How we Provide Ongoing Success Support-SuccessPlant.com (CFFL 0037)
How we Provide Ongoing Success Support-SuccessPlant.com
Steven: Hey, Jack Butala for Land Academy. Welcome to our Cash Flow from Land Show. Jill’s with us and almost as always, almost always.
Jill: Almost always.
Steven: In this episode, Jill and I discuss our creation SuccessPlant.com. It’s one of my personal favorite success stories and creations I guess that we’ve done since we started Land Academy here. It’s an online community where our members, and you, and I, and Jill collaborate on anything land and success related. This tool kind of separates us from our competitors, I think.
Jill: I love it.
Steven: I had this crazy idea, Jill, that we should read some of the super successful stuff, and some of the questions in general that we get in SuccessPlant, and then I’d love to have your take on … Since we sort of look at stuff in a different way, and I think it’s really helpful, your take on the how it’s working and what happened, and maybe even tell the story about how we started it.
Jill: Should we start there?
Steven: Or why we started it …
Jill: Why we started it? Okay. I just love it. This is just … This is a fun show for me because it’s nice to talk about one of our great level tools that we offer are our people, and it’s just inspirational. Not to get too far ahead as … I think why it’s named SuccessPlant, which is really your brainchild Steven was [the name of that game. 00:01:13]
Steven: That’s with the .com was available at that time.
Jill: That’s why I was laughing.
Steven: There’s a lot more that went into it than that.
Jill: We can see it growing into so many other things. Right now it’s really around our niche and our land business, but there’s so many things that you and I are working on, and we’ll get to that later, but it’s all about success. That’s it. Talk about … I go there for inspiration sometimes. It’s just kind of like, “Oh wow, look what these people are doing. Look how great this is. Look at this money this person is making.” We’ll get in to some more of that. To back up, how in my words …
Steven: Let’s do this together because I think both our words are appropriate for this little story.
Jill: All right, we’ll share how SuccessPlant came to be. I was knee deep in a ton of new members coming in to our Land Academy program, and I found myself getting a little bogged down with wonderful questions, and I realized, “Gosh this person had this question, and that one kind of had a similar question gosh wouldn’t be great if I could answer it at one time for everyone”. So I went to you, Steven, and I said, “Help, can we please come up with some way that I can, we can all kind of communicate together, and answer some questions, one, share great information, gosh let’s brag about our successes how well we are all doing”. You said, “I have the answer”.
Steven: I said, “Why don’t you take your vacation with your girlfriend in California, and I’ll sit here and work”.
Jill: Yeah, that’s exactly what you said.
Steven: And that’s what we did.
Jill: That’s what happened. Thank you every much you take great care of me.
Steven: The truth is I really actually enjoyed the super quiet time.
Jill: Quiet time.
Steven: It was almost … I swear I … From this time… I could have paid somebody to do this. From the time that I started, sat down, it was like 36 hours later with this little bit of sleep on and off, and a bunch of canned spaghetti all over the floor. We figured … I got this, the website done, and I think it still shows … It’s very reminiscent of how it looked in the beginning. I think it’s doing its job fantastically well.
Jill: It is. Hundreds of members just signing up. It’s totally free right now. Right now. It’s just a great environment. Steven created, literally, this fantastic online environment.
Steven: It’s a community, online community.
Jill: It is, online community. We have all these different forms. You can ask different questions, and it’s really about our land-flipping niche.
Steven: You know what it ended up being without an unattended consequence? Probably every couple of days, maybe even more often than that … Jill, I’m sure this happens to you too. Somebody calls me or emails me and says, “Look, I am extremely skeptical about this and really every type of real estate education thing. I get that. I agree. There’s some crazy stuff on late-night TV, and we like to separate ourselves from that completely, but one of the things I do with people who are very skeptical, and relatively, they’re handling it in a really bright way. I ask them to go onto SuccessPlant, and just post a regular question in the regular form, and they do. The question should be something like this: I’m really skeptical. I don’t believe this thing works, however you want to phrase it. I’d really like to hear from some people who have purchased this thing, or going through the program, and they’re having some success, and it’s working.
Every single time, almost without exception, that convinces them, or kind of pushes them over the edge to really buy into the program, and it … This is not something that’s putting food on the table for Jill and I. This is truly … Land Academy in general, for Jill and I, is a way to kind of give back.
