08 Oct Ep. 72 “Driving for Dollars” Software with Matt Kamp of DealMachine.com

TRANSCRIPTION

Welcome everybody to the st louis realtor podcast I’m your host Adam Kruse live today from my backyard here in St. Louis, Missouri I’m super excited because we have a guest here matt camp he’s a stainless i guess native right yeah something like that born and raised for sure yeah we’re uh I’m excited to talk to you today matt because you’re I guess the rep for this new exciting thing called deal machine yep which we’ll get into all about what that is but you know it’s real estate related it’s for real estate investors I think realtors can probably use it too it’s an interesting way to find deals and uh matt welcome thanks for being here today yeah thanks again for having me I was just complimenting your background so I’m a little jealous i need to figure out my outside setup there but yeah you can tell i’m in like a south st louis city basement that’s finished off a little bit so uh yeah i’m a you know definitely a family with native it’s funny mad because as a realtor i can look at your background and i can tell that that you haven’t been able to stack stone foundation you have it’s about two feet or so thick uh one of those windows probably used to be a um cold shoe but it looks like somebody opened them up at some point to be more like a lookout style so it’s more of a living area down there yep nailed it yeah guessing you don’t have a lot of moisture issues although you’re not supposed to paint those kind of foundations really but you know hey it’s all good it came like that but hey yeah the moisture’s not too bad yeah yep exactly so thanks for being here today and although you are a very interesting guy and I have a lot of questions I want to ask you in general um i think it’s your sort of affiliation with this with this is it an app called deal machine that we wanted to have you on today so do you mind giving us kind of the general overview our listeners by the way are anyone from people kind of interested in real estate people that are real esters realtors investors i used to say amazing would listen she’s passed away now uh we love her but uh you know any anyone in the world can listen so give us a little overview of the deal machine yeah no for sure i mean uh i think um you know it’s cool to hear a lot of people uh listening to this are you know newbies or looking to get into real estate investing or maybe they’ve done a deal or a couple you know earlier on in their in their real estate experience or real estate investing experience yeah because i think we we primarily uh especially at first we’re really designed for that um we do have enterprise plans now so we work with companies who are like wholesaling and fixing and flipping at scale as well but um really the the core of what we’ve created uh is for that new investor um really uh how it even started was we actually uh the the ceo of the company David Lecko who is a st louis native as well uh lives in Indianapolis now but is here often um he had he was kind of uh in between uh different ventures he had started a tech company had exited that was figuring out his next thing was getting into or wanting to get into residential real estate investing and started driving for dollars so for those not familiar with that term um just meaning hey get literally get in your car drive down the street and try to find properties that look like they might not be taken care of or they might be vacant or you know have an absentee owner or something like that um you know David was starting to do that he would find properties write down the address try to figure out how to get in touch with them remember try to remember to follow up with them like the whole process was just tough to pull off and really time consuming and just not easy um so he created a deal machine uh back in 2017 i believe um you know version one was like hey how do we make driving for dollars a better process a more efficient process um so you know he created technology that now you can take a picture of a particular property really you know it’s nationwide so anywhere our data covers you know the u.s um take a picture that property and you can instantly you know pulls in from a few databases a few public databases uh to really show you hey here’s how you get in touch with this person whether it be um you know you can send them a direct mail piece um if they’re an absentee owner it’ll actually send the postcard to where they where they actually live um you know uh you know maybe the corporation will show you who owns it um or you can you have the opportunity to also skip trace and and call them on the spot so um you know you can either cold call them or and or send them postcards like that so the platform started off as this driving for dollars platform for new real estate investors who didn’t know how to get started and even find their first deal and even start talking to people um it’s something to take action on and get out there and use this technology to make that process much more efficient and then it’s grown into that plus uh we were we’ve launched a free crm in addition to that um where the crm helps you manage your particular pro leads and properties so you understand you know whenever you enter a property into the crm it’ll say hey this is up for approval if you approve it you have the opportunity to you know start sending mail directly from there um the you know the crm will tell you how many pieces of mail you sent them where it is in that process kind of help you track that deal with follow-ups make follow-up real easy and then um we also have uh our third piece of software that’s all in this deal machine platform now it’s a mobile app and a web app um is our list engine which that’s a list pulling technology that you know we really preach and say hey you know combine your original list of driving for dollars leads with your with a list that you can pull from a database where you can go in and literally draw around your neighborhood and say hey you know for this area i drew around show me every property that has been vacant and not sold for over 10 years you know you can get very specific on the criteria and it will return a list to say hey here’s 30 houses that fit that would you like to sync your mail your marketing to them as well so it’s a crm that combines kind of this list pulling and the driving for dollars leads together cool okay it sounds like it does a lot you know yeah and um i guess for people kind of watching or listening or whatever like what i what i find is with investors or realtors they have to sort of focus on one of what i consider to be three areas one area is they can say okay i’m just gonna spend a ton of money and i’m gonna do lots of marketing and mailing postcards and you know billboards tv ads whatever it is and i’m going to wait for people to call me so i’ve got basically more money than time and i’m going to do that and then the other kind of area that people concentrate is is like i don’t have unless i don’t necessarily want to spend as much money but i do have more time but i’m not super aggressive so i want to spend my time doing things like networking going to local investor events or going to happy hours with my friends or whatever and kind of finding deals that way and so that’s not a lot of money not a lot of time not a lot of um like i don’t want to call it aggression but like direct sales or whatever and then the third category i think people are in is more like okay not a lot of money a lot of time and i’m aggressive and i’m ready to make phone calls and i’m ready to just kind of make things happen and so it seems to me like deal machine kind of is in this what i would call the third category but sort of like an option for the first category right so someone can drive around do driving for dollars which like you said means drive around and look for houses that have deferred maintenance and are maybe beat up or have gutters falling down or their lawn is longer than all the neighbors whatever so that’s like literally driving around and finding the best potential candidates to buy but then instead of what they probably used to do which is write down the address go home and maybe try to remember to call them or try to look them up whatever it sounds like what you’re saying is they can while they’re out they can type that address into deal machine and they can either do what i’m considering to like not that expensive but more aggressive they can just start calling them them there or they can do like a hybrid route which is click some sort of button and deal machine which by the way i’ve never been in deal machine so i like the way it sounds but i’m just talking about it here if anyone’s wondering but they can get some sort of pretty intuitive i think yeah okay so they can then click some sort of button and deal machine and it’s like i found what i think should be a house that someone should sell me and you guys start marketing to them for me is that right so it’s funny i love the way that you bucketed those three different types of people i think the initial investor getting their feet wet and like just starting to take action would probably fall many times into that networking bucket like they’re just starting to educate themselves and to be honest like uh you you need uh to self-educate um to understand how to analyze a deal on all of that and you know whether it be listening to podcasts like this or reading publications or networking or all these things like that’s a great place to start and that’s a great place that if if you’re not doing that uh your likelihood of finding deal machine to be useful um probably isn’t isn’t great because it’s a tool that um you know what that is going to help uh enable everything else you’re doing in real estate right like um it’s a tool that’s going to make you better at the process of investing in real estate not just be a passive you know something you can outsource right so um i think there’s that bucket and then you’re right i think the person who has maybe some more time and can be a little more you know open to being more aggressive they would love the driving for dollars piece of it of going out there and you actually so what the app actually looks like is a map that is on your essentially like a gps on your phone you’re looking around and you can see as you pass each property there’s a little black dot for each property uh that you can click on and say hey actually you know what’s the address of that okay it matches up to here click on that property take a picture so that way the point of that picture is that’s going to show up on the postcards that you said so um you know if you call them on the spot that’s great too but the postcard you send it’ll actually have a picture to say hey is this your property so that way you get a way better response rate uh people you know sometimes people if they don’t live there they’ll see that picture and be like oh wow that’s what it looks like you know that they’ll actually be uh you know it might give them a you know a wake-up call in that way too um so being able to to import that picture um you know this is a way that you can it matches it up on the map on there and then you’re one button away from starting to send mailers that comes from you so the we’re just the technology like the mailer itself um you can customize in the deal machine app what the mailers are going to look like so you can say like hey send them a mailer the first one being um a ballpoint pen written letter which we actually have that option it’s a little more expensive but we have that option and then and then uh if they don’t answer that 30 days later send them a this mailer that says this you know particular text on it and it has the picture of the house and then 30 days later if they don’t respond to that send them one more and you can make this automated campaign so that way you’re not having to mess with the follow-up it’s automatically getting out there and it’s all through the app to kind of facilitate that so i think you know that person would that has more time would fall into that bucket and then the less time more money person they could use our list pulling engine to be able to just say hey circle this entire neighborhood and any deal that falls under my