Epic Real Estate Investing - Facebook Marketing for Real Estate Investors with Chris Chico | 556

Episode Date: December 31, 2018

Our guest today is Chris Chico, an investor who perfected the concept of virtual real estate and who’s willing to share his tips and tricks to help you grow your business. Hear him out and learn how to set up your business page on Facebook, how your ad should look like, and what you should avoid if you want to be successful in implementing the strategy that Chris delineates for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From coast to coast, epic investors are doing the most. It's time for another epic field report. Okay, so on the phone, I have RIA's clients, Jack and Josh from Fargo, North Dakota. They've been on the show before. They've been a part of field reports before, and we've got so many different stories still to share with you. But these guys just pulled a monster right out of their keysters, and I wanted them to get on the phone. I wanted to talk to them about it. So Jack and Josh, welcome back to the show.

Thanks, Matt. Hey, you know, you call it fishing for leads. We call it ice fishing up here. Ice fishing, got it. Appropriate. What is the weather there right now? Not too bad, actually, I think it's in the 20s. In the 20s? On the ground, you know. Yeah, that's not too bad. We get that maybe one day a decade here in Los Angeles. Anyway, so I saw your posting for follow-through Friday. I wanted to bring guys on and you guys are posting every single Friday. But this one in particular caught my eyeball. So let's go ahead and look at it. December brings Josh and me our largest acquisition to date, $1.1 million.

That's a mobile home park plus multifamily, only bringing in 5% of your own cash for the down payment, seller carryback of the majority of the down payment, doubling your rental portfolio in just one deal, went from 35 lots plus 30 apartment units, adding $100,000 in equity and day one cash flow is $10,000 a month. Monster deal. Yeah, that one felt good. I can imagine. Yep. And I love you guys those pictures.

You've got a new pose and a new picture with every time it's your, it's your title company. That's good. That's social proof. Got to have that social proof, baby. Great. So how did you find this deal? I know we're marketing for a single family and this is not in that class. So how did this one come about?

This one was interesting because our real estate agent brought it to us. He's kind of, you know, dabbling. He does a lot of residential, but also dabbling in commercial space as well. So, you know, he is, he's really, is very persistent. inconsistent in his efforts of notifying everyone about deals. So he knew that we could possibly make something work. So he brought it to our attention and mentioned it enough times where we finally, one day I just looked at Jack and said,

right, let's just sit down and analyze this. Seems way out of reach. But let's see how could it possibly work out. Let's figure what we would pay if the numbers work as it is. And if so, let's try to push it forward. Why not? What's the worst that can happen, right? it doesn't happen and we're no worse off than we were. So he gave us all the brochures and

information and the rent rolls and all the financials about the properties. We sat down, figured out it was a cash flowing beast. The only question was how are we going to generate what amount of money would we have to bring into the deal? And he had mentioned and what really caught my eye was that the seller was willing to carry back a portion. So that made it from seemingly impossible to possibly possible. Enough where we were willing to at least go take a look at the properties and put things on paper. Nice.

So you put things on paper and how did you present your offer to the seller with this creative structure that you got? Well, on the other thing I should mention, too, is we had just developed in a relationship with a lender and he was fairly hungry and really wanted to build his book. So we were able to utilize that same amount of motivation on. the lender side. We ran the deal by the lender and said, if this could work out, we could come to a deal with a seller, would you be willing to finance this and what percentage? So we basically got the lender to agree to a verbal commitment of bringing in 75% loan to value. Then the seller,

and we told the seller, we negotiated back and forth after seeing them and got him to carry back 20. So that was 95% of the deal was covered between the seller and the lender, which left us with only having to bring in 5%, which is 55,000. Sweet. Was the lender, like a private lender or institutional? Just a regular, just a bank, a local bank. Regular bank. Very good.

And they brought the money in at the time of purchase too. So, you know, normally we do cash acquisitions and do cash out refis. So this is a little bit different as far as our normal business model. But we thought, hey, if there's a way to make it happen and all parties are pushing in the same direction, let's go for it. So sweet. We also, speed was kind of of the essence, too. The seller was pretty motivated to get things happening.

So we had to engage in a company, make sure they were able to pull this off as well. So once we kind of made all, made certain all parties were able to pull this off. And we were in agreement with the seller. Then it was just a matter of executing. Nice. So this all came pretty much through a relationship. So your realtor relationship, how did you find this person and how did you nurture that relationship? Well, we kind of got lucky. Lee is our go-to realtor here in town, and he was somebody we met on like our very first deal.

We've just established a relationship there. And thankfully, he's also an investor, so he kind of gets it. So when we submit profitable offers, especially those properties on the MLS, he isn't afraid to do that. And he's comfortable explaining to the receiving agent that we're investors and not to take it personal. and he's got a spiel ready for that. Nice. And he's very persistent too. And he consistently presents us with things. And I think honestly him badgering us about it four or five times.

