00;00;00;00 - 00;00;21;25

Unknown

They only focus on it as a numbers game so they'll buy. And I mean that in a couple ways. They'll buy the cheapest data they can because they don't want to spend any money thinking, I'll just buy big lists and I'll hit them and I'll just keep hitting it hard. And that is the exact wrong way to go about it.

00;00;21;28 - 00;00;44;20

Unknown

Be, you know, targeted, structured, intentional, the lists of people, and an A and a cadence and structure that will promote relationship building is the way to success. And where I see people just, you know, slam it and just trying to, you know, get their teams to make as many calls, I don't care, just call cocoa, go call.

00;00;44;23 - 00;01;12;00

Unknown

Those people tend to have the least success in terms of rates. Connection rates, conversion rates, closing rates and all that. And they have the biggest risk of compliance and fines and lawsuits. Hey everyone, this is David Richter of the Profit First ROI podcast. Have Jordan Fleming on today, which he is the owner of Smartphone Smart Die calling it smartphone, a smartphone that I o should have asked that too.

00;01;12;02 - 00;01;32;08

Unknown

Honestly, smartphones find most people in the, real estate space know us now. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I will I this is so interesting because we use smartphone. I think when it first came out years ago, it was attached to Podio and that's where it was. Smartphone I o and I remember thinking like, oh, this is the coolest thing ever.

00;01;32;08 - 00;01;50;25

Unknown

Like, I can integrate this right into Podio and like I can click this button and it will call. So like to me this is kind of a very cool thing. Years later now having you on the Prophet First I podcast. So Jordan, thanks for being on today. Well that's that's fantastic. I didn't know that. And, that makes me very happy.

00;01;50;25 - 00;02;11;28

Unknown

But yes, you're absolutely right. We started out, smartphones started out as, as we used to call it, the only phone system built for Podio when we first started out. Yeah. That's incredible. And you have been in this business now? How long? Like, how long have you had smartphone? Smartphones. About eight years old at this point.

00;02;12;00 - 00;02;31;09

Unknown

I say about because I should really know this off by heart. But you know what it's like. It's like is it feels like yesterday or it feels like 100 days. 100 years. I'm not entirely depending on the day. Right. But, yeah, we're both eight years old now. And, you know, we we founded it, we founded together.

00;02;31;12 - 00;02;55;05

Unknown

Three of us came together, who were actually Podio consultants. And, we, we came together and we, we we looked for an opportunity to work together. I mentioned that that I had an idea for a phone system. And three months later, we launched the beta. That's so cool. And were you in real estate before that, or did you jump into this as a software company and then like, did real estate pass that?

00;02;55;05 - 00;03;18;00

Unknown

Or just like have focused on the phone technology? You know, it's actually kind of Podio that brought me into the real estate game in many ways, because right about the time we launched, there was that perfect storm of everybody discovered Podio and then the real estate investment sector. Right. It just became like it became a tool that just took off.

00;03;18;00 - 00;03;46;03

Unknown

And yeah, you know, like that was when investor fuze started up Joe McCall and and Dan Schwartz and and they started up this system and and it just became a sort of I guess it just it built itself in the ecosystem. And because of that, as a, as a guy who was running a consultancy that was setting Podio up for people around the world, we worked in, we had we had projects in like 20 countries.

00;03;46;06 - 00;04;19;26

Unknown

Wow. It just became it became natural that the real estate suddenly became a part of our conversation in, in a way that like we were doing manufacturing systems and we were doing, you know, we did, you know, securities system investment systems manager for all these retail systems. And then I just noticed there were more and more real estate investment systems where people were like wholesalers were coming in and saying, hey, I've heard this works.

00;04;19;26 - 00;04;55;17

Unknown

Can you help me set up an acquisitions flow? And, or, you know, can you help me set up a basic system? And that kind of kind of started us, me, my journey into real estate investment and then when we founded smartphones, the honest truth is we didn't target real estate. We we we we targeted Podio. The Podio users, but very quickly realized that the real estate investor community that was using Podio, this was a missing link, which they they grabbed on to you.

