700 Land Deals, Zero Debt: Abi Asija on Offers and Speed to Lead

Original automatic captions. Names, numbers, and punctuation may contain transcription errors.

0:00 All right, welcome to the owner meeting podcast hosted by Multif Family Strategy. I'm Christian, your channel host today, joined by Abby Asia. I am
0:08 super excited for today's episode. As many of you know, I actually started uh at the CoStar group, but before that, I
0:15 was at land.com before I worked for Loopnet and CoStar. Lance.com was acquired by them. So, my start was in
0:22 land. Now, Obby, you've built an awesome company and a higher volume company than any of the acquisitions that I've done.
0:28 talk to us a little bit about the uh the acquisitions you've done and give us a a high level overview of the company that
0:35 you've built in land. Right. So, we buy and sell vacant land all over the US. So, we participate in
0:41 tax auctions. We use direct mail. We use social media marketing to acquire land and then we sell direct to consumers
0:48 through our website and through websites like land.com and landflip.com. Um, so
0:53 that's how that's what the business model is. We as you said we are a high volume business so and we have completed
1:00 uh 700 plus deals in the last 7 8 years that's an amazing amount of deals 700
1:06 deals is a wild way to do it marketing for land first question how did you land
1:12 on well land why is land the model right yeah so quick background so uh
1:18 came to the US as an international student completed my education graduated
1:23 and worked 9 to5 for 10 plus years got burnt out and then I wanted to go into real estate because my wife was also you
1:30 know she worked for the city of New York uh as an affordable housing director. Uh so we were looking to do something in
1:36 real estate but we did not wanted to take out debt uh very heavily anti-debt
1:42 because we consumed a lot of Dave Ramsey's con content. Uh so house flipping was out, apartment flipping,
1:48 commercial, all of those uh things were out. Then we stumbled upon a guy buying
1:54 land out in the desert in in Nevada in in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and
2:01 and flipping them on eBay for like 2x 3x the profit. At first, we didn't believe it. We thought it was like some kind of
2:07 a scam. But then we're like, well, it doesn't hurt. Let's just send out some letters, see if we get any response
2:13 back. So, we sent out a mailer, like maybe 600 to 800 letters. Most of the
2:18 people did not respond. Uh some who did respond, they was like, "Yeah, please don't bother us again." But then two
2:24 people said yes. And so we we bought those two pieces of land in New Mexico.
2:29 We listed on eBay and we sold it in like in 3 months and we like 2.5xed our money. So we're like
2:34 How much did you actually buy them for? Uh like $4,000. It was amazing.
2:40 Yeah. So it was not it was not a huge amount and but we were able to like uh
2:45 more than double our money. So we we proved the concept. So we're like we know the model works but the question
2:51 was how do we do so so many uh so much volume that we can actually replace our
2:57 salaries. So that's how we got started and you know you know and then we started focusing on more treating it
3:05 like a real business as opposed to a side hustle. If someone was starting this model today as an example, is 500
3:12 letters actually enough to be like did you get lucky to get two out of 500 to prove concept with only 500 mailers?
3:19 Um, I would say so. At least at that time the competition was not as high, but nowadays it, you know, you would
3:25 probably have to send more like 5,000 letters. That's what I thought. I was like I was like, "Wow, two successes out of 500
3:32 mailers. That was uh that was very fortunate." And again, more people are doing it, right? So, so when you first
3:39 started, your odds were higher. How fortunate that you got the right two people on the first mail blast.
3:44 Yeah. I mean, it was 2018, so you know, there not a lot of people were doing it. It was like a relatively unknown niche.
3:51 Uh, but now there's like, you know, any unknown niche becomes saturated when people see, oh, other people are making
3:58 money. I'm going to make money. So, there's right in the sweet spot. It was right around 2017 2018 is when I was
4:04 working for lands.com. So you were you were launching this right as I was in the space with I I watched the start of
4:10 this where it became more popular. You were right at the front end of this being the sweet spot,
4:16 right? Uh I mean I consider myself lucky in that sense because uh the cost to
4:22 entry in the business is is much higher nowadays. So you know I definitely got lucky. But on the flip side, you know,
4:28 there's a lot more knowledge now available on the internet and and Chad GPT and whatnot. Back in the day, you
4:34 know, you you didn't really know how to perform proper due diligence on land. Uh like I remember one time we bought this
4:41 uh 20 acre parcel in in New Mexico and we sold it like within a month and we
4:46 like 3xed our money and then a month later we got like an angry call and the guy is like, "You guys are a scam." I
4:53 was like, "What are you talking about?" Like this is like he bought it. we deeded you the property. How can we be
4:58 scams? And he says, well, you didn't disclose there are wetlands on the property. I was like, it's New Mexico
5:04 desert. What do you mean wetlands? There is no water. Like, what are you talking about? He's like, well, it's called
5:10 Aoyos. So, we got like a lesson. It's called Aoyos. And when you know when there's like a rain or like like a event
5:18 where there's like lot of water, it like becomes dangerous because water just like gushes through it. So we're like,
5:24 well, we were we apologized. We were not aware. We lived in New York City. Like we don't have a royos, so how would we
5:30 know? U so stuff like that. And then we like we're like, well, we just refund you and and just keep the property back to us.
