If you’re a real estate investor, odds are, you’re at home trying to figure out what to do during your staycation instead of just sitting around and waiting for things to run their course. Now is the perfect time to focus on taking further steps to market your real estate business and be one step ahead of everyone else when the market opens up. In this episode, Scott Carson breaks down the five things that every real estate investor should be doing now in their real estate business and marketing. Each of these things will greatly increase your chances to thrive and stay on top of the post-crisis market. Make sure to take some time to listen and take notes!

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Five Things You Can Do To Market Your Real Estate Business From Home

In this episode, I wanted to talk about five things that every real estate investor should be doing with their free time. Whether they’re at home for a week or a month, they’re laid off from job. There are some things that we all can do to help us make the most of this time and make the most of this staycation. I’m sitting here and thinking about what to talk and to share with you in this episode. Everybody talks about, “I want to be a virtual summit expert.” I don’t know about you but I’m tired of seeing them. We’ve been doing virtual events for years and we’ve got some great stuff that we’ve helped people out with. I’m sick and tired of virtual summit experts or how you got to start a podcast. You should be marketing. You definitely should be using the time to market oneself, whether notes or real estate or your full-time gig or your part-time gig. It’s important to do that.

Reach Out To Your Contacts

There are a lot of things going on in the market. It is almost a little too soon for us to spend a lot of time diving in and connecting with banks. I haven’t sent an email out to our asset managers. I don’t think it’s a smart thing to do because they honestly don’t know what’s going on. There are some pros and cons. Get it out in front of them, at least you’re still on their top of mind. I would agree to that aspect of things, but we’ve done stuff on a regular basis, we’re top of mind now. For people out there that have never sent an email out to their database, which I’m willing to bet is probably most of you guys reading here, that would be a smart thing to do. Sending an email out to your regular database, your friends, families, colleagues, people you’ve networked with. Posting that on social media and maybe sharing that in the email that you send out to your database, to your Facebook groups, Facebook profile, business profiles, LinkedIn, those places. That would be a great thing to do.

I don’t necessarily would be sending an email out to bank asset managers because they don’t know what’s going on. A lot of them are waiting around to see what’s going to happen here with the government in the coming days. That’s why it’s smarter to wait and see what happens with the government if they’re going to build anything out and go from there. Once you start seeing the chain reactions, what’s happening and the actions taking place from these actions, from these dominoes falling, then you’ll be much more proficient in identifying opportunities out there. That’s the first thing. Everybody still needs to send an email to the database. Don’t do one of these like, “We’re wiping ourselves down from the Coronavirus.” Try to do something different. Just be yourself. Share how you’re overcoming your frustrations and things that have worked out well.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve always talked about how everybody’s gotten that one letter from your Aunt Flo or that one email from Aunt Arlis talking about the update of her and her family. People need that. How are you coping? What are you doing for fun? If you’ve got kids, how do you keep them entertained? How are you not going stir crazy with everything? How are you avoiding the negativity on TV? Those are some of the things that will be good. People need to hear and see that. Not every day is a good day. Some days are good days. Other times, we had rough days.

I was down a couple of days. I had a lack of motivation to get some stuff done. I’d been in a good mood for the previous couple of weeks. It’s okay to take a couple of days and be like, “I’m going to take it lazy. I’m going to sit on the couch and bed for a day or two.” Get back off the couch and get back on that horse and get back being productive in any way that you can. Doing something is much better than sitting around and not doing anything. There are only many times you can clean the kitchen and moving piles of stuff around. There’s so much you can do before you stir crazy and start looking like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

Identify Your Asset Class

These are some of the things I want to get back to. Let’s go back to the top five. One is as we talked about it, sending an email update to your contacts. Post it everywhere. If you’re a part of media groups, post it there. Post it on your LinkedIn groups and Facebook groups, “What are you doing? What’s an update?” If you want to, take the time and film a short video to go along with it. A short 2 to 5-minute video will increase your engagement, productivity, and open rates across the board. That’s the first thing. We all know that with the market changing quite a bit here, there’s going to be some changes taking place.

