I’m Steven Jack Butala.

I’m Jill DeWit and this is the Land Academy Show. Land Academy is the place to go for the education tools and support you need to start or grow your land investment business.

Jill and I are talking about the moment we knew land investing was our forever business. This is episode number 2258. While we’re talking about it, it’s about you. I would love for you to think about if you’ve had your moment, if you think you might have your moment. It’s like a first kiss.

I was going to describe it as this. This is a girl’s question for a guy. I think of this moment like when a woman says, “I’m going to marry that man.”

Does that happen?

Yes, and it could be a kiss. It could be that they did some action that they did that blew them away.

I want examples of all this. We’re not going to move on if I had it my way, I’m going to be old and this still just baffles me.

I’ll tell you my moment for you. I’m not going to describe the location of where we were but you said something. My dad had died. That was it. I thought that I relate falling in love with you with my dad dying.

This is a verbal Rorschach test.

What is that called a Rorschach?

It’s a picture of a butterfly. What do you see? I see a butterfly. I see fallopian tubes.

That’s what that is. What happened was, for us, my dad had passed and we had been dating for several months. Trust me, I’ll tie this back to the episode in a moment. There was some gesture and some act of kindness that you did. I was falling for you anyway.

Do you remember what it is?

I don’t remember that exact.

You just remembered you liked me. It’s not going to pass any psychology test. I just remember that you did some cool stuff. Is that how you’re going to do the episode too? “I just remember that I like land. Trust me.”

I’ll be very granular. We had already exchanged I love you and you asked me how you needed to show up for my dad’s funeral. I just said, “Can you get some newspapers with the obituary,” and that thing. You had flowers in the obituary. You had like ten of them. You had the newspapers. You went above and beyond for me. You had a cooler with cold drinks for us and at the time, there was no ice in the fridge so you took your kid’s popsicles. That was the ice. It was the cutest thing and I’m like, “Wow. That was pretty special.  This is the guy.” What about you?

With you? I knew right away and I know this because I was not happy about it.

I remember you saying that. Now, that’s not what we’ve described, what we’re looking for at the moment, the magic happens. Hopefully, you have that with your business and I can think of it. I’ll talk about it when we get to the topic. I can think of little moments leading up to it but then there’s a ping that’s like, “We’re done.” I have more to share about it too when we get into the meat of this because not only did it help me decide I wanted to do this forever. I know there’s ten other forever companies that are offshoots of this. Should I need them or want them or we get bored or something?

Before we get into the topic, Jill and I just spent not in preparation for this at all because Jill doesn’t prepare for this in any way, the episode. We spent about twenty minutes for some reason reviewing the market where we own long-term presence for houses. We were both shocked at how good the markets are doing in the areas where we are.

We decided to have a conversation about it and she said, “Over the last two or three weeks, I’ve been looking at places where we were attempting to buy property, both land and single-family residences for flipping purposes. It’s a good thing that in every case, except two cases, they didn’t accept our offers.” We do the regular Land Academy deal. We accept these crazy offers. Jill’s even more crazy about it the older we get the lower. Though, we’re making sure the prices are lower. Every single example, we said, “They should have taken our offer because it’s not worth that now.” That’s not good. My point in saying this is, please make sure you are offering crazy low offers.

There’s two ways of doing deals here. It’s a long-term thing, which Jack is talking about. We were looking at some long-term plays. I’ve been watching these markets like Jack just said. I’m like, “They’re starting to tick backwards a little bit, and they’re forced to go down in one.” Dodge those bullets. There’s long-term plays and then there’s a Land Academy way, which is I’m trying to get in and out in 30 days. Those are crazy numbers. I don’t care what’s going to happen months from now or a year from now. I’m only caring about 2 to 3 months from now at the most.

The property that we own that prompted all this, that our kids will end up with it. It’s a state property, which we paid cash for. That property is just staggering how well it’s doing. They’re totally different decisions.

What do you think it is? Before we get into this topic, there’s luxury markets and then there’s not luxury. I’m looking at luxury markets, I’ll be honest with you. Let’s just say anything over $1 million and even over $3 million and over $5 million. I like to think that there are other people in this space or the people who are buyers in this space that are not worried about interest rate or paying cashing anyway. What do you think? I wonder if that’s partially why those markets are doing okay because they’re like, “I don’t care what’s happening in the interest rates.” Which is true. It’s still a buyer’s market.

