Epic Real Estate Investing - EREI 061: Jeff Coga and How to Find Deals Online

Episode Date: August 19, 2013

On this episode Matt is joined in studio by Jeff Coga of Captial Redevelopment Group, LLC to share his up and down, and up again stories of his real estate investing career. Discussed are markets of the past, present and future, and specifically how Jeff find his deals online. If you haven't established your online real estate investing presence yet, you may take the first step in a very easy and affordable way by using Matt's new landing page system at EpicRealEstateWebsites.com Matt will show you how to invest in real estate at FreeRealEstateInvestingCourse.com or he'll actually do the investing for you at CashflowSavvy.com Can't find a buyer for your deal? Feel free to borrow Matt's private "all cash" buyers' list at EpicWholesalers.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Broadcasting from Terrio Studios in Glendale, California, it's time for Epic Real Estate Investing with Matt Terrio. Welcome, welcome, hello, and welcome to another episode of Epic Real Estate investing where I show people how to get out of the rat race using real estate. And it all begins with just a really simple shift in your mindset, a shift in focus. Simply to stop focusing on creating piles of cash and start focusing on creating streams of income. what we like to call in the world of real estate cash flow. I created my financial freedom in less than four years, and I created a free course for you to show you exactly how I got started and how I would do it if I had to start all over again,

and you can access that free course at free real estate investing course.com. Free real estate investing course.com. Okay, so I've got a very awesome, exciting show for you today. I got a very special guest in studio. Mr. Jeff Koga, Jeff, welcome to epic real estate investing. Thank you for having me. I'm super duper excited. You got the whole set up here and I'm just super super pumped. Me too. Me too. I'm glad that you're here. You know, you've got, I was typically give people a nice and big introduction, but you've got a pretty

wide background and you've got a pretty extensive background inside of real estate. So why don't you just kind of tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got started investing in real estate. Well, in a nutshell, I, I run. No, no, no, no, no nutshell. No nutshell. Okay, okay. We want the details. All right. Well, I started investing straight out of high school, pretty much. And I bought my first investment property at age 19. Wow. And kind of the funny story about that is when I graduated, I was supposed to go to all these big university. You know, I'm an Asian background. So, you know, My mom's all like, you got to go to college, you know, get a good job, you know, have that corporate life. And then I'm just like, uh-uh, uh-uh, I'm not taking on a $40,000, $50,000 loan to go because she was a single mom, couldn't, you know, afford it.

So luckily enough, I was blessed to get connected with a family friend who connect me into the insurance financial service industry. And that's where I kind of learned the ropes for sales and how to close and that kind of stuff. It was a Fortune 500 company. So I got very, very good training. And long story short, on that. I became one of the top producer in little of six months straight out of high school pretty much and people were just like, oh my God, what's going on? I thought I was the king of the world.

I was making more than my mom and my dad combined, you know? So straight out of high school, I'm just like, yeah, and I had fun, partying my butt off and that kind of stuff. But one of these nights I was having a beer sitting on the couch late at night and, you know, the type of shows that come on at late at night, right? Those infomercial type of things. And a gentleman came on and he said, hey, you know, you. you can become a multi-millionaire in real estate with no cash, no credit, and with no experience. And I saw that.

And I don't know if it was to this day the beer or if I was just the mood that I was in, but I just picked up the phone and called. And I'll kind of shorten it up because I got the course and I followed the course to the T. And I did my first deal. And by the time 19 came, I flipped and I made over $55,000 on a rehab deal. Obviously, that was a different market at that time. So I don't know what that. heck I was doing, you know, especially now that I rehab. It's totally different how I rehab than how

I rehab back then. Right. So, uh, because like at that time, I had all my, uh, high school basketball buddies that I used to play basketball with, come in, paint the walls, that kind of stuff. And I'll throw a big old party, uh, before, uh, I would flip it out and that was kind of my payment for them. So, so, I was being cheap with that, but, uh, good bartering. Yeah. And, uh, anyone that was doing anything in real estate will know what happened a few years after 04, which was the came crashing down and that's when really really it humbled me instantly you know I was very egotistic I thought I knew I can take over the world kind of deal and when it came crashing down I lost a lot of money and I even lost my condo at that time that I had and at

that time I was trying to figure out if what I'm gonna do with my life pretty much and I was really really depressed I got over like almost like 240 pounds heaviest I ever been what year was this this was a at the crash, right, the 07, yeah. So I was trying to figure out, and I did go back to 9 to 5. You know, it was, I had to eat, so I went back, and I started working at the bank call center with all means, because I didn't have a college degree. So, you know, people like the, like I wanted to be, to go into the big firms for the stock brokers, and they were just like, I love your salesmanship. I love how you're polished and stuff, but they said, but you don't have a college degree.

So we can't hire, you know. I'm just like, fucking what the hell, you know? So sorry about my language, so that even depressed me even more. But I got connected and started working at the bank, and it was a bank call center at that time, which was pretty cool. But I changed the time to start at like 545 a.m. And the reason why I did that was because I wanted to do real estate after I got off. So I got off like around 1 o'clock, then after 1, I would do real estate.

Right. And luckily enough, I learned a new strategy at that time. I didn't even know you can make money that way, which was, now it's wholesale. You know, you tie properties, get them under contract, and you flip them, and you make an assignment fee. And I did my first deal, and by that time I said, you know what, I made 10 grand on it, I said, FU Bank,

and I literally quit that job thinking that I'm back in the game, you know? So, and that was probably my dumb mistake again that I made. But I'm looking back, you know, at that time, I thought it was the best decision. But, you know, I didn't close another deal until like three or four months later. So you got expenses going out. and you know 10 grand only go so far so and you got to spend for marketing and that kind of stuff and it was real tough and but luckily enough uh you know i found a little niche at that time coming down which was a short sell arena so because why because i was losing my own condo at that time so i was really really trying to figure out a way to even try to save it and that kind of stuff and um i learned how to do these back-to-back short-cell clothes uh and the only reason why i was able to learn that it was because uh i joined a mastermind group at that time uh that really, really allowed me to connect with a lot smarter investors that helped me learn that

side of the business. And it was a very, very expensive one. You know, it was almost like two grand a month, I think, at that time. So that was a lot of money. So, you know, instead of making payments to my mortgages, I was paying a coach to join the mastermind group. And, you know, I don't recommend for folks to do that, you know, because it's kind of very, very stressful.

