The Property Perspective
From hidden gems to billion-dollar deals, this is The Property Perspective - where seasoned real estate pros reveal how they spot value others miss, and industry disruptors share the unconventional strategies reshaping real estate.
The Property Perspective
Mastering Real Estate Entrepreneurship: Overcoming Challenges with Rafael Cortez
Real estate coach and investor Rafael Cortez joins us to shed light on the entrepreneurial challenges often overshadowed by the allure of success. From battling imposter syndrome to resisting the siren call of shiny object syndrome, Rafael navigates the often tumultuous waters of real estate with a wisdom forged from his unique journey—from firefighter to business psychologist and accomplished broker. Our conversation centers on building confidence through small victories, driving home the importance of clarity in business ventures like wholesaling, where the action trumps theory.
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00:00 - Hope (Announcement)
Feel stuck in your real estate journey. You're not alone. On this episode of the Property Perspective, host Preston Zeller sits down with real estate coach and investor Rafael Cortez to unpack how imposter syndrome, shiny object syndrome and fear of failure hold entrepreneurs back. Hear Rafael's powerful strategies for gaining clarity, taking action and building a business and life by design, from hidden gems to billion-dollar deals. This is the Property Perspective, where seasoned real estate pros reveal how they spot value others miss and industry disruptors share the unconventional strategies reshaping real estate. Now here are your hosts.
00:39 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Welcome everyone to the Thursday webinar. My name is Preston Zeller, I'm the Chief Growth Officer at Batch Service and I'm joined by Rafael Cortez. Welcome, sir, how are you?
00:51 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
Great, great, great, preston. Thanks for having me
00:52 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Cool, and I think today we're gonna have kind of an informal conversation just around like 2025, what's holding people back, and we'll go off some rabbit trails too, too, as we were kind of talking about before the show, um, but I'd love for um, people who don't know you to get just like a brief introduction to who's rafael, and maybe let's just start there uh, all righty that that works.
01:17 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
So, rafael grotesque, I'm based out of phoenix, arizona. I'm a real estate coach. I wholesale a lot. I'm also a real estate broker. My background is I'm a business psychologist, so that's part of it, and I lot also real estate broker. My background is I'm a business psychologist, so that's part of it, and I started in real estate back in 2009. Before then I had a couple other companies wanting transportation, and before then I used to be a firefighter at one point, did that for years as well. So so it's. It's been one of all you know, one of those things where you kind of grow into into a role, into a vertical, and then you see an opportunity and then move on to the next one and then move on to the next one and just kind of scale your way up, right, yeah, so it's been an interesting journey over the last 22 years.
01:53 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Cool. I want to touch on something first that just came to mind as you were talking. I think so many people I think probably a lot of people who are listening to this you get into real estate and you get this imposter syndrome because you're like there's so many people out there doing real estate in various shades. Did you encounter that? And I'm curious maybe there's parts of our career where we still get to right. How do you overcome?
02:20 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
that. Well, I mean, first off, everybody, everybody gets it. I've never seen a prodigy, right that just kind of wakes up one morning and knows how to do real estate, how everything behind it, or just entrepreneurship in general. Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a necessary trench for becoming an entrepreneur, right, every time we level up, every time we're doing something that just puts us out of our comfort zone, we're, we're expanding boundaries, we're breaking paradigms, breaking, you know, ways that you know we've learned to think right. Uh, and every time we do that it's uncomfortable and it's easy to get into that, to that space where, like man, I'm seeing people have results all around me and, and I'm not, I'm not there yet, and you've been two weeks into the business right or the learning curve, and when somebody else has been doing it for 10, 15 years. So I feel like there's this thing that forces us to compare the highlights of other people to the day-to-day that we're going through, when we're learning and growing right. So, absolutely, I mean I went through it.
03:29
You know, at a point I was actually talking to one of my coaches this week, because coaches need coaches and you know, to stay in that constant state of growth.
03:38
But one of the things was understanding that that usually becomes a problem or an issue because we're looking for outside validation, right, which is normal when you're getting into this space of you know something that you don't understand. You just want to make sure that something tells you that it's working right and you start locking up deals, you start having better conversations, you start, you know, you start to stack up those little wins. So the easiest or the fastest way to get out of that imposter, you know, feeling right is by acknowledging what you're doing right, right and like, make deposits, think of them as, like you know, one cent deposits or one dollar deposits into your confidence account. Right, I made ten calls today. I had, you know, a great conversation with the seller oh, I figured out an answer for a seller that I didn't have yesterday and those little wins it may sound little but they stack up in the long run and I mean they create this whole other personality that you are going to need as an entrepreneur going into it. But everybody gets it, yeah, absolutely.
04:50 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, I think there's some amount of that too, where there's an overem over emphasis that we might have in our own brains of like fear of failure, yeah, or the you know, maybe you did have a failure, so to speak, it's a learning lesson but then, like that, starts to just wrap up who you are.
04:57
Yeah, you know and, and I'm curious, so let's um, you know you, you do a lot of coaching as well, right? So talk to us about that. Like what kind of what are the other things? You see, there's imposter syndrome, but like what are sort of the stumbling blocks that people have to get out of their own way of?
05:14 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
A lot of it, man, is going to be. Clarity there's. You know people have the desire, right, you're either going to be interested or you're going to be committed to doing something. That's where it begins. So if you're interested in I don't know, learning how to ski, I mean you're going to land on your butt multiple times because you're not really committed to taking lessons and you know studying it and spending the time. So it's a matter of being interested versus being committed, because when you're committed, your mindset around the you know, whatever that is that you're trying to tackle is completely different, right, nothing stops you when you're committed. You know I've had it. You know I've been in pretty tough spots before in my life, right, financially, and you name across the board and it's like man, I have to get committed to this because I can't make the mortgage Like, oh, that's fire burning.
06:07
You know what I?
06:07
mean and that'll put me in a different state where it's, like you know, there's no other outcome. You have to get into that Almost. That tenacity has to come from somewhere, so it can either come from commitment, of a bigger desire of doing something and moving towards something that you want to create, so, if the vision is big enough, it's pulling you hard enough to that outcome, you're going to be okay. Most of the time, though, it happens because something bad happened and we need to make a change Right and so. So what I'm getting to here is the. The idea that you know you're going to jump into something that it's challenging may not be as comfortable as, for example, the idea of a nine to five, although, you want to leave the nine to five, the commitment it requires to do something and go through the ringer.
