0218: Level Jumping: How I grew My Business To Over $1 Million In Profits In 12 Months with Author, Speaker, Trainer & CEO of Just Start Real Estate Mike Simmons

This is Mike Simmons from Just Start Real Estate. And you're listening to EA interviews, EA.

Interviews episode 218, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's expert Authority effect interview. Have you ever thought about investing? Maybe making 100,000, 500,000? How about a million dollars in 12 months? I think that's pretty interesting. And that's why I'm excited to have Mike Simmons on today's episode. He's an author, a speaker and CEO and he's going to be sharing this with us right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's free business book publishing course. Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Mike Simmons. Mike, how are you feeling today?

I'm doing great, man. I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.

Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm excited to just dive right in because there's few people who can say they broke the million dollar barrier. And you did it in 12 months with investing. How did you pull that off?

Great question. It was what you call a six year overnight success. I started in real estate, made a lot of mistakes, was having trouble scaling my business until I made some key changes in my company that allowed me to go over that million dollar mark. And I did actually a little less than 12 months. And I learned a lot in that time. And the way I did it was really just learning some key stuff. Right. I started surrounding myself with the right people. That was huge. I got a mentor which was.

So transformative in my business, it's hard to even describe. And I started doing things like tracking numbers. Right. People don't track numbers very well in their business and I wasn't tracking numbers. And if you're not tracking numbers, not only do you not know if you're doing well, you don't know if you're doing poorly. I knew money was coming in and going out. I just didn't always know where and how much. And finally I learned how to hire and that I needed to hire. There's only so much you can do as an individual. Right. You have a ceiling on what you can accomplish. And, and that's not to say that people aren't able to do amazing things and more than they think it a lot of times it's true. But no matter how optimized you Are, no matter how efficient you are, the fact of the matter is you have a certain amount of time in the day. And if you really want to grow beyond what one person can physically do, no matter how great that person is, you have to hire, you have to build a team. And that's some of the things that I learned that will allow me to get over that hump.

Well, I appreciate you for talking about that because I've told people that myself and I'm very thankful for my team. There's no way I could pull this off without them. But. But some people seem like they're averse to it just because it's like, well, no one can do it as good as me and whatever trash they're telling themselves because, I mean, you're not gonna do it on your own. So I wanna ask you, when it comes to the team, is there a secret size that the team should be or is it the right people? Or is it, you know, tell us a little bit about that side.

Yeah, there's no secret size. I mean, obviously, if you're a very, very, very small business, the bottom line is the size of the company can't be more than what your cash flow can handle. Obviously. Right. And that sounds like a joke, but it's. You know what? I know people that have hired themselves right out of a business because they overhire, they overextended their overhead and their personnel cost them way too much and they weren't able to spend money in other key areas and they failed. Right. But as far as, like, who do you hire? Ultra important, like the. There's something called opportunity cost. And when you hire the wrong people and you aren't able to seize the opportunities in front of your company, that's the opportunity cost. And for me, in my company as a real estate investor, I found it was most applicable to my sales team. If I hired the wrong salespeople, then I was not closing or getting enough opportunities. And in my business, we're talking every transaction is tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. So you leave a couple of those on the table a month and next thing you know, a year later, you've missed millions of dollars worth of opportunity. So opportunity cost is huge. We take hiring very seriously. It's very important to us. We try to do it slowly and we try to fire fast because you're not help. You think people think they're helping by not letting someone go as early as maybe they want to. They hold on to them, but you're really hurting them. You're not going to keep them. They're not able to get to a place where they actually have a better fit. And your company opportunity cost is huge. And the other people that work for you are being. They're suffering. The productivity of the company is suffering and that's hurting everybody. So hiring slow, firing fast is certainly something we try to do.

Why do you think people. So let's say they get past the point where they go, I do want a team, they build it up. And I've dealt with this before where it's like, you know, on a personal level, you don't want to let someone go because, you know, you don't want to hurt them. But from a company standpoint, it's. I believe that too. You know how you're slow fire fast because then it just drags it out and you know, it's hurting the team, it's hurting you. You know, they're not doing a great job and you're just prolonging it.

Yeah.

Why do you think that is? With some people, they feel bad.

