9: Finding Off-Market Deals, Step-by-Step with Ryan Dossey (Mentor) and Drew Wiard (Mentee): Part 1

This is real estate rookie show number nine.

I honestly enjoy marketing to find off market deals probably more than the real estate itself. Shocker. But when you're doing buy and hold real estate investing and you use the same paint scheme and the same appliances and the same cabinets, it starts to kind of lose its luster a little bit. It's kind of like, what's one more house? But for me, what I've really enjoyed is kind of hypothesizing, if we do X, can we get deals from it? Testing kind of those theories and then scaling them.

I am Ashley Kerr and I'm here with my co host, Felipe Mejia, who is finally back into his little closet and doesn't have a beach view anymore in Florida.

Look, guys, Ashley is super jelly because I'm finally back in Nashville. I'm back home. I was in Florida for the past month and a half quarantining myself, making sure my family and myself are safe. And she was starting to get a little jealous that I had the beach behind me all the time. But yep, I'm back in my little five by five closet for recording.

I'm in a closet too. So now we're equal.

That's funny.

We have a great show today. We actually have Ryan and Drew. So Ryan is the mentor, Drew is the mentee. And we're gonna be talking about how Drew reached out to Ryan for help because he is a rookie in direct mail marketing. And this show is actually going to be more than one show. It's going to be 1, 2 and 3 or maybe 1 and 2. We're not sure yet. But one of the main things that I want to focus on here is that some of the questions aren't going to be answered and they're kind of open ended because we're going to talk about it in the next show. And we didn't want to give it all out at one time.

Right.

And it was just there's so much information about what we talked about that it would have been, you know, for our show to include everything. But so Drew has had some real estate investment history, but now he wants, wants to get a specific niche covered. He wants to learn how to do marketing direct to the seller. So that's where Ryan comes in. He has got these systems down pat and he shares, you know, the exact system he's using. You mentioned in the episode how sometimes you listen to podcasts and people say, oh, I use this, but don't actually say the brand name or, you know, the company of that system.

Yeah, I Love that Ryan talks about every single system he uses, how he uses it, and then gives the name. Perfect. If you take notes, you're going to be able to do exactly what Ryan says or Ryan does because he that's what he's teaching Drew how to do, right? And he's dropping the names of the companies he uses. No secret here. He gives it all out, which I think is great. Another question that I think was key that I asked was, hey, Drew and Ryan, how did you guys click? Because, you know, Drew had to reach out to Ryan and you know, I asked Drew, what did you look for in a mentor? And then I asked Ryan, I said, hey, you know, why did you decide to take on Drew as a mentee? Because that's important. And I think their answer is spot on.

And even if you're not interested in doing the direct marketing and you think this episode might not be for you, we really do touch a lot on how to find a mentor, how to be a good mentee, and we do go through that a lot. So I would recommend giving that a listen for sure. So let's bring Ryan and Drew onto the show.

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Welcome, Ryan and Drew to the show. How are you guys?

Good.

Doing great. Happy to be here.

Yeah, thanks for having us so excited for this show.

Yeah, our show is going to be a little bit different. We're having you guys show us what you've been doing as a mentor and a mentee and how. How that's going. So, Drew, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself first?

Yeah, I can do that. So I'm a doctor of pharmacy. I've been director of pharmacy at the local hospital system here in town for a number of years. I've been investing maybe five of those years, just a little bit on the side. We do rentals, and over those five years, done lots of different things. I've done a little bit of almost everything, but I've had to learn that while you're working full time, super hard to manage and so the importance of systems and finding creative ways to have people and systems take you through all that is essential.

So you said you've done. You've already done some things in real estate. You've done a little bit of different things. So let me ask you this. Why did you seek out a mentor if you've already done stuff?

Well, some people will tell you you need to pick a niche in real estate and do just that. And whether that's a good idea or bad idea, I just, I love to learn. And so my history has kind of been an evolution of, I'll try this, and once I get that kind of under my belt, I'll move on to the next thing. But all along the way, I've sought out Mentors, be they someone local, be they someone across the country. And so I kind of got a pattern of seeking out someone who's doing it, learning how they've done it and what works well, and then trying to implement it in my own systems.

So were you like that guy in school that couldn't sit still?

Yeah, I'm a drummer, right.

So.

So I never sit still. I drive everyone nuts.

That's. Yeah, that's.

That was probably me as well. Man, I couldn't sit still for the life of me in school. It literally felt like torture sitting there waiting for the teacher. I was like, oh my gosh, please move on. I couldn't wait for lunch. It was insane.

Well, to that point, I don't. Ryan and I. I don't know that Ryan even knows this. I was homeschooled as well. So, you know, when you get the jitters or you need to go for a walk, you have a little more flexibility.

You can't just tell people I was homeschooled. That's like on the down low, don't you?

You gotta like ease into that, man. You just straight threw Ryan under there. He was homeschooled too.

Now, in my defense, I went to public school through eighth grade, so, like, I knew how to interact with people.

Well, Ryan, on that note, do you want to tell everyone a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, absolutely. So I honestly enjoy marketing to find off market deals probably more than the real estate itself. Shocker. But when you're doing buy and hold real estate investing and you use the same paint scheme and the same appliances and the same cabinets, it starts to kind of lose its luster a little bit. It's kind of like, what's one more house? But for me, what I've really enjoyed is kind of hypothesizing if we do X, can we get deals from it? Testing kind of those theories and then scaling them. So I was a total noob before I found Biggerpockets. You can find my posts from like 2014 that are horrible. It's literally like, I have no money, but I have a credit card. What can I do with it?

Right.

So somebody please dig that up.

Yeah, absolutely.

We can put those in the show notes.

Yeah, you can. You know, there's that one. There's like, I got a deal under contract. What do I do with it? I mean, pretty much if you could do it wrong, I did it wrong. But biggerpockets was there to help. Fast Forward went full time in real estate in kind of 2016. I did like 6 off market deals that year. In 2017, we did 74 off market deals. And then between 2018 and 19, we probably wholesaled. Wholesaled about 100, 100 properties and we kept another 150 units.

Well, I mean, you say that really nonchalantly, and I hear that in, you know, other podcasts as well. Oh, I went from one to a thousand.

And.

And it's like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Something happened there. So, Ryan, if you could put it In a nutshell, 30 seconds. What made the difference, man? Because I feel like our, our listeners are going to want to know that, because same thing happened to me, right? I went from one. Then the next year I had six single family homes. And you're right, it is just another, Another. Another house that, I mean, that's. That's what happens. But what was that secret sauce for you?

