How An Army Vet With Zero Experience Hit $1.9M In 3 Years

Speaker 0: Like, $300 a month can send you 30,000 emails a month. Like, our average assignment fee was, like, 8 to $10. This is what's crazy. Google makes a ton of money off this. Like, there was a crime across the street right when I finished renovation.

We ran out of money, but let's just rip the cord now and take the risk now. Because, like, when you're at twelve years, you're only eight years away from, like, a pension. I'm like, I'm not gonna apply for a job. And I started real estate to try to quit my job, and I had all those properties, and I still worked full time. So we took the gamble, like, have you thought about cold email market?

Speaker 1: Welcome, and thank you for joining us for today's episode of Disruptors Where Millionaires Are Made. Today, we have Tim Yu with RE Inbox and Tim Fluent from Louisville, Kentucky to talk about how an army vet made a million dollars in his first three years in real estate. Now, guys, I'm on a mission to create millionaires. The information on this show alone is enough to help you become a millionaire in the next five to seven years. If you'll take assistant action, you will become one.

You ready?

Speaker: I'm ready.

Speaker: Alright. So let's talk about, you know, army vet. Yep. Right. So what were you doing in the army and why didn't you just stay in the army?

Speaker: Man, that's, a lot of people are asking me those questions. We... I was in the military for twelve years.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: We recently... I recently just got out, but I was Really? Yeah. So I was an infantry officer, changed over to, what we call acquisitions. So they're like the program managers of the military.

Mhmm. So we're in charge of the different programs. I was in charge of a GPS software. So we were in charge of developing the product and then putting them on the military vehicles. Mhmm.

Speaker: And

Speaker: that was my last job before I got out and did the business ventures full time.

Speaker: Yeah. Okay. So but you were... While you're in the military, you were also working on real estate.

Speaker: Yep. So I started in 2021. I was living in this, like, downtown apartment in Louisville. So that's where I was stationed at in 2021. That's where I got my wife.

And I lived in this little apartment that was costing me, like, $1,800 a month, and I was, like, losing my mind. So I Louisville?

Speaker: Is that what it goes for?

Speaker: In downtown. It's really... It wasn't it wasn't good. When you look around Louisville, it's like so much more affordable and cheaper outside of the city. Yeah.

So I was like, hey. You know, I'm paying all this money. Let me go try to buy a property.

Speaker: So

Speaker: I've never bought real estate before ever. And I ended up buying a conventional property, and my real estate agent was actually an investor. She owned short term rentals. So I asked her, hey, if I wanted to get started in this, like, what do you recommend I do? And she gave me all the books, all the podcasts listened to, and it took me, like, nine months of, like, searching on Zillow to, like, find a property that I wanted to buy.

And it ended up being my first fix and flip deal.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: So I closed on that, like, November '22, and that was, like, an actual disaster. It was, like, in the hood. Like, there was a crime across the street right when I finished renovations, and then I was trying to sell at the same time. End up losing, like, 4 or $5,000 on it.

Speaker: Not the worst thing

Speaker: in the world.

Speaker: The worst. But 2021, 2022. Yeah. You're buying a property off of Zillow?

Speaker: Well, I was look... I was looking on Zillow. It was... I remember it was, like, around Thanksgiving time, and I was walking on my wife. And she's like, why are you always, like, looking on Zillow?

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And I saw this property price drop from, like, a $100 to, like, $60. So I called that same real estate agent that I had, and I was like, hey. I don't know anything about this, but will you go see this property with me? And we went to go see it. It was all boarded up downtown Louisville.

Speaker: I'm

Speaker: like, if anyone's from Louisville, it's like... The street is called Algonquin, and it's like well known to be like a war zone. Mhmm. We find out that the owner is from California, and he's an out of state investor. He's like, I just wanna let it go.

And we just made an offer of, like, 35,000, and he and he took it. So I was like, okay. Like

Speaker: Slam dunk.

Speaker: I have a I have a deal. It looks good. ARV was, like, $1.18. Cosmetic

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: It was not. Like, everything that you would imagine that would go wrong did. Like, I picked the cheapest contractor. He left me, like, you know, a third way in the project, took my money and just kinda disappeared. Mhmm.

You know, everything that they tell you not to do Yeah. I probably did it on my first flip.

Speaker: Okay. I mean, where where are the other things?

Speaker: Shoot. Well, I thought it was gonna be, like, a $35,000 reno. Mhmm. It was, like, 85. Wow.

Right? And I did hard money. That was, you know, I had a w two, so I put, like... I think it was, like, 20% down on my first flip, and then they covered the rest in reno. Mhmm.

It was like... It took a lot longer too because I thought it was gonna be a thirty day renovation, but that contractor disappeared. And then my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, I was like, I need you to, like, help me paint this house. So she... She's like, okay.

So she goes to this property with me. We're, like, painting the ceilings and... Because we had, like, drop down ceilings that were, like, stained with, like, smoke. Yeah. Not like they turned yellow.

Speaker: Uh-huh.

Speaker: We ran out of money, so I was like, we need to just paint it over. So me and her have these rollers just painting up the ceilings, like, trying to make it look, like, sellable. Yeah. And, we had, like, it was in a bad part of town, so we had a ton of, like, like, like, like, homeless guys walking to the backyard and stuff. It was a very bad neighborhood, and we were just desperately trying to get it done quick and Mhmm.

Not lose our total ass on it, you know. So...

Speaker: There are homeless people walking in your backyard?

Speaker: Yeah. Like, literally, if you look in the backyard, there's some trees, but behind those trees is, like, factories and all that stuff.

Speaker: Was, like, are they not fences?

Speaker: No. We had to put up a fence.

Speaker: Yeah. What was the crime across the street?

Speaker: A prop... So it was a... Same thing. So, like, in Louisville, there's a lot of shotgun houses.

Speaker: What's a shotgun house? I'm sorry. I might sound completely incompetent in here.

Speaker: So shotgun house are, like, they're little rectangle buildings. Usually, in in Kentucky, those type of houses don't have a basement. It's just crawl spaces. And when they talk about shotgun houses, if you open the main door, you can look all the way through the house. Mhmm.

So, usually, it's like a living room, bathrooms on the side, and then the kitchen, and then the way out of the property. Mhmm. So it's just a straight shot. So basically, like, I think whoever created that term is like, if you took a shotgun and shot through it, you can get to the whole house.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: So it was a bunch of those, bunch of shotgun houses. And right when we were getting ready to sell, the the neighbor across the street, there was, like, bunch of SWAT cars and stuff like that that popped up. I guess there was, like, a major drug bust. Mhmm. And it was, like, two weeks before my agent list the property.

So it was a disaster. Mhmm. But it was fun. I mean, I learned a lot. I learned not to buy on busy streets and not to buy the cheapest property at all times.

Yeah. Because I thought it was $35. It was a great deal.

Speaker: Can't lose.

Speaker: Yeah. I lost. But Right. So

Speaker: So... Alright. So then... But you're still working the whole time Yeah. In the army.

Speaker: Yep. So I was stationed at Fort Knox. So I lived in Louisville, so I drove to work every day. It was, like, an hour drive every day. So I would get home from work, and I would try to go to the property, fix it up and stuff.

And then after that, I converted more into, like, wholesaling

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Because I was like, hey. I don't wanna flip these properties, and I don't wanna spend three, four months doing it. So then I started cold calling two, three hours a night after work, and that's kinda how the wholesaling business started. And I met my business partner who was also in the army with me. Mhmm.

And he ran the business side of it while I was doing the acquisition side while working full time. Yeah. So I was taking calls during lunch, trying to run out of meetings to take these sales calls, and he would be texting me, like, what are you doing? Yeah.

Speaker: How would you leave meetings in a

Speaker: Well, I don't know. I'm out now as I can say it. So I was in charge of a lot of things. So I was an officer in the military Mhmm. But, you know, I wouldn't skip every single meeting.

But sometimes I'm like, oh, hey. Like, I gotta run out for a second, especially if it was, like, an inbound lead coming in because we spent a ton of money on, like, PPL and Facebook ads and all that stuff. So we knew that we had to get a hold of these leads. Mhmm. But, I actually...

In Knox, I didn't really have, like, a crazy, like, job at Knox. Like, I was more of, like, an office job. Like, in my younger years in the military, this would... I could have never done it because I was always training and doing all these different things.

Speaker: Right. Mhmm. Okay. As an officer, you had a little bit more leeway.

Speaker: I did. A little bit. Yeah.

Speaker: Okay. You're, like, taking calls, like, in, what do you call it? The mess hall? Like, what do you?

Speaker: No. So, like, you know, we we worked in, like, offices. So Okay. I can go out in the hallway and, like, take the call. Like Mhmm.

You know, I have the lead connector app, and I'm, like, talking to these, you know, sellers in the hallway. And then, you know, I'd be texting them and stuff at work. But, you know, we weren't, like, in, like, a military barracks type thing. Like Yeah. Fort Knox is really relaxed out there.

It's, you

Speaker: know Fort Knox is relaxed? I would expect

Speaker: it to

Speaker: be the most secure facility in the country.

Speaker: The gold, I don't know if it's a myth or not, but it's so relaxing. Like, it's one of the most relaxing army posts I've been to, honestly.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Apprising.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: Okay. So, you didn't really catch a lot of flack then?

Speaker: No. Not really. I mean, I I didn't really talk about real estate stuff publicly probably until, like, twenty twenty four ish.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: I kept it really under wraps. I was kind of afraid, like, what my bosses would say and all that stuff. But towards the end, they kinda knew, like, what I was doing, and they knew I didn't wanna stay, like, full time.

Speaker: Mhmm. They knew you were not reenlisting or whatever you call it.

Speaker: Yeah. Because, like, when you're at twelve years, you're only eight years away from, like, a pension. Mhmm. And when I told everybody I was getting out, it was kinda, like, shocking. They're like, you've made it more than halfway through.

Mhmm. Like, why aren't you sticking it out? But I think, like, at a certain point for me, there's nothing wrong with a pension, but I was so not in it anymore. Like, I was just thinking about work and real estate and business more and more and more that it kinda, like, overlapped into, like, my normal w two life. Mhmm.

So I just made, like, a business decision and said, like, hey. Let's just start... Let's just rip the cord now and take the risk now because I think I would have regretted it if I stayed in all the way and not give it a full shot.

Speaker: So your first deal was a disaster, so you started wholesaling. That was a pretty quick pivot.

Speaker: Yeah. It was.

Speaker: How was that?

Speaker: We, I I personally liked it. I was doing it by myself before I met my partner, Jake. I did a lot of direct to seller marketing in general. So I did wholesaling, but then then I also purchased eight properties in one year all through, like, creative finance. Mhmm.

Speaker: And

Speaker: I exited all of them through lease options. So that's kinda how I got started. So I would do, like, lease options. I would buy them on seller finance, and then I would sell them to a leased or an end buyer that was renting it.

Speaker: Yeah. And

Speaker: then that's how I kinda got into those deals cheaply. And then the deals that I couldn't buy, I ended up wholesaling them to local investors in Kentucky.

Speaker: Got it. So you're really buying for yourself.

Speaker: That was the intent.

Speaker: And then you're moving whatever you couldn't buy for yourself.

Speaker: Yeah. Because somebody... One of the investor friends that I knew in Kentucky, when I presented him the deal, he was like, well, if... Because I was asking him to, like, lend me some money. Mhmm.

And he was like, well, why don't you just sell it to me for, like, $10? I'll give you, like, $10,000, and you'll just sell me this house Mhmm. With the same agreement. And I didn't really understand, like, what he was saying. He's like, well, you can just get under contract and then just sell me that contract, and I'll buy it.

Yeah. And that's when I was like, holy cow. Like, there's, like, a picture of me in Instagram, like, three, four years ago with my first, like, check. You know, it was, like, $9,000. Mhmm.

And it was, like, no work. Well, not, like, no work, but, you know, you didn't have to buy. You didn't have to, like, renovate it, do all that stuff. I just had someone pay for it. So that kind of, like, gave me a new idea.

I was like, okay. Cool. I'm still doing the work of talking to sellers, pulling the list, but I can also sell the deals that I don't wanna purchase for an assignment fee.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: That was, like, the birth of, like, what we started doing full time after that.

Speaker: So that's when you learned about wholesaling?

Speaker: Yeah. Like, unofficially, like... Because I was just doing, like, deals, you know, like, talking to sellers and stuff. Yeah. And then when we started to learn, like, how quickly you can, like, generate income with wholesaling, I was talking to him, my partner, and I was like, why don't we just do this full time?

Yeah. And that's when we started doing... You know, we started paying for marketing, and we started to try to, like, operationalize it. Because at first, we were just kind of, like, hey, whatever list we have, let's go cold call it. Let's go text it and see what happens.

Mhmm. So then we started, like, making it into a more of, like, a business model probably in, like, late twenty twenty two, '23.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And then '24, we started, like, really spending a lot of money in marketing.

Speaker: So, you you picked up those eight. You sold on lease options or... Yeah. Lease options. So those eight properties?

Speaker: No. We actually sold most of them. I have one duplex left in Louisville.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Actually, it's on the market right now, so I've made a huge pivot over the last, you know, few years. And then we have five more properties in Iowa that we're trying to get rid of too. So

Speaker: But did you sell them through the option, or those didn't work out and then you sold to someone else?

Speaker: So about three or four of them actually executed on the option. Okay. We have one property left where the tenant's in there right now that she's trying to execute it, but we don't know if she's actually gonna execute it or not. And then the rest, we ended up selling it on the market. Mhmm.

I have one duplex in Kentucky still on the market. I bought it as, like, I used my VA loan on it back in the day. Mhmm. And I actually lived in one of the units, but it's a midterm rental and a traditional rental, and it's on the market now. I'm trying to sell it.

Speaker: So after you started wholesaling then, did you stop buying for yourself?

Speaker: Yeah. So, the only transaction that we did, in the middle of wholesaling was probably in 2024. We ran into a sheriff that was, like, out of town, and we bought his house seller finance. We ended up selling that house in 2025. So we we...

Because we were pivoting completely. Like, we had all these different properties that we're trying to get rid of. Mhmm. And, like, what really hit me was I had all these single family properties, and I started real estate to try to quit my job. And I had all those properties, and I still worked full time.

Like, I didn't make enough money to, like, quit, essentially, because I was just getting, like, $400 here, $200 here. And then, so so we haven't bought a property since 2025, like, early twenty twenty five. We've been focusing strictly on, like, the active income side.

Speaker: Okay. So then, your heart wasn't in the army anymore, and you eventually decided to leave. What kind of money were you making at that point where you're like, okay. This is an easy decision, or was there... We were gonna do it anyway regardless of income.

Speaker: I was gonna do it regardless, but we did make enough money, like, consistently to be like, alright. Like, we feel comfortable leaving everything behind. Like, you know, when you're in twelve years, like, I was a major in the army. Like, I had a 6 figure salary and was pretty comfortable, but I didn't need to fully replicate the salary to, like, feel comfortable to leave. Mhmm.

Like, I was like, we make pretty good money. I can eat it for a few, like, months or to a year, and we're just gonna full send it and see what happens because I think the problem with me was I was really scared. Like, I didn't wanna lose a salary, but then, like, I always had that, like, deep feeling. I was like, if I don't do this, how am I gonna feel twenty years from now?

Speaker: You're gonna regret it.

Speaker: Yeah. Okay. So so we took the gamble, and, obviously, my wife and my partner were were full on board on it too. But

Speaker: So when you... When did you leave the army?

Speaker: So I officially got out September of this year.

Speaker: December of this year?

Speaker: Yeah. Because it takes about a year to, like, get out. You have to, like, request it. You have to go through all this training. It's crazy.

Speaker: I didn't know that.

Speaker: Yeah. What kind

Speaker: of training?

Speaker: So, like, oh my gosh. It's like resume building training, how to budget, how to get your health care. Like, they make you go through all of that.

Speaker: And that's not a bad thing.

Speaker: Oh, it's not. But, like, I mean, they're, like, making me sit in an hour Yeah. Long resume building class. I'm like, I'm not gonna apply for a job. It's fine.

Speaker: Like home economics.

Speaker: Yeah. It's crazy. And then they they have, an entrepreneur track now too. So if you're getting out of the military and you tell them that you're a business owner or trying to be one, they'll give you tons of resources in terms of, like, how to get SBA loans, all that stuff. It's it's pretty cool.

It's just it's just long.

Speaker: Yeah. Why is it so long?

Speaker: It's the army. It's the government. Everything's slow. Yeah. It's bureaucratic.

I mean But you're

Speaker: getting paid the whole time, so it's not the

Speaker: one end of the week. And and also too, like, you know, you have vacation days that you have to burn. So I got out officially in September, but I was on vacation technically for sixty days prior.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So... But the admin stuff too is, like... So I sent my paperwork up January '26. I didn't get it back until, like, May '26 just to see if I got approved or not.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Okay. And what about your partner? Like

Speaker: My partner's been out of the military for a couple years. So we met in college. We did ROTC together, and we ended up commissioning in the military together. We actually got stationed together at our first duty station.

Speaker: I mean... Yeah.

Speaker: So we knew each other for a long time, and we didn't, like, actually work together until maybe, like, three years ago. Mhmm. And I reconnected with him at his wedding. Mhmm. So it it was kinda nice.

And he was like, hey. I'm already out. So if we wanted to do a business, like, this is... Would be my full time job Mhmm. While you get situated and figure out what you wanna do.

So I'm

Speaker: I'm really grateful for him. Okay. So you partner up. What is

Speaker: that set up like? So he's operations, like, the fulfillment side, the software, the tech, and that was more of, like, the marketing and sales portion of it. Mhmm. So during the leads, picking the marketing channels, like, doing the sales calls, training sales reps when we did hire people, and he would do everything else. So the CRMs, the tech integrations, like, the contracts, the TC stuff, he did all that.

He did the dispo as well.

Speaker: Did the dispo? Yep. Gotcha. Okay. And did you guys, like, divvy it up by personality traits, or, like, how did you guys call him?

Speaker: Percent personality traits. He is not much of a talker. He's more introverted Mhmm. But he's a big brain. Mhmm.

So he knows how to put things together that I just don't. Like, I don't even know how to tie my shoes.

Speaker: Mhmm. You know

Speaker: what I mean? I'm like that type of guy.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: But he's, like... He kinda, like, held held me up together, you know, while I was kinda, like, thinking about a 106 different things.

Speaker: Okay. So then you didn't leave the military until this year.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: What was that transition like? Not not from the military and, like, resume building, but, like, actually running the business.

Speaker: It was it was a big... I wouldn't say it wasn't a big adjustment because I kind of already mentally kind of checked out of, like, what I was previously doing with my w two. But I I think the biggest change for me was not having a 100%, like, set schedule. Like, waking up to go to the gym, waking up to drive to work, and go to the, you know, nine to five. I know I'm gonna be in the office doing this, and kind of figuring out what my schedule was actually gonna be Mhmm.

As a free man. You know? It was just a big adjustment in terms of, like, how much freedom I had. And whatever I didn't do was, like, completely on me. And I think that's, like, the biggest adjustment for anyone just getting out of a job and starting something from scratch is Mhmm.

Trying to get your feet under you and figure out, like, what is the most important thing to actually do. Right. You know?

Speaker: And how did you rectify or or or resolve that?

Speaker: That's a tough question, honestly. I I

Speaker: think still addressing it?

Speaker: Well, I think we're always still addressing it. You know, I I live religiously off my calendar now. I mean, he helps me. My partner Jake helps me out a lot. You know, Grokbot helps me out a lot.

You know, especially, like, the birth of AI, I think, for people like me that are kind of disorganized in terms of thought processes and, like, trying to figure out what's super important. You know, having, like, AI, like, not to be weird about Grok, but I feel like I talk to Grok more than my wife. And I love my wife very much. But I talk to Grok so much in terms of, hey. Like, keep me on track with my appointments or, like, you know, tell me what's going on with this next appointment that I have.

Because I like to save a lot of data on my calendar.

Speaker: So

Speaker: when I have blocked appointments, I usually put a ton of notes in there. So then when Grok actually reminds me of things, it's like, hey. Like, don't forget, like, this person that you're speaking to, like, these are the these are the topics of discussion Mhmm. That you plan to talk about. Like, don't go off the rails.

And I'm like, okay. Cool. Yeah. So that's kinda how I've been trying to stay organized, living by the calendar, trying to have AI kinda streamline a lot of different things in my life that I don't wanna actually deal with. I know you're a big fan of AI as well.

Speaker: Yeah. So... Yeah. That's what I'm gonna do. We're gonna dive, dive into that or get...

Go deep into that rabbit hole as well. So, so it's this year you did this, but, I mean, mean, you've been doing this. What was it? Since, like, five years now? You've you've been in business?

Speaker: '21, twenty two ish.

Speaker: Okay. So then, like, what were the things... So you're talking about, like, the the, the transition to so much free time. So that was, like, one of the bigger transitions. What are some of the other bigger challenges?

Right? Because people are listening. There might be people right now that, you know, are w two that are trying to make the jump. Because I had that same exact challenge. Right?

And I was like, the whole day went by. I don't know what the hell I got done today. Yeah. So what other challenges did you have in making the transition from, you know, military life to entrepreneur life?

Speaker: Yeah. I think, you know, we're in a, you know, sales and marketing type industry, like real estate and sales and all that stuff. And, you know, what the craziest thing for me was... And I had to talk to my... My wife had to, like, calm me down because I was taking all these sales calls, right, with real estate and all these different things.

And if I wasn't, like, closing people, I wasn't getting paid. Right. And, you know, I had a salary. I had, you know, the military gives you health care, all these different things. And I'm like, I just let all that go.

Mhmm. And I'm sitting on these sales calls, and I'm not closing x y z. And I'm like, what did I do? Like, I'm like, tunnel. I'm sorry.

Speaker: You

Speaker: know? Like... And she's like, it's okay. Like, you know, you've only been doing this for a couple weeks, whatever. But it's really nerve wracking when you lose your salary...

Well, you don't lose it. I I I let it go.

Speaker: Give it up.

Speaker: And you don't have that guaranteed check. But then as soon as you kinda realize that, you know, you follow your KPIs, you follow your metrics, that you're gonna be okay. But I think that initial shock when you first leave your w two Mhmm. Knowing that everything is on you, your business, and your partners, or whatever you're doing to actually make the money so you guys don't have to eat ramen, like, every day, right, for meals, which I was totally okay with. But, you know, I don't want my wife to eat ramen.

But, you know, that's... I think that was a really scary thing for me to kinda go through it. But, you know, I think you get used to it once you start seeing success, like, after you leave that w two, and getting that fear out of the way that you feel more comfortable.

Speaker: Right. Okay. So then talk to me then the, because your business is already going. You're already doing deals. So then what was the first big problem that you you you solve or overcame in, you know, driving consistent revenue?

Speaker: Yeah. So we... You know, with with wholesaling and and real estate stuff, when we started selling off our properties, that actually gave us some clarity too because we we were running our own property management on some of these properties. Mhmm. And we kinda need to, like, free up time because we started doing, with the real estate stuff, we started running people's email marketing, and that gave us a ton of consistent revenue once that started flowing in.

And then once we kinda saw, like, the business model kinda, like, stabilize, we kinda felt a lot better because we kind of started a business, like, kinda with, like, from thin air. Yeah. We started running people's email marketing stuff, but then, you know, once we started getting a big wave of, like, interest, then we're like, okay. Like, this is something that we can actually double down on. But what issues we saw was obviously, you have to run ads, you have to do all the different marketing, and we kinda had to learn a lot of that stuff on our own.

Mhmm. We had a good background of sales experience from the real estate side, wholesaling side, but we never really done marketing outside of real estate before. Right? Selling a service or a product was a little bit different for us. So that was, like, a huge adjustment.

But once we kinda saw, like, the consistency with it, like, you know, we we just naturally became, like, okay. Like, this actually works. We believe in it now, and, like, we feel more comfortable going forward with it. Because at first, you just don't really know when you're starting a new venture if it's gonna actually pan out for you financially or if you're just gonna go down in flames. So we're really worried about that, but, it's been about a year since we started doing it.

And this is, like, the first time we, like, started talking about it more publicly. Mhmm. You know?

Speaker: What does that mean to handle someone's email marketing? That is... That's that's not a thing that people talk about.

Speaker: Yeah. So there's... I think there's two big differences with, you know, how you can run email marketing. One is, like, the infrastructure side where you have all your different domains, your different mailboxes, and we can talk nerdy about it too Mhmm. And kinda dive into it.

But, there are companies that do the infrastructure stuff where they set up all the tech stuff, the DNS records, all that. And then you have, like, the full, like, agency side, whether writing your email campaigns, they're, verifying all the emails, sending it out, and also, like, watching the campaign metrics to optimize it. So there's, like, two different types of businesses. It's what you think it is. Like, they give you data or you can source the data for the client.

And based off that data, we write customized email campaigns that match that type of lead type. And then, like, what we usually do is we help people build out lead magnets for what you're talking about. So if you're emailing a foreclosure lead, you know that there's certain things that that foreclosure lead probably is going through. So we have these lead magnets that kind of focus in on those things, and that's how we get positive replies. And then we kind of qualify them in the emails as well and send them CRMs.

Speaker: What would be an, an example of a lead magnet that resonates with preforeclosure?

Speaker: Yeah. So, a big one is... That's been getting a lot of good replies is the 10 ways to stop a foreclosure or, like, your foreclosure options guide. Yeah. And, you know, it's kind of like...

In that guide, it's kind of like a setting sales process as well because it goes through different options and kind of breaks down, you know, have you tried a loan modification? Mhmm. Have you do you know what a short sale is? And it kinda goes to that process. And when somebody on a setter team or whatever calls that homeowner, and it's like, hey, man.

Like, we've been communicating back and forth via email, and we sent you a guide. Did you get it? Mhmm. And then they're like, yeah. I got it.

It's like, you got ten minutes. I'm gonna walk through that with me just to make sure, like, you don't need any help arranging anything or have any questions. And if they actually get that guy and they open it and you're going through that checklist together, it's kind of like a prequalification sales process on that guide. Yeah. And even if they don't reply back to the email, your guide will have your phone number, your QR code that goes to your website, and all that stuff.

And then in the meantime, you can still qualify the homeowner because, you know, nowadays, emails are more of like text messages Mhmm. Where you get the thumbtack notification. You know, someone's sitting there, they're emailing you back. We wanna we wanna hit them within one to two minutes on the email and keep them there. And sometimes they'll give a different phone number because, you know, some real estate data is not a 100% accurate.

So if we if we text them and say, hey. What's a good phone number for you so we can actually, like, send the guy to your phone and, like, reach out to you? And sometimes they'll send a different number. So we can give that to the client and say, this is their actual phone number where you can actually reach them.

Speaker: So Where are the emails coming from?

Speaker: So a lot of different real estate data provider companies provide emails. You know, we've worked with quite a few clients that do different companies. You know, it's companies like data syndicate, you know, the county records. Those usually do the best just because their data is specifically broken down at different lead types. Yeah.

And the more specific you get with data, the more personalized your email copy can be. Like, if you have data that has auction dates or, you know, age of the person, like, you can customize your email copy to get someone to actually reply to it. You know?

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker: So that's the big difference is, you know, if you get bulk data, so we see different data types that come into our business. Mhmm. It's like, all they have is first name, address, and city. But I don't know, like, what type of, like, data that is. Like, is it, like, a pre foreclosure?

Is it, like, as just a random ZIP code? You can't really write an email for that. Like, you can say, hey. Like, I'm a home... I'm a local person.

Like, look... But, like, that... Those type of emails just get sent to spam. Like, people will see it people will see it, and then they'll just mark you as spam.

Speaker: You know?

Speaker: Gotcha. So there's no personalization. There's no sort of distress tied to that email. Mhmm.

Speaker: So are you using it strictly on data that's purchased? Like, you guys... I mean, some people, you know, like, when you're do PPC, PPL, for example, you get everyone's email address that way. A different service?

Speaker: No. So, like, are you talking about, like,

Speaker: It's basically an email follow-up at this point.

Speaker: Correct. So, like, if you do the cold stuff, like, I would say cold email is designed for really, you know, if you're pulling a list from, like, you know, there's people doing AI scraping, there's people that buy the data. Mhmm. That... Those people you've never...

They've never heard from you, they've never talked to you before. The guys who have the PPL, the PPC, the meta ads, those are, like, warm, you know, because they've opted in. Mhmm. What we recommend for those type of leads is, like, I wouldn't cold email them necessarily because they've opted into your funnel somehow. Mhmm.

If you don't close those people in, like, two, three months, then I would just throw... Then I would throw them into a cold email cycle. Because what we've seen is we have guys that run PPC, and they're like, hey. I got all these old leads. Like, what do I do?

I'm like, I wouldn't cold email them because they've filled out some sort of form or whatever. They should be in your nurture sales cycle. But after two, three months, they haven't talked to you. Yeah. Why not throw in on a cold email campaign?

Yeah. And we've seen tons of replies from them because they're... Most of the time, they're actually legit email addresses of the homeowner. So

Speaker: Got it. And you said there was two different types of structure. So what were the two different types of structure for cold emails?

Speaker: Yeah. So a lot of companies do the done for you marketing agency where they, like, set up everything. They do everything for you. And then there's companies that just, like, sell infrastructure where they'll be like, hey. You pay us, you know, $5 a month for a Google mailbox, or you could pay $300 a month for, you know, a thousand emails a month.

So there's so many different things. And what's crazy is, like, cold email is super big and, like, almost every under industry.

Speaker: Oh, is it?

Speaker: Yeah. But real estate, like SaaS, health care, tech, all the... Like, a lot of those guys market with b to b cold email. I think the reason why it's not as popular yet in real estate is because we're going b to c. Like, we're emailing consumers, and there's a lot of intricacies to that, with people, like, marking you as spam and all that stuff.

But

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker: But, yeah, it's it's big in a lot of other industries.

Speaker: I was actually looking for myself. I was looking at a couple different options. I think there was r b two n was one. Mhmm. Goji Berry was another.

Speaker: DealJoy. There's a lot of, you know

Speaker: For b two b. Yep. Do those work for... Where are the websites for b two c?

Speaker: Yeah. So b to c, that's what...

Speaker: So, like ask that. Because I'm I'm assuming people know what I'm talking about. What am I talking about there in regards to, like, what those services offer?

Speaker: Okay. So when you're going b to b, cold email is very, very big in b to b. Like, that's where if you, like, if you ever open up an ad from anybody with cold email, you will start seeing all the different companies out there that do b two b email. Mhmm. A lot of the companies that you see now are infrastructure place.

Yeah. Where they'll say, we have a done for you all in one software. You pay us, you know, 100 to $300 a month, and you can send this many emails a month. There are different types of mailboxes that providers can use. Right?

There's the the the big two, which is like... The... There's like the two biggest companies out there is Google and Microsoft. Mhmm. Right?

Those are the biggest infrastructure guys out there. And then there's a third tier of emails, what we call SMTPs. SMTPs are... We can make any of them. Like Yeah.

Me and you can go build SMTP mailboxes for, like, a penny. K? The problem is those emails are... They have to be managed on our own level, or you pay a company to do it. And the hard part about those emails is that you have to run your own IP servers and your own hardware.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: But you can have unlimited emails from there.

Speaker: That's what

Speaker: a lot of these companies are selling now. They can buy hundreds of emails for a penny each, and then they'll sell it to you for $23 a month.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: How we usually do it for real estate because we're emailing consumers and it's harder. Mhmm. We will recommend that you buy a Google mailbox at first.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And then you can always scale with the cheaper mailboxes later. The reason why is Google obviously is a massive company.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: They have tons of staff that their sole job is to make sure that that IPs, like, IP network is clean.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Because if you're running your own mailboxes on your own server, if your IP server gets flagged, every mailbox, every domain on there is going to spam.

Speaker: Yeah. Well, so for me, what I was looking at, like, for example, Goji, Barry, is that if someone's landing on my website and I could see their email address, then they just pop right into our CRM Yep. And now they're getting cold emails. So are you able to do the same thing? So let's say, for example, you know, my website, we buy AZ Homes.

I... I'm working with you. Right? And then, like, someone's on my site. It's like, boom.

We got their IP address. We got their email, and now we can start cold emailing them.

Speaker: No. We are not a SaaS company. We we don't have that capability yet. Mhmm. But that is a very interesting thing because what we usually do is, like, hey.

If you have access to data or you're buying data and you wanna set up all your... Like, we'll set up Google Mailboxes, Microsoft Mailbox, whatever you want. We'll set up all that stuff for you, and then we'll also write your email, send it out, and send it to your CRM. We don't have that crazy tech stack where if someone shows up to your website, you're like, holy cow. We just took this dude's email.

That is pretty smart, though, in terms of getting leads coming to you. The thing is, though, I think if you were doing that model, you would just need the AI or or software to do some homework on that person.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: To customize and personalize that email copy going out.

Speaker: Yeah. And that's what we're looking at. I mean, this is... Sorry. I'm completely derailing

Speaker: you.

Speaker: Yeah. Complete selfish about myself right now. Right? But we're looking at, like, there's Apollo and there's Clay. Yep.

Speaker: And then

Speaker: I can see there's some other stuff too where, like... Yeah. Like, they're on our company website, and it's like, oh, hey. Like, they're a house buyer in this part of the country, and, like, let's go ahead and

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Download their email, push it, and go high level.

Speaker: Have you ever done our tregg? Tregg.to?

Speaker: Remind me what that is or share with me what that is.

Speaker: Yeah. Treg.to is like a software that, you know, uses Apollo, uses LinkedIn scrapers, all that stuff. It is way cheaper

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Because the creator of Treg is trying to create a software that defeats ZoomInfo, and it is really cheap.

Speaker: The juggernaut?

Speaker: Yeah. We pulled, like, 500 b to b email leads for, like, $10. Yeah. It's, like, really good. So I would look into that if you're doing that sort of scraping stuff.

Speaker: Yeah. We're gonna have to figure all that stuff out. But, like, that's the the next adventure. Because I didn't even know that was a thing, and that's might seem completely, you know, naive. Yeah.

But I was at some pitch event, last week. This guy's like, oh, this is what we do. You know? Like, you know, and he showed us, like, you've just pulled the email address and their contact info for every person that's on your website. He's like, well, it's only 80% certain.

I was like, 80% certain.

Speaker: Still really good.

Speaker: That is really good. I won't take 80% certain. Right?

Speaker: It is really, really good. Yeah. You brought up go high level. I use go high level

Speaker: for Yeah. You said lead connector.

Speaker: For everything. Yep. I use it for everything for the wholesaling, for tracking leads in our business now. The thing is with that, those email services, you have to buy your own, sending domain on there.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: The the reason why is... And and you should buy your own server. Mhmm. Because GoHighLevel is known. So a lot of people try to do cold email with GoHighLevel.

Yeah. And they're like, oh, it's getting... It says delivered, but no one's opening them at a certain point Mhmm. Because GoHighLevel can't... Well, yeah, and it can't track fully, like, open rates and all that stuff.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's just saying that it's delivered and no one's responding to you. Right? And then, yes, it shares a giant IP pool with lead connector and every other subaccount out there. So when they're saying that if you wanna send emails at volume and go high level, you have to go buy your own, IP server, which which you can. You can do that.

Speaker: We bought Postmark.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: And our email deliverability... We're like, what is going on? We're sending all these emails. No one's opening it. No one's reading it.

Yeah. And so, we had a consultant who works for us full time now, but at the time he was a consultant. He's like, hey, why don't you look at postmark? I was like, what the hell are you talking about?

Speaker: So good. Yeah. Super good. That's what we did for our stuff too on the high level.

Speaker: Yeah. So then email deliverability was great after that.

Speaker: Yep. Skyrocketed. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3: I think it went live I think it went live, like, technically Saturday. So it's a lead that's been in our CRM over a year and it reached out Tuesday, so just a couple days ago, set an appointment, do the, follow-up cadence and signed contract yesterday. So four or five days in, it's already working, like literally a contract from a year old lead. Should be 20 to 25,000. It's a cheaper home, but, you know, $20 on a $80,000 house would be nice.

Well, one, our team is horrible at following up with old leads. And obviously, with the AI, there's no fatigue. They follow a cadence, like, perfectly 10 times out of 10. One, just listen to one of the thousands of calls that are recorded from the AI. Like, we have overseas employees, and I think the AI sounds more human than some of our overseas employees.

Yeah. I mean, it's it's legit.

Speaker 4: What's the situation with the property? Living there, vacant, or rented?

Speaker: What is my age? I'm a... I'm 75 years old, and the property is approximately 200 miles away. And it's stressful trying to drive that distance every time something breaks down.

Speaker: I hear you. That sounds like a lot to manage from that far. How's that been wearing on you?

Speaker: Well, it's just the last couple years. You know, after I've turned 73, I got a little... The 70 seem to give you a newer outlook on what you can and cannot do and what your limitations are.

Speaker: Got it. So at least you'd wanna see what options are out there. Would you be open to a quick conversation with one of our specialists to map that out for your situation?

Speaker: I would.

Speaker: And if you wanna hear for yourself exactly what this sounds like, text AI caller to the phone number 33777. So... Alright. So, how did you get into the world of, like, doing email marketing for other people. That's just Yeah.

It's like, hey. What do you do? It's like, I I email market for other people. Like, what?

Speaker: Yeah. It, so my partner, he he knew, like, the science behind in terms of, hey. You know, I see all these other companies doing cold email or other industries.

Speaker: And Right.

Speaker: You know, we were doing... I think it was, like, 10 to $12 a month on PBL. Mhmm. We're doing meta ads. We did direct mail.

We're like, dude, this is, like, very expensive. And in Louisville, Kentucky, like, our average assignment fee was, like, 8 to $10.

Speaker: Oof.

Speaker: Right? It's a very... It's a small city, and we had to flip properties consistently to even, like, make remote prop... Or any, like, profit. Mhmm.

So, like, risk was out the door. We were going crazy. We just experimented with email because he just knew that, like, other people did email for other businesses.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And no one online was talking about it. So, like, let's go email people, homeowners, if we buy data. So we bought data from, like, every company, every subscription, and we just try different things. Because if you do it yourself, it's actually very cheap. Like, you pay for the mailboxes.

Like, that's your ad spend. Like, it's not like spending $1,020,000 dollars on ads. You're you're spending, like, $5 a month on mailboxes. Right? And then that's that's how you get the bond.

Right? So I think to send 30,000 emails a month, I think, like, if you just bought all Google mailboxes and your domains, your monthly spend would be $2.50 to $300 a month, like, on your mailboxes. Mhmm.

Speaker: So what does that mean, paying for mailboxes?

Speaker: Yeah. So, you buy a domain. Each domain can have x amount of mailbox attached to it. Right? So you would buy different versions of your business domain.

Speaker: Disruptors.com.

Speaker: Right? It'll be disruptors, home buyers, disruptors, blah blah blah. Right? It would just be different versions of that. Mhmm.

You own the domain. You buy it.

Speaker: They had to buy all these different domains.

Speaker: Yep. Then we'll set up all the DNS records. So, like, your your DKIM, your SPF, that's like the virtual handshakes, security certificates to send emails that get set up, and then you buy individual mailboxes for each, like, account. Mhmm. It's not a traditional Google workspace.

So, like, if you were to buy, you know, mailboxes from Google, it'd be $7 a month if you bought it annual. If you buy a lot of mailboxes like us, like, you become, like, a licensed Google reseller. So we get Oh, really? We get massive discounts on mailboxes. So what our offer is we kinda package everything up for the consumer.

Like, if you buy this package, you'll include 30,000 emails a month, fourteen to seventy days of warm up because we get a massive discount from Google itself.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: So I think, like, for us, like, depending on how much volume we buy, we can buy mailboxes from 3 to $4 a month. Mhmm. So when you have a client that has a 100 to 200 mailboxes a month, you know, that saves them a ton of money over time.

Speaker: I thought Google would, like, frown upon this.

Speaker: No. They... Google... Okay. This is what's crazy.

Google makes a ton of money off this. Yeah. Like... Oh, I

Speaker: get that they make a lot more money

Speaker: for it.... In a disgusting amount. There... There's a company out there. I don't know if they want me to bring up their name, but there's a company in the email marketing space known as the number one Google resellers in the world.

Like, they sell to, think about, like, the DOD. Right? Department of Defense has, like, how many employees? Like, 20, 30, whatever. Probably hundreds of thousands.

Right? Yeah. Every service member gets a mailbox. If they were to buy a mailbox retail for each person to be in the same amount of money.

Speaker: I I pay an insane amount of money right now.

Speaker: Our mailboxes. Right? Yeah. They have deals where this reseller will sell you 10,000 mailboxes, and they'll sell it to you for, like, you know, 50¢ a mailbox. Mhmm.

But they can get that because they buy so much.

Speaker: The volume.

Speaker: Right?

Speaker: But then they don't they don't they worry about, the spam component. Right?

Speaker: Yeah. So, like, if you're not, like, if you're not sending, you know, a 100 emails a day from that one mailbox, like, you're gonna be fine. And plus, when you have, like, Google mailbox or Microsoft mailboxes, you know, it's run on their servers.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: So when you're emailing from a Gmail account, it's coming from a Gmail IP server, and usually a lot of other mailboxes are usually Gmail or Microsoft. And there's usually a virtual handshake already before that email even goes out. Yeah. But if you look at consumer data with emails, I mean, most homeowners now, consumers have Gmail and Mail accounts. Mhmm.

So that's kinda why we recommend, hey, if you're gonna start off with... Are you

Speaker: past AOL and Yahoo now?

Speaker: Yeah. We do have a lot of Yahoo's because they're older.

Speaker: I I know. Like I was saying, like, typically, when I was... Yeah. I mean, I guess I'm dating myself. But, like, when we're buying houses, everyone have freaking AOL Yahoo emails.

Speaker: My dad still has his AOL account.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. But now we're seeing homeowners now have Gmail's. We're we're we're at that stage now.

Speaker: I mean, we still have Yahoo's. I'd... I've... We don't really see many AOLs anymore. Yeah.

But we do have a a Yahoo guys, but a lot more people are doing Gmails nowadays. Interesting. And there is a statistic that Gmail to Gmail has, like, an 86.2% deliverability rate.

Speaker: To their inbox, not to their promo.

Speaker: Not to promo, not to spam. And, obviously, like, we look at the email to make sure that nothing does get flagged. Mhmm. But there is a way to actually email people without going to the promotions tab.

Speaker: I can share that

Speaker: with you as well. But it's like code. So if you're good at AI, you can actually inject ghost ink

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Coding into your emails Mhmm. That kinda tricks the servers to not send it to promotions.

Speaker: So it's Ghosting.

Speaker: It's crazy. Yeah. We call it ghosting in the email world. So

Speaker: Yeah. Fascinating. Yep. Okay. So this is news to me because, like, I know, maybe this is is that bad info, but, like, I remember, Gmail would, like, spank you.

Right? It's like, hey. You sent too many emails. But maybe it's just because I was sending too many from one email address.

Speaker: How many were you sending?

Speaker: I don't know. 2,000 a day.

Speaker: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That... Jake's laughing in the back because, yeah, he's like, oh my gosh.

Speaker: Right. Because I wanna say this is this is a long time ago. So let's see. I was... I I still have my brokerage and I was recruiting.

So this is probably twenty fifteen.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Right? And my way of recruiting was, and it was funny because at this point, I had to use Outlook to connect to my Gmail. Yep. Right? Because for mail merge.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: So I would send... I would say 2,500, 3,000 emails to all the realtors that were producing

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: To recruit them to join my brokerage. Right? And that did not last very long. And then you run into situations where, like, your email stopped getting sent. Yep.

And then, I had a brokerage, and all the realtors were using stunning homes dot dot com. Right? Because that was my email.

Speaker: All their emails got turned off.

Speaker: Their emails were like, hey. They deliver... Their deliverability went down. And, like, Steve, what's going on? Why is everything going to spam?

I was like, I might have had something to do with that.

Speaker: Yeah. So think of it like an umbrella effect. Right? Like, you have the top layer. Your umbrella is, like, your IP.

Right? Google IP, Microsoft running your own, and then you have your domain.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And then you had all your brokers under it like an umbrella. Mhmm. And when your domain got, like, slashed Mhmm. It, like, cut everything off.

Speaker: Right. Well, that's what I learned.

Speaker: So that's crazy. Yeah. 2,000 would do that. So we usually limit between, like, 15 to 25 a day per mailbox.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: Right?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So that's why it's, like, we have... When we set up somebody and they tell us, like, the amount of data they have, we kinda give them an estimate of, like, this is what you're probably gonna be sending every month. Mhmm.

Speaker: This is

Speaker: what we recommend building. And they say, yes. We, like, buy their domains, buy their mailboxes. So we spread everything out between domains and mailboxes. Mhmm.

Speaker: So there's a lot of best practices that you guys implement

Speaker: Yeah. To make sure. Because it's getting rougher. Like, think about, like, cell phones. Right?

Like, the, spam screening iPhone, like, ESP's email service providers are, like, equivalent to Verizon, AT and T. Mhmm. They're trying to protect consumers as well. Like, they don't want people to get blasted with emails Yeah. Same as text messages.

So there's, like, ways around it by just spreading out your emails, spreading out your accounts. You know, there's a cheaper way and a more expensive way. Like, you can go the SMTP route. But if you're just starting, like, it's it's a pain in the butt managing all your servers and stuff.

Speaker: So I bought a list Mhmm. Of 60,000 roofers. Nice. Right? Which, by the way, consumer data and, like, business data, consumer data is so much more expensive

Speaker: It is.

Speaker: Than business data. I was shocked at how little it it cost to get, like, business debt. Yeah.

Speaker: It's all over the place. Right? Right. Google, everything's there.

Speaker: Like, all that stuff. Posting it everywhere. Yep. So, if I wanted to send emails to 60,000 roofers, how many mailboxes do I need? Just divided by a 100?

Speaker: No. So, like, it depends on your your sequence and cadence. Mhmm. So if you're doing a cold email sequence, usually it ranges between three to four. Mhmm.

Speaker: In a

Speaker: cold email sequence, so what you say 60? Mhmm. Let's... I'm really bad at math as an agent. So let's go 50,000 times three.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: 150,000 emails that one month. If you wanna hit that whole list in a month.

Speaker: As a buy.

Speaker: Okay. Now we're talking about infrastructure.

Speaker: Just try to think how many mailboxes I need. I mean, just just for, you know, as a as a simple thought experiment.

Speaker: So a 150,000 emails a month. Holy cow. How do you... Hey. Who who can do math?

So basically, each each domain and five mailbox can send about a 125 a day. Mhmm. So... Oh my gosh. How many...

Speaker: That's a

Speaker: 125.

Speaker: That's a lot.

Speaker: Right. Or 625. Yeah.

Speaker: So you need, like, 500 domains and, like... Oh, I wouldn't say that many, but you need, like, 50 domains times five is what?

Speaker: 50,000 times five?

Speaker: Yeah. No. Fifth... 50 domains times five.

Speaker: Oh, that's 250.

Speaker: Yeah. So 250 mailboxes can send 25 a day from there.

Speaker: Yeah. So 6,250, something like that.

Speaker: Are you really good at math?

Speaker: I don't know. I could be off by a digit.

Speaker: Man, that's crazy. Okay. Like, so basically, like, to send a 150,000 emails, you would need, like, way more than that. Like, you would need a ton. But at that point, we would tell you not to use Google at that point.

Mhmm. Right? Because that would cost you, like, at least 3 to $5 a month to mailbox. Mhmm. Like, you can have your core, like, Google, Microsoft.

Like, you wanna have, like, a spread. Yeah. Like, diversify your risk because what if Google makes a new rule Mhmm. And, like, your thousand mailboxes kinda go

Speaker: I mean, I experienced that when I got good SEO. Yep. Right? And I was like, oh, the algorithm has changed.

Speaker: Changes. Right? Your rules change.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: So at that point, if you're scaling up that hard, like, to be honest, if you're emailing a 150,000 people or emails a month, you're probably a lot more experienced or you have someone that's more experienced, and I would just start doing your own mailboxes from there. Gotcha. That's gonna cost a ridiculous amount of money.

Speaker: So I have to do a private consult after this. Yeah. Okay. So you're doing this, and then you're just sharing successes with your colleagues. And then this is where people are like, hey.

This is cool. Like, maybe for us.

Speaker: Yeah. Like, kinda like, hey, you know, I know you're... I know you spend money on marketing. Like, have you thought about cold email marketing? They're like, no.

But I have all these emails because when you buy data, like, you know, from real estate companies, it has their address, phone number, and it has email.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: But no one thinks about that Yeah. Ever. So when I started, like, telling them, like, have you ever thought about this? So, like, no. I haven't.

And I'm, like, if I were to set this up for you, like, would you just pay me a little bit money, like, just so I can, like, make it for you and then, like, see if it works? And we asked some of our friends, and they paid us a couple thousand just to set up their stuff. And and once we started seeing results, they were our first batch of testimonials. Mhmm. And we're like, holy cow.

This is like... This actually works. This is really cool. And then we started, like, asking them for referrals. And then now we're, like, running ads and growing the business, like, exclusively now.

But, you know, there's a lot of things that we do for the client in terms of, like, using AI to personalize lead magnets for them to make them more specific to their business model. And we've expanded campaigns out to different types of businesses. Like, you know, there there are wholesalers that only do luxury tear down flips. Like, we have a couple of them Mhmm. Clients doing that.

They just send a ton of volume all across the city.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Because there's less distress there. There's Yeah. They're more retail value pricing. Then we have a ton of people that do traditional wholesaling Mhmm. That do very targeted list, niche, all that stuff.

But the beautiful thing about it is they get to experiment with different marketing, like, angles and stuff like that without, like, chopping their leg off in marketing bills. Yeah. Because they can try different ZIP codes, and it'll cost an extra $100 of mailboxes to send, you know, 10, 15,000 more emails.

Speaker: Alright.

Speaker: It's a good experiment.

Speaker: Lot cheaper than direct mail.

Speaker: Yes. We call ourselves virtual direct mailers. That's, like, our big, like, slogan right now. It's, like

Speaker: Gotcha.

Speaker: You know, 10,000 mailers. Why Why don't you do 10,000 emails for a fraction of the cost?

Speaker: So what kind of results are your clients getting right now?

Speaker: Yeah. So a lot of KPIs kinda break down. You know, we'll give kind of benchmarks. Like, we obviously try to strive to beat them.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And results actually increase depending on how niche you get. But on a very conservative email campaign, your response rates are gonna be 1% to one one to 2%. And out of those responses

Speaker: Which is actually better than direct mail.

Speaker: Yeah. And... Yeah. Because, like, what? Like, now people are getting, like, a point two to three, like, a whole back

Speaker: rate. 2% a lot, which is kinda crazy. Yeah. The ROI is still there. The point 2% is discouraging.

Speaker: I think it's a good branding play Mhmm. You know, with everything... With your whole marketing stack and ecosystem. Yeah. But spending 10 to $15,000 a month in mail and getting a point to callback rate Mhmm.

It's like, holy cow. Like, we're bleeding a lot of money. So... But I will tell you, though, like, with the reply rates on email, not all of them are gonna be positive. Right?

Like, take me out of your list or f f off. Right? So in cold email, what we do, if you talk to any agency or any emailer in general, we look for positive reply rate. So out of the one to 2% that reply, how many of those people are positive? And positive can be determined by whatever your business model really looks at it.

Mhmm. How we look at it is if someone's asked for a lead magnet, if someone asks us a qualifying question like, hey. You know, what's the process? Because when we send them the lead magnet, we always send, like, a qualifying question after that. Mhmm.

Like, hey. Like, what, you know, what bucket are you in? Like, are you in this bucket, this bucket, or this bucket? And then it kinda goes from there. We do not send neutral responses.

If they're a neutral response, you know, saying, like, an example would be neutral, but, like, hey. Not now.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: We won't send that lead to the client. We'll continue qualifying them to the email to figure out if they're, like, a good lead or not a good lead. Yeah. Right? And then, obviously, if they're telling you to f off, we will mark them, unsubscribe them, and clear them out.

Mhmm. And then from there... So, like, let's go for 10,000 emails. So if you send 10,000 emails, 1% would be, you know, a 100 Mhmm. Responses.

30% would be 30 positive. And you're hoping to get, like, a 70 to 80% book call rate. And then you would go to the sales motion from there. The... A lot of people like to ask us, like, hey, how many leads you have to get to convert?

It really depends on who you're marketing to. Right? If you're emailing just a thousand ZIP codes, it may take you one out of 25, one out of 30. Mhmm. If you're doing foreclosures, it may be one out of six, one to 10.

It just depends on

Speaker: who you're talking to.

Speaker: Well, if you think about it. Right? If you're only emailing a certain list and the difference you get is, like, hey. You get whole... Wholesalers that call you, the wholesalers that text you, you get wholesalers that knock on your door.

They're all very intrusive. Mhmm. But then when you see an email and the subject line is not like, hey. Are you selling your property?

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: It's like, you don't know what options you have. And they click on it, and it's like, hey. This may not be right, but, like, it looks like you're going through x y z, and you don't know what options you have. You're just letting the bank make that decision. Yeah.

It's like, have you thought about these different things? We have a guide that helped a lady like Sally just like you. Mhmm. We just give you this guide for free. And you're leading with value.

And then when your setter actually calls that person, I think it's a way different conversation in terms of, hey, like, are you selling your property? We're more like, hey, like, we have a guide that, like, can actually help you. Mhmm.

Speaker: We

Speaker: just wanna go over it with you. Yeah. And I don't know how you feel about, like, your phone, but I hate getting text messages from wholesalers. It's like, hey, Tim. Like, are you selling your property?

And then they don't even have your address in there in the CRM. Yeah. You're like

Speaker: Following up on our offer? Yeah. It's like we never have.

Speaker: Yeah. We never talked. Yeah. But you don't have that same, like, visceral reaction when you get an email from Gmail. Yeah.

It's not the same. Yeah. Right? So

Speaker: I mean, right now, I'm kind of forgiving the... For wholesalers because right now the the political texts are are hard.

Speaker: The elections? Yeah. Yeah. We're getting a lot of elections off

Speaker: the road. So it's done. It's done. It's over. But, man, like, that last seven day blitz, I had no idea.

I I didn't remember, like, two years ago, but, like

Speaker: Monday was, like

Speaker: Yeah. It was nonstop. It was crazy. And so, okay. 10,010 emails, let's just assume 1%, a 100 people, a 100, 30% is positive.

You get to 30. And if it was 30, you're saying you should be able to pull out seven or eight appointments. Yeah. Not guaranteed Yeah. But, like, cross what you've seen from

Speaker: clients.... Metric. Yeah. We wanna try to get that seven to eight out of that 10,000. And then, like, what we're trying to figure out is, like, you know, I was trying to figure this out with, you know, trying to get a setter, you know, appointments that are, like, can we get legal event?

Like, can we get an opt in from an email to have someone call them? Mhmm. Like... Because I know, like, with AI, you know, you need to get an opt in to get a robo dial to call them. But what if we can get compliance from an email and someone says, hey.

Can we call you? Mhmm. And they say, yes. Is that good enough to have something like objection proof call them? Like, we don't know yet.

And we're trying to figure that out.

Speaker: I'm willing to gamble.

Speaker: Yeah. Have you thought about that?

Speaker: I was actually thinking about that right now before you said that.

Speaker: Okay. Cool. Like, because that's what I'm like... Obviously, there are a lot of larger companies that have large amounts of emails going out. The lead gets sent to their CRM.

Like, when we web hook it straight in

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Can we get... If someone, like, legitimately was, like, hey. Yes. You can call me to go over the guide. I mean, I

Speaker: think It's that for sure. Light. I sure... I think at that point, like, hey. Can we call you?

Then I think for sure that's good.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Okay. So then, like, who are some of your people that you can say we're having a lot of success with with email?

Speaker: Yeah. So, like, there's a guy, Alex Gallardo, Hunter Homes. He does, like, specifically foreclosures

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And, I think he's in LA and Florida. So he has two different markets.

Speaker: Wow. Okay.

Speaker: So he does two weird, like, LA Yeah. And and Florida. I think he's trying to expand into a different market too, but he only does, like, distressed type data. Mhmm. Right?

So probate, foreclosure, etcetera. And then we have some larger companies too that ran a lot of inbound marketing that could not close deals after, like, three, four months. So the first thing that we tell those type of clients is, like, hey, before you buy any more data Mhmm. Let me run your older leads through an email campaign.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: We try to revive them for, like, you know, pennies on the dollar. Mhmm. Because you've already paid those leads. So there's two different kind of businesses that do well for us. Like, it's the larger companies that have a lot of older leads to kinda recycle Mhmm.

And who are actively running ads because this is what's really cool about emails too, is if somebody replies back to you and they're asking for a lead magnet, you can have your lead magnet onto your company website. When they click on that website, meta pixel retargeting. Yeah. Or I don't know. I'm not from...

I'm not too good with Google Ads, but for meta Mhmm. If someone is clicking on your lead magnet and reading it, going to your website, that's, like, the perfect opportunity to hit them with your meta retargeting ads.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: So it's like a nice omni marketing channel for those larger companies that we prefer working with because they just get better results in terms of what they're doing overall.

Speaker: I mean, what do you see right now for your clients as far as cost per contract goes?

Speaker: So a big thing is even with an agency fee, like, we see people ranging from, like, 3 to $600 cost per contract because of how cheap, like, the actual email marketing infrastructure is. Mhmm. Like, we've all hired agencies before, like... And I, you know, we paid them thousands of dollars plus ad spend. Mhmm.

With email marketing, it's like, okay. You pay your agency the same fee that you would pay Google or Meta, but your infrastructure is $300.

Speaker: Yeah. So it's

Speaker: a big difference. Mhmm. Right? So if you're doing a ton of volume and you're only spending 3 to $500 a month, like like, $300 a month can send you 30,000 emails a month. That's your marketing dollars outside of the agency fee.

So when you put the agency fee plus the $300 a month and you divide it all by your cost of... The contracts that you collect, you can actually get, you know, that 3 to $600 range.

Speaker: I mean, that's what we were paying when we were texting

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Back in the day. Yeah. Not today.

Speaker: I know.

Speaker: Back in the day.

Speaker: Testing a lot. Right? Well, we don't do bulk texting anymore. I don't. So...

Speaker: Yeah. Okay. Wow. That's that's crazy. So, so I'll put, the the QR code for those watching on YouTube and then the the show notes.

We'll put the link on how to find out more. And I'm just thinking right now, like, there's so much opportunity because right right now, like, we're cold call... Not cold calling. It's not a terrible choice of words. We are calling their old leads and texting their old leads as follow-up campaigns.

Yep. So it only makes sense if we're already calling and texting, you might as well email them too.

Speaker: Correct.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: That's what we're saying too. It's like, you might as well throw it in the stack.

Speaker: Yeah. So I think there's a lot of opportunity here. So how much AI is involved in all of this?

Speaker: Yeah. So a lot of people want to use AI to help you write your copy. I think that's okay if you have the data to back it up. Mhmm. What we use AI generally for is, like, the onboarding.

Like, we have admin stuff that we do. Like, when you join our thing, like, we can, like, set up your mailbox, all that stuff with AI. But from the copywriting perspective, we have just so much data. Like, we use AI to, like, take all of the replies, the emails we've sent, the reply rates, and all that stuff. We can literally have a brain that collects all this information.

Mhmm. And then, like, for instance, like, we talked about my client that does luxury wholesaling. We learned after sending, like, 80,000 emails for him. If we mentioned the word developer in our emails, it, like, crushed, like, in a bad way. Yeah.

It was, like, do not do this anymore. Mhmm. But for us to comb through, like, all those emails for each client, like, it would literally kill us. Yeah. But what we use for AI is to congregate all that data or aggregate all that data to figure out what type of combinations of emails and copy that has actually been working.

And then also, AI also helps us with spintax. So if you guys aren't familiar with spintax, it's randomizing words inside your email copy Mhmm. Or SMS copy, whatever. So the email service providers don't see that you're sending the same email to 10,000 people every day. Yeah.

Right? We we change up all of our copy at the same time.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: So every email that goes out is a different combination of words. Right. That's what our big use of AI is is really for data decision making and applying spintax to our copy.

Speaker: Gotcha. Okay. But, you've also gone down this rabbit hole with AI. Yes. What's this rabbit hole you've gone?

You you

Speaker: It's, you know, everyone's talking about GrokBot. We're we're on the same boat. We are trying to have GrokBot do all these different things. Like, I'm not... Like, you know, content creation is a big thing for me.

Like, trying to... GrokBot's been kinda automating things, and I was talking to your team here. Like, you guys do some crazy things with Grok with that end. Mhmm. But really for us, it's like, how do we, like, maximize fulfillment?

Like, what we're trying to do right now is develop, like, a CSR in terms of, you know, we kinda have, like, the beginning of it right now where it's actually tracking all of our clients' tasks that we do, like email copies, sending up their mailboxes, reminders for them to, like, log in, book a call. And it's actually, like, talking to them in Slack. Mhmm. And saying, like, hey. You haven't, like, logged into your portal yet.

Yeah. Like, what's up? Like, are you gonna book a call with us? Like, it's like doing all that stuff because as we, like, start growing the company, like, we wanna make sure that, like, we're delivering for our clients. Our clients stay on task because when you purchase, you know, all these mailboxes, it does take a little bit of time to, like, warm up and, like, get attributed and write the copy.

Speaker: But

Speaker: people forget stuff. They're busy. Right.

Speaker: So

Speaker: we're trying to, like, automate all that stuff. But it's it's a lot of feedback here and there. Like, we're not trying to automate the whole business, but I think, like, having someone that kinda keep tracks of everybody is... You know, it costs... It saves a ton of money, but also, like, helps out the actual client too.

Speaker: Yeah. We are trying to automate everything.

Speaker: What are you guys trying to do? Everything?

Speaker: Everything. Everything. Like, I mean, we're trying to have, like, we're trying to... What are we doing now? I think we're at 1,900,000 ARR right now, and I'm trying to get to 10 without hiring another person.

Right? Like like, how can... Like, how how much can we automate where we only need the human in the loop, and that's it. Right? So, like Yeah.

Because we already have stellar people. The people in our organization are awesome.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But, like, can I can I grow this without adding people and just spend more on tokens? Right? Good. So we'll see. Right?

Because, like, right now, you know, we're we're we're changing the cost modeling. We're gonna, open it up, lower the price, open up to hit more people. And if they're open up to hit more people, then at the lower price, you don't get humans. Right? Yep.

You get AI support. Yep. And so, like, right now, like, I'll give you an example here. You know? I called the IRS yesterday.

They still use an IVR. I know. It's atrocious.

Speaker: Yeah. It's very bad.

Speaker: And it's... None of the options that I want are there. Right? I wanna have it where AI is level one support, but we have enough data from all the tickets that we solve. Level one support with AI will be significantly better than, like, the average human.

Speaker: I know. I agree with that.

Speaker: That's the target. So we'll see when we get there.

Speaker: Yeah. Well, you mentioned that you're doing, that you had a list of, like, roofers or something like that. Right? Like, are you trying to advertise to those type of companies now for AI? Like, you're...

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. I mean, we're gonna be going after every industry. And so, like, the more aggressive we can do it, like, cold email sounds like a great way. Yeah. Outreach, because you're saying b to b, and I I was, again, completely naive.

I had no idea how much cold emailing exists in the b to b world.

Speaker: Oh, yeah. I mean, if you... I mean, now that you're probably talking about it, you're probably gonna see a ton of ads. Mhmm. And you'll notice that, like, every ad you see is b to b.

So when we started running ads for ourselves, we actually got a lot of people that weren't wholesalers at first until we started, like, training the pixel a little better. Mhmm. But most people who came to us were, like, oh, I'm a property management company, like, looking to do this. Or I used to be a wholesaler, but I do life insurance now, two companies. Mhmm.

Like, that's who was, like, coming to us at first. Yeah. And then we adjusted our ads and stuff, then we're now only talking to real estate investors. But it is very prevalent in every industry but this. Like, we are, like, pioneering, you know, email marketing for real estate.

But, yes, huge for anywhere else.

Speaker: And then I guess the other thing too, you know, you're talking about using it for CSR, creating content. How are you using it for creating content?

Speaker: Yeah. So I scrape everybody's, like like, my competitors and other different creators, like, on YouTube and Instagram, and I use Apify, pull the transcripts and stuff. And then also, I'm starting to look at outside my industry as well, like, seeing what outliers are not in the real estate world. Because what I noticed, like, in YouTube specifically, the content that was, like, popping off for other creators in you... Or real estate, like, I wasn't really doing well.

So, like, I started just doing my own stuff, but having that research, then I have it pass off to a, content script writer that interviews me for every video, and I just, like, give it, like, feedback, personal experience. Then it creates a script. I film it, and then I drop it into a folder, and then I have a Grok editor Mhmm. That just takes that raw footage, cuts it into the way that I like it. So I was telling your crew about it.

I was like, I have a folder for raw, a folder for edited that I paid, like, a professional person to do, compared the two. Here's a raw clip. Run it. See how it do... See how it does.

And then give a feedback. Give a feedback. And it's, like, pretty good, like Yeah. For AI doing it and being, like, all automated.

Speaker: So what I did, recently for x was, I had it just follow a handful of people that are doing really well Mhmm. And just, like, learn their strategies, replicate their their thing. And at first, I was, like, you know, letting it write the post and then, like, I would approve it and so on. But now we're at a point where, like, it's just writing all the posts.

Speaker: And posting it themselves.

Speaker: It's just posting it. But what's really cool is I actually have one other bot who, it's... Had access to my entire, library for all my AI calls. Right? And so it's just...

On Sundays, it's just pulling four of the best audio clips, extracting it, giving me the waves, giving me the transcripts to put underneath the waves, bleeping out any sensitive information. So there's no company name. There's no address. So if you're talking

Speaker: to someone, just like, hey, Sally. It, like, beeps out the mail.

Speaker: All of it. And then it's just posting it on x without any requirements from me. And I was like, hey. This is pretty cool. So what we did now is, like, hey.

Also make a nine by 16 Instagram version.

Speaker: Yeah. Right?

Speaker: And so now now that automatically goes to my media team, and now they can start posting that. And it's, like, all automated. It's not... So, like, I'm now growing followers and views on x. Automated.

Automated.

Speaker: How much

Speaker: time? It's way better than me.

Speaker: What, what plan are you on now? Like, do you have multiple Grok plans now?

Speaker: I mean, I just have the Ultra. Okay.

Speaker: That's what I do too. Yeah.

Speaker: I have the highest. But we have 16 Grok accounts. Right? It's like

Speaker: it's

Speaker: like everyone in our company has a Grok bot account.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: That's what I'm saying. I'm trying to get to where we can five x our company With AI. Without any more hires. Yeah. We'll see if that happens.

We'll see if that works.

Speaker: I mean, I... From the short time that we personally use GrokBot, like, we were like, holy cow. And, like, we're not even, like... I mean, we probably had, like, 40% usage right now so far this week on, like, Grok... Like, the $200 plan.

And, like, we, like, essentially automated, like, 80% of onboarding. Yeah. And we had someone that actually, like, did that for us. Mhmm. You know?

Now we're like, oh, wow. We don't really actually need that person to do that. Because now with technology, like, everything has an API, everything has an MCP, And you can actually access, like, the... So, like, how we buy our mailbox, like, we can just, like, plug into Google and just, like, buy it. Yeah.

And we're, like, oh my gosh. This is this is crazy. And all we need to do is provide it the feedback, like, hey, he's buying 20 mailboxes, 30 mailboxes. This is what his domain is. Go find me, like, six different versions of that domain.

Yeah. And then, we have a little Grok bought credit card that has a limit. Use the Grok credit card. You go buy for us.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Done. We're like, this is crazy.

Speaker: It's nuts. Yeah. It's nuts. This is this is this is a new world we are in now. So let's see here.

Is there anything else... Oops. Hang on a second. Can I see if there's anything else I had in my notes here? We had...

Yeah. I think we covered a lot of... Is anything that we haven't talked about that you wanted to make sure we hit on? No.

Speaker: I mean, I think we I think we covered a lot of the educational stuff. Like, I just wanted to, like, educate people too. Like, hey. What are the differences between the different things? And

Speaker: Yeah. I mean, it's it's fascinating. Right? Because, like, this is a whole different world. Like...

And we've done the texting. We've done the cold calling. We've done all these things. Right? And I tried cold emailing a few years ago, and it was a complete bust.

Speaker: It was better, like, honestly, like, it was probably easier a couple years ago.

Speaker: Not when we did it because we sucked at it.

Speaker: Okay. We didn't

Speaker: know what

Speaker: we were doing. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: Right? It was just like you give it to your VA. Hey. Like, go send email....

Speaker: Send 2,000.

Speaker: Yeah. Well, no. That was me when I was there with Gmail. I'm saying, like, when we were doing it for wholesaling, I was, like, 20, maybe 2019, whatever.

Speaker: It's like, you just

Speaker: give it to your VA. It's like, hey. You know, my buddies are cold emailing. They're saying it's great. Like, go do it.

And then she would go do it. And then it works. Like, well, we tried.

Speaker: I know. I know. It's it's, you know, the... I think the hardest part is, like, it's the same as, running inbound. Right?

Like, even if you paid for a paper lead or a Google lead and they give you your email and their phone number, and your setters are, like, calling them, texting them, trying to get a hold of them, like, there is that problem too in email. Like, I would never be a provider or service person that says, like, we are, like, the end all be all. Mhmm. There are risks, and there are other typical real estate b s that we deal with. But in terms of getting at bats and the most cost effective at bats, like, that's what we're trying to achieve Yeah.

Is if you spend money on Google Ads, like, we tell all of our clients, don't stop. Like, that's what makes you money. But our whole goal is, like, if your cost per contract is $13.40 $100 and you get one banger, two bangers of a deal on email, you've brought your whole business down to, you know, $900 cost per contract. Right?

Speaker: Well, you already have the email address. Correct.

Speaker: And you already have it.

Speaker: Yeah. You're gonna hit them.

Speaker: Might as well hit them. Yeah. Right? So that's kind of, like, the thought process with, like, email marketing, and it's even bigger with b to b because, you know, they're just used to getting hit with emails.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's just having the message that actually delivers. Like, we we have a roofing company guy who, does wholesaling and roofing. He's leaning towards doing only roofing because he's making a lot of money in that. When we get him a person, like, we're about to launch his campaign for just roofing alone, all he needs to do is get, you know, one or two people that do, like, a low ticket offer of, like, a gutter repair for a thousand bucks. It comes with a free survey.

They see the roof. Oh my god. You know, is there

Speaker: a hole in the roof or whatever?

Speaker: They sell them for, you know, $2,030,000. Mhmm. Right? So, like, in the b to b space, it's way more money. Tons of recruiting firms do cold email.

Yeah. But, yeah, I'm I'm excited to talk to you about that. But, yeah, it's it's a lot of fun doing email. Yeah.

Speaker: We're probably gonna have, like, extra hour after this call to have a podcast to keep going. So, so, any last messages you wanna leave? Last thoughts, all watchers, all the listeners you wanna leave them with?

Speaker: Yeah. I mean, if you're, you're doing a w two and you're on the fence, like, don't rush it. I would take your time, think about it, you know, figure out what you really want to do in life. There's nothing wrong with quitting your job. Right?

So I I went... I struggled with that for a long time, but don't be in a rush. And if you really want to, like, achieve your dream, just go for it. And then, yeah. If you wanna do cold email, let let us know.

Speaker: Yeah. So Tim with our inbox. And then, again, we'll have the QR code. We'll have the URL and the show notes. Thank you so much.

It was awesome. I learned a lot.

Speaker: Steve, appreciate it, man. I appreciate you having us. Yeah. For sure.

Speaker: Thank you guys for watching. We'll see you guys next time. Steve train. Jump on the Steve train. Disrupt us.