82 – Automatic Follow Up To Close More Deals With InvestorPO – Robert Syfert

This transcript was generated automatically with Otter, there may be some grammatical errors.

Sean  0:48

Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of The everything real estate investing show with Sean pan. Today, we have Robert Syfert. Robert is a real estate investor who created an amazing software service to help you automate your follow ups and close more deals. I know how important it is to have an automatic process so that work is done without you getting in your own way. He’ll share how he developed InvestorPO, and how the tool has helped him increases profits in his own real estate investing business. If you enjoy this episode, subscribe to the show and leave a review. We will these episodes every Wednesday and Sunday and released the show notes on our site. Everything Rei com. Enjoy. So Robert, thank you so much for being on the show today. Go ahead and introduce yourself and let us know who you are. What do you do and how did you get into real estate investing?

Robert  1:31

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me. My name is Robert Fiverr. I currently live and operate out of the Tampa Florida market. been actively involved full time in real estate for just over five years. But over a decade researching, studying, reading everything there is about real estate before I even got started. I’m born and raised in the Metro Detroit Michigan market and I say that to say that’s actually where I started my real estate business. And then it just grew so big thatAnd we wanted to move as well. So we moved to Tampa, Florida expanded our operations. And really how I got started was I always had a passion since I was a young kid. 18 years old watch the Russ Whitney, TV commercial and just knew real estate was something I wanted to do.And just didn’t get started. And then one day, I just realized that I needed to, as they say, burn, burn the boats and go all in. So I left my corporate position and company that I worked for and went 100% into real estate and haven’t looked back since. And since have, besides just doing real estate, wholesaling, and turnkey and property management, over the last couple years have started a couple software companies that now compliment based off of my own business for other real estate investors. So make it essentially make it a lot easier for them to do business based on all the things that I’ve learned over that. last five years of doing this. Yeah, so how you even get started in creating the software companies.

how it starts and a lot of people end up in this rabbit hole as they start to grow their business, they, for me, at least, I ran into challenges of you know, there was no software out there that did everything that I needed or wanted to do for my business. And when we were looking at moving out of Michigan, I wanted to move to Tampa. And first and foremost was just to be able to run all of my businesses virtually. And I wanted to make it as simple as possible for me to manage all my numbers, and be able to hold people accountable without having to physically be there. So that’s really what started creating the software is really just solving pains for myself. And then it took us over a year to get that dialed in incorrect. But once we had it, it really was, again, just a, I solved all the pains in my business, I eliminated three VH that I hadn’t saved over somewhere between four and $5,000 a month in overhead for payroll expenses at that point. So I was just eliminating, and all those things to make my business way more efficient, process friendly. And so I never intended to do that to actually offer a software to other people. All I cared about, quite honestly, was to be able to scale my business to multiple markets. And I wanted a solution that allowed me to do that. So I built it.

Sean  4:19

So are you still investing in Detroit?

Robert  4:23

Yeah, we’re actually we still invest that we now now we’re at the point with the software businesses that in my real estate business, I primarily just wholesale. Last year, I got rid of my property management business. And we stopped also doing turnkey, at least from the renovation side of it. So now the only thing that we do is wholesale we wholesale deals in Metro Detroit, Michigan virtually. And then we also wholesale in Tampa, Florida, as well, technically, I do it virtually even though I live here, I don’t go and see any property. My acquisitions person doesn’t live in either one of those states. They actually live in Virginia and manage everything through my software. So we don’t go see anything. We contract everything over the phone, and then wholesale to all of our buyers and we partner and or hire certain people to go do you know, on the site stuff if we need to. But outside of that it’s all done virtually even in my local market.

Sean  5:15

Yeah, that’s amazing. So can you talk about what software you created? And what were the exact things that you eliminated from your data, your normal procedure?

Robert  5:24

Yeah. So there’s a couple but the main one that started this whole process for me and got me in the world is investor PO. And it’s actually why you saw me at the scaling escape event because I was there to speak about that software and, and really to speak about automation and follow up. So the main thing that it did for us was that it allowed us to automate all of our business follow up processes with our sellers, our buyers and every stage. So we used to have a VA to make sure that that got done. So that replaced that VA. Another thing that we were able to do and automate through the business, which is all now part of investor PO is we were able to eliminate the VA that we had that would take all the leads that came in and they we had a step by step process for them to go and evaluate the comps and put in a report so that when the am or acquisitions manager got the lead, and already had that data, so I’m big about keeping sales, people focused on sales. So we had VH, do all of the ancillary work, like follow up through text and email and follow up and run comps. And so we automated the whole comps process. And now every property automatically comes from three different comp sites publicly and averages them. And so that gave us a quick snapshot, which again, we were able to get rid of a VA that did that. And then because of all of that, we had to have another VA to double check and manage all the stuff which eliminated it because now I can literally just click on one tab in my dashboard, and I can see everything that’s going on across the team. And know instantly if people are doing their job or not. So it’s like takes me 10 minutes to evaluate the work that’s being done today, I need a person to go do that for me for the cost that it would have occurred. And then, you know, along the road, we’ve added a ton more things. And now we just made it so that our software has our phone system our texting is in there, our email is built in our E signature and virtual contract system is built in the ability to blast to our buyers is all in one place. So we just simplified it where everything is now in one place, instead of having, you know eight to 10 different dashboards and accounts that we have to log into to make our our organization work. And then from that, the only other pain point that we had, and a friend of mine had as well. So we created another software to go with this is one called property list manager. Essentially, what that is, is we just we created a software that takes all of our data. So as you start to grow, you get more and more data, right 10s of thousands of cold lists that you’re going to do marketing to. And we needed a better way to manage that. And to make sure we got rid of the redundancy and the duplication, that’s a crossed all those lists, especially as you start to get into like the hundreds of thousands of property addresses that you’re marketing to, like we are. And so with property list manager, it becomes a centralized database that we just dump all of our data into, and it automatically scrubs out all the duplicates, it lets us know if a property is on multiple lists that we’re doing. So if we get a probate list of foreclosure list, they can see Lyft high equity list, right? We knew there was redundancy across that. So what we made the software do is tell us Hey, this properties on about all four of your lists. Well, guess what, they have a lot more motivation than a guy that’s just on one. So it minimized all of our marketing expense, number one by doing that. And then number two, it allowed us to track all of our marketing better. So we knew who got the first round of mail, who got the second round now who got text message marketing, who did we skip trace or not skip trace, who we cold called so far. So we’re able to track all that and that database. So essentially, between the two, we have the front end that tracks all of our marketing and what’s going out and what’s supposed to go out. And then we have the CRM that manages everyone that contacts us until the day we close it, sell it and make money and tracks all the KPIs for us as well.

