Land Investors Member Eric Ko and his Success (CFFL 499)
Land Investors Member Eric Ko and his Success
Transcript:
Jack Butala: Jill and I interview Land Investor member, Eric Ko.
Eric Ko: Hey, Jack.
Jack Butala: Hi, Eric. How are you? Good, you know you have both of us. Jill’s here. She happened to be in my office, so she jumped on.
Jill DeWitt: Hey, Eric. How are you?
Eric Ko: I’m doing well.
Jill DeWitt: Good. Thought I’d say hi and just listen in the beginning, if that’s okay with you.
Eric Ko: Yeah, no of course! Finally get to talk to you in person, I guess, right?
Jill DeWitt: Thank you!
Eric Ko: Yeah. It’s good.
Jill DeWitt: How’s everything going?
Eric Ko: Everything is good. To be honest with you, I was doing pretty okay, and I felt like I kind of lost a little momentum because I was busy. I have another business.
Jill DeWitt: Okay.
Eric Ko: My coffee business, so I’m starting that, too. I was a little busy doing that, and then kind of lost momentum a little bit. Now, I’m kind of back, and I wanted to move forward with it and start doing it again.
Jill DeWitt: Cool! How far did you get before? Did you flip some properties? Did you-
Eric Ko: Yeah. I’ve done about 16 deals, about five cash and 11 terms.
Jill DeWitt: Wow.
Eric Ko: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Wow, man.
Jill DeWitt: Good!
Eric Ko: Yeah. Thank you. I was actually pretty surprised. To be honest, I was a little skeptical at first. I bought the [inaudible 00:01:22] and I just followed everything, and I worked.
Jack Butala: Hey, can we make this a podcast?
Eric Ko: Uh, yeah, you can.
Jack Butala: I hope so.
Eric Ko: I don’t know if I’m good enough to-
Jack Butala: Don’t mention any county names or anything, and I’ll just drill some questions. That’s a fantastic story.
Eric Ko: Sure.
Jill DeWitt: I love it. I was going to ask you that, Eric. I was going to say, “Are you one of those guys that are like, ‘Hmm, does this really work?’ And then the next thing you know, you’re like, ‘Wow, it does work!'”
Eric Ko: Yeah. It’s good. I was going to get into flipping houses and stuff, and my wife’s uncle, he’s been doing that for the longest time. He’s more specialized in the back taxes and all that kind of stuff. I’ve done it in a couple of counties before, and just a lot of work. I spent like 23 hours on the list, and I only got maybe one or two properties that I really wanted. It’s a lot of work upfront and not so much on the return.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah. You heard our people. A couple times ago, Dave V in our group, he said, “I never lost 20,000 dollars on a land deal, but start doing houses and everyone doing houses, they’re not all perfect. A lot of them are really hard, and the return is … ” We did it, too. You know that, Eric.
Eric Ko: We’re good in the groove.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah, we tried. I sat there and I really … That was the defining moment when I really sat and added up all the hours and what I could’ve been doing.
Jack Butala: Two dollars an hour.
Eric Ko: Oh, wow.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah, and I never really thought … We had a 45-day move-in walls event, and that was my full-time job.
Eric Ko: Yeah.
Jill DeWitt: While I was doing that thing, I’m like, “This is really ridiculous for this little amount of money.”
Eric Ko: Right. I think it’s kind of like what you guys were saying. It takes a certain personality. I have a couple of friends here in Las Vegas that does that for a living. I say, “Oh, this is kind of cool.” I have no experience in real estate. I never was a realtor or anything, but I kind of liked the idea of [inaudible 00:03:41] investment. Always have been. I just dug a little bit deeper and found you guys.
Jack Butala: Tell us, how long have you been in the business and when did you send your first mailer out? What was the response?
Eric Ko: Yeah, I bought the program, I think it was in August 2016, and took me about two or three weeks to really learn about and go through the whole program, and learn the whole process. I sent out my first mailer in September.
Jill DeWitt: Nice.
Eric Ko: I was nervous, but I just went in and did it. I followed everything from the program, and yeah. A week or two later, it actually … I got calls and I got a couple of hate calls, [inaudible 00:04:34] here and there, but it was a good mixture of everything. That’s what you teach us, right? Pick the right county. You should get a good mixture of everything.
