From Land Deals to Business Empire: Abi's Journey

All right. Welcome to The Owner Meeting Podcast hosted by Multifamily Strategy. I'm Christian, your channel host today, joined by Abhi Asesha. I am super excited for today's episode. As many of you know, I actually started at the CoStar Group, but before that I was at Lands.com. Before I worked for LoopNet and CoStar, Lands.com was acquired by them. So my start was in land. Abhi, you've built an awesome company and a higher volume company than any of the acquisitions that I've done. Talk to us a little bit. About the acquisitions you've done and give us a high-level overview of the company that you've built in land.

Right. So we buy and sell vacant land all over the US. So we participate in tax auctions. We use direct mail. We use social media marketing to acquire land, and then we sell direct to consumers through our website and through websites like land.com and landflip.com. So 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 700+ deals in the last 7, 8 years.

That's an amazing amount of deals. 700 deals is a wild way to do it. Marketing for land. First question, how did you land on, well, land? Why is land the model?

Right? Yeah. So quick background. So came to the US as an international student, completed my education, graduated, and worked 9 to 5 for 10+ years, got burnt out. And then I wanted to go into real estate because my wife was also, you know, she worked for the city of New York as an affordable housing director. So we were looking to do something in real estate, but we did not want to take out debt. Very heavily anti-debt because we consumed a lot of Dave Ramsey's content. So house flipping was out, apartment flipping, commercial, all of those things were out. Then we stumbled upon a guy buying land out in the desert in Nevada, in Arizona, California, New Mexico, 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 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 back. So we sent out a mailer, like maybe 600 to 800 letters. Most of the people did not respond. Some who did respond, they're like, yeah, please don't bother us again. But then 2 people said yes. And so we bought those 2 pieces of land in New Mexico. We listed on eBay and we sold it in like in 3 months and we like 2.5x'd our money. So we're like, how much did you actually buy them for? Like $4,000.

It was amazing. Yeah.

So it was not, it was not a huge amount. And, but we were able to like more than double our money. So we proved the concept. So we're like, we know the model works. but the question was, how do we do so, so many, uh, uh, vol— so much volume that we can actually replace our salaries? So that's how we got started. And you know, you know, and then we started focusing on more treating it like a real business as opposed to a side hustle.

If someone was starting this model today, as an example, is 500 letters actually enough to be like, did you get lucky to get 2 out of 500 to prove concept with only 500 mailers?

I would say so, at least at that time the competition was not as high, but nowadays it, you know, you would probably have to send more like 5,000 letters.

That's what I thought. I was like, I was like, wow, 2 successes out of 500 mailers. That was very fortunate. And again, more people are doing it, right? So when you first started, your odds were higher. How fortunate that you got the right 2 people on the first mail blast?

Yeah. I mean, it was 2018, so, you know, not a lot of people were doing it. It was like a relatively unknown niche. But now there's like, you know, any unknown niche becomes saturated when people see, oh, other people are making money. I'm going to make money.

So it is right in the sweet spot. It was right around 2017, 2018 is when I was working for lands.com. So you were, you were launching this right as I was in the space with, I watched the start of this where it became more popular. You were right at the front end of this being the sweet spot.

Right. I mean, I consider myself lucky in that sense because the cost to entry in the business is much higher nowadays. So, you know, I definitely got lucky. But on the flip side, you know, there's a lot more knowledge now available on the internet and ChatGPT and whatnot. Back in the day, you know, you didn't really know how to perform proper due diligence on land. Like I remember one time we bought this 20-acre parcel in New Mexico and we sold it like within a month and we like 3x'd our money. And then a month later we got like an angry call and the guy is like, you guys are a scam. I was like, what are you talking about? Like, this is like, you bought it. We deeded you the property. How can we be scams? And he says, well, you didn't disclose there are wetlands on the property. I was like, it's New Mexico desert. What do you mean wetlands? There is no water. Like, what are you talking about? He's like, well, it's called arroyos. So we got like a lesson. It's called arroyos. And when, you know, when there's like a rain or like, like an event where there's like a lot of water, it like becomes dangerous because water just like gushes through it. So we're like, well, we were, we apologize. We were not aware. We lived in New York City. Like we don't have arroyos. So how would we know? So stuff like that. And then we like, we're like, well, we just refund you and just leave the property back to us. And then he was like, well, let me think about it. And then a week later he calls back. Well, it is 20 acres. So there's still plenty of buildable space. I was just pissed that you guys didn't disclose. So he let us go and he was like, well, it's fine. It's still a good deal. But that's an example of like stuff like, you know, we're completely noobs, like complete noobs when it comes to doing due diligence on land. And now, you know, in fact, my wife, she was like, this is going to be a big problem for other people getting in. And she wrote a book about it. And we started with like 30 things you need to know, like 30 pointers. And then she kept on expanding as we learned more, you know, because at that point we only did like 100 deals. And we were like, well, at least now we know what all the things we need to know about buying land. So that was a 30-point checklist. She kept on updating it. And then since last year, now it's a 210-point checklist.

