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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Q Edmonds interviews Todd Heitner, a seasoned expert in real estate marketing. Todd shares his journey from helping single-family investors to focusing on multifamily syndicators. He emphasizes the importance of building relationships and networking in the real estate industry, discussing strategies for effective outreach and the significance of professionalism in business. Todd also provides a framework for reaching out to potential partners and highlights the value of follow-up in maintaining connections. The conversation concludes with Todd offering resources for listeners to enhance their networking skills.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Todd Heitner (00:00)
I guess what I see people do a lot of times is instead of focusing on their relationships or instead of looking for leverage like that, they’re doing cold outreach to people they don’t know, which is really difficult, because trust is at absolute zero, everybody’s guard is up, but when you can get a warm introduction, it’s kind like when you have a friend recommend a restaurant, you’re not skeptical of it, you’re wanting to look it up and find out, because…somebody you trust recommended you. And that’s kind of the thing when you have a relation, if you form a relationship with somebody who can refer, know, whoever it is that you’re trying to do business with, like get somebody that can refer them to you, it’s gonna make it so much easier to do that.
Quentin (00:39)
Yeah.Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I’m excited to be here today. I have another fantastic guest and we’re gonna get a chance to peek through their lens. And I’m excited about what they’re doing. I’m excited about how they position their business. I’m excited about the pivot that sometime that comes along and allow them to pivot to different strategies that’s gonna allow them to continue to be successful. But I’ll let him tell you all about that. But I am so excited.
Quentin (02:42)
to introduce you all to Mr. Todd Heitner Mr. Todd, how you doing today, man, doing good, doing good. Glad to be here with you. You could have been anywhere in the world, man, but you ain’t with us, so I appreciate that. And so, Todd, I want to dive in, I want you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. If you want to give us a little bit of an origin story of kind of how you got started, how you got to where you are, we love the origin stories. And then also, ⁓Todd Heitner (02:47)
I’m great, how about you?Quentin (03:11)
geographically, if you don’t mind telling us where you are, what markets you serve, man. So you have the floor, ToddTodd Heitner (03:15)
Sure.All right, sure. Yeah, I’m currently in Pennsylvania. I lived a few places, but yeah, here and now. And my background, guess I was kind of a computer nerd going back and I saw I got into like web design and that kind of stuff. And so kind of got into helping real estate investors online, know, getting their online presence and all the marketing and things like that going. with single family investors, I did that we still have that going. That’s been a long, long.
Long going, I mean, for 20 years now we’ve been doing that, but then now the last decade or so we’ve kind of also branched into helping multifamily investors like syndicators who are trying to raise capital for their deals. so again, started out with the technical side of it, like website marketing tools, things like that. But then more recently we realized like people don’t just need tools, they need strategy to know how to use those things effectively. And so we’ve been, you more recently helping
syndicators, people are raising capital to get in front of more investors and attract investors to them. So it’s a brief.
Quentin (04:14)
Yeah, I love it. I love it, man. I know you kept it brief, but it still was impactful, man. It was a lot in that. So was writing down, you know, some of the things you said, computer nerd, you know, you helped out the single family investor for 20 years, something that you still do, but now is a heavy focus on the multi-family. And you’re absolutely right. People need strategy, right? People, they can come up with the plans, but they need the strategy to put the plan in place. You know what I’m saying? So, absolutely, know what mean? Yeah. It’s so, uh, I-Todd Heitner (04:15)
Over.Yeah, exactly.
Quentin (04:43)
have a saying, where I say, destiny has no wasted moments. So meaning no matter what we go through in life, things happen that we pick up that make us kind of who we are today. It’s kind of like part of a mosaic. We see this beautiful picture, but it’s these little pieces or fragments that make up the beautiful picture that we see. And so Todd, I would love to know, man, as you’ve grown in your success, 20 years single family, focusing on multifamily, along your destination, along your journey,What has this real estate space taught you about yourself? Has it taught you resilience? Has it taught you hard work? Like what has it revealed to you about yourself?
Todd Heitner (06:10)
Yeah, resilience is a part of it. But I would say a big thing too is connections like networking, like, you know, who you know, like, can really make all the difference, know, making I think it’s always important to be always reaching out to people, always building relationships, because you never know where those relationships might build, you know, or lead to. And, you know, I think that’s I know that’s one thing that early on in our own business, we didn’t focus enough on that. And then I saw other people come along and like, you know, blow us away because theybecause of that one thing, by the time I got it, everybody had already gotten in connection with this competitor at the time. that was a big lesson for me going forward is like always be reaching out, to meet people and not just trying to get something from them, but try to give value to people that you meet. And then those relationships can be very powerful.
