YOU MIGHT BE ONE HOUSE FLIP AWAY FROM TURNING IT AROUND
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Tips on how to flip houses by Tom Nardone
- Why you might be one house flip from turning it around: A lot of people don’t realize that in this house flipping game you’re just one flip away from putting 10 grand in your bank account
- If there’s a vacant rundown house somewhere, the ones I would see on my mail route, those are a very good lead for somebody who’s trying to buy a house below the market
- If I had to start all over again, I’d probably start out buying and selling, and taking care of today’s cash flow needs first, build up a pile of money and then start buying and holding and thinking about the long-term residual income that it can bring.
- I still use direct mail
- We’ve wholesaled some houses. And by wholesaling I mean, you’re not going to be rehabbing it. You’re just going to get that property under contract and assign the property to another investor who will do all that work, That’s how I teach a lot of my students to start out today.
- Free ebook – see below for details
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SHARE THIS EPISODE: YOU MIGHT BE ONE HOUSE FLIP AWAY FROM TURNING IT AROUND
YOU MIGHT BE ONE HOUSE FLIP AWAY FROM TURNING IT AROUND
A lot of people don’t realize that in this house flipping game you’re just one flip away from putting 10 grand in your bank account
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Doug: Well, welcome back listeners, another episode of Real Marketing, Real Fast. Today, I think you’re going to want to stay tuned. You want to listen in, and you’re going to want to have a notepad. We’re going to take a different approach. I’ve got, joining in the studio, a gentleman I met in San Diego at the New Media Summit, Steve Olsher’s event, and his name is Tom Nardone. Now, Tom is known as the millionaire mailman. And Tom started working at the Post Office back as a mailman in the 80s, and it didn’t take him very long to realize that the security of a good job or the entrapment of a good job really was no different than a 30 or 40-year jail sentence. So, if you feel trapped then your income is limited.
So as Tom started buying houses on his mail routes, and after 25 years of buying, holding, buying, selling houses Tom has bought and sold over 250 properties. He’s also co-authored the book, The Secrets of the Real Estate Millionaires, and has created and written course for several real estate information products. Tom has twice been featured on television with two appearances on the Good Morning America, and Charlie Gibson, and Joan London, as well as the CNBC’s Power Lunch with Bill Griffith. With radio appearance on the Cash Flow show, and the real estate related podcasts.
So, I am super excited today to talk about taking a different direction, looking at your marketing, and maybe looking at exiting your career and doing something to get you out of that 30 or 40-year trap. So, welcome to the Real Marketing, Real Podcast today.
Tom Nardone: Thanks for having me on the show, Doug. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Doug: Well, I am super excited that we connected because I remember when we first met in San Diego you had such a great personality and such a great presence. And as we talked about, before we started recording, a shtick that really got people’s attention, and they were just drawn to know who is this guy and what’s he doing.
Tom Nardone: Well, thanks. Yeah, I tried to do as much as I could at that event that would serve as a memory point for people to just never forget who I was.
Doug: So, before we pick your brain and figure out all your top marketing secrets and why you’ve been so successful at what you’re doing, why don’t you share just a little bit of your backstory? I mean, this is an unconventional story in that you’ve taken two totally different career directions.
Tom Nardone: Sure, sure, Doug. Yeah, I actually started working for the Post Office as a mailman down here in sunny South Florida. I live in the Ft Lauderdale, Florida area, which is close to Miami. And realized after working, and starting there at age 19, after about five or six years that the Post Office was a good job, but it really wasn’t my highest calling in life. So, I set out to do some other things. And my wife and I, at that time to try to get out of the grind of working daily on these jobs, we tried different multilevel marketing, opportunities. And there are some good ones out there, but we couldn’t find one that worked for us.
And then, about the mid-80s, in South Florida here, we had a lot of these no money down gurus that would blow through town on a regular basis selling their no money down information products, and I was lucky I hooked up with a couple mentors that were real guys and they made me aware that, “Listen, you’d be a great fit for flipping houses because you’re a mailman. So all day long you either walk around, or you drive around and you see houses. So, you’ll be able to see things that no one else’s and you’ll be really good at this.
So, I took their advice and I used my job being a mailman as a platform to give me an unfair advantage over the market of other investors that were doing the same.
