Welcome to our latest episode. Today, we’re thrilled to have Jennifer Steward, the owner and founder of Powerful Property Solutions and Phone Phoenix Agency. Jennifer is a licensed real estate agent, a certified commercial real estate advisor, and an expert in off-market acquisitions, cold calling, lead management, and virtual acquisition management. With over 22 years in sales and six years dedicated to real estate, Jennifer has closed countless successful deals, helping real estate investors find and secure profitable opportunities.
In this engaging discussion, Jennifer shares her journey from starting as a cold caller making $5 an hour to building a thriving business that now employs over 200 people. She talks about the importance of understanding seller motivations, the value of persistence, and how she has scaled her companies to offer comprehensive services to real estate investors. Jennifer also dives into her strategies for staying competitive in a slowing market and her recent ventures into doing her own real estate deals.
Tune in now to gain exclusive insights from Jennifer Steward and discover how to leverage her experience to enhance your own real estate investments. Don’t miss this episode packed with actionable advice and inspiring stories!
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE EPISODE
00:19 – Introduction and welcome
00:24 – Jennifer’s background and journey into real estate
03:00 – Balancing family life and business
06:44 – The importance of supportive relationships in business success
09:32 – Transitioning from cold calling to business ownership
14:00 – Scaling from a single practitioner to managing a team of 200
18:43 – How speaking at events transformed Jennifer’s career
23:41 – The challenges and rewards of running a high-volume business
26:10 – Adjusting strategies in a slowing real estate market
29:20 – Jennifer’s tips for finding motivated sellers in today’s market
33:32 – The importance of reputation and integrity in real estate
35:34 – Parting words and Jennifer’s recommended sales book
If you found this episode substantial and want to dig deeper into real estate, or maybe you want to discover better investment opportunities, be sure to check out www.tempofunding.com.
CONNECTING WITH THE GUEST
Website: https://reidatasource.net/
Email: jen@reidatasource.net
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2TyzDfAemfTevlAHwXhYsw/search
Intro: Welcome to the BigMikeFund Podcast, where you’ll learn about advanced wealth building strategies from real estate investing to creating massive ROI and secure retirement profits. So pour yourself a cup of coffee, grab a notepad, and lean in. Because Big Mike has got the mic, starting now.
Mike Zlotnik: Welcome to the BigMikeFund Podcast. I’m the Big Mike, Mike Zlotnik, and today it is my pleasure and a privilege to welcome Jennifer Stewart. Hi, Jennifer.
Jennifer Steward: Hello, Mike. Thank you so much for having me today. It’s great to be here.
Mike Zlotnik: I’m honored and humbled to have you. And they will create to see you again in Dallas just a few weeks back and let me do a quick intro.
So Jennifer is the owner and founder of phone Phoenix agency and RAI data source, complimentary companies serving real estate investors. Second off market acquisitions through cold calling, lead management, virtual acquisition management, list pulling, skip tracing and wholesaling. To compliment her buyers community, she’s also a hard money lender and you do wholesaling and wholetailing.
And I’ll stop. That’s enough of the introduction. It’s very technical. So let’s go through the journey. First of all, I just want to say we need more successful women leaders in real estate. You’re one of them. So it’s so good to have you. Thank you for your leadership and adding some great energy to the space.
So tell, tell a little bit about your journey, your family, where do you live and, and all the fun stuff, but start with kids, cats, pets, or anything that works for you.
Jennifer Steward: Yeah, so I have two chickens and a cat. One of my chickens is a rescue. She only has one leg, so she hops around, but she hops around pretty quickly.
And I get to interact with her as I work from home throughout the day. And my cat, she, she’s a very strange cat, you know, she doesn’t care for mice at all. Sometimes, you know, we live right behind a field and we don’t care. Whenever they mow, the mice will find their way in, despite our best efforts, and she could care less, you know.
So we have glue traps that do that job instead of the cats. So, you know, pets are funny, like you, you think activity is species specific. But it turns out it’s pretty personality specific, so it’s just like, you
Mike Zlotnik: know, well, they don’t have to hunt for my kid did the same thing a while, while back when we had to go away, we had to give the cat to my wife’s parents and they live in a building and apparently the cat caught a mice and she didn’t kill the mice.
