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So the big question is this: how are real estate investors who don't have a ton of free time, don't have access to off-market deals, and didn't start a life on third base? How do we grow a real estate business conservatively to support our families, finally leave the corporate rat race, and build a legacy?

That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Ed Mathews, and this is real estate underground. This is the real estate underground podcast show, number 45. Hello, fellow undergrounders at Mathew's here with the real estate underground podcast. I am a marketing geek and also a real estate nerd.

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I am excited because I have had the opportunity to meet our guests today. Bob McIntosh. Welcome, Bob. Thank you for taking time. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me on. And for all of you listening, I appreciate you giving your time to this podcast. It's the most valuable thing you can give, and I don't take it for granted.

Yeah. Thank you so much. We were talking about this offline, but I'll tell everybody. One of the cool things about having a podcast is you get to schedule your time with really interesting and smart people. And occasionally, you learn something yourself. And, uh, when we started talking, I thought, Oh my God, I can learn so much from Bob and I, all the marketing geek light bulbs went off in my head.

So, I was very excited to have this conversation. So welcome. I'm excited to, you know, what's funny is sometimes people are like, no, I don't want to have a conversation with someone because maybe they're in the same niche or same space or they do the same thing. And it's like, Nah, if you collaborate with the right folks, you'll find that you're going to learn something.

Everyone, even like through, I was just talking to a newbie the other day on his podcast, literally only been doing real estate for a year and a half. And I still learned something from you and that guy. And I was like, man, I've been doing this for 14 years and still learned something. So you never know.

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Iron sharpens iron, right? Absolutely. Yeah. So, Bob, I've been cyber-stalking you for quite some time. And so I'm familiar with your company, three degrees consulting, as well as your book and the things that you do. And so, for the audience, why don't you give them a brief overview of who you are and what you do for a living?

Absolutely. So real estate investor and digital marketing expert. So, my dad and I started investing back in 2008. So I've been doing it for a hot minute, bought our first property, then made every mistake you could make, learned a lot, lost a bunch of money on our first deal, but somehow still.

Still doing it, but here we go. And then I lived in Los Angeles for 10 years, but we were doing everything in Buffalo. So I had to figure out how I could provide value to this company for 3, 000 miles away. And I got very good at raising money and doing digital marketing. In fact, today, about 35, maybe 40 percent of all the deals we've ever purchased came from the internet.

The best part is that when you do things the right way on the internet, the deals come to you, which is great, right? Because it doesn't take you, I'm not having to go out there. They already want to work with you because they reached out to you and see. It's always a better price because they want to work with you.

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You're usually not competing against the 800 other direct mail pieces they got yesterday and the 40 other texts that they're getting today or whatever else it is, right? They just want to talk to you. So, it's been a great business. From there, I transitioned or was asked by one of the largest real estate education companies to build their student platform for marketing online, which it did for them and several others.

From there, about four years ago, I decided to teach it instead, which I love doing and sharing my knowledge. However, I found that probably less than 10 percent of the people I taught how to do stuff online actually did it. The reason is not for any other reason: we usually have to wear many hats and don't have time.

So I said, you know what? Okay. Instead of just teaching it, I'm going to offer to do it for folks because I found that I can do it better, faster, and ultimately cheaper when they consider the value of their time. Awesome. So, obviously, that's three degrees consulting, right? Correct. Yep. Yeah. Okay. So, I want to get the marketing piece done for you and the training, but let's talk about your real estate first.

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So, let's talk about the types of real estate that you're doing. I know you were into rehabbing quite some time ago, but I'll let you tell the story. Yeah. So we focused, well, it's funny. I went and started off buying; the first thing we ever did was a rental property. I was like, okay, this is great.

I'm making 200 bucks a month. This is awesome. And then I was broke. Right. I had a job, but I was like, for me to save up enough money to buy another rental property or to buy the scale that I wanted to, there's no way I like it'd take me most of my life to get there. I was like, I don't. Hey, nobody has time for that.

