Wealthy AF Podcast
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Wealthy AF Podcast
Revolutionizing Real Estate: Technology, Marketing Automation and Lead Generation with Ryan Hartman
Ready to master the art of leveraging technology in your real estate journey? Get a front-row seat to the insightful experiences of Ryan Hartman, a real estate and marketing automation trailblazer. Hartman’s story begins in his early 20s when he dipped his toes into the tech world, sparking a journey that would eventually lead him to revolutionize the way real estate agents use technology. He takes us through the ins and outs of direct mail marketing, highlighting how this traditional method can surprisingly boost the ROI of digital marketing channels. Tucked in his story is a lesson on the power of education in understanding the complex world of real estate investing.
Let's navigate the path of generating leads in real estate, shall we? Brace yourself for Hartman's unique strategies. Imagine using Remind and other databases to build a list of absentee owners and high-equity buyers. Picture yourself utilizing postcards, QR codes, automated email follow-ups, Google keywords, and landing pages as your arsenal in the lead generation war. But the innovation doesn't stop there. Hartman shares his unique method of initiating real estate conversations using physical flyers and an army of teenagers scanning them in local businesses.
Finally, let’s traverse the path to connections, networking, and the subtleties of sales. Hartman reveals his secret weapon - Google Docs. Sounds simple, right? But wait until you see how he links all his resources, social media, and more, making him just a click away from potential clients and collaborators. He brings us back to the traditional yet effective method of door knocking, blending it with modern technology to generate leads. A final reflection on his early understanding of technology emphasizes how it became the cornerstone of his success. So, get ready to immerse yourself in Ryan Hartman’s world, filled with real estate investing, marketing automation, and tech-driven strategies.
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Welcome back to another episode of Latinos and real estate investing podcast, and today's guest is Ryan Hartman. Ryan started out as a realtor in the late 1990s. Eventually, he became a real estate tech consultant. He successfully sold a real estate coaching company called Retekulous I said that right this time, ryan, in the 2010s and was an executive at an inside real estate for a little while Now. He's currently focused on growing thanksio and wake up real estate, ryan. Appreciate you being here, sir. Thank you for showing up today and sharing with my audience myself. Yeah, thanks for having me Today. We want to talk. I want to talk to you about marketing automation. Tell us about this journey, about how you got into real estate, then went into technology, and tell us all of that there. Ryan, how did you wind up where you are today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when I got into real estate, the internet was kind of just getting going in the late 90s, right. So in the early to mid 2000s we started to see things like IDX searches you can put property listings online drip emailing platforms, automatic property alerts that sort of stuff started coming out and I happened to be in my early 20s and understood the stuff and other brokers and agents wanted me to help them out with it, with their tech stack, so that a decade and a half later the technology around all this has gotten a lot more sophisticated. Right, I mean, we're talking to each other on a video right now. That's right.
Speaker 1:I would have never imagined this. I mean, think about it. In 1990, when we were in high school, saying, hey, we're going to be able to talk to each other from a little box on our phone and see each other, we were like we would be. Like you're crazy, man, that's the Jetsons, right, that's something we see, blind cards. Yeah, but yeah, here we are Right. Anyways, go ahead, brother.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so along the way, teaching, consulting, showing, helping build systems that automatically generated and followed up with real estate leads I've built a number of solutions and have been involved with building CRMs, things of that nature. One of the projects that I'm still working on is called Thanksio, which basically automates direct mail follow-up. It connects to your online stuff and it automatically sends postcards, note cards and letters to your leads and your past customers.
Speaker 1:Okay, so this thing automates marketing. So let's talk about that Direct mail, direct mail, marketing. So let's talk about that. What is the importance of? Why is direct mail better than? If it is I want to get your thought on it Better than pay-per-click, and I've done both. I do both. Better than pay-per-click or cold calling or text blasting. And what are some of the data around some of these things?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I wouldn't say it was better, I wouldn't make that argument. But I would say that when you add more channels to your marketing stack or your funnel, that every aspect of the stack is enhanced. So if you're running Facebook or Google ads and somebody engages with you digitally but then you're able to automatically put a physical postcard or a letter in their hands at their house, the ROI you get from the paid click goes up.
