Why The Senior Living Industry Can Be Your Best Lead Source Yet With Phillip Vincent

Episode 435: Why The Senior Living Industry Can Be Your Best Lead Source Yet With Phillip Vincent

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There is not much inventory to go around in 2020 and probably for a good part of next year, but you can still find incredible buying opportunities if you know where to look. Mom’s House co-founder, Phillip Vincent joins Mitch Stephen in today’s episode to discuss how he found the senior living industry to be the best source of great leads. It’s a wholly different market than most of us would be used to, but it is a big one. We’re talking millions upon millions of buying opportunities from a different kind of motivated seller. Listen to the podcast to find out how you can cash in on this incredible niche and do good deeds while you’re at it.

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I’m here with Phillip Vincent. He is going to show you a niche that I’m sure you haven’t heard of because I hadn’t heard of it. If I haven’t heard of it, it’s way out there. That’s not necessarily true. There’s a lot of things I don’t know, but I thought this was clever. I can see why and how it works. I wanted to make sure that we got Phillip on the line here. Before we start, I need to pay homage to my sponsor, LiveComm.com. It’s a lead generation system. It has mass texting, it can record all your conversations on your phones and it captures every incoming caller’s cell phone number. I can show you a million ways or I could talk about it for an hour, but if you’ll go to Livecomm.com and watch the video on the home screen, I’ll show you how and why I averaged nine days on the market, about 100 houses a year. I average 10% to 15% down on my seller-financed homes. It has a whole lot to do with LiveComm and the little system I have set up and you can see exactly how it works. LiveComm.com, thank you very much. We paid the bills there, Phillip. Let’s do this. Where are you sitting now?

I am in my home office in Puerto Rico.

What a wonderful world we live in. I’ve been contemplating Puerto Rico myself, so maybe when I come down there to do my tour, you can show me around and tell me what not to do.

I’d be happy to. That’d be fun, Mitch.

Tell us a little bit about your background and what we’re going to talk about? I can’t wait for the people to know this.

I’ll be brief because nobody wants to read about some guy’s 22-year career story, that’s never fun. I started in this business backward. I started off when I was twenty years old as a developer and home builder, and most people aspire to get to that. I realized quickly that I didn’t like that job because I’m not a good adult babysitter. What I mean by adult babysitter is contracting. I wasn’t good with municipalities and what did not fit my personality. I worked my way back to being a wholesaler of all things, where everybody starts.

For me in my life, I like to solve people’s complex problems and then move on to the next one. I’m a deal junkie. You make your money the day you buy the house, not the day to sell it. That’s the culmination of what you thought was going to happen. Back in 2008, 2009, I felt like most people, the best deals have to be coming from REO properties. I would know about REO properties soon, but because of this seller look back period where it had to be owner-occupied, I would know about deals early, but I wasn’t able to buy them. Back in 2009, I set out to say, “Where are the best deals coming from?” You and I could spend the next three days talking about that subject.

We have investors reading, I’ve tried everything from pizza top box marketing, to church bulletins, to the Life Alert, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” I’ve marketed to people who bought those. I’ve done all your pay-per-clicks, millions of pieces of mail, Facebook. If it’s been done, I’ve done it, everything. Things like bandit signs and some things never fit my personality. I knew if I had to go out at 3:00 in the morning and hide from the cops so I wouldn’t get in trouble, then that isn’t the right business to be in. What we’re going to talk about is the best lead source that I’ve ever found.

I discovered it back in 2011. Mitch, it’s helping the adult children, when their parents are moving into senior living, at that exact moment that most responsible child I call them or this person might be 60 years old themselves is going through one heck of a time. They’re being pulled in four different directions. They’re still trying to take care of their parent. They’re trying to get the money ready for the senior living community. They’re trying to make their brother and siblings happy to live across the country. They are opinionated and haven’t helped much and then they still have a family at home. Their life didn’t stop because their mom got sick.

In that situation, that family has gotten a lot of bad news. It happens where mom fell again. What I mean by that is mom’s doing the best she can. Stereotypically, dad passed away eight years ago. Mom’s been doing the best she can. She fell down again. This time she had to have hip surgery and the doctor comes in and says, “In three weeks, when mom gets out of rehab, she cannot move back home on her own.” The brother and sister are looking at each other like, “What?” It’s literally called crisis management. When you start to take mom around to the different places in town, the question comes up, “Are we moving mom by me? Are we moving mom by my brother who’s in North Carolina? Are we moving mom where she lives now? Are we picking the most expensive place?” It’s because of guilt, no one picks the cheapest place.

