The Keys To Marketing During The Holidays

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] Something that we've been really chatting with our guys about, though, is, like, this is the time to be following up with a lot of those leads that you've kinda built rapport with over the fall that maybe didn't wanna move forward. You know, they said, like, oh, call me in the springtime, all that sort of stuff. Even though you're not expecting a transaction and the time spent doing that can feel a little pointless, it's a very important part of the sales process because, you know, what it means is that, like, you're gonna stay front of mind. And then as the weather starts to get better, the year starts to turn around and you engage them again, they're gonna be that much more familiar with you because you checked in with them over the holidays.

Speaker 2: [0:38] 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: [1:03] What's going on, guys? Welcome to the collecting keys real estate investing podcast episode 62. This is the beginning of the new phase of collecting keys. Mhmm. We have our three week episodes that we've started. You guys listened to the interview on Monday. This is the first official exclusive Mike and Dan show. Exclusive. We got new instant investor stuff online at instant invest sorry. Good instant investor program, we're collectingkeyspodcast.com. Instantinvestorprogram.com or collectingkeyspodcast.com. You can check out all of the new platform on there. And in typical Mike and Dan fashion, we are currently trying to avert a crisis as we have our Airbnb property that we just had an instant booking to someone moving in. Back in the game. Yeah. Back in the game. We're back in

Dan Austin: [1:51] the game, and it's already full of drama.

Mike DeHaan: [1:54] Full of drama. We got an instant booking with someone moving in here this evening. And first off, they it should be blocked off. For some reason, they were able to book it. But in other news, our our cleaners slash, I guess, Airbnb manager

Dan Austin: [2:11] Property. Yeah. They're our property manager.

Mike DeHaan: [2:12] Yeah. Just the second that they booked sent a warning saying, oh, yeah. This person just checked out of someone else's property that we manage, and they trash the whole place, and we're, like, smoking meth in there. Yeah. So we need to cancel it.

Dan Austin: [2:26] Which also may be a property that we rent to an Airbnb arbitrage. I'm hoping it's not our other property.

Mike DeHaan: [2:33] Yeah. Wait. Have we not confirmed

Dan Austin: [2:34] that it's not yet? I have not.

Mike DeHaan: [2:36] Oh my god. If we if we get just two ends of that, that would just be so on brand for Yes. How things go. Yeah, man. You get we're back in the game, it's already a shit show.

Dan Austin: [2:46] Yeah. I mean, that's that's the Airbnb lifestyle apparently in Spokane, Washington.

Mike DeHaan: [2:50] I'll be honest about this though. With how much weird shit happens all the time between all of our transactions on the wholesale side, with our rental properties, you know, this Airbnb stuff, the fact that it happens so regularly and also too, we talk to other people that I know do a lot of business, and they always have similar crazy stories about stuff. It's how I know that all these people that are on, like, social media that talk about, like, oh, I have, like, 40 units that I arbitrage, and it's so easy. Like, oh, I bought, like, these couple units, and now I just travel around it. It's so simple. Liars. I know that they're liars.

Dan Austin: [3:25] Yeah. They either don't own it or it's not easy. Yeah. Exactly. One of the two.

Mike DeHaan: [3:30] Or they actually just make no money, and they're just 100% living the illusion, and it's not real Yeah.

Dan Austin: [3:36] At all. There's a lot. I mean, it's one of all of those things. There's very few people out there just in the grind that are happy Yeah. All the time and don't have a great story of some crackhead trying to rent their Airbnb, and you have to scramble last minute to get them out of there.

Mike DeHaan: [3:48] Yeah. I mean, it it just probably comes to the territory, honestly. Like Mhmm. You're you're in the business of I guess, it's like a service based business where you're working with people of a wide range of social demographics, of income demographics. And with things like Airbnb, it puts you in a position to where peep you know, there's no real due diligence process on that except for Airbnb.

Dan Austin: [4:09] So I guess with the Airbnb, you're relying on the network effect of of people Mhmm. And community to, like, provide you're you're providing a service and people. The network should take care of it because you have five star, three star, all these starred reviews. But because you're having to rely on this external factor, there's nothing you can do about some crackhead coming in, renting your place, and

Mike DeHaan: [4:31] trashing

Dan Austin: [4:32] it.

Mike DeHaan: [4:32] Exactly. And even in the case of this guy, we were just looking at his profile. I mean, I'm guessing that his profile has been hacked or something because the guy's been around since 2014. He has, like, a few dozen five star reviews as, a tenant. But, you know, we don't know that it's not him or maybe he's, like, you know, used to be a meth head and he went off a bender.

