Money is in the Follow Up

Mike: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the FlipNerd show. Really excited to be here. Uh, we have not created a nearly as as many FlipNerd shows as we have in the past. We’ve done over 1500 podcasts over the last eight years, but I haven’t put a lot of focus into investor fuel show and things like that. So excited to start getting things back on track here and really excited to be here with my buddy, Danny Johnson.

Uh, we’re going to get started today. We’re gonna talk about the importance of follow-up. Danny is really a master at systematizing your business, and he’s going to talk about the importance of fun. Welcome to real estate investing secrets. We’re all looking for freedom and the opportunity to live better, more fulfilling lives.

But most of us were trained our entire lives to work for someone else to chase their dreams. How can we use real estate investing as a vehicle to achieve financial freedom? My life is dedicated to answering your real estate investing questions and helping you build an investing business that allows you to change your.

And the world around you and to enable you to turn your dreams of financial freedom into a [00:01:00] reality. My name is Mike Hambright from flipping our.com and your questions get answered here on the real estate investing secrets show. Hey Danny. Welcome

Danny: to. Thanks, Mike. So glad to

Mike: be here. Yeah. Good to see you, buddy.

We were just talking a little bit catching up. Cause it’s been a little while. I think you, I don’t know this for sure. I bet you’ve been on the show. Do you know? I don’t know if you know this I’m coming up on eight years of a, from when I started the her show. And you’ve been doing your podcast for a long time too, but I think you’ve probably been on.

This might be the third time, maybe?

Danny: I think so. I think, yeah. And I remember the first time, because I got the glasses, I got the, yeah, the black, plain framed glasses. I don’t think you send them out the second time. I was disappointed that again. Yeah,

Mike: that was, it’s kind of like Verizon, if you’re an existing customer, you don’t get the excrete of discounts as the first time it was, you’re a new customer, but, um, you know, you’re, you’re somebody I’ve always looked up to you.

You’ve really done some amazing things in the industry. And I think, uh, As somebody that runs a service business for real estate investors, which we have for our advertising agency, [00:02:00] investor machine. I always appreciate, uh, technology. I guess I’m a little bit of a nerd, which is kind of why we call this flip nerd.

And so I appreciate people that have made a lot of effort. Cause I know that it’s on many levels, it’s a thankless business to try to impact the industry. And so I appreciate all you’ve done.

Danny: Yeah. Yeah, no problem. Yeah. That’s why I did it for you.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Well, Hey, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and kind of how you got to where you

Danny: are today?

Sure. So I started back in 2003 and I, I came out of college, was a software developer. So that’s how that started. And my father started flipping houses at that point were after I graduated. Uh, from college and he was having so much fun with it. And something in me was just like screaming to do the same thing.

Like he was always an entrepreneur growing up, all of the businesses pretty much failed while I was growing up. But after I moved out, then he started, he found this and had so much success in it [00:03:00] and he was just having so much fun and, and I just felt that burning desire to do the same thing. And of course I read rich dad, poor dad, and that just added fuel to the fire.

And, uh, you know, got into it and started doing it. Part-time I was too scared to leave the job. So it took me three years. To, uh, to go full-time and I had to be fired from my software job, you know, and it was, it was interesting cause it was, you know, what, the job there, it was the, the real estate investing the house flipping could be more of the fun thing.

Right. I wasn’t relying on it. Wasn’t stressing me out because I already had everything taken care of through my paycheck. And it’s interesting though, because the last probably year of being part-time. I was losing money by not doing, just focusing on real estate. Right. So I needed that, that push. So I got fired and went full time and did that with my ex wife.

And I, we did everything ourselves in that business for the first eight or nine years. [00:04:00] Pretty crazy. And then, you know, we started building a team at that point after that much time. And it got to the point where, you know, we had the freedom that we were. Always wanting when we got into the business, you know, we got that, that ability to, to focus on other things and other passions while we still had it going while we still had the business going.

And we’re a big part of the house flipping business. And, uh, you know, that’s when I transitioned back into doing a lot of software, Yeah, whenever I started Lee propellor and then RM mobile, which became flip pilot, which became flip pallet too, which became forefront. So yeah, it’s just been, it’s been a cool.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. Whenever I talk to people, cause I’ve been, I remember when I was like the new guy, you know, I’m like the youngest guy in the room now. I feel like I’m the I’m like Yoda. I’m like the wisdom guy with that people think have wisdom. I don’t know whether I do or not, but definitely have a lot of war wounds and a lot of experiences.

