The $500 House Hack That'll Change Your Life | Joseph Griffin DSH #1041

Summary

Digital Social Hour - Episode #1041: The $500 House Hack That'll Change Your Life

Release Date: January 1, 2025

Host: Sean Kelly

Guest: Joseph Griffin

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Introduction

In Episode #1041 of Digital Social Hour, host Sean Kelly welcomes real estate mogul Joseph Griffin to discuss his groundbreaking approach to real estate investing through tax deeds. With a track record of transforming minimal investments into substantial profits, Joseph shares his journey, strategies, and insights that have positioned him as a leader in the industry.

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Understanding Tax Deeds

Joseph Griffin begins by demystifying the concept of tax deeds, providing a foundational understanding for listeners unfamiliar with the term.

Key Points:

• Definition: In the U.S., property owners must pay their property taxes. Failure to do so results in the county auctioning off the property.
• Historical Context: Joseph likens the process to historical practices where property was seized for unpaid taxes, albeit without the violence.

Notable Quote:

"What happens is in the US whenever you own a property, you have to pay your property taxes. You don't, and the county's going to take that property and sell it as some form of auction."
— Joseph Griffin [01:24]

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Joseph Griffin's Early Success

Joseph recounts his entry into the real estate market during his time as a nurse and military personnel, highlighting his initial investments and rapid returns.

Key Points:

• First Investments: Purchased properties at auctions for as low as $1,900 to $3,000.
• Rapid Growth: Acquired three properties in his 20s with under $6,000.
• Significant Profit: Sold a property in Deltona, Florida, for a $200,000 profit after buying it for $70,000.

Notable Quotes:

"I entered my first auction, got a property for $3,000. My second in the same month, $1,900."
— Joseph Griffin [02:14]

"I got it at 70,000. I sold it at like 300,000."
— Joseph Griffin [02:44]

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Scaling with Other People's Money (OPM)

Joseph delves into his strategy of leveraging OPM to exponentially grow his real estate portfolio without significant personal capital.

Key Points:

• Initial Capital: Started with personal funds as an RN, later expanding using OPM.
• Raising Funds: Established a fund that raised $400,000, managing assets worth $3 million within a year.
• Bank Relationships: Emphasizes the importance of building strong relationships with banks to secure funding.

Notable Quotes:

"People taught me to use OPM. And before I told you, when I was a nurse, I had my own little bit of $6,000 that I use. But once I learned about other people's money, I actually started a fund."
— Joseph Griffin [06:09]

"What niche can you turn $400,000 into? 3 million? Right?"
— Joseph Griffin [07:06]

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Innovative Strategies: Business Credit Cards and Wholesale

Joseph explains his unique methods of utilizing business credit cards for property acquisitions and his wholesale approach to real estate.

Key Points:

• Business Credit Cards: Uses credit cards to finance property purchases, treating the investment as "throwaway money."
• Wholesale Operations: Maintains a buyer's list of 15,000 individuals, enabling swift property sales even before acquisition.
• Efficiency: Reports generating between $100,000 to $150,000 monthly through wholesale operations.

Notable Quotes:

"We're using business credit cards to buy a house. Credit cards to buy houses? Yes."
— Joseph Griffin [08:45]

"My wholesale team right now is doing like six figures a month."
— Joseph Griffin [12:36]

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Building a Comprehensive Real Estate Business

Joseph outlines the vertical integration of his business, encompassing various facets of the real estate market to streamline operations and maximize profits.

Key Points:

• Multiple Departments: Established Wolfpack Realty (brokerage), Wolf Title (title company), and other departments to handle different aspects of real estate transactions.
• Tax Surplus Recovery: Helps homeowners reclaim overpaid taxes, adding another revenue stream.
• Comprehensive Services: Offers full-service solutions, including credit repair through partnerships.

Notable Quotes:

"We've established ourselves as the subject matter experts. Number one in the nation."
— Joseph Griffin [19:45]

"We are like my wholesale team right now. I had to make a whole different department for it."
— Joseph Griffin [12:36]

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Overcoming Challenges and Teaching

Transitioning from investor to educator, Joseph shares his motivations for teaching others and the challenges faced in the process.

Key Points:

• Motivation: Inspired to help others avoid the pitfalls he encountered due to a lack of guidance.
• Mental Health: Faced anxiety and burnout from overwhelming demand for consultations.
• Educational Approach: Initially offered affordable one-on-one consultations, later scaling to group sessions to manage growth.

Notable Quotes:

"It's something that I wish somebody would have taught me. Right. Growing up. I'm from New Orleans originally and came up in the 6th Ward."
— Joseph Griffin [14:24]

"The worst thing you can do is just sit there and do absolutely nothing."
— Joseph Griffin [28:00]

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Personal Background and Motivation

Joseph opens up about his upbringing, military service, and the personal experiences that shaped his entrepreneurial spirit.

Key Points:

• Early Life: Grew up in the 6th Ward of New Orleans, raised by his grandmother after his father was incarcerated.
• Military Service: Served 11 years in the Army, experiencing multiple deployments in Afghanistan.
• Career Shift: Transitioned from travel nursing to real estate seeking better financial opportunities and personal fulfillment.

Notable Quotes:

"If I would have learned this, like, it would have really changed my life."
— Joseph Griffin [14:24]

"Joined the army when I was 17 because I knew no other way to pay for college."
— Joseph Griffin [26:31]

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The Escape the Matrix Tour

Joseph promotes his Escape the Matrix Tour, a speaking series aimed at educating aspiring investors on real estate strategies and financial independence.

Key Points:

• Upcoming Events: Scheduled stops in Jacksonville and Tampa, Florida.
• Content: Covers a broad spectrum of real estate investment strategies, including tax deeds, OPM, fix and flips, and more.
• Objective: Provide structured guidance to help individuals navigate the complexities of real estate investing without falling prey to misinformation.

