The Titanium Vault hosted by RJ Bates III
RJ Bates III, affectionately referred to as the Viking Wizard by his students, started his real estate investing career in 2014 after attending a real estate education program that put him $65,000 in debt. RJ contracted his first deal he found on the MLS and wholesaled it for a $7,500 assignment fee. That was the end of his former life and the beginning of his venture into becoming a real estate investor. Since that moment, RJ has become an influential figurehead in the real estate investing industry. He has successfully purchased and sold over 2,000 properties all across the USA including wholesale deals, rehabs, rentals, owner finances and short term rentals. One of his passions is being the host of The Titanium Vault Podcast where he interviews the top real estate investors and finally, RJ has won back to back Closers Olympics earning him the reputation as the King Closer!
The Titanium Vault hosted by RJ Bates III
Tony Javier: 10X Your Real Estate Business with TV
Imagine turning an initial investment of $200 into a thriving real estate empire. That’s precisely what Tony Javier did, and he's here to share his wealth of knowledge and experience with us. We'll be exploring Tony's journey, from investing in his first real estate course back in 2001 to navigating through the complex world of BRRR's, flips, and wholesales.
If you've ever wondered about the power of television advertising, stay tuned. Tony breaks down his unexpected foray into this medium, which started with a simple poker game. You'll learn about the incredible returns that can come from TV advertising, and how it can not only transform your business but also help you stand out from the competition. From comparing costs to other forms of marketing to discussing the impact of market size, we've got you covered.
And as we move forward, let's consider what the future may hold. TV's effect on marketing and real estate is undeniable, and Tony's insights into how it can generate high-quality leads and build credibility are invaluable. You'll also get to hear some honest advice from Tony on what he would have done differently when he first started in the real estate business. Don't miss out on this stimulating conversation as we explore the past, present, and future of TV advertising in the real estate industry. Learn more about Tony Javier and the power of TV marketing at https://tonyjavier.com/
Come learn how to Close just like me, The King Closer at https://thekingcloser.com/
Learn more about the systems I use to virtually wholesale nationwide using the links below!
LeadZolo YouTube Leads: https://www.leadzolo.com/titanium
BatchLeads 1,000 Seller Leads: https://batchleads.io/titanium
The Most Powerful Dispo Tool: https://get.investorlift.com/titanium/
Propstream Free Trial: http://trial.propstreampro.com/titanium/
Buy your replay of the Closers Olympics at https://closersolympics.com/rj
Hey guys, welcome to the titanium vault. I'm your host, rj base, the third, and today I'm sitting down with Tony Javier. How you doing, man?
Speaker 2:doing good man. How are you bud?
Speaker 1:I'm excited for today's interview, like I was talking to you about before. You know, we haven't really had somebody that is Done as much TV as you have to generate real estate leads, so I'm excited to dive into that. But before we do that, you have a pretty impressive resume, so give us a brief rundown of your background, how long you've been in real estate and what all you've done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so back in 2001. I was waiting tables and in college and I found a late night or saw late night Infomercial Carlton sheets no down payment system I think a lot of people that have been in the business while I've heard of Carlton sheets, one of the OG's of education back in the day. So I had investing $200 in a course I probably had. I think I'd less than a thousand dollars in my account at that point. So I took a leap of faith, bought the course and it showed you how to buy properties without using any of your own money, which I didn't have money. So it's like perfect, if I want to buy properties and, you know, do something like this, this, this could be it. So I I got the the. It was actually CDs. They had just converted from tapes to CDs just to show you how old it is. Yeah, and so it was just a binder and CDs, that's all. It was very simple, basic course, but I got infatuated with it how you could buy properties with no money down you could. He talked about the Burr method, which before Burr was really a term, and so I ended up burring my first 10 properties. But so I bought that in April of 2001 and September of 2001, so 9-11.
Speaker 2:Basically, I bought my first two properties no money down. I had my dad cosign on both of them. He put the down payment on one of them. The other one I was able to buy cheap enough where I could get a loan that paid for the purchase and the renovations on the property, and I was able to get $20,000 back Tax-free. So to get $20,000 back tax-free, have another 20,000 in equity on a property, that cash flowed While I was in college without much money, was absolutely amazing. So so that's kind of how the the journey of real estate started. First Two, I'd say about year, year and a half, about 10 properties, bird of all and within you know, 16, 18 months I was worth several hundred thousand dollars, you know from properties, and so at that point I was able to quit my job waiting tables, dropped out of college with nine hours left to graduate, and Just jump full-time into real estate.
