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David: Hi guys, welcome back, discount property investors. Today, we are talking, Mike and I are talking with a local St. Louis investor wholesaler, Trevor Rice. Trevor, welcome to the show my man. How are you?

Trevor:  I'm doing good man, I'm doing real good.

David: Awesome.

Mike: What's up Trevor? Thanks for joining us man. It's good to talk to you again.

Trevor: Yeah, absolutely. It's good talking to you guys. You guys are killers and I always aspire to go that way.

David: Well, thank you for the kind words. So, we wanted to bring Trevor along because Trevor just sent us over a deal that he had, and we have a service called 'Let's Co-wholesale' which basically allows other local investors in our market to share in our buyers list efforts and our buyer marketing efforts that we have. We have a pretty good system in place, and we also have a pretty good list of buyers, so Trevor sent us over a deal and we successfully helped him sell it by bringing in the buyer. We're going to split the deal. It wasn't a homerun deal, but hey a deal is a deal and if you have a decent buyers list in your market guys. It doesn't matter where you live or where you invest. Let me rephrase, if you have a decent buyers list in a market that you like to invest, again, it doesn't have to be where you live. You have a lot of power with that list, right? And you can partner with other investors and that's what we did, right? to help them sell those deals. You have something you want to say, I can tell, go for it.

Mike: No man, I'm just- I love it. I was thinking in my brain like we should probably try to roll out Let's Co-wholesale in other markets by partnering with other people like us, like there's no reason not to.

David: That's right.

Mike: But anyways, that's where my brain was at just then.

David: That's right. So Trevor, thank you for bringing us the opportunity to work with you. We just inked in the contract it sounded like about 10 minutes ago, which is cool. We'll get that over the title company and that kinda closed this week.

Trevor: Yeah, yeah, that's what's great about-

David: So, you know Trevor came to us and he probably had done some of his own marketing already, but he said hey, I'm getting into the crunch line, right. And again, it wasn't a homerun deal, we didn't make like 15 grand on the deal but we're each gonna make a couple thousand bucks and at the end of the day for really just you know, visiting a property once or twice and sending out a couple text messages and doing a little bit of marketing efforts, we created a triple win situation, in this case of quadruple win situation. The seller is going to be able to sell his property, Trevor is going to get paid, Mike and I are going to get paid, those are two wins right there and a buyer is going to buy it and put a little bit of money into it. He's actually looking for just another property but he's also looking to keep his guys busy, right? So if he doesn't have anything to do, you know those guys have the risk of going out and working for somebody else so sometimes people are willing to you know, not necessarily buy at a massive discount just because they have other goals in line. So, we got this one sold, it worked out, we're gonna get paid this week. Trevor, thank you for putting your trust into us. If you are local in St. Louis guys, and/or do marketing in the St. Louis area and you need help selling your deal just like we were able to do for Trevor, reach out or go to Let's Co-wholesale l e t s c o w h o l e.com. letscowholesale.com, throw on an application of the deal you got and we will then get back with you usually within a couple hours with either a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. Thumbs up means yes, we would love to help you and work with you. Typically, we give the investor that brings the deal to us 60% too so we really want to you know, juice- make it juicy for them, right? We want to make it worth their while. Go ahead.

Mike: I was just going to say Trevor, tell us about the deal though, man. I mean that's what-

David: Yeah, that's a great-

Mike: You know, a lot of people are new to the business and they're like well, where do I find deals and that's always kind of interesting too so what were you doing marketing wise or how did you come across this seller and how did that go?

Trevor: Yeah, so the lead altogether is very unique and I love it. It was an SMS lead actually. At the time I was using Batch, I'm probably going back to that, we've talked- spoken about that before but SMS sent to this real estate agent actually who contacted me and then stated hey, I want to sell my deal, you can make an offer on it. This is about eight months ago and so I went to the property. He had- he had a guy there already painting the walls from a bad tenant and the floors were all getting replaced and I'm like, you know, hey my highest and best is $55,000 and we had the whole conversation. He understood why I made the offer cuz it's a 2-bedroom and I think he came back and said look man, I owe too much, I can't accept that, I'm sorry. In just a simple follow-up, I texted him last week and he just said hey, I need this deal closed, I'm going to make some money on my other property that I'm selling and because of this I am willing to go lower, take the 55 for my deal and I'm like cool man, that's awesome. All I want to do is go have dinner and like, you know follow up with you cuz he's a realtor and I bought deal from him before and he has connections with other people that I've wholesaled their deals for him as well. It was a deep relationship that I have with this guy just off of a text lead and then I'm trying to help him out on this deal. Now, I didn't have enough time like I told you guys, so I'm sitting on my blasts but most of my guys need, you know, 14 to 30 days minimum. I didn't have anybody that can actually come to the table and like buy it that fast so I remember David have a phone call with me one time and he told me like look man, if you're at that point where you don't know where to go and like you last second situation just call us and so that's what I did. I reached out to Dave and I said look man, I'm in that point right now where I'm in the last second, I need help and you came through. What's crazy is I knew who the buyer was, but you guys just are so good with your list and you guys know who's out there wheeling and dealing, and you're so in tune with it, that list that you were able to connect us and we're able to do the deal and I'm so happy to be able to pay you guys just to bridge that gap.

