Bill Allen is the CEO and Owner of 7 Figure Flipping a real estate organization based out of Nashville, TN. He and his team currently flip and wholesale 200+ deals per year in Tennessee and northern Florida, while leading the top house flipping and wholesaling mentoring groups in the nation.
Bill began his career as a Naval Officer with 18 years of military experience and discovered through the avenue of real estate, that his calling is leading others by helping them find their own success through networking and accountability. This year, 2021, Bill is the author of 7 Figure Flipping Underground: How expert real estate investors find hidden properties, negotiate the best deals, and build profitable businesses.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Bill Allen about teaching real estate investors to negotiate the best deal.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How being a salesperson requires being a good storyteller.
– Why using a value ladder can help you sell high ticket items.
– How writing a book can make people trust you and your business quickly.
– Why a book funnel can be a great tool to get clients and up-sell them.
– How having a mentor or a coach can be game changing for entrepreneurs.
Connect with Bill:
Links Mentioned:
7FFbook.com
Guest Contact Info:
Instagram
@billallenrei
Facebook
facebook.com/7figureflipping
LinkedIn
Linkedin.com/in/bill-allen-rei
Rob Kosberg:
Hey, welcome everybody. It’s Rob Kosberg with another episode of our Publish. Promote. Profit podcast. I have a great guest for you. I love the real estate investing space, and we’re going to be talking about that a good bit. In the next few minutes. Bill Allen is the CEO and owner of 7 Figure Flipping, real estate organization based out of Nashville. For those of you that know, I lived in Nashville for a time, love it. He and his team currently flipping wholesale 200 plus deals a year in Tennessee and north Florida, while leading the top house flipping and wholesaling mentoring groups in the nation.
Bill began his career as a Naval officer with 18 years of military experience. Still in the military now and discovered through the avenue of real estate that his calling is leading others by helping them find their own success through networking and accountability. Bill’s the best-selling author of 7 Figure Flipping Underground: How Expert Real Estate Investors Find Hidden Properties, Negotiate the Best Deals, and Build Profitable Businesses. Bill, thanks so much for being on the podcast. Looking forward to talking to you today.
Bill Allen:
Yeah. Thanks for having me, Rob. This is exciting, because I’ve never really talked about my book like this, so I’m really excited to talk about that or wherever we’re going to go.
Rob Kosberg:
It’s all about the book, baby. It’s all about the book. So with us anyway. You told me that it took you a couple years to write the book. Maybe start if you would with what you’re thinking was a couple years back or however long ago, when you started writing the book and what you thought it would be versus what it ended up being. And I’m sure there’s some pain involved in that, but I loved to hear the idea of why you started writing it, why you pushed through, et cetera.
Bill Allen:
I’ll take you back all the way to when I was a little kid. I wrote it in the dedication. I remember writing this was, it always brought like tears to my eyes and talking about it and reading it for the book, for the audio book. Right. When I was a kid, my dad was published in the World Book Encyclopedia. So, I don’t know how old your listeners are, but when I was a kid, we had all these encyclopedias, the Encyclopedia Britannica, the World Book Encyclopedia. My dad was an engineer, kind of a nerd, right. A lot like me and he got published in that World Book Encyclopedia. And it was this coveted thing that he showed to me when I was a kid, and I was so proud of him, and he was proud of himself and all these other people were talking about it. And right then I was like, you know what? That’s amazing. That will always exist. Even after he goes. And so I said like the written word is something that lasts after us if we allow it to.
So, I didn’t even remember that story for years, and years and years, but when I looked at growing my business, growing myself, I knew that I wanted to write books, not just a book, but books. And I had all these ideas and different things that I wanted to do. And I really could never find the thing that pushed me to do it because I would just get stuck and say like, oh, I’m not an author. I’m not a … I’m an engineer. I’m numbers. I’m data and numbers, and I really don’t work very well in the creative when it comes to sitting down and writing.
I wasn’t very good in English. I wasn’t very good at writing a essays and stories. And so I started becoming a better storyteller because I had to. I sell high ticket products from stage. My main job of what I do is to encourage people and to push them a little bit to do more than they think they can do on their own as a mentor or in a coach and things like that. And so when I, that was even a challenge. So all of this stuff boils down to the fact that I knew I wanted a book. I’m going to grow my business. I need something that is a tangible item that I know will bring people into my world. And it also really elevates a status that you have. I mean, it makes you an authority.