5:37 And then he was like, well, let me think about it. And then a week later, he calls back, well, it's it is 20 acres,
5:43 so there's still plenty of buildable space. I was just pissed that you you you you guys didn't disclose. So he let
5:49 us go, and he was like, well, it's fine. It's still a good deal. But uh but that's an example of like stuff like you
5:55 know we're completely noobs like complete noobs when it comes to doing due diligence on land. uh and and now
6:02 you know in fact my wife she she was like this is going to be a big problem for other people getting in and she
6:08 wrote a book about it and we started with like 30 things you need to know like 30 pointers and then she kept on
6:15 expanding as we learned more you know because at that point we only did like 100 deals and we were like well at least
6:21 now we know what all the things we need to know about buying land so that was a 30point checklist she kept on updating
6:27 it and then since last year now it's a 210 point checklist list. Yeah. Isn't it amazing the difference like wow we
6:33 learned a lot over a 100 deals. How much more do you learn over 700 deals, right? Be a whole lot more. That's what a what
6:40 a fun start though and what a fun concept. So did you continue in the business? Did you stay completely
6:46 debtree through the entire thing? And did you continue to use the model of no debt? After 500 deals, we started using
6:52 uh home equity line of credit for to for some shortfalls. Like when if there's
6:57 like a bigger deal, we would like, you know, use uh line of credit to to uh cover for that purchase
7:04 and pay it back. But for the first 500 deals, we we didn't use any debt whatsoever. So, it was all reinvesting
7:10 the profit because both me and my wife had jobs, right? So, we didn't really need the income. It was more of a side
7:17 hustle. But then we actually started to turn into a business and we just kept on redeploying everything back into the
7:22 business. So that's the reason how we were able to scale in the beginning. And then when we replaced my wife's salary,
7:29 that's when my wife quit. And then eventually we replaced my salary and that's when uh I quit. So now we're 100%
7:37 um being employees of the business. When you uh you mentioned at the beginning of
7:42 this you did your first two deals and you're like, "Okay, well how would we make this the full-time business?" like you saw the success like wow we can keep
7:48 doing this. What did the actual engineering look like for that? Like was there a specific target that you set
7:54 where you're like how did you do the math for this is what we need to do in
7:59 land? Yeah. So the math was directly related to the amount of terms income that was
8:05 coming in. So most of the properties you sell um is on owner financing. So people
8:11 usually when you're selling land for say $15,000. People who are buying these, they usually don't want to put 15,000
8:18 like cash up front. So they'll be like, "Well, I'll give you $1,500 and the rest
8:23 I'll pay you $500 per month for the next couple of years, right?" So that's how most of our land was selling.
8:30 Um, so we did the math. If our terms income is equal to our monthly income
8:36 that's the W2 income that's coming in when then that becomes the same that's when my wife will quit because I was
8:43 making more money that uh than my wife. So my wife was the first to quit and
8:48 then I quit uh later. Oh that's perfect. So so simple simple math. What are we making now and how much do we need to do
8:55 to replace that? And you just hit on a concept that I think a lot of people don't realize about land. It actually can be right.
9:02 There's no business that's completely passive, but right relatively passive income. When you think about buying and selling land, you
9:09 think it's all transaction, it's all val you're flipping. But the seller finance contracts that
9:14 are very commonly involved with land. You actually are setting up long-term
9:19 recurring income on your transactions out of after doing 700 of these. I'm really curious, how often do these go
9:26 all the way full term? How many out of 700 of these? How often do you actually
9:31 get someone who would default on a loan? How often do you actually get the land back and how often are these transactions fully they went through
9:38 they're successful they refinanced or paid it off? Yeah. So around our default rate is
9:43 around 15%. So 15% of the people would default and then uh you know we'll take
9:48 the land back but we also if they ever come back we let them roll over the equity into another piece of land. So
9:55 it's not like we're like oh they lose the money. Um, and but there are some people they like
10:01 they never come back but a lot of people do. It was surprising. I was like surprised a lot of people will show up
10:07 like 2 years later and like oh I'm ready now. I lost I lost my job at that time and I you know I was like I didn't want
10:14 to I felt embarrassed so I didn't want to contact you guys but now I'm back on on my feet and like to buy land again.
10:21 So we let them roll roll that over. Um that's awesome. Yeah. And also, yeah, most of the land does sell on owner financing, but
10:27 there's also like 20% of the time will sell on straight up cash. By that math, you've done hundreds and
10:32 hundreds of seller finance transaction, right? Yeah. Yeah. That that is I I I think that's what a
10:38 lot of people are missing when they when they first think about the business is especially because you started your
10:44 first 500 units debtree. It's not that debt's not a piece of the business, it's just not your debt. You're creating
10:50 essentially the business is 80% creating accounts receivable as opposed to
10:57 flipping land. Exactly. That's really cool. That how long did it
11:02 take you to officially be able to replace both your wife and your income in this? Um yeah so it was couple of
11:09 years in uh my wife was able to uh replace her income and then few years
11:14 later I was able to replace but then I added I stayed extra a year just to be 100% certain you know because I didn't
11:21 want to it was like I didn't want to lose my bonus and stuff. So I stayed some extra just just for a little bit of
11:27 a cushion. But uh yeah for my wife we were like as soon as we hit that number we're like all right because we still
11:32 had one salary coming in. So, we're like, "Well, we'll be fine even if the business doesn't work." I I did the I did the opposite order,
11:39 but similar similar strategy for my wife and I in multif family is we hit a certain point. I was like, I I want to
11:45 go all in on this. She was a school teacher, so our our fall back was uh kindergarten teacher salary. It wasn't
11:51 uh it wasn't incredibly stable, but it it was nice having that little fall back. Like, okay, if we had a shortfall,
11:57 at least we built our life where we could live on her salary until we got her out. And then I was like, "Oh, wow.
