This is episode #416, and my guest today is Luis Ontiveros.
Luis has been on the show before, a little over a year ago, and shared his amazing story of being in the wrong place at the wrong time in his youth, which ended up landing him in the California State Prison…then getting out a new man ready to change his ways and not take life for granted again.
He went on to truly become a very successful real estate investor, operating in several different markets. This is the short version of his story, of course.
On today’s show, Luis is here to share some techniques that he and his team are using to continue to dominate markets. I’m not joking…he shares exactly how to do what his team is doing, and it’s something that you can start doing today, even if you don’t have much of a budget to get started.
If you want it bad enough, today’s show just might change your life. If you’re already as active real estate investor, you can take the lesson learned today and roll it out to your team to start doing more deals.
Let’s get started!
Please help me welcome Luis Ontiveros to the show.

Highlights of this show

  • Meet Luis Ontiveros, multi market and state real estate investor.
  • Learn Luis’ story about overcoming major obstacles on the way to success.
  • Join the lesson on how to overcome a challenging real estate market for investors, and how to thrive.
  • Learn how extra effort will help you stand out from the pack.
  • Listen as Luis shares powerful advice on what you can do to start generating motivated seller leads RIGHT NOW, even with a limited budget!

Resources and Links from this show:

Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

FlipNerd Show Transcript:

Mike: This is the FlipNerd.com, Expert Real Estate Investing show, the show for real estate investors, whether you’re a veteran or brand new. I’m your host Mike Hambright, and each week, I bring you a new expert guest that will share their knowledge and lessons with you. If you’re excited about real estate investing, believe in personal responsibility, and taking control of your life and financial destiny, you’re in the right place.
This is episode number 416, and my guest today is Luis Ontiveros. Luis has been on the show before, a little over a year ago, and shared his amazing story of being, honestly, in the wrong place at the wrong time while in his youth, which ended up landing him in the California State Prison, pretty scary. When he got out, he was a changed man and ready to change his ways and not take life for granted again.
Oh, he’s an awesome guy. He’s got just a ton of heart and went on to truly become a very successful real estate investor. In fact, he learned by watching a video of a guest we recently had on the show, Michael Jake. Watched the training video and that was, kind of, the launch of his real estate investing career. So it’s funny seeing all these friends come together.
But he even became a very successful investor operating in several different markets, still does today. Of course, this is a short version of his story. I don’t want to steal the thunder. On today’s show, though, Luis is here to share some techniques that he and his team are using to continue to dominate in the markets they go into. Now, I’m not joking, there’s not always a ton of super-actionable content on the show. We meet some great people, and hear some great stories, but he shares exactly how to do what he and his team are doing today. And it’s something you can literally start doing today yourself even if you don’t have much of a budget to get started. If you want it bad enough, today’s show just might change your life.
If you’re already an active real estate investor, you can take these lessons learned and roll it out to your team to ramp up and start doing more deals. It’s a great show. Let’s get started. Please help me welcome Luis Ontiveros to the show. Hey, Luis, welcome to the show, my friend.
Luis: What’s going on, brother? Good to see you, man.
Mike: Yeah, happy to have you back on. It’s been a while.
Luis: It’s been about a year now, man. It’s been about a year. Definitely, an honor to be back. And it’s always good [inaudible 00:02:26] Mike: Yeah, excited to have you. I always loved talking to yet. Now, I’m excited. Honestly, for everybody, I don’t want to steal our thunder yet, but if somebody moved your cheese and you’re having a hard time finding deals right now, Luis is going to . . . we’re going to talk about that over the next half hour or so. And he’s going to give some tips that are going to just change the game for you if you just listen and follow us through.
Luis: That’s right.
Mike: He’s willing to share some trade secrets today, some stuff that’s working really well right now, and I think it’s going be great.
Luis: Absolutely, brother. Absolutely. Definitely.
Mike: Hey, before we dive in. By the way, we’re talking about lead generation, how to find motivated sellers today and a unique way to do it. Before we get started, though, Luis, kind of, give us a couple of minutes of your background, how you got started.
