‘How to Source Deals and Investors’ With Real Estate Coach Joe Mendoza

In this podcast episode, “How to Source Deals and Investors,” Kim Lisa Taylor interviewed Joe Mendoza, a real estate coach, podcaster and author of two books, “Flex with a Plex” and “Make It a Comeback.” Joe shared his views on how to source deals, how to source investors, and how a coach can help you stay on track as you build your syndication business.

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Kim Lisa Taylor:

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Syndication Attorneys, PLLC’s free monthly podcast, where we talk about topics of interest to real estate syndicators, with the opportunity for live questions and answers at the end of the call. I am Attorney Kim Lisa Taylor.

Before we get started, please note that all of our podcasts will be recorded and may be used for future promotion, posted on our website, or broadcast in a podcast available to the public. If you don’t wish to have your voice recorded, please schedule a one-on-one consultation instead of asking questions during the live call. And you can do the one-on-one consultations through our website at syndicationattorneys.com.

Information discussed during this free podcast is of a general, educational nature and should not be construed as legal advice. This is an audio-only presentation … Today our topic is “How to Source Deals and Investors,” with real estate coach Joe Mendoza. Hey, Joe, welcome to the show.

Joe Mendoza:

Hey. I’m so glad to be here, Kim. Thank you so much for having me on your show today.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Yeah, I’m so excited. We’ve known each other for quite a while. I think I’ve spoken on your podcast before and we’ve met each other back in San Diego. And that was years ago.

Joe Mendoza:

Yeah.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Through Real Estate Investment Club, right?

Joe Mendoza:

Exactly, exactly.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Right. So, Joe, tell our audience a little bit about you and what you do.

Joe Mendoza:

Sure. I’ve been involved in real estate a long, long time. I started way back when I was about 17 years old. That was how I started my journey. Went to a Robert Allen seminar, got really pumped up, and the rest was history.

My first venue was obviously on the investment side with Robert Allen being the person that inspired me, and then I went to college, put it on the back burner because I got a little scared. I mean, during that time — late ’80s, early ’90s — the market was doing a correction. And little to my knowledge, that’s the time when you should probably start to invest if you know how.

So I got scared, pumped the brakes, and in 1998 I got my real estate broker license. And I said, “You know what? Let’s give it a go as an agent.” And I got into coaching right away and I did about 12 transactions my first year. In 2004, I (did) 113 transactions. I flipped a dozen homes. I became a coach of 20 people nationwide. Currently — fast-forward —  I’m coaching all across the nation and in multiple countries — Philippines, Australia, Canada — and I’m teaching people how to be a great agent, how to invest or be a great agent and eventually invest, or for some people that just want to jump in straight into investing, I teach them how to build that as well.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

That’s amazing. I have a real estate broker’s license — I don’t use it, but I do have it. And I used to be a real estate agent way back when, I’m not going to say when. But it seems like there’s a change in mindset from being an agent to being an investor. And I think a lot of people can’t make that switch, maybe without having somebody like you helping them do it. And there are a few people that do it. I think people that go through the CCIM program are able to make that transition, but a lot of people … a lot of agents can’t wrap their heads around what it means to change sides and become the buyer.

Joe Mendoza:

You’re exactly right, Kim. And one of my mentors — I’ve hired so many over the years. I still have some today. I believe learning is forever, especially if you want to keep growing and challenging yourself. — One of my mentors really opened up my eyes when he said … “Hey, Joe, quit working for tips.”

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Wow.

Joe Mendoza:

And when he said that, I was blown away because he goes, “Joe, you’re working for 3%, 6%. Meanwhile, all these investors are adding a zero.” For instance, one of my fix-and-flip opportunities that I learned from as an agent, I made like $10,000 on one side, $20,000 because I double-ended it. I gave it to my investor, because I didn’t know how to do fix-and-flips at the time. I go, “Hey, this is a fixer-upper, major dumpy house. The guy wants to sell it.” I brought in my investor and he made over $100,000 on that blip. And that, to me, was the eyeopener moment where I was like, “You know what? I better figure this game out because there is a whole other world on the investor side.”

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Yeah. Oh, wow. You were so right about that. So you’ve transitioned into the coaching space. Why is it important that syndicators or anybody who wants to invest in real estate, why is it important for them to have a coach?

Joe Mendoza:

A couple of different things. Number one, mitigate. Mitigate your risk. Because when you don’t know how, you should hire a pro like Kim or myself to hold your hand. Because I mean, I was at a meet-up the other day, Kim, and somebody said, “Hey, should I use this two-page contract I found online?” And I was like, “What? No way.” So mitigate your risk.

The other one is to speed up your rate of success. Because I firmly believe that if somebody has already figured out … somebody has already made the mistakes … why are you going to go through all that pain and struggle? So, definitely hire a coach.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Yeah. That has been my experience, too. All of our clients — I’ve been doing this now since 2008 — and all of our clients that have gone on and done either many, many deals or are starting to, gone on from small deals to really big deals, they all started with a coach. Every one of them had a coach for their first two, three deals. And then after that they didn’t need the coach anymore. But it was so critical to them to keep them on track for the first deal, not make $100,000 mistakes with other people’s money that would put them out of business after their first deal and go on and do those second and third deals. And then they gained the confidence and the knowledge they needed to be able to do it on their own. I’ve seen that in practice, that coaching is critical to long-term success in any kind of an investing strategy.