People just, you know, you try. Listen, most people are genuinely pretty good and firing someone feels bad. It sucks. You know, it's hard to do. It doesn't feel good to do it. And it's sort of. It's sort of. Why do people, why are people bad parents? A lot of times it's because they don't have the stomach to do what they need to do. They don't. They can't hold their kids accountable because their kids cry and then they feel bad that their kids are crying, their kids are sad. So they, they, they don't make them follow through on the punishment, whatever it is. And then you have these kids that are just running around crazy. Employees are the same way. If you don't do what you need to do, it's usually because it hurts you. It feels bad to you. If you've ever had to fire somebody, you know what I'm talking about? It's not a fun unless that person was just awful and it was just like relief. But even when they're awful and it's a relief, you don't wake up that morning and bounce out of bed and go, yeah, I get to fire somebody today. You. You feel bad about it. So, you know, people just do it because they don't do it fast enough because it just feels bad, you know, really. But. But if you reframe your thinking a little bit and so yes, it feels bad, but you're actually doing your company, your other employees, and the person you're gonna let go. You're ultimately doing them a favor and it's like a bad relationship. How long should you let any bad personal relationship go? People need to be able to move on and be with someone they really, really like and who likes them. And your employees deserve that too. So if it's not a good fit, you know, it's not a good fit. You're actually hurting them by not letting them go sooner.

I'm glad you're saying that because it's something that's not talked about enough and I know too many people that have been hurt by it. I'll even throw myself in there because you're right, it's not fun unless you're like a cold hearted, mean person. You're not like, oh, wow, this is gonna be so fun. It sucks, but you know, it sucks worse just dragging it out six or 12 months.

Totally. Yep. Absolutely. It just makes everything harder, right? Everybody gets deeper, entrenched. There's more things though, to try to untangle. It's like a relationship. It's just you're better off to do it sooner.

So let's talk about the good side of the secrets you're sharing with us and how, what are the benefits of having the good team in place is that, you know, one of the reasons you were able to pull it off.

In 12 months, I'll be perfectly honest with you, I would love to say yes, I had the perfect team and we were very, you know, cohesive and we all loved each other. Not the case. When I built my company up from really, I was on a pace to do about $200,000 in gross profits. And within 12 months, I got over a million in gross profits. Now, I did that, unfortunately, with not the best team in the world. And they weren't. It wasn't so much they weren't the best team as it was. I was a bad leader. So when I started hiring, I had this, I'll be honest, I had a goal to get to a million dollars in revenue or gross profit. That was my goal. And so I was going to get there come hell or high water. And I started bringing people in and I was just cramming information down their throat. I was just, you know, like beating a horse to the finish line. Like, we got there, but we got there with a team that felt a little bit abused, probably exhausted, underappreciated.

And.

And we spent the next year after that. We still made over a million, but we spent the next year trying to repair the foundation that we built that wasn't great. And it was all because I was a bad leader. I was hiring the wrong people. I was incentivizing them poorly. I was frankly, fairly abusive, not verbally, but in the amount of work and what I expected from them. It was unreasonable and I had people quit. I had to fire people. And at the end of the day, once we hit our goal and once we were in the repairing and rebuilding mold, I realized it was me. I spent that whole first year going, it's them, it's them, it's them. They don't have drive, they don't want it, they don't care. They're not hard workers. And at the end of the day, what I had to really come to grips with was my expectations were unrealistic. I expected people to work like I did and know what I know after five or six years of building to that point. And the fact of the matter is, they're not owners. They're incentivized differently than I am. They're never going to care like I do and they're not going to work like I do necessarily. So it doesn't mean they're not great, doesn't mean they're not hard workers. But I was being very unrealistic with what I was expecting from them. So we do it differently now. We really hire for values more than we hire for experience and knowledge. I want a good value fit and someone that really fits with our culture. And if I can find that person and they have any amount of experience or knowledge in that area, I can train them up and make them.

I love that you're saying that. So now I have two questions for you. One of them is, how do you decide what's reasonable and unreasonable in the workload in relation to the compensation?

We usually start with the workload being less than I know they can probably handle. And then we also, we keep people in the lanes. I'm real big in my company for I hire someone to do a specific job and that's what I expect them to do. When I first start hiring, I tried to hire a few people and just give them everything I was doing. Like the whole. They were running the whole company. They were wearing all these different hats in these different departments and it was completely ridiculous. Now if I hire a salesperson, their job is to wake up in the morning, do their cold calls or do their lead gen stuff, right? Look at their calendar, go on their appointments, get contracts. When they get back to the office, they give the contract to the next person who processes it and they Go back and rinse and repeat. They're all about talking to homeowners and signing contracts. That's all they do because they're sales. They should not be doing other things. And then I have someone, when they hand that off, I have somebody in my company called a dispositions manager. That person is. Their job is to figure out how we're going to best monetize this property. And that's what they do all day. They don't go out and sign contracts. They figure out how to take that contract and monetize it for our company in the best possible way. So everyone has a lane that they're in, and they have very, very, very clear set of instructions on what success means to that position. And that's how I keep people with realistic expectations. And a lot of it is just. It's trial and error and it's. And it's the past. It's data. So I use data to tell me what I should expect from my people going forward.

