Building Businesses To Solve Your Own Problems With Justin Dossey

Justin Dossey: [0:00] Yeah, there's all kinds of entertaining ones that come up. But I mean, there's just not having that stress is is worth it for us.

Dan Austin: [0:06] I think the point you make is huge too, because you want your acquisitions managers to be as productive as possible. And having them get because our salespeople are emotional people, they go up and down with the emotions. And so if you can clear out the stressful or the bullshit, let a call service take the initial calls and get rid of those Satan phone calls. And if you can have a lead manager doing that just like heavy follow-up every day, that's heavy sometimes. Right? When you're Yeah. You're calling 40 people that aren't answering, you're calling, and they're like, shut the fuck up. Leave me alone. I don't wanna talk to you.

Speaker 3: [0:35] Welcome to the collecting keys real estate investing podcast with your host, Mike DeHaan and Dan Austin. From wins, losses, horror stories, and tactics for optimizing your business, Mike and Dan take a real uncensored deep dive into the ins and outs of running a full time real estate investment and wholesaling business.

Mike DeHaan: [0:58] What's going on, guys? On this episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast, we have Justin Dossey, who is the I don't Is he he's, like, kind of the founder, but he, like, runs him and his brother, Ryan Dossie, he's pretty big on Instagram. They found it and Justin primarily runs a call center that we use called Call Porter. He also runs Ballpoint Marketing, which was kinda one of like the first mail houses to do the handwritten mail that provides a really cool product. So they basically provide direct mail services that like have robots that actually write it with a pen that looks like a human wrote it. And it's a super, super good product. But he has a ton of great insight in this episode on the importance of why you should look into using a call center, why it's worth paying for the extra cost for handwritten letters just to the extra conversion. He even gets into the weeds about, like, how it truly is more advantageous than just like junk mail. I learned that apparently, the mail the post office, like, actually sets aside perceived junk mail to be delivered just like Yeah. Once a I didn't know that either. Which is mind blowing to me, like, that actually is making me really really consider just exclusively switching back to handwritten mail, because, you know, if you can show up on the days when, you know, yourself isn't getting mission to junk mail, that's like a no brainer. Absolutely.

Dan Austin: [2:14] Yeah. And I think the cool thing about what Justin's doing is, like, he's talking about these systems and these businesses that were created out of their off market real estate business, and they still operate it. So they're not just like, you know, slinging letters to people like that. They they're doing it for themselves, and it just happens to be such a great service and and great business that they do it for other people as well.

Mike DeHaan: [2:33] Yeah. And I think that that is the best style of business, right, is when, you know, it's easy to be passionate about a business, and to really try to build something well when you were starting and building it to solve your own problem. 100%. And that's exactly what these guys did both with the call center and with their direct mail business ballpoint marketing. So, you know, definitely give it a listens a lot of great valuable insights in there. Besides that, guys, please go leave us a five star review wherever you listen to your podcast that really helps out a lot. At the time this recording, I don't know where we're gonna be up for reviews. But as we keep getting reviews, until we get up to 50, every single person that gives one, I'm gonna send you a free t shirt. So if you go ahead and leave us a review and you send me a snippet of it on Instagram, I will send you a free collecting keys t shirt, which are pretty rad. You can see me wearing them on a handful of our YouTube videos. Aside from that, if you wanna learn how to start generating off market deals, you can go to collectingkeyspodcast.com/free, and you can get your five step guide to start generating off market leads completely for free. And that will give you the basis, so that you can start doing what Dan and I do and buying properties at huge discounts. So, anyways, guys, thanks for listening and enjoy the show. Enjoy. Justin Dossey.

Mike DeHaan: [3:46] What what is is that, Dan? We're gonna start with that.

Justin Dossey: [3:49] Let's Yeah. Let's just roll that way.

Dan Austin: [3:51] This is the energy we got.

Mike DeHaan: [3:52] This is the true authentic podcast experience. Dan's in, like, apparently a metal shop. Justin Dossey, founder of a ballpoint marketing, a call porter, investor. Investor. I I mean, mean, I'm gonna say brother of Ryan Dossie, even though I'm sure you hate being labeled that way. But, you know, he definitely does have a pretty big social media following. He does. Yeah. How you doing, man? Appreciate you coming on the show.

Justin Dossey: [4:15] Yeah, doing great. Thanks for having me, guys.

Mike DeHaan: [4:17] Yeah, absolutely. So you got a lot going on. What I love about all the stuff that you're doing is you're kind of like at the pillar of being a service provider for real estate investors between ballpoint marketing, which is your mail house. Yep, we have used ballpoint marketing. You guys do the handwritten letters, you know, they're awesome product. It's funny, actually, in one of the episodes, she said we were talking about your Christmas ones.

Justin Dossey: [4:43] Beautiful. You got some beautiful letters

Mike DeHaan: [4:45] have the samples that I got here. So we plug those on an episode that came out in middle December.

Justin Dossey: [4:51] Well, we just sold out of those. So hopefully no one tries to buy.

Mike DeHaan: [4:55] Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's good to know. Good, bro. And you also have a call center through call porter that we use and we have used for years and has been great. But you are one of the few people I guess that we've had on the show that is like, you know, really solving problems of other investors

Dan Austin: [5:09] and not

Mike DeHaan: [5:09] solving the problem of where our deals, right? And by like actually providing solutions, people do it themselves. So I'd love to hear about kind of all of that. And, you know, what your business looks like, your background and everything in between. Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

Justin Dossey: [5:23] And thanks again for having me, guys. Mhmm. For those of you who don't know, we've known Mike and Dan for a couple years now. I got to know them really well, and it's a pleasure to be here. So, you know, kinda start off with everything, like, started out as just like a typical Midwest kid. Right? Like, I know you guys are in the Midwest, but probably the same where you're at.

Dan Austin: [5:40] You gotta explain you gotta explain typical Midwest to us.

Justin Dossey: [5:43] So typical Midwest is you you grow up in a lower to middle class type home, and you stay there till you die.

Dan Austin: [5:51] It's essentially Well, yeah. But you skipped the part which are the photos I like to see on social of you and Ryan with your your emo stage. Is always an emo stage? Because I have been in the Midwest. Okay. I randomly met a guy at a gas station that was very emo, and he was a cool guy. I'm just saying, does every Midwest kid do this?

Justin Dossey: [6:09] Not everyone, just the weird ones. Just anyone that was like, Gas especially like stations. Yeah. Right? Especially my age, like, got I was in, like, the whole, like, 2004 to 2007 is when I was in high school. So, like, all the emo bands were, like, at their epitome at that point, you know, like, under oath and all those guys. Like so, yes, my my wedding pictures are, like, band pictures is the way we did them. So you guys could find me on Facebook and find those. But, yeah, had had the long hair. But, yeah, like, you know, typical at least in our area, I'm outside of Saint Louis, kinda grew up, like, lower middle class, and it's like most people are just stuck in that that typical rat race where, like, you get your make some money, then you buy more expensive stuff, and then you're still stuck living paycheck to paycheck and just continue that cycle over and over and over again. So I always knew like I wanted to do something different and not be in that role, but I don't know what the hell I wanted to do. Like, I wanted to be a cop at one point, but I didn't do that. I wanted to be I wanted to be sports, wanted to be a music producer, wanted to be a band. Like, there's all kinds of shit I wanted to do, and really realized what we were doing until I was, like, 28, 29. Because I left my w two job when I was 20 like, 33 now.

Justin Dossey: [7:27] So '28. 2017 was when I left my w two job, and it basically started like we worked in call centers, and that was our our livelihood for years. If you've ever talked to anybody selling extended warranties, that was so sorry.

Mike DeHaan: [7:43] You're that guy.