She just played around with the mice and released her. So it can happen if they’re, if they’re fed, they don’t need, they don’t need to.
Jennifer Steward: I don’t want to do that. Yeah. And then I have two boys. I have one who’s 14 that you got to meet there in Dallas. Bruce, and then I also have Adam, who’s turning nine at the end of this month, and then I have been with their father since I was 16, and I’m now 39, so 23 years.
With him and I could not be a business owner without him. He does everything else. So the, all I have to do is focus on the business and his mother was a CEO for a very large home health company. I won’t say which one, cause they ended up in scandal, although she was. Totally found innocent. But she was the CEO of a very large company at the time.
And she was making a million a year as a CEO in 1994, which is, you know, probably about 3 million in today’s dollars, if you would agree with that, Mike. So, you know, so for him, women being successful is, is very normal. And in fact, he’s not very happy with me when, whenever I’m not successful, if I’m not making a million a year.
He’s kind of wondering, you know, Jennifer, you know, what are you doing? You’re kind of slacking. And my dad is the same way. He, he expects me to, to perform at high levels. You know, he used to travel around the world installing telecommunications cords to countries. That didn’t have telephones in the nineties.
Like I remember him going to Jakarta and central parts of Africa to lay down all types of hardware so that there could be phones in places where we take for granted, there’s only phone, but internet now. And so he expects me to be very intrepid, fearless, and profitable. So, you know, like I said to you at the table, whenever we’re at that event, it’s easy to.
be a woman in business whenever you’re surrounded by gentlemen who support you, who are true gentlemen, who are not intimidated by the fact that somehow by you being successful and female, it lowers their status. It’s quite the opposite. They see the, the feminine strengths that you bring that compliment masculine strengths.
And so therefore those are the type of people. You want to look for as you build your teams and your alliances and not the people who do subtle digs at you, which of course I had my fair share of that, but that’s just. Water off a duck’s back because you can’t pay attention to that stuff. Just like being a politician.
You just have to focus on your goal, find your team, find your allies, and just keep going forward. See who you can help, right? That’s what business really is. It’s who can we help and how.
Mike Zlotnik: That’s wonderful. You’re blessed with a wonderful family. Your hobby, I guess it’s a wonderful hobby. It’s been supporting you for so many years and you have great kids and it’s it’s certainly a journey and I have to say my oldest daughter is the same way.
She’s going to be the proud winner in the family and her husband is kind of laid back fully supportive, happy with the role that he has. It’s, it’s, let’s just call it the new generation. It’s hard for me to say. Of course as a father, I, I want my, my daughters to be super successful. So all my girls are kind of leaders and, and self starters and go getters.
So when I see another successful woman, I am very happy to see this. It is just too traditional to have typically men leading the households and there’s nothing wrong with women being the leaders and it’s a personality thing. Some men, they’re pretty happy to to find a wonderful woman who can lead the household and be a successful business person.
So from my perspective, I’m just hearing this and I’m reflecting, that’s wonderful, that’s, that’s, that’s, it’s a, you found a great combination and you gotta find the right man who will be happy with that, not everyone will be, so.
Jennifer Steward: That’s true, that was not easy to find, luckily I found it pretty young, but I do see a lot of men tell me whenever I travel around and speak, even my host will say, Jennifer, you know, I’m the one who invited you here to speak, but I would really struggle to be in his spot and just take a back seat.
And I said, you know, he’s really the boss. He just lets me be the boss. Cause he knows it makes me happy. So isn’t that an interesting, I mean, he can change that dynamic at any time. He’s stronger than me. You know, I’m the one who loves the children. And I notice a lot of times there’s one parent who could leave and probably still lead a happy life.
That’s more him than me. I’m much more family oriented. I’m not happy unless I’m with my family. And I think he kind of longs for a day where he can just go out in the woods and not have to worry about children. So, you know, He could be the boss if he chose to, but he lets me do it because he knows it makes me happy.