12:03 This is the business worked. This is this is fantastic." Uh, but up to that point, I I really like that model of retire one,
12:10 retire the other, uh, and do it over the course of a few years. But you did that. I mean, that's still relatively fast to
12:15 replace two jobs. Yeah, that's pretty amazing without using leverage at that phase. That's really
12:21 amazing to do. Well, I mean, we were pretty much we didn't take a single dollar out of the
12:26 business. We were like redeploying everything back. So that that kind of like acted as a leverage.
12:33 That was a I actually the first time I've I've heard the concept amazingly uh
12:39 was Mr. Beast talking about building his YouTube channel. He's like, "Yeah, we just reinvest everything we've made into
12:44 the next video and then it should do better." Um just the concept of 100% reinvestment until you hit the goal. I absolutely
12:51 love the model. So you started debtree, you multiplied the money, and you kept spending it until you hit the goal.
12:57 you're just like, "Hey, we're just going to reinvest 100% back into the business. Roll it, roll it, roll it until we hit the target." That that is the single
13:04 best model. If you believe in an idea, invest in the idea and just go all in at
13:09 the idea until you're where you want to be. That is the of everyone that we've had on this podcast, that seems to be
13:15 the winning model for almost everyone is we didn't take the money out and spend it on something stupid. We we didn't
13:23 skip to financial freedom. We earned it by reinvesting and reinvesting and reinvesting and reinvesting until you
13:29 hit critical pass. Yeah, it is. Yeah. I mean I in because I was risk averse because I didn't want to
13:35 go in debt. Uh that seemed like the safest way of doing it. I mean on the flip side, one could argue that if I was
13:42 more aggressive and I quit earlier, my business would be you know more than seven figures at this point. But you
13:48 know uh we can go back in time now. And and at a certain point too, you never
13:54 know if it was a mistake or not, right? You know, if you're going all in at it and then it didn't work and then you
13:59 then you got stuck in the nineto-ive longer, you you never you never know. So taking
14:05 calculated risk, it's hard to look back and regret that, especially sitting on a seven figureure business, right? You're
14:10 like, "Oh, I mean, maybe we could be an eight figure business, right?" But you're you're doing great. You're
14:15 doing great. It's hard to look back and say it was a mistake, right? Yeah. I mean as entrepreneurs
14:21 as entrepreneurs you're always looking at other entrepreneurs who are ahead of you right and then they're like well they are at eight figures why are we not
14:28 eight figures but yeah but in retrospect like if someone is like just doing W2 and they're looking at us they'll be
14:34 like well these guys are spoiled or they're like you know so I understand both perspectives
14:40 exactly I'm I'm originally from Washington state where we just passed that new uh the new 10% millionaires tax
14:46 and a whole bunch of other taxes that went with Uh, but that's been a lot of the comments that I'm receiving now because
14:52 I I posted some some videos on like, huh, uh, this is why I left. I took all the jobs that I provide and my whole
14:58 portfolio and I moved to Texas. That is one of the things I get a lot of feedback from a lot of people on like,
15:03 oh, well, you're so spoiled cuz you're you make this today. I'm like the path and what you have to reinvest in your
15:10 business even to build a sevenf figureure business excluding the 8 n 10 figure businesses. It is so hard to
15:16 build a sevenf figureure business and it takes so much sacrifice to get there. And I think a lot of people don't
15:21 realize that people are telling me well the millionaires won't move. I'm like
15:26 if you took 10% of my business just because I live there I'm not going to rent living in Washington state. I I'll
15:33 move to a warmer climate that wants my business. Yeah, it's especially like nowadays with
15:39 like the Instagram and all those like becoming rich quick like people don't
15:44 really understand that entrepreneurship is is actually a lot of work. Um I was Yes, it is. Passive income is so much
15:52 work to build. Yeah, I I was on a podcast recently. So I was, you know, so I uh recently listed
15:59 my uh published my book, The Land Business. Uh, so I was on a podcast. Great title, by the way. I love clean,
16:04 simple titles. Just beautiful. Your book cover, title, everything. I love
16:09 the actual branding of your book is 10 out of 10. You, you know, I I I asked at GPT,
16:15 what's what's the bestselling non-fiction ever in the history of the world? Uh, do you want to take a guess?
16:23 Um, bestselling nonfiction book of all time. I don't I
16:29 don't know. What is it? The Bible. Oh, D. I knew that. I knew that.
16:35 I What are the odds? It's my favorite book. Uh, no. Yes, that that would that
16:41 would make sense. The Bible. So, you basically built the land. No. Right. So, so I was like I asked
16:48 that. All right. So, yeah. So, should I mimic my cover? Nothing on the back.
16:53 Nothing on the front. Just says, "No wonder I love your book. It's based on my favorite book." Oh, that's funny.
16:59 That's funny. That that that's very fitting. That's that's that's genius. One of the first books that I ever read in real estate was uh Brandon Turner's
17:07 called the book on rental property investing. If I missed that title at all, I apologize, Brandon. Uh but I
17:12 looked at that. I'm like, what a genius marketing. You can just call you can always for the rest of time now say I
17:18 wrote the book on rental property investing. You wrote the book on man. It's a great um great branding.
17:25 Absolutely. By the way, the the book is linked below. There's an Amazon link uh in the show notes. So, if you guys are wondering why I'm so excited about the
17:31 cover, I'm a marketing nerd and you did a great job uh building a great branding on his book.
17:36 So, by the way, yeah, I I was saying so I was in the on this podcast. It was it was a live
17:43 stream, right? Yeah. Um so, I was explaining this concept. So, I was like I was telling people, you
17:48 know, I so these so the book that I wrote is about principles on how you
17:53 build a scalable business and how we thought about it. Um, so the the biggest principles in the
17:59 book is like the amount of money you you make in business or the amount of money you want to make is equal to the amount
18:05 of goodwill you have in the marketplace multiplied by the number of offers you make to your customers. Just just to
18:12 explain what that means. So say Christian, you and I, we live in a small town, right? And we we open our
18:18 respective cafe or coffee shops, right? There's no Starbucks. It's a small town, right? So if someone comes to your
18:25 coffee shop and they say, "Oh, I would like a small cappuccino." And then you you have a nice conversation with them.
