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this is the bigger pockets podcast show 4 39. you're listening to bigger pockets radio simplifying real estate for investors large and small if you're here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype you're in the right place stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com your home for real estate investing online what's going on everyone it's brandon turner host of the bigger pockets podcast here with uh david green in the sea shed again because we literally just recorded two episodes in a row it was last week's with marie forleo and this week where we're going to talk about that episode a little bit david green what's up man welcome to the sea show again thank you very much i'm glad i got to be here this is uh still raining also yes it is it's been raining this entire time a week later we haven't been able to leave please send food we're starving it never rains here i like live in the desert but it's been raining in the last couple days uh anyway so today like we said this show is going to unpack uh and really go in depth on a few different topics first of all we're gonna talk a lot about this idea of everything is figure out able meaning how can real estate investors apply this to their life of like figuring out asking how do i accomplish this not can i accomplish this we talk about that we also talk a bit about uh the idea of calling yourself a real estate investor if you're not one yet if you're brand new like how do you do you fake it so you make it uh we talk about that and or do you how you don't want to turn people off if you're brand new so how do you build that credibility when you're young like we talk a lot about that and then third we're going to talk uh in depth about marketing about some of the ways that you can stand out as a marketer and when i say marketing i mean like you know whether you're buying properties selling properties trying to raise private capital try to talk to people that give you money from a private lending standpoint talking to hard money lenders doing direct mail marketing all of that is marketing it's basically how to get your business going uh it's the fuel that runs your business in every aspect we talk a lot about that today as well so that's kind of a roundup of today's show but before we get to that let's get to today's quick tip all right today's quick tip is very simple and it's brought to you by our good friend and producer kevin kevin welcome to the show man what's your quick tip and always be ready always i was sitting here i was sitting here finished this interview with marie forleo i was kind of uh feeling really accomplished for booking such a big name on the show i was planning out the rest of my holiday and brandon says hey why don't you join us for a little wrap up here like no like join us now do you even have now i don't have a mic ironically so um i'm the producer whose audio sounds terrible and all the guys who have been on the show who have been really strict about their mics are gonna get a laugh out of this so yeah we literally gave kevin like a 30 second you were like like i don't know man and i was like we used the method from marie it's like is the fear your gps here that telling you to go towards it and uh you did it and you cut you crushed it today kevin you could i hope so we talk a lot about the basement guys so stick uh stick around for that and uh you know i get a little vulnerable about my own business uh challenges here yeah and we'll explain a little bit more in the uh in the episode who you are in in terms of like your real estate journey uh and kevin is just an awesome dude we're honored to have you as a you know producer on the show kevin so thank you for doing that and for joining us on this episode and now time to get into the interview with kevin kevin remind me leahy or the lee hey yes that's how i brand myself and set myself apart from the other in the world okay leahey like a hawaii and you have a lay like yodel [Music] [Laughter] there it is kevin leahy that might actually stick as your brand from this point let's remember that when he comes on next time every time we're gonna we're gonna i think it should be announced every time you do a show with a yodeler that actually announces your presence and have anybody here the traditional uh investments of course well that's that's a given come on kevin all right well with that said that was uh last week's show with marie if you guys did not listen to last week's show with marie it was phenomenal uh it was episode number three no 437 with marie forleo uh you don't have to listen to that episode in order to listen to this one though i definitely recommend it because we're gonna unpack a few things she said uh specifically like i said we're gonna talk today about kind of uh marketing we'll talk about that about faking it to you make it uh and also a little bit about this concept of everything is figure out able so kevin thanks for uh joining us today thank you guys for kind of bringing me out of the shadows here everything is figureoutable uh when i first heard that phrase uh her book came out like a year ago or something like that i heard it and i was like that's a cool phrase and then i never bought the book until like i don't know what a month ago or whatever or a couple weeks ago when i knew she was gonna come on the show i was like i gotta read that book so i read it and marie is very much you guys will notice if you look at online she's very much teaches mostly women and same way bigger pockets is like 80 percent male listeners i think it is like kevin do you know what percentage is it still 70 80 yeah it's about 80 80 okay yeah hers is like opposite so it's like 80 i think female and so like it's not a book i'd naturally pick up but i wasn't kidding it really is one of those books i will probably like recommend over and over it's kind of like the compound effect not in this in the content but in the fact that it's like this is like the ultimate development book for like i could you could go read 20 different books or you could read everything is figure editable and it has all the things that i'd want you to go read in the