The Science of Flipping - Episode 115: Interview with Trevor Mauch of Investor Carrot – Earn 4 Million in Revenue

Episode Date: January 8, 2018

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () { podlovePlayer("#player-5eb5ab305822c", "https://thescienceofflipping.com/wp-json/podlove-web-player/shortcode/post/2912", "https://thescienceofflipping.com/wp-json/podlove-web-player/shortcode/config/default/theme/default"); }); document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () { podlovePlayer("#player-5eb5ab30582b2", {"title":"Episode 115: Interview with Trevor Mauch of Investor Carrot - Earn 4 Million in Revenue","subtitle":null,"summary":null,"duration":"","poster":null,"chapters":"","transcripts":"","audio":[{"url":"https://audio.simplecast.com/2be4af52.mp3","mimeType":"audio/mpeg","title":"AUDIO/MPEG","size":0}]}, "https://thescienceofflipping.com/wp-json/podlove-web-player/shortcode/config/default/theme/default"); }); Want to know the mindset up a guy who does 4 million in revenue? Justin Colby interviews Trevor Mauch of Investor Carrot. Get a Free Coaching Call with TSOF team. CLICK HERE TO FILL THE FORM. JOIN MASTERMIND  — APPLY NOW!!

Welcome to the Science of Flipping Podcast. I'm your host, Justin Colby. Yo, yo, what's up? Welcome back to the Science of Flipping Podcast. I am your host, Justin Colby. And for those of you who are watching this on YouTube, as you can see, I have my man here that you guys are able to see. I'm going to introduce you in a second. So hold on everybody. Let me get some of this housekeeping out of the way. For those of you who just happened to fall on this episode for the first time, this is your first episode ever listening. Welcome. We have a lot to give away. This podcast is all about building systems and implementations and tools for your real estate investing business. There's a lot of mindset involved. There's a lot of strategy

involved. And so that's what I really build this on is to build the life that you really want to build you personally and how we can help you and give away all of our tools, systems, secrets that we use in our business to build a seven figure business here in Phoenix. So go to the science flippingofflipping.com. If you want my free book, if you're one of those that want some free stuff, go to thescienceofflipping.com forward slash book. I'll give you my book. It's the same one I sell on Amazon.

You'll just be able to download it for free via e-book. So scienceofflipping.com forward slash book. But go check out the website. There's a lot of content there that I give away a ton of stuff for you guys to use access to start implementing your business. So scienceofflipping.com or the scienceofflipping.com forward slash book for my free book, go ahead and download it. But I do have a very, very special guest. I would say it's been about six years since we first met in a mastermind, I think. And we kind of hit it off there. And for the last six years, we've been

in other masterminds together and we've just been all in the same community of real estate investors. And he is the head of, the founder of, the president, CEO, the man of Investor Care. I got Trevor Mock on the line. What up, dude? Justin, dude. Super pumped to be on here with you. And man, this one thing I want to toss out to people. It's like, there's so many people to follow and so much noise out there and so many things you can listen to. And I think I just want people to make sure to recognize who they're listening to in you because you're the real deal. There's a lot of people out there who I've seen that aren't the real deal that profess themselves to be and, uh, you know, when you're for years and seeing behind the scenes and stuff and what

you and Eddie have created over there, man, it's awesome. So everyone make sure you're listening to Justin on this, uh, stuff he he's teaching is awesome. Right on dude. Right on. I'll pay you later, dog. I'll pay you later, dog. No, I appreciate it. Listen, I know you're very, very busy, right? And I know my loyal listeners have heard all about Investor Carrot and what you guys can do. And so I want to give you some time a little bit to explain your business. But what you've created is really, really special because not only are you in the investor space here, but you have, you kind of surround the space and you've built a company that does, you know, grosses over $4 million a year. You have 16 employees, you're up in Oregon, um, doing your thing. And, and, you know, it's been incredible to actually watch from, you know, six years ago when we were in the boardroom together to see what you've done over

the last six years and what you've built in the team you've surrounded yourself with. And you and I, you have a mastermind of yourself of your own that I, you invited me to that I actually went to up in Sedona, which was phenomenal. And you're just such a big giver, dude. And I think that's why you've been able to build what you've built because truly, I think it stems from your heart, what you want to do. And that's always to give. And when you give, you don't just, it's not smoke and mirrors, right? Like you're really giving true content. You're really delivering on your give. And so couldn't be prouder to call you a friend, dude. You've built something really incredible with Investor Carrot. I have like four of your websites myself, right? And so I'm always talking about if you're getting a website, you need to get,

