From Stuck to Unstoppable: The Mindset and Strategy Shift That Changes Everything with Jacob Bopst

Transcript

[Mattias]
Welcome back to the REI Agent. We’re here with Jacob Bobst. I said it right, did I?

[Jacob Bopst]
You did, you got it right on there, right on there. Excellent.

[Mattias]
I always have anxiety about that, but Jacob, thanks so much for being on the show.

Can you give us a bird’s eye view of who you are and what you do in real estate?

[Jacob Bopst]
Absolutely, again. And first, I want to thank you too for having me on here, Mattias. So thank you very much for the opportunity.

A little bit about me. Again, my name is Jacob Bobst. I’m a husband, a father.

And first and foremost, I like to think of myself, but in investing, I do a little bit of everything. I do fix and flips, buy and holds, wholesales, innovation, wholetail, and happy to break into any of those during our conversation here. But probably been investing and doing the real estate thing for probably about 12 years or so, about.

And right now I’m grateful as of 2025, I went full-time in real estate investing. So really grateful for that. And that’s a little bit about me and what I have going on.

[Mattias]
I love it. I want to definitely get into the definitions of some of those. Some people may not be familiar with it, but we can get there.

Let’s, I guess, what were you doing? Were you holding the same primary job before you went full-time in it? And then, yeah, what kind of got you to start looking into investment real estate?

[Jacob Bopst]
Yeah, so my, to go back a little bit further than that, I was interested in real estate. And what’s really interesting for this podcast, I started off as a real estate agent. So that was my gateway into real estate.

I thought, okay, real estate, I got to be an agent. That’s where the money is. And I joined with a Coldwell banker in my local area and did terribly, did terribly.

Did like one or two deals a year, like wasn’t successful by any means, it’s just kind of like sphere of influence. But still, you get so much knowledge and experience and understanding contracts and inspections and timelines and working with title companies and so much stuff through that, in that avenue before you. So I feel like I had a big step ahead of most people like who just try to jump into any of those avenues.

So that’s kind of where I started out there. From there, not making any money in real estate as an agent, I did get my first property, did a birth strategy for people who aren’t familiar with that is, you buy it, it needs work, you fix it up, you put a tenant into it to rent it out, and then you do a cash out refinance and pull all the equity back out of it and hopefully pay yourself some tax free money as well. And so that was like my first deal that I did.

And then I got serious with my now wife and she was like, you need to make some money. Like, what are you doing? Like, go get a job, you know, go get a job.

I was like, okay. So then I thought, what is the, besides real estate, like where else is the money? Where’s the money at, Mattias?

I was like, where’s the money? And I was like, the financial industry, Wall Street, you know, that’s where I need to go. So I got like the most basic bare bones job at Tiro Price, answering the phones, working with IRAs.

And then from there, I was in that industry for about four years. And that was the last kind of my career was, you know, with the licenses that I had and everything. That was my last job I had was in the financial industry.

And that was the last one, 2025. And then while I was doing that job though, part-time, that’s when I was building my kind of real estate empire, trying to build doors. And then I made a switch in 2023 to be more of an active investor, which we can definitely talk about.

But that’s what the active side of opposed to the passive side, which I was building, and then switching, making a mindset switch in how I invested in real estate, made it so that I could go full-time investing in real estate. But was an agent for about four years, had my license and referrals since then. And now here we are.

[Mattias]
Yeah, okay, so there’s a lot I wanna tease out here. First of all, if you don’t mind me asking, well, first of all, when you were starting with being an agent, that would have been what, like, so?

[Jacob Bopst]
It was like 2015.

[Mattias]
Yeah, so that’s close to when I started and the market was slow. It was like, it was still kind of, we were starting to maybe slowly ramp up from the big crash, but things were just, you know, it was like months on the market. And maybe I’m not speaking accurately for your market.

No, no, you’re spot on, Mattias, you’re spot on, yeah. And I mean, so I started in 2014 and it was, you know, a good three years before my business kind of ramped up and I was pretty solely focused on it. And I was also doing another job.

But do you think that if you break down your strengths, your skills, what you bring to the table, would you be able to articulate why you think maybe the investing side of the space suits you better than the sales space? Or do you think if you were to, you know, go all in on real estate sales again or in a different marketing condition, that kind of thing, that it might look different? I mean, would you be able to break any of that down for us?

[Jacob Bopst]
Big time, that’s a great, great question because, and it’s, I have a simple answer and it’s just, as an investor, you make more money. Sure. There’s bigger splits, like a real estate agent, if you like, look, look at the HUDs, you know, look at the Altos.

You know, you’ll see that like the investor side, like you can afford to spend more on marketing. And it’s because of that, I think that just the number one is just the money, the money and talking about like skills that I have, it’s not many. It’s not many.

It’s maybe, you know, it’s the same, it’s the same skills just talking to people, you know, just like talk to people. You don’t even really need skills that is just reps. You know, it’s literally reps and learning how to ask a good question and learning how to actually listen, which is tough.