So part of it was systematizing. So, I mean, I've been on the podcast before. My own Call Porter, it's our answering service. So I no longer had to take call, which freed me up to do a lot more marketing. So before, there was kind of almost like this fear of, like, if I put more marketing out, there's more angry people I have to talk to. So that was part of it. And then the other part for me personally was just I hired a business coach. 2016 was a super rough year for me. Like, credit cards maxed out. It was like my wife would be like, hey, we need 400 bucks for X. And I would somehow go find that. Right? Not like the glamorous thing most people want. And this business coach I hired back then, his. His big thing for me every week was, what are you doing in real estate to get another deal? So just really focused on revenue generating activities.

That's awesome. So I want to talk more about your direct marketing and how are you helping Drew with that? And what's. Can you explain to everyone how this is different than finding a deal on the mls?

Yeah. Okay. So my approach in a nutshell, we build a local community brand. Think like Amazon or Yelp, right? Consumers want to read reviews. They want to know this is legit. Back when I started in 2014, we sent yellow letters with nothing on them. You couldn't tell who we were. Now, you know, everything ties back to a local company. One thing I do want to differentiate. It's not Ryan buys houses. The brand doesn't rest on my shoulders. That enables us to do, you know, 100 deals a year in Indianapolis while I live in San Diego. So it's kind of a local community brand, has an online web presence. It's very easy to find. All of our marketing is custom designed for that market. So, like, our envelopes are full color, watermarked for that city. The piece that goes inside, it is also full color and matches the exterior. So, you know, we hear things from sellers like, I've never gotten anything like this before. And then probably our, like, part of our secret sauce, we use robots that hold pens and handwrite in cursive on those pieces.

Wow.

So, yeah, they're not. It's not like, printed. It's not like a font out of an hp. It's literally done with Papermate Eagle pens. They smear, smudge, indent, all that good stuff.

Wow, that's really interesting. I had no idea there was robots that even did that out there.

There's robots for everything now, man.

Yeah, that's true.

You don't need.

No one even wants to write their own letters anymore.

Yeah.

I'm not gonna lie. I wrote my wife a love letter once, and I gave it to her, thinking I was, like, slick. And she was like, this come off one of your machines? And I was like, yeah. She was like, yeah, this doesn't count.

I love that.

That's hilarious.

Busted.

So is this like a machine you have in your house, then? It's not like you, like, email a place, then they print them out for you, you actually have the machine?

We have a lot of them. It's a ball. Ballpoint Marketing is one of our companies.

Cool. Very interesting. Okay, so let's talk about how Drew is, you know, brought into this. Drew, how did you find Ryan, and what is he helping you with? With right now?

Sure.

So I had done some direct mail stuff on my own and had some success with it. We bought a couple of deals, but it was really tough to sustain, not only putting mailers together, but maybe the use of a CRM or a system, a mechanism to track those leads, follow up with people.

Can you tell everyone what a CRM is real quick? Can you just explain that?

Customer relations manager. The other piece that I was really missing is I couldn't answer the phone.

Right.

I'm at work doing healthcare stuff, and you can't just stop what you're doing to answer the phone. And so those three pieces, and then probably I just needed to bone up on marketing and modern ways to do that. So those were kind of the four empty boxes that I needed to check. And so as I was kind of looking out there just to see who's Around. I'm from Fort Wayne, Indiana. It's about two hours, three hours from Indianapolis. And so some of the people that I know knew Ryan, you know, you just start to follow and you kind of see the things they say and the things they start to work on. Heard a few podcasts and so just kind of dug in deeper and eventually we connected and just kind of took it from there.

You are missing what Ryan could. Like you said a minute ago, right. Like you needed to come 21st century type of thing.

Right.

And Ryan seems like he had been through the same things that you had been through and now grew into something just more professional, right?

Yep, yep. Yeah. And they were systems that I could see myself using that would elevate me kind of that to that next level. You know, if I can't answer the phone at 2pm because I'm helping with patients or I'm in meetings or things like that, someone's going to be there to do that for me. And then I can follow up downstream.

That's one of several examples, for sure.

So, and then, Ryan, you were saying that you went from, you know, doing a couple and then now you have a robot writing your letters for yourself. So you went from, is this not the same as just building your personal brand? Are you doing something different than that? I mean, what does that look like?

I mean, so for me, I've kind of followed like the Marriott model. I've just as opportunities fall in my laps, like Call Porter, for instance. I can tell you, as somebody who runs a call center, it is not fun. I mean, it is a lot of work. It's pretty management intensive. So, you know, we tried hiring VAs, I tried other answering services and it just wasn't working. So I hired one person to take my calls, and then I ran my mouth because that's what I do. And buddies were like, well, can you take my calls? And then it got to the point that it was like, okay, we had three employees and 20 or 30 clients. And then it grew to what it is today. Similar with ballpoint marketing on our direct mail side. I mean, this was kind of something we were doing just for us. Wasn't talking about it anywhere. It was kind of my, like, big secret. I actually had a lot of fear about letting people know that I was doing it because I have some buddies that are mailhouse owners and I didn't want to step on toes. And I hired a guy to run it for me just to fulfill my own marketing because, well, I didn't want to lick envelopes anymore. And I gave him a number of, if you can get production to this, I'll start to talk about this. And it was one of those, like, he's never going to do this. And he did it in like four months. And I was like, well, crap, it's time for me to pay the piper. So, you know, now it's. We have a lot of these machines and we work with people all over the country.

Nice.

Got it. Okay. Thanks, Ryan.

I wanted to.

I want to kind of wrap that up. That was really good. So, Ryan, what was the first steps that you had Drew take to grow into this next stage for him? Because you knew he knew real estate, that's obvious. But he was missing this core piece. So what were like, the first couple of steps that you said, hey, Drew, this is what you need to do to get started?

Yeah. So I'll tell you what it is, and I'll give you a caveat on it. So it's setting up a local community brand. Now the goal with this is like, this can become busy work if you're not careful where somebody spends just days and days and hours and months of building a website and making their own logo and they never get anything done. Right. I think I gave Drew, like two weeks. Like, you have to. You have to get this done. But that being said, like, the. The importance of branding, I don't think can be understated. I've got a buddy of mine who owns Labrador real estate out of Boston. Beautiful brand name, family dog, all kinds of great positive imagery. It's kind of like that versus like a Pitbull properties. Probably going to call that radar. I love pit bulls, but that doesn't mean your clientele does.

Right, Right.

So we initially went through kind of like the branding, the logo design. We use carrot template websites. Carrot sites are great. I've had over like 1500 leads come through. Mine so highly recommend them and then kind of just like getting the brand out there. So Google, my business, Facebook page, that kind of stuff.

And Drew, what did you think about all this? A two week timeline to basically create your brand. How did that go for you?

It sounds rushed.

