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 show. This is your host David Dodge and today, I have a special guest: Mr. Max Keller and Max Keller is a best-selling author, real estate investor, entrepreneur and he's a national speaker and today, Max is joining us and he's going to talk about closing more deals and raising more money with a book that positions you as the trusted expert. I love it, it's something new and fresh. Max, welcome to the show my friend.
Max: Yeah, glad to be here. Let's make it happen.
David: Hell yeah. Well Max, good to have you. I'm grateful for your time. Thanks for coming on today. Let's jump right in, who is Max Keller and what do you spend most of your time on man? You're a best selling author, a real estate investor, entrepreneur, speaker, you know, what are you working on right now Max?
Max: Yeah sure, so yeah I'm a full time real estate investor in Forth Worth, Texas and so I'm investing in real estate. I have a publishing company, you know, I've been doing that five years full time and you know, really like it. Real estate's a good business, didn't initially intend to get into it full time, I was a math teacher and coach and loved doing that and just wanted to get into you know, real estate, purchasing discount properties. Just like one or two a year was my goal when I started. I just want to you know, supplement my income, you know, start building some kind of like a retirement portfolio. You know so when I retired as a teacher, I'd have a little extra, my pay was kind of locked in and you know, everybody who's kind of been bit by the real estate bug knows I mean, you know, just sort of takes over and so I just learned, got some local advise, flipped- wholesaled my first property, you know, made a good 5 figure profit on it, reinvested into my next deal, quit my job and now 5 years later, you know, I've discovered a really good niche that's serving us really well in our home buying business: Save your Home Buyers, you can check us out on Facebook and I have a unique way that I, you know, market for these leads and it's- it just really happened super unexpectedly and you know, just looking forward to sharing it with your audience and just trying to spur some, you know, new ideas.
David: I love it Max very cool, very cool. Thank you for giving us a little introduction about yourself today. You've been doing this it sounds like about as long as I have full time for maybe five or six years give or take, something like that. Have you been investing prior to that at all and with real estate or no?
Max: No, not really. I tried to start doing real estate when I was in my 20's, but I really didn't know- I just was kind of lost. I thought I knew more than I really did. I didn't understand just how to be coachable. I'm really different than I was. I think maybe every decade, we change so I always like drove around when I first got my license. I would go pull flyers for houses, always wanted to live in a better house, a bigger house and so I was like always into real estate. I just couldn't figure out how to get into it and then when my friend bought a rent house, it kind of got me the idea and then it just- I mean it's obviously taken over and I love it, but it's a good business, I don't think it's going to go anywhere.
David: No no, not at all. I've been investing for probably close to 16, 17 years, but only full-time for about five or six, so I was just curious. Yeah, you're absolutely right though. It's definitely not going anywhere, you know, people need food, they need water and they need a roof over their head you know, like it's kind of one of those things, you know. It's definitely top three, top five things you need to survive. You got to have shelter, you'll freeze, you'll die from mosquito bites, whatever it is, you got to have a house at some point, right? So totally agree with that. Well Max, let's jump in man. Let's talk about, you know, closing more deals and raising more money with a book that positions you as the trusted expert. So you know, I don't know Max. We chatted for just a couple minutes prior to the show, but I told Max, I said Max I got two books man. I got 'The Ultimate Guide to Wholesaling Real Estate' and I have 'The BRRRR Method' book, these can be found on Amazon. We're working on our third book right now, actually working on two more books right now, but we're not really working on anything specifically that says that we're home buyers, that we would actually give to a seller or that we would give to another investor to get money or you know, anyone that would be a private lender essentially. So this is a whole different approach and I think it's really really cool so let's talk about like, you know maybe why you stumbled across this or how this started and then we can talk about the fact that you turned it into a business.
Max: Yeah, okay great so yeah, so I went full-time in investing in 2015, and the first 2 years just kind of flew by. It went really well. You know, I was- 2017, I think it was on track to do you know, 30 or 40 houses that year, you know, full retail flips, a few wholesales so like things were going good but when I was noticing my market was- and this is- I'm in Dallas, Fort Worth is you know the- we're talking about you know on this show, you know, buying at a discount. Well, I was noticing that discount was starting to shrink and so the return on my ad spend on all of my marketing channels was just getting smaller and smaller and so the first way I tried to fix it was by just doing like more channels, so literally I was the guy who was in every mastermind, I'm buying every list, I'm stacking all the lists, I'm trying a lot of different-
David: Let me guess, let me guess. You were doing more deals, but your expenses were going up and you were making less money than you were.
