$50,000 DEAL CHANGED EVERYTHING: THE BLUEPRINT TO REAL ESTATE FREEDOM || JAMIL DAMJI || EPISODE 069

I'm walking by a house that has a for rent sign on it. Now, oddly enough, I was actually trying to rent the house a few months earlier, but it was $200 a month out of my budget. So it was the upper floor and I really could only afford a basement suite. So I didn't get to rent the house, but it was still available three months later. So I call and the lady picks up the phone and I ask her if she'd be interested in selling it instead of renting it because she hasn't been successful yet. And her answer was sure for the right price. And I asked what that number would be. And she said, I need at least $350,000 for the house. And I'm like, cool, thank you. So I run to the office and I go talk to my partner. And I think this was the pivotal moment for me because most people would go into that meeting and say, I can buy this house for $350,000, which would be the normal thing to do. But my mind didn't work like that. I went in and I said, hey, here's an address of a lady who's interested in selling her house. What would you pay for that? And then he says, 400,000 all day. I'm like, cool, thanks. Let me work on it. So now I have a $50,000 problem to solve because I can buy the house for 350 grand. I can sell the house for 400 grand and I don't have any money. What do I do? Well, I do what I had been doing every day for the last six months, which was go into the yellow pages and start calling people. And I tell them everything that I'm going through. I'm like, I can buy this house for 350,000. I don't have any money. I have a buyer for it for 400,000. And I just don't know how to do this. Do you know where I could borrow money? Do you know anything like how a transaction like this could get done? And he says, oh my God, that's so easy. You want to do what's called a skip transfer. I'm like, huh? He's like, yeah, that's called a skip transfer. I'm like, okay, so what do you mean? He's like, well, what you're going to need is two contracts. What's your email address? I'll send them to you now. I'm like, okay. So he emails me a contract. He's like, all right. So it's the same contract. One of them is going to be one where you're buying the property for $350,000. Now just know this, on the name where it says your name, just write and or assignee. On the second contract, you're going to be the seller and you're going to have the $400,000 price. So you're going to buy it for $350,000. You're going to sell it for $400,000. Everything else on those contracts has to match up. So I don't need money? He says, no. I'm like, how? He's like, well, the buyer who's going to buy it for $400,000 is going to bring the money to the table. I'm going to use that money to pay the $350,000. Like, you can do that? He's like, oh, yeah. People do this all the time. And it gave me a model because I took that first deal and I didn't look back. I then went, drove around every neighborhood of that city looking for every for rent sign that I could find. And then I went and got newspapers. And I would call the classified section of the newspaper everywhere that there was a for rent section. Obviously, the paradigm shift completely changed. Making $50,000 from one transaction is what usually people would make, not even in a full calendar year as well. What was the next step of trying to put this into fruition and trying to build an empire in a whole sense? Well, I just started doing it more and more and more and more. and I got to a . In your mind, looking at that timeframe between like seven year period, knowing how much you potentially made, even though you took a break, you realize the potential that is there and the circumstances that you face, considering that you were younger, how did you end up like incorporating, getting back into the real estate space while you were in the US? I think that I'm supposed to do this. And I believe that with all of my heart because everything that has pulled me here has been an organic pull. How am I gonna do this? As this broke ass comedian in LA, I can barely live. So I'm now going back to what I know makes money. And so I open up the internet, I go into Craigslist and I start looking at real estate in ****. The code to winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. This is going to be a very unique special guest. We have a man who literally drove hours and hours away to come to the studio. He is, I call him one of the godfathers of wholesaling. So if you're curious learning about like astro flipping, wholesaling, learning about real estate, we have the OG in the studio with us. So this next episode, tune in. I will have a lot of the links in the description section as well. But before I begin, some intros I usually just like say from the top of my head, but this one I'm going to read word for it because it's too darn good for me to miss a single term. So without further ado, his name is Jamil Damji. He's an internationally renowned real estate investor and entrepreneur whose true passion is to empower others to create generational wealth through real estate. Jamil co-founded Cagley, a nationally franchised real estate wholesaling outlet operating in 118 markets and counting. Additionally, Jamil is a visionary behind Astroflipping. We're going to talk a lot about that. the most successful community of real estate wholesalers with over 4,000 active members and $10 million in student profit. So like I said, an OG. I'm super excited to have him over here. He took flights. He took driving all the way to get just so- Rode a camel. Rode a camel. That was an interesting part of the journey. Why didn't you tell me I was going to ride a camel to get here, David? In the middle of the desert here. And where are we, Morocco? Casablanca to be exact also thank you very much for coming to me great to be here thank you for the invitation and for any of you that are wondering we're in Phoenix Arizona and it was about a 20 minute drive from my house also stuff I wanted to know what was the defining moment you're Indian obviously ethnicity wise and I know that you obviously left the passion for pursuing medicine to try and I was never passionate about it I was just told that's what I was going to do. My family, you know, when you grow up Indian, you've got a couple of choices for a career path. It's an engineer or it's a doctor, right? Like even trying to be an attorney, which I would have been more suited for my gifts because I'm, you know, a talker. I love communication. I was winning debate and speech competitions as a young kid. And so, or, you know, being an orator was a part of, I imagine my life plan and my parents were just not for it. Like, you know, I had so many teachers say to my mom and dad, he would be an incredible attorney. You know, this guy could be a politician one day, but it was just like, doctor, don't come home, you know? And so, yeah, I didn't get into medical school. And so that started a whole new path, but I wasn't passionate about it. And I understand why I didn't get in. Even though I had phenomenal scores on my medical school entrance exam, the MCATs, I had a near 4.0 GPA, I was not authentically a doctor. Like, when I was asked, what type of medicine do you want to practice? I said, I want to be a plastic surgeon for the purposes of what it can make you financially. You shouldn't give a guy like that the power to write prescriptions, right? because I probably was going to do not the right things, you know, and I don't believe I was in there for the right reasons. And so I'm grateful. I'm so grateful that whoever it was that made the decision that said no to me, did that because my life is so much better than it would have been if I was a doctor. Oh, no, I couldn't agree more. And like, I think I told you earlier on before we started when we were talking, I'm originally from South Africa. So historical context, if you know that South Africa has got the highest population of Indian people actually outside india in terms of numbers and so growing up um even in high school the smartest kids were indians yeah um and just it's like almost