You shouldn't worry about interest rates because the truth is, it’s still a buyer’s market. Share on X

I have a simple answer. Location. These long-term holds that we have, even now when I look at it, what these locations have to offer. I am still like, “I wish we could buy a few more of these properties that are close by,” which we can’t do. For the prices that’s anywhere close.

I could find them. “We can’t do it,” or you’re going to say, “No, Jill?”

I don’t say no. When have I ever said no?

I’m just checking. I’ve surprised you with the boat. You said, “We should buy this boat.” and I said, “Okay.” You’re probably going, “Really?”

I was surprised about it. Do you know why we bought it? Location. It wasn’t necessarily the actual asset, which is all the case for these long-term holds. It was in the best spot and the best marina in San Diego, in my opinion.

I agree.

Which came with the boat which is unusual. Usually, people keep it but they were just retiring and it wasn’t for sale. It’s a deal made for us. She saved a bunch of money off of it and ended up being a great deal. We were not even looking for that. When you’re looking for something, at the back of your head, you’re probably going to pay too much just because you want it. When it drops in your lap, “For X, I can make this work.” That’s what happened.

That’s why the Land Academy model is so great. It’s like, I’m not trying to live there. I’m going to buy it because it’s cheap and I’m going to sell it cheap. It’s going to work out great. No skin off my nose. I’m happy to pass and go to the next phone call.

We’ve got a bunch of questions from members that wrote in the script that we’ll talk about later on. Everybody loves that segment of our episodes, so stick around. Now, we’re going to talk about the actual topic, the moment that we knew land investing was our forever business. Jill, you go first.

I had several little triggers that started me on the path. I grew up around real estate in Southern California, in Orange County, near Irvine and Newport, and all of that. I’ve talked about on past shows, Don Cole, who my dad used to charter for. I got to go to his helicopter. That was one of them. I can remember being in this guy’s helicopter going, “How do you get to do this?” It’s like, “It’s real estate.” Noted. I’m watching my dad do some things, build up his own little rental portfolio in the Hurst-Euless-Bedford area in Dallas, Texas around there in Southlake.

I worked for some developers in Orange County in Santa Ana for a while. That was another light bulb moment. I was always on the unrelated third party or the employee. That was where I was getting a taste of this. I’m like, “If I could just be the one. If I could be an investor. If I could be on the inside.” I don’t have the money to do that. That was a lot of it. I didn’t have the money to do it. It wasn’t even figuring out where to find them. I just knew. I was young. I didn’t have it. I got stuck into another life and a career and all that then you came along. You know this, too. When you sat me down finally and explained to me after I passed all the tests.

I did it at Jill’s dad’s funeral. I had an amazing time.

By the way, we should talk about you and I getting Natalie in bed together personally but financially. You had a roll down with your dad.

She didn’t talk about that at all.

Anyway, that was very good.

I remember you sitting me down and explaining it to me. It all just made so much sense. I’m like, “Duh.” You have said this before also that you didn’t have to explain a lot to me. It was like, “You do this. Here are the ten steps. Go through them. If there’s money in the bank, do it again.” I’m like, “Okay.” You gave me the ten steps. First of all, I knew this is what I wanted to do. When you set me down and said, “Here are the ten steps.” I’m like, “What?” We had the money to do it, thanks to you and the expertise and the knowledge and all of that.

It’s a roadmap like a full instruction manual.

I have to admit. You gave me a leg up because you started me with selling paid for properties. That was it. You’re like, “I have these properties sitting here. No one’s touching them. It’s been a while. I wrote them off. I don’t think they’re worth anything anymore.” They were old eBay properties and we needed to sell them. You didn’t need it. You’re just throwing it to me to see if I could do it and I did it.

I remember you going, “How was it going, by the way?” We didn’t talk about it. I would do what you told me to do and I would get the deeds recorded and I put the money in the bank and do it again and again. You’re like, “How much money have you got over there now?” It was a separate little account that we set up that’s where that money would go. It wasn’t my money. It was your paid for property. The money is growing and you said, “Now, we got to talk.” I’m like, “Yes.” I know. It was easy for me.

