Recently, Brandon Barnes interviewed Sharad Mehta, the CEO and founder of REsimpli, on the REsimpli Podcast. During the interview, Sharad shared insights gained from his 10-year journey in real estate, as well as important information that every real estate investor should know. Sharad also discussed how REsimpli simplifies the lives of thousands of people and more.
If you want to focus on deals instead of integration, we can help!
Real estate investing can be an uphill battle, leaving many people confused. Fortunately, you’ve found this life-changing podcast hosted by Sharad Mehta.
Sharad is a highly active real estate investor with a thriving business in Northwest Indiana. Over the past 10 years, he has completed 750 deals, an impressive feat. You may be surprised to learn that Mehta manages a virtual investing business, despite living out of state. Thanks to his systems and processes, he is able to close over 50 deals a year.
In 2015-16, Mehta became frustrated with the outdated software he was using to run his business. He decided to build his own software, which he used for a couple of years before opening it up to other investors in 2019. That software is REsimpli, an all-in-one tool designed to simplify real estate investing. The software’s mission is to provide “Tools to Simplify Real Estate Investing” and to help investors close more deals in less time, with the lowest marketing costs. It offers features like Texting, Calling, Driving for Dollars, List Stacking, and more.
REsimpli requires little to no customization. All you need to do is have your CRM up and running, which only takes a few minutes.
Additional REsimpli features will be coming out in the next 4-6 months, so stay tuned!
Brandon Barnes 0:06
Hey, what’s up, everybody? This is Brandon Barnes, host of the REsimpli podcast, where we are helping investors close more deals with less software. Today I’m excited! We have a very special guest, not only just an amazing person, an investor but also the founder and creator of REsimpli. Sharad, how are you doing today?
Sharad Mehta 0:29
I’m doing really good, friend. Super excited to do this call with you!
Brandon Barnes 0:34
Yeah, man! It’s been a long time coming. The story and journey of REsimpli. I’ve seen it not since inception but not long after, and it’s remarkable, kind of what you’ve done in the past five to seven years.
Sharad Mehta 0:47
Yeah. It’s been a fun drive, man!
Brandon Barnes 0:49
Yeah. So, Sharad, where are you currently located, and where are you doing real estate out of right now?
Sharad Mehta 0:56
Yeah, so right now, as of March 1st, I live in right outside Toronto, Canada. But if you’re listening to it, after July of 2023, I will be in California, San Diego area. But yeah, I live in Toronto, Canada, right outside Toronto, Canada. Invest in northwest Indiana, right out of Chicago. I used to live in downtown Chicago, so that’s why I picked the Northwest Indiana Market, about 30 to 45 minutes outside of Chicago.
I started out buying rental properties, and then from there, I started doing fix and flip some wholesale. But now, primarily, what we do is fix and flip. We do about 20-25 deals a year. Done about over 750 deals. But now, withREsimplitaking a lot of my time, I do about 20-25 deals for my house flipping business. Primarily we sell to other investors as for turnkey property, or we put them on MLS to sell to homeowners.
Brandon Barnes 1:49
Nice! It’s nice to talk to an owner of a company who is still actively doing real estate. You hear lots of stuff about people selling or teaching things and not actually still investing in it. You’re just telling me before we started, you had eight or nine projects getting ready to start under contract to purchase. So that’s awesome.
Sharad Mehta 2:09
Yeah. We have two projects going on, nine under contract, but at least we’ll close on eight, one we haven’t inspected yet. It’s been fun. I love real estate investing. That’s kind of how the whole REsimplijourney started with me being a real estate investor. So I would not have it any other way. I just always want to keep flipping houses; not as actively involved, but still want to keep flipping houses for the rest of my life.
Brandon Barnes 2:33
Yeah. That’s awesome! And we’ll talk a little about your real estate in the beginning, and then we’ll get into, I’m sure, what people want to hear more about us REsimpli. But in the beginning, what got you started? Because you’re from Chicago, right? Born and raised in Chicago.
Sharad Mehta 2:48
Yeah. You can tell from my accent.
Brandon Barnes 2:50
What got you into real estate investing in Chicago when you lived there?
Sharad Mehta 2:55
Yeah. For anybody that confused, I am not born and raised in Chicago. Born and raised in India. I went to school in New York, then moved to Chicago. I didn’t want to throw anybody off. My God that doesn’t sound like a Chicago accent. He’s got a hint of New York accent.
So I moved to Chicago for my job after I finished my school in New York. You know, I was a CPA doing tax stuff, but wanted to invest in real estate on the site. So I bought my first two unit property in August 2010.
