Episode 165 – Growing Your Investment Business In a Post-COVID World with Dave Bokman

You're listening to the “REI Marketing Nerds” podcast, the leading resource for real estate investors who want to dominate their market online. Dan Barrett is the founder of AdWords Nerds, a high-tech digital agency, focusing exclusively on helping real estate investors like you get more leads and deals online, outsmart your competition, and live a freer, more awesome life. And, now, your host, Dan Barrett.

(00:39): All right. Hello everybody. And welcome to this week's episode of the R I marketing nerds podcast as always. This is Daniel Barrett here from AdWords nerds.com. And look, if you need more help more more online leads, more motivated sellers. You know where to go. You go to AdWords nerds.com/strategy that is AdWords nerds.com/strategy, and will help you out. Now in this week's episode, I am talking to David Bachman. You may remember Dave. He was on the podcast. I wanna say a couple years ago now really incredible investor out of Philadelphia, but he recently made the decision to not only move to Florida, but also to merge his business with another investors. I'm gonna sit down with him and talk it about what's been going on in his life over the last couple years, how his marketing has changed and so on. And before we jump into that, I wanna introduce you to two very special guests I have here right now with me in the studio. Oliver Barrett, Oliver, say hello? Hi, I am max. Well, Barrett, go ahead and say hello. Hi, these are, you can tell my children and I am training them to be the next generation, the absolute best in the world in online advertising and marketing for real estate investors. Daddy's not true. All right. Well, I guess that's not true, but anyway, let's get on with my interview with David Bachman. All right. This is Daniel Aaron. I'm here with David Bachman. David, welcome to showman.

(02:09): What's going on, man. Happy to be here. Happy to be here. Thank you again for having me. Yeah, no problem. We were just chatting before the press record and everything. We're kind of talking about like where you're at. You've actually been on the show before, and I am very curious about kind of catching up with you talking a little bit about what's been happening in your real estate investing business. You made some big business decisions, some big life decisions that I'm really interested to to dig into. Yeah. Before we do that. Oh, and I should say, by the way, your website for people that wanna go check it out is Philly home investor.com, which is Philly like P H I L L Y Philadelphia there. Which is, you know, was your, your kind of base of operations for a really long time, but you recently moved down to Florida and we were just kind of talking about this. And I personally, like, I am fascinated by like decision making processes, right.

(03:01): And obviously the decision to move, not just to move, but to move away from the market, your investing business has been in and you are, you are super successful investor in Philly. Been doing business in Philly for a long time now. Right. I'm sure you're like, you know, that market market backwards in four or words, you've got all your resources there, but you made the decision to move down to Florida and sort of put that distance between you and the business. So I I've got two questions. One is like, how did you go about making that decision? And then two, has it really impacted like the day to day running of the business? Is it all that different with you in Florida and the business in Philly? Or is it basically like no change?

(03:44): Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great question. And, and first I don't is this, is this also like a video format as well? People are watching these. Yeah. We're people watching the video right now. I not live, but we'll edit it. Yeah, yeah, no, just wanna set the tone for everybody. I am in my closet. We are converting this. We are converting this into an office, but I am in my closet. So, all right. You can't get that. It's a sick closet. You can't tell. I just wanted to get that out there. And with having two puppies and a daughter, it's also the quietest room. So I, I thank you. So yeah, we, I did move for my market, you know, and let's, so if I can back it up a little bit, I think, you know, start this type of business. And I think the reason why a lot of people get into it is so that they can create a business that doesn't really necessarily require them to be there physically. Right. I, I would, I would say it's pretty accurate, right? People want to create a business where, you know, they can travel and be all over the place. And so you, you have to like trust in that process. Right. So when COVID kind of hit, I think that that escalated a lot of things. One, I shut down my physical location and we all went virtual already, you know, and I already in my head was I always toyed with the idea of doing virtual wholesaling.