00;04;55;19 - 00;05;21;08

Unknown

And and that's what took us, you know, on a trajectory up. Yeah. So I'm going to pretend I'm a new investor and I'm in the market. And that's since I have the knowledge that you were part of Podio before, I would ask myself today, like, are you a standalone or do you have to have some other type of CRM system in order to use a smartphone and go down that road?

00;05;21;11 - 00;05;55;01

Unknown

Technically you can use smartphone as a standalone product. But the truth is, the power of smartphone, the real power of the smartphone is that we deeply integrate with a core set of systems. We don't integrate with everybody. We are not like, if you go to some of our competitors out there, much larger companies, dial pads and, and, you know, air calls and all these people, they will use Zapier or some technology like Zapier to say we connect to every CRM, right?

00;05;55;01 - 00;06;28;01

Unknown

We connect to thousands of them. We don't do that. We can. We've chosen the people to connect to, and we build very deep and tightly integrated partnerships so that when you're using one of the systems that we connect to and there's about nine ROI specific ones, we are so tightly integrated and we rebuild parts of our system for each, you know, each of the ones we connect to so that it becomes an unbeatable combination.

00;06;28;01 - 00;06;50;17

Unknown

Right? So yes, you can use us just off the shelf as a phone system without anything but the real power. And where we beat everybody else is that if is that if you're using one of the systems we connect to, we are going to make that system absolutely soar. Okay. So let's say I am a user of one of the systems that you are connected to.

00;06;50;17 - 00;07;10;01

Unknown

And you say, absolutely so. Or like what makes a phone system stand out? Like, why would I want your integration? What makes it do I get deals faster? Do I get, you know, more money in my pocket? Like, what's the thing that I get as the investor looking at a system inside of the system I already have? Yes, yes and yes.

00;07;10;03 - 00;07;31;29

Unknown

But the honest truth is the, the integration is. And that tight integration means a couple things for you as an investor, particularly one who's maybe trying to scale. Right. There's I always say there's a journey and you'll be very aware of this is a journey that investors go on when they start. Maybe they've gone.

00;07;31;29 - 00;07;54;02

Unknown

Maybe they bought a book or they've or they've gone to a mastermind. They've got to a they've gone to an event and they've kind of drunk the Kool-Aid and they've just, they've assumed that I'm going to be a multi-millionaire in six months, and it's going to be really easy, because that's what they told me on stage. Right? That's not what they told them on stage, of course, but that's what they heard.

00;07;54;05 - 00;08;21;03

Unknown

The truth is, those guys, there's a very high fail rate of people who think they're going to be, you know, masters of the universe of with no effort. The ones who really scale are the ones who build proper businesses. They're the ones who build, you know, the fundamentals of building teams, structures, processes, systems. And they they rigorously track performance metrics, etc..

00;08;21;05 - 00;08;46;15

Unknown

And so there's a journey that real estate investors go on where they start out. A lot of them start out as hopefuls, and then the ones that make it through the hopeful stage to the maybe I'm going to try and scale stage to the ones who make it to the eventual stage of mature businesses that, you know, like really developed, maybe doing many millions a year, tens of millions, some of them more.

00;08;46;17 - 00;09;20;08

Unknown

And so what I find is that that journey is really a good, a good part when you're starting to scale, when you when you go past, it's just me and you start to bring other people into the game. That's when smartphone and the systems become critical. Because, you know, when you start investing money in marketing and you start spending money on leads, when you start spending money on people who are going to be taking your place, making sales calls, that's when all the rubber hits the road.

00;09;20;10 - 00;09;42;17

Unknown

And with smartphone, because we're so deeply integrated with your real estate CRM, the system that's managing your data, your leads, your acquisition flow, your processes, your tasks, your people and everything right through the disposition. Because we're so deeply integrated, you have an efficiency for your team. They can just look at a lead, click, call it and have everything logged in.

00;09;42;24 - 00;10;07;07

Unknown

And you know yourself when you're making a sales call to someone, say you're following up with someone and you can. Before that call, you can look at the calls you did before the text messages exchange. You can remember that last time you you said you that they'd talk to their sister to find out about X. Well, the moment you get on that phone call and you say, hey, Tim, last time we talked to you, we spoke.

