Joe:   What's up guys? Joe, here I am with my good, good and real good friend Rob Swanson from FreedomSoft.

Rob:   What's happening man?

Joe:   Now I love this guy. Listen, we're at a mastermind right now in Tampa, Florida, and I wanted to get Rob on a little podcast slash video here to talk about FreedomSoft. I signed up for FreedomSoft a long time ago when it first came out. When did it first came out?

Rob:   It was first launched in the 09, 10. Somewhere in there. Yeah.

Joe:   And then fast forward about 3 or 4 years. You bought it from that owner and it was a good product. Right? But there were a lot of things. Let's just put this politely that needed to be fixed. I needed a day. That's right. Yeah. That's a good way.

Rob:   It's like a house that needs to be rehabbed.

Joe:   Yes. So Rob is the master rehabber. And he took FreedomSoft. That was good and made it 100 times better. And so I've been using FreedomSoft pretty much ever since you bought it. I mean, I did buy it originally, and then I stopped. And then, you came in. You made it tons faster if you started adding a bunch of features. Like, one of my favorite tools is the zip tool finder, minor zip finder. And it's a tool that tells you the most targeted zip codes to go into where all the activity is, which is awesome. Yeah. So I wanted to bring them on and interesting to you guys because FreedomSoft is an incredible tool. Now, you may be using other tools out there. There's a lot of them out there and they're pretty much all good. Some are better than others right. But it's so important. One of the things I learned early on in my real investing career, Rob, is the importance of no lead left behind right, no left behind. And so whatever anybody's using, they have to have a system that leads don't fall through the cracks because the money is made in the follow up. Right? Totally. And that's something that freedom has done really, really well. So, I wanted to ask you some questions about and a why you why do you want to buy FreedomSoft. What were some of the things that you did to it and where do you want to take it. Yeah. But first let me say this to, I think I already said this, but I use FreedomSoft every day. I use it for houses. I use it for land. I use it to do my direct mail. I use it for my phone numbers. I use it for my websites. I use it for digital signatures. We use it for getting my lists. Now this is really cool and I'm excited about this. I've been able to get house lists forever, but now, soon, maybe even as you're watching this has already been released. There's going to be lists for land that you can get excited for. Yeah, did I mention skip tracing? You can do cold calling. Yep. Create your contracts. Create automated workflow automations like, follow up and all that. So when you learn how to do all of this, the lead stop falling through the cracks and no lead gets left behind. All right, so that's my sales pitch for freedom. So that's how much I'm a fan of his. All right. I'm not trying to butter him up okay. So talk about why did you buy FreedomSoft to begin with and, what was what was the goal?

Rob:   Yeah. So back in the day, it was 2015 when I bought FreedomSoft. So nine years ago. So I've had nine years of kind of ripping it apart, looking under the covers and saying, okay, what do we want to make this thing into? And, you know, I've been an active investor for over 20 years, flip houses all over the country. And, I was looking for a system that I could simplify because I think, you know, I always say the three word simple system scale. Right.

Joe:   And I stole those from you, by the way, yet and I still talk about them all the time. They give you credit.

Rob:   Well, I like it. That's awesome.

Joe:   It's simple system scale. Yeah.

Rob:   Because if you if you keep it simple, you and someone else can do it. Yeah. If you build a system, you and someone else will do it. Yeah. And then if you kind of let the system build and do what it's supposed to do, you can get out of the way and you can let the business scale. Now, scale doesn't have to mean you build a monster. It's saying scale. Sometimes it's just getting more out with less in right, less input. And what we wanted to do, what I wanted to do with FreedomSoft was I wanted to build something that was central around lead generation, because we're in the sales and marketing business that's real estate investors. And so we built around the concept when I first bought FreedomSoft years ago around the concept that we call Lead Central and that's designed to help you stay organized, automate simply and build around the number one thing that you have to do in your real estate investing or any business. And that's generate leads. So there's a line in the sand or a flag that we'll plant at the top of the hill that I'll stand on all day. And that is you need to organize before you automate. And so we've tried to build FreedomSoft in a way that is naturally organized, but then but and allows you to see what campaigns, what liswhat team members are performing well and then make the adjustments accordingly for those that are. Yeah.

Joe:   And the communication is all inside of the link.

Rob:   And it's all inside.

Joe:   Communications, the emails, the texts, the phone calls.

Rob:   That's right.

Joe:   Direct mail.

