KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Direct Mail Lead Generation for Agents & Investors

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

SummaryThis episode demystifies direct mail and reveals why it remains one of the most powerful and reliable lead generation channels in real estate. The discussion goes beyond simple postcards, providing a strategic blueprint for agents and investors to consistently find motivated sellers and buyers without relying on costly ads or emotionally draining cold calls. You'll learn how to target the right people, craft a compelling message, and build a system that generates a predictable flow of quality leads.Key TakeawaysDirect Mail is Not Dead: In a world of digital clutter, a tangible, well-designed mailer stands out and builds trust. The episode highlights that direct mail has a significantly higher response rate than email, making it a powerful channel for reaching a targeted audience.Targeting is Everything: Discover how to build a highly effective mailing list. You'll learn to go beyond basic demographics and use data to identify high-intent leads such as absentee owners, expired listings, and pre-foreclosures, ensuring your message reaches the people most likely to respond.Master the Art of the Follow-Up: A single mailer is rarely enough. The episode emphasizes that a successful campaign is built on consistency. Learn how to implement a multi-touch strategy that includes a series of mailings, digital follow-ups (like QR codes and retargeting ads), and warm phone calls.Create a Compelling Message: Understand that your mailer's message should always be about providing value, not just asking for a sale. Whether you're sending a "just sold" postcard showcasing your expertise or an informative letter offering a free home valuation, the content should be relevant and benefit the recipient.TopicsReal estate direct mailLead generationReal estate investingPostcard marketingExpired listingsCall-to-ActionReady to get a steady stream of leads straight to your mailbox? Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform and master direct mail lead generation!

You're listening to the Investor Agent Nation podcast, empowering agents and investors to collaborate effectively and grow their businesses symbiotically. Your host, Randy Zemnock and Eric Gross, share real-life case studies, trending tactics, and expert strategies that have helped them to accomplish over $1 billion in sales volume. Whether you're a seasoned agent looking to expand your business or an investor seeking to optimize your returns, you're in the right place. This is the Investor Agent Nation podcast. One of the first things that I want to talk about with direct mailers is going to be the riches are in the niches with direct mailers. So I get a ton of investors who always reach out and they go, hey, I'm going to pull a list. It's going to be absentee owners.

I'm going to go ahead and start sending out mailers. There's 30,000 that I can find record. So I'm going to go ahead and blast them out and I'll start handling the phone calls. And I go, you and literally every other investor in Cincinnati are going to be hitting absentee owners. It's the, it's the top, like it's the easy picking. Everybody goes for that. Absentee owners. I'd love to hit the address. So we always kind of discuss, maybe think about where there's another pain point. For some absentee owners, it is a pain point. But what else is there? So there's an investor in the area who he looks for properties that have been transferred in

the past couple of years. So in the past year or two, and they have tax liens on the property. So typically it's an inherited property and there's tax liens that are on it. He goes ahead and sends mailers. Then once he gets a phone call from him, he goes, I don't know if you know this or not, but you own the property on 1, 2, 3 Main Street. It says here that you have 15,000 in tax liens. Were you even aware you own this property? No, I have no clue.

Didn't know I owned it. You know, maybe inherited it or yeah, I did know it was owned by my ASG passed away, got inherited it to me, just didn't know what to do with it. then he goes, I'll pay you $15,000, I'll pay your tax liens off, I'll give you $10,000, we'll just move forward. Now, our prices are a lot smaller. I know Randy's probably like $25,000 for a property, like sign me up, but it's riches in the niches with direct mailers.

You were trying to hit the list that nobody's hitting and that there's actually a pain point that is going to work out. If you have somebody who is living in their home and you're sending out direct mailers, the EDMM, every door, our EDDM, every door direct mailing is really expensive and 90% of people don't want to move. 90% of people's houses don't need work. There's no motivation. So you're trying to find the motivation and you're trying to hit them at the right time. So we talk with our investors and try and come up with some creative list that we can pull. And I actually have some examples right here too here that I'll do in a second.

And then Randy, if you want to jump in at any point, let me know. I can kind of see it. Yeah, so pull that up. So what I'm hearing from you is like you guys like to layer things on, not just, oh, let's just do absentee owners, but maybe how about we do absentee owners and find the ones that are behind on payments or taxes or things like that. So it's a deeper kind of layer filter of the list. Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah.

So instead of sending out like 30,000 mailers a month and spending a ton of money on your market spend and maybe 10% of those people are actually going to be people interested in selling. we would rather have a really like dialed in record and like data for us as investors and as agents data is like the most important thing you can have so if your data is really bad and you're sending out mailers to what you think is good data but it's not it's a waste of money so data is actually like the gold in this business so finding a site that where you can pull the really good information or you can get their their real address or their real phone number so that you can do those touches but also just making sure that you're if me and every other investor in Cincinnati are any absentee owners, then you're really just hoping that you're sending enough mailers that you get that one time where they're like, you know what, I'm done and fed up, I want to sell it. This is the postcard that came in.