I always say that the kids try to pick the shiniest chandelier. When you find out what that shiny chandelier cost per month for mom’s care, immediately, Mitch, they go, “We’re going to need to sell the house.” That’s what I’m teaching people how to do, is build relationships in the senior living world. There are about nine different stakeholders that are having that trusted conversation with those families in that time of need. When you do it the right way, you’ll build an oil well of free leads continually.

When I saw this, at first, I had my doubts and then I started thinking about it. We have the biggest number of Baby Boomers, like 10,000 a day or whatever, that are retiring. I heard it described as a basketball. This population is like a basketball moving down a garden hose. It’s going to cause a lot of problems, but wealth comes from chaos. When there are a lot of problems, there are a lot of opportunities for people who know how to solve the problems. You’re right squarely in the middle of a big demographic, it’s a definite need. I saw a book on this one time. Do you have anything to do with that book on senior living?

I’ve written a book on senior living. I don’t think we’re talking about the same one though. Maybe we are.

That was the first time I’d ever heard of it. I blew past it. I then saw your story and I thought, “I better stop, slow down and pay attention to this.” One of the things I do is I have four acquisition managers and what I like to do when I find a good idea is to pick one of those acquisition managers and go, “How about I work with you and you work this lane? You stay in this lane.” It’s tough to find inventory now. I’m not going to lie about it. There’s a lot of competition, COVID shut down foreclosures and evictions. It’s pushed off people’s problems for a while. Delayed it. We’re in this limbo-land. MLS listings are down because no one wanted infectious people potentially in their home. Instead of doing 100 houses in 2020, it looks like I’m going to be lucky to hit 65. I’ve been hitting 100 plus or minus a couple for two decades. It’s refreshing to have a new idea that makes sense. You’re teaching this to people, but you’re not teaching it like this Isn’t a game for novices. You’re trying to find someone who has a game so you can up their game. Is that right?

That would be the best person. Somebody who’s a novice can be taught if they have the right mindset. Normally who this works for is that guy doing 10 to 20 a year that wants to get to 50. He thinks in his or her mind that the only way to do it is to double or triple their marketing budget. That’s the way we got to spend to win is what we’ve been taught. I’m here to tell you, it’s not that way. You threw that stat out, which I love, that 10,000 people a day turn 65, but I’m going to give you two stats that should open everybody’s eyes. It’s 15,000 people a day are turning 75 and that’s much closer to the customer that I have.

The stat that everybody needs to know is 70% of Americans over the age of 65 will live in some assisted care before they pass away. What I’m going to tell you is millions upon millions of opportunities to buy houses. Mitch, you work probate deals in your career. Probate is my second favorite lead source. There was a simple reason why. If Mitch and Phillip are brothers and our mother has passed away and a probate case is open, you and I care about every single dollar that that house sells for because of what’s in it for us. We lost her mom so we’re not in that good of mindset, but when mom’s moving into senior living, nobody’s mad at Nana that she got older. If you sell that house for $92,000, $88,000, or 86,000 it doesn’t matter because that money is going to go into a bucket.

It’s crisis management. We’ve got to do something. We can’t wait around. I don’t have time to sit here for an extra $4,000 or $10,000. We got to do something.

If you get an extra $4,000, that difference between mom’s pension and that shiny chandelier that we put her in, you might’ve saved the State of Texas one month. I’m not saying you take advantage of anything. That’s not even close to what I’m saying. I’m saying that the seller’s mindset is different than every other lead source I’ve ever worked. When it’s referred from the right stakeholders, it’s like a layup. These are the best leads, hands down. I’ll take the Pepsi Challenge with any lead source because I’ve been doing this for many years and there, they are the best. In this world we live in, Mitch, I do something that’s good for the community. I see the weight come off of the family’s shoulders because they’re going through so much. Let’s talk about it. Sometimes, almost every family knows a realtor. They call the realtor up and what the first thing the realtor says when they walk into that house that has been lived in for 40 years?

This house has to be updated. 

It starts with clean this place out, and then you get to rehab it. I can show you on paper that it could easily take six months to get that house cleaned out, rehabbed, on the market and sold before that cash comes back to the family’s pocket. Let alone that with the siblings on average live 400 miles away from mom’s house. That’s how far away they live. You live in Texas. It’s hard to do a rehab when it’s across town, let alone across the country.

Across the street, it’s hard. We have a number to get.