But luckily, it was a very good investment and met a lot of good friends. I took off and I started, I think at one time I was handling over like 50 short sales in the pipeline. I had three negotiators that were handling it. So I had a pretty big operation. Then the market shifted again. Right. And that was really, really scary. You know, that's when the shorting banks is like to call it finally got their shit together.

Right? And I know Matt, you were doing shorts at that time, I think, too. So, you know, the big aim and how it changed. And we were no longer able to do these back-to-back short-sell clothes and make those, you know, 20-30 grand. without doing anything to the property. And then we're trying to scramble, trying to figure out how to do these flips. And even in the mastermind group,

it was funny because all these deed restrictions started popping up. You know, and when Countrywide was the first one that came out, it was called like the Bullet 10, the 30-day deed restrictions. So you couldn't do the back-to-back closes anymore. Right.

So, you know, I'm in the mastermind group and I'm paying money for this. And I'm just like, hey, folks, you know, hey, you know what? I can't flip these damn houses, you know? What are you guys' thoughts? And they were just like, uh, Jeff, we don't, get these on our approval letter.

And it was just funny because I would have all the problems that everyone on the West Coast would have the problem, like in California. And no one in the East Coast would have this problem whatsoever. Really? Yeah. And luckily enough, we did find a temporary fix, which was to use a revocable

trust to flip, and we were just like, oh yeah, this is amazing stuff. So in this mastermind group that we were trying to keep it hush-hush as low as possible because we had a theory that, you know, the bank representative was going to these guru seminars and was just actually sitting in there trying to learn how the heck these investors are scamming the banks or whatever, right?

Right. So we were trying to keep it hush-hush, but long story short, it still leaked and they started making a sign like affidavits that there's no outside transaction. And once the bank is telling you to sign affidavits, you know, you're not going to plainly lie about that because you can go to jail for that, you know, perjury, that kind stuff. So that whole business came crashing down. But luckily enough, I made a shift.

I was with my old partners and I made. It's amazing that the banks can tell you what to do after you own the property. Exactly. You know, it's so unfair. I mean, it doesn't even make sense. It doesn't, but you know, what are you going to do? You got to play by the rules and you know, at first I was pissed off and we're just like, yeah, let's boycott them, you know, let's talk to many of you.

But you can't do anything. So luckily enough, I made a shift in late 09 to get back into the rehab game and the wholesale game. And that was probably the best decision I ever made because the other folks that that stayed in that mastermind that stuck with just a short sell, oh man, I've heard some horror stories on. They're holding on to 50, you know, pipelines, 50 short sales in the pipeline. Some had 100 deals in the pipeline, and they couldn't flip them. Right.

You know, and luckily enough, I unloaded all of those and just retailed them out and, you know, made some little money on it. And luckily enough, I caught a break on the rehabs and kind of took off. And that's when I set up a new company called Capital Redeveloping Group, my new partners. and our vision at that time was to dominate the Los Angeles market and become the authority and become the fastest growing or the number one liquidators in Los Angeles. And so far we're into year four now and we've been doing pretty well, you know.

It wasn't easy, but, you know, it was a growing pain, but we're doing good now. Very easy. Well, there's periods where it's easy. but then, you know, you've mentioned, you know, several shifts in the market. And I think that's one of the one thing that real estate investor needs to be prepared for because there's really not an up-down or a good or bad market. You know, the markets just go up and down and you have to adapt your strategies and your approaches to those market conditions.

Absolutely. And, boy, it sounds like you've certainly done that very well. But like you said, not without pains. Oh, yeah. You know, and that's just the life of an entrepreneur. Correct. And then you combine that being an entrepreneur, real estate investor, and you get a whole new set of things.

Oh, yes. Right? Every business, in my opinion, has all the challenges in the world. Yeah. Yeah. If, you know, if it pays well, it's saturated. There's competition, and, you know, it's got challenges, for sure. So the market's shifted.

And you're primarily operating here in California, correct? Yep, Southern California. Okay, got it. So this is a, what's it like out there right now? Ooh, sheesh. It's a blood bath. That's what it is. Holy smokes.

How so? Everyone in their mamas wants to be an investor in Los Angeles, you know? Right. So, you know, and I run a coaching program as well, and I talk to a lot of local students. And the reason why I kind of started that was because I needed a competitive advantage. Right. You know, and my theory was this is that at first, my business partner were against it. They were just like, Jack, why are you going to teach all these people how to flip houses?

It's too damn competitive to begin with anyways. And I'm just like, look, look, look, we got to have an abundance mentality, you know? It's like, you know, we can hold on to our little secrets that we think it's secrets. But, you know, at the end of the day, they're going to, if people want to learn how to flip houses, they're going to learn from other people. And I said to them, I said, hey, you know, if they're going to learn, I'd rather have them learn from me so that way I can dictate the market on what they hear. So finally, when I told them that, they're like, okay, fine, you can go ahead and do it.

And ended up with the competition and stuff like that. And kind of back to the market on where we're at in Los Angeles is I'm seeing things, and we write a lot of offers, but I'm seeing things where some investors are buying things literally at 80, 85 cents, even 90 cents on the dollar. And I don't know how they're going to make money. You know, and I backtrack some of the buyers Then actually physically see if they made money or not, you know, and there was one deal that I was looking at It was on like 57th Street or something like that in L.A. The actual investor bought it for like a buck 90 and they popped it back up on the market for 230 You know, so you look at that and you're just like that is some thin margin, you know

You pay out the real estate commission the closing cost and then you got Uncle Sam and we're in California where they tax you left and right, you know. And, you know, yeah, how do you make money? Well, you're going to make five grand, you know? Right, right. But these buyers are the special buyers that I always say, these are these little hedge funds that are buying up the property. And speaking with them, they keep on saying that it's because they're just trying to move the money. And if they can make some return on it in a very short period, they can compound it and get a yield over, you know, eight, nine, ten percent. They're okay with it. So, you know, I'm not complaining why, because I wholesale to them and they buy and they pay a good premium on assignment fee.

