Welcome back to the Discount Property Investor podcast. Our mission is to share what we have learned from our experience and the experience of others to help you make more money investing like a pro. We want to teach you how to create wealth by investing in real estate, the discount property investor way. To jumpstart your real estate investing career, visit freewholesalecourse.com, the most complete free course on wholesaling real estate ever. Thanks for tuning in.

David: Alright guys, welcome back today! Mike and I are going to be talking about the three pillars or wholesaling real estate. That is what we love to do, guys. Market to motivated sellers, wholesale real estate. So the three pillars of wholesaling real estate. The reason we call them the three pillars, it is actually kind of like a bar stool. We need to come up with a better term for the bar stool method here, guys. But, look at the three pillars like a bar stool, right? You have three legs on your bar stool. If you pull one of those legs out, you are going to hit the ground if you're sitting on that stool, and-- basically all three of these pillars are going to be equally important for you to be a successful wholesaler, or have a successful wholesaling business.

So what are these three pillars? These are basically the three money making activities that are what wholesaling is consisting of, right? There are a hundred things you can do to wholesale a deal or better your wholesaling business. But, if you stop doing one of these three things, your business is going to fall apart. These are basically the three things you need to be doing at a minimum all the time, consistently.

Mike: What I like the most about it though, these are the three things you need to start with--.

David: And end with.

Mike: And continue doing--.

David: Right.

Mike: Consistently.

David: Right, right.

Mike: So that is something I think-- because also we help coach people and-- we really emphasize that hey, you have to start doing this. You can ask me a thousand questions about a thousand different topics, and you can know all the ins and outs of what a double closing and an assignment is--.

David: Oh man!

Mike: This right now, I can't help you. I can't help you make money in 60 days, 30 days or less if you do not start doing this right now.

David: I had a new student on last night, and I gave him access to the course. He is like, I have been studying and researching for like two years. I'm like, how many offers have you made today? None. It's okay, I knew the answers, right? How many offers have you made this week? None. How many offers have you made in 2020? We are in September at this point, right? He's like, none. I go, okay, well here's the thing; I am going to give you access to the course, because that is included in the coaching program. Don't get upset if you know everything in here already. I wouldn't be surprised. Some and or all of our students-- they learn a couple of things along the way, but they know all of it already. That's okay. Don't get upset with me because you know this. You are hiring me to get you results, not to teach you how to wholesale. Most of the time they already know, but they are not sending offers, they are not marketing to motivated sellers, and they are not following up. Wow, I just said the three pillars, didn't I?

Mike: You gave it away.

David: Alright, so what are the three pillars, guys? It's simple. Marketing to motivated sellers is the first pillar, you have to do that, alright? If your phone is not ringing, or you are not ringing somebody else's phone, okay? You are not going to get a motivated seller on the hook. It's not gonna happen. So pillar one is that.

Pillar two, we are going to have a whole separate episode for pillar two and pillar three, but pillar two is making offers, right? You don't have any inventory to sell if you don't have anything under contract, right? So working your way backwards through this whole process, you can't get payed if you don't have a cash buyer that is willing to buy your contract if you don't have a contract. So sometimes it is better to look at the big picture and start from the back-- you know to go forward, to see what is required to even understand this business. So again, if you are not making offers, you are not doing to do wholesale deals, period. So period number two is make offers, make a lot of offers.

Number three is just follow up, right? Follow up with your marketing, follow up with your contacts that you have ran appointments with, follow up with the contracts that got denied, or you had to exit for some reason later. You may be able to continue working with those people.

Mike: Let's talk about marketing. Marketing is what we are talking about on this little--. Let's talk about marketing. In wholesaling we need-- our life blood is leads coming in.

David: It is, man.

Mike: If you are not talking to new people everyday, if you are not finding or creating new relationships with people, you are not going to be in this business for a long time. Again, you have to have new leads coming in the door, and you have to develop relationships with people, because motivation changes. This is something-- I am getting into the next pillar, I am getting into marketing, you have to market, guys. So marketing. There are several different ways we do it. There are free ways, there are ways that cost money, there are ways that are list dependent, there are ways that don't-- we could categorize it a hundred different ways.

David: Yeah.

Mike: The most important thing is, you need to start doing it. You need to pick one method that works for you, and works for you meaning you are going to do it consistently.

David: That's right.

