David: Alright guys, welcome back to the Discount Property Investor podcast. I am your host David Dodge, joined by a good buddy of mine Gavin Timms. Gavin, what's going on, buddy? How are you?

Gavin: I am good, Dodge, how are you? Thanks for having me on.

David: Doing pretty good, man. I appreciate you coming on the show today. Really just wanted to touch base with you, kind of talk about marketing, talk about some of the strategies you guys are using in your marketing. Also before the show started, you mentioned that generating a ton of leads is a great thing, it's super important. However it is not as important as working the leads that you actually have. If you are just generating leads, but you are leaving the current ones in the funnel by the way side, it's so wasteful, and I totally agree with you on that.

Gavin: Yeah.

David: I wanted to jump into a couple of topics on-- along those lines.

Gavin: Absolutely.

David: You mentioned earlier that you guys are not using [00:01:51.26 - inaudible] which is a product you and I both used. I am still using it, I think it's a great product.

Gavin: I do too.

David: Yeah absolutely, I am sure--. What are some of the reasons you decided to slow down on that right now?

Gavin: Well a few things, back to a point you just made. Everyone-- most people in the industry, the problem is lead gen. We are so focused, if you think of the [00:02:20.04 - inaudible] at the top, the funnel at the top, people want to get in. They believe that the more leads you get, the more deals you're going to do, right? I am 100%, I agree with that. The problem is, if you don't have the system in place, the foundation in place, then that's not possible, okay? It's not possible that if I overwhelm you with leads and it's just you as a one man show, okay? You can't physically go through the process properly to get a lead to closing. So what you're going to do is you are going to feel you have so much traction. What happens is, you are having phone calls with every lead that comes in, and you are literally just trying to grab one to close, okay? But all the ones that actually need following up on, you are not closing. So all of a sudden your marketing budget is up at the highest it has ever been, you are going through and you are grabbing a close, right? You make money, but how much profit do you make? That's the problem.

David: Man, that is a great point. I think a lot of people discount that. Once you start getting that marketing machine going, often times that is where a lot of their focus goes, and it is not into nurturing the current leads that come in, and giving them the proper amount of time that they need. So I totally agree with that, and I think that is very valuable, something definitely to think about. Before we jumped on I asked Gavin, I said, hey what kind of marketing are you doing right now? He said he is doing some direct mail and that is having a really good response rate. The date we are recording this is March 30th 2020. It probably won't post for about a week and a half to two weeks. We are in the middle of the Covid19 crisis right now. You can call it a pandemic, that's really what it is. Gavin, it's funny, I keep hearing people dropping these words like recession or depression on CNN and CNBC and all those different news networks. We are not in either of those, we are in a pandemic state. This has not happened for like a hundred years. So trying to compare this to a recession or a depression is very difficult. We have not had something like this in our life time, let alone our parent's life time. Very crazy. You are doing some direct mail and having some great response with that.

Gavin: Yep, and just to say on that. I am not massive direct mail at all. We have not-- that's the first piece that we sent that hit two weeks ago, at the absolute perfect time, right? By complete chance. I am not going to say that I could see this happening, and us going on lock down, absolutely not. This was something when we picked one zip code, it was just over 600 pieces, got just over a 4% response rate, we dropped it over two weeks. It landed just literally as we were shutting down two weeks ago, and this really started-- hey something is going on. We were hitting the nail and it was great for us. But, we are still into cold calling, that is our main channel, and that is what we consistently are doing. The reason we got rid of [00:05:49.06 - inaudible] is because we couldn't handle the volume of leads from text messaging. People were saying, you're insane. As I explained, it is about the process, right? Just because we have more leads does not mean it is going to bring more profit into the business. It does not mean it is going to close more deals, no. If you work it right, and you have the team to go through the system with you, then absolutely you do. But I am big on as you know, I do everything virtual, I do everything from my home office. I don't have a lot of overhead, and I am not trying to build a business where I have twenty people, massive staff and overhead, because guess what? Luckily, you have that now, we know, friends, no names that are panicking right now, cutting costs left right and center, stopping all marketing because their overhead is so high, that is what they have to do to survive. They can only last for so many months because their outgoings are so high. It is really just building the right business that makes sense and that stays profitable.