Sean  9:10

Cool, I seems like your software does everything that I don’t want to do. It’s perfect.

Robert  9:15

That’s why I created it for my business because it was everything I didn’t want to do. And I was spending a lot of money for people to do it. And I knew that there. You know, there are solutions out there that had pieces of this, but none of them had it all. So we just created one that did all of that, so that we could eliminate those positions because we knew that I knew that you could automate it once we systematized that even better, and we had it down to a step by step process that someone could follow. But it’s much easier if we take that and use technology and leverage it so that it just does it for us, or at least as much as makes sense.

Sean  9:46

Right? And do you guys do the incoming call portion as well? I’m not sure if that was part of your business as well.

Robert  9:52

We do answer incoming calls. In the software itself, we route all those to wherever you want them to go. So in In other words, like you know if on this campaign, you have somebody that specifically deals with your buyers, then you want those calls routed to your guy that hand guy or girl that handles buyers. Same thing for sellers so every marketing channel that you do you have the option of saying where you want to answer that call that you know this person cell phone that guy cell phone over here instead. Or you also have the ability to send it directly into voicemail if you don’t want to answer so we have multiple different ways that we market so it depends on the marketing channel. You

Sean  10:29

don’t have like a call center or something to help pick up the phone to deal with that lead later right. qualified lead. Yes.

Robert  10:35

At the time of this recording as of right now at this time. Exactly. We do not have our own answer center. I will say without saying too much. We’re in the middle of making something available hopefully here in the next couple weeks where we will have that ability and capability.

Sean  10:56

Yep, got it. So just to I guess summarize what everything you said. So the software that you guys have number one, it does a quick comparable quick comps on the properties by basically taking I’m guessing Redfin, Zillow, Trulia and take an aggregate of their estimate. And that’s kind of like your baseline comp, right. And then it also has an automatic follow up system. Once you have someone in your database like they called you. Now your system knows to send them on that text message, email, maybe something else automatically as a follow up.

Robert  11:30

But we use Zillow total view real estate and the appraisal of three different work, we attach it site, so we can’t use red, red and red sun doesn’t have the capability of doing that. Nor does truly at the moment. So we pull in all three of those. And then our system automatically averages the three also pulls in all the public data about the property for you, and then puts it into a calculator where you can manipulate the percentage of AARP click a button to choose zero to $100 a square foot and it’ll calculate all your renovation costs. And then it’ll calculate your maximum allowable offer based on just clicking a couple buttons on the calculator. And you can if you have access to the MLS, you can override it and put in your own MLS comp your comps and it’ll re average based on what you put in. So lots of flexibility there. And then the follow up is the probably the most standout feature within our system. We call it our multi funnel, interactive touch system. And so why because it knows based on the marketing channel, the person comes in whether they’re a seller, a buyer, or some other type of contact, it communicates with, with already pre with written language, depending on what type of person they are so not just generic to say, Hey, thanks for reaching out, we’ll get back with you soon. No, it’s more like, Hi, thanks, we’ve received your message, we’d love to learn more about your property needs, right if you’re a seller, or we’d love to learn more about your investment needs if you’re a buyer. And then once that buyer or seller actually is qualified. So this is assuming they’re not qualified as called and hung up, they call them, you know, left a message but no one talked to them yet, or they filled out online web form our system already knows they came in and starts following up with them not not only text message from the local number that they contacted, it also sends out emails, if you have their email address, like if they fill out an online web form. It also sends out ringlets, voicemail drops as part of the follow up. So it seems to them as if though someone picked up the phone and called them and left them a message saying, Hey, thanks for filling out your online web form, we’d love to learn more about your property needs. I’ll try you back later today. Right. So we instantly contacted me, even if I am not available to get back to them. And then we also have one off postcards that are built into the follow up sequence as well. So we touched every type of contact and four different ways because we believe there’s four different personality types, and they’re going to respond to one of them, you just don’t know which one, so we believe you should have all. And then once they progress into a lead, meaning you’ve qualified, you’ve spoke to them and the buyers case you found out that money and what they want to spend, etc. and the sellers case, they actually have a property that they can sell, the system automatically shuts off the contact, what we call the contact stage messages, because they called you hung up all that kind of stuff. And it changes gears and says, Oh, this is active lead now. So now I’m going to talk to you completely differently. Now I’m going to talk to you about the offers that I’m following up with, if you have any questions about my offer on your property, or if you’re a buyer, Hey, I got some deals, I think they’re going to fit exactly what we talked about, you should hop back on the phone and talk with me. Now that’s all happening. Regardless, if you have a deal or not all to engage in further the relationship that you have with that buyer or seller until the day you’re able to do a deal or send them a deal. Yeah,

Sean  14:45

that’s pretty crazy. How would you even create a software system like that? Do you have like a tech background?

Robert  14:50

No, I have an amazing, I have an amazing head of our technology that runs everything. So he actually ran all of our marketing and technology for our real estate business, and helped dial in all the operations. So he’s really the head of all of our you know, we call them our chief information officer in the real estate business because he ran all technology operations, and headed the marketing. And so he had a technology background, he’s built a few fortune 500, SAS products, SAS being software as a service, which is what our software is, then you actually sold one or two. And I think one of them, we got sold to Google in the late early 2000s. So he has an amazing tech background. And he’s hired a team of some of the top professionals possible. And literally, we just keep hiring more. Every time we evolve. And we grow, we double down and hire another developer, because we’re going to continue to be at the cutting edge of innovation and continue to just enhance what we already have going on. And because I’m still an active real estate investor, the beauty of the relationship and why it’s so amazing is I don’t have an avid tech background. Most technology, people suck at figuring out what real estate people actually need. So they tend to build a product that is technically really cool to them, but doesn’t very much function well for real estate investors. So the awesome unique blend that we have. And what makes our product totally unique in the way that it is, is because I am an active real estate investor and such I think like one. And I don’t know what technology can or can’t do. I mean, I’ve learned a lot over the last couple years, of course, to make me dangerous, I guess you could say compared to most people that don’t have any tech background, but the beauty is, is that I’m able to tell all the real estate stuff. And then our head technologist knows how to put that into technical language. So it actually comes to life on on the computer screen. It’s not like a clunky, you know, technical thing. It’s more of a 90 this thing that ebb and flow without real estate does. And so I needed to shift when I shift and I needed to make a different decision here because I might make a different decision here. And I need that flexibility within the software. So I just continue to play with it. And our company uses it and our users now that we have hundreds of users also give feedback that continue to add to the roadmap, which was keep us ahead of everything out there, especially our follow up. I think our follow up is second to none.

