All Forum Posts by: Johnny Kang

A few weeks ago I joined a Mastermind/Accountability group started by a member here on BP. We are all from different states (WA, NC, VA, NY, TX). We video chat once a week for an hour and talk about some of our wins, what we think we need to work on, our long term goals, tips on what's been working for each of us, some of our mistakes and whatever else comes to mind. Almost everyone's done a few deals, I believe with the exception of a few; but like Joe Splitrock mentioned these are people who are already on their path to success, having made self-improvement a way of life for them for some time.

The person who started the group has been doing this with another online group for his business, so he's been great at keeping our conversations flowing, and really, the hour we spend flies by. 

Even though it's only been a few weeks, great thing about collaborating with like minded peers is, having group synergy that helps push everyone to do more than they could, operating alone (kinda like the peloton in a bike race). 

I've been to a handful of REIA meetings, but I've never been a fan of them. Like Jay Hinrichs alluded to earlier, it's either a social gathering, or a presentation of sorts. By being selective on who joins your group prior to officially launching one, it helps to have productive meetings where everyone walks away feeling like it's helping them move closer to reaching their goals. 

And I think meeting once a week aids in keeping everyone focused & momentum moving, on what they personally need to before the next meeting, as opposed to meeting once a month.   

@Michael Hayes

The VA who makes calls for you, how many total hours are they working/week? Do you have them do other admin work to keep them busy full time? I'm asking this, because I've gone through several VAs to cold call, but they were all PT, since there's a finite amount of leads they can call every week.

@Account Closed

I started data mining about 6 months ago in 14 different categories with the help of VAs, soon to be replaced by automation. Code violations was one of my verticals, but often times, I found that 95% of them were totally unaware of their violations. (At least in NYC, the city can stick a violation on your property, and unless you, as the owner has been checking it up online, it's common for homeowners to be totally unaware of it). Reason I bring this up is, instead of talking to prospects about the possibility of purchasing their property, now I have to go into the education business about what the violation was for, when it was, etc, etc, and sometimes, having to overcome their complete denial of the whole situation to begin with... 

So my question is, within code violations, are there other filtering criteria you can suggest where there's a higher likelihood of a prospect being more motivated to sell, or at least have an honest conversation about it with the lead? A friend thought Absentee owners with violations, but that would still fall within the Absentee list. 

Maybe the severity of violations, or penalty amount? Any guidance would help. 

@Ciro Affronti

This might help to start:

1) Interactive Demographics Map from the Census: Interactive Map (this map is a little finicky, but once you get used to it, you'll get valuable visual info)

2) Federal Reserve Economic Data: FRED (provides charts dating back 10, 20, 30, 40 years so you can see how things have been trending)

3) Census Quick Facts: QuickFacts (provides charts at the State, County, City level regarding various data)

4) Bureau of Labor Statistics: Labor Stats

5) FEMA's National Flood Zone FEMA. You're probably not going to need this map being that you're in AZ, but who knows, you might be looking elsewhere down the road :) 

@Eric Turner

I'm with you on starting off with, give or take, 8 ppl. People's involvement tapers off after some time. 

This is just an idea I wanted to throw out there, but aside from the weekly video conference, maybe we can have like a shared "score board" on Google drive where people can post their daily activity (# of leads, # of ppl talked to, appts set, offers made, etc.). 

This is something that my office did when I was in finance, and often times, when I would see so and so had more activity/sales in a given day, it would push me to do more; work a little longer, wake up earlier, read more books - just from sheer competitiveness and peer pressure. 

Also, it'll help everyone see what areas they need to improve on to grow their business. 

@Eric Turner

Do we have enough to start? 

@Jay Hinrichs, yes it's a lot more involved than people think, or it's made out to seem. People hear someone in a podcast, read a few books, or seminars and many get the impression that anybody can do it. 

But even before we can have a discussion about all the skills necessary, I think people are at a loss as to what mindset they need to have to do well, not just in wholesaling, but in any endeavor. 

I've been fortunate enough to have met my current business partner who's done quite a number of deals in her career in real estate that I can learn from.   

@John Paul

Have you looked into municipal bonds? Yields ranges from 3.5%~4.5%, usually tax free at the state, federal and/or city level. Talk to a CPA, as I'm not one, nor do I want to be. 

