How I Maintain Indomitable Happiness

This week a lot of people in my “inner circle” have been extremely stressed and negative, so thats why I am writing this. I am by far not the best person to write this, but I feel like if I can help out one person, its worth it....

If you have known me for any length of time, you know I have 2 emotions, happy, and happier. A few people have recently asked me how I do it. This post will explain it.

When I was growing up my (awesome) dad told me several times that being happy was a choice. Just think about that. Every single day you have the ability to wake up and be happy. Or, every single day you wake up, you have the ability to be miserable. I choose to be happy. I genuinely feel extremely blessed and lucky to be me.

Attitude Of Gratitude

I am thankful for a ton of things that people don’t even notice. My friends, my family, my career position (all obvious ones) but, I also appreciate literally everything else. I love nature stuff, I appreciate bugs and sunsets, and the power of waves, and the echo/sound of a basketball dribbling. It just blows my mind how everything works.

A few years ago when I was starting my real estate investment business, I talked to one of the people in the business that I would consider a mentor. He told me that whenever something stressed him out, or made him angry, he would just start saying “thank you” to everything. “Thank you for all of the deals I have” “thank you for the endless amount of leads coming in” “thank you for the amazing people I get to work with”. Even if it isn’t the case, your mindset shifts from anger or frustration to just gratitude.

You Are Way Too Lucky

First of all, if you are reading this, you have a computer/smart phone whatever. You have the internet. You have eyes that work. Consider yourself lucky. Watch this if you don’t believe me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQSjyYRTDVM

I am so lucky to have everything I have. I know I don’t have near the material positions as a lot of people, but I also know that I have a ton more than a lot more people. I know I may not have the best looks, but I also know I am not the ugliest dude ever. There is always someone in a position that you wouldn’t want to be in.

Once you start appreciate everything and considering yourself truly lucky, things will start happening to you that didn’t before. The craziest stuff happens to me on a daily basis. Ask any of my friends. And maybe it’s because things come to me, and I truly am lucky, or maybe it is my mind set that is different, and I see things differently so things that people would just brush off, turn into things that are awesome/crazy for me.

Time to Zen Out

I was listening to one of Joe Rogan’s podcasts and he said his friend would make this one trip to Boston from NYC on a regular basis, and Joe asked him “how in the hell do you do that?” his friend replied “I just zen out”. I loved that line. I say it all of the time. Probably 500x a day or more.

I make a trip to Elizabethtown several times a week from my house (over an hour each way). Now, I know thats not a big commute compared to some people, but I absolutely hate driving. Like, I would rather ride my bicycle or walk than drive any day. So an hour drive for me, is like.... 10 hours to a normal person (if my conversion chart is correct). I honestly don’t care about the drive anymore. It used to stress me out before, but now I just zen out. Let me explain what that means to me.

To me, to zen out, is to just accept the fact that, you are just doing what you are doing. So here is what I do: I get in my car, turn my phone on silent, put some great music on (or whatever you love), and I just zen out. You just go to another planet and just be cool with what you are doing. I don’t rush, I don’t make calls, I rarely txt, I just “do me”. That is my me time. Driving through York, and Lancaster, and Elizabethtown, it’s a beautiful drive, you can smell cow shit. You can see ducks crossing the road, you can see the Susquehanna river, it’s just awesome for me now.

Don’t Change Your Income, Change Your Wants

If anyone reading this knew me a few years ago, I was extremely money driven and materialistic. Just when I started to be not so happy, a few people came into my life, one was a younger super successful doctor, another a young, very successful family man who is an insurance agent. They both seemed crazy happy. And I wanted to get to know them. One day the insurance agent said to me “The easiest way to be happy with materialistic things is to just change what you want, to change what is important to you”. That just hit me. I wanted the private jets, the Brioni suits, the crazy “jay-z-stuff”. I realized that working my life away to have that stuff may be for some people, but its not for me. I drive a POS car, I rarely buy expensive clothes (still have some from before), and I rarely spend ridiculous money on things (minus experiences, because experiencing great/different things is important to me still). I think when you appreciate what you currently have in your life, the need to buy the next best thing goes away.

That being said, I still want an Aston Martin, because it is super sexy, and the sound..... oh god that sound.