And you can ask my wife about that. You know, it’s tough sometimes to just listen, but yeah, really for me, it was the money side of it. Cause I’d see, you know, you make 3%, you know, maybe, maybe somebody as savvy might get you down to 2% when you’re, you know, maybe you’ll get both sides of the commission.

I don’t know what state you’re in. Maybe you can do dual agency, but you know, that’s such a small piece of the pie as to what’s out there in the investing world. It really is like, for example, I’ll give a concrete example.

You know, there was a deal that I just did here that my agent who kind of, and being an agent, I can speak to this cause I was, I was one. Like agents do so much, you know, so much work for free and it might not even pan out. You know, the thing about all the buyer showings, all the contract, all the information, all the rent, and people do not take agents for granted.

They don’t understand how much an agent does for you. Being an investor and having an agent on your side, like I get it. And I’m like the best person to work with ever because I understand that.

And like, I’m really respectful of their time and the effort and the energy they put in. But at the end of the day, an agent’s going to do way more work than I’m going to do as an investor. And they’re going to get paid way less and I’m going to make way more.

And so that’s the mindset shift. And I think, and I love what you’re doing Mattias about like teaching agents about the investing side, because I believe every agent should be an investor. Every agent, if every agent was an investor, it would help their family and their financial kind of positioning tenfold for sure.

Because there’s times when being an agent makes sense, but there’s also times when being an investor makes sense. And so having both those hats, it’s really helpful. So that’s my answer is money.

[Mattias]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I wanted to tease out something here quick with what you’re saying and I’m making some assumptions here, but you’re probably talking more about things like flips and maybe wholesaling, that kind of stuff where you’re getting more of an active income. So I think we should, first of all, kind of say there’s kind of two paths here, right?

There’s active income, like commission would be, you know, if you have a great sales business, you can make a good amount of money in sales as same with, you know, investing on the active side. And then there’s a passive side. So if you’re doing like a burst strategy or whatever, you may not get a ton of cash.

The cashflow is probably not gonna be huge necessarily, depending on the property, but that’s building up your kind of investment bucket, your long-term wealth, if you will. So when you’re talking about earning more money, you’re not buying rentals necessarily, you’re flipping a house or is that what you, is that the transition you said you made in 2023 is to be more active?

[Jacob Bopst]
Yeah, exactly. And I’m so glad you circled back to this because it is such, I thought my way to being my own boss was through the rental side. And maybe back in like 2012, like you could have a rental business, maybe because of where the prices are, but realizing that building, cause I built up maybe like 13, 13 rental properties, 13 doors, excuse me.

And I was in the exact same position that I was, like my net worth looked good, but I was in the exact same position that I was. And I still had to be grinding out of my nine to five, listening to my boss, doing whatever he says, go to the bathroom when he says. And I was like, what am I doing wrong here?

Like, it’s great for my taxes, great for my taxes. Owning rental properties and having that, great for long-term appreciation play. Like that’s the best way, the great way to park your money as a great investment.

However, for that active income where you can support your family, non-existent, non-existent. You think you’re getting that cash flow, you’re like, oh, I’m making 500, I’m making a thousand a month. Oh, profit, like after everything, that’s great.

Well, as soon as that AC goes out, as soon as that roof, one plumbing issue and you’re back to zero, my friend. And I didn’t realize that. And I spent so much of my time trying to build that up.

And then when I made the shift and I’m like, I’m so glad you asked the question. Like when I made the shift of not going the passive side and I’m not saying the passive side isn’t great. It’s just for what I wanted to do for my life.

I wanted to be my own boss and I needed to switch to the active side, which is fix and flip, wholesale, innovations, wholesale.

[Mattias]
Yeah. Yeah, so that’s exactly it. And I think, you know, when we’re looking at Robert Kiyosaki’s cashflow quadrant, we can kind of outline some of the steps and outline some of the ways to think about this.

And I think, you know, the big win, a lot of agents feel is going from the employed to the self-employed. I mean, the same with you, right? I mean, that was what you were aiming for, right?

You were aiming to get to that self-employed category, get rid of the boss, you’re your own boss. If you’re an agent listening to this and you’re having a successful business, you feel like you might, you know, have 50 bosses at a given time. Oh yeah, for sure, for sure.

It’s still all boils down to you. And so if you move to the other side of the quadrant where you get into the business and you get into the investing, that’s where you start leveraging money and you start leveraging other people. So this is possible both to move from the investing side, the agent side into that business building, right?

Where you leverage other people, your money, et cetera. And it’s also possible to build up that investment bucket. And I think that’s those two buckets on the right side of that quadrant are what we really try to focus on is, you know, how can we build up a business that isn’t completely reliant on you?

When you take a vacation, A, you’re gonna get super busy because this always happens that way. But does it fall apart? Like, do things fall apart if you’re not available?

And then also, you know, building up that passive, that investment side that will become something big that your net worth is gonna be primarily, you know, supported by, but maybe isn’t what you can live on right now. Exactly. No, I love it.