Justin Dossey: [7:44] I was one of those guys. You're

Mike DeHaan: [7:46] the one white guy and, like, with all the overseas people that are doing the same thing. Yeah.

Justin Dossey: [7:51] Yeah. So, like, St. Louis is known as, like, the mecca for car warranty companies. I got fired from, like, six of them, and probably four of them went out of business also. Wow. Interesting. So, yeah. Anyway, that's a whole another whole another thing. But Ryan, my brother, had started this little, like, call center on the side of just people taking his phone calls. And then a couple buddies were like, hey. I need phone calls taken too. And at that point, I had been managing a call center and I hated what I was doing. Not so much the people, but more culture, kinda hit a glass ceiling, could be going any further, you know. And so I got the question from Ryan, like, how much can how much of a pay cut can you take to quit and come help me? He's like, let's do the latter. I'm just gonna close this down and not do it. So,

Mike DeHaan: [8:38] yeah, and me just let me just preface this by saying, Ryan, you know, Ryan, your brother, as at this point was running a pretty successful wholesaling operation in Indianapolis. Correct. Right? And so he had started this call center to basically start receipt to keep receiving calls from leads that were coming in Yeah. So he didn't have to, like, manage that with a single person in house. He'd actually build a more robust system.

Justin Dossey: [9:01] Yeah. Because, like, you guys know, like, first person to answer the phone gets the deal, typically. Right. Speed delete. Person that that gets their speed delete, whether if it's a phone, text, cold call, whatever. Yep. And the reason he started is he had a guy call on a Friday, and he's like, hang out with my wife. I'm not gonna answer. He's calling him back on Monday, and the guy was like, I sold it to the person that took the initiative and answered the damn phone, and he missed out on, $20. So that's kinda how, like, call Porter started and hired people from the industry that we do. So scaled that, grew it. I think we've got 30 agents at this point now, and they'll basically those of you who don't know what we're talking about with CallPorter, we take all of your inbound calls. We build rapport. We answer as if we're your front desk receptionist. So Mike and Dan, we people call. They don't know that it's not them. So we answer using their phone with their company name. We'll build rapport. I know what's going on with the property, take notes, book appointments, and then send the lead over to you in your CRM. New feature that you guys might not know about as we're also doing lead management as well now.

Justin Dossey: [10:04] Kinda newer, but we'll basically work currently if you're using recently as the only CRM we'll do it in, but we'll actually nurture those leads for you. Do the text messages. Do the follow-up calls. Try and get them to an appointment so you can really step out of being the solopreneur in your business and focus more on going to appointments, getting contracts done, things like that.

Dan Austin: [10:24] That's awesome. And so as lead managers, do you guys provide like scripting or how do you guys adapt, I guess, your agents to specific businesses or regions for that lead management? Good question.

Justin Dossey: [10:36] Regions isn't like isn't something we've typically had to worry about much Okay. Unless we get like a lot of Spanish speaking people in a in a certain area.

Dan Austin: [10:45] Right.

Justin Dossey: [10:45] We don't have a solution for that at the moment on the lead management side.

Mike DeHaan: [10:48] Gotcha. But

Justin Dossey: [10:49] what we do is we've got essentially a certain amount of agents that are assigned, let's say, twenty hours a week out of the forty to do lead management. So they'll basically go in, and if there's specific things you're looking for, specific criteria you're wanting, they'll be able to have all that information on their side to know what they're doing, what they're looking for. Just like you do on the inbound side. Right? Like, if you're Uh-huh. Not worried about if you want any anything close to retail, you don't want it, they won't send it over. Similar type thing. If someone's like, hey. Last year, people were selling for 30% over retail. That's what I want. Uh-huh. They're it's not gonna happen anymore. So they're they'll be able to go through and get you the information and the leads that you're looking for. We'll typically do like an onboarding call and kinda find out what we're looking for and go over the explanation of how the process works too.

Mike DeHaan: [11:38] Cool. Sweet. Perfect. And so I guess what is the typical cost for that? Because that is a big thing that comes up with various people, especially as it starts to scale is lead management is is a pain. Like I know, for Dan and I's business, there's two periods in time where our business very distinctly changed. It was a fire hired our first acquisitions manager. And all of a sudden, we had someone whose time was fully committed to getting these leads. And you know, she crushed it out of the park. You know, she got seven deals in the first two weeks for us. And the second time I'll say our business changes when we hired our first lead manager, which to be fair, we completely lucked out with like the uniform that we hired. It was this guy based out of Nicaragua, who unfortunately no longer works for us. But he came in strong sales skills. He was an expat. He lived down there. And all of a sudden, all of the leads that our acquisitions manager couldn't handle, or like that were slipping through the cracks, he was able to reignite And that was kind of like the second resurgence of major success that we had. Yep. Yep. So, like, it's a big thing. So I guess from, you know, using that with your CallPorter, what's like the cost?

Mike DeHaan: [12:38] Like, what sort of exactly do they do? Like, how does it take into account the fact that they might call 40 people and no one answers?

Justin Dossey: [12:45] Yep. Yeah. So it is it is relatively new, so we are still tweaking things as we go. So I will preface it with that. Like, it's not perfect yet. But what they're doing is it's basically twenty hours a month currently for $500. And what they'll basically do is each session that they do, you get an hour per day per week. There will be other packages and stuff that'll roll out with higher volumes and lower volumes based on what people need. But what they'll essentially do is I believe it's active now, but they'll screen record the session that they're doing, so we have an archive of everything that they did. That way, you know, they're not just sitting there on Netflix. Right. Yeah. But, basically, they're gonna go through re simply because that's the, again, the one we're working through right now. But they'll basically go through, find the leads that are in, like, follow-up status or don't have status assigned to them, things that need to be worked. And they'll go in and do phone calls, text messages, and try and nurture that lead to an appointment. And they're gonna set up follow ups for themselves. They're gonna basically be that person working within that CRM to make sure that, you know, if you've got 10 people that are close, you wanna continuously be in touch with them, and that's what they're gonna do. Our biggest thing that we look at is every single lead that is in your CRM should have some sort of next action. And for those of you who are listening right now, if you've got a CRM and you have leads in there and they don't have anything attached to them and you're thinking, I'll remember it. No.

Justin Dossey: [14:10] You won't. No. You won't. You won't. You're gonna forget. I can't tell you how many leads we've missed because we're like, yeah, next Tuesday, I'll remember that at noon. And then next Tuesday comes around, I don't know what I had for dinner the night before. Like, you're not you're not gonna remember that. So our rule of thumb is like every single lead that's in there needs to have a task or next action assigned to it. And that's what they're gonna help manage and do all the calling and texting through reSIMPLY too. So there is, like, a historical record of what they've done, who they've talked to, conversations that have happened, and so on.

Mike DeHaan: [14:42] Okay. Sweet. So you said an hour per day. How many days a week?

Dan Austin: [14:46] Or just one

Justin Dossey: [14:47] day a week. So it's twenty hours a day, basically. So four weeks type five.

Dan Austin: [14:51] For how much?

Justin Dossey: [14:53] For $500 right now.

Mike DeHaan: [14:55] It's not bad. That's pretty good, actually.

Justin Dossey: [14:56] Yeah. It is doubling in January. It's kind of like our beta pricing. So it will be a thousand bucks a month, but I think it'll probably be thirty hours at that point. Yeah. Don't hold me to it, anybody, because we're still talking about it. But we'll be having a couple tiers for different needs. Some people need more, some people need less. But Right. So far, we've seen good success with it, and we pulled a $15,000 side of the fee out of it ourselves here in Saint Louis by doing it just from a lead Oh, really? Yeah. It had been sitting since, like, I think, like, May or so, And it was a whole crazy scenario of what happened, but there was a squatter at the house, and I hadn't followed up with him. It was one of those leads that did not have a task assigned to it. We forgot about it. It was just sitting there. And I think it was Zoe, this girl on our team went through and got in touch with them. He's like, Hey, the squatters gone. I got them out. Really want to sell this and where do you want to move it for 15 grams? So it been worth it for us so far in just a couple months. Awesome.