If you have a book, it doesn’t matter if you don’t know what you’re talking about. People think you know what you’re talking about. It’s very interesting to see. And in my bio, you said bestselling author. I don’t even know who put that in my bio. It’s the bestselling book that I have, but it’s definitely, I’m not on any list. And really we sell our book very differently than most people. So that’s a little bit of the story. I mean, I could go lots of different places, but I just remember being a kid and my dad doing that. And then when I wrote this book being so proud yeah that I got it finished finally, and was able to tell that story in the dedication to him and say, “Dad, I hope you’re proud of me.” Because like really ultimately when I go back to it, that’s really a lot of what’s wrapped up in who I am and what I do is family, friends, the legacy that I leave behind and all that stuff.
Rob Kosberg:
Thank you for sharing that. Maybe let’s take a step back if we could. I’d like to hear a little bit about your business and your model. I like what you just shared about what you do. You sell high ticket from the stage. You push people to do more than they think they can. Talk to me about what your business is and what the model is to grow that business.
Bill Allen:
I run a couple different companies, but if you think of the company that you talked about, where we’re flipping in wholesale houses, totally separate entity that I started with and got to doing a couple million dollars a year in that business. And then I became a coach for a real estate coaching program. And it was a mastermind group that I joined. I always joke that I’m like the Hair Club for Men guy. If you remember that commercial, I’m going back around the same time probably, but I’m not only a client, but I’m also the president, but I’m also a client. Right? And so I was one of the first members paying $25,000 in this mastermind group. And I was flying airplanes full-time for the Navy. And I was flipping one house a year for a couple years.
And I did 67 houses the first year after I joined that program. And then I did 135, then I did 187. Then we did over 200 a year for the next three years. And so that thing was the catalyst to my success. And it was a group called 7 Figure Flipping. And almost three years ago now, I had the opportunity, so I became a coach. I became the COO and then the owner and founder of that company, he was getting a little frustrated and was ready to do something different. And so I had the opportunity to buy the company. I said no at first. And then I did. It was like three days between me saying there’s not a chance that I would ever do that and me buying a company, not knowing what I was doing.
And so that took me into this place of marketing and sales and speaking from stage and having to make offers and things like that and learning the area that I never learned before. And in that, we had a little book. We basically did before I owned it, we had done some interviews with 15 high level entrepreneurs and just sandwiched it together as a book and sold it on a free plus shipping book funnel. And it was fairly successful. And we actually saw some people coming into our 25,000 hour mastermind group from that. And so I said, okay, there’s something there, but this is obviously, it’s not mine. I own the rights to it, but it’s not my story. My story’s in there, but I was being interviewed. So I want to write something for me.
So, my business big picture looks like we have a lot of front-end lead magnets that come in. So, our coaching program and our mastermind group. We have front end lead magnets that come in and we build out a value ladder structure where it might be a contract or some document or a case study or a book in this case, or the podcast that I have or our email list that you’re getting onto, a newsletter that we’re sending out, whatever it is on the front end. It’s free or very cheap. And then we have a video course. That’s the next step. It’s used to be $2,000 a year. And now it’s, we just launched at $97 a month on a continuity. So people can just pay monthly, like Netflix subscription. And then we’ve got a $15,000 entry level mastermind group. And then we have a $25,000 next level mastermind group, which is people who are flipping and wholesaling consistent basis that are trying to grow and scale.
And then I have a $50,000 entrepreneur mastermind group. That’s a small group that works one on one with me that I just launched in January. So, if you can think we just are moving people up this success path we call it. Right? Value ladder you might call it if you’re the front end business owner. And just meeting them where they need to. Some will come in horizontally, but mainly they come in early stage and stay with us for years and years and years.
And that’s our business model we have. We do events. I’ll do almost 60 events this year live and virtual. I bought a church that’s 16,000 square feet this year to do events from. Build a stage in a studio and all that stuff.
Rob Kosberg:
In Tennessee?
