Learn how Michael Wiley transformed his life flippin’ mobile homes and teaching others how they can do it, too in this episode of the LMScast podcast hosted by Chris Badgett from LifterLMS. Michael shares insights into how he turned 2016 census data into a profitable business.
Online course or membership websites are rarely successful when all five hats of course creation are not covered. You need an entrepreneur, an expert, a teacher or coach, a techie, and a community builder. Michael wears all five hats himself, which is very difficult for most course creators to succeed with, but he shares insights into his personality and how he pulls that off for his business.
A lot of people think about mobile homes as places with beer guards, mugshots, stray dogs and cats, broken down cars, and junk in the yard. And you do have that element in some places. But at the same time, it’s a very profitable niche market. And it’s important to niche down, because you’re never going to get all the money in a large market, but you can get a big chunk of a smaller market.
When you look at it and break down the numbers, according to the 2016 census data that Michael had looked at, there are over 11 million people in this country that fit the criteria to be in a mobile home. So he decided to help people make money, but also give people a chance to get involved with the real estate world who otherwise probably would not have been able to get the funding from traditional sources.
To learn more about Michael Wiley, be sure to check out FlippinMobileHomes.com. He also has a YouTube channel, so head over there and subscribe to check out what Michael’s coming out with in his niche to promote his course content. Go over there and like a video. It really does help him out with the algorithm. And if you want to join in the public group Michael runs and network with some people and learn about investment opportunities, join Michael over in his Facebook group at Flippin Mobile Homes.
And at LifterLMS.com you can learn more about new developments and how you can use LifterLMS to build online courses and membership sites. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. If you like this episode of LMScast, you can browse more episodes here. Thank you for joining us!
Episode Transcript
Chris Badgett:
You’ve come to the right place, if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co-founder of LifterLMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. I’m joined by a special guest, his name is Michael Wiley. He’s from flippinmobilehomes.com. When I see Michael around the internet, he’s like what I think of when I think of an education entrepreneur. Somebody who’s trying to teach online, he’s building an online business, he’s creating a ton of value, he’s making an impact and helping other people in business make money and figure out this world that he’s in. But first, Michael, welcome to the show.
Michael Wiley:
Man, it is great to be here, Chris. I cannot believe I’m actually on a podcast with you. Oh, my God. [crosstalk 00:01:03].
Chris Badgett:
That’s a lot of fun. Do you remember where you first heard about LifterLMS or us?
Michael Wiley:
I want to say it was probably about maybe three years ago and I was doing a lot of research at the time. I wanted to start up a course and I was like, “Man, I’ve got some cutting edge and everything. I want to learn.” So, of course you hit the interwebs and stuff and you get to floating around and you get all this information, and everybody’s talking about Udemy and [crosstalk 00:01:37]-
Chris Badgett:
Kajabi.
Michael Wiley:
Kajabi, yeah. [inaudible 00:01:40] right there for the the lazy course creators and everything. And so eventually I got to a point where I just kept on hearing the word LMS, LMS, all over, all the time. So I was like, “We’ll, just look up some popular LMSs and everything.” And eventually that led me over to Lifter. And when I got there, I was like, okay, I think it was little baldhead guy on YouTube as well.
Chris Badgett:
WPCrafter.
Michael Wiley:
Him. Yes. [inaudible 00:02:11] right there. A pretty cool guy. Puts out great content, very helpful person. And kind of led me over there. He was talking about the modules and everything, and when I got there to the website, when I got to the website and you had the demo up there, I was like, well, let me try this out. And it was just so, it was very easy. It was very easy, especially for a mind like mine where I can, you don’t have to be a wiz everybody, okay? You don’t have to be a wiz, but you do have to have some technical knowledge, at least. And I got on there and I was just blown away. And then what really did seal the deal for me was you, man. People don’t buy products, they buy you. And so I saw you and how just so laid back you were, already living the entrepreneurial lifestyle, I was like, this is the product for me.
Chris Badgett:
Wow. That’s awesome. And when you got into that, did you have WordPress experience yet? Like building websites or not yet? [crosstalk 00:03:12]-
Michael Wiley:
Yes, I did have some WordPress experience. I think a lot of people will kind of start off with Wix and everything and eventually migrate on over when you want a little bit more liberty. So, yeah, I had experience and stuff playing around with templates and everything, and it took a little bit, because I didn’t really understand how the other themes and everything kind of worked well with what you had going. And then once I got that down, I was like, we’re here. We’re here. Get it out. We’re out. We’ve arrived.
Chris Badgett:
Awesome. Awesome. One things I want to interview you for is that you kind of embody what I think of as somebody as an education entrepreneur who wears all five of the hats, which is really hard to do. And just to list those out, you have to kind of be five people at once. You have to be an entrepreneur, you have to be an expert at something, you have to be able to teach or coach or communicate as like a a teacher, you got to be a techie, and then you got to know how to build community. You’ve been able to figure all this out. Before we kind of get in and unpack some of those areas, could you describe who you help and what your main teaching is all about?
Michael Wiley:
Sure. So the people that I help are entrepreneurs just like you and me, with the exception of mine is more buying and selling mobile homes. Now, when a lot of people think about mobile homes, it’s always beer guards, the dregs of society, mugshots, stray dogs, and cats, broke down cars and stuff in the yard. And true enough, you do have that element and everything, but at the exact same time, it’s a very profitable niche market. And that was another buzz word and everything that I was hearing at the time that it was important to niche down, you’re never going to get all the money but you can get a big chunk of a smaller market. And so anybody who wanted to get off into like real estate who found themselves meeting some kind of a financial ceiling, like there’s a very low financial barrier to get into it and the profits are comparable, right?
So if you look and say, “Okay, I can get a home maybe if the bank takes me through these seven stages of approval and everything to get a home and maybe if I go on ahead and flip it, maybe I can ind somebody.” And so a lot of maybes in there, right? “Maybe somebody will come along who has the credit and everything to be approved, and then we’ll sell it.” And for crying out loud, when you’re just getting started off, you’re probably bootstrapping the hell out of it at that point, right? You’re out there on a prayer. And so with mobile homes, it’s like, okay, let’s say you get yourself maybe a house or something like that. You can flip. I’m going to go with just a ballpark range of, let’s say a starter 70, 80,000 dollars, okay? Bare minimum.
