How to Use IFTTT
When Kent first started out in real estate he had no money. He spent his day at Starbucks getting free refills on coffee, calling people who had placed their properties on Craigslist for sale. It took him all day searching for those opportunities, calling the sellers, trying to work out his first deals. But all that is different now that the internet is developed more. In particular, there are free services that enable you to receive a notification whenever those types of properties are listed, so you don’t have to search for them. This coaching call demonstrates how you can use IFTTT to shortcut the process.
A free app that can notify you when your exact property interest is listed on Craigslist. Click To Tweet
IFTT stands for If This Then That – it’s an amazing free web app that you can connect to a number of services, including email and text. That may not sound like much to you but imagine this: Instead of searching classifieds on the internet you can set up an automated notification that will inform you when the exact properties you’re interested in are listed. Find out how to use IFTTT on this coaching call demo.
Don’t waste your time doing things you can automate. Click To Tweet
This coaching call is just a demo, an example of the kind of things you can accomplish with free apps. They make our life easier and simpler by doing things automatically according to criteria that you set up ahead of time. No more searching for people to cold call. No more looking for a needle in a haystack to find leads. These apps can sort through the haystack and send the lead directly to you, if you know how to set them up property. On this video call Kent shows you exactly how to do it so you can stop wasting time and start making money.
Outline of this great episode
- [0:04] Kent’s story of having no money and using cold calls to get started.
- [2:09] Introducing IFTTT – If This Then That (it’s free)
- [4:20] Using the IFTTT aplets and interface to get emailed when new real estate is listed.
- [8:39] The variety of ways you can use the search.
- [15:30] Looking through the other options you can use IFTTT for.
Resources & Links mentioned in this episode
- IFTTT – automate your emails
- Craigslist
- Youtube
The Monday Mindset & Wednesday Wisdom calls are group coaching calls included in the REWW Academy. These live calls are hosted bi-weekly by Justin Colby and Pat Precourt and cover a specific topic each session – ending with live Q&A at the end of each call.
These calls are designed to empower students to be effective entrepreneurs, creating business that thrive and make money through real estate investing. Students are encouraged to attend the calls and bring any struggles or questions they have about business or real estate.
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If you would like to learn more about the REWW Academy, attending these calls live, or learning fast effective ways to get involved in real estate investing, go to http://reww.com/v/reww-academy/ and follow the link at the bottom to apply today.
Below is the full transcription of the How to Use IFTTT Wednesday Wisdom call with Justin Colby.
Justin Colby:
What’s up? We’re live, we’re recording. Wednesday call. So, I am going to get started and one of the things I want to show you guys, is when I first got into the industry, I used cold calling as my avenue in, right. I had no money, you guys know my story, I had no money. I was sleeping on the couch, I had no income, right. So I didn’t have a lot of avenues, to use, I didn’t have direct mail as an avenue, right, I couldn’t do PPC, I couldn’t do some things that maybe I do now.
So one thing I would use back then is, I would cold call realtors, and I would get onto Craig’s List and I would start calling motivated sellers, you know for sale by owners, landlords, you know homes that were for rent. And I would call the person and I would say, “Hey listen, you know, are you interested possibly in selling?” And that was the strategy every single day. Because it’s free to call realtors. It’s free to call people on Craig’s List. I would go to a coffee shop, down the street, and I would sit there and I would drink my coffee, for like a $1.25 or whatever, all day long, because I didn’t really have money to buy lunch. I had no money, right, I broke, busted and disgusted. And at the time Starbucks would give you like free refills, so long as you stayed in the shop. Right?
Speaking of Starbucks …
So I would use Craig’s List a lot to find direct to sellers, right, again whether it’s people trying to find a renter, and they’re landlords and you call them and you have a conversation, just about, you know, “Hey, I’m actually an investor. I saw you’re looking to rent this property. Can I ask you a question about if you have any interest in selling the property?” And you hear a lot of no’s, and you hear a lot of no, you know, I’ve owned it for 30 years or whatever. And then you also have people on Craig’s List that are looking to sell their property as a for sale by owner. Right? And so I would, every single day, I would make these calls.
Well, now, there is an application that I’m going to share with you guys. And I’m going to take the camera off of me and I’m going to go on here and if you guys have already heard of IFTT, if this, than that, awesome. If you’re already using it, awesome. For those who maybe have never heard of it, or heard of it and never used it, I’m actually going to show you how to use it. And use it effectively because now it actually can do what i have to do manually. Now it will actually email you directly and you can just check your emails and every time you get an email, you can make those calls. Right? So this is actually a really cool tool and it can be used for a lot of different things. I’m just showing you how real estate investors can use it.