I’ll give an example. I’m in Austin, Texas. I did not buy debt in Austin in quite a few years because it’s been an overpriced aggressive market. I had a conversation with a realtor friend of mine out in San Diego. She was like, “Everything is going to be great and nothing’s going to happen. We’re going to rebound strong. I’m selling houses in San Diego virtually. It’s going to be fine like that.” I’m like, “That’s San Diego.” If you’re in a market that’s not like that where it’s overly crazy, overly priced, low demand anyway, you’re probably going to want to do some things. The first thing I would do is I would identify the niche of real estate deals that you want to target. If you’ve been a single-family residential guy or gal, small commercial investor, fix and flipper, it might be a little more difficult. If you’ve targeted subject-to deals in the past but haven’t done that or if you are looking for owner finance notes, you haven’t found anything much, look at what’s going on in the market. Realize that there’s going to be some training taking place.

There’s going to be an increased influx of some foreclosures over the coming months. It’s going to happen. People lose their jobs and they get behind. The banks will give them six months of easy deferments and modifications to get you back on track. Start identifying those markets that maybe you’re looking to invest in. Maybe it’s a bigger city. It’s a different market than you’re familiar with. I was talking to an attorney who’s done some stuff out in the neck of woods. He was talking about how a lot of the foreclosing attorneys in New Jersey are ceasing all for that. It doesn’t make sense for them the $2,000 for a foreclosure that could take two years. They don’t make a lot of money. They lose money almost on that stuff. If you’re in the longer foreclosure market, I would probably pull back. What I mean by that, look at the foreclosure timeframes before this all happened and then maybe roll that out. Push it out a little bit. Add another three months to that timeframe. As we have an influx, it’s going to drag some things out.

 

Who knows what’s going to happen on a state by state level? We could see things that happened years ago where the Attorney General canceled foreclosure proceedings, canceled evictions proceedings overnight for 60 or 90 days. That’s why I say it’s a little too soon to do that. This is why you can start putting these things together. Start identifying an asset class that you want to do. If you want to target small commercial, great. Look at some of the markets that have small commercial assets. You want to look at strip malls, office space, self-storage, apartments. I don’t think your big apartments are going to take too big of hits.

You’re going to see the smaller 50, 60-plus, sub 100-unit apartments that are going to probably take the biggest hit because most of the time the mom and pop operators don’t usually have a big reserve of capital depending on how they get bailed out or don’t. If they won’t get bailed out, there will be a lot of increase in that and people are motivated. I’ve started seeing an influx of deals coming across. People are looking to move stuff immediately and taking some discounts and some stuff to get it off their plate, to get something in and get it off their books so that they have a capital back on their books. They can invest more, buy more and move on to the next asset class. I talked to quite a few realtors, investors, and seeing emails from other people out there.

Identify Your Market

If you’ve got a new niche you’re looking at, identify that niche of asset and start looking in the areas of the markets out there for you. The markets that may have hot, list those. I’ll give an example. If I was interested in self-storage, I would not focus on Austin. You’re going to have these bigger cities that are getting bought up because it could be competitive because they’re local. I would go an hour outside of your major metroplex, your secondary markets. Those markets aren’t the biggest but they still have a lot of opportunities. Medium-sized cities in different asset classes and see what’s available in those places. I’ll give you an example. If I draw a one-hour circle around Austin, Texas, that will take me up to Collin and Fort Hood. It would take me out west or east in La Grange. It would take me south into San Marcos, Comal County, Hays County, those necks of the woods, and looking at areas and those opportunities. That might be an hour or two hours out. Drawing a circle on the map on a city and then targeting those areas outside your major area would be a great thing to do.

I would start researching. That’s the number three aspect of things. Researching properties and banks in that neck of the woods. Maybe pick 2 or 3 bigger and major metroplexes. You can do that two-hour circle. Who’s lending in those states? You can go to Scotsman Guide or others, especially on the commercial side of things. Who’s lending in Texas, Ohio, Michigan or Florida on that specific asset class? Start putting your list together of asset managers. Maybe you jump on Bauer Financial and download a list of banks and phone numbers that are in those states or those markets, or LaneGuide.com. You can start researching now so that you’re prepared when things do finally shake free. You’ve got these things. You’ve got your targets. You’re ready to rock and roll and ready to jump versus trying to research.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s going to be constant researching going on. What’s going on? How are things going to play out? Start putting those lists together. Start targeting those markets for you so that you’re prepared. Start targeting an asset class. Maybe you need to jump in and join a membership, or jump on an association website and see if they’ve got a Facebook group or something like that that you can target. I’ll give an example. If you were into gyms, if you wanted to buy gym space because you could convert it into a storage facility or you’d take over the operation, what I would do is I would target every major gym out there.