(04:57): Right. But I just never really focused on it. So it, it, you know, it was kind of just like the perfect storm, the physical office location closed down. We were already kind of doing things virtual, right. People were used to it at this point. Right. Nobody needs to go to the title company, everything can be sent to them electronically. It's almost like a touchless transaction. Right. So the timing of it was, what can you say? I guess it was the time. Right. And I think a lot of people will always stay in the comfort zone because it's easy and it's what they're used to. And of course it was really hard for me to leave because that's where my family is from. I have a really small family and really close to my parents. They're both alive, you know, knock on wood. So it was a very difficult decision, but it was the decision for myself and my family. Oh, sorry. I just hit my mute bud by accident. Yeah. I think you mentioned your dog, my dog just got here and is sniffing all around.

(05:51): Yeah. Chopping on the windows and doing all sorts of stuff. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's the thing that you mentioned, which is so interesting to me, cuz like, so AdWords, nerds has always been remote. My whole team's been remote, although we all happen to live close to each other, but just like my right. So it's like, we we've always kind of been, but with, with the, with the pandemic you had this like rapid transition of basically everybody else in the universe to just kind of what you said, kind of like a touchless sort of economy where, you know, it's like, we, you know, we went out to breakfast today and you know, cuz we're like sort, you know, we're all vaccin and stuff. So we're back to go into restaurants and stuff and we, you know, just scan a QR code to get the menu.

(06:32): And then we ordered and paid on our phones and then the food just came out to us and then we left. That was the, that was it. Right. It's like the amount of like, I gotta hand you a piece of paper and then I gotta write it down on a piece of paper and then you gotta give me the piece of paper and then I gotta take it back there and then I'll bring it back and then you're gonna, you know, it's like all that stuff's kind of gone. Yeah. And so for you, it seems like it was a pretty painless transition, but I, if you look out at, you know, the, that, that, you know, you know, that, that you network with, do you feel like as an industry, we are transitioning well to that kind of process because it does seem like the whole virtual wholesaling thing was kind of ahead of the curve in that way. And shout outs to Chris Chico. I know who like always says like, he's the one who a term, right? Like, do you think we, we are adapting to that? Well, or are investors kind of falling behind in a place or having difficulty with a certain kind of, you know, piece of the transaction? Like what's your take on that?

(07:29): Yeah. I think I, well I think the ones that are doing well and the ones that are succeeding during this time have adopted that mentality. And to be quite honest with you, they're, they're, they're closing deals over the phone. Yeah. Right. That's that's not something that I'm actively doing. You know, I have a sales guy, he makes rapport. Then he goes out there and he sees the property. I mean, that's almost reverse what most people are doing. Yeah. Right. So if, if people are already doing that, they're closing the deals up over the phone, they're selling over the phone or email the title's all done. So I think, yeah, I think we're absolutely transitioning. And it's funny, you, you asked that question and I, and I mentioned to you earlier that I'm, I'm shifting my business a little bit and merging with another well known wholesaler in my marketplace.

(08:17): And that's what he does. He has a team you know, they're, they're all VAs and you know, the team is just doing SMS. They're just doing cold calling and they're just doing sales. Yeah. And they're just doing it all over the phone, residential and commercial. Yeah. So I think so I think, and that's a, and that's a shift in just mindset, you know, like you go from like a making offers in person cuz you think that the best way to doing it over the phone, it's a, it's a huge shift in mindset. But I think the people that are doing it are, are the ones that are actually doing well right now. Yeah. And I, I also think there there's a bit of a chicken in the egg thing. Right. Because the market has to be there. Right. Like the seller has to be comfortable with the idea of a lot of this transactions happening kind of site unseen or, you know, I remember when people were like, well, no one's ever gonna buy anything online because they don't feel comfortable putting their credit card information to do a form. Right. And it was like, well, we all got over that pretty quick, real quick. We all moved on pretty quick. So I am curious because it sounds like, it sounds like your, and I, I'm definitely gonna come back to the merging question. I'm fascinated by that. Right. Because I just have so many questions about that, but to sort of stay on this point that you're talking about closing over the phone, right.

