Category: Kathy Kennebrook’s Insightful Articles

Kathy Kennebrook is frequently asked, “If you had it to do over again what would you do differently?” Well, Kathy Kennebrook would like to answer that question for you. There are several things you can do to help your business grow and several things you can do to kill the dream before it ever has a chance to become a reality. Let’s talk about the “ten deadly mistakes” that can kill your dream.

1. Listening to people who make less money than you do. There are a lot of folks out there who don’t understand this business at all, yet they will want to give you advice faster than anyone else. They basically want to keep you where they are, which is broke. Surround yourself with people who can guide you in a positive way and a forward direction. Get involved with your local real estate club or a mentoring program like Ron LeGrand provides for you. Read all you can on the subject of Real Estate Investing and educate yourself to move forward with your business. Don’t let a “naysayer” kill your dream.

2. Lack of Focus. If you’re anything like I was when I first got started in real estate, then you know how to find something else you’d rather do, or something that seems like it’s more important at the moment. I found very quickly that I had to do the work in order to succeed in the real estate business. The more of the initial “work” I did, the faster my business grew. What I mean by the work is finding motivated sellers, learning how to structure deals and then figuring out my exit strategy. The other part of the work was to very quickly find ways to automate these systems, and get someone else doing the work for me so I could deal only with the sellers. This took concentration and the ability to learn to avoid distractions, like the telephone for example. I very quickly learned to return all calls two or three times a day instead of taking every call that came in. I also had to learn how to focus on specific types of real estate deals at the beginning of my business instead of being pulled in all directions and not accomplishing anything at all. You must stay focused in order to become successful in any business you pursue.

3. Getting Beyond the “Get Rich Quick” Mentality– Anyone who thinks this is a “get rich quick” kind of business is in for a rude awakening. It takes time, discipline and ongoing education to be very successful at real estate. Isn’t worth it to take some time now to learn the business and start doing deals that make you thousands of dollars so you can vacation and spend time with your family a little later? There are so many “get rich quick” schemes out there that just don’t work. Real estate will work for you over and over if you give it the time and discipline it well deserves.

4. Wasting Time With Unmotivated Sellers– I cover this extensively in my Marketing Magic System. Don’t waste valuable time dealing with people who want to sell a property. Deal only with those who NEED to sell. And don’t waste a lot of time on the phone with them. Automate your system to develop ways to get sellers to give you the information you need to determine if there is a deal to be made before you ever have a conversation with them. If a seller is not motivated enough to accept your offer-be it price or terms, find another seller who is. Time is money in this business. I would suggest however, that there are times you will want to follow up with a semi-motivated seller and there are great ways to do this without taking up a lot of your time. I also cover this extensively in my system. Also, don’t waste your time looking at properties before you have made an offer to the seller. I never look at houses anymore without having a very good idea what my seller will accept. I just make the offer “subject to inspection” which gives me an out if the property isn’t what the seller and I agreed to. Usually the deal is made before I ever see a property.

 

5. Building a Huge Rental Base Before Taking Care of Today’s Cash flow Needs. I could absolutely write a book on this subject. When I first started in the business, I started keeping every single property. All of a sudden I had 55 properties in inventory and no money to pay the bills. I actually started thinking the real estate business just didn’t work. Thank goodness I was proved wrong, but not before learning a very valuable lesson. I have my mentor Ron LeGrand to thank for that. We started liquidating some of those properties to get cash coming in and then developed a plan for how many houses we would retail and how many we would keep each month based on what our personal needs were. If you are just starting out, believe me when I tell that you wholesaling properties is a really good way to build cash flow quickly. If you want to keep some properties, you can do that. Just make sure you develop a plan of action that will work for you and your personal finances. Make sure you have enough cash coming in to meet your personal needs and build a nest egg of extra cash.

 

6. Fear of Making Offers.  This is another subject I could talk a lot about from personal experience. I remember targeting motivated sellers, having them contact me and then leaving the information on my desk because I was afraid to contact them. Once I figured out that they are just people too, it became a lot easier. If you already have the information about their situation and their property in front of you because you have built a system to do that, you already know most of what you need to know. The rest of the deal lies in your ability to pick up the phone and talk to the seller. Fear of sellers is probably one of the most serious problems you will encounter as a real estate investor, because without the sellers, there are no deals. The biggest problem that I see with students is the fear of rejection from the seller. So what? Either they sell to you or they don’t. If they don’t, then simply move onto a seller who is willing to work with you.

