Transcript of $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, broadly enough, I was actually trying to rent the house a few months earlier, but it was $200 a month out of my budget. It was the upper floor, and I really could only afford a basement suite. 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. I asked what that number would be. And she said, I need at least 350,000 for the house. 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 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, you're going to sell it for 400. 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 grand is going to bring the money to the table. I'm going to use that money to pay the 350,000. 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 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 to try and put this into provision and try and build an empire from a whole sense?

Well, I just started doing it more and more and more and more, and I got to a point in your mind, looking at that time frame between seven-year period, knowing how much you potentially made.

Even though you took a break, you realized the potential that is there and the circumstance that you faced, considering that you were younger, how did you end up 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 going to 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 Craigslist, and I start looking at real estate in France.

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. I call him one of the godfathers of wholesaling. If you're curious learning about, like Astroflipping, wholesaling, learning about real estate, we have the O-G 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 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 Cagli, 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.

Like I said, an Ogie. I'm super excited to have him over the year. He took flights, he took driving all the way to get just so a bit.

He rode a camel. He rode a camel. That was an interesting part of the journey. Why didn't you tell me I was going to ride a camel in the middle of the desert here? Where are we? Morocco?

Casablanca, to be exact. Also, thank you very much for coming to me.

Of course. Great to be here. Thank you for the invitation. For any of you that are wondering, we're in Phoenix, Arizona. It was about a 20-minute drive from my house.

Also, Stefan, 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-Well, I was never passionate about it.

I was just told that's what I was going to do. My My family, 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. Even trying to be an attorney, which I would have been more suited for my gifts because I'm a talker, I I love communication. I was winning debate in speech competitions as a young kid. Being an orator was a part of, I imagine, my life plan, and my parents were just not for it. I had so many teachers say to my mom and dad, he would be an incredible attorney. This guy could be a politician one day, but it was just like, Doctor, don't come home. And so, yeah, I didn't get into medical school, and so that started a 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. 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, 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. 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, even in high school, the smartest kids were Indians. It's almost a culturally invested way to try and teach kids, Listen, you learn, get the best grades, and you should end up becoming the engineers and the doctors. But even coming to America, living in both East Coast and West Coast, you'd see it in the Wall Street. You see it in Silicon Valley, especially living in the Bay Area. They follow that path. However, I've been seeing a change, though. I've been seeing a lot within the entrepreneurial space and becoming super successful. I mean, I follow Vivek Ramaswami, massive fan of him. But yes, I wanted to know, how did you get that first wholesale deal? What made you pursue that journey?

It was an accident. A happy one. I don't get into medical school, and now I'm like, what do I do with myself? And I'm getting into trouble. I grew up in an interesting demographic and part of my part of Calgary, Alberta, where I grew up, I was surrounded by violence, surrounded by not the best ways to make money. That was my world. That was my environment. But I was different from them because, A, I'm Indian, B, I'm also smart. I'm really intelligent, but my environment is not conducive to me letting that be a real thing. And so the girl I'm dating is trying to push me away from the friends and the people. And she says, Hey, 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 I'm 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. 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. 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. 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 $600 actually cost us $700 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 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. 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. It's like, what is going on here? Meanwhile, I hear my And 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. So I ask, 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. 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 said, 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 with 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 to be in these specific areas of the city, the inner city part of Calgary. Ondly enough, I live in an inner city neighborhood in a rental there. And 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, Otterly 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 $300 $450,000 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 He 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 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 $400,000 price. So you're going You're going to buy it for 350, you're going to sell it 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. 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 tool, and I actually do it. I I fold it off.

I get the house under contract. I sell the deal. It turns out to be $47,000 in 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. 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 had ever seen. But 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 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. Soft XP.

Coming out as like-Yeah. I'm using Internet Explorer as my browser. It's early, early internet. It's AOL days.

That's mad. 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 put this into fruition and try and build an empire in a wholesaling?

