023 - January 1st is Just Around the Corner

2 Wealth Show S3 Ep23 – January 1st is Just Around the Corner

 Super E and Justin discuss goals and marketing.

 Key Takeaways:  

1. Personal Connection
2. What is your niche?
3. TikTok

 Resources and links discussed  

• Videocast on BrightPath Notes YouTube Channel 
• Videocast on Elizabeth Maora YouTube Channel 
• BrightPath Notes Website - https://brightpathnotes.com 
• Elizabeth Maora LLC Website - https://elizabethmaorallc.com 

 Sponsored By: Integrated Health Solutions

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 About the Hosts 

 Justin Bogard – Note Investor specializing in performing Residential Real Estate Debt. He finds deals and acquires them for his own portfolio as well as educates investors while walking them through the process of owning a Real Estate Note!  

Super E – Real Estate Investor specializing in short-term rentals and the management of them. She connects investors with short-term tenants and manages everything in-between.  

  Connect with the Hosts: 

• @2wealthshow – Facebook/Instagram 
• @wealth_show - Twitter 

Transcript

Justin Bogard: 0:05

[inaudible] Welcome to the 2 Wealth show, a show that shares how you can create real wealth for you and your family. I'm one of your hosts, Justin Bogard. And my co-host is Elizabeth Sickles, AKA super E I am a real estate note investor specializing in performing residential real estate debt. I find the deals acquire them for my own portfolio, as well as educate investors while walking them through the process of owning a real estate note. My co-host super E a real estate investor specializing in short-term rentals and the management of them. She connects investors with short-term tenants and manages everything in between. Our show is sponsored by bright path notes and Elizabeth May aura. You can find out more information by visiting our websites at brightpathnotes.com and elizabethmaora.com.

Elizabeth Maora: 1:09

Hello everybody. And welcome to episode number 23.

Justin Bogard: 1:14

We're almost to the end of the season we

Elizabeth Maora: 1:16

Are, and being close to the end of the season. We want to talk to you about the fact that we're in fourth quarter and we only have two months really left in 2021.

Justin Bogard: 1:30

There's not enough time. There's not enough time left. What am I going to do

Elizabeth Maora: 1:36

Exactly

Justin Bogard: 1:36

How to reach them?

Elizabeth Maora: 1:37

Yes. So we got goals to talk about, and we've got marketing to talk about because if you're not on track to meet your goals, what changes, what tweaks can you make to make sure that you meet them by the end of the year, since we are fast approaching

Justin Bogard: 1:51

That's right, Elizabeth. Um, so a lot of people get distracted. I noticed, uh, specifically in our real estate business and they want to go after everything. They want to do everything. They want to be involved with everything. As far as let's say the say they're, uh, um, someone that like I do, I do note investing. So there's performing loans. There's not performing loans or sub performing loans. There are seconds there's first there's, um, seller financing, there's note creation. There's all sorts of things you can go into just within this niche business of note investing. And when I first got into the note business, I kind of was in all directions because I really didn't know what I wanted to do. And then I kind of found and landed on performing loans as like, it just, what it's, what suited me. It was, it was available. I didn't have a lot of competition with it. He was like, a lot of people do non-performing. So I do non-performing stuff, but I really focus on performing, um, because I know who I'm selling to. Right. Elizabeth, I, uh, I know the end that I have to deliver to somebody. And I just, I just see a lot of, um, people that are young into a real estate business, they kind of want to do everything. They don't really know who they're selling to. And so I've kind of rewired my brain a little bit to think as if I'm a big box store. So to speak to where I look at it, as I know who my customer is or who my avatar is, don't know who, uh, what kind of product they want to buy. And that's what I want to serve to them. I want to serve them that pizza that they want to buy. Um, so is that the kind of the way you tackle with your business?