David: Man, I love that. I totally agree with you; nurturing those leads is more important than just trying to fill up the pipeline with leads. If you are not giving them the right attention, they are going to fall by the way side or someone else is going to come and they are going to work those leads, and get them before you do. I love your point about having an overhead that is low. I know that you have been using [00:07:19.27 - inaudible] for a while. You may be back, you may not which is great. You love the product, I think the product is great. I am using it very heavily right now, I think it's a great product. However, it is very expensive. If you don't use it, you are paying a hefty monthly cost to be a member of it. I love that. The fact that you guys are keeping an eye on the expenses but also mentioned you are getting too many leads right now. You never think in the beginning, oh man, too many leads, could that really be an issue? If you are not giving each lead the time it needs, you might as well not have any leads at all. You are just going to be throwing them away. I think that's so cool. If you don't mind, I would like to talk a little bit today about the virtual wholesaling aspect of things.

Gavin: Absolutely.

David: I've been hearing virtual wholesaling for years, right? Probably four years. I've done a couple in Kansas city, I am out of St Louis Missouri, so that's across the State. I don't do any marketing outside of St Louis. Really the couple of deals I have done in Kansas city came from St Louis marketing efforts. They just happened to have a house there and I knew some wholesalers and investors there. I was able to joint venture with them and get deals done. But it sounds to me like you are specifically virtual. Do you do any in your own market or not?

Gavin: I've just-- the only thing that I do here in Savannah, I am actually looking for a house for an investment that mother and father in law are going to be living in. So I have started to market here for that, but otherwise no, everything is virtual. We work some markets more full time, some are part time. So we do deals in Birmingham Alabama, that's probably our main spot. We do some stuff in Auguster, we do some stuff in Maui Hawaii, which is pretty cool. We do some stuff in Florida. They are the kind of markets that I'm in right now. Then I do JVs all over, I have worked the Phoenix market and stuff like that. That's where I'm actively looking and it's kind of a different process. The biggest thing is-- when you go virtual is-- obviously for you, Dave, you go or you did or you still do visit houses a lot, right?

David: Yep.

Gavin: So to go virtual you can't visit the house. You have to set everything up that you're not going. As soon as you're not visiting the house, it doesn't matter if you're in St Louis doing deals-- the idea is, can you go away with your wife for six months to California if you wanted, and business goes as normal? That's what you need to create. Not-- we are not talking here about you just working on the business, not in it and doing absolutely nothing, but can you create something that works from a phone and a laptop to be able to work from anywhere? As soon as you're not going in the house personally, then you have that. That's the only thing that is going to stop you going virtual is if you physically feel the need to have to walk in that building yourself. As soon as you have an acquisitions manager, as soon as you have a runner to go get pictures. Any of these things you can put in place, and you are physically not walking in that building, then you are not virtual.

David: Man, I love that. So let's talk about that. Yes I only wholesale in St Louis, I love going on appointments and looking at houses. So it doesn't bother me. However I don't want to live here forever. I love this. So let's jump in. You are getting an acquisition manager in each market I'm assuming?

Gavin: Yep, you can do partners or you can do acquisitions. Depending on who you are billing it out with. So for instance you and Mike, right? Let's say you two are business partners which you are, okay? For instance, I don't know the set up, but let's say you're splitting the profits 50 50 right now. That's a similar thing you would do. You would have the person on the ground. So if it was me and you, and I would be running all the systems and the team on the lead gen, you would be running appointments and moving them, and we would be partnered 50 50 and it would work nicely, because you become focused on what you're good at, and you can run more appointments and get more contracts into closing. If I am doing all the lead gen for you and making sure we have leads coming in.

David: I love that, right person, right seat.

