Real Deal REInvestor Network

Thomas Edison, inventor and innovator, leader and entrepreneur, one of the greatest minds in the history of the human species, once said:

“I only hear and I forget. I see and I may remember. But I do and I understand.”

Edison’s quote here is an eloquent and simple manner of expressing a singularly inarguable fact, a fact that high achievers have always known: the best way to grasp new information and turn it into new results, skills, and the completion of goals is not just to learn new things but to apply them.

There’s no secret, human beings can definitely learn by hearing, reading, watching, seeing, and analyzing…but when it comes to getting results you simply cannot learn better than to learn by DOING.
 
You learn best by doing. So do I.

Think of how you learned as a child.

Remember how you mastered your mother tongue, the way you picked up the trick to tying your shoes, how to get your parents’ attention when you were hungry, sleepy, or cranky, or think on the trial-and-error scared-but-joyful minutes and hours of your first couple of bicycle rides. Did you read how to do those things from a book and then just magically have the skill? Or did you learn these things by doing them, and in the practice get feedback on how to get better, until eventually you could do it without thinking?

That’s why the best trainings of any kind are interactive, and that includes learning “how to” information or new skills, both in school and on the job. When you set out to really learn something, whether it’s the science of building rockets like the teenagers in that favorite inspirational movie of mine “October Sky”, or how to get results for a real estate business through internet marketing like the members in my free apprenticeship for aspiring real estate investors, finding what works to best train the human brain isn’t about just seeking more information. And while we all love to have fun and live life, the purpose of seeking knowledge to ‘hear’ and to ‘see’ as Edison would say, is certainly not to just entertain us.

If we want to get the most out of any powerful training or information designed to help us gain new competence (skills) and confidence (ability), then we need to take what we learn and immediately apply it to the real world through a practice-first and practice-often approach that allows the continual trial-and-error feedback loop we receive back from our efforts to give us much-needed data for the improvement of our success ratio.

That’s why the best education, whether it’s an academic course in school, or a training “how to” information such as those currently for sale in today’s world to teach you how to make more money, marketing tactics to get more customers, information on how to buy and sell properties, or  the specific strategies professional real estate entrepreneurs use to build wealth in real estate, or anything else, should be structured as a “learn by doing” experience. It should be an experience that, like we learned as children, that will literally take you by the hand and regularly stimulate your response, ask for your input, and channel your ability to take action on what you’re learning.

There’s nothing worse than staring at a blank page and trying to come up with some new creative marketing ideas.  That’s why I suggest that you create a swipe file of marketing ideas.  You have to have one of these, they save you so much time.  What is a swipe file? It’s an electronic library and written published library of ads you’ve seen that get your attention and compel you to respond or others around you to respond in the perfect way that ad is positioned to do.

I created a swipe file of creative marketing ideas years ago. My attorney even knows I keep a swipe file and sets things aside for me from time to time. He has added a lot to my swipe file because he’s kept certain things over the years that impressed him as marketing pieces. And, of course, I was able to take those, use them, massage them into something else and start making money for our company. I highly recommend that you create your own swipe file of marketing ideas.

What are some cool ways that you can start your own swipe file today? Well, my marketing knowledge, when I first got started, the curiosity if you will or the wow factor of, man that’s what I want to do is be a copywriter, a marketing consultant, it came from a guy who positioned himself as the greatest copywriter in the world. In a field of big egos in copywriting, for a long time, no one questioned this gentleman on being the best in the world, which really says something.

Unfortunately, he died before I could thank him in person for the pieces of information and encouragement he gave me, but one good thing about him passing away is that someone in his family or center of influence decided that most of the stuff he had for sale should be given away for free.

For anyone interested in copywriting, search for “The Gary Halbert Letters” online. You’ll find an archive of 20 years worth of marketing newsletters, promos, etc. that he used along with some great swipe file nuggets. Is it organized the way we’d like? No. Are you going to have to wade through a lot? Yes. Are you going to be annoyed sometimes with his attitude about writing about how he’s the best, he knew it so he doesn’t need to impress you? Yes.  Will his newsletters be great for someone like you looking to create a swipe file of marketing ideas?  You bet!

