Chapter 14 - Guerilla Marketing, Real Estate & Big Visions

After a few great years working at the Irish Bank, I decided it was time for a change.  I didn’t know what I wanted to do next.  I just knew I wanted to make more money and not have to work nights for the rest of my life.  Late one night, I came home from work and put on the TV.  It was about 4am and there was an informercial on with some cheesy dude talking about how he made millions from buying real estate with “Zero Money Down.”  As cheesy as he was, I was blown away listening to what he had to say.  So I ended up buying his CD's (“Real Estate Riches”).

This was around 2004/2005 and everybody and their mother were talking about real estate.  So I decided to get my real estate licence and jump on the bandwagon.

I ended up getting a job through a craigslist posting as a “Loan Officer” for a Mortgage Brokerage.  The brokerage was called Specialty Funding  - it was run by three Jordanian brothers, George, Faris and Fadi.  These guys were super cool, extremely knowledgeable, very down to earth and very ambitious.  Real good people to be around.  My job as a Loan Officer was to find potential home buyers and people who wanted to refinance their existing mortgages and take advantage of the lower interest rates and home loan programs.

Even though I was working for a broker I was basically working for myself.  To say the least, it was a bit nerve racking at first.  I had to find all my own customers and it was 100% commission based.  This was completely new to me.  Like most folks in real estate, I was thrown in the deep end and after some mortgage finance training, I had to hit the streets on my own and find customers.

I started off the traditional route by calling all my friends and also going to networking event after networking event.  My goal was to become friends with CPA’s, Real Estate Agents, Real Estate Attorney’s and Financial Planners in hopes that they would refer business to me.  It was tough. Most events I went to were full of other mortgage brokers all on the same mission.  And I never felt that comfortable trying to befriend Real Estate Agents/CPA’s etc... who didn’t really have any interest in talking to me either.  They knew I was looking for business from them.  

The networking approach wasn’t working very well for me, so I decided to take the fight to the streets.  Proper guerilla marketing style.  I used to print up 3000 fliers per week and hit the streets with approx 500 flyers a day.  I put them on cars behind windshield wipers, in mail boxes,  anywhere and everywhere I could.  I used to wait outside the front door of large apartment complexes and when someone came out I’d walk in and start on the top floor and put flyers under every door from the the top floor to the bottom floor.  Sometimes I’d get chased out by property managers.  I also nailed 24” X 24” ugly yellow signs to lamp posts on all the major intersections around San Francisco with the words “3 Bed, 2 Bath House For Sale, $2500 per month, Zero Down Payment, Free Recorded Message”.  I had a free 1-800 number with a recorded message with me talking about how you could buy a house with no money down - the message lasted about two minutes long.  I could then see on a software program called “call capture” how long someone listened to my message.  If they listened for the whole duration and left me a message I knew they were somewhat serious.  I would then follow up with a call and then a meeting.  Yet again, it was a complete numbers game.  

I used to have all sorts of weirdos leaving me messages, especially over the weekend in the early hours of the morning.  Obviously people on the way back from the bar drunk.   Some were sincere and some would shout crazy abuse down the phone.  The ones who shouted abuse down the phone never expected me to call them back, and I would.  It used to really shock them when they would get a call at 11am on a Monday morning asking them what their issue was.  Even if you pressed *67 trying to hide your number before you called, call capture would still get your number.

By law, I had to put my Brokers License number on all my marketing material.  After a few months of me blanketing the city with ugly yellow signs and flyers, my broker called me into his office and told me that he had gotten quite a few complaints from the City & County of San Francisco and I had to stop with the flyers and signs.  

It worked for a while so I couldn’t complain, I’m still friends with quite a few people that I met through my ugly yellow signs and flyers.  I then teamed up with a Russian guy named Vlad who worked in the same office as me and had the same vision which was to to build a real estate empire.  Our only obstacle was, we didn’t have any money.  So, we put the the Zero Down thing to the test.  We bought two houses in San Francisco at the same time with no money down. We then rented them out and refinanced them after a few months after we did a new paint job and maybe some new flooring if needed.  Then we took out a line of credit on each of them and used that money to purchase some commercial properties in upstate New York through a lender called Greenpoint.  Greenpoint would allow you to buy commercial property with only putting 10% of the selling price down, then allow the seller to finance 10% and the bank would lend us the remaining 80%.  This was unheard of in commercial property.  This was 2006/2007, and the real estate market was very different back then.  Not long after, Greenpoint went bust with lots of other banks.

