Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche so you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host. He uses the insider group method to poll his audiences every single week, Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Hi, I’m Ziv Raviv and I’m here in season two episode 2 together with Michael Wiley from Alabama, US Michael is the owner and operator of flippinmobilehomes.com. Hello, Michael, how are you, my friend?

Michael:

I’m doing great this morning. How about yourself?

Ziv:

I’m excited to talk with you because when I, saw what you do in your online course, I was very impressed at how specific it is and how, like it actually helps people with a very specific transformation. What do you help people do? Like what does it even mean? Flipping mobile homes?

Michael:

Well, the thing is that you have the real estate market, which I would call traditional real estate. And so mobile homes will be what I would call alternative real estate. And so I teach people how to invest in those. And a lot of people don’t realize there’s a lot of money in that market where most people just don’t pay attention.

Ziv:

So what type of person makes a decision to flip on a mobile home? Like what is the avatar of your audience, potential clients?

Michael:

Well, I’ll start off with a big name first about this. So I’m just going to ask you a question here. I’ll give you maybe a guess or two for laughs. But when you ask about what kind of person basically invest in mobile homes, right? There’s one name that I’m looking for and they’re really, really successful, really successful the biggest mobile home investor in the world. Can you give me that name just all the time?

Ziv:

I’m really going to guess, because I’m not familiarized with this, but I’m just guessing, like what luck, maybe Grant Cardone,

Michael:

Even more major. I’m talking about over successful. Somebody who could just wipe the floor with Grant Cardone, but I’ll cut the guesswork out. Warren Buffett’s actually biggest investor in the world. So when people like that do something like this, it makes you kind of want to take a look at, you know what I mean? It’s like, okay, what is what’s going on over here with this? And that’s not to say that that’s what guided me on this journey to doing that. But I mean, once I got there and I was like, okay, I’m in the right place.

Ziv:

So you’re actually like an expert on this topic. You help people do it after you first found out all the ways to do it efficiently and you’re doing it yourself. So how many years are you in this market?

Michael:
Four.

Ziv:
Right. And only you’ve got some results. Like what’s the end-to-end timeline here for a project like that.

Michael:

So, the, you mean the actual flip or teaching someone how to do it? No,

Ziv:

Actually, flipping it.

Michael:

Okay. So, I’ll have to explain a little something here. So there’s three different types of flips, right? That I teach people. Number one would be the standard flip, which is where you buy one. Maybe it needs a little bit of referred work or something like that in it. And depending on the extent of wear and tear that could take anywhere from about two to three weeks, the next one would definitely be just buying it out. You would buy that outright and sell it. The next one would be just not having to do any at all, which I guess we can categorize those the same way. And you basically have your buyers list and everything. These are people who are eager to buy from you, right? They’re motivated buyers. They have the capital to be able to invest in something right now. And you basically go out there and you get that on the third guy would be the wholesale, which is basically, you never own the mobile home at all.

Michael:

Right? So basically what you’re doing is you’re still working off of that buyer’s list and you can have yourself. I mean, a really strong buyers list within a pack within the next 24 to 48 hours. So, I teach that’s the first thing that I teach. You need people in your area who qualify to buy from you. They have the capital ready. And what you basically do is you find a motivated seller. So, we’ve got a motivated buyer and we’ve got a motivated seller. You need to get those two people together, where you as a middleman, what you do is you go ahead, basically broker that deal and you put some in your pocket for yourself. And that’s the easiest method that I teach.

Ziv:

That’s like a more advanced way, or like, where do you think people, your students, whether you recommend they start?

Michael:

Well, I definitely recommend that they start with a buyers list first. So, I have a free training set up before any money changes hands, I call it a test or market exercise. And so, this is about maybe or videos. So, three month that’s a one module, three lesson program, little mini course that you take, and it teaches you how to get these buyers for yourself in a very short amount of time. And so that’ll get your story and stuff when you’re actually ready to go ahead and make it for sale.

Ziv:

That’s very interesting because you took what I perceived as the hardest problem, the hardest problem, which is like, how do you find buyers? And you made that into your free stuff. Your free course.