7. Making Excuses like “I don’t know enough yet to make deals”. I am one of those people who just has to jump in first and do it and then fix it later. However, in the real estate business, this just isn’t a really good idea. You do need to get some education in order to do this business, or work with someone who already has the education. Working with a partner or a mentor like Ron LeGrand is one good way to get started. However, your own education is going to be an ongoing process and you need to do it. If you try to do deals without having any idea what you are doing, you’re going to get burned out quickly. You will not get offers accepted, you won’t know what to do if you do get an offer accepted and you may not make nearly as good a deal as you could with a little education under your belt. Even after all the years I have been doing this business, I still go to seminars and read books to learn even more ways to do great deals.  In the beginning, I learned enough in a very short time to do a lot of profitable deals and you can too. Once you get active in the business you will run into a lot of different kinds of scenarios concerning sellers and situations. This is one of the reasons I offer ongoing support to all my students as does Ron. If they get stuck on a deal or an offer, they know where they can get their questions answered.

8. Procrastination. There are several things you need to do in order to become a Real Estate Investor. Sitting in front of the television watching re-runs isn’t one of them. You will be able to find lots of reasons to put off getting started in the real estate business. My personal favorites were “my job is keeping my too busy” and “the kids need me.” Once I started making a specific plan and put it in writing, things started to happen. I have always been a list maker and working the real estate business involved making several more lists. So I started keeping a detailed planner outlaying what I have to do the next day, the next week, the next month, etc. This helps keep me very focused and moving ahead in a specific direction. This will make your business grow faster than you know. You will be able to track tasks, deals, and you can keep your appointment schedule organized as well. There is nothing I know that will keep things in prospective better than a specific plan of action.

9. Lack of Communication Skills. One of the major obstacles I hear my students having trouble with is their lack of communication skills. There are a lot of reasons this happens. One is simply because the student is from another country or part of the country and has an accent that makes it difficult to understand them, or they don’t have a total grasp on the English language. To these folks I say, find someone else to do the talking for you until your communication skills improve. A Realtor or a partner can certainly help you with this problem and you should have a Realtor as a part of your “Dream Team” regardless of your communication level. As a matter of fact, if you have automated your business the way I teach you to, you can buy houses without ever seeing them or talking to a seller. Many of my offers are made in writing without ever seeing the property and then the details are handled by the closing agent. In fact, I deal with a lot of Spanish speaking sellers and I don’t speak a word of Spanish. I simply developed a system to handle these sellers.

 

10. Fear of Failure- Let me be the one to tell you that the only person who can truly kill your dreams is YOU. The decision is simply yours to make. I know this sounds cliché, but do you really want to go through your whole life wondering if you could have done it? The only way to realize your dreams is to “fail forward”. You may make some mistakes along the way but you will quickly learn what not to do the next time. I would much rather know that when I reach retirement, I will be able to do what I want to do, go where I want to go and not have to depend on anyone to provide for my old age. The easiest decision to make is to do nothing at all, but you get no reward that way. Half of the excitement of my life these days that makes me get up in the morning is finding and doing the next deal because it’s a thrill for me. It definitely isn’t a job anymore. I can also choose to just take the day off and do what I want to do. Only you have the ability to set yourself free to do live your life in whatever way you want to, and real estate is definitely the avenue to accomplish this goal!!

 

Be sure and check out Kathy Kennebrook’s website at www.marketingmagiclady.com for all the information you need on finding motivated sellers. While you are there be sure and sign up for our FREE monthly newsletter!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using delinquent tax lists to locate motivated sellers is one of the easiest ways Kathy Kennebrook knows to find good deals and really motivated sellers for your real estate business. None of your competitors are using this resource and there are definitely some motivated sellers in this group.

Each year, just before the tax certificate sale in your county, the county will produce a list of all the people in your county who have not paid their tax bills before the cut-off date. Usually this list will also include the name of the owner, the address the tax bill was mailed to and a description of the property including the subdivision if there is one. They provide this list in order for you to be able to look at properties you want to purchase tax certificates on. But this is also an excellent list for you to use for direct mail campaigns.

There are two easy ways to get this particular list. One is to simply look in the newspaper. Usually a few weeks before the sale, the newspaper will print a section listing all of the properties that have had tax certificates issued against them. They produce this weekly for about three or four weeks right up to the date of the sale. The other way is get this list is to go to your courthouse or tax collectors’ office and ask for it. They will usually gladly give you a copy.

The way Kathy Kennebrook utilizes this list is to carefully go through it and choose properties in subdivisions I want to buy in and mail each of these property owners a letter. The list is going to be fairly large, so picking subdivisions you want to buy in is a good way to hone the list down to something more manageable. The important thing you need to remember is to keep this letter neutral and personal, don’t mention that you are aware that their taxes are behind. You don’t want to do anything to alienate a potential seller.