And he said, all I want is for you to be happy because when you’re happy, the kids are happy and when the kids are happy, I’m happy. And so it just kind of goes in this. In this circle, right? And also it comes down to competency as well, right? And it just so happens that I was never happy unless I was in a leadership position, not because there aren’t better leaders than me, but because I had my own vision that was different from theirs.
There’s someone we may know mutually and he’s in CG. His name is Joe Theriault. He was my boss for a little bit doing acquisitions. Great guy. And he said, Jennifer, you know, why don’t you go out on your own? Like you, so he was one of the few people that I worked for who said, here, let me help you go out on your own.
He didn’t ask for anything in return. He didn’t ask for any equity in my company. But I do things to help him all the time, even though it’s been five years. So I am very loyal to people who helped me along the way. I believe that you should dance with the one who brought you to the dance. And I don’t forget about people over time.
I always remember who helped me whenever I had nothing and just figured I would be a lowly acquisitions person, you know, by contrast. So they try to make me feel, but Joe Terrio. He didn’t do that. In fact, he’s the one who told me to go to your dinner that first night. He said, Hey, Big Mike’s coming into town.
You know, you need to sign up for his dinner here and you need to show up to that. And I said, okay, Joe, thank you. So he’s, he’s the reason why we know each other. So I loved working for Joe, but he said, Jennifer, your talent is wasted here working for me, go start your own company. And so I was lucky to have people like that in my life.
Mike Zlotnik: I appreciate you sharing that. And yeah, Joe is a great guy and it’s a great, it demonstrates great confidence in his own abilities and being able to step back and let you succeed is a wonderful quality. So let’s talk a little bit about business. Let’s talk about how did you get started? As a business owner and what’s been your journey growing your business, because it’s not easy.
Any, any business is hard. You have all some family kids and most men rely on a woman to take care of the kids. I, I certainly, my wife makes a big difference in our household because if I, if I were to feed the kids and take all this stuff. They’d be hard, they’d be hungry every, every day. I even had to call my wife and ask, what am I supposed to give the kids for lunch?
Cause she’s working today. She’s, she’s a optometrist. So it was kind of funny to have these conversations. When I’m, when I’m home, well, I work from home, but when kids are home in the summer, they didn’t go to a camp or whatever. How do I feed them? What do I do? And then some males get lost. And I’m one of these, one of these guys who I don’t know what to do, but how am I supposed to keep fit? What do they eat? How long have you been around the kids? And that’s hilarious. So,
Jennifer Steward: yeah, it’s a pretty domain specific skill for sure. And it’s hard to wear many hats. So you ask a great question. Whenever I had my children and they were babies, they were my sole focus. So, you know, keeping it in the context of business, that was an evolution.
So when I first gave birth. I breastfed my children until they were three years old. Now, you never knew that was going to be on your podcast, so I’m talking about that. But it was really important to me to be completely present whenever my children were babies. So from age zero to three for my first, I was a full time mother, and then I went back to college and graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s of science in psychology.
And then right after I graduated, two months after I gave birth to our second son. stayed home another three years and was just a full time housewife. At that time he paid all the bills and he was a bicycle mechanic. So we were, we were right at the poverty line, but I had a vision, Mike, and the vision was once my children got to a certain age, then I was going to start my career.
But not until then. So we endured at the poverty line for all those years to give children a mom who was completely focused. And luckily Daryl shared that vision with me. I know a lot of men who were a little bit more materialistic and they wanted their women to go back to work so they could have a nice truck.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. That just wasn’t our vision. So, as soon as Adam, our youngest, turned three, I put him in daycare full time, which was very hard, but then all of a sudden my career took off. So, with a psychology degree, what can you do? I wanted to possibly go get my PhD in epigenetics, behavioral epigenetics.
And my GPA was good enough to do so, but, and Daryl said, I am not, I cannot stand by you through another degree. I need you to work, please. We’ve suffered for so long. I said, okay, you’re right. You’re right. We’ve, we’ve been poor long enough. So I had a friend of mine. She said, Hey, why don’t you cold call for this investor friend of mine?
