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.

Mike: Welcome back guys, the discount property investors here Mike Slane and-

David: David Dodge.

Mike: Your hosts and we have a special guest again with us today. One of our favorite guests, Mr. Matt Kamp. Matt, how are you?

Matt: Great man, doing great. Thanks again for having me. It's you know a little dreary here in St. Louis, but we're making it work. Excited for the new year to come in.

Mike: Yeah, it got cold on us, didn't it?

David: It's cold.

Mike: Yeah, just brutal.

Matt: Winter caught up to us.

Mike: Yeah, winter it was definitely more fall, 50, 60 degrees and then just overnight before the holidays, winter kicked in so here we are.

Matt: [inaudible] though. They'll be cold, they'll run around outside and do not care whatsoever so we're making it work.

Mike: That's true, that's true. Little monsters do not care at all. Ours are running around barefoot in the kitchen, you know, on the tile. She's like: are your feet cold? No. You pick her up and her feet are frozen.

Matt: Doesn't matter haha.

Mike: Yeah, it's crazy. So yeah man, the holidays came and went and we're looking at New Year's holiday coming and it'll go before we know it so today we wanted to chat a little bit I think about kind of our predictions or where we see the market headed. The market being the real estate market both nationally and I would say more locally because I think that's what everybody says is that real estate is always local, right? You have to kind of know your local stuff and dig into your local stuff to really get a foothold in your market. So yeah we can talk about the national trends and then kind of go into what we see here locally cuz I think that's what's most pertinent to you is to really dig into your local market and figure out where you see it going. So Dave, we are lucky to be in the Midwest. Matt, you joined us here in St. Louis which is awesome. So we are in a linear market and that's something that I love about the Midwest because we're not recession-proof, but when you hear about the real estate market sky is falling and it's crashing, normally they're talking about the coast. They're normally talking about California and New York and they get to see these really really fun skyrocketing prices and they get to have some very terrible crashes as well.

David: Yeah, that's true.

Mike: So we are lucky that we somewhat are insulated from that in St. Louis, a Midwestern market. We go up and we generally go up, we just don't go up as fast and we do crash but we crash pretty slow. It's more of a fender bender than totaling out the car like Dave likes to do. So if you didn't know Dave was in a little car accident, he got taken out, was unable to recover and-

David: That's almost a month ago at this point. It was on the 7th.

Mike: Yeah. Finally got his new vehicle in though so he's able to do some more driving for dollars which I know Matt is happy to hear.

Matt: There you go.

[inaudible] 

David: And the other two people are arguing about whose fault it was.

Mike: Oh geez.

David: So now the insurance companies like oh yeah, we're going to pay you obviously. You're not at fault but we got to figure out who's paying here. I was like well how long is that gonna take? And they're like it could take a couple months.

Matt: Geez.

Mike: It's crazy.

David: I have two car payments for another couple months.

Mike: Oh you gotta pay them, both of them?

David: Yeah, they're paying off the other one, right?

Mike: Oh man, that's crazy.

David: Oh well, it could be worse. I could have no insurance, right?

Mike: Exactly, exactly. So real estate, back to real estate, our main topic. I think the market is going to keep just- inventory is going to keep flying off the shelves. I don't see any slowdown. We've seen a lot of kind of the indicators, they're saying that there's more new construction starts than we've seen since 2006, there are less properties available, and a lot of these things are pointing back towards 2006. This is prior to you know, the 2008 crash that we had experienced. So a lot of new construction, we're seeing very little inventory. What else are we seeing? Things along those lines that just- oh, lowest interest rates that we've had and there's no indication they're going to go up anytime soon or at least not in the next year or so.

David: Values are up.

Mike: Yeah and values are going up for I think a part if it, part of that reason as well.

David: See that offer we got last night on gas? I need to forward you guys that email.

Mike: Yeah.

David: And then I just declined it, but all around, prices are up.

Mike: Yes, sir. Yeah, so Dave what do you think's going to happen man? I think we're going to keep seeing rising prices, low inventory and it's just going to be another year of- for investors anyways, it's going to be difficult to find a true discount on real estate just cuz I feel like properties are going to keep climbing and more and more sellers are going to be aware of that.

David: Yeah, I think we're always going to be able to find a discount, however I agree with you at the same time, right? I think it's going to be harder to find those discounts. The inventory is low already, so I think that just based on that alone, it's going to- it's going to make it more difficult for us investors.

Matt: I mean I know- yeah, inventory-wise, from a national perspective, it's the lowest it's ever been so yeah, I definitely agree with you on that one.