18:32 As part of the conversation, you say, "Oh, you should try the large. You know, you you get a free croissant with it. We
18:38 have this pastry that we just uh you know, it's like selling really fast. People love it. We have these coffee
18:44 beans that just came from Costa Rica." So you're having this conversation with the customer and you make like four,
18:49 five, six offers as part of the conversation. And then people maybe upgrade their or order or they buy
18:56 multiple things. Right? So that's how you are running your coffee shop. And if people come to my coffee shop and they
19:01 say I would like a small cappuccino and we like here you go uh thanks for coming in. Right? So if we are running our cafe
19:08 shops like that and you are making five six offers per customer and I'm making one offer per customer and assuming
19:15 there are 100 customers coming in in both our coffee shops. You can imagine at the end of the year your revenue
19:22 revenue numbers will be ridiculously higher than my revenue, right? So, so that concept of making
19:28 more offers multiplied by goodwill. You need to have goodwill in the marketplace
19:34 because you you know people need to like know you know you like you and trust
19:39 you, right? So, if they if they know, oh, I see Christian's blogs, I I I see his YouTube channel. I've read his book
19:45 and they're like, "Oh, yeah. If Christian is recommending uh this upsell, you know, it must be really
19:50 good. So, I will take that upsell." Right? So, you need goodwill and you make a lot of offers and then you're
19:56 going to make a lot lot more money in your business. Right? So, this is the concept I was explaining on the live podcast. And the first question I got
20:04 and this is like all people who are trying to start a business and the first question I got on the live
20:09 stream was well Abby that that's an excellent principle. I really I understand it. I like it. Now tell us
20:16 how do I build goodwill really quickly? And I was like
20:21 and I was like you can't I was I was going to say really quickly and build goodwill. Those are two things
20:26 that are uh diametrically opposed. Exactly. It takes time to do you have to have
20:31 done the thing and continue to do the thing and that is how you build goodwill. Yeah. So that's that's like the misconception in the Instagram world.
20:37 People think oh everything needs to be fast. But when you are an entrepreneur and you're building like a long-term
20:43 brand and you're building something like you know you want to leave as a legacy it takes a long time right so you cannot
20:49 rush through goodwill you have to show up every day every week just like Mr.
20:55 beast, right? Getting 1% better every day. And then over time, people will know, like, and trust you. And that's
21:01 then they'll buy more stuff from you. And and that does two things for you. One, that makes business much more
21:07 enjoyable because now you're stuck with a good product and you're doing a great job servicing your customers. Like that is the the ultimate goal is you're
21:14 working on the product at all times. And so by getting better over time, you're building more and more goodwill. The
21:19 other thing selfishly as a business owner is the longer you do this and the more you iterate you create this
21:25 economic moat or someone cannot just enter the market and do what you have done.
21:30 Exactly. All of that time all of that iteration before we started the pod I I was complimenting if you happen to be uh if
21:37 you happen to be listening you should watch this on the uh on the YouTube channel. His lighting is fantastic. The
21:42 little things he's like oh of course it is. I took a I took a course on lighting. He has an awesome background, awesome lighting, and immediately stood
21:50 out. It's the little things in your business that someone new doesn't think of. They haven't got the lighting quite
21:56 right yet. They haven't figured out the thumbnail. They It's those little teeny details that you iterate thousands and
22:03 thousands and thousands of times. And it's the difference between the clickability of Mr. Beast thumbnail to
22:08 someone else. It's the little teeny things end up being the difference between a failed business, a a $10,000 a
22:16 month business, a $100,000 a month business, a 10, you know, a $10 million business, right?
22:22 Those little iterations. And that is the answer every single time. How do you get there? Reinvestment in your product.
22:28 Lots of time. Only way to do it. Yeah. Goodwill. So for us in land, the way we're doing uh or or adding more
22:36 goodwill to the marketplace is we we do live streams. We show up every day like so we'll do like property uh drone
22:43 videos. We will like incorporate that. We'll do a Matterport, you know, like the 3D scan of the land. So we'll send
22:49 someone to take that and then we'll do like virtual tours every day. So we have at a given time
22:54 we'll have anywhere from 100 to 130 parcels available for sale. So, we can literally
23:01 show up daily, every day. So, we do every day 7:00 p.m. Eastern. We show up, we we do a virtual tour, which we'll
23:09 tell them, oh, this property is 20 minutes from Walmart, 10 minutes from a state park, you know, electricity
23:15 available, water, you'll have to drill a well. So, we, you know, disclose all the facts. Uh, we show all the marketing and
23:22 then we just show, we answer all the questions, people, you know, live chat, answer all the questions. So, we show up
23:27 pretty much every day. And that kind of like we've done like thousands and thousands of these like so thousand plus
23:33 videos on our YouTube channel and and and and to your point you know and that kind of built a moat so someone
23:39 can't just come in and start like can just like dethrone us because we we've
23:45 been doing this for so long you for you to produce thousand videos it's going to take a couple of years.
