How to Pocket $10,000 on Your First Deal When You Have No Free Time

I hear this question all the time…

“Sean, between working a full time job and family time, I’m left with no extra time to find the motivated sellers that will lead me to good deals! What’s the quickest way to find these leads”?

First, let’s start with the “no extra time” comment. Just about everyone has extra time; it’s just a matter of deciding what is most important to you. Would you rather go to lunch with your office buddies or go find some motivated sellers? Would you be willing to take an alternate route to and from work every day or are you stuck taking the same route regardless? Are you willing to get up a few minutes early or stay up a few minutes later to do a little research?

What is more important to you? Free time or setting yourself and your family up in a business that will allow you to live the lifestyle you say you desire?

If you’re committed, you will find motivated sellers, you will do deals and you will be able to leave your dead end job. However, if you’re not 100% committed, you may as well forget it because you’re going to be chasing a dream that you will never catch.

That’s the first part to the answer. The second is there are several ways to find motivated sellers with little effort on your part.

Try bandit signs for example. ..

Bandit signs are the plastic Coroplast signs you see plastered on street corners and telephone poles. They typically say something like We Buy Houses. You can get bandit signs for a couple bucks a piece online at places like Banditsigns.com. Personally, I’ve had better luck establishing relationships with local vendors. I’ve found better pricing, faster turnaround and no shipping cost.

I can’t recall a time when I put out as little as a hundred signs and didn’t have at least a few deals from them. Theres a couple things to be aware of when using bandit signs though. First, in most places, code enforcement will fine you if you put them out. The solution is either to put them out on Friday evening and pick them up Sunday evening (code enforcement is typically off on the weekends) or use a phone number that isn’t “traceable”. For example, get a prepaid cell phone with voicemail and run the calls to that number. Of course, you still run a slight risk when doing that and that’s a risk that only you can decide if you want to take.

Another note about bandit signs is they are very labor intensive. I can remember early on in my investing career, driving around with bandit signs stuck in the back of my truck, stopping at every intersection I could find, running around all 4 corners and then doing it again at the next intersection. It gets very tiring and redundant. It’s discouraging when code enforcement takes them down, too. However, it’s a numbers game. Expect to lose plenty (if not all) of the signs you put out pretty quickly. But expect to get a few deals from them, too.

In closing, whether you choose bandit signs, direct mail, TV or any other marketing platform, it’s important to come up with something creative, catchy and memorable to put on your marketing piece. If you do, you can expect to get a MUCH better response than you would if you use the same thing everyone else uses. I recommend steering clear of the worn out and overused “We Buy Houses” saying because the idea is NOT to blend in with your competition. You can bet that every investor in town uses that slogan, so you want to stand out and make sellers take note.

Take action and the leads will come (even if it’s slowly but surely)…get creative and they’ll come quickly and plentifully.