Doug; Well, that’s interesting. I mean, I just, making a note here it says that you’ll be able to see things that nobody else would be able to see. So, I think that’s so applicable to so many people in their jobs. So, I guess, the questions to our listeners is, what things are you able to see that nobody else can see, and how can you take that and leverage that like you did and turn it into a super successful business?
Tom Nardone; Sure. Well, back in the 80s, if you remember, I bought my first investment property in 1985. We didn’t have some of the tools that people even take for granted today. There was no internet. There really were no computers. There weren’t any cellphones in 1985, or if it was a cell phone it usually came in a big suitcase, you carried around with you and it was only for the rich and elite. But, just being out in the neighborhoods all day I would see houses that had tall grass. I’d see houses that had water turnoff notices around the doorknob, the mailbox was stuffed with mail, newspapers piled up in the driveway, stuff like that, and those were a great lead because you couldn’t find those things online.
And, I’ll contend to say that even in this day in age it’s hard to find those things online. So, the things that a mailman sees, as far as the real estate business goes, is huge because those are good leads for people who want to flip houses. Because, if there’s a vacant rundown house somewhere, the ones I would see on my mail route, those are a very good lead for somebody who’s trying to buy a house below the market.
Doug: So, what did your wife think at that time? You said, “Hey, I’ve got a new idea. I think we should start buying houses.”
Tom Nardone: You know, she was really okay with it because we had to find something that worked for us. And, I’ll say, when I started out it wasn’t a get rich quick scheme for me, at all. It was sensible. It was a get rich slow plan, for sure, and I almost like to say that I started out backwards in the business because I started out buying and holding. And I was building this big retirement for one day when I’m going to retire, and I guess that I had some foresight, being 25 years old at the time. Now, I’m 58 and some of the houses that I bought 30 years ago, just through the natural plan of paying off a 30-year mortgage 30 years later, I figured the last payment will be made. I own the house, and then I can keep all the rent money.
So, that’s a no-brainer, but if I had to start all over again I’d probably start out buying and selling, and taking care of today’s cash flow needs first, build up a pile of money and then start buying and holding and thinking about the long-term residual income that it can bring.
Doug: Now, you don’t have any real estate background. Are you a licensed realtor or no?
Tom Nardone: No, never been licensed, don’t have a real estate license. I probably have grown my knowledge to be greater than what most realtors understand about real estate because I’ve taken a lot of seminars. But, yeah. I have no professional licensing. I just figured a lot of this out by myself with competent mentors I’ve had over the years.
Doug: That’s really cool. Yeah, I know a couple guys I had met years ago that are in the business. They’re down in Utah. And what’s interesting is, they talk about the stuff that you’ve just shared with our listeners is that they need people feet on the street to go actually walk neighbourhoods and look for … They have a whole list of things that you look for to see if a house maybe is, like you said, is abandoned, or is an opportunity to purchase. But, it’s really they’re training people to do what you were already doing.
Tom Nardone: Yeah, and it’s funny how that works and comes full circle because here we are in this digital internet age, and the information is readily available in most markets, right at your fingertips of your keyboard. But, it’s those houses that are sitting there vacant that are not on any type of marketing list, or direct mail list, that no one knows about but somebody giving it a visual eyeball. It’s hard to scale because you can’t be, obviously, spending every day driving up and down every street in America looking for vacant houses. But, if you can figure out some kind of bird dog system, like I did using mailmen to do that for you, then it became an edge that I had that other person didn’t.
Doug: So, that’s really cool. So, you’ve brought in other mailmen to help you identify properties in?
Tom Nardone: Yeah, I would just tell them, “Hey, all day long you drive by these things. You see houses with the tall grass, you know that they’re vacant,” and if you’re the regular mailman you know when somebody’s living there or not living there. So, those would be a good lead for me, and if I close on one of those deals I’ll take care of you at Christmas time, give you a little Christmas tip or something.
So, that’s how I built the network that nobody else knew how to do.
Doug: That’s really cool. It’s really … I just like how creative you are and what you’ve done. And, I think that so many times people get into a job or like you’ve said a jail sentence. They get the 40 years, used to be the 40-year plan. And you’re working along, and they’re not happy with what they’re doing and I could never understand why people would keep going to a job they didn’t like. But, in this case, you say, “Hey, it’s not that you didn’t like it, but you saw a different opportunity.” You wanted a side hustle for a better life for your family.