Notable Quotes:

"We have November 9th, actually, in Jacksonville, Florida. And then December... we'll be in Tampa."
— Joseph Griffin [27:33]

"It's a lot to the game."
— Joseph Griffin [28:00]

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Conclusion and Promotions

As the episode wraps up, Joseph emphasizes the importance of taking proactive steps in real estate investing and invites listeners to engage with his resources.

Key Points:

• Call to Action: Encourages booking a free consultation through his academy to receive personalized guidance.
• Persistence: Stresses the value of consistency and grinding to achieve success.
• Resource Accessibility: Provides multiple platforms for listeners to connect and learn more.

Notable Quotes:

"The worst thing you can do is just sit there and do absolutely nothing."
— Joseph Griffin [28:00]

"Stay consistent and keep grinding and believe in yourself and you'll make it to the top."
— Joseph Griffin [28:00]

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Final Thoughts

This episode with Joseph Griffin offers a deep dive into innovative real estate strategies centered around tax deeds and the effective use of OPM. Joseph's journey from a challenging upbringing and military service to becoming a successful investor and educator serves as an inspiring blueprint for aspiring entrepreneurs. His comprehensive approach, combining practical strategies with personal resilience, provides valuable lessons for those looking to navigate the real estate market successfully.

Resources Mentioned:

• Website: taxdeedwolfacademy.com
• Instagram: @taxiwolfCEO

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Thank you for tuning into Digital Social Hour. Be sure to check out the links below for more information and resources mentioned in this episode.

Transcript

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[Joseph Griffin]

Work, work, work, work paid. Work, work, work paid, right? Then you're like, work paid, work paid, work paid, right? And then you get to the point where it's like, work paid, paid, paid, paid, paid, paid. And that takes years.

[Sean]

Facts. People want that instant gratification these days.

[Joseph Griffin]

And they'll give up and two months.

[Sean]

Yeah, they'll say you're a scam for giving up after two months.

[Joseph Griffin]

You people will work for 40 years for somebody else, but they can't give themselves three years.

[Sean]

All right, guys, digital social hour in the new studio. Joseph Griffin here today, and we're talking tax deeds.

[Joseph Griffin]

Yes, sir.

[Sean]

Thousand two hundred episodes. And I've never talked about this on the show.

[Joseph Griffin]

Man, I'm about to light it up.

[Sean]

Let's go get ready. We'll start off basic because probably 99% of people don't even know what that is.

[Joseph Griffin]

100. So let's break it down. What happens is in the US whenever you own a property, you have to pay your property taxes. You don't pay those property taxes, county's going to come, they're going to take that property, they're going to sell it as some form of auction. This has actually been going on for a very long time. If you watch like the shows from back in the day, you didn't pay the king. They came in, they beat you up. They don't beat you up anymore, but they will take that property.

[Sean]

I love it. So you just started going to these auctions and buying properties. That's how it started.

[Joseph Griffin]

That's how. That's how it started. I was nursing at the time. I was military actually. They sent me to medical school, then LPN school. Then I became an rn and I had a little bit of money as an RN and I'm like, man, I want to. I need to get into real estate. That's what all the other millionaires are doing. But I didn't think I had enough money, and I didn't know nothing about credit or none of that back then. So somebody told me about it, and I looked it up and I was like, no way. I entered my first auction, got a property for $3,000.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Joseph Griffin]

My second in the same month. 1900 dollars.

[Sean]

Holy.

[Joseph Griffin]

And at the same time, use my VA loan and just got the keys to a house with no down payment. Damn. So here I am, like, in my 20s, three properties using less than, like, $6,000. I was like, okay, this is. This is where it's at.

[Sean]

That's a money printer.

[Joseph Griffin]

Oh, yeah.

[Sean]

So you made more in a month than you did your whole life, you know?

[Joseph Griffin]

Well, technically, yeah. Because when I finally sold that house that I got 200 thou. Like 200k profit.

[Sean]

Whoa.

[Joseph Griffin]

Yeah. I got it at 70. Like, 70,000. I sold it at like 300.

[Sean]

Holy crap. And what state was that in?

[Joseph Griffin]

That was in Florida. It's a small city. Deltona, Florida.

[Sean]

Okay. So that's probably a good trick to go to the smaller cities. Right?

[Joseph Griffin]

Everybody goes to the major cities. I go to the outskirts. When the major cities fill up, everybody's just going to buy it. It's cheaper. Right. Taxes are more affordable, insurance more affordable, and they're just going to commute to work. So that's always where I go. The big cities. I find the cities that you have to basically live there to know what city I just said. For instance, Deltona.

[Sean]

Yeah. And how often are these auctions?

[Joseph Griffin]

It depends on where you live. Some places may have annual auctions, some may have two a year. Some counties may have an auction every other week.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Joseph Griffin]

Like Hillsborough County, Tampa. They may be every single Thursday or. Or if, you know volumes, if inventory is low, maybe every other Thursday. But it really just depends on, like, what state and what county you're going to.

[Sean]

Interesting. And do you know the address before you get there, or is it random?

[Joseph Griffin]

Oh, man. You can see the list two months before in most cases. Sometimes like one month, sometimes even less. But you go ahead, you research these properties. You gotta do your due diligence in real estate. And that's where a lot of real estate investors really, like, F up, right? They just buy and they think, okay, I'm buying real estate. It's all good. Like, you have to know, you know, what the value of it is. So you know, how much to spend how much rehab is going to be involved, how much money you're going to make? Right. What's the cash on cash return, Lean searches, title searches. Right. There's so much more to the game that you might not hear everybody talk about on the daily.

[Sean]

So it's not the sexy stuff.

[Joseph Griffin]

Not the sexy stuff. But a lot of people are losing.

[Sean]

Oh, yeah.

[Joseph Griffin]

That's a fact. You know, you see real estate investors on social media talking all the. Oh, I'm doing this. I'm doing this. To be honest with you, most of them really aren't. Really are making money.