That part of the business, I have to tell you, was impossible for me. Buying the property, sourcing and doing all the data part and establishing the relationships to get that pipeline full was just a natural extension of my arm. For whatever reason, it was just natural for you to get on the phone, get in front of the computer and sell land.

Jill’s “Forever Business” Moment

When did I know it was my light bulb? My exact light bulb moment was, I’ll tell you now, being in a bar on a Friday afternoon that starts with a K, that we still go to. My phone rings and I go, “Excuse me, I’ll be right back. I’ll be right back in 5 or 10 minutes.” I have to step outside, answer the phone, sell the property and go, “Tomorrow morning, you’re going to get an email from me with the deed. I just need to know how you want the deed prepared and here’s where you wire me the money.” I could sit down with you, pick up my cocktail and see that the deposit was made.

I don’t know if I’ve ever heard that story. Do you remember the deal?

I don’t remember the exact deal.

Do you remember the buyer or anything?

No, I don’t remember. I just remember it was so easy. I’m like, “Why would this not be my life? I want this to be my life. I can step out and close the real estate deal, come right back and have fun. I’ll do this all day long.” I don’t care if it’s Friday night or Sunday morning or Tuesday. It doesn’t matter. It’s fun for me. At the time, I don’t know what job I had. There’s only a few jobs that I’ve had in my life where I had a boss that I despised. At the time, I didn’t despise a job. I was paid well. I had good friends there but this was fun for me. This was easy and I loved it.

You’re just naturally good at it.

Thanks.

When you’re naturally good at it and you can go back to your half drink cocktail, who doesn’t want that? As long as it’s repeatable. There’s a theme in this. You need to make sure it’s repeatable.

To finish my whole thought, that’s when and how I knew this would be my forever business and I’ve never worried about it since because in all the things that we’ve done with our mail company, offers to owners and different things we’ve done over the years and personal fact, Land Academy and all the offshoot different coaching things and career path. All the things that we’ve done there. No matter what, if anything catastrophic happened, I would go right back to being in our tool of man show, buying and selling land once a week and having a nice easy life. I would do all my own work, do all my own phone calls, post my own properties and have a ball.

Basically, be a new Land Academy member with some experience and a partner.

 That’s it. What was your moment?

I have three childhood distinct memories that set the stage for what happened in my early professional life including now. My dad had a small accounting practice and he dabbled in real estate and eventually retired because of it. That’s exactly what I did. I went into accounting and then ultimately utilized real estate because I love it and because it’s easy to get to the point where we have the option to retire, which has now long passed. When I was very young, my dad had a client who was looking for property land to build a house on in Michigan.

With real estate, it's easy to reach the point where we have the option to retire. Share on X

I grew up on 13 and Schoenherr, if you’re familiar with Detroit, Michigan. 13 Mile Road is 13 miles from mile 0 in Detroit. It was a very close suburb of Detroit. There’s other suburbs that are pretty high flute and pretty far out, but that wasn’t us. Me and my sister who’s two years younger in the car, very young and I remember this. I was in early grade school. We went to this farm out on 18 Mile Road, which seemed far to me but it wasn’t far in the scheme of things.

As far as development goes, it was farmland. He said, “I bought this farm.” He told me how much, and he said, “I already sold it to my client for $10,000 or more.” Some numbers just like that, $10,000 to a fourth grader is $42 million. My question was this and I remember. I have a vivid memory of this because my dad’s repeated this story my entire life. I said, “Why don’t we just buy all this land?” He just laughed and said, “That’s hilarious,” but he didn’t and I don’t know why.

I have the exact same memories sitting in the back of my dad’s Chrysler New Yorker in sixth grade moving from that 13 inch Schoenherr house through a much nicer neighborhood in Grosse Pointe. As we were pulling out of the final load in the car, pulling out of the driveway, he told me the numbers again. “Your mother and I bought this house for $13,000 and sold it for $87,000. We had you kids here and it did what it did.” Again, I said, “Why don’t we just buy all these houses?” Again, he laughed and he didn’t.