Now you got to flip it. Now you got to have your contract and everything. Whereas with a mobile homes, like, okay, maybe I can put in about 10 grand. Put in something like that and I can still make comparable profit margins with very little and like I can still put somebody into a home and it’s just easier to manage that way. And I think a lot of people at the time they were just blown away. They were like, “Oh, my God, [inaudible 00:06:41].” I was like, “Yeah.” So this is something that could work for the average person who wants to get into what I like to call alternative real estate because mobile homes are not real estate, they are treated as vehicles. They actually do have VIN numbers on them.
And when you look at it, when you break down the numbers, according to the census data, and I haven’t looked at the 2020 census data, but according to the 2016 data that I had looked at, there are over 11 million people in this country that fit the criteria to be in a mobile home. So I was like, “Hey, you know what? If you’re an entrepreneur and you like helping people and you want to make some money and you still want to work with real estate and everything but you also want to be able to give people a chance who otherwise probably would not have been able to get the funding from traditional sources, this is probably going to be something for you.” And so, dude, I’m not going to get off into the success story shit because I don’t want to jump the gun on any questions that you might have, but some of [inaudible 00:07:49] that I’ve seen people have from the things that I’m teaching. Man, if I was crying person, I would definitely cry because I’ve seen people just blow up. Yeah.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. I love a good niche story. It reminds me of a, there’s another person who uses LifterLMS named Angela Brown. And she talked about how she helps house cleaners start and grow their career. And the market is just so massive. And like you’re saying like this niche of mobile homes, it’s a big market and maybe it’s an underserved market from people learning how to get into it. Not everybody’s going to be flipping condos in some big city or whatever it is. [crosstalk 00:08:29]-
Michael Wiley:
You’re right. Yeah. That’s kind of the image that gets put out there and that’s something I actually talked about earlier on when I had the whole PowerPoint presentation and everything. And it was like, now it’s like I don’t do that. But early on when I talked about it, I was like when you think about people who are doing any kind of flipping, it’s always the perfect couple and everything that you see on HGTV, they’ve got the power suit on and everything. “Hey, why don’t you come on in here for a open house and everything.”
And at the end of the day, what I see when I’m out doing everything, and I’m talking about, you would not believe or you wouldn’t think about it, but I’m actually, when I’m doing my thing, I’m actually around a bunch of silent millionaires. These men and women are out here, they drive pickup trucks, they wear flannel t-shirts that you can get from Walmart or Target and some jeans and boots and everything. They don’t splurge. They don’t go out here showboating for anybody. But if you actually take a look at the things that they’ve got, they might have about three, four parks or something like that and they swim in it with scrooge. [inaudible 00:09:41].
Chris Badgett:
I’ve heard that from some bankers before that the people that have the most money are often not like the most fancy dressed when they come into the bank or whatever, which is [crosstalk 00:09:54]-
Michael Wiley:
Yeah, that is often the case.
Chris Badgett:
Well, if we’re like in the expert hat, how did you learn this business?
Michael Wiley:
All right. So here’s a pretty dope story, man. Are you ready for this?
Chris Badgett:
I’m ready.
Michael Wiley:
All right. So in my, before, all right, so I used to work a factory job, okay? Just like anybody else, I was a nine-to-fiver, trading out my time for a paycheck. And as you know, and I’m going to say this for your audience, I live in Southeast Alabama. It gets stupid hot here in the summer, okay? Stupid hot. And so, you know what they’re saying in the Southeast, it’s not the heat [inaudible 00:10:38], it’s stupidity. But I’m just going to say this right here. So when I worked in this factory, let’s say you have a 90 degree day, and it would be like 10 degrees hotter because I used to work in a textile factory.
So at the time I had graphic design skills, Photoshop, Illustrator, and stuff like that, and I was using that as a side business to kind of like try to get out of that, lots of drama in the factory, employment space, and everything like that. So I got a few clients up under my belt. They were bigger. They were wealthy clients. People who could just fly me to New York and Miami and stuff and just kind of tell me what they wanted.
I’ve had the opportunity, the biggest client I ever had was BET. And so they used to have this program, I think they still do, it was called Stars or something like that, but we were a bunch of big names like Kevin Hart, Yolanda Adams, Anthony Anderson, people like that, that you know from shows like Blackish and they put on this big show, and they would give out these scholarships and everything for these people and they would do like a one-hour special and everything. I actually handled the graphics package for that, so it was pretty cool.
Chris Badgett:
Wow.
Michael Wiley:
So doing, in that creative space you have to be in a mental space to be able to be like upbeat and come up with something that’s going to, because people can feel it when you put together your presentation. You do presentations all the time. And if you’re not feeling it, it’s going to show. Well, I got to a point to where I was facing a lot of depression and I had gotten out of a relationship and everything and I just felt like a failure. And so at that point in time, I had already quit my factory job and that was how I supported myself. And because I had never experienced the entrepreneurial slump that people will eventually feel. The feelings of-
Chris Badgett:
Like burnout?
Michael Wiley:
Burnout. Imposter syndrome is a very real thing. I had read about that all the time and I was like, “I’m not an imposter. I’m the greatest [inaudible 00:12:44].” So that was not me. And then I experienced it and I just, things went downhill from there. So fast forward to my story a little bit, I was depressed. I was down. I was broke. The bank and stuff is calling. They were like, “We’re going to sell you your car and all kinds of stuff.” Could barely keep my lights and stuff on at that point. And I was actually sleeping on a friend’s couch and she was very helpful. To this day we’re still friends and I always tell her, I’m like, “No matter where I go at in life, I’m never going to forget what you did for me back then.”
