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Jason has been investing in real estate for years, his specialty is finding off market deals. He built and sold REI Blackbook, now he helps individuals find off market deals by building them a specialized blueprint and giving them a leg up on the competition. If you enjoyed today’s episode remember to subscribe in iTunes and leave us a review!

 

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“You’ll go from 3000 homes in Cleveland down to 30 in a matter of minutes” – Jason Palliser

 

Jason Palliser Real Estate Background:

 

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TRANSCRIPTION

Joe Fairless: Best Ever listeners, how are you doing? Welcome to the best real estate investing advice ever show. I’m Joe Fairless, and this is the world’s longest-running daily real estate investing podcast. We only talk about the best advice ever, we don’t get into any of that fluffy stuff. With us today, Jason Palliser. How are you doing, Jason?

Jason Palliser: I’m doing well, how are you?

Joe Fairless: I am doing well, and looking forward to our conversation. A little bit about Jason – he is an off-market lead generation specialist. He’s closed 3,200 investment transactions and he has built and sold a real estate automation company, and actively invests. Based in St. Louis, Missouri. With that being said, Jason, do you wanna give the Best Ever listeners  a little bit more about your background and your current focus?

Jason Palliser: Sure. Hello, everyone. I’ve been investing for 20 years, I’ve been doing private funding, hard money and investment specialty [unintelligible [00:01:41].20] for 24. I build two-day investment blueprints. I basically in a matter of 48 hours build out 28-30 off-market lead generation funnels. Most people only know a few… And we take over marketplaces. I do it for hedge funds as well. So if there are any listeners who don’t understand the hedge fund side – it’s really simple. Hedge funds decide to invest money and diversify. They might buy 200 million in copper, 100 million in overseas technologies, and they’ll also invest in real estate.

So they’ll hire somebody in a city (called a city operator) and say “Hey, we want 1,000 homes in Houston, and we need to do it in 40 months.” It’s a good gig to get for the city operator person, but if you can imagine the stress of having to average 50, 60, 70 homes a month off-market… Then someone will hire  me to come in and do it, and I will just build their off-market funnels, their systems, all the way down to doing direct mail for free, if you do it the way that we want you to. But that’s pretty much in a nutshell what we do. I sold an automation software company, for those who might be familiar, called REI Black Book – I sold that company, and I just started doing individual blueprints for individual investors, again, and not just do it for the hedge funds. That’s kind of who I am, what we do.

When we lay a blueprint over a marketplace, it’s just simply not fair. I’m from St. Louis, and just moved down here to St. Pete Beach, so I’m happy to report to everybody that the weather is much nicer down here by the beach.

Joe Fairless: [laughs] Talk to us about your process. You’ve just mentioned when you put a blueprint over a market place, you’ve got that competitive advantage. So when you put together a blueprint, what’s your process you go through to do so?

Jason Palliser: What we do is we’ll do several things. When we get our hands on an investor, they’ll have told us ahead of time what marketplace they’re looking to attack – or marketplaces, if it’s more than one… And the first thing we’ll do is we’ll break down data in their city, because data doesn’t lie, it tells the truth. So we’ll take the median sales price; what’s the average square footage for 2-3 areas that you’re looking to attack; what bedroom count sells the fastest… Nine real estate data points, and then we’ll start paring that down.

We’ll take half of the median sales price and we’ll start setting triggers. So one of the 30 ways is that we start to automate the online world. We start with their marketplace, we teach them that data doesn’t lie, so that they have that skillset, so we could drop them off in any city when we’re done with that section, and — maybe they’re not from Cleveland, but we’ll just drop them off there and they’ll talk to a realtor, ask for those 9 data points, in 60 seconds they can give it to them, and then they don’t need them anymore.

We’ll show them 16 real estate online websites to attack, and we’ll drill down to the good stuff. We’ll go from 3,000 homes in Cleveland, down to 30 in a matter of 2-3 minutes. With certainty, they would look me straight in the eye and say “I want these appointments”, and they’ve been in Cleveland for 10 minutes.