other books that make sense yeah so it's kind of like yeah one it's like one ring to rule them all one ring ring to buy them yeah anyway that's that's one book to bind them all anyway uh but the phrase stand off with your expectation here really that beard's definitely influencing your speech here your communication style by the way i was i was somewhere yesterday and i said the line that somebody said you're late and i said that was with me oh was it yeah you need to get it right that's right you were the one that screwed that up i was like uh brandon is never late he arrives precisely when he means to and david had no idea what i was talking about kevin do you know what i'm talking about no i assume it's a quote from lord of the rings gee that's a quote from lord of the rings you guys are not nerdy enough for this show all right uh everything is figure-aboutable that the phrase what are your thoughts on that what came to mind when you heard that david first thing is that it flies in the face of excuses yeah because just everything is figure-out-able if that's true then when we tell ourselves things like i can't do this then everything is figurable isn't true so the first thing i really liked about it is that it forces you to analyze the belief system you currently have do you believe everything is figure outable or do you believe that the system is rigged against you and you can't make it unless fill in the blank the second thing i liked about it is that it's also an invitation to figure things out to tinker with things to try to pull them apart look at how all the pieces fit together which i i would say that everybody here speaking agrees that's a healthier mindset to approach to something new is yeah is can i look and see how this all works together yeah yeah it's really good and i like that it's like a quite it invites your mind to start working because it's a question it leads to the question how do i figure this out right so like everything is figured out all these two how do i figure this thing out um which goes to the kiyosaki quote of like the wealthy say i can't afford the or the rich that how do i afford it where the poor say i can't afford it the same thing is like like i've been talking my daughter a lot who's four right rosie i say like instead of saying i can't do it it's how do i do it like i can't figure this out i can i always i tell the story once in a while of my daughter uh she had this one of those blocks you know those blocks where like you put the shapes inside and the shapes only fit a certain way yeah so you got to put the it's a little square in the round hole yeah exactly it doesn't work the square doesn't go in the round you gotta put the round around and this is like a year ago and she's got this box and she's trying to put this shape in the box and it won't fit and she's getting angry and angry and i'm watching she's you know three at the time so she's like super cute and she's trying to put this thing in the box and she's getting angry and angry she's like she just takes it and throws it across the room like little three-year-old rosie just screams and throws it it was just the perfect picture of like frustration of what we all go through with different things then she goes she takes like three deep breaths and she stomps over to it she picks up this box and she takes the piece and she shoves it back in there and this time she turns it a little bit and slides right in it was the right piece it was actually just like she just had it turn wrong right it was like going in kind of diagonal and so when i saw that i just thought of this picture this perfect picture of our life of like we are trying to push things in this box all the time i want to get this real estate business going i'm trying to start this whatever you're trying to do i'm trying to lose weight i'm trying to improve my marriage and i just keep pushing this piece and it's not going and we want to throw it across the room but sometimes it's just a little tweak and it's asking the question how do i make this fit if it's figure-out-able if we take that belief it's figure-out-able now it's just a matter of twisting and all of a sudden the energy like it's so much easier because now we're not pushing we're just twisting a little bit so the question i have for you guys is is it everyone listening is there an area of your life right now where you feel like you're pushing really really hard on something and getting frustrated that it's not working and really it maybe just needs a little tweak maybe you just need to take some deep breaths like rosie did and take some tweaks kevin i want to throw that at you you might have an area that you're struggling with right now in that maybe you do but i'm also wondering where have you in your life use this idea of everything as figure outable just like rosie when she threw the thing down she wasn't detaching from the problem that she was looking at she was so wrapped up in it and and so emotional about it and that little moment of detachment jocko talks about that too but that kind of stepping back and what i really like about marie and how i discovered her was through my wife who you know i was actually facing the decision about whether i should take the bigger pockets job or this other job the other job offer was actually real brandon it wasn't just a negotiating with you okay i didn't know i didn't know i i wondered if you were just playing with me yeah i don't think you were buying it it was real and uh you know the bigger pockets one now of course it looks great but at the time it was more risky and um the other one was a little bit more of a sure thing kind of mainstream um and my wife said you know i know this woman marie forleo and she has this trick that she does whenever she's facing a big decision or feeling a little too close to something and has to make a high leverage decision and what she does is she takes a step back and ask yourself the question or writes it down and says does this let me see how my body actually reacts to this does my body actually expand and like do i take a deep breath or do i contract and hunch my shoulders up and kind of feel like in a defensive crouch and i did that and