David: Alright guys thanks for joining us today. I am your host David Dodge with the Discount Property Investor podcast. Mike is out in the field today. However, I am joined by Michael Batista. Have I got that right, Michael?

Michael: You got it, man.

David: How you doing today, buddy?

Michael: I'm ecstatic, thrilled to be on here.

David: Cool, man. We are happy to have you. So those who have been following us, listening and watching us on YouTube and whatnot; this is the first time we are going to be publishing an episode with me and Michael. However we have done a podcast about a year ago. You were working a product. We had done it a little bit prior to you launching that product. The launch got delayed and we just never put that podcast out. So we are re-doing this episode. I am actually really excited to have you back on the show again. This is the second time around for me and you, but the first time around for our audience.
Michael: Awesome.

David: Real quick, give us a quick introduction of who you are, where you are located, and tell us a little bit about what type of investing you are doing with real estate right now.

Michael: Basically I live down in Florida in Fort Charlotte. I focus specifically on the creative financing side of deals. Owner financing, lease purchasing, lease option wholesaling. Whatever you want to call it. I have just been doing that type of deal structure. I haven't done any flips, any wholesaling. It's just been this creative structure of the business. This particular platform is more geared towards you lease option wholesaling, you home owner financing acquisition on a massive scale.
David: What do you mean on a massive scale?

Michael: What you are able to do with the platform is you can pull dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of listings all within the same day. Then send out a massive text messaging campaign and reach people within minutes. It's crazy. We generally get 30-50% response rates with our campaigns. We have really-- it's an on demand lead system for people who want to talk to people right away, and put together deals same day.

David: Awesome,man. That sounds really cool. So what's it called? What is the system called?

Michael: The system is called the Automated REI for real estate investor.
David: You got a website?

Michael: Yep, TheAutomatedREI.com, absolutely.

David: Okay, man. Cool. Are you currently doing lease option deals in your market or other markets? Or are your primarily focused on this software? Or both?

Michael: So I have been doing real estate for about two years. Really for the first year I was using some other techniques and things of that nature like cold calling, maybe cold texting, virtual assistants.

David: Sure.

Michael: A lot of time was spent, a lot of money was spent kind of doing all that stuff manually, right? I found out how much I hated cold calling. Some people are wired for it, but I am not a fan of it, not at all. For my first year I kind of struggled through that entire process. Really this last year really took on this project as a whole. Been focusing specifically on that. I am not someone who can generally do multiple things at the same time. If I do I don't usually get things done. I have just been focusing on creating this particular platform for myself and for others who are watching this podcast.

David: Okay cool, man. Let's-- you are going to give us a demo today, right?

Michael: Yep, I will be taking everyone through a live demo of how the platform works, what features it has. Things that will be up and coming, an overall time frame including costs.

David: Okay, very cool,man. What we're going to do if you're listening to this podcast, Michael and I are going to do our best to describe what we're looking at. If you're watching it, you're going to be just fine, you will be able to see what we see. But if you are listening to just the audio, we are going to do our absolute best to describe what we're looking at. That way you can get an idea of what this software can do to help you and how it works. So Michael if you want to take over the screen sharing. That would be fantastic.

Michael: Absolutely. For those guys watching, I will go ahead and do that live demo. For those that are listening, really the best description is we pull data from the most popular real estate websites. Right now we are doing Zillow. In about 30-45 days from when this podcast is launched, we will actually have Craigslist implemented as well. It works as a scraping platform. For those of you who are not familiar, it basically catches all of the data, all of the listings that are on those websites, then creates a nice easy to read spreadsheet for you. Then we take it one step further by implementing a mass marketing campaign; in particular text messaging. The reason we use text messaging is because we have found that is generally speaking the best response rates, the most cost effective way to put our voice, our written message in front of someone.

David: Just to recap here for those who can not see the screen, you're scraping data-- are you scraping it from multiple places or just Zillow at this point?

Michael: As of this particular recording it's Zillow.

