March 11, 2024 • 26 mins
Dive into the cutting-edge realm of real estate investing as Josh Miller returns to share his expert insights on leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) for unearthing lucrative fix and flip opportunities. In this compelling follow-up episode, Rod Wilson guides listeners through a detailed exploration of how AI technology is revolutionizing the process of identifying, evaluating, and capitalizing on property flips. Listeners will gain access to invaluable information on:
- The role of AI in modern real estate investing and how it's changing the game.
- Practical applications of AI tools for finding under-valued properties ripe for flipping.
- Strategies for utilizing AI to assess renovations, project costs, and potential ROI.
- Tips on integrating AI analytics to streamline operations and maximize efficiency.
- Real-world examples of successful AI-driven fix and flip ventures.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:06):
Welcome to Optimize real Estate Podcast.Hey real estate pros, Welcome to another
episode of the Optimized real Estate Podcast. I'm your host, Rod Wilson,
and on this podcast, it's myjob to interview the movers and shakers of
residential real estate and to pull outtheir top secrets, ideas and strategies to
help you optimize your own business.And today I got a special guest.
(00:29):
I'm super excited to interview this guy, Josh Miller. He has a company
called Gopher Clothes and they basically dodone for you outsource marketing. So it's
a way to basically outsourceer your marketingdepartment to him. He works with relatively
small investors and whostsellers as well aslarge, more institutional They do all the
marketing for Joe HomeBuyer, the JoeHomeBuyer franchise. And the reason I like
(00:54):
this conversation, I love what Joshis doing is that I was never that
great on the marketing side, andhe's got it figured out. He does
deep data analytics. In fact,he has a background in data science.
He basically analyzes your market to determine, you know, the best most profitable
approach and so that's also key becausethey don't just do one thing. No,
(01:18):
no one trick pony here where they'rejust doing you know, Facebook ads
or you know, direct mail orwhatever. He determines what's gonna work in
your market. He talks about nichelistsand why you can focus on them,
why you should focus on them,and how they do it make it easy.
He mentions novations, which I've nevereven heard of that term. He
describes kind of what that is,and then he actually has a free tool
(01:41):
where you could determine the best ZIPcodes, and he makes a startling statement
about AI that's a little scary inone regard, and then the other is
that I think if in fact we'regon, we're gonna have a follow on
podcast to go deep into it.But you know, he just talks about
kind of where it's going. Andthe one thing that stuck out to me
was he said, you got abouttwelve months or AI could potentially, you
(02:02):
know, dramatically impact, not ifnot run over, your business. So
enjoy this episode and please, ifyou like it, share, share the
episode, leave a review, subscribe. The more you do that, the
more we can get this out there. I appreciate you taking the time to
listen, tell your friends enjoy theepisode. Hey Josh, how you doing.
(02:23):
Thanks for joining the podcast, man, and this is gonna be fun.
I'm you know, this is thefirst time I've seeing you face the
face. It's always been via phonecall, so that's right. No,
it's always good to put the face. In fact, my lighting is needs
a little improvement. Your lighting isvery good. Yeah, So I guess
I'm just jumping into it. Man. I really appreciate you taking the time.
(02:44):
I know you've got a lot goingon. In fact, we were
just chatting a bit before we gotstarted about AI, so I definitely want
to cover some of that. You'vegot a very interesting background, and I'm
actually, even though we've talked alittle bit about this, I'm excited to
learn more. So when don't westart there? Just kind of your background,
how you got into Obviously we're talkingabout, you know, some of
(03:06):
the lead gen strategies that you're employing, and I'm curious just you know,
how you got into it. So, spent ten years at Chevron doing data
engineering stuff and having a blast.And you know, I saw the writing
on the wall that a forty yearcareer with Chevron and that pension at the
end wasn't for me, and Iwanted that financial freedom just like anyone else.
(03:30):
So did a bunch of you know, looking around, found real estate,
and the rest is history. Ikind of did it simultaneously while I
was working. And then twenty eighteen, I think it was, I started
acquiring rentals, got a bunch ofthem, over one hundred, and realized
this game sucks, man, Likeyou gotta know you gotta be on your
A game to have a lot ofsingle family homes, especially virtual. I'm
(03:53):
in southern California and these are thesewere all in the Midwest. Yeah,
I got my and cuss, butgot my butt handed to me a couple
of times. And of course,yeah, I did a bunch of flipping
and whole selling and lease options andtrying to find what I loved about real
estate. At the end of theday, I found out what I loved
was just what I What I didat Chevron was really the data side of
(04:16):
things and understanding, Okay, yougot one hundred and twenty million homes,
who's actually going to be selling toan investor? How to contact them?
And so I became like a marketingguy by my mistake, and a software
guy, and that's where I'm now. So I actually sold my portfolio in
twenty twenty and I've just been focusingone hundred percent on marketing for other folks.
(04:39):
And I love it. Like Iwake up in the morning and I'm
just excited about working. And I, you know, for each your own
Some find that with the deal solvingit problems in real estate, the flipping.
Not me, like it's too stressfulfor me. I just like the
marketing. So that's what I focuson. Very cool. Well, we
could probably do a whole podcast onhow you you said it almost like nonchalant
(05:01):
hundred deals. You know, yougot a hundred properties. That's saying something.