06:59
Right, it's going to be usually because matter of comfort, and I see a lot of people just kind of, you know, falling off the wayside because of that, right, um, it's incredible man, but you know nuts and bolts of doing. You know the, the actual business, right, the, the nuts and bolts of. You know wholesaling, for example, or jumping into real estate. Uh, you know, those are trainable skills. It's cool, anybody can do it literally. You can put the time into it, learn it, learn the nuts and the bolts and piece it together. But the mindset is always going to be one thing that's going to stop you in your tracks before you even get started.
07:34 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, one of my favorite ways of thinking about that is when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.
07:43
That's when we change, and it is usually, unfortunately we kind of like grow that muscle because of something really crappy going on in our life, right, and then you're like, wait, I can do this. Yeah, um, which I know you know. Again, there's, I'm sure, people listening to like I want to know how to do innovation, like that's not necessarily, um, what we're trying to talk about today, because it is so much of that like, yes, there's the learned skills, like how to do all these, you know nuanced transactions, but then, like, how do you even decide or get in the right mentality to move into that? So that's a great point. Anything else that comes to mind when you're thinking about like you know what starts to separate people and success it?
08:28 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
clarity and just clarity of the path, right it's. It's usually the biggest thing. I don't know how to do it, I don't have the support, I don't, you know. Or we'll start paying attention to the, to the shiny objects, and think about reading a book. Right, you get this book. If I go to the last page and I start reading this last you know paragraph over here, I don't know what the book is about, right, so it's jumping into that last page because it's a shiny object.
08:55
It's the same thing that we do whenever we're looking at different, for example, different strategies or different. You know, what's the newest thing right now in wholesaling, as opposed to beginning right at the start, which is okay. You have to figure out how to have a conversation, how to structure a deal, how to, you know, get your lead generation in place and create that consistency in the business, and then you can pick and choose exit strategies and stuff like that. But there's a what do you call it? There's a reason to the madness, right, when we're setting things up in a very linear fashion, and I think the clarity of like oh, I want to do, for example, innovations, I want to do creative financing, I want to do all these things that tend to be a lot more complicated than the beginning of the business. They tend to be at the end of that book as opposed to reading the intro of the book, and that gap right there is where we lose a lot of the steam.
09:49
Right that we can start off with, if that makes sense.
09:51 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah Well, I mean, you know, one thing I think people can fall into the habit of is they're working on work. Yeah, you're setting up all the things that make you feel productive.
10:02 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
Yeah.
10:03 - Preston Zeller (Host)
But to the point you mentioned earlier is it generating me leads? Is it pushing a?
10:08
deal through Like all that stuff?
10:11
Or is it just feel good to do, but it's not really like that impactful for me. It's the wrong time to do it, maybe.
10:17 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
Yeah, well, the focus also can be in the wrong. I mean, think about your highest and best at any point in time, right? So this is a very simple, you know piece of advice Think about your highest and best. What are you doing today? That's going to actually move the needle forward, right? That's going to put you ahead of you know, the game by you know, by this afternoon. So, for example, if you're sitting there and theoretically learning about you know all the different ways of structuring deals, theoretically learning about how many different ways you can talk to the seller, theoretically learning about how you can compile a buyer's list, and going through all these, we see seminar junkies all over the place.
10:53
Right, but never taking action actually Seminar junkies, seminar junkies, yes, yeah, all over the place.
11:01
And learning and learning and learning, but not really taking action, picking up the phone and having that conversation, that initial thing, I mean we can become professors in the vertical right, but if there's no action behind it, you're not going to see the results that you need to see, you're not going to create that spark right. There has to be a catalyst. Information is great, but we have to apply it right and that's one of the things. I mean I talk to people all the time um and uh and oh. Yeah. I mean I've been, I've been looking at videos for the last two years. I've been studying this for six months, seven months, like how many calls have you made, how many? How many times have you picked up the phone? How many offers have you thrown out there?
11:40
like I'm not. I'm not sure about the numbers, I'm not sure about the numbers, I'm not sure about the comps, I'm not sure. It's like dude, just you know, get your minimum viable product right per se, or your, you know, let's say that you just understand the faces enough to be dangerous in them and then go out there and execute, because the questions that come after execution, after you picking up the phone, after that seller asks you questions, right, they're going to be a lot more instructional and they're going to teach you a lot more than going through all the materials, materials, materials, right. So it really comes down to that Maybe a cliche, but it really comes down to that. People don't take action enough. We'll read everything, we'll go through all the training, some of the modules and all that stuff, and when you put somebody on check, on, uncheck it's I haven't made a call.
12:25
I haven't had a conversation. I'm not ready for it yet. I'm gonna start in January 1st, you know so. So I think a lot of what comes, or a lot of a big part of the reason why that happens, is clarity, right, what's, what do I start and what's the next step coming after it?
12:44 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, you know, I wonder how much of that is like I don't know, a Western culture thing or like that. We've glorified four-year, six-year, whatever-year degrees.
12:55
You know, it's like we're like kind of obsessed with learning, which kind of makes us just like I don't know attached to that. You know I was. I was just in a actually a Honduras recently and I mean it's not like an economically bountiful place, beautiful jungly, but it was interesting. We got off to take a picture in front of a sign. These kids were like some of the best salespeople I'd ever met and they had made bracelets and all this kind of stuff and they were just, they were respectful, but they were also just like no qualms about like trying to get you outfitted with some of their gear.
13:36 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
And.
13:36 - Preston Zeller (Host)
I'm like man, that's so interesting and I know they're in school learning too, but it was just like culturally very uh cool to see how and different, how like I think they just had that ethic drilled into them, like, hey, you need to go and like do something beyond just being in this classroom, setting um down there, at least so and again. I bring that back to here because we're like we're so, we're thinking about this super long two decade tour in school and it's like yeah, I think it hampers us a little bit.
14:10 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
I think it does. I mean we, when you, when you say culture, I mean I think we, we live in a comfort culture.
14:15
Right so anything that that makes us feel like we're in a space that, ok, we have it figured out, we know what's going to happen tomorrow. It doesn't matter how, how uh you know dynamic, we think we are, at the end of the day, like that's still going to have some, you know, certain appeal, right, because of the security. But, um, but, for example, if you go to, to this, other places they don't have that level of comfort. They have to figure stuff out right, they have to make money to put food on the table, to put so they have that, that fire that I was talking about earlier. They've not been able to pay the mortgage. I mean, that's gonna, it's gonna give you a different spark.