Well, I just started doing it more and more and more and more. And I got to a place where I pieced together what was going on. I'm like, okay, so these developers need this product. They need these houses to tear down. Well, 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 gutting them, and they're turning them into luxury condos. And they're taking the one apartment building and turning them into condo buildings. 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 neighborhood, calling... Anywhere that there was a building that had a rent sign that was handwritten, 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 in 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. It was interesting. Of course, I'm in my early 20s, so I'm buying dumb stuff. I end up buying myself a home that overlooks the entire I buy my mom a house on a lake. I buy too many cars. I have a very expensive, 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. Then it all left. I lost it all in 2008. It was It's 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 He pulls up. He wants to meet me because he's like, who is this kid who I'm buying all these buildings from? I want to see this guy. I want to meet this guy. So he's telling his acquisitions person, When I come to town, have him meet me. Bring him to the building. I want to shake this guy's hand. 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 woman walks out of the car. Oh, my goodness. She's like one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in my life.

Bumbecluck. And then this guy walks out of the car, and he's like 5'2, maybe 180 pounds. And he's bald. And he's like, his belly's falling out of his pants. 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 got to 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 cosign all the construction loans. And then the market crashed.

2008 financial crisis.

I have lost all of it. Not only did I lose the 12 million in cash I made, I lost all of those buildings. I was negative $1. 8 million 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 the next few months. Just everything just going down with trajectory. So that affected you still in algorithm in Canada that time because it was such a global, right? Exactly.

I'm in my 20s, of course. I don't know how to mitigate that type of a problem. I didn't know that I could go and negotiate. And I'm in Canada at this point, too. So banking is way different in Canada than it is in the States. The banks are essentially the government in Canada. The government is involved in the banks, and they have the police behind them. It's not like banks here, where it's a private entity. In Canada, they're way too intertwined. It's borderline communism in Canada, right? It's a social democracy. And And so the government has their hands in everything, everything, 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 take something from you, they take it. That's ridiculous. It was. It was borderline criminal. 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 fraudulent banking. It would have been predatory lending. In Canada, it's business. And so it is what it is.

I'm not salty about it. I had to take a break from real estate for a little while after that, and I went to become a stand-up comedian in LA. So I went and did a few years of stand-up and sketch-comedy and just licked my wounds and figured it out.

But I think the hardest thing about that is the fact that in your mind, looking at that time frame between seven-year period, knowing how much you potentially made, even though you took a break, you realized the potential that is there and the circumstances that you faced, considering that you were younger. The beautiful thing about experience is that you end up learning from your flaws, your mistakes, your shortcomings as well. How did you end up incorporating getting back into the real estate space while you were in the US?

Well, again, one of those accidental happy accidents, right?

I need these accidents, Jamil. Where do I get these accidents?

I really think that I'm supposed to do this. I believe that with all of my heart because everything that has pulled me here has been an organic pull. It wasn't me running out and saying, I'm going to do this thing. It was like, well, this is the most obvious next choice. So I'm in LA. I'm not successful as a comedian. I'm doing okay. I'm making some money, but I'm not Kevin Hart. I'm not on television or anything like that. I've been on a few stages. I get booked to do actual sets at nice comedy clubs. I performed at the Comedy Store. I performed at the Hollywood Improv at the Laugh Factory. I've been on big stages, but I wasn't a headliner by any means. I was the filler dude in the middle. I'm that guy at that point. And I had just asked the girl I was with if she would marry me. And of course, she says, yes, but now I'm like, how am I going to support this family? She's in Canada. I have to immigrate her to the States. How am I going to 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 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 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 hell hole. 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 multifamily 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 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 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 $25,000 because the market had crashed so low. And they were renting for $800 a month. Where can you buy something for $25,000 that gives you $800 a month in cash flow? 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 fund our lives wherever we're living. 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 even though you write an offer on it, it doesn't mean it gets accepted because it's a bank They take 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 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?

Yeah, because the market had crashed. Everything was upside down in Phoenix. Everything was upside down. Nothing was selling traditionally. Everything 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 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 buy. And I get a phone call. For real? I got a phone call by a guy named Tim Wyn 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 a half an hour. I'm sitting there thinking, What am I doing here?

Why am I in Phoenix? Why am I in LA? Why am I trying to do this comedy thing? This is irresponsible of me. 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? That's why I have these as I got these knuckle tats. People laugh at me because I'm in my mid-forties, 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, on 13th of December.