Joe Mendoza:

No doubt about it.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

If you really want to turn your investing into a business, you need a coach. If you want to just dabble on the side, you can do it on your own. But if you want to involve other people and use other people’s money, then you’ve got to have a coach. And like you said, you need a coach that teaches you the real estate side of it — like, “What’s a good deal? What’s not a good deal? What deals make sense for investors? What don’t? What things you should be doing to the property. What things you shouldn’t be doing to the property that aren’t going to get you a return.” But you also need — if you’re using other people’s money — you need us to help you figure out how to do that legally without stumbling and losing money or doing something that’s going to get you in trouble with securities regulators or get you in a lawsuit.

Joe Mendoza:

Exactly. Even worse, right?

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Yeah. Any one of those things can derail your business and ruin your reputation. So you to make sure you know what you’re doing from the legal side.

All right. We were wanting to talk today about how to source deals with investors and investors. So how do we source deals? What do you mean by that?

Joe Mendoza:

Sourcing deals is probably the No. 1 thing to figure out. There’s a lot of money running around. A lot of people have money and they typically say, “Find a deal, you’ll find the money.” So sourcing deals, plain and simple, number one, you got to know it’s a deal. Take the coaching, take the training to figure out if it is a deal or you create the deal.

Then to source it, there are many, many, many ways. I would say the first way is the easiest, WOMM: word-of-mouth marketing. The easiest, cheapest way to find deals is to start flapping your lips. I mean, tell them you’re an investor. Tell them you’re looking out for deals. That’s the easiest.

Secondly, if you want to go ahead and do some grassroots marketing campaigning, you see a lot of these yellow signs on the streets, on the highways, on telephone poles. Now, depending on your city jurisdiction, be careful because that could get you in trouble. I say use it though, because when I first started out, that’s actually one of the ways that I sourced deals, when I put these bandit signs — they call them — on telephone poles, next to corners where people make these stops, put those out there.

I could go do a whole training on that one because there’s a pre-printed one and there’s a handwritten one. And there’s a big, big difference between both. And there’s a lot different mindset and mentality and psychology behind why you should do one or the other, yellow letters. Some people are just sending letters out there like crazy. The best way to really get a higher conversion is the yellow letters.

Yellowletters.com and yellowletterscomplete.com are companies I’m not affiliated with, but you could go ahead and check them out or create your own. Go to like a Kinko’s or a FedEx or Office Depot, get a yellow pad, write in like blue ink, “Dear homeowner, I want to buy your house. If you’re interested in selling, call me.” And put your name, your number, all that stuff. Fold up that yellow letter, stick it in an envelope, hand-write it with a blue ink, send it out. You’ll get a higher conversion. Make it in one of those envelopes that look like a greeting card envelope, because they’re more inclined to open it. And put a regular stamp, crooked. You’ll get a good rate of return that way.

Door-knocking — You’ve got to subscribe to a list, and one of my favorites is PropStream. I have a small trial out there. If you go to findhiddendeals.com, you’ll get like a 7-day free trial because you want to know, “Okay, are these foreclosures, pre-foreclosures? Are these high-equity absentees?” I mean, like I said, I could go through a lot of training around that …. So if you know that somebody has a notice of sale, door-knock. But when you door-knock, you want to make sure you’re saying the right things or asking the right things. That’s another way to source deals.

One of the things that I like to share with people is if you’re door-knocking somebody who’s a notice to default, a notice to sale, I try many things. One of the best things that I found out that works is like, “Hey, how’s your loan modification going?” And they look at me like, “Okay. Number one, who are you? And how do you know what’s going on with my house?” That line works so, so well and you tell them something like, “Hey, you know what? It’s public record, the bank’s been trying to get ahold of you.” And you try to figure out a solution. Again, another full training on that one. We’re talking about deal sourcing.

The online, social media — If you want to really put yourself out there, do like Kim and I are doing and talk about what your strategy is and how you could help somebody. Are you looking to buy property to fix-and-flip? Are you looking to buy property to hold? And you’ve got to know your strategy before you start doing these mailers, doing the door-knocking, doing the social media. Because if you start without an end in mind, you’re just going all scattered. And you’re going to be doing all this activity, and then sometimes you might get frustrated and tired and what-have-you.

So, number one, know what you’re looking for: the deal. Number two, pick that niche: Are you going to go after notice to defaults, trustee sales, foreclosures, divorces, probate, anything like that? Or are you looking to buy and hold?

These people don’t worry about, the ones I just mentioned earlier, they probably have high equity and then find out, they usually owned it 20, 30 years. And then your pitch would be totally different. It’s not like, “Hey, I wonder how your loan modification is going.” Go straight up and ask them, “Have you any thoughts on selling?” And start to talk to them. Well, they might have an objection like, “You know what? I don’t want capital gains.” Well, there is not a deal, but potentially you could create a deal by saying, “Well, I’d love to buy your property. Would you be open to taking payments?”