You know, it was a lot, but it was good. It was focused and it was directed. You know, I can relate to Ryan's comment about having wanted to achieve something and you, you're getting some stuff done, but it just takes. It's easy to try to do everything. Do I get the business cards? Do I set up a website? Like, what do I need to do? And it was nice to have someone say, here are the steps I would tell you to take, and here's when they're due. You know, just the accountability, I think, is.

So what were. Was it like almost a checklist that you give Ryan? Just saying, okay, you need your name, you need your website, you need your business card. Start it in this order.

Yeah, we. We use an accountability tracking tool called Monday. It's actually, like. It's a project management tool. If you're in any business at all and have things you want to track, it's worth looking into.

And, Drew, how did you come up with your name?

Sure.

So the name of my company is Clear Sky Properties, and we spent some time, some energy thinking about, what are your hobbies? What do you do? What's important to you? What do you want to accomplish kind of in the community? And so I fly paramotors, and for folks who don't know, you see the guys that have the parachute over their head and they strap a fan to their back and run up into the sky. And so the general concept was we want to help folks if they have a problem, just help them get onto clear skies.

Right.

And so my branding, my logo all kind of centers around kind of a house with paramotor on it and just kind of sailing up through the clouds and on to better times.

It's legit because it's also such a neat conversation starter of, like. Wait, you do what? Like, it's. I love that piece to it of just, like, ice is already broken. They're interested.

Yeah, I think that's. That's really. That's really good too, because that way, you don't just sound like a guy that's trying to take somebody's home or whatever the case may be. Right. Because regardless of what we know, you know, most people, if not everyone, is somehow emotionally attached to their house, right? So if you come in just like, hey, I'm gonna buy your house. This is what you're gonna get. Yada, yada, yada. You're not gonna really get anybody. But, like. Like Ryan said, you know, Drew's coming in with more of a. Of a story of even just how. How he got the name for his company and what he does. It's outside of the box. I think it's great. I would have a conversation even just about, what do you do? And we can talk real estate at the end. I had a friend of mine who said he does, you know, wholesaling, and one of the things that. That he did was he didn't talk real estate. But about 10 minutes of the one or two hour conversation that he had with the people, it was most through relationship building. Drew Ryan, is that something what you guys see?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, our. Our number one thing is rapport. So rapport and customer experience. So if we tell them we're going to do something, we do it. If we tell them we're going to show up, we're there on time or early, you know. But our, like, tasks for our guys, whenever they leave an appointment is what do they do for a living? What are they passionate about? What are they stressed out about? How can we help? Right. Because if you go in and it's just like, it's funny, we'll run into competition on deals, right? And they'll be, you know, so and so came in, he was in and out in five minutes, gave me a number and left. I haven't heard back from him. Versus, like, we're there. In Oregon, they call it porch time, as I think a Jay Hendricks phrase of just spending time with them, getting to know them, understanding what they want and why. So that way you can help facilitate bridging that gap.

Right. See, that makes perfect sense because you're building rapport with that person before you're even talking numbers. I mean, it's like, hey, you know, how's your day going? Or whatever the case may be.

And then, Drew branding real quick.

Yeah.

I would also make sure you don't go like a we buy houses in your city thing just because it's very hard for them to remember. Like, was it we buy houses in Indianapolis? Was it we buy houses Indie? Was it homes? Like, you want it to be something that's differentiated enough. I mean, I'll be blunt. We'll have sellers call us. That'll be like, yeah, you made an offer. I want to accept that. We look in our CRM, never spoke with them.

Yeah.

What was that number we gave you again?

Right.

We're not gonna be like, oh, yeah, you were probably looking for so and so, but you're much less likely to lose deals to competitors if your name doesn't sound the same as everybody else's.

That's really good for branding. Right. Because then you don't. You don't get stuck in the mesh of everyone else. You've actually differentiated yourself just enough to where people are going to remember who you are. Correct. Cool. See, I like that.

And to highlight that, I mean, a lot of what Ryan has shared with me and that just that I've learned is, I mean, it's Interwoven into everything. Your website, your Facebook page, Instagram, every place. And that sounds really intuitive. I mean of course that's an obvious thing you would do, right? But there are ways to build it and make it visual so that they really do stand out. You know, if you get a letter from XYZ Properties and you go to a website and it's just kind of basic or bland or a Facebook page and there's nothing there, not I don't know that it stands out in someone's mind. You know, you come to my website, you see pictures of me flying around, hot air balloons and sunsets and things like that. And so, you know, the imagery, there's, there's value in creating very positive imagery.

Before we go on to like your next step after building your brand, I just want to focus on that two week timeline again because a lot of times people say don't bother with a website, don't bother doing this. Because a lot of people get boggled down and dragged out with oh, should my website be this color or that color? So I think setting that two week timeline really pushes you to, you know, get it done with and don't, it's almost like analysis paralysis. Don't spend too much time on, you know, building your website and picking out your font and your color and stuff like that. So I want everyone to remember that when they start going through these list of steps. So what would be step two after that?

So step two after that? Kind of after you have the initial brand set up and you kind of know like what you're going to call this thing is I think figuring out who you're going to start marketing to and where. So it really kind of depends on the person. But we normally look to have like a variety of asset classes. If you just mail a class areas, you're probably going to get a pretty low response rate. It's going to probably take a lot of work to get a deal. Obviously if you just mail D class neighborhoods, it's probably not what you want. Right. So there's actually a way that you can search on list source for free and figure out where the most deals are being done in your market. So that's, that's a good place to start. Especially if you're looking for something like wholesales or flips of figuring out where are other people buying properties.

And can you explain a little bit about list source?

Yeah. So list source, I personally don't recommend buying lists through them anymore. They charge you like 20 cents for a person's name. And mailing info. So pretty expensive. There's like, we buy a lot of data so my cost is 3 cents. But we have other providers we prefer now, but they are kind of like a data aggregator. But if you Google like how to find hottest wholesale zip codes like on YouTube, you can find walkthroughs of exactly what I'm talking about. That'll show you like, okay, cool. In these, you know, 10 zip codes, the most transactions were done, which indicates the most people are selling there for a discount.

So Drew, really cool knowing that you're as busy as you are. How, how would you tell our listeners that one and I'm gonna. Step one was the two weeks and then you had to figure out immediately after was like, you know, who are you gonna, who are you gonna send stuff to? Who, who's gonna be your market? I mean it sounds like you are a busy guy. So where did you find the time to do the two weeks, get all that knocked out and then boom, next step hits you. I mean, where did you find the time to do that? Because I know our listeners are gonna say, well, I don't have the time to do that because I have, you know, three or four kids and I got a full time job and all this.

Sure, yeah, I guess I would tell you if you're trying to find the time, you're never going to find it. It's about creating the time.

Interesting.