you know, an Investor Carrot website, but tell a little bit, everybody, just what investor carrot does. What do you, what do you kind of focus on, but the expertise of what you do first, and then we'll open up the convo. Yeah, man. Um, so what, what we do at carrot kind of the, do the, let me, let me reverse her. Okay. The reason we started carrot was this, um, it was 2012 or so. Um. I just sold my shares in my last company. It sounds fancy, but it wasn't. It was mainly to get away from that last company and really so I could get focused on something I was passionate about, focus on something that I knew we could take far that really solved a big need and built a business so we can build a business that was fun. So at that time, we kept on having a lot of people, real estate investors, because I'm in that space, come to us and say, hey, man, how are you getting leads

online? Can you help us get leads online? And that's something we've been really good at for years. And the thing that we recognized at that point was the previous decade, so 2012, and then maybe back to 2000, the whole call to arms for all small businesses, including real estate investors and agents was like, you just got to get online, right? Everyone's like all the commercials, get online, get online free, get online fast. So what everyone did was they got online because their competitors weren't online. Mom and shop, mom and pop shop here in small town America or whatever, they got online, they had an advantage. What happened then after that, once everyone was online over that decade was shoot, I'm online, but I'm not getting the results. I'm not actually getting in front of

my prospects. If you're an investor, an agent, not getting in front of my sellers, I'm not getting in front of my buyers, not in front of my tenants because it's so cluttered. So then we recognize in that year, it's like, man, the next wave, it's not getting online. Anyone can get online. They can go to Wix or Weebly or GoDaddy or set up their own WordPress site. Anyone can do that. But the thing is, how do you actually perform? How do you actually crack through that clutter and get in front of those prospects when they need to be, when they have problems that need to be solved? And then how do you actually convert them into leads at a high rate?

So that's what we focus on creating software that helps you launch high converting websites, the highest in the industry. And we have tools that help you get in front of those people through Google search and other free and paid methods. And our clients generate, you know, shoot as well over a million leads in the past three and a half years, just in the real estate investor space alone. And if you Google sell my house fast, we buy houses or any of those phrases for buyers or sellers in any country, in any city in the country, you're likely going to find three

to five, three to six carat customers controlling the top of page one. So that's what we help people do, man. I mean, that's the what we do, but why we do it is what I'm passionate about. Well, I'm sure we'll dig into that here in a bit. Yeah, yeah, and I think that's what's so compelling is you and I both have seen thousands

of real estate investors, but just business owners in general is why do you do what you do business owners in general is, you know, why do you do what you do? And ultimately how do you get there? And, um, I think something that has been top of mind and what I've really been digging into recently is not just the why, but what it takes to fill the why. Right. So people, whether you get into the space of business because you're like, I want to own my own time. I want to, well, all the whys, right? Some things to gauge people's success are your typical like hard work, persistence, discipline, work ethic, right?

I think in my particular example, and I would say, I see this time and time again is patience should be at the top of that list right along with your work ethic. Yep. Because what most people discount, like again, um, the people I have focus and I can do this and whatever. And then 30 days, they don't reach the results that they want. And like, oh, this doesn't work. my city has too much competition oh this oh that right but then they don't realize that it actually takes patience right it's that whole phenomenon of an overnight success and people are like oh i've never heard of you justin or whatever i can't believe you're doing so big and all these and i'm like yeah but

it took me 10 years to get to where i'm at right now, right? This is... Dude, one thing I want to... Dude, you're spot on. One thing I want to toss out there is this is, man, I didn't recognize the importance of momentum until probably two, three, four, five years into being an entrepreneur. I think we all... Let me throw this concept at people. So I've been formulating these things over the years. I'm going, okay, there's these different phases of entrepreneurship. And it seems like most of us at the start, you start being

an entrepreneur because you're running away from something, right? Like you're running away from a job. You're running away from a low income. You're running away from something you don't like, whatever it is. Most of the time we find people running away from something that come into real estate or come into something there. They don't like their current current situation they see something over here that looks like it's better and that's real estate and then they are running away from this so as soon as as soon as you're able to actually break free from that thing you're running away from you've got to have a new motivation that gets you excited you've got it you've got to have something that gets you excited because it's pretty easy to

run away from that job or to run away from whatever it is follow Justin systems you know be relentless with it just follow the system and do it and do it and do it until it works that's gonna get you away from that job or to run away from whatever it is, follow Justin's systems, you know, be relentless with it, just follow the system and do it and do it and do it until it works. That's going to get you away from that job or away from that thing you're running away from. But once you get the income coming in that covers that thing that you're leaving, now you're in the business. And that's where I think most people have the problem is once they're there, they've got past the thing they're running away from now. It's like, okay, now I've got this income. How do I make this, this, this something that's amazing? How do I I've got this income. How do I make this something that's amazing? How do I make this my ideal business?