Excellent. Now, the values that you brought up, what are the values you look for? Because I know this is increasingly important. Because, I mean, let's be honest, anyone can do certain types of work, especially if they're trained in it. But not everyone has the same values.

Yep, 100%. And values sometimes are difficult to figure out in an interview. So my interviews are a lot different than a lot of people's interviews. I'm not hyper focused necessarily on their credentials. I'm focused more on how they view things, how they talk about their past employers, how they talk about their past coworkers. So what kind of values we look for one of them, that's huge to me. And this is something I added in, in the last few years, and it's called extreme ownership. There's a book by the same name by Jocko Willink. Fantastic book. I had a chance to meet Jocko and actually get trained a little bit by his team.

So the extreme ownership part of the. Of the hiring process is important to me. When I asked somebody at your last position, what did you think of your last two bosses? And they go, oh, idiots. They didn't know what they were talking about. They constantly made my job hard and screwed me up. It's like, okay, you don't take ownership. Obviously you're blaming somebody else for your problem. So extreme ownership is huge for me. Continuous education. I want people who are voracious learners. I want people who read. I want people who are trying to better themselves all the time. Integrity is huge. Integrity is one of those cliche ones that sound like it's just thrown in there to look good. But it means something. In my company and in my industry, for that matter, there's a lot of opportunities, to be perfectly frank, to screw people over, to be unethical, and to take advantage of people. There's plenty of opportunities to do that. And what I tell my team is there's no profit margin. There's no amount of money. There's no deal that's important enough for me to sell my soul or to have the person that I look at when I see. When I wake up in the morning look in the mirror. I don't want to look back at a bad person. I don't want that person looking back at me in the mirror to be a bad person. And I've told myself, because the sales team has the best opportunity if they really wanted to take advantage of people. And I've had salespeople call me on the road and say, hey, listen, we got this house. We're talking to the owner. It's a little old lady. She has no family. She has no idea if this house is worth. And she told me whatever I think is fair, that that's what she'll sell it for. I could literally tell this woman anything, and we could destroy this and make the. I mean, we could have a huge, huge, huge day on this house. And I just tell them, listen, what if that was your grandmother? What if that was your mom? But what would you want the person across from them to say to them? Would you want to take advantage of them? Do you want to be that guy? And I'd go, no. We had a number going in. We knew what a fair number was going in, what we were willing to pay. Pay that. That's what you pay. That's what you do. Right. So integrity, work ethic, extreme ownership, continuous education. Those are the kind of things that I look for, employee.

Well, I'm glad you do, because I know there's plenty of people out there that aren't.

As scrupulous. They're unscrupulous. They're not as good as you.

Unscrupulous. Yeah, exactly. There are. There's lots of them in every industry, honestly. But, yeah, they're. They're. They're out there.

So how did you get into real estate? Because I noticed you said for six years. What were you doing prior to that?

So prior to that, I worked in the automotive industry. No big surprise. I'm in. I'm in Michigan. I worked in the automotive industry, got my degree later in Life. I didn't get my college degree right out of high school. I got a full time job at a great company. I was making good money and I thought, this is it, I'm here forever. Did not end up staying there forever. Got into the automotive industry. Ended up going back and getting my four year degree as an adult with kids and the whole nine working full time. And I was working my way up the corporate ladder. I was in an automotive company, ARP company made seat structures for cars. And I was in the prototype department. So I was a project manager in the prototype department. We would build seats and then the test team would crash them or burn them or freeze them and do all these things. And we would look at the results and go, okay, so there was failure modes here, here, here, let's change the design, let's rebuild them and let's crash them again. And that was the industry that I was in and it was actually pretty fun and interesting and it changed a lot because it was prototypes. We are constantly just crashing and blowing things up and seeing what happened. So pretty cool. But honestly, in that life I knew the jobs that I was kind of like looking at as far as what did I want to do in this company over the next 10 to 20 years and the jobs that I really wanted to get eventually. The people who held them were unhappy. They were not people that enjoyed their life. They hated their husbands, they hated their wives, they hated their kids. They never had free time, they were miserable. And I thought this cannot possibly be my goal to be where these people are because they're telling me it's horrible. And just started looking on the Internet. How do I invest? What do I do with my money so I can retire early? And I came across real estate and it really piqued my interest. I loved it. I love learning about it. I love going to seminars and rias. And I dove into that world and started flipping houses with my wife. And that's kind of how it all started.