Max: Yeah, exactly. You got it right. [inaudible].
David: I've been there. I'm coming- I'm coming out of that right now where it's like man I'm doing, you know, we went from doing 6 or 7 deals to 12 or 14 but we're making less money because our expenses are through the roof so you got to balance that. I love it, I love it.
Max: Yeah, so that's what I did is the first thing is like I knew there was a problem so I wanted to solve it and then it didn't actually take very long to figure out what the problem was. You know, the problem was is that the stuff I was sending out to other people, you know, they- my motivated sellers were getting the same messages from you know, all the other fix and flippers and all the other wholesalers in my market, the number was growing everyday. What else was growing was is the number of people that were willing to pay more than I was willing to pay, what also was growing was it was getting easier for motivated sellers to find those people who were willing to pay more so like every metric is sort of going in the wrong direction. The only one that was going in the right direction was just increasing, you know, retail prices. That's obviously, you know, a good thing when you buy it six months later after the profit you made is on the appreciation, but-
David: Yeah, the competition has gone, you know, 3x, 4x since when I started five years ago. I think that a lot of it has to do with you know, the barriers to entry are a lot less now like I endorse Propstream, you can see I got my t-shirt on today right?
Max: I use them like a lot.
David: Yeah, Propstream's great you know, and like with Propstream, you can get a motivated seller list, you can get a contact for a penny, you know. It's a hundred bucks a month for 10,000 exports, that's a penny and a list for- to build a list and you can run unlimited comps so you don't even need to be an agent. Before, when I first started, if you weren't an agent, you had to get somebody's MLS access or become their assistant to get access. Now you don't, on top of that, there's cold calling and cold texting and it's just plug-and-play, and it reduces the cost to market down to like two or three cents vs. fifty cents to send a letter.
Max: Right.
David: So you don't need like- I remember my first campaign Max was you know, I hired Joe McCall as my coach when I first started and I think my first campaign, it's got to be 6 years ago, was like 15 or 18 hundred bucks. I didn't have the money, I put it on a credit card. I was just thinking, you know screw it, let's do it, let's give it a shot and you know, I got a deal or two out of it and I'm like I'mma do that again, and I haven't stopped since but it's not always been consistent with the mail because that's the most expensive way to market unless you're looking at like AdWords or radio, you know, so yeah.
Max: You're exactly right so- yeah and that's funny you said that because actually the first deal I wholesaled and made five figures, how I found my cash buyer was from a Joe McCall video, so it's funny that you said that. [inaudible].
David: He was the OG, man. Joe is- he's the OG.
Max: [inaudible] couple weeks ago. He's really [inaudible].
David: Yeah, he's a good dude.
Max: Yeah, super good. So yeah, so that was my problem and it was a problem that you face, you know, probably a lot of people are facing right now and so what I did about it was is I made- I went through the people that I'd already, you know done business with and I made a list of criteria that fit like what I wanted because one of the things that was happening was I was making a lot more money, but it was just a real grind and- you know, versus teaching. I felt like it was just I was on a hamster wheel and you know, if I wasn't getting a lot of leads, I just- I wasn't going to have a business and so I just- I really wasn't enjoying my work so for me, I was actually just thinking about quitting and going back. I don't quit but I mean like, I was thinking about going back to becoming a math teacher cuz I just- I was making a lot more money, but I just wasn't enjoying it so what I did was I was like okay, what would I enjoy? And the three criteria that I want like in a perfect deal are you know, a lot of profit for the deal, I don't like to do skinny deals. I want to work with homeowners that you know, are not like resistant to my offer, so they see me as the consultant, the advisor, the teacher, you know, cuz I was a teacher for 7 years, right? So I want to work with people like that, I don't want to work with just transactionally minded people that just, you know, will go with somebody else after they already committed to me for a hundred bucks and then the last thing was like I said, I want to work with any good profit, people who are not resisting my offer and then just have fun, you know the kind of people you get along with. I mean look I want to make money but I just want to have fun too, I don't want it to be a miserable job and so kinda two things happened. One is I went through my list and most of my list of deals I'd already done did not meet all three criteria so that was the bad news. The good news was that the ones that did, I was a math teacher for 7 years, you don't have to be a math teacher to see the pattern, it was so obvious. My best deals for