WS567: The Most Important Steps Before Being Interviewed with Adam Adams

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication.

And now your host, Whitney Sewell.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:24.1] WS: This is your daily Real Estate Syndication show. I’m your host Whitney Sewell. Today, our guest is Adam Adams. Thanks for being on the show again, Adam.

[0:00:33.0] AA: Thank you for having me, brother.

[0:00:34.9] WS: Yeah, honored to have you back. And I love talking to Adam about some of his special skills. He has some unique skills that have helped many people in branding and growing meetups or podcasts or really getting out, putting themselves out there in a very professional manner. Looking forward to this conversation.

A little about Adam, you should go back and listen to some other episodes. He was all the way back on show number seven on October 28^th of 2018 believe it or not, we’ve done numerous shows since then about numerous topics.

He started investing in real estate in 2005, after repositioning his first apartment community in 2007 from two-million-dollar value to four-million-dollar value in 12 months as property manager. He bought is first multifamily apartment building as you were property manager as well, Adam?

[0:01:18.5] AA: Right after. In Utah, when you don’t have a license, you’re not allowed to manage property for one person while you don’t live there. So, as soon as I bought my triplex, my first multi-family in 2008, I had to quit and move out of that 18-unit that I was managing.

[0:01:36.4] WS: Wow. Okay. Adam is the organizer of Colorado’s most active real estate group and he hosts the Creative Real Estate podcast. And maybe Adam can give us a little update on how many hundreds of doors they’re at or whatever, where they’re focused right now in the real estate business in this crazy times.

But you know, I know that each one of you listening, especially if you were trying to be an active operator, you are attempting and trying to brand yourself in the most professional manner that you can. It’s not easy and sometimes we can get ahead of ourselves and sometimes maybe even be interviewed on podcasts or do different things before we’re prepared or vefore we have a few things lined up that could make those – help us to be so much more successful. We may even be wasting our time if we haven’t done just a few key things and Adam’s going to help us with that.

But Adam, won’t you give us an update about your team and let’s jump in.

[0:02:26.2] AA: Well we’re recording during the coronavirus and so the biggest update, it’s happy and sad, it’s one of those things where you feel kind of good about yourself but you feel really terrible too. We just backed out of a deal during coronavirus and it’s costing us a significant amount of capital which is a very tough pill to swallow and I hope that others listening will take that and kind of think about why did Adam just lose hundreds of thousands of dollars on a deal that he backed out of during coronavirus? Maybe I should too. Maybe, who knows?

But we were scared about what’s happening with the market and not sure if it was the right time, the six million that we raised, we wrote checks back to all of the investors. We didn’t want to pay that many wire fees, that would have been a lot of wire transaction fees. But we wrote checks back to the investors and gave them their money because we didn’t know what might happen in the next couple of years.

We talked about in 2008, I owned that apartment, that multifamily, that small one. Well, my tenants weren’t able to pay in 2009, 10 and 11. I lost the first multifamily that I ever owned. I lost it three years later. A couple of years after the crash. And so, I’m afraid for what may or may not happen and it was easier to lose our money than it was to lose investor money so we jumped out of a deal. Maybe that was the right move and I hope it was.

I hope that we didn’t just lose all that money for nothing. But you asked to kind of update other part?

[0:04:06.7] WS: I think it’s extremely respectable and just shows how much you cared about your investor’s capital and you decided to take the loss yourself. I just think it’s very respectable that you would do that for them and just knowing that what’s best long term.

[0:04:21.6] AA: I know only a couple of syndicators that wouldn’t do that. It’s sad to think that they would be like, “But I’ve got a couple of hundred grand hard on this property and I stood to make a couple of hundred more as an acquisition fee.” And there’s a lot of people playing the game just for those acquisition fees and it is a tough choice. We decided we had to make it.

But door count, you were talking about door count. Within my company, we just had a few hundred all together, passive and active, I think in that 14-ish hundred and you know, everything was cash flowing as of April, we’ll see what happens in May.