And so I’m sleeping on her couch and everything like that, eating her food, showering and stuff in her bathroom. So I get a call from a friend of mine, a voice from the past. And so he calls me up, he’s driving trucks at the time, and he’s like, “Hey Mike, what are you doing, man?” And I’m not one of those kinds of people who lie just for posterity purposes, right? People will tell you, “Oh, man, it’s all going good.” And I’m like, “You know what, dude? I’m just going to be honest with you, man. I am shooting bad in life right now. All right? I am broke, I’m depressed, and I no longer have the will to go on.” Not suicidal or anything, not that there’s anything wrong with that. People, if you’re feeling suicidal, get some help. But I wasn’t at that point, but I was definitely down.
So he says, “Well, I got something for you.” And I was like, “Well, what’s that?” And he was like, “Man I need you to take some pictures of a mobile home for me.” And he was like, “I’ve been looking into investing in mobile homes.” And he was like, “I’m thinking about it.” I’m like, “Well, the more you explain it to me, the more it sounds viable. So I’m not going to put it down,” but I was like, “It sounds great for you. You’re driving trucks. You’re making decent money. You have no kids and anything like that. You basically got your rent, which you’re never at your apartment and stuff in Atlanta. So you can spread the love around a little bit more. Me, I don’t have that.”
So he was like, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll explain everything later.” He was like, “There’s this address right here to this mobile home. I want you to go take a couple of pictures of it for me. Here’s what I need. Kitchen, hallway, interior, exterior, all that stuff right there. If you can get that, send it to me on your phone. It would help me out a lot and then I’ll help you out.” I was like, “Okay, cool, no problem.” I go there to this mobile home. I think a cat lady stayed in there, all right? So when I go in there, there are turds all over the place. It’s been closed up. I think she had moved out probably about two or three months prior. So the place was closed up with all this pet smell in there and everything, right? Amplified to super salient levels. You know what I’m saying? [inaudible 00:15:36].
So, I go in there, open up the doors, open up all the windows, make a beeline outside, and I sit out there for about 15 or 20 minutes while it airs out some. I’m like, “Okay, I’m doing this. I am doing this.” And so I go back into the mobile home, take all the pictures of stuff he had requested. And I just want to make a little side note right here for a quick second. A phone, all right? A lot of people don’t think about this. This is a piece of technology that is a million times stronger than the computers that first put mankind on the moon, all right? And a lot of people just take it for granted, all right? So I’m in there taking these pictures and I’m like, “This is a tool that you can use to make money.” So I took these pictures, I send them off to him. Fast forward, two days later, he is in town now and he sends me a picture of him standing outside of the very same mobile home.
And with one hand, he’s shaking hands with some guy I’ve never seen. And then the other hand has got a big stack of cash and I’m like, “Teach me.” And that’s just kind of how I got introduced to mobile homes and from there we kind of partnered up for a time and he kind of took me under his wing. And I was like, “Oh, my God, I cannot believe just the amount of opportunities that are out here because…” Tony Robbins talks about this thing called a Reticular Activating System, right? And it’s a real thing. There’s a more technical term for it, neurons and all this stuff right here, but to give like a layman’s definition of it, have you ever bought a new car, Chris?
Chris Badgett:
I’ve never brought a brand new one, but I’ve definitely been shopping for a certain model.
Michael Wiley:
Right. Okay. That’s cool. And whenever you see that model or something like that, do you normally like, is it like a window opens up in your mind and you start seeing everybody driving that car around?
Chris Badgett:
Absolutely. Yeah, right now I’m kind of curious about Teslas or whatever so I see Teslas everywhere.
Michael Wiley:
Because that’s on your mind. Your Reticular Activating System is telling you that’s important to me, so now I notice it. And a Tesla is a high-end car, but it’s not necessarily one of those, it doesn’t get Lambo attention, you know what I mean? Like some of those people out there, what I call them, the try hards or whatnot, but if you want to Lambo, no hate there. But the thing is that your brain is telling you that that’s important to you. Same way when you learn a new word. You learn new words. You start hearing it everywhere. And it’s not like it didn’t exist before, it’s just that you weren’t paying attention to it. It wasn’t important to your brain, but now your Reticular Activating System is telling you, “Hey, this is important to me.”
So when I started getting into mobile homes, I see them everywhere now. Oh, rubberneck and all over the place, I wonder how much that’s worth. I wonder what I can get for that. I wonder what to sell it for. I wonder what kind of opportunities that I can unlock for myself if I just go talk to somebody. Knock on a door, hand out a card, and see what’s going to happen. What kind of magic will take place. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my journey into mobile homes and it has served me well.
Chris Badgett:
And how long ago was that when you first went and took pictures of that first property?
Michael Wiley:
October will make four years. October will make four years. I’ve been doing this for about four years now and I knew at the time that I wanted to get off into this because I had a friend girl of mine and she was just all about these courses and everything, and I had no idea about online courses.
Chris Badgett:
So how do you go from real estate flipper to teaching the craft of that type of real estate as well?
Michael Wiley:
Well, I was just about to explain that. So when she started telling me about these courses and everything, I stuck my toes in the water a little bit to see if the water was colder, whatever, what it feels like. I started getting off into it more and then I came across a few people who are just always talking about it. Dan Henry will be one of them. Russell Brunson’s a big name in the marketing space. And so I was like, okay, maybe I can get off into it. And so I, at the time, I didn’t know what I would teach. I knew about courses but I didn’t think I had anything that I could teach. But then when I started learning more about mobile homes, when I flipped my first mobile home, four years ago, I went into it with the mindset that this is what I was going to teach one day. [crosstalk 00:20:20]. Yeah, I’ve found my niche. I wanted to share the wealth with people.
Chris Badgett:
That is cool. There’s a saying we have at LifterLMS, like you’re a customer, but it’s our customer’s customer that we’re really focused on, like in the sense that, your success story is awesome. Your customers’ success stories is like really awesome. Because we’re, it’s just like, that sends out a ripple of impact in the world where people get success or learn something super important to them. Can you tell us a story about some of your people that have taken your program and what they’ve been able to achieve?