Tom Nardone: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the big picture here might be, what do you want to have one day when you get down to retirement? If you just have 10 properties, like 10 houses, single-family homes, real simple program, paid for free and clear, and the average one rents for 1500 to 2000 a month, and all you gotta do is pay the taxes and the insurance once they’re paid for. I mean, that’s an income for retirement that most Americans will never experience, and it’s solid. Once a house is free and clear no one can take it from you. If you have insurance on it and it burns down to the ground, you get it replaced. So, it’s a pretty good plan.
Doug: Yeah, I had heard some financial numbers and I’m not saying that these are accurate, but these are the numbers I had heard a seminar, was that the average American last … when the big financial crisis in the real estate market crashed and burned, the difference between people keeping their homes and losing their homes was less than a thousand dollars a month.
Tom Nardone: Yeah, let me tell you, and I did go through that crash. And did I have some setbacks, to be totally honest with you Doug, yeah. It was a painful time, mainly because all the fundamentals of the business itself were just messed up.
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SHARE THIS EPISODE: YOU MIGHT BE ONE HOUSE FLIP AWAY FROM TURNING IT AROUND
YOU MIGHT BE ONE HOUSE FLIP AWAY FROM TURNING IT AROUND
A lot of people don’t realize that in this house flipping game you’re just one flip away from putting 10 grand in your bank account
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Doug: Sure.
Tom Nardone: There were … Banks weren’t leading to people, even if they had great credit. They just were not doing mortgages, and it was hard to sell. So, yeah. We went through that but we survived. We’re still here, and we might have lost a little of that battle, but I think we won the war overall.
Doug: Yeah, and the point was really that if people had a side hustle, and had an income property like you’re talking about, that provided that extra thousand dollars a month a lot of people that lost their homes would have because they would have had that extra money to stay in the marketplace.
Tom Nardone: Correct. And, I think, for the most part, you hear those people that really did get in trouble it was because they had a mortgage on their house.
Doug: Sure.
Tom Nardone: And a mortgage is not a bad thing, there’s certainly smart debt and dumb debt when we borrow things, but if you did own the house free and clear then, again, nobody can really take it away from you, good times or bad.
Doug: So, when we were talking before we started recording you mentioned somebody’s name, a guy that I followed in marketing for a long time. That was Dan Kennedy, so do you mind sharing with our listeners just a little bit of your experience? I mean, it’s always interesting because we talked about, or you just mentioned, “Hey, before the internet, before cell phones,” and I think back of these big white plastic 3-ring binders that I have with Dan Kennedy’s materials and his cassette tapes, and all of his books. So, at what point were you working with Dan?
Tom Nardone: Yeah, I was in his mastermind group. And myself and about a dozen other guys would fly up to his house in Ohio, and we meet in his basement, and we would do that four times a year. That was actually in 2005, and a lot of the principles with writing good copy, and headlines that attract, and growing a following of people, that all still is pertinent today but the online presence we have today with some of the marketing funnels that you can build with other programs, infusion soft click funnels, etc, that didn’t exist back then. Or, at least, at that time I think infusion soft was just starting to emerge.
So, we did a lot of things with print and paper back then, but the whole concept of writing good copy and the concept of not being boring in your marketing, I think those are timeless things we learn from Dan that will work in any market.
Doug: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I love his material. At that time I was writing long-form multi-step direct mail, a direct response to moving the sales doll for clients, and was really enjoying his stuff. And we’ve just taken that like you said, and we’ve transitioned that style of attention-getting headline, problem, agitate, solve, what’s my USP, what makes me different, what makes me unique compared to everybody else, and just move that into the digital space. Although, I still like mail. I still, because … I don’t know about you, but when I send them a letter to somebody that I’ve maybe met at a Chamber of Commerce, a networking event, often they’ll phone me and go, “Oh, wow. Thanks, I got your letter,” as if I had done them some big favour and all I did was pan them a letter.
Tom Nardone: What you said is very true, Doug. And, obviously, here we are in 2018. And if you look at your inbox for your email, it’s gotten really noisy in the last few years. But, when I send out direct mail, I guess maybe because I worked for the Post Office for 16 years and left there at age 35, I understand mail. So, I still use direct mail. And, in finding house deals, it’s actually still very effective. In fact, more so effective today because the list that you can get with direct mail is much smarter than they ever were. And when I say much smarter, it’s like if you’re going to market to single family homes, well, the mailing list you buy today they don’t just know the name of the owner and the address of the property. It actually knows the amount of debt that’s on the property. It knows the amount of equity that’s on the property. It knows if the property’s free and clear. It knows the owner’s age. It knows how long they’ve owned the house.
So, all these extra filters you can build into your list. So, you can develop a very high targeted mailing list with the direct mail today.
Doug: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I live the world of lists, mostly from the email, digital side, but you’re right. I mean, you can add the psychographics, in terms of age, income, a number of kids, what credit cards they have, what vehicles they drive, where they vacation. So, that data is available to make smart decisions.
Tom Nardone: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, absolutely. So, we have some lists that we’ve tested over the years that we’ve found be effective, and good old direct mail, with just a cheap postcard, gets the message out and it’s effective.
Doug: So, there we go. So there’s a, for my listeners going, “What are you talking about direct mail?” So, I just published a book on email marketing, but again, I tell people you need to be tactic agnostic. You need to do what works. And so, coming back to your point, huge fan of a direct mail. I like the book, Blue Ocean Strategy, you go where the crowd isn’t. And the crowd, right now, isn’t in the direct mail, so you may consider that, listeners, to look at a way to drive your sales, and that reaches out to people via pen and paper.
Tom Nardone: Yeah, it still works. It still works. In fact, it may speak even louder today because, as we said, a lot of the traffic’s shifted toward the inbox which has been noisy, and very few people are in the mailbox these days.
Doug: Yeah, absolutely. So, why don’t you share just a little bit about how you got into the podcasting space? I mean … So, I didn’t know you before. I hadn’t heard of your business, and then we fast forward now to the New Media Summit, and as you came. And why don’t you just share with our listeners what your thinking was when you walked into the room.
Tom Nardone: Yeah, I really didn’t know what to expect when I got there. I was thinking, “Oh, did I waste my time? Or, what am I doing here?” And I didn’t really, wasn’t really super clear about the overall objective of it all. But then, as I realized people were getting exposure to different people’s shows and, of course, the podcast icons that were present there. They have large followings, and I wasn’t sure if my message might be a match to their list or not, but I thought, “Hey, there’s enough commonality that the ones that I … There is a fit here. They’ll pick me up, and I’ll be a guest on their show and, hopefully, I can add value to what their listening audience can hear.” So, that’s where I went. I’ve probably been a guest on eight or nine shows now, and I have probably another half dozen or so on the calendar.
Doug: Well, good for you. I was thinking more about your presence. I mean, you did think, just so your listeners know, Tom didn’t just show up at the event wondering, “Oh, what am I going to do?” He did plan, and he did have a strategy to make sure that people notice and remembered him. So, that’s what I’m thinking of. Tell us what your thinking was. And, I think, I don’t know whether it was something that just came to you before you showed up, but I’m pretty sure you were organized and planned before you got there.
Tom Nardone: Yeah, thanks. I see where you’re going, Doug. Yeah, I needed to come up with some kind of memory hook, because I knew there was going to be 150 other people there just like me. And I know how it is when you go to networking events, because probably, like much of your listening audience, they’ve been to dozens if not hundreds of them. As soon as you get somebody’s business card the next day you don’t really remember who they are. So, you gotta do something outrageous. And, as we talked about before the show, Kennedy was always big on the biggest sin marketing is being bored. So, I figured, how can I really soup this up and utilize my memory hook as millionaire mailman?
Well, what I did was I went to San Diego. I went to that show. I had some little foam rubber houses printed up that … from these promotional companies. They’ll do coffee mugs, and they call them squishies I believe, and I had these little foam rubber squishy house built up with my contact information, my website, my phone number, who I am, Tom Nardone Millionaire Mailman because I wanted to be known as the house flipping coach. That’s what I do in this day in age, in addition to my house flipping business I now coach and train others how they can flip houses as well.
So, I had that all printed up on these little squishy houses. I literally just … I did make an announcement to the audience first. I said, “These are not going to hurt you. They’re squishy.” I didn’t want them to think I was throwing blocks of wood out to the audience.
Doug: I remember that yeah.
Tom Nardone: So they lose their eye or something. So, I threw them out into the audience and that was different. They had to dodge them or try to catch them. And the other thing I did was, I have my mailman bag from back in my mailman days, actually, it’s not my official bag. I dug … I wouldn’t want to be caught stealing Government property, so let the post office have the bag, but you can buy anything on eBay these days. I bought a mailman bag, a real mailman bag on eBay. So, I don’t know how that guy got it, but I took that with me and I filled with the little squishy houses and had … I figured, what a visual memory hook that would be. And I carried that bag around with me, wearing a suit and tie, for like three days having the mailman bag and those squishy houses.
And by the end of the three days, there was no doubt of who Tom Nardone was. He was the millionaire mailman because it was visual and everybody knew what I did. So, it worked out well.
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SHARE THIS EPISODE: YOU MIGHT BE ONE HOUSE FLIP AWAY FROM TURNING IT AROUND
YOU MIGHT BE ONE HOUSE FLIP AWAY FROM TURNING IT AROUND
A lot of people don’t realize that in this house flipping game you’re just one flip away from putting 10 grand in your bank account
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Doug: Absolutely. And here we are in the podcast, and I’m bringing it up because I was one of the 40 guys there, icons, looking for people to interview on my podcast, and to help share some tips with the audience. And so, you had probably the most memorable presence there. I mean, there were lots of great people there, but you really went out of your way. So, that’s where I’m going. So, with our listening audience missed saying, Tom took an event that 150 other people paid the same price that he did. They drove, flew or walked, or however they got to San Diego, and the goal there was to pitch 40 icons on getting them … booking these guys on the podcast. And he did an exceptional job by just being a little bit creative before he got there, taking a risk, and he has a great presence and he just went out there.
And so, as he’s mentioned, he’s been on nine shows. He’s got more interviews coming, and it just proves that you don’t have to be a thousand times better than everybody else. You just need to be a little bit different and have a bit of an edge.
Tom Nardone: Exactly right.
Doug: So, well done. Yeah, that was really cool.
Tom Nardone: Thank you.
Doug: So, what are you most excited about in the next six to 12 months, or the next year or so coming up?
Tom Nardone: I’m most excited about is, teaching others the real estate business and seeing how that alone has the ability to change lives. We have seen a lot of people that have been struggling with how they’re going to make their bills. A lot of people don’t realize that, man, if you’re stuck and you’ve got, say a 10 thousand dollar problem, if you just had 10 grand in your bank account it would just get you back on your feet so that you can get ahead.
Well, a lot of people don’t realize that in this house flipping game you’re just one flip away from putting 10 grand in your bank account. So, that’s what I’ve been teaching and training people to do over the last five years actually and have done it very successfully to the tune that I think I’ve had about 600 students that I’ve worked one on one with, literally, over the last five years.
Doug: Wow. And so, how many homes have you flipped, bought, or sold yourself?
Tom Nardone: It’s been over 250. I’ve scaled it down now, now that I got more into the coaching and mentoring part of the business. We always have one house that we’re renovating. We just finished a house here in a little hick town called Okeechobee, Florida, which is between Ft Lauderdale and Orlando. And, on Monday, we’re closing on another property which is in Port Charlotte. It’s two hours away on the west coast of Florida.
So what I have found myself, having to do Doug, is actually go outside of my market because I live in the Boca Raton area of Ft Lauderdale. I’m 20 minutes from the beach. It has almost become like California in sense, where the prices are getting so pumped where just to do the average house takes 350 or 400 thousand. But, we do have a lot of sleepy towns in Florida that are even in coastal areas where you can still buy a nice house for 75 to 100 thousand. And those numbers are very intimidating, and a lot of people can afford to live in those houses once they’re rehabbed.
Doug: That’s really cool. So, listeners, I was asking Tom about how many houses he’s flipped because you’ve heard me before talk about my asking people for advice. So, my rules for asking people for advice, if you haven’t it before is never asking anyone for advice who hasn’t done what you’re doing to do, or hasn’t been willing to pay the price that you’re willing to say. So, when you’re looking for someone to mentor you or to help you, I’m always looking for people who had this sort of success that I want.
Tom Nardone: Sure.
Doug: So … And I like your point, your one flip away. So opposed to a lot of other side hustles, and I’m not sure how much work it takes to get there, there are not many other projects that you can probably work on the side where you could pop 10 grand in your bank account in one fell swoop.
Tom Nardone: Exactly. It’s, for a lot of people, if they think they would go out and cut grass after work or something … I say that because I literally did that when I was 20 years old, even though I worked as a postal carrier. It wasn’t enough money. I needed to do something else and I developed a little lawn cutting business after work to give me that extra 500 bucks a month I need to make my bills.
So, there’s not a lot of things that you can do where you can slam five or 10, I’m being conservative when I say 10. We’ve wholesaled some houses. And by wholesaling I mean, you’re not going to be rehabbing it. You’re not going to be banging the nails and doing all the work. You’re just going to get that property under contract and assign the property to another investor who will do all that work, and you just make a quick chunk of money and move on to find the next deal. That’s how I teach a lot of my students to start out today.
Doug: That’s really neat. So, I’m going to ask you a different type of question on boring from Tim Ferris’ books. And that is, what is some of the bad advice that’s in the marketplace with regards to what you’re doing right now?
Tom Nardone: Oh, bad advice is mainly paying too much for things. In the real estate business, or I guess you could say any business where you’re buying something and you’re going to sell it at retail, you can’t pay too much for it. In the real estate business, back eight years ago in the crash, we all saw correction here, and if you buy something that what people feel right now is maybe near a top of a market, or certainly approaching a top of a market, you don’t want to be stuck at the top.
So, as more competition comes into the market people are paying too much. And, it’s because they don’t have the proper foundation of education. They don’t realize the right margin you have to have in the property, and how you have to buy it right the day you get it. Otherwise, nothing else is going to fall in place if you don’t buy it right to start with.
Doug: Yeah, that totally makes sense. And like you said, that relates to just about any business. So, if you’re going to sell stuff on eBay, or Amazon, or whatever I’ve heard it said that the profits made when you buy, not when you sell.
Tom Nardone; Correct. And you have to know where you are in that trend.
Doug: Right, yeah. I mean, we can wishful thinking and optimist all we want but, the reality is, you’re going to have to negotiate the price to make sure that at the end of the day that you’ve got a profitable transaction.
Tom Nardone: Sure, and there’s a market for everything. I remember years ago buying blank cassette tapes off of eBay and tried to buy those blank cassette tapes today you’d have to just about get them for free because nobody wants cassette tape.
Doug: Sure.
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SHARE THIS EPISODE: YOU MIGHT BE ONE HOUSE FLIP AWAY FROM TURNING IT AROUND
YOU MIGHT BE ONE HOUSE FLIP AWAY FROM TURNING IT AROUND
A lot of people don’t realize that in this house flipping game you’re just one flip away from putting 10 grand in your bank account
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Tom Nardone: There’s a need and a want for everything. And as trends go buy and technology changes, some things go obsolete in this world really fast.
Doug: Although, I do have … We do have three adults kids and we do hear them debating over who’s going to get the Nintendo that we still have. And the younger daughter living at home’s going, “Well, I’ve got it set up here,” and the older going, “Well, I don’t think you it enough. I should have it.”
Tom Nardone: Well, those are going to be like collector’s items soon, or museum pieces soon after.
Doug: Yeah, very good. So, tell us, who’s one guest that you think I should have on my show?
Tom Nardone: One guest, well, Dan Kennedy himself. Have you had him on the show?
Doug: I have not. He would be a great guy to have on the show and I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.
Tom Nardone: I would say that would be the number one pick for me.
Doug: Yeah, that totally makes sense. So, tell us a little bit more. So, where can we track you down? Where can we find you? And, what are you working on today?
