In April, I wrote the first part of this three part article about how I would go about starting my Real Estate business today on a budget.  In part 1, I covered the basics of creating a business plan, setting up an LLC, and setting up a business bank account.  After you have set up your basic business, it’s now time to create the professional image that will jump your business ahead of the competition (for a newbie Real Estate Investor, the average life expectancy of their business is only 7 months!  Often these drop outs are folks who haven’t taken the time to establish their new business as a true business and treat it more along the lines of a hobby)

To give your business the professional edge over your competition, you need to have the modern equivalent to an office or store front and everything that goes along those lines.  Essentially creating a virtual office space that gives the impression of a real world business location.  So how do you go about doing that without spending the thousands of dollars you would if you had a “brick and mortar” location?  Simple.

1.  The Business Website

Business websites come in all shapes and forms (and price points!).  While it would be great to start your brand new business with a full blown commercial level website (sites like Amazon.com or WholesalingGenius.com) the price behind such sites are not really justifable to a new business.  I recommend just simply starting with a basic “starter” site.

I often hear new business owners say, “But do I need to have a website right away?”  which almost always (99% of the time) is an emphatic “YES!”

The reason is simple.  In today’s business world, legitimate businesses all have websites.  When you are thinking of buying anything these days, where is the first place you head to get more information about the company or the product?  The WEB!

So let’s bring back to a Real Estate model.  Let’s pretend you are a distressed homeowner who needs to sell your house.  You not only need to sell your house NOW, but last month.  BUT (and this is a big BUT) you don’t want to have your house “stolen” from you, I mean who would right?  So where do you look for a buyer?  The internet.  When do you look for someone to buy your house?  When you can’t sleep (so late at night, or early in the morning).  Are you starting to get the picture?

Motivated sellers are often looking for someone they can trust (often a local business who isn’t too corporate, yet still has a professional, trusting feeling about them).  That’s why what you have on your website is so important.   It needs to be clean, professional, but not so over the top big corporate feeling that you scare away the seller.  Your website/business needs to have a personal touch to it, and you need to have a HUMAN element.

A Starter business site generally has only a few KEY components:

  1. What your business is and how you can help the motivated Homeowner (i.e. We Buy Houses!)
  2. Who you are (Which should include the following HUMAN elements)
    • The Mission Statement of your business (which should explain clearly what it is your business does!)
    • A Picture of YOU
    • Brief background article of who you are and your experience
    • An Email address &/or a contact form to contact you
    • A Phone Number
    • A Physical Office Location a physical location (I recommend a Mail Box, ETC or UPS Store post box for this.)
  3. A House Seller’s In-Take Form Page (a way for motivated sellers to offer their home for you to purchase)

Three pages.  That’s it.

Dan’s Recommendation:  Clearly I recommend getting a C.R.E.W. site (Cheap Real Estate Websites) to fulfill those needs.  A company that my wife and I started about a year ago to help investors get their businesses off the ground at affordable prices (only $25/month with no set-up fee).  To get the 3 page version of the site above runs $35/month…mention this article and get the three pages for only $25/month!   Plus with these sites you get the option of seller &/or buyer intake forms, plus the ability to get that information emailed to you AND texted to you.  So when someone fills out your sellers form, you can get immediate notification via text message (at no additional cost to you!).

I also recommend getting your domain (website name or url) from sites such as Go-Daddy.  While we can always help you get your domain and purchase it for you, I always believe in having control of what I refer to as the business “constants”.  Your website domain, as well as your business phone number, are things you want to keep control of at all times.  The reason is that you never know what the future holds, and if you have your website domain with a company and they purchased it…they own it.  They do not HAVE to release it to you if you part ways.  This could be bad if you have spent time and money on marketing your website and/or phone number and then don’t have either!!!

2.  Business Cards

I can not tell you how many networking functions I have been to where I have met investors who told me that they did not have any business cards yet.  Even in today’s world of electronic business, the traditional business card is still a very powerful tool.  This little piece of paper will tell the world (or should tell the world) a ton about you and your business.

I often get questions about what should be on a business card, and I have seen some doozeys in my time!  I recommend using a simple layout without a lot of words or clutter on it.  Simplicity is king when it comes to business cards.  Make sure your card has the following elements:

  1. Your Business Name
  2. Your Business Address (the physical location aka your mail box site)
  3. Your Business Phone Number (I do not ever recommend having your cell phone # it!)
  4. Your Name
  5. Your Email Address (which should never, ever be @yahoo or @gmail but should be: YourName@YourDomain.com)
  6. Your Picture (This is often overlooked…but do you remember faces or names?)
  7. An Non-Finished Back (so you can use it take notes from folks without business cards etc)
  8. Your Logo (if you have one. If not, a simple logo that tells people what you do aka a house outline etc)

Dan recommends:  I always point folks to Vistaprint.  They don’t require you to do huge batches of cards, they ALWAYS seem to have a special or a deal going, and they are very simple to use with a lot of great templates to chose from.  All of my business cards come from Vistaprint.

3.  An Auto-Responder-Email system

This is often over looked by a lot of new Real Estate Investors, yet is almost as essential as having a website.  Essentially these systems allow you to send out emails to everyone in your email list (aka your buyers!)  Depending on your real estate strategy, chances are you are planning on building a buyers list of some sort.  If you are planning on starting with wholesaling, having this system in place is key.

“But Dan, I can just cc or bcc all my buyers with an email from my account.” is what you might be thinking (ask me how I knew that…you aren’t alone).

While that is true, MOST email systems (especially comcast,  yahoo, hotmail, and gmail) have anti spam rules, and while I realize that it is not your intent to be called a spammer, eventually if you send out emails large numbers (large being more than 3-4 for some providers) or send out too many emails too quickly, you will be potentially labeled a spammer by one of these services.  Having an autoresponder-email account with companies like IContact will help (not totally negate) the likelihood of getting the label.

The other major bonus is that you can send one email out to all your buyers/recipients and track who is opening them, who’s email addresses don’t work anymore, etc.  Chances are you already get email from someone using IContact or a variety of other services.  Using these services will simplify your systems so that you can focus more on finding great deals and making more money.

Dan Recommends:  IContact is very easy to use, setup, customizable web-forms and has decent tracking/analysis functions.  More importantly, it’s cheap.  You can get started for as low as $10 a month and then simply scale up the amount as your lists grow.  I have also had clients who use IContact for their seller intake forms.  With a customized form to gather the motivated seller’s information allows them to get an email with that information

With the prior recommendations, you can get that professional business start for $25-$35 a month.  If you add in business cards and a domain registration it may increase your first month by another $25-$50.  Not bad for starting a brand new business!

In the third article I will cover a few advanced starter systems that can help to really jump start your business.

Until next time!  If you have questions, feel free to leave me a comment below.

-Dan

All links on this site are affiliate links.  I believe in only ever recommending services that I use personally and all said links are endorsed by me and this website.

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