David: Cool, then I would imagine you guys are probably working on other sources for the future?

Michael: Yes, we will be adding Craigslist about 30-45 days-- it's in the works right now, so it is in development.

David: Perfect, okay cool. So you're scraping data from Zillow. You focus more on the lease option side of the business. , so what are you looking for whenever people go in an scrape the data or your software does it? Tell the software what you're looking for? Or does it do it for you? How does that work?

Michael: Right so I set up my campaign. In particular, I like to pull data on the for sale by owner site. We are working on an actually process to effectively scrape the data for the real estate buy agents. We can still pull that data, but in terms of a massive text message campaign, two agents that is not effective right now.

David: You want to try and reach the other or the seller directly, versus going through the agent.

 

Michael: Correct. So what we do is scrape that date from the owner. I like to send out a campaign that sounds like something along the lines of, 'Saw your house advertised online, definitely interested. Would be you consider doing a short term 9-18 month lease purchase/rent to own?' It's a very straight forward message. Generally speaking that message gets me 30-50% response rate consistently across the board.

David: Man, that's awesome. That is amazing.

Michael: This is in every market in the United States. I have been testing this platform for about a year now, working in different markets, different messages. The message is around that 30-50% consistently. It could go up or down if you get more specific or less specific. But you have the ability to be able to customize your message however you want.

David: Okay cool. Well, let's jump into the demo here. So we are logged into TheAutomatedREI.com for those who are listening. Michael has a dashboard pulled up here. Michael, what am I looking at here?
Michael: Okay once you log into the account, you come to this dashboard. There are a few different things going on. We tried to keep this system very user-friendly, clean. So when you look at this dashboard it is also mirrored. So everything on this dashboard is also available on the left hand panel here.

David: Okay.

Michael: So we have our account details, that would be like your name, e-mail address, phone number, PayPal address, what kind of account you are. Then we have Zillow scraping, that's our Zillow scraping module. The scraping history, for scrapes that have been done in the past. I have my text messaging campaign, my texting campaign history. Then I have my incoming voice mail box. So a certain percentage of people will actually call you when you send them a text message.

David: What phone system are you guys using? Do you have your own system integrated in here? Or is there a company you have to use as well? How does that work?

Michael: We actually designed this from the ground up. Basically right now we wanted to keep it simple. We don't have a phone system per say where you can make calls in and calls out and all that kind of stuff. It really is just a voice mail box that lets people call you back. My voice mail is very straight forward it says, hey this is Michael, I am not here right now, just leave a message. Okay? I found that to be the most effective way to get data and have things be consistent without over complicating things.

David: Yeah, okay.

Michael: Then you have your help and support. Now you may have used a platform like this in the past, or may have used another scraping system. The reasons that they may or may not have worked are because Zillow, particularly Craigslist are always changing their algorithms, okay? They are always coming up with new ways to basically stop us from scraping data. So we maintain a support staff five days a week, it's on a weekly basis, a monthly basis consistently. So most tickets can be resolved within 24 hours. Also any type of algorithm changes, our teams are constantly monitoring our servers, and monitoring the code within Zillow, and will be Craigslist moving forward on a daily basis. So as soon as those algorithms change, we are on top of that and we can quickly re-code a fix for that new change, and make sure that we stay online. So this is something-- so this is something that hasn't really been done in the past. We also get around the issues with all that. So everything is integrated within our platform.

David: Very cool. Well let's test it out, man. Show us how this works. We going to be scraping today? Probably want to take advantage of these efforts.

Michael: Yeah absolutely. What market are you in, David?
David: St Louis.

Michael: St Louis, okay. Let's do a test in St Louis. I will do for sale by owner. Now I will search by city; St Louis Missouri. Zillow sees this is a keyword whatever we type in.

David: St Louis is kind of strange because it could be ST.Louis, or Saint. Could go either way there really isn't a right or wrong.

Michael: Okay
David: It could go either way, there is really no right or wrong.

