RG 264 – How to Invest in The US as a Foreign Investor w/ Alicia Jarrett

G’day, mate! For this week’s episode, we have the wonderful Alicia Jarrett with us, an Australian real estate investor based in her home country who is here to tell us all about her adaptive strategies for investing in the US.

Alicia is a global real estate investor, leadership coach, and business specialist who focuses on helping other business owners succeed through real estate marketing and data solutions. With over fifteen years of experience, she is also an excellent leader and coach who helps other women maximize their potential as students and business owners.

This successful entrepreneur knows her stuff, especially when it comes to business strategies and effective marketing, and we’re fortunate to have her on the show with us this week. In this episode, we focus on the topic of investing in the US real estate market as a foreign investor, particularly as an Australian. We go over how to do due diligence as a foreign investor, and who you need to approach if you’re just starting out in a foreign market.

We also go into detail about data analysis and how to use it to drive marketing and make genuine connections with other people. Most people do not engage on the first touch, and Alicia tells us how we can go forward and maximize that lead with effective follow-up strategies.

This episode is packed with useful information for all real estate investors out there, US-based or not. Tune in and listen to what she has to say; you will surely learn more than a few effective strategies that you can apply to your own business.

Key Takeaways

• Most people don’t bite into a deal on the first try, which is why the follow-up is so important.

• Not getting a response at first doesn’t mean a lead is dead.

• If you’re investing in a different country, do due diligence and find the right people to help you.

Be Bold, Be Brave and Go Give Life a Crack!

Alicia Jarrett (00:00):

If people do a whole bunch of mailings out there and then they go, oh, I didn’t get a response. That’s it. Then I sort of turn around and go, okay, well tell me your follow-up strategy. What did you have in your systems and processes? That means you followed up with those leads, knowing that they’ve got your letter. What is your, um, your strategy for second offers? If and when do you send them out? Do you even do third offers? Are you doing email blast out to these people? Are you doing ringless voice or SMS to say, Hey, you got my offer. I’d love to speak with you. No marketing. These days, people don’t convert on the first touch. They really don’t. Some people do, but you know, the average stat, as you would know, is that people need to be nurtured or, you know, communicated to, if you like on average, about seven to 13 times before they go, oh, these guys sound familiar. Maybe I’ll pick up the phone and have a chat with them. So what we’ve put in place from a systems perspective is doing all of that, but doing all of that quite naturally and, and almost on an automated way, and we’re finding, therefore our conversions are going up.

Reed Goossens (01:12):

Welcome to investing in the U S a podcast for real estate investors, business owners, and aspiring entrepreneurs looking to break into the U S market join Reed. As he interviews go getters risk takers and the best in the business about their journey towards ttfinancial freedom and the sheer joy of creating something from nothing

Reed Goossens (01:32):

Good day. Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another cracking edition of investing in the U S podcast from Los Angeles. I’m your host Reed. Goossens good as always every with us on the show. Now, I’m glad that you’ve all tuned into learn from my incredible guests and each and every one of them are the cream of the crop here in the United States. When it comes to real estate, investing, business, investing, and entrepreneurship, each show, I try and tease out their incredible stories of how they have successfully created the businesses here in the U S how they’ve created financial freedom, massive amounts of cashflow, and ultimately create extraordinary lives for themselves and their families life by design. As I like to say, hopefully these guests will inspire all of my cracking or listeners, which are you guys to get off the couch and go and take massive amounts of action.

Reed Goossens (02:19):

If these guys can do it. So can you now, as you know, I’m all about sharing the knowledge with my loyal listeners, which is you guys, and there’s absolutely no BS on this show, just straight into the nuts and bolts. Now, if you do like this show, the easiest way to give back is to give us a review on iTunes. And you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter by searching at Reed Goossens. You can find the show, every podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Google play, but can also find these episodes up on my YouTube channel. So head over to Reed goossens.com, click on the video link, and it’ll take you to the video recordings of these podcasts. You can see my ugly mug or the beautiful faces of my guests each and every week. All right, enough of me let’s get cracking and into today’s show to end the show.

Reed Goossens (03:06):

I had the pleasure of speaking with Alicia. Jarrett. Alicia is a passionate and driven global real estate investor. She’s based out of Australia, but she’s conducting her deals here in the United States. Really interesting background. She’s focused on land flipping and providing business efficient, real estate marketing solutions and world-class data solutions to assist other real estate business owners, his owners in creating bigger and better businesses for themselves. Alicia is also experienced in a leadership and executive coaching, and she’s a business management specialist I’m super pumped and excited to have her on the show today to share her incredible wealth and knowledge from investing from a far but here in the United States, but not phenome. Let’s get her out of here. Get Aly CEO. Welcome to the show.

Alicia Jarrett (03:48):

Hi rate. I liked that you said get aid in, cause that kind of makes us feel a little bit at home. Doesn’t it?

Reed Goossens (03:53):

It does. It does. So for those people who are listening in, and we’re going to dive into Alicia’s story today, but you are from Australia, right? So maybe give us a bit of context where you’re dialing in from before we get into the nuts and bolts.

Alicia Jarrett (04:09):

Yes. And not only am I from Australia, I’m currently talking to you in Australia. So we, uh, my partner, Matt and I are actually based down in beautiful Melbourne Australia. So for any listeners that haven’t been, come on over, it’s a, it’s open as beautiful. And, and it’s a little bit of European Australia. I like to say. And, and we’ve been doing business in the states now for over four years. So, um, so we we’ve had, I guess pre-coded, if I can say read, we probably spent a good third to half a year in the states, uh, over there doing business would fly over. We’d do what we need to do, and then we’d come back. But I guess in the last 12 months, we based pushed that envelope a little bit further with COVID and have done all of our business remotely. Uh, and, and the blessing I think in that as well as it’s really forced us to look at how we’re getting some of our systems and processes really efficient. And our goal when we started this business rate, our goal was to be able to do business no matter what asset class we were in, because we were in single family homes when we started. But our goal was to do business from anywhere in the world, as long as we had a laptop and a phone. So I think we’ve proven that that’s, uh, that’s definitely doable. Well, well, I,

Reed Goossens (05:17):

I do want to get into that in a little bit, but I do want to, like I ask all my guests on this show is rewind the clock and tell me how you made your first a dollar as a kid, because that’s going to help us set the stage for your journey into what you’ve just described to us, which is pretty idealistic lifestyle, but we’ll get into those nuts and bolts in a little bit. But, but, but for one o’clock and tell me how you made your first dollar as a kid.