Well, I'm glad you did find it. And I felt the same way early on where it was just like, whatever we do, we're going to choose to do for the rest of our life or at the very least a large chunk, slash portion of it. It's like, if you don't enjoy it, why are you doing it? You can make, there's a million and one things to do to make money. And I know very few that are better than entrepreneur. You know, being a business owner. Entrepreneur.

Yep. 100%. 100%, right. And that's I didn't know that growing up there was no entrepreneurs in my life. Nobody was telling me to be an entrepreneur. So I did it later in life. I mean, I really didn't start my business until I was 38 and I had been in the automotive industry and, or like in a real job for, you know, at that point, 18 years or something. 17 years. So I spent a good amount of time in corporate America and it was soul sucking. I hated it, didn't like any part of it. And I didn't even know that owning a business was really an option for me. But once I started down this path, it was like I tell people it was like I was underwater for years and came up and finally got a breath of like clean, fresh air. And that's kind of how it felt. And so I never want to go back underwater. That was awful. I didn't like that at all.

Well, I'm glad you got to that point. So let's talk about the future because obviously you're in a good place now.

Where do you see the business going over the next two to five years?

Boy, that's a great question. So I use, there's a book called Traction that I use. That's how I run my business right off of that book. So we do quarterly meetings and we just finished our last quarterly meeting to talk about the rest of this year. So we have a big one coming up at the beginning of the year, end of the year, end of this year, beginning of next year. It'll be kind of a planning for the year. And I'm right now in the process of kind of coming up with my most revised two to five year plans. The interesting thing about being an entrepreneur, especially if you're a typical entrepreneur, is you have entrepreneurial ADD where you do get a little distracted. And I fight that every day. There's, like you said, there's so many ways you can make money and so many things you can do that. The hardest thing you can do as an entrepreneur is to say no to an opportunity that looks awesome because you have a plan. So that's something I've struggled with. But to answer your question directly, my real estate investing company is going great. I've got a team that runs it. I don't have to be involved day to day. So that's kind of running on its own. I've recently started a lending company, so now I lend money to house flippers and landlords and other folks that are doing things inside of real estate. That's the latest company that I started. I'm excited about that. I have a podcast, like you obviously do, and that's important to me. I've spent a lot of time with that podcast, giving and giving content, just providing content and value like crazy. And. And I haven't really focused a ton on monetizing it because I was just about. I don't even care about money. Like, I don't care about money. I don't care about making money. The podcast. I just want to give value. But I. You know, I'm getting older. I just realized at some point, if I'm going to spend a lot of time doing something that's not my family and not with my family, it simply has to pay for itself and more or I can't continue to do it indefinitely. And that may sound crass and it may sound greedy, but the fact of the matter is, time matters. Time is the one asset and the one commodity that we cannot get back. So if I'm going to do something, like I said, that takes me away from my family for any amount of time, it has to be productive from a monetary standpoint. So I'm doing that now, too. I just wrote a book. I'm in the process of talking about that and going on shows. I'm excited about it. The journey I took from going from not really making much money to over a million dollars in profits. And the book kind of outlines exactly how I did that. So that's kind of what I'm up to right now and probably for the next few years.

Well, I appreciate you for sharing that with us. And there's nothing crass about it, because the reality is, I know what microphone you have there. You told me about the mixer. I know you got lights just like I do. And I can assure you, for anyone listening, this stuff is not cheap, so. And it's sure as heck not free. So it's definitely worth the investment. But it takes money to produce a show. A quality show, I should say. I mean, I'm not going to go off a tangent on that one, but there's nothing crass about it. You should be focused on revenue and profits and knowing the margins and all of that. And there's some people who think it is a bad thing, but it's not. And they're generally the ones not looking at it. And that's why it feels bad. You can still have the same heart and say, I want to have the XYZ margin, and it's allowing me to help this many more people versus I struggle, they struggle. And now nothing Gets accomplished.

Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. I've never looked at my podcast as being something I need to survive, obviously. But, yeah, the fact of the matter is I've only got so much time in my day and in my month and whatever. So, yeah, I have to make decisions about where I'm going to spend it. Yeah.

And the time with your family. I mean, it takes, you know, for me, 30 to 60 minutes every single one. And you do hundreds and hundreds and thousands of those. It's like those are years of your life. I absolutely love it. But the reality is you can't be in two places at once. And as far as the opportunities, yeah, they're pretty much every day. But the bad thing is when you get a hundred a day and you only get through the first 10% of each one.