a culturally like invested way to try and teach kids listen yeah learn get the best grades and usually end up becoming like the engineers and the doctors but even coming to america living in both coast east coast and west coast you'd see it in the wall street like you know you see it in silicon valley especially living in the bay area you know know they follow that path however I've been seeing a change though like I've been seeing a lot within like the entrepreneurial space and becoming super successful I mean I follow Vivek Ramaswamy massive fan of him yeah but um yeah so I want to know like how did you get your that first wholesale deal what made you pursue that journey uh it was an accident a happy one so you know I don't get into medical school and now I'm kind of like what do I do with myself And I'm getting into trouble. I'm, you know, I grew up in an interesting demographic and, you know, part of my part of Calgary, Alberta, where I grew up. I was surrounded by violence, surrounded by, you know, not the best ways to to make money. Just that was my that was my world. That was my environment. But I was a little I was different from them because, A, I'm Indian. B, I'm also smart. like I'm really intelligent but I'm just my environment is not conducive to me letting that be a real thing and so the girl I'm dating is is kind of you know trying to push me away from the friends and the people and she says hey you know there's this there's this friend of mine who has a media company that is struggling they can't make any sales and you're awesome on the phone because I was working as a telemarketer part-time to pay bills and whatnot. And so that's where I met the girl that put me in touch with these people. And she's like, you're always winning the sales competitions. You're so good on the phone. Why don't you try talking to these guys and seeing if there's an opportunity for you there? So I go, I meet these people. And it's a startup. They're in the business of reaching out to business owners, convincing them that this thing called the internet was real and that they should start investing in building websites instead of only advertising in the yellow pages. And so that was the company. It was called Trinity Media House. They were selling six-page websites for $600. It was like an About Me page, a contact page, a glossary, all the little services we provide, all the things. And where was this? LA, right? In Calgary. Okay, Calgary. And so I get in, and in one week, I sell more websites than they sold in a quarter. And so they really want me in this company. They want me to come in, bring my sales skills and help them. And it's a long answer to my first wholesale deal, but I'll get there. I promise. So I tell them I want to take over the company. If they want me there, I want 51% ownership of it. I was bold. And they're like, yeah, okay. there's we're we're literally a week away from going under if you don't come in and save us so whatever you want now not the best move on my part because i didn't know anything about how these guys operated and come to find out that every six page website i sold for six hundred dollars actually cost us seven hundred dollars to make these guys sucked they had no clue what their costs were they didn't understand anything they were just brand new entrepreneurs as well the funny thing about it is that the the other owner in that company he was also doing real estate with his father and that's what got me to my first wholesale deal okay because i'm struggling in this company we're trying to sell these websites every week cash is coming in but more cash is leaving than is coming in and i can't make sense of it all like it's like what is going on here meanwhile i hear my partner and his dad popping a bottle of champagne because they just sold a luxury duplex that made them $160,000. And I'm figuring out how to survive on 200 bucks a week. Right? So I ask, how do I, how do I get involved in what you guys are doing? And they're immediately saying, you can't, dude, you don't have any money, you don't have any credit, you don't have a real estate license, like, what could you possibly bring to the table? And I didn't have an idea for them, I had nothing. And so they carried on. Now, in that conversation, however, they start complaining about needing more building lots. So then I jump back into the conversation. I say, well, what does that mean? What do you need? They're like, well, we need more houses to tear down because these duplexes, we take these old bungalows and we tear them down and then we build a luxury duplex. So they need to be 50 feet in width, at least 110 feet in depth. They need to be zoned R2 so that we can subdivide and put a duplex on there. And they need to be in these specific areas of the city, the inner city part of Calgary oddly enough I live in an inner city neighborhood in a rental there and that in the neighborhood that I'm living in this type of development is rampant it's like they're tearing down houses left right and center over there and building up these duplexes and so I am very familiar with the types of projects they're talking about the next morning after I hear this and have this conversation with them I'm walking my dog and I'm walking by a house that has a for rent sign on it now oddly enough I was actually trying to rent the house a few months earlier, but it was $200 a month out of my budget. So it was the upper floor and I really could only afford a basement suite. So I didn't get to rent the house, but it was still available three months later. So I call and the lady picks up the phone and I ask her if she'd be interested in selling it instead of renting it because she hasn't been successful yet. And her answer was sure for the right price. And I asked what that number would be. And she said, I need at least $350,000 for the house. And I'm like, cool, thank you. So I run to the office and I go talk to my partner. And I think this was the pivotal moment for me because most people would go into that meeting and say, I can buy this house for $350,000, which would be the normal thing to do. But my mind didn't work like that. I went in and I said, hey, here's an address of a lady who's interested in selling her house. What would you pay for that? And then he says, 400,000 all day. I'm like, cool, thanks. Let me work on it. So now I have a $50,000 problem to solve because I can buy the house for 350 grand. I can sell the house for 400 grand and I don't have any money. What do I do? Well, I do what I had been doing every day for the last six months, which was go into the yellow pages and start calling people. So I start calling attorneys in the yellow pages and i get all the way to the letter s in that section and an attorney by the name of david steed picks up the phone he's fresh out of law school doesn't even have a secretary yet and i tell him everything that i'm i'm going through i'm like i can buy this house for 350 000 i don't have any money i have a buyer for it for 400 000 and i just don't know how to do this do you know where i could borrow money do you know anything like how a transaction like this could get done and he says oh my god that's so easy you want to do what's called a skip transfer i'm like huh he's like yeah that's called a skip transfer i'm like okay so what do you mean he's like well what you're going to need is two contracts what's your email address i'll send them to you now i'm like okay so he emails me a contract he's like all right so it's the same contract one of them is going to be one where you're buying the property for 350 000 now just know this on the name where it says your name just write and or assignee okay on the second contract you're going to be the seller and you're going to have the four hundred thousand dollar price so you're going to buy it for 350 you're going to sell for 400 everything else on those contracts has to match up from inspection times to deposit amounts to closing dates to the attorney who's me fill all of that out if you have any questions you can call me i can help you with filling out the contract and as soon as they're done bring