Your Forever Network

What’s up, guys? Hey, welcome back to the show. I’m just here actually dropping off my Christmas cards, it’s a little funny, and I started thinking about the power of my network. We actually sent hundreds of Christmas cards, and in some instances, people that we haven’t talked to. I say we, my wife and I. Some of these are personal, some of these are business. Truthfully, when you do what I do, everything is kind of personal. So my business associates are my personal friends, too. And so it just got me thinking about people that we haven’t talked to for a long time, but we still send out cards and we still try to maintain relationships, and just got me thinking about how important networking is to my business and, honestly, my joy in life. So that’s what I’m going to talk about today, how networking can impact your business in a very significant way.
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 and 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 life and the world around you, and to enable you to turn your dreams of financial freedom into a reality. My name is Mike Hambright from flipnerd.com, and your questions get answered here on the “Real Estate Investing Secrets” show.
What’s up, everybody? Hey, I want to talk about networking today, and specifically, just the power of your network and how it can dramatically change your business. Now, I was about to say, if you’re in sales, you’ll kind of understand this. The truth is, if you’re watching this video and you’re involved in real estate in any way or any trades that serve real estate or anything, we’re all in sales. Like, it doesn’t matter who you are. You’re selling something. It could be a product or a service or it could be yourself. It could be your company, for sure, obviously.
And the reason I thought of this today is . . . you might be able to tell in the back here, I don’t know if you can see on the video here, I’m at the post office. I just dropped off this huge box of personal Christmas cards from my family, and in my life, my business associates, anybody that’s a member of our Mastermind or coaching students, or lots of people, I consider all these people kind of in my personal network. I’ve had a really hard time separating personal from business, and so I don’t really try to anymore. It’s just like, “If you’re in my inner circle, you’re my friend and you’re part of my network, and I want to maintain those relationships with you.” And in some instances, and this is the key to what I want to talk about today, maintain those relationships for years and years, with no expectation of anything. In some instances, it’s just because it brings joy to my life.
I love running into somebody that I haven’t seen for a few years, not that I love not seeing people in my network for a few years. But even when I haven’t seen somebody for a few years, and out of nowhere, something good happens. It could be I just run into them and we catch up and have a great conversation, or it could be they come across a deal that I might be interested in and I’m the first person that they thought of. And you know, the reason for that is that I put a lot of effort into maintaining those relationships. There are people that bring me, to this day, somebody that I served, you know, many, many years ago on something I did that still bring me deals every year.
And it’s like, give you an example, there is somebody that I did a bus tour like six or eight years ago to go around and watch my rehabs and kind of teach new real estate investors how to rehab. And there was a realtor that was on that trip, and we went to a burnout, because I thought that would be kind of a dramatic thing to show people, like, we buy houses like this. And now, every burnout that this person comes across, he always sends it to me. And I close like that, and I let him keep both sides of the commission. And I’m in his network, I’m the guy for that. That’s just one example.
But I think as real estate investors, God, we’re so polarizing. We just . . . like, “I tried this and it didn’t work. I move on to the next thing, move on to the next thing.” And the reality is there are some things that we do, like direct mail, that you can’t give up that fast, because it doesn’t work that fast. You have to do it. I think the average seller that sells their house from direct mail receives like six messages, right, and so many real estate investors give up so fast. Relationships are even more, and it doesn’t really cost you a tremendous amount to build relationships. What it really costs you is having some structure around how to continuously follow up with people without it being a whole lot of work for you, and that’s where a lot of us give up as like, “Ah, it’s too much effort,” and just kind of let people fall off your radar.
So networking is . . . I mean, I’ve done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of deals, and about a third of my deals came through my network, the rest through paid advertising. And if you look at the value of those deals, I’ve made millions of dollars off of my network just from getting deals from people that I touched in one way or another. And so, you know, how do you do that? How do you maintain those relationships?