Speaker 1:I love it. I've got a pretty specific question about it because you brought up 9-11. I mean, I was in high school when 9-11 happened and it was a scary time. I mean it was like we didn't really know what was gonna happen in the world where we go into war. Like you know, I was approaching being 18 years old. It was like, hey, is there gonna be a draft? Go be, you know, going to Afghanistan or Iraq, you know, was there ever a concern like that you had where you were like, hey, I'm buying these houses in, like this, super unknown times? Was that a concern of yours?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I can't really remember, but I do kind of remember like having that same thought. I remember I was in, I was in a class and I was on the the class computers. You know they had like a room with computers and I saw real like a plane runs into the World Shades Center. Didn't think anything of them like it's a small plane or accident. So I go to class, come back out an hour and a half later and there's a TV in the hallway. You know, like in the main area, that everyone just has their eyes glued to it. I remember thinking the same thing we're getting attacked, two planes at the real trade center. One one was going for the Pentagon and I'm like, oh man, am I gonna get drafted or we? I mean same thing that you just said. And I just I remember kind of being scared a little bit, like you know, do I, do I want to kind of get into this, but obviously something kind of pushed me through to to close on those properties.
Speaker 1:You know it was like hey, I invested $200. That's like 20% of my total net worth.
Speaker 2:Man, I'm all in.
Speaker 1:Do you still own any of those properties?
Speaker 2:Interesting enough, I just sold those two properties probably two years ago, or, excuse me, the first two properties yeah, the first two properties two years ago. The other ones I'd have to look. I think I may still own a few of those. I unloaded a bunch of properties back in 17 and 19, which obviously everybody says this, but I wish I would have kept them because those appreciated another million million dollars plus. But but yeah, I still, you know, use the same methods to these day buying properties with no money down, burying them, having some cash flow, having some equity, some tax savings with accelerated appreciation, and and then I keep them for a little while and then I'll sell them in 1031 exchange. So I'm still doing the same method to today.
Speaker 1:So, looking over your resume, you've done over a thousand deals over these 20 plus years. Have they all been burrs or the flips wholesale? What was kind of the blend there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. I would say probably close to 200 were burrs. You know I still own over a hundred properties now. Sold some of those over the years but I'd say about over 80% of those we ended up selling at close on everything. The reason I close on everything a lot of people like to wholesale, which is great. I mean, I'm not saying that that's not great.
Speaker 2:What I like about closing on them is that I'm in control. I don't have to Push it, push out into it to an email, push out an email blast. I don't have. I don't have a you know three to four week or you know five or six week window to sell the property. We take our time and then we either clean it up and put it back on the market to sell as a whole tail, which is a very small percentage of what we do, but a lot of them we fix up and then we decide after we fix them up, do we sell them or do we keep them as rental properties. And I've got a whole spreadsheet that my team will fill everything in, outline it, send it over to me and then we'll make a decision on whether we Flip that property or whether we keep it in our portfolio.
Speaker 1:See, what I love about that is is, though you have a system and a process right. There's a process in which what you're doing with your properties you know. For us, we're a wholesaler. I openly talk about mistakes that I made in 2018, 2019, and that's where we got away from the process of what we do. You know, it wasn't wholesaling anymore. We took a lot down. We didn't have a process built out around what we were gonna do with these rentals and these flips that we were taking down. It was just, hey, we're really good wholesalers, so of course, we're gonna be a great flipper and a landlord too, and that's not the case.
Speaker 1:So I love the fact that you're like a. We're not even gonna pretend to try to be a wholesaler. We're gonna take everything down. We're gonna take our time because, you're right, there is a lot of pressure, especially like I like. For example, we just sent out six contracts to a seller today when he's facing foreclosure in the next two weeks. That is a lot of pressure in order for us to get that taken care of, or otherwise he's going to lose those properties. So I appreciate you bringing that up, because I think that's something that we don't openly talk enough about as real estate investors. So you know, fast-forward, how does TV become a part of Tony's world here? You know, I mean where, where did that come from?
Speaker 2:Great question. So I've always been a proponent of trying things. So back in 2002 or 2003 I filed an LLC and I had someone call me Actually, you know who it is Leon Barnes.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I got Leon into the business. He he called me, cold, called me and said hey, I do phone book Advertising for for people, and so I ended up he tells the story. I actually go to them after I set an appointment Briefly, but he kept following up with me and so I was like, alright, I'll meet with you. You know, I didn't have much money, and so he ended up selling me like a $60 phone book Add just a little, just a little ad to start with, and actually make good money on it. I I think I at least 10, if not 20 times my money, might even 30 times my money, because it was, you know, wasn't very expensive. And then I kept increasing over the years and so, so, fast forward to 2012 Yep, 2012 I Ended up meeting a guy at a networking event, kind of a whole by chance thing.
Speaker 2:I wasn't supposed to go to it and there's a whole story behind that too, but anyway. So we become friends. He invites me to a poker game and so I go down into this guy's basement and I see these two guys and I'm like I recognize those guys. Those guys are on TV, they have TV commercials, and so I purposely sit next to one of the guys. I'm an introvert by nature but I'm like you know, I'm kind of like have this little celebrity status thing in my head, like I want to sit next to this guy that's on. So I ended up I was like, hey, man, I see you on TV a lot. How are your commercials doing for you? And he's like dude and his eyes just lit up. He's like we do millions of dollars a year in business and all we do is TV commercials. And then he starts going into, like you know, people call us. The conversations are easy. You know, other people tell people about us because we're on TV. So there's like free marketing right there from the people to see us. And I was like, oh, that's pretty cool and I wasn't thinking anything of it.
Speaker 2:And he goes you know, maybe that would be good for your business. And I'm like I don't know. And I was like he's like I'll tell you what. Here's my media guy, drew. Why don't you call him? So I called Drew Monday morning and you know I'm all about trying things. So I'm like Drew, tell me about TV is like you know, do you think this would be good for my business? He goes well, I'll tell you what. Let me go back to the stations or go to the stations and I'll come back to you and I'll tell you, like what I think you need to spend. And he's like I've got some. And then he calls me back a week later. He's like I've got some good news for you.
Speaker 2:Your demographic is lower income and older. And he said I went to those shows that I know people are watching and they're actually pretty inexpensive. And he's like for three thousand dollars I can get you. I can't remember what the number was. It was like 300 or 500 commercials a month. It was a lot. And so I'm like all right, let's do it, let's roll. So I spent three grand my first month, made 35,000 my first month, and the rest is history.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's been super consistent over the last 11 years and it's crazy because I didn't realize that I had kind of a Formula that people wanted and needed and that was over many years. I've I've dialed in stations, we've tried different shows, we've done a lot of different tweaking. I've tested 12 different scripts on my TV commercials. Eight have worked really well and so I had this formula that you know people were wanting. People were like why don't you teach people and show people what you're doing? So a few years ago I went back to Drew, my media guy, and I said you know, we've got something really good here and people keep asking for it.
Speaker 2:If I were to show people what I'm doing and, you know, hold their hand through the process, would you negotiate the rates with the station, do the production, basically do everything you did for me. And he's like absolutely. He's like I've been doing this for 20 plus years all over the country. We can, we can do it for anybody in any industry really. But he's like you've got, you've got something dialed in. So yeah, if you can find your same avatar, let's do it.
Speaker 2:So I called 10 people that I knew that could probably afford it. Eight people said yes, and I think we still have, and that was three years ago. I think we still have six or seven of those still running with us today. You know some of them Dean Rogers, andrew Lucas, yeah, so we so. So, and the great thing is is that when I, when I launched this for other people, I was thinking, did I get a little bit lucky? Because I knew TV worked, but I didn't know, like is it usually three months, six months, twelve months, before someone really starts getting traction. And so when we started launching other people, they started seeing the same results, like literally week or even day one. They started getting phone calls and many of them did multiple deals their first month. So I'm like, man, this is crazy. So from then I'm like, all right, let's do this. So we launched it to the public and we have to this day a hundred and ten real estate investors running TV with us that are getting very similar results.
Speaker 1:So it's just been just been crazy how something like that turns into Something where we just help a lot of people really grow and scale their businesses you just drop like a titanium vault guests like alumni list there Dean Rogers, leon G Barnes, who obviously Leon's my buddy from part of the disruption Love that guy. So I've got some specific questions here about TV because I'm genuinely curious Just from the nature in which you're talking about TV. It's like hey, we're going to send this out to the world and then we're gonna wait on the calls or or Submissions to our websites, right, it's very similar in nature to direct mail campaigns and and I almost feel like the cost would be similar to direct mail campaigns Do you think that is a fair assessment there?
Speaker 2:Absolutely not. In fact, it's, it's. It's dramatically different. Guess which way it goes more expensive or less expensive?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm guessing that TV is gonna be less expensive. But I guess what I'm saying is is like, upfront, you're gonna spend, like use your example there you spend three thousand dollars and then you're waiting on the responses back. Right, right in nature that's similar to what the right mail is. That's what I'm referring to is hey, you're dropping this much money and then you're waiting on those returns back.
Speaker 2:Right, hundred percent. Sorry, I misunderstood the question. What I was thinking was how expensive it is to do TV compared to direct mail. And what I compared to is what is our cost per reach? So there's something called CPM, which is basically cost per thousand in TV terms, and you can use it for other you know marketing mediums as well. So if you do the math, if you send out a thousand direct mail pieces, if you're doing postcards, it's about 50 cents give or take, little more, little less sometimes. So call it $500 to hit a thousand people. For TV commercials for that same thousand people, you're only paying five dollars to ten dollars per thousand. So it's a fifty to a hundred times less expensive to hit the same amount of people.
