Probate wholesaling beside an eight agent retail team
Runs both a real estate agency and wholesale operation with a dedicated full-time cold caller.
About
Joe Rodriguez, once exclusively a real estate agent in Houston, revolutionized his career with DataSift, expanding into wholesaling and flipping while maintaining his retail success.
Operating market
Houston
Favorite features
The Challenge
Joe found Tyler around 2019 while looking into wholesaling as a solo Houston agent. Back then the playbook was Excel spreadsheets: organize the sheets, pull them somewhere else, repeat. He calls that confusing and not his wheelhouse. So the account sat dormant for years while COVID sent retail into overdrive and his team worked around the clock.
By the time he came back, he had eight agents and counting, a growth target of double that, and a real hesitation. He did not want to be a jack of all trades. The investing side had to run without stealing hours from team meetings, coaching, and recruiting. That meant one niche, one caller, and processes he could hand off, not another job.
What They Built
One caller, one niche, every morning
A daily probate list drops 35 to 50 fresh records into DataSift. His cold caller opens the ready to call preset and works it on a single line dialer, clearing about 40 contacts a day.
I've hired the full-time cold caller. She's working 40 hours a week.
A monthly rehash on the first of the month
Follow up records with more than three call attempts roll into a rehash preset, 143 of them at last count. Those get cleared on a double line dialer every first of the month. Records that die there drop into deep prospecting: obituaries, family trees, and people search tools until a human turns up.
Mail out Tuesday in a couple of minutes
Every Tuesday he opens the needs mail preset: first to market records with zero mail attempts and vacant set to no. On camera that was 94 postcards. He copies last week's campaign, dates it, and sends.
I don't even want to go to another system because it just works.
Boards that keep two businesses separate
A conversation on the wholesale side lands on the FTM new lead board, not in his retail pipeline. The retail team runs itself with two admins, a full time transaction coordinator, and weekly coaching outside of him. Time blocking covers lead follow up and postcard inbounds. Two businesses, one calendar.
Before and After
Before DataSift
- A VA Works Every No-Contact Lead in DataSift
- Daily Follow-Ups Run From the Sift Line Tasks
- Nine Deals Under Contract After the Stacked Niche Switch
- Cold Callers Sent KPIs by Hand Outside the System
- Expensive PPC Spend With No Return
- Follow-Up Leads Vanished Into an Abyss in the Old CRM
- 60,000 Records a Quarter Feeding His Bulk Callers
- Four Contracts Signed in 10 Days
- Three Deals a Week, Two Weeks Running
- First Direct to Seller Push in 30 Years of Business
- A $10,000 Mail Campaign That Produced Nothing
- 15 Years Buying Only From the MLS and Wholesalers
- New lender agreed 12 days after the first collapsed
- $105,696 net profit after closing costs
- Nine properties contracted at $360K, sold at $450K
- Hard money lenders would not lend on rural portfolios
- Local title companies refused assignments and passthroughs
- Seller would only sell one house, priced far over appraisal
- Still Runs on a $500 Monthly Budget
- An $85K Deal Off a 50-Name Stacked List
- 13 Contracts in Six Weeks From 250 Prospects
- About $40K Spread Across Six Months, Still Behind
- Five Contracts in a Row Fell Through
- Shotgun Lists Across Too Many Zip Codes
- One Contract Per 25-35 Leads, Half the Typical Ratio
- Each Caller Brings 16-18 Leads a Week
- 50,000 Free County Records Called on a Four-Month Cycle
- Two Partners Dialing Everything Themselves From 2017 to 2019
- VA Cleaned Every County Download by Hand in Excel
- Another Blanket ListSource Pull Whenever the Pipeline Ran Dry
- Same county-data system expanding into Texas and Miami
- $800K in revenue from six or seven deep-research deals
- About 20 people across data, calling, research, and sales
- PropStream tax delinquent lists arrived after owners had already paid
- Two years hunting a golden list that did not exist
- Bandit signs at intersections, cold calling all day from a coffee shop
- Four deals closed faster than his first three
- 8,200 dials and 25 leads in one November
- Four VAs running one calling and texting protocol
- Generic YouTube advice with no sequence to follow
- Back at a sales job four months after going full time
- Spent $35,000 on marketing with zero return
- About 35 Leads Per Deal Across 347 Total Leads
- $253K In Cash And Equity From One Package Deal
- 40 Properties Wholesaled In Under Four Months
- 12-Hour Days And A 45-Minute Commute
- No Deals Found Through Realtors, MLS, Or Craigslist
- Cold Calling From A Printed Spreadsheet In The Parking Lot
- Pulls Nearly All His Data Straight From the County
- Runs Jacksonville Virtually on $1,000 a Month
- Locked a Contract Four Days After His January Restart
- Scattered Across SMS, Facebook Ads, and a Website
- Partner's $2 an Hour Caller Hit a 1% Contact Rate
- Called Lists Three Times Then Trashed Them
- 50,000 sqft warehouses in negotiation, one to two leads daily
- $59,000 spread on his first big wholesale deal
- Every eviction filed in New Jersey, worked daily