Sean  17:14

Yeah, I mean, that’s great. So you have an actual problem. And you have some of the technical background to help you solve that problem. Because you’re an actual gear, the end user, so you know what you want? Yeah. And then you’d be able to sell that product to other real estate investors. So it’s, it’s genius.

Robert  17:28

Yeah, it worked out? Well. I mean, I didn’t like I said, I didn’t go down this road to actually sell a product. I built it on po do originally and custom built opodo with a whole bunch of extra things connected to it to make it do everything I wanted it to do. That’s just a deep dark rabbit hole that you can go down as I learned the hard way. And trust me, it’s a building it, breaking it, it not working, rebuilding it with what we learned till we had what worked well for us. And then it was actually being in a closed door mastermind group or others saw what I was doing, and said, How the hell are you doing that? That Matt, all inside a podium? Like that’s not possible? Like? Well, it is possible. We built it for herself. I couldn’t tell you how I didn’t know. That’s what I said I wanted to do and it does it. I have an amazing tech editor like Oh, how can we hire but you can’t he works for me, he doesn’t work for anybody else. He’s not a not hired. And then that just evolved into, okay, there’s a bigger need in our space than I realized. And it’s, for me, it’s always been our expansion in real estate was so that I could help more homeowners, more buyers. That’s why I went into the turnkey business because again, I saw a pain there. And I wanted to help people have better rental properties, better property management. And so I just saw this as quite honestly, software in the way that I learned with this is that I had an opportunity to help way more people. I mean, there’s, you know, there’s over a million people that do real estate at some level. I won’t, presumably, or try to presume that I’ll touch all of them. But I have the ability to now help 10s of thousands of people that will change and affect all of the buyers and sellers and tenants and landlords that de touch. So I have the ability and the reach through software to touch 10s of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of life’s more than just real estate alone in my eyes. So that’s what took me down the software path and made me shut down a couple of our other very successful businesses. Just because I I’m very much a believer in the more people you help get what they want. The more you get out of life that you are

Sean  19:45

Ziegler.

Robert  19:47

Yeah, hundred percent loving Ziegler. Yeah, nice will be a university. Yeah.

Sean  19:52

So who do you think is your ideal client for this product?

Robert  19:56

Yeah, my ideal client are, as we call her avatar, we call wholesaler, Wally. And so wholesaler Wally is a person who is gotten that pain point where you’re doing deals, and you’re looking to scale. But the issue that you’re running into is that, you know, you can’t scale with your yellow pads and white boards, because there’s only so far you can take it, I’ve been there. And so you’re looking for more time in your life. And that time not to be spent on trying to figure out technology. So it’s really a guy that’s looking to scale, he’s doing one to five deals a month, right. And they want to scale and they want to have more time to enjoy their life. Usually scaling and having more time in your life don’t go hand in hand. But if you leverage technology, it does. And you could go down the path of creating it yourself. Or you could find a solution like investor to that it’s already done that for you. So you don’t have to think about technology. So I want a guy or girl, of course that is got business happening, knows they need technology to scale doesn’t want to figure out technology would rather just have a done for you solution. And then has the ability to go scale as a result of it. Versus You know, there are people that are in that boat, right that do that amount of deals, and they want to scale. But they also want to go and learn and play with technology and do all that it’s not. While there’s flexibility to do that in our system, it’s not my nothing client that I prefer to have. Because I think they’re going to they’re going to, they should go build their own. And until they’re done wasting their time trying to do that. They’re not ready for a solution like ours, because they just won’t come in and they won’t come in and own it, right, and the guy that’s ready to just give up on all that and just scale and do deals. That’s the perfect, that’s the perfect client for us how we help other people, right, we can help somebody just getting started to if they have a good enough marketing budget where it makes sense to track all that and do it. Otherwise, I’ll be the first to tell you go grab a yellow pad in your cell phone, you don’t need anything else to get started in this business. It really is that simple. You don’t need to overcomplicate it with all the I call it the shiny objects that are out there today, you don’t need a call tracking system, you don’t need any of that stuff, you can do it all on a yellow pad until you get your first deal, then use your first deal to determine what you’re going to do. Now, if you’re starting with a budget and you’re not just driving for dollars and going to figure stuff out, then yeah, we have a low level package that at least gives you all the tools you need your call system, your phone system, your follow ups, your tracking, all built in one place, e signatures, all that stuff. So you don’t have to go find five other tools to get started. So hopefully for that guy or girl, we’re just eliminating the excuse to get started. But again, I wouldn’t tell you not to go get that. If you’re on a super, super small budget to get started. yellow pad pen and cell phone. You don’t need anything else. If you want to take it a step further get a Google Voice number two hijackers that’s about and that’s free.

Sean  22:48

Yeah, cold calling all day. So I do all day cold call Google Voice.

Robert  22:52

Yes. It’s simple. Don’t overcomplicate it, besides cold calling. If you’re if you hate being on a phone call drive for dollars, right? And send them a piece of mail. Right? And you don’t have to spend a lot of money and write it yourself. Look at envelope and lick a stamp and send it to them. Right look them up on on white pages. com is the first low level skip tracing you could do to possibly find their address and mail it to them. Don’t overcomplicate it.

Sean  23:19

Yeah. And when it comes to using the product, how often do you guys follow up with potential sellers.

