This is episode number 1950, believe it or not. We are talking about our 4-hour investment work week from the road. We’re in our rig. How mailer yield is a direct result of who answers your phones?

Running A Land Business On The Road

These are two really important topics. I have got to tell you. Let’s go back to topic number one for a second. I just want to cover these things. For those of you who are watching us, watch this. I can extend both arms, and I’m not hitting a wall. I’m not sitting at a kitchen table.

We have a new RV, and Jill’s delighted.

Just over there.  We have upgraded everyone. For those of you who are in our RV world, we went from 24 to 38. Now that we’re in 38, we feel like, “Wow.” We’ve been two nights by the way in our 38, and what does Jack say? “Do do we need a 43 or 45?” I’m like, “What?” We don’t need bunk beds. We don’t have kids. We don’t have pats.

We have these workstations.

We have kids, but they’re not allowed to come with us. We don’t allow overnight guests. Just kidding.

This is a happy wife moment for me.

You too. Thank you very much. It’s a whole different ballgame. As you can see, that’s going to tie into our topic because everybody’s like, “What do I need to know to do this from the road like you guys? You guys are in an RV.”

It might be the back of a boat.

You’ve had two years in your little RV, and we did a good thing. I’m very proud of our two years in our little RV. I think we fared very well. We stayed together as a couple. Our companies held on.

You’re all valid points. There were moments when we weren’t sure about all of this.

Touch and go. It was the companies that were fine. It was us. That was touch and go. Now we’re in a much different situation, and we can really spread out. That’s what we’re going to talk about. I did a show, a live thing, last week. It was a live webinar, which we also streamed on YouTube and Facebook at the same time, which was great. It was so much fun. Here from the road. The whole topic was As A Land Investor, Can You really Do This From The Road? The four-hour work week is one part of it. doing it from the road is another part of it. Putting it together, it’s amazing. That’s what we do. Now the whole land academy part of it, that’s not a four hour.

Are you going to go into the topic?

I guess I am. I will stop now.

Land Academy Discord Member Question

Each week, we answer questions from our Land Academy Discord Forum. We review land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar, and we take a deep dive look into two land-related topics that are usually requested on the Discord channel or through some venue by our right our members. Let’s take a question posted by one of our actual members on the Land Academy Discord online community. If you want a sneak peek, go to LandAcademy.com. It’s free.

Andre wrote, “I got my first signed purchase agreement back in an email. I believe I can sell the lot for three times the purchase agreement price.” Awesome, because Andre did it right. “I would like to talk to a few agents in the area about what they think it could sell for. Any tips on how to approach the agent and what questions to ask?” Sure, really easy. I love this. I like that too. That’s sometimes part of my due diligence also. I think I know what’s going on.

Sometimes, I know. Sometimes I’m like, “I think I know what’s going on. I just want to confirm it, A. B, I want to find an agent anyway. I want to see who I connect with and see how smart these guys are. Why not bust out the calls now? Why wait? I’d rather have them lined up.” What you want to do is you want to call them, and you don’t want to say, “I’m staring at a purchase agreement, and it’s for this amount.” You don’t want to share any of that.

You want to just skip along the top, let them assume you own it, number one. “I just got this property, and I want to see what you could sell it for.” Great, awesome. I assume you own it, you’re calling me to sell it, and you got their attention. I want you to say, this is what I do, because I don’t want to hang on to it forever. I’m not going to do a long thing with them. I want you to say, “I want to get your opinion on it, and there’s no fire.

I’d like to know what you could sell it for. I don’t know, between like 30 and 90 days thing.” That’s what they know. “Great. Where is it?” “It’s off I-42.” Whatever it is. “Do you want me to email you? Do you want me to text you the APN? What do you want me to do?” They take over. “I’m going to be at my desk in about an hour. Why don’t you email me? Here’s my email.” “I’m going to be in that area on Tuesday afternoon, and then I’ll get right back to you.”

Awesome. That is what your initial phone call should be. That’s it. By the way, do that with three people. It may take more than three, but I want you to have a conversation with three because if four don’t answer the phone at all, you cannot get with them. They’re not your guy anyway. If you cannot call them about selling a property, people cannot call them and reach them about buying a property.

If you can't call them about selling a property, people can't call them about buying a property. Share on X

You want to get those responsive agents and those agents that are that are excited about this property, and then in a perfect world, they’re going to follow through like you just said. You’re going to text them or email them. They’re going to reply. “Got it. I’ll let Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning. I’ll get you to know what I think.” You’re like, “Great.” Of those three that you connect with, probably two will get back to you. One of them will hopefully you’re really going to connect with.

They’re going to go, “I love this. I just sold one just like this about four months ago, but it wasn’t even as nice as this. Here’s what I think. I think if we list it for 72, we’ll probably get at least 60, 65.” That’s how it should go. You’re like, awesome. At the end of that, you’re going to say, “Great. I appreciate that. Give me a couple weeks to finalize everything on my end.” Which is code for, “I haven’t closed on it yet, but they don’t need to know that.” Say, “I’m going to call you back, and inside of 30 days, watch for me.” They’re like, “Great, I will.” Done.

Andre is brand new or relatively new. He’s plastered himself all over this court. Those are all kinds of good questions.

This is great.

The second question later in this episode is from him, too. You’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to do. You sent some mail out. It sounds like you got a great property here among a group of properties I think that you’re buying or potentially buying, and you’re asking questions. Here’s a basic rule of thumb about when to start reaching out in a local community about a local property that you think you should buy. There’s always this risk of you don’t control the property. What are you asking a lot of questions from local people about a local property and you don’t control it. You just got a purchase agreement back.

