We recently had the opportunity to interview Adam Johnson and Brent Moreno on the CarrotCast, two partnered-up investors who finished their first $100k month back in March.
On the episode, Trevor asks them about how they got to their first $100k month — exactly what marketing strategies they used and what mindset philosophies made all the difference.
If you’d prefer to watch or listen, you can go here to view the full interview.
Or below, I’ve compiled 7 of the duo’s dead-simple, secret strategies that they shared on the Carrot real estate investor success story. Want to learn how they got to their first $100k month and how you can, too?
Read on.
Dead-Simple, Secret Strategy #1: Making Uber Do Your Driving-For-Dollars
Brent Moreno is likely one of the most innovative online marketers around.
While he and his partner often use tried-and-true marketing methods (PPC, Facebook Ads, Direct Mail), Moreno isn’t afraid to think outside of the box in order to get a leg up on the competition.
The way he used Uber drivers to find deals is the perfect example of this.
Before his real estate investing days, Moreno was a part-time Uber driver. He’d drop his wife off at work and go drive for a few hours to make a little extra money. During that time, he started an Uber Facebook group. When he finally took the leap into real estate investing and gave up on Uber driving, he had an “aha!” moment…
Uber drivers literally just drive around town all day… If I could get just a few of them to send me property addresses for vacant or distressed homes, they could do my driving-for-dollars for me.
So he reached out to his Uber-driving pals in his Facebook group and asked them to do him a favor. One of them took him up on it and passed him 35 seller leads, 2 of which he was able to close on.
That’s just the kind of marketing ingenuity that separates top investors from the rest. Feel free to steal his strategy and try this in your own market. Who knows? Could be a game-changer.
Dead-Simple, Secret Strategy #2: Building Your Inner Circle
In real estate, perhaps nothing is more powerful than long-term, meaningful relationships in your market of operation.
And that is a truth which Adam Johnson doesn’t take lightly:
I love to make people smile. I really do.
In fact, he’s built so many meaningful relationships in his community that when he walked into the local courthouse (a place he regularly visits, giving chocolates, kind notes, or snow cones to the workers whenever he leaves) to check the title on a foreclosure, something amazing happened.
He overheard one of the workers talking on the phone as they said something like this:
I’m sorry Ma’am, I just don’t have the authority to offer discounts or lower your payments. There’s nothing I can do.
After a moment, the worker noticed Johnson in the room, said
Uhh. Hold on, hold on. Let me get someone else on the phone
and gave Johnson the county phone to try and help this woman solve her tax problems.
That random situation turned into a closed deal for Johnson.
What’s more?
Johnson literally has his own set of keys to every courthouse in the county because of the relationships he’s built. Don’t underestimate the power of consistent kindness to build meaningful relationships in your community — you never know where your next deal will come from.
Moreno even goes so far as to claim that 50% of their success can be directly attributed to the relationships and rapport that they’ve built in their market.
Dead-Simple, Secret Strategy #3: Using A High-Converting Website
I won’t splice words here.
Johnson and Moreno are Carrot members, and they love their Carrot website.
Making $100k per month, these are two people who could definitely afford their own custom website. But when Trevor asked them why they haven’t ditched Carrot and built their own website, this is what they said.
Johnson explains their reasoning best:
“Because I’m in the real estate business, I’m not in the website-building business.”
And their Carrot site has been converting website visitors into leads since day one. Why change it if it’s working?
Plus, Johnson, self-proclaimed at being tech-incompetent (he didn’t even have WiFi at his house until 2017) can use the site just fine. It’s easy to use and it converts like a charm. What’s not to like?
If you’re on the fence about trying Carrot out for your own business, you can sign up with us risk-free for 30 days. Go here to find out more.
Dead-Simple, Secret Strategy #4: Steal These Facebook Ads
To be honest, I was kind of surprised that Johnson and Moreno were willing to give away their Facebook Ad copy for free. Now, with Facebook’s new ad library, anyone can view any page’s past and current ad campaigns (this is GREAT for studying your competition), but Moreno actually encourages other investors to steal his ad copy and try it in their own market: “Take it and try it out for yourself. It’s working for us.”
So, in the spirit of mutually agreed upon theft (:D), here’s how you can go on Facebook and look at MS HOME Buyer’s Facebook Ads.
Go to MS HOME Buyers Facebook page and click on “See More” next to “Page Transparency” on the right side.
Click on “Go to Ad Library”.
And voila! You can now look through the ads that these guys are running and they’ve given you explicit permission to copy them, so have fun!
Oh! And if you’re needing to do competitor research or want to figure out what other investors in your market are doing with their Facebook Ads, use the above strategy — knowledge is power, after all.
Dead-Simple, Secret Strategy #5: Don’t Give Yourself An Option To Not Finish The Job
When listening to this interview, one of my favorite things that Johnson said was…
Not to overplay the stereotype — being from Mississippi — but the truth is that when you grow up on a farm or in a rural area… you just gotta get the job done. There’s been plenty of times where we had to fix a fence and we didn’t have any extra fence and we just had to figure it out with what we had… I think that’s where people go wrong: they let not doing it be an option. The truth of it is, if you put yourself in a position where you don’t have a choice, then it’s a different mindset — it’s not ‘we don’t have this or we don’t have that,’ it’s just… you gotta make it work.
I think that quote speaks for itself. When you don’t give yourself an option to quit or to not finish the job, you get it done with what you have; that’s all there is to it. And more often than not, just working hard with what you have at your disposal will grow your business, regardless of the resources available to you.
Dead-Simple, Secret Strategy #6: Keep Your Business Simple, But Do The Simple Things Better Than Anyone Else
The philosophy behind Johnson and Moreno’s business is to “Keep it simple, but work extremely hard on those simple things.”
Many real estate investors (many entrepreneurs, for that matter) get caught up in the details of their business. They create over-complicated internal processes that unintentionally slow their businesses down. Or they use 10 different marketing strategies all at the same time, optimizing none of them.
But the best way to grow a business is usually to let your internal processes and marketing strategies grow with your business. Always keep it as simple as possible to build a business that’s agile, and optimize the heck out of those simple internal processes, sales tactics, and marketing strategies.
You can do 100 different things with mediocrity… or you can do a couple of things expertly well. For Johnson and Moreno, working really hard on the simple things has proven far more lucrative than trying to tackle everything at once.
Dead-Simple, Secret Strategy #7: Don’t Underestimate The Impact Of Hard Work And Compounding Results
The grind. The hustle. The day-in and day-out hard work of an entrepreneur.
Over time, it can get exhausting and discouraging. You start to wonder if all this hard work will pay you back in the end. Well, Johnson firmly believes that it will:
Don’t underestimate the legwork and then giving your efforts time to compound.
Before you can build momentum for your business, don’t forget that you must first push the boulder up the hill — only then can it start rolling down the other side.
And don’t quit before you reach the top of the hill; that’s where building a business gets fun.
Conclusion
We hope that this information has helped!
Clearly, Johnson and Moreno are crushing it with their business. I imagine they’re well over $100k per month now that we’re half-way through the year. And we’d love to see you get to that same place.
Maybe $100k per month seems so out of reach right now as to be ridiculous.
Or maybe you’re right on the cusp of breaking through that threshold.
Whatever the case, in addition to using the above tips, we’re willing to give you a risk-free trial period with our service which has generated over a million leads for real estate investors and agents.
Find out more here.
And happy investing!