Joe:   Hey, everybody. Joe McCall with Real Estate Investing Mastery. I’m really glad you’re here and I’m with a good friend, Trent Wood from Oklahoma City or Tulsa?

Trent:   I’m actually between, about, 45 minutes from each way.

Joe:   Oklahoma’s a beautiful state but we’ve never gone to Oklahoma to go to Oklahoma. We’re always driving through to go down to Texas. And I’m sure that really irks Oklahomans, right?

Trent:   Well, when you stop, you get gas. I guess we get a little bit of your tax there.

Joe:   Or stop at one of your casinos.

Trent:   Yeah. Yeah, but I don’t know if we get any tax money from that so…

Joe:   All right, so, Trent and I have been…

Well first, let me tell you guys, go to RealEstateInvestingMastery.com to download our fast cash survivor kit. And in there, Alex and I teach you how we wholesale deals. How we wholesale deals with equity, or deals without equity. How we find our sellers, how we find our buyers, how we get virtual assistants to do almost all of it for us. It’s a pretty cool resource. You’re going to get a lot of value out of it. And I know most of you listening to this have already gone there and downloaded it. I’d encourage you to go through it again. Go back to the website and get it again because there are so many good things in there. I was reviewing it the other day thinking, “Wow, I came up with this stuff? This is pretty good,” in all humility, right?

So, the other thing we wanted to tell you is we’d appreciate you leaving a review in iTunes. Do you like this podcast? Do you like the show? We hope you do. Let us know. Please, go to iTunes and if you haven’t subscribed yet in iTunes, subscribe in iTunes. And download these episodes and leave a review. We’d really appreciate it. I will tell you there was an episode I did 6, 8 months ago called “Leave a review, get free stuff.” And if you do leave a review in iTunes and you go to that page, if you go to RealEstateInvestingMastery.com, go to the search box and find that episode. I think if you just do, if you just search for stuff, you’ll find that link. And in there, I’ll show you how to get all this free stuff. I think we had a couple books and some videos and things like that. So leave us a review in iTunes.

And by the way, too, if you’re a Google Android fan, which I am not, I have my iPhone right here and my Apple watch. I’m a nerd. Apple nerd. So, but anyway, Google Android users, I just got notification the other day that Google and their Android and all their smart phone devices are actually going to be making podcasts, like, native in all of their Android phones. So, you don’t have to go download another podcast and the app. It’s going to be coming with all of the new Androids and all the updates starting in 2016, so in a few months, which would be really cool. So just like in iPhone, there’s a podcasting app that’s in there. Google Android phones are going to have podcast apps, already native in there. So hopefully, that even increases our audience more. And we’d really appreciate you guys leaving a review in iTunes or pretty soon, Google play, if you like this show. I’d really appreciate it. Trent, thanks for coming on this show, man. I appreciate it.

Trent:   No problem.

Joe:   Do you listen to podcasts much?

Trent:   Now I do, yeah.

Joe:   So, what are some of your favorite shows? It’s okay if ours is not on the list.

Trent:   No, actually, tell you the truth, I started off listening to Sean Terry probably because at the time, he was probably pushing podcast at the most, at the time. That was almost two years ago.

Joe:   Yeah.

Trent:   Start to listen to him, then come across Peter County and Jerry Norton, I think they're… I don't know what it's called now.

Joe:   Flip Guys.

Trent:   Flip Guys, yeah. And then Bigger Pockets, obviously. I started listening to them and…

Joe:   Good podcast.

Trent:   …Years was probably right in the mix of all those, I think. I think what was the first one I listened to probably was Alex talking about that he’s just sitting at home, hoping nobody can see him because he might be sitting in his underwear or something like that. So, I don’t remember which one that was but anyways, I do remember him talking about how lazy he was and didn’t want to do anything. Just sit there, and he was happy to what he did, going on about that. And I thought, “Well, that’s pretty interesting.” You know, because he’s talking about his time freedom and different things that he had going on. So yeah, I started listening to that and that’s where I got started, I guess. Just listening to podcasts.

Joe:   Alex and I had joked for years; we should create a course called wholesaling in your underwear. I think that’s a great title.

Trent:   Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah. You might need to trademark it.

Joe:   Well, you know, most of the guys listening to this podcast are guys in their forties. So, I don’t think we need to worry about offending too many of the ladies out there.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   But I think wholesaling in your underwear would appeal to a lot of guys.

Trent:   Yeah, they get the image of sitting in a recliner and kick back, I guess.

Joe:   But I will tell the truth, and Alex is not here to defend himself so I’ll go ahead and take all of, all my advantage to that. He does wear this Sesame Street pajama pants. It’s either Elmo or Cookie Monster or Big Bird or one of those. Yeah, he’s proud of those things I guess.

Trent:   Yeah, yeah.