That doesn’t mean it’s like it’s signed, sealed, and it’s over. You always have to ask yourself, “Is this property good enough for me to open escrow on and then start getting people’s valuation opinions?” It’s sometimes yes, sometimes no, and you did the right thing. You’re asking this community. I would even go further and try to find somebody who knows the local area and start asking them questions within our group, within reason.

Which is what he’s doing.

He’s reaching out. He’s not saying where it is or anything. Would you do this deal section in Discord?

Yeah.

If you’re comfortable, you could post it there. People are going to say, “Yes.”

I answered his question was just about approaching an agent and what to ask.

I know. You don’t want to give away the APN because the first thing they’re saying is, “Where is it?” If not, if it’s not under contract, and if it is, it gets three times.

I have a signed purchase agreement.

I disagree.

You are allowed to.

That’s why there are two people on this show and co-founders.

If you are in any way nervous about that, yes, open escrow, get an escrow number. I still make the phone call. No big deal.

Our first topic is called Mailer Yield and is A Direct Result Of Who Answers Your Phones.

That’s the second topic.

Four-Hour Work Week: Land Investing From The Road

Sorry. Our first topic is called 4-hour Work Week, Land Investing From The Road.

Thank you very much. This is the one I really want to dive deep about. The reason is this was a hot topic last week. Much so, there were between 1 and 200 of you that showed up to listen to me, watch me, and ask me questions live about this topic. This is interesting. I’m curious. I should have asked, is it more about the four-hour work week, or is it more about doing it from the road? I think it was more about the four-hour work week. What do you think?

Yes.

You were there. You watched and heard. The questions were, but there were several of you that said, “I’m on the road too. I get you guys. I love it. This is what I want to do.” It used to be with Jack. It was the back of a boat. When we first got together, he’s like, “I always wanted a business where we did very well. We didn’t have to work that hard. We could do it from the back of a boat.” You did that. Now we transfer to wheels, doing it on wheels and doing it on the land.

Still, we’re not stationary, if you will. We are for a few minutes, but that’s about it. I want to talk about what really goes on and how the heck I can do this and we can do this in a four-hour work week. A lot of it is stuff you’ve put in place. I’m going to give Jack some credit here. We have a lot of systems. We have a great team, and we’ve had to work to get to this point. You just jump in at any moment.

This whole topic of four-hour work week. First, let me preface this. I hate little things like this. I hate it. “Let’s say four-hour work week. You can have passive income, and you don’t have to do anything.” That’s just not the case. This is a result of years and years. In your first year of land investing, you’re not going to have a four-hour work week. It might be closer to 80 if you do everything right, but you can achieve at some point 4-hour Work Week.

This entire buying and selling of land, the way that we do it, is a result of me trying not to work and me surrounding myself, Jill included, with somebody who is really efficient and wants the same stuff that I do. All of our top managers are just like that, with a couple of exceptions. There’s no fibbing or no embellishing. Let’s call it on any of that. A four-hour work week and buying and selling real estate or land specifically is very accomplishable. Honest to God, I think it’s four hours between the two of us.

3 1/2 minutes to 30 minutes. That’s really how it goes. Three and a half hours to me and 30 minutes to Jack, which is true. It’s not nuts. It’s funny, but it’s true.

Here’s how it plays itself out. If you’re starting out or you’re scaling, let’s say, you do if you’re between 1 and 10 deals, you do the first deal you buy for four $10,000 yourself for $25,000. You’re either going to say, “What? Are you kidding me? I can do this 200 times a year. What do I have to do?” You’re going to say, “It doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t like it.” There’s a why in the road there.

You’re going to choose which way. Once you go down the path where the light bulb went off over your head and you want to start, you want to do 200 deals a year. You start to say, “Hmm.” If you’re me or like me, you start to say stuff like, “I got that deal done. I hated doing a mailer. I’m going to get somebody.

I’m just figuring out who can do a mailer out there for a lot less money and a lot faster. I hated talking on the phone that whole time. I had to talk to the real estate agent. I had to talk to the seller. I don’t want to do that. I got to get somebody else to do that.” In my case, I found a partner who likes doing that. Step by step, you get yourself to where you’re doing nothing. It’s very profitable.

You are still you still have a conductor’s baton in your hand, which is the four-hour work week. This is my final point here. I cannot stand when people talk about passive income because I just don’t believe it. It’s passive income that I know about is interest income, where you put money into it, not even the stock market, because you’ve to check that. Interest income and a CD or something like that. That’s passive.

That’s right. That’s fair. That’s really good. I’m going to back up and explain a little bit. I started to talk about this in the intro to about the land investing part. You can, and you should, get to this point. The land academy stuff, everything else that we do, that’s not a four-hour work week, but that’s okay. I want to talk about too, what equipment I need and what do need to do this from the road. You want it the four-hour work week like we do. How does this all start?

First of all, what do you got to do on day one? You got to set your acquisition criteria. As Jack talked about? You got to think about how hard do I want to work? How many deals do I want to do? What do you want these deals to yield thing? That’s my acquisition criteria. Got it. That’s minutes. The next thing you got to do is where are the properties? I got to figure out where they are. I know where to send my mail. That’s called trolling. This is all Jack’s of the sheet, by the way.

This is the front end stuff that he does. Feel free to interrupt me or add or change. I know you do. That’s Jack stuff. He does have it down. I joke about the 30 minutes. You know what it is in truth? He’s always trolling. That’s the thing about Jack. That’s the thing about Land Academy, and my white people are with us because we’re really focused. We’re investors with you.

I’m an investor first. We both are. That’s our core bread and butter, our business. We try to stay ahead of everything to make sure we have the latest and greatest data, make sure we’re spotting trends in areas and learning to even identify trends so we can come back and teach you and show you how to do this. You, too, and your business will thrive like ours.

