Scaling Off-Market Deal Acquisition, with Cole Ruud-Johnson of Easy Button Real Estate

0:03 As a real estate broker focused in probate real estate, I get approached literally every day by investors looking for deals. And truth is in my particular business, because I work with attorneys all my going the market, I don't really have special deals on the side for investors I like. But, investors are always looking for ways to get deals more cost-effectively and I work with a lot of them through the escrows I do. The thing I've learned is that investors make their money on the purchase side, not as much on the flip side, meaning they have to spend their energy buying properties at the right price. They can only do so much remodeling and marketing it to sell it to get the right price at the end. And so, those tools are important. I've come across one I wanted to share with anybody here who is an investor and purchasing or is a real estate agent you work with investors or attorneys you work with investors who are looking for off-market and distressed properties. Cole Johnson is with Easy Button Real Estate. Some interesting tools kind of combining a couple different technologies for real estate investors. Cole, thanks for joining us today.

1:00 Thanks for having me, though. I'm excited. So, Easy Button. I love the reference to Staples, my formerly best favorite retailer, though they're out of business now. And downtown LA was a staple center for years during the Laker glory years with Kobe Bryant. No longer. So, the Easy Button doesn't have the same reference that it used to, but maybe you guys are the new uprising of that word. So, talk a bit about how you make your systems become a an easy button for real estate investors.

1:26 Yeah, so my background was in just off-market deal acquisition. So, I started my real estate company at 18 about 10 years ago, almost 11 years ago. And for the first 7 years, I'd done almost 500 off-market real estate transactions, all direct to seller. So, I'd gotten really good at you know, through cold calling, direct mail, all the different channels that are out there, getting in front of sellers, targeting the right lists, and putting deals together. And that led me to doing some flips of my own and stuff as well. And one I was on the BiggerPockets show and one night I was I was chatting with Brandon Turner and he actually coined the name Easy Button. That's now our company name cuz he was like, "It seems like what you guys are trying to do is just like someone can wake up and click the easy button on deal on deal acquisition." And

2:13 Hold up for a second there cuz you just ran through something one of my heroes that got me in the business and helped me make some of my best on the way. BiggerPockets podcast is was a fantastic podcast. It's not quite the same because the guy who really I think made it big was Brandon. I'm not sure what that was all about but really one of the great voices of real estate investors to come democratizing opportunity. You had a chance to go on the episode with. So just for those who know a little nostalgia, that was when BiggerPockets was a BiggerPockets. So go ahead, I'm just my call.

2:41 Yeah, so I was I was 22 on the show was like 6 years ago. I flew out to his house in Maui and did it live from his house. We became pretty close and we were in Lake Chelan one time at the same time and playing poker like 3:00 a.m. And he was like, "I think Easy Button should be your name." And that's, you know, we changed right there. That next day I bought the domain and we swapped everything to Easy Button. So that's kind of been my goal since then is putting deal acquisition, really finding better deals and providing a better surface on easy mode for investors and agents cuz we're in such a we're in such a fragmented industry. Like real estate itself is so fragmented and decentralized. When you come into the business, there's like 300 different tools you can use. You have to take people's word for it. A lot of people get scammed really bad from, you know, different seminars or masterminds or groups or whatever and don't really get any real value. And so my whole journey the past decade plus has been putting together tools that actually help people do more deals and then putting that on easy mode and getting paid for it. And that whole podcast was my kind of kick off into people wanting to come to me for that. So

3:51 Stop it there for a second cuz I think that's very important concept that I didn't really understand, which is and I see this in fact I had another interview with another vendor earlier today, which is that I think the when business was easier, you know, you could kind of the equivalent of walking to Home Depot and buy a hammer and buy, you know, some nails and buy this and buy that, but nowadays I think more competitors are packaging together two or three pieces into a kit and selling you a kit to do the job. And so I notice in your offerings that you are offering a hammer and nails and you know, some diagrams, but you also are putting it together in a package and that's what that integration and that they work well together I think is the difference that makes the difference. That's what makes it the easy button I think.

