$200K in 6 weeks from 250 prospects on a $500 budget
250 stacked prospects beat months of shotgun lists: 13 contracts and about $200K in six weeks on a $500 monthly budget.
About
Josh Newman wholesales houses in Birmingham, Alabama. He lost his remodeling business in 2016, spent 2018 in trucking, and learned wholesaling in June 2019 with no savings. Six months of grinding later, a data reset turned 250 stacked prospects into 13 contracts and about $200,000 in six weeks.
Operating market
Birmingham, AL
Favorite features
The Challenge
Josh learned what wholesaling was in June 2019 and started with almost nothing. He wrote down addresses while driving for dollars, looked up numbers on free people-search sites, and dialed from his cell phone. He tried Mojo as his first dialer and did not like it. His first paid deal came four weeks in: $13,000 from two contracts, found on the first call through a 15-name cash buyers list.
Then the grind set in. From July to December he closed around $40,000, spread so thin he stayed behind on bills. Five contracts in a row fell through. Some were priced too high, one seller sold behind his back, and one sat in a zip code where the buyers had already left. He was loading every list he could find and calling all of it. "It literally comes down to I can buy groceries or I can pay for my REI budget," he says of those months. The budget was $500. It still is.
What They Built
Breaking liens into their own lists
At the end of 2019 Josh rebuilt his whole data approach. Instead of one blanket liens list from PropStream, he pulled HOA liens, mechanics liens, judgments, and income tax judgments separately, plus failed MLS listings. Jefferson County splits its records across municipalities, so he went town by town for code violation lists most investors never touch. On some of those lists, in his words, "I'm the only one that's going out and getting them."
I would pull HOA liens, mechanics liens, judgments, I'll break everything down so to where my data is really like individualized.
Stacking down to 250 prospects
With everything loaded into DataSift, he cut the bad zip codes and built two campaigns. Two-stack matches in the top three turnover zip codes made one list of 200. Three-stack matches everywhere else made a second list of 50. His question was simple: "How can I get so much great data and lay it all out here so I can just laser focus on stacks only?" Equity and absentee lists stayed in rotation for daily volume, but the stacks got the real attention.
Mastering one channel: cold calling
Josh runs a 400-dial day on a triple-line dialer. Prospecting fills the first half of the morning, lead follow-up the second, and he drives to appointments only when needed.
I never have even tried to do any RVMs, texts, direct mail. I haven't done anything except learn how to master cold calling. Learn how to systematize it. Learn how to do it properly.
Marketing to bigger houses on purpose
Most wholesalers cap their list values low. Josh set his filters at $50,000 to $650,000 because his remodeling background taught him rapport with affluent owners. "I'm going to set a goal. I want to do the biggest wholesale deal ever in Birmingham," he says. The rest was rapport: "It starts with genuinely caring about the people."
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
- Tens of Thousands Spent on Masterminds That Never Fit
- Got Crushed Wholesaling Cleveland Virtually From New York
- Career-biggest payoff under agreement after a year of deep prospecting
- A 1,300-lead vacant property gold mine in two counties
- One shared database with his agent wife for three years
- Guru models demanded VAs and a big company he never wanted
- His investing and her listing business never connected
- Ten years flipping houses with no shared system
- One Call and One Text Found His Last Buyer
- A Deal About Every Three Weeks, Pushing for Two
- Eight Deals Working in the Middle of the Slowdown
- A $7,000 Mail Campaign Went Out at 56 Percent of Value
- Three to Five Active Listings in Every Subdivision He Underwrites
- Colorado Prices Down 9 to 11 Percent by May
- Callers Hunt Correct Numbers, Closers Take Over
- Returned Mail Tagged And Worked As Its Own Bucket
- 6 Deals In One Month From Year-Old Data
- Eight Months In Before Working The Data Right
- Bulk Dials On Call Tools Produced Nothing
- 100K Records Added, Team Spinning Its Wheels
- Mail, three call attempts, then the rehash pool
- 150 records a month, skip traced twice before dialing
- Full authority probates only, five Southern California counties
- 15 to 20 grand across seven months of last year
- Calling agents and MLS, never direct to seller
- No CRM, just a phone, a computer, and email
- $56K Largest Single Assignment
- A VA Pulls County Probate Data Daily