Oh, cool, dude. 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. 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 sees on the circumstances that they're currently in as well. And obviously, looking back at that, when you realize the skills there that you had, the most important thing is that you've kept evolving and adjusting according to the market. Obviously, wholesaling in 2025 is so different to when you were doing it before in 2000 as well. Now that you're in Phoenix and the state is so hot, I love it. The best people you'll come across. But gosh, dang, 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, I think one of the hardest thing entrepreneurs also do, they don't 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 were in Phoenix?

I get approached at this sandwich packing party because 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 on how I was getting all the deals is I was contacting every realtor. I got every database I could find, and I co-called every real estate agent. And I said, hey, Look, I'm a cash buyer. I want to be your secret weapon in your back pocket. If you have anything that's in dated condition or hoarder house or something that's just needs a total redo, I'm your guy. But don't tell anybody who I am. And they'll be like, 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 about you.

Was that because of the trauma that you had from Canada?

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 invisible. Plus, I was still $1. 8 million in debt from the foreclosures. And so I was wanting to get my feet together before I figured out how to pay that debt off. 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? It's the first thing. It's not dodgy. Like, what the heck? Well, that's not what they thought. They were like, oh, who's this guy? 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. 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 approach me at a sandwich packing party, Josiah Grimes and Hunter Runian. And they're like, you're that Jamil guy, right? Yeah. How many deals did you do last month? 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 check. I'll come and work for you right now?

It was a little different than that. They were interns for Cody Sperber.

Okay.

So he's a big name in the wholesale world. They were like his underlings thing, right? So they had proof of concept. They knew that the money was real. They just hadn't 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 Iman 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 broken up with this girl and wanted to be in the Bahamas all the time. And he would never tell me that he was leaving town. 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 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 called the boys, those two kids who gave me their number at that sandwich packing party. And I'm like, Hey, 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? 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 systemized.

They've got processes. 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 got agendas. I'm using everything's in paper and pen. I'm super old school. These guys are using CRMs and all this fun stuff that I could care less about. But 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 Kegli.

Boom. Yeah.

And those two are my partners.

Boom. That's crazy. Because I I know that you guys mentioned that you knew people from Astroflipping as well. With Kegli, that started in 2015, 2016?

Yeah, 2016. Okay, all right.

I think I want to go into that. Obviously, it's a nationally franchised powerhouse, but what are the systems that... You partnered up with them. What are one of the most unique systems that Kegli does have that other companies don't have in that space as well?

Well, I think one of the things that Kegli does really well is sell deals. Kegli is known as a dispositions company. Their job is to help people disposition their wholesale contracts. Our capacity to build buyers lists, I think that's our secret to our success. Now, truth is, there's a lot of competition out there these days. You've got InvestorLift, you've got InvestorBase. They're democratizing what Kegli was doing as a service. So Kegli was doing Dispo as a service because the reality is, why were so many wholesale deals getting canceled? 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. Every time I speak to a wholesaler, they hate real estate agents. It's almost like there's a war or a conflict between two. And then wholesaling, you've been seeing a lot of special social media people. It's just been getting a rep of 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 the BS things wholesalers will do. Wholesalers will put a seller under contract, put $10 EMD down, not even... Just ghost the seller, not close, file a memorandum on the property, and then the seller doesn't even know that no one's closing on the house. The 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 I don't believe in being dishonest with real estate agents. 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. In 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.

Lack of 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 Kegli. 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 are they having a hard time selling the deal? Because building a buyer's list is hard. Finding a qualified cash buyer is a six-step process. You got to identify, A, the company who's flipping a home. So you got to either look for, okay, 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 six steps to to calling that phone number, to calling that guy. So wholesalers are notoriously lazy, bro. We don't want to do extra work. It's just a part of how we operate.

And so we're great at talking. We're great at getting deals under contract. We're 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 Kegli became successful is because that was a massive problem. Now, There's platforms and other softwares out there that have been competing with Kegli. Investorlift is one. I think they do a phenomenal job, right? I really like Robert Wensley, the owner of InvestorLift. I think he's done phenomenally well. Good A good dude. You should have him on the podcast as well.

I think he just recently moved to Arizona.

Yeah, he's here in town. I can connect you to him. He's a great dude. Also, investor base, they're out of South Carolina. They're a newer platform, but you just put an address into this thing and it'll spit out 10 cash buyers who have bought right in that area. Unbelievable. And it give you their phone number and their name. And so now if I have a deal in a contract, I don't have to go to a Kegly. I can just put the address into investor base, and boom, there I go, I make money. 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, which 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. I think one of the people that you partnered up with You two are probably the most prominent figures in Arizona. It's Pace Morby. We're in the same church as him as well.