4:35 Yeah. Yeah, you know, I developed and it's just a it's a problem for me. Like I not everyone I don't have to even think of it in a negative way, but like I think in general pure like people that purely sell information doesn't get people to where they need to be. I think application is everything in this business and a lot of people the information is very simple. On paper business is very simple, right? You do a certain amount of marketing, you make a certain amount of calls, you meet a certain amount of people, put together deals, on paper it's pretty straightforward. But when it's applied to real life it's a little more tricky. So, I try to be very cognizant of that and everything that we offer is, you know, tailored around back in my day when I was coming into the business what I actually needed to do more deals and grow. Not hey, how can I take more money from my audience or from people that we market to. And I think in real estate it's gotten really backwards where I think a lot of vendor again it's so decentralized there's no regulation. I think a lot of people they do a couple deals, they build a brand, and they all of a sudden switch into this how much can I take from people by providing as little as possible. And ours is how little can we take from people by providing as possible and that's turned into a really great business for us of, you know, servicing thousands of investors and agents across the country. And we've been doing that for a decade, and you know, I pride myself you know, when I'm on my podcast, you can't go into any BiggerPockets forum, any online review site, there's not one negative review about us out there anywhere because we take care of people, and we really try to flip the script on its head of how people are treated. A lot of people get to us, and they've worked with 10 different vendors and 12 different coaches and 14 different, you know, providers of some kind of tool, and they're just exhausted and burnt, and they've lost a lot of money. And my whole message is to really, you know, still provide a service, but do it in a do it in a way where people can actually integrate it and use it how it should be used to do more deals and make more money. That's what we're all here for.

6:33 So, let's talk a little bit about your offering, and I had just kind of poked around a little bit and checked it out. Easy Button Real Estate is the brand, the website, and you have a community on Facebook of people in your class and school. But, I think the first core piece is the lead engine.

6:49 Yep. Could you talk a little bit about your lead engine? You're the Costco of cold calling. Talk You're the Costco of cold calling.

6:57 Yeah. Yeah, so I think everything in real estate starts with leads and opportunity. You know, you can be the best real estate agent ever, but if you have no you know, no new clients to work with, or the best investor ever, but you have no properties to work on your team, it doesn't matter. You can be the best flipper on Earth if you have no deals coming your way, it doesn't matter. And so, the first problem that we solve for people is the leads problem. I boil real estate down to three letters, LCO, leads, conversion, and operations. And this takes care of the leads problem. And cold calling to me is an amazing channel because you have control, you can scale it up and down very quickly, and it's very low-cost leads. So, very high margin of error. And so, the Costco of cold calling is again, it's kind of flipping the way most people do cold calling as a service on its head. Most people out there, they go white label with a call center and they charge you a three, four thousand dollars a month for a caller and they take money for you for from a few months, but the whole thing with cold calling is your cost per lead has to be super low. If your cost per lead gets above 30, 35 dollars per lead, the return on ad spend and it just doesn't really work. And so our thing is, hey, with us, you can hire as many cold callers as you pay a small membership and then you can hire as many cold callers as you want at our cost, which is $4.50 an hour that are fully trained and managed for you. So it's just like Costco. You get your Costco card, well you get your Easy Button membership and then you can hire, you know, three, five, 10 all at cost and get leads at 15, 20 dollars per lead, which lets you actually have success with, you know, cold calling as a marketing channel in real estate.

8:31 Are you say you're providing the callers, so you're hiring them, you're training them, you're managing them and you provide them the scripts? Yeah, correct. So we have you know, partner BPOs that we work with that we give all of our training and infrastructure to and then we whatever our cost of labor is what the what our clients pay. So all the scripts that thousands of investors have used through us that we've taken 10 years to develop and perfect, the scripting, the managing, everything's done for them. So someone gets their membership with us, which is their Costco card, they say, hey, I want five agents. That's all they do. They wake up every day and leads come right into their CRM and they can work and turn into deals or listings or whatever they're going to do.

9:14 So there's a membership and then after that then the other items are offered as cost and so on your website your membership, I guess you have different programs, but the simple basic membership is like 975, I think a month.

9:26 975 a month and that comes with our, you know, community, it comes with all of our resources and tools plus you can hire cold callers and other positions. You can also hire, you know, transaction coordinators, admin assistants, sales people, lead managers, all the positions they may need in their business at our cost cuz we do what we do a lot of hiring, recruiting, and vetting. So, it's really meant for someone to pay a membership and that's them hitting the easy button and then every tool that they need in this business from their CRM to their data to their callers is all taken care of for them.

