All Forum Posts by: Max M.

Carlton B... where have I seen that name before...

Any relation?

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 Hey man it's not a cure all, it's just my way of systematizing my basic operations. I'm particularly fussy about these things. I learned the hard way in my World of Warcraft & Diablo 3 real money business that unless I plan on doing tiny amounts of biz, systems are needed. I don't plan on doing this part time. I'm going whole hog, and just the thought of how many people/leads/relationships I'm going to have to deal with makes my head spin. Without a management system my ability to maximize followup while minimizing slamming everyone with excess/incorrect communications will either be seriously hampered, or cause me to take 5 times more time and energy to handle, and make me want to tear my hair out.

I am fortunate because I have a 6.5 month timetable before I actually have to reach a level where I can make a living, and in the worst case I can live on very little while I build things up after that. This is a marathon not a sprint. What I do in terms of finding and executing on deals in the next 2-3 weeks matters little. However, what I do immediately after that, in the next 2-3 months, however, is crucial. And with a couple weeks of systems/procedures building integrated with my start of marketing method campaigns, I will be capable of hitting a much bigger stride half-way to June and really fire up those afterburners. Whereas without the systems I'd be drowning in a sea of calls, sheets, marketing campaigns, e-mails, e-mail accounts, scheduled stuff, etc. that I don't know what to do with.

After some initial forming, the system will have to be built and refined as I e-mail, call people one by one. As more kinks are worked out, things move faster and faster until the next kink, adjust, then even faster until the next king, adjust again. In a couple weeks I have a system that works for me far more than I work for it.

That's one of the advantages of working on this database now since I'm also working on my operational procedures. 2 birds with one stone

@Rick C. yea I noticed that when I was really cavalier about trying to insert or delete fields into tables that were already saved, from the base table edit GUI, weird errors started occurring although that seems to be avoided by just inserting stuff at the end instead of trying to insert new fields between other ones.

Are you saying that if I link a table in the database to calc I might potentially be able to insert fields in whatever order I want, and move them around, in calc, or delete them, and then it would be appropriately changed in the table of the database without those weird errors that destroy the table? As I understand, the order of fields in the table of the database doesn't matter anyway since how they're displayed in practical use will depend on custom queries/displays and/or forms that get set up.

I also liek the idea of having spreadsheets and database tables synced, that makes a lot of future things very easy both getting and giving spreadsheets

Edit:

I was planning on one of the following backup protocols to start with:

1. Place the database file in my dropbox folder so it saves to there + running a batch file from time to time which copies from the dropbox folder to another location (incase a corrupted DB gets saved to dropbox at some point)

2. The reverse: Place the database file in a purely local folder and occasionally run a batch file that copies it to dropbox.

Which makes more sense?

@Kevin N.that's why I like the database idea so much, I can customize it exactly to fit my requirements.

Yea I don't plan on pirating any of this stuff. I'll use LibreOffice Base.

Right now all my stuff will be done from my PC so that's just fine. I even use Skype for my phone service at the moment. The cellphone I do have is so crappy it's hardly worth using except as a last resort.

It sounds like the 365 Access and sharepoint however will become useful later on. Migrating to it might be a pain but I don't think it'll be a big deal.

 The cool thing is it seems with these programs all this stuff can be created using the graphical interface. I'm hoping programming or scripting won't be necessary or only minimally. I shall find out soon

By the way I don't have any legitimate MS software, I'd have to pay or pirate. Fortunately base seems to use standard database formats anyway so the DB should be compatible.

@Dev Horn

Good point but I like my way better. I officially challenge you! I will check back with you in June of 2015 and we shall review two things:

1. My progress in closing deals including total profits

2. Whether my organizational finickiness helped, hurt, or "didn't really affect things either way"

If it turns out my obsession with organization hurt or was irrelevant, you win. If it turns out my organizational system worked wonders for me and I just pumped pumped pumped, I win.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!!!!!!!!!!!!

What's your standard procedure these days for dealing with these "i'll track you down and shoot you in the ****ing head" calls?

 omg mine too rofl

@Michael Quarles IMO one of the best posts ever, it conveys the right stance on so many levels for so many things

So I originally thought using these types of database programs would require weeks of my time to get working for taking care of my organizations requirements for tracking all the stuff I need to track for creative real estate stuff. I was originally going to use just spreadsheets.

However I played around a bit with LibreOffice Base today and it seems a lot easier than I thought, plus I found an excellent wikia site dedicated to both the abstract concept of databases and specific database implementations and definitions, so I'm gonna keep messing around with it, because it seems to me like maintaining and using a spreadsheet is a much more difficult and clunky affair than maintaining and using a database.

I plan on marketing super heavy in the next few months as well as possibly forming tons and tons of business relationships in real estate, and I cannot afford to be disorganized. I'm very finicky when it comes to systems that I use all the time.

I've investigated the various CRMs and all that and either they cost money or they're ugly monstrosities and web based. Plus there's no true customization except for Podio and Podio makes me want to remove my eyeballs out of their sockets with a fork. This database stuff seems awesome and I don't mind spending a few days creating a database system for myself. In fact, if it turns out to be a powerful enough tool I might not think anything of spending 2+ weeks.

What I'm wondering is if anyone around here has experience using these types of programs and what their experience has been? Because this stuff seems like it could be super powerful. Plus with these databases in the future there could always be ways to interface them to networks/web stuff since its all standard stuff

I just can't get this little nitpick out of my head before I start trying to push big marketing numbers

Let's say you're doing (or your VA/staff is doing) your Craigslist/etc. internet marketing procedure looking for houses, contacting FSBO's and landlords. Calls, e-mails to their e-mail address, e-mailing their craigslist reply thing, text messages, voicemails, whatever. Do you guys keep track of who you've contacted in order to avoid or regulate repeatedly contacting them within a given time frame (unless it's specifically for a different one of multiple properties)?

It seems like a real nitpick to consider these things on one hand, but on the other hand if this type of thing was systemized and easy to do, it might really increase the quality of the marketing.

For those of you who use automated scraping and e-mailing methods, how do you handle avoiding repeat communications in too short of a time frame? Does the software database all the contact info it finds and automatically avoid contacting the same people twice, unless it's regarding different properties?

Perhaps these lists of people marketed to could even be harvested or analyzed later down the road for other purposes in the marketing campaign? But my main focus right now is on the repetitiveness aspect.