Rob:   Exactly. So we built around the concept with our lists, campaigns and workspaces around this concept of lead central, where lead generation is, is the central hub of your business. And then you bolt on. The phone system, and you bolt on the direct mail engine, and you have all of these things as part of an integral system. It just makes it more simple. Yeah. And you know, again, when things are simple, people will use them and people will do so. You know, we the guy or gal that's just getting started, whether they're going full time or part time that, you know, needs to be just out of the box, ready to run, doesn't want to tweak or customize anything. They can run on freedom, soar, right? They can run a rehabbing business. They can run a wholesaling business. They can run in one market or multiple markets. They can run a land flipping business. They can do all of the different things. And then the guy or gal who needs to scale up or has a specific way they want to do business and operations, they can customize and tweak freedom to their business, whether that's tweaking the automations, the email follow up, the text follow up, whether that's tweaking custom fields or, you know, you name it, fill in the blanks.

Joe:   Or they can just buy my custom signature addition of FreedomSoft. Exactly. Which has my contracts, my workflows, my checklist, my marketing pieces, my email follow up sequences, all of that. That's right. And be in my account that I can give my students and clients 100%.

Rob:   And I like the ability for a guy like you who teaches people to use a software and invest in real estate and do a thing for you to customize, and then give that signature edition to your students. The way you do business is pretty awesome. Yeah, and it makes it a lot of fun. You know, we the phone system was essential piece then bolted on to the leads side of stack. And you know whether that's answering in app on your desktop, whether that's going direct to voicemail, whether that's capturing every inbound lead, whether it's a hang up or a voicemail left, or taking live calls right on your iPhone or Android app. Right. Getting people into the field where real estate deals getting done was a key consideration in how we built and what we knew with.

Joe:   Simple system scale. Yep. Sometimes when we try to build systems, it gets all confusing because it's not simple. It's not based on something simple. Yep. And then when we try to scale something that doesn't have good systems around it, it breaks, it falls apart. And it's, you know, it's gets frustrating. Exactly. Well, it's important to start with a simple foundation. Yeah. Though the system around that which FreedomSoft is already done. Yeah.

Rob:   And you know, we did something earlier this year. We released it in January. So what's that? About four months ago. Almost. And, so we released the leads in box with this conversation. And so the thing that we had previously was, was fairly well organized around your lists, around your lead campaigns, and around your workspaces. And for somebody that knew how to look at freedom, saw it just it made sense. Yeah. But one of the things that we wanted to do, and the things that we always think about as a software company is how do we make it more simple, more intuitive, easier for our users to just log in and go? And so we launched the, the leads inbox with Active conversations, which brings your hottest leads, your most recent inbound activity, no matter where that activity is coming from, from any of your marketing campaigns, whether it's phone or text or direct mail or an email, inbound or web form in your leads inbox. Yeah, the newest stuff always hits the top.

Joe:   So if somebody's replying to a text and saying, we're calling you back. Yep. You don't have to go searching for that. It's right there in your inbox.

Rob:   That's right. And you see at the top, everything always comes to the top. It's like your Gmail inbox, right? Our email inbox, the most recent inbound thing is always at the top then adding on the active conversations. People don't always want to see that at the top and then have to click into the record and, you know, communicate. So we have an active conversations pop up that when things hit the top of your inbox, you click the Active Conversations button and you can chat right there. It's a game changer. Oh, and people love it.

Joe:   Yeah, I think it's huge because, it's here's the problem that a lot of people that are just getting started into this is they're totally unorganized. Yeah. And they're completely overwhelmed all a sudden because they've got so many leads coming in from different directions. Right. They're doing cold calling. They're doing direct mail. They're doingpostcards. They're doing letters. They're in this county. They're in this zip code. And it's so easy to get to get lost, lost and buried in this in a sea, not just a post-it notes or yellow legal pad of paper, but maybe even in a CRM getting very upset, and all of a sudden you've got 500 tasks to complete and you've got you don't know what the new communications are. That's right. And not very many CRM can help manage that. It just honestly gets overwhelmed. And I tried to build my own CRM before and it did not work. I figured it out. That's right. I can't do this.

Rob:   So the way the way things are organized with FreedomSoft Joe, you know, lists. Really hold your prospect, right? Lists are, a combination of the total records in your account. And so it starts oftentimes as a prospect. And marketing is done to prospects out of your lists. And then when those prospects respond to your marketing, they get captured in a campaign for tracking. They get automatically flagged in marked as a lead and on your list. Now you see that X marketing was done and Y leads were generated. So you see the performance of your list. Then you look at your campaigns and you say, oh, I have a cold calling campaign, and I have this direct mail campaign in that direct mail campaign and these bandit signs and, you know, this online campaign, and you want to know what campaigns are working the best, what list is working the best.

Joe:   What's the cost per lead?

Rob:   What's the cost per lead, and then what campaign is working the best? Where should I be spending my marketing dollars? And then you distribute those leads. If you're a growing team and you've got team members, you distribute those leads in private workspaces. Yeah. And now you see what list is performing, what campaigns are performing. And then as you distribute those leads into workspaces for team members, you get to see what team members are performing. And so that's kind of that lean central concept that we talk about. And people love it. And the leads and mocks was the thing that sort of centralized all of that and gave people one place to go to log in every time and get their hottest, most active stuff.

