How to Build an Inbound Real Estate Business Without Cold Calling | Tatiana Zagorovski

Tatiana Zagorovski (00:00)

I remember my first closing on fix-and-flip, and my escrow closer in the title company said, Congratulations, you made money. I’m looking at her, like, of course, I made money, that’s the whole point of fix-and-flips. And she’s like, You would not believe how many people come to the closing and bring money after fix-and-flips. And when I realized, because I think people sometimes make mistakes there can be multiple factors. Number one, we trusted, for example, the wholesaler’s numbers for ARV and repairs, and never trust the seller, me including, always do due diligence independently. Because the most important for fix-and-flips is the numbers. You need to get the right ARV, understand the demand in the neighborhood, if it’s something like hot area or not.

Dylan Silver (01:22)

Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today we’re joined by Tatiana Zagorovski who spent twenty-three years in software and then built a business as a St. Louis investor and cash buyer. Tatiana, thanks for joining us here today.

Tatiana Zagorovski (01:36)

Hi, thank you, Dylan for having me. Hello, everyone, good time of the day.

Dylan Silver (01:40)

Great to have you on, Tatiana. What types of deals are coming across your desk these days?

Tatiana Zagorovski (01:47)

All kinds of deals are mostly out-of-state investors with properties they no longer want to maintain. And I see a lot of inherited deals. Some percentage also comes from elderly sellers, people who want to downsize or move, to different areas. That’s what I see a lot lately.

Dylan Silver (02:06)

When talk about acquisitions and people talk about the different acquisition channels, distressed property and acquisitions has so many different ways for folks to acquire properties. You mentioned several. I want to highlight one, out-of-state investors. There’s of course a lot of ways to find folks who may be tired landlords and so forth. How are you able to target those out-of-state investors?

Tatiana Zagorovski (02:34)

Interesting question, Dylan, because I don’t really do outreach marketing, to be honest. I’m focusing on inbound leads. So I get most of my deals through my referral networks. I work with a few third-party vendors who send me deals, and if I close, I pay them a certain percentage or a certain amount for bringing me the deal. All my life I’ve been very big on working efficiently, and for me working primarily on inbound leads makes the most sense, especially when real estate is not my only business.

Dylan Silver (03:11)

That’s where all cash buyers, I believe, want to get to is where they have that referral network. They’re known as the authority in their market and the person who will close. I want to talk about that. So going from having a software corporate career and then becoming a cash buyer, and we talked in the green room the years that you spent building that, and now you have multiple businesses that you’re running. What was the aha moment for you where you realized, inbound beats outbound?

Tatiana Zagorovski (03:43)

I think it was always my goal when I started real estate investing. I was always looking for ways to get those inbound leads because when you get inbound leads, people are motivated already. They are looking to sell the house. When you do cold outreach, you basically, reach out, and in 90% of cases, if not more, probably 98%, people are not happy to hear your call. And Today at 8 a.m. I got a cold call and I was annoyed because I don’t think it’s a good strategy. Plus, for example, cold calling is illegal in most of the states, but people are still doing that. But inbound leads are the highest quality leads you can get. And also the hardest type of leads you can get.

Dylan Silver (04:30)

I wanna get a little bit granular here. When we talk about inbound, that first conversation is of course so important. And people talk about speed to lead as well and ways where they’re not missing any opportunities. What’s that first interaction, that first conversation or that first message look like for an inbound lead?

Tatiana Zagorovski (04:51)

And again, since those leads are inbound and I’m all about efficiency, I don’t have first level of interaction with those leads. I have my human assistant. I do have a whole army of AI assistants, but for those leads, I have a human assistant who basically interviews about the property condition and if it potentially fits my buy box, if it’s something that can fit my buy box. When I’m making the second call and I’m trying to understand, the situation. Because for me, the most important thing in a transaction is to help the seller. And in some cases, I’m not the right person to help them. And I’m very direct and very honest. I never lowball, I always make a fair offer if it makes sense. And in some cases I just honestly walk them through options, through situations and Either making an offer or not. And I know multiple coaches teach always make an offer, which is right from a business perspective, but I don’t think it’s always right from a human perspective, and human factor is very important. My brand is built on something that is in my veins, I guess, in my blood. I call it heat, honesty, integrity, trust. So that’s why I have repeat clients probably. And people who know me, they really trust me because they know my word is basically a binding contract. And if I make an offer, I’m not going to lowball it after that.

