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David: Hi guys, welcome back to the discount property investor podcast. I'm your host, David Dodge along with my co-host, mister Michael Slane. 

Mike: What's up? 

David: Today, we are going to be talking all things Deal Machine and driving for dollars. Deal Machine has been one of the secret weapons for Mike and I to find motivated sellers, find these properties that have distressed situations going on, and we do so by driving around in our cars and using the Deal Machine app to plot the properties that are showing signs of distress. Once we do that, we then send a postcard or some mailers to those property owners, we can skip trace them in real-time and they also have a new SMS engine to allow you to do direct messaging directly to these motivated sellers.  So it's a very, very powerful tool and a great tool, and we're fortunate enough to have Matt from the Deal Machine himself here today. Matt, how's it going buddy? Welcome. 

Matt: Great, yeah. Thanks again for having me on. You know, it's exciting to really kinda get more involved right now just because with the weather heating up and just you know, the market traditionally heating up right now. I think now is a really, really good time to get ahead of things and just start to jump out and especially in your local market like to find those deals that you know, you'll be able to kind of get in front of people before others. Driving for dollars is the way to find those off market deals, right? So there's no better time than now to really get out there as though the weather is you know, fine and start looking for those deals. 

David: I absolutely agree. 

Mike: Yeah, couldn't agree more and that's the- as the weathers stalling, I know the whole Midwest and you know, most of the country was just blanketed with snow, I was kind of- I was driving for dollars and I was doing some videos on it myself. I love it when it's snowy out because it is easy to find those properties after a week where nobody has been out to shovel a driveway, there's not been a car moving and there's snow everywhere, like you can easily tell which house does not have any activity so again, I was just out there and driving and cleaning up. Again, you can go a lot faster when it's super easy to spot whose house is vacant and whose isn't so I've been having a good time, adding some leads in the Deal Machine. It's just really easy to do, but we're waiting on Matt to build us a team, so again last month he told us that and this month he's going to tell us how many team members he signed.  

David: That's right. 

Mike: I'm teasing Matt again, I'm teasing again. 

Matt: We- yeah, hey you know what? I'm pretty sure you hold me accountable on the accountability buddy. 

Mike: No problem, yeah, absolutely. 

Matt: Yup, keep it going. I mean you have a really good point on the driveways and all that. I mean, vacant is a great place to start, you can actually, you know, if you do get the Deal Machine app or if you start the trial with you guys or if you're currently on it, like you can jump into the map and hit highlight and then vacant around you, and you know, boxes are gonna start popping up around you to begin with so that's a great place to start, where you're saying hey drive around, look for those houses that maybe they haven't shoveled snow or maybe they're not keeping up with upkeep for whatever reason and then you know, use the app to kinda guide you around the neighborhood to find those diamonds in the rough.  

David: Yeah, absolutely. 

Mike: So we did have Matt on for a reason today, he mentioned they're coming out with a little promo for March, right? So we're talking about getting into spring and it is just a really good time to start some more of the marketing and get some of the marketing out there, and Deal Machine's got a really cool offer, a program or just kind of a- it's just an incentive to go out there and do what you need to do. Yeah, so Matt, you wanna tell us a little bit about what this is? 

Matt: Happy to. 

David: Yeah, so what do you guys doing Matt? Fill us in man. 

Matt: Yeah, man. And this is something we really, we want to collaborate with a few partners to you know, the goal is like you know you guys are putting out great content. We know that you're speaking to an audience that is educating themselves actively, they're already thinking about or possibly already driving and you know trying to get out there and get that next deal, right? So to help kinda give people that extra motivation, we wanna do a giveaway where we're calling it the hashtag 300 in 30 challenge. So the number 300 in 30 challenge where you know, the month of March, we're telling people hey get out there and add 300 leads by driving for dollars and you know that is really like that is the metric that we've seen like it's not an arbitrary number we picked, it's- the metric we've seen across Deal Machine members, once you add 300 leads like that and start actively marketing to them, that's where you're gonna land that next deal. It obviously depends on the market, it depends on a lot of factors, we've had people who you know, they're in a super competitive crowded market where it's gonna take a couple multiple- you know, 500 to 1000 deals or 1000 leads. We have some partners- some deal machine members who were in a market where it's like we'd put in 5 leads and we got a deal, that does happen too, you get lucky that way but 300 is really kind of that magic number we try to coach people and say all right, think longer-term, thinking away that's going to set you up for success, you gotta fill that top of the pipeline with leads so the challenge we're doing which we- I can run through kind of the steps on how to enter it but the challenge we're doing, we're saying hey get out there, be the competition, start going out there before things heat up too much, you know, both weather-wise and market-wise but we see really like a pick up traditionally around March, April, May, like you know, each month gets more and more active typically for real estate market so if you can get out there in March and make that goal of adding 300 leads in the Deal Machine, we want to reward you for that. So, how you really- I can walk through the steps on how it's going to work or- 

David: Yeah please, fill us in.  