Joe:   Yeah, I hope you guys are watching this are just getting started in real estate and you're not overwhelmed by all of this stuff because we're using some big words, right? Lists and campaigns and workflows. And as a direct mail in cold going, you may not even know what that is. Yeah, but that's okay. One of the things I love about what you guys have done here is with your support, there's a green button at the top says need help. Question mark I at least five times a day from on my coaching called. I'm working with clients. I'm telling them to go to that green button and just type in whatever words you weren't looking for. Yeah, cold calling list, comms, rental car like. And you'll see a really good step by step tutorial in there. You guys have put a lot of resource into that and you're constantly updating.

Rob:   Well, we're constantly updating because we're always trying to make the product better. Right? This is not a static product. I invest heavily and the development team and innovation in like I think about where the future of technology is going in the future of CRM, where that's headed. And we invest heavily. But because of that, I've got a full time, dedicated guy whose primary job is to make sure that our helpdesk and our support center is up to date and trained on new things that we roll out, because if we're going to be leaders in the space, we always have to be innovating and we always have to be doing something new. And so that new thing needs to be communicated with our customers.

Joe:   And no question is too dumb. We still got we're going to time, I think. Totally. Okay. Yeah, yeah. No questions too. Don't know. I get all my clients tell me all the time. I talked to him. I talked to them like, these guys are awesome, amazing. They're really helping with this thing. They actually will get on zoom with them. Yeah, and show them how to do what they're doing.

Rob:   Yeah. So here's the thing. We don't often take inbound phone calls. And I'll tell you why. Because it overwhelms the support teacher. But what we do is we take a ticket, we read the ticket. Yeah. And then we do one of two things. We either shoot a video to show somebody their specific question in their specific account, exactly how to do it, and we send it back to them, or we call them and we jump on the phone and walk them through. Yeah. And so sometimes once people figure out that, oh, these guys are really responsive, I don't need to jump on the phone. Now we have a live chat because the chat is easy again, for us to shoot a Loom and drop us a chat. Right now.

Joe:   A Loom is, like a little video.

Rob:   Yeah, a little video that shows people exactly how to do it. So our support team is dialed. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to I'm going to pat their back because they knew a really good job and they care about our customers. That's why they do a great job.

Joe:   Cool. Let's talk about the future. Really. Where do you see it going in the next six months, 12 months? A couple of years? Yep. What are some cool development things that are coming up? Yep. So, yeah.

Rob:   So, a few things. We, we're leaning into AI, right? We're leaning into it, and we're asking the question, what is the thing without being just gimmicky, right? Yes. We could create something AI driven and launch it and people will buy it. But does it really serve the customer? Has AI been figured out in real estate investing around lead generation, around automation, around follow up, around chat, all of the things that really helps the customer. What was more real estate deal? That's the bottom line question.

Joe:   Or it's just a gimmick.

Rob:   Or else it's just a gimmick. And, you know, we can sell gimmicks, but I don't sleep good at night if we just sell gimmicks. So we spend a lot of time thinking about what is the future of AI and how does it impact our. Customers around list building and data and that kind of thing. And so I'm about a year and a half ago, we started to do some testing around, a protocol that we've built called deal AI, and it powers a variety of different things, and it can power of variety of different things. We launched it initially around a tool inside a freedom shop called the Dig Tool. And basically the dig tool takes any search you do for any property, or any lead you generate. And it digs up additional opportunities for or motivation. And what's really cool about that is it looks at your lists, it looks at your leads, and it says you've probably seen the Amazon stores where you go and you buy something. And then it says, you know, people also buy this or people also like that. That's what the Dig tool does. Yeah. You get a lead in and the dig tool pops up and it says we found these eight additional opportunities. So it amplifies. It amplifies your lead generation on a multiple of eight. Every lead you get in every address you search, you get eight opportunities that you can add to your opportunity list and do marketing to all call skip trace. Yeah, it's really powerful. Yeah. And so that's a future thing we've got.

Joe:   We already have a lot of that already.

Rob:   We've got that. But we're building deeper okay. We're building deeper integration. We're building deeper intelligence. We're going to build ways for that, to connect through more parts of the application. Yeah. And do things behind the scenes that the customer will not even know is happening. That helps them generate more opportunities with less work.

Joe:   You've recently released a deal, Bot Negotiator. Is that kind of what you're talking about in terms of negotiating? Like it's is that is that working? How's that going?

