5 Game-Changing Marketing Strategies from a Digital Nomad Expert

Dylan Silver (00:00.632)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Dylan Silver. And today on the show I have Thomas Rendleman. Thomas is a self-described digital nomad and he helps real estate agents and businesses get more clients, customers, and sales. Thomas, welcome to the show.

Thomas G. Rendleman (00:19.902)
Thank you for having me.

Dylan Silver (00:21.676)
Absolutely, before we hopped on here, we had a good long conversation about a variety of topics and I’m an aspiring digital nomad myself. I’m actually moving to the Dominican Republic in October of this year, at least part time. Santo Domingo, so I have to get my Spanish. It’s already decent, I gotta get it a little bit better. But how long have you been a digital nomad?

Thomas G. Rendleman (00:45.96)
I’ve been that way for well over 10 years. When I got a divorce, I moved into an RV and I decided I was going to live life on my terms. And so that’s exactly what I wound up doing. was an incredible move and it was a good move because there’s a lot of freedom as a digital nomad. As you know, you can pick up, you can go anywhere. There’s an internet connection and that makes it easier

to live life on your terms, which wasn’t that way 30 years ago. You couldn’t do that. It just didn’t exist.

Dylan Silver (01:24.27)
I mean, would I like…

a lot about it in addition to being able to move anywhere is the dollar arbitrage is what I call it right so we have our US dollar here and it just seems like everything gets more and more expensive but then you go to a lot of these places I believe you mentioned the Philippines you know and I’ve seen now Latin America and it’s just a totally other world right so you can I mean I’m talking about Santa Domingo in the Dominican Republic you can get a two-bedroom two-bathroom practically waterfront rooftop condo for like $600 a month

Thomas G. Rendleman (01:54.746)
Yes, exactly. And that allows you to live a life that you couldn’t normally live. I mean, you can’t do that with a job or with something that sticks you into a specific geographical area. And of course, just like you said, having US dollars come in and living in an economy that’s cheaper

It can make it a lot better not only for you But also for your clients because now you don’t have to charge the huge amount of money that you would in the US So it allows you to get more clients customers and sales. Yes

Dylan Silver (02:33.336)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (02:37.688)
Thomas, when you were going through the genesis, the origins of being a digital nomad, what was that process like? Was there growing pains? Was it a hit right off the bat?

Thomas G. Rendleman (02:49.228)
yes. Yeah, no automatic hit. Just like anything, it takes time, effort, but it was fun along the way. And I’ll tell you what happened. Before I bought my RV, there was another digital nomad that was the wins and they’re a digital nomad, but they do things.

about being a digital nomad. have videos, they have information. And I went to this RV show and I walked in and there they are. And I was gonna contact them the next week to go over the details of buying an RV. it’s, and you know this, it’s important to have somebody that’s already done whatever you want to do. Yeah, because if you don’t, you’re gonna make a lot of mistakes.

Dylan Silver (03:37.9)
huge.

Thomas G. Rendleman (03:42.62)
So it’s better to have somebody and I talked to them for probably three or four hours, went to the bar with them. Of course I don’t drink, but at that time I went with them to the bar because they had all these followers that were going there. And I wanted to know more details and boy I did get them and then I purchased my RV shortly after that and started traveling throughout the US.

Dylan Silver (04:10.264)
Do you think, Thomas, for people who are maybe aspiring digital nomads, that you have to have kind of a predisposition, a mentality that some people might not be able to do it? Or do you think it’s a lifestyle that is accessible to all people if they’re willing to put in a certain amount of time to understand some core skills?

Thomas G. Rendleman (04:29.608)
Yeah, I think anybody can do it, okay? Mostly people, they don’t. And it’s because they’ve got family or they’ve got other obligations that stop them from doing that. But over time, you can do it. And yes, I would highly recommend it. And especially, there’s something, and we…

We haven’t really talked about this, but it’s something that’s very important. And that is when you have, when you’re a digital nomad, there are things that you have to set up some kind of a system to have some of these other things taken care of. And that frees up your time even more. So it’s not just being a digital nomad, it’s setting up systems to make you more

effective and stop being a slave to other people’s systems. That’s really important. And even if you’re going to be in one location, you can set it up where you can have systems that help you automate and delegate tasks, like having a VA. I’ll be honest with you, if I didn’t have my VA, I wouldn’t be in business.

Dylan Silver (05:34.947)
Yeah.