Michael:

Yeah. I actually have a friend of mine who is, she inspires me a lot and her name is Pam. And she was like, she gets onto to alive. She gives me good advice and everything. And she was like, you’re giving us a way. And I was like, yeah, why not? She was like, should be charged for that. I’m like, it’s pretty easy stuff. And you know, when you get off into this space, you kind of take for granted the things that you know, but I don’t have any problem with it and people who’ve got success. And that’s actually one of the ways that helps me to get people into the profitable part of my sales funnel. And I’m assuming that people who are going to be listening to this podcast know what a funnel is, you know, or at least have some rough approximation of what it is. So by them getting those results, just having this list of people who are ready to cut them checks for like 30, 40, 50, 60, $70,000 is legit. Then they’re like, okay, I need to know how to take advantage of this. And I’m like welcome into the fold and that’s how that works.

Ziv:

Nice. So how did you think about the idea of sharing your unique expertise online with like a mobile, like with an online course and everything?

Michael:

Well, I’ll say this right here. There was a book that I kind of learned like the basics from, and I have no problem sharing that. It’s called a Deals on Wheels by Lonnie Scruggs. And it was written like back in the nineties. So it’s, it’s, there are parts of it that are out of date compared to how we do things now. And I was like, well, there’s not really anybody in this space doing that. And even now there’s only a few people who are doing it. And so when I first flipped my first mobile home, I was like, I had this goal in mind. I was like, I’m going to teach this because my story was at the time. And I hope I’m not jumping the gun with any questions that you have here. But I’ll say this at the time, when I first learned how to flip Ziv, I had $2 in my pocket.

Michael:

I would like to say $2 to my name, but hell even that was owed out. I was mired in debt. I worked a nine to five job like anybody else did and car payments, depression, lots of other factors and stuff contributed to me, just not performing as well as I had before I had encountered all these things. And I was literally like, I’m sitting there with like $2 in my pocket. I had to make a decision of whether or not I was going to put food in my stomach or put gas in my car. That’s a tough spot to be in. When I flipped my first mobile home, I didn’t go from like super rich or anything like that. My first book got me about $8,500. And I was ecstatic about that. You go from $2 to 8,500 and that was just like, okay, I’m like this, this is what we’re doing now. You know what I mean? And so going from there to that, I mean, I definitely had some help from a friend of mine who kind of like took me under his wing to kind of show me the ropes. And then once I did that, it was just like, no stop.

Ziv:

So tell me a little bit about your operation nowadays as an educational entrepreneur. Do you have a team?

Michael:

Yes and no. Most of the work that goes into what I do is done by me. And I’ll tell you why. I mean, I have like a I have a studio jammer guy and everything like that. And so they helped me out a lot when it comes down to production. But when it comes down to the flip and everything like that, now first started off by myself. I have carpentry skills and everything like that. And I think that’s what sets me apart from everybody else who teaches this stuff, nobody else is actually doing the work. You know, they just hire people, everything like that. Now I have a crew that actually can alleviate some of that work for me so that I can focus on other things. But for the most part, I’m the face of everything. So if you’ve ever watched something like HGTV, they’re watch, you know, chip and Joanna gay or somebody like that, that you understand pretty much what goes into what I do this part of my funnel. I show people how to do it, that it can be done. It’s not to say that you have to do it yourself, but I mean, when you see somebody else doing it, it makes it that much easier.

Ziv:

What do you think in your opinion is the hardest bit for your students? What’s the biggest hurdle for them before they managed to do the, the first flip?

Michael:

Talking to people, talking to people. So the first module in my course, right. And I just want to talk about that for a sec is mindset, right? So I guess the average person goes into this into the world, period. Let’s not even focus on my course for a second. Let’s not focus on my business. Let’s focus on the mindset of the average person. Has they, every person has a value system. All our friendships, our family relationships, everything is based off of that. The people that are closest to you have the most value to you and the person who comes into this, they’re automatically assuming that they have no value and that when they go to people and they start asking for these, talking up these business deals and putting this paperwork and everything together, their mindset isn’t that somebody is going to tell me no, and it’s going to be so terrible and everything like that.