i was like man that is so good because it takes it brings you a step back from the thing that that's making you emotional and you're swept up in it and allows you a little bit of detachment same thing with writing things down as she talked about in the show i think it just gives you a little bit of perspective and allows you to kind of slow down and think about things and um so i think that's kind of you know in my own real estate investing business i've done the thing where you know you send direct mail you don't have a clear strategy i've heard thousands of people on the podcast say you need to be consistent about direct mail and somehow i think i'm going to be the one person who's different and send it once and get a reply right but a lot of times you just get wrapped up in that oh man everyone else is getting deals on social media i'm not there yet but if you take a step back and you think and you write it down okay what have i done how many pieces have i sent how many people have i sent those two to three times too what have i really said to them if you just sit there and write all that down it just doesn't look like a personal thing anymore it's like you just your strategy hasn't been good enough or you haven't given it enough time so i think that's kind of how i would apply today to a real estate investing example so in other words the the reason you're here is because of marie we owe marie everything absolutely thank you marie thank you marie forleo for for bringing kevin to our to our life all right david what do you think on that before we move on to the second kind of note from today what i was thinking when this was being discussed is that intensity can be a red flag that you need to slow down and detach when you feel yourself with intense emotions trying to shove something in what i think about is when your phone freezes and your screen's not responding what do we all do smash on it right just even more this isn't working let me do more of what doesn't work because there's a i don't know where it comes from there's a piece of us that just feels gratified by intensely trying to push through a problem that's real quick my dad my dad my mom and dad are visiting right now here in hawaii and uh my wife was just laughing at me yes or joking with me yesterday because she watched my dad try to answer his phone and he grabs his phone and it's ringing and he can't press the button it's not answering he's like it's not answer it's not ant and he's just like just hitting his phone smashing his phone until it stops ringing because they hang up finally or it goes to voicemail and like he just i'm like all i want to do is like dad dad like we want to be like dad just just slowly put your finger on the button and then slide it to answer that's all you got to do but it's pressing harder and harder so anyway and it would have taken detachment for him to see that correct there you go so you know people are always going to have intense responses monitor yourself and when you're feeling that emotion say okay wait a minute i'm doing it let me take a step back i've seen this a lot of time from new investors trying to force a deal that's not going to work so i get the question of how do i make this seller take my offer what's the negotiating instruction what's the negotiating strategy that i can use to convince them to sell this to me for way less than asking price even though they have seven other offers at asking price and i just tell them you're working on the wrong deal there's intensity is not gonna get this thing solved you need to step back find a person in a different situation so that's the advice i'd have for everybody here is when you find yourself frustrated and responding with intensity remember brandon's beautiful voice and kevin's great example detach for a minute and ask yourself if this is the best tool to use to solve the problem that's good well second thing i wanted to pull up from today's interview was this idea of calling yourself a business owner in our case a real estate investor before you actually are one and i wanted to get your thoughts on this kevin i know like you're you're you've started your real estate by the way you want to give like a 10 second background on your real estate real quick what are you doing then i'm gonna answer the question um like what are your thoughts on that like is it misrepresenting yourself to tell everyone you're a real estate investor but first let's give you a background give a little insight who you are yeah so i kind of i i skipped straight to the rental property kind of phase of the real estate investing career so i turned my primary residence into a rental then bought a house hack and so i do own three units in washington dc which is like nothing sneeze that given that the values here um but but you know i had less confidence in can i go out and negotiate a deal directly with someone in their living room right do i kind of skipped over since i always had an agent helping me with the title and escrow process and the contract side do i actually know how to do all the steps involved in writing up a contract and figuring out someone's pain point and figuring out ways around that and so that's kind of the phase of investing i'm in where i'm trying to find off market deals um and you know there's a lot of there's a lot that comes with that that you haven't done before and um so that's kind of right now the the phase that i'm in is trying to figure out how to make a direct seller business work and so how do you feel when you're talking to a seller if you're going to reach out to them like you're not you're you like if you were to say yeah i buy houses all over the dc area like that would be probably misrepresenting right because you don't buy them all over there so how do you how do you cross out without lying without misrepresenting yourself how do you also communicate that you're somebody to be trusted as a real estate investor even though you're just getting started and i think it makes it worse when i show up and they see that i look like i'm 16 years old um and james david talked about that on his show with us med robin the waiter and he said dude at the time i looked like i was 