Finally I said, all right, let's just sit down and look at this. And I give all credit to him as far as staying on us and seeing that there was possibility there and making sure that the parties got together and then we just kind of took it from there. Got it. There's power in the good relationships and the partnerships and the partnerships. Then the lender. You said he was, he's just at a bank, but you said he was hungry and knew, how did you come across him? Yeah, that was funny because, you know, when I was in my photography, when I had my photography business, he was a client.

I had done his newborn pictures a couple times. So we had a personal relationship. And also my band had played at a party that him and his lake neighbors put on every summer. So I was chatting with him this summer. And I said, what are you doing now? And he said, I'm doing commercial banking. And I said, the light bulb, I think he could visibly see. get a light bulb above my head. And I said, we need to sit down and chat, you know, because we could

probably throw you some business. We did a couple of cash out refies. And then this was, actually, this is only our like second or third deal with them. So it was a pretty monster of a deal to be that early on in the process. But the numbers just worked for everybody. So it was that we were able to pull it together. Fantastic. So speaking of the numbers, you're going to hold on to the property, right? This is part of the cash flow. Very good. And then calculating the ROI for the first year. What do you guys have that at? Well, basically, you know, we figure 10 grand a month conservatively net cash flow. That's net.

Yeah, that's net, yeah. It brings in up 26,000 in gross rents. So we're conservatively estimating 10,000 net. You know, that's 120,000 a year divided by the 55 grand. I think that works out to be 250% cash on cash return somewhere on there. Yeah, we'll settle for that, right? Nice. And then you've got 100K and equity.

there. Yeah, because there's appraised at 1.2 million. That's actually one of the reasons why I think we were able to get everybody on board and pull in the right direction because there was already that information available to us because he previously had a deal fall through. Yeah, he had some buyers back out. So we had a very detailed appraisal already set up and ready to go. So what's your biggest lesson?

This is a brand new asset class for you. I don't know where the lessons have learned. maybe you got a couple of them. What's your biggest lesson learned in this transaction? I would say sit down and at least run the numbers and if they don't work, figure out, just like in a single family house, figure out where they would work and then offer that. I mean, or figure out and just at least throw it out there, take the swing. And there was a little bit of a mental hurdle there because you just think, well, there's something, he's asking $1.1 million. That's just unattainable.

And really, you know, it's not. I mean, this is kind of a unicorn of a deal because the seller was willing to carry back 20% and the you know but if you don't ask you'll never it'll never be a yes so we just said well we're going to at least sit down around the numbers and move forward if they work and at least try I say there's a couple lessons one was that it's it was amazing to watch the power of the team pulling in the same direction it was because we managed to basically close on this in a couple weeks, identified, offered, closed. I mean, very tight time frame for this size of a deal, yeah.

Yeah. So it was, it was amazing how quickly it came together when you have everybody on board. The other thing was is that I think we're not going to be as shy of these because I believe that the carryback concept is a bit more prominent in these larger deals. So the current owner was just more willing to do that. I think that's going to be the case going forward on some of these larger deals. Nice. Well, you guys, we're approaching almost a year on our anniversary of working together. What have you found most impactful working with Epic?

You know, it's funny that you mentioned that we post every week in the Facebook group. I mean, just the accountability factor is huge because if we don't have something to post, and I think it's only happened like two, maybe two or three times in the year. We're seriously disappointed and feel like we left. ourselves down and failed as a business. And then, you know, how could a Facebook group, you know, make you feel that way? But it's just because we hold ourselves to that standard. It's like, well, we need to have something to show the efforts, the results of our efforts. And, you know, so that, that alone, that accountability piece for me, at least I know, and for Jack, is a huge

part of it. That's great. Well, really appreciate you guys. It's been a pleasure working with you, and I'm looking forward to decades to come and us interacting like this. And thanks for sharing all of your success and being so giving and gracious. We'll do it again soon, I am sure. Awesome. Yeah, they'd be great. So if you don't know, Jack and Josh, they have their own podcast. You can go to real estate investing rookies or R.EIRookies.

RIEIRookies.com. RIAIRUCES.com. They've got a great show so you can check them out over there as well. All right, guys. Well, Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Keep doing what you're doing. And if you need anything, let me know, okay?

Sounds good. Thanks, man. Thanks, man. Thanks, back. Bye-bye. Yo Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow You didn't know home for us

We got the cash flow Uh What's up? Hello And welcome To the epic real estate investing show Got a great show for you today We meet here each and every week

For great shows Just like the one you're going to have today And we do this to help everyday people Escape the Rat Race using real estate So if this is your first time here So glad you found us If it is not, welcome back. And you can stay connected right here to the show by clicking the subscribe button to wherever you listen to your podcasts.

And I'm just grateful. Thank you for listening. And you can also stay connected with us on Instagram at Epic Real Estate and on YouTube by going to Epicurei. Where the video versions of the podcast are uploaded there every week as well as a whole lot more. So today got a great show. Got a great guest. I mean, if you have ever wanted to grow a successful real estate investing business, using the power of technology systems and the internet.