I know exactly what my goals for 2020 are. There are three big goals. One of them is very specific to this kind of initiative and Ryan's a key part of that goal for me. And so I think being able to stay focused on that kind of gives me that drive to say, yeah, I could sleep till 7:30 and go to the office, but I'm going to be up at 6 o' clock and we're going to, we're going to pound it. So I tend to stay up late and sleep late. But for, I don't know, 8 weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks, I was up every day, 6am Prayers, devotion, goal review, and then we hit it for an hour or two before I head to the office.

Anytime somebody tells me they're too busy, I just ask them how much Netflix they watch because it's easy. It's easy to feel really busy. But if you made it through Tiger King in two days, we both know you have time.

Yep, that's so true.

I'm not saying that everyone has the same 24 hours in a day, but it's how you use those 24 hours.

Right, right. Well, and I mean, this is a perfect example. Today's my first day off from the hospital for a while. Right. And this is what I'm doing on my day off.

Right.

I choose to put the time in where there's going to be a return, and we try to do some fun and relaxing things like run up into the sky every now and then.

But that sounds really relaxing.

Oh, it's fantastic. It actually is trapped to a fan. Pretty cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, when it comes to the time portion of it, I think that's really important for our listeners to understand that we do all have the same 24 hours and we're all busy. We're just all busy in different ways. And it's like Drew said, if you are looking for the time, you're not going to find it. It's definitely something that you have to take an actionable step to say, where do I have an hour that I'm going to use for X goal or X X criteria, two weeks that I have to do this or. Or who I'm going to market to? I have to figure this out. And if I'm waking up at 6, well, then there's also 5 to 6. You have that hour there or, you know, after you put your kids to sleep. Right. So there's always that time available. You just definitely have to make a conscious decision that you're going to decide and say, hey, I'm going to use this time applicable to my goals. Period.

Yep. Yeah. And it's super easy to get up early. And all you do is focus on your inbox, trying to get through your email or you. Like, we have a lot of rentals. I do some syndication stuff on the side. It would. It would be easy to get up and let that time go to something else. But my goal is this. This is what this time is for. And once I achieve that goal or get this deliverable to Ryan, then I can let those other things invade that time. But saying it's not just creating the time, but keeping the focus.

I think it's funny too, because if you. If you give the other stuff time, more stuff comes up. Like if I don't check my email, it's almost like I don't get emails, but if I sit there and check it and everything comes up.

Yeah. Yeah. Those are really great tips, guys, for everyone listening, you know, to really figure out how you need to time block to. To get to your goals and. And complete them. But I want to continue back with the. Picking your market. So what Target markets. Did you end up picking Drew?

Sure. So I'll be honest. This one's probably easier for me than maybe say, Felipe, you're in Nashville.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Okay. So it's huge. You have lots of zip codes to choose from. In Fort Wayne, our population is somewhere between 250 and 300,000, and that's spread across maybe 11 zip codes, something like that. So my goal is to find 10. I think I included all 11 at the beginning. And then I picked a couple of. There are some really nice commuter towns that people commute in and out of the city from. And so I chose some of those as well. You know, as I get further down the road and really dial in specifically what I like and what's working and not working, then we might adjust. But for me personally, it was pretty easy because I got to blanket the city as a whole and we'll slice and dice later.

So you decided to blanket everything and then kind of pick your market from there, Is that what you're saying? Kind of pick where you were going to go, more strategic. So you did more of a 30,000 foot view, maybe, and then started scaling down to what you were going to be more specific on?

I did, but that was primarily because I knew that I wanted to send X amount of mailers out, and maybe we'll talk about that. And those zip codes allowed me to do that. If I lived in Nashville or Chicago or Miami, I would not have blanketed all of those zip codes because the number of mailers that you might send out might be astronomical.

Talk about the mailers.

Yeah. Ryan, you want to speak to?

Yeah, so, I mean, one thing I think you want to highlight here is these are the starting campaign I always recommend is absentee owners with equity. Now, I know that's a pretty common list that people are hitting, but keep in mind, we're showing up in front of these people in a way that's very, very unique. So we're getting different results than if you're using, say, postcards or something of that nature. But I do think it's important to highlight. We didn't blanket 300,000 people. It was like 2,500 folks in these zip codes that have equity.

That's a really great point. And is that what you tell all of your mentees, Ryan, is to kind of focus on that type of person, the absentee owner with equity?

It depends.

Would you recommend that for our listeners or. It depends on the market?

Yeah. So that's normally where I would start. If you're in, like, a super high end or a super competitive market, it may make a lot more sense to niche down and get a little bit more specific. So, like, you know, one of the things we showed Drew how to do was find public documents. So Drew's actually starting now to build his own mailing lists based off of people that have filed for divorce, pre foreclosure, evictions, mechanics, liens, power of attorneys, death certificates. I mean, I'll be blunt. In Indianapolis, I even mail murderers with equity. Like, well, if there's an indication that they could want or need to sell and they have equity, we're in front of them.

So, and, so what would be the first step to find that information? I'm sure it varies from county, but you go to, like, the clerk's office.

Honestly, the best thing to do is just call, like, your county assessor, like, so you want to. You'd want to decide what you're looking for. So, like, one of my favorite lists that I unfortunately can't get in Indianapolis is properties that are behind on their taxes. Great, great list. Some counties will give it out, some won't. For some, you need to file a Freedom of Information act request, which costs you a couple bucks, and then they'll kind of give you the goods. Other counties, it's as simple as you call up and say, hey, here's what I'm looking for, and they send you the file. So first place I would start is like, another common one is code enforcement. Right. So reaching out to whoever's over code enforcement in your community. And, hey, do you have a. Is there a portal or is there a list you can give me of properties that have board orders or have been flagged as vacant or whatever?

Drew, kind of give us your experience with that part with finding the list and that navigating that. Now, Ryan's obviously a professional, so he speaks very easy about it. But I want to hear kind of from Drew. What have you had in looking for these lists, if you would?

Sure.

Could we kind of call this step three? So we got build your brand. Step two is find your market, and then maybe step three, who in that market?

I would say this is more like step, like six or seven. This is probably after you've done a campaign or two and you're looking to kind of niche down. I do want to give a shout out to the CRM company both Drew and I use. It's a company called Resimply. They're active all over, bigger pockets. They're also buy and hold guys. That are great. So that's kind of the. Like, after you have the brand set up, after you have your farm area identified, before you send out marketing, you're setting up a tracking phone number and setting up the CRM of where are you going to work all of these leads. You know, working out of something like a Google sheet or an Excel file is cool when you have four leads, but when you have 50, 60, 70. I mean, it starts to get pretty messy if you don't have a software to do some of that heavy lifting.

Okay, okay, well, we'll go. We'll go to all that. But first, Drew, go ahead and answer Felipe's question on your experience with that.