You know, they pay like 20 grand, 30 grand. I'm happy, you know, so. So this is a dynamic that's rather unique to, would you say it's unique to California? Or is it a national thing right now with the hedge funds being a player? Talking to the buddies that I have in my mastermind back in the days and stuff like that, and they say that the hedge funds are in the coastal cities predominantly. And I've heard that they're moving into kind of like certain pockets like, And you might know this better to know that is like Tennessee and stuff like that.

And Indianapolis, I've heard that. And, you know, I haven't verified it. But, you know, I've heard it's becoming, you know, very, very competitive everywhere. Yep. Indeed. The market is certainly shifting again. I question seriously how permanent it is because it is so much investor driven. Correct.

You know, and, you know, when investors drive to anything. Well, but you said earlier, you know, the market. market goes up and down, and so it's never permanent. So as long as we know that it's a market, and then we just need to know when to capitalize and when we need to go ahead and let go of the break as well, you know, accelerating, let go of the break, I think we'll be okay. And, you know, I felt the pain last time, so I definitely don't want to be in the same position on this next collapse that's going to come.

You know, obviously, we don't know when, but, you know, it's going to happen, you know, it's a matter of when. Yeah, it's a cycle. Exactly. So what are some of the things that you're doing to prepare? To prepare? One of the things that we're doing is we're actually letting go our acceleration on our rehabs. Okay.

Yeah, we've slowed down a lot of our cookie cutter deals, and we're doing now just bigger development deals. And the reason why we're doing that is we honestly think that we might have a 24-month window, and we might be even less than that now. Is that 24-month window for what? Until the market is really going to slow and maybe start coming down. Like our goal is we want to be in a position where we're in. in cash position by 24 months. That we want to be liquidated at that time and we want to have enough cash

so that way if a collapse happens, then at least we'll have cash on the sidelines so that we can clean house. Got it. So the window or come down, you're meaning you're speaking of the appreciation that the media has really got a hold of. And we have experienced significant appreciation

in several parts of the country. So you think there's about a 24 month window for that before that kind of slows down and sucks. Correct. And I'm not the only one in the Southern California who believes that, I'm sure you've heard of gentlemen Bruce Norris. Of course.

Yeah, the godfather of Southern California real estate who called the collapse of the last collapse, right? Right. And I look at a lot of charts, and the funny thing was I was looking at a video that he did recently, and he was talking about the exact same thing. So I'm just like, okay, I'm looking at some numbers, and it looks like that. And he's talking about it, and I listen to what he says, and he said the same thing. He says he thinks that it's really going to be about a 24-month window, and he thinks that it's going to come down crashing down.

afterwards. I'm a little bit more optimistic. I don't think that the government's going to allow it to come crashing down as they did in 08 because they see what type of a global effect financial collapse that we were in. But, you know, I don't want to be in that position where I have to say, oh my God, it's coming collapsing. And I have all these properties or deals that I can't flip out on, you know, because I've already been there and that sucks. So what is Bruce cite for the reason that it will crash? Well, same thing that you say. Does he use the word crash? He does use the word crash. And the reason is, like you said, it's an artificial boom.

He says it's investor driven. He does say that. Absolutely. I have been listening to him and I have not heard him say that. So that's the first I've heard. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It was the new one that he came out with.

And he said that he's never going to release another report. Because you know how he releases a report every so often. But he said he's so busy now that he said he's not going to probably release another report. But, you know, he says the market is based on what the Fed, Reserve is doing pretty much what the government is doing. And we all know that they're artificially, you know, keeping the interest rate loads to stimulate the retail market and things like that. And, you know, the inflation is what people, some people talk about.

Some people know what's going on. But that's where the big question mark is, you know, like some people old saying is what as interest rate goes up, real estate prices, what, come down, right? And Bruce actually debunks that and he kind of compares the market cycle now, not to the actual 90s when real estate and interest rate went up and market went down. He compares it more to the 70s where the stack inflation era with Jimmy Carter, Paul Volcker, when he was the Federal Reserve

at that time, and he said when the interest rate started creeping up, he said the real estate market boomed. And that's why he says, we're in that cusp of if they start creeping up then the salesman on the other side, right? The salespeople, the real estate agent, real estate broker, mortgage bankers, what are they going to say? Real estate interest rates are coming up. You need

to buy now before you miss the boat again. Otherwise, if the point goes up 1%, you're going to end up paying $100,000 in interest. So you need to get and now, you know, so. Right. So, but, you know, it's, it's an interesting, interesting market. And, you know, if you're starting off or, you know, you're in it and you're doing it,

to just be aware that, you know, this, the gravy train isn't going to last forever. So you just got to be prepared for it. So. Mm-hmm. Cool. You know, it's, you wrote a book this year or last year? I've wrote several books this year. Right.

Yeah. Oh, okay, several. Well, let's talk about the one I'm, and you kind of touched on it a little bit. where your strategy has changed and you are actually taking advantage of the hedge funds in the area and you're selling them properties. Oh, yeah. And I think your book was flipping homes to Wall Street. Flipping houses to Wall Street.

I think it was very successful. I saw it on the charts. Explain to me, what's that book about and how might someone today be able to take advantage of the same thing? It's actually, I'm talking about a story of how I accidentally found this particular buyers and I ended up wholesaling these deals to them and figuring out that they're a hedge fund. And it's really, I give strategies and how to find them and actually how to wholesale to them. But the message that I give in the book is exactly what I'm talking about now is, hey, you can

flip houses and make money flipping houses to Wall Street hedge fund buyers, but you got to be careful because it's not going to last forever. So if you're going to do it, capitalize them, make a lot of money as you can, but just be ready to exit when you need to exit. it, you know, so. When they stop buying, basically. Yeah, exactly. Okay.