Right. And so I [00:05:00] think it’s interesting to talk to people that have been in business for a long time, because. You evolve and you go back to things that you like to do, but you didn’t have time for, and now you have the resources to do it, or you start to kind of find yourself right. And say, I have the financial freedom that I, that I want.

And so at some level it starts to not be just about the money anymore, depending on how you started. But, um, and you start to see people say, start to shift more towards what they want to do instead of what they have to do, you know?

Danny: Yeah, that’s an interesting point because in the, you know, had that burning desire for the real estate for, for housekeeping for years and years.

I mean, I couldn’t talk or think about anything else. Like I, that was everything. And it had annoyed, some people, a lot of people actually, but you know, it was just the thing that was never, I never had to consider whether I liked it or not. It was just like, boom, I’m doing it. I love it. Like, I love hunting down motivated sellers, like who, somebody in some sort of situation that might have some real estate they’d like to sell, what are these [00:06:00] situations and how can I get in touch with them that no one else is doing?

You know, all that kind of stuff was just a game. And it was so much. And, uh, you know, that does transition, right? Because for me, at least it did where after I’ve I had a certain amount of success, um, it became this thing where, you know, I’m still keeping it going and I’m juggling all this stuff, but I’ve, I’ve lost a lot of the passion for it.

Yeah. And why is that? Yeah. Cool. Why is that passion gone from certain pieces of the business?

Mike: Yeah, there’s a lot of people that feel this way and I, I, I do too. It’s like, it just gets the transactional nature of just like every time every deal you do, you’re starting over. Um, it kind of wears on, on some people for sure.

And I know people that have done it for way longer than me. And they still keep doing it. So I think everybody’s a little bit different, but you know, at the end of the day, I think of the business this way is like, if it’s a stepping stone or a stair-step to get you somewhere else. I mean, I do a lot more multi-family now, [00:07:00] which I, and I mean, like, you know, we’re talking.

You know, we’ve got several deals on our contract, a couple that are $24 million deals, $10 million, just bigger deals. But I didn’t do that for the first 13 years I was in the business. And even when I did do it, I started to partner with people that, that are experts in that space because, you know, I know the learning curve is steep to be able to learn how to do all that on your own.

And multicam was kind of perfect for team-based investing, you know, but I just think, uh, you know, I think on some level, there’s a lot of newbie folks out there these days that take a lot of pride in the hustle and the grind and all that. And I think I’m, I’m past that. And it sounds like you are too.

It’s a great business. They got me where I am. I love it. Everything that’s done for me, it absolutely changed my life. I’ll always, I mean, I I’ll always be involved in single family investing for sure, but I’ve gotten to a point to where I have, you know, uh, resources to do other things that I’m more passionate.

Yeah,

Danny: and I think that’s the, you know, To, to come across as being like a bummer thing of [00:08:00] like, yeah, this guy’s not excited about real estate. I’m not going to list it. It’s more of like following what what’s going on with you and your passions about it. Right? Because there’s, you know, ends up being something where I think Jim Rohn used to say it all the time where he, you know, someone come in and say they have eight years experience or 10 years experience in something.

And he look at the resume and they say, no, no, you got one year of experience repeated 10 times. Yeah, right. You, you did that thing. You learned it, you did it. And then you just kept doing, you didn’t do anything different, you didn’t, uh, evolve and, uh, you know, provide, start providing more value by doing other things.

And so I think that that’s the thing to be aware of because I feel like that’s maybe what happened. I think I see that in a lot of other people too. Um, if, but some people, they just love doing all the pieces all the time. That’s just where their groove is. And they’re good with that. But if it’s not like being honest about like, You know, I’m kind of getting tired of this kind of stuff.

And, and I say that because I wish that we had transitioned [00:09:00] into having a team. Much earlier than eight or nine years into this. Yeah.

Mike: Yeah. But you, you know, the truth is Danny, you have evolved. And so by, I mean, you, you evolved into software, which helps a lot of other people. I, after my first few years, um, maybe two, three years into it, after I’d flipped like a hundred houses, I felt like something was missing.

And for me it was like the social aspect of it. Cause I. No, if you remember my story, but I left corporate America and always worked around. I mean, I always worked for huge companies with thousands or tens of thousands of employees. And there’s always like somebody’s birthday and there’s always like happy hour.

