From Craig Fuhr, Real Estate Marketer...
Say it with me… “I’m a real estate marketer…I’m a real estate marketer…I’m a real estate marketer.”
All joking aside, I’m seriously about to blow your mind – but only if you’re willing to have your mind blown. So, I’m askin’…are ya ready to open your mind to some very powerful and potentially life changing suggestions?
I promise you, if you make this simple and powerful shift in your mental blueprint, your real estate business will forever be changed.
I’ve been successfully flipping houses for 10 years – full time for 7 years. In that time, I’ve flipped well over 100 deals, and I’m known all over the country for doing insanely gorgeous Champagne rehabs on a Budweiser budget.
As a rehabber, I’ve got a lot on my mind. My day-to-day business activity usually involves finding more cash, managing and paying contractors, and evaluating deals. If I’m being honest, I often find that there’s little attention paid to marketing, and I most certainly would never characterize my marketing as consistent.
Marketing shmarketing, right? Hmm…
In the early to mid-2000s I got fat, dumb and happy just firing up the old MLS system, sending out a few offers…and BAM, I had more sweet deals than I could shake a dead cat at. (Sorry, cat lovers.)
Who needed postcards? Who needed yellow letters? Who needed that horrible taste in your mouth after stuffing and licking a thousand envelopes? Who needed the sign police threatening to fine me $1500 over a .99 cent bandit sign? I had MLS access and that’s all I needed, baby! Right?
Well, if you haven’t noticed…the MLS party is over! Not only are listings at an historic 12-year low – it seems everyone (AND their mother) is scouring the MLS for deals. To make matters worse, if you find a stray, crappy listing on the MLS, you’ll also find about 17 dummies who are willing to pay way too much for the deal. How many times have you received the “highest and best,” email over the past 12 months?
Okay, enough belly-aching, let me change speeds here…
I had the pleasure of spending a week with my good friend, Mr. Cody Sperber, just after the New Year. Cody is a friggin’ genius in that he has a brilliant mind for marketing and a brilliant mind for developing systems to scale his business. His wholesaling business does $100,000 per month (that’s $1.2 million per year) and its run by three people! That’s pure insanity!
Mind-Blowing ALERT in 5, 4, 3, 2…
Most importantly, over the course of the week, it occurred to me that Cody doesn’t view himself as a real estate investor. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that if I asked him, “What is your job title?” or “What do you do for a living?” the last thing he’d say is, “I’m a real estate investor!”
Instead – I’d bet a million bucks that he’d say, “I’m a real estate marketer.”
That’s a guy who makes $1.2 million per year in real estate, folks…and he wouldn’t call himself a real estate investor.
Look, if you want to park your money in a bunch of rentals for the next 15 years…that’s real estate investing, but if you want to make $250,000 flipping cheap houses to people looking for cheap houses….THAT’S MARKETING! You may call it wholesaling, but dammit – it’s MARKETING!
If you want to quit your job and need to make $150,000 per year and you plan to do that by making crappy houses pretty, you need a consistent funnel of crappy houses. You may call that rehabbing…but dammit, I’ll say it again – it’s MARKETING!
Say it with me, “I am a real estate marketer.”
What kills me is that very few newbies (and yes, veterans too) set their businesses, and therefore themselves, up for success. If you decided tomorrow that you wanted to sell insurance for New York Life, the very first thing your boss would do after hiring you would be to teach you how to build your deal funnel. That’s marketing.
If you decided to quit your IT job to open a neighborhood tavern, your very first task after stocking the place with cold beer would be to make a plan to put bottoms on the barstools. That’s marketing! See how this works now? If you had a dream to open a day spa, the first thing you’d do is develop a plan to get as many wrinkly faced women in the door as possible. That’s marketing.
So, why should your plan for real estate be any different? Why should you be focused on ANY OTHER thing but marketing? You got it, it shouldn’t.
You’re not an investor. You’re a marketer.
As I travelled home to Maryland from my visit in Phoenix with Cody, I broke out my journal and wrote down all of the most successful guys and gals I know or have known in the business. And without fail, I proved my own theory.
I won’t list all the names for you – but you know the names of the biggest guru’s in our biz, (and I know a lot of them personally, too). They are all master marketers.
Think for a moment about “the whale” in your town; that guy or gal who you know is just CRUSHING IT. Think about that investor that you want to be, and then ask yourself, “Is that person a Ninja Marketer?”
I’ll bet a buck that you answered, “Yes.”
So, what will you do now? Well, if you want to be truly successful you’ll learn not from the best investors, but rather the best marketers.
Look – anyone can teach you the mechanics of a wholesale deal, but not everyone can teach you how to make your phone ring off the hook! Learn from THAT guy. Anyone can get you all pumped up after a weekend seminar where they’ll sell you a busload of bull…but not everyone can teach you how to set up massively effective marketing campaigns.
Learn from the best marketers! For if you do, you will truly be a successful, real estate marketer.
Let me know what you think. Am I full of crap or am I on to something here? Do you treat your marketing like a hobby or do you treat it like the lifeblood of your business?
-Craig Fuhr
Stop -- Seeing yourself as simply a "real estate investor". Your "big hat" is much more than that.
Say it with me -- “I’m a real estate marketer…I’m a real estate marketer…I’m a real estate marketer.”
Learn -- Not from the best investors, but rather the best marketers out there in the REI arena around you. Become an avid student of what they're doing to market their deals on ball sides of the transaction.