Yeah, absolutely. So, again, I've been doing real estate locally for about five or six years, and so I've got a fair amount of experience with. Our online systems here in our county are actually very robust. And so I've spent a lot of time searching and digging into them. And some of my previous mailers came from those lists. But admittedly, I wanted to test the waters with what Ryan was suggesting that we do and not deviate from that too much, just because if I deviate too much and it doesn't work, then Ryan can say, well, it's Drew's fault. What if I do exactly what Ryan says and it doesn't work? Well, then maybe Ryan and I, maybe we need to talk about it a little bit differently. No, I won't let the cat out of the bag. We've stayed with absentee owners just for the first major mailing, and it's been good thus far. But the next step for me, kind of now that everything's established, we're looking to do the second and third mailings downstream. Then we'll start tearing into the niches.

Okay, great. Ryan, you want to go back to your steps. So after he's found his market, what would be next after that?

Yeah, so, I mean, you've got your brand set up. You know what you want to call this thing. You have your website and social media profile set up. You then have to figure out what phone number you're going to put on all this stuff. If you're going to use, like, tracking phone numbers, we use resimply because that's included in there and pulls through there and then from there. I mean, if you're going to take your own calls, cool. If you're going to hire somebody to take your calls, Resimpli gives you, like, a web form you can give them so they don't have access to all your data. They can just input the leads, and then really, from there, it's kind of like you need to get some. Some leads into the system, go on some appointments, talk to some people, make some offers.

So you're. You're telling me you don't put your personal cell phone number on 2000 mailers and.

Okay, Drew, so what did you. Did you end up doing that, and did you get your first call?

Yeah, so we got our mailers all set. We sent them out kind of, you know, once a week, I'd kind of send another batch out to make sure I didn't get so many that I. That I couldn't handle them. And we. It did real well. Almost immediately, phone calls would come in. Of course, they didn't come to me. They came to call Porter and Carpenter. Call Porter did a great job of taking those calls, asking the kind of questions that I'd be asking if. If I were on that call. And then they populate that CRM for me so that when I'm done with work at the end of the day or when I get home, I can open it up, see what sort of conversations happened, and then begin the process of following up with. With each of those leads.

Drew. I think that's really important for our listeners because a lot of the times I even get questions like, man, how do you do so much? How do you buy a property under contract, mess with your tenants, this, that, the other? And it's. And I try to explain to them, look, if you can systematize your life, actually, you step back and you kind of watch it work on its own. Right. And that sounds like what you did, if you could, you just said you came back from work and you were able to just look at a business that was basically running without you. Right. And you were able to just kind of pick and choose what appointments you were going to do. You didn't have to sit there and answer every single call. And you didn't create yourself another job. What you're doing is you're systemizing with Ryan's help, right. That, like, okay, I'm coming home. I see the conversation that they had. This person looks like that they're ready to sell or whatever the case may be and you're not wasting time.

Yeah, I think there's probably a transition between doing all the work yourself, choosing when you get to do the work, and then letting other people do the work. And I'm probably kind of in that middle step where Ryan has helped me thus far. Say, I don't have to take these calls during the day. I don't necessarily have to do all my mailers. I still have to do some of this work with all the follow up and I'll go on some visits and things like that. But now I'm setting the time when I want to do that, which makes a world of difference. And if we continue to have some of the success that we've had thus far, then we'll be looking for maybe an acquisitions manager or the next person who really can do that work and then he and I or she or I can follow up and make decisions together so that I'm less involved.

So it's.

I don't know that it's overnight, but it's been a good transition so far. I'm probably right in the middle of, I don't get to get rid of all the work, but I get to choose when I'm doing it, which makes all the difference.

I really like this because it kind of highlights the point. Don't recreate the wheel. Like you could probably do this on your own using Excel spreadsheets, pulling numbers from the phone book and taking the calls yourself and then recording that data. So let's talk about the pricing of this and how did you decide how much you want to spend and how many mailers are you. Are you sending out right now?

Sure. Ryan, do you want to speak to. You know, I don't know that everyone's advice is the same for each market. So maybe you could talk through how you mentor the mentees through.

Yeah, that would be great.

Yeah. So I typically recommend that this is, this is something folks only do if, if they can spend about 3,000 bucks a month on marketing. A lot of like mail houses will tell you, hey, budget to mail the same list for six months before you get a result. I've heard that on numerous podcasts. I'll just be blunt. I'm not that patient and I don't expect other people to, to see that kind of money going out the door for that long without getting a return. So that 3,000 bucks, what that typically looks like is going to be about 2,000 pieces of direct mail. You're going to have the CRM we use resimplies about 75 or 100 bucks. Carrot sites we use are about 45 to 150 bucks depending on like which version we use. A little bit of Facebook ads, a little bit of Google Ads, and then call Porter taking the calls. That's kind of like what that breakdown looks like the most scalable and obviously, the most expensive piece is also the direct mail. On that note, the reason why I do direct mail, I've done cold calling. I've done text message blasting, I've done RVMs, and I currently have friends getting sued for RVMs and text message blasting. So we choose.

Can you explain what that is? I don't even know what that is.

Yeah. So there's platforms that can send out a thousand text messages in 30 seconds. A lot of, like, coaches and stuff push it because the barrier to entry is so low. Hey, you can get in front of a thousand people for a hundred bucks. Right? Personally, for me, though, I just decided I wanted to play above board at all times. So we don't do any of, like, the. The quote unquote, like, gray area marketing. We're not doing bandit signs. Our big focus is on the stuff that's legal, ethical, and scalable. So that's direct mail and online.

Yeah. And then what does the. The RVM stand for?

Yeah. So our RVMs are ringless voicemails in theory. Like, a voicemail is just supposed to go to your phone. Your phone's not supposed to ring. What actually happens is you get a call from an unknown number that you can't answer, and then you get a voicemail of, you know, somebody. It's. We looked at it. Of just. The user experience is terrible. I never get a voicemail, and I'm like, oh, great. Can't wait to check this out. It's kind of like, come on, shoot me a text. So that. And it started out, and it wasn't really regulated, and now it's. It's not so much a gray area. It's. It's pretty black.

Yeah.

So that's interesting that you're saying, okay, I got to stay legitimate, because a lot of people are probably going to be like, okay, how do I hustle my way through this? Right? Like, how do I get. Get in front of a thousand people for this amount of price? And you're saying, look, guys, no, just be legit from the beginning. Be honest. Kind of like you told Drew, right? Just clear skies, right?

Be.

Be personable. If you got. Like you said, I'm never going to check my voicemails. Text message me if you. If you really want to. Right? So I think you're. You're dropping some gold there to people. Hey, Be. Be personable, even from the beginning. I mean, from the beginning all the way to the end is how you're going to get the deal done. One.

