Hey guys, what's going on? Joe McCall, REI In Your Car, and on this podcast I'm going to talk about fueling your fire.

So I've been thinking about this lately and so many times if we, if we're feeling stuck or feeling like, and this is, this is not actually exactly intended for new beginning audiences like people, if you've never done a deal before, maybe you will not relate to this, but you should still pay attention. I'm talking specifically to the people out there who have done deals in the past and you're frustrated because maybe you're stuck and you're not doing deals anymore. You had a spurt of success, you were doing some deals and now you're just like, ah, what's going on? Like, you know, it's not working anymore. Or was that just a fluke? Was it just beginner's luck? Like what's going on, why can't I do deals again? Or why can't or why aren't I doing deals more successfully and consistently? Does that make sense?

So I want to encourage you to keep on fueling the fire, stop changing things and just stick with what works. Let me kind of give some context to this. When I was first starting out in real estate, I would go do a bunch of marketing. Well let me rewind even more. I was getting real frustrated because I was always on this yoyo income where I'd make a bunch of money and then be broke and then make a bunch of money and be broke and freak out and then make a bunch of money and I couldn't figure out what was going on and so many, so this is what was happening. As I started thinking about it and I heard one guy talk about like, we're not in the real estate business, we're in the marketing business and you should always be marketing leads are the lifeblood of your business and you need to get marketing done for you in spite of you.

So what was happening to me was I would do a bunch of marketing to get a bunch of leads and then I would get really busy and start working those leads and start getting properties under contract and then I couldn't handle the new leads that were coming in anymore so I had to stop the marketing. I wouldn't send out another batch of postcards, I wouldn't do any more texts or emails to Craigslist and stuff. I just stopped the marketing and work these deals I had under contract and then start finding buyers and get them sold. And then a couple months, one or two months go by and I would make some money and get some deals and I'd be all excited. Which reminds me too, I a lot of people struggle with this. Like they need money right away, right? And they need to make this fast cash and they don't realize that just getting a property under contract does not mean you get money, right?

You got to get that property sold and sometimes that takes a couple of weeks, two to four weeks. So if you need money in like the next four weeks, you got to get that deal under contract in the next couple of days. So don't just be aware of that if you want to, if you need to make money in the next four weeks, you got to hustle and get off your butt and fuel that fire and get it as hot as you can right now, which is all about marketing, right. So I remember just when I was first made aware of that, I thought, oh great, yes I got this property under contract, but that doesn't mean I made any money. So you still have to do the work of marketing that contract and selling it. So anyway, I was in this vicious cycle of doing a bunch of marketing, getting a bunch of leads, getting excited, getting properties under contract, shutting the marketing off, getting the property sold.

And finally month, two months later, sometimes three months, because I was doing some lease options at the time I finally get paid, right. Then what happens? Well now I'm turning around and my pipeline is empty. I have no new leads coming in and I'm freaking out a little bit now all of a sudden that money doesn't just sit there and do nothing. I have found creative nice ways to spend it, started spending it on marketing and expenses and stuff like that. Well and marketing is not like this switch you can just turn on and off and marketing starts pouring in. There's this principle of momentum where you have to be consistent in your marketing. You've got to keep that fuel burn and you've got to keep on feeding that fuel of marketing and never, ever, ever stop feeding it because when you need it, it's going to be there for you.

So I realized that man, I got to do this marketing all the time like I can't just stop it and turn it on. This momentum, it takes time to build. Once I start the marketing it takes two four maybe six weeks before I started getting deals out of it, because most of your deals come from the follow up. She got to keep on fueling that fire, keep on putting the wood into it, into that stove don't stop that momentum that's consistency, you've got to be consistently doing it. And I realized then at the point, at this point, like, man, I got to get somebody else to do this for me or it's just not going to get done. And I heard this one guy, Gary Boomershine talk about, and I interviewed him recently, you should look at it in the podcast, but he was talking about getting marketing done for you in spite of you. And that was a marketing service gem was advertising at the time called a Sales Team Live.

