Ep 34: Driving For Dollars

This episode continues our series on how to find great real estate investment deals, and this week, we are going old school.

A technique that is so easy, and works.

Driving for Dollars is probably one of the best strategies I've ever used. And it's absolutely the simplest thing that you can do.

The return can be ridiculous.

And so today, I urge you to come to our YouTube page, the Value Driven Investor YouTube page, because I'm going to be showing a bunch of cool things around my strategy for Driving for Dollars. So here's where the story starts..

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Full Transcript

Welcome back to the value driven investor podcast where we forge value driven investors on a mission to live life on their terms. No matter where you have come from, or where you are going, becoming a value driven investor is in all our best interests. Because becoming financially free allows us to focus on what matters most fulfilling our purpose, our community of value driven investors is committed to showing you the way with the support of this community, you are sure to reach your goals for all of us in the value of an investor community, there is no greater gift than the gift of giving because together, anything is possible.

Man, am I excited for this episode of the value investor podcast, because we are going to be talking about driving for dollars. Now, we mentioned that earlier in our find deals introduction episode. And this is going to be the first big tip we give you for going out there and finding your first deals, driving for dollars is probably one of the best strategies I've ever used. And it's absolutely the simplest thing that you can do. Now, is it the most time effective thing that you can do? Probably not. But at the end of the day, the return on investment is ridiculous. And so today, I urge you to come to our YouTube page, the value driven investor YouTube page, because I'm going to be showing a bunch of cool things around my strategy for driving for dollars. And then following up with mailing letters. Yes, I said mailing letters, everybody is so caught up on how they can use these digital strategies and how they can use an online website or an app or all these funky things. But at the end of the day, mailboxes are emptier than ever. That's your chance to get someone's attention. Because when you open a piece of mail, your cell phones on the table, you're actively doing something which is ripping open the envelope, pulling the letter out. And you're looking at it now how long they look at it, if they read it is about how much value you are delivering them. And also at what point is the message going to resonate with them. But the beauty of the letters that I've been able to craft is that I've realized over the years and years and the 1000s of letters that I've sent, that these letters are extra special. And that's what I want to show you guys today. So we are on the podcast. So if you're listening, if you're working out, if you're doing yard work, if you're in your car, I would urge you to listen to the podcast today. But the experience of this episode is going to be 10x better if you join us on the YouTube page, because I'm going to be showing some really great stuff on the video here. So let's get this started. Today, I want to really want to have a podcast that is revolves around a case study or a story. I have so many different stories around how this approach really works. Proof proof, this approach really works. And I feel like you know if you're gonna go out there, and you're gonna make this bold statement that on your podcast, you want to give people a great strategy for how they can find deals, deals that would potentially change their life. And what is the strategy? And then you come up with this idea of like, oh, yeah, drive for dollars. Like, even when I told Bob Gran the strategy when he first said, you know, I'm or if I'm going to start investing in real estate, what do you recommend? I said drive for dollars? Well, what do you mean drive for dollars. And that's exactly what he did. And he is a testament to this strategy working because he got his first deal off of this exact strategy that I'm about to share with you guys right now. Okay, so this is no joke. And I continually use this today after 17 years of real estate investing. And I will tell you, it's probably one of my best strategies. So tune in. This is not fake. This is real. I am not going to give you a bunch of crap. I'm going to give you a real strategy that you can execute today no matter what phase you are in. And especially if you're in the survival phase, where you have limited dollars, you have exponential time You need to get your first deal. Here we go. So, flip over to the YouTube channel, because I'm about to share my screen and go over this particular case study that, that I want to talk about this story I want to talk about. So here's where the story starts.