Mike DeHaan: [15:57] Yeah, that's great. Cool. Yeah, that's pretty sweet deal, especially for, you know, if someone's trying to figure out, like the, I guess, like the nuances of what that should look like to you, probably even learn a lot about like, what a lead manager should look like just from hiring someone that's already experienced that role. That's the other thing that's super challenging too is, you know, you can go and you can find an overseas person or something that's, like, somewhat cheap to help with that. But the next biggest challenge people have is they're like, well, how do I even teach this person what I need them to do when I don't entirely know myself?

Justin Dossey: [16:27] Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And I I mean, you guys have had VAs and stuff overseas. Are you guys similar to where like, our process is when we hire somebody, we have their especially if they're overseas, we have their tasks outlined of what's expected, when it's expected by, and then that document has, like, a little video on how to do it step by step in deliverables, basically. Because I've hired people where I'm like, yeah. Help help with customer support. I train them on how to use some of our systems, and then I'm like, why aren't you doing this? As you didn't tell me. That's her. I didn't.

Dan Austin: [16:58] Yeah, that can be a problem.

Mike DeHaan: [17:00] Yeah. Especially especially with virtuals too. That's kind of the joke I make is, you know, you can you can tell a virtual, hey, go and like edit this spreadsheet. And, you know, they'll download the spreadsheet, and they'll go to like, Megazu. And you'll go back and say, where's spreadsheet on orders? And they say, didn't upload it to the drive. You say, why? It's like, well, you didn't tell me to do that part. Yeah. Very literal. Should be obvious. But for some reason, they They

Justin Dossey: [17:21] Yeah. They're bright. And

Dan Austin: [17:22] it's not that they're dumb.

Justin Dossey: [17:23] They're bright.

Mike DeHaan: [17:23] Yeah. They just they just follow Yep. The Directions. Binary.

Justin Dossey: [17:27] Yeah. A it's a culture I think it's a cultural difference from what I've seen, but, like, it's very literal. Like, they tell me one thing to do, I'm gonna do one thing. Tell me nine things to do, I'll do all nine, they'll be done. Perfect. Right. But, yeah, we I learned that the hard way. We're similar thing. I'm like, well, where is this? And they're like, well, it's over here. Why is it over here? Tell me, put it over there. Alright. That's too You're right. Here's where you put it. And here's what it needs to be there.

Mike DeHaan: [17:53] Yeah, that's awesome. So so that's cool. So yeah, so Call Porter, know, is a call center for investors. It's a great service. We've used it literally since like day one. I mean, honestly, we never we never answered our own calls even when we first joined.

Dan Austin: [18:05] Yeah, I think we did.

Mike DeHaan: [18:07] And we were plugged in a call for her right away. And I mean, that was huge. Because especially when I mean, we first started doing this, Dan and I were both working jobs, and we didn't have time to be answering Mhmm. The phone in the middle of the day, you know. Totally. And because it's like you said, the speed to lead is just so important, and that can't be understated. And even though, you know, sometimes the reps, they say funny things, they pronounce the city wrong. They do like all this stuff. Like it can the thing that I do like about call porter is you guys are super responsive. If we say like, hey, you said Spokane wrong, as we said this way, it's usually good for a couple months until the new person comes in and didn't get the memo, which is fine. Yeah. But then like, having a bad first call or even like, you know, a mediocre first call is better than having no one answer.

Dan Austin: [18:48] No answer. Yep. Better than voicemail, 100.

Justin Dossey: [18:50] Yeah. Every time. There's there's the speed the lead is is obviously probably the most important thing. But for me too, like, if you're listening to this and you've never taken a seller lead call off of direct mail, they are stressful as hell. Like, if you're if you're already having a bad day for whatever reason and you get a call of somebody come calling in, cussing out at you because you sent them a piece of mail, Like, there's certain people who don't have the right personality, you're gonna take that personally and hold on to that. It's gonna ruin the rest of your day. So, like Totally. For us, it's nice to not have that stressor of 30% of our calls being shitty calls of people being mad. And like Yeah. Our team at Call Porter, they're fantastic with handling them, and we give them, like, flexibilities. We rep contests. We work with them on personal stuff to make sure that, like, they're not the people that are holding on to all that, like, negativity that comes in. But we also do a really good vetting process when we hire people to make sure that, like, they've got the experience. They've got thick skin. They know how to Mhmm. Not hold on to 25 phone calls from the last two hours of angry people because it's gonna happen. So it really allows us to just not even have to I don't even hear about it anymore, honestly, unless it's a really funny one. Yeah. Because those are some ones. We had a guy call in pretending to be Satan for thirty minutes.

Justin Dossey: [20:09] That's cool. Two months ago, I've got it recorded on my computer. That's great.

Mike DeHaan: [20:13] Thirty minutes?

Justin Dossey: [20:14] Oh, yeah. Like, down to, like, literally talking about, like, he's gonna go gonna go to hell this weekend and, you know, hang out with his friends, and then he'll be back to torture people here in Saint Louis. Like, just all kinds of he's like Oh, Jesus. Know why because my name's Kevin Satan. Like, Kevin Satan. Yeah. Like, all right. That's that's a new one. But, yeah, there's all kinds of entertaining ones that come up. But I mean, there's just not having that stress is is worth it for us. I think the

Dan Austin: [20:42] point you make is huge too, because you want your acquisitions managers to be as productive as possible. And having them get because our salespeople are emotional people, they go up and down with the emotions. And so if you can clear out the stressful or the bullshit, let a call service take the initial calls and get rid of those Satan phone calls. And if you can have a lead manager doing that just like heavy follow-up every day, that's heavy sometimes, right? When you're you're calling 40 people that aren't answering, you're calling and they're like, shut the fuck up, leave me alone. I don't wanna

Justin Dossey: [21:09] talk to you. Get rid

Dan Austin: [21:11] of that so your act manager is only focused on the good high quality leads. There's a ton of value

Justin Dossey: [21:15] in that. Exactly. Yep. Yeah. Give them give them the quality top 20% to focus on Mhmm. And not have to worry about the bottom 80.

Mike DeHaan: [21:23] Exactly. And I think as huge as your guys are twenty four seven.

Dan Austin: [21:26] That's massive. Yeah.

Justin Dossey: [21:27] That is new. But yes, that is twenty four seven, not three sixty five. We still do give them holidays off. But, yeah, twenty four seven has been been great even though, like, volumes are low at night. It's nice that no matter who calls in, they're gonna be handled.

Mike DeHaan: [21:42] We'll justify that for you. We made a $15,000 fee about a month ago off of a crackhead that called in at 3AM. Perfect. Yeah.

Justin Dossey: [21:50] I love it.

Mike DeHaan: [21:51] The rep was dead tired, man. I think she might have been sleeping on the phone, but it didn't matter because an answered call was better than no answer at all.

Dan Austin: [21:59] Yeah. Absolutely.

Mike DeHaan: [22:01] That's awesome. And that was a that was a weird deal too. So the too long get a read on that deal. The seller was deaf and mute, and was a crackhead. And had to like call in through the service where she like signed to somebody on Zoom.

Justin Dossey: [22:14] And then they

Mike DeHaan: [22:15] like, get over the call. Yeah. Yeah. So so the cadence on it was really weird. Oh, the reps are so hard.