Speaker 2:So a lot of the data I have around this is not based on big sample sizes, it's based on us growing Thanksio or the single real estate investor or agent who sends maybe 100 follow-ups a year. But then they tell me look, I had a guy, a customer I had. I thought totally for out about me. They're just calling me out of the blue because they got, you know, they held on to my postcard so Hard. Data wise, I would say that the open rates, if we want to go there, like the open rate on a postcard, is way higher than that. It maybe even an email, because it's 100% you know if they get it and they put it in their hand. So you, the medium itself lends itself to better consumption of your content. You know of what you're sending. Hope that answers it.
Speaker 1:No no, that does. That does answer it. If, if there's a, if there is a, a realtor out there or an investor, right, and they're just getting started out and maybe there's an investor and or real, so they want to flip houses, yeah, or they want to buy their first. You know, I used to struggle with one thing I'll share this with you, ryan when I first. I've always liked real estate. I'm a real estate guy, that's what I do. I am, I'm a real estate guy, this is what I like to do. I have other investments outside of real estate very little. This is where I make my money. It's real estate. But when I was Not educated in real estate, I used to.
Speaker 1:Always. I was always curious about how does someone buy a property below market value and then Fix it and then make money like that was such a foreign thing to me, right, it was so foreign to me because I was only looking on the MLS, right, yeah, I would look on the MLS and I was like, okay, this doesn't make sense, okay, so there, so this needs all this work. I know there's gonna cost me 25 grand, or this needs like 25, and again, this is just innocently right, just common sense. I was like, okay, so how do you make money on this thing? And if I'm gonna rent it for $1500 and I gotta get a bank, I gotta get a loan. How does this work? And I couldn't make sense of that. I couldn't make sense of that until I got educated right. I got around people and I formally got the formal education on how this business works.
Speaker 1:So if someone's out there and they're me at that time and this is the first podcast they're listening to and Right, and they're like great question, how do I do that Right? How do I, how do I buy that Right? And someone is or just getting started and they know a little bit, where does it make sense? And why does it make sense to do a mailer Right, to do a mailer, and who should they be mailing to to find those deals? What criteria putting, what parameters should they be putting on those? And or maybe they're realtor so it could be an investor Right, an investor that's starting out, that wants to invest or be a realtor. That's just starting out and it's thinking man, I need to build my book of business and I need to get some client, need to get some listings right or some sales or whatever.
Speaker 2:So the coolest thing about direct mail for me is how targeted you can get. So whether you're an investor or realtor, we know you can go out and you can buy lists of People who have a certain amount of equity in their home. You know they're in a certain geographic area, you can even that. Why they married, do they have kids, you know. I think more relevant will be are they underwater or not? Because a lot of times investors, you're trying to solve a problem. So if you know somebody's kind of underwater on their mortgage, you might have a better chance of you know helping them out or something like that. So if you're totally new, you know I would say mail gives you the opportunity to Very specifically target exactly who might have the problem you're trying to solve. And it can be you could spend as little or as much as you'd like.
Speaker 2:So you know I tell a lot of new agents just start, just start sending note cards one at a time to business owners in your market who might be interested in buying an apartment building. You know you could do that for two bucks a day, you know. Just go into our platform and send a. Send one card a day. Or if you have the budget, you know, go send a thousand postcards to your, to the farm of your choice, offering you know somebody a tool that lets them know their current home value.
Speaker 2:And Incidentally, I'll mention it that the reason things started was because we were doing a lot of online find your home value or sell your house fast offers, like a lot of investors do. So Google, you know somebody's googling sell my house fast and then you know you show my landing page. It's like, hey, you know, get an offer on your house in 24 hours. I find out what a buyer might pay today and Thanks will start. Because we wanted to follow up with those leads more efficiently off Facebook, google ads. So we were sending postcards out, you know, because we know people don't they'll fill out your online form but they'll forget about you. You know you'll send them a hundred, yeah, hundred emails, a hundred texts. So the card kind of helped the conversion on that front, got it so what?