I ended up buying a bunch of properties. I auctioned some of them because I was limited on funding, and I was little skeptical to be honest, too. I was like, “Okay. Let me try these auctions out.” I ended up selling everything. I’ve done about three mailers so far.
Jill DeWitt: That’s so great.
Eric Ko: Yeah. Like I was telling you, I got kind of distracted for a little bit, so I paused for a little bit. Now, I’m back at it.
Jill DeWitt: I need to give you a compliment, Eric. Thank you for just going out there and doing it. You didn’t clearly whine and be afraid, do you know what I mean? Some people are like, “Oh, I can’t. Does this look okay?” They never get off the ground because they’re second guessing themselves. You’re like, “You know what? I did it. I sent out this thing, and that’s what I did. Then, I bought some, and I’m going to try this.” You weren’t afraid to follow along and do it. I’m super impressed. You have great goals.
Eric Ko: Thank you.
Jack Butala: What do you think? What’s your secret? What made it work for you?
Eric Ko: I think a lot of it is the experience I had with … I was a creative director and had my own digital ad agency for six years prior to this. I burnt out and left the company. I ran a business. We grew from just three of us in a little, small room to a staff of 12 people, which is not a lot of people, but it’s a decent sized staff. I think a lot of it is just from my previous business experience. You just kind of go for it. You just do it.
Jack Butala: Jill and I always say that if you have your own company, or you’ve had your own company, man, you are so much further ahead on a learning curve because you know how to solve your own problems. When those speed bumps come, you don’t see them as detrimental. You just go with it.
Eric Ko: It is, yeah. It helps a lot. People look at … I think that’s what happened to a lot of people who got involved. They don’t really look at this as a real business. I think that’s the number one pitfall.
Jill DeWitt: Thank you. I love it.
Jack Butala: Did you ever hear people say, “There’s no such thing as a part-time realtor?” You’ve got to get in with both feet. I really think that’s true with this, too.
Eric Ko: Yeah, for sure. I think it’s either you’re in or you’re out, right?
Jill DeWitt: I agree.
Jack Butala: Yeah, like marriage.
Eric Ko: Exactly.
Jack Butala: And pregnancy.
Eric Ko: You can’t be half pregnant, right?
Jill DeWitt: Oh my goodness.
Jack Butala: We’re child rearing.
Jill DeWitt: I tried to think of how it got to be a comparison between flipping land and a county and pregnancy. All right.
Jack Butala: Now it’s on your podcast.
Jill DeWitt: Here we go. That’s really good.
Jack Butala: Before you called, now we’re turning this thing into a podcast, you asked me several questions in Skype here. I’m going to take them one by one. I don’t know if they’re in front of you, if you want to ask them, or I can just do it. I’ll answer the questions.
Eric Ko: You know what? I copied and pasted the questions and I totally forgot where I put them, into another form. If you want to just go for it …
Jack Butala: There’s seven questions. I’ll take them in order. Number one. Do you still believe a direct mailer is the way to go compared to a PPC, paper click, SCO search engine optimization or management, or squeeze page? What about lead propeller? What about investor care, etc?
Yes. Here’s the thing. I tried the squeeze page thing, and yeah, it generates a lot of traffic, but it’s very similar to sending out a postcard. You ask them to fill out a form on a website. You drive the traffic and you get a lot of form submissions, and they all suck. It’s just like sending a postcard out saying, “Hey, do you want to sell your property?” Of course you want to sell your property for 16 million dollars. We stopped doing it. It’s just a distraction. I’m just being real straight with you.
Eric Ko: I talked to the guy from investor care and the other company, and the way how to do it is they have a two-step form. In the second step, the form, they ask, “How much do you want on this property? What is a minimum that you would sell this property for?” I don’t know if that would kind of filter out all that shit emails, all that contacts, I don’t know.
Jill DeWitt: Here’s my thoughts on that, though. For me, it’s so much easier when I’m dealing with one county and one batch, or a large group in the same area, and I priced them. I know what I want in the area, versus all these … I could have 16 random people from all over the country, and it’s a waste of my time-
Jack Butala: 16 a day.