Alicia Jarrett (05:38):

Yeah. I love that question. And interesting. I was thinking about this when you first asked me this question, when we chatted a few weeks ago and it was like, how did I earn it? Because interestingly enough, I went out and started making money for other people before I made it for myself. So growing up, I grew up in country, south Australia, so about, uh, eight hours drive from where we are here in Melbourne. And, uh, and my first ever experience of going in earning money, was this a girl guide going and selling biscuits in our country town. And, uh, and for those that, you know, I know in, in America selling yoga is also still so done. And I think it’s, uh, a gorgeous way to, to teach children not only how to approach strangers and ask for money in exchange for a product, but to build relationships in your local neighborhoods.

Alicia Jarrett (06:22):

So I did that from probably the age of about eight or nine, um, put a bunch of biscuits on the back of my bicycle and went riding around from house to house and selling biscuits and, and raising money for essentially our charity, which was, uh, to have our girl guide unit, um, you know, do other things and an experience of, uh, things as a result of fundraising. So my first experience with money was always how to make it for others. And I actually love that. That’s where I started because it gave me a sense of how money works in the world. Um, and not only, you know, making it for yourself, but when we make it for others in something that’s to the greater good, we all get to benefit out of that. And I think I’ve actually kept that ethos as part of our business approach moving forward as well.

Alicia Jarrett (07:05):

And secondly, to that third raised, uh, yeah, uh, I, I’ve got really fun memories of that, you know, would you like some biscuits? Um, and they, they weren’t that good back then either, but I think people were really charitable, but the girl guide biscuits, you get now a pretty good, I think they even have chocolate covered ones now, but, um, but second to that raid growing up, uh, I started working from the age of 14. So in a small country town and the biggest town near us was a town of 25,000 people. Um, so obviously that had a couple of opportunities in it, but I didn’t grow up around a lot of opportunity. You really had to make opportunity happen. So, uh, from 14, I, I was a swimmer all my life. I started becoming a swimming instructor and in school holidays and on weekends, I would teach other kids how to swim.

Alicia Jarrett (07:51):

And that was my first experience of earning money. Um, and then I started to do as, as it was back then Thursday night, late night shopping instead of the morning, uh, shops were still open. These days, shops are open seven days a week, um, until late, but back then it was Thursday night. And Saturday mornings is when you did your casual work. I know afterschool hours. And I started working in retail when I was, uh, 15. So, you know, my, my, my experience in ending money was trying to get out there pretty early. I, I moved out of home at 17, uh, and moved into state to start some new opportunities. And I guess that was driven region to be really open with you about my upbringing. We didn’t grow up with a lot of money. Um, I do remember my family and I, you know, being in a, in a country town, there were times when we struggled mum and dad, but both self-employed and they were extremely hard workers, but no, there was a recession in the eighties and that hit us pretty hard.

Alicia Jarrett (08:45):

And I guess at that point, I always had the mindset of, I want to go out and do bigger and better things here. I don’t want to have to rely on what’s happening in the environment that dictates, you know, what my lifestyle looks like. So I’ve always been a bit of a go getter and always looking for those next opportunities and moving out of home at 17 to go and start a job in a big city. I mentioned Melvin at 17, I didn’t know anyone, um, moved here pretty young and, uh, and started my career pretty early. And I haven’t looked back since

Reed Goossens (09:16):

That’s awesome. That’s an incredible start to the podcast and start to life. I guess, the, the understanding of going out and earning that dollar is really important and something that I definitely admire, but also sympathize with. I remember being very young and walking around the local shops and with, with my, my parents’ phone number, the landline on a piece of newspaper and saying, can I have a job at like 13 and a half? And he can in Queensland, it was 13 and a half. You could be legal was to go out and start getting jobs. Yeah, that was a CV Sorento cafe. I can remember was the, uh, the local employee at seven bucks an hour. So I’m raking it in. Uh, but, but now let’s transition into what you’ve created over the last couple of years. You mentioned earlier in the show, are you bet you’ve been in the U S for four years now, investing here actively in the United States for four years, maybe talk about the transition, how you got started in real estate. What, what was the bug? And I know personally that I got started in real estate actually, well, it started with my, my interest peaked in, in, in Australia. And I cut was starting to learn the tricks of the trade, going to net local networking events in Brisbane before moving to the United States, actually applying the trade here in the U S and in growing my portfolio here. So did you do something similar? You have you, did you cut your teeth in Australia for making the trans transition to the United States?

Alicia Jarrett (10:37):

We sure did. Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, so my partner, Matt and I, before we’d even met, we met later in life at 39, and we’re both now 45. So we’ve, uh, we started our relationship a little bit later, which I love because we’d both gotten to that stage in life that we were ready to explore new things. But up until that point, we’d both had rental properties, you know, over here, negative gearing is a strategy that people still use. We’d both built houses, we’d sold houses, we’d done a range of things over here that meant that we both had a passion in real estate, but readers, you know, and, and for the listeners, uh, on, on this show, the price point to get into the market over here is ridiculous. And, uh, and the things that you both can and can’t do with real estate over here is quite prohibited prohibitive.

Alicia Jarrett (11:21):

When we think about the biggest strategy of what we’re really trying to achieve with that with real estate investing. So we did look at, you know, different things that we can do here in Australia. But, um, I guess at the end of the day, that the more that we got exposed to the opportunity in the states and the more that we, we started to really explore what you could do over there, the more our eyes and our brains were just like, okay, wow, this is amazing. So we transitioned, uh, in, in two levels, I guess one was that Matt had to leave full-time employment to come into do what we’re doing full time. Uh, and that took about a year to transition into that. I also had my own consulting and training business over here that I’d had for a decade. So again, I had to make the transition of, you know, how do I still manage my customers here and start to work in the states.

Alicia Jarrett (12:07):

And, and a lot of people are doing that. They’re, they’re leaving one thing and starting another, and trying to really balance that transition and it, and it can be challenging, but where we started raid, same as you, we had that, that interest. And then we went along and did some training at a real estate course. And, uh, and it was one of those trainings that skepticism between us starting the call some morning tea was like, is this stuff really possible in the states? But between morning tea and lunch, we were just like, wow, our minds have been blown about what we can do in the states. And it just started from there. That was like day one. And we were in

Reed Goossens (12:39):

That’s awesome. Talk to me a little bit about the perception of that, because I think we need to touch for the listeners on the differences between Australia and the United States. You mentioned negatively gearing. And for those people out there who don’t understand that it be gearing, it’s just really your, you don’t make enough money from the there’s no cash flow. And so thus, you’re paying out of your own pocket to cover the mortgage on your investment property, in any that is then tax deductible. So if you’re in a a hundred thousand dollars in a year, for example, and you spent $20,000 on your investment property paying off that interest, your new taxable income is now $80,000. That’s negatively hearing in, in a nutshell, but, but maybe talk a little bit about the landscape and how the perception of all of Australians look at Americans in America and Americans in the way in which they go about investing and maybe the differences the way they go about their business here in the United States versus back at home.

Alicia Jarrett (13:30):

Yeah. Wow. That’s a big question. Um, there’s lots of economics with that. So the first thing I would say that, and if I start with the perception, I guess I’ll start with the perception of maybe some of our friends and family, when they ask us about what we’re doing. And we talk about the fact that we’re wholesaling land, that we fix and flip some houses remotely, um, that we’re investing in certain asset classes that we’re, you know, doing off market properties and all of these things. And honestly, most people just glaze over because it’s such a foreign concept here in Australia of the different strategies that we’re doing here in Australia. It’s a pretty cut and dry process. As you would know, Reed, you go to a real estate agent, you find a property to buy, or you go to a real estate agent. If you have a property to sell or a broker, and you go through that process and it’s all pretty regulated.

Alicia Jarrett (14:17):

Um, the, the opportunity over here for people to do off market properties, seller financing, lease, purchasing all these creative ways of doing things. Um, the opportunity to do that over here is minimal one because we are more highly regulated, but two, it just doesn’t seem as widely acceptable as a way of doing business compared to the United States, that our experience of doing business in the U S particularly in real estate is not only are we meeting people that are just more, a lot more entrepreneurial in their openness and willingness to do and try things which love because that’s our mindset. But second to that, the openness of both buyers and sellers to get creative in how they deal with their properties. Um, you know, there’s a, there’s an entire different market in the U S around this, this goes for all asset classes on how the wheeling and dealing and exchanging of properties takes place and how everybody can win. If you like in the buying and selling process, whether you are a wholesaler and investor, a fix and flipper, et cetera, everybody in the value chain has an opportunity. Whereas over here, not everybody has the opportunity in the value chain, but equally getting into that value chain is a hundred times the price.

Reed Goossens (15:32):

Right. Right, right, right. And so how did you then go and start to choose your markets from a far? Because one of the things we spoke about in the green room before I press record here was the difficulties that I saw when I first moved to the United States of international investors, wanting to come to the U S and thing, snap up everything they can, but then also having the downside of like, you’re not here, you don’t know who is a fraud. You don’t know who’s a shark and it’s the state. So you’re going to be chewed up and spat out, you know, like it’s, you know, there’s no, there’s no rest for the wicked over here. So how did you find getting that foothold in a market? Making sure you had the credibility from afar, because that does seem like a very big mental at a minimum, a mental gap, right. A mental leap of faith. So how did, how did you manage that?

Alicia Jarrett (16:17):

Yeah, there’s two, two ways. I’ll answer that question. The first one we started by surrounding ourselves with the right people. So the very first person that we surrounded ourselves with, and I remember this clearly on the, on the morning of during that first course, when we were here in Australia and it was, uh, a bunch of American, uh, guys that had come out and he had to teach people how to do fix and flips for houses. And one of the first tasks that they gave us is not only do some research to find out which market you want to be in. And that was easy for us. I’ll come back to that in a moment. But the second thing was find a local realtor in that market is willing to have a conversation with you. And we literally jumped on Google, started looking for investor friendly realtors in the area that of our choice.

Alicia Jarrett (16:57):

And this was Jacksonville, Florida. We put out a bunch of phone calls, only one called us back. Only one, that person, Michael, uh, if anyone needing a good realtor in Jacksonville, Florida, Michael Cassidy, Keller Williams, he’s been on our team since day one. So not only are they your friends now, but he is someone that we lean on as our boots on the ground, as someone who gives us an honest opinion when we need it, um, someone that we can, we actually joint venture with him on a number of deals. So, so first thing for us was how do we surround ourselves with the right people? And because he’s also trusted within his network, he was able to introduce us to local title companies, um, local attorneys that we needed, probate attorneys, um, a whole range of other services that we might’ve needed at points in time.

Alicia Jarrett (17:45):

And then we just started to grow as him organically from there. So I think the first answer to your question was surround yourself with the right people and start those relationships to get those really trusting relationships happening and make them, you know, I, I love to use the word reciprocity. You’ve got to give as much as you get. So whenever we start, those relationships were more about what can we give to this person to help them so that in turn they can help us. And I think reciprocity in business is often a little bit missed. And I do see that somewhat in the states, you know, you talked about being chewed up and spit out. Um, I think if the right relationship isn’t in place, then people can take advantage pretty, pretty easily. So making sure those trusting relationships are there now, the second part to your question, go back to your original question raid though, something else I was going to add out. Was it about choosing the market

Reed Goossens (18:34):

In the market? That’s right from a far, you mentioned Jacksonville, Florida. Why, why Jacksonville?