[Sean]

Yeah. There's almost like a bad taste in people's mouth. Right. From these real estate gurus.

[Joseph Griffin]

Oh, especially when you have a course.

[Sean]

Yeah. You got an uphill battle. That's why it was smart for you to pick this niche. Because I feel like the fix and flip got wrecked. A lot of those guys got burned.

[Joseph Griffin]

Definitely. Yeah. The Burr. You know, everybody's trying to burr Airbnb. Oh, my goodness. Oh, those started on Airbnb.

[Sean]

Section 8's a hot one right now. I see.

[Joseph Griffin]

I see it's coming up, but I.

[Sean]

Feel like they make it too easy. Like, they show it in the ad. Like it's. You just invest and you get this money. But there's probably way more that goes on it.

[Joseph Griffin]

You know, they do make it. Same with any other niche. They make it sound like, so easy. But even with the Section eight, you know, you're. You're. You have to be up to code. Right. If you're not up to code, even if it's your tenant's fault, you know, you might not get paid, you know, so that's tough.

[Sean]

Yeah, tough.

[Joseph Griffin]

And that's why, actually, I kind of stay away from Section.

[Sean]

Oh, you do? Yeah. It is appealing to a lot of people because it's cheap. Like, your. Your model is pretty cheap, too.

[Joseph Griffin]

Oh, just wait till I get started. Start breaking down some of these numbers.

[Sean]

Oh, yeah, yeah. You were talking out there, you bought a house for 500 bucks.

[Joseph Griffin]

$500 in Alabama, if you go to revenue.alabama.gov. right. There's literally a list of thousands of properties. These taxes have not been paid. And some of the taxes were so cheap. It's like a hundred a year, 80 bucks a year. And I literally went on there. I use Parcel Pro app, actually. I know the person who created it went on there, man. You make your inquiry with the county. Hey, I want this one. They get back to you. Hey, you have 10 days to respond. It's going to be this price, if you want this house, you pay the. Pay it yours.

[Sean]

Wow. So you're just stacking houses right now?

[Joseph Griffin]

Stacking up. Me and my community. The wolves were killing it.

[Sean]

Yeah. How did that start? The wolf stuff, man.

[Joseph Griffin]

We did a. We did. What was it called? It was like a training session at one job I was with, and they're like, what animal do you relate to the most? And I thought it was the craziest, most stupid thing in the world, but it's like, okay, I related to the wolf. That was my thing. And then it just stuck with me, man. Once I got into tax deeds, I was like, I gotta do. Be something that. That's catchy, you know? I was like, all right, tax deed wolf. And just ran with it.

[Sean]

And you're like the guy for Deez now.

[Joseph Griffin]

The number one.

[Sean]

Number one by far. I don't know anyone else doing it.

[Joseph Griffin]

No one does it at skill like we do. Right. There's some people that do it, and I'll be honest. They're older. They're like 60s and up, and they're probably not even doing anymore. They're just selling a course. But with us, somebody taught me, a lot of people taught me to use opm. And before I told you, when I was a nurse, I had my own little bit of $6 that I use. But once I learned about other people's money, I actually started a fund, right. We raised like, $400,000.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Joseph Griffin]

And what niche can you turn $400,000 into? 3 million? Right? And what niche, Seriously? There's a. There might be a few, but that's really hard to do. That's an 8x return with just $400,000. We had. We were managing 3 million in assets.

[Sean]

Wow. And over what years did that take place?

[Joseph Griffin]

In 2021.

[Sean]

All in one year.

[Joseph Griffin]

That was in one year.

[Sean]

8X in one year?

[Joseph Griffin]

In one year. And that's because of the equity. Let me break down a couple of the properties to you. So one property we got was like $16,000 in Texas. Okay. The house was valued at $300,000.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Joseph Griffin]

Right. Another one, we got around 14K. That house was worth like 200 to around 212 or something at the time. You know, we've. That fund's Even. That fund's over now. Right. But it was amazing. It was amazing. And that's when I really blew up.

[Sean]

Dude, that's crazy. I love this model because you're not risking, like, six, seven figures to buy a house.

[Joseph Griffin]

It's throwaway money. We're in Vegas right now, it's the same money you'll be gambling. You would go to casino way.

[Sean]

Right. That's crazy because a lot of people, that was my thing with the fix and flip method. You're putting 100k and then you might not even sell it once you fix it up.

[Joseph Griffin]

Right.

[Sean]

So you're stuck with all that money in the house.

[Joseph Griffin]

Especially in this market right now when interest rates went up, a lot of those houses start. Started sitting right. Covid had people thinking, oh, I could just buy anything and then I'd just be this super multi millionaire investor. Once that, that died down, you see so many people giving up on real estate.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Joseph Griffin]

Even real estate agents. It's just, you know, they don't understand how consistent you have to be in that you have to actually keep building your knowledge or you're going to get lost.

[Sean]

Absolutely. Yeah. So are you trying to raise more money or where are you at with the OPM now?

[Joseph Griffin]

Actually with the opm. So we're using, believe it or not, we're using business credit cards to buy a house. Credit cards to buy houses? Yes, Even tax deeds. And you know, a lot of people are going to be like, what? How? Because they only know how to swipe the card. They know nothing about like liquidating the card.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Joseph Griffin]

So to give you an example, if you go to a website like Plastic, it's. It's some people say plastique. Right. It's plastic with a Q. You literally swipe your card. They will wire the money to title so you can buy that house.

[Sean]

No way.

[Joseph Griffin]

So it's some amazing stuff. OPM is awesome. And the credit card is simple interest. So it's not like the mortgage that's compounding. $200,000 mortgage picked over 300k by the end of the loan. No credit card interest. Okay. I use 30k. I'm paying interest on that. 30k that I use. Right. So it's just, it's amazing. It's much cheaper money.