If they say something like that, well, hence, you could create a potential seller-financing strategy where you could take over the property. You hear about these programs out there with zero money down, no credit, well …that’s how you do it. Again, another full training on that one. I could keep going, Kim, or you could stop me, whenever.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

I think I have definitely had some multifamily clients that have used the yellow letters. And I don’t know if they were actually using yellow letters, but they were definitely sending out a letter campaign to owners of multifamily properties in their target market.

And I get them, sometimes. We had a property in Ohio and we would get them all the time — something that says, “Hey, just sold two or three doors down,” try to get somebody to think about, “Oh, wow. Look, if they sold that thing for that much, maybe I could get this much out of my property.”

So I have had clients that have found that strategy to work. And it gets you the off-market deals where people have a problem that you can help them solve. And once you’ve sent them that letter and they’ve responded to you, now your questions are going to be more like, “Well, what are your needs? What are you trying to get out of the deal? What do you need to make this deal viable?” And once you figure that out, now you can get creative with seller financing or whatever helps suit their needs. Maybe they even want to stay in the deal as an investor. And we can craft a syndicate that has a seller-financing component in it, and we would create a special class of investors for that, that could be bought out based on whatever terms you’ve agreed to with them. And that’s always acceptable to the lender to do that if they come into your LLC, but not necessarily if they do it as a loan.

I think some of these word-of-mouth — that’s going to be you talking to brokers in your target market, letting everybody there know that you’re actively looking for deals in their market, talking to everybody else you know in the market or anyone else you can think of maybe going to the area and just talking to some local business owners about what you’re looking for —  certainly some of those things can work even in the multifamily world, which is where a lot of our clients are.

So I think we’ve covered what about sourcing deals, what’s the best way to do it? But what about sourcing investors? Let’s talk about what that means and some strategies for that.

Joe Mendoza:

Absolutely. So we talked about deal sourcing, deal finding, now you’ve got to have the money. As soon as you find a deal it’s like, “Oh, no. How do I close it?” The first and the immediate (answer), I would say is friends and family. And believe it or not, never ever, ever judge a book by its cover. You just never know how much they have, have in the bank, have under the mattress, whatever. So tell them your intention, tell them your goals. And pre-plant the seed where like, “Hey, you know what? I’m getting into investing. And if I find a deal, would you be interested in maybe exploring that opportunity with me?” So feel them out. “Okay, great. Yeah, I would.” And, “Well, how much would you be able to participate?” Ask them; get it. It’s like dating — you’re not trying to get a home run right away, you want to get to first base and see how much they’re willing to invest. They might say $30,000 or $50,000 or something like that, but go ahead and ask them how much would they be willing to participate or something in that regard.

And then start organizing like in a CRM, an Excel spreadsheet — this person I talked (with) about this deal and how much. And then you can start to edge mark how much is available because when a deal comes up, believe it or not, when you do that cash call, not everybody will be ready. Sometimes you might think, “Okay” — you add it up — “I got a half a million ready. I got a million ready.” And then you start doing the cash call, “Oh, you know what, Joe? I’m so sorry. I actually bought a property in Vegas. I’m tapped out.” Or, “Oh, man, I had a life emergency. I don’t have that available.” So you want to really go through all your friends, all your family, all your people you know and start organizing, seeing how much. There’s a lot of great software out there that you could even get involved with, that could help you organize.

Meetup groups — They’re starting to launch, they’re starting to launch. I’m launching, I’m doing some different events here throughout San Diego County. I’m doing a lot online. You could either host them or attend  … you see who’s attending. Start to see what they’re saying. See what questions they’re asking. And then maybe send a direct message or a private message, especially if they’re online — Facebook, LinkedIn, all these social media platforms are so much easier than it was back in the day. Back in the day we didn’t have that luxury. Well, you join any group, whether it is self-storage, multifamily, investing, real estate, you start to see the conversations going, “Oh, I found a deal.” “Oh, I have money.” Send a private message to this person. They’re putting it out there already, like, “Hey, I have money.” Send a direct message (to them): “Oh, I saw you posted on this forum that you have money. I’m always running into investments all the time, too.” And start to build that relationship.

Because like I say, that would be key, to build up the relationship, whether it’s friend or family or somebody you don’t know, because, like I said, you’re not going to get a home run right away. You want to get to first base, second base, third base. So add value to them. If you hear they have money, find out how much. Because at the end of the day, quite frankly, if you know five to 10 people with a significant amount of money, you might only need one to five for the rest of your investing career, because you’re going to build up this relationship. You’re going to add value. You’re going to take them to lunch, to dinner, etc., etc., etc.

Lo and behold, one of my buddies, he called me the other day. I was doing exactly what I shared earlier, putting myself on social media, doing these meetups. I’m the one soliciting in an indirect way that, “Hey, I’m back looking for deals. I’m adding value.” He calls me, he goes, “Hey, Joe. I see what you’re doing, dude, what are you up to?” So we went into small conversation. Then I started asking him questions. I go, “So you know what? Well, how much do you have to play with?” And he goes, “About three.” I go, “Okay, great. And what’s your max? What’s the high?” He goes, “About five.” And I go, “Sweet.” And then just to confirm, I knew he was a player and I just wanted to confirm, “You can go three million, right?” He goes, “Yeah.” And I was like, “Sweet.” That’s the only guy I need.

