Season 1 Recap - That Real Estate Tech Guy

Season 1 of That Real Estate Tech Guy is a wrap! Jordan Fleming hosts a recap episode where the overarching themes of the season are summarized, the best tidbits of advice are collected, and you get to hear from each of our amazing season one guests! Even though our investors and tech experts come from all different backgrounds, certain topics and themes just kept popping up. We decided to focus on some of the most important, so tune in for a round up of the absolute BEST moments from season one of That Real Estate Tech Guy! 

First off, Jordan and his guests give their insight on the importance of data: how to collect, organize and analyze your data in a way that is productive and revenue-generating. The conversation turns to scaling, and why every successful leader will eventually have to figure out the smartest way to scale their real estate investment business.

“In general, I think that when you start spending money on marketing is when you need to make sure that you’re organized.” - Stephanie Betters

Every entrepreneur and real estate investment professional has probably had to tackle the tricky balance of separating their business from their personal life, so listen in to hear what our experts have to say on it!


"I see a lot of guys still using their personal cell phones for business and I just don't understand it!" - Brandin Pettersen.

Leads: can't grow a business without 'em, but you also don't want to drown in them! Listen in to hear the best ways to generate leads, as well as foster the ones you have. It's no surprise that another major theme of the episode was about the fortune being in the follow-up. As Larry Goins explains, "sometimes 50% of our closings each month are from old leads." 

If you're going to listen to one episode of TRETG, it better be this one -- we've distilled our best advice, our best insight, and our best moments from 11 guests into one recap episode. That being said -- all of Season 1 was spectacular, so give us a listen and stay tuned for season 2!


About That Real Estate Tech Guy Podcast

That Real Estate Tech Guy is the only podcast focused on helping Real Estate Investors make better technology decisions to close more deals and make more money. It is your weekly chance to explore how technology can help your real estate business explode. Informed by decades of REI and technology experience, Jordan gets into the details with seasoned tech and real estate industry leaders to bring you the lessons you need to get ahead. Learn from guest successes and failures, get the inside scoop on the next big trends, and always walk away with actionable ideas to build faster, better, and more profitably.

Interested in being a guest? Head to thatrealestatetechguy.com and let us know!

For more information about smrtPhone, the only all-in-one CRM phone system check out https://www.smrtphone.io/

Transcript

Jordan Fleming: 0:01

I can tell you one thing. Technology is the single most important aspect of every business that has successfully scaled.

Narrator: 0:09

It's time for That Real Estate Tech Guy, it's your weekly chance to explore how technology can help your real estate business explode. Each week, you'll hear from real estate investors who have been there and done that and find out their favorite technology tips. Listen in as Jordan speaks with tech companies and learns about new technologies and new ideas that will help you scale your business. And now join your host Jordan Samuel Fleming, CEO of smrtPhone for this week's episode.

Jordan Fleming: 0:43

Hey everybody, it's Jordan Samuel Fleming here with a pretty special episode of That Real Estate Tech Guy. Yes, we've come to the end of the first season. And I want to take a minute to kind of sum up some of the amazing things we have heard and the themes that we've kind of been given from our amazing guests this season, we've had a chance to speak to incredible investors, as well as some incredible technology partners. And I thought it'd be a great opportunity to dive into the common themes that everybody has talked about, let's take a look at them. So the first really common theme that I saw was around data and how important it is, and how to use it to your advantage. And it's something that you know, I have been preaching as a guy who, you know, used to build CRMs, and used to integrate technology into people's businesses, and now sees a lot of data flowing through smrtPhone, for instance, you know, the data that you have, as a company, the data that you purchase, as someone trying to grow your marketing, it is critically important to your business. And you have to think really closely and carefully about how you're, where you're getting the data, how you're using it, and how you're actually making sure that you're tracking the right things around the data in your system to get the results you want. Whether that's KPI metrics, making sure you're tracking each touch point you're doing, or just being able to use the information in your system to give you the best decisions on what to do, what to buy, and you know where to spend your money. So first off, let's take a look at what Terry Thayer who owns multiple real estate businesses, multi-million dollar real estate businesses, had to say about this.

Terry Thayer: 2:40

I mean, you can kind of get away with spreadsheets, you can kind of get away with using your cell phone and things like that, right. But if you're, if you're thinking about the long game, if you're thinking about the end, you're not going to be that one person band, right? And as you grow, and as you evolve, that was my biggest mistake is, I have all this data and all these different things in so many different places. And as we start to grow and expand to build out a team, and first of all, you can't run a team off spreadsheets, you can't run a team and hold them accountable off of just using their cell phone. Right? There's so much data that you can collect by using the right technology. And that's how you truly grow a business is through data, through data KPIs. And that's how you can shift, how you can you know whether you're doing good or why you're not doing bad.