Everybody’s like, “The market’s good.” I’m like, “You better believe the market’s good. Do you know what else is hard to do? Rehab a house because the good contractors are busy.” Let alone being a one-off person. The other big thing is when you do this at scale, you said you do 100 deals a year. Even the people that do twenty-plus deals a year, we’re at a scale where we can do it for much less than the layperson can. In that is the profits that we make, that we can do that rehab for less. We add value to these families. They can net the same amount, but they can get their money in 2 to 3 weeks instead of six months and a question mark. That’s where this comes in. What I do is not sexy by any stretch. It’s not trendy. No matter who the future president might be or not be, no matter what the economy is, this is going to be a needed niche because it’s bigger than you think. Seventy percent of Americans over the age of 65 will need it. It’s a huge market.

Senior Living Leads: About 70% if Americans over 65 will live in some form of assisted care before they pass away. That’s millions of opportunities to buy houses.

What are you giving away some something to our readers?

I want to help people build a list of the stakeholders to work with. We don’t have time to go into all nine of those.

Go to 1000Houses.com/vincent.

It’s funny, people tell me all the time when I tell them who they need to network with, they always say, “Phil, I don’t have time to network.” I say, “Do you ever buy houses from wholesalers?” They’re like, “Yes. All the time.” “Do you ever buy houses from realtors?” “All the time.” They said, “Where did you meet those people?” I said, “I was out networking. I got to juggle.”

If you’re not networking, you’re not selling. No matter what business you’re in, you’re a salesperson and you’ve got a network or someone’s got a network.

Let me give you an example though of what happens. People hear me and they think they’re going to walk into a senior living community and figure this out on their own. I put my foot in my mouth often and I kept coming back because I’m a little thick-headed. The problem is this, Mitch, they want to put you in 1 to 2 boxes. They want to think of you as a shark investor. That’s not good or they think of you as a realtor, I would say that’s even worse because they already know what a realtor is. They already have a realtor, that archaic way to fix this problem is what the problem is.

The senior living industry has a problem and that is their customers only live with them on average 28 months. If you owned apartment buildings and you knew your customers are only going to live 28 months, what I do is I add months on the front end. I’m going to give you a sentence right now that your readers should know. This sentence has made me $1 million. It’s do you ever have a situation where they want to move mom in, but they can’t until they get the house sold? It’s followed by a chuckle and they say, “Phillip, every single day, that’s my job in this business. It’s to try to help that family figure that out.” The way it’s being done, Mitch, is they figure it’ll work itself out in the retail market. I’m here to tell you what we offer is a better option for these families that are going through a lot.

I want you to go to 1000Houses.com/vincent and check it out. You also are going to have over there some information on your coaching, although I understand you select. You’re like me and I appreciate this a lot. You don’t want to take someone’s money. You want to work with someone that you feel like you know you can help, which is a great place to be. It means you’re not a millhouse and you can’t do hundreds of thousands of people a year or even thousands of people a year, but you’re not into that and neither am I. One-on-one, to me means one-on-one. I’m going to talk to you about it and when you pick up the phone and call me. When you do that, you’re going to be talking to a guy who has twenty years of experience. I can’t sub that out no matter how I want to and neither can you. Tell us a little bit about how one-on-one works with you. Is it close to that?

I love to take the calls. I love to talk to investors every day. I want to try to help people grow their business from where they are without making the marketing. In fact, what I do has a zero marketing budget. As investors, sometimes we spend 90% of our time trying to make our phone ring, and we want to be in the house buying business, but we spend most of our time in the marketing business. Why do I say this maybe is not the best thing for a newbie? It’s not because they’re new. It’s not that at all. It’s when you deal in the senior industry, it only comes down to trust.

I can’t stress it enough. For them to refer to you, there needs to be trust. I like wholesaling. The problem comes in is that the newbies only have wholesaling in their tool belt as their only option to buy. If and when they don’t get it wholesale, what do they do? They back out of a contract. That stuff keeps me up at night because that butterfly effect will reverberate through my network and it won’t be good. Every decision I make in my business is to try to put the adult child first, not the senior.

The senior is being helped by their adult child who’s now making decisions for their parents. I want to make sure that that person has some good news and getting stood up at the closing table with a wholesaler who couldn’t close. I can’t have it happen. My only prerequisite is either you let me buy the deals from the people so that way they know they’re going to be solid or get your bank relationships right. Here’s all I want out of people, Mitch, can you do what you say? That’s all I need. If people can do what they say, they can be part of this.