me, everybody's criteria is different, I encourage people create a criteria for you because I really do believe in what Dan Kennedy says 'in the riches or in the niches' and the niche that I decided to go after was senior homeowners, and the reason was for a myriad of reasons. One, you know, a lot of these senior homeowners, they are full equity houses, you know, they're very confused about their options. You know, they lived in the house 30 or 40 years, they're calling all these different sales people and that's all they are: sales people and they're- you know, they call an investor, find out what their house is worth, the investor tells them why, you know, realtors are no good and they're the best investing company, here's a picture of my dog and my family, a bunch of stuff nobody cares about. Then they call the realtor, realtor tells them why investors are trouble, they're the best realtor, they have the most letters at the end of their business card name and then they call like a lot of them have to move to assisted living and stuff, you know, and they call these other places and everybody's just trying to sell them into stuff and they don't necessarily- the customers that I was working with, these weren't rich people, okay? These are folks that like, you know, drove the school bus, they retired and they got a little pension, little social security that own their house but there's like all these things happening at once and they're trying to figure out what's going on and I was like- and my grandma raised me for the first like 15 years of my life and then I took care of her so like I've always been around seniors so I liked it and so I was like okay, this is who I want to work with, these are the kind of deals I want to do, how do I get more of them? So I went back and looked at all the different, you know, where my senior deals came from and I saw that they came from kind of random places. It wasn't like I was doing anything systemically, I was like well I need to do things more systematically and I want to just go all in and serve these people at a higher level so I found different ways to target and get my message out. I really tailored my message to exactly you know, what was going on and like you know, what was going on in their minds, right? The senior homeowners which is different from just a regular homeowner and I was noticing that the more I was tailoring my marketing cuz I was actually really nervous about doing this cuz I was like okay Max, you're getting less deals right now because of what's going on with your marketing and the market, now we're going to go after a smaller niche, you know like we're trying to do more deals not less deals so I had kind of scarcity mindset about this and I was nervous but actually the total opposite happened. Around in my area, my community, I started becoming known as the senior housing guy, you know, the person who had relationships with your local senior places, local agencies, you know all the stuff seniors need, probate attorneys. And I was just focusing on that niche and I was noticing that the more I learned about just all the things these homeowners needed, you know, the more they trusted me and the more business I was getting and so another thing I noticed is that a lot of the deals that I was doing, I was the only person in the deal whereas the other deals, it was like a ton of people and then the other thing I was noticing was is that sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes my offer was quite a bit lower and it was still getting accepted to somebody else and so like- and that's profit, right? That's number one, right? So I was like okay, I got to figure out why this is happening, so I just went on a little fact-finding mission, I called one of my sellers who I had done business with like six months previous, it was the son and- adult son of the mom and I just said hey, you know, you remember me? Max, save your home buyers? he's like yeah, I remember you. I said hey just a quick question, do you remember like getting a higher offer from somebody else? I thought you mentioned that and he's like oh yeah. I was like just curious like why did you, you know, go with me versus them? Like I'm glad you did, like you can't go back, right?
David: Hahaha.
Max: [inaudible]. That's really honestly- I was thinking that at the time of the deal but I didn't want to say it and blow up the deal even though they knew about it and so it wouldn't have made any difference and- but I just- I like- I need this information to really go all in and so what the son told me was is the reason we went with you is because we trusted you, you know, some of these investors are very transactional in nature and they- we felt like they were just trying to hunt us down and they were pressuring us and telling us how crappy our house looked and you know you like seemed like you genuinely cared, you listened to us, you were helping out- you were giving us options that didn't even point to you, like you making money and so I noticed that that was really like the winning formula. The problem was it was really hard to scale so in our business, we had five people in our office at the time and one other person helping me buy but when I'm in these living rooms on these, you know, flower sofas with Mavis, you