TGIM

Thank God its MONDAY.  That sounds weird from someone who can't stand working a job, but hey i gotta stay motivated, lol.

Mondays are either really horrible for me getting up or really hope filled and motivating.  Mondays help me to see what my life can be or i can wallow in feeling stuck. 

I have lots to do, so this Monday, i feel hope filled and READY.

Here's where i get some of my motivation:

The marketing plan

Ok so, for wholesalers, you aren't in business if you don't have marketing going out, plain and simple.  Folks need to be receiving your marketing in order for them to give you deals.


I have been studying several "gurus" approach to getting motivated sellers to contact you and I think I may do a hybrid of them all.

Here goes:

Direct Mail - yellow letters using my handwritten font
Targeted out of state absentee owners
Quit claim deeds (covers probate, divorce, etc)
Military owner occupieds
Attorneys (probate law, divorce law, bankruptcy law)

I will use the drip campaign for these in which i keep mailing to these lists, each touch pulling a higher response rate.  Have 5 ways for sellers to contact me: fax (need to set up fax account), snail mail (need to renew my UPS mailbox), phone (Need to buy 512 Google Voice number back), email, and website (need to set up Wordpress site) with these response mechanisms built into the letter. Also need to buy invitation envelopes, stamps, legal pad paper.

Bandit signs - handwritten 25 each check

Drive for vacant houses as well as any returned vacant letters

Sell House Fast 4 Cash T-shirt - 2 shirts to wear when out and about town

Car magnetic sign - put on car when out and about

Craigslist.com ads for buyers - Mons, Weds, and Fri's

Attend June foreclosure count auction to network with buyers

Attend local REIA meetings coming up

I've got a lot of work to do but at least its work that will benefit me directly and those that are in need of my services.  I can sleep well at night knowing that that the hard work I put in here MEANS something (namely freedom).

Turning the faucet on to fire hose status

Here I am, still here, still learning and still grinding.

I am not fulltime in my real estate biz yet, i still have yet to do my first deal. The past few years, i feel like has been building up to this year. Ive learned all that ive had to learn, my mind is set, im not scared of change, the atmosphere is ripe for leaving my job and going out on my own.

I have a FEW, yes a FEW direct mail campaigns that I am about to start, along with bandit signs I have yet to put out and a few T-shirts to wear and flyers/business cards to hand out. Im ready to get it. I feel like my dream of growing my real estate business has been pulsating and now its time to birth it into fruition.

I will be following "The Great Escape" podcast reality show that is being broadcast at Flip2Freedom's website. He is going to mentor, real time, a guy that is HERE in Austin, TX from his first wholesale deal to leaving his fulltime job where he makes $150K a year! This podcast reality show couldnt be more perfect as I live in Austin, TX and I am also looking to leave my fulltime job but I only make $52K a year, so that's 1/3 of what this guys needs to live on! But I'm going to go ahead and act like I need $150K because i need that to pay off all my debts. For me to feel comfortable leaving my job, I would need to be debt free. Even tho my debts are less than $150K, i'd love a cushion as well.

At any rate, here are the first assignments given by Sean Terry:

1. Find a licensed Realtor with an NAID registration.
2. Have the Realtor pull all the cash transaction that have closed in the last 120 days.
3. Attend a local forecloser auction and network with buyers.
4. Attend a real estate club meeting and network with other wholesaler, fix & flippers and landlords.
5. Ask for a referral from other members on an experienced closing agent in the area.

As for me, this is my progress thus far:

1. Find a licensed Realtor with an NAID registration. I found a realty firm that is investor friendly and is NAID registered. Need to contact them to see if they will submit offers for me as well as take leads.

2. Have the Realtor pull all the cash transaction that have closed in the last 120 days. I have done this at FindMyComps.com

3. Attend a local forecloser auction and network with buyers. I cant get off work to do this in May, but can do this in June as they are held the first Tuesday of every month at 10am. Need to request the day off for June.
4. Attend a real estate club meeting and network with other wholesaler, fix & flippers and landlords. Missed the meeting this past Thursday due to gas funds being low. Another meeting is scheduled for May 9th as well as a seminar this coming Thursday, Sat, and Sun here in Austin.
5. Ask for a referral from other members on an experienced closing agent in the area. I found three investor friendly title companies here in the area, contacted one thus far (playing phone tag with them), need to contact the other too to inquire about their services for investors.

I'm so excited, i feel like my first deal is waiting on me and all i have to do is put out the effort to manifest it. This check is rent check so I can buy the lists I need and what not, but i plan to get my networking in so that when my lists go out and i get sellers calling back, i can process them as needed.