Elizabeth Maora: 3:32

Absolutely. So we have two types of target audience. So one is a target audience for the clients. So those are the property owners and the other audience that we have our clients or excuse me, our, our guests. So the people actually staying in our properties. And one of the areas that, you know, we said that we're going to talk about marketing is that we have shifted our focus on our guests to going after medical professionals, because they're here for weeks, sometime months, sometimes months at a time. And we want those bookings. So we're starting a whole new campaign on how do we attract, uh, medical professionals.

Justin Bogard: 4:18

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. It's kind of the longer short-stay right,

Elizabeth Maora: 4:22

Exactly. Yes. Yes. You know, if you think about, you know, especially with our business, you know, we have a lot of turns. We have a gazillion turns every weekend and the more, you know, obviously our higher occupancy, which we have higher prices on the weekends, but if we can get somebody in there for two or three months at a time, especially since we're going into the winter months here, that's so much better. We don't have to go in and do additional checks of the property when we don't have guests in there.

Justin Bogard: 4:49

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So then you, you're probably lower your, your operating expenses, so to speak with people coming in and cleaning and, you know, doing that transition from guests, from old guests to new guests, check in and check out. Right. That's right. Yeah. That makes total sense. So it's the longer short stay is the sweet spot for you.

Elizabeth Maora: 5:09

I like it the longer short stay and was, as Justin mentioned, niche. So think about to what, what is your niche, you know, for us, you know, there are a lot of vacation rentals, but we're urban, which is a huge niche market, or it's a small, um, niche market in the short term rental vacation rental space. So what area are you in and how can you be more niche? And then the other part of that is how can you market to that audience and to really capitalize on your niche,

Justin Bogard: 5:45

What are the effective ways to market to, um, I've found that Elizabeth, um, sometimes it's not just, uh, email marketing or SEO marketing, or text message marketing or calling marketing, or delivering something in the mail type of marketing called direct mail. Uh, there's, there's different ways to attract that, that client or that, that guest, right. And it's like, which, which way is works the best. And the kind of answer is they all work, but some of them work are more effective than others, depending on maybe the, um, the gender of the person or the age of the person or the, you know, what type of hobbies or activities do they do. Um, I kind of dove a little deeper with kind of my investing group that invest with us and kind of got, um, familiarity as to who they are, kind of what attributes are associated with them and what, what is common with that group so that I could focus on, okay. That person really fits really well with our business. And it works, right. It makes sense. You see all the stuff you're like, oh my gosh, I'd never realized that some of these people are more scientific, right. They have more of a science type of background or analytical background. And so they, I kind of, I kind of, um, um, geared more towards them. So it's interesting when you kind of dive into the specifics of the individual investor and find out more than just, yeah, they, they they've met the requirements of the capital requirement. Right. But beyond that, like what, what specifically, uh, who they are, what makes them up.

Elizabeth Maora: 7:21

Absolutely. And just for, even for our audience, know the more, you know, who you're going after the better your marketing can be so that you get those people or that person, you know, as a client, as a customer. So detail is, is really important.

Justin Bogard: 7:38

It is. It's not just like, oh, I'll just get on Facebook and do a Facebook ad, a bunch of random people. It'd be like, I got like a half a percent response rate. You scratch your head and wondering like, why isn't this working? It's it's because you have to get granular, you have to really understand your audience. And that's, what's great about our businesses is that, you know, they, yes, they are niche within real estate, but they can be even more niche within that real estate business. And then you can really slice off a different section that you essentially have. Don't have a lot of competition too, and there's always somebody wanting to that that needs what you're offering. And you just have to know how to find them. And once you figure it out, it's kind of a sweet little thing.

Elizabeth Maora: 8:18

Absolutely. And, you know, I think one area that, um, you know, people, you know, and we always talk about Facebook and Instagram, but I have a coaching client that said, Hey, are you on Tik TOK? And cause her, her full-time job is marketing. And I said, no, we're not. And she said, I see a ton of stuff on Tik TOK for short term property, rental management and all kinds of stuff. So if you're not on Tik TOK, there can be a huge business use to that platform as well. So we're actually exploring, um, starting to add Tik TOK to our social media because it is so popular and it's so popular with every age group.