Speaker 2:And some people may say, well, it's not quite as targeted. Yeah, that's true, but I mean you're hitting. You're probably hitting those people that are on list. But the beautiful thing is you're also hitting people that aren't on those lists, that are either looking to sell or getting ready to sell or getting ready to be on list. You're actually hitting them before they get on those lists. So it's dramatically less expensive when you look at it that way.
Speaker 2:And it's just there, the reach you get from TV is just unlike anything else. And then on top of that, there's the credibility you get. You know, just like when I went to that poker game, if I saw those two guys and they hadn't been on TV, I'd be like you're just a Joe Schmoe. But then, being on TV, it's like I wanted to go sit next to him, I wanted to talk to them. You know, it's just one of those things that happen. So it happens with sellers. They trust you more.
Speaker 2:It happens with, you know, buyers. If you're dealing with buyers, with contractors, with this is a big one private money lenders. I've actually had a private money lender walk into my office and say I see you guys on TV. I've been wanting to invest in real estate, but I don't really want to buy houses. Oh, perfect. And so we're like we have a private money program, you can invest in our deals, you don't have to swing hammers. You know, blah, blah, blah. And within six months it might have been closer to 12 months. He had over a million dollars invested with us. And any time I talked to someone in Wichita, kansas, for my TV commercials are running and they're like hey, john told me about you, he's investing with you. You know I want to learn about what you're doing. I've seen you on TV for years. It's just you can tell the way they talk to me. It's like they already trust me and the credibility is there because of TV.
Speaker 1:And then I could go on and on.
Speaker 2:There's probably 20 to 30 benefits that I could go through that TV offers.
Speaker 1:So I want to talk to you about what you said where, because that that's where I was gonna go with it is that direct mail is super targeted, or when you pull a list You're super targeted. But I teach this all the time because one of our Channels is cold calling through lists. Right, I'm not big on direct mail myself, just because I find it to be cost prohibitive and it has some of the worst returns out there and I Say it all the time where, hey, they might show up as Preforeclosure or tax default or vacant property, but that very rarely is the motivating reason as to why they want to sell. There's a story as to why they're in pre foreclosure and that's the real motivation. So to your point.
Speaker 1:We're going to be hitting them with our television commercial Prior to them going into pre foreclosure because of that real story as to why they're going into pre foreclosure. So, cold calling, texting, threat mail, you're late to the game and and you're right, you don't get any credibility by sending a text or cold calling with a virtual assistant or piece of postcard, like in reality you're just getting yelled at more than you are actually talking to a motivated seller. So let's talk about the conversations that you're having with sellers. What does that look like in comparison to a cold call or these other forms of marketing? How pleasant is it? Because it feels like they're going to be coming to you saying, hey, thank you so much. You know I'm super interested, so my house is that kind of how it goes in comparison to other forms of marketing.
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny, I've only had a couple of our clients send me like recordings of people that called and said, hey, get off my TV, what are you doing you? A Kind of stuff. It's very rare, right, like obviously with texting and cold calling. Like every day, right, every day, you're getting that. So the great thing about TV is it provides High-quality leads that aren't tire kickers, because if someone is calling you number one, they they know or feel like your legit business, so they're not just going to call you and waste your time. Most likely.
Speaker 2:The other thing is is that if they are, if they are taking their time and Stepping away from the TV to either go on your website or to call, they're probably a pretty motivated seller, they're actually wanting to sell a house.
Speaker 2:They're not just, they're not just getting hated with with a Facebook ad or a random text or a call that where they're just like, yeah, give me an offer and we'll see if I want to sell, kind of thing, right, and so With cold, you can tell me what your numbers are, what you're seeing. But cold calling and texting, from what I've heard, is between 50 leads to 100 leads to get a deal, whereas with TV our numbers are about one out of every 10 leads becomes a contract. And then we have some clients that are even one in five. I would say one in 10 to 20 is is probably a good range for TV. But yeah, the conversations are totally different. They're they're they're actually Not trying to sell you, but they're actually calling you to get them to do business with you, instead of the other way around, instead you trying to reach out to them, right? So it's a totally different conversation.
Speaker 1:And you know those numbers that you gave on cold calling and texting Pretty accurate there. Listen, everyone's gonna have a different version of what they consider is a lead and not a lead. One of my questions I have about this is this how often are people Responding to a TV commercial Wanting to sell their house for full market value? How are we getting the truly motivated Discounted properties from these commercials?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. I'd have to look like I'd have to dive into the leads and ask my team and like, pull that stat. I haven't really looked at that, but I know when I was doing acquisitions back in 2015, before I moved to San Diego from Wichita, that most people called because they are in distress. I mean, our commercial is you were buying your property as is. You know it's paying fees, any commissions, you know doing repairs, you know that kind of thing. So our commercial shouts Right, motivated seller, most likely a house that's in distress.
