Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast, we're talking with Michelle Jipguep-Sanders from just outside of Atlanta, where she's been a long time real estate investor, who's now transitioned into being a real estate agent.
We spent the entire hour talking about Getting Listings, and the approach of taking her investment mindset and applying it to listings in any area she wants.
We went through a process of evaluating and choosing the area, then calculating what you could expect as a yield. It was great to hear the light bulb come on when we started evaluating the investment as an investor instead of looking at the money you spend doing lead generation, as an expense.
I asked her how she would think about this as an investor, and it's amazing to see the opportunity we have when you look at it through those goggles.
This is a great episode to see things from that perspective, and I think you'll get a lot from it.
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep124
Dean: Michelle?
Michelle : Yes.
Dean: Hey, how are you?
Michelle : I'm okay, good morning?
Dean: Well, I'm very excited to chat.
Michelle : I don't know. I'm nervous.
Dean: Oh boy. How do I say your last name?
Michelle : Oh, okay. Do you know the car, the Jeep?
Dean: The Jeep? Uh-huh.
Michelle : Yeah. Jeepgup.
Dean: Okay, there we go. Jeepgup. Okay, perfect. And where are you calling from?
Michelle : I'm calling from outside of Atlanta, Georgia.
Dean: Oh, very nice. I'm in Florida. So not too far.
Michelle : Okay. Yeah, not too far at all.
Dean: I am excited to chat and I'm excited to hear what you've got going on and how we can make some advances here. I'd love to hear the Michelle's story here. How long have you been in real estate and what have you got going on?
Michelle : Okay. I've been in real estate for now over a year, but I've been an investor since 1997. I know that part of the business, but only single family, recently got into investing and commercial. That's where I am. However, I haven't been successful in becoming an agent and I really want to be a listing agent.
Dean: Ah, you're in the right place.
Michelle : I hope so. I'm very systematic in my thinking-
Dean: Oh, good.
Michelle : But it's also a curse because unless I think most of it figured out process wise, I feel like I'm paralyzed and cannot make a move.
Dean: I got it. Well, this is good because you are in the right place then. I love that, being analytic like that and you've got something that I have to bring into most people. You're an investor. You come from investor background and you already think about things in terms of a return on a capital investment. I have to get most people to come around on their thinking, because they think about advertising or marketing as an expense. I'm trying often to just get people to think with their investor goggles on, you're already coming into it with that as the mindset. I would love to maybe talk about that. If you're at a situation where you've been going for a year now, where are we at so far? Do you have any listings or are you working with some buyers right now? Where do we stand?
Michelle : Where we stand is I have one listing. I have a potential of getting a listing hopefully this week and I'm working with five buyers.
Dean: Okay, perfect. That's all good. There we go. You've lived in the same place for this whole time? You've got roots where you are, relationships?
Michelle : Not many. I was an investor, but I've been working overseas and I came back to the US seven years ago.
Dean: Okay. One of the things I always ask is just looking at your relationships. Do you know 150 people? If we parked you at the grocery store for a weekend or whatever, would you have 150 people that if you saw them at the grocery store, you'd recognize them by name and have a conversation with them? Where are you-
Michelle : I wouldn't say that. Yes.
Dean: Okay. This type of asset that you have, everything that we talk about is really assets that we look at, right? Your relationships are an asset that we're trying to manage for what we call return on relationship. Meaning that if you know, let's say 100 people, I'm certain that you know 100 people. And if you look at those 100 people, they're going to be the ones that, if they did have a real estate need, you would hope that they would consider you and that if they have a friend or they know someone who's got a real estate need, that they would consider introducing you to them. Right? That's what we're looking at is managing that relationship portfolio. Now, do you have a list of people like that? Do you have the names, address, telephone numbers of 100 people like that? Okay. And are you communicating with them at all? Do you send anything to them or...
Michelle : I'm communicating with them, not on the regular. I have set up an Instagram account and a Facebook page, a business page, and a personal page. And I've invited everybody on my personal to my business. I have-
Dean: And that's a good headstart by the way. How many Facebook friends do you have?
Michelle : Oh, probably over 1000.