Michael Wiley:
Oh, man. Yeah. I really shine on this right here. So, I’m like telling my story, but I love it when everybody else has a success story as well. So one guy in particular, I just interviewed him. That interview is up on YouTube. The name of my YouTube channel guys, shameless plug here is also Flippin Mobile Homes on YouTube without the G, just Flippin Mobile Homes, okay? So, one guy named Lamar, he came to me, and I want to just let people know, like, okay, maybe I’ll touch on this a little bit later, but Lamar and I hop on a call, we talk for about 30 minutes. And like I said, he had this guy that was down the road from me. He had an old trailer park. Now this guy is like in his 70’s or something like that.
And you’ll have this a lot of times. A lot of times when people have done really well in life, which is what everybody is working towards, I think, having some kind of a legacy of something to leave behind and your family, and eventually you’re going to get to that point to where you’re just ready to live out the rest of your years and stuff in peace. So this was that guy that fit that criteria. He had a couple of trailer parks, I think. And he knew that he wanted to kind of chill out. Like I said, the guy is like in his 70’s and everything. It was him and his sister that was running it.
So he was like, “The guy’s got several mobile homes out there that nobody is staying in and I think maybe I’ve got a shot.” And I was like, “Okay, you don’t have any money, right?” And he was like, “No.” And I was like, “Well, go over here and do this to this guy. Go ahead and let him know that you’re here for him and you want to go on ahead and sell their home. Kind of tell them your situation. Don’t make it a sob story or anything like that, but just be real with the person because there are no magic words.”
So he goes down there and does exactly what I said. And they guy was like, “Okay, make me an offer for the mobile home and I’ll think about it and everything.” And so I was like, “Uh-oh, think about it?” And I was like, “Look, just go ahead and let them, do this first.” And I told him how to get him a buyers list before he ever approached the seller. Did the exercise. I have a little free exercise that I do which is something that I actually, it was an idea that I got from one of your earlier, I think it an article that you had done with somebody who was kind of using like little quizzes or something like that to kind of get people off into your course. And so it was a test your market exercise that I had made. And I was like, “Do this first and then go over there and talk to the guy.”
So the guy was very resettling. He was like, “If you bring me $5,000 for this mobile home or at least a seller,” he was like, “You can charge whatever you want for it.” So it was a wholesale deal. So what it was was he actually found like a couple of buyers and so one of the guys showed up, tried to play him and everything for that. I was like, “Okay, that’s not your buyer right there.” So the next guy showed up and he was like, “I like that mobile home. And it looks like you’ve got some other mobile homes out here.” And so what happened was he wound up buying that one mobile home. So there was a mobile home for $5,000. He half-whole sold it for like $10,000 and so so now he’s got 5,000 in his pocket to play with.
So the rest of these mobile homes, the guy had told him, he was like, “Look, if we do get business on this one mobile home, I’ll let you get the rest of these homes right here and sell them as well.” So the guy that bought the mobile home from him was like, “What about the rest of these right here?” And he tried to go and talk to the owner and everything but the owner was very loyal to Lamar because he had given him his word and he was like, “Well, if you want those mobile homes, you’re going to have to talk to Lamar about that because he’s the guy that we’ve entrusted to go ahead and handle that for us.”
So long story short, after all that was said and done, Lamar, putting nobody down, comes out of this with about, I’d say about 10,500 in his pocket. Tells me about it and everything. And I was like, “Dude, take a hundred dollars or maybe 150 or something like that. Take the wife and kids out. Stash the rest of it for another investment. It’s time to go to work.” And since then he has made thousands, right? And he continues to be an asset and I really want to kind of hammer that in there, because like you were talking about, yeah, I’m your customer, but I also have customers as well. And when you give that expectation or that hope for people, that’s one of the things that bolsters an entire community when you have those success stories like that. So yeah, that’s a very powerful event that I can make a difference in somebody’s life and I never look back. [crosstalk 00:25:54]-
Chris Badgett:
How do you attract or find people to learn from you?
Michael Wiley:
Well I have a couple of different avenues, but I will say that my biggest one is going to be YouTube. I use a couple of different tools out there like VidIQs, kind of like TubeBuddy. But before I get off into the weeds on that, I’m making videos telling people how to do something. And I’m like, “Okay, I have this topic and everything like that.” And so-
Chris Badgett:
I was actually looking before this interview and I saw one, I think, where it was like how to take a free mobile home and turn it into $10,000. And I think somebody just wanted it off their property or something and then… So tell us, this is like an example video like this, right?
Michael Wiley:
Yeah, it is. Actually, and it was just a guy, he had bought some land, and it had a mobile home on it. And I’ve got… People around my area know me for what I do. And it was like, “Hey man, I got a friend of mine. He’s got a mobile home he wants to get rid of, and like okay, he’ll sell it to you for a dollar.” I’m like, “No problem.” Understand people that a dollar makes everything legal, okay? I tell people that I’ve bought mobile homes for a dollar before and they’re like, “Get out of here.” I’m like, “No way I’m telling you the truth,” because you got to look at it. You got mobile homes that go for like 300 grand out in California, right?
So the guy gave me a mobile home. I went on ahead and did exactly what I said I was going to do with it and made that money. It got on somewhere. And that was just about the size of it. So I make videos of people out there, they already have the curiosity. Like I said with you, I had the curiosity about courses. And so, lo and behold, you had some content out there and I liked it. The personality was there, which I know a lot of times, software developers and everything don’t really have the personality to be able to pull people in, but you did. And that’s why I’m here. Most people tell me is that they’re comfortable with the things that I talk about and I really do provide value because I’m not the only person that they’re talking about mobile homes, but it’s the personality and the expertise that I display in my videos that really does bring them to me.
Chris Badgett:
I think you’re absolutely right. I’ve seen it. I can feel it in your energy and how you write and your social media, and like your videos I was watching and you were going into a mobile home and like the grass was high and you were explaining why these are good countertops. These cabinets are a little swollen and stuff, but your energy is like, you can feel the optimism and opportunity and it just bleeds through just the marketing or the brand, like that energy is everything.