So I bought a bunch of rental properties, still, own them, started flipping houses. And then, in August 2015, my wife, she got a job in Calspas, San Diego, and weather doesn’t suck there, so we decided to move. And I still had this investing business that I was doing 40, 50 deals a year. And then when I moved to San Diego area, I thought, okay, I’m going to look for a software that is going to help me kind of organize my business. I can just basically go in and have my marketing team be there, have my project management team, my VAs, to just log in and do everything.
So I started looking at for software options. I didn’t see anything at that. This is like 2015-16. Basically, everybody was using Podium. I just didn’t like the look and feel of it. It was great in terms of you could integrate, but I didn’t like the idea of buying the software and then having to integrate all these platforms.
So I thought, you know what, I’m just going to create something for myself very specific to what I do in my business. So that’s kind of when I created REsimpli, used it for a couple of years for myself with a very basic function. And then I was part of a mastermind where Brandon and I met, and just kind of do my hot seat presentation on what I’m doing in my business. I would share the screenshots and kind of the platform that I’m using.
And then that’s where, like, 2019 is when, we kind of started opening it up for other investors. And since then, it kind of blew into what it is now. Yeah. I love it. Like, everybody on my team, from my Cold caller to my lead manager, my acquisition manager, my project manager, my bookkeeper accountant, everybody’s on the same platform just makes running my business much simpler.
That was the whole idea. Like, that why we named the company REsimpli that it had to be something simpler to use. Like, everything that we did, it had to be simple to use, but it just simply logged in. It just made sense, kind of what we were trying to do.
Brandon Barnes 5:29
Got you! That was a lot. So let’s chunk that up for a second. I don’t want to loss over. You built a software for you to use yourself in your own business, was REsimplidesigned like when you first thought about it; you booth the Carlsbad, which I’ve been there. I had lunch with you. Beautiful out there. Indian food was excellent. Was your first thought like, hey, I’m going to build something for myself, or something maybe it could be used for other people later on down the road?
Sharad Mehta 5:58
I think primarily it was for myself with the idea of, okay, if nobody else uses it, if I get value out of it, it will be worth it just for myself. The investment that I’m doing in terms of how it’s going to systemize my business, that was the primary intention. Like, it’s kind of when you build a product or, you know, even when you’re flipping a house, you have this finished product, and you do an open house, the software where you kind of start opening up the beta version for other people, you’re always a little bit anxious and nervous that it’s kind of like your baby at that point.
And then you’re taking your baby out for the first walk into the wood or having people come and look at your baby. You don’t want anybody to say, “Oh, your baby is ugly”. I was always afraid of that.
Brandon Barnes 6:48
We all know if the baby’s ugly, though. We all know it. We just don’t say it.
Sharad Mehta 6:51
Yeah, I know, but yeah, that was my biggest fear. And being a little bit of an introvert person, I kind of just thought, all right, even if nobody else uses it, based on the investment that I’m doing, I will at least get enough value where it makes sense. But once I started showing it to other people, and then they’re like, oh, this is great. Can I use it? Can I use it? And then it just kind of grew to what it is now. It just still feels very surreal.
Now working with some of the largest companies in the country, doing 20, 30, 40 deals a month, using REsimpli, I never imagined that, like, I always wanted that, but I never imagined kind of to where we started from, to where we are now, and kind of everything that we have on the roadmap, things that we’re going to keep developing.
It’s been amazing! Yeah. I get up every morning super, super excited about the things that I’m going to work on. That’s my drug of choice.
Brandon Barnes 7:48
There you go. That’s a good one. And as a user myself, I can tell I’ve had a REsimpli account for almost four years now. And similar to what you said, you’d go to Masterminds and share your platform or share your numbers, and everybody’s like, how do you get that, Podia and other softwares? You could track some things, you could get some reports, but it was really difficult to get anything.
And within a couple of clicks of a button, I can tell you how many calls we’ve made, contracts, how much money. It does all the math for me. It’s not like, “Hey, let me pull my calculator out and do all this”. And it’s showed like, your passion has showed through it because me being a user and how it’s integrated, you just released 3.0 Saturday. Excited to learn kind of what that next step looks like as well. Kind of the evolution of it’s been amazing.
Sharad Mehta 8:50
Yeah, man, it’s exciting! I mean, I never imagined, like, everything we’re doing with REsimpli, we would be doing that. Like some of the things that we’ve released, like website dialer and other features, I get super, super excited. And I think the way we built REsimpli, I think it was very heavily influenced the fact that I was an accountant.
If I were not an accountant, I don’t think I would have built it the way I have. I mean, if I’d never moved to California, I would have probably never created REsimplibecause I would have accepted the chaos that I was in doing all that business, kind of just using broken system, just kind of everything aligned for me that I moved to California, I moved away from where I was flipping houses, and I saw a need. I had like a vacuum that I needed to fill.