But as I get off the camera, and I share my screen … lets just go home first. This is If This Than That. Let me know if you guys can see my screen. Let me know you guys can see where I’m at. Again it’s IFTT, is how you’re supposed to pronounce it. I. F. T. T. If This Than That. It is completely free. Right? And so you just go and create an account. It’s absolutely free. You can create an account. And again, when I say there’s a lot of different things you can do, there’s a lot of different things you can do. So I’m not going to show you everything, right, because what the concept of what this is, is if you’re a programmer, if you’ve ever been a programmer, they talk a lot about, If This Than That. That’s how programmers work. Very similar.
So for example, if we’re to use this for Craig’s List, a strategy I used to use, and you can use this for anything, right. I mean literally, look at all these different things, like, you can use it for your calender. You can use for Facebook. You can use it for your phones. I mean it just goes on and on and on. Right? And so, you know, you go in and if you ask it to do something … So you would click my applets, now they have their own applets, they have very commonly used applets, right. So if you just hit “get started” here, again it shows you what are commonly used. You can also use the search term, the search bar. So here are some commonly used apps that people will use If This Than That. Right?
So, if the San Francisco Giants win a game, I want an email from ESPN letting me know that. Right? And there’s all these different things. Again, I don’t want to completely explain this, you guys can go to YouTube to really understand the value of this, it’s rather large. But if I’m using this as a real estate investor, I’m thinking Craig’s List would be a great place to go.
so classifieds. I want to look at all the classified services that they have. So if you scroll down here to “get a notification whenever a new Craig’s List post matches your search.” I love that. Right? Get a new email whenever a new Craig’s List post matches you search, even better. Right? Now I’m looking at emails. Cause this is going to give a notification on Craig’s List. This is going to give me an email. Find what you’re looking for on Craig’s List similar to get an email. Get an email whenever a new Craig’s List post matches your search, that’s the same. Right? These are the same.
So there’s a lot of different things you can do with classified ads. Right? Job search for Craig’s List but what I would be using is “get an email whenever a new Craig’s List post matches your search”. So you click on that and you want to turn it on. So get an email whenever a new Craig’s List post matches your search. You want to find what you want quickly. Perfect for being first in line for competitive rental market. Just copy and paste your search from Craig’s List in the field and you’ll get an email for any new post that matches. Right? So you want to turn this on. Boom. And then you want to configure it. Right? So receive a notification when the applet runs. Sure why not turn that on. New post from search. Copy and paste search results in the URL from Classifieds.
So you go over to Craig’s List, and I just put this in now as I was preparing for this, but I would go into Craig’s List … so let’s just start from scratch. I would go real estate for sale. Boom. Kay. And then put a search term in there. So FSBO could be a search term. All of these have the term “for sale by owner” in it. Kay? All of these have the term “for sale by owner”. So what you would do, see if you’re looking at this link, you see here in gray, FSBO, I would take this link, I would copy the whole link, I would copy it. I would go over here to “paste in your search results”. I would paste in that. I now would save. Your applet in invalid, I don’t know what just happened there. Let’s just close that. Save. Your applet is now active. Kay?
So now, for me, I have to deactivate this cause now I am going to start receiving an email anytime someone posts into Craig’s List, for sale by owner, in the real estate section. Right? I have real estate. I have all of Phoenix housing real estate for sale with the term FSBO. Now anytime someone comes in here and posts a new Craig’s List add with the term FSBO, I am now going to get an email. Kay? So I’m not even certain, let me see if I can do this. Okay nothing yet. So you can do this for a bunch of different terms. You can put fire damage. Boom. You would take this, these are all fire damage issues. So you know, look at the homes.
Any time someone posts there, you take the URL. Click. You go back. It’s on. Check now. I would go redo it again. Kay? So I would go back to classifieds. I would get more, right, get a notification. Get an email. I would do it all over again. Right? Turn on, and boom, URL right here. Copy and paste this URL. New post, new search from Craig’s List, save. Boom, your applet is now active. So now I have 2 different lead types that are now going to be emailed to me anytime someone puts in a new Craig’s List listing with those terms. This is so genius. Again back when I started, back in 2007, I’m cold calling the whole time. In 2008, this didn’t exist, I didn’t have this opportunity that I could actually go on and get these updates. Instead I would have to go on and get these updates. Right? Now I just go to my email. They email me an ad, I click on it, I call them, boom, I’m done.