[Sean]

Wow. And you could get business credit pretty easy.

[Joseph Griffin]

Pretty. People don't understand, Sean. People don't understand, man. You. If your personal credit is good, you can start a company. I've literally have mentees that have done this. You can start a company today, you can have business credit by next week. If you just personal guarantee that company. You walk into the bank. Banking relationships, another thing a lot of people don't talk about. But you got to have these relationships in the bank because they need to give you the money. They're not. Could you imagine if the banks could go and buy the houses themselves. We'd be screwed if the banks were just buying all the. No, they need you to take the loan and they're going to give you the money. And they're going to have that, that asset as leverage though, right? They have. They need to give you the money. People think the banks are after them. No, the banks, they want to partner up with you.

[Sean]

Facts. Yeah, Those relationships are key, though, because I had a guy at Chase, he gave me a 50k credit card.

[Joseph Griffin]

That's too easy. You could. You know how many tax DS you could get with that? You got me.

[Sean]

You got me interested for sure, man.

[Joseph Griffin]

You could get.

[Sean]

I might have to get one, man. Vegas is probably a tough market, though.

[Joseph Griffin]

Vegas actually has a sale, I want to say. Well, not. I can't say Vegas. It just. It goes by county. Right. So I was just talking to my coo. He's. He loves it here. He's a gambler and he was telling me he. There's an auction, I think, coming up in December.

[Sean]

Oh, really?

[Joseph Griffin]

So I told him, hey, look, go look it up, whatever county it is you're talking about. We're going to fly our bus back out here in December.

[Sean]

I might pop in with you guys, clean up. That'd be cool. Do you ever film those?

[Joseph Griffin]

We have before. We have before. It really just depends. A lot of the auctions we do now are online, so it would be. It's a little boring if it's. Yeah, watch me on the screen. It's like, okay, two minutes on this property. Two minutes for this one.

[Sean]

So you don't get to see the actual house.

[Joseph Griffin]

You can.

[Sean]

Oh, you can, you can.

[Joseph Griffin]

Now can you go inside? That's a. That's a different question. Right, because if somebody lives there, then of course you're not, you know, you're trespassing. You can't go in there. To be honest, I don't like to deal with properties that when someone's. When it's occupied, go for vacant properties. And that's what I've done my seven years in this game. That's what I've done, like my whole career. Vacant properties. There's no, Hardly ever any. Any hiccups. And, and most of the cases, if no one's living there, they don't care about the property. Yeah, right. Some grandma died or something, left it to grandson. Grandson doesn't care about. Grandson's not doing nothing with his life. PlayStation, you know, we come in and the real sauce is, man, we get the properties before Auction? I don't like going to auction.

[Sean]

Oh, really?

[Joseph Griffin]

So we get the list in enough time. You ever had anybody come in here and talk about wholesale?

[Sean]

Yeah, man.

[Joseph Griffin]

We get the list in time, go ahead and do our due diligence on the property. Why go to auction with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk when I can approach the property owner, something Eli Mus and Jeff Bezos don't have time to do. And I can offer them a price for that property on the spot.

[Sean]

Smart.

[Joseph Griffin]

We get it before auction. Now the cloud, the title's not clouded, and we actually just did a clean sale.

[Sean]

Yeah, that's brilliant.

[Joseph Griffin]

We can wholesale it before. We don't even have to use any of our own money. Just get an in buyer to come take it off our hands.

[Sean]

Dude, I love that. So you found a hole in the market, man.

[Joseph Griffin]

We are like my wholesale team right now. I had to make a whole different department for it. My wholesale team right now is doing like six figures a month.

[Sean]

Damn.

[Joseph Griffin]

Yeah. 100 grand.

[Sean]

The wholesale still works.

[Joseph Griffin]

100 grand. 150 grand a month.

[Sean]

There's people that say wholesale died.

[Joseph Griffin]

No, no, I think consistency died. It's never, you know, nine out of ten aren't gonna do it. But if you do it right and they don't understand it, you. You won't just get. Make millions in three months. It took. It took me years to get here. And that's what a lot of people don't understand. There's times where I didn't make any money for a whole month, you know? Then suddenly it goes, work, work, work, work, work paid. Work, work, work, paid, right? Then you're like, work, paid, work, paid, work paid.

[Sean]

Right?

[Joseph Griffin]

And then you get to the point where it's like, work, paid, paid, paid, paid, paid, paid, paid. And that takes years.

[Sean]

Facts. People want that instant gratification these days.

[Joseph Griffin]

And they'll give up in two months.

[Sean]

Yeah, they'll say you're a scam for giving up after two months, they'll give up you.

[Joseph Griffin]

People will work for 40 years for somebody else, but they can't give themselves three years.

[Sean]

Crazy.

[Joseph Griffin]

And that's why they. That's why we're wolves. That's what we call ourselves, wolves. But because everybody else is sheep, it's.

[Sean]

A mindset thing, for sure. Yeah, People want that victim mentality, right?

[Joseph Griffin]

They love it.

[Sean]

It's easy to feed into it. I used to think that way growing up.

[Joseph Griffin]

So we were brainwashed. Yeah, that's how we were taught.

[Sean]

Yeah. 100%.

[Joseph Griffin]

Literally. You have to break that it's the Matrix. You got to get out. You got to get. I'm on my Escape the Matrix tour. I have two more cities, but yeah, you got to escape the matrix.

[Sean]

Oh, you're doing a whole speaking tour right now?

[Joseph Griffin]

Yeah, we've been on tour mostly in Florida cities. We went to Georgia. We were gonna hit up Arizona. We. And I think we're gonna do a New York.

[Sean]

Nice, actually. Yeah, that'd be dope. So you're like teaching this. What inspired you to, like, teach it rather than just do it yourself?