Mike: I think that is the most important part. Whatever method you will stick to, you will see results with. All these methods work.

David: Every one of them work.

Mike: All of these methods work.

David: And I was talking about it last night. Fifty different ways to find to find motivated sellers. Every single one of them works.

Mike: They do.

David: If you do it consistently and you are willing to invest in time or money into them.

Mike: So let's talk about five of the ones-- the kind of big ones that we have-- in this kind of synopsis on the three pillars of wholesaling.

David: Let's do it, Mike. I'm ready.

Mike: Let's do it. Alright, so number one-- let's talk about Driving for Dollars.

David: Oh yeah.

Mike: Let's talk about what that is, how you do it, and why it's good, We got to keep these--.

David: Okay cool. Fire round here. Driving for Dollars, it is one of the best ways to find leads and deals, because it teaches you your neighborhood, right? It is going to get you in places that you wouldn't normally be when you are out Driving for Dollars. You are going to be writing down addresses or use the Deal Machine app, which is what Mike and I use. You can actually get a hundred free skip traces if you use code 'Dave' by the way, because they dropped the price of the skip tracing.

Mike: Sweet.

David: So you can get like a 107 skip traces-- use code 'Dave' if you sign up for it, but the Driving for Dollars is the best way, because you are going to find properties that are distressed. Typically when you find properties that are distressed, the people that own the property are also distressed. Even if they are not, there is a reason that they haven't fixed the property. They can't afford it, they don't know that it's distressed and so on and so forth. So by using a Driving for Dollars technique, or in my case Deal Machine app, because it is just safer and easier and way better to do it that way. You are able to get to know your own neighborhood. You are able to find properties that are not on lists that everyone else can buy. Last but not least, the lists you create from Driving for Dollars are unique to you and you along. Boom!

Mike: Love it. Driving for Dollars, it's simple as that; you're going out to neighborhoods that you are familiar with or not, just areas that you know someone is investing in. You are driving your vehicle around. You are saying, that house looks like it might need work.

David: That house looks like shit!

Mike: Exactly, that house don't look so good, I am going to write down the address, I am going to find out who own it, I am going to find that person and find out if they want to sell.

David: Going to call them up and say, hey I'm Dave, want to sell this piece of shit property that you got? Not always the case, but that's what we do with marketing and Driving for Dollars. So what's next, Mike? I love it.

Mike: Next one up would be bandit signs.

David: Bandit signs.

Mike: Bandit signs are the signs that you see on the side of the road that say 'I buy houses'. I am going to digress real quick. I just saw a funny little meme and it said, 'based on the signs that I see on the side of the road, it looks like Trump is going to win, I buy houses is coming in second'.

David: I love it.

Mike: I know you've seen bandit signs.

David: You've seen them.

Mike: On the side of the road that say, 'I buy houses'.

David: They're on telephone poles, they are on the little metal spikes. They are called bandit signs because you put them in the ground, or you staple them to a telephone pole, you do that, you leave them there. They are not necessarily-- what would you call that?

Mike: Well they are called bandit signs because you are not getting a permit for it. Let's leave it at that.

David: Yeah.

Mike: You have to check your own municipality to find out if they're legal.

David: I've put out thousands of them and never had an issue. Be aware though. Bandit signs, called bandit for a reason.

Mike: It's kind of like littering.

David: It's marketing is what it is.

Mike: A lot of people consider it. So again, you don't necessarily-- let's just move past that. Look up your local ordinances--.

David: We do them, guys. We buy them in bulk, we get like 500-600 of them at a time, and we go and put these out. I wouldn't recommend you do what we do, I would say start with twenty or thirty a week, and be consistent, and do it every week. You are going to have better results than what we do with them, because when we do it, we get thirty phone calls, but we might not be doing it consistently enough to have them out. When you do anything in marketing though, consistency I think is key.

Alright-- we did Driving for Dollars, we did bandit signs, what do we have next?

Mike: Next up, cold calling and cold texting.

David: Yes, cold calling and cold texting is a great way to market to motivated sellers. Now, cold calling and cold texting requires phone numbers. You have to have a phone number to do this. If it's a property listed for sale by owner or for rent, that information is on Zillow, PropStream, any other website; Facebook market place, Craigslist, and so on and so forth. You can do that in one offs. Otherwise you can create your own list by Driving for Dollars or purchasing those lists online. Then, you have to skiptrace those lists. Skip tracing will give you the phone numbers and e-mail addresses of those property owners and sellers. Therefore allowing you to be able to cold call or to cold text them.