So what are some strategies on how the, how the audience can tap into one of these? Because I think where this is really significant is if they're buying properties at really low margins and not looking for great returns, then that puts it kind of for the wholesale on the other side. They don't have to find as good of a deal as they would have in the past, correct? Absolutely. Correct. Okay.

So I'm putting it together. So how would they find, how would they tap into this buyer market? First is that to find a, to find a deal. buyers, we did, we do a lot of extensive research in data. And this is where I always say, this day in age, you're a competitive advantage to be able to beat the other investor. Because, you know, in business, you don't get an A for effort, okay? It's either you execute or you miserably fail and you don't make money. Right. So you got to execute. But then to execute, you got to execute, you got to make sure that you're making the right moves. So how do you know you're making the

right moves? Well, my opinion is I'm an Asian guy, so I say follow the numbers. Numbers don't lie. So one of the biggest thing is when I found, out that one particular buyer was buying, guess what I did? I took that name and I threw it back in the public records on the MLS and then I try to see how many properties that they own. And instantaneously, when you put it in and guess what happens? You go, boom, a list that comes out. I'm like, holy spokes. Yes, we got to, you know. Yeah. So then from there, then you got to try to figure out, okay, we got a bona fide buyer, right? So now you got to get in front of them and get hold of them. So I sent out a postcard first,

right? No callback. You know, I'm just like, screw this shit, you know? So I ended up skip tracing the whole address and you know and try to figure out who the signer was got the actual signer of the individual and the signer's name wasn't like a joe smith where there's like a million joe smith you know so i ended up being able to find her home number you know so kind of like a stalker i am you know so i'm just i called the home and i sent the letter to the home say hey thank you so much i saw that you bought this property give me a call i have more properties just like that and luckily enough from there we they called back and we started building a relationship with the actual signer of the fund.

And long story short, they're now kind of like our best friend, you know, so that's pretty cool. And that's who we've been wholesaling most of our properties to, you know. Got it. Got it. So it's good old-fashioned relationship building. Correct. Yeah.

Research and relationship building. Yeah. But then how I did it, I think, is a little bit different is because I, you know, I did some really, really strategic thing because the signer of that document is a actual real estate broker. Okay. Yeah, so I guess the fund hired a broker to actually be the signer to oversee the fund or whatever. So I wanted to do something so that way I have what I call social proof before I pick up the phone. And so that way it's like no Joe Blow that's just calling.

So one of the things that I did is I took the email address and I used this a lot in a lot of my businesses. I contacted and I became friends with them on LinkedIn before I called them. Right? And the LinkedIn is one of the most powerful social media tools out there. And the reason being is LinkedIn allows you to actually take outside email addresses and put it in there. And you can connect with them. Got it. No other social media platform allows you to take outside emails.

So, you know, imagine you get an email from someone. You find it on the internet, right? Or you take it off the MLS or whatever or you get business card. You can just put it in LinkedIn. You can put a friend request through LinkedIn. Got it. when they actually connect with you, I have my profile set up in a way where, you know, it's supposed to like intrigue them, you know, and I have my projects on there and that kind

of stuff and I have, you know, a pretty strong connections. And to this day, I don't know if that helped or not, but I've been doing that over the last year. So we've sent out over all, we manage, our social media manager, managed all of our workers and our company's LinkedIn profile. And we've sent out over, I want to say, 90,000 LinkedIn invitations. Wow. Yeah. So all my guys profile have over, I believe, like 3,000, you know, friends, you know, and some have like 5,000, obviously, Susan, who's my business partner. She's, you know, very gorgeous looking women, so she has the most friends, you know, surprise, surprise, you know, so. Right, right. But that, that really works on building bond and relationship, and I call it social,

it's social media, but I call it more of social networking, because you're really trying to network with people over the computer, so, so. Got it. So I know you've, you've done a lot over the computer, you generate a lot of your business. You use technology significantly, and you've got a team that manages that technology for you. And there's another book that you put together, I think was a book about generating leads through Craigslist. Oh, yeah. What's that one called? Crushing it with Craigslist.

Crushing it with Craigslist. There we go. Let's hear about that one. So I know a lot of people are very intrigued. You know, there's nothing that's going to replace good old face-to-face networking and relationships. I mean, that's really where I think all of our deals will come from, you know. And, but people are always looking for other ways, other avenues, other strategies of generating leads, finding that motivated seller, finding those all cash buyers. So on this crushing with Craigslist, I'm assuming that's kind of what you're doing, right?

Correct. And, you know, I think some investors out there, if you've been investing for a while, you've heard of that, you know, people talking about, oh, yeah, you can generate leads on Craigslist. And I've heard about it in the past, but I never really applied that much energy into it until. So one of my buddies, Jason, who we run real estate strategy lab, started talking about it. He was like, yeah, I think this will work. And I'm just like, dude, just run with it. See if it works. And he started working some campaigns that we kind of drummed up and kind of did a brain dump.

And boom, we instantaneously got a lead. And we closed on it and made over like $12,000 with just like 15 hours of work, which was pretty cool. It should have, it took 90 days, you know. But it really, the work time was about 15 hours. And the only reason why it took 90 days was because some liens popped up. We had to clear out. But once that happened, then we said, okay, one worked. Let's see if we can scale this baby.

And then that's where we started to map out some other strategies and really, really put together kind of a flow funnel where now my VA actually manages the campaign on Craigslist. And I'll give you guys who's watching or who's listening to this is a Golden Nugget is we never log into Craigslist at all. We market on Craigslist, but we never log into Craigslist. Yeah, strange as a sound. Okay.

We use something called IFTT.com. I FTT. Yeah, if, then, then that, IFTTT.com. So three T's. Okay. Not two T's. Three T's. Three T.