Jill DeWitt: It could be 16 that I don’t want, that don’t meet my criteria, that have really pulled me away from what I want to be focusing on. I’d rather buy what I want, so that my own criteria … I know that I want 40 acres in this area, and I know exactly what I’m going to do with it. I know exactly who’s going to buy it. I don’t need to be chasing 16 random things all over the place. That’s, for me, why I like it. Again, I really still believe that we all know, even though we all say, “We’re never moving or we’re never going to leave this house,” every single person has a price that they would come to their wife and say, “Sorry, sweetheart. We’re going to rebuild next door because they just offered us” whatever. There’s a price. I just need to weed out the people and make sure that they’re in my ballpark. I’m not going to ever be in their ballpark. I’d rather just say, “Nope.” I’ll pass on all of them.
Jack Butala: In the end, I don’t think it’s more cost efficient anyway. I think it’s expensive and I think that … Here’s the thing. When we do a mailer, 1,500 a month, it costs 500 to 750 bucks, but you know what’s going to happen.
Eric Ko: Right.
Jack Butala: You can predict it. If the thing comes back in the mail unsigned, you priced it so it’s hopefully a [inaudible 00:11:10].
Eric Ko: How about the competition, though? Ever since I started in August, I’ve had a couple properties. I’ve been getting letters for looseness …
Jack Butala: Further down in the questions, you asked me how you milk a county or select a county.
Eric Ko: Yeah.
Jack Butala: We’ll cover that in a second.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah, one thing I was going to say for you, too, Eric. One good thing, if you’re not sure, test it. There was a guy and it was like a year ago. I cut and paste his exact case study into my Facebook because I thought, “This is brilliant.” There was a guy, who went out and tested the whole, “Let’s mail only back tax people versus non-back tax.” He wrote a whole dissertation on the whole thing. “That was a mess. It cost me more money. I got nothing but problems. Now I get it. I’m not going to focus just on those.” It was beautiful. I don’t think the guy’s in our group, or at least he wasn’t then. I was like, “This is brilliant. Thank you for doing this for everyone to share.”
It’s not crazy, Eric, to test these ideas if you think it might work. Please share with us all what your results are.
Eric Ko: Yeah. Okay.
Jack Butala: As far as competition goes, you just have to get creative in the counties that you mail and the pricing that you select. Our most successful people in the group are mailing counties that I have never even considered mailing, and they’re not sending them out for 125 dollars an acre. They’re looking at it much more intelligently and creatively. Buying 70 – 80,000 dollar pieces of property and selling them for 300,000. That’s where the real money in this is. I never meant the cashflow from land program to be a long-term sustainable income scenario. I meant it to be exactly how you used it.
Eric Ko: Right.
Jack Butala: You got your feet wet. You learned. You can see the power of it. Now, you’re ready to take it to the next level, clearly.
Eric Ko: Right. Okay. That makes sense.
Jack Butala: Your second question is, you need help in selecting a specific area in a county inside real quest-
Eric Ko: Yes.
Jack Butala: And how to do that. I don’t know if you’ve been following our weekly calls. If you haven’t, they’re on YouTube.
Eric Ko: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Jack Butala: There’s a RedFin. There’s a real simple way to utilize RedFin if you’re familiar with that. The IEX feeds get real specific. Then isolate the APN scheme. It’s very consistent and predictable. If you picture a map on the wall of the county that you’re interested in, the northeast corner will have an APN scheme of 102 to 607, or something like that. You’ll price it at, I don’t know, 4,000 dollars an acre.
Eric Ko: Okay.
Jack Butala: The southeast corner will have a different APN scheme, and you might price that at way … Let’s use Colorado. The southeast corner of Colorado is extremely inexpensive because it’s flat.
Eric Ko: Yeah.
Jack Butala: The central northeast, because it’s very mountainous, is three times as much. You can really smoke that out based on the first three letters of the APN usually. First three characters.
Eric Ko: First three numbers, right?
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWitt: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Does that help?
Eric Ko: I think so. I still need to isolate the APN scheme by the … How do you do it inside Real Quest?
Jack Butala: You can’t do it without an index map, or some other mapping tool.
Eric Ko: Okay.
Jack Butala: It is not provided in any of the Core Logic products. You have to go to the county and request an index map.
Eric Ko: Okay.
Jack Butala: If you go on our resources page, I think that I explain it pretty extensively at land academy. If not, we talk about it so much on the weekly calls. Every single weekly call is on YouTube.
Eric Ko: Okay.
Jill DeWitt: This is really good. You’re really getting … You’re pinpointing to and getting really detailed. You’re not just blasting a county. That works, too, but this is good.