[Joseph Griffin]

Man? Because one, it's something that I wish somebody would have taught me. Right. Growing up. I'm from New Orleans originally and came up in the 6th Ward. Dad was in jail my whole life. Didn't even know my mom. My grandmother raised me right.

[Sean]

Damn.

[Joseph Griffin]

So if I would have learned this, like, it would have really changed my life. If my parents would have learned this right, this would have changed my life. So when I started doing it, I wasn't thinking about teaching it at all. Like, I just wanted something better for myself. I don't want my family to come up like I did. So I started doing it and people were hitting me up like, oh, man, what do you do? I just started documenting the journey. Like, hey, I got this for 3000. Oh, I got this one for 1900. I got an acre of land for $1400. And they're just blowing me up. Like, can you show me? Can you show me? I started doing one on one consultations with people and my calendar was so booked. I was having anxiety.

[Sean]

I've been there before.

[Joseph Griffin]

Yeah. I literally had had to go to the hospital. Like, damn. I had. I was booked up and I was just like, oh my gosh, I can't do this.

[Sean]

Yeah, you weren't charging enough.

[Joseph Griffin]

200.

[Sean]

Oh, that's cheap.

[Joseph Griffin]

200 for an hour, man. For. It was like two hours. I didn't know what the hell I was.

[Sean]

Yeah, you were worth more than that.

[Joseph Griffin]

One on ones. Just showing people the game. This is like way in the beginning.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Joseph Griffin]

Now good luck. 200 you $200 is. That's. That was the Uber to get here. Inflation, man. Blame it on inflation.

[Sean]

That's why I don't do one on ones unless it's thousands. Because gotta be your time is worth a lot these days.

[Joseph Griffin]

Now. 3,000 for an hour.

[Sean]

100%, like, to.

[Joseph Griffin]

Just for me to even think about it.

[Sean]

Yeah, no, I'm with you on that. Like, because it's not like scalable, like one on one.

[Joseph Griffin]

Definitely. You Gotta do the group. Yeah, do group. If you're doing one on one, I know you know, these guys are charging $40,000 for, for a one hour phone call. Damn.

[Sean]

You know who's that? Like guys in your space or different?

[Joseph Griffin]

And you look at Grant Cardone.

[Sean]

Oh, great.

[Joseph Griffin]

Like Myron golden. Like these guys are. I think you've had all. I think you had all them on the show.

[Sean]

I've had Grant. Myron's gonna come on eventually. I didn't know Myron was charging like that. Wow.

[Joseph Griffin]

Beast.

[Sean]

He is a beast.

[Joseph Griffin]

Somebody who really knows what they're talking about. Like those individuals, man, they're. They're not. You can't take them out for coffee. Yeah, good luck.

[Sean]

I hate when people ask me, can.

[Joseph Griffin]

I come pick your brain?

[Sean]

Oh, that's a pet peeve of mine. When they ask for coffee or pick your brain, like, come on nowhere. Like, who's teaching you to tell people that? That's terrible advice.

[Joseph Griffin]

Crazy stuff.

[Sean]

I didn't know this worked on land too. You said you bought some land.

[Joseph Griffin]

Land's actually where I started.

[Sean]

Oh, God.

[Joseph Griffin]

It's cheaper. So to give you an example, like state, like Florida now, I didn't even explain this. Let me go back. There's a different type of tax sale. It's tax sale and then there's different types. So we have tax liens, we have tax deeds, we have tax redemption deeds, their share of sales. There are scavengers, there's all different types. And depending on what state you're in and what type of auction your county holds will determine, you know, which one you're going to enter and what's going to be the style. With liens, you're not getting the house, you're just buying the debt. Right. And a lot of people are like when I post on social media, oh, I just won this auction. This is my. He's lying, he's a scammer. They just are telling their version of the truth. Right? Because they may live in a state that has a redemption period or a state that only does liens. So I'm in Florida. We have liens and deeds, right? So I can go to lean hub.com and go like just to a lien sale, but I can also go to real auction and go to a straight up detail. When I win a detail, I pay the county. The deeds is mine got sold property in two weeks.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Joseph Griffin]

They don't understand that because they live in a state that has a two year redemption period on a lien or something. Or a State like Georgia or Texas, where they have like one year redemption, but they call it a deed. It's not a deed. It's a redemption deed. It's in the title.

[Sean]

Got it.

[Joseph Griffin]

Right. So people are so confused on that. But to answer your question now in Florida, the land was so overlooked when I got started in this industry. Everyone wants a house. Everyone wants a house. And I'm like, okay, I can get land for like $2,000 right now. Let me start buying land. I'm getting quarter acre lots for 2000, 3000. I'm selling these lots for 15k, 20k. And that's still below market. Now that same area I told you where I started in has blown up so much so to the. To the point where land that I used to sell for 20k now sells for 70,000.

[Sean]

Wow, that's crazy.

[Joseph Griffin]

Market blew up.

[Sean]

Damn. Yeah. Land's going up everywhere.

[Joseph Griffin]

I feel like we're running out of. We run out of land.

[Sean]

Right, right.

[Joseph Griffin]

So like I said, a city like Orlando. All right, cool. We start off in Orlando, but then, you know, we're building, we're building apartment complexes coming up everywhere. Where are we? Where are we going to go? Where are we going to go? So then I just started. It was a simple model. Buy a property for under, under 4k, under 3k, sell it to a builder for more. It was a simple model. Even if I only made four grand, five grand, it made sense to me because it was so simple.

[Sean]

Yeah. How hard is it finding those builders?

[Joseph Griffin]

Too easy.

[Sean]

It's easy.

[Joseph Griffin]

It's easy.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Joseph Griffin]

When you drive past anybody that's building a house, usually they have like their sign. I would literally just drive around. I'm looking at the signs. I'm walking to brokerages, looking for real estate agents and stuff, asking them, hey, I have land. Do you know any builders? Hey, I have land Networking. It's all about who you know. And once I built my buyers list, right now we have about 15,000 buyers on our buyers.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Joseph Griffin]

Over the years. So now I can have. I literally have properties sold before I even get them under contract. I know who I'm calling.