How do I make this something that fires me up every day, that actually makes a difference, that's not just chasing dollars with my goals? Because we all know numbers never end. So you hit like $1 amount, you're going to immediately mentally jump past that and go, I'm not being content until I hit this next one. So I've kind of had that concept. It's like people, excuse me, people run away from this. Once they're

separated from that, we've now got to have something to run towards. And that's where so many people don't have that. And they lock their running towards into financial numbers. And dude, I did the same thing. You know, I did the same thing as an entrepreneur. And one of the things that helped me as I was breaking away from that thing I was running away from, which was, I did the same thing. You know, I did the same thing as an entrepreneur. And one of the things that helped me as I was breaking away from that thing I was running away from, which was I just chose not to get a job after college. I'm like, I'm going to give myself a year to not get a job. And I'm going to try to figure this, this, this, uh, entrepreneur thing out probably six to eight months through it, but me not seeing results and me paying everything on

my credit card. My wife was in graduate school at the time. So everything went on my credit card that year. I mean, I just didn't have any money. I paid my taxes on my credit card that year, in graduate school at the time so everything went on my credit card that year i mean i just didn't have any money i paid my taxes on my credit card that year which i don't suggest you guys do and uh it's not good because you got to pay the extra three percent fee right man i didn't see that stuff stuff you learn as you go i guess but the thing was like six to eight months in i'm going man so is it worth it doing what i'm doing you know i'm not making the income. I'm having a lot of failures, some little successes here and there,

but it was really easy to have my confidence squashed because I thought it was going to be way easier than it ended up being. And here's how I shifted my mindset, and this is something I've lived with ever since, and I suggest everyone do this. If you're in that mindset of it's got to happen now or you're four months or six months or even 12 months into it and things haven't popped for you yet. I had to shift my mindset from, from, Oh man, is this actually going to work? Like, does this work? Um, to,

it's not a matter of if this works, it's just a matter of when. And what I had to do is shift from the mindset and go, okay, so number one, is this possible for me to do this? Well, the answer there, you just have to look around you or look at people and go, has anyone in my situation actually done what I'm looking to do? If the answer is yes, 100% it's possible for you. If someone's gone through Justin's program and actually followed the steps and succeeded, 100% it's possible for you to do it too. So the only question in your mind should be, it's a matter of when it will click,

not if this works. So then you'd have to stick through it. You got to follow the steps. You got to keep on coming back and jumping up and doing this. You might have to shift and pivot a little bit, but that's the thing, man. Shift your mindset from if this works to when,

and then just be relentless and patient, like you mentioned. And that's where you get momentum. Yeah, and I mean, I just am so big on this right now. I have a list of what I, you know, success has hard work, persistence, ambition, sacrifice, patience, failure, and focus. And any one of those could be the number one, right?

I mean, you could choose, pick one. You got to focus, right? So what I really think is super important to also come along with that is every entrepreneur is going to experience failures. You've had your own and you could probably talk several. I've talked many times on this podcast about the development and that costing me $400,000. That was a $400,000 loss, right? Thank God the year before we crushed it because that's a big loss, right?

So I mean, sleeping on a couch, with nothing making little mistakes you know whatever right and i'm sure you have but everyone has to understand along with the growth the momentum the the building the successes comes failures and this is where you have to go back to kind of what you started with which is your why right is do you have the fortitude you have the internal grit to stick with it when you fall on your face yeah because it's also very easy to give up like holy shit do i really want to deal with this like people think entrepreneurs just have it easy like dude sometimes i look at servers literally i sometimes i'm in restaurants and I'm like, dude, you probably make a hundred dollars today and you go home and you don't think about a thing for the rest of the day.

Yep. Right. Yep. And sometimes I'm just like, that sounds kind of good right this second. Right. Exactly. Think about another thing. Like there's nothing else on your plate.

When you leave the restaurant, you make your a hundred bucks, 200 bucks, 300 bucks, whatever you're done. There is no client customer service, nothing. And so it can be also very easy to quit. And that goes back to, you have to be doing it for a reason that's greater than just a paycheck because any of us can go make a paycheck. Any of us can go be a server, a bartender you know whatever i could go work for let's say a hedge fund and make a salary but i don't get the profits of the hedge fund right so i'm more i'm more interested in growing something myself but you could do the same thing you can go work at google you can go work at whatever you have the experience you can go get your paycheck you're creating something because you want more and that wanting more needs to be bigger than

the fear of failure and or bigger than when you fail. It's not, the failure is not bigger than your why or what you're looking to aspire to because we're all going to fail. Dude, I think a lot of people like myself included, a lot of people struggle with that why, right? I mean, I think it's natural to struggle with it. If you don't struggle with your why or your mission or your purpose, then it's probably not the right one, like honestly. And usually people do struggle with it. I know for me around that time, 2012, so I had finally kind of broke through on the entrepreneur side of things, figured some things out that worked. And I actually did a podcast episode on those eight steps, those eight decisions I had to do to go through. And like, I broke it down. It's a friend of mine asked like, dude, what did you have to

go through? And what did you do? And he said, what's the number one thing that you'd attribute your success to? I'm like, there isn't one thing. There was maybe one decision at each stage of my life that I had to do this. I had to do that. And I had to do that. And it ended up being eight things and recorded a podcast on people can check it out. But basically in 2012, I had built a business that trapped me. And that's, that's where, that's where I was stuck in that phase with where I got away from the thing I was running away from, you know, which was, I don't want to get a job. I want to try this entrepreneur thing out. I had an income that was comfortable, but I hadn't found the thing that I was going towards, you know, so business

became miserable, dude. I don't want to wake up in the morning to do the job that I had actually created in my own business, which is just the weirdest thing in the world. Cause if you said people look at you going, man, this, you know, Trevor's got it made or Justin's got it made. And we do, we're very grateful for, or we should be very grateful for what we, for what we have. I wasn't grateful for it at the time because I didn't see that business as a vehicle to go make a difference that I wanted to make. It was just a vehicle to make some money. And I didn't have to, my back wasn't against the wall anymore. So then you got to find something to be excited about. So the thing that worked for me, and I'll toss this out to people really fast, because you might be in that phase yourself,

is we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to find that purpose, to find that passion. And I would love it if everyone could find the thing that is their purpose in this phase of life and for me I couldn't find it at that time I'd write down stuff that I thought was it but it wouldn't hit me in my gut like I wouldn't find myself every single day subconsciously working things into fulfilling that purpose like it took work to actually move towards that that purpose and so what I did was beginning 2012 I'm I'm like, man, I'm just going to give myself this year just to do the best I could possibly do at one thing this year. Not 42 things like I had in the past. I had like seven different businesses all doing mediocre before

that. I'm like, I'm going to get rid of everything. I'm going to sell my shares in this. I'm going to get rid of these investments. I'm just going to focus on one idea this year. I'm going to push it the whole year. I'm not going to stop in month four. I'm not going to stop in month six. I'm not going to stop in month eight, 10, or 11. I'm going to push it the entire year. And then December 31st, at the end of the year, I'm going to look back and go, okay, did I do the best I could humanly do in everything in life, the business side of it, that I focused and pushed it as far as I could, being a husband, being a father, being a friend, all those things. And so I did that, man. I just took all the clutter out of the way. I knew that I could succeed at it because other people had. I just needed to figure out. And I needed a long enough

runway to build that momentum, which people give themselves three months. Some people join Carrot and they'll quit two months later and they're like, I'm not in the business anymore. I'm going, man, that wasn't any kind of commitment. Can you imagine if you got married and you got divorced two months later? It's like, well'm not in the business anymore. I'm going, man, that wasn't any kind of commitment. Can you imagine if you got married and you got divorced two months later? It's like, well, that was zero commitment. I was just kind of on a whim. Yeah, and I think a lot of people love the idea, right? I think the reality is I would probably,

and I'm just throwing a number, I'd say 95%, if not even higher, of people have an employee mentality. I mean, they just do, but they love the idea of the entrepreneur, the business owner, the creating your own job and getting rich because they see the one percenters, right? They'll see you, they'll see me or Kent or Sean or even, you know, Grant Cardone or Gary Vee or any of the people that they can see on social media.