Gavin: Absolutely.

David: That's how we run our business here. We have a couple of different acquisitions people. However, there are people that are dedicated to just working the phones. There are people who are dedicated just to going out and looking at the properties. There is another person in our business who is disposition. She is just in charge of selling the properties. Right person, right seat. I think that is very important. Once you partner with somebody, or hire somebody to do the actual appointments, that frees you up from having to go do those, which is very time consuming. If you are not already running a ton of appointments, I can tell you, if I go run an appointment, that appointment may only take 15, 20, 25 minutes, somewhere in that range. However, I have to drive to that appointment and drive home from that appointment, so I cant really have too many of them booked together, especially if I have other things going on in my day. So when I have an appointment I basically block out about two hours, and I just figure 45 minutes on the front side, 45 minutes on the back side, that is going to be my travel, my preparation, maybe run some numbers before or after. Ideally it is going to take about two full hours. If you can be on the phones or I would imagine in your case be managing people that are on the phones. When they come across leads, theny you can then put them in front of the people in the field, the boots on the ground, the partner or the employee to then go do that. That would allow you to scale, which I am not doing, I am really looking to expand into the KC market, or maybe some other markets in my area. Essentially though the goal would be to keep wholesaling in St Louis in a few areas, and move somewhere a little bit prettier, maybe down by you in Savannah, nice weather and golf courses everywhere. St Louis is cold, cold here in the Winter. It's hot as hell in the Summer. I was born and raised here, to me this place is home, but there are a lot of other great places out there. Ideally I could keep wholesaling here, but I would have other boots on the ground. I could be out in the mountains skiing, or on the beach or something like that. That's really cool. You guys are wholesaling in multiple markets. I love the approach. Even though that you are doing marketing in multiple markets, you guys are still nurturing those leads versus having the mind set of more, more, more. If that's where you're at, and you said it earlier Gavin, I am going to repeat what you said, but if you are constantly just working the newest lead that comes in, basically when you're not busy you will try to snag one up. You might be over paying for those leads, or they might not be a great deal in general because you are just trying to get one, but if you are nurturing them, it gives you the ability to build better rapport, and get probably a better price on the property because-- I think there has been a lot of lessons and gold nuggets in that right there, that's awesome.

Gavin: I think as well with focusing on them leads, it comes down to how comfortable you are on the phone. You could get a lead that slaps you in the face, and if you're not comfortable or know what you're doing; you're not going to get it anyway. That's the problem; when people are new, we teach, right? We teach people that if you are sending mail out, and we do not send much mail. The mail we do, you need to be answering those phones live. If a lead comes in, you need to be getting that lead as fast as possible. So one aspect we are teaching people to get there fast. The problem is that they are too busy touching those leads because the funnel is so full--.

David: Gavin, people never talk about this; I think this is a great topic, I really do. I agree 100%. Whenever a student comes to me or to you, if they don't have two or three grand to dump into a monthly marketing budget, that's okay. Like you say, you don't have to send thousands of postcards. Send a couple of hundred. The one, two or ten calls that you do get; answer those calls, man. Answer them. Get out there and view it, or get your acquisition people to get out there and view it. Built that rapport. Even if you can't buy that deal today, and it takes a couple of months, and you did a good job building that rapport and building a relationship with that person, the odds of you getting that deal when they are ready, right? Is going to be much higher. I think that is absolutely phenomenal information.