Joe:   But, good. So, Trent, there’s a lot of good podcasts out there. You named some really good ones and there’s probably 4, 5, 6 more out there and I think it’s really important that you get educated. Get out there and start listening to these free podcasts. There’s a lot of really good podcasts out there and I think ours is one of the best, in my humble opinion. We’ve been doing it since 2011, Trent.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   We actually have listeners in over 170 different countries.

Trent:   Wow.

Joe:   It blows me away.

Trent:   Yeah, yeah.

Joe:   So, hello everybody out there in Afghanistan that’s listening to this. There are people from Afghanistan listening to our podcast. So, Trent, talk, you’re in Oklahoma City. Are you an OSU fan or an Oklahoma? What is it, the University of Oklahoma?

Trent:   Uh, no. OU.

Joe:   OU.

Trent:   Oklahoma Sooners, yeah.

Joe:   Okay. I’m sorry to hear that.

Trent:   That’s all right.

Joe:   So, how long you been in Oklahoma?

Trent:   I was born and raised in Oklahoma.

Joe:   Okay.

Trent:   I was actually about 10 minutes away from where the Sooners play so…

Joe:   Oh, really?

Trent:   Yeah, they play in Norman. I live over Newcastle, Blanchard which is just little ways away from them.

Joe:   Nice.

Trent:   Now, we moved to Bristow which is a halfway between. It’s a little community. So it’s, it’s in, it’s on the turnpike. So Diane and I have worked for so…

Joe:   Yeah. All right. Now, you signed up for my automated wholesaling coaching program 6, 8 months ago, is that right?

Trent:   Hmmm, six months ago?

Joe:   Yeah. So what were you doing before that?

Trent:   Absolutely nothing.

Joe:   Okay.

Trent:   No. We actually, as far as investing and stuff like that, I’ve been, like I said, listening and talking to my wife about it, doing different things. We’ve done a couple of our own stuff as far as, you know, borrowed money from the bank, fixed up a house, sold it, made money on it. I’ve been in construction basically all my life and got into computers and stuff. When I was in high school, I decided I wanted to go be an architect and kind of dropped that when I realized how much math there was. And decided I don’t want to do that. I just picked up the CAD stuff and started doing the, more of the CAD and doing that.

Joe:   Yeah, that’s smart.

Trent:   So, but, yeah, I’ve been doing bar CAD work. I’ve been project engineer for the last, I don’t know, 5 or 6 years. And before that, I actually owned my own company for 3 years, 4 years, something like that. Build cabinets.

Joe:   Really?

Trent:   Cabinet shop.

Joe:   Yeah.

Trent:   And before that, I worked for my dad. And that’s where I got my, I guess, my construction background. Building houses and doing a lot of extra stuff with him and running his computer programs.

Joe:   Okay.

Trent:   And we got cabinet programs that I run and had CAD stuff so, learned how to do it there.

Joe:   Are you still doing any of that right now?

Trent:   I am. Doing on the side. For people when they need it. Actually, right now, I’m actually working for my dad, part time. Just, my brother went to California and decided that he was going out there for vacation and had all kinds of issues getting out there. And his minivan broke down. Anyways, he hasn’t made it back. So I’m helping, helping Dad for the time being, for a little while.

Joe:   That’s cool you get to work with your dad.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   Some of us take our dads for granted. I know I do.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   And I miss, I miss my dad. Dad, if you’re listening, hello. But that’s cool you get to work with your dad.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   All right so…

Trent:   You train, you train me what I know and I learn a lot from him so…

Joe:   Yeah, he’s probably…

Trent:   He gets a lot of credit for what I do know.

Joe:   Yeah. All right, All right. So, describe your evolution into wholesaling. You’re starting to do deals now pretty consistently. You know, were you just dabbling in it, little bit here and there? What finally made you decide I’m going to actually start doing deals now?

Trent:   Well, I think the main thing was the time factor. I didn’t feel like I had time to put into it.

Joe:   Okay.

Trent:   And so, I will send out marketing, try to handle phone calls and do things and realize that if I couldn’t follow up with them, couldn’t get in touch with them and I was losing deals. So, my wife and I talked about it and it’s kind of funny, talking about podcasts and I got her to be a podcast junkie.

Joe:   Yeah.

Trent:   She really, at first, she was like, “What are you listening to all the time?” And she was getting kind of frustrated cause I come home telling her what Shawn Terry might’ve said or what you might’ve said. And I was like, “We’ve got to do this. We’ve got to try it.” I said, I can’t see any… She was always about the risk. And part of that was because back in ‘08 when everything started going downhill was when I was in cabinet business, in my own shop. We almost lost everything. And lucky for me, I found somebody that would buy my tools and buy my shop out. And I walked away with nothing but I didn’t really lose anything either so… I mean, we lost some credibility, I guess, but that was part of the market. Nothing we could do about it at the time, so.

Joe:   Sure, sure.

Trent:   But anyways, she’d become, she would start listening along with me to these podcasts. And as she grew more, like, you’ve, you’ve got to do it. So she started pushing me and she’s like, “Just quit listening to the podcasts and just go do it.”

Joe:   Good.

