Ever wondered how to build a rock-solid acquisition pipeline while balancing the unpredictable nature of real estate? In this episode of the Land Academy Show, hosts Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit pull back the curtain on their weekly mailer strategy that’s not only keeping their acquisition pipeline healthy but also paving the way for their ambitious $2.5 million goal this year. From deal-making tips to tackling unique property challenges like junk-filled lots, they share insights, strategies, and lessons learned that can elevate your land investment game. Don’t miss this candid discussion!

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Mastering The Weekly Mailer: Building A Healthy Acquisition Pipeline

I’m Steven Jack Butala.

I’m Jill DeWit, and this is The Land Academy Show.

How To Execute A Weekly Mailer Schedule

This is episode number 2,100. It’s Tuesday, and we’re going to talk about how we execute a weekly mailer schedule to ensure a healthy acquisition pipeline. All week this week, Jill and I are talking about how we will earn, or we’re scheduled to earn, $2.5 million this year in 2025, buying and selling real estate.

That seemed low to me when I saw that number.

I know. I struggled with it.

Is this semi-retirement? Is that what it is?

Yeah. Jill and I are at a different point in our career, most likely, than you are. We’re at a different income level. Our priorities are different. For the vast majority, up until maybe a couple years ago, all I was interested in was making money. I didn’t care how many hours it took and all that. If you’re that kind of personality, that type-A personality, that’s just a nutcase like I am, it starts to wear on your employees and wear on your business partner. There’s a rational place where, after you’ve hit your financial goals, I think we talked about that last week or the week before, that that’s about it.

That was going to be my next question. How will that change our lives, dear?

It won’t.

That’s my point.

I could have put $5 million in here. In fact, I put $5 million in and hit the delete button and put $2.5 million. We’ll break the numbers down.

Thank you, so I don’t have to work that hard.

$2.5 million, Jill doesn’t know this, probably, until just this moment, is the actual number that is in the budget this year. We’ll break it all down.

Is it the bottom?

Probably more than that. If I look back on what we’ve done company-wide, two and a half is above the average.

For all the years?

Yeah. Not all the years, but the last lot of years.

10 or 20?

Yeah, 10.

This is cool.

This week, like I said, Jill and I are talking about how we’re making some number that Jill’s not apparently happy with.

Here’s what happens. We’re going to be halfway through the year. He’s going to push, and then that $2.5 million goal will change. That’s what happens. It goes up, not down. That’s who I get to sit next to every day.

I’ll tell you what, when we get into the meat of the show here, I’m going to break it down, how I came up with that number, how many deals it’s going to take, and work it all backwards, how many mailers to send out, how many phone calls it’s going to generate, right down to the last detail, and then you tell me how much money you want to make.

I know. Thank goodness I have a good team.

Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum and take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular request.

Mark wrote, “I’m working on a deal now with an owner who received my offer, called PATLive, and wants me to call her back Monday morning. The property is just under 22 acres. High level, so let’s say buy for $95,000 and sell for $200,000, still confirming the numbers. I noticed on the property there’s a dirt trail that is lined with a good amount of junk and abandoned cars. How big of a red flag is this? It is an older out-of-state owner, so it may not even be their stuff. Would you try to get a reduction to the price? Any idea how much? Or, if those purchase and sale numbers are generally correct, just factor that in, maybe getting a slightly lower offer but still a good profit margin. Thanks in advance.”

Engaging Sellers And Building Trust

This also, like yesterday, warranted and garnered a lot of response. My favorite response was Bae’s husband, Chris. Chris and Bae have been with us since the very beginning in Land Academy. She has led them into amazing success financially and otherwise, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of deals that they’ve done, and they continue to do it and continue to participate with Land Academy. Most people make a lot of money and just close the Land Academy door, but they have chosen not to do that.

What he said was, and they’ve done that, and what he said, he went on to say, this is what you do. You call them, you talk to them about it. We’ve bought properties that have had junk, and it worked out really well for us. Properties where it all had to be removed and cost a lot of money. He said, in both cases in general, and I’m paraphrasing here, obviously, that they still made money, but you got to find out if that’s known as the local junkyard in your lot. You don’t want that.

