RG 095 – Driving for Dollars! Gorilla Marketing Techniques 101 with Whitney Nicely
About Whitney
- Whitney raised her initial capital selling dump trucks
- Whitney never gets a mortgage for her property purchases
- Whitney has flipped 9 properties in the last 6 months
Nuts and Bolts
Whitney started her entrepreneurial journey selling dump trucks in East Tennessee and flipped her first property in 2009. While selling trucks she learnt how to sell, advertise and present properly. In the last 6 months she has flipped 9 properties whilst also planning a wedding! Her portfolio includes 17 residential houses, 19 apartment units and 7 chunks of vacant land. She teaches couples of invest in real estate and is also a broker and a coach.
Whitney’s first house was a flip while she was also investing and selling trucks, At the time she was working 4 jobs because her belief is that you can always find the time if you want something badly enough. Her mother was a real estate investor and owned a nearby property. Together they gutted and flipped the property, which took 4 months. She then went onto flip a further 5 properties with her parents but each one took 4 months and she was becoming frustrated. Finally she did a flip on her own and it took 3 weeks because she’d been practising and honing her skills. She decided to train for a real estate license because she saw how much commission her mum was being charged and decided that if anyone was going to be making money selling her mothers properties it should be her.
Whitney’s investment strategy is to identify and buy in “honey holes”. These are areas within a city with a solid community feel, close enough to a big city and with good transport links. She teaches these strategies to groups and couples to help them become property investors. She puts her students into groups so that they can motivate each other with a little peer pressure. Her aim isn’t to encourage people to be full time investors as they might be happy in their jobs, but just to help them build a passive income stream on the side.
Whitney uses creative financing for her deals rather then getting mortgages. She often uses owner financing or lease options and her advise to copy this strategy is to not find properties through the MLS. Instead she says you should go driving for dollars, take an extra 15 minutes on your way home and go through a different neighbourhood to find empty houses. You can find the owner through the Geological Information Service and send them a message. You can encourage them to sell because if it’s empty they aren’t currently making any money on it, so offer money to get your foot in the door. Whitney often goes driving for dollars with her step-son and says that this is a good way to get your loved ones involved with your business. Make it a game with kids to find empty houses.
Top tips
- Most important habit – Getting everything into the calendar and doing the most difficult things first
- Most influential person – Her mother
- Most important tool – Free service called “If this then that”
- Most important failure – Paying too much for a really bad property, put house back up for sale and lost $5K
- Contact – whitneynicely.com