Robert  23:25

So depends on what stage they’re at. If it’s, if I’ll give you a an analogy of how I would follow up whether you have our system or not, right, so if someone contacts you with interest, all right, let’s start with front end marketing, front end marketing, you should market to that person in multiple channels, whether it be cold calling direct mail, text messaging, whatever you have access and capability to use your marketing person on a weekly or bi weekly, bi weekly basis. At a minimum, once they’ve responded to your marketing, whether they call in hang up, call and leave you a message. If they’ve responded, you then should start engaging them daily, to get them back on the phone. Right. So the until you get the information you need, you should be engaging them daily to find out how serious they really are. Now, the faster you get to that there’s a rule of thumb, that’s even worse, if you’re doing online, but it’s within five minutes of that contact, you want to be able to respond to that message that came in to you. Because it’s just the day and age we’re in right speed is everything. So the faster you can reply, the faster and better opportunity, you have the answer if you wait till later in the day, that’s when you find people not responding. And then I would follow up daily, in the beginning, now I would start to stagger that off. So if they’re not answering, they’re not responding to my follow up, I may follow up every day for three to five days, right, or something along those lines, at least daily for the first couple days trying to do it, then I would stagger off meaning now I’d wait a few days, then after a few days, I might delay that to you know, five days between follow ups. And then I might go to a week we follow up for a couple weeks. And then if that’s they’re still not engaging, and we’re over a month now, now for the next month, the 30 to 60 day window and probably going to follow up twice that month. And then after that, I’m probably going to stagger out to every three to four weeks, and just kind of bounce up and down with my follow up. Now we automate all that. So that’s already done and built in for us. But if you don’t have that automated call and text them, and email them if you have their email within that timeline, once they’ve responded, though, and I actually have their full property address. So if I was cold calling, I wouldn’t be that aggressive, right, because I already got the information over the phone, I did qualify them. Now I would follow up based on that. When can I get an appointment when it kind of come back. And now if they’re ghosting me after I have the property address and I’m trying to make an offer, then I would follow up, like, depending on your personality, anywhere from five to 10 days, right every five to 10 days, for at least the first couple months, I’d be fairly aggressive on a weekly basis, I be trying to touch base with them through text, phone call, and email and sending money letters, it’s been a month right at the end of the month, if they still haven’t, I’m going to send them a letter. Then once the month hits. At that point, I’m probably going to shift to every other week for another month or two. And then after 90 days, I’m just going to shift out every 30 to 45 days. And I’m going to follow up until they tell me they sold the house where I verify this old house. Otherwise, my follow up will never stop. And it’s a there’s a Harvard study that I shared somewhere else before. That shows it’s between the eighth and 12th touch and follow up where most deals are done. And 95% of people in sales stop after the second call, no competition at the later stages. All you got to do is be there when they’re ready. That’s really the name all follow up is is nothing more than being there when they’re ready. That’s right.

Sean  26:50

And by having an automated, it’s kind of like a back then my thing you we know that you’re following up what’s happening in the background, right.

Robert  26:57

And that’s the awesome part. Right? So for us, we used to do that all manually. And then people are sick, they take days off holidays pop in or the system doesn’t take a day off, it doesn’t get sick, it does exactly what it’s supposed to when it’s supposed to on the day it’s supposed to, at the time of day that it’s supposed to. So it follows rules perfectly right. And it’s automated. And we end up doing all that. And the cool part is and we have so many people in our community that have that have sent us messages and testimonials about the fact that they thought like most other systems, they have to come in and like write out what all that is no, our system just does it out of the box ready to go whether you know and this is why because we know you won’t do it if it’s left up to you to do it. So we just have done for you save a lot of people, when it comes to mind is a guy named Tyler, who literally said the biggest wholesale deal he ever gotten his life was because six months after the fact that a guy told him no, he forgot about the deal all together was working on other leads. And the guy responded to an automated text message. And he was like, I didn’t send you a text message. And then he looked them set up. There’s a text message that went out to this guy. And he replied to it. And now he’s ready to do a deal. And he got the biggest I think it was like $28,000 wholesale deal, the biggest deal he had ever had at that point in his investing, all because of an automated text message that he didn’t even though was going to happen on his behalf that did and the guy responded to it. That it was numerous stories like that,

Sean  28:25

can you go through the customer journey? Like let’s say I am already a wholesaler or flipper, I do you know, some volume one or two deals a month. And I say I want to automate the system. What’s next?

Robert  28:39

Yeah, so they go to investor pod calm as the first and foremost thing, obviously they do right? There’s a full demo on our site that shows them the whole software. So we’re probably one of the most transparent companies you’ll ever find on purpose. We show you everything in the software right on the website, we break down every everything that we charge, what’s included in it, what it costs you if you go over that for every single possible item that you could ever have a bill about on the front facing public website. From there, there’s an online signup process, which takes them literally through putting in their information about their company, because all this information is what’s going to build your account in less than 24 hours. And so they put in that information and at the same time, and actually, depending on the package, it takes them into a within 24 hours, they’ll get an entry email that welcomes them aboard at the same token, they’ve already scheduled what we call our kickoff call, we like to hop on all of our members one on one for at least 30 minutes to get started and make sure you know where everything’s at how to get help center, how to get on our weekly live q&a, zoom calls with myself and the head of our technology to make sure you’re getting the most out of the system in the most out of your business, we’re there to help you be even more successful than you already are. Not even just with our service, but just in business in general, then, so they already have access to that they have access to all the training videos access to all articles access to the system, which is fairly intuitive. However, it doesn’t hurt to watch something and learn a little bit more than they had their kickoff call, which literally make sure that they know that this is already built for you there’s actually nothing you have to do. But here’s where you can go if you want to go and customize it for you because you can then the goal is let’s turn on all your marketing channels. If you have a bunch if you don’t get out there and start marketing start doing your cold calling start doing your texting. If you have services like like a text service, like lead Sherpa, for instance, we can integrate it where it becomes a push of a button pushes that data in our system when you once you got the marketing and lead. If it’s direct mail, it’s as simple as put our phone number on the marketing that things automatically come in the system system tells you what to do, tells you and alerts you when the call came in. Same thing with online websites will connect those to our system for you. So if someone fills that out, automatically ends up in in all the while. You now have a team of VA as we call it, IPO investor PO that’s doing all this follow up for you to make sure that you are engaging people until they’re ready to do a deal with you. And the system just walks you step by step depending on what you do, right, whether you go on appointments, or you make offers over the phone, it’s flexible to go whichever route you go. Do both Okay, do one this way one that way doesn’t matter. It’s all action based system where whatever you did today determines what you’re supposed to do next. And the system will literally lead you down what to do next even down to you cannot you can start to notice the cool thing is what am I the most behind on? Well, guess what? Now I know who I’m supposed to hire next for me now with some guy out and you know Facebook land told me is the proper process to hire that, you know may work sometimes may not. But that’s not a perfect fit for everybody. In my opinion, the perfect fit is find out the thing that you’re the most behind on and you’re lacking at doing best way to do that is to have technology that tells you this is the thing you’re the most behind on following up with buyers, okay, hire someone to follow up with buyers, or you know, whatever it is, right, I’m, I’m bad at this, hire that person, that’s what you’re supposed to hire next is replace the things that you’re bad at and that you don’t enjoy doing. So at all during that process. Again, we do weekly webinars, we’re talking with you, we can schedule one on one calls and consulting anytime that you want. Depending on the size of your operation and your needs, I’ve been hired to come out to people’s offices or have people fly into Tampa to come into my office and sit down for an entire day. And help them blueprint out their business. We do live, we just did our first live boot camp. And we’re going to be doing more of those where it’s literally like, workshop, hey, great, you have our software and you’re in there working in your business. But we’re going to give you an opportunity to fly out with me and my team for three days. And we’re going to work on your business, answer every question you have and make sure that you’re operating at the most efficient highest level you can be so you can continue to scale to whatever level it is that makes sense for you. Right? Doesn’t matter if that’s $20,000 a month are $2 million a month, we can help you scale to wherever that is. We have a Facebook community and you know all that kind of other support stuff. That’s typical live chat, email support, you name it, we’re there.