Tom Nardone: Yeah, well today I’ve been doing a lot more writing, and a lot of teaching, and if anyone’s in the South Florida area I run a meetup group that’s local here on a small basis. You can find me on meetup.com. But, I’ve also written different books and eBooks for audiences like yours, Doug, where I can teach somebody even if they don’t know how or where to get started in real estate investing. If they’re under a crunch where they need to get some money in their bank account, I wrote an ebook for that. It’s, How to Get to Your First $10000 Flipping Your First House, and they can download that ebook for free.
Doug: Oh, cool.
Tom Nardone: Yep, all they simply have to do is text the word mailman to 31996. It’s called a short text code.
Doug: Yep.
Tom Nardone: So, they just need to text the word mailman to 31996 and you’ll immediately get a response back for an ebook download. And enjoy the book, it’s free and there’s a lot of good information on there. And if I can help you in any way, you have any questions you can also find me on my website which is simply, millionairemailman.com.
Doug: That’s really cool. There you go again with … I’m thinking of the number of guests I’ve interview and the number of events I’ve been to, and you’re the first guy that’s using a shortcode which totally makes sense to promote your business and make it easy for people to get access to your information.
So listeners, again here is a business that’s really hot, people in the real estate market, and here is Tom coming along with a way to make it easy to do his marketing.
Tom Nardone: Yeah, it’s a great idea. I’ve only seen a few people use it over the years. And I wonder, why? Because I thought, “Man if you’re on a podcast,” and I would hope somebody wouldn’t take their hands off the wheel to text. You’re not supposed to do that. I’ve been guilty of that before, and if I had a short text code that’s probably what I would do. Because to write something down while your driving, and wait until you get back to your computer, a lot of times those pieces of paper get lost, or they fall off your list of things to do when you get back to your computer.
Doug: Sure.
Tom Nardone: And therefore, you never get opted in. So, if you can remember the word mailman, which is easy to do and you can remember that five digit number, then at a red light or when you stop for gas you can opt-in, and it’s a really handy tool.
Doug: There you go. Well, that’s really cool. Hey, I want to say thanks so much for you taking the time. I mean, I was so looking forward to having you on my show after having met you. And, when I saw your appointment come in I went, “Hooray.” I was looking forward to this because you’re a really inspiring guy. I think you’ve done some really good things, obviously for yourself and for your family, and now you’re sharing those with other people. And people need to take note that you can take a business that’s a hot business now, the real estate market, and you can … anybody has the opportunity to get there and take advantage of some of the tools that you’ve given them and look at that to leverage a side hustle.
Tom Nardone: Well, thanks. I appreciate the kinds words, and I hope people got some value from what I’ve been able to share here today. I think we threw a couple ideas that maybe people have maybe not heard of before, and that’s good. It will give them the edge.
Doug: Well, let’s hope so.
So, that’s another episode. Listeners, thanks so much for tuning in and I hope you’ll head over to the show notes. We’ll make sure that we have all of the links to Tom’s websites and social media sites there, so you can follow up with them as well. We’ll make sure that the shortcode there, the 31996 mailmen, is there for you in case you didn’t have a chance to jot it down. Again, just thanks to Tom for showing up bigger than life just like he did in San Diego. So my tip to you is if you’re going to go to a networking event, you’re going to do something in marketing, what are you going to do that’s going to make you stand out from the crowd?
My question to my clients all the time is if you were standing in front of an audience of people who could write you check, and besides you are all your competitors, why would they pick you?
So, thanks for tuning in. Don’t be shy, sign up for our mailing list and make sure you give us a shout out and share this episode on social media. So, thanks for tuning in and we look forward to serving you on our next episode.
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YOU MIGHT BE ONE HOUSE FLIP AWAY FROM TURNING IT AROUND
A lot of people don’t realize that in this house flipping game you’re just one flip away from putting 10 grand in your bank account
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Free ebook – text the word “mailman” to 31996
Get in touch with Tom:
- Web – Millionaire Mailman
- Tom on LinkedIn
Find out more about Tom:
Links to other related podcasts and or blog posts:
PRIORITIZE BY ASKING “HOW IS THIS GOING TO MAKE ME MONEY?”
TO MAKE A SEVEN-FIGURE INCOME? SOLVE A SIX-FIGURE PROBLEM
YOU MIGHT BE ONE HOUSE FLIP AWAY FROM TURNING IT AROUND
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