It's.

I mean, I'll be totally blunt. I have gotten deals through gray area methods.

This.

This isn't something that I didn't. I didn't see the reward and the sex appeal to it and was like, like, we bought two duplexes in Indianapolis off of a text messaging campaign that cost me $85. I bought two properties in a hot, hot part of town for a total of 150 grand. Those properties are both worth 175 apiece. We put maybe 30 into them. Right. Like, don't get me wrong, I have seen the, like, wow, that was lucrative. But ultimately, I didn't want to run a business where I felt like I needed to look over my shoulder. But then on top of that, like, I didn't want to explain to my wife, like, hey, the FCC is calling because of some dumb stuff I did. Right. So, like, when you're starting out, if you want to cold call or text landlords, like, don't. Don't get me wrong. Like, you've got to work with what you've got. I'm a big fan of, like, driving for dollars through something like deal machine. If you have, like, very, like, very. Any budget. But I'd rather see you, like, door knock or go to garage sales or do kind of some of that on. On your feet kind of stuff that, you know, if you're hustling because you're broke and then you get slapped with a fine, well, that doesn't help you be less broke. So.

Right. Makes things worse.

My first deal was. Was from a yard sale. Actually, my first house hack that I have was from a yard sale. I pulled up on a yard sale. The little lady was selling everything, and I was kind of confused. And ultimately she was like, yeah, I'm selling my house too. I was like, really?

Yep.

Let's buy it.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's like, there's kind of this. You're either going to spend more money or you're going to put in more time. It's up to you which. Which one it is. I like the scalable systematized. Like, I value my time way more than I value money. But that wasn't always the case. There was a time when I had no money and I had time. As you can find in old BP posts.

Yeah, that's great. I really like that because that's very true, is you can either spend more money or spend more time. I like that. We'll have to use that as a highlight of the show when we come out. But, Drew, I want to ask about what have you used besides just mailers? Anything. You mentioned you had a Facebook page, your website. Are you getting leads through those?

You got to talk about that. That first deal, man.

Yeah. So the first deal was. Yeah, first deal was wild because it kind of came out of nowhere. You know, we're working through a couple of weeks at a time trying to build these systems and get onboarded. The first deal that came to us came through the Facebook page, where someone just messaged the Facebook page. Turns out they had a lake property, actually on the same lake my parents live on. It's about an hour from here. And we wound up purchasing. We actually close on it tomorrow. And this. It's going to be a vacation rental throughout the summer, but it's only 45 minutes, maybe an hour up the road. And so we'll go hang out there, visit our folks. Maybe at Christmas time, when relatives come from out of town, they'll stay. And it was a great deal for us. It was great for the seller, and it was even before I had sent a single mailer out. So it just showed me immediately the value of just putting yourself out there and having that brand that's attractive.

I've had so many folks I've worked with that when they throw out the business page and invite their friends to like it, people are like, oh, I've got a house. It was like, they didn't even know that you. That you did this. So, Drew, I don't know if that's how this particular guy found you, but.

Yeah, it turns out that we have a lot of mutual contacts. Like, it's strange how many people that we know. And so, again, I had invited a lot of friends to, like, the page. And so I don't know if it was through some of those connections, but it's been great just to get to know him and kind of what they're going through. And it's been good.

That's a common theme we've had on the podcast, too, is people talking about word of mouth, how they just tell people what they want, what they're looking for, and, you know, either their direct friends and family have something for sale, or they say, oh, actually, I know someone, you know. Let me connect you.

Yeah, I think I.

It's.

That's been huge for me. When I first started investing, you could find deals on the mls, and that has started to dry up, and we spend a lot of time. I host the local real estate investors meeting in town, but we talk a lot about network and put yourself out there and communicate and now with Ryan's guidance, we've started to get several deals and the ball's really starting to roll. But the previous six months I think we had four or five deals and they were all word of mouth pocket listings or my sister needs to go to a nursing home or things like that. So word of mouth is absolutely huge.

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Drew, I do have, I do have a question that I get all the time as well. And this is going to be more directed to actually probably both of you guys. But Drew, if you would tell me, if someone is looking for a mentor like Ryan in a specific niche, what are some of the things that you looked for? Because there's other people that do what Ryan does very successfully and also teach people how to do it. Why did you choose Ryan? And then Ryan, you can say the question to you would be after that is, you know, why did you decide to mentor Drew? Because I don't mentor everyone that comes to me. So, like, you know, what was the decision factor for both of you guys?

Yeah, that's a really good question. I think it's going to be different for everyone. I think it's important that you kind of know what you're going for. Right. So if you're just starting out and you want to do rental properties, you're probably going to seek out local landlords in your community so that you can just spend time with them. So maybe you meet and you meet for lunch or you however you want to connect. I'm to a point personally where I do learn a lot from local people and I actually spend a lot of time teaching local people now because of the Real Estate Investors Association. So now I'm kind of at a place the last two years where I'm really trying to focus on this aspect, this one thing. And so you kind of cast a wide net and just kind of sit back and watch. At least that was my approach is I've heard of Ryan. I listen to his podcast. Okay, what's he about? Right, so you follow the Facebook thread and you maybe introduce yourself, things like that. But I kind of vet through just watching for a little bit.

You gotta stalk them a little bit.

And make sure they be.

You're spot on. So that was at least my approach. So it probably depends on what you want to learn and how specialized of the information you need to gain is. And the stuff that I need was pretty specialized. And it led me to Ryan.

Ryan, why did you decide to take on Drew?

Yeah, good question. So one of my big things is I try to work with people that already kind of have the dream. Like, I'm. I don't. I don't really like the, like, selling the business opportunity. It's very, very rare that I'll work with somebody who hasn't done a deal or several. But I think the thing for me that was appealing with Drew was he'd done deals, I'd actually dabbled in his market with somebody else and had good luck. So I remember when I told Drew, when he was, like, debating it, I was like, look, I've already done this in your market, and I know it works. So, like, you know, come on, let's go. And we. We also just happened to get a couple Fort Wayne leads that fell into our lap down in Indianapolis. And I said, I'll tell you what, man, whether you join us or not, here's. Here's 15 leads. Go, go work these. So, I mean, ultimately, for me, it came down to the fact he had the experience, he had the track record. Our big thing is acquisitions and getting you in front of people. And I felt like he could close. I can get you in front of as many people as you want, but if you can't close a door, I really can't help you. Right.

So that's funny, because it sounds like you were going to make him successful easy. You knew the market. You knew what was going on. You knew it worked. You were like, oh, this is going to be easy. I'm going to make him successful.

Yeah.