know, sometimes it's three or four hours, you know, cuz they got like a- they got 30 years of real estate questions and it all, you know, right here in the living room and then when the adult children come in, you know, they don't know me so they don't trust me and then we have to start all over and so it was good to go niche but there was some downsides and so how I got this idea that really revolutionized our marketing and is revolutionizing the real estate investing marketing for our students is I got it actually from a motivated seller. So I'm at a house, I'm doing the close- like closing paperwork, you know, and getting everything, all the contracts signed and the adult daughter was like hey, you know, you've helped us out a ton, I helped your parent move into an assisted living facility, I didn't charge anything. You know I just like, you know, like she knew I was there cuz I want to make money but you know I wanted to be there too. You can tell when somebody's really not into it, you know, if you- you've probably gone on dates before where you can tell the other person's not into it. Same value when we're buying houses, you can tell when somebody just there for themselves and I don't care what other people do but I was there for me, but I was there for them and she said, you know, you know a lot about this, you've helped us out like tremendously. I mean, it would be a normal situation for people to be crying, they're so relieved cuz they're in so much pain and stress and I just came as like their trusted guide and helped them and she said, you know, have you ever thought about like writing a book about this and I was like uhh no and I'm- people who know me like I'm dyslexic, I was really good at numbers hence the math teacher but writing and English, like that would be- if we went back and saw my high school English teacher and told her that I write books now for real estate investors and they plug into our stuff, she wouldn't believe it for a million years. So like one of the keys that I found that's helped me be really successful is coachability, so investing in education, learning from people who've actually been there. I join masterminds really early and educate myself a lot, but then the other thing was just openness, you know like I had 36 years of really bad experiences writing and- but I just wanted to be open to the possibility and so I just said, you know that's a really good idea, why dismiss it? And then I was like, you know that is a good idea, I could pivot in this really competitive landscape, I could go from the person who knows a lot about senior housing to the person who wrote the book on senior housing and so I didn't really know how to do it at first but I got some resources, you know, I got some support, some help. It took hundreds of hours, I won't lie. Now we've made it really easy where people can plug in and it's so simple, but for me, it was a journey and I actually have a book that I wrote for real estate investors to help them write a book or an eBook and it's a- we sell it but I'm going to offer it to your audience at the end, I don't want to spoil the surprise, but I'll give your audience the code for a limited time, they can download a copy. It's called 'The Real Estate Investor Book Writing Checklist' and it's sort of like what I wish I had cuz I had no idea David. I mean, I was so not prepared. So here's what I did: I think anybody just listening, even if you never write a book, but you want to get more business, you want to get more discount properties, well how do we do that is we got to find the right audience, people to target and then we gotta- we have to, you know, obviously there has to be an appeal factor, we have to be speaking to their pain, right? So I just wrote down all the questions I had been asked over and over and over again and by these sellers in the living rooms, wrote down the answers, pros and cons and just started building it out and that became my first book. It's called 'Home to Home: the step-by-step senior housing guide' and then I created a companion workbook to go with it and that I printed out a hundred copies, I didn't really know what I was doing and I just started giving it away as my business card and you know with the time that we have remaining if we have time for some case studies, I can share with you like some specific things that happened that I would have never imagined a million years. They made a huge huge difference, it's still like it's happening, it's already happened too but like it's still exciting to talk about it cuz it's so- because when I talk about it with you, it brings back the old memories of like 2017 that were so miserable with my marketing and now the way I feel now 3 years later is just like so much better.
David: Interesting, very interesting. I like it. So great story man, great story so that was- so you basically stumbled across this from a you know, you following up with somebody asking for feedback essentially and they said check it out, this is something that you should do. You didn't think that- you had never even thought of it but then you did it, you ran with it so you created your book. How many pages is your book? The one that you give to the seller? And it looks like you've got a couple books obviously, how many books have you written?