Quentin (07:00)
Absolutely. No, Ilove it, man. I’m with you, you know, reaching out, learning how to connect, connect with people. Those resources and connections, like you said, can be so powerful. And so now, you know, you learn more about yourself. So what are some of the strategies that you have adopted now that is helping you power the vision forward?
Todd Heitner (07:21)
Yeah, know, kind of building on what I was saying about relationships, I think one of the big things is looking for partnerships basically, or people that you can work with, you know, to kind of help each other out, basically looking for win-win situations and creating those. so that’s one thing that we, which, you know, have been doing for many years now is kind of reaching out to people andin our space and seeing like how can we how can I provide value to your audience and then you know it create a win-win situation and so that’s something that you know we’ve really been focused on because it works you know you get you get in front of you know you get a warm introduction to somebody else’s audience and that’s a great place to be.
Quentin (07:59)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Todd. So tell me, what’s your next real goal? Like, what are you looking to solve at Scale Next, man?Todd Heitner (08:05)
Yeah, like I said, we’ve found people really need help in multifamily with getting in front of more investors. So we’ve really been focused on education more. And so that’s been the way we’ve been focused on is like helping our audience, helping our multifamily syndicators to get in front of more investors. Because I see people really struggling with that and they do a lot of things. They’re spending a lot of time, but they’re justQuentin (08:16)
Yep.Todd Heitner (08:31)
really spinning their wheels a lot of time, it’s not really producing results. So I’m excited about helping people get the results they’re looking for and kind of not struggle so much.Quentin (08:38)
Yeah.Yeah, no, absolutely. I tell people all the time, I believe that the foundation of any sustainable business is servitude, is helping people. And ⁓ you’ve mentioned helping people from start. Since we started our conversation, you’ve mentioned like, you know, really helping people and you’ve mentioned the word relationships. So it seems to me that this is very, very at the core of what you do. And so I would love to talk a little bit about relationships, like how
How has it served you well within business? How do you go about building relationships? Tell me a little bit about your relationship building style. Tell me a little bit about relationships and how it’s parallel to Utah.
Todd Heitner (09:22)
Yeah, and that’s,I guess what I see people do a lot of times is instead of focusing on their relationships or instead of looking for leverage like that, they’re doing cold outreach to people they don’t know, which is really difficult, because trust is at absolute zero, everybody’s guard is up, but when you can get a warm introduction, it’s kind like when you have a friend recommend a restaurant, you’re not skeptical of it, you’re wanting to look it up and find out, because…
somebody you trust recommended you. And that’s kind of the thing when you have a relation, if you form a relationship with somebody who can refer, know, whoever it is that you’re trying to do business with, like get somebody that can refer them to you, it’s gonna make it so much easier to do that.
Quentin (10:05)
Yeah.Todd Heitner (10:07)
so, you know, but you do have to be careful how you go about it. I see a lot of people making mistakes with this. They reach out to people in a way that’s…annoying or they just, you know, they reach out and they’re just talking all about themselves. Like, here’s what I do. Here’s why, you know, and it’s also super generic. You know, when we reach out to people in the first line or two of the message, like they should know that this was written specifically for them. Like I knew, I know something about them. This isn’t something you could blast out to, you know, 10,000 people. And that makes all the difference because when you get in, if you get a message like that and you know that it was just copy and paste to everyone.
We just immediately delete it, you but if it’s speaking directly to you and talking about something you care about, then we want to read a little bit more. We want to find out more. So I think that’s a big, big part of it is like figuring out what does the other person care about and speaking about that, not speaking about myself, right?
Quentin (10:56)
Yeah.Yeah, yeah. No, I love it. I think, I think, you know, the whole, the old adage is people want to do business with people that they trust like, know, right. And so then also that’s so true, but you want to do it from an authentic place. So I love how you said, you know, not just, you know, something that’s generic to the person you reach out to, but no personalized life. No, like I’ve given thought about you. I’ve given thought about what you may need. I’ve given thought about how I can add value.
Todd Heitner (11:47)
Yes.Quentin (12:06)
to you. And so I love that building relationships from an authentic place. Absolutely love that. So I don’t know if we went all this time. I have not mentioned or heard the name of your business. And so if don’t mind, tell us the name and then tell us the thought behind the name. Because a lot of times names have meaning, The names are the journey in itself. So tell me the name of the business and tell me how the name came about.Todd Heitner (12:11)
Yeah.Yeah, so with the multifamily sites, Apartment Investor Pro is our company. yeah, and so, you know, as we got into that space, we wanted to help, we kind of focused on apartment investors and like helping them to be more professional, you know, to look the part. Because if you’re raising capital, like if you’re asking somebody to invest, you know, $50,000 with you, like you better look professional, you know, they’re gonna be checking you out. And so if you don’t have a professional website, if you don’t, you know,
branded email, all that kind of, those little things signal trust or distrust. so, so that was, that was kind of what, you know, how we were positioned there. We do have another side, you know, like I said, for single family, which is done deal website. And that was the idea there was to, you know, help people to do deals basically, you know, through their website, but also to make getting their website a done deal, you know, have it not be a lengthy process, but have.
by making it as easy as possible basically. So yeah.