12. um and so it's hard to get people to take you seriously but you know i think the the authenticity i think a lot of people are gonna see through it if you're going out and saying we've been in this business so you know so long and we flipped this many houses but i also think you know if you're someone like me who's going out and looking at deals and you might either be doing a joint venture with someone because i don't have that much experience in renovations or you're possibly looking at wholesaling a deal i think it's good to just come out and be honest about that and say hey i work with various investors who have cash that they want to deploy and they actually need to deploy and they need projects and so i have various people we may close in in their name but i'll put down this big earnest money deposit so that you're secure and so i think a lot of people get into wholesaling or trying to dig up deals and they feel uneasy about that because they're like well i'm representing myself as this cash buyer they might know i don't have 600 000 sitting around but if you just represent yourself as hey i'm involved in the real estate game i have some rental properties we're always looking for more we work with other people who have flipping businesses you know uh joe asamo is a guy that i could buy i could buy a deal with him so why don't i just represent myself that way with the with the seller and i think everyone knows that in businesses there's a marketing side i can say hey my partner handles the financing side so i'll ask him about that right instead of saying yeah i have the money myself um so yeah i think it's you know being being open about that and kind of thinking to yourself um from the other person's side does it make any sense if i show up to them and i say yeah i have cash ready to go to buy a house right now i think their bs detector is going to start um you know firing off a little bit if i do that but if i said hey i work with investors i go out and knock doors and get deals that makes sense i think you're exactly right there and that like if you're tr they're going to read through your if you're lying like yo i've got hundreds of thousand dollars in here but if you're like honest like i've got private lenders or i got partners or i'm a piece of the deal like they're gonna be like oh okay great they want to solve their problems so they i don't think they're gonna care as much david what do you think on that the fake a team make it versus you know be honest i'm not a fan of fake it till you make it i'm a fan of uh the truth well told so you explain to somebody what you're doing without ever lying but that doesn't mean you just poorly throw it out there actually i don't have any money at all and i'm just praying that i can find someone that would buy your deal and if they don't sorry man but i'm not gonna buy it yeah okay what it really comes down to is how you communicate what you're looking to do honestly which is what we talked about in today's show marketing yeah marketing is your ability to communicate and i think that is the secret and you said something when we got done that this isn't talked about enough but it's probably the most important skill anybody could have in any business yeah agreed and that's actually the third thing yeah i wanted to talk about here today here at the ending is is just that idea that of marketing being a marketer a lot of people might have heard marie say that and they're just thinking well murray has an online business she teaches people how to do online business that doesn't apply to me but like marketing is everything let me give an example and like of how i use marketing in my real estate like at a at a big level oh yeah and it's a small level and it's a big level but for example um so my fun i have a real estate fund we raise a lot of money we buy mobile home parks right but if i just say i you know i've got a fund i'm just like everybody else right so i had to ask how do i communicate what my fund does better than other funds or other syndication projects how do i communicate that better so i find ways to do that i come up with new branding or new names or i find a special a special niche that i think we have a really unique angle at that's what that when i think marketing from real estate that's what i'm talking about the same thing could apply to hey i want to be a better marketer for my first duplex okay well what does that mean like maybe you are like really good at if you decide you want to be the duplex person in cincinnati great so get really good at that how do you market to people who own duplexes well maybe that means going to like list source or going to uh one of the other one prop stream and getting a list of all the duplexes in cincinnati and then writing a letter what's that letter going to say that's marketing is how do you communicate your the one that they should be talking to that they they should buy from for or sell to it it's really the same thing here uh and that's what a marketing is so i think marketing and communication is just so under used and talked about in real estate because we just think of real we don't for some reason we don't think of real estate as a business you know like it's crazy but it it is a business but why don't we think of it that way because we call it investing yeah that's okay when you're buying stocks you're not really running a business you're just pushing a button and i think because a lot of people take that stock mentality into real estate by the way have you noticed that that there's a lot to get into it that think that the goal is to buy low and sell high which is how you make money with stocks but it's not even it's one way you make money with real estate was probably not even the biggest one i think that's the problem is that's a really good point david never thought of that before i think that's where the the virus comes from is that's and then that's why people get frustrated with real estate too because it's not as easy as pushing a button to buy a stock like this comes up all the time stocks are real estate and i hate this argument because it's always worded like which one will make you more money but they're not apples