Dean: Yeah. That's why I'm saying, I think you're underestimating yourself that you don't know 150. One of the places to start with this is to look at your friends list. You can go in and see who all of your friends are. If you go through, if you were to print out that list even, and have a highlighter and say, oh yeah, I know them. I know them, I know them. That's a good place to start with them. And then we need to start getting out into their physical world, as opposed to just on the Facebook or Instagram, this'll be something different. Okay. I'm going to put that to the side for right now. Just know that that's an asset that you have, and then let's focus on your listing strategy. Tell me about the listing that you have right now and where is it?
Michelle : It's not far from Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta and it's - on the contract and it's - the contract at five.
Dean: Okay. How did you get the listing?
Michelle : It's through a friend.
Dean: From a friend. Yeah. That's good. Have you got a strategy for getting listings right now?
Michelle : The only strategy that I have is cold calling and I don't -
Dean: How do you like that?
Michelle : Yeah. Well, I don't like it.
Dean: Of course. That's why I said uh-oh.
Michelle : Well, I don't like it because I think the returns that I see, even though a lot of people are saying it takes time and it's [inaudible 00:10:18] the return considering the effort and the time when I do my math, I don't see it. I'm looking for a more efficient or scalable way. That's why I've been breaking my brain, looking at ways and soul searching.
Dean: You're in the right place. I started out doing the same thing. I was a cold call machine. I would make 100 cold calls a day. That was how I got started with my business, but I very quickly realized this is not scalable at all. I wasn't using those words scalable, but I was using the words that this is a hamster wheel, that as soon as I step off this hamster wheel, it's not spinning. I'm personally on the phone making the calls and when I'm making the calls, I'm talking to people, making contacts and stuff. But if I don't get on the phone, that wheel stops spinning.
Michelle : Definitely that was one of my challenge, because I'm not able to do it, If I just spend time with the family, the kids and the summer, it was like I needed to be present. I'm not on the phone, I'm not producing, I'm not doing anything. And I was like, is there a way I can have something else doing it for me, if I'm not physically doing it?
Dean: And that was my big discovery was that, I fell in love with marketing and direct response marketing specifically, because when I figured out that I could put words on a postcard, mail that postcard and have people call me, that changed my life. I mean, that was the whole thing. Talk about leverage, when you can send out 1000 postcards and have 10 or 15 people call you, that's instant leverage, right? Because I didn't have to make any outbound calls to find those people. Remembering I've told the story on the podcast of the first day that I discovered that and it was also the last day that I ever made a cold call, because now I knew I'd had the secret. I had something that I could scale, I could leverage and it was working when I wasn't working, which was my favorite thing about it. All I had to do was make sure to send off the postcards.
I have been trying to solve this puzzle of getting listings for 32 years now. 1988 I started in real estate. I've really cracked the final pieces of the code in 2006 when we launched the getting listings program. And now we've had thousands of agents all over the world using our getting listings program, including all the people that you may have heard on the podcast, or are you brand new to the podcast? How did you come to here?
Michelle : Yes. Well, I'm new to the podcast. There's three real estate podcasts that I've listened to including yours. There's a lot of them but I like podcasts, they have people that have visions and then people that are strategists. I've been in business for so long. I don't like it when on the podcast or topics people talk about to do, we'll do, might do. I like people who've done proven methods and can - and also are adapting their ways, understanding that today's world, even if you send a postcard on out, it's not the same as you did 60 years ago. Let's not talk about that method. I - those. I have-
Dean: You know what? We call those, Michelle, we've talked about field reports, versus book reports. Right? A book report is theory, and you may try this, but field reports are what's actually working in the field right now. And that's what we're talking about, is field reports.
Michelle : For this direct response marketing in today's world, I mean, isn't everybody being bombarded with emails, pop ups.
Dean: Yeah, this was part of why postcards that we do are the most amazing thing. If we could wave a magic wand and say, you could get any type of listing that you wanted, where would it be? What's the main area that you focus in Atlanta and what type of listings would you like to get, if you could get any kind of listing?