Fast forward, I went to school. I was involved in general business and then ultimately accounting. As a profession, I had all kinds of clients and customers that were in real estate. They were driving around in much nicer cars. It was obvious what I needed to do. I used accounting as a springboard and bought and sold as a broker a lot of commercial property and hated it. I hated being a commercial real estate broker. It was crazy profitable. It’s funny, Jill and I just made some new friends in California. She’s a residential real estate broker and he’s a commercial real estate broker. If you talk to them they’re like, “They should have a YouTube show.”

They should have it on the HGTV channel. They look perfect. They know everybody. We’re so lucky to befriend them. They introduced us to everybody. We went to the top of a hotel. Probably 60 or 80 stories and he wasn’t with us. She’s pointing down. This is the residential real estate agent telling me who has been sold that building to and naming these names of people that own all these properties. I don’t want to be the owners of those buildings and certainly, I don’t want to be their agent of those buildings. They live close to us. We found out later.

Jack’s “Forever Business” Moment

Being a real estate broker has never been on my list. I just want to be the owner. I was so tired of accounting and commercial real estate that I went on to eBay after a couple of cocktails many years ago. I was sitting at my coffee table in Ohio. I got a very good job in commercial real estate. Way too much money for my age in a little apartment in a high-rise. I bought a piece of property in Arizona. An 80 acre property for $8,000.

The deal went so easy. I remember every aspect of that deal because buying and selling a long-term care facility is the hardest thing there ever was in real estate. It takes a year. You have to get approval from everything and it’s just so complicated. I bought this piece of dirt. The guy sent me the deed. It was a handwritten deed.

The whole thing?

Yes. It was handwritten.

People don’t believe that that’s possible.

This guy is still in business. He still remembers me. I reached out to him not long ago. I bought it for $8,000. It was an 80-acre property. I’m sure it was landlocked. I had no idea what I was doing. I signed the handwritten deed, got the recorded deed back and dressed up the piece of property on the internet. I never went there. I never left the coffee table.

Would you just describe dressing up?

I will. I dressed up the property on the internet. I added plat maps. I laughed at what I did now because it was not necessary. I went nuts making it look beautiful on the internet. Nobody went to view the property and put it off for auction for 30-days and sold it for about $16,000 or $18,000 or some number like that. I doubled my money. That was it. The buyer called me.

That was your moment?

The buyer called me and said, “How would you like me to pay?” When somebody says that, they are done. There’s no sales pitch. I used all the tools in my box to make sure I didn’t have to go through some sales pitch with some guy because that’s what I had to do with commercial real estate all the time. He paid the same way I paid. The check cleared. I sent him the deed and he recorded it.

I didn’t record it and I said, “Now I have one job left for the rest of my life. I need a source.” Again, that’s just repeatability. Even to this day when Jill and I do a good deal. I scratched my head and I thought to myself because Jill’s tired of what I say in general, “Is this going to happen again?” It’s just my natural pessimism. Jill is like a full blown life-long optimist. I wonder if this is ever going to happen again if this was a fluke.

Do you still say that?

Yes. Three days later, Jill gets off the phone and says, “We should do this deal.” It was that moment. It took all those seasons being planted and then I left out the horror stories about being a commercial real estate broker in Detroit during a recession.

Thank you. We don’t need that. That’s not our topic, by the way. That’s a whole other show that I’m sure three people might read.

I would not have had that epiphany moment, that light bulb moment without all that tragedy in real estate.

You had other unfortunate experiences. There was never anything bad that happened. You got to taste it. We both got a taste of it, but I don’t think it has to be that way. You don’t have to be just like, “I’m not going to have a light bulb moment because I didn’t know it.” You could still have a light bulb moment. I’m going to say that. Maybe you’ve tried other things. I tried to do this and that didn’t work. I tried to open this store and that didn’t happen. I thought it could be successful over here. That didn’t work. I have a good one.

A list of companies that Jill and I have owned and no longer owned because it didn’t work. It’s silly.

