All Forum Posts by: Melissa McRay Johnson

Anyone who is actively marketing and doing deals can benefit from a CRM system. I do wholesaling and flipping and couldn't manage the business without one. You want to be able to track all of your incoming leads all the way through to completion. You can use it to track your marketing performance, budgets on projects, KPIs for every role in your business (even if you're a one man show), call metrics, and manage your lead pipeline. A CRM is also critical for doing follow up, which is where I've been getting most of my deals from these days. I am using Left Main CRM system and love it. It has really cool dashboards so you can see everything happening in your business. You can also integrate your phone systems so you can track all those metrics as well. I use it for managing my projects too. 

Hi Baron,

About 6 months ago I switched from Beastmode to Left Main. Once I got used to the platform (it's built on Salesforce instead of Podio) I found I really liked it. My favorite thing is the dashboards, you can literally track every single thing in your business. I've been investing since 2003 and have used a few different CRMs over the years (after moving from notebooks and spreadsheets LOL). None of them ever gave me so much data in one place. An added bonus is connecting your Quickbooks to it because then you truly get the entire picture of your business once you get that financial data tied in! They also allow for phone integrations (most recently smrtPhone) and that's been helpful. Before I had to log in separately to my Call Rail account to get the call info. Hope this helps!

Hi Joseph!

I always recommend starting out by birddogging leads and wholesaling, both don't require a lot of money to get started. Mostly a little bit of marketing costs and a lot of sweat equity :)

I would suggest starting out by networking with other investors in your area. Find out what kind of properties they are looking for (what areas, condition, price point, etc). Then go out and find properties that fit that criteria.  In wholesaling it's all about relationships, so if you can establish those early on you'll be ahead of the game! 

Once you get comfortable networking and get some wholesale transactions under your belt, then you can decide if you want to try other exit strategies. You can start to look for properties that the owner may potentially finance for you, then you can flip it or keep it as a STR or Long term hold. You can also look for private money lenders to finance your deals with flexible terms and no inspections or appraisal requirements. I believe Bigger Pockets has some great resources for finding private money lenders.

Best wishes! 

We recently switched from Left Main REI from Podio and are really loving it! It's built on Salesforce so it's pretty robust. I like that I can integrate a lot of the other software I was using before into one system like Quickbooks, Call Rail, and HelloSign. I've been rebuilding my team and it really helps to see everything in one place. The dashboards are definitely my favorite feature (especially marketing!)

I've seen it done both ways. I typically roll it into the asking price. The only thing I would caution you on is the way you're marketing the property. Make sure you're being clear that you're assigning your equitable interest in the property. Also I would advise being transparent about the fact you're wholesaling the deal. Good luck!

That might be a good place to start. I would also look up who bought those properties that sold in the same condition and see if they are owner occupied or if an investor bought them. That way you could get some insight if they're an investor, and possibly even wholesale the deal to them! :)

I have used West and West Attorneys for the last 19 years. I've always had a great experience with them.

I've recently switched to Left Main REI from Podio and am loving it. It's built on Salesforce and has lots of automations and prebuilt dashboards. You can also create your own dashboards as well as reports. It's pretty robust, but not intimidating. You can use as much or as little as you need. I also like the fact you won't outgrow it. I've changed CRMs three times in the past 5 years and I can tell you it's no fun! We were using Podio before and found it to be decent, but unable to do a lot of things I needed. I'm a data nerd so I really like the analytics! Their website is leftmainrei.co

Hope that helps!

Hi Matt!

I am an introvert as well, but have been putting out a lot of content consistently over the past year. For me, there were a few things that helped. One is I hired someone to shoot the videos with me. I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn't do it on my own, but having someone pushing me forced me to get it done. The second thing is getting down to your "why". Often if we know the real reason why we are working toward something, then it makes it easier. I know that my desire to help others overcomes the discomfort of shooting the videos so it helps keep me focused. One other thing I do is plan out my content ahead of time. I come up with a list of topics I want to talk about, then actually jot down my talking points right before we video that way it's fresh in my mind and I'm not rambling too much or forget what I want to say. Start making your content, distribute it across multiple platforms and then see where the most engagement is coming from. Based on that you can narrow down your focus to make sure your content is getting in front of the right people and converting.

Hope this helps!