Alicia Jarrett (18:38):

Yeah, so we, the, the course that we were doing, they gave us some really good basics on what to research. So going in and having a look at what’s the growth path, what’s the population growth path being is, is there a growth path going through that city of infrastructure, um, industry people moving there, um, you know, demographic information, uh, socioeconomic information, the amount of properties that have been bought and sold, you know, was that above market, below market, what’s the actual environment telling us. So there was a bit of a checklist that we went through, but our first thought around it, now this is going to sound a bit of a, uh, you know, what’s the word I’m looking for a magic wand. We were like, what’s a sign that could tell us that, um, that, that, that would be the place to go. Um, funnily enough, uh, my partner, Matt, and he’s got a nephew called Jackson, and we were just speaking to Jackson not long before we attended the coolest, and we just were talking about Jackson and they put up a list of potential cities to look at on the screen. And we went Jacksonville, maybe that’s a sign. So when we then went and did all the research to look at the demographics, the infrastructure investment in local community, a whole range of things, it ticked all the boxes. And the other thing that as, you know, Reid being in the states, even though it is the subject of hurricane season, it doesn’t freeze over for half of the year. So it makes doing business a lot easier.

Reed Goossens (20:05):

Yes, no, that’s right. And I actually love Jacksonville as a market. I know a lot of investors in the multi-family space indication space who do some great deals over there too, definitely marketing. You mentioned a few things there, path that grow apart, growth path or path of progress, population, GDP, growth, socioeconomics, you want all those sort of things going for it. And also, I know Florida in general, as in Texas, which is where I’m investing have had the biggest inbound movement throughout the United States throughout COVID. Now that we’re sort of changing the landscape in terms of how we work and affordability and people not necessarily needing to live in Silicon valley or New York or Chicago and moving into warmup climates and doing things from abroad. So from afar, I should say. So tell me about the investment strategy in and around what you do in Jacksonville.

Alicia Jarrett (20:53):

Sure. So I guess Jacksonville is where we started since then, we’ve expanded out to a whole bunch of different counties in Florida. We still do Duval county. That’s where Jackson Bill’s based and it still manages to yield us the buyers and sellers all the time. Um, just out of interest, I was talking to one of our customers the other day, and on average is 5,000 people a day moving to Florida. And I was like, wow. So, you know, pretty incredible. So we we’ve expanded out into different counties and our strategies is multifaceted one. We have a couple of really good relationships with, um, local builders and developers that, that lean on us to, to source land for them. So we actively market in the places that they want to do. Deals is the thing with, with strategies. We always want to do deals where there’s enough supply and demand that there’s a pull of what buyers are looking for, what sellers are willing to give.

Alicia Jarrett (21:42):

So we have some awesome builders that we partner with. And then we’ve just gone out to over four years, I guess we, we’ve got a very active buyers list of where people are looking for properties. So we continually targeting certain counties that we have buyers that we know that want properties in. Um, third to that in our strategies, when we’ve had a property that we might not even have buyers for, but when we’ve got a property and we’ve advertised it and sold it and turned it around in a really quick space of time, and it’s been super popular, that’s an area that we go back into and do more marketing. And the fourth part of the strategy is obviously looking at the types of properties that are best use. So we’re obviously doing land wholesaling. So we’re always looking in those counties of what seminary build size, why are people buying properties there at the moment?

Alicia Jarrett (22:30):

So in some of the counties raid that we’re doing, we’ve increased the amount of marketing that in some counties were doing for agricultural land at the moment, reason being is a lot of our buyers are telling us they want out of the city and they want to be 10 to 20 miles out of the cities and have room for their families to roam around and put a bond on it or to house on it and have a couple of acres. So people are looking for different lifestyles now. So always listening out to what your buyers are wanting and building that into our strategy. So as strategy never stays static, we’re always reviewing it and making sure that it’s in line with what’s the market telling us,

Reed Goossens (23:06):

And go back to that statement you made before about, you know, you having access to deals that the local developers don’t, those are really interesting statement. What are you doing in your strategy to attract those leads, to make sure that, that someone who would have thought just naturally again, being in alignment, if you just listen to this show and listen to this, this statement, like, how does someone from Australia I attract the better leads than a local person. Who’s a developer, maybe they’re lazy. I don’t know. But, but, but what was sort of technologies are you using in order to get, get that listing or get that lead first?

Alicia Jarrett (23:37):

Yeah. Yeah. Really great question. So again, two things I’ll answer with that. First is about local builders and developers. I think in certain states across, uh, across the U S wholesalers and investors have almost taken over the market of getting off market properties. So the smart, uh, builders and developers have looked at their processes, only the smart ones, and have said, rather than trying to compete with the local wholesalers and investors, why don’t we partner with them? Why don’t we use them as our source of, of, of leads and, and properties. So they’re the ones that we’re dealing with used to have their in-house team that would do all of this. And they said, you know what, we’re paying our in-house team to go out and find these. And we’re always having to compete with a wholesaler. Why don’t we just partner with a really good wholesaler and make that part of our process, which for us is like, that’s smart business.

Alicia Jarrett (24:24):

You know, you can’t beat them, join them. So that’s, uh, that’s been good. And I guess I’m to your second point, why do we get so many deals? It’s all about consistency and marketing. So in our business raid, we’ve invested really heavily in, um, our own database. So we have data for every single property across the U S all of the own attributes for those properties, as well as all of the, um, every single business in the states as well. Um, because we have some people that like to use a marketing platform that are going after commercial properties, self storage units, things like that. So we, uh, I kind of hate to say this because this is not what I want us to be known as, but we’ve got a data warehouse it’s as big as all the other big data warehouses out there when it comes to properties, but we are not a data warehouse seller.

Alicia Jarrett (25:10):

We use our data to drive outcomes. So our marketing platform, or data-driven are soon to be released, enable it as platform all. Data-driven how we run our land business old data-driven. So where we, um, get quite clever, I think is rather than just doing a blast out to a county and doing a whole bunch of mailers to a county, we’re getting really specific on not only the type of property that is ideal to, to get under contract, but the type of seller. So it’s not just about a property sometimes it’s also about the person. And so if I can give you an example of that, let’s just say that we’re marketing for buildable infill lots around Tampa. So we know what the minimum build size is. We know what the maximum size property is to put a house on that that makes it, um, a good return on investment for a build.

Alicia Jarrett (25:59):

We know what the average build costs are in those areas. We run sales analysis based upon all of our data to tell us what stuff going for. Is it above market? Is it below market? What’s a real, um, improved property worth versus, you know, vacant land, et cetera. We do all of that analysis upfront in quite a lot of depth where a lot of other wholesalers probably wouldn’t go to that depth. And, um, and then when we send out offers, we’re thinking not just in terms of the property, but what’s the demographic information about the person have they acquired the property on a quick claim? Have they had it for more than 10 years? Is it owned in a trust? So what are the different elements if you like that one within marketing to them, but more to that, when am I having conversations with them?

Alicia Jarrett (26:41):

Because we have a team actually answers all about Kohl’s. Whereas a lot of other wholesalers and investors will send stuff to voicemail or do that. We’ve got live people answering our calls, and then it’s giving our team the information to be able to have a conversation about that, to say, Hey Ray, thanks for calling us in relation to our offer that we sent. We can see that you got the property on a quick claim, which is a hundred dollars, uh, eight years ago, you know, was that passed down in your family. So it was sorry for your loss, but what are your plans for the land now? You’ve had it for eight years. It’s got no improvements because we can see from the data that it’s got zero improvements. Um, what are your plans for the land? And, and tell me how we might be able to help you with that.

Alicia Jarrett (27:21):

So it’s using the data to not only help drive the marketing, but to help drive the conversion when it comes to conversation. Um, and where I think that is different is the, if anybody was to go along and learn how to do, you know, fix and flip for houses, um, land wholesaling, mobile, home investing, whatever it is, most courses, real estate courses. Now there’s some awesome educators out there. I will say this, but most courses will give you the basics, go to a data house or go direct to the county, download a list, send out you mail, but then you’ll fishing with bait on the end of the hooks that not everybody wants. And we’re looking at it more from the perspective of go fishing with the right bait, the right hook, and to attract the right person. Right.

Reed Goossens (28:08):

Right. And so, so talk a little bit about how that morphed into what it seems again, just from the half an hour we’ve been talking that that is been the big, um, uh, nearly like, uh, your, your special sauce, like your, your, your super power in terms of how you attract leads, but also the, how you can offer a product to other people who would you just, because as you just said, you’ll hook and your beta so much better than the average person that’s being taught out there to go and start in the wholesaling business. Yeah.

Alicia Jarrett (28:39):

Yep. So, um, to answer the first part of that question, right. I guess I’m not going to say that we’re better because there’s some awesome people out there doing great deals with the tried and tested methods. What I am going to say though, is we are more consistent than a lot of people we know. So we always, we send out mail every week without fail. Now, a lot of people that you’ll see out there, we’ll send out mail and do one-off. Um, and if that county doesn’t respond, they go and find something else. But we’ve been doing Duval county. Now for four years, we send offers consistently offer one. If we haven’t heard from them in a certain timeframe, we send out off a, to just a little bit more, six months later, we will do those same mailers again, and we still get deals.

Alicia Jarrett (29:21):

So I think not giving up on a certain area and really making sure that you’re maximizing the marketing opportunity in that area and using data to tell you if that area is responding or not. So if, if people do a whole bunch of mailings out there and then they go, oh, I didn’t get a response, that’s it. Then I sort of turn around and go, okay, well, tell me your follow-up strategy. What did you have in your systems and processes? That means you followed up with those leads, knowing that they’ve got your letter. What is your, um, your strategy for second offers? If and when do you send them out? Do you even do third offers? Are you doing email blast out to these people? Are you doing ringless voice or SMS to say, Hey, you got my offer. I’d love to speak with you, no marketing these days, people don’t convert on the first touch. They really don’t. Some people do, but you know, the average stat, as you would know, is that people need to be nurtured or, you know, communicated to, if you like on average, about seven to 13 times before they go, oh, these guys sound familiar. Maybe I’ll pick up the phone and have a chat with them. So what we’ve put in place from a systems perspective is doing all of that, but doing all of that quite naturally and almost on an automated way, and we’re finding, therefore our conversions are going up awesome.

Reed Goossens (30:35):

That’s and that’s incredibly important for maximizing marketing and not giving up on the first try. And I think a lot of people start off in wholesaling. And I remember being pitched when I first moved to the United States, like the local re is like, get into wholesaling. It’s easy. It’s like, let’s just do it. You know, like that’s where everyone starts. Right. But the people who were successful in wholesaling stick to it and then not only stick to it, but then develop decent systems around that to continue that followup, to maximize the marketing in order to get those touches up, as you said, 7, 12, 13, 24 touches, like it can be a lot, so you can come back again. And again, my next question for you is how are you valuing? And I guess what sort of price range are you trying to buy these, the rural land? It is rural land, right? You’re flipping land.