Matt: Cool cool, yeah so essentially the idea behind it like I said, you know, 300 in 30, you get an extra bonus day for the March 31st to try and make it in by the deadline. There's kinda 3 steps, so first piece is get out there and actually drive for dollars, like actually go use the Deal Machine app, start driving around. You know if you sign up with your guys link, they're gonna get a 7-day trial with free deal credits to start getting out there and start using the app, right? But add 300 leads where you're driving around adding distressed properties into the Deal Machine app and then once you do that, take an actual- kinda step 2 would be taking a screenshot of that, so when you go- when you jump into Deal Machine right away on your dashboard, you'll see a bar- a progress bar that'll say here's how many leads I've added this month, take a screenshot to show that you've added those 300 leads in March and then post that screenshot on Instagram and if you do you know, drive for dollars, take a screenshot on your dashboard, post it on Instagram, do those three steps and when you post it on Instagram, make sure that you tag Deal Machine like that'll make it easy for us to find it. You gotta use the hashtag, the 300 in 30 challenge so that way we can find it and then ideally, it would be great if you can caption the picture of like what drives you to drive for dollars, like why are you in real estate investing, tell people a little bit about why you even are posting this, right? But if you can put that screenshot on there on Instagram, we're gonna pick one lucky winner at the end of the month that used the hashtag and give them five hundred bucks right into their deal machine account, so that way they can go and start to have conversations with people and you know be able to save money when it comes to marketing and finding that next deal, right? So, that- those deal credits, that goes for the mailers, that goes for the skip tracing, that goes for you know, all of your marketing spend right there so that way, you can have these active conversations and get that next deal on us.  

Mike: That's cool man, that's really cool. So again, if someone were to use are our link, so again, if they go to dealmachine.com and they just use our forward slash DPI link, they can get a free 7-Day trial and that's always been the case because again, we love working with you guys and helping promote it and you guys are really awesome supporting us and our audience, but they can do that. So if you're not a user, you can still enter this, right? So you could use the free trial, you could drive as hard as you could for 7 days, right? Add 300 properties then you post that on Instagram and you use the hashtag 300 in 30, is that right? 

Matt: Yup, 300 in 30 challenge, yeah. 

Mike: 300 in 30 challenge and probably @dealmachine so that you guys see it, is that what you're saying? 

Matt: Yeah, if you do @dealmachineapp, that'll make it easier for us to find this as well or you know, as long as you have the hashtag, we'll be able to find it. But yeah if you do @dealmachineapp, it'll make it real easy to be able to make sure you're in the contest. 

Mike: He's not saying you have a better chance at winning that way but it seems like you might have a better chance of winning that way so tag that 300- hashtag 300 in 30 challenge and then @dealmachineapp and again, you're gonna be entered to win $500 worth of marketing. 

David: That's a ton. 

Mike: So again, like I said- 

David: That's a ton of marketing. 

Mike: - you can kinda sign up for free, hack this, potentially win and get another 500 dollars. 

David: Depending on what plan you have, I mean that's also basically like a year of Deal Machine, like if you're not using the traditional things, right? I mean the basic plan's roughly 50 bucks, right? So $500- 

Matt: Yeah, 49 bucks a month. 

Mike: Can you use that credit towards the monthly or would it be just for marketing credits? 

Matt: Yeah, so we- I'll have to clear that with the team. 

David: Yeah either way, it's awesome.  

Matt: Like we can kind of discuss exactly how they want to use it but yeah like the goal with it is like hey, we want to make it really easy for you to get out there like you said, you know hustling, get the right number like set the right expectation. You got to have 300 leads is really that magic number that we're seeing and then yeah we want to take like you said, it's- I think it's roughly 3500 free skip traces. 

David: Man, that's a ton. 

Mike: Yeah, that's awesome. 

Matt: Or like 900- a little over 900 free post cards. 

David: Yeah. 

Mike: That's huge right there. 

David: That's massive.  

Matt: It's gonna help. 

Mike: Yeah, that's awesome. 

David: Yeah, that's really cool. That's a ton of postcards. So, on average, you guys have found that adding- it takes about 300 leads added in to the Deal Machine app for somebody to get a deal, right? Give or take? 

Matt: Yup. 

David: Okay. Now, adding in the properties is just the first step. 

