SMS and Cold Calling for Real Estate Investors

Mike Hambright (00:00.997)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today I’m here with my buddy Nicholas Nick and we’re gonna be talking about cold calling and SMS best practices. A lot of people have run away. There’s some people that are leaning in. There are some best practices to follow and not many people know this space as well as Nicholas Nick. So Nicholas, glad to have you here,

Nicholas Nick (00:01.262)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today I’m here with my buddy Nicholas Nick and we’re gonna be talking about cold calling and SMS best practices. A lot of people have run away. There’s some people that are leaning in. There are some best practices to follow. Not many people know this space as well as Nick. Nicholas, glad to have you here buddy. Yeah man, I’m so glad to be here Mike. Thank you so much for the invite. I always enjoy talking. Obviously…

Mike Hambright (00:20.473)
I always enjoy talking, obviously I own a Legion company, you own a Legion company, totally different channels and we kind of geek out a little bit. We like get together and start talking about Legion and next thing you know, nobody can understand, we’re speaking our own language, we’re like speaking in tongues or something. Yeah, so I’m excited to talk about this today because I think SMS and cold calling has been a little taboo lately, but there’s some people that are still doing well with it and.

Nicholas Nick (00:31.778)
Our goes by

Mike Hambright (00:48.549)
We won’t get into, I guess I’ll start off the show by saying we’re not giving legal advice, so seek your own advice. Today we some sort of disclaimer here. But, you know, we won’t talk much about the legal side of that, because neither one of us are attorneys or experts. But before we jump in, like you were not always a lead mining pro. So tell us about your backstory a little bit.

Nicholas Nick (01:00.91)
side of that because neither one of us are attorneys or experts but before we jump in like you were not always

Tell us about your…

Yeah, well, you my backstory really set up my fun story, right? So it’s like I always say all the time and we’re all like this, right? All of everyone who’s super successful when you look into their past, it’s like I call them Bible stories, right? And it’s because you see like from birth that like we were destined to become whatever we are. Like that’s one thing, you know, when you’re when you’re in the story, it feels like it hurts. You feel like you’re not going anywhere. But but when you finally get to where you’re going and you look back, you’re like, that’s why that happened.

that’s why this happened. so something that’s that are really unique about me is I didn’t start, you know, I’m not born into entrepreneurship. My parents don’t own real estate. They never owned a business before. You know, I had to teach myself entrepreneurship that this was even a viable reality. You know, I didn’t I never saw it when you don’t see it. You don’t know it. And so

Mike Hambright (02:05.211)
Yeah, same here, buddy.

Nicholas Nick (02:07.246)
Yeah, right. And I think and I love that path. mean, I prefer to have my own weed whacker and knock down the bushes in front of me anyways. I feel like I earn it a little bit more that way. And so I started off as a restaurant manager. I did restaurants from like 17 to 30. And, you know, I worked 70 hours a week for almost 13 years. And if you do the math on that, I think it’s like 18 years.

Mike Hambright (02:33.221)
You should be retired now, yeah.

Nicholas Nick (02:34.4)
Yeah, right. Right. 100%. And you know, and it’s funny because so many of my friends say, like, you’re so successful. How’d you get here? And I was like, no, I I front loaded my time, you know.

Mike Hambright (02:44.955)
Yeah, overnight success, right?

Nicholas Nick (02:46.906)
Yeah, yeah, like, no, dude, I work 70 hours a week for 13 years. And then when they hear my story, they’re like, no wonder. It’s like, you know, I almost put myself into like a military style environment. So I was a student of mastery, right? I didn’t care. Honestly, in my restaurant days, how I looked, what I looked like, my weight, anything.

Right? And I couldn’t, I couldn’t give 70 hours to a career and still go home and care about other aspects of life. So, you know, I wore glasses, my head just stayed shaved because that was easy to maintain, you know, and all I cared about was being the best damn restaurant manager in the world. And

Driving back and forth to work every day, I would listen to audiobooks. Started with Gary V, then it went to Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which is my highest recommended book of all time. I listened to all of them, good to great. I drove for 13 years. So imagine how many books I’d listened to. Let’s say seven of those years I just crushed books the whole time during my commute and I drove an hour each way every day. yeah, yeah, was, yeah, discipline.

Mike Hambright (03:53.523)
wow.

Nicholas Nick (03:56.194)
Right? mean, discipline. And so anyways, I’m doing this and I was the like the only restaurant manager who was like exceptional for lack of a better term. Some people were good at just one category. They’re good at this. They’re good at talking to customers. They’re good at cooking the food or they’re good at managing or they’re good at liquor or they’re good at the computer. I learned like I was good at all of it. Right. I could talk to the cook. I could talk to the server. I was a big computer nerd still am. Right.