Michael: Okay. As long as Zillow recognizes either or, then our platform is basically mirrored up with that.

David: Okay, cool. You can upload zip codes if you want to do that as well, for those people listening.

Michael: Correct, so you can upload a maximum of 15 zip codes per search. So if you want to do more than 15 you just do multiple different campaigns.
David: Sure.

Michael: If you want to be more defined I would recommend doing that. But for this demo, we will just do it by city, keep it simple here. Once I type in St Louis, the keyword box becomes checked.

David: Okay.

Michael: I will click on my filters box, and I can also do for rent as well. Zillow does allow us to do for rent. Just keep in mind that if you do for rent, when you check this make sure the agent box is checked as well. Most properties on Zillow are going to be by agents, or by property management companies.

David: Right, right. Today we are just going to stick to for sale by owners. Listing type as for sale, then you have the by owner, not by agent checked.

Michael: Yes, and this pulls every property that would be associated with buyer, by owner so--.

David: Cool. So if we then wanted to narrow it down, we could do min and max price, and then home type as well.

Michael: Absolutely. Then you have your additional filters right here; bathrooms, square footage.

David: Oh cool. So you are basically using the data that Zillow is already providing, then just sorting it?

Michael: Yep you got it, man. I could do a T word here, so pull up pool homes, whatever I want.

David: Cool, very cool.

Michael: Submit that. Now when I do a campaign, I want to set it out for a couple of minutes ahead of time. Or If I want to do a campaign maybe today is Monday or Tuesday, and I want the data delivered on Friday. I have a full schedule system here. So I could set up a date--

David: Michael I am going to interrupt you for one second here. What would be the reason that someone would want to do that? Why would someone-- I guess run this software at some future time versus just in real time?

Michael: Yeah, if you want the data immediately great, if you want to start working on it immediately that's fine. But if you want a fresh campaign to come out with all the new listings the next week, or on a particular day; you would go ahead and set a future campaign up.

David: Got it. So it gives you the ability to do just that, which is cool.
Michael: Yeah exactly. But just for this demo, we will do the same day here. I got a couple of minutes ahead. Each user has the ability to call up to 250 listings per day for free, okay? If you want to above and beyond 250 listings, the system will allow you to do that as well. You pay 1 and a half cents per listing anything beyond 250. So for example here I have used all of my 250 scrapes for the day. So I have 250, and I am pulling 500, so I am going to charged $5. Basically 1 and a half cents above and beyond that. I would hit proceed here, okay?

David: I am going to interrupt you one more time here real quick. You said you get 250 free-- that's basically pulling the data, that's nothing to do with the actual texting, right?

Michael: That's correct, yes. So I am just double-checking one thing, okay.

David: How much is it per additional?

Michael: If you want to do additional scrapes-- above the 250, then it's 1 and a half cents per listing.
David: So point 0.15.

Michael: Correct.

David: Got it, per listing. Okay very cool. Let's do it, man. Let's test her out.

Michael: Then I would hit proceed here. Once I proceed I will create my campaign. Now the campaign is going live. This is what will happen. So I will hit scraping history here. So the system is scheduled to go out in about two minutes, okay? This is what the data looks like, so then we go to schedule and it will say processing, okay? This status will change to processing. The data is pulled real time, so because of the algorithms and everything Zillow and Craigslist has-- basically these listings are sorted one by one, and they are all processed in real time for you. Usually they are going to be delivered within just a few minutes, okay?

David: That 250 is-- a day? People can pull 250 a day? Is that basically right?
Michael: For free yes, 250 a day.

David: 250 then they have to pay the 1 and a half cents, okay.
Michael: That's correct. Other than the monthly subscription with your discount David of course is $99 a month.

David: Okay very cool.

Michael: That includes the 250 a day, then above that is one and a half cents each.

David: Sure, okay cool.

Michael: That is going to serve your average user. Power users are maybe going to want more than that. So this is what the data looks like when it's pulled. We have a quick view, okay? So I hit view right here, and I can see I have pulled my URL, I have pulled my address, price of the property, owners contact number.