and apples no stocks are a lot easier there's a lot less that you're doing yeah you can get a lower return in stocks and it still could make sense because you're not doing all the work real estate has more more work going into it so that's one of the reasons that you and i have been slowly subtly working in business into real estate because we want people to start thinking of themselves as a business owner and identifying as a business owner instead of a passive investor which is why we're bringing on people like ed milette and marie forleo and like these guests that are coming on the weekend shows because like this is a trade this is what you need to succeed long term a bit at the business of real estate is you need to understand these concepts kevin what do you think on this whole idea of marketing like how do you use this in your business how do you see people using it correctly well first of all i love bringing great marketers on the show because there's this moment on the show where they say okay i have this concept and i like to call it and i can see brandon and his face starting to get jealous because he didn't think of that phrase and that happened with uh that happened with marie today right brandon goes everything is figure out about i love this concept but i can see the jealousy on his face and he wanted to get to these phrases first right so um you know i think once you turn on this we talk about the reticular activating system and how if you're looking for to buy a truck you see trucks everywhere i think once you turn this on you will see it everywhere with any kind of marketing i was walking to the mailbox the other day and i saw a truck with a contractor and it said the basement guy and it just had a picture of his face that was all there was no like fancy branding or anything like that but i was like he's the basement guy and now like in my mind he has associated himself with basements and all the properties out here in dc have basements and he probably deals with moisture and probably pretty does pretty dang well for himself with his little um business out of his f-150 so i think uh once you start noticing that marketing stuff like on the business podcast the bigger pockets business podcast number three we have brent underwood who's a fantastic marketer brandon you're friends with probably one of the best marketers on the planet he's awesome and he does little things like he has a hostel that he runs in austin but i guarantee you he asked himself how can we be different from all the other hostels in austin and he got a goat and the goat you know chews the grass on the property and there's probably all kinds of tax benefits and stuff that come with that but but also everyone probably takes selfies with the goat that stays at his place and then posts them online and he's the goat hostile guy and so once you start seeing those things you can think to yourself okay what can i do with my mailer what can i do on my website that just sets me apart a little bit i don't have to completely reinvent the wheel but how can i carve out something and be that go-to guy in my area do you remember tucker marahu back the first time we had on the show he talked about this he had his dog his mailer was like whatever his dog's name was i don't know chief or something like that chief buys houses and it was like this big mass stiff i think it was like that was the postcard with his dog i think he even said that he would choose the areas of portland where people are really into dogs and he's got marketing there you know um and that's just taking that extra step to think about um what the person on the other side of that marketing piece i'm spending two bucks on the piece isn't it worth spending a little time thinking what's going to stand out to them and what's going to stick in their mind because they're not going to probably be ready to buy their house to sell their house the first time they receive a letter it's really good you know one thing i've been thinking about lately uh i'm still trying to put like a framework behind this and i'm just talking through it so i'll talk through it with you guys real quick um is like i was talking to somebody who had kind of a commodity type business i didn't remember who the person was or what they were doing but it was something like selling some product and we were talking about like how do you differentiate yourself to sell that and real estate is very similar there's a lot of people trying to buy houses right now we are a commodity business in a way in that like if i was a motivated seller i could sell to you or i could celtic you know david i saw the kevin i could sell one of the listeners on the show this anybody could solve my problem probably just like if i was gonna buy you know a toothbrush there's a hundred companies i can sell my toothbrush so how do you differentiate yourself uh and i came up with a couple thoughts one think of bulletproof coffee so bulletproof coffee is an example of marketing in which if you're not familiar with bulletproof bulletproof is a type of coffee where you add coffee with like grass-fed butter m with mct oil or mtc oil whatever it is like the oil some like basically coconut type oil and then there's like ah there's something else you do to it anyway the point being like it's like just like a formula of like three things you add to your coffee it's supposed to make you more awake and aware it's got more fat content with the butter but bulletproof was like the guy dave asprey i think is his name like he basically created this new thing which was like butter with i'm sorry coffee with like fat in it then he labels it as like bulletproof coffee as a thing and then who are you going to buy your coffee through well i'm going to buy it through bulletproof coffee companies in other words he created a category this is where i'm getting out with this is he created a brand new category and then happened to fulfill that category that's one really good way of marketing i did that in a way with my with my fund is we created a cash growth fund it's a growth that like i mean i don't need to go into it but basically we have a dip like we created a brand new type of real estate