Gavin: That's what we try to do, we eliminate everybody else, right? In the right way. We just do things in the right way so they want to work with us, and that's huge. We always make sure-- you have to be marketing everyday. I am not saying not to market, because marketing needs to be going out, leads need to be coming in. Whether it's cold calling or texting, it's how many. It needs to be quality and quantity, it needs to be controlled, okay? So what we do is, I look at a market and say, who needs leads? If someone is not getting to their leads, then I will drop one lead into them and give three to someone else. I am going to give the rest-- and we can move the lists and really control that. We keep that stead flow of marketing going, but as you said, with our clients-- everyone thinks it is impressive just to generate leads. Well I can generate leads but that's not going to help you. I know that you haven't gone through the process of learning the sales side, right? The process that people are teaching in sales is-- you can't do that on one phone call. If all you're doing is talking once, then how are you going to do deals? Unless you get the one in a thousand that you hit, go and make your ten thousand or fifteen thousand, but what have you put into the system to get back out? You can't be running a business at a negative, or making little to nothing, right? You have to keep your profits high. Your profit margins have to be there, and this is the best way. If you learn how to manage that process and understand that no means not now, and as we take them through that we are going to get them in the long run. It only takes a few months before you are consistently closing.

David: Man, I totally agree with everything you just said. I think that is super important. If you are new to wholesaling, generating leads is important, it really is, right? We are not discounting that. I highly respect Gavin, he is not only a friend of mine, but he mentors me as well which is awesome. I want to thank Gavin for coming on the show today. I highly agree with that. Generating leads is one thing, but once you have leads coming in, the volume of the leads is not as important as the amount of time you are spending on each one. Build that rapport and make a friend, let them know that you are the company that they are going to work with. Start disqualifying all of your competitors. You can do that in a good way, you don't have to be bad mouthing people. Gavin is not for that, I'm not for that. None of us are for that, right? However, we can provide value to show these customers and these owners and sellers, that if they don't work with us they will he losing out on something, right? That's the message that I think that we are trying to put here is-- work your leads, value those leads, nurture those leads. If you don't have any, then of course you need to do some lead gen. There is a fine line between doing lead gen and just focusing all your time on lead gen. Once you start getting leads in, work them. Man, I think that is phenomenal. Gavin, do you mind breaking down a little bit about-- like some of the people on your team? And just talking about how many people you have and what roles they are in?

Gavin: Yeah, obviously we have different markets. So we have some that just handle a 50 50, let's say it was you in St Louis and I was delivering to you the leads and we are partnering. Then I have Melissa, she's a business partner in Alabama so let's pick that. So Melissa in Alabama on the ground, but we also situated that she is not going out to see properties either. We have an acquisitions guy who is just on the phone. All he does is on the phone, he doesn't even comp properties, he is just on the phone, okay? Our way of doing it is, we want to book as many properties as we can on the phone, then we send people out to get us pictures and do a walk through video. We are going to get in front of the buyers and they will decide if they want to go and see it. Ideally if there is a lock box we can put on there to get the in, then we can get the deal done. In Alabama there is me and Melissa you could say, then we have one acquisitions guy, then we have a runner that does pictures for us. The runner will probably be payed about 25 bucks a property to go out and get pictures.

David: That's nothing.

Gavin: The only time we will ever go to a property to get a contract is if they are elderly and they can not get on the internet to sign.

David: You do everything virtual then?

Gavin: As much as we can, yeah. For you, back to what you were saying earlier about running appointments. I believe that you are going to get more contracts face to face, it is easier face to face. The problem is, it is two hours out of your day. How many more phone calls could I have made? And on average, how many more contracts?

David: 100%. I totally agree 100%. So I still run appointments for two reasons; one, I enjoy getting out of my house--.

Gavin: Which is number one, and that's very important, that you enjoy it.

David: I enjoy it, right. I like getting out, I don't mind driving. My car does it for me anyway. I like getting out, I like looking at the houses, I like talking to people. Number two, is I always have my eye out for my next rehab, my next fix and flip, or my next rental, right? But if you want to build a virtual-- a business virtually and own real estate, and be the landlord, that's an option too. I personally like to get eyes on the property if it is going to be one of my rentals. Now if it is a part of town that I have no interest in flipping in, and or buying a rental in, then I have acquisition guys I sent too. So I totally agree with what you're saying. Once again, Gavin, if you don't enjoy doing it, find somebody else who does. If you're new, I would think Gavin would agree with me on this; get out there and do it to learn it, right? Make some mistakes because those will be the best life lessons, alright? However, once you know how to run an appointment and do some repair estimates, you don't need to waste two hours of your day doing that. Find somebody else to do that so you can leverage them, and focus your time and efforts and activity that may be more beneficial.

