This is Waste to Wealth, a podcast about turning your waste hauling business into a profitable, scalable, cash flowing machine. And now, here's your host, Michael Hey everybody, this is Michael McCall, and I've got a special guest here today for all of us. Jaben Makings with Onnix Investments, and we're going to talk about business owners, the challenges they face, and how you can upgrade your business. So Jaben, welcome to the show. I really appreciate you coming on here. This is Waste to Wealth, and we talk primarily to waste haulers about how they can be successful and make cash out of trash. So how are you doing today? I'm doing phenomenal. I'm fired up to be here. Sweet, sweet. And so you told me Yes, sir. Based out of Scottsdale, Arizona, I moved out here from Nebraska Awesome. Great. I actually was just out there in Tucson. So how far away is Tucson? Because Tucson is further south compared Yeah, Tucson's just south of us, about an hour and a half. Kind So I was pretty close to you. So I was out there for not work-related stuff. I was playing Australian It's like a cross between rugby and soccer. It's very chaotic, though. You kick the ball a lot, you run around a lot. It's a lot of fun. You get to tackle, though, so it's a little more manly than playing soccer, but not as tough as rugby. Rugby's pretty brutal. So next time I'm out there, actually, I don't know if I'll go out there anytime soon, but I'll try to connect with you in Arizona. But I like to ask early on in the questions here so that people can know how to find you. How can people connect with you? Where do they find you on Yeah, I am primarily on Instagram. So if you message me the word McCall, so I know you're coming in from this podcast, M-C-C-A-L-L, I'll send you over our free wholesaling contract, which is what we use Oh, nice. Excellent. Cool. So speaking of properties, tell me about how you help people. What problem do you solve? Who are your clients? Who Yeah, so two primary people, number one being real estate agents. So most investors, they go direct to seller, right? So they're sending out mailers, they're doing Google pay per click, they're doing cold calling. But we figured out what do like 80% of homeowners do when they decide they want to sell a property, they're going to go online and look up a realtor, or they're going to call a friend and family member and get referred to a realtor. And that's where we come in at, right? So we talked to these agents every single day, and we basically just want to be another tool in their tool belt. So that way, when they come across these clients, then we are that cash offer solution, because a lot of these agents don't really know what to do with those leads. And you know, I'm speaking from experience, because I was an agent for several years. So when I get these leads, I wasn't 100% sure what to do with them. Sometimes I just throw the lead away, because the property is trashed, it wouldn't make a good fit on the MLS. So we come in, we get these agents paid on these leads that, you know, may otherwise not have gotten them paid anything. And then we help these sellers get out of a really tricky situation. And then on the flip side of that, the second person that we help, I guess there's two people right there, the homeowner and the agent. Then once we get the property under contract, then we're going to take that to investors and sell them the property. A lot of these investors rely on guys like me to bring them properties every single week so that way they can lock these properties up, flip them, and Oh, nice. That's cool. Do you normally get solo investors or Yeah, or like small, like I can think of like investment clubs where there's like 10 guys that they all have extra money that they're trying to deploy, but like they You know, our biggest buyers are solo guys. Typically, I have seen some small groups of investors, but our primary buyer is just the solo guys. You know, a lot of them are mom and pops who only do a few flips a year. We have a couple of guys that crush it and they're doing, you know, 30 plus flips every single year. Yeah, so Oh, that's fantastic. Good. And how much, I guess I'll ask a dollar amount, like how much does someone normally come to you to deploy? Do they have like, 100, 200, a million, what kind of numbers they bring to you, or is it all over Man, it is all over the place. Like for example, I have, I have one guy, I'm actually in North Carolina and he does a hundred flips a year. So he'll, he'll deploy his money on as many properties as I'll send him that fit his buy box. Um, on the flip side, I got another guy out there who will only take on two properties at a time. So I just sent him one. He's like, Hey man, I've got two that are, uh, on the market right now. So once those, one of those cells, then I'll be ready to pick up another one. So it really varies person to person. You also got guys that, you know, some of the mom and pop people who only do a couple of flips a year, it's gotta be kind of a grand slam deal. And it's gotta be a very low price point, maybe under 200 or under 300. And they're only doing one of those at a time. And then you've also got guys that are only doing luxury. So Got it. That's a big range and it sounds like you accommodate people that have a smaller niche, like we're only going to work with a few properties that meet this target. Then you have other people that they're just like, I'm in this state and I want to touch everything I can in this state because it's a growing market. I guess if someone wants to get into real