The Dreaded Phone Call

Grab your phone. If you accept this call to action, you’ll thank me later. Paraphrasing the men’s warehouse guy, “You’ll like the way this works. I guarantee it.”

You need 30 to 60 minutes uninterrupted for part one of this exercise:

Open a word processor or find pen and notepad. Create three columns at the top of the page:

Now scroll through every contact in your digital address book. You can include your contacts on Facebook too, but you’ll have diminishing returns there. Place contacts into one of the three columns. Be aware, you’re not allowed to put more than 10% of all your contacts in the “Impossible” column. The more you pen in the “Impossible” column, the less success you’ll find.

Once you have scrolled through your whole list of contacts, sorting each into one of the columns, it’s time to prepare for part two of this exercise. Allow yourself five phone calls or fifteen minutes a day, three days a week for part two of this exercise.

I’m the kind of person who prefers to put the hardest part of my day in the rearview mirror first. I work with a gentleman who prefers to warm up to the tough parts of his day with a few emotionally reinforcing activities first. Approach this how it makes sense for you.

Contact everyone in the first two columns. If you reach voicemail, leave a message or follow up with a quick text. The trick is, you need to get these people on the phone, regardless, so your voicemail and text should both be roughly the same: “Hey John Doe, this is Jack. No emergency, but can you call back when you have five minutes?”

If you’re like most people, your blood pressure is already at dangerous highs just thinking about what I’ve already challenged you to do. We all remember the old high school friend who reached out to us when she decided to sell Pampered Chef®. It’s uncomfortable.

But here’s the secret: she’s uncomfortable talking to you too, you’ve just always been too inward-focused to consider how hard it was for her to pick up that phone. Moreover, you’ve never thought about how courageous she was to dial you. She deserves your respect, even if she’s terrible at selling kitchen wares. If you’re going to be mad at anyone, be mad at the creator of the kitchen products for using the psychology of guilt as leverage to generate wealth.

Back to the point: during part two of this exercise, you’ll be building a second list to drive part three of this exercise. In order to build that list, you need to know what you’re calling for in the first place.

You’re calling your contacts to ask who would be interested in investing with you for real estate projects. Note who expresses interest. I’ve offered my contacts 14%APR for any money they invest with me on guaranteed terms. To get the trust from first-time lenders, I’ve offered absurd collateral to the tune of the house they lent on if my terms defaulted. You might not have to offer so much, but the goal is three-fold (1) They trust you. (2) You trust yourself. (3) The pitch and the result is so memorable they want to lend again in the future.

Once you’ve completed your calls, it’s time for the final step in the process. You’ll need between 45 and 90 minutes to complete step three. Go back to the word processor or notepad and pen. Using the notes from the phone calls you completed, rebuild your list of “Easy” “Hard” and “Impossible”. You can add one to two names to the impossible list if you wish, but remember, “impossible” contacts only reduce your potential investment partners. That said, some people are undeniably combative and would be poor business partners. Once you’ve made the calls, you can better judge who those people are.

If your experience mirrors mine, you’ll probably have found that a few of the people you were afraid to call are the most promising investment partners. Likewise, a few of the people you thought would be easy to talk with made things awkward and uncomfortable for you.

You’ll then want to follow-up with those contacts who expressed interest in investing with you when you have a deal. Don’t be surprised if they don’t have money when you need it and don’t let that stop. Keep calling. You may even find people who didn’t invite you to call back may be interested in helping when you next reach out, and people who said they wouldn’t be interested may change their minds when they see how much money you’ve made for your partners, and how well you live as an investor.

The key is persistence and kindness. In the end, you may be helping someone else to achieve their financial goals, and it’s hard to imagine a better outcome than that.