Thomas G. Rendleman (05:54.922)
It’s It’s a whole different mindset, but it’s one that you can be more effective have more fun be able to Delegate and I can literally go out and do anything that I want I just have to make sure that Everything is moving moving along without me If I want to take a month off I can if I want to talk to you on a podcast I can

If I want to go play bridge with a bunch of senior citizens, I can do that. I can just get up, go. I don’t have to ask permission. And that comes by setting up systems. And it’s not necessarily because of the digital nomad style. The systems are what’s important.

Dylan Silver (06:47.81)
Let’s talk about some of the businesses that you have active right now. We’ve talked a little bit about it before the podcast, but it’s just so interesting to me and I think a lot of other people, because I’m vaguely familiar with the idea of being a digital no-bat and I aspire to be one myself, but it sounds like you have multiple businesses going on digitally. Let’s dive into that.

Thomas G. Rendleman (07:11.88)
Well, I have a few of them. Clients, I typically don’t talk about their particular businesses. But I do help a lot of people be able to delegate and replicate some of those systems. And I’ll give you an example. I have a client that works in the

fire niche and the fire fire niche is financial independence retire early niche and it’s a very big one right now it’s something that’s coming up and what he does is he works with doctors to help them through real estate get this they buy homes from him he earns a commission and what he does is he helps them get one

or more homes a year until they can retire. Now he couldn’t have done that without me. I wrote the book for him. I did the website for him. I did and I set up the marketing. Now he didn’t follow the marketing part, but everything else he did perfectly. And so the reason I’m saying that is because people sometimes need help to be able to automate themselves.

And the best way to do that is to show you’re an expert, which is why I wrote the book for him. And I also made a website for him. And that website helps him automate some of this marketing funnels. And for those that don’t know what a funnel is, I know most of your listeners will, but if you have a funnel, basically what it is, you give away a free offer, you get their email, you send them the free offer with a link.

and then you can market to them forever until they unsubscribe or die. And why that’s important is because if you don’t do that, you’re just throwing things away because people surf the internet, they look at things, and if you don’t have constant touch with them, even once a month, you lose out on those clients. And that’s one of the things I do is I help clients to automate that system.

Dylan Silver (09:08.28)
Hmm.

Thomas G. Rendleman (09:31.442)
And I know that makes sense. you have any questions about what I said or was I thorough?

Dylan Silver (09:35.736)
Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, we talk about funnels, right? And I think a lot of people are looking for, you know, how can I turn a lead into a deal fast, right? But you talk about a lead funnel, this could be a very long period of time, right? And so, when people are looking at their lead funnel, and they’re kind of thinking about the long term,

Thomas G. Rendleman (09:52.235)
yes.

Dylan Silver (10:03.008)
I guess, especially as someone who’s familiar with this but hasn’t really done a deep dive into this myself, there’s, I guess, a lot of open-ended… a lot of open…

undecided ways where people can go? they want to do like a year-long process? How do they want to stay in touch with these people? Is it just a newsletter so that they can think about them and not lose sight of them? What’s your approach and what should be a good mentality for people if they’re looking at this kind of a long-term follow-up in a lead funnel?

Thomas G. Rendleman (10:37.524)
Well, there’s a specific way of doing it. The first thing is to give value. If you don’t give value to a customer or client, you can’t expect them to work with you. You have to give them something of value. That value can be a post. It can be a giveaway, such as this gentleman that is giving away his, the one I wrote, the…

the doctor book and that way it shows you as an expert. Whatever it is, it requires you to give things away and I actually design those giveaways. So it’s not like I’m asking my client to do that. I’m not. I do it based on research. Now here’s the, and this is so much more important because a lead funnel is great. It really is. But here’s the problem with the lead funnel.

The lead funnel, even if you follow up, if you don’t keep providing information and things to keep them excited, they go elsewhere. They don’t do it. And you want to have it where it’s a reoccurring theme.

the same thing, you don’t want to jump from one thing to another. Now I know that you’ve got a lot of different listeners here, from investors to lenders to real estate agents, other real estate professionals, but the whole idea there is if you don’t do several different things, one, they have to know who you are and they’re not going to remember you without repeat interaction. And that doesn’t have to be specifically

Talking with them, but it has to be constant interaction even once a month is fine And they have

Dylan Silver (12:21.806)
What would you say Thomas of texting versus email?

Thomas G. Rendleman (12:30.194)
I personally don’t like the texting and the email is much better for what I do. You can do SMS, but the thing is it interrupts people’s day and you don’t want to continuously interrupt because it’s all an emotional buy. When people want to work with you, if you piss them off all the time,

They’re not going to want to work with you. They’re going to go somewhere else. So the idea there is a soft introduction, a soft sale, and you never pressure them. If they want it, they’ll buy it, or they’ll subscribe to your service. If they don’t, they won’t.