Dan Austin: [22:21] Yeah. Well, and it's really weird because you don't get to like, when you talk to her, like, rep would be super nice, and like, the reps, when I would talk to him, would also like have sidebar conversations with me. So it's like, initially, you're like, what's going on? And you and you don't get the real sense of like, oh, this is a crazy crackhead on the other side, so I

Justin Dossey: [22:34] have to talk differently. Yeah. Like, you don't

Dan Austin: [22:36] really get that. We missed that whole part of the conversation. They're like,

Justin Dossey: [22:39] whatever you say, I'm saying back. So Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I used to deal with those all the time, like, in the car warranty industry. Oh, couple a week, and it's always so awkward trying to have a conversation through somebody else that, like, tone is probably not coming through the conversation. Definitely not coming through. Yeah. Awesome.

Mike DeHaan: [23:01] So, cool. So, you run Call Porter, and you also have your other business, which is very important for investors, the Mailhouse Ballpoint Marketing. Yep. So, I guess, Call Porter came first Correct. And the Ballpoint came after the fact. And what, I guess, spurred going into that as opposed to just using a mail house that already existed?

Justin Dossey: [23:19] Yeah. So, funny story behind it. So, Ryan, my brother, likes to do his thing, is he likes to do cool shit other people don't do. This is why we fly paramotors. That's why he got me into it. Because, like, most people don't do it. It's freaking awesome. Nope. So he's trying to, like, think outside of the box, and he found these handwriting machines from a company, and they were only set up to do signatures at that point. So he reached out to the owner and was like, hey. Could this write a letter? Like, if I wanna do a handwritten letter to somebody, is this possible? The guy was like, maybe I don't know. We just do it for signatures. So they kinda programmed some stuff. We're able to figure out how to write letters on it. And at that point in Indiana, he bought the home next to him to use as, like, office and basically just did it for himself to give himself a competitive advantage. And, like, hey. I'm the only one that has handwritten direct mail for real estate investors on scale. He had done a previous campaign through somebody else that hand wrote the letters himself, But Ryan had to he had to stuff the envelope. He had to lick the envelope. He had to put the stamps on. Gosh. Had, like if you it's like a kit car. Right?

Justin Dossey: [24:26] Like, you got the pieces, and you just have to put it together then. And he would only do, like, 200 pieces for, like, $1,200. Like, it was it was very expensive. So he did it for himself for a couple years, and then he had a biz I think he was doing it most of the time we were using call or started call forward. And I think he had a we had a business coach or something that was like, these are playing playing real small by keeping this to yourself. Like, there's more than enough competition. Quick sidebar for you guys are worried about competition in your market, like, there's plenty to go around. Unless you live in, like, a town of 300 people. Like, even in Saint Louis, we're maybe under 1,000,000, something like that. And it's like, I have no concern about anyone else that is marketing. Like Right. There's plenty of deals to go around. So once we got over that mindset hump, started pushing it out to some friends, kinda like how we did in this call porter, came through a coaching group that we were running. Ryan still runs today. And the funny part of it is is I had no intention or any idea of ever wanting to run a direct mail company. I don't know. I just take voucher emails. And I get a call from Ryan, like, three, four days before my anniversary in 2019. And he's like, hey, I moved. Obviously, as you know, the guy that I left running that is stealing money from me and just run this into the ground.

Justin Dossey: [25:47] Mikey might have been around at that point, but like Yeah. I I remember

Dan Austin: [25:50] think we just started then.

Justin Dossey: [25:52] Lead times for male were like a month and a half. Like, it was Uh-huh. Horrible. Luckily, people were patient enough to wait through the month and a half wait time to get the better results. So we drove out to India on a Friday, and he's like, hey. You wanna run a marketing company? I was like, yeah. Sure. I don't know what I'm doing, but sure. So we brought it out to Saint Louis and went from myself and one employee to now we do, like, 600,000 pieces a month or so. Four or 500 Wow. 500,000 pieces a month. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. Over the course of three years, our turnaround time's like a week and a half tops. So that kinda got started that way. And our really why it's so important with us is it gets opened. Right? Like, we have most mail that you get, but you'll usually get, like, you know, the printed postage on here. It's got the envelope. The kind of window on here. And if it's not from somebody, no, they're typically gonna just toss it out. Go ahead and pull it. Don't have the other one on my desk. But typically, they get like presorted postage on it. Problem with them is they get lumped in with some junk mail. Right? Yep. Here in Saint Louis, we get junk mail on Mondays. I'm sure you guys have a day you get your junk mail too.

Justin Dossey: [27:04] I never paid attention to that. I did not know that's funny. Most people don't know. There's typically one or two days a week where it happens. And Interesting. Anytime you do a pre sorted letter, which is the majority of direct mail that's out there. Right? Like postcards, even our postcards are pre sorted still, but they still look better. That gets lumped in with all the junk mail. So you have a higher opportunity if people just ask, it's crap mail day. No bills. Cool. It's all get thrown out. So we kinda did is we started real heavily with letters with real live first class stamps, We'll actually mail those to our clients. So we send them to you guys up in Spokane, send them to clients at California, New York, Florida, wherever they are, have them drop it in the mail. And our kind of rule of thumb is you wanna put it in the mail a day or two before junk mail ends. Uh-huh. And that way, you know, you have three daddies basically till your mail hits, and you avoid your mail getting lumped in. And that just makes that open rate so much higher with the fact that it is a letter, the first class stamp. It's handwritten, there's no company information on the front. So, like, you get it and you're like, who's sending me an invite to something? Like, what is going

Mike DeHaan: [28:15] on? Why do

Justin Dossey: [28:15] I have this? And I actually have some on my desk. I lied. So this is what they'll look like, where

Mike DeHaan: [28:21] Yeah.

Justin Dossey: [28:21] There you go. This one has a sample, it does say ballpoint marketing. But for you guys, Dan, do we use your name

Mike DeHaan: [28:29] on your mail?

Dan Austin: [28:30] No. We've used everybody's name. What do we use now, Mike? Do we

Mike DeHaan: [28:33] use your name again? It varies. So we we have to stop using mine, because I'm starting to index on Google for like this sort of stuff. And they'll see like videos of like me and Ryan talking about us making like a $100 and sellers don't like things like that. Yeah.

Justin Dossey: [28:47] Yeah. Anyway, we usually put someone's first and last name on here. Right. And then that way, there's just there's no identifying marks. Like, I can now look cow mail where I'm like, yeah. That's junk. I'm like, gonna open it, waste my time. Where these have, like, a 99% open rate, and the response rates on them, we see anywhere from, like, one to 2%, which to boil it down to make it easy, like, equates to an average acquisition cost for most people between, like, 2,500 and $3,500. There's areas that's better. There's areas that's a little higher, but nationwide, these people we work with, like, that's been consistent for the last three or four years from what we've seen.

Mike DeHaan: [29:25] Yeah. Exactly. And I think that that point is super key, and that sets good expectation for people. Because one of the biggest things we always get pushed back on with mail is how expensive it is compared to, like, you know, cold calling, you can go hire someone in the packs in pack stand to cold call for you for like 5 But $100 a it's not gonna be as effective, and you're also, you know, you're spending your time interrupting people's day, as opposed to getting people raise their hand that wanna, you know, talk to you. Yep. And I think having that metric, you know, so on historically, our average cost was about $3,200. You said 25 to $3,500 is sort of the average you've seen across the nation. And when you're starting out, that seems expensive. You're like, man, $3.5, that's a lot of money. But you're making like a 15,017 thousand $40,000 wholesale fee, who really cares? Yeah, the ROI on that is massive.

Dan Austin: [30:12] Yeah, well, it's just math too. That's a great thing is like, I think, yeah, if we're at 3,200, I want to say we've averaged, we'll just assume $17,000 a fee.

