
All right. Thank you so much. There you have it folks. Another episode of Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner and I am Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority. Wishing you all the best. Here’s to taking your business to the next level. And I’ll see you on the next show. Bye for now.

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