I got lucky my father bought me my first computer when I was six and and I’m so old that it was like one of the first computers like ever invented. Yeah so it was an I it was a Macintosh Apple 2e is what it was called. It literally had 16 hertz of speed not megahertz. Okay. Not gigahertz just hertz. Okay. It’s two story. And I played the original Wolfenstein and Doom big nerd my whole life.

Mike Hambright (04:33.681)
What kind of computer? Dude, tell me what kind of computer it was.

Mike Hambright (04:40.411)
Okay.

Mike Hambright (04:45.041)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (04:53.349)
Yeah, yeah.

Nicholas Nick (04:54.366)
And again, that also served me. So now I’m in this field with, know, restaurants are very blue collar, right? These people do not know how to use a computer. None of my peers knew how to use a spreadsheet, knew how to change cells or even do math, right? They just, they just knew restaurants. So anyways, I realized I was exceptional. And then one day I come into work and they transferred me to a new location and it was in my hometown, true story. I finally didn’t have to drive an hour, two hours a day commuting.

Mike Hambright (05:00.41)
Right.

Mike Hambright (05:07.537)
Especially back then,

Nicholas Nick (05:23.404)
And I walk in, I look at the schedule and I’m scheduled 90 hours a week for six weeks. And I was like, I worked at this company for five years at this point. If I was new, whatever torture me. You know what I’m saying? But I was like, I’m like tired. I’m 30 years old. I’ve been doing this for 13 years and 30 years old is not old, but a 13 year career is a long time. Yeah. And, and I go, what the fuck are you guys doing? I’m not working this schedule. I didn’t approve this. Okay. I had a rule.

Mike Hambright (05:28.848)
Wow.

Mike Hambright (05:43.321)
At that point, yeah.

Nicholas Nick (05:52.672)
And it was, I will work up to 70 hours a week without needing to approve the schedule. If I’m scheduled over 70 hours, you have to talk to me. And you know what? And I’ll probably say yes, but I’m not just blindly working the schedule. OK? Right. That’s right. know, hey, you know, I’ve learned with all accountability. If you let them roll over you, they’re rolling over you. Right. And I would still say yes, but you’re going to have to have a talk with me first anyway. I come into work. I’m not working this. This is crazy.

Mike Hambright (06:01.265)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (06:05.915)
Don’t take it for granted, yeah.

Nicholas Nick (06:22.626)
They told me they’d fix it. came into work the next day. They didn’t fix it and I walked out. And, you know, I felt so disrespected after five years with this company. I was an area manager. I’m floating around. I’m at their beck and call. And I was so insulted at the time. And at the time I was I also was on my way out. Like I was like, what are you doing, Nick? You know, my boss sucked. My boss’s boss sucked. You know, and I remember saying one of my favorite quotes is I ran out of role model.

Okay, and it’s like if you don’t want to be your boss you need to quit I mean that’s really the general rule of thumb like that’s your future of what you’re

Mike Hambright (06:58.736)
Yeah.

Yeah, dude, I had the same thing and this is there was a point of my career I’ve told the same story of like I was a financial analyst and there were two teams of two so they’re like four of us that reported the two managers that reported to like one director and I was like I could see like the next 20 years of my Career within like three cubicles of me. I was like this can’t be it, right?

Nicholas Nick (07:23.852)
Yeah, no, 100%. You know, one of the places I worked at was IHOP. OK, and I hope is actually an amazing corporation to work for. this day, IHOP has been my best training experience. I learned the most because, they get sued all the time. So they like taught us about liability and like lawsuits and litigation. Like, like they were smart the way that they trained us. Like we were all there to save them hundreds like lawsuits is their real loss, not.

eggs being wasted or an employee stealing, right? It’s someone getting fall and hurting and then they pay them a hundred thousand dollars. That’s where I hop loses money. but you know, I worked at IHOP forever and I realized that, you know, no one’s quitting. Like if I’m going to get promoted, someone has to die because all these other people, they, she’d been here 22 years. He’s been here 35 years. Well, these fucking guys aren’t getting a new job. So I was like, I realized I’m waiting on.

Mike Hambright (07:54.811)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (08:00.325)
Wow. Yep.

Nicholas Nick (08:22.69)
death in order for me to move up in life. You’re almost similar to what you were just saying. You’re like, wait, I can see the, you know, and then the other point is like, I’m sure that your boss’s boss had been there for X years too. anyways, did all, yeah, right. That’s right. You know, and, and then, and that’s when I started to make the change and, I, left that job and then I got lucky. I got hired at a real estate education company. I had no idea what that even meant at the time.

Mike Hambright (08:35.077)
Yeah, they weren’t going anywhere.