Michelle : For mostly listing, I prefer to get single family home. We'll be able to work around staging, marketing the property, yeah. And anywhere that is 15 miles away from my house is -
Dean: Yeah. But no, here's the thing, let's pick where exactly you want, where would be the best place? What if we got within this 15 mile zone around your house? Because we want to make it as easy as possible. Would it be great if you could just roll out and list your next door, neighbors house or list-
Michelle : Oh my God, yeah.
Dean: In your neighborhood or wherever you are. Right? - yeah. Let's focus on that. Are you in a suburb of Atlanta or are you in-
Michelle : Yes. I'm in a suburb.
Dean: What suburb are you in? Let's narrow it down here.
Michelle : Okay. I don't know. The county is called Henry County.
Dean: What is Henry County known for? I live in Winter Haven, Florida, and the thing in Winter Haven is we have a lot of lakes. The best thing in Winter Haven is Lake from Helms. Do you have in Henry County, any sort of category, things like that? Would you say, are there lakefront homes or golf course homes or town homes or yeah.
Michelle : I do know in the South, anything that's Lake or country club or anything like that it's considered exclusive and rich, assuming. There are some, yes, and there's a lot of lakes around, but they're smaller lakes. I don't think it's just Henry County, but we're known for subdivisions.
Dean: Okay, great. And that's what I was going to ask next. Is, are there any named subdivisions, planned communities kind of thing?
Michelle : Yes. There is a lot, I mean, I think most of the Cities, okay, the Counties there are rural, but now there's more and more and more new construction. Of the last 20 years, there's been a big growth in terms of subdivisions. That's where we are.
Dean: Okay, perfect. When you look at it now, then, if you could pick some of the great subdivisions, right in your area there, do you live in a subdivision? Do you live in an area where you'd like to get more listings in that area?
Michelle : Yes.
Dean: Okay, tell me about two or three of these subdivisions. How many homes are in them? What is the price range of the homes and...
Michelle : Okay. New subdivisions, I would say new from 2019, price is 300 and up. Older subdivision, average sell price is north 300. The size of some subdivision, yeah, the smallest, 15 to 20 homes, the biggest will have over 500 plus.
Dean: Okay, perfect. That's what I'm looking for initially, is what would be a couple of subdivisions that would be 500 to 1000 homes?
Michelle : Okay. Yes, there are a couple of them. Now have a question about you. When you mentioned area, I was thinking there are two streets that I like when I drive past them. I mean, they're like, I was going to be six miles up the street or three miles, but there are many, many subdivisions of that street. I really like that area and I was like, I would love to really target that area, but it's not one subdivision, it's not two, it's maybe 7.
Dean: Okay. That's fine.
Michelle : Is that too much?
Dean: Here's the thing, what it looks at is, I want you to have that kind of big vision, right? To expand out, but you got to start with what you can manage. What I always recommend to people is let's start with 500 or 1000 homes and then look at expanding out. I don't know if you've heard some of the earlier episodes of the podcast, but if you listen to the first three episodes, one of the ones that we talk with is Tony Kalsi, who started out with a smaller number of homes, but as up to 20,000 homes now. After this September will be six years of doing it. We've been monitoring and documenting a case study with him for six years now and he's over 1,000,005 in earnings and commissions from doing the getting listings program in that one area now. Starting out, how many homes would those subdivisions, if you say there are seven subdivisions there, how many homes would that total?
Michelle : Oh my God, maybe 10, maybe 7000.
Dean: Okay. Some of these are big. They're-
Michelle : Yeah. - are really big.
Dean: Okay, perfect. If you look at this as starting out, pick one of those subdivisions and go for it. It's all just a matter of what your investment allocation is for being able to do it. It's like if you look at to mail the postcards for the area for six months, for 1000 homes will probably cost around $4,000 or so for six months. And then what we'd look to do is get to what I call escape velocity, where you're then self-sustaining, where the money from the commissions that you're earning by selling them is re-investing to continue to do the mailing.
You need the seed investment to get to the first listing, because if you're at 300 or $350,000 homes, you're probably in a 8 to $10,000 commission when you do sell one, right? That's all it takes is your you're putting up the investment capital in the beginning to get the thing. Now, it's really interesting, because I mentioned to you that you've got an advantage in that you've got the investment mindset. It was very interesting to me that I was working with a realtor who she was also an investor, but she looked at mailing into an area, she chose 2000 homes to start with. We were spending $1,500 a month, or I think 12 to $1,500 a month mailing the postcards. Five months in, she had a couple of listings, but they hadn't sold yet and she was getting just kind of thinking it through, thinking, wow, I've raised my expenses here, but I haven't seen the revenue yet to match.