It's in by itself, you know, it isn't It's not like you
talk to folks and they're like,I got ten thousand doors and all this
stuff. So it's all relatively youknow, but it was definitely. I
saw myself as a marketing engine,and my job was literally just to reach
(05:24):
as many homeowners and get the housein their contract. I had two acquisition
managers and I said, get everyproperty under contract, it doesn't mean even
matter at what price. And thenonce we had it under contract, we
could figure out what we could dowith it, right, we get it,
listing on it, whether we doa least option, you know,
there's so many strategies. So itwas literally get the house in their contract
(05:46):
and we can figure out how tomake money on it. Right. Yeah,
I know, you hear that alot where it's like, you know,
if you if you can get agood deal, good real estate deal,
there's always a way to you know, monetize it. There's always either
someone that will want to partner orbuy it or whatever. Yeah, It's
it's crazy because I run marketing fora lot of investors now and it's like,
you know, just based on howmany appointments they go on, how
(06:08):
many deals are going to get Andit's you talked as some investors and you're
like, ah, that person's notinterested in selling, and you know there's
all these excuses they make up andwhy they don't call this appointment. But
it's like the people that go onthe appointments, the people that write the
contracts, they get the deals.And it is sad, but it's kind
of it still is a numbers game. I'm trying to change that with AI,
(06:29):
but it's a numbers game. WellI'm sure, I'm myself and the
audience is definitely gonna want to hearabout that. So why don't you get
into kind of before the more AIfocused discussion, because I know that's where
you're kind of you're involved and headed. Your company is Go for Clothes yep,
And I guess maybe what was kindof the lead into that and basically
(06:53):
what what do you do related towhat lead gen for investors? Yeah,
thanks for asking. I mean,at the end of the day, you
know you do you do the lendingaspect that there's so many aspects to real
estate. There's so many hats thatyou have to wear. There's so many
and I see it as my jobto take on that marketing hat. So
if you own a real estate companyand you're like, hey, I need
(07:13):
deals, I can't help you withthe seals, I can't help you with
a flipping, but I absolutely cantake care of all that marketing. So
I just see myself and my teamto come in and just handle all of
your marketing. So every market's different. That's probably the biggest thing that I've
heard as and I learned and nowwe internalize of how every market is different
and so we have to utilize differentchannels to reach homeowners in different markets.
(07:36):
So some markets we focus on GoogleAds by far and away the best marketing
channel. Sometimes it's YouTube ads,sometimes it's direct mails, sometimes it's cold
calling, and so really it justdepends on your market and it ebbs and
flows. Things change. What mightbe an incredible market for Google Ads,
(07:56):
somebody might come in and really increasethe cost in that market, and so
we have to decrease our spend.But at the end of the day,
what we do is we find homeownerswho are like, yep, I'm ready
to sell, We do the qualifying, and then we push those leads over
so you can do focus on theseals and one hundred other things that's involved,
but at least you don't have totake care of the marketing. And
(08:16):
fortunate enough to have some incredible clients. Probably one of our most known is
the Joe HomeBuyer franchise, so wedo all of the marketing for them across
the country. There's some big guyswhere they they so stupid amount of money
and stupid amount of volume in theirmarkets. And then you know, we
also help smaller investors who are justlooking for you know, one or two
(08:37):
deals a month and we do themarketing for them as well, so across
the board and really grateful to findsomething I love and work with investors who
love what they do. That's great. So yeah, that was one of
the questions, is you know whatis kind of the sweet spot? So
it sounds like you work from workwith pretty much you know, each end
of the spectrum and everything in between. As far as side of investor slash
(09:01):
flipper. Yeah, I mean,at the end of the day, it
really is just about increase in yourvolume. I'd love to say, like
the guy who does one deal amonth versus a guy that does fifty deals
a month, we have incredibly complexdifferent strategies and all this, but it's
just not true. I mean,it's just more volume. If you see
a guy in your market that's doing, you know, twenty deals a month,
(09:24):
they probably are doing very similar towhat you're doing at one deal,
but they just do a whole lotmore volume, right, you know,
which is always scary. It's kindof scary to scale like that. I
mean, back in the day whenI was doing this, I was always
like, you know that you havethat outflow and you said something earlier,
you know, it's just a numbersgame, and so you kind of know
it's a numbers game. But thenyou know it's whatever the number is,
(09:46):
five hundred two grand, five grand, whatever that spend is a month.
You know, you got to generate. It's like how long can you sustain
that? And I was, youknow, if you don't have all the
other systems in place and whatnot,it gets to be it's kind of check
time when you start. You know, you got to just you got to
have I guess, have a budgetthat you're willing to stick with. I've
heard people talk about, you know, if you're not going to do it
(10:07):
for six months, don't even start, because sometimes it might take a couple
months to get a good deal orwhatever. What's your advice for people on
just what's the lowest bar entry pointfor an investor who's thinking about, you
know, handing over their marketing tosomeone like you. Yeah, so we
typically start with investors spending at leastfour K a month, and the reason
(10:28):
for that number is in most markets, that's about what it's going to cost
to get a deal. You know, certainly there's markets where it's far less,
and then there's some markets where it'sa little bit more, but on
average, and that's our goal.Our goal is to get like, hey,
if you're working with us, you'regoing to get at least a minimum
of one deal a month. Andthen obviously there's investors that kill that and
(10:50):
their cost per deal is fraction ofthat, but that really comes down to
their side and having incredible sales teamsand incredible follow ups and moreultiple exit strategies.
I'm seeing that more and more thatthe top investors that I work with,
you know, they used to justbe wholesalers, and now they're doing
whole sellings and novations, and thennow they're doing some wholesaling novations and hotels
(11:13):
and now they're doing you know,so the more exit strategies that you have,
you're putting your marketing dollars to betteruse because you're going to talk to
the homeowner who anovation is the onlysolution for them, and if you only
have whole selling as a solution,you can't help them. So you're in
you're saying novations, novations. Yeah, so that's the cool new buzzword.
(11:35):
Okay, Yeah, that's totally newto me, and that's it's been around
forever. I certainly am not experiencedat it because although it was around in
twenty eighteen, I wasn't handling it. But I can definitely introduce you.
I think you should have on somegreat people that this is all they do
is novations. But the basics ofa novation is that you get into a
(11:58):
contract with the homeowner that says,hey, we're gonna net you two underd
K. So at the end ofthe day, you're going to get two
under K no matter what. Youget too under K. I'm gonna put
get some risk, I'm gonna buy, I'm going to put the house on
the MLS. I'm going to takecare of any repairs that need to happen.
I'm going to take care of realtorfees, I'm gonna do everything.
At the end of the day,you're gonna get two hundred no matter what.
(12:20):
I'm gonna list it though for saythree hundred though, and I get
the difference after I take care ofall the stuff, and you know,
take care of the out of pocketexpenses that are required. And so what
happens is you enter into agreement withthe homeowner for two hundred, they put
it up on the MLS, theysell it a buyer comes and buys it
(12:41):
directly from the homeowner. And sothe key point about that is there's no
requirements for FHA and other things likethat. They can do an FHA loan,
they can do whatever the loan theywant. It's just one strategy.