10:01 And like you on your website you had this calculator return for your I'm not sure what AS is but return for your ROI return for investment and then based on how many cold calls you want to hire, what your profit per deal is a real estate agent our commissions are lower but as investors might be higher per transaction and that calculates how much your net profit is and what your what your costs are for the leads I guess. You're charging for leads, you're charging for cold callers and then after that it's your profit and that's we can actually calculate those numbers or I think more importantly you can calculate where your break even is.

10:35 Yeah. So, it's just it's just gives people a tool to kind of figure out what it looks like to run a cold call campaign and you know, kind of what their costs will be with us and not have to guess. So, when they when they click on one caller or two callers or three callers and what their profit per deal is, it should be as long as your as long as your average deal size is 10,000 plus which I even if you're an agent in a lot of markets it is, you can really run a an at scale cold call campaign and still be at a five the gold the threshold is I get to a five extra on ad spend and then and scale from there. So, yep.

11:13 Return for your ad spend. Okay. And then the you're calculating this on a 2% conversion ratio. So, for every 100 leads you're looking for two deals closed. Obviously it takes some time, right? Month one you get you get some leads and month two and month three but that's not you're not going to see those kind of numbers probably for three, six months or longer down the road to see the profit.

11:32 Yeah, I try to be very conservative in everything that we put out to the world. And so we have clients that do a deal every 20 leads, 30 leads. Average out as our pipeline grows. And it does take Every marketing channel takes time for it to mature, your pipeline to grow, and things to come through. But we try to just make it very conservative on what's you know the average sales person, what they're going to see. Not hey, the best sales person out there. So if you're an average sales person, you should be converting one in 50 to one in 60 you know leads into a contract or a listing or whatever you're doing. If you're an investor and an agent, you can get that even lower. But it's just a rule of thumb to make sure people are projecting the right way.

12:10 And it's a reasonable number. Having been in this business quite a while, I've seen people with projections at higher number. And it's true that best performers might convert four of 100. But also they've been at it three, four years. And so they have that one that's been there for three years that now they have the benefit of it. So many people start and quit after 6 months or a year. They're not getting those older ones that take longer to convert. The numbers can't be as good mathematically, obviously, if they're around as long. So again, I you know hats off. I saw this. I thought it was pretty reasonable number where so much of it is I think hyped and oversold. It's not like you know you have actual numbers that you're going off of to keep us up-to-date.

12:47 Yeah, you know we have data from almost every market in the country and every state in the country. So it's easy to put out real numbers to people and give them a real expectation. And although I got like I said earlier in the show, a lot of people they try to just over-inflate what they do and what their success is. And you know business is hard and ugly. And if you get a three to five extra turn on your ad spend, it's a great business. If you get if you get really good at sales and it all pans out perfectly and you get to 10, great. But I think when you're building a business, the responsible thing to do is model it out based on like likeliest reality.

13:21 Yeah. Oh, excellent. Now, you also have an Atlas program which is a little more intense, a little more technology or artificial intelligence included. Talk a bit about the Atlas program, how that adds to the program, what it does for a customer.

13:34 Yeah. Yeah, so I realized, you know, over the years how many of our deals were coming from, you know, probates and evictions and, bankruptcies and divorces. And, you know, I've always been looking at ways to get in front of those people quicker and put our services in front of them quicker. And a lot of people think that's a bad thing. But as a service provider, it is not a bad thing to put your service in front of people that need it. And so, what the Atlas system is that we built for part of building for people, is it's all the tools that AI can bring to find those people quicker. And so, really what it is, to boil it down, is when we build this for someone, they own it. It's on their server. Cost them like $20, $30 a month to run, once it's built. And it pulls in, for their counties they do business in, all the hottest lead types daily, fully enriched and ready to market to. And so, every single day, the system wakes up, and uses, you know, AI bots, and they go out and they scrape all the county records for new code violations, evictions, divorce, tax delinquencies, cleans them up, puts them through a satellite imagery to rank their condition, and gets them ready to market to. So, every day you wake up and you have all the new pre-foreclosures, bankruptcies, evictions, tax delinquents, whatever's available in your county, in your CRM, ready to go, ready to market to, every single day, because those are some of the warmest leads that are out there.

