Accelerating Real Estate Success with Yoav Gilad

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast. Today I am talking to the CEO of Green Block Incorporated, they help real estate investors accelerate their growth by funding more deals more quickly. So I’m excited to be talking to Yoav Gilad. Hey, Yoav You ready to rock?

Yoav Gilad: Hey, Tim, Let’s go.

Tim Melanson: So we always start off on a good note. Tell me a story of success that we can be inspired by.

Yoav Gilad: Thank you. So got into real estate about eight or nine years ago. started with my wife, who’s also my partner, doing flips, on a very small scale. eventually we were able to grow the business and transitioned into lending. And now, you know, we run green block and help about 50 investors currently every single year.

To accelerate their growth and to be able to find more both time and financial freedom.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. So now along with a good note though, sometimes there’s some mistakes that get made [00:01:00] and some bad notes that you might hit. can you share with us something that didn’t go as planned?

Yoav Gilad: Sure. so when I started out, the very first property that I bought, turned into a whorehouse. and, yeah, it was, It was quite the experience. But basically I bought a house. I lived there for a while and then decided to rent it out. People came through, checked it out, and one guy showed up with his girlfriend.

This was in Venice Beach, California, and he walked through it and he is like, yeah, we’ll take it. And I was like, well, cool, but you gotta fill out the application. and he is like, nah, I don’t really want to. I was like, well, you know, we do credit checks, whatever, blah, blah, blah. So he writes down his name on the application, he signs it, he gives it back to me and I was like, dude, you gotta fill it out.

He’s like, I really, really just don’t want to. I was like, okay. He’s like, but I really want the house. Okay, well I don’t know if I can help you. He pulls out of his pocket this roll. Of [00:02:00] hundreds and he just counts off the rent. And at the time I believe it was like $2,800 per month in rent. he is like, how much is the deposit counts off another 2,800 bucks.

Hands it to me. He is like, are we square? Yeah, it’s yours, man. Move in. So, few months went by, started getting emails, calls from other, tenants, homeowners in the area. It was a condo complex. and the straw that broke the camel’s back was that I got an email from one of them showing me a link, to Craigslist.

For showing me a post on Craigslist that had his girlfriend, the address, and very explicit services listed. at that point I had to take action, unfortunately and evict, but he was friendly throughout the process. paid me in full and I learned that I should never manage my own property again, rather get a property manager.

’cause I don’t know. The first thing about vetting people apparently.

Well, [00:03:00] it’s tough when they give you the cash right up front. You’re like, okay, well clearly the sky has the money. He can pay it. But it’s one of those things where you don’t even know what you don’t know. Exactly. there’s this cliche in real estate that you’re either gonna get a profit or an education, and I’ve gotten many, many educations.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Okay. so now what did you do to change that to remove that mistake?

Yoav Gilad: So once he moved out, and like I said, he moved out cleanly and it was all pretty simple and straightforward. I got a property management company. Ask them to take care of it. And, you know, they take a piece. but you know, it was very straightforward and, you know, just getting monthly checks and when things needed to be repaired, they were repaired.

So it was just so much easier.

Tim Melanson: let’s talk a little bit about getting fans to your. Business and like attracting people, like an audience. Have you got any sort of principles on how to do that?

Yoav Gilad: well, we believe that happy customers are kind of the best way to get new business. And [00:04:00] so for a very long time, we’ve not spent a dollar on marketing in any way. We just use word of mouth. We have, however, recently discovered that it is a little bit limiting, just because we’re very well known locally.

and I’m in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but we wanna be working in the south as well. And so now we’re starting to increase our profile on social media, particularly in the southern states.

Tim Melanson: Okay. And how are you doing that?

Yoav Gilad: Excuse me. so we’re doing that, primarily on social media, Facebook, Instagram, there’s an investor website called BiggerPockets. I don’t know how familiar people outside the industry are with it, but it’s pretty well known within the industry. And so we’re on there as well and just trying to help people, answer questions and if we can underwrite something for somebody and just help in any way that that’s what we like to do.

our goal is to help people, discover the [00:05:00] time and financial freedom that we’ve discovered through real estate investing.

Tim Melanson: Right on. So do you buy ads or do you create groups or how do you work on social media?

Yoav Gilad: neither unfortunately, we’re not that sophisticated. it’s basically just me on social media posting and, talking to people.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Okay.

