A First Experience In Bandit Sign Land

It's in the books! We've now completed our first "bandit sign" excursion! Maybe I'm just completely over-analytical, but it's amazing what a range of thoughts and emotions go through something as simple as sticking signs in the ground! The funniest part of the whole thing was that we didn't plan on putting up bandit signs when we woke up on Thursday...but sometimes, you just gotta go on faith and take action on something you think will bear fruit.

A quick story about how we ended up in the bandit sign world before sharing my observations about the entire process.

It was Thursday morning, and Dan and I woke up early (7:30 is pretty early for us!) to host an interview with our new friend Mike Donnelly to talk about seller financing. We had a fantastic conversation (which is available through Flipping Awesome!), but had to head out at noon to meet up with Brandon Schwab, who I had randomly friended on Facebook based on hearing him on Joe McCall's "Real Estate Investing Mastery" podcast. He lives right next to my brother Dan, and 45 minutes from me, so I figured it would be a good idea to network with him, having NO CLUE what benefit either of us could provide each other. Little did we know (there is something extraordinary about just going out and taking action, whether you really know what you're doing or not!)......

We sat down at a Starbucks and took a while for the usual formalities...get to know each other, yada yada. 4 hours later, we had both told our entire life stories, shared tips with each other, and also discussed how we could both benefit each other. Brandon needed some financing on a hot property (or more), and we just wanted to learn the finer details about lease purchases. Mission accomplished on both sides. Great success!

What we DIDN'T expect was to be offered an opportunity to make some money on a couple of properties Brandon was looking to unload, and for him to give us a gameplan for how to effictively use bandit signs.

So, that's how we arrived at the 18x24 pieces of yellow cloroplast that were sitting in my garage waiting to be loved, and will end up making us gobs of money! I have so many thoughts about the process, and so many things we learned...I'd like to share it with anyone looking to do the same. Learn from my mistakes/experience, so to speak...

1. 1. Plan your route before you go. My gosh, that would have made things so much easier! We went to a town i've never actually been in before (surprisingly) that I knew was extremely spread out, Next time, I will look up the subject property on Google Maps, and then specifically identify the exact street corners I plan to place the signs (if possible, all 4 corners of the 4 biggest intersections around the subject property...plus a few signs near the house...so about 20 signs total per property. At $2/ea, it's a wise $40 investment [plus time and gas, obviously]). Obviously, planning this our site-unseen may be more difficult than it seems, but when you drive to a town you've never been in, in the dark, it's extremely easy to get turned around and waste a ton of time. At least TRYING to map out a plan seems like a great idea.
2. 2. Expect a roller coaster of emotions. It's hard to explain the mixture of excitement, nervousness, fatigue, confusion, and over-analyzation that you go through as a first-time bandit. Are these things actually going to work? Where should they go? Over there?? Is that a cop?! What if they fall down? What if we get fined? What are people going to think? What if one of our friends calls us?! AHHH!! :-) The very first sign I went out to put in the ground...I approached the corner, trying to be sneaky, and someone randomly honked (not at me...although I obviously thought so), and extremely coincidentally, a cop drove up to turn right, right in front of me. WHAT THE CRAP! In reality, the honk nor the cop had anything to do with me, but I still almost had a heart attack. Just expect that you're going to be an emotional wreck because you don't know what the heck you're doing or what to actually expect!
3. 3. Go on faith and be proud you're taking action. Regardless if you get a single call (you will!), there is something amazing about pursuing your dream by taking action and trying SOMETHING. I don't know the stat, but I am willing to bet that over 90% of people never actually pursue real estate because they never leave the gate. They'll take some courses, learn some things, dream about success, come up with goals, but never talk to another investor, go to a single meeting, put a single sign in the ground, or even tell anyone else about their real estate ideas. The fact that you wrote a message on a bandit sign, drove to a town and placed a sign in the ground very likely puts you in the upper 5% of the entire real estate world. Be proud and expect the best, but don't get too hung up on results in the beginning. Learn and adjust over time. The first time of ANYTHING is always the worst.
   
4. 4. Make note of where all your signs are. You'll likely want to go pick them up after a period of time. Every town has their own rules, but I don't think you'll win over many people by leaving them in forever. You'll especially want to re-collect them if you're using general, non-specific-property signs so you can use them again.
   
5. 5. Document the experience. Take pictures and video...write down your thoughts. It will be fun to look back on these thoughts in several years after seeing success...documenting my entire real estate journey. Even more importantly, and I think a HUGE area where people fail...real estate investing is LARGELY a marketing business. One of the biggest parts of marketing your business is marketing yourself...telling your story...sharing with others. So many people love seeing people taking action, and will look up to you as a resource if you were to share your experience on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. Start a following...it will be worth more to you than you could even know (that's an entirely separate post in itself!).

We put out 20 signs on Thursday from 9:30-11:00PM, and it's now noon on Saturday. We've already received 15 voicemails. This number is actually lower than it usually will be because there was LITERALLY almost a tornado in our area yesterday, and only stupid people (like me) were out driving. Today and tomorrow should bear a lot more fruit...not to mention that some people probably wrote down the number and haven't called us yet. We'll see!

We're very excited to see how things go with these signs, as well as becoming more efficient with our process over time!

What have your experiences been with bandit signs? Anything similar? Anything to add?