Mike DeHaan: [30:20] It's 23.5. So our average. Our average.

Dan Austin: [30:23] Okay.

Justin Dossey: [30:24] I'm sorry. I undershot us a bit. Excuse me.

Dan Austin: [30:28] I feel like we're at 17 at some point in history. Why is that in my head?

Mike DeHaan: [30:31] But because it was back when Bethany was around.

Justin Dossey: [30:33] Okay,

Mike DeHaan: [30:33] we've had with some of the huge deals we've had over the past little bit, like have

Justin Dossey: [30:36] scaled it.

Dan Austin: [30:37] But it is a numbers game. The KPIs, it's like, oh, you could say, oh, you've grown to that. But it's like, well, that is our average fee. And if we pulled a 6 figure fee averages out and say, you're gonna do one deal a month, my math was going work out really good in my head. But say, say you're going to do one deal a month at 3,200. And if it's, what do you say our average fee was or $23.5.23.5. So minus overhead, you're at like, say $19,000 a month in profit if if you you're running a slim business with one deal a month.

Justin Dossey: [31:05] That's almost

Mike DeHaan: [31:05] $240 a year.

Justin Dossey: [31:07] Yeah. Then the way the way we teach it with our clients is it is just a repeatable formula. Right? Like, you want one deal a month? Come on. Send out $3,500 worth of mail. Understand that it's gonna take two to three months to get the momentum that you're needing to get leads nurturing. That's key. You know? Yeah. Right? Like, I have people that come in.

Dan Austin: [31:26] They're like, I didn't get

Justin Dossey: [31:26] a deal off my first one. I'm like, yeah. That's okay. Like, that happens. It's going. It happens. Talking averages here. We're talking averages. It takes time. Like, there's also the average of, like, 12 touch points before a deal typically happens. So, you know, really, it's it's a repeatable formula. If you want three deals a month, okay. Cool. We'll spend $10 a month. Well, five deals a month, go up and spend 15 to 17, so on and so forth. And just allows you to as long as you could build your systems to match what you're doing and handle the leads and the amount of deal flow that are gonna be coming in, it's a very easy, repeatable process to make sure that you know what's gonna be coming back in to where, like, now, I'll give you an example. One of the markets we are in is Baton Rouge, and we dropped 40,000 postcards in August. And so it was like $26.27 grand in marketing. And, like, it's a little nerve wracking spending that much money at once, but we pulled out nine deals so far out of it. Nice. Average That's cost per acquisition on it's like $2,100 right now. And I think the fees that we'll make on that $25 we spent will be well over 150 in from from that campaign. So, you know, if I if I was uncomfortable or didn't understand the I will try and say, like, basically, now that I know the formula, I don't have a problem putting money into it to spit out the result end at the end.

Dan Austin: [32:54] It's a lot easier to spend the money when you've proven it.

Justin Dossey: [32:57] Yes.

Dan Austin: [32:57] That because the numbers don't the numbers don't lie.

Justin Dossey: [33:00] Yeah. For me, like, if you threw me into texting, I'd be like, I don't know. Like, I hope this works, but I don't know anything about it. You know? So Yeah. Yeah. And it and

Mike DeHaan: [33:10] it's good as you build up to have like a mix, because different people respond to different stuff too. So that's like why, you know, start with one thing, become an expert at it, start it like direct mail. And then, you know, as that starts to grow, you know, maybe add in some texting because people will just throw all their mail in the track, maybe they'll respond to a text message. As that starts to grow, maybe add some PPC marketing. Because there's some people that don't want to, you know, engage via mail. They don't wanna make the first phone call. You know, they don't wanna respond to a cold caller. But if they can go and submit a website form, you know, they're gonna be more interested in engaging with you that way. Right? And it's all just about adding on those different layers as you sort

Justin Dossey: [33:44] of become expert in wine. Totally. And I'm I'm glad you said that too, because I don't think most people are getting into real estate realize that. That, like, the the general feeling I get from people I talk to is like, it's a get rich quick scheme, right? Like, it's it's a way to make money real quick, and it's not a business, so to speak, right? Where if you look at any successful business, right? Like Walmart, Home Depot, like, these big national brands, they do all of those forms of marketing. Every single one. They do. SEO, PPC, YouTube ads, Facebook, direct mail. Like, I get direct mail from Walmart. I get direct mail from Amazon. I get direct mail from all of these other companies, and they're building a, like you said, like a cohesive brand awareness campaign, essentially, that what you're gonna respond to is where they're gonna target. And that's what they're trying is making sure that they've got well rounded business where if Amazon was only doing direct mail, it's not possible, obviously. But like, if you think of a big brand that was only doing direct, only doing text messaging, you're losing out on so much opportunity. That's Yeah. Out

Mike DeHaan: [34:54] And I I think what you said there is super key. It's about creating that cohesive brand awareness, right, and having those those different touch points over a long period of time that make people be familiar with that brand. And that's what makes them be willing and interested in doing a transaction with you. Yep. And that's the other thing too, and people you know, saying it's a quick get rich quick scheme. The number one thing we find with a lot of new investors is like what you said before, they need two to three months to start to get traction. Most people after month one, they like panic. Like, I just wasted $3,000. They don't want to

Justin Dossey: [35:23] do it. Yep. Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [35:24] Or then like, they'll they'll think of it such a get quick rich scheme that they won't even, like, really understand or pretend to try and understand the struggles that other people's were where they want to be went through to get there. I mean, even even Dan, like, we've grown, I feel like it feels relatively quick. But, you know, I've been investing now for coming up on five years almost. Right? It's like four and a half years. And like the first year that I quit my w two, and I just went and was like basically a bum for a whole year, trying to figure what I wanna do. I went from making a engineering w two salary to me. I mean, $15,000 in 2018.

Justin Dossey: [35:57] Dude. Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [35:58] Right? And now, you know, we very regularly make two x, three x that a month Yeah. Right when I made that entire year. But like, I went through a bunch of bullshit to get to that point.

Dan Austin: [36:07] Yeah. It was not it was not quick get rich overnight.

Mike DeHaan: [36:10] No. And it can appear that way, right, when you look in the rearview mirror, but it's, you know, there's a lot of time and everyone, you know, don't think there's any way to really get around that except for dumb luck, which does happen.

Justin Dossey: [36:21] Or fraud. It does.

Mike DeHaan: [36:22] Or fraud. Yeah. Fraud. I was gonna

Justin Dossey: [36:24] say most of the if if you get rich quick results, I'd be concerned on, like, any Yeah. Absolutely. Thing that's out there. Right? Like Yep. Yeah. If you go in in month two, you're making a million dollars, like, sure. It happens. But the vast majority, it takes time to build to that. Mhmm. You know, when we we started when I started with CallPorter, we were doing, like, $9 a month. Like, that did not get much higher for the first year. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like Mhmm. Just building the systems to now we're doing, not giving exact numbers, you know, over 500,000 a month between those two companies and in revenue they're coming in. And it's like, yeah, if I went day one a, I wouldn't have been the person that could handle that. Like, if if I had my what I do now Yeah. Five years ago, I would've been like, there's what? I don't know. I don't know how to do any of this. Don't I don't have the the personal development to handle the the stress of having 60 employees or Yeah. You know, how to manage to the point now where, like, I can afford to work thirty hours a week and everything still runs perfectly. You know what I mean? So it it's a yeah. The get rich quick stuff is terrifying.

