EP 589 – Five Things You Can Do To Market Your Real Estate Business From Home

This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for pennies on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now, here's your host, CEO of We Close notes, Scott Carson. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Note Closure Show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be here with you today. And hopefully you're safe, you're healthy, chilling at home. For those of you out there running around the beaches, hey, can't make it to the beach. So I thought I'd have the background here. If you're watching this video, a little on the beach. But for those that are listening across the country in Note Nation, hopefully, like I said, hopefully you're safe. Hopefully you're healthy and making it through everything that's going on. So today's episode, I wanted to kind of talk about five things that I think every real estate investor should be doing right now with their free time. Whether it's a week home for a month, they're laid off from your main job. There are some things that we all can do to help us make the most of this time, make the most of this staycation, I guess you could say, is what it is. So you probably want to grab a piece of paper, pencil or pull out your notepad on your phone, which is where a lot of people take notes, I guess, while they're listening. So. Cause these are some things that I was sitting here today thinking about, what to talk about today on this episode, what to share with you. You know, everybody talks about, oh, hey, I want to be a virtual summit expert. I don't know about you guys, but I'm tired of seeing. I mean, we've been doing virtual events for years and we've got some great stuff that we've helped people out with. Can you do that? But I'm sick and tired of virtual summit experts or how you gotta start a podcast today. No, you don't. I think you should be marketing. I think you definitely should be using the time to market oneself. Whether notes or real estate are your full time gig or your part time gig, it's important to do that. But there are a lot of things going on. The market's almost a little too soon for us to spend a lot of time in diving in and connecting banks. And so I haven't sent an email out to our asset managers this month. I don't think it's a smart thing to do because they honestly don't know what's going on. Now, there are some pros and cons like, oh, hey, get it out in front of them. At least you're still on their top to mind. Yeah, and I would agree to that aspect of things. But we've done stuff on a regular basis. We're top of mind. Now for people out there that have never sent an email out to their database, which I'm willing to bet is probably most of you guys listening here, that would be a smart thing to do in a one sending an email out to your regular database, your friends, your families, your colleagues, people you've networked with, posting that on social media, maybe sharing the email that you send out to your database, to your Facebook groups, to your Facebook profile, to your business profiles, those places to LinkedIn, that would be a great thing to do. But I don't necessarily would be sending an email out to bank asset managers right now just because they don't know what's going on. A lot of them are waiting around to see what's going to happen here with the government in the next 30 to 60 to 90 days. And so that's why I think it's smarter to wait to as we get closer to the start of the third quarter, wait and see what happens with the end of April. Wait and see what happens with the government if they're going to bail anything out and go from there. And then once you start seeing kind of the chain reactions, what's happening and actions taking place from these actions, from these dominoes falling, then you'll be much more proficient in identifying opportunities out there. So that's the first thing you still, I think the first thing everybody still needs sending an email out to the database. And don't do one of these like, oh, we're wiping ourselves down for the coronavirus. Try to do something different. Hey, just be yourself. Share how you're overcoming. Share your frustrations, share things that have worked out well. I've always made a comment that many times over the past couple years. We've always talked about how everybody's gotten that one letter from your Aunt Flo or that one email from Aunt Arlis talking about the update of her and her family. I think people need that a little. Hey, how are you coping? What are you doing for fun? What are you doing if you've got kids, how are you keeping them entertained? How are you not going stir crazy with everything? How are you avoiding the negativity on TV Those are some of the things that I think would be good. People need to hear that. People need to see that not every day is a good day. Some days are good days here. Other times we had rough days. Last week I was pretty down a couple days. Kind of lacked motivation to get some stuff done. In a pretty good mood for the previous couple weeks. It's okay to take a couple days and like I'm just going to take it lazy. I'm going to be sitting on the couch and veg for a day or two, but then get back off the couch, get back on that horse and get back being productive in any way that you can. Because doing something is so much better than just sitting around and not doing anything. And there's only so many times you can clean the kitchen, moving piles of stuff around. There's so much you can do before you kind of go stir crazy and start looking like Jack Nicholson in the Shining. All right, so these are some of the things I want to get back to. Let's go back to the top five. Drum roll, please. Everybod one is as we talked about before sending an email update to your contacts. Great. Like I said, post it everywhere. If you're part of meetup groups, post it there, post it on