(09:33): It sounds like your kind of purse approach kind of what, what I think most people would, would deem maybe like the traditional sales approach. Right. Certainly for real estate investing, but really for any industry where it's like, Hey, there's a value to the face to face. Just like you said, you build rapport. Hey, you know, what's the weather like it's rainy it's rainy where I'm from. And then you, you know, you connect with 'em or is, and you sort of build this relationship over time and then you sort of transition to the sale or whatever. Now how do you do that entirely over the phone? And I think the catches for me is someone looking in and kind of scratching my head about that. It seems like in a really short period of time, right? Like like Lou, you know, who's who works sales for Edwards and nerd, it's my company. Right. He'll talk to people for like a year and a half before we all feel comfortable with each other, like he's and he is great at that. Right. That's what he does. Right. He's a relationship. Person's why he is good. His get his job. Like how do you do that when someone's like calling up and they're like little defensive and know you and I mean, what is that process different or is it not really that different and all, and I'm kind of blowing it out of proportion.

(10:44): Yeah. I think that, you know, I don't think it's all that different, but like I, I kind of alluded to, it's a complete 180 mindset shift, you know? So like, and I'm still, and I'm still learning that process myself. Yeah. And that's why I I'm merging with another guy because that's his strong suit. And, and he went through that process himself just like me. He was the same exact way. Yeah. And then when his mentor, I'm sure we all know mark DM Evans told him that you need to shift your mindset. And he, you know, he fought that tooth and nail until he actually decided to implement it and tried it out. And so I think once again, getting out of your comfort zone, you know, and so how do you do it? I mean, obviously you're not making an offer to everyone over the phone, right. You're, there's, there's a, there's a process they need to get through. But I think it's a, it's a, it's definitely a mindset shift more than anything else than, and just believing that that process will work, that people will actually sell you their home over the phone. If you sound educated, if you know about the property and the comps in the area, you know, if you can back it up with, we have a hundred Google, five star reviews. And you know, if you, if you have all this stuff that you can talk about over the phone is really no different than in person. And, and obviously we, we paint the picture that we're making you this offer based on exactly what you're telling us.

(12:09): Right. We, we, we are gonna inspect the property at some point. So if there's no floors in the property and you said it was imaculate floors, then you know, we might discuss some things, but we're, we're, we're, we're, we're just setting the right expectations. Right. And I think if you do that properly, you can do it over the phone or in person. I mean, just think about all the sales jobs that are over the phone. Yeah. You know, I stock, I started sales as an inside sales rep. Yeah. You know, I bought and sold all kinds of things over the phone. So I think once again, it's just a mindset, you know? Blockage. Yeah. It's just that there's like a mental barrier in this case specifically. Right. For me where I'm like, well, a house is different than buying or selling a couch or whatever. Right. But think, but it isn't right. Not, not in reality. Right.

(12:57): Think about, think about this. People are actually, you know, people are, people have a business off a band sign. I don't, I, I, I dunno about a business, but they're closing deals off abandon signs. You know, that that's a strategy, that's a strategy I never used because I just didn't want that to represent my business. Right. Right. I, I did more of the SEO and the brand building and PPC, which is why I worked with you guys and that takes longer. But you know, I never wanted that to be the image of my company is just some like sign on the street, you know? Yeah. But I'm probably missing out on deals. Right. Cause that's what everybody else is doing. Yeah. It's like the fact that it, the fact that, I mean, banded signs is like the perfect example. And I bring it up a fair amount where it's like, it's a thing that seems like it shouldn't work, but clearly does because it has survived as a marketing methodology for many, many years. And now it's like, I'll drive around and I see bandit science for not real estate investing. Like, I'll see bands. I like, oh, we buy or, you know, we buy diabetic test strips.

(14:01): That's the business. I don't understand what that means. They're like, who, you know, I, I don't understand how much. Right. But it's a thing. It's a thing. Right. I think, I think half the population is on diabetes. So I mean, someone I do like the idea of I'm on diabetes right now, I had to, I had to go on diabetes. You know what I mean? But that's a, that's a, yeah, yeah. That's a thing where it it's this huge universe of people and thousands of people are gonna pass the sign. And if 1% of those people, you know what I mean? Like wanna call this sign then that's, that's a flow of leads. Right. I mean, you can't, you can't argue with six this, I guess. Yeah. Well, speaking of success, see like that transition, look at that as a killer segment. Speaking of success, I am super curious about this, this decision that, that you made, it sounds like relatively recently, it's still in the works. Right. So we're not gonna talk about specifics of the business deal, this idea to merge with your business with another investors. Right. But I am so curious about one, like, why did you make that decision versus let's say trying to build up your capacity in house. I think which, which is kind of what I think what most people would sort of think to do. And two, how did you choose the person? Because obviously business is such a weirdly intimate thing. You gotta spend all this time with people, you, you know, you really, you really see people in like who they really are in terms of how they act in, in the course of their business. Right. So, yeah. How'd you, how do you make that decision? Like personally, I I'm so curious.

(15:34): Yeah. So, you know, just a, a lot of, just for people listening, I'm going into my sixth year. Right. So, you know, over course of the last few years, well, I think once again COVID will probably be a topic because that sped up a lot of things. Right. Thing, not just in our world, but in a lot of things in the world in general. So, you know, I think for me, and I think a lot of people will probably relate to this. I, I ended up hiring a while ago, somebody who was a friend of mine. And I think a lot of people do that. Right. They hire friends and, and it's pretty consistent in the industry. And, you know, I kind of had high hopes for him as like kind of taking over some parts of the business that would allow of focus on other things. And so the goal was for almost to kind of, for him to be like a number two, which would allow me to build the business and you know, it, that never really happened, but things were going good. Right. So when things are good, things are good. Right. So he was just doing what he was doing, which was AC acquisitions dispositions. Right. And we were just trucking along, but I was never really able to build the business. And so when COVID hit everything changed, he ended up moving on, which was great because I kind of needed that change. Right.

(16:46): And really the last two years has given me a lot to think about, I did not make this decision easily. And I think over the last two years also people have gone away, right. People have changed. People have merged together. People have changed the way they do business. I, I don't think that it's been like great for anybody. Yeah. At least not anybody that I really know other for the exception of, you know, some of the larger teams, but you know, those large teams, they have high overhead. Yeah. I, how much, how much profit are they really bringing in? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. But for me it changed my business, you know, and to be quite honest, I doing it alone is really just not that fun. And I still had that vision of, you know, working with somebody, I just so happens.

(17:32): This other person was at the same point in their life also, you know? And so we've been talking since last year and it just, it's just all about timing, you know? So that's kind of how I've been making the decision. I, I want to be able to grow the business so that I'm not right now, I'm working in the business, which means I have a job. Yeah. Right. And I don't think a lot of, I don't think a lot of people understand that if you're, if you're grinding away, which I'm not grinding away, but if you're working on things constantly, then you know, you, you still have a job. You're not running a business. And so I just, for me to people sharing resources and connections and people who compliment one another, I think will be able to do bigger and better things together than alone. Yeah. That, that's kind of how, how, how it happened

(18:27): Once find motivated seller leads line, but don't know where to start download our free motivated seller keyword report today. Adwords nerds have spent over 5 million this year researching the most profitable keywords for finding motivated seller leads. And you can grab these exact keywords when you download our report at www dot AdWords, nerds.com/keywords. You are certainly right. That there is a, there's a multiplicative effect, right? Like it's not one plus one is two it's like one plus one equals four somehow. You know what I mean? Yeah. When you get the right people in the room to get it's, you know, you were telling your story about, you know, hiring the friend and, and it's like, we sort of at AdWords nerds, we recently sort of lost a team member. And I had not changed my core team in maybe like seven years. You know what I mean? Like I was joked on like, no one it's like, you can, you can join, but you can never leave. It's like how?