Dan Austin: [4:50] He met a lady. He's from Georgia. He came to Spokane. He met a lady. He met a local, a local Spokaneite, a beautiful lady that just got caught up in some bad ways, and now they're spiraling down together. They left Camp Hope, otherwise known as Camp Dope. Yeah. Here, the homeless shelter we have here in town that's I don't know

Mike DeHaan: [5:08] if it's closed down yet, but It's not.

Dan Austin: [5:09] The homeless camp, not shelter. It's a camp. And now they're just spiraling together, and his Airbnb star his review is going down with it.

Mike DeHaan: [5:17] It probably was five star. Now it's four and a half. It's gonna be 4.2. Yep. Basic By the end of

Dan Austin: [5:21] the week, 3.9. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [5:22] If they're gonna get into and trash, you know, a dozen homes between now and then.

Dan Austin: [5:26] Right. So

Mike DeHaan: [5:26] And then the network the network will work because then his review will he'll get pulled off.

Dan Austin: [5:31] But the people in between that had to make the network work Yeah. Were that person. Our other guy that we know is that person that had his Airbnb trashed.

Mike DeHaan: [5:40] Yeah. I mean, you know and and that is the way you see with the network, know, you that sort of network trust there. Because you see that with a lot of these, like, peer to peer sort of, like, side hustle things. Right? Like, you know, Uber, for example, you order an Uber. I I've thought about this several times as as someone, you know, if I go out, you know, we're going to get drinks or whatever, I'll Uber home if if things get a little bit too crazy. And, you know, usually, it's kinda like late at night. I'm like, how do I know that this Uber driver wasn't someone who was out drinking and had the drunk thought of, like, you know what would be fucking cool right now if I went and made some money and decided that they were gonna go, I don't know that. I have you ever been in

Dan Austin: [6:16] an accident in an Uber? No. Have you ever been? Got smacked in an Uber before. It hurts so bad, rear ended on the freeway. Where was this?

Mike DeHaan: [6:25] Seattle. Okay.

Dan Austin: [6:26] Yeah. It was not I literally whiplash. And then I felt so bad. It was a it was a immigrant from Mexico City, and he just got the car. He just saved up to get it, and then, you know, he got smashed by this person that didn't have insurance.

Mike DeHaan: [6:40] Of course. They they never do, the people that drive like that. But, you know, that's it is funny. Trust in Airbnb. Like, there's no difference. So that's that's our drama. What's gonna happen? Tune in next week, and you'll find out.

Dan Austin: [6:53] That sound machine, like, mute we need the news, the, the little news ticker coming, and that's the news. But, actually, queue up news ticker. Bigger news. Bombshell news out there today. Liver King has been exposed for being on performance enhancing drugs just this week, just today.

Mike DeHaan: [7:12] You would care about that. You're, like, the only person I know that would care about that.

Dan Austin: [7:15] I'm just saying. It's confirmation. It's confirmation.

Mike DeHaan: [7:18] For how, like, not into, I don't know, like, Internet and social media and stuff you are, you know so much about, like, the random stars that, like, I've never heard of before. Yeah. If it bleeds into, like, the public eye a little bit, like, I know. Right? Like, you know, liver king. I mean, he's a popular guy.

Dan Austin: [7:37] People know who he is.

Mike DeHaan: [7:38] Yeah. If you got on a head list know

Dan Austin: [7:40] who he is, go look him up. He's a buff guy that is not, until today, on steroids. He is on steroids. They exposed him. He's an idiot. Like, he sent emails to people with all of his stuff, all of his stats on what he's taking. And then he's on the Internet telling people he's how do you do that?

Mike DeHaan: [7:56] Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Like, also, if there was ever anyone that It's like a sociopath. That honestly had doubt about that, then they're not smart. Just go look at him. He's, like, enormous. It makes no sense. Yeah. Like and and the way that his body is formed is, like, not a natural thing. He doesn't run Airbnbs at all. He doesn't know what he's doing. I've heard he's, like, really rich from something, though. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [8:17] He is. He runs Ancestral Supplements, like a legit supplement company. You've probably heard of him.

Mike DeHaan: [8:22] Yeah. Probably. I don't know. But, yeah, he came from a lot of money somewhere because that was why he spends all of his time just, like, carrying kettlebells around the 50 acres that he lives on. He does do that.