Here’s what I heard in his response. I believe this, and Jill’s going to probably confirm this. There’s a lot going on with this land. The person’s out of state, probably has never been there, or maybe been there when it wasn’t like the way that it is now. This is a huge opportunity for you, if you want the property, to call back and engage this seller in all kinds of topics, to the point where they start to develop trust with you, because this junk and this stuff is a great reason, and a legitimate reason, by the way, to reduce the purchase price, because you’re going to have to deal with a lot of stuff.

I see new people in Land Academy making this mistake all the time. They call the seller back. They say, “$95,000 doesn’t work for me. I think $70,000 is good.” “Why?” “That’s just what I think.” They’re not engaging the seller the way that Jill does, forming a relationship with them, and talking all about the junk. Pretty soon, it’s like the $95,000 doesn’t matter.

I’m making a note about this. This is good.

Evaluating And Managing Junk On Properties

Engaging the seller is the whole point here. That can go both ways. The junk thing, I love when junk’s on the property. It differentiates the piece of land from just a regular piece of land that has just a regular piece. If you go out on the internet and look at land that’s for sale, there’s just tons and tons of pictures of trees. You want to differentiate that. This is a huge opportunity.

Do we even know it’s still really there? That’s my first thing too. How old are the pictures? If you are concerned about it and you’re really loving the land, it’s sometimes really beneficial to hire a photographer really early on. If you don’t have an agent that you like and trust to go out there and take a peek at it, then hire a photographer and have them go out and spend a couple hundred dollars. You could use those photos if it all works out great and you buy it. Maybe you end up listing it yourself even, to get it rolling, to see if you can sell it without somebody and save that commission. You have the photos, have drone shots and things like that ready to go. It’s really good.

We know we can get access to it. They can drive those cars out there. Somebody’s doing that and dropping stuff off. Just be careful of what’s out there. If it’s an old refrigerator, then we get concerned. But if it’s a cool, classic Mustang convertible that somebody left there, you might just gloss over that and just buy it, and that’s yours, kind of thing. Just like Jack said, talk to them and find out. They may not know. Either they know it’s there, and they think it’s a negative about the property, which, I can, that’s what I would think, that’s true, or they don’t know it’s there, and you just enlighten them. You need the pictures too, for that, just to let them know what’s going on.

They’ll automatically start to go, “Shoot. $95,000 is probably beautiful and treed and whatever. Now I realize it’s got this mess on it.” They’re going to start knocking the price back themselves. You don’t have to worry about that. That’s that question. Just have that conversation. The other thing I wanted to just bring up again, Jack is really great at the parts of our business that he does, being out front, the data, and all of that. He’s not as aware, I should say, I didn’t want to say self-aware, he’s not as aware of our membership community and how many people have been with us for many years.

I have a sweet gentleman right now who is coming back, I think the third or fourth time. I’m not sure. He has left and come back because one of the things about us, because we’ve been doing this for three decades now, you for three decades, me for two, is that we know how to roll with the punches. We know how to pivot and change and make money and adjust when there are upturns in the market and downturns in the market. Mail’s changing, and people are texting, and now the texting’s not working. If you’re watching all these threads, these texts and things that people have been doing are now less effective and expensive, and they’re getting in trouble for stuff. We’ve got to pivot.

You have to know how to roll with the punches, pivot, adapt, make money, and adjust to both upturns and downturns in the market. Share on X

Who do we know that’s survived and gone through all these things for many years? That would be this person right here next to me. It’s not one person. Everybody leaves, and you’re like, we have so many members that are quietly with us for going on ten years, and we’re really happy and thankful and grateful for you. I know you’re there, so you don’t have to be loud in Land Academy.

Please don’t.

The Importance Of Networking And Collaboration

To let us know, like, “I’ve been with you guys for nine years.” I hope I’m not the only one. You are not the only one. I just wanted to make that note, and we welcome you back. There’s no hard feelings. If you left and thought the grass was greener, or you were doing really great, and let me just make this too, because this happens often. They’re like, “Things have changed. Everything was going great for my business for three years, Jill. All of a sudden, this is not working, and that’s not working.” Like, come on back, we’ll fix it together. That happens all the time, and we’re happy to do that with you.

Our topic, it’s Tuesday, and we’re talking about how we execute a weekly mailer schedule to ensure a healthy acquisition pipeline. The whole key to leading up and making a decision to do a weekly, let’s just call it weekly stuff, to get to a long-term goal starts with the amount of money you want to make this year.