David: Oh wow, that's pretty neat.

Michael: Then I hit download here. Once I hit download I would then would go ahead and want to start and SMS. See the start SMS button on the side?
David: All from this right here, got it.

Michael: When you send a text message, our rates are very competitive. We are about three cents a message to send, and three cents to receive. I will do text 65 St Louis. If I have additional data, I can upload extra contacts. So if I have other phone number lists that I want to upload I can do that.
David: Got it.

Michael: Now I have-- select voicemail recording; so maybe I have multiple voice mail boxes, maybe there is a different person you want on your voicemail, whatever you want to do. You can do-- mind just sounds very simple, it's hey this is Michael, leave a message.

David: Yeah keep it simple. We are all about simplicity here. Again, this phone isn't going to ring any particular phone, it's just going to go straight to a voicemail assuming that they call it. Text it then you will be able to receive those in another area I'm assuming?
Michael: Yes absolutely. So that's all implemented here. And then we have actually done, David, is we have created a system that allows us to send on a massive scale ten-digit phone numbers, ten-digit message. Normally when you do a massive text campaign, you associated that with a shortcode.
David: Yeah.

Michael: Most major companies are going to use short codes like Pepsi, TNT, whatever. What happens is we found in our testing that our response rates in our short code was 11-24%, which is pretty good, but as soon as we went from short codes to ten digit phone numbers our response rates jumped up to 30% minimum.

David: Almost double or triple.

Michael: Triple yeah, it's crazy. So 30% minimum. 40-50% is usually our average, okay? The highest campaign I have ever gotten, or highest percentage was 77% in the State of Iowa.
David: Holy cow! We use a texting service, and we had a short code for the first year and a half that we were using it.

Michael: Right.

David: They came out with the ability to add the ten digit numbers so we jumped on that. Yep, I totally hear ya, man. Our response rates went through the roof. Whenever we had a real number that also forwards to our company. So if someone wants to text it, we will get an e-mail. But if they just want to call that number back, it is forwarded straight over to our company. Definitely a lot more powerful than the shortcuts. I definitely can attest to that, that's great.

Michael: Absolutely. Again, you have a full scheduler here as well, so if you are up at 4am, you probably don't want your text message to go out at 4am. I would recommend somewhere between the hours of 9am local time to 8pm local time.

David: Sure, reasonable hours.

Michael: Yeah. I have found as long as I am within those hours, the response rates don't vary a whole lot.

David: Sure.

Michael: They are pretty consistent as long as you are there. Then we have also implemented a system with this. When we did a short code campaign versus a long code campaign, or a ten-digit phone number; if we sent out more than 200 text messages with our ten-digit phone numbers, we were actually getting blocked by the carriers. ATNT, Horizon, T-mobile, Sprint, whoever will block us. So we created this system called a looper system, okay? Let's say you send out 1000 text messages. The platform will send out 200 text messages with one phone number, okay? Then as soon as it has sent the 200, it will flip out with another phone number and send 200 more, then so on and so forth until you actually have completed your campaign. So our system is sophisticated enough to do that for you as well. Our response rates-- sorry, our delivery rates are real close to 100% because of that.

David: Sure.

Michael: That's how we get around it. So again, we will do a text message here. So if I send out my text message I maybe want that to go out in a few minutes if I want it immediately, even though it's ahead of me. Down here I will create my text message. I usually use, I saw your house advertised and I am definitely interested, would you consider a short term 9-18 month lease purchase/rent to own? Very straight forward campaign. I try-- any text message you send, I recommend doing 160 characters or less. That way it sends through with--

David: One message versus breaking it up into pieces for certain--

Michael: Exactly. So once I have that message in here I would just hit start. This is what it looks like when the text campaign is complete.
David: Okay.

Michael: I will use this one for example. So I hit view, see here is the message that I sent out. Here is the phone numbers that were associated with the campaign. So this is-- I sent this to Baltimore, a 407 area code is Orlando, okay? Actually all these numbers I believe are Florida.