And our guest today is the one that you've been waiting for. He's well-versed in real estate websites and traffic that contain the essential elements. Just required, all the essential elements required for success as a real estate investor. And he was the first person to develop and perfect the concept of virtual real estate investing, where you can do deals literally from your laptop from start to finish. He then streamlined his methods into a fully integrated system called virtual, wholesaling. You heard of that before? The expression, it's now in the household lexicon of real estate investors, and it all started with him. So please help me welcome to the show, Mr. Chris Chico.

Chris, welcome to the epic real estate investing show. Thank you. I'm very excited to be here. I have a drink, like, three cups of coffee just to be ready for this interview, so I hope that I have enough energy for you. Yeah, every time I've met you, that's something I always thought. I wish she drank more coffee. I'm working on, I bustle it from Amazon that will feed it right into my veins. I'll let you know how that works. Maybe you want a good review.

Maybe you want to try it. Right, right. We'll start what, vaping caffeine, maybe. Yes, that's right. I love the idea. I love the idea. We look rather peculiar here on the screen, the two bald heads.

It's like someone has to, all right, we'll move on from that. That's right. Hey, Chris, I have an old. while. We met in a mastermind group and I remember we had a little breakout session. I never got to acknowledge you for this. I just wanted to thank you for when you brought up the, uh, the whole idea of Montessori school for the kids. Oh, yes, right. Remember that? Yeah. And, uh, I immediately went home and shared that with Mercedes and we enrolled Mateo into Montessori school. And the kid is so smart

beyond his years. I just, I'm blown away of what he knows how to do. I, I swear I felt he was reading in a week. And, uh, oh, wow. I do remember our conversation. So he's been on, Montessori ever since? Yeah, so we're probably going to switch him over to public or something like that next year. But yeah, that's what, four or five years now he's been in and it's, I'm really blown away because he's much smarter at seven years old than I was. Okay. Oh, that's great. I'm glad I'm able to help on that. Yeah, absolutely. So, Chris, when we met, I knew you were kind of a big guy in the virtual wholesaling world. That's what I had your name attached to. But I never met you before. I'd never talked to you about it. And we've still, to this day, we've never really talked

about that. Tell me how that started and where the virtual wholesale thing came into play. Well, this was back around, I think it was around 2004 or five. You know, we were doing deals here in the south floor of the market, doing well, mostly focused on direct mail. And however, though, you know, the market started to kind of slow down a little bit. And one of the things that I noticed is that even though our market has started to slow down, because our market had had a tremendous uptick and pricing, but there were a lot of other markets throughout the country that hadn't had that tremendous increase.

And so I started to think about, well, gee, these other areas, these other investors are doing deals and they're not having as hard of a time as I am and making deals work here in the South Florida area. And I started to think about, hey, is there any way for me to explore doing what I'm doing here now, but maybe doing it in a completely different market? And it was interesting because during that time, right now we have a lot more tools available.

You know, back then, I was using direct mail. So I was able to get the mailing list the same as I was here in South Florida and was easily able to get it over there. One of the challenges that I had was buyers. And with buyers, you know, I figured out that, hey, I can go in and pull a list of the most recent absentee owner transactions in a particular area. And then just send postcards to those people as well. Back then, we were, you know, so we were sending people back then to all. website because back then hardly any real estate investors had the website so i was using a squeeze page and etc and you know back then things were a little bit more difficult we didn't have google street view

back then so um anytime we got a property in the contract we had to go out and um get somebody on on uh craigslist and pay them like 50 bucks to go out and take photos of the property right um and that's how it all started it started because of necessity you know the market wasn't doing that well here and i wanted and i saw other real estate investors we're doing just fine in other areas of country and then and that's how I got started with with virtual wholesaling and I think that that's what a lot of people know me because that's what I started to teach when I started to teach I didn't set out to create a course or materials I just really took at that time all the materials that I had all the videos that I had that we were using internally and I uploaded it to a website and then I

gave people access to that and that's kind of how I got started in the you know teaching other people how to do the same thing as well awesome Cool. Yeah, it always seems like everything that we do that's exceptional or gets recognized was born out of necessity. Right. When you start making a name for yourself, other people want to know how you did what you did. So then you start showing. And it just kind of morphs it. I mean, I'm a total accidental guru myself. Like this was not the plan. Right. Yes. Exactly.

But cool. All right. So that brings me up to speed. So I know you're on to something really new right now that I think you kind of have an edge on that that, that, that, uh, what's the word I was looking for? I was on a roll there. You're always on the cutting edge as long as I've known you, and you're onto something new with regard to Facebook and how you've been able to create motivated seller leads through Facebook, and where a lot of people have really struggled and flat out failed

and trying to make that work. No one's really cracked the code, but I think you're really onto something. So I wanted to bring you onto the show and have you share that with the people and see what we can create together. Yeah, and for me, the Facebook, spoke was born out of necessity.