You guys are all LDF?

Yes, sir. Sweet, yeah. Served on missions and all that. I I want to talk, how did you guys form a collaboration? Because you and Pace are just popping up on everyone's feet all the time. I haven't heard an ill thing said about both of you.

He's such an incredible guy. I adore that man. Our friendship is such an interesting one because it started in a problem. He was being ripped off by this wholesaler in town that was flipping houses. 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 Romans, so you don't like to hear it. But F that guy. But yeah, John May. He was robbing Pace, 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, Why did Jamil stop doing business with John? 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. 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.

My profile picture isn't even in 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. 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 in Fortier Street. Delicious place. We meet there, but it's full. There's no seats. And so he's like, You I 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. I said to him, What are you doing tonight? He's like, well, just hanging out with my wife. I'm like, you and your wife come to my house. Let me show you what's really happening. I had uncovered John's Ponzi scheme months prior. I had all of the research done. I was watching John I'm going to 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. So 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 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. 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 show it to him. I look at every home that John owns. Let's just say John owns, buys a house for 100 grand, and it's worth 100 grand. He's got a mortgage on it for 150. That doesn't math. 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, 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, he says to me, I got to rebuild my life, dude. This guy just... And it's like, he gets the notice that John's going to file bankruptcy on him the day Corbin is born, his daughter.

Oh, my gosh.

They're in the hospital, and he gets served the bankruptcy papers. And they just gave birth.

And you He's going to lose everything at the time as an investor if somebody fell for bankruptcy.

Yeah, he's getting nothing. It'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? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

We've been friends almost in eight, nine years now. So yeah, about 2017. And 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 I didn't care if Pace beat me on a deal. It never bothered me. And he didn't care 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 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. Uplifting, which is the entire purpose of what competition It was meant to do. Yeah.

And that's what we did. 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 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. Him and I decide to take that message out on the road. And we do, Pace and Jamil does America. It was so funny. We took our heads and we put them on to the Beavis and Butt head, Beavis and Butt head Do America poster. We just plastered our heads on top of Beavis and Butt head. We made this cute little drawing, and we went around the entire country. And it started off as grassroots and very small. I think the first meetup we did was in Orlando, and 13 people came. Now, if we go to Orlando, 1,300 will come out. Wow.

I think that's the beauty. That's why I wanted to stress on it because I've always admired you guys' relationship for a mile away. A matter of fact, Brittany got back to me because Pace is going to be releasing a I think, in October as well, because it was the schedule to get both you and Pace, but he's in Montana every now and then as well. But one of the things I want to talk about, I've done sales for a while. I did solar sales, I did pest control, and the The hard thing about, especially the DoraDora industry, is the fact that... You probably know Sam Tagrid in Utah? Yeah. The hard thing about that industry is that there could be potential of integrity issues, like lying and and not telling the customers the truth. You've seen it, you've been burned with the Johns and so forth. What have you been doing with your societies to try and ensure that integrity is an important part of how you people do business on a day-to-day basis?

Well, I think everything starts on the inside. I really do believe that. 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 is love, there is the choice to live in higher centers, to be more heart-centered than to be more ambitious and to 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 all energy. And this is where my science background comes into play, because I've not only read this, I've proven this 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 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 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. And that, to me, is important because, okay, I make an extra $1,000 today, and I hurt five people in the process. 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 will attract me in if it's not in alignment with me.

I love that. I love that so much. I know I want to respect your time. I want to ask about like, astroflipping. How did it come about and what made it to become such an effective way in creating success for the amount of students that it has right now?

Well, it's based off of this 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 I don't know 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 If you want to do it the hard way, if you want to do it the way where you don't have help, where you are denying that you're connected to everything, I believe that I'm connected to my next deal. I 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. I do that by maintaining my frequency.

I do that by maintaining my vibration and maintaining who I am as a human. I continue walking and I just show up. The phone rings. And there's money.

Powerful. Did you ever have mentors? Because I know every single successful person. I haven't touched on that. Did somebody ever walk you through something? Because it looks like you learn from trial and error.

