Joe:  Hey, what's going on? Joel McCall, REI In Your Car Podcast number three.

Joe:  I think about this a lot as we kind of start the new, it's kind of weird, if you have kids, you know what I'm talking about, right? It feels like the fall, you just get out of summer, kids are going back to school. It's kind of a new start. It's almost like a new year in a certain sense, right. You're done with summer vacations, you're plugging back into the grind in a good way. I don't mean grind as a negative thing, but like this is when I like to do some introspection. And I like to think, how did the year go so far? How does the year, the rest of the year look like? And what could I have done better? What can I have better in 2025 so that I would be in a better position than I am now, right? We all have areas that we can improve in. But one of the things I was thinking about was, and I know this would be helpful for you, and I'll share kind of my journey through this as well, but if you had to start all over again in 2025, what would you do?

If you are a real estate investor and you want to do deals, why are you probably listening to this right now? In my opinion, I'm going to tell you what I think. What is the most important thing, the most more important stuff that you should be focused on? I was thinking about this and I was writing down some notes. The first thing I would say, if you are real estate investor and again, had to start all over again, I would focus on becoming a deal finder. It is the more important skill in real estate, learning how to find deals because write this one down. We're not deal creators. We are deal finders. And I know I used to teach like we need to be transaction engineers, right? We need to be able to offer the seller different options based on what their situation is. If they don't have a lot of equity, if they do, if their behind on payments, et cetera. Like it is good in a certain sense to be able to create a deal out of a non-deal if you're doing more of the creative financing stuff. Okay, so I get that. There is a place maybe where you can do more deals, make more money, if you are a transaction engineer, if you understand creative financing, you can give the seller's options. Part of the problem with that is I would argue that I think you will do less deals by being distracted like that, by being a transaction cord like a transaction engineer where you're selling the seller, we can do this or this or do this. And because it can it's confusing. When you're giving them options, it sometimes it makes it hard for them to say yes, because are confused. Not saying you can't do it because I've done lots of deals like that. But the point I'm trying to drive home is it's better to be a deal finder than a deal creator. I can promise you you'll make more money if you learn how to find good deals, not how to create them. You see a lot of deal creators right now getting in trouble. They bought a house with not enough equity, not enough cash flow, just because they got a property with a good interest rate. It doesn't make sense to me, right?

It's got to be a good deal all the way around. It's got to have good numbers. But if you can learn how to be deal finder, you will never be broke again. How do you find deals? Well, you got to understand that it's a marketing business. We're not in the real estate business. We're now in the lease options subject to owner financing, cash, wholesale, rehab, fix and flip, short-term rentals, co-living business. We are in the marketing business, so if we're in the market business, I think it would be it. Really important for you to focus on in your business, doing this all over again, getting really good at marketing. How do you get the phone to ring? How do you get sellers to come to you? And how do you go out and get sellers? So like, there's two different kinds of marketing where leads can come to you or you can go get the leads. And I've always preferred when the leads come to me. So with vacantland, that's why I love direct mail because it works so well. It's because I can send out some postcards to the exact kind of property owners that I want who two to ten acres and this zip code and they've owned it for over ten years and they don't live anywhere near the property that's a great list I can target anybody who calls me from that list will be a deal that I might probably will want to buy make sense so but the point is you've got to if you're going to be a deal finder.

You need to learn how to generate leads so marketing is the most important skill I would focus on that I would study that I would be a student of marketing and find it does not like you have to reinvent the wheel on any of this you just need to find what's working, find other investors that are already doing a lot of deals that are deal finders themselves and figure out how are they getting these leads.Are they doing PPC?Are they doing cold calling, texting, direct mail?Maybe they're doing all of them, but which is the one that's working the best? You know Tiffany High, she has a company called, her and her husband has a company called Results Driven. And you might have seen their ads on Facebook. They do a every month they do a workshop. It's really good. I recommend you check them out. But they talk about OpenBook the results of their marketing. So they do a lot of different kinds of marketing and they will share with you what's working best. It all works, but usually when they share this what works the best is direct mail. It is more expensive, but when you look at it from revenue produced, nothing beats direct mail most of the Sometimes PPC does. All right, so the point is this become a deal finder become a student of marketing and learn how to generate leads. The next thing I'd say you need to focus on if you had to do it all over again, and start over again from scratch, I would learn to get good on the phone. This thing right here. This is a phone and sales is the million-dollar skill. And I say sometimes, listen, if you're not on the phone, you're NOT making money, but you're not Grant Cardone. You're not whoever these sales guys are that are like really popular right now and have six pack abs. Like, you know, you don't have six-pack abs. You are not an alpha male and you're good at sales, whatever, right?