And then the fact that I was an accountant, the KPI tracking, the data tracking was very important, especially being away from where I was flipping houses. I wanted to make sure, rather than going based on somebody’s opinion of how the business was going, I could actually make decisions based on the numbers.
So that was a very important part of it. And it’s exciting that as we’re noticing more and more people are switching over to REsimpli, you know, even for QuickBooks, part of it like that to me. The accountant on me gets very excited about that part. The accountant in me gets super excited when I notice people, like, switching over from QuickBooks to start using it for bookkeeping.
I feel like that’s like, the last thing that they want to trust us with is the financials, but kind of like an ecosystem that will be that the more they get into it, the more value they start seeing. And I feel like accounting is the last piece. Once they start using, they’re like, “Oh, I see the total value of everything”, like how everything comes together in the entire system.
Brandon Barnes 10:49
Yeah. And one thing that real estate investors, myself included, we struggle to make informed financial decisions because we live in such a what’s going on right now and a pace of life. And I know I’ve gone back and looked at properties, and we bought it, renovated, sold it, sold what we thought we were going to sell it for. Everything feels good. I’m like. This is a great deal.
And then I go back and look at the financials, and either we didn’t make what we thought we made, we broke even, or we lost money. And if you don’t have something that does that for your flips, for your marketing, you may just continue to do things that feel good. I get the endorphin kick from selling a home and maybe getting money back, and that feels like, “Oh, I’m making money”.
In reality, I just got money back. And this helps you from all facets of your business, say, okay, is cold calling making us money? Is pay per click, is direct mail? Are these things making us money, which you can easily see through resembling financials and everything else?
Sharad Mehta 11:57
Yes. Sometimes you may spend $100,000 in marketing in the year, and you make, let’s say, $400,000 -500,000 in revenue and like, “Hey, this is great. I spent 100,000, I made $400,000 -500,000”. But the question is, did you really need to spend $100,000 to make that 500? Could you have only spent like 75 and made the same amount of money?
So the 25 that you’re spending is actually not making you money. It’s breaking even. But when you look at it, you know, like aggregate data, maybe it doesn’t show you, you know, by every single marketing channel. You might notice that I made money from direct mail, or I made money from PPC. But was there a specific list in direct mail that you made money from? Was it like the probate list, absentee list that you made money from, and your other list of high equity tax list, you broke even, or you actually lost money when you just look at I spent 50,000 on direct mail and I made two-three hundred thousand.
Yes. But could you have only spent 10,000 and made the same money? And the other 40 was like basically a base for you. That’s the stuff that is going to help you make a lot more money in the business. I mean, I would rather make instead of a million dollars in top-line revenue where I can just pop my chest and say, “Look, I did seven figure”, and only have $50,000 net profit. I would much rather have $700,000-800,000 in gross profit, but have a net profit of $200 to $50,000 or more, have a very lean but very highly profitable business. That’s what I want to do. I want to look at the bottom number. At the end of the day, how much money did I walk away with from the business? Not the gross revenue but the net income.
Brandon Barnes 13:44
Right. Yeah. And that’s key, especially a big company, one that’s maybe spending 20, 30, $40,000 a month in marketing and bringing in potentially seven-plus figures.
Sharad Mehta 13:55
Yeah.
Brandon Barnes 13:56
You know, they can withstand or do okay if they spend an extra $20,000 in marketing. I’m not saying they want to, but you take something like my size where it’s just myself and my wife, and if we were to spend $20,000 in the wrong place of marketing or do something like that, it could really cripple our business. And having the ability to look at something every 90 days and say, “Okay, this is working. This isn’t working. Let’s tweak it, shut it down, prove it something else”.
And then I think another cool thing that REsimplihas is it’s really easy to say, all right, this phone call, you can get down to nitty gritty. Like this phone call cost the company $50.
Sharad Mehta 14:44
Right!
Brandon Barnes 14:44
And then you can go to your lead manager or acquisition manager or yourself, whoever’s answering your phone, every time this thing rings, that’s $50. If you don’t answer it or don’t get to them fast enough, or something else is going on, it could potentially be like taking a $50 bill and setting it on fire.
And I think that analogy for employees helps because they don’t necessarily always see the money you’re spending in marketing. They hear about it, but then when you can relate, “Hey, you got 20 phone calls today. These cost us $50 a phone call, $1,000 that we spent today just for your phone rank”.
Sharad Mehta 15:24
Right. Yeah, I agree, man! I mean, when you think about real estate, investing business, and real estate wholesaling, it’s essentially a marketing business. You’re only in the business as long as you’re marketing. And for most investors, marketing is going to be the biggest expense that they have in their business. So if you don’t know where the money is going or if you’re not being as efficiently as you possibly can, then you’re not doing yourself a favor. You’re not running the best business you can.