Trent:   So, I give her credit for that because she’s just like, “You’ve got to do it if that’s what you want to do. So go do it.”

Joe:   Good, good.

Trent:   So that’s where I guess I took that step and just said, “You know, what it’s going to cost me? A few hundred dollars here and there, I guess to do direct mail and maybe paper clip, whatever I got to do. Some bandit signs. I know people kind of frown on that sometimes. As I will, hey, if it gets taken down, I guess but I get a phone call or get a deal off for that, I’d be okay for that for now. But, so, we did that. I recruited my wife and my son and built bandit signs while I was at work.

Joe:   Oh yeah?

Trent:   We bought the poster and wrote on them with the magic marker and put on a wood stake and put them out.

Joe:   Nice.

Trent:   So, real calls from that so…

Joe:   All right, so when did it start to finally happen, you start to do deals?

Trent:   My first deal actually was, let’s see, I first got my first contract on February this year.

Joe:   Is that the one where you sent me a picture of you holding a check and then the next picture was you holding a bunch of cash?

Trent:   No, that was actually, that one was back in June or July.

Joe:   Okay, okay.

Trent:   So, no, the first deal actually got a house that was just down the road from my house. And it was, hang on, let me get a drink.

Joe:   It’s cool.

Trent:   Getting choked up here. The house was just down the road and it was just junk basically, mold and had a big old hole in the roof. I got it for $11,500 and turned around, sold it for $12,500.

Joe:   Okay.

Trent:   Then just signed the contract to somebody. So, I was excited about that. Made $1,000. Didn’t really do anything other than send a letter to the guy saying, “Hey, I want to buy this house.” And he’s like, “Well, if you want to buy that one, I’ve got another one down the road too.” So, both homes. So I actually said, “Well, let’s make two contracts. Let’s get a contract on each one.” And I said, “I’ll try to buy both of them.” And he said okay. So, the other one was like $33,500. It’s a nicer house but I couldn’t get it sold. There are some foundation issues and I didn’t get it, obviously, I didn’t get a low enough price on it too. Wholesaling so…

Joe:   Yeah, yeah.

Trent:   But anyways, on that one, yeah I made $11,000 on those. I mean, I’m sorry I made $1,000 on those.

Joe:   Right. Okay.

Trent:   And then in June, I got another one that we… Was in Edmund, Oklahoma. And that’s the one you were talking about.

Joe:   Okay.

Trent:   I sent you those pictures.

Joe:   Is it okay if I use those pictures in the podcast?

Trent:   That’s fine. Yeah. I told my wife, I said, “Well, I could deposit this.” But when I had that check I was like, “Well I’m going to go deposit it.” But I decided that I was like, “Well, I want my son to see $10,000.”

Joe:   Sweet.

Trent:   And he said, you know I was just, I guess more of a visual for him.

Joe:   How old is your son?

Trent:   Eight.

Joe:   Eight? Okay.

Trent:   And he’s been helping us. I mean, that’s what…

Joe:   Oh, really?

Trent:   It was… I’d tell him, he would peel the back off of the envelopes. And we’d have him peel the backs off the envelope, sealed them up and then put the stamp on it.

Joe:   That’s great. That’s fantastic, because I’ve been thinking how to get my son, who’s 10, involved. He keeps on bugging me and the only thing I can… Because I have the mail house that does the mail for me.

Trent:   Right.

Joe:   But maybe I should start just having him do my mail for me, because he keeps on asking me, “Hey dad, I want to help.”

Trent:   Well, and I told him, I told him, I said, “We can work out a deal with you”. I said if you’ll do it, I’ll pay you 1 percent of every deal. And he’s like, “What’s that?” You know he’d count, trying to figure it out. I said, well, I said, on this deal, I made $10,000 on it, that means you get $100.

Joe:   Wow.

Trent:   Because the first deal, I made a thousand so I kind of get him… You’d done the same thing so I’ll give you $10.

Joe:   Yeah.

Trent:   And he couldn’t figure out the percentage thing, exactly. But he’s getting it now. He understands what’s going on now.

Joe:   Doesn’t take too long when you’re holding $10,000 in cash in your hands.

Trent:   So he’s excited that getting out a deal. He’s like, “So I get another $100 or I get another $50.” Like, yeah. That’s right. So, as soon as we get something closed, he gets a little bit of money. But he’s working for it so… He sits there and puts 250 stamps on 250 envelopes.

Joe:   Wow.

Trent:   He’s not getting off easy, I guess. He’s a nerd. But he loves it. He loves doing it so…

Joe:   That’s excellent. I’ve been thinking that maybe I could have my son go to Craigslist and send text messages for me.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   But then I get him, I send him down to the computer and, just to try to teach him the copy and paste and all that, putting in spreadsheets. Like, oh my gosh. Maybe I need something a little simpler, like putting a stamp on an envelope.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   I like that.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   All right, so you’re having your son help you? Good.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   Go ahead. You were telling your story.

