The 24-Week Challenge: Week 20 – The Power of Social Media

So, the big question is this, how do aspiring real estate investors like us escape from the rat race and build real wealth and freedom without access to millions of dollars in investment capital and start to live the life that we know we deserve. This is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Zack Childress and welcome to Real Estate Investing Talk Show.

So, we’re digging in today to help you guys understand how to use social media. There are so many aspects of social media, right? I mean, you have everything. I don’t even use them all. I got so many social media things going on out there and people say, Oh, I see you on this. And I’m like, I’m not even on it, but we have a team here that does it for us. So, the point is that there are simple things that you guys could be doing when it comes to social media. And let me just point this out. The one of the reasons is, as a real estate investor you want to use social media for the branding aspect of things. The branding aspect of things is why we use social media as real estate investors because it’s so easily searched.

I’ll give you an idea. In today’s world, we are moving closer and closer to where we are a predominant business lookup on Facebook now, where in the past, we would look up businesses on Google. Now, we go to Facebook and we type in the businesses and we look them up. We get a more of an in depth look on them. We get to see their business, their profile page, the reviews. We get to see the pictures, the photos, the videos, we can see all that kind of stuff. We get more of a social interaction with someone through their Facebook page. Does that page also show up in Google? Yeah, absolutely. It’s very powerful. They ranked very high. But the reason I say that when it comes to Facebook is if you don’t have a business Facebook account, you’re probably missing out.

You really are because you might say, how do I do that? Will you just create a Facebook page? That’s it, a business page. Now there’s a difference between a business page and a group page, and I’ll tell you why. A business page is just that. It’s a page and if you have people who are on your page and let’s say you end up with 10,000 people in the area that like your page and you want to message them through your social platform of Facebook, it doesn’t always show up for them. But if you have a group, if you have a business group and people join your group, then the differences is they all received those messages and so you just need to understand the difference. So, most businesses just create a page and the reason being is because that page does not really do that.

The businesses aren’t creating the page to really interact or communicate through a messaging platform with their customers. It’s really designed for branding and communication and platforms and updates and things that they’re doing. So, like for a real estate investor, if you want to create a page and that page, you’re going to have things about what you do, like how you buy houses or how you sell houses with seller financing or how you have lease option houses. It’s going to be all around that and your page shouldn’t be, John buys houses, but it should be like John Buys Tampa houses. Or it could be, sell my house Tampa. That’s what I would name the page and the reason I would name the page that is because you get more search engine optimization from that. But then you’re able to go in and put all everything about your company.

You’re able to make a video just like you went on a website. The beauty of the Facebook pages is they’re basically like a website just there within Facebook. And so, you can use that. You can even buy domains and direct them to Facebook. The downside to that is you don’t want to use it in your marketing obviously because you’re not really capturing anybody’s information. It’s just more of an overview of your company and who you are and what you do and the branding aspects of your business. But you should absolutely create a Facebook page for your business. I think that that is where a lot of investors miss out on. When we’re talking about Facebook, should you have a page? Yes, you should. Does it matter if you’ve only got three or four likes on it?

No, it does not. It just matters that you have it and it’s there. So, if somebody says, you’re meeting with a seller and they’re like, well, do you have any information about you? Yeah, you can check out my page on Facebook or you can go over here and see my website. At that point is where you’re starting to initiate branding and you remember marketing is all about lead capturing and so you’re going to be doing marketing to capture information. But once you’ve gotten that information, you have to move into what’s called a nurturing period with any prospects, seller or a buyer. That nurture period is where they want to know more about you. They want to see if they like you and they want to see if you’re trustworthy. Here’s the reason – because we live in a very jaded world.

Trust me, I know. I’m in real estate investing plus other businesses plus the education business. And on the education side, we hear it all the time about how people are jaded from this industry. I’ll give you an example. Barbara Lee, perfect example with Barbara Lee. A lady that wanted us to help her, she wanted a coach. She came to us initially to help her build her business and she had been jaded in the past and so she just wasn’t sure. She started second guessing us and, and just wondering like who we are and what we do and where are we the right company for her. And I get it, so she didn’t enroll with us right away, but she wanted to get more information about us branding who we are. She started coming on our Facebook live shows and realized we were real and we do every week and then after that she realized, hey look, we’re a real company, I’m a real coach, I’m a real investor.

And she came on board with us and I’m happy to report that she did her first wholesale deal and it was an apartment complex and she made $69,500 on her very first wholesale deal. So, I want everybody just to give Barbara Lee a little bit of love for that. But that just goes to tell you. I mean, she sent me this amazing text about like how she was sorry that she second guessed us and that she should have stayed with us from the beginning. Listen, I get it. I’m not mad at her at all, but that goes back to any other business, right? There’s people that are jaded and they don’t always trust and sometimes they don’t always, looking at everything is what it is. They think there’s more behind the lines and that’s in any business that you do or have.