Again, again, born out of necessity. You know, I've always been known as a direct mail guy. So I was, you know, early on in the process, you know, I, you know, was, I'm very well known for creating a bunch of different postcards and different angles on postcards. You're using 24 recorded messages. And that worked well. And what happened is that, you know, as everybody knows, that channel has become a lot more crowded.

And it was taking a lot more money to find deals. and there's more and more of our sellers are online. You know, I always kid around and say, you know, my mom and my mother-in-law now have phones with like Google and Facebook and everything else that you need on the internet, which wasn't the case like, you know, five or six years ago. And so I started to think about, you know, hey, everybody's online. How can I get access to these people online? And I had contemplating doing pay-click, but, you know, at the time I was contemplating paperclip, which is last year, with a cost per lead on paper click. and the cost for deal on pay-per-click was high. A lot of the guys that I spoke with said,

look, unless you got $7,000, $10,000 a month to really push on this and give it a go, then you're just wasting your time. And so for me, you know, SEO was also something I had thought about, but SEO was more of a longer process. And so I was interested in, hey, is there a way to me to get sellers now? Now I have to wait a year or six months

in order for my site to rank. And so I started that journey of learning Facebook. I started to really copy, you know, when you're starting out something brand new, you don't want to reinvent the wheel. So you start just looking at what everybody else is doing and trying to do the same thing. And that, you know, it didn't work for me. You know, I started running Facebook ads. And in the end, you know, I took a step back and I said, okay, well, what is it that has worked for me in direct mail? You know, what approach?

And are there, is there a way for me to take the approach I was using in direct mail and take it into Facebook and maybe create a unique way of the, generating leads right through Facebook. And that's what happened. And so what I want to do today, and I'm looking at my screen partly because I have some notes, I want to make sure I cover what I'm going to cover. But I'm going to go through specifically my framework for using Facebook ads. Okay. And, you know, I've got people, I've got clients that were doing direct mail, wasn't working.

I have a client that I had recently spoken to that was doing direct mail, wasn't working, and it wasn't working to the point where they were actually almost contemplating leaving the business because they just weren't be able to make it work. And all of a sudden, now implementing Facebook ads, their businesses completely turned around. Like, they're only doing Facebook ads. And so what I'm going to share with you guys, it's not theory. I mean, we run an agency.

We have lots of clients that we work with each and every single month. We have lots of students with tremendous results. So I'm going to walk you through, guys, the exact framework that I use. And that if you were to follow this, then literally if you put an ad on Facebook, this morning at 8 o'clock in the morning, you're going to have leads come in today. So it's not like, you know, hey, I'm going to spend money on Facebook over the next week or two weeks, and hopefully I'll get some leads. It's no, it's a median. And so I've broken it down to three different things. So the first thing, in terms of for us making Facebook work, and some of these are counterintuitive,

is how are we going to come across to the sellers? So what I noticed is when I was doing Facebook ads, most of people were advertising from their business page as their business, So if you have true home investors or we buy houses cash, that was how you were showing up in the news feed. And again, some of these things that I came up with is just taking information from other niches and other things I'm working on and applying it to real estate. And I noticed when we were running ads in the information marketing business that the ads always gave us better results if I advertise as me, Chris Chico, not as my company. And so then I took that approach and I applied it to the us running Facebook ad. So instead of coming across as, hey, you know, rapid house offer,

you know, and then me having, you know, pictures of houses and stock photo and everything else, then my approach is Chris buys houses. So for you, it would be Matt buys houses. Right. And the image is you, your personal image. And on your business page, you're showing up up at the top. You have pictures of your family. You have pictures of you. and so because at the end, you know, people do business with you because they know like and trust you. And it's always a personal relationship. You know, in our business, yes, you can go out and try to build a brand in a local marketplace. But at the end, people are doing business because of you, because of you as the individual.

And so for us, that's how we come across when doing Facebook ads. And we've tested it. We've tested it. I just did another test just to make sure this was a couple weeks ago. Well, he had a client run the same ads and he was running, you know, his business. business page as a company and its business page as him, you know, Franklin buys houses. And the cost per lead was more than half less. Excuse me, he had a lower cost per lead and more leads come in through the, through the pipeline by advertising as him personally. So that's the first layer of

advice is that if you're going to do Facebook ads, do it as you, do it as an individual. Matt buys houses, Chris buys houses. So that was a... You set up your business page to look like a personal profile almost. Right, because also, too, what happens is when people are flicking through the news feed, the minute they see an ad, they're just going to swipe right through it. But you're trying to come across so that they could at least, you know, just slow it down as they're flicking through the news feed because they'll, at first, they don't know if it's an

individual or if it's a company, you know, putting an advertisement. And so that also helps in us getting their attention. attention because, you know, Facebook, unlike Google PPC, where somebody's coming in and typing in sell my house fast, Facebook is more interruption marketing. So we can do everything we can to kind of slow things down for them, look at the ad, and then for them to say, okay, you know what, maybe I might want to talk to this guy. So that was the first thing. So that's kind of our first pillar in terms of our approach with regards to Facebook ads. Now, the second thing is now targeting. So now let's say that you, I'm coming across the Scris Bites houses, how am I going to target on Facebook?