14:47
So usually have the, the if you're too comfortable in something, that the desire to do something else is not gonna be as strong as somebody who needs to do something else. You know what I mean. Yeah, now I think there's a lot of missed opportunity because the what we do, for example, in my, in my, in my vertical, which is wholesaling, it's not a huge barrier to entry. There's a lot of opportunity there, but the tenacity that a lot of people need to go through it, it's just you know. Oh no, I'm just going to go back. You know they'll give it a shot for again for a month, two months, and because there's, there's not necessarily a need to make something click. They don't, they don't stick with it and then lose the lose the seam. And I think I'm not, I don't think it's culturally or necessarily taught, but it's, it's part of the environment that we're in what I mean like, no, I can, I can, I can do better.
15:41
You meet a gratification and go hit something else and just get a paycheck on Friday, yeah Right. As opposed to building your own, your own dream, your own life, your own vision for it which can also be tough and putting in the work for that.
15:54 - Preston Zeller (Host)
So yeah, you know, I took some years ago I took like a six month sabbatical and going into it. I got into this like concept of life design Right.
16:04
And that's yeah.
16:06
And it's a really interesting thought to think about. Uh, just what can my life look like if I'm really outlining the things I really want out of it versus what's just comes my way, and I'm a by-product of that?
16:21 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
Yeah.
16:22 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Um, yeah, so there's definitely more ways to take advantage there yeah um, so you know, along these lines okay, we kind of talked about this a lot of education seminar junkies, as you said, um, but you know, ai tools have just an ai as a concept. I think is really it's. It's continuing to hit people more Right, and so now it's like oh, there's a bajillion new tools out there. I know I'm faced with this, I'm sure you are too and there can be a tendency, I think, for people to now delay the work again because it's like now I got to adopt all this new stuff, otherwise the work I'm going to go out and do is going to be obsolete it's not the best and the latest.
17:07 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
Yeah, it's not the best and the latest and like.
17:09 - Preston Zeller (Host)
I would even say that about a platform like batch leads or any other kind of you know equivalent that if, like, you're not ready for it, that's not going to be the thing that fixes you right in your mentality, but they have a purpose, right. It's like the right tool in the right hands. If I give you a sword in a sword fight and you don't know how to use it, like you're going to be pretty messed up in that situation. So we were talking about your stack a little bit earlier. Maybe you can share, like you know, some of the. If there are some new tools that you have adopted, I'm sure people would be curious to hear what that looks like.
17:48 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
I do. I do have a couple of different, different tools that I'm using as of maybe a year ago and leaning a little bit more into the AI portion, one of the things that I want to emphasize here. At the end of the day, yeah, if you're wholesaling, if you're in real estate you were selling stuff and whatnot you're in the people business mm-hmm you are in the people business.
18:03
We, you are in the people business. We provide solutions for people who can't find another solution otherwise right. And, at the end of the day, we have to understand that, as business owners, as team players, your acquisitions people, your Dispo people have to be on the same page. If you're a solo operator, you have to wrap your mind around the fact that you have to provide a solution right. So it doesn't matter how great of a system or platforms or everything around you is, or AI facilitates all that stuff. At the end of the day, you are going to have a responsibility to think through a transaction and then see how I can be better for this person. Because we are in the people business. It's so important to emphasize that. So put that on a pin right.
18:46
Um, now, with that being said, the uh I mean you were talking about the store earlier like one of the biggest case and points that I can think of is I've had, um, I have a lot of students that you know. Maybe they have some savings and, oh, I have 30 000 saved, saved up. I just want to ramp it up, I want to get in there and and I want to blow this thing up and get a bunch of leads in and start negotiating closing deals. What does a conversation sound like? Yeah, okay, you may pay for lead generation but.
19:13
If you capture those leads and you don't know what to say, you don't know how to negotiate it. The next dude who's cold calling and then putting in the elbow grease right, is going to take that deal from you because they said something better than you, agrees, right, it's gonna take that deal from you because they said something better than you, right, the confidence was different, the way they structured the deal was different. So again there's, there's a linear pathway to, to getting to to a deal. And it's not the sexy part of the of the business, right? Or, you know, even recognizing that portion, it may not be, you know the again, the, the thing that appeals, but it's the. It's the true right. The, the thing that appeals, but it's the, it's the true right.
19:45
The, the truth, the, the better that you get at at handling. You know those, for example, those conversations, your lead generation processes, your acquisitions process, accountability and going in in this linear fashion eventually leading to dispo, of course, the better you're going to be, you know, able to handle whatever comes at you. So you can have a lot of AI generating leads and having virtual conversations and all kinds of stuff. Yes, that helps, but it's going to help you at the beginning of it. You still got to carry the weight of everything else and you have to understand how to do it.
20:15
So my biggest recommendation is don't sleep on putting in the work and actually treating this as a people-person business because of the ease of having AI around us. So we lean on it. Don't get me wrong, we'll eat. I mean, there's platforms that we use. One of the one of my favorite ones right now that my dispo team is using is investor base. They're great. It's super simple platform. You go in there, type the address and then, boom, it just pops up with you go in there, type the address and then, boom, it just pops up with you know, potential buyers. Basically you have a lists, right, uh, so we're doing that quite a bit.
20:51
Um, cold calling services has always been one of the uh, you know, one of the our key. You know providers for leads yeah, so I used to have it in house. I outsource now to direct to two seller leads, uh, so that's another platform that we go off of. And yeah, as far as CRMs and management, I mean we're doing a lot more stuff on the automation side, even platforms like Podio. I've been on Podio for years and I built that thing up to the point where it does everything that we need in the business build that thing up to the point where it does everything that we need in the business. But there's a lot of just improvements and automation on the back end that allow it to do a lot more stuff than what it used to do, for example, three years ago.
21:30 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Right. So, yeah, it was. You know another couple of investors I was interviewing last week. They were talking about how they had their podium and tried to scale and it was a train wreck because it was not set up right. Yeah, it actually led them to like shut everything down, retool. Um, they got really in there and did you know work the elbow grease to make it worthwhile and then went back in again. Um, I don't, one of the things for me that's been really helpful, um, because you know, we've all heard like chatgpt, and then there's a claw, and now there's like deep seek is one of these and I think people can use those or tend to as like just a glorified Google, which is all fine and good, but one of the really cool features in there if you're paying like 20, 25 bucks a month, you can create projects, because the challenge with, if you go in there and just ask it a question, it only knows the context of that chat.