It’s just on the information side of our business. We get it a lot because there are some definitely shysters out there and I’m not gonna sit here and say there aren’t. There are, and one of the reasons that I made myself so available to my students doing all these live shows and everything that I do was because I wanted to step out of that, that jaded mentality and show people there’s people hiding behind a web screen. They don’t want to ever talk to you. Well, I’m not that person. And so, I want to be here. I want to expose myself to you guys. I want you to know I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. And anybody who’s ever been around me knows that, so I just commend her for moving past her fears and taking that belief in us.

Now take that over into a business in real estate. There are also the same challenges in your real estate business. And here’s why, because there are people out there that do not like investors, and the number one is agents and agents will always talk negative about investors. Oh well, you know what? They can’t do that. They shouldn’t do that. You just need to list it. Sometimes when you talk to a seller, they might have already spoken to an agent and the listing, don’t get me wrong, not all agents are this way. Okay? They’re not all this way. I have some really good agents on my team and Jill has good agents on her team. But the point that I’m making is, you’re going to face that even though if you don’t think you’re facing it, you are facing it.

So, the more you can get your brand out there with what you do using Facebook pages, using a group page. I’m getting a YouTube channel setup to where you may not have as many videos as I have out there, but it doesn’t matter just as long as you’re creating a YouTube channel with the right key words like Tampa House buyer. I’m at Jacksonville, home solutions or something that indicates you’re in the real estate space that they can do some research and find you. Then they’re going to start to feel more comfortable who you are. Because here’s why – the person who is going to get over on you is typically the person who does not expose themselves because the person who is more exposed has more opportunities to get more push back, right? And don’t get me wrong, I got haters.

Like, let’s be clear, okay, I got haters. People that say things that just aren’t even true, like just aren’t even true at all. And it happens. But I’m very exposed in what I do it. And I’m not seeing that’s gonna happen to you, but the more branding you create, the more trust you’re going to build with your prospects. So as real estate investors, it’s important that you do that because who’s didn’t say that you aren’t talking to a seller and the seller is talking to other investors and the other investors may not have any of that and this seller might be nervous, but here you’ve got a Facebook page up. You’ve got a YouTube channel up. You’ve got maybe a website. You’ve got some other things we’re going to talk about in a minute. Also, that starts to help you get exposure, especially when you get a page started and you go and start liking other investing pages. So, then it says, Hey, look, this page is a member of all these other pages. You start to build that. That essence of you’re here to stay and so I encourage you all to really think about that.

You know, that idea of a Facebook page for just even the average investor, or not Facebook but YouTube, that’s really a great idea. If they have a live moment of walking through, I’m going to look at a house that wanna buy.

Yeah. Or even like when you get one under contract, I mean you should make a video of it. You should be like, hey look, I’ve got this house right here. Here’s the contract. I’m selling this contract. Give me a call. And then here’s the other beauty of using a Facebook or a YouTube channel is that every single time you get a deal under contract, you should video that property. Even if it’s somewhere that you’re not living in. Let’s say you’re in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and the properties are in Plano, Texas, you’re going to use WeGoLook. You’re going to send WeGoLook to go shoot a video of it and then you’re going to post that video on your YouTube channel. And so, when people want to know about your property, you can say, hey, look, go check out the video on YouTube.

That way you’re engaging them in the process. They’re seeing it. It’s not some fictitious deal that they don’t know anything about. They can’t figure it out because most wholesalers do it all wrong. Most wholesalers, I wasn’t going to go there, but we can. Most wholesalers do it all wrong. Most wholesalers don’t even understand they’re selling a contract. They think they’re selling a property. And that’s the problem with most wholesalers is when you say, well look, I’ll buy it but I need to see the contract. Well they don’t even want to show you the contract. Well, that’s like trying to buy a car and not being able to see it, but the dealer says well, pay me the money and then I’ll bring the car around. Well now, I want to see the car I’m buying as a wholesaler.

You got to understand you’re selling a contract. There is nothing in the world wrong at all with making a copy of your contract. So now you’ve got the original, and this is what I always did. I got the original over here in a file and I’ve got a copy of it and I would white out the seller’s name so that if they were shady that they couldn’t just go find the seller and then that way I could show them what’s in the contract. I can be like, look, here’s what was in the country. These are the clauses that put in. This is the escape clauses, this is the inspection clauses. These are the terms because here’s what – what if you go buy a contract and there’s things in that contract that don’t allow you to perform and what you need to perform.