Well, I couldn't afford Sales Team Live, but I did go out and get a virtual assistant. I hired a virtual assistant. I was too afraid to hire one from the Philippines, so I hired somebody from Indiana, I think I found her on Odesk at the time, now it's called Upwork, and all I had her do was marketing. And in fact at the time all I had her do was send emails and text messages to Craigslist and Zillow ads and guess what happened? We started getting leads consistently every day without my involvement, without even thinking about it leads were coming in a beautiful, wonderful thing. I also then hired a direct mail company. I just ordered, I don't remember the numbers, but I ordered a few thousand postcards and I had them split it up and schedule it out. So they'd sent out 500 750 a week or whatever it was at the time, right. So now I had my direct mail scheduled for the next couple months and I had a virtual assistant doing my marketing for me. I was feeding the flame and part of feeding that flame guys is just, it's really not complicated. It's just getting somebody else to do it for you. Getting somebody else, getting a two, three $4 an hour virtual assistant in the Philippines to put those logs in the fire for you so you don't forget because you're going to be busy, you're going to be busy talking to sellers and making offers. Well, got to a point now where I'm getting a bunch of marketing leads coming in and I can't handle the volume because I'm still working a full time job. So I found a friend who could help me handle the leads, paid him a percent on a commission.

He started getting the properties under contract and now I'm still working so I can't handle marketing these properties and these contracts so I hired a realtor. And it had the realtor start marketing these homes for me and later on is I just doing more wholesaling I just would partner with local wholesalers. So my whole point is this guy's keep the fire burning. You need to dig your well before you're thirsty. I'm using two different analogies, but the point is that marketing fire has got to be roaring continually because when you, if you need it to start it up again, it's not going to be like roaring hot blazing fire as quickly as you as you would think, right? Those leads aren't just going to be coming in. So always, always, always be marketing. I say this sometimes too, you know we're not, we're not real estate investors that do marketing, we're marketers that do real estate investing and I say that right?

All right, so that's all I wanted to say. Keep the fire burning, stop changing things and getting bored with stuff and trying to do something else like that's another thing that's really important to think about, like in your marketing stick to what works. If the direct mail is working, then stick to it. Because things go through cycles as well, right. And I've seen this over and over again. Direct mail works really well and then it gets super competitive and doesn't work as well anymore and then everybody quits. But the people that are still doing it continuously, it starts working back again because it goes through cycles of pendulum where people are, a bunch of people are doing it that hardly anybody's doing it. Same as being a licensed real estate agent.

I've seen, I saw some charts and statistics on this at one time, like the realtors that stick in the market and stop quitting, the ones that stick with it in the down slow markets are there to pick up all of the new business that comes in when the market turns around. And the income, I forget the stats, I wish I would have kept this, but like the income of the realtors that just stayed with it when it was, it was hard, it was slow, the market was slow and it was super competitive. Their income was way, way higher than the ones that just join in because they see the market getting hot, you know, and then they join in but they have no ground work. They have no foundation for what. You know what I'm saying? I don't know if I'm making any sense.

So bottom line, keep that fire burning. Keep the fuel, keep adding fuel to the fire. Don't stop and don't change things. If postcards are working, keep doing it. It may be more expensive, maybe one of the more expensive forms of marketing, but the end of the day you spend $2-3,000 in marketing to do seven $10,000 in profits. That makes a lot of sense to me. So don't stop doing it. The texting and the emailing to Craigslist and Zillow ads, for sale by owners, you may think, man, everybody's doing this is so competitive, keep on doing it. Keep on doing it. You know why? Because it gets you leads and you may not get deals from it right away, but the bigger your pipeline is, the more leads you have to follow up with. The more leads you have to follow up with, the more deals you're going to do.

All right. Trying to think of more analogies or better way to drive this point home, but I think you guys understand what I'm talking about. So get out there, you guys make it happen. Get out there and make it happen. And if you have more, I talked about some wholesaling and some marketing and things like that. You all probably know about this, but I created a course called Wholesaling 101. It's completely free. All of the videos, like 15 videos or so, they're on YouTube. So you can go to YouTube if you just go to YouTube and do a search for, Joe McCall Wholesaling 101. You'll see a series of videos that we did 12 to 15 videos. My coaching business partner, Gavin and I, and on those videos we teach how to wholesale one on one. So it's a beginner's course, but we give away everything, the contracts, the marketing pieces, the checklist, the scripts, even the voicemail scripts. It's all in there and it's completely free. You can get the YouTube videos there and there's also a Mind Map that goes with it. If you, there's a couple of different ways to get it. Number one, go to YouTube and just do a search for Joe McCall, Wholesaling 101 and you'll see the videos. Or you can get the Mind Map, which has the videos in the Mind Map along with the transcripts. And you just text the word FLIP to 313131 again, text the word FLIP to 313131 and we'll get that over to you. All right, guys, take care. See Ya.