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: All right guys welcome back to the discount property investor podcast. Your hosts, David Dodge and Mike Slane. Hey Mike.

Mike: What's up Dave?

David: What's up buddy?

Mike: How are you today?

David: Doing good man.

Mike: Good.

David: So if you didn't check out the last episode guys, we literally just broke down how to invest in real estate with no money.

Mike: They keys to the kingdom.

David: The keys to the kingdom guys, it truly is, and this episode, it's going to kind of be a part 2 of that last episode so if you haven't listened to that one, go check that one out. In this one, we're going to actually sort of-we're going to break down you know, how you invest in real estate with no money when it comes to deal finding, right? So the last episode was you know, basically the general overview of how you would go about doing that and then what are the different types of investing and we broke those down into basically what we like to call the big three: wholesaling, fix and flip and landlording. So now that we've kind of explained what those types are and how we're going to do that, we're really going to dive deep on this one and we're going to talk about how do we actually find these deals, right? How do we come across a deal that we can use or position ourself in to basically flip it, hold it, wholesale it, but with none of our own money, okay? None of our money. So, I would say the number one thing that Mike and I preach over and over and over again when it comes to finding deals, and this is kind of irrelevant or you know, regardless of the type, but it's marketing. You can't keep your business a secret, you have to scream it from the rooftops, you got to tell everybody you know. I heard a really good quote the other day Mike, and this guy said there's only two reasons that people aren't doing business with you, and I was like okay I'm interested, what you got? And he goes: one, they don't know that you're in business or two, they forgot, right? And I was thinking, man that's so smart like yeah they may not need your business, right? But that's not the point though. It's either they don't know about you being in business to solve that problem when they find it or they forgot. So you got to tell everybody, shout it from the rooftops, you got to do the marketing. Now if you have money, you can automate this marketing and your phone will ring, and you can go do whatever you want, but the whole purpose of this podcast, this episode, this topic is doing this with no money. So when it comes to marketing, there's typically two types of marketing guys: there's paid marketing and then there's free marketing. So we're going to be focusing on the free marketing, the free marketing is time-intensive, period. Period.

Mike: It's true.

David: You're going to spend time or you're going to spend money, and when you spend money, you still typically spend some time but if you don't have any money, it's 100% time-intensive, not necessarily a bad thing but you can't sit on your couch and just expect leads to come in, you got to get out there, you got to shout from the rooftops. So what are some of the ways to go about finding deals Mike by trading time?

Mike: I'm gonna steal the best, I'm gonna steal the best one.

David: Or by using your time and not your money.

Mike: The best one, right away.

David: What is it?

Mike: This is the golden- the golden goose that just keeps on giving.

David: Okay.

Mike: It's called driving for dollars.

David: I love this one.

Mike: So again, first and foremost I think- I don't know if we hit on this but you've got to go direct to sellers. So we're doing marketing, you can't necessarily rely on just finding deals on the MLS to buy and then try to resell as a wholesaler, you can't necessarily rely on that as a landlord either because there may not be that many deals and if the market's hot, they get brought up right away. So again, going direct to seller's the way to go and finding motivated seller leads, my favorite way is driving for dollars. It's a very- it can be a little bit intense because there's so many aspects to driving for dollars but again, it's the best. Man, we've done our biggest wholesale deals from driving for dollars.

David: Yeah.

Mike: Our business deals come from driving.

David: Literally the top three have come from D4D.

Mike: It's unbelievable.

David: Yeah, absolutely.

Mike: So again, what is it? Alright, driving for dollars simply explained is this: you hop on your car, you don't even have to hop on your car, you can ride your bike around your neighborhood.

David: I've done it on my bike.

Mike: You could run, you're not going to get very many houses that way.

David: Unless you're a marathoner.

Mike: But you're looking at- you're looking at properties while you're out in your vehicle driving around and generally speaking, you're gonna look for the distressed ones and you're looking for property and what's a distressed property? Well, we've all seen the one with the gutters falling off, that's gold to you.

David: Boarded up windows, broken down cars in driveway, tarps on roofs, long grass, landscaping, trees falling down.

Mike: Broken windows.

David: Broken windows, paint chipping and peeling, etc.

Mike: That was a good summery.

David: Yeah, that was a quick one.

Mike: I like a pile of newspapers.

David: Oh, I love that.

Mike: Pile of newspapers, something like that.

David: Maybe a big old yellow sign on the front door that says-

Mike: Notice to- yeah.

David: Notice to evict or notice-

Mike: Yeah, not suitable-

David: Not suitable for living conditions.

Mike: Yeah yeah yeah.

David: Boom.

Mike: So those are gold right there, and why? Because that property's distressed in some way and if it's sitting there for a long time, the owner is probably distressed in some way, they probably don't have the means to fix it up. So again, that's just an asset that sitting there, it costs money to own whether you realize it or not, even if it's paid off, it costs money every year in taxes, hopefully in insurance, some people may skimp on that but these things cost money, these assets cost money.

David: That's right.

Mike: So yeah, very, very cool. So driving for dollars, you're looking for these little diamonds in the rough, you find them then what is the next thing? Again, you can't just drive and find these properties then magically money falls out of the air into your hands.