There’s a lot of social stuff. Then it went to like my wife and I, and a hole in the wall, like strip center. Office that was like super cheap for years. And we’re like, you know, we just weren’t around, like our peers are around people like us. And, and so for me, that’s when I started coaching and sharing with what I’m sharing, what I’m doing, and yes, I made money doing coaching and all that stuff, but I really got a lot of joy out of just like, Sharing my knowledge or helping other [00:10:00] people.

And so that is the evolution. I don’t think the evolution has to be that you go from a hundred thousand dollar houses to half a million dollar houses to mansions to multi-family. It doesn’t have to be like size of the deal necessarily, but it’s more of the evolution is in terms of the impact you make.

I think like you help individual people and you help people that help people. And, you know, you can think of it a lot of different ways. So,

Danny: yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s my point is just kind of being open to. You know, possibility of changing within it. Right. Because I think, I, I think if I were to sum up where I was going with, that was just this feeling of, of trying to make it to the point passed.

I think it was something like 20 or 30 deals, like moving beyond that. And it was, it was a true grind because it was okay, we’ve done this many deals we need to do, you know, 50% more this next year. And the only way. Focus that I had was go back and like, what other marketing campaigns, or how much can I put more [00:11:00] money into?

How can I put more money into these other campaigns to generate more leads? Right? And it was like this, this never ending thing that required all kinds of work. And putting those campaigns together, executing them, handling even more calls, going to even more appointments, managing even more rehab crews.

And it was like this unsustainable. You know, thing that was going on to try to have more success. And it just was not working out.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like it’s a old guy therapy session we’re having here.

No, no, no, no. Tell all the listeners here, we’re going to get to follow up here just a moment, but you know what I think it is is, uh, and I’ll kind of summarize and we can move on. Because you’re, I know you’re, you’re friends with Matt Andrews, too. Matt and I are really good friends. And, uh, in fact, he just saw him like the week before last, he came and did a keynote and investor fuel and he said this quote a few years ago.

Um, and I’ve used it over and over again. In fact, he used it again a couple of weeks ago and that was for him. Cause he Matt’s [00:12:00] very much a lifestyle guy. He’s like done a lot of great, great things. But you know, you said for him, uh, the quote he gave us real estate, isn’t the thing, it’s the thing that gets you the thing.

And I think. A lot of people that start in real estate investing are in love with real estate investing. But what they’re really in love with, with, uh, with what it’s doing for them, the freedom that it’s giving them. And then you get to a point to where, you know, if you’re successful, you have, you have the freedom that you sought, but that real estate isn’t enough anymore.

Like it got you there, but it’s not, it’s not as exciting as it, as it once was. And it’s, you have to find some other passion that moves you forward. And for everybody that’s a little different, right? It could be doing charitable things with the resources that you’ve earned. And with some people it could be building software, it could be coaching, it could be masterminds, it could be a lot of things.

Right. And so anyway, for hopefully people listening to the lesson there is that wherever you’re at in your business, if you’re feeling a little burned out on the transactional side, know that that’s okay. You just have to find what that passion is. If you knew, [00:13:00] just know. Like kind of like a new relationship.

Eventually the, the, uh, some of the, some of the, of the new relationships stuff will wear off. Um, and you gotta find that passion somewhere else, maybe. Yeah.

Danny: Yeah. Well, I mean, some of that came. I mean with, uh, you know, growing that because it was still looking at what we were doing, right. That was causing the burnout.

And it was that the whole idea of, you know, being on that hamster wheel of I’ve got to do more. I got to go faster, go faster, faster without changing the way we were going about it. And that’s, that’s more of a. I was moving towards, instead of saying like, oh, this, this business is too much work. You guys, anybody considering this should go do something else.

Now there’s a lot more money in Bitcoin. Um, but no, it’s, it’s a lot easier. You just sit there and you buy it. But, um, no, I’m just kidding. I don’t have any Bitcoin. I wish I had some, but, um, it was more of, you know, going to looking at like how we’re operating that. [00:14:00] Right. Cause we were operating just her.

And yeah. You know, that, like, what was the reason for, I had to look at what was the reason for staying that way. When we knew other people that had teams that were doing things, and we just weren’t doing that. And I think that there was this, uh, this idea of. You know, this business is fun. Again, this business is fun as if, as long as I keep it sort of this, this thing that’s not too organized.