Well, we could talk about a bunch of software and tools, but what I’d encourage you to do first is lay out a systematic approach to, when you network with people, how to maintain those relationships. And it’s not by getting somebody’s business card and throwing it in a drawer somewhere. It’s by putting that into a CRM or putting it into some sort of system so that you can follow up periodically, and for them, it might feel . . . this is going to sound a little orchestrated, because it is, like, you want it to feel natural. And I don’t think that you should not do this because it feels dirty, because you’re using systems or tools to remind you. At the end of the day, we’re busy, so we need tools and systems to remind us. There’s nothing . . . I mean, you probably have your children or your spouse’s birthday and your anniversary in a calendar somewhere, right, I mean. And it’s not that you wouldn’t remember, but those tools help us stay honest and help us stay on track.
And so there’s nothing wrong with using a systematic approach to reaching out to people now. It doesn’t mean you have to, like, send out autoresponders to thousands of people at once. And when you’re trying to build a more personal relationship, I would encourage you to actually not do that. There’s a place for those, but in relationships that you’ve built that are a little bit closer to home, they’re not just somebody on your mailing list, like there are things that you can do to remind you to reach out, check in, “How’s it going?” It doesn’t have to be, “Let’s go meet for lunch,” every time. It doesn’t have to be these things that take up a lot of your time. It could be just a quick email, like, “Just checking in with you, haven’t heard from you a while. How’s everything going?” It could be, “Here’s a picture of a house that I just picked up, and I thought you’d be interested, you know. If you ever see ones like this, don’t forget about me.” It could be a lot of things. But your network is very, very important.
As we kind of get here, around year end, everybody’s kind of planning. I would encourage you to think in whatever your business is, especially if you’re in real estate investing, but this applies anywhere, to think about how to actually consider networking as a lead generation and advertising channel, maybe even put money towards it, right. We spend a lot of money on other marketing, why not throw a few hundred bucks at some systems and tools a month, that if it takes that, it would be hard to actually spend that on some of these tools, that can help you systematically build a relationship with people. And potentially, if you saw my show a while back, this was the “Investor Fuel” show, where I have my buddy, Beyond Wynn, come on. He’s a master at networking, and he kind of said, “What if you took a third of your budget and you spent it on gifts and networking with people?” That was a little while back, so check out that show. But it’s kind of like mind-blowing. Like, we don’t really think that way.
What if . . . and he just sends little packets to people through a service that have, like, brownies and a card and stuff like that. What if we did those little things and we built a relationship? It’s hard for us to see that that will turn into other business down the road. That could turn into acquisitions of properties. It could turn into better buyers that are paying more than anybody else for your properties than the wholesalers in your market. There’s a lot of things that could come from that. It’s hard to track, so you have to have a little bit of faith.
And most importantly, you have to believe in it. So if you think that, “That sounds interesting, but I don’t know if that really works,” well, then you’re probably not going to do it, so. But I can tell you, your network is everything. It should be everything to you, who you surround yourself with, but importantly, not just people that you know or “I knew of them,” or “If I send them an email, they might reply.” Like, people that will 100% respond to you if you send them an email or a text message or something else, because they know that you’ve put effort into building that relationship, so.
As you enter the new year here, make sure that you put in some focus on that. Speaking of the new year, we actually are having our event in about a week, New Year Freedom, flipnerd.com. It’s a free event, and we have 10 people speaking there. I wasn’t prepared to list them, so, but I’ll tell you a few people that are going to be there. My buddy, Matt Andrews, John Martinez teaching some sales tactics, Trevor Mauch, from Investor Carrot, Todd Swaggerty, from Yellow Letter HQ, Don Ross, from Beast Mode, Jason Lewis, who is a master at teaching how to use VAs, and several more people. I apologize to those that I left off there, but I don’t intend to kind of list everybody.
Newyearfreedom.com, it’s a free event. We’re going to give you the free recordings. It’s live. It’s online, by the way. It’s 100% online, so you can ask your questions in your boxers if you want to, your undies, whatever you want to do, you can join us. And if you can’t join while it’s live, we’re going to give you access to the recordings as well so you can watch it whenever you want. So great event on helping you kind of prepare for the next year, just like the message that I shared with you today about building your network, so.
Appreciate you guys a ton. Hope you have a great week here. And as we come up to the new year here, make sure you are prepared to crush it in the new year. Appreciate you a bunch. We’ll see you soon.
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 and 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 years, and my students have literally purchased thousands and thousands of properties. Many of them started with little to no experience at all. Our program is a paint-by-numbers program, where 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.
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