Sean  33:13

I was gonna say, do what you can to automate your business and get out of your own way. Because it’s always you stopping yourself, right? Always or worse right? Now, I was wondering, I know one of my pain points with using polio or other CRM software is that I’m like, typing in every single contact one at times big pain in the butt. And especially if I mailed out like 7000 people, I don’t want to put all that one by one. So I’m sure you guys have some kind of automated or some kind of import system that takes everything and populates it all for us.

Robert  33:45

Yeah, yeah. So depending on what you’re meaning, there’s one of two things right, if you’re talking about like the cold Lyft, that you’re going to market to you. That’s where you would put it into proper this manager, one click loads it all in there at one time. Anyone that’s responding to your marketing, again, we would help you in our kickoff call in the first couple sessions with you and training, make sure that all your marketing channels are properly integrated, if needed, or something like direct mail, for instance, you just put our phone number on the mail piece, the person calls out of the 7000, you got a 1% response rate that’s like 70 phone calls, all 70 of those people would automatically end up in the system, just by calling our phone number.

Sean  34:28

Oh, that’s crazy. So you send out the direct mail piece with a special phone number, I guess that phone number goes, I guess to you guys first and then it routes to our phone. And that’s how we talk. And that’s how you guys know that that person calls you.

Robert  34:40

Yeah, so just like Google Voice or a call rail, except the differences. Our phone numbers are already integrated in our service because it’s our phone. So when they call our number, you know, like call rail or Google Voice, you can see it, it automatically flows to you at the same time. Well, it flows to you at the same time, it rings up the difference between we’ve already captured the call. So if they hang up on you, or they you know, Ghost you or whatever, they’re they’re already captured in the system, you already have a heartbeat in the system, notifying you that you got a new incoming contact and the whole thing’s being recorded. If you pass it on to a call center to answer for you, we’re recording that whole conversation with the call center. Like it’s already captured, it’s already tracked, we’re already calculating your KPIs on that phone call. And you put in your so like, Hey, I spent $1,000 in direct mail this week, cool. Put that in, we have an expensive spot, every call that comes in, we’re breaking down. So let’s say you put in 1000 bucks, and you got four phone calls could cost you $250 per phone, you get 10 phone calls, $200 per phone call, right? I don’t it doesn’t matter what the numbers and as it progresses through the system, instead of you manually going and trying to figure out KPIs and put them on spreadsheets systems is going to tell you what are your numbers are

Sean  35:52

automatically shipped, probably you should probably have investor to first before you start mailing campaigns and get that phone number right to track with.

Robert  36:00

So that’s why we have the solo package. So you know, the I would say the size or follow up being the most amazing thing about our system, it’s also that you don’t need so most people, if you’re trying to build something you need like a podium so that it can store all your data or some other CRM database, most of them need you to also go get a phone tracking system. So they can integrate with it like a call rail, or ringcentral, or a bumper, or one of those types of numbers that are integrated with services. And then you got to connect to whatever services you want for you to have follow ups and contract signing and all those capabilities. Well, all of that is included investor PO, so a lot of people will say, Man, you guys are kind of like more expensive than some of the other ones. No, actually, we’re not more expensive than anybody. If you actually compare apples for apples, they’re just giving you a price for the pOH do part, you still got to go get a phone system, you still got to go get the follow up sequences, you still got to go get a contract service, you still got to go get XYZ add up all those accounts, you gotta go get. And by the way, these are all different logins versus everything is included in ours. So if there’s our price includes all those services, and one, only thing you do with investor po is now go market. And depending on your marketing channel, right, if you’re sending direct mail, put our phone number on it. If you’re doing text blasting, go get you a legally compliant text blasting service. And the really good ones are integrated with us where you literally click a button when somebody is interested in it pushes it over to our system for us to manage the closing. And their system is just a marketing tool. Or if you’re cold calling, like you said, just go get a Google Voice number and call from your cell phone. It’s not don’t make it more complicated that but if you got a couple bucks go get a Mojo dialer a call tools are the best to I’ve seen people use and then that’ll that’ll speed up your dialing, you’ll be able to call more people faster. And you know, if you don’t have a website, go get our knowledge just carry it. So go to carry on. They’re the best in the business. I’d say over half of our users use carrot site. This is just you want the simple roadmap. Those are the simple things to go do instead of building all that you could go build your own website, you will come up with your own call service and all that stuff but simple as go get carrot you have an online presence in seconds. Go get call tools or Mojo dialer. If you want to dial faster than you do on your cell phone. Right you want to go to direct mail order your direct mail, put our phone number on it Yeah, just get our get our system first and then it automatically tracks all of everything you’re doing and wherever it comes in as you go and put our phone number on a bandit sign. Right order your bandit signs with our phone number on it. Guess what anyone to cause your Bannatyne automatically ends up in this system tells you what to do records and tracks everything you put in how much it costs, you put your bandit sign, get your bandit signs, if you pay someone to put them out how much it cost you to put them out, will track every penny for you.