So it’s one of these things where you start putting your feelers out there. You think you need a massive list, heck no, it’s not so much quantity, it’s quality. You want to make sure that you start telling the world that, “Hey, I’m out there. I’m looking to invest,” and then, okay, start deal-sourcing. Then as you were telling all these people, ask them too, “How much gun powder do you have? How much dry powder do you have?” You play around with the words depending who’s in front of you. Use their language to make sure you’re more relatable and then start organizing. Because it’s one of these things to ask them, but stay organized because I have a good amount of people in my database, I have over 20,000 people. But as far as investing, like I said, it’s less than five, depending on the deal is the way you source money. If you don’t know anybody, you’re new to town. Well, you’ve got to get out there and hustle. There’s no deal flow or no deals happening if you’re a secret investor.

When I was starting out and when I was broke, I said, “Okay, you know what? I’m going to go all out.” And so on one of my cars one time I put, “I Buy Houses.” So you get these stickers, throw them on a car. I mean, you’ll probably see these people driving around town. Number one, sometimes they may be broke, sometimes they’re not, but whatever it is, commit, 100% go all in and give it that effort. Then eventually you’ll have more than enough money. You’ll have more than enough deals, and the rest is history.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

I want to comment on some of the things you said. I hope everybody’s taking notes. I know I am.

So, friends and family — Most of our clients that are buying commercial real estate will start with friends-and-family deals. They’ll all start with Reg D Rule 506(b) offerings. Nobody goes to Rule 506(c) offerings until they have a significant track record because you’ve always got to survive the question, “How many have you done before?” So if you’re new at it, you got to start with people that you already know, because they will invest with you before you have a track record. People who don’t know you want to see your track record, because they don’t know anything about you.

Meetup groups — I always like to say to my clients, “Find your investors locally, but invest globally.” You can invest all over the United States if you have the right strategy and you can convince people that you’re able to handle a deal across the country, but your investors are people who want to meet you face-to-face as much as possible. So, people that you meet in your local community. And it could be a meetup group, but it doesn’t have to be a real estate meetup group. It could be a hiking meetup group or a church meetup group or a dinner club or whatever it is that can get you to know other people that might be interested in getting to know you and maybe participating with you in some business deals. And then talk to those people about what you do and how you put these group investments together and how other people like them — and it’s always how people like you — can participate.

REIAs —Real estate investment association meetings. That’s where Joe and I met. When I was in San Diego I used to go to three or four different real estate investment association meetings every month. And I found there were a couple that I really liked and I really resonated with, there were a couple that didn’t seem like such a good fit for me. So I just kept going. And nobody at a REIA is going to invest with you until they’ve seen you there at least for six months. Because otherwise, they just think you’re in and out the door. And so you’ve got to have that longevity.

And some of you have listened to the podcast that we did with Sam Freshman called “60 Years of Investing Wisdom With Sam Freshman.” And I asked him, “How much money have you raised?” He said, “Oh, I don’t know. A billion dollars.” And I said, “What? How did you raise that much money, Sam?” And he said, “I just joined every group that I could locally. And I kept showing up for 20 years.” So that’s your ticket: join any clubs and local groups that you can; volunteer for things. There’s all kinds of volunteer opportunities, especially around the holidays. There’s people that are doing fundraisers and galas and tree festivals and raising money for hospice or for local churches, all that stuff happens a couple of times a year. Get involved with that stuff because you’ll meet other people there that you can talk to about what you do. They can talk about what they do and they might become investors with you.

Facebook, LinkedIn — Now all of those strategies, you’ve got to be careful when you’re using any of these strategies, that you’re not just throwing your deals out there … You can throw out what your business does. You can advertise your business. But don’t advertise your deals until you have a significant, substantive pre-existing relationship. And that means you’ve got to know someone, you’ve got their contact information. Then you had a follow up conversation with them to ask them about their investing goals, whether they’re accredited. If they’re not accredited, how are they sophisticated? And once you’ve done that, put that in your database, now you can start offering them deals, but not until then. There’s an article about that on our website. If you go to syndicationattorneys.com into the library, into the articles, then you can get the article that’s called “How to Create a Substantive Relationship. “It’s the first article that pops up. So I highly recommend everybody does that. It even has a proposed list of questions.

Joe, you’ve talked about how to source people and in adding value. Is that the cornerstone to how you would develop relationships with someone that you’d just met?

Joe Mendoza:

Absolutely. Like I said, you can’t (hit) a home run or like, “Hey, hand me over your money” right away when you meet somebody randomly … you’ve got to build a relationship. So it’s one of those things where get to know them, let them get to know you, but see if there’s a fit. Because if you have a weird feeling about this person, imagine this is going to be a potential investor with you for a long time. Maybe at least for the life of the deal. And if you don’t like this person, you might as well not deal with them now. Because you want to do the touchy-feely in the beginning because if this person hands over $100,000 to you, sometimes that might be the last $100,000. That might be a little bit of a lot.

And so build that relationship, find out what their needs are, find out how to serve them and help them. Because I’d rather you ask them more questions , even small talk like, “Hey, tell me about your family. Tell me about what you do for fun.” Stuff like that. I mean, there’s a basic formula out there called FORD and FORM. FORD is family, occupation, recreation, dream. FORM is family, occupation, recreation, message. If you’re new to sales, if you’re new to that kind of business, I’ll say that is one of the best techniques to learn, FORD or FORM. …

Family — You’ll probably see a ring, “So tell me about your significant other.” “Oh, how’d you know?” “Oh, your ring.” You assume, play around a little bit.