So why don’t we get into the definitions a little bit? So you just described a number of things that you’re doing on the active side. Can you explain those definitions?

Like wholetail, what’s that, ovation?

[Jacob Bopst]
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So for my investing strategy for the, this is talking about the active side, which we were talking about. So fix and flip, everybody knows that, right?

You buy a property, you fix it up, you make it nice, make it smell nice, make it look nice. And then sell it to somebody else and make the difference, hopefully make a profit. Everybody knows that.

Wholetail is, that’s honestly in my business right now. It’s kind of like my bread and butter right now. That’s like where I’m making my most money.

It’s the same thing as a fix and flip, except you’re not fixing anything, it’s just a flip. It’s kind of a listing as is kind of deal. You do very bare minimum, so you’ll buy the property, but your goal is targeting either other investors or people who want to get into investing or that, and where you get the most money is that end buyer, the person who wants to live there, but maybe can’t afford that, something in that neighborhood that needs a deal and willing to put in a little sweat equity, which that’s what I was like when I was buying my first house.

Like I was like, just give me something, like I’ll do it myself. So that’s wholetailing is that you buy it really low at a big discount. Maybe it’s like a hoarder situation or maybe an inherited property or whatever.

And you buy it a big enough discount that after you close it, pay the closing costs, maybe pay somebody to get all the junk out of it so you can actually take pictures of it. Or maybe there’s a small leak in the roof, you patch that. If there’s an active leak, you stop that and fix that.

Very, very little under $5,000 and you just put it right back on the market. And that’s known as wholetailing is the name of that. And that’s where I’ve been making the most of my money.

That’s that. Any questions on that or moving on to the next?

[Mattias]
Yeah, well, real quick, what would some example numbers be on that kind of situation? Like how much profit, what are you buying it for? What are you selling it for?

[Jacob Bopst]
Yep. I’ll walk you through an actual deal, the last deal that I did. This is in a deal in Maryland.

And at the end of it, so if you’re buying it, how I like to, or how I do it is you could utilize like private money. We’ll talk a little bit about the lending. Like you could have your own cash, which if you have like a lot of cash sitting around doing that, which I didn’t and I don’t, and I don’t like to.

I like to keep it working for me. But I use either a hard money lender, which you gotta be really careful about. I could go into like 30 minutes talking about do’s and don’t sayers, but a hard money lender or a private money lender or a friend or a family member or whatever, borrow the money to buy the property, the majority of it.

Maybe you use your own cash, business lines of credit, or home equity loans on your property or equity or other rentals that you have. You have to pay closing costs. The way I have it set up with my hard money lender is they will pay 100% of the acquisition cost and 100% of the renovation cost.

And I always put it in like I’m gonna be doing both, renovating it so the numbers pan out, but I’m not gonna be renovating it. I’m not, I’m gonna be just buying it and put it on the market. But you gotta like play by the rules sometimes.

So for example, this one I paid for the closing costs. I didn’t get the 100% financing because of a goof on my end. I should have got it, but I messed up, but it was no big deal.

But I had to put about 48,000 down of my own cash to get the property. And this one, I also made a big blunder, which is I’ll give pro tip to somebody here. Oh, my wife turned out the light on me.

Pro tip of when you are buying a property that’s a rural, say it’s in the United City, you’re outside in the outskirts. Always double check. This is a blunder learning lesson for me.

Always double check that the driveway is actually your driveway. And if it’s not your driveway, make sure there’s an easement. That’s what I’ll say.

That sounds like it. Yeah, it was, this one was tough. Luckily I had a good enough deal where it worked out and I’ll explain the numbers in a second, but always make sure of that.

Make sure, hey, is this driveway that’s getting this property on my property? If it’s not, make sure there’s an easement in the deed. Okay, cool.

Always remember that. You will thank me later. Now, because of that, I actually, I wasn’t gonna spend under 5,000 on this deal because I had to put in a whole new driveway.

Luckily it was a big enough spot and we were able to make it work. But I had to put maybe with the stone and putting in the asphalt for the road and the permits and all that stuff, I had to put maybe about, looking at my numbers here, it looks about 20, no, no, no. Yeah, just call it another maybe 20,000 or so, 20,000.

So by the end of it, right, I ended up netting after I was done and sold. Okay, because I did this like lightning because you wanna do as fast as possible because hard money lenders interest adds up and every single month counts. In the end I profited 135,000 off that deal.

But after it was all said and done, my end profit was 68,000. So after all that stuff I had to do with, I didn’t really touch the house at all. Everything just went into figuring out how in the world can I put a driveway into this place because the driveway was not mine and the neighbors were putting up signs and putting up gates and saying, this is not your property now.

And I was like, oh man, but we made it work. You gotta be quick on your feet when you’re an investor and just pivot, take the next step. But 68,000 is how I made it.

The one previous before that, I’ll talk net profit because gross is really deceiving. People always talk about like gross profit. Like for example, the last one I had before that was a gross profit of 76, but I only made 48.

