Transfer Testimonials ahead of where we were a week ago. You’ve changed the industry.”
-Brad Whiteman “I am a single guy with kids, working a full time
job, and building a real estate business at the same time. Having Realeflow has changed my working life. Instead of spending my time shuffling papers around on my desk, I can spend my time marketing, making offers, and getting deals done.”
-Kurt Verscharen
The
Freedom
Manifesto
Become A Modern Day Treasure Hunter
The
Freedom
Manifesto
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Legal Notice
While attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions, or contradictory information contained in this document.
This document is not intended as legal, investment, or accounting advice. The purchaser or reader of this document
assumes all responsibility for the use of these materials and information. Realeflow, LLC. assumes no responsibility or liability whatsoever on behalf of any purchaser or reader of these materials.
Table of Contents
The Modern Day Treasure Hunter ... 1
Get In The Game ... 4
Why Most Real Estate Investors Fail Before They Get Started ... 6
Why a Lack of Organization Can Lead to a Business that Runs Like a Machine
... 8
Poor Business Design Results in You Doing All the Work
... 9
The Helping Hand Positioning Process ... 11
Little Hinges Swing Big Doors
... 17
Why Delegate When You Can Automate?
... 21
Why Repetitive, Time-Consuming Tasks Will Be Your Downfall
... 25
Positioning Your Business ... 28
$32,000 Per Hour Work
... 31
The Dating Game ... 32
Why Staging Is Becoming The Only Way To Sell Quickly For Full Value In Any Market
... 36
Becoming Ambitiously Lazy ~ The Pursuit of Freedom
... 39
3 Secrets to Putting it All Together ... 40
Buckle Up!
... 42
The
Freedom
Manifesto
The Freedom Manifesto is written for 2 and ONLY 2 types of people.
1. The NEW investor looking to break free from the shackles of their very predictable life. This person wants more and wants real estate to bring it to them. They want FREEDOM from their work, from their boss and maybe even from the rut that they find themselves in. They want to work for
THEMSELVES. They want to wake up when they decide to wake up NOT when some electronic gadget blares in their ear. If you are this type of person then you’re in the right place NOW. This guide will help you break free from the chains that society has placed on you and start you on your NEW LIFE. Its right around the corner…
The Modern Day Treasure Hunter
One of the first books I ever read as a young boy was Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson. The story has
everything: sleek schooners, crafty buccaneers, a mysterious island in the Caribbean, and a treasure map. It’s a coming of age story about young Jim Hawkins and the world he encounters when he first leaves home.
When I first read that story I wanted to be Jim Hawkins. I wanted to explore new places, seek new challenges and find treasure. I wanted to be free from homework, and chores, and responsibility.
I wanted adventure.
Problem was that the older I got, and the more responsibilities I embraced, the more I felt like my life was getting painted into a box. I was being hemmed in by choices I made and choices made for me, and
I never quite forgot that story and never gave up that idea of being an
explorer and living each day with the thrill that comes with adventure.
I recently read an awesome article about 2 guys who find hidden treasures. John Morris and Greg Stemm, founded Odyssey Marine Exploration, a company that conducts extensive deep ocean search and recovery operations around the world.
Before John Morris teamed up with Greg Stemm to bring a boyhood dream they shared to life, he had been successful in real estate and construction. Greg Stemm’s background is that of an academic, explorer and
entrepreneur. Basically, what the two of them do for a living is find buried treasures. A properly constructed real
estate investing business can and will make you feel like a modern day treasure hunter just like John and Greg.
They use the most sophisticated tools and technology available today to find hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sunken treasure almost every year. How can you do the same?
In The 4-Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferris suggests, “the opposite of happiness isn’t sadness, but boredom.”
He’s right. Despite the success I’ve had in business, any unhappiness I
experience isn’t from a lack of family or friends, or from money: I’ve been blessed in so many different ways. No, whenever I’ve been down,
I’ve been bored.
My peak moments occur not only when I am doing something that I love, but when I am doing something that challenges me on many different
levels to perform at my best.
Real estate has long been the “sure thing” for those who have yearned for a better life and weren’t afraid to work to achieve it. Everyone knows that real estate has churned out more millionaires than any other industry: late night television infomercials attest to the power of this idea and countless gurus can be seen pitching their program to teach you how to make millions.
“I wanted adventure.”
“the opposite of
happiness isn’t sadness,
The
Freedom
Manifesto
Unfortunately, the “sure thing” that real estate once represented has changed with the subprime lending fiasco and the downward turn in the housing market. Like the Conquistadors of old, people are still looking for a “city of gold” that ends up being nothing more than a flickering illusion in the far horizon. But, it’s still there…
The problem isn’t real estate.
The challenges associated with investing in real estate today have less to do with real estate and more to do with people’s false expectations. An environment of easy money, and countless get-rich-quick scenarios involving false appraisals, or houses in markets that were appreciating
too fast caused everyone involved in the game to believe they themselves
were brilliant – true winners.
In essence, real estate investors were like children playing musical chairs: In the beginning, almost everyone has a place to sit when the
music stops and they can continue playing the game. But as the chairs
are slowly removed, it gets more difficult.
But the music is still playing.
My name’s Greg Clement and on behalf of my team here at Realeflow we’d like to welcome you to our world… a world filled with a sense of independence,
accomplishment, boundless opportunity
and excitement. And we’d like to thank
you for giving us the chance to share our story.
As a kid looking to start a business I wondered why certain people had a knack for success in business while others failed. Was it formal education? Luck? Connections? Perhaps they had secrets that only a select group had access to... or maybe it was all of the above?
What if we could show you some of the techniques that allowed us to build one of the most successful residential real estate investing businesses in one of the worst markets in the U.S.? We never had crazy appreciation
in our market to count on and we had to build our business while navigating through the sharks that circle any financially distressed market. In other words, we didn’t have anything handed to us. Our goal was to build a business that was consistently producing month after month after month. I wanted a business that would generate income without me being behind the wheel and making it go. And we did!
“We spent months trying to cobble together a programs that would allow us to systematize our business, you know systems are what it’s all about right? Well, Steve from Maralogix, recommended we take a look at your program and well, after I got up off the floor, had my partner slap me to see if I was dreaming, ran around screaming like an idiot, laughing, giggling like a girl...you get the point?
We had to really learn the real estate industry… we didn’t buy a business in a box, but we did spend some money on education that,
in retrospect, has proven to be priceless. We also relied on our
understanding of human nature and how free markets work in a free
society.