I’d like to make a plug for the sponsor here. LiveComm.com is a good follow-up system because you can take the first name of all those. We can do it like how there’s mail merge and you use people’s first name. One of the things I like about LiveComm is you can text merge. If you have 100 leads going that a real strong now, but they haven’t committed, in one time you can send out a text to all 100 of them. It’ll use their first name and then you can put in the variable of the property. You can send out a text that says, “John, I’m still interested in 123 Main Street. Have you gotten closer to making a decision?” That will go out to 100 people like that in less than 60 seconds. I like this company. It’s effective. It’s affordable. It’s $0.2 per person. The cost is not even an issue. Just get in there and learn how to use it. I have two questions. What’s the best thing that ever happened to you in this business, marketing to these people?

Are we talking about profits or a feel-good story?

I leave it in your core.

Profits are easy. I hate to be the guy showing off the check. There’s a lot of money in our businesses that’s why we’re in real estate.

What’s the most you’ve ever made from this marketing lead? 

It’s $300,000.

Next subject, what’s the best thing that ever happened?

I saved the lady from getting catfished. Do you know what the term catfished is?

Yes. Someone who is posing as someone else.

A lady was trying to sell her house. She was getting catfished and we got the authorities involved and saved her from that happening. She was going to send all the money from her house sale to that person. I knew it. I smelled it from the beginning. I knew nothing was right. It rings in my head sometimes. She told me, “I didn’t want to be alone.” Now we’re active, vibrant people. We don’t think about the future. In the senior living world, everyone should go explore a senior living community one of these days because it should make you grateful for the mobility that you have now.

What’s the most difficult thing? What’s been the most challenging or the worst thing that’s happened?

Senior Living Leads: No matter what the economy will be, this is going to be a needed niche because it’s bigger than you think.

The worst thing that’s happened to me?

I like to cover both sides. Everyone talks about the pretty side, but there are issues with the business. There’s a downside sometimes.

When you get in any new business and we’re teaching networking, not everybody likes you or me. What’s great about this, I’m not saying you had to go out and build 100 relationships. If you even have 10 to 20 people that know you in this business, you can do some damage. You got to find your tribe. It’s no different than people networking with real estate agents. You might hit a home run with somebody, they love you, they come to you all the time and somebody might not ever call you back. It’s having duck feathers and letting things roll off your back that you’re not going to make everyone love you, but that’s okay. I liken it to the analogy you used before. “There are many leads in what I do. It’s like taking a 5-gallon bucket out of the ocean.” You take your scoop out and you’re happy, but it’s still an ocean when you’re done. You didn’t put a dent on that basketball going through the hose. That’s how big this is.

You’re giving away is it a video or is it a book? What are you giving away?

It’s a sheet on exactly the search terms that you should do in your local cities to build out who these relationships should be built with. You’re trying to figure out who it is. I’m going to tell you exactly who it is.

You already figured out who it is. Let’s find out. These are the places you need to go to start generating interest. You then find out who’s motivated or who’s friendly. You start narrowing it down and stick to those guys.

It’s mainly the job title and each job title has its own what’s in it for them. I love to be on the same side of it. I’m not selling them anything. I want to sit on the same side of the table with them to fix the problem that they face every day. When I do that, they love to call Philip. They’re going to say, “I got a guy that buys the house. Don’t fix that house up. Don’t clean it out. Don’t list it. Don’t rehab it, call Phillip.” When that happens, Mitch? Game over.

I want you to go to 1000Houses.com/vincent. That’s short for Phillip Vincent. Get this list of vendors that you need to know. If you’re going to start in this business of people, job titles that you need. You need to know how to address them, what the objections are, what they need, and how you can talk to them. Anything you want to say to the readers out there before maybe we wrap it up.

Mitch, thank you for having me on. I like a guy that’s had the longevity that you have. One of these days I’ll get down to your river walk. I’ve been hearing it’s a cool place to be, and I’ve never made it there. Thank you for having me on. I’m an open book and I look forward to sharing value with your readers.

Thank you. I’d like to thank LiveComm for being the sponsor. Go to LiveComm.com. It’s live communication. Watch the video on the homepage and see for yourself why I averaged only nine days on the market, less now, but I’ll be conservative and average about 15% down payments from my owner finance buyers. Check it out at LiveComm.com. Thank you for stopping by to get you some Phillip Vincent and we’ll see him and hear from him more. I’m sure.

Thank you.

Important Links

• https://1000Houses.com/phillip
• 1000Houses.com/vincent
• 1000Houses.com/Livecomm
• 1000Houses.com/TaxFreeFuture
• 1000Houses.com/coaching
• Phillip Vincent

About Phillip Vincent