Control Your Surroundings

You control every aspect of your life. If you want to be rich, you can be rich. If you want to be broke, you can be broke. If you want a family, you can have a family etc. I want to have the coolest people in the world as my friends. And I do. None of my friends are “Negative Nancies” and if they are being lame (negative), I’ll just call them out on it, and they either change, or I don’t hang out with them anymore. Another great thing about being radiantly happy, is people want to be around you. You will attract people in your life that are amazing. Ever since I have been truly happy with everything in my life, I have made more great friends, met more incredible girls, have experienced so many cool things, I just cant explain how cool it is.

I really think that once people grasp the idea that their life is theirs to change, quite a bit of change will happen for everyone. Its not the easiest thing in the world to control every thought you have, but you will get the hang of it sooner or later.

I know, I didn’t hit everything with this post, but hopefully one of you will make the change, or continue the happiness because of this.

Hit me up on twitter @mikeswords if you have any questions. Thanks!

My First Deal: How I made over $17k in a few hours of work.

I thought it would be interesting to walk you through my first ever real estate investment deal. At this point you have enough information to start generating your own wholesale deals, so get crackin. (Or Hustlin if you are Herb Stevenson)

First, to explain my situation, i had a business partner who had a small line of credit secured by his personal home. So we did have cash available, but we did not want to use it if at all possible. (It cost my company $7k to get started, between marketing costs, LLC/legal costs, etc, and that was already paid for by his line of credit)

I was/am a licensed realtor, and I was always digging up deals in the MLS for other investors prior to this, so i had that advantage. I had also trained another real estate agent in my office to work with me. What i had done was find a hack in the MLS to search for all of the bank owned listings (prior to the bastards putting in a “Bank Owned Yes/No” field in the mls), and call the listing agents to feel out the banks motivation.

The agent i had trained came back to me and found a house that the listing agent had basically said, “make an offer, it needs to be sold, the bank just wants to get rid of it”...

So my agent in training took me out to the property. It was a city property that needed a tiny bit of work (paint, kitchen counters, a tiny bit of drywall repair).

Lets run through the numbers:

The ARV at the time was $69,900

The Repair costs was $1200-2000

The List price was $39,900

I went back to the office and made an offer for $20,000. The bank promptly came back at $29,000 (WIN!), i then went back at $25,000, and we finally came to an agreement at $27,900.

Now, the only issue was that we had to use our line of credit to buy this property. If we didnt have that line of credit available to us, we would have had to get “Transactional Funding” (Hard money that has a very short term, and very little credit requirements from the borrow). Now i needed to find a buyer for the property...

Literally the week before we bought this property my friend had called me and told me about his new hard money lending program which would do 100% financing on properties with the right credit score, he also had a friend that he already qualified for the program, just needed a house to fit his needs.

So, I called my Hard Money dude’s friend. The friend met me at the property, and immediately wanted it. So we drew up the paperwork, and submitted it to my hard money guy.

I was able to sell it for $45,000, with a $1000 non refundable deposit, with a 45 day settlement (i knew he needed the time to clear up his LLC issues and what-not).

He ended up settling a little early, and it took a ton of phone calls to “talk the buyer off of the ledge” once it got close to crunch time, but it all worked out. Luckily no title hiccups or anything happened.

This property was my first one, and with a gross profit of over $17k, i consider it a very successful deal. Feel free to ask me any questions! @mikeswords on twitter!

Happy Dealing!

Exciting Job News!!!!

Exciting Job News!!!! 

Hello Everyone. 

Recently, I have been up to some really cool stuff with my career, and I wanted to share it with you. As you may know, I have been involved in real estate ever since I was in 11th grade in high school, and have really enjoyed it. I loved the people I worked with, possibly the greatest part of my job, and I loved the deal chasing. 

Recently, one of my best friends, Tam Lapp, was looking for some help expanding his business, Tam Lapp Construction, which specializes in post and frame construction/pole buildings/barns. So, I sat down with him and came up with a few ideas for him to think about, and he offered me a position to partner up with him. 

For me, having the opportunity to work with one of my best friends, while still maintaining the freedom of being self employed is the perfect arrangement. I cannot wait to see how far we can take this business! 

As far as my real estate business, I will be actively writing articles about my experiences in investing in real estate (my wins, my losses, and everything in between), and I will be continuing to work with buyers and sellers (and credit repair clients), I just will not be pursuing any new clients at this time. If it becomes too much, I will be referring it to my close friends in the business. Thanks for your support. 

I hope everyone is doing great, feel free to update me on your lives by commenting below! 