We want you to achieve freedom from work, anxiety, and financial
struggle and, ultimately, freedom from your business.
You see we have cracked the code.
We operate a super-successful real estate investing business that
runs by itself – a dream held by many who enter this industry – but only achieved by a few. Well guess what? That’s all about to change because we think that there’s enough out there for everybody, and we’re here to make that happen.
The reality of real estate is that anyone can get lucky with a quick hit that makes thousands, but building a sustainable business involves some work. Moreover, mistakes made in this
profession can cost you those same thousands made on the previous deal. In essence, there are short cuts, and
there is a way to work smart and to build a business that you control.
My goal is simple: to give you the golden nuggets we discovered in building our own highly successful business
so that you can:
1) implement a buying SYSTEM that will allow you to attract properties like a magnet; 2) implement a SYSTEM to process these leads efficiently; and
3) implement a SYSTEM to rent or resell these properties at maximum value and realize HUGE cash profits. That’s it. That’s all. End of story.
Well, one more thing...
4) to set your business up to RUN WITHOUT YOU, so that you can enjoy your life.
So let’s get started, we have a lot to cover and the story, yours, is only beginning.
“...set your business up to
RUN WITHOUT YOU, so that
The
Freedom
Manifesto
Get In The Game
Remember the early years of grade school when the physical education teacher would order you to get dressed in the appropriate gym uniform and tell you to meet as a class out behind the gymnasium?
I do. Or at least I remember what it was like those first few weeks of the new school year with the Indian summer sun blazing down. I’d dress with my peers and head out back to find an assortment of equipment: balls, rackets, cones, jump ropes, etc. We’d be put through a series of drills and tests that not only helped to identify our strengths and weaknesses but it also introduced us to different sports.
Through those activities I learned what I was good at doing. I knew, for instance, that I hated standing up at the plate and whiffing on a pitch so much so, that at times I would feel like faking an injury to get out of the game. On the other hand, I had a natural affinity for contact sports – wrestling, football – and I tended to spend my time
after school pursuing these activities.
In short, I had to figure out what I was good at doing, what I enjoyed doing, and decide how much time and dedication I was going to put into the training. Not every sport offered the same benefits: some sports were done more in the public eye and drew bigger crowds than others.
I just had to figure out where I felt comfortable, what my goals were and how I was going to achieve them.
In a similar sense, deciding to start a business reminds me of my years as a student in P.E. You have to figure out what game you want to get in, what the challenges will be, what the payoff is, and how hard you’re going to work to get where you need to be. I mean let’s be honest- YOU have an abundance of opportunity right in front of you.
Pick up the latest issue of EntrepreneurMagazine and you will have no fewer than 100 business opportunities
to choose from. What I am hoping you will see by the time you finish this reading is that REAL ESTATE INVESTING is:
1. one of the fastest ways to reach millionaire and multi-millionaire status. AND
2. if designed and built properly can be an awesome “geyser” like source of consistent income.
A quick example, when I left college I saw most of my friends go into entry level managerial or marketing type positions. Hmmmm... let’s see, I could go work for a company that offered me $35,000 a year starting salary and security, or I could go back and get my masters degree but have to spend another 2-3 years in class (I barely made it thru the first time) while making NO money.
But there was another option.
AND, I would have to talk a lot... to a lot of people. Not too hard for the average person, but a little harder for a guy with a stuttering problem! I had stuttered literally as long as I could remember and some days were definitely worse than others. They really don’t know what causes stuttering, but for me – some days were pretty traumatic as a kid. Not to change the story here, but one time in college speech class I had stood up in front of a group of my peers and turned a 3 minute speech into a 20 minute horror story. I could see it in their eyes, they were literally feeling sorry for me. Thank goodness I talked the
teacher into letting me do the rest of my speeches after class.
Anyways - all that risk meant one thing... if I made it I’d have a shot at building the life that I had long envisioned – three day work weeks, plenty of time to be with my family and to do what I wanted to do, “living the dream” as Owen Wilson said best in Night at the Museum.
So what did I do?
I took a chance on myself, went to work in the financial industry, worked my butt off and did pretty well. I struggled at times, but
overall had “control” of my income and lifestyle.
I knew what game I was suited to play, and I was willing to bet that I’d make it on top and I did. Since then, I’ve left the financial industry for the wide-open opportunities in real estate.
It’s about Income, Independence, and Impact. It’s also about
Systems, Work, and Focus.
For those of you who like the thrill this business provides, step it up and take it to the next level. If you want to be a professional then you need to begin thinking about your business as something that you work on, instead of working in. This is something that I will discuss in great detail later, but what I mean is, how much can you scale your business before you are completely burned out?
What will it take to make your business super smart and super efficient?
As long as you are working IN your business, you will most likely never be able to scale it the way you intend in
order to achieve your financial goals.
I’ve never forgotten a story about Cortez that I heard in a Central American history course I took in college. Some of you may recall that Cortez was the Spanish Conquistador who conquered the Aztec people and brought a glorious civilization to its knees. But did you know that when they arrived on foreign soil AND in order to
“...three day work weeks, plenty of time to be with my family and to
The
Freedom
Manifesto
motivate his men to do the unthinkable – they were vastly outnumbered and had no maps – he had his ships burned? He burned his SHIPS, all of them and in doing so triggered a psychological fight or flight instinct in his men. They couldn’t return so they had to fight, and fight they did.
There was no turning back.
His Conquistadors would have to fight with all their intelligence
and passion in order to achieve success. They did and the Spanish
influences on not only Central America, but the rest of the Americas are seen every day, everywhere.
The good news: you’re not going to have to conquer an empire. The bad news: you might have to do something that for some is very difficult – you’re going to need to shift your thinking on what is possible as well as redefine your expectations.
Dream big, but be accountable to what those dreams mean, and what they will demand. Understand what you and your business do well.
Finally, make sure that you carefully implement a structure and system in your business that will help you to define, measure and
achieve your goals.
When I started, after a while I had too much business... money was coming in but I was working harder and harder to keep up. I realized that I needed to work smarter not harder: I needed to come up with a different way to run my business and do so fast or I was
going to burn out.
Figure out what you’re good at doing, define what it is that you want to do and...
Get in the game. You can start building your money today.
Why Most Real Estate Investors Fail
Before They Get Started
Let’s take a look at the mindset of the real estate investor. They’re people who are independent self-starters who like to be in control. They enjoy the excitement that the real-estate business can bring them.