Jill: Yes.
Steven: And to share these great real estate opportunities, these low-cost real estate opportunities, and help people make some money. There’s tons of success stories on SuccessPlant about it.
Jill: Right, so you don’t even have to get an account. I love what you said, cause if you want to go that, and really get some firm feedback right then, but you don’t even have to do that. You can just go skip … You can get into SuccessPlant, and just read some of the stories of what people are posting. All the successes are right there. For example, I just saw your … So-
Steven: So let me read an entry that one of our students, Mike [Dogan 00:06:10] … We actually did a podcast with him, and posted a couple … I don’t know, maybe a month ago by now, but … This is his comment, I don’t know, a day and a half ago: “I just got a signed contract down payment in the mail for my first terms deal.” We teach … We talk about selling property for cash, flipping them for cash, and then doing terms. Here’s the breakdown: “My total all-in cost for the property, it’s a 1.15 acre property in Colorado, was 14 hundred and 50 bucks, which is a little rich for Jill’s blood. She would probably pay a hundred dollars for that property, but that’s a topic for a whole different podcast.
” … purchase for 14 hundred and 50 dollars, sold it for 10 thousand dollars, 15 hundred dollars down, financed the balance at 85 hundred dollars 12% … It’s a 127 dollars a month for nine years and two months.” I’ll stop right there in the entry, because that, right there, is a base hit.
Jill: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Steven: We talk about 10 thousand dollars a month for life-
Jill: There you go.
Steven: It only takes several deals just like that, and you’re there.
Jill: Exactly.
Steven: That’s what I love about SuccessPlant. I log on there … I have to confess, I log in there and just snoop around. I have a username that’s not really me.
Jill: Oh, do you now? I didn’t know that.
Steven: I don’t do any entries. I just go in there and look around.
Jill: I log in, and it’s me, and everybody knows it’s me. You know what’s so great about it?
Steven: I feel proud. It’s like watching your-
Jill: Me too-
Steven: Kid do well at baseball, or something.
Jill: There’s times that I log in, and have every intention of answering a bunch of questions. I’m like, “Okay, here I am, and I’m looking for questions, and oh! Okay, nobody needs me there. Oh! Okay, nobody needs me there.” You know what I mean? It’s-
Steven: Yup.
Jill: We, I think, did very well with our program, and setting folks up for success that a lot of SuccessPlant is just success stories-
Steven: Right.
Jill: And just little tips … Sometimes it’s little tips like, “Hey, put this on your answering machine; you’ll get a better response.” Or, “Hey, maybe use this to mail out letters; you might … It’s a little bit less expensive.” Sometimes it’s a lot of little tweaks that I see, and it’s awesome.
Steven: Yeah, I just read … I mean, we were looking for a couple … Right before the show started, I was looking for a couple comments and questions, and I just read a comment that … Well, it was a question. A new member just asked an old member that’s been doing it for a while, “What’s the best way to send these mailers out? We send out a ton of mail. We send out offers, or we teach sending out offers, and then having them come back to you. The ones that are signed, we obviously do the deals. The original company that we used to send the mailers out to process them, turned out to not be the best one.”
On their own, a Land Academy member went out and found a better deal with a better company, a more reputable company to send these mailers out, and now we’ve all changed. Even Jill and I have changed. We’ve changed our land estate company, our real estate company to change the way we do business because of a student, which I just think-
Jill: I love it. You put it on the resource pages, too, didn’t you?
Steven: Yeah, I discontinued the old one, and input hers.
Jill: That was fantastic. That can happen. That can change. The best way that we found, or the cheapest credit card processing company two years ago … There might be somebody better today. It’s great stuff, little thing like that.
Steven: Yeah, you know what, we used Stripe-
Jill: I just heard that.
Steven: I-
Jill: Are you going where I think you’re going?
Steven: I don’t know. I’m in love with Stripe.
Jill: Well, I heard there might be a cheaper way.
Steven: I think there are cheaper ways, but with that, I don’t know, man.
Jill: That’s true. You and I … We do that, though. See now, hey, this is a whole another podcast, but sometimes you get … Sometimes I’m willing to pay more to get what I want. You know what I mean?
Steven: Give me an example. Some stuff I think you need to pay for, period.