Dan Austin: [8:34] Anyway Anyhow, news ticker. There you go. That that was your news ticker for the week.

Mike DeHaan: [8:38] There's a random pointless fact for for the week. In case you're wondering. Anyway, so, yeah, real estate wise, like, you know, coming into the holidays is always kinda like a weird situation as where, you know, everything has always turned so dead. Something that we've been really chatting with our guys about though is, like, this is the time to be following up with a lot of those leads that you've kinda built rapport with over the fall that maybe didn't wanna move forward. You know, they said, like, oh, call me in the springtime, all that sort of stuff. Even though you're not speculating at a transaction and the time spent doing that can feel a little pointless, it's a very important part of the sales process because, you know, what it means is that, like, you're gonna stay front of mind. And then as the weather starts to get better, the year starts to turn around, and you engage them again, they're gonna be that much more familiar with you because you checked in with them over the holidays. And, you know, like, always bring up the house. Like, they know that's why you're calling them. But, you know, try to treat it as more of, like, checking in with, like, a friend, having a little bit an informal conversation.

Mike DeHaan: [9:37] See what their Thanksgiving was, see what their plans are like going into Christmas. You know, those sort of things, like, they can seem pointless, but they can go surprisingly far.

Dan Austin: [9:45] Well, you got like you said, be top of mind, but, also, you're you're not you're not just calling and making it a weird awkward phone call. I mean, it's always gonna be a little weird because you don't they're not really your friend, but maybe you have a great rapport with a great relationship. And the holidays seem to be like a great it's like a marker, a defining point in the year for most people where things, like, shut down. Like, okay. I'm not doing anything this week. It's Thanksgiving. I've gotta cook a turkey for hundred and eighty four hours.

Mike DeHaan: [10:11] Yeah. Don't know how a week is.

Dan Austin: [10:12] You know

Mike DeHaan: [10:12] what I mean? Yeah.

Dan Austin: [10:13] Right. They're taking time off

Mike DeHaan: [10:14] of work or their work

Dan Austin: [10:16] is shut down. They're at home. They're slower. So then there's an opportunity, a, because you know they're probably gonna be more available to call them, touch base, keep building that rapport. But, b, once that holiday season's over, like, January 3 or where whenever you wanna call that defining point, it seems like things start picking up and you wanna be right there.

Mike DeHaan: [10:33] Yep. Yeah. Exactly. You know, you'll find too if you check-in with people sort of more casual like that, they'll start to remember who you are pretty quickly, and that's how you know that you have good rapport with them. Like, even one of our sales guys just mentioned today is like, oh, yeah. I've had some people I've called recently, and, you know, they answer, like, the first ring, and they're like, oh, hey, Dave. How's it going? You know? It's like Yeah. Exactly. That's great news. That means that if, you know, they look to move forward with a sale here in the next couple of months and they comes between between us and Dave and, you know, some other Joe Schmo, we're gonna be probably a lot better, have a much better chance of getting it than they are because they're gonna be that much more comfortable with us.

Dan Austin: [11:09] Yeah. At least gonna have an opportunity. Right? If there's a deal to be had, we're hopefully gonna be the first people to call because they are they're answering the phone on a first name basis, which is huge. I mean, that doesn't happen very often. You gotta really work on that. But I think too, you kind of alluded to it too is, like, don't expect to close the deal on December 23. Not that that doesn't happen because we've done that. Right? There are those leads, but this don't think of it as a sales call. It's a check-in call. That's what it is. As you're checking in on one of your book of clients just like you would with anybody, you know, a a realtor, an agent, you know, they might have sold you a house and in twenty four months, they're gonna send you an email, or they're gonna give you a phone call and just check-in because you're their book of clients. Now they want to stay top of mind knowing that you're not gonna sell every twelve months or every thirty days. Same thing with our sellers, like, hey, I haven't sold yet, so let's keep checking in on Just seeing whether or we're top of mind.