Justin Bogard: 8:58

So that's, that's awesome. And, um, I'm always, it's always funny when I hear people talk about the things that work for them and how, what works for us is this a little bit different? Um, so it's like just understanding who your clientele is and understanding for your situation who your guests are as well as is great. Um, it's always changing Elizabeth it's, uh, you kind of have to keep up with marketing and it's an ever-changing things as far as how to sell your product or service and how to get in front of the right people. And, and I've learned the past couple of years, I've ramped more of my efforts with, you know, our resources towards the front end of our operation, as far as what I call like, you know, lead generation of our investors and kind of lead generation of sourcing some of our deals as well. And it seems like, you know, we're not balanced like 50 50 where we're more, you know, 65%, uh, heavy towards the front end of it. And then cause we know the back end of it. So it's a little bit easier to, to off load our inventory because you know, a lot of people are looking for inventory and solid investments right now. So it's not a challenge to, um, dispose of them. Right. But to acquire them, it's a little bit different. And, and so wait, we're going after our inventory, as well as our clientele is going to end up buying our inventory as well.

Elizabeth Maora: 10:16

That's awesome. You know, and Justin kind of just to expand. So I was very against TikTok, you know, it's owned by the Chinese and ah, um, no, but they're tracking us on Google and Facebook and everything else with everything we do. So my thought is, well, what's one more app. And if you know, going to help us meet our goals, then we're going to do it.

Justin Bogard: 10:37

Exactly. Exactly. So we're heading, we are in the fourth quarter, we have a couple of months left to go. So should people be already kind of buttoning up the, the end of the year, trying to reach those goals and then also reviewing what has gone on the first three quarters and part way through the fourth quarter and setting the expectation going into 2022.

Elizabeth Maora: 11:02

Absolutely. Because January 1st is just around the corner.

Justin Bogard: 11:08

Right. Well, Elizabeth, do you have a budgeting, um, like amount in mind when you go into a new year? Or is it just like, I know I have to just put some effort into here and then understanding what your profitability is, knowing that, you know, if that's the most amount of money to spend on it, like, what is your game plan or how does it look or is it just ever evolving?

Elizabeth Maora: 11:32

We have an overall budget and then it's, it's always changing. And one of the things that was nice, I mean, I'm all about travel. Um, but the fact that we didn't have, we just had, well, I've been to two conferences so far this year, we have another one next month. Um, but the fact that we haven't had the travel expenses that we normally have, so we're putting that money into marketing. So, you know, there's always shifting that you can do once you have that budget.

Justin Bogard: 12:05

Right. Okay. I'll be going to a conference pretty soon here. I'm not sure when this episode's going to air, but in the early November timeframe, we'll be going with, to Dallas, to one of our bigger conferences. So that'll be exciting to go to another live event. So hopefully I'll, I'll learn some more, uh, knowledge from other people in our industry. And I can be able to take that information and apply it to my business and make it better.

Elizabeth Maora: 12:30

Absolutely. We just had our international conference for the vacation rental management association in Texas and San Antonio. And we had over 1600 participants. So that's not including vendors and suppliers. So it was, it was fantastic to see everybody

Justin Bogard: 12:47

Again. And what city was, I said, I'm sorry,

Elizabeth Maora: 12:50

San Antonio,

Justin Bogard: 12:52

San Antonio. Okay, well, I'll be near there. I'll be in, uh, Dallas, Texas and a couple.