Alicia Jarrett (31:22):

Yep. Yep. Yep. It’s vacant land in that can be anything from an infill lot in, in a suburbia, uh, through to, you know, massive acreage or even commercial land, industrial land. We do it all because if it’s vacant, someone can do something with it is the way that we look at it. Um, our price point rates. So our strategy, depending upon what we’re going after in that particular marketing strategy, we can go anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars. And that might just be an infill lot in a, in a not great area, but somebody would prefer to get rid of it and have someone do something with it, then not all the way up to, you know, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Um, so I know that sounds like a really broad range, but you’ve got to look at that based upon, or what, what zip code am I in marketing for specific properties because where there’s bias, there’s gotta be sellers and vice versa.

Alicia Jarrett (32:09):

And also if I’m out in really beautiful areas, getting acreage and people are using that acreage to, you know, develop different lifestyles, um, there’s a price that comes with that too. So we actually do a whole spectrum of things. What we do always look at though is what’s our minimum value that we want per deal. And we’ve always said that we aim to get at least a minimum, uh, you know, four to $5,000 profit per deal after costs. Now that doesn’t always work out. No, there are some times that you get a deal that, uh, the more you look into it through the closing process, you realize there’s back Texas and lanes and maybe some probate issues to work out. But if it’s good for the seller for us to help them with that, and we have an active buyer, and if it means that we need to forgo some profit to help out both people, we will.

Reed Goossens (32:56):

Hmm. Interesting. And I think that that’s really important. It does. And having such a people first business model, which is what we’re in the business of doing, making sure you’re connecting in that sort of goes back to what you said earlier, the win-win mindset of what you, when you first entered the United States, unlike potentially coming from Australia, it’s not as win-win all the, the, the, the Daisy chain of trying to get in that sort of chain of command. Um, but, but, but I guess as, as you morph into the products you build, because we also talked about you’ve got the data center, how else are you helping other people, you know, in starting the wholesaling business a bit based on the products that you’ve created?

Alicia Jarrett (33:33):

Yeah. Yeah. Good question. Right. So we, um, if I can take us back a step, you know, I think we started off on this call talking about that in the last 12 months. We’ve really had to think about how we get business efficiencies, being that we’re a hundred percent remote at the moment. And interestingly enough, about two years ago, we’d already started to think about that. Um, because of that, our goal of wanting to do business anywhere around the world, as long as we had a phone and a laptop. So we started to create out an acquisition model, um, purely acquisition, not disposition. So an acquisition model that included all of our data, all of our mailings, um, and mail tracking, integrating that with online integration. So websites and sales pages that actually convert as opposed to just information on a page, um, Facebook ads, Google ads, uh, applying cookies and, you know, following people around with ads, everywhere that we go all based on our marketing model of acquisitions.

Alicia Jarrett (34:26):

So we just built that for ourselves because we were looking at the way that a lot of people were doing business from acquisitions. You know, having someone that, that downloaded a list or buying that list from somewhere, employing a virtual assistant to cleanse that list for you, then going to a mail house and doing your own mail merging and uploading that and getting letters sent, and then, you know, managing your own Facebook page and all of these things. And it was just so disjointed and inefficient. So we basically put all of that together in one system, just for ourselves, we were being selfish, I’ll admit it. Um, because we just wanted to do business Bisha. And I think the one thing I see a lot, no matter what asset class people are in is they’ll get a deal or a couple of deals they’ll then focus all their time and energy on great.

Alicia Jarrett (35:08):

How do I now get rid of that deal or fix the house and flip it or do whatever it is. And that’s now completed. And they turned back around to their pipeline and there’s nothing there. Um, so you see a lot of people kind of get a little bit, bit yeah, because they they’re doing this. It’s like, you know, one month is great. Now it’s not now, it’s great. Now it’s not, and they’re riding this wave of uncertainty. So we created supercharged offers purely so that we had more certainty about our pipeline. We just showed it to a couple of friends and, uh, that we we’ve got some really great networks in the U S and some of them, we now look at his family and we showed it to a few of them. And they’re like, can you do that for us? And so, you know, 18 months, two years ago now, uh, probably be about 18 months when we really launched supercharged office was born.

Alicia Jarrett (35:57):

So now not only do we have a land business that we do land, and we, by the way, it sounds like a cross term, but the way that Matt always says it is like, you’ve got to be okay to eat your own dog food. So in other words, if you’re going to build something for people to use, you have to stand by it and use it yourself. And I totally am on board with that. So we use everything that we build in our own business. Um, and now we’ve got, I think we’re up to about 30 different supercharged office customers that, that we now manage all of their acquisition process for them up to the point that when the phone rings, they then need to convert. And as soon as they converting, they then manage the disposition process. Uh, and that’s going really, really well read where we’re loving it.

Alicia Jarrett (36:38):

We’re loving, helping people to maximize their business opportunity. We’re loving, filling the gaps. You know, one thing I often talk about in business is the E-Myth by Michael Gerber, which is you can be great at, um, at, you know, your craft. Let’s say, let’s say you’re a hairdresser. You can be an awesome hairdresser. Doesn’t mean that you’re going to be good in running 10 felons. You know, that’s just not how it works. It’s a different skillset. So I think what I’m loving most about super-charged office is we’re really helping people to fill a gap in their team, without them needing to go and employ, you know, five other virtual assistants or different people to, to do all that stuff for them. Um, so supercharge office has been super fun to work with and, uh, and to see people really start to scale their businesses and make it easy, easier work. Awesome. Awesome.

Reed Goossens (37:26):

Well, as we come to the end of the show here, I want to wrap it up by asking what are the plans for 20, 21 and beyond. I know we’re still in COVID, what are you doing in the business to help continue to grow? And what are your goals coming up for this year in terms of maybe acquisitions or new clients or customers? Yeah.

Alicia Jarrett (37:44):

Yeah. Great. So I mentioned before that we, we have our own data warehouse and we’re using that to drive different products and apps out there. So the goal for this year where we’re about to launch another product called enabled letters.com. And again, this is an entire automated system of, of when people have properties and marketing out to the neighborhood or the letters. Uh, again, that was a very manual process for a lot of people to do download your list, cleansy list. Do your mail mode, send it off to someone to print for you. We’ve built a system that does it all for you in 60 seconds and just done. So we’re probably about one to two weeks away from launching that that’s been a labor of love because as you would know, raid to develop any apps and products that are data driven, you have these things called bugs.