And I think it's easy to find out who the gurus are and who the legit people are that you do want to invest your time and money with just by asking, you know, ask that person, who are you mentoring now? You know, get referrals, even. Just maybe someone is not mentoring anyone, and you message them on social media, just asking, hey, can. Would you be interested in mentoring me? And then you can provide some. Some value to them, whether it's money or, you know, writing, sending out mailers for them or. Or something like that.

I'd really want to talk about people who add. Value is my thing. Like, I've. I've had people in the past that I reached out to. For help. And it was like, well, you know, here's my, you know, $25,000 program. And it was like, yeah, right. I asked, like, how I set up a Google my business.

That's not what this is. Right. I'm not trying to buy a $25,000 program.

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's. I think, really, you want to look for somebody that you're. You're learning from before they've, like, asked you for anything. I think is. Think is another big piece.

That's a great point.

You know, Ryan, I would add a little bit more to that as well. And then I got a question for both of you guys. But I would add that, you know, I even go past now what kind of value that person is bringing. I don't even look for that anymore. I look for genuine relationships. Like, if someone's like, hey, Felipe, I can redo your website. I'm like, so can the other person that you're not adding any value, like, or, hey, Felipe, I'd love to help you with this. That the other. I'm like, all right, that's cool. But so can the other person. But the person arson is like, hey, Felipe, I saw that you were in your prayer this morning. I think that's really cool. Didn't ask me for anything, just. Just a comment. And I'm like, oh, that's cool, man. Building a genuine relationship, I think is even more important than just like, hey, I can add value to you. Well, that's fine. Maybe that would have helped me back when I didn't have money. Not that I have money now. I'm just saying, you know, there, there. If you want to reach somebody, man, build a relationship with that person. And I think real estate is like that in a completely way. Right? Adding value to somebody. Cool. I love that. It sounds great. You can throw it on an Instagram post, whatever. But for me, I think more important is relationship building. Do we click? Am I going to actually be able to help you? The money is irrelevant. If. If me and you don't click, bro, I'm not going to be able to help you because I don't know, we're not going to connect. So I think more than that is just building a relationship with that person.

There's a book on that called Blue Fishing that I highly recommend.

Okay.

Yeah, the. The guy's, like, just a total gangster, but some of his. Like, his basic. His basic thing is he can get anything for anyone. He had, like, a client who wanted to get married in Rome, and he Got her married in the Vatican by the Pope.

Dude. Wait, what is that book called?

Blue Fishing.

Oh, man.

Add that to the show.

It's like a four. It's like a four hour listen. And I know the guy who wrote it personally. Super, super good guy.

If you guys want to find that link, we'll link it to the show notes@biggerpockets.com forward/rieval9.

Hey, Ryan, let me ask you, how are you? Because I think this is really important and I want everyone to listen real quick. Ryan, how are you going to hold Drew accountable to the goals that he's talking to you about? Even going back to like the two weeks thing? And even going forward, how are you keeping him accountable to his goals?

Yeah, good question. So how we structure things, we do two group calls a week, and then we also have slack access. So one thing I've found with entrepreneurs is when they're hurting, when stuff's not going well, when they've got relationship or health things going on, they tend to pull back from the communities that are there to support them as opposed to pushing in. So it's like, hey, you haven't showed up in a few weeks. Like, what's up? We've had guys that be like, oh, I got a new girlfriend. Like, okay, cool, that's fine. Just, you know, wanted to make sure it wasn't anything else. And then on top of that, I mean, the way we look at it, we're. This is kind of a passion project for me of like, my goal is to be just a part of the success story. So the way I look at it, every single month, every single marketing campaign he does, I mean, this is money he's spending with my companies, right? I need to earn him as a customer every 30 days. And I think that's just the way I look at business. So, hey, what were the results? If the results weren't great, let's talk about it, let's dive into it, let's look at what we need to do for the next campaign, that kind of stuff.

So that's how you're holding everyone in your team accountable. It's like, hey, guys, you haven't been around. New girlfriend, cool and all, but like, hey, you know, this is what you talked about last week. Or the things are good.

Then if you got a new girlfriend, things are bad and you're flying away.

You mentioned, like the relationship piece, though. Like, I follow all these people on social as well. Right. So it's like. And then I also love that you mentioned that I had A. A buddy of mine that I remember, I asked when I started coaching people, like, how do you differentiate? Is this somebody you're going to pitch on, what you have to offer, or if this is a relationship? And, I mean, his advice to me was always, go for the relationship. And that's just what I've done. And, I mean, I have friends that have ended up spending money with me. I have friends that I've poured a ton into that haven't spent a dollar with me. But I think the big thing you're talking about, though, is it has to be that genuine interest in the relationship. Not, like, what can I get out of you? Because that's. I mean, that sucks. Nobody wants.

That's something. That's something that my mentor is working on with me. He says. He's told me a couple of times. He's like, felipe, you do have genuine relationships, but I feel like a lot of the times even you don't know it subconsciously, you might be building relationships to see what you can get, and you need to start building relationships to what you can give. And I'm like, man, that's really good. It's actually one of the pastors at my church, but basically it was telling me, like, it doesn't always have to be a monetary gain, and you'll see a huge success if you just build relationships to build relationships. And I think that's really smart. And, Drew, I would ask you what is. If you. If you're willing to let us know, man, what's one goal right now that Ryan kind of has you accountable to?

You know, when we first started talking, there's kind of this core curriculum that we start working through that he holds you accountable. And I've just recently, the last couple of weeks, kind of gotten through that. And he and I communicated back and forth about. I gave him kind of a report of, okay, I've gone through the whole thing. This is how it's gone. And so this is how many leads we got. This is how many offers I made, how many deals we got. And then the dialogue from there is, okay, where do you want to take it next? What do you want to work on? And so we've had discussion about niche lists, which ones to pull other people, either inside his network of people or maybe even outside that might be able to help me. It turns into a little more independence. But he's challenging me to think about new things and test new things, and that will continue on.

That's really great. And Felipe and I are actually going to be Your accountability partner, too, because we're going to have you back on the show to see how you're progressing going through this mentorship and using the direct mail marketing pieces. We'll also focus on, you know, what happens after that person calls and, you know, you go to the property and how do you negotiate the deal and how you close it. Because Ryan talked about how he can get deals in front of you, but you have to be able to close it. So when you come back, we'll. We'll cover all that, too.

Yeah, and I'm. I'm really excited to do that. I think the first kind of round that we've done took off like gangbusters and, you know, we'll see if that continues. I imagine that it will if I keep putting in the same amount of effort, but, man, there's. There's so much more to talk about, you know, how I finance these deals. Just the face to face interaction with the people and building the relationships that we keep talking about.

Exit strategies. Yeah, yeah.

