Gavin: Hey, guys, how are you doing? Welcome back, Gavin Timms with REI Network. If you watch this on YouTube and the podcast, make sure you like and subscribe. This episode is going to be unreal. OK, I’m telling you, it’s one that you will not want to miss. This is insane what we’re going to be covering in this before we do. We’ve also got a great offer I want to throw out there. If you want five thousand records for free, you want to go to batchleads.io/gavin. While it’s on. I don’t know how long that off is going to be me and Josh when I introduce him, I use Batch. Ihighly recommend it. Go and get your free records. You got seven days to check this out. Me and Josh both use it, generate a lot of leads from it. We’re going to get into that here in a second. 

Gavin: So go to batchleads.io/Gavin and get in while you can while that’s available. So anyway, right. I want to introduce my guest coaching client of mine. Super cool guy. Amazing story. That’s why I wanted him on and I twisted his arm enough to get him on here. So, Josh Howard, how we doing? 

Josh: Yeah, doing great. Gavin, thanks so much for the honor and privilege to be on here, my man. 

Gavin: I appreciate you and I’m so excited and I don’t even want to steal the limelight because I want you to tell us your story all-star a little bit and then I’ll let you go. You’re actually doing deals virtually from somewhere and you’re going to get into that in Indianapolis, very active. Came out the blocks doing deals, got a partner that also is virtual in Denver. Will just tell us what tell us about you, what you do when what’ve you been doing deals from and let’s start that. 

Josh: Yeah. Gavin So about thirteen years ago, I moved to the country of India, so not India, Indianapolis, Indiana. India. And so I’m halfway around the world. Right. And my family and I are a part of a nonprofit organization. My wife leads a children’s home. It’s an orphanage. She has over one hundred and fifty kids there. And I work with pastors and leaders and churches and things of that sort. My wife’s family started the organization about forty years ago, and so they’ve just been doing amazing work. They do all sorts of different things to help the people of India and the surrounding countries. And so what kind of got us into the whole real estate investment world and stuff like that was I have a friend of mine that’s also in ministry. He’s a pastor in Texas and my brother-in-law, Greg and I, who’s my who’s my partner that you mentioned from Denver. Him and I have been dreaming for a long time what it might look like to completely supplement our income so that we wouldn’t have to take income from the nonprofit world. 

Josh: But we could keep doing that work for free, basically. And so then we could completely become financially independent and what that might look like. But we just from India, man, what do you do, bro? Like I said, I had no idea what I could do from India where I wasn’t going to be working, like every night, all night, throughout the middle of the night and stuff. I had no idea what to do. And so my buddy in Texas was like, Josh, have you ever heard of wholesaling real estate? Have you ever heard of what people do in that world? And I was like, no, man, tell me about it. So this was about, I guess, about six months ago that he told me about this. And back in August of 2020, at the very end of the month, we jumped head first, man head first then and started doing marketing and things in the Indianapolis market. And so that’s kind of what got us going. And like you said, man, it was all the way from India. So I know if we can be successful from India, man, any anybody can do this if they put their mind to it for sure. 

Gavin: Yeah. And I just think it’s amazing because you have so many more roadblocks than most in the United States. I mean, I was in England when I was traveling about that a lot, doing deals. And I’m only the time difference of eight hours to five hours, depending on where in the United States when you’re on a new level of doing that and just to stay disciplined and have the vision to be able to do this, I think is amazing. And I think people are going to get a lot of value to say, well, hold on, if he’s doing it from India, then why can’t I do it when I’m in the same state or I’m going to a few states across because there’s no excuses. Right. And that’s the power of systems. And we’re going to come on to that and dove into that here. But talk about just real quick water on this, about your nonprofit. I do want you to talk a little bit about it if you want to throw a website out for people to check it out. I know a lot of people want to give to these things that our audience to watch it. I want to donate as well. So anything that you can share on that, if you want to just throw that out, that would be awesome, if you don’t mind. 

Josh: Yeah, I would love to do so. The nonprofit is called Central India Christian Mission. The website is IndiaMission.org, India Mission dot org. And like I said, it’s been around about forty years. Man we do a lot of different things. I mean after 40 years my in-laws have there’s so many different arms and legs now of the organization. We do a ton of social work when it comes to drilling wells where there is no clean water or we have, like I mentioned. My wife does the children, so we actually have six different children’s homes in different parts of India with over a thousand kids in those homes that we’re taking care of every single day. We help pastors, we help leaders. We do leadership development. We have a hospital. We have a nursing college. The sky’s the limit on what we’ve been able to do and what God has been able to do through this whole work. And so it’s really been incredible. So, yeah, anybody who’s interested that wants to join us or even to come see us, we’d love to have people over to India if they want to come see the work and come hang out with us a little bit. But yeah, check out the website, Indian Mission dot org. And you can also contact us through that website as well, if you’d like. 