Michael Wiley:
Yeah, it is. Don’t get me wrong now, it takes a little bit because like if you’re not, back to the whole phone thing that I was talking about, it’s an asset, but you have to be comfortable when it comes down to talking to people and you have to get in the mindset of, I’m not talking into a camera, I’m talking to people and they need me. Have you ever heard of a guy named Miles Beckler?
Chris Badgett:
I do know that guy. He teaches some marketing stuff.
Michael Wiley:
Yeah, he teaches some marketing stuff. Great advice from that guy right there. And he’s another guy that I learned from, I like his energy and everything, and I really did get in with him when he first got started. Like he built his YouTube channel from nothing. And so, nothing fancy, nothing in particular about like his productions or anything like that, it’s just straight from either his camera or whatnot to his desktop and back and forth. And I was like, I want to have that same kind of energy, even though it’s not fancy schmancy, you can feel how enthusiastic he is about talking what it is that he talks about. And so I kind of wanted to mirror that.
Chris Badgett:
That’s cool. That is super cool. Any tips on community building? Like how do you… Like you can attract your customers and you can create content, what is the, I’m sure there’s like a mobile home entrepreneur type community, do you have like a Facebook group or how did these people connect to each other?
Michael Wiley:
All right. So I do have a Facebook group. I have a couple. And this is like a little technique that I learned from Dan Henry, right? So this is a guy who basically just came out of nowhere. I was friends with a girl that works with him. Anyways, long story short, he had launched his course in, I want to say 2016 August. And it was like a 10K agency or something like that. And by December, he had hit 500K in sales.
Chris Badgett:
Wow.
Michael Wiley:
And then by January, he had hit 700, no, he had hit a million in sales, in revenue. And I was like, whoa, that’s major. But I noticed one little thing that he did. He had a public Facebook group and then he also had a private Facebook group. These are for the people who have paid for the course, and they want to get like the knowledge, because, excuse me, you never want to give out free knowledge that people have paid good money for it. You kind of want to give out snippets and everything like that.
And so when it comes down to community building, I would say, you have to keep that same energy in your group and once you get past a certain threshold, I’d say, I don’t know, maybe four or 500 people, they really do start to create their own kind of community based around the things that you’ve already taught. And I was just amazed because you never wanted, like you were talking about earlier about burnout, right? It’s a real thing. And when I did it, I kinda got burnt out again. I was like, “Man, I’m making way too much content. I’m on this all the time. [inaudible 00:31:55] is not why I got into it.”
And so what happened was this, I started logging on everyday and looking into the group and I’m noticing that they’re networking with each other now. And I made a video and I was like, “Hey guys, I noticed that you guys are doing this right here and this is not what I had originally envisioned and everything for the group, but I will allow it,” because it actually did help out. Like they were actually in different parts of the country like, “Hey, who wants to do a joint venture? Got this home right here, got this right here.” And there were several deals that came out of it. And I was like that’s great, so I encouraged that. And so eventually I got to the point where I was like, “Okay, we’re going to have certain days to where, I call it Mobile Home Mondays. You need to be posting pictures of stuff that you’re actually looking at because the internet, it attracts the intellectuals and the idiots alike,” you know what I’m saying?
So you got people who are just like, “Oh, mobile homes. That’s cool.” And then they’re off to something else. And then you have those serious people there. And there’s no way for you to be able to tell really who’s going to be who. You can just tell by who’s there when the dust clears and it’s time to go ahead and break ground on a project. And so you still want to nurture those relationships with people and you have to kind of do it that way, like, okay, keep something for them to be engaged. I don’t care if there’s a couple of days where you ask for some engagement from your group, post some pictures or something that you’re doing this, that, and the other.
And that really does help out people a lot because they can get feedback from people who either have experience or don’t. And there are people who were in there looking and it really does help them to, just because you don’t want, even though you’re probably the face of your brand, and I’m talking to other people who are course creators out there, even though everything is going to be centralized around you, you don’t want everything to rely solely on you. You do want your community to help each other out. And from there, information gets disseminated, so there.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. One Flippin Mobile Homes question, and then I want to move on to some technical stuff, but does this usually involve moving the mobile home somewhere else or is it also sometimes flipping it and just reselling, but also getting the property it’s on and reselling it? Or is it both? What do you teach?
Michael Wiley:
It’s all of those things. So, you’re not, all right, so I get this question asked to me all the time like, “Okay, Michael, what do you do when it comes down to buying a mobile home? I don’t have anywhere to put it. Where do you move it?” And so I tell them all the time, it was like, once again with the whole car question that I asked you, but different approach, “When you buy a car from a lot, do they ask you if you have a driveway? No, they don’t. They’re not concerned about that.”
The buyer needs to understand, okay, if you’re buying this mobile home, and I post all the time, I post on Facebook whenever I have a mobile home for sale. There’s tons of buy-sell-trade groups out there. And one of the things that I tell people, I was like, “You need to be in 10 buy-sell-trade groups, populous buy-sell-trade groups in your area.” It’s one of the first things you need to do, because the more eyeballs you can get on your offer, the better. So with that being said, you’re going to have people, obviously who don’t have land. At that point in time, it becomes imperative that you go on ahead and let them know, “Hey, I’m not offering land with this mobile home. It’s going to have to go somewhere, so you’re going to have to iron those details out when you get it.”
Now, when I buy the mobile home from the seller, what I will try to do is if it needs any flipping, I’ve bought mobile homes that don’t eat any work at all, all right? But if it does need to be flipped, I’ll tell them, “Hey, I’ll need a little bit of time to work on the mobile home. And if it’s all the same to you, I can pay you some lot rent as long as the home sits here and give me, I don’t know, 30, 60 days or something like that to go ahead and get it out of here,” because you just never know, because even if you do get a mobile home, you’re still at the mercy of the movers, right? And so these guys will have garnered relationships with mobile home dealerships and everything, and so they have contracts for that. These are the big dogs at the top of the food chain. They’re going to get moves before anybody else. And then there’s a little guy who was going to be you and you come in on the back end of that.