Moreover, people go into real estate believing that they are going to
make money fast. kids, working a full time job, and building a real estate business at the same time. It is an overwhelming schedule to say the least. The business suffers the most due to my time limits, I have only been able to dabble in R.E. until now. Having Realeflow has changed my working life. Instead of spending my time shuffling papers around on my desk, I can spend my time marketing, making offers, and getting deals done. It’s like hiring two assistants. I can’t thank you enough for developing this system.”
One problem with real estate is that while it can be extremely profitable, transactions are seldom as fast as you thought. But if you expect this AND
plan for it, then you can build your pipeline so that
you are working on multiple deals at one time.
Expectations are super important in this business: yours, the sellers and your buyers.
A quick story to illustrate this point: my family and I visit Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio almost every year. It is a wonderful amusement park on the coast of Lake Erie. Each year it seems as if they are building a new state-of-the-art roller coaster, and last year was no different as they
built the Top Thrill Dragster - a 400-foot plus behemoth of a ride.
That summer, the wait to get on was over three hours long, which made it “unattractive” for us to wait around. Later in the year, around Halloween, we went back and found the wait to be only 90 minutes; I jumped in line as soon as I heard the good news. Having expected a wait of over two hours, I was delighted when we learned it was
shorter.
And although the ride lasted only 30 seconds, it was a blast!
Afterwards, as we drove home exhausted and starving from a day in the sun, we stopped at the first McDonald’s off the highway. And guess what we saw? Long lines of hungry people equally as tired from a day at the park. We weren’t the only ones with the same idea.
There’s nothing quite like having to wait in a long line for 20 minutes to get Big Macs. I wasn’t happy, and I certainly left feeling frustrated at the end of what had been an awesome, fun-filled day.
What happened?
For most people eating a Big Mac is more enjoyable than getting launched from 0-122 mph in under three seconds (not me), so why was it so frustrating to wait a fraction of the time it took to ride the coaster? EXPECTATIONS. Waiting in line for fast food put us in a crabby mood, yet when we waited 90 minutes for a 30 second ride, it made our day.
Our expectations were set, and when they were not met, our emotions shifted 180 degrees.
The same can be said regarding investors new to the real estate industry. They go into it expecting things to happen overnight.
“Our expectations
were set, and
when they were
not met, our
emotions shifted
The
Freedom
Manifesto
By shifting EXPECTATIONS just a little, and expecting the unexpected, investors can be on their way to
experiencing tremendous profitability. It truly is a mindset.
The main difference between those that are successful in this business and those that fail has little to do with start up capital and everything to do with having proper expectations and taking ACTION!
Why a Lack of Organization
Can Lead to a Business that Runs
Like a Well-oiled Machine
I’m not very organized. I can be, but usually choose not to be. Many
experienced and novice investors alike get sucked into the same whirling vortex of a never-ending list of tasks and responsibilities. The end result is that their business feels like they’re walking in
sand AND pulling an 800 pound gorilla behind.
What further compounds the problem is that it is rare for any real estate investor to be great at everything. Lead acquisition, sales, managing properties and managing the business can be tough to do for one person without a SYSTEM. Quite frankly, most of us simply do not have the organizational skills necessary to keep things on track. As the pile on the desk grows, so does the opportunity to completely lose focus.
I often hear GURU’s talk about not having a system and at what a disadvantage it puts the investor. I disagree. Everyone has a system, some suck, some are average, some are decent, a few are good, and a small number are exceptional. After reading this you will understand how exceptional systems work and how TOP investors all
over the country are using them.
For example Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software comes into play when businesses are trying to improve their systems. CRM is a term used to broadly define the concepts used by companies to manage their relationships with customers, including the capture, storage and analysis of customer and internal process
information.
Realeflow is a CRM that we designed to do the above and more for those individuals interested in streamlining their business for maximum effect.
So what does this actually mean? It means you have access to ALL your information with a click of a button.
I am assuming that everyone reading this at some point has had to call the cable company for one reason or
another. Generally, you are requested to put in your account number – usually your telephone number. This allows the customer service representative on the other end of the line to look up your billing history, and any
assist the customer more efficiently than if he/she had to sort through files or send a question up to a
supervisor.
Why is your business any different?
The amount of material and information you have to process for one deal, let alone the several deals a year
you need, to be ultra-profitable is enormous. Have you ever kept track of how many calls you make when working on just a single case? How about the notes you made for each call so that you could keep track of the process? If you’re like me, then at times you probably didn’t keep notes. On those occasions when I did, I’d stuff them into a folder - never to be
heard from again.
You need something that can provide the information
you need whenever and wherever you are…
In a “SNAP”.
A CRM that can manage the complexity of multiple real estate transactions while managing multiple
properties is critical to staying on top of your business.
After all, you want a business that performs beyond your efforts. One that has the capability to run by itself.
Only by realizing our weaknesses can we ever truly REALIZE the importance of improvement. That
last sentence is simple but if you can fully grasp the true meaning then you are well on your way to achieving quantum leap growth… By being disorganized you should realize how much stuff is falling thru the cracks and realize the importance of finding a solution.
Poor Business Design Results in You Doing All the Work
What if I told you that you are exactly where you should be, in life, in business, and in the amount of happiness you experience on a daily basis? If you’re not making enough money or not as satisfied as you should be then you need to DESIGN your life differently – your business differently.
When I first began building a real estate company, I thought that I could do it all: take the calls, do the appointments, write up the paperwork, meet the appraisers, manage the contractors, run the office, etc…
Boy was I busy, and while I was having some success, I’d go home at night feeling as if somehow I was missing the big picture: something wasn’t quite right. And then one day it was as clear as daylight: what’s the point of
“I’m new to Real Estate Investing and Short Sales in particular. Being a newbie and essentially being a one person shop, I have been VERY concerned with how I would be able to manage everything. I started to think that maybe I would not be able to enter the very timely and lucrative area of Short Sales because of all the moving parts. Well Realeflow is answered prayer! Now I feel extremely confident that I will be able to manage it all! Thank you so much for all the time and effort that went into creating such a well-planned and all-encompassing management software. I am certain that my future success is going to be in large part to Realeflow!!!
As you can see even though I have only being using Realeflow for about a week, I am VERY excited about it!! I plan to tell everyone I know about it.”
“owning your own” business just to work harder than you did when you had a steady job with steady pay?
I mean, what was I working for? The right to call myself self-employed isn’t so great if my business owns me and not the other way around.
Here’s a litmus test to see where you stand in relationship to the business you have or the business you hope to create. Ask yourself “what if I were to leave my business for two months or two years, would I still have a business that would run without me?”