Gavin: Yeah, that’s awesome. I appreciate you sharing that. And again, the amazing things about real estate. So I appreciate you’ve been out there for the U.S. 13 years, which is insane. I remember when we started to work together, we got on the phone, you filled out an application and I’m in India and I’m like India in indie band in India. Oh. It was like 3:00 in the morning. And I was having this conversation. And obviously you started doing deals. Guy in Texas got you introduced. You set it up. So let’s talk about that. Like, why Indy? How did you get into Indianapolis on that market? 

Josh: Yeah, absolutely. So a little bit of the background. So my my buddy in Texas that actually he was a part of like Tom Crowell’s coaching group with wholesomely. And so he introduced me to the whole eight people. I actually was coached by Warren Hardy, who was a virtual I think you’ve been on her podcast as well sometimes. So I got connected there. And through that course, Yavne, basically, I they really had us dove deep into what market are you going to choose and stuff like that. And Indianapolis is where our nonprofit headquarters is. So I know that area really well. It’s also big enough that it’s a really there’s tons of rental properties in that market. There’s a ton of fix and flip going on in the downtown area of Indianapolis. It’s not like a New York City or an L.A. or San Diego where it’s just crazy expensive. It is a Midwestern town. And my brother-in-law, who’s also my partner, he grew up in Indianapolis, too, so he knows the area really well. So it’s kind of a combination of how hot the market was, how many rental properties there were, how many fix and flip properties there were, the population of that city. And then also kind of our familiarity with it is kind of what got us involved there originally. 

Gavin: Yeah, no, absolutely. And that’s exactly kind of how we teach as well, that you have to go with as many as much kind of all the right tools with your tool belt within that market. When I did you grow up, then you go to college, that you have family, that you know, someone that’s in that area that could do that. And then you got the one percent, right? I mean, in the one percent rule, let’s say things a rent in four thousand books worth one hundred thousand or maybe better than that. All these things identify in to a virtual move is exactly the way that we analyze it as well. So that’s awesome. So you start diving in and you start obviously marketing, you start doing a lot of texting using Batch. Remember, guys, go to Batchleads.io/gavin, get involved in a lot of mass texting. You’re not really using the CRM. You’ve got no systems. Right. You’re making it happen and you’re doing deals, right? 

Josh: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we that’s so at the beginning it was only texting. That’s the only marketing we did. And we chose that Gavyn which there may be some people listening or watching for me living in India, I couldn’t do things that were more of a pull marketing where where I was waiting on people to get back to me, because if I did direct mail, they may call me at four a.m. in India, you know what I mean? Like, you never know when they’re going to call or if we were going to try to do any other sort of like I couldn’t do bandit signs or driving for dollars or anything like that. I couldn’t do those things being so far away. Texting was on my own time. I was I was able to do it whenever I had the time to do it. And it just went so much better that way. And it was crazy. Man. We started marketing the end of August, closed our first deal at the end of September like it was it was nuts. And I had I had people tell me all the time, Josh, it may take three, four, five, six months. And I get that it does happen in some markets. But how quickly deals started coming in, man, it was unbelievable. Our first deal in September and then October, our company man gross. I think it was twenty-six thousand dollars in October. So how quick that happened. 

Gavin: And it’s amazing. We said that we were out of the coaching call yesterday and we’ll come on to how we started to work together. You even said to me that you did it faster than me. 

Josh: I’m messing with you. You’ve done way more than me, bro. You’ve done well. 

Gavin: And it’s funny. It was funny. You reminded that. Yeah, OK, that’s good. So obviously, you’re making it happen. Your partner. What I would say is. Probably, right? Yes, making it happen, you coming in, unless not, you’re very personable, you can hold a conversation, you go to interact and people are going to see that, which helps. Right. If you can interact and talk and you don’t mind talking to people and interacting, then you can make this work, right. So you have that when people listen to you. And that’s why I see what you did as fast, because you can hold a conversation, you can sell, you can talk, you can engage all these things. That’s going to help you. So great job. So what happened was a little chaotic. Then we started working together for more of the system side, the structure of the business. How are you going to be able to do what you need to do kind of in India, sleep, not rely on everything to come down to you believe? 

Josh: Definitely. So how do I actually sleep and do this business? 

Gavin: Yes, absolutely. Because you were working I mean, we’ve done two, three in the morning on a regular basis. 

Gavin: So obviously, how’s it been? Like, what will you tell the story? So we started talking about that a stroke to better systems. How can you be smarter with your time to drive this and looking at it from a marketing standpoint, looking at more proactive sort of reactive marketing. And at the end of the day, when you have partners in the deal, you have to be more selective with the marketing that you’re doing, in my opinion, because no one is interested in you doing thirty thousand. Thirty thousand. Fantastic. If you spent twenty-five thousand doing it right. And that’s what people don’t see. So looking at your cost, making sure, you know, making sure your team’s efficient to talk about that kind of the things that we still like to do, put in place how that’s looking as we start building this. 

Josh:  Yeah, it’s been amazing, man, because we going back to the why behind this business, I think that’s so important for people to to really get early on is why in the world am I doing this right? I mean, you don’t want to you don’t want to quit one 40 hour week job to end up working 80 hours a week in another business. Like you don’t want to do that. Why are you doing it? And so are why. Greg and I, both my partner and I both was really to step out of income in the nonprofit world, but still work full time in the nonprofit world. And so it wasn’t to leave that to go into some other business where we’re working more and harder and longer hours and stuff. And so at the beginning, like you said, things that were super chaotic and we didn’t really have any systems in place. We had systems, but they were broken, man. And it wasn’t working. I felt like we kept getting the bottle next in our company because there just wasn’t enough hours in the day, man. There wasn’t enough time in the day to really get things scaled well. 

Josh: And so we were really dreaming and having a vision for our business on how can we scale this so that it continues to grow in spite of us. It continues to grow without us working every single day in the ins and outs of everything in the business. And what’s that look like? And so when we started working with you, man, I mean, you got us you got to set up with a proper CRM. That has been amazing, man. It’s been so good. REI simple has changed the game of our business. We now have a hub. We never really had a hub before. Deals were falling through the cracks. Leads were falling through the cracks because we didn’t have that system in place. And so you guys getting us set up on there, you’ve got us connected to a virtual assistant that’s been helping massively with the new marketing channel with cold calling and things like that. Yeah, you’ve helped to get our other VA, which is an admin VA, kind of up to speed on things and stuff like that. 

Josh: And so the fact that we now have virtual systems, a system in place. You’ve talked with Greg and I about scaling and making sure that we’re able to get to a point our business of kind of fulfilling that vision that we have of really not having to work so many hours in a business and then spend so much on marketing. And then pretty soon, at the end of the day, not really making much out of it of what you would hope or what you would expect. And so it’s been incredible, bro. I absolutely loved working with you. I want to thank you from our Greg and I and our whole team. Man, you and your whole team have just done an incredible job, bro. And honestly, I’m not a details guy, Gavin. I’m more of the big picture visionary kind of person and so on my left to my own devices, OK, I would have I would have never been able to create a system or structure like what you guys have helped us create. And so that that’s worth a million dollars. Man, it’s been awesome. 

Gavin: Well, I appreciate it. Thank you. And obviously you’re a pleasure to work with because you don’t you just get on with it, right? You don’t question you’re looking at a model that works. OK, and just to back up what I seen when I came into the business is like, this is amazing. This guy’s in India, this guy’s in Denver. The both doing it virtual, the both making money. Well, then I’m looking at the profits. Not enough, right, in my opinion, for the work that’s going in. Right. You making five-thousand-dollar fees and stuff like that. That’s great. Well, now we’re going to expand that. Right. And obviously you’re a giving person and all then, but you still got to run. This is a business to get way. You’ll go in. Right. And it’s all going to filter that through with your life and what you will do. And your passion is to be given back. I was one thing and we looked at the felt that were very, very lead heavy. And what I mean by that is that you were sending so many taxes, so many leads coming in, and all you were doing was you were closing deals that were ready to close now. But we had nothing on follow up. Some like you’re closing like three or three a month or whatever. It was right. To three a month. And it’s working. But I’m like, you’re getting them fresh. Like I’m closing 90 percent on follow up. 

Gavin: So if we can get that open the follow up, all that now is profit because you’ve already spent the money in the pipeline. So if we can prime the leads and get them having a Habila business is the CRM track in the marketing channels that are coming in and we don’t know yet if it’s cold, cold and Tex in Texas is going to be a number one. Why? Because that’s where the focus is. That’s what gets results for you. With me is cold calling is number one, so no right or wrong with that. But we need to track it. And once we’re tracking it and we can control the lead flow coming in because that’s where the overwhelming is and it gets tagged right in the CRM with a rhyme. I follow up and sequences on it. It’s going to get you structured not only for you in the position that you’re sitting in the business, but also the people in the team. As you grow, when the acquisition manager comes in and takes your role, eventually he will understand this is how we run it and this is up. You can’t bring in an acquisition manager into complete chaos because it’ll just be chaos for him. Right. 