Jack Butala: If you practice, because you’re familiar with houses, practice a subdivision. Picture a master plan community that’s called, I don’t know, Washington Arms or something like that. You’ll get in there, and you’ll find out in Real Quest, it doesn’t cost you anything without downloading the data. Whoever subdivided the property, they went to the assessor and said, “I need 4,200 APNs,” and the assessor says, “All right. They’re all going to start with 602-31.” Now you know that every single property that starts with that is in that subdivision, and they’re being sold for 140 dollars per square foot. You want to send a mailer out for 110, or whatever the numbers are. Same thing with land.
Eric Ko: Okay. The APN scheme … All right. I just need to do a little bit more research on that, and hopefully I can … I’m getting ready to send out my next mailer.
Jack Butala: Next question, you said, “What’s your Strategen pricing offer?” In the simplest terms, and this is land only, we price it for between 25 percent and 40 percent of like-kind property sold, or available for sale on the internet. If property’s selling for 10,000 bucks an acre, and it’s very similar, it’s a real comparison for sale, not a completed sale, but a for sale property at 10,000 an acre, we offer between 2,500 and 4,000 bucks an acre. We try to sell it for 6 or 8 because it’s still under what it’s really worth.
Eric Ko: Okay, so 20 to 40 percent of what’s current selling.
Jack Butala: Yeah, 25 to 40 percent. 20 is really light. The closer you get to 40 percent, the yield gets exponential, so to speak. You’re going to buy way more properties, but you’re going to pay more.
Eric Ko: Okay.
Jack Butala: At this point in our career, that’s how Jill and I do it. We actually pay more than we probably should just to get big deals done.
Eric Ko: Do you find that when you do bigger deals, your margin is less?
Jack Butala: Yes. Margin is less, but the dollars are more. Here’s an example.
Eric Ko: That makes sense. Okay.
Jack Butala: We target ranches. We call them movie star ranches around Los Angeles and some of the counties. If you listen to our show, we talk about it.
Eric Ko: Yeah. Okay.
Jill DeWitt: I think one of the things is we have to get out of our heads that we fail. I hear people saying, “Oh, I failed. I didn’t double my money.” Hold on a moment. You just made 40,000 dollars. Big deal, it wasn’t exactly doubling your money. I think you still win. Anything above 5 percent, right Jack, is just crazy.
Jack Butala: The numbers on a ranch are … You buy for 800,000. You sell it for 900 or a million, and it’s worth 1.5. With the brush of a couple of pen strokes, you made 150, 200,000 bucks on a deal. The percentages on that are 20 percent. The way we structure it, we don’t even put the money in at all. We don’t even put a dollar in, so you can’t calculate the return on that.
Eric Ko: Sure.
Jack Butala: Jill and I laughed all the way to the bank on those deals, literally.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah, it’s true.
Eric Ko: Yeah. It makes total sense.
Jack Butala: Next question. How do I improve my listings on, I’m going to plug your website, ruralnest.com, not selling as fast as I can? Do you want to look at that, Jill?
Jill DeWitt: Yeah, I want to look at it. Let’s pull this up right now.
Eric Ko: Check it out.
Jill DeWitt: Nice plug for Eric, here.
Jack Butala: This is going to go over the half hour that we’ve allotted. Do you have time, Jill and Eric?
Jill DeWitt: I’m okay. Are you okay, Eric, on time?
Eric Ko: Yeah. Okay, of course.
Jill DeWitt: Okay.
Jack Butala: Nice Google presence.
Jill DeWitt: Ooh!
Jack Butala: The site looks good, bud.
Jill DeWitt: Nice photo! Joshua Tree, right?
Eric Ko: Yeah.
Jill DeWitt: [inaudible 00:19:49] okay. That’s really cool. Nice Hawaii property! Hey, that’s really cool!
Jack Butala: It goes with your coffee.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah!
Eric Ko: I was from Hawaii originally.
Jack Butala: Your listing looks perfect. I have nothing to say about it negative-
Jill DeWitt: Holy cow!
Jack Butala: Except one single thing.
Jill DeWitt: Looks great!
Jack Butala: I would consider doing a video.
Eric Ko: Okay. I have a couple of people who … I’m trying to find ways to add more credibility to my website. There’s a couple incidents, I know the buyer wants to purchase, but I can tell that she was kind of skeptical still. I did my best to try to sell her on the property, but I need to increase some more or add some more credibility of some sort on my site.
Jack Butala: In your about page, I’m looking at it right now.