So what you guys are saying is we need to make this into a part three, three, part two shows.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you send me Ryan, how do you. How do you handle when a mentee. Because this show is talking about a professional like yourself and Drew, who's trying to get on that level. But how would you handle somebody? Because Drew, it sounds like he hit a home run from the beginning. What would you say to somebody that didn't?

So first thing first is diagnosis. Like, I've done dumb things before, like, sent a marketing campaign and not turned my phone number on. Like, did we. Did something like that happen? Did we had a customer who. Or we had a guy in our group who couldn't figure out how to log into his CRM but hadn't told anybody. So he's like, you know, I've been checking my email and I'm not getting anything. And it's like, did you have like 45 leads in your CRM? Like, let's make sure you know how to access that. So, I mean, I think for a campaign that kind of like falls flat, it's looking at like, okay, what. What can we change? Or what should we do differently next time? Because it's not just. I would say most people who I buy houses from aren't desperate. But the other piece to that is most people who I buy a house from call me asking way too much money, tell me I'm out of my mind and should be ashamed of myself for the offer I gave them. I think biggerpockets actually lovingly named my last interview how to make a lowball Offer. So, you know, most of these are people that tell us no and then end up handing out when we follow up. So that's one of the big things we get into is follow up and overcoming objections. And if you offer a hundred, but really you can do 110, you don't come up to 110 on that first phone call. It's kind of, I think more the negotiation piece, I think just kind of doing diagnostics on like if you have leads but no deals, then there's probably a breakdown in either how you're analyzing the deals, how you're estimating your repair costs, or your follow up.

I feel like we have so much more to talk about and to cover. So I'm really excited for the other episodes and if you guys guys have questions about this episode that we didn't cover or going forward, stuff you want Drew and Ryan to cover, you can call our rookie request line at 1-888-5-ROOKIE and leave a voicemail there and we'll play it on the episode and we can have Ryan and Drew answer that question for you. Is there anything else you guys wanted to add that relates to the show today? Kind of getting your brand out there, getting your systems in place, finding your market.

I think the only thing I would add is I used to look at anything I paid for marketing websites, services as like I used to put a lot of the responsibility on like there's a, there's a tool I pay for for email opt ins and okay, am I getting 250 bucks of value out of that tool this month? But then what I kind of looked into and realized is they have all kinds of training and material and stuff like that out that the way I now look at like any marketing campaign I do. Like there's vendors I've got people I hired to do my pay per click advertising and my Facebook ads I look at, okay, do they have resources that I'm potentially not tapping? So I think like somebody who's a bigger pockets person who's like, is it worth paying for a premium membership or whatever? Like it's on you to extract the value out of that. I mean it's kind of like listening to a podcast. I'm hoping that somebody who listens to this is going to go like Google how to find the hottest zip codes in their market. Like we name dropped the vendors we're using. Like this isn't like this isn't a hire me thing. It's a. These are the tools.

Go.

Go connect them. And it's. I think, really, if you don't take action, you're just. You're wasting your own time.

And this is something that definitely rookies can do, because you mentioned that you personally only mentor, you know, people who have already done some deals, but this is something that, you know, anyone could start.

Yeah, I mean, my. My first deal I did was direct to seller. I. I think that, like, was a blessing and also a curse. Like, that's how I find all my deals. But, you know, I wasn't on the mls. I wasn't looking for pocket listings. I was out talking with sellers, trying to figure out how I could solve problems. And I think that's really the thing is, like, get yourself in front of people. Like, Felipe mentioned a yard sale, an estate sale at the block party, Pass out business cards. I'll never forget, I had a buddy of mine who I was talking about real estate investing with, and he goes, oh, man, I totally forgot you did that. My dad and I just sold my grandpa's house to homevestors for, like, pennies on the dollar. And he was like, man, I totally would have just, like, that could have been yours, but I wasn't talking about it, so.

Absolutely. It's really great that you actually name dropped everything, because I'll sometimes hear podcasts where people are like, oh, well, I use this CRM, and I use this and I use that. And I'm like, cool. Where can I find that?

What are you.

Yeah, what are they? Like, what are you using that I can use? And you literally gave them step by step. Hey, this is how you're going to get started. And on the next episode, you're going to say, this is how you follow up. And on the next episode, you're going to tell us, like, so if people just listen, write it down and take action. Done. It's. You've literally given the exact steps on how to get this started. And, Drew, thanks so much for being on here today. You know, and. And being that mentee and being vulnerable to saying, hey, I needed help, even though Ryan might be younger than me, but I have this experience in real estate. But, hey, I'm not good at systemizing this, and Ryan is, and I need to find out how to do that. So it's really cool that you were able to humble yourself and say, I'm going to hire this guy, and. And we're going to get it done. And you're definitely crushing it. So, Drew, where can people find out more about you, Ryan. Where can people find out more about you?

Yeah, for me, honestly, probably Facebook's the easiest way to find me. It's Drew Wired. That's wizard without the Z. So Drew Wired. And what I would tell you to do is go find your local. Ria. If you're. If you're starting out and you're new to things and you're not spending time with people who are doing it, you're doing yourself a major disservice. That'd be like never reading a book or never watching a podcast or listening to a podcast. You need to go spend time with people, even if you're not necessarily a people person. You can just soak up so much knowledge, even just by sitting at the elbow with people. So that's between now and when we come back for the second round. People should have been able to attend one or two at least by then.

Agreed.

I always harp on that.

And I was about to say you hit Ashley's button. She loves to talk about Ria. Yeah, go ahead, Ashley.

All the meetups. Yeah, especially now when you can do them at home. All of them are virtual, right?

Well, and I mean, you can tell Ashley, Ashley clearly loves just socializing and being with people and all that kind of stuff. And that might not be your cup of tea, but if this is what you want, if this is what your goals center around, you can just go hang out. We have lots of people come to our meeting. Who? I try to meet everyone, but there's too many people and I can't. But they just fly on a wall for a couple of months.

And, yeah, believe it or not, I am an introvert. Like, I prefer to be at home. And so I usually take a friend with me or I meet someone online, you know, on Instagram beforehand. So I know a face to, like, go to when I first get there.

Ashley will Instagram creep you before she gets to know you. And she knows more about you than you think, so can't lie to her, Ryan. Where can people find out more about you, man?

Best way to do it is just my website. It's just ryandossi.com.

Drop your Instagram too.

I mean, mine's Ryan Cdassi. Same with, yeah, Facebook, YouTube. I mean, it's.

She loves Instagram. Guys, you gotta understand.

Yeah, it has good content. I follow Ryan on there, so. But thank you guys so much for being on the show today and we can't wait to have you guys back. I am Ashley Kerr. You can find me at wealth from Rental on Instagram and my co host is Felipe mejialipemejia rei that's right.

Thanks guys.

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