Elijah Bryant grew up in Staten Island. Only child. Big extended family though. Always lived in an apartment building. Always people above him, below him, to the sides of him. All those personalities in one building. That taught him how to move.
His dad had his own business, making deliveries for high-end clients. Seeing his decaled truck come and go, come and go, made young Elijah proud.
The seed of entrepreneurship had been planted.
After high school, Elijah went to college, played a little b-ball, studied business and marketing. Not the best student but his work ethic more than made up for it. Graduated, hooped overseas for a minute. Came back, now what?
Like so many of these stories go, he starts Googling “how to become a millionaire,” “how to make $20k in 60 days,” that kinda thing, right? Comes across wholesaling.
Hmm, he thinks, now this I could do.
So, while he’s driving for DoorDash, he’s listening to the Wholesaling Inc podcast with Brent Daniels. On one particular episode Brent interviews this dude, Dan Green. Dan had moved from Jacksonville to Tampa, was living on his friend’s couch, and made $300,000 his first year wholesaling real estate.
Elijah was left dumbstruck.
Dan was about the same age as him. Only Dan now had $300 Gs to his name while Elijah was lucky if he could scrounge together fifty bucks.
On the advice of his mom, Elijah set his ego aside and reached out to Dan asking for help. “Bro, I’ll work for you for free if I have to,” he said. “Just show me what you’re doing.”
“Come down for an interview,” Dan replied.
Next thing ya know, Elijah’s moving in with his grandma about an hour outside of Tampa, shadowing Dan at the office during the day, delivering greasy fast food at night. Then he’d come home, stand in front of the mirror and practice Dan’s phone script.
Dan could cold call a seller and have them purring in his palm after 15 minutes. Little by little Elijah started catching up.
Eventually he was like, ya know what, I think I can do this myself.
He wasn’t wrong.
Elijah wholesaled 12 homes over the next few months. The checks were $5k, $15k, $20k, etc. No more DoorDashing, that’s for sure.
But then he had one month where he didn’t make anything. What the hell’s up with that? Elijah thought about the two guys he had met that were only doing land deals. Their checks were steadier than a monk’s heartbeat during meditation. Screw it, I’ll try my luck at land, he decided.
“And literally, soon as I jumped in, it felt like the gates just opened,” he recalls.
“Got the first deal. Made $6,000. And then it was just back to back to back after that. I became addicted,” Elijah laughs.
The builder he had flipped that first plot of land to gave him his criteria for future deals. Here’s the zip codes I’m interested in, he told Elijah, and this is how many lots I’m willing to buy per quarter, and here’s what I’m willing to pay.
Armed with that information, Elijah was like a kid on Christmas Eve. He could hardly sleep. There was so much opportunity and these deals were not hard to get. A little marketing and 8-10 offers later and he’d have another square of dirt under contract to take to his builder buddy.
Ka-ching, ka-ching.
Today, Elijah continues to scale and plans on developing on some of these parcels in the future.
He sells a Land Your First Deal course for $997 and an EDB Academy with live weekly coaching calls (cost unknown) if you’d like him to mentor you.
While I’m inspired by Elijah’s story and found his demeanor comforting like a cozy campfire, my heart belongs to digital real estate. See why below.