Trent:   Oh I was just going to say about the… So, we got the $10,000. Part of the reason I did that, I got the money and he listens to the podcasts along with my wife. She would play them through the house. And so it’s kind of funny, she started off several years ago; they had listened to Dave Ramsey.

Joe:   Yeah.

Trent:   And he would tell us you need to cut out the credit card or what. And his deal is he wants to, his goal is for us to all go to Dave Ramsey to Nashville to where daydream he’s at and scream we’re debt-free.

Joe:   Oh, nice.

Trent:   That’s what he wants to do. He is… We told him we’re going to do that. He’s excited to do that.

Joe:   Oh, that’s cool.

Trent:   So, couple more deals, we may be able to do that.

Joe:   Oh, man. That’s awesome.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   I get Dave Ramsey’s Instagram thing on.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   And every at least couple times a week, he’s got somebody with a short little Instagram video. Like, 5, 10 seconds long. And some family screaming I’m debt-free.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   That’s awesome.

Trent:   Well anyways. Yeah, he is, he’s been excited about that but we… So that one we closed in June or July. I guess it was July. First of July. And then took that money and put it back into marketing. And I think that’s when I went ahead and bought your course in automated wholesaling.

Joe:   Yeah.

Trent:   We did that and started setting up some systems. I haven’t got everything set up completely. Part of it was I just didn’t have the time and…

Joe:   Sure.

Trent:   We, in this next round, these next two houses actually are partners with guys. So, they will be, one of them will be my contact, I guess, in Oklahoma City. The other one is my contact in Tulsa.

Joe:   So, you’re leveraging other people. I love it.

Trent:   Yes. Yes, so maybe, the marketing I’ve got going now, we will be able to get them moving. They’re both pretty good, pretty good guys and pretty… I’ve been doing quite a few deals that are on their own, that they were happy to work with me. And they want to, obviously, they want to do more deals. If I bring them a deal, they’re like, “Yeah, sure. We’ll do it.” So…

Joe:   Let me explain a little context of what Trent’s talking about. In Automated Wholesaling I teach how to build a wholesaling business where you get someone else to do all the work for you. One of the ways you do that is by getting somebody to do the marketing for you. Getting somebody to prescreen the leads for you or you can do the prescreening yourself; it’s not a big deal. But then getting someone else to talk to the sellers, go to the house and get it under contract and sell it. If you set it up right, which is what I’ve done for the last several years while we go to Europe or while we go on our RV trips, is getting other people to literally do all of the work for you. That’s what Trent’s talking about here. That’s what the Automated Wholesaling’s about. So, good, now. Talk a little bit about in the last few months, how many deals have you done, Trent?

Trent:   Well, the last two months, we’ve actually only done 2, I guess. We’ve done 2. We did, we’ve got one that should be closing next week. And then, one I should’ve closed on it maybe a month ago. Maybe a little bit longer than that but the older little lady that we are buying it from, she actually lost consciousness and went into the hospital. So, in the meantime, we’ve just held everything up in limbos. So, everything, the title and everything’s still in the title company. Still waiting for her to sign so… She has slowly started making recovery. They’ve been talking to me about it. And she’s, hopefully, she’s going to get better, they said.

Joe:   Okay, good. Hopefully.

Trent:   Her daughter was helping her with it too. And so they needed to sell it. Some of it they needed to get rid of and kind of, that deal, she, she broke an arm or something like that. You know how those surgeries can be.

Joe:   Sure.

Trent:   She’s holding up. They took her down pretty far.

Joe:   Wow, okay. Okay. You said you’ve done 5 deals in the last three months, is that right?

Trent:  The thing is, just four.

Joe:   Okay.

Trent:   I’m trying to think. Yeah, it’s just four. No? Yeah. Yeah, that would be five. Yeah, I did, uh… Yeah, I’ve actually closed on four houses; will be closing on four houses. I did that one, had one under contract, didn’t get it sold so…

Joe:   Okay. Good, good.

Trent:   We tried to do 5 deals. We’ve only did, actually got 4, I guess.

Joe:   That’s fantastic though. That’s really good.

Trent:   Yeah, for a total, I figured it out, we did, we’re doing 10,000 on the first one, I mean, 1,000 on the first one. 10,000 on the second one. 11,000 on the, this one should be closing next week. And 8,500 for the next one. So that’s what? Almost $30,000

Joe:   That is fantastic, man.

Trent:   Yeah, so…

Joe:   Good for you. And about how much money do you think you’ve spent in marketing in the last 3, 4 months to get those deals?

Trent:   I know we’ve sent out a little over 15,000 letters.

Joe:   Wow, that’s it?

Trent:   Yeah. Yes, sir. Sent out 15,000 letters and about maybe 40 or 50 bandit signs. Did some calls on Craigslist, some of that kind of stuff. But most of us have been directing out. Actually, so…

Joe:   Now, just imagine, if you took 10, 20 percent of your profits and reinvested it into marketing and started doing 15,000 postcards a week, how much more business can you do, right?

