Jordan Fulmer and his wife Melissa are the founders and owners of Momentum Property Solutions, a real estate investing company in Huntsville, AL. They have been investing in real estate for four years and have completed about fifteen deals during that time, including fix and flips, lease options, long-term rentals, and creative financing deals. They have recently completely revamped their marketing style from traditional methods such as direct mail to more modern approaches, including SEO and Google Ads. Jordan and Melissa love what they do and enjoy helping people by purchasing their houses for fair prices with zero hassles.

Can you tell our readers about your background?

I began my career as a mechanical engineer, but I quickly shifted my focus and became focused on building a business to invest in real estate. As a house buyer, I have built experience with flipping houses, rental properties, and even structuring creative financing deals. My experience as an engineer has also helped me during home renovations with projects such as electrical circuits and load-carrying members.

What inspired you to start your business?

Even in college, I had an entrepreneurial mindset. I just didn’t know what to pursue. I was a mechanical engineering major, and all I knew at that time was about building things similar to my senior design project.

After being in the engineering industry for a few years, my wife, Melissa, had a co-worker who left his job to run the successful paper company that he had started on the side. I still remember what he told his boss when he quit. He said, “I have to quit. I’m losing too much money.” Melissa used his remaining time at work to pick his brain on everything he did to start his company. He gave her many great insights, including the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. She immediately began reading all about entrepreneurship and became fascinated with the idea of having your money work for you instead of working for your money.

Around that time, I was on a work trip when a colleague began talking to me about investing in real estate. He told me we would be in the perfect position to buy rental houses with two engineering salaries and no kids yet. I had never thought about real estate before then, but the idea of having monthly cash flow while the mortgage on a rental house was paid down sounded great to me. I came home and talked to Melissa about it, and she was all in. Real estate had been the area she wanted to start in as an entrepreneur, but she was waiting on the signal from me first.

Where is your business based?

Our company is based in Huntsville, AL, the fastest growing city in Alabama due to its influx of jobs as an engineering town. We have purchased homes all over Madison County, which is the county where Huntsville resides. However, we will soon be expanding our reach into the surrounding counties and even parts of Southern Tennessee.

How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?

When we decided to pursue real estate as an investment, we immediately began our search for a rental property to buy. That search didn’t take long because Melissa’s aunt, who also flips houses, knew someone with a house coming available soon. We decided to buy this house because it had already been renovated, it was in an up-and-coming area, and it would be easy to rent.

Although the cash flow from that rental property was great and all, we had our sights set higher. We wanted to build a portfolio of properties that replaced our income as engineers so we could do real estate full-time. There was one issue, though. We had just deflated our bank account to make the down payment on the house we just bought, and it would take another year or two to save up that much money again.

But we didn’t let that stop us. We immediately began learning all about creative financing options by going to trainings, watching videos, and hiring coaches. With the knowledge we gained, we were able to start buying houses without using so much of our own money, which allowed us to buy as many homes as we could find.

What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?

Up until this point, we have focused on more old-school tactics for marketing our brand, such as direct mail and word of mouth. We’ve had social media accounts, but we haven’t used them to their full potential. However, we’ve just hired a social media strategist that will help us develop a plan for using all of the relevant social media platforms to build an audience and raise awareness of our brand. Also, our primary method for bringing in new clients is now our website, which we have spent the last eight months designing and optimizing to rank on Google.

What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?

The biggest challenge in our business has always been lead generation. No question. And I’d be willing to bet that if you asked every real estate investor in this area what their biggest challenge was, 95% of them would give you the same answer. It is very difficult to find people who need to sell their houses, and even more so houses that will actually be profitable.

When we first began marketing to find properties to buy, we used the traditional methods such as sending postcards, cold calling, and driving neighborhoods to look for vacant houses. While those methods brought us over a dozen deals, it was always a struggle because we never knew when our next deal would hit the pipeline. It got even worse when we saw a massive influx of out-of-state investors and rising home prices from increased demand and low inventory.