(19:30): And I was like, I basically have to like kill someone for me to let go. You know? It's like, it's just like, yeah. But, but, but, but you know, it's this kind of painful experience and you know, it, it, it was, was difficult for me emotionally. Right. Cause I sort of view myself as this like team leader that is really compassionate and empathetic and I can anyone through anything and yada yada yada. Right. And, but you just re we, we realized after the fact that's like, oh, the D somehow the dynamic had kind of gotten off course. And it's now it's like, it feels like there's more energy in the room than we'd had in years. Right. For whatever reason. And maybe it's just the destabilization, you know, maybe, maybe it's a bunch of different things, but I it's so easy to, especially when you work, work, working with someone you really care about, which is same case for me, this was, was the case with you. It's so easy to overlook that or to kind of lose sight of it and not realize like what you could be doing, you know what I mean? Or what it could feel like. So I really respect your like dedication to that vision. You're like, no, like, just like you said, it's not that fun to do it by myself and there's other ways to do that. Yeah. yeah, just to,

(20:46): Just to finish and just to finish how I picked the specific person. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's funny, it's not even like we've done deals over the last six years. You know, it is somebody that we I've spoken with and, you know, I think, I think I've been doing sales my entire life, you know, corporate world. My parents came to this country. I really think I'm a good to be good at sales and marketing and negotiations. You have to be able to read people The way they talk, the way they walk, the way they hold themselves. And this particular person, you know, we grew up in the same neighborhood. We're almost from like the same cut of cloth. So like, I, I trust him, you know, I think when you, when you've been in the business long enough, you know, that the people that are actually doing deals, it's a pretty small circle. You know, what, what do they say? The 2% of the people are doing like 80 or 90% of the deal? I, I don't know what the,

(21:39): You know what I mean? And smaller than people say it is too, because there are people like, yeah, I did five deals this week. You're like, great. Where are, where were they? We were in Flavor, town. Yeah. Flavor, town, flavor town. Gotcha. Yeah. So, yeah, for sure. So, so in this industry, I think like one of the most important things is just like trust and like character. Yeah. And I think he, his is up there and to me that's like the most important thing. Right. So, and, and obviously we, we fill in the gaps for one another, you know, so he's got a team already in place. He's not really into certain things that I'm into. So how can I take his systems and processes and make it better, you know? Yeah. You know, and, and, and once again, allowing us to have a team that's functioning while we work on bigger deals, like the commercial deals and the storage facility. So that, that it it's coming together there slowly, but, you know, I feel good about it. So once again, it's just, it's about timing. I didn't rush to this decision. And like I said, we've been talking since last year.

(22:37): Well, I'm super excited for you cuz I mean, I, I, that sense of, he likes to do this stuff. I don't like to do. I like to do stuff they don't like to that's like the best that's just is the best. Well, yeah. So I'm super curious. I mean, you, you've mentioned kind of COVID a couple times, right. Because that's, you know, the, the sort of big, I mean, seems wild because as we're recording this like world political events feel like they've already moved on and now we're talking about other terrible stuff that's happening. But you know, at least for the last couple years COVID was like the primary terrible thing that was happening. And so I'm curious just if, when you back out and you look at the last couple years you know, 20, 20 to 20, 22 as we're recording this, right. What do you view as the story of that time period in terms of the effects that it had on real estate thing on, on your business specifically, like when you back up and you say like, okay, here's what that meant to me in terms of this is how it impacted the way I'm doing business.

(23:39): And then maybe more importantly, how is that informing what you see the next couple years looking like, because I, I will say just as a bit of context, right? We know a lot of the same people kind of networking groups and stuff. You know, obviously I work with a lot of investors to know a lot of investors, my impression of, you know, when I try to take like the temperature of the room, so to speak is that people are kind of nervous because a sense that like, we sort of got through this big thing and maybe it wasn't as bad as everyone maybe thought it was in terms of its impact on real estate investing. But now we have inflation and now we have you know, like Ukraine and now we have this and now we have that. And like, no one really knows what is the next thing. Yeah. So I'm curious, like, what's your take on that when you, when you back out and you look at narrative, what were the last couple years all about, like in your mind and kind of, what do you see as your next couple years as being about

(24:38): Yes. So there was a lot there in that, in that question, I would say everybody should be nervous and anyone that says, they know what's going on, has no idea what's going on. You know, they just don't, they just don't, you know, and some context, you know, like I'm in the stock market as well, you know when COVID hit, I needed something to do and, you know, my friend kind of sucked me in and so, you know, a day traded and I'm involved. Okay, cool. Yeah. So like, you know, I, I see the headlines that come in, I see how it's affecting the market. So, you know, and, and even the traders don't know we're in a time where nobody knows and you just have to be honest and say, I don't know. And I haven't spoken to a single investor in the last two years that claims to know anything, you know, so what it, what COVID did to me, and I can only speak for myself. Sure. But if it did it for me, I'm sure it did it for a lot of people was that it exposed them. And what I mean by that is if you were spending too much on marketing, if you were letting things fall through the cracks, whatever it was, whatever inefficiencies you had, it exposed you and maybe not right away, but it was like a slow kind of like spiraled down, you know, like, okay.

(25:54): Two weeks to flatten and the curve, you know? Okay. You know, real, estate's shut down for a little bit. Okay. Two months in, and now, you know, two years later, right. So, you know, what did it do for me? I mean, in the beginning, you know, everyone was a like, okay, let's, let's increase marketing to, you know, to take care of, you know, to try to take advantage of what's going on. Did that work for some people? I don't know. Some of the larger, some of the larger players in the game, they shut down their marketing probably smart. Well, I wouldn't say shut down. I mean, I wouldn't say smart about shutting down, but right. Did they, they shut down. Right. So it exposed me. I, I was spending a lot at that time. Right. So it really, it, it changed my business in the ability to spend for marketing.

(26:41): Yeah. And then that just caught up month after month. Right. So you know, I mentioned that the friend had left, so that had, that was kind of a positive thing. Him, him leaving. Yeah. But I I've been basically just sustaining my business the last two years. Not really working hard. Right. But it's just kind of self sustaining. Yeah. And really it's really, self-sustaining because of the SEO and some of the work that we've put into my site over the last five years. Yeah. You know, knock on wood. I've been able to decrease my marketing 50, 60, 70% and still get leads coming in. Yeah. And they're, and they're good quality cuz they were organic. So, you know, that's, that's what it's changed my business. Yeah. And then you ask and then you ask moving forward. Well, there goes me partnering with somebody who is doing things completely different than me.

(27:33): Who's got a team and systems and processes in place that I've always wanted. You know? So now I'm kind of, I, I think that, and, and I, and I've seen other group groups all over the country do that as well. But you know, I think people are just partnering and getting stronger together as opposed to trying to do it alone. And yeah. You know, I'm sure I could build it all up myself. But I think for me personally, like I said, working with somebody else you who has the same kind of goals and aspirations is how I plan on getting out of it, shifting, you know, shifting focus to commercial as well. Yeah. More, more of those opportunities that are out there. So I don't know hope does that kind of answer all of that?

(28:16): Yeah. Yeah. It does. It does. And I, I think you, your whole point about first of all, I, I absolutely love and a hundred percent going to steal from you. The phrase, like what COVID did is expose you because it works, there's a pun cuz you get exposed to COVID and then you get exposed to your business and I'm a sucker for a being a father. So you know, I'll take that stuff all day. But I love an idea because there is very much a sense that I have now. And like, you know, like as a business owner, right. In, in working with other businesses very much, got the sense, very similar to lead to you that yeah. There's gonna be people who don't make it through this because yeah. Good times make things relatively easy. Right. And then similarly, while I'm having that thought and I'm feeling very confident, sure.

(29:12): Myself, right. I turn around and I'm like, oh, and by the way, these things in my business are on fire. Right. These things are on fire. And it made me realize right. The places where we had gotten complacent or we had gotten, you know, just kind of like too sure of ourselves. Right. And there's this great this, this thing I love to read about, which we, we don't have to get into in, in any way. But there's this thing called conne, which is like a complexity framework. This guy, Dave Snowden worked at worked for, I think IBM in, in the eighties and nineties and sort of developed this like kind of complexity framework. And he says, you know, systems are either clear, complicated, complex or chaotic. Right. And we don't have to get into the thing, but like a clear system is a system that like, everybody feels like they understand.

(30:00): Right. Yeah. I put my key in the car and I turn it and the ignition, you know, turns over and the car starts going, like that's a clear system. Right. I put the thing in, you do the same thing every time. How do you wanna start the car? Turn the key. Right. There's no, you're not like, how do I start the car today? Right, right, right. And what, one of Snowdens points that I always thought was so found is there's a reason in his little framework that clear and chaotic are next to each other because it's like, when everyone feels like they understand what goes on, like everyone gets it. There's only a tiny little change that needs to happen before everything explodes. So he is like, you, you know, you're in the car, you turn the key and then the wheel falls off and now you're in chaos mode.

(30:39): Right? Yeah. And to that's what it felt like was like the whole world kind of shifted into chaos mode for a while. And we're, we're kind of, kind of still there. I don't know. That's kind of how it feels. So I just think it's a very different skillset navigating a market that's well known and Hey, the best practice at our X, Y, Z, that's a different skillset from how do we navigate in a world where things are kind of uncertain. We don't really know what's gonna happen and I've gotta cap my downside and, and all these things. Let's, let's talk SEO a little bit. Yeah. Because you, you have long had, and I I'll typically call you out. I think I mentioned this on the last podcast that you did with me, but I think you have some of the best SEO in real estate investing.

(31:22): I think you've, you've done a really good job of that. Historically. I'm curious if you, and we don't have to get too techn technically into the weeds of that stuff or whatever, but I'm curious if you noticed an up and down or an ebb and flow in that. And where do you kind of view SEO as being in your kind of current marketing strategy? Cuz you're, you're building on, it sounds like SM and cold calling and stuff. Are you moving away from SEO? Are you gonna start building that again? Like how do you view that right now? Yeah. So first and foremost, I've, I've taken my foot off the gas just for a minute, but that's only because of what's been going on and then also the slow integration with another company, but yeah.

(32:04): Well, that's pretty much our main, one of our main marketing channels that we'll be doing. So, you know, I came from the corporate world, right. And so being in the corporate world besides doing all the cold calling and all the other stuff, one of the things I used to love is getting leads in the morning. You know, you just wake up and there's leads, right? Whether it's from a trade show or whatever it is. And those have always been the best leads, the most quality leads. And so I wanted to run my business that way as opposed to outreaching. So most people are outreaching to people sending mail, cold, calling, SMS, all that stuff. I basically spent the last five years doing the complete opposite, trying to create methods for people to reach out to me. Right. And, and so SEO, you know, it just takes time.

(32:53): And I came from, you know, I, I ran an online business before where I got into real estate. And so I was very, we were with social media marketing, gorilla marketing strategies and the importance of keywords and, and, and, and that type of stuff. And I knew that building a business that is gonna be the most important thing. Right. You know, building a brand credibility. And so that has always been my mindset from day one. So I basically focused on that from, from almost like the beginning and knowing that that was gonna take time. And so fast forward to now I've dramatically decreased, you know, like my PPC budget, but I'm still getting about the same amount of organic co leads. Yeah. So that really hasn't fluctuated in the good or bad times. It's just been consistent. And we know that those leads are just higher quality. You know, one of the things that you said to me a long time ago is actually stuck with me was you're like, Dave, what do you wanna focus on quality? Or, yeah, because I think we were trying out some like Facebook stuff and I said, man, I'm getting a ton of leads, but they just suck.

(34:10): And you were like, it's terrible, but such big portions that's portions are great, but it's just, I can't eat it. So so that always stuck with me. Right. So I would rather not my time with the bad stuff and just get to the good stuff and it just costs a lot. So yeah. You know, it's just, it's just a different way. Once again, it's just a mindset shift. Most investors need deals now they want leads now. And so it's hard for a lot of people to invest, but if I could tell them, if you do it in the beginning, it'll like, you know, double, triple itself in the long run. And in some markets, it doesn't take long, you know, keep in mind for anyone that's listening. I'm in Philadelphia, Philadelphia for the last few years has been one of the toughest markets. I'm not only, I'm not only competing with other wholesalers and investors, but also, you know, large funds that are out there and, and large buy IBU. You know, most of the people on page one are, are people that are buying the leads to sell to investors. You know, like those lead companies, you know, they're, they're not even, they're not even other wholesalers. They're just, they're just capturing the lead to re you know, to resell. So you know, that it's, it's tough. But the longer you're at it, the more fruitful it becomes. And, you know, the, if one thing I will add is that the, the spreads have been a lot larger with those deals as well.