fund and then i'm i'm the only guy that does that now in reality it's yes there's a spin to it and yes there's other funds that are great but our unique thing that's we created the category but another way to do it would be like tom's shoes so what did tom's do tom says buy a pair of shoes give up they give a pair of shoes to somebody in need like over in you know in a country where they don't have shoes like so in other words shoes are commodity you can buy shoes from anybody they're all if you go to walmart target and buy shoes why would you buy from toms because now you're doing something good people want to do good for the world so that's another way that you can differentiate your product is by like how can you make them feel better it's kind of a simon cynic start with why like they want to buy they they don't want to buy what you have they want to buy why you have it i've heard that phrase before uh and then sometimes it's just the cheapest option like can you give people the best deal ever like some people just are really good at like this is just either a superior product or the cheapest product so really there's four things in this framework right the best product you're offering so you can offer a seller the best price or you can sell a house that's better than every other house on the market there's the cheapest option i can give a better deal than anything else so i can you know whatever that is i don't know for buying a property and then there's the category section being a category you create your own and then there's was the fourth one i don't know whatever i just mentioned whatever it was those are those like the four of like how to differentiate yourself so anyway this is a thought that's been in my head you can cut that whole thing out if you want to because it's kind of long but i've been trying to like put that into a framework what do you think on that i think this is why you're the best marketer that i just came up with all of that on the fly well thanks it's been in my head for a long time much longer than it should have so thank you but yeah you're you're absolutely right you do you do have to differentiate yourself but i probably want to highlight it doesn't have to be something radical i agree it doesn't have to be i'm the goat person right like i think i did that with my real estate team by saying we are real estate agents that help that think like investors so we approach this from a perspective of i am protecting your income and helping make build you wealth through real estate which was different than i'm the local blank expert or i hold your hand better than everyone else we said no what we're good at doing is making you money through real estate that's what we're gonna help with and then i built a team around that because that's what the needs but what you did there and you may not even notice that you did it is you you implied everyone else all those other agents out there they are not going to make you money well that's exactly right right and they're not yeah we're going to make you money we're the only ones that can make you money and i would even say that that fits in the category thing we are a category that's unique in this area and that we are investor agents that understand investing and as a category and you need a name for it like you know we are a uh we are in you know green investors and it's investors who understand uh yeah but we're a bunch of greenies yeah like when you put a name to it now you're bulletproof coffee you invented a brand new thing and not that you're the only one in the world doing it but to the client that you're talking with in my world you're the only one that's the secret like when someone wants to sell their house i'm saying listen we're going to do it this way because this is going to get net you the very most you could possibly get i'm not going to be the cheapest one i'm going to be the best one but in that world i'm the basement guy for those people and that's really what you have to do to be successful at whatever business that you're starting is your sphere of people those that follow you those that know you have to see you as boardwalk and park place on the monopoly board you are the you own the real estate of that thing that they're looking at and what kevin is getting into is he's trying to figure out well i want to buy houses in washington dc how do i differentiate myself from the other buyers he's starting that process of going down that road and kevin at a certain point you're going to hit it you're going to pick up traction and boom you're going to be picking up lots of properties and i think it's such a good point that it doesn't have to be a extreme thing right it doesn't have to be we'll buy your house and we'll donate to this charity like like it's like toms was like a radical idea but i thought of kind of a couple subtle ones which like i know david a lot of times if you're choosing between giving someone there's a seller right and they've named their price and you're representing your client and you're either going to give the full price offer and write that offer but then you're going to ask for some concessions and closing like help with closing costs that seller feels so much better about selling you their house at the full price and getting that full price from you then doing it the other way around let me let me undercut you by 5000 and then pay the full closing costs i think that's interesting to think about when you're dealing with directly with homeowners too is like there's a guy named jerry green i think he's in ohio and i heard him on a podcast he talked about how he always would do the standard thing of set an appointment go to the appointment walk through the house point out things you know that might be wrong with the house then give an offer then he switched it and started giving an offer on the phone and then sending a professional inspector to the to the house afterward and i think it's just a psychological thing with sellers where they like that that surety of having the offer over the phone even if later you're gonna ask them for some concessions on the price because you didn't see it and so i think for him like that was a