It's not the end all be all, and it's it is risky, and
so if you are a flipper,I don't recommend it personally. I don't
(13:03):
think it's a battle you want toget into where you're buying your You're getting
under contract under a property, puttingone hundred thousand dollars worth of work into
it, and the house isn't inyour name. You just have a contract.
So I definitely don't recommend it forflippers. But you know, if
it's a very very very like rehab, there's an option for that. You
(13:24):
know. I've always liked that model, and I've always I've tried on a
deal I didn't maybe didn't want totake down myself just from a risk perspective.
I've liked that model as far aslike monetizing a contract. I just
never had a huge buyer list orfelt like I was, you know,
wholesale, But I always thought therewas a room for that because you get
homeowners that want to flip until theywant to you know, improve it and
(13:46):
maximize the exit, but they don'tknow how, they don't have the resources,
they don't have the time, whateverthe case. So you're kind of
able to use your expertise on therehab and obviously benefit from that. In
fact, I was even thinking,you know, give the homeowner, you
know, a piece of the actionif we got over two hundred, you
know, if we got it soldfor three hundred, they'd get x percentage
of you know, that upside orsomething, just to motivate them to want
(14:09):
to do that type of deal.So I actually kind of like that model.
Anyway, we don't want to Yeah, I'm not the experts, so
yeah, I don't want to show. But okay, it is a cool
it is. It is a greatstrategy if you if you know, if
the house doesn't need a lot ofwork and you're just planning on you know,
turning around and selling it the nextday. Anyways, it does,
(14:30):
you know, help you and thatyou now don't have to go out and
get a loan for the property,you don't have to pay for the closing
the first time. Of the homeownerand then again when you sell it,
so you can buy it higher.And that's the name of the marketing game
is. Okay, I can runall this marketing and find homeowners who need
to sell, But how do youshow them that you're the solution versus all
(14:54):
the competition out there? Okay,So going back to well, I'm curious,
you know, with your clients thatyou're doing the marketing for, are
they typically flippers, wholesalers, ora combination. Yeah, in the past,
they were almost all whole sellers.And then I you know, I
don't know how to say this nicelywithout pissing off all my clients, but
I like I like flippers more.I feel like there's a lot of wholesalers
(15:18):
out there that it's just about makingmoney and there's really no real value that
the whole seller's bringing to the situation. You know, there is that once
in a while that they inherited theproperty, they live out of state,
and they just want the easy solution, right, you know, most of
the time, there's not an incredibleamount of value that they're really bringing that
(15:39):
agent can't. So we have beenmoving more and more to work with flippers
because I feel like there's real valuewe're helping the homeowner there, and it's
easier to wake up in the morningand feel excited about helping people who are
helping others. So absolutely, yeah, I'm definitely you know, you go
up and things change, so yeah, we're definitely going more and slipper it
(16:03):
out. Okay as of the lastprobably a year or so. And then
so you're in, you're focused primarilyon just the lead gen side. You
had mentioned follow up, which Iknow is you know, a massive piece
and making this you know, successfuland profitable. Yeah. So once once
the lead, once you basically asa client, they receive that lead,
it's kind of on them to makesure they maximize that. Yeah. So
(16:25):
what we see we see ourselves asa marketing company in their cells. So
where is that handoff. Well,it's when that homeowner is like, yeah,
I need to sell now in thenext ninety days. At that point
we say, okay, this shouldbe going to cells, and once it's
in cells, you know, youreally should be following up in person.
It should be the sales person orthe owner, you know, talking to
that homeowner and really closing the deal. So what we do when we do
(16:49):
all of our follow up. We'remore talking about when we reach out to
a homeowner and they're like, yeah, I'm thinking about selling next year,
We're not going to send that personover. We're going to keep following up,
following up. That's where you canstart using a lot of the automation
and all that AI. And that'sa real good use case of where we're
you know, you can now domuch more personalized follow up messages and things
(17:11):
like this because we have instead ofa VA doing it or a standard automated
text. Now that's where you canput AI in as just one example to
help find when that home owner isready so we can send that person over
to the to the investor. Okay, so just to I know, we
got to cut this off. Yeah, that's my bad. I'm sorry.
I felt like I could talk allday with you, and I apologize.
(17:34):
No, it's good. We'll havea follow up and we will. I
want to go deep on AI becauseI know people are very interested in that
from the go for close platform.I guess if you want to cover just
a couple of minutes kind of whatwhat are you guys doing? I mean,
what do you what do you?I mean I know you got to
probably analyze the market, analyze theclient, and figure out, you know,
where you want to see your energy. Yeah, because you're you're kind
(17:56):
of just like the client. You'regoing to be looking at the lowest cost,
kind of highest you know return typeof you know leads, and you
know, once you take a lookat I guess the market, in most
cases, you'll determine what's the kindof biggest bang for the buck. Yeah.
And I've got a great free toolthat I have available if anyone wants
to do it on there by themselves, we're happy to do it for you.
(18:17):
But if you want to just havea go at it, it's called
hottest zip dot com and you candeep dive into your market to figure out
where you should spend your marketing dollars. At a very high level, what
we're trying to do is we're basicallyfishing, and we want to be in
the smallest pond with the most amountof fish. So essentially, we want
(18:37):
to be where there's the most amountof homeowners selling to investors. And so
this tool allows you to dive downfrom a county level, to city level,
to a ZIP level and really divein and see where's the most competition,
where's the most amount of homes beingsold to an investor, What's how
much distress is there in that area. If there's no distress in that area,
(19:00):
it's probably not a great market tobe in. Same with days on
market. If there's a high dayson market, probably not a great market
to be in. And so thisallows us at a very like that's step
one, analyze the market, figureout, okay, where should we be
spending our marketing dollars. Then wemove into the actual homeowners in that market,
saying who what's the normal profile ofsomebody selling? And the nice thing
(19:26):
is all this information is historical,so we can look back and be like,
okay, seems like there's a lota lot of higher proportion than normal
of inherited properties that we should begoing to. Or you know, in
some markets it's simple it's the absenteeowner, right, that one's a no
brainer. Or sometimes it's you know, certain certain things will be higher than
(19:48):
normal of pain points in certain market, and so at that point we really
tried to find as many of thoseas we can. Well, we're very
data centered company, so we doa lot of things like going into the
county records and pulling as much aswe can directly instead of just buying it
in bold. That's probably you know, if anyone gets anything out of this
and you're struggling and you want tocontinue doing it on your own, my
(20:11):
first suggestion would be to stop usingthese public sites like propstream and property radar
and all of them. I lovethem. There's a use for them,
but there's so many investors now usingthem, and so instead do the hard
leg work. Go into your countyrecords, find things like code violations,
find things like eviction records, findthings like your probates, and yeah,
(20:33):
this all takes work, but becauseit takes work, there's so fewer people
doing it. So get that hardto get data. Then you can skip
trace some call them direct mail them, the Google ads, the YouTube ads,
those are more. Once you havea larger spend, that's when you
want to get into those. Idon't suggest doing that if you don't have
a large budget. So and you'rereferencing basically the niche lists, yep,
(20:56):
and you guys do that as well. Is that ye take care of everything.
When we say like and this wasmy dream, this is what I
wanted, I wanted a company Icould go to and say, hey,
I've got this size marketing budget,get me leads, get me qualified homeowners
who are ready to sell, whohave raised their hand and said I need
to sell my out. So yeah, we take care of everything. We
take care of a lot, alot of data digging. I mean,
(21:18):
that's basically a big part of itis finding that niche data finding, scraping
sites like deceased records. So we'repulling every day anyone who's deceased, we're
matching their name with a property,did they own a property? And then
now we've got things like that whereit's just finding the you know, the
few people that Unfortunately, you know, there's a lot of investors out there,
there's a lot of competition, andso what worked before, which was
(21:41):
just basically meiling and mass, it'sjust you know, it doesn't really work
anymore. Right, we take careof it all. Right on, Well,
I know you got to run.We are going to by the way,
Josh got double booked, so we'regonna ah, right, everybody,
no, no, But I likethis. Well we'll turn in a two
parter and we'll go deep into AIbecause I personally, I'm very interested in
(22:02):
what you're doing on that front.Yeah, I'll end on AI just to
get folks to listen to the nextone. One hundred percent. I would
say, within twelve months, everything'sgoing to be different. You're not going
to be using virtual assistance anymore.There won't be cool calling. All of
our Google ads will be different,our Facebook ads are all different, driving
for dollars will be non existent.Like everything you're used to doing in the
(22:23):
marketing space, because that's really whereI'm focused. I'm sure other areas too,
but everything in the marketing space willbe completely different and changed. And
so my one word every like whatI try to get everyone doing, is
just be in it every day,because you won't. Every minute that you're
in it learning and fidgeting around playingwith stuff, you'll learn something new and
(22:45):
you'll be ahead of the game wheneverything does change. So yeah, very
cool. Well listen, I reallyappreciate the time, and I'm looking forward
to part two. D. Thisis thanks for having me on. I
feel like I just talked, buthopefully some value added and the people people
got their brains turning. So nogood stuff. I mean, if anyone's
looking for, you know, outsourcetheir marketing, which you know, most
(23:08):
I would say myself included most realestate investors not only are not great at
the marketing side, but also justthe data analytics and the data is everything,
and we've we have it now it'sjust a matter of, you know,
how do you go get it.I heard Clothier, I heard him
actually this morning talking about how,you know, back in the day when
he started, which is kind oflike when I did, there was no
(23:30):
data. You know, you basicallyhad to go down to the courthouse.
You know, you had to youknow, go to the county records and
you know start or just you know, doing mass mailers or door knocking or
whatever. Now there's a much smarterway and more cost effective way to find
you know, motivated sellers, andI think you've kind of unlocked that in
a big way. Not to mendthat's that's not even talking about AI,
(23:51):
which is going to make things evenmore you know, more powerful. It's
absolutely going to be the I don'tknow the exact quote, but basically there's
going to be bullo companies who utilizeAIS and that's it. Like, it's
not going to be any other companiesout there. It's either your company that
utilizes AI or you don't exist,it's right, Yeah, very cool.
Well, we'll we'll do part tworeal soon. And again, Josh,
(24:17):
appreciate the time. And hey,thanks for having me on. Yeah,
we'll talk to you soon, allright, thanks for having okay, bute
bye. Well, that was anamazing interview, albeit a short one.
We will definitely be having a parttwo, if not a part three and
four and five, who knows,so stay tuned for that. Well,
that was an amazing interview with Josh, and we will definitely be doing a
(24:37):
part two, if not a partthree, four and five, because this
guy is an absolute stud and I'mreally looking forward to picking his brain on
some of the strategies, definitely aroundAI. That's been kind of on my
mind. Been doing my own littleside research on that. So go check
out hottest zip dot com where hebasically it's a free tool where you can
determine kind of where the hottest zipsare zip codes that is, I would
(25:00):
go check out Joe HomeBuyer. I'mgoing to do that myself and just kind
of see what they're up to.It sounds like he does all the marketing
for them. He mentioned ovations.That's another strategy that, like I mentioned
in the podcast, I think isa very interesting one from a I was
always looking at ways to lower therisk and just increase the ability to monetize
deals when maybe it wasn't a perfectwholesale deal or a perfect flip deal,
(25:22):
but you got a seller that wantsto sell, and you know, if
you're not a real estate agent,what are some of the alternatives and working
with that person. So I promiseyou I'm going to get him on as
soon as possible to talk about AI. He makes the startling comment he made
is you got about twelve months tokind of figure it out. It's going
to be changing just like every otherindustry, it's going to be changing residential
(25:44):
real estate potentially dramatically, which Ibelieve that if you look at the power
of AI. So that's it.Rod Wilson here, Feel free to reach
out any way you see this orfind this, you know, just message
me. You can always reach outto my number my cell phone four oh
eight five six eight six eight sevenfive for any kind of lending finance needs
(26:06):
related to fix and flip, groundof construction and even some long term rentals.