Elizabeth Maora: 12:58

Absolutely. You know, I will, you know, just tell our listeners and viewers too, that anytime you can go in person, it makes such a huge difference. Just those personal connections that you make. And you know, you can talk about all different topics. You never know where the conversation is going to lead. So I definitely encourage folks if they can, if they feel comfortable to go, go to these conferences and meet people and expand your speaking, what, you know,

Justin Bogard: 13:24

Well, someone in one of my networking groups always says us, it says this, and it's so true. He's like, you don't know who they know. And it's like, you need to treat people with kindness and you're respectful for them. And you know, you're, you're, you're doing your part, you know, you don't know who they know and who they could introduce you to. So it's always an extension of somebody else. So when you go to that conference and you're meeting hundreds of people, um, sometimes something resonates with somebody like, oh yeah, I talked to Elizabeth and she's in Indianapolis. And be like, if you're looking for that connect with her, then all of a sudden, you know, there's, there's a connection, you know, twice removed from somebody that got to you and it's just, it's an invaluable,

Elizabeth Maora: 14:03

Um, absolutely never underestimate the power of his personal connection.

Justin Bogard: 14:08

Exactly. Exactly. So, uh, what else do we need to be worried about going into the fourth quarter?

Elizabeth Maora: 14:14

Well, I should probably make sure you have your Christmas gifts early.

Justin Bogard: 14:22

Oh my gosh. Make sure you're prepared to hit the black Friday sales and cyber Monday sales on Amazon, right.

Elizabeth Maora: 14:30

That's right. That's exactly right. As soon as they open

Justin Bogard: 14:34

That's right. I'm not a store person. I don't, I don't go to the store. I've never waited on black Friday before. I think I visited like a Lowe's or someplace that people typically won't go to on a black Friday, but I I've, I've never understood people going into a big box store, um, and waiting in line. So I'm not trying to, if anybody listening to this or watching this right now, this feed, but, uh, that's just not for me or you like that.

Elizabeth Maora: 14:59

I am not a black Friday person.

Justin Bogard: 15:03

I guess I always love shopping online. I was like, I feel like I was one of the first people that started to do that and it's just, life is so much easier. You just, oh yeah, I need this. I pop online. I go ahead and buy it and shows up a couple of days later.

Elizabeth Maora: 15:17

Fantastic. Absolutely. You know, which, you know, speaking of not liking black Friday, but we do like being in the black on our books. So financial, I would say, you know, just kind of point is if you don't have a good CPA, if you don't have a good bookkeeper, get that done, that should be a one priority. Especially if you're looking at any types of, um, big money coming in before the end of the year. So you want to be able to offset that income with any type of expenses that's going to lower your tax burden. So make sure you're talking to a qualified professional on that and plan that accordingly.

Justin Bogard: 16:01

That's some great advice and a necessity to do. I wish there was somebody that could just list all the things out you need to do when you start a business and whatever you do, but it's just not possible. Is it? There's just, there's some core things that you, you know, you want to have, you know, some sort of attorney that represents the type of business that you do. You know, if you're in real estate, you probably wanna know some title companies. You probably want to know some other investors, right? You probably want to know who can help mentor you or coach you. And then as far as the business side of it, there's not really, you know, an expert per se in our real estate world. That's an expert in real estate finances, right? It's just, you want to find somebody that can kind of educate you on how a business should be ran. Um, even though all businesses are different and unique, you still need to understand the core concepts of business. So like people that have a business degree obviously have a step up from, you know, folks like you and I, that, you know, don't necessarily have a full business degree, but we just kind of have to pick up and learn pretty quickly as to what to do.

Elizabeth Maora: 17:01

That's exactly right. Learn by trial and error as a point to our last point. Yeah. Shawn Holsapple.

Justin Bogard: 17:11

Exactly. Yeah.

Elizabeth Maora: 17:14

The ups and downs of running your business.