David: Right, but it doesn't really matter though. Because you can still have a property and live in another area, have an area code from years ago, live in a different part of the country. This isn't as important as matching the number to the property address, that is the biggest problem we have. We don't do a ton of lease options, we do a few here and there. But our biggest problem is just finding motivated sellers.

Michael: Sure.

David: We can send out mail campaign and it can be anywhere from zero percent up to as high as five, six, seven percent on a really good one. Very rarely is it even close to ten percent. Usually it is only two, three, four percent. I would say average three or four percent. But again, that is just sending the letter out. If we can skip trace those people, then just call them. It makes more sense to us, and actually more cost effective to do that as well. I love the fact you are going for the people that are advertising their home for sale by owner, and they are providing their phone numbers. You are getting right to the seller, and you know they are wanting to sell, their motivation may not be-- at the peak I am looking for as a wholesaler. However-- you're reaching them, so that's all that matters. That's great, I didn't mean to interrupt you, I just wanted to get that in there.

Michael: Yeah, any opportunity, and this is what this is design to do. Instead of making cold calls, maybe train a VA, do all this extra stuff. It takes all of that barrier away, right? The idea is that you send out a mass text, okay? And you get responses back to people saying, yes I would consider your offer, let's talk about it.

David: Sure.

Michael: I am going to show that here now. So after I have sent that text message, you can see right off of that I had someone right here that says, I will consider that, happy to discuss that option. This one did a voice mail and they called me back.

David: They sent a text back then a voice mail later it looks like?

Michael: Correct yep, they did both.

David: That's a pretty motivated seller right there.

Michael: Absolutely, they need your help. So here is another one. Then as I scroll down, there is another one. You can even consider which property-- it might be an investor who has more than one property.

David: Yeah, okay. So the ones that don't have the message response, that just means that it was sent, but they didn't respond though, right?

Michael: They didn't respond. The system is basically just a one way system. So what happens is-- if you send out the text and they respond back to you; that's basically it. It's not a two way system, and the reason we do that I think, there are some other systems out there that I think might be like that.

David: Adds a layer of complexity. If they are interested they are going to call.

Michael: Exactly, I think we get away from that. We want to try and text and do all this stuff

David: That's a really easy barrier in my opinion to overcome. The fact you can call them and say that was one of my assistants texting you on my behalf. This is my phone number to reach me, call me back on this line. So no big deal at all. So you can basically see if they respond, and or if they send you a voice mail, or call back and leave a voice mail.

Michael: Absolutely. Here is three more, right? Just from a glance, you can see--

David: How long did it take for you to-- get the responses? As we all know, everyone has a cell phone these days, everyone carries it. I kind of refer to my cell phone as a digital leash. I operate my business and my life, my wife and everyone else has to reach me all the time, my business partner. I would think the response is basically-- within 24 hours you are probably going to get 95% of the people responding. Is that a good estimate?
Michael: Yeah. Actually, I would say within the first hour you get 60-70% responses.

David: 24 hours is way too far ahead.

Michael: 24 hours you are going to get-- I would say that is your probably maximum window.

David: If it's over that people are probably not going to respond.

Michael: Exactly.

David: So one hour 60%, maybe four to six gets you up to about 90.

Michael: Yeah. You got it. Then obviously time is of the essence. As soon as they respond, you just check your campaign. Okay I got some new responses, let me just call them right now. That's really--
David: What do you advise? Because I like that the system is simple. However it looks like it would be difficult to track those who had texts right away, and those who had texts six hours later. So I am with you on getting back to them, because time is of the essence as you just said. So in this case you just download it maybe an hour later, then go back and download it again six hours later, then delete off the ones you have already called.
Michael: Yeah that is exactly right. This campaign of course has matured for 24 hours. After that period-- heck you could even wait 24 hours before you make your calls.

David: Sure.