That’s what we want to do. That’s kind of what the nerd in me gets excited about, running these tests and seeing, okay, was it the direct mail absentee list? Was it probate list or whatever list that I’m meaning to like? Which list is it that is actually making me money? Let’s double down on that. Let’s cut out all the losers or the break-even list and then just double down on the ones that are actually making me money.
And then you become more profitable. You are spending less time because instead of going through 100 leads to find that one deal, you only have to go to, like, 20, 30 leads from that very specific marketing campaign. Like the other 70, 80 that you were getting. Those were, like, not even converting into a deal and just makes you way more efficient in your business. It helps you scale from there just knowing your marketing number.
Brandon Barnes 16:44
100%. So I have a question for you, and it’s a two part question. First question is, what is, out of all the features that you’ve built into REsimpli, what is one of the features that was the most challenging? And then part two of that is what is the feature that you were most excited about creating for the public to be able to use?
Sharad Mehta 17:08
That’s a tough question. No, please ask me that. I mean, the challenging, maybe the dialer. The dialer, I would say, because that’s something a lot of people wanted to see for a very long time, and having gone live with it and people using it and getting really good feedback from that, it feels amazing. But yeah, that was challenging because I don’t do a lot of cold calling.
So like getting close to the release, we had to change some requirement based on the demos that I did with some people who do a lot of cold calling, and they were looking to switch to our system. We had to do some last-minute change in requirements, and my developers didn’t like me for that. But I would say, yeah, that’s the one I can think of was the most challenging, and then the second part was the most exciting. I
would say the website as of the release that we have done, but there’s something else in the pipeline that’s going to be coming out in the next four to six months, which is just going to take us to the next level. Actually, I would also say the one that we released, we call it Speed to Lead. That is actually a pretty cool feature. I mean, it immediately connects you with lead in under a minute as soon as the lead is created from your website online, Zapier, it just connects you with the lead, and it could connect you with the lead in 30 seconds if you pick up the call on time.
So that’s actually a pretty exciting feature once people start using it, and they’re like, “Oh wow, this is pretty amazing”. Especially to go back to your point of you’re spending so much money on these leads, especially like PPC leads, paper lead, spending like $200-300 or more on each lead. And imagine if you can connect with that lead within like 30 to 60 seconds of lead coming in. That’s pretty cool. And then a couple of other things we’re working on that are going to be coming out in the next four to six months. I’ve shared with a couple of people, and they’re pretty excited about what we have in the pipeline. So I’m looking forward to that.
Brandon Barnes 19:20
That’s awesome. Yeah. So the dialer, I’ve heard people since the beginning when they’re going to be a dialer, that’s exciting. And now I see a lot of chatter in the Facebook group and stuff, people asking about it, how to use it.
Sharad Mehta 19:34
Yeah, so we’ve had pretty decent number of people that already started using it. They’re getting used to it. Just the fact that it’s built in, you don’t have to do any integration or anything. Yeah, I’m excited about that. I’m having my team start code calling from next week. So kind of excited to do that.
Just previously with the challenge of using a different platform and then uploading and pushing leads from that dialog into none of that. You have all your lists and list hacking. Just create a campaign, start dialing, and then push it to a lead. Super super simple. So that’s going to be a good lead source for us moving forward.
Brandon Barnes 20:14
That’s amazing! So Sharad, how many subscriptions and, again, ballpark do you think REsimpli covers for your typical investing business?
Sharad Mehta 20:25
I would say you should be able to eliminate like eight to ten subscriptions, easily list, talking, your dialer, driving for dollars, website, CRM, Call Rail, email platform, your buyers management, your vendors, accounting, task management. We’ve had people to review on our website or other places. You’re just saying, “Hey, I was using eight to ten different subscriptions now. Now I can just run my entire business within REsimpli”. So I would say at least anybody that’s running a typical investing business easily eight to ten subscriptions, and then they can just manage all of that within REsimpli.
Brandon Barnes 21:12
And it’s so easy to add those subscriptions up and not even realize that you have them.
Sharad Mehta 21:20
Yeah.
Brandon Barnes 21:21
I mean, you can, you just mentioned, you know, taking your phone number, subscription, your task management, your QuickBooks, your money management, your CRM, and they don’t seem like big deals because they’re one’s, you know, 20 bucks, one’s 30 bucks, one’s 80 bucks. And when you sit down and look at your PNL, and you realize, hey, I’m spending $1,500 a month, $2,000 a month on multiple subscriptions just so that my team can operate.
Sharad Mehta 21:46
Isn’t that crazy when you think about it? I mean, not just even the money part, but just like the number of software that we have to use. It’s insane! It just goes my mind that for it’s a very simple business, and then having to use all these different software. I mean, I didn’t even talk about you can replace design. You can replace. We don’t use Dropbox, Google Type. It’s all built-in. It just organizes.