Mike DeHaan: [11:58] Well, that yeah. Exactly. And it it's all about branding as well. And it's the same reason you have all these realtors that do even the silly novelty things like, oh, we're gonna, you know, give you a pie if you the first 100 and people that give us their email, you know, we're gonna give you a pie if you come down to our brokerage and pick it up, you know, or they send out, like, wreaths or poinsettias or whatever the hell else people want. It's always, like, a nice gesture. But, literally, they're doing that with the hopes that sometime in the future, you will go to sell your house or buy a house, and you're gonna be like, oh, yeah. Remember when they, like, gave us the pie? Or, like, now I know who this person is because I had to go and meet them face to face and, like, shake their hand and say thank you for my free, shitty $4 Costco pumpkin pie. Yeah. Like Right. You know? But it it pays dividends, and you have to approach it as an investor with the same sort of mentality. Right? And, actually, like, our previous acquisitions manager that we had got almost two years ago now, she was really good at this, and she would, like Totally. Weigh out just kinda like the mentality of the sellers.

Mike DeHaan: [12:56] And even, like, little things, you know, like, if you had like, we went in some of these houses where you had a seller that was on really difficult times, and we would, you know, get them like a well, she would go and pick them up, like a blanket or, like, some pillows or, like, just, like, some basic house things just to make their home a little bit cozier while they were there and trying to figure out their next steps. And then even if they didn't choose to sell with us for some reason, it was typically because they were literally unable to go anywhere else. It wasn't because they did not have trust. And, you know, worst case, we spent, like, $20, and we made their lives a little bit more comfortable. Best case, we get a sweet deal on a house.

Dan Austin: [13:31] That's so highly overlooked too. And just the sales process, the skill of being able to identify that stuff. I would have walked in and, like, oh, must be doing laundry or whatever. There's no sheets on the bed, but for her to observe that and then kinda inquiring throughout the sales process to understand where this person's at Mhmm. And then recognize that there's a solution she could provide to that person regardless of what's happening with the house. Like, that's a skill in itself, and it and it takes time. And and you said they have $20, $30. I mean, if you're gonna make, say, a $50,000 wholesale fee and you spend a few thousand bucks on marketing, your average cost for deals that, and then you had to spend another $100 on that person, you would say yes if you knew you're gonna get $15 out them.

Mike DeHaan: [14:08] Yeah. Exactly. I mean, in you know, despite how much we talk about, like, crackheads and crazy people and, you know, like, the up and down of the different transactions Yep. We talk about those things because they're the ones that stand out in our head. That's not the vast majority of the transactions. I mean, and and typically too, some of the best transactions and the biggest transactions we have are ones where everyone is super cordial, the people are super nice, like, and it all comes down to providing a service for them as opposed to having to solve some insane problem with their, like, I don't know, ancestral nieces and nephews who were smoking crack in the house and, like, doing something crazy. Right. Oh my goodness. Yeah. You know, you just never it's not it's not always crazy, but, like, you know, that when it when it comes to those more put together people, that customer service is even more important. So you definitely wanna keep that in mind.

Dan Austin: [14:58] Yeah. Well, and, again, another point not to overlook here is right now, you probably have the time to do that. Like, don't you know, we've heard, all the different gamuts of what people do. They stop marketing or they take the end of the year off. Because I call it the slow part of the year. Like, nobody wants to sell during Christmas. You're absolutely right. Very few people do. Some people do. Again, we've had that happen, But this is the time where you get to clean up some of that. So you get to clean up your book of clients. You get to clean up your CRM, get it all dialed in, and and spend that time doing that that holiday check-in is when you whatever you wanna call it. You know? Do that follow-up and be consistent because nobody else is doing that because they're taking the rest of year off because they don't think anybody wants to sell their house. That's fine. They don't. But on June on January 3, will.

Mike DeHaan: [15:36] Yeah. Exactly. Perfect. And what a great transition that is to to our educational piece that we're gonna talk about today, which is going into the holidays, the importance of marketing, and ways that you can stand out with your marketing pieces going into, you know, the end of the year and Christmas time. So first off, if you are in a situation where you're like, you know, Mike and Dan, you guys talking about need to follow-up with these leads. I don't have any leads. Well, if you wanna start getting them, first, should go to collectingkeyspodcast.com/free, and you can download our free five step guide to start generating off market leads. And now if you are already marketing and you want more opportunities, we're gonna talk about some ways that you can go about that. Let's do it. Alright. So marketing during the holidays. First off, it's very important. A lot of people, they will, you know, every year, they will completely pull back on their marketing during the holidays because they have the assumption that, you know, people are less likely to sell their house during that period of time, which is true. Yep. But it's a very important thing to do because what it does, it tees you up for going into the new year where everyone sort of comes out with, like, a new year, new them sort of mentality.

Mike DeHaan: [16:47] And historically, for us over the last few years, January usually still isn't awesome, but February is usually a very big month for us. February and March are. And more often than not, those leads that we close during those months, they come from, like, the December and January marketing. Right? Mhmm. So, you know, first off, make sure that you're doing it. Second off, there's certain things you can do to help you stand out and to help build a little bit more urgency with people as you, you know, we sort of get into that period of time with your marketing to make the most out of your marketing dollars. Some of the things are novelty. Like, I got these samples from from Ballpoint Marketing. If you go check out our YouTube, I have, like, a little bit of them. But they're Ballpoint, they, you know, they did these handwritten letters, but they have these, like, novelty little, like, Christmas envelopes that you can get right now on their on their website.

Dan Austin: [17:36] What do you think about that? Here's a good question. This is a point of discussion because I'm looking at the camera. They've got the the address's handwritten on it, right, with a pen Mhmm. Or, you know, auto pen. Do you think that, like, pops it, sticks out versus, like, a white envelope with just, like, handwriting on it.

Mike DeHaan: [17:50] Yeah. Well, so so it's all about little stuff that makes it stand out a little bit more. If you can do things that are a little more relevant to the area or, like, the situation, it helps stand out even more too. Because so, like, with these ones, handwritten, if you go on YouTube, you can see the envelopes. They have Christmas ornaments. They have other things on them. You know, it's kind of a cool little way to just sort of make it stand out, I guess, amongst all the other marketing material together, the other blank envelopes they're gonna be getting during this period of time. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [18:15] I mean, that one there specifically looks like a Christmas card.

Mike DeHaan: [18:18] It does. But I what I'm gonna say is, you know, if you use, like, this one right now versus you go to, like, another mail house company, you just send, like, a bright orange envelope. This is probably gonna sit a little bit less better and look less like just a straight advertisement

Dan Austin: [18:30] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [18:31] Versus, you know, just like the orange envelope. Or, like, you know, if you're sending, I don't know, flyers or something like that, doing something that makes it Christmas themed makes it a little bit more personal. But, ultimately, what it does too is it makes it look like you spend more time and gives you more credibility as a business. You know, it looks more like you're an established business and you're not just like some person that's, like, sitting in your mom's basement just flinging stuff out there trying to buy someone's house. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [18:55] And if you think about the list you're you're marketing to, think about your end your end user of that product that you're sending the marketing. You want them obviously, the goal is for them to say, that's interesting. I'm looking at it now. Like, okay. I'm gonna open it. It looks like a Christmas card. And maybe you're sending some of your distressed sellers cards to your distressed sellers. So they obviously are stressed. It's holidays. A lot of people get stressed, especially if they have don't have financial security, which if they're on a distressed list, there's a good chance that they don't have financial security. So then they're probably already thinking they wanna sell their house or they need to do something with their house.

Mike DeHaan: [19:31] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [19:31] They're in they're in the holiday stress. They see it. They open it up. And then how you sell them and, like, what are you doing in that in that card or that that letter also matters too. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [19:40] Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So the copy is gonna be super important. And the copy, this can this you know, we're talking about direct mail kind of exclusively here, but this can also go along with if you're cold calling people, if you're texting people. The messaging that you put out at the end of the year, they can be it can vary slightly from other parts of the year because, one, you can create urgency pretty easily with the impending timeline be the end of the year. So, you know, with that, that can be this is pretty common for us to do in our letters or for other people to say, like, hey. Miss Seller, we're looking to buy one more property by the end of the year. You know, we would love it to be your house on 123 Main Street. That's a very simple way to do it. This sort appeals to everyone. But the more powerful one is if there are landlords out there that might have a property that they've been looking to sell, but they're worried about taxes, they're worried about all these sort of different things. A lot of them will have now start to have, like, a slightly better idea about where their financial position is sitting, right, coming into the end of the year. And if it makes sense to sell or not, that will be a much more of a clear decision versus, like, in June, where they don't know if they need to be worried about taxes or not. They actually don't know how much money they've made.

Mike DeHaan: [20:46] So we've actually I mean, almost every year, we've closed some pretty sweet deals, like,

Dan Austin: [20:50] at the end of December. Feel like that's, like, our best year. They're all landlord ones. Right? They're all landlord ones.