If the answer is yes, congratulations; if no, then what you’re saying is that by leaving your income will stop.
In other words, while you have achieved self-employment you haven’t achieved what most hope their business will provide: an AUTOMATED source of income.
Don’t run your business like so many other investors in real estate.
Don’t be one of those individuals that rationalize daily challenges with the thought “at least I am working for myself” while expecting things to get better. If you have a flawed business design, it won’t.
Differentiate your business on every possible level, beginning with the structure that you need to keep things flowing while you are away.
The only way to set your business up to run without you is to develop systems and processes that will keep your business going even if you’re not present. You need systems to bring in leads, to market and sell property and to manage the multitude of tasks necessary in running a real estate investing
business.
Use Our 3-Step Formula
1. Spend 2 hours a week on the highest dollar per hour work known to man- THINKING. Think about your business weaknesses and how to improve/solve them. Think about your strengths and how to further enhance them.
3. This last step is the KEY to fortunes. You could stop reading in a second, never pick this book up again (please don’t... you’ll miss many other secrets) and if you do this I GUARANTEE your life will never be the same. Ready? Speed of Implementation- say that 30 times
now. This is what separates the men from the boys.
Multi-millionaires THINK, PLAN (map) and
IMPLEMENT very, very quickly.
It’s up to you to decide how you wish to design your life and your
business.
Avoid the trap so many fall into by building businesses that are
flawed and becoming indentured servants. By establishing a set structure that will do what I’ve discussed, the sky is literally the limit for your business and the life that you want to create.
The Helping Hand Positioning Process
Marketing is a problem that confronts everyone in the real estate industry. It costs money, it takes time, and the results are often erratic. Be it bandit signs, cold calls, door knocking, newspaper, direct mail, (least expensive) or billboards, radio and television (most expensive), finding a way to get leads in the door is an endless
source of stress for most.
Many real estate investment businesses only focus on the front
end when they need the leads. As soon as the leads come in, they begin to process them, and their marketing programs lose focus
and momentum. Several months later, once those initial deals have
closed, investors will once again bring their attention to lead acquisition.
This up and down pattern means an up and down cycle of closings and therefore profit. In essence, it’s a feast and famine cycle that will keep your business from realizing its full potential.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
In putting together our real estate business we went through a wicked period given that our market had more houses available for sale than any time since the Great Depression: and this was when there was record appreciation in other states like Florida, Arizona, and California, etc!
The
Freedom
Manifesto
We couldn’t just buy a house, sit on it for six months while it appreciated 30 percent and sell it for a nifty profit. We couldn’t be lazy... if we wanted to keep our company alive it demanded and depended on finding the formula that would generate the leads we needed to
thrive.
We turned marketing into our own science project, using scientific methods to observe, ask questions, generate a
theory, and then test that theory.
Basically, that was our approach to marketing. We’re not MBAs – didn’t have any inclination to work for corporate America – and besides, we’re firm believers in experiential education... in other words, getting out and
putting theory into practice.
Our basic formula was as follows:
1) through trial and error we identified our target audience – what neighborhoods, what kind of houses, what range of values;
2) we made a commitment to be specific about where we wanted to work and seldom deviated to chase long shot deals in parts of town that were unfamiliar to us; and
3) we held firm on costs, eschewing bolder forms of advertising like television, radio and billboards that would have flooded us with unqualified leads at a steep price.
Make True Contacts
We understood that whatever marketing program we developed needed to identify those “true contacts” that would give us the best shot of closing a deal. We define a true contact as an individual who is pre-qualified and predisposed to doing business. These are people who CALL us and ask US to help THEM.
Our challenge was to develop a system that we could put into place that would achieve this and moreover, we needed this system to be automated so that it could run efficiently over long periods of time.
Remember this: Effective marketing makes selling superfluous. If your marketing is good then you will NOT need to do much selling
at all.
“We couldn’t just buy a house,
sit on it for six months while it
appreciated 30 percent and sell it
for a nifty profit. We couldn’t
be lazy... if we wanted to keep
our company alive it demanded
and depended on finding the
formula that would generate the
All we had to do was discover a way to make as many “true contacts” per month as possible, without breaking
our budget.
And we did.
The framework that we use in our approach to marketing is called The Helping Hand Positioning Process. It
The
Freedom
Manifesto
A cornerstone of The Helping Hand Positioning Process is the referral.
Here’s a quick story (and a huge secret for those reading). Going back to my days as a representative for a prominent financial services company, the importance of referrals was ingrained early. In fact, we would spend hours role-playing different ways to ask for referrals at the end of an appointment. Armed with my brief case I would go out on appointments, attempt to sell our services, and then at the end of the appointment use one of the many techniques we spent so much time learning. Guess what? It seldom worked. When I just asked them for
names they really didn’t have any.
So at a certain point I knew I had to go beyond the training materials and do something a little different. What I did was combine a little research with a little psychology, and the result made a huge difference.
A Small Change Can Make A Big Difference
My next appointment I was meeting with an attorney at a big firm downtown. While I wanted to sell him on our services, I was just as interested in getting some referrals. So at the end of the appointment I took out a sheet printed with the names of the other members of the firm (I researched this ahead of time). I told him, “John, over the next 10 days we are going to be contacting these individuals. Anyone on this list that would be WORTH talking to?” And it worked! Handing the list over to John he began marking the names of the people I should see. Almost as a sense of self-worth and validation – he began to tell me about each of these individuals. Then I said, “John, would you mind if when I talked to these people I mention that we had met?” And John again was
more than helpful.
I got the sale, and I think it was mainly because John had just indirectly referred me to almost his entire firm that he now HAD to do business with me. And I still had a list of contacts to pursue in the coming days and months. This approach worked, over and over. As a result, I turned around
my year and finished in my company as the top first year rep in the country!
What Centers of Influence would be helpful to you in building your business? I’ll give you a hint. Attorneys, realtors, and mortgage brokers could fill your pipeline so FULL of leads that you would
literally have to turn the faucet off to control the chaos. We have developed a complete system based on this one approach.
Our business depends heavily on this method: some 65 percent of all true contacts that we obtain are derived from Center of Influence Marketing. Far and away this is the most cost effective and productive means we have of generating leads that turn into dollars... for us, not some advertiser!
Step 1: Information Mining
Identify and implement technological tools to fill your pipeline with quality leads. Obtaining accurate data is the critical foundation for success. Efficiently mining RAW Material is crucial to building
your business.
But to be effective, you need one important thing – a company
identity. More on this later...