Sincerely, 
Mike 

PS: If you would like to see more about our new business, please check out: www.custompolebuilding.com Follow me on twitter @mikeswords

Marketing Plan - Business Cards

Business cards are officially your best friend. If MySpace didnt go extinct, you would definitely have business cards in your “top 8”. You should Facebook friend business cards and poke them endlessly.

When designing a business card you want it to be effortless to get your information off of it. Don't make it some abstract piece of art that is completely useless when it comes to lead generation. That being said, if you are not super attractive, keep the picture off (my card does not have my picture, sorry ladies). Don't put 25 colors on it, dont put every single thing about your business on it, like your business slogan, mission statement, customer conduct promises... it is just for a simple marketing message, and the info to contact you. Don't make it complicated.

Once you get your cards, give them to your friends tell them to hand them out to people they know who talk about wanting to buy or sell a home. Put them up on those community boards at some businesses that nobody looks at (people actually do look at them for some reason. Maybe they find several dogs a week or something?). One thing that I have done is give a bunch of cards to my friends, and tell them I will pay them $1000 if they get someone to call me and i end up buying their house. This motivates them to keep me fresh on the mind, and excited to spread my message. Referrals are great, but referrals from motivated, excited friends that will already vouch for your credibility and character are priceless (well... minus the $1000). I think this is the most under-used tactic in the real estate investing game.

Make it a goal to get rid of 50 cards a week minimum. They cost a few pennies but, they can make you thousands!!

One cool trick you can do is start going to local real estate auctions and talk with the other bidders at the auction. This will allow you to meet more investors to build your potential buyers list (we will be covering this shortly), it also allows you to look at properties and get a good idea of what investors are willing to pay for certain properties.

I would recommend potentially putting “I Buy Houses” on the back or something to let people know what you do. Putting “Property Acquisition Specialist” on the card as your title may be cool, but nobody cares/knows what that means.

**Random Thought**
I once read somewhere that if a 1st grader cant understand your marketing message, you are too complicated.

If you need business card designs i would recommend googling “business card designs” and just read through some cool articles and look at pictures of some awesome cards. I actually personally collect business cards from successful business people, and I can say, that it seems the more money someone is worth, the more simple their business card gets. <- just food for thought. I get all of my printing done at overnightprints.com because they are dirt cheap and they have great paper thickness, with free gloss finish.

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to comment or email me @ mike.swords@me.com - or find me on twitter @mikeswords - I answer every single question personally!

Marketing Plan - Bandit Signs

Hellooooooooooooo

Today we will be covering Bandit Signs, and how they can make you rich. When i started my business, i ordered two different types of bandit signs. One was made to target sellers and said “I buy houses, and condition, any situation” with my 1800 number. I also had another one made to target buyers “I have homes! 0%down/Bad credit options available” with my 1800 number.

I would put our signs up whenever i felt like it. In my area, there was one municipality/tax district that was very strict about signs so i just never put signs up there. On average my signs would have a 4-7 day life expectancy, which isnt bad for a few bucks on a main road. I would plaster an area, and then come back in a few months and just cycle through my list of target areas.

A lot of the what i have read says you should put them out late on friday so they stay up during the weekend. I dont necessarily find that to be the case in my area. Whenever i put up signs they would have roughly the same life expectancy as any other time. I think that each tax district in your area will probably have different levels of sign nazi-ness.

I always put my signs on telephone poles... someone told me that that is illegal because the telephone company actually owns the poles... but i dont really care. i have never received a call from anyone saying i did something illegal. I always put the signs at stop signs/red lights as high as possible on the telephone poles, and just staple them on with one of those “slap staplers” at home depot or lowes.

As far as the sign, i would recommend the most simple sign possible with your phone number fairly large. I read somewhere that blue is 20% more effective than black in regards to lettering. I personally have seen signs with 2color contrast, and it was epic. You could see the signs from space. But really, being simple is the most important factor, you want the letters to be as large and readable, from as far as away as possible.

I always tried to put my signs out right before rush hour so I would get calls shortly afterwards.

**productivity tip #1** always go with 2 people. One person drives and the other person is the sign bitch. This is much quicker, and also makes sure that you don't hold up traffic.

**productivity tip #2** since you listened to number 1 (obviously), have the driver do some “driving for dollars” - While you are driving around and you see some “jacked up” houses, write down the address of the house to develop the “shit list”.

I would recommend ordering your signs from Super Cheap Signs. They have always been extremely good, and their sign designer is amazing. If you are interesting in doing some testing, order 50-100 signs at a time and completely change the sign every time until you have the ultimate combination of color, font, font size, and sign content.