Eric Ko: Yeah, I need to update my bio up there.
Jack Butala: I would put a picture of you on there. If you got a little coffee company, I would tell that story, too.
Jill DeWitt: Oh, that’s a good idea.
Jack Butala: Make yourself … “Hey, I’m just a guy over here that’s got some real estate. I kind of don’t know what I’ve been doing. I’m not letting a big corporation take advantage of me.”
Eric Ko: Yeah.
Jack Butala: That’s what Luke Smith does. Luke Smith downplays himself and is like, “I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s worth. Make me an offer.”
Eric Ko: Yeah. That’s kind of like … I’m always going back and forth, “Should I make it really professional looking, or should I make it like … ”
Jill DeWitt: Make it perfect.
Eric Ko: I don’t know.
Jack Butala: I think it looks fantastic.
Jill DeWitt: I wouldn’t change a thing. I love your … Keep those completed sales up there because I think that is what’s going to lead you to the credibility that you’re looking for. The more solds that they see, they go, “Wow. Look what these guys are doing.”
Jack Butala: You could say you’re a member of Land Investors, too. We have reports from people that that really helps.
Eric Ko: Okay.
Jack Butala: In fact, a lot of times our customer service people are in-house staff and are starting to report back to us that we’re getting a lot of questions from the general public about X,Y,Z site. Are these guys for real? What is Land Investors? That tells me that people are … If you look at Luke Smith’s site, he’s got a link right in there that says, “This is what it’s all about. Land Academy.”
Eric Ko: Okay.
Jack Butala: I’m not begging you for a back link or anything, I’m just saying …
Jill DeWitt: Yeah. I’d say, too, in the land investing community, other investors, they know who we are. If anybody out there who is in this business, and they might be looking to you to buy it wholesale from you, and then flip it and do something with it, that’s a perfect example. There’s a lot of credibility there in our …
Jack Butala: I get calls from letterstream.com, who did your mailers. They did a mailer for you guys, too, for you probably. They’re constantly complimenting me on the level of intelligence and professionalism from people in our group.
Eric Ko: Okay. Yeah, they’re great. I used them my last mailer. They’re great.
Jack Butala: Good.
Eric Ko: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Next question. Can you define “milking a county?” Did I say milking a county? I think it’s more milking the data. Let’s say you download between 5 and 20 acres in X,Y,Z county, and you’ve got 5,000 records. You only send 1,500 out. Make sure you send the … Don’t waste the money on that data. If the county works, and it’s pretty clear by your website which counties are working for you, go get the 40 acre data.
Eric Ko: Right.
Jack Butala: Then the 100 acre data. Maybe they even have acre data. That’s milking a county.
Eric Ko: Okay. Do you go for the odd number, odd size lots, too?
Jack Butala: Whatever’s in the right price per acre. Whatever offer gets signed, we usually jump all over it.
Eric Ko: Okay.
Jack Butala: Your last question is, “How do I scale to Luke Smith?” That’s a very popular question I hear all the time. It’s a very simple answer. Send out more mailers.
Eric Ko: Yeah.
Jack Butala: When you ask him … He’s going to be on the call later at 3 o’clock. When you ask him that question, that’s his answer, “Oh, I just sent out a ridiculous number of mailers and just see what happens.”
Jill DeWitt: Yeah. That’s true.
Jack Butala: If you’re fishing and you cast a six mile by six mile net, you’re going to catch something.
Eric Ko: Right.
Jill DeWitt: My other thing I was going to say, too, is Luke does a good job of utilizing his resources. I apologize, we’re getting there as fast as we can, Eric, with July and things like that, but that will help you out a lot, when you can not answer your own phone and you deserve the deal maker. That’s another, how you build up your volume. You’re not spending time on paperwork.
Eric Ko: Yeah. I’m currently using Padlife. They’re good, but they’re just too nice.
Jill DeWitt: What are you spending, Eric, a month?
Eric Ko: Honestly, I would say I spend about 100 bucks. I’m only doing one county at a time. I decided, to be honest, about two weeks ago. I’m doing that free trial. I maybe spend about 100 bucks a month.
Jill DeWitt: Okay. What’s your volume do you think? How many calls do you get in a day, do you know?
Eric Ko: Right now it’s kind of hard to gauge. When I sent out my last mailer, I would say five to ten. Around there.
Jill DeWitt: Okay.