[Sean]

Damn.

[Joseph Griffin]

Before it's under contract. I know who I'm calling. I know how much they're willing to spend.

[Sean]

That's impressive. Yeah. You built up a great network. You've been on some huge podcasts, so you've crushed that part. And social media, you're killing it.

[Joseph Griffin]

Yeah, I'm on a huge podcast right now.

[Sean]

Yes, sir. I feel like, though, getting on social media help your business a ton.

[Joseph Griffin]

100%. Because now it's not just about those tax deed leads. Right now I get people just sending me all types of. Like, when they're behind on their taxes and they don't know what to do, they come to us.

[Sean]

Absolutely.

[Joseph Griffin]

So people really didn't understand, like, the full picture of what we did. So not only can we go to auction and win property, but we've established ourselves as the subject matter experts. Number one in the nation. So now people going through those. Those struggles we always talk about, you know, the terrible deeds. Debt, divorce, disability. But now deeds when they're not paying their property taxes. So they come to me, right? And now we can educate them. We can also educate other investors, and then we can educate the property owners about the tax surplus. That's another thing we don't talk about when there's those overages. Let's just say you own a property, you owe 3,000, it goes to auction, I win it for 10,000. The county's only taking the 3,000. Right. If that's what all the fees added up to, and the taxes, they're only taking 3,000. You can actually go get the. The $7,000 difference.

[Sean]

Really?

[Joseph Griffin]

And the homeowners don't know that?

[Sean]

White.

[Joseph Griffin]

Yeah, no, I'm told you, I'm blowing up your podcast. Blowing it up. So you can do what we call it tax surplus. Some people call it overages. But you can literally help these homeowners now get that money. And you charge like, a percentage. Hey, look, I can get you this money back, but I, you know, 30 is my fee.

[Sean]

What's that? Process. How long does it take to get the money back?

[Joseph Griffin]

That process isn't bad.

[Sean]

Really?

[Joseph Griffin]

Yeah, I have a whole. I have another department that does it. It's too much for me. I ain't calling nobody, like, right now. I don't even do any cold calling.

[Sean]

Or nothing like that.

[Joseph Griffin]

The VAs are handling that. The wholesale team's closing, but we have a whole department.

[Sean]

Damn, you're growing quick, man. How many people you got working for you?

[Joseph Griffin]

We got about 15 right now.

[Sean]

Okay, so it's still pretty lean.

[Joseph Griffin]

Still pretty. Yeah. We got, you know, our office is, I don't know, our office. Like two 2500 square foot or something like that. You know, we got the. I'm so vertically integrated at this point. I just. I hate missing out on money. So I was doing the tax deeds, and then I was like, man, you know, there's so much we're missing out on. I started Wolfpack Realty So then we had the brokerage in Florida. Then it's just like, man, what else am I missing out on? Okay, title company wolf title that had the launch wolf title. So now when it comes to, like, even clearing, tax the title on tax deeds because the tax sale will cloud the title. And attorneys are charging like $3,000 to do what we call a quiet title process. And it could take, you know, two, three months. Well, with our title certification process, we'll give. We'll give insurance on. On the tax deed property if it qualifies, and we can do it in 10 days.

[Sean]

Damn.

[Joseph Griffin]

And we're half the. Half the price.

[Sean]

Yes. You're solving a big pain point there.

[Joseph Griffin]

Big pinpoint. And I, you know, you come to us and just, you know, you, you come in here, you come in here, you come in here. Full service, seven businesses at this point.

[Sean]

I love it. But you do the credit stuff, too.

[Joseph Griffin]

I have a partner. Okay. Credit. I couldn't get into credit. I couldn't do it. It. There's a real huge misconception when it comes to, like, credit repair services and stuff. People think, oh, it's just going to happen in a week and all this and all that. It. It takes too long.

[Sean]

Takes months.

[Joseph Griffin]

Yeah, it takes. It takes too long.

[Sean]

A lot of headaches, too, in that space. A lot of complaints.

[Joseph Griffin]

Clients are gonna. He's a scammer.

[Sean]

Yeah. Shout out to those credit repair guys dealing with craziness. Yeah, they got tough skin. Good. Credit's important, though.

[Joseph Griffin]

You got. There's a. There's a complete picture. I came from nursing. I can't give you a medication for your heart without knowing how it's going to affect your kidneys, your liver. Right? That's the aspect I took into real estate. So I can't just teach tax deeds. You're going to just go there and buy tax deeds and you're going to be like all these other people in my DMs crying, right? Because you bought a crappy property. 90% of the properties suck.

[Sean]

Really?

[Joseph Griffin]

90% suck? Yeah, they're landlocked or something. Or it's a pro. You know, you think you're getting a good piece of piece of land and you find out that there's a demo lien, there's all these other municipal liens on it. So now you owe more than what you thought. You thought you were going to do a nice quick flip, but you didn't know what you're doing because you thought you could do it the cheap. Right. The cheap way. Right. Like the YouTube University. Google University. So, man, you got. You got to know what you're doing.

[Sean]

Due diligence, man.

[Joseph Griffin]

100%.

[Sean]

Yeah. Because if you bought a property with the lean, you're now entitled to pay that right?

[Joseph Griffin]

For depending on what lean we're talking about, some will die with the sale. Like the mortgage.

[Sean]

Okay.

[Joseph Griffin]

Mortgage will die with the sale. Because, you know, people ask me that all the time. What about the mortgage? It can be true. Well, when you have a mortgage, you're paying your property taxes and insurance, usually in escrow, right? So if you're paying it, you're paying it. If you're not paying it, the bank is just going to foreclose on you long before the tax sale auction comes. So if the bank let that property. If they were notified the. The correct way, and they let that property go to auction, they're screwed.