We have to do it faster. So then I was like, Oh, let's get into rehabbing. Cause it was the biggest check. Even though it took the most time. Then we did wholesaling and went back to retail. To rehab for a while. Along the way, we picked up a few rentals, but we've been heavily focused on the rental game for the last couple of years.

We're up to 30 so far. We'll see where we go. I'd love to be at a hundred before the end of the year, but we'll see if we get there. That's a good stretch goal for us. And then we also started getting more into commercials. So, a fun fact: As of today, we're putting in an offer on a 15-room boutique hotel in Tulum, Mexico.

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New things are a little different, but after that cash flow these days, that's where it's at. Yeah, absolutely. So tell me about the hotel. Is that a conversion project, or is it a straight play? Straight play already exists. I stumbled upon it through an agent connection down in Mexico. And I was actually; it happened to be in Tulum two weeks ago.

I walked through it and just fell in love. The property is amazing. And as a marketing nerd who's on the computer, shoot, I don't know, 12 plus hours a day, if not more than that, to be honest, I don't know. The entire hotel is designed for you to disconnect. For example, they have Wi-Fi, but there are no TVs.

There are no alarm clocks. It's designed to be a place to disconnect and relax completely. And I was like, and so it spoke to me. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm about that. I'm also not, because I love being on my computer and the Internet and all that. But sometimes, you have to get a little break.

So it's an interesting opportunity, and Mexico's numbers are significantly cheaper than they are in the States. And I think there's a benefit to that. Selfishly, my goal is to be able to spend January, February, and maybe part of March down there as well. I don't want to be cold anymore.

Yeah. I can't say I blame you, my friend living in New England myself. Right. For [00:06:00] those of you listening to this, I'm in a vest and a couple of different layers. And I'm over here to see my breath, right? I'm wearing a T-shirt and shorts right now. And it's like, yeah, I'm good. 20-something years of Buffalo snow and cold.

I'm good. Yeah. That's good for the rest of my life. Okay. Yeah. Excellent. So let's talk about the rehabs, you know, in terms of your process, you mentioned that you've already got 30 under your belt, and you're well on your way to a hundred knock on wood in terms of how you're finding these deals.

One of the things that is always challenged is that, you know, I talk to investors all the time. Man, where do you get your deal flow? How do you grow your deal flow? Right. And there are the traditional channels, direct mail, texting, email, knocking on doors, and all that. But you have a unique approach to this, and I'd like to learn more about it.

There are two things that I think are working, right? So when we look at finding deals, and let me address this one side piece first, if you're looking for rentals, honestly, the best place we're finding our rentals right now is from our property management and [00:07:00] other property management. They have them, right?

And then someone eventually says, Oh, I don't want this anymore, I want to sell. And I more or less just. Bribe our guy by paying him a higher-than-average commission to be the first person. Like you call me before you call anyone else. I want 24 to 48 hours, the bare minimum, with a deal before you put it to anybody else.

And for doing that, instead of getting the standard 3%, I'll give you four, maybe five, if we have criteria, right? So if it's above eight units, I give them a bit bigger piece because I want more units in one property, which is better for me. Right. Right. That's a great way for rentals, right?

Not as much for flips, right? And you're not gonna find that that way, but if you're looking for rentals or that long-term game, that's a way to go. But the other part of this comes down to this: no matter what, like, look, there are hundreds of marketings. My team is currently putting together over 50 different ways to find deals.

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There's no shortage of ways to find deals, and every market is a little bit different. What I tell people is, look. Every market will have what works well there and doesn't in other places. What I see working in Buffalo and what I would do in my business is different from what you might see in Connecticut.

Right? For example, Buffalo is a very blue-collar city. Most of the property owners are very blue-collar people. I would argue Connecticut's probably a little bit different than that. It's probably the opposite. It's a pretty good mix. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good mix. Okay. So, so we got to understand too, even in a place like that. Then, we got to understand neighborhood marketing and more blue-collar and white-collar.

What are they looking at? Do they understand the process? Do they know the options available? Do they know how money works? All of these things are going to change how marketing works? But the one thing that never changes, no matter what market you're in, yeah. No matter what the difference is between the blue-collar, white-collar, rich house, poor house in the chain, luxury house, or starter home, the one thing that's universally true across all cities, all this country, and the world is that the moment you market to someone, or you have a conversation or you initiate contact with them, the first.

