EP 335 – Connect And Reach Out With Technology And Smartphones

NCS 335 | Technology And Smartphones

NCS 335 | Technology And Smartphones

 

The advancement of technology has made it possible to connect with more people than you could ever before. In the business side of things, it provides you an outlet to create more deals and reach out to your clients. Technology in notes is the new media outlet and that your smartphone is the tool that can be very handy for when you need marketing. Scott shares some of the cool technology features that WCN is working on to help you get more deals closed. He goes and discusses how technology has changed the way we deal with business while creating more opportunities to be smarter with communication. Technology and smartphones are the future and we have to embrace it in order to move forward.

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Connect And Reach Out With Technology And Smartphones

One of the things that we’re excited about and had been working on for quite some time is that we are always diving into technology. This is your new media outlet. Your smartphone is your media outlet. This is where everything’s at right now for the most part and you have to expect it. We have some great stuff going on here with our phones, our technology. One of the things that we’re using our phones for and one of the cool things about it is as we get some product in and some stuff that we’ll be looking to move assets. We’ll be using our smartphones, the technology, we’re using it to get the word out to you, to our note investors or our buyers. We have classes and new podcast podcasts available. It gives you an opportunity to stay connected at the touch of your phone. A lot of people spend time on text message marketing and we’re using a service called MOBIT. That’s a mobile technology where if you text notes, you’re sent with a link to your smartphone. You click on and it will ask your first name, your email address, and then it will provide you with links.

If you have not done that, please do so. I want you to pull out your smartphone, go to your text messaging service, type in the number 72000 and send in the word NOTES. That will initiate text messaging. You’ll be in our service and in our system and that way I can send you alerts on a regular basis. I’m not going to bombard you every day with something, but as we have podcasts episodes that become available or as we have deals. If you’ll be typing notes, I’m going to send back a link to you. We’ll be sending that out here for you to update the top three states and your top three markets that you’d like to buy in.

What we’ll do with that is as we have assets available, as we have assets that we’re moving off our plate because we’ve got some that we’re getting ready to sell. You will be notified, “Here’s an asset in your area. Here’s a link to an asset page for you to take a look at.” If you want to make an offer, great. If you want to dive into it, get more information, you’ll be able to do that. The beauty of technology is everything is coming to your smartphone like video replays, webinar reminders and assets. One of the cool things that we are doing, we’ve been working hard over the last couple of years working to create some stuff that makes sense to stay ahead of everybody technology-wise.

We sent an email out to our database, “Please text us if you’ve not done this, go ahead and do this. You’ll be excited about what we have to offer.” We’re not just going to bombard you with, “Buy every note we have.” We want to make it and target it and be specific and niched down to what you want. We don’t want to send you the thing that you don’t want to see. That’s not what we’re trying to do, but there are also cool things that we can send you over lists. If we have got a tape of assets available, “Here’s a list to preview. Here’s a list to take a look at and make offers.” We’ve used this before with some of our workshops. If you’ll text the word NOTES to 72000, you’ll get my slides. If you text the word NIGHT, it will allow you to get registered for our Note Night in America. Those are just two things. If you text the word DEALS to 72000, it will also send you the preview of the notes if you send the notes. It will allow you to be able to see who sent the word in for deals. You’ve just got to send either NOTES or DEALS or NIGHTS. We’ll get you in the system and be able to send you out direct information to your smartphone. We’re pretty stoked about that.

New Application

We’ve got a new app that we’re working through that would be tied into Facebook. It’s like a chatbot and an app to your smartphone. If you’re brand new or asking questions, you are able to go and connect there and be able to ask questions. We’ll be able to answer them almost instantaneously. I’m pretty excited about that because we’ve got a company and Peter Lisoskie is taking videos and hours of webinars and uploading them to an artificially intelligent system that we’ve developed them for the note business. If you have questions to ask, it will be able to prompt your questions, answers, videos and podcast episodes directly in your inbox or via your Facebook Messenger. You’ll be able to communicate with us. I won’t need to be live 24 hours a day. It would basically be an instant gratification for you. I’m pulling out some big guns for you. That’s in development.

We hopefully have the first part of it rolled out here by the end of the year. It’s been a long time coming and we’re constantly tweaking and adding some things to make it a smart thing. We’re trying to revolutionize the note industry coming into the new guard versus the old guard. We have nothing against the old guard, although the old guard often has a very like, “I don’t want to share anything with you.” The new guard is very open, “Let’s share some stuff. Here are some great things that are going on.”

We are quantifying and maximizing our marketing. I know some people are not a big fan of marketing. Some people would rather stay at home and watch TV all day, which is fine. Some people would rather talk to people versus the mass marketing of emails or social media. I totally understand that sometimes it’s not the easiest for people. Welcome to the 21st Century. Scotty is working his ass off to help you find deals, to help you with education and to help with raising capital. There is a lot of great stuff out there.

We have a big announcement. We’ve hired Hazel Rivera to work with us on a full-time basis as a new asset manager for us on our portfolio. Hazel comes to us from Madison Management where she worked there for a couple of years. I’m excited to have her. She’s going to manage our portfolio. We would be rolling out some other things for our Mastermind group like maybe a private asset manager to help out with other people’s files as well. If they’re curious and if they need help with following-up and things like that. I’m pretty stoked about that. We’re looking to also be providing updates via text message out to our clients as well on the text messaging service so they could get updates, payments coming in and our files. We’re pretty stoked about that aspect of things. Technology is something that you shouldn’t shy away from, it’s something you should embrace. It can save you. It can help you save time, save your money, and make your money if you use it properly to make sure you’re communicating on a regular. That’s what it all comes down to.

NCS 335 | Technology And Smartphones

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

If you think about the book, Tribes, by Seth Godin, it’s one of the great books out there. It’s all about connecting people and networking. It’s about taking your business to the next level. You can use less and less people to make things happen. You’ve heard of robots in McDonald’s or in assembly lines. Now that we have a robot, we are using chatbots with our technology. We’re rolling that out and stuff like that. We’re using some easy features to be able to communicate with you on a much faster basis. There are some parts of the podcast website brought into that as well with the episodes where you can watch directly from your phone without having to go out to iTunes or Stitcher or anything like that. Although, we like it when you go there because it tracks it a little bit easier. There are some of the things that you can use that are simple like Voice Blast. It’s relatively easy if you want to leave a voicemail with a lot of people. MOBIT is a great text message service. There’s a variety of them. FixYourFunnel is another one that you can use for text messaging marketing out to your database to help you drive things in.

The idea is with the way that the technology, the podcast, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram works, everything is all about being on the phone. You have to start embracing that. That’s why you want your emails to be WAP enabled where it looks nice when you send an email out. That’s why it’s important to use an Infusionsoft or MailChimp or something that you can use that integrates a lot of these features into your phone or into your CRM, so it’s easy to communicate. We’re even toying with the idea of using text message marketing in with our borrowers to be able to alert them, “Your payment is due. Thanks, we received your payment.” We’ve got some people using some of the voice blasts just sending an email out, “This is such and such. We want to remind you that your payment is due. Your mortgage payment is due this month.” It almost crossed the line a little bit, but there’s some feasibility to it. There are some great uses of that stuff in your note business, not only for raising capital and moving deals but also on the workout side.

Life Away From Phone

You can get a cell phone number of a borrower and then you’re sending a text message to him on a normal time, not crazy after hours. You always want to be compliant with the Fair Debt Collection Practices. If you can literally be communicating with people directly to their cell phones, you’re in their pocket. You’re on their phones because people are spending more and more time answering their text messages. Text messaging has a much higher open rate than emails. A lot of time, I don’t get my We Close Notes email on my cell phone because I don’t want that constant thing at home after 7:00 to be checking my emails. I want to be able to unwind, to be able to untap myself and unplug a little bit. I want to be able to have a life away from the phone. A lot of people spend time on social media looking at Instagram and Facebook at night. I get that. I do that too but I like to be unplugged from the work side. I don’t want to read every email. Those can wait until I get to the office in the morning. That’s important thing is from 7:00 to 7:00, you pretty much do your thing unless it’s an emergency.

As I always say to people out there, “If you can’t get ahold of me via email and I didn’t respond within 24 to 48 hours, it’s okay to send me a text message straight to my cell phone.” That’s why I get my phone out, (512) 585-3810. That’s my direct cell phone number. You can reach me on there. Text messages are the fastest way because I will put my phone on silent, sit it down and not look at it for two hours. When I’m diving into a project or I’m working on something, I don’t look at email and text messages for hours on end because I want to be focused. I don’t want to get knocking on stuff out. A lot of people will allow the distractions to come in and keep them from being successful. That’s fine if you’ve got little kids or stuff like that, I get that. You’ve got to be able to see what happens. What did we do before cell phones? You had a landline. We go and leave a message or a voicemail. I don’t need to be a helicopter person. I see that a lot of times, “Johnny farted. I’ve got to run and wipe his butt.” No, you don’t. “Little Susie sneezed, I have to take her to the doctor.” Just chill. It’s okay.