Step 2: The Multiple Medium Approach
Capture consumers based on varied responses in different advertising mediums. Customize your message and apply it to several forms of advertising as a way to ensure a greater reach. Clients will think of your company when they are ready to take
action.
The bottom-line, learn what blend of strategies to rely on in order to keep a steady stream of leads coming in. Don’t just depend on one
source.
I had a friend in a separate real estate business that depended on an ad in the front cover of the white pages to generate the majority of his leads. Sure, he wrote a big check, but the price wasn’t as high as you would think and basically he’d have to close one deal a month to break even. At the time, this wasn’t an issue, but each year that advertisement became more and more expensive until finally he had to let the ad go and come up with a new marketing plan.
Step 3: The Consistency Formula
This is one key area that separates high performers from everyone else.
Streamlining your message and delivering it in a consistent and repetitive way will establish your brand quality and trust. By maintaining the same steady outreach, this type of “gourmet” marketing will position your business to dominate the market.
The key is being consistent. Don’t send out mailers and wait three months. Implement a program and give it time. After tracking its impact, you can adjust with better insight at a later date.
To achieve this, business owners need a system that will automate the complex task of maintaining multiple levels of marketing. This marketing needs to be implemented in an organized manner so that all strands work
together to generate as many “true contacts” as possible.
Step 4: Deal Filter
You need to be able to “check out” your leads quickly and see if they are worth your time. For example in today’s market one profitable way to
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invest in real estate is through the use of a short sale to purchase properties in pre-foreclosure. The Deal Filter
is a tool in Realeflow that provides a short sale scoring model and a profit analyzer.
The scoring model provides a formula that helps
investors identify what deals to pursue and what deals to avoid. Likewise, the profit analyzer provides information useful in exploring possible exit strategies while
identifying the one that makes the most sense.
The Deal Filter is a point and click interface that provides answers at a moment’s notice. The purpose of this tool is to teach Realeflow users how to differentiate between time consuming deals that don’t payoff vs. the ability to detect deals which offer the best chances of closing with the most lucrative results.
It is important to develop formulas and tools that can be
used as both a means of evaluation and identification of
potential deals.
Step 5: The Credibility Filter
Please remember this - generally, people make a decision to work with you within the first minute and a half of
an appointment. It’s called the anchoring principle and
it basically states that in the first 90 seconds of meeting
someone new that both parties form an opinion that is hard to break. This is why it’s so important to come across as professional, knowledgeable and credible IMMEDIATELY. The marketing you use, the clothing you wear, and the words from your mouth will measure your credibility. Whether it’s setting response times or general estimates, your clients will be evaluating and determining their faith and trust in your abilities.
Step 6: The Positive Results Conversation
Identifying the need of your client and creating a compelling and actionable solution that is valuable to both is
critical to cementing a deal. You must discover the key need of the client and specifically what is most important to them. Once established, you can create a solution to fulfill that need while achieving your end result.
But how does one begin to do this?
You may have one of those affable personalities that are able to convey ideas and stay on message without forgetting any of the important stuff you intended to cover in the first appointment. If so, great, but I’m willing to guess that most of you are like me and depending on the time of day, and the type of day you’re having, your presentation may be average. Again, for some of you, average is fantastic, but wouldn’t you like to be better than average?
“Realeflow has changed the way my partner and I do business. Our short sale company has literally exploded since using Realeflow. Why? Because we can handle exponentially more deals more efficiently in our pipeline. Information is available to us at the click of a mouse. Plus, our short sale business can be run from anywhere in the world. I’m in AZ, and my partner is in KY... and there’s no lapse whatsoever in the exchange of critical information. Prior to Realeflow, everything we did was on boards and in paper files. I found myself scrambling for files when mitigators or sellers called. Notes were strewn everywhere. My partner and I were constantly on the phone with each other to see where we were with our deals. No more. Realeflow was a lifesaver. I’m less stressed, we’re tremendously more organized, and we’re closing more deals. Thanks, Josh and Greg!”
When I began my career as a financial planner I learned the importance of following a script on a first appointment. Like everyone who has ever been in a sales position, I didn’t relish the idea of memorizing and reciting lines that made me sound artificial or that made me sound, well... like a sales rep.
I had a change of heart when one day I realized that as much business as I was doing, there were still plenty of people in the company doing much better. The key: these individuals had
practiced a script that they seldom deviated from and that they had
used for years. THEY MADE IT THEIR OWN.
I didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. I found one of the top performers in the company who was willing to sit down and teach me the simple language that he used and I put it to work. The result? I
tripled my productivity.
Needless to say, I’m a huge believer in learning sales language. The “Positive Results Conversation” promotes this idea as a way to increase deals by offering a template for how to structure a solid script.
For our business, we have used a script when specifically working with people facing foreclosure or dealing with a problem property and have experienced tremendous success in resolving the issues a particular homeowner faces. But any well-written script will be just as effective for you, regardless of the type of business you pursue
as a real estate investor.
These six steps represent the core of The Helping Hand Positioning Process. If you use the above as a guideline,
you will not only see more dollars come into your business, you’ll begin to position yourself in your market as an expert.
Little Hinges Swing Big Doors
Quick story, when I was younger and a bit lighter, I used to dabble in the game of tennis. I say dabble because anyone looking at me knows that my body type is better suited for a football field than a tennis court.
Back when I was a kid, I remember watching Bjorn Bjorg: he was a tennis super-star. He won title after title and he played with a wooden racket similar to the ones we had out in my garage.
Then he retired.
While out of tennis, new metal and graphite rackets were being made and were taking the tennis world by storm. All of my friends wanted a new Prince racket, including me.
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wooden racket, disdaining the newer more powerful rackets much the same way traditional baseball fans disdain metal bats. The result? Time after time inferior players using the newer rackets beat Bjorn. He stayed true to his wooden racket, but he never won another title.
Could it be that the racket (tools) he was using was preventing him from winning?
Now, as my business was thriving I couldn’t help but notice two things:
1) My competition – those Realtors and home rehabbers – were going out of business because the market had shifted; and
2) I was under intense pressure to continue improving my business, but I was using inferior tools. In essence, I was just like Bjorn swinging away with a heavy wood racket. While my competition wasn’t an immediate threat, I understood that rules change and that I was playing the game the way it had always
been played.
I was going to need to develop different strategies and tools to keep up with a changing environment. And simply attending more seminars and reading more books wasn’t
going to be enough.