Jordan Fleming: 3:28

Now, let's take a look at Larry Goins, my own, my old pal, Larry Goins, who's got over 30 years of real estate investing experience. Let's see what he has to say about data.

Larry Goins: 3:38

One of the most important things about this is you've got to spend a little bit of time, every once in a while to analyze the data. Like it does me no good to know that I'm making 38% more on probate leads, if I do nothing about it, right? It does me no good to know that information. Right? You've got to take action, you've got to analyze that data, and then take action on that day.

Jordan Fleming: 4:03

I had a great opportunity to sit down with Eli Fischer from Audantic. Now these guys are pure data scientists. And he had some fascinating insights on data and how to get the best data.

Eli Fisher: 4:16

Yeah, I think you know, it's really kind of, it's two sides, right? You have to have best in class data. But best in class data is only so good. It's really incumbent upon the operator, you have to have great systems and processes. Because if you don't, you can have the best data in the world. And it's not going to make a difference. I mean, I tell people look, it's the equivalent of giving me the keys to an f1 car. Yeah, it's cool, but I didn't go to race school. So kind of what's the point? And I think there's a lot of similarities there. One of the things that I think is really exciting as we see technology come in and start to influence the industry is how can we become more efficient in our operations? Because you look at any market as it progresses over time. And efficiency is always at the forefront. And one of the things that we do to really help our operators understand and become better at what they do is we're the only people in the industry that publish attribution. Now, as a marketing guy I know you can appreciate this. So what I mean for that, for those of you that aren't familiar with attribution is we generate a data set and we say, Hey, these are the people that are most likely to sell off market at a deep discount in your market. After one quarter, we publish those results to an online portal that says, okay, we predicted these 3000 transactions would occur in your market. How many of them did you get? And what it allows the client to do is really understand the relationship of conversion to their revenue

Jordan Fleming: 5:51

I spoke to Bob Lachance now, Bob's an investor, funnel. you know, and not only is he an investor in real estate, he's got a huge virtual assistant company that deals with real estate agents and investors all the time. And he really was clear on some of the most important things about keeping your data clean. Let's listen.

Bob Lachance: 6:11

Yeah, well, it's kind of funny, because, you know, leads and records are two different things. So the only thing that you should ever put in your CRM is a true lead. I'll give an example. Right. So if you're doing, let's say you're doing cold calling, text messaging, and direct mail That list that you have, those are records. Do not throw those records in your CRM. The only time you throw anything in your CRM is when, as soon as someone raises their hand that says they want to sell boom, that goes in your CRM, this one, this channel, same exact thing.

Jordan Fleming: 6:45

Another theme that really came through quite a few conversations was, of course, a fundamental kind of thing that we preach in this podcast, which is about scaling, right, and you know about how to scale in the right ways. You know, if you're building a business, and you start out as an entrepreneur, you tend to do a lot of things very quickly, you know, you move fast and break things as the saying goes. But as you start to actually scale a business that has other people in it that has, you know, significant revenue, significant spend, that's where decisions have to be made. And technology can play an enormous role in that. But you have to think about the right things, you have to concentrate on the right areas as you're scaling. And that's something that came through in some of these podcasts. Let's first start off with Stephanie Betters, Stephanie Betters is the CEO of Left Main REI, an amazing Salesforce CRM. Let's look at what she has to say about scaling.

Stephanie Betters: 7:44

In general, I think that when you start spending money on marketing is when you need to make sure that you're organized.

Jordan Fleming: 7:52

Now I've got Tiffany High from Results Driven REI as well as a incredible real estate investor in her own right. And she talks about her journey scaling, and about how she starts to invest in the right resources in her company.

Tiffany High: 8:09

But what ends up happening is, is they waste a bunch of time trying to click buttons, do this, all this shit that they don't know how to do, nor should they ever do to be honest, because it's not their skill set. So if I can recommend anything, it is to outsource immediately to the right people with a tech staff that's bigger than a size of three, because I see that out there. And then they wait for weeks to get shit done. And join a community where they have a tech support staff that can support you in a way that can help you scale. Because without it, you won't get there.

Jordan Fleming: 8:41

Now, here's my friend, Scott Corbett, from Light Mark Media, talking about how if you're really serious about scaling up your business, then you've got to look at your marketing spend as an investment. And you know, not really a cost, right?