Dan Austin: [37:37] It takes time to build those systems. And when we interview people that are successful, those are the first things Mike and I key in on is, like, how they built the systems to lead their business. Because you could win the lottery overnight, but doesn't mean you know how to use that money or leverage that money or have the systems to deploy that money. And so when you're talking about slowly building it up, you're you're taking your licks. Yeah, sure, you always wanted to go faster, but there's nothing wrong in taking the time to build those strong systems. And by the time you are scaled, you're like, oh, yeah, this isn't that bad.

Justin Dossey: [38:04] Yeah. I can do it. Someone like early on, I think it was my business coach, Chris Robinson at the time. He had hit me with a quote that he had heard from somebody that said, most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year and wildly underestimate what they can accomplish in five. For sure. Yep. I've heard that. What I was trying to do

Mike DeHaan: [38:29] Is that is that your phone?

Justin Dossey: [38:30] Yeah. Don't know why that pops up. That was weird. I was like, is that you guys? Is that outside?

Mike DeHaan: [38:36] I won't judge you for the ringtone or the fact that you have your phone not on vibrate. Like, it is vibrating. I've heard my phone ring in four years. That is weird.

Justin Dossey: [38:44] It is on vibrate. It's something I had to I don't know if it says on air. I don't know what the hell it is. That was real weird. I thought it was like, I was like, is this closing music? Are we done? Yeah, right.

Mike DeHaan: [38:57] Playing We're young gonna see a giant come out and like pull them off.

Justin Dossey: [39:00] The big solar microphone is

Dan Austin: [39:02] gonna come back out and hit you in the face.

Mike DeHaan: [39:04] Yeah,

Justin Dossey: [39:04] right? Oh, like underestimating what you can do in five years, right? Like, right. I'm at I wished I would have been at five years ago, but I'm glad I wasn't. You know? Like like, we're just talking about you're not typically, you're not gonna be given more than you

Mike DeHaan: [39:20] can handle

Justin Dossey: [39:20] from For sure. Whatever you believe, like, God, universe, whatever. Like, you're typically not gonna be given more than you can actually handle because otherwise, like, that's why when people win the lottery, they go broke because they don't know how to handle money and it's they give half of it away and the other half on whatever. So, yeah. Anyway, I kinda lost my train of thought after that, but Well, that's good, because I wanna ask

Dan Austin: [39:43] you a way more important question than bullshit we're talking about right now, which is paramotoring, because Mike knows that this is like kinda one of my one of my things. Like to do adventurous kind of things where you could almost die, like that's one of my things. Yeah. And I'm kind of have this loose. I haven't formed it yet, but you know, watching you and Ryan and and Drew actually on social flying, Drew's really big into it. Mhmm. Like, it's got me thinking, like, how did you get into that? Like, what would you say to somebody thinking about getting into that sport? Because I think that's cool. Hobby that you've

Justin Dossey: [40:12] picked up. If I can do it. Like, do it. The first time I did it was 2018, 2019. I was in LA for a conference, and Ryan tricked me into doing paragliding. He was like, hey. I paid for it. We're going. And I was like, no. We're not. Was it was $300. And at that point, like, that was a lot of money for us. Yeah. And he's like, so you're going. So I did it there, loved it. Like, it was terrifying at first. Mhmm. And then I was like, can we go again and again and again again? And we'd spent like a whole afternoon doing it. So if that's something you wanna do, find a reputable school. Don't try and teach yourself because that's how you die is Right. Teaching yourself and doing stupid things. The cool thing about this sport is it's the cheapest form of aviation that you can get into of any other form, and it is one of the safest. Really? It's safe? Yes. Very safe.

Dan Austin: [41:05] Okay. Do you get a reserve parachute too in case, like, everything fails?

Justin Dossey: [41:09] I have two. Two reserves. Okay. Yep. You can fly with one. And honestly, with the wing I have, because it's it's built to be more of a beginner wing that you can do intermediate stuff on, Like, I flew for months without a reserve till I got one. And it's Oh, okay. So there's certain weather you have to avoid, certain times of day you have to avoid, but going to a good school points you in the right direction. Training took like a week, week and a half. And by the end of the week, I had 30 flights in, like thirty hours worth of flying or no shit. Probably not thirty hours, probably twenty hours. So like it's it's intense for that training time. And then, you know, I think all in with training, was like 12 grand gear. I thought about gear training and everything. With the gear? Yeah. So I am it's literally all I think about. And, like, I'm kinda bummed because it's real windy here for the next, like, six days. And I can't get out at all. And I'm like, I'm itching to go. Been a while. Stuff alone.

Dan Austin: [42:07] Yes. I love your enthusiasm. It gets me excited because I have a I have a friend too that lives like, he just moved. Was like a half a mile from me. And I'm like, okay, so we have this field. Like, we live in a neighborhood,

Justin Dossey: [42:18] but we have this, like, 50 acre field next to my house. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [42:21] I'm like, I bet I could take off right there and land

Justin Dossey: [42:23] right there. Probably, as long as you're not in It'd be super convenient.

Mike DeHaan: [42:27] Yeah, as

Justin Dossey: [42:27] long as you're not in, like, commercial airspace, near commercial airspace. Might be

Dan Austin: [42:30] I mean, I'm okay with breaking the law.

Justin Dossey: [42:32] Well, you wouldn't want that.

Mike DeHaan: [42:33] You're not commercial airspace here

Justin Dossey: [42:35] real quick. But like, dude, I've had times where like, I've taken off at the beach, I've taken off in a football field behind a middle school. I have taken off at an at a, like, smaller region airport. So it's you can really have so much more freedom. And this is I'm just gonna show you, but this is a picture I took earlier this year while flying. Oh, that's badass. That's cool. You know, over like a little, like, waterway out by us. And, like, you can't do that. You can't fly five feet above the ground in a plane Oh. Where you can with this. And it's it's so much fun, like, seeing kids, like, looking around and like waving at you and, you know, kind of do some little tricks and stuff. It's it's a lot of fun.

Dan Austin: [43:17] That's cool, dude. I'm excited. I'm gonna call you offline. We're gonna talk about this. Let's do it.

Justin Dossey: [43:22] Yeah. Let's do it.

Dan Austin: [43:23] There you

Mike DeHaan: [43:23] go, Dan. Put that on your one sheet. Go get your I've got like, be on

Justin Dossey: [43:26] my one sheet. I've got like four people that I've gotten into it so far. And I'm like, alright, cool. Let's go. Asa is supposed to be getting into it. Oh, nice. Yep. He's wanting to get into it. One of my buddies here in St. Louis just got his training done. So, yeah, dude, it's it's it's very I don't There's it's hard to explain. Like, it's just so much fun. So free. Yeah. I love it. So, yeah. I'll send it you. Will do. Cool.

Mike DeHaan: [43:53] So on that tangent, you guys you guys can go like snuggle or something after we get off the show.

Justin Dossey: [43:58] I wanna snuggle up to that beard. It looks so comfy.

Mike DeHaan: [44:02] Yeah. If you guys would check us out on YouTube, Justin's beard is is just very, very majestic. He's put he's put some work in you. I'm glad.

Dan Austin: [44:10] Someone noticed. Yeah. I mean, my wife

Justin Dossey: [44:13] has this. She says I was like a child without it. So I have to keep it. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [44:18] That's funny. But yeah. So either way, so super awesome stuff covering this between Call Porter and ballpoint, you know, I think that the services you're providing are really, really good and are super viable for anyone that's looking out to invest or, you know, is looking to make their investing business less of a pain in the ass or have better results. I mean, you got two great services right here. So to roll out the show, we are going to go into our end of show questions. First question, which is the crowd favorite, what is the craziest real estate investing story that you have? And I have one caveat. Let's not make it about finding a dead person in a property.

Justin Dossey: [44:54] You've had a lot

Dan Austin: [44:55] of dead people.

