The Science of Flipping - Episode106: How Brett has made over $400k in his first 10 months

Episode Date: August 29, 2017

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Welcome to the Science of Flipping Podcast. I'm your host, Justin Colby. What's up, people? Welcome back to the Science of Flipping Podcast. I am your host, Justin Colby, and we are in part two of the Brett Burris extravaganza. This man is dynamic. Obviously, we got a lot of feedback from part one that his mindset is right, and he's been able to get to a place where a lot of you want to be. As I mentioned, I wanted to bring him back

so that we can talk tactics and strategy about what he's done in his business in Florida to be north of a $400,000 earner in the first 10 months. I mean, everyone wants to know what Brett's doing. So with that said, if this happens to be your first episode, if you happen to click on this first because you're on iTunes and it's the top episode, all good. I encourage you to get over to thescienceofflipping.com. I have a lot of free cool stuff there. For those of you who are curious about possibly working with me and my team in coaching, there's

an application on the site. Possibly you heard part one with Brett talking about the masterminds. If you're looking to get accepted or apply to a mastermind, there's a free application. Also, I give away my book for absolutely free. It's called The Science of Flipping. It's not just an e-book. This is the same book I sell on Amazon every day for $15. Download it for free and get as much information as possible so that you can go out and attack this business the same way Brett has done. And lastly, what I'll tell you is for those of you who are rehab flippers

or looking to flip your first deal or needing a little financing, I have partnered with a company that I trust completely that will be able to show you how to get more money and more funds without needing to go to a bank or to go to a big lender. Go to TSOFfunding.com. That's TSOFfunding.com. That's TSOFfunding.com. If you're looking to raise capital, you can use this money for anything, marketing, rehabs, it doesn't matter. So TSOFfunding.com, go there if you need money for rehabs or whatnot. With all that said, now all the paperwork's out of the way and we handled all the housekeeping. Brett, man, I think episode one was incredible. I know we've gotten some good feedback about your ability to have the right mindset, but I know now that people want to know what the hell did you do to get into the game after being fired to say, I'm all in and I'm

going to go out there and make this happen. Let's talk strategy. Let's talk real tactics, right? Let's not talk concepts. Let's dive in. What did you do? What was your first couple things you did? What marketing strategies?

Let's go from there. Yeah, so we just started with direct mail. I took the most common of common little yellow postcards that I think a lot of people use. You know, hello, my name is Brett and I want to buy your house. And we matched that up with some lists. So the list we started with was really just high age, high equity right out of a smart system. And we started with was really just high age, high equity, right out of a smart system. And we started mailing. That was really December of 2016. So 10 months ago, whenever that was. How many mail pieces did you send out?

We sent out about 3,000. And you used the Fine Motivated Seller's number one letter, I'm assuming? No, it was a- Oh, no, it was a postcard. I'm sorry. Yeah, it was a postcard. And I just really copied what my friend was doing in New Orleans and took his name, put my name on. Because I was praying that this business did not require like massive levels of creativity and marketing. I'd been down that road, some very large companies in this country, and it's just very taxing. I was pretty, I'm pretty good at it, but it just wears you out. So I can tell you that zero creativity on the actual mail piece, zero creativity on initially on list building, just used what was available to us in the REWW smart system and started mailing.

We did about 3,000 pieces the first month. We got a few calls. Nothing happened. I don't think I went on one appointment, and I didn't do a single deal. January, I got nervous, and I did more mail. So some people get nervous and do less mail. It makes no sense to me. If you want to make this work, how's less mail going to make it work?

So I got nervous, put it on a credit card, did more mail. Phone rang. I went on a couple of appointments. I had a caller, the cat lady. Her cat climbed all over me the whole time I was there and I was wigged out by it didn't get a deal done in January February comes same amount of mail I did in January the nervous level is higher I'm literally running out of money yeah And so phone starts ringing. Guy calls me. He lives in Texas. He's got this little house over here in Florida. He inherited it 10 years ago.

I go drive by it. It's a little house. It's like 700 square feet yeah i call him back and he keeps saying something to me and here's a tip he keeps saying i think it's a teardown i didn't tell him it wasn't a teardown sure i just said okay if it's a teardown then i can only afford to pay you land value so he says what's land value i said well land value is about 7 000 he said well i could never sell it to you for 7 000 and i said okay i, okay, I need to get on the inside. He says, well, I don't live there. So I asked him if he'll mail me a key. We never met before. So will you mail me the key? And at first he's like, I don't know. And I said, well, let's think this through for a minute. What could possibly go wrong? Like nobody's lived in that

house in 10 years. It's a wreck. What am I going to do? Right. It's like, well, that's a pretty good point. So he mails me the key. So he mails me the key. I go open the door. Door had never been open. Door hadn't been open in 10 years. I didn't know what I was going to find. Right. Right. So I walked through it and I'm like, all right, it's, it's kind of bad, but you know, it's not as bad as I thought. Call the guy back. And he says, at least I'll take his 20. I say, I can't do 20. I'll, I'll do 15. He says, okay. Emailing the contract, he signs it, scans it back. I sold it, uh, five days later for25,000. Boom, dude. So here's what's cool. February, I think we did two or three deals.

So Justin, when you and I first met in that first boardroom, I hadn't done a deal yet. Right. I remember. I'd sent a lot of mail, but I hadn't done a deal. But just like it says in Think and Grow Rich, when riches come, when success comes, it comes so fast that you can't even believe it. So I went from no deals in December and no deals in January to three deals in February. My whole life changed like that. And so we did three deals and then it's grown from there. But we started with high equity, high age, right inside of the REWW system. We use the standard postcard that says,

I want to buy your house. It's yellow. It's got little doodles on it. It looks handwritten. I guess it looks handwritten to people. I don't know. I look at it and it doesn't, but it's that handwriting font. And then we added from there. We needed to do more mail to grow the business to a place that I would be happy with. So we added things like tax default and probate. But again, nothing magic. I haven't done anything that I haven't heard from you or Kent or Sean. Yeah. Like I didn't go figure something new out. Right. I don't think there's much to figure out new.

Now, I will say this. A few months in, we added some online marketing. Okay. Google paid search. And I'll tell you that we close deals every month because of Google paid search. We're spending between the management of that account and the media buying, the AdWord buying. Now, we spend about $4,000 a month. But I close deals. My cost per deal from online is under $2,000.

Got it. That's great. Scott Utes, he's closer to $8,000. Got it. That's great. And so, you know. I mean, you know Scott Utz. I mean, he's closer to $8,000 cost per deal online. Right. So, I mean, you're crushing it. So where do you get these lists? The tax lien list you said you pulled.

The other list besides fine motivated sellers. What other list did you attack? We use Rebo Gateway. Okay. And we use Successorors Data. Got it. For inheritance. And we used to use ListSource, but now really Rebo kind of did a refresh of their whole platform. And you can kind of get everything you need to get there. Yeah, sure can. And the guy, John Harkar, that owns that company, he's a great guy.

So we signed up with them annually to get a little discount. And we get everything we need there, except for the inheritance piece, which we get from Successors Data. Another great company, by the way. Really good. It is. I actually just interviewed the owner of Successful Data for the podcast. Oh, Maury? Yeah, Maury's awesome. Does he know his stuff, boy? He will talk your ear off. Well, I'm going to give you an example about him. So my wife really manages the data part. She had a question about something. Maury shot like a five-minute screen cap video with voiceover, sent that to her so she could see exactly what to go do. That's customer service. That's what you need to do in business.

And he's got a heart for customer service. So anyway, he's a good guy. And more importantly, his data is good. Or just as importantly, his data is good. Totally. Right? I mean, it's business still. Could be a great guy, but we're still in business.

It's not show business, right? Right. All right. So you're tactically going after what list specifically? You said tax liens, inherited, probates, and what do you use from fine motivated sellers? High age, high equity. And you are using a postcard. And then you combine that with pay-per-click, which if you're just starting, I probably wouldn't recommend to a lot of people.

But if you have a little capital behind you, it is an absolute monster of a way to get deals. I actually, as a matter of fact, I do not do any PPC because in our market, it is very expensive and it is very tricky to figure out. And so I just get very reserved when I tell people to go do it because Sean does it very effectively, but he puts a lot of money behind it, right? And so I just get very reserved when I tell people to go do it because Sean does it very effectively, but he puts a lot of money behind it. Right. And so, um, when you're just starting, I'm definitely an advocate for a direct mail. That's for sure. Well, and get good at one thing. Yeah. Um, you know, my background was online marketing, so I have a comfort level and I can, I can hang in that conversation with the best of the best in terms of online

marketing. So I'm not going to get taken advantage of. I'm not going to get bowled over. I can hang in that conversation. So I had a level of comfort that allowed me to, in fact, my discomfort was in direct mail. I was like, I've never done direct mail in my life. So that comfort level allowed me, once we started making success, to venture into paid search. So what has projected you into this stratosphere of 10 months, $400,000? Besides just the consistency, maybe that's your answer, but what has gotten you to this place of, I trusted the system, I believed before I saw it. You probably heard me at Scale and Escape. I really talk a lot about you got to believe it before you see it.

You got to trust that it's there, regardless if it takes one month, two months, three months. It took me nine months. What's really projected you into this stratosphere of this financial success that you're finding? I think it's a couple of things. You hit on it. So nowhere else in our, first of all, seeing is believing is the biggest lie we're fed. There's no such thing as you see it first before you believe it. I mean, just sit down for two minutes and think about that.

That's the most ridiculous statement ever made. What happens is you believe it first and then it comes to fruition. Think about anything, anything you can think about on earth, look at a bridge. First, it's built here in the mind, and then it's built in reality. And so I understood that concept, and I got to apply it and test it in this business, number one. Number two, I ignored the results. Totally, completely was numb to the take me off your list, to the dribbling of phone calls in the beginning, to the no appointments. I was numb to it because for me, that was a bunch of noise around the signal and the signal was pointed to, I'm going to make this work. Everything else was noise. When, you know, somebody said, Hey, if you can't take it down as

a flip, you ought to take it down. I mean, as a, as a wholesale deal, you ought to do this. You ought to do these other 17 things. I'm like, are you crazy? I can't even figure all that stuff out. Right. I wholesale. It's all I do. If the deal wouldn't work wholesale, I was like, man, it was really nice to meet you, but I can't buy your house. Right. Now, some of those came back, and I got them anyway. But focus, I can tell you, as a guy that spent the majority of my life unfocused and now having hyper focus. And I am, they said Henry Ford was hardheaded and, and obstinate because they told him that the model T was dead. He sold it for like 12 more years and made some unknown fortune over it.

Make a decision. So successful people make very few decisions. They make them slowly. I'm sorry. They make them quickly and change their mind slowly. Unsuccessful people make decisions slowly and change their mind quickly. Right. And brother, I locked in on this thing and I just wouldn't let it go. That's it. Yeah. Well, and then, you know, quite frankly, you're in a position where a lot of people come

to me and say, I need to get bigger and I need to grow and I need to hire and all these things. And I sit there and I look at them and I'm like, what do you really want from the business? Because you and I've had a discussion where you, and it could have changed, but you might not ever hire because the income in your lifestyle is at a place where what else could you really actually want, right? Because hiring, as you know, building something bigger, expanding more minutia, more effort, more headaches, more anxiety, more late nights, more work. A lot of people don't get it. They look at me or they listen to me on, whether you're watching this on YouTube or on iTunes or, you know, Sean or Kent,

and they say, oh, I want to build this. Well, do you really? Because, you know, watch what you wish for because along with that comes meetings and spreadsheets and bookkeeping and accounting that is well beyond, you know, and profitability margins and payroll and all these things that, you know, can really actually be more detrimental than saying, dude, I'm going to make 500 grand this year and 425 of it goes into my pocket. Right. Yeah. So let me address that because one of the things that has happened is it's called peak to peak. You can't see the second peak until you've crested the first peak. And so you don't know what you don't know. I was like, all right, between me and my wife who, look, I'm fortunate. I married a beautiful engineer who can pay attention to details. Now, when you hear that, you can, you can say, well, I'm not married to somebody like that. My wife's got, if that's your excuse, cool, man, just live

with it. Like tell yourself every day that you got some reason you can't do it, whatever. I, I can't help you with that sort of stuff right yeah and so we looked at each other and we were like all right we're good like you you get the marketing together you get it to the mail house you manage all the kpis and details i'm gonna go on the appointments i'm gonna build the the buyer database i'm gonna do all that so we did that month one month two month three month four month five and so what i realized was man like sometimes i just want to go on a boat ride but the phone is non-stop ringing so at first i was like crap like i can't do anything because i've treated those phone calls like gold right

so at first i was like you know what i can let some of this stuff go to voicemail and it's fine you know people that really want to sell their, they leave you a message and say they'd like to sell their house. People that want to tell you to pound sand, they'll leave you a voicemail on that too. So don't get too wound up about that. If you're a two, three deal a month guy and you want to go bigger, just increase the mail, see how that stresses the systems that you have fix the weak points and just intelligently move on so we've added um a va okay that does follow-up calls where i'm not va um through ibis ivas yep you get dedicated VA, you get to train him, get him going, do corrective training along the way. This guy speaks great English. And so we got that going.