Another resource for swipe file information is the Robert Collier Letter Book. (Good luck trying to find a copy for sale for less than a couple hundred bucks since it’s out of print). If you find one for sale for less than $100 grab it up, it’s a good investment. It’s a published book of winning ads that he put together to use from different marketers.

I hope that you will begin to create a swipe file of marketing idea right away.  You always want to be keeping an eye out for great marketing pieces.  The resources I’ve shared with you in this article are a great place to start!

I personally like to think of it as a marketing funnel for your real estate business as opposed to a sales funnel which many people call this idea. Imagine an inverse pyramid. Everyone is in it, everyone you meet, everyone that comes into your marketing portals, everyone that comes into your website, everyone that calls you, everyone that emails you for information, everybody that responds to one of your bandit signs, everybody you meet at a networking meeting, everybody that sees one of your videos online or reads one of your articles - these people are all at the top of the sales funnel levels.

   This includes people who know you. They may or may not be the perfect prospect for you to do business with, your mother, your father, your sister, your brother, teacher, preacher, girl you met at the gym - these are all people that are at the top of that pyramid.

   Just below that if you were to draw this on a piece of paper, we all know what a pyramid looks like, I'm assuming, not that ancient Egyptian history is a pre-requisite for reading an online article, but let's assume we all know what a pyramid is. At the top if you've got a line that's about two inches wide, just below it you've got a line that's about an inch shorter, about an inch wide and it's centered below it.

   That first line is all those people I just mentioned– just below that are people who you decide to follow up with– just below that is another line, which are people who agree to receive your follow up and just below that are people who want the same and request more information.

   What do I mean by that? Somebody can give me permission to follow up with them, but they're not even a real person until they raise their hand and say, “Hey, tell me this,” or ask a question. You should have something within your follow up sequence of your marketing funnel that identifies those people that do raise their hand from those people who are like a cold fish just laying there.

   If you're looking at your piece of paper and you're actually drawing this with me, you've thus far got four tiers and they consistently get smaller. What we're building here is an inverted pyramid. If you were to continue going down the next three levels would be levels of getting involved with them. 

   What do I mean by that? In your real estate business marketing funnel, or really one for any business, you should have different ways someone can get involved with you. Let's say, for example, you're a mortgage broker. A level five would be - level one, two, three and four I've already shared with you - a level five would be they've raised their hand and said they're interested in you following up with them and right now is the time they want to put in a loan application, so you’d get a 1003 filled out.

   Level six of your sales funnel levels would be you have a conversation with them after that. You follow up with those people in a different way in your marketing funnel. Of course, some of that should be automated, and if you're not using automated follow-up tools you're missing out on time you could be spending with new prospects. 

Level seven would be people who actually do a loan with you if you're a mortgage broker. Now, we're seven levels deep going from a Level one which might be someone you've met at a conference, or who has seen you on social media or your mother, father or whoever that comes into your orbit in any way, going all the way through Level four which is they have given you permission to follow up with them, you want to follow up with them, and they've raised their hand asking for more information in several ways.

   Whether it's emailing you, asking a question, calling you, filling out a form on your website, filling out a form through your autoresponder sequence that says I'm interested in (X), all the way down through getting more specific to your business in levels five, six and seven with the example I gave for a mortgage loan officer.

This is the basic anatomy of the sales funnel levels.  Do you have a sales and marketing funnel with clear levels established for your real estate business?