Eric Ko: Yeah.
Jill DeWitt: This is good for me. I haven’t got to the final pricing yet.
Eric Ko: I’m excited.
Jack Butala: Is there any real good hate?
Eric Ko: I did. I don’t know if it’s appropriate on this call.
Jack Butala: It’s appropriate.
Jill DeWitt: You can’t swear, but you can bleep. You can give us a hint.
Eric Ko: It’s kind of weird. There was this guy. Actually, no.
Jill DeWitt: This is good.
Jack Butala: Sorry, I love when people get so angered by this. It’s so silly.
Eric Ko: It was actually pretty good. He actually went and mailed everything back to me.
Jack Butala: He drew some pictures?
Eric Ko: He drew some pictures. He went and changed every … The place and added zero and stuff like that. It was just really funny.
Jill DeWitt: I hope you saved all that. I would frame that and put that on the wall.
Eric Ko: Actually, I’m friends with him. I was thinking about a different one. I did an email blast, and I got a really bad, funny response. I was thinking about that one, it’s not really super funny, but that one is pretty weird, too.
Jill DeWitt: It’s hilarious to me the people that spend the time-
Jack Butala: We got kicked off of Gmail one time for doing that.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah.
Eric Ko: What happened?
Jack Butala: I sent an email out instead of sending regular letters out and it was a disaster.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah. We tried that and it doesn’t work.
Jack Butala: You can’t do that with a Gmail account. You need to be a little more smart about it.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah.
Jack Butala: It didn’t yield results anyway. There’s nothing like opening an envelope, and sitting there and looking at a piece of property that you forgot about with an offer for 12,000 dollars. There’s nothing like it. It’s like, “Wait a minute. I have 12,000 dollars on Wednesday for a property I forgot about?”
Eric Ko: Yeah. I got a guy that he took over … His dad passed away and he was just cleaning up his trust and all that. He said he found my letter, and that was almost a year ago. Yeah. I think it works. I think a lot of it is just from my background because I was in the digital advertising [inaudible 00:28:33]. Direct mailing is obsolete and this and that. I’m thinking in the back of my mind, “Oh, maybe it’s just not really working as well as it should be.” I don’t know.
Jill DeWitt: I hear you. I wish there was a legal electronic way because believe me, I would do it, too. If we could text people offers, I’d do it. There’s no legal way to do some of this stuff.
Jack Butala: We used to send faxes out through real estate agents all over the country and we can’t do that anymore either. Man, that was just ridiculously successful.
Eric Ko: Yeah.
Jack Butala: They all had pocket listings for 2, 3, 400 bucks an acre.
Eric Ko: Oh wow. Okay.
Jack Butala: If you want to break the law, the data’s really easy to get. For whatever reason, every real estate office still has a fax machine. I don’t know why, but whatever.
Eric Ko: Yeah. I don’t know why either. I want to get rid of my fax, but I get like two out of a mailer around there.
Jack Butala: Oh, yeah. They fax them back to you? Me, too.
Eric Ko: Yeah. I’m actually in the position of switching over different phone services. I’m using [inaudible 00:29:47] right now and my fax and my number is the same. I have to get a new fax number.
Jack Butala: Yeah. You do. It’s real cheap.
Eric Ko: Yeah.
Jill DeWitt: Your phone is set up. You can keep this phone number forever, right?
Eric Ko: Yeah.
Jill DeWitt: Okay, good. As you know, they’ll call you … It’s funny. Three years from now you’re going to get something-
Eric Ko: Yeah.
Jill DeWitt: Wow.
Eric Ko: To be honest, I’m excited.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Now is the time for you … We have a ton of listeners. The show got pretty big. Now’s the time for you to plug your coffee thing. I want to hear about it anyway.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah.
Eric Ko: Oh. I have a coffee roasting company in Las Vegas, it’s called Brew 3. The website is brew, B-R-E-W, the number 3.com. What we do is we import specialty coffee from all over the world and we roast them here in a commercial kitchen. It’s delivered to your doorstep.
Jack Butala: You could probably roast coffee beans on the hood of your car right now in Las Vegas, right?
Eric Ko: Oh, yeah.
Jack Butala: What’s the temperature today?
Eric Ko: I think it’s like 100 … Phoenix is hotter, no?
Jack Butala: I don’t know. It’s about the same.