Nicholas Nick (08:52.546)
Again, real estate was not a business to me. My father paid a mortgage. That’s where we lived. We did not own rental properties. No one ever talked about it. My dad put everything in the stock market. know, real estate wasn’t a thing in my house. And so after working there for 10 months, my leadership skills from my restaurant days, I ended up becoming an executive. became the director of fulfillment at this education company within 10 months.

And again, I wasn’t a real estate expert. I was a system processes and service expert. Okay. And so I ended up working with the mentors and refining their process and, dealing with the students. Now every complaint’s coming to me. Right. And I’m new, but that’s perfect. That’s great training. You know, you know, every complaint’s coming to me. and then that’s what introduced me to real estate. And then, when that job came to an end, what I started to do is I made a deal.

with the founder of the company that I would go online and in his community every day in cold call live from home. Okay. So he let me work from home. He cut my pay and this is like 2016. This is before anybody was working from home. Right. So let me work from home. They cut my pay and I’m going live every day, five days a week for an hour in their community. And I’m cold calling and I’m cold calling. I did this for three months and his students started calling me.

saying, could I pay you to call for me? Could I pay you to call for me? And before I knew it, I had five clients. making $1,000 a week. I’m working two and a half hours a day. I’m doing all the cold calls myself. And I was like, wow, this is like, could see, I’ve never made so much and worked so little in my life, right? Basically is what was happening. So I was making about, I think 1,500 in a week a total, but I’m only working like,

Mike Hambright (10:35.813)
Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Nick (10:48.59)
12 hours and when I ran restaurants, I made $1,500 a week and work 70 hours, you know, so I could see that something was working in my favor here. And then, you know, one day I make a post online offering an American cold-caller. I said, hey guys, I’m doing something different. I’m doing something new. You know, we’re not foreign cold-callers. We’re all American. And it was really just me back then. And that post in this Facebook.

Mike Hambright (10:54.769)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (11:13.681)
Yeah. Were you wearing the Hulkster shirt at the time? You were all American and you were wearing the Hulkster shirt? All right.

Nicholas Nick (11:17.998)
Yeah, right. I was ripping it up, dude. I’ll tell you, I was so overwhelmed. But that’s what happened. So I make the post and it goes viral. Over 300 people commented on it that they wanted more information. had like 500 likes. Like it went totally viral. I stayed up till two in the morning. I emailed everyone. The next day I signed up 20 clients. And then as soon as I signed them up, I called.

Mike Hambright (11:42.349)
wow.

Nicholas Nick (11:45.452)
the guy I worked for and I was like, hey, I quit. know, like my life’s going in a different direction. I’m no longer working for you. Right. And it was a really beautiful change since that day. Lead mining was founded basically that day. That’s the business I own. And since that day, we’ve never done less than nine thousand dollars in sales in a single week. And nowadays we’re probably averaging about we did thirty seven thousand in sales last week.

Mike Hambright (12:12.869)
Yeah.

Nicholas Nick (12:13.526)
So it’s like, so that post literally is the defining moment in my life when everyone commented on it and I followed up with them and my whole life changed literally from that day forward. So it was really cool.

Mike Hambright (12:24.783)
That’s great. I wanna get into some of the best practice stuff, I do wanna, for folks that are listening right now, I wanna, like I think a lot of people resonate with that story. Like you get to a point to where either you get fired from a job that you love or maybe you don’t love it. But a lot of times people don’t.

make a move in their life until something happens. Like there’s some catalyst, right? It’s like something bad happens or maybe something that kind of quote good happens and you realize that that’s not what you wanted. You know, so you, I have a whole bunch of stories like yours of getting fired from dream jobs or, gosh, I mostly get, I guess I’ve mostly gotten fired or the company shuts down more so than me quitting, you know, kind of like in my adult life. But I do remember this, you you said,

Nicholas Nick (12:42.538)
something happens like there’s some catalyst right it’s like something bad happens or maybe something that kind of good happens and you realize that that’s not what you wanted. I have a whole bunch of stories like you getting fired from Dream Drive.

guess I’ve mostly gotten fired or the company shuts down more so than me quitting. Kind of like in my adult life. But I do remember this, you said something, this is a different story, but you said something that resonated with me is I remember…

Mike Hambright (13:10.149)
something that resonated with me is I remember you talked about some of your people in your circle that are like, you’re basically like an overnight success, right? And I remember sitting at a stoplight one time and I had just talked to somebody.

Nicholas Nick (13:15.982)
Yeah

Mike Hambright (13:26.905)
because I’ve coached a lot of people that basically said they wanted to be like me. And I remember sitting at the stoplight with my wife, Lindsay, was next to me and I was just sitting at this red light and I was like, is this what success feels like? Because I felt miserable because we were just working our asses off, right? And it just felt like, you know, whatever success people think, we never like, I never lie about anything, but there’s this, there’s this like.