Mike DeHaan: [44:56] We had a lot of I was say, one of

Justin Dossey: [44:58] my We didn't find the dead person, but the lady did die at the house before we bought it. I got I got a good one for you. I got a good one. So, the deal we talked about earlier where we had our lead manager go through and found the deal and got it with the squatter. Right? So that is in a place called DeSoto, Missouri. It's kind of like it's in the country. It's very, very rural. So the first time we went and looked at this house, the guy that we talked to, he was, like, the the owner of the house. He's like, look. He's like, it's my house. I've owned it for twenty years. My daughter was living there, and I think her boyfriend is there now. He's like, I've tried to get him for her ex boyfriend. Tried to get him to leave. Hasn't left. And you know? But I do wanna sell his property. Wanna get out of it. So feel free to go by, you know, if he's not there. If there's no one there, great. Go in. Check the property out. Like, here's you know, back door's always open. Yada yada yada. So we pull or I was there. Our guy doing acquisitions was. He pulls up, and it's a long, like, wooded driveway. So, like, quarter mile maybe, like, long wooded driveway down to these essentially a mobile home on, like, really weird piece of property where, like, part of it sloped up real high down, basically, so water can just pour onto the property all time. Nice, where the house is.

Justin Dossey: [46:13] And so he pulls up, and he starts looking around and sees that someone's there. So he starts turning around. He's like, alright. There's a swatter. The swatter must be here. So he starts leaving. He sees this guy starts running towards the truck, like running after him. And he's like, okay. He's like, so guy we always our guys carry guns, like, just in case. We're in Missouri, so we're allowed to. So he's like he's like, I've got it just in case. Like, I don't know what's gonna happen. And he this guy ends up getting closer and closer to the truck. And as he he's like yelling stuff at him. What are you doing? What do you want? Get the fuck off my property. And this whole time, he can see the property next to him. Another truck was driving at, like, forty, fifty miles an hour, all the dirt's coming behind to trying to cut him off and hold him in this property or on the driveway at this property. And he's like, fucking cut him off. Don't let him leave. Don't let him leave. And our guy, Ron, was like, there's not a chance at hell I'm staying here. So he just floored it right past the guy right before he was able to cut him off. But he was like, that was the most terrifying thirty seconds of my life I've ever had,

Dan Austin: [47:21] where he's like, they're gonna wear his skin that night. That's what they're trying

Mike DeHaan: [47:24] to I wasn't sure if

Justin Dossey: [47:26] I was gonna be shooting somebody or not, but he was like, I I think the guy originally came out pounded on his hood and was like, what the hell

Mike DeHaan: [47:33] are

Justin Dossey: [47:33] you And doing then he was like, nope. I'm leaving. So, yeah. I was able to was able to get away, and I guess it was another guy that was squatting on the property that drove around the back of the property once he was there to try and cut off on

Dan Austin: [47:47] the front. These are your squatters for sure then.

Justin Dossey: [47:49] Oh, yeah. Like, through and through. They were they were claiming because they had been there coming up on ten years that they had squatters rights and the property is gonna be theirs. And just all kinds of crazy stuff, which I don't know how Washington is. And for those of you listening, Missouri is very landlord friendly, very landlord friendly. Oh,

Dan Austin: [48:10] nice. Yeah. So like

Justin Dossey: [48:11] California, doesn't matter. Yeah. Washington's not so landlord friendly.

Dan Austin: [48:15] Yeah. So we drag people out of our houses.

Justin Dossey: [48:18] Oh, yeah. Missouri is very lenient on stuff like that. So anyway, he didn't end up getting property long term and we also put so worked out great. Beautiful. There we go. Yeah. That's fair. Crazy. This one so far.

Mike DeHaan: [48:31] Yeah, that has happy ending. As a happy ending. Yeah. Right.

Justin Dossey: [48:35] I do have a second one if you want.

Dan Austin: [48:38] Yeah. Let's do it. Why not?

Justin Dossey: [48:39] Alright. Also involves guns. Baton Rouge in our other market. Aisa who we work with down there had just gone to closing with the seller comes back to the house to meet the new the guy that he wholesaled with to, and show him a couple things. And as they're there standing in the driveway talking, a drive by happens, two houses down.

Mike DeHaan: [49:03] Like, no way. It's like, yeah. Just pop up.

Justin Dossey: [49:06] Just just pulled up. Rolled down the window, started firing like the other direction, luckily. But, yeah. So we changed where we market to in Baton Rouge. You're like, that's area code's off limits now. Yeah. That's an area we're we're not in anymore. So we'll work crack houses for us right now.

Mike DeHaan: [49:23] Crack is whack, man.

Justin Dossey: [49:24] Yeah. Crack is cheap. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [49:27] That that's scary. I don't I don't know if our guys ever been in any, like, legitimate danger like that.

Dan Austin: [49:32] James is too much of a pussy. He'd run. I know he's gonna listen to this.

Justin Dossey: [49:35] So yeah, lazy situations. And I they happened pretty close to each other over the summer. And I was just like, we needed like, we're now targeting more like, villaging type, you know, classes instead of like, yeah, beater hood houses that you can't really do much with. Got it. So yeah, it's a little safer.

Mike DeHaan: [49:55] Awesome. Those those are good ones. Alright. Second question. What is a tip you would have for a new investor looking to get started investing or a small investor looking to take their business to the next level?

Justin Dossey: [50:11] There's so many of them that you could give. Your number one tip. Said most of the people that listen are maybe not in this part of their journey, but work on yourself and your business will grow. Mhmm. Personal development is one of the most important things that I have done and one of the things I spend the most money on. Like, I've got a business coach. I've had multiple business coaches. I'm in coaching programs. Like, the thing that I have found and seen is most issues that come up in your business are typically due to a personal hang up that you have that you don't realize, and you're neglecting something. So it's not always fun. It's not always like the sexy, like, I made $20,000. But the things that have helped me get to the point to where like, you know, I could be gone for a week and our company's run without me being here is because I worked on personal stuff to be able to hire the right people, set up the right processes, have the right mindset around running and growing a business to get to that point. So that's I mean, yeah. I can't even tell you how much money we've spent on personal development stuff just to help us get to where we are.

Mike DeHaan: [51:20] Yeah. Mean, that is awesome. Like, I I think that, you know, being involved in groups, communities, you know, working with like minded people, it is Super Major, and that is definitely a direct contributor to, I mean, dad, I didn't start I mean, joining CCF that was like the game changer for us. Was building out the group there. And then I mean, even now we're in we're in go abundance. And the guys that we've met through that are super, like, invaluable help. Then Oh, yeah. And that's not even like direct one on one stuff. It's just, you know, but you run into people there that you vibe with that you can sort of help. You know, that they almost like accidentally help you sometimes just talking about business and just having someone that's like willing to, you know, have those tough conversations with you. And, you know, the ways you can find that if, you know, you don't necessarily know people like that in your immediate life is you pay for it. And that's perfectly okay.

Dan Austin: [52:11] Yeah. People.

Mike DeHaan: [52:12] Yeah, a lot of people they kind of turn away at that. But, you know, you can pay for that luxury to be around people or

Justin Dossey: [52:18] to hire someone to have those conversations with. And then there will be an ROI if if you're affected. Yeah, the best advice I got on that, like just getting into different circles is like, there's two ways to do it. You serve your way in or you pay your way in. Like, those are the two different ways to do it. Like, if you don't have money, that's great. Find someone in your market who's doing what you're doing and where you wanna be and find a way to serve your way into their life. Like, I I don't know if you guys are the same, but I hate when I get emails like, hey. Can I take you out to lunch and pick your brain? Not the worst. No. You can't. I'm sorry. Like, if I unless I have a previous relationship with you and I know you, like, no. It's not gonna happen. But if somebody came to me and was like, hey. I do this, and I would love to learn how to do what you're doing. Can I come in and help out for free and just learn from you? Like, okay. I'm a little more interested at that point because there's a benefit to me It's a two way Yeah. It's it's not a one one-sided road. Right? So, you know, a good example from one of my business coaches who wanted to get into public speaking is he didn't know anything about public speaking, didn't know where to start, he'd reached out to people. I was like, hey. Can I volunteer next time you do an event?