Michael:

But what I tell them is you’re not just living in mobile homes here. You’re a problem solver. At the end of the day, somebody needs a place to stay. Somebody has something to sell. You’re the person who’s going to be able to make that happen. And even when you go talk to these mobile home parks, they’re squeamish about going in there and talking to part managers and stuff like sitting in an actual office, talking to the big person, the big man or the big woman and staff on campus. And I tell them all the time, I’m like, look, you have something to offer. So don’t go in the door thinking that you’re begging for an opportunity. You’re actually providing them with an opportunity for this. Each one of these lots around here that you see that is empty. That is money that they’re losing the year.

Michael:

The person is going to come to the door and make them make money on that. And then when you come to the door saying, Hey, I can help you make money. That changes the whole dynamic of the relationship. You’re not just somebody walking off the street and begging for a sandwich or even a place to stay or something like that. You’re all an opportunity. So I had them shift that mindset before they even get off into it. And that seemed to help out a lot because a lot of them, like I said, they’re scared. I deal with men and women. Some of them have never talked to people was over there on edge of burden. Some of them are extremely extroverted, which is a good thing. But for those people who can’t do that, or this is new territory for which there is new territory for all of them, most of them I’d say some come from a real estate background. So with all that being said, that’s like, the hardest part is just talking to people for these large sums of money. And these are mostly people who are coming from like the average person, I would say in the United States makes about somewhere, let’s say about 30 to $35,000. The average person, the people who come into my course, they have different backgrounds, but they’re normally not used to getting lump sums like that. And I think that that much money and talking to people just scares the hell out of them. So what else?

Ziv:
What are the other things that your course covers?

Michael:

Well, my course covers the basic. What a, you gotta have, it covers it like this right here. So different mobile homes are going to have different valuations, right? Different year models. And the United States is like split up into these three wins zone category. And I’m like, okay, you can get X amount of money for a mobile home here, but just in case, check your local market. I go from that to how to scope out of a wall. Okay. So that would be prospecting, right? How to scope out a good mobile home for a good price. Then we go to acquisition. This is how you go ahead and you structure your deals. Okay. So you’ll have that down and you’ll know how to offer, how to get the best deal for when you actually go in to do it, how to talk to the current owner and everything like that, how to get your way as you get your foot in the door, get the best deal.

Michael:

Next is, well, does this home mean any kind of repair or anything like that? Because if you could make like minor repairs or something, you can Jack your price up, right? You’d be surprised at what just a simple fix, like maybe a small leak in the roof or something, or maybe a soft spot in the floor, quite common in mobile homes, especially your older ones, maybe a hole in the wall. Maybe somebody opened the door really fast and a door knob kind of went through it or something like that, or who knows what might have making those small fixes so that you can ensure that you get the best deal for it so that you can ensure that the seller and you get the best deal for your home, right? You might be able to take a mobile home that you could acquire for like $8,000 and be able to end up getting like maybe 20,000 out of it, or a hundred thousand, depending on where you stand in the United States.

Michael:

So we cover that minor repairs. The next would-be management. And that’s basically where, you know, you have to have your taxes and everything in order. And I show you how to do that in a paperless fashion. And you can do everything and stuff on your phone. So that’s about the size of that. Once you get that down, I mean, what do you do before, where you can still kick it and everything, I’ll really like for a person to come around and just encourage other people to that it’s possible to get out of their nine to five. That’s about the size of

Ziv:

Do you sometimes offer them any like coaching or one-on-one or some Q and A sessions?

Michael: Of course. So I do weekly zoom meetings. So I have a free public group that anybody can get into. We also have a pay group that’s only for the students and everything. So once I get them in there, I fast track. And from there, I mean, I have plenty of testimonials. I will tell you that if you got a problem, please call me right away. Like you have my cell phone number. I will hop on a call with you. And this is something that I pretty much want to talk about too, while we’re on this podcast is I’m six foot one, all right, I’m over 200 pounds. I’m a man. It’s going to be very important here in a sec. But I also deal with women who are not like that. Right? So as a man, I typically don’t have to worry about getting taken advantage of, or being assaulted by people or something like that.