Gavin: Just to add to that, is yes I agree with what you just said. It also depends on what market your listeners are coming from. Maybe if you are in a San Francisco market, you are in a California-- you may be in New York or somewhere like that where the competition, the marketing dollars are so much bigger, the process is so much more drawn out to get a deal. You need to be more patient. What we say to our clients is, okay you can work these markets, but understand you may be working deals for months on end before you see the reward. If you're okay and you have the right mindset for that, then that's great. If not, you need to go to a virtual market where the rents are better, more buy and hold, more flips, more activity. A lot of people want to see a win, a win is a win. I know when I started I made 1500 bucks on the first deal. I couldn't care if it was a hundred bucks. I needed to see and prove that this thing worked.

David: Yeah, me too, Gavin. I needed to see that too. I love that. Man, that's awesome. You have a team built out in four different markets essentially. Maybe only one or two people in each market, right?

Gavin: Get Maui, I have an investor in Maui. Would I have picked Maui as a virtual market? Absolutely not.

David: That's a tough market, man. When you said that I was thinking, hopefully he is looking to buy a vacation home there in return too.

Gavin: Exactly, I would like to do that, that is a goal. When we find Maui and an investor there who I met while we were on vacation, he was a friend of an extended family member so we started talking. He can't find deals, he is buying them from realtors etc. I said, look-- would you be interested in working this market and I'm like, no not really. For me-- we're wholesalers, right? Our job is to find a discount property and give it to someone that is going to pay the most amount of money.

David: That's it.

Gavin: I said to him, that is not going to make any sense. If I go and find the deal, you are going to want to pay as little as possible to make as much profit as possible. So I said, the only way I will do it is if we partner-- you do the flip, and when we sell we will part on the back end of the profit. That's what we did, so on that one what we do is-- Melissa is in as well, she did the call. We got someone from England in Savannah, someone that lives in Alabama doing calls in Maui. We locked up a contract eventually in Maui and that's what we did. He came in an bought it, did the flip. We make 30% of the profit on the back end.

David: That's a great way to set that up. Again-- I love it, he is going to want to pay the least, you as the wholesaler want to find somebody who is going to pay the most. So incentiveize him and you guys-- that's a happy medium. You guys are coming out of pocket on time, time and energy of course, some marketing expense I would think too. He is coming out of pocket on having the buy the house, and fix it up, and sell it. So a lot of work being done on either side. However, the splits are really fair in my opinion. Without you he wouldn't have had the deal. But without him you would not have been able to purchase it and flip it either. I think that is phenomenal, very cool. So you have to have an acquisition guy in that market, but they don't have to live there really. They can live elsewhere. The only person you need to have in each virtual market is a runner, right?

Gavin: Yeah. If you have a runner in a virtual market that can literally get pictures, if they don't know anything the better, that's better for you. Because you don't have to worry if they are going to go behind your back, are they going to try and take the deal. Can they take a good picture? Explain what pictures you want, and show a buyer the house if you need them to. Right? If you can do that, then that's all really neat. We can pull data, we can build our buyers list, we can communicate on the phone with them. We can do exactly the same with the sellers. So you can do it virtually no problem. Again, it's a process, right? We don't want to sit here and say this business is easy, because it isn't.

David: It's simple, not easy.

Gavin: It is.

David: Bit difference. We did a podcast on that just recently. Simple not easy.

Gavin: The hard bit is--.

David: The hardest part is to get off the couch and turn off Netflix and do a little bit of marketing. When those leads start coming in, answer the phone and get out there, or hire somebody else to get out there and get those pictures for you, then it's just a relationship game at that point. Make sure the seller wants to work with you and you have a value proposition for them. Then you have yourself a deal. Man, I think that is phenomenal. The fact that you have scaled back marketing I think is awesome. You don't have a lead problem right now. Instead you are just trying to nurture those leads that are coming in from your other sources. I think that is phenomenal, that is awesome.