And maybe part of me is the reason why I created it the way I did. I hate logging into multiple software. I hate it. It’s kind of like you’re using one phone for calling, an iPhone for calling, and then you’re going to your Android phone for checking text messages or email. It’s kind of like that. And then you can do some sort of integration where text on Android phone or email would forward. But if something happens to your Android phone, it doesn’t forward. Then you have to go fix it.
It just to me, I never liked that idea. I just wanted to log in, just run my business, just focus on my business, not I wanted to be a real estate investor, not a software developer, not have to hire software developers to do the integration. So that was the motivation for me. That was kind of what I wanted in my business.
And I thought I can imagine other people will not see value in this just having to log in and run their entire business. And that’s kind of the number one thing we hear why people love using REsimpli. It’s just, it simplifies their business. They log in one login. Everything is already there. They don’t have to buy all these different subscriptions.
Brandon Barnes 23:32
Yeah, it really is as we built. And so what we’re trying to do recently in our business, my wife has staging, is we’re trying to figure out how to use her staging business in REsimpli, which has been interesting because we don’t wholesale much. So we’ve used some of like buyer stuff as agents and tasks because cause similar like we had to log into seven different things to
run our businesses. You know, we’d all be sitting in a meeting and be like, all right, how do we all right, let’s log into Asana to manage Tasks for her stuff, or then let’s log into MailChimp so we can send emails. And so I asked, what do you think? We could incorporate what we do this little bit here into our REsimpli. And it’s been interesting. It’s worked. We’re slowly learning how to use it as a team, but it shows that it can even take place, like add on some of the built-in stuff.
Sharad Mehta 24:31
It’s funny that you mentioned that we use to manage our own REsimplicustomers use a different platform. We have the same problem. Yeah, like my customer support person said, hey, can I just use REsimpli to call, text, and email the users because otherwise, they have to log into multiple software to call, to text, to email, and then just like some of the other simple things like save any information. It’s not fun. I’m like, “Yeah, actually, why don’t we do that”?
Let’s start with one group of our users that we can start moving them over our back-end users to REsimpli, and let’s just use it and see how it works out for us. So, yeah, it’s been interesting. I mean, we have some. It’s primarily for real estate investors, but we have some agents using it. We have, like the other day, somebody mentioned that they run a loan officer. They’re using it, and it’s not built for loan officer, but it’s built primarily for real estate investors.
But, of course, people kind of tweak. They just love the idea of like they can just log in and make some tweaks to the system and use it for their business and not have to log in to like they have to use multiple different software in their business. So, yeah, it’s been exciting. Just like having other companies use it in their business and see the value.
Brandon Barnes 25:58
Yeah, and if you think about it, again, we talk about wholesaling fix and flip is a little bit different, but wholesaling it’s just the sales and marketing, writing phones, doing, staging, other than the part of putting furniture in. Who’s called us? Who haven’t we talked to? Let’s put them in.
Sharad Mehta 26:15
No contact.
Brandon Barnes 26:16
Your appointments don’t have to be physical. Your appointment can be a phone call. It can be a zoom call. Hey, we’ve been on an appointment. Is this person going to work with us? And what’s cool, like how we’re looking at from our staging business. As we create clients, we simply can tell you. You’ve done so many properties with this person, same as the seller. Hey, we collect from this person. Okay, let’s send this person a really nice thank you package or do something for them, and it allows you to really easily see that.
Sharad Mehta 26:48
Yeah, man. That’s honestly one of the most exciting things that happen. When we create the future, we have a certain idea in our mind, like this is how we intend people to use it. This is how somebody would want to use it. Like, go and do these things.
And then when people go in and use it like totally different ways, like holy crap, like we didn’t even imagine somebody would use it like this. You know, we would release something and like, okay, this is how we intend people to use it. This is how we think they would use it. And I’m like, oh, you know, yeah, I’m using the exact same feature with this or that. Like, oh, this is awesome.
Like we didn’t even think, you know, there would be a use case for that, like something similar to what you are saying. And then we have some loan officer and like other agents and other people from other construction businesses using the platform like this is exciting.
We didn’t even imagine that we would have people out. Still a real estate investor use it, but once they use it and they see the value, that tells us, like, we’re on to something.
Brandon Barnes 27:43
Yeah, I think you are. I think it’s been something fun to watch it grow. It really is a special property. It’s cool to see it a different mass or that property, a special business, and watch different businesses and masterminds and stuff use it. It’s been pretty awesome.
So let’s talk. Let’s switch the topic and a little bit about real estate since we have people here that want to know a little bit about the secrets behind how you have flipped, the homes that you flipped, and how you get them. So what is your main marketing channel you would say that helps you get properties?