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After that conversation is over, they're going to want to do, they want to look up who you are. They want to know who you are. The first thing they will do is go to your website. They're going to want to check out who you are. What do you do? What do you stand for? Are you trustworthy?

And here's the difference in what's happened over the last few years. What's really important to this is. When someone comes to your site now, the most important factor is the design of your site, not the content, not the information, not your experience, but your design. 40 percent of people will leave your site if the design is bad and 94 percent will judge your business's credibility on the design alone and nothing else.

And so. If you want to close more deals, no matter what marketing you're actually doing, if you're not seeing the close ratio or the talk ratio that you would like to see, then I, first place I would check is what your site looks like. One and two, are you found online? If people Google your name or your business, can they find you?

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And if they can't, you're losing out on a massive amount of the business you should be getting just because of those two things. Right on. So, being a content-driven kind of marketer, let's talk about this more, right? I feel like, uh, this is the Yankees and the Red Sox or the Hatfields in terms of approach, right?

Let's talk about look and feel and design. Why is it so important? And when you say. It has to be nice, credible, whatever, and explicit. What do you mean by that? Those are great questions. So let's talk about design. First and foremost, I can't necessarily give you design specifics because it's always changing, right?

And if you're listening to this podcast in a month, it might be different a year from now. It'll probably be different in five years from now. It'll be different. Yeah. Right. So here's what I'd say. See what the big guys are doing. Always go look in your space and your industry and look at what their design facets look like.

What are they executing on their site? That's usually where you're going to see the trend because they hire people with a lot of money and a lot of expertise with a lot of time to figure out what they should be and go from there and replicate from there. That's number one. Number [00:11:00] two is. Thank you. We use a thing in all of the sites that we build for our clients, especially real estate investors called conversion science.

And it's an idea that I came up with: I've studied NLP quite a bit. I've studied eye movement, eye tracking on mouse tracking, heat mapping, clicking all of this through all of those sites I've built. And from all of that, I came up with a series of things that I found to drive more convergence from a site.

And almost all of those things have to do with design. It can be simple things such as when I have a call to action, I'll have a section divider with two different colors and there's a slight change. angle and the point of the angle points to the button, right? Or if I've got a picture of a human being where their eyes are looking, they should be looking at the call to action, the button, the form, the phone number, whatever, right?

Simple things like this. It sounds cheesy, but it's like if that only makes a 1 percent difference, but I did 15 things, each with a 1 percent difference. Now, all of a sudden, we're closing 15 percent more leads on our site than we were before, [00:12:00] right? All those things matter. And then, most importantly, if you plug in with the right company, ours, for example, we will simply issue design updates.

And that's one of the core principles of us is I understand how important that has become. And so for our real estate investor sites, we push down design updates annually so that you're never going, well, I. paid for a great site, but now it's not anymore because it's five years down the road. Yeah, exactly.

So that's part of it. Now, the other part of this is content. And I don't mean to downplay the content on the site, the information blogs, all this stuff is still has a big importance, right? But step one is if your design sucks, you've already lost them. It doesn't matter how good your content is, right?

So we've got to start with what's the most important and then work. Down the scale from there. And this is what you see. You see a lot of these big template companies out there, and the design was probably cool three, four, five, 10, 15 years ago, but it's not anymore. And they don't put time or effort into keeping up to date.

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Even if they do, they don't issue updates as you go along, so you're still buying what worked. And this is my biggest lie: Oh God, I hate this. And I hear it all the time. He was, well, we. This is the template that we use because it's tried and true. It's tested. We know it works. And I'm like, okay, sure.

It did five years ago, eight years ago, and 10 years ago when you built it. Sure. It was great. But what about today? Is it still the case today? And the answer 99 percent of the time is no, it's not because things change. Think about cars every year. You see a slight difference in the car. You know, it's a little more angular here, a little more there.