Dylan Silver (13:15.82)
So pivoting a bit here, Thomas, when folks are looking at creating a lead funnel and they’re maybe not sure how to do this type of thing, would you recommend that they kind of jump in and just kind of start? the sooner you start, it’s like planting a tree, right? And you get the benefits later on. Or do they have to really have a very systematic approach to this? And it’s really better to get educated on how to do this, maybe CRM systems, all these different

facets of this before they go ahead and start.

Thomas G. Rendleman (13:48.83)
Yes, and most people never start. That’s the first problem. People have a tendency to procrastinate forever. And then five years later, I started that project five years ago. So the number one thing is to get started. And number two is to have somebody do it for you, because that’s not your business. Your business is to sell, not to…

You your business is to buy or sell, but not to do lead funnels. You’re going to spend a year trying to learn how to do that while you could have been making sales or subscriptions or whatever you do. So yeah, it’s better to get somebody to do it for you. And let me tell you, it’s a lot cheaper and more effective to have somebody like myself or somebody else in the marketing field that can do that for you.

Dylan Silver (14:29.198)
Yeah.

Thomas G. Rendleman (14:44.614)
It’s just the way it is.

Dylan Silver (14:46.99)
When you were learning how to do this yourself, of course, being an agent, a real estate agent, and then being involved, you’ve seen it. But then there’s also a different level of setting it up and of diving in and doing a campaign yourself and then doing it for other people. Without giving away all the game, all the sauce, Thomas, what were some of the biggest aha moments that you had which were game changers for you and your business for constructing lead funnels?

Thomas G. Rendleman (15:17.63)
Well, I was doing this many years ago and I did it for a broker that I worked with. This was…

year 2000, so that’s a very long time ago. And I produced a lot of things for him. And I learned a lot because at that time there wasn’t many courses on it and you just kind of had to figure things out. So I come from the school of hard knocks versus the school of getting a mentor because there weren’t any mentors. They just didn’t exist back in year 2000. And so that’s how I got started.

I was taught credit repair from this broker as as an exchange of services And I learned a lot about law about dealing with creditors And so that’s kind of how I got started does that kind of answer your question a little bit

Dylan Silver (16:17.378)
Yeah, absolutely. think, you know, for folks who are like myself, right, are looking at this, it seems like, I don’t know about lead funnels. How do I start, right? But part of me also feels like, well, if it’s a lead funnel, right, you got to funnel them to the, I’m picturing like a cyclone, right? You got to funnel them to the tip of the, I don’t know what you would call it, but the bottom of the funnel, right? And so,

Thomas G. Rendleman (16:41.662)
Yeah, you’ve got that, that’s why they call it a funnel, is because it looks like a funnel. You have all the people up here and then you slowly wean them down until you get to a client.

Dylan Silver (16:55.926)
I’m thinking about all the ways where this would work in the businesses that I’m a part of. And I’m also thinking about, I didn’t even realize that there were people like yourself who constructed funnels, right? And it’s got me thinking, how many opportunities am I missing? And how many opportunities are people missing in their business? Because they don’t have an approach.

Thomas G. Rendleman (17:19.975)
huh.

Dylan Silver (17:20.174)
They may not even consider anything that’s gonna be longer than like six months out, right? But with some of these lead funnels, mean, correct me if I’m wrong here, but some of these lead funnels, you’re getting potentially business that you planted like over a year ago.

Thomas G. Rendleman (17:35.178)
It can be a very long time and it can be very short. And the idea there is you keep providing value and if they know you as the source to go to.

Typically, they’re not going to continue looking on the internet and one day they will use you in many cases and if they don’t it’s okay too because you’re providing value to them you want to be able to provide value to the to the masses and Then the ones that raise their hand the one that say hey, I’m gonna do this Can you help me? Or even just get an idea of what what steps to do next? Yes, you want to provide that?

for for everybody and The thing is if and and I hate to say this but if you do build it They will come but you’ve got to provide value You’ve got to provide something of substance and you can’t be talking about yourself all the time a lot of times this is and I

put a book together for Chandler, Arizona. Now realize all of this stuff is in production right now. It’s not completely out, but in the resources we’re gonna give out at the end, this is…

This is a book for real estate agents, okay, for Chandler, Arizona, and it can be made for any city in the United States. I don’t want to work outside the US, because that’s not my expertise. I only work with my expertise. I do not work outside of that. That’s where my niches come in. And what that is is a book that real estate agents can give out to anybody.

Dylan Silver (19:12.984)
Sure.

