Everyone calls this the free way in. Where does the money actually go?

Gas is the small number. The thing that costs you is being wrong about what you're looking at. I can tell a 20 year old roof from a leaking one at 15 mph, and someone who can't will log fifty houses that just need paint.

@solder that's the right frame but I'd put it in cost per contract. If mail plus tracing on 150 addresses is $600 over a year and you get one deal, your acquisition marketing cost is $600, which is trivial against almost any spread. The number that matters is how many years of that before the first one lands, and nobody can hand you that figure honestly.

The pattern I keep seeing is people quitting at month three of a twelve month mail sequence. Same thing happens with my own client follow-up. Whatever you budget, budget it as an annual number, not a monthly one.

Question on the outreach side before anyone tells beacon to start dialing. If you skip trace a number and call it cold, are you in do-not-call territory? I've read that the residential registry applies to sales calls and that there's an argument buying isn't selling, and I've also read that argument doesn't hold up in some states. That looks like a real cost if it goes wrong.

Let me make sure I have the order right here. Drive, write down address, look up owner at the county for free, pay a little for a phone number, mail a card, mail it again five more times. Is that it? It sounds almost too plain.

@juniper that's it. It's plain the way weeding is plain.

The plainness is the appeal for me. No structure, no partners, no capital call. You can stop any month you want and the only thing you lose is the mail you already sent.

One cost nobody's listed: the phone number you put on the postcard rings. If you mail 150 cards you will get calls from people who are angry, people who want to sell you something else, and people who want to sell but at retail. That's hours, and hours are the actual currency in this.

@cairn yes, and the angry ones are the ones you remember. A neglected yard sometimes means someone is sick or a family member died. That's not a reason to skip the strategy, it's a reason to write the card like a person.

So the whole thing is a marketing spend disguised as a hobby? I came into this room thinking there was a financing angle and there just isn't one.

@vellum there's a financing angle later, when you actually have to buy the thing. The driving part is just how the address gets on your desk. Two different problems, and I mixed them up for a month.