23:51 Yes. And it will take a couple years for you to actually get any good at producing thousands of videos. Everybody
23:56 starts on YouTube. I imagine we go back to the beginning of the channel. I'm going to guess it doesn't look nearly as
24:01 polished as it does today. When I first started, we did uh I had a business partner named Cody Davis and we
24:08 started in our boss's basement of his office with an iPhone
24:14 and a little ring light. And that was and we didn't own any real estate either. It was it was us talking about how we're going to close this deal. We
24:20 just got under contract. I'm like, we're going to buy this deal and we're going to scale to 100 units. Uh, follow the adventure here. The lighting was
24:27 terrible. Terrible. My outfit didn't fit me well. Uh, just two guys in a basement. You You have to go through the
24:33 iterations of, hey, we did the thing and we continued to do the thing. And now you go back and you you now have the
24:40 proof of like, hey, they've been doing this for a long time. And you can go all the way back to the beginning back when we were terrible at it. And it just adds to the proof of like,
24:46 oh yeah, he didn't used to be good at this and now he is. And you're always getting better. I I love I think this is the
24:52 most important thing that anyone can learn as an entrepreneur. Uh I think you hit both sides of it is making the product better because you're
24:59 you have to serve your customers with your product. That is no customers, no revenue, no revenue, dead business,
25:04 right? And you get better at doing it by doing it, which is where I think 99% of people
25:09 stop is they they do all the planning. They have all the ideas and they don't just go out and do the business.
25:15 And that's what I love about what you did. You sent 500 letters, someone said yes, you bought twice and you're like, we're gonna just keep just keep doing it
25:22 and and look where you're at today. It's amazing. Yeah. So, so that's Yeah. So, that was the one thing, right? Goodwill making
25:28 number of offers. So, number of offers just just to close that loop. Uh for us, you know, in the beginning, we would
25:34 just like someone would say, "Oh, I would like to buy this 5 acre property in in Arizona." And then we'll sell it
25:39 to them. So, we were just making one one offer at a time, right? So just like the cafe shop example, that was a mistake.
25:47 So we incorporated now we make like maybe like 9 to 12 offers per customer.
25:52 So what do they look like? So if someone comes in, they're like, well, I would like to buy this piece of land. And then we're like, well, we have 10 acre parcel
26:00 nearby. Any interest there? Like or we, you know, if they say, well, I'm looking at multiple parcels. Then we'll be like,
26:06 well, we have smaller parcels available like maybe adjacent parcels also available if you want to like have your
26:12 like brother or like whatever cousin lived right next to you or something, right? So, we we will try to you know
26:18 like gracefully offer them more properties in our inventory. So, that's one thing we're doing. We'll also add uh
26:25 we'll also offer ancillary services like oh would you like us to uh have like a
26:30 perk guy go there do a soil percolation test or you want us to fence the property you want to uh want us to grade
26:37 it survey it clean it you know like anything like pretty much any ancillary
26:42 thing related to land uh we we try to offer it as part of our services because
26:48 that you know the more offers you make more people take it and then it increases the revenue. So that was like
26:53 a big thing for us. At first we were just making one offers and when we started making multiple offers, you
26:59 know, revenue went up. Now in your because you're a volume driven business, right? In your your equation, number of offers is is that,
27:06 you know, that's half the equation. Yes. You must hear the word no an incredible
27:11 amount. Oh yeah. I I want to hear your thoughts on the word no because no doesn't necessarily mean there's no relationship. It doesn't
27:19 mean there's no there's no future. No. in in the business where you hear no probably a lot more often than you hear
27:25 the word yes. What does no mean to you? Right? So no to an offer is not a no to
27:31 a relationship, right? Just because you made an offer and and someone said no doesn't mean they they're not ending the
27:37 relationship. They're they're just saying it's maybe not yet, right? We don't know. Maybe they're it's
27:43 just not ready yet. So what we try to do uh a very particular scenario like when
27:50 someone would come in and they'll be like well I want to buy this property and I want to build a tiny home on it
27:56 right but the zoning doesn't allow it right because it's like it's more restrictive so we would just say oh yeah
28:04 sorry it doesn't work right but now what we do is well I'm sorry it didn't work but would you like would you like our
28:11 help to like help you figure out what kind of counties you need to look at so
28:16 you can find something. Even though you don't buy from us, we still like start the relationship and
28:21 point them in the right direction, help them uh so they can become successful and maybe down the line they might buy
28:28 land from us in the future or maybe they refer someone else to us. Right. So those are the other things we started
28:33 doing. Um where we it's all about just like you you were mentioning you know
28:39 you are more of a relationship based business. So, we started out as just volume and now we're like volume plus
28:46 goodwill plus relationship, right? We want to make sure that we we like we
28:52 stay top of mind and and people think of us when they're in the market to buy land. Well, and that goes right back to your
28:57 coffee shop example, right? You you retain customers. If you just sell them a piece of land or just that cappuccino
29:03 and they walk out, congratulations. You've sold a cappuccino. You you successfully move product. If you have a
29:09 rewards program, an incentive to buy a larger drink, a different drink, try something new, you have repeat sales
29:16 from the same customer, and they like you even more, like you provided more value to them, and you've done not just
29:22 twice as much revenue. You probably end up doing four, five, six, 10 times the revenue per user.
29:27 Yeah. It's such a it's such a simple practice, but I I've seen so many I used to I used
29:32 to run a uh sales company with my friend Caleb. So, we we'd help sell people's offers. And the first thing where we'd
29:39 come in to anyone's business, one of the number one problems they'd have in sales, they're like, "Oh, I I don't want
29:44 to have upsells, downells. I just want to sell one product." And I'm like, "Do your do your clients want one
29:52 product, or is there something that you're not offering that you should be offering?" And what we find almost every time is
29:59 that you interview your actual end users. They're like, "I went through the product and I loved it and then I was
30:04 done with the product." I'm like, "You want to 5x your income? Uh, this is your first step. You're going to create an
30:10 upsell and you're going to design it based on what your customers want." Exactly.