Yeah, isn't it amazing the difference? Like, wow, we learned a lot over 100 deals. How much more do you learn over 700 deals, right?

Yeah.

It is going to be a whole lot more. That's what a fun start though. And what a fun concept. So did you continue in the business? Did you stay completely debt-free through the entire thing? And did you continue to use the model of no debt?

After 500 deals, we started using home equity line of credit for some shortfalls. Like when, if there's like a bigger deal, we would like, you know, use a line of credit to cover for that purchase and pay it back. But for the first 500 deals, we didn't use any debt whatsoever. So it was all reinvesting 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 hustle, but then we actually started to turn into a business and we just kept on redeploying everything back into the business. So that's the reason how we were able to scale in the beginning. And then when we replaced my wife's salary, that's when my wife quit. And then eventually we replaced my salary and that's when I quit. So now we're 100% employees of the business.

When you, you mentioned at the beginning of this, you did your first 2 deals and you're like, okay, well how would we make this the full-time business? Like you saw the success, you're like, wow, we can keep doing this. What did the actual engineering look like for that? Like was there a specific target that you set where you're like, how did you do the math for, this is what we need to do in land?

Yeah, so the math was directly related to the amount of terms income that was coming in. So most of the properties you sell is on owner financing. So people usually when you're selling land for say $15,000, people who are buying these, they usually don't want to put $15,000 like cash upfront. So they'll be like, well, I'll give you $1,500 and the rest I'll pay you $500 per month. For the next couple of years, right? So that's how most of our land was selling. So we did the math. If our terms income is equal to our monthly income, that's the W-2 income that's coming in, when then that becomes the same, that's when my wife will quit. Because I was making more money than my wife, so my wife was the first to quit and then I quit later.

Oh, that's perfect. So simple, simple math. What are we making now and how much do we need to do to replace that. Right. And you just hit on a concept that I think a lot of people don't realize about land. It actually can be, right? There's no business that's completely passive, but relatively passive income. When you think about buying and selling land, you think it's all transaction, it's all about you, you're flipping. But the seller finance contracts that are very commonly involved with land, you actually are setting up long-term recurring income. On your transactions out of, after doing 700 of these, I'm really curious, how often do these go all the way full term? How many out of 700 of these, how often do you actually 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, they're successful, they refinanced or paid it off?

Yeah, so around our default rate is around 15%. So 15% of the people would default and then You know, we'll take the land back, but we also, if they ever come back, we let them roll over the equity into another piece of land. So it's not like we're like, oh, they lose the money. And, but there are some people, they like, they never come back, but a lot of people do. It was surprising. I was like surprised. A lot of people will show up like 2 years later and like, oh, I'm ready now. I lost my job at that time. And I, you know, I was like, I didn't want to, I felt embarrassed, so I didn't want to contact you guys, but now I'm back on my feet and like to buy land again. So we let them roll that over. That was awesome. Yeah. And also, yeah, most of the land does sell on owner financing, but there's also like 20% of the time we'll sell on straight up cash.

By that math, you've done hundreds and hundreds of seller finance transactions, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. That is, I think that's what a lot of people are missing when they first think about the business. Especially because you started your first 500 units debt-free. It's not that debt's not a piece of the business, it's just not your debt. You're creating essentially the business is 80% creating accounts receivable as opposed to flipping land.

Exactly.

That's really cool. How long did it take you to officially be able to replace both your wife and your income in this business?