She said, you know, you have one specific talent and that is your ability to read people’s motivations. Had it. She’d known me since middle school. She said, you’ve had it since middle school. Now you have a degree behind it. Please come and call for my investor boss. She’s outta Seattle. Her name is Heather Sailor.
And I said, great. How much does it pay? She said, five bucks an hour. ’cause you know they’re used to hiring the Filipino VAs. And I said, okay, I’ll do it. She said, are you serious? I said, yeah, absolutely. I’ll do it. And Daryl, my, you know, my husband, he’s like, no way, you know, you didn’t get a degree to make five bucks an hour.
My grandma said, you didn’t, how could you get, go with 70 K and student debt for five bucks an hour? I said, give me 10 years, give me 10 years and see where the skillset leads me. So, so I could see the potential of how the hardest part in any deals, not finding the funding. It’s finding the deal in negotiating.
So I figured if I got good at that, everything else would come. All the other knowledge would be easy by contrast. So I spent several years between five and 15 an hour. The poverty continued for another few years as I built up the skill set. And he was working and we separated for a bit. I think the poverty had gotten to him.
He’s like, I’m out of here. So then I’m a single mom and I have to pay the bills on 15 bucks an hour. So I would start at 8 AM on the East coast calling for Joe and then call all the way until 11 PM calling for investors in Hawaii for several years. And so in about eight years, I put in Well, let’s see, closer to 6 or 7 then, I’m thinking.
Yeah I put in about, maybe somewhere between 000 hours on the phone with sellers. That’s an insane amount, because it was 6 days a week for several years, right?
Mike Zlotnik: And so It’s, it’s, it’s, the mastery, they call it like the book outliers, 10, 000 hours. You, you, you, you’ve put in at least that, more than that.
To build incredible mastery to achieve a level of I don’t know if you wanna call it the grand master of these lead negotiations, but it, it’s, it’s certainly phenomenal investment. And that gives you the skills or they, I given you the skills that you have today. And in real estate, you make money on the buy.
You just gotta get the buy Exactly right. You gotta get the deal.
Jennifer Steward: Exactly. So even though. I didn’t make much money learning that skill. It was well worth it because from that skill set, a gentleman named Jim Ingersoll recognized how many hours I was putting in. And I’ll say from his perspective, my talent, talent combined with skill and experience and education with my psychology background.
So he put me on stage and I thought it was 2021 and I’m not sure he was having an easy time finding speakers. So he said, Jen, will you come and speak at my event? And I thought, well, I’m sure I’ll, I’ll do Jim. I’ll do my good buddy, Jim Ingersoll, a favor. I’ll go speak at his event. Well, little did I know he was doing me the biggest favor of my life because then I was speaking in front of hundreds of real estate You know, most of them within that worth of at least a few million.
But I thought, why is he having me speak in front of these people who already know how to do this? How else would they be so wealthy? Well, little did I know how many people buy from other people and not necessarily directly themselves, because I’d always work for people who were having me buy directly.
So once I got off stage from speaking at that event, I couldn’t get to the bathroom for two hours. Because people had bombarded me off the stage. They wanted to know after my presentation, you know, how can, how can I learn what you do? And I was overwhelmed. I wasn’t, I didn’t have coaching anything. I didn’t plan on being a coach.
I didn’t have anything to sell. And I was just like, Oh my gosh, you know, nobody prepared me for what was going to happen. But from that, I was introduced to many people. And that’s how my companies were born. I had a data and skip tracing guy, supplier who came to me and said, Hey, you have a big following now, not big.
I mean, but I’ll say a very interactive following a very loyal following, very niche following. You know, you have this following, can you sell the data? I don’t know. And then I had already started my agency in 2018, but all of a sudden I had a better labor supply because people were saying, Hey, are you tired of trying to deal with managing Americans?
How about I bring you all my Egyptian callers, all my Filipino callers. And they were just as good for one fourth the price often. And so it was being put on stage that gave me the connections to have access to the supply. As well as a ready made buying audience. And of course I had to do the work of quality control, making sure that I was honest, had integrity, stayed on top of everything.