It shocks me the number of people that do not implement this before they put a mailer into place, learn how to buy and sell land, all of that. Long before you join a company like Land Academy or a group like Land Academy, you have to decide how much money you want to make. Write it on the mirror where you get dressed every morning. Do it in lipstick so you can’t erase it.

This whole week is about $2,500,000. The first thing I’m going to do is divide that by 12, but I usually divide it by 10 instead. That gives me two real bad months out of the year to fail at some stuff because that’s just what happens. Even at our age and with our experience level, stuff happens. If I want to make $2,500,000, then I need to generate $250,000 of profit every month. Let’s just call it $200,000. I’m going to make these numbers real round and easy. I can hear radios clicking off everywhere when I talk about this, the intense math piece.

You think so?

Yeah.

I don’t think so. I like that.

I need to make $200,000 a month to get to my $2,500,000. I know that my staff and Jill can effectively manage a certain amount of phone calls, and I know how many phone calls and responses and transaction processing we call it. I know where it gets to be too much. My way to reduce that, and Jill’s way too, which we completely agree on, I think, is to do fewer deals for more money. Let’s say I want to do two deals a month. I want to do two great deals a month where I make $100,000 each on gross profit.

I’m going to have to send out how many letters, or what am I going to have to do to keep Jill and her staff engaged, keep that pipeline jammed full so that she’s reviewing 20 to 30 deals, maybe even more, before she decides that, “Yep, this is the one we can make $100,000 on.” I work it backwards in the mail. Responses are about 1%, and so to get a deal, and by the way, where we’re choosing to send mail, I’m not going to send mail to make $100,000 on a deal in rural Nevada. I’m also not going to send it in New York, New York, in Manhattan.

Those two places, it’s not going to work. There are no actual examples in the middle of Nevada and in urban New York where I can buy something for $100,000 or $200,000 and sell it for $100,000 more. See, there’s no real guessing here. All I have to do is find out where that’s already happening and send some mail out, intelligently and well-priced. That’s what we talked about yesterday, finding those places and then responsibly sending the mail so that your team can execute. At 1%, if I send out 10,000 offers, 1% of 10,000 is a hundred. I’m going to get about a hundred responses, and the way that we do it, that should be good for one deal. That’s not jamming the pipeline full enough.

Worst case scenario. This is like the bottom, if you screw it all up, these are your numbers. I like that.

A hundred people are going to respond somehow. About 50 of those people, this is a serious generalization, are going to be calling back to express their unpleasant disdain for the fact that you sent out that offer.

That means we did it great. I love those. Let’s talk. What should it be? What do you think it should be?

25 to 30 of those people say, “We were thinking about selling this property anyway, but that number doesn’t work for us.” That’s when Jill really goes to work. About ten people out of that hundred-person response are going to say some version of, “We are going to sell. We want to sell, and this price works.”

Jill’s going to go back with her team, run through the due diligence like we talk about very often, and say, “There’s no access to this property. There are some fatal flaws. That’s probably why it hasn’t sold already. We don’t want it for any price.” That leaves the magic 1 or 2 people that have great pieces of property that fit our acquisition criteria. This is the secret sauce to this. The secret sauce is not, “We’re amazing,” because we’re not. The secret sauce is, send a truck ton of mail out, let the chips fall where they fall, and get some deals done.

Structuring Your Weekly Mailer Schedule

I have questions, please. Our topic is how we do a weekly mailer schedule for our pipeline. I’m new. Can you please tell me, should I think about Monday through Friday? Should I think about the month in terms of week one through four? How should I structure my time to get this mailer schedule consistent?

This is how I do it. Your question is perfect. Timed perfectly. I don’t want to do every week of mailers because I’m lazy.

You don’t want to do Mailer Monday?

No. I do Mailer Monday, but in the beginning, what I do is all the mail for that month. If I need to send out 10,000 a month, that should be enough. I like to process 70,000 or 80,000 records at a time. I’m a few months ahead constantly. I process it all, price it all, and get it back to Offers 2 Owners, which is our mail company.