That was where I got this idea that they're thinking about it as an expense, but at the same time, she was just telling me about a house that she just bought as an investment that was, she bought the house for $11,000. It was just a small two bedroom wooden house that she was going to put a $9,000 in. It was going to take her to get it to where it was livable, rentable, and she would get $650 a month in rent for this house. And so she was pretty excited about that, because as far as an ROI goes on a $20,000 house, getting 650 a month is a great ROI. It was really interesting that I said to her, I said, listen, you're out of one side of your brain, you're looking at this situation with the postcards that you've spent $7,000 or whatever, 1250 a month for five months so far and you are looking for an ROI.
All of these homes that we were targeting were in the 12 to $15,000 commission range. As soon as she gets one, she's going to double her investment. And I said, the way that you're thinking about this, what I would rather see is for you to take this mindset, that we're going to do that for the year, meaning you're going to spend that $1,500 a month for the year. It's going to be $18,000 or whatever that amount comes out to be, that you think about it as a capital investment, we're not going to measure the ROI until the end of the year. It just gets the urgency out of your mind in a way on it, that if you look at it that if you take 1000 homes and you're going to spend $7,000 over the course of a year take on this neighborhood, and you're going to establish yourself now in that neighborhood, the asset that you're investing in is the list of people who reply to your postcards, as people who are potential sellers.
That little folio, if we mail 1000 postcards and we can identify 70, 80, 100 people in that year who are future sellers, that's the asset that we've invested in. It's this portfolio of these 100 people. You've got that mindset right there already baked in, which is a good thing. And we've already got the system for you in terms of, I've got the postcards, the learning page, the initial package. We've got a book called How to Sell Your House for Top Dollar Fast that we personalize with your name as you, the author, we've got the 12 newsletters and cover letters that you send to people each month after they respond. It's a whole self contained system where really, even we have an easy button program as well, where you literally just point on the map where you want the listings and we can do the whole thing. It's very leverage-able.
Michelle : When you sent the postcard, is there a - is it every week? Is it every month?
Dean: We send one postcard every month. Wen people respond, we send them a cover letter that I've already written and updates. The information that we're offering to people is the, what's the name of one of the subdivisions?
Michelle : Here, you have Spivey Cove.
Dean: Spivey Cove. Okay. What we're offering people is the August, 2020 report on Spivey Cove house prices. Anybody thinking about selling their house, the first thought that they have, the first question that they need to get answered is, well, how much is my house worth? What can I get for my house? When we offer them that they're happy to respond to it. We mail it out, if you mail out 1000 of these, you make get 7 or 10 or 15 people who reply and say, oh, send me this report. We mail them a cover letter and a copy of all of the activity in the last 12 months in Spivey Cove, so they get a sense of here's what the houses are selling for in Spivey Cove and we send them a copy of your book, How to Sell Your House for Top Dollar Fast. And we offer them the next steps. Because either way, people are going to want one of three things, they're going to want to know specifically how much their house is worth. We offer them a pinpoint price analysis, or they may want to know what do I do to get it ready to sell, we offer them a room by room review.
Some people may want to, well, if you have a buyer, let me know kind of thing, if they might not be ready to list their house right now, but if you had a buyer, maybe they would consider selling. We offer our silent market where we may be able to sell your house in as little as 24 hours, without even putting it on the market. When people reply, then, then we go out and see them and there you are, you're in the kitchen with somebody who's thinking about selling their house and you can do your magic.
The great thing that makes this even better, is if you start advertising for buyers who are looking for homes in Spivey Cove, you can offer a guide to Spivey Cove, house prices for buyers. On one side, you've got the postcards that we're mailing to all the homes in Spivey Cove and the homeowners are responding, raising their hand, saying I'm potentially thinking of selling the house. And then we're running Facebook ads or homes and land ads, or other ads, display ads, looking for people who are looking to buy homes in Spivey Cove. Now you've got the opportunity to be a market maker, where you've got this list of buyers and one of the things that we offer them is a daily tour up at Spivey homes.