Vlad and I had a big visions.  Our goal was to buy distressed commercial properties all over the US do some work on them, bring them up to scratch and positive cash flowing and eventually have one property manager run everything.  Things went great for a while.  We had some commercial property in upstate New York that paid us enough passive income each month to pay our living expenses and travel.  During my free time, I did some courses on how to trade the stock market and started day trading futures,  that was an eye opener.  

It actually seemed like our plan was working, until....  We cashed out some money from our buildings in New York and bought some more commercial property in Huntsville, Alabama.  Our goal was to fix it up, rent it out and then refinance again, pay our creditors back and still have enough money left to go again.  Naive and silly, we left the remodel of the Alabama property in the hands of a young property manager who talked a great game and didn’t deliver on his word.  And like many people all over the world, we got stuck in the middle of the credit crisis and couldn’t get the bank to refinance our new property in time.  We were left with a pretty big monthly holding cost that we couldn’t sustain for much longer unless we got the refinance sorted out.

Lessons I learned from this Chapter in my life.

1. Guerilla marketing really works :)

2. Don’t ever leave your business in the hands of someone else to look after.  Nobody will care for it as much as you do.

3. Yet again, sales is a total numbers game.

Till Next Time

Cheers

Gerry :)

Chapter 12 - My First Few Months In San Francisco

After a 10 hour bus ride from LA, my buddy Des and I arrived in San Francisco on a cloudy Tuesday morning in September 2000. We made our way to the Pacific Tradewinds Hostel in Chinatown. We couldn't book in until 4pm, so we relaxed for a few hours in Union Square drinking coffee with our backpacks wondering what the fuck were we going to do next.

While sitting in Union Square, I got talking to an Italian guy who had just traveled around South America and funded his whole trip teaching English. He said he had done a course called TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) just up the Street from Union Square in a language school and could literally travel anywhere in the world and teach English with his certificate. 

“Pretty cool,” I thought. So after we settled into the hostel, I went in search of the language school he had talked about. I had a vision of myself travelling around South America teaching English. I enrolled in and completed an 8 week TEFL course that took place two nights a week at the school. 

We stayed the maximum allowed in the hostel which was only two weeks and then had no choice but to leave and find another place to stay. I called my family in Ireland one day and spoke to my sister. She told me that she had spoke to one of our cousins and they said that their brother Padraic (my cousin) was living in San Francisco. It was probably 20 years since I had last seen Padraic. She had a number for me to call, which I immediately called. It turned out he was a painting contractor in San Francisco. After a quick surprise call to him, we hooked up for a few beers and the next day I was painting retail stores and houses in San Francisco. Thank God for that because I had run out of money and was thinking about packing up everything and just going home. The first job I worked on was a pretty cool fashion forward boutique called “Villians” on Haight Street. We painted it some cool funky green and purple colors. I used to spend most of my wages buying clothing in Haight Street. It used to have the coolest stores in San Francisco. Mind you, it still has some amazing vintage boutiques.

Then, we were painting some beautiful houses in the Marina district. It blew me away that these houses were owned by young tech millionaires in their early 20’s. I had arrived in San Francisco at the height of the dot com boom in 2000, which was a pretty crazy/interesting time to be in San Francisco. It’s actually very much what it’s like right now.

Also, it was extremely tough to get an apartment to rent, especially with no references and no deposit etc. So Des & I sniffed out another hostel in an area called “The Tenderloin.” To say the least, the hostel was ok but the area was a shit hole. It was crack head central. It was crazy. We had bums literally sleeping outside our front door and fights on the corner all night long. There was a sleazy strip joint next door to us too. Every night at about 3am a Chinese woman used to empty all the trash cans on the sidewalk in front of the hostel and dig through the trash for cans and bottles to turn in for cash. There was a lot of activity.