00;10;07;07 - 00;10;39;28

Unknown

You said you were going to talk to your sister. How did that conversation go? Right. That reference that you only get when your communications stream is integrated with your CRM, that reference point stops it from being a cold approach. Instead, you're following you're a warm follow up. You're you're you're someone I'm speaking to again. And so by using our system, which is fully integrated to your system, your CRM, but also all inclusive calls, texts, power dialing, you know, voicemail, mobile apps.

00;10;40;01 - 00;11;02;16

Unknown

By using that, your team, you have the visibility and the efficiency to scale and close more deals. Yeah. Okay. Well, I like that because it's what you said. It's more about building a business than it is just the phone system. It's about having the because I'm sure that your track in the numbers, I'm sure there's call recording. There's all this stuff.

00;11;02;16 - 00;11;18;06

Unknown

It sounds like there's an intense notes like that are generated now. There's I that it seems like can summarize everything. So I, I'm sure smartphone has leaned into that as well too. Correct on the AI side. And being able to to grab all that data for you.

00;11;18;08 - 00;11;36;27

Unknown

Yeah. And I actually, you know, there's a lot of elements of AI that we, that we brought in and the we continue to bring on, your point is absolutely true. The, you know, being able to capture if initially you could just capture voice, you know, recording. So you'd make a call, I would be recording, it would be in your CRM so you can listen to it.

00;11;36;27 - 00;12;00;26

Unknown

But now of course, in seconds you'll have a full transcription. Right. And that and again, that just leads to that efficiency where I can quickly look through. But another part of the AI, discussion, which it helps in scaling is, for example, we've we've integrated very recently over the last 6 to 10 months with a, Steve trains.

00;12;00;26 - 00;12;31;02

Unknown

Objection. Proof. I, which is a call scoring tool. So one of the things that happens when you build a team to scale is you have to worry about their performance. You have to, you know, you have to keep track of their performance or you're going to lose leads. And before you would see managers, you know, randomly picking recordings and listening to them, not efficient with a tool like with AI and a tool like objection proof.

00;12;31;04 - 00;12;55;25

Unknown

Steve trains objection proof selling. You every call is going to be scored by their AI model. And so you're going to be able to the system will tell you what were bad calls so that you can zero in on that performance and you can give the instant feedback to your agents so that they can maintain their the the quality of the process you want them to run.

00;12;56;01 - 00;13;19;14

Unknown

That's a game changer. That's only really available now and was a very manual process back then. Yes, it was a very manual process back then. I remember being in there and like, okay, the calls clicked and then boom, you're you're on the call with the person. But then having to go through and take the detailed notes, especially in Podio, to just like put it on that lead and all this stuff.

00;13;19;21 - 00;13;40;11

Unknown

Now it's much more efficient. It sounds like you've integrated also with one of the top, one of the top salespeople in the real estate space to be able to get the most out of those calls to in the most concise format. So it sounds like if you hand this lead off to someone else, or if someone comes in to be replaced, or if it's like, hey, we've got lots of leads, here's some of the past calls.

00;13;40;11 - 00;14;05;05

Unknown

It's more efficient to find those leads and to find how to be able to train that person. So there's like so many different applications of just that one, you know, just that one thing that you're talking about there. Now, is there anything else that you want to go over with like smartphone or like a system like this that helps them close deals or get the profit in the door or anything else, you know, that we might not have covered at this point?

00;14;05;07 - 00;14;35;00

Unknown

Well, I think, you know, the most important thing about, one of the fundamentals that everybody who goes in real estate for a long time learns is and it's a truism, but it's truism for a reason, because it's true. And that is the fortune is in the follow up. And, and, you know, where you have a smartphone tightly integrated with your system, then the follow up can be automated and no lead can be left.

00;14;35;08 - 00;15;05;25

Unknown

You know, I see so many new investors, they get really excited about new top of funnel leads. Right? I want more leads. I want more and more and more. Well, what are you doing with the leads? You've got the you know. And where you see the mature businesses that really scale are the ones that have a systematic approach to following up the leads they've got in their system, not just are, you know, aimed at, and always filling that top of funnel.