People say, hey, I'd like to come on a tour of Spivey homes and you can now reach out to the people who responded to your postcards. You could say, hey, Nancy, I'm showing houses to a couple from Alpharetta are looking for a house over here. There's only a few on the market right now and I remember looking up your house online when I sent you the Spivey report. I'm not sure what your plans are, but I thought I'd check in and see if maybe I could tell them about your house. What a great opportunity to be a market maker.
Michelle : Yes, definitely. Definitely. This example made me think of something. How do I select, which house do you send the monthly postcards to? Is it anybody who is not on sale or?
Dean: Yes. Exactly, everybody who's not for sale. What we've got is I want you to take this as a situation, where you're going to take over that whole strip of these six or seven subdivisions along that street that you love. Okay? When you look at it, we're going to start with Spivey Cove for instance, but I want you to think about making a five year commitment to Spivey Cove that you want to take over the neighborhood there. What happens is that it's like compound interest, the equity that you're building, every time you send out, you're getting more people to raise their hand. And literally every month you mail, people respond to the postcards. You're building that list of people who are now getting your monthly newsletter. As soon as they respond to the postcard, we take them off the postcard list and we put them on the newsletter list, so that we're sending more in depth information to them.
Michelle : Would they be getting the postcard and the newsletter or just the news-
Dean: Just the newsletter.
Michelle : That makes sense.
Dean: Yes.
Michelle : That really makes sense. Okay. And the newsletter -
Dean: But then the advantage that you have Michelle, what we do then is we create a Google map layer, where you look at Spivey Cove and we drop a pin on the map on all the people who have responded. Now, whenever you're showing houses in Spivey Cove, you know who's already responded. You've got this secret inventory of future sellers that nobody else has. And that's an advantage. That's where we get this opportunity to really be a market maker. All of a sudden, people start seeing.
The first side that goes up is the salt side for me, that's a great thing. You're going to start building your reputation that if anybody in there, they're going to tell, yeah, we didn't even have to put it on the market. We just called Michelle. She had a buyer. Yeah, if you're thinking about selling, call a buyer. And then you get to promote that idea. Now, whenever you do that, we have an insert that we put in your newsletter called helping people on the move, you can put a picture, congratulations and tell the story of how you helped the Johnson's sell their house in Spivey Cove. And now everybody's saying, oh, wow, that's great. Michelle's the neighborhood expert.
Michelle : Yeah. That's true.
Dean: You take that over, you start to imagine that. Last year was the fifth year of the case study with Tony Kalsi. He'd been doing it since September of 2013 and we got all the way to September of 2019, which was five full years of it. In 2019, Tony sold houses for people who responded to the postcard in every year from since 2013. He did transactions with people who responded in 2013, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19. That's where the compound interest of it comes, is that some of those people had been just dating for five years, but how could they ever choose anybody aside from Tony, since he'd been mailing them every month all the updates. That's the thing, it's that patient sort of investment approach.
Now, by the way, he's running at 12 times investment on this and that's overall. That's all of the money he spent over the five years, just over $100,000 dollars, but have made over a million dollars, I think 1.2 million or something on the total. But the reality is that he only put up the money for the first five months, until he did his first transaction. All that other investment has come from profits. He only funded the first five months, then he did his first transaction, got back all the money that he put in for the first five months, had that money, it was paying for itself now. It's been self-sustaining for the rest of that $100,000 dollar investment. Yeah.
Michelle : But tell me something, in today's market, I don't know, everybody says there's a new market or a new economy, I don't know, the people currently doing the monthly, are they seeing a shift or are you guys on average, seeing a shift in terms of people are responding much quicker to the postcard, therefore getting on the newsletter?
Dean: Yeah. When I mentioned to you about this five-year approach, is I look at this as a buy and hold strategy, where you're totally invested in the market the whole time. What most realtors are doing is they're trying to be stock pickers or day traders, where they're trying to catch a trend or trying to shortcut the market. What I'm saying is I look at this as investing in an index fund, you're investing in the Spivey Cove index fund. And this, be the analysis that you'll have to do is to see what's the turnover rate in Spivey Cove? Let's say, how many homes would you say there are in there?