Trent:   Exactly. Yeah. And that’s my ultimate goal, obviously.

Joe:   Yeah.

Trent:   And that’s been tough but part of it was because I have it cloaked on these houses, like I said. I put out marketing and some of… I’ve got stuff back. And some of them have just fallen out of the blue after. I mean, actually the one that is supposed to be closing next month, that one was, we sent out those letters back in probably February.

Joe:   Yeah.

Trent:   And we followed up a little bit with some of those letters. We sent out some more to those same addresses. And the lady that is closing on, that we’re closing on next month, her brother actually wants me to come. And I went and looked in the house that he has and made him an offer. He hasn’t called back yet but he said he’ll do the deal but he just don’t know when.

Joe:   Yeah. All right, All right.

Trent:   So, I’ll probably push his buttons again and just kind of see what he’s up to and see what I can do with that. I’ve gotten several calls and made several offers, I mean, made a lot of offers. We make, we try to make an offer on every deal.

Joe:   Okay.

Trent:   And used, used the materials, 3-option letter of intent, I guess.

Joe:   I love that.

Trent:   I try to use that as much as possible. Cause my long term strategy I guess be to do more, holding on to some of them.

Joe:   Sure, sure.

Trent:   Through either lease options or through leases or just buy them outright as rentals.

Joe:   Yeah. Those of you who don’t know what he’s talking about, Matt Theirault didn’t invent this? And I’ve talked to him about it but he’s kind of perfected it, it’s called the three-option letter of intent. And people have been doing this for years and years. Lot of, he’s learned it from other people. So basically, you send out a letter or an offer to every lead that comes in. Every lead. With, even if they’re motivated or not. And it’s a cash offer. And, one or two seller financing offers and I like to add even possibly a lease purchase offer. But the idea is you give sellers options. You give them options.

And so sometimes they’re not going to take your cash offer but it opens up the door to talk about another offer where you get the more, but with on your terms. It’s either price or terms. I describe it like that sometimes to sellers. I think it’s really important that you set up the rights, the systems in place so that those, you can automatically mail out letters of intent to sellers. Even if they’re not motivated to sell very good. So, Trent, I wanted to ask you about how do you select your market? Do you, are there, do you go after absentee owners or retired landlords? Do you go after certain zip codes? All the home owners in those zip codes, what do you do?

Trent:   No. That’s part of, I think that part of the reason why, I guess, my response has been, it seems like my response rate’s been really been good. I listen to some guys and they talk about sending out thousands and thousands of letters and getting one to two percent returns or calls or whatever.

Joe:   Yeah.

Trent:   Seems like I’ve gotten good response off of what I’ve been doing. Most of it has been absentee owners and I'm trying to target… Do more targeted… I know that cash buyers are going to want.

Joe:   Okay.

Trent:   You know, then do more research, little bit. Probably, probably overanalyze things.

Joe:   Yeah.

Trent:   I know I’m bad, I’m bad about that. I overanalyze it and look at it and think, “Okay, I’m…” I guess I’m more of an efficiency expert.

Joe:   Okay.

Trent:   And try to figure out the best, most efficient way to use my money.

Joe:   Nothing, nothing wrong with that.

Trent:   Been doing it some ways but I’ve been, yeah, I’ve tried to do my targeted marketing just by zip codes that I know are hot. And then I draw down some more and try to find as many three beds, two baths. And I don’t know, try to make sure that what I do, the marketing that I know that if hey, I get at least one deal out of all that then you know…

Joe:   So…

Trent:   Usually I know what’s a good deal, hopefully.

Joe:   Now, are you, these letters are you sending a little bit every day?

Trent:   I’ve been sending about 200 a month.

Joe:   Okay.

Trent:   So, you know, we just, part of it like I said, we didn’t have the resources, really, just to put all that into it. Like I told you, I quit my full time job.

Joe:   Yeah.

Trent:   To do this, and so what I do make, I have to live off of, you know?

Joe:   Yeah, I get that.

Trent:   But at the same time, it’s given me more time to focus on refining the business, I guess, and making things happen.

Joe:   What you might consider doing, Trent, is taking maybe just 20, 30 letters a day, you know? And you can print them on your own printer. Get your son to… if his handwriting’s good enough, you can handwrite the address on the envelopes.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   Then…

Trent:   Yeah, probably. Just, probably…

Joe:   All right, well… It’s funny you think, “Oh it’s not professional.” But you’ll be surprised how much better your open rates and response rates will be if it has handwritten, that looks like a kid, on your envelopes. And then make sure, he makes the postage crooked. So it even draws more…

Trent:   He does that without thinking about it.

Joe:   All right, so you’re going after, I love that, Trent. You’re going after zip codes where there’s a high demand. And as I’ve shown, I’ve talked about that hundreds of times on this podcast but if you go back to RealEstateInvestingMastery.com, you’ll see a video I did on my favorite ways. It’s called “My favorite ways to find cash buyers.” And there’s this strategy, I think that’s it, but you can go to list source and find the most active zip codes by country for free. Right. So you’re going in to see the most active counties and it’s pretty easy to figure out. Listen; if I can find a deal in this county, I can sell it pretty easily to these buyers. I like how you’re doing that. Um, do you…

Trent:   Yeah, I’ve learned that from you.