Dylan Silver (06:18)

That’s a huge credibility builder, certainly. And anyone who’s been involved in the brokerage arena or in the assignment of contract arena knows that deals fall apart at the finish line for so many reasons and that can be challenging, especially if a seller is distressed or facing some type of time constraint. I wanna ask you about building that trust and also building that inbound lead funnel and your referral network for folks who are looking at doing the same for building their own inbound lead funnel lead magnet what broad strokes advice would you have especially for maybe newer investors?

Tatiana Zagorovski (07:01)

I guess the best advice, live by integrity if it’s something relevant. Because it’s interesting that you ask about building a network of referrals. When I started, you can clearly see I have this funny Midwest accent. Basically, I wasn’t born in the United States, and I worked in large corporations where most people were not even located in St. Louis In the beginning, I had nobody, no family, no friends in the United States, in the area in particular. So it’s impossible to get any referrals business. So I needed to find some different ways. But eventually I started to go to a lot of networking events. I started to close deals. And since I’m always honest and do what I say, slowly but surely people started to recognize me. And yeah, now I’m getting deals by referrals. And that’s amazing. But it takes time, it’s not a quick process. So it took me I think good three or four years maybe before it really started to kick. But again, my starting point no family, no friends, nobody local who knew me. So if you do have your network, it will be faster and easier.

Dylan Silver (08:11)

Think that is a huge stumbling block for folks involved in any part of the real estate game right whether you’re in brokerage or whether you’re a single family investor or a lender it can be challenging to be on that on ramp and deal flow and lead flow can be slow and challenging but understanding that you have to have a longer perspective you have to be looking maybe two three or four years out and understanding that is how long it takes not just to build a brand but also to have deal history right when you get that first deal when you get that second deal when Realtors and brokers are aware of you and other cash buyers, and sellers for that matter. That helps so much.

Tatiana Zagorovski (08:53)

Yeah, and another little tip that cost very little. I got two magnets and I put it on both sides of my van, like yellow magnets with black letter We Buy Houses And I’m not telling my line was ringing all the time, but I think about eight months after I put them, I got my first valid call and I closed two deals. One I kept for myself, one I wholesaled. And only from that relation alone I closed over next two or three years, five deals. Also interesting, I was driving in this van with my son all the time. And more than once when I came to appointment to potential sellers, we saw your van at Home Depot we saw you in the area, I actually wanted to call you, and here you come. So they already knew me kind of because of my car marketing.

Dylan Silver (09:43)

That’s right. Those magnets, something so simplistic can have such a profound impact. And you mentioned multiple deals really being a result of that initial interaction and that initial hour or that initial conversation. When newer investors are looking at this and they’re trying to determine well where do I put my dollars? What’s the best use of this? They’ve got, Facebook, they’ve got maybe physical mailers, you could certainly decal your vehicle. You also have being able to do targeted campaigns in some capacity, right? And that could span a whole variety of different forms of outreach or more subtle outreach. What would be your recommendation for the best use of their dollars for newer investors?

Tatiana Zagorovski (10:25)

Well, here, Dylan, I cannot reinvent the wheel and as you know very well, it all comes to the balance of available time or available money. So I cannot give universal advice, it really depends on a lot of factors, time, money, and personal preference. Because if you talk to one coach, he will be all over mailers. And mailers is great marketing, but it costs a lot, it has very low, closing rate. But if you do it at scale, it might work, it also depends on area. Some people do Facebook ads and it works well for them, for some it doesn’t. It’s all personal preference. The only thing I will recommend everybody who starts, and I call it rule of 3C. So we need to have clarity. And that’s probably the hardest part for beginners: clarity of what strategy you want to do in real estate, because real estate has various different strategies, and every new strategy might seem like a shiny object, but it’s important to focus on ideally one, no more than two for sure. Then next important thing is community. Definitely get yourself out there to networking events. And every area, especially larger metro areas, have real estate networking. We go in every single week, even more than once. And if you live in some rural area and you don’t have, close by networking event in person, find online networking events. There are bunch of them. And the last but not the least is coaching. It can be one-on-one coaching or it can be group coaching, like masterminds. It’s extremely important. But with a shrink or, I don’t know, for me it’s a hairstylist, because I have crazy hair. You need to find your person as a coach. Because when I started, I still was in my corporate job, so I kind of had money, so I spent literally tens of thousands of dollars. And unfortunately most of them went down to the toilet until I actually found the right communities and right coaches for me. But it’s super important. Clarity, community, coaching, 3C

Dylan Silver (13:20)

You mentioned being able to find your niche, right? And understanding what type of assets you’re going to invest in. In your journey, how did you determine your asset class and what types of deals would work best for you?

Tatiana Zagorovski (13:34)

I’ve done it all by trial and error. When I started, I bought a couple of small multifamily rental properties out of the gate using traditional lending because lenders loved me at the time when I had a nice W-2. But I wanted to do fix-and-flips. And I couldn’t find it in the beginning in my market, so my first real joint venture was with out-of-state, and I have a book coming out soon, Cut Out of Closing, because it was a very expensive learning experience. I got scammed for more than $100,000 on this JV deal by someone in my networking very expensive group. So it was kind of unexpected, and it wasn’t because I didn’t know something. I actually did deep research. I spoke to attorneys. I knew exactly how to protect myself. My problem, I trusted this person because we were in the same group. She acted like a friend. She’s a pastor in a church, for God’s sake. So the last thing I would expect, to be stabbed in the back, but it happened. And then it didn’t stop me because I knew real estate is something I will be doing for years and years. That’s how I will start building my empire. So it was a costly lesson, but I moved forward and eventually I did start doing fix-and-flips and a lot of creative finance deals. I love both of those strategies. Now I’m also doing some wholesaling because I get more deals sometimes when I can handle or they don’t fit my buy box, but may fit buy boxes of other people. So it took a trial-and-error and I tried different strategies, as I said. For me, now the best strategy is fix and flip and wholesaling. And of course I can still do here and there creative finance deals, but it makes sense. Because this way I can help more people to become homeowners when it’s done right. And I always look for win-win. If it’s not win-win, I usually don’t do a deal.

Dylan Silver (15:35)

Fix and flip these days has been somewhat challenging for a lot of investors. If you look back over the last maybe three, four years at this point. A lot of investors have bought too deep, maybe they’ve lost money, they’ve found opportunities that looked great, but based on old underwriting and the deals are sitting longer and they’re competing with new builds, especially in certain markets. I can’t speak for St. Louis. How have you been able to navigate maybe changing market conditions in your neck of the woods?

Tatiana Zagorovski (16:08)