Michael: This house is going to sell today most likely. So if you call them tomorrow it is probably going to already be on the market. So you hit download here--
David: It doesn't really matter if you are doing it right, right away then?

Michael: Exactly, so I mean these are on Zillow, these are on Craigslist.  That's what we are going to be leveraging.
David: Sure.

Michael: Alright, I now have the data. So again, just from a glance, guys, you can see-- I probably have at least 40 if not 50% response, okay? I sent 90 T-text messages. I don't know the exact number of responses on this. But again, I am just showing you at at--
David: It looks really high, it is definitely higher than 50% in my opinion, just from you scrolling.

 

Michael: Yep you got it. Once I have hit download, this is basically what the campaign looks like. I will upload it into a spreadsheet. I have my Zillow campaign, my address, my Zillow link.

David: Now the Zillow link, that can come in handy. That way when you're talking to them you can pull that up and actually see pictures of the house as well as data on the particular house. So you don't need to waste time being like, is it a three bedroom two bath? Because that information is most likely online.

Michael: Exactly.

David: At that point when you make the call, you are basically just saying, hey-- do you tell them that you're an investor? How does the [00:33:13.09 - inaudible] go from there, Michael?

Michael: You know, you could really do whatever you want to do. What I would recommend is saying that you have a list of tenant buyers that are qualified, that you would like to put them in the property. Basically, go through whatever coaching or whatever training program that you have done in the past. Leverage what you have learned from them, and basically what talk off you have learned from them. Then really use this system to run with your training. Then again, I don't know if you use [00:33:52.25 - inaudible], anyone who is big in that system, right? They all have great training programs. So that's who this system is really going to be best suited for. Just learn that, and use this. You have your hot leads and you go to work.

David: Man, it has almost been a year since we did our first run at this. I remember you were having some difficulties with the software. You basically scrapped it and started all the way from scratch. So I commend you on your efforts and your persistence. That's a great skill.

Michael: I tell you what, man, it was frustrating. We had three months of development, had to be totally scrapped because the code changed. I ended up finding a better development team who understands the different algorithm changes on a higher level. We really went to work on this. In fact the last six months were just spent on polishing the platform. We had a working version and people could do all that six months ago. But I wanted to make sure we worked out as many bugs as possible. Servers can support people who are getting on the platform, so on and so forth.

David: Right.

Michael: Again, the most important thing for me was bringing out a product that is going to be able to help as many people as possible, but work, right? Not work today but work for the long term, years from now. Here's the thing, Facebook isn't going away, now text message is interrogated with your Facebook messenger. That's huge. Everyone that you text is probably on Facebook, okay? Because they have their house on Zillow, if they have their house on Zillow, they are in with technology.
David: Right.

Michael: So that's really the reality of it. Then as soon as we leverage Craigslist you will just have double the data to pull.

David: I am looking forward to testing this out, Michael. This is really cool. I don't do a ton of lease options, do a couple here and there. We are primarily wholesale rehab and rental company here in St Louis. But this system seems like it is going to make it so easy for me to break into the lease option space.

Michael: Here's a cool thing. Again, this is the first time I am basically going to show this idea. When we add in Craigslist, you are going to be able to leverage this platform to co-wholesale. I don't know if you do co-wholesaling.

David: We do, we actually do quite a bit of co-wholesaling. We have a website, letscowholesale.com.

Michael: Oh perfect.

David: It's just a landing page that we use Podio web form. We advertise it at all local REIA's. So it is definitely not advertising anywhere nationally because it is just a St Louis type of program. But basically we can leverage the efforts of other wholesaler's marketing, and they can leverage our efforts of building a massive buyers list, over 10,000 buyers. It's a win, win.