Scott Corbett: 8:58

I mean, it is really like an ROI framework that makes the most sense, particularly with Google Ads, which are more expensive. But Jordan, I will tell you Facebook ads can be like a way to kind of put your toes in the water a little bit with paid ads, because you can actually generate leads for I mean, it depends like I don't want to say that too many times. But it does depend on the market. It depends on how strong your organic social presence is, too. Because the stronger that is, the stronger you let's just call it your brand presence in a market, than the less hard the paid ads have to work, I think is a good way to phrase that. But anyway, the point is, you can actually get in the game with Facebook ads for closer to around $1,000 a month in spend. Right so that's that can be encouraging sometimes for people as a way to start.

Jordan Fleming: 9:59

Another theme that really resonated with me a lot, as someone who has started multiple businesses and grown them is this kind of notion of, you know, of separating the business and the personal, right. And it's something that again, you probably it probably comes more as you scale, and it is a huge factor. A lot of times in technology and being able to get things either out of your head, or being able to kind of differentiate and separate your personal parts of your life from your business. And technology plays a big role in that. And now let's take a look at John, John Whitfield, CEO of InvestorFuse, the amazing CRM, see what he has to say about that.

John Whitfield: 10:43

Get a business phone, do not let anybody that works for you call from their personal cell phone ever. Just like no, that's not a thing, don't do it, it's most, it's important that you can control that communication method.

Jordan Fleming: 10:56

And another great thing about separating the personal and business comes from Brandin Pettersen. Brandon is an incredibly successful investor. And he makes a really great point.

Brandin Pettersen: 11:08

I see a lot of guys still using their cell phones, and I don't understand it, I use your system. So I have a cell phone on smrtPhone that is in my email tagline. So and it forwards to my actual cell. But so that way for the wholesaling side of my business, because obviously I flip, and I do other stuff for and rentals. But like for the wholesaling side, even title companies, all them, they get my smrtPhone sell that forwards directly to my cell phone, and then I could pick it up and I see it, cause you allow me to set the caller ID. So I set the caller ID I know exactly that it's my wholesaling cell phone. So that way, no one gets my personal cell. And I like that. And I give that to the team too.

Jordan Fleming: 11:50

Now, a lot of what we talk about on the podcast, of course, when we talk about technology, you know, there's a lot of things we talked about around lead generation, and how to make more money and be more efficient around that. But another really important part of technology, as it relates to scaling your business. And something that we talked about on numerous episodes this season was how you can use technology and or technology can help facilitate the delegation that you have to start doing as a business owner and operator, when you start to scale. Here's Tiffany High, again, from Results Driven REI and an amazing investment, talking about how to use technology to delegate.

Tiffany High: 12:34

So now we have what we have eight an eight salespeople doing four times the revenue that I had with 12 salespeople back in the day simply because of their ability to be more productive.

Jordan Fleming: 12:47

And now here's Bob Lachance talking both about using technology to delegate and how it can free you up to invest in other things

Bob Lachance: 12:54

Technology takes you here. But then the non-technology will be investing in your sales team and understanding sales strategy, a lot of people don't put that piece in there. And it's very, very important.

Jordan Fleming: 13:06

Finally, here's Brandin Pettersen talking, you know about who and not how

Brandin Pettersen: 13:11

Whether you have a big platform like REI Ops Center, or you're just in Excel, it is important that you have somebody on your team, able to figure out what deals you got, where they came from, you know what list source they came from, what skip source you use, what month you pulled it and how many times you've pulled it essentially, to know whether or not or where you should be putting more of your money.

Jordan Fleming: 13:31

An absolute common theme that came through a number of episodes this season, and I think it's one that's going to be coming even more important over the coming year as the market conditions fluctuate across different parts of the country, is the idea of good buyers, right concentrating on your buyers. It's really easy when everybody's buying and money is flowing incredibly freely, to essentially kind of play fast and loose, quite honestly, you, you know you're gonna make money regardless, but when conditions tighten up, it starts to become more important to make sure you're concentrating on your buyer sides because it doesn't really matter how many leads you put under contract, if you're a wholesaler, and you can't find a buyer for it. If you're only going to make money if you've got the right buyers. And let's just drill in right now to Paul, Paul Wakim from TwnSqr. And what he has to say about what makes good buyers and how to find them.