Interesting when you ask because I remember my first closing on fix-and-flip, and my escrow closer in the title company said, Congratulations, you made money. I’m looking at her, like, of course, I made money, that’s the whole point of fix-and-flips. And she’s like, You would not believe how many people come to the closing and bring money after fix-and-flips. And when I realized, because I think people sometimes make mistakes there can be multiple factors. Number one, we trusted, for example, the wholesaler’s numbers for ARV and repairs, and never trust the seller, me including, always do due diligence independently. Because the most important for fix-and-flips is the numbers. You need to get the right ARV, understand the demand in the neighborhood, if it’s something like hot area or not. And I always very conservative on my calculation of ARV after repair value. At the same time, for renovations I’m lucky now. I have an amazing general contractor with whom sometimes I JV on the deals. So I always have him to evaluate the scope, and still I always add additional cushion, like 10% extra, because you never know what happens when you open some walls. Or whatever the other surprise you can get. So that’s the first thing. And yes, the area is important. So I never lost money on fix and flip. Usually I go over budget, but because I’m conservative with my ARVs and I do try to buy, I’m very selective what I’m buying. I’m mostly buying in hot desirable areas. So even if I go over budget. In 90% of cases I get over asking price with multiple offers. So it balances usually. But now market changes. We were for a long time in the selects market. Now clearly it’s different and I see it in St. Louis also houses sit longer and longer. But again, we have really hot spots where you still get multiple offers over asking But now what becomes more important for fix-and-flips is the quality of your renovations. Because I don’t cut on quality. I don’t do what you call, lipstick on a pig Because I think investors in general, got kind of bad name from the public because of people who do shortcuts on repairs and don’t do quality work. My recent flip had closed last month. I also got under contract within two days over asking. And both the buyer and the agent were told that’s the best quality project we’ve seen, and we’ve seen multiple projects. But the work you’ve done is amazing. Again, I don’t personally do anything these days except, financial things. But I have a team that doesn’t cut corners. That’s the key. And I have designer and stager. Because another mistake people do, they let’s say some have designer skills and they can do it themselves. I don’t. So I have a professional designer who knows what is in trend now, and similarly, if it’s house over 200,000, I’m convinced you must do staging, real staging, because now people doing this virtual staging. And they modify the pictures on the MLS. So people come to see the house only, to find out it’s not the house we anticipated. I never do that. Only real pictures, if I don’t have grass in the moment, the picture will have no grass, and only real staging.

Dylan Silver (20:23)

So important staging and you mentioned design. I can imagine that this also goes into your underwriting. You’re looking at okay, I have to have a design budget for this property, right?

Tatiana Zagorovski (20:34)

Well, I’m lucky. I work with a great company here in St. Louis, Flair Staging. And when I hire them to do my staging, the advice of the designer comes with that. So I don’t have separate people, I work with, that professional company and they take care of two important things for me.

Dylan Silver (20:52)

That is so important, the staging. And this isn’t just important if you’re, doing a fix and flip. At this point, and you mentioned we feels like we’re in a buyer’s market. If someone is showing up to a property, you mentioned the virtual staging, whether it’s a fix and flip or a property that was, pre-owned and is seller occupied, some level of staging goes such a long way, right? Especially if they’re comparing that to a another property that may be equally as good if you’re looking at the bones and even, the kitchens and the bathrooms, but they can’t envision themselves living there because the staging isn’t there and that makes all the difference in the world.

Tatiana Zagorovski (21:33)

Absolutely, especially when you have, some smaller areas or not traditional areas in the house. If it’s empty, many people will have a hard time to envision what they can make out of that. And staging does exactly that. Because of course, for staging you typically cover kitchen, living room, and master bedroom, but if you have, special areas in the house, it’s extremely important to stage when. So your potential buyers will see how it can be utilized.

Dylan Silver (22:04)

I wanna pivot a little bit here and talk about flips and managing contractors and scope of work in particular. There’s a lot that can come up on a flip, right? You can realize there’s foundation issues. There could be electrical issues that you didn’t see, there could be mold that you discover, and that’s just off the top of my head to name a few. When folks are starting to flip, maybe they’re on their first flip. What are some things that they should look out for or what should they really make sure to get right?