David: You got to market to them.

Mike: You got to locate those owners.

David: Yeah, so you can do this without any money guys, it's super easy. So you can go to the tax records and you can find the owner of that property and maybe they have a different mailing address, then the property address and you can go knock on their door. If you- I mean come on guys, this is 2021, everybody has a cell phone so you can call them and that doesn't cost you anything to just use your existing phone. If you don't have a phone number and you can't afford to pay high price skip tracing, no problem, there's free places to find people online like Facebook, you ever heard of that website before? It's pretty wild. You can find people on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, guys these are places that you can find people. You search their name and you find them, right? You can go to other websites like truepeoplesearch.com.

Mike: I love that one.

David: truepeoplesearch, this is a free skip-tracing site. Maybe only 50% of the time is it going to give you the right phone number but the other 50% of time, you're going to be able to get a lo- locate a seller or a property owners phone number for free without spending any money at all, right? Once you get the number, you should call them, you should text them and again, it's 2021, I'm assuming that everybody has an unlimited plan or at least access to a phone. That's not included in no money, that's- you have to have that to live your life at this point I feel like, right? So if you don't have it, I'm sorry I don't mean to offend you by any means, but you should have a phone in my opinion. So, you're going to use some of the things that you already have like your car, go knock on doors, right? Call people that you get from driving for dollars, right? So D4D is just one scenario, there's a couple other things that we can do to find these deals. D4D is one of my favorites, I think Mike agrees on that as well. Networking, networking is huge. Talk to agents that come across really really bad listing opportunities. Talk to your friends and family and tell them that you buy houses. I get a lead a month probably, Mike too, Mike too, I don't want to discount Mike, Mike too, we both get a lead a month probably from people that say, hey I see you posting on Facebook that you buy houses or I've seen you on social media for 5 or 6 years now talking about this and my colleague at work is moving and they don't want to hire an agent, they just want a cash offer. They know they're going to leave some money on the table but they want convenience. Boom. Well again, if we didn't shout from the rooftops that we're in the business of buying houses, those leads would never come to us, right? So I think networking is a massive thing. It's going to cost time guys, it doesn't cost money, it costs time. You can't network when you're on the couch, you got to get out and meet people and shake hands and build relationships.

Mike: Have you seen that- it's a tiktoker I think. I don't know if he's on YouTube or whatever but he's like, he uses a green screen and he's doing networking like meetings you know, but he's like on a motorcycle and he's got a green screen strapped to him.

David: Hey, how are you?

Mike: And he's like on a jet ski and he's on a- but it looks like he's in his office because of the green screen, so I mean-

David: Good to see you guys.

Mike: Barring exceptions like that.

David: Right right.

Mike: You're right, you have to go-

David: [inaudible] be the exception.

Mike: You have to get out there to network.

David: You gotta get out there to network guys.

Mike: You got to talk to people, you've got to post it on your socials.

David: What's another way if you don't want to door-knock, you don't want to drive for dollars and you're not good at networking, right? Go on Craigslist, go on Facebook Marketplace, go on Zillow, you guys have heard of these websites before. Go find properties that are listed for sale by owner. They- if they're listed for sale by owner, they're giving you a way to contact them. Call the phone number, text the phone number, send the email or send a direct message through the social media site itself, reach out to them and just say, hey I'm an investor, I don't typically pay retail, I see you're asking 100, would you take 60 for it? You're going to get no 99 times out of 100, but if you do 300 of them, one or two or three of those people are going to say, you know what? 60 is a little low, but I could do 65 and then boom, you got a deal. Boom, you got a deal, right. So you can call these people, right? On that same note, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, Zillow, they are- they have tools to list properties for rent. I just mentioned for sale by owner but on the flip side, you can go find people that have properties for rent, sometimes people will rent a property because they think they can't sell it, other times people will rent a property because they don't know any other option, it's always been a rental, right? And sometimes people are tired of having to deal with tenants, they're tired of having to rent properties and when you call them and you say, hey my name is Dave, I'm with Household Easy. I see you got this post on Facebook or Craigslist about you know, this property on Main Street that you're trying to rent. Sorry to bother you, I actually have no interest in renting, you know, but I would love to buy it. Do you have any interest in selling it? And again, 99 times out of 100 the answer is probably going to be no, but if you do enough of these, somebody\ is going to say, you know what? I'm so glad you called. I didn't even know that was an option. I just have always rented it, I thought that's what I needed to keep doing. I freaking hate the rental business. Yes, make me an offer, make me an offer and you're going to be able to find deals that way. So it's a time business, right? Marketing is time-intensive or monetary intensive. You basically have to have a budget of money or a budget of time and if you have both, even better. The sake of this conversation, the topic, this podcast, is about doing it with no money. [sneezes] Excuse me, I'm getting excited. And if you do it with no money, you just got to understand, you got to get it in your head guys that it's going to cost time. So if you get that and you're willing to put the time in, budget the time. Don't just say I'll do it, I'm willing to do that and then you do it once or twice and then nothing happens, set aside an hour every evening, set aside 2 hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, set aside 4 hours on Saturday. It's better to set aside a little bit of time more often than a lot of time less often, here's why: let's say you're like, hey Dave I can't do this Monday through Friday but I'm wide open Saturday and I got 6 or 8 hours on Saturday. Well, next Saturday it's your cousin's birthday, you're going to be, you know, at the birthday party and then the following Saturday, you're sick and you don't want to do nothing and then the Saturday after that, you get invited to a baseball game with your friends or whatever, a sporting event and you go, well boom, that's three weeks of no marketing, nothing happened. So don't put yourself in a position to where you can easily fail and that's why I say don't try to bulk your marketing on one day of the week, instead you're better off doing 20 or 30 minutes Monday, Wednesday, Friday. You literally are, you're better off because if you missed Friday, you got Monday and Wednesday, and then the following week, you're back again, right? Don't miss the big periods, miss the small ones. Best piece of advice would be when it comes to marketing is just consistency. Don't try to do a ton of it all at once, just do a little bit of it everyday guys, everyday.