David: Hey man, we're grateful for you bringing us the lead as well in the business.

Mike: Yeah, you got the right mindset too.

David: It's a win-win, that's the main thing. Yeah yeah, absolutely, and we actually went outside of our typical deal structure just to get it done and make it a win-win, you know, we- we're obviously not in the business of price gouging, we have minimums and we went outside of that because we wanted to get the deal done. We wanted to create the triple win and you know, we want to make it fair for everybody so again, we can make exceptions on these as needed but again if you are in the St. Louis market and you have a deal you want to sell, guys go fill out a form, Letscowholesale.com. If you don't live in the St. Louis market, hopefully you're learning up valuable lesson about the power of a buyer's list, right? So maybe offer at your own local real estate clubs or in your own local Facebook groups or whatever you're doing with your networking to help other investors sell their deals. And on the flip side of that, let's say you are new, Trevor's not new at this, let's say you're brand new and you don't have a buyers list or you don't know how, you know, how to market a property accordingly, well maybe find a local investor that's you know, very good at wholesaling or has been in the game for a long time and ask to leverage their buyers list, and if you have a good spread on a deal that's you know, maybe a 7 to 10 or maybe even 15 thousand dollar deal and they see the value in that deal when you bring it to them, do you think they're going to say no? They're going to say yeah 50-50 split. We juice it, we say we're going to give you 60% because we're more interested in helping more people than trying to do less deals at a bigger amount. We'd rather them make more money, us make less money, but have the ability for them to bring those leads into us and at the end of the year Mike, it equates to maybe like 15 or 20 extra deals that we were able to do by just connecting the dots.

Mike: No, we don't do a ton of deals with it but again, we help people out and I loved what you said Trevor which is like I knew the person but I'm just happy to pay you guys. I'm happy that we were able to get the deal done cuz again, you mentioned you've got a relationship with this agent/seller sounds like, and that's super super important to keep nurturing that relationship and to be positive about the fact that oh man, instead of being like I lost out, I could have sold this deal myself, like to be like well no but I needed help, these guys found a buyer even though I knew them, they got this deal connected, we put the dots together and we're able to do a deal and that's what having a bigger network allows you to do. Yeah, so really really powerful man. That mindset is super super important and again, it's not something that you can necessarily really teach other people to keep that mindset that you have.

David: That's right.

Mike: What else are you working on Trevor? What's good man?

David: Yeah Trevor, now that we got you and said our thanks, let's just chat and do some networking. That's the whole point, right? So what are you working on? Do you have any other deals, now that we got you here that you may want help selling cuz we got you know, we got the capacity to move some of these other ones. Also, let's just talk about some of the marketing that you're doing. I'm just kind of curious.

Mike: Yeah, what's working?

Trevor: Sure, just to touch on real quick with what Mike had said, like I totally agree with that mindset and for me, it was- 2021 was for me a year of relationships. I wanted to scale vertically with my relationships, I didn't want to scale horizontally right now, so like with you guys as well as like with the you know, agent seller, my thing was if David's middle was three grand and he told me hey look, I'm gonna take that 3 grand, you're not gonna be gaining, I probably would still have done the deal because the relationship with both of you guys as seller and the buyer or you guys are just as important to me. So, I think that's huge for a lot of wholesalers to understand because a lot of these wholesalers that are coming into the game, they're gonna be like oh screw David and Mike, I already know the end buyer, I'm just gonna go to the end buyer or they're gonna say oh the seller, you know, I don't really care about that seller, I just did one deal with him, I'm not going to follow up with him anymore cuz we only had that one deal and they, you know, just 8 months ago and they couldn't accept that I don't want to work with him anymore. But for me, it was more about the relationship. I just followed up on him to go out to dinner with him, to help him out with some bank stuff and he told me he still has that deal that he wants to sell so it was just super perfect.