If, then, then that.com. Okay. FTT.com. And what that does is, it's, I don't know the term for it, but what it does is you put in some keywords in there that you want to use, and we use a very sophisticated in Craigsist. Craigsist, most people, when they do a search on Craigsist, what would they do? They'll take the keywords, like, the fixers or something like that, right? And they'll go to the real estate for sale section, and they'll go for sale by owner.

And then in the search section, they might put, like, a fixer. And then they'll see the list comes up on the screen, and then they'll manually look on there and to see if it's a good deal or not, right? That's, to me, you know, Jason was doing that, and he was showing me how he found the deal that we made 15 grand on. I said, dude, that's how it seems like a lot of work. And he was like, but it worked so we can do it. And I'm just like, no, no, no, no, no, we're not doing that shit.

That's what I said. So we ended up using IFTT and what it does is we use a very... Three Ts. Three Ts. Three Tsys. IFTTT.com. And we use a very sophisticated advanced search algorithm on Craigslist. So it uses like parentheses. So think about it.

It's parentheses, put the keywords and then you put that little straight line button. And then you put the keyword, straight line button, put the keyword, straight line button, and then close the parentheses. And it will search all of those keywords. You can put fixer, investor, you can put motivated, distress, you know, you can use that. And one of the keywords that we subtract that we don't want to look at is we put a minus sign for mobile. Okay. For mobile?

Yeah, for mobile. Because we don't want to look at listings that have mobile homes. Yeah. So when we do that formula and you put it in through IFTTT, then it directly shoots the listing into our Gmail account. So we set up a new Gmail and I thought it was very clever and I set up a set up a Gmail called Craig Lester. Okay. Yeah, so it's Craig Lester, CRG at gmail.com, and we set that up, and it goes in there.

And once it goes in there, all we do is look at the listing and look at some of the headlines and see if it looks like a deal that we can do. And we just physically open it. And when they open it, it does go to the Craigslist post, but all my VA does is then hit the reply button, and we use a tool on Gmail. If you go to the actual setting side on your Gmail account, there's like a gear on your Gmail and then you go to settings and go to labs right and under labs there's a section called canned response I use it yes yeah so so you know the power of can response which is you don't have

to sit there typing up email so we have pre-populated emails about eight email series that we have that I preloaded in as can response and my VA knows that for the first one it says we have it marked as like yellow one or whatever and that's that's the match the star colors right on the email that you can change and they'll send it out and says, here, I noticed that this property, and this is like a boilerplate email, says, hey, I'm interested in this property. Can you tell me a little bit more about the property that's not listed on the post? And then it goes, thanks, Craig.

And it says, P.S. Please let me know if you're a wholesaler or a real estate agent because sometimes real estate agents and wholesalers are post on this listing. And that's it. And it's very generic. So most people, you know, when they read it, they'll reply back. Some people reply back with long paragraphs and says, yeah, this is, and they try to sell you on the property.

And then that's when physically, once that happens, you know, happens, my acquisition guys will go in because our VA will look at it and it'll say, okay, if it looks like a good deal based on Zillow, right? So she'll run a Zillow search on it and it says that if it's about 90% of Zillow value and then our acquisition guys will then review the numbers to see. Okay. Now, the interesting part is we even have a canned response that called a passive price reduction can response, which is once someone tells us a number, he says, okay, and

our favorite line is, what are you willing to take without losing sleep at? night. That's our favorite line. In the email, we have that as one as can. Nice. And when they respond back and they give us a number, then day after our guys will hit the can response says, hey, and they'll put the name with the person like, hey, Matt. It says, here's the message that our acquisition manager

said, please let me know if this will work. And then I changed the font on the can response. So it looks like that our, I call it the acquisition concierge or whatever. It looks like they just copy and paste our acquisition manager's message. And it says on there, says based on the numbers in that area, it seems

a little bit high we would need to get a discount of 10 to 15% for us to go ahead and send out our architect engineers our inspectors to see if we can go ahead and purchase this property please let me know if the seller will accept and it says dash edwin so they're thinking on their side that someone actually analyzed the property right the decision maker the boss the manager in the back with the back room correct yeah and then do that and instantaneously just on that email guarantee you usually get a discount of like five 10,000 dollars easily you know just sending out that one email so and then from there that's when our guy starts analyzing.

So we have a pretty sophisticated funnel. That's one. And then for the other part on Craigsist, and I'll give this to you, but is we look in the renter section. Okay. Yeah, so that's a pretty interesting strategy. So you're calling the landlords? We're not calling them.

We don't want to call people. We don't want to talk to people. We're lazy. I want to say we're the hardest working lazy people. So we don't want to talk to them. So what we do is we go on there, same thing. We have the keywords in there. And then from there, it gives us all the list.

things for properties that are for rent. And then our VA goes in there and guess what? It just sends them one quick email. So, hey, saw your listing. You wanted to see if you were interested in getting a cash offer, please let me know. Just one sentence. And that's it. And then from there, most of the people say yes, no, no.

Obviously most of us say, no, no, no. And some people say, what is this about? And that's when we say, well, we're investor developers looking to buy property. I wanted to see if you wanted to get a cash offer. You can instantaneously save 8%, I mean 6% without paying a real estate agent's commission, so that'll be about going back to your pocket. And there's no obligation. I think the line that I use is there's absolutely no obligation for this cash offer. You can go ahead and decide at that time if you'll accept, counter, or you decide not to sell at all. You know, and that's it. Nice. So,

and that's working. And I got some couple other juicy stuff. So, but we'll get to those. Yeah, I'll get them out of you eventually. There you go. There you go. But very creative. But still a lot of work, right? It was a lot of work, it was a lot of work setting it up, just like any other system, you know, is, and I personally built the whole system on that, and I personally actually in the beginning, even though Craig Lester was set up, I personally went in there and I was actually responding to the emails myself, as if I was the VA. And that's really kind of the business building strategy. This is more of a business building strategy that I'm giving, not a lead generation strategy, but in my business, I try to set up different email accounts for different