Now again, let me show you something else. Let’s go to my applets. See I have 2 different applets now. Well, let’s say I want to create my own applet. Like, let’s say I want to do something else. So let’s create a new applet, if this … So I would click on the plus sign. So I would click Classifieds, right, so look at all of these different apps that they use. Right? Facebook, Dropbox, Gmail, YouTube, Evernote, Pocket, right, all this stuff. But again you might even want to use Facebook, you can use it for Facebook, right, if someone posts for sale by owner on Facebook, you can get those ads, right?
I’m going to show you Craig’s List specifically. So, new post from search, okay, so now if this, again, I would put that URL in here, right. Whatever I created, whatever I’m looking for, create a trigger. Boom. So if this URL, which I showed you I took from Craig’s List right here, if this than I want to get an email. Send me an email. This action will send an html based email, images and links are supported. Okay? Or if I want to do, let’s see … I thought I saw Gmail on here. Send me a text message. Right? Then you’ve got to connect your phone. There’s so many cool things. Right? So then you connect your phone. Right? Put in your phone number, send, pin. Now all of a sudden you’re getting text messages, not even emails, you’re getting text messages every time someone puts in for this fire damaged property on Craig’s List. This is so cool. I means guys, this is like a game changer. It’s going to save you so much money and then you need to do what we teach you to do.
Call then, say, “Hey, I just saw you put an ad on Craig’s List. Are you interested in selling your property that I’m looking at here on 123 Main Street”? This simple AP, is so cool. You can get text messages, you can get emails, you can connect so many different things. Right? Let’s just say I want to get an email and then post title, new property … Oh this is sending an email. I want to receive an email actually. I don’t want to send it, yeah. Send me an email. Right. New property. Fire damage and then the body can be anything, whatever you want to, you know, put in here. And then you create the action. Right? Create the action. Let’s just do this. Boom. Create action, review and finish. There’s a problem with your applet. Unrecognizable ingredient. Go back. If a new post search from Craig’s List send an email to Justin Colby 55. You would finish. Boom. It’s on. Your done. You’ve made a new applet.
So now I have these 3 applets. I just made these in front of you right now and I’m going to start getting emails from these postings that happen on Craig’s List. Guys this is, I mean, I’m telling you now, it’s crazy. It’s crazy what you can do with these things.
How about I turn these things off? See now I’ve got to go in and turn them off, otherwise I’m going to start receiving all these emails. Let’s turn this off and lets turn the last one off. Come on, buddy, there you go. But guys if you go in here … Again I’m teaching you what you can do with this as a real estate investor. But guys you can set up so many different things on here. Right? Like let me just show you again. Stop webcam, show screen. You can go on here and literally do anything, right, if you’re dealing with your Gmail, connect Gmail to auto save attachments, create reminders, get notifications, stay organized and much more. These are common If This Than That’s that people are using. Save new email attachments from Google drive, you know, if you get a new email attachment it will save it to Google drive automatically.
Automatically create new reminder on you iPhone for emails, you start in Gmail. Right? These are commonly used. Tell Alexa to email you your shopping list. That you’ve been talking to Alexa, “Hey Alexa I need to go get milk and eggs and bread.” And then once you’re done you can actually have If This Than That connect your Alexa and Amazon account and email you. So, guys, I mean there’s just, it’s limitless. There’s so many cool things but as a real estate investor starting your business utilize this Craig’s List sneaky trick. Right? And you guys will be able to do and speed up the process of, you know, what took me so long to do.
Can you guys … There you go. Is that pretty cool information? I mean this is, it’s been around for a little bit but some of you may have heard of it some of you may not. If This Than That is absolutely free. You can start getting these emails. Again you can connect it to your phone. You don’t need to get an email, you can actually connect it to your phone and get text messages. Right? It is absolutely awesome. Right on. Yes this is recorded and it will be put into the board room as well as our real estate world wide Facebook pages. Right on, [00:17:07], right on Dave. Right on.
So very cool, free and easy. This is something you need to be using if you’re not using right now. This is just going to give you more and more leads and it’s just a matter of time until one of those calls. Right timing, right circumstance. Someone says “Yes, thank God you called. I need to sell my home. I’m tired of being a landlord or, you know, whatever.” Right? So make sure you are doing it.
Richard great call last night. Thank you. You’re very welcome Richard, that was awesome. The 50k code was a huge success. Many people took action and bought the 50k code about how to hotel. So that was very, very cool. So thank you for the complement Richard.
Thanks for bringing it again. Dave says, “You’re welcome, this is an awesome ninja trick. You’re very welcome Lynn.”
Andrew see you in a week, yes sir. Scale and Escape, baby, Scale and Escape.
Grace, I appreciate the compliment, you’re a rock star.
All right guys, that’s it. See you next week. And for those that will be at Scale and Escape, can’t wait to see you. Peace.