Yeah, so it was a couple of years in, my wife was able to, replace her income. And then a few years 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 want to, it was like, I didn't want to lose my bonus and stuff. So I stayed some extra just for a little bit of a cushion. But yeah, for my wife, we were like, as soon as we hit that number, we're like, all right, because we still had one salary coming in. So we're like, well, we'll be fine even if the business doesn't work.

I did the opposite order, but similar strategy for my wife and I in multifamily is we had a certain point, I was like, I want to go all in on this. She was a school teacher, so our fallback was kindergarten teacher salary. It wasn't incredibly stable, but it was nice having that little fallback. You're like, okay, if we had a shortfall, 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, this is the business worked. This is fantastic. But up to that point, I really liked that model of retire one, retire the other.

Yeah.

And do it over the course of a few years. But you did that, I mean, that's still relatively fast to replace two jobs.

Yeah.

That's pretty amazing without using leverage at that phase. That's really amazing to do.

Well, I mean, we were pretty much, we, we didn't take a single dollar out of the business. We were like redeploying everything back.

Yeah.

So that, that kind of like acted as a leverage.

That was a, I actually, the first time I've, I've heard the concept amazingly was MrBeast. Talking about building his YouTube channel. He's like, oh yeah, we just reinvest everything we've made into the next video and then it should do better. Yeah. Just the concept of 100% reinvestment until you hit the goal. I absolutely love the model. So you started debt-free, you multiplied the money and you kept spending it until you hit the goal. 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 is the single best model. If you believe in an idea, Invest in the idea and just go all in at 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 the winning model for almost everyone is we didn't take the money out and spend it on something stupid. We didn't skip to financial freedom. We earned it by reinvesting and reinvesting and reinvesting and reinvesting until you hit critical mass.

Yeah, it is. Yeah. I mean, I, in, because I was risk averse because I didn't want to go in debt. That seemed like the safest way of doing it. I mean, on the flip side, one could argue that if I was more aggressive and I quit earlier, my business would be more than 7 figures at this point. But we can't go back in time now.

And at a certain point too, you never know if it was a mistake or not. If you're going all in at it and then it didn't work, and then you got stuck in the 9 to 5 longer, you never know. So taking calculated risk, it's hard to look back and regret that, especially sitting on a 7-figure business, right? You're like, oh, I mean, maybe we could be an 8-figure business, right? But you're doing great. You're doing great. It's hard to look back and say it was a mistake, right?

Yeah. I mean, as entrepreneurs, you're always looking at other entrepreneurs who are ahead of you, right? And then they're like, well, they are at 8 figures. Why are we not 8 figures? But yeah, but in retrospect, like if someone is like just doing W-2 and they're looking at us, they'll be like, well, these guys are spoiled. Or they're like, exactly. You know? So I understand both perspectives.

Exactly. I'm originally from Washington State where we just passed that new, the new 10% millionaire's tax and a whole bunch of other taxes that went with it. But that's been a lot of the comments that I'm receiving now. 'Cause I posted some videos on like, huh, This is why I left. I took all the jobs that I provide and my whole 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, oh, well you're so spoiled because you make this today. I'm like, the path and what you have to reinvest in your business, even to build a 7-figure business, excluding the 8, 9, 10-figure businesses, it is so hard to build a 7-figure business and it takes so much sacrifice to get there. And I think a lot of people don't realize that. People are telling me, well, the millionaires won't move. I'm like, if you took 10% of my business just because I live there, I'm not going to rent living in Washington State. I'll move to a warmer climate that wants my business.

Yeah. It's especially like nowadays with like the Instagram and all those like becoming rich quick, like people don't really understand that entrepreneurship is actually a lot of work. I was—

Yes, it is. Passive income is so much work to build.

Yeah. Yeah. I was on a podcast recently, so I was, you know, so I recently listed my, published my book, The Land Business. So I was on a podcast—

Yeah, great title by the way. I love clean, simple titles. Just beautiful. Your book cover, title, everything. I love the actual branding of your book is a 10 out of 10.

You know, I asked ChatGPT what's, What's the best-selling nonfiction ever in the history of the world? You want to take a guess?

Best-selling nonfiction book of all time? I don't know. What is it?

The Bible.

Oh, duh. I knew that. I knew that. What are the odds? It's my favorite book. Yes, that would make sense. The Bible. So you basically built The Land.

No, right. So I was like, I asked Sajid, all right, so yeah, so should I mimic my cover? Nothing on the back, nothing on the front, just says—

No wonder I love your book. It's based on my favorite book. Oh, that's funny. That's funny. That's very fitting. That's genius. One of the first books that I ever read in real estate was Brandon Turner's, I think it's called The Book on Rental Property Investing. If I missed that title at all, I apologize, Brandon. But I 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 wrote the book on rental property investing. You wrote the book on land. It's a great branding. Absolutely. By the way, the book is linked below. There's an Amazon link in the show notes. So if you guys are wondering why I'm so excited about the COVID I'm a marketing nerd and he did a great job building a great branding on his book. Yeah. So when did the book come out, by the way?

Yeah, I was saying, so I was on this podcast, it was a livestream, right?

Yeah.

So I was explaining this concept. So I was like, I was telling people, you know, so the book that I wrote is about principles on how you build a scalable business and how we thought about it. So the biggest principles in the book is like the amount of money you make in business or the amount of money you want to make is equal to the amount of goodwill you have in the marketplace multiplied by the number of offers you make to your customers. Just to explain what that means. So say Christian, you and I, we live in a small town, right? And we open our respective cafe or coffee shops, right? There's no Starbucks. It's a small town, right? So if someone comes to your coffee shop and they say, oh, I would like a small cappuccino. And then you have a nice conversation with them. As part of the conversation, you say, oh, you should try the large, you know, you get a free croissant with it. We have this pastry that we just, you know, it's like selling really fast. People love it. We have these coffee beans that just came from Costa Rica. So you're having this conversation with the customer and you make like 4, 5, 6 offers as part of the conversation. And then people maybe upgrade their order or they buy multiple things, right? So that's how you are running your coffee shop. And if people come to my coffee shop and they say, I would like a small cappuccino and we like, here you go. Thanks for coming in, right? So if we are running our cafe shops like that and you are making 5, 6 offers per customer and I'm making 1 offer per customer, and assuming there are 100 customers coming in in both our coffee shops, you can imagine at the end of the year, your revenue numbers will be ridiculously higher than my revenue, right? So that concept of making more offers multiplied by goodwill. You need to have goodwill in the marketplace because you, you know, people need to like, know you, like you, and trust you, right? So if they know, I see Christian's blogs, I see his YouTube channel, I've read his book, and they're like, oh yeah, if Christian is recommending this upsell, you know, it must be really good. So I will take that upsell, right? So you need goodwill and you make a lot of offers and then you're 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, and this is like all people who are trying to start a business. And the first question I got on the live stream was, well, Abhi, that's an excellent principle. I really, I understand it. I like it. Now tell us, how do I build goodwill really quickly? And I was like, I was like, you can't.

I was going to say really quickly and build goodwill. Those are two things that are diametrically opposed.

Yeah, exactly.

It takes time to do. You have to have done the thing and continue to do the thing. And that is how you build goodwill.

Yeah. So that's like the misconception in the Instagram world. People think, oh, everything needs to be fast. But when you are an entrepreneur and you're building like a long-term 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 rush through goodwill. You have to show up every day, every week, just like MrBeast, right? Getting 1% better. Every day, and then over time people will know, like, and trust you, and that's, then they'll buy more stuff from you.

And, and that does two things for you. One, that makes business much more 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 working on the product at all times. And so by getting better over time, you're building more and more goodwill. The other thing selfishly as a business owner is the longer you do this, And the more you iterate, you create this economic moat. Someone cannot just enter the market and do what you have done.

Exactly.

All of that time, all of that iteration. Before we started the pod, I was complimenting, if you happen to be listening, you should watch this on the YouTube channel, but his lighting's fantastic. The little things. And he is like, oh, of course it is. I took a course on lighting. He has an awesome background, awesome lighting, and it immediately stood out. It's the little things in your business that someone new doesn't think of. They haven't got the lighting quite right yet. They haven't figured out the thumbnail. They, it's those little teeny details that you iterate thousands and thousands and thousands of times. And it's the difference between the clickability of MrBeast thumbnail to someone else. It's the little teeny things end up being the difference between a failed business, a $10,000 a month business, $100,000 a month business, a 10, you know, a $10 million business. Those little iterations, and that is the answer every single time. How do you get there? Reinvestment in your product. Lots of time. Only way to do it.

Yeah. Goodwill. So for us in land, the way we're doing or adding more goodwill to the marketplace is we do live streams. We show up every day. Like, so we'll do like property drone videos. We will like incorporate that. We'll do a Matterport, you know, like the 3D scan of the land. So we'll send someone to take that and then we'll do like virtual tours every day. So we have, at a given time, we'll have anywhere from 100 to 130 parcels available for sale. So we can literally show up daily, every day. So we do every day, 7:00 PM Eastern. We show up, we do a virtual tour, which will tell them, oh, this property is 20 minutes from Walmart, 10 minutes from a state park, you know, electricity available, water, you'll have to drill a well. So we, you know, disclose all the facts, we show all the marketing, and then we just show, we answer all the questions. People, you know, live chat, answer all the questions. So we show up pretty much every day and that kind of like, we've done like thousands and thousands of these, like, so 1,000+ videos on our YouTube channel. And to your point, you know, and that kind of built a moat. So someone can just come in and start like, can just like, dethrone us because we've been doing this for so long. You, for you to produce 1,000 videos, it's going to take a couple of years.

Yes. And it'll take a couple years for you to actually get any good at producing thousands of videos. Everybody 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 polished as it does today.

Right.

When I first started, we did, uh, my, I had a business partner named Cody Davis and we started in our boss's basement of his office with an iPhone 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 had just gotten under contract. I'm like, we're going to buy this deal and we're going to scale to 100 units. Follow the adventure here. The lighting was terrible. Terrible. My outfit didn't fit me well. Just two guys in the basement. You have to go through the 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 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, oh yeah, he didn't used to be good at this. Yeah. And now he is. And you're always getting better. I, I love, I think this is the most important thing that anyone can learn as an entrepreneur. Yeah. Uh, I think you hit both sides of it is making the product better cuz you're, you have to serve your customers with your product. That is like the no customers, no revenue, no revenue, dead business.

Right.

And you get better at doing it by doing it, which is where I think 99% of people stop is they do all the planning, they have all the ideas, and they don't just go out and do the business. Yeah. 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 going to just keep, just keep doing it. And look where you're at today. It's amazing.

Yeah. So that's, yeah, so that was the one thing, right? Goodwill. Yeah. Making number of offers. So number of offers, just Just to close that loop, for us, you know, in the beginning we would just like, someone would say, oh, I would like to buy this 5-acre property in Arizona, and then we'll sell it to them. So we were just making one offer at a time, right? So just like the cafe shop example, that was a mistake. So we incorporated, now we make like maybe like 9 to 12 offers per customer. 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 nearby. Any interest there? Like, or we, you know, if they say, well, I'm looking at multiple parcels, then we'll be like, well, we have smaller parcels available, like maybe adjacent parcels also available if you want to like have your like brother or like whatever cousin lived right next to you or something. Right. So we will try to, you know, like gracefully offer them more properties in our inventory. So that's one thing we're doing. We'll also add We'll also offer ancillary services like, oh, would you like us to have like a perk guy go there, do a soil percolation test? Or you want us to fence the property? You want to want us to grade it, survey it, clean it, you know, like anything, like pretty much any ancillary thing related to land. We try to offer it as part of our services because that, you know, the more offers you make, more people take it and then it increases the revenue. So that was like a big thing for us. At first we were just making one offers and when we started making multiple offers, you know, revenue went up.

Now in your, because you're a volume-driven business, right? In your equation, number of offers is, you know, that's half of the equation.

Yes.

You must hear the word no an incredible amount.

Oh yeah.

I want to hear your thoughts on the word no, because no doesn't necessarily mean there's no relationship. It doesn't mean there's no future. No. In the business where you hear no probably a lot more often than you hear the word yes, what does no mean to you?

Right. So no to an offer is not a no to a relationship, right? Just because you made an offer and someone said no doesn't mean they're not ending the relationship. They're just saying it's maybe not yet, right? We don't know. Maybe they're just not ready yet. So what we try to do, A very particular scenario, like when someone would come in and they will be like, well, I want to buy this property and I want to build a tiny home on it. Right. But the zoning doesn't allow it. Right. Because it's like, it's more restrictive. So we would just say, oh yeah, 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 help to like help you figure out what kind of counties you need to look at so you can find something. Even though you don't buy from us, we still like start the relationship and point them in the right direction, help them so they can become successful. And maybe down the line, they might buy land from us in the future, or maybe they refer someone else to us, right? So those are the other things we started doing where we— it's all about just like you, you were mentioning, you know, You are more of a relationship-based business. So we started out as just volume and now we're like volume plus goodwill plus relationship, right? We want to make sure that we, we like, we stay top of mind and people think of us when they're in the market to buy land.

Well, and that goes right back to your coffee shop example, right? You retain customers. If you just sell them a piece of land or just that cappuccino and they walk out, congratulations, you sold a cappuccino. You did, you successfully moved product. If you have a rewards program, an incentive to buy a larger drink, a different drink, try something new, you have repeat sales from the same customer and they like you even more. Like you provided more value to them and you've done not just twice as much revenue, you probably end up doing 4, 5, 6, 10 times the revenue per user.

Yeah.

It's such a, it's such a simple practice, but I, I've seen so many, I used to, I used to run a sales company with my friend Caleb. So we'd, we'd help sell people's offers. And the first thing where we'd 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 wanna have upsells, downsells. I just wanna sell one product. And I'm like, do your, do your clients want one product or is there something that you're not offering that you should be offering? And what we find almost every time is that you interview your actual end users and they're like, I went through the product and I loved it. And then I was done with the product. And I'm like, you want to 5X your income. Uh, this is your first step. You're going to create an upsell and you're going to design it based on what your customers want.

Exactly.

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's a exact, it is literally carbon copy of your coffee shop example. That is the difference between a business that is stalled and stuck doing what it does and a business that grows and adapts. The relationship aspect is the difference between big and small business.

Yeah, in fact, there are 4 types of offers. I talk about it in my book as well. So there's the upsell offer. We talked about it, right? Someone 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 home with you? Right? So that's the upsell offer. Then second one is downsell. So if someone says, oh, these coffee beans just came from Costa Rica and they're like, oh, that's, Awesome. I would like to buy like a 5-pound bag. How much is it? And you say, well, it's $99. It was like, oof, that's kind of expensive. Say, oh, that's fine. We also have a 1-pound bag and it's only $20. Right? So we down-sold, 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 down-sell offer, as you said, also brings in more revenue. And then there's continuity offer. Continuity, you alluded to it like rewards program membership. Or subscription where they give you like something monthly and in return, you know, oh, well, you, you become our loyalty member. And every, every time you buy, you get like points and then you can redeem the points and you get like discounts and all that stuff. And the fourth type is attraction offer. So this is more like trying to attract people who otherwise wouldn't come in the shop. So for example, say in the coffee shop between 12 and 2, we know that it's slow time. People are out on lunch. They don't want to come in, right? So we put a sign out and say, well, if you come in between 12 and 2, everything in the store is 10% off. Doesn't matter what you buy, right? And now you're attracting people who otherwise wouldn't have come in, right? Exactly. Those are the 4 types of offers. Pretty much every big Fortune 500 company, Fortune 100 company uses it. Like if you think about going renting a car, right? What happens? They advertise, oh, $19 per day. You're like, oh yeah, that's cheap. I'm renting for 5 days. That's like $100. Not a big deal. You go there. Oh, would you like to, sir, would you like to upgrade to an SUV? It's gonna be snowing, so you want 4x4. Oh, would you like a car seat? Would you like a ski rack? Would you like a GPS? Would you like to prepay for gas? Would you like to upgrade your insurance? And they make you like 10, 12 offers, and then your bill comes out to like $280, and you were expecting $100.

Yeah. Right?

So it is, it's a concept that pretty much every successful business understands and small businesses like us, we, if we don't understand this, we're just losing a ton of money on the table.

What does an attraction offer look like in the land business? Because it could relatively inexpensive compared to the rest of the real estate space.

Yeah.