LinkedIn, LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups. Hey, what are you doing? What's an update? If you want to do, take the time and film a short video to go along with it. A short 2 to 5 minute video will actually increase your engagement, increase productivity and increase your open rates across the board. So that's the first thing. We all know that with the market changing quite a bit here in the next 90 days, there's going to be some changes taking place. Now what I would do is if you're in a market, I'll give you an example. I'm in Austin, Texas here, not bought debt in Austin, Texas in quite a few years because it's just been overpriced, aggressive market. And I had a conversation the other day with a friend of mine, realtors out in San Diego, and she was like, oh, everything's going to be great and nothing's going to happen. We're going to rebound strong. I'm selling houses in San Diego virtually. It's going to be like, fine like that. And I'm like, that's just San Diego. So if you're in a market that's not like that, where it's overly crazy, overly priced, low demand anyway, you probably going to want to do some things. The first thing I would do is I would look at identifying the niche of real estate deals that you want to target. Now if you've been a single family residential guy or gal, you've been a small commercial investor, you've been a fix and flipper and it might be a little bit more difficult if you've targeted subject to deals in the past but haven't done that. If you are looking for owner finance notes but you haven't found anything much recently, look at what's going on in the market and realize that there's going to be some trending taking place. Yes, there's going to be an increase influx of some foreclosures over the next six to nine months. It's just going to happen. People lose their jobs, they get behind. The banks will give them six months of free and easy. Well, not free or easy, but you get what I'm saying. Deferments, modifications. Hey, let you back on track. Great. Start identifying those markets that maybe you're looking to invest in. Maybe it's a bigger city, maybe it's a different market than you're familiar with. If you're in like a longer foreclosure state like New Jersey. I was talking to an attorney this morning who's done some stuff out of the nick of woods and he was talking about how a lot of the foreclosing attorneys in New Jersey are just ceasing to offer that. Does it make sense for them to $2,000 for a foreclosure that could take two years. Just they don't make a lot of money. They lose money almost on those stuff. So if you're in the longer foreclosure market, I would probably pull back. And what I mean by that, well, look at the foreclosure timeframes before this all happened and then maybe roll that out, you know, push it out a little bit, add another three months to that timeframe. Because as we have an influx, it's gonna drag some things out. Now who knows what's gonna happen on a state by state level. We could see things like happened 12 years ago where attorney generals cancel foreclosure proceedings, canceled evictions proceedings overnight for 60 or 90 days. That's why I say it's a little too soon to do that. This is why you can start putting these things together. Start identifying an asset class that you want to do. Hey, if you want to target small commercial, great. Look at some of the markets that have the small commercial assets that you want to. I'm going to look in the strip malls and I want to look at office space or I want to look at self storage, I want to look at apartments. I don't think your big apartments are going to take too big a hit. I think you're going to see the smaller 50, 60 plus sub 100 unit apartments are going to probably take the biggest hit because most of the time the mom and pop operators don't usually have a big reserve of capital and depending on how they get bailed out or don't get, they won't get bailed out then there'd be a lot of increase in that people motivated. Even if I've started seeing an influx of deals coming across that people are looking to move stuff immediately and taking some discounts and some stuff just to get off their plate to get something in, to get it off their books so that they have the capital back on their books so they can invest more, buy more, move on to the next asset class here in the next 90 days. So talk to quite a few realtors, investors and seeing emails from other people out there. So identify the niche, identify if you got a new niche you're looking at, identify that niche of asset and start looking in the areas of the markets out there for you. The markets that may have hot list of those. I'll give you example. Like if I was interested in self storage, I would not focus on Austin what I would do because Austin's going to. You're going to have these bigger cities that are getting bought up because it'd be competitive because they're local. I would go an hour outside of your major metroplex, your secondary market, those markets that aren't the biggest but they still have a lot of opportunity, your medium sized cities in different asset classes and see what's available in those places and start just maybe drawing a circle around a bigger city and looking. I'll give you example. If I draw a circle, an one hour circle around Austin, Texas, well that would take me up to Killeen and like Fort Hood. Take me out west May La Grange or East lagrange. It would take me south into San Marcos, come out county, Hays county, those neck of the woods and looking in areas and those opportunities. So that might be an hour, two hours out, just drawing a circle on the map on a city and then targeting those areas outside your major area would be a great thing to do. Okay now and I would start researching. That's the number three aspect of things. Researching properties in that neck of the woods, researching banks, lending that neck of the