tasks. So that way, even though I'm doing it, in my mind, I can always say that, hey, this task that's being done in this email, I can outsource to someone else. So that's what I started. And in the beginning, I was on Craigslist literally hours trying to figure that out the codes, algorithm, you know, what's working, what's not working, you know, what kind of responses give and I've gotten some heated, pissed off actually Craigslist people saying that, I'm going to report you to Craigslist, you know, you sent me the same email, you know, 10 different times, you know, that kind of stuff. So, so I had to be very, very careful. And finally, I kind of figured out a model that really, really works. And after it worked and got it to work, I just created a

video on, you know, Camtasia and saying, this is exactly what I do and kind of passed it on to my VA. And then she's handling it now. So awesome. So did you put all of this in your crushing it with Craigslist book? Yeah, it's in the book. So it is in the book. Most of it. The other stuff, the more of the new strategies that I'm coming up with, because it's like, as I say, the market is changing. Craig's, this is going to make another change as well coming up, I believe, and they were saying in like three months because we're doing like before ads and stuff like that. So we're using these image codes to track the actual click-through rates and how many times impressions our ads come up and stuff like that.

But they're going to eliminate that. So now that strategy of tracking our ads and the longer going to work, I think. So it's consistently changing. So what I did was after I released a book, I figured out some couple of other strategies, and I did a boot camp, and that's when I brought in some students that actually showed them what I was doing. And I got students all across the nation. And then from there, I kind of mastermind. It took all the information, the feedback they were giving me as well, and then improved it even more.

So super, super. So if someone wants to pick up your book, where do they go? They can just go to Amazon. Look up crushing it with Craigs. It's down there. Just pick it up, and we got some pretty cool bonuses as well on there. So you can pull it up and you can take a look. And if that's something that really, really that you like,

then you can definitely go ahead and look into more of the system side. And I have a full-blown course, actually, that we did. And it has over, you know, like six hours of video. And I actually even give out the keywords that I use and things like that and the actual code that I use. And you can purchase that as well. Very good. And flipping houses to Wall Street, is there too?

Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. And you said you wrote several books. I wasn't aware of anymore. What else you got? I have another one called one of my favorite ones is called retargeting. Retargeting? Yeah.

Okay. What's that about? Retargeting is one of the new, hush, I don't want to say it's new. It's more of a hush-hush marketing strategy online that a lot of the internet marketers have been doing for the last several years or so. But no one in the real estate industry, in my opinion, has been doing. And what retargeting is, is an easiest example is go to Amazon. Go to Amazon and look up your favorite shoe or something like that. Or go to Zapatoz and look up your favorite shoes.

And then what you'll notice is that if you go to a different website afterwards, you'll suddenly see the same shoes that you were looking at as a banner that's following you. So the concept is that's retargeting. What they're doing is they cookie your computer once you did a search online, on their site and you went on their cookie to your computer and then when you went to a different site and if that site had the same network advertisement or whatever that they call it then they have the ability to run an ad in front of you right so that's why i see that gopro camera on every website i go to like how do they know i just bought a gopro camera yeah see so so that's a perfect example

so when when this was taught to me um i was just like oh my god you know what i can use this to make myself look like a multi-bigillion dollar company. And at first when I was telling this to my business partner, they thought I was insane. You know, because it's like, you know, you try to explain this to be like, look, we can stock people on the internet. And they're like, what? You know, like, what do you mean? You can stock people.

I'm like, yeah, we can put these cookies on their computer and then we can have little banner ads following them. And then there was just like, Jeff, how the hell are you going to make money off this? And I'm just like, don't worry about it. I got this. And so I started putting these pixels on my websites. And what I started doing. was a lot of our leads that we generate on our buy side is we send out a lot of emails to

real estate agents. And when we send out our emails, we have our before and after videos on there. And it says, click here to watch the transformation. It has over 100,000 views on YouTube. And, you know, the people click on it. And then obviously we send them to a web page. And guess what that web page has? It has a cookie on there.

So when it's cookie, now, ooh, they're screwed. They're trapped in the CRG. I call it the trap. And when there's trapped in there, guess what happens? We have banner ads running out, and one of our favorite ads that we run is, it says connect with LA's best, connect to LA's best investment firm. And we have an image that says we heart realtors. Oh, okay.

Nice. On there. So when they click on that, then they go to our Facebook page. So I'm not even sending them to a squeeze page. I'm sending them to a Facebook page of all places, yeah. And our Facebook page has been growing because of that. And my goal was, you know, most people say, well, if you're buying traffic, you should try to convert that and try to ROI it. But in real estate, it's kind of tough because, you know, how do you know the connection that you made from retargeting at and that realtor brought you with you?

I really don't know that. Right. But I know for a fact that when a realtor says, man, you're everywhere. That feels good, you know, because they don't know what I'm doing in the background, you know. So they think that I'm a Fortune 500 company and, you know, they go to whatever side and there says, we love realtors, you know, capital redevelopment group, you know. Yeah, we buy houses and that kind of stuff. So that has worked really, really well. And that's what that book is all about, where I go and talk about retargeting,

and I talk about how you can actually set it up. And it's more of an overview of what retargeting is because there are, you know, it is kind of nerdy, kind of techy stuff. But I'll give a golden nugget. Is most retargeting companies that you go through, there is a minimum traffic that you need to have on your website. So if you absolutely have no traffic on it, it's going to be tough for you to retarget. You know, you can't retarget one person, you know, through the regular.

So, but a company called AdR-R-R-R-R-R-O, yeah. AD-R-R-O. Like, add AD-R-R-L-O, allows you to use if you just have 2,000 cookies. And the cookies stay on the computer for 90 days. Okay. So if you do the math, go 2,000 divided by 3, then, you know, 700, you know, 700 visitors. You know, 700 visitors is not a whole heck of a lot. that's easy to get, you know.