So we’ll start there, on “Data doesn’t lie”, so that you can get to the good stuff without sifting through all the stuff that doesn’t make sense, and then that’s where we start to apply everything. We’ll walk you through a mind map that’s taken 15 years to cultivate, blueprints for the hedge funds that are responsible for 34,000 homes acquired… So we’re gonna walk you through what we know wins. We’ll start going through each different lead sandbox, and whether it’s pre-foreclosures, vacants, water disconnects, tax delinquents (tax delinquents is my favorite of all time) and we’ll show you what actually wins. We’ve had approaching 60 million in marketing budgets at this point, so I always joke and tell people I don’t have the luxury of not knowing how this is done.

So we’ll start walking through each lead piece, but then the most important thing is this – everybody says “Hey, I wanna get some good, motivated leads”, but within an hour of us getting our hands on a client, they usually tell us “Wow, I’m never gonna have a lead problem ever again”, because the first set of leads that we unlock for a person could be 1,500 off-market vacant leads, or 1,500 water disconnects. So there’s not a lead problem… And Joe, I’m sure you’re aware of this, it’s more of a “What do I do with these leads to get them to respond to me” problem. So we’ll start walking them through a critical tab called “The systematic approach”, where as soon as the leads come in we walk them deliberately through what we do and in what order, and if you do it the way we want, then you’ll have smoked that good lead four times for less than a dollar.

The first level of attack costs one tenth of one cent. The second level of attack costs 18-20 cents, the third is six cents, and the fourth level of attack is 55 cents. So for less than a dollar you’re blanketing those good leads in the marketplace, and then when we lay on top of that how we do free direct mail, if you do it the right way, then you can take over a market and quite frankly no one can stop you.

Joe Fairless: What are the four things that you do for less than a dollar?

Jason Palliser: The first level of attack is we put systems in place to have the doors tagged. So as soon as you get those, we have 200 variations that we’ve tested on different door tags that we do. You could do regular door tags; we suggest you don’t do that. Your first thing that you do, which will be a to-do item for you, is that you or somebody in your team gets a post-it notes stamp made; a stamp the size of a post-it note, and we’ll use 2 or 3 different variations of wording on that to get them to contact you.

The second level of attack, which we have it down to as little as 10 cents, but 18 to 20 cents is fair – a skip-trace. We’ll throw them straight into your systems that we build out.

The third level of attack – we’ll attack them and surround that person socially with cookie-free IP targeting. Hopefully that doesn’t lose people on this particular episode, but cookie-free IP targeting means this – everybody knows if you search online for shoes, that all of  a sudden on almost you go to shoes keep popping up. Well, you willfully did  a search, you had to perform an action, and then it cookied you and followed you around.

So imagine a world where these good leads come in, and for as little as 2 to 6 cents you can socially surround them with your ad, your brand on any website they go to. That’s the third way that they do it – they start to know you and contact you… Because almost any website that they go to, there’s your ad – “Hey, I’m interested in your property. I’m interested in your property. I’m interested in your property.”

And then the fourth level – we drop a direct mail bomb on them. 60 million in marketing budgets – we have a marketing piece that gets a very nasty open rate, and since we started doing this for individuals (again) and not just for the big companies, hundreds in a row now, I’m like “Would you open this?” and they just simply go “Yes, I would open it.” I go “Isn’t that what you wanted?” and they’re like “Yes.” So we’ll hit them four times…

Joe Fairless: What about it makes them wanna open it?

Jason Palliser: What about it makes them wanna open it? I hope people have their fingers ready to type, or pens in their hand… We’re gonna do a colored envelope. That colored envelope is going to be handwritten in crayon. And then we have what looks like a handwritten letter on the inside, and we’ve tested somewhere in the ballpark of 700 different letters over 122 marketplaces, and your first level of attack when you get to that step – it has a letter that invokes a response from them better than any other letter we’ve ever sent.