David: Wow, is it really the lowest it's ever been?

Mike: That's crazy.

David: That's crazy.

Matt: Yeah, I think like especially too being in the Midwest, I think that- that's a great point Mike when you bring it up is like you- you know, obviously you guys have listeners all over the place but if you're here in town or nearby, I know you know, the highs aren't as high, the lows aren't as low so it's one of those things we're like yeah, you want to be obviously kinda everything going on and really understanding the overall national trends but then know that it's going to take a little while to get to us and that the effects, you know, where a ripple, you know, ripple effect where on the, you know, smaller waves that hit us so, you know, as long as you have the right fundamentals down and you're approaching it the right way and you're kind of being systematic about it, not just trying to time the market from that perspective, I think you're coming into with the right mindset and I think that's- that's the way I would have recommend approaching 2021 as well.

David: Yeah, we're not going to do anything differently. I mean we still have a marketing budget, we're still driving for dollars, you know, we're still cold calling people. We do some- a little bit of direct mail from time to time. We turned our radio ads off in- I guess it was maybe late October and we were talking about maybe circling back to trying some new strategies with that come, you know, come January or maybe even February, not in a huge hurry with it but yeah.

Mike: Yeah, and we're pretty consistent on that as well though seasonally so a lot of times and around the holiday seasons, the ad prices go up and there's more people doing it so we said eh we'll back off again but yeah, I think it's just- yeah, I think being part of a linear market, it's easier to set yourself up for the long haul and just literally just keep trudging along. Unfortunately, it's not that sexy high and low like we talked about that you hear in the national stuff. I consider them leading indicators so when we see that there's a crash, that means hey maybe we kind of slow down some of our flip activities or get out of those higher dollar riskier flip activities, maybe try to get more of our properties refinanced and slow down on the acquisition mode but until then, it's still I'd say foot on the gas.

David: Yeah, did they just approve a new stimulus today? Think I saw something this morning.

Matt: There was talk about it.

Mike: Yeah, they're still talking about it. I think it's hitting the senate or something today so just going to wait- wait and see where that goes.

David: Okay, okay.

Mike: Yes sir.

David: Cool.

Matt: Yeah, I mean I think like going into the like you said, you know, you've got a couple different marketing channels you're gonna be exploring. I think no matter what, each market is going to be a little bit different like you're going to have some markets where just, you know, direct mail might respond better than others. You'll have some markets that you know, you're online, your inbound leads will be more effective. You've got, you know, everything from that to literally door-knocking, the radio, to all these different marketing channels. No matter what, I'd say approach it with kind of a almost a marketer's mindset of trying out a bunch of different stuff and then making sure you're measuring what's working. So you know, making sure you have the right calls to action on each of these different marketing channels that you can track and see oh this came from the radio ad or this came from a Facebook ad or this came from a direct mail piece so you can really kind of attribute where these leads are coming from and just adapt accordingly cuz I think each different market's going to have competitors who, you know, various local real estate or real estate investors that try different things and you might be in a market where everyone- where more people are trying out direct mail or more people are trying out cold calling, more people trying out texting, more people trying out these various things, and where there's less competition, you're going to have more of an ability to win. Like I think within Deal Machine specifically, we built it out just for direct mail pieces to start with, like just to make it really easy to send mailers and then we added in skip tracing so that way you can call people and text them. You know, we're going to have you can look at emails another option within that skip tracing marketing channels. I think like we want to make it easy for you how to diversify your different marketing channels and try out multiple things and see what's working, but in the end it's about kind of testing and making sure you have the right systems in place to know which tests are working and which aren't.

David: I agree.

Mike: Awesome.

David: Absolutely.

Mike: Awesome. So as far as I mean 2021 goes, I know that- so Matt, your Deal Machine is national so obviously you say, you know, you got to kind of trial and error with marketing.

Matt: Yeah.

Mike: How do you see, you know, all this low inventory and all this stuff in the market affecting real estate investors and what their strategy should be and how they- with Deal Machine or you know, other marketing in their business? I mean, what's the- what's the right course right now? I mean, what should we- what should we be doing?