And so of course I had a big learning curve to go from, you know, 15 an hour to between 40, a month, which is going to be way less than some people that listen to your podcast and maybe way more. So that’s not a brag. I’m just telling you that was quite. a huge increase in income very quickly with a lot of responsibility.
And so there were some learning curves there. There were some business maturity learning curves there. You know, the first time someone was unhappy and they were making threats, I thought, my God, this is insane. I mean, people really get crazy. Anytime you own a business, you have to just Be prepared for a client to be crazy or staff to be crazy and that I wasn’t really prepared for but you do that a few times and you start to realize who’s going to be crazy up front so you can avoid it, you know, before you even get started with somebody.
And then also, you know, different things like entities, taxes standard operating procedures, that was all new so I was just Trying to respond to the demand for my services that just went up atmospherically after speaking in 2021. So that’s how it got started. It was a combination of hard work and luck.
If Jim Ingersoll hadn’t put me on stage or Joe Terrio hadn’t introduced me to people and encouraged me, I might still be calling for, you know, 15, 20 bucks an hour with inflation, and that would have been my life. So luck is a huge factor, I think, in anyone’s success, if they’re being honest, as well as being right place, right time, and putting in the work behind it.
But there’s a chance that you could put in all this work and, and never see glory, right? So I would just say to anyone out there who’s putting in a lot of work, and they’re not seeing glory, they’re not seeing a lot of profit, believe in what you do and just keep pushing, right? Because I enjoy talking to sellers.
I enjoy helping them solve their problems. I enjoy Helping them enjoy the process of selling assets at a discounted equity position. I mean, that’s, that’s not a fun thing. I mean, nobody wants to sell assets at a discount. Of their of their equity. I mean, that’s that takes a real skill set of identifying who needs it and also making them feel good about it and feeling good about you as a person that you’re not taking advantage of them, that you’re helping them.
It’s a privilege. It’s an opportunity. That’s that’s not easy to do.
Mike Zlotnik: Yeah, Jennifer, thank you for sharing this, because what you just said is actually a very powerful and unique skill, and I’ve operated mostly in commercial real estate, so I’ve seen a lot of people do this through the Collective Genius and dealing with these situations, but ultimately, real estate is all about real estate.
It’s an inefficient asset class, but an inefficient, well, at least private transactions are inefficient. And what it means is that the, the, the sellers typically have to be motivated to give you a good deal. So good deals are happening all the time in these private transactions. So you as the, as the buyer need to be able to connect with them.
And make them feel happy, even though they’re not necessarily getting a perfect price. But it’s all a question of basically meeting their expectation versus versus what the market can do. And if you can’t make a deal with them, They can’t sell the house is it? They’ll never sell the house for the price that they want unless at least the property on the market, they fix it up, etc, etc.
Jennifer Steward: Exactly.
Mike Zlotnik: They, you, you cannot get everything at the same time. You either get your price, or you get your production fast, or you get whatever other needs. And what you do is important because if you understand all these factors you create an opportunity for yourself. To buy it at discount and you solve that problem, whatever the problem is.
And if they’re not motivated sellers, it’s okay. They can go and sell their own. So that’s, it’s an attitude of abundance and I’ve seen it done many times. And if it’s done the right way, it’s a win win. It’s difficult. Most of the time you think about it. Well, I win, they lose. I got a great price. That’s not how the whole thing transacts.
It transacts. It’s a win for them and it’s a win for you. If you could present it that way. It can’t be a win for both parties that both parties can walk away with with happiness. I’ve watched this many times When you get a motivated seller for whatever the reason i’ve seen either they’re old or they have family and i’m not an expert Right, but as long as you meet their happiness, it’s not about every dollar on every deal.
So well said Well, let’s go back to your kind of journey. How many folks you managed today and your evolution going from a single practitioner just doing this calls to being business owner and dealing with all elements of a business? Like you said, operating the company, operating the business, and then obviously managing teams of folks.
I’m just curious, how many folks you you’re managing today? They work for you one way or another.
Jennifer Steward: I have a staff of about 200, but I don’t manage them all directly. That would be insane. So I have, as you know, so I have team leaders. For each country that I operate in so well, I have actually two in Egypt two in Pakistan and three in the Philippines that so there’s five minutes.