28:25
It’s a direct mail, and PPC are the two or online leads, and direct mail got you.
Brandon Barnes 28:34
Got it! And the cool thing is we simply tell them that as well.
Sharad Mehta 28:38
Yes, we literally have data to prove that we spent $10,000 on this specific online lead, did not make a penny, but then we were able to make a decision and say cut it out. Let’s move on to what’s working.
Brandon Barnes 28:50
Got you! So you primarily get your leads from some form of online source, pay per click, SEO, paper lead, and then direct mail. And so, with REsimpli, you’re able to take your list from what data source are you using primarily?
Sharad Mehta 29:10
For us, the best-performing list has been absentee list with 30% equity or unknown equity and five years of ownership or unknown ownership. That, by far, has been our best performing list for direct mail with the same list. We’re starting cold calling next week with the exact same list your data approve. It works in direct mail. So we’re going to do the same thing in cold calling.
Brandon Barnes 29:34
You’re able to take that list upload. It in REsimpli, which has a Stacking feature in it, and then from Stacking, you can change it up, make sure duplicates, things like that. And then, who do you use the skip trace?
Sharad Mehta 29:51
We have built within REsimpli? We use a third-party API that’s already built in. So nobody has to go in and do any integration. It’s built-in, just go in skip trace, and then you just pay for whatever it costs you get. And then, if you want to start dialing, you just start dialing from there.
Brandon Barnes 30:07
And that’s such a saved step from having to I can’t see how many Excel sheets I’ve had on my desktop of, like, did I skip trace this, did I not? Did it upload? Did it know you have 50 Excel sheets or, sorry, ESB files kind of on there? So basically, you can take your data, you can put everything in a REsimpli in the stacker. Stacker can then skip trace it. So you can now use your dialer to call, and then you can send mail through resemble as well. Is that who you are?
Sharad Mehta 30:38
Yeah. So we send mail, and then anybody that becomes a lead or they say, “Hey, take me off the list”. So when we’re calling them or doing next round of marketing, we’ll just make sure we filter them out and just only call the people that we haven’t heard from.
Brandon Barnes 30:52
Got it, which is key. It’s really important. It’s always kind of a strange topic in real estate. It’s like, what do I do with the people that tell me to remove them from the list? It is very difficult to answer your call. Remember to put it somewhere and then go into another sheet. And then, if you accidentally call this person or reach out to them and you’re not supposed to, you can get trouble. So it is nice to have that feature. Hey, you don’t want to call you again? Put them in the DNC if you’re on left.
Sharad Mehta 31:20
Exactly, you’re right. You don’t want to get sued by someone who’s said to take me off the list. And then you’re still calling them or texting them.
Brandon Barnes 31:31
Correct! For those of you that may have never used REsimpli, I mean, you just answered it there. You’re putting your list in REsimpli you’re skip-tracing them in the same software. It’s, it’s as simple as clicking a button and matching some real. And then, from there, depending on your choice of marketing, you can go straight from the list and call simply.
It’s super simple. Click some buttons, pick a postcard or pick a letter, add it to a phone number, and off you go. Alright, so basically, the CRM REsimpli. You can do everything to get the marketing out. How are you buying properties? Who’s your acquisition person?
Sharad Mehta 32:17
Yeah, so my team structure is I have a lead financer based in Philippines. She’s taking our calls, so she’s on salary plus commission. And the acquisition person based in Indiana she’s commission only based on the project that we close on. So she’s the one who goes on appointments, the lead manager in Philippines, and setting up appointments or making an offer, like pre-qualifying for the acquisition person to go out.
And then once we close on a property, then my project manager, who lives in California, managing all our projects in Indiana, that’s when she takes over the property, and manages the entire project within REsimpli. So that’s kind of what my team structure is. Two full-time employees, one in Philippines base plus commission, my project manager base plus commission. And then the acquisition manager is commission only.
And then, the process lead manager takes a call in Philippines, qualifies the lead, sets it up as an appointment for the acquisition person to go out, make an offer, and then once it’s accepted, we close on it. Then the project manager takes over.
Brandon Barnes 33:12
So for those of you that may have missed that, he only has one person who lives in northwest Indiana that does this. So it is really important for you to rely on your system.
Sharad Mehta 33:24
I mean, the four people that we have are spread across three different countries. I’m in Canada. My acquisition manager part-time or a commission is in Indiana. My project manager is in California managing everything. Lead manager is in Philippines because of COVID. Like, I didn’t even in last three years, I didn’t even go visit Indiana for three years just because of COVID. And I live in Canada. They won’t let us out.