Speaker 2:I would guess that probably one out of every ten, maybe two out of every ten leads may be like a Retail lead where you could take it, and actually a lot of our clients that Our real estate agents are actually making money just on that, taking the leads that they can't buy that are actually in pretty good shape and making those listings. And even for us we refer those listings out. We make a little bit of money each year on referring them out to other agents. So yeah, I'd say probably one and one to two out of every ten is actually Someone that could sell on the open market that's in good condition and probably get way more than what we can give them so my buddy Also part of the disruption.
Speaker 1:You know panelists Eric Brewer he's big on TV and client of ours as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I want to use him as an example to those that might be like okay, yeah, this sounds great, but I'm a high introvert, I won't even go live on Facebook. There's no way in the world I'm gonna get in front of a camera crew, lights and a make a commercial. Eric Utilizes his mom for his TV commercials, correct, and, and that's been like a huge hit for him Utilizing his mom. So is there a certain level of like creativity that your clients have on how these commercials are like developed?
Speaker 2:Great question. So people use us because they know we have the formula right. We know that if you do everything that we say, the likelihood of your commercials working is very high. Right, we have clients that come to us are like, well, I want to shoot it in my backyard or I want to shoot it here. I've got a video guy that can do a bunch of amazing things. And it's like our commercials are very simple, they're to the point, they're not super sexy, but we know they work right.
Speaker 2:So we talked through it. Like if someone has a mom they want to put in, and I've got a Client that him and his mom are in it and it's doing really well in two markets. He's running in two markets with us. We have People that have kids, that want their kids in the commercial, and then we tested that over a year ago and that did well. So now we have a script and we have a model for putting putting families in a commercial. We've got husband and wife. We've got, you know, two guys that are partners.
Speaker 2:There's there's a lot of different variations to it. The the thing that that you, that needs to be the same as the station and so is we put you on. The scripts are very similar, the format of the commercials very similar, so we will be a little bit creative with adding different layers to it. So back to your point. If someone doesn't want to be on the commercial, we can do many things. First of all, I've had some people that are real introverts, that are really terrible on camera, that we've had come in the studio and shoot and we've been able to edit and make it look good. Right, we do enough takes that we can find something to work with. Two is I've done commercials for people. So I'm probably in 10 markets throughout the US right now with with my face on the commercial. But if someone says I want an older white lady or something you know, whatever it is that they feel like is going to produce well in their market, then we can find talent to do that commercial.
Speaker 2:But I will say that if you are spending the money to be on TV and building that credibility, that you should be in the commercial because you're building your personal brand. If I go into Wichita, kansas, right now, I see people look at me and I can tell that they're like I recognize that go from somewhere, or they know who I am, or A lot of people come up to be like oh, you're the real estate guy, you're the TV guy, right, that is just. That is priceless right. Because if I go out and I go do business in Wichita and they say, I know who you are, I've seen you on TV, the credibility is already there and it helps me negotiate, it helps me to do business with them. They don't have to vet me as much in that kind of thing. Especially if your team or you are going into houses, that right there is like they're, they treat you like a celebrity. Oh, tony, I didn't realize that you are coming. You know, it's like.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's what they say, I mean that's part of what you're paying for. Is that credibility as well? Right, when, hey, the lead comes in, they, you know your team takes the answer. If they see you come to the house, I mean it's like you're the guy that was on TV, you're the woman that was on TV, then instantly, I want to do business. When you just like you felt at that poker room. So, yeah, I think people need to get over that and it's funny, I'm the one saying this.
Speaker 1:First two, three years of the podcast, there was no video, there was no YouTube channel, because I was afraid of cameras and lights. Yeah, and now I've actually been on TV and let me tell you it's not that bad. Okay, these are professionals. I mean, they work with you and they're like, hey, just do it again, do it again, stop reading this script, just be you, be you. And eventually it comes out. So I love that. Let's. Let's talk about, like, the expense here in comparison to other. I know back when you got started, it was $3,000 and that guy, you had three 500 commercials. What is it looking like now? And does the market depend on how much it costs?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's totally market dependent. You know we have people spending, you know, five grand a month which most markets would also recommend spending less than that. I'm a pretty small market and I was able to start on the on the lower end. But you know, when you do the math on it, adding a couple thousand dollars to your budget to be able to get an extra several deals a year most likely is worth the extra money. But there are markets where we have client spending 100 grand a month and those are in bigger markets that they're on the high end of the ad spend. I mean that's them starting at 10 grand and going to 100 eventually because they're, you know, just it worked and they continue to add to it. I would say most markets throughout the US I'd say 90% of the markets will be somewhere between five to five to 10 grand a month, which, if you look at a direct mail drop, I mean that's you're usually spending five to 10 on a decent direct mail drop and the other thing about it is that it's it's there's not a lot to manage because when we set it up, we set it up right.