Joe:   Okay. That’s what I was hoping.

Trent:   I give you credits for that one.

Joe:   All right. Now, how do you handle your leads that come in, Trent?

Trent:   Answer the phone.

Joe:   What a brilliant concept. All right, so does the call go to you? Does it go to voicemail; is it a call center?

Trent:   It would usually… It’s just going to go straight to me. Now, if I know I’m going to be busy or got things going on, I try to make sure that it’s going to at least, somewhere to capture their number and please give me something to call back and see what they wanted and… I’m working on the, I guess, CallFire or CallRail structure, those that add up with the next building. When I finish that, I’ll set that all up. We’ll do that.

Joe:   By the way, if you need help with that, you can feel free to contact my office and we’ll help you with call reels and that.

Trent:   Okay.

Joe:   Since you’re a student, right? Everybody else listening to this, don’t call my office trying to get help.

Trent:   Well, I’ve really been, I watched you deal with Dan Schwartz on the Podio automation. And that’s what one thing I have been working too is doing more automation and more. I’m still, I’m still trying to figure out and maybe I can get to figure it out eventually but I wanted to be where when I make some things and Podio. I wanted to fill out three-option letter. You have the three-option letter of intent with like you said, maybe when I click another button, it’ll add the lease option. And so then they might even be interested. So that kind of stuff I am working towards getting some of that set up so I can…

Joe:   Let me give you some good advice. And this is not just for you, Trent, but everybody else listening to this, because I’ve been selling Podio for a long time. I even have the domain, PodioJoe.com and JoePodio.com, so I’m probably breaking all kinds of terms and conditions with Podio by doing that. But anyway, I’ve been selling Podio for a long time and I’ve been always selling the idea that you need to automate your business and systemize it and get everything done for you, in spite of you. And that sounds good but one of the things I’ve been seeing people struggling with is spending all of this time, I don’t want to say wasting, but spending all of this time trying to get the systems working, to getting Podio to doing this and this and this, all you do is click some buttons.

That’s great but I see a lot of people just stumbling over that. And not everybody’s as techy as I am or as you are, Trent. And I’m like, they get totally lost and confused and they get discouraged and depressed, give up and this doesn’t work as you said it would. Here’s my advice to you, Trent, and everybody listening to this. Sometimes, the best automation you can get is a good virtual system. Okay? And you know, Podio has all this fancy work flows and you can get GlobiFlow and you can get Zapier and you can get MailChimp and Lab, and three or four other tools that are kind of like third party stuff. Once that’s built, that’s great, that stuff works and we can help do that. But sometimes, you know what, you just need a good virtual assistant to help you do all of that stuff.

So what happens then, the only work flow you need is, All right, when a new lead comes in, create a new task for the VA to make it look nice. Or call them back or whatever. This is really important. Tom Crawl and I are coming out with a small little mini course called outsourcing. We’re kind of thinking of a cute funny name for it. I suggested “Slap Your Mama Outsourcing” but he didn’t like that. The reason why I said that is because I’m getting so frustrated sometimes with people trying to get all of these systems and they’re wasting too much time behind their laptop or their computer. They’re spending too much time buried in Podio trying to figure it all out. And so I thought, “Slap Your Mama Outsourcing cause I want to slap them across the head.” I’m like, “Stop!” You need to focus your time and energy on the highest and best use of your time and the highest revenue generating activities. Which is what?

Trent:   Talk to the sellers.

Joe:   Talk to the sellers and making offers, right. So, I wanted to bring this up because a lot of guys are struggling with that. I would suggest considering hiring a good virtual assistant. Maybe it’s not a virtual assistant. Think of it more like a personal assistant. So, you get this lead, Trent, on your phone which I’m glad you’re taking this calls on your phone, right. And you say, you get some basic information, you chicken scratch it out on your yellow pad of paper. And then all you do then, Trent, is you send a voice memo to your assistant using something like Voxer or Whatsapp. You know, “Hey, Jane. I talked to this seller at 123 Main St., go ahead and update the lead that they’re not motivated. It’s listed but the listing expires in two months. Go ahead and sell them an offer in the mail and remind me in two months to call them back.” Boom! You send that voice memo and it’s done, right? Then you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   So, when your VA’s in Podio then, she updates with the notes. She sets the tasks to remind her to call back and follow up in a month. She sends the offer in the mail for you. And there’s ways you can do that even if she’s in the Philippines. You can send offers and letters through Google Docs and click to mail and stuff. So, that’s something that I’ve been really, really been passionate about lately. Just get somebody that can help you, like a personal assistant or a virtual assistant. And make your life so much easier. There’s also, kind of in a sense, there’s even better quality control with that stuff. So, I’ve been telling people, “Listen. Take all of the training videos that we’ve done with Podio and give them to your virtual assistant. Let them figure the systems out. It’s really simple and easy.” And then what you do is you’re driving around in your truck. I bet you have a truck, right Trent?