So when you get a colored envelope in the mail, and it’s written in crayon…

Joe Fairless: Yeah, I’d open it.

Jason Palliser: You don’t think it’s from somebody to talk to you about your house; you think “Oh gosh, I’d better open this up. I wonder what kid’s birthday party invitation is being sent to me.” So that’s what we do to get a nasty response rate.

Joe Fairless: And the difference in what they expect, handwritten in crayon on the front, versus you’ve got handwritten inside, but it’s not from a kid that you know, it’s from a company – how do you bridge that gap, so it doesn’t upset them, and so that you drive action for what you want?

Jason Palliser: Well, on the inside, like I said, it looks handwritten. So one – they opened it, so you’re winning the game. Two, the handwritten letter is so polite that any level of, like you said, “How do you bridge the gap?” or flip the script on them, so any level of animosity, whether it’s 0.1% or 10%, they’re like “Hey, this isn’t from a kid!”, the letter softly solves that. But then we get a lot of phone calls that go like this… They’ll call us, obviously they’re like “Hello, I’m calling you, I’m at the 123 Candy Lane”, and then they’ll start the conversation with “That was good.”

Joe Fairless: [laughs]

Jason Palliser: They’ll start the conversation, Joe, with “Hey, I just wanna let you guys know, that’s good. Look, I get a lot of letters, this and that… You got me.” They’ll say “That was good” and “You got me.” Which is exactly what you want. You want them on the phone with you. Same thing when the leads come in and we get their information, or when we automate the online world, when a good lead pops up in the online real estate universe – we have 2,000 variations of e-mails that we’ve tested, over 4,2 million e-mails in 14 years, and when we build out the system for 2-day blueprint clients, one of their to-do items is to text-message themselves the exact e-mail that we use, that gets the appointment faster than any other e-mail that we’ve ever sent. Because we dont’ want them to think, we want the machine to run.

When your phone lights up like a Christmas tree, because we can automate Craigslist, Zillow and a few other websites, for perfect deals in your area. When it goes off and it’s a perfect deal, you don’t need to look at pictures. Pictures don’t set appointments or cash checks. You need the appointment faster than any other human, so… Imagine a world where your phone lights up and you just move your thumb one-eighth of one inch over, copy straight from your text message the exact e-mail to get the appointment, and then go right back to ordering dinner.

Joe Fairless: What’s been the most challenging client or project that you’ve chosen to undertake? Just tell us a story about how you approached it.

Jason Palliser: I’ll say with a client… We built out a two-day blueprint for an investment client in the Atlanta area. We get all the time “Oh, my market’s saturated.” It’s my favorite question. And I always tell them the same thing… Before we even got the ball rolling, he was already trying to work against himself. And I’m like “Hey, data doesn’t lie. If you do this, follow it to a T, you’re gonna succeed.” But he got into his own head, so the challenge was this – we built everything; when we’re done, there’s no ramp-up time. This isn’t baby stuff, this isn’t guru stuff. I speak for tons of TV shows as their back-end expert for real estate, so this isn’t the guru-level stuff, it’s the back-end experts building your stuff out… So the biggest challenge was he simply wasn’t executing; through conversations found out that we told him the exact order to do things in to get the appointment faster than anybody else, yet he strayed away from the deliberate, on-purpose process.

One example is he gets a good lead that comes in, so the blueprint/the machine is doing its job, and he’s running comps. Well, I teach everybody, the moment you get a good lead in the door, you’re only going goal online is to get the appointment faster than anybody else. If you’re running comps, I always tell people, if you catch yourself looking at pictures or running comps, I’m already at the house. Try again. Nobody’s mad at you, try again tomorrow. They are still spinning just fine. Try again tomorrow, you’re not doing it right.

So the challenge was that he kept over-thinking. Running comps – of course you’re gonna run comps, after you get the appointment, but if it’s a hot lead, as you know, Joe, you need to get the appointment faster than anybody else on Earth, because there’s other investors who want that same asset. So that, and basically not following the order that we want them to do stuff then.