00;15;06;02 - 00;15;28;01

Unknown

They're looking to fill the top of funnel, but work the middle of the funnel as well and and push and never leave those leads to die. And that's where an integration with smartphone in your CRM, an ROI CRM is, is gold. Because in every case you can set follow ups that are automated cadences. They're automated tests your team.

00;15;28;03 - 00;15;52;18

Unknown

And very soon with some of the new AI tools we're building, where you're going to have an AI voice agent that can make those calls for you to warm people up. The that follow up is a critical part of a successful ROI business. And I think that's one of the things that smartphones integration with the ROI CRM really, really excels at is making that follow up happen.

00;15;52;20 - 00;16;14;17

Unknown

Automated and successful. Yeah, that gold really is in the follow up, because I remember that was one of our issues in the early days, and it was a godsend when we saw that little smartphone integration in there because we were like, you know, we we hadn't been following up very well, and that just made the follow up process easier of like being able to say, okay, where are we with this lead?

00;16;14;17 - 00;16;30;19

Unknown

And then let's click this button and like give them a call. And it just made the task system easier as well to to complete versus like, okay, do I have to go out to a dial or do something like that? So if this is already integrated in your system, this is something to very heavily look into if you're not already using it.

00;16;30;19 - 00;16;56;14

Unknown

And if you are looking to scale because this is a system that helps you scale up, which if they need more convincing, it sounds like you've written a book. Let's talk about the book that you've written and that is releasing here soon. I love okay, he already told me the name and I love it. Click call scale like boom, I, I love the simplicity of that title and it just tells it right there.

00;16;56;16 - 00;17;05;16

Unknown

Can you go into it? First of all, I want you to give the tagline and then second of all, like just going over what that book teaches.

00;17;05;18 - 00;17;28;07

Unknown

Absolutely. Well, so the book, as you say, click call scale. The tagline is, the real Estate Investors Ultimate Phone System Playbook. And it's really a summary of, you know, I've worked with real estate investors as a consultant and now as the as the co-founder and chairman of smartphone. I've worked with like hundreds to thousands of real estate investment companies over the years, and I've seen what works and what doesn't.

00;17;28;10 - 00;17;56;18

Unknown

I've trained sales teams. I've watched the best trainers like Steve and his team. I've worked with some of the best people who are working in 40 states. I've seen new investors just get off the ground. And so what I did was I thought it was a great time, particularly with all the technology changes. The truth is that getting in their phone, getting in their pocket, calling them is still your best way to reach the sellers.

00;17;56;18 - 00;18;25;12

Unknown

It just is. But there's so much out there and there's so much, honestly crap out there that I wrote the book to distill everything I'd seen and to give practical, scalable advice on compliance, on text messaging, on using power dialers, on training teams, and on fundamentals like fundamentals, like getting your data correct before you start calling, I'll give you an example.

00;18;25;12 - 00;18;49;28

Unknown

David. I, I always the first chapter in the book is about data. It's not about calling. And why is that true? And I give a story in the book about imagine if you've got bad data. Here's a scenario I see happen all the time. And that is I've got I've got David's contact in my system and I've got him in six times because I don't clean my data.

00;18;50;00 - 00;19;16;00

Unknown

And so David has the unfortunate, situation where he gets called in one day eight times by three different people in my company. How do you think David feels about being called eight times by three different people from the same company hassling him? He feels pretty, pretty angry. Not only is he not, you've lost that trust. You've lost that relationship and that lead.

00;19;16;06 - 00;19;40;02

Unknown

He may very well turn around and slap you is, tcpa tcpa violation. And and so the book really dives into the practical element of how you can use the phone system to scale your real estate investment business in steps that I've seen work time and time again, and warnings of things that I've seen, heard time and time again.

00;19;40;04 - 00;19;59;21

Unknown

Yeah. And you have a lot of this experience for building this company, because when we were talking, even beforehand, you said you bootstrapped this company and you've scaled it up, you know, like through your hard work, your efforts and the team there. And I don't know if any of that is reflected in the book or if you have any of the knowledge that you want to impart here of like, that journey.

00;19;59;21 - 00;20;27;27

Unknown

Like, how does that journey either affected the book writing process because a book is such a heavy lift, or how is it affected, like just how you teach other people now and like what they're going through or growing through as they scale? Well, one of the great things about like experience, nothing will ever be the experience and going through things through and you know, I before I, I, I co-founded smartphone with Alex and Vlad, my co-founders.