Marketing

If you’re looking at marketing, if you’re looking at using your phone, there are a couple things that are easy to do. Take it one step at a time. I have always been a big advocate of getting people’s first name, last name, emails and cell phone numbers because that allows you to be able to communicate with them in an effective manner. First name, last name, email is important, so you can send an email blast out. A lot of people forget about the cellphone because they’re not used to it or they’ve affirmed that they’ve had in one way doing it for years. They’re not adding information. They may have the person’s cell phone number online, they may have an account, but it’s not as effective as collecting it at the time of login. Especially for an event where you’re providing that list to other people. One thing that we love to do religiously when we have an event is we try to get people’s information out so that you can network with people. That’s the important and handy thing to have.

I would love to ask those that are reading what been the one big marketing thing or one big technology thing that you’ve added in the last twelve months to your business or to your life? One thing that I am not a fan of is the in-home Echo or the in-home Amazon, whatever they call those things. Those little boxes where you can say something in order for you. You won’t see me adding one of those. I probably need to work a little bit on some things so that when people want to order it or listen to podcasts, I could make it a little bit easier for people to do that. I won’t add one of those Amazon Dots or the Amazon Echos into my home.

I can see the feasibility and the smartness of it, especially if you’re an elderly. You can call the doctor or 911 or, “Order this, order that.” That last thing you need is there will be a mic on in your office the entire time because we already know the Uncle Sam can tap in. All they’ve got to do is turn on a smartphone if they need to, to listen in, which is crazy. That’s why it’s important to turn things off. That’s why it’s important to limit some stuff. One of the things I do think that’s pretty cool is the Ring Security Systems where you have the cameras on the outside and somebody rings, it rings through your cell phone or you get the motion detectors in your house where if your dog runs around, you can see if your dog goes to the bathroom or if your cat takes a crap. Some people want to have those updates on a minute-by-minute basis, “Amazon, can you order more kitty pads?” That’s what’s going to eventually happen. I know, “You’re out of milk. Let the refrigerator order more milk for you.” It’s coming to be an automated thing in our lives out there.

A lot of people in real estate have bucked the trend of doing that where we’re embracing part of it in identifying opportunities to be able to help people out there with their real estate, their education and other things out there that can dive in buying assets or finding assets or getting somebody to work and open an IRA account. One of the great things about what we do is we are a big referrer of new accounts to Quest IRA, Laughlin & Associates and Madison Management. Each and every year, we send a lot of business across the board to our vendors that we love like Singer Law Group, Polaris and Ross Diversified. I can think of a lot of people that we’ve sent a lot of businesses. The thing is we love doing that. We have great vendors we work with. We love referring business to them because it becomes a win-win across the board.

Getting text messages and videos to your phone is the wave of the future. You have to start realizing that this how business can be done. This is how we do webinars, how we communicate, conference calls, assets and driving by houses. We use this a lot by sending photos of properties. These are property inspections. I walked through two assets in Ohio. They’ve taken videos of the property. There are lots of great things that we did, and we do on a regular basis, and it comes from our smartphone. Kristie Whites was here for our Marketing Monday. She talked about some of the things that they’re doing. They have a service with Apple and they basically rent phones. That’s the smart thing to do versus dropping several hundred bucks at a time.

NCS 335 | Technology And Smartphones

Technology And Smartphones: Getting text messages and videos to your phone is the wave of the future. You have to start realizing that this is how business can be done.

 

Our good buddy, Bill Griesmer, likes fruity drinks. He just doesn’t like the taste of alcohol by itself. He likes something fruity. There’s nothing wrong with that. I know that people like green tea or black tea. Tom Hazzard loves Tequila or Dan Zitofsky loves a good Old Fashioned. Shante Duffy loves vodka drinks and Daniel Singer is a bourbon guy. Those are all important things to keep in mind. You can tag that in your smartphone and send them wine and stuff as well. There’s an app I love using called Vivino. Apps are pretty cool if you’ve got a good one. Vivino allows you to take a picture of the wine bottle and tell you what the average price is, the ratings, you can rate it, you can add it to your things. One thing that I love to do while I travel is that if I’ve got a good bottle of wine, I’ll take a picture of the label and keep it. We also do it for ourselves. We’ve got a pretty decent little wine collection from all the Napa and Sonoma, and the places that we’ve been to. We keep track of it on our phone.