Speaker 2:When I started my commercial back in 2012, we actually didn't change it for over 12 months it produced it did well. The only reason that I did a new commercials I wanted to test something and see if anything did better. Most of our commercials when we do them, they do well and they run for 12 to 18 months and we don't touch them, whereas most other marketing mediums you have to manage it every month, if not every week, or it would text in cold calling every day for the most part. So it's kind of a set it and forget it mentality. So you know it's not super cheap. It's not something that a new investor that you know only wants to spend a thousand a month could do. But but if someone is doing other forms of marketing, it, especially at scale, it's an absolute no brainer. So someone's doing direct mail, ppc and even cold calling can help because people when they warm up the conversation and they realize someone is actually looking to sell and not just a tire kicker, they will mention their TV commercials. We told our clients to start doing that and it softens up the conversation even more. All you're the guys on TV, right, but TV kind of ties everything together where if you're doing direct mail, if you're doing PPC, all of those things are helped by TV because of the credibility we get.
Speaker 2:I would say Anywhere from one to three deals a year where someone will get our direct mail to get our postcard and say we called you, and only you, because we noticed you're on TV. We know who you are. Where we don't know who these other guys are, right, and we've actually had many people sell to us for a lower amount because they know we're credible and they'll say well, you know, we have these other guys. They offered Five thousand more, ten thousand more whenever the number is. You know, we've seen you on TV throughout the years. We're going to take your offer because we feel like you're going to close. We're not sure about these other guys, right? So again there's. You know I could go on and on about the benefits of TV, but I just layers on to each other.
Speaker 1:Let's just utilize cold calling as an example here. I mean, if you say you have five virtual assistants cold calling for you, you're probably spending somewhere between a thousand to twelve hundred dollars a week just in their labor. This is not including the dialer, this is not including the list, this is not including the skip tracing. I mean very quickly, with a small cold calling force of five people you're eclipsing the cost of TV right there and there's a lot of management that has to go into that. So from a management perspective of what this looks like, say I say okay, tony, here's 10 grand a month, so I just, I just give you 120 grand. What does that look like from my perspective? Is there an extra expense where I have to pay for the production of the commercial, or is that included in that? And how often am I having to come out and and record commercials with you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question. So, first of all, we make it super easy. So we, we would negotiate with the stations, put the scripts together, set you up in your market to shoot the commercials. You don't have to come to us. We have several clients in orange county, just north of me, that virtually invest in other markets, so I just offer them to. You know, drive an hour, hour and a half down to come shoot with me. Um, so we make that. We make that super easy.
Speaker 2:Um, there are some other costs associated that if someone you know wants to book a call we, you know we can talk about that. Um. And then we mentioned the ad spend of, you know, you know, five to ten grand in any given market. Um, you know that they'll need to invest. And so if someone, uh, you know, like I mentioned with my commercials when I started, I was able to get Several hundred commercials in my first month. So when someone comes to us and says what would, um, the low amount of ad spend get us? So if, if, in someone's market, we look at it and we say you wouldn't want to spend less than 7 000, chances are that's going to get somewhere between 500 and 800 commercials a month, um, which it's?
Speaker 2:It's kind of interesting because I met a guy last week in Vegas at an event. He's like, oh, I'm already doing tv and and I was like, okay, cool. And then, uh, he just texted me a little bit ago and he sent me a schedule. He's getting 30 commercials a month for, uh, it's either three or four thousand dollars. And I just kind of laughed at it because he is getting absolutely hosed. So what he did was he called the station directly and said I want to spend x amount of dollars. So they just gave him the most expensive package. That isn't even the right audience. He's on like Morning news, like morning news channels, so it's really expensive, it's not super dialed in, and so we've got a call later today and I looked at his market and we already have data on it for that same $3,000 we can get them like 600 commercials a month, you know, um, and and a lot of it has to do with.
Speaker 2:I mean we're, we're getting a difference. Oh, it's a amazing difference. Imagine only being seen one time a day compared to 20 times a day, right, um? And so, yeah, because we've we've had several people come, just like this guy, that are like we're doing, and he's actually doing okay with it. He's like I'm doing okay, it's not not doing great, but it's like man, we can get you 20 times more more commercials. So we've had many people come to us, even if they're doing tv already, uh, and we've been able to dial in.
Speaker 2:So either their their commercials not very dialed in. I mean you have to have an easy to remember phone number, you have to have an easy to remember website, you have to be on the right shows and stations. Um, you know that your call to action has to be right. I mean, there's so many different elements to tv that Someone that's really smart could do with themselves. But we also have some really smart people that um are not Uh able to do it themselves.