24 Hour Fitness filed bankruptcy. Are they going to stick around? Are they going to restructure and come back? Who knows? Maybe they don’t. What I will do is I would target every gym in the area, Gold’s Gym, Lifestyle Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness, Anytime Fitness. Target those in a geographic area and seeing who the lender is on these or looking to see any if any of them have been sold, if there are any specific realtors that handle previous sales in an area. Those would be great to know. Who’s buying? Who’s selling? Who’s got the banking relationships if they’ve been given these as REOs? That’s what I would do. Look at the areas that are going on.

Expand Your Database

Another thing about researching markets and they’re valuable. This goes back into seeing what’s going on. In Houston, Dallas, or other parts of the country, you’ve had major employers laying-off a variety of things. Here in Texas, we have tens of thousands being laid off across the state in the oil industry. Halliburton announced they’re starting to layoff or furlough their 6,500 employees from the Houston office. That’s a lot of people. You look at other major oil companies in the Houston area. ConocoPhillips has 3,600 employees in Harris County, Houston alone.

 

What you have to realize is those people that are leaving these companies that are being laid off, doesn’t mean they’re broke. They may need other work. They may not have a lot of savings, but often many of them will have substantial 401(k) that need to be rolled into self-directed IRAs. Maybe they are taking early retirement and looking to do some things. Those may be some great opportunities to reach out and identify those individuals. You could use services like Melissa Data to go and pull a list. One of the things that we’re doing is pulling a list of some of these bigger oil companies in Texas. We’re starting to pull those lists so that we can start marketing to them once we have an idea of what’s going on. If you want to, roll your 401(k) into a self-directed IRA and use it to invest. Use it to fund some deals. Use it to buy a deal, a property if you want to get into real estate. I’m talking about that.

Put Your Story Roll Together

The thing about targeting them will lead to number five of the biggest things that you should be doing. Number five is something I’ve harped on before. Now that you’ve got time at home sitting around, this is something that everybody should be doing if you’re a real estate investor. This goes into the marketing aspect. I mentioned this briefly with number one in sending an email out to your database and putting maybe a short video together. Number five is you need to start putting your story roll together. What do I mean by story roll? You need to have 5 or 6 short videos on a variety of things. Variety doesn’t mean to be crazy. We’re not talking about a library of 100 videos. What I mean by a variety of things is some things that you’re going to use over and over again. Most real estate investors are doing the bare minimum marketing-wise.

If you had to take this time to leverage your free time at home, use your smartphone if you need to, using Zoom or Facebook Live or something, you could easily record these videos. I would say these five topics are probably the biggest ones that you use the most. One, if you’ve got an entity, what does your inverse asset funds do? What does EvergreenProfits.com do? What do we do as real estate investors? What do we focus on? What we do and what we focus on will be video number one. Video number two is, why you got into real estate, your backstory, what interests you, and what are some of the things you’ve done, your history. If you’re brand new, great. I’ve been into this for a while. I’ve been learning. I’ve been educating myself for a while. I’ve been a fix and flipper.

I was talking to a flipper out of Melbourne, Florida. I asked her, “How many deals you’ve done?” She was like, “I’ve done 52 flips over ten years.” I’m like, “Cool, 5 to 6 a year.” She’s like, “It looked great.” I was like, “Are you marketing that in English?” She’s like, “No, I’m in writing class, but I’m going to wait six months before I get it out. It needs to be perfect.” I’m like, “That’s a big mistake. Don’t wait for perfection to get something out.” The minute you write something, it’s going to be outdated. The minute I upload this podcast, it’ll be outdated in 30 days and 60 days. That’s okay. The idea here is to get stuff out and you can always go back and tweak it. You can always change things. Get something out there to help.