This is my theme song, its so inspirational:

Yellow letter campagin cometh

So yea, thas what Im working on now, getting my yellow letter campaign up and running. According to like.....every real estate investor online anyway, yellow letters are a BEAST at pulling leads, so im bout that now lol. I have like 3 lists thus far, 2 ive already sent postcards to once (and i got one lil call back lol) but the other I haven't bought yet (its in my Listsource queue to be purchased tomorrow). So now all Ive been doing all week is writing my yellow letters BY HAND.

Yea, THIS sucks lol.

I mean, my hand is not cramping or anything but LAWD, i cant wait until I have enough cheese to pay someone ELSE to do this for me, lol. But until then, I gotta do it. I got my letter from reading REI forums to see what others are sending out. I hope I get a decent response, but if I dont, I will just tweak it.

I would like to buy one more list of inheritance leads from USLeadslist, but everytime I call up there, dudes are busy and we play phone tag. Plus, I dont think I can even afford their list right now, but I would like to find out what they offer at least.

Anywho, I also have resolved to "wear" my magnetic bandit sign on my car all weekend. Granted, im not going to be in my market (at least im not planning on going down there), but i think it will be good to do anyway. Only thing is im afraid its gonna fly off. Its nooooot exactly flush on my car, its a little big, so i dunno. I mean, either way, i dont use it or i use it and it flies off, at least the latter means I may get some eyeballs on it thus some calls from it lol. I dunno, we'll see.

I need to network to get some realtors on my team, most specifically a HUD realtor. I dunno if I wanna do the cold calling bit or just network it out at the local REI groups in area (much more appealing, i think lol). There is actually a REI group going on right this second (yea, i suck for not going but hey lol), but I need to pencil these things into my calendar to actually attend them lol.

Im fighting fatigue from my job though. All my 9 to 5'ers who cant stand their jobs know this.

Im DRAINED as HELL man.

I go to work and im on 90mph all day, im dragging myself from task to task to task and by the time i hit home, all i wanna do is SLEEP! I mean, this week has probably been exceptionally bad, im not usually this sleepy....I mean at this point, i dont even wanna eat anything (dunno what thas all I about, i LOVE food lol).

The way I figure it, i need to do at least two things....I need to wake up earlier (yea that sounds backwards, but this facilitates me eating breakfast which is IMPORTANT and getting in some quiet time before work) and I need to re-start hitting the gym (i mean, i AM paying for it lol). Both of these, from past experiences, gives me a jolt of energy, either early in the day or when i get home. Plus, HOPEFULLY, work SHOULD be slowing down here in the next few weeks with the holidays and all that (and i have a few off days I need to use [can you say courthouse auction networking for buyers!] before I lose them at the end of the year...yea, reason #4088 I cant wait to leave corporate america lol).

Anyway, lemme see if I can knock out at least 20 of these yellow letters tonight before I pass out lol.

Its new year's eve for me

New Year's eve, as in December 31 is all well and good....but its kinda arbitrary to me. Without going into all the history about how the modern calendar came about and all the different New Year's Eve's celebrated across the globe, December 31 is kinda just another day to me.

But my REAL New Year's eve is today...October 15th. Why, you ask? Because tomorrow is my birthday and as far as IM concerned, thas where MY time began and what I should truly be celebrating. I mean think about it, its the day that YOU entered time, so why not celebrate THAT day as your New Year? Am I right or am I right?

Anywho lol, so today is New Year's Eve, so Im in reflection mode and all that. How good was my year, was I a blessing to others, was it a rough year, did I achieve my goals for the year and on and on and on. I think I did alright this year, could have done WAY better, but I did ok. This year was all about laying the foundation and getting my mind/psyche right. There are things I learned this year that I will carry with me the rest of my life....and thas a GOOD thing!

So now, you must be asking, do you create New Year's resolutions? Eh, yes and no. I think resolutions are doomed to fail, but rolling, continually renewed goals are good to have and that's how I do it. I have personal goals and business goals (which really intertwine to be honest). I can share a few goals I have for my new year here if you want...

Escape the rat race! (duh, check the name of my blog)

Become debt free (even student loans)

Become great and consistent at baking sourdough bread

Start and finish NROLFW (lifting weight program)

Volunteer at local Boys and Girls Club

Start my container food forest

Purchase a side of beef and pig

Travel overseas

So yea, there ya go, thas a hefty goal list, dontcha think? I can do it though, I can prolly do that by the half year mark if I REALLY get on my grind, but I will be more than happy that if by the next New Year's Eve this basic goal list has been achieved. So now its all about breaking them down, working backwards.

So, once I work my first goal, escaping cubicle nation as it were, backwards to today, my tasks are to write out my yellow letters, stuff envelopes to mail later today or tomorrow. Im pretty much going to write them by hand myself. I dont have time to print out my own handwriting and then scan and adjust and print them perfectly on each yellow piece of paper and all that,...I'd rather just do it myself. I have two lists I can hit, but i'd like to purchase a high equity absentee list from Listsource even though I figured out how to pull absentee owners from the online tax records...only problem is I would have to look up each out of state owner to see if the property they have has any equity, blech. Once I get a VA, that will be an awesome task I can give them to do, but I need to get a deal done first to afford/justify the VA lol.