Max: Well now, three but we license them to other people so I'll explain that. We kinda- that was the award I got with Robert Kiyosaki, that picture. We created- we got this award for industry innovation of the year and it was at a big real estate conference. It was nice to get that and to share a stage with Robert and you know, Harry Dent and all these really great people. It was super cool, but what was super cool is to do something different cuz what I was getting tired of is like being seen by my customers like the same as everybody else you know? I was- I would get called by motivated sellers, you know, a dime a dozen. If I couldn't come over to their house in 30 minutes, they'd be like well I'll just call somebody else cuz you guys are a dime-a-dozen and you know that sucked because when I was a teacher, I wasn't a dime a dozen. I taught at an inner-city school, those kids didn't have a lot of fathers and I loved every second of what I did. I made a difference with those kids. I still see them in the area and I run into them and on Facebook and stuff, they're doing really good so I wanted to make more money but I still want to have some kind of impact, I want to make a difference and I knew David that I was doing the research. I was doing- I was building the relationships, I could add more value to the deal. The problem is when I was working with just everybody, well you know, they didn't see the value. When I started working for senior- with seniors, they saw the value and they wanted to work with me for that and so it felt a lot better to do something different and stand out and so kind of where we took all that was is this is kind of a funny story, so I'm using the book in my market and I'm giving it out and I'm noticing these like- these benefits that I wasn't anticipating. So the first thing I noticed was I go to somebody's house, I give them the book and they're like amazed. They think I'm like a celebrity and I'm like no it's just- I'm Max, I'm the home buyer guy, you know like no big deal and they don't want to talk to me, they just want to read the book because the book isn't about me. I have some real estate investor friends that wrote some great books and it's their memoirs, it's about how to invest in real estate and those are good books but like my motivated sellers don't care about that, they just want to know how to fix their problem so I didn't see- and all I wanted to do with the book was get more customers and I read a book that talked about in high margin businesses like we're in, the number one way to make money with a book is not to sell it. People who are already famous are the people who make money selling a book, the way to make money with a book is to get more prospects, more customers, you know. And if I'm wholesaling for an average of 15 grand in my retail fix and flips on a 250 ARV and DFW or you know, 40, 45 thousand, that's a very valuable prospect and we know this because that's why there's so much competition. Competition is good cuz you know you're somewhere where there's something going on, but it's bad when you're crowded out. So when I was giving my book out, I was noticing that people are reading it, they didn't want to talk to me, they were like so interested, so then what I started doing was is when people call us up, I'd say hey uhm- cuz people call us- I mean they still do if they haven't heard about our book yet, you know like hey, you know, I saw your stuff, you know, come over right now, you know that kind of thing and I'm like woah woah woah, hit the brakes, have you gotten a copy of our book yet? Like your book? And all of a sudden the whole thing switches. Now the control from being in the motivated sellers side of the phone goes to mine cuz I'm the expert credible authority here and I say well, here's what I'd like to do for you. Do you need us to come over like right now, is something going on 911? We can't- can we come over a couple days cuz I want to give you this valuable content so you don't make any mistakes and they're like okay, what is it? And I'm like well it's my book, so chapter is all the ways to sell your house, pros and cons of each one. If I send you a copy of it with a courier and I sign it, will you read chapter 3 before I come over? And they're like uhh yeah and this is just like everything is shifted and the whole power control over the phone has shifted. I'm the person who's writing the prescription. I'm not taking orders from the motivated seller, no disrespect but I'm the expert in this transaction so we need to follow the process, and when it gets real crowded and the motivated sellers are getting 1500 messages everyday, you know, they're sort of like well okay cool, these- I have something everybody wants so if you want to come in my living room and get it, you're going to have to pay me dearly for it. And so how we counteract that whole mindset, shift it. The whole thing in a seller's market is like that through credibility, expertise and to become more trusting so we send the book and it does a couple of things. One is it gives us instant credibility. They read chapter 3, they read our story then they end up reading the whole book before we come over cuz they haven't gotten a lot of autographed books from the author and so 2 days later when we come over there, we're already pre-sold before we walk in the door. It used to be I was trying to interview- it felt like a job interview. I'd be sitting on the couch and I'd be like all the reasons why you should go with me and 10 minutes after there's some other investor coming through and just like- I mean, I've been to some where there's like 10 investors on the front yard, you know, have you ever been [inaudible?
David: I've been to those too.
Max: Yeah, so like we don't do that. So what happens is- and when I first [inaudible] all this stuff is my experience, my students use it now, but they never expected that in a million years, I'll tell you that right now, but I didn't know any of this was going to happen, it just- it sort of evolved and we picked up the trends and you know, they were good trends, you know. One thing that you know kind of maybe finish up one case study with this if we have time, something totally random unexpected happened. Well, I'll finish the other story. So one time, I was doing this deal, lady got my book and I'm like well who else are you like considering? Cuz that's what you know I took John Martinez, he's a friend of mine, he does great sales training. He lives in your state, I was just at his house a couple months ago, really nice guy and you know, like step six in his training is like you're supposed to ask who the competition is. So even though I never wanted to ask that question, so I said well who else am I competing with for this deal? This was after a book and the lady goes well nobody. I'm like well I'm okay with that but can I ask why? Cuz I'm thinking to myself- almost like looking at her kitchen table and there's like a stack of postcards from people who are not me. She goes well I did call a couple people before I found you but then once I met you, I called them and told them not to come over anymore and then I had a list of some people, pointing to the stack in the junk mail, right? This is how we go from junk mail to the coffee table is totally different. The books don't go in the junk mail, they're on the coffee table. She goes well I didn't call them because why would I work with anybody else when I already have the person who wrote the book on the subject? I was like, oh snap, thank you Jesus.