Michelle : I would say 100 up to 300.
Dean: Okay. We need to collectively get to where there's 1000 homes or 500 homes, let's say.
Michelle : In one subdivision alone, or I can have two where -
Dean: Yeah. You can have cumulatively, it's the same thing. You can have Spivey Cove and you could have, what would be another one?
Michelle : Another one would be Spivey Village.
Dean: Okay. Then in Spivey village, how many would there be there?
Michelle : Similar, I think together. Oh, wait, no, maybe 200. Maybe if I get two and then there's a big one, Lake Spivey, then that, 800.
Dean: There you go. That's what we're looking for. Lake Spivey, is that what you said?
Michelle : Uh-huh.
Dean: Okay. Lake Spivey, let's call that 700 and 200 for Spivey Village and 100 for Spivey Cove that collectively there's 1000 homes in there. What we want to look at is, let's kind of do the analysis of what the yield can be here. If we say that the price range is what would be the medium price range in collectively these three?
Michelle : - Medium would be 479.
Dean: Okay, perfect. Let's call that just to be conservative for 450. We're talking about $12,000 or more per listing side commission, just to be conservative on the whole thing. And then what we're looking for, and I know you probably don't know it, is the turnover rate in the area. Let's say that it's 5% and that there are 50 of those 1000 homes that are going to sell each year. Does that sound about right? Or does it sound higher or lower than what you might think?
Michelle : Yeah, I think yeah. Around 50.
Dean: Okay. If there's 50 of those homes, in that little corridor there of those three subdivisions, if 50 people sell their house and it's $450,000, and you're going to make $12,000 on just the listing side commissions of that, that means that somebody is going to earn $600,000 just from those. And I say, somebody, meaning, collectively, all the people that end up listing those homes in the area. That's not including the 600,000 that's going to be paid to the buyer agents who bring the buyers for those, I'm just talking about the listing conditions. And then we multiply that by the five years. What we're looking for is the total possible yield on just the listing side commissions is $3 million.
Okay. That's the stakes that are up for grabs here. We're looking at, I want to do everything possible for you to get as much of that $3 million as you can. If we could get to a point where you have a 20% plus market share in there, that would be what we're looking for. That one in every five listings that comes up is you. We could get you maybe even a little higher, but let's say that's a reasonable thing for you, a reasonable target for you. It's a nice six figure per year yield for serving just these three subdivisions here. That's how we look at it.
If you look at that as a $7,000 investment, let's say, to do for the year, if you take that mindset that you're not looking at it as an expense kind of thing, you're not saying, oh, there goes that other $700, oh, there's another 700. Your expectation is that you're going to make a capital investment today of $7,000, we're going to put a black box over it, you're just going to trust the system, follow the proven model, look at the end of the year and evaluate what was your return on that investment. If you were going to invest $7,000 and it was $7,000 a year for five years, $35,000. With your investing hat on, what would be your expectation of a return as an investor with that $35,000? What would you be looking as your return target? Your cap rate?
Michelle : Okay. I would say above 10%, I was thinking 15.
Dean: Okay. This is the thing, what I wanted to do, is I want to get in that thing, when you're taking that mindset, if you invested the $35,000 in there, you wouldn't be expecting that you would get, if you had utilized a 10% return on that investment over five years, how much money would that give you? Are you competent to calculate that? I don't know the compounding or the net present value or whatever it is, but-
Michelle : Yeah, I think overall, it seems to be in a good range in terms of return.
Dean: I can do the math on five years if we say you're going to invest $30,000, and you're going to get a 10% return on that. That means that in five years you'd be getting $3,000 a year, four or five years, you would get $15,000, plus your $30,000 is you would turn that 30,000 into $45,000 at the end of five years. If I said to you, Michelle, I've got this great situation here. If you give me $30,000 now on a five year note, I'll give you $45,000 in five years. You would be happy with that. That's what you're saying as an investor, right?
Michelle : As an investor, yes, that's a return. I'd like to have higher, but yeah.
Dean: No, but I mean, you would accept that, but even if it was 15% that I gave you that 30, that would be $4,500 a year times five years would be 2250 a year on top of that. You'd get $55,000 back for your $30,000. That would be a home run, right? As an investor.
Michelle : Oh, no, it would totally be, no, it is. I think going through those steps with you and looking at it in terms of investments, it does make sense. I think when I was processing it, I wasn't thinking in terms of being an investor, I was thinking in terms of being a realtor, starting this side of business and I still didn't make sense. Like you said, I looked at it as an expense, I was like, how do I do that? But then when I think about the investment side, it flows more, it flows easier in a way and makes more sense. If you go ahead and want to add, this is expensive, you go ahead and add these things, because I look at the numbers, having done it for so long, it just makes sense that this part wasn't clicking. You - now to click.
Dean: That's a great thing. But now, the reality is you don't have to give the 30,000 upfront. You can do it at $750 a month. You're only going to put up the $750 a month until you get your first transaction in there. If let's say it takes six months, you've put up $4,000 or $5,000 and you've made $12,000. Now you get all of that back and it pays for the next six months of mailing. You only had to put up your $5,000 and now you get to leverage it with reinvestment, your dividends. That's a great investment. Now you take your original 5,000 and you roll over and start the next Spivey subdivision in that, until we get to the point where you're the queen of that whole Boulevard.
Michelle : Yeah. No, it does make sense. The clarity you brought to this is...
Dean: That's perfect. I'm glad that we got that mindset. It's nice that you, because you're so familiar with the evaluating investment opportunities, you look at it and it's a great thing.
Michelle : It totally makes sense. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Dean: What other questions do you have about that or what do you see now as your action plan kind of thing?
Michelle : Yeah. The other question that I had was how to find buyers, but then you touched on it, having the guide to XYZ subdivision, I was like, okay. I did not even see that -
Dean: Right. Because here's the thing. That's why I talk about, the great thing about categories or subdivisions, or Lake front homes or golf course homes or named communities, you can generate buyers without having to have listings. That's the real advantage. Now when you start this process of getting buyers, if you've already got a pool of buyers who are looking for homes in Spivey Village or Spivey Cove, or any of them, you now have the opportunity to be a market maker there. How is anybody not going to list with you if you're able to go in and they say, okay, we're going to interview you, Michelle, but we're also talking to two other agents and what all these other agents are going to say to them, is here's how long we've been in business, here's what we do, here's our marketing plan. And when we list your house, this is what we're going to do to expose it to the market. Here's our marketing plan.
What you're able to go in and say is, I started looking for the buyer for your house 180 days ago, because every month we're running these ads for looking for buyers who want to buy in Spivey Cove and I've got this list of 100 people, who are getting weekly updates of all of the homes. Before I came out here, I sent a quick email to them saying, hey, I'm going to see about a new house in Spivey Cove, it's a three bedroom or it's a four bedroom or whatever it is, would you like me to get you the details? And these eight people said, yes, please, send me the detail. Now you're going into every listing presentation, armed with eight or 10 or whatever potential people, who want to know about the house right away, because three months ago they asked for the guide to Spivey house prices.
Michelle : Yes. Yeah.
Dean: I'm so excited for you, Michelle.
Michelle : That's great. Thank you. Now you've opened I think a part of my brain that wasn't open.
Dean: That's perfect. First step, if you haven't already done it, is to set up a GoGoAgent account at gogoagent.com. That will connect you with Diane on our team, she'll walk you through everything, getting it all set up for you.
Michelle : Perfect. I'll call her. Thank you. Really appreciate it.
Dean: This is awesome. It's been great talking with you. I can't believe it's already been an hour, time flies when you're having fun.
Michelle : Wow. Okay, yes. It's really been viable. I really appreciate this.
Dean: Awesome.
Michelle : I'll send you an update either to Diane or directly on how I'm doing.
Dean: Of course. Yeah. We do number calls twice a month on Thursday. You can join in on those two and you get to ask questions or share your updates and all of it. We got a whole community going here. Very excited to have you part of it.
Michelle : Me too. Thank you so much Dean. I appreciate it.
Dean: Thanks, Michelle. We'll talk to you soon.
Michelle : Bye-bye.