Yoav Gilad: it’s fairly early in the process. We’ve only been doing it for about a month and a half now. but so far the kind of early indications are that it is working

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And I imagine that the fact that you have all these, existing clients that are happy probably helps with that, right? Like, it would be different if you were starting from scratch, I’d imagine, right?

Yoav Gilad: Yeah, I think so. and they are our best, source of new business actually. they refer us quite frequently. And so it’s always awesome when people think enough of you to be able to tell their friends and other investors, that they should work with you.

Tim Melanson: So how’d you get your first client?

Yoav Gilad: It actually happened by accident. we started out doing flips [00:06:00] and one day outta the blue, someone approached us. They knew that we were cash buyers, and they said basically, Hey, I’ve got this deal. And it was an Airbnb arbitrage deal. So basically they rented, property and then we provided the cash so they could furnish it, pay the rent, et cetera, et cetera.

they told the, the property owner, the landlord, and away we went. we didn’t even know that we could lend. When this person approached us first, we were like, what are you talking about? We’re not Bank of America. And she said, no, no. Go talk to your lawyer. You can do that. So we talked to a couple of lawyers and they’re like, if you want, you can do that.

both of them had this sort of hint of hesitation in their voices, which I thought was funny. And sure enough, the deal eventually did go bad, but, we learned enough to keep doing it and to figure out what we needed to do to ensure the next deal wouldn’t go bad. and so, you know, away we went.

But yeah, that was basically it. It was just an accident.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, it’s [00:07:00] funny. so many people start their first business by accident, right? It’s just something that works out. You’ve got this skill that someone’s looking for and all of a sudden you’re for the races, right?

Yoav Gilad: Yeah, and in that case, like we knew enough about real estate at that point and flipping and what goes into kind of making a property look good, et cetera. that we felt confident underwriting alone. and it was also very small, so there was, you know, not too much risk, that we were able to run with it.

Tim Melanson: So now you say we quite often, tell me about the band. Tell me about the people that you have around you.

Yoav Gilad: Yeah, totally. basically it’s a duo. It’s me and my wife Marsha. she basically runs the back office. She does all the underwriting, all this stuff that, to me is really tedious I’m basically the front man and she’s like the drummer or bass player, working hard, diligently, making everything sound good and stay on key.

and I’m just performing shenanigans in front of the crowd.[00:08:00]

Tim Melanson: It’s a good analogy. Right on.

Yoav Gilad: Exactly.

Tim Melanson: do you hire other people in your business as well?

Yoav Gilad: we work with, currently we work with VAs. Our goal is eventually to grow the business and to hire people as needed. we’ve flirted with it, but had a tough time. but we continue working on it and we’ll see as we expand and yeah, hopefully we will continue to grow.

Tim Melanson: So my wife and I work as well together. I’m wondering, you know, what are the kind of challenges that you’ve come across? I wonder if they’re the same.

Yoav Gilad: I think my biggest challenge Is letting go. I’m a person who thinks that I should do everything myself, number one, because no one cares more than I do. And number two, because I know more than everyone on planet Earth. the first one might be true. The second one is obviously absolutely not true, but unfortunately that is how I think.

And so it takes a lot for me to trust somebody and to not. [00:09:00] Blow up, you know, the first thing that goes kind of sideways. so yeah, I think I need to work on my trust, when bringing people and maybe also, set my expectations a little bit lower. but, you know, it’s something to deal with.

Yeah.

Tim Melanson: and I know we kind of touched on this before the interview started. like for me, I know that AI has made a big impact and it actually has extended the time that I need now to hire somebody. ’cause I was, I was about to hire, I needed somebody. And then all of a sudden, some AI tools started to get pretty good on the, you know, like the VA type side.

And now. I save so much time by using that is are you using any of these tools too?

Yoav Gilad: Absolutely. and we’re using AI in conjunction with our virtual assistants. we’ve trained, GPT to basically mimic my voice as much as possible. And so they basically provide inputs and get [00:10:00] content out. and so in some cases they are providing content for social media and things like that.

Tim Melanson: It’s so crazy that we can do that.

Yoav Gilad: Totally.

Tim Melanson: I think it really is leveling the field quite a bit for, you know, husband, wife teams and for small solo entrepreneurs to be able to compete with, you know, mid-size, I guess, businesses, right.

Yoav Gilad: Totally. Yeah. I mean, instead of hiring 2, 3, 4 people and having to pay them and cut into the cash flow of the business, you know, we’ve got one VA and AI teaming up together, and it’s just, I mean, the results are tremendous.