Matt: Yeah. I mean I do think like it is getting like you said, the- or like we talked about the inventories is so low that there is a lot of competition out there. It's something where investors will have to step up their game when it comes to lead generation and it comes to doing these marketing activities to bring in deals. So everything we're building out and we're helping people, you know, with is focus on how do they take their lead generation to the next level. I think you've got a couple different options there. You've got increasing the number of marketing channels you're doing is one option, like you've got- like we talked about radio, you know, door-knocking, all the way to direct mail to, you know, to texting, calling like you're running marketing channels that you can test out. So that's one thing you can change is just doing different marketing channels. Another thing would be to ramp up to just the number of leads you're getting- you're putting in your system. A big part of that would be- for us like we still think that driving for dollars like from an ROI perspective, best bang for your buck is getting out there like looking for those hidden gems, those, you know, diamonds in the rough that you can't just pull from a list but that you have to actually physically validate with your eyes and find so you know, if you're able to drive and how do you scale that is hiring a driving team to get out there for you and be out there and be deal finders. You know, we make it easy within the Deal Machine app, but just in general like hiring birddogs that can get out there and look for deals and be able to point these out to you and build a list for you so that way you're not just doing it yourself, but you're hiring other people to do it for you, like that's the way to scale that strategy, that's the way to hit the number of leads you're going to need to hit within 2021 and then in a more competitive market that's harder to find inventory like this. So I think diversifying your marketing channels and then just ramping up the number of leads you're doing or that you're hitting is what I'd recommend beginning and then on the marketing side too, if you can automate as much of that stuff as possible. Like if you can, you know set it and forget it with these, you know, email drip campaign or with a campaign through the Deal Machine app. We have the mailers campaigns that you can set it and forget it with mailers or you know, hire out a, you know, somebody to do cold calling for you or these other different things that you can outsource and automate, that's how you're going to be able to hit those lead numbers that you're gonna need to hit in order to find deals just cuz it is so competitive and there is the least amount inventory out there possible that we've seen.

Mike: I like that man, I think that's good. That's something we haven't done internally is built out a little- like a driving team and we should probably start working on that. Matt, can you kinda share some of your-

David: Yeah, what are the best practices?

Mike: -successes or how it [inaudible]-

Matt: [inaudible]?

Mike: Yeah, yeah. If- I'm not kinda putting you on the spot there but if you've got any insight in that, I'd love to hear a little bit more about building out a driving team.

Matt: Yeah. Take out notes, take out a pencil here.

Mike: Exactly man.

Matt: Yeah. I mean basically, you know, there's kind of like- there's a couple phases so you've got like recruiting to begin with, like how do you even find them, training them up so how do you get them prepared to go out there and do it and then managing them so how do you even like how do you know where they're going and how you do that properly. Within Deal Machine, I know how we think about it from a training perspective like, you know, basically- or a recruiting perspective. Basically our end goal is to say okay how do you find the people who are already out there driving? Like they're just so many different delivery drivers, there's so many different Uber and Lyft and you know, Instacar and DoorDash and all these different things in general that people are out there driving constantly. So if you can get in front of those people, that's a great like easy sell to start with, is just say hey while you're already out there, you know, giving people Uber rides or whatever it might be, you know, in between your rides, drive- look for deals for me. Like whip out the Deal Machine app, start driving around taking pictures of a couple different properties and you can usually get people to tack on a couple hours a week just starting like that and that's kind of the lowest hanging fruit that we've seen is kind of looking for drivers like that. It's- they're not as reliable long-term I would say but it's a great place to start looking for drivers. Also, you'd probably be shocked by if you post on Facebook or just any kind of personal text or whatever might be to your own network and say hey who wants to make a couple extra bucks by driving 5 hours a week, 10 hours a week for me? Like there are probably people who would be up for that and maybe if you can pitch them and say hey I'll show you how I'm evaluating the deal, I'll show you kind of the ins and outs of what I'm doing when it comes to this actual, you know, analyzing this particular property. You can pitch them that mentoring route so that way if they're new to real estate or if they want to get into real estate investing, that's an amazing way for them to learn like that's invaluable experience for them and plus you're getting a deal out of it too. So I'd say like to start with the most casual places to go or just your personal network pitching it is a mentorship opportunity and then posting online within various groups on social media or you know, where you see drivers hangout online, like you can search part time jobs in St. Louis on Facebook and easily find plenty of groups like that or you can start posting about it there. We have plenty of new members too who will literally print out a flyer on their- and put it on their door, so that way when they have like Amazon drivers dropping off stuff or any driver that comes to their door just cuz we're getting so many things delivered nowadays, like that's a great opportunity to say: hey if you want to make more part-time income like drive for me couple hours a week, you know, it's an opportunity to pitch them that way. So I think, from a recruiting perspective, you can kind of start there. When you really want to ramp up, you've got our enterprise plan is built for that, so like you can do- it's like up to 300 drivers through enterprise plan, so that actually comes with a landing page that's a link to- that pitches the idea of being a driver for you, so you can easily post that online with- on Indeed or Craigslist or any kind of like job board and it'll pitch people on the idea of driving in your market up to full time if you're able to support that, so that's kind of our enterprise plan, it helps from a recruiting perspective like that. That's kind of where it's like the start.