My name, main area, which many of you that have been listening to podcast will know, is an area called Edina, in the state of Minnesota, which is where I reside. Edina is one of the key pockets that I do my infill development projects in. It's a very luxury pocket. So we do a lot of projects where we do major remodels, we do what we call a pop the top where we take off the roof, or a partial second storey, which is called a half Storey, and we add a full second storey or we go as far as to tear the entire house down and build a brand new house. And that is a story I'm going to tell you about today. So how do I get started executing the drive for dollar strategy? It's real simple. You get in your car, and you drive the neighborhoods and the streets that you want to acquire homes on. And that's exactly what I've been doing. For the last 12 years that I've been working in the Dinah market, I've been driving streets. And I've been literally typing hand typing the addresses as I drive by the houses that I want to purchase in the future. And how do I do this, I create a spreadsheet in Google Docs. And on that spreadsheet, I type in the addresses. Now I have it categorized out and I don't really want to share these addresses or my spreadsheet on on my YouTube page. Because it's private information. And I just don't feel like it's right, I feel like I need to keep it confidential. The other thing that I wanted to let you guys know too, in the strategy I'm not going to be sharing is I'm not going to be sharing the specific number of dollars or profit that I made on this particular transaction. Because again, I feel like it's not fair to the people and the clients that I work with. But I can tell you that I will share some numbers on profits that I have made. And you're just gonna have to take my word for it. So again, I am driving down streets in Edina. I am writing the addresses down of homes that I'm literally looking out my window and saying, Man, I can see how I can do this type of project, or that type of project. And I already know what the profit margin is because I've either done it before. Or if it's my first deal, I've crunched the numbers. And I've created a case study based on other projects that I know are going on in the neighborhood and the research that I've done. So I have a pretty good formula that I believe is profitable. And this particular property that I'm sitting in front of in my car, writing down the address on a Google spreadsheet, I'm going to send them a letter. And here we go. Here's the letter. Okay. Janice is the actual person who owned the property that I'm going to show you. You can see the address 5800 block of the Kellogg. Okay, this is the exact sample. Now it's not the exact letter, obviously. But it's an exact sample of the letter that I sent. Now, I will not be showing you the letter that they pull out. Because you know what, we're going to be creating a program that you guys can grab down the road that will show you the letter, and everything that I put into that letter, because there's some magic sauce in that letter. And I just don't feel like it's the best approach to just hand that away. I feel like if you really want something the magic sauce, you know what I want to create a great program so that you can execute this strategy to a tee and actually get results. But today, I just want to give you a general 30,000 foot view of the approach. So you saw the letter or the envelope. You saw the letter that I put in there. Now you didn't get to read it. You didn't get to see it. But I want to show you the results of that letter. So here we go. I'm going to share my page and

this was Janice's response. So what I do is in that letter, there's obviously contact information, Janice decided that she wanted to reach out and touch me. And so this is what she said. And if again, if you're on the YouTube channel, you can read literally the proof verbatim on a voicemail that Janice left me, which says, Hi, Tim, this is Janice Richardson. Here's my number. I live on Kellogg Avenue in Edina. And I received a letter from you a few months ago saying, you know, you know, inquiring, or saying, and then again, this guy messed up because it was a voice text, inquiring if anyone would be interested in selling my property. I am considering posting my property on the market. So I don't know. If you're in the position to purchase my property over the next few months, anyways, just kind of high level inquiry, the address 5832. Kellogg, which is the actual address that I mailed to, if you want to, you know, look up any particulars about it, and give me a call. Now, again, this is literally the voice text, it's kind of scrambled, it's kind of messed up. But this is for real, I want you guys to see this. Because if you're like me, prove it, like prove that this works. And this is about as much proof as I can give you that I got she reached out and she said, Hey, if you're interested, call me. And that's exactly what I did. Now, I documented this on my company website, ground up development, which is ground up dash development.com. And you can go there, and you can read about the story. And all you have to do is go to Properties, and go down to 5832 Kellogg app. And that is the webpage that we're looking at right now, if you're on the YouTube channel. So this is the property that I ended up acquiring. Now I have meet the owner, I've told the story. And you will see a picture of the existing property. Now this existing property, I paid $400,000 for actually 399,000 She wanted me to pay over 400. But I refused. I was firm at under $400,000. But if you are looking at this picture, you're gonna laugh because I couldn't even believe at the time that I was willing to pay $400,000 for this particular property. So I sent this letter to Janice, Janice responded back, and she said, Hey, will you come over and tell me about your process, I'm really considering selling the home. And that's exactly what I did is I set up a meeting, after Janice had reached out to me, again, through my contact information. I showed up to this house.