I'm not quite there yet in terms of inbound calls because I'm a little bit of a skeptic and I know how important those calls are. But I have him doing follow-ups. I also found the, one of the best guys in my market for acquisitions and dispositions, a total stud and brought him on actually as a partner because I saw a clear path where one plus one could equal 10 instead of two. And so he's on the acquisition side. I'm on the disposition side. He's actually better at acquisitions than me. And so we've expanded a little bit. But again, I have my vision for this business in sight and I have to test every decision I make against what do I really want out of this and where am I going? What's your, you know, absolutely. And Kent does a great job with this about create your perfect day. Um, and that's really what it all comes down

to is whether you look at it that far and, and you know, say day or you want to say life at the end of the day, what do you really want? Right. I'm going to simplify all of it. Right. And I'm just going to say, what do you really want? Because if you're happy making 40, 50 grand being an employee, then great. No, don't even worry about getting into this industry. Um, if you know, you deserve more, if you feel obligated to give your family more than this is an industry you can crush it in, but how do you want to build it? Because there's no one size fits all. You can absolutely come out here just like you did for the most part. The better part of this year's earnings is going to be you and your wife running a business.

If you're spending 10 grand a month, I would be shocked. But let's say you are. You make 500 grand, you spend 100 grand, you pocket 400. That's a beautiful lifestyle, right? That is not rocket science. But I caution people, or I should say instead of caution people, listen to this podcast. Listen to what Brett is talking about.

Go back and re-listen to number one. Listen to the tactic. I mean, he didn't do anything that we didn't tell him to do. Go send more mail. Okay, I'll do it. Go start trying PPC. Okay, I'll do it. Go start trying PPC. Okay, I'll do it. And he just did it.

And now he's, you know, today he's going to make $22,000 and take the rest of the day off. He's doing me a favor by being on the podcast. So with that said, dude, anything else you want to press upon the people about tactics, any strategy or anything else besides the ultimate, just go out and take action. Yeah, look, I think you have to work on your mindset. I think you have to work on your skills. And so, you know, what can you do to better serve your sellers and your buyers? You know, I had a buyer phone call this morning. We interview our buyers because we want to make sure we're working with real buyers. And we tell them, I say we, I tell them, I am here to serve you. My business doesn't exist

unless I can bring value to your business. And so it's the same thing with the sellers. Figure out a way to serve those sellers. Figure it out. When you go sit with them, figure out what their true motivation is. Listen, guys, if you play the game of price, you're going to lose every single time. Because in this business, in the position we're in, in the niche we're in, we're not there to provide the highest price. So figure out what else that sale is about. I've done things like the guy wanted to sell me his house, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out what he was going to do with all this

stuff. So I went and got him self-storage. I kept the receipt. I got paid back at closing. He needed a junk removal. I paid for that. Now, I knew I had a done deal, slam dunk. I'm not suggesting that you go pay for people's stuff. I had a contract with him. I had a contract with a solid, rock solid cash buyer. We were a week away from closing. There were no title issues no lien issues something really strange and weird would have had to happen for this deal not to happen and so i was willing to do those things but the point is i listened enough to understand what the true problem was to solve it wasn't really about money right it's about other things and And to this day, people don't believe that you can go buy – you can go get a contract on a house for $100,000. Three days later, turn it over to a buyer for $110,000 or $115,000.

They put $50,000 into it and go sell it for $220,000, $230,000. That happens every single day in this industry. It's out there. I didn't go create anything. I just got in the middle of stuff that was already happening and decided, hey, I'm just as good or better than the next guy. I'm taking what's here and I'm going to serve the seller, serve the buyer. It's part of our mission statement, our core values. We create win-win situations for everyone involved. My closing attorney loves me. His secretary loves this business. The sellers love me.

The buyers love me. And the reason why is we create value for everyone involved. Amen. And when that's your perspective, how can I serve? The people that serve the most people make the most money. That doesn't mean I'm getting beat up and pushed around. Justin knows me. I'm not getting pushed around in this business. I've sat in the boardrooms of some of the biggest companies in this country and held my own. So clearly, Fred and Ethel Merriweather, who need to sell their house,

aren't exactly pushing me around, but I am open to hearing what their concerns are and what their problems are. And I am very open-minded about how to solve them. And I think that will help a lot of people if they don't see this purely as a financial transaction, but they see it as I'm here to solve a problem. I think that's a big piece of it. It's a huge piece. And we couldn't have ended on a better note because that's really what it is. Be an answer for all the issues, not just one. You're going to get the deal every time, even in sales, right? Even aside from real estate.

Answer all of their issues. If you're selling something, you'll get the deal done. Dude, I appreciate you. We did two of these. You rocked it. You knocked it out. I thank you so much for giving to the science flipping world. And I look forward to seeing you here in Scottsdale here in November, right?

Yeah, we'll be there. It's my 19th wedding anniversary. So I'm bringing my wife and we're going to stay a few extra days. And Justin, I just want to say this. I am very grateful and appreciative for how you give back to this industry. I appreciate the invite to do this. And I absolutely look forward to seeing you in November. Appreciate it, brother. Okay, man. Take care. Peace.