David: Hahaha.
Max: [inaudible] so I got a call one time, I'll just close with this, I got a call cuz I know we're getting short on time. I got a call from a church. Didn't know, you know, who they were, don't know how they got my book but they said that they had gotten a copy of my book from somebody who goes there and they want to know if I could come and speak to their congregation and like do a workshop and I didn't have, you know, slides, I wasn't really that prepared, I just brought some of my books and I gave one to everybody who showed up. The church did all the marketing, they had all the people there and you know, it was so cool because I felt like I was back in the classroom, right? But instead of you know, students and I love working with students, but you know, the pay's not real good being a teacher let's be honest and now I'm in an audience with 25 homeowners, all at the same time so I'm basically doing a sales call but instead of doing it with one person, I'm doing it with 25 people at once. The big difference is they don't see me as a salesperson, they see me as an author, an expert, a credible trusted person.
David: Yeah, you changed the narrative. You reframed it completely. I love it. I think it's a great- a great approach. So you're typically mailing people a book and then setting an appointment for 3 to 5 days behind that typically, right?
Max: Sometimes it's sooner but yeah, usually a couple of days. What we'll do is we'll reach out with our normal channels and the channels that have opened up to us by being an author, you know, and they're different and we teach those and then yeah, we just- we send out our mail now. I never knew what a transitional call to action was, I always had like a benefit statement, you know why you should work with us and our phone number but now where we've pivoted, you know that was getting us a 1% response rate, half a percent but where we've pivoted, it increased the response rate 3 to 6 times is it sounds simple but it works, it's- and now I'm kind of learning why but we just put a picture of our book on whatever we send out digital or physical and say hey, if you're not ready to sell, that's cool we wrote this book, you can go online and buy it for 13 bucks, or you can call our office, we'll send you a copy for free, and so we get phone calls from that and that's really where a lot of our warm and cold leads come from and because we have a follow-up system in our business, but most importantly we have a bandit sign in their living room, which is our book on the coffee table that they cherish and they don't throw away. It's sort of like automatically following up and it's making like a physical touch point with them so we're- we have access to people's homes through that, so that helps us convert the warm and cold leads and we get calls 3 months, 6 months later because like there's probably plenty of people before books for me and you know, people who have reached out- you've reached out to David that you're their number one choice. It's just by the time from when you last reach them to when they want to do something now, they just- so many things happen, they just sort of forgot or lost track of our info. I mean, once your-
David: Yeah no, it makes sense. Follow-up is the name of the game in this business for sure and if you put- if you put a bandit sign inside their house, that's awesome. So Max, this is great. I love it. This is amazing. Let's talk a little bit more about the, you know, your business of helping people, right? So it's easy to see what a powerful marketing tool a book can be. I think everybody agrees on that. For the average investor who's thinking though like hey, I buy and sell houses, how am I supposed to write a book? So where do they start?
Max: Yeah, well the good news is that if you're thinking that right now, so is your competition. So, traditionally writing a book has had a high barrier to entry, that's why very few people do it. We've simplified the process here in the real estate investing space and made it easier than ever but there's really two ways to do it, I'll break them down real quick. So there's DIY and ROI. So the DIY method is for the investor that's used to doing all aspects of the deal themselves where they have to roll up their sleeves, you know, get their hands dirty. It takes a little bit longer to you know, see results from that method, little more trial and error, but if somebody wants to go DIYing their business, there's like nothing wrong with that at all, and so what we've done is created the first of its kind, it's called 'The Real Estate Investor Book Writing Checklist', and so I'm going to share with your audience at the end a link where they can download it and it basically just breaks down if you want to write a book, an eBook, a- just improve your sales copy, this is how to create and how to document, okay, a reference guide teaching your motivated sellers, your ideal prospect something to draw them in. So if you want to do that, I'll share the link at the end and you can write, you know, your own book. There's resources out there, I did it. If you don't have the time to invest or you're more of a the second kind of investor, the ROI. You know, ROI investors are just like this: time is money, they want to be at houses closing deals, you said you were looking at three properties today, they want to be locking up more money, but all the other parts of the business, they want to outsource to other people and so what we've done is become that outsourcing arm for real estate investors who are really serious about standing out and positioning their marketing totally differently. They inject a couple hours of their time and then within 30 days, we plug them into some licensed content so that they can be passing out their book for- to motivated sellers. We have some niched content for people who are trying to attract private money lenders and then we have a whole back end system built around it so we show them how to implement it cuz you know, execution is everything. So that's sort of the two different ways real estate investors can use a book to leverage and get more of whatever they're trying to get.