If you’re an investor in Houston, Texas, you might want to do a video, “You’ve been laid off? Here are some options for you to roll your 401(k) into a self -directed IRA. Here are some options for you to do.” It’s easier than you think to roll your money into your account. You may want to talk with somebody who’s got a self-directed IRA LLC. Start thinking about those questions and start thinking about the solutions that you can offer not only to people in your database but people around you. If you’re pulling a list, which is easy to pull, it’s not too expensive to pull a list these days. Pull in a list of professionals or people in the market that have been laid off or haven’t been laid off. Oftentimes they can give you a list and email database that you can upload to Facebook or upload to LinkedIn and connect with a lot of those people and you start marketing to those people.

Some of these people that are on the list are probably still working there, but maybe they’re not your ideal client. I guarantee they know somebody who’s been struggling and that has been laid off or furloughed or took early retirement. Maybe forward the email. All you need is a few people to read the email or to opt-in so that you’ve got a lot of extra cash sitting on the sidelines and be ready to invest when the market finally breaks free. We start seeing the defaults of foreclosures on the residential and the commercial market. It doesn’t take much to be able to find something valuable. Everybody who’s reading this is capable of raising $1 million in private capital. It’s relatively easy if you market. There’s a big if. Those are two letters, “If you market.” Market via a video, market via audio, get an email blast.

We’re not talking about the HBO production company. Although, some people that are watching the nightly news or the Tonight Show will probably produce a better quality video than Jimmy Fallon climbing a tree or Bill Maher climbing up a 6-foot tree in his backyard. It’s hilarious to see that. What I’m getting at is start sharing little stories about you. Who are you? Why did you get into real estate? What are some of the things that attracted you to being a real estate investor? Why do you invest in notes? Why do you invest in distress property? What property type do you like? What type of deals are you going after? You do these variety of things. If you’re a landlord, “Here’s what I like. I like four-bedroom, two-baths, and fifteen square-foot houses.” Why? Because of this, this, and this. I like this market. Why do you like Columbus, Ohio? I like Columbus, Ohio because of this, this, and this. That’s the thing to look at. Knowing your niche and knowing your market too.

 

Looking at what’s going on in the universities and seeing if you’re in a college town. There’s going to be a lot of changes. There was a great article in USA Today about how a lot of the smaller colleges are struggling. They’re laying off people. They’re canceling programs. Even here in Austin, Texas, LeTourneau University, which is a large private university, they’re called the Hill toppers and not the University of Texas. It’s Saint Edwards. They’ve canceled, not stopped, their baseball team, their soccer team, and a couple of golf teams. They’ve canceled them completely because people aren’t there to play. If you’re in a university town, you may want to look at the rentals around the university, the homeowners. Especially the property owners or out of state owners are a popular thing. You might be able to pick up some property deals below market value.

Maybe they’re living in California but they’re renting properties in Flint, Michigan, around the university there or in Columbus, Missouri, around the University of Missouri and there’s nobody there to rent them because the university is not back. What are you going to do? Can you turn them into rentals? Can you pick them up cheap and drop the market rent to get somebody in them, and then adjust the rent back up in 6 to 12 months? Those are the things you want to be looking at as opportunities. Do some research, talk about what you’re doing, and marketing. Take the time to put some good assets, not just property assets but video assets, descriptions about who you are, your business, what you’re focused on, where are you focused on, and why you got there.

Something that I would always do too if you’ve got the opportunity and you don’t know where to start, if you’ve done some fix and flips, you’ve done some rentals, you bought some property, you sold some property, do those first and foremost. Talk about these deals. Drive out, pull out your smartphone, stand in front of that house, “I’m standing in front of this house at 2013 Little Tree Bend in Round Rock, Texas. This is the first property I’ve ever flipped. This is the first property that I got a subject-to deal on. Here’s the first property that we rehabbed on. I’m here out at 1500 Blue Bonnet Drive here in beautiful Zilker Park, Austin, Texas, downtown Austin. This is a property we wholesale that we put under contract for $10 that we flipped for a $75,000 option fee.”