Trent:   Yes.

Joe:   All right, you’re driving around in your truck. And you get a special email address that only your personal assistant or virtual assistant has, okay? You only get emails from her in there. And then what you do is, every morning, she sends you an email. Maybe, three emails of the next three things you have to do and put all the information in your phone. So you’re not sitting in Podio in the first thing in the morning and looking at all the things you got to do and getting lost in all these details. So, you look at the information in the email, you call the seller, you voice memo the VA back and then you delete the email. When you got those three emails done, you voice memo your VA, “Hey, send me another, the next thing I got to do.” That way, you can be in your truck, looking at houses, making offers, talking to sellers and you’re not in Podio all the time updating. Does that make sense?

Trent:   Yeah. I like that.

Joe:   I’m getting, I get hot and excited about that because I get these coaching calls all the time from folks getting frustrated like, trying to set up my system. “Okay well, how many sellers have you talked to?” “Well, I haven’t talked to any yet because I’m trying to set up my systems.” No, you know, so, something to think about. It’s really important, just keep your eyes and ears open everybody cause Trent, I mean Tom Crawl and I are talking about this.

Trent:   Yeah. It’s funny you say that cause probably, I don’t know, I spend time doing some of that. Setting things up like that but yeah, I try not to get bogged down with all that. I try not to let it… I still want, I got, I understand the follow up and that’s one thing I’m trying to make sure that that’s getting done. But as far as everything else, the offer, I don’t spend a lot of time on it. I try to get it and sit down and do it and get it sent back out. But to get my systems, I guess, I’m more of a systems kind of guy, I guess, that’s why I like to listen to you.

Joe:   Yeah.

Trent:   And learned a lot from you because you have your systems and you work on systems. But yeah, the virtual assistant is one thing that maybe because I don’t feel comfortable completely telling them what I need them to do, that’s, I think part of new guys and new people, that’s kind of getting new to the business, they’re probably thinking like, “How am I going to tell them what I need them to do? They’re just going to be wasting my money.”

Joe:   Yeah.

Trent:   “Because I don’t know what I need to do”. You know, I’ve got to figure it out first, you know?

Joe:   I’m going to plug, shamelessly plug this course that I’m going to be creating with Tom. By the way, guys, you should all listen to episode 84 that I did with Tom Kroll. That’s kind of what got me all fired up with this. Episode 84. Write that down. Go listen to it.

Trent:   I’m not going to do anything.

Joe:   Yeah.

Trent:   Don’t do anything. Let the virtual assistant do everything.

Joe: Yeah, exactly. And so, he gives me a lot of credit. If you listen to that podcast, he gives me a lot of credit. Because I remember when he was first getting started, I was kicking him in the butt. And he was just running ragged. So, but, Tom is, he’s a fantastic wholesaler. We’re going to be giving everybody who invests in this course, and it’s going to be super cheap, all of the things that we give our VAs do. So, in other words, let us train your VAs for you. Use our process, manual as it were, to get your VAs to do this stuff for you. It’s really simple. And sometimes you just build it as you go, Trent.

Trent:   Right.

Joe:   It’s just, well, okay I don’t understand how it works yet or what I want the person to do but this is my end goal. My end goal is I want to talk to 5 sellers a day and I want to make an offer to every single seller that calls. And I want to follow up with every single seller that has ever called me ever.

Trent:   Right.

Joe:   That’s your end goal, right? So then you get the assistant to help you do that. Sometimes, it’s like, I don’t know how to do this but here are some videos or please help me figure it out. And a lot of times, they will. You know what I’m saying?

Trent:   Right.

Joe:   So, good, Trent. Man, I’m really happy for you and I’m proud for you that you’re doing these deals now in Oklahoma City. It’s a great market. We were talking about this earlier. I’ve had some coaching students, I’ve actually interviewed them before in the podcast that were wholesaling deals in Oklahoma City from the country of Lebanon. And I think they’re still doing deals. I haven’t talked to them in a while. I always was nervous talking to them, Trent, because Oklahoma City, it’s a good-old country-boy market, right?

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   And proud to be an American. And I’m talking to this guys that are Arab, Muslim, in Lebanon and this was all going on when the NSA was like, it was all in the news that they were listening in on all of our phone calls. And so I’m sure the NSA was listening in on our phone calls as I was talking to this guys about Oklahoma City from Lebanon. But they’re great guys. Hassam… Oh, I forget this other name. Hassam Wassim. Yeah, something… Ah, I’m sorry guys if you’re listening to this. But those are the guys that actually introduced me to Podio. Is that a crazy small world?

Trent:   Wow.