I made 48K on that deal. And then the one before that 61 gross, I made 41 net. So that’s what the numbers are looking like.

[Mattias]
Do you have estimates about what you would make if you did actually like do the full flip?

[Jacob Bopst]
Yes, yep, yep. And I always consider that cause I will do fix and flips. I’ve done them before, but I don’t, I like the speed.

I like the speed of it and I like the less stress of it. And if people who have done fix and flips before, they know that like managing people is a lot. It’s like a lot, even like hiring, if you’re gonna hire a contractor, even managing the contractor, I know a lot of people, myself included, have gotten really burnt on that.

So the risk, the mitigation of the risk is even if I would make like double the amount, I still like this route, whole tail’s better because of what I’ve experienced in the past.

[Mattias]
No, I get it. I mean, I definitely, I’ve done both and I haven’t made that kind of profit on them. It’s been difficult to find deals with enough meat on the bone to do that much.

But there’s definitely the advantage of, especially if I’m going in with a partner or something, a minimum of like a $15,000 profit each. The unknown of exactly how much it’s gonna cost, how much time it’s gonna take to actually do the full renovation. Some of the other possible unknowns that you don’t, what surprises lay ahead if you do the renovation?

There’s often, and you can get into how you actually budget for a flip, but there’s often things that you don’t expect to come up. So I totally get the appeal of doing it that way. So, okay, so then let’s go into what, Novation next?

So what’s the next one?

[Jacob Bopst]
Yeah, we can talk about Novation. So Novation is utilizing an agent, a local agent in the area. And essentially what it is, it’s a way to, this is a very, and by the way, all these strategies, when people hear about them, they might think to themselves, like, why would a seller do this?

Why would a seller give you a deal? Like, how can you get a deal where you can sell it close to as is and make 135,000 gross profit? Like, what’s happening here?

And it really just comes down to their situation, their motivation, and what’s most important to the person. And every single one of my deals, it’s a win-win situation. And people are thanking me in tears.

Sometimes when it’s all said and done, that I pulled something together and helped them out. So I say that as a preface, because with Novations, it’s the concept of it. When I found out about this, it broke my brain when I found out what Novations are.

It really, really did. And I got one settle in here in four days for where I want to make 26K. And it literally broke my brain.

So what it is, it’s essentially a seller, you don’t buy the property, okay? You talk to a seller and maybe the house is vacant and they want nothing to do with it. And they don’t want to deal with real estate agents.

They just want it gone, but they need a certain price. They can’t sell it for a cash price, which is like, you know, I’m looking at, I’m holding up my hands here, like the scale, like cash prices down here, you know, it’s like 60K, but they need to make, they don’t care how it’s done, they need to have 85,000. But the cash offer from a numbers perspective only makes sense at like 60.

I’m using these numbers as an example, obviously. But they need a little bit more money, but they don’t want to handle and do anything about it. They want the ease of the cash offer.

They want the ease of not having to talk and deal with anybody and get it done quickly if possible. But with these Novation deals, typically they do have a little bit of time. You need probably for Novations, they need to have at least like 60 to 90 days they’re willing to wait a little bit.

That’s why they can be a little bit stubborn on their price because they’re like, yeah, I have a little bit of time. And what a Novation is, is you agree to a net price for the seller. So let’s say, okay, Mr. or Mrs. Seller, I will give you 85K. You need 85K, cash offers down here, but hey, there’s an opportunity where I could actually do this for you called a Novation, where I call it my buyer concierge service, where I can take care of everything for you. I can find the buyer. I have a big network in the area.

I can find, we can use someone on my team to list the property and get it sold for you. I’ll take care of the negotiations, the contracts, the legalities. If a little small tidbit repair costs come up, I’ll cover it to get the deal closed as long as it makes sense in the end.

Do you know that I have to make some money somewhere? As long as that works out, I will take care of it and I will sell your property for you. How does that sound?

And they say, yes, please do that. I’m done with it. I don’t want to be involved.

Great, I’ll guarantee you at the end of the day, I’ll pay the closing costs, the commissions for the real estate agents. You’ll get 85 net to your bank, minus any mortgages, liens, judgments, that kind of stuff. But everything else I’ll cover, it’s 85 net to you.

And the person said, that’s perfect. That’s exactly what I want. That’s what I need.

I don’t need more. And they say, well, how does that work? How does that work for you?

Well, Mr. and Mrs. Seller, as long as you get to 85, I’m going to be paying all the stuff on the sides here. I’m going to list the property. I’m probably going to list it around like 150 or so, but I’m paying for everything and I’m going to handle everything.

The difference between what I sell the property for and your net, that’s my profit. Could be 10,000, could be 20,000, could be a hundred dollars. I don’t know, because it depends on where your property is going to sell.

And then you lay out, hey, I think it’s going to sell here though. Okay, great. So you then have, you get a limited power of attorney to just do listing docs and negotiate offers for them, for the seller.