14:56 So, you're bringing some real big high-tech stuff that, you know, venture capitalists use when they trade on billion-dollar deals. You know, I know they're venture capitalists use satellite data to see what parking lot attendance like is in Walmarts versus Targets, and they're betting based on those numbers. And here, you're doing the same thing, it sounds like, with real estate.

15:13 Yeah, and it's not, you know, there's a lot of expensive satellites you can pay for access to, like a lot of, you know, insurance companies, mortgage companies use, data aggregators use. But you can also go to Google and pay for their street view and satellite API, which is a pay-per-use API, and you can run 10,000 properties through it and use AI to score those for 100 bucks. So, there's a very cost-effective way to add more data to your marketing, and then it works incredibly well. Like if it's about 80% accuracy for current condition, and it's been an amazing tool for us in my real estate company, and also for our clients to get in front of get in front of more people that actually need the services.

15:56 And also this is one of those cases where it sounds like, you know, why you're selling this product, part of it is you need bigger scale to be able to afford some of these higher-tech solutions that at scale are inexpensive, but just for your own business might be prohibitive. But if you can get 10, 20, 100 customers all doing the same thing, you can buy some of these very sophisticated tools. It's amazing how inexpensive some of this stuff is, the power of technology today.

16:19 Yeah. Yeah, you know, our how we built our whole company is the more people that use us, the like just like Costco, the more people that show up at Costco, the better you know, deals they can provide. The more people that use us, the cheaper like our like our partner call centers, the cheaper we can bring them to people at. And the more people that use us and get on their membership. So, Yeah, that's exactly what our model is the more the more people win, the better cost for everyone.

16:44 Yeah. Yeah, and I like I said, I see these companies who do some things you know, like you say, white label other services, or they kind of slap together some sort of disparate piece of the puzzle here, but it sounds like you put together some thoughtful businesses work for you, and by scaling it up, drives down your costs, and it gives you again more technology. So, you know, heads off to you. So, let me ask you this, the people who I know that there are people who try your program and do well with it, which you want more of those. The people who try your program and don't do well, where do you see the difference between the people who are successful at it and the ones who struggle with it?

17:15 I tell the successful ones I understand that real estate and business as a whole takes work. And they still have to no matter what tool they have, they have to show up, they have to make the dials, follow up the sellers, go on the appointments, put the deals together, find the lenders, find the partners. Like, they still have to do the work. And they still have to work their pipeline. Yeah. Anyone that takes it seriously and works their pipeline tends to be with us for years. And we have a lot of clients who've been with us since our inception 10 years ago. So, if you work your pipeline, you work your leads, you take business seriously, you listen to advice, we it's we have clients that are very successful if they do that. If you think you know it all, you don't want to work your pipeline, you think business is easy, you think you're going to buy a tool from us and magically deals are going to fall into your lap, not going to work so well.

18:04 I get people call me, you know, weekly. I offer like a free coaching call for people. I don't charge for coaching, I just offer free call if you have some questions and want to build your business. And the question I get most is, "What's the easiest way to build your business?" I go, "I have no freaking idea cuz what I do is hard work, man." I mean, I you know, I'm older now, so I don't work as much as I used to. I don't do the things I used to do. But, you know, within the day that I work, I'm working. Like, it's not There's no You better enjoy it. You better enjoy the grind. You better enjoy the process. You better enjoy talking to other people. There isn't I'm not aware of any shortcuts to the whole process.

18:37 Yeah, it's a you know, it's a one of one of the main flags in our funnel. Like, when you go through like you see a Facebook ad from us, all the language is directed to that you know, business is hard. And if you if you treat your business seriously, we're the company to work with. And the first question they have to answer when they go to book a call with us is, you know, it's very intentional. Hey, do you actually want to work your leads? Do you actually want to take your business seriously? Do you think this is like a magic tool? Not even because I you know, I mean, at the beginning I did. I was looking for the magic tool the first year. Right? So, I understand when people are in that spot, but I never want to be the person that has someone pay me their hard earned money expecting that all their problems are going to go away with one software or one tool or one lead type or any of that.

19:22 Well, at the end of what you're offering though, you have leads and you're doing calls, but these leads are being coming back to the agent as calls they have to make. Are they appointments at that point or are they warmer leads? What's the What's the process look like?