estate or they're looking for more real Yeah, definitely reach out. I'd love to help you guys get started on wholesaling, investing, going to become an agent. I did that for several years. So Yeah. One of the cool things about real estate is it's really hard to, to, to lose in the value side of things. Like if you can afford to buy a property, it's not gonna lose its value, right? And if you've got a deal where you're gonna upgrade the property, it's gonna gain more value. Is that where you normally see people having successes? They Yeah, that's the most most of our buyers, right, they're coming in and purchasing the property, usually with cash or hard money, and then they're going to go in and rehab it and then plan to sell it on the back end. And there's also quite a few rental buyers out there, which is kind of slowed down a little bit with how high the interest rates are, you know, comparatively to a couple years ago, a lot of guys are just buying them, remodeling them, and then refinancing, doing the BRRRR method, which is buy, rehab the property, rent it out, refinance, and then repeat. And that hasn't been as popular in the last couple of years with how high the interest rates are. The bulk of our buyers are just Well, it makes a lot of sense. So our listeners could be on either side of things where they're either investing in real estate because they like that asset class, or they could be servicing people that are flipping. I know a lot of clients of mine when I was running a dumpster business or customers of mine when I was running a dumpster business. They were just going to different properties and doing clean outs. And I get a frantic call saying, oh my gosh, this house is totally rampant. It's like, I need help cleaning it out. Can you get a dumpster over here right away? Because I got to clear it out so I can get tenants in here next month. So is that one of the things you see when you Yeah, we're all over the place. So right now we have one in Indiana and that one is, it's like a hoarder house. You can barely walk, walk through it, right? Cause stuff's stacked up so high. And then on the flip side, we have some super clean properties where it just slightly outdated, but the owners just don't want to deal with it. So it's, it's all over the map, but yeah, I'd say it is pretty common that they need a clean out of some sort. And even if like on those, those cleaner properties, right, they're going to have to do some sort of clean out. Cause they're going to be demoing the kitchen and they're going to have all this, there's trash and stuff that they Right, yeah. I wonder where those guys find their contractors, because contractors are normally the guys that they coordinate all the different people, like the demo guy, the electrician, the plumber, and they call the port-a-john guy and the dumpster guy, like they call all those people. But I imagine whoever's renovating a property, they have like a list of contractors and vendors they work with, and Yeah, for sure. Yeah. A lot of guys will sub their own stuff out. So they have their own vendor list or they'll just go hire a contractor that'll Right. Yeah. Excellent. Well, cool. So I know you talk to business owners a lot about their problems and encourage them to make changes so that they can thrive and that, that if they thrive, that frees up more capital so they can make more investments, they'd make more money. Um, so, um, I do want to ask you questions about your business owners, but before we do that, how did you get into this line of work? Like what's your origin Yes. I moved out here from Nebraska. Like I said, several years ago, I think it was 2019 and I got started as a pool boy. So I was out there cleaning, cleaning pools. Cause I wanted to start a I did that for a few months. I, I didn't love it. I saw the owner who was in a sixties having to come out and clean pools when guys would call sick. I'm like, that's going to be me when I'm 60. I don't want to be doing that. Knowing what I know now, if you set the business up, right, that wouldn't be the case. But like, I didn't know anything. about anything at that time. So I thought that that was what it was going to be. And I'm like, I don't want that. So I remember reading a book about real estate investing in high school, and I kind of knew that that might be an endgame for me buying a bunch of rental properties get super rich is what I what I thought. And that's what was in my mind. So like, how can I make a bunch of money really quick to go purchase a bunch of properties and then be able to retire you? And so I'm going to go become a real estate agent. I thought I was going to get rich quick, buy all these properties. And you know, that couldn't have been further from the truth. Like it took forever to start making consistent income. So I got my license, became an agent, did that for three, three or so years before going all in on the investment side of things. So I started Honix Investments almost two and a half years ago now. and haven't looked back since. I kind of hung up the hat on the agent side of things and then just put my head down and committed to this and said, I'm not going to touch anything else for the next three years or until the company is stabilized and Well, good. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So you had some early shots at being an entrepreneur Yeah, I didn't, I didn't love that at all. And then when I was an agent, I really wasn't that great of a real estate agent, because my biggest issue was, I was a guy that had several business ideas every couple of months. So like, you name it, I probably tried to start it right from door to door sales, I wanted to go be a stockbroker, I wanted to do Amazon FBA dropshipping, like I you name it, I probably tried it or I had thought about trying it. Yeah, that was that was my biggest downfall because I was trying new stuff every six months. So I was a jack of all trades and master of none. I was just average at a bunch of different stuff. So if you're getting started in business, you No, that makes sense. It makes sense to me because I've done the same thing where I tried a bunch of stuff and because I tried a bunch of things, none of them were effective. How do you pick your one thing? How did you settle on real estate Yeah, I would say the, if you're getting, if you're, if you're watching this and thinking about starting a business, I don't think that there's a, you can go wrong in many areas because I have like some, some of my guys come up and ask me about different methods of wholesaling, different areas of real estate. And I'm like, honestly, there's, they're not bad, right? There, there might be one that's a little bit higher and a little bit better, which I think is the cash offer wholesaling, which is what we do. but if you pick any avenue and you went and crushed it and became the best in the industry at that, you're going to be making way more money than the average person. And there's, there's guys out there crushing it. And pretty much any industry that you can think of, you just have to be the best. So just pick something, get going. Um, you know, you can, you can switch it up later Become obsessed. Yeah, become obsessed. Well, I'm curious about some of your beliefs around business. So, do you have a belief that you see business owners have that might be off base, talking about Yeah, the biggest thing I see business owners biggest mistake that I see business owners making is thinking that you have to have a million different things within the business to be successful. So that could be, you know, in wholesaling, for example, that could be having a million different marketing channels when you haven't mastered one. And that's okay, at some point, right, you're going to get to that level. But when you're first starting out, you need to hunker down on one thing, it goes back to my point that I was talking about earlier, pick one marketing channel, you need to max that out before moving on to the next thing. And then you go do one thing at a time. Because what will happen is you go get yourself diluted. So if you're doing direct to seller wholesaling, you could be doing, you know, Google Ads, you could do, you know, the pay-per-click you'd be doing, direct mail, cold calling. And you're going to really dilute yourself if you're trying to do all those things at once when you haven't really mastered the one thing. So you need to pick one thing at a time, get that maxed out before stepping on to the next thing. And what I did with my company there's a couple different departments that we have, right? So acquisitions and dispositions are the main ones. And when I first started the company, I said, we're not going to touch dispositions for a while. We're going to get this stabilized before we start building out dispositions, because it's just another shiny object. It's just another distraction. So we went all in on acquisitions. And we're finally to the point where we're building out the disposition side of our business. But that was probably the best thing I've I ever did because I see a lot of newer guys starting and they're trying to do it all themselves. So what happens when you, you're doing acquisitions and then you get a deal and then you have to go sell it. So you're, you're building up this, this machine to get deals. When you get this deal, you get this machine kind of dies down cause you have to stop it and go over here to dispositions and start building that machine up and then selling it. And you stop that and then you're just bouncing back and forth. So we decided we're just going to pick one thing, get good at that. stabilize that and then go on to the next thing and just keep building it on top of each other. No, that's really smart. That's good insight. Waste haulers have a really hard time figuring out where they're going to get customers from. And I think every starting business has this challenge. Every business has this challenge always, but a new business has the most because they don't have customers yet, so they have to get some. And I don't know where the best place is to get customers. Social media has become so huge that it seems like a logical place to go. I mean, do you have recommendations for a new business owner or someone that maybe their marketing is not not dialed in yet like where should they start you know it really depends on every industry right Yeah. I mean, it could be all over the board. So I'd hate to fear a lot of your audiences doing waste hauling and stuff like that. I'd hate to hate to lead them in the wrong direction. Cause there's so, so many different ways, like even just within real estate, different real estate businesses. Um, so I can only imagine what it is with the waste hauling, but I'd say networking is, is your best friend. So talking to people, getting on the phones Yeah, I think it is different for each business, even inside waste hauling, it's different for each company because they have different target. They have different work they like to do. Some guys, like the junk haulers typically, well, I shouldn't say typically, junk