Bill Allen:
In Tennessee, yep. It’s in Spring Hill, right down the street from my house. I’m very lazy. I don’t want to go very far from my house. My last office was 500 yards from my house. This one’s three miles and I’m actually really upset. It’s so far away. So that’s what our business looks like. I do two big conferences a year, one in June for multifamily, one in October for single family. And the majority of our sales come from those conferences. I’ll do three to 4 million in sales from those. And we spend the rest of the year fulfilling those orders if you will. I mean, I hate talking about our people like that, our tribe, but I mean, if for any other business owner that’s working, that’s listening out there, that’s effectively what it is. We fulfill the orders through the year, and then we have some people that come in, maybe anywhere between five and 10 high ticket purchases throughout the year just from booking sales calls and things like that from whatever front-end products we have.
Rob Kosberg:
So, couple questions come to mind, and then I want to get more into the book and the book funnel and that stuff. You mentioned 60 events a year. That’s a lot of events. Five events a month. Is it the more standard old school real estate where you got the pre-sale events where you’re selling a ticket to the thing or what? Talk to me. What are these 60 events? You shared two big ones. What are the other 58?
Bill Allen:
The two big ones are the open to public events. You buy a ticket, you come. It’s three day conference. It’s not the, we don’t do a lot of the come here for free then we’re going to upsell you, and then we’re going to upsell you again, and we’re going to upsell you again at all these different event structures. Like, max out your credit card, call and increase the limits. We’re not that company. We’re actually trying to put those companies out of business. If this is the place for you, come stay with us. And so six of those are fulfillment events for the customers for the year. So we have mastermind retreats that we do. We’re going to Cancun in a couple weeks for a whole week with all of our people. We’ll have 280 people down in Cancun doing a mastermind retreat.
Then in July, we have one in Chicago. We’re going to have another one here in July at our new office building for some of the newer folks that we just announced for them that they didn’t expect to get, even though they paid us 15,000. They didn’t get it and we’re adding it in. So six of those are fulfillment. Two are main, big open to the public. The other ones are private. You have to be a member to come. And then what we found last year for most people that are listening, the biggest thing was when we looked at who came into world, on average, if they didn’t already know me, like me and trust me like family members or somebody who knows one of my family or very close friends that is being referred, it took two and a half events for them to buy a high ticket item, like a 15 to $25,000 thing.
So, we tracked everybody through from the last three years that I owned the company, all the data that we had, and it took two and a half events. So what we decided was we wanted to figure out how to put on more events, live events, virtual events that are open to the public and free typically. Just to come not selling anything really. Just come, get to know us and have more touchpoint. So when you come to the big event and if anybody’s coming to our event, they’re listening to all the secrets, right? Come to our event. It’s called Multifamily Live and Flip Packing Live. You’ve come to that event. And if you’ve already been to one and a half or more events with us, so one or two events, then that’s the conversion event. And we can potentially accelerate the trust by a year or two when it’s a longer term cycle that we have with a client. And I thought-
Rob Kosberg:
The 50 or so events, are they one day events? Are they two hour events, half day workshops? What are they?
Bill Allen:
Yeah, pretty much that. A couple hours, half day workshops. So we built a real estate investment club here at the office. We bought the office specifically to launch a local REIA Real Estate Investment Association. And so what I do is I teach on a Thursday night, and we do an hour of networking before. We do about an hour and a half of me teaching. And then we do about an hour of networking after. And we also stream that virtually as well for all the people all around the country. And then the next Tuesday, I do a half day deep dive on that topic. So I’ll teach a framework on Thursday night and then I’ll do a really deep dive for the more advanced investor on Tuesday where I share my screen. I go into it. So Thursday is put on for the audience in person, and then we also stream.
So, the streaming people are kind of secondary. And then the Tuesday is taught to the camera and the stream and people can come into the studio and attend live and ask questions that they want to, because I love a live audience. If you give me this camera, I have like TV screens, all behind the camera. I can see 500 people on our virtual events, but I would much rather teach to five people in the audience and 500 people on the other side. I need the energy. So yeah, it’s a mix of all of that stuff. We also do like half day accelerators, two day virtual events, things like that. It’s very much a free event model. And then you come to the free and then I’ll sell you a ticket to the live event, like 397, 297 a ticket, bunch of bonuses. And then you come to the live event and that’s when I’ll make an offer of a higher ticket product.