Our hostel was full of long term backpackers in transit, some guys had come to SF for a week and were still there three years later. I gotta admit, it was fun and a great place to get situated, meet people and get work. There was always something going on. There were guys and girls from all over the world. Most people were working in construction or bar work. There was a bar directly underneath the hostel called “Reds Corner” where a lot of backpackers used to hang out. I got a job bar tending two nights a week for a few weeks filling in for a guy who went back to Ireland for vacation. I’ll never forget it. At the time, people used to smoke in bars. They had some loophole. If it was owner operated, you could smoke etc…

One night, I was working with the manager, a hardcore New Yorker called Tommy. Tommy looked like he smoked 200 cigarettes a day and washed it down with a bottle of whisky. He had a face that was as rough as a badgers arse. I think Tommy grew up in the inner city Bronx and was mysteriously transplanted into the middle of the Tenderlion. All he knew was rough hardcore, no nonsense, carry a gun, knock you out type of shit. 

I’ll never forget one night when we were working together I asked him, “What’s the craic like in here on a Friday?” He gave me a strange look and said “same as every fucken day.” (Craic in Irish terms means Fun/Good times) Then, the same night, I asked him could I smoke a fag behind the bar. O man, he didn't know what to make of my Irish chat. It was a real eye opener. We had all types of weirdos trying to come into the bar begging for money, trying to use the toilet, trying to steal jackets. Tommy would roar and shout and chase them out. Sometimes, he’d throw handfuls of ice at them. Some bums would knock on the window and abuse him. I used to have to hold myself back from bursting out laughing, as I don't think he would have appreciated it. He was well used to taking crap from bums. I was only there for a few weeks but I could now see why Tommy looked like he did. It was crazy. Entertaining for a few weeks but stressful if it was your full time job. 

I wasn't much of a painter. My cousin would regularly lose the plot with me as he was quite the perfectionist when it came to painting. We’d argue like crazy during work and once work was over, all would be good. I gotta admit. I was in quite a hole and he helped me out, that’s for sure. Some days/weeks, he’d be waiting on another job to start and instead of saying “there’s no work today,” he’d pick me up and we’d drive around the whole day chatting. He’d show me different jobs he did or some fun places to go. And he’d still pay me. For that, I will always be grateful to Padraic.

Because he and I both knew painting wasn't my forte, I went on a mission to find a job in an Irish Bar. The word on the Street was you could make good tips if you were personable. That was something more up my alley. In my first few months in San Francisco, I experienced gratitude. Thankfulness that the Tenderloin “lifestyle” was a temporary one and gratefulness that I had many choices before me. I saw San Francisco as a motley crew of characters and I liked being part of it so far.


Till next time :)

P.S. Please feel free to share with any of your nice friends that you think would enjoy it :)

Cheers 

Gerry :)


Sonas Denim
www.sonasdenim.com



"As long as I'm breathing, I'll never quit" Gerry Kelly 2011

Chapter 11 - USA, Here We Come!

After an amazing year in Australia, it was time to move on. Four of us flew out of Melbourne on the same flight heading to New Zealand. By now,all our good friends were back in Ireland, bored and pissed off with only memories of their trip. It was a bit depressing leaving Australia knowing that we were now on the last leg of our round the world trip and I still had no idea of what I wanted to do with my life.

I had already spent eight weeks traveling around New Zealand, so I decided to continue on to Figi for a few weeks. The four of us ended up on a little Island called Mana. It was paradise: warm turquoise water, palm
trees, golden sand and chilled out big Fijian people.

While sitting on the beach one morning, I saw an extremely pale looking girl walking towards us. I had a sneaky suspicion she was Irish. She was milk bottle white with rosy red hair. Your stereotypical Irish girl.
Turned out she was from Dublin and was on route to Australia and had just come from San Francisco. We got chatting and she said to me, “You gotta check out San Francisco! There’s something about it. It just draws you in."


"Wow," I thought. That was the second person who told me about San Francisco in the last few months. There must be something to this San Francisco place.

After a few weeks in Figi, we got a flight to Hawaii. We flew into Oahu. Again, we didn't have a clue where we were going, so we did the usual. We went to the bookstore in the airport and read through the trusty Lonely Planet travel guide and took down some names and numbers of some local hotels and hostels.