We have one where I had a guy who was dying to make it as an HGTV house flipper. That was his thing and he was talking to me. I’m like, “Why?” He’s trying to save up money for that. I’m like, “If that’s what you want to do, let me show you how to do land. You’ll save up money a whole lot faster or doubling your money the way I do it then you can make that a thing. If you decide you don’t want to go down that path like we did, you have all these options, big deal.” You have a big bank balance now. You can do whatever you want. All he kept saying was, “Jill, land is not sexy.” I’m like, “Whatever.” He called a year later and said, “Now I want to do land. This is stupid.” I’m like, “We’re talking again, aren’t we?”

I guess you’re not sexy now.

I said, “My big balance is sexy. That works for me.” He’s like, “Okay.” He called back and he’s like, “I got it.” That’s the thing that I tell people too, if you’re thinking about it. Whatever you’re thinking of doing, you are just as a catalyst to do that. What’s wrong with that? Be careful. You might get hooked because if you have the right personality, you want to be an owner or an investor or in our position.

Use it as a stepping stone or use it as the end.

Use it to pay off your kids’ college. Who cares? Whatever you do. This is a great thing to do for all kinds of stuff.

It’s a massive learning experience.

For us, I’ll never do anything else. I’m so happy. I love land. I do. When we drive around in our RV. I’m so happy. I love grass and trees. I’m sorry I sound like a dork but I love nature and the mountains. I love the ocean. I love all of it. I’m thrilled. To me, that was an unintended perk. It’s to get to travel like, “I don’t need to.” You know us in Land Academy.

One of the things we do say is, try not to go look at your land because if you’re like us, you won’t want to sell it. You have to be careful of that, but I do love it. Now we’re going to go on to the next segment that you’re working on. Let’s see what the Land Academy Community on what you’re working on? We have a message here from Tracy and Dave. They said, “The mail is out, the calls are coming in and the pricing is right.”

How would they know the price is right?

What do you think?

There are some people that are a little bit angry about how they value their land. There’s three types of people that receive offers in the mail and three types of responses. There’s no way you have to be out of your mind, “Please lose my number. Please lose my information and don’t send me an offer again.” Number two is, ‘I talked to my husband about this and we do think we might want to sell it. We didn’t think about it, but now we’re thinking about it but just not at that price.” The third way is, “Your timing’s perfect. Please let me know how we can get the deal done. What’s the next step?” You don’t get the equal number of calls.

That would be nice.

Probably 90% are the first type. There’s probably a few that you get on the second type and there’s 1 or 2 or 3 that you usually get per mailer that are the third type. Let’s just do a deal. It’s all circumstance and timing based.

Congrats, Tracy and Dave.

Here’s what we are working on in Land Academy now. We have an application solution that we’ve been working on that is yet to be named. Our staff put it back in my lap at lunch a few days ago, so I have to name the thing. That’s one job that gave me this whole thing, so I think I can handle it.

We don’t need anything but the name. We got everything else.

The New Land Academy Application Solution

It’s an end to end solution for buying and selling houses in real estate for the purpose of flipping them. Now, you got to go all over the place. It works. The system has worked for me for many years and many thousands of Land Academy members. With AI and the way things are, we decided to make an easy button and that’s what this says. If you think of a piece of tracker, that’s what it is.

It’s all of Jack’s hard work and steps and everything down to where everyone can handle it because that’s kept a lot of people out. Not just money, but a lot of people are like, “Spreadsheets scare me.” I have to go, “What are you talking about? I have to take these lines of data from this data center and put it here. I pull out the zip code and do what?”

“That’s great, Jack. Why don’t you do that in the beginning?” Here’s why. The availability of data and how over time it has gotten cheaper and cheaper to access and way more prevalent. All of these things, these APIs that are available, we have put them all together. It’s soon that we’re going to release this thing.

We put them all together to make it cost effective and make it easy. You don’t have to price a mailer anymore. You don’t have to do the mailer if you don’t want to. It pretty much tells you if you have a pretty good idea about where you want to send mail, it does a red, green, and yellow test for you or not just for you but push  a few buttons and check it out. There’s a lot of things that make it amazing.

By the time this airs, there’s a pretty darn good chance it’s available to you. Go to LandAcademy.com and you’ll find it. Now, we have a question from our Facebook group. Liz wrote, “If you didn’t increase the value of the land, how are you able to sell it for more?” I love this. Do you want to go first?