Quentin (13:29)
Absolutely, man.I love it, man. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing that the thoughts behind the name names have powerful names themselves can build trust. know, name themselves is our attractive point themselves. So man, thank you for that. Tarso, let me ask you, I’m going to kind of create a little space. Is there a topic that you would like to talk about that I have not brought up?
⁓ Or is there any other kind of words of inspiration, motivation, education that you want to leave? And so again, is there anything that I did not touch on that you want to touch on? Because I want to make sure that your messaging, that your word gets out. And also, if there any other inspiration you want to leave, I’m going to open up the floor to you,
Todd Heitner (14:10)
Sure, yeah. Maybe I could just, I just want to provide value. like, you know, if somebody is wanting to reach out and like, you know, reach out to potential partners, somebody that might refer people to them, I’ll just give a brief overview of like a framework you can use for that. So, you know, like I said, the first part is the initial part of the message you’re sending out, make it all about the other person, you know, not about yourself. They should know what’s in it for them. And that’s what we’re all looking for when we open an email or whatever, like what’s in it for me, you know?By not doing that, people just want to get rid of it. But it should be clear, a real human wrote it. It should be obvious that it’s written specifically for them. then talk about what’s in it for them before you ask for something, before you tell what you want from it. And then just ask a very simple ask, yes or no question that starts the conversation, basically. And so that simple formula.
It’s worked consistently for us. We’ve used it for our clients. And then I think another really critical part is that the money’s in the follow-up. Most people don’t respond to the initial message. We have to follow up. that’s, you know, we’re all busy. You know, we get a lot of messages. So it’s important then for you to do your part, to follow up and make sure, you know, people didn’t miss your message. And I find most people, you know, we’re always like, I don’t want to follow up. I’m going to be pestering them.
The most common reply is, I’m sorry, I meant to respond sooner. It’s part of doing our job to follow up and make sure people see the message that we sent, that we put our time into. that’s just a basic framework you can follow.
Yeah, and yeah, think like I said, relationships are so important, looking for leverage like that, you know, rather than one to one, look for somebody that can refer people to you, you know, and we have relationships that we’ve built, you know, many years ago that I mean, for five more more years, like, we’re still getting leads coming in because of that relationship. So it’s, I think it’s very powerful and
It’s one of the highest leveraged things you can do as the business owner, you know, is to focus on building those kind of relationships.
Quentin (16:55)
Todd, man, thank you, sir. Man, I really appreciate your message in here today. I really appreciate the nuggets that you gave. Listen, if someone wanted to reach out to you and connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you,Todd Heitner (17:12)
Yeah, so for multifamily, our website is apartmentinvestorpro.com. Then for single family, done deal website, those are our main websites. But if anybody wants to learn more about the strategy I was teaching today, I do have something special for listeners. They can go to apartmentinvestorpro.com forward slash R-E-P, like real estate pros, and you can do a free week of our training program. It’s a 30 day accelerator that will help you, you knowLearn how to these connections with people and get in touch, you know, build those partnerships that can give you really high leverage. So it’s an apartmentinvestorpro.com slash rep.
Quentin (17:50)
I love it, man. Todd, thank you so much, ⁓ Listen, you always going to win my crowd over if you give them something that they can go and tangibly use. So I appreciate that, So Todd, let me say three things to you, First, let me thank you for your time. You could have been anywhere in the world, but you would see it with us. So sir, thank you for your time. Two, thank you for your story. Thank you for sharing your… ⁓and presenting it with authenticity, presenting it with integrity. I tell people all the time, you know, stories have a way of planting the seed that we don’t know what the growth is going to be, but it plants a seed. so you sharing today your narrative, talking about what you do is truly planting the seed for somebody impossible that’s going to grow them to something that we may never even expect. And so thank you so much for your story. And lastly, man, thank you for your perspective.
Thank you for the way you think and your mindset and bringing that perspective to this platform. I greatly appreciate you,
Todd Heitner (18:50)
Thank you, I appreciate being here.Quentin (18:52)
Absolutely. So listen, y’all heard Mr. Todd looking at show notes, get the gift, get his websites, connect with them, but definitely make sure you are subscribed here because I promise you we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Todd. So sir, I say thank you again and everyone else. Listen, y’all have a fantastic day.