Maybe they move one thing this way or that way. They throw out some new pieces of technology, and it's always small increments, but then there's a big change every three to five years. Something that's like a, you know, that, and that's the same with websites. And if we're not, if you see a 1990s car driving around, it's old.

Same with website design. You see an old website, you know, it's old. You may not be able to say, Oh, that thing there is why, but you just know because you've seen a change over time when you see it. Exactly. Right. Right. No, it makes sense. So looking for those one percenters, right? What are the, some of the things that you look for?

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I know you mentioned eyes, pointing at the call to action, and using shape and form to guide someone through the site. But I'm curious about this in two ways. One is from a design perspective, like what are the things that you're looking for? And then the other part of it is the intrigue with NLP, right?

Why does it work? Yeah. Yeah. Right? Yeah, let's tackle both of those a little bit separately. So, design aspects. Let's start here. Things that work well right now is dividing text up. So we got to have a lot of text on our site from a Google standpoint because as good as they are at recognizing things, they still rely on the actual words written on the page.

Page to figure out what's going on, the files, uh, names, the alt text, all these little various things. So having the right words is great. You want to have, when we design our sites, we put a fair amount of content on the page, but I don't just block. I don't just like, it's not like a novel where I just throw up hundreds of pages of content and call it a day, right?

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We're going to break it up with images, colors, spacing, bigger fonts, smaller fonts, and bold italicizing. Think about it. This should be almost like a newspaper, right? Imagine if a newspaper was literally just all of the articles in the same font, all the way down the whole newspaper. You'd have no idea what's going on.

Right, right. Yeah. It's what they break it up. They have headlines and spacing; they put a picture here. They do a section here. They ensure that when the, the fold, if you will, which is in the. Old terminology for those who are not familiar with newspapers because you're too young. It was where the actual paper folded.

Well, that idea is the same in internet. It's just where the page ends when it loads up, right? So all those things we want to take into account. And then also understand that mobile use is number one. We build our sites for desktop first and then modify them for mobile. And some companies do it the other way around.

And the reason that I do that is that We just find it easier for us, but it doesn't mean that mobile is less important. In fact, right now, if we look across all of our sites, probably about 70 to 75%, and the number varies on a day to day basis, but between 70 and 75 percent of all site visitors are coming on a mobile device, specifically a phone, not a tablet.

If we factor in tablets, [00:16:00] about another 5 percent on top of that tablet and the rest is desktop or laptop. And so things like that are important. Variations of color, pictures, images. Oh, this is really important too. If you are going to build your site yourself, do not go to Google and just download photos you find there.

I used to teach that like 10 years ago, because it was like, Hey, you just get a photo there. It's perfect. Right? Well, no, not anymore. These, these companies will, they will send you nasty letters from attorneys and sue you for using their images. So there's lots of either buy images at stock image sites, like.

I forget all the names off the top of my head, but I use one called unsplash. com. It's free. A lot of great photos there with stuff, but there's tons of royalty free sites that have commercial distribution. This is important. This is a distinction to your image has to be free for commercial use. You are a business operating to make a profit, not a person just using it for your own personal blog.

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So you got to make sure you have that. So little things like that all make a big difference. And then the last thing is. page load time. So have you noticed that lately pages seem to be getting longer and longer and longer? Like instead of going to different pages, you click the menu and it just scrolls down the page.

This is done on purpose because page load time is important. About 35 to 38 percent of people will leave a site if it takes more than three seconds for the page to load. But what the actual page load means is It's very different for a user than it is for Google or other places. So for example, for a user, it usually means if I'm on a phone, the first two scrolls, if I'm holding my phone, I scroll up once, put my finger to the bottom, scroll up twice.

That's two scrolls. That content needs to load in less than three seconds, ideally in about one to one and a half seconds. Longer pages allow for us to create a faster load experience without actually having a faster load experience. Because from a user standpoint, I now, when I go to scroll number three, it's already there.

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Scroll four, five, six, it's already all there, right? I don't have to wait for it to load. So my perception is that the site loads faster, even though technically it probably actually loads slower than if I were to load each page individually, but I'm loading it all at once. So, from a perception standpoint, it's better.