So one of the things that I see that I saw people do that I tested and did not work for me is people number one were targeting geographically over the entire area. So I'm in Miami. So in other words, I would say, hey, I'm going to target all of Miami. Now, when you do that, you're going to get an audience size of, especially my area, 500, 600,000, 700,000 people. So because of that, then you're forced to give Facebook some additional parameters. So now you start plugging in there, oh, I want somebody to be a homeowner. I want somebody who's likely to move. I want somebody who's visited Zillow and all these other things and you put them in there.

And I tried that and it just didn't work it off. Completely did not work at all. So what I ended up doing is I ended up then figuring out that targeting by zip code works best. So what we do is that we take and similar as if you were going to go ahead and do a direct mail campaign. If you're going to do a direct mail campaign, you're going to go ahead and pull the list of buyers and you're going to figure out what are the top 10 zip codes that most of the transactions are happening. So then you take those zip codes and we're going to individually target those zip codes individually in Facebook. So that's our first layer of targeting.

Now that gives us an audience of anywhere between, it depends on the area, but it could be anywhere from a low end of 10,000 people to a high end of 70 or 80,000 people depending on the metropolitan area. Now, the second thing that we did that is a little bit counterintuitive is that we removed. all of the targeting, specific targeting that Facebook allows us. So the only targeting that we use is age. So we put in there 35 to 65 years old and then the zip code, and we do nothing else in terms of targeting, which is counterintuitive to, again, what other people teach and what I did myself in the beginning, but wasn't really getting anywhere with those results. But then now we're really zeroing in on that particular target area.

And keep in mind is that the way Facebook works is it works geographically, but it works based on the location of the device at the time that the ads are being shown, meaning that if you happen to be from Florida, then you happen to go into Texas and you're driving through that zip code, then Facebook will show the ad to you. So it doesn't necessarily mean that you live there. It means that your device is in that zip code, right? Now, if we're targeting by zip code, then one of the issues that I had is I was putting out ads that look like. like, you know, hey, you know, your standard ads, you know, stock photos of houses with, you know, hey, sell your house for cash. And, you know, the typical language of real estate investors. So I thought about the way that I was getting postcards to work when I was doing a lot of direct mail was to personalize the postcard as much as I could. So I would take the postcard. I would put the

address of the seller. I would put the name of the seller. And I would put whatever else I can put into to really make it specific. And so then that's what we did with the, that's what we do with the zip code ads. So when we write the copy for the zip code ads, number one, it's very conversational. It's not, hey, we sell your house for cash, you know, repairs, you know, the whole typical investor spiel, right? So our ads are very story-based. Hey, my name is Chris, and I'm looking to buy a property in zip code 33147. And I love to know if you might be interested in selling your property. I am, you know, I recently sold a few properties and I need to buy a few, I need to buy something else. And so maybe I might be someone for your property.

I'm just kind of, I'm giving you a big picture, but that whole, the way that we're coming across is very personal. It's a very story-based. And the ad itself references that particular zip code as many times during the ad. The other thing is that the image, the image is 80% of the work in terms of or getting somebody's attention on Facebook. So what we did is that, again, to further personalize the ad, rather than using stock photo, what we do is we go to Google Street View and we take a Google Street View of that particular neighborhood, right, as if you're driving by the street. And then we take, and that's why I call it my digital bandit sign technique, so I put in a little

yellow sign to the right of the ad that says sell your, and it has whatever the zip code is, sell your 33147 zip code. And so then now that also further catches. their attention. So if you think about it, you know, taking all that and putting it together, as opposed to them browsing through the newsfeed, seeing something that says, you know, hey, Houston Home, Houston Cash Buyers, and then having just a stock photo and, you know, just your generic investor text. Right. They're seeing Chris Buy's houses. They're seeing an ad that's more story-based. They're seeing the ad that specifically says the zip code. They're seeing an image that

is of that particular area. They're seeing a sign on that image that says that particular zip code so all of a sudden now it's very very personalized um and so then now the what we also so so that's one of the ways that that's what's really worked well for us and and again what we're doing is now because of that now we're able to zeroing on a target market and also keep our cost per lead down significantly now so if we then start from the perspective of we're going to start advertising as crisp by's houses we're going to really zero in on the zip codes So then now the last layer is how is it that, how do we target? How much of the cost?