Speaker 2:I mean Ron Legrand, for instance. He's a super smart guy who ran tv commercials for a long time for his info products, and he's higher in us to do his commercials because he knows that it's a different way to do commercials and he doesn't want to mess with it and he wants us to dial it in. So, um, and that's the great thing about tv is there's not a lot of competition. So if you can get on tv and figure it out, um, the, the, the, uh the barrier of entry is very high, right texting and cold calling. You can listen to a podcast. Someone could say go to batch by this, by this list, hire this va company and within a week to two weeks you could be up and running with with cold calling and texting, whereas tv there's so many more elements to it that not many people do it so Specific question for me and for my audience, because a lot of my audience is going to be, you know, people that have attended crucibles, our education program, things like that.
Speaker 1:We teach nationwide virtual wholesaling. So when I say nationwide, I mean we are all 50 states and and we don't care where the lead is coming in. So if I go to you and I say, tony, I want to do tv, where are you going to lead me to do in tv? Because it sounds like it's going to be market specific. So how would we figure that out together on where we could actually run commercials?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great questions. So we look at your market first, because you're there, right, that would be the obvious one. If someone's like it's too expensive in my market or I don't do any business in my market, then we go look at the other markets. What markets are you doing business in? Where do you have a team? Where are your profit margins higher? You know, we just dive into that and if someone's like, well, I do ppc all over the country and I don't know where I'm going to get my deals, then we go on and we'll look at a map and I'll show you different areas where we've either had success or where I know, for a low ad spend, that you can get a higher return.
Speaker 2:For instance, um, there's a lot of different markets in the southeast that are small markets, and when I say small markets, they're usually between 500,000 to a million people for the metro and the surrounding areas, right, um, I consider that still kind of a small, maybe a medium sized market when you could spend between five and seven grand a month, and we have a lot of clients that are doing that and getting anywhere from a 10 to 20 times return, because really you only have to do a couple deals, a couple decent deals, you know, 25 to 30 thousand dollar deals To get that 10x return and that's why that's one of the reasons I call it 10x tv is we, um, we get in front of 10 times more people, 10 times faster, with 10 times more credibility. But we also have a lot of clients that are doing 10 times return on their money, which we've done In some years in the past as well, um, so, yeah, that's, that's how we would go through the whole process of figuring out which market to to dive in a good example.
Speaker 1:That would be me for an example. I'm just going to make an assumption here that running a commercial in dallas, fort worth, texas, is going to be a lot more costly. I mean, you're talking about, like, uh, I think, the fourth and the 12th largest metro city in the united states and, okay, that's probably going to cost a lot more than if I said, hey, let's go run something in chattanooga, tennessee, or birmingham, alabama, where we probably do you know less deals there. But when we do get deals there, they're instantly, you know, sold and profitable for us. So that would be something, you know, intriguing for a virtual wholesaler like myself. Okay, another question I've got.
Speaker 1:We talked about michael mcdonald and when I was doing research on michael mcdonald for his podcast on the titanium vault, of course, I went to his website and saw, you know, launch home buyers and saw all this stuff. Now, fast forward, I'm sitting down With the kiddos, we're watching Monday night raw on youtube tv and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there's michael mcdonald hey, do you need to sell your house? Go to launch home buyers. These guys whole little tv commercial. So Obviously that was a retargeting ad. Was that through your efforts. Or is that another marketing, because it, I mean to me it was on TV, so was that a part of your ads, or is that something else that he was doing?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. I would imagine it has to be through us, because he's running TV through us and there's nobody else that's servicing him. I know that on YouTube TV we're running on certain stations and shows, but I think my media team probably negotiates something like that where we get extra ads that retarget on certain devices.
Speaker 1:That was really cool to see because it was clear that the reason why it was there is because it was a retargeting ad and so, to your point, it was kind of refreshing my memory, rebuilding that credibility. There he is over and over and over again. I highly doubt well, maybe I don't know I was gonna say I highly doubt that you're specifically targeting Monday Night Raw WWE.
Speaker 2:But maybe that is a good.
Speaker 1:Democrat, I don't know. That's interesting. So where do you see the future of TV going as we move more into this world where it's streaming services like Netflix and YouTube TV? Like I just converted over, I've had direct TV for years because it was the only way you could get NFL Sunday ticket. I'm a big football guy. Now, all of a sudden you know, hey, this season can't get it on direct TV, you're not getting it through YouTube TV. So where do you see the future of TV going?
Speaker 2:Well, here's the interesting thing. So YouTube TV just spent, you know, millions or hundreds, whatever the number is, to get YouTube TV right. So if they didn't believe that TV was gonna be around for a long time, they wouldn't have invested that money, because YouTube TV, even though it's YouTube, is still regular TV and cable TV right. And so if you look at the statistics with people in the US that watch TV, it's astounding. I think it's like 40% of the US still watches three hours of TV or more per day. 40% Is that down from five to 10 years ago? Yeah, probably a little bit down. But here's the great thing. Is our demographic, which is lower income, older. They grew up with TV, traditional TV. They don't want to one spend money on streaming. Small portion of them may want to and they watch their same old shows that are on the shows and stations that we still buy, right?