Rob Kosberg:
And so, at most of these events, are you pitching at the end the soft pitch on the ticket to the live event? Is that kind of the thing?
Bill Allen:
Yes. So normally on the REIAs, I haven’t been doing that as much. I’m don’t not really selling anything yet.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, you see them every week as it is, right?
Bill Allen:
Yeah. Most of them what I found is most of them already have tickets to this stuff. They’re on our email list. They’ve come into our funnels. They’ve bought something from us. They have tickets. And so really what it is it’s just another touch point to build trust, to get them to the point where I’ve added so much value to them that when there is a $15,000 offer, they’re like, I think I owe this guy like 50 grand by now. So it’s a no brainer to do it. I just joined $150,000 mastermind group for a year with one of my mentors.
I joined Russel Brunson’s Category Kings group this year. I’ve just been waiting for him to open the inner circle. Right? And so, I mean, Russell’s given me million … I’ve made millions of dollars from the stuff that he wrote in his books, give me for free, all that stuff. So it’s absolutely amazing. Maybe that’s where we got connected.
Rob Kosberg:
So, let’s then switch over if we could, and let’s talk a little bit about the book and the book funnel, specifically how you’re using it and what that looks like. So you’re super well versed in free plus shipping and all that. So just literally walk me through exactly what the strategy is, exactly what the steps of the funnel as much as you can remember. Even what some of your stats are, if that’s okay.
Bill Allen:
I don’t have the stats in front of me, but I’ll tell you. I know where our targets are. So there’s a couple things. The biggest thing for me when I was sitting down to write this book was I wanted to accelerate that trust factor. Right? So the same thing that I talked about for all the events was the purpose of this book. I wanted to build credibility, give tactics, but also give belief change. So the book is not just a regurgitation of all the tactics that we use in real estate. It’s a lot of belief change and shifts, and also a lot of success stories from our members. Where you start reading it and you’re like, wow. So it’s half story, half tactic, somewhere around there. And so in there, there’s a ton of CTAs inside the book, different links and things.
We set up an entire workbook. What you do is inside the book, so the funnel for the book is 7FFbook.com. And then I think inside of there, and what I knew is people give away books. They read a book and they give it away. Right. So I wanted to figure out how to capture the person, the five people that they gave it to, or somebody that finds it in the house they just moved into or something like that. So there’s an opt-in portion inside there right in the beginning. I think it’s 7FFFworkbook.com. And when you go there, then there’s an opt-in to get the workbook that goes along with the physical copy or the audio book. So it’s like 40 or 50 pages of stuff that just has all the exercises that are in there towards the end. Every chapter has an exercise to do.
You’re writing out limiting beliefs. You’re writing out all these things and you can download it. And also it’s digitally on PDF. So that in and of itself is a funnel too. So you go to 7FFFbook.com. It’s free plus shipping. So shipping is 7.95. Yep. That’s about what it costs us. They’ll break even, before ad spend for us. And then from there, the first, the next upsell is an audio book. So for 9.95, 9.97, somewhere around there, we have a download of the audio book that you’d get, which we actually kept this book off of Amazon. And we kept it off of Audible for the initial launch for quite some time. And I had no desire to sell it on Amazon at all. I would much rather you come through my funnel obviously, because I want to own your email address, that information and stuff.
So, when you buy it from Amazon, we don’t know that you did. However, what we found was people wanted to buy it on Amazon. So we put the price up kind of high. And I think it’s 19.95 on Amazon, and they’re buying it on Amazon. And they’re opting into our workbook. So the fact that we have a funnel inside the book is allowing us to capture the people from Amazon anyway. So we are now talking about dropping the price significantly on Amazon to 99 cents or something, something crazy and just pay to get them out there and become one of the top sellers in real estate and get the book out there because then they’ll still opt into us on the workbook right inside the book. It’s all over. I mean, it’s 15 different places inside the book.
