REI Marketing Tips

Last week I interviewed a friend of mine who is currently flipping 3-4 REO properties each month in Miami, FL.  What is most intriguing about what he’s doing is that he has systematized his complete process, and he has 2 interns helping him flip the houses.

He makes an average profit of $6,000 per flip, so you can quickly do the math and see how much he makes each month.

Last week (before the interview I did with my friend Alex) I spent 2 full days in Phoenix, Arizona.  I went out there with my real estate investing partner to evaluate the market for opportunities, and see if we wanted to expand there.

After 2 very busy days, we have decided that there’s plenty of opportunity in that market, and that we’re going to expand.  One of the obstacles, however, is that we don’t have a local set of eyes to do a lot of the work that we would normally do ourselves here in San Diego.

I’ve always been one to practice what I preach, so we decided that one of the best ways that we could immediately get some help would be to hire some interns to help us expand into a new market.

Since I’ve been a huge advocate of hiring interns for your real estate investing business for a long time, today I sat down as if I were a new investor and mapped out exactly what the interns would do for me, and how I would go about hiring them.

I’m going to map this out for your right now in this blog post, so you can duplicate our success.

1.  Decide What The Intern Is Going To Do: We’ve decided that we’re going to create 2 different internships for our expansion into Phoenix: a Real Estate Investing Internship , and an Internet Marketing Internship For A Real Estate Investing Company (note: those are the actual titles we used in the job description).  However this doesn’t mean that we’re only going to hire 2 interns.  We might actually hire 2 or even 3 interns for EACH position (we want to be prepared for attrition, and also to let the cream rise to the top and see who the best performing interns will be.

The Real Estate Investing Intern will be focused on “traditional” real estate investing work, such as evaluating properties, meeting with contractors and getting repair estimates, coordinating closings, and focusing on the transactional side of real estate investing.

The Internet Marketing Intern will be focused on using the internet for marketing our business.  Since Phoenix has an abundance of deals, this particular intern will be focused on finding buyers for our properties.  They’ll be doing this by building a blog, and then having an accompanying Twitter feed, YouTube Channel, and lead capture pages.  They’ll create content and set out “link bait” (in the form of articles, free reports and videos) to help us build a buyers list.

As you can see, the first internship will require someone who is interested in real estate, but the 2nd internship could be for anyone interested in marketing, internet marketing, or general business.

2.  Create a List of Responsibilities For Each Internship:  We created a list of probable tasks and responsibilities for each of the internships.  This might obviously change over time, but we wanted to get something down as quickly as possible.  These list of responsibilities also became part of our job description (more on this later).  Here’s the initial  list of tasks for each intern:

Real Estate Investing Internship
- Evaluating properties for acquisition
- “Walking” properties, meeting with contractors, and creating videos of properties
- Analyzing comparable sales data and estimating potential profit of individual deals
- Analyzing data for multi-family properties to evaluate cash flow, cap rates and profitability
- Tracking renovation progress and timelines to ensure deal profitability
- Coordinate closings and work with escrow company manage the process from contract signing to close of escrow

Internet Marketing Internship For A Real Estate Investing Company
- Using video and well written video descriptions to drive traffic to our sites and market our properties
- Become well versed in local search and SEO through our training, and implement these strategies to help us dominate the search engines.
- Use social networking, social media and social bookmarking to drive a flood of traffic to our sites
- Install analytics and goal tracking on all of our websites, launch experiments, and help us make our sites get more traffic and increased conversion percentages
- Build a new blog using WordPress (open source blogging platform)
- Build lead capture forms and landing pages to maximize conversions & build a list of buyers for investment properties

3.  Write The Job Descriptions:  Fortunately I’ve written plenty of job descriptions for plenty of internships, so I have a great idea of what needs to be done.  However, if you’re unsure, I actually have a webinar where I break down the 10 steps to writing a winning job description to get a flood of people applying for your internship.  (It’s actually an action packed webinar full of content about the top 3 internships you need to create for your company, but if you just want the information about how to write a winning job description, just fast forward to the 44 minute mark).

4.  Decide Where To Post The Internship:  If you watch the the same content webinar I reference above, you’ll see that we reveal our list of Top 25 Internship Job Posting Websites at minute 54.  However, for real estate investors, we recommend that you post your internship to a local college or university where you plan on investing.  The reason is simple: you’re going to want your intern to go out and look at properties and find deals for you.  That’s why for these 2 positions we’re posting our job to Arizona State’s intern job posting board.  It’s free to post there, and we’ll find an intern who is local and knows the area well.  If you don’t know whom to contact at a particular school, or where you can find interns looking to gain experience in a particular field (like real estate or marketing), then watch this short video.

5.  Call The Recruiting Coordinator At The School Where You’re Going Post The Internship: As soon as I had my job description ready I called the recruiting coordinator at the school I was going to post my message to.  If you’re wondering what’s the fastest way to find: A) what schools you should even be contacting or B) what the name, phone number and email address are of the recruiting coordinator, then watch this short video.  Once you know who you’re calling, pick up the phone and call them.  I’ve actually prepared scripts for calling into these schools (more on this later), but because I’ve done it so many times now, it’s easy for me (and it will be easy for you as well).  Today I found out that at ASU it’s free to post, and that my account would be “approved” to post a job within 24 hours.  But making a phone call first, BEFORE posting the job, makes it much more likely that your account will be approved quickly.  In fact, today, by making the phone call, I even found out that ASU has a real estate investing club, and that I could post my internship there.  Talk about an easy way for me to find my new interns!

6.  Start Reviewing Resumes:  At this point all I need to do is review the resumes of potential interns.  I ask them to include a cover letter explaining whey they’re a good candidate for the position.  If they can’t include a cover letter (and fail that test) they won’t get a call from me.  It’s a simple test to see if they can follow instructions.

7.  Conduct A 1st Round Of Interviews Over The Phone:  For candidates who sounded good on paper, I’ll email them and set up a phone interview.  On the phone interview I want to find out about them.  At a minimum, I want to know the following information:

- What made you apply to my job post?
- Why do you want an internship?
- What do you know about the position? (in other words, what do you know about real estate investing or internet marketing)
- When do you plan on graduating? (we’ve made it a policy to not accept freshman/1st year students since they are adapting to school life and adding an internship is too much)
- How heavy is your course load?
- How many hours per week, at a minimum, can you dedicate to the internship?
- Are you looking to earn credit for your internship?
- Do you have the tools necessary to complete this internship (PC, cell phone, skype, video camera, car for the real estate investing internship, for example)

I have a list of dozens of other questions, but you get the point here.  I’m trying to do some initial screening and fact finding, and see if we “click” and a I get a good feeling about the person.

8.  Invite The Top Candidates Back For A 2nd Interview:  After the first round of interviews I email back the people I liked and schedule a 2nd interview.  I ask more questions, and at the conclusion, if I think that they could make a good intern (and addition to our team) I give them a specific deadline (usually 48-72 hours) to send me an email with the following information:

- Are you still interested in the internship
- Why would you be a good candidate for the internship
- The specific start date that you can begin
- The minimum number of hours per week you can commit to
- The end date of your internship

9.  Extend The Invitation:  At this point I’m ready to extend the offer to the prospective intern.  As I mentioned earlier, many times I’ll hire 2 or 3 interns for the same position.  They can work together as a team, and the best interns will quickly show their stuff.  Interns also like working in a team environment, and let’s face it: they do have exams and a social life, so if an urgent task pops up, I’d like to have 2-3 people who can complete it, not just one.

10.  Put Them To Work:  As soon as the intern accepts the offer, I put them to work.  I usually start out with a “kick start” call to make sure that they understand the big picture: what our company does, how we make money, who our target audience is, and what we’re looking to accomplish.  I can’t tell you how important this is: your intern is probably going to work on some very focused tasks and projects for you, so it’s important that they understand the big picture.  Then, every single day that they work on their internship, they have to send me an email detailing:

1.  What they did that day, and the results that they got
2.  Any problems or challenges they encountered
3.  Any questions they have for me

Sending these 3 items to me in a daily email is a MUST, and it’s a non-negotiable.  They simply have to do it.

Next Steps:

Hopefully between the interview with Alex, and the steps that I’ve laid out for you here, I’ve inspired you to take action and hire an intern for your real estate investing business.  You’ll be amazed at how much more productive you become, and how having an intern forces you to create documented systems that only help your business.

Speaking of documented system, we do have a system that we’ll be releasing to the public in the very near future.  It’s going to be extremely affordable, and inside of it we’ll include the 2 job descriptions for the 2 internships I talk about in this blog post.  Plus it includes scripts, templates, internship agreements, instructional videos and a whole lot more information.  It’s extremely affordable, and as soon as it’s ready I’ll update this blog post with a link.

In the meantime, I want to leave you with comment from someone who has our system, and also a video.  The first is a comment from Jesse C’de Baca in Denver, CO who writes to us and says:

I’m always looking for ways to scale my business – whether through automation or outsourcing, both which have their inherent drawbacks. The concept of getting unpaid interns as a solution to bridge those flaws has been such a mindset-shift for me.

I already have 2 interns working for me within 2 months, and they work about 20 hours a week each for me! I haven’t even yet called any of the schools directly, which I plan on doing soon to get more interns.

Not only have they gotten good work done for me for free, but they have FORCED me to develop duplicatable systems for my business processes, which has really helped me to hustle and get more done in less time.

Not only that, having interns make me look a hell of a lot “bigger” in my clients eyes, which feels pretty good too.

Thanks so much again for showing me a way too scale my business at near-zero cost.

The final thing I want to leave you with is proof that interns can help grow your real estate investing business, and find you deals.  Here’s video of “Ben The Intern” who found a killer deal for us during his internship.  Imagine not having to go to a closing, but have your intern attend on your behalf instead:

As a reminder, we’re releasing an updated, more cost effective version of our intern system in the next few days.  Be on the lookout for it!

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People REALLY enjoyed the video I sent out earlier this week, and lucky for you, my next door neighbor (we work in the same office building and live 4 blocks from each other) Than Merrill, a former NFL football player and star of A&E’s “Flip This House”, has been gracious enough to share another one with you!

http://REIMarketingCoach.com/index_vid2.html

In this video Than goes through the different sources of fudning that are available for your real estate deals and business right now.

In fact, the #1 Misconception is that you need money to be successful in the Real Estate business.

In the video Than tells you why this isn’t true and he discusses 12 different sources of funding that you can use right away.  I’m going to bet that you have not considered a lot of these funding sources before…

Watch the video right now by visiting the web page below: http://REIMarketingCoach.com/index_vid2.html

Don’t worry, you don’t have to give up your email address to watch the video, you can just visit the page and start watching it.  Enjoy the video!

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One of the best things about living in San Diego (outside of the weather and the beaches) is the fact that I have access to some of the smartest real estate investors in the country.

I mean, in the SAME OFFICE building, literally just down the hall, I can stop by and chat with Than Merrill from A&E’s “Flip This House”, and the rest of his team, and talk about “what’s working now” for real estate investors.

You see, we’ve been wholesaling short sales along with flipping them to retail buyers, but then I started talking with Than and his team about some of the other methods that THEY are using to generate deals and make money in this real estate market.

I was scribbling down notes furiously as they shared with me some KILLER ideas that I had literally never even thought of doing myself…

In fact, at the end of this “brainstorming session” I was blown away by how much cash I was actually leaving on the table!

So I asked Than a favor…I asked him if he’d be willing to record a quick video (instead of me “stealing” his ideas) and be willing to share it with you. He agreed!

You can check out this video here: http://REIMarketingCoach.com/index_vid1.html

In the video Than breaks down all of the different real estate opportunities that exist in today’s market and how profitable a lot of the niches are.

If you are new this will help you understand where you should start.

If you are an experienced pro you will see opportunities to expand your business into bigger and more profitable deals. (This is exactly what happened to me!)

Here’s the link again to watch the free video (you don’t have to give up your email address or anything, just go to this page and watch the video): http://REIMarketingCoach.com/index_vid1.html

Than’s been in this business for 8 years and has bought and sold over 500 properties and worked in pretty much every niche there is in this business.

Not only that, but every day I see him, and his team, first hand every single day, busy working on deals, marketing for buyers & sellers, and running a true real estate EMPIRE!

I know you can learn something from Than’s experiences (and his mistakes!) so check out this video now:

http://REIMarketingCoach.com/index_vid1.html

To Your Success,

Justin Lee
REIMarketingTips.com

PS- I know that Than, being the sharp business person that he is, will track how many of the REIMarketingTips community will watch his video. I PROMISED him that I have a community of “Action Takers” and that if he took the time to record the video for our community, you would deliver and watch it.
So PLEASE, do me a favor, and watch the video, so I don’t look bad! (I want to be able to keep picking his brain for more golden nuggets of info, just like the ones in this video: http://REIMarketingCoach.com/index_vid1.html

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If you’ve been a subscriber of mine or a reader of this blog for at least the past few months you know that we are HUGE advocates for hiring interns to help you build your business (whether it’s a real estate business, or any other kind of business- it doesn’t really matter).