Matt: Right. 

Mike: So I want to educate some people here on this process. So if you're not already using Deal Machine guys, go check it out. Go to dealmachine.com/DPI for discount property investor and over there, not only will you get a 7-Day free trial, but you're going to get like 15 free deal credits which equates to like 100 free skip traces. So first and foremost, go download the app, use that link to sign up because you're gonna get a hundred free skip traces when you do so. Now, next you're going to get out there on the streets with the app and you're going to locate properties. Now the properties we're going to be locating are ones that are showing signs of distress. When Mike and I go out, we're looking for ones that have really old roofs, maybe even tarps on the roofs or several layers of shingles, right? They just look old, we're looking for old windows, boarded up would be great, but just old windows, right? We're looking for peeling and chipping paint, looking for siding coming off of the houses, of course tall grass, overgrown bushes, sometimes we'll see trees that have fallen on rooftops or trees that are leaning up against rooftops, abandoned cars in the driveway, I mean I can go on and on and on. We are looking for signs of distress, right? And typically signs of distress in the property leads to some other signs of distress in that sellers life and that's where we come in as investors and we help them, right? We come in and we say hey we're cash buyers. Of course we're going to do this for a profit, right? We don't pay retail but you know, we're going to make you a very, very fair offer on both sides and allow you to get rid of this problem whereas we as investors, landlords, rehabbers, wholesalers, doesn't matter, can turn around and make a profit on that house. 

Mike: So I think where you were going though is this adding them to Deal Machine is the first step. 

David: It's the first step. Thank for pulling me back. 

Mike: And what's really neat though about Deal Machine is that the first step used to be- and I'll admit this fully, the first step is where I got stuck. I would do the first step a lot prior to using the Deal Machine app and the reason was because this was, in relative terms, this was the easiest part is going out and actually looking for a property and saying oh that one looks vacant. The hard part comes after that. The hard part used to be finding out who owned the property then tracking down where they lived and getting ahold of them. What deal machine does is it makes it really easy to do the next step, it makes it really easy to do the hard steps. So that's why I again I think just motivating or the Deal Machine and using this 300 in 30 challenge, motivating you just to get out there and do kind of the easy part is going to lead you to do a deal, which is very, very powerful because they've taken the hard steps out of it. So go do the easy part and you're going to be able to get ahold of people and then you're going to do kind of like Dave was talking about is providing value to- 

David: Yeah, so lets talk about those seconds, those future steps. So once we get the property added in to Deal Machine, from there what Mike and I do is we always typically send at least one, if not three postcards, right? So we're going to automate that right out the gate, okay? Next what we're going to do is we are either going to- what we typically do is we use the skip tracing feature for more of an instant skip trace when we're out and we see a dumpster in a driveway, we see a really bad one. Again, everyone can do this a little bit differently but we always like to call those people right then and there, right? Next we'll come back to the office and we'll bulk skip trace and use the SMS engine to communicate with all of these individuals and let them know that you know, we're in business to buy houses and if they have- well we already know they have a house, right? And we already know that house is distressed too so we have a lot of good information here, but what we're going to do then is just reach out and just say hey do you have interest in selling? You know, we're not going to rub in any of the stuff that we found like it's got a tarp on the roof and a broken down car in the driveway. We're just going to say, hey we're buying in the neighborhood and we thought, you know, you may be interested in selling and if you are, great let's talk we'll come meet you and if not, no big deal, we'll follow up with you in 6 months to a year to see if you change your mind, right? So we'll then SMS those individuals, we'll also export that data out and start cold calling it, right? So we like to hit them with as many different types of marketing as we possibly can but the cool thing is just Mike had just mentioned, Deal Machine takes all of the hard part out of the equation. They allow you to add the properties very easily. They allow you to even identify good properties that may be on other lists like vacant or pre-foreclosure and so on, so forth to, to go drive those particular ones first which I think is very very helpful, but then once you identify it, you can get their information via the skip trace which typically is a couple phone numbers and an email, and by the way that email is very underrated. You call, you know, two, three, four of these phone numbers, you may not get them every time. You know the data is really good but you know, nothing is a hundred percent so what we do is if we can't reach them, we send them an email and just say, hey I'm just you know, trying to reach you about this property that I believe you own, give me a call back and we'll keep those messages really broad cuz we want them to be curious on why they're-why we're reaching out, right? So we use the skip-tracing features to identify who the owners are and then of course, the SMS feature is a great feature as well to speed the whole thing up, right? But again, Mike and I, we like to do all of it, you know we're sending postcards even if we plan on and we do send an SMS messages and cold call. We're hitting them with multiple different ways because some people like to communicate in a certain way so you want to be able to communicate with them in that way. 