Luis: Absolutely. First of all, thank you for having me on the show, Mike. It’s always an honor. And everybody listening, glad you’re here. So quick background. Grew up in Mexico, came over here for college, around 2002, after getting kicked out of high school a bunch of times, and ended up, kind of, lived life on the wrong side of the tracks for a while until all of that lifestyle took me to the worst day that ever happened to me in December of 2007, when the DEA showed up at my door and basically took me in and I ended up doing about 13 months in state prison.
But it was the best thing that ever happened to me, because through that pain and through that and just being at that rock bottom place and have been stripped of everything, absolutely everything. I remember just, kind of, sitting there and in the cell missing my family, having nothing, and all I wanted was to have a lunch meal with my family, that was like the big thing. Like, if I could have that, I was a happy camper.
I wasn’t thinking about the money, not the cars, not the business that. I just wanted to spend a little time with my family, walk on the beach or something.
So after that, you know, I came out in 2009 and I started looking for something. And I ran into a video, I was living at my parent’s house, ran into a video of a guy telling me that he was going to show me how to buy houses 10 ways with no money, no credit. And it’s Mike Jake, you know him.
Mike: The funny thing is for those of you listening right now, Michael Jake has been on the show before. In fact, he was just on a couple shows ago, literally.
Luis: That’s awesome.
Mike: Like, two weeks ago, I think. Yeah.
Luis: Definitely. So I downloaded it, I . . .
Mike: I remember the story when you told it the first time we met. Powerful, man. Michael Jake was crying.
Luis: Exactly. So what I decided to do, I could have got done two things right there. I could have said, “You know what? This guy’s full of crap.” But what I did is, I said, “You know what? I’m going to have a little faith.” I took a step of faith and I downloaded it, and I started putting things into action. And long story short, within a few months, I ended up making $13,000 check wholesaling houses, and I’ve never looked back since. And 2014 was the first year we broke seven figures, and we just kept growing and growing from there.
But the main thing is, I like to build a wholesaling business. I never really liked talking to sellers. I never really liked meeting them at their kitchen table and all that. It wasn’t my thing. So from an early stage in my business, I’ve always wanted to run my business in a way where I didn’t have to talk to any sellers. And, by the grace of God, I haven’t done that in about six, seven years now.
Mike: Yeah, awesome.
Luis: And still producing deal flow. Yeah.
Mike: Isn’t this the opposite of the model that I follow? That I’ve always used myself and that I teach is, buying at the kitchen table. As exactly you’d say is buying in the living room, whatever and so. But I’ve always appreciated guys like you that buy over the phone. And so, you know, there’s no right or wrong solution, but even on your model, one of the things that’s enabled you to do is just, kind of, pick up your ball and go to a different playground, if you need to. I know you’re in San Diego there, gets too hot and you just, kind of, pick up and land somewhere else, right?
Luis: Exactly. And that’s one of the most beautiful things. But just like you said, Mike, it’s 100% personality-based. It’s all about what you want. I mean, we got a lot of friends that love doing deals, right? Just, kind of, sitting down, shaking hands, and signing contracts, and making stuff happen. But for me, I’m more of a lifestyle, kind of, guy. I like to, kind of, hang out. I mean, if you, kind of, document my life, it’s probably pretty boring because I’m just, kind of, chilling at home a lot. But it’s all about that lifestyle. So, like you said, there’s no right or wrong.
But, yeah, I mean, as far as . . . I love the fact that there is no geographic boundaries or things that can hold you back with this business because, you know, you could live in China, for all we care, and you can run your business from there, doing deals, going into different markets. All you need, obviously, is internet and be able to run your team. But that’s a beautiful thing.
For a lot of you, guys, that know San Diego, it’s a pretty hot market right now. Our cost per deal was getting into the $10,000 range per deal, so we decided to switch markets and it was just as simple as looking at some data, testing, a little bit of marketing over there, and seeing what the conversion was. Everything over the phone, and that’s one of the most beautiful things that I love about the business.
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Luis: It’s a pretty hot market right now. Our cost per deal was getting into the $10,000 range per deal, so we decided to switch markets. And it was just as simple as looking at some data, testing, a little bit of marketing over there and seeing what the conversion was, everything over the phone. And that’s one of the most beautiful things that I love about the business.