Sean  38:51

Yeah, very cool. What are the packages that you guys have and one of the price points for each one?

Robert  38:57

Yeah, we started as low as 97 a month including service. So that’s your phone, your texts, your local number campaigns, we started with three different phone numbers. So one for buyers, one for sellers, one for just general contacts that you want to put in and keep track of and include your signature account and include your email blasting the buyers or text blasting the buyers landing page to sell your properties out to and all the auto comps. There’s no feature that’s not turned on within that other than connection to like higher level API’s and Zapier, we can include that at that $97 price point. But we got everything in there that’s needed to get you started in business and going. Then the two that are like the majority of our clients are what we call corporate or enterprise. And really the difference between the two is how big is your company already. And just know you literally in our system, click a button upgrade. So like if you’re a solo guy, you have everything if you end up growing and hiring multiple people, because now you’re growing and scaling, literally click a button and you’re upgraded in a second. And so the upgrades only mean we give you more levels, right. So what I mean is like at the solo package, you have three phone numbers, all you need to get started one for sellers, one for buyers, and one for general contacts, you don’t need anything more than that. When you’re first starting out, corporate, our main avatar, right is up to five employees 10 phone numbers to start with a bunch of text messages, phone, minutes, emails, contacts, they’re all included. And so that’s like the mid level, that’s what we call our mid level is to 97 a month. It is geared for majority of wholesalers that are doing some level of business already and looking to scale as you scale. Or if you’re already a bigger company, we have an enterprise solution, which is for 97 a month, and includes like 25 campaigns, 25 phone numbers, 10 employees and staff members. So this is a bigger company, right? You’re probably doing eight to 10 deals or more every single month at the enterprise level. And it’s for 97 a month and includes everything that you’re going to need for your office. And then now I will say we scale beyond that. But that’s not our website. If you’re a bigger company than that we’re we do special and specific programs that we can build out customization for you like we have a hedge fund that uses our software as a way to build out a custom platform just for them. But that’s way beyond the the 10 employees, we have a 18 person operation in our place right now that uses the Enterprise Service. To give you an example. When I was talking about this customer, it’s like 4050 employees. So little bit, not normal for the user.

Sean  41:38

But for the most part, if you’re a solo guy, that basic $97 package is good enough.

Robert  41:44

Yeah, and let it get that to start and then let it scale with you. Right, you’ll know when you’re too big for that package, it gives you everything you need. It has all the automation that you need, there is nothing in that regard that we shut off or don’t do, we provide all the fame, even the lowest level is to help get started, get you into our community environment. So you can be on the weekly calls, we can help you become a better real estate investor. And then as you grow, you’ll notice your invoices for all the messages and leads you’re pumping through will start to your 97 will go up because you’re paying as you go for some of the for some of the features, which is going to be pennies in the beginning when you’re starting. But as you start to get in so many leads, that’s going to start costing you more for the follow up. At that point, you can just watch and say, Oh, I need to hire three people. Okay, well, rather than pay the, you know, once you you can see like, oh, it makes sense for me to upgrade to the to 97. Because if I don’t think it’s going to cost them more than 297 for these extra that this low level package, the bigger package don’t for a company that scaling. So that’s the cool part, right? We’re built for you to start wherever you are in scale to wherever you want to go. And one system does it all for you.

Sean  42:51

Yeah. And if you say have a Google Voice number ready, can I just give that to you? And have you use that? Or does it have to be a brand new phone number?

Robert  42:59

Yeah, Google Voice is not an integrated service. So that one wouldn’t work. I mean, what you could do is you could just start forwarding your Google Voice to our tracking number. But yeah, if you just have a Google Voice is not like a integrated cell phone system, per se. It’s all end up masking phone number, it doesn’t do anything special. So we can’t, nothing we can do with your Google Voice number. Now, if you have call rail or ringcentral, or something like that, then there is something we can integrate. So those calls will come into the system automatically, too.

Sean  43:27

Cool. Good to know. And I was wondering if you could just kind of tell us what are you doing with the system? You said you do virtual wholesaling, I love to hear, I guess your method of virtual wholesaling.

Robert  43:36

Yeah, but we’re actually, we’re actually doing something pretty unique. Right now I went through some lots of ebbs and flows and business by opening up software, it’s been a huge pain to get to where it is today. Took through a lot of things, but it’s selling real estate, we’ve just mostly been doing mostly networking deals over the last couple years. Well, not couple years over the last year, specifically while this business was growing, and there was get rid of some other ones. We just mostly just wholesale deals that came to us through referral networks that we’ve built up at this point. So we do quite a bit of transitions we are currently in just started, we’re going through a process of I actually have one of my my mentorship students that I’m working with to do a case study together. And so what we’re doing is we’re literally and this is gonna he’s he’s smart enough dude in real estate just all by himself. So what we’re doing is a deal where he’s going to grow my real estate business. And we’re literally picked out a market that we’re not doing any marketing and right now. And we’re literally building a case study to show how to start from zero dollars today. And we’re going to scale this business to a million plus business by the end of this year. So soon, we’re going to document the entire step by step, how did we go into the market and get free data? How did we then turn around and precisely figure out who we are going to market to and how using our property list manager to stack the data and go after the pain points down to answering one of your questions. I won’t go too far on that. But built in answering service for you already scheduling appointments. So we’re testing out a model. And as it works, because we know it’s going to work within the have a completely documented step by step process that you could just come in and follow. We’re literally starting from zero. So we’ve done I’ve done like, I’ll be open and honest, I think I’ve only done maybe like 30 or 35 deals so far this year. And I may sound like a lot to some some. There’s not a lot I used to do 120 plus a year I’ve done as many as 204 in one year,