Speaker 1:what are you finding that's working today, right? What's giving you, like, what criteria is? Let's talk about nitty gritty, right? I want to give people some real, real. Yeah, let's talk about what's working in today's market for marketing, for realtors and for investors, right. What criteria is right? You said something about. You said something a moment about If they're on the water right, and there are some right that are on the water Austin, texas, one of them, some areas in Florida. There's some markets that some people are gonna be on the water.
Speaker 1:There's some markets and other prices still pumping up and they're going up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's working today we do a lot of this with real estate agents. So the two main funnels I've been coaching and that we've been helping people execute is a real estate transactions list Funnel. This is where the postcard so we send a postcard to absentee owners is what's working best. So you get a list using remind if somebody's familiar with that, but there are a number of these database solutions out there you send it to absentee owners and you say here, get a list of all the recent sold transactions in your market. So this implies that you've gone into the MLS or you've just looked on Zillow. You make a quick list of 10 to 20, you know home sales with the published prices. You can put that in a blog post or on a Google, wherever you put it, and then, with thanks, we have people scan a QR code to see that information, whatever our lead magnet is. So on the QR scan, they're taken to the info, but our QR scans alert you in real time that the owner has interacted. So they don't have to opt into anything.
Speaker 2:Okay, right, so the opt-in itself is a low barrier. They just take out their phone and they scan this and then you have the homeowner to follow up with. We found that for realtors in particular this is very useful because it's a lot harder to get somebody to fill out a form. But if you know the homeowner scan you can send follow-up mail. You can show up and knock on the door if you want to. Okay, so the transactions list hook works really well. Then the tried and true just find your home value still works, especially now. It worked a little less, less, few years as the market was really in a fever pitch. Now people are feeling they know that the economy might be taken a little turn and they're curious. They see that their neighbor's houses aren't selling as fast. So we see more people opting in for just straight find your home value. Now Got it.
Speaker 1:So I want to make sure I understand that process. So you're going. So, if a realtor is listening to this, they get a list of absentee owners. Is that it? That's it. That's the only criteria, just absentee owners.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no, it doesn't have to be absentee. So the last I ran this about a month ago in St Petersburg, Florida, where I live we went, we did absentee owners and we did equity in the property was 50% plus.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because this was a realtor who wanted somebody who could sell their home. If I was investor, I might have gone the other way. Remind, which is built into a lot of MLSs, gave us about 800 addresses, so we sent 800 out. We got 15 scans, which might not sound super exciting. I've done better as a percentage. We can usually do that's pretty good, actually, that's what.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 1% would be 80?. No, 10% will be 80.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 10% will be 80. So 15 scans wasn't bad. We've been seeing I mean, it'll sound like buying the sky with our QR scans We've been seeing close to 10% on a lot of campaigns when it's local. So the offer has to be compelling. But yeah, so we got 15 scans on that. But the owner of the company, the broker who I was doing this for, and with last I heard two really good conversations that will probably be listings. So sure she spent about 800, just call it 800 bucks. It was a little bit less. 15 people go into the CRM for a later follow-up, but two really good conversations about a listing. And then those conversion rates, of course, go up. When she next quarter I like to do it once a quarter She'll email the same list again and, as you know, the repetition will yield better results.
Speaker 1:So if there's an investor listening. So one of the things that we do we buy lists of here is we like to buy in and out of state owners absentee owners. So absentee owners with high equity right With less than six, with more, with LTVs of 70% or less right. So 30% in equity or more. The higher, the better right, because the higher the chance of us getting a better deal right, the more equity they have, the better deals we can do. There's more room yeah, there's more room for us as investors to buy it, fix it and flip it if that's what we want, or buy it, fix it and rent it and re-fire it if that's what we want to do. So I'm just playing this out of my brain here.
Speaker 1:So if an investor is listening or realtor is listening, you buy this list absentee owners, high equity, boom. You send it out. Then they scan this QR. You send them a. You send them a what you call it a postcard. They scan the QR code. Then you get notified that they scan the QR code. Someone on the team or yourself needs to call these people and say what.