Gavin: Our challenge is always getting the right people to be on the phone, that's the hardest part. The hardest part with the team is to get good people on the phone that work, that understand it, have the ability to go make offers and build rapport. That's the hardest thing in the business for me. Leads are no problem. I have so much marketing ready that I could flood, but we can't, because all I am going to do is slow the process down, because I know if I flood it, it is going to all go onto lead gen, new stuff, not going to follow up on the leads and the contracts will slow.

David: Yep. I think that is awesome, very awesome. So guys, it is possible to virtual wholesale, not only in one market but in two or three, or in Gavin's case, four. Do you have any other markets that you are thinking about getting into at this point, or are you pretty content with where you're at?

Gavin: To be fair like I said, the main market is Birmingham, the others really-- depending on who the partner is, I filter in leads. I am big on-- let's say I was going to come to St Louis, right? I want to find out how many leads you can handle. I want to find out if you can work the process that we need? Are we on the same page? If you can only work two leads a day, then I am going to give you two leads a day, right? So I do that in the Florida market. I have a friend in Florida I do some work with and he is full time doing his real estate-- his realtor stuff. He is a broker and whatnot, but he does some investing as well, so how many leads do you want? Let's come up with a game plan so it works. If I give you too many that you're not working, it is going to annoy me. If I am not going to give you enough leads it is going to annoy you, right? So let's figure out what you want, let's communicate daily. How are the leads looking? What do we need? Do we need more? Do we need less? I can make it happen, but we need to be in sync. If you're not working them I'm taking them and putting my resources elsewhere. That's what we find in a couple of markets that we really have to juggle with. It still then allows us to make money, then focus on the more heavy markets. I have opportunities in multiple places, it is just making sure the bandwidth is there for the team to deliver.

David: Yeah, man I think that is phenomenal. You have inspired me to do a little bit of marketing in Kansas City. It's an area I've always wanted to do some wholesaling, and I personally know some investors and wholesalers there already. Getting that started would be relatively easy.

Gavin: Absolutely.

David: I think it would be a good test for me too. I love that you are 100% virtual. If you and your wife decided you wanted to go to Europe for four months or whatever.

Gavin: No problem.

David: You wouldn't have any hiccups with you not being able to be there as long as you have an iPhone or a phone, and a computer; you're rocking. So man, I think that is phenomenal. Guys, lessons to be learned from this episode; virtual wholesaling is not hard, you just need to find somebody int hat market that you can either hire or partner with, right? Keep it simple. You can pay a property runner $25, 30, 40. You are talking a small amount of money to go look at a property and get photos for you. That person will be your boots on the ground, which is going to save you time. With you being virtual you don't have to be anywhere. You can be anywhere I should say, but not necessarily in that market. Last but not least is-- you might not have a lead problem. You might think you do right now. If you're not getting any leads then you definitely have a lead problem. Let's not discount that. However, if you are getting leads coming in, right? You have a consistent amount of leads coming in, maybe your focus shouldn't be on more leads, maybe it should be on nurturing the current ones, and working them to the best of your ability, so you can actually start closing more deals from the pipeline that you have already. I think that is phenomenal. Gavin, that is awesome. Earlier before the show you mentioned that you have a brand new YouTube channel, hours old?

Gavin: Hours old. I literally-- it's content time.

David: That is what's up. Tell us what the game plan is, man.