So, the that’s the first upsell, is the audio book. We probably get about a 30 to 40% take on the audio book. It’s very high at least for what I think it should be at. And then I did this thing called the 500K Challenge. It’s a money raising challenge that I did. It’s a 30 day video challenge. It’s some of the best content I ever put together. And we don’t charge hardly any money for it at all. I just want them to commit to it. So even our $25,000 customers have to pay $100 to get the challenge. And so our next upsell there is a $29 challenge. So they get the 500K Challenge for 29 bucks instead of 100. And that’s about a 15% take on that. And what I mean is not, you have to take the audio book to take 15%.
I mean, 15% of the book purchases go through that too, whether they buy the audio or not. And then we have, the next step is our ticket. We have a live ticket OTO there. And so that’s pretty low. I found that is actually very low. I think we’ve sold. And sometimes it’s a mistake. Like somebody’s like, oh crap. I hit no I don’t want it, but it’s yes I want it. And it’s automatically charged to their credit cards. They’re asking for a refund. I would say I could oddly count on two hands the number of people that have bought a ticket through that funnel. So we’re redesigning that right now.
What I found is I think that’s, it’s not real expensive of an event, but it’s like a high-ticket purchase. It’s the dates, it’s the time away from the family. It’s the flight, hotel. It’s a $2,500 trip. But that’s what it looks like ultimately. And we, I just drive a ton of traffic there. People find me. I have a farmer’s market here in Spring Hill, Tennessee. People are going to the farmer’s market. They’re going to my Facebook page. It’s on the banner. In the background, they’re buying my book. From social media. It’s crazy.
Rob Kosberg:
I am going to go through the funnel, which I want to do whenever I find a good book funnel, free plus shipping. I generally go through buy a bunch of stuff, record it all. And I’m going to do that. I am going to ask a favor. I’m writing a new book funnel book, and I did not know. I don’t think we were connected via the inner circle, but I’m going to ask a favor if it’s okay. And that is, if you could get me the stats of your book, I’d love to see them and I can include some of this in my book funnel book, if that’s okay with you.
Bill Allen:
I have them all because I sent them all Russell for the inner circle book that he sent out. So I have that, and then I can give you current ones now. Yeah.
Rob Kosberg:
What does it cost you to acquire a customer on the front end, a book buyer, and then what is your average order value, total average order of value? Where are you at with the funnel statistics there?
Bill Allen:
I wish I had better numbers and answers for you on the value of the customer, because we’ve had a real challenge. We just shifted over CRMs and tracking to figure out where these people are ultimately coming from. But I’ll tell you, it was costing us on Facebook about $15 to sell a book.
Rob Kosberg:
Cheap. That’s amazing.
Bill Allen:
Yeah. I’ll tell you, that’s not at scale. So it’s not at scale at all. So these are more like awareness ads in beginning, and then bringing them down into a much more targeted audience where we’re running traffic to them. And they think that we’re crushing their Facebook account and we’re spending millions of dollars when we’re spending $1,500 a month. So it’s not … Those aren’t big enough numbers for you for me to say, oh yeah, I can acquire a customer for $15 to sell a book to because it’s … I think you need to quantify that with 10,000 books too and not just a couple.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. You want to be selling 30, 50 a day probably in your space.
Bill Allen:
Yes.
Rob Kosberg:
And maybe even scale it to 100 a day, something like that.
Bill Allen:
Yeah, we’re not doing that. When you see our numbers, these are very specific and targeted people that are coming into our world that we’re warming up, getting on calls with, things like that. So these are not at scale book sales at $15. If somebody could do that for me, I’d be very, very happy. So the numbers. If somebody’s listening to this, I don’t want them to think that we’re absolutely killing it because we’re not. We might sell, I don’t know. We might sell a 100 books a month. Yeah. So not, we’re not … this was build it, launch it, and then just like every other entrepreneur out there, I move on to the next thing. And it’s out there and it’s producing, but it’s not …
Rob Kosberg:
100 books are nothing to sneeze at. 1,000 books a year is 1,000 people that have your message on their desk. I mean, that’s powerful.