I'm an investor first. That's our core bread and butter. We try to stay ahead of everything to make sure we have the latest and greatest data. Share on X

Watching somebody bigger than us roll by on their way out of town, like, okay. Anyway, that’s our thing. Jack’s part is, so he’s always trolling. I say 30 minutes, but it’s 30 minutes here, 30 minutes there. For him I think he loves it. He’s always on his phone looking at areas. We know our acquisition criteria, or we know what’s within our threshold, let’s say. I’m going to say our acquisition criteria are pretty much always what’s the hottest. Am I right?

Yeah.

It’s going to change. We see a lot of things selling in the $75,000 range. Now I’m to tailor myself there. If I see a lot of things selling in the $110,000 range, I’m going to tailor it there. I usually don’t go too small because I don’t want to swim in that pool thing. I don’t want to deal with that. It’s going to be in the in the healthy pool where I know I’m to make a good profit.

I’m not going to jump up and down for a $9,000 profit. I will jump up and down for a $9,000 profit. That’s the stuff I look for and above. That’s the first thing you’re thinking about. Think about this. As I go through this, I’m going to tell you what equipment you need. What do you need to do this? A phone, that’s it. You don’t even need Wi-Fi.

Your phone has internet. You have your hotspot, you have whatever. You can be sitting there at a restaurant or waiting to get on a plane or at lunch and bored, and you could be trolling and going, “We just drove through that area. I’d I’d look at this. I just noticed some things. I look at on the other side of the ridge. I noticed this jotting down on my phone, those zip codes. I’m going to look those up later.” That’s a little bit of what you need to do.

You come back. Now you’re settled, whether you’re in a hotel room, whether you’re on your boat, whether you’re in your rig parked. You’re going to spend a little time again on your phone looking deeper, but now you’re going to get your laptop out and start really looking at these areas and looking at how many properties are for sale. This is all part of the trolling that we teach in the land academy. I’m to go along faster because I have a lot to cover.

There are ten steps to buying and selling a piece of land successfully, converting whatever it ends up being, buy for 30, sell for 100. Ten steps have to happen. The vast majority, maybe with the exception of 1 or 2, can be outsourced by, and you have two choices here. They can be outsourced to people who work for you, which is, at this age and with our experience level, our first choice, or they can be outsourced to unrelated third parties.

Which is the next phase after you troll and you’ve got your zip codes and all that.

Is that what you’re going toward here?

Yeah, thank you. We’ve got that part out.

Trolling is something that I don’t think you can outsource. You have to decide where you’re going to set.

That’s what I’m saying. I’m going to identify in the four-hour work week who does what and what you need. Are you asking me to speed it up a little bit? I can go for a long time on this.

I will keep you on track.

How To Set Up A Remote Land Investing Business

I’ll try to go to a healthy pace. That’s something you should do. It’s four hours a week, so focus on that. Now you’ve got your stuff. You run what we call a regular green test. You’ve done this on your computer. You really zeroed in on the areas you’ve zeroed in on what’s hot. You know exactly what size. You know exactly where to hit, where you want to do it.

The next step is to outsource this piece. That’s what Jack was getting to. Whether you have someone on your team that you have trained or they’ve learned from us, or you use our people, which is our concierge data, which you get through Offers2Owners.com. You say, “I need these six zip codes. I want everything from 2 to 10 acres.” Fill in the blank. All the little criteria that you want are there. “I need that data pulled. I need it scrubbed. I need comps in there.

I need it ready to go so I can set the pricing.” How great is that? It’s that fast. Now you’re off doing whatever you want. Again, this is a four-hour work week. Let them do all that work. Cue it up for you. Now you get back, it’s 24 or 48 hours later. You need to review that. You set your pricing, what percentage you want to come in at. “I want to price these at 25% of that number, I want these at 22% of that number, and these at 18% of that number.” Whatever it is.

They’re examples of how to price. Please don’t price your mailer that way. It’s very customized.

It could be 33.

It be 75.

Whatever you want. It could be whatever you need.

Pricing is not why we’re here to talk about this.

Anyway, you’re going to give them a percentage. You’re going to check them. I want you to eyeball them, spot-check them, and let them do the work by the way. This is outsourced again. Are you handwriting any letters? Nope. Are you doing all that? Nope. You already have set up like we do a company for Offers 2 Owners is our direct mail company, because we got tired of people that I’d explain it all the time and didn’t get what we’re doing and it wasn’t as cheap. We created that for you. Anyway, the mail goes out. Again, four hours work, I doing that. I haven’t done anything yet. He did. I haven’t.

Which is the way it should be.

I like that exactly. Now, here come the offers. “Wait a minute. I’m on the road, Jill. What do I do? The phone the stuff’s coming back.” What? Don’t do it. If you’re new, I want you to learn how to do this. I want you to understand about these sellers and things like that. In a perfect world, you’re not taking the calls. We’ll talk more about that in a minute, the value of a live person versus Google Voice. You’ve got something like PatLive set up. You’re on the road. The calls are coming in. The mail hit. The mail’s going somewhere else. You’re not even dealing with that. That’s more for another show. You have that outsourced.

She means a UPS store or a PO box. Not necessarily the USPS PO box, but someplace where your mail is going. It’s either getting scanned in and getting to you, or it’s being physically packed up and put into a FedEx package, which is how we do it. We get all the mail for all the companies in one place. Especially when we’re on the road here, we receive the package.

There we go. That would be it. Honestly, especially in the beginning, the majority of its phone calls. That’s PatLive or some other unrelated third party that’s answering the phones for you. At the end of the day, you’re getting a report of here’s the twelve calls that came in and you get to look them over and go, “Like it.”

You get to listen to them.

That too. Pick the ones you want. The next 6 or 4 hours quick, next day, that night, whatever is whatever you is best for you. Now, you’re calling these sellers back and putting together the deal. I’m going to skip along the top. I’m not going to go through into great detail.

Deciding you don’t want to do them. You’re going to see if there’s a deal there.