They say, oh, I want to create that. And I and you and every name that I just mentioned helps to try to motivate and inspire people to get there because we want that. We want the community of successful entrepreneurs for us to all share together and create and grow. But the reality, when it comes down to it, more people like security than they like the, the, um, work that goes into creating what you want. Yeah. They will say, I mean,

basically they, for lack of a better way of saying it, they'll sacrifice what they really want for path of least resistance and security. Cause there is no, you know, you know, isn't,

and I know this thing shuts off and in, we've both kind of created our businesses that I don't have to be in my business. I mean, I think in a 40-hour week, I work 5 to 10 hours a week in real estate. I have a company that runs, but I do a lot of other things alongside of it. I help grow the company. And you do the same thing. But until you get to that point, there's a lot of hard work involved. There's a lot of grit. Again, back to the, you will fail. You will fall face first on a decision

you make. Those are lessons you get to learn because I can tell you now, all the money I'm making now is not because I became smarter. It's because I learned a lesson. And I guess I did become smarter, but it was because of the failure I made two, three, four, five, six years ago. Like, well, that's a failure. I'm not going to make that decision again. So when I get the opportunity to make a decision again, I now know what not to do. So, you know, that's, that's a huge thing. Dude, here's a really cool story on patience and then we'll maybe shift topics or something like that real quick. But a client of ours, Brian, Brian Rockwell out of, out of Dallas, he a school teacher, baseball coach, baseball coach or software coach.

I can't remember. And I remember when, when he joined and then we started to see like, you start to see the customers who kind of boil up there who are giving you these success stories like, okay, you latch onto those. Cause you want to go, okay, what is it that they did following our system that the others need to do also? And so I latched onto Brian and we get those all the time, but like, it was really cool because we talked and he goes, man, I was looking at being a real estate investor for 13 years. He was studying 13 years ago. He was

looking at things, looking at things, but he didn't take the leap. He's like, man, I couldn't take the leap. For some reason, I would just stop. he didn't take the leap. You know, he's like, man, I couldn't figure, I couldn't take the leap. Like it, for some reason I would just stop. I couldn't take the leap for him. What helped him take the leap was his wife actually went on her own and started becoming an entrepreneur. Oh, really? That's what it was. So she, she became an entrepreneur and inspired him. And he's like, man, she's out there doing it, you know, inspired him to do it. It goes, I'm just going to finally get rid of my insecurities. And I know what to do. I've been studying this stuff for 13 years I'm just gonna take this and take action now you don't have to study for 13 years you can study

for two months and just start taking action to learn and execute fast but he did and then he executed really fast and in a competitive better market Dallas one of the most competitive in the country he starts with all online marketing didn't do any direct mail, but he did some direct mail at the start, but just for him, he didn't know how to do that. So he's like, I'm just going to focus all online. Cause that's more kind of up his alley and he ended up crushing it. So this is by far the usual result, but he sent me a text message a couple of weeks ago. We were texting back and forth. I'm going to pull it up really quick. And hopefully this inspires people to be patient is the big thing here.

Yeah. And implement like execute a, an actual plan because if the plan works, execute the darn thing and, uh, and get the results. So Brian Rockwell right here, he text messaged me, he says, here's the gross numbers for 2017. This is by, this is as of, you know, a little less than a month ago. I started using Carrot mid to late February 2017, started closing deals in March. So these numbers are March through November numbers, $611,681.86. Correction, I started my pay-per-click in February.

I started using Carrot in December. So in a matter of 11 months, finally getting over that insecurity, finally going, okay, I'm in it for the long haul. I'm committing. I'm just going to follow a system, relentlessly implement it until it works because I know it works. I've seen it work. I'm going to make it work. And he ended up bringing in $611,000 in revenue and it's not even over yet. Now that's not, that's not normal. And I don't know what it was in his brain that made things click a little bit better at this point in his life than five

years ago. Whatever it was, he had commitment. He said, I'm going to follow one system. He didn't look at 12 different things and follow one because I can see that it works. I can see other people getting results. I trust the person. I'm going to follow one. I'm going to execute. And he said, I treated it like a college course. I woke up and three to four hours a day. That's not what we say you got to do, but that's why his results accelerated. He's like three hours a day. He was doing that on the side of his job. And he left his job earlier this year. So be patient guys. And the cool thing is it builds momentum by about one, six months, seven, because he was executing really fast. It was easier. And that's where the big M, the big

momentum catches up. And year two, if you're doing things right and stacking on actual stuff that scales, your momentum grows and your momentum grows grows but you can only get there with patience and most people don't have it they don't and then even if their momentum is growing they hit that one big hurdle that one big speed bump that is holy shit you know they're ready they're like I'm done this is you still got to go past that right to get to the level where you want to be and so I think that kind of brings me into a place where you know investor care in And so I think that kind of brings me into a place where, you know, investor care in a simplistic form are, well, why don't you describe what the websites are,

what they're for, how they're used. But then my intention to take that conversation is the big change in the real estate market, probably over this year, how valuable something like that can be. And so dude, yeah, I'm more in depth about what investor care actually does. What is it? Why people would use it totally man, and I'm totally pumped about talking about the market change I've got some stuff for people to actually implement like I'm gonna drop some stuff We're seeing with our data because we have access to a ton of data actually have thousands of customers, you know Well over a million leads have came in so we can track data on an aggregate level We'll show you some things need to be doing in 2018 for sure but on the basic level like i said our software you you choose what type of leads you're going after motivated house sellers cash buyers land buyers