Bandit signs can be a great way to generate leads on the cheap. Starting out i cant imagine an investor not including bandit signs in his lead generation plan/model.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment, or send me an email @ mike.swords@me.com.

Marketing Plan - Direct Mail Overview

We did a CRAP TON of direct mail starting out. I like direct mail because, you can pay your dues and do all of the bitch work in the beginning, and eventually outsource it easily to other people. It is also easily trackable, predictable, and duplicatable.

We sent out postcards and letters to our lists. We went the extra mile and hand signed every piece of mail that went out, telling them to call our number (which was handwritten), it was the local number routed to the call center. We would then get tons of calls because of the fact that it had a super personal touch. It may take longer but it is absolutely worth it.

As far as who we sent the mail to, it was mostly absentee owners (people who own the house, but dont live there), and what we called the “shit list” (we will cover this in detail shortly). We also did a very effective letter to people that were going to be foreclosed on at the sheriff sale. It was just a short letter saying they need to call us to get help.

The shit list was something me and my partner sort of coined, it has turned into our most effective marketing campaign. Me and him would drive around our neighborHOODs, and identify these awful properties that looked abandoned, had the fire safety plaque on it, or had grass up to the windows.

We would then cross reference these with the tax records and find out where the owners lived. (they never lived there because the houses were inhabitable). We would send them a letter saying “Hey Jim, This is mike swords. I want to buy your house @ 123 W Market St. Please call me to talk about this XXX-XXX-XXXX (local number routed to call center)

We would also put this on small paper, and in a greeting card envelope. I bet you every single one of those was opened, and we would get a call 20% of the time. Amazing.

So when we are sending out direct mail, the most important thing to keep in mind is, the more work you put in to the mailer, the more return you are going to get back. We would sign every letter, write a short message on every letter, put stamps on instead of bulk mailers (people hate seeing bulk mail), hand write addresses.... anything/everything to get it opened.

Most people attempt to do direct mail and they try to just send the most possible. I focus on getting return, not the time. In the beginning, your time is most likely not valuable anyway, so why not maximize your $$. send me an email or post a comment if you would like any more info on the direct mail campaigns.

Marketing Plan - Website - Phone Number

Hello All!

In this next incredibly good post, we will be going over the process of setting up my first marketing campaign for real estate. When i started in real estate, i actually had much more marketing than this, but most of it, i didnt do consistently, or it just didnt work so i stopped. If i would do it all over again, this is exactly how i would set it up. When i started my company it was $7,000 for everything; attorney, marketing costs, accountant fees, and enough left over to put a deposit on our first house.

The First thing i did was research a business name before i went to the attorney. In Pennsylvania (where i am from), you can just go look up the PA LLC name search site and look up all of the ideas you may have to see if they are already taken.

With my last name starting with an “S”, and my partners last name starting with a “P”, we decided to go with S&P Housing, LLC. We chose an llc because our attorney recommended it. No idea what the differences are in business types honestly.

I then, with my extremely limited abilities, designed a logo and bought the domain sandphousing.com as well as wholesaleyork.com. I recommend buying both a namesake domain as well as a vanity domain. People driving by a house are much more likely to remember wholesaleyork.com than sandphousing.com. With my credit repair business, i bought firstcapitalcreditrepair.com, as well as saveyourscore.com. Guess which one drives more traffic???

When you start thinking about your website, always think about lead generation. There is no other point of having a website other than lead generation. Your website can generate both buyers and sellers, but this post is primarily focusing on how to generate motivated sellers.

When i was looking at prices for getting a website, we lucked out and got a buddy of mine to do it for free (we payed him anyway). He did a great job. I would look for either 1) someone looking to build their portfolio or 2) a very nice looking web2.0 style template site.

Be prepared to have something to give potential leads in return for their email address, or any other personal information. Make sure the product that you give them is a much larger value than them giving you their personal information. That way, when you call them, they already love you for rocking their world. We did e-books, because it require no effort on our part, and it was extremely valuable to the lead.

The next thing i looked into was the phone number. Because i had a “full time job” working as a realtor, and my partner had a full time job in insurance, we both decided it would be best to have a company handle all of our incoming calls. So i typed up a script of all of the questions i would need to know. The answering company then answers the call just like they are my employee.

One little trick i did was get both a toll free number (not a vanity number), and ALSO a local number (both forwarding to the call center). I will talk more on the next post when we cover our ridiculously successful direct mail campaigns.

Stay tuned until tomorrow!