(35:32): Yeah. So you're talking, the spread is, is bigger with your SEO leads than with other lead types or, or just in general, your deal spreads have gotten bigger.
Well that, that the deal spreads have gotten bigger. Yeah. But in general, the organic SEO leads specifically. But it's not. So you don't need a whole, you know, depending on how you run your business, small team, large team, whatever, you don't need a whole bunch of to, to make your, your profit. So I, I, I wanna point this out. Cause I think this is so cool. You mentioned this all the way back, you were talking about, you know, understanding what you didn't want your business to be represented as, or stand for. Right. So you're like, look, I'm in debate science because it did didn't match in your head, your vision for the company. Right. And similarly you were like, yeah, I could do Facebook leads. There's nothing wrong with Facebook ads or Facebook leads are great. People use 'em right. They're awesome. But it does tend to be, you know, I would say it's penny candy, right. Where it's like, yeah, it's super cheap. You could get a lot of it, but they're neck leaves. So you got, you just have a lot of neck wave or something like that. Maybe that's your, the, maybe not, but you know, so, but, but you kind of understood this, this sort of underlying concept that I'm, that I always think about, which is there is a real, there is an opportunity cost to everything.

(36:51): And if you are chasing down 1,000,001 low quality leads, right, you are chances of having really high quality lead fall through the cracks are relatively high. Right. It makes me think of we had Andrew Newland on here from, from Moza house buyers a couple episodes ago, he was talking about, they were doing like, they, they opened up a new marketing channel and they're getting blasted with leads. Right. And they're like, this is amazing. But they noticed like their revenue didn't really go up because what was happening was they were spending all their time, fielding, lower quality stuff. And for him, it was like PPC. They do SEO as well, but it's like, those leads were higher quality for them and they were losing right. Losing them in the haystack. So it's just as important. Right. And I, I love that. You kind of like, you started to hit on this where it's like, it's just as important to know what you don't wanna do as it is to know what you wanna do.

(37:43): Yeah. I just think that's awesome. We're, we're going a little bit late. So I wanna make sure that I wrap up there. There's so much stuff I, I wanted to get into. You're going into commercial wholesalers that are doing storage facilities. There's just so much stuff going on. So if people wanna follow up with you or learn a little bit more about you, you know Philly home investor.com obviously is the place to go. If you wanna check out, you know what Dave's doing on the SEO front, you should absolutely go check out that site. It's a fantastic investor site. Think they do a really amazing job there, but is anywhere else you want people to follow up with you and, and kind of learn a little bit more about you or reach out or anything like that. Yeah,

(38:18): Man, absolutely. Sure. I, I have a, a, a personal website as well. It's just my last name, Bachman investment group. It has all of the companies that I own and operate. So if you're a buyer in the Philadelphia or area, you can join my buyers just there. It also has some of our, some of my podcasts that I've been on. And also a way to reach out to me as well. Cool. Yeah. So that's Bachman investment group.com. Bachman is B. OK. M a N. You got it. I check that out. I will have both those links in the show notes. You can go to a stewarts.com/podcast to get those, my friend, thank you so much for coming up. This was really, really fascinating. I'm so glad we got a chance to catch up, man. This is Great. Cool, man. Thank you for having me again. I'm always, always happy to share whatever wisdom I'm I can drop on people. Well, you, you you've got it. So I'm, I'm glad that you're dropping it. And again, I'm completely stealing the exposed to COVID thing. COVID exposure. I'm a hundred percent taken that. So no, no, take backs that's our goes I'm handing it off to you. All right. Cheer.

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