Why Vertical Integration is Crucial for Growing your Business with Josh Wilson
What is it like to make a ton of money and grow companies that weren’t yours? Our guest, BRRRR method expert Josh Wilson, knows what that feels like, and it became the turning point for why he started figuring out ways to buy real estate. In this episode, Josh talks about how he started in property management. He shares how he discovered the BRRRR method and incorporated it into the vertical integration model. Over the years, Josh has turned $150,000 into over $15,000,000 using the BRRRR method. He now runs a BRRRR Bootcamp that helps other budding investors learn the ropes of the business. Join in and learn how he does it! — Watch the episode here Listen to the podcast here Why Vertical Integration is Crucial for Growing your Business with Josh Wilson I’m joined by Josh Wilson. Josh, thanks for being here. What’s going on, Tim? It’s just another beautiful day in Dallas, Texas. Why don’t you take a minute to say hello to everybody? Tell them who you are. I’m Josh Wilson with the BRRRR Bootcamp. We teach the BRRRR Method. In addition to that, I got started in real estate by learning how to do property management and how to be an operator when it came to real estate. I stumbled upon the BRRRR Method several years ago. That is where everything blew up for me. I was your traditional investor that was doing your 20%, 30% down payments, then found out about the BRRRR Method, and completely blew up my portfolio. My wife and I have been BRRRR-ing since before it was cool. I love that we get to talk about this because it’s one of those no money down things that people don’t understand. I like to start these episodes with what I call the BLUF, the Bottom Line Up Front. When I was in the Marine Corps, I would brief generals. One of the things they used to tell us was, “You’ve got to make sure you say the most important thing up front in case the general needs to leave.” What are the most important real estate trends we’ve faced now? Where do people need to be focused? One thing you’ll hear me say a lot is vertical integration. That is what I have founded and been able to build my companies on. When I say vertical integration, what I mean is I have a property management company. We have a rehab company. We also have a sales brokerage and an acquisitions department. We are vertically integrated within our companies. We are now able to essentially take the entire process and put it under one roof. From an efficiency standpoint and economy scale standpoint, it is massive to be able to scale a portfolio. Without that vertical integration, we would not be able to take a $150,000 loan that we started out with as our private money loan and BRRRR-ed it all the way into over a $15 million portfolio. It is higher than that now. We’re growing by the millions about every couple of months. It is massive. Vertical integration is huge. It’s one thing that I’m an advocate for. I teach a lot about it. I love the concept of vertical integration because whether you’re doing $1 billion a year in business or $1,000 a week in wholesales, the more of the transaction you can control and influence. Even more, you do not rely on someone else. One of the worst things about this business for me is that so much of your word depends on other people’s performance. Even down to my new details when it comes to maintenance or rehabs, we’re in an economy where contractors are not around, not available, or their prices are too high. When you have vertical integration, you are able to take that rehab piece. We have our own in-house team. We are in control of how fast our projects get done, on time, and under budget. That is huge for us. Let’s go back in time. Clearly, you are a Harvard-educated quantum engineer that has figured out how to create words like vertical integration. I would like to know more of your story, how you got here, how you ended up doing this, and where you think that you can help people that are reading. It all started back when I was a kid. There was a guy on the TV by the name of Brad Richdale. He sold these infomercials about all these yachts, jets, and everything on the TV. I was seven years old. I told my dad one day, “Dad, I want to do that. I want to own a yacht. I want to own a jet.” My dad was like, “Okay, son. Whatever, no big deal.” I told him, I was like, “I will work. I’ll cut grass. I’ll do whatever it is. Can you buy me the infomercial? Buy me his little cassette recordings.” He bought me the actual infomercial. I then took that and went to my mom’s office. She was a secretary at the time. I took it and I photocopied it. I put them into manila envelopes. I went door to door and sold them for $100 apiece. I took his information. I had no idea, but that was the entrepreneur in me. I was trying to take a product, go out, resell it, and make money. That started my spark. That flopped and only lasted for a week. My wife and I were sitting around fifteen years later. She was like, “HGTV, look at these people, flipping houses, and doing all this stuff.” I had a little bit of a bug. I had an itch. I wanted to get into real estate. The only way for me to get into real estate was to learn how to manage properties. I didn’t have any money. I was broke. I ended up working for a property management company. A year later,
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