Michael: So you are going to love this, is when you go on Craigslist and you click on real estate for sale, right? You scroll down and you click this drop-down arrow, and you have real estate. Everyone inside of this list generally speaking is going to be a wholesaler. Most people in this spot. Most people we buy houses guys. So you can quickly create a list of either buyers or a list of inventory, right? That you get from this system, okay? Then you can upload them, or turn around and market back to them and say, hey do you have any properties? I am looking for a flip, or I am looking for a property, right? Then you can re-market back out to kind of the same list, minus those you just got the property from. Let's say you have got a list of inventory, and you want to co-wholesale property one, two and three, you could re-market back out with the same system.

David: I love it.  If you have properties on your website for example, you could just send these people a link.

Michael: A link or a mass text to all of the buyers. Just leverage it that way. There is kind of another neat way to use it.

David: Very cool.

Michael: So yeah like I said, this system is really simple to use, it's straightforward, there is not a lot of things going on, it does two things very well. It scrapes data, and it sends out mass texts. We are adding some extra features. Like right now you have to-- merge the data manually. So if I had a text message here, and I copy it; I have to bring it over to this list, let me show ya, 8221-- alright I have to actually copy and paste this. So this can take a little bit of time. The first update will have an auto-merge feature where we automatically merge the text with this, okay? So that's coming. Actually have some other updates as well, where we will be doing what is called address specific texting. What's cool about that is, instead of just sending out a massive text to one list, I can now use address specific texting to go after real estate for sale by agent properties. If I sent out a mass text to a list of agents and say, would you consider selling your house for rent to own? They are going to respond back to me with the same message every time that says, which house are you talking about? Any good agent is going to have more than one property.

David: Not only that but they are not going to necessarily get paid as much on that type of deal, than if they were to find a buyer outright.

Michael: Correct.

David: Not going to be as motivated to want to work with you.

Michael: Right, exactly. There is actually structures, there is ways that have been taught, or you can do these deals so that agents still get their full 3 or 6% commission or however they are structuring it now. But basically we leverage the for sale by agent by using address specific texting. We can still send a massive text. But instead of saying that general message, we can say, hey sell your house on 123 main street, would you client consider doing a rent to own on a short term basis?

David: Right.

Michael: Then they have a real message in front of them, they know what property you're talking about. They can call that owner quick and say, hey I have this offer, would you consider doing it? Then they can get back to you.

David: You guys are doing the looper system with the phone numbers. I think that's awesome. Just kind of a way of bypassing getting the numbers blocked, so on and so forth. Does your guys system have hundreds if not thousands of phone numbers that it uses? Then do they forward back to the same user? How does that work? That a little bit behind the scene, a little bit of a higher-level question. If you could give me a quick example that would be awesome.

Michael: So the system knows how many phone numbers you need to have on your platform before it sends out that text. So if you are trying send out 1000 messages--

David: It might not be a local number it's getting sent from then? Or is it--?

Michael: You can buy as many numbers are you want. You pay $2 a month to rent the phone number. But you request a number here, okay? Then you can put in-- lets say 407 area code, Florida.

David: Very cool. Buy as many numbers as you need.

Michael: Exactly. Yep two bucks a month. How it will work is--

David: Send out a campaign with 1000 numbers and you only have say, four numbers purchased. Say you need to buy another number.

Michael: Yeah it will say buy another-- buy another number or two numbers. It says you need to buy at least one more. So then you will go into your system you will buy-- now you can do your campaign without--

David: Very cool, very cool.

Michael: That's how it's programmed, it's all very sophisticated. It is simple but it is sophisticated on the back end. Make sure it's user friends for you guys.

David: Sure.

Michael: We handle all the technical stuff, and just let you focus on what you do best; making money doing deals helping people.

David: This is awesome, man. Very cool. I am thrilled to have you on the show. Thanks for coming back, we could have published that first episode but things happen. It's a great story of persistence. The fact that you scrapped it after three months and started over. Basically been about a year since we spoke. Here you are with a system that looks like it's awesome and working. Getting response rates of 30-50%. A cheap multi-subscription of 99 bucks, this is kind of a no brainer for anybody that's looking to do either more marketing, or get into marketing for lease options. But it really can be for anybody that's looking to buy real estate. Doesn't have to be lease options. I think this is probably a really good system for lease options, but could be great for anybody looking to pick up more rental properties, or just buy a property in general too.