Speaker 2:Well, in the real estate example we do a few things. One, we just call and say hey, thanks, we try to ask questions about the property. We are able to automate on that scan. You can send Zaps, use Zapier. So we actually automatically send a home value report on the scan. That goes out by email and text. They see it right away, so if they see the transaction list, we then are sending an automatic email. It's like hey, we ran a quick RPR report on your property. Here's the value. Yeah, so Brilliant.
Speaker 1:That's freaking awesome.
Speaker 2:That's the follow-up stuff that thanks was built to do. It's kind of like an action is taken, now we'll go talk to your CRM and have more actions happen. So, whether it's the lead generating QR scan or you can flip it the other way the Google keyword sell my house fast. I think a lot of investors use that. Right, I felt something like that Sell my house fast.
Speaker 1:They go to your nice landing page.
Speaker 2:Maybe using yeah, like on-caric or one of these solutions. I've built some of these landing pages that are just like get an offer in 24 hours. If somebody fills that out and you get their address, well, we can then trigger a postcard out to them automatically. We don't have to do any work and it was just yeah, knowing that, like I said before, a lot of people don't engage right away, but now they start getting the postcard to get a letter from you. Hey, thanks for engaging with my tool. You know, and you try to get an appointment scheduled with the text of your postcard or letter.
Speaker 1:Okay, fantastic, fantastic. I'm just going to ask you in general. So you have also this other thing that you're doing, wake uprealestate, right, which is a show you do. Tell us about. What is it that you do there, exactly, ryan? And yeah, you tell us about that.
Speaker 2:So my partner Josh and I, we had had that earlier business you mentioned and we kind of had gotten back together but we both independently educate about marketing and lead generation pretty much every day for the last decade. So we said let's just combine the efforts and start doing a morning show. There's a little business lesson in this. We had no monetization model when we started. We were kind of just doing it for fun and we knew that we create some content that we could then leverage. You know, just like you're doing this podcast, like you leverage it in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 2:About a month or two in, we got pulled into a mortgage team at Nexa Mortgage. We got invited and you know a lot of mortgage lenders. Their model is let's, let's shmooze realtors and get them to send us their mortgages. So what the show is morphed into is we do this show. We teach paper, click, lead, follow up. We talk about, you know, direct mail, the things we were just talking about. But our main call to action is if you want help converting your real estate leads, our team will help you do that from the financing side of things. So more specifically, it's a little complex but more specifically, we then go in and we'll connect their realtors CRM up to our CRM, have all their leads go into our side of the house and our loan originators will call, will email text, try to get somebody pre-approved and then we give it back to the realtor in real time with notes and you know, put them up.
Speaker 1:That's a good deal. That's a good deal for both sides of the equation. That's a really good deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of investors and realtors. They pay an ISA or somebody to follow up on their lead. Usually it's somebody who's yeah, but usually it's somebody who's like kind of you know, low dollar per hour. Sometimes they're over in the Philippines or something. It doesn't always work, but if you have a mortgage lender A lot of times in your market that conversation goes a lot better because it's about the thing the buyer needs the financing.
Speaker 1:Correct. That makes a lot of sense, all right. So I have one final question for you, my friend. So my next question is if I am a new investor or I am a new realtor or brand new and I don't have much money, right, and that person not I, but that person doesn't have much money, they're listening to us and they're like, hey, I need to get started, I want to find my first deal, my first listing. I don't have any money, I just got this licensing, I just got involved in this sort of state investing thing.
Speaker 1:What is the lowest hanging fruit? What is the least expensive way to get your name out there? Or to market, or to find not to market, because marketing and finding leads, or getting your name out there and finding leads, are two totally different things. One takes time over time, but you need to feed your family To get leads. What is the cheapest and the most cost effective way, if not a free way that you can give advice to a brand new? You know, 19 year old person like me in 1999, when I first got started?
Speaker 2:Dude, they were the same age and I was 19 too, right?