land sellers notes like whatever it is right we we have a lot of different um i hate the word template but uh we have a lot of website templates right and we didn't just make something one day and decided to put it up there. That was kind of one of our core fundamentals when we launched Care. We said, man, there's a lot of companies out there and options for people to launch a website. So there's not a need out there for just another way to launch a website. What there is is a need for something that actually performs when you launch it. So you don't have to go through the learning curve yourself to become a conversion rate optimization expert to become an seo expert to become a web development expert and technology changes so fast google's algorithm changes a lot uh you know google

updates uh what they're looking for technology wise with websites a lot like there's some big updates just recently so you've got to you've got to stay ahead of all this technology stuff too to really stay out of the game so what we did did was we said, okay, we're going to simplify the model rather than giving you a hundred different design templates to choose from, where you don't know which one performs the best, nor does the company that's giving them to you, because they didn't test them. They're just giving you a bunch of design options. We said, you know what, we're going to give you a few design options, but we're always testing. We test more than anyone in this market. We're always doing what's called split tests.

And we test one version of a page against another version of a page. Visitor A goes here, visitor B goes here. And we've ran over 1400 split tests over the years, you know, through like sort of a million leads through our system. And so we know, we know what makes things perform better. And little, little examples of this are, uh, shoot, this is two and a half years ago. We ran this test on a bunch of our websites where we were going, okay, does the button on your opt-in form really matter that much? Like, can you just put submit on there or continue? And does it need to be big? And does the color matter? We tested a bunch of stuff there. A few of the findings we found, and this

is just one of hundreds that we baked into our sites that make them convert better, is the button should be as wide as the form fields. Your form fields should be as wide as the button. The button needs to be big. It needs to be one of the first things that your eye goes to on the site. The color needs to contrast from the other colors. It can't be a gray button. Don't do black buttons.

You'll see a lot of orange buttons on our sites because orange is the most common color that will contrast visually with most people's normal branding. You know, blues and reds and grays, whatever it is. And then the next thing is the verb, the words on the button matter big time. We increase the conversions on one website over 30% by just changing the words in the darn button. It was like from submit to get my fair cash offer because it started to speak to the prospect and go, man, so what am I submitting? Or it's like, no, I'm clicking this button to get my offer. So it starts to confirm why they're there in the first place. Long story short, we launched a site on Carrot. We've baked in the conversion optimization. We're always baking new things in as we're testing. And then we've built things in a way to where you can go in there, personalize it, build your credibility and branding in it really easily.

And then you can use our tools to get your website ranked high in Google if you choose to do SEO. And then on the back end, we recognize, like, man, if we just give people a great tool, awesome, but most people are going to need some help. You know, we can give you, you know, Emeril Lagasse can give you, like, his exact recipe with his exact, like do these exact things. But the odds of you nailing that recipe to have it taste like emeralds on your first or second shot is very low.

Even though you have the same ingredients and you've got the exact recipe. It's because he's got the expert factor. He's been doing it for years. He keeps it on the grill that half a second longer or two seconds longer that matters or whatever it is, right? He's the expert factor. And so we know that even though we can give you guys the tool, we can give you guys the exact steps to succeed with your pay-per-click marketing or Facebook marketing or SEO or

amplifying your direct mail. Like, how do you make your direct mail perform better with a website? We're finding ways to do that. And so we give you all that and we go, well, we need to bake in the expert factor too. So we've got our weekly coaching calls. We've got our trainings, strategy calls with customers, things like that. So that kind of is the overall what we do. And we really mainly focus on right now, our primary clients, a buyer, a house flipper, a house wholesaler, you know, people like that, a lot more land buyers and sellers are coming into Carrot now. Sure. And we have a lot of other people using for

multifamily for private lending, stuff like that. Yeah. I mean, I, I think, like I said, I think I'm four and I'll probably end up getting more as I continue to grow, but let's kind of talk about the shift. You know, it's kind of, I try to keep these things roughly 30 to 45 minutes, but I think there's a major shift coming in the next year. I think things are changing. We were just talking about marketing strategies. One of the biggest hurdles that I came across or failure, if that's how drastic I want to be about it, is anytime I've gone into one aspect, put all my eggs in that basket, I got hurt.

