Joe Dillon Shares How to Scale to Hundreds of Thousands Per Month

Steve Trang: Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Real Estate Disruptors. Today, we have Joe Dillon, and he's here to talk about his journey in wholesaling. If this is your first time tuning in, I'm Steve Trang, broker and owner of Stunning Homes Realty, founder of the OfferFast Homes app, the only app you'll need for wholesaling, and I'm on a mission to create 100 millionaires. So if you're interested in joining me in that journey, please let's connect on Instagram, steve dot trang.

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You ready?

Joe Dillon: Ready to go, my man.

Steve: Alright. Alright. So what got you into real estate?

Joe: So, yeah. I was actually flipping cars. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, man, I've I've always been an entrepreneur.

So, like, ever since I was young, when I was, like, 14, you know, I used to go to my parents are from Peru. Okay. So I went there. I bought, like, $7, like, because Lacoste was made in Peru. Mhmm.

I bought, like, $7 Lacoste shirts. You know what I mean? And, and we came back and flipped them for, like, $40. I would do that, like, 30 times. You know what I mean?

But, anyways, I've always been an entrepreneur. So, like, I as soon as I got out of college, I I tried to do the job thing, and I was like, dude, this is not working. Yeah. Right. I'm an entrepreneur.

Right. And so, I started flipping cars.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: So as I flipped cars, and I did did that for about a year or so. Right. And man, like, cars are so much work. And, and I would make, like, maybe $1,500 or, like, $2,000 for, like, weeks of hard manual labor. You know what I mean?

Steve: Oh, okay.

Joe: Yeah. So, through that, I was doing that with a partner. Okay? And, and through that, I met, basically, we were we were at my cousin's house one day. Mhmm.

And, through that, I met, I met my partner to be who told me what he was doing. Right? And he was, basically, doing wholesaling. Right? Getting off the ground.

You know what I mean? And, and I was really intrigued. Well, kind of as the universe had it, like, we ran into each other, you know, just kept running into each other. Mhmm. And, and pretty soon, I was like, you know what?

Like, I need I need to probably make that move. Right? Right. And, you know, so I hit him up. And now we basically joined up.

He told me what he was doing, and I was like, alright. Well, this is what I can do. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Boom. Boom. We started, like, mapping out. I remember I still remember that day. Put a whole game plan, the whole vision.

And, we have a lot we have very different strengths. And so, like, we were able to really come together Right. And just explode the the business. Right? So What year

Steve: was this?

Joe: This was, 2014.

Steve: 2014.

Joe: Yeah.

Steve: Okay. So five years ago.

Joe: Yep. Yep. Okay.

Steve: Yeah. Five years ago. So you connected with them. Yep. And you guys started working together.

Joe: So it

Steve: was basically up and running. Yeah.

Joe: Yeah. It was it was already up and running. You know, it was, you know, wasn't weren't doing anything crazy, but, like, you know, kinda getting started. Mhmm. And then and then, you know, just a lot of hustle, man.

A lot of hustle. I remember hammering the phones, like, you know, I remember this this one, winter day. It was, like, snowing. We were just, you know, we were just so dedicated. We we still went all all of us to the office and just cold call, cold call, cold call.

You know? A lot of hustle. Right? A lot of hustle. Started on just a little bit of direct mail too.

And, and, yeah, we really we started to started to really see, you know, some some growth. Mhmm. And and then we hit kind of like a a plateau. Right? And we didn't get any deals for, like, five months.

Steve: What market was this in? DC. DC. Okay.

Joe: This is when we started. Yeah. Okay. So we started in DC. And, and yeah.

I mean, so it was, it was definitely hell of a journey. Right? I remember, like,

Steve: watching We got a we got a we got a a comment, and this is it's not fun. They're they're saying the gum was distracting.

Joe: Oh, I apologize. Sorry about that. Alright.

Steve: Okay. Go ahead.

Joe: Appreciate appreciate that, whoever said that. So, so yeah. So, basically where was that?

Steve: Where was that? Well, you're going, it was five month plateau.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. I remember telling so it was actually me, a partner and another partner. Mhmm. Okay.

And I remember telling the other partner, I was like, man, like, sometimes when and, you know, there might be people that are relating to this right now. But sometimes when you're like, when you don't get a deal for a while Mhmm. You're like you feel like the whole world is falling apart. Right? And you're like, shit.

Is this gonna actually end up working? And I remember telling my my other partner, his name is Daryl. I remember telling him I was like, dude, I'm gonna look back on this moment, and I'm gonna I'm gonna smile. Right? Right.

Like, yeah, we were we were just hammering the phones for months. You know what I mean? Months and months. And, we didn't get any deals, you know? So, so anyways, yeah, so that was that was the grind.

You know what I mean? I kind of missed that. But, but, yeah, basically, that's kind of how we started getting started. So

Steve: Yeah. So, you talked about, some of your struggles. Right? It took five months. So what was the struggle or what exactly, you know, you guys were cold calling?

What did you guys do to overcome that struggle? Did you guys do anything different? Or it was just

Joe: Yeah. So, basically, there was a, there was a point in time where we we took a step back from new lead generation Yeah. Which I always recommend. Right? Let's say if you have if you're if you're a little bit more comfortable than, like, alright.

I don't have money to buy groceries. But if you're a little bit more comfortable than that, I always suggest taking a step back to systemize the business a little bit more. Mhmm. So you have more of, more more power overall overall. Right?

And so we took a step back, and we structured it a little bit more, as opposed to just, you know, and it was kinda like still kinda like messy. Right? Because we were still getting started. We still kinda didn't know what the hell we were doing. So but, but, yeah.

So essentially, we were we were doing that and, we we took a step back and we started to structure it. Mhmm. Okay. Because before it was like everybody was doing everything. You know, it was like I was doing these positions.

He was doing these positions. I was doing acquisitions. He was doing acquisitions. You know what I mean? There was no division of labor.

There was no structure in place, you know. And, and really, like, really, like, what I've come to realize is, like, you know, just like any business, like, really building a business as opposed to just trying to find deals. Yeah. Right? Which is two completely completely different things.

Steve: 100%.

Joe: And, we took a step back also. Like, I I, I came in with marketing, you know, a little bit of marketing background. And so I definitely created a tool for us that we could analyze our marketing Mhmm. Which is one of the biggest things. Right?

So, basically, I help a few people, you know, kind of scale their business. But, basically, the things I always teach is is, four the four stages of marketing. Right? Which is planning. Okay.

Who are you going to target? How are you going to hit them? Right. And back in the day, like everybody was doing direct mail. Right?

All right. And so, you know, obviously we're doing that too. But we were one of the first people to start cold calling. Which is pretty cool because, like, man, I remember, like, so many times like, this is like, people that are just getting in the game will be, like, I can't even fathom this. But so many times we would talk to people that we cold called and they would tell us consistently, man, I got a stack of postcards on my desk.

Right? Right. Stack of postcards. Hundreds of postcards. I've never received a cold call before.

Steve: Oh, wow.

Joe: You know? Yeah. And so we started to, we noticed that we would triple down on on cold calling. Right. Obviously, right?

Yeah. And, that's what I always share with everybody. Like, you want to get where investors aren't right now. Obviously, that's not the case right now. Right.

Everybody and their mother's cold calling. So, it's a little bit it's a little bit different, but you got to stay ahead of got to stay ahead of the pack. Right. And so, you know, we took us like like I said, back to your question, we took a step back. You're saying you're asking me like, okay, what was the real difference?

We took a step back. We structured it. All right. You know, you're going to do acquisitions. You're gonna do, you know, building cash buyers list, building dispositions list.

You're gonna do marketing, for example. Right? So division of labor, and strategic marketing, you know? So we would, like I said, I I built this tool that we can actually analyze and we can plan on marketing. Mhmm.

So a lot of people are just trying they're basically throwing shit against the wall. Right? But yeah. So, basically, one of the, one of the things that we did was that over in DC, and it's probably like this in a few other markets, there's a lot of development that goes on. And with, strategic, like, very specific development, with that comes a lot of opportunity.

So, for example, analyzing certain zoning codes to where, hey, there's a single family home on this property right now. Mhmm. But it has the lot size. Right? And, the zoning to where you can build up, you know, maybe one or two more levels, and you can turn it into two or three condos.

Right? And so those were our those were some of our our biggest, biggest hitters. Right? We've had several we had several several 6 figure assignments in DC.

Steve: That's cool.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, that's, but that came from analyzing the zoning. Right? Kind of, like, learning that. And, we I remember, man, there was this guy. Guys, follow-up.

Oh my gosh. Follow-up is so key. Like, that's where 90% of your your business is gonna come from. Right? There was this guy that I knew, like, I knew he was in, you know, the the situation the perfect situation, but he was just he just felt defeated.

You know? And I feel like that's a lot of, the homeowners, you know, in that situation, which is again, I I love homeowners. I love being able to serve, right, in that situation because they feel like they feel like like you're you're you saved them. You know? Because this this poor fellow, I still remember him.

His name his name was Reggie. Right? Reggie Pegram, out in DC. And, he was just gonna let it go. He was just gonna let let the property go.

Right? And he owed he only owed 70,000.

Steve: Wow.

Joe: And so in DC, right, for those of you who know DC, that's, that's nothing. You you I literally couldn't buy anything in DC for 70. I would buy anything in DC for 70. So ended up, getting that property under contract. And, you know, well, after we analyze it, we're like, wow.

This is a phenomenal deal. Phenomenal deal. So, we actually ended up selling that one, I believe it was, for 200. Yeah. And so and and because he was just an awesome like, we gave him, you know, we gave him, extra on that one.

Steve: Right.

Joe: But yeah. I mean, we actually ended up getting two more properties from from that person, and they were both they were both large assignments. You know?

Steve: So you were talking about, when we're we're we're talking before, like, you so you started in 2014. At some point, you guys were doing a lot more volume.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve: Right? So, like, your biggest month ever, you guys did?

Joe: Yeah. About half half 1,000,000.

Steve: Half 1,000,000. Okay. So what was what was going on to get you guys to that level?

Joe: Yeah. So that's when we started to structure. So I would say 2014, you know, kind of getting getting it off the ground. I'm still testing a lot of things out. 2015 was kind of like our we we called it like our, our mistake year.

We made a lot of money in 2015, but we also spent a lot of money. Right? And, you know, for those of you listening, look, it doesn't it doesn't matter what you what year what the top line is. Mhmm. Don't get, you know, don't get caught up in what people, you know, say nowadays.

But it doesn't matter what you, what the top line is. It matters what the bottom line is, you know? And so we ended up spending a lot of money. And we made hiring errors, you know, marketing campaign flops, you know, inconsistencies. There was just a lot a lot of things that we did and that we learned, oh, you know, over the course of the year.

But, what kinda like back to what I was saying. The biggest thing that the biggest thing that propelled us was structure. Mhmm. Right? Alright.

This is how we structure the business and proper delegation. Right? And so, you know, like I said, I mean, I help, I help some investors now, but but really, like, the the biggest thing is, like, help them how to help them build a business. Right. You know, a real business.

And that's supposed to just getting deals. And so having structure, having systems, having processes and hiring the right people. So we, you know, as any as anybody who's concerned about the bottom line is, When we started hiring people, I Oh, my God. Yeah. So so, you know, we put the ad out of, like, I think, like 10 or $12 an hour.

Mhmm. Right? Somehow expecting to get a rock star. Not not expecting, but like we didn't really know any better. Right?

Right. And so obviously the caliber of people that we attracted with that was obviously subpar. Right? Right. So, yeah.

And so I've been

Steve: in the DC area.

Joe: Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

Steve: Live offs hold all the time. You can't

Joe: you can't do anything. Yeah. So yeah. So I remember the the caliber of people, and it was like, it was kinda like us. And it was a huge division between, you you know, the owners and the employees.

You know what I mean?

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: Because, just because obviously, like, you know, we we didn't we didn't wanna, like, pay for it. Right? Mhmm. And so, obviously, we changed that, changed the conversation structure. Mhmm.

We started really reaching out to our personal network. Right? If you guys are whoever's building a team, read the book Who, who is a phenomenal book.

Steve: Who is a who is an amazing book?

Joe: Definitely amazing book. And, you know, one of the things that it teaches us about sourcing, selection, retention. Right? So basically all about people and how to attract a players to your team.

Steve: Yeah.

Joe: And the best by far, by far, consistently, and I see this repeat in every business, a lot of different business owners, a lot of friends, by far the best people that you're gonna attract is in your personal and professional network. Typically. Mhmm. Typically. Now you can obviously get a rock star from, like, you know, Indeed post or something like that.

But, but still, we did that. We started reaching out to a personal and professional network. And, you know, we we started posting on social media a lot. And so, yeah, we just attracted we started attracting them. Right.

Those high caliber people. And I remember, like, we were like, man, we finally found our we finally found our our our group, our solid core, you know? And those people are actually still there today. So Yeah.

Steve: So at some point, you transitioned. Right? Like, you part you parted ways. Yep. Yep.

So when was that?

Joe: So, a few months ago, officially in November. No.

Steve: No. I'm talking about, like, when you used to work with Rafael.

Joe: Okay. Okay.

Steve: When was when was that?

Joe: So that the whole time. The whole time. And then we've, we've Oh. Yeah. Officially parted ways, November.

Steve: Yeah. Oh, okay. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Alright. So then what was your business looking like

Joe: before? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So okay. So getting there. So, basically, as soon as we struck the business, we found our core people. Mhmm. Doing, you know, regularly, you know, six figure months and, you know, the market market we were in.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: Tried to expand to Baltimore. That was our first, that was our first attempt at expansion. Mhmm. And, we we kinda didn't know what we were doing still because, you know, we kinda just took a shot. But, you know, in wholesaling, it's it's way less risky to just expand into another market than it is to, let's say, flip in another market.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, it was it's just this your only risk is your marketing campaign. Mhmm.

Right? And, the biggest thing is we were very strategic with our marketing campaigns. Right. I tell people this all the time, wholesaling, not flipping or buying holding, but wholesaling specifically, it's not a real estate business. It's a marketing business.

Steve: Right.

Joe: Marketing and sales.

Steve: Mhmm. You know?

Joe: And so that's kind of like was our expertise. Right? Really marketing and sales. And so, and, and so, oh, lost my train of thought. Let's see.

You were asking What

Steve: were you talking about? What was the you're expanding the Baltimore?

Joe: Right. Right. Right. Okay. So yeah.

So that that we didn't, like, lose money, but we didn't make a ton of money. Mhmm. But with for all the time, you know, for all the time invested, like, it's not, you know, it's not really Right. Wasn't really worth it,

Steve: you know? So then what was the lesson learned there?

Joe: Well, we need to be a lot more strategic about the zones, like the specific neighborhoods that we're hitting. Right? And so, you know, we, as we started to become more prominent on social media, right, we came on the, I think we were at Dave Lindahl's. Dave Lindahl, you know, are you familiar with Dave Lindahl?

Steve: I am not.

Joe: He's a multifamily, basically, he's a multifamily, I guess, instructor. Mhmm. So he had an event down in Tampa. And, basically in Tampa, we, we met up with, like, you know, someone that was following us on social media. Mhmm.

And basically, you know, months after, we kind of developed that relationship. And because the the relationship was so awesome and the quality of the person was so was so high Mhmm. We decided to jump into Tampa. Alright? Yeah.

And but this time, we did it a lot more strategically. So we got we got, relationships with investors that are already in the business in Tampa. Mhmm. And asked them about certain ZIP codes. Right?

Right. And we found commonalities within the ZIP codes. In addition, we got access to the MLS and we started really, we started really, really diving deep into the MLS, looking at specific, ZIP codes and looking at what properties it's selling for, how much the spreads are on the MLS, you know, and, and off the MLS. Right? Right.

And so we we targeted specific, specific ZIP codes in Tampa. Boom. With the right people, with the right marketing. Right? Mhmm.

Because we were testing out a lot. We were heavy in direct mail. And, so we we tested out consistently split testing. Right? For those of you that are doing, again, that are doing marketing, gotta consistently split test to figure out what's working.

Right? Right. I call it conscious business. Right? You gotta understand your business as much as possible.

Yeah. And so, so essentially, yeah, so we hopped in, we jumped into Tampa, and we had like a, like a, 2000% ROI. It was amazing. Wow. We were also jumping in at a great time, right?

Yeah. Tampa was When

Steve: was it?

Joe: Appreciating. This was, 2016. '16.

Steve: Okay.

Joe: 2016. Yeah. Okay. Yep. And so, yeah.

So that snowballed. And then, again, like the main thing there is we really understood our marketing. So we understood, hey, what postcard is performing the best? Right? We did a lot of, of the Chris Chico postcard.

I actually just met just saw him a few weeks ago. Yeah. Like the third notice kind of postcard. Card. Right.

And so and what we also did, though, was we split tested that with another post card. So it's like an indirect post card, which doesn't really say, hey, I wanna buy your property Mhmm. Versus a, a direct postcard that says, you know, very clearly what you want to do, what your intentions are. Right? And so, what we found, right, through thousands and thousands of data points is that they, they both appeal to a different, different portion of your list.

Right? So, you know, you buy a list, you skip trace it, you, you know, you're you're you're mailing that list or you're or you're targeting it in some way, RVM ing cold calls, that extracts a different portion. Like, there's for example, there's some people that will call you for this for this, this I wanna buy your your home letter, let's say. And that definitely wouldn't call on the third notice postcard. Right?

And so in that way, you're extracting all the juice from your lists. Mhmm. Right? As opposed to sending the same postcard over and over. Right?

Right. And so what we would do, what I call cycling, right, market cycling, is we found that like the Crescendo postcard was working phenomenal. Right? Right. And that was our highest performing postcard.

But we still wanted to extract the juice. Right? Mhmm. So I would, so basically we would send let me make like a Chris Chivo postcard, that very indirect, urgent notice type of postcard, let's say for two months. Mhmm.

And then we would cycle it and send, like, a very direct, nice, professional letter kind of thing. Right. And in doing so, you're retaining the cost of not sending letters, because letters are expensive. Mhmm. Not sending them letters every month, but still extracting the juice from that.

So, like, two months, one month, two months, one month kind of thing.

Steve: Yeah. That makes sense.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. And so, like, it was, you know, we did a lot of a lot of really cool stuff with the marketing. But and this is this is kind of a tip for for everybody. But again, you want to get where where investors are not.

Right? And so we had, you know, several lists that were really working for us. But for example, like, we had a, it was a very expensive list, but we would, we would, we would, get an owner occupied list and we would skip trace that list. And not a lot of first of all, not a lot of people do that. Right?

Because it's a bigger, broader list. Right. And then we would see who came back as a different address. So essentially, they weren't unoccupied. They were absentee in reality.

Mhmm. And because nobody was skip tracing those, nobody was mailing the the new address.

Steve: Right.

Joe: And that was one of our highest performing lists because, because nobody was was was hitting those guys. Yeah. You know? By the same token, another example, is you you skip you know, most people use, like, batch skip tracing. Right?

Right. But, you know, you get a list of 5,000 people, let's say. Mhmm. You skip trace it, and you, you know, it comes back. Usually, industry standard is, like, 65 to 70% of the list comes back.

Mhmm. Okay. So two things here. One, I use, I use this company called Smooth Skip. Okay?

So smoothskip.com. And they're able to run it twice. So so they run it with a property address as well as the mailing address. So they're able to get higher returns than any other batch, batch company that I've seen. So, essentially, they come back, let's say, with 80%.

Right? Right. So out of those, what did I say? 5,000? Out of the 5,000 people Mhmm.

That we targeted, that we sent to SkipTress, 4,000 came back with updated addresses, with phone numbers. What happens to the other thousand? Right? Guess who's not skip tracing the rest of the other that thousand?

Steve: Most people.

Joe: Everybody else. Right. Right? And so, we, you know, skip trace that. The people who don't come back Mhmm.

Right? Because most batch skip tracing, I think, is very similar. Yeah. You know, they're all using, you know, Delve Point and the back end or or TLO. Right?

But most of those, right, will usually return the same kind the same similar data. Right? Yeah. And so those thousand people that are not coming back, there might be, you know, plus or minus few 100, but chances are they're not coming back for the other ones as well. Mhmm.

And so what you do is you manually skip trace those thousand. Right. And then since no one has guess who's not calling those people? Right. Everybody else.

And so, and so, you know, those are basically, few tricks to the trade. But, yeah, you wanna get where other investors aren't. That's how you win in a saturated market.

Steve: Yeah. You know? Any other any other ideas?

Joe: Just as far as,

Steve: Like, things that you're

Joe: knowing that

Steve: are working really effectively. Yeah.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So for example, I've had a few people come to me.

They're like, man, I set up an RVM campaign. Mhmm. Like a ringless voicemail campaign. And, first of all, please don't make the mistake of of, taking those calls live. Yeah.

Because so so here's the thing, right? And, and you gotta you basically gotta just gotta understand how how, marketing works, right? That's why I tried to, to enlighten people that it's a marketing business, right? Marketing and sales, right? Which we can get to sales in a second, you know?

But basically just still talking about marketing. So I look at different marketing channels. Right? Direct mail, RVM, SMS, you know, cold calls. And, you you really wanna just understand how they work.

Right? So, for example, when you send out an RVM, most people are not going to most most people, I'd say, don't listen to the RVM. They just see a missed call and they call back. Right? Because sometimes you will see a you will see the missed call.

Right? And when that call is being returned, that's probably one of the lowest quality leads. Let's let's call it, lowest ratio of quality leads. Mhmm. So that might be of all the people who call back, that might actually be, like, a 2%, ratio of people that might actually be interested.

Because, like, they see them as call, right, they're they're gonna call back. Super low quality. So you gotta you gotta kind of, play that. Like, you gotta understand that. Right?

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: Alright. Well, I'm not going to allow my team to take a 2% quality, call. Right. Right? I wanna keep it at, let's say, 50 plus.

Right? You know, maybe every every other call, which is, you know, direct mail is at, let's say, if you use a direct kind of messaging. Yeah. Direct mail is, you know, anywhere from 50 to 70% sometimes. So half the people call to bitch you out and half the people call to, you know, to, to actually, see what you got to say.

Right. With the third notice kind of postcards, it's usually a lot lower, anywhere from 20 to 30%. And, and so you gotta just basically you gotta play where it lays. You know what I mean? Right.

And so I don't I usually don't push anything to, you know, I wouldn't push anything to my acquisitions team Mhmm. Unless it's, like, above 50%. Right? Right. And so what you do for RVMs, going back to RVMs, is you set up a system, where, you know, it basically it sends when they call back, it sends them to another voicemail Mhmm.

And says, hey. You know, it gives you the whole feel. Hey. This is this is Joe Dillon. If, if you missed if you missed a call from me, chances are I'm giving you a call about a property that that, you may be looking to sell.

Then you give the whole the whole pitch. Right?

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: If they're interested, right? If you want, if you want an offer on your home, if you want a cash offer on your home, press 1. You press 1, then it rings your team. Right. And in that way, you kind of have, like, a buffer.

And it filters out, like, you got a bunch of people calling you, and it just filters out the interesting ones.

Steve: Alright. Yeah. I had friends that have done that, and it's made that mistake. And it's like, oh, my God. I would never do that again.

Joe: Alright. So the first time we did that, our acquisitions guy was, like, drained. He was like Yeah. He was like, dude, what the hell did you do? Yeah.

Are we allowed to go in here? Okay.

Steve: Yeah. Alright. So alright. So I wanna so we talked about, like, back in November, you're you're bought out. Right?

And you're you're you're jonesing and you're getting back into it. Right? So I wanna talk about, you know, since you had this massive success before with a partner Yeah. You wanna you know, you're going back different markets. So, like, I wanna talk about, like, you know, you kinda have this blank slate that you can do it exactly how you want it because you you know what worked before

Joe: Mhmm.

Steve: You know what was disaster that you cannot undo. Yeah. Right? So, you know, you're gonna go back to you're gonna go to new market. What is the blueprint for you now moving forward to a new market?

Joe: Alright. Yeah. That's a that's a phenomenal question. So, so one, we got I got to understand the the market. Mhmm.

Like, I got to understand my my zip codes. I got to understand my neighborhoods. Right? Yeah. So there's two ways that you can really you can really, like go about marketing and targeting, let's say.

Yeah. You can go about it by and we we always had like debates on which one, which one to go with. You can go by motivation. Right. So like getting, you know, lists like, you know, like like tax defaults.

Right? Like like probates, like foreclosures. Right? You can also go by by geography. Right?

And so I would really do kind of like a hybrid where I would be targeting both of them. Right? Mhmm. But I'm a huge fan of list stacking. Right?

Really? Yeah. So, you know, you know, what do you think about it?

Steve: I mean, I've heard many people say that's on their best best best list.

Joe: Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. It sound like you were gonna disagree. That's why.

Yeah. But yeah. No. I'm a huge fan of ListStacker.

Steve: Oh, are huge fan. I'd like to say you weren't. I'm sorry.

Joe: Oh, okay. No. No. Dude.

Steve: Huge fan.

Joe: Massive. Massive. So Robert Robert Cypher is actually a good really good friend of mine. Mhmm. But, yeah, I mean, I was looking for that, dude, for so long.

Right? And so because if you don't have it, the list the the list management in Excel is just a freaking pain in the butt. Right? So anyhow, that's a way that's a really good way to, like, sniper target and then really get a high ROI. Mhmm.

Right? So I would what I would do is I would sniper, get a high ROI, close deals with low lower costs. Right? Mhmm. Which, you know, you do that with with list stacking.

Yeah. Actually just did that with a buddy of mine, and it turns out, like, 65% of his revenue was, you know, someone that I'm helping, 65% of his revenue was coming from, like, 7% of the entire records. Right? Yeah. That's when you find that out, it's like, woah.

It's like, you know, it's huge. So, so definitely jump in, right, list stack and target. Right? So sniper so that I can get start generating revenue, get a high, high ROI.

Steve: Or highest, lowest hanging fruit.

Joe: Right. And then, right, to kind of like test out the, the, the market. Right? Because as much as you study and analyze the market, you're not really gonna know it until you really start to get in there. Right?

Steve: Yeah.

Joe: And so, and so that's that's what I would do first. Right? And really generate, you know, a lot of, a lot of a lot of income. And then use that income to, one okay. So it's basically like there's three there's three aspects to the business.

There's marketing. There's acquisitions. Mhmm. Right? Which is which I say acquisition starts as soon as people, as soon as you pick up the phone, when someone is interested.

Okay. And then there's disposition. So as soon as you get a property in a contract, selling the property to an investor. If you're wholesaling, if you're closing on the property, that's a different story. Right?

Steve: Yeah.

Joe: But, so yeah. So I would get my marketing machine, make sure that, you know, start generating income and really systemize this market machine. So the biggest thing that I've seen and a lot of people come to me, and they're like, with the probably the biggest problem that people have nowadays is inconsistency. Mhmm. Deal flow inconsistency.

Like, I can't get my my my my months to be consistent. I can't get my my my deals to be consistent. Right? And, and man, I feel for them because, like, that's like, you're chasing the deal at that point, you know? And I've had so many people, like, it's it's stressful, dude.

It's it's frustrating. You know? Yeah. The way to consistent deal flow is one okay. So I actually, I plotted out 13 macro five.

I won't go through each of them. But I, really analyze this business. And I was like, alright. What are the contributions? What are the contributing factors to an inconsistent deal flow?

And, you know, I broke it out by department, you know, marketing acquisitions, disposition. But the biggest thing is so obvious, but people don't do it. Consistent marketing. Right. Just being consistent with your marketing.

Right. And so, you know, that's number one. Right. So you have a plan. Right.

And I have a VA that literally manages the, you know, I'll have a VA that literally manages the entire back end.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: So, you know, they'll get to the point where all I have to do is like select what I want to target. All the property list manager stuff, all the Excel stuff, all the loading into the the dialer, the the sending to the direct mail company. Right? Loading into the RVM software or SMS software. All that's done by the VA.

So the biggest thing and this is for me. It might not be for some of you, like, because I have, you know, because I'm not, like, hurting for money. Right? That's this is what I would do. I would set up the marketing machine.

Yep. So that I could be consistent. And then obviously go into it with, with great people. Right? And so find find a killer.

Right? An acquisitions killer. Maybe someone who's been in the business before. But if not, I found well, I found great places to target people. Obviously, personal professional network, but, specifically, previous jobs, either, timeshare, like people that have been in timeshare sales.

Mhmm. Freaking phenomenal. Right? Right. And, car salespeople.

Right. Yeah. I know

Steve: a lot of people have success with car salespeople.

Joe: Yeah.

Steve: Okay. So, you do research. You do you start pulling data. Right? So where would you pull data from?

Joe: Okay. So couple different places. Right? I've we've had huge success with list stores. Right?

A lot of people try to cheap out. I've seen this time and time again. A lot of people try to cheap out on on data. Yeah. It's not gonna work.

Right. It's not plus It's

Steve: the foundation.

Joe: And it's not sustainable. Right? You have to spend money, one, on good data and to skip trace it. So you really gotta spend money. Right?

Mhmm. So it's, you know, it's definitely a list source. The county, you can get a lot of free data from the county, but I I like list stacking it because a lot of that is, a lot of those are people without equity. Mhmm. So I, you know, I do, like, a 50%, equity and unknown equity on list source.

And then, and then also, I'll, this is what I'll do. I'll I'll make it very broad. Mhmm. Like, this is just on another little tidbit. On ListSource, for example, some people like to do years of ownership.

But if you don't if you don't do years of ownership, right, which you shouldn't because I'll I'll explain it in a second. So, basically, when you purchase a list with, like, let's say you say fifteen years of ownership, right, it's going to remove all those unknowns. Mhmm. And the unknowns, usually, it's like, you know, older folks. Right?

People maybe maybe there was, like, an older system in place. And so all the, you know, all the data from maybe 1984 and before was was wiped out or something like that. Right? Right. And so that's gold too.

And again, we've, like, we were, like I was we were tracking themes, and so we would track every part of the business. And so that's how I know all these little things. Right? And so, so list source for sure. Go to the county, get evictions list.

Right? Tax delinquent list. And then, you know, all those other lists. I have preforeclosures. Right?

Ideally, probates. And, again, one of the biggest things is list stacking Right. For me.

Steve: So And so and for you guys that don't know, list stacking is basically finding all the different pain points.

Joe: Mhmm. And

Steve: there's multiple pain points, then you got your stack. Yeah. Right? So you got the list stacking in place now. Right?

So you're using Roy's service. Right? Property list manager?

Joe: Property list manager. Right. Robert. Robert.

Steve: Robert. Yeah. There you go. So property list manager, and now you gotta skip trace it. Yeah.

So what was skip tracing service would you use?

Joe: Smoothskip.com. Smoothskip. Yeah. Yeah. I actually have a coupon code.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it's, yeah. So I think on this on the website, it's like I I forgot what it is.

Like, 30¢ or something like that, which is still worth it, by the way. Right. But, you know, $20.20 cents. So it's, it's the coupon is Elevate. It's just, like like, Elevate, o e l e v a t e.

So for those of you who who, who wanna jump in on that

Steve: Yeah.

Joe: And get good quality data at probably the highest that's the highest I've ever seen. They like, I've seen returns 90, like, 6%. I've never seen that ever Right. Ever. Like, I've seen, you know, like, literally on, like, a 10,000 list, they'll give you back 9,600, you know, addresses.

Right? Updated addresses and phone numbers. I've never seen that before.

Steve: Right.

Joe: And so, you know, definitely go use that, guys. And so private risk manager. Yep. Skip it. And

Steve: then how you gonna get a

Joe: hold of them? Okay. So for my hotter niche list. Right? So for my stack, like, my high stack lists, I'm going to hit those mofos from all angles.

Right. Right? Because that's where the juice is. Mhmm. Right?

That's really where the juice is. And, you know, you manage them. You manage that, in probably list manager, let's say. Or you manage the opt outs and, like, people who are, you know, said do not call me. Right?

You you manage all those in probably list manager. For the bigger, broader lists, right Mhmm. I'll do a low cost. Again, that's why I said play where it lays. Right?

So I'll do a lower cost marketing. Right? Because it's not as targeted. And so I'll do something that I'll still I'll still be hitting everybody, but it's not gonna be, mailing piece. Right?

Because that's really expensive. Right. And so the one thing that I'm a big fan of right now is is RVMs. Right? So shooting out an RVM to that, you know, owner occupied list, but I won't do it every month.

Yeah. Again, playing where it lays. Right? And so, like, if you, if you were to see my marketing tool, it's like really freaking robust. Right?

And it honestly gives most people a headache. But Right. This is how you, one, you have consistency in marketing, but you also are super profitable. Right? And you have very cost effective Yeah.

Consistent, consistently cost effective marketing campaigns. And so I would hit them, like, once every three months, let's say. Big bigger, broader list. Right? And then so, yeah, I mean, I I that's basically how I'm how I target

Steve: it. Right? So You just would cut out the direct mail?

Joe: In in the bigger, broader lists. Right.

Steve: Alright. Okay.

Joe: But I but I'll still, like so I'll kind of try to explain it. But, basically, the tool that I have is, like, I I always plan my marketing out by month. Mhmm. Okay? So basically, it's like the tool that I have is like lists on the left, you know, and then the months are on the right Mhmm.

With the different marketing channels. I'm trying to explain this, but so hopefully people will follow. Yeah. But, with the different marketing channels underneath each month. Mhmm.

So let's say we're in, what are we in, March? Mhmm. So I'll plan out April, like two weeks before. And, I'll say, alright, boom, direct mail, direct mail. Right?

RVMs. RVMs. And I'll and I'll line out. Alright. Who am I hitting from what angles?

At the bottom of that, it gives me the totals. It also gives me the estimated leads based on my KPIs, which, you know, guys, track, track, track, track, track. Okay. So you understand your business. If you don't track your numbers, you don't you won't understand your business.

Right. Right? And at the bottom of that, it'll pop out, okay, your estimated number of leads as well as your total cost. Yeah. And so that way, you plan out your campaigns by month.

Mhmm. But there's also the next months, right, after that. And so you can even plan months in advance. Right? So I'll plan, like I said, I'll do, like, a bigger, broader list from, I'll do a bigger, broader list, like like, let's say once every three months.

Mhmm. And so I'll plan that out. I'll just put it on the on the tool, you know? What's the

Steve: name of that tool?

Joe: It's just a tool that I I I create. It's just an Excel program.

Steve: Okay.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. So I I call it marketing list planner.

Steve: So okay.

Joe: So But if you reach out to me, I'll I'll gladly just for every you know, mention Steve Chen. Yeah. I'll, I'll shoot it over to you.

Steve: Okay. So then you skip traced it, and you're you're attacking from all these different angles. At some point, someone's gonna be cold calling. Right?

Joe: Absolutely. So Yeah.

Steve: How do you plan on acquiring acquisition people?

Joe: For marketing or I'm sorry. For for cold calling?

Steve: For cold calling.

Joe: Okay. So I actually consider so we're we're about to get into sales. Yeah. So, again, like I said, you know, wholesaling is marketing and then sales business. Okay.

So, I know running a little over right here, but, so, basically, I actually consider cold calls marketing.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: The reason is because I I divide the line, like, again, where, I wanna I wanna push leads, interested leads to my high level team. Cold calling for me, it's $10 an hour task or less. Okay. Because you'll be on the phone for two hours and you won't get a lead. Right?

No, no high level person is going to want to do that. Right? And so you want to keep your high level people where they should be. Okay. And so basically for cold callers, a lot of people said and and I agree.

Like, people try to outsource cold calling to to The Philippines to to, like, VAs from The Philippines, which can can work. It has a higher probability of not working because, I guess they don't understand the culture. You know, this is a language barrier, things like that. Right? And so what a lot of people are doing now is they're they're hiring people from, let's say, Latin, like, Latin American countries.

Mhmm. Who, you know, definitely understand a little bit more. Like, they understand sarcasm, for example. You know what I mean? Right.

And for whatever reason, like, that was never really, that wasn't really, working, for example, like that wouldn't, that wouldn't happen. Like with the cold callers from The Philippines. Now our best cold caller though was from The Philippines. Yeah. So that's, so, you know, just like nothing's almost nothing is ever absolute.

Right. You know? But essentially, yeah. So a good company, though, that is, that's actually, that you can find good cold callers on is Outbounders as well. Mhmm.

Outbounders? Yeah. So, they they also have, like, basically cold callers in, like, Latin American countries and things like that. And I think all over the world Yeah. That you can that you can basically, like, kinda like an Upwork kind of thing.

Mhmm. There's also, if you have a little bit more money to spend, right, like services like LeadMiners. Right? You're familiar with LeadMiners?

Steve: Nick or something? Yeah.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nick Nick Nicholas. Yeah.

Yeah. He's a good friend too. And then, calls and you know, my my buddies calls and stuff, they they actually just, have have a cold calling company as well.

Steve: Right. Callings.

Joe: Yep. Yep. Yeah. Which, yeah. They were I mean, I had a few people using them.

They were just pumping out leads, so they're going well. Yeah. Yeah. They're a little bit more on the expensive side. So if you can afford them, definitely go with them.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Okay.

Steve: So, you know, with your with your what was your time frame for for for expanding or for starting back over?

Joe: For starting back over. Oh, okay. Let me by the way, let me just kinda just finish. So, basically, yeah, we I'll just kind of, loop back and Yeah. Come full circle with the story.

So, basically, we ended up moving down to Tampa. Mhmm. Right? So we had, you know, a lot of success in DC and kept it running in DC. Yeah.

And then but we actually uprooted and and came to Tampa. Right? Mhmm. Brought all the employees and everything. Right?

Lower cost of living, better weather, like, all this good stuff. So I still Lower taxes? Yeah. No. Yeah.

No no state income tax. Right? It's it's amazing. Thinking about moving to Cali, but, you know, I don't know. Yeah.

Complete opposite with, with the taxes, but we'll we'll see. I think I'm gonna have to talk to my CPA about that. But Yeah. But, anyway, so and, so, yeah, we ended up moving there. And then, you know, we expanded to, you know, two more two more markets as well.

Mhmm. And so, you know, by then, we were working in four different markets and, anywhere from, like, 60 to 120 k a month per market. Mhmm. And so, yeah, that's kinda where we, we were. So

Steve: Yeah. But as far as time frame, I'm not getting back into it.

Joe: So yeah. So, basically, about five months ago, sold my ownership of that business.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: And then now I am, I'm probably gonna jump back in, like, the next two months or so. Okay. So yeah. It's pretty exciting stuff. Yeah.

Steve: So Yeah. We'll definitely keep us posted on on that progress.

Joe: Yeah. For sure. For sure, man.

Steve: So what's the greatest lesson you've learned?

Joe: Real estate or life? Life. Yeah, man. I, alright. I'm about to get real for a second.

Alright. So, sometimes, you know, things just don't work out the way that we want them to. Mhmm. But in reality, like, we we have so much of, like, as human beings, we're control freaks. Mhmm.

Like, we want everything to go our way.

Steve: Or, of course.

Joe: Right? Right. And this mind right here is a is a as a mf. Right? Like, it never shuts up.

Right? It always has preferences. But by the way, if you haven't read the book The Untethered Soul, have you ever read that book?

Steve: I have not.

Joe: Amazing book, man. Mhmm. Amazing book. But, anyway, sometimes things don't don't pan out the way that we that we would want them to, at least the way that we we prefer to go. Yeah.

But in reality, I I fully believe, like, you know, I I absolutely believe in in God. I believe in a higher power. Right? I believe that there's, like, laws of the universe that that, like, conspire to help you.

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: And And when you're when things might not seem to go your way, in reality, it's just paving the way for something greater. Mhmm. Right? And and in addition to that, like, basically, the biggest lesson that I learned is to this is gonna sound super, but we're talking about life right now.

Steve: Right. Talking about life.

Joe: So the biggest lesson that I've learned is to this is gonna sound so corny, but it's so freaking true and real. It's like I've learned to love myself. K? Mhmm. Because, you know, I was in for me, personally, this is just my perspective.

I was in an environment that didn't really serve me. Mhmm. But I allowed myself to be there. Right? Right.

And it wasn't until I hired a personal mentor that, like, really, really, like, like, they really introduced me to myself. Interesting. And, and, you know, through that, I learned how much of a of a powerful leader that I am. How much of a of a a positive influential person that I am. And, you know, because of that, I, you know and and I'll be vague here, but I'll I'm being vague for a reason.

But it the point is the concept is not the the specific. Side. Mhmm.

Steve: Right.

Joe: But, I was in an environment that didn't serve me, like I said. And, once I developed that self awareness, which led to self respect, which led to self love. Mhmm. I decided that, hey, I actually this environment is not right for you. Mhmm.

You know? And I took a monster leap of faith. Right? A monster leap of faith. And that's when the universe rewarded me.

Yeah. I started seeing so many blessings. Right? Right? And and the biggest blessings were not external.

They were internal. Right? A sense of peace. Like, serious inner peace is something that's so coveted that, like, you, like, you like, almost nobody has that nowadays. And it's crazy because, like, I'm on a mission.

Like, I you know, my I I when I visualize my future

Steve: Mhmm.

Joe: So, like, I do meditation, which is one of the biggest game changers of my life. Right? So I've been doing it consistently for, about a few years now. But, really, really, really consistently for just about a year. But but and when I do my visualizations, like, what I'm like, my future consists of is sharing my story and, and and really helping people master themselves and love themselves.

Mhmm. Right? As corny as that sounds, like, that's what's gonna change the

Steve: world. Yeah.

Joe: You know? Because to be honest, guys, everybody listening, we have enough of, of the achievement oriented world. Right? This is we don't have enough of that. Mhmm.

What we aren't starved of, we're starved of inner peace. We're starved of real connection. We're starved of of, of a community. Right? We're starved of real social experiences.

Right? Because we're all so freaking distracted right now. Mhmm. And we're so far off. Like, we live in the social media, like, instant gratification.

Like, you know, if I don't get 200 likes on my picture, I'm gonna feel bad about myself in the world. Yeah. Like, how fricking ridiculous is that? You know what I mean? Now now, I mean, I fully believe that there's hope, but I, you know, that's kind of, like, what I am in the future gonna be dedicating my life to, and really in the entrepreneurial space first.

Because a lot of us are chasers. Right? Mhmm. But a lot of us don't even know what we're chasing. Maybe we're chasing for a sense of self worth.

Right. Maybe we're chasing because, you know, we had childhood issues, and, this is the only way that we can get away from it. Mhmm. Whereas, like, when you develop that deep sense of self understanding, self awareness, you will live life from a completely different aspect. Yeah.

You know? And so I take that approach, right, when and, you know, I I take that approach in business. So, basically, like, the Antonya Sosa talks a lot about, like, surrender. Right? Mhmm.

It's back what I was talking about. Like like, surrender to the outcome. Yeah. We have control over our actions and our attitude. Nothing else.

Steve: Right. It's true.

Joe: And, like, even just even just, even just today. Right? So my Uber got there late, like, really late. Right? To come here.

Right. And I was like I was like, man, like, you know, I I wanna get thirty minutes to talk to Steve before, like, so we can, you know, shoot this shit and and and, you know, so we can kinda just get to know each other a little bit more. Right. Right? And what what is that?

What do you usually do? Right? You know, most people what most people usually do? Forget. Forget.

Get frustrated. You know? And does that does that help any ever? Does that ever help?

Steve: No. There's nothing for you.

Joe: It doesn't do anything. Yeah. And so, I've learned to and, you know, by I definitely have miles to improve on it. But I've learned to kinda surrender to that process. Right?

Steve: Yeah. But I

Joe: also learned to own my this is kinda going another piece to it. Basically, like, you said what's what's the biggest thing I learned is, kinda going back to that question is to love myself, who I am, to own my gifts. Right? To own my gifts and to use my gifts to contribute back to the world. Right?

And so I've been doing a little bit of that the past few months.

Steve: Yeah.

Joe: And, it's been absolutely amazing. It's been absolutely amazing.

Steve: That's awesome. I think that's a great spot to end it. So if, someone wants to get a hold of you

Joe: Yeah. How would they do that? Yeah. I Facebook. So you you just search Joe Dillon.

I actually right here. Right? I think you tagged me.

Steve: I did.

Joe: You know, shoot me a friend request. I think I think I have, like, 200 friends left until I hit the 5,000 mark. Yeah. And, Instagram, joe dillon official. Right?

Joe, j o e d I l l o n official. And, yeah. I mean, those are the two platforms that I'm that I'm most on. You know? Reach out to me.

I'm I'm really an open book, guys. And, you know, the people that I have been helping recently know that. Yeah. I just loved it. I just loved to freaking help people, not only improve their businesses, but most of all, improve their lives.

Like like, some of the texts that I've received or, like, the, like, the, like, the things that people have told me Yeah. There's nothing more fulfilling than that than than having someone say, hey, bro. Like, you've changed the course of my life. You know? I've had someone tell me, like, dude, like, you you see like, the things that you've taught me, like, you've saved my marriage.

Steve: Wow. That's awesome.

Joe: You know? And so, yeah, so that's that's kinda like where I'm gonna be heading towards in the future.

Steve: Yeah.

Joe: Kinda in the distant future. Like, you know, I'll be the next Twin Robins or something. I still see. So we

Steve: all wanna do. We all wanna be. So alright, guys. That's the end. So thank you guys for tuning in, and thank you.

Joe: Yeah. That's

Steve: that was awesome. Man. Appreciate it.

Joe: Yeah. Thanks for having me, brother.