- Old CRM buried callers in highlight and right-click drama
- Phenomenal months, then crickets for months
- Overnight pharmacy shifts, 84 hours in a single week
- Knows the playbook works and is replicating it
- First off-market contract four months after starting
- $250,000 assignment fee on deal one
- Weak cash position after funding ground-up projects
- Questioned whether real estate money was even real
- Two years spending on development deals, not making much back
- $40,000 month tracking with fixed costs
- Five first to market deals since April
- Probate filings pulled daily in multiple counties
- Two mail campaigns, response rates he did not like
- Costs fluctuated month to month with list spend
- Custom Podio build, broad absentee and vacant lists
- Owner buried beside her son after two years unclaimed
- Runs every heir search solo now
- Five heirs found, contacted, and signed across Texas
- Needed a specialist for her first deep heir search
- Paper records only, fathers listed by initials
- Probate leads dead-ended with no findable heirs
- Every No Recycled On A Two-Year Rehash Cycle
- Three VAs Clean Data Before A Single Dial
- Three First To Market Niche Filters Worked Daily
- Loose Onboarding And Under-Corrected Bad Hires
- Team Swung From Large To Small To Solo
- Broad Marketing Across Every Niche At Once
- Mornings and evenings back with his family
- 8 person crew handles whole projects in sets of two
- 40+ properties across three portfolios in about six months
- Afraid to take on payroll and a crew
- The bottleneck on his own projects
- Software job eight to five, real estate five to midnight
- 55% Answer Rate On One-By-One Click To Call
- Free County Data Replaced Every Paid List
- $45K Fee Closed One Week After The Callback
- Podio, Slack, And Multiple VAs, No Traction
- 30,000-Record Lists Dialed Two Or Three Times Through
- At Least $40K Wasted On Lists And VAs
- Four Marketing Attempts on a Couple of Lists
- A Three-Person Team at About $1,800 Cost Per Contract
- Almost Two Years Nomadic Across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East
- Behind a Jacksonville Desk 95 Percent of the Time
After DataSift
- Achieved Data Clarity
- Consistent Deal Flow
- Inconsistent Deal Flow
- Poor Marketing Flow
- Little Data Clarity
- Relied On Google Sheets
- Consistent Deal Flow
- Data Clarity / Organization
- Wholesales, Flips And Does Retail
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Didn't Understand Data Management
- Strong Real Estate Agent
- Wanted To Break Into Wholesaling But Didn't Know How
- Healthy Scale
- Data Driven Decisions
- Consistent Deals
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Inconsistent
- Little Data Insight
- Unorganized Bulk Marketing
- Strategic Focus on Niches
- Enhanced Lead Flow and Certainty
- Streamlined Marketing Process
- Efficient Use of Data
- Direct Mail & Deep Prospecting
- Broad, Unfocused Strategy
- Inconsistency in Results
- Dependency on Luck
- Marketing Clarity
- 6 Figure Months
- High Deal Volume
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Proper Data Management
- Weak Marketing Flow
- Poor Data Management
- Lack of Focus
- Manual Efforts
- Successful Scale
- Total Data Clarity
- Clear Marketing Approach
- Large Deal Spreads
- Improper Data Management
- Poor Marketing Method
- Inconsistent Deal Flow
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Clear Data Management
- Clear Data Management
- Successful Scale
- Many ways to close deals
- Large deal spreads
- Poor data management
- Unable to scale properly
- Poor marketing flow
- Smaller Deal Spreads
- Increased Deal Volume
- Platform Utilization
- Realtor Collaboration
- Funding Efforts
- Lots Of Deals
- Data Driven Decisions
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Sales And Marketing Clarity
- Poor Data Management
- Poor Marketing Flow
- Relied On Bulk Marketing
- Lack of Clarity
- Automated Acquisition
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Data Driven Decisions
- Structured Follow-ups
- Increased Lead Generation
- Achieved Sales And Marketing Clarity
- Manual Acquisition Processes
- Ineffective Marketing Flow
- Minimal Lead Insights
- Poor Follow Up Flow
- Inconsistent Lead Generation
- Lacked Sales And Marketing Clarity
What changed
Joe's breakthrough came from Tyler's analytical guidance in data organization with DataSift, coupled with the insights gained from the First To Market Challenge, affirming his decision to join during DataSift's developmental phase.
The Results
The honest number first: 1,192 records sit in ready to call, more than one single line caller can clear. That bottleneck is the argument for the niche. At 40 contacts a day she works about 200 a week, which is why he cut back to probate only.
The wholesale pipeline now runs alongside the retail business instead of replacing it. Probate mail goes out every Tuesday, the rehash clears monthly, and deep prospecting catches what the dials miss. Before: a dormant account and confusing spreadsheets. After: a daily system his caller runs while eight agents keep closing listings, on $4,000 to $5,000 a month in overhead.
When you first look at it as a newbie, it's complex, but it becomes very simple once you see like what I just did. I'm not a whiz at this or anything. I just followed the process that Tyler put in place.
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