So we I really appreciate you takingthe time to listen, and we'll
see you on the next episode.
Welcome to Optimize real Estate Podcast.Hey real estate pros, Welcome to another
episode of the Optimized real Estate Podcast. I'm your host, Rod Wilson,
and on this podcast, it's myjob to interview the movers and shakers of
residential real estate and to pull outtheir top secrets, ideas and strategies to
help you optimize your own business.And today I got a special guest.
(00:29):
I'm super excited to interview this guy, Josh Miller. He has a company
called Gopher Clothes and they basically dodone for you outsource marketing. So it's
a way to basically outsourceer your marketingdepartment to him. He works with relatively
small investors and whostsellers as well aslarge, more institutional They do all the
marketing for Joe HomeBuyer, the JoeHomeBuyer franchise. And the reason I like
(00:54):
this conversation, I love what Joshis doing is that I was never that
great on the marketing side, andhe's got it figured out. He does
deep data analytics. In fact,he has a background in data science.
He basically analyzes your market to determine, you know, the best most profitable
approach and so that's also key becausethey don't just do one thing. No,
(01:18):
no one trick pony here where they'rejust doing you know, Facebook ads
or you know, direct mail orwhatever. He determines what's gonna work in
your market. He talks about nichelistsand why you can focus on them,
why you should focus on them,and how they do it make it easy.
He mentions novations, which I've nevereven heard of that term. He
describes kind of what that is,and then he actually has a free tool
(01:41):
where you could determine the best ZIPcodes, and he makes a startling statement
about AI that's a little scary inone regard, and then the other is
that I think if in fact we'regon, we're gonna have a follow on
podcast to go deep into it.But you know, he just talks about
kind of where it's going. Andthe one thing that stuck out to me
was he said, you got abouttwelve months or AI could potentially, you
(02:02):
know, dramatically impact, not ifnot run over, your business. So
enjoy this episode and please, ifyou like it, share, share the
episode, leave a review, subscribe. The more you do that, the
more we can get this out there. I appreciate you taking the time to
listen, tell your friends enjoy theepisode. Hey Josh, how you doing.
(02:23):
Thanks for joining the podcast, man, and this is gonna be fun.
I'm you know, this is thefirst time I've seeing you face the
face. It's always been via phonecall, so that's right. No,
it's always good to put the face. In fact, my lighting is needs
a little improvement. Your lighting isvery good. Yeah, So I guess
I'm just jumping into it. Man. I really appreciate you taking the time.
(02:44):
I know you've got a lot goingon. In fact, we were
just chatting a bit before we gotstarted about AI, so I definitely want
to cover some of that. You'vegot a very interesting background, and I'm
actually, even though we've talked alittle bit about this, I'm excited to
learn more. So when don't westart there? Just kind of your background,
how you got into Obviously we're talkingabout, you know, some of
(03:06):
the lead gen strategies that you're employing, and I'm curious just you know,
how you got into it. So, spent ten years at Chevron doing data
engineering stuff and having a blast.And you know, I saw the writing
on the wall that a forty yearcareer with Chevron and that pension at the
end wasn't for me, and Iwanted that financial freedom just like anyone else.
(03:30):
So did a bunch of you know, looking around, found real estate,
and the rest is history. Ikind of did it simultaneously while I
was working. And then twenty eighteen, I think it was, I started
acquiring rentals, got a bunch ofthem, over one hundred, and realized
this game sucks, man, Likeyou gotta know you gotta be on your
A game to have a lot ofsingle family homes, especially virtual. I'm
(03:53):
in southern California and these are thesewere all in the Midwest. Yeah,
I got my and cuss, butgot my butt handed to me a couple
of times. And of course,yeah, I did a bunch of flipping
and whole selling and lease options andtrying to find what I loved about real
estate. At the end of theday, I found out what I loved
was just what I What I didat Chevron was really the data side of
(04:16):
things and understanding, Okay, yougot one hundred and twenty million homes,
who's actually going to be selling toan investor? How to contact them?
And so I became like a marketingguy by my mistake, and a software
guy, and that's where I'm now. So I actually sold my portfolio in
twenty twenty and I've just been focusingone hundred percent on marketing for other folks.
(04:39):
And I love it. Like Iwake up in the morning and I'm
just excited about working. And I, you know, for each your own
Some find that with the deal solvingit problems in real estate, the flipping.
Not me, like it's too stressfulfor me. I just like the
marketing. So that's what I focuson. Very cool. Well, we
could probably do a whole podcast onhow you you said it almost like nonchalant
(05:01):
hundred deals. You know, yougot a hundred properties. That's saying something.
It's in by itself, you know, it isn't It's not like you
talk to folks and they're like,I got ten thousand doors and all this
stuff. So it's all relatively youknow, but it was definitely. I
saw myself as a marketing engine,and my job was literally just to reach
(05:24):
as many homeowners and get the housein their contract. I had two acquisition
managers and I said, get everyproperty under contract, it doesn't mean even
matter at what price. And thenonce we had it under contract, we
could figure out what we could dowith it, right, we get it,
listing on it, whether we doa least option, you know,
there's so many strategies. So itwas literally get the house in their contract
(05:46):
and we can figure out how tomake money on it. Right. Yeah,
I know, you hear that alot where it's like, you know,
if you if you can get agood deal, good real estate deal,
there's always a way to you know, monetize it. There's always either
someone that will want to partner orbuy it or whatever. Yeah, It's
it's crazy because I run marketing fora lot of investors now and it's like,
you know, just based on howmany appointments they go on, how
(06:08):
many deals are going to get Andit's you talked as some investors and you're
like, ah, that person's notinterested in selling, and you know there's
all these excuses they make up andwhy they don't call this appointment. But
it's like the people that go onthe appointments, the people that write the
contracts, they get the deals.And it is sad, but it's kind
of it still is a numbers game. I'm trying to change that with AI,
(06:29):
but it's a numbers game. WellI'm sure, I'm myself and the
audience is definitely gonna want to hearabout that. So why don't you get
into kind of before the more AIfocused discussion, because I know that's where
you're kind of you're involved and headed. Your company is Go for Clothes yep,
And I guess maybe what was kindof the lead into that and basically
(06:53):
what what do you do related towhat lead gen for investors? Yeah,
thanks for asking. I mean,at the end of the day, you
know you do you do the lendingaspect that there's so many aspects to real
estate. There's so many hats thatyou have to wear. There's so many
and I see it as my jobto take on that marketing hat. So
if you own a real estate companyand you're like, hey, I need
(07:13):
deals, I can't help you withthe seals, I can't help you with
a flipping, but I absolutely cantake care of all that marketing. So
I just see myself and my teamto come in and just handle all of
your marketing. So every market's different. That's probably the biggest thing that I've
heard as and I learned and nowwe internalize of how every market is different
and so we have to utilize differentchannels to reach homeowners in different markets.