Yeah, trial and error. My mother, My mom's a really positive person. And my dad, too. My dad, because I've seen him suffer, I saw how hard it was for him. He's still with us, and I love him so much, but he's always been pessimistic, a little negative, a little hard. 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, just enjoying life. My dad can barely move. It's energy again. It's energy, yeah. So that was an example for me. One of my, I'd say, greatest teachers was Tupac. Listening to his music was very inspiring for me because it gave me the contrast of what I could see in my life, in my childhood, as my environment. But 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 %. Obviously, I think you spoke about our faith, the beauty that we know that when we are heavenly Father's children, we're literally the spiritual offspring. The fact that I know that I am a son of God, I know that 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. I'm There's somebody out there that's watching this podcast, and I just wanted to the last two questions. And it's an entrepreneur, and it's probably in that plateau stage started. It's in that phase. What's the advice you'd give them to try and upscale and just push forward towards their goal and their dreams?

Well, I think we tend to want everything now. I want it all now. I want my success now. I want the hot girl now. I want the McLaren now. I don't want to wait for it. And it's the constant denial of your current circumstances that I think keeps people in perpetual agony. You are where you are for a reason, bro. So own it and see the magic of every minute. There are no wasted people. For instance, let me share a story with you in 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. This year, we We decided to go to Portland, Oregon, so we can hike the waterfalls. 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. It's going to be a 20-minute line, but they sell all these awesome donuts. Do you mind? Can we go do that first? I'm like, Sure. We're on a break.

Let's go stand in a 30-minute line and get a hot dog. Donut. 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 going to 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-dipped donuts in there. They got one that's like cake. It's really cakey. And 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-dipped donut. It's more doughy. It's got more of a sticky thing on it than it is 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 stand in the 30-minute line. We get her donut, me a donut, and his His donut.

We come back, you give him his donut. He's just happy. He's just eating his donut. And then right at that moment, I yawn. I'm an energetic guy. I don't get tired in the middle of the day. But this yawn comes over me. I noticed there was a coffee shop right beside the donut place. I say to my sister, Frick, sorry. We should have got this earlier, but I just got this 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. 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 got to go have this Michelin Star Indian food. I love Indian food, and I've never had Michelin Star Indian food, so we got to eat it, right? We've been hiking all day, so I sit down and I order everything on the menu. I'm starving. The food comes out, and I can barely eat a third of it. So we've got all this leftover food. I say to my sister, let's pack it up and let's go give it to somebody outside. We're Portland. There's homeless people everywhere. They invented homeless people here. 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 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 restaurant. So I don't know. Maybe this will be new to them. And so we're in this discussion. She's like, Fine. I will go out and 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, 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 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. But I'm like, hey, 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. So I park on this corner and my sister gets out, and she takes the food. And she's gone 10 minutes. What What's going on? And I'm starting to get worried. So I'm 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 start to my heart's beating fast. I'm like, What happened just now? She sits in the car, she's crying. I said, What happened? Is he okay? Did you see him? Is he okay? Did he die? What's going on? Talk to me. And she says, No, it wasn't him. Why are you crying? She said, Well, when I walked up, 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.

I tapped her on the shoulder, and she looks up at me, and she's crying. I asked her, Are you hungry? She said, Only if it's Indian food. She said, This is what I got. 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 Indian food.

No ways.

Yeah. Think of that. No. When did that When did that start? When did that start?

Energy.

Bro, I can't even say it and not get emotional because it's like, wow. 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 not. To go and do that? Absolutely not. And 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, Camille. Thank you for sharing that. Towards the end, we always ask every guest because it's the code to winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. If you were just to define it in just either a term or even a phrase, what does the term winning mean for you?

Man, that would have been so different, so many different versions of me. But I would say today, winning to me is living what I am inside every day. 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 join one of your companies, whether it's Kegli, whether it's AstroFlipping, whatever it may be, where they can get a hold of you on social media. If it's an email you take or calls, whatever, can you let our viewers know, please?

Yeah. Hi. You can find me on Instagram at jdamji. 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. 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 love sharing and learning. You can find me on YouTube at Jamil Damji.

The Coat Winning Insights You Need Today to seize the world tomorrow. The O-G, the man, the myth, the legend, the man himself, Jamil. Thank you so much, boss. Thanks for having me, brother.