That’s what I’m saying. You’re doing your due diligence, calling back, and doing the deal.

That is not something you can outsource. Correct. That is, the massive magic sauce that Jill brings to this entire situation is her calling, returning these calls and creating a deal very many times where there wasn’t one when the person picked up the phone in the first place.

Sometimes, that’s true. What Jack’s saying is that  it would be a situation like the message to us is go jump in a lake your numbers nuts. I want at least this. That’s good. You know you want to sell. First, I do my due diligence, and the next day, I’m calling it back and going we need to talk about the price. This is me. Whatever you and I work out, and that’s a whole other conversation.

She’s a dealmaker.

Thank you. What tools do I need? A phone and a laptop? There we go. Now we’ve got some deals. Let’s just zip along here with a 4-hour Work Week. I’m opening escrow and letting them do their thing. I’m putting it in escrow with the seller. I’m still going to manage it a little bit, a couple of times a week, either myself or my staff. For you, it’s going to be you in the beginning, babysitting at least two times a week, touching all these people.

Again, you can do this on the 4-hour Work Week, you got three deals you’re working on. That’s two, that’s six phone calls a week that you could do to make sure, “Is everything going okay? Do you need anything from me? Did you get in touch with the seller? We’re waiting on the title. Got it, thanks. Talk to you on Thursday.” That’s it. Eventually, now we’re wiring the money in ten days from now. Again, phone and a laptop, and now you own it.

By the way, on this time while you’re waiting to own it, remember we talked about the question that Andre had. You’ve already got an agent lined up because one of your rest stops was calling a couple of agents in these areas and lining up who you like and getting an idea of the price. You know when it closes, you’re picking up the phone and going, “Ready to go. Get those pictures done, or get the drone shot if you don’t have them already.

Get that baby listed, hopefully by tomorrow. Let’s go.” You’re not doing a 4-hour Work Week. They’re doing the work. They’re getting all the stuff. They’re writing the posting. You just sit back. Again, you’re rolling around why these properties are being sold. At the end of the day, “Look, we got an offer on this one. I need to sign this.” Excellent. If you don’t know how great DocuSign is, and you’re not using it all the time. There you go.

We DocuSign the sales agreement from the broker. We’re cruising around. We’re three states over by now. We’re working on trolling and sending mail for another area while this one’s being sold. Are you following me here? The last piece that we’ll need something from you will be a physical signature when you sell it on that deed. How great are these mobile notaries? They will come to you. I showed a picture on my live thing.

There are two options, by the way. Mobile notaries are awesome. They will absolutely come to your RV. They think it’s the coolest thing, too. They’ve probably done it before. “Come on in. Do you want a cup of coffee?” “Sure.” We’re going to do the signing right here and send them on their way. It takes 5 or 10 minutes. That’s itl, and they’ll overnight them back to the title company. Don’t even think about it.

The other option is now with the online notaries. I’m not going to get into detail now, but it just it exists. If you’re really remote or it’s something hard or whatever it is, you can do an online notary where you’re holding up your ID. You’re literally on your phone, holding up your ID, documents have been scanned in for both of you, and you click a button that you acknowledge it, and then that goes to the title company.

This is all outlined in several different incredibly detailed ways in Land Academy 3.0, which is the most recent program. It’s flowcharted and color coded. What I say in the program, and I’ll say now, is that in the beginning, you need to do all this stuff yourself so that you can make good choices about who to outsource it to after your tenth deal. You need to really learn and self-learn. That’s what this group is about, to talk to as many people as you can within our group, utilize Discord. Please join our Thursday calls and ask all these questions and details about this.

We’re happy to describe it. What it all adds up to eventually, if you’re into it and you want to go through the learning curve, it ends up not working very hard and making a lot of money. We are in our 2nd or 3rd week in Career Path. Career Path is a program that Jill and I have where people are taking this very seriously. They want it to be their career, or it already is, and they’re scaling way up. They have a surprising amount of healthy, detailed, oriented questions about how can I stop working so hard? Which is, I started out with that notion, how can I stop working as hard and make more money? The answer is outsourcing and being a good conductor.

Knowing what you should be working on.

This is very possible. It’s very likely if you have the right personality and the right organization skills. We have multiple hundreds of current members that are doing it. Let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the LAND Academy. I’m sorry.

That’s right.

We need to take a look at a deal. Let’s take a look at one of our favorite land acquisitions. When you’re from on the road, you don’t necessarily have all the same equipment.

You might get a little confused.

One of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar.

Peppin County, Wisconsin $6,000 bucks. Nice job. Let me let me back up here. The original offer was $62,087. Evan said, “I’ll give you $6,000. That’s where we are.”

Zach is access.

One broker indicated that if access of the access can be established and recorded. It would sell for between 120 and 140, which is obviously what you were thinking when you did your original stuff. We would target between 80 and a thousand for a quick sale. It’s 40 acres. Legals of work in progress. Owners of one who call, service alive. This area is said to be good hunting land for Turkey, especially deer.

This would be how the land would be sold. Most of the land in the immediate areas is now buildable per state DNR regulations. People in this area use it for hunting, a huge pastime in Wisconsin. He’s 78 years old. He got it for $2,800 back in the mid-’70s. He knows it’s currently landlocked and the DNR won’t allow any building in the area, but the areas used for hunting anyway, crowded by a broker waiting to hear back from others.

I’ll tell you $6,000 for 40 acres in Wisconsin, I would buy it. It’s just hunting. Just sell it as hunting land, and you’re going to be fine.

Yeah. I’m looking at on data training. It’s got a river going through it. I just don’t know how you’d access it. Even with access, the roads are pretty far away.

Look, this is what it is. You’re to have to cross over other people’s land, and they’re probably never going to know. We cannot check the FEMA map, but it’s a drive.