So that's what we've been doing into running the ad role campaigns. So we've been doing that. And simultaneously, Facebook came out with the same retargeting as well. And that was a game changer for us because what we're able to do with, it's called custom audience. And what you need to do is go on Google Chrome and you need to install this app called Power Editor on Facebook and install it on there. And once you install it, you can create a custom audience, meaning you can. take an external email address, upload it into Facebook. And if that particular email matches with a Facebook profile, now you can add runs,

ads in front of that Facebook profile in the stream, right? And then on the side. Yeah. So we do the same thing. We take all the real estate agents. So all the local Los Angeles real estate agent here, I have their email address. And so they're all up in Facebook right now. And I have ads running literally right now in front of them, same campaign.

We heart realtors, connect with LA's best real estate. So now if our acquisition guys calls them, regardless of, you know, if that's working or not, they're going to be like if they see it, you know, it's kind of like you're driving down a freeway in the same banner ad is there. You know, there's a capital redevelopment group. Capital redevelopment group is constantly in their face. So they're like, yeah, capital redevelopment group wants to buy your property. There's just like, yeah.

So, and it's been working very, very well. Yeah, so tell me about the results. What's your business look like today? Today is we've, like I said, is we've really, really slowed down on our rehabs. This year alone, we've only flipped five houses. That's it. That's it. Five rehab, five flips.

But all of them we have done over $100,000. Okay. And the reason being, that's off the net, paying off investor everything. And the reason why we're able to do that is because we're doing very heavy construction. All of those rehabs we've done over construction cost over $100,000. So which is cool. Now, on the wholesale side. So the $100,000, that's $100,000 profit per property?

Per property, yeah, per property, yeah. Got it. So, and but what we've really, really been crushing it is on more of the transactional money. Obviously, we make a lot more money on their rehabs, you know, but our transactional money is really, really good because, you know, if you're a rehabber and you're listening to this, you would know this is that a lot of rehabbers go through what I call a boom and famine cycle, you know, where they get into a property and then, you know, they fix it up, excited, they flip out and then, you know, and then now the money's gone or they have to re-roll that money into a new project and they're kind of strapped with cash, that kind of stuff, right? Right. So we needed to fill the gaps. So luckily enough, our wholesale department just skyrocketed. And we've wholesaled over 60 properties, you know, in the last six months or so.

And we've revved out over like 600,000 on that. Wow. So we're doing fairly good. And I didn't even want to talk about that because people in the sand just can hear that. And they'd be like, oh, my God, you know. We won't tell anybody. The secret is safe with us. Right.

Only, yeah, we're only 100,000 listeners, right? Right, right. What was I just going to say? Oh, and you're just going to say. And you're driving all of this traffic on all your business is coming through these online internet efforts? We're doing majority of online, online and email marketing. Okay.

Online email marketing, that's what we're doing. So we try to get them from a bot, you know, paid traffic. We got our landing pages or squeeze pages that they opt into. And we're just pushing, you know, we just try to do something different, you know, so the most people. Sounds like you're doing it. But, again, there's a lot of effort there as well. Yeah. So what would your advice be to somebody who's out there, you know, knocking on doors and

doing direct mail? And now they just heard this and they want to switch their whole business up. I'm going to use the line that I hear you say often is focus, right? You talk about focus. Energy dispersed. Right. And you use the example of a magnifying glass and, you know, the sun being, you know, warm and sunny outside.

But when you use a magnifying glass and you put that sun in there and it gets focused, you can start a fire. Right. Powerful stuff. So same thing I would tell them. If you're just starting off, I wouldn't, you know, learn the basics. Learn the fundamentals because the stuff that I'm talking about retargeting, that's like advanced stuff, you know.

And if I use a sports analogy, kind of like, you know, basketball because I'm a basketball fan, you know, you got to learn the jab step first and you got to, you know, before you try to do the, you know, dribble the ball with your left hand first before you try to do a crossover, you know? Right, right. You know, you got to learn the basics first and then at least understand that conceptually so that way at least the context of where the advanced, you're, the advanced strategy comes from so that way if you decide to hire out someone you're not going to get you know you're not

going to get screwed now if you're bootstrapping meaning that you're like in the start-up phase as i like to call it your investment meaning that you don't have six months of reserves from your profit because once you have six-month reserve or profit i don't think you're in a startup phase you're in more of what i call the the the growth phase of your investment business but if you're in your straight startup phase and you need to kind of bootstrap it is you got to pick one strategy in my opinion and you've got to get that one strategy to ROI quickly as possible. You know, break even, I don't care. You know, you got to ROI.

Then once you ROI it, tweak it. So that way you can start going in the green. And once you get in the green, then move to a different strategy. But until you do that, don't jump around different strategy. Because my coach told me that and he drew this whiteboard because I was telling him one time, I was just like, man, I'm so depressed. I'm like, I'm doing all this stuff. I feel like I'm working, but I'm not making any money, you know?

Right. And he was just like, Jeffie boy. and he calls me Jeffie Boy, and he was just like, here, let me show you something. And he goes, and he pops up a, you know, a green marker and goes on the whiteboard. And he says, here, let me draw something to you. Give me a strategy. And he goes, and I told him, yeah, I'm doing direct mail. So he draws the line.

And he says, okay, from zero to 100, what's your completion on that? What would you say? I was like, you know what? I think I can, it's not 100% yet. I think maybe I have like 70% and he draws online. And then I go, okay, what else are you? I'm the social media marketing. He's like, how are you doing it on that?

It's like, ah, you know, I'm executing maybe like 20, 30% and he draws online. And I kept on going through five different strategies. And he looks at that and he goes, he goes, Jeff, do you see a problem? I said, what do you mean? And I'm just like, none of that line is to completion. And he says, so if you were in a race, you never completed a race. Right.

You didn't win anything. And then I was just like, okay. And then he says, let me show you something else on how I work. And he says, he says, you were working like this. And you go, ABCD, ABCD, ABCD, ABCD. A, B, C, A, B, C, D. And I was just like, what do you mean by that? And he's all like, well, you're starting one

one, one's one, you don't finish it. And then you go to a different strategy. You work on that. Go to a different one. Work on that. You never work on it. You never completely finish it. Versus how I work.