00;20;27;29 - 00;20;54;27

Unknown

Before we did this, you know, we all had consultancies where we build systems, etc.. Now all this we were selling our time. Really? Yeah. And, but having scaled, you know, we, we bootstrapped smartphone, you know, to just under 10 million last year, bootstrapped the whole way. 60 people. And so I've seen the challenge of going from three people when we started to six, from 6 to 12, from 12 to 25 and 20.

00;20;54;27 - 00;21;26;01

Unknown

You know, I've seen those challenges. I understand, you know, I've seen firsthand how you can develop teams, how you can, you can, build leadership into your teams, how important process and structure is without doing it in a way that kills culture. And you learn a lot and, and you, you also get this experience lets you look at scenarios and immediately recognize them and go, oh yeah, they I know where this is going.

00;21;26;04 - 00;21;53;18

Unknown

And a lot of that went into the book because I just sat back and I thought of everybody have worked with all the best things I've seen and all the worst. And my experience allowed me to kind of put them into boxes a little and create that, that understanding from having gone through it myself as well. Are there any mistakes that people make when it comes to phone systems, or to like what they think it can do or can't, or like?

00;21;53;18 - 00;21;58;17

Unknown

What are the things that you see tripped people up the most?

00;21;58;20 - 00;22;20;00

Unknown

So number one trip up is they only focus on it is a numbers game, so they'll buy and I mean that in a couple ways. They'll buy the cheapest data they can because they don't want to spend any money thinking, I'll just buy a big list and I'll hit them, and I'll just keep hitting it hard.

00;22;20;02 - 00;22;44;20

Unknown

And that is the exact wrong way to go about it. Be, you know, targeted, structured, intentional, the lists of people, and an A and a cadence and structure that will promote relationship building is the way to success. And where I see people just, you know, slam it and just trying to, you know, get their teams to make as many calls.

00;22;44;20 - 00;23;12;12

Unknown

I don't care just cocoa Google call those people tend to have the least success in terms of rates, connection rates, conversion rates, closing rates and all that. And they have the biggest risk of compliance and fines and lawsuits. So, you know, no. Absolutely. You know, the, the, the phone system is a surgical tool to build relationships and close more deals.

00;23;12;19 - 00;23;34;24

Unknown

It is not there for you to it is it is not work at its best when you're just throwing everything you've got against the wall and hoping something sticks. Yeah, that sounds a lot like just the business issues that a lot of people face. They just throw something against the wall to see what sticks. And it definitely is the same thing with the phone system.

00;23;34;24 - 00;23;56;27

Unknown

And I just, I, I don't know if you would agree with this, Jordan, but it seems like if you play that game with the phone system, you could get very heavily fined to where it could almost be business break if you're not doing things correctly. I spoke with one of our customers the other day, and they had a $98,000 fine.

00;23;56;29 - 00;24;24;25

Unknown

And how how many businesses do you know in the real estate game that can weather a $98,000 fine? Not that well, right. Like, not that many. Not that many. Right. And and and yeah, that now in in their case I actually think they were hard done by but the truth of the matter is, the truth of the matter is the, the compliance landscape is real.

00;24;24;27 - 00;24;49;03

Unknown

It doesn't mean you can't sell. It doesn't mean you can't connect with people. It doesn't. Cold calling is legal, but there are guardrails that you need to understand. And the book lays most of them out. And there are best practices and best practices is probably the best way of looking at it, because at the heart, most of you got two parts to this.

00;24;49;08 - 00;25;16;07

Unknown

One is a legal problem where the FCC tcpa whatever they're going to fine you or sue you, the attorneys general are going to sue you, whatever. That's a that's a big, bigger problem. But there's a secondary problem. And that is where you see people, whose connection rates, whose phone systems are basically the carriers stop paying, stop allowing them to make calls.

00;25;16;10 - 00;25;42;13

Unknown

The carriers simply stop processing their calls. And that happens because of behavior. It's not legal. It's not like an FTC lawsuit or anything, but it's where the carriers analyze the behavior that they're doing, and they're saying, this person's a spammer, let's get rid of them. And so best practice and the behavior and paying attention to these things, it's not that hard.