David: Cool, I like it. So let's talk numbers man. What kind of time commitment is required? How long does the process take and what are the costs involved?
Max: Yeah great, so if you go DIY, you know it can be- you can do it on a shoestring budget so that's good. The time, it just depends on your proficiency. You know, for me, it took a couple hundred hours to do my first book. You know, there's the editing, the proofreading, you know, finding all the different people to help me putting them all together. So for that one, it's more of a time cost, you know, so much than the financial. If somebody was more on the ROI side, you know, we have some licensed content that starts at about $1,000 and goes up just depending on what niche you're trying to go after and so depending on what system you want to do and people can plug into it and then, you know, just run with it in less than 30 days, they can have their book and you know, be passing them out and putting it into your marketing. So you know, there's two roads and you know, it just depends on what you want to do.
David: I like it man. How long does the process take? You said about a month like best case.
Max: Yeah, so the way we work it is we have a really- we really simplified the process so real estate investors who get involved in what we do, they plug in about an hour of their time, we have a real easy form where they supply their content or we get over the phone and help them. It takes less than an hour and then from that point, within 10 days they get a digital proof, they approve it, we send them a physical proof and then once they give us the green light, we send them their copies that come with the package and we send them all of their marketing materials, all the templates we've created and so yeah, 30 to 45 days, they're passing their books out to the same people that already marketing to but now, you know, the sellers are seeing them, the private lenders are seeing them more as the educator, the advocate, the trusted expert than just the salesperson. And so we found that- we have case study after case study on our website of people who are using it and it's just every day, it's just remarkable. I really don't understand why more people don't do it. I think it's just cuz people don't know about it, it's pretty new but you know how it works when you get in early on something that's really good, and what's interesting about this is like what we're doing with real estate investing, lead generation books, I don't think has really been done before on a big scale like we're doing it but it's interesting because it's new but it's not. Books have been around for four thousand years, you know, books are probably going to still be around. So the code that I have, you know, before I forget, I want to share with your audience. Is now an okay time to give?
David: Yeah, now's a great time, share it up.
Max: So the website is, our company for publishing is dealschasingyou.com and then if you just go to dealschasingyou.com/Dodge, D-O-D-G-E, then for a limited time, you can download a copy of the book 'Real Estate Investor Book Writing Checklist', you know check it out and you know, just consider using. It's basically the framework on how to write a lead generation book to motivated sellers or private money lenders and is the guide that I wish I had when I started because when I wrote my book, I got about halfway and I had to almost go back to the beginning cuz I just didn't have a lot of book writing experience and I didn't understand, you know, the structure. So we put all of that in this book and like I said, for a limited time offer, it is a free resource so I hope you use it, implement it and get a lot of value from it. And then there's some other free videos and stuff you can check out on our website, maybe it'll answer your questions.
David: No, that's perfect. Guys don't forget: dealschasingyou.com/Dodge, that's my last name if you aren't familiar. So dealschasingyou.com/Dodge and he's giving away a free copy. Max, I got a couple quick questions for you real quick. So, the time commitments obviously very short, an hour or two, right? The process takes an hour, this is assuming that somebody works with you and not just doing it themselves, right?
Max: Right.
David: It takes the process for- after they do that hour or two with you, it takes roughly, you know, from they send you a proof 10 days later give or take but you're talking maybe about a month give or take right?
Max: Right.
David: What are the costs involved with the different options, like I said- again, not do it yourself like they come to you, right? Is there a couple different packages or is it just one option? That's the first question, second question is once this book is done, where do they go buy it from and order it from? Are they going through you to buy it every time or is it a publisher directly or is it KDP in Amazon or how does that work?
Max: Yeah sure, so you know, our prices for the niche content, cuz we have a bunch of different ones. You know, they adjust all the time and we're always adding to our packages and so the best place to get all the pricing info is just to go to the website and then we have all that on there cuz I don't want to say a price, you know, and then it changes.
David: Yeah it may change, I gotcha, okay, I got you.