them to my office and then what happens he says well i'll start doing my job and in a couple of weeks if everything works out i'll have a check for you so i don't need money he says no i'm like how he's like well the buyer who's going to buy it for 400 grand is going to bring the money to the table i'm going to use that money to pay the 350 000 like you can do that he's like oh yeah people do this all the time and that was it wow mind paradigm change right because now i have a i have a tool and i and i and i actually do it i pull it off i get the house under contract i sell the deal i make it turns out like to be $47,000 and change after the attorney took his fee. Wow. And I have this cashier's check that I'm fearful of cashing. I didn't cash that thing for months, bro. I folded it up. I put it in my wallet and I just walked around with it. Like I didn't know what to do. And then a friend of mine was like, if you don't cash that thing, it's going to expire. Oh, yeah. You got to cash that. I was fearful. I was still living in lack. I was still living in all of this, in this scarcity. I didn't think that that could happen again. And so I was guarding that $50,000 with my life. It was more money than I ever seen But it gave me a model Because I took that first deal and i didn look back i then went drove around every neighborhood of that city looking for every for rent sign that i could find and then i went and got the newspapers and i would call the classified section of the newspaper everywhere that there was a for rent section which year was this this would be early 2000 so it's like 2002 2002 that's crazy the early days of the internet early everything microsoft xp kind of yeah yeah it's like yeah we're we're i mean it's like i'm using internet explorer as my browser you know like it's early earlier internet it's aol days you know that's mad and then from then obviously the paradigm shift completely changed making 50 000 from one transaction is what usually people would make not even in a full calendar year as well what was the next step to try and like you know put this into fruition and try and build like an empire from like in a wholesaling well i just started doing it more and more and more and more and i got to a place where i i pieced together what was going on yeah right i'm like okay so so these developers need this product they need these houses to tear down well what where else is stuff like this happening And then I'm looking at condominiums that are in town and they're taking these old apartment buildings and they're and they're gutting them and they're turning them into luxury condos. And they're, you know, they're taking the one apartment building and turning them into condo condo buildings. Yeah. And so I'm like, well, maybe I can wholesale that. I didn't call it wholesaling at the time. I didn't even know wholesaling was a word. But maybe I can skip transfer one of those things. Right. And so that's what I did. I went driving around the neighborhoods, calling anywhere that there was a building that had a for rent sign. that was handwritten, like I knew it was self-managed. And if it was self-managed, that means that the owner or someone close to the owner was going to answer the call when I call on the for rent sign. Smart, yeah. And so I would make a hundred grand flipping those buildings. And I, for a few years, just stacked money. I didn't, you know, it was interesting. I'm, of course, I'm in my early twenties, so I'm buying dumb stuff, right? Like I end up buying myself a home that overlooks the entire town. I buy my mom a house on a lake. I buy too many cars. I have a very expensive, very, very manipulative girlfriend. It's like I do all the things that you should do in your 20s when you become a millionaire. Right? You mess it all up. Especially when you haven't experienced that before. Oh, yeah. Exactly. Right? And then it all left. I lost it all in 2008. And it was an interesting loss because I build up 12 million bucks, essentially, from 2002 to 2007, call it. I make like $12 million. And I'm loaded. I've got a bunch of cash, a bunch of cars. Super young. Life is great. I never think I can lose it. And what takes me down? I'm standing. one day the developer who i'm selling these apartment buildings to he pulls up he wants to meet me because he's like who's this kid who i'm buying all these buildings from like i want to i want to see this guy i want to meet this guy so he's telling his acquisitions person when i come to town um have him meet me bring him bring him to the building i want to shake this guy's hand and so i was like cool i go and i'm waiting for him outside and this rolls royce phantom pulls up now i don't have a rolls royce at that time right and so i see this phantom pull up and this woman walks out of the car oh my goodness she's like one of the most beautiful women i'd ever seen in my life and then this guy walks out of the car and he's like five foot two maybe 180 pounds and he's bald and he's like his belly's falling out of his pants like i'm like this dude has that girl the methane method and i was like i got it this is how i do it i gotta do what he's doing and so the next four buildings that i got under contract i didn't wholesale i bought them i closed on them and i had my mom and dad co-sign all the construction loans and then the market crashed oh 2008 financial crisis i lost all of it not only did i lose the 12 million in cash i made i lost all those buildings i was negative 1.8 million dollars at the end of it wow and i remember i think it was the inauguration day in 2009 20th of January the Dow continued to plummet that day as well and then it continued like the next few months just everything just going downward trajectory so that affected you still in Algarit in Canada at that time because it was such a global effect. It was global right. Exactly. I you know I'm in my 20s of course I don't know how to mitigate that type of a problem like I didn't know that I could go and negotiate all the and I'm in Canada at this point too so like banking is way different in Canada than it is in the States. The banks are essentially the government in Canada. Like the government is involved in, in the banks and they have the police behind them. It's not like banks here where it's like a private entity in Canada. They're way too intertwined. It's like, it's social, it's, it's, it's borderline communism in Canada, right? It's a social democracy. And so the government has, has their hands in everything, everything from from media to the electric company utilities banking all of it the government is involved in everything and they were also involved in banking and so when they want to take a building back when they want to when they want to take something from you they take it that's ridiculous it was i was it was it's it's borderline criminal if that would if what had happened to us in those buildings being taken away the way that they took them happened here in the united states it would have been a it would have been fraudulent banking it would have been predatory lending in in canada it's business and so it is what it is i i'm i'm not salty about it i i i had to take a break from real estate for a little while after that and uh i went to become a stand-up comedian in LA. So I went and did like a few years of standup and sketch comedy and like just kind of licked my wounds and figured it out. But you know, I think the hardest thing about that is the fact that in your mind, looking at that timeframe between like seven year period, knowing how much you potentially made, even though you took a break, you realize the potential that is there and the circumstances that you face considering that you were younger. The beautiful thing about experiences that you end up learning from your flaws your mistakes your shortcomings as well how did you end up like incorporating getting back into the real estate space while you were in the u.s well you know again one of those accidental happy accidents right i need these accidents where do i get these accidents they they i i really think that i'm supposed to do this and I and I believe