 Let's say somebody is advertising in your local newspaper and they're saying they have their house for rent. Could you call them if your niche in real estate is doing lease options or sandwich lease options, in which you take the lease from the seller and you offer a lease that incentivizes you, meaning you get option consideration, you get more money per month, and tell them you’ve got a perfect tenant buyer for their house who has bruised credit and would like to buy a house like theirs on a rent to own basis? That is the power of reverse marketing for real estate investors.  If that's your niche, what would stop you from calling people who have a house for rent and offering them that value proposition? What would stop you from calling every single for rent ad you find every week?
 Maybe you might call with a reverse marketing message to phone numbers associated with “for rent” ads that goes something like this: 
“Hey, I know you have a for rent house, possibly you may have wanted to sell it and just weren't able to. If that's the case, I'd like to buy it, please call me about terms.”
 Now, that's not too difficult, but what is a little bit more advanced, what I call reverse mass marketing –this is kind of interesting stuff, this is some next level stuff that very few people do– what happens if you had somebody, you don't have to do it yourself or if you're strapped for cash you can do it yourself, I happen to like other people doing it but that's me. What would stop you from doing it as a “voice blast” after getting the phone numbers typed up and put into a spreadsheet?
   Take all the numbers in your local newspaper that are for rent, have them typed up and put into a spreadsheet, and send that exact same message that I just said to you guys over a voice blast using a service that only charges you a few cents per call.
   The people who call you back are people who would be looking to sell their house who weren't able to sell their house, are now offering it for rent, and were intrigued by your voicemail call saying “hey, I'd like to buy your house, call me if you're interested in my terms.” When they call you, your job at that point, is to take that prospect and turn them into a seller so that you can purchase their house in a lease option, resell it to a potential buyer tenant you already have lined up in the wings and make money.
   It's a very simple niche. Can you use that with a lot of different things? Yes. Is there a voice blasting tool that works better then others? Yes. Will I give it to you? Of course, I will. There are many different services available but of the ones I’ve tried I like CallFire, for price on large call blasts and VoiceShot for ease of use on quick small voice blasts. 
No matter which strategy for reverse marketing for real estate investors you use you're going to ask yourself a couple of questions: Who is my market, meaning who is the perfect person who should hear about my message? What are the mediums or media that I can use to reach them? What is the perfect message that will get me the response I'm seeking? No matter what market you’re looking to reach with your message, you can likely reach them through the medium of reverse marketing, not just by telephone or voice blast marketing.
Those of you who are real estate professionals or investors who have yet to use reverse marketing I challenge you to begin thinking now of who is advertising, to do business in a certain way or sell something in a certain way that you can grab their contact info and reverse market them because of what you offer them matches what they are actually spending money or effort to tell the world they have to offer you.
Pretty sweet, huh

Develop Multiple Marketing Funnels for your Real Estate Investing Business

How many different sales and marketing funnels does a real estate investor need? I want to encourage you to develop multiple sales funnels. Let's say that your particular niche is buying and selling houses on a lease option. It's very simple; you need people who want to buy a house, but for whatever reason can't afford it, can't get the traditional credit financing or more importantly believe that they can't get the traditional credit financing. 

Trust me, in that particular industry, you're dealing with a lot of people who could get financing they just for whatever reason have priced themselves out of it mentally, they don't believe they can. It's the job of the lease option investor to show them that they can't and to convince them that they'll be able to help them qualify for a traditional mortgage within a specified period of time under which that lease arrangement is working. 

Who else is it you'd want to find? You get those people to raise their hand, you put them on a list, you follow up with them in a certain way; by phone, by email, whatever it is that works for you. I prefer email because a lot of that can be automated. 

Who else do real estate investors need to develop a sales and marketing funnel for? Sellers. People who want to sell their house are procrastinators. People do things for one of two reasons– inspiration or desperation. When the market is up people get inspired – oh, I want to sell my house, I want to cash out my equity, I want to do this and that – those are not your sellers you're looking to deal with for a lease option type business. 

However, those same people who don't sell and the market drops out beneath them in the next market cycle or two market cycles further.  Rick Melero, a good friend of mine does a great presentation on market cycles, and if you get to review that I believe it's within the download now section of the Real Deal Community website. It is a fantastic free presentation you can review on market cycles, not as an aside but just letting you know. 

What I'm saying is that those same people if you follow up with them in the right way, if you tickle them - and by tickle them I don't mean putting fingers underneath their armpits - stay in touch with them in a regular basis whether that's in an automated fashion or giving them a touching base call once in a while, pinging them. 

Pinging is a fantastic way to run a business and stay in touch with thousands of people as I do. I've only been doing it for two and a half years, and there are few things as responsible for as many things as I can keep going, in terms of projects and different opportunities I've got a finger in then pinging.  