I always tell everybody this – I’m no smarter than anybody else… I saw the value in getting good at stuff post-college, so I paid to get better at stuff; process, online marketing, offline marketing, copywriting, all that good stuff. Just like you fine-tune your skills. But when you have big marketing budgets, and you get paid to test everything under the sun, just pardon my French, stupid things that you would think don’t work, and then they do, then you refine those, at some point when you’re millions in in the marketing budget department, you kind of know what wins and you kind of settle in on that better process.

Everything’s trial and error until you start hitting your numbers, and then when you’re hitting your numbers, you start fine-tuning. It’s compartmentalizing things. So the challenging client – he kept over-analyzing because he was scared of making mistakes, so he just kept getting ready to press go, instead of just pressing go, if that makes sense.

Joe Fairless: And then what’s the response to someone saying “Okay, I hear you. When I get a good lead, the only goal is to get the appointment as fast as possible, *but*… What if it’s a terrible deal and now I’ve wasted the time that I’ve spent during that conversation?”

Jason Palliser: I love that.

Joe Fairless: You’ve clearly heard that question before, right?

Jason Palliser: Oh my gosh, if everybody could see me, they’d see how big I’m smiling. “Hey, but Jason, if I get a lead, I don’t wanna make a mistake, but what if it’s just not  a good deal?” And I always frame it for everybody like this… 1) I understand what you’re saying. I’m  hearing you, so at least know that you’ve been heard. 2) I’m pretty sure that we’re on the same page as far as you do not know what you’re gonna get when you walk in that door. You want the appointment faster than anything else, because here’s why – you’re willing on anything that could remotely be a deal, the new you is willing to run a machine that gets to everything first, and you’re willing to get to every one of those that could remotely be a deal first, no matter what, because that’s what you are focused on, for this reason: you don’t know what you are gonna get when you walk in the door, neither do I.

I’m simply willing to get there first every time, to find out. Here’s why. You could run numbers on a deal and be like “Meh… That’s not a deal. It doesn’t look like a deal.” The phrase “look like”, “it doesn’t look like a deal”, “Well, at those numbers it’s not a deal.” When you do that to yourself, here’s what you’re saying to me: “Hey, Jason, I’m so unbelievably good that I looked at this and I’ve waved my magical hand over it and it could never be a deal.”

Now, I think everybody listening knows that that’s simply not true, and it’s presumptuous. What you’re also telling me in the moment is this – that no one has taught you a seller waltz, to turn that no into a yes, nine different ways. You just need to have that skill, because you’re telling me that it can’t be a deal at that number, so you’re saying that in the history of all mankind people go on appointments and whatever number they see on paper, however that lead came in, that it can’t be turned into a deal? I just simply know that not to be true.

So stop over-analyzing it. Don’t operate that way. You should get to everything first… And here’s why – if they’re unreasonable with you when you walk in the door, so what? We’ll teach you when we teach the seller waltz that should be expected… Because if they’re unreasonable with you, Joe, they’re gonna be unreasonable with me. They’re gonna be unreasonable with 15 other people. But if you do your job and seller-waltz them right, you can offer them multiple ways to strike a deal that they’ll never hear from anybody else, and then the next layer on top of that is that you’ll also offer to help them out for free, and use techniques like “Hey, our organization – we don’t buy every house, but I appreciate the fact you’re saving money without using a realtor. If we don’t come to an agreement, I hope you market your home for free, to 30 or 40 different real estate websites. All I ask in return is that if anybody ever needs help, send them my way.” And here’s why you do that…

I wanna get there first to create a relationship with them, because that’s what really closes deals. I don’t care if at a glance it looks mediocre. I wanna get there first and create the relationship, so that when they decide to come down on price, and I didn’t beat them up, offered more ways to strike a deal with them, and offered to market their home for free and a few other different techniques of doing free things for them, and they soften up on price, Joe, you and I both know who they’re gonna sell to.