Michael:

But when you’re a woman or something, you know, that that could be a part of her. That could be a very real possibility. So I offer that just to my women, clients who may or may not have a boyfriend or a husband who could or could not be there with them and I’ll hop on the call with them and we’ll be like, okay, cool. We’re even to guy, maybe they’re just not that confident in themselves. I’m like, okay, you work for me and I’m your investor. I couldn’t be there today. So I’m there via video call, and I’m going to walk you through this and we’re going to talk like that. So those are some of the things like when people buy, my course, they’re buying me. You understand what I mean? Like, they’re not just getting the some course they’re getting full support.

Ziv:

How do people hear about your activities, your course?

Michael:

There’s a couple of ways. So I’m on like as many social media platforms as I could manage, which right now is Snapchat and Instagram, Facebook and YouTube is a big one for me. Cause I love to make videos. I have plenty of videos out there. I do how to videos, where I build cool stuff. You know what I mean? That has nothing to do with flipping mobile homes at all, that I really like to build things. And also people seem to be able to find me through Facebook as well. I have no idea how they do it, but they do it. But the group is definitely growing at a steady pace. I love it.

Ziv:

What would you give yourself as an advice if you were talking to yourself a few years back now that you know what you know.

Michael:

Can I speak freely here? Right. So if I had to go back several years to, let’s say about the time that I first came into the knowledge of doing this, right? So I got a little story to tell and I had an old friend of mine, right? We had been friends for probably about six years at that point. And he was out of town. He was a truck driver and everything, and he needed to, he wanted to start flipping mobile homes. And so while he calls me up, cause I guess maybe I was like the smartest person in his spread circle or something like that. And I was capable of doing it. So he tells me to go over to a mobile home, he calls me up and he’s like, Mike, how’s everything going? And I was like, I am miserable. I have no money.

I’m down on my luck. I’m literally sleeping on a friend’s couch at this point. And he was like, well, I need you to go do something for me, man. So I was like, what is it? So he was like, well, I need you to go into this mobile home and I want you to take some pictures of it. So I was like, sure, no problem. Just shoot me the address. And I’ll go over here and do it, tell me what pictures you need. You know, bedrooms, kitchen, baths, living room hallway, everything like that, interior exterior. So I was like, okay, cool. I can do that. Took the pictures and everything and texted them to him two days later. Now he’s in Colorado at this point, two days later, he’s in town. He sends me a picture back. He’s standing out in front of the same mobile home, standing there, shaking hands with some guy I’ve never seen what he’s got.

Michael:

He’s got like a big stack of cash and I’m like, teach me. So after that I flipped my first meal while he didn’t exactly teach me everything. I’m really good. I’m a fairly smart person, you know, without to moan or nobody likes somebody who is like, you know, no pompous or whatnot, but they would, the bounds of being humble. I am very smart. Right. So I went on ahead and did my first one without his help and everything. And that was when I was like, okay, I’m going to teach them stuff. But fast forwarding to getting to your point. There’s an old saying here is that if you want to know the depths of a man’s soul, offer him Lander money. We went into business together and I was more of the bookkeeper type person. So I got spreadsheets and stuff over here, keeping track of our expenses and everything, how much money and everything that we got coming in.

Michael:

I look in the account one day and I’m like, okay, there’s we’re not rich at this point. Okay. I’m not rich still. Alright, I’m climbing like everybody else. And so this advice is going to tie into what I’m going to say. So there’s 40 grand missing out of the account, 40 grand USD. And I’m like, well, what the heck is going on with the money? He was like, man, look, I started this company. I can do whatever I want to with it. I’m like I’m in business with you. So if you’re doing that with company money, then that affects my life. You know, plus I want to see the company do good. That’s why, where I had to do at work every day. And so without going into too much detail, it spiraled out of control. He went to the authorities, told them that I had stolen $1,500 them.