Speaker 2:So could it change 20 years from now to be dramatically different? Probably. Is it gonna change in five years? Probably not, because it's been dramatically different in the last five years and TV viewership hasn't gone down that much. And even if it does, we'll shift, but right now.
Speaker 2:So the guy that I told you that I met last week in Vegas. He's like, yeah, I'm on some different stations and then they sold me streaming and all this stuff and I'm like I'm kind of hitting my head against the wall, going, no, don't do that, because one, it's not very targeted. So even if they say we're gonna target your demographic of 50 and older, well what if? Or let's say, 40 and older, so let's say your kids are watching it, it's not targeting you, they're watching a show that may not even be something that you watch. So for us it's. We want to target the shows that we know older people are watching and potentially lower income, right?
Speaker 2:Also, there's no way to track it. With TV, there's an old system where we get a report for our clients every single month that verifies third party that that commercial ran on that show and that station at this time and third party verified. Whereas with streaming, they can tell you they can get 10,000 impressions but you have no way to track it. It's all about trust and they're spreading it all over the place, right? We've had many people outside of us say, oh, I don't want to try TV, I'm gonna try streaming, and I advise them against it. And they've come back to us many months later and being like we didn't get one call from that. So could it change later, where TV kind of develops more into streaming? Yeah, we may just have to figure that out, but I don't see that happening for at least five to 10 years, and there's still plenty of time to run commercials until then.
Speaker 1:Well, man, you have completely opened my mind to this whole world because you're right when you think about starting a wholesaling business or any sort of real estate business and marketing. It's all about texting, cold calling, direct mail and, yeah, over the past couple of years now there's the paper lead models which we're big in with PPC and YouTube ads and stuff like that. But this is a whole nother world and nothing compares to an inbound lead where they're saying I want to sell to you, how much will you give me for my house? I love that. How can people find out more about 10X TV and learn more about you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we do semi-market exclusivity, which means we only have so many spots per market. So if someone wants to check to see if their market's available and we could price it out and all that good stuff, you can go to remtvcom. Again, remtvcom stands for Real Estate, masters TV, yep, go there, just fill out some information. You can book a call with us and we can talk you through it. And one of the things that people ask me typically a lot of the time in podcasting conversations because I've been in the business long is what would you do differently starting out 22 years ago? And I say two things. One is join a mastermind group or community or hire a coach, something where you can get support and learn from other people's mistakes, which I didn't do, for I think CG was my first attempt at it in 2015 of getting in a room with really smart people. And then the second thing is I wish I would have started TV sooner.
Speaker 2:Tv is not for everybody. It's not for. We've had some newer investors that have done TV with us and the only reason we did that is because they either sold a company or they had a lot of sales experience or ran a company really high level and we figured that they could figure it out. But typically it's gonna be for investor doing at least one to two deals a month. If you're doing four to five deals a month, it's an absolute no brainer to give it a shot. So yeah, I mean those are the two things that I would say I would do differently, starting out. So I would say, at the very least, book a call. We'll kind of talk about what your market looks like. If it's not the right timing for either of us, either we don't think it's a good fit for you or a good fit for us we can table that. But, as you can see, tv's not as expensive as you would think and it's not just for big brands, which is a lot of a big misnomer with the general public.
Speaker 1:Well, I appreciate you coming on here and dropping as much knowledge. I try to get as specific as I could about a topic that I currently am not using. I'm gonna look into your program. I'm probably gonna have you priced out a couple of markets for me. Just see what that would look like. So I love the knowledge that you dropped. And just going back to the credibility and the social proof not on TV, but by putting yourself on video I will give a specific KPI that I have. I share every day two reels on Instagram, tiktok, facebook and on YouTube shorts of me talking to sellers Legitimately. Me talking to another seller buying their property. Okay, during my previous 50 day challenge, I got 14 properties under contract from a seller reaching out to me on Instagram or TikTok saying I saw you buy someone else's house on Instagram and TikTok. How much would you give me for my house?
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:Social credibility is so important and, to your point, 40% of Americans are watching three hours of TV a day. That's the power in that alone. We're not even talking about the highly motivated person that needs to call you and wants to call you right there. This is about just the credibility side of things. I think it's super powerful and, like you said, if you're doing four to five deals a month, no brainer. Reach out to Tony. The link will be in the show notes. Just click down below. You can click on that schedule to call with Tony. Tony, I appreciate you coming on here, man, and taking the time to drop knowledge about TV.
Speaker 2:Awesome man, good to be on the King of Closers podcast man.
Speaker 1:Absolutely All right, guys. Hey, if you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to go give Tony a follow, check him out and then also give us a five-star review. We will see you next week. Thank you, guys.