[0:05:01.6] WS: Interesting times no doubt about it. Over the next month or two. Adam is amazing at marketing and branding and we want to talk to day just about your funnel and the process of growing your brand and lead magnets and some of those other things that he’s really good at.

You can be better prepared to grow your brand professionally and maybe even before – you could get the – they say, the cart before the horse. You know, sometimes we do that and Adam’s going to help us to get the horse back out there in front and to do this in the right order. Adam, help us to think through the funnel, process a little bit or maybe do any lead magnet, what do we need first and let’s talk about a few of those things.

[0:05:36.4] AA: Awesome, I will mention something that you brought up in the very beginning, you’re kind of introducing the whole topic. And that thing is to the listener before we go anywhere: I just really want them to know that even though they definitely want to get on a podcast and they would like the exposure, if you do it in the wrong order, if you get on a podcast, before you do the things we’re talking about today like you’re really going to hurt yourself.

It sounds good, it sounds like a good thing to grow your exposure but without having the funnel and the lead magnet ready to go, there’s really no purpose to be on somebody’s podcast, right? If you’re going to jump on the podcast and you’re going to want to talk about maybe what is good for a passive investor, maybe what you’re selling is spots for passive investors and you jump on it and you just say go to my website.

The problem with a website is that there’s too many calls to action, there’s too many possible things that they can do when they go to that website. And so, they jump on and they get confused and a confused mind always says no. Write it down, a confused mind says no. The problem is, when they jump on to your website and there’s all these things that they could do, they could look at your bio, they could contact you, they could join your investor list, they don’t know which one they should be doing and they hop off.

They probably never go again. When you’re jumping in to your first podcast interview and you’re on Whitney’s podcast, you’re on Joe’s podcast, you’re in my podcast, you’re on whoever’s, Rod Khleif. You jump on to that podcast and the person asks, “How can people find you? How can they get a hold of you?”

You need to have a clear direct funnel. Here’s the thing to answer your question. The process that you need to be implementing prior to getting on people’s podcast as you’re starting to think about growing your brand, I want to talk to the listener just about how they could have something set up ahead of time that could capture their perfect avatar.

Step one is to know your avatar. Absolutely first thing you do is just understand who you’re attracting, You want to know a lot about them and so for me, I know it might sound racist or sexist or anything ist. Ageist, because I have such a clear idea of the perfect ideal avatar that I want to attract.

Now, it doesn’t mean that I don’t have passive investors that are older and younger and different colors and different jobs and different genders than the one I’m about to tell you. But I make sure that I think about this one person in my mind every time I create content for passive investors.

My avatar is not going to be your avatar, you’ll find yours, right? My avatar is 42 years old, male, Indian, engineer that’s already passively invested in several syndications and has more than a million available to continue investing. And so, I found a way to easily resonate with my avatar because my father was an engineer. A lot of my good friends are Indian and I love talking about all of the Indian food, everything. I’m really passionate about getting along with that one person.

I have investors, past investors who are women and whatever. 60, 70 years old or even 20 or 30 years old but if I am at a conference and I meet an Indian engineer, male. I will always say, “Hey, do you want to go grab a beer? It’s on me. I’d love to talk to you more about what you do in engineering. It’s fascinating to me. You do bridges?”

Once we start getting to know each other, they find that I’m a sponsor and a podcaster and they listen to a lot of my episodes and we bond. And eventually, they say, “I want to invest passively with you.”

[0:09:44.5] WS: You know your avatar so well but not only that, you’ve prepared so well to be able to connect with that avatar and unless you’ve like – just drilled down that far, well, I mean, how can you be prepared to connect with so many different types of people? And I haven’t really heard somebody talk about it like that on the show. We always say, “Okay, you got to know who your avatar is,” but we don’t really think about you preparing to be able to just connect with that individual, you know? And grow that relationship.