So each one has about 40 people that they manage and oversee. But then I also do talk to most of them directly. As needed, so I kind of have memorized all of their personalities, but the only this possible is because I acquired them over a period of time. So each person who’s new, I spend about an hour with them.
Maybe sometimes 30 minutes. I get to know them and then I started to see their strengths and weaknesses. So as I have a client come in, whether it’s. data skip tracing, someone who needs acquisitions coaching cold calling appointment setting, whatever it is, or hard money lending even, which, you know, I don’t want to be in bad taste and talk about that.
In fact, I look forward to hopefully borrowing from, from you guys someday as, as appropriate as deals come in. But I have to think about how does that, how does my staff co relate to the personality and needs Of the client and I kind of have it memorized. So I will directly interact with someone and say, hey, for example, Monique, I think this client would be great for you based on, you know, your personality and their needs.
And so I do some of that. I am still the one who does the client acquisition. I’m still the one who attracts the client. I haven’t been great at replacing myself in that role. So I do kind of memorize who everybody is and then send them accordingly. But I’m not the one who manages the day to day. That would, that would literally be impossible. So I’m just team managers.
Mike Zlotnik: Yeah, just explain. So it’s a large team. You acquire the clients, meaning that folks that sign up with you for your services and your services is this calling for leads, data man skip tracing number of other related services and it’s a, it’s a big operation. 200 people feels like I don’t think I can manage 200 people.
It’s a lot. It’s a, I would rather manage, you know, And then 200. And in your business, I guess you need to do it in volume because that’s how the business works.
Jennifer Steward: Yes. Well, there’s very little profit per unit, you know. Per hour is maybe a dollar profit, and then per skip trace is a cent. I sell my skip tracing for very inexpensive, two cents per skip trace.
Right. So I don’t mind sharing what my profit margins are, but also I have to make sure it’s fairly high quality too. So in order for me to make the profit, it has to be at a high volume and without high volume, then it’s really not worth the trouble. Right. And so in, in a slowing market with interest rates.
I’ve seen the volume go down, but so what we’ve done is we’ve pivoted to doing calls for other industries. Like, you know let’s see here. Anything from Russians coming to me, wanting me to sell lighted mirrors to hotels, Indian magnet, like paper magnets. Guys have these big toilet paper companies and napkin companies.
They want me to sell to restaurants or People in China who are selling these lights that go on top of jeeps, you know, so, so I was a generalist before I became specialized in real estate in terms of sales. So I’ve had to somewhat go back to those generalized routes to maintain the volume because of interest rates in real estate.
However, I will say my real estate clients who are still in the game, still doing the cold calling appointment setting and acquisitions over the phone, they’re killing it because so few people are still doing it. So for everyone who’s like, Oh, it was saturated. Well, it right now it’s not saturated, at least not in most markets. So that is a different thing of
Mike Zlotnik: duration. Yeah, I didn’t realize this. Of course, transaction volume all through the floor was of the higher for longer interest rates. But I guess the ones who are left. Are the survivors and they’re doing well, so
Jennifer Steward: yeah, kind of like in Forrest Gump, whenever there was that hurricane and Forrest Gump was the last boat
Mike Zlotnik: to get all the fish,
Jennifer Steward: but I can’t charge those few remaining boats absorb exorbitant prices that make me uncompetitive, so I’m still at the same price for the few boats left that are killing it.
And so, like, you notice. I always told Tom Barry, I said, Tom, if my business ever slows down, I’m going to start doing my own deals. So, like we discussed before, I’m finally, finally able to do my
Mike Zlotnik: own deals. Yeah,
Jennifer Steward: so I’m looking at hotels in Dallas. So, I have that skill set of doing acquisitions over the phone, obviously, but it’s kind of an all day, everyday thing.
It’s not something you can do quickly. So, I feel like I’ve earned the right to purchase from other wholesalers now, instead of Finding my own deals. So I’m finding properties from other wholesalers. I’m checking them out in my dead time, going to them in person. And if the numbers work, then I’ll slap them on the mark.