22:25 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
Right.
22:25 - Preston Zeller (Host)
You close it out, right, and then you want to kind of continue that conversation. It doesn't know what you talked about. So when you create a project in there, you can like upload all this other documentation, maybe about your deals, you know any kind of stats. You have market research you're doing and then have like different types of conversation. But it knows the context of every other conversation you've had. So it starts to become like a weird assistant for you. Cool, cool hack there.
22:56 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
But you make. I mean, you make a really good point. One of my favorite books all times and all-time reads it's Napoleon Hill's thinking grow rich right. The the principle of the mastermind, is in there, literally. I did the same thing with Chad GPT, because you can go in there and create your own GPT and then feed it. I want an expert in real estate, I want an expert in whatever, and this person knows how to analyze commercial deals and you can get really nitty and crafty. But you want that particular avatar right to do, and I literally started to create a board of advisors. So I have. I have, for example, one that's you know, it's an expert in marketing.
23:33
I have another one that's an expert in in community building. I have another one that's an expert in real estate and complex you know, for example, deal structure something like that so. So I use it not as the end-all be-all, but I bounce off the.
23:49
I mean it's great for brainstorming mm-hmm you start to play around with, with tools like that and, man, it's gonna open you up to to a you know whole new set of eyes and it's pretty interesting. It's pretty interesting how that works. So, yeah, we lean on that stuff all the time as we're growing, but I feel like we can't let it, you know, take over the, uh, the, the, the people. You know the relationship business, you know the, the relationship responsibility that we have, um and um. Another thing man, it's easy to get like the you know it's shiny object syndrome, like I mentioned earlier, with everything that's out there like oh I'm gonna go to this platform and do this.
24:28
I'm going to go to this platform and do this. I'm gonna go to this platform and do this at the end of the day, like what matters is going to be taking action. You can pull the list. Data is king. Get good data. Pull a list. I mean you, you guys are experts on that. I mean I think you're at the top of the food chain, uh and uh. Pull a list and start making. You know, start making outbound calls. It's really not that difficult, right? Like there's ways of setting that stuff up, but you have to take that first step. I mean I know that, me saying that probably it's a turnoff. Like I want, I want, I want the one button answer.
24:59
There is no such thing.
25:01 - Preston Zeller (Host)
And searching for the Holy grail.
25:03 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
Yeah, exactly I mean so, so, but I mean, and what it does is you kick that off right, like you start to take that, and then there's going to be a question that comes as a result of that action that you took, and then another question, and then another question. You do that enough times, like you have standard operating procedures and you have the ability to plug people into the bottlenecks, and that's really how a company grows. It's, you know, through the motion, emotion, emotion, motion. Man, I can think about. I mean, I spent quite a bit of time when, at the beginning of bash, we were in the same office. It was really cool, but to me it was just awesome to see everything grow. I mean, they would roll something. I was like man, the next week something else will come out, but it's it's all based on questions that are driven by action behind them.
25:48
It just, you know, and that's one example, but every single business is the same, the same way. We have to shake that need for or the quick, the quick result thing, because it doesn't, it doesn't happen. There are going to be platforms that are going to help us a lot, but at the end of a day, you still have to put in the work, you still have to know what process to follow right. You still have to know what's ahead of the end of the day. You still have to put in the work. You still have to know what process to follow right. You still have to know what's ahead of the curve and think of it as a map. I mean the more clear you are on the actions that are coming at you, the better actions you can take.
26:18 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, well, here's one thing that came to mind as you were talking. Especially if someone's like man, I'm struggling to make my first calls, I think you go make 50, 100 calls and when, when someone says no to you, just ask, ask them why, like, why is it falling apart? Keep those in the note section. Obviously, if it goes well, you have that in note section, but that's a fantastic one. You could actually put into one of these.
26:44
You know um projects in chatgpt or whatever and have it, analyze it and give back to you recommendations on what you can say.
26:53
Yeah, Rebuttals or, you know, suggestions on what to do differently. Just, again, more of that data you can give it. But that's where I think people maybe forget that, hey, you're going to, you're going to be the best generator of the data that's going to pre predict your likelihood of success because you're doing the work Right, not because this thing is somehow doing the calls for you and then somehow vetting someone and like all the fanciful things that, like you said, just want the button.
27:22 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
Yeah, exactly, and I mean again, they're great support to what we do, right, but at the end of the day, like we have to run the reins on that. It's when I started when I mean I used to when I got into wholesaling back in 2009, I started flipping and then I got into wholesaling a little later, closed a couple of deals and whatnot. I ended up selling the other business that I had, which was a non-emergency medical transportation business, nothing to do with real estate. But I sold that business. So I was looking for something else to do full time, right, so I exited that. And then I started working with Sean Terry on his email list and he sends out an email one day looking for an acquisitions guy. So I come in. It was like, yeah, I'll be the acquisitions guy. I mean I've been running my business for the last eight years as a business owner the team of 48 employees and a fleet of vehicles and all that stuff.
28:18
But I want to learn like you know, leaving Eagle aside and all that stuff, like I don't have to be the, you know the, the big head honcho is like I'm going to be humble, I'm going to get in there and just put in the work.
28:29
So there were deals. Sometimes we had appointments. It was like this is not going to be a good appointment man, this is not a lead. I would still drive. I would still drive to that lead because of the intentional learning process that I had in mind. So I would still make.
28:49
For example, in your case, if you see something, you're cherry-picking all the leads at first and you need to learn, use them as ammo. Right, it's target practice. If you're gonna mess up a lead, mess up a bad one, don't mess up the good one that comes at you and it's a hot sale that you spend, you know, five thousand dollars trying to get that lead and then you don't know what to say at the end of it. So target practice with the other ones. Borrow leads or get leads from somebody else.
29:11
If you don't have the budget right to get leads on your own, get somebody else's list and then do a ref share if you lock something up. But think about that like target practice. Have those conversations, go on face-to-face appointments if you're able to do it, if you're able to do it now, most of my business I mean I want to say 99% of it is virtual, so we don't do a lot of face-to-face appointments, but it's a big, big differentiator when you're in front of somebody and they actually get to get to see the person. Especially now with everything that's automated, you know, and it's all tech, people still want to have that, that personal connection.