Today the latest video and downloadable PDF from Greg Clement and the rest of the SIMS team reveals their “Digital Marketing Plan”.  But here’s the real kicker…

Greg is going to tell you to hire an intern to execute your Digital Marketing Plan!

This is something that for months now, via webinars, emails and other formats, we’ve been telling you to do.  It seems as though the rest of the real estate world is finally catching on to the importance of using interns in your business.

You may or may not know this, but my wife Dreama and I have a completely separate website and company where we show business owners and entrepreneurs EXACTLY how to find, hire & manage interns.  It’s here at www.InternProfits.com.

We congratulate Greg Clement and the rest of the SIMS team for publicly acknowledging how powerful hiring interns can be for your (real estate investing) business.

In fact, Dreama and I have been personally consulting the SIMS team behind the scenes on not only what they are doing with interns (and sharing some “best practices” with them), but we’ve also been helping them out with their franchise marketing strategy.  This is based on the years of experience that we’ve had running www.SaveMeFromForeclosure.com.  In fact, in the next week or so, I can guarantee that you’ll be hearing a lot about www.SaveMeFromForeclosure.com so stay tuned.

Here’s what you should do next to maximize all of the great free information that Greg and the rest of the SIMS team are currently giving away for FREE:

1.  Visit http://simsprofits.com/?1005624 and claim your “Digital Marketing Plan”.
2.  Watch the video from Greg on the thank you page.
3.  This will also register you for a special webinar that they are hosting on Monday night.  Add the webinar start time to your calendar/daytimer
4.  Be on the lookout for a very special email from me over the next few days showing you all sorts of cool free resources that we’ll be giving you to help you find interns faster than ever before.

That’s all for now- and if you’re still not sure about how powerful interns can be for your real estate investing business, check out the video below, filmed by one of my interns.  I know that you’ll be excited about the possibilities!

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Do I have a treat for you today! It’s a FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE private lender powerpoint presentation for real estate investors that is available for instant download!

There is no cost to download this private lender power point presentation, designed for real estate investors. After you download it you can customize it with your business information and use it in your business when you’re looking for private lenders for your real estate investing business.

This is so simple and easy to use. There has never been a better way to create a private lender presentations. I’m not sure how much longer they’re going to be giving away free private lending power point presentations, so make sure you download your copy today.

Also, be on the lookout for another blog post from us tomorrow, as we’re going to be telling you about a brand new iphone/ipad app that will totally change the way in which you evaluate properties.

This app is going to be free, so check back here tomorrow for a download link.

In the meantime, but sure to download your private lender power point presentation before the page comes down.

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Here is the replay from last night’s training call with Jamel Gibbs. We covered how ANYONE can flip properties like they’re pancakes. This is a content packed training that can show anyone, even if they have no cash, no credit or no experience exactly how to flip houses in today.

If you enjoyed this training please leave any comments or feedback below.

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Last night’s teleseminar was action packed with all sorts of goodies on the call.  Fortunately for you, if you missed it, the replay is already up:

Last night we pulled back the curtain and talked about:

• Building relationships with realtors
• How much to offer the lender
• How to structure your purchases
• How to “get around” Bank of America’s dreaded “Item #10″
• How to structure deals with no cash out of pocket
• How to pay private lenders
• How to structure payments with private lenders
• How to get a partner to do renovations for you

Plus a TON more!

We answered a TON of questions, and we even opened up the phone lines so some people got to chat with us LIVE.

The entire replay of the call is posted here:

http://instantteleseminar.com/?eventid=18763446

You’ll notice on that page there’s also a big button to claim your very own private lender powerpoint presentation, absolutely FREE.

Go grab it now, before the replay page comes down.

http://instantteleseminar.com/?eventid=18763446

Have a great weekend,

Justin

PS- Since it came up a few times last night, later today I’ll be sending you an email with a video about finding private lenders.  DO NOT miss watching the video!

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This past Tuesday night I held my Foreclosure Master’s Coaching Club monthly call.  For only $7.95 to get started (and then a measly $49.95 per month thereafter) there’s no question that it’s the best value for those looking for help with their real estate investing business.  On Tuesday’s call I reviewed my day, which consisted of:

1. A BPO for another short sale deal that we’re working on, where I met the appraiser (who was actually a W2 salaried employee of Bank of America) who told me that my offer price of $460,000 “sounds about right for this property” (SMILE!).  During Tuesday night’s call I also reviewed some basic but important things that you have to do ANYTIME you go on a BPO appointment.