Tatiana Zagorovski (22:37)

Well, I am a huge fan of delegation. Or not necessarily delegation, but to have experts doing important things. And similarly, if you are starting and you don’t really have an idea what to look at in the house, find through network. Again, don’t go on Google because usually you will not get in many cases someone good. But build a network of trusted experts. And find someone who can help you either experience, general contractor. Or again, in St. Louis, we have outstanding lady, Kathe Gerhardt St. Louis Property Walks She used to be acquisition manager for large companies. She worked hundreds of properties. And the level of inspection she does better than most of home inspectors I’ve ever seen. And she provides a comprehensive report. And ARV and different strategies. So even I, with my experience, for some projects, I hire her because she does amazing work for very reasonable price, and I would rather spend, a couple hundred dollars but avoid a bad deal than to get into a deal where I lose money. So have an expert with you if you are not the expert. Don’t try to do it yourself. Because for example, I don’t have this vision or I don’t pay attention. To details in the house. I’m very detailed as it comes to numbers or software. I’m probably the best of the best in troubleshooting those, but no house design or maintenance is not my thing. So that’s why I work with experts.

Dylan Silver (24:13)

You mentioned an expertise in software and of course you had a long corporate career before getting into real estate, I wanna pivot and talk about the AI that is, taking over all industries and certainly real estate has had a huge impact and particularly when it relates to speed to lead and just the way people automate their business processes internally. I know from the conversation we had in the green room that you’re involved in that as well. Can you tell us a little bit about what you’re doing in AI?

Tatiana Zagorovski (24:45)

Yeah, and again, I think it’s very important to distinguish between automation and AI, because for ninety percent of businesses and for 100% of those who just start, simple old-fashioned automation will be much more efficient than using any AI tools because AI tools are not straightforward automation. AI can help you to do automation. And another thing is that you need to be very cautious when using AI. Don’t trust AI 100% and know how to use it correctly because what I see all over, and sometimes I intentionally test it this way. People use AI as like the next level of fancy Google, and they’re asking all kinds of questions, but the answers they receive look very professional, very authoritative. But if you didn’t ask the right question and didn’t ask to provide the sourcing for the answers, most of the answers you receive are just some kind of average based on data AI has access to. And when you ask why you did give me this answer, did you check this or that? What kind of sources did you check? I will guarantee you. In 90% of cases, the answer will be, I didn’t check anything. I gave you an average answer. And yes, now I see you are right, but usually people don’t question my answers. So you need to be very cautious. AI is a huge help, and I’m actually offering business owners to build AI teams now to make their repetitive work and some creative work Taken care of in a very efficient way. I am personally more productive ten times, if not more, by using various, agentic tools. But I’m very cautious. I review pretty much everything, and my conversations with AI is basically like brainstorming with a partner, which I don’t fully trust, by the way.

Dylan Silver (26:45)

That’s right. You have to be, a skeptic for sure when you’re evaluating the output because there could be all types of different outcomes that you may not have realized were possible. And as you know, being an expert in this, prompt injection and hallucination right can happen. Yes. And you could, start off with one simple task and it’s doing something entirely differently. You had mentioned automations versus AI. And I think this is a really important and interesting distinction that we haven’t discussed before on the show. Can you break that down for us? What the distinctions are automations versus AI.

Tatiana Zagorovski (27:25)

Yeah, because automation is basically a simple software program, an algorithm that you have clear rules. You get something in the input, your software processes it the way the program is written, and it gives you an outcome. And it’s always, the same algorithm. And I will give you an example from my real estate business for incoming leads. In the past, originally I have a third-party vendor who emails me new leads. So the process used to look the way I was forwarding those emails to my human assistant. She was reviewing, entering into my CRM and calling the leads. So I implemented simple automation, has nothing to do with AI I have a parser program who picks up those emails, enters information into my CRM with no human error assigns a task to my assistant to follow the lead and also sends text message to the lead saying hello, we are from such company, what is the best time to reach out? And speed to lead is two minutes before it could take a few hours. But that’s simple automation. With every new release, every new improvement. I see it more and more. Even if you have certain rules that you gave to your AI agents. They stop following it, they hallucinate. They were recently starting to act, to predict probably what you want. And I’m not sure about other people, but for me personally, it’s very annoying because in 90% of cases they do something I don’t want them to do. Or they’re doing it wrong without clear direction. So that’s why simple automation can save immediately, Hours per day, per week for repetitive work, while AI is great in some more creative brainstorming things. But if you put it on repetitive tasks, you still need to review because these changes, the logic behind those LLM AI systems can impact the outcome. And it never happens with simple automation. And recently I was super excited. I built this simple, program to create listing websites. You know why I was excited? Because while I was using AI when developing this program, and it was something I wanted for myself, the outcome was an old-fashioned software that you install on your computer, you don’t need to use AI, anything. And it produced custom, professional-looking listings. With very friendly user interface. Yeah. But it will not hallucinate because it’s old-fashioned software.