Nicholas Nick (13:42.838)
success people think we never like I never lie about anything but there’s this there’s this like outside people like looking in seeing that what they think is success right right right yeah

Mike Hambright (13:48.675)
outside view, people like looking in, seeing that what they think is success. And you’re like, man, I’m not, I’m not feeling it. I mean, you know, and it could have been financial success, like on some level, but not as good as what anybody thinks. But also just like, man, I am working like a dog. Like this isn’t, this isn’t what I signed up for. so anybody listening to this, wherever you’re at, like don’t, don’t have to wait till things hit rock bottom or you’re backed into a corner, have a health issue or any of those things to change. Like the key is that’s one of the reasons I do the podcast.

Nicholas Nick (14:14.862)
or any of those things to change. Like the key is, that’s one of reasons I did podcasts, is I want people to hear other people’s stories and be able to climb a learning curve faster than what they could do on their own. Like from others mistakes, don’t wait till you make-

Mike Hambright (14:18.589)
I want people to hear other people’s stories and be able to climb the learning curve faster than what they could do on their own. Like learn from others mistakes. Don’t wait till you make that mistake, you know.

Nicholas Nick (14:25.942)
Yeah. And you know, I love that you said that because if you do wait till there’s a catalyst, it can be you can get into a slump. You know, I got fired. Well, then I’m going to get depressed. Well, now I’m depressed and I’m trying to be an entrepreneur. And it’s like if you can actually pull the reins up right before you crash, there’s no crash. You can kind of use that momentum. I think I’ve always been very good about that. You know, with my story was when I was a restaurant manager, I wanted to be an executive. Then I became an executive.

Mike Hambright (14:42.405)
Yeah.

Nicholas Nick (14:55.856)
And it still sucked. I thought this was my dream job, to lead people and wear suits every day and not have to sweat over a grill. And I’m like, I actually liked restaurants more than being an executive. And then whenever I was working from home, I was like, I know it’s not executive. I know it’s not management.

Mike Hambright (14:57.362)
All right. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (15:09.157)
Yeah, yeah.

Nicholas Nick (15:17.59)
So the only thing it can be is entrepreneurship. So I kind of use the power of deduction. I didn’t wait to get fired. I negotiated work from home so I could get my free time back. Then I use that free time and I parlayed it into entrepreneurship, right? Accidentally. I think it’s cool that you extracted that from the story that, you know, I didn’t I didn’t hit a low.

Mike Hambright (15:38.095)
Yeah, well I think a lot of people are reactive to their situation and they’re not proactive. They just wait for something to happen and then it’s harder to shift if you’re proactive about it. You have some say in it. If you’re reactive, you’re usually operating from a place of pain.

Nicholas Nick (15:53.806)
So.

Right. Yeah. I’ll tell you, it’s way harder. Like, you know, it’s way harder to pull up. And, know, just to update everyone as well, because I know we’re about to talk about SMS and texting to this day, my company, we do. We’ve been open for eight years now. We do on average 50,000 dials a week and 50,000 text messages per week. So what we’re about to get into today, what makes me an expert in calling and texting is like we’re doing it at a high volume for hundreds, if not thousands of different investors at a time. So, you know, as we

Mike Hambright (16:24.315)
Yep.

Nicholas Nick (16:25.924)
as we get into the next segment, right? And the cool thing about me is I built my company brick by brick. I didn’t outsource anything. I didn’t hire a team and say, I don’t know what’s going on over there. I created all the systems. I created all the processes. I’m in there troubleshooting and editing scripts and working with the employees day in and day out. So I’m not just the CEO that’s removed. I’m actually like, just like in the restaurants, my sleeves are rolled up. I’m cooking burgers with my team.

Mike Hambright (16:54.127)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So let’s jump in. Let’s just jump in because we spent probably a lot of time talking about our backgrounds, which that was great story. I appreciate us having that conversation. So let’s jump into this stuff. So let’s share some kind of SM kind of modern day like right now. Best practices. Let’s start with SMS. Like what are kind of best practices that you’re seeing right now in 2025?

Nicholas Nick (16:56.064)
Absolutely

Okay, so a couple things, I’ll just rattle them off. One is one thing we’ve learned is an out of area number on SMS actually helps you more. A lot of people think a local number helps them more. The difference is a local number helps you when the phone’s ringing.

Because everyone knows an outside number. If I don’t know anyone in Pennsylvania, I don’t fucking I don’t know this guy. Right now. SMS, you don’t see where that area codes from. You just see the number you don’t recognize when you get a call. It literally says San Diego, California, like underneath it. Right. So they know I don’t know anyone in San Diego on the text. We just see digits. So the out of state information actually builds curiosity. Like, what’s this person texting me about? So first low hanging.

Mike Hambright (17:39.226)
Right.

Mike Hambright (17:45.871)
Right.