For example, when I was buying only from auction. It's the only place I was buying homes from. The hedge funds come to town. They're paying 110 cents on the dollar. I can only pay 80 cents. I'm done. I'm toast. Now I have no marketing going. I have no anything going. I have no realtors making, I have no other auction or option to buy, but the auction. Same thing when in the last three to four years, direct four or five years, direct mail has been doing great. This last year and a half or so has been getting topsy-turvy. It's been, the numbers are not close to what they used to be. So then all of a sudden, about a year ago, we started noticing this. Now we have bandit signs going, we have direct mail going, we have a full

blown call floor going, we've diversified, we have four of your websites. I mean, there's, you know, there is change in the marketplace and you need to know what you need to know to protect yourself. And so I want to talk a little bit about your data, maybe that you're finding to talk, to shed some light on what is going on in the marketplace. Yeah, dude. So what happens is in kind of going through some basic real estate market dynamics here, right? You've got the crash happened 2000, you know, eight, nine, 10 around there. And the market was starting to recover 2013, 14, you know, 15, some markets around there. And so in, in, in those market shifts, of course, it became a, a buyer's market big time. So back then when we were helping people

get leads, we were focusing on short sale, you know, verb is on websites. We were focused on, on, um, you know, motivated house seller websites works. So worked really, really good then because there's a lot of options for them to sell, right? That the buyers weren't there as much anymore and things like that. And then the market started to heat up and we've seen, this is probably two years ago. We were seeing, um, the wholesaling side of things really pick up big time. Two, two and a half years ago, right? And we had a lot of customers who came in and they nailed the wholesaling model.

But what happened was in the past year, they were still getting the same amount of leads through their marketing. They weren't closing deals anymore, man. And so we would see some of these customers who were with us for years and they were crushing it for like a year, a year or two, they were crushing it. And they would cancel and we'd reach out to him like man what's going on there like I'm shutting down my business because I'm not able to close deals anymore so we're starting to talk with them and

we're looking and going your lead volume as far as online hasn't changed so what has changed and it was their ability to actually dispose of those leads like to actually monetize them they were looking at everything from from the perspective of a wholesale deal with these particular numbers but it's not geez exactly do but the competition had increased in increased right so they have more people compete for the same leads now they weren't calling them back as quick as they were as their competition was maybe so what I wanted I ended up happening was those people who didn't shift their strategy got flushed out so we're in a

market right now where there's a few things that are going to be critical in 2018. And they're important, crazy important right now. So number one is the credibility and branding side of things. I'm not saying you got to have a big fancy brand. I am saying that more and more these days in this day and age, your prospects are searching Google to find out if you're a company that they want to work with. So if you can imagine you're at Home Depot or wherever you're at, you're looking to buy some stuff, you whip out your cell phone, you're usually like Google searching reviews on stuff. And that's what we all do. Your sellers are doing the same thing. As they get your direct mail piece, they see your bandit sign, they even land on your website. They're then going to go

back and go, you know, XYZ company, BBB, XYZ company reviews, things like that. So you need to make sure you have a website that's robust, that has good content on it around your credibility, get testimonials on there, make sure you got to, because if they see four websites that day from Google searches or direct mail or whatever it is, and they all basically say a similar message. We, we can buy your house fast. We can close quickly. No commissions, no fees, right? Like everyone's saying that. Right. So what happens then is they start to go into this mode where they're going, okay, it looks like you can solve my problem. It, it makes sense. As long as your website's built in a way to where it walks them through answering how it works and answering the

frequently asked questions, you need to vet that the model works to them first and then go into, okay, well, it looks like these companies can probably solve my problem with their service, but which one do I want to work with? Like, yeah, which one's trustworthy? Who's not going to rip me off? Things like that. And the way that people vet that is your about page. It's always the number three most visited web page on our clients' websites because people figure out your model and then they go, okay, who are the people? So make sure you've got pictures on there. Make sure you tell about why you do what you do. It doesn't have to be crazy fancy.

People need to get a warm feeling that this is a human being. Next thing, get testimonials on there. And one tip I want to throw out to people is on testimonials, man, like once we started doing this years ago, people started getting way better results and so did we, is write down the biggest objections your prospects are having, your sellers, your buyers, write those down right now. And then go, okay, my mission over this next month or two is to go out there and get testimonials from people. If you're an experienced investor doing deals, get testimonials from people that directly combat those objections and then put those in your website. So they sell for you. If you're a newer investor, no big deal. Like you've got your, your network, you've got your, your mortgage broker, your insurance broker, your colleagues, your boss, your local banker, people you've worked with, go to them and get