So generally, targeting that approach. Now, there are a couple things. Number one is our budget, our budget is per zip code. So when you're advertising this way, then we have a budget of, it depends on the market, but generally between $15 to $20 a zip code. So if you're advertising three zip codes that day at $15 and you're spending $45 for the day. Now, on average, the kind of our benchmark is $35 a lead. Now, it depends on the market.

If you're in the market, like, say, San Francisco, you're going to pay more toward the $35 to $40 per lead on Facebook. In other markets and smaller markets, we're about the $15 to $20 per leave, meaning somebody raises your hand and says, yes, I'm interested in selling my house. And the mechanism for us, say, we have the ad and it shows up on a news feed instead of us sending them to a website. So that was the other test I ran. I said, okay, they click on the ad. Now they go to an external website. And a lot of vendors out there that had websites and I tried all of them and I just wasn't getting anywhere. And so what we figured out

and what works best for us and also makes it easier for people to implement is that we use Facebook's own internal lead forms. So Facebook has a lead form that the person clicks on the ad and our ad says, hey, click on the button, and that way I can give you a quote on what I would offer you on your property. They click that on. They still stay within Facebook. So they're not leaving the Facebook ecosystem. Right then they're there, as soon as it pops up, their name is pre-populated, their phone number is pre-populated, their e-bole address is pre-populated, and then now all they have to do is type in their property address. And they hit the submit button. And as soon as they hit the submit button, then that lead gets sent to us. And you could send that a variety of different ways.

we typically send it to our CRM. We send ourselves an email just as a secondary backup. And also we send ourselves a text message. And the reason we send our text message is that what we found when doing any sort of online lead advertisement, but for us, for Facebook, speed is very much, very important. So what happens is the lead comes in. And again, you're not getting 50 or 60 leads a day. If you think about it, you're getting, if you're advertising three zip codes, then that day you might get three to five leads.

So you're not talking about tremendous volume of leads. So what will happen is that you get a text message from your lead. And what we do is that we immediately text message the person that has sent in the submitted the forum. And we just say, hey, this is Chris from Chris Pyshouses. When would be a good time for us to chat, right? Now, regardless, if they respond or not, we call them right away. And the key thing is you want to text message them and call them from the same exact phone number. because what happens is that for me especially I get a lot of calls throughout the day and there's nobody but

robocalls some nice lady offer me refinancing or something else right or car loan or whatever so I'm very hesitant to pick up that phone however if I get if you text message a seller now that's now they have a text message from you there's a record now there's a phone number there now you're calling them within a few minutes, there are double or triple. I mean, we get a lot more response in terms of them picking up the phone and us having a conversation. Worst case, they'll say, hey, give me a call later, et cetera. So, you know, for us, speed is key when implementing the strategy. And, you know, the way at the end, our approach to Facebook is different conceptually from the way that Facebook wants to be worked. And by that, I mean that most people give Facebook demographic information and try to feed

information into the system. And the best way I can describe the way we do Facebook ads, it's just like the regular old school bandit signs. If you're out putting up bandit signs, you go out and you put bandit signs in the particular zip code. They work great for the first three or four or five days. Eventually, it starts to decline, why? Because the sign gets taken out. The bandit sign police comes out. So when that happens, what do you do? You go to another zip code and you put more signs in there. Maybe you don't put any more signs here for a little bit because you want to let that thing rest for a week or so. The same thing happens here. Then when those die out, then you go back to that same zip code you were at. And now you're going to put some more signs,

but you might do it a little bit different. You say, you know what, this time we're going to put some pink signs up because the last time you put up a yellow. So what we do is, if we have a list of 15 zip codes, we're constantly rotating those zip codes with different ads. So in other words, one ad might be a more personalized, hey, I'm looking to buy a house, whatever. Another one could be, hey, are you a landlord in zip code 331-147 that are looking to sell your property. If that's the case, then we should talk because I'm interested in buying a property, et cetera. So, you know, it's a process of, it's a little bit counterintuitive because it's not a,

it's not a set it and forget it. It's not, hey, I'm going to put an ad on the whole county, and then I'm going to just let it run for a month and then, you know, I'm going to get a certain number of leads. If you do that, and we've tried that, you're going to spend a lot of money per leads on Facebook, and in the end, you're going to say it's not going to work. And so, you know, the way we do, the way we do, do it, our kind of our general guidelines are, you know, if you go in knowing that you're going to spend $35 a lead on average, and what we found is that generally it takes about, it takes

about 50 leads to be able to get a viable deal. And the effectiveness of this working also very much depends on the strategy you're going to implement around what you do with the leads. And by that I mean that if you are only, if you're in San Francisco and you're only for focused on wholesaling, and that is it. So you're looking for, you're always going to have a harder time there than if you are in a maybe a less competitive market, maybe you're doing wholesaling, maybe you have a way to refer the leads to a realtor, maybe you have a way to do some creative financing, you might close on a couple deals. So the clients that we have, because we also, we teach people how to do this, we also have an agency. On the agency side, the

people that we have stayed the longest with us are the ones that have those multiple strategies. But I think that's the case with any marketing medium that you're going to be using in today's market, the more avenues you have of making these deals work, the more the better ROI and the more you can sustain that particular marketing channel. We have a very small time window here, you and I here together. But in essence, I mean, I just instilled the entire strategy from beginning to end in terms of if you've done Facebook before, you can take my whatever, what information I just gave you now and you can run with it. And that's a framework that we're using right now currently to generate deals and all of our clients are having amazing success with it.