We ended up staying in a dodgy hostel in Honolulu and sharing a room with some pretty straight backpackers from France. We were now in Hawaii and decided to head out on the town and celebrate “Irish style.” We hit up a load of cheesy tourist bars. We kind of knew it was probably our last big night out together for a while, so we made sure it was a good one. We stumbled back to the hostel like a pack of wild dogs, three sheets to the wind at about 4am. We were shouting and roaring, waking up everybody in
the hostel. We clambered back into our bunks. We were super noisy and obviously very annoying. There were eight to a room. My buddy Liam lit up a cigarette in his bed. That was the final straw. A pretty big French lad jumped out of his bed in a pair of “Y Fronts” shouting and screaming at us to shut the F&*q up and telling Liam to put the cigarette out. “Chill out Pierre, or I’ll put you out,” Liam said in a calm passive/aggressive tone. I guess he wasn't used to being told off, especially by some pretty tough drunk Irish guy who was sharing a room with him. He didn’t say another word. He gave Liam a look and got back
into bed and went to sleep. He was gone before we got up, thank God.

We left the hostel the next afternoon and made our way to Waimea Bay on the North Shore of Oahu. We rented out a caravan in a pretty cool campground that was full of surfers and backpackers. We had barbecues there nearly every night for a week and got to meet some fun local surfers and more backpackers.

Our next stop was Los Angeles. Four of us arrived in LAX and got a shuttle to Venice Beach. We booked into a budget hotel called the “Jolly Roger” about half a mile from Venice boardwalk. If I didn't know what I
was doing before, now, I was really lost. I didn't know a sinner in LA and our hotel was very impersonal. After getting used to staying in hostels and meeting other travelers, I felt a bit out of place in our boring hotel room in LA.

We only stayed two nights in LA. It’s definitely a bit of a daunting city if you don’t know anyone.

Liam and our other buddy Ciaran decided to get a train to Chicago. Liam’s brother was there for the summer playing Gaelic football and had room in his house for them. It was pretty sad to leave the lads especially after traveling for approx two years with Liam and living in London together. We had no idea when we’d see everyone again.

My buddy Des (also known as Dingo Des) and I decided to get a bus to San Francisco and see what all the fuss was about.

Next stop San Francisco.

One important thing I learned from my final leg of my journey is: It’s not where you are that matters, it’s who you’re with. Whoever is beside you and around you makes all the difference in the world.

Chapter 10 - Australia Pre-Olympics 1999/2000 “G’day G’day Mate!”

After an eye opening few months in South East Asia, my buddy Liam and I decided to take a flight to Australia with one last stop before we had to start working again. This time it was Indonesia, we spent two weeks taking it easy on Kuta Beach in Bali with some other backpackers on route to Australia. 

Our English friends Tim & Doug decided to go back to Thailand and meet back up with the girls they had left behind. When we arrived in Sydney, we had planned on meeting up with some of our good friends from back home: eleven single lads from Dublin who went to Australia on a one year working Visa about 8 months before we arrived.

When we actually got to Sydney, they were all still traveling up the Australian East Coast. My friend and I rented out a pretty cool furnished apartment in an area called Newtown (similar to Haight Ashbury in San Francisco or Camden Town in London). It had a pretty chilled out hippie vibe with amazing vintage stores, cool markets and some great bars and restaurants.

I ended up getting a job selling American Express insurance over the phone in a pretty big call center that was full of Irish and English backpackers. We each sat in cubicles like “Dilberts” and wore ear pieces on automatic dial to American Express customers. You had about 10 seconds between each call. The goal was to get as many existing card holders as you could to sign up for a free 30 day trial of American Express Insurance. After the 30 day trial ended they were charged approx $9 - $15 a month, depending on the coverage. It was a numbers game. I guess American Express was banking on most people forgetting to cancel it and make their money that way. I got to meet some really cool Irish and English guys and girls while working there.

Whenever I saw an Irish name come up on the screen, I would play the Irish card and tell them I’m an Irish backpacker and ask them if they would please do me a favor and sign up for a month and then cancel. Lots of people were up for it. All they had to say was “Yes” on a recorder. It didn't require filling out any forms, thank God.