You don't have to be. You just need to be yourself. So how do you learn how to talk to sellers? You practice. So as you're working on generating leads, you need to start practicing talking to sellers. The best way to do that is by actually talking to sellers, but you can practice role playing with friends. You can practice by cold calling. You can call realtors, but, you need learn sales. There's a lot of good YouTube videos out there on how to talk sellers. I did a video once with Claude Diamond. Claude is a sales coach, really good guy. I learned a lot from him over the years. He's one of the coaches that got me started in the business. He has some really good videos on his YouTube channel about sales. But you should go and Google or YouTube search Joe McCall, Claude Diamond, Cold Calls. And there was about a 15-minute video we did long long time ago, about 40 pounds ago, when I did this video. And it's really good because we actually called A Seller Live and talked to them. But if you go through that call and it's about five or six minutes long, you will hear Claude count down how many questions he asks. And he asks in that five minute conversation about 23 different questions. And the conversation is very simple, very friendly, very laid back. And all he's doing is asking questions. And you can learn a lot from watching training on YouTube.

I have a script in my course that train onquestions to ask sellers. But anyway, my point is learn to get good at because if you're not on the phone, you're not making money. And when you do all that work of getting the leads, if you don't know what to say to them, you are going to have a hard time doing deals. So one of the keys to being a deal finder is learning how to generate the leads and then when the leads come in, learning what to say to those. So I would really focus on that. Get your hands on every different sales book that you could find. One of my favorites is that you can't teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar. I don't where that title came from. It's a sales, it's a Handler's sales Institute, whatever, but you can't teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar. It's a good book I recommend another book called a go for no another book never split the difference if you start with that That's a place to start great books.But learn how to ask questions learn how be the reluctant buyer how to go for note.

You need to get the seller to tell you why you should want to buy their property You're never chasing them learn to ask questions in my script in my program, you know, it's a really really simple, Mr.,do you mind if I ask you a few questions about your property to see if it would even be something I would be interested. I want to turn my autopilot on here. Let's see how it works. Okay, cool. Hands free. Anyway, I am going to be paying attention here. So practice, practice, practices. Sales is a million-dollar skill. If you learn to get good on the phone, you'll never worry about money again. Because if you made it a goal to talk to five people a day, now you're doing some marketing to get some leads to get people to talk too.

But if you made it a goal to talk to five people a day and each conversation is maybe three to five minutes long. You're gonna kill it this business five people today. That's 25 people in a week That's a hundred people in the year that could be a seller a realtor an investor another buyer You talked to a hundred a year and then you follow up with them every 30 days. Have you sold that deal yet? Do you have any deals that you want to sell things like that, right? So if you could talk to 5 people a day, it's almost like you can't help but doing deals. I know a guy who was an active wholesaler in St. Louis, and he was a guy that, you know, kind of an introvert, only came out of his cave when he needed to make some money. And he had a big Rolodex of players, people who managed properties, bought properties, rehabbers, investors, realtors, etc, etc. And whenever he wanted money, he would come out of this cave, quote unquote, and we'll call everybody in his Rolodex. And you had a couple hundred people in there. And even ask him two questions. Number one, do you have any deals that you're to sell, I'm looking to buy. And if they said no, do you have any deals you're looking to buy? Two questions. Do you have any deals to sell? Do you any deals you're looking to buy?And eventually by the time he got through his whole Rolodex, you would find somebody with a deal to sell and somebody else who had a deal they wanted to buy and you would put them together, make us five to 10 grand and then move on. All right. Go back to his cave, play video games or whatever. I don't know what he did, but the whole point is get on the phone and talk to people. And if you just did that call people every day. Hey, do you have anything you want to sell to have anything? You want to buy? You will find people that will do deals. So stop treating the phone like a 500 pound cactus. Pick it up start talking to people this one thing right there. If you start talking the people could make a huge difference in your business.