Yeah.

You never get any. You never get the traction that you need to have that breakthrough. It's like, yeah, it's a great opportunity, but, you know, why don't you do it? It's a great opportunity. I'm like, I already have a dozen great opportunities. I'm focusing on one, and it's my business.

Yep, totally, 100%.

So for anyone that's thinking about getting into real estate, what would you say some of the things they should look for are?

I say, figure out what it is that you enjoy. What do you like? If you want to get into real estate, ask yourself, why? What is it about it that excites you? Here's what I've seen, and there's a lot of ways you can get into real estate. Don't get me wrong, but two of the more popular, let's just say three of the most popular, the three pillars would be landlord, meaning like buy and hold properties, flipping properties, otherwise called fix and flip, and what's called wholesaling, which is essentially getting purchase agreements and selling those purchase agreements to a landlord or house flipper who wants to take that property all the way to fruition. So those are the three major ways that most people get into real estate investing. You have to talk, you have to think about what it is about real estate that excites you and which one of those three, for example, is most interesting to you. And what I hear people tell me a lot is this. This happens all the time. Wholesaling has kind of been a buzzword over the last few years, maybe handful of years. A lot of people talk about wholesale and wholesaling. So I'll talk to folks that are new and they'll say, well, I flipped four or five houses. I Loved it. It was a great experience. I'm so excited when I see the new owners and they're excited about the new house, and I just love it. I love flipping houses. But I'm gonna start wholesaling now, and. And it's like, wait, why? Why are you doing that? Well, I just heard someone talking about it, and it sounds great. It's like, does that sound exciting to you? Do you want a wholesale? Well, I just think it's probably the thing to do. Everyone else is doing it. I'm telling you, these are like, verbatim, like, conversations. And I'll go, no, you should be flipping houses because that excites you. That makes you want to get up in the morning because it's going to get hard. And when it does, if you don't love what you're doing, you're going to have a hard time sticking to it. So I say, for people who are getting started, figure out what it is you want to do. Figure out what you can do, where your strengths are and where your passion is, and go in that direction. Don't do what you see someone on a seminar or even a podcast or, you know, whatever on a website, what they're doing, because, you know, listen, a lot of people exaggerate their success anyway. But second of all, that's what they're excited about. You need to figure out what you're excited about and then follow that. Because like I said, it's going to get tough. And when it does, you better be happy about what you're doing. I used to flip houses, by the way. I said I started flipping houses. I don't flip houses that much anymore. I do some, but that process didn't get me out of bed in the morning after a while. So I switched my model up a little bit and I started doing buy and hold and wholesaling. Now I do do a lot of wholesale deals. Last year, I did over 100. Like, I do a lot of wholesale deals because I like wholesaling. I like the model a lot better than I did flipping. Does that mean wholesaling is better? No, it means the wholesaling is better for me. Me, but not necessarily for you. So you got to figure out what you like.

I love that honesty because even with what you're saying, oh, I love giving them the keys and they get to do this and, you know, they really appreciate. You're probably not doing a lot of that in wholesaling.

No, no. I never get to see the finished product. There's no, like, ugly duckling Journey to the Beautiful Swan for the house. Like, I don't see that. To me, my business, honestly, I wholesale real estate, but. But really what my business is, it's sales and marketing. It's all it is. I market for opportunities, I get the contract, I sell that contract to someone who wants to take it the rest of the way and then I go on to the next one. Now it's houses. But quite frankly, my business model could be applied to anything. It doesn't matter. It just happens to be houses because I'm good at that. I understand that world and that's where I'm going to be, make the biggest splash and have the most value. But it could be anything. I don't see them, I don't see the finished products usually. And honestly, I don't care. Because for me, one thing I learned about myself is I'm impatient. I'm super impatient. So wholesaling. The thing about wholesaling that attracts me is the contract and the deal lifespan is two to four weeks maximum. Right. Whereas a flip is like two to four months, maybe six months, maybe a year, depending on the actual deal. I'm like two to four weeks and it's gone. So there's a lot of velocity with wholesaling. It all moves fast and I like that it moves fast. And I feel like it insulates me a little bit from recessions and economy because if I only have a contract for two weeks, how bad can the real estate market get in two weeks? Right. It's just not going to happen. So I can get in and out of things fast where I feel like I'm not exposed. Like people were back in 2008 frankly, and had to really take a big bath on some of the stuff they were holding.