There are a lot of things that you can do. They say real estate is one of the required things to stay open and keep things moving, although closings have slowed down. Do that, “I’m out taking a video for a real estate firm.” I’m still 6-feet away from people. That’s something that you could do, talking about the case studies that you’re doing, getting out, driving around, and getting a little vitamin D from the sun if it’s a sunny day. Hook up your laptop to your TV. Have your TV behind you with a picture of the property and talk about the property and go that route.

Those are some of the things that you could do. Start putting those assets in place. They’ll do well for you, upload them. Now, you’ve got something to talk about, “Here’s a video on a deal that we did a couple of years ago. Here’s a video that we did on our first flip. Here’s a video that we did on our first rental property. Here’s the first fix and flip that I did.” All sorts of great things. “Here’s the roach house in Salt Lake City that we rehabbed.” Those things will add value. They’ll tell the story. We had a friend that was out visiting a property in Ohio and got nauseous and threw up. He vomited on camera on the back porch of it because the scent was bad in the house. It got thousands of views because people want to see him vomit. It also dropped thousands of eyes to him as an opportunity and potential investment strategy.

Not the vomiting side. I’ve got some money. I got $20,000, $30,000, $50,000 to invest with. What can you do with that? He doesn’t have to market it much out. Let’s do a quick recap. One, I’d be emailing on a regular database. Two, researching your asset class or the niches that you want to be investing with. Three, Identifying the markets that you want to be in or maybe need to diversify out of. For a lot of people, you need to change some markets. It is not going to be the same as it was beforehand. You’re going to have to look at a different price point. Maybe look at a different exit strategy, especially if you’re in that higher-end single-family house area. I don’t think I’d be planning there. I’d be planning your bread and butter, single-family houses, and your first buyer home, sub-250 in value for the most part.

Four, making some deep dives into companies that are going out of business scenario or laying people off. Seeing where they’re at and then using some of the list building services to maybe buy some of those lists. How did I know there are 6,500 people in Halliburton, Houston, Texas? I’ve researched it, 6,518 to be precise. Name, address, phone number, email, that’s not too shabby of a database to pull. Lastly, putting together 5 or 6 or more short videos about you, your business, what attracts you, what deals you like, and then some case studies. These are all things that can be done from the computer in your home. We’re not talking 40, 50 hours of research. You do a little bit each day to maximize your stay at home, staycation marketing.

That’s what I would recommend you all do. It’s not too difficult to do. These are things that we all should be doing on a regular basis anyway. Those that are taking actions and doing it, the better off you’re going to be. I have seen a reduced amount of emails coming across from investors. They’re not communicating. I don’t know if they think it’s the time to take off. It’s the worst time to take off. People have nowhere to go. They’re looking for stuff. They’re looking to watch. They’re looking to engage. They’re nervous about their finances. They’re stressed. They’re looking for opportunities. They’re looking for ways to reinvest their retirement, to reinvest their savings into something that can help to bring in some cashflow. That’s what I would do. Hopefully, that is valuable to each and every one.

If you’re reading this episode and you like to jump on the phone and talk with me for 30 minutes, you can do so easily. Go to TalkWithScottCarson.com. It’s easy to use. Jump on that and it will take you directly to my schedule. Feel free to schedule 30 minutes with me. I love to visit you. If you’re struggling out there and having issues, don’t be alone. Pick up the phone. Give Scott a call. I’ll be glad to talk with you. Also, we’ve got a couple of upcoming events. I want to make sure that you are aware of that. As always, we have our Note Weekend Event. We also have our Note Camp Conference, Note Camp 2020. We got quite a few new speakers coming to board this time around for the eighth time. We’ve done for years. I’m looking forward to the new speakers. The new content as we schedule it around the time that we know we’re going to start seeing some things. I’ll give you guys some content actions, marketing and profit-generating nuggets to implement in your business. Check it out, NoteCamp2020.com. Get your extra early bird tickets while you can. Otherwise, go out and take some action and we’ll see you all at the top.

Important Links:

• Scotsman Guide
• Bauer Financial
• LaneGuide.com
• Melissa Data
• EvergreenProfits.com
• TalkWithScottCarson.com
• NoteCamp2020.com
• http://www.NoteBlueprint.com

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