What we were talking about was touching those people over time, tickling them if you will, who are sellers that say, “Yes, I want to sell my house,” but have yet to agree to sell it to you who are the lease option buyer who is then going to turn around and sell it to someone with bruised credit. You want to have a follow up sequence and marketing funnel for these people.   

Next, let's say you're still that lease option buyer and seller but you're trying to get to a next level of real estate.  You're finding that you're making a few thousand dollars on an option consideration, you're getting some good cash flow on some of the deals that you're doing that you're renting out to tenant buyers, but your true focus, your true calling, your true passion - your purpose - things you really want to get done is you want to be a commercial real estate investor. You want to buy big deals and you want to do it with other people's money, and you want to own that thing yourself. 

Designing a Marketing Campaign-- Determine Your End Goal and Work Backwards

Before designing a new marketing campaign of any kind, you need to determine your end goal and work backwards to determine the steps, processes, money and time you’re willing to invest in order to reach that business goal.  For example, is your end goal to wholesale a property? Is it to make $5 for every $1 you spend mailing this letter? Is it to create two new investor clients who put $100,000 or more with your private investor project?  Once you’ve determined your end goal and worked backwards, if you’re willing and able to spend the money and invest the effort to reach the goal, then put the plan in motion.  

I have a client who created an information product on “how to make money” that sold for $4998,  and I designed a sweet marketing campaign for him, which entailed a direct mail marketing package that included a $2 bill stapled to the top of a letter and a stamp on the outside of the package that said money enclosed. Now, he’s selling a product for $4998, so to me it makes perfect sense to be willing to spend $2 per customer if it increases your response rate over a regular letter. 

That client was not willing to do that campaign that I put together, but the letter started, “Hey, you might want to know why there’s a $2 bill stapled to this letter. I want you to know I’m so confident that you’ll want my product that I’ve stapled your change to this letter in advance.”  That’s a cool little strategy to grabs people’s attention. In fact, in copywriting terminology it’s called a “grabber” when you staple or attach something to the top of a letter that grabs people’s attention.  

The end of the letter said, “If you’re not going to purchase my product, then I guess I just invested $2 in you.  You can feel free to invest it in yourself, or you can hope to go get lucky at the local race track,” and I’d give them the address of the local racetrack close by in the letter. We all know what $2 is good for.  And what does $2 make you think of?  A lot of people think of it as a lucky charm, because $2 bills are rare and uncommon. 

I played on that whole thing in designing this marketing campaign and in essence said, “Look, if you’re not going to invest this money in my product, then this isn’t your change from your $4998 product purchase sent in advance, but I still encourage you to invest this money in yourself. Or, if you’re one of those people who thinks that success is about luck, you can take this $2, walk down to your local racetrack and see if you can win some money, because that may be the only way you’re going to get it.”  

It was that kind of tone without saying that. Why did the client I designed that marketing campaign for turn it down?  I don’t know. Maybe they weren’t confident enough in their product that adding that into the mix would help them get that added number of sales to offset the cost of having a 2 dollar bill in every direct mail piece they sent out. However, a future client did use the idea, and those of you who want to know what the results were can contact me one-on-one sometime and I’ll let you know. It’s impressive. 

I tell that story to tell you this—begin with the end in mind when you’re designing a new marketing campaign for your real  estate or any business.

This is the process I use to start a campaign for real estate investing, an info product for myself, or a project for a copywriting or consulting client.  Determine your end goal and work backwards.  It’s that simple. 

Once you’ve designed and get a marketing campaign rolling, you’ll have the confidence that when you send a certain message through a certain medium to appeal to a certain market, it will make money.  All you have to do now is tinker with process a bit. Work on it to get it better and produce better results. I’ve seen certain marketing messages go from a 1.2 to 1 ROI with testing to a 10 to 1 ROI and it’s just by tinkering with those three variables – message, medium and market– that once you have a winner test a little and do it again. 

One of the coolest ways to get feedback very quickly is Google AdWords, which I am not an expert in, but what is cool about it is that you can put an ad up and find out the next day whether it worked or not, or whether you lose your shirt so don’t do that if you don’t have a lot of funds. 

I hope that you have found this article helpful for when you are designing new marketing campaigns. 

Remember to simply determine your end goal and work backwards from there.