Mike: Yeah, that’s awesome, man. So it’s interesting because when you and I were talking ahead of time, and for folks that are listening to the show, we always . . . usually, honestly, at this point and after, this is episode number 416, most the people on the show right now are friends of mine. They are people that, maybe I didn’t know a few years ago. I think you and I probably knew each other for at least two, maybe three years, the least. And it’s, like, I just use the show an opportunity to catch up with my buddies, you know.
Luis: Exactly.
Mike: And each time we talk, you know, we probably talked for a half hour before we even get started here. And of course, part of that conversation always ends up . . . It has to be what are we going to talk about today. And we tried to about competition and Luis liked stopped me in my tracks. He’s like, “There is no such thing as competition. Competition is irrelevant.” So tell us a little bit more about that. I mean, I know it did get more competitive, but I know you want to talk about why that doesn’t matter.
Luis: Yeah, and it all started, Mike, when things . . . Well, it all started because I started doing deals in San Diego. And yeah, competition is irrelevant whether a market gets hot or not. But I remember just, kind of, sending out marketing and sending out marketing. And initially, I’d send out just a few thousand postcards. We’d get . . . this is years ago. We get a lot of leads and we do a lot of deals. But then, I started to, kind of, seeing that diminish and diminish and diminish, and it’s because these people are getting bombarded with marketing. The marketing messages that they are getting all over the place, and then it, kind of, numbs them to your marketing.
So number one we said, “Okay, we need to start being different.” And number two, we said, “Okay, we just need to focus our efforts in a place where it’s going to make more sense. Even though we can do deals here, it’s just going to be more expensive. But the biggest thing that I realized, as I was going through this, is that competition is irrelevant because even, though, it got higher, the price per deal, we could still do deals, but we just decided to take those marketing efforts and that marketing money in a place where it would be more efficient.
Now, the bottom line is this. And if you got somewhere to write, got pen and paper, awesome, write this down. As long as there’s people living in houses and life happening, deals will be made. Period. Because, I mean, in our particular niche, which is the distressed homeowner niche, we need to buy houses at a discount, right? If we’re wholesaling and we’re fixing, flipping, whatever you’re doing in that sense, you need to buy at a discount in order to make a profit.
So our niche is the distressed market niche, which is only about 5%, 6% of the entire real estate industry, right? So in our niche, life happens, right? Life keeps happening and people . . . So I say, as long as there’s people living in houses and life happening, deals will be made. People die every day, people go through divorces every day, people inherit houses every day, people don’t pay their property taxes every day because of a situation that’s occurring in life. So if you, kind of, just believe that, like, it’s almost impossible to think that you can’t do this business.
Mike: Absolutely, no, I agree.
Luis: All right. Because the bottom line, if you can generate leads, leads are coming in, offers are going out, stuff is going to go down.
Mike: Yeah. I teach the same thing. I mean, there are strategies that work different times, like, I was never big on short sales or REOs, just never was. I’ve always been direct market to seller. But those things worked for some people, and then, you know, when they dried up, those folks didn’t really know what to do. They had to figure out another option. But stuff like you said, death, divorce, inheritance, problem rental properties, like all those things, are never going to stop. They’ve been around since there were people in houses and they’re going to be around, like you said, as long as there are people in houses.
Luis: Exactly, exactly. And, you know, I think it’s important to just, kind of, believe that because, what you believe, that’s going to determine the type of actions that you take. And if you’re, kind of, caught up . . . And there’s a lot of competition right now. It’s not a good time to get into market, like, that’s totally like the opposite of what you need to be thinking. And so, hopefully, that empowers you today.
Mike: Yeah, and I think the important lesson there is, you need to evolve. Your thinking needs to evolve, your lead generation techniques, tactics, whatever you do, need to continually evolve.
Luis: Exactly.
Mike: Sometimes the stuff you used to do doesn’t work anymore and you have to just evolve. And the good thing is, if you develop that mindset like you have to know that I have to evolve, well, the truth is, there’s 9 out of 10 real estate investors aren’t going to involve. So as long as you can stay ahead of them or just show them how to do it. You just have to take action right ultimately.