Sean  45:41

go

Robert  45:42

30 in six months, there’s not a lot for me. But it’s you know, I don’t work in my real estate business, though I have I have one acquisitions manager who runs the database, and we have someone that handles our closings. And that’s it. That’s that’s my real estate operation. So this was like a unique thing is just one of my students that got into my mentorship program here. had an idea and a concept. And I was like, You know what, I’m game, let’s do it, I will literally coach you step by step you do all the work because I need to work on my software business. And but I will coach you every single day will spend 10 to 30 minutes, sometimes hour sessions. And I will literally tell you step by step what to do to recreate what I had created in the past because I had a multimillion dollar multiple multi million dollar businesses, my property management was 5 million plus, my real estate turnkey operation was just north of 3 million when we stopped doing turnkey when I built this offer. Now the software companies are seven figure companies will be seven figure companies this year. In gross, that’s not we’re not we’re not profitable at that level. We’re over producing for people. But so what we’re doing is we’re going to prove in real estate, I don’t care you take me and give me nothing. And I’ll show you how to go start real estate, I’m going to show you how simple it is. This time around with the software that I didn’t have when I first started. When I first started it was whiteboard yellow pads, and my cell phone. Now I’m going to show you how it just a little bit of technology, we’re going to start and scale it from nothing. Improve that software and leveraging technology does everything for you. If you add it,

Sean  47:17

that’s pretty gangster, can you tell us kind of what you’re planning on doing? Like, I’m going to take this one market on putting 2000 pieces every month, blah, blah, blah. And then

Robert  47:27

yeah, we’re laying out the marketing plan as of right now, but I will tell you so the first I’ll give you the first parts of what we’ve already done over the last couple weeks, we’ve already went into the market. And we’ve contacted title companies, and we’ve contacted the county record offices, so that we could go and find out what kind of data we could get for free. And a lot of people don’t think that that’s possible, we’re proving as possible. My guy, when did all the online research called all the counties call them title companies, we literally are now on a VIP list. every single Friday, we get an email of all the notice defaults that happened in the county. So that literally is like the first level of pre foreclosure. So we’re getting that list, we’ve gotten every single tax default from the county are getting it for free. So we have like 6000 records that are coming to us from that we’re going to put that both of those in. So we stack and see the combinations. And then we’re going to we’re going to run a little bit more data than that, we’re probably going to run an unknown equity list and an unknown owner list or something like that. And then we’re going to combine them all I’m sorry, and we’re getting, we’re doing an fo IA requests, which is a Freedom of Information Act request from your county, we’re doing one of those for all the code violations in the city. So that we’re going to get all that too, and then we’re going to stack it all in PLM, we’re going to iron out what is the so hopefully, we’ll get you know, 40 50,000 Records in there most of it for free. So it really isn’t gonna cost us anything, maybe a couple hundred bucks at best to get the data and that data is king, right? Everything starts with the data. So we’re getting all that data, then we are going to skip trace it we’re got Well, we’re going to turn that down, I would presume end up with somewhere between five and 10,000 people that are the target that we’re going after out of all that data, after we put it into our one system. So that’s gonna help us clean the data, see who we should be going after that is the highest motivation, then we’re going to do, we’re going to do cold calling. Because free and cheap. We’re going to do text messaging, because it’s really cheap. And we’re going to do direct mail. And we’re going to mail them every, we’ll just say every other week. So we’re going to mail a portion of the list every other week, everybody boom, now at least every 30 days, if not every two weeks. And we’re going to we’re going to have we’re going to start off with eight rounds of mail on that. Now mail would be the last piece. So if you have a really low level budget, I mean, we have a little bit of budget that we’re we’re going to start this with so that it makes sense for someone that could actually do real estate. And that’s it, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat and then the game. And why will be so successful as well already analyze out, our goal is to get from zero to five deals quickly. And we’re even probably going to take this to another level, we’re probably going to contact a couple wholesalers in the area to network with and make them go do all the boots on the ground work for us, and partner and make them go find all the buyers for us until we create the buyers list that goes along with this. So just to continue to prove you can start from practically nothing because you can do the cold calling and texting for next amount, you could use your cell phone literally, with a Google Voice number and do both of those and cost you nothing. So the only cost is getting the data and most of it you can get for free. And then skip tracing it right and we’re going to skip traces will spend a little bit of money there. But still you there’s skip tracing services now that are like 15 sets a record for really good high level skip tracing through skip trace it all go after it. And we’re just going to hit it. And then the bigger part is the follow up. Right, we’re literally going to non stop aggressively follow up with everyone that replies and will continue front end marketing. And now we have because of the new software’s The software will automatically filter out everyone that responds, the marketing will come off of our front end marketing list automatically. So we’ll start marketing to them, but will kick in the follow up mode on them until we get the deal. And then you will scale it from there. It’s really just a numbers game at that point.

Sean  51:21

So when they want to sell the house, you don’t even go there and personally right. You say Well, I know this property’s worth X amount, I’m gonna get it for maybe 50 cents on the dollar 60 cents on the dollar. They say okay, then you just send them the contract, they sign it online. And then now you can wholesale it just like that. Right?

Robert  51:35

That’s right. All in one phone call.

Sean  51:38

Wow, seems so simple. When you say like that.

Robert  51:40

Yeah. You know, we’re good at doing it virtually. So there’s a couple key points to that, right. If you’re going to do it, virtually the biggest mistake a lot of people make, especially if they’re newer is sending the contract and then they lose contact with the person. It’s if you have you want an E signature service. And you want to if at all possible. When you got that them under agreement on the phone, send them the agreement while you’re on the phone. So you can get them to sign it while you’re still on the phone. Because that’s when they’re going to ask questions. I mean, if at all possible, that’s the best case scenario. worst cases, you send it to them with a deadline, and you follow up. That’s the worst case. And then if you you know, you don’t have any boots on the ground, and you need to go take pictures of the company called we go look.com that for like 50 or 75 bucks, though, they’ll go anywhere in the country and inspect the house for you. And take a bunch of photos. And it’s not like a high level homeowners inspection, but it’s just Hey, they’ll go take 20 photos for you and send it to you. And now you have something you can use to market it to buyers. Or you don’t have to do that either. You literally could get it under contract. Maybe the homeowner could take a picture on their cell phone or the front of the house at least send it to you. Bam, I’d send that out. And hey, anyone with an offer we can schedule time for you to go see the house and then have your buyer go inspect the house.

Once they send you an offer that is buying the hot

night that’s it. Are you with a wholesaler agent if you absolutely have to partner with one of them JV with them. Let me tell you what, so many people are afraid to do that. I’ve done so many deals with other agents and JV cares if you give up 50% of the deal that you can close versus Nope. Don’t want to partner with someone and then you never do a deal. Because you can’t go see the house and you can’t manage it appropriately. Who cares? Give up a part of the pie to get the deal done this all about win win win relationships. Right. That’s the name of the game real estate. Yeah,

Sean  53:29

great advice. So before we end the show today, I was wondering if you had any last words to give our listeners?

Robert  53:35

Yes, I this was a key theme at our bootcamp and I will stress it anytime anyone asked me anything. Focus, focus, focus, keep everything simple. And just take massive action. You don’t need to go read 100 more books you don’t got it? Why am I telling you this because I’m the guy that did that. I’m the guy that for 10 years read every every single book, the legal books, the accounting books, the tax books, LLC books, went to every course in study thing that I could do. And I learned more in real estate by doing actual real estate and any other time in my life. So focus, keep it as stupid simple as possible. And don’t chase shiny objects. It is as simple as your cell phone and a yellow pad. You want to make it even simpler you have no money and you don’t even have gas money to go driving for dollars cool. here’s here’s a little trick I will give you. People say call for sale by owners you could do that that you know they’re selling the house. Here’s an even better one. Get on Zillow, Trulia, Craigslist, whoever else and call all the For Rent properties. Why you probably asked, right? Here’s why all of them own a property. Their landlords guess what they are. They’re either people who want to buy more properties, or someone who’s fed up being landlord and ready to sell. So you have an opportunity to talk to a potential buyer and a seller for every rental that you call in your area. Start there. That’s the simplest cold calling you could ever do. And it’s another trick to help you that that’s super free cost you nothing to look up Zillow for rent, and call every single one of them in your market area. And go read the book The magic, by Rhonda magic, yes. Okay. I Rhonda Byrne and do it. It’s a 28 day book, you literally read like two or three pages that day, because that’s all it gives you to do and an exercise that you’re supposed to do that day. It will it will come if you do it. It will come I’ve done it three times so far. And my businesses all continue to skyrocket to the next level every time I go through this book.

Sean  55:48

Any quick synopsis on what it is? Or should we just

Unknown Speaker  55:52

go do it?

Robert  55:55

But the side A lot of people have heard of the secret and the law of attraction. She’s She’s who right the secret and the law of attraction, Rhonda Byrne. So the magic, the core concept of the magic is everyone wants the secret thanks to Oprah, and then wondered Okay, so I still don’t get it. What am I supposed to do now that I watched the secret to make this work? Well, the secret to the secret is magic. And magic is a focus focus. It’s a focus on gratitude. And so the 28 days are 28 different ways that you can be grateful for everything that you have in your life now that you’re probably completely ungrateful for because you take it for granted, because of where we live and where we’re from. Right. So like, if you’ve ever been overseas, you can more appreciate this than any other time in your life, we take for granted that I am on a frickin laptop right now that has Wi Fi connection, right, we take for granted that I have lights on because I push the button in my house to turn the lights on, I take for granted that I have an air conditioning service in here that provides cool air for my house for me to stay cool. And I would take for granted that we have food on our plate anytime we want to we take for granted that we have running water and oh hot water. And that just because we turn the knob in our house, we take for granted all these things that we should be grateful for. And if you focus on being grateful for everything you have now, those are just quick, simple analogies I’m giving you but it’s down to like, Hey, can you see there’s hundreds of people, millions of people that can’t see because their eyes don’t work. There’s hundreds of people that are handicapped in a chair. So you should be grateful you have feet and legs if you can walk You should be grateful you have clothes if you have clothes, because a lot of people that don’t have clothes. Right? There’s I could you you can tell I’ve done this a few times that you can just go on and on about the things that we take for granted. And it’s that lack of gratitude that brings into our life. This is the law of attraction, tons of other things to continue to be ungrateful for. If you focus on being grateful for everything that you have, what happens is the magic is you start to attract through the law of attraction, those things that will make you more grateful for the life that you have abundance of money, more clothes, more food, better cars, all the stuff comes because you’re grateful for what it is you have today. As the course

Sean  58:09

amazing, I’ll go VI go get that book right now.

Robert  58:13

It’s that we told everyone in our bootcamp to go get that book, every one of my mentorship students is required reading and required exercise to go through because I know it’ll change their life.

Sean  58:23

Nice. I love it. So in conclusion to our episode today, how can people get in contact with you?

Robert  58:28

Yes, the best and easiest way is investor pod com. info at investor pod com support at investor pod calm as the absolute best way if you want to I’m on Facebook, you can send me a private message, I have no notifications. But when I do check them at least once every day or every other day hours. I respond to everything personally on my Facebook page. So any any of those channels will definitely be able to get in contact with me ask me any question you have. I’m open book more than happy to share and help you in any way that I can.

Sean  58:59

Cool, Robert, well, thank you so much for being on the show today. Really appreciate all of your knowledge and all your sharing.

Robert  59:04

Thank you. My pleasure. And thank you for having me. Have lots of fun today.

Sean  59:09

Yep. All right. Take care. Thanks, you too. Here’s some of the key takeaways from this episode, automate your follow up and get out of your own way. This machine will work any day of the week. It takes no breaks, it makes no excuses. And it’s cheaper than hiring a person to do the job. Following up, it’s just a matter of being there when they’re ready. And this product is great for investors who already have a system going and want to scale. Now I was really interested in this product, because I went to a real estate investing meetup one day. And the guest said that the reason why they stood out from the crowd is because their follow up game was so strong. And they spent over $10,000 to build a custom automated follow up system using Salesforce. And I wanted one of those two, but I didn’t want to spend the money on creating it myself. And that’s your po does all that and just for a fraction of the price. I just subscribed to it and I’ll be testing it out. So it’s send me an email at Sean at everything. rei.com you want to hear more about my experiences with the product. And if you’re interested in the product, the link will be there in the show notes on our site. Everything Rei com. hope y’all learned a lot. Thanks and have a great day. This was another episode of The everything real estate investing show. Sean Did you enjoy the show leave us a five star rating will take less than a second and they’ll help a lot. You can contact me at sean penn realty at GO. com. That’s svanpanraotyiqo.com Thanks Have a great day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai