Steve Trang interviews Tony Javier about how his company manages $1.3 million monthly in TV advertising for real estate investors. Tony shares insights on TV marketing effectiveness, lead management best practices, and how he built automated businesses that sustained him through a serious health crisis.
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74 minutes
TV advertising remains surprisingly affordable at $8-10k monthly for most markets, often generating 5-10x ROI for real estate investors
Live answer rate is critical - improving from 30% to 90% can increase deals by 20% with no additional leads
Speed to lead matters: get to properties within 24-48 hours maximum, as sellers often call multiple investors
1:23:07Casey Ryan from We Buy Any House reveals how he generated $6 million in profit with just 12 employees by leveraging AI automation, data enrichment, and strategic focus. He shares his journey building custom AI tools for call analysis, lead scoring, and CRM automation, plus why he's selling his rental property portfolio to focus on his core wholesaling business.
1:12:00James Harkless of Property Leads shares how his company generates high-quality motivated seller leads for real estate investors, with 1 in 4 homeowners reaching out before selling. He discusses his journey from construction to building a successful pay-per-lead business, innovative features like live transfers, and quality control methods that achieve 25% title transfer rates.
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Build your business to run without you by hiring key people and implementing systems - it only takes 2-3 strategic moves
Use tracking phone numbers and 'As Seen on TV' branding across all marketing channels to amplify TV's credibility effect
”“If $5 a month is getting you a lot, why not try 7? Why not try 9? I think if people looked at it from a perspective of compounding interest, you're exponentially gonna grow your business if you just keep thinking that way.”
”“The investors that do the best with TV, and I think it has to do with any marketing campaign, is that they're just dialed in. They have a good CRM. They have a good lead manager. They have a good acquisitions person.”
”“Get your business where it doesn't need you anymore. Last year could have been disastrous in many different ways. And especially if something would have happened to me, would my family be okay? I would still have two businesses that would still be running without me.”
”“TV has seventy plus years worth of data. There's a system to it. YouTube ads are newer. So there's just not as much data behind it. There's not as much credibility.”
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Tony Javier: So literally for three months, I was like, feel like I'm gonna die. Like, I thought they were gonna find, like, a brain tumor or tumor somewhere that, like, causing this because what would happen is every day I'd get I'd wake up out of breath, go walk into the living room even more out of breath, and I'd literally have to, like, like, sit down. I can vividly remember this, like, sitting down going, gosh. I can't breathe very well. And then I try and eat, and I literally eat, like, a bite of food, and I'd have this happened for drained as all could be.
And I could maybe answer emails for, like, an hour a day or something like that. Otherwise, I was just laying down. So just slowly over time, it's just a little over a year since that happened, since I started getting really bad. Started getting normal this last three months.
Steve Trang: Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining
Steve: us for today's episode of disruptors. So we have Tony Javier with TEDx TV,
Steve: and he flew in from San Diego to talk about what a million dollars a month buys you.
Steve: 1,300,000, I believe, to be exact. Now, guys, I wanna
Steve: mention to create a 100 millionaires. Information on the show alone is enough to help you become a millionaire in the
Steve: next five to seven years. If you'll take consistent action, you will become one.
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Steve: of today's show, please hit that subscribe button. That way we can create more millionaires. You ready?
Tony: Let's do it.
Steve: Alright. So, since you've been on the show, a lot has changed. Right? The real estate market has kind of been, you know, not going down, but it's kinda interesting. There's some more challenges.
So I was curious. You know, you got to work with a lot of clients. What are you seeing right now in the landscape in the real estate investor community?
Tony: Well, luckily, the election's over. I think that was a big roadblock Yeah. Mentally for people. And everything that I researched and understood from the election is that really it's just a mentality. Right?
This the election over the past however many elections have shown that the stock market and the real estate market gets better after elections. Mhmm. At least that's what I've heard from financial advisers and people really smart people. Mhmm. So I think that's that was the biggest thing last year that people are hung up on is, do I really want to start a new marketing channel?
Do I really want to add to marketing channels? Do I really wanna add anything at all when there's a lot of unknown? When, really, it's just a mentality. Mhmm. And I think I mean, you know this from sales training is, like, a lot a lot of business, a lot of things are just mental.
So for me, my business, and I told my clients this all the time, I market every month out of the year no matter what. So even if there's elections, even if it's November and we're slowing down and things are aren't looking very good for, you know, a month or so, we're gonna continue to market because in December, they may not be wanting to sell in December real estate or, sellers. But if they see your commercials in December playing, and then all of a sudden in January, they wanna do something, if you weren't in front of them in front of them in December and maybe your competitor was, you may not get that deal. Right. So you may have spent that month marketing money in December, but it's gonna pay off in January, February when some of those sellers are looking to do something.
So I think that's the biggest thing. And, you know, markets it's it's all market specific. Right? Like like in Wichita, Kansas, where I invest, we still put properties on the market, and they sell within a week. Like, almost every single property sells within a week.
We just sold them last week, had two off three offers. One and it sold for cash, $10,000 over asking. And it was only a $170,000.
Steve: Gotcha.
Tony: And we priced it at the very top of the market. So, so I think a lot of markets are still pretty strong like the Midwest. But I think a lot of it's just a mentality. And even if the market is softening and potentially, you know, going down, which I don't think there's any markets that are significantly going down, adjust to it. Continue to market.
Just buy cheaper. Right? If you think in six months, when you flip a house, it may be 5% cheaper, just negotiate five or 10% cheaper to make sure you're covering. So just kinda weird how investors just got so scared last year.
Steve: Yeah.
Tony: And here we are, January, I believe.
Steve: Yeah.
Tony: If I'm not mistaken. First full week. And the first Monday, we had three clients or three people jump on board and say, hey. We wanna go ahead and start TV that we had talked to at least a month before. Yeah.
And the only thing that changed was the beginning of the year in election. Election's over in the beginning of the year. Yeah.
Steve: I think it's interesting.
Steve: You know, talking about, like, stock market goes up, real estate market goes up. If I were to attribute to anything, right, it's complete complete speculation. It's just there's just more certainty. Right? Like, it doesn't matter who wins.
There's just uncertainty in there. We don't know what's going on. But now that we know who's president, now we can speculate more positively or whatever. So I don't know. Maybe that could be it.
And then once the honeymoon is over, we'll see what happens. But
Tony: And don't get me wrong. If Kamal would have gotten in, I might have, like, in my back of my mind, been like, oh, gosh. What's gonna go on? Mhmm. But I still would have done business the same.
You know? I I I just don't think things are gonna change that much. Now there might be some other industries that could be majorly affected by who got in office. But for real estate investing, as long as you're buying smart, you should be fine. Yeah.
You know?
Steve: And I think it's it's it's a good point you mentioned, though. Like, with the election coming and going that you keep spending because you wanna stay in front of them, which is important in marketing. Right? Like, Google PPC, no one's gonna notice who you're spending for the month of November. But for TV, they're gonna see if you're on October, November, December, or really, like, several months before then because the way marketing works, you gotta stay in front of them over and over and over again.
So that makes total sense. Any any other trends you see? Because, like, the reason why I'm asking, you have, like, over a 100 clients. Right? Mhmm.
So you kinda see kinda, like, the feel ebb and flow. Do you see any other trends?
Tony: The I think the biggest thing is that the the investors that do the best with TV, and I think it has to do with any marketing campaign, is that they're just they just they're just dialed in. Mhmm. And what I mean by that is is that they have a good CRM. They have a, a good lead manager. They have a good acquisitions person, and good is subjective.
Right?
Steve: Sure.
Tony: But to me to me, it comes down to how are you handling those leads? So even if you're not a great salesperson, if you can answer the call or get back to that person with a short amount of time within a short amount of time, get to the house very quickly within twenty four to forty eight hours, make the offer and try and get that sale right away, you wanna strike while the iron's hot. Mhmm. So the ones that we've seen where they're struggling is we kinda dive into their sales, and they're just not handling the leads problem. That's what it comes down to.
Mhmm. So if I looked at all of my clients, the top 20%, which I can visualize some of them some of them in my mind, they started with me. They have increased their ad spend over time, and they haven't missed a payment, and they haven't changed their advertising spend unless they go up. Mhmm. Right?
And it's because I think they're handling the lease properly. They're doing the deals, and they know how to handle them. Yeah. So I think if anything, that's the number one thing that I could say to anybody is if they're starting a marketing campaign is to make sure that they're handling the leads properly. And then, don't always believe when someone says something doesn't work.
Mhmm. You don't know why it didn't work. Do they Yeah. Did they do it right? Maybe Maybe they hired the wrong person to help them implement it.
Did they handle the leads properly? Did they spend enough money? And did they give it enough time? And I think that's that's another thing to touch on is if someone runs TV with us for at least six months, the cancel rate is extremely low. Gotcha.
And typically, it's because, like, usually when we launch TV month one, just like when I launched twelve years ago, it performs very quickly. Mhmm. But sometimes there's markets or sometimes maybe someone doesn't connect as well with the audience for some reason when when they're on TV. It just takes a little while to ramp up. Mhmm.
But anybody who's waited six months when they struggled kind of in the beginning and when I say struggle, that's subjective too. Right? Sure. Struggling to me would be like losing money, but to some people, if they're getting, like, a two to three times return in three months, they're kinda, like, panicking. Mhmm.
Because they want that five times return or at least three. And sometimes that doesn't always happen right at the gate. Because we've had I mean, anybody who has asked me, like, what is your like, I've already kinda touched a little bit on some of the things that are important for marketing, but you really have to give things a certain amount of time to really see how they're working. Yeah. So So the first six months, you get a pretty good gauge.
And even first three months, you can kind of like, okay. There's some traction here at least. Mhmm. If there's no traction in three months, then obviously but, like, if there's some traction, you know, give it some more time. But you you have to look in almost twelve month increments because, like, TV may have done x this this year, but the year before it did twice as much, and the year before it maybe did three times as much.
Mhmm. And I think, a lot of investors just don't give things enough time in order to for them to pay it out.
Steve: Yeah. Oh, I I think probably every entrepreneur is, like, I want this to work fast, and then not giving that time. Because I see the same thing with direct mail. Right? Like, someone wants a direct mail, and they they they have enough budget to do three months, like, don't start.
Mhmm. And I imagine the same thing with TV.
Tony: Yeah.
Steve: So three different questions here. You you mentioned lead management acquisition. I they have a good system in place. I've heard arguments for TV leads, PPC leads of, who should answer the phone. To be a lead manager or an acquisition manager.
Tony: Do you
Steve: have a position on this?
Tony: I think it depends on the size of the team. Like, if if someone's not running very many marketing channels and their acquisitions person is not a ton of appointments. They're on, you know, one or two a day. I think it's okay for acquisitions people to answer the phone. But if if an acquisitions person is, you know, on appointments three to four hours out of the day Mhmm.
And I'm just throwing a number on. I'm just kinda kind of assuming just kind of off the top of my head, that you should have a lead manager. The lead manager, is there to answer the phone. Right. They answer the phone.
They make sure the lead goes into the CRM, which obviously acquisitions people aren't always the greatest at.
Steve: Correct.
Tony: They're able to put them in the right place. They're able to set up the appointment. They're able to follow-up after the appointment or or, confirm that the appointment, before the appointment to make sure the the seller shows up and then follow-up after Mhmm. And just manage the database. So that's what we do.
We have a lead manager that answers the phone, and she manages the CRM. And then our acquisitions person goes out and, does the appointments. Yeah. So I think that's the best system to have a lead manager. But if someone doesn't have, enough leads, enough cash flow to support a lead manager, which really lead managers.
I mean, you can our lead manager is in The Philippines. I think I'm top managed in, like, like, twenty or thirty year end, which is actually really good for Philippines.
Steve: Great.
Tony: But it's not that much in the grand scheme of things because if you miss one deal, that could be 20 to $30, out the door.
Steve: Oh, for sure. So I
Tony: think lead managers are are definitely gold. And then, and if you don't have a lead manager, I think if the call does go to an acquisitions person, if they don't answer the phone, then it should route to an answering service because I'm always a fan of an of a human answering the phone. Because anytime I've ever called a place I wanted to do business with, if they answered the phone, I'm, like, probably 10 times more likely to do business with. Otherwise, if I have to leave them a message and someone gets back to me, I'm either kind of forgetting about them or I'm moving on to the next person to call, And the first person to answer the phone and service me is the person that, you know, I'm gonna go with.
Steve: Yeah. Live answer stops you from calling other people. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the reason why this question comes up because I've heard some teams make the argument that you want the best salesperson to take the inbound calls or or the hottest calls.
Right? So that if you're taken care of, then they'll call anybody else. So but, yeah, to your point, absolutely. If it's, a live answering service, then at least they feel like they talked to somebody, and they don't feel this inclination to call anybody else. Do you have a preferred, company you work with or
Tony: a live answering service? Yeah. AnswerFirst is who, who we use. We have a lot of clients that use CallPorter. Mhmm.
There's no perfect answering service. I mean, you know, they're call center. So, there's gonna be dozens, if not hundreds of, people answering the phone, and the quality control is is probably pretty tough.
Steve: Yeah.
Tony: But in my perspective, when you have when you have an answering service, answer the phone, it's just to get the basic information. Name, phone number, email address, address of the property, how much you're asking, how did you hear about us, and why are you selling, I think Yeah.
Steve: Are
Tony: all are the only questions that we have them ask. And if if they start asking questions, it's, hey. We're just gathering the information. We're gonna pass this on to a representative. They should give you a callback in the next fifteen minutes.
Steve: Yeah. And I and to your point, right, there's no perfect one because, like, I know when I was using a live answering service, I would get frustrated and aggravated. And we, you know, always submit feedback, but had to remember at the end of the day, there's some kids in the middle of the South making, like, $8 an hour. Like, that's who's answering the phones. Can't get super critical if that's the case.
And then answer rate. So you kinda alluded to this one here. Your best operators. What percentages of the calls do you think that they're getting a live person on the phone? Like, someone calls a TV ad and then they dial into the company.
What do you think the answer rate is?
Tony: Do you know Chad Young? I do. Has he been on here?
Steve: Yes.
Tony: Okay.
Steve: Great guy.
Tony: So he's a client of mine. And I was talking to him the other day, and and he shared all this publicly on, on an interview I did with them. So so he it was interesting because he wanna know his live answer rate. And his coach, I think it's Amanda Dean, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah.
Steve: She doesn't coach for
Tony: us as well. She asked him what his his answer rate was, and he goes, I I'm pretty sure it's, like, 90%. Which answer rate, from what I understand, definition is that you're either answering it live or you're getting back to them within three minutes or five minutes or something like that?
Steve: For me, answer rate is it does not go to voice mail.
Tony: Okay. So it's different for different people. Yeah. So, so I think his was get back to them within, like, three minutes or five minutes or something like that. And he thought it was more than 90%.
And he went back and he really dug in, and he noticed it was all at, like, 30%. 30. And so I think a lot of people think their answer rate is is better than it is. In fact, I'm I'm probably the same way. Mhmm.
And actually, dug in when, Chad and I had that conversation, I went back to my lead manager, and I I'm trying to get her to figure out how to calculate the answered lead rate without her just manually doing it. Mhmm. So I know there's software and stuff that they can do that. But, but I I don't I don't know the the, data from all of our clients. They don't report that kind of data.
But from what I have with Chad Young, I know that he's, like, at 90 some percent. He said when he looked at his answer rate before, and then once he corrected that over, I don't know what time period, six or twelve months or whatever it was, he said he did I I don't I don't wanna butcher this, but I wanna say it's, like, 20% more deals with no no additional leads just by answering the phone Yeah. And getting his answer rate up.
Steve: Yeah. And I bring this up answer rate. It was not a stat I cared about before until I saw Eric Greer talk about his, Collective Genius. And, he was saying, like, his answer rate was, like, 40, and that's all they worked on. All they worked on for, like, a quarter.
I think he got it up to, like, 80 something percent. And so and, obviously, like you said, right, you get more deals just by answering the phone. So, like, that was something we went back to our teams. Like, you guys need to get better at this. We need to get our answer rate.
You know, the target was 90%. I don't know where we ended up at. But we also had, Austin McCurdy here. He was on the show, about a year ago, maybe a little less than that. And he was, like, the best Papa John's owner.
And he had, like, multiple franchises in Chicago. And, like, they're trying to figure out, like, what's his secret? How is he so successful? And he only cares about one metric.
Tony: Answer right?
Steve: Did you answer the damn phone? Like, that's it. Right? If a college kid calls in hungry, you answer the phone. You don't want him calling anybody else.
Right? Like, urgency is pretty high. You're hungry.
Tony: Yeah. I don't know if San Diego is just bad, but there's a few, like, few of my favorite restaurants. Like, you call 90% of the time, they don't answer. And it's really frustrating. Because I I could order online Right.
But it's like, maybe they don't have what I want online that I need to call in or I need to ask them, you know, some kind of question, and I don't get it. It's really frustrating Yeah.
Steve: For sure. So, and then the last one, speed to lead. Do you have any data on speed to lead? Like, what is
Tony: You do
Steve: required, best practices, or so on?
Tony: For us, we wanna get out there within twenty four hours. That's kind of our rule of thumb. So if someone calls in at 4PM, obviously, it'd be hard to get in, you know, get out there at six or seven. The aqua that's the advantage of having an acquisitions person answer the phone. Right.
Is if it's 4PM and they're they don't have any other appointments, they can just shoot out there and Right. That kind of thing. So that is an advantage. But, twenty four hours is kind of our rule of thumb of when we want to get someone out there. Unfortunately, my lead manager, she's not great when someone says, oh, I can only do next Monday or, you know, like, several days out.
She's not really good at being like, well, we have someone in that area. They're gonna be there. Do you think we could meet that day? And, you know, we're kinda working on some scripting up there. Yeah.
But I would say, if they're willing if they're willing to meet, forty eight hours is probably the max, but I I'd say twenty four hours. Yeah. I can't remember if I told this story in a previous podcast, but I remember, getting, so back then have you heard did did you ever know Vobray? I don't even know if they're still around. Voice Office Box for real estate.
No. So this was back in, like, 2005 probably. It's a long time ago. So they didn't have very many systems. But I remember getting the system where if they called in, that you would get a text message if you missed a call.
Mhmm. So at that point, I was answering the phone. I was the acquisition person. I was answering the phone at that point. So I went into the mall, and I didn't get service.
And I went out of the mall, and boom, I got a I got a message that someone had called. And had I not had that service, I would not have known that they called.
Steve: Right.
Tony: So I called them back right away. This was, yeah, the evening, I think, 06:00. And, I got there the next day at 9AM, got the deal under contract, and she had, at least two other three two or three other people coming later that day. Mhmm. And I think I ended up making, like, 35 or 40,000 on that deal.
Yeah. So that's a difference between, like, a good a good sales process, a good marketing campaign. Mhmm. Right? Because if you spend money on marketing and you get that deal and maybe you don't get any other deal that month, I mean, that makes a really good month for that marketing campaign compared to not.
So, yeah, twenty four to forty eight hours because these days, people when they call, TV's TV's a little bit better. TV when they call you typically I say typically. More often than not, they're calling you and only you because you're hitting them at the right time and nobody else is hitting them. Right. But these days, I mean, if they're going on Google and filling out form, they're filling out three or four forms.
Steve: At least.
Tony: At least. Yeah.
Steve: Yeah. I I typically hear six or seven.
Tony: Yeah. The the other day I say the other day. It could have been several months ago, but I remember someone, a seller told us they were getting 10 offers. Mhmm. Maybe they they weren't gonna make a decision until they got 10 offers.
Alright. And I can't remember if we got that deal or not, but that's that's kinda what we're dealing with these days is people know that there's options out there.
Steve: Yeah. And then also, there's the microwave culture. Right? Like, even the older people are getting less and less patient. Right?
Like, I mean, what were we, with YouTube, I think we had to be, like, ten or fifteen minutes to be able to have commercials. Right? Like, if YouTube video was less than ten or fifteen minutes, you didn't really get a chance to monetize it. And then it went down to eight. And now I think it's, like, four or five minutes.
Tony: Oh, really?
Steve: Because with TikTok, everyone's attention span went right out the window. You know? Like, if you don't and I'm guilty of it. Right? If I'm on TikTok, like, if the hook is not compelling or, like, the video doesn't look compelling within, like, even a fraction of a second, I'm on to the next one.
Tony: Yeah. 100%.
Steve: And I think we're all in this market culture where we're like, we might have been impatient five years ago, ten years ago, but today, we were grossly impatient.
Tony: Yeah. And it's probably I mean, imagine it's only gonna I don't know how much worse it could get, but I'm imagine it's only gonna get worse. I I'm actually glad we didn't grow up with social media.
Steve: Oh, man. Yeah. Seriously. I'll the statistics I've heard, right, is, like, the goldfish has attention span of seven seconds.
Tony: Right? So what Humans are, like, three three seconds an hour or something?
Steve: Yes. As a species, I think we're down to, like, five or six. Damn. It's pretty awful.
Tony: It's brutal.
Steve: Yeah. Okay. So before we go to the the the time on, you know, what a million dollar buys you, you were on the show, I think a little over a year ago. Mhmm. And we were talking about TV.
We were talking about
Tony: pickleball.
Steve: We were talking about all these different things. And then I opened up Facebook one day, not too long thereafter, and I think I see a picture of you inside an ambulance or something like that. Right? What what happened?
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Tony: Yeah. So, yeah, this time last year, which was not too long after the show, I pretty much thought I was dying. Yeah. You know, a lot of things happen. I think it was like I mentioned a little bit ago, I think it was a perfect storm.
So, mold, we found out, was an issue. And the way we found out was actually my son. My son was having behavioral issues.
Steve: Oh, really?
Tony: And, my through mom's group, my wife posted his results from some kind of medical testing she did. And they said, oh, you're you've gotta be in mold based on the levels that he's got of whatever. And she's like, no. We we live in, like, a ten year old house. It's immaculate.
Like, my wife keeps the house extremely clean. So anybody who would walk in her house would be like, there's no way there's mold there. Yeah. And so he was they they thought my son was autistic. Mhmm.
And he was three years old at the time. And, actually, four years old at the time. And, so then we got tested, and we found out we had mold in our system. So we're like, okay, there is mold in our house. So we ended up finding the mold, remediating, getting rid of the mold.
We moved out of mold and I had been sick off and on for like a year, Like, literally every month, I was getting sick months or twice a month. Just normal sick though. And then I think just over time, the mold combination of mold and when I went to go see a naturopath, she gave me high doses of iron. She gave me high doses of testosterone and found out she didn't test me correctly for either of them Yeah. And gave me doses that were even if I needed them, were way outside the realm of what she would should've given me.
Because iron is a metal. Right? So, like, it can be toxic. And then some other things happen. I was flying my own airplane, so there's, you know, lack of oxygen.
There's, you know, EMFs and, you know, electromagnetic fields. Got COVID a couple times, and my body just wanted to get down. It was literally at the point where, the night of the ambulance ride, I was actually sitting on the couch. I wasn't feeling good that day, and I literally just felt, like, tingling going up all the way through my body and through my arms. And I just started, like, shave shaking and shivering.
And I was like, oh my gosh. I I can't breathe as well. And I told my wife, and it could have been anxiety that was causing the breathing, but there's something going on with my body. Understandable. And I and I told my wife, I said, I think he well, no.
She asked me. She goes, do you think I need to call an ambulance? Because usually, she's the one that's like, whatever. You'll be fine. Mhmm.
She's like, do I need to call an ambulance? And I'm like, I think you do. I'll do. So the ambulance comes, and, I get into the you know, they do all these kind of tests. They're like, okay.
I think we need to take you in just to be safe. Hug my son. You know? He's like, what the hell is going on? And so I go to the emergency room, and, of course, they tell me it's anxiety.
Don't worry about it, whatever. And I had COVID a couple of times, so I thought maybe it was, maybe it's long COVID. Mhmm. So, I felt this way for probably at least three months where
Steve: Also you checked out?
Tony: Checked out fine. So I mentioned POTS syndrome to you. I'm kinda going down a rabbit hole with all this health stuff. POTS syndrome is basically where your body can't regulate your blood pressure. So if you bend over or if you do something, it can totally throw you off.
And I think that's what happened was my body was so out of whack that when I bent over to pick something up and then I and I got up, I was, like, feeling like so I went and sat on the couch, and then I crossed my legs Mhmm. Which is even worse because then you're, you know, re disregulating your blood flow in your legs now. So now your whole body's feeling it. And so when I got into this stretcher, you know, they carted me out, and I went flat, it regulated pain. Mhmm.
So then I started kinda, like, feeling better. So when I go to the hospital, of course, they're like, there's nothing wrong with you. Like, they do blood work. And so it's it's called dysautonomia, which was caused by all this stuff where your body is just basically out of whack. So literally for three months, I was like, I feel like I'm gonna die.
Like, I thought they were gonna find, like, a brain tumor or tumor somewhere that, like, was causing this. Because what would happen is every day, I'd get I'd wake up out of breath. I'd go walk into the living room even more out of breath, and I'd literally have to, like like, sit down. I can vividly remember this, like, sitting down going, gosh. I can't breathe very well.
And then I try and eat, and I literally eat, like, a bite of food, and I'd have to go back to bed. And this happened for
Steve: You're just drained.
Tony: Many weeks drained as all could be. And I could maybe answer emails for, like, an hour a day or something like that. Otherwise, I was just laying down trying to feel better. So just slowly over time, it's just, it's been a little over a year since that happened, since I started getting really bad, and Tom just started getting normal this last three months. Yeah.
It's been it's been a slow slow process.
Steve: So two questions. One probably more important than the other. So we'll go with less important question. How did you run your business and why you're going through all this?
Tony: So that's the beautiful thing. We actually had a record year in two out of the three business two out of three two out of the three main businesses that we that I run that I own and run. So back in 2010, I kinda hit rock bottom mentally where I just had to fire my whole staff, and this this has happened, like, two or three times at this point. So I ended up staffing back up smartly. I hired my sister Mhmm.
And I hired a coach who had a business that ran without him. And so within about three to four years, I was able to automate the real estate investing business where I didn't need me anymore. This is back in '14. And I moved from Wichita, Kansas to San Diego. So when I started ten x TV, I wanted to do the same thing.
Steve: Right.
Tony: And so, luckily, out of the gate, I had a good media team already. So they handled all the media buying and all of that. I did the sales for the first, probably, two years. Mhmm. I was the best at it, and I I actually kinda like doing it.
Even though I'm, like, a natural born salesperson, it's nice talking to high level people that you know you can, you know, positively affect their business in the world. And so but I knew that I couldn't do that forever. Like, I knew that there were other things that I wanted to work on and do and have more free time. So I hired a salesperson a couple years ago, and they've been amazing, Noah. Some of you guys, that are listening may know.
And, so I was fortunate enough when this happened that the business ran without me. I could literally just answer high level questions on email, maybe do a meeting every once in a while. In fact, there were many months where I just didn't take any meetings. Like, my team meetings, I'm like, you guys have to do it. Every once in a while, I might pop on for a little bit and say hi to the team.
Like, hey, guys. You know, give them a little encouragement, whatever. But they they ran without me. We were at least 10, if not 20% better, 10 x TV, this year than the year before or 2024 than 2023. From the flipping standpoint, I think we were up, like, probably close to 50%.
Mhmm. 40%, maybe something like that. And I always encourage people, like, even if you don't need to automate your business or think that you want to be in your business, get it to a point where it runs without you. So if something like this does happen Yeah. I'll tell you what.
If I didn't have the people that I have and I was running one of these businesses or especially both of these businesses and I was the key factor to it, having to go out on appointments or having to do sales, I would have been in trouble. Mhmm. I mean, I just I couldn't do anything. I live in San Diego, so it's super expensive. I've got, you know, pretty decent amount of overhead.
And if the the business depended on me while I was out, then I would have been in really bad shit.
Steve: Gotcha. You mentioned two out of three businesses got better. Which business did not get better?
Tony: Well, actually, the other one did get better too. Just just not substantially.
Steve: Oh, okay.
Tony: It is co working space. We we built a big co working space in Wichita, Kansas where I I asked my how's my team, and we do have, like, private offices and menu space and stuff like that. But that actually did get better, just not as substantial as the end of this.
Steve: Got it. So another question, the more, you know, impactful question and and, by the way, that was a great answer. Like, your business already built to withstand this and survive this. What perspectives have changed since not knowing whether you're gonna be here on this planet or not?
Tony: That's a great question. I literally know what it feels like to be 90 years old now. Yeah. Like, seriously. Like, I I used to judge people that when I would pull up to a stop sign and they would walk really slow, we've got we've got to go this way too.
They walk. They know they know you're there. They know you're there, and they're just walking really slow. Yeah. And I used to get really frustrated, or when people didn't open the door for me.
So when I was going through this, I literally like, going upstairs, I'd have to go up one step at a time. Like, literally, sometimes I'd have to rest after step three and then rest after step five. Like, going upstairs was, like, brutal. Walking across the street was the same way. I was literally like an old man walking across the street.
So with that being said, I felt like my life fast forward, like, fifty years. Yeah. And all of a sudden, it's like, okay. How much longer am I gonna be here? And so I feel like I still go back to, you know, my old ways sometimes, but, like, when people are crossing the street slow, it doesn't bother me.
Someone doesn't open the door for me, I'll judge them for, like, a second. Because, like, you know, you know what I'm saying? When you're right behind them, they know you're there.
Steve: Dude, just hold it.
Tony: Come on. Dude, just come on. Just hold a little bit. Yeah. That that doesn't bother me anymore.
Maybe for, like, like, a split second. The things that I take on now have to be purposeful. And I use that as a loose term. And what to me, that means that I get fulfillment out of it. It's got a benefit to me.
It's got a benefit to others, and it's not high risk, high reward. Mhmm. We talked about this just right before you guys hit play. I used to be high risk, high not not in everything, but there were some things that I just throw money at that I'm like, alright. This is gonna work.
I'm gonna make a bunch of money.
Steve: Mhmm.
Tony: If I don't, if I may lose some money, and some of those ended up making losing a lot of money. So from a business perspective, I don't work that much any I I say not work that much. I probably work twenty to thirty hours a week on average.
Steve: Mhmm.
Tony: You know, I take off early to go play pickleball. If if I'm not feeling well, which still I'm I'm close to a 100%, but I still have my days where I'm like, man, I can still kinda feel the effects. I'll just take the afternoon off and just go to the beach and hang out or, like I said, go play pickleball or, you know, whatever. Go go pick my son up early from school and go hang out with him. Yeah.
So, you know, you you hear people with these, like, near death kind of experience, and I wasn't near death, I don't think. Mhmm. But it felt like I was near death.
Steve: But you were thinking about it?
Tony: Totally. Like, I yeah. I thought my time was, like, really close because it it felt that way. Yeah. Just think things are, like I'm not saying I'm, you know, blissful a 100% of the time, but I can tell that things don't bother me nearly as much, that I'm more patient with things, and that I'm much slower to take things on.
Because I know if I take things on, that I have to deal with the repercussions if they don't go the way that I want them to, which in business, that happens quite often. Yeah. So I have to be okay with the worst case scenario. So I'm getting ready to move to, Boise, Idaho here in a few weeks. I think that's gonna help me slow down a little bit too just because of the pace pace is slower there.
But I'm just gonna kinda start let things come to me instead of trying to push them so hard. Yeah. Yeah. Just take take take things for granted less and just super grateful for being back to housing.
Steve: So I definitely could've used this talk on Monday night because as we went to I was at Collective Genius Select. Right? I flew there Sunday. I came back Monday. So probably not the best decision, but I did.
So it was a it was I was delayed two hours from Phoenix to Dallas Uh-huh. And then another four and a half hours from Dallas to Sarasota. And the worst part really with American Airlines is they they don't tell you, like, we're gonna be
Tony: four hours late. It was like, it's gonna be an hour,
Steve: and then, oh, it's gonna be another hour. Yeah. Right? So, like, complete waste of time. So that was really irritating, but it's like, whatever.
Flying back, the next day, it was actually on time from Sarasota to Dallas, but another hour delay from Dallas to Phoenix. So I touched down, like, 01:00 in the morning, alright, which kinda like getting, you know, on your last nerve. And as I'm about to get off, I get out of my seat. This old lady gets in front of me. Right?
Like, it goes wide open. This old lady gets in front of me. I'm like, k. Fine. Like, just be patient.
And then as she's moving along slowly, she stops. So the two older ladies get in front of her, and I'm like, I am just slowly dying on the inside.
Steve: I don't say anything because
Steve: I still respect my elders, but, man, I was, like, miserable as can be on the inside. But he uses perspective.
Tony: Yeah. Yeah. Still yeah. Totally. So you and I have the same personality.
It's like we wanna get from a to b as quickly as humanly possible.
Steve: Yeah.
Tony: But, yeah, things like that don't bother me. Like, even coming here today, I was supposed to fly, you know, my plane here this morning, and the winds and the turbulence were just like, even big planes were were having issues in the in the weather today. And so I was you know, instead of just, you know, getting upset because I I haven't flown in a while, so I really I really wanted to, I really wanted to fly. Mhmm. And it's like, well, things happen for a reason.
I I guess I wasn't supposed to be open the air today and, you know, flew commercial. So just gotta just gotta take what things give you and things happen for a reason. In fact, last night, interesting enough, I I had a intuition that I should fly commercial. Mhmm. So I I didn't know if, like, something was gonna happen or what.
But, yeah, sometimes you have to listen to your instincts and, kinda go with them.
Steve: Gotcha. Alright. So we we lit out the show talking about what 1,300,000.0 buys you. So what does what does 1,300,000.0 buy you a month?
Tony: So we are managing, TV commercials for real estate investors. So we are managing, one three one four one five, somewhere in that range of of TV commercials, because it kinda fluctuates with the time of year and people, you know, increase or decrease their ad spend. So it buys you a lot of commercials. Mhmm. You know, I think our average real estate investor is probably spending between 8 and $10 a month Mhmm.
Which a lot of people don't understand how inexpensive TV can be. When I started TV, twelve not thirteen years ago, I started with a $3,000 a month budget, ended up 10 x ing my money within the first thirty days and kinda was off and running from there. And there's a lot of markets that not can't quite get away with 3, but 5 to 7,000 a month and a lot of markets can actually go a long way. So when I started in Wichita, Kansas with 3,000 a month, that got me, I think, 300 commercials a month, give or take. And and you would think that it would be $10,000 or more in most markets.
Mhmm. And you'd maybe get 50 to a 100. It's kind of the perception from what I used to believe and what people tell us. Right. So yeah.
So that's that's, you know, that's what we're managing right now. We're seeing that, as I mentioned, the ones that are spending the money that are dialed in are the ones that are getting the best returns.
Steve: Mhmm.
Tony: I think that, 2025, people are gonna need to find a marketing channel or marketing channels that are less competitive than others. Mhmm. So, obviously, Google PPC is really competitive. Pay per lead, is pretty expensive or pretty competitive. The, I mean, the prices are getting driven up.
And then if they're selling to multiple people, you have multiple people you're competing with. People are buying the same list and cold calling and texting them, which, you know, I still don't know how people are getting away with texting these days, but they are. Whatever. And, so yeah. So we we have inbound channels, a lot of inbound channels.
So TV is our number one lead source. Radio is soon behind, and we we're actually helping clients implement radio as well. Those those right there are kind of the one two punch, I feel like. And then, you know, we add on direct mail to that. We do billboards, which are not a great return on investment.
In fact, I'm leaving I think there's only been one year that we've actually made money from billboards, but they're not super expensive. And I feel like it helps TV and radio. It helps the whole mass media thing. And then Facebook's kind of the same thing. We don't get a big return on Facebook, but we get so many impressions that it's gonna help, hopefully, our TV, radio, and everything else that we do.
So those are those are kind of the things that I'm seeing from my perspective. And, also, as I mentioned, clients that are dialed in, not only are they managing the leads well, but they're they're not depending on one or two lead sources. Mhmm. They're they're five, six, seven, eight. I think we're I counted mine the other day.
It was, like, eight or 10 lead sources if I remember correctly.
Steve: Yeah.
Tony: So yeah. So, like, if one goes dry for a period of time, whether it's a quarter or even sometimes a year, one of my clients actually last year, he's like, TB wasn't the greatest TB out of the gate four years ago was amazing. Second year was good. Year three, it kind of, like, it didn't tank, but it went from, like, a five to seven x all the way down to, like, a three.
Steve: Mhmm.
Tony: And then, I'm sorry. That was '23. And then '24 just crushed it again. Again. And, but he had other lead sources that helped him pick TV up while he was, you know, while while TV was kind of, like, staggering a little bit.
Mhmm. And I think that's the way with most investors. They need multiple lead channel or the successful investors. They need multiple lead channels to pick them up when
Steve: Yeah.
Tony: One or or maybe a few of them aren't doing very well.
Steve: Gotcha. So couple different things. Yeah. I think it is surprisingly inexpensive here on TV because I think there's this idea that you're gonna be ready to drop a lot of money to be on TV. 8 to 10,000 is what you're saying, like, your average guy is spending.
That's very affordable. You only you don't even have to do one deal a month. It's less than one deal a month. Mhmm. It's very given there.
Mhmm. So that's really surprising. Do you think TV is still a slept on marketing channel? Because, like, five years ago, there wasn't that many people doing TV. Right?
Like, you were doing it. Doug Hopkins was doing it. That was it. You think it's still being slept on?
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That's at 100percentmoney.com.
Tony: Yeah. So when I joined CG several years ago, me and Brad Chandler were the only one doing TV Yeah. In that whole group. When I joined Investor Fuel twenty one? '20 or '21, it was me and one other person that was doing TV, and he ended up becoming a client of ours.
And now we have, like, 30 some that were running TV for investor fuel out of, I don't know, 100 some members. Mhmm. But, yeah, I I think I you know, even though it's become more popular over the last five years since I've been talking about it publicly and, you know, our clients go out and do podcasts and stuff, and they, you know, talk about how they've been having results and stuff too. Yeah. There's still this there's still this in fact, I went to, Boardroom.
K. Is that over there?
Steve: Yeah.
Tony: And same thing there. I don't think there's very many, if any, doing TV in that whole group. And and I went up and did a presentation, and they were asking questions. And there was there were two guys that were doing a lot of deals, and they asked me what the average ad spend was. And I told them, you know, just like I mentioned that a lot of markets you can get, you know, get away with 5 to 7,000.
You know, our our average client is doing 8 to 10, but that's with those that are, you know, also spending $20.30, 50, maybe $100 a month. But they were, like, they were shocked at how inexpensive it was. Mhmm. And they didn't realize that they would get hundreds of commercials a month. They thought that they would just get, like, maybe one or two spots a day or something.
Right. So that's a great thing about TV is that there's so many misconceptions. There's a misconceptions misconception that it's, too expensive, that their business isn't big enough, that they need to be, like, a big corporation or something like that, that they need a face for TV. A lot of people like, we've had some people that, you know, you wouldn't think would be on TV, and they actually do really well. What was the other one I was just thinking of?
Gosh. There was another important one. Yeah. Oh oh, and the TV's going away. The TV's dying.
Which which TV is declining somewhat in Oh, so TV viewers are
Steve: showing now.
Tony: Got it. Got it. Yeah. And so if you look at the data yeah. I mean, it it went from everybody's watching TV back in 2000 before really the Internet started blowing up and shipping streaming came along.
But it I mean, it's slowly declining. But if you look at the, population or the demographic that we're going after, which is 55
Steve: Right.
Tony: Lower income, what are they doing? A lot of them are watching TV, and they're doing it all day. Mhmm. And there there's actually, I wish I had the graph that I could pull up here, but, there's a study from it's either '22 or '23. They interviewed people 55 plus with houses a $150,000 or less.
90 some percent of them are still watching TV, regular TV. The average viewer is too close to two and a half hours a day of TV. And when they were asked what triggered an online search for them, 67% or 60 some percent over all the other marketing methods, 60 some percent said it was TV was the number one thing that drove them to do an online survey. So, for that reason, there's not nearly as many people doing TV. And not only that, but if I said, Steve, go do TV.
Right?
Steve: Mhmm.
Tony: You could probably figure it out. You may not be the best at it or you may it may take you a while. But that's a great thing. Because if you if you go and you wanna do PPC, there's a dozen guys you probably you know, someone who could refer you to. But with TV, it takes longer.
You have to develop a script. You have to go to the stations and shows Mhmm. Or stations and find the shows that work for you, negotiate the rates. In fact, when I in 2005, I had this idea of being on TV, Mhmm. And I actually had no idea what I was doing.
I called one station, NBC, and I don't think I called any other stations. And they gave me a $3,000 budget, 30 or 50 commercials or something like that. And it took a while to do. And then once I finally got on air, I I I think I broke even in three months and I stopped. Mhmm.
So knowing what I know now, obviously, I would've kept going, but I also don't know I don't I didn't do it right.
Steve: Yeah.
Tony: And so, TV is a is a is a harder medium to get on. You have to, again, you have to we, you know, we know what scripts work. We know what station shows work, so it's easy for us. Mhmm. But a lot of people just don't wanna go through that.
Yeah. Even if they have someone managing it for them, they still don't wanna go through the whole thing. And, really, we make it super easy. Like, our clients are usually it's, like, one or two hours of time for them to approve the ad approve the script, approve the ad spend. And if they wanna be in the commercial, shoot the commercial and Yeah.
You know, they're off the road. So
Steve: Yeah. I'm surprised it's still it's still a secret because I mean, anytime anyone asks me is like, you know, what should I do? It's like, well, the main two I hear all the time is PPC and TV. Like, right off the bat, hot inbound leads. And with TV, you're an authority because, like, we were saying earlier, people think TV is more expensive.
While watching TV, also think it's expensive. Yeah. So you're an authority right off the bat. Perception.
Tony: Yeah. Yeah.
Steve: And then do you have any data as far as, we were saying, you know, you do a billboard, not to get deals on the billboard, but, you know, pluses everything else. Do you have any data behind, like, doing TV, radio, direct mail, Facebook, and billboard? Like, how much it all the what's the word I'm looking for? The omnipresence, how much that helps? I'm just curious.
Tony: I mean, no no specific data, but I know it does. Because when people call us from TV, they sometimes will say they they, heard us on the radio. And almost every time they say they called us from radio, they saw us on TV just because we're on t we're on TV a lot. Like, we're I think, they got 1,200 commercials, commercial spots running every single month. So it's like we're saturated pretty pretty heavily.
Billboard, we don't really ask them. We probably should start asking about billboard now. We just started doing them more in the last year.
Steve: Yeah.
Tony: We don't spend a lot. I actually own a coworking space as I mentioned. I I've got a big digital billboard that I put on there. It's on a major highway, so we rotate some other ads with, with Pine. But, yeah, not not a lot of people mention the billboard.
Now that you now that you mentioned now that we have this conversation, not a lot of people mention it, but I know that they see it.
Steve: Right.
Tony: But I think the direct response is more from TV and radio, and that's kind of why they and you and, usually, they're more engaged. You know? When they're driving down the street, they may just see it for, like, one second or two seconds. Whereas with radio, sixty second commercial. Then their car, they're hearing, you know, sixty seconds of it.
TV, it's thirty seconds. They're hearing in the living room, and they're hearing it over and over. So those are those are the ones that they respond to more. But the great thing about, TV and radio is that it helps the other marketing campaigns. So I know for a fact, we get at least one, if not several deal deals a year from postcards where they say they called us and only us because out of a stack of postcards because we were on TV.
Incredible. There you go. So
Steve: So definitely pluses, you know, for sure, direct mail. Do you this might be a dumb question, but is it the same logo and company on every single, platform.
Tony: Yeah. And I think I think a lot of companies get this wrong, especially real estate investors, because a lot of them do marketing themselves, is that they don't tie everything together. Yeah. So with us, we do as seen on TV on our our website. We do it on our billboard.
We do it on our direct mail piece. Mhmm. In fact, on the direct mail piece, I put a screenshot of me on the TV commercial Uh-huh. So they can correlate the TV commercial with the postcard. Yeah.
So, yeah, everything should look very similar. Obviously, if you're doing, like, postcards are tricky because unbranded postcards statistically kinda do better. Mhmm. But a lot of people don't compare it to the as on on as seen on TV postcard that
Steve: if they're
Tony: on TV that they send that out and see what the data is there. But we did notice that when we put as seen on TV with, the image, then our our response rate did well for sure.
Steve: That makes total sense. What about phone numbers? Are the phone numbers the same? All of them.
Tony: No. I I think if you're doing really good at marketing, you need to have tracking phone numbers. That does take away from, take away from it a little bit because I know when I call a place and I see a different phone number, I could be like, why do they have two phone numbers kinda thing? But, yeah, we have a different postcard phone number, different billboard, TV, radio. We do for TV and radio, we do have the last four digits, which is which is sell, s e l l.
Mhmm. So that way they kinda correlate those two because those are out there the most. And, yeah. But I I think I think you need to have tracking phone numbers. We have had a couple clients that say they don't do tracking phone numbers, and they're really good at, like, asking and finding out where the lead came from.
But we've had many people that are adamant that they, Googled us, and they, found us on Google. And then we get to the closing table, and they're like, oh, man. I'm so glad I saw your TV commercial or something like that. You know? So it's really hard to, like, get the real data from people of, like, where they came from.
So having a tracking phone number, that thing also you can do.
Steve: And and the only reason I'm asking is, like, you know, you talk about I don't know if you guys use a jingle for a phone number. Right? But, like, 11
Tony: number
Steve: is a lot easier to remember. That's the only reason why I asked that. Like, because there's there's a trade off. Right? Do I want better tracking, or do I want more memorable?
Tony: Yeah. Exactly.
Steve: So, okay. And then right now, you know, I thought TV was not a secret anymore, but apparently still is. But, like, there'll be multiple people in one market. Right? And they're all using TV.
And by the How do you separate yourself from your competition if you're all using TV? Because, like, you know, like, Facebook ads, whatever, like, your messaging can be completely different. The TV, if there's, like, a best practice, how do you separate yourself?
Tony: So that's a great question. So when I started talking more publicly about TV, people saw in my market that I was talking about it. And at one point, we had four it might have been five other competitors with us on team. Mhmm. And we're in a pretty small market.
You know? Yeah. 400,000 people. And, I got a little worried, but then I I looked at our numbers and, like, we're still doing deals. So if fast forward today, two year so that was about two years ago when that the competition was the most.
There's probably one other person that's running TV still Mhmm. Out of those four to five people that were running TV against us. So I say that with don't be worried if someone's on TV right now because if they're not doing it right, if they're not handling these correctly, you know, whatever, they're probably the chances of them staying on TV long term is is a little slimmer Mhmm. If they're not doing it correctly. And then if you if you look at the numbers, like, let's say you have from texting I don't know.
What do you think? Under real estate investors, texting in the Phoenix is probably hundreds Yeah. Texting the same list. And so if you look at, you know, on TV, it's usually in any market. Sometimes we literally people will say that we don't think there's anybody in our market, which there may be, like, one or one or two maybe in their market.
But let's say there's even five. Mhmm. Five people on TV compared to hundreds of people that are texting or sending the same postcards at the same list. So from a competition standpoint, I wouldn't worry about that too much. And then, from a messaging standpoint, you know, we've got scripts we've tested over thirteen years now, and we've spent millions and millions of dollars in marketing to test these scripts.
So we know scripts work well, whereas, you know, if someone's not using us and trying to do it on their own or whatever, that they may not be may not have it dialed in and the message correct. And then, I think the biggest thing is making sure you're on the right, contacting the right stations and on the right shows. Yeah. So even if someone does have a really good commercial, if they're they did what I did back in 2005 and they start calling stations and, you know, getting sold whatever they wanna sell, and not getting it right, then they're kinda throwing money out the door. Yeah.
So if you're gonna do it, just make sure you do it. Do it right. Do it with data, and you should be, you know, above your competition if you do that.
Steve: Gotcha. Do you have, like, a a rough number as far as, like, you know, something 1,300,000 or 1.3 to 1.5? What that generally yields is as far as revenue goes?
Tony: Yeah. It's interesting. A lot of real estate investors don't wanna give up their numbers, partially because they probably don't have them. A lot of real estate investors don't have their numbers. But when we do get the data, typically, our clients, in the very beginning, it was a lot easier to get data because they were newer clients.
You know, kind of us, we were we were a little bit newer, so we were fetching for the data more. Mhmm. But it was between a five and ten times return is what most clients were getting. So if they're spending $5, they're getting at least 25 to $50 back in return. For me, that's, like I said, out of the gate, spent $3.
I made over 35,000 my first month. I don't have the data from way back in 2012 because I didn't know my numbers back then. I know we made good money. But when I started really tracking it in, I think, '17, so we have about seven years of trackable data for our company, We're as low as the three times return on investment, which still isn't too bad considering all the credibility and all the things that come with it and the fact that it's helping postcards and all that other stuff. And our highest is, right around 12 times return.
But I'd say a lot of our clients between five and ten x. The ones that aren't doing as well are three to five x. And then we have some that, you know, they launch and they just can't get over that three x. And I think a lot of it, when we dive into it, has to do with sales.
Steve: Yeah. So one point three should be able to get you to four mil to I mean, it was 12 x, like, 15 mil. So, a lot. One one point three million buys buys you a lot.
Tony: Buys buys you a lot. It should it should we should be generating anywhere from I think you like you mentioned, 4,000,000 to gosh. It could even be closer to 7,000,000 when you average it all out or something like that.
Steve: It's It's pretty good. Yeah. So we kinda talked about, like, you know, best practices, but, you know, have you seen anything that's, like with TV, you're like, man, like, don't ever do that. Like, you see you see people do things that are just like, why did you do that?
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Tony: Yeah. So like like I said, I've I've we've got quite a bit of data. There's things that I've tried. I've tried the car salesman commercials, so you guys probably see my demeanor by now. I'm pretty, like, chill.
Uh-huh. But I tried, like, hey. This is Tony with you know, like, really amped it up Yeah. And literally went from, like like, great call volume to literally a just tank. And we tried it for it was at least a month.
It might have been two months. It was long enough. It was like, okay. We can't do this any longer. And then we flipped it back to our regular commercial, and then the calls went back up again.
Steve: Oh, so a big sale this Sunday.
Tony: Exactly. Yeah. I don't yeah. So we have many different pieces of the puzzle that we feel like work well. So, yeah, don't be super hyping.
Mhmm. I think people like doing business with people rather than businesses, and that's why we encourage, our clients to be on TV if they can. They get personal branding, and they get to see the owner of the commercial. In fact, I thought about it the other day. Do you remember that, CEO?
I think it was LifeLock. Mhmm.
Steve: Do you
Tony: remember that commercial? And he would actually give us Social Security number out. Yeah. But I noticed some big companies started doing that. I don't know if he does them anymore where they started putting the CEOs on the commercial, and it made it feel like you knew who the You know the founder.
Yeah. You know the founder, and and it felt a little more more personable than just a big conglomerate company. So, yeah, I think just being real. You know, we edit our commercials pretty well, but you can still tell it's a real person. So I think people kinda connect with that.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of lot of different pieces of the puzzle, and think if you can get most of them right, you can do really well. If you get all of them right, I mean, you're really crushing it.
Steve: Yeah. And I think there's a lot of truth to it because, like, you know, one of the things that I learned, from my mentor was, like, you know, you don't do deals you don't do business with Apple. You do business, like, you know, with Steve Jobs. You obviously don't, but it feels like you are. Right?
Like, when you buy a Tesla, you're not buying a Tesla car company. You're buying from Elon. Like, this is, like, Elon's product. So you have this idea even though you're buying from this, you know, Fortune 100 company, it feels like you're doing business with the owner. And those entities, like, you know, insurance companies or banks, like
Tony: You have no idea who they are.
Steve: Yeah. Right? Like, we don't know I mean, obviously, the founders are long gone, but, like, we don't know there's no face attached to it. Like, even Amazon. Right?
Like, you're doing business. It it feels like, you know you know who Jeff Bezos is even though we don't. Feels like we do. Or Facebook, we feel like we know who Zuckerberg is. Yeah.
Tony: Yeah. It's true. I never thought of it that way.
Steve: Right. If we feel like we do, I mean, we obviously don't. It's all it's all PR. Right? Like, you know, you read about, like, Warren Buffett had, like, this '90 1983 Cadillac, whatever.
It's like, that's what the PR says. Like, he has other nice cars. That's just what the PR says.
Tony: Yeah. He's got the same house he's lived in for, you know, forty years or something. But, yeah, he's got some mansions other places.
Steve: Yeah. Other places.
Tony: So he's
Steve: not as that mansion.
Steve: Yeah. Like the PR. So gotcha. Okay. Anything else about TV we haven't talked about?
Tony: I don't think so. I mean, to me, it's like, I just don't understand why more people don't do it. It's kind of a no brainer, especially when you kinda know the numbers. Like, if you're in a market like Wichita, Kansas, $5 a month can get you, you know, pretty good amount of commercials. I'm not afraid to say that because I'm sure we're gonna have some competition, you know, after after seeing those numbers.
But, yeah, I just feel like I feel like it's this it should be the center. I feel like TV and radio billboards are you know, I don't encourage everybody to do them. We do them just because they're not super expensive, and and I own one of them. But, I think TV and radio, TV especially, should be the center of any marketing campaign just because it feeds. Like, there's so many different things it does for the marketing Yeah.
As a whole. And then, you know, just omnipresence as we as we as we mentioned, just as you get, you know, a lead because people obviously, people start with one lead channel. When you get one lead channel, find another one and then find another one and put that money into another one. Mhmm. And and same thing even with TV.
So it's interesting. Like, we've launched some people with $5 a month and, like, some numbers that we were given, like like, there's one client he said he was doing consistently over a $100,000 a month for, like, the first six months. Wow. There might have been one or two months where he was under that. He said he even had a $200,000 a month because he had, like, a $100,000 deal on a bunch of others.
But I'm just surprised, like, if that's yielding you good returns, why don't you you know, like the stock market. When you make money in the stock market, you put that money back in and you compound it. Well, I don't understand why people don't do that more with the market. Mhmm. Obviously, there's, like, diminishing returns to where you get to a certain point, like, if I don't wanna spend more.
But if $5 a month is getting you a lot, why not try 7? Why not try 9? So even some of the clients that we know are very smart, they're they're pretty happy because they're spending little and getting a big return. But I think I think if people looked at it from a perspective of compounding interest let's say you you go from 5 to 7, you're spending an extra 24,000 a year. Well, what if you can get an extra three to four deals out of that per year?
Steve: Yeah.
Tony: I mean, you're you're exponentially gonna grow your business if you just keep thinking that way.
Steve: Yeah. I think there's, there's probably some game theory involved. You know? Like, some people wanna maximize ROAS, right, which I respect. Like, that is one metric.
The other metric is like, well, which one will net you more? Right? Like, I think I don't know what the right number is, but we're talking about game theory. You probably wanna spend as much possible to net as much as you can while still maintaining, you know, maybe no worse than a five x ROAS. Right?
They're like, what's the highest that you can get with a five x ROAS versus trying to have, like, the highest ROAS? Because I think that's kinda what you're saying.
Tony: Yeah. That's a good point. Because some people well, first of all, they'll they'll be like, well, one of the first questions is, what is your average cost per lead? And then right then, I'm like, okay. You know, first of all, I can't tell you that because every market's gonna be different.
We have clients that have reported 50 to $100 a lead. We've had some clients that have reported a thousand dollars a lead. But a thousand dollar lead person may be making way more money than the 50 to $100, you know, 50 to $100 lead. Mhmm. But, yeah, you're totally right.