Our marketing got to a point where we saw very few leads come in, and even fewer actual good leads. Instead of doubling down on the marketing tactics that weren’t working, we decided to shift our focus completely. Instead of pestering people asking if they want to sell their house, what if they came to us? That sounds great and all, but how do you make that happen? That’s why we set off for the last eight months to completely revamp our website. Our reasoning for this is that if people seek you out for an offer to buy their home, there is an entirely different dynamic than when we are reaching out to them first. However, for homeowners to find us, we have to be in the places where they’re looking. This is why we’ve worked so hard to climb up the rankings on Google. Although we’ve made fantastic progress and rank on page one for popular keywords, we still have a lot of work to do.

How do you stay focused?

I stay focused by thinking about how far I’ve come but also realizing that I’m not where I want to be yet. There are definitely times I get discouraged, but at those times, I reflect on how all of the hard work we’ve put in will pay off. I also use tough times as motivation because the competition will be lower on the other side since many other people give up when they face adversity.

How do you differentiate your business from the competition?

We set ourselves apart from our competition by our marketing methods. Nearly all real estate investors use the same tactics that we used to use to bring in new leads. And honestly, many homeowners see those tactics as annoying. I’ve witnessed angry postcard recipients first-hand. Instead of us pestering homeowners about selling their houses, we’ve set up our site so that they can come to us when they’re ready.

Photo Credit: Jordan Fulmer

 

Aside from that, we try to truly listen to the needs of each client and structure a deal that genuinely helps them. We know that if we don’t make an offer that works for them, they probably aren’t going to sell us their house. So we do our best to listen carefully to what they need before we start putting together our numbers.

Beyond creating deals that work for everyone, we do our best to go above and beyond for our clients. There have been times that we’ve sacrificed some profit to make sure that our clients felt like they were taken care of.

What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?

Hands-down, developing and optimizing our website to rank on Google has been our best marketing strategy. Even though we haven’t gotten to the ranking position we want to be at yet, we have already had high-quality leads come in.

What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?

My advice for new and aspiring entrepreneurs would be to assess your most significant obstacles between where you are and where you want to be and face them head-on. For example, our biggest obstacle is lead generation. Although classes on real estate deal strategies are great and informative, too many investors spend all their time learning new deal strategies and ignoring the fact that they cannot bring in new deals. Their efforts would be much better spent developing unique marketing strategies that consistently bring in leads.

What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?

My favorite blog is the ahrefs blog. They talk all about SEO and give actionable advice on building a well-performing website.

My favorite book for business is Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss. As an investor, I am constantly negotiating deals, and this book completely changed how I viewed negotiations. It helped me recognize the subterranean emotions that influence people’s decisions and how to use them to steer a negotiation in a way that benefits everyone.

What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?

I recently became an ahrefs.com user, and I can’t imagine not having it now. This tool is a must-have for anyone serious about building a website that ranks on Google. It provides me with metrics on my site, and it also helps me research new keywords and develop blogging strategies. Aside from being a tremendous tool, they have an immense amount of training that goes beyond just using the tool and into ways to use it to build your business. It has already provided me with tremendous value for my business.

Who is your business role model? Why?

After reading his book on negotiating, my business role model is Chris Voss. The man is a former FBI hostage negotiator, and he took the tactics that he used in that role and applied them to business deals. The information he gives in his book, podcasts, and videos is completely groundbreaking, and he has completely changed the way I do business.

How do you balance work and life?

Honestly, during this period of rapidly growing our business, work has dominated my life. But in reality, I feel like that’s how it goes for entrepreneurs - it ebbs and flows. And my goal is to put in all of this work now so I can pull back in the future when I want to. The excitement of building something unique motivates me to work harder, and most of the time, it doesn’t even feel like work because I enjoy it so much.

What’s your favorite way to decompress?

I’ve always been an avid golfer, so anytime I get to play golf is a great time for me. Melissa and I have recently begun going to Topgolf together, which is a lot of fun. I do believe that it is essential to have time to decompress, especially as an entrepreneur. Otherwise, the stress can really get to you, and burnout occurs.

What do you have planned for the next six months?

My plan for the next six months is to consistently write top-notch content for our blogs to grow our audience and attract high-quality backlinks to our website, further improving our rankings. In the next six months, I expect to have a consistent flow of leads hitting our pipeline as a result of the work we have done and will do on our site.

How can our readers connect with you?

Here are the ways your readers can connect with me:

Website: www.MomentumPropertySolution.com

Email: jordan@MomentumPropertySolution.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MomentumProperties

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-fulmer-07a37a215/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Momentum_Prop