48 acres.

I’d still buy it.

It’s in a floodplain. You can check it on the data tree. There’s on the layers, just going to flood.

Areas.

Yeah.

For $6,000, I would buy this. Would you, Brandon?

Yeah. For $6,000, obviously, I would try to figure out the accessing before, but what’s the worst that can happen? You sell it for $10 on eBay.

I would pick me up right here. We’re going to fill it in the first week.

Especially if it’s worth 140 with access. That’s worth just checking into for $6,000.

Trying to figure it out.

I want to point out that people are often afraid of, “How am going to get this person from $62,000 to what I really think it’s worth? I’m sure the guy knew the guy paid $2,800 for it. The guy knows it has this problem, no one can build out there. The access issue, whatever. You just matter-of-factly stated it and let it go. He sounds like he is agreeable because he knows. I guess my point is don’t be afraid to just get it out there.

Let’s take another question posted by one of our members on the Land Academy Discord online community. Again, if you want to sneak a peek of all this, go to LandAcademy.com. It’s free.

Cool. Andre wrote, “I have a few signed purchase agreements. We went to the first one, now he’s got several.” I love this. “What’s the next step for getting deal funding? Do I need a memorandum? How do I protect myself? When do I open escrow? Things are moving. I’m a little lost at this point in the process.”

Which is totally natural and normal. I understand it. Especially if it’s working for you like this, you’re going to have questions because you don’t want to screw it up. What followed Andre’s question below this is multiple responses to who to talk to, multiple people who are in our group to fund deals that responded.

How much money do you need?

I’ve seen the good funders that we have in our group will probably take Andre under their wing and say, “This deal is great. This deal sucks. Let’s do this together. I’ll fund your stuff until you have enough money.” Where you don’t need a funder and experience where you don’t need a funder anymore. I put Andre in here for a reason. I’ve never talked to him. I didn’t even know about him until I was writing this script, if you can call it that. He’s a perfect example of self-teach.

He’s self-taught. He watched Land Academy 3.0 probably a hundred times like most people, got a mailer out, got a bunch of responses. What the hell do I do next? That’s very natural and normal, and he’s doing the right thing. He’s reaching out on Discord and utilizing all the tools that Jill and I put together for a new person to succeed, including other using other members to get deals done.

Are we going to answer the question, or is that the answer to the question?

That is the answer. You want to answer it. Go ahead.

What’s the next step to get deal funding? Reach out. If it’s me, you go to LandFunding.com, and you just fill it out. It tells you exactly what I need. State, county, APN purchase price. If you have a PA, attach it. What do you know about the property? Things like that. All this stuff so I can go and look at it and go. “Yeah, it is a good deal. Andre happy to do that with you.” Do I need a memorandum? Nothing yet.

No, your funder will put it together because everybody’s different. Our memorandum is different than the others.

Exactly. They’ll have a level of sweet little hopefully like we do. It’s ours is like a two page. One page? I think it’s one and a half pages, something like that agreement where just spelling out what you’re doing, what I’m doing, who’s going to be on the deed, how it’s going to go. That’s it. How to protect myself, that will cover that. When to open escrow. Anytime you want. I’m a fan of opening escrow.

As soon as you’re doing the deal, like, I don’t know who’s going to fund it yet, let’s just get it open. I can change that. You can call your title out company, Andre, and say, “Just put it in my name for right now. Just who’s a buyer?” In six days, when you and I get the deal together and I say, “Here’s what’s going to be.” You just say, “We’re going to update the purchase agreement because we’re now going to put it in this name.” They don’t care.

If you’re brand new, I don’t know, Andre, if you are not. If you’re brand new and that process is intimidating to you, which I understand, then do it with your funder. I hope that you get the right funder in the beginning. You might not. You might go through a deal, and the funder’s not your personality type.

Have a couple.

Jill’s great about this, me not so much, but please understand that these first few deals are going to be painful like anything. That’s the first time you ever do it. It’s like, “Yeah, why I can improve on this?” I can improve on this, and I can prove on this. Believe me, the first deals that I did I’ll do a show on this sometime. The first 4 or 5 deals I did were absolute trainwrecks, but I made money, and you will too here.

Please understand that the first few deals are going to be painful like anything you ever do for the first time. Share on X

It’s so difficult for me.

It’s going to be a car crash of a disaster.

My first field deals were fun. I learned a lot. I’m like, I get better.

Just great about this stuff.

I never call him a train wreck. It’s like, tell me your first few relationships.

It’s a profitable train wreck. That’s going to be the name of my next e-book.

Great. I love it.

The Importance Of Answering The Phone For Mailer Yield

Our second topic is called Mailer Yield and How It’s A Direct Result of Who Answers Your Phones.

Let me lead off with this. As Jack has mentioned before, it was me, and before that, there was a team. Let’s go way back. Let’s go back to the ‘90s. This person to my left was a one-man show.

It’s sad but true. It’s a profitable train wreck.

Yeah, I understand the point now. Yes. You had no one to bitch with or about or to or whatever you want to call it. Anyway, one-man show figuring out there’s money in this like, “What just happened?” I bought this property off eBay. I did what the guy told me. I own it. I sent it in for recording. I went out and got better pictures. I wrote a beautiful description, learned about the area, put it back on eBay, and sold it for three times or whatever it was.

Twice.

Sold it for double what I paid for it. There’s something here. That’s the backstory. The point I’m trying to make is that he was answering the phone back then. He was the one when he figured out this whole thing fast forward past that he was, that was him going out and finding a property. Just to test this. Fast forward to years later, figuring out, “I’m just going to canvas areas and send out these offers to all these people. Don’t even know I’m coming. Let’s see what happens.” By golly, it worked and still works. You get calls back now. The point of our second topic is that these calls are coming back from these sellers that you sent out offers to like the what we do, and who answers the phone makes a difference.