very specific criteria could be two houses it could be 200 you know we’re going to send them mail or we’re going to send you know we’re going to call them or whatever it may be um but i’m sure you pick those three yeah yeah i mean it’s really cool because i’ve done some like driving what i you know we call driving for dollars with some of our new agents or you know people who kind of they have realtors who get into the business because they’re interested in investing and but they get their real estate license you know and so i like to kind of go down the different paths paths with them of what they’re kind of like hoping to do with their career and but when we done when we’ve done the driving for dollars what i found is that without some sort of a software which we didn’t have anything then as we ended up coming up with maybe two mini options right and so we’re driving around for 20 minutes and it’s like okay now we’ve got 20 addresses right and then we get distracted we find the one that looks really beat up and we’re trying to look it up you know but no one’s really writing it all down and if we are where is that list going right we just we’re just like writing down some list and then it’s going in a stack back at the office so i wish we would have had a software like you’re saying to kind of enter them into and then will that that help us to narrow it down because you you know depending on where you’re driving you might see a lot of houses with gutters falling off or you know deferred maintenance and that kind of stuff yeah there is actually a feature on deal machine as well um i believe it’s under the pro plan uh and up but there’s a highlight properties feature so if you actually pull up the map while you’re driving and you hit highlight properties according to whatever criteria you put in there it’ll overlay the map and say like hey uh you know these properties that were that were popping up with a green box around them um as you drive past them these fit your exact criteria that you wanted highlighted like this fits this amount of equity in the house or this amount this you know size of house or this you know whatever the criteria may be um so that way you can avoid that problem too like you know trying to write down every address um but yeah i think the less more time less money people driving for dollars is an amazing uh beginner strategy for them because uh it’ll help them get used to evaluating properties on the spot and then start talking to people and then the actual roi of it as well of that versus other marketing options um you know we have plenty of case studies to show you like how you can get essentially double the results for your money if you’re doing driving for dollars properly so it’s uh we’re a big believer in the strategy it’s just a matter of finding the time or or hiring someone to drive for you oh really hiring someone wow now we’re talking about next level stuff right there yeah but i mean i find it to be just i find it all to be very interesting you know i think i mentioned this last time we talked matt that i’ve been making a lot of calls lately and i guess you can call them warm calls but one of the you know what i found is ultimately i get basically seven uh different sort of objections you know every single person i call says one of seven different things you know and one of those things that they say to start is how did you get my number or why are you calling me or something like that you know and i guess gone are the days where it’s where i had to have some big reason now there’s tons of software’s out there and things that are saying hey there’s software out there saying that you most likely want to sell right and i don’t know if deal machine calls it a sell score right but there’s softwares and things that are basically saying this guy at this property is 80 likely to sell or whatever and very likely to sell right and so it’s not surprising that they’re getting a call yeah and we’re very we’re big proponents of just being honest like that or saying you know hey i’m a i’m a local investor i was driving down the street like um like you said you can even be very specific about the software saying hey the software thought that you know uh that you know it would be good to get in touch with you like that kind of thing um we don’t have the actual uh uh score uh like that in the in the app itself but um based on the criteria you put that highlighting of the property um is where we say like hey uh rely off of that and rely off um you know your eyes of seeing the property itself and kind of combine all that rather than just you know picking a neighborhood and spamming it like not only because that’s gonna uh not be great for a local reputation but also like the just not smart business like you’re the roi you’re gonna see from that is nothing compared to you know getting more specific and finding the right houses and you know trying to get in touch with them interesting okay so how long has deal machine been in business uh so David i believe he started in 2017 David lecko on the ceo so we’ve been around for about three years um okay that’s a long time actually in like the tech world right that’s kind of a long time yeah i guess yeah i think it still feels like a startup to me i mean i don’t know when you stop saying startup but like uh yeah unless you make your first billion you know working on it okay and so then what are what like features of the software have you guys found that people are using more than other features is it still the driving for dollars or are people doing the kind of circle around a certain neighborhood or zip code yeah um so the driving for dollars piece is low on what we we started with and that was the first two years really like that’s the the market that we really went after is like we want to be the best driving for dollars app out there um and that’s that was our goal is like just own that niche um you know over time we realize like hey people really need a platform to be able to have their data um you know do more than you know once they drive for dollars like where does that data go how are they using that how are they managing it like the whole the crm element was a very natural extension of the driving for dollars piece because it’s it’ll help you track and manage each of those leads that you have right um so that’s why we developed that out for i think in July we launched that and then the list engine piece was also a very complimentary piece where that was something that we were constantly hearing and hearing people say hey i would love to combine my driving for dollars list with another list that i you know pull from these broader databases i use and put it all in one place and make it so that i don’t have to transfer data back and forth all the time but we have you know one software to kind of manage all those leads um so that was where we saw the opportunity there saying okay we can really help people out where you know like you said it’s either the lots of time less money or more money less time people and be a solution for both of them so um yeah i think uh it kind of depends on the user we definitely have more driving for dollars uh uh users of that specific piece of our software um we call it street engine now is like that driving for dollars piece um but you know the more that we’ve gotten the list engine out there um the list pulling uh piece of it um the more people are starting to use that in tandem with it so um yeah that be a good question uh check in with me in a few months and see how how you know how the everything’s giving up there okay so i kind of i just want to make sure i’m fully understanding you through a deal machine you can sign up you can drive for dollars you can say here’s one here’s one here’s one right and it’s sort of i guess it’s kind of creating a database of the ones the properties that i’ve specifically found are options hey i’d love to call this person and see if they want to sell and then from that list i can either do nothing just use deal machine sort of as my crm and it has this big list of people i want to call or i can use deal machine to start mailing those people right or and or maybe included in the first part is deal machine will tell me the phone numbers are there potential phone numbers for these people yes you can do a function called skip tracing so you can do that on the spot where that would pull from a database uh uh saying like hey here are a couple likely phone numbers for them um you know whether it be be theirs or um you know potentially like a family member or something you know it’d be a a way to potentially call cold calls yeah okay and then am i dialing through that system or am i kind of like cust are manually entering the phone numbers so you can hit that you can dial on the spot if you’d like yeah you can just uh call that number from right from uh the app okay and all of that is sort of what deal machine originally was but then you called something called list engine which is where i can say like call all of 63017 or call all of this little custom map that i made and then it’ll pull in the information from those then i can search that and say okay that’s cool that’s 500 houses but i only want to call the ones that have lived there for 15 years or i only want to call the ones that have x amount of equity based on assumptions on their sales price and their mortgage and all that kind of stuff yeah exactly yeah so that that database um that’s something that you know there um are other software’s that uh have that you know that kind of uh feature and function to it but um trying to combine that you know that with the driving for dollars and making this all-in-one software that you can kind of diversify your legion strategies where you have this you know general database that maybe is a little more competitive because anyone could go in and pull a list right um and then you also have this original list that may be smaller but it’s less competitive because you physically drove around and created it yourself so um yeah it’s a you know our platform you can kind of uh sink through both of those things and and you know pull that all into the crm together cool well you just kind of brought up something that reminds me of why like why would people drive for dollars when they just have access to these lists right it’s like this perfect list of a non-owner occupant who has over 80 equity and who’s owned the property for 10 years or whatever right and the deal is you can you can mail that list through your system or others but everyone else has two right yep and so when i when i call people they’re like you’re the 16th person that’s called this week sometimes you get that right but like through driving for dollars you might be the only person who’s called this week or this month or this year because they might not meet some of those like kind of obvious criteria of non-owner occupant with this much equity and all that all this other kind of stuff right yeah exactly so that’s that’s what whenever we quote like any members around roi for driving for dollars it’s for that exact reason of you know every mailer you send to your your driving for dollar leads um it’s a you know it’s a very qualified lead and it’s somebody who has much more likely that they’re not being called or mailed to already like that um whereas these other lists that you can pull from you’ll have to probably blanket a bigger area um to really uh see the same type of results it’ll be more costly to do that interesting i love it okay are you personally doing any sort of real estate investing if i may ask or is that too much uh information no you can ask yeah it’s funny um i actually one thing that got me excited about uh joining deal machine was i’ve actually spent i’m pretty much our kind of typical uh uh you know textbook case of who would be a really great user for deal machine so i’ve spent the last couple of years i’ve had multiple friends getting into real estate i knew david and david the guys who started the steel machine app um i had plenty of you know a handful of other friends who were all the guy we met through yeah yeah yeah and yeah also through him yeah so multiple people i knew were in that world already um and then uh outside of that um you know i i was seeing them uh you know their success in that and it always says like yeah i’d love to get into real estate someday like that would be a great thing to do someday and it was spending a lot of time listening to bigger pockets and reading you know different newsletters and like just trying to educate myself i went to a couple networking events like um you know definitely would fall into that that bucket and then now that i’ve joined the machine it’s like hey you know i should be using i should use the app if i’m going to be talking to people about it so yeah it’s something that i’m like just getting into now myself where i get to go through that journey and i get to tell people like here’s the types of types of pro tips that i’m seeing that that’s working for me and you know being able to kind of practice what i preach there so um i would say new newly taking action but um have been kind of a passive uh consumer of real estate information for quite a while so um exactly who we’re trying to get the you know head-to-head to to get the app in front of cool yeah i love it and you know if you don’t mind me saying there are most likely people listening who are in the stage of what i call analysis paralysis right yep where they’re still figuring out what they’re going to do and what app they need and who they’re going to call and what neighborhood and all this kind of stuff and i hope that they will just start taking action i hope they’ll sign up for deal machine potentially you know i mean i’m not like a paid spokesman or whatever but i they need something they need a tool like that you know like i said i’ve driven around and done the calls without an app and it pretty much went nowhere but i hope they’ll call someone like you for their app i hope they’ll call someone like me to help them figure out the logistics of their purchase and what they can sell it for and all that kind of stuff you know because there’s a lot that goes into a deal and you you know everyone needs a little bit of help and that’s where we that’s where we can all sort of add value to the transaction i think you know yeah yeah and that’s something like even just uh taking any action at all is start is going to uh give you a great much greater chance of starting to build momentum like that’s something where the more that i’ve been using the app the more i get excited about it the more i like build those muscles of getting used to driving and identifying a house and then trying to get in touch with someone and like the whole process of it um so even just just you know taking action and starting to get out there um will build your confidence and help you uh start to move along that process you know yeah yeah and i’m like just do it man you know like just getting that right yeah just do something like just sign up for some app or some crm or something right just start going on some appointments you don’t have to have every single detail lined up before you can go on that first appointment and talk to that first seller you know find a seller who’s willing to sell and and then call one of us or call you or call me or whatever and like somebody out there you can make it happen completely so yeah all right well matt i don’t know if you want to talk about anything else in particular but i think you kind of answered all the questions i had in general you know i like talking to you because i think that you’re uh you’re out there doing something that’s good for the real estate investment community you’re making our jobs easier um and so i appreciate that anything else you want to say or how can people get a hold of you yeah i was going to say people um if they have any questions around driving for dollars or anything app specific or you know anything like that um just matt matp deal machine dot com is my email so feel free to reach out that way um 314-239-8050 is a phone number so um feel free to either email or call i’m happy to to help people out that way um and then yeah i mean my role is really uh uh you know focused on um educating people about deal machine i really um in charge and am in charge of our partnerships as well so there’s anyone in the audience who’s like yeah actually i think i know a bunch of people that could use the old machine like um you know i work with our referral partners to get them set up as an affiliate with us so um you know feel free to reach out whether it be you know any questions around the app or questions around how we can team up that way too i love it i love it and are you finding as as what you’re calling an app startup even though you know like you said you’ve been in business for a few years are you finding that most of your activity is happening around st louis or is it and that’s because you guys are from here or because it’s a great place to invest or are you guys finding that you’re doing business sort of nationwide already yeah it’s it’s really all over the place um i think we have a good uh you know a strong presence here for that reason of just uh you know having built relationships here and uh being all four of our leadership team we’re all from here um two of them still live here so it’s like uh you know we have a strong tie to st louis and i plan on staying here so it’s gonna you know i think uh there’s there’s that behind it um i know like our top concentration of users i think is in texas um i think we’re pretty strong in florida i believe too um but really it’s it’s nationwide like our databases cover the entire us so it um you know you can use it from anywhere in the u.s so there isn’t any restrictions or anything but um i i definitely think st louis is going to be you know a priority for us just uh for personal reasons i love it that’s great cool well thank you for taking the time to be on my podcast here and um you know i look forward to continuing conversations with you and i hope that people reach out to you about deal machine and we’ll talk to you later matt yeah thanks again for having me on i really uh really enjoyed it and uh you know great questions so yeah for sure you guys have a good thing going on and you’re helping the community so that’s great awesome thanks for your time and take care sir yeah you