Sometimes, when I got a real idiot on the phone getting abusive, telling me to never call again, instead of hitting the "Never Call Again" option I’d schedule a call for about 10 mins later. 10 mins later you’d hear someone in the call center saying "Oh My God! I just had some really pissed off customer on the phone. Someone called him just 10 minutes ago.” It was hilarious. Some days, I’d have pains in my stomach from laughing so much.

I also got another job bar-tending Friday and Saturday nights in a nightclub in Kings Cross. It worked out perfect. Not only was I saving money not going out to a bar, but I was also earning money working. I used to make the most awful tasting super strong cocktails. Some people loved them and tipped really well, and some would ask me to exchange for “something a bit more drinkable.” Then late one Saturday night, it got raided by the cops for serving after hours and they were closed down for a month and I never went back.

After a few months in Newtown, we decided to move over to Bondi Beach to another apartment right in the middle of all the action and next to the beach. 
The beaches and the water were unbelievable. Hard to believe that you were in a city. Bondi was full of young backpackers from Ireland, England and Scotland on their one year working Visa. 

I only worked for three months at the call center (that’s all our work Visa’s would allow on any one job) and now needed a new job. My buddies had all worked on the building sites and got me in contact with some labor hire agencies. I got a job as a laborer on a pretty big building site where they were building a hotel and luxury apartments. This was just before the Sydney Olympics 2000. The place was screaming out for construction workers. There was construction going on everywhere. Three or four different labor hire agencies used to call our apartment every day looking for more workers. After a few months of laboring, I bought $600 worth of tools off a Welsh guy who was leaving town and chanced my arm at being a carpenter on another building site. It was a good bit more money then laboring. I had met a guy while laboring who said I could work with him and he would basically carry me along. Of course I still worked, but he did all the technical work. I was basically laboring for him and getting carpenters wages from the agency. It worked out great for a few months and all we were doing was putting up sheet rock. Then, he got sick for a week and I was transferred to another site run by an English guy who figured me out after a few days when he asked me to hang a few doors and build a staircase (which I had never done before). Anyway, I got a great run out of it, learned a good bit and got paid more than laboring, so I couldn't complain. I ended up selling the tools for what I had paid for them to some legitimate carpenter from Ireland.

My next job was working on the building of a Buddhist Temple just outside of Sydney. It was a bit of a trek but easy work. I met a really cool guy there from the North of Ireland, Dermy Finn. Dermy was a hardy tough Irish lad that was a hard worker and well up for a laugh. The foreman on our job liked us and we got to work together all the time. We had great chats about growing up and the crazy carry on we both got up to and travelling stories, which were very similar. We became pretty good friends while working together. The Aussie foreman from our job, Pete, was going through a divorce at the time and was always looking for some wing men to go out on the town with him, so of course we obliged. He was a good bit older than us but loved hanging out and hearing our travel stories.

Dermy would always be talking about his friends who were living in San Francisco and a cool festival they would go to every year called the “Burning Man”. 
I had never heard of it. He also mentioned that if I ever went to San Francisco that I should look up his friends. To be honest, I had never ever thought about going to San Francisco. The only thing I knew about San Francisco was from the TV show “The Streets of San Francisco,” which we watched sometimes when I was a kid.

After I had saved up some decent money, a few of us decided to go traveling up the east coast with a neighbor of ours from Dublin. He was a bit older than us, but well up for a laugh. He had an old Hiace van that could fit five lads and their bags comfortably. It was perfect.

We ripped up the East Coast like we were in the Cannonball Race. Some days we drove 1000 kilometers in one day and only saw about ten other cars on the road. It was desolate. We had a blast stopping off in some strange little towns along the way. We hit all the cool beach towns and drove inland to Mount Isa. Then we made our way to Ayers Rock, climbed the famous huge rock and hung around there for a few days.

At this stage, we were on the last leg of our round the world trip. We decided to make our way to Melbourne to fly out from there. Our next stop was New Zealand then Figi & Hawaii.

I learned a lot in Australia while I worked. Something that stuck with me most is: 1. Sales is a complete numbers game (the more calls you make
the more sales you get), and 2. There's no harm in trying (if a job isn't the right fit, you'll know)