I needed to marry all the experience and knowledge I had gained in building my business with a tool that would allow me to build that type of business
that I dreamed of.
And so I created a complete Business
Management System: Realeflow.
Nearly every business wants to scale up. But growing a business can take more than just a good market and a lot of hours at the office. Growing a business involves understanding how to leverage your position in your particular market.
But you can’t do this unless you know how to leverage your own business.
Remember those old Roadrunner cartoons you use
perched precariously above a canyon.
His plan? ...to push the boulder off the ledge when Roadrunner came racing by using only his body weight and a lever.
Finding a large old wooden board, he
builds his lever only to learn that his
body weight alone is not enough to move the rock. As the fuse burns lower and lower, a desperate Coyote jumps
off a nearby cliff onto the board only to
bounce back into the air, landing on the rock.
You know the rest: the bomb explodes sending the boulder and Coyote down the canyon where Roadrunner watches
from a distance.
What aspects of your business remind
you of Coyote’s attempt to get the Roadrunner only to blow himself up in the process?
If I asked you to diagram this scene, labeling those
parts that represented you, your business, and the
systems you have in place to run your business, what would be the rock, the lever, and the Coyote?
Okay... matching three on three is easy, right? The Coyote might be you, the boulder your business and
the lever the systems you use to run your business.
It’s a silly image that I want you to use as an example for the type of business you don’t want to own.
If your business isn’t moving, you need to take a look at the lever you are using (the SYSTEMS IN your business) and re-evaluate. If it’s not allowing
you to increase your number of deals and your
revenue without demanding more from you in the way of time, effort and energy, then you need to rethink your plan.
“We have been investing in Real Estate and our education as investors for the past 5 years, and have spent tens of thousands of dollars on boot camps, coaching and mentoring. We know it is more expensive to be educated than not in this business, and we’ve been fortunate to work with “real deal” gurus who added value to our business lives. So we have very high standards for who we will work with. Well, you and Realeflow have set a NEW standard. The systemization, professionalism and comprehensiveness of the tool and the training are so far above what anybody else is teaching or selling. Realeflow is clearly a tool to be used by the already successful investor, or a business person who wants to start a new business investing in real estate. We are thrilled we purchased the product upon it’s initial release, because it’s cutting edge, and that’s what we are up to. It’s brilliant.”
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Is This You?
Tom Stufflebean was a manager for a chain of tanning salons making $50k per year. The work wasn’t difficult and he liked the people, but with a young family on the way he grew anxious about finding a way to provide more without sacrificing additional
time and money.
Tom decided to learn real estate. He attended a couple of boot camps, and read some books, and slowly transitioned into the business. He bought his first house, and then his second, making sure to stay conservative in his approach. His first two deals he wholesaled quickly and made a third of what he earned in his regular job in a matter of weeks instead of months.
When Tom felt confident of success, he left the tanning salon business and went full time into real estate. He worked from his home in order to keep costs down and he set up his marketing to target those parts of town he knew well and that would sell
fast.
In his first year he doubled his income, but he was working pretty hard to do it, in fact he was working harder and had less time with his family.
He could see the profit potential, but the way his business was designed, he could only handle working so many cases at once. He needed a way to scale up his business to be more profitable without increasing demands on his time.
He began by structuring his week to focus on his time spent on revenue producing activities and non-revenue producing activities. He used his Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for getting out in the field, seeing properties, networking with buyers, and showing houses – doing the things that would bring in money. His non-revenue producing activities would be done on Tuesday and Thursday: he would focus on document preparation, returning emails, phone calls, and other office minutia
that needed to be completed.
This was a small change in his business, but it increased his productivity in similar fashion to a small hinge swinging open a
big door.
Tom stayed disciplined, but again when the office work became too much, he hired a part-time office coordinator to help him a few hours each day.
But the more “effective” he became in the operation of his business, the more cases came his way: deals and work began to pile up. Tom realized that even with additional part-time help, he needed something more...
Instead of having to constantly create materials he used for organizing, recording and implementing; Tom wanted to find a way to set up his business once, letting it run almost as if it were on auto-pilot.
He searched different programs, different systems, found Realeflow and finally found a way to increase his productivity. But how would he increase his profit per deal?
By using the analytical tools on Realeflow, such as the Deal Filter, the Hammerpoint Project Manager, the Profit Analyzer, Tom was able to target properties that stood a greater chance of earning higher profits.
He also used the Classroom Section and Greenlight Selling System in Realeflow to research how to sell property in a down market and learn about “staging property”: another simple idea that helped Tom to earn an additional $5k per transaction. In the beginning, the lever that Tom was jumping on to move his business worked alright, but as his business began to grow, the lever became less and less useful until it seemed like it wouldn’t move anything at all.
Why Delegate When You Can Automate?
Is it easier to ask an assistant to spend an hour to design a brochure OR push one button and then print it out?
Is it easier to spend hours having contractors look at your jobs and then average out the estimates OR spend 10 minutes or less in a “point and click” checklist preparing a work estimate?
Is it easier to hire a team of people to design and send your marketing OR use an automated inexpensive system?
Since we’re talking marketing then one other approach that needs to be discussed is something that we call “Action Sequences”.
I’d like to describe a Bjorn Bjorg moment... in the course of developing
The Helping Hand Positioning Process, I had an epiphany:
Why was I working so hard to develop a marketing program based on concepts that were representative of an older, outdated technology?
In essence, I caught myself swinging at the market with a wooden tennis racket and I knew that at some point my competition would catch up and use the newer technology available, namely the Internet.
What we’ve done in our business is to set up multiple ways to direct homeowners in distress to our websites and toll free phone lines. Then our “marketing engines” kick in and automatically educate our prospects and convince them to do business with us through the use of auto-responders, free reports, and audio/video. Basically an action
sequence is a series of actions that happen by triggering an event. For
example, if a seller visits your website and enters their information, you should automate the following to take place:
1) have a series of prepared emails sent to the prospect;
2) have a series of direct mailing pieces sent to the prospect’s mailing address; and
3) have their contact information forwarded directly to you via email.
The beauty of this method is that it is entirely automated and it provides the ability for you, the business owner, to track results.
“Your RealeFlow program is a Godsend. I have been doing short sales for six years now and I thought I had it down to a science. The thing I dislike the most about short sales is the time spent updating files and arranging file folders and never really quite knowing what needs to be done next. It use to be that my customers would call to keep me in line and while juggling 60+ short sales at one time it was the tail wagging the dog constantly. It was getting to the point that I agonized walking in to my office each morning not knowing what fire I would be putting out next. With your program I have been able to have all the information I need at my fingertips. I feel that this program paid for itself within the first six weeks. I would need at least two full time employees to do what Realeflow is doing now. Thank you for maintaining my sanity and my business.”