Kathy Kennebrook mails them a personal looking letter letting them know who she is, how she can help them, and that she am interested in purchasing properties in the particular subdivision they own property in. 

Kathy Kennebrook includes with the letter a response area where they will answer questions for me about their property and their motivation so she can determine whether there is a deal there when they respond to my mailing. The response rate from this particular mailing always seems to be very high and brings me a number of leads from motivated sellers. You probably don’t want to mail more than 500 letters at a time, or you may not be able to handle the responses from these motivated sellers.

Many of the people who have not paid taxes on their property have not done so for a variety of reasons, such as an inability to afford them, an inherited property, a divorce situation, a probate situation, or a vacation property they no longer intend to visit.

All of these are situations that are ripe for good deals to be made and many of these sellers are very motivated. Very often, they know they have a problem they need to solve, they just don’t know how until they are contacted by you.

Think about it, if a person just inherited a property they neither want nor need and they just got another tax bill for several thousand dollars, do you think they will be more motivated? The answer is a resounding yes! Sometimes you will see that the tax bill may be more than just one year behind. These are even better prospects. Many times Kathy Kennebrook has purchased properties at wholesale value or below.

Generally speaking, there is no competition for these properties since your competitors simply haven’t thought about using this list as a lead source. In the last mailing Kathy Kennebrook did to this list, she sent out 178 pieces of mail and received almost a ten percent response rate from that mailing. Kathy Kennebrook currently has two of these properties under contract.

This may be an exceptional response, but you should certainly try this mailing and see what kind of response you get. This list can actually be a dual resource for you, one is to find motivated sellers and the other is for you to buy some tax certificates if you are so inclined.

Any time you are able to reach a group of potential sellers, who have problems they need to solve, you will get good leads from them. This particular lead source will create many deals for you since there is a higher number of potential sellers who need to sell. Always be willing to do what your competition will not and you have more deals coming at you than you can handle.

For more information on excellent direct mail campaigns to use to attract motivated sellers from delinquent taxes, visit Kathy Kennebrook’s website at www.marketingmagiclady.com. While you are there be sure and sign up for Kathy Kennebrook’s Free Monthly Newsletter and receive over $149.00 in marketing bonuses absolutely FREE!!

Where can I find a good mailing list to find motivated sellers? How can I create my own list to find highly motivated sellers? These are the big questions that Kathy Kennebrook gets a lot from Real Estate Investors!

The true secret to success for a Real Estate Investor is finding sellers who really need to sell. Kathy Kennebrook uses different direct mail campaigns to locate different types of motivated sellers: out of state owners, properties quit-claimed from one person to another, expired listings, burned out landlords, vacant properties, military transfers, and pre-foreclosures, just to name a few.

The best part is that you can customize your direct mail piece and your list to reach exactly the kinds of motivated sellers you want to deal with in order to create the kinds of deals you want for your real estate investing business. This is best done by locating mailing lists and refining them to meet your individual criteria, then mailing to these potential sellers again and again, thus creating a multitude of profitable deals.

Investors often neglect to market to sellers using direct mail because they think the list is too difficult to get, or they only send the mailings once and quit. They don’t take the time to create the machine that will bring them deal after deal.

These are some of the easiest lists for you to get and it will be very profitable for you to do so. You can contact a list broker or your local property assessor’s office and ask them for these lists, or you can create the lists yourself. It’s fairly easy to do. You can go to the courthouse and research divorce cases, death notices, liens and judgments, tax liens, marriage licenses, bankruptcies or Lis Pendens, which is the first step toward foreclosure. Let me share a few pointers here.

1. Do your homework when picking a list broker. How current is the list? Does it have all the information you need to create your direct mail campaign? Does it reach the audience you are targeting?
2. Do a test mailing of 100 pieces to test any new list. How many responses did you get? How many letters came back with a bad address?
3. Don’t waste your marketing dollars marketing to a bad list that won’t get you the result you want.
4. Create continuity with your direct mail campaigns. You can mail a lot of letters or a few letters but you need to have a flow of mail going out at all times in order to create a funnel of incoming leads.
5. Never mail more pieces than you are comfortable getting responses to. If you do a huge mailing and you get tons of responses you can’t get to, you are wasting marketing dollars. Put systems in place to help you respond to the mailings and grow your business gradually.

Another way to find motivated sellers is to cultivate relationships with individuals who can help you find deals. One of the ways Kathy Kennebrook does this is to create a direct mail campaign targeting attorneys who handle family law, estate planning and probate law, divorce and marital law, and corporation and business law and she lets them know she is in the business of buying houses.