small thing that kind of exploded his business not saying it's gonna work in every market it might not work in my market but it's basically the same steps just in different order you know my brother recently was talking to me because he got a real estate license now he's talking about becoming an agent and uh he was saying like how do i though differentiate myself because i don't have any experience i've never done any deals i'm curious if your answer on this one uh and this does apply to real investors as well so keep listening if you're not you don't care about agency but he said how do i differentiate myself and i said well you don't have the experience you can't pull that card and be like well i'm a little experienced agent so what can you do well if you don't have any clients right now it means you got 24 hours a day that you can serve those people so i was like i would honestly make a guarantee and brand it with something it's called it's called the 10 minute guarantee i will return your phone call in 10 minutes 24 7. guaranteed or i'm going to pay you 100 gift card to whatever restaurant you want or something like that right so like i guarantee you because what's one of the biggest frustrations people have with agents is i can't get ahold of my agent time or but if you were like i 24 7. test me out you call me at three in the morning i don't care i will return your call in 10 minutes or less guaranteed or i'll give you 100 and like that would make me want to work with an agent like if i was someone like oh yeah he owns the category of that like that that's a special thing no one else has ever done and so if you don't have the experience in a business you're going to start what do you have your lack of experience you can make up for in the amount of time if you promise a guarantee like that like people that will mean that would mean the world to especially to those who have dealt with frustration yeah that people aren't calling them back yeah someone like me that might not expect you to that wouldn't go that really far but correct uh i've been pushing this square peg in this round hole they won't answer their phone i'm so sick of it when you see that boom it's gonna draw you yeah right there so imagine him not that he would do this but imagine getting a billboard on the highway it just says we guarantee to call you back in 10 minutes or less or uh we'll pay you 100 the responsive realtor the responsive realtor right yeah and you put that on the thing guaranteed call back in 10 minutes or you know we can show you any home in 30 seconds or 30 minutes or less or whatever that thing is right like yeah not 90 people won't care about that they haven't had that pain point of struggle with an agent that won't come back but thousands of people in an area have had that pain point so you can become the basement guy to those people and that's how you market to those people so whether it's real estate you're investing you're building a business you're an appraiser it doesn't matter what can you do that sets yourself out and then how you show that is what really maria's getting out with marketing so we do all the showing i mean the next level is you can even back into what are those things that are frustrating my clients yeah and you can go on bigger pockets forums and type in agent you know frustrated or something like that and see what people are saying and then and then tune into those you know find whatever forum is gonna is and use that exact language right are you are you tired of your agent never picking up your call there's this guy named like dane something or another i can't remember what i heard him on a smart passive income podcast like 10 years ago probably he did an episode with pat and he has he had a thing called the foundation i don't even think it exists anymore but their whole model of building online businesses was to go to an industry and then just dig not you don't have to be in the industry but just dig in what's your problem what's your problem what's your problem and like you find what their problem is so like for example you go to the dental world and you go and talk to dental hygienists and say what is your problem you really dig and interview a dozen of them or two dozen of them and really find out what they're struggling with and then you go create a product just for them and then that that idea is like you're solving a problem and i always loved that that was one of the better podcasts i think i've ever listened to because it was so like yes like this is so good so if you're how it applies to real estate i would say yeah what are the problems that if you're trying to buy from a motivated seller what are the problems they have what are the things that they get frustrated with and for example at mobile home parks right now the biggest problem that sellers have is people not being able to get financing okay so we stopped for all cash like we we raised enough money that we can offer all cash and then we just burn the properties we immediately go and refinance them with the lender after we buy them but we we are offering all cash on properties because that is one way that we stand out because that was a problem we just kept hearing over and over was that because of kovid all these sellers were getting jerked around because they thought they could close they really couldn't so anyway again asking what's the problem that your customers are having or that potential customers are having it's just such good business this needs to be a solo show because if i could boil down what is an entrepreneur it's a professional problem solver yeah like i'll just give you a couple examples i found out uh last week the mortgage company i started has been in business for about six months now we're in the top 100 loan originators in the country in our six months of business wow right that's crazy and if you probably what's the question you're wondering how did you do that how did you do that right i asked every loan officer i knew what slows you down what's your biggest problem what would you guess that they said uh paperwork yeah really close it's collecting documentation from the borrowers who don't want to do it okay then i went to