haulers could love working with individual customers like homeowners. And then, or they could love working with property managers or someone in the estate clean-out business, because they're going to get recurring business from the same people. There's two totally different marketing strategies behind those. And I think you could win on a lot of different social media platforms, or you could go door-to-door, which I don't recommend that, but it would work. So yeah, I think you're right. It does depend on who you're going after, but you're saying pick one, pick one thing and just do that. Get really good at it, right? Don't just try, don't hit every single platform, social Yeah, exactly. And it's going to take a lot longer than you think to actually get a momentum and consistent results. Cause what I'll see a lot of business owners do is they'll, they'll start with one thing. And then after 30 days, they're like, Oh, this isn't working. And then I'll move on to the next thing. Like it can take six months. It can take a year to really get consistent results from that one marketing channel. So you don't want to stop that and then go start something else and then keep switching it up every, every few months because it's not performing the way it should. Right. Reality just Yeah, that makes me think of Alex Ramosi's book, 100 Million Dollar Leads. Have you heard of his different strategies? He's got like, he's got like four strategies he recommends, which I can't remember off the top of my head, but like there's like cold outreach, there's paid ads, there's things like that. But I think he says, if you wanna get serious about marketing, like really serious, you'd like dedicate hours a day, every day until you have enough customers to be too busy working. to spend on marketing and acquiring customers? Do you have a method you ascribe to Our best way is cold, cold calling. So we cold call, we cold text. Um, that's been kind of the name of the game, but it's a little bit different with the way we do it, right? Cause we're reaching out to real estate agents instead of directly to consumers. So a lot of them are actually happy to hear from us because we're almost providing a valuable service to them for free. And we're actually paying them, uh, for the forks that they're doing. So it is, uh, it's a little bit different. It's more business to business in my eyes compared to, uh, business to That makes sense. I really have a hard time understanding how to market to consumers. I'd much rather market to businesses because they're actually advertising their services. They're saying, hey, I'm open for business. And so they're findable. And you can say, I want to work with this type of business and you can find all those people, right? So if you want to work with real estate agents, I don't know if this is a similar question or not. I guess it sounds similar. So if it's too much the same, we'll just skip it. But what's one mistake that you see entrepreneurs making over and over again in their Yeah, one mistake that I see. all entrepreneurs making or most entrepreneurs making is, is what I was talking about earlier, the shiny object syndrome, because there's a quote I, I really love. It's like, if you have one foot in two different boats, you're going to end up falling in the lake in two separate boats. So this goes back to the point of picking, picking one thing. Yeah, yeah. Well, I like that a lot. I personally struggle with that quite a bit because I have a million of ideas. I'm sure you have a million ideas too, or someone will give you, say, hey, what about this? You ever get pulled into or attracted all the time, man, it's like, it's like a constant battle for me, because it's the way my brain works. I think it's the way a lot of humans brains work is just chasing after that new, new thing. But it's just you have to become really good at saying no, right? That goes for for everything. But to be successful, you have to be able to say no to a lot of different things. Whether that's going out on the weekends with friends, because you need to you need to focus on business, whether it's a new shiny object that just came in, like it, you need to become better at saying no, because you're gonna have to say no to a Well, what's your strategy for saying no? I bet you It's tough. Now, I'm a little bit more blunt than I used to be. I used to be a yes man, so it was really hard for me to say no. I felt bad, but I'm just kind of blunt about it. Like with friends going out on the weekends, like, hey, I can't make it, I'm too busy. Or with new ideas, I kind of go back to my principles. Hey, we're not quite ready yet. Like, it's a great idea, maybe at some point. But right now, we're solely focused on this Sure, that does make sense. I think something I'm going to keep trying is referring to my already existing priorities and My existing priorities fill up my calendar, and that's normally where I can't say yes to things because I'd have to take something off my calendar or say no to something that I'm already doing, that I already believe in. It is good to swap out stuff that if something comes along and it matches up with my priorities, I will take that on, but that means I have to subtract. You And I became so strict with my calendar, which you're right, that has helped a lot. Because if it's not in the calendar, it's not happening for me. Like whereas before I would just go just go with the flow every single day, whatever came at me, I'd kind of be more reactive. But now it's everything's dialed in with my calendar and my