(07:36):
So some markets we focus on GoogleAds by far and away the best marketing
channel. Sometimes it's YouTube ads,sometimes it's direct mails, sometimes it's cold
calling, and so really it justdepends on your market and it ebbs and
flows. Things change. What mightbe an incredible market for Google Ads,
(07:56):
somebody might come in and really increasethe cost in that market, and so
we have to decrease our spend.But at the end of the day,
what we do is we find homeownerswho are like, yep, I'm ready
to sell, We do the qualifying, and then we push those leads over
so you can do focus on theseals and one hundred other things that's involved,
but at least you don't have totake care of the marketing. And
(08:16):
fortunate enough to have some incredible clients. Probably one of our most known is
the Joe HomeBuyer franchise, so wedo all of the marketing for them across
the country. There's some big guyswhere they they so stupid amount of money
and stupid amount of volume in theirmarkets. And then you know, we
also help smaller investors who are justlooking for you know, one or two
(08:37):
deals a month and we do themarketing for them as well, so across
the board and really grateful to findsomething I love and work with investors who
love what they do. That's great. So yeah, that was one of
the questions, is you know whatis kind of the sweet spot? So
it sounds like you work from workwith pretty much you know, each end
of the spectrum and everything in between. As far as side of investor slash
(09:01):
flipper. Yeah, I mean,at the end of the day, it
really is just about increase in yourvolume. I'd love to say, like
the guy who does one deal amonth versus a guy that does fifty deals
a month, we have incredibly complexdifferent strategies and all this, but it's
just not true. I mean,it's just more volume. If you see
a guy in your market that's doing, you know, twenty deals a month,
(09:24):
they probably are doing very similar towhat you're doing at one deal,
but they just do a whole lotmore volume, right, you know,
which is always scary. It's kindof scary to scale like that. I
mean, back in the day whenI was doing this, I was always
like, you know that you havethat outflow and you said something earlier,
you know, it's just a numbersgame, and so you kind of know
it's a numbers game. But thenyou know it's whatever the number is,
(09:46):
five hundred two grand, five grand, whatever that spend is a month.
You know, you got to generate. It's like how long can you sustain
that? And I was, youknow, if you don't have all the
other systems in place and whatnot,it gets to be it's kind of check
time when you start. You know, you got to just you got to
have I guess, have a budgetthat you're willing to stick with. I've
heard people talk about, you know, if you're not going to do it
(10:07):
for six months, don't even start, because sometimes it might take a couple
months to get a good deal orwhatever. What's your advice for people on
just what's the lowest bar entry pointfor an investor who's thinking about, you
know, handing over their marketing tosomeone like you. Yeah, so we
typically start with investors spending at leastfour K a month, and the reason
(10:28):
for that number is in most markets, that's about what it's going to cost
to get a deal. You know, certainly there's markets where it's far less,
and then there's some markets where it'sa little bit more, but on
average, and that's our goal.Our goal is to get like, hey,
if you're working with us, you'regoing to get at least a minimum
of one deal a month. Andthen obviously there's investors that kill that and
(10:50):
their cost per deal is fraction ofthat, but that really comes down to
their side and having incredible sales teamsand incredible follow ups and moreultiple exit strategies.
I'm seeing that more and more thatthe top investors that I work with,
you know, they used to justbe wholesalers, and now they're doing
whole sellings and novations, and thennow they're doing some wholesaling novations and hotels
(11:13):
and now they're doing you know,so the more exit strategies that you have,
you're putting your marketing dollars to betteruse because you're going to talk to
the homeowner who anovation is the onlysolution for them, and if you only
have whole selling as a solution,you can't help them. So you're in
you're saying novations, novations. Yeah, so that's the cool new buzzword.
(11:35):
Okay, Yeah, that's totally newto me, and that's it's been around
forever. I certainly am not experiencedat it because although it was around in
twenty eighteen, I wasn't handling it. But I can definitely introduce you.
I think you should have on somegreat people that this is all they do
is novations. But the basics ofa novation is that you get into a
(11:58):
contract with the homeowner that says,hey, we're gonna net you two underd
K. So at the end ofthe day, you're going to get two
under K no matter what. Youget too under K. I'm gonna put
get some risk, I'm gonna buy, I'm going to put the house on
the MLS. I'm going to takecare of any repairs that need to happen.
I'm going to take care of realtorfees, I'm gonna do everything.
At the end of the day,you're gonna get two hundred no matter what.
(12:20):
I'm gonna list it though for saythree hundred though, and I get
the difference after I take care ofall the stuff, and you know,
take care of the out of pocketexpenses that are required. And so what
happens is you enter into agreement withthe homeowner for two hundred, they put
it up on the MLS, theysell it a buyer comes and buys it
(12:41):
directly from the homeowner. And sothe key point about that is there's no
requirements for FHA and other things likethat. They can do an FHA loan,
they can do whatever the loan theywant. It's just one strategy.
It's not the end all be all, and it's it is risky, and
so if you are a flipper,I don't recommend it personally. I don't
(13:03):
think it's a battle you want toget into where you're buying your You're getting
under contract under a property, puttingone hundred thousand dollars worth of work into
it, and the house isn't inyour name. You just have a contract.
So I definitely don't recommend it forflippers. But you know, if
it's a very very very like rehab, there's an option for that. You
(13:24):
know. I've always liked that model, and I've always I've tried on a
deal I didn't maybe didn't want totake down myself just from a risk perspective.