Thomas G. Rendleman (19:22.438)
Facebook or on Instagram whatever and the idea there is it shows that you’re an expert in that area and Let’s say that you’re in a city that that book is available. by the way, it’s white labeled so you get to put the real estate agent on the back cover and The and the name I don’t put my own name on there It’s the it’s labeled and so they can they the person can keep the book now. This is the important part

Dylan Silver (19:42.882)
Very cool.

Thomas G. Rendleman (19:50.93)
If you just make a book, people are going to flip through it and they’ll forget it. But if you put links in there, which Amazon doesn’t allow in most cases, and QR codes where they can just go in there and click on their computer, it will show updated information such as what the current amount of homes that were sold in the last month, kind of the median.

Value so that they can get an idea Different things that are current information. So the book may never change But all of the links they can go to and they can get current information. So would they keep the book? Absolutely, they’re gonna keep it

Dylan Silver (20:36.002)
Wow. Yeah.

It’s adapting, I love that. Thomas, we are coming up on time over here. I’m actually gonna share my screen with the link that you gave me before hopping on here.

Thomas G. Rendleman (20:44.82)
Yes.

Dylan Silver (20:50.414)
So I’m gonna go here, Simple. So this website that I’m sharing, this is earlyexitforpros.com forward slash simple. There’s a couple videos at the bottom and a direct line for Thomas, 5207288030. I’m just gonna play 15 seconds of the second video here.

Dylan Silver (21:32.694)
So that’s one of the videos on this website here, earlyexitforpros.com forward slash simple for folks who are listening here. Thomas, is that the best way where folks can go to get a hold of you?

Thomas G. Rendleman (21:47.858)
Yes, and I’ll tell you why that I’m not practicing what I preach. I would normally have an email capture down there and then you wouldn’t have access to it unless you put in your email. The reason I’m not doing that is because I only want to work with people that are really interested and they would be, if they don’t see it by now, they’ll never see it. The idea there is,

If they want to get in touch with me personally, I don’t have a problem with that. I answer the phone every single time unless I’m in a meeting or I’m sleeping. If I’m in a meeting or sleeping, of course, I don’t answer the phone. I had a mentor that did that and he only got a few hours of sleep a night because he was constantly, constantly answering the phone, one, two, three in the morning. And I’m not gonna ever do that, okay? He was a great mentor,

Dylan Silver (22:45.39)
Go crazy.

Thomas G. Rendleman (22:46.654)
Yeah, a little bit crazy, but you gotta be a little bit crazy to be able to step outside the normal bounds. And if you want to do something that is extraordinary, you have to take extraordinary steps. And so I wanna work with those kind of people. I do have a lot of…

Dylan Silver (23:02.51)
Absolutely.

Thomas G. Rendleman (23:09.646)
of projects that are going on and those are the ones that I listed. I do not list clients that I actually have projects for because that’s their personal business and I don’t want to have them think that people are going to steal their ideas. And the funny part is if you really understand marketing, even if they copy what you do, it’s not going to be the same.

There is no competition as long as you do a job and bring value to customers and clients. And that’s what that book was about. And just real quick on the early exit for pros, that is the one where you can do multiple transactions using 1031s and this sort of thing for tax benefits.

Dylan Silver (23:48.27)
I couldn’t make it anymore.

Thomas G. Rendleman (24:05.522)
If you don’t know about that, you should look it up because it’s something that that I know you know about it, but there’s a lot of people that don’t and The thing is is that your biggest biggest expense in Business is going to be taxes. So if you can defer it or you can do creative strategies with a CPA I’m not a CPA, but I know about it and

That is something that can help you tremendously in business. The second thing is getting more clients, customers, and sales. Sorry for going on too long.

Dylan Silver (24:37.304)
Thomas.

Dylan Silver (24:42.126)
No, that’s okay. We are coming up on time here. I want to say one more time that the phone number that I had at the bottom, 520-728-8030, that’s the good number for you.

Thomas G. Rendleman (24:52.938)
Yeah, and they can reach me directly and that’s why I put it on there I don’t care if people get it a telemarketers or whatever because a lot of times people don’t want to give out their phone number I don’t have a problem with people having my phone number because that’s what I’m here for a website a book all of these things are made to get more people Communicating with you

and that’s how you get more clients and customers and sales is direct communication.

Dylan Silver (25:25.454)
Absolutely. Thomas, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.

Thomas G. Rendleman (25:29.17)
I appreciate you having me and I’d like to say hi to Mike also and I appreciate the…

the interview. really do. I’ve had a great time.

Dylan Silver (25:41.088)
Absolutely. Thank you.