Occupation — “What kind of work do you do? Oh, how long have you been doing that?” Start to dig into that.

Recreation — “What do you do for fun?”

Then Dream, — “If you had all the money in the world, where would you live? Where would you buy your dream house? What kind of dream car?”

The other one was FORM, family, occupation, recreation, message. So the message is once you leave that lunch, that coffee meeting, whatever, you got to do your 30-second elevator pitch again, in some form or fashion to remind them, that’s the last thing they’re going to remember about you. Like, it was a great lunch. No, they’re going to remember the experience. And so that message is like, Okay, we talked about all kinds of stuff. What were you asking? What were you trying to imply? That’s how you’re going to build relationships from day one. And then following up, day over day, week over week, “Hey, I just wanted to see how you’re doing.” And remember in your head or on your notepad, ask them about, “Oh, how’s Johnny? How’s he doing in baseball? Did he hit that home run over the weekend?”

So you’re not really trying to get the money right away, you’re authentically trying to create a relationship. And I mean that sincerely. Because some people, they’re one-and-done. No, that’s not the way to do it. Because if you help this person make an 8% return on their money, way better than the bank, they might invest in your next deal and the next deal and the next deal. And guess what? They have friends. And if they have friends and they like how you work, they love your relationship, you made them a lot of money, guess what they’re going to do? So that’s how you really build up that relationship when you’re sourcing money.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

And I can say that that has actually happened with some of my clients. I have some clients that started out buying $3 million to $5 million deals and now they’re buying $30 million to $50 million deals. And for their last deal, they raised $10 million in like four days. And then what they said is, “It’s all of our past investors that keep investing with us in all of our new deals.” And so all they have to do is get the word out to their past investors. And they’ve got people raising their hand, “Yep. I’m in, I’m in, I’m in,” just with the first flyer. So that’s where you want to get to, is where you have this group of people.

And then one of the ways to do that is to stay in touch with them when they’re in your deals, too. And keep them informed of what’s going on with those deals, but also keep your entire database informed of what’s going on with all of your deals. Because the people that didn’t get in on the last deal are going to be like, “Oh, man, I wish I’d been in on that deal. I better get in on the next one. I can’t wait. I’ve just got to respond as soon as I see something from them.” So now they’re looking for your information in their inbox because it’s important and they recognize that. So you’re so right about that. I love that, FORD and FORM. So FORD and FORM relationships. That’s what it’s about?

Joe Mendoza:

Absolutely.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

And so your message, that’s what you need to think about, is once you’ve met somebody… this is all part of what we talk about in our investor marketing plan template. Anybody that’s a client of our firm gets an investor marketing plan template for free. If you want to just go buy one you can go to our investormarketingmaterials.com website.

But it’s really about, what are you going to do to meet people? And then once you meet people, what are you going to do to foster and maintain that relationship? And this sounds like exactly what you need to be doing. And then maintaining that relationship until you have a deal and making sure that you have the right information about that person and you’ve put it in your record-keeping system so that you can offer them that specific opportunity as soon as it arises. Those are all important things.

And if you don’t have deals right now, find other people that you can come in on their deals and bring your investors to their deals so that you can, first of all, get your investors invested. Don’t wait six months to do it. And also so that you can get some additional experience in the management of another person’s syndicate. All of those are viable strategies that our clients use every single day.

What kind of followup systems do you suggest, Joe?

Joe Mendoza:

Stick to some of the basics and don’t overcomplicate. KISS: Keep It Simple, Silly. It’s one of these things that people respond in multiple different ways. So I always say stick with the basics, mail, email, phone. Because mail, if somebody gets something in the mailbox — especially nowadays, it’s fun, it’s awesome to have something received in the mail — they open it up. It’s cool. Email, sometimes the downside, it gets trapped in junk, where they’ll never ever see it.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Right, right.

Joe Mendoza:

Pick up the phone. I’ve got to say, and this is something definitely a technique, because if you look at the different generational gaps, there’s a lot of obvious things there. Think about your parents, think about your grandparents. How do they like to communicate? Well, I guarantee you, some of them aren’t on social media or responding to email. They’d rather have the friendly phone call. So if you’re constantly just sending emails, sending email, “My God, why aren’t they responding?” Well, you’ve got to do the phone call.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

That’s right.

Joe Mendoza:

And if you go to the millennials, they love to text. So really, if you have somebody who’s an investor, you know much money they have, talk to them in the way they like to be talked to or through.

There’s a lot of CRMs out there. I would suggest if you don’t have the money yet start with a regular pad. Start with a whiteboard. And then …

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Or Excel spreadsheet.

Joe Mendoza:

Excel spreadsheet, Google Sheet. Start with something like that and stay organized, but touch them in multiple different ways on purpose because you don’t know how they like to be communicated with yet. It’s important to figure that out and maybe on a column in your spreadsheet, put that down. Because if you’re emailing and emailing, “Oh, my God. No response.” Well, look at your checklist, “Oh, they like phone better.” Pick up the phone, “Hey, do you have $100,000?” “Oh, yeah.” Boom. So it’s …

Kim Lisa Taylor:

You know what they call it, right? Smile and dial.