So I only went to Indiana like last month for a day. I planned two days, and after half a day, I’m like, this is my kind of waste of rest of my one and a half day because things are pretty much in control. I don’t need to be involved with anything, but it was good to be there.
Brandon Barnes 34:06
It’s so amazing! I live 30 minutes from most of my projects and still struggle with it. And it shows how you have dialed in your system and process through REsimpli on how to build the business.
Sharad Mehta 34:23
It’s also like the right people. We’ve gone through a fair share of bad people in the business. We’ve had that project manager. We’ve gone burnt on the acquisition manager side. But once you find the right people and you put them in the right system for them to succeed, it’s fun, man. It’s fun. Now if I spend more than half hour to 1 hour per week on my house flipping business, something is massively wrong. There’s some major problem for me to be involved more than like 1 hour a week in the business.
Brandon Barnes 34:58
Which is a testament to being able to make decisions based on having true data. And then you have this hustle culture that everybody subscribes to now. Hey as I’m just going to work super hard and outwork everybody. And don’t get me wrong. There are moments in life when you have to work hard, and you have to spend extra hours.
But if you have resources at your fingertips that could potentially cost less than maybe everything that you have already paid for, it can really change how you work and use your business. I think as new people starting, they should think about that as, hey, while I’m, I don’t know, we use the word slower, but while I’m learning and maybe not doing as much as 25 flips or we’ll do in our business, we’ll do 15 to 18 this year. It’s like, hey, how do I get some of this stuff dialed in and done? Right?
So that as we go from five a year to ten a year to 20 a year to whatever it is, you’re not working that much harder every single level.
Sharad Mehta 36:02
Yeah, absolutely! If you’re starting out or whatever level you’re at, if you look at your business like a year, two years, five years down the road and just think about could you scale to the levels that you want to scale to with the systems that you have? If the answer is no, you want to start thinking about I’m not just talking about REsimpli, I’m just talking about systems and processes.
It could be like having a standard operating procedure. Okay, if a new project comes in, this is how we handle it. It could be a Google sheet. It could be whatever you want to use. But you want to start thinking about systemizing. It’s not the sexiest thing in the world to talk about, but that’s the thing that’s going to help you leverage.
You don’t want to be doing the same thing over and over again when you can just do it one time and then write a process like write a checklist. It could be something as simple as checklist. If I walk into a house, the first thing I’m going to do is check the foundation.
And that’s how you learn. Like when I bought my first house, I was just so excited that will call me, and then I just bought the main level. It was a ranch for the basement. I walked the main level, and I made the guy an offer, and I totally forgot to check the basement. And basement is a major issue in the area where we buy. You could have major foundation issue.
But then I wrote it in my lick less check foundation. Then next time I would go, I should check foundation. But then I would forget something else. I would add it to my lip. So you start building those things, and then you start getting comfortable with what you’re doing.
Brandon Barnes 37:37
Yeah. So you’re absolutely right. The system doesn’t have to be this perfect thing. In the very beginning, I remember same here from my flipping my first home to where we’re at now. Our scope of work template has changed our design scopes, the way we order things, the way we turn utilities on. And what’s really cool is you just document it.
Hey, these are some lessons that I learned from this property. How can I not do them on the next one? And then what’s cool about any software we simply whatever is you can create templates. So, hey, I bought this property. It’s not going to give me 20 checklists or 20 tasks.
Sharad Mehta 38:16
Yeah.
Brandon Barnes 38:16
Hey, did I turn power on? Did I turn us all up paying for the next person’s utility bills?
Sharad Mehta 38:22
Oh, yeah, we, we’ve been there. I spent, like, $12-1300 because we have so many projects going on. I spent, like, $12-1300 paying somebody’s. I think it was water bill for like good eight, nine months before we caught it back in the day. And now, in our checklist we have any number of projects sells the day after, I mean the day after, within 24 hours.
It creates a task for my project manager to cancel gas, electric, water insurance out of her name. And then there’s another task a month after for my project manager to make sure we got the insurance check back, and it was actually deposited in our bank account. So we never forget that set it up, and that’s it now we absolutely have.
If it happens now that you’re paying somebody’s utility, we know exactly who dropped the ball. They checked, something was done, but it was not actually done. It’s not happens since then. But, you know, we, we paid them somebody’s water bill for like good eight months, like twelve hundred dollars. And then we couldn’t do anything about it. So that kind of sucked.
Brandon Barnes 39:26
And that insurance check also is a pain to get back. It can take, you know, three, four, they’ll take it immediately when you pay for it, but I know, and it’s….
Sharad Mehta 39:36
Send you by snail mail. So but we have it in our, we have it in our list to check 30 days. It’s a task for a project manager to check with the bookkeeper that the check was actually deposited in our bank account. So we can just say already it was actually deposited, not just received, but it was actually deposited back in our bank account. But it’s not a huge amount like 1500 bucks is usually the refund, but once you start adding up, you know, what, 10, 15, 20 property, that’s like thousand, $2,000 that you could be like, not accounting for.