Joe Fairless: Yup. You.

Jason Palliser: So when somebody says “But Jason, I’ve got a lead in, but I’m running the numbers…”, you don’t know what you’re gonna get. They might have it out there — and I always tell everybody this, “Set a crappy appointment if you need to.” Hey, if your week’s not going the way you want, just go online, in a zip code that you like, and look at something that looks mediocre, barely could be a deal, and set a crappy appointment. Here’s why. If everybody else just like you looks at that potential lead and goes “Meh…” They make that little noise, “Meh…” – all those noises, because it doesn’t look like a deal… Well, what if everybody did that? So what if you’re the only one that sets the appointment? And what if when you walked in the door, they’re like “Hey, look, I just threw it out there, the number. I know this house needs some work. Somebody just needs to make me an offer”, everyone that listens to this would be like “Man, that’d be a dream come true.”

That’s a dream come true appointment. Well, you won’t know, because you’re so good that you look at the numbers and say “Meh. Not a deal.” I’m willing to get there first every time, and I will waltz them… And I already know that people aren’t reasonable on price, just like you do, Joe. That’s why you pass up on deal, and so do I. But I wanna have the conversation first before I pass up on it. Does that make sense?

Joe Fairless: Yeah, it’s really interesting. Thank you for sharing that perspective. It’s not contrarian, but it’s very focused, and perhaps it will shake and rattle some investors who get focused on a lot of this stuff, whereas you are literally focused on a step-by-step process.

What’s one other thing that real estate investors based on your experience do, that it could be optimized to get better results?

Jason Palliser: Refine their process. When I have people come in for a two-day blueprint, I have people that are brand new, I have clients that I’ve taken from 40 closings a year to 200… I’ve just had some — back in December they came in for a second time, because we’ve been doing  it long enough to where people are cycling back through, since we’re doing it for individuals again… And if you can imagine – and anybody who’s listening to this – if you wanna get to 10 closings a month, or 20, or you’re saying “Jason, shoot, I’d love to just get two or three a month”, refine your process and make your process better.

When these bigger companies come in – and I know you know this, Joe – and sit down and say “Hey…”, just like the gentleman that came in that I took him from 40 to 150 to 200 houses… They came in and sat down and said “Okay, now we wanna go to 300 or 400.” So focus on refining the process. When they come in the door, if they’re doing 200 deals a year, a lot of times when people sit down with us, once they contract with us, they sit in the room and you can get the feeling of “We’re already doing 200 deals a year. What are you gonna show us?” And I love those conversations, because we’ll teach them “Hey, look, whatever you have in place, obviously it’s working. We’re here to super-size it. We’re here to enhance it.” So what I would tell everybody on here is make your process better, pay attention to what you do, and in what order.

One example that we just talked about, Joe – when a hot lead comes in, if it can remotely be a deal, we get the appointment faster than anybody else in the cities that we’re attacking, because it could be a deal at some point, and we’re gonna do our job on the appointment to do that. So don’t run comps first. You can do that after you get the appointment. Because if you wait, somebody might already be at the house, making the offer.

So these big companies that come in, I tell them all the same thing – we’re going to tweak some of the things you do, and maybe add some efficiencies to your process. And here’s one more example, Joe, that I think would help everybody out… Add this wrinkle to your process – you get leads in the door, you contact them or they contacted you, you set the appointment, you go on the appointment, you’re more than likely gonna disagree on price to start out with. Do your job, waltz them well, and then you’re gonna throw them in follow-up; everybody knows that, but here’s one extra wrinkle – every time you get in the car, just because they wanted 200k for the house, and let’s say you were at 190k, and let’s say you and I, Joe, even looked at the numbers with anyone of the investors listening, and we agreed “Hey, for what you wanna do, yeah, 190k is probably the number. Not 200k.” But I always tell everybody this – is someone gonna do the deal at 200k? What do you think, Joe?

Joe Fairless: I don’t know.