And he says, I go A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A. Until I finish that. Then I go B, B, B, B, B. And I finished that, the C, C, C. And when he told me that, I was just like, holy smoke. I get what you're saying. I don't know if it will work,

but I'm just going to go ahead and try it. And that's been the biggest life-changing moment for me is when I realized that, is that the type of DNA that I have, I'm just always scatterbrain. So I like to start new projects, that kind of stuff. So I'm not a very good closer. I know that about myself.

That's why I'm, so when it comes to new projects, I'm very good at. But I realize I just need to complete them. So now my strategy, like I said, is I'll start a project. I'll take it to 90% and then I have a person on my team that I can pass it on to close it off

and fine tune it. And that really, really helps. So if you're starting off, you know, is you've got to, one, stay focused,

but then two, with focus, you've got to realize what your natural DNA is, like what you're strong at, because you want to amplify you're on your strength because, you know,

if you suck at, you know, some people are really, really good at certain things than other people aren't, you know? So, like my strengths are, coaching, teaching,

you know, going, getting in front of people, and I'm very good at that, you know? And some people say, Jeff, you seem like you're very analytical, you know, and I say, and I say, is that an Asian joke, you know, but really I'm not an analytical by nature, you know, I'm very free-spirited,

I'm more creative than analytical. But the analytical side I've learned over the course of, you know, running businesses and just looking at balance sheets, looking at numbers, that you need to know that side of the business. But I'm really not the best guy doing that. So my business partner is a lot better at that, you know. So, you know, it works very well. So if you're starting off, you really got to know your strengths on what you're good Some people are really good at, you know, meeting face to face.

Some people are really good being like the back office, you know. Some people are really good at actually physically doing stuff with their hands, right? Some people are really good at starting stuff. But it's terrible at closing. Some people are terrible at starting. They procrastinate. But once they get going, they're really good closers, you know? So those are the strengths that I think you've got to know.

Right. So then once they identify their strengths, what do they do next? Is that how they choose their strategy or do they find team members? I would say so. If I had to redo it over again, that's what I would do. is if I, if, if, let's just say I'm, I go into a brand new market, I have no connection, no network, I don't have any money whatsoever, then my strength I know for a fact is that I can meet and connect with a lot of people. So then my next question is say, okay, at scale, how can I get in front of a lot of people quickly? And I would take that route and try to try to strategize.

In my case, if I probably go to a market, I don't know, I'll probably leverage realtors. Right? Because they know a lot of people and they're already in the market anyway, so I'll try to become the realtors' best friends. One way or another, you know, I'll probably find the top. I wouldn't say find the top real estate agents, typically they have their nose up in there, you know. Right. So you want to look for what I say. I know that guy.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I know that. I know that. I know those people. Yeah. But then, you know, like I would strategize and find more of a, called the B.C. realtors, you know, the ones that haven't broken through yet. Right.

And those are the folks that you want to look for because, you know, a lot of real estate agents are one-legged as well. Like, you know, most entrepreneurs are one-legged, meaning that they're very good at one part of the business, but they're not good at the other part of the business, you know, so if you can find, if you're good at, you know, if you only got a left leg, you know, it doesn't make sense to find someone with another left leg. You know, find a right leg that matches with you and go. Now, the other part is this. I was just thinking you and I would be terrible business partners because we're great at starting stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so. But go ahead, I'm sorry. You want a left leg and a right leg. Yeah, you want a left leg and a right leg. And if you have the ability and you have the capital, is the biggest thing is this is that to hire your right leg. Don't partner your right leg.

You know, that's the golden advice I can give. Because that forces you to actually run it as a business. You know, when you have to pay money out of your pocket for someone's salary, that changes the game. You know, it's not like, oh, yeah, you know what? You want to invest? Yeah, okay, I can invest. You know what?

You're good at talking to people. Oh, I'm good at analyzing the deals. You know what, let's partner up and do 50-50. Stupid shit. Don't do that. Right. You know, if you're starting off because then you're kind of going in there with just a big question mark. And I guarantee you sooner or later when you go through that, one person's going to do more work in the other.

And then another person is going to have remorse. And it's terrible. Always. Always. Yeah. So, and nothing is ever equal in life. We know that. You know, nothing is ever 50-50.

No, no, no. Usually it's an 80-20. Right. So. Yeah. Definitely. So those are the advice I got for brand new investors that's getting starting. Awesome.

You know, so. Well, God. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for spending the time with us. I know you're a really busy. guy and you came here to drop by to grace and bless the studio. That was awesome. So you also have a podcast too. So if people like what they heard today, how would they find your podcast? Go on iTunes and look up real estate strategy lab. And you'll be able to pull it up and see all of our

podcasts. It's a little bit different. Our podcast is more marketing. It's strictly just we try to talk about just only marketing. And the biggest thing is we talk about strategies that I'm doing in my own business right now at the moment. And also we bring on guests as well. And I know Matt, you've been on there as well multiple times. So, you know, check it out. Okay, for sure. And then if they want to get your books, go to Amazon.com, crushing it with Craigslist, flipping houses to Wall Street and retargeting. And if you want to put, you want to help me keep the lights on here in the studio, go to epic real estate.com first, click the Amazon banner before you go there to purchase. That'd be great help for the studio. And now we can keep delivering this awesome, awesome content.

So again, thank you again, Jeff, and we'll certainly have you back if you're open to it. Absolutely. I'm excited to take. Perfect. Enjoy the day and we'll chat soon. Thank you. Take care. Okay, that's it for another episode of Epic Real Estate Investing.

If you happen to have a question, comment, or concern that you'd like me to answer or address here live on the show. Please share them with me on the Epic Real Estate Investing Hotline at 1-888-91-7203. That's 1-888-891-7203. Okay, until next time. And as a very wise person once said, focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity, but in doing it. To your success, I'm Matt Terrio, living the dream. You've been listening to Epic Real Estate Investing, the world's foremost authority

on separating the facts from the BS in real estate investing education. If you enjoyed this show, please take a minute to visit iTunes and share your thoughts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. here at Epic Real Estate Investing with Matt Terrio. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.