The Future of Creative Marketing with Data and Mail with John Klingelhoets
Buying and holding real estate is the main topic for this conversation that we had with John Klingelhoets. He has been in the real-estate business for several years now and has a vast knowledge of buying and holding for his own portfolio. John talks about how he started the business by selling telephone equipment in high school to founding a startup that offers direct mail marketing service. Let's dive in as he went into detail concerning this aspect of his business, and his entrepreneurial journey.
John Klingelhoets (Founder of Robot Ink Marketing)
Besides being a seasoned real estate investor, John is also a real estate retired millionaire. He has been in real estate investing for over 10 years now, with his biggest goal to buy and hold his portfolio. Most of his properties are located primarily in Wisconsin. Cool thing is, all the home purchases he made are around the perimeter of where he lives. This explains why he owns a successful portfolio — he knows the area best being a local resident.
Not long after, he found another niche of finding really good deals. So he started doing wholesaling, and find deals for others. Now, this has become the other piece of real estate that he is working on, looking for deals all over the place.
What Does Robot Ink Marketing Do?
Robot Ink Marketing, a creative marketing company founded by John, offer off-market deals, wholesales, and a variety of strategies. These are all exclusive offers for their clients. Even though they work with new people all the time, but still find themselves hesitant and a little bit more cautious. As soon as they find a good off-market deal, they want to make sure people can follow through and close the deals without messing up.
Besides that, the company helps to mail product and take it to the retail space. The mailers are unique in that they're not flashy, as they’d normally use a #10 Security window envelope, a machine to handwrite the address on the envelope.
From Selling Telephone Equipment In High School
John started by selling business telephone equipment in high school, as an online business. He scoured from a variety of sources within a driving distance of where he lived. Later on, he managed to find bigger suppliers and he cleaned the equipment, turned around and sell them. What was junk to one company is a treasure to one man, he said.
Soon, they ran into a problem — they could not write enough mails. To solve the problem, they first break it into a bunch of sub-problems to solve. At that time, they were already doing data and building lists. So, they wanted to build a machine that was fully integrated, and they start building homemade machines.
Through this experience, John starts to learn what entrepreneurial journey is all about — solving problems.
Mindset When Getting Into The First Real Estate Deal
Buy and hold perspective:
If you’re going to be a buy-and-hold real estate investor, make sure that you're not thinking about getting rich quickly. That'd trigger your greed and leads to wrong decision.
Buy to appreciate:
Many people are buying with the anticipation of prices going up in the following year, while John thinks that having that expectation in mind is very risky.
Enjoying the journey:
John advises investors to just have fun doing real estate. If you're not having fun doing it, maybe real estate investing isn't for you, because when you do have problems there, it's just going to be miserable for you.
Investing Experience and Property Manager
John articulates the best moment of his real-estate career was handing over his investment portfolio to a property manager. He shared his stories of how they had day jobs, but in the evening he had to go fix all rental issues that had been reported that day.
He advises new investors to not immediately get property managers, so that they are able to manage their properties themselves. Doing things by yourself in the beginning gives you insight into what it takes on an intimate level. Do it for one or two years to begin with, and as the portfolio grows, delegate some of the tasks to the property managers.
Do’s and Don't in Entrepreneurship
Just do it
Start with where you are and learn as you go along. John sold telephone equipment when he was young, and that was the best business 101 boot camp for him, because he was doing it and learn new stuff along the way.
Build a solid foundation
Don’t outsource completely, even accounting. As mentioned, doing things yourself gives you more insight on what it takes to complete the task. For example, doing accounting for your own business would be a valuable skill as you understand how to truly read financial statements.
Small pivots are necessary
John expresses that success is shown by taking small pivots based on what is working and what you're doing. It's essentially a great way in business to see bigger success.
Reach Out to John Today
Email : john@roboticmarketing.com
Connect with his Instagram