Max: And then your second question was where they go, so we have- so we use like a print-on-demand publishing company like Amazon. So what we do is we give our audience and our students two links. One is a link for the retail link so they can share that retail link with their audience, they're motivated sellers then go on there, it's got reviews and people can buy the book themselves at the retail price which you know, people are used to doing. Books are seen as a valuable item, more valuable than other things and then we also give them the link where they can buy their books at cost and at the time that this recording, you know, our students are buying copies of their books for, you know, between 4 and 5 dollars each so yeah, I don't know about you, but when I was doing a 7 touch, you know, yellow letter campaign, I was paying a dollar a touch and you know, the conversion rates weren't a super high, they were high enough of course to make sense. Now, you know, by getting these books and you know, warm leads hands, it's- we're actually paying less than we were for glossy brochures. We're paying less than we were for junk mail that was getting thrown away that people didn't want, so now for 4 or 5 dollars, we can give somebody a book, they cherish it, they keep it a long time and it has so much more weight, not just physically on their table but in the mind share of the prospects, so that's why it's been kind of a- economically, it's been such a homerun deal.
David: Oh yeah, so Max, very cool, good information. What was I- how many pages is the book? I'd imagine for 4, 5 bucks, you're looking at maybe a 150 pages give or take because my books are almost 300 pages and I think my cost through Amazon's somewhere around like the 6 to 7 dollar, like the cost cost of it, so I would imagine you're probably around a 150 pages give or take, is that about right?
Max: Yeah, yeah that's correct.
David: Very cool, and then the other question I had for you was if somebody buys the book retail because there's going to be people that just go buy it and they don't want you to send a copy cuz they don't want to talk to you right away and they just want to go buy it directly and you give them that link, you know, that's a 5, 6, 7 dollar profit margin. Does that come back to the individual or who keeps that?
Max: Yeah, so it's a pretty skinny profit margin on like I said, selling books. The number one way is to get more motivated sellers so, you know, after the publishing company does their thing, there's not really a ton left over so we don't- we don't- the students that have come on to our program haven't really seen anything substantial from that. What they've actually done is built out some landing page templates that we have set up and if they want to make profit on the book, they've kind of just like sold it themselves instead of through the other company, but most of them have been just sending them out to the prospects for free and we also have-
David: Not a big deal, just curious, I figured I'd ask, you know.
Max: Well another thing is- great question, I just want to throw this in. So one of the things we do is we host like a flip book and so we- a lot of our folks give out that link to people before they give them a physical book and so it's mobile and digital, you know, desktop optimized. The person can get the book digitally and you can get them to it instantaneously and there's no cost and then if somebody wants the next level, they kind of like Perry Marshall style, you know, marketing. Raise their hand, then we give them the physical book so we sort of have like a whole process setup that's been tested to convert the best.
David: Wow. Max, I love it great content. I'm an author but not that kind of author so I'm interested in checking out some of the pricing and looking at the website. This has been very cool. It's been a good- a good podcast. Max, thanks for coming on and guys again, welcome Max Keller, go check him out, close more deals and raise more money. We didn't even have time today to talk about raising private money but what couldn't be better to show your private investors that you are the authority, right? And you are the expert. They're only going to want to lend to the expert in the market or the authority and by having a book, I know firsthand, mine are more focused on teaching people and coaching people, but it makes you the authority by having the book. So, do it yourself or go check out Max over at dealschasingyou.com and then do the forward slash Dodge, D-O-D-G-E, and you're going to get a free book on the- what is it Max? Like the bullet points and the things that you need to write the book?
Max: Yeah, Real Estate Investor Book Writing Checklist, so if you want to go book, e-book, just improve the copy on your website, you're just trying to get better at getting more of the people you're targeting. This book just breaks down the five steps that you know, just make it kind of easy button for you so you just plug the answers into the questions and then you know, boom, out pops the new marketing tool, so that's going to be good if you want to go DIY.
David: I love it. Max, thanks again for coming on the show today, it's been a pleasure. I'm grateful for you and your time and I think the business that you're- that you're working with here and working on is amazing. I think it's going to bring a lot of value to a lot of people but it's also going to separate you if you are in a market that's really competitive guys. This is going to help separate you from all these other investors, right? Max has got a great approach too. You know, don't just go drive right to the house right away cuz then you're just another one of these people, instead maybe send them a book or even drop one off to them and then go back a day or two or three days later after they've had time to read it and you're going to basically eliminate your competition. It's awesome. dealschasingyou.com for pricing, /Dodge for the free eBook. Max, thanks again for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure and we'll talk to you soon. Signing off.
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