Mike: Yeah, and I'm gonna say that Dave, you make it sound like we are doing a lot of the work and here's the honest truth, Deal Machine is the one that's doing all that work. 

David: That's right. 

Mike: They made it easy on us because again, the three postcards that we send, we've actually got scheduled out in Deal Machine, right Matt? I mean that's something that you guys actually do for us and we pay them. 

Matt: You guys are doing it the right way though. You're thinking through like hey you've got, you know, you have all these different marketing channels, people are gonna respond differently to different outreach so you've got that plan, that follow up plan figured out the right way but absolutely like our whole goal with it was to make it as easy as possible, as automated as possible for you to find that data, figure out is this a vacant house? Is it absentee owned? Like what's the situation with it? And then make it really really easy, you can automate it and just hit send postcard, you know, directly within the app or you know, skip trace and call them right from the app or text them right from the app, you know, do as many channels right in the app and [inaudible].  

David: Sorry about that Matt, go for it. 

Matt: Hahaha, is that a sound effect on your end?  

David: Yeah, so I'm just playing with these little sound effects, so one of the things I was just thinking of, I didn't mean to interrupt you was before we started using the app, I got in 2 car accidents driving for dollars and since I have been using the app, I haven't had any issues. 

Mike: Related to driving for dollars than accidents. 

David: Correct. 

Mike: Yeah. 

David: Yeah, exactly. But whenever you aren't using something that's going to help you easily plot the properties, you know, get them into your system. What are you going to do? How do you do it? So before the app or for those not using it, you're writing down addresses which requires pen and paper or maybe a phone and you're trying to type and it's a lot of stuff to do especially if you have cars behind you or there's people on the street walking their dogs or they're kids, you know, so you want to be safe and you want to make sure that you're not trying to do too much at once. That's why the app comes in so handy because as you are moving, the map moves and you stay in the middle of it so as you approach a property on your right, that property is going to be right in the middle of the phone and you can literally turn on a feature or it's a setting where it's tap to add so you don't have to tap it and then confirm it, you just click it once, boom it's added, right? Just like that, it speeds the process up and it prevents you from getting in car accidents. [crash sound effect]. 

Matt: There it is. There you go, I like it.  I think- we even have people who love to go out and go driving for dollars with a friend or with their wife or you know, make it a team event and that makes it even safer obviously. So yeah, it goes without saying, like no matter what you're doing here, we want you to do this the safest way possible but Mike, you are right that like adding the lists and creating that list, you know, that is- that's kind of the first step but it's not the only step. Like it's where you got to start to set yourself up for success but you have to follow through with those various, you know, marking touch points or you know, you won't see results from it. 

David: Yup, that's absolutely correct man. I love it. Well guys, get out there, download the Deal Machine app, use code DPI or go to dealmachine.com/DPI for discount property investor. You get a 7-Day free trial, but not only will you get a 7-Day free trial, you guys get a hundred free skip traces so at the very least, right? Check out the trial and use those skip traces. I mean, that is basically the ability to go contact 100 property owners for free if you do it in the first week. I love it. Mike and I've been using Deal Machine probably going on 3 years?  

Mike: Little while, yeah. 

David: Yeah, it's been a long time and we love it, and Matt, we're happy that you we're able to come on and tell us a little bit about this promotion guys. So over the month of March, add 300 properties, add it to social, tag Deal Machine in that post, you'll be entered into a drawing to win $500 worth of marketing. Again, that's almost a thousand postcards you could send out or several thousand skip traces and you know, here's the thing: if you're already using Deal Machine guys and you're already out driving for dollars, that just makes it that much easier to enter into this contest to win those- that $500 in additional marketing. Matt, thank you so much for coming on today, always a pleasure. 

Matt: Yeah, always guys. 

David: Yeah, and we're excited. I might even go- I got to go look at a property set for noon so I might do a little d for d while I'm out in that area myself. 

Matt: Yeah, I was gonna- while you're out there, make things happen and yeah, it's a- same thing here, the snow is melting and all that so yeah, we're ready to go back there and start finding properties.  

David: I love it. Matt, thanks again for coming on today buddy. 

Matt: Yeah, thanks guys, appreciate it. 

David: Signing off today guys and don't forget, check out discountpropertyinvestor.com. Mike and I have rebuilt our website. We have tons of free courses on there as well as tons of resources, so if you are new to the game and you're looking for a contract or an assignment or a lesson on what, you know, how to do a double close, we have all the information on the website, it is free to join and all the information on there right now is also free. discountpropertyinvestor.com. Signing off. 

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