David: Yeah, isn't it funny how follow-up is really like the most important part of this business? Following up with your sellers, following up with the offers that you made, following up with buyers, following up with offers that you made, following up with title companies, following up with offers that you made. You guys see the consistency here? Following up with other wholesalers to do joint venture deals, following up with your offers, did I say that a couple times already?

Mike: Yeah, yeah, you gotta follow up.

David: You gotta follow up with those offers though man, that's the thing like you gotta follow up with those offers, that is where the money is made in this business. I love it so Trevor, very cool, thank you for sharing. Marketing, what kind of marketing are you doing? What's working for you right now?

Trevor: It's so funny you said that because this year, I kicked my ass into gear because in my Podio, I think I can still check it now, I have 173 like, properties that I need to follow up with that. We physically have walked that [inaudible]

David: 153, that's great. Have you made offers on all those hopefully by now or at least verbally?

Trevor: That's what I'm saying, we haven't followed up and I remember looking at my Podio and I'm like dude, 2020, we missed on like probably a good 20, 30 deals just cuz of not following up and that really fueled the fire under my ass. I was like, you know, let's just chill out on the regular marketing right now and let's hit these follow ups cuz I feel like we've spent so much money to get these people to just be on the phone and say yes and now we've just let it go because we gave up because the first offer didn't work out where they no call no show, you know, some of those reasons. Now, we're just focusing on banging those out and following up. All my deals this year, I've already got 7 deals this year and out of the seven was all follow-ups. We didn't do any of those were marketing.

David: Not any of those were from new marketing basically.

Trevor: Yes.

David: Yes, so all was follow-ups, so guys that's such an important thing. It's such an important thing. It takes us four to six months typically to do a deal and you know, when we get a bunch of leads that come in, of course we're looking for the ones we can get closed right away, but really the goal for us whenever we do our marketing is just to build a big follow-up system, that's it, right? Because we know that months down the road, we're going to be able to get deals, right? The fact that you guys are aware and just doing as much follow up as you can is awesome because now you're getting deals without even having to spend new money on marketing. I love that. Follow-up is really truly the name of the game. People ask all the time Trevor, how long does it take to get a deal of you're brand new? and Mike response is: that's kind of a loaded question because you know, how much marketing are you actually doing? Is it consistent and then once you get a seller on the phone that has a level of motivation, you know, how good at closing are you, right? But then it's beyond all that, you know, that's like the one in two hundred, you know lead that comes in or 1 in 500 lead that comes in where they're motivated right away. All those leads need to be then added to a system and then followed up with so then the final question is how consistent are your follow-up efforts? Because if all of those things are in line, the average person should be able to close a deal in one to two months, right?

Trevor: Yeah.

David: In my opinion. Now, that's probably with the coach helping them make sure that they're doing all the things right. Without a coach, maybe double that amount of time, right? By all means, I get it. There's a difference between speed and having a coach is obviously going to increase or I should say decrease the amount of time or increase the speed at which you're going to be able to go get a deal but the fact that you're doing all those is awesome, that's why you've already done seven deals this year, we're only a month in. Your own pace to do like, you know 80 deals man, that's awesome, keep crushing it. What kind of new marketing are you working on right now? We do cold calling, cold texting, very little online marketing but some like AdWords and Facebook, again some and we cycle on and off the radio, which currently we are off the radio so right now to this very second, mostly cold calling and cold texting. We do drive for dollars and we implement mail when we do our driving for dollars. Now we don't typically buy lists and mail them but when we do our driving for dollars, we hit those individuals with 2-3 postcards right when they get added in from our efforts, but then we also take that data and take it home and skip trace it and cold call and cold text simultaneously. That's what we're doing right now, it seems to be working. It also allows us to keep our budget around, you know, a couple thousand a month, anywhere from two to four thousand a month without getting too crazy cuz when you run AdWords campaigns or you do radio or these things, these are expensive, you know, you can easily spend one to two thousand a week, you know, if you bring them up for the most part, so that's what we do, what are you doing? Curious to hear it.

Trevor: Yeah, so as far as my marketing efforts, right now I was deep into texting. We're probably hitting about 500 people per day.

David: Nice, that's a good amount.

Trevor: In the texting world and then we were pulling these from Propstream and we would also pull leads from driving for dollars. I have two acquisitions people so every time they go on an appointment, I just tell him like hey, whenever you go an appointment, I want you to get 5 driving for dollars when you get there and then 5 driving for dollars leads on your way back.

David: I love it.