30:15 And now they love you more and you're doing a better job. And as a byproduct, you're making a ton more money. Um, it
30:22 exact is literally carbon copy of your coffee coffee shop example. That is the difference between a business that is
30:28 stalled and stuck doing what it does and a business that grows and adapts. That relationship aspect is the difference
30:34 between big and small business. Yeah. In fact, there are four types of offers. Uh I talk about it in my book as
30:39 well. So there's the upsell offer. Um we we talked about it, right? You someone
30:44 wants to buy coffee and then you're like, well, would you like pastry with it? Would you like a croissant with it? Would you like to take the coffee beans
30:51 home with it with you? Right? So that's the upsell offer. Then second one is downell. So if someone says, "Oh, these
30:58 coffee beans just came from Costa Rica." And they're like, "Oh, that's awesome. I would like to buy like a 5B bag. How
31:04 much is it?" And you say, "Well, it's $99." It was like, "Oof, that's kind of expensive." It's like, "Oh, that's fine.
31:09 We also have a one pound bag and it's only 20 bucks, right? So we downsold,
31:14 right? So we didn't make $99." And if they say, "No, we were going to make zero, but now we made 20, right?" So
31:21 downell offer as you said also brings in more revenue and then there's continuity offer.
31:26 Um continuity you you alluded to it like rewards program membership or subscription where they give you like
31:33 something monthly and in return you know oh well you you become our loyalty member and every every time you buy you
31:40 get like points and then you can redeem the points and you get like discounts and all that stuff. Um and the fourth
31:46 type is attraction offer. So this is um more like trying to attract people who
31:51 otherwise wouldn't come in the shop. So for example, say in the coffee shop between 12:00 and 2, we know that it's
31:58 slow time. People are out on lunch, they don't want to come in, right? So we put a put a sign out and say, well, if you
32:04 come in between 12:00 and 2, everything in the store is 10% off. Doesn't matter what you buy, right? And now you're
32:10 attracting people who otherwise wouldn't have come in. Right. Exactly. Those are the four types of offers.
32:16 Pretty much every big Fortune 500 company, Fortune 100 company uses it.
32:21 Like if you think about going renting a car, right? What happens? They
32:26 advertise, oh, $19 per per day. You're like, "Oh, yeah, that's cheap. Um, renting for 5 days, that's like 100
32:33 bucks. Not a big deal." You go there. Oh, would you like to serve? Would you like to upgrade to an SUV? It's going to
32:38 it's going to be snowing, so you want 4x4. Oh, would you like a car seat? Would you like a ski rack? Would you
32:44 like uh a GPS? Would you like to prepay for gas? Would you like to upgrade your insurance? Right. They make you like 10
32:49 12 offers and then your your bill comes out to like $280 and you were expecting
32:55 100. Yeah. Right. So, it is it's it's a concept that pretty much every successful
33:01 business understands and small businesses like us, we if we don't understand this, we're just losing a ton
33:07 of money on the table. What does an attraction offer look like in the land business? because it could rel you know relatively inexpensive
33:14 compared to the rest of the real estate space. Yeah, land your base pricing. So what is what is an
33:20 attraction offer in land? So we do free land giveaways. So every uh twice a year we would give away like
33:27 the cheapest parcel whatever the cheapest parcel on on our on in our inventory is. Uh so we'll like do a
33:34 freeland giveaway. Everyone on YouTube who comments on the video participates in it and then hundreds and hundreds of
33:40 people participate and then we super cool on on the live stream we we pick someone randomly and then we give them away give
33:47 give a really cool well and in land you can actually do it right because in any other asset class
33:52 in in real estate I can't hop on and be like yeah you know what I whoever comments the you know top comment gets a a free
33:59 duplex cost hundreds hundreds of thousands of dollars
34:04 Uh that would be really difficult contest first month rent free. Yeah, that would work in in a in a PM
34:11 company. That'd be really cool for for tenants. Yeah, that'd be that'd be a really good way to attract like a a higher tenant base. Yeah, it's awesome.
34:17 Yeah. Or you could do it on on on the coaching side. Uh like uh free threemonth course,
34:23 you know, access to whatever something like that. Um, so the cool thing about And then we also do like on our cheaper
34:29 properties, we'll do like $1 down like every now and then we'll be like, "Oh, Black Friday special." Uh, you instead
34:35 of putting 10% down, you just do put $1 down and then you pay the dock fee and we start the owner financing terms. So
34:42 stuff like that, we'll do promotions. Um, but but the cool the the reason I like attraction offers so much is
34:49 because it literally creativity is your limit, right? you you you can come up with like like you could put it in
34:54 charge GPD give me hundred ideas and then you you just pick one right yeah it's so cool and and you can be that
35:01 that can also be your USB or competitive advantage like compared to other companies because you can come up with
35:07 something like a unique angle that only you are doing yes and that is that that goes back to
35:13 that just creating an economic moat around what you do if you are more creative more agile longer relationships more social proof that's how you go
35:20 again six figure business to a figure B 7 to an eight. It's just more iterations of those same things.