Michael:

They locked me up. I got out like 12 hours later and I was like, you know what I’m done with him? So the reason why I said, if you want to know the depth of a man’s soul offer blander money is that once the money started coming in, he, he turned on me, but he really revealed more of himself of his true nature. So if I could go back and tell myself, you know, anything, is that in anybody who’s listening to this, you are strong enough, right? Never. They’re going to be marvelous and stuff. When you are going to doubt yourself. And that is if you are a human being, that’s normal, you’re going out into unchartered territory. And that’s a scary thought, just like my students, where they get in there. And they’re like, you asked me like, what they’re most afraid of. This is unchartered territory for them.

Michael:

And I understand that they’re do my best to walk them through it. Now, does everybody meet with success? No. Some people just come in and they let that fear. Or maybe just this interest or something like that. Just take them away. You know, shiny object syndrome. Oh, another course over here. And they just get lost in that analysis paralysis can’t be helped. But if I had to go back and tell myself that as don’t doubt yourself, be extra cautious of who you let into your circles when you’re on your purpose. Because people, especially people who don’t have anything going on for themselves are drawn to people who look like they know where they’re going to always do your best to try to cultivate an air of certainty and boldness. And that is what’s going to draw most people. Am I the most popular? No. When people tell you they wouldn’t learn from anybody else, especially at modus.

Michael:

When I doubted myself and I hesitated on pulling the trigger on what I got going on, I’m like, who am I to be doing this? Nobody’s going to like me and everything like that. Next thing you know, I had a thousand subs on YouTube faster than most people do it. My group is, it’s not, you know, massive, you know, it’s growing to about 400 people now. I’ve got plenty of success stories now, and that it never would have happened. Had I not taken that leap? So that would be my last bit of advice for you is should you gotta jump, man? And you gotta be focused on where it is that you’ve done with.

Ziv:

I love it. And this is such a clear case where you could open it in a very micro niche with very small numbers. I resonate with that. Like my first launch of an online course was with an email list of 400 people. And it was like an $11,000 launch and it was beautiful. So I’m really, if I may say so I’m proud of all that you do. I’m so excited about your journey. Can’t wait to see where you go from here with all sorts of advanced products like memberships and coaching high-end coaching or whatever you do. Super cool to see you flipping mobile homes and helping other people do it. Michael Wiley, thank you so much. Where can people go again to learn more about you?

Michael:

You can find me flippinmobilehomes.com and if you go there and you fill out the questionnaire and everything, you can actually get into the Facebook group that way, and you can interact with me in there. And you know, people didn’t always mesh with me and stuff on messenger, but do you mind if I leave the viewers with a final thought,

Ziv:

Please?

Michael:

So the focus of your, of your podcast here is niching down. And I know that you’ve covered this before. You’re a very thorough guy. I mean, you and I have been interacting and stuff in the group together. And I just really like your stuff, how positive you are about that. But I would definitely like to leave your listeners with this who are afraid of niching down because a lot of people are afraid of missing out on these opportunities out here, look at business this way, you’re in this room and it’s a circular room, right? And around you, you’re surrounded by these doors, right? Let’s say that there’s 10 doors. Just for the sake of visualization. Most, if you had to choose one, you can’t choose two or three or anything like that. Yet you can, one, most people are afraid of opening that door. So they never move to going open that door.

Michael:

This is where most people are, but I’ll say this right here. If you go and open one door, this is, this door is a niche. Okay? Each one of these 10 doors represents a niche. If people think that once you open that door, that’s just, it. There are no more opportunities. I’m stuck here. This is my life. This is what I do. But here’s the thing behind that door that you open are going to be more doors than you could ever possibly open. And there’s going to be more doors behind each one of those doors that you open. All right. So niching down. Isn’t a bad thing. So that’s my final thought on that. And yeah, you guys definitely catching my website, join with the Facebook group. I’d love to hear from you guys and tell them you

Ziv:

Thank you so much for that, Michael. I love it. I’m in for that and see you guys next week on the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Thank you, guys.

Voice Over:
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