You have to look at it because people get too caught up in cost per lead. I think ROAS or ROI, is a good metric, but you're right. You do have to dive into it further because you may spend go from five to 10. Your ROAS may go down to from a five to a let's call it a four or three, but then your net profit at the end of the day is a lot higher.
Steve: 8,000 higher a month. Exactly.
Tony: Yeah. So there's there's a lot of different things that I think real estate investors just look at one metric or a couple metrics, and they they they're like, okay. Is the cost per lead good? Is the ROI good? Okay.
Great. And they don't look at some of the other factors that can really help them make better.
Steve: Yeah. Because I'm one that's tempted. You know? I have a pretty high risk tolerance. I'm the one that kinda like, let's let's boost it.
Like, if we're getting a five x for us, like, let's keep spending till we get to three x for us. Because, like, your expenses are pretty fixed for the marketing. If your expenses your fixed expenses are what they are and you're getting a three x ROAS, you can pretty much keep pumping money in as long as you're getting a three x ROAS. Your fixed expenses are the same. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Let's see. Was the did it have something else here? I mean, I think that's, oh, I did have one more question.
So but before we go there, like, I completely agree with the TV thing. I thought it was not a secret anymore. I thought everyone was doing it. So, like, if you guys are watching it and TV is available in your market, like, highly recommend it. Right?
Because I see consistently the two lead channels from all our and we've got about 40 clients, right, that we have as coaching clients. We we do sales training with. And consistently, the top two lead sources are TV, PPC. Yeah. It's always those two.
Right? And, guys, if you wanna check out TV, go to 10xtv.co. That's 10xtv.co. Are you guys doing anything as far as not TV, but video still? Like, for example, YouTube ads, Hulu, or whatever.
Tony: We are trying to crack YouTube ads. We we tried it during the election, and I think it was just wrong timing.
Steve: That was the worst time.
Tony: Yeah. Yeah. So we we didn't have we need a lot of traction from it, but we're we're, rolling it
Steve: out here this q '1
Tony: again. Yeah. I think I I think it could do well. I don't know that it'll do as well as TV just because, YouTube is and and really so going back to TV. So TV has seventy plus years worth of data.
Right? Mhmm. And tracking, and there's a system to it. YouTube, did we say YouTube TV? I think we've made YouTube ads.
Steve: I meant YouTube ads. Yeah. Okay.
Tony: I can't remember if I said I thought I said YouTube TV. But, yeah, to use YouTube ads, are are newer. Right? I mean, fifteen years ago or something like that. So there's just not as much data behind it.
There's not as much credibility. So even, like, with TV, even if you don't get direct ROI that's, like, really good. So say say you get a two to three times return, there's still that credibility that you get that could still make it worth it. Whereas if you do YouTube ads and you get that two to three times return, you're not getting the credibility and everything you're getting from traditional TV.
Steve: Oh, yeah. That makes sense.
Tony: So we're gonna try and crack it because I feel like there's some synergy with having our TV commercial and then having it on YouTube. Mhmm. It's just gonna take some time for us to
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. The the abort, the election time was really rough because, like, I struggle because, like, I don't let my kids have their phones. Right? Like, they don't have phones.
Yeah. Like, not until high school.
Tony: Right? Yeah.
Steve: But we do then watch YouTube. Right? And Arizona being a battleground state, I wanna say it was twenty four seven ads on abortion. Right? Because, like, that was, like, you know, Kamala's message.
That was it. Right? Abortion, abortion, abortion. There was no, like, you know, we're gonna turn economy around. There's none of that.
It was just abortion. Right? Trump's taking abortion away. So I have to talk to my seven year old, and when she's like, dad, what's an what's an abortion? It's like,
Tony: this
Steve: is a fun conversation. Right? But I remember specifically, it was, like, November 6 or November 7. It's like, oh, we have regular YouTube ads again. We're not talking about just abortion because
Tony: I I
Steve: promise you it was, like, 80%. It was wild because we're a battleground state.
Tony: Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
Steve: Yeah. So, yeah, I'd it'd be interesting to see, you know, what the, what the data shows as far as YouTube t or YouTube ads. Is YouTube, Hulu. Like, they're not the same age. Right?
Like, 70 year olds are not on Hulu TV, but it'd be interesting to see what happens there.
Tony: Yeah. You're exactly right. That's another key factor to it is is traditional TV, you have our avatar, whereas YouTube isn't quite as much our avatar.
Steve: Yeah. I think the only thing you get from them is what they've Googled recently. Right? That's the benefit of YouTube versus Hulu. Hulu, I think, is just kinda right.
Tony: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Any any kind of streaming platform for the most part is gonna be pretty random. So a lot of people come to us and be like, hey. Do you recommend over the top or, you know, these other streaming platforms?
And there's just not enough data behind it, and they they spread you all kinds of different random places. And, like I said, it just doesn't get as much credibility as
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, no one's streaming. The Price is Right. Right?
So or Judge Judy.
Tony: Or Jerry Springer.
Steve: Yeah. Maybe during
Steve: the Jerry Springer documentary. Right? That's gonna be on Netflix.
Tony: Oh, is it really? Yeah. That'd be an interesting one.
Steve: Yeah. That was, that was chaotic. So perfect. Yeah. So, again, like, I highly recommend it.
You know, I've we work with a lot of people. You know? We're in CG. We're in, boardroom and and and all these other places. Like, TV consistently is is one of our top two.
So, yeah, if you guys are watching and you guys haven't checked it out, highly recommend it. So, any last message you wanna leave all those things with?
Tony: I mean, just from a so I I guess I'll touch on two things. One is get your business where it doesn't need you anymore. I mean Yeah.
Steve: That's huge.
Tony: Yeah. I mean, last year, and when I say last year, 2024, could have been disastrous in many different ways. And especially if something would have happened to me. Like, if I would have not made it, would my family be okay? I would still have two businesses that would still be running without me.
They might drop a little bit little bit just because there's not a a leader in place at that point. They they probably have to find a leader somehow. But that's that's an that's one of the top things that I I love talking about is getting your business to where it doesn't need you anymore. And it really doesn't take that many moves to get you there. Mhmm.
For me, it was probably three different moves. It was hiring my sister who was the solid person in the background to where I could go do my thing. Go deal get deals under contract, manage contractors, all that kind of stuff. And then eventually, I'm like, okay. We she actually helped put processes processes and systems together that I didn't have.
So I put together some, but you hire good people, they're gonna put even more in place.
Steve: Mhmm.
Tony: And then the third thing I did is I hired someone to kinda help lead the organization, where I could step out of that. Because I I wasn't the best at that. You gotta know what you're good at, and you gotta know what you're not good at. And to me, I was someone that just like to go from a to a to b or a to z very quickly. And I didn't like talking about people's days.
I didn't, you know, I wasn't You
Steve: wanna go conquer?
Tony: Yeah. I wasn't, you know, the foo foo fluffy person that came in and made you feel good. Right? Yeah. And, yeah, just those real really, like, two to three moves, got me to where within three to four years I was able to, kinda step out.
And, so 2015 is when 1415 is when I went from, sixty hour weeks in my business to literally, like, two hour weeks in that business. So that's that's that's, kind of words of encouragement to figure out how to get there. And then from a marketing perspective, man, marketing and sales are the two biggest things in your business. You gotta find people to come in. Mhmm.
Obviously, you have to have a good product, you have to serve them, all that kind of stuff, but you can get them in the door and you can figure out how to sell them. It's game over, right? So just being able to be omnipresent with your marketing, be very consistent, do it right, have your data, and then just handle the leads correctly. So between getting on TV and having good sales training, I mean, there's no reason you can't be good at this business. And I think those are the two things that people have managed.
Yeah. Managed to conquer is that they do very well in this business are sales and marketing. You
Steve: can solve a lot of problems if you're good at sales and marketing.
Tony: Mhmm.
Steve: Yeah. Perfect. Alright. Well, thank you, for jumping on. Thank you guys for watching.
I'll see you guys next time. Jump on the steep train. Disrupt us.