Jill: Okay, purses. You asked for an example. I’m giving you an example. The purse that I carry is absolutely not the least expensive out there, and I can guarantee the less expensive one will do just as well. Slash, however-
Steven: We might be talking about two different things. I-
Jill: Oh, okay, that’s were I was going for it. Sometimes I’ll pay for quality, and I mean in an item, and in service. I do both. That’s where I was going with it. What were you going to say?
Steven: Well, with Stripe, specifically, we don’t get anything … there’s no affiliation with this at all. I just love Stripe. I think it’s for developers; not for real estate developers, but for IT developers. There’s a ton of support, and it’s … Have we ever had any credit card payment issues, ever, since we started?
Jill: No.
Steven: How many payments have we processed?
Jill: Wow.
Steven: That’s what I think. Maybe if it’s a few … Not percentage points, but a few tenths of a point more expensive-
Jill: In little fees, or anything. I agree.
Steven: I just-
Jill: It’s one of those things that … Yeah, when you run that risk, too … Gee, I don’t know. Have you ever migrated a website, Steven?
Steven: I just migrated-
Jill: Thank you.
Steven: All of our websites to one, to save a bunch of money. I’m going to say it. It could have gone a little better.
Jill: I know.
Steven: It’s okay now.
Jill: Thank you. Thank you for-
Steven: I don’t think I could have bought my way out of that, though. There were some innate problems going on, which is why we did it. We had to do it to solve those problems.
Jill: Yeah, in the end-
Steven: It was a combination of over eight years of taping together websites, and we just had to get them all together, and make them work right.
Jill: Exactly. In the end, it probably saved hundreds of dollars a year, it sounded like. I know it. I wrote it all down.
Steven: Here’s an example of some stuff that you have to pay for.
Jill: You’re going to toilet my purses thing. Go on, I love it. Go ahead.
Steven: If you’re building a house, you got to pay. You might find some cheaper labor, but you got to get the right materials, and I just think … That’s why I think most contractors I know, and I know a bunch, have a little over-inflated sense of how much stuff costs.
Jill: Say that again, over-inflated sense of how much stuff costs.
Steven: Yeah, other things other than contracting. If you’re going to ask a contractor how much a used car is, he’s going to say it costs 80 thousand dollars when you can get it for 12.
Jill: Okay.
Steven: It’s just because they’re really-
Jill: They’re used to-
Steven: In a good way, bent on buying the right stuff in the first place-
Jill: Right.
Steven: And paying for it, and having the project come out okay.
Jill: If you have a good one. I agree with that.
Steven: How much does SuccessPlant cost? Nothing.
Jill: Gee, it’s kind of free right now. Right now.
Steven: Right now, yeah.
Jill: It’s great.
Steven: What else besides purses do you have to … You think-
Jill: Oh, you came back to that, didn’t you? Shoes.
Steven: Yeah.
Jill: Jewelry.
Steven: Jewelry? Oh my gosh, it’s like it’s Jill day
Jill: Hey speaking of Christmas …
Steven: Here’s another entry.
Jill: Okay.
Steven: This is from John D. This is actually 16 hours ago. “I’ve been very fortunate to have some good success. I started out with Jack Sh-, our competitor’s program …” … Not going to say his last name. ” … And did a lot of the basics, learned a lot of the basics. I really learned the most when I found Steve and Jill’s site …” Man, you can not pay for this type of publicity.
Jill: I know.
Steven: ” … And Seth Williams helped me, too, a lot.” We have Seth on the show all the time.
Jill: We love Seth.
Steven: ” I found my greatest responses from doing very focused searches. For example, I’d pull up a GIS website, which is a mapping website for accounting, that I want to search in, and then I look for the properties that have had the same owner for many years, and that haven’t been built on.” He’s found his little niche out of our little niche.
Jill: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Steven: He said he’s got an even better response than we … A better mailer response than we actually budget for, which is amazing.
Jill: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Steven: Which means it’s more than five to twenty percent.
Jill: Mm-hmm (affirmative) That’s one of the things I love about this business is, there’s a niche within a niche, within a niche, within a niche. We can all profit tremendously in this environment.
Steven: Right.
Jill: It’s fantastic. Hey, I want to share something. Are we done with … Cause I have a success thing I wanted to share.
Steven: Yeah.
Jill: Speaking of SuccessPlant …
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