In case you’ve been living under a rock somewhere, and are wondering why you should use video marketing to promote yourself or your business right now, this article is for you. Here's what I have to say about it: DO IT! Don't think about it. Go get a hand held HD video camera and start talking into it about your business, about what you can do for others, and start learning about local search or about video marketing as a tool to get yourself found not only as a credibility piece, but because the search engines love video. 

For example, why does Google love video? Why is it beginning to show up on the first page of search results? Quite frankly, it comes down to one of the biggest companies in the world buying an asset that has yet to produce income for them. 

If you don't know this, it's amazing. They purchased YouTube. We all like YouTube, some people go there and they watch silly videos, right? Other people go there to market their business. Some people go there who are employees and they spend their entire work day watching silly videos. 

However, that business model has yet to generate a profit for YouTube and for its acquiring company, Google. Is Google incentivized to make sure that video gets out there as much as possible so that people click into it, watch it, and they click on some of the ads on the websites that do make them money? You better believe it, and this is why you should use video marketing.

They're one of the biggest companies in the world and they're not stupid, they want a return on that investment. Until they get it, video is the new blogging and it has been for quite some time and will continue to be for quite some time, until that model turns a profit for companies like Google. 

Again, the tip with video marketing is to begin doing it now if you haven't already. Get yourself a Flip video camera or whatever you can, I don't necessarily recommend you do it on your cell phone although there are many people who do. 

You want to talk about what your business does, who your business likes to connect with, who your perfect customer is, customer success stories, testimonials, the different areas and markets in your local area that you serve, and the different niches and types of services you provide.  You also want to stack your videos with keywords.  If you don't know what keyword stacking is, find a tool like Traffic Geyser or find a tool that does it for you and learn more about that.

If you’ve been investing time in your marketing, and have begun to see results, you may be finding yourself with less and less time to invest in marketing.  Hopefully, those results are translating into dollars in your pocket, and you now have the ability to really ratchet up your marketing by investing in some time leveraging marketing tools. 

If you don't have money to throw at marketing right now, that's okay. There are ways to get your message out there without spending a small fortune, but never forget marketing requires an investment of either time or money.  So if you don’t have much money, you need to be prepared to make an investment of time instead.  I’ve written many articles on cheap and effective marketing ideas, and I believe that you will find them very helpful.

Time leveraging marketing tools allow you to get much more done in much less time.  One of the tools I use is Traffic Geyser, which is pretty fantastic. Is it perfect? No. Have I had issues with it? Yes. Is our support team on the phone sometimes with their support team trying to figure out why this or that didn't work? Sure. It's not perfect. Nothing is on the Internet to be honest with you, but it is it worth the investment? Yes, it absolutely is, and I'll tell you why. 

Traffic Geyser is a time leveraging marketing tool that allows you to put your message into one website portal, meaning Traffic Geyser and immediately pushing it out to almost 100 others such as YouTube, Mega Upload, Facebook and Yahoo Video, etc. That basic premise, just pushing out a video and instead of posting it to YouTube posting it to Traffic Geyser has been responsible for a lot of business for myself and for my company with HIS Real Estate Network. 

However, they don’t stop there. When they first started a while back that's all they did. Now they'll actually take that same piece of content, that same video and they'll do a couple of really, cool things with it. They will literally strip out the video part and keep just the audio, which is an mp3 file, and they will post it for you to places like iTunes where people can download it and listen to it on their iPod. 

They don't even stop there. They will take that same audio file and somebody somewhere, I don’t know - first, second, third world company or machine– they will turn it into an article and submit it to article marketing sites for you. Is that a cool service or what? So, I don't have to lift a finger other than creating the video, uploading it to Traffic Geyser and then it’s blasted out there to all of these places. By the way, another thing they do is tag all your videos on all the social bookmarking sites. Is that fantastic? Yes. Is that leverage? Absolutely!  

Could you do that on your own? Here's the question those of you who don't have the financial resources for example even to afford something like Traffic Geyser. Could you do it on your own? Absolutely! Is that the best use of your time? No. If you were to test it, I think you would find that it would take you a good 40-60 hours personally and manually doing submissions that Traffic Geyser does overnight while you sleep.   