Awesome. That's great. Thank you for sharing. That was a bunch. So the three pillars were to advertise personally. Right. Two is basically just targeted by zip code and age, leave all of the other classifications out that Facebook offers. Right.

We found that to be, I concur with that. And then what was the third thing? The third thing is just the combination. of personalized ad, meaning that personalize the ad to that zip code, personalized the image to the zip code, all right, and also come across in a very conversational tone because you're trying to not come across like everybody else is coming across. And so that's the second part.

And also, too, from a mechanical perspective, use Facebook's own internal lead form system in order to just have an easier time of collecting the leads and make it easier for the prospect too as well. Right. That's good. That's good. So, I don't know, give me, give me some results. Give me, give me a story on some success stories and someone that was having a tough time with direct mail and what are they experiencing now. Well, I mean, there was a gentleman that I interviewed Dom Summers. And he was, you know, his story, there's two guys that I interviewed recently. One is Dom and Don was doing direct mail. He was doing the typical absentee owner mailings and just wasn't getting anywhere.

And the last time I spoke with it was a couple weeks ago when I did that interview was that I think he had about $70 or so thousand dollars in wholesale deals that he had a pending. And that was from just maybe spending about $1,500 or so a total $2,000. I had another gentleman, James, who I interviewed. And he was doing direct mail. He's a competent guy. I mean, he used to be, he used to work for Microsoft. So he knows what he's doing. He knows his way around the computer.

Let's put it that way. So he was doing direct mail, and that started to the client. Then he switched over to PPC. And now he was doing well with PPC for a bit, but then the cost per lead just started to continually increase. And then now he's only doing Facebook. That's his main strategy for leads. The last time I spoke with him, he had about 50 or so, okay, that he had pending in wholesale

deals. and then actually he had closed 50K and wholesale deals and then he had another 25 or so K pending. From about a, I think that was his, his aspen was a little bit higher was about a $3,500 ad spend. I have Franklin Cruz. You know who Franklin is?

Yes, yes. Yeah, so I just got him started on Facebook ads. And now he's only doing that. His first deal, he made, you know, now this is, again, you have ranges, right? So he got off on the right foot. He spent 300 bucks and made a deal that was I think $8,900,

Jeff for that first ad. And then now he is only focused on Facebook ads. Because also I'm a fan of if you've got something that's working, and it could be Facebook, it could be maybe you're doing cold calling. Whatever you're doing, I think a lot of people don't double down. Like they go out and, oh, I got this working. It's working a little bit. Let me go out and implement these other three things, right?

Versus if you just focus and go deep, then I think that most people listening could do that. And that's my always recommendation. And so for him, he's focusing on that. That's all he's focused on. That's the only source of lead generation. And, you know, I would say this. Look, there's always layers, right?

Meaning that, you know, the strategy that I outlined is a strategy that will get you leads at an economical, we're up and running, will get you leads at an affordable cost. But there's layers because you're familiar with Facebook and advertising on Facebook. You know, that well goes like, you know, 10 feet deep, right, or more. And so, you know, I'm not saying that it is with anything else, right? It's simple. I always give the analogy is it's simple, but it's also complicated underneath. You know, the whole example I always give is that I get in the car in the morning,

I put the ignition in the car, and then I go, and I put it on drive, and I go. And it's a very simple process. However, if you lift the hood underneath, there's a lot of stuff to have. happens underneath the heart. And so, so, you know, I could definitely, I mean, for me, it's just amazing how the people that I've spoken with and are having great success where they were really having a difficult time before with other channels just because we're more crowded. And then now with Facebook ads, they're just doing, you know, they're generating leads and doing deals from it. Awesome. Have you found a particular type of market this works best in?

or is it pretty, you're getting nice results across the board? You know, I would say in general, it just, the cost per lead, and I think you have to go in it where if you're in a large metropolitan market like me, like in Miami, you've got to go in thinking that,

okay, the average cost rate of $35, I've got to be willing to give Facebook at least $1,500 minimum to really more than $2,500, to order to give it a chance. If you're in a much smaller, market, then that number is more on the lower side. You know, I think in general, I think you have to go in thinking that I'm going to

spend at least minimum a thousand, but really closer to $1,500,000 to really give this a go. Because otherwise, then, you know, you might get lucky. And, you know, Franklin really got lucky at the beginning. You got a couple of leads and he was able to slam one and get a deal. But that may not always be the case, right? So, you know, I always think about, there's a fine line between possibility and probability. Is it possible that I can go and play the lotto today and win? It's possible, but it's not probable.

So is it probable that you can spend $100 on Facebook and get a deal and make $10K? It's possible. But the probability is that if you're more in the line of spending $1,500 to $2,000, now you have a better chance. And again, provided that we're, and I'm giving you that number based on an average cost per lead of $35, right? So you're looking to generate, you know, 50 to 75 leads. If you generate 50 to 75 leads, as long as you know how to talk to sellers, as long as you can do the rest of the, what happens, after that, then you have a good chance of making it work. Right.

Great. So, you know, even 1,500, I mean, people are spending anywhere from $4,000 to $6,000 a deal from direct mail. So, I mean, this is like three times better. Well, you know, that's an interesting point you made because the other thing I like about Facebook is that there's a couple of things. So number one, we also can generate buyers on Facebook. So buyers will cost us anywhere between $2 to $4. a buyer league. But the nice thing about Facebook is that, number one, with direct mail,

if you're going to do a test in direct mail, you've got to push some mail out there. You've got to spend $1,500, you're going to drop $2,000 or whatever the number is. With Facebook, it's incremental spending. All you've got to do is decide, you know, today I'm going to advertise on two Zipcos, and I'm going to go ahead and give it $15 or $20, and then you're going to produce leads today. If you produce leads today, then it gives you the confidence to say, you know what tomorrow i'm going to go ahead and let those ads run if it doesn't work that you can say okay well let me try another zip code or let me see if i can maybe i did something wrong or didn't approach it correctly etc but you know that's what the other things i like about facebook is that

um yet when i say you're going to get facebook 1500 or 2 000 you're not giving them that money at one time you're just you're spending incrementally and the only way you would get there to two thousand dollars is because you feel confident that you know what i'm continuing to generate leads these are good leads and it's going in the the direction that you wanted to go. Right. If someone wanted to take this on and they were going to kind of do that sort of micro-managing on a day-to-day basis like you just kind of explained, what are some things that they

should look for in the sense that, oh, this is not working, not working at all. I might not be good at this. I might want to get somebody else to do this for me. Well, I mean, I think the biggest mistake I see people make is that if you do the ads correctly, you would start receiving ads. First of all, when you launch the campaigns, you always launch them in the morning, right? So you're going to launch it, say, 8 o'clock in the morning. At the end of the day, you should have leads.

Number one, if you don't have leads at the end of the day, that there's something wrong there. So the other thing is, let's say we have people that will run the ads and we'll start to get leads. And they get leads day two, day three, day four. But then now they start to fizzle out. And all of a sudden now, you know, they've gone a day or two days or, you know, without leads.

If that happens, you need to pause the campaigns and you need to rebuild them. Because then what happens is that you might get good leads for three, three to four days and now you have a cost per lead of $15 a lien. But then you let that campaign run way too long, another four days without leads, thinking that you are going to get leads, but the campaign is stalled out. And all of a sudden, you doubled or triple your cost per lead unnecessarily, whereas you should have just cut it off and then maybe just use another ad,

rebuild the campaign and just pause it and unpause it, et cetera, and just rebuild another ad. So I think it's the understanding of this is not a advertised on Facebook for a week or two weeks, and then after two weeks, and finally people will get to know you and they will submit their information. No, this is you advertise today. You get leads today.

And if you don't, then you got a problem. Right. Got it. Got it. Great. Thank you. You're so generous with your information, Chris. You mentioned the people that you mentioned,

names you were talking about interview. Where are you interviewing them? Oh, this is on my YouTube channel. Oh, your YouTube channel. Okay. Yeah. And that's just Chris Chico? Yeah, you could just Google Chris Chico,

I mean, or go to YouTube and type in my name and then you'll be able to pull up my channel. And I've got other video tutorials on Facebook ads as well there too as well, along with a variety of different things too. Awesome. And then if someone I don't want to just skip all that and reach out to you directly, what would be the best way for them to do that? You know, the best way is just to, again, just go to chico.com.

And I do have a sample available of what one of my ads look like. When you go to the site, it'll be apparent to you that, hey, you can sign up to receive a copy of one of the ads. that I run on Facebook. And we have some also additional training where everything that I discussed here, I discussed on that trading a little bit deeper. And then I also show you screenshots. You get a chance to see me and the Facebook ads in the face and walking you through,

et cetera. And showing you what it all looks like behind the scenes. Perfect. Well, it's been a pleasure, Chris. I'm out of time. But thank you for being here. And let's come back. Let's do it again, reconvene.

And, you know, his marketing is always changing. You're a brilliant marketer. I like to stay up to date and stay in contact with marketers because we are marketers really before we're real estate investors. And so I think it's a key skill and a key thing for people to pay attention to. So let's do this again. Oh, perfect. Thank you for having me on.

You bet Chris. Take care. All right. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know home boy, we got the cash flow. This podcast is a part of the C-suite radio network.

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