Yeah, absolutely. so now if you were to look, you know, maybe, you know, five, 10 years down in the future, where do you think the next hires are gonna come from? My guess is initially they will come from sales. But I think they’ll. Our first hires will probably be in sales because the key to any business is generating clients, generating customers. [00:11:00] So we definitely need salespeople, who would do what I do currently.

and then after that, probably a couple of back office people to manage the new business, and make sure it gets handled appropriately.

Tim Melanson: I love that too. Yeah, sales is a big one. I imagine that, you know, probably one of the things that might hold you back is that it’s gonna be probably hard to find somebody that’s gonna be as passionate about what you do as you are. Right. You’re basically trying to replace you.

Yoav Gilad: Yeah, that’s one of my worries.

Tim Melanson: But on the other hand, I think that probably, you know, with the use of all these AI tools and creating some really solid systems that hopefully it’s gonna be easier

to create tools for your salespeople, right?

Yoav Gilad: I hope so. Yeah, I mean, that would be, the goal is to kind of create the processes and systems so that they can go out there, do their jobs, get the results, and yeah, not have to worry about it.

Tim Melanson: Nice. Right on. So let’s talk a little bit about [00:12:00] the, you know, keeping the hat full of the cash flow. So what’s your process on making sure that you’re making more than you’re spending and in real estate? I understand that that’s sometimes a real big challenge, right?

Yoav Gilad: It’s definitely cash intensive. I think a CEO really has one role, and that is knowing what your numbers are. If you don’t know how much you’re bringing in, what you expect to bring in and how much you’re spending, it’s terrible that that is your job.

Like you gotta know where you stand, how much you can spend, and how much you’re gonna bring in. Without that info, you can’t plan appropriately or make the right decisions.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Now, is that something that you can hire somebody to do if you are not really a numbers person?

Yoav Gilad: I believe so. but I think the key would be, yes, if you’re not a numbers person, you could hire like a CFO or an accountant I think the key, however, is having a way to come up with the numbers and being constantly aware of them. And that, I think what separates, a [00:13:00] successful business from an unsuccessful one.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and I think I, recently started using QuickBooks and QuickBooks is, you know, if you were not a numbers person, you could definitely hire a bookkeeper to just keep QuickBooks up to date. And then, with the click of a button, you can see your numbers right.

Totally. So it, I think that, but I agree with you think as a CEO, you have to be a numbers person. You have to know where you’re at, right?

Yoav Gilad: I mean, if you look at a map, you could go anywhere, but if you don’t know where you are, you don’t know how you’re gonna get there. so yeah, a hundred percent.

Tim Melanson: Absolutely. And now with real estate though, like you say, it’s very cash incentive. Like you actually have to spend money before you make it. Right.

Yoav Gilad: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: that must be scary,

Yoav Gilad: Maybe, I don’t know if I would say it’s scary, and maybe that’s just because I’ve become used to it. I think that initially it was a lot scarier, but, you know, we’re writing [00:14:00] loans, you know, primarily now around $250,000. And yeah, I mean, if I want to make money, I’ve gotta put that money out to a flipper, usually, who’s gonna take it, buy a property, rehab it, and then.

Sell it and repay us.

Tim Melanson: Right now. So did you start like much of a smaller and then you kind of built up to that? Like I.

Yoav Gilad: Yeah. So, we’ve always been around that level, whether we were performing the Flips ourselves or whether we were lending on them. I think it’s just a function of what market you’re in. and Michigan is a fairly inexpensive market just generally compared to the rest of the us.

we actually used to live in Los Angeles and we would not be able to flip there or lend there just because a home in la you know, you’re talking about like six, $700,000 for a home in the worst neighborhood. And here in Michigan a six or [00:15:00] $700,000 house is a very, very nice house. So as I said here, it’s like quarter of a million dollar deals all day long.

the south is similar, although it is more expensive as well. But yeah, I mean we basically started by flipping and then just transitioned into lending on properties that were similar to what we had flipped.

Tim Melanson: Okay. And then so was there are like flipping TV shows and all that stuff that you can see about all this, like how, how accurate are those shows to their real life?

Yoav Gilad: I love those shows, man. yeah, they never show you the numbers behind the deals. And so there’s a lot of work, there are a lot of headaches and all that is a hundred percent accurate. Totally agree with them, but you know, where the deals are made or not made, is in the numbers.

you could build the most beautiful house anyone has ever seen. And if it’s in a really bad part of town, you’re not gonna be able to sell it. or, you know, you’re not gonna be able to [00:16:00] sell it for what you want or what you need to make. I think they’re accurate in some ways, but the fact that the finances are never mentioned, the fact that, they’ve got access to the greatest, Materials and all that for, a really small flip is completely not accurate.