Paul Wakim: 14:43

What we're trying to push our customers and the real estate investor community to realizing is if you have a deal and it's a good deal, sure somebody on your buyer's list is going to buy it but if you're not the guy that is the very top authority in your market, you probably don't have as good of a relationship with the top buyers in your market as that guy. So how do you connect with those buyers, if you don't meet that authority in your market on the street? Well, we've just created a way for you to do it, where if you have a good deal, maybe you'll make more money. If you go and work with somebody that you find on TwnSqr.

Jordan Fleming: 15:20

Eli Fisher from Audantic had some really, really important things to say about good buyers and how to concentrate on buyers.

Eli Fisher: 15:28

The problem that we solve in the industry right now is we help our clients really hone in on who has the highest likelihood to sell off market at a deep discount. And by that we are able to really efficiently help people's marketing focus on the best class of target and the marketing, as opposed to we hear every day, people are like, yeah, marketing all these people, they check all the boxes on surface, and yet, they're never going to sell to me. So that's really the problem that we solve here.

Jordan Fleming: 15:59

Now, the last really major theme I want to touch on in this recap, is one that, you know, I'm sure that most of my customers, people that I spoke to speak to on a daily, weekly basis, are tired of hearing, but I'm going to keep bashing on it anyway. And that is that the fortune is in the follow up. We all know that. Or at least we all pretend to know that. But how many of the companies out there are actually executing on that. It's something that as someone who you know, spent years designing and building and implementing and supporting CRM systems into hundreds of real estate investors businesses, I know that we talked a lot about follow up. But so many times the investors were just concentrating on the new leads coming into the system, and forgetting the fact that it is down the line as you're following up with people where you're actually going to close the majority of deals. I'm gonna start with Larry Goins again, my old friend, Larry, and he's got a lot of experience with this. And he has a lot of thoughts on how important follow up is.

Larry Goins: 17:01

The fortune is in the follow up, right? The fortune is in the follow up. That's where probably 40 to 45, maybe sometimes 50% of our closings each month are from old leads.

Jordan Fleming: 17:15

Stephanie Betters from Left Main REI had a really important point to make about the follow up as you scale your business.

Stephanie Betters: 17:23

So basically, you can't rely on your memory when when you want to follow up with somebody, there needs to be systems that support you as you're growing your business. And as your team members are working. So you need to give them a place to work, there needs to be a cloud based software that all of your team can plug into wherever they are in the world or in their office, and work collaboratively on the leads that come in and have some automation there that supports you so that you remember when to follow up with them, that things happen in the background, while you are dealing with the hottest prospects. So in general CRM will help support you in those endeavors.

Jordan Fleming: 17:56

Alex Parge from REIvolution, you know, he really did zero in on how important it was for the follow up and organization of your CRM to be well managed and defined.

Alex Parge: 18:10

I totally agree that the follow up is one of the key, key processes in in the lead management and it has to be very well organized. So you don't miss anything, because a lead means money that you have already spent, and you need to maximize that.

Jordan Fleming: 18:28

Well, there you have it. Those are some of the key themes from this first season of That Real Estate Tech Guy. I really hope everybody who listened and watched us on YouTube, enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed interviewing everyone. I personally learned every time that I speak to someone, whether they're investor or another technological partner, and I can't wait for next season. We've already got some amazing episodes that we've recorded. And we've got some amazing guests coming down. We've got people like 8020REI, we've got BiggerPockets, we've got Realeflow. We've got some incredible investors who are doing hundreds of transactions every year, coming in and giving us the benefit of their wisdom, giving us the you know, the mistakes they've made, the things they wish they'd known, and of course the things that they're doing to be successful. If you are watching this and you think man, I'd love to come on the podcast, I've got a story to tell, please do head over to thatrealestatetechguy.com where you can go ahead and submit an application so we know who you are and what you do for the podcast. And of course, a personal note from me, please do make sure you like and review and share the podcast on the YouTube videos. It's all about from my point of view, getting this message across to as many people in the industry as possible. We are entering into a fluctuating economy and that means that technology can be the difference to help you really scale your real estate investment business. And we want to make sure that on this podcast, we are bringing you best in class advice, best in class software partners, and the chance to listen to incredible investors tell their story. And finally, reach out to me on our social media. We've that real estate tech guy on Instagram, on YouTube, on Facebook and on TikTok, we're here and we can't wait to hear from you guys. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next season.

Narrator: 20:37

Thanks for listening to another amazing episode of That Real Estate Tech Guy. Head over to thatrealestatetechguy.com to check out all episodes and get special discounts on tons of awesome real estate technology platforms.