So things like that make a huge, huge difference. Are you interested in real estate investing right here in Connecticut? Ever wonder where all those real estate investing pros hang out to network? Did you know the Connecticut Real Estate Investors Association will introduce you to those investors and will help you learn how to find deals, fund those deals, and even teach you how to do it without leaving your current job.

Go to ctrea. com that's C. T. R. E. I. A. Dot com and click on the events button to register for an upcoming event. Hope to see you soon.

Buying investment real estate is both thrilling and sometimes stressful without a lending expert by your side. Most investors don't stand a chance. That's where C. T. Rhea funding comes in. C. T. Rhea funding was founded by investors to help investors just like you fund their deals. Whether you're buying a single family rehab, an [00:19:00] apartment building or really any investment property.

Our team will understand your deal and help you close quickly. Go to CTR EIA funding. com or call us at 8 6 0 8 7 6 0 5 7 2. Now, second question, why does it work? So NLP, right? Neuro linguistic programming. The best thing I can do is tell you this, right? So I'll share a little story. I had a good friend.

Him and his family went down to Orlando, actually not too far from where I am right here, at a hotel. They get checked in, beautiful hotel, gorgeous location, has a nice balcony out back. Parents are getting all the stuff in suitcases. You know how it goes with the family and the whole thing, right? Oh yeah.

Well, they're in the room, a bedroom on one side with two beds and there's a living room and in the living room, there's a door that opens out to a balcony that's fenced in. So he opens the door and says, Hey, kids, go outside and play, have a good time. And if there's a fenced in, they can't get too far, you know, they won't get in trouble.

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Things are good. So they're unloading all of a sudden and all of a sudden he hears his daughter screaming at the top of her lungs, like bloody murder. So he's like, what the heck's going on? He runs out and he sees his son on the porch on the balcony and there's a boa constrictor. I'll be about a 15 foot one wrapped around this son because they're in like the Everglades portion and it's like forced the outback and the thing is just squeezing this kid's son's only like three years old and it's just squeezing in his kit and he can see his kid like like trying to say something but he can't because he can't whatever right and then he woke up oh it was a dream yeah now if you were listening to that story and watching your face right like did your heart just go a little bit faster like oh yeah right right well why is that the case It was a bullshit story, right?

And so when we look at that and we say, why is that the case? It's because our subconscious mind cannot distinguish between true and false. Everything it receives, it assumes is 100 percent true. And because of that, it relies on our conscious mind to differentiate it. It's no different than when you go to a movie and you get scared or you cry or you laugh.

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It's just photons on a screen, right? But our subconscious reads it as true. And so using this idea, we can implement content direction. We can implement design aspects that will communicate subconsciously to a person without them even realizing it to do things. And the easiest example I always give everyone about this is, because it's very simple, is that when When I speak, for example, on stages, which I do quite often, I won't just say, like you, I did these things, right?

I say, I like you experienced this thing, right? And what your mind hears is, Oh, I'm just like you, what your subconscious hears is I like you. Well, if I like you, well then you know what? That must be true because my subconscious takes everything is true. There's for reciprocated back. They're going to like me more too.

It's a small, like this is a, it's a very simplistic example of it, right? But these little things is speaking directly to someone's subconscious allow us. To build the bridge of trust faster. Now it's not going to make someone do something they don't want to do. Like if they're like Adam Lee or they hate you, like, you know what?

I hate red heads. I'm never going to work with a ginger ever. Like, well, you know what? They're probably not going to work with me. Cause I got bright [00:22:00] red hair, but I can use these things to help create the bridge of trust faster. And in real estate specifically, we have the biggest bridge of almost any business to build.

Cause we're dealing with things that are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in most cases, and it's not a 10 thing that I got done, 10 Build trust on like, yeah, okay. 10 bucks, whatever. It's 10, 000, a hundred thousand, 10 million. It's a very different game. Yeah. Fascinating. Fascinating. So how do you apply this to real estate world?