35:25 Yeah. And and and just to just to bring this concept together, why we do all
35:30 these offers, why are we doing this is it all comes down to CAC and LTV, right? Cost to acquire a customer and lifetime
35:37 value, right? Because there are two only two ways to make money in in business, right? You can
35:42 continue to spend more money on on ads and marketing and acquire new customers, right? So that's one way. And the other
35:49 way is you can make your existing customers more valuable by making more offers, right? By by having a
35:55 relationship with them, right? So those are the two ways. And most small businesses, they only focus on the first
36:00 part of the equation. They just continue to pour more and more money on ads and marketing. The problem with that
36:06 approach, it works, but the problem is every year the cost of ads and marketing
36:12 goes up. Yes. Right. So, you know, Facebook ads 2018
36:17 really cheap 2026 very expensive, right? So, it's it's not going to go down for
36:22 ju just to run for context. I'm always open with our I'm always open with our numbers. Just to run a multif family
36:29 mentorship in uh 2026 baseline 50 to $60,000 a month on Meta just just
36:37 to just to maintain for context 5 years ago an eighth of
36:42 that for the same amount of people. I just unbelievably increase in expenses in the ad space.
36:47 Yeah. So so the re that's the reason why your CAC cost to acquire a customer always goes up, right? So to maintain
36:55 the healthy LTV to CAC relationship, you have to focus your you have to focus
37:00 your attention on on making your LTV lifetime value of the customer higher. And the way you do that, which is
37:07 contrary to other gurus, right? They're like, "Oh, never talk to anyone. Just hire like hire your VA, virtual
37:14 assistants to talk to your people. You don't want to talk or or have someone else manage your loans, right? It's
37:19 completely contrary to that approach because now you're like, well, you should be talking to your customers. You
37:25 should be maintaining relationships because then you're making them more valuable because they're going to come
37:30 back and buy from you, right? Yes. And and when someone comes back and buys
37:35 from you, your cost to acquire for that particular purchase is $0 because you
37:41 already spent that money, right? So, this is a referral or an existing customer coming back. And that's the
37:47 reason why it's so crucial, right? And that's why every small business should be learning about, you know, these four
37:52 different types of offers and how to make more of them and how to build like a long-term relationship with your
37:57 customers. If you start with, so this is starting with uh is building a product from the ground up. It's taking customer
38:03 and client feedback. It's iterating and coming up with ways to upgrade the product. And then your next step from
38:09 there is now how do we increase awareness to the fact that we have a ton
38:14 of product and and now your marketing actually leads somewhere. But I I love the too many people and this is where
38:20 you get online gurus verse actual professionals. Online gurus start only
38:25 with marketing. They start by being a great marketer and then they'll they just have product. If you start with
38:31 product and you start with iteration and you start with your offers and then you move into the marketing, uh, now you
38:38 actually have a business where people continue to come back and that's that's where you end up, you know, that's the difference between being a longlasting
38:43 business owner and being someone who has a concept that gets a few sales, then gets better views and then fizzles out.
38:49 The difference between online guru and actual business owner, that's it right there. Yeah. when when you're learning how to
38:54 do because you've learned and shared a a ton uh that you've really dove into
39:01 going from a W2 employee to a company owner. You've learned a lot in not that much time. If you're if you're diving
39:08 into land in 2018, uh you've given this obviously an incredible amount of thought and an incredible amount of
39:14 time. Going from A to B, the question everyone waits for. The highest stupid tax that you've paid. uh when you are
39:21 starting there's stuff you don't know that you don't know about business until you know it and if we can save any any
39:27 listener today time money or pain uh that you had to go through to be work at today uh what was the most painful what
39:33 was that highest stupid tax that you paid not knowing what you didn't know yeah so the biggest ignorance ignorance
39:40 ignorance tax was not paying attention to uh the the sales like the sales
39:46 aspect of the business right and I'll give you I'll give your audience is a very tactical thing that literally moved
39:52 moved the needle for us uh by a lot. So most of when you when you're a new
39:58 business owner, right, you you learn about sales, you take sales training, you you take so sales courses.
40:04 Most of the sales training is is around objection handling. I don't know if you if you have ever taken a sales course,
40:10 but you I have taken far too many. The f first eight years in my career were only sales. That was like my entire
40:16 background. So So you would relate to this. What most of the focus is always on like oh
40:22 objection handling how do we handle this objection oh someone says I don't have the money how do you handle that someone
40:27 says oh I need to talk to my wife how do you handle that oh I need I need to think about it how how do you handle
40:32 that right so that's what you're learning right but and that's what I learned and then we we try to implement
40:39 it and they was like yeah you know you can move some people you know they might buy sooner rather than later and it does
40:45 help but the biggest thing that helped was speed to lead. How quickly you
40:51 respond to them. Because when someone buys land, this is like very specific to land, but it literally applies to every
40:58 other business. When someone buys land, they go on Zillow or they go on land.com. They
41:04 they're not just picking one piece of land and say, "Oh, request more information." They're going request
41:10 request request request request request request like 20 times, right? 20 different properties, right? And if the
41:17 the 20 different businesses they this request went to and if someone respond
41:22 if my competitor is responding within 60 seconds and I respond next day they
41:28 already started the relationship I'm dead in the water like there is no chance I'm going to come and restart a
41:35 relationship if they've already had like multiple calls within 24 hours right so the day we learned this we had literally
41:44 had to hire two extra virtual assistant assistant to to meet this 60-second metric cuz we were like, "Oh yeah, we
41:50 were responding anywhere from like 4 hours to 12 hours." That was our speed to lead, which was like ridiculous in
41:57 retrospect. And now our speed speed to lead is our directive to our team is
42:02 less than 60 seconds. We don't always meet it, but we try to keep it less than 5 minutes, right?