So, I think I mentioned this earlier, but I am going to say it again. Whenever you are doing your marketing, you are either calling them, or they are calling you. Even if you do a web form and they fill it out. Somebody still gets that message and has to call that seller. So you are either calling or texting out, or you are paying for marketing which we are going to talk about next, this is a great segway into direct mail. Direct mail is no different than a billboard or a radio ad, or an online ad on my opinion. You are just paying to get your message in front of somebody else that says, 'hey you got a house you need to sell? Call me. I have the solution and I have the cash so we can do this'. And that's it. So direct mail would be our fourth or our fifth method here. Direct mail doesn't require--.

Mike: I am just going to circle back real quick though, because-- how do you find numbers of people to call, right? This is important--.

David: Batch Skip tracing.

Mike: So you have to skip trace. Skip trace is a step in here that-- you find a list, then you find the people's contact info. Either their mailing address or their phone number, and-- that's how you then cold call, cold text or mail them.

David: Right.

Mike: Now we can segway here into--.

David: We have a 20% discount if you guys want to use that. Also code 'Dave'. Keep it simple. One code, keep it simple. So yeah, the cold calling does require the skip tracing, I love that. Now the direct mail you can Drive for Dollars, and you don't need to skip trace to send the mail, because you just need the address of the home, right? Or if you buy a list online or pull one down from a list provider, again, you don't have to skip trace the list to send the mail, because the list typically is an address and a name, or it may just be the address, right? So direct mail again, it is just a type of marketing that you're paying for. It is mail that goes directly from me to you. That's it, that's why it's called direct mail, direct to the home owner, alright?

So, Driving for Dollars, it's a great way to build your own list. That was number one. Number two I think was bandit signs, right? Bandit signs are signs you post up or leave on the side of the road to get your message out there. We buy houses, called me at 13455555, right? Next we would talk about-- cold calling and cold texting which requires skip tracing to do so. That's the fourth method, sorry the third method, direct mail would be the fourth method, right? Then the fifth method is just going to be referral marketing, right? If you are already an agent, and the odds of you listening to this and being an agent is probably pretty high, because most real estate investors are licensed, not all, but most. You can get a lost of business from referrals. So like literally me and Mike post on social media once or twice a month that just says, 'hey friends, quick reminder, I buy houses'. Somebody might see that and say, my aunt is looking to sell her house like right now. Dave, maybe you can go look at it and make my aunt an offer. It has got shit everywhere and she's kind of embarrassed to list it. It does not some repairs, so this would be a great rehab for you, and it would be really convenient for her to not have to deal with the clean out and the repairs, and the painting, and dealing with the agents, and dealing with the inspections, the appraisals and all of that.

Mike: Referral marketing, that's-- again Dave is talking about your current network which is great, but also if you go out to networking events, you can go to real estate investment groups, you are going to meet other real estate investors. That is important to your business, but you may not necessarily find direct to seller leads that way. So it is important to go to other networking events, or other events you enjoy doing, and telling people what you do.

David: Yeah.

Mike: Telling people, don't hide it is the key here. Tell people that you're a real estate investor.

David: Don't keep your business a secret! That's your line; I stole it. That's it though, man. You can't keep your business a secret. It goes against all business principles, right? You need customers, you need people to work with. So let everybody know that you can help them if they have a house they need to sell.

So those are the lists of ways that--. Go ahead.

Mike: Like you said, Dave, there are tons of ways. We could probably mention another twenty ways in ten seconds.

David: Easily. But these are the ways-- look at it this way, Mike; 80 20 principle.

Mike: 100%.

David: This is going to be 80%, only thing I may add to the list would be online marketing like PayPerClick, where you get a landing page or a website, then you market that on Google, Facebook, YouTube, Bing. That's a little bit more sophisticated because it does require a website and the ability to run ads. But again, it is another way to go about getting either a motivated seller to call you, or you to get their information so you can call them. That my friends is what the first pillar of wholesaling real estate consists of.

Mike: That's right, zoom back out.

David: Marketing to motivated sellers. In the next episode, we are going to talk about making offers. Signing off.