Right. Let's say I'm a potential customer and I'm looking for deal flow or capital flow or both, right. Either. So what's the process to kind of take me through at least at a high level to be able to figure out, Hey, can you help me? And B how can you help me? Yeah. So whether you're communicating with a seller or a buyer or a private money lender or an agent or a contractor or a retail buyer or any of the other people that we deal with as investors, right?

Because we have a lot of different folks, right? Understand, I call it what's [00:23:00] their flaky level. So how likely are they to flake out and leave your site if they can't find what they want? And there's a hierarchy to that, right? Private money lenders are probably the least flaky. Sellers are the most flaky.

And what I mean by that is if I'm a seller and I want to know if you can help me, I'm not going to click through 15 different buttons to find the information I want, either it's there or it's not. And I'm leaving. If it's not. If I'm a private money lender and I've got money, well, I'm probably a little bit more savvy.

I'm willing to look for the right person. I'm going to want to work with the right person. So I'm going to spend more time to get to know you. So I'll click through a few more buttons on your site to get that right. If we all agree that having a great site is the first step and design is the second step within that.

And then the next thing is to communicate clearly who you are, what you do and how you help them. And that's one of the things that I think is the most important is make sure that you have all the information out there that you would want that person to have. See, it used to be back in the day, even three, four years ago, it used to be that, Hey, I could just put up a little bit of information, then what we call gate it.

So put up [00:24:00] a, an opt in a form and say, give me your name, email, phone or whatever. And then I'll give you the rest of the information. But what's happened in the last few years is that. There's been a flood of new investors who are desperate for deals, are finding it harder to get them and more willing to give more away for free.

And so I, as a seller, especially can find all the information that I need. So if you try to gate it, if you try to make me work for it, I'm going to go with somebody else. Can alienate your audience, right? Exactly. Right. And the same with lenders, right? So what we're finding is working better is saying, look, I'm going to I'm here to help you.

Here's everything you need to know. They still need to work with you, right? Like there's nothing like no one that we deal with can do what they want to do without working with an investor. If I want to lend money and I'm not lending it to myself, right? I mean, I'm sure I guess I could, but the whole idea is to lend it to other people to get it out there.

And so when we look at doing this, they have to work with you in some capacity. And so because that's the case, give them all the information. Don't hold anything back. And more [00:25:00] often than not, you'll have. Induce the law of reciprocity. I gave you everything. So now you're going to want to give me back what I want, which is take a phone call.

Can you name your email? Like let's talk, let's chat. And thus the digital marketer look and feel person came together with the content person who over delivers. And there was detente and the marketing geeks were happy and Finally, everyone agrees on the same page. It took, it took about five, six years to get there.

We're actually way more than that, really. So Bob, obviously you have a pretty big foot in the real estate world and an equally big foot in the digital marketing and technology world. I'm sure you've had mentors over the years and people who've given you advice. I'm curious who gave you, or what was the best advice you ever got and who gave it to you?

Oh, man. I mean, there's way too much. God, I, you know, I'd have to think about it. Here's what I'll say. I can't give you any singular piece of advice from a single person, but the thing that I've done is I've always invested in other people. Right. And what I mean by that is I've probably spent well over a quarter million [00:26:00] dollars on training, education, coaching, mentoring, groups, meetups, masterminds, whatever you say.

Right. And I pull, A little something from each of those, but if I had to simmer down to one thing, it's, it would probably be this. And this is sort of the premise of my book as well, which is done is better than perfect. You got to get out of your own way and just understand that your business will never grow to where you want it to be for true financial freedom with just you.

You're going to need other people along the way. And it doesn't matter if it's perfect, just get it out there, get it done, make it happen. And especially right now with what we're seeing with the rate changes and the market slowing down, those who take massive action are going to trump anyone else who's trying to take perfect action later.

Couldn't agree more. And it's a common theme among all of the folks that we talk with here on the show that act, right? Do something move forward. Even if it's not perfect, because it won't be, it's not possible, right? So give up on that. Absolutely. There's a board. You can't quite see it in the video, but over it, it says progress, not perfection.