You don't even have to spend any money on marketing You can just get on the phone call realtors call wholesalers find people that are advertising properties on Facebook call for sale by owners et cetera, like get on the phone, talk to five people a day. If I had to make $5,000 in the next 30 days or $10,000 in the 30 days, or you would kidnap my wife and my kids, that's exactly what I would do. I would get on my phone and I would call 30, 40, 50 realtors every single day until I found a good deal. And I'd get on phone and call 30 40 50 buyers every day until I sold that deal. And I wouldn't be just chasing one deal. I'd be doing a lot.

So you get what I'm saying here. Number one, learn to be a deal finder. Learn how to do marketing, learn how to generate leads, learn how to talk to sellers. The next thing I'd be focusing on, making offers. Making offers. But to make offers, you need to know what your buyers want. So it's important you understand in your market that you're doing deals or you're trying to do deals in. Who are the buyers? Who are the players? What are they buying? How much are they paying for it? You need to buyers what they want rather than what you have. If you're stuck in the business of selling what you've got, you're going to get broke really fast. That's not the way to grow a business and make a lot of money. So imagine if you're in New York Times Square for whatever ungodly reason. I can't stand New York. Well, I can stand Manhattan. It's just, it's a zoo. It' crazy. Anyway, imagine being in Times Square and walking around with a bowl of spaghetti or a pizza that's cold and you're trying to sell it to people. They don't know who you are. Nobody would buy it. But instead, you went around, you got a DoorDash hat, and you said, hey, are you hungry?

If you're hungry, I'll buy you something and bring it back and deliver it to you. You'll probably find somebody, right? They give you with your order what they want, and then you go out and get it. It's much easier to sell people what they what rather than what you have. So figure out what people want. What are the zip codes they're buying in? What kind of properties are they buying? Are they buying two bedrooms, three baths, two bedrooms or three bedrooms? Does it need to have, is one bath okay, or does it have to be one and a half? There's a buyer I know in St. Louis who only wants two bedrooms and which are usually harder to sell but he likes them and I was talking to him. I was asking him. Why do you like two bedrooms? He said well number one,the tenants that I get in two bedrooms are usually better tenants because they are either single or they are Older and don't have any kids or they're professionals or you know nursing students. They're working full-time and they don't Have kids so they're just going to take better care of the house. And the other big reason is he can buy them for so much cheaper than a three-bedroom house because there's not as many landlords that want two bedrooms. So when you look at, and, the rent’s just as good almost in a two bedroom as they are in a three-bedroom. So anyway, how did I figure that out? How did I know that? I got on the phone, I called buyers, I talked to them, I found out what it is that they're looking for. So this guy, I know what he wants. I'm going to go get it for him.

So that's pretty much it. This business is so simple, right? If I had to start all over again, I would be focusing on those four fundamental things. I think I said for. But number one, marketing. Learn how to find deals. Get leads. Number two, I'd be talking to people. I'd been talking to sellers. I'll be talking the buyers. Be talking to five people a day. And number three, I would be making offers every single day. I've been talking to five sellers a day and I'll sending an offer to every single seller that I talk to. That's it. If I had to start all over again in my deal business, that's what I would be focusing on. I would focusing on revenue generating activities. You've heard the phrase revenue in first position. If you started off every day, just asking yourself, what's the fastest path to cash today? What do I need to do right now today to make money? And it probably would not be read another book, work on your business logo, work, on your website, play around on Instagram and, and watch a bunch of stupid reels and whatever. It would be marketing, talk to sellers, make offers, talk to buyers, find out what they want. I guess in a nutshell, that's what I would do if I had to start all over in 25 and I hope you got something out of that cool hey listen real quick if you want to join me on my next five day challenge I do it every Monday it's called the flip dirt challenge go to www.flipdirtchallenge.com and join my next challenge live. www.flippdirt challenge.com

I'll teach you how to flip vacant land and make a lot of money doing it if I had to start all over again I would definitely be doing land, not houses. Alright, peace out. We'll see you.