that with all of my all of my heart because everything that has pulled me here has been an organic pull it wasn't me like running out and saying I'm gonna do this thing it was like well this is the most obvious next choice right so I'm in LA I'm not successful as a comedian I'm doing okay right I'm making some money but I'm not Kevin Hart right I don't I'm not on television or anything like that I've been on a few stages I get you know I get booked on on to do actual sets on at at nice comedy clubs you know I performed at the comedy store I performed at the Hollywood Improv at the Laugh Factory so I've I've been on big stages but I wasn't a headliner by any means right i was like the i was the filler dude in the middle and you know i'm that guy at that point and um i had just asked my uh the girl i was with if she wanted if she would marry me and of course she says yes but now i'm like how am i going to support this family right like she's in canada i have to immigrate her to the states how am i going to do this i'm as this broke ass comedian in LA. I can barely live. So I'm now going back to what I know makes money. And so I open up the internet and I go into Craigslist and I start looking at real estate in Phoenix. Because funny enough, in Phoenix, you could put these properties under contract that were short sales and you could wholesale those. I didn't understand the whole mechanics behind it because I was just getting back into it. But I start looking at real estate in Phoenix. And my sister, on the other hand, she had been trying to rebuild our family. So the four years of hiatus that I took as a comedian, thankfully, my sister was the saving grace of our family because she had went and worked on rebuilding a little bit of cash for us in Canada. We had a couple of buildings that didn't get foreclosed on that we were able to keep, but they were in the roughest neighborhood in all of canada it's called the north central part of regina saskatchewan a hellhole she took those two buildings that we actually bought as a joke we bought these two buildings as a joke for a birthday present for my dad we were like let's go buy our dad two two multi-family buildings in the worst neighborhood in all of canada for his birthday and those were the two buildings that ended up saving our asses my sister went and they were condemned and unit by unit renovated them and and made them into sober living and sold them and got nearly a million dollars for them meanwhile i'm telling bad jokes in la doing nothing but now she's got this million bucks she's like okay i've got a million bucks what what can we do with it and so i i have to step back i step back in and i say okay look in phoenix right now you can buy these condominiums for like $25,000 because the market had crashed so low. And they were renting for like 800 bucks a month. Where can you buy something for 25,000 that gives you $800 a month in cash flow? Right? So my thought was, let's take the million bucks and let's just go buy as much of this cheap real estate as we can possibly buy in Phoenix. And then we'll use the rent money to to fund our lives wherever we're living. Yeah. So it made sense. And so that's what we do. I start writing offers on these short sales, but the way the short sales work is that even you, even though you write an offer on it, doesn't mean it gets accepted because it's a bank negotiation. They take forever. Short sale can take sometimes six months to come to fruit. And so you write way more offers than you can actually close on. That's the trick with sort, when it's a short sale market you have to pepper the entire marketplace with your offers because if you write 100 offers you might only get five of them accepted and was that the only option you could do like doing the short sale in that yeah because the market was the market it crashed everything was upside down in phoenix everything was upside down nothing was selling traditionally everything was selling by short sale so i start doing that i start writing offers on short sales And then how I get back into wholesaling is two houses get approved by the bank and we ran out of money. We had already placed all of our funds into other properties that we are now renting out and turning into cash flow. And so now I have these two contracts that are accepted that are really great deals that I can't close on. So what do I do? I do what I know how to do. I go to Craigslist. I write an ad and I say I have these two contracts for sale. If you're interested, call me. Bro, 10 minutes don't go by and I get a phone call. For real? I get a phone call by a guy named Tim Wynn here in Arizona. And he drives by the homes and he says, I'll take them both. And I make just under 20 grand. And it takes me like a half an hour. And I'm sitting there thinking, what am I doing here? Why am I in Phoenix? why am i in la why am i why am i trying to do this comedy thing like i'm this is irresponsible i'm i i'm just about to get married i have this skill set that can make tens of thousands of dollars and i'm able to literally do this in my sleep it feels like exactly so what am i doing so that's why i have these you know it's a 46 i got these knuckle tats like people laugh at me because I'm like in my mid 40s and they're like, you got knuckle tattoos, you're a knucklehead. But they mean 12-12, because on 12-12-12, that was my birthday. Hey, I'm on the 13th of December. Oh, cool, dude. So you're 12-13, so you're Sag as well. So 12-12-12, I'm in a U-Haul, leaving LA, driving to Phoenix, Arizona, taking the trip of my life. And that's how everything changed. My goodness. No, that sounds amazing. and I mean I think the best thing about everything is that not only did you say everything was accidental the entrepreneurs always seize on opportunities they always seize on the circumstances that they're currently in as well and obviously looking back at that when you realize the skill set that you had the most important thing is that you've kept like evolving and adjusting according to the market obviously wholesaling 2025 is so different to when you were doing it before in the 2000 as well now that you've in phoenix and the state is so hot i love it the best people you'll come across but gosh dang i i need air conditioning 24 oh i know it's terrible it's terrible here in the summer man i don't even know how i'm wearing this shirt right now it's gross it's so gross i mean now that you're in phoenix at this point um i think one of the hardest thing entrepreneurs to do they they don't they don't um delegate build teams and try to upscale the business that way when did you realize hey listen i got the skill set i want to try and build an empire from this thing when you're in phoenix i get approached at this sandwich packing party because i'm i'm i start building a name for myself here but i do it in this funny way right because i'm here in arizona i'm doing a lot of wholesale deals and my secret that i was on how I was getting all the deals is I was, I was contacting every realtor that like I got every database I could find. And I cold called every real estate agent. And I said, Hey, look, I'm a cash buyer. I want to be your like secret weapon in your back pocket. If you have anything that's in like dated condition or hoarder house or something that's just like needs a total redo, I'm your guy but don't tell anybody who I am and they'd be like huh I want to stay super private so I will be your secret weapon I'll be your cash buyer I'll be the guy that you can deploy to do all types of deals on the condition that you never tell anybody was that because of the trauma that you had from Canada because of the it's why I said that was because of the trauma that I had I didn't want any notoriety i didn't want any eyes on me i wanted to be just i wanted to be invisible plus i was still 1.8 million dollars in debt from the foreclosures and so i was wanting to like get my feet together before i could before i figured out how to pay that debt off right so i had a few reasons as to why i'm saying this to people but what happens when you tell somebody not to say not to think something or not sound dodgy like first thing well that's not what they thought they were like oh who's this guy yeah because i'm actually closing on all my deals so they started talking about me even more and more and more and i became like an urban legend here i'm not kidding like everybody was talking about this guy that they're not supposed to talk about and i was doing so many deals so these two kids approached me at a sandwich packing party josiah grimes and hunter runyon and they're like you're that jamil guy right like yeah how many deals did you do last month and i looked in my phone i was like 14 and they're like how the hell did you do 14 deals i can barely get one done was that a wolf of wall street moment like listen you show me that chick i'll come work for you right now it was a little different than that okay they were like they were interns for cody sperber okay so he's a big name in the wholesale world and and um They were like his underlings kind of thing right So they had proof of concept They knew that the money was real They just hadn seen volume like that before So the guys say would you give us a shot to sell your deals ever? And at the time I was in a really good working situation with Chris Simon here in town, who's a big wholesaler as well. And he was selling all my deals for me. but chris has a habit he likes to go on holidays a lot and so this was the time when he had just kind of broken up with his girl and wanted to be in the bahamas all the time and he would never tell me that he was leaving town it was just it was like the worst because i'd get these deals under contract and chris was my dispo he was selling my deals for me and he does this bs thing to me again And he disappears and goes to the Bahamas and doesn't tell me. And I got these two contracts that I got to move like ASAP. I've got earnest money, non-refundable on both of them. I'm not messing around. I got to sell these things and I got to sell them fast. And he's not answering his phone. So I call the boys, those two kids who gave me their number at that sandwich packing party. And I'm like, hey, you know you wanted to sell a deal for me? Yeah. I said, now's your chance. I'll send you one right now. and i didn't know at the time they were in australia it was like three o'clock in the morning their time when i called but they saw my phone number on their phone and bro answered the phone in the middle of his sleep oh wow he was like i'm not missing this call i love that i love that so much and he got that deal out in a half an hour and sold it and i was like i got another one sends it out 15 minutes later sells it i'm like who the hell are these two kids you know like what is going on here so slowly slowly slowly i start moving more and more and more of my deals over to start doing business with these guys and then eventually i realized that these guys are actually very like systemized they've got processes they've they're using tech they're doing things i'm a dinosaur at the time everything i'm doing i'm writing down i have like i've got like agendas you know i'm using i'm using everything's in paper and pen i'm like super old school these guys are using crms and all this like fun stuff that i'm like i could care less about but they're obviously doing something right because their reach was so big because of how they were leveraging tech. So then I have the idea that I want to do this all across the country. And I can't do this by myself. I'll need them. So I write a check for a million bucks and we start Kegely. Boom. Yeah. And those two are my partners. Boom. Yeah. That's crazy. Because I know that you guys mentioned that you knew people from Astroflipping as well. with with keegly that started in like 2015 2016 yeah 2016 okay all right and i think i kind of want to go into that obviously it's a national uh nationally uh franchise powerhouse but like what are the the systems that you know you partnered up with them what are one of the most unique systems that is uh that keegly does have that other companies don't have in that space as well well you know i think one of the things that that keegly does really well is is sell deals right that keegly is known as a dispositions company their their job is to help people disposition their wholesale contracts and our capacity to build buyers lists i think that's our our secret to our success now truth is is there's a lot of competition out there these days you've got investor lift you've got investor base they're kind of democratizing what keegly was doing as a service so keegly was doing dispo as a service because the reality is why were so many wholesale deals getting canceled you know like if you know anything about wholesale you'll know that wholesaling has a little bit of a bad rap out there with real estate agents and people why is that i've noticed i mean whenever every time i speak to a wholesaler they hate real estate agents it's almost like there's like a war or a conflict between two and then wholesaling is just you've been seeing a lot of especially social media people just it's just been getting a rap of like a bad reputation over time especially the last two three years that i've noticed as well it's been there for a while the bad rep has been there for a while but it's because of of the bs things wholesalers will do like wholesalers will put a seller under contract put ten dollars emd down not even not just ghost the seller not close file a memorandum on the contract on the property and then the seller doesn't even know that no one's closing on the house. The seller goes and packs all their things in a U-Haul and closing day comes around and there's no one to be found. And wholesalers will do that shit all the time. And that sucks. Another thing that wholesalers will do a lot is they'll lie to real estate agents. They won't tell them what they're going to do. And so the agents get all flustered because they don't understand what's happening. and so what we brought to the table was a way to elevate the ethics of the business model i don't believe in lying i don't believe in in being dishonest with real estate agents i i'm honest with agents i tell them i might flip this i might wholesale it i might buy it and hold it i don't know i'm an investor i've got multiple exit strategies how i exit this isn't your business your job is to help me get this at the best price i can possibly get it at as my agent you owe me a duty to help me with my purchase and my purchase is i need to buy this for an investment which means i need to make money on it and they understand that they understand the assignment right the problem that wholesalers have is that they lie their asses off when they're on the phone with real estate agents and they don't tell them that they may wholesale the deal and that pisses people off and so transparency pretty much the lack of transparency is just irrefutable. And so that, along with the missed, all of the unfulfilled promises that sellers have had with wholesalers, is the reason why we built Kegely. Because we wanted to A, help wholesalers fulfill in their promises. If you're going to go contract a house with a seller, we're going to help you sell that deal. Because the reputation of this industry is being tarnished by people who are just walking away and why why are they having a hard time selling the deal because building a buyer's list is hard like finding a qualified cash buyer is a six-step process you got to identify a the the company who's flipping a home so that takes you got to either look for okay what what house is on the market right now that was just flipped okay who's the owner of that house okay who's the owner of that llc okay let's find out what that guy's statutory agent's name is okay now let's skip trace that there's like six steps to getting that phone number to calling that guy so wholesalers are notoriously lazy bro like we don't want to do extra work it's just a part of how we how we operate and so we're great at talking we're great at getting deals under contract we're great at negotiating but following through it's not our best part so we're there as the follow through right and that's i think why keegly became successful is because that was a massive problem now there's platforms and other softwares out there that have been competing with keegly investor lift is one i think they do a phenomenal job right i really like robert wensley the owner of investor lift i think he's he's done phenomenally well uh good dude you should have him on the podcast yeah i think he just recently moved to arizona i think yeah yeah he's here in town i can connect you to him he's a he's a great dude um also investor base they're out of south carolina they're a very very they're a newer platform but you just put an address into this thing and it'll spit out like 10 10 cash buyers who have bought right in that area unbelievable and give you their phone number and their name and so now if i have a deal under contract i don't have to go to a keegly i can just put the address into investor base and boom there i go i make money wow so so So I'm grateful that we were first movers in the business and we built this big brand and we're doing great across the country. I also see that there's room for competition and I welcome it. I think that if you're doing your best to elevate this industry and that competes with me, I'm absolutely grateful for the competition. I just want the industry to do better. I love that so much. And which kind of even segues to that, despite the fact that there may be competition one of the things i also do admire about you is the fact that you're also involved in collaboration and uplifting and i think one of the people that you partnered up with um you two are probably the most prominent figures in in arizona is pace morby yeah we're in the we're in the same church as him as well you guys are all lds yes sir yes sir served our missions and all that but and so um as i kind of want to talk like how did you guys form a collaboration because like you and pace are just popping up on everyone's feet all the time yeah i haven't heard an ill thing said about both of you you know he's he's such a incredible guy right like i i adore that man and and our friendship is such an interesting one because it started in a in a problem right like he he was being ripped off by this by this wholesaler in town that was flipping houses um john may i'm happy to say his name pace and i for the longest time never said his name because we were like fuck that guy excuse my language because i know you guys are mormon so you don't like to hear it but um but f that guy you know and so um but yeah john may he he was robbing pace like hand over fist and i did business with john back in the day I had done a lot of wholesale deals with him and then I stopped. And so people were wondering, like, why did Jamil stop doing business with John? And so people said to Pace when he was running into problems with him, you should reach out to this guy named Jamil. He knows a lot about John. He's done quite a few deals with him and then they stopped for some reason. So maybe he knows something that you need to know. And so Pace does that. He DMs me on Instagram. Now, this is pre-Jamil Damji, social media Jamil Damji. I don't even have my profile picture isn't even my face. It's an owl. That was my IG. I just had an owl as my face, right? I like owls. And so he DMs this owl profile and he says, hey, man, I've heard so much about you. Everyone says I need to know you. And I'm reaching out because I'm in a problem. and I think you might know the guy who I'm in this situation with. John owes me a tremendous amount of money, and I'm wondering if I'm going to ever see that money. Now, I don't see the message for weeks. Like three weeks go by, but then I finally see it, and then I reach back out to him, and I'm like, hey, man, yeah, I'm happy to talk to you. So he says, let's meet at this grocery store. Actually, we met at the Henry. There's this really good restaurant in Camelback and 40th Street, delicious place we meet there but it's full there's no seats and so he's like you want to just cross the street go to the grocery store and get a sandwich I'm like sure so we cross over to AJ's right across the street there and we go pick up a couple of deli sandwiches and we sit there in their deli and he's telling me all about what's going on and I said to him what are you doing tonight he's like just hanging out with my wife I'm like you and your wife come to my house let me show you what what's really happening i had uncovered john's ponzi scheme like months prior i had all of the research done i was watching john build a massive ponzi scheme and i knew this thing was about to collapse i was just waiting for it to collapse because i was going to go in and clean up underneath it uh-huh right so i was i saw the ticking time bomb i knew it was there but now i know a guy who's going to get hurt by it right and so at the time the only person who i knew was going to get hurt was John and I didn't give a shit about John so like John can do whatever he wants but when Pace is telling me now that he's going to get into trouble I tell Pace bro you you got to run like I wouldn't I a the 250 grand he's got of yours right now you're not getting it back and if he's asking for any more money run away wow run away now this whole thing is about to collapse i i show it to him i look at every home that john owns like let's just say john owns buys a house for 100 grand he and it's worth 100 grand he's got a mortgage on it for 150 that doesn't matter yeah that's ridiculous everything is over leveraged everything was over leveraged there was no way he was getting out of that there was no way so pace doesn't listen he continues to give john money he gives him over a million dollars oh my gosh but john eventually files bankruptcy and the ponzi collapses now in this time pace realizes that my god you know that jamil was right and he was honest with me and he was real with me and him and I are starting to do a few wholesale deals together so he just you know he says to me you know I gotta build I gotta rebuild my life dude this guy just and it's like it's hot he gets he gets the notice that John's gonna file bankruptcy on him the day Corbin is born his his daughter oh my gosh they're in the hospital and he gets he gets served the bankruptcy papers and he they just gave birth and you lose everything at the time as an investor if somebody fell for bankruptcy yeah he's getting nothing he's getting nothing and it's like over a million bucks all of his money and so him and i start running together really closely then because i'm helping him rebuild that's like 2018 ish or yeah yeah yeah about 20 we've been friends almost in eight nine years now so yeah about 2017 okay and uh yeah we didn't look back after that we started collaborating pretty heavily but we're competing at this time right because we're both wholesalers we're both chasing the same deals but what was really interesting about our dynamic was like i didn't care if pace beat me on a deal it never bothered me and he didn't care if he if i beat him on a deal if there was a resource i had that he needed i'd give it to him and if there was a resource that he had that i needed he gave it to me you know how many people pace introduced me to that i still do deals with today that's that he could be doing those deals with but he instead made the connection to me i think that defines healthy competition as well amazing competing as well but you're still collaborating and working together absolutely lifting which is the entire purpose of what competition is meant to do yep yeah and that's what we did we we realized that what we were doing was special that it was different that it went against the grain of what people normally do and how we normally operate in scarcity and lack and that collaborating and caring and living in abundance and caring about your brother and wanting him him to win and celebrating him when he wins that that's what life's really about that that's the better frequency that's the way that we want to live and so him and i decide to take that message out on the road and we do pace and jamil does america it was so funny it was we we took our heads and we put them on to the beavis and butthead beavis and butthead do america poster we just plastered our heads on top of beavis and butthead we made this cute little drawing and um we went around the entire country and it started off as like grassroots and very small i think the first meetup we did was in orlando and 13 people came now if we go to orlando 1300 will come out wow wow and i think you know that's the beauty that's why i wanted to kind of stress on it because i've always like admired your guys relationship for a mile away matter of fact britney got back to me because pace gonna be releasing a book i think in october as well because it was the schedulers to get both you and pace right but he's in montana every now and then as well but um one of the things i kind of want to talk about i've done sales for a while. I did like solar sales. I did pest control. And the hard thing about, especially the door-to-door industry, is the fact that you probably know Sam Taggart in Utah Yeah The hard thing about that industry is that there could be potential of like integrity issues like lying and not telling the customers the truth And you've seen it, you've been burned with the Johns and so forth. What have you been doing with your society to try and ensure that integrity is an important part of how you people do business on a daily basis? well i think everything starts on the inside i really do believe that and i don't believe my success is because i'm really good at wholesaling i think that i've tapped into a frequency and in that frequency there is transparency there's truth there's honor there's there is love there is the choice to live in higher centers to be more heart-centered than to be more ambitious and to, you know, win at all costs. I believe that your life is being lived on the inside out. I think everything that you're seeing right now is an outpicturing of what's going on inside of you. So if you're living in a moment of chaos, then you're probably living in chaos internally. And if you're living in peace, if you're finding peaceful opportunities, peaceful people peaceful situations then you're in peace yourself and i'm always seeing that get reflected to me all the time and so then i realized that we're all really just frequency we're we're all energy and i you know this is where my science background comes into play because i've i've not only read this i've proven this in in my studies in university we are all energy energy can't be created it can't be destroyed it's just transferred from one form to another and money my friend is an energy and there's a frequency to it and if you can tap into that frequency then abundance is impossible it's impossible not to have you are abundance you are that and so for me the reason that i feel that the communities that we're shaping are of the highest integrity because we don't believe in in incoherence i can't be one way on the inside and then pretend to be another way on the out that doesn't line up i have to be inside what i am outside and that's why you see the integrity that's why you see the honesty that's why you see people within my community and pace's community champion truth above all else champion and transparency above all, collaboration above all, to be happy to walk away from a few extra bucks if it means keeping your integrity intact. That's powerful. You know? And that to me is important. Because, okay, I make an extra $1,000 today and I hurt five people in the process, right? Those five people now have animosity towards me. They've got negative energy that they're sending my way. And I'm blemished by it as well. I'm blemished by that. I'm blemished by that behavior or that thing that hurt them. And I have to account for that at some point. And there's no getting around that. You don't get away from your energy. You can lie your ass off as much as you want out there, brother, but the energy doesn't lie. Powerful. It just doesn't lie. And so when I walk into a room, I can feel the room. I can feel the energy of a room. I know what it is, and I can sense the frequency. and the room will spit me out as fast as it'll attract me in if it's not in alignment with me love that love that so much i want to uh i know i want to sort of respect your time um i want to kind of ask about like astro flipping how did it come about and what made it become such an effective when creating success for the amount of students that it has right now well it's you know based off of the success that i've had in the wholesale business i've left nothing off the table. I've taught it all. I didn't hold any secrets or any strategies to myself that made me successful. I shared it all. But that also meant sharing the things that I do personally to tune myself up, to live in those frequencies, to live in those alignments. And so I not only teach you how to wholesale, but I make meditation one of the primary things that people need to do on a day-to-day basis that having that relationship with your creator is how you will be a better successful wholesaler you can't do any of this on your own and if we're if you want to do it the hard way if you want to do it the way where you don't have help where where you are denying that you're connected to everything I believe that I'm connected to my next deal I'm I'm not only believe I'm connected to my next deal I believe I'm connected to every deal that I'll ever do all I have to do is draw those connections to me and I do that by maintaining my frequency I do that by maintaining my vibration and maintaining who I am as a human and I continue walking and I just show up and the phone rings and there's money powerful and did you ever have mentors because I know every single successful person I haven't I haven't touched on that like did somebody ever like walk you through something because it looks like you learned from trial and error yeah trial and Aaron, my mother, you know, my mom's a really positive person. And my dad too, my dad, because I seen him suffer, I saw how hard he, how hard it was for him. And he's still with us. And I love him so much. But he's always been pessimistic, a little negative, a little hard, you know, and if you see the two of them in their 80s, right now, you can see, my mom is a spitfire. She's moving around. She's laughing, giggling, you know, just enjoying life. My dad can barely move. you know and so it's energy again you know it's energy yeah and so like that was an example for me um one of my i'd say greatest teachers was tupac you know listening to his music was very inspiring for me because it gave me the the contrast of of what i could see in my life in my childhood as my environment but that there that a beautiful rose can still grow from that concrete jungle that you can still have that you can still be god's kid in a cell but you have to first acknowledge you're god's kid that's 100 and if you obviously i think i spoke about our faith the beauty that we know that when we are heavenly father's children we're literally the spiritual offspring and the fact that i know that i am a son of god i know that i mean i am capable of literally achieving my full potential as well. And once you can put that in your head and understand that, nothing can stop you from achieving anything you want to put your mind to as well. Somebody out there that's watching this podcast, and I just wanted to say the last two questions, and is an entrepreneur and is probably like in that plateau stage started, is in that phase. What's the advice you'd give them to try and like upscale and just push forward towards their goal and their dreams? well i think we tend to want everything now right i want it all now i want my success now i want the hot girl now i want the uh you know the mclaren now i don't want to wait for it and it's that it's the constant denial of your current circumstances that i think keeps people in perpetual agony like you are where you are for a reason bro so own it and see the magic of every minute there are no wasted people like for instance let me share a story with you yes sir closing because this is i think probably one of the most powerful proof of concepts that i've seen in a long time. My sister and I go on a trip every year as siblings to just connect and talk. And so this year we decided to go to Portland, Oregon, so we can hike the waterfalls. And so the morning of our hikes, wake up and she says, my sister says, I really feel like a donut. Can we go to this voodoo donuts place? It's in downtown. Like it's going to be like a 20 minute line but like they sell all these awesome donuts will you do you mind can we go do that first and i'm like sure you know it's a break we're on a break let's go stand in a 30 minute line and get a hot dog or a donut no problem so we get to downtown and we park and there's a homeless guy sitting outside of a building right there where we park and my sister walks up to him and says hey man we're gonna go get a donut right now from voodoo donuts you want one and he says i do i do want one yes but i want to make sure you get me the right one so they've got a couple of different types of chocolate dip donuts in there they got one that's like cake it's like really cakey and they put they put chocolate on top of that that's not the one i want they have another one it's more like a honey glazed donut it's like a honey dip donut it's more doughy uh it's got like a like like a more of a sticky thing on it than it is like rough. And then it's got chocolate on the top and it's super spongy. That's the one I want. Make sure you get the right one. I'm like, okay, got it. So we go and stand in the 30 minute line. We get her donut, me a donut and his donut, right? You come back, give him his donut. He's just happy. He's just eating his donut. And then right at that moment, I yawn, right? And I'm like an energetic guy. I don't like get tired in the middle of the day. But this yawn comes over me. And I noticed there was a coffee shop right beside the donut place. So I say to my sister, Frick, sorry, we should have got this earlier, but I just got this like wave of tired. Can we go grab a coffee? She's like, yeah, sure. No problem. So she goes to the homeless guy. We're going to go get a cup of coffee. You want anything? And he's like, yeah, I do. I'm like, okay, what? He says, I want a mocha, but I don't want how they normally make the mocha. You know, mocha is hot chocolate and coffee. I don't want it like that. I want hot chocolate and two shots of espresso. I want it to be a supercharged mocha. I'm like, super mocha. Okay, got it. So we go to the coffee shop, come back with a super mocha and my coffee, and we go on our hike right we're out all day long and then i see that there's this michelin star indian restaurant in portland and i'm like i gotta go have this michelin star indian food like i'm i love indian food and i've never had michelin star indian food so we gotta eat it right we've been hiking all day so i sit down and i order everything on the menu like i'm starving and the food comes out and i can barely eat like a third of it so we've got all this leftover food and so i say to my sister let's pack it up and you know let's go give it to somebody outside it's like we're you know portland portland there's homeless people everywhere they invented homeless people here and and and she's like okay cool and then her and i get into this discussion about how she's packing up the food because i said you can't pack up indian food just willy-nilly you got to pack it up so it makes sense because they're not going to know what's the entree and what's the bread and what's the dessert if you don't put it like that because he'll be dipping the dessert balls into the into the savory sauce and he's going to be like this is gross and she's like you'd not think that this homeless person will have eaten indian food before and i'm like i don't think so i don't know about you but i don't know a lot of homeless people that might go out to michelin star indian restaurants so i don't know like maybe this is maybe this will be new to them and so we're like in this discussion she's like fine i will go out and i will i will show them how to eat the food okay and i'm like perfect so we're walking around and we can't find a homeless person to save our life where we're at not a single homeless person and this is portland oregon that's crazy right so then i have this idea i'm like well you know your friend from this morning why don't we go give it to him and she says well yeah that's way on the other side of town i'm like yeah but what do we got to do i ain't got nothing to do right now i was like let's just go on a drive so We put it in the GPS. It's 25 minutes away. Oh, wow. Right? But I'm like, hey, you know, the guy made an impression on me. So let's go give this dude the Indian food. So we go drive 25 minutes to downtown. And now the street where we were parked before is closed. And so we have to park somewhere else. And I can't see the guy, right? So I park on this corner. And my sister gets out. And she takes the food. And she's gone like 10 minutes. Like, what's going on? and I'm starting to get worried so I'm like staring out the passenger window waiting for her and then I start to hear her click clack of her high heels and she comes and bro she's bawling her eyes out and I'm start to like my heart's beating fast I'm like what is what happened just now she sits in the car she's crying I said what happened is he okay like did you see him is he okay like did he die like what's going on talk to me and she says no it wasn't him like why are you crying she said well when i walked up i there was this girl laying in the same spot that he was sitting in and she was speaking hindi which is an indian language exactly and i tapped her on the shoulder and she looks up at me and she's crying and i asked her are you hungry and she said only if it's indian food and she said this is what i got and then the girl starts crying even louder and my sister says why are you crying honey she said because a half an hour ago i cried to god that if you're real you'll prove it to me by bringing me into you no ways yeah think of that no when did that start when did that start energy bro like i can't i can't even say it and not get emotional because it's like wow you know that had that man not been so specific on his donut order on his coffee order on the whole thing you think i would have driven 25 minutes absolutely to go and do that and like what is time even because that woman's proof of god moment started in the morning yet she hadn't said it until a half an hour before we got there wow and so there are no wasted people there are no wasted moments ever oh my gosh thank you so much for sharing that thank you for sharing that towards the end we always ask every guest because of the code to winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow if you were just to define it in just like either a term or even a phrase what does the term winning mean for you man that would have been so different so many so many different versions of me but i would say today winning to me is living what i am inside every day having having the having a life where i get to live what i am inside truly authentically every moment powerful yeah thank you so much jamil if you could let our viewers know where they could get a hold of you if they want to get like um uh join at one of your companies um whether it's kegley whether it's astro flipping whatever it may be where they can get a hold of you on social media if it's email you take or calls whatever can you let our viewers know please yeah um hi you can find me on Instagram at at J D A M J I. Also, I have a YouTube channel where I talk about wholesaling co living, which is my current focus in my real estate portfolio growth, as well as some mindset stuff. So if you're into things like breathwork, meditation, or concepts about personal development, I am a super nerd when it comes to things like that. And I I love sharing and learning. And so you can find me on YouTube at Jamil Damji. Awesome. The co-twinning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. The OG, the man, the myth, the legend, the man himself, Jamil. Thank you so much, boss. Thanks for having me, brother.