Joe:   We were talking about, I was, I forget. I was using smart sheet at the time and with some, I forget his… Ah, I’ll think of his name later. Wassim? Yassin? Yassin! And Wasab. Okay, sorry. Great, guys. And they were the ones who introduced me to Podio. I think Wasab moved to the Philippines, actually he lives there now and Yassin, I think, lives in Oklahoma. I’ve probably got their names mixed up, I apologize. But they’re great guys and I interviewed them. If any of you guys are interested listening to that interview, go back in RealEstateInvestingMastery.com and look that up. But, cool, Trent. Sorry about that bunny trail.

Trent:   That’s all right.

Joe:   But, God, it was funny. A good friend of mine Cory Boatright also lives in your neck of the woods.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   You ever talk to him or see him?

Trent:   Well, I connected with him on… Oh, goodness, Real Estate Mogul?

Joe:   Yeah.

Trent:   I connected with him on there and we talked some through that. He gave me his phone number to call him if I had any questions.

Joe:   He’s a good guy.

Trent:   Never have taken the chance or never have taken the opportunity to stop and call.

Joe:   You should add him to your buyer’s list.

Trent:   Yeah? Yeah.

Joe:   Cory Boatright. Yeah. If he doesn’t buy it, he will probably have some buyers who will.

Trent:   Some buyers… Yeah. Yeah.

Joe:   You can partner with him on those deals.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   Cool, Trent. You know, if somebody wants to contact you, Trent, to maybe partner on some deals. Maybe they have some deals in Oklahoma City they want, they don’t have a buyer for and you can partner with them on it, what’s the way that people can contact you?

Trent:   Probably the best way is to give me a call and that’s, you may give that phone number out.

Joe:   If you want… It’s up to you.

Trent:   It’s a Google Voice.

Joe:   Okay. All right.

Trent:   It’s Google voice numbers so if they all leave a message or whatever they want to do, usually I try to answer but… It’s 918.324.6699.

Joe:   918.324.6699.

Trent:   Yep.

Joe:   You know if you got a deal, and you want to partner with Trent on it or maybe have a house you want to sell and you’re actually listening to this podcast.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   Or you want to get on Trent Pire’s list, give him a call. And I like the fact, Trent, that you do answer your phones.

Trent:   Yeah.

Joe:   That’s the fastest way to a deal, right? You know?

Trent:   That’s what I feel.

Joe:   You’ve got to be accessible to sellers and buyers.

Trent:   I mean if you call car salesmen and they don’t get back to your, whatever it may be. I think of lumber salesman.

Joe:   Yeah.

Trent:   Because I’ve been in that business for so long but I think if I can’t get a hold of him to order my material, then I may call somebody else.

Joe:   I tell you, man. If you ever went and looked for a house, right? And tried to get a hold of the realtor that had the sign in the yard.

Trent:   Yes.

Joe:   I just can’t believe how frustrating it is to get a hold of anybody. You know, especially, and I’m guilty of this too….

Trent:   They got a cellphone because there’s hardly anybody in the United States now that don’t have a cellphone.

Joe:   Mm-hm.

Trent:   I mean, even my grandpa who is 90, I mean I’m sorry, who is 87, my mom and dad bought him a smart phone.

Joe:   Oh yeah. Does he use it?

Trent:   Yes, and he loves it because he can ask it to dial or call whoever he wants to. He can ask it a question and he gets an answer and it reads back to it. He’s partially blind so he loves it.

Joe:   Oh really?

Trent:   Yes. He don’t know, he don’t know how to use anything but the Okay Google.

Joe:   Yeah.

Trent:   He does know how to say that.

Joe:   That’s so funny cause when we were in Italy, this taxi driver, taxi drivers in Italy, oh, my gosh! Just make sure you have life insurance before you go to Italy and get in a taxi. These guys are just insane. And so this one taxi driver was trying to talk to me and ask me questions or whatever. He had a smart phone and he was doing 20 things at once but he would get his phone and he would open up Google translate and would speak in Italian and show me the phone like this. And the thing would translate what he said and I would speak back in it, you know, in English and he would look at it in Italian. We did that for about 15, 20 minutes. And I was just praying the whole time, “God, help him, help him stay on the road.” But, phones are amazing these days. All right, Trent. Thanks a lot and this has been good.

Trent:   No problem.

Joe:   I appreciate you taking the time to kind of give people your story. And if anybody’s interested in working with me and getting some help, if you go to JoeMcCall.com, you can find information about my own coaching and what. I do a lot of one-on-one consulting and I do some group coaching. I’m really big on group systems and getting your wholesaling business automated. And there’s really, really, simple, easy ways to do that. So, if you’re interested, go to JoeMcCall.com or somewhere in RealEstateInvestingMastery.com is a place you can go to get more information. I love working with guys like Trent who are actually taking actions and doing deals. It’s a pleasure to work with guys like you, Trent.

Trent:   Thank you.

Joe:   All right. All right.

Trent:   To know you, and working with you too, I appreciate your help so far.

Joe:   Thanks. Thanks a lot. All right, guys. See you later. Take care. Bye-bye.