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Forget about putting stamps on a post card or making those cold calls... Earlier I asked what would happen if you left your business for two months or two years? In order to do this, you either need a fantastic team of people you know won’t let you down, or you need to automate the systems and procedures that are most important to the life of your company. If you’re going to use traditional marketing like direct mail (which can provide great results)
then you need to automate it or outsource it completely.
Developing a marketing plan that incorporates Action Sequences is an important first step.
But having the right Mindset and tools is only half of it. The other factor that plays heavily into whether a business will find success has to do with knowing your strengths as a businessperson, and putting in a DESIGN
that bolsters those areas that aren’t strong.
In other words, you need to DESIGN your BUSINESS so it will cover those areas in which you don’t excel. If you don’t have a system, or it’s not what it needs to be, you need to develop one immediately.
Having met with many novice and even advanced investors there’s one common mistake that they make that puts them on the path to failure or worse, hard work: they’re operating their business in such a way that they do all the work.
You’ve heard the old adage that “most people in business don’t run their business, it runs them”?
It’s true.
What a poor business design means is countless hours of feeling overwhelmed by all that hasn’t been
accomplished, and ultimately, failure.
To prove this point, take a look at any thriving business that you encounter, be it a restaurant, gas station, retail
store, or car dealership. If they’re successful you might notice many things that they have in common, but one
should stand out – their business runs like a machine... meaning that it has several components working together.
The mistake that most real estate investors make when
starting a real estate business is that they treat it more as a hobby, rather than a business.
This is a critical point that I’ve mentioned before: new
business owners focus their energy working IN their business, rather than ON their business.
So what does this mean?
It means that people new to running a business spend most of their time taking care of menial tasks necessary
to the business, but not always crucial. The thinking goes something like this... “If I hire someone, that’s going to put more pressure on my finances, and I need to watch money. So I’ll do all the little stuff, and hire someone
“...new business owners
focus their energy working
when I nail larger deals consistently.” The result is that the investor has created a trap and walked right into it ...
the trap of being a “technician.”
But those large deals might never materialize. Why?
Perhaps the owner is spending more time taking calls and organizing files than problem solving new ways to get leads and grow the business? While they may see the bigger picture, they have a harder time separating out those tasks that need to be addressed in order to achieve it.
I know, because I’ve done this.
In any business, much of the day can be spent focusing on repetitive tasks that are time consuming. Sure, they fill up the day, but what did you really get done?
How many of you have attempted to do the following on your own: create the marketing plans, obtain leads, send out the postcards, lick the stamps, take the phone calls, return emails, negotiate with sellers, contact the lenders, rehab houses, find buyers, raise money to fund deals, set up a closing, contact buyer to schedule signings, manage the books, and on and on?
Crazy, isn’t it? But how many of us haven’t fallen into this trap?
Let’s say that if instead of starting a
real estate company you had bought a McDonalds, do you realize that you’d seldom have to step foot in
your restaurant to make money? You’d AUTOMATE or DELEGATE
everything... probably to a $10 per
hour high school senior who could cook, clean, fry, and take orders better than you ever could!
So why do real estate investors go into business thinking that they can do it all, too? If buying and selling
residential property successfully is a long-term goal, then understand that
you cannot be successful doing everything it takes to build a successful business on your own.
Nor should you want to run a business on your own, after all, would you rather own the business or simply be self-employed?
You might begin by hiring an office coordinator – someone who will run the day-to-day operations while you
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address the higher level issues. Or you might begin by investing a fraction of that to invest in a system like Realeflow. Or you might do both!
It goes without saying that you’ll need to be selective, making sure that you get the right people with the
right personality traits for the right positions. There are different diagnostic tools available if you get really
specific. I love the Kolbe A Index (www.kolbe.com).
But delegating responsibilities to another person or
staff won’t be enough. You also need to find a way to AUTOMATE those aspects of your business design
that are time consuming and repetitive. Don’t hire a
human to do what a computer can do. It comes back
to SYSTEMS. What systems do you have in place to
streamline tasks and to make sure that your business is running as effectively as possible?
Think back to the question posed at the beginning of this section: Why delegate when you can automate?
Here’s the idea... what if you could set up your business
one time, automate as much as possible and delegate the
rest? What kind of impact do you think that would have not only on your business, but your life?
What if you could create a business that you own, but that you don’t need to run on a daily basis?
Working without a business management system in real estate is terribly difficult. Go ahead and sign up for every seminar and course of study available, the bottom-line is that if you don’t have an effective way to deal with the minutia that your business creates on a daily basis, you’re bound to get jammed-up.
An example, let’s say you’re running your business one day, answering the phones, licking stamps, organizing the file cabinet and a call comes in. Some guy wants to sell you his house for a discount immediately, but the trouble is he needs to leave for the airport in an hour and won’t be back in town for several weeks.
After going over the specifics, you realize that this is it…the “million dollar call” that each real estate investor dreams of getting. You also realize that due to some of the particular circumstances of the deal, it will take some time, probably longer than what you have, to get all the paperwork and forms in line in order to meet and sign the
contracts.
What will you do?
“Hi Greg, I wanted to send you a quick note to let you know how much we appreciate RealeFlow and the people you have who support it. As you know, over 90 percent of our business is from real estate agent referrals. Since we’re negotiating over 100 properties at a time, our biggest challenge has been keeping up with requests from agents for updates on each case. Some days our backlog of phone messages can take literally hours to retrieve and return so that listing agents can keep their buyers, sellers and buyers agents updated on a regular basis. Providing limited access to the Realeflow database has been a lifesaver, reducing the volume of calls and providing timely status reports to agents so that there’s less chance of losing a buyer. Thanks so much for developing a product so perfectly tailored to our business.”
One of the ways that I have addressed this problem in my business is through the automated form creator in Realeflow. In this situation, I would be able to take in all the information I needed over the telephone, plug it into Realeflow, click a button and print out the several documents I’d need in less than four minutes!
Because I have the ability to create forms on the fly, regardless of where I am, that once in a lifetime opportunity is not going to pass
me by.
You might be wondering what other areas of the standard business can be automated?
How about marketing?
I’ve always had difficulty in my business setting up a structured marketing plan and staying committed. Why? Things happen and
life gets busy. Doing marketing is critical, but it’s tedious and people slip up, make mistakes, including me!