And also weather does play a factor. I don’t know what part of the country you currently stay in right now.
Chris Badgett:
I’m in Maine.
Michael Wiley:
You’re in Maine? So have you gotten any of that rain and stuff that’s been coming up?
Chris Badgett:
Yeah, it’s been really wet this summer.
Michael Wiley:
Yes, really wet. I swear to God, there’s rain just about everyday, this summer. So that actually impacts you. So when it’s raining like that, movers will not touch it. So, it just so happens that I was like, “Okay, you need to garner a deal with these movers. Number one, if you tell them you have a higher volume of moves, they’re more likely to pick up the phone when you call. Your meal ticket now.” So, you’re not just an entrepreneur, there are going to be other businesses that rely on the business that you have now started. So bear that in mind. I’m talking about just lots of different people, contractors, supply stores, everything. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, right? So when it comes down to that, just ask them to go ahead and have their affairs in order.
A lot of the time you will have people who do already have land. They’ll probably live in rural areas or something like that. They’ll probably have an anchor or two. Maybe they have a younger family within their clan who wants to get a start and they’re helping them out. Getting them a mobile home. Or maybe they’re just going on into a park. And a lot of the times, what I tell people also is if you go into a park, let them know that, okay, when you see an empty mobile home lot, what does that mobile home lot represent? It represents loss revenue for that park. They’re not making any money off of it.
So when you go in there, tell them, “Hey, I would like to buy and sell mobile homes in your park, if you do have private owners.” Not every park allows people to own mobile homes in their park. Sometimes they’re greedy. “So, if you allow me to come in here and do that, my goal is to keep that mobile home in here and also probably move other mobile homes in here that will fit your criteria. And that way the park is making money. You’re making money. You don’t have to worry about where to take the home to.” And you’ll basically run them through the process of the application process as well, because the parks wouldn’t know if the people that you’re moving in there can actually pay their lot rent and everything. If they have the disposable income, then we’re going to be able to cover their bills, so that’s that.
So, yes and no. People will have their land. Sometimes they won’t. Garner relationships with parks. And also, last but not least, I have sold a mobile home with some land and that’s where skip tracing comes into play. When you’re dealing with real estate, I don’t care if it’s mobile homes or regular homes, there’s going to come a point in time where you’re going to have to know who the land owner of that is. So you’ll probably want to get on something like white pages. I’ve hired a PI before for like $150 to look up who the owner is. And from that $150, I’ve made about even grand off the sale of like an acre-and-a-half or something, off in the country.
Chris Badgett:
Wow. That’s super cool. This is the power of a niche. Like it’s so specific and so nuanced and it’s also a relationships game. There’s all these different characters from the park owner, to the mover, to the contractor, to the supplier, and all kinds of stuff. That was awesome. [crosstalk 00:39:53]. Well, packaging all this up in a website and creating a learning opportunity, let’s talk about LifterLMS a little bit. What do you like most about it? How do you use it to teach?
Michael Wiley:
Okay. My favorite feature about Lifter would definitely have to be the course builder, all right? It’s dope. What I did was I actually had, I went off into Microsoft Word and if you’re looking at this live and everything, you know about Microsoft Word, you know the powerful tools and everything that it has in that. So I just started making out my course and typing out everything that I wanted to do in that course.
Chris Badgett:
Like the outline kind of thing?
Michael Wiley:
Yeah, the outline, I was typing out the outline and everything. And so I was, with the course builder I was able to replicate that. I was like, wow, I can make out the course, all right? I don’t have to do anything with it right now. Just make it and leave it. And then I could just make out the module, okay? Then I was like, okay, I know my course has like six modules in it. So I made out the modules, and then I made out the lessons. Then I just started copying and pasting and everything from my outline right over into [inaudible 00:41:09]. I had all that built out. And I was like, now, the only thing I have to do is just make videos for that. I’m the video maker, all right? I was making videos before I ever had a course, before I ever flipped my first [inaudible 00:41:21], I’m a video guy.
Chris Badgett:
So that’s the easy part for you.
Michael Wiley:
That was the easy part for me. It was just the structure of it and everything. There were a few things that kind of puzzled me first because I didn’t have any experience like dealing with APIs and things like that, but it was very quick. I think I was able to find like a few videos of yours on YouTube that explained it. And you also had it like in a little mini course that you have on the main site as well showing how to do all that stuff. And it was quick, it was easy. And, yeah, didn’t require me to build a rocket ship to Mars or anything like that to go ahead and put it together and I really did like it.
Chris Badgett:
Well, that’s awesome.
Michael Wiley:
It was clean and just very professional look and I really did like it. Yeah.
Chris Badgett:
I appreciate that. I saw you giving a shout out to Lifter in our Facebook group, which I appreciate. I think it’s good, when you use technology or learn something from somebody it’s always good. I try to spend a little time, like you, sharing the love a little bit, showing some appreciation out there, so I appreciate you doing that. One of the things you mentioned is you were talking about like the WordPress and LifterLMS versus like a Kajabi or something. If somebody is, like how are these different in your mind and why has WordPress and LifterLMS ended up being a better fit for you?
Michael Wiley:
It all boils down to one word and that’s going to be ownership. When it comes down to it, you’re putting in a tremendous amount of work. I do not want to mislead anybody, okay? And if you’re going to be successful in this course space, you are going to have to work like a one legged man in a bucket kicking contest, all right? So, you’re going to have to put together your modules. You’re going to have to nurture those relationships and everything with people. And at the end of that, at the end of that, for somebody to, in no uncertain terms, tell you that your material that you have worked hard for, belongs to someone else, it boggles my mind. And then I’m going to have to give you a cut of my hard work when all you’ve done was set up a website and you’re literally curating content from something that I have had to put in blood, sweat, and tears. It does not compute. Okay? It does not compute.