Yeah. And that's a great. Like you said. I love when you said it's the best fit for me because there's other people who, you know, it's basically the creatives versus spreadsheet and I can do both of them. I prefer the creative. But there's other times I'm like, I don't care. I just want to focus in, you know, like with profits and margins and stuff like that. You're not going to be doing that in crayon. But you know, the people who like process a. That's a better fit for them, for, you know, us, it's. I'd probably say this, probably. Obviously it is for you. And then you said there was a third one. Buy and hold.

Yeah, buy and hold. Landlords, people who want to buy for long term, you know, property. Like passive.

Yeah, I was just going to say that's more the passive where you're getting the renters, you own the asset.

And yeah, it's a drip, you know what I mean? It's not, it's not an avalanche of money every month unless you have a ton of rentals. But I mean, when you're starting off one or two or three or four or five rentals, you know, we're talking hundreds of dollars a month, that's not insanely like going to change your life overnight. But if you do a good job and you buy right and you hold onto em for long term, it builds momentum. You know, you keep adding houses, you pay them off. Next thing you know, that house that was giving you $200 of passive income is now giving you $800 of passive income. Cause you paid it off, you own it free and clear and you start doing that over and over again and then you have appreciation over time. Like that's a strong strategy, but it's not. If you need money right now, like by the end of the year you, you need to make $20,000. Rentals is not how you're going to do it. You're going to probably need to flip a house.

That's a five to ten year plan.

Totally.

At least.

Yeah, at least. At least.

There was someone I knew in college and he had been doing, he was just so casual. We were at like a homework thing and he was an older gentleman at the time and he was just like, yeah, I just bought another, an apartment complex. And I thought he meant he got an apartment, he meant he got the whole complex. And I'm like, come to find out he had been doing real estate for 30 years at that point, maybe 40, and he owned around 15 million in assets and he had rentals in every single one. And I was just like, you know, I knew of the concept, I wasn't doing it in college, but I was like, that's a lot of, that's a lot of passive. But again, it wasn't, you know, 3, 6, 12 months. It was. He probably started with a couple houses, then went to 10, then went to 20, then 100 and you know, then started buying buildings. I mean, that's cool too.

People do. It works. That's exactly how it works.

So when you're saying sales and marketing, how vital has it been to your success in real estate? Because I know you're saying you can apply it to anything.

Totally applied to anything. It works great in real estate. The funny thing about real estate, not sales so much, but when it comes to marketing, real estate is so antiquated. Real estate investing, I should say, is so antiquated. Like I'm in a mastermind where there's hundreds of investors from around the country. I know guys that are just humongous real estate investors, just massive.

And I know them all personally, so I know where their deals are coming from. I know what marketing channels are working best for them. And almost to a person, the marketing channel that brings them the most amount of leads and makes them the most amount of money over the last five to 10 years is direct mail, believe it or not, sending out these little postcards or letters. And nowadays, by the way, most people are sending postcards, right? So they're sending a postcard that says, hey, my name's Mike. So I got this property at this address, I'm interested in buying it. I can pay all cash, don't have to do any repairs. Call me if you want to sell your house. That's how people are buying houses at a large scale and that's how they're doing most of their deals. Now. There's a lot of online stuff people do now like Google AdWords or it's called PPC, text blast and ringless voicemail and some of these other, a little bit more tech heavy stuff. But honestly, of all the investors that I've met in the last 10 years, like 95% of them are getting most of their deals from direct mail. Like it's insane. Post like you go out to your mailbox and you get this car that says owner, buy your house. Like that's how people are selling their house. Now why is that? Most people are on the Internet. Most people search on the Internet. You would think Google AdWords would outperform direct mail every single day. And some people in some markets it does. But for most part it doesn't because my clients are older, frankly. I mean, we buying houses more often from folks who have life events and they're in the stage of life where they need to start selling their property and they have equity. And there's a million reasons why people sell their property to an investor as opposed to selling it through the mls. But that's just the demographic of people that I can most often help are people who are a little bit older. So they're still checking the mail, they're still looking at their mail, right? I've talked to younger folks who said if you sent me a postcard like that, I would burn it. Like I would never even read it. And it's true because they want to find it on Google or whatever. Like they're going to do a search and do stuff on Facebook ads or whatever. Like that's how you're going to reach a younger demographic. But my parents, my grandparents, you can still reach them through the mail. They're still opening it up and looking at it. And until that demographic changes and now we're buying from folks that are currently on the younger side, probably direct mail will continue to work.

And I've told my marketing clients before we've incorporated direct mailing campaigns because you can also put the website, like if you want to do lead gen, you put the website on the postcard. But it's so great because it went from direct mail. Then everyone's like, oh, email everything, and digital this. And then everyone started doing it because it was so inexpensive. But now there's hardly anyone doing the direct mail. So the sheer nature of doing it. Yeah, you, you can clean up with it. I think it's great. I did want to ask you though, are you doing. Do you know if they're doing custom postcards or are you talking like edd with every door direct? For anyone who doesn't know?