Mike: [inaudible] talked about kind of recruiting, then you said, what was the next step is kind of up-

Matt: Yeah, bringing them up to speed. So I think, you know, once you found people like that, I think the training portion, you know, one, we'd highly recommend always having a group of people come in at the same time. So like if you can find, you know, five drive- five people who are interested in driving for you and give all of them the assignment of saying hey I'll pay you twenty bucks, put in 20 properties into my Deal Machine or you know, write down 20 properties that you find and you know, this will be kind of like a trial run essentially. You'll pretty quickly see who's most motivated to get out there and do this and do it well and put in qualified leads and all that stuff, like that will become pretty obvious where you can pick one or two drivers out of those five. So I'd always recommend kind of going into it with a little trial run like that. Outside of that too, on the training portion, if your on our [audio cuts out] like seven or eight videos that are just fed to them and teach them how to drive for dollars, you know, what to look for, you know, for a distressed property and you know what, you know, really kind of the basics of how to use Deal Machine and how to find great deals for you. So we try to make that really easy for you too through the app, but you know, the idea behind it being like hey, you know, we want to give it so that all you have to do is just add their email to your team within Deal Machine and then the app does the rest for you. So I think kind of a combination of a little bit of one-on-one training yourself if you've driven yourself, you know, if your already used to driving for dollars and then also giving you know, giving a trial run or having Deal Machine train them up for you, I'd say like all those things are going to help set them up for success.

Mike: Sweet, and then what about like managing? I mean, there's kinda couple different things- like you said, some people are just gonna fall, they're not gonna be motivated. But the ones who are, I mean what's the management best practices in like compensation best practices around what people are doing? I mean what keeps people motivated? Is it paying per lead that they enter or is it- cuz I don't know if that's gonna work for people.

David: Yeah, That's a good- that's a great question. How are you- how are people that are having success, how are they compensating their drivers? Are they paying them hourly? Are they paying them per lead? Are they bonusing them when they do deal?

Matt: Yep.

David: What's working?

Matt: So those are- what you just touched on, those are really like the three factors that we see, like it's a combination of those things. I think the long-term people who stick around for a long time and see it as a real job, they're usually paid hourly and then have a bonus on top of that of like x per property or per closed property or per closed deal, so they kinda have a performance bonus, but they're main compensation is the like how many hours you drive for me? It depends on what state you're in too. You got to be careful on like the laws around, you know, how to compensate birddogs in general so make sure [audio cuts out]. I know it's a little more- but I think in general like if it's a full-time, like somebody who's really committed, I'd say you know, doing some kind of really consistent hourly pay is really important. If it's more like hey I'll- you know, a couple hours a week here and there, doing the pay per property method or pay per closed property if they're, you know, the pay per closed property I'd say that's only if you're really pitching that mentorship route with them and you're saying yeah, I'll show you how I'm doing this and you know, if you- if I close one, I'll pay you a thousand bucks or five hundred bucks or whatever it is. Like I think that route could work if you're really have a really good relationship with them. Otherwise, I'd recommend going the hourly and/or per property added route.

Mike: Cool.

David: So the common theme that I keep hearing over and over is that you should probably be paying these people.

All laugh 

Matt: [inaudible].

David: Hey, wake up everybody.

Matt: For sure, yeah. I mean I think definitely you want to pay the, for the right stuff like quality properties really matters like you know, you don't wanna just have them run down a street and take a picture of everything and then say hey, pay me a hundred bucks, I put in a hundred properties, you know? But if you- that's why through the Deal Machine app, we've really built it so that way you can add them as a deal finder within the app which means they only have access to adding to your list. Then you have to go in and approve the property and start marking them yourself so they can't spend any of your marketing budget and also at that point you can really find out is this a qualified lead or not? And you know, pay them accordingly so that way they're doing the right stuff.

David: Yeah, I like that you have the ability to approve it or not, you know? So when it's added in there, it's not added into all of the campaigns automatically, you know? Because again, some of these people that you know, you may hire or we may hire, you know, they may not, you know, they may not be putting into rock solid leads out the gate. They may take a little bit of training so the ability to kind of weed through them and say some of these are good and some of these aren't, that's cool.