And then you also have a few other things for innovation paperwork and a purchase agreement saying, hey, I’m netting you 85,000 at the end of the deal. People who want to try this, by the way, as a word of caution, always use a title company that knows this stuff. Because if you don’t, a lot don’t, and they will be like, what are you doing?

This is madness. But it’s not, I promise you, it’s completely legit. It’s just you want a title company that knows what they’re doing.

And it’s, you want to have the same title company on both sides. And that might be hard in some states, but you always, when you’re listing it, when you’re doing it, always mention that, hey, the title company, we’re only accepting offers that it’s the same, it’s this title company to make this work. But essentially that’s the concept of it.

I listed for 150, I’m representing the seller. The seller is selling it, but I’m handling everything. I’m bringing in the real estate agent.

They’re taking care of the majority of things, as you know. They do the most of the legwork. But any negotiations, any repairs that come up, or anything that maybe needs to be handled, I’m taking control of it.

And then at the end of the day, they get their 85 net, I get the difference. That’s innovation.

[Mattias]
Yeah, that’s awesome. And I think you started stressing about how the perception of what investors do. I think we talk about this a lot in the show, and I think there can be, I think there’s bad actors on both sides.

[Jacob Bopst]
Oh, for sure.

[Mattias]
Yeah, unfortunately. Not ethical and do all this stuff that give agents a bad name. And then I think it’s true for investors as well.

But it doesn’t have to be that. And you’ve just explained motivations and why people do things, and that you’re being transparent about how you’re handling everything. But that’s just important to understand.

And one way, a reframe I’ve used to kind of help understand is this, kind of what you said as well, a buyer concierge package or whatever. This is kind of like giving the most luxurious sale to these people who are in circumstances that they need it, or they really want just things handled for them and not to worry about it. They need fast cash, they need whatever.

And this is a service that provides that. And yes, there are profits that come with it, but it’s not that you’re necessarily like hoodwinking anybody into like thinking it’s something different than it is. It’s just the situation they’re in warrants this kind of service, and there’s a premium for it.

[Jacob Bopst]
And unfortunately, you’re so right. And one thing I’ll say to people is like, always be transparent 100%. That’s at least my strategy.

I am so like, if your seller can’t, or sorry, the seller you’re working with, if they can’t explain back to you what you’re doing, then you’re doing them a disservice. Like that’s my take on it. Like everyone knows we’re all on the same page.

There’s no hidden things. Cause like you said, there’s people unfortunately out there competition that they’ll say one thing, but really they’re doing something else. And that’s when there’s trouble.

And that’s when there’s people that’s upset. And that’s when it’s not, I don’t believe a win-win.

[Mattias]
Yeah, 100%. And I think if an agent, a licensed agent is wanting to do one of these strategies, I think it’s good to really dive into maybe with an attorney that’s a specialist in investing strategies, creative finance, that kind of stuff to make sure that everything is thought through and disclosures are appropriate, et cetera. But there is definitely an opportunity there too, to like be able to market to distressed properties.

Some of them will be just regular listings. Some of them will be ones that you can maybe pick up as a flip, but or a BRR. And I think ultimately it’s all about how that is presented to the buyer.

So again, like that they could, like you said, explain back to you exactly the options they have and kind of the differences in them. And some people are gonna want the easy button. Some people are gonna want that, I need the cash like in two weeks, but so that’s where these other strategies really can come into play.

[Jacob Bopst]
And to add on what you’re saying, like people are so scared to like tell people that they’re gonna make money. Like they know, consumers know, they know what you’re doing. Like, it’s okay to say like, I’m gonna do this to make money for my family.

Like no one’s gonna care. They’re gonna be like, okay, I have my own stuff going on. Like, don’t be scared to be like, I’m gonna do this to make money.

And I’ll be like, okay, sounds good. I’m doing this because I wanna get out of the country. Okay, cool.

Let’s make it happen, you know?

[Mattias]
100%. Yeah, there’s no reason to tiptoe around it. I mean, there’s no reason for you to do find win-win solutions if you’re not also winning.

[Jacob Bopst]
Yeah, exactly.

[Mattias]
Cool. Were there other, I forget what other terms.

[Jacob Bopst]
Sorry, last one. Last one, I know I’m spending a lot of time on these. So last one really quick is wholesaling.

And that’s, and again, another thing you really wanna be upfront and open about what you’re doing. Because a lot of people will pose as they’re buying it when really they’re not. And that’s a lot of, I see that so much.

And I’m like, it kind of grinds my gears a little bit. Like just tell the people what you’re doing. Like be honest about it.

So what it is, I like to think about it as selling the contract, not the property. So if I buy a property for 100,000, I’ll talk to someone and say, hey, I’m gonna buy this house, $100,000. But it’s actually me.

I work with kind of a group of investors. And I might buy it, maybe, I don’t know. It depends.

Or one of my colleagues will buy it. And if one of my colleagues are gonna buy it, I’m going to assign them. But regardless, Mr. and Mrs. Seller, we are gonna close at this date and you are gonna get this price no matter who buys it. But it’s either gonna be me or someone in my network. Does that make sense? Yes, that’s fine.