Nicholas Nick (18:03.414)
fruit. I’m texting from an out-of-state number. I’m not saying it works everywhere, but split test it. Okay. Cold calling definitely in local number. Okay. I don’t want anyone to confuse that, but SMS specifically, it can be of an outside number. Number two is be extremely direct. Okay. Like

Don’t you know some people send me their scripts. Hey, you know, I was wondering if you have any financial distress and are interested. What what are we talking about? You know, it’s like, you know, people first things there. No one likes to feel targeted. OK, if that person is experiencing you just piss them off. You know, don’t believe me. Walk up to your wife and tell her she doesn’t look good in that dress.

Right? mean, it’s like, you know, it’s not going to go over good. OK, so starting a conversation with some of these things. Well, I only want the hottest, most distressed leads. Yeah. Well, that comes from you working the lead. There’s no script that you can say to a seller on the first conversation that’s going to crack this super hot lead wide open. Right. And I think that’s the first thing people need to get. So being.

Mike Hambright (19:08.657)
Yeah. So what do you start off with with an SMS? Because I’m sure I’m like everybody. I get a ton of junk SMS like every day all day. And and sometimes it’s like, is this Mike? Question mark or how are you doing? Question mark. And that’s it. I’m like, stop opt out. Or are you still trying to sell the property at this address? Like there’s there’s super direct and I’m just like, no, I’m not. I’m not looking to sell anything.

Nicholas Nick (19:16.076)
Right.

Yeah, so stupid. Yeah, so stupid. You know, how are you doing? had, yeah. And are you still trying to sell the property at this address? Like there’s, there’s super direct. I’m just like, no, I’m not. Well, that’s right. And just so you know, I mean, that’s the move. So what we say is, hey, this is Amy. Okay. We picked the shortest name that we could find. That sounds very American.

Mike Hambright (19:45.285)
Yeah. And it’s personalized, right? It’s not like, it feels like it’s personalized. It’s a person, it’s a human.

Nicholas Nick (19:49.856)
Right, that’s right. Hey, this is Amy. That’s right. And all of our text messages are Amy right now because we do have a character restriction. You can do 160 characters before they charge you again. Okay, so we do that on purpose. So Amy is the name. Very American, very soft and gentle sounding. And it’s a woman. I was following up about the property at 123 Sycamore Street. Have you ever considered selling before? That’s it.

You know, and and again, we’re not trying to get into this weird debate of where they’re at mentally. And it’s like we’re just yes, no, yes, no, four hundred thousand dollars, two hundred thousand. Like those are the responses we get. Then we hit them back with two text messages with two other questions. Now, they’re going to ghost you quick, as quick as shit. OK, so first of all, as soon as they say yes, we call it a lead. Now we do ask additional questions. So the first text says what?

What’s the condition and what price do you have in mind? OK, so that’s the first one. Then if they answer that, we follow up with another text that says, what’s your timeline and why do you want to sell? Then if they answer that, we say, great, my partner or my acquisition manager, it’s what you guys would probably put, will be reaching out in the next 24 hours, blah, blah, blah. So that’s that’s our segmented script.

Mike Hambright (21:12.249)
And you’re a service for people. that’s why if it was somebody doing this themselves, they would probably move it to a call or try to schedule an appointment or something.

Nicholas Nick (21:19.244)
Yeah, so I would say, mean, I would, what I recommend doing is have as much of the conversation as you can. And in that channel, as much as they’ll let you, and then as soon as they ignore you for 24 hours, you call them. So that’s exactly what we do. So if people ghost us,

Mike Hambright (21:27.565)
in that channel, in that channel. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (21:34.171)
Yeah, yeah, okay.

Nicholas Nick (21:38.794)
after 24 hours, we just send the lead to the client. As long as they’ve indicated yes, we just do that. So that’s our strategy and it works extremely well. then, we’ll touch one more thing on lot of people. Texting leads are the ugliest lead you’re ever going to find. Hands down, it’s the cheapest lead you’re ever going to find either though. So you have to discern.

Mike Hambright (21:44.816)
Yeah.

Nicholas Nick (22:03.916)
What that is. So another strategy I teach all my clients is every leads worth two to five minutes of your time. Yeah, but Nick, they said they wanted a million dollars. Yeah, well fucking call them. OK, it’s like if they’re an asshole, hang up the phone. What do you got? 30 seconds you’re going to waste. Like, what the hell, right? If they’re. And the other thing I say is stop trying to qualify to lead based off of how distressed you think they are. Qualify that lead on how easy they are to talk to.

Okay, because if you think about if they’re easy to talk to, we’re going to get to the distress, you know, and if they’re yelling or, know, hey, know, I’m not dealing with this shit today. And I always say if they’re screaming at you, hang up the phone on that guy. Right. And so I recommend this totally different approach from those because, you know, texting leads are ugly. So but if you grade it like everything else, you’re going to lose opportunities and take money off the table.