[Sean]

Damn. That's nuts, man.

[Joseph Griffin]

Yeah, they're screwed.

[Sean]

You said you grew up in New Orleans.

[Joseph Griffin]

New Orleans, man.

[Sean]

Oh, that's the right way to say it, right?

[Joseph Griffin]

New Orleans. Yeah. No, I don't care how you say it.

[Sean]

How long were you there?

[Joseph Griffin]

Born and raised. So I left New Orleans, actually, when Hurricane Katrina came.

[Sean]

Okay.

[Joseph Griffin]

All right. People are like, oh, where's your accent? Where's your accent? So I went to private school. My. My grandmother that raised me, she was a janitor at this private school.

[Sean]

Whoa.

[Joseph Griffin]

And I could play. I played basketball.

[Sean]

Oh, yeah, we might have to play, bro.

[Joseph Griffin]

Definitely. So they gave me, like, a scholarship, especially because she worked there and everything. And so I just learned how to speak proper. And I got made fun of for, like, saying certain things. And so I developed, like, you know, I talked pretty proper, and people like, oh, you. I don't hear your accent. That's because I got made fun of all the time.

[Sean]

Damn. So private school, I lived in the.

[Joseph Griffin]

Hood, and I went to private. It was like Everybody hates Chris at the show. I lived in it. I lived in the ghetto. Gunshots every night. To private school. You know, wearing. Wearing a uniform.

[Sean]

So you got to experience both worlds.

[Joseph Griffin]

Best of both worlds. And I'm so thankful for it that she raised me because she works like she worked three jobs.

[Sean]

Holy crap. Your grandmother?

[Joseph Griffin]

Yeah.

[Sean]

Wow, that's tough, man. Did you retire her?

[Joseph Griffin]

Oh, she. She's still taking care of, but she don't want to quit. I love that she want to quit. I cover all her bills down to do anything. My first tax deed. My first tax deed flip. I made, like, $6,000 off of it. Right? That's a small Amount of money to a lot of people. Right? But for me at the time, it's like, man, how many hours would I have to put into nursing to make that, make that amount of money? And I called her up on the way home, was like, mom, yeah, I just made $6,000. This is the way. I'm like crying on the phone, like, boo, crying. It's like, you know, you go, keep doing it. And then we just, man, we just start.

[Sean]

That's beautiful, dude. Yeah, nursing would have been 300 hours probably, right? 20 an hour.

[Joseph Griffin]

And you're stressed. Stressed people don't. Yeah, it's like, okay, money, okay, but for what you have to do for it.

[Sean]

And you know, that stuff doesn't leave you.

[Joseph Griffin]

No, I'm like, I'm working in the icu, you know, people coding all the time. You know, you got a white butt all the time. Like, it's, it's a lot going on in the nursing field.

[Sean]

Oh, yeah, I respect those guys, but yeah, they're dealing with a lot.

[Joseph Griffin]

It's tough. Drink. They're drinking after every shift. Oh, man, it is tough.

[Sean]

You were in the military too, you said?

[Joseph Griffin]

Yep, 11 years army.

[Sean]

Holy crap.

[Joseph Griffin]

Lived a long life for a 30 year old man.

[Sean]

You still got that young energy.

[Joseph Griffin]

Joined the army when I was 17.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Joseph Griffin]

Cuz I know no other way to pay to pay for college, honestly. So went National Guard, right. So, you know, I'm just going on the weekends basically. But of course, what you don't know, they're like, hey, join the reserves or National Guard. You don't know that they deployed just as much as the active duty guys.

[Sean]

They don't tell you that.

[Joseph Griffin]

Yeah, they don't tell you you got deployed? Oh, my goodness. I'm like deploying every three. It's like, okay, I can't go on another. I went to Afghanistan.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Joseph Griffin]

And then I did a private. Did a private contract, actually. Kind of had to get let go of the army to go do this one contract overseas. And then, you know, I came back in the new unit they wanted me to go back to.

[Sean]

Jesus.

[Joseph Griffin]

You know what, I'm done.

[Sean]

Damn.

[Joseph Griffin]

And I'm travel nursing at the time. So it's like, look, I make more money on this side. I started investing too. It's like, oh, yeah, I'm done.

[Sean]

Yeah, I feel that, man. I think you made the right choice. You said you got two more events. When are those?

[Joseph Griffin]

We have November 9th, actually, in Jacksonville, Florida. And then December. I don't even remember the day for December, but we'll be in Tampa.

[Sean]

Okay.

[Joseph Griffin]

And that's the whole Escape the Matrix tour. So going over pretty much everything. You know, invest, investing, using opm. Right. Other people's money. Like just the tax deed stuff, the fix and flips. I mean, everything. Yeah, we go over pretty much everything.

[Sean]

Yeah, we'll link those below. What else? What else you want to promote, man?

[Joseph Griffin]

Just if anybody wants to get started in tax deeds, I can't express this enough to you. I've lost more money than you can even imagine trying to do this on my own. Because unfortunately, there was no number one tax deed investor when I started this. Right. So just reach out to us, man. Taxdeed, wolf academy.com. go ahead and book a call. It's free. The thing is, you hear so many things from all these people, right? We're talking about this earlier. You got the brrrr. The fix and flip, the section 8. What do I do? It's like three people in the backseat telling you, one saying go left, one saying go right, and one saying stop. We get analysis paralysis. We don't know where to start because no one ever guided us in a clear path. And that's why I always suggest, hey, book a call. I can say all these awesome things. Anybody can say all these awesome things, but you don't know how that relates to you until you get on a call with us. So, hey, look, you might want to do tax deeds, but actually you might. You need to get this first and you might need to want to do this. Hey, you need to get a business and blah, blah, blah. We got to talk about taxes, right? Not paying all the. Not paying all these taxes. When you. When you start buying these properties, flipping these properties. So it's like, it's a lot to the game.