Rob:   Yeah, it's working great. We basically took proven script our house buying script. Yeah. And we put it into an online system that, somebody can go to a web form, begin interacting through the steps of this process and basically get to the end of the process with already having told you what their lowest price is, or if they will sell on terms and if they'll sell on terms, what they'll take on a monthly basis. And through the step process, you gather all ofthe information around the deal that you need to know as a real estate investor. And so we find that people, two types of people love it, introverts that don't want to talk to people that just want to drive traffic online and let the system kind of do some of that works. They love it because they don't then have to talk to people and, and the other people that love it are operators or people that are trying to grow a business, but they're trying to balance and have a life at the same time. Yeah. And they want something out there that's kind of working 24 over seven to help them get them deals. So they wakes up in the morning, log in in their leads, inbox a deal negotiator opportunity them and they can jump right off.

Joe:   The that could come from direct mail. It could come from a PPC or a Google ads. Right. Something like that. That's right. Awesome. Anything else you guys are working on? Some about getting lists for vacant land inside of FreedomSoft.

Rob:   That's coming man. Like so we've been talking about that for a while. Yes.

Joe:   And I don't bug you at all about that now do I?

Rob:   He bugs me all the time. But to be honest with you, I get a text from him at least once a week. But I get it. Like, I totally get it. And it is coming. In fact, as we were standing over there a few minutes ago, I said, okay, Joe, help me make sure that when we bring the land data into freedom, saw that we do it the right way. And you sent me an email and I forwarded it to my team because we've got all the data we just now need to make it fully usable to the people on the other side of the screen. Right? Yeah. And, that's what the team is working on right now. And we're so close.

Joe:   I will keep on bugging him. Okay. We got three minutes. Got. So basically what I love about FreedomSoft is, if he gets a custom Joe McCall signature edition of FreedomSoft, which is awesome. I'm excited about that. Basically, you're going to go into FreedomSoft and say, all right, I want to go into this county. You're going to be able to download a list of vacant landowners that maybe I've owned it for over ten years, that live outside the county, that have between 2 and 10 acres, let's say. Yeah, you're going to take that list and you don't have to know. Import download. Oh, fancy, complicated, weird stuff. It's just like, okay, but.

Rob:   Save to list.

Joe:   It's in a list, right? Then you can, what I like to do. And by the way, we're going to be doing I'm just giving you a heads up. Stay tuned, because we're going to be doing some live workshops where we're actually going to be doing this, and all the information will be down below in the description. Okay, maybe in the comments or something like that let you take that list. Then you can skip trees. You don't. Skip, trace the full 5000 records or whatever, right? Just skip series 20 them and you could do a quick cold calling campaign if you wanted to, right that in there. And then you could also download I mean, not download like check 20 of them, 40 of them, 100 of them and do a quick, simple direct mail campaign. That's it. I'll rewind a little bit. You get a phone number. Yeah. For that campaign. So it's a virtual phone number that all of the leads that go to that number you put into that campaign right there. And All right. So then you cold call them skip tracing. When cold call them. You could send them some direct mail. Yep. As the lead start coming in you can talk to the sellers. You can text the sellers right from inside the system. Yep. You can create an offer. And I like to send my offers into the in the direct mail. Like in the mail. Yeah. But I also text the offers to the sellers. I email the offers to the sellers, I'm send it in the mail and you can do electronic signatures as well. This is awesome. All right, all right. Did you get a deal under contract? Put it on your website. Upload some pictures. Yeah, right. You can track all of the contracts, the attachments, the inspections, the closing statements, all of that I can just upload into there.

Rob:   You never have to leave FreedomSoft.

Joe:   No. So this is why I'm excited to talk about FreedomSoft for you guys. Because again, if you get the Joe McCall Custom Signature Edition, I love that term. You get my signature edition of FreedomSoft. I do get a commission on it, but this is something that I use every single day for my own business. But I'm going to give to you guys the contracts that I use, the letters, postcards that I use, the workflow, automations, automations like the sequences. I'm like, all right. When the status changes to this, then do these three things up. Send an email, send the text, add a task, send a direct mail, stop the direct mail, add them to your do not call list or set reminders. It's just like, yeah, we could talk for an hour about working automations with credible, but you get all of my websites. What else? Like we can use your custom defined fields and all that, but like you get it specifically the way I like to do vacant land. Yeah. Which in my opinion is the best way to do back up my. I don't know if they will see. Totally. But Anyways, guys, down below this video in the description, is a link where you can go get more information on how to sign up for FreedomSoft. Just try it out. I think you're going to love it. And I'm excited about what we've got coming in the future. I talk about FreedomSoft every day I'm a huge fanboy. A little embarrassing, but it is what it is, right? I love tools and technology that make my life, my studentslives easier. All right. Thank you Rob, for being on my show. Appreciate it.  Have a good one.

Rob:   Appreciate it, you bet.