[0:10:11.0] AA: Yeah, well, the most important thing when you’re talking about whoever your avatar is or is going to be is that you need to understand if you’re speaking to everybody, you’re speaking to nobody. If you’re out there trying to please everybody and do everything for everybody, it’s going to be really hard for my avatar if I’m out there doing everything. It’s going to be really hard for my avatar to say, “I like that person,” because I need to speak their language. I need to understand them and identify with them.

And so, your avatar could be single mom who is XYZ. Your avatar could be a doctor or a dentist, I didn’t say your avatar is just anybody who runs something in medical. You need to really understand the language of that person. That’s why it’s step one is to understand the avatar, start to think like they think. The problem that a lot of people have when they jump on the podcasts like this is they will say, “Well I need to raise more money and so I need to act really smart and I need to talk about IRR and I need to talk about all these confusing terms. The confusing terms.”

The confused mind says what? No, the confused mind says no. When you get in front of your audience, you want to have the exact language that your avatar would have like your passive investor that you’re trying to raise money from, you want to understand them really well and use words and phrases that they understand that. Most engineers are going to understand IRR, so I might be able to get away with it.

But if you’re having an avatar who is a doctor or a dentist, it’s less probable that they’re going to understand those terms. So, you want to use simple cash on cash return, this is what it looks like. And don’t talk over their head because you’re not helping yourself. It doesn’t benefit you to sound smart or to sound cool.

You just want to use the same language that your perfect avatar uses. That’s really step one. Once you understand that, now you’re going to start getting your feet into their shoes and trying to figure out, “What are they worried about. What is my 42-year-old male Indian engineer with two kids and already passively invested in a certain amount of deals. What is he worried about? What is he looking for?” You want to start providing that information.

Another issue is that people that are starting podcasts these days, they are saying to themselves, “I want to attract passive investors so I need to start a podcast.” I just decide, I’m going to have a podcast. Well, when they start their podcast, it has nothing to do with their avatar. Their avatar is a passive investor, somebody who is a busy professional, somebody who is a doctor. But the title of their podcast has nothing to do with doctors. It has nothing to do with busy professionals. It has everything to do with them trying to teach how to get into real estate.

The issue is, that they’re really training syndicators like you and me. They’re helping other people to be syndicators. But that’s not the best route if you’re goal is to attract passive investors. As you’re putting your feet in their shoes, you got to understand, “What does this guy worry about at night? What keeps him up at night? Is he worried about the stock market? Where is he putting his money? Where does he spend his time? Does he listen to podcasts?”

“If he does listen to podcasts, what does he want to know if he’s scrolling through? Is he going to see Creative Real Estate podcast,” this was my mistake, when I started. Is this engineer going to be like, “Creative Real Estate Podcast. Well, that will be, if I didn’t have any money at all. I have plenty of money not my podcast,” and they skip it? Don’t make the same mistake as me. If your avatar is somebody with a lot of money do what [inaudible 0:14:01] did. He started a podcast that was for passive investing for busy professionals.

If you’re a busy professional and you’re like, “Well great, I get to still keep my job but I got to invest passively.” Perfect title for that. They found you, right? You want to be thinking of these things. What’s going to be the key words that they’re searching for? What do they want to know?

Once you do that, you can start creating a lead magnet and lead magnet basically just means, free piece of content that they have to give you their email for.

[0:14:35.5] WS: If we know what they’re worried about that can help us create the lead magnet, right?

[0:14:38.0] AA: Exactly. Now that you understand who they are and you’ve put your feet in their shoes. Now you totally understand what they need. You create a piece of paper, a document or a check list. Something that says, “If you’re going to invest passively with an operator, here’s the things you need to know about what to look for in a market or here’s the things you need to look for and what to look for and what to look for in the operator.” You talk about their experience. So, you go on that podcast, now that you’ve had some lead magnet ready, now you are able to get on that podcast and you are able to at the end say, “Look Whitney, I’ve got something free for your listeners if they would like to know more about this subject we are talking about, they can go here.”