You now just bought a contract blindly and have no clue what’s in it and I don’t understand why, how sellers don’t get that. Maybe they’re just not trained correctly. Another thing wholesalers do is they don’t respect the buyers. Correct. They don’t respect the buyers and here’s why. They don’t respect the buyer because they have not moved into a position that they are running a business yet they’re just trying to get the money. That’s all they’re trying to do. How do I get the money? How do I get the money? How do I get the money? Who’s got money? Who’s got money? They’re chasing the dollar. They’re not building the business. Because if you’re building a business as a wholesaler, the number one thing that you need to make sure you have in check is a relationship with your buyers. That’s the number one rule. Even if your buyer isn’t buying that deal, you’ve got to give them the respect to say, hey look, I’ve got other buyers looking at this.

You know, there is a sense of urgency here on your behalf and then if your buyers come back and be like, okay, well I understand why. I’m gonna come look at it tomorrow and you put it under contract with somebody today. You got to tell them that. You got to say, look, I already have it under contract, but if you want to come look at it tomorrow, that’s fine. I’ll put you in second position. This happens. To assume that it will never happen is just not accurate. I mean, listen, I’ve been doing this 16 year and it’s happened to me over and over. Jill’s been doing this for a year and it just happened to her.

We can tell the story. I’m okay over my raw reaction. I’m okay.

Well, I’m a little sensitive around here for a little while.

Well, hours maybe a day. I really needed to close the door.

But ultimately what it comes down to is, you’ve got to take the time as a wholesaler. I know we’re getting off track a little bit, but I’ll get back on. You’ve got to take the time as a wholesaler to just understand like if you’ve got buyers looking at a property, listen, they’ve got things going on in their life to, okay, so you got to either one, you create sense of urgency. And here’s the thing, we say it all the time. Create a sense of urgency, create a sense of urgency. But when you really have multiple buyers on it, you absolutely need to be creating that sense of urgency and being truthful about it because here’s what happened. It will make other buyers speed up. It will make them go, oh, I really want this one. I’m going to get on the horse and try it on down the road. Here you will see what happens. But when you’re not giving that sense of urgency to your buyers, well here’s what happens. They assume that you’re just working with them. That’s what they assume. They assume that you’re just working with them and so that they verbally agreed to you with this deal and that is just you and them going to put this deal together. They don’t know if you haven’t told them, right. So as a wholesaler, just know you’ve got to get really clear with your buyers on that process.

I want to add in there, one thing for you to point out there too, is if you have multiple buyers and you’re chasing the money, don’t not communicate that so you can’t up your assignment fee.

Good point. Like this wholesaler that we’re talking about right now, he’s in our local market and I would be really easy to call him a couple of names, but I’m not going to do that. But, I think I already got that covered for you. I’m still blown away because this guy’s done this twice to Jill. She was looking at a deal that he had and he sold it to somebody else knowing that she wanted to buy it too. And instead of him going back to his buyers and saying, Hey, look, I’ve got multiple buyers looking at this. What’s your highest bid? What’s your highest bid? He didn’t do that and he could have made more. Same thing that happened this last time. He brought it to the other buyer and they negotiated him down and he had another buyer ready to buy, and he could have got more but he’s not using his brain. He’s just chasing the money.

So, we talk about social media. Get back on track here. When we talk about social media, remember Facebook is highly useful. Write that down. Number two is YouTube, highly useful. Write that down. Number three is going to be meetups. You want to join those meetup groups and be part of those discussion boards. And like Jill said, if you feel like the emails are a little overwhelming, then set up a separate email account and use that. So, you’ve got Facebook, you’ve got YouTube, you’ve got meetup groups, you got Facebook groups, you need a Facebook page, but you need to be using the Facebook groups.

So, let me clarify this. You need to be using Facebook pages and Facebook groups for your business. And you need to be using meetup groups for your business. You need to be using YouTube channels for your business and then if you really want to take it to another level, you start integrating Instagram in there. Now I’m not going to tell you to start doing that right now because, Instagram takes some time to understand and study it and really use it. I absolutely don’t even use Twitter. I’ve never used it. Well that’s not true. I set up an account about eight years ago and then I can never figure it out. I just didn’t. I mean, it just doesn’t know. It just seemed like a waste of time for me. I like more of an interaction type social media platform where a little two-sentence tweet didn’t seem to be enough for me to get my message out. I couldn’t figure out how you get the notifications back on tagging people and liking people and it’s very complicated.

All right, so this is why it’s important for social media. You guys need to plug that in for your business, okay? Plug it in, plug it in, and use those platforms. If you don’t do anything this week, then just get a Facebook page set up for your business, okay? Just do that.

You’ve been listening to the Real Estate Investing Talk Show. I’m Zack Childress and I’m on a mission to create 10,000 real estate bosses over the next year. Will you be one of them? Head over to my website, ReiSuccessAcademy.com/web class and register for my free web class where you’ll discover how to escape from the nine to five grind and become your own boss in real estate. See you there.