29:42 - Preston Zeller (Host)
You know what I mean it's a distinguisher right, yeah yeah, absolutely yeah, um, have you ever seen the movie tin men? By the way, uh tin man.
29:53 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
No, I don't think I have it's a great movie.
29:55 - Preston Zeller (Host)
They do like door-to-door aluminum siding sales yeah yeah, anyone who's listening to this should go watch that. You're like that's. It ended up being kind of a fraudulent industry, but they would come up with all these wild gimmicks to get people to buy.
30:11 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
Anyways, it's on my list. Yeah, it's a. It's a funny movie.
30:16 - Preston Zeller (Host)
But you know, on that note, right, you know we talked again. There's the. You know people addicted to webinars, learning, reading the books, you know, whatever the consuming content. But what about, like the mentors, right, the coaches. I mean you even said it yourself, right, a coach needs a coach. Yeah, no one's really immune from needing some amount of guidance and leadership. So I mean, where you know, where do people maybe go wrong there? How could they improve their thought process or approach to that need?
30:50 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
I'm the poster child for skepticism, bro. You know. Getting into anything that I was getting into, I was like, no, I'm not going to pay for it. I mean, I can go to YouTube and watch a video and learn it. And granted, youtube back in the day wasn't what it is now right, but still there was a lot of content in there.
31:09 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Cats teaching you.
31:10 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, there was a lot of cats teaching me so I'm very well versed in cat language, but the idea behind it was like no, they're just out to take my money and whatnot. And unfortunately, there are people out there who go out and coach and they don't have the track record. They don't have the track record, they don't have the the background. So I see how it can be one of those things. Do your due diligence. When you're looking at a mastermind, when you're looking at a coach, what's their track record? Are they actually doing deals? Are they, you know? Or if it's a personal growth coach or a mindset coach, I mean, I have a mindset coach, I have somebody that I talked to you and and it's like just different perspective, it's clarity. Clarity right At the end of the day. What I'm looking for there is clarity. So we can't be educators if we're not growing right.
31:56
And to me thinking that my perspective is the perspective I mean that just tells me that I started to suck. As a coach to die, so masterminds, for example, I mean there's one that a coach to die. So so masterminds, for example, I mean there's one that's coming up, uh, the family mastermind. I love that one because of the, the, the key players that are in there, and uh, and you know, every time I sit on a, on that table is like man I walk away with, with so much one knowledge, but different ways of looking at things. So it's, it's, it's, it's crazy to think that we're gonna figure everything out by ourselves, and and I don't know if you're super sharp, you might, but it's gonna take you forever, right? So I'd rather get there, you know, a little faster, borrow experience from people around me and then do it the right way, because I've spent a lot of time paying the dumb tax man like oh.
32:44
I'm telling you, I wasted a good ten years playing, you know, paying the dumb tax, meaning that I could have had those results in one year. Mm-hmm, if I had, you know, if I had trusted a little more. So so, yeah, I mean the, the. I feel like the constant pursuit of growth is one thing, that's, that's a common trend, right? An entrepreneur, especially if you get into the, into a vertical that's very competitive, like you have to stay on top of your game, otherwise you're gonna you know you're gonna fall back in and fizzle out. But yeah, it's, it's, you're gonna learn a lot of things from from the web. You can go to YouTube. There's a lot of. Probably mean, everything, though anybody has to teach, is probably in a video somewhere.
33:23
Right, the thing is, I mean the way that I, that I see it, that I understand it is like, think about a box of legos. When you buy a set, right, and you have the set of legos, like, oh, I know, this thing is an airplane and I have all the pieces, and step one, you have little squares, and then step two, and then step three and then, boom, you end up with a plane. Yeah, and then that plane falls off the shelf. Everything goes all over the place. But I tossed the the manual, so I put it all back in a box, right?
33:47
so now I have a box of legos with all the pieces in there, but I don't know how to put it together right, that's exactly what happens, um, most of the time when, when you self-instruct right you may put the airplane together, but you're not going to be able to do it in an hour or two, when you had the instruction and and the the the map to it, right, um, as opposed to you know, okay, this is going to take me three days. It's the same thing right.
34:13 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Well, another kind of analogy, a little different perspective. I, I, so I love cooking. I last year I'm like I'm gonna make a sourdough starter. I'm gonna learn how to make sourdough bread and um oh, the yeast, or is it the bread? The, yeah, the yeast starter and, yeah, I gotta feed it and all that, and, and so you know, I of course I went to youtube and I was like you know, I'm gonna learn how to make sourdough bread.
34:36
Everyone taught it a different way, yeah, and I was like yeah, it got really actually frustrating because I got and I'm definitely a doer type, fortunately, I think by default but I just was like, okay, you know, screw all these guys, I'm going to just figure out my own recipe in the most simplistic way possible. I'm sure the first, you know, two, three, four, five, whatever are not going to be great, and just I've made you know so many since then, continue to tweak. But if I just want continue to watch people and I I've made you know so many since then, continue to tweak. But if I just want continue to watch people and I was thinking about this as we were talking earlier, and you know being addicted to kind of information, you get analysis, paralysis too.
35:17 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
A hundred percent.
35:18 - Preston Zeller (Host)
And I don't think people like take that into account. So, um yeah, having having the good, the right guidance, combined with taking the action, I think there's something about a coach too. I mean, hardly any coach is going to be a free coach, so having that skin in the game makes you more accountable.
35:40 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
It does. It does I mean now you have skin in the game. Going back, for example, to what you were talking about right now, it's it's you lot.
35:49
you abandon the videos because of lack of clarity right like it really comes down to that, like it doesn't matter how we see it. A lot of times you're not going to have that, that uh, that level of clarity if. If there's so much noise in, in everything that you're, you're, you know, taking a look at right, it's have perspective, bar perspective. But the clarity comes through action. You take the first step. It's like, all right, cool, you figure out where the next foot needs to go and I mean it's really how it works. I break down, for example, our industry. I break it down in six different stages and it's simple, right, like the path to a business model. I have six stages and I did the same thing when I built the brokerage, same thing with the wholesaling business, same thing with the coaching business.
36:30
The first part you have to figure out sourcing. All right. So if you're watching the webinar, I mean take some notes on this, but you're going to have to figure out your processes for sourcing your leads. You have to source and these are in order, right, you've got to figure out sourcing, whether that you know what's your lead generation, whether that's cold calling, it's PPC, it's you know, it's whatever that is pulling data, whatever that is right. Sourcing is the first step. The second step is qualifying, which is converting. So second step is pre-qualifying everything that comes in from whatever you sourced. So if you made 1,000 calls, now you know you have 100 people that are, are interested, you're pre-qualifying those 100 people, right?
37:12
The next step is actually going into an acquisitions process, right where you negotiate, you, you start to talk about the, you know benefits and, and you go back and forth, you end up in a common ground. You, you know, add value to whoever you're serving, right. And then the next one, of course, is gonna be fulfillment, which which is dispo in the world of wholesaling. But those four steps at the beginning bring so much clarity to anybody taking action, Because if you're in the sourcing stage, you can't be having, for example, acquisition conversations or worrying about this process. We need to figure that out first, worrying about this process like we need to figure that up or that out first.
37:47
Right, um, and you're not going to be able to close deals or dispo deals, or, you know, think about exit strategies like innovations. You know stuff like that. If you can't source the leads, so they. There's always a a linear path to everything that we do. We just have to be clear about you know how it goes. For example, if you, uh, if you worried about the starter as a step number four and like there's no way the bread's gonna happen, mm-hmm, yeah, you know what I mean.
38:10
Yeah, yeah, the right kind of order of operations for all these things are gonna go yeah, and the last two because I said four, but the last two are measuring an improvement. So tracking everything that you're doing, there's KPIs or you know stuff like that. Scorecards, right, they don't have to be super complicated, just something that keeps you accountable and that you're measuring on a regular basis so you see your input. Like today work two hours and I generated three leads. Maybe those are my KPIs right for net before, for what I'm doing right now or at this stage in the business. And then improvement conscious improvement. Every time I had an appointment, a conversation or something like that, I would walk out and debrief in my head.
38:51
Like what happened on that call or what happened in that seller appointment that I could have done better? Where did I lose them?
38:59 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Right, right.
39:00 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
Where did I lose interest in the conversation? Where did they shifted their body posture to to want it, you know, to not wanting to talk to me anymore? Right, know that sort of thing. And but you have that, that just having that awareness of going through an improvement checkpoint on everything that you're doing, every appointment. You know every deal that you close, for example, we still do that as a company level. We close the deal. Okay, what happened how? You know, did we lose? You know, did we leave any money on the table on this deal or could we have done something better for the seller on this point? But, you know, provide more value, like, where's that at right, but you, you got to have that Improvement uh section at the end of it yeah, so I some of those coming to mind.
39:38 - Preston Zeller (Host)
I was typing while you're, uh, or talking. I saw this the other day and it kind of accentuated it perfectly, so I've you know. For a while I was like, okay, one percent better every day, that kind of thing. But um, for anyone who's you know into math, which I think a lot of people in real estate are, you know, if you do one to the 365th power right as an exponent, you get one yeah um, if you do 1.01 to the same three sixty five, you get thirty seven point seven eight.
40:10
So it's just an interesting like mathematical illustration. Super nerdy, but you know, it's just. It's an interesting look. It's almost like the penny compounding over a month you know, doubling every day over a month. But you're just putting that step forward every day over a month.
40:25
But you're, you're just um, putting that step forward every day and like, and and I, I think you know back to a really really good point man yeah, I guess, because some of what we were talking about, right, it's like people could be doing the things that feel like they're getting one percent better every day, but it's not yeah it's. It's actually just like rehashing the same kind of. It's not the true action that's getting you the progress right the and I tend I tend to be very distracted.
40:52 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
I mean, I'm doing a lot of a lot of things usually at the same time, and and and the focus is that you know it can be one of those very challenging, you know parts of my day, right, what am I focusing on? The one of the questions that constantly comes up, or anytime I like. Okay, what do I need to do next? The questions that constantly comes up, or anytime I like. Okay, what do I need to do next? The first question that pops up is what's my highest and best? So, what's my highest and best? I go back to that with my teams and I think about it. Right me, or you know from a personal standpoint what's my highest and best, but I also teach them to think the same way. Okay, what's your highest and best for Dispo manager? What's your highest and best? Right now, your highest and best is not putting an email together.
41:30
Your highest and best is actually having conversations to sell the deals like, that's the highest and best, right, so figure out what that is and then focus on that same thing for acquisitions what's your highest and best? Well, your highest and best is not, you know, it's not cold calling, it's it's, you know, sending out offers. Figure out, we do that highest and best and you start to. I feel like that question, right there, just allows me to dial down the volume on a lot of the noisier activities. Right, and we can do this when we're starting a business, when we have scaled a business, it doesn't matter what stage of your entrepreneurial career you're at.
42:05
You can always go back to that question because it's gonna give you the thing that you know you need to do to move that needle.
42:14 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, so that's a great point. I'm kind of curious, as this year we're in later February now, which is crazy. But what are some of the things I think you're focused on? That to continue to improve yourself and just you know, maybe, maybe something that is more in your genius zone that you're like realize? You know, recently I need to do more of that or less of something else the good question man.
42:41 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
I mean, I think that it's a, it's a loaded, it's a stack question.
42:44
I want to be better in every aspect but I, you know you mentioned live by design earlier. I used to. I used to. I got burned out, you know, at one point in my, in my, in my career, because I was just after the after the dollar, after the dollar, after the dollar, and I wasn't really paying attention to the stuff that really matters, right, family, kids and relationships and, and, just, you know, joy and smiles, right? So that to me was was a big wake-up call.
43:17
And even I have a podcast and one of the questions, like actually the last question that I always ask is if, to my guests, this is like if you were walking down the street and you ran into your 17 year old self, what would you, what would you tell that kid? Right, the reason I ask that question is because I had to go through a process of understanding and knowing myself again, because I feel like I got lost in the, in the, in the business, operationally, and you know the stuff that I, that I that would just kind of make me feel alive, that I, that I that would just kind of make me feel alive. Really I lost it. You know that I didn't have desire to take trips and and, and, you know, spend time with friends and family. And then, you know, I did a self check, was like man.