So I decided to automate my marketing program.
Now I have a multi-pronged approach that depends on several different strands working effectively together to drive leads my way (as explained in The Helping Hand Positioning Process). Sure, I have to monitor and make
adjustments based upon changes in the market and the results I receive from new campaigns. But I’ve taken a constant source of worry that demanded a good portion of time and effort and relegated it to the push of a button.
Sweet.
To recap this section, setting the right expectations for yourself and those you work with while learning to Delegate and Automate will force you to construct a business that runs efficiently and makes money.
Remember, the goal isn’t to have a business that you have to work in each day, but to have a business that can
create an automated supply of revenue.
By doing this you will put yourself onto a path where you begin to build a business that works – for you.
Why Repetitive, Time-Consuming Tasks Will Be Your Downfall
I used to think that working hard meant filling in every minute with some busy task. I had to be the master of “efficiency” which meant to me that I was responsible for getting as much done as I could every day and using
each day up to the minute.
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an hour later and I couldn’t tell you, but I could tell you about the disposed dictator of some small foreign country.
Or in my work-a-day life: how about email? What a fantastic creation... is there anything else that provides the fulfilling sense of getting things done, and “staying on top of it” than answering emails?
I used to check my email 40 times a day and then spend most of the day answering messages. When I got home at the end of the day, I often couldn’t recall what exactly I had accomplished for my business, but by golly, I answered a few dozen emails!
At first, I blamed this on the work ethic I learned from my dad as a child. Working hard was a good thing... I was taught: “it’s how our country rose to greatness”. Later, I began to see it as a compulsive-obsessive behavior that dictated how I lived each day and how I felt about each day lived.
And maybe this Protestant Work Ethic idea is dead-on, but what we’ve done with it is turn ourselves into a nation of multi-taskers. Reading while “enjoying” a meal is one example, but what about all the people talking on their cell phones while driving, or worse yet, emailing on their Blackberry’s while talking on the mobile while driving!
I was a multi-tasking machine and the truth was that I wasn’t really living, I was just marking items off a list... doing the things that would give me the sense of moving forward, of achieving my goals.
And it worked, well sort of. I accomplished quite a bit, but I always had this sense of a knife pointing in my back... it never felt like I was working enough, so I’d only work harder.
And for some reason I wasn’t going as far as I thought I would go.
Then I hit a wall... went through one of those periods of time of reflection; began to understand that when it came to my business, staying “busy” was just another way for me to keep from doing some of the tasks that I found unpleasant or dull, but that were critical to success.
My epiphany: I realized that in order to do more I needed to do less.
The less I work- the more I make!
What I observed in my business practice was how multi-tasking – being all things to all people – ended up distracting me from the real work that needed to be done. Immediately I began to prioritize my day to focus on only a couple of major things that needed to be completed and to do so at any cost: I not only remained efficient, I was becoming more effective.
“I had to be the master of
“efficiency” which meant to
me that I was responsible for
getting as much done as I could
And I began to think about how I should automate those areas of my business that would free my time and energy to focus on more important issues. I began implementing a system that would help me to delegate and automate tasks and responsibilities. But to what end?
Whatever system I put into place I knew I had to decrease the amount of work I performed, while increasing revenue or it wasn’t useful.
But far too often, people in our business don’t understand
what this is, or what shape it should take.
A useful approach in thinking about a system, and determining what kind to use, is to consider the time that
you are focused on revenue producing activities.
Think about your day as being made up of
non-productive time vs. non-productive time. Earlier I mentioned
how as owners of a real estate investing company we can
easily fall into the trap of thinking that we need to do or oversee everything. So much of our business appears to be outside of our control, that it is only natural that we want direct involvement in all aspects of the business. But such micromanaging is ultimately wasteful and non-productive.
For example, at some point, we’ve probably all thought about losing weight. But before you can lose it, you have to understand what it is you are eating. A way to do this is to record what you eat during the week. I know that when I did this, I assumed I was keeping my caloric intake down by going easy on breakfast and lunch. I never suspected how I was blasting my caloric intake out to space by the types of food I’d eat for dinner!
You can follow a similar process in examining how efficiently and effectively you work in your business.
During my first job out of college, I mentioned earlier that I was working for a prominent company involved in providing a broad range of financial services to clients. As part of my training that first year, there was plenty of talk about how much of the day was focused on revenue producing activities. Our trainer asked us to keep a daily journal broken down into 15-minute increments. It was our goal for three days to keep track of everything we did during the workday, and I mean everything. Stops at the snack machine, bathroom breaks, calls from home, etc.
Did it drive all of us a little crazy? You bet. But when we got back together the following week, it was surprising how much time we spent each day not doing the things we needed to do to make money. Most of us were taking our vacations 10 minutes at a time and then complaining about our lack of time off!
Consider trying the same activity. Get a small pad of paper that you can keep with you and record each 20-minute segment throughout the workday. I think that you’ll be surprised and alarmed by what you find.
As you learn to identify those tasks that are not revenue producing, you’ll begin to understand those parts of your day that are. This is where you need to begin rethinking your business design and the system you need to create to earn what you want to earn.
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But figuring out what I should be doing was a mind-bender. After all, as a micro manager that wanted to be involved in every aspect of my business, no task was too small or insignificant to demand my attention: I was just being responsible, right?
Wrong. What I failed to realize in my early years as an entrepreneur
was that all activities in a business are not equally important.
But how to define those revenue generating activities from those that were non-revenue producing?
In the real estate business, it’s relatively simple: lead acquisition
and disposition of property are what make the dollars come in. Of course, there are a multitude of tasks in between the front and back
end that must be completed, too.
Consider applying Pareto’s Law, which can be summarized as 80% of the profits are generated by 20% of the actions.
1) Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness?
2) Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?
Use this idea to think about what results are crucial to your business, and what actions create them. An easy place to begin is your marketing. But what about the programs you have in place to sell property? Finally, what about the systems and core structure you use to keep it all together?
By focusing on processes you will lessen the impact that
minutia can have on your business.
Start putting it all together.
Positioning Your Business
We’ve discussed a little about marketing and a lot about automation. Your marketing initiatives are one
of the areas most easily automated, and one of the most
important. But to do this you need to have some idea of what your marketing will be.
My experience has been that most people coming into real estate investing have little idea what is meant by the term “brand.” Fewer understand how a brand should be built.
So what is a brand? A brand is your unique selling proposition. We’re not talking Madison Avenue here, we are talking about building your company around an idea that is unique in your market.