If you don’t want to do this at all, you can call Offers 2 Owners, and they’ll do it for you. I process it all, and I tell them, “Please release 2,000 records every Monday.” They do that. What it allows me to do, and Jill’s real direct about coming back to me and saying, “We got it. We have too many deals, so we need to skip a couple of weeks,” but you always want to have the mailer schedule set up like that and ready to go.

It’s not real often though. We can handle it. I’d rather have too many deals coming at me than be running around like a crazy person. That’s the real goal. You don’t really want to do that.

This is what you do not want to do, and it’s what most people do as follows, “I didn’t do one this week, so I’ll double up next week. It’ll be fine.” You do not want to do that. You want to get into a mailer schedule and absolutely make sure all the people in Land Academy Pro have mastered this. They are making tons of money. We can see the properties. Our staff processes the acquisitions in the acquisitions for Land Academy Pro, and we can see how many escrows they have up, and it’s staggering. It’s more than we do in a lot of cases.

Sometimes.

The Importance Of Patience In Land Investment

The whole key to this is a weekly mailer schedule. Everybody in Career Path that makes millions of dollars a year like us, they have stories of recklessly mailing.

How far out is too far out? Say I don’t want to do it. I’m not that good at it. Can I do six months at a time, or should I do like 90 days because my data needs a refresh?

The data refresh thing, unless you’re sending out a lot of mail for houses, you don’t want to get too far out. But if you’re new, one good solid mailer a month. If you’re at a different level, you’re probably processing a lot more than that.

First week of the month maybe, of every month. This is what I do. Got it.

Yeah. First Monday, let’s say, of every month. Mailer Monday is what we call it in our office.

One of the things I see people doing, I thought you were going to say this with your examples. This is a different example. One of the things I see people doing wrong is they work real hard. Maybe that first week, the mail goes out, they’re waiting for the phone to ring, and then the phone rings, and then they’re doing their due diligence, and then they’re working on buying it, and then they’re working on marketing it, and then they’re working on selling it and now six weeks have passed, like every step took a week, but they’ve done nothing else in between. No other mail went out.

It’s like it needs to be building on each other. They wait. Six weeks, eight weeks go by, and they’re like, “It’s sold.” They’re like, “Great.” They have to start all over again instead of starting week one, like having a week-by-week thing, and they all overlap. Mail went out, calls are coming in, filling the calls. Mail’s going out, calls are coming in, reviewing these, buying these, you should have all these things happening at the same time.

That’s what I want you to do. My favorite thing is the fire hose. You should feel like there’s a fire hose in your face. Seriously. That is the best possible solution, and that’s what’s going on with our pro people. They’re good at it now, but in the beginning, when they joined LA Pro, it’s basically Land Academy Pro, it’s for after Career Path. We have made our team available, and our team’s so available that you better have the volume because it’s just not worth it otherwise, and it’s mail nuttiness. The minimum is 10,000 units or something like that.

It’s use it or lose it.

You’re going to be like, “I got the mail out,” and so you’re like, you scramble a little bit until you get comfortable with it. You need to be uncomfortable, and then you’ll get comfortable because the more uncomfortable you are, the more you have to review, the better decisions you’re going to make.

The more uncomfortable you are, the more you have to review, and the better decisions you're going to make. Share on X

Jill, it’s strangely attractive when you get upset about this.

I’m like, “Stop, I have to finish this thought.” Anyway, that’s it.

You got to send the mail out real consistently or this won’t be successful.

It just needs to be your life. That’s the bottom line. It has to be your life. If you don’t like this and you’re struggling every day with it, you’re not going to be consistent, and you won’t be successful. It’s with anything. It’s not just this, and you know that. It’s anything. Jack used to talk about playing the guitar. I can’t tell you how many guitars we own. Every trip in the RV, we buy another guitar.

Most of them are in Goodwill. There’s only one left.

It’s just like, it’s not important to you. This needs to be part of your life. If it is part of your life and you’re that focused, you will say no to a lot of other things, which is really good. You will come up for air in six months and be really successful and happy with your bank balance.

None of this matters today, what we talked about, unless, on Wednesday, we’re going to talk about how we manage the massive amount of inbound seller response to our mailers. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.

Important Links

• Steven Jack Butala on LinkedIn
• Jill DeWit on LinkedIn
• Land Academy
• Offers 2 Owners
• PATLive