deep work blocks where I'm not getting distracted by anything else, like literally everything to my family time to when I No, that's smart. I should steal that because my calendar is not What you should do, anybody watching this and you as well, Dan Martell taught this, but the calendar audit. So you'll sit there every day, set a timer for 15 minutes, just recurring all day long. And at the end of every 15 minutes, you're going to write down exactly what you were doing those 15 minutes prior. And just take a look at that, you're going to be shocked because I was I was me personally, I was thinking I was super efficient, getting so much work done. And I did that. And I'm like, I'm switching tasks every 10 to 15 minutes, there's no way that I'm being super efficient. If I'm starting something new every 15 minutes, like I'm bouncing all over the place. And that's what I was like, I really got to dial in my calendar, and just get locked in for you know, Yeah, I've done a few of those time studies, and you're right. It does a couple of things. One, it makes you feel embarrassed about how much time you spend on the wrong things, right? Or a task you think only takes 10 minutes ends up taking an hour. Like, wow, I spent an hour doing email, right? Email eats up so much of my time, or used to. Now I just have an auto response that says, hey, I'm not available. Email my team instead. But also, if I know my time is going to get studied, I try to make better decisions in the moment because I don't want it to reflect all these bad things. Maybe Do you have any business stories where you learned an unforgettable lesson that you could share with us, either maybe a customer experience or something you did that worked out well that you want to continue to I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to stuff in my business. And one thing I struggled with was building out our SLPs or our playbooks, right? I never wanted to finish them because everything had to be perfect. So I never want to have a finished product. It was just so difficult for me trying to get all the correct pieces into the right places. Like it made my brain, it just fried my brain. Like just so much thinking and like, this isn't good. So what I did in one of our company principles is we'd rather be 80% right or 80% there and then and then ship something instead of getting 100% there because that extra 20% is going to take, you know, just as much time, if not more than that, than it took to get you to that 80%. So what I did on the playbooks, and what I do now is I'll just release it like 80% done. And then as people start using it, then we can start adding to it, instead of trying to get it perfect Yeah, that's a really good, that's a good thought because I just dealt with this this morning we were working on something I'm like it's gonna, it's good enough like we, we just got to move forward with it. But the, but then you, the perfectionist in us I think, you know, I'm in an accounting background, a lot of A lot of what we do is has to be very precise, but there's a lot of things that don't have to be precise or we got to get that first draft out. So yeah, that's a lesson that once you learn it and you actually give that up, you can definitely make big like Yeah. Cause a lot of people struggle with it. Like they're like, it's gotta be a hundred percent done a hundred percent perfect. But like, when you really look at the math, like for example, I have a, I have a guy on my team and when he is trying to think of, he's trying to turn down a property, he's trying to think of the perfect thing to say. And so he'll sit there and ruminate on it and try and think of this perfect thing to say. And then he'll end up not saying anything at all. Well, then he comes back to it like two, three hours later and he has to spend just as much time thinking through their response. I'm like, Bro, just think of something and send it. I don't care if it's perfect. I don't care if it's bad. It doesn't matter. Just send something because you're bogging yourself down. You're getting decision fatigue by sitting there and ruminating on it and then stopping it and then coming back to it a little bit later. Just get Yeah, just send it. Just send it. Is there a guy that was his thing? He like would drive a snowmobile. That's what it was. And he would do like jumps with his snowmobile. And he's like, I'm gonna send it. Should I send it? And then he would do the snowmobile jump. Those are so funny. I love those videos. The Send It guy. Awesome. I think I got through almost all my questions here. I might have already asked, I already asked you who you like to help through your business, right? Yeah. You'd like to help. Sounds like anyone that wants to get into real estate is Yeah, like I have a lot of free content. I'm not selling any courses or anything like that. Just free business content, real estate investment content on my Instagram page. And then obviously our three Yeah. Well, maybe you could help someone. What would someone do if they want to get into real estate? What's the right way to do it? Because I think we've all seen people or have been the person that's gotten into real estate the wrong way and then got burned by something they just had no idea. What's the right way to walk into the real estate I think the biggest shortcut that a lot of people overlook, or I guess not, I don't think the biggest shortcut that a lot of people overlook is hiring a mentor, right? So go out there and spend some money if you have money to find somebody that's done it. And there's