Yeah. They got the TV shows resources at their disposal, right? So it’s all of a sudden, man, they got this great deal on something and you’re like, in real life, maybe that doesn’t happen. Yeah, totally. And you’ve got like the director telling him to say like, oh, I got this at Home Depot. And that’s because Home Depot paid him X amount to. To talk about it. And so these people that are flipping on TV are making money off the show, not off the flip.

Tim Melanson: Oh, that’s a good point too. That’s probably why their budget is so high too.

Yoav Gilad: free.

Tim Melanson: and so did you, like, are you like a handyman? Like when you got into this, like, I.

Yoav Gilad: I know enough to be kind of dangerous, frankly. I can do basic electrical wiring, [00:17:00] plumbing, very rough carpentry, but no, like I just learned from watching my dad fix stuff at home and like, I can do that too. when we started out flipping. You know, if the contractor didn’t show up, then it was on us to do the work, and so we did it as needed.

but I would rather not do the work.

Tim Melanson: Okay. but in order to get started, like if someone was thinking about maybe doing a flip on their own, they wouldn’t need to be a super handyman, but they would have to be able to work their way around it to try to figure it out, right?

Yoav Gilad: Yeah, I think. if somebody wanted to flip and wasn’t handy and wasn’t gonna do it themselves, which I think sometimes is the best way to go, because then you’ve got a lot of people working on it. You’ve got a lot of people working on the flip rather than just you and your wife, which can lead to other issues.

Basically, I would advise them to learn as much as they can about the costs of doing flips, how much the materials cost, how much the labor costs, things like [00:18:00] that so that they can keep an eye on the bottom line because that’s what’s gonna, again, make or break it. but yes, absolutely, I would step in when I had to, but my goal was to get a crew in there and get it done as quickly as possible.

Tim Melanson: Okay, well, let’s go into your guest. So tell me what’s exciting in your business.

Yoav Gilad: Well, so as mentioned, we wanna help people basically get to where we are and I. Further even. and so we offer people, a free download of our guide to flipping on our website, green Block inc i nnc.com. and all you gotta do is go on there and. type in your name and email and you’ll get our free guide to flipping.

and it’s, you know, having gotten out of my W2 and doing this full time, like I can never, we were talking about this earlier, I can never imagine going back to work in an office for somebody else You know, every single day I drive my son to school and pick him up at eight 30 and three o’clock

And so that, [00:19:00] I just love having that kind of time freedom. Not to mention that, you know, whether you succeed or fail depends on you. It doesn’t depend on your boss telling you what to do So, that’s what excites me every single day is that I get to run my day as I see fit. And some days, that means just going to the movies.

Most days it means working, but, you know, I can manage my life.

Tim Melanson: So do you think that flipping houses or flipping properties would be something that could be done like in your spare time, or do you think you need to do that full time?

Yoav Gilad: I don’t think you need to do it full time. I think what matters most is figuring out what your goal is, because if you just wanna add some extra cash to your pockets, 20, 30,000, $40,000 a year. You can flip a house sort of casually part-time. I would still say try to do it as quickly as possible because holding costs will kill you.

However, you don’t have to be full-time. Again, it’s your goals. do you wanna [00:20:00] manage your time completely? Do you wanna try to maximize your income? Then probably you wanna do it full time, but if it’s just kind of something casual, then that’s fine. It’s whatever you wanna do.

Tim Melanson: Okay, cool. And so tell me a little bit more about the process of working with you. Like what do they do? how do they contact you? What happens then?

Yoav Gilad: yeah, you can reach out through our website. you can email us directly, find me on Facebook. you can call me. My number is (734) 210-2828. I answer the call. We don’t have loan officers. and if you’re interested in flipping and learning more, just. Gimme a call. once somebody has a property, we ask them that they’re interested in buying.

we ask them to complete an application, and from there we start the process and, do whatever’s required.

Tim Melanson: Wow. That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for rocking out with me today.

Yoav Gilad: Awesome. Thank you Tim.

Tim Melanson: Cool. We’ll see you next time with the Work at Home Rockstar podcast. And as always, you can go to workathomerockstar.com for more [00:21:00] information.