Right. And, you know, that, that's the mantra here [00:27:00] as well. We will create something, a piece of content, and we'll get it as close as we can to perfect. And if we get feedback or realize that it's not perfect, we'll iterate, right? We'll fix it. We'll update it. We'll do something else. And eventually it'll serve the audience that it's designed to serve, right?

Hopefully it's right out of the box, but sometimes not. Yeah. It's okay. You just said you spend a lot of time on and money and resources on training and growing and educating. How do you consume information? Whether it's through books, podcasts, masterminds, and coaches, who are you paying attention to these days and how are you consuming their information?

I spend a lot more time on books and audio books than I do in anything else. Podcasts are interesting to me, right? I love being on podcasts because you connect with great audiences. The issue I have is that while you can learn a lot from podcasts, because it's, it's definitely true. If you follow enough people for long enough through enough podcasts, it's the same stuff reiterated over and [00:28:00] over and over and over.

And so over time, it becomes less valuable with that. But what I, what I do like is this podcast for me are a great opportunity to explore ideas from people I don't know. And then I dive deeper with them onto books that interest me. I just finished listening to who not how with Dan Sullivan and. You know, the guy, forget the guy, the guy who co wrote it with him or whatever, but great, great book.

The thing that I'll say is this, find an area that you feel like you're weak in right now, and then get a book around that. Listen to that book, read that book, take in that book, however you need to, whatever format works best for you, and then stop. Don't listen or read or do anything else that requires action until you've taken the actions required from the thing that you just read.

Because the thing that I find all too often with people, and it annoys me to no end, is they read a ton of books, but then they never actually do anything that the books say. And at that point, [00:29:00] If I can say this, if you excuse my language, it's mental masturbation. Sure. It feels good to say I've read a bunch of books, but if you're not actually moving your business forward, does it matter?

Right? It does not. I'm a huge advocate of action, right? And, and having a bias towards action. When you go to a coaching session, when you read a chapter in a book and it resonates with your business, stop and use it, use it right then and there. Right? Because the thing is, is that many, many years ago, I was that guy, right?

I would read four or five books and I basically sit there and go, wow, I really need to get going. Yeah, I did a lot of seminars and at a certain point, right, there was a year I did 36 events, 36 three day events over the course of one year. And I saw a lot of the same people at these events over and over and over.

And I was like a year later, I was like, what have you done? He came to a bunch of events. It felt good. You mean the network, you had some fun, you got out, you traveled all that's great. I was like, but is your business. Actually moving forward yet. And we call them the seminar junkies. And [00:30:00] most of them were the ones that came to the seminars, they got all motivated and they went home and they did absolutely nothing.

And then they came back to another seminar. And it's the same with books, right? Same idea. It just do something, anything, even if it's again, not perfect. It's fine. Just as long as you're doing something. Right. 1 percent improvement every day. And that's the thing, right? With training, I'm sure you've seen this as well.

When we first started with a CT Rhea, the Connecticut real estate investor association, I went and talked to all the former students. And. I think you mentioned earlier about 90 percent of the people hadn't done anything. They spent a lot of money and a lot of time to go through what was from the previous owners, an excellent coaching class.

And it made my brain short circuit. So the thing that, that we were intensely focused on is help me understand why. And it came down to the buckets we were kind of touching on earlier. I don't know where to get the deals. I don't know where to find the money. I don't have the time, right? Well, you make time, but the other thing is we're ladies and gentlemen, if I, if I haven't been clear about [00:31:00] this before, I would like to be clear now we are in the marketing business, right?

And the fact is, is that if you are a marketer. You can figure out a way to build your deal flow and to create capital flow. And if you are not a marketer, that's okay. Hire Bob or someone like, right? The fact is, is that we're able to move the needle by reaching out, creating awareness, and then, uh, And serving that public to the point where you create trust and then ultimately you're in the right to do business with them.

Right? Simple. A hundred percent. And I want to share a quick story about that because I think this is important. When I got started, the first coaching program I bought, he's like, all right, you're going to go in. You're going to watch this eight week marketing course. And I was like, on the coaching call, I said, okay, I got off the coaching call.