wood, researching properties in those. Maybe you pick two or three Bigger major metroplexes and you do that two hour circle. Who's lending in those states? You can go to Scotsman Guide or others, especially on the commercial side of things. Who's lending in Texas or who's lending in Ohio or Michigan or Florida on that specific asset class and start putting your list together of asset. Maybe you jump on Bauer Financial and download a list of banks phone numbers that are in those states in Those markets, roughly. Languide.com okay, the reason is you can start researching now so that you're prepared when things do finally shake free here in the next quarter. You've got these things, you've got your targets so you're ready to rock and roll, ready to jump when things versus trying to research. Now don't be wrong, there's going to be constant researching going on, what's going on, how are things going to play out. But start putting those lists together, start putting targeting those markets for you so that you're prepared. It's targeting an asset class. Maybe you need to jump in and join a membership or jump on an association website or see if they've got a Facebook group or something like that you can target. I'll give an example. If you were into gyms, if you wanted to buy gym space because you could convert it into storage facility or you take over operation, what I would do is I would target every major gym out there. Now 24 Hour Fitness just filed bankruptcy. Now are they going to stick around? Are they going to restructure and come back? Who knows, maybe they don't. But what I would do is I would target every gym in the area. That means Gold's Gym, Lifestyle Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness, Anytime Fitness and targeting those in area in a geographic area and seeing who the lenders are on these or looking to see any of, if any of them have been sold. There are any specific realtors that handle previous sales in an area because those would be the great people to know who's buying, who's selling, who's got the banking relationships if they've been given these as reos. All right, so that's what I would do. Look at the areas that are going on now. Another thing about researching markets that are really valuable is this kind of goes back into seeing what's going on now like in Houston, Dallas, other parts of the country you've had major employers laying off a variety of things. I think Halliburton announced this recently but Halliburton announced furrowing. Oh actually here it is. This came out actually this is a couple weeks. This is about a month old. Like here in Texas. We have tens of thousands of Texas being laid off across the state in the oil industry. Halbert. Yeah, Hallbert announced they'd be starting to lay off furlough their 6,500 employees from the Houston office. Okay, that's a lot of people. You look at other major oil companies in the Houston area, like ConocoPhillips is like 3,500, 3,600 employees just in Harris County, Houston alone. Now, what you have to realize is those people that are leaving these companies are being laid off doesn't mean they're broken. Yeah, they may need other work. They may not have a lot of savings, but often many of them will have substantial 401ks that need to be rolled into things, into self directed IRAs. Maybe they're taking an early retirement, looking to do some things. So those may be some great opportunities to reach out to identify those individuals. And you could use services like Melissa Data to go and pull a list. Some of the things that we're doing is pulling a list of some of these bigger oil companies in Texas, starting to pull those lists so that we can start marketing to them here in the next 30 to 60 days once we have an idea what's going on. The idea like, hey, if you want to roll your 401k into a self directed IRA and use it to invest, use it to fund some deals, use it to buy a deal, a property, if you want to get into real estate, all right, talking about that, the thing about targeting them will lead to number five of one of the biggest things that I think you should be doing. Number five is something I've harped on before, but now that you've got time at home sitting around, this is something that everybody should be doing. If you're a real estate investor, and this goes into the marketing aspect, and I mentioned this briefly with number one in sending an email out to your database and putting maybe a short video together. Well, I think number five is you need to start putting your story roll together. Now, what I mean by story roll, I think you need to have five or six short videos, a variety of things. Now, variety doesn't mean to be crazy. We're not talking about a library of 100 videos. What I mean by a variety of things is some things that you're going to use over and over and over and over again in the next six months. And as most real estate investors are doing the bare minimum, marketing wise, if you to take this time to Leverage freedom at home using your smartphone if you need to, using Zoom or Facebook Live or something. You could easily record these videos. And I would say these five topics are probably the biggest ones that you use the most. One, if you've got an entity, hey, what does your inverse asset fund do? What does evergreenprofits.com do? What do we do as real estate investors? What do we focus on? Okay, what do we do? What do we focus on? Will be video number one, video number two. Hey, why I got into real estate. Your backstory, what interests you? What are some of the things you've done? Your history. If you're brand new, great. I've been interested in this for a while, been learning, I've been educating myself for a while. Or hey, I've been a fix and flipper. I was talking to a flipper this morning out of Melbourne, Florida and I asked her, I said, okay, well, I said, how many deals you've done? She's like, oh, we've done 52 flips over 10 years. I'm