Jason Palliser: More than likely, someone will do it. There’s always somebody willing to pay more. So if that’s the case, and your machine gets you there first, here’s the wrinkle to add – every time you get an appointment and you’ve got there first yet again, because when we built the 30 different ways to get there, you’re getting the things first… So we teach everyone we get our hands on, you or the person on your team that’s on the acquisitions side, if you ever start your car, blast it out in your meetup groups and Facebook groups, because somebody’s always gonna do the deal.

I don’t know why somebody’s willing to pay 200k. It may be because they have a 1031 exchange and they want a house in that area, and they’ve got three weeks left to find one… So they’ll overpay. So throw it out there. If they want 200k, throw it out in all your groups and say “Hey, I’ve got an opportunity in this area. If you want more info, let me know. For 210k.” If no one responds, no one knows if 100 people responded to you or zero. But someone’s gonna do the deal, so if you’re getting there first, of course you’re gonna follow up with them. But what if somebody else [unintelligible [00:22:08].15] You wanna have your machine maximize your opportunity. Now you’re making money on houses you didn’t even have under contract.

Joe Fairless: Great stuff. Real quick, what’s your best real estate investing advice ever?

Jason Palliser: My best advice ever is to wake up and follow the system to a T. And I always tell everybody this – always look to master the process; don’t worry about outcomes. If you get so unbelievably good at your process, closings happen. The moment you start to worry about “Man, I don’t have enough closings. I’ve been doing this for this long, I’ve been doing that, I’ve been reading all these articles and watching YouTube videos and blah-blah-blah”, then you’re not focusing on the right things in your business. So seek to master the process, don’t worry about outcomes.

Joe Fairless: We’re gonna do a lightning round. Are  you ready for the Best Ever Lightning Round?

Jason Palliser: Sure, go for it.

Joe Fairless: Alright, let’s do it. First, a quick word from our Best Ever partners.

Break: [00:23:04].13] to [00:23:48].18]

Joe Fairless: Okay, real quick, best ever book you’ve recently read?

Jason Palliser: The book I’m reading right now that I really like is Never Split the Difference.

Joe Fairless: Chris Voss.

Jason Palliser: It’s about negotiating. Yeah, Chris Voss. I love that.

Joe Fairless: Best ever deal you’ve done?

Jason Palliser: Best ever deal I’ve done – I wholesaled a property, made 175k.

Joe Fairless: A mistake you’ve made on a transaction?

Jason Palliser: Not vetting my contractor good enough.

Joe Fairless: Best ever way you like to give back?

Jason Palliser: Two Christmases ago my team and I donated a car to a  guy that I’d never met before, but I taught my team to always provide value. She gave the guy a lift in the rain, and it turned out that he walks to and from Target and Steak ‘n Shake, and he was saving money, and he goes “Hopefully a year from now I can buy a car…” So we started a GoFundMe, and I said whatever people put in, I’ll match half. We told Target, we showed up at work, and when he was getting off work he had no clue it was coming – we handed them the keys to the car.

Joe Fairless: Best ever way the Best Ever listeners can get in touch with you and learn more about what you’ve got going on.

Jason Palliser: If you wanna hit us up, we can help you take over your market. Just go to 2dayblueprint.com. It’s got good info there, and you can schedule a call directly on my calendar. Or you can simply e-mail me, jason@goseejason.com.

Joe Fairless: Jason, thanks so much for being on the show, talking about the process. I love your best ever advice, “Master the process, don’t worry about the outcomes”, because as long as we’re doing the right things, in the right order, at the right time, and doing it very consistently, then we’re gonna get the outcomes that we want.

Jason Palliser: And you’re gonna win.

Joe Fairless: Yeah, you’re gonna win. Thanks so much for being on the show, as well as obviously the very practical advice, that can help influence a best ever listener as they’re getting leads or attracting leads. I hope you have a best ever day, and we’ll talk to you again soon.

Jason Palliser: See you, guys.



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