As long as you give me 100K cash, I don’t care. Perfect. And you assign the contract to someone else for 110,000.

You make $10,000. They’re willing to pay 110 for that contract that you have with the seller for 100. And then you make a small profit by assigning it to another investor who’s going to buy it.

That is wholesaling.

[Mattias]
Yeah, perfect. This one, I’ve had a little bit of a hard time thinking of an agent doing both for wholesaling and being kind of a regular agent. I mean, I think, again, to your point, like if everything’s fully understood and this seems like the best path forward, there’s probably disclosures and everything that you could get to make it all above board.

And I think in our state now, you can only do one deal. There might be some workarounds, but only one deal a year before you have to have your sales license. So there’s also, I guess, that element to it.

But I think that there’s public perception. You want to make sure that people understand who you are and what you do. If you’re primarily a real estate agent, depending on your marketing channels, et cetera, wholesaling might not come up very often.

That would be the right path. But yeah, I mean, any thoughts on that as far as if you do hold a license? Is this something that you should also explore?

Because I think getting your license and selling real estate as an agent and wholesaling are often kind of the first steps people think of when they’re wanting to get into real estate.

[Jacob Bopst]
Yeah, I think I see where your hangup is. And I had it for a while too, thinking about it. Like, how does this make sense?

Because as an agent, you’re going to try to list a property and sell it and get the most for the seller. How can you get the most for the seller when you’re trying to make a profit also, but instead of a commission? So it’s a whole different beast.

The way I look at it, Mattias, is like what is most important to the seller and do they care? That’s where I come from. What is most important to them?

Because there’s different experiences, I’ll put it that way. There’s a different experience from selling the house extremely, extremely quick because you know somebody in the area and the person doesn’t care and they want to get out of it, opposed to going through the formal listing agreement and getting nice pictures and there’s different types of properties. And I think as a real estate agent, you need to be very mindful of how you do it, but I don’t believe that you can’t do it.

And I believe that there’s going to be people out there and opportunities where it might make sense for them and they’d be perfectly fine with it as long as you’re, like we talked about, upfront, honest, and open and saying like, hey, I could probably have this under contract tomorrow. There’s a buddy of mine that’s an investor down here. I’ll try to, instead of me making my money through a commission, you don’t have to pay me commission.

This might be one I want to buy or he might want to buy. How do you feel about that? And that way you don’t have to deal with people coming through your house, a bunch of showings.

You can keep it discreet. Is that important to you? It is?

Okay, we can do it that way. And that way you can make money that way. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that if that’s what they want and you’re open and transparent about it.

That’s how I feel about it. Sure.

[Mattias]
No, I think the open and transparency part is super key and really, as long as the people understand and they agree to that approach, there’s that. If you’re in a brokerage, you might explore a little bit what it means to receive payment in that regard. Does it still need to go through the company as far as splits go, that kind of thing.

So there’s probably some other things to think about but from a perspective of a client. At the end of the day, you’re really trying to give the client what they want, the best solution for them and you have way more tools available here depending on the situation for them.

[Jacob Bopst]
And you give them options. You give them options. And that’s what I wanted to say.

It’s like, you let them know, hey, we could do this. We could list it, we get it nice. You can get the most money going.

And this is exactly how my sales conversation is too, Matthias, is like, you can go this route. Like if you want to get the most money and you have time, like list with a real estate agent. Like I wouldn’t work with me.

I like to tell people that straight up in every single one of my calls when I talk to a seller. I’m like, if you need the most money for it and you’re trying to get the most, like list with an agent. But if that’s not important to you, oh, that’s not the most important thing.

You need to move quick or you need X, Y, and Z. And that’s why I think both can work. It just depends on the situation.

[Mattias]
Yeah, that’s a really good point. Options. Yeah, I love it.

We probably could keep going forever, but I think I need to start wrapping up here. I’m curious about some golden nuggets. I mean, we’ve had a lot already in the show.

Do you have some prepared for us?

[Jacob Bopst]
Oh, I got some. I got all the nuggets. I got all the nuggets.

Not from Chick-fil-A, although we do love those. So one that I’m going to say is like you’re saying like, hey, I know there’s some workarounds and like if you only have one wholesale year, I’ll give you one or two. One workaround for if you have wholesaling deals is something called double closing, which is essentially using kind of like a transactional lender where you do take possession of the property.

And this is something you want to talk to your title company about. You do take possession of the property, but it’s like for minutes and you already have the end buyer lined up. You don’t even use your funds really.

There’s some title companies, two different ways to do this. One, sometimes in your state, they’ll require that not the third party purchaser comes in with their funds. You need to bring your own funds.

That’s when you can use a transactional lender where they’ll charge you like 1% and it’s like quick. They just want to see that the other money is still there. So double closing is essentially I’m buying it A to B, seller to me, I’m B.

And then C over here is a third party purchaser. And he’s the one that’s actually going to buy it. So you’re wholesaling it, but you can’t.