Mike: It's kinda like exercise.

David: It's just like exercise.

Mike: You cannot go-

David: Go run a marathon and see how far you get without preparing for that.

Mike: Well, I was gonna say like weight loss, you can't go to the gym for 14 hours.

David: No. I'm gonna lose 15 pounds today, I'll see you tomorrow, yeah it doesn't work that way guys.

Mike: It would be nice.

David: That's a great analogy Mike, that is a fabulous analogy.

Mike: You're gonna have to- You're gonna have to be consistent.

David: I'm feeling chubby, I'll see you in three days. No, it doesn't work that way. You're going to come back with your arms in casts and not be able to walk. It doesn't work that way

Mike: Oh, that's funny.

David: Great analogy.

Mike: All right, let's talk about a couple other great ways to market.

David: Love it man.

Mike: Now, some of these will cost a few dollars but we're not talking about actual like real investing in the real estate itself. So one of them, one of my favorites, one of the ways that I got started was throwing out those bandits signs.

David: Bandit signs are great guys.

Mike: Yeah, so-

David: Basically it's a no money type of marketing, you're gonna spend a little tiny tiny tiny bit.

Mike: Eh, couple bucks.

David: But check this out, you don't need to spend money on this either Mike, you can get creative and go find cardboard boxes.

Mike: We got a bunch of them.

David: We've all seen this. You guys are probably subscribed to Amazon and on Prime and you buying a bunch of shit all day long already, let's be honest. Every box can be a bandit sign.

Mike: I love that.

David: It can be. So you're not really spending, you don't have to but you're going to- you're going to spend time writing on them with a black sharpie that says: We buy houses, call me with my number and driving around and placing those on telephone poles or stop signs.

Mike: So turn your wife's Amazon shopping habit into-

David: Into a profitable marketing solution.

Mike: I love it. I'm going to start doing that man. I'mma start taking those boxes cuz I've been-

David: And they fill up my trash can too.

Mike: Dude, every week we got freaking 10, 15 boxes in there. It's crazy man, it's crazy.

David: Love it man, love it. I'm sure we have one more before we wrap up this episode. So let's do a quick recap guys. D4D is a great way to find those deals, networking is a great way to find those deals, cold calling or cold texting people that are for sale by owners and there's multiple places to find them and/or calling the landlords and seeing hey are you tired of being a landlord? Instead of renting it, would you rather sell it? I know we got at least one or two more, bandit signs was the next one.

Mike: Bandit signs is another good one. Let's talk about lists for a second here.

David: Sure, sure.

Mike: So you can also go out and purchase lists and then you can either call them so it's gonna take a lot of time or you could send them direct mail. So both of these are minimally expensive, they do cost a little bit of money.

David: You know how you can do it with no money? I can tell you right now.

Mike: Dude I love this, let's go.

David: You can find an investor that's already doing deals and buying houses and you can say, hey I need a little help getting started in this game. If you buy me a list, I will cold call every lead on it personally. Boom, done. You want $150 from me to go buy a list to get me my next rental property? Done, let's go. So partnering guys, joint venturing, we talked about this in the last episode. Use your- use your likeness, your ability to make a friend to get into a joint venture agreement. It's just a- it's a joint venture on marketing versus a deal itself. There's no difference though, it's a joint venture.

Mike: Clever.

David: Love that.

Mike: Clever.

David: Yes, absolutely.

Mike: Cool.

David: So, guys we've just given you tons of ways to find deals, most of which, almost all actually, were ways to do this with none of your own money. So again, check out the last episode if you haven't listened to that already. It's going to break down some of the ways to invest and we like to refer to those you know, typical ways as the big three. This episode was all about how to find deals. You can do this, it's not that hard, just know that you have to put in the time and then again guys, be consistent. Don't try to do 6 or 8 hours Saturday and then miss three Saturdays in a row and before you know it, 30 days goes by. Do it daily or every other day or two or three times a week because then if you miss, you're not really missing much, you're missing an hour's worth of marketing, you're going to do another hour tomorrow.

Mike: Perfect.

David: Anything to add Mike?

Mike: Uh-uh.

David: That's it. Thanks for listening guys. 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