She’s applying common sense. This is a good question. It’s like an HGTV. I’m going to buy a piece of crap house for $100,000. I’m going to put $50,000 into it. I’ve got $150,000 into it now because I improved it. I’m going to sell it for $200,000.

I did this sweat equity.

I pat myself on the back and I made $50,000. Most of us have done that. Jill and I’ve done it several times. Most of us hate it, or you wouldn’t be listening to a landfill. We don’t have to do that. There’s only one other way to create equity. You’ve got a piece of property that’s worth $100,000 in as is condition and you buy it for $80,000 and you sell for $100,000 or for $90,000, depending on how much you want to make. Our numbers are a lot better than that. It’s more like buy for $30,000 and sell for $100,000 or $120,000. Property is worth $150,000.

When you get to land, you can do those crazy numbers.

What’s special about it, is you don’t have to worry about the actual asset. When you buy a house, there’s all kinds of surprises. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care how many inspections you got. You get the key and you get in there. About a week, if you moved in, there’s going to be some stuff that nobody thought of. That’s just how it is, including a new house. That’s the end all be all of real estate improvement.

Buy a piece of land, put some roads in and build a house. There’s a reason those companies are publicly traded. Those people don’t live in their subdivisions that they built. They live in different neighborhoods because it’s very profitable. Do you know who makes the most money on all those deals? The person who owns the land. Usually a farmer.

Do we have two questions?

We have three.

I’m a little confused.

I should’ve given you a heads up.

I didn’t know that.

There’s two. I found two that had good questions.

I’m like, “We have typos? Uh-oh.” I got it. We have three questions, alright. Now, this is from our internal Land Academy Discord Channel. NM wrote, “I have come across many properties that are owned by trust. Do you think that these families are revocable trust sell the properties? Usually, they bought properties to save the assets, so why would they sell them for low prices?”

This question has got about 25 responses on our Discord channel, which is pretty on your usual. Putting property into a trust is one way. Trust is an entity by law that can own property just like us. We are individuals. We can own property. If we have an LLC, which we own. The LLC can own property. The LLC can be owned by trust, by the way.

I don’t want to get all complicated but it grants that consensus and I totally agree as hell yes. Send the mailing address of the trust. Send them an offer. Keep it in your offer campaign. We’ve done deals with trusts, buy side and the sell side. Everybody in there. Some of the best deals I’ve ever done from trust.

You never know where they are.

Do you know why? It’s because their trust is owned by dead people.

Also, it could even just be a holding place. It’s a holding place for everything mom has and they would love to get your offer. Maybe mom is still even alive now and the kids don’t want it. Mom throws it in the trust because we’re not going to throw it away and then your offer comes along. The kids are all like, “Now we can have the cash in lieu of this deed.”

“I don’t even know you had that, Grandma.” $30,000 sounds great.

Exactly. This is very good. Why do they sell it for low prices? Especially in that situation, no one is using it.

Who cares?

It’s left over often. It’s either leftover, somebody passed and it didn’t get used or for the situation. They put it in the trust to transfer to the kids so the kids can sell it because they’re not living there. That’s the whole point and they would love to get that check. Who knows how long they’ve owned it? The other thing too talking about low prices. Lowest compared to what?

I can’t tell how many wonderful properties I bought from little old ladies who said, “Would you just give me fill in the blank for it?” They paid many years ago $5,000 for something and to get $54,000 now is wow, but it’s worth $110,000. They don’t care. They’re not going to go shop and get an agent and do all that. They will happily take my $50,000 and say, “Jill, I wish you all the best.” That has totally happened over and over.

This is one of my favorite questions when somebody asks this, especially a new person on Land Academy. “Why do people sell property for less than it’s worth?” It’s because they don’t know how much it’s worth. What you’re telling me when you ask this question is, you are a real estate professional waiting to happen because you do know just because it seems natural to you, what properties are worth.

You probably know what the properties are worth as you drive down the street or drive to work. You might not even be in the real estate industry at all. It’s just in your soul. The vast majority of people who own real estate, I would say almost all of them do not have any idea nor do they care how much their property is worth.