Luis: Exactly, and it’s all about consistency. And just like you said, Mike, evolving, right? Like, right now, for example, one of the ways we’ve evolved as we were . . . One of our main markets was San Diego. We started seeing the numbers, kind of, go south there. So we evolved. We said, “All right, there’s people living in houses and there’s life happening, so where can we go that we can make these dollars more effective?” And we start testing other markets, right? We test with a little bit, test with a little bit over here.
And another way we’re evolving is we’re actually adding more value to our prospects, to our homeowners, right? This is what we teach our team, okay? Don’t just, kind of, be like everybody else out there just going through a script and making an offer. Go the extra mile with them. You know, if they got property taxes that they owe, find out how much it is. We just closed the property I was telling you about it with the 25k, bought it for 25k is worth 180. Not all the deals are like that. This was a good one.
But one of the reasons I was talking to my team that we got that deal is because my team member said, “Hey,” like, “Matter of fact, let me find out how much you owe,” okay? Because she didn’t know. So we went to the website, we looked it up, we got all the figures, we presented to her, and nobody else had done that for her. We were competing with a few other people. So just, kind of, like going that extra mile or teaching your team to do that will definitely go a long way in the current market right now for sure.
Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, that’s good. So the last time you were on the show, a little over a year ago, we talked really about a similar topic. And at that time, you were focused heavily on niche lists, but you were doing some extra research to find out if they’re vacant and things like that. And so, I know back to the evolution part, you’ve just continued to evolve here. So now, we’re going to talk about how to find leads that ultimately that you can call, right?
Luis: Okay, yeah. So if you’re listening right now and you’re, kind of, getting started, you don’t have money to get started, this is the best way that I would do. This is what I would do if I had maybe like $1,000, I was put in China and a place that I don’t know, and just, kind of, little apartment over there or a little hut or whatever and just, kind of, like, “Okay, how am I going to get out of this?” Right?
So number one, I got a 1,000 bucks, I would get a list. All right. The list doesn’t really matter. Obviously, the more distressed list that you can get. I would just go to your county, get the property tax delinquent list requested. They’ll give you a CD for, like, 50 bucks. Then I would convert that list into usable data because a lot of it usually just has, like, the APN, the assessor parcel number, the tax number, whatever. So you need to get names and addresses, right?
So I would go to a place like Melissa Data, or there’s just any data pending company, or even go on upwork.com, get a VA to, kind of, like, just convert that list into usable data. That’s step number two.
Number three is, I would want to know what properties on there are vacant, okay? Because this is going to be the kicker right here. This is going to be the secret sauce that’s going to make your list, like, way more valuable. So I would go to accuzip.com and I would get that list converted. Usually, it’s like 1300 bucks a year, but if you don’t have money, I think you can send them your list and they’ll run it for you for, like, 200 bucks. And now, you’ll have a list with over a few thousand names and you know which ones are vacant, right? Through the United States Postal Service, this AccuZIP company, they run their list through the database of the United States Postal Service, and it comes back and it tells you which ones are vacant.
After that, go to a company like SearchBug, and now you have phone numbers. So now, you get calling. And now all these people . . .
Mike: So you just upload your list. Yes, you upload your list. So, what you’re doing is you’re saying, “Hey, I’ve got this distressed seller list. Now, let me find out.” And by the way, you probably when you get the distress seller list, you probably can run it through an equity filter as well, right? To see who’s got equity, maybe.
Luis: Exactly.
Mike: So it’s, kind of, taking these lists. I mean, there’s a few folks that are doing some of the stuff they were to call it list stacking, like, let me just find these lists. And a bunch of them only have one flag, but let me find the ones that have a few flags. Vacant, has equity, and we can find out who they are, right?
Luis: Exactly. So now you made it even juicier. Now, you know they got equity, right? So once you got the phone numbers, you can start calling them yourself or if you got somebody on your team, you get him on a platform called Mojo, which is basically like an automatic dialer for telemarketers or whatever and just get him making offers. Making offers, and that’s the fastest way to get a good deal. And a lot of those people are probably not even being marketed to stuff like that. So . . .
Mike: Not that way, you’re probably right. I mean, they might be getting stacks of direct mail, but they just see it all is the same, and they throw in the trash or whatever, right?