So you tell the title company closing my name and then right away, sell it to them right away. So it goes from like in a matter of minutes, it goes to your name and then boom, sold to the next guy. So there’s a little bit more costs involved with that because of closing costs and stuff than just pure wholesale.

But people use double closes to get around that rule. Also, if they wanted to hide how much they’re making because they think it might upset somebody or if you just feel more comfortable doing that because you said, hey, I’m going to buy it and I am going to buy it. So technically you will buy it, but maybe it switches up where you want to do.

That’s not somewhere else because you can make money because whatever, because of life, who knows. But you said, you know what? I want to be true to my word.

I am going to buy it. And you do buy it. It’s just you buy it and then right away sell it to somebody else like that.

So that’s the way to round it. That’s one golden nugget, I think. Yeah, yeah.

Second golden, I’m going to give a mindset golden nugget. I’m going to get a mindset. This really was a shift for me in my business, my life, even my health, my mental health is lowering importance, lowering importance of things that happened.

A lot of times in life, negative things, I’m going to say negative because things happen all the time. And the emotional juice that we put on the things because of our upbringing, because of our things that happened in the past, things that we believe or we think that are true that maybe aren’t, we put a lot of emotional charge on certain things. And typically it’s negative things.

And whenever you do that, you need to remember to lower the importance of it. You’re putting too much importance on things that happen. So I’m talking specifically negative things.

So for example, you’re closing a property, you’re going to close that day. Then all of a sudden title comes back and says, hey, the legal description is good. We can’t close.

And you’re going to lose a bunch of money. A lot of people will be very upset about that. And you’re letting the other parties down and whatever, maybe you got monthly bills that you need to pay off and maybe creditors are calling.

That would be a very emotional charge situation typically. I’m asking you to instead just say, okay, just treat it like a fact, give it zero emotional charge, zero. And that’s hard to do.

And there’s going to be initial like jock, like that feeling that in the pit of your stomach, like you’re about to upchuck everywhere because you’re like, oh, the end of the world. Lower importance. And then just focus on one thing, which is taking the next step.

Take the next step. Just take action. Lower importance, take action.

Okay, boom, you get that news. All right, what can I do? A, B and C, I’m going to call a telecom company.

Get on your phone right now. Call, even Kiel, just go, just take the next step. Take the next step.

Take the next step. And this is an example of what happened to me in one of my deals. And the real estate agent who told me this, they were like, why are you not like yelling?

Or like, this is weird. Like all the other investors I work with, like, why are you just like, you know, this is odd. I’m like, hey, we’re going to get it done.

We’re going to solve it. We’re just going to focus. You keep imagining your goal, what you want.

Lower importance, take action. Lower importance, take action. And if you implement that into your life, just watch, it’s incredible.

Just watch how things start working out for you. Always, things will always, because a lot of times that thing that happens is going to work out in your favor. How many times in your life, Mattias, has a door closed and you thought it was the end of the world, turned out to be something was even better because that shut, the world takes care of you.

And if you have that mindset, it’ll help you.

[Mattias]
It’ll help you. I love it. And that’s a way better way of saying it.

I’ve described it a couple of times and I think I’ve actually tried to explain this once and then cut it out and not even used it because it sounds really bad. I actually never even read this book, but the book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F, that title kind of just resonated with me. Because I came out of a really, a lot of stuff was hitting the fan business-wise.

And this is in the sales business too. So this stuff applies everywhere. And I kind of exactly did what you said.

And you said it in a much better way. It’s just basically lowered the amount of emotion, energy I’m giving it because it actually just clouds your judgment. It just makes things worse.

And then just take the next step. So I love that.

[Jacob Bopst]
Lower importance, lower importance always.

[Mattias]
It doesn’t mean you’re not doing everything. In fact, you’re being more, like if you’re working with agents, if you, for me, sorry, if you’re working as an agent, for me, I was wanting to be a successful agent more than anything, had poured so much energy and dedication into this and had been building this and building this and building this. And then as you have more deals, as you have more things come up, there’s more problems.

And so I was taking on the emotional baggage of my clients. I was taking on as wanting to be, figure everything out. And it just had so much importance to it, to me, that it kind of wore me down.

And then having that realization that, actually, all I can do is the next thing. And if I’m focused on that and lose that importance, I’m gonna be more effective. I’m gonna be happier.

I’m just gonna work through this. So I absolutely love that. That’s a much better way of saying it than saying that I don’t really care about my clients and their deals.

Yeah, yeah.

[Jacob Bopst]
So, but it’s the same, the importance, yeah, lower importance, right? I can’t wait for a second. It’s the same thing, same thing.

Different spin, same thing, different spin. Cool, what else you got? Yeah, so I wanna give some nuggets up for people who are wanting to dabble in investing and getting leads.

And what’s really, as an agent, you actually have, being an agent and investor, what I said in the beginning, like I believe every agent should be an investor, is because you can have multiple hats depending on the situation. Like I could make way more money if I also had my agent hat on still, I don’t have it anymore. But if I did, because there is a lot of deals that I get that I just pass off to the other agents and I don’t make a dollar off of it.