Mike Hambright (22:58.885)
Yeah, and I think, you know, if…

folks are listening this right now. mean, here’s the reality is that a lot of real estate investors, really a lot of people, but are just lazy. like, don’t try to find excuses to not have to have a conversation with somebody. Like you’re better off just having the conversation and see where it goes. What else are you going to do? Go like, start watching TikToks or something. You know, that’s your, if you’re, if you’re in business, it’s all, you’ve got to generate leads for your business. And so you should be willing to have a conversation with anybody that’s willing to talk to you, at least for a few minutes. Like, why not? And if they say a million and you know, it’s worth like 150,000, just say,

I make a joke of it. like, hey, it sounds like you’re swinging for the fences here. I don’t know.

Nicholas Nick (23:34.21)
Well, you know you’re 100 % right and you know the go I thought that was a scam text I didn’t know this was real and then and then before you know it you get this whole new tailspin going on for like

Mike Hambright (23:43.963)
Right.

Nicholas Nick (23:50.382)
to your benefit. So many people say stuff like that. You know what I say? A false yes in 2025 is the dumbest thing anybody could do, right? With all the AI and the fall. Why? If the answer is no, it’s no. Or it goes to me. So they can ghost you, say no, or they can say yes. And if they say yes in any capacity, and in my opinion, it’s worth the time. And you made a great point. What else are you going to do? Right? Like you literally don’t have anything better to do but to call a lead.

You know, and then, and then what I recommend too, I’m such a, I’m such a troubleshooter. Even if I called and everyone’s angry, I’d go, well, God, how can I cheer these guys up quickly? What could I do to be different?

Mike Hambright (24:19.675)
Right, right.

Nicholas Nick (24:33.378)
Right? How could I stand out as a investor? So even when the obstacle presents itself, don’t throw your hands up or give up, you know, really brainstorm and try, try new things. You know, when I was my first cold collar, I’ll give everyone a cool tip when you’re doing this stuff. When I was cold calling myself for those three to five months.

I made a rule and I never said anything the same way more than five times. I always changed a word after the fifth time I said it. Then I start split testing everything. And now I’m realizing, shit, like if I say it this way, like it’s crazy. You say it this way. So I’ll give everyone one sentence real quick. Okay. When someone says that they’re not interested, this is the best sentence in the world to give. I’m not interested.

Okay, well look, you know, would you maybe mind taking down my direct phone number? And if anything ever changes, just giving me a call when that happens. Right? So I learned when I said maybe mind, I’m almost confusing. Yeah, I mind. No, I don’t mind. Yeah, I’ll do it. No, I won’t. Like no matter what, they’re kind of saying yes.

Right? And you really, I really disarmed them. And when I use that line, I got 50 % of people that were about to hang up the phone, taking my phone number down. And it’s like, I always said, that’s the next best thing you could do to get off the phone is making sure they have your phone number in case something ever changes. And so it’s like, that’s something I chiseled out by using the like five different way process.

Mike Hambright (26:02.171)
Yeah, that’s awesome.

Yeah, so I know there’s a lot of similarities. What about kind of best practices on the cold calling side? Maybe some of it you just covered there, but anything that we didn’t cover there?

Nicholas Nick (26:12.867)
Yeah, well yeah, I mean they they are just so you know and you’re right they are super similar right I think the main thing is really consistency following those our script and chose the same way hi I’m looking for the owner of one two three sycamore Street Yeah, that’s me. great. Well my name is Nicholas, and I was wondering if you’ve ever considered selling before now the trick there is to like speak slowly okay, because

Mike Hambright (26:17.883)
Right.

Nicholas Nick (26:41.814)
The American culture is to just say no or hang up the phone. If you give them time to think about what you’re actually saying. So the next thing I’ll give you is we do three rebuttals. Okay. No, I haven’t. Okay. Do you think in the next three to six months, anything might change? You’d be surprised how many people go. Yeah, actually things we actually get a lot of our leads off that one question. Okay. And do you have any other properties for sale?

And do you know anyone else who is considering selling? We hit a no with those three questions every time. And I think that is also, and also by the time you get down, they’re like, wait, what are we talking about again? Right? Because they’re just autopiloting. So what you’re actually doing is you’re giving them an opportunity to think about what you’re saying. So I think that that is one of the biggest.

cold calling tips I could give because that’s all in the first 30 seconds and you’d really give them time to see if they want to sell.

Mike Hambright (27:42.277)
Yeah.

That’s great. Well, let’s jump into kind of, obviously you’re a service provider. Oh, investor machine is a service provider as well for on the, on the Legion side or direct mail and data. Right. And so a lot of folks, you know, this is one of things that I say when people are new or newer in their real estate business, like, and you got to hustle, you got to work hard, you know, you got to use some of your own sweat equity sometimes. Right. But once you start to scale your business up, the reality is, is you shouldn’t be trying to compete with guys like us or trying to even run a marketing company. I mean, you’re a real estate

Nicholas Nick (27:56.43)
Thanks for watching.