We’ve said this before in yard sale things. How many things have you had over the years? How do yard sales work? You’re like, “I know I can clean it up. I could put it on Facebook Marketplace. I could fill in the blank and get more money for it but I don’t flip and care. I’ll take the $5. You can have it and get it off my lawn.” That’s kind of the same thing.

How many yard sales have you had or have you gone to? I just saw that broom at Home Depot for $38 and this guy wants $8? Let me see if I can get it for $6. Does he care? No. He wants all the stuff out of there. That’s the same exact thought process and mentality that goes on with people who own land. There’s another question that I’m going to handle if it’s alright with you, Jill?

Do you want me to read it or do you want to read it?

I’ll do it. There’s a guy named Steve in our group. He’s been here for a long time. He’s my age. He owns a collections company and a bunch of other really successful companies. He says this, “Hi, everyone. Here who signs mail. I dusted off my old dialer.” This is a guy from an era, so am I, by the way. Where we still have these dialers and it would just automate connected to your phone, connected to our hardware. I think you’re connected to it, the copper line phone. It automatically dials numbers and sequences and says some stuff. In his case, it probably says, “Do you want to sell your land?” Here’s his numbers. This is in August. Two people, 15,444 call attempts. This guy set the dialer.

We have an auto dail. Now it’s all an app.

He set his dialer. That’s all. It doesn’t matter why. Here’s the numbers. It made 15,444 calls, 325 of those answered the call. The dialer left 2,357 messages. Out of it, he received 6 warmish leads, 4 of which they checked the dirt out and you didn’t want to buy it. It didn’t meet his approval and two people are interested in selling their property for the price. He’s interested in the property and in the price. He’s asking, “The theory is, if I’m going to send out 5,000 units of mail, which has been the old stand by number. How many units do I have to send out?”

He went 15,000 to get two leads. That’s the point.

Does it still take 5,000 mailers to close one deal? He’s trying to compare it from a cost standpoint. That completely depends on if you’ve done your homework and if you price the mailer. I just love that he’s trying another thing and utilizes it in a different way. Now, he’s got a different pipeline.

Ensuring his results because that’s the thing, too. I remember one time. I don’t know how many years ago. There was this guy in Facebook. He was sharing his results from mailing only back tax properties, versus other properties. He very nicely gave all his responses and then how crappy it all went because he got a number of people that replied. The properties were crappy. That was the whole thing. There were problems. They were probated and all that good stuff versus our whole way forever has been mailed to everybody. Not just back text property. Mail them all and see what comes back, then check the numbers.  This is tying into that, too.

You never want to make your business smaller and we’ve had a lot of questions in Discord. I left them out because we’re running over on time now. A lot of questions about, “Should I send mail to a trust?” I wonder if that’s a good idea just like we talked about. You’re making your business smaller by sending out a smaller mailer. I know that mailers cost money and I do not want you. I’m the last person in the world that wants you to waste money on a stamp like sending an offer to the US government.

That’s silly. They’re not going to respond but you do need to get a robust mailer pipeline going to get this business going. Please don’t try to make your mailers smaller. Ask us tons of questions or even your peers about trying to cut out certain segments of a mailer. It’s in the program. It’s in the Land Academy program who you should send mailers to directly.

We got you. Now, Apple even does a lot of it for you. That’s a beautiful thing, too. By the way, if you want to learn more, get to know our members, even some of the people ask some of the questions here. You can connect with them and us on one of our weekly Thursday member calls. We do them every week. It’s 3:00 in the afternoon, Pacific time and 6:00 Eastern time. Anyway, you can have a one-time ticket. Send a note to our team via Support@LandAcademy.com and they will get you into our clothes Zoom members call. As I said, you can connect with these people, hear other questions and ask your own questions, too. We’d love to help you.

Thanks for reading. Join us on the next episode.

The next episode is going to be an interview. It’s cool. We’re just going to say a new Land Academy team member, Nick. He’s got a lot to share. It’s going to be fun getting these guys together. He has a lot to share and they have some Michigan stuff to share. This is going to be fun. Thank you for joining us.

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