Luis: Yeah.
Mike: So talk a little bit about the significance of it being vacant, like, there are people that have equity and people that are in distress situation but they may still live there. But talk about the significance of it being vacant.
Luis: Well, I love vacant houses because, I mean, I had a vacant house . . . I’ll give you an example. I bought a house a few years ago in Sacramento. And I was wanting to rehab it remotely from San Diego, you know, hundreds of miles away. And it was sitting vacant for a couple of months. And during those months, it got vandalized, people went in there, were taking copper, there was a guy living there, some squatter. To get him out, I had to call the police, and just do stuff like that.
So I was a motivated seller. Like, I didn’t want that house sitting vacant like that because I knew was just going to get jacked up. So for any other homeowner that has a vacant house and either if it’s not rented, something’s going to happen to the house. And if it’s not even rentable, it means it’s already all messed up, and that creates opportunity for guys like you and I or listeners here, because a vacant house just means motivation. It means that there’s been neglect. It means that there’s people or somebody doesn’t care about it or they don’t have the resources to attend to it and fix it up and get it right. So we come in and we present value to the homeowner by telling them, “Hey, here’s the deal. We can get this off your plate and all we got to do is get this contract signed.”
Mike: Right, right. So I want to back up here because you mentioned a few things we flew through. I was want to make our listeners get this. So you get the property tax delinquent. No, this is an example, it could be any list, right?
Luis: It can be an absentee list. You go to listsource.com and download the absentees. The key here is flagging which are vacant so that you can focus on those.
Mike: Right. So you find vacant properties and then . . . It’s probably different in every county, I’m guessing. With some counties, you need to append to get their name and address, like, it might show, like, the legal address which is, like, lot in block and subdivision number . . .
Luis: Plot number.
Mike: . . . which for human beings, it means nothing really. But so you got to basically say, “Hey, lot 14 block T of the XYZ subdivision. It actually is 123 Main Street, right? in Dallas, Texas or whatever.” And the significance of needing that address is, one, you can talk to people and say, “Hey, do you happen to be the owner of this?”
Luis: Exactly.
Mike: But also, when you go to a SearchBug, which is a tool you use, there’s a few of them out there, but SearchBug to do, like, a reverse lookup to try to find a phone number associated with that name and address, right?
Luis: Yep, yep.
Mike: I think with SearchBug, you have to have . . . or the results will be much better if you have name and address right?
Luis: Name and address. Name and address. And you can append the data. If you only have, like, a number, an APN in the county, you can go to Melissa Data and they’ll send you back the right data.
Mike: Okay, okay.
Luis: Yeah, it’s only like a few bucks per thousand per se.
Mike: Yeah. And they’re usually giving you what’s common. I mean, sometimes they can’t find any phone numbers, but sometimes they find a couple, right?
Luis: Though, they give you a lot of stuff. I mean, they won’t give you phone numbers right there, but they’ll give you everything, from last transfer date, homeowner name, property address, mail address, assessed value. I mean, they’ll give you everything.
Mike: Yeah, that’s great.
Luis: And I know this doesn’t sound like too much of a sexy way to do stuff, but this gets results. Like, if you’re struggling right now and you just, like, don’t have money to spend on marketing or PPC or whatever, do this. And this will get you your first deal, and then now, you’ll be able to breathe and make other stuff happen.
Mike: It’s funny because I was telling you beforehand I’ve been doing some live events, teaching people how to get started in real estate investing. And I often use that phrase. I start to explain how to do something and I say, “Is that sexy?” Like, of course, it’s not. None of the stuff is sexy, really. Now, I, kind of, say, “Look, if you do the hard work, you can have it sexy.” But you got to do hard work first.
Luis: Exactly, exactly.
Mike: And I know for some people, like, if you find a really ideal that has a ton of equity and, like, maybe the person is deceased or whatever. You’re calling a number for someone that’s dead. We recently had Larry Higgins on the show from Skip Genie. So you could, kind of, cherry-pick some of those deals that you just can’t find the person. You know it’s a good deal, and you can, kind of, go much deeper, doing actual deep dive or skip trace, like, with something like Skip Genie, right?
Luis: Oh, yeah.
Mike: If you need to, yeah. So then you talk about AccuZIP. So tell us what that is and tell us what that it.
Luis: So basically, AccuZIP is a service that . . . It’s usually meant for people that run, like, mail houses right? Like, direct mail and all that and they’re wasting a lot of mail sending to addresses that are no good, right? So they have the software that’s meant for those types of companies to flag the vacants. They, kind of, appended to the United States Postal Service vacant list. Basically, a mailman’s going out there, delivering mail, making stuff happen, and he sees a house that is either stacked up in mail or he just physically sees that it’s a vacant house. So they mark them down, and now the USPS has a database. And when you run your list through AccuZIP, it compares it to that list and then it tells you, “Okay, these are vacant.” And it puts a little check mark on it, and now you know those are the ones I want to focus on.
Mike: Yeah. So this is the part that’s crazy is for years . . . at this point, I’ve spent over a million dollars on advertising over the last 10 years. A lot of it drip, more than half of it direct mail. And for years, when we’d buy direct mail, we specifically have, whoever we’re buying our list from, scrub it against AccuZIP or a service like that because we want them to remove the [inaudible 00:24:43], the belief is, “Hey, I’m wasting my money on mail if it can’t be delivered.” Right? And the thing is 9 out of 10 real estate investors in the country, maybe 99 out of 100 that are mailing, do that, right? They don’t want to waste money on sending something that’s not going to be delivered and going to bounce back. It’s a waste of money.
The funny thing is, up until recently, nobody was really systematically approaching those people that we scrubbed out. It’s like, “Hey, that’s a vacant house.” Like, they’re probably more motivated than the guy next door that you did send a letter to that lives there, right?
Luis: Right. Well, and it’s interesting because, a few years ago, we could just send direct mail and we’d get a bunch of leads, do a bunch of deals, and as soon as we started, kind of, seeing, like, those numbers go down a little bit. Now, we need to get more creative, right? We need to actually start thinking outside the box and seeing what we can do to get to the actually most motivated people in the shortest amount of time.
And if you’re also listening and you like this whole thing, but you just don’t want to be talking to sellers and all that, then there’s lots of ways. You can go to Upwork, get a VA, a decent one for, like, five, six bucks an hour, have him call your list non-stop with a simple script that just gets them to raise your hand and then they’ll send them to you and you can actually close them and you get most of the grunt work out of the way. Very cheaply, very efficient as well.
Mike: Yeah, if you’re going to do that in scale, you know, you can bring on VAs and hire a team of people. And I know . . . I just happen to go to John Martinez’s Sales Training event. And they have their Seller Snipers product business which is they’re doing. I think he said they’re doing, like, they’re calling, like, something like 50 or 100,000 numbers a day for other real estate investors. And they’re doing the same thing. They’re just calling lists that people sent them and trying to get them warmed up and they pass them back to you. So that’s, like, it very cost effective ultimately as well.
In fact, if you’re listening right now, I’m going to add a link down below for that. But at the end of the day, I think what Luis is saying here is, kind of, like him, like, he doesn’t want to be the guy doing the work. And truthfully, I haven’t been on appointments and don’t answer my phones anymore and stuff like that in many, many years, right? I mean, we all want to get there. We’re not saying that that’s beneath us because we all started there, right? But that’s probably not your goal is to be on the phone all day long prospecting for leads. And so, even if you have to do that and you’re just getting started, that’s not the goal, but you got to do what you got to do now, right?
Luis: Absolutely. Now, but you’re absolutely right, Mike. I mean, we’re all in this business. I mean, we love properties and all that, but we’re in it for what it brings, right? We’re in it for the time that it brings, the freedom to be able to do the things that we love with our family and our loved ones. And it’s not to be sitting down with sellers and negotiating all day unless that’s what you love. If that’s what you like, then more power to you, but at the end of the day . . .
Mike: There’s nothing wrong with it. You’re always limited by your own capacity if you’re the one doing it, if you’re in the way doing the work, right?
Luis: Exactly.
Mike: Yeah.
Luis: Exactly.
