In the beginning, one of the main reasons I created SI Lead Manager was to help me organize and keep track of all my direct mail campaigns. This has been the most challenging idea to implement for many reasons. As I’ve used each version and have learned what I require in a campaign manager, I’ve had to constantly rework this module. With Beta 6 I may have finally found the best way to handle mailing campaigns, there still might be …
Si Lead Manager – Beta 6 Preview
After over a year of re-thinking, re-coding and re-testing SI Lead Manager – Beta 6 is almost ready to go. This past weekend I took some time to create a quick video preview of one of the newest features of Beta 6, Tags. ***edit*** Because of a lack of audio and how bad the first video was, I redid the video. If you have any questions feel free to email me at scott@strugglinginvestor.com
Marketing Monday: Hit In The Pocket Again!
This year is starting off as an expensive one already. The Payroll tax reduced my JOB’s paycheck (and my wife’s) by more the $100 per check; – $5000! Wells Fargo informed us that they didn’t charge us enough money last year to pay our property taxes through the mortgage escrow, so they tacked on an addition $150 per month to pay back the shortage; – $1800! Oh and our Property Taxes went up this year; -$1000! If you are keeping …
Marketing Monday: Getting Back Into The Swing of Things
I’m finally getting back into the swing of things and have been putting together some mailings using the new system. There have been a lot of starts and stops for one reason or another but after 3 weeks of trial testing Beta 6, I’ve got most of the errors out. Even still, there are some areas that I’ve been reworking because I found them to be either confusing, not working as intended or Chris or my partner have suggested …
Holy Crap!….It’s already January 11th
Man Oh Man have I been busy ever since Christmas! I’m getting to the point in my life where I don’t like to take extended breaks from anything because it is so hard to ramp myself back up again. Christmas and New Years does this to me every year. I’m a man of routine and when that routine gets broken I have a hard time getting back to it. It all comes back to momentum I think. I’ve spent the …
Meeting Minutes: Education
This post is part 5 of 6 detailing what my partner and I went over during our annual meeting this year. The point of this meeting was to come up with a plan that will create a more consistent and profitable business for 2013. The items we covered in our meeting are listed below. To view prior posts related to this series click on the link for that topic. Budget Sweet Spot Areas Sweat Equity Mail Campaigns Education SI Lead Manager …
Shutting It Down….
This has been the fastest years of my life! It is amazing how having your first child will push the fast forward button. Even through all of the change I managed to keep putting out the mailers and gaining valuable real estate investing experience. At this point (mid December), my partner and I send out our last mailing of the year and start ramping up for the next year. We have already had our yearly board meeting to discuss what …
Meeting Minutes: Direct Mail Campaigns
This post is part 3 of 6 detailing what my partner and I went over during our annual meeting this year. The point of this meeting was to come up with a plan that will create a more consistent and profitable business for 2013. The items we covered in our meeting are listed below. To view prior posts related to this series click on the link for that topic. Budget Sweet Spot Areas Sweat Equity Mail Campaigns Education SI Lead Manager …
Meeting Minutes: Sweat Equity
This post is part 3 of 6 detailing what my partner and I went over during our annual meeting this year. The point of this meeting was to come up with a plan that will create a more consistent and profitable business for 2013. The items we covered in our meeting are listed below. To view prior posts related to this series click on the link for that topic. Budget Sweet Spot Areas Sweat Equity Mail Campaigns Education SI Lead Manager …
Meeting Minutes: Sweet Spot Areas
This post is part 2 of 6 detailing what my partner and I went over during our annual meeting this year. The point of this meeting was to come up with a plan that will create a more consistent and profitable business for 2013. The items we covered in our meeting are listed below. To view prior posts related to this series click on the link for that topic. Budget Sweet Spot Areas Sweat Equity Mail Campaigns Education SI Lead Manager …
Meeting Minutes: Budgeting (And VOTE FOR ME!)
****************************************************************************** First things first, it is time for the second annual REI Club, Best Real Estate Investing Blog contest!!! With the help of all you last year I managed to finish in 2nd place. We actually almost pulled off the victory but got beaten by a final day surge for the winner. So this year lets push for the top spot. If you like my blog and appreciate all that I share, head on over and vote…. —-> Vote Here <—- ****************************************************************************** “Narrowing …
Marketing Monday: I Spent How Much??!?!
Some where along the way I apparently lost track of how much money I was spending on my marketing campaigns. I forgot about the dollars and only focused on the number of mailers I wanted to send out. On average I was sending out about 750 letters per month which out paced my plan by about 250 per month. It’s good to get out more mailers for sure, but by deviating from my plan it has handcuffed me a little …
Last Week Was a Fun Week In New Jersey
I’ll start out with saying that compared to other people in New Jersey, I had it easy last week. My power went out on Monday morning, for the first time, two strides into my treadmill workout. The power came back on 5 minutes later though so I took the opportunity to jump back on in hopes of getting a half hour of running in. I must have been powering the house like a mouse on one of those wheels, because …
Partners: You May Need A Partner
About two years ago I was stammering along trying to get some momentum going with my marketing to bring in phone calls. With my limited time I was really having trouble answering the phone when a lead would call. I’d return the calls when I could, usually at lunch or between 6:30pm and 8pm. I quickly fell behind and sometimes took days to call a lead back. This is not a good strategy and hurts your reputation with the lead …
Partners: Tools We Use So We Can Work Together
Thank god for technology! Some people refuse to use it, but I embrace it and try and think of creative ways to use it in order to allow my partner and I to communicate better and more efficiently. In the beginning we started off trading spreadsheets back and forth which you can imagine quickly became a mess! “I sent it over yesterday, did you get it?” “I didn’t get it, or maybe I did” “Shit, I accidentally copied on file …