But I was a financial advisor for 8 years. 

Hey @Dave Rav

I feel your pain. I went through something similar with direct mail 2 years ago, where I was able to get about a 5% response rate and solid appointments & close deals, etc.; then all of sudden - poof, my response rate dropped to less than 1%, and the people who called were just tire kickers. 

Still being a novice in real estate back then (not that I'm a seasoned veteran now), I just kept sending out letters, without realizing I had to course correct. 

$28,000 later sending out letters, I stopped what I was doing and tried to figure out what I was doing wrong. 

"Traction" by Gino Wickman had a major impact on what I did next. 

What I lacked was my purpose in running a real estate investment company. All I cared about was finding deals to make money, but failed to think about what the purpose of the existence of my company was for. 

Any lasting business that grows and matures does so by providing value to the market place. Once it ceases to do that, it eventually dies. 

So the question I had to ask was; "what's the reason my company exists?"

I've always heard "find motivated sellers," cause that's where you can find discounted properties and make a decent profit. Finding 60%~70% ARV would be the ideal scenario any investor would want because it can be profitable. But it's also mainly feeding our selfish-greedy side in us all, if finding a "good deal" is what we're mainly focused on.

But the flip side to that is, that's where distressed homeowners are. People going through real life issues (bankruptcy, divorce, passing away of a loved one, landlords dealing with nightmare tenants, they're getting sued, they have code violations, they can't pay their mortgage, they owe taxes, they just had a flood and need mold remediation specialist, etc.)

So I decided I wanted my company's core value to be, helping distressed homeowners in whichever way possible, even if there's no immediate monetary compensation. (we are helping a lady guide her through a loan modification process because this is totally foreign to her, without asking for any compensation. Ok, well, my partner is doing that. I'm not as altruistic as her. haha)

This lead me to naturally come up with ways to compile leads thinking about property owners who might be going through stressful situations, and came up with about 14 categories, and built systems & processes to Create these type of leads, and Convert them into appointments & deals closed. It was a 6 month long process, from initially reading the book "Traction" to having built out an operation that brings in on average 250 leads a week, and getting to the point of sending out 1~2 offers/week, which will turn into more offers/week as I tighten my operation and start employing AI to scale. 

Although I somewhat agree with old methods not working as well, I think the core issue is trying to come up with how you can bring value to the market place, and then figuring out the best possible method to get that message out to the people you're trying to help. So it may mean utilizing updated methods, social media, online marketing, but it may not. It may mean having a corporate image, but it may not. What I'm saying is, the presentation of what you represent matters only to the extent it matters to your audience. And that, only you can figure out how it is you want to serve the market, and the compensation is the by-product for services rendered. 

What is the purpose your company exists? 

@Nephtalie Pierre, 

You're doing the right thing by targeting various categories (Probate, Litigation, Bankruptcy, Zoning, Absentee, Pre-foreclosures, etc), and looking to automate getting these leads. 

Where my process differs from yours is that, I no longer do letters (for various reasons; too saturated with others sending out letters, too many manual steps involved with setting up drip campaign & returned letters, cost, response time, etc.), so I spent some time implementing procedures to basically create an assembly line to call prospects. 

Once these leads are data-mined, I have our skip tracers look up #s, information is uploaded to our auto-dialer & CRM, then I have my cold caller(s) reach out to all the various categories I target. 

So visually, it looks something like this:

All the lead source categories are complied in Google Drive's Sheet, and it's shared with people who are assigned to them; An assembly line to have leads go through our acquisition pipeline. 

One thing that's really helped me was creating instructional videos for every task I want done, saving it in Google Drive and sharing only the necessary ones with the person assigned to that task. Initially it'll take a decent amount of time to do this, but once it's done you'll be glad you have them. I had to go through several VAs, but virtually had to spend zero time explaining things. 

I'm not saying you have to change everything now from doing letters to cold calling prospects. I'm showing you my process so you can see which aspects you'd like to implement. It'll take you several months to create all this from scratch, so if it feels like it's taking awhile, just know you're on the right track. If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, always come back to what's important: "How do I Create & Convert Leads?"