a lot of gurus out there who aren't doing it and they make all their money for coaching. So be cognizant of that and make sure that they're, they actually have a legitimate business and they're actually making money from that before paying a bunch of money to these people. But you get, pretty much all of their life experience and business hacks and tips, tricks, like everything about their business by just cutting them a check. So I'd say do that. And if you don't have the money to do that, then you might have to start with YouTube University. But the biggest thing with all of that, right, if you go cut a check, or you do YouTube University, you need to take action. And you need to understand that it's going to take a lot longer than what you have envisioned in your head, right? So you're gonna have to make more calls than everybody else, you're gonna have to spend more time doing, doing everything. So just understanding your head, it's gonna take a lot longer than you think. And you just have to take action. Yeah, that's wise. Because if you don't go the right way, you don't find a mentor or find someone that actually knows how to do it, and you just jump into real estate. and take too much risk on, that blessing that real estate can be becomes like this curse. And you're like, I can't get rid of this curse. And now you got to unload properties that you never should have been in in the first place. So yeah, that's good advice, Jayven. Awesome. Well, is there anything you wanted to talk about? Like, do you have any books you want to recommend? Or like you said, you do give free content. Like, is there a place where people should follow you, like on YouTube or Instagram to get more Yeah, my biggest one is Instagram Jaben underscore makings. And then I love books. I read several books every single month. I think that's another huge hack that people overlook because you get you know, some guy with 50 years of life experience and you paid 20 books for all of that or$20 for all that in the book. So you need to read, read more books, uh, listen to more podcasts. Uh, so there's a couple of good books that I, there's a lot of books that I really like, but if you are just getting started in sales or something, uh, one that I make all my sales guys read, is How to Win Friends and Influence Yeah. Super simple book, but it just really teaches you how to communicate with people, asking better questions, listening, which helps in all avenues of your life, relationships, business, whatever it may Yeah, that book is like timeless because it's been around for a while and I think it still stands up and it's something you got to go back to. I've read it, but I could use a refresher because it's a pretty thick book. It gives you a lot of information in their pages there. Yeah, it's solid. I think there was a story in there about how he was a mechanic. Um, he, he just, he was really curious about this. I think it was a plane mechanic and he just started talking to this guy that worked for him, this, um, this mechanic and he got to know him really well. And just, just by being curious about his life, they know they develop this relationship and this trust. And the mechanic was like, became one, like one of his best employees ever. And it was just cause he decided to have a conversation with him. He wasn't like, it wasn't a transactional relationship. It was more of a. Like, I'm really curious about how, how, how you're doing and the mechanic just gave him great service, you Yeah, I was, uh, I'm re I just started a new book yesterday. It's called Jack. Um, it's about Jack Welch. The CEO is the CEO of general electric for 20 years, but he was talking about always be, always be recruiting. So something similar to that. And he had a very similar story to that. with a guy that he uh i can't remember what it what it was doing but it's some random guy he just started talking to literally the the next week i think it might have been a mechanic on a car as well and the next week he came and he quit that came and started working for general electric and then ended up working there for 30 plus years oh my gosh Yeah, that's fantastic. Yes. You never know where you're going to get your next talent. You know, in the in the truck driving, in the waste hauling business, it is really hard to find good drivers. But the best people I've met are not through job postings. They're from interactions in the community because waste hauling is very local. You're not going to you're not going to have a business that's nationwide as waste hauler. It's going to be in your town and in your county. And so you're going to have to work with people that you meet or they're local. So, yeah, meet the people and be curious about your neighbors, be curious about other business owners and be curious about the people in your town. And it's really amazing what doors that will open up. For sure. Awesome. All right. Well, I'm ready to wrap up here and we got I'm sure you have a busy day, have a lot going on. But is there anything else you I don't think so, man. I really appreciate you having me on. It's been a blast Awesome. All right. Thanks, Jabin. Everyone, thanks for joining us for Waste to Wealth. Keep hauling and keep turning that trash into dollars. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of Waste to Wealth. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you connect with us on social media and subscribe to the show wherever you consume podcasts. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review and tell a friend about the show.