43:55
The last time I felt like I was, I was in that you know really cool happy place and I owned the world in my head. Of course, I was 17 years old. You know the, the joyfulness of life, the playfulness of life, you know, that was back then, uh, so I, I, I brought that back and I feel like over the years it's getting better, get better, better. So, so, um, the, the reason I, you know, I say that background story is because one of the biggest things now for me is is really the, the lifestyle. Right, and I'm not talking about, you know, buying fancy, you know cars or spending all kinds of money and being material. To me it's about smiles If I have a really good opportunity in front of me. But it's going to anchor me, it's going to make me feel like a slave for the next year. Maybe somebody else should take it. I'll still monetize somehow.
44:44
I'll probably JV and make a lot less on it, but it's going to fit. I'm building stuff around the lifestyle that I want, the freedom that I want Right, and I think we say that often as entrepreneurs and I'll speak for myself. But from saying it to actually doing it, it's a big, uncomfortable leap.
45:03
So that's really one of the spaces where I'm at and I'm growing a lot. You know more on the coaching side. I mean, every time I teach, I understand my own process better, so it's a two-way street, so I love that part of it. So, but yeah, I mean it's, you know, going forward. I guess it the uh, when, when. Uh, you know what we are like entrepreneurs the.
45:34
The reason we get bored is because we're not creating. The reason we get bored is because we're not creating, we're not spending time in a creative state and and I feel like when you put a business together, for example example now the wholesaling business I may spend maybe 10% of my time there and I come in as a coach capacity. Rarely do I ever make a call or interact with a seller or a buyer or something. My team does that right, because I was able to build the systems and processes for that to operate. So the reason I stepped back was because I felt like it wasn't as as exciting as it was when I got started, because I was putting pieces together, I was being challenged by the conversations and all that stuff and I reached the point of knowing enough about it where I felt comfortable with it. So I was like all right, cool, I've got to step back and do something else.
46:22
But I think the ability to create right, we all have that. But I think the ability to create right, we all have that. If you're stuck in a 905 and you feel stuck, literally stuck in a 905, just understand that during that time you're building somebody else's dream, your dream. You're going to build it when you go home and then you put in the work from you know 6 to 8. If you start that way, right.
46:42
That's when you build your own dream, your own way of just you know, stepping away from whatever thing is making you uncomfortable, and I think that losing the understanding of that can be one of the biggest mistakes that we make.
46:57 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah of that. Just what drives you that kind of thing? Yeah, you know, if anyone has any questions, by the way, drop them in for us and we'll get to them. Yeah, you know, I'm, I'm totally that way. I resonate with that a lot of just definitely. We're all meant to be creative and to create and whatever, finding the context that works for you.
47:24
For that, know, entrepreneurs or um, of course, that want, like that, max freedom, right, and so I think, uh, in the in that sense it's that can be like this achilles heel of like I think you pointed out, this thing's good enough, what's the next thing to go tackle? And, um, you know, maybe losing sight of what you enjoy because you're trying so many new things all the time, um, but then you can also on, you know, I think, on the flip side, get like kind of complacent because you're like things are fine enough yeah um?
48:01
so I don't know um. Brad David asks what are the best lead generation sources, tools and tactics?
48:10 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
So, brad, lead generation. I've always been a fan of cold calling, so that's one, but right now it's actually surprising, right. But one of the most effective lead generation strategies is direct mail. Direct mail is working great. It's more expensive, of course, than cold calling if you start to hit bigger campaigns, but I've always had cold calling as a pillar for lead generation. It gives us the consistency. Again, I have callers and they're based out of Egypt and they're just constantly just pumping out leads Boom, boom, boom, boom. So we have that coming in. The quality of leads is gonna be different. You get better lead quality with direct mail and then PPC. So right now, my, my lead generation efforts are we have four, four, four pillars. So it's cold calling, direct mail, ppc, and then we do a lot of door knocking as well. So, yeah, door knocking is brutal. Not a lot of people like it, but it's. I'm telling you, the biggest deals come from door knocking.
49:15 - Preston Zeller (Host)
When you've done mailers, have you done any fake checks?
49:19 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
No.
49:19 - Preston Zeller (Host)
I know that's a whole another mailer type.
49:21 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
49:23 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, that's, that's, one's been interesting on the.
49:27 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
So you were. You're asking, for example, about a tips, right and tactics, one of to not deplete the budget and then, just like spray and pray for direct mail because it can get super expensive.
49:38
We'll pull lists, for example, pre foreclosure lists right and have a three, three mailer sequence for that. So the first one is the cheap postcard. Right, because we want to see what comes back vacant, non-deliverables so when those come back, I mean we go deeper into searching those out, like who actually owns? Because now you have a, you got to find the golden address and not everybody's hitting those right because they're hiding somewhere. So that's the first one. So, for example, say that we pull a list of 200 people closures, right, the first hit is gonna be a postcard, the second hit it's gonna be a packet. I literally have a packet of 10 ways to prevent pre-foreclosure, save your house from foreclosure. And like, right in the middle of that booklet, right, and this is a more expensive, I think it's about $3.80 or something per lead, so it adds up but right in the middle of it it says you know, sell me your house, right, like I'll buy your house for cash and then you don't have to worry about it. Yeah, then after that, you know, of course we have, you know you can ask your, your lender these questions, try to negotiate, and there's like we have other, like another, nine different strategies are very valid that people just sometimes don't want to go through, right, because they take work, they take effort, they're still freaked out.
50:51
So that's a second mailer. The third one is actually I do so. This is the only case when I send a letter of interest, right? So we do send them a letter, not a purchase contract. We send them a letter just saying hey, listen, I'm interested in buying the house, and, and you know, send you a couple mailers. When we're doing all this, we're still hitting them via phone. So we become. You know, they see us from different angles, you know what I mean mm-hmm.
51:15
But yeah, we get pretty, pretty creative on the lead generation side. PPC, I mean it's, it's pay-per-click it's, I mean it's great yeah, you running it in-house or outsource both. So I do have an in-house campaign and then I do have I do outsource, yeah to. Actually Brent Daniels has a really good PPC, oh yeah.
51:33 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, yeah.
51:35 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
So we're using them. And the internal campaign I mean I've had it for a long time, so I just left that one in place and we get leads off of that. So, yeah, I mean there's ways of just combining right the different verticals out there. Again, don't start with all of them, start with one. If your budget is tight, pull a list of prefer closures, you know, get the latest data, you know whatever you can get, that's, that's fresh, right, and then do a list and start hitting those doors. I mean it's gonna be the fat again, not the sexy way of doing it, but it gets pretty sexy when you're closing 45,000 our deals right in 45 days.