Also, I will be setting up my Google Adwords campaign. I figure, I'll start out at $10 a month and go up from there. I'm really excited, I feel like a boss because im behaving like a BOSS!

Every night when I visualize the life that im working towards as already true, I can hardly get to sleep. I toss and turn while smile to myself and my heart flutters and pounds at the excitement. Its a good exercise to do, you should try it. :)

Back again lol

So its a month later, so thas progress, no? lol

Anywho, so my initial goals for Sept were...eh, squashed due to financial constraints (im broker than a joke), so I couldn't put out the marketing that I needed to get my phone ringing.

I'm tryna change that this month.

This month, I am targeting out of state absentee owners with lots of equity and then I will be setting up and starting my pay per click campaign with Google Adwords and maybe Bing and Yahoo (may also do MSN). My WHOLE premise for the rest of this year is to CRUSH my marketing...I need my phone to melt and i know that the guru that I am kinda following says I may get overwhelmed if I put out TOO much marketing, but I will be more than happy to have that problem, lol.

Basically and especially for real estate wholesalers, you aren't in business if you aren't marketing to get leads coming in. Add to that, the vast majority of leads are gonna be dirt (analogous that you are sort through the dirt to get to the gold). So basically, even though I work full-time, I NEED to get my phone ringing off the hook. I may not be able to call them back until lunch or after work or whatever, but hey, thas better than *crickets*, yamean? lol And i can think of no better way to make it through a tough work day than to know that i may have GOOD money waiting to be made on my voice mail :D

Anywho, I have made SOME progress though nonetheless. I have found the title company that I will be working with, they do everything that I anticipate I will need with wholesaling (the first title company did not, blah). Ive been playing phone tag with an inheritance listing company, but im thinking that right now I probably cant afford to buy their list anyway, so they can wait. I also would like to put up an ad on Craigslist or the internet in general to see if I can find an investor friendly real estate agent or an investor-agent to work with (send leads to, really).

This week's goal is to send my my absentee owners list in the form of the yellow letter. Folks rave about this yellow letter stuff, so i figure i will do that. I did postcards thus far but that hasn't brought in anything (1 dead lead actually). I'd also like to send out again to the lists I already have, cause that cant hurt either.

Sometime in the next month, i'd love to visit the foreclosure auction to meet some serious buyers. I'm not too worried about building a buyer's list (*gasp* shock and awe) because i know that if i have a smoking deal, the buyers, thus the money will come running. But its always good to have a starting point, no?

My ultimate goal is to get my first deal done before 2011 is done. With my marketing budget, I'm not sure if that can happen, but ima darn sure try.

Posting is hard lol

Especially when you are continuously evolving.

Since I opened this blog, I have only posted one post and I have already changed my mind about it several times and tonight, I think its changing again.

For the longest time, I thought that the way I would escape the rat race was through real estate investing, most specifically, wholesaling. It is true that it is relatively easy, requiring no credit and no money and little time put in for a nice check....and I'm still going to/am wholesaling.

But I don't think I want to do this specifically to live on, day in and day out. Then, after I realized that and found my local real estate group, I wanted to be a buy and hold real estate investor or in lay men's terms, a landlord. I liked the different ways I could make money (HELLO, depreciation! lol) and I still would like to make money including this in what I do,.....but just a little differently than I first learned it.

Now, I think that I want to be a debt free real estate investor. I mean, think about it.....here I am, struggling, crying, sweating and bleeding to get out from under this MOUND of debt that Ive managed to accumulate thus far....only to get into even MORE debt just to hold the property?!? Debt is DEBT. Should I become a vegetable, God forbid, tomorrow, I wouldn't be able to pay back that property debt just like I wouldn't be able to pay back credit card debt.

So, that begs the question, why is this guy the ONLY person teaching this?....especially in this economic climate!?

More and more people are realizing what's truly important in this life as companies and corporations value human resources less and less and its becoming abundantly clear that what you had sitting in your driveway, or lining your closet is on BORROWED TIME.

Anyway, I think im going to look into this debt free investing a little bit more. Don't get me wrong, right now, I'm a wholesaler...I need cash to get out of this hole we're in...and then once I'm able I need to be able to buy properties to flip and/or to buy free and clear.

Part of this debt free investing or becoming what's called a 'Lifeonaire', is that you design the life you want FIRST and then design your business to support that design the best. Well, I most definitely have the life design down first. I did that here. Now, I'm just onto the designing the business to best support it part.

Always learning...always growing and I love that. :)