2. The fact that we closed on a half million dollar condo in La Jolla, CA, and to close the deal I came out of pocket $30. This is a renovation/flip deal in which I have a partner on the deal.

3. LIVE Q&A and answering of questions by people (note that if you want to join my Foreclosure Masters Coaching Club, you get to chat with me live, 1-on-1 about your real estate investing business. This is the last time I’ll mention it’s only $49.95 per month. You can get a trial membership for only $7.95 here: www.BestForeclosureSystem.com/oto)

I decided to post the audio replay to the this month’s coaching call, because it was full of great information, and I want you to see how you can personally get on the phone with me once a month and get your real estate investing questions answered.  You can listen to this month’s training call here.

On the coaching call this past Tuesday night I outlined (VERY QUICKLY) how we structured the La Jolla deal, and then answered a few questions. However it dawned on me that a LOT of people in our community (even the ones who aren’t in my Foreclosure Masters Coaching club) might want to learn more about how this deal was structured, and how I can close on a $500,000 property with only $30 out of pocket (and NOT flip it right away, but hold it so we can do the renovations and make a $125,000-140,000 profit on the backend).

Oh yeah, and I’m not doing ANY of the work related to the rehab (my partner is doing it ALL).

So what I’m going to do is host a special teleseminar (audio only) next week to break down this deal.

Here’s what we’re going to cover on this special “Case Study” teleseminar:

- You’ll get to meet the person who FLIPPED the deal to me.  (I was actually the “CASH” or “C” buyer on this deal).
- He’s going to break down how he found it, how he negotiated it, and how he flipped it to me.
– He’ll share with you why I was the PERFECT buyer for this deal.
- I’ll share with you how I got the cash for this deal (hint: private money).
– I’ll tell you how I structured the deal so I only had to put $30 into it.
- I’ll let you know how I structured the partnership with the person who is going to do 100% of the rehab work on the property.
– I’ll share with you some killer resources and ideas for how you can raise private money (for your own deals).
- I’ll talk about how having access to private money TOTALLY changes the way you can approach real estate investing, making offers, and closing on deals that you never could have in the past.

All of the call-in details can be found here: http://instantteleseminar.com/?eventid=18763446

Make sure to add this to your calendar. You can put questions in the chat box on the teleseminar page, and we’ll also take LIVE Q&A questions about how we structured this deal on the call as well. Go here now to get all of the details on this free, live, “case study” training call: http://instantteleseminar.com/?eventid=18763446

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Bob & Ed Diamond just released a 3 payment plan in their Commercial Wholesaling course. You can now get started for just $369.

Don’t forget about the bonuses that I’m offering, and also the fact that I’m hosting a special, LIVE Q&A webinar with Bob & Ed Diamond on Thursday night, March 10th at 5pm PST/6pm MST/7pm CST/8pm EST.

You can register for this free Q&A call here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/718841355

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Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been emailing you about some great videos from my friends Bob & Ed Diamond about how anyone can do commercial real estate investing.

Since their program opened for registration earlier this week many of you have been asking me what kind of bonus package I’m going to offer, if at all.

Well I decided to offer a single bonus, that will help you explode your commercial real estate investing business (or any business for that matter), and I recorded a quick video about it for you:

Here’s what you should do next:

1. Watch the video in this blog post (it describes my bonus package and a few important items about things that you need to know about commercial real estate investing).

2. Register for our special, LIVE Q&A training that we’re doing with Bob & Ed Diamond this Thursday, March 10th at 5pm PST/6pm MST/7pm CST/8pm EST right here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/718841355

3. Prepare a list of questions for Bob & Ed and attend the call promptly. To give you the BEST questions to ask, I would advise attending one of their webinars that they are holding between now & then. To select the time most convenient for you visit this webpage and register: http://www.xbankattorney.com/a?p=jl&w=pw

4. Clear your calendar on join us on Thursday night, March 10th at 5pm PST/6pm MST/7pm CST/8pm EST by registering here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/718841355

That’s all for now. I hope you’re excited about the LIVE Q&A call on Commercial Real Estate Investing & also the incredible bonus package we put together for you.

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