And I talked to Janice, and part of the strategy is the delivery, you're going to hear about a lot of these different strategies that we're going to give you for finding your first deal or finding deals. And it really comes down to the delivery of your message and what you can provide that homeowner. So when I walked in the door, I said hi, Janice, thank you for inviting me to your home. I really appreciate that you reached out to me and responded to my letter. I'm definitely want to help you out what can I do to help you. And Janice gave me her story and told me that she was been living in this house for an extended period of time, years and years. It's a great house, love the neighborhood love location, but it's just time for me to move. And I thinking about quitting my job and I thinking about moving on with my life. And so she said, I'm ready to sell. Now how does this process work? I know I could list the house, I know that I could hire a real estate agent. And I know that I could go through that whole process. But my house, you know, is in a little bit rougher shape, I haven't really done a ton of updates. And I would rather just get this done quickly and move on. And so what I told her was here are your different options. And at that point, I go over the different options. I disclosed her I'm a real estate agent, but I disclose to her as well, that my main priority is not to come in here as a real estate investor and take advantage of you. There's plenty of guys out there doing that. I want to be different. I want to help you. And I want you to know that I can help you improve this property. And we could put it on the market and we could try to reap the most amount of money for it. She said, Tim, have you looked around lately? All you see on the street? Are homes being torn down and new homes being built? Why would I do that? I said well, it probably wouldn't be the best strategy, but I wanted to give you your option. And she said no, that doesn't really make any sense to me. And I think I can get as much or more money by just putting it out there and having someone like you buy it. And I said you know what, you're probably right. And so she said, Well, what will you do as a builder developer? What will you offer me and I gave her my offer because I knew what the offer was? Because I know that market because I bought multiple properties on that street. And so I said here's what I would offer you and it was $400,000 and she said you know what, Tim? That seems like a fair price. So let me do a little homework and let me get back To you, and when I decide to make a move, you will be the first one to call. Little bit, you know this, I'm paraphrasing this, obviously, I was sitting there for a little bit longer than the five minutes I just went over. But at the end of the day, that's exactly what happened is that she decided to sell this house to me. And we moved on, and we built this home. So this home is a brand new construction home that we create, we were going to initially build as a spec. And we ended up building to suit because once we got the house framed, we had a buyer that came up to us and said, Hey, we love your design, we love what you're doing. And we want to purchase this property from you. And again, you can go through this story, if you visit the page, which is 5832, Kellogg, av.com. And you can read the rest of the story. Long story short, this particular property that we built, we sold for over $1.4 million. The profit on this was significant. It was well worth my time to drive the neighborhood, my time and energy and expense to mail the letter, my time to show up to the house and have a great conversation with Janice and have her feel comfortable with me and select me as the person that she wants to sell the home to you guys.

This is a short story about how you drive for dollars, and how you make big profits. Now, you're probably asking yourself, what was the profit. And I'm not going to disclose what the profit was on this, because I just don't think it's fair to all the people and the clients that I have involved. But I will tell you, there's a lot of other projects that have done like this over the last 12 years. And the profits are significant 100 150 175. And I would say if my memory serves me correctly, I had one transaction that was just over $200,000 in profit off of a letter, because of a project that I was able to get, like this project that you were looking at right here. So I want you to know, driving for dollars is one of the best strategies out there. And it's one of the best strategies for a couple different reasons. Number one, it's one of the best strategies, because you're actually out there targeting exactly the location for exactly the product that you want to deliver to the market. On top of that, you're able to match that location with the strategy that you're going after. So the strategy is half the battle. Because if you know the numbers for the product that you're trying to deliver, and you can match it with the right location. It doesn't get any better than that. Sure, you can go out there and you can do web leads. And you can get random, you know, wholesaling deals in some neighborhood that you don't even know. And you can show up and you can run the comps and you can do all your due diligence. And you can hope that you're right on the number. But when you do it in a neighborhood on a street, that you've already executed on the same strategy, the same plan. And now you can do it again. And you can repeat, wash, rinse, repeat, you guys. You're reducing your risk exponentially. You're controlling your destiny. That's why driving for dollars is so powerful, especially after you have a case study, or you have a proven model that you're using like I do, like Grando does. So that's the beauty of this strategy is short. It's simple. I hope you guys enjoyed it. And I want you guys to ask questions, because yeah, there's a little bit more that goes into it. And yeah, I want to show you this letter. And yeah, there's different approaches that you can take. And I want to create a program that you guys can be part of around driving for dollars. It's that powerful. So I hope you guys enjoyed this short podcast about how you can execute this strategy and find deals that are profitable beyond your wildest dreams. Thanks for listening to the value driven investor podcast where we lead by giving for more information about our community and what's new visit value driven investor.com

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai