5 - Presenting a real estate proposal- Rick Otton & Nathan Baw
Transcript
00:00We needed to get rid of the crap that wasn't working and then double down and really hone all your resources into what's working
00:10Hey Nathan the guy that turns ideas into business
00:15Empires, how are you going business legend? G'day Rick you innovative disruptive property guru
00:22Here we are again
00:29Rickster how are we today sir right fit fine wonderful and well, but let me tell you something
00:35I want to know this we've been talking about property strategies that we can talk about more and more property strategies
00:41But you know what you did all that and you learn all these property strategies and as a result you got
00:46massive amount of properties
00:48Then you ended up with a property business and then you flowed from the property business in all sorts of other
00:54Businesses that you springboarded from from the property business. What do you think?
00:59Some of the things are that people need to be aware of that
01:02Yeah, I think people are gonna do one property then two or then three and someone last night said she loves property
01:07Well, what's this transition look like and what are people need to be aware of?
01:11Yeah, it's good question because we obviously this podcast is all about the business
01:17properties, so
01:18Doing one transaction as you say is great. The next one's great. But how do you scale that into a business into a business?
01:26So that's what I've been focusing on and because I love business
01:31I just love business in any shape or form and I have a bunch of different businesses across different categories and
01:38Starting them up. I find that really fun. I find that the most exciting part of any business is the startup phase
01:45So, what do you need for starting up a business so it's always good with the property when you do one or two
01:52Transactions and then you work out a system or a formula for rape but reproducing and replicating and scaling
01:58So you need that in any business? What's a consistent?
02:03Strategy that you can use again and again and again to grow
02:06one of the most important things in my mind in any business in anywhere property or anything is
02:14Lead generation we need a
02:17juicy thick bunch of leads coming in on a regular basis and
02:22so that it just gives us so much more options because you can imagine if you've got a bunch of
02:27Properties, for example coming in you've got lots of motivated sellers being in the situation that you can choose between
02:35What you want to do the best juiciest deals and the deals that like you both the most
02:41What do you want to do rather what you have to do right exactly and there's so much power in choice
02:47so when you're negotiating if you've got
02:50One deal that you only have in your pipeline and this that's all you've got then obviously you're pretty motivated
02:57And you become pretty lenient in in how you negotiate
03:01Whereas there's so many different types of leads, but I can get leads. Hey, how did I get Lisa?
03:06We put those very first yellow and black ugly we buy houses boards up that was in Manchester in April
03:122009 I think we put 65 in the CBD of Manchester that got chased to the airport by the police, right?
03:17That was the first time we ever put those ugly boards up, but they work incredibly effectively and that was just one type of marketing
03:24But there's just so many other different sources
03:26Where are you finding today people need to be looking for in order to so where's the future gone when it comes down to getting leads?
03:34We're doing heap of
03:36Automation so through through the likes of bots and automation software
03:41So we're reaching out particularly through social media marketing and across lots of different businesses not just property
03:48But lots of different businesses. We're using automated software and and this is in categories like LinkedIn
03:55Facebook and Instagram
03:57so there's a lot of software these days that we can utilize for our lead generation strategies and
04:05It's all done on
04:07automation, so
04:09That's the way it's going. Everyone's online. We need to be online
04:12There's so much opportunity just for example through Facebook groups if we were to reach out to Facebook groups in
04:20property owners around the UK or the US wherever you're targeting and
04:25Going to become a member of those groups and then we can use certain software that automates a direct message outreach
04:33So it means that we can reach out to 50 plus people a day
04:36You've got to be careful of social media marketing algorithms that you're not you're not going to be fast as spamming
04:43But if you do it within the comfortable levels and and we generally go somewhere between 20 to 50 in each different category
04:51So we'll do those outreach every day and we can send direct messages to
04:56investors or
04:57people in the right
04:59Category of who we're targeting and get responses and start relationships. So it's a fantastic way of lead generation
05:06But this reminds me just leave everybody to the hopper right credit this big hopper
05:10You just suck everybody at the top and then you start shaking it and all the gold drops out the bottom of the hopper, right?
05:17Correct and get it all going
05:19So that's just one of a bunch of strategies that we use for business growth and lead generation. So direct message marketing
05:27Fantastic, it's organic and it's free
05:29To is something that we've used a lot in the UK for generating leads for property in the past
05:35So I've had websites that we set up and we do an article on every day
05:41So we create more keywords that we're looking for we optimize it
05:45We got to the stage in the UK where I was getting around three
05:51qualified sellers per day
05:53Coming in and it was really interesting as we were learning your strategies back then which was starting what?
05:592009 around 2009 2010 we were building up these websites creating the SEO
06:05search engine
06:07Optimization if you know what that means
06:09so that's optimizing your websites for keywords so that people who are going to be searching coming off those keywords and
06:17We were interestingly enough. We were getting
06:20When we first started utilizing your systems and and patterns of speech
06:25We were converting one in 50 leads that came through the the website as we refine that
06:32Process we got to convert one in three leads
06:36I
06:37Remember when I used to run some pretty advanced classes, right and the kids and they'd be converting one in one half
06:43Right, but I don't do that day one, right? You just get really good at what you do
06:47you said something interesting that was was
06:49People get one or two properties and three properties and they go to a business now and you actually said you do a couple of property
06:56Transactions and then you scale it up now when you started the scale and what you're doing
07:03I think this is an interesting module right here
07:05Were you doing all different types of property strategies or did you specialize in something?
07:11And then when you pick the something you just scaled that
07:15Absolutely. No, absolutely good point
07:17So it was about refining and that's how we went from one in 50 to one in three
07:23conversions and it was just narrowing the focus down being very very expecting in essence by
07:30Doing the vendor finance and the the creative systems
07:33You just open yourself up for the ability to do so many more transactions
07:38We were actually doing everything at the beginning and that's what what we do
07:43It was much mud on the wall
07:44See what sticks and then choose one that you get the most momentum in and that I do
07:49Across all all my businesses, for example in my food business
07:52What we do is we've got about eight different verticals eight different strategies for getting the site
07:59So we wholesale we sell retail we have restaurants. We have
08:05Fundraising we do catering so in property you can do the same you can stretch your works and what resonates best
08:12But there's always the 80-20 principle
08:15So 80% of your business is going to come from 20% of your strategy
08:20So if you can narrow that down find what you're good at and find what's converting best
08:26Then you really start to scale
08:28Would you say that when you do that, right?
08:30You start getting the numbers numbers are coming in you're looking at where your money's the most your money's coming from
08:35Would you suggest therefore you start letting go of the other stuff and pour more energy and resources into that one?
08:42It's all about doubling down tripling down 10x
08:46Whatever's working obviously put your energy towards that get rid of the others very quickly
08:51And that's another thing that I've found in business
08:54Businesses that are hemorrhaging cash and
08:57On a daily basis and you've got to shut them down pretty quick. And then you you feel energy
09:03So we originally when we went on shark tank and pitched our restaurants, we were really really fun restaurants
09:09that was the main thing and then we found that that was actually pretty challenging as very
09:14Challenging industry to be in they say the question is how do you make a million dollars out of restaurants start with 10 million?
09:21So, you know that says we needed to get rid of the crap that wasn't working and then double down and really hone all your
09:29Resources into what's working and just grow the hell out of that
09:33You know
09:33Can you say that because you know world the way by houses brand of the UK and it just took off right and you'd have lots
09:40Of people calling it for all sorts of stuff and I even to this day people call me about a development
09:45I simply say I don't do developments, you know about Airbnb. I don't do rent to rent
09:51I don't do HMO
09:52I'm really really smart to do doing what I don't do
09:55So I've always found that every time I've gone into areas for which I have no experience
09:59I end up getting the experience by burning cash, right?
10:02So I've always been this is the bit I do
10:05But I'd never so if someone rang me up and said I would I do I went to rent or an HMO
10:09I don't you say look I don't do that
10:11But I'll find someone who does that like I'm not gonna spend the life energy to learn
10:16I'd like you said I'd rather be 50 miles deep and an inch wide
10:21Right, so I like like Greg brand of spaghetti. I just do one thing really well all the other stuff
10:27I accept the fact that I'm not the guy for you
10:29I might do joint ventures with other guys and plug other guys in but I totally get it
10:33Yeah, cuz it's gonna be everything to everybody. Ah, very true
10:36it's very hard to be everything to everybody and and you can find what you're really good at and
10:42Scale that then that's where it happens and it's sometimes in the traditional way
10:48For example of buying property we we to be a little bit limited based on borrowings our borrowing capacity. So
10:55Utilizing creative strategies for finance is a system that allows you just to scale the hell out of your business and it's infinite
11:03You you know app so you when you're going into creative finance
11:07You can just it's a just so scalable that you you don't have to have finance to
11:13Thousand you can just do it
11:15Yeah, no, that's it so so really what you're saying is is we've got some property to other businesses you've found really those
11:23Property the way you ran your machine the property business that you ran your machine
11:28Really just picked it up and duplicated that to other types of business exactly, right?
11:31Yeah, the success applies to any business that you run be it property or anything. Yeah
11:37It's nice to you. Look. Yeah, we were property deal
11:40And if you had to do a property deal knowing that there's all sorts of different property deals out there
11:46What would you do and what wouldn't you do based on your own experience exactly based on my experience?
11:52I would only do things that I was comfortable with doing but if there's a great opportunity
11:56There's no reason why as you mentioned before we can't find joint venture partners
12:01We pick up the bit that we're good at and then pass it on to them that where their strengths lie
12:07So it just means you can do so many more deals and you've got so many more
12:12business opportunities
12:13That you can say yes to when you strategically aligned for example our little podcast that we don't right now
12:19You know you get property. I'm
12:22Keep passionate about businesses and then so putting those together. It becomes a great outcome
12:28You know, many people will benefit from the business of property combining
12:32Put the business together. I know that freaks a lot of people out. They go. I've never started a business
12:37How do you start know of all the years we've done property people always go where you get started?
12:42I totally get it. But I reckon as soon as you start talking about business
12:46Where do you get started? So I know I'm gonna be really simple here
12:51But if I said to you Nathan, I'm thinking about starting a business. What do I need to know?
12:56What are some of the real basics?
12:58Just to get myself along that road the
13:01Bing time the best opportunities in business is finding where the biggest problems lie
13:07and then if you can start with the problem and then step one step back and say what's my
13:14solution and if you can bring an amazing solution to a big problem you have a
13:19Phenomenal business or you have the start of a phenomenal business. So it's really interesting because yeah
13:25Virgin right virgins never actually created anything
13:28What they've done is looked at existing things seen where they've been problems with existing things in business and just made them better
13:35Yep, right a lot of guys ago. Okay, so
13:40What's a by the Apple company, right?
13:42They never invented the mp3 player, but then they brought but I just made it better with the iPod, right?
13:48But they never invented mp3
13:49So they just put a better vehicle on which it to run and that's what virgin does
13:53I'll pick up stuff you go. How can we make that little bit there better?
13:57So you're right because there's a problem. This isn't working that well. How do we fix it? So it does
14:02Well recreating the wheel is a very long and intensive process and it's generally not very lucrative
14:08But making an improvement on an existing structure. For example, we for our products
14:13Tommy's one of my businesses that we do we manufacture pasta now, there's a lot of crap pasta out there on the market
14:20They fill the needs but what we started to do is go a way better. So in making small increments
14:27we've gone to just making the whole process a lot more seamless with
14:33Delivery home delivery free delivery and then product in itself as I say, there's a billion different pastas out there
14:40but a product which has
14:42Amazing flavor without all the artificial rubbish in it is is the club
14:46So we haven't recreated food as such we haven't built food for the first time, but we've just made it better
14:53Look, you always say you can get from A to B either in a Rolls-Royce or a mini
14:58So it is all about getting the message out and same with any property. So property business. We've got to be
15:05Generating a shitload of leads if we're going to move forwards, right?
15:09So we're in front of 50,000 people so that's in our own retail stores
15:14We run pop-up shops in very very busy shopping till at Perth Western Australia and we're in front of all those eyeballs
15:21Plus we're we're doing a hunch of social media marketing
15:24So we constantly giving the message out there because we've got a lot of educating to do
15:30So the first step is educating our customers and then the second step is is constantly around
15:36And then the third step is having a really awesome product that will that will business
15:43So in the property world what that means the conversion is
15:47Having an amazing solution that can help so many sellers and buyers move
15:51Forwards that people are going to start talking about you and referring you so that's in the money generation
15:58Opportunity is having a great solution to any of the problems out there
16:03and you just watch the momentum that that creates pasta, for example is just freaking awesome and
16:09Because it's a great product we generate so much heat out of it
16:13So you're bringing that across to any business you like
16:16Well, as you said that's word of mouth, right?
16:18It's best marketing machine you could ever have you're gonna spend millions on marketing
16:21But all you need is Mary Smith to say to Sue listen, if you're gonna go and buy this ravioli get this stuff
16:27It's a great. It's fantastic, right and that just knocks in the teeth. Everybody else's marketing machine, but I'm correct. Yeah
16:33Yeah
16:34So
16:36Builds your business if you had to start again, what do you reckon you might have done differently without a
16:42Doubt crossing that I've started in particularly in the early days when I was in the health industry
16:47That the most in me is just marketing and lead generation and just getting getting your message out there
16:54You can if you can't process your business just grows, you know sales are the important part of the business
17:01So not only lead generation, but then what do you do when you've got that customer on board or
17:09Knocking on your ring you on the phone the patterns of speech in the language that we use are just absolutely
17:16Essential is there's no good having a truckload of limb bumbling on the phone and we don't really understand
17:23I mean, I won't have any more leads if you can't convert them
17:26Well, it's all about your ability to convert that well, I guess a suspect into a prospect
17:31I've got a thousand late. How many to convert one?
17:35Maybe I need a hundred leads if you convert ten
17:38Yeah, yep
17:39and and have that give people the comfort level around what you're doing and
17:45Also the strategies in the background that you can solve a lot more problems
17:50So when we do the property industry
17:52They're just absolutely amazing tools to have for increasing conversion
17:57I remember the first negotiation book I ever read. I think it was called you can negotiate anything
18:03It was I heard Herb Cohen. Yes
18:05You read two books one was called negotiate this and the first one that you mentioned both by Herb Cohen
18:11And he was the guy that negotiated
18:13For the American government to get out of the Vietnam War at the Paris Peace Conference
18:19Fantastic it was it was a mate and I remember the first time I read it I was in as
18:26pharmacies I was in the health industry and I had just read this stuff and one of the things that it's talked about was I
18:34always ask for more than you expect to get and I was sitting in this meeting with a with the cities watered jugs and
18:41they were discontinuing them and
18:43I think the wholesale cost was something right around $25 and I was sitting there
18:50absolutely shitting myself
18:52wanting to about to
18:54I'd read the night before for the negotiation to see if I could get a cheaper price on this on these just sweating I
19:00Could hardly breathe because I was just so nervous. This is the first time I'd ever negotiated anything and
19:06He said so I'm gonna let you have them at
19:10$10 $10 a jug from 25. We're just trying to discontinue them. So we want to get rid of the lot. So I said
19:18I'll give you $5 and I just blurted it out and then I sat there and there was just silence and I just that was the
19:25Most nervous, I think I'd ever been in my first negotiation and then a few seconds passed and he said yeah, okay
19:32We'll do that. It's like what it's that easy
19:35Once you know the systems and the tools and it's like, oh my god, and then it was just
19:40Mind-blowing and then from then on I just started learning more and more negotiation
19:45I spent you know a year with you hanging out with you and and learning all negotiation strategies and it's just so
19:52It's into the zone and I teach my team
19:56you know all about negotiating and and when they do customers and how to upsell and all those things and it's very
20:04Uncomfortable for a lot of people
20:06Can I just say I can jump in there?
20:08but you're on a bit of a roll and said the whole thing about sales and
20:11Negotiation is one of those things that most people hate and what are you gonna find is most people on the internet?
20:16They'll say I'll do anything on the internet
20:18But I don't have to sell anything to anybody and I don't have to negotiate with everybody because they're not comfortable
20:22Now what they're really saying is you're not comfortable because you don't know
20:26So let's say I'll give you a roadmap right and the road map said you start here
20:30You say that say that say questions, right?