like, okay, cool, five to six a year. She's yeah, look great. And I was like, okay, are you marketing that? Anyway? She's like, no, I'm writing a class, but I'm going to wait six months before I get it out. It needs to be perfect. And I'm like, that's a big mistake. Don't wait for perfection to get something out. Because the minute you write something, it's going to be outdated. The minute I upload this video or upload this podcast, it'll be outdated in 30 days. In 60 days, that's okay. But the idea here is to get stuff out and you can always go back and tweak it. You always can change things, but get something out there to help. So if you're in an area, if you're an investor in Houston, Texas, you may want to do a video. Hey, been laid off recently. Here are some options for you to roll your 401k into a self directed IRA. Or here are some options for you to do. It's easier than you think to roll your money into your account. Or you may want to talk with somebody who's got a self directed ira. Llc. Start thinking about those questions. Start thinking about the solutions that you can offer up not only to people in your database, but people around you. Because a, if you're pulling a list, which is pretty easy to pull, not too expensive to pull a list the way data is these days, pulling a list of professionals or people in the market there, that have been laid off or haven't been laid off. Oftentimes they can give you a list and email database that you can upload to Facebook or upload to LinkedIn and connect with a lot of those people and you start marketing those people. Yeah. Are some of these people that are on the list are probably still working there? Yeah. Great. But maybe they're not your ideal client. Not maybe. I guarantee they know somebody who's been struggling, who's been laid off or furloughed or took any early retirement and maybe they forward the email. All you need is a few people to read the email to opt in so that you've got a lot of extra cash sitting on the sidelines and be ready to invest when the market finally breaks free. When we start seeing the deals, the defaults, the foreclosures on the residential and the commercial market, it doesn't take much to be able to find something valuable. I mean, everybody who's listening to this is capable of raising a million dollars in private capital relatively easy. If you market. There's a big if. Those are the two letters. If you market. Market via video, market via audio. Getting email blast out now, we're not talking about like HBO production company, although some people that are watching your nightly news or the Tonight show and stuff will probably produce better quality video than Jimmy Fallon climbing a tree or Bill Maher climbing up a six foot tree in his backyard. Kind of hilarious to see that. But what I'm getting at is start sharing little stories about you. Who is you? Why did you get into real estate? What are some of the things that attracted you to being a real estate investor? Why do you invest in notes? Why do you invest in distressed property? What property type do you like? What type of deal are you going after? You do this for a variety of things. If you're a landlord. Oh, here's what I like. I like three bedroom, two baths, 15 square foot houses. Why? Because of this, this and this. I like this market. Why do you like Columbus, Ohio? Why? I like Columbus, Ohio because of this, this and this. Okay, so that's the thing to look at, you know, knowing your niches, knowing your markets too. Looking at what's going on in the universities and seeing what's going on if you're in a college town. Because that's going to be a lot of changes. If there was a great article in USA Today yesterday talking about how a lot of the smaller colleges are struggling, they're laying off people, they're canceling programs. Like you're even Here in Austin, Texas, letourneau University, which is a large private university called the Hilltoppers, not University of Texas, but it's St. Edwards. Did I say Letourneau? I think it's St. Edwards. They've canceled, not stopped, but canceled their baseball team, their soccer team, and a couple other golf teams. They've just canceled them completely because people aren't there to play. And so that's the thing in a university town. You may want to look at vacation, vacation rentals, but the rentals around the university, the homeowners, especially the property owners, out of state owners, is a popular thing. You might be able to pick up some property deals relatively soon, below market value, if somebody's living in California, but they're renting properties in Flint, Michigan, around the university there, or in Columbus, Missouri, around the University of Missouri, and there's nobody there to rent them right now because the university's not back. Hey, what are you going to do? Can you turn them into rentals? Can you turn them into. Can you pick them up very cheap and drop the market rent to get somebody in them and then adjust the rent back up in six to 12 months? So those are the things you want to be looking at as opportunities. Doing some research, talking about what you're doing, marketing, taking the time to put some good assets, not just property assets, but video assets, descriptions about who you are, your business, what you're focused on, where you're focused on, why you got there. Something that I would always do to everybody is if you've got the opportunity and you don't know where to start, if you've done some fix and flips, you've done some rentals, you've bought some properties, sold some property, do that first and foremost, talk about those deals. Drive out, pull out your smartphone stand from the house. Hey, I'm standing in front of this house here at 2013 Little Tree Bend here in Round Rock, Texas. This is the first property ever flipped. Okay. This is the first property there. I got a subject to deal on. Here's the first property that we rehabbed on. You know, I'm here out at 1500 Blue Bonnet Drive here in beautiful Zilker Park, Austin, Texas, here, downtown Austin. Basically, this is a property we wholesale that we put under contract for 10 bucks that we flipped for a $75,000 option fee. Okay. You know, there's a lot of things that you can do, and they say real estate is one of the required things to stay open, keep things moving. Although closings have slowed down, you still go out. So do that. Hey, I'm not taking a video. If anybody stops you, hey, I'm not taking a video for a real estate firm, okay? I'm still six feet away from people. All right, that's something that you could do. Talking about the case studies you're doing. And you know what, getting out and driving around, getting in a little vitamin D from the sun. If it's a sunny day, yes, my friends up north are in snow still. It's the two thirds through April, they still got snow on the ground. Might not be the most effective, but you could even still, if you've got a tv, hook up your laptop to your tv, have your TV behind you with a picture of the property, talk about the property and go that route. So those are some of the things that you're putting those assets in place. They'll do well for you. Upload them. Now you've got something to talk about. Hey, here's a video on a deal that we did a couple years ago. Hey, here's a video that we did on our first flip. Here's a deal we did on our first rental property. Here's the first fix and flip that I did. All sorts of great things. Here's the roach house in Salt Lake City that we rehabbed. Those things will add value. They'll tell the story. I mean, we had a friend that was out visiting a property of his in Ohio and got nauseous and threw up. Vomited on camera on the back porch of it because the scent was so bad in the house and it got thousands of views because people wanted to see him vomit. But it also dropped thousands of eyes to him as an opportunity and potential investment strategy. Not the vomiting side, but hey, oh, okay, I've got some money. I got 20 grand, 30 grand, 50 grand to invest with. What can you do with that? And he doesn't have to market much now. So like I said, let's do a quick recap. One, I'd be emailing your regular database, just touching base. Two, researching your asset class or the niches that you want to be investing with. Three, identifying the markets, markets that you want to be in or maybe need to diversify out of. And for a lot of people, you need to change the markets. It is not going to be the same as it was beforehand. You're going to have to look at a different price point, maybe to look at a different exit strategy, especially if you're in that higher end single family house area. I don't think I'd be playing that area. I'D be planning your bread and butter. Single family houses. First buyer home sub 250 in value for the most part. 4. Making some deep dives into companies are going out of business scenario or laying people off, seeing where they're at and then using some of the list building services to maybe buy some of those lists because they can usually pretty. How do I know there's 6,500 people for Halliburton, Houston, Texas? Because I've heard research it this morning. 6,518 to be precise. Okay. Name, address, phone number, email. That's not too shabby of a database to pull. Okay. And then last thing, course, putting together five or six or more videos, short videos about you, your business, what attracts you, what deals do you like and then some case studies. These are all things that can be done from the computer at your home. And we're not talking 40, 50 hours of research. We're talking you do a little bit each day to maximize your stay at home staycation marketing. So that's what I would recommend you all do. Not too difficult to do, everybody. These are things that we all should be doing on a regular basis anyway. And those that are actually taking action and doing it, the better off you'll be. Because I have seen a reduced amount of emails coming across from investors. They're just not communicating. I don't know if they think it's the time to take off. I think it's the worst time to take off. People have nowhere to go. They're looking for stuff, they're looking to watch, they're looking to engage. They're nervous about their finances, they're stressed, they're looking for opportunity, they're looking for ways to diverse or reinvest their retirement, to reinvest their savings into something that can help to bring in some cash flow. So that's what I would do everybody. Hopefully that is valuable to each and every one. If you're listening to this podcast or listening to this episode, you'd like to jump on the phone and talk with me for 30 minutes, you can do so very easy. Just go to TalkwithScottCarson.com that's TalkwithScottCarson.com very easy to use. Jump on that. They'll take you directly to my schedule. Feel free to schedule 30 minutes with me. Love to visit with you if you're struggling out there, having issues. Hey, don't be alone, pick up the phone, give Scott a call. I'll be glad to talk with it. Also, we've got a couple upcoming events. Want to make sure that you guys are aware of that. As always, we have our Note Weekend event upcoming this Saturday, and then we also have our Note Camp conference taking place in June, 5th through the 7th note camp 2020. Excited about quite a few new speakers coming aboard this time around for the eighth time that we've done it in five years. And so I'm really looking forward to the new speakers, the new content, as we kind of schedule it around the time that we know we're going to start seeing some things and give you guys some not only content actions, marketing and profit generating nuggets to implement in your business today. So check it out. Not2020.com give your extra early Bird tickets while you can. Otherwise guys, go out, take some action and we'll see you all at the top. Bye.