Nicholas Nick (28:02.508)
some of your own sweat equity schemes, right? But once you start to scale your business up, the reality is you shouldn’t be trying to compete with guys like us or trying to even.

Mike Hambright (28:12.701)
You should be talking to people buying and selling real estate and not becoming a…

Nicholas Nick (28:12.848)
company should be talking to people right

Mike Hambright (28:19.113)
a marketing expert, right? So a lot of people outsource stuff and they just look for the, especially on the texting and cold calling side and on the data side, there’s a lot of people that are just looking for kind of the cheapest stuff and they’re not really, you you really have to measure kind of performance, but let’s talk just a couple of minutes here about kind of outsourcing done right. Like what are some of the, you know, I guess best practices and a couple of maybe examples of mistakes that folks make sometimes that lead them down a path that…

Nicholas Nick (28:20.652)
Yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (28:47.458)
They may be chose, because they cheaped out a little bit or something could be, but they would have been better off maybe paying a little bit more, working with somebody local or somebody in the US or something like that.

Nicholas Nick (28:52.046)
achieved out a little bit or something could be. Right. But they would be better off maybe paying a little bit more working with somebody local or somebody in the US. Yeah. Yeah. So there’s a couple of things. One is one big outsourcing mistake is a lot of these companies, they really don’t care about your results as much as they care about your money. Right. And, you know, I invite all of my clients to weekly one on one calls.

Okay, so every week you get all of your stats emailed to you and in that email is a link to book a zoom call with me and my clients that that’s their favorite thing about me. Even when things go wrong, had this this campaign didn’t do good and this guy’s like Nick, I’m so glad you’re meeting with me. So I’d say number one thing if you’re outsourcing, make sure they make sure you’re meeting with them. Right. We don’t want them like this. you’re not happy. you know, so that’s one mistake. Number. The other mistake is

Another guy called me the day he’s about to hire us. He has Egyptian cold collars right now. Okay. Well, he keeps adding a cold collar. Well, you know what? He’s not selecting the cold collar. He’s adding the cold collar. So a lot of these people, if you give these people control over your business, they are not going to give you their best cold collars. Period. Okay. So if they’re like, Hey, here you go. Here’s, here’s, we add another cold collar. No, I didn’t interview anybody.

I didn’t hear recordings. I need you to send me eight candidates right now. I’m gonna pick the best candidate. This guy could tell was so hands off that it was now hurting him. And he’s like, Nick, they’ve been calling. I’m not getting results. I’m paying for three cold callers. It’s costing me an arm and a leg. And you know, so I would say the other thing is don’t give them too much control. When you use us, you’re in control of everything.

All of my people, the days, everything you are that we send you recordings, I make sure you’re satisfied. And it’s like a much higher white glove experience. don’t just put your head in the sand. This stuff is expensive, okay? And it’s like, think that’s another mistake people do, is they outsource it and then they ignore it.

Nicholas Nick (31:02.784)
Okay, well, I almost don’t let people do that with my weekly invites and all that other stuff. We need to talk about this because here’s what happens. I just sent you 30 leads, let’s say over a month. Well, I need to talk to you about what you did with those leads. Right? You know, we have a mutual interest here. You know, if you’re not closing deals, I’m fired. So one thing I try to do, it’s actually my duty to meet with you.

It’s actually my duty to make sure, and you’d be surprised how many people pay me 1500 bucks, get 30 leads and go, you know what, Nick, I went on vacation with the wife. I’ll do better on the next campaign. What? No, call those 30 leads right now. Call them today. What are we talking about? Like, you know, we got to get this done. So so making sure that there’s mutual accountability, they they need your success, Right. And if they’re not focused on your success, then they might not be the right outsourcing.

Mike Hambright (31:44.529)
Yeah.

Nicholas Nick (31:56.79)
company either. So that was the first aspect right was outsourcing. The other thing was mistakes people make I think was a question you asked. Yeah you know I honestly I speak to all my clients myself you know my cell phone numbers on the website and I’ll say this the most common denominator of someone who’s not doing well is a bad attitude.

Mike Hambright (32:04.261)
You some common mistakes.

Nicholas Nick (32:18.678)
Okay, the people that call me up grumpy almost never see success. The people that call me up literally, Nick, know this is gonna work. my mentor told me about you and he’s so good. This is gonna work. That person almost always closes the deal because they actually believe they’re gonna, they don’t get a lead and go, this lead sucks. I’m not calling this lead. And that’s what someone with the bad attitude does, right? Someone with a good attitude goes, my God.