Joe Mendoza:

That’s it. Smile, dial, make a pile.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Take a deep breath and go, “Okay.” And you’d be surprised how many people are happy to hear from you. Some people won’t respond; you just can’t take it personally. You just have to assume everybody’s got their own world. They’ve got their own things going on. Some people have the time to talk to you. Some people are monitoring you in the background and they’ll respond when they can. But don’t give up.

Joe Mendoza:

That’s right. That’s right.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Don’t give up. And it’s easy with these investor management platforms, with any CRMs to set up automated responses so that if somebody does respond to you or if you send them out a newsletter and then you can do followups after that, you do want to make sure that you’ve got an opt-in and you want to make it easy for people to unsubscribe. I will say this, I have mixed feelings about holiday greetings. And the reason I say that is because I unsubscribe from more things that people send me Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas than I do any other time of the year. What do you think about that, Joe?

Joe Mendoza:

Wow. I’m studying a lot on marketing right now and one of the mentors out there says that email is something you should build up as big, as big, as big as possible. And here’s why, he made a lot of sense. MySpace. Who remembers that?

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Oh, yeah. Right.

Joe Mendoza:

Right? There’s these social media platforms out there where people are just jumping right in, “Oh, I got to be a pro on Facebook. I got to be a pro on TikTok. I got to be a pro on YouTube.” Well, what if they shut down like one of these other places? That’s why this guru out there said that — email, build it up. If they unsubscribe, oh, well there’s going to be a lot more other people out there, but old-school, get their mailing address. You’ve got to get their mailing address. So I do agree with email, but I would say kick it up a notch, get their actual physical mailing address. And then eventually, hopefully you get their number along the way. And then old-school: smile, dial, make a pile.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Well, I will say that I hardly ever get actual mail from people, but occasionally I do. And the ones that I actually look at — and I look at them every single time — are those big, 5-by-7-inch postcards with the glossy picture on the front. And then on the back it talks about whatever the message is. I read those. And then I toss them. But I actually do read them. So if there was something there that was relevant to me, then I would set that aside and I would actually do something about it ,where the email would’ve been lost.

And my staff could have screened it — I have an email screening program that could have screened it. All kinds of things could have happened to it that I never would’ve seen it.

Joe Mendoza:

I want to point something out also, in addition to that, Kim, because this is very important for your listeners out there. There’s something to be said about this called V-A-K. You got to understand this, because this is huge in marketing. Some people are very visual, very visual. Some are more auditory, some are more kinesthetic. They like to touch and feel. So if you’re not sending something in the mail and they’re kinesthetic, they like to feel, well, you’ve lost that audience. So you’ve got to really realize that in marketing, there is psychology behind it. And if you’re not doing it properly, that’s probably why you’re missing the boat on deal-sourcing or money-raising. And it’s not that simple, but if you get a coach, a pro like Kim or myself, you will have higher conversion almost instantly.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

I think you’re 100% right on that. All right. So you’ve written a couple of books; I want to hear about those.

Joe Mendoza:

Thank you. I appreciate you allowing me to share on that one. During COVID, it reminded me of 2008, instantly. As soon as March hit, I got scared, I think like a lot of the rest of the world. First I was oblivious, “Ah, this is going to go away. No big deal.” But then it got really, really serious. And then I said to myself, “You know what? I’ve had this book in my head, on my computer. Just sitting there. Let’s just put it out there. Because I think there’s a way where there’s going to be people that’s going to get in trouble. Like I did in 2008.” And that’s how I wrote that first book, “Make It a Comeback.”

And in that book, I wrote down a lot of ways that I got myself out of the hole and there were a lot of different things that I shared that quite frankly, some people during that time, they lost it. Either, they committed suicide, went to jail, filed for divorce. Whatever. And I threw all kinds of nuggets in that book. And I’ve self-published it, it’s on Amazon.

Simultaneously, Kim, I wrote the second book, “Flex With a Plex,” almost the same time, back to back. And that was like, “You know what? If I die today, I got to put something out there.” Whether my kids read it or my grandkids or my family, so I do “Flex With a Plex. Now, truth be told, I’m not a professional writer, never went to grammar school on English writing or whatever that stuff. So you might find some errors there, so I just want to disclaim that. But I just wanted to put something out there to help somebody.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

What’s the gist? What’s the gist of that book?

Joe Mendoza:

(The idea behind) “Flex With a Plex” is that people like to flex, flex their muscle. So flex — flexibility on lifestyle, flexibility on having to work or not to work when you invest in multiplexes, multifamily. I talk about how basic a house hack — I get into that in the book, where a simple house hack — you buy a house and rent out the room. That’s your first plex. And then you graduate get to a duplex and a fourplex. Here on the West Coast they usually call it “multiplexes,” I know (in) Chicago, Midwest they say “flats.” But that’s more a West Coast thing, I guess. So “Flex With a Plex,” you’ll have the flexibility of financial freedom, time freedom, all summarized in that book.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

So if anybody wants to look up those books on Amazon, they can look up Joe Mendoza as author on Amazon and find the books?

Joe Mendoza:

Absolutely. Absolutely. So just go on Amazon, “Make It a Comeback.” Or “Flex With a Plex” on Amazon as well.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Okay, great. And how can people reach you?

Joe Mendoza:

Just go to joemendoza.com or coachjoemendoza.com. I’m all over social media. If you do old-school and you want to call me: 877-794-5227.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

That’s fantastic. Well, this has been a lot of really valuable information. I think our audience will really benefit from this. I do want to let everybody know that if you want to engage with us, if you’re not already a client of our firm, then we do have weekly Masterminds. I host those every Friday at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time/noon Eastern Time. It’s an opportunity for just our clients to get on the call. We usually get anywhere from six to 10 people on the call and we’ll go through whatever questions or issues you’re facing right now, but it’s really geared at helping you gain confidence, making sure you’re doing things the right way, making sure you’re following the right procedures to develop substantive relationships and all of that. We’ll also give you an investor marketing plan template if you join our pre-syndication retainer program. So that’s one way you can engage with us for a nominal fee.

If you’re already a client, you’re already invited to those and you should be looking for our notices, which could be going to your junk mailbox or you can check with our Facebook page and we do post when we’re going to be having those events. But we have them every Friday unless I’m traveling or it’s a holiday. So anyway, that’s all great stuff.

Let’s see. Does anybody have … it looks like we’ve got a couple of questions. If anybody has questions, you can put it into the Q&A and we’ll go ahead and ask. All right. So Jay asks, “What CRMs do you recommend, something that tracks FORD information like Sharkware used to do, but not MailChimp which just started censoring users?” What do you recommend, Joe?

Joe Mendoza:

I would start with maybe HubSpot, H-U-B-S-P-O-T. It is a publicly traded company, I believe. And their platform is incredible and you could get it for free.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

So yeah, we’re actually potentially going to change our own database, because we use ActiveCampaign right now and we’ve graduated through a few. We started with Insightly, which is a Google app and that used to be free for two people. And that was really good for a while. You can also upgrade into the paid program if you find it doesn’t have some features that you want. It integrates with MailChimp, if you want to do email campaigns, but then we graduated into ActiveCampaign and then now we’re actually looking at going somewhere else. We like it for our campaigns and for our automations, but there are some limitations that we have internally that we think there might be some better solutions.

Also, there are investor management platforms. We have a relationship with Groundbreaker, it’s groundbreaker.co. Anybody that comes from us gets 50% off their onboarding fees if they sign up with Groundbreaker. So check them out, groundbreaker.co. And there’s other investor management platforms out there. I don’t recommend that you get one necessarily unless you have some deals to track investors, but if they have a very useful CRM, then it might be worth getting on board early. And some of them seem to have some introductory programs where you can pay a nominal fee until they actually get some deals. So ask about that, do some demos and see what you like and think about one of those. But yeah, anything like that works.

Let’s see if we have any other questions. We’ve got a couple of chats. “Could you please repeat the name of the book for climbing out of the 2008 recession?” I think that’s your book, Joe.

Joe Mendoza:

Yeah, it’s called “Make It a Comeback.” And you’ll find it on Amazon.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Okay. And then somebody else said, “Love the mastermind calls.” So thank you. Thanks for that little plug. And let’s see, someone else said, “What is the Google CRM that you mentioned a moment ago?” Insightly. I-N-S-I-G-H-T, like insight and then L-Y, Insightly … And that’s like graduating up from an Excel spreadsheet, go try Insightly or try the free HubSpot version. With HubSpot, you might want to just make sure that you understand what their paid versions are because they can be a little bit costly. If you have a lot of people in your database, you probably need one of the more robust CRMs. If you just have 10 or 20 people, you probably don’t need something that robust at this point or at least you don’t need to go into the expensive paid programs.

One thing also I want to say is that anytime you sign up for any of these programs, if it’s a paid program, be aware of signing up for an annual subscription. They’re going to try to lure you into an annual subscription saying, “Oh, it’s 20% off and you’re going to save so much money,” but I can’t tell you how many times our firm has signed up for an annual subscription and realized after three months that we don’t like that program. And then you’re stuck in it for a year. So it’s better to pay a little bit more for three to six months, make sure you really like it and then go into their annual program. That’s just my own personal opinion.

Joe Mendoza:

I totally agree with you, Kim.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

And then the other thing that I find myself doing is … this is a really great time of year to scour your bank accounts and your credit card statements to look for all of those hidden things that you’ve signed up for and you don’t remember, and get rid of them. Just clear it out at the end of the year, start fresh. Even look at your apps on your iPhone or your mobile devices and just make sure that you don’t have things on there that you don’t even remember you paid for that you’re not using.

Joe Mendoza:

Great tip. I do the same thing. I actually take it a step further, I close my credit card accounts … Well, the card. I say, “Hey, I need a new card.” So all these automatic (debits go away).

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Oh, that’s a really good idea, is just ask for a new card.

Joe Mendoza:

Yeah. Every year. Every year, just close it, get another one.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Huh. And then all those things just go away.

Joe Mendoza:

Yeah.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

That’s a really good point.

Joe Mendoza:

Yep.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Never thought about that. All right. It ooks like we might have another question or two. We’ve got some more time … If anybody has any questions for me or for Joe, please do reach out to us. Joe, go ahead and give out your contact information again.

Joe Mendoza:

Sure. If you’re going to call, 877-794-5227. Or check out joemendoza.com or coachjoemendoza.com.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

And then if you want to reach out to us, it’s syndicationattorneys.com. I do want to let you know this book behind me, if any of you don’t know about it yet, it’s called “How to Legally Raise Private Money.”… The first chapter is about mindset. You’ve really got to get in the right mindset to raise money from people and realize you’re not asking for favors, you’re offering them the investment opportunities that they’re looking for and they need. And you’re helping them grow their wealth at the same time that you’re growing your own. So if you look at it from a giving mindset you’re going to be a lot better at it and you’re going to feel a lot more comfortable doing it than you are looking at it for asking a favor or help me with my goals, I’m not helping you kind of thing. So mindset.

The second chapter of the book is “get your strategy down.” This is where you need Joe, you need a coach. You need somebody to help you with your strategy and make sure that you know exactly what you’re going after. Do not go too broad, stay focused, get really good at one thing and then if you want to move out and branch out into another thing, go ahead and get good at the next thing. But start and stay with something for the time it takes to get good at it. Don’t try to do too many things.

So somebody here, Joe, says, “I made a list of people in my neighborhood that have been living in the same home for 25 plus years and could be retired and looking to downsize. What would be the best advice to begin marketing to them to potentially buy their home?”

Joe Mendoza:

If they’re in your neighborhood, I would just door-knock them. Get to know them a little bit, don’t come in directly, like, “Hey, I want to buy your house.” I mean, unless that’s your personality and you want to go out for it right away. If that’s how you want to do it, go for it. But find out. If you know that there’s high equity, find out what they want to do by asking questions: “Hey, I was doing a little bit of research. I’m your neighbor down the street. I’m starting to get into investing. And I was just curious, I saw you have had it a long time. So I’m assuming you have a low loan balance. What’s your plans moving forward?” If you’re a licensed Realtor, you should be door-knocking and saying that script anyway. But if you’re not a licensed Realtor, this is where you could potentially create an opportunity on a deal acquisition. But find out first what their needs are. What do they want to do? Are they going to go ahead?

If you know they’re downsizing, by all means, figure out how you could get in there. “So if you’re going to be transferring over to Florida, what are you going to do with this property?” Find out. You’ve got to ask questions, ask questions, ask questions. It’s about asking the right questions, where you will find the potential opportunities there and then just go from there. And whatever they say, you start documenting and creating those notes and put that in your CRM. Because if they’re not ready today, maybe they’re ready tomorrow or next month or next year. Because some deals take two to three years to develop. Just because they’re not ready now, one of my assistants was calling off a Craigslist. I go, “Hey, these are the things I need you to look out for. Go onto Craigslist and figure this out.” She happened to find somebody on Craigslist, it was a for-sale-by-owner and I met with the person, she got me an appointment and he wasn’t ready yet. And he just was trying to figure it out and sell it on his own.

And then later he calls me, at random. I totally forgot about him. It was about a year later. And he goes, “Joe, you met with me and you stopped by my place.” And I was like, “Yeah. What do you want to do?” And so he ended up listing the property with me. It was a 17-unit office building here in Escondido. And I wish I would’ve known the strategies I do now because he ended up selling it, seller-financing to a buyer and it was a home run. So I mean, I made probably $40,000 on the commission as a Realtor. So I can’t complain, but should I had that in my portfolio, I mean, easily, if I bought it back then, I would’ve easily made over $3 million today.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Wow. Wow. That’s a interesting story. So Joe, had a followup question. He says, “Great response. Followup question, Joe, what was the criteria on Craigslist you had your admin look for?”

Joe Mendoza:

Great question. So I had him look for for-sale-by-owners or not-listed-by-an-agent. And it’s pretty obvious. When you go on to Craigslist and you can see, “Oh, there’s a website. Must be a Realtor.” When you happen to call, “Oh, thanks so much for calling blah, blah, blah, blah. We’re the ABC Realty.” Hang up. So if they’re with a Realtor, you know what? It’s a little bit harder to figure out that deal. But the FSBOs (for-sale-by-owners), FRBOs (for-rent-by-owners), those are the ones you should be going after because these are potential people that you could create a deal with. Number one, they don’t want a Realtor involved. So if you’re a Realtor, you should put on your other hat as an investor. “How could I make this a deal?” and go at it with that angle.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Right, right. All right. Well, we’re going to wrap up, but somebody did ask, “How do we get the free digital copy of (my) book?” You can get that at syndicationattorneys.com. There’s a tab right there that says “Get the Book.” You can download a digital copy of it for free that you can read on your computer. It’s a flip book. If you decide you’d rather have the Kindle version or the soft copy you see behind me, then you can get that at Amazon. So either way, it’s gotten a lot of great reviews. It’s helped a lot of people and we’re glad that it’s been that tool for everybody. It’s a good reference to have. All right. Joe, thank you so much. We’re going to wrap this one up.

Joe Mendoza:

Thank you, Kim.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

And you and I are going to hop on another call. All right.

Joe Mendoza:

You’re awesome. Thank you so much.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Thank you so much. All right. Thanks everybody for joining today.