Cause I have my, my license with eXp for referral purposes and also team building and also access to hedge funds. And so now that volume is down, I feel like it’s time for me to do my own deals. And that’s exciting, Mike. I kind of wish I’d done it years ago, but I was scared. I was scared I would make an expensive mistake.
And I was, you know, didn’t, I didn’t also didn’t want to compete with my clients. Think about that. I mean, if your clients know that you’re doing deals, some of them have even said to me, well, Jennifer, now that you’re doing deals, how do I know you’re not going to do my deals? I’m like, because you could.
Tell someone that I was doing your deals and then I’d completely lose my reputation. I told a guy yesterday, I said, look, reputation is like a gun. You can use it to feed your family, or you can use it to shoot yourself with. I prefer to use my reputation. To feed my family. So there was that aspect too. I didn’t want clients to feel like I was in competition with them and what they were doing.
I just wanted to purely be the acquisitions professional. Like the person who sells the picks and the axes to the prospectors, right? Versus being a prospector myself. But now that it’s gotten so slow compared to where it was I’m happy to, to start doing my own deals. And that means I need lender relationships, which is why I went to Quest Trust a couple of weeks ago and saw you.
But the figure, the more lenders, the better, because the easier it is to, to scale, and the more it makes it easier to do more deals and more markets.
Mike Zlotnik: Yeah, I appreciate that. It’s you’re evolving, you’re evolving with times and you’ll figure out what, what is the next chapter in, in your journey. But for sure you have a great skill set and acquisition front and the environment will get better.
I do feel that inventories will improve and then being able to, to buy right. And yes, it’s a very different environment because residential versus commercial commercial has been corrected by the higher for longer rates, residential higher for longer rates killed all the supply. People are not selling their homes because they got.
Big straight debt. They don’t want to get rid of it. So it’s kind of it’s a different very bifurcated experience but you can make money in both you could find deals either you buy high and you sell even higher or you look for bargains Right. It’s just you’ve got to figure out what what you’re working on and and and figure it out
Jennifer Steward: One of our tips that I tell my clients is you do not want to market your list to occupant sellers to your point People don’t want to sell at four percent And, you know, get 8%, right.
For the most part, they can’t afford it even if they wanted to. And so all of my marketing lists are geared toward vacant, absentee, you know, tired landlords. Some people really like the distress one, pre foreclosure divorce. I personally don’t prefer those for my own acquisitions because it’s more of a longer play.
And as you know, like Joe Theriault, he did the inherited properties. That’s how he kind of made his name. Tired landlords have kind of always been my bread and butter. I like dealing with them. They’re professionals. They don’t feel like they’re being taken advantage of kind of like if you’re a mechanic and you take your car to a mechanic, you can kind of have a conversation with the same professionals.
And I don’t, I don’t prefer to have people feel scared of me or scared of what, I mean, a landlord is going to know exactly what I’m doing and if it works for both of us, then great. So that’s what I tell people, no matter what you’re marketing to. Try to make sure that you’re doing properties that don’t have an occupant seller in them and make sure that you spice in some other things in there if you can, tax liens or you know, code violations, things like that, things that are going to make sense in this market and don’t waste your marketing dollars and time trying to get occupants buyer or occupant sellers to, to, to sell their house because where are they going to move to?
Mike Zlotnik: It’s a very different motivation. The, that worked during the. Days of post 2008 crisis, because people were upside down a lot of these assets and you, people had nothing to lose. So it was a very different environment today when there is a difficult, difficult to move because of the higher interest rates to move to buy a new home.
It’s so much more difficult. People are stuck where they are and they don’t want to move for many that and other reasons. But let’s wrap up the episode. So this was a very interesting adventure. Of Jennifer in the world of real estate investing marketing for deals, negotiating these deals. So any parting words any final thoughts how would folks get ahold of you, any good book?
And they, and again, you don’t provide coaching, but you have services. And how would folks look you up and understand what services you offer and et cetera. So what’s the best way to reach out?
Jennifer Steward: I do do coaching. Whatever I spoke that first time, I was not prepared to do coaching, but after that there’s so much demand that now that I do and Jeff Watson, my attorney, who you probably know was kind enough to put that program together for me about three years ago.