“They can text this word to this number or they can go to my website, forward slash lead magnet,” or whatever and that’s going to allow the people that are interested in the thing to only had one decision. Remember the confused mind says no, once they go to your landing page not your website, once they go to this landing page, which could be like realbrucespruce.com/leadmagnet or something like that. Once they go there the options are to either get off the page or to enter their email to get the free thing.

[0:15:51.9] WS: So, they don’t see the about and the contact us page or the home page, they don’t see all of that stuff. It’s just here it is. Here is your thing that you signed up for, whatever the lead magnet is.

[0:16:02.3] AA: Yes, and then so the important parts that we talked about is that you have to have a lead magnet and then you have to have a place for them to get the lead magnet where you can get their email address in exchange. The third and final thing that we’ll discuss on this funnel that I call it, the landing page, the lead magnet and the blank is all part of this funnel before you ever get on to somebody else’s podcast, before you ever start your own podcast. This stuff needs to be prepared and ready to go. You need to understand who your avatar is.

But the third thing is your email follow up sequence and that is a part that a lot of people miss. They’re like, “Oh awesome I got this landing page and people are signing up for my list.” And it is like, “Well what are you sending them?” “Well sending them, what do you mean sending them?” “Well they are signing up for your list so what emails are going out?”

“Oh no, I mean maybe if I have a deal, I’ll send something.” If you are not nurturing that list, if you are not staying in front of that list, if you’re not helping that list with the things that they need to know you are going to fail.

So, once you have gotten to this point, it is time for you to have emails continue to come up and this is my strategy. You can use it if you like, I call it the rule of 52. You all know the rule of 72, the rule of 52 is a little bit different.

It means four lead magnets all having a minimum of 12 follow up emails. So, they go to the main thing plus the 12 plus the 12 that’s 13 times four in total, which is 52 that is what you should have. You should have maybe a lead magnet about a deal, a market, a sponsor and whatever.

So, my lead magnet today is they can text ‘raising money’ to 555888. And they can get four videos of me teaching about how to raise money. That is my lead magnet. It is a video of me for an hour just giving out more content for free. Well, in exchange for an email address, right? So, you need to have one too before you ever get on somebody’s show.

[0:18:06.2] WS: And then they know they are going to get 12 follow up emails.

[0:18:08.5] AA: At least. Yeah well, we do more so that is the minimum is 12.

[0:18:13.8] WS: Okay. Well what is your goal through those emails?

[0:18:16.2] AA: Well, my goal through the email is to get them to acquire the next lead magnet. And my goal through those emails is to get the next lead magnet. And we score the people that have the most amount of lead magnets and the most amount of opens. And the highest open rate and things like that. All of that gets more complex than the overview that we are really discussing right now.

But my goal is if you to raising money at 555888 if you go text that and get that four video content to get more information on what we are talking about then in the emails I am probably going to talk about another lead magnet that is going to be valuable to you. And then I am going to ask you if you would like to get it you can get it for free and it is in exchange for an email. You are just on a different list. And within that second thing, it is going back to the same.

And we might talk about one of the lead magnets being look – If you’re not wanting – This is a hard business. This is a tough business to do on your own or even with a team. I have a team of 13 and we’re still having a hard time, depending on where we are in the market. And so, if you are thinking about being a syndicator, this is like at the end of one of my email sequences. Look, you can just be a passive investor. These are the types of returns that you could expect. Let me give you a checklist of what it looks like to be a passive investor.

If you are with me and if you like me and if you have been around me then there is a lead magnet to where you don’t have to run everything. My team will run it and you invest passively pretty much.

[0:19:46.6] WS: Tell me about the tools that you are using there to be able to – somebody is to text and then to receive and some of the back end software that makes that happen. Because I feel like visit bluesspruce.com/ whatever, 10 ways to become a passive investor – like that is a lot for somebody to remember especially just on a podcast. So I really like how you say just text ‘raising money’ to 555888. See I can even remember that. I hope I get it right.

[0:20:13.7] AA: Yes, you did.

[0:20:15.1] WS: So, I can remember that and I like that a lot. Tell me a little bit about the backend software that you use for that?

[0:20:20.0] AA: There is three softwares that I will share with the audience and this does almost every single thing that my team will do. So, we use ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels is a place where – it is about 100 bucks a month to maintain it but you can create unlimited funnels. We have created 60 funnels. And so we’re almost at the edge of needing to upgrade our account. So, ClickFunnels though is phenomenal. I suggest you just have four and that is going to be cost you about 100 bucks a month.

ActiveCampaign is also very important. There is a lot of different types. There is Infusion Soft, there is MailChimp, you name it there is a lot, they are all terrible when compared to what Active Campaign can do. ActiveCampaign is like Trello meets CRM, meets your email list. So active campaigns have been really helpful for us. We send out all of our emails through there, I suggest you segregate your like separate the content.

Like how do I say it? So, you join my investor list, you join some type of a list that I have, right? It’s an essential that you copy that before somebody unsubscribed it can be very helpful for you to make sure that you have a master whereas if you ever used Mailchimp or Infusionsoft or something to help send something out, you get more exposure that way. So, I make sure that I do that and I help clients do that too.

And the third one that I wanted to share. So, ClickFunnels, Active Campaign and then SimpleTexting. There is a lot of different texting funnels for you to be able to do this. But SimpleTexting is cool because when they do raising money to 555888, all that is going to happen is they get a text back that gives them the link and so they click on that link, put in their email and now they can have those videos for free. SimpleTexting does all of that.

And what’s cool is I think all we have one, if you text ‘passive’ to 555888 then you can join our list. If your text ‘raise you money’ to 555888 then you get this. We’ve got all sorts of words where we own the number, 555888 and we can use as many words as we would like. So, it is kind of cool, if it is something for passive investors, we do that.

[0:22:36.8] WS: So, if they just texted ‘Adam’ or if they texted something you don’t actually have a word for, are you still going to receive that?

[0:22:42.9] AA: I won’t get anything. I will only get it if they text one of these special things. It is all automated so like they text ‘raise money’ or whatever, they automatically get the link. I don’t have to look at it.

[0:22:56.2] WS: And I have seen these three platforms are integrated and they all work together?

[0:23:00.1] AA: Yes, and that is not my expertise. That is Chad, Chad is the one who integrates them all together.

[0:23:07.6] WS: So, 60 funnels in ClickFunnels?

[0:23:09.9] AA: I think that is where we are.

[0:23:11.8] WS: That’s massive. That is so much time and commitment to creating good content. That is incredible, Adam. Tell me how big should we strive it? Say the listeners just getting started and they want some funnels or they were thinking, “Wait a minute that just seems overwhelming,” how should they start to develop maybe their first funnel?

[0:23:27.7] AA: If they are only going to do one funnel that is a great question because maybe not use ClickFunnels. It’s 100 bucks a month. If it is just their first funnel ever it is harder to do it this way but it is cheaper. They would actually use – There’s Squarespace. There is a couple of more. I can’t think of all of them. So, they can use WordPress. We just use ClickFunnels because we do a lot of them or they can hire somebody. So, I won’t make any money on this.

But I have somebody in our staff that can do this if they’re like, “Look I don’t want to run my own, I don’t want to do my own but I need one,” just reach out to me. I will put you in touch with Chad and you can pay him to do it and now you have your funnel. That is what I would say.

And then think small at the beginning. You must at a minimum have a webpage or you could use SimpleTexting somehow where they could go to get the thing. And the second thing is that you need to make sure that your lead magnet is ready to go. And the third thing is to make sure that the email sequence of at least 12 is just is totally ready to go. You don’t have to have your other lead magnets and your rule of 52 when you are starting out. But don’t you dare waste your time or energy by getting on a podcast thinking that this is so wonderful that you are really boosting your business now and getting in front of the right people, if you don’t have your lead magnet completely ready to go.

It is just a complete waste of time and the biggest fear for you is you are not likely to be back on that show for three years. That is the average.

[0:25:00.9] WS: So, Adam maybe for those who aren’t familiar with these terms like funnels and sequences things like that, maybe you could just quickly describe the difference between a funnel and the email sequence because the funnel was in ClickFunnels but the email sequence had lived and ActiveCampaign. So they hit the funnel and that gets them into the email sequences.

[0:25:18.7] AA: Well the way I look at this is that the funnel is an imaginary way for you to get your avatar on your list. And so, what I mean is you just imagine this funnel. You are trying to pour a five-gallon bucket into a small water bottle. You can’t do it without spilling. But a funnel is going to help you get it to where you want. So, when you hear me talk about a funnel, it is not a specific website. It is not any one part. It is the holistic idea of you not wasting time and effort and spilling your possible value out onto the ground.

So that is the funnel to me. Other people called the webpage a funnel. I just literally call that a landing page like to me that landing page is a piece of the funnel. You being on the podcast is a piece of the funnel that incorporates with your lead magnet that gets people excited about that value you can give them, which incorporates to the landing page, which incorporates to you staying in front of them. So, the four steps that is the real funnel in my mind.

Your people need to know you, like you and trust you. They are not going to know you unless you are getting out there. But if you do the interview without the other pieces of the funnel then that is when I really say you are completely wasting your time. You are probably not going to be back there for three more years. And you feel like you have given everything you got but you didn’t get anybody on your list because you didn’t have a clear directive. Does that make sense?

[0:26:46.9] WS: It does and that’s great value add. I am very grateful for you just being so willing to share all of these too with the listeners because I know many of them are trying to get on podcasts and maybe they’re not as prepared as they should be just yet or they can maximize the return on that time spent, if they just did a few of these things. But just a couple more questions. Tell me the one thing that’s contributed to your success Adam?

[0:27:07.6] AA: Persistence and determination have helped a lot. I would say that’s part of the biggest part. That or just thinking of other people first. One or the other. I am not really sure.

[0:27:19.7] WS: And that shows no doubt Adam, it’s been great to get to know you. I have seen that first hand. But it goes right into how do you like to give back?

[0:27:26.8] AA: I give back in a couple of ways, coaching. And then the other ways would be very passionate about anti-human trafficking. And so, I give money and also whenever I see a good cause like that, I offer them free ad space on my podcast. And the other way is with autism within the autism spectrum. My son is autistic and you know that was scary and so I sit on the board of Dream Gap Foundation, which we help transitioning adults to be able to go from autism to be able to find their house and find their jobs.

So, it is fun, those are the three ways that I would say I give back the most.

[0:28:05.6] WS: Amazing show Adam. I am grateful for you time. You have definitely given a lot to the listeners and myself today. Tell them how they can get in touch with you or what they should do.

[0:28:14.8] AA: ‘Raising money’ to 555888. Just text the word ‘raising money’ to 555888, you get four free videos of the similar thing that we are talking about today. Take your business to the next level and I will get your email and I will hound you like crazy.

No, I won’t do that. But you will get emails from me and be able to get more content because it is all about adding value.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:28:35.2] WS: Don’t go yet. Thank you for listening to today’s episode. I would love it if you would go to iTunes right now and leave a rating and written review. I want to hear your feedback. It makes a big difference in getting the podcast out there. You can also go to the Real Estate Syndication Show on Facebook so you can connect with me and we can also receive feedback and your questions there that you want me to answer on the show.

Subscribe too so you can get the latest episodes. Lastly, I want to keep you updated so head over to lifebridgecapital.com and sign up for the newsletter. If you are interested in partnering with me, sign up on the contact us page so you can talk to me directly. Have a blessed day and I will talk to you tomorrow.

[OUTRO]

[0:29:14.8] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to The Real Estate Syndication Show, brought to you by Life Bridge Capital. Life Bridge Capital works with investors nationwide to invest in real estate while also donating 50% of its profits to assist parents who are committing to adoption. Life Bridge Capital, making a difference one investor and one child at a time. Connect online at www.LifeBridgeCapital.com for free material and videos to further your success.

[END]