So whenever I hear somebody saying something about Kajabi or Udemy or something like that, it might be for you at the end of the day, but you got to ask yourself. And I do remember that post that you were talking about when I was giving a shout out to Lifter. And at the end of the day, at the end of the day, when you’re putting in that work for yourself, you’re not doing it for somebody else, you’re building a brand. And just to be able to have that stuff as an asset for yourself, as a monument to your work, you’re going to have to say, “Yes, I’m going to have to put in the work, but how far am I willing to take this? How far am I willing to take this?”
There’s a poem that’s one of my favorite poems. And every time I hear it, it brings a tear to my eye. It’s Go All The Way by George Bukowski, all right? And he was like, “If you’re going to try, go all the way, otherwise don’t even start.” And I feel like you to me and Kajabi, you’re not going all the way. You’re asking someone who owes you nothing, who’s going to dip into your profits, to meet you halfway. When you just go on ahead and take the leap, I literally have that as a signature on my phone, so whenever I open up the screen, everything, it just says, take the leap right up there in the top corner.
I took the leap with Lifter and I have not been disappointed. You guys have been super helpful. Anytime I want to do anything, I think maybe, in the three years or so that I’ve been using Lifter, I’ve maybe only had to do one support ticket or something like that, which was answered promptly. And you have a very awesome team over there. I really like you and your team of people that seem very nice and very helpful.
Chris Badgett:
And, yeah, thanks for sharing your perspective on creating an asset and going all the way. I’m going to have to go find that poem. Can you tell me the name again of the author?
Michael Wiley:
Yeah. Charles Bukowski. He’s got several poems on there, but if you find it on YouTube, just type in Go All The Way and it’s going to come up. I think it’s like, maybe one of the more popular videos is going to be like two poems or one, but both of them are super powerful. Super powerful.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome.
Michael Wiley:
Yeah. Just to give like a little bit of nuggets from that poem. He talks about, he was like, basically seeing your dream out. He was like, it might mean jail time. It might mean derision, mockery from people, because when you’re starting a course or something, and I have wealthy friends, okay? When I first started, like I said, I was broke when I started off but I still had wealthy friends. I got personality. Money is not the only currency out there. And when I told them about mobile homes, the look on their face was, mobile homes? And I’m like, “That’s the look I’m looking for, right there, because I know I’m in a spot where you guys are not at. It’s not to blow about it or anything like that, but I know that I have a niche that people turn their noses up at when everybody else turns that market down, you know you’re in the right spot.” Do you know who the most wealthy mobile home investor in the United States is?
Chris Badgett:
No, who is it?
Michael Wiley:
Warren Buffett.
Chris Badgett:
Oh, wow. Oh, that makes sense, because he’s a value investor [crosstalk 00:47:35] and I know he does a lot with RVs and stuff, so that makes sense.
Michael Wiley:
Yeah. If the value is there and it makes sense, he’s a practical investor. If it makes sense to him, he’s invested in. Close second would be a guy you probably never heard of, but he’s also very wealthy, I think he’s at about eight billion, Sam Zell. When you get like that, and he said, “Poor people should not envy rich people, they should emulate us.” And so it wasn’t like this elitist kind of thing.
He was like, “If you spend less time looking at, oh, so-and-so is trying to get out of paying taxes and [inaudible 00:48:10] they’re a bad citizen, all this stuff and I work hard and everything like that, look, you can learn a thing or two,” but about that poem, he talks about that, and like I said before, I’ve had friends that kind of, they look at you like you’re crazy when you’re trying to make it happen. That’s going to happen to you, I’m talking to the viewer. You’re in a good spot, okay? Don’t let it get you down. If you’re going to start this thing, you need to see it through.
Chris Badgett:
Yeah. Yeah, that reminds me of that quote, like first they laugh at you, then they ignore you, and then something, whatever, then they follow you or something like that. It’s [crosstalk 00:48:46]-
Michael Wiley:
That is it. I have a great friend of mine who is a self-made millionaire. He was the mayor of my city at the time when we became friends and I’m down there having a couple of beers in this bar and he comes in the door and he finds me and he sits me down and he tells me a story. And he was like, “Michael,” his name is Mike too and he’s the only guy that calls me Mikey. And so he says, “When I first got started,” though he owns like a lot of car dealerships and everything like Mercedes-Benz and Harley and all this stuff here. And so he said, “When I first got started, man, people at the country club couldn’t even remember my name.” And he was like, “But I’m going to tell you something. Success is a very sweet revenge.” You don’t try to get up all this money in order to get revenge on people, but he was like, “You see how differently they treat you when you were right.”
Chris Badgett:
Yeah, that’s a great point. My last just kind of Lifter question before we get out of here is, what would you say to someone who’s on the fence and they’re shopping for LMS software. I know people do a lot of research. Like you mentioned, you got into it and you’re like you’re in learning mode and you’re learning about all these different things. And I see a lot of people that are just a little bit overwhelmed at just all the research, trying to figure out the tools they need, any other, you’ve given a lot of great experience on how you processed all that and your thoughts on it. Anything else about somebody who’s just kind of in that world trying to figure out what tech to use?
Michael Wiley:
Sure. Let’s talk about it from the point of the person who’s sitting on the fence. Now, why are they on the fence? Like anybody else, you’ve probably got analysis paralysis. There is a lot of information out there and I understand you just don’t know who to go with or anything like that. I was the same way and there are a lot of other people who are also Lifter customers. People are not being paid to say this, but they are satisfied with what they get. If you like being in control of what you have created, if you like having a great team of support behind you, if you just like something that looks great. I think I’m running the Astra Theme with mine. And it’s just so easy. I’ll say this. Like this past week, like I said before, and I knew I was going to revisit what I was talking about, I undervalued what I had, right?