No. It’s not make a difference. Who answers the phone is an absolute non optional critical piece to this entire business model. Hold on a second. I want to drive this point home. You know the band Journey, and you know Steve Perry, every single person. If you don’t, then you have bigger land academies. It’s not your first problem. For a very long time, most people didn’t know this. I only know this because I grew up in the ‘70s.

Journey didn’t have Steve Perry, and they cut a lot of records, and they were pretty good. The composition was great. The guys can sing. It’s the same thing with Van Halen. One day, they cut a record, and Steve Perry’s on it. It’s an international smash hit. Like 5 or 6 of the songs, the ones that we share all the time, it’s 2023. We cannot walk into a bar without hearing those same songs.

Hockey game.

They got a lead singer that got somebody to answer their phones. That is the completion. Jill completed this business model.

Thank you.

We’ve had many people in a Career Path, and we may or may not have people in a Career Path right now who are very technically oriented like I am. Believe that this is not a component that’s necessary. They believe something like this. “Jack, you say he’s got to send out 5,000 letters to get a deal or 7,500 to get a deal. That’s great. I’m not going to do that. I’m going to send out 25,000 letters. No one’s going to answer the phone. I’m going to get a couple of purchase agreements signed back, and I’m going to go on my merry way because the numbers still work.” I’m telling you, it doesn’t work that way. You have to answer the phone. There are so many things involved. When Jill answers the phone or she returns the calls that when PatLive, am I taking over your topic here?

No, it’s fine.

Creating Deals From Seller Conversations

When PatLive answers the phone and then Jill gets those messages and returns those calls, she creates deals. At the same time, she’s learning about a new area. She’s talking to all these people and putting the deal together, and she’s deciding, and maybe it’s subconscious whether or not we’re going to send another mailer there. Does she like the people who are on the other end of the phone? Do they act like New Yorkers?

Do they act like they’re from Arkansas? You choose which one where you’d rather do a deal. There’s so much stuff involved. I was just talking about this in career path. If you’ve ever been to business school or taken any online classes from 0 to 100, there’s a critical point in every business where you deliver something to a customer in exchange for value. In most cases, it’s money.

Healthcare is that bedside delivery of sitting down with a patient or somebody who’s whatever they need and delivering that with the care that they need. Most doctors really just will fail at that. They’re just technical people. They made it through medical school. They didn’t make it through psychology school. This is the critical point of customer delivery. Your customer is that seller. The person who buys a property, the real estate agent, is going to deal with that. The property you buy it so cheap. Anyway, there’s no real value added to talking to a buyer.

In my opinion, there’s a huge amount of value for somebody like Jill, where she’s sitting and talking to a seller and meeting that person from where they’re coming, whether it’s their price or the fact that their spouse may have died. They’re making this sometimes difficult decision to sell the property. They don’t understand value or the process. She’s delivering all that. This person who, in your case, if you’re new, you’re going to answer the phone or who’s a deal maker is absolutely critical to this. I know because I had Jill’s job, and I didn’t do it right for a very long time.

That was the point I was going to make.

Sorry. I did take your time.

It’s okay. Who would you rather talk to, him or me?

Who would you rather listen to? Did you see the stupid speech I just made?

Yeah, exactly. No, although that was beautiful, and I love it. Thank you very much for saying that. Some people incorrectly even think that Google Voice will do the job. Think they have a great voicemail. Please don’t do that. That’s it. I just want to hit this home. You need to have a live body, preferably nice, sweet, people can relate to them and someone who can control the conversation because the goal here is in three minutes or less.

Just calm everybody down if they’re hot or just figure out where they’re coming from. That’s it. Do they really want to sell, and does your price work for them? If not, what price does? Not retail. Let’s be honest here. You know who I am. I know who you are. I’m just a sweet little investment company. This is all I do. Whatever deal you and I cut, it’s our deal.

I’m not an agent, not a broker, and I’ve got cash ready to go. I love your property. What number would really make you okay with all this and make you happy? That would work for me, too. Your goal is, “Jill, I know you offered eighteen. I got to pay off this stupid thing I’m staring at. Make it 25, and you can have it. Let me call you back tomorrow. I’m going to see if I can make 25 work.” That’s it. That’s how these things should go.

We have a couple of basic personality types in our group. Hundreds of successful people. Have 1 of 2 basic personality types. Number one, they have some type of lifelong corporate sales or they don’t know it yet. If they’re young and new, they don’t know it yet, but they have Jill’s personality. They’re very successful, and they’re a pleasure to deal with and pretty quiet about their success in general, which is one of the things I love about Career Path because we get to know those types of people.

They’ll say stuff, “Yeah, that’s great. That’s how you guys do it. This is how I answer the phone and why this works so well.” Why we’re trying to scale from $100,000 a month to $500,000 a month. There’s the second type, which is more my personality, where they are obsessed with mailer yield, how to get a mailer out, how to price it. I have to tell you along the comments that I’m saying that I said earlier.

All of that and all the money that’s associated with let’s say setting out a 10,000 unit mailer, which is going to cost you $6,000 will be wasted unless you have somebody on your team or you can muster up the spirit, which is honestly what I did for before Jill and I joined forces. You can just act your way through it. It will all be wasted. You will eventually quit. We can talk about mailer yield and all of that stuff until we’re blue. Until the person on my right makes deals out of my mailer.

That’s the downside. That’s what can happen. We’ve had people where they’re like, “I had a mailer flop.” I’m like, “What do mean you had a mailer flop? I don’t care if you overpriced it or underpriced it, who’d you talk to, what’s in those things?” “I didn’t talk to anybody. Nobody left a message. It was a flop.” I’m like, “Are you flipping kidding me? You didn’t call them back?” “No, they hung up.” Like, “What the heck?” Let’s go back through your list, shall we?

I’ll bet I can get something in there, and I can and I have and I’ve done that. This is my thing here, too. You need to you need to be available, or somebody does and take these calls and work with these people and talk through this stuff. I seriously do not believe because the best thing that could be is, “Here’s the poss. Here are the two. You think you have a nail or flop.” It’s usually you think, “I price it too low. Everybody hates me.”

You need to be available or somebody will take these calls. Share on X

My personal thanks for that.

Recovering From An Overpriced Or Underpriced Mailer

You had 35 phone calls this week. You need to call some of them back. Even if you had 35 sucky phone calls, you got their stuff out of them because some of them said, “Take me off your list. Its reference number is 12345.” “Great, go look at 12345.” He was hopping mad on Tuesday. “What? Let’s call him on Friday.” I looked at your property again, and I realized it might be worth more than I offered you, and I want to talk about that. Great.

Beautiful example, Jill.

That’s it.

This is how you create a deal out of anger.

I absolutely take that call, wouldn’t you? Sure. You’d be like, “Yeah, damn right, it’s too low. Let’s talk.” “Great, what did I miss?” The next thing, you’re having a great conversation about this person and you’re putting about this property, and you guys are putting a deal together. That’s it. That’s the thing that people say, “I did it too low.” Now we can recover from that one. Here’s the other scenario. “Boy, did I overprice? I offered everybody retail plus 10%.” This has happened.

I’ve done that.

Fantastic. Now everybody loves you. Instead of the 13 or even many, the 30 calls you had this week, you had 200 people that love you.

More chances to do those now.

Exactly.

It might take more than four hours a week.

This is true on that. That could be your business model. I don’t know. I don’t think that would be a time waster. I don’t want to be your business model. Anyway, you goofed. Go back through those 200, and get a VA to help you. Go through and say, “I need to know which ones have access. I need to know this about this one. I need to this about this one.” You can look at them and go, “Of these 200, I really like these twenty.” I’m going to call these people back. I’m going to have that tough conversation.

That could be your business model.

It could.

I’m not recommending this. This is your business model.

It’s because it’s a lot of work.

It’s too much work.

That could be someone’s business model. Do a VA to screen them. You call back that these have all the 6 1/2 or 7 As that come up with another one now. Anyway, you call them back and go, “My name is Jill, and yes, I got your voicemail, or I got your message that you talked to someone on my team the other day about your property. We need to talk. I looked over your property, and it is fantastic. I know you were all excited about the $225,000 I offered.

I’ve done this.

“I realized when I originally sent out the offer to you, I thought it has this and this. I realized it doesn’t have those. Again, I do like it.” That $225,000, I cannot do, but I can do $25,000. If that works, I am ready to go. Let them give them a minute, and we’ll talk more about that. We have talked more about that. I do talk about that all the time within Land Academy, how to go from $225,000 to $25,000. You can do it. I’m going to tell you, they probably expect it. They know. If you offer retail plus 10%, they probably know something’s wrong. They think something that they don’t know. Like, “Is Amazon moving in next door?” You’re going to tell them, “No, Amazon’s not moving in next door. That’s not what happened. I really goofed, but here’s what I can do.”

You should teach a class.

I do teach a class. Thank you very much. Anyway, that’s how you recover from that one. I think that I don’t without now we’re to go into dead horse territory. If we talk about this so far, I think you guys got it.

Land Acquisition: Jefferson Country Missouri

Let’s take a look at another one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar.

What is the Jefferson County, Missouri that did offer price $45,802. Thanks. We can sell for $75,000, 7.36 acres. Yes, on the access. We’d like to get it cheaper. Not sure how much. The houses are next door. Utilities nearby. Great access road frontage on two sides. How great is that?

It’s a bad Thursday. That’s what this is.

Yeah.

It is.

That’s great. Everyone is alive. Close to the town, a 45-minute drive from St. Louis. One similar size, five and a half acres smaller, is listed nearby for 675. One month on the market has a thousand views. Reach out to the listing agent still waiting on his opinion. The same price per acre would make this one $90,000. He’s thinking 75 is realistic and that one’s smaller.

6.8 for 60,000 and then it goes to five acres to a hundred.

Click on one.

This is Missouri. Let’s click on the cheapest one. Seven acres for 175. That’s good. I don’t sound like a broken record here. It looks like it’s priced right. The property itself is awesome.

It is.

What is this for?

What are these houses? Yes, right.

350 on the property is right next door, and the acreage is smaller. Six thousand square feet. Is that right? One bedroom, six thousand square feet. That’s a barn.

One bath.

2008.

Three acres.

That’s fantastic. It’s an indication to me that this is a great deal. You got to get a broker. It sure looks good.

That’s good.

Jill, you have something inspirational to share.

Yes. After all that, this is all from this week. I had some really valuable, awesome, interesting conversations between Career Path and the live webinar that I did. It was so much fun. One of the little takeaways that I was thinking about from the webinar that I did was the 1 or 2 people that jumped in and joined Land Academy while I was doing the webinar. It’s special going on at that moment. It was sweet because one of the persons said a version of I just found you guys.

I’ve been on the road. I’ve listened to like ten hours of your podcast in the last two days. I get it. I am in. I love that. I do a version of that. My note to myself was digging in on what sings to you. When you find something like that and it really makes sense to you and you’re passionate about it, I do that too. I encourage you to dig in. I’ll give you a story. I’ll give you a backstory here. like where we are with this RV.

Dig in on what sings to you. Share on X

We’ve been trying to get a bigger RV for at least six months, I’m going to say maybe longer that we’ve been thinking about upgrading our RV, but nothing made sense. He liked it. I didn’t. I liked it. He didn’t. The deal worked for him, not for me or vice versa. It was too far. There was something that wasn’t. We knew we needed a bigger RV, and we knew we both were on the same page about that. We of knew the manufacturer. We’re still open.

We agreed on that.

We did about the quality. We agreed on that research, but the actual rig and the dollar amount and the floor plan and the size, none of that we were sure about. This rig, we owned it. We traveled three states over and owned it in seven days.

We both just, it sunk to us.

I’m finding it.

I checked every box.

I think this is the one.

Every single one.

Exactly. That’s a version. That’s what happened to us. We just clicked. Maybe you are reading now, maybe it’s Land Academy, maybe it’s something else. I just want to talk a minute about trusting your gut and your head, knowing that “This is right. This clicks.” Just going for it. When something clicks and it connects with you. As you move forward in the process, as everything starts to fall into place, then you’re on the right path. I want you to keep on going with it. Found the rig, he liked it. I knew who to call. It was a sweet girl who made this sweet video showing the rig. It was her phone number. She answered the phone. “I like this girl.”

Great dealer.

We can communicate. That’s another like, “It’s all going in the right direction. Things are falling into place. Now we’re talking money.” I’m like, “Here’s a deal. I’ve got this trade in.” They’ll take our trade in. There’s another positive thing in the right direction. The last thing is, how much is the difference? What was the gap?

It was acceptable to me.

I said, “How close can you get to this?”

Jill wouldn’t have cared what number that was.

I do care, but there was a number that we needed to get to. I’m like, “How close?” We had a number that we together agreed upon. If it’s in this range, we’re moving forward. It was. Like I said, so that’s my thing. Whatever it is that you’re moving forward or you’re doing, whether it’s Land Academy or something else with your life, trust your gut, trust your head, and take those extra steps. If there’s a green light, keep on going.

Making Land Investing Efficient And Scalable

I have an anecdote, too, and it’s not as positive.

Are you just going to undo what I just did?

No, I’m going to be very realistic about this.

Go ahead.

There’s something that you said within all those words that you just said that’s important to really important to understand? It has to sing to your head and to your heart. When I was very young, starting out long before I even knew that I was going to be involved in land or real estate or anything, I knew I wanted to be wealthy. That was in my soul and in my head. That thought can lead you to not the best decisions. Same thing with a girl. You meet a great girl, everybody’s on their best behavior. Yep, this sinks to me. I’m going to dig into this. Date number 2 or 3 or 4, again, it’s a train wreck without the profit. You got to make sure that there’s a balance between your head and your heart.

Your gut.

Define and understand your gut and define what sings to you because you cannot just say, “I really like how that girl likes, and she’s singing to me.”

Two out of three.

“I really want to be rich.”

“I like this girl. She’s pretty, but boy, she expensive.”

Really want to be wealthy, and selling cocaine stinks to me. You see it what I’m saying?

Yeah.

You don’t want to just follow either your head or your heart. It needs to be both, or like women are better at having feelings. If it’s the right feeling, then there’s a chance it might sink to eventually. Still, your head has to say, “Okay.

I agree. Jack, hopefully, I didn’t bring mine down. You didn’t bring it down. That was good to thank you. What do you have informational to share with us?

I’m heavily into the research/writing portion of pre-launching a company that I’m going to launch later this year called ManPlan.

Are you launching?

Pretty much. We’re both going to do it, I guess. I guess we’re going to do it. Together. We don’t know yet, but I hope it’s both of us.

I may be invited, I may not. It depends a little bit, sinks to his head and his heart and his gut.

There’s a lot of derogatory things I could say.

It might be zero out of the three.

A substantial portion of ManPlan is about helping each gender understand each other and helping people convert those feelings of, let’s say, “I want to be rich” to “How am I going to be rich?” We’re all covered that we want to be that way or wealthy, I should say. Now, how am going to do it? There’s a lot of concepts that I’m reading about a lot of great material out there that’s non-schlocky that’s not self-help stuff it’s actual real concepts like, “Consider this.” Another great example, and I’ll define self-liquidating debt because it’s new to me.

I just learned about it this. Another great example is I just read the sentence. “Middle-class people who cannot break the veil of getting out of the middle class into an upper class and only mean wealth by that. Pay their taxes first, and then they pay their bills. Wealthy people pay their bills first and then after all that expense, pay taxes.” That’s sung to me. There are all kinds of things that I’m researching, and I’m inadvertently plug in man plan here. If you want to go to man plan now and type your email address in and get notified as this thing gets released, it’s available to do that.

Self-liquidating debt is a really cute name for something that we’ve all known about. I’ve always known about this as a recovering accountant, but I’ve never heard this phrase. We’re all familiar with debt, and all of us are mostly familiar with how bad it is. I go buy an expensive car, brand new, we’ve all made that mistake. I got to pay all these fees and all the stuff that’s associated with it. It’s always worth less than what I owe. You never get out of that.

That’s just tertiary debt. It’s terrible. The same thing with the mortgage. Sometimes you get out of that okay, more often than not, this day and age. I really think if you do all the math, not so much. If you go and buy an apartment building and you utilize a rational amount of debt at a great rate and the deal works and the debt service coverage is okay and all of that. Is the stuff we’ll talk about in man plan. It’s okay to take some debt out on that because it’s self-liquidating.

The actual first month’s rent that you collect out of that new apartment building, if you do the deal right, covers the debt. Is it really debt? It’s tied to the building, not you. If you do it right, if it’s nonrecourse debt. There’s no damage in doing self liquidated debt. I guess my big picture point is here and maybe this isn’t, “It’s informational, not inspirational.” Jill is inspirational. I’m informational. Think about this stuff before you sign your name about what’s happening. Tertiary debt’s bad. Self-liquidating debt can be great. It can be a great tool to move you through the cycles of wealth.

Thank you.

She just fell asleep.

I totally zoned out. It’s all right.

Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode. You’re not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.