   Traffic Geyser is just one example of a time leveraging marketing tool. I'm not going to go into a whole bunch more tools in this article, but there are different things I use, have used. Some that work and some that don't work.  The point is that at some point, we all need to be able to leverage our time and take advantage of some of the tools that are out there.  I hope this helps point you in the right direction.

Hey everybody,

This is my first post. I wanted to take the time to introduce myself and also give a first-person account of how to build relationships.

I'm a young man who has taken the road less traveled by his peers. I'm sure most of us have a similar story. What's interesting about it is how it came to be. We have all had a defining moment that has pushed us or pulled us into the real estate world. Some of us have wanted it from the very beginning (such as myself). Some of us have stumbled upon it as an alternative or supplemental income source. But all of us realize the potential. And this is my story.

I grew up in a middle class home in Freeport, New York. For those that are unfamiliar with the town, it's on Long Island in Nassau County. I was a great student in school, graduated number 19 of 460 people and had great relationships with some of my more vocal teachers. Meaning, the teachers that my friends hated, I loved because they expected more from me than to just regurgitate info. They wanted me to think. And I showed them that I could.

I went to college for 3 semesters in two different schools (Nassau Community College & DeVry Institute). I hated it. It wasn't what I wanted to do. I knew I could do better even at the tender age of 19. So what did I do? I joined an MLM company, that's what I did. It was called Primerica (God, I hope I don't get sued for mentioning the name. Not that they'd get much at this point in time :)  I learned about loans and securities and finance. But mostly, I learned about myself. I learned that I had the mental capacity to do just about anything but I was lacking the courage to try (sound familiar?) I stayed in that company for 3 years and even made a few insurance and loan sales but the time had come for me to move out and live on my own. Here's where it gets interesting...

My first move was an attic apartment within the same home as my immediate family. My mother, sister, brother, and stepfather lived on the first floor. My aunt, cousins, nieces, and nephew all lived on the second floor. And I was in the attic. I lived there for years until my landlord decided that he wanted me to move out. I was rowdy and had small parties all the time. My family didn't mind because they were my family but I guess someone heard something and told on me.

So I had to move in with a friend. But he lived in Brooklyn. I learned a lot about him and myself during that time. It was only 8 or 9 months. Then I moved into my own apartment in Brooklyn for about a year. Then, a few months before my lease was up I got laid off from my job as a marketing analyst for a small internet firm called Partsearch Technologies (hope they don't sue either). It was five months before my lease was up and I was running out of money fast. I was on unemployment but it wasn't enough. I needed more.

I started picking up books and buying courses and trying to learn what I needed to learn so that this crap would never happen again. I read the book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" and it changed me forever. I spent ALL my money on books and courses and read them all but I was stuck. I didn't know how to do anything although I had read all about it (I know that just hit somebody on the head...probably really hard too). I was scared out of my mind to do anything. So what did I do? I bought MORE books and courses (ok, your head hurts now, I'll stop, I promise, I think ;)

I was flat broke and had to move in with the same friend I moved in with in Brooklyn but by this time he had moved to Atlanta. That was December of 2008 and I've been here ever since. I don't live with him anymore. I got my own apartment but then I lost that because the Census job I worked was only temporary and I was out of money again. So I moved with another friend (not the same one).

During the last 60 days I have taken action. I read a bunch of stuff online and I educate and motivate and inspire myself regularly. Hell, I'm the only one who can anyway (that should be a revelation but I promised I wouldn't hit you on the head anymore). I've met the most wonderful people and I've met some duds but this is where I'm going to outline my formula and give you some real-life examples. Here goes...

I jumped on LinkedIN and started poking around. People posting about buying, selling, lending. I injected myself into conversations and started talking to people digitally. When I didn't have an answer or I needed help, I would go post on REI Club and Bigger Pockets. Man, did I learn a lot. I took that same information back into those conversations and people started noticing me. People sending me colleague requests and emailing me out of the blue. Apparently my style (which you are just now getting to witness) is very authentic and real. People are drawn to that. Especially with so many 'fakers' out here trying to get something for nothing. Has anyone ever heard of a deal with 15 intermediaries? No? You know why? Because it never closed and never would. Who is gonna pay 15 different people for finding the same deal? Answer? Nobody.