Trevor: That way every time we go on an appointment it's, you know, probably bringing 10 to 50 leads per day just from that. Then I have Charisse who's my VA, she skip traces it, puts it into our marketing efforts and puts them into the campaigns, that way they're tagged to each acquisitions person so their driving for dollars leads are attached to them so whenever they get their commission, it's attached to them.

David: I love it. You guys see what Trevor did here is he basically, you know, he put a goal in place for his team that is a very easy goal to be consistent with. He's not asking for them to go out for two hours every day, instead he's just saying if you're going to go do anything, if you're going to go look at a property, hey try to hit 5 on your way and 5 on the way out and that obviously helps your team be consistent. I love it.

Mike: Dude, what a great-what a great idea and a great practice because you should really and I don't do it but you should drive the neighborhood that you're buying the house, you should drive up the streets just to get a feel for what you're buying.

David: Before you even get out of your car.

Mike: What a great idea man. That's awesome Trevor.

David: Yeah, I like doing that too. I don't always pull my phone out like he suggests but that's something I'd probably start doing though. I really like that Trevor, that's awesome.

Trevor: Thanks man.

David: So cold texting for the most part is your main lead source and it obviously gets leads in the system, but getting those leads closed is a whole different story. Follow-up is really the best way to do that and just from your follow-up efforts, you got 7 deals closed. How many months old is your lead system, how long you been doing this business? cuz I know you're adding leads into some sort of a CRM, how long have you been adding those leads in there basically is my question.

Trevor: I've been adding- I've had Podio since early 2018.

David: Okay.

Trevor: So I've been adding leads since about then so coming up on 3 years.

David: Yeah, 18, 19 and all of 20, we're in 21 now, aren't we?

Mike: Yeah.

David: That's great. So you have 3 years of leads so the coolest part is this business snowballs and that's how Trevor was able to basically get 7 deals the first month of 2021 is because he's got three years of leads that he's added into his system, right? And he's just following up with these people. So, the more time you spend in this business, the more leads you're going to have added and the more ability you have to follow up with the people. Trevor, who does your follow-up primarily? Is it you or do you have somebody helping you with that?

Trevor: I'm at a point now where I'm also buying rentals for myself very aggressively so I delegate that off to the VA Tri, she's awesome and she coordinates the follow-ups. Now if it's something where the acquisitions has already went on the appointment, then that's the acquisitions people's responsibility to follow up with that lead. Once it hits their desk and they've already went on appointment then the acquisitions has to do the follow-up and it's their responsibility because in every morning meeting that I do with them I'm like, hey, you need to track that lead, that's your person, you were there, you were- you got them motivated to sell, you made your offer so now you've got an offer out there, it's in the air, you need to follow up and the important thing too is like out of my deals, the other thing about the three years of leads, it's not just leads. Now that's 3 years of relationships that I've built.  If I have to quit right now all my marketing I could still probably bring in 3 deals a month just because I have real estate agents or smaller wholesalers or I have title companies reach out to me, you know, there's multiple other sources that come out to me and they'll send me deals. Even my lender, he'll send me deals like probably once a week and he'll say hey I'll lend you on this one so it's like, it's almost perfect because I've built those relationships up so well that when people get fed and paid money, they want to keep sending me deals because they want to keep getting the money so that way they can feed their families. That's important. I think that was [inaudible].

David: You're absolutely right. I like that you said it's relationships that we build, it's not just leads and I think that that's a- that's a really good point to make because if you just look at those as leads and you enter them in the system and you're in a hurry to get on the phone with them to determine if they have any motivation and if they don't have any motivation, you're in a hurry to get off the phone with them, they remain a lead. If you spend time talking to them or even setting the apartment to view that property, it allows you to make a friend aka build a relationship, and then when you go to call that person back in 3 months, now you're like calling them as a friend so they're going to be more likely to answer, they're gonna be more likely to want to work with you, they're going to be more likely to want to negotiate with you when you build a relationship and you make a friend, and Trevor that's such a valuable thing because a lot of people, you know, they don't necessarily have the confidence to just go run an appointment with an unmotivated seller cuz they think it's a waste of time whereas Mike and I you know, we look at it like you know what, if we can make a friend with this person, maybe they'll be willing to negotiate with us a little bit more and even if they aren't, we know they want to sell and we have a brokerage so maybe we're able to pull another two out of our belt which would be a listing to help them sell that property, right? So making a friend, I just can't stress enough, how much value it has and really you worded it better than I ever could have by basically saying they're not just leads in my system, they're relationships. I love that, I absolutely love that.