Gavin: So I think we’re building that structure out the basic things. So you now can then get your time back if you want to scale in the business. In my opinion, you can’t be the business. Right. Meaning you can’t be the job because if you how you would do it right where you’ve got your full-time job in India, you’re working at the night, you sleep a few hours, you have kids can only last so long and you’re getting results. So how do we get your time back? And then your time is spent in a different area by sitting on the business, working on the business to scale the business. And that’s kind of where we’re doing it while we’re staying profitable. I mean, Amazon is good to see. I think we’ve got we’ve stopped, I will say as well, not try to do too many marketing channels either. We talked about driving for dollars. You’re overpaying. How are we going to track them all? These are the systems that were being used efficiently with just cost and money. We’ve got to get rid of them for now and introduce them when there’s a time and a place. 

Josh: Absolutely. Yeah, you’re the way that the way that you kind of took a look at things for us, Gavin. It was almost like you were just doing an basically an audit on our current business structure and saying, OK, what do we need to get rid of? What do we need to keep doing? What do we need to double down on? What do we need to add? What do we need to start doing completely and to kind of have a second set of eyes on the business as experienced as yours? I mean, it was it was amazing to be able to do that, man, because it really helped us save money. It helped us save money on areas that maybe we were wasting money on that we thought was going to work well and it didn’t. And then put more money into areas that we’re actually going to be more profitable. And so that’s been amazing for us. It’s been really good. 

Gavin: Yeah, no doubt that. I appreciate it. And you’ve just done today you’re working. I think it’s not closed yet, but you’re working on your biggest deal, right? You’ve got to you’ve got a good one. And I don’t want to again, nothing is done till it’s done. What are you working on? Your biggest deal, right? Yes, we are. 

Josh: Yes, it’s yeah. It’s a big one. It’s a five-property package. And yeah, that one is going to be by far our biggest deal yet. It’ll be the most profit we’ve ever made in one deal. And whenever it closes, it’s supposed to close in a few weeks. But it’ll be our have our biggest month ever because of that deal. And so it’ll be it’ll be big man. 

Gavin: It’ll be great. And it’s good to see this happen to good people. You work at it. And I just think people listen like this. There’s no excuses. That’s what I want them to get. Like you in India, you’re getting and you make an app and no one else. People want to just call it a day at five, five o’clock. You only wish you could call it day at five o’clock. Right. When you’re doing calls and we’re scheduling things two or three in the morning because you discipline to make it happen with your vision and your why your why overtakes everything right when it gets hard. Why am I doing this. Well, you know why. Because you are strong and you’re going to make it happen and that’s what you’re doing. So I appreciate it. Also, guys, I just want to throw this out now, if Josh doesn’t mind, he’s obviously very active in the Indianapolis market. So if you know you’ve got deals in the contract, you need help JVing. Josh has been working on a big business as well, so he’s probably happy to be with you. So if you’ve got any deals in the Indianapolis market, Josh, right. If you can fire off an email or something, people can kind of send you if you’ve got a deal. They want to JV and maybe you can collaborate again, REI network. Network with people and get more deals done as well. 

Josh: Yeah, for sure. If somebody wants to connect or about anything in the real estate market. My personal email is [email protected], iCloud, dotcom. 

Gavin: Awesome, and that’s going to be in the notes as well, guys below, so make sure you check that out. So, Josh, anything else I appreciate? You know, you’ve got to get back to it here. I want to hold you up because I know this is a fun time right now. This is money time. So I don’t want to be holding anything up. But anything else you want to share or anything before we go to finish?

Josh: So, yeah, I just want to encourage anybody listening that if, like I mentioned at the very beginning, if we’re able to be successful from such a far distance in India, if you’re just now starting, if you’re listening and just getting started, I want to encourage you. Just keep taking action. Keep taking that next step. Keep doing the next thing on the list. Keep calling people, texting people. If you keep marketing to sellers, you’re going to find deals. And so don’t give up, keep focused because this definitely works. And if you need help in the business, I definitely want to encourage you to contact Gavin and his team because they do a killer job and so they can get you set up real nice as well. 

Gavin: I appreciate that. Yeah. So, guys, if you’re interested in kind of working with me and I swear I’ve not paid Josh anything to save them kind words. 

Josh: If you want to Gavin, if you want to, I’d be glad. 

Gavin: But if you want to if you’re interested in work and if you need systems, OK, if you need help, we have what would people one-to-one or I set systems up if you go to REINetwork.com/systems. REINetwork.com/systems. Reach out. We’ll get on the phone, as Josh knows, it’s not any sales pitch. We talk. If it’s a fit, we do it. If it’s not, we don’t. So make sure you reach out. I appreciate you, Josh. Looking forward to getting you back on the podcast to get an update in a few months from literally what you’ve been doing and where you’ve been and then how they structure and how you’re going to grow. And hopefully it’s not even about deals. It’s about the profit and more profit with the system and building it out. All right. But so I appreciate you. Thank you for joining us today. 

Josh: Thanks, Gavin. I appreciate it, buddy. Thanks.