20:32and I teach you guys the eight questions because that takes you in and out of a
20:36Negotiation every single time never change learn that since I was 18 years old and even now I still use to say make questions
20:41Well, when you got a formula, it gives you much more reassurance
20:45Then if you just walk it in there to go, oh my god, what's gonna happen next?
20:49What am I gonna do join me? Yeah. Yeah, and once it is so much fun
20:53It's just mind-blowing how it can take you
20:56I remember one of the key things and this is an absolute nugget changing the we are question or
21:02Asking a completely different question will obviously lead that customer into the direction that we want them to go into
21:08So that was one of the following things is think one or two steps ahead of in the negotiation of where it's going to end up
21:17Tell us
21:18Funny because most scripts or most things or people say are embedded right and they get activated by what you say
21:24So if you say to your partner, I love you, babe, what do you reckon? They're gonna automatically say back to you
21:29I love you to that's embedded, right?
21:31So what you've done is if you're not too sure whether she loves you at all, don't say do you love me?
21:36Because that makes the person uncomfortable just say I love you, babe
21:39And then automatically springboards back the reply, right?
21:42And I was telling a guy the other day that what his wife does is warning because he doesn't understand this and his wife will go
21:49By one o'clock in the morning, right? I really love you. She'll wake him up now
21:53He does the embedded reply and he goes well, I love you, too
21:58Then she says well, babe
21:59if you really love me you'd go downstairs and take the garbage can out because I forgot to
22:04Right, and then you did he go downstairs you thought the garbage can in your dressing gown and your slippers
22:08You find there's 15 other guys in the neighborhood
22:10Also one o'clock in the morning paying out the crash grant because I didn't understand a bit language
22:14So I always had a guy to get around that when your wife says to you at one o'clock in the morning, babe
22:18I love you, right? The answer should also be awesome
22:20The thing is most languages embedded and so if you know what the inputs are, you know
22:25The hours that you can actually know what someone's gonna say
22:27If you've influenced what you say first because most language replies were better like, you know, I always do this
22:34You just go to work right? Yeah. Hey John. How are you? He says good. How are you Rick?
22:38You say good and you walk on it's so embedded that if you listen to the podcast you go to work
22:43You go. Hey John, how are you? He'll say good. How are you Rick?
22:47Good
22:52And that's another thing I notice when I'm selling it's it's not about the words much but the body language
22:59So yeah, I tell people I tell my this there's a way
23:04It doesn't matter so much you say because I train our team exactly what to say
23:09But but I've had in past team members who just blurted out
23:14Identical read it off the script and we get zero sales, you know, it's crap bad results
23:19But then you understand more of the body language and the use of your hands and your facial expressions
23:25you know, I feel 80% of
23:29Information that comes from from those and you're the key mate, you know, you studied
23:35First one came back there in 1980 and I tell it was really funny because I started work with Alan
23:401978 the first book on body language came out in 80, right?
23:44now that was the first book ever on body language because prior to that it was only
23:48Darwin's book of evolution or scientific journals and I remember when the body language came back it book came out in 80
23:54No publisher in the world would print it
23:57This is a really interesting story and no publisher of the world because they all thought was with voodoo
24:02We know crystals in the air like what is this about you're telling me that when people's eyes do this and that no publisher
24:09Embarrassing their publishing house by publishing body language. Now. Here's what's interesting
24:14Alan was forced to self-publish. So to publish the book cost a dollar ten and it used to sell for
24:201995 here's the point. It's now sold 18 million copies
24:25Fantastic. Yeah
24:28But I used to go to these conventions and watch him trying to introduce body language to people because you had 7% of
24:34Communications words 38% tonality
24:3855% body language and I used to watch all these people in rooms and I used to look at him like here a dickhead mate
24:45What are you talking about?
24:46You're wacko
24:47But as he actually said Alan said if you want to introduce anything in all marketplace
24:53It'll take you 20 years for people to get it to get past what I call tipping point, right?
24:58Tipping point is where the first 20% get it and then it tips over and everybody else gets it
25:02But to you about 20 years and now there's a million different books on body language and it's a great subject and blah blah
25:08But he was out there the first one. Awesome. That's so cool
25:11We should do a whole podcast on that at some stage
25:13But I think we're getting pretty close to needing to wrap it up this one mate
25:17Well buddy until then I guess I'll look forward to speak to you on the next