19:34 Yeah, so our the call center's job is to qualify. So, they're getting someone on the phone, making sure they have real interest in selling in the near future and they're not just tire kickers that just want a number. And then they pass them off to that client CRM and then it's that client's job to set an appointment, to work them over the phone, to send it whatever they're going to do. We have a lot of clients that do all their deals virtually, so they never go to the house. And then we have a lot of clients that go on appointments. So, it's up to them how they how they take it from there, but yeah, they're getting a lead that has notes. Hey, this person actually wants to sell. Here's why. Here's what's going on in their life. Here's their phone number, email, interest, address. All of it delivered right to their CRM and then they take it from there and run with it.

20:14 Fantastic. But, you still got to do the work. You got to make those phone calls and you need to convert them to appointments or get on the phone and do an appointment on the phone and send the contract out or whatever you're going to do. There's no You can automate a lot, but there's no Someone's got to convert that lead and that's the That's the whole the whole success is right there.

20:29 I always say when, you know, when I'm when I get off stage to speak or, you know, someone sends me an Instagram DM or whatever, they're like, "Man, it's so saturated. This business there's so much, you know, there's so much competition." I'm like, "Yeah, but 90% of people don't take it seriously." And they don't follow up with their leads. They don't treat it like a business. They like So, there's Is there a lot of people trying to do deals? Sort of. Is there a lot of people that take it really seriously that are really running it like a real business? No. There's very few. And I and I there's more sellers that need a real help than there are people trying to provide a real service. If there wasn't, there wouldn't be so much institutional money always trying to make iBuying work. Like they see the demand.

21:11 You know, I it's so true. I've been in this business now for decades and you often wonder how can the coach you give the same talk in front of you know, hundreds of investors or real estate agents in the same marketplace. The answer is cuz none of them are going to do anything with it. One in a hundred. Now, the one in a hundred has a business he's going to build or she's going to build and have great success. But most of them just won't do the work and God bless you. Go find something else you're going to do because there's no solution in my mind to anything of life that's value a value without hard work. That's the measure of what something's worth, I think. So well, it's the easy button. You know, it's so funny because I come from a program where one of the common phrases we say it's simple, not easy. What's simple? Like you got to make your phone calls every day. That's simple. You got to make the phone calls every day. You guys are making it about as easy as you can, but at the day it is easier. I think it should be the easier button cuz it really isn't easy. It's easier. Yeah. Maybe every You're making a All I have to do is this. Now, I don't have to do all of this. I just have to do this piece. But I get what you're doing. I appreciate you guys have both the systems for generating leads. You have the systems for curing lead creating leads and then really taking technology to develop them quite a bit. So Cole, I really appreciate being on here today. Again, if you're interested in more information, website is easy button realestate.com.

22:30 Easy button real estate. I'm going to put back up There is his contact info. Cole at Easy Button Real Estate. What's the What's the starting point look like? Somebody who what is going on? This sounds about right. A budget thousand two thousand dollars a month to get started. I'm in business. That sounds about right. What's the next step that somebody typically goes and they just sign up or is there a process?

22:48 Yeah, I mean, if they just want to get to know us a little more, they can join our free community which they can go to easybuttonrealestate.com and join our free community. We are I think we're closing on a thousand people in there that are active investors and agents. And then if they do if they want to actually start with marketing or leads, they can go to they can go to the easybuttonrealestate.com click on the lead engine and it walks them through, you know, how to book a call and actually get started with leads. So, easybuttonrealestate.com is the starting point and then wherever they want to go from there, it's a very clear path forward.

23:16 Look, I really appreciate the chance to chat with you. I get approached by a lot of people in this space, to be honest, selling data and our systems. But, the thing is most of them are afraid to show what the costs are, what the numbers look like to be successful. The fact that you guys just showed it right up front to me just says, you're not scared to do the hard work, you're not scared to the process. And again, I think it's a great opportunity for people to take a look at. Cole, thank you for joining us. I really appreciate your time today.

23:39 Thanks, Bill. Appreciate it. And for the rest of you, this is Probate Weekly. We get together every week and talk about how we build our business in probate. Whether you're an attorney looking to build more business, you have telemarketers that work for you, or you're a real estate agent, or investor, obviously it's a tool to take a look at easybuttonrealestate.com. I'm not an affiliate. I just really admire the technology and some of the things they're putting together for those of you who do make those phone calls. So, love to get your comments and what you think about this. Like, share, subscribe. Reach out to me if I can help in any way at Bill Gross Probate on social media. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.