I've liked that model as far aslike monetizing a contract. I just
never had a huge buyer list orfelt like I was, you know,
wholesale, But I always thought therewas a room for that because you get
homeowners that want to flip until theywant to you know, improve it and
(13:46):
maximize the exit, but they don'tknow how, they don't have the resources,
they don't have the time, whateverthe case. So you're kind of
able to use your expertise on therehab and obviously benefit from that. In
fact, I was even thinking,you know, give the homeowner, you
know, a piece of the actionif we got over two hundred, you
know, if we got it soldfor three hundred, they'd get x percentage
of you know, that upside orsomething, just to motivate them to want
(14:09):
to do that type of deal.So I actually kind of like that model.
Anyway, we don't want to Yeah, I'm not the experts, so
yeah, I don't want to show. But okay, it is a cool
it is. It is a greatstrategy if you if you know, if
the house doesn't need a lot ofwork and you're just planning on you know,
turning around and selling it the nextday. Anyways, it does,
(14:30):
you know, help you and thatyou now don't have to go out and
get a loan for the property,you don't have to pay for the closing
the first time. Of the homeownerand then again when you sell it,
so you can buy it higher.And that's the name of the marketing game
is. Okay, I can runall this marketing and find homeowners who need
to sell, But how do youshow them that you're the solution versus all
(14:54):
the competition out there? Okay,So going back to well, I'm curious,
you know, with your clients thatyou're doing the marketing for, are
they typically flippers, wholesalers, ora combination. Yeah, in the past,
they were almost all whole sellers.And then I you know, I
don't know how to say this nicelywithout pissing off all my clients, but
I like I like flippers more.I feel like there's a lot of wholesalers
(15:18):
out there that it's just about makingmoney and there's really no real value that
the whole seller's bringing to the situation. You know, there is that once
in a while that they inherited theproperty, they live out of state,
and they just want the easy solution, right, you know, most of
the time, there's not an incredibleamount of value that they're really bringing that
(15:39):
agent can't. So we have beenmoving more and more to work with flippers
because I feel like there's real valuewe're helping the homeowner there, and it's
easier to wake up in the morningand feel excited about helping people who are
helping others. So absolutely, yeah, I'm definitely you know, you go
up and things change, so yeah, we're definitely going more and slipper it
(16:03):
out. Okay as of the lastprobably a year or so. And then
so you're in, you're focused primarilyon just the lead gen side. You
had mentioned follow up, which Iknow is you know, a massive piece
and making this you know, successfuland profitable. Yeah. So once once
the lead, once you basically asa client, they receive that lead,
it's kind of on them to makesure they maximize that. Yeah. So
(16:25):
what we see we see ourselves asa marketing company in their cells. So
where is that handoff. Well,it's when that homeowner is like, yeah,
I need to sell now in thenext ninety days. At that point
we say, okay, this shouldbe going to cells, and once it's
in cells, you know, youreally should be following up in person.
It should be the sales person orthe owner, you know, talking to
that homeowner and really closing the deal. So what we do when we do
(16:49):
all of our follow up. We'remore talking about when we reach out to
a homeowner and they're like, yeah, I'm thinking about selling next year,
We're not going to send that personover. We're going to keep following up,
following up. That's where you canstart using a lot of the automation
and all that AI. And that'sa real good use case of where we're
you know, you can now domuch more personalized follow up messages and things
(17:11):
like this because we have instead ofa VA doing it or a standard automated
text. Now that's where you canput AI in as just one example to
help find when that home owner isready so we can send that person over
to the to the investor. Okay, so just to I know, we
got to cut this off. Yeah, that's my bad. I'm sorry.
I felt like I could talk allday with you, and I apologize.
(17:34):
No, it's good. We'll havea follow up and we will. I
want to go deep on AI becauseI know people are very interested in that
from the go for close platform.I guess if you want to cover just
a couple of minutes kind of whatwhat are you guys doing? I mean,
what do you what do you?I mean I know you got to
probably analyze the market, analyze theclient, and figure out, you know,
where you want to see your energy. Yeah, because you're you're kind
(17:56):
of just like the client. You'regoing to be looking at the lowest cost,
kind of highest you know return typeof you know leads, and you
know, once you take a lookat I guess the market, in most
cases, you'll determine what's the kindof biggest bang for the buck. Yeah.
And I've got a great free toolthat I have available if anyone wants
to do it on there by themselves, we're happy to do it for you.
(18:17):
But if you want to just havea go at it, it's called
hottest zip dot com and you candeep dive into your market to figure out
where you should spend your marketing dollars. At a very high level, what
we're trying to do is we're basicallyfishing, and we want to be in
the smallest pond with the most amountof fish. So essentially, we want
(18:37):
to be where there's the most amountof homeowners selling to investors. And so
this tool allows you to dive downfrom a county level, to city level,
to a ZIP level and really divein and see where's the most competition,
where's the most amount of homes beingsold to an investor, What's how
much distress is there in that area. If there's no distress in that area,
(19:00):
it's probably not a great market tobe in. Same with days on
market. If there's a high dayson market, probably not a great market
to be in. And so thisallows us at a very like that's step
one, analyze the market, figureout, okay, where should we be
spending our marketing dollars. Then wemove into the actual homeowners in that market,
saying who what's the normal profile ofsomebody selling? And the nice thing
(19:26):
is all this information is historical,so we can look back and be like,
okay, seems like there's a lota lot of higher proportion than normal
of inherited properties that we should begoing to. Or you know, in
some markets it's simple it's the absenteeowner, right, that one's a no
brainer. Or sometimes it's you know, certain certain things will be higher than
(19:48):
normal of pain points in certain market, and so at that point we really
tried to find as many of thoseas we can. Well, we're very
data centered company, so we doa lot of things like going into the
county records and pulling as much aswe can directly instead of just buying it
in bold. That's probably you know, if anyone gets anything out of this
and you're struggling and you want tocontinue doing it on your own, my
(20:11):
first suggestion would be to stop usingthese public sites like propstream and property radar
and all of them. I lovethem. There's a use for them,
but there's so many investors now usingthem, and so instead do the hard
leg work. Go into your countyrecords, find things like code violations,
find things like eviction records, findthings like your probates, and yeah,
(20:33):
this all takes work, but becauseit takes work, there's so fewer people
doing it. So get that hardto get data. Then you can skip
trace some call them direct mail them, the Google ads, the YouTube ads,
those are more. Once you havea larger spend, that's when you
want to get into those. Idon't suggest doing that if you don't have
a large budget. So and you'rereferencing basically the niche lists, yep,
(20:56):
and you guys do that as well. Is that ye take care of everything.