Mike Hambright (32:41.934)
Right.

Nicholas Nick (32:47.278)
I got a lead. This is great. I can’t believe this. Let me call them. You know, I had this guy the other day get 11 leads. I thought his results sucked. He’s in Boston, you know, and he goes, he goes and I’m like, because I’m only seeing the number, right? I’m like, oh, you only got 11. You know, we kind of like it to be a little bit higher. He goes, Nick.

He’s like, got two great leads out of this. He goes, I spent $10,000 on direct mail last month and I got one lead. I spent 1500 bucks with you. I got 11 and two great conversations. And he’s like, I’m loving this, right? But it’s like, that’s something I don’t necessarily understand because I’m just looking at the numbers. Then I meet with another guy who has 22 leads and he’s chewing my ass up, right? And I’m like, bro, like, you know, I just like, but that’s attitude.

Mike Hambright (33:23.632)
Right, right.

Nicholas Nick (33:35.052)
Right? And it’s funny because when I deal with hundreds of clients, they don’t know. They don’t know the differences.

You know, I remember one time I had this 82 year old woman closing deals by printing out the leads and making notes in a binder. And then I got this guy using a high new age CRM yelling at me. I’m like, bro, I just got the phone with the 82 year old woman who just and she’s got the same leads, right? It’s yeah. Yeah. You know, we’re doing the same, but the client doesn’t know it’s like because that client with the bad attitude thinks I’m like screwing them or hurting them or, you know, something’s happening. And I’m like, dude, like

Mike Hambright (33:56.945)
Yeah. She’s a great grandma. Yeah.

Nicholas Nick (34:10.986)
I’m dishing the same quality to all 200 clients, you know, and so that’s why attitude is so important, you know, whenever calling, reading these notes and, you know, maybe…

Maybe it starts with expectations. You one thing I tell everybody is no lead is like, I’ve been waiting for you to call. I’ve been dying to sell my house for 50 cents on the dollar. I just didn’t know who to sell it to. And now like what? Like, no, if someone wants to sell a property in 2025, they’re going to sell it. OK, so what we do is we build a stronger relationship with them.

in order to get them to select us. That is the goal. No one’s confused on how to sell a property in 2025. So then what are we doing differently, right? So anyways, attitude, all that really adds up. And I would say that is the most common mistake outside of just not calling the lead in general.

Mike Hambright (35:10.159)
Yeah, that stuff is gold as you know, you gotta get all over them. And by the way, if you can’t do it, then find somebody else in your team that will.

Nicholas Nick (35:17.548)
Yeah, right. And look, I respect that. know, there’s certain things on my. think acquisitions is the most important part of everyone’s business. I recommend all clients, even if they want to outsource it. I say you need to have the first 20 conversations first. So when you outsource it, you know what you need them to say. I was like, you don’t. And that goes back to the outsourcing question, right? It’s like we need to outline it ourselves. If you want to hire an acquisition manager, it can’t be like, hey,

yourself out. It’s like, hey, here’s your script, make it better only, right? Don’t change it, don’t make it worse. And so we need to like map the way a little bit.

Mike Hambright (35:57.105)
That’s awesome, that’s awesome. Well, Nick, know we, Nicholas, I know we could talk for hours on this stuff, but we’re out of time today. If folks want to learn more about you or lead mining pros, where do they go?

Nicholas Nick (36:00.738)
Yeah.

That’s all I want.

Nicholas Nick (36:07.98)
Yeah, lead mining pros.com is a great choice. That is pros with an S.com. I have my cell phone numbers at the top of the website. There’s a place to book a call and there’s free courses there. And you know, if you look me up on Facebook, you know, I’m a hoot on Facebook. I’ve got like over 13000 followers. I make all kinds of crazy posts, whether it’s business or personal or pleasure. So, yeah, feel free to give me a follow anywhere you see me. And and I’m super available, whether it’s by phone or Facebook.

messenger or whatever it is you’ll find I’m all over the communications aspect. Yeah, my pleasure man. Thank you Mike.

Mike Hambright (36:43.013)
Yeah, awesome, fantastic. thanks again for sharing your story with us and some insights on kind of what’s working now with SMS and cold calling. Appreciate it.

Yeah, everybody, hope you got some good value from today. think a couple lessons here, a couple takeaways are, you know, make sure that you’re proactive in your goals. Like you’re not just letting life happen to you and then having to react from it. And then I think also make sure you’re working with professionals on the lead gen side. Like there’s nothing more important to your business than lead generation. So don’t leave that to chance. Make sure you’re working with people that come highly recommended, have been doing this for a long time and really care about your results ultimately. So hope you got some good value from today. We’ll see you guys on the next show.

Nicholas Nick (37:19.054)
Hope you got some good value for the day. We’ll see you guys on the next show. See you guys.