Eric Ko: I think Phoenix gets hotter. It’s about … Today is actually nice. It’s about 83, but it will get up to 102 in the afternoon.
Jack Butala: We’re in Los Angeles right now, and it’s …
Eric Ko: Oh, you’re in Los … Okay.
Jack Butala: About 70 degrees out.
Eric Ko: Yeah.
Jill DeWitt: I’m looking at your site brew3.com. This is cool.
Jack Butala: Anyway, I interrupted you to make a silly joke, but … You roast the beans and then what?
Eric Ko: Yeah, and then we package it and ship it to your house or office.
Jack Butala: Oh.
Eric Ko: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Is it working pretty well?
Eric Ko: Pretty good. We’re still a startup. We started in January, so we’re actually in the process of restructuring everything. It will be more like a coffee club concept, like subscription-based. We’re pretty excited. In about two, three weeks we should launch a new design.
Jack Butala: What are your sales? Are you struggling? Are you past the startup stage?
Eric Ko: For the coffee?
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Eric Ko: We’re still in the startup stage. It’s more like a passion project for me.
Jack Butala: I love coffee.
Jill DeWitt: That’s cool.
Eric Ko: You guys like coffee?
Jill DeWitt: Yeah.
Jack Butala: I love it, yeah.
Jill DeWitt: Oh my gosh, we drink too much coffee. Let me tell you about Jack. There’s a few things that Jack does not skimp on, and one of them is all of our equipment in the office, home, and Tvs and computers and everything. There’s no skimping. The other thing is a coffee machine and coffee beans. He goes high end. I stare at them going, “I don’t know how to work this.”
Jack Butala: Drip. I’m sure you know what those are.
Eric Ko: Yeah, they’re good. You have a grinder though, right?
Jack Butala: The grinder’s in the [inaudible 00:32:57] machines.
Eric Ko: Okay. We’ll be selling whole beans.
Jack Butala: We have multiple machines in our house.
Jill DeWitt: It’s really funny. There’s too much coffee going on, actually. It’s hilarious. I’m like, “I’m on my fifth cup. I probably should stop.”
Jack Butala: It’s also not doing skimping on diamonds.
Jill DeWitt: No, no. That’s a good thing, actually. That I forgot, and cars.
Jack Butala: And cars.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Pretty much in that order, actually.
Jill DeWitt: That’s true.
Jack Butala: Electronics, coffee, diamonds, and cars.
Eric Ko: That’s funny.
Jill DeWitt: Good deal. Can I see what you just put on the screen there? I have a roast, a land-related roast version, property version [crosstalk 00:33:45].
Eric Ko: We should do a Land Academy roast.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah.
Jack Butala: We’re putting together, all kidding aside, Eric, is a gift package when people join.
Eric Ko: Sure.
Jack Butala: Or after their one year anniversary or whatever, so if you want I’ll get with you later, or somebody from my office will get with you, and talk.
Jill DeWitt: That would be cool [inaudible 00:34:05] just coffee.
Jack Butala: Yeah. If it’s [inaudible 00:34:09] sounds good, right?
Eric Ko: Yeah, for sure. I’ll send you guys some samples.
Jill DeWitt: Thanks.
Eric Ko: So far, so good. Everybody that we’ve sold to, they love it.
Jill DeWitt: That’s awesome.
Jack Butala: That’s all about getting the word out, right?
Eric Ko: Yeah. I’ll be more than happy to send you guys some.
Jill DeWitt: I like your membership idea, too. That way I don’t have to think about it. I just know every Monday there’s coffee there. I don’t have to go get it. That’s brilliant.
Eric Ko: Thank you.
Jack Butala: Eric, it was great to talk to you. Eric Ko, please plug your two sites again.
Eric Ko: Ruralnest.com, that’s for my land business, and then brew3.com, that’s B-R-E-W, the number 3.com.
Jack Butala: Awesome.
Eric Ko: Thank you.
Jack Butala: I had no idea this would turn out to be a podcast, but I appreciate it.
Jill DeWitt: This will be great.
Eric Ko: [inaudible 00:35:05]
Jack Butala: One less episode we have to record. Thanks again, man. Let us know how it goes on the next mailer.
Eric Ko: I will, I will for sure. Thank you very much.
Jack Butala: All right, bud.
Jill DeWitt: Thanks, take care.
Eric Ko: All right. Bye.
Jack Butala: Bye.
Jill DeWitt: Bye.
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