Bill Allen:
Oh yeah, for sure. And these are great. I mean, I just got a message. Here’s a perfect example. I got a message from a guy today, and I wish I had it in front of me. I might actually read it. It says like, “Hey, I’m really struggling in my flipping business right now. I have these two deals, two jobs I need to complete. I feel like I’m spinning a 100 plates. Everything’s falling down in front of me, my personal life included. I just listened to this podcast of yours that I didn’t know that you were a believer and a follower of Jesus. Do you know any other Christian entrepreneurs in Utah? I really need some help right now.” And he said, “I just got your book on Friday. I read it this weekend. And like, man, it’s so powerful and so amazing. I can’t wait for the event in Orlando in October.”
And so it was, he comes into the world through the book funnel. Doesn’t wait for the book, goes to the podcast, starts getting all of our emails, listens to the right podcast. Then he reads the book and comes into our world. Yeah, yeah. And during that time, even before he got the book, he bought two tickets for him and a spouse or him and a business partner to come to our event in Orlando, October and not through the funnel, but later on, after getting all the other stuff and binging on some of that stuff probably. And I hate that he’s in pain, but we can absolutely help him. And I said, “Hey, here’s our application link. Make sure that you go.” He read the book. He’s ready to join the mastermind. And I said, “Make sure you talk to my enrollment director, and he’ll help you for sure.” And link him up with a couple investors that I know in Utah.
Rob Kosberg:
Look, you’re doing everything right. I don’t need to say that. But one suggestion I’d have, and then I want to get some links from you is first of all, 15, forget $15. If you could sell the book at $40 at scale 30, 40, 50. $40 is really cheap to sell a book on online as far as average cost per sale. If you made your first upsell, much, your upsells are too low priced. And that’s part of why your probable average order value is not high enough. One of the problems with leaving your ticket price as the last upsell is that the vast majority people are never even seeing it, to choose too. They’re opting out before they get to it. Make your first upsell your ticket and whatever the price point is 297, 397, whatever the number is, offer something special, a one-time offer. Give them a discount. Give them a legit discount, then do a down, sell, breaking it into like three payments of 97 a payment or something like that.
And you’re going to see your average order value skyrocket. I did a, I’ll send you a couple of recordings that I’ve done for my new book funnel book that I’m doing. But Dean Holland is a buddy of mine from the early inner circle days seven, eight years ago. And he was able to double his average order value up to $80 per sale by simply switching around and putting his highest ticket upsell as upsell number one. And that will way, more people are seeing it. You’re making a special offer on it. And you’re able to land a good number of those folks. And then of course you keep emailing and driving traffic back to it and that sort of thing. But I guarantee you, if you do that, you’re going to see a massive uptick in your average order value. And you know what? We’re going to see each other in the inner circle meeting. And you’re going to hear 100 other things that you can do with your book funnel, because your book funnel should crush it for you.
Bill Allen:
I’ll take some coaching every chance that I get because we don’t, we’ve never done one of these before, and all I’m doing is looking at what other people are doing, try to model that.
Rob Kosberg:
I don’t know a lot, but I know book funnels. We run a lot of traffic in my book funnel. We do a lot of book funnels for our clients, but anyway, it’s not about me. It’s about you. And so, gosh, I mean, thanks so much for the stuff you shared. I mean, super valuable. I’d love to have your stats at whatever point they are because you’re obviously an action taker. So you’re going to make some changes, adjustments, and I’d love to see some of your before and after stats. And of course we’ll see each other in a few weeks. Bill, give us some links. Where can people go to learn more about you? You mentioned your book funnel link. Give that one, but also just any general ones that you want to give.
Bill Allen:
Yeah. 7FFFbook.com and it’s the number seven. So 7FFF is everything that’s all over all of our stuff. And we have a podcast called 7 Figure Flipping. It’s all real estate pretty much, single family, housekeeping, wholesaling, things like that. And that’s it really. I mean, 7FigureFlipping.com is where I hang out and live, and I’m pretty active on Facebook personally.
Rob Kosberg:
Bill, super great to meet you. Thanks for sharing. Just so authentically and given so really appreciate it. And look forward to hearing more about your book and your business.
Bill Allen:
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Rob. This is a lot of fun. I don’t usually get to talk about marketing stuff like this on a podcast. Everybody wants to ask me big questions. This is so great. Love it.