00;25;42;15 - 00;26;03;01

Unknown

The book goes through most of the things you need to know. But if you take it seriously, you'll be able to use the phone effectively to scale your business profitably. Now, I like that a lot. And you've said that a lot of this is covered in the book. So do you have a way they can get the book or something that you could point them to?

00;26;03;08 - 00;26;25;02

Unknown

You know, on that side? Absolutely. Well, actually, we will, I will give you a specific link that you can pop into the podcast, description, and that will give them a link to actually buy the book for free. Just pay the shipping costs. I think they're about 499, for shipping costs. The book will be delivered to you.

00;26;25;04 - 00;26;53;16

Unknown

Absolutely free of charge. And, and then you know what a great things is, because it's my book and smartphones, my company. There's lots of little, gifts that we include in the book. You know, opportunities to grab 5000 free minutes of calling, opportunities to get, discounts on, subscriptions. So there's not only you're going to get the best how to guide to scale your ROI business with the phone, but you're going to get a lot of little presents as well.

00;26;53;16 - 00;27;13;12

Unknown

And I'll give you that link, that you can put in the podcast description. Awesome. Yeah, we'll put it there. So that way they can have that. And if they want to look up smartphone days, you do they can they just go to smartphone that I oh is that where they can go to learn. You can you can go to a smartphone.io smartphone is without an A by the way.

00;27;13;15 - 00;27;29;08

Unknown

If you see it on my chest and smartphone that I, oh, you can sign up yourself. It takes about five minutes to sign up. Really very quickly. You can connect to any one of our 11 integrations if you're using one of our systems. Or you can go, and use it as a standalone.

00;27;29;10 - 00;27;51;20

Unknown

And, you can also, of course, find me. You can find me on LinkedIn and you can find me on the website. I'm always happy to give people, some of my time. I'm always I speak to customers every week, to make sure that I'm still listening to the pulse of things. I'm getting feedback. I'm hearing the good, the bad, the ugly, and I'm getting ideas for products.

00;27;51;23 - 00;28;13;18

Unknown

That's good stuff. Now, this has been very helpful, just going through your experience of learning the systems and what makes a good system, then how the system can help make the money. When a good time is to get a system. I like that you focused on that, where if you're starting to scale, if you're starting to hire, if you're starting to get more people on the team, you're like, you need a system around them, especially in the sales department.

00;28;13;24 - 00;28;30;07

Unknown

And I love how you also have the integrations to make sure that it's efficient to be able to grab the best calls and like what? What was working, what wasn't working, and just all the things that you've integrated it now, it's quite different than when I started using it eight years ago. And there's a lot better, and a lot of upgrades.

00;28;30;07 - 00;28;48;09

Unknown

I believe that's which is very, very cool. And then I do too, like that. You you hit on follow up, making sure that that you have a system in place for fall because the gold is in the follow up. And then the link will be in the show notes for the free book. So make sure you grab that link there.

00;28;48;13 - 00;29;04;08

Unknown

To be able to get that ebook, click call Scale. I still love that title. So that's where the book will be. This has been a great episode. And if you're wondering, like, okay, I have these leads, I have these deals, but I'm not making money. You can reach out to us at simple cfo.com. We help you keep what you're making.

00;29;04;08 - 00;29;26;00

Unknown

If you're going to play offense with Jordan and Smartphone to let us help you play defense and keep the money that you're going to go out there and bust your butt for and get on those calls and talk to sellers and all of that. So that's what we want to help you with. Jordan, thank you so much for taking your time here and explain not just what a system is, but how it helps you when you integrate it and all that.

00;29;26;03 - 00;29;43;19

Unknown

Absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for having me on. And, you know, it's been a pleasure to speak with you. At long last, this episode of The Profit First for our podcast is over. But there are plenty more where that came from. Are you ready to learn how David and his team can help implement the profit first system in your business?

00;29;43;21 - 00;30;04;10

Unknown

Schedule a discovery call at simple cfo.com right now. We'll see you next time on the Profit First for ROI podcast with David Richter.