Not every door direct. No way. That's. To me, that's a, that's a huge. In my industry, that's. I think it's a waste of time and money. Now, I know they're very, very cheap. I get that. But for me, it's like, it's almost like the billboard.

You're pulling up the addresses and you know who you're targeting directly before you target them.

Yes, I have criteria that you have to meet to get a postcard from me. I don't want to send you a postcard. I'm not saying you specifically, but I don't want to send a person a postcard who's upside down in their mortgage. They've only lived there for a year. Like they are never going to sell. Like that person. It's a waste of a postcard. Unless they're in some distress, they're not going to sell it to me. I want to sell to people who have some sort of a distress, but also some equity. It's a lot easier to help people with equity than without equity. There's things we can do without equity. Don't get me wrong, there's creative financing and solutions, things like that. But in general, I also don't use billboards because I don't want 10,000 people to see necessarily my Ad, it's just a waste. I want to be able to track too. Like, I want to know why people are. Why people are responding to my card, and I want to know which demographics are responding. So I do a lot of split testing and I have hundred different phone numbers that I use for different things. Like, I want to know why everything's working. If I go every door direct, I don't necessarily know why. Sure, I can ask them. I get that. But I want to be able to test and turn on and off marketing channels that are working or not working. I'm super data driven with my marketing. Super data driven.

I think that's something that's overlooked too. And like I was saying, as much as I'm a creative, I love going into spreadsheets and looking at profit market margins and especially in marketing campaigns because the data doesn't lie. And almost always you think this is going to work and then it doesn't. And then the thing you think doesn't work does. But you know you can't when you have empirical facts like that. It's. You just do more of what's working. And it's simple if you can remove the emotion from it. And I think it's great you're bringing this up because the direct mail is huge. But again, if you have that spray and pray mentality versus, I mean, who wants 10,000 leads if 9,000, 992 of them are all junk?

Right. Yeah. There's a cost.

Just give me the 10 that are going to be. That are ready to go right now and they're a perfect fit.

Yep. I've told my team. So we get a lot of phone calls. We try to drive people to a phone call as often as we can. I've told my team, my goal, as in the marketing department, my goal is not to get more calls. My goal is to get more calls from people who have houses that they have the ability to sell and the desire to sell. Right. There's a big difference between the two. So just making the phone ring means someone has to pick it up and I have to pay them. Like you said, I would rather them not pick up 9,950 calls that are junk. I would rather them just pick up the phone for 50 calls where there's a motivated seller that wants to sell their house.

Yeah, it's a better return on investment. You're not annoying people. And people don't realize that when you're doing marketing, it's not just generating interest, it's also getting the people Repelling the people who are a bad fit. Everyone thinks, like, just because you're doing a campaign, it's like, oh, I want everyone. It's like, no, you want the 5, 10% of the right people.

I joke around real quick. This is helpful. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

I was saying, when I'm speaking in front of audiences, I always go, who would love 10,000 leads? And everyone raises their hand. I go, now if I could deliver that by tomorrow, how many of your businesses could honestly support it right now? And everyone goes.

Because the fact of the matter is, if you don't have the systems and processes in place, your subconscious is telling you this does not add up. And that's why it doesn't work.

Totally. Yeah. And you know the number one question that we used to get when we would send out our direct mail, the number one question was, how did you get my information? And that's all they wanted to know. They didn't want to sell their house. They just want, how do you get my information? So on my card, I started printing. We obtained your information from public record, which is available to the general public.

That phrase on there cut my calls down by more than half, but we didn't lose any volume because we just cut out. Like you said, we repelled. We answered the question that most people had who were never going to sell to us. And. And when they don't call us, that's perfect. I love that our call volume went down. Our deal flow didn't get hurt at all. So that's exactly what you want.

Yeah. When you can figure out those hot buttons and answer them ahead of time, that's when marketing gets fun. Because like you said, you're talking about transformational amounts. It's not just, oh, we got a few less calls. I mean, over half of a 10,000 spread. That's a lot. Yeah, that's a big a lot.

All right, so we're going to do the. I mean, this whole thing's been fun, but we have the wheel of whatever right before we thank the sponsor. And my question for you is.

Who is a real estate entrepreneur? You'd love to have dinner with.

A real estate entrepreneur? Real estate entrepreneur I'd like to have dinner with. Maybe it's a good question.