I said, F that. I don't want to learn marketing. I just want to flip houses. That's what I want to do. I don't, I don't care about this. Right. And so I didn't do it. And then I was like a month later, he's like, have you finished the marketing courses? There's eight weeks, eight videos, but you can watch all eight in like a couple of days.

And I was like, no, I don't want to [00:32:00] be a marketer. I was like, I want to flip houses. And it, to be real, it took me, Year and a half to really learn that lesson. That's like, well, you're not going to flip houses unless you do marketing for deals. And I, I, like, I don't know why that lesson was so hard for me to learn, but once I did, I was like, Oh, Oh, that's when everything changed.

Right. We started like you, the needle moved when all of a sudden I was like that. And then also like for me, what it's enabled me to do is now I don't have to be any location. I live nomadically right now. Because I can do marketing anywhere. As long as I got a laptop, everything else can happen, which is great.

And COVID only accelerated that by the way, which is amazing. But you're in the marketing business. You're not in the real estate business. You simply fulfill and make money in the real estate, but the marketing is where you're at. A hundred percent. True. You know, Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's or at least the main McDonald's franchise, he met with Harvard business school.

I think I, I think I got this story from Robert Kiyosaki, but if, if not, if I'm misattributing it, my apologies, he asked all the smarty pants at Harvard, what business am I in? And they would raise their hands and say, well, you're [00:33:00] obviously in the burger business. You're in the quick service restaurant business.

You're in the customer service business. And the fact is, he said, no, I'm, I'm actually in the real estate business. And the reason being is that they own corner of Maine and first USA. Everywhere. Right. In fact, McDonald's at one point, I don't know if this is still true, but I know it was true not that long ago.

They were the second largest property owner in the world. Second to the Catholic church. So when you look at amazing, isn't it? I mean, I knew they were big. I didn't know they were that big. That's crazy. They at least were. It makes sense. Yeah. But the fact is, is that when you look at a business, you've got to break it down in terms of what moves the business forward, right?

Nothing happens in the real estate business until something's bought or something's sold. Period. 100%. Bob, when not talking about real estate, I'm curious, how do you like to spend your time? Travel, a lot of travel. I go to different cities. For me, that's probably the most fun thing that I can do. I'm that weird guy that loves being on planes.

I find a lot of solace in being on a plane. I'm not, I don't know, maybe I'm a weird guy. That and honestly, I love going to [00:34:00] micro breweries. You ever want to like explore a city and really find the cool things that are not on TripAdvisor or the other stuff that's on the web? Go to a microbrewery and ask around what you should do and you'll get the big things of course, right?

But there will always be two to five hidden gems that you never would have found Otherwise in that city that you could do and almost always those things that have more fun doing than the big things on the sites That you're supposed to do Seeing the world one IPA at a time, right? You know it, you know it.

Excellent. Excellent. Bob, I've really enjoyed this and I appreciate you literally weathering Hurricane Ian to be here today. I'm grateful for that. How can people get in touch if they want to learn more about three degrees consulting or your coaching, or just want to get to know you, what's the best way to reach out?

Yeah. Ted to our core site, which is just go Geo number three DC for go three degrees consulting, go three dc. com. You can go there or you can reach out on me on any social platform. You'll find me at V T H E or [00:35:00] the Bob B. O. B. Macintosh MC. I N T O S H literally every single platform, I have the same username, so you can find me there.

Or if you want to send me an email, Bob at go3dc. com is my direct email address. I'd be more than happy to help you get a great website. If you're like, I don't know what to do, or if you need help with a CRM or anything else in the digital space, I'm your guy. Love to talk to you more about that and help you get going with your business.

Well, excellent, Bob McIntosh. Thank you so much for joining us today. It was a lot of fun and frankly, I learned a ton. So good to see you, my friend and be well. Thanks for having me on for all of you listening. Thanks for chiming in. Thanks for doing this. Appreciate it. Have a great day, night, evening, morning, whatever time it is.

Appreciate you taking the time to listen. This has been the real estate underground podcast, the Clark street capital presentation. Thanks for joining us. If you're enjoying the show, please remember to like and share it with your friends. Also leave a comment. If there's a topic you want us to cover, we read every comment.

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