Alicia Jarrett (38:30):

They need to be ironed out. So, um, so, you know, we’ve done a lot of testing with that, and that’s nearly to go secondary to that. Uh, we, we have another business called property wizards. That’s also building out some more database apps and making it easy for people to do business, no matter what asset class you’re in. Um, I’ll, I won’t say any more about that at this point. So they’re two massive projects that we’ve got for the rest of this year. Um, secondary to that is keeping our land business where it is, but growing it at the moment we do on average, um, we send out about anywhere between 10 to 20,000 mailers a month. And on average, we’re doing anywhere between say five to 15 deals a month. Um, I say average because, you know, some months you might be working on 20 deals and, and five or close at the same time. And that’s, that’s the beauty of, of, uh, of real estate investing. You might have all the right systems in place that you still dealing with people.

Alicia Jarrett (39:22):

So we really want to keep, keep that growing. Uh, we were looking at expanding into some new locations in that as well. And, um, and keeping a supercharged office business growing, you know, we’ve got some fantastic customers onboard there now, and we’re always open to the feedback that they have are and how we can make their lives easier. So we’re always looking at, um, systems and processes improvements. And, and in addition to that, I guess how we run our business in our CRM model, we’ve had quite a few people reach out to us and want us to help them with that. Um, and, uh, we’re already working on that with one customer. So we’re asking a sales, well, do we now have more of a managed services model? That’s part, part of our business to where we can help people with that. So lots of exciting things to come, but you know, it definitely both of the mindset that, uh, opportunities everywhere, if you keep looking for it

Reed Goossens (40:12):

A hundred percent. And I mean, that’s the biggest thing that I’ve taken away from today’s show we’ll wrap it up here in a, in a, in a little bit was just the opportunities that getting into any business. And for me personally, real estate was the starting point. And it seems like same with you, but once you get into it to see all the other efficiencies and in real estate is the base of both of our businesses, but it’s also growing an ecosystem to support the systems along the way. And then through that create products that can help bring in other vertical revenue streams, that if the land flipping business goes caput or whatever, you’ve still got other things to rely on. And they’re the things that make an ecosystem and wealth truly, truly worth, worth striving for it. And something that I see a lot of investors on the show talk about that they find something in the business and say, Hey, this ain’t right, but if I fix it, it helps me, but I could then maybe monetize it and sell it to someone else. I’m not saying from a selfishness point of view, but it also then adds a different de-risks the business overall, because you’re not relying on one leg to support the table, right. You’re relying on multiple different income streams. I love, I love that so much about it. And that’s what gets me, gets my juices going. But, um, but we’re coming, but we’re coming to the end of the show and we are going to dive into the top five investing tips, ready to get into it.

Alicia Jarrett (41:30):

Yep. Let’s go. What is your

Reed Goossens (41:33):

Daily habit that you practice to keep on track towards your goals?

Alicia Jarrett (41:38):

Uh, it’s right here. I journal every day. I know that sounds really basic and simple, but at the end of every day, I like to just do some quick analysis and what are the things that I’m super proud of for, for the day? Um, and what are the things that, uh, that, uh, need to be my key focus for the following days. So to close out my brain space for the days and nice way to, to help sort of, you know, switch off from what we’re doing and switch onto life a bit more, but equally to have things in our focus, you know, they often say where focus goes energy flows, so that that’s a daily practice that I do.

Reed Goossens (42:12):

Awesome. I just say I’ve got exactly the same thing here. I go through a lot of these little notebooks and people have got these apps and stuff, and I know there’s something about writing it down, the art of writing it down, helps it get it. And then I get to cross it out at the end of the day. It’s yay. Good for me to question number two is who is the most influential person in your career?

Alicia Jarrett (42:37):

Ooh, that’s a big question. Can I give you too? Uh, first of all, it’d be Tony Robbins. I’ve done all of his programs. And I think that they really helped her. This was over a decade ago. I did all of his programs, but they really helped me to understand my, my value and what I bring in and what I am am, and I’m not willing to accept in the world, you know, what am I boundaries and values and things too. And how do I put me first? So he was quite instrumental in me being a bit more bold and courageous there, taking some leaps to, you know, start my own business and get a little bit crazy with the things that, that we do these days, uh, and secondary to that, um, was actually a guy called John McClain. Who’s a Paralympian based in Sydney. And when I was still employed, he asked me a really interesting question that changed the trajectory of everything.

Alicia Jarrett (43:29):

And it was one of those light bulb moments. And the question he didn’t realize at the time had a huge impact, but, uh, you know, at, at the time I was doing a lot of looking after a lot of executives and, and doing lots of coaching internally in this organization. And he said, have you thought about doing this for others because you’re really good at it. And it was just that one question the very next day I went and made some very different decisions about things. So the moral of the story to that is I think mental is everywhere. We’ve just got to be open to what people say and do

Reed Goossens (43:59):

Love it. I love it. Take the blinkers off and understand and be, um, what’s the word sort of, uh, vulnerable enough to take on the criticism or just take on their advice because so many people have so many worlds up all the time that they don’t, they don’t, they need to break those down and just let things occur to you rather than happened to you rather than always going out to seek them. Right. I think that’s a super important question. Number three is in your business. And we talked a lot about your tools today, but let’s talk again. What is the number one tool you use in your business? When I say tool, it be your software that you’ve created, or it could be slack, or it could be a sauna or something online, but it also could be a physical tool like your journal or your phone, or a person in your team. What is the number one tool in your business and why?