And if I had at least have my referral status, like I could be making money on people because I talk to people every day that wanna sell their house, but maybe I’m not the best fit for them. Maybe an investor’s weight is not the best fit. And it does make the most sense to go with a real estate agent.

And I recommend that to people all the time. So one pro tip is I’ll give away or tell people the lead source that I use to get leads. Maybe they can give it a try.

I’ve found them to be phenomenal. And all the deals, like the one I talked about with like the 135,000, that was one from this company. It’s a company, and maybe you’ve heard of them, but they’re called Property Leads is the name of the company, Property Leads.

And they are a PPL provider, pay per lead. So essentially they run advertising, they run the Google ads, they run the Facebook ads, they run the marketing, and then you just buy the leads from them. You can get refunds, full refunds if it’s not an actual lead, like say they’re not selling or you don’t get a hold of them or it’s fake information.

So I love that about them and they’re really cost-effective, but propertyleads.com and I have a referral code, but if you use somebody’s, it doesn’t have to be mine, but use somebody’s, cause you get a bonus like $250 if you wanna give them a try. But that’s, I’ll give you that. That’s where I get all my leads from is Property Leads and I just do it that way.

And it saves me so much time and energy and you actually talk to motivated sellers.

[Mattias]
Awesome, cool. I love it. Yeah, no, I’ve used them and had to pause it here recently.

There’s a heavy, heavy drought in the sales season. So I was like, let’s pause this for a second.

[Jacob Bopst]
That’s great, you can pause and turn it back on like what, you know, throughout the day, even daily. Like it’s great, yeah.

[Mattias]
Awesome. What about a book? Do you have a fundamental book or one that you currently really enjoy that you think everybody should read?

[Jacob Bopst]
I do, I do. And it’s the one that I got the advice about lowering importance from. And I believe it is the best book that I’ve ever written and it’s huge and it’s long and it’s laborious and it’s hard to understand.

I think I’ve reread it. I probably had to reread it six or seven times because I’m kind of a dummy and like I need to like beat stuff into my brain like to like understand it. I’m like one of those, like I have to learn by repetition, unfortunately, type of people.

But the book is Transurfing Reality. Transurfing Reality by Vidam Zeland, I believe is his name.

[Mattias]
Interesting, okay.

[Jacob Bopst]
Yeah, and it’s a giant book. It’s like a Bible, it’s rough, but it’s transformed my life and it’s the best book I’ve ever read. And I have read a lot of books, like from Think and Grow Rich to talk about the Cashflow Quadrant to Brandon Turner’s books.

I have read probably, I don’t know, I’ve read a lot of books and this one was worth it enough to reread it. Like I said, like six or seven times and it’s like 600 pages, it’s like crazy. But it really, I believe if every human being read that book they would have better lives.

[Mattias]
Okay, that’s a mic drop. Everybody picked that one up. I haven’t heard of it, so I’ll have to take a look.

[Jacob Bopst]
Yeah, Vidam Zeland, V-A-D-I-M, I believe. He’s like a Russian physicist, I think.

[Mattias]
Okay.

[Jacob Bopst]
Yeah, it’s a little bit wooey. It’s a little bit wooey as a warning out there to people, but if you just get through it and read and just try to understand like the base concepts of it, it’ll help.

[Mattias]
Okay, I love it. I mean, the concept you described is 100% was a huge shift for me. And that alone I think makes it sound worth it.

So Jacob, what about, where can people find you if they wanna follow you on social media, any websites? Where are you at?

[Jacob Bopst]
Yeah, thank you so much for asking that too. Like I really appreciate it. So a couple of different ways, which you can connect with me.

One is I do have a real estate investing course. Anybody that’s looking to learn about, it’s structured around like the BRRRR strategy because that’s what I first started using and learned a lot about and got built up. But I also added in all the things I’m doing now for active income.

So it’s kind of the best of both worlds. Mindset, passive income and active income. Shows all my systems, how I do things.

And I’m pretty much an open book. Hopefully you can tell by the podcast. Anything I can give, I’m happy to.

That’s one way you can connect with me one-on-one. Another way is you can reach out to me on Instagram @jacobbopst. Just hopefully you can see it in the, in down here, right here.

How it’s spelled, at jacobbopst. Feel free to shoot me a message. I’d love to hear if anything I said on here helped you in any way.

That would really make me grateful. Awesome.

[Mattias]
Well, Jacob, thanks so much for being on the show. It’s been a lot of fun talking to you.

[Jacob Bopst]
Yeah, excellent. Hey, ditto, man. Thank you so much again, Mattias, for inviting me on here and having me here.

And I really appreciate what you’re doing and you’re doing a great job.

[Erica]
Thanks for listening to the REI Agent.

[Mattias]
If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week.

[Erica]
Visit reiagent.com for more content.

[Mattias]
Until next time, keep building the life you want.

[Erica]
All content in this show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.