Mike DeHaan: [20:56] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [20:56] Like, our best properties,

Mike DeHaan: [20:57] I should say. Exactly. Because you have these landlords that are like, you know, oh, I didn't really wanna sell. Was like, but shit. If I sell next year with what I'm sort of expecting, my taxes are gonna be significantly worse than if I sold right now where I had kinda like a down year or whatever. And they wanna get it off their books for the end of the year. Like, we literally bought an eight unit apartment complex last year, and we would have closed on, like, December 31. I think it was the day before New Year's Eve. And part of the condition of the sale was that it had to close before the end of the New Year or they weren't gonna sell to us. And we actually kinda had to scramble the jets because the guy called It cost us more. It did. It cost us more. Yeah. And, like, the guy literally called us, like, two weeks before, and he was like, need to sell us by the end of the year. We gave him our terms. What do we take for us to be that quick? And he's like, that's fine. I don't care. I just wanna be done with it. Worked out great. Right? Mhmm. Like, the year before, do we have We had

Dan Austin: [21:45] a duplex that closed in December. That's right. And then maybe another property.

Mike DeHaan: [21:48] I think we had the single families that we bought the eleventh one, maybe. I don't know. But I don't know if that was the same situation. But, yeah, we did have the duplex, but it was similar sort of thing, right, where there was somebody that needed to get it off their books for the end of the year. It's a sweet little duplex, and they wanted to be done with it, but it wasn't gonna affect their taxes, especially if they're older. You know, older people, if they're on Social Security, they have to be really cautious about how much money they make. And if they go into a realize, like, a huge gain on a property sale, like, that can mess up their Social Security forever. So for a lot of them, especially getting to the end of the year, it can be beneficial for them to make less money than they potentially could and be able to collect this. They can keep receiving their government insured money forever, but now they don't have to deal with this property anymore, especially if they're having issues with it they know are gonna be an issue next year.

Dan Austin: [22:36] Yep. Yeah. We actually ran into that a few times where sellers and and I can't remember exactly all the details, but when they show a certain level of income, like, that's the problem with how, like, our elder system works. It's like if you have any money or any assets, they want you to get drained those completely before they give you the assistance you need to survive as an elder person who can no longer work. So it's sad, but they can get to these thresholds where they're like, well, I wanna offload this property. Let me get it below that threshold so that, like, you're saying I don't have this gain, or I no longer have this asset, so then I can actually keep my government assistance that I deserved and earned.

Mike DeHaan: [23:13] Yep. Yeah. Exactly. Right? And, you know, a lot of them are super, super sensitive to that. And it and it's crazy too how much people hold on to that as well, sometimes even if it doesn't necessarily make sense for them. Right. You know? Like, we we've had people that

Dan Austin: [23:27] Sometimes it makes no sense. They just hate the government.

Mike DeHaan: [23:29] They just hate yeah. Right.

Dan Austin: [23:30] They don't wanna

Mike DeHaan: [23:31] pay taxes. Or they're just so accustomed to living off that Social Security money. And even though you can be like, well, if you had an extra $100,000, which is what you could get, you wouldn't need that. But the comfort of having that money come in every single month is how they've grown up and how they, you know, expect to live. So, you know, if you really, really push that towards landlords, there's, you know, a lot of opportunity there. So leaning on that that time urgency, you know, whether saying that you're only looking to buy a couple by the end of the year or that, you know, if they are worried, you know, about selling by the end of the year, you know, you can sort of word that in there a couple different ways. Like like I said before, you can literally say, looking to buy, like, one by the end of the year, or you can say send it out to landlords and say, like, hey. If you need to close by the end of the year for tax reasons, like, we have cash and we are ready to close by December 30. And you literally put that in your marketing, you'll get some people that are interested in that. Right? Yep. So those are some major things that you can lean on. Also, too, a lot of places, they will have sheriff sales that will be coming around kind of at the end of December to early January. So if you sort of can find the details on those different, you know, lean sales, tax sales, share sales in your area, it's highly possible that you're gonna have people that have been waiting until the very last minute to, you know, get out of that situation and are now in big trouble. Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [24:52] And if you market towards those people and, you know, you can find list of these on most county websites, and you literally market to them and you say, like, hey. I see you're gonna lose your house. You know, you're gonna lose, like, sort of every all of your equity in the situation. We can bail you out, but we have to do it before this period of time. You can always get some engagements with that as well. And we had one last year that we tried to bail out that way, but the house was just so underwater with the work that needed that we couldn't get it together. But tell you what, like, he was completely ignorant of the situation. We marketed towards that, towards the share sales sort of situation, and it came around really, really quickly, and he wanted to close, like, ASAP to the point that it was, like, kinda highly stressful because we cannot close as fast with title company. And then the hell come which couldn't handle going that that space during the holidays. But if you just do a little bit of legwork, there are a lot of events that happen, you know, amongst the population of people between the holidays, but also amongst the county that create a lot of opportunity in this December period of time.