them to vet you character wise. Say, Hey, I'm going into this business and I've worked with you as my banker for eight years. Would you mind kind of writing down just something about my character? I'm always prudent here, and whatever it is, like something about your character so they can see, hey, this is a quality person. Yeah. In a big way. Next thing, this next year, we're starting to see people switching to less competitive models too so a land buying we're seeing a lot of people moving over to land buying in some markets because san diego is really tough to get deals in for some people if they don't have the systems down and processes down but they can go get vacant land you know out

on the outskirts of town so that's something possibly look at branching your business out this year you can either branch your business out to find different types of property or to different areas yeah and that's something we're seeing a lot of our clients do as well as they're going, okay, markets, markets flooded with competition. Are there outskirt areas that we can dive into that are going to be less

heated as far as competition wise goes that we can find deals better or there are areas outside of our state that we can partner with people on. And I see a lot of consolidation happening this next year, you know, where more investors are going to be working with each other. You were mentioning at the mastermind, dude. And so there's going to be a lot of that this next year. So how do you, since I started bringing that at the mastermind, have you been seeing it and talking to your clients? A hundred percent, man. So right, right before we were hopping on here, I mentioned a competitor of yours in Phoenix. Yeah. That's his model now moving out. And I see he's still staying in Phoenix, but he's going, I'm going to go to these other markets. I'm going to partner with existing

flippers and wholesalers there. And they're going to team up. There's going to be a lot of that. We were talking about that at your mastermind. I just, I've seen it. Like I've, my manager now that runs the entire office, uh, came from a competitor of ours. Um, and now he runs my entire management team. Right. And it's just because our competitors shut down, said, we're out. I said, all right, so what's going on with your business? How can I help you still monetize, blah, blah, blah. What are your guys doing? He's able to get their manager, bring them on board. But there's just a lot of opportunity. This year is going to be crazy. There's going to be a lot of opportunity this year. You just have to get smart, dig in, get educated, know the different ways of the exit strategies,

right? Like wholetailing, like that made us an extra 30, 40% every to our bottom line because we can make more money. And wholesaling wasn't our only strategy. We're wholetailing too. It goes back to just the simple, having more exit strategies will help you better. So with that, man, I kind of want to wrap it up. I want to be able to give, you know, what's your podcast? You're on iTunes, right? Yes. Yes. Yes. What's the name of your podcast? It's called the carrot cast, carrot cast, man. So yeah, go to iTunes, look up carrot cast, all one word carrot, like the vegetable C-A-R-R-O-T. His websites are the real deal. I have four. Like I said, this man is a

great entrepreneur. He's not just a great entrepreneur. He's a great leader. Happy and proud to call you my friend, dude. I thank you so much. I know you got a lot of things on your plate. So I really appreciate you coming on here and giving my loyal listeners some great content, some great feedback. Where can they find you or if they need to get ahold of you, where can they go? Yeah. First of all, man, I mean, if they're a student of yours, reach out to you or if they need to get ahold of you, where, where can they go? Yeah. First of all, man, I mean, if, if, uh, if they're a student of yours, reach out to you directly, if they're looking to join care, cause I'm making it directly to us, but I always like to make sure to, to, to help the source and reward the source as well. We want to make sure to work together there. So connect with Justin, if you want to join carrot, but you can find us on our blog. We put out free

content every single Tuesday and Thursday at on carrot.com forward slash blog. So check out our blog over there. And now we're just passionate about helping people, man. And one thing I want to, I want to wrap with this right here is, is in 2018, one of the biggest things you can do is, is separate the people who are real from the people who aren't that you're going to be following in partnering with or learning from. And, and just please make sure as you're, as you're moving into the start of this new year, write down that list of people you're going to focus in on or that one business you're going to focus on and then start to go really deep this next year and follow Justin's stuff.

They're going to be keeping you guys at the forefront of what's happening because they've got a real organization. It's not just one dude out there doing some stuff and teaching on the side. They've got a real organization. They're doing lots of different stuff. So he'll be able to teach you guys what's working, what's not. So stick where you are, y'all. Appreciate that, dude. Appreciate you, brother. I will see you. I'll have you back on again. We do this about once a year. So you know, you'll be back on here giving some more good stuff. But thank you. I'm happy to wrap up. This is our last podcast for the year, man. 2017. Cool, man. This is it. This is the last one. So, uh, proud to have you on for the last, uh, podcast episode for 2017. I look forward to listening and seeing, uh, you out there,

but also, uh, you know, for 2018 continue to give you guys all the stuff you guys want. So that is it. I am out. I will see you in 2018. Peace. See you later, guys. Thanks, Justin.