Epic Real Estate Investing - I Know I'm Being Successful When... w/Dean Jackson |624

Episode Date: April 4, 2019

In the real estate business, one needs to be a marketer before being an investor, so we brought Dean Jackson, a marketing genius, on the show! He runs Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast as well as many others and has multiple businesses, such as 90-Minute Books. Listen to why he got involved in so many projects, how he manages to complete them, and how he would use his skills to get sellers to call him instead of searching for them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terrio Media. How do you know when you're being successful? Most people kind of look at success as something aspirational, like looking down the road and saying, I'll be successful when I get to this, when I make a million dollars, or when I have this amount of money, or when I do this many properties,

or something that you're defining a goal as how they know they'll be successful. But the reality is when you, the kind of success that we're looking for is the sustainable feeling of success. Hi, I'm Matt Terrio and welcome to the epic real estate investing show. And today is Thought Leader Thursday. All right.

So on today's episode of Thought Leader Thursday, I am joined by someone who I refer to as a marketing genius and considering we're all marketers before. We were a real estate investor. I thought it was fitting to have him on the show, so I'm very excited about it. He fell in love with marketing as a young boy when he first realized that selling stuff on commission was much better than renting himself out by the hour for a regular job. And he's never looked back. So he carried this distaste.

I like the way he says that. He's carried this distaste for real work into his adult life and is focused on a lifestyle-centered approach to a business using marketing as the ultimate lever to a life of freedom and fun. So please help me walk through the show. Mr. Dean Jackson, Dean, welcome to Epic Real Estate Investing. Hey, man, welcome. This is exciting. Yeah, isn't it? I feel like, you know, we've seen each other a few times now here in the last, what,

six to eight months. I feel like that's true. So, Dean, as I was reading about you and as I've talked about you, what was that young boy moment that caused you to fall in love with marketing? It's interesting because when I was 14, waited and waited and waited until you were, 14 was the minimum age where you were allowed to get a job. Uh-huh. And my friend Neil and I went up to the bowling alley in town.

And we both applied at the same time. We both got hired. And that was for a job at the minimum wage of $2.50 per hour, which is what it was. You know, this is like we're talking 1980 now, you know? Yep. And what I realized is that was like a long, you know, eight hours on a Saturday. in the bowling alley was a busy day. And at the end of the day, you'd end up with less than 20 bucks or whatever, you know, after taxes and stuff.

And I also, I'd had a paper route, you know, before I was 14. And one of the things that my newspaper did was they published these as a separate little venture, these coupon books. and I discovered that I could make probably $15 an hour selling these coupon books door to door. And that's when I realized, well, this is way better. I can get a lot less work and make more money. And I'm the one in complete control of this. So that was the only job I've ever had. And so from there, everything I did was all on the results economy.

of me, we call it, where you're getting for your results, not your time and effort. Right. You know, I have a similar background, a similar story. I did take jobs here and there to help ends meet while I was in those entrepreneurial endeavors. But I'm always interested that people that started that way, because I started with the paper route myself. I started going, I started also door-to-door sales. I'm always curious as to what are some of the more interesting things that you sold? We have the coupon book subscriptions for the, magazines. The,

was doing a, ran a painting company all through college. My friends and I owned a hot dog cart where that was a valuable lesson in that we had partnered or

contracted with a nightclub. It was close to us that would allow us to come and set our cart up on, you know, Thursday through Sunday and we would, you know, we were the only food, they didn't have any food in the place. So we would from, you know, nine o'clock till one o'clock in the morning, we would make, you know, a lot of money in that little bit of time.

And compared to, you know, if we were pushing the cart around the neighborhood trying to sell hot dogs, all week we wouldn't make. what you made by being in front of a starving crowd. You know, you learned the lesson of alliances with what would be the equivalent of traffic now, you know, of being in those things. And with the painting company,

we had the lesson of, you know, generating leads, but we started a separate company called name droppers. And what we did was we would hire college girls to go, into neighborhoods and do surveys in the spring to find people who are going to be doing home improvement projects in the summer. And we would have a checklist with all different home improvement projects like a new roof,

windows, pool, siding, driveway, deck, landscaping, all of it. And we would take the painting leads for our painting company, but we would sell or refer the other leads to other companies in each of those categories. So we turned our lead generation, our advertising, into a profit center. And in some cases, if we refer a pool to the pool company, our referral fee for that would be more than the money we would make if we had painted their house. And sometimes we would get to do both. Sometimes we would pay at the house. And referred the pool company and made the money for that. So I've just always been, I've just had that love for marketing from the very, you know. The internet has put those types of creative ideas on

full steam ahead for you. Absolutely. Yeah. Right. One of the things I've found interesting the few times that we've been together is that you've always got like an interesting story or an anecdote or a fact or some sort of historical reference to make a point in. And I was reading about you and you said that one of your favorite things is to discover new information. Right. And, you know, I've just noticed that every time you've got some new information. So do you have a process for what you set out to learn or is it just kind of, you know, happen? I think it's one of those things that's like I'm insatiably curious.

And so I love to just pay attention and, you know, look and read and to watch new things and kind of explore. different things, what other businesses are doing. And the way that my business works with all the different podcasts and the events that I do, I get exposed to and get to see all kinds of different businesses. So I have a whole new, you know, multifaceted kind of a view on things. What's something that you've learned recently that you're most excited about? What I've really discovered now is for most of my career, one of the winning moves that I've done is to create something that I call is a scale-ready algorithm. I'll figure out something like on the real estate side. I would figure out how to get listings for realtors.

and then I would then syndicate that turnkey system that I've created to all other realtors all over the country. And so we spent a lot of years, like 15 years, doing big real estate seminars in the top 20 markets in North America every month for 15 years to build this big audience and to take these things. out to the market. What I've experienced in the last few years is this idea of I've been working with some franchise organizations, like the power of distribution, where I'm able to work with one franchisee and create a scale-ready algorithm that's something that solves a problem or gets new customers and then we're able to immediately distribute it and deploy it to hundreds of franchisees all at once as opposed to creating something and then going out and building one at a time,

right? Take you out there. What does your business look like today? I know that you're very focused on creating lifestyle centered businesses and I think that's One of the part of it. But the thing is that, you know, so if we look at it that my, like organizationally, our main or primary purpose is that we help entrepreneurs make more money. And so everything that I do kind of falls under that umbrella.

And so that opens up so many different things. So we do free podcasts where, you know, I've got five or six. different podcasts that we do, including the I Love Marketing Podcasts and more cheese less whiskers and the joy of procrastination and all these podcasts that are really great conversations about marketing mostly. And that gives me the opportunity to be in communication and grow a big audience of people who were constantly in communication with. And then we do live events.

So I do our Breakthrough Blueprint event, which where I met you came to one of those. We spend three days with people applying our eight profit activators to their business. We've got online programs like our Briggs and Blueprint program and our email mastery program. And I have a company called 90 Minute Books. that we help authors write their first book and tools. So we have a company called go-go-clients.com, which is, you know, landing pages, auto-responders, toll-free voicemail, postcards, and a CRM, all in one thing.

So there's a whole collection of things that all fall under that umbrella of helping entrepreneurs make more money, which is a huge, you know, big enough territory that I'm never going to get tired of it or bored or feel cornered or wondering if there's a bigger market. And, you know, the great news is helping people make more money is a, it's never going to go out of stop. One thing I find so intriguing about you is your systemization and your creation of efficiencies. And what you just described me was actually hearing it all come out at once is really rather large. Right? How do you, I mean, can you touch on? You have to go into great detail, I guess, but can you touch on how you're able to manage so much? Yeah. Well, it takes a

village. That's the other thing, right, is people. And so I always, you know, that's really the thing that, you know, I always now have learned to focus on asking myself, the question of who, not how to do something. So I focus on what I see and what an opportunity is and what I want to do, but I don't get trapped in the mechanics of how do I do that. I am focused on, okay, who can help me with this? Who can I partner with or who can I bring on our team to run that, division of our our business and that's been i think that's really been out of necessity because one of the

great things is i'm a d and you know find it's not natural for me to um focus and uh you know do discipline execution of things but i have an infinite capacity for ideas and seeing um what to do right yeah i should have known that answer because that's one of the bigger takeaways I've had from hanging out with you. It's not the how, it's the who. Right. Well, you passed your own test. That's right.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Very good. So you talk a lot about business. You talk about a lot about marketing and helping entrepreneurs make more money. What would you like to talk about more that you don't get the opportunity to? You know, it's been an interesting thing because you bring up the lifestyle stuff that I really am a big believer in that. that the purpose of the business is to support my life, right?

That my life is the thing that is really where what I'm most interested in growing or building. And so I've been thinking about and really working on the dynamic between what I call like the lifestyle elements of something. We've got, I've started a podcast called Listing Agent Lifestyle, and it's for our real estate community. And I talk about the, you know, there's eight elements of the listing agent of life. All five of them are kind of the business elements, but the three lifestyle elements are daily joy, abundant time, and financial peace.

And we're looking to turn those dials. to 11 you know where we're trying to get to maximize those three things and I often find that where people get frustrated is when those three things are out of alignment right that if people if they're if they're not joyful it's usually because they feel like they don't have any time right they're stressed with the time and the reason that they feel with the time crunch is because they feel often that they have a money crunch. And so it's like this whole downward spiral of things that spires together to bring people down where it's the same thing where I look at it. If I can help somebody make more money and do it in a way that takes less time and brings them more joy,

that's really going to be a big win for them, you know? And so that's why I've been focusing on, you know, really conveying those, the importance of those lifestyle elements. People think it might be indulgent to have abundant time or to even strive to have daily joy. But I think, why not, right? Like, those are the real,

if you don't have those things, what's the point? What's something that few people know about Dean that you wish more people did know? Well, have a beautiful singing voice. Do you really? Yes, I mean, like an angel. Really? Nice. Yeah. I did not know this.

There you go. I'm going to tell everybody I know. That's one thing. Yeah, yeah. What are you kidding? No, I'm not kidding. Oh, okay. I wasn't sure.

No, he's ever asked me that. It's funny. All right. So let's tap into your magic superpowers being if you were a real estate investor. I know you work with a lot of agents, but if you're a real estate investor, looking for distressed properties, properties that you could find at a discount. Yeah. How would you deploy your superpowers and making that happen? So it's really interesting that I learned about this is something that I mentioned about name droppers.

Right, that I'm always thinking about, well, who else is looking for that same person, right? That I think that, because I've got so much experience with real estate agents looking for, who are looking for listings. Right. Not the people who are distressed, right? But the fact is that you're going to find out of some number of people in any neighborhood that there's going to be some number of distressed situations. And that trying to only find those people is, that's not how I would approach it. I'd still try and find the people as if they're going to be normal sellers in a way,

like not stressed, especially the way we're doing it, which is offering the valuable information for people because anybody who's thinking about selling their house, the thing that they want to know is what is it worth, you know? And but so we've hit on a way of doing that that's not as isolating as find out what your house is worth, like enter your address here to find out what your house is worth, which people have been, you know, tricked on that for a little while now, right? that we have been offering people the opportunity to voyeur in on the you know, April 2019 report on Winter Haven Lakefront house prices where it's like the report is

already done and get to voyeur in on it. Right. Now, when those people respond, I as an investor would be looking to, you know, present those people with an opportunity to sell their house right away. But if they're not that, to also then refer those to a real estate agent or to get that sponsored or to get, you recoup the money that I spent to generate those leads. Look at how can I generate those leads out of profit? The concept being offering, say, your market report. Yeah, the market, yeah, but more where it's not so much focused on you and singling you out,

it's that you happen to live in a townhouse in a particular area, like the Winter Haven Townhouse report, that means that you're interested to know what all the townhouses are selling for. Or if you live in a community called Lake Ashton or Cypress Wood or a golf course community, you want to know what the activity is going on in there because you may be thinking about your options. Can I get, can I negotiate a short sale? Can I get out of this? Can I, you know, you want to the data, the more information that you have is going to create more options for you, right? So the fact that somebody asks for it is going to create the opportunity, you know? So then it would be like an opt-in type situation and a follow-up phone call?

Is that how you do it? We don't actually, my whole way of doing it is that we don't even make the phone calls. I've got my whole way of setting it up was, what would I do to get listings if my phone only accepted income and calls? And that's the way that it's been. So we've set up everything. So I can do this for realtors everywhere. just to get them to the point where people call them up and say, hey, can you come and list my house?

It happens all the time. The power of a powerful question, right? Well, that's it. But I think, you know, are you noticing, I'll ask you a question because I'm curious about this too. How do you think things like Open Door and the eye buyers and stuff are going to change the distress? property investment

situation. Yeah, you know, I don't know what the workings on the back end look like. So basically their venture backed, they've got all the money. So they, if you want to sell your house to open door,

what you do is you fill out a little form, send them some pictures of your house. They look it over, 24 hours later, they give you an offer for your house. And typically the offer will be for, you know, that number, market value basically minus the 6% fee for the open door experience plus another 3% or so for a risk fee on top of that.

So you basically will get, you know, 90% of what market value is. for your house. But you can close in three days or you can close in 33 days or three months whenever you want to close. So it kind of gives a baseline, but you're, you know, I think overall, they were saying within Phoenix,

where they have a pretty good, almost 10% market share in Phoenix that their average is about six, and a half to seven percent off of the market. Off the market value, yeah. Yeah, I've got two thoughts on it. One was, I was a real estate agent. That was how I got started.

That was in 2002. So I was 2002 to 2006. I was an agent. And I remember back then, every agent was always nervous because that was kind of the emergence of Zillow or like with their introduction to the market. And everyone was really concerned about that.

And I remember that, I forget the actual number, but I think there's like 1.1 million real estate agents across the country. Yeah. I think the last time I looked, there was about 1.1 million real estate agents. Yeah, exactly. Right. So there's that part of it where I've seen this kind of fear and this, you know, this discussion and chatter about something like that. And it hasn't had that impact yet. The other part I think about is, I think it's going to take a lot of public education for someone just to sell their house through a phone or through a computer.

Yeah. Right. But that becomes normal. And I think that's going to take longer than most people think. Yes. It's my thoughts. I agree. Yeah. But I think as it becomes, yeah, normal, like when you look at it, when somebody, what would your investors be typically looking to buy a property for if it's a distressed situation? What kind of a discount off a market value are you finding that you guys are able to negotiate?

The common formula is taken what fair market value is subtracting repairs, subtracting your profit, right? And in that profit, there could be your profit only or your profit plus, maybe another investor you might sell that property too. So it's kind of a big chunk. So I think people are looking between 50 and 70% off of market, right? Yeah. Totally.

And so that's like when you're the, but that's the kind of thing is when you're the only option that somebody has, that makes a lot of sense. But when it's like, you think about how prevalent car max is right now in the car world where you just literally drive your car up and drive away with a check, then that's the, that's where a lot of, in major markets, that's where it's going, right? So it's interesting because the data is available so that they can determine what market value is. you know right right yeah no i think something's gonna it they'll meet eventually right yeah what we do

here at epic we were very much more though the buy-and-hold strategy so the deep discount isn't necessarily required because we're not flippers i don't know i'm not i got clients that are but uh if there were three guiding principles for your success what would they be so you know i think that those can all be found in something i did about about 20 years ago, I decided to define what success means to me. And so I created, I did this work with a gentleman called Thomas Lender. And Thomas was really instrumental and kind of guided me through that process. But the conversation we were having was, how do you know when you're being successful?

Most people kind of look at success as something aspiration. like looking down the road and saying I'll be successful when I get to this when I when I make a million dollars or when I have this amount of money or when I you know do this many properties or something that you're you're defining a goal as how they know they'll be successful right the reality is when you the kind of success that we're looking for is the sustainable feeling of of success, right? How do you know that you're being successful? So we started, instead of thinking about it as something aspirational, we started looking and thinking, how will I know it when I'm experiencing it right now so that I can just be successful, right? Right. And so all we did was fill out the statement, I know I'm being successful when.

And so we filled those out with finishing that statement with what it means to you. And so for me, my top three, as you asked about three, my top three are that I know I'm being successful when I can wake up every day and say what would I like to do today? So that means my number one value is time freedom, right? that I know I'm being successful when I'm in complete control of my time and I can do whatever I want. Then number two is that I know I'm being successful

when my passive revenue exceeds my lifestyle needs so that I don't have to spend my time to provide for my life. That gives you another, level of freedom. Then the third is that I'm working on projects I'm excited about and doing my very best work. And that is an infinitely scalable statement because it allows me to, it defines everything. You know, I'm working.

I'm not just idle, laying around kind of thing. Right. I'm working towards something, right? on projects. So there's always a newness and an excitement and a beginning and a middle and an end on a project. Right. But I'm excited about, meaning I want to work on the things that I want to move forward on. And I'm doing my very best work, which means I get, you know, I'm challenging myself and I'm doing things that I get bigger opportunities, the more that I grow.

You know, my best work today is better than my best work 20 years ago. And I'm a different Dean Jackson than I was 20 years ago, right? I look for the next 20 years to be the exact, you know, continuation of seeing how far can you go with those three premises. I think I'm going to adopt those, if you don't mind. Why wouldn't you? Right? Those are fantastic. Well, Dean, it's been an absolute pleasure.

Let's stay in touch. Let's do it again. Yeah, awesome, man. All righty. Well, thank you so much. All righty, so that's it for today. God bless to your success. I'm Matt Terry.

I'll see you next week on another episode of Thought Leader Thursday right here on the epic real estate investing show. Take care. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.