Speaker 1:So what. I have no money. I'm part of a piston, but I needed to get out there and make some sales. What do you what? What are you telling them to do? Like, hey, dude, go do this, this and this and this, this is your lowest hanging fruit and then take that money and invest it into marketing? Give us a one, two, three, four game plan for that person that don't have any money. That and then, and how do they do it to get themselves going and build themselves up?
Speaker 2:Put together a list of deals. So for a realtor, you just go and you you search your IDX website for foreclosures and price reductions, whatever deals might mean it could be for investors. It could be a list of wholesale deals just 10, your 10 hot buys. Put that on a piece of paper somewhere or on a website somewhere. Build a quick flyer or a business card, something physical, that just says access my deals list. I have a page called a 727realestatedealscom. It's a simple little opt-in page. Then get out. Get out, this is free, right, this is just free. You're totally new. So take your everybody's. Got a printer, print out 50 of these things. Take your physical card or your piece of paper and start walking into local businesses.
Speaker 2:For me when I did, it was pizza shops in Philly, right, I was. So walk into pizza shops or whatever A place where the sole proprietor is probably going to be sitting there. They're not going to be too busy. So at a pizza shop that's like two, three in the afternoon, like the lunch rush is over, just think and literally walk in and say, hey, you have any interest in finding your next, your first or your next investment property. You got the flyer in your hand and it says go to 727realestatedeals to access my list, or it could be directly on there and that just it's a little old school. It's like door knocking but that puts you in direct conversation about real estate with somebody who you know as an entrepreneur already.
Speaker 1:They're like they own a business, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course they want to buy an investment property. You might not have the money right now, but they're going to. They'll have the conversation with you, right. So now for wholesalers, investors you could probably do the same thing if you're building a buyer's list, I guess, but you could usually just walk in and say, hey, do you know anybody who's trying to sell a property? I mean, the business owners are just sitting there bored, right, who do you know that's trying to sell something? But yeah, it's in person. I've been paying a teenager to do this for me for the mortgages. So we have a flyer and it's like five mortgage programs for self-employed business owners, like our non-QM stuff, and it works great. Now the kid he's 12 years, I mean he does it like when he feels like it. I give him like 15 bucks an hour, but every time he goes out we get a few scans.
Speaker 1:That's great. So it's just a bunch of yeah. You know what? I'm happier for the kid than I am for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah so am I.
Speaker 1:Because the kid is getting like real life marketing and sales experience. Like the kid doesn't realize how that's going to pay tremendous dividends for him in 10 years, 15 years from now. So I'm excited for that kid. I mean he's out there talking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he gets five bucks a scan too. He gets 15 an hour and he always he calls me that night and he's like did I get any scans? I'm like, yeah, you got two scans. You know we sell them. My wife, Apple pays them because the kid has an iPhone. So Apple pay him 25 bucks and then, like he's done this a few times, a couple of weeks later, when he spends that money, yeah, he's back to work.
Speaker 1:So you know this is good lessons for that kid because you know at least he's that's the age you're supposed to do that kind of shit, right, yeah? But you know I have contractors that this is their behavior and I have literally identified their behaviors where I'm like okay, so this guy is going to do this job for us and he's going to.
Speaker 1:We're going to pay him 40 grand, 50 grand. I already know that guy. Once he's done with that job, if I have another job lined up for him to do for us, I can't line him up right away because I already know what this guy's behavior is. He's going to go to Puerto Rico, he's going to go here, he's going to go there, and my wife is this and that one is this one. He's like this bullshit. It's just he's taking the money and then when he wastes the money and he's out of money, then he comes back and he's like okay, what's next? So at least the kid is learning it now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some people never grow out of it and it's funny. But, guys, if you're listening and this is you you need to be paying attention to this, because this is an unconscious behavior that a lot of people do and they don't realize. Listen, dude, I used to do the same thing. I used to have big check. Syndrome is what I call it. I used to get a big check. I'm going to chill now for a minute. I'm going to go take the family to dinner and you can't let up, man, especially when you're in a commission-based world. You've got to keep going. Stuff happens sales get canceled. Orders get canceled, you get chargebacks. Things happen when you're in a commission.