[Sean]

Absolutely. Yeah, I've definitely had that analysis process for sure with real estate. Real estate's. There's so many different ways you can make money off real estate.

[Joseph Griffin]

You just gotta have that path. And that's when people just. They don't know what to do. Right. They just get stuck. And like I said, we were brainwashed, man. School teaches us, hey, it's A, B, C or D. Real life's not like that. Real life. There's more. There's a bunch. You, you guys, your podcast. I got real estate. You know, somebody else has this. Was any of us right or wrong? No. Life is more so about appropriate versus less appropriate. Even when it comes to killing. Oh, you kill someone, is that bad? Well, what if they were about to kill you?

[Sean]

Facts.

[Joseph Griffin]

It's Appropriate versus less appropriate. That's real life.

[Sean]

Yeah, it makes sense.

[Joseph Griffin]

Got to get out there and take chances for sure.

[Sean]

What do you think Dave Ramsey would think of this strategy?

[Joseph Griffin]

Oh, Dave Ramsey would hate guts, man. He's going to tell you save until you die. Save, save, save. You don't get rich by, by saving. Yes, saving is good, but if you really want to build that wealth, you have to invest. You have to be a risk taker. You have to take calculated risk though. Don't just be out there throwing money, but know what the heck you're doing. Underwrite these deals, do your due diligence and invest.

[Sean]

I'd love to see you two talk about this.

[Joseph Griffin]

Oh my God.

[Sean]

He's pretty stubborn. But it's working for you. I mean, it's hard to argue against numbers.

[Joseph Griffin]

Hard to argue, man. You look at what the bank's going to give you, you look at what this, what this IUL is going to give you. Right? Whatever. Whatever you say. I don't know. I haven't heard, heard of them in a minute. But you look at the returns on there and then I show you a real estate investment where we're getting 35% cash on cash return. Where you, where are you going to get that?

[Sean]

No brainer. 35% is insane.

[Joseph Griffin]

We've, we've got some 55% cash on cash returns that we're doing.

[Sean]

People are happy with 5 to 10%.

[Joseph Griffin]

Exactly. We're, we're like, when people really see what we're doing, they're like, holy crap. Yeah, right. We'll wholesale like we're doing wholesale and like tax deed to wholesale tax deeds in general, tax deed to seller finance. We don't have to even put all the money up front. Hey, let me give you X amount down and then pay you this much over time and then we can go ahead and wholesale that still get the down payment. And even my, my, my guy Kareem calls us a slow flip. He's literally wholesaling properties basically and still getting a monthly payment on them.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Joseph Griffin]

So he's taking his assignment fee and he's got his.

[Sean]

That's brilliant.

[Joseph Griffin]

And getting his monthly payment.

[Sean]

What do you think of the subject to stuff Seller financing, stuff seller finance, I love.

[Joseph Griffin]

It's actually one of my favorite strategies. We control almost everything. I didn't care about interest rates going up because I'm getting all my properties at 0% when interest rates were at their like highest this past year. Yeah, I got, I want to say seven, eight doors at zero percent.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Joseph Griffin]

A duplex. I got a quadplex and another duplex. Zero percent. All right. I got one property in Pennsylvania. We sell a. Finance this deal. I'm paying a homeowner $500 a month. Right. It's a duplex. I'm making 2100amonth off.

[Sean]

Damn.

[Joseph Griffin]

Off of that duplex. It's like a thousand each door. Yeah. It's not 3, 500 each door, but when you look at how much I put to get it. Because I put nothing to get it. We made a deal with the guy. Hey, if we sell this deal, because, you know, most realtors suck. No offense to my realtors. Some of you are good, but some of you just, like, jumped in for the money because you thought it would be easy.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Joseph Griffin]

But the realtor couldn't sell his house. And we said, hey, man, this is actually a good deal. We can sell this house if you sell us this one, or if we can sell this one, you give us this other one on seller finance terms. Just 500 bucks a month. We sold the other one, made 40,000 off of it, and then gave us the duplex for just 500 bucks. Win, win, win, win in it. Who, like, if I say stuff like that, what are most. He's capping. Yeah, he's captain pro. It's out here.

[Sean]

You got the receipts?

[Joseph Griffin]

Got the receipts. Man, I love that you listen to Pace more, being all these guys, man. Like, we're really out here.

[Sean]

Yeah. He does the sub 2 stuff. I tried to do it. It's pretty hard.

[Joseph Griffin]

Sub 2. I haven't done a sub 2 deal, actually. Not my favorite strategy, but it can work for me. It's more of like an in, like an entry. Yeah, right. That's how I treat. I don't see it as a long term. Let me sub to this for 30 years. I see it more so as, like a balloon. Like, okay, let me get in here. Just because it's easy to get in right now. And then in three years, maybe I'll refi. You know, maybe we'll. We'll get out of this or something. That's kind of how I look.

[Sean]

That makes sense. Yeah. Shout out to Pace. You need to start a deed show or something where you just hunt these deals down.

[Joseph Griffin]

Oh, man. Got me started.

[Sean]

That's how he. That's how him and Jamil blew up. Right? With their show flipping houses.

[Joseph Griffin]

No, they do good stuff.

[Sean]

Oh, they're crushing it. Yeah. Shout out to those guys. Well, where can people find you, man? And learn more on every platform.

[Joseph Griffin]

Tax deed, Wolf on Instagram. Taxi Wolf CEO. If you have any questions, just don't hesitate to reach out. Website taxd wolf academy.com Worst thing you can do is just sit there and do absolutely nothing. All right, so just get started and stay consistent and keep grinding and believe in yourself and you'll make it to the top.

[Sean]

I love it. We'll link it below. Thanks for coming on, man.

[Joseph Griffin]

I appreciate it.

[Sean]

Yup. Thanks for watching, guys. Check out the link. See you next time.