One thing that we’re looking at dealing with that aspect of this thing is literally if you’ve got a deal you’re buying, why not be able to share? “I’ve got a deal here,” and a text message goes out to your investors. Follow the property and send it to my investor list, “Here’s the deal that I’m working through. It’s worth a $100,000, I paid it for $50,000. Who wants to jump into it?” Instant gratification is what we’re looking for and instant access to things. In that aspect, I would say that the technology is great. I know it can be overwhelming. Marketing can be crazy. It can be scary, but if you take it one bite at a time, one little thing at a time, learn how to use it and learn how to implement it, you’ll be a lot happier. It will save you a lot of time and maximize your hour. If you want to take the hourly rate of what you’re making up a notch, learn the market more.

Most entrepreneurs struggle because they get so busy doing one thing and they forget to market. Then they go through their funnel or their lead generated for a while, then they come to an end-point and now they’ve got to start in marketing and build that funnel again. I’ll give you a great example. Realtors, mortgage brokers, title reps are very known for this. They’re always pushing towards closing by the end of the month. They have this month’s goals. It allows them to stay competitive if they’re a competitive person. If you’re not competitive, I would not be in that nature because everybody, good mortgage brokers and good realtors, are focused on getting things closed by the end of the month. That’s one thing you have to look at too, especially in the note business.

When we come to the end of the fourth quarter, a lot of the sellers have stuff, especially some of the hedge funds that they’re trying to move off the books by the end of the month, by the end of the quarter, by the end of the year. We’re coming to a busy timeframe for them to get stuff off their books. The ease of being able to market is important. If you can put some things in place and not donate to the company for a while. I donated to Infusionsoft probably for two years before we started using it on an effective basis. To get your money back, start doing simple marketing things like creating a text message list and create a voice blast system. Those are all little things that you can do to help drive people to your tribe. You don’t need to have 1,000 people. 100 people can be very effective or even 50 people can work depending on that list and if it’s investors.

Keep in mind that little things can help you save the day. Technology is important. Technology is not going to go away. The sooner you learn to embrace things versus fighting it, the happier you’ll be, the more effective you’ll be, and more fun you’ll have. Most importantly, you have to make sure to take care of the nuts and bolts in the base stuff of assets or raising capital or making offers, that’s where it comes down to it. The smarter you can be on your phone or using some of the technology available out there, the more you can communicate with your database, investors, staff or other people out there, your tribe, your fellow investors. Trust me, the happier you’re going to be. The more you can communicate, the more we can link in that stuff into your messaging and marketing, the happier you are going to be.

NCS 335 | Technology And Smartphones

Technology And Smartphones: The smarter you can be on your phone, the more you can communicate.

 

If I could recommend anything out there using VoiceBlast.com is a great thing to be able to drop voicemail blast out to your audience. It goes straight into their cell phone. If they don’t get their cell phone, it goes straight to their voicemail. If there’s a missed phone call, they can call you back, but it leaves a voicemail on there, “Scott Carson, I just want to say thank you for being a part of things or whatever. Thanks for going to a class. I’ve got a new deal available for you. If you want to check it out, check your inbox or text messages.” Those are some cool things that you can use. We use MOBIT. You can also use FixYourFunnel. If you’re an Infusionsoft user, it’s a great way to do that. We use different things like Repurpose.io for video stuff. It allows us to automatically film in one place that we live stream to Facebook. After we’re finished with the video, it allows us to repurpose it, repost it straight to YouTube as well with a click of a button or two. It’s relatively easy. It saves us a lot of time.

A lot of people ask me, “Scott, how do you do all this stuff?” I’m like, “We have systems in place. We have easy tools that make it look like a million bucks and don’t take that much to do.” Whereas for a lot of people, they would have to hire somebody full-time to do a lot of those things. We’re pretty lucky we run a pretty small staff for the most part, but we get a lot done. When we need a big staff or special projects, we can bring on virtual assistants for other things to get things done. That’s all I’ve got for you.

Please once again, do me a huge favor. Text the word NOTES to 72000. It’s not case sensitive. If you’ve already done it, great. You don’t have to do it again. If you haven’t, do yourself a favor, get on board, get updates, webinars, notices and deal updates. Opportunities are available to you straight to your inbox on your text messaging. That will help us help you. That’s what we’re looking for, to help make you better because we’re giving you all we’ve got to help you take your business to the next level. Hopefully, it’s helpful. Thank you for all of you out there. We look forward to continue to deliver great content and information to you. Have a great day and we’ll see you all at the top.

 

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