Justin Bogard: 17:17

And, you know, that's, I guess that's one of the nice things about you and I doing this podcast together when we interview these people and learn where they started from and where they're at today. Like there there's a, there's a commonality with them, right. There's, there's kind of a similar background story. Not necessarily if they were from the wrong side of the track, the right side of the tracks, it's just, you know, they all kind of struggled in a similar way as far as like, okay, I figured out I knew what I wanted to do, and then I figured it. And then I had to figure out how to do it. And everyone always talks about, you know, running the business numbers and just having, you know, an eyeopening experience going all right. That's a whole nother subject matter that I have to focus on in order for me to be profitable. It's not just like finding a great deal and selling a great deal, making great amount of money. It's it's how do you maintain that, that profit without giving away the farm, right. And setting up your business the right way and having the right people analyze the stuff for you and itemize it in your books. It's, uh, it can be an eyeopening experience at least. Yeah. Elizabeth, I want to kind of jump off topic a little bit and I want to go, um, to you and then back to me, and I want to us to answer a couple of questions, maybe one or two, if we have time on some people that come into our specific businesses and what is some very common questions that get asked to you? So just for full disclosure, Elizabeth teaches a lot about what she does with short-term rentals and running a business like that. And I do the same thing as well with real estate note investing. And we both have groups that meet once a month and we all have psych classes that we do as well. So Elizabeth, if you can pick, you know, kind of one question was very common for new people trying to get into your business that we could help met with. Let's kind of explore what, what some solutions are for them, maybe on air right now.

Elizabeth Maora: 19:09

W one of the things, um, especially my coaching students, a lot of times, they don't know, they have no idea where to start. They know they want to buy a property. So it goes back to know your numbers. That's a big know what you need and know your numbers. So talk with a CPA, especially if you're a W2, even if you're not W2, but do you need to buy for appreciation? Do you need to buy for cashflow when you know those upfront you can make a much better investment.

Justin Bogard: 19:40

Exactly. So Elizabeth, some of the most common questions to me when people are looking at real estate deals, especially in the note space, is they're not understanding how to calculate their return correctly. And they get confused with ROI in yield. And we just did a very detailed broadcast on this, on our monthly meetup that we did a couple of weeks ago on our YouTube channel. So check it out if you want, it's called yield versus ROI. And so people would mistakenly calculate ROI on a passive investment, as opposed to calculating the yield, to know what their profitability is. So they, they would come up with these numbers and be like, I'm, I'm only making 3% on this return. This doesn't seem like a good deal. I'm like, no, you're, you're doing it wrong. And they get confused. And so we had to break down the numbers and say, look, an ROI is a fixed investment to where you invest in something. And then you wait for the lump sum return, right? And then you look back on it and you can analyze that if you want, if it took, you know, over a year on a yield, you're looking at basically cash flowing investment. And you're looking at the projectability for thinking it's in the future and knowing what that profitability is measured on, what that number is. And so once we kind of explained that to people, they're just like, oh, okay. Cause we always have people that tell us like this, this isn't a good deal. The ROI on this. I'm like, okay, hold on, hold on. The ROI is not how you're calculating this investment. You know, if it's a non-performing loan, then yeah. There's going to be no cashflow. Right. So it would, you would do an ROI calculation, but on a performing passive investment, it's a yield calculation. So that's kind of the number one thing that people, when they're buying notes, the first time they get confused on

Elizabeth Maora: 21:23

And that's huge. Wow. That's great.

Justin Bogard: 21:25

Yeah. So Elizabeth, we are we're at a time for this episode. I kind of went by pretty quickly, but, um, we, what we wanted to remind our listening audience and our viewing audience that, you know, catch us on our YouTube channels, uh, BrightPath NotesYouTube channel and Elizabeth Maora's YouTube channel as well. Elizabeth has Elizabeth Maora, uh, that she offers for training and mentoring and coaching. And then I have a constant cash flow course. You can find it on bright path notes website, under constant cashflow that you can sign up and get some training on how to be a note investor as well. So without further ado, Elizabeth, thanks for being on this episode 23 with me when I've got a couple more left to end into the year. So I'm excited for that and getting into season four. So I'm Justin Bogard with BrightPath notes and I'm

Elizabeth Maora: 22:10

Elizabeth was Elizabeth Maora. Thanks

Justin Bogard: 22:12

Everybody. Next time. See you guys. Bye The 2 wealth show is produced by Justin Bogard and super E sponsosed by BrightPath notes and Elizabeth Maora Thanks for listening and watching for our show.