Mike DeHaan: [25:51] So Yep. You know, some stuff to think about as you're going into it. And I think, you know, the number one thing too is as you are contacting people, people are reaching out to you, people are saying, you know, I'm not ready to sell yet. Call me after the New Year. One thing I cannot emphasize enough of this is to set a specific date or at least a period of time you're going to call them back and stick to that. Because otherwise, what'll happen is, you know, you call they call in on, like, December 15. They say, hey. I'm not really interested in selling right now. I wanna wait till the springtime. Say, that's awesome. I appreciate that. Would it be okay if I called you, like, just right after the New Year, say, like, you know, January fifth or sixth, and we could talk about it then? And they'll say, yeah. Sure. And then when January fifth or sixth comes around, you call them, and they're gonna remember that you made that appointment. And it's that little bit of, like, you set the appointment, you showed up, you did what you said you're gonna do is gonna give you that much rapport going into that new year where they're gonna be starting starting to be more open to selling. Because what we see a lot of people do is they'll have a seller say, call me again in, like, three months. They're cool. I'll call you in three months. And then you call them in three months, but you never went through the motions of setting a specific date with a specific expectation.

Mike DeHaan: [26:57] They call them three months, like, who's this? They don't remember.

Dan Austin: [27:00] Yeah. Yep. It goes a long ways.

Mike DeHaan: [27:02] Yeah. And even though it can seem like such a minor minor detail, those things, I think, are especially powerful when you have the mental sort of calendar that everyone keeps, which is the end of the year and the holidays. Right? Because they'll say, oh, yeah. I forgot. You said you were gonna call me at the end of the year versus, oh, yeah. You said you're gonna call me August 18, which doesn't mean anything to anybody. Right? Totally. Unless it's your birthday.

Dan Austin: [27:22] So So I had a question. Going back to the sending mail. So you're you're saying we should keep marketing. What should should we expect to see, a lower response rate even though we're sending mail? Like, should that alarm somebody if they

Mike DeHaan: [27:34] get a lower response rate this time of year? That's a good question. So this is also why it's important to be tracking your, you know, your different campaigns. So, like, we use Ari Simply for our CRM. With that, it's very easy to make different phone numbers so you can track how how different campaigns do. You will likely see a lower response rate in the immediate, but don't be surprised if you send out mail or you do your outreach kind of in the beginning of December, and then people start calling you from those letters, especially if they're kind of pretty novelty letters like these ballpoint ones Mhmm. That have, you know, the globes and stuff on them, like, make them sort of stand out. Because people will keep those, especially older people. They start calling you, like, middle of January. Right? Or, like, you know, early February or things like that because they got your Christmas card, and they're like, oh, cool. Yeah. This is nice.

Dan Austin: [28:20] Put it on the fridge.

Mike DeHaan: [28:21] They put it on the fridge. Oh, and, like, honestly, they put it, like, in their kitchen drawer, and they just, like, forget about it. And then the new year rolls around, they open up their drawer to put their holiday shit away, and they're like, oh, yeah. Who is this? Oh, yeah. Was gonna

Dan Austin: [28:32] call this.

Mike DeHaan: [28:32] They go they they read it. They look at it,

Dan Austin: [28:34] they go, you know, I I am kinda interested in selling my house. Hey. I'm freaking upset with the holidays right now. I'm, like, stressed to the peak, so I can't do anything. I'm, like, locked into whatever I'm doing with the holidays. But this house is, for whatever reason, put whatever niche list that person's on, reason why they wanna sell their house or need to sell their house. Or it felt like they've wanted to sell their house, but they're like, it's just not right now. It goes in the junk drawer like you said. January comes out. New year, new me, cleaning out the kitchen. Yep. And they're like,

Mike DeHaan: [29:01] oh, yeah.

Dan Austin: [29:02] I do wanna sell. I'm gonna call them.

Mike DeHaan: [29:03] And I also think that that that whole thing, you know, we really hard pushing direct mail. Guess we really push it because of how powerful this is, especially if you do, like, high quality, like, kind of novelty direct mail. Is you'd be surprised at how often people keep it.

Dan Austin: [29:16] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [29:16] And, I mean, even recently, we're getting calls from markets we haven't been in for, like, four months. I'm like, stop calling me. We're not buying there anymore. But they, like, found it. You know, like, we'll get like a web inquiry from someone in North Carolina where we haven't been since like, I don't know, September.

Dan Austin: [29:33] Right. Right. And then Sales guy like, we're still doing stuff here? No. I'm like, no. But like, maybe it's a deal.

Mike DeHaan: [29:39] Yeah. Exactly. But like the stickiness of of mail is is really, really interesting. Right. So, you know, and that's why it's important to spend the extra mile, especially when you are coming around things that are, like, mental time to answer people or, like, checkpoints. You know? Christmas Right. New Year's, fourth of July, even, like, start of summer, right, school getting out. There's another one, like, Labor Day. Like, I don't know. Any sort of yeah. Kwanzaa. That's true. I was not very inclusive in all the things that I listed off. Ramadan, Chinese New Year.

Dan Austin: [30:11] Oh, Canadian Thanksgiving, which actually falls in October.

Mike DeHaan: [30:15] Canadian Thanksgiving. Day. Another one. Day, day of the dead. What else did they celebrate? I'm sure there's something somewhere. Indigenous Peoples' Day. That's a big one that we do now. Big one.

Dan Austin: [30:28] I think it's is that Christopher Columbus Day too? Woah. Woah. Woah. They don't say

Mike DeHaan: [30:31] that anymore. That's not allowed. Sorry. Yeah. My bad. How dare you? Why can I get canceled for that?

Dan Austin: [30:35] Hey. Edit hey. Edit that out, Jim.

Mike DeHaan: [30:37] Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Jim. I appreciate that. I believe our our our producer's name is actually Max. Okay.

Dan Austin: [30:43] Sorry, Max.

Mike DeHaan: [30:43] Which you would know if you ever figured out how to access your collecting keys email. But You're right. So, anyways, guys, marketing into the holidays, don't stop doing it, first off. Just do the little novelty things, especially I mean, even if you do, like, kinda not novelty stuff for the rest of the year, suddenly you're cheap, you know, slips postcards, whatever, take step up for the for the holiday. I guarantee it will pay off cause you're going to be aligning with the general view and mental space that everyone is in, and you're gonna be that little step above everyone else who's trying to keep it cheap during the holidays. So definitely go and dive into that. Anyways, guys, anything else, Dan? I think that's kind of it.

Dan Austin: [31:22] No. No. That's it. I think the is this a no shave November look for you?

Mike DeHaan: [31:27] No. I think I think this is gonna be my new look. Yeah. So you're not doing the whole

Dan Austin: [31:32] November thing.

Mike DeHaan: [31:34] No. No. This is gonna be me now. I'm trying to be like you. I'm gonna shave my head here soon as well. No. I don't think you'd look that good with your head, Shane. You don't think so? What about like this?

Dan Austin: [31:41] Plus plus that's called being trans bald, and nobody likes a trans bald person. Trans bald. If you're not really bald, you shave your head as a trans bald person.

Mike DeHaan: [31:50] Trans bald.

Dan Austin: [31:52] Us bald us bald guys, we get offended by you trans bald

Mike DeHaan: [31:55] guys. Yeah. So so does that mean that you identify as, like, I don't know, shiny and glimmering or something? Like

Dan Austin: [32:00] That's what you're trying to. Yeah. Yeah. You can't shave your if you have luscious locks, you can't shave your head. It does not work.

Mike DeHaan: [32:05] How dare you assume my bald status, sir? It's very not PC of you. Dan, we're definitely getting canceled now. Yeah. Alright. Cool, guys. Thanks for listening. If that was offensive to you at the end, just you can take that out on Dan on on Instagram at investor man Dan. Go and send him with me.

Dan Austin: [32:22] Guy. I'm the guy with the bald guy. He's the bald guy. Nice beard, though. I have a nice beard.

Mike DeHaan: [32:26] Yeah. And if you wanna learn some stuff, you can reach out to me at Mike underscore Invest. Aside from that, if you want to start generating your own off market leads, go to collectingkeyspodcast.com/free, and you can download our five step guide to start generating off market leads just like we do every single month. So, anyways, thanks for listening, guys. Talk to you guys next week. See you.

Speaker 2: [32:47] Thanks for listening. Please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and check us out at collecting keys podcast dot com for tips and guides on starting your own real estate investment and wholesaling business.