Michael: Absolutely. It could be leveraged either way. That's the beauty of the platform. However you want to send your text message, you can say, hey I'm a cash buyer. You can even potentially leverage this platform for wholesaling. I mean the difference is you are not targeting off market properties, you are targeting properties off Craigslist or Zillow with this platform in particular. You could still potentially pick up wholesale deals as well.

David: Yeah definitely, they are going to be few and far between just like any other type of marketing. You are really looking for that highly motivated individual for a wholesale. You have to buy great and be able to sell good. You still have to be able to sell that deal at a really good discount. You are going to have a lot less, I shouldn't say response rates, but closing rates on this particular deals. But so what? The cost of the marketing is very inexpensive and that's the important thing.

Michael: Right. We have calculated that if you send out 1000 text messages, again we are at 3 cents a message, plus your subscription. Let's assume you don't use any excess scraping at 250 a day. You are basically looking at $130 a month in marketing. Okay?  If you send out 1000 texts, you get 30% response rate, right? That is going to be 300 people who text back, okay? 300 who text back minimum. Generally, 30-40% of those people are going to be positive. That's a translation of 1000 cold calls, or 1000 manual texts, that is 1000 pieces of hand-sorted data.

David: Absolutely, I’m with you 100%. I am thinking I am going to test this out in my local market first thing tomorrow. I am just-- going to send out a message that says, hey I'm an investor and I don't typically pay retail, however I am a cash buyer, are you interested in working with me? Just see what kind of responses I get on that. Try something else, you got to trial and error sometimes, right?

Michael: Yeah, but that's the great thing, it's predictable every time with-- at least on the lease option side it's predictable every time. So by sending out 1000 texts I know that if I get 20-30% positive response out my total response--
David: That's 200-300 people!

Michael: That's about 60-90 leads that I can call tomorrow or today. It's crazy. These are highly targeted people that say yes, lets get a deal or lets talk about it. You just think about how much time you will save. It's 10-20 times more efficient. Either you or your VA, so it's great.

David: This is cool, man. This is very cool. Well Michael thanks again for coming on the show. I don't want to go too long here because we want to keep our episodes at a reasonable length. This is going to be a difficult episode for those that are just listening. So I highly recommend going and watching this on our YouTube channel; Discount Property Investor. You will get a lot more value out of it that way. But if you're listening, to you TheAutomatedREI.com. Michael, how would someone reach out to you if they had questions? Is there a support, e-mail or phone number on that particular site? Or do you want to give out a particular way for someone to reach you?

Michael: Absolutely. So if you go on our website, down at the bottom of the site is my personal cell phone number. So you can call, you can text, or you can drop me an email at [email protected]. Then phone number is 608-432-5606. Okay guys? Again you can send me a text, give me a call, whatever you need I'm here. Also at the bottom of David's link, or included with his information, just look for his discount. He will have a discount code. That will bring your monthly subscription from $119 a month down to $99 a month. So we take $20 off, if you go directly through David, help his pod cast out, and we love to work with you. Thanks guys for tuning in, appreciate it.

David: Thanks for the discount. I am sure the listeners will appreciate that, and I am going to take advantage of that myself, that's awesome. So Michael send me that link and I will add in whenever we publish this here. It will probably be about two weeks or so give or take, but yeah. This is super exciting. Thanks for coming back and doing this with me. This is a really cool system and I am excited to check it out.

Micheal: Last thing here, guys. There is-- there will be a seven day trial as well. So if for some reason you jump on and you are not happy with the platform or whatever the case is, cancel within seven days and you

will get our money back. You only pay for the text messaging.
David: That's great, man. I love that, that's really cool that you offer that. Thank you Michael for coming on.  If anybody has any more questions you can reach out to Michael directly. TheAutomatedREI.com. Alright guys thanks for tuning in, we will catch you on the next episode.