Mike: Yeah, so the deal finders, then when they go back in, can they see which ones were approved and which ones were rejected or not approved or whatever?

Matt: Yeah, and when it comes to managing them too, they can see- in general, you can see like the routes they've driven, properties added versus approved. When you close a deal, you can see which driver that came from to see which drivers are really doing well. So yeah, so like from a management perspective, I would say yeah you want to see who's performing, what's working and then try to train up the rest of your drivers to do what they're doing. And then the route tracking feature is really- that's a big one for figuring out okay, you know, we don't want to duplicate our efforts anywhere, you go to this neighborhood, you go here, you go here so you can really can kinda quarterback all of it from technology like that, yeah.

Mike: Well this is great man. I'm really looking forward to you building a team for us in 2021.

David: Hahaha and pay them.

Mike: Yeah. This is really exciting, I can't believe you volunteered to do it and we're really happy that you're going to head it up for us.

Matt: I'm here to help you guys, yeah sure.

Mike: Thank you. Everyone listening heard it so Matt is on board.

David: We're gonna have to put some-

Matt: Oh yikes.

[inaudible]  

Mike: I'm thinking 5 to 10 drivers to start should be good.

David: I think that would.

Mike: Yeah.

Matt: Well, let's get the whole city driving for you, yeah.

Mike: Yeah, no worries.

Matt: I have a town that helps, but yeah man I think like 2021, I agree you're going to really have to step up your game on finding leads because there isn't much out there that's on the market and when they are, it's extremely competitive so, you know, being able to do things like outsourcing to drive it, you know, have a team or automate it so you're sending them postcards all the time or you know, just saving time anyway you possibly can to get that lead number up per month that you're doing, that's going to set you up for success next year.

David: I love it.

Mike: Sweet. Well guys, I think that's a- I mean that's a pretty good way to end it I think. We talked about 2021, we know that we're going to have to up our game in marketing because it's still a pretty competitive market, so yeah building out a team is probably the way to go as far as working with Deal Machine in particular. So we always know that building our own list is better than you know, just the ones everybody can buy and Deal Machine is allowing us to do that with the deal finders so that really is some pretty good advice.

David: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah, and make sure if you guys do any kind of trial or anything like that, make sure to go through your link just cuz then they'll get hooked up with what you know, deal credits and free stuff they wouldn't get otherwise, but feel free to use just Matt@dealmachine is my email and [email protected]. Feel free to use me as a resource if you're looking for help on hiring a driving team and things like that, I can point you in the right direction internally to help you get coached up on how to do that.

David: Hey, I love it.

Mike: Sweet.

David: I love it, that's awesome.

Mike: Yeah, we'll throw a link in the show notes and all that and yeah Matt, thanks so much man. Appreciate you coming on again, we look forward to chatting with you again.

Matt: Always man.

Mike: Once you've got a couple of those drivers on our team for us.

Matt: Hahaha, I'll get to work. Thanks guys.

Mike: Sounds good man.

David: That's right. Hey guys, don't forget to go download Deal Machine, you get a 7-Day free trial and Matt, how many free skip traces are they- are you guys giving out right now with the use of our coupon code?

Matt: I believe it's $15 worth which would be basically a hundred free skip traces.

David: A little over a hundred actually, yeah.

Matt: Yeah, it's a hundred free skip traces so it's a hundred free conversations basically for reaching out.

David: I love that, that is awesome. Guys, use code podcast P-O-D-C-A-S-T, that's pretty easy to remember. Use code podcast, you are going to get a 7-Day free trial and 100 free skip traces. That is a deal, I love it.

Matt: There you go. Make it easy for you to take action and get out there and you know, make things happen.

David: That's what's up. Hey Matt, thanks for coming on today. As always, we appreciate your time, we're grateful for you my friend, we're grateful for the ability to have Deal Machine app at our fingertips to help us drive home more and more deals every single week and that's it. That's all I got man. I'm at a loss of words today.

Mike: I love it. Let's build a team man. Build a team. Thanks so much Matt.

David: Alright Matt, thanks buddy. Have a great man.

Matt: Appreciate it guys.

Thanks for listening to the discount property investor podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please like, share, and subscribe to help us reach a wider audience to jump-start your real estate investing career, visit freewholesalecourse.com- the most complete free course on wholesaling real estate ever. We would also appreciate it if you left us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. Thank you in advance for your support and remember you make your money when you buy, you get paid when you sell. Now let's go build some wealth