42:07 Yeah. But the day we implemented this, we saw immediate immediate returns. Like
42:13 literally, we were like, "Oh, wow. I can't believe last month we closed 12 deals and this month we closed 18 just
42:20 because of that one change. Right? So that would be my biggest tactic biggest takeaway for all the entrepreneurs
42:27 listening to this. It is it is oh and just put yourself in the in the mindset of like hey you just
42:33 saw you just got exposed to this product. So you you view it as like you got an ad on Instagram. It's the one ad
42:38 that you're like oh I actually am interested. I'm going to go engage with this. you engage and someone immediately
42:43 calls you verse tomorrow when I'm not thinking about it like hey you checked out a like so obvious when you think
42:51 about it but it is probably the most missed thing in apartment leasing that is like the main thing we train
42:59 everyone it's the most important thing speed to lead if you are reaching out about an apartment and you're looking
43:04 especially on Facebook marketplace is like the most important for speed to lead but it's like you reach out you're looking for somewhere to live
43:10 the first place that who tour 85% of the time that's where you end up moving. So whoever responds to you first and just
43:17 books the showing if it fits your requirements you'll move there almost every time. So if you're the slowest one
43:23 to reach out you're never going to lease anything. I have fired in my career I've fired so many PMs and it always came down to
43:30 that. Yeah. I'm like what's happening? You have an employee problem. And half the time I'm like no our employees are awesome. I'm
43:35 like, they if they're taking two days to respond to a a lead, you you're getting destroyed. Speed delete is everything.
43:44 Beautiful, beautiful takeaway. Yeah, that's if you're not doing that right now, you're losing a ton of money. And if you
43:51 apply it today, talk about speed to lead, you now have the information. If you apply it right
43:56 now, you will see a significant uptick in sales now.
44:01 Yeah. And just to just to just like an advanced version of the tip, uh make sure you're measuring the metrics like
44:08 you know the the speed to lead, cash collected, uh how many clo how many closed versus and also how many uh
44:16 disqualified people showed up, how many people how I'm forgetting. So if Yeah,
44:22 people Oh, no shows. That's the big one. So if people booked and they never showed up, that's like a big one because
44:27 if you improve the no-show rate, right? uh you literally are like increasing your conversions. So me measuring all
44:34 these sales metrics will will show you where the gaps are and then you can like
44:39 pinpoint and and tackle those. But yeah, but all of these of all these metrics,
44:44 uh speed to lead is the most important. I absolutely 100% agree. And that is I could do a whole episode on tracking
44:50 metrics because it is so fun as a business owner to be able to get into like, okay, we launched 100 ads. Which
44:57 ads had the highest click-through rate? But that's not really what we want to know. It's good to know, but I want to know which ads resulted in sales.
45:04 Yeah. And then I want to be able to reverse engineer all the way through what was the entire path. Who clicked what? How
45:09 many no-shows were there? Who was qualified verse unqualified on? Sometimes if you look, this is a huge
45:15 mistake I see people make right on this uh train of thought. They go, "Hey, which ad got the most views the highest
45:21 engagement?" And they base all their decisions off engagement. And what you find if you look through exactly what
45:27 you said is maybe you had a really catchy ad that was really easy to watch
45:32 and you're attracting a ton of no-shows, unqualified contract and and you go it
45:37 goes back to your cost of your your cost of c your c you cost acquired customer.
45:43 We're spending 10x on this ad per dollar that it makes, but it's bringing a ton
45:49 of people in the door. It's mostly worthless. I I've seen that happen on is that's you really have to have a robust
45:55 set of metrics so you know every step from they saw me for the first time to
46:00 they became a customer and if you can make that thing efficient you'll find you'll get the cost of customer acquired down to half or a quarter of what you're
46:07 spending in many cases when you look at the metrics if you don't have the metrics you're guessing what's working
46:13 based on the fact like it feels like we're making more money and there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are there I
46:18 mean there I would say very significantly more than half. Probably like 90% are like that.
46:24 Yeah. Did it work? Well, we made more than before we launched it. So, yes.
46:29 Very hard to make decisions about that. And everyone's been there. Every entrepreneur has been there at some
46:34 point where you're like, wait, before we had metrics, after we had metrics, how much better do we get? Astronomical. All
46:40 everything you said in that last segment too, it very Alex Heroszy. Yeah. You know,
46:46 work on the offer, work on the leads, track the metrics. uh it there's a reason his business worked as well as it
46:52 did. These are principles that are fantastic and universal and uh also uh
46:58 principles that we'll find in your book uh which is again uh linked below. Not only is it a fantastic cover and title
47:05 uh but you have a lot of the most successful practices I've seen in businesses. Uh you mentioned them all in this episode. So I have to imagine
47:11 there's a lot more in there. So if you guys want to learn more uh click the link below. Uh check out his book. Uh,
47:17 it's available on Amazon. What What does the book cost? I I can't remember off the top of my head. Uh, well, it's free on Kindle Unlimited.
47:25 Uh, 99 cents on Kindle and like 10 bucks on on I kept it like at the lowest
47:30 amount they allowed me. Oh, see? Okay. So, so, so for $10, get a
47:35 ton more. I I like physical copy. I think I think you should do the physical copy. It Yeah, I know. For Kindle, it's basically
47:42 free for knowledge. $10 is also essentially free. Get the get the hard copy. I'm I'm
47:48 I'm telling you to do it because I I the advice that it was given here is unbelievably solid. You should get more
47:53 of this. Check out that link. Uh grab the physical copy and uh and and check out more. How else do people find you?
48:00 If someone has questions, they want to follow up with their business. Maybe they want to get started and do their first land investment. Where do they find you? Um yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn.
48:07 I also offer mentorship like one-on- ones. So that's my company honestwealthbuilders.com.
48:13 So you can check out there as well. Awesome. That will also be linked below in the show notes. Guys, this was the
48:18 owner meeting podcast. Learning from the people who have done the thing that you want to do. Super solid advice given
48:25 here. Thank you so much for joining the show and we'll see you all on the next episode.