Once you develop relationships with some of these attorneys, they will call you when they have a client who needs to sell a property quickly no matter what condition it’s in. This is just another way to build ongoing lead sources using direct mail. You only have to create this direct mail campaign once to create an ongoing source of leads for your Real Estate Investing business.

If you own any kind of business and you need certain types of leads, think about unique resources that can provide you with the leads you need and create a direct mail campaign targeting these resources. This can be really profitable. For example; if you own an alarm company or a lawn maintenance service it would behoove you to create a direct mail campaign targeting owners of properties in your area who live out of state. These are potential customers who need your services.

The main reason that direct mail works so well is that you are reaching highly targeted leads. You become the potential seller’s first option when they need to sell. Even if you are on a limited budget, direct mail is an excellent source of leads for you since you can buy more houses from fewer leads, thus maximizing your marketing dollars. As your business grows, you can increase the number of mailings you do. You can also target specific neighborhoods or dominate certain parts of town. In doing so, you become a “property value expert” in those areas, which makes the offer-making process that much easier for you.

You end up creating an ongoing relationship with your target market, which makes it easy for you to follow up with formerly inflexible or unmotivated sellers. Since these mailings are so targeted and so residual, there is virtually no competition for these properties. It puts your lead generating system on “auto-pilot,” leaving you more time to make offers, do more deals, and make more money.

Most importantly, be consistent in all your efforts. The successful Real Estate Investor has a network of people and strategies at their fingertips at all times. If you don’t develop continuity to your marketing campaigns, you’ll see your results begin to drop off immediately. This is true no matter what business you are using direct mail to target to.

When you implement multiple techniques and several different direct mail campaigns, you will have more opportunities than you’ll be able to handle and the possibilities become almost endless. Using direct mail to develop a “cookie cutter” system to accomplish this is one of the most affordable, reliable, and effective ways Kathy Kennebrook knows to build your lead base quickly and have all the business you will ever need.

Be sure and visit Kathy Kennebrook’s website at www.marketingmagiclady.com for all the information you need on developing highly effective direct mail campaigns and finding all the list brokers you need to increase the number of leads coming into your real estate business. Kathy Kennebrook has done all the work for you and can provide you with all the tools you need to be successful using direct mail in your business.

 

One of the most important aspects to a marketing campaign to find highly qualified sellers and buyers that is going to work is to create a solid mail piece for your business. These are key points for creating a solid direct mail piece that folks will respond to no matter what business you are in.

1. The first thing you’ll want to do is to “touch” your prospective customer or seller with “the dream”, or “the solution” to their problem. You’ll want to touch the basic emotions and the needs of your client or seller within the body of your letter, whether that is fear, relief, greed, pride or vanity.
2. Keep it simple. The grammar doesn’t necessarily have to be perfect. You want to reach this person at their comfort level. Keep your letter relaxed, personal and conversational.
3. Use simple language; don’t fill your letter with big words or technical words or “industry jargon” that your seller or your customer might not understand.
4. Kathy Kennebrook also uses paragraphs so that there is a specific break between thoughts and so that the letter just flows better and is more pleasing to the eye.
5. Even though this is a personal letter, Kathy Kennebrook still begins with a powerful headline or first sentence to make sure she has their attention so that they read the rest of her piece.
6. Kathy Kennebrook also lists the benefits to the seller of choosing to work with her the real estate investor, as opposed to perhaps listing their home or trying to sell it themselves. You always need to list the benefits of whatever it is you are selling and why they should buy yours.
7. In any piece you send out you need to have your USP (Unique Selling Proposition). For the Real Estate Investor this is going to be the ease with which you can help the seller solve their problem, and/or debt relief. For every business the USP will be uniquely different.
8. Always include a strong P.S. In Kathy Kennebrook’s case the P.S. is “contact me immediately since we budget to purchase a certain number of homes each month.” This motivates them even more to contact her right away.
9. Create residual mailings so that your seller/customer sees your message over and over again. By doing this you create credibility with your prospect and when they need your services they will contact you first.

When you are creating direct mail pieces or letters no matter what business you are in remember to think about writing your letter as though you are writing to just one person.

For example, you wouldn’t begin your letter “Dear Neighbors” you would begin it “Dear Neighbor” or “Dear Friend” or “Dear Mr. Smith”. Within the body of the letter you should write as though you are writing to just one person, so you wouldn’t say something like “all of you” within the body of your letter.

These few points will help you to create direct mail campaigns that will net you excellent results just as ours have over the years. For specific information on how to create direct mail campaigns visit Kathy Kennebrook’s website at www.marketingmagiclady.com. Kathy Kennebrook also provides a free monthly newsletter you can sign up for while you are there PLUS you will receive $149.00 in bonuses absolutely FREE!!!