When we say like and this wasmy dream, this is what I
wanted, I wanted a company Icould go to and say, hey,
I've got this size marketing budget,get me leads, get me qualified homeowners
who are ready to sell, whohave raised their hand and said I need
to sell my out. So yeah, we take care of everything. We
take care of a lot, alot of data digging. I mean,
(21:18):
that's basically a big part of itis finding that niche data finding, scraping
sites like deceased records. So we'repulling every day anyone who's deceased, we're
matching their name with a property,did they own a property? And then
now we've got things like that whereit's just finding the you know, the
few people that Unfortunately, you know, there's a lot of investors out there,
there's a lot of competition, andso what worked before, which was
(21:41):
just basically meiling and mass, it'sjust you know, it doesn't really work
anymore. Right, we take careof it all. Right on, Well,
I know you got to run.We are going to by the way,
Josh got double booked, so we'regonna ah, right, everybody,
no, no, But I likethis. Well we'll turn in a two
parter and we'll go deep into AIbecause I personally, I'm very interested in
(22:02):
what you're doing on that front.Yeah, I'll end on AI just to
get folks to listen to the nextone. One hundred percent. I would
say, within twelve months, everything'sgoing to be different. You're not going
to be using virtual assistance anymore.There won't be cool calling. All of
our Google ads will be different,our Facebook ads are all different, driving
for dollars will be non existent.Like everything you're used to doing in the
(22:23):
marketing space, because that's really whereI'm focused. I'm sure other areas too,
but everything in the marketing space willbe completely different and changed. And
so my one word every like whatI try to get everyone doing, is
just be in it every day,because you won't. Every minute that you're
in it learning and fidgeting around playingwith stuff, you'll learn something new and
(22:45):
you'll be ahead of the game wheneverything does change. So yeah, very
cool. Well listen, I reallyappreciate the time, and I'm looking forward
to part two. D. Thisis thanks for having me on. I
feel like I just talked, buthopefully some value added and the people people
got their brains turning. So nogood stuff. I mean, if anyone's
looking for, you know, outsourcetheir marketing, which you know, most
(23:08):
I would say myself included most realestate investors not only are not great at
the marketing side, but also justthe data analytics and the data is everything,
and we've we have it now it'sjust a matter of, you know,
how do you go get it.I heard Clothier, I heard him
actually this morning talking about how,you know, back in the day when
he started, which is kind oflike when I did, there was no
(23:30):
data. You know, you basicallyhad to go down to the courthouse.
You know, you had to youknow, go to the county records and
you know start or just you know, doing mass mailers or door knocking or
whatever. Now there's a much smarterway and more cost effective way to find
you know, motivated sellers, andI think you've kind of unlocked that in
a big way. Not to mendthat's that's not even talking about AI,
(23:51):
which is going to make things evenmore you know, more powerful. It's
absolutely going to be the I don'tknow the exact quote, but basically there's
going to be bullo companies who utilizeAIS and that's it. Like, it's
not going to be any other companiesout there. It's either your company that
utilizes AI or you don't exist,it's right, Yeah, very cool.
Well, we'll we'll do part tworeal soon. And again, Josh,
(24:17):
appreciate the time. And hey,thanks for having me on. Yeah,
we'll talk to you soon, allright, thanks for having okay, bute
bye. Well, that was anamazing interview, albeit a short one.
We will definitely be having a parttwo, if not a part three and
four and five, who knows,so stay tuned for that. Well,
that was an amazing interview with Josh, and we will definitely be doing a
(24:37):
part two, if not a partthree, four and five, because this
guy is an absolute stud and I'mreally looking forward to picking his brain on
some of the strategies, definitely aroundAI. That's been kind of on my
mind. Been doing my own littleside research on that. So go check
out hottest zip dot com where hebasically it's a free tool where you can
determine kind of where the hottest zipsare zip codes that is, I would
(25:00):
go check out Joe HomeBuyer. I'mgoing to do that myself and just kind
of see what they're up to.It sounds like he does all the marketing
for them. He mentioned ovations.That's another strategy that, like I mentioned
in the podcast, I think isa very interesting one from a I was
always looking at ways to lower therisk and just increase the ability to monetize
deals when maybe it wasn't a perfectwholesale deal or a perfect flip deal,
(25:22):
but you got a seller that wantsto sell, and you know, if
you're not a real estate agent,what are some of the alternatives and working
with that person. So I promiseyou I'm going to get him on as
soon as possible to talk about AI. He makes the startling comment he made
is you got about twelve months tokind of figure it out. It's going
to be changing just like every otherindustry, it's going to be changing residential
(25:44):
real estate potentially dramatically, which Ibelieve that if you look at the power
of AI. So that's it.Rod Wilson here, Feel free to reach
out any way you see this orfind this, you know, just message
me. You can always reach outto my number my cell phone four oh
eight five six eight six eight sevenfive for any kind of lending finance needs
(26:06):
related to fix and flip, groundof construction and even some long term rentals.
So we I really appreciate you takingthe time to listen, and we'll
see you on the next episode.
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The Brothers Ortiz
The Brothers Ortiz is the story of two brothers–both successful, but in very different ways. Gabe Ortiz becomes a third-highest ranking officer in all of Texas while his younger brother Larry climbs the ranks in Puro Tango Blast, a notorious Texas Prison gang. Gabe doesn’t know all the details of his brother’s nefarious dealings, and he’s made a point not to ask, to protect their relationship. But when Larry is murdered during a home invasion in a rented beach house, Gabe has no choice but to look into what happened that night. To solve Larry’s murder, Gabe, and the whole Ortiz family, must ask each other tough questions.