Gavin: It is 'Gavin Timms' go search it, go and subscribe. Going to be doing content at least two or three times a week. Releasing content on virtual, whether it's talking to sellers, whether it is marketing systems, it is going to be a number of things. Really-- especially times like this, we are all stuck in, right? Whether you're on lock down or not. I know in Savannah we are only allowed out an hour a day at the moment until the end of April. I think everyone is in a similar position. There are going to be a lot of people needing help, needing content. That is kind of what geared me up to start doing it now. There is no better time than right now. Whether it's marketing or whatever you're doing, now is the time. We do not wait and that is the one big thing, if you take nothing out it's this, do not wait for this whatever we are in now, right? Is it going to crash? Is the market going to do this? For the things we do in terms of wholesaling, okay, the only thing you can lose is time and money for marketing, that's it. You need to hit it hard. The best list to go at right now is vacants. You do not have renters in that can say, I'm not going anywhere because I'm not paying rent and I'm stuck here until I get told to leave, which is probably going to be June or July at the earliest at this point. Vacants-- our real focus right now in the CRM of all followup, we are pulling lists of who is vacant, in the notes, vacant, vacant, vacant, okay? That's where we are focusing. One last thing I want to say that I haven't mentioned which is important; when you're doing this and we are talking about working a lead from start to finish, it's all about how quality your note taking is.

David: Man, I cannot agree more! I harp on this everyday. I don't care, I'm going to interrupt for one second.

Gavin: Go for it.

David: -- I don't care, it may have a thousand bells and whistles, it may not. But there are two things that matter with a CRM, two, taking good notes. Take good ones. Two, setting a task for a future date to do something. It doesn't matter what that is. It doesn't matter if it is just to review the damn notes, right? That is something in the future that will notify you or ping you, or e-mail you or whatever, letting you know that it is time to give a little bit of love to this lead right here. I think that is phenomenal. So taking good notes is key.

Gavin: Yeah, absolutely. Again, if that is one thing you take from this whole thing is that-- how do we know-- the common question-- how do you know? What is good notes? If you can go t a lead and understand the situation of where it is at, then it's good notes. If you go into the lead an have absolutely no idea what's going on, then it isn't good. So that is the difference between a good note and bad note. You need to know-- okay the situation is this, we need to follow up here because this is what's going on.

David: Man, I totally 100% agree with that, 100%. Take good notes, set tasks. There are a hundred different CRM's out there. Some of them are free, some of them are not. At the end of the day, all of them are going to let you take notes and assign tasks to yourself or your team, and that's all that matters. All the other bells and whistlers are great, but you still have to put the data in the system on the notes. So what kind of notes do I take? I make a note every time I call, text or e-mail that person. Anytime that person call, texts or e-mails me, and while I'm on the phone. Anything that is relevant to the property goes in my CRM. Anything that is relevant to them and their situation and their why, or their when, goes into the CRM. If I call them and say I'm calling Jack and I call him right now, and Jack says, hey I can't talk right now, call me in a week, I am taking my daughter to the hospital, right? Not a great situation, I am going to make a note of that. So in a week when I call back, I can pick right now, and I might have talked to 500 people between now and next week when I call Jack back but, I am going to say, hey Jack, you told me to call you back in a week, it's been a week. Do you need more time? If not, I am here for you. When we spoke last you were taking your daughter to the hospital, and by the way, how is she doing? Build the rapport, get the notes in the system, and make detailed notes. If it takes your a minute or two to read those notes to get caught up before you make that call. Knowing that extra information is going to be super helpful. Also people don't like to be annoyed. When you're calling them and asking them the same question over and over again, they are not going to want to work with you. If you have already asked them how many square foot the house is on three previous calls, probably not a good idea to ask them on this next call. Review your notes. Go into that call with an idea in mind of what is my target here? Is it to get an appointment Is it to get a contract? Or simply to follow up to see if the level of motivation that Jack has for example, is high enough to work with me yet? That's really it. Gavin, I didn't mean to go off on a tangent.

Gavin: No, no it's good.

David: Gold nuggets, man. I wanted to highlight that, because that is really really awesome. Guys, check out Gavin's new YouTube channel. Head over to YouTube and type in 'Gavin Timms'. Go over there and check that out. Gavin, what else are you working on right now, man?

Gavin: Always working on a few things. On the real estate side we are shipping over focus onto vacants right now.