It's on top. I'm going to give them a call. Why they've kept them and they're going to call all of them and they're going to compete for the top dollar? So it gets a little bit difficult. We try and narrow it down as much as possible, find those pain points, find those things that are going to work really well, find those lists that other people aren't touching, there's less competition. It's more work up front, but it's more deals on the back

end. So, and then, and I think Randy's screen came off, went off. So I'll go ahead and start in on the next thing, too. So we also try to do, it's typically going to be seven touches for direct mailers. So I also will have discussions with our investors where it's like, they'll be like, look, I've sent down mailers for two months now. And like, I just, I'm not getting anything. So it's a waste of money. I can't keep doing it. And I'm like, look, the average, statistically, the average it takes is seven touches before somebody shoots you a call. That's seven times that you're sending a postcard to somebody before you even receive a contact. That has nothing to do with actually getting the deal. That just has to do with you're starting the conversation after you've sent

them seven direct mailers. So that means that it has to be pretty consistent. The best thing to do is typically on a two to three week cycle. So that way they're constantly getting it. You're constantly staying top of mind. It's not such a delay that if it's seven months, that can take a really long time, whereas if it's every two to three weeks, you're going to be all done in about three or four months.

Once you get that phone call, you can kind of work on what works for you. We always try to build rapport. Hey, Eric, let me interrupt. So yes, I say the same thing to the investor clients I work with. Like I always ask like, okay, what's your budget? Right? And if they're like, well, I have, you know, three grand for the next six months.

Okay, great. Well, then let's pick a list, like you said, let's small enough where you can hit those people seven times with your budget. Or in this case, probably more like three times within the three month period to start, right? Ideally, it's more. But I want to, I always say you're rather hit them more. and less mailers than trying to do a mass mailing. So that's the same message I share with all my investor clients. But you got to start with end in mind.

What's the budget? How many mailers will that get you? And then do the numbers, right? Divide that up by six or seven touches. And that will tell you how big of a list you can really go after. And then that will tell you how niche do you want to get. And usually it's going to be a nice and small list. And I agree with what you're saying.

And one thing I was going to say something. Oh, what do you get your list? Do you like we get ours from our title company very often. A lot of my investors also have access to software like real flow is one. There's other, many others. I can't think of top of my head. But what do you get your list? See, we do title company.

We've used PropStream, which is what a lot of. PropStream. That's a lot of it. PropStream is what a lot of people use. So that one I would say, you know, it might be a little bit. You're pulling the same data as everybody else. Batch leads. One of the things we're doing right now, too, and this actually works out really great.

I just got a phone call today from somebody who owns a four unit. Our website, it's Housesincense.com, and then we have a bunch of other websites locally that push into them as funnels. And it comes back to direct mail. I'm not going to bring in websites into this. So we'll get a bunch of Google PaperClick leads where it's just the address. There's nothing else. So we'll go through and pull on the address and we get the, we get the owner's name, their number if we can, and we try and pull like emails and stuff.

And then what Katie, my wife, will do is she gets out a piece of paper that's got a letterhead of Eric Gross Group on it. And she writes a personal letter to them. And we get, I mean, we might get like 30 or 40 a month. And it does take some time. But, I mean, it's a couple hours to work. So the first thing that we send out to them is a personalized letter. and then it's addressed to our neighbor at, and it's their address, and then it's a letter just, hey, we had noticed that you had shopped or checked your

value on our website. Can we help? Can we send you more detailed comps if you are considering selling? So we detail it out, send the letter out, and then every two weeks after that, we send out direct mailers. So after that personal letter goes out, they're just receiving regular postcards with our faces on it, market updates, just sold, everything like that. I had somebody who called me earlier today who's looking to sell a four unit because he's like,

I clicked on it. I saw the value online. I have your letter right here. So I just want to go into more detail. We had about an hour of conversation with them. So if somebody doesn't have money for direct mailers and you don't have three to $5,000, do some driving for dollars, look around, find houses that have overgrown grass, holes in the roof, windows are falling out, busted, anything like that.

go home, takes a little bit more time, a little bit more work, and reverse prospect it, find who owns it, find what the current address is, sit down. I can't write the letters, otherwise I would. My handwriting is chicken scratch. So Katie does all the writing. You make it personal and you go, hey, we have some interest. Either if you're looking to purchase it and you go, hey, we have interest. We're local investors.

We love your property. We're looking at, you know, being able to make it a place where people want to rent. We love the community. This is what we love about it. But like for us as agents, we have clients. You send it out and it's personal. And I can guarantee you instead of getting like 15 direct mailers that are all the exact same, when they get a personal letter, it sticks with them.

And we've had a ton of investors get deals that way. That brings me, dude, I remember when I was running city homes, this is like day going back to 2011, 12. We would have interns drive around a particular area. we would lay out the map of the streets we want them to drive and we would try to cover all the areas within a particular city, let's just say, right? Yeah. And then we would have them do what you just said,

take a photo of like they were looking for the worst piles on the block. They would take a photo and then later, you know the send out cards? You probably heard of send out cards where you can basically customize your postcards. And it's a, it's kind of like a network marketing type company, but for direct mail. So then we would log into our send-out cards account, the intern would, and then they would upload the photos of that person's property, and then the postcard would come in, and they would see their house on the postcard.

With our message on the back. Like, it was gold. But we didn't do, like, thousands of these. Like you said, like, you do a few at a time. It adds up, right? And you just keep adding. Even if you do, if you add 10 to your list per. week, imagine if you do that consistently every single week, how big your list will be, because

you're not just going to mail to them once, the first time they might get the postcard. Maybe the next letter was going to be a yellow letter. Maybe the other, the next one is going to be something different, right? But you're just now keeping adding and adding and adding and adding to your list. And all of a sudden, your 10 is now a thousand. Yeah. And we honestly, like I'm open to admitting mistakes, we were throwing away these Google paper click leads at first, the seller ones, because we weren't paying for them.

If somebody went into the website, the way it does is it takes like six different values online and it gives them an average for what their house would be worth. So we get a lot of like looky-loose who are just typing it in and it's pretty much compiling like their Zillow, their Redfin, all of those values. And then it's spitting out to them and saying, based off of the six values we can find online, your house is worth $450. And it might be anywhere from a range of $400 to $500. So people would get that.

And then once they back out, they don't put their information in. we'd lose it. So I just like, I mean, honestly, I deleted it or we tried and reverse it, prospect it, and I'd do a phone call. Data was 50-50 sometimes. So sometimes it's a great phone call. Sometimes it's a terrible phone call. So then I was like, you know what, screw it. Like, we're just going to start doing direct mailers. And Kay's like, well, I'll just do personal like letters to kick it off and see what happens. So I mean, she might put an hour into it a day. But as an agent, an hour into it a day, if we get three, four, five, six listing the month off of it, it's, it's. huge. Now imagine doing that as an investor and you're getting three, four, five, six deals that you're not having to go on market. You're getting them at a great discount. I mean, if you take the long run of you owning those properties, whether it's a flip or a buy and hold, your hourly pay for doing those letters is probably something absurd. I mean, it's probably like five grand an hour because, you know, when you're holding those buying holes and you're getting the pay down and you're getting all of the tax benefits. So there's some like,

really cool ways to do it, but I actually, and I'll share my screen for this, we have a couple direct mailer. Here we go. We have a couple direct mailer examples. Let me see if I can get this set up for you guys. I cannot see my other part of my screen. So we are, let's go. Man, Randy, now I see what you're talking about.

This is a, I'm on the spot on this trying to get this up. There we are. Can everybody still? Can everybody see my screen? We could see her screen, but see if you can make it. Oh, there you go. So this is turnkey. This is the company that we do flips with up here. So right now we see just a, there you go. Now we see what you're talking about.

Okay. Got it. Perfect. Yep. So this is just a basic one and it's different for every single one. The way we send out mailers is we do driving for dollars and then we circle prospect around every flip we're doing. So if we're doing a flip, we take 100 doors in the nearest quarter mile and we send out to them. And then we also have parameters that we were

pulling up on PropStream. They've had to own it since 2015 because then they had the equity in there so we didn't have to put high equity. They had to own us since 2015. They couldn't have refinanced in like the past two years. Had to be like a three bed. Couldn't be older than like 1930. So it was like our normal buy box. And we've actually got a couple of deals off of this. Just it being a basic card, we had a lot of people that called that were super interested, but just had no clue what it had to do. So it was a good conversation starter. So this is more of a general one that you would mail to a larger audience, you think, or still like a niche you guys just did? No, this one's larger audience. So this one isn't tailored

to anybody. This is just a generic mailer. And then what we would do, was we would tailor it. If we were in a certain neighborhood, we'd tailor the postcard to the neighborhood. If we were trying to hit a certain list, we would try and send it to, you want to kind of tailor it to the people you're sending it to. This one was that we're just sending it all around,

or we're circle prospecting a neighborhood, and we're just trying to get five miles out, 100 doors. And then what we do, we actually had our number connected to a smartphone number, and then it would go to me. So it would ring in, it would go to a recorded up line and let them know it was recorded so we could track to see how

the conversations were going and then also if they were discussing the property we can go back without having to call back and be like hey i totally missed when you said this was it a three-bed too bad um so this would be a call in they would just like hey we got your your mailer what does it typically mean and my conversation would always be hey you know we're a local company we invest in properties we can give you a cash offer for your home but we're also licensed realtors. So if you're thinking about selling and the cash offer doesn't fit, we can also let you know what the market looks like, how we can get your home sold for top dollar and run you through multiple options. So, Eric, is this is turnkey your company or is that an investor? You're talking about it.

Yeah, it's a company. It's the flipping guy I work with here. Okay, so when you guys do that together, he wants you to do the calls on his behalf. Is that how you guys set it up? So you're like almost on you're like an extension of his investment company yeah so i me and my agents and like our team i offer for investors if they want will intake calls because to me as an agent if i can have that conversation for one week cold call anyways so if i can have that conversation with the person if i can build the rapport be the one that goes out there i understand not all agents are going to do that but i prefer to intake the leads i prefer to get an idea and then you know if you have a That's amazing. Dude, I mean, that's a huge value at. So if, if you are, if you are, if you are an agent and you want to work with investors, like that alone, you could be like, look, you spend the money, Mr. Investor and I'll take the, I'll take the calls on your behalf. Right. Now you basically most, in most cases, you should be able to negotiate that. So you don't actually have to spend the money. And because like there's another way of doing is where you co-market together. Right. And you guys split the cost. But.

I think if you're bringing the value of taking on the calls, which I agree, I think there is a massive benefit to you, Eric, right? As long as you are trying, of course, to get the investor in front of that client with a cash offer, which why wouldn't you if you have your finance, the financial incentive is set up correctly for you, right? and I'm guessing if he would buy the property, either you make some money on a front end, but then you definitely get the listing on the back end. And then if you do get the listing, which is actually a higher probability, that it's a listing, then you win. And then what do you give to the investor in this case if you just end up getting a straight up listing? So the guy that I work with is also licensed.

So we would typically do a referral fee and it would just differ. But it got to the point where we were taking in so many leads and I was handling so much cold calling. It was just if you did it, it was just a basis by basis. Like if it was small enough, he was like, look, just take the listing. I'm not worried about a referral fee. And then we'd kind of go that way. Make sure you have a CRM set up if you do this. If you're going to do direct mailers, make sure you have something where you can track, follow up.

It doesn't have to be expensive. We've spent a ton of money into our CRM, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. so make sure you have a CRM that you can follow up with. And then, yeah, I mean, if you're an agent, like I just met with an investor yesterday, and I'm like, he doesn't have a CRM set up. He's a newer guy, but he wants to put money in. He's super driven.

I'm like, look, I'll use my CRM. You'll have your own tag that'll go in. So if they call a specific number, they'll automatically tag you in our CRM, and we'll follow up with the leads for you. So, and yeah, we are incentivized to do the cash offer. But at the same time, if I meet with somebody and they're like, I don't want to sell my house for cash or that's too low of an offer, I'm not going to be like, cool, thank you for the time, have a great day, bye. If they're like, I don't want to do a cash offer that's too low, I go completely understand that. Have you thought about listing?

I can let you know what this home would be work on the market and the condition it's in and if you do updates? And do you go with your investor to that appointment? or do you already know basically the numbers that they work off? You got a repair estimator that you can use as a general kind of idea. So you can analyze it yourself. Like where are you at on that? Or how did you start? That's maybe that would be probably a better question.

Yeah. So it definitely was started differently. When I started, I knew a lot. I had done construction. I had done volunteer for Heptapper Humanity. I had done rehab rehabs. I'd helped my wife's dad do rehab. but I didn't understand the numbers that he was looking for.

So the first, I'd say probably like 10 deals that we got, I would go to the property with him and I would just go, what are you seeing? Because his contractors have, every contractor has different pricing. And he uses the same two or three contractors. So I picked up on his pricing really quickly. So I was like, okay,

we're running roughly $4 to $5 a square foot on floor. I'll do five. If it's $1,500 square feet, it's $7,500 to lay floor. A new roof, depending on the size of it, it's probably going to run us 8 to 10 grand. If there's damage to OSB board and stuff like that, we might be a little bit higher. So I always, I'm just super conservative.

I'm like, I'm going to bake in a 12 grand roof replacement. It's realistically probably going to be 8 grand. But I don't want my investors to lose money. So if my rehab budget comes in, and I'm always not to be cocky about, I'm always about like 5,000 within the contractor in terms of total budget, because like I talk to them too. and I'm like, what are you seeing? What did I miss afterwards? But starting out, we would do it together.

And he was like, he would just bake in all the, or we would just discuss it. Like I have to be all in 70% of the ARV. I'm like, okay, well, I've got comps at 300. That means we can be all in 210. Yep, exactly. Cool. So I've got to rehab of 60,000 in here. Yep.

Okay. So what I'm hearing is basically you want to get to the point. If you are an agent basically working with investors or you're an investor and you have an assistant, you know, going out, looking at properties, you want to get to the point where they are trained enough working of a repair estimator that you've created that gives them a bit of a guide. So they could quickly go through it, add it up, boom, boom, boom, and be done with it. So anyone really could do it. So it doesn't have to be you as the principal or you as the investor principle doing all the analysis. The agent, the assistant can do it or acquisition guy could do it. That's how we did it eventually.

And there's definitely times where like, I'm like, and I think it's just part of being human. This is a really large investment. That's the thing with this. So there's times where like I'm realistically not as sure about it as I should be. Like I'm like, okay, comps are 290. I'm pretty confident on that. But I'm walking this house and there's some moisture in the basement. Doesn't look major.

do we price in a fringe strain? Do we price in waterproofing? Am I missing something? So then, you know, he would have a GC come out or he would have a foundation guy come out. I'd meet him out there and figure out what's going on. Or we would just automatically bake it into our offer and say, okay, crap, we don't know what's going on in that basement. Let's say $12,000 for the basement because that's our average water remediation and mold and then waterproofing. And then if we don't spend it, good.

So, but yeah, I mean, I'd say go out there with them as an agent. And that's definitely been huge for me that knowledge because I also carry that through with my retail clients. And it's a huge benefit because I can say this is what's going to cost and I have the connections to the contractors. And then for my investors, you know, I'm just going to tell you how it is when we're walking those properties. And I just walked a duplex with a client of mine the other day. And I'm like, it's aluminum siding, you know, it's less. an ideal. It's not worst case scenario. It's in kind of rough shape. You have some dense. An agent walked behind me. I'm getting you, not getting you. And she goes, this is vinyl siding,

and it looks to be in pretty good shape. And my client just like stare at me. And I'm like, I don't know what to tell you, man, like that's for sure vinyl. That's metal. It's got dense in it. And it's just like, you know, most agents don't know what they're talking about. They just go around and have it. So it's a huge value ad. And then we have this one as well. Okay, good. Yeah. Let's continue because we got, it's 128, so maybe another 10 minutes, whatever you have left. And of course, we're going to continue this, like Eric said, because this is a deep topic. So, yeah, we're going to continue this conversation also next week. But go ahead. Okay. And then this is the last one. This was when we were with Keller, or we switched it to XP for this one, but it was with, when we were with Keller Williams and everything was branded red and black. And this was just a, it's a similar style, as opposed. of our branding on it. And we would do different stuff. We put different photos on there. We actually had three different. After we got a property, we had three different scenarios that we had for every

property. We circle prospect at like normal. Then we would do a co-marketing where it was, hey, we're getting close to finishing the rehab. Here's our agent. You know, anybody looking to get in the neighborhood. So that way, somebody could say, hey, I want a cash offer for my house. or, hey, I have a best friend that wants to move into the neighborhood. They had two options. And then the final one would be strictly retail. Hey, the house is finished. Open houses this Saturday, 11 to 2.

Please come join us. Let us know what you think. And we get a lot of the homeowners around there who would come and say, thank you so much for flipping this house. It was an eyesore for 15 years. We love it. We love what you've done. Can we have what contractors did you use?

So you can kind of be a benefit there as well. And I'll stop sharing. with that. So one thing I would say is another way of doing is if you have a listing for an investor, right, if you're an agent and you have a listing for an investor, and this is common for me. Like I list investor flips, right? So if I would have a listing coming up knowing that the property was just bought by an investor, it's going to be rehab. What I did for a while, and I need to get back into this, actually, now that I think about it, because it worked. is,

neighbors are curious. They're always nosy. Like, oh, man, that eyesore. Who bought it? What's going on there? Right? So you basically have an assistant or an agent on your team, walk that area and leave doorknock or leave a letter stating,

hey, by the way, so-and-so company bought this property. This will be a fully renovated home within the next 60 days or so. I just want to let you know that I'm here. if there's any issues at all, please reach out to me. I am the extension of this company, C.D. Holmes, on our case. I am a licensed agent. I'll be listing this property when it's finished, but I want to make sure you have an avenue to reach out if there's any issues.

If the contractors are leaving a mess, whatever it is. So you're coming off from an angle of like, hey, like, we want to make sure that we preserve your neighborhood and now there is no problems happening. and it has nothing to do with selling, right? That's a great idea. Right? So now they're like, oh, okay, cool.

So now we check one box for them. Now they know who bought it. Now they, because that's what they're curious about. Two, they're like, oh, I can reach out to Randy if this freaking contractor is leaving the front messy and they're working at 10 p.m. at night. Who knows, right? Like anything, anything can happen. Right?

And then in there, I would also say, oh, by the way, this will be one of the better properties now on the block, fully renovated. So if you have any friends or neighbors that you would like to have to buy this, like, let me know. Right. And if you're thinking about selling, this is another thing I would say, if you're thinking about selling, you might consider waiting because we're going to set the new high price for your neighborhood. That's good idea. So like I don't even ask for a listing.

I don't, I don't really talk about, oh, you know, work with me, work with me. Do you need to sell? It's more about me giving them tips and ideas, but obviously, indirectly, what I'm trying to say is like, I'm here to help you, right? And if you have buyers, like, send them my way. So as an agent, think about how you can leverage one flip opportunity to turn it into more business for yourself, right? And of course, on the same thing, you could even say, like, oh, if you know anybody else that needs a cash buyer, my investor is always looking, right? Because this has to be a team collaboration, right?

This is you doing a dance with your investor. So the messaging is constantly synergetics between you and them. So you're always mentioning the investor, and the investor is always mentioning you as the agent because there will be opportunities, but you've got to have a structure set up with your investors. So everybody's incentivized financially no matter what happens. and if someone is not licensed,

if your investor client is not licensed, which many of my clients are not licensed, and they get me a listing because of, if I get a listing because of their flip, right? Or the co-marketing that we do, then all I say is like, look, I can't pay you a referral fee legally. However, I can't pay for your marketing.

So I would ask them, hey, can you send me an invoice for the next batch of marketing that you do and I'll cover your cost. And I would just ask him to send me an invoice for the amount that I'm willing to pay, which would equal to the referral fee. Yeah. And I'm legally allowed to pay for someone's marketing.

Yeah. So that's how you get around, you know, referral fees not being legal, but I could absolutely pay for marketing. So if I'm willing to pay for my investor to market, because I know that I'm also being promoted through that marketing, I will pay for it. And that's how we do it. I just need an invoice.

Yeah, I love the idea of sending it out to neighbors because, like, I think a lot of times as investors, we forget that when you're flipping a house or you're doing a rehab, it rarely looks and sounds great. You know, there's a 40-foot dumpster in the yard. You've got stuff. You've got drywall in the driveway and everything like that. I mean, just it tends to happen. It's really hard to keep a job site clean and quiet all the time.

So that could work. just another thing that came. That could work only if your investors are pulling permits. Because if your investors, if some investors, you know, are not pulling permits and it became actually very common in San Diego during COVID because how backed up the city inspection departments got

where it literally you just couldn't get a permit for months. So guess what ended up happening? Like investors just did it without. And then you can't do any of the things I just mentioned. Because the investors, don't want the attention. They don't want any attention to that property. So then you go back to other avenues, which would be direct mail, targeting areas. But if your investor is fully doing, you know, everything legit, pulling the permits, then you have to do what I just told you,

telling you it works. Yeah. No, I love it. And we've had neighbors call, like they find our numbers from somewhere and they call and they go, hey, the contractors need to come out and cut the grass. So if you send that out there, you're kind of letting them know, like, hey, I care about the neighborhood. I care about you as a person. And then you can also, if they do give you a call, hey, I'm really sorry about that. We'll get it worked out. It's just whenever you can kind of help people. And then you don't finish there.

So then you, as soon as that rehab is bought, you get in front of those neighbors with that letter. If they don't, if they're not home, you just leave it. Right. But then you do a VIP open house only for neighbors. So now you have another reason to go to the same neighbor and be like, hey, remember me? I sent you that letter about blah, blah, blah, all buying that property. Well, we're almost finished.

We have scheduled a neighborhood only open house. We would love to give you a first look at the property. So now you're doing a neighborhood only open house just for the same people that you just, you know, two months earlier, a month and a half earlier, sent that letter, right? And then guess what? Then you list the property. Then you promoted yourself to them again, right? You could literally create like a three-touch campaign to the same people, right? And it has nothing to do with you begging them for business, right? But trust me, they see how well you do this. And that's how realtors, when they tell you, like, off one listing, I should be getting another listing or two

and a buyer or two, that's how it happens, right? Because when other people see excellence being executed for a seller, when this case the investor, that's the realtor they want to work with. Because they're like, holy cow, look what he's doing for this investor client. What if he did that for us? Imagine he did all this for us, right? They start envisioning themselves using you and getting that exposure like you just did for a friend down the road, right?

So anyway, that works. Do it. No, I love it. And any time we can, you know, those touches through direct mail, any time you can have them. That's the way you set it up. Like even as an agent and an investor. So all right, I think we are good for, we got about 10 minutes for breakout rooms. Yeah, at least.

So I can do it. Or you want to practice since I'm here together. I'm not going to be on next week. So you'll be running the show. So go ahead. Yeah. Do it into two breakout rooms. Got it.

So again, if it's your first time here, we're doing breakout rooms. You're going to be, see us on your screen, you're going to accept to be put into a breakout room. The idea behind this is for one, build a better community, get to know each other, but also ask, you know, what maybe you're learned just in the last 30 minutes or what you're planning on implementing or what you're already doing around this topic that we're talking about. or maybe there's something you need. What's the need, right? That maybe others can give you advice on. So we're going to give you about minimum minute and a half to two each, depending on how many people are in the room.

But that's kind of the, we found that the one minute is too little. So it's going to be a minimum of minute and a half to two minutes that you get to speak. But please do not hog your spot, right? Don't take five minutes. Okay, just be mindful of other people in your group. So everybody gets a chance to speak. So go ahead, Eric. Awesome.

I'm going to go ahead and create it. Hopefully, I didn't mess anything up. Okay. There we go. Everybody is going. There we go. Nice. Okay.

So usually now I... Got it. Cool. Awesome. I think we have everybody back. So before we talk about what you guys talked about there, we wanted to do this last week and I think we're going to do it every week going forward. Don't feel like you have to.

If you want to put in the chat, just like something you want to get done by the next meeting by next week, we call us Sprint Goals when I do my business coaching. If there's something you want to get done in the next seven days and you're willing to share it in the chat, go ahead and put it down there and I'll take a photo and I'll follow up in the Facebook group. But we call them Sprint Goals. It's like this is going to move my business in the next seven days. maybe it's something small, maybe it's something big, but then we'll follow up and there's some accountability there.

But keep it simple so it's achievable. Don't say like, I'm going to write a book in seven days. Yeah, I mean, maybe like I can do a coloring book possibly in seven days. All right, cool. Who wants to share based off of their, yeah, Mani, you should be cold calling 15 leads to that. He's on my team. That's why I said that.

Who is wanting to share how the breakout room went, what you guys talked about? Anybody, any positive? Nobody. I'll go. I'll go. So, hey. So, yeah, I just shared. I had Kevin, Aldo, Tim, Emmanuel, in there.

I shared that I've done the direct mailing. I mean, I started doing it back in the short sale time, and I was just talking about doing it again. I do have a template that I typed up, and I make it personal. I put a personal note on it, personally address the envelopes, and I'm getting ready to start doing it again because it's a wacky market. And just to find even off market fixers, I have done the actual driving by. I've trained my kids, you know, my kids, Randy, that they know.

I'm like, look at that property. Get the address as we're driving by. So, you know, we do that as well. And I'll send off a letter. And it does work. That's how I got working with investors back in 2013, as Randy knows. They called on my short sale fixer and basically, you know, started in with their spiel of You know, oh, I'm like, you know what, I don't even need you to hear it.

Just write the offer. Let's see what the lender says. And that's how they got their first deal. And they made over $100,000 on it. So that's what got me working with investors a lot. But, you know, that it's a real deal. It does work. And I'll spend a day of it, you know, doing it, getting some mailers out.

And it works. And also going to the neighbors, we do that all the time. I'll take a Saturday morning after closing on a fixer. And I'll have like a little flyer what we do with my name number, you know, for any trouble or anything else and I'll go and knock the neighborhood on a Saturday morning. And if they're not there, I'll leave the letter, you underneath their mat, but it actually introduce myself personally. So they have a face to the name.

And sometimes it leads to some bugaboo neighbors that will text you every other day. But you know what? At least they're staying in contact. You never know. I think I forgot to mention. So yeah, you want to add that too. The three touches really is going to be once the investor buys the property, so you can inform the neighbors.

Then right before it goes live, you do an exclusive neighbor open. Then when you sell it, you go back to those songs people and pick one highlight. Did you maybe sell it at $10,000 above market value in the area? Did you sell it in three days? Did you have 15 offers? Whatever it is, pick that one highlight and get some attention to that in that postcard or the letter that you're going to drop off. So that's the three touches that you want to do. Anyway, so thanks for reminding me about that, Jodale.

I will say I'll give one of my golden nuggets. I just don't want everybody to steal it. If you do an open house and you do paper sign in, take the paper sign in after the open house and you've accepted an offer and it works on the markets like this. Go to the neighbors, door knock with the open house sign in, and go 30 people came to our open house, one person got the house, there's 29 other people looking in your neighborhood.

And we have gotten listings off that because they're like, oh, crap, that's the, I mean, 29 other people are looking to buy in your neighborhood. So if you do want to move, we will start calling these 29 other people tomorrow and let them know your listing. So just don't do that for in the Cincinnati area. You can do it everywhere else. No, I'm kidding. What else does anybody have to add?

For me, what's it called? Jadale actually had some of the good takes when she was explaining to us. She actually has templates and stuff also. She's going to send out. But it's funny that we're having this conversation today because I literally was just talking to one of my clients two days ago. And he went to the county, I'm sorry, the county and got like a bunch of lists of the areas of investing. And he asked me if I can, you know, call a couple of them. You've just been sending me them daily.

So I've started on that. But just to see where it goes, not sure yet. But it's just kind of an extra thing to my extra call and I'm doing on my team as well. Absolutely. I had one other thing to add that Emmanuel will remind me of as I shared another thing is if you're doing direct mailing, be thoughtful of the situation. So my example was this is my mother-in-law has been in her house for 60-plus years. And she just recently got like at least five letters. My father-in-law died in 2011. And all these letters are addressed to him and saying so sorry for your husband's passing. And I'm going, this is 12 years ago. You know, it's 12 years ago as of January. And it really upset her. So be thoughtful and really look into your leads you're getting from your farms.

Absolutely. Yeah, because I actually called those agents for her and said, you know, this is, you know, really kind of insensitive. The wording of it was really insensitive. So I think I shared one with Brian Randy because he was just like, wow. So. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah.

All right. What else do we have? We still got five minutes. Joe, what are you doing, Joe? out there in San Bernardino, Victorville. I'm just working hard, man, trying to put in the work and see, see what comes out. But, no, you know, we were talking about the breakouts. And, you know, we talked a lot about, we talked about CT homes and how Randy likes to help people work with a real estate agent.

So they don't, or with investors, so they don't have to keep chasing deals. And how the ex-P, you know, through the company, we've established a tribe and how, how, how, how great our upline is. That's a lot of what we talked about. But for me right now, man, I'm hitting, I'm doing the cold calls. I'm going through the comment to the database. I'm looking at processes. I'm looking at drip campaigns, all the different things that are on the back here,

just trying to tighten everything up and, you know, keep trying to get in front of clients. I've joined a couple new social groups and just to meet more people and continue to things but or continue to increase exposure and meeting people. Joe, Joe, I know what you do a lot. And I know one of the things that you get consistent is land listings, right? And I remember like you share it with me like, oh, yeah, I got this one investor that just keeps giving me land listings that they have. Like that's an example, right, of what we're talking about, like repeat business.

Absolutely. So thinking outside of the box, you know, I work with one guy right now. I've got 26 listings from him. They're all vacant land. You know, they're all vacant land. You know, they started, they're as low as 10 grand. And then they go up to 900 grand, right? And so they're not bad, but the best thing about lot listings is, is you get buyers,

you get investors, people that are looking to build houses, people that want to build houses. But at the same time, it just keeps, it, he's got a whole different business mindset, right? going into the investor idea. Now, this guy buys land. He does his marketing. He sends out his mailers. He sends out his, or he does cold calling. He does those things in certain areas.

And then he's able to secure these vacant properties. A lot of times they're absentee owners or there are other things. And he's able to secure these listings for a couple thousand dollars or under market value. And then as soon as he gets them, he calls me and we put it on the market for under market value, just under market value. His whole idea is to sell this piece of property that he just acquired within 90 days. All right. He just got he wants to sell within 90 days. So we do just that. We put it right on the market. He pays me the standard, you know, a little bit of a reduced commission rate on it because he gives me so many listings. But I split whatever I get

with the buyer's agent. And he literally is flipping land within 90 days, no inspections, no appraisals. No, no, it's all cash. You don't have to worry about a lender. You know, there's none of that involved. And maybe he's turning 10, 15, 30, 20, whatever it is on each of these deals. But it's just flowing. And Joe, and how did that start?

Right. The competition that you guys have with so many other people trying to buy homes or Corey the crappy home on the block, he's got not, he doesn't have hardly any of that. You know, they're just not allowed it out there. How did that start? for you. I'm wondering, like, how did you meet this investor? So I met this investor. Actually, I was working with another buyer, a guy that was taking me all over the place looking at every type of property from wineries down in San Diego to

cattle ranches out in, uh, like North Palmdale and current county and everything in between. So I was just taking them out every weekend and showing them properties. We found a few properties here in my local area. They were both owned by the same seller. We ended up reaching terms on both of those deals. And then the seller had told me that he liked the way that I operate and wanted to see if I might be interesting and listing a few properties for him. That was two and a half years ago and about 80 or 90 deals ago. What? Holy moly. That's an amazing case study, did. Yeah. Anyway, that's, that's, I mean, you heard it right there. Like that, if that doesn't, if you're out there and, and you do do the right work, you just never know, but you got to also

keep an eye out for those type of opportunities because I know Joe lists a lot of land. And it's, and when you list land, you're not listing at the regular two and a half percent on the listing side. You usually list it out of five percent on the listing side. And then you offer five percent on the buyer's side. So it's usually between eight to ten percent listing. agreements. Yeah, I get this seller. He gets a flat 8% and I split it four and four with the buyer's side. But, you know, half of these deals I end up double ending.

So I'm getting 8% on them, which is not bad. It's awesome. For more insights and to join the Investor Agent Nation community, visit investoragentnation.com. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a five-star rating to help Randy and Eric continue delivering valuable content that resonates with you. Thanks for listening to the Investor Agent Nation podcast.