borrowers and i said what's the worst part loan process having to give all my paperwork having to take the time to do all this stuff when i don't know if i'm getting an answer then i went to people and i said hey you're a loan officer what is your biggest struggle as a new one i don't have anyone to teach me what to do i have to figure this out on my own and i just came up with a system that solved all three of those problems we are going to take junior loan officers they are exciting to get licenses or they are licensed teach them ways to successfully get documentation from the borrower by communicating very clearly why it's so important and making it easier by doing that they made themselves very valuable they got a job they supported the senior loan officer who knew what to do once they had the paperwork that one little solution that i came up with that fixed all three people boom the pipeline flooded and i'm just using this as an example that this is how every single business owner should approach every single thing that they have what's your problem i don't have enough people coming to me asking me to fix up their basement okay do you think people know that you do basements no why don't you brand your f-150 with basement guy now he's gonna have another problem right i'm growing too fast i need people to work with me well how are we gonna solve that problem there's people that need to work that need to learn the business they don't know it yet come up with an apprenticeship model that's all entrepreneurs are doing and real estate is a form of that and this is we're just giving these examples so other people can kind of take what i did apply it to their situation apply it to their scenario and understand and be grateful for problems right that's what creates opportunity entrepreneurs solve problems don't when you throw the thing across the room like rosie did go pick it up and look at it from a different angle and say how do i solve this problem as opposed to i don't want to deal with problems how do i make money without it last closing thought here which is a good one for real estate investors i lost i lost out on a huge deal to one other person and price was not the problem um and i wound up finding out from the seller like what the difference was which which is a great thing to do super painful to do and i you know i was aware of both problems that she had but i just didn't come up with a good solution to solve them whereas the guy who beat me out put an addendum to the contract saying two things number one i'll pay for your moving services with a local company that's an easy one that i just kind of overlooked that was her one pain point the other pain point was she had to talk to one more person which is a classic thing hey i'm ready with this price but i just need to run it by my stepmom she had to do that for me i said okay cool let's talk tomorrow for him he said let's sign this contract you can cancel a contract in 48 hours if you want to for any reason whatsoever that's really good and you know what happened is he got the signature on the paper she must have checked with her and it was okay and then there you go so that's just a perfect example uh in stark terms and a painful lesson of really seek out those problems and then think hard about is there something that i don't know how to do to solve that problem and you know can i conjure that up in a moment that's really good that one tip probably is going to make a lot of people a lot of money just getting let's get the contract signed you can cancel in 48 hours i love that it's it's like because people are much less likely to cancel that's why i like the whole like free trial just dollar free trial just give us your credit card number just gotta cancel within 30 days not a big deal so true you know who else uses this technique very well who's that you when you're writing you are a better writer than me because i just give people information you pull them in but by giving one sentence at a time that creates more and more interest you get them committed to the to reading it and then they actually read it and you do more good for people because they get the the spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down whereas mine's so dry i don't think people read my content as much as yours so that's just as an example right this principle works in many many different things i can see like you want to get somebody into working out going to the gym more often hey just come with me just spot me when we're here yeah right you want to get someone into jiu-jitsu hey let's just like wrestle around for 10 minutes i'll just show you some easy stuff like you get them committing to tiny little pieces and moving forward i know they call this the puppy dog clothes in negotiations i've read that in a couple different negotiation books because or the pet stop pet shop clothes anyway the idea being you're at a pet shop and they're like just take the dog home for the weekend like just bring them back on monday if you're not into it not a big deal no one brings the puppy back in on monday like you just you don't do that that's not a thing right you can't like once it's in your house you fall in love with it so the more you can get people like yeah take the puppy home for the weekend the the significantly higher chance you have of getting them to convert to whatever it is you're trying to do whether they're trying to buy a property sell a property whatever yeah that's that's good kevin look at kevin bringing gold today we'll have to get that guy in the show i'll grill him on the show yeah there you go yeah the guy who beat you out love it all right guys well this has been a fun kind of wrap up and uh yeah it was been really cool so thank you for joining us kevin for your uh debut bigger pockets i like you can i take us out please do for brandon turner and david green oh i screwed it up you're listening to bigger pockets radio simplifying real estate for investors large and small if you're here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype you're in the right place stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others 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