Speaker 2:I'll give you a little secret behind Thanksio about our business model, and it's based on the fact that we know real estate agents in particular. They only buy marketing stuff right after they have a deal or when they're really desperate for a deal. So part of the reason why we base the whole business around automating the sending of postcards and letters we want to tie our stuff up to your CRM because then you don't have to physically do anything to spend the money to automate your business. So this effect that you're talking about to get over our own human nature, the more you can automate, even if it means you're automating spending money, the better it is for everybody involved.
Speaker 1:That's brilliant. I got to tell you, man, that's really brilliant that you're doing that, ryan, and actually you're actually providing a service because let's keep it real right, let's keep it 100. A lot of realtors and a lot of salespeople I know because I've been there don't take the time to personally develop and like, hey, why am I doing this? How do I get better? Let me attend a conference, let me get coaching. A lot of people don't do that and that's the only way you uncover your flaws is by coach, by attending an event, by working on yourself and saying, okay, damn, I've been doing this and this is impacting me and that's what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:And I call it the thermometer. Right, the big check that you have with the thermometer. You're set, you make that money and then unconsciously you let up. But, my friend, it's really valuable what you're doing out there for folks. I love that system that you've got set up right now. Right now, we're about to go into the entitled round. We appreciate you coming out and sharing your insights with us. We're about to go into the entitled round, where I'm going to ask you a series of questions. You don't have to think, you don't have to justify right, all you have to do is one word and answer you. Ready to play, my friend.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1:Real estate is Fun. A million dollars is Not that much money. I've always wanted to travel too.
Speaker 2:Mexico, for some reason.
Speaker 1:My advice to you haven't been to Mexico yet Great place. My advice to young people is Enjoy working.
Speaker 2:Like the work can be fun. You'll find something to work at it. It's actually fun in and of itself.
Speaker 1:Never underestimate the power of Conversations. People coming to St Petersburg, florida, should try. Oh man, so much.
Speaker 2:You might think, ah, you're stumping me here. Golf port this is a little neighborhood. Go hang out in golf port, family or business.
Speaker 1:Oh family, all day Wine or beer Beer. Growth or security. Oh, growth Scale or popularity Scale, baby, coffee or tea, depends on the day of the week.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I've been going back and forth. I can't kick the darn coffee. Yeah, some of my business partner just kicked it a few months ago.
Speaker 1:I remember we were at an event and she was headaches and she was like dude, I can't man she was having, but she kicked it, she kicked it for sure man, I can't, she kicked it. She kicked it for sure man, she did it.
Speaker 2:I quit it for weeks at a time, but I always come back, really. So I've gotten over. If you quit it for a couple of weeks at a time, the headaches do start going away when you stop. But whatever, we don't need to go.
Speaker 1:Book smart or street smart Street. And lastly, Trump or Biden.
Speaker 2:You're going to do this. Huh, I don't like either of them, Honestly. I just don't like any of it.
Speaker 1:My team's hilarious. They put these questions together and a lot of times I'm reading them the very first time and they put both of us on the spot. But I'm playing full out, just like you are. Thank you so much, brother, for coming out and sharing with us.
Speaker 1:If there's a realtor, an investor, an entrepreneur, a business owner out there listening to us and they're thinking man, I want to connect with Ryan and I want to talk to him about getting hooked up with Thanksio and that whole funnel and that whole thing, how do they find you, where do they find you and how do they connect with you?
Speaker 2:Thanksio is easy and not ryanhartmaninfo. I have a very fancy website, ryanhartmaninfo. It's a Google doc. I've linked all my stuff on that doc if you want to check me out, got it Ryanhartmaninfo.
Speaker 1:You can go there and you'll find how to find Ryan in all of his social media and stuff. Ryan, thank you, my friend. Thank you for coming out, really appreciate it, brother. Learned a ton of different strategies here from you on marketing. Appreciate you, my friend, thanks. Thanks for having me.
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