Mike: So talk a little bit about . . . Maybe just share some of your experiences from your team about reception to people cold calling, like, you got to have thick skin, right? There’s a lot of people that are getting pissed that you’re like, “Hey, I’m at dinner right now and you’re calling me?” Like, I remember growing up, like, you know, we had rotary dial phones. It was before cell phones, right? And you’re, kind of, sitting there and having dinner with your family or something, the phone is ringing, is always the salesman and parents are always mad, right? But we’ve, kind of, come back to that now, right?
Luis: Yeah, and I mean, I do that myself. You know, I get calls every day and it’s just like some guy in India or something that just hang up. You know what I’m saying. But the reality is this, is that and not every lead is a prospect, right? And there’s people out there waiting for you to find them. And if you’re not doing the work, if you’re not making the calls or if you don’t got people making the calls for you, like, it’s just not going to happen.
And yeah, I mean cold calling is hard. You know it’s not easy. If anybody tells you that easy, doesn’t know what they’re talking about. But there is results if you’re consistent with it. Yeah, the majority of them are going to be not worthy deals or not worthy leads even. But that’s why the most beautiful thing is, like, you can outsource this stuff very cheaply, very effectively to only talk to people that actually want to talk to you, and that’s the biggest thing I can get. I mean, look, at the end of the day, you got to have that thick skin, rhino skin, no matter what you do. And you shouldn’t be dabbling, right? If you’re dabbling, like, “Why are you even here?” Right? If you’re in it for the long-term, then, now we’re talking.
Mike: I love that, man. Yeah, and for folks that are listening right now, if you’re not new, you’ll understand this. If you are new, even when you send direct mail, to get 10 leads, like, if you have a half a percent response rate, which is, kind of, typical today, even if you have like a good list, that means you got to send 2000 pieces of mail to get 10 leads. And those aren’t necessarily even 10 good leads. Those are just 10 people that pick up the phone. They might not have equity, you don’t really know. And so, it’s the same thing. It’s a funnel, right? You got to put so much in to get one unit out. And you don’t know what that is, but cold calling is just another way, kind of, fill that funnel up.
Luis: Exactly. And, kind of, to top that off, Mike, it’s all about, like, anything that you do, you got to just go all in. You know, you can’t be on the fence. You’re either in or you’re out. You got to put in the work. This business, it’s an amazing business, and it’ll definitely provide for you and your family to live the life of your dreams, but you got to do the work. You got to get in there, you got to put in the time, you got to invest, you got to give, right? You got to give before you get. So that’s the bottom line.
Mike: Awesome, man. Hey, Luis, if folks want to learn more about you . . . First off, thanks for sharing this. This is a great tip. And for those that are getting started or they’re, like, “Oh, this is too hard. This doesn’t work. I can’t compete anymore,” you know, this is for you.
Like, if you’re saying that, you need to just look in the mirror and, kind of, think about how bad you actually want this, right?
Luis: Exactly.
Mike: This is some great stuff here. This is stuff that people pay money to get access to. But if folks want to learn more about you or what you’ve got going on, where do they go?
Luis: You can just go to luigiontiveros.com, L-U-I-G-I, Ontiveros, O-N-T-I-V-E-R-O-S.com. And you can download some free trainings over there. I’m always sharing stuff on social media and all that. So at the end of the day, it’s all about providing value, helping out people, helping out other people, and going full circle like Mike Jake, right? He was the guy on the other side of the screen telling me that I could do this, and it was my choice at that point to say, “He’s full of crap,” or, “I’m actually going to take a step of faith and do what he says.”
Mike: Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Thanks again for sharing your insights, buddy. And these are some great tips, for sure.
Luis: Absolutely, Mike. Anytime. Take care, and God bless you, my brother.
Mike: Awesome, awesome. Thanks, buddy. Hey everybody, this was episode number 416. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to our show on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Play, or subscribe to us on YouTube, if you watch us there.
Of course, all of our videos and shows, over 1500 videos now and podcasts over the last, like, 4.5 years on FlipNerd.com. So you can always watch or listen on flipnerd.com. But if you could give us some, love share with your friends, people you care about, we’d appreciate it. We’re trying to change lives over here, and glad you could join us today. So hope you have a great day, we’ll see on the next episode.
Luis: Let’s change the world.
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