Trevor: Yeah, it's important and you know for us David like, you know, you have a team around you and I have a team around me like attitude reflects leadership, you know remember the titans quote and on top of that like when I went out to Texas, I realized that I was just kind of laying back like my acquisitions going on appointments, making offers and stuff, I maybe had morning meetings like once every two weeks or something. The connection or relationship with my own team was off and so when I got home, I just established everybody's why, I asked them what's your why? What makes you tick? Why are you doing what you're doing? And I built that up and I said hey we're doing meetings every single morning, so I wanna be here with you guys and I realized like hey, it's a relationship based business like I have to be in the trenches with my team and I have to be a leader and to be a leader, you have to be able to go to the trenches and like show your team that you can do it. So, morning meetings I'll hop on calls with the sellers with them, I'll give all my confidence to my team so that way they can use that confidence on their appointments and I think that's super important with those relationships too so like just being a good good leader to your team

David: Man, I totally- I totally agree. We were just looking at a deal we got under contract a minute ago, Mike and I over the weekend, and we wanted to see where the lead came from. We had the lead in the system for 6 months and it was generated by one of our cold callers who no longer works for us, but the reason that we went to look is cause we're like man, we just got this under contract, you know, what a better way to get the team inspired and be a good leader is by rewarding our team so we were gonna basically try to send them a 50 or 100 dollar bonus which doesn't seem like much but you know, that's actually a lot of money to somebody that's working at 4, 5 dollars an hour, just as a thank you but then they don't even longer work for us anymore at this point cuz sometimes, callers they come and they go, you get how that works. But yes, totally agree with 100% of what you just said man. I love it, I love it. Anything else that you want to add for the newbies? We have a lot of people listening that are really new to the investing and really I should say, marketing business of wholesaling, right? You are investing cuz you are buying rentals, you're taking risks outside of just flipping paperwork, right? But if you are a new wholesaler in this business, what would be the best piece of advice you can give to somebody that's brand new?

Trevor: Yeah, I think I would tell people what I would want myself to be told 3 years ago and that is don't be afraid to fail fast, also take it slow and worry about yourself, don't worry about what everybody else is doing and what they're saying. There's so many people on this saying they're doing x amount of deals but they're really not, so just stay in your own lane and do your own thing and as well as consistency, don't give up and just keep being consistent. As far as software’s, you don't have to get shiny object syndrome. There's a lot of software’s out there that have all these fancy buttons but at the end of the day like David and I are talking, it comes down to simplicity like Batch. I use Batch and now I'm going back to them now probably because it's just a simple software, x price, they're transparent about everything, there's no bugs, you know, it's tried, true and tested so it's like don't get shiny object syndrome when another software comes out and says oh well, we can do all that, but we add this.

David: Yeah, or it's half the price but after 3 hours of using it, it's gonna air out every day and it's like well, can I even use it?

Mike: Yeah.

David: Right. Absolutely man, absolutely. Simple is best.

Trevor: Yeah.

Mike: Trevor, I think one of the coolest things about you is your mindset man. Over and over throughout, just talking over this 25 mins I hoped people picked up on the fact that you have the right mindset and I think that's what is so important to this business. If people want to reach out to you, you want to give them an email or Facebook, how can people reach out to you?

David: Yeah, yeah, yeah, how do they reach out to you Trevor? You got a website?

Mike: If you don't have something of the top of your head you wanna share, we can stick it in the show notes, either way.

Trevor: Sure, yeah so, I have a free course that I give out, it goes like ethics, the mentality, integrity, it also goes into the wholesaling world, all the stuff and the tools that I use that's cheap and easy. To get your first deal for all the newbies, it's zerotoherowholesaler.thinkific.com and then as far as-

David: Love it.

Trevor: As far as like reaching out to me, you can reach out to me on Facebook, the name is Trevor Rice and also you can reach out to me via email at [email protected]

David: Great.

Mike: Yeah, we'll throw-

David: [email protected], got it.

Trevor: Yup.

David: Okay, cool man.

Mike: Well Trevor, thank you so much for joining us man. Again, love the mindset, that's one of the things that again, I think is just so important to have in this business is the correct mindset. Thank you all for listening to us discount property investors show. If you've got a deal, if you're here in St. Louis that you want help selling just like Trevor, we're happy to come in and help move a deal if we can for you at letscowholesale.com. Thank you guys so much, we'll talk to you guys next time.

David: And don't forget, visit discountpropertyinvestor.com, brand new site, got tons of free courses on there as well. Trevor, thanks for mentioning yours. Signing off.

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