Dylan Silver (30:04)

I think that is a really important distinction, right? Is this idea that not everything needs to be AI and a unique output based on an input. It can be preset, right? And it can be hard-coded, if you will, old fashioned, right? And a lot of times, people were relying on an AI tool where an automation may have been better, right?

Tatiana Zagorovski (30:27)

Yeah, but also another very important thing is security. Because there are bunch of vibe-coded applications now, applications developed with the help of AI by people who have no idea about software development basics, and they start selling those applications and many of them ask for personal or financial data. But those applications have no right guardrails for security and performance. So we are in danger, to lose this private customer data. And another danger with AI development, with AI agents becoming smarter and smarter, and they can replace human hackers. Just yesterday and the day before yesterday, two days in a row, there were worldwide security breaches. The first one was related to PHP, and I’m sorry if I speak Chinese, but In a nutshell, it’s related to all websites built on WordPress. So immediately it was required to update WordPress to prevent this security breach. But people who do it themselves probably didn’t even notice the breach and it could have impacted their website. And yesterday was another breach related to security on a certain platform with a lot of tools use online. So need to be very cautious and I see people use all kinds of bots and agents, which is exciting and amazing. But please be cautious what credentials and personal and financial information you share.

Dylan Silver (32:02)

Yeah, that PHP vulnerability was quite interesting. I was tracking that as well. The PHP vulnerability. I heard about the railway if you’re familiar with

Tatiana Zagorovski (32:13)

Yesterday, too, Railway.

Dylan Silver (32:15)

People are now looking at, well, if PHP and Railway have these vulnerabilities, how safe are financial institutions? Right. And then the financial institutions are indicating that, and I don’t know if they’re publicly indicating this or if these are the reports coming out, that they are facing what looks to be, attacks of a new variety. And, it hasn’t made news yet of money being transferred out of accounts, but that’s the ultimate concern is. How safe are these financial institutions from a type of AI attack which could be attacking in ways that we can’t predict?

Tatiana Zagorovski (32:52)

Exactly, and you brought very great point because you’re talking about financial institutions who have an army of cybersecurity experts. And even they are in danger. So think about those vibe-coded applications who have zero level of security. That’s what can impact, regular people, solopreneurs who are looking at this funnel. And see that’s lifetime subscription for a hundred bucks or twenty dollars a month and you get AI agent whatever, and they give their credentials to those agents and who knows a few days later what they can find in their accounts.

Dylan Silver (33:33)

We are coming up on time here, Tatiana, any new projects or activities that you’re working on? Also anything you’d like to mention directly to our audience?

Tatiana Zagorovski (33:42)

Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I think we touched the most important things, of course, for anyone who needs to sell their house as is in St. Louis. I’m Tatiana, I buy houses. And my website for real estate is We Buy Houses in St. Louis. But I’m very passionate now about my technology business, where I help business owners to Either install those automations, replace repetitive tasks to save money and work more efficiently, or another thing I’m offering is to build your own team of AI in place that will help you replace some routine tasks too, create social media content, be more active, and basically depending on the business area, it can do a lot of things. Just remember, don’t trust AI 100%. And for this second business, I think the easiest way is to find me at aiwithtatiana.com

Dylan Silver (34:39)

Tatiana, thank you so much for joining us here today. Thanks for your time.

Tatiana Zagorovski (34:43)

Thank you, Dylan, for having me.