52:10 - Preston Zeller (Host)
I mean, I'm telling you it happens every day, dude, yeah and sometimes you might just need to get like see that first check and you're like holy smokes.
52:20 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
Yeah, Proof of concept man. Proof of concept is huge.
52:25 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Excuse me, Raul asked what is the best form to find the absentee owner. Maybe, you meant for? I'm not sure what the forum would be.
52:37 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
Yeah, well, probably best way. Yeah, in context. In Spanish it translates to that Raul, what's up? Yeah, forum like the way forma. So what's the best way of absentee owners list? I mean just full list.
52:52
I mean we're right here, these guys yeah, one click filter, yeah it's so you, you go to an area, so go, for example, go to badge leads and drop a drop whatever your backyard is right. So if you want to pull an absentee owner and list in Central Valley, Cali or whatever like, just drop that in, drop the zip code and then pan it out and literally the filters are their absentee owner. If you go for that, some of the filters I would recommend would be go for the higher equity. If you can go absentee owner, higher equity and then look for properties that are built that have maybe 30 years of wear and tear on them. 25 years wear and tear, so, for example, it's 2025.
53:33
Look for properties that are, you know, built in 2000 or before. Right, it's usually the properties that are you know some of the bigger hedge funds are not targeting. They're targeting newer stuff and whatnot. Some of them will buy that kind of stuff, but competition is a little less. But now you have wear and tear. You have, for example, like the roof that hasn't been treated in, you know, 30 years.
53:52
You have, you know ACs or you know stuff like that. So that would be another filter, and then another one would be ownership. I go ownership of over eight years. So the absentee owner owns a property, but they own that property for over eight years, right? So some simple filters that are going to dial in your list a little more.
54:10 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, I think we have roof age. I thought because we have permits around roofs, new roofs being pulled, but I could be wrong there. So, yeah, those are fantastic ones you mentioned. Next one is about SMS. So what do we think about SMS texting to generate leads? What do you think about it?
54:34 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
I don't do SMS anymore, so I was going through a, through a platform called launch control. They still, you know they have some some, you know they have services out there, but I mean it's just the regulation on it got so strict that to us is it's. I mean it just doesn't make sense, right? So I'd rather put that budget into something else like PPC or cold calling. If I add another two cold callers, I mean that would probably just supplement the amount of leads that I was getting from text messaging. But yeah, I don't use it. We do use it on the back end with selling the properties on the dispo side. So we do text buyers when we have the property and we'll do campaigns, SMS campaigns, for that.
55:18 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Right, so more of like a customer relational aspect.
55:21 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
Yeah.
55:22 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, I mean, I think you know, from a batch perspective, we, of course, you know, became like super widely known for that when it was, you know, possible to do all the different kinds of cold texting that people were doing. And we actually still send a crazy the golden days.
55:40
Yeah, the golden days, right yeah, it was too easy.
55:45
But we still actually send a lot of through integrations, of course, but through our platform, still send a ton of text messaging. We still have that feature in there, but we, through our platform, still sent a ton of text messages. We still have that feature in there. Uh, it's not enabled by default just because, um, there's people who try to get into it with a fresh Twilio account or whatever, like it's not gonna happen, you know. Or, or you hit, uh, the jackpot loophole and they let you in, and but they became pretty wise to real estate world and you know, the relational side I think you mentioned is amazing. But if it's cold prospecting, I, I would agree, don't rely on. That is like yeah, there's one.
56:26 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
There's one company that I know you know does it actually some of my students are working with, but it's gold lead mining pros, calm, and they do have the grandfathered into this. The sequence of SMS's and I'm not sure how they work in on the back end, but on, if you're, if you're starting off trying to get the deliverability rate up, I mean, in my experience is going to be super tough just because of all the you know 10 deals, compliance and all that stuff that that's rolled out.
56:56 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Well, I don't think most people rise to like you know, we just came out of a heavy national election cycle and election years. Actually, for cold calling to can be tough, just because you know we see how many communications are being sent out.
57:11 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
Yeah.
57:11 - Preston Zeller (Host)
And I think the FCC is like holy smokes. The amount of complaints probably happening is just, you know, through the roof.
57:20 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
So do this, guys Like, if you're rolling into this space, do whatever you need to do to monetize and then start to roll in inbound lead generation strategies, pay-per-click, I mean it's going to be one of those things that, yeah, it's going to get tricky because of the algorithms and whatnot, but if you bring somebody on who knows how to handle it, you can keep it pretty steady, pretty safe. People will come in at you. So all that red tape on outbound calling and you know that sort of it's not going to impact it as much. You want to have a leg that feeds you leads In you leads. In my case, for example, social media is a big part of it. We get a lot of JV opportunities and even leads through my just social media presence and it's. I mean, I don't have millions of followers, but I'm pretty active. You know people. You want to do business with people who are doing business right. So what comes down to? But there's different ways to like putting yourself out there is, it's gonna, it's always gonna be important as well.
58:12 - Preston Zeller (Host)
So yeah, I think a key thing on the on the paid front is like do some research on what market you're into right, because I mean we, you know we were doing PPL stuff for a while and we saw leads anywhere from buck fifty to six fifty yeah it pearly and you're like when obviously you know the some of those markets are, you know whatever San Diego, or you know the some of those markets are, you know whatever San Diego, or you know Utah is actually really expensive.
58:38
But then there were some places, like, I think, new jersey, where it was like because of the way the towns work, you just it was virtually impossible to kind of like to really nail down those areas so it's good to know like what. Whatever market you're in for the PPC stuff, there's going to be probably some nuance depending on where you are.
58:57 - Rafael Cortez (Guest)
Yeah, there's always and too, I think, every lead generation channel. You're going to have nuisances right. Yeah, it's going to be really hard to dial in. The more you dial in, for example, PPC, the more expensive it gets, and I mean it's just how it works. On the door-knocking side, I mean, you know, the determining factor right there is that you actually have to go out there and door-knock and have that conversation. That's scary, bro.
59:23
Yeah, you know. But if you have that DNA built into you, I mean I think it's one of the best ways and fastest ways to start getting deals through the door.
59:37 - Hope (Announcement)
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