I joined this network about a week or two ago. I've got a few friends and have one in particular that I would like to take a minute to rave about. Anthony Silva. The man is a wealth of knowledge. And apparently I am too. We were on the phone today for almost 90 minutes, 83 to be exact. This was our first phone call. We have never spoken to each other before. I learned quite a bit about him and he about me on that phone call. It's like we knew each other. Our stories are similar. As I'm sure yours is too. He lives in Utah and I live in Atlanta. That's a rather large geographic gap. However, the internet and this network in particular is responsible for us connecting. Well, I'm sure the good Lord and the law of attraction had something to do with it too.

I say all that to say this: It's ALL about RELATIONSHIPS. If you're the kind of person who just wants to do a few deals and get on with your life, you're going to have a tough time. But if you're in this thing for the long haul you are going to need to develop certain skills. And the one skill that will pay every bill that you have is People Skills. We've all heard it. We all know it. But very few of us DO IT. And that's the difference between a champion and a chump.

Which one are you going to decide to be?

P.S. Don't just sit here and say "I'm gonna be a champion, I'm gonna learn (or begin to show) people skills. That's not enough. A decision is not real until its acted upon. Ask Tony Robbins and anyone else who understands this profound fact.

If you want more of me you're gonna have to fork over big bucks. I may never post another blog again. Get it while it's hot...

Until next time (if there is one),
Allen T. Gregory

P.P.S (P.S's a are so lame but they're useful). Anyway, I might be kidding and I might not. But you're going to have to use your people skills to find out.

Carpe Diem

Wholesaling is a function of marketing for both sellers and buyers.  One of the best ways to do that right now is to use video to position yourself as the local authority.  If you haven’t been able to get a property under contract or you do have a property under contract as a wholesaler, but you’ve yet to sell it, it’s probably not that you don’t know as much as you need to know about real estate.  It’s probably that you need to work on your marketing.  Until you sell a deal and make some money, stop reading some of that stuff you’re reading about different types of real estate.  If you really want to do wholesaling then focus on that.

Let me go a little bit more in depth on video because quite frankly, there’s a ton of untapped potential there in most markets for somebody to establish themselves as the go-to wholesaler in their area, and I do not say this lightly.  

   What I mean to say is that if you are consistent, you are hardcore about it, you post consistent videos that give good information and content, and it is properly indexed by Google and the other search engines, I don’t care if there’s people in your market who have been doing wholesale properties or buying from pre-foreclosure sellers for 30 years, within the next six to 18 months, those people will get a call after you get a call.  

   What do I mean by that? If you use video to position yourself as the local authority, a trusted expert and solution provider, they’ll be calling you first.  You do this by consistently posting 2 to 4 minute clips with something valuable to your target market in the content and then saying, “Hey, my name is John,” or “Hey, my name is Joe,” or “Hey, my name is Sam” or “Hey, whatever your name is, and I can buy your house in foreclosure and pay you (X) and make sure that you get out of that situation.  Please give me a call or check at my website here.” You’re gonna get contacted, it’s that simple.

  I’m not talking about 5 or 10 minute videos,  but hundreds of 30-second to four-minute videos that answer questions precisely targeted on different ways that you can help people, that give people good information and tips, whether they do business with you or not.  This is how you use video to position yourself as the local authority.  Follow the matrix of content, content, pitch; content, content, content, pitch; content, content, content, pitch.  Your phone will be ringing off the hook with the type of people that you need in your local area.  They will be calling you, and it will not have cost you a dime. 

The guys who you’ve been doing your business with for 30 years in your local area will scratch their head and think, I must need to advertise more in the newspaper because this John kid, or this Sam person, who’s a new person on the scene in my local area is somehow getting all these calls, I don’t know how he’s doing it and everybody that I talk to has already talked to him first.  

   If you want to be that person in your market, use video to position yourself as the local authority. I’ve said enough about that. Is that something you can have done by tomorrow? No. Is it something that takes time to build up? Yes, but it’s worth it. Get going!