Alicia Jarrett (44:46):

Oh, can I say all of the above? Cause we use pretty much all of that. Um, I’m going to find number one tool in our business is, um, Ooh, good question. I I’ll, we’ll say our CRM and how we have created our CRM. We use fresh works as a CRM and fresh works has been really instrumental in helping us grow our business from a reporting, accountability, pipeline management, all of these things that, um, very quickly when you’re growing can get out of control. So bringing all of that together in one system has been fantastic. Um, I guess the second thing is ease. Um, if I can add another one is, uh, is our data and the way that we’re using our data to get outcomes and, and drive outcomes for our customers. And the third would be my partner, Matt. Now he’s not a tool. Um, but he is certainly, you know, we’re doing so many things together and we’re an awesome partnership and, and we really support each other and encouraging each other. And not only that, we push each other to do better and be better. So, you know, we’re almost like each other’s kind of accountability buddy at the end of the day.

Reed Goossens (45:57):

That’s awesome. Well done and not, not many couples can do that. So congratulations, uh, question before is in one sentence, what has been the biggest failure in your career and what’d you learn from that failure?

Alicia Jarrett (46:08):

My biggest, uh, I’m not, I don’t like to use the word failure because I think whenever we fail, we fail forward and we learn from it and pivot quickly. That’s my mindset around failure. Um, but probably my biggest mistake was not starting my own business earlier. It took me two years to leave a good paying job to go out on my own because I let fear overcome what in my heart I knew I really wanted to do. And those two years, if I kind of think back on, I think what if I had have started that sooner? And what if I was really just back to myself a little bit more and did that know, would, would I be in a different position today? Who knows because none of us have a crystal ball, but my biggest regret was that I left spear and paralysis of analysis stopped me from what I really wanted to do.

Reed Goossens (46:58):

I love that it’s so we can get so caught up in our own mind. Sometimes we too focused on the outcomes and not on the negative outcomes. That is like, what? This could go wrong. If I do this, I could give up, I don’t have money coming in to pay the rent, like basic stuff like that, this sort of, why would I walk away from a six-figure

Alicia Jarrett (47:16):

Job? Like, you know,

Reed Goossens (47:18):

Exactly, exactly like life is, you know, my upbringing is telling me, my friends are telling me about, I shouldn’t do this, but it’s so important to back yourself and know that you can do it and just jump and there will be a net to catch you because when your back is against the wall, things change dramatically, dramatically when you have no other options. So yeah,

Alicia Jarrett (47:39):

I think you end up approaching life, um, in a, in a very different mindset because it’s like, I’ve got to make this work now, so there’s no sitting back and just letting it, letting it pass. It’s like right. If you’re in you’re in

Reed Goossens (47:52):

Yup. A hundred percent understand. Now final question is where can people reach you to continue the conversation?

Alicia Jarrett (47:57):

Yeah, absolutely. So I would always be open to helping anybody, um, through their, their real estate, trials and tribulations, and also just giving any, uh, any help I can. Cause I know what it’s like to get started and, and to grow a business, uh, they can give me a call out on team. Uh, our team for supercharged offers can be reached on 8 8, 8 5 3 8 5 4 7 8. That will go to our, my team, but they will pass on a message to me or can email me direct. So it’s Alycia, which is a L I C I a, uh, Reed and I were laughing before. How many people get that wrong? So alyssia@superchargedoffers.com.

Reed Goossens (48:39):

Supercharged offers.com. All right, well, look, I want to thank you so much for jumping on the show today. I really enjoyed our conversation and I think some of the biggest takeaways that I took away from today’s show for me personally, was your ability to challenge yourself and do something that is probably a little bit outside the norm, being that I am Australian. I understand where you come from and sort of the looks that you get and going to a conference and then taking the initiative to do, to start a business halfway across the world. I can just, I sympathize, I empathize with you. I know how it can be how hard it is to come across, but then taking that and then making your systems not just good, but better, better than what’s out there. And then creating a product around that. I think that’s really good, kudos and good business modeling for yourselves to then offer something else that was missing in the market.

Reed Goossens (49:24):

Given that you can have a little bit of your superpower is probably the fact that you are abroad, right? You do come from another country. You do see the shortcomings of certain systems or in certainly business industries that saying, Hey, what if we did, if we just didn’t build a bit of a data, you know, we talk about the hook and the bait, the hook and the beta just a little bit better. We can do so much business will grow so much more just through different tweaks in the model. And I think that is really, really important for so many people out there to have the self-awareness and I, and I, and I believe being an Australian, I think it’s because that is part of your superpower being an Aussie from afar, being able to view something with a different lens because of where you’ve come from and the market that you come from. But I talk about all the time. This shows that the opportunities that you described early on the Daisy chain, it ain’t there to get to jump on board in Australia. So you can get involved at lower levels in the U S and there’s opportunities plentiful that they just don’t exist back home. And I think that is again, probably some of the super powers that you have in and around what you’ve created with your business. So, so did I leave anything out there?

Alicia Jarrett (50:26):

I think that’s a beautiful summary rate and, and it’s, uh, it’s interesting to hear you say that and, and call it a superpower because I think when you’re in it, you don’t often feel like it’s a superpower, but I’m starting to see more and more through the podcasts I’m doing. And, and the thing that people are saying to me, they’re kind of like, wow, you guys are really rocking it from Australia or anything. Yeah. So thank you for that wrap up. Uh, that’s really kind

Reed Goossens (50:50):

Well, my pleasure. Well, I want to, you too, enjoy the rest of your week. Enjoy your happy Eastern long weekend and we’ll catch up very, very soon.

Alicia Jarrett (50:57):

Wonderful. Thanks for having me on res my pleasure.

Reed Goossens (51:00):

Well, there, you have it. Another cracking episode jam pack with some incredible advice from Alicia and her team and what she’s built over there@superchargedoffers.com, please go over and check out everything they have to offer over on that website. She’s doing amazing things with her partner, Matt, and I just wish her all the best in the future. If you do like this show, the easiest way to give back is to give it a five star review on iTunes, and we’re going to do it all again next week. So remember be bold, be brave, and go give life a crack.