So I do do coaching. My favorite book in terms of sales is going to be the book Go For No. That book taught me how to love rejection. Most people are not great at sales because they’re super, super scared of rejection. The book, Go For No, it’s kind of this narrative that teaches you how differently your life can look.
If you simply get rid of your fear of rejection, instead of having a yes quota, you need to have a no quota. Go for a hundred no’s a day. If you’re a high volume person, you think a hundred no’s. Well, you get a hundred no’s while doing your best. Not a hundred no’s because you self sabotaged yourself.
Because they say that psychologically, Mike, if our goal is, let’s say, 4, 000 a week, if you hit 4, 000 by Tuesday, then you’re done, you’re golfing the rest of the week, and your future looks very different. But if your goal is to be rejected a hundred times, then most likely by the end of the week, you’ve hit maybe 10 to 14, 000 is your goal.
And so that’s what I always went for. I went for a tally mark of how many times I’ve been rejected. Which completely changes the dynamic of your success proposals. So I would recommend reading that because I notice everyone, almost everyone is really, really scared of upsetting people and, and not being liked.
That cannot be your concern. Your concern needs to be helping them. That’s the only concern you need to have. And the amount of times. You get in front of people is the other one. It’s like, I teach my children. And so these can be my parting words. There are two aspects that make us successful in business.
The other is attaining and controlling a supply of something that our competitors hopefully can’t touch. Right? So we need a, we need a supply where we can buy low, whether it’s the skill set of talking to sellers, whether it’s inexpensive, but high quality data, whether it’s inexpensive, but high quality labor, maybe in your case, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s money that you can get right.
And you can pay a certain amount, but then you need to lend it out at a higher amount. So we need a supply of something that it’s, that there’s some sort of barrier to entry for. And then the other aspect and then try to control that supply. And I use the word control loosely. I’m not saying we lack an abundance mindset, but we don’t just go giving it out willy nilly, right?
It needs that, that knowledge needs to be earned by someone who’s a stakeholder in your life and willing to be maybe a lifelong partner with you and your business. And then the other aspect is ABM always be marketing. Always be whatever you think you need to do for your marketing, double it whether it’s posting on social media, whether it’s TV, radio, PPC, speaking at events having a marketing department, whatever it is.
Never stop marketing. Think, oh, I’m good. You know, I don’t want to pay for this marketing budget. I’ve already made this much this month or oh, I’m busy. I’m going on vacation. Well, you’re going to come home to a dead business. A lot of times if you go on vacation, someone’s not marketing while you’re gone.
Whenever I go on vacation, I have all my marketing planned out and done ahead of time so that I don’t have to think about that while I’m on vacation.
Mike Zlotnik: I appreciate your always be marketing. That’s, that’s a brilliant way to put it. I, I appreciate your wisdom. Thank you for sharing. We do have to wrap up this episode.
As I said, all good things come to an end and so does this episode. Again, how would folks reach out to you? Is there a website just so you can share?
You can email me at Jen at reidatasource. net. That’s J E N at R E I. For real estate investing data source. net or something most people don’t do is you can call me on my cell phone.
Cause let me tell you something, Mike, I know anyone who’s listening to your podcast is going to be a high quality person. So my personal cell is 4 I actually do answer my phone. Unlike most people. And if I don’t answer it, it’s because I’m in a meeting. So feel free to both call and or email. Thank you, Jennifer. I greatly appreciate your sharing your wisdom and courage to share your personal cell phone. Not too many people do that.
Jennifer Steward: Yeah, well, I’m not scared. I’m ready.
Mike Zlotnik: And yeah, I really enjoyed this discussion until the next time. And yeah, enjoy your journey. And I wish I’m wishing you the best of success and we’ll, we’ll, we’ll keep we’ll keep chatting.
Jennifer Steward: Sounds great, Mike. Thank you so much. Thank you for everything.
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Thank you for listening to The BigMikeFund Podcast. To receive your copy of Mike’s how to choose a smart real estate fund book, head to BigMikeFund.Com or visit Amazon and type Mike Zlotnik.
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