I didn’t go to business school, you know, and I don’t have to have a business plan. I don’t have to have any of this stuff, but as soon as I bring on some employees or somebody to help, I’ve now got extra responsibility that I don’t want. Right. Right. I won’t be able to go on vacation for two months. And shut everything down and just enjoy myself.

Right. Which, you know, funny enough couldn’t happen because we had to take calls and go to appointments, right?

Mike: Yeah. It’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a leap of faith to build a team. And, you know, I think a lot of us, especially when you, when you first got started, [00:15:00] you’re you have to be lean and mean, and then you get to this point to where for some people it’s hard to.

Um, bear that expense, even though in hindsight, I know that I couldn’t be nearly as out of my businesses as I am without having a team, one of our businesses, we have, I told you about 75 employees. So we’ve got, um, a huge team and that’s actually given me my life back. Right. But, um, well I think when you w same thing for us, what we were, we had a couple of employees from the beginning.

We had an admin upfront. We had an acquisitions guy pretty early on, but I still. Full-time acquisitions almost. And we had me and another person, or sometimes two of the people on me, but I was still heavily involved in the household side for the first 10 years. Um, Some of it is just a control issue of like, you know, I can do it better, faster, more reliable, or employees are difficult.

Um, but you know, all those challenges, but [00:16:00] you can look back now and say what you do differently and share those lessons with other people. Right. And hope that hopefully that, cause back when I started there weren’t podcasts, there weren’t, there wasn’t a lot of information online. I mean, it were. Physical boot camps and workshops and stuff like that.

But most of them were for a new people, not experienced investors, you know? And so that’s one of the beauties of a mastermind is people can get together and talk through this stuff. Right. And try to figure it out and help other people improve. But yeah. So, but ultimately, you know, um, one of the things that we’re going to talk about today is, uh, is the importance of followup.

And I know in fact, back to growth people that are trying to grow now, um, sometimes people don’t have the resources yet, or they don’t want to spend the resources on more and more advertising because advertising costs are up more than ever. Uh, but, um, You know, it, you can squeeze more juice out of the fruit you already have.

Right? You can, and you do that through a systematic approach to [00:17:00] following up and not necessarily generating more leads, which was on the wrong with, but trying to convert more of the leads you already have.

Danny: Right. Yeah, that’s absolutely right. And that’s, that’s exactly what happened, right? Because when I was on that hamster wheel of we got to grow, I’ve got to do more lead.

I got to generate more leads. I’ve got to find that magical marketing campaign, the new one that people are talking about, they’re generating all the deals, you know, and I gotta, I gotta do that. I gotta try that too. And, uh, you know, the real problem there was inefficiency in the bidding. Yeah. You know, I thought it was deletes, you know, I thought, oh, I’m not getting enough.

Good leads. That that’s all, that’s the only problem I could possibly have. Right. And that’s where the epiphany was because it actually occurred. Uh, you know, several years ago, but it was, I had written a book called flipping houses exposed in where I documented 34 weeks in the life of a real estate investor.

And in that book I wrote, I wrote about every single lead that came in every, like all the marketing I did. And then like every time [00:18:00] somebody called me, I said, here’s what they’re asking. Here’s what they owe. Here’s why they want to sell. Here’s what I offer it. Or whatever. 495 of those 495 leads in those 34 weeks were documented.

And, you know, a lot of people tell me I got into this business because of that book, because it showed me it was a numbers game. You just kept saying next, next, next. Yeah. So I felt pretty good about it. Right. I was like, oh, this is awesome. This is cool. Again, a pat on the back, you know, and then, you know, after getting burned out and after sitting and just really considering, you know, everything.

Realizing that I only bought, I think 11. And maybe after a little while later, I got a couple more, maybe 11 or 13 deals out of those 495 leads. Hmm. That sucks. I mean, that, that really does that’s things. Um, especially being that a lot of those were from website, right. Which are people typically looking for you instead of you just mass shooting out a bunch of external mail and hoping it finds [00:19:00] somebody that might need your service.

Whereas online, typically they’re already know they have a problem. They’re looking for you to help them out. And so that conversion rate, which I think is like 2.2%. So it’s like one out of every 45 leads or something like that. Yeah. And. And the problem was not in putting more leads. If I put more leads in at that conversion rate, I’ve got to do what 10 times the normal, you know, roughly the normal right.