- $5,300 Total Expenses, About $441 A Month
- $210K In Fees From 7 Deals In A Year
- Every Conversation Started Cold
- No Pipeline, No Aged Database, No Team
- Random Calling On Whatever Records He Found
- Started September 2023 With No Probate Experience
- $95K Spread Closed In 21 Days
- All Four Questions Answered On Every Lead
- 120 Qualified Sellers In The Pipeline
- $1M+ Company With SMS As The Core Channel
- Tracking It All In Podio, Then Another CRM
- Doing What Everybody Else Was Doing
- Downloading Every Record Providers Would Give Him
- Churn And Burn Message Blasts
- One Contract For Every 10 Leads
- 100% Of Deals Sourced Inside The System
- $1M+ In Assignment Fees In 2023
- Almost All Deal Flow From Driving For Dollars
- Bouncing Between Tools Looking For One That Stuck
- Leads Tracked In Excel Sheets, Antiquated And Scattered
- First Flip Finished And Live On Market
- Partner Funding Instead Of 18-22% Hard Money
- Probate Cleared In A Week And A Half
- About One Deal Per 15 To 20 Doors
- Door Knocks The Foreclosure List Top To Bottom
- Severely In Debt, Couldn't Keep Up
- A Couple Of Years To Get In Gear
- Worked Hard For Two Weeks, Then Stopped
- 12 Years In Oil And Gas, Then Nothing Left
- $10K Deal From A Q3 Not Interested Lead
- Follow Up Brought The Seller Down $40,000
- Two First To Market Contracts In One Week
- Dedicated Caller Works The First To Market Flow
- Eviction Records Pulled Straight From Two Counties
- Outbound Marketing Completely Phased Out
- Credit Card Debt From Bad Marketing Advice
- Two Years Of Shiny Object Crash And Burn
- Absurd Data Subscription Costs Draining The Business
- $61,644 Net From A Lien List Rehash
- Tracks Wrong Numbers, Cuts Skip Trace Spend
- Emails The Township For Exact Lien Payoffs
- Rehash Filters: Mobile Numbers, No Response, Liens
- Next Day Follow Up Text Gets The Reply
- Lien Lead Silent Since February 2024
- No Follow Up Text After A Silent First Message
- Unknowingly Recycling The Same Data
- Pulling 10,000 Record Lists The Old Way
- 15 Heirs Signed, $37,500 In One Month
- Skip Trace, Upload To Sift, Call Fast
- Small Problem Lists Over Huge Data Sets
- Targets Deeds Of Trust 12 Years Or Older
- Checks County Foreclosure Postings Every Morning
- Bulk Absentee And Owner Marketing Dried Up
- 150 Mile Days Driving Project To Project
- Six Renovations Running At One Time
- Full Time Rehabbing Since 2015
- Sellers Now Calling In From Her Mail
- One Hot Lead Plus Tons Of Correct Numbers
- Mails Only The 54 Absentee Petitioners First
- Google Form Auto Formats Data For Upload
- Pulls Probate Filings Daily Across Three Counties
- Left A Company, Unsure She Could Pull It Off
- Tedious Copy And Paste List Formatting
- Struggled To Pull Data From Her County
- Years In California Trying To Figure It Out
- 135,000 Records Organized Into Buckets
- A Lead Every 10-15 Calls
- Pre-probate Inherited Niche, 60% Sell Within Two Years
- New Process Closed Its First Deal In 30 Days
- Thursday Deep Research, Offer Accepted By Monday
- PropStream Lists And Bought Probate Data
- Return Mail Dead-ended, Records Sat Dormant For Years
What changed
The reset came at the end of December 2019. His trucking partner had gone back on the road because the deals were too thin to live on. Josh stayed, spent nights going through his records, and asked himself why he was failing. "It was plain and simple because I was way too shotgun. I was way too all over the place," he says. So he redid the whole way he approached data and campaigns: separate lien types, filtered zip codes, stacked lists only. The first call through the new 200-name list produced a contract the same day.
The Results
The 50-name list produced two deals worth about $105,000. The big one came off a municipal code violation list. A retired couple in Destin owned a $650,000 Birmingham house their tenant had wrecked, with $500,000 still owed on it. Josh contracted it at $225,000, sold it to a buyer at $310,000, and the sellers brought over $277,000 to closing to be done with it. That was an $85,000 deal. Their second house added a projected spread of about $20,000.
The 200-name list opened with a bankruptcy contract locked the same day as the first call, a projected $17,000 spread. Then came the week of this recording: 11 contracts, including a 10-property rental portfolio locked at $520,000 against a $1.1 million ARV.
Add it up: 13 contracts from 250 prospects, about one for every 19 people on the lists. Roughly $200,000 closed and projected in six weeks, against $40,000 across his whole first six months. About $25,000 had hit his pocket by the recording, with the budget still $500 a month. His KPIs stay rough, tracked by hand in free Podio, and he says so.
You can't give up. Cuz you only fail if you quit.
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