Brandon Barnes 47:06
For us, with our hard money lender, they require one year of insurance at closing.
Sharad Mehta 40:11
Oh, wow! For you guys, that’s going to be a pretty big amount
Brandon Barnes 40:14
Yeah. So we’re turning our properties our average; what I call D-D is four and a half months. And so you’re having seven and a half months of insurance payments that you’re getting back. And there’s plenty of times I’m like, three weeks into it, and I’m like, hey, did we even do prorate it back to your HUD date? But it’s easy to just forget.
Sharad Mehta 40:41
It’s such a simple thing, like, you get excited about getting the buyer or check for the property you sold, and these small things you could totally forget about. Or you could just you could not tell your lawn care guy to stop cutting grass, and you’re just cutting grass for somebody every week. And then your lawn care guys, hey, you didn’t tell me. How would I know that you sold the house?
Brandon Barnes 41:03
Yeah, I’ve definitely cut some people’s grass.
Sharad Mehta 41:07
We’ve all been there, right? But you want to make that mistake only one time.
Brandon Barnes 41:11
Correct.
Sharad Mehta 41:41
And then, especially if you can learn from somebody else’s mistake, there’s nothing like that. You know you want to learn from your own, but if somebody ahead of you has already made that mistake, learn from it and then just put that process in your business.
Brandon Barnes 41:22
Cool deal. Well, I have four rapid-fire questions for you. Touched on some of them, but we’ll get it really clean so people can search them really easy at the end if they want to go back and listen. So the first question is, from a data standpoint, what is the number one data filter that you like to use?
Sharad Mehta 41:40
For us, absentee with 30% or more equity or unknown equity and five years of ownership or unknown last absolutely the best list. If somebody starting out, I would start with that list before any other less.
Brandon Barnes 41:55
Alright. Second, for marketing, if I had $5,000 and all I could do, that’s all I had to start marketing. What is the marketing channel you tell me to start with?
Sharad Mehta 42:08
I would start with direct mail to that list.
Brandon Barnes 42:10
Alright. From an operational standpoint, we’ve touched on it a little bit. What is one of the things, as a new, say, newbie to kind of beginning their business is an operational thing they can improve really quickly that they don’t even know about.
Sharad Mehta 42:25
Checklist. Just have checklist, simple checklists of things that you’re doing so you don’t have to keep thinking about it all the time.
Brandon Barnes 42:33
And then the last thing is, what would be a tip for sales that you would give somebody in real estate?
Sharad Mehta 42:40
I would say listen to what other person is talking about. Don’t just be so excited about closing a deal. If you’re on the phone with someone or you’re in a meeting with someone, and someone says, hey, my dog just passed away. You might not be an animal person, but then take a moment just empathize with that person. Don’t be like, oh, my doctor’s, pastor. Don’t say, oh, that’s great. What about the roof? When did you replace the roof? Just listen. It’s nothing common. I mean, at the end of the day, everything that happens, it’s like human to human, just person to person. Just everybody wants to feel important and hurt in business, in a relationship, in anything in life. Just make sure you make the other person feel good. And if you do that, you’re going to be successful.
Sharad Mehta 43:31
I 100% agree. I have just one thing to say on that. I remember an acquisition person listening to their calls, and the lady said that her mom had just died. He’s like, so, how old are your windows?
Sharad Mehta 43:48
Yes, it happens that when you think about it, nobody would do that. You get so into the deal-closing mode that you forget to kind of step back and realize that you’re not talking to a seller. You’re talking to a human being with emotions, and you just want to validate it. You want to empathize with that. I mean, if my wife was listening to this, you’re like, why don’t you do more of that in a few minutes?
Sharad Mehta 44:15
I think all of them would say that.
Sharad Mehta 44:18
Yeah.
Brandon Barnes 44:19
Awesome Sharad. Well, I’ve had a great time catching up and chatting with you. Can you please let our listeners know what is the best way to contact you, find you social media, phone numbers? What’s the best way for you?
Sharad Mehta 44:36
Yeah, I mean, I’m not very active on Facebook. I have a Facebook account, but the only thing I do with that is check REsimpli Facebook Group. You can send me a message on Facebook. I check my messages. You can email me at info@resimpli.com, or you can go to REsimpli.com, fill out a form. And if it’s for me so, get filtered down to me, and I’ll get back to you.
Brandon Barnes 44:52
Awesome.Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate by listening. If you guys enjoyed this episode, we’d love a five-star review and a review about it. So anyways, stay tuned for the next REsimpli podcast!
Have a great day!