Cause numbers vary based on all kinds of factors. But 10 times I would need to do 10 times as many leads. If I kept my funnel the way it was. Right in funnel being, not like marketing funnel, but the entire business funnel, like a lead came into my business. Somebody called me, did I answer the phone live?

Did I set an appointment right away? Like as soon as possible as well, did I, you know, take as much time as I could to be at that appointment and not rush off to something else. And as [00:20:00] you know, not build any rapport or. And then did I follow up? So all of those things, and there’s, there’s some other things too, but all of those things made a big difference.

Um, and especially when I hired people, because then it was, somebody could answer the phone live anytime. Right? That’s their job. They were doing that. Right. And then acquisitions people that would go to an appointment. They’d be able to sit in front of the house before the appointment reset from the last one, no matter what happened or whether they got rejected or whatever recently.

And even imagine getting the deal on this next one, you know, doing some law of attraction stuff or whatever, you know, the, the acquisition person was into and go in and get the sale, you know, and be able to take the time because of the appointments could be spread apart. But I think the. Change in the number of deals and that conversion rate, because we ended up getting to a point of about one out of every five or one out of every seven, somewhere in there fluctuated became a deal, which is like 10 times better, I think, than what it used to [00:21:00] be.

And so with that, um, you know, the biggest thing that made the difference was follow-up getting consistent with the follow-up. The more leads are generated. The less followup I could do because there was nobody to do it. It was me and I was too busy taking calls and going to appointments. So I was just killing myself for nothing, for the most part, when I could have just been, you know, making sure that none of those leads ever slipped.

Mike: Right. And it’s interesting, the types of sellers that we buy from, you know, They’ve often been delaying this decision for years, if not decades. Right. And so to think that they’re ready to go right now is typically pretty rare. I mean, there’s definitely some sales techniques, some stuff like, you know, my buddy John Martinez teaches about how to really set the expectation of why you’re there.

But for the most part, people have been, uh, delaying that decision or finding a reason to not make a decision today for a long, long time. And so that’s why follow up [00:22:00] is key. It’s really a process.

Danny: Yeah. And, and so it made me curious about why are people not following up? Well, I mean, now nowadays, like why are the most real estate investors know that fortune is in the follow-up and then yet they’re still not doing it or doing it consistently.

And like the biggest things that I hear just not enough time. Right. Cause if you’re doing what I was doing, of course, there’s not enough time. You gotta, you gotta take the chance and stop doing maybe some of the marketing. So you could spend more time doing follow up. And, uh, you know, then from there.

It’s having the right perception or yeah. Of, of how you’re seeing what followup is all about. And that’s an interesting thing to say, right? It’s not very clear what I mean by that. So I’ll get clear on it now with forefront, which is our software. And obviously we do automated up and stuff like that. We, we have these calls every two weeks and we’re on one of these calls with, with customers and everybody just asks questions and things.

And I asked everybody on the [00:23:00] call, who here is not using the automated follow-up. And about half of the people that are paying for the software, not doing automated follow-up and half. Half that word immediately jumped on the ones that weren’t like, what do you guys do when you’re missing out on deals?

We’re making like, we’re getting all these deals with 50% more and all this kind of stuff and just getting onto them. But it was good because we got to sit there and say, okay, those of you that are not, why are you not doing it? When you know, it produces, like it creates a consistency. And this gets into even when you’re, if, even if it’s not automated, Why are they not manually following up?

Even if you’re not, you don’t have a software system, why would you not be manually following up? And I think at time has something to do with it. But on the other side of it, what I saw from why they’re not doing it, they said, we’re afraid that it’s too salesy and pushy. And so the perception is that they’re nagging people every time they contact, they told us they weren’t interested.[00:24:00]

So if I follow up. You know, more than once or something, they’re going to think that I’m just being annoying and, um, you know, and I’m trying to convince them, Hey, some of your house sell me your house. Well, that’s not at all. What followup is, right. You’re not going to convince somebody by, you know, sell me your house.

So when you’re out, assuming you’re out selling your house seven times magic number and they sell you the house, it’s all about just being top of mind, just reminding them right. We’re still here. We’re still interested in the house. Have you done anything with it? You know, Hey, have you hold it sold the house.

Great. If you did, but if not, you know, let me know. And, uh, you know, we need to buy a house this month, you know, obviously there’s are spaced out right over time, depending on how motivated they are. It’s all about just being there so that they remember when time has the way of motivating them. Something happens in their life where they’re like, okay, I have to sell now.

Guess who they’re going to think of. Like the one person that kept contacting me.

Mike: Yeah, for sure. I just had this [00:25:00] conversation with somebody yesterday. Somebody was actually in my mastermind and they, uh, they have a ton of leads and their followup is, you know, they’ve only been calling just like they call like every, every 30 days.

And they’re pretty much. Saying some version of just checking to see if you sold your house yet, or are you still interested in selling? And we talked a little bit about some scripts and things you can change, but I was like, look, it could just be like, Hey, I just happened to be in your neighborhood. I was looking at another house.

Just wanted to check the thought of you just want to check in it. Doesn’t you don’t even have to say you want to sell the house. Do you want to sell the house? Do you want to sell a house? It could be. Thinking of you thinking of you, you know, especially if you use a CRM and you’re really good at it, there should be some level of automation too.

Right? Every touch point doesn’t need to be a call, right. It could be a text. It could be, you know, I don’t know if, um, if your CRM does this, but, and there’s a little. No gray area, but, uh, some systems who are VMs and it could be, you know, certainly emails. It could be a number of different ways to touch people because people communicate differently.

Right. I think [00:26:00] that takes a lot of pressure off of people of having to, like, I don’t want to pick up the phone and call this person again. It’s like you don’t don’t think about it. I’m an automated text message go out on day 47, you know, and you don’t have to think about it, but I think, um, yeah, like you said, it doesn’t have to be all always about, do you want to sell the house?

Do you want to sell the house? Do you want to sell the house? It’s just like, Hey, we just bought a house in your neighborhood. We were over by, by this way. Or if, if you wanted to send something manually, it could be, if you do a good job in your CRM of tracking, like. This person was an avid deer hunter.

It’s like, Hey deer, season’s coming up. You get ready for that? Just thought of you or whatever. Right. It’s just like showing people that you care and you listened to them when you were with them so they can trust you. Right.

Danny: And that’s huge. And that stands out. I go to certain, I go to a lot of different coffee shops cause I hate working at one place for too long.

So I like to go to different like different atmosphere and everything. And the ones I’ve found that I love sometimes I’m like, oh, I love this place. So great. You know, and why is that? It’s not necessarily the core or [00:27:00] anything like the temperature there or anything like that. It’s because I realized it was because of like, at some of them, the, the, the barista.

Make it a point because you use your credit card, they see your name, they use your name. They never asked me for my name, but they always, I walk a Danny, you know, it’s like, they are just super friendly. Like they, they personalized it and, you know, treated me as an individual. And so I just ended up liking, you know, and that’s the whole name of this whole game is building the, this rapport and this trust with somebody.

That’s how you do it. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: So tell us a little about, for folks that are kind of struggling with consistently doing that. There’s really, like you said, there’s probably a couple of reasons. One is it’s in your own head that you’re too frequent or you’re bothering somebody and then the other one. Not using the right tools like there’s to this day, you said some of your customers are not using the very tools they’re paying for.

There’s some people that won’t pay for tools because they know they’re not going to use them or they’re too expensive [00:28:00] or whatever, but obviously the cost of, uh, not getting a deal is way higher than the cost of using tools to help you get those deals. But maybe we can just say a couple of minutes to talk about getting out of your.

Uh, which we just kind of talked about, but also just using the right tools that will help you accomplish this way

Danny: easier. You’re going to have, because this is like the start and stop that I’m sure most entrepreneurs go through. It’s like, they have a great idea when implemented, they start doing it and then they have another great idea and then they stop doing the other thing.

So that’s, that’s the whole point of the automated part. Yeah. Even if you want to do it manually, have something that tells you when to do it. If you’re going to do it manually, but otherwise automate. And you know, that’s why we even changed. The name of flip out to forefront was, was to have the active leads at the forefront and stuff.

We’re actively working. I want in my pipeline showing me where it’s at the rest of it, all this other stuff that’s in followup. I don’t want it making me feel overwhelmed. I want to look at the small amount that we’re actually actively right now, talking to you in [00:29:00] negotiating with working with follow up, goes in the background, right?

As soon as they respond to one of the automated messages. Text or email, or I get a task to call them or somebody on my team to call them or manually text them or do something like that by looking at notes, like you said, and putting in whatever they want. Um, that’s personalized if they respond to any of those, it’ll kick it back up into the pipeline to be worked as an active lead again.

Right. And pause the follow-up. Right. Which is really cool because you can take all of them. Out and then have all that bandwidth back to really go. And it makes it consistent because you can, you can chain sequences. And so what I like to do is create like a motivated, a little bit more frequently sequence, and then gets to like a medium like sequence.

Like there we’re spread out. Like maybe once every three weeks they get a message and then like a longer-term maybe every two months, right. Something like that. And then once the first one ends, it kicks them into the second one. Right. Cause they [00:30:00] never responded. It kicks them into the next one. After that.

I don’t like, what’s the, I dunno if you’ve done a lot of follow-up you were real good with thought, but what’s the longest you ever followed up with somebody to get a deal.

Mike: So we had one that was almost five years. Wow. Yeah. And it’s crazy. And the benefit of this is, you know, we, we. W we have when we, even when we call, because what typically happens is you call and you don’t get through, you get a voicemail.

Right. Um, and so, uh, or even the number’s disconnected, right? So over the years we just have all numbers just connected and have stopped following. It’s like, no, keep calling because they probably just didn’t pay their bill this month and next month it’ll be back on. And so we got to the point to where, you know, we just had it.

Our team that’s following up. Say, even if you called and left a message, just say called left voicemail. Um, and so in that, in that particular one, um, cause I’ve actually talked about this and some like, you know, coaching stuff I’ve done before about the importance of follow-up, you know, we’ve had you and I both had these conversations, a number of times with other [00:31:00] people around us, right.

Is that you could see call left voicemail, call that voice so we can see all these notes called and they said, oh, it was a rental property, but they’re like, we’re thinking about moving back in it. We think we’re going to sell it. We’re going to fix it up ourselves. Like all these things over the years.

And then eventually, you know, and a whole bunch of, you know, w when we said who we were, they hung up on me, but they didn’t say stop calling. So we just kept the follow-up going. And then eventually they said, is that offer still? Yeah. Yep. And so that does, you know, that doesn’t happen with every lead doesn’t even happen with, you know, it’s a very small percentage, but what does that small percentage value if you do it right.

You know, it’s, that’s worth for a lot of professional investors. That’s worth tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to do it. Right.

Danny: Right. Yeah. I did. My longest was eight years, I think about eight years. And it’s cause I like the house too. I wasn’t doing this with all the leads, but it was eight years on this one.

Cause it was an oldest toric house. And I liked the old man. That was, [00:32:00] that was the owner. And he was always waiting for his daughter’s daughter. Didn’t want him to sell it. And then, so it was always like, Hey, is your daughter changed your mind yet? You know, ready to sell that house? Cause I know it’s still falling down.

I would drive by and all the time. And he finally called me one day and said, Hey yeah, she said she’s, she’s okay with me selling it. So I want to sell it to you. And, uh, yeah, that was pretty cool. And I, I, I wholesale that house for 40 or 50,000 and then the guy that bought it from me, I kicked myself because yeah, that’s awesome for a wholesale deal.

Right. But then when they fixed it up and they turned around and sold it, I think they may like two 50 or 300 K. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. So I think I undervalued what the potential of that place was, but it’s still like, I mean, I’m not going to complain too much about 40 or 50 grand on a wholesale where I didn’t have to do any fix up a cleanup.

Mike: So I think the lesson here is get the right tools to make it easy for you. And then don’t assume that you’re bugging people as long as you really are [00:33:00] following up and paying attention and listening to them. I mean, you know, just like that one, you just mentioned, uh, for most people that are in a difficult situation, they don’t have a lot of money.

There’s some financial distress there, or they don’t have the means or even interest in fixing up a house. Their situation generally is not going to get better. Whether it’s months or years, like it’s just going to continue down a path of deterioration probably and more financial distress. And so staying on top of people with their best interest in mind.

Right. Just following up, checking in, always trying to serve people first because they’re going to have to sell it eventually. So, um, you know, why not? Why not have a BDU,

Danny: right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That’s the way to go. And really like the, the big thing. Is is that whole, um, personalization of it. And, you know, if you do it manually, right, that’s easy to do.

You can, you can do that. And if you automate it, make sure you get a system where you can do like short codes and stuff to put in to automatically put in their name or your name or your company name or the house [00:34:00] address. Because those like when it’s automated, but it seems automated. It does the opposite, right.

Of what you’re really trying to do. So. It should be, you can personalize it, but yeah, that’s

Mike: awesome. Well, Danny folks, you’ve got a podcast you’ve been doing. How long have you done your podcast

Danny: for? Oh man, I don’t, I don’t even know. I’ve always, I, I, I sell it short. I’ll say four years, but it’s six or something.

Yeah. I think it’s probably six years. Yeah, it’s

Mike: been awhile. So how do folks find out about your podcasts about your CRM? Like drop some links for a sales where they can

Danny: get. All right. So flipping junkie.com is the, the podcast been around for a long time. Start with episode like 16, if you’re looking for, you know, training to get started in this business, because I started doing a sequence of starting with mindset, motivation to marketing a whole order of things instead of jumping around episode up.

So for like 40 or 50 episodes. Okay. So that was cool. And then if you’re. Um, you know, operating this business yourself or with one partner and you guys are wearing all the hats, you [00:35:00] tired of it. Like I was talking about earlier, I did start actually a new podcast called braver and, uh, that one’s got about nine episodes at this point, I think, but, but it’s really talking about like, what are those, the reasons that we.

You know, self-sabotage or, you know, we’re afraid to grow in and build a team and treat it as more of a business. And so that’s what that, one’s all about. Scott braver, B R a V E R. You can go to bravery FM for that. And then the software is forefront. It’s a different way to do CRM. It’s a visual approach.

Um, everything sort of at a glance and we’ve spent, this is basically why we completely scrapped the last version after paying like a million dollars to build the whole thing. We just like the usability I thought sucked. And so this one, like you can never get lost. You never go one or two clicks deep.

You never like that. That’s the frustration with Podio, right? It’s like all these different apps and all that stuff. And you’re having to click around to get all the info. So we spent a lot of time, even amongst ourselves [00:36:00] in our team, arguing about. Design and how it should work. Like that’s just the most important part of it.

So if you want to check that out, you can go to forefront CRM. That’s F R E F R O N T C R m.com. And then if you want, uh, if you’ve got old leads that you didn’t do a bunch of up. Why not do that now. And so I’ve got a sequence that I can provide. That’s a, as you know, when to send them out the emails and the text messages that you should use, you can get that free.

If you go to a forefront, crm.com/reactivate R E, and then activate when

Mike: you can get that to you. Why those links down in the show notes here. So, Danny, great to see you. Thank you. Great to see you too. And everybody, uh, you’re going to see some amazing things come out of flipper. We’ve been doing the podcast, like I said, for almost eight years, the last year.

Um, I’ve kind of focused on the investor fuel podcast, which if you haven’t listened to that, we interview, uh, members of the investor fuel. [00:37:00] Um, Uh, mastermind and those are just amazing. And, uh, we’re about to do some, some pretty cool things with the FlipNerd podcast, kind of an evolution and where you’re gonna start to see some other hosts and friends of mine, people that are my mastermind, people that I really respect in this industry are going to start to.

Uh, be some hosts of different shows on the flipper platform. So you guys a ton, if you go to flipper.com, you can learn more. You can learn more about our mastermind and investor fuel.com and our Legion, uh, businesses, the investor machine.com, a very cutting edge kind of technique to how we use data there.

So appreciate you guys a bunch and we’ll see you on the next episode. Thanks for listening to today’s show. There are three ways I can help you start or grow your real estate investing business. If you’re a new investor in just getting started, the FlipNerd investor coaching program is the most effective program in America.

I’ve been coaching and mentoring new real estate investors for 10. And my students have literally purchased thousands and thousands of properties. Many of them started with [00:38:00] little to no experience at all. Our program is a paint by numbers program. We tell you exactly what to do week by week to make sure that you don’t get distracted on your way to results.

We show you how to build a real business, not just create another job for yourself. New memberships are limited. You can learn more and apply. Or schedule a call with me and my team at flipnerd.com/coaching. If you’re an experienced investor doing a minimum of 10 deals a year up to 500 deals a year or more, or have a multimillion dollar real estate portfolio already, you should check out our powerful investor fuel real estate investor mastermind over a hundred of the nation’s leading real estate investors are members and it’s not uncommon for our minds.

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