Justin Dossey: [53:30] Whatever it is, I'll be there. I'll help. I don't care what it is. And he got a call and was like, hey. My camera guy's sick. Can you run a camera? And he's like, Yeah, yep, sure can. Yep. Looked up a couple YouTube videos went ran a camera and now he speaks like all over the world. So that's a, you know, like, data player, like serve your way in.

Mike DeHaan: [53:49] Yeah, and his footage was shit, but didn't even matter. He spent the whole time zoomed in too far. It was blurry.

Justin Dossey: [53:55] Yeah, but he showed up for

Mike DeHaan: [53:56] the job.

Justin Dossey: [53:57] Exactly showed up. And now he's he's surpassed that person on public speaking level like that's amazing. That's so crazy. That's awesome. Nice.

Mike DeHaan: [54:06] That's cool. Yeah. That's good advice. Alright. Last question. Where can people find you, follow you and reach out to you if they if you'd like them to do so? And I also know that you have a new offering that you wanna talk about as well. Yes.

Dan Austin: [54:17] You can go

Mike DeHaan: [54:17] ahead in here.

Justin Dossey: [54:18] So company wide or company wise, like ballpointmarketing.com, call porter.com. Both of those are also on Instagram. I don't know the handles off the top of my head. I can get them to you if you need them, though.

Mike DeHaan: [54:30] Yeah. We'll put them in

Justin Dossey: [54:31] the show notes. Cool. So you can get that social media. It's just Justin Nasi on Instagram is where I'm most active. Again, I don't know my handle, so I'll that to you as well. So connect with us there. And, you know, any of the stuff we've talked about, if you wanna hop on any calls, it's real easy. Ballpointmarketing.com/schedule and call porter.com/schedule. If you wanna hop on call with either of our team on the sales side, ask any questions, go through anything, that's gonna be the easiest way to do it. Cool. Perfect. And on on the products

Mike DeHaan: [55:01] you guys have too, if you guys go to collectingkeyspodcast.com, and you scroll down to our partner section on the front of the homepage, we actually have some discount codes there for anyone that wants to check out your services.

Justin Dossey: [55:11] Yes. So do that instead of go to the schedule call, unless you have a lot questions, then we'll answer you. Yep. Yep. Either way. So, we'll we'll make it work. Perfect. Cool. So, yeah. So new offering that we have that I wanna just kinda put out there. It's a new thing that we've done. We've noticed a lot in coaching and working with thousands of clients over the last couple years is, like, there's not a done for you not even done for you, but, like, an all inclusive type service. Right? Where you can have Mhmm. CRM, you can have data, you can have your leads answered, leads company deal, can have your leads managed. Like, you typically have to spread out and go to five or six different places to get that stuff done. So we put a lot of thought and time into this over the last six months or so and have done different variations of it, and we basically got a it's not on our website. I will say that. So if you do do a call with us, let us know that you heard about this from Mike and Dan so we can get discounts applied to it. It's called Lead Engine. And essentially, what this is is there is seven month process. You're only committed to three, then it just automatically removes for the full seven. And what it basically does is we'll provide your data. We will provide you with a CRM through ReSimply. So we partnered with ReSimply on this.

Justin Dossey: [56:23] Data is from Deal Machine as well. So if you need driving for dollars, Deal Machine is a place to get it from. We will then send out direct mail through ballpoint marketing using your phone numbers from ReSimply. Call porter will take all of the calls. And as a add on, we haven't worked this in yet. I'll also do the lead management side for us, a separate fee of that 500. Got a couple different tiers, but it's basically a dollar per piece on postcards. Ink, it's a dollar 20 on letters. And so, essentially, like, you're paying $3,000 a month to have 2,500 letters go out, and that includes the CRM, data, the mail, and the phone calls all in one. And then we do a monthly, like, office hours phone call with myself and our COO, Jeremy, where we go through questions, concerns, ideas, stuff that we've talked about on here of just best practices in marketing, running your business. Really, it's an open book. So any questions that come up, you guys can hop on once a month. I think it's the first Tuesday of each month when we'll be doing them, but really allows you to get in, get the data, get started. But we also make you commit for ninety days so you could see the leads come through and get your first you get your traction running instead of just Yep. Doing one month and being done.

Justin Dossey: [57:38] Like, that's not gonna help you.

Dan Austin: [57:39] It's not

Justin Dossey: [57:40] gonna help me. We're we're there to help kind of push you through the first ninety days and then keep it going from there where you get a new letter or a new postcard every single month, new copy, just just depending on the packages that you choose. So that's something that will apply the same discounts that we give you guys. I think it's 10% off. Is that right? Yep. Okay. Cool. So it's

Mike DeHaan: [58:00] 1010% off on ballpoint. And then I don't remember what it is for Call Porter.

Justin Dossey: [58:05] Just changed that. So I don't either. But yeah, think it's 10 to 15%, something like that.

Dan Austin: [58:11] We'll figure it out. We'll put in show notes.

Justin Dossey: [58:12] Yeah. We'll put it in the notes. Follow the notes. Yeah. There you go. But, yeah, if you if you're interested in that, it's not on our sites anywhere yet. So just go to ballpointmarketing.com/schedule, and it's set as a ballpoint marketing product. So do that. K. Cool. Get you on the books, and go over consulting call and see how we can help you.

Mike DeHaan: [58:30] Right on. Right on. Sounds great.

Dan Austin: [58:32] Thank you.

Mike DeHaan: [58:33] Well, thanks so much for coming on the call on the call on the podcast, Justin. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for having me, guys. And if you guys have any interest or questions in any of the products that Justin runs, you can get our discounts to, you know, get some cheaper cheaper options for, you know, their product, which are definitely worth it. Click the keys podcast.com. Just scroll down to where it says partners and get our codes there. And that will help you get started for a little bit less. If you have any questions about it, reach out to Justin everywhere that he said, we'll put all those links in the show notes as well. And aside from guys, if you want to

Justin Dossey: [59:05] know just kind of like

Mike DeHaan: [59:05] the general basis about how to start generating leads as well and how to start building your business with a sort of free read, you can get our five step guide to start generating off market leads at collectingkeyspodcast.com/free. So just go and grab that, and that will sort of give you the basic gist about what you'll be getting yourself into if you decide to get into this So

Justin Dossey: [59:25] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [59:25] Aside from that, you guys, thanks so much for listening, and talk to you

Dan Austin: [59:27] guys next week. See you. Cool.

Mike DeHaan: [59:29] Thanks for listening, everybody. Please make sure you subscribe and leave us a five star review wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, please make sure you go and you share this with other people within your network. We are really trying to grow this thing, the best way for us to do so is by you telling other people to come check us out. You can also follow us on Instagram. I am at mike underscore invest. Dan is at investor man Dan. You can follow the podcast at collecting keys podcast. And if you wanna learn how to make real money as a real estate investor or you want to grow your already existing real estate investing business, please go and check out instantinvestorprogram.com and book a call with either Dan or myself, and we will see if you'll be a good fit. Thanks for listening everybody, and talk to you next week.

Speaker 3: [1:00:12] Thanks for listening. Please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. And check us out at collectingkeyspodcast.com for tips and guides on starting your own real estate investment and wholesaling business.