David: We are doing the same thing. We just pulled some vacants literally like three or four days ago. What's today? Monday? We pulled vacants on Thursday. We sent a small little direct mail campaign. We uploaded those into our texting software as well just to get a text out to them. We have a cold caller too, so we break it up. We use [00:40:51.19 - inaudible] to get the landlines, then we just export those out, and put those into the dialer, then we will text the mobiles, hit the landlines with some cold calls, and everybody gets a letter regardless if we get a hold of them or not.

Gavin: Perfect. That's good. The other big thing that we're doing that I would focus on if you're wholesaling right now, if you're brand new; I would build a buyers list before selling or marketing, and I would get two to four active buyers, okay? As soon as you do that, I would quieten that down, but still do it, get hit, seller marketing heavy. You need to know who is buying. Obviously you, Dave, you're buying yourself, no problem. But, someone new right, we have had people pull out of deals, well guess what? There are still people buying. We had one buyer tell us today-- sorry last week, I have two million ready, I am buying. I am buying more than ever right now. Other people are pulling out. You need--.

David: Yeah, find those people that are buying, I love that. Gavin, you bring up a great point, if you are new, and we have a lot of new people that listen to this podcast. This is actually really good and crucial information. If you are new, start with building a buyers list. Again, you don't need 50 buyers on there. Find two or three people. Let's talk about some of the places we can go to find those people. Obviously your real estate investment clubs, go there. The big investors, they are part of those clubs, they like going there to meet people like you. They go there to meet wholesalers to find deals from, because those wholesalers are doing the marketing, the boots on the ground and all the work to find those deals. If you want to be a wholesaler, go find buyers at your real estate investment club. Another great place to find buyers-- is to go into Facebook and find your local real estate investment groups, okay? You can find any group on Facebook, but what I like to specialize in is finding the niche groups by city, so don't find a nationwide group, find a St Louis, or a Savannah, or a Chicago group that is a real estate investor, or real estate investing specifically. Guess what? The same people that go to the REIA's, they are in those groups. They are trying to find properties within those groups from other wholesalers. Last but not least I love using PropStream, you can pull a list of cash buyers on PropStream. From there you can do whatever you want with that. You can cold call those people, skip trace them, send them a letter saying you're an investor with your URL to opt in on your buyers list, or even to call you if they want to buy some property and build a relationship. So many ways to do it. But at the end of the day, you don't need 50, you don't need 100, you need two or three. Find out where those people are wanting to buy, then put your marketing efforts in those areas. Gavin, man, you crushed it today, buddy. I love it.

Gavin: Tried to bring it for you, bud. Tried to bring it.

David: You brought the fire today, man. That's what's up. Guys, I want to thank Gavin for coming on. Gavin is great friend of mine, I love Gavin. So check him out on YouTube. I am confident he is going to have some amazing content coming out. All things real estate I'm sure, specifically wholesaling and virtual wholesaling I would imagine. So yeah, Gavin--.

Gavin: Lease options.

David: Lease options, I forget all about that sometimes. You guys are crushing it.

Gavin: I appreciate it, thank you.

David: Hell yeah.

Gavin: We could talk all day, there are so many other things that are--.

David: It's kind of nice outside, I think I'm going to head to the park.

Gavin: Good for you, I'm--.

David: Alright guys, we are signing off. Gavin, thanks again for coming on the show today. Guys, check out the show notes at DPIPodcast.com. I want to also-- I need to make this more of my routine here. The conversation continues over on the podcast blog. That is DPIPodcast.com. We have a place for you to listen to the podcast or subscribe to your favorite platform. We throw in a video of the podcast. We record all of these in video. There is a video in there, the show notes in there, we have links in there. But my favorite part of the DPIPodcast.com is that you can come and be a part of the conversation. I really want this conversation to continue. So go over there and drop me a comment about what you're doing, what you thought about this particular episode. Both Mike and I are in there, and we have some really great conversations sometimes about the episode. So the conversation continues at DPIPodcast.com. We are signing off.