I can open it up to any entrepreneur if you.

Oh, any entrepreneur. Okay, that changes it for me. I would probably most like to have dinner with Gary V. Gary Vaynerchuk. If I could talk to. If I could have dinner with any entrepreneur, that'd be it.

And why Gary?

I've been a follower of his for a long time. I actually had the huge honor of speaking at one of his events. Now, speaking at one of his events doesn't make you his bestie and you get to hang out with him at home and drive back to the hotel with him. It means you speak at one of his events and you don't necessarily get a ton of time. So I've been a big follower of his and I'm just, I admire his approach. It's pretty straightforward. I like that he, he really talks about hustle and not some magic bullet or some, some secret formula to success. That is bs. He doesn't, you know, he's just, he's got a gritty approach to success and I just appreciate that. I'm, you know, Midwest kid here, born and raised, automotive, you know, capital of the world. And I just like when people are honest and they sell you. Hard work is what makes you win. Like, you have to be smart and there's certainly some other stuff going on, but you can't just, you know these people who just show pictures of them standing next to a Mercedes with a handful of money and the real estate industry is the worst for this. The really cliche, just sort of really bad imagery where it implies that it's all like champagne and money and everyone succeeds and it's super easy. It's all bs. It takes work and there's a little luck in there too. So somebody like Gary who's just sort of got that mentality, I just enjoy and I'd love to get his advice on. I would like to get his advice on my company and my industry because he doesn't talk specifically about real estate very often and I would love to hear what he thinks.

What a great answer. Thank you for sharing that. I can tell you it wasn't just an answer to answer.

No, not at all.

He is definitely a good one and I think it'd be interesting too. I mean, such a wealth of wisdom. So thank you for that. We're going to thank our sponsor and come back for the imperfect action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours. And it's true. And that's why you should visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori. I went from having an idea and.

A possibility to actually getting my book.

Published or Catherine thank you for making.

My mom number one best selling author.

Or Mary Alice what he got done for me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable.

John Cody I've worked with Mario over the phone and online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I.

Needed to go with promoting my books. Rocio there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. Adele if you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficini or Bill Benner. I can't make a higher recommendation for than to work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started now and I look forward to hearing your transformation as the next video success story. Once again, that's free businessbook publishingcourse.com and we are back with the imperfect action round. Mike, are you ready to take imperfect action?

I am so ready.

Let's do this. All right, this is rapid fire answers. 60 seconds or less. The first question is what is the fastest path to the profits?

Fastest path to the profits? 100% is execution. It's not education. It's not thinking and deliberating. It's not shiny object. It's action. And the people who I see that take action are always the more successful people.

Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

If you mean prospects by the people that I buy houses from, the biggest mistake they're making is waiting too long. We're at the tipping point in the real estate industry. We're at the top of the market. Values are as high as they've ever been. Everyone thinks they're going to cash in on their house. The fact of the matter is, I'm telling you this, you're not a seller. So I have no ulterior motives here. The longer you hold onto your house over the next six months, the less you're going to make on it. House prices are going to go down. They just are. If you want to sell your house, do it now. That's the best time.

Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value.

To be honest with them, to do what you say you're going to do and to be there for them and to over deliver.

I just listened to a talk this weekend of a guy, his name's Kevin Brown and he talked about kind of the Disney effect. Right over deliver. Do more than people expect and do more than you tell them you're going to do and you'll get a customer for life.

Excellent.

What is a book or two that you'd recommend? Expert Authority World.

I think I mentioned Extreme Ownership. Jocko Willink. Love that book. Everyone should read it. It's a little bit holding up a mirror and it's a little bit of like you just better be hon with yourself. It's a little uncomfortable sometimes, but I think everyone should read it. And I think I also mentioned Traction. Those are my two favorite books lately. Traction. If you are running a business, small to medium sized business, and you're struggling with meetings and how to structure things and I think you should retraction because it changed my business and I think it's an absolutely fantastic way to run a business. Very easy to understand and very actionable.

Gino Wickman, right?

Gino Wickman. Yep, exactly.

Excellent. Well, I've enjoyed this. Thank you for sharing. Where would you like people to learn more?

You can go to mikesimmons.com you can check out my podcast at Just Our Real Estate. And I did write a book, so it's called level jumping. You can check that out as well.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Mike. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you.

All right, Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate and qualify leads while increasing profit for you 24 7? And if so, how well are you promoting it? With the Expert Authority Effect publishing method, it's easier and faster than ever. Visit freebusinessbook publishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started. Now once again, that's freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.Com hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes. The full interview, video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.