Initially when I launched, I knew I needed social proof and everything like that. You got to have that. Everybody talks about that and I’m like, “I have nobody. Nobody is in the course or anything like that.” So I started off at like an entry point of about a thousand dollars. And then I was like, “Okay, so for my first X amount of people, you can get in with this early bird coupon.” That was another thing that I liked about Lifter is that you could make coupons. So I made out 20 early bird coupons, all right? And for like half off, all right? I had like 997, so when you put in the coupon, it dropped you down to 497, you’re in the course, you can learn everything like that at your leisure and it’s mobile friendly.
So I was like, “Man, you can eat cookies in the bed and you’ll still learn something from me if you want to, at your own leisure and everything when you get some downtime and everything at the house,” so cool. Boom. Got that. Then I started getting in like reports and stuff from other people [inaudible 00:52:25] got a course over here and they’re charging seven grand for it and I’m like, whoa! Whoa! I’ve really been shortchanging myself. I live in the South and the cost of living here is just astronomically low here. Like if you’re making 60 or 70,000 dollars a year, you can live like a king or a queen in the south, okay? This opens up everything.
Another thing I liked about Lifter on that same vein of thought was, I was like, okay, it’s time to move forward with my next phase of my plan and I’ve got all the social proof and everything. So I changed up my sales page. I do use Thrive Themes for my sales page, all right? It’s a great product for that. Not to plug anybody else’s stuff, but I don’t see a lot of people talking about marketing enough in the course space. It’s a very important factor. You can have a great course, but you don’t have anybody over there. You can’t get anybody to it. You’re never going to sell anything. You need to get that hammered out. But once I went on ahead and decided I was going to go up in price, because it was worth it, it was going to come anyways. I was like, okay, the coupons are gone. Everything is going up in price and everything. And it was just like so easy with Lifter to where I could go to my backend and eliminate one of my sales options or purchase options.
Chris Badgett:
Access plans, we call them. Yeah.
Michael Wiley:
Yeah, exactly. The access plan. So I had a payment plan. I was like, “That’s gone.” Gone on to hit up in the price and it literally took seconds for me to do that and people were just like, “Okay, we’re here.” And I’m like, “Okay, cool. Now we’re rocking and rolling along and everything.” And I did well at 500 bucks, but then when I went down and hit up the price to like two grand, nobody batted an eyelash or anything like that, it was still a great option. So with that, the ease of access, how beautiful it looks, and I like the little tabs and everything, they kind of come down to where they can actually toggle things down and see their course progress. That was a bell and whistle that really did wow me about that, and so it was just great.
So I’ll tell anybody this right here, man, if you’re on the fence, you only have, you can look this up, there’s a chart online, and it’s just a bunch of squares, right? And each one of those squares represents how many weeks that a person has to live in a typical lifetime. We’ve gotten through quite a bit of those weeks and you have so much time left. Do not look at this video and do not look at LifterLMS two years from now, wishing that you had taken some action today that you should have done already. You know what I mean? Do it now. For God’s sake, do it now, because I have no idea where Lifter is headed in the future. I’m sure you have some great players and everything in the future, but you have the opportunity to take advantage of somebody and a product that really is easy to use. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, there’s a great support group behind you, but it’s just awesome.
You guys aren’t in my inbox all the time trying to push X, Y, and Z and everything all the time. It’s always some kind of help. You guys are very helpful. You always make sure that you keep the end-user and everything in mind. What do you do this? And the people that you interview too, I watch those as well. And they just give up so much great value. And there’s great life out there, and it’s got your name all over it. But as long as you’re sitting on the fence, and as long as you have all this analysis paralysis, and what do I do? The only thing you have to do, like Les Brown says is, the only thing you have to do is decide. Make the decision to be great. You can wake up today at 20, 30, 40, 50-years-old and just decide that you are going to do something different. That is the only thing that separates the successful from the habitually unhappy and the unlucky.
Chris Badgett:
Michael, thank you for being a shining example of what an education entrepreneur is. You really combine three things well that really shine through and I’ve just learned more and more in this interview is, and just for you who’s listening in your earbuds or watching this on YouTube, you have a, just like niche real estate focus, which is super powerful, and you help other people build business, which then it just keeps entrepreneurs and small businesses, the main engine of our economy, and you have found a great niche. You’ve also invested in your technology learning in terms of learning WordPress, learning how to do video, being excited about it. So you’ve done the investment in getting the tech skills you need which are really important in our modern world, not just for course creation.
And then you have this passion. I can tell we watch a lot of the same videos. I love a good Les Brown video to get me pumped up. And I’ve seen those posters with all the squares for every week and you can check them off as you go. I’ve been meaning to get one, but, yeah, I think those things combine together to really, it just helps to accelerate you. And I appreciate your honesty too around, hey, there were some not good times and you were down and out and there was a mentor who came into your life that helped you with that and kind of helped you out with your taking those first pictures of the mobile home. And then your curiosity pulled you into that world and you were open to learning and growing, and now you’re doing that for others at scale through the website, which is awesome.
So, that’s Michael Wiley. He’s from flippinmobilehomes.com, no G in that. Is there any other final words for the people or anywhere for them to go to connect with you?
Michael Wiley:
Like I said, I do have my YouTube channel, so I would appreciate any subscribers over there. I’m doing a 90-day content push right now. I kind of took a little break in there because I think, like this little sickness and everything going around kind of broke my momentum up a little bit, but, yeah, pushing out videos over there. I would appreciate a subscriber over there. Go over there and like a video. It really does help me out with the algorithm. And if you want to join in the public group and everything and probably network with some people, maybe learn about some investment opportunities you probably didn’t pay attention to, join me over in my Facebook group at Flippin Mobile Homes, and you can find me on there and it’ll be like, there’s two of them that’ll probably pop up. One is orange, that’s the public group. The green one is the private group from when you actually buy into the course, but join the public group. I’d love to connect with you.
And you have to trust that the dots will connect, folks. I learned about course creation before I ever knew anything about mobile homes, but all those dots connected. And you have to trust that they’ll do the same thing for you. Just keep learning and keep pushing forward and make a decision.
Chris Badgett:
And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMScast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends, and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at lifterlms.com/gift. Go to lifterlms.com/gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode.