Your base pricing. So what is, what is an attraction offer in land?

So we do free land giveaways. So every Twice a year we would give away like the cheapest parcel, whatever the cheapest parcel in our inventory is. So we'll like do a free land giveaway. Everyone on YouTube who comments on the video participates in it. And then hundreds and hundreds of people participate. And then we— on the live stream, we pick someone randomly and then we give them away.

Give a property away. Oh, that's really cool. Well, and in land you can actually do it, right? Because any other asset class in real estate, I can't hop on and be like, Yeah, you know what, I'll, whoever comments the, you know, the top comment gets a free duplex. I'm like, this costs hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. That'd be really difficult.

You could do one first month rent free.

Yeah, that would work in a PM company. That'd be really cool for tenants. Yeah, that'd be a really good way to attract like a higher tenant base. Yeah, it was awesome.

Yeah. Or you could do it on the coaching side, like a free 3-month course. you know, access to whatever, something like that.

Yeah.

So the cool thing about, and then we also do like on our cheaper properties, we'll do like $1 down. Like every now and then we'll be like, oh, Black Friday special. Instead of putting 10% down, you just put $1 down and then you pay the doc fee and we start the owner financing terms. So stuff like that, we'll do promotions. But the cool, the reason I like attraction offers so much is because it literally Creativity is your limit, right? You can come up with like, you could put it in ChatGPT, give me 100 ideas and then you just pick one, right?

Yeah.

It's so cool. And you can be, that can also be your USP or competitive advantage like compared to other companies because you can come up with something like a unique angle that only you are doing.

Yes. And that is the, that goes back to that, just creating that economic moat around what you do. If you are more creative, more agile, longer relationships, more social proof, That's how you go again, 6-figure business to a 7-figure business, 7 to an 8. It's just more iterations of those same things.

Yeah. And just to bring this concept together, why we do all these offers, why are we doing this is it all comes down to CAC and LTV, right? Cost to acquire a customer and lifetime value, right? Because there are only 2 ways to make money in business, right? You can continue to spend more money on ads and marketing and acquire new customers. Right? So that's one way. And the other way is you can make your existing customers more valuable by making more offers, right? By having a relationship with them, right? So those are the two ways. And most small businesses, they only focus on the first part of the equation. They just continue to pour more and more money on ads and marketing. The problem with that approach, it works, but the problem is every year the cost of ads and marketing goes up. Yes. Right. So, you know, Facebook ads, 2018, really cheap. 2026, very expensive, right?

Oh yeah.

So it's, it's not going to go down. Yeah.

Just to run for context, I'm always open with our, I'm always open with our numbers. Just to run a multifamily mentorship in 2026 baseline, $50,000 to $60,000 a month on Meta. Wow. Just to maintain. For context, 5 years ago, an eighth of that for the same amount of people. I just unbelievably increasing expenses in the ad space.

Yeah. So, so the re— that's the reason why your CAC, cost to acquire a customer, always goes up, right? So to maintain the healthy LTV to CAC relationship, you have to focus your, you have to focus your attention on, on making your LTV, lifetime value of the customer, higher. And the way you do that, which is contrary to other gurus, right? They're like, oh, never talk to anyone. Just hire, like hire your VAs, virtual assistants to talk to your people. You don't want to talk or have someone else manage your loans, right? It's completely contrary to that approach because now you're like, well, you should be talking to your customers. You should be maintaining relationships because then you're making them more valuable because they're going to come back and buy from you. Right? And when someone comes back and buys from you, your cost to acquire for that particular purchase is $0 because you already spent that money, right? So this is a referral or an existing customer coming back, and that's the reason why it's so crucial, right? And that's why every small business should be learning about, you know, these 4 different types of offers and how to make more of them and how to build like a long-term relationship with your customers.

If you start with, so this is starting with, uh, building a product from the ground up. It's taking customer and client feedback, it's iterating and coming up with ways to upgrade the product. And then your next step from there is now how do we increase awareness to the fact that we have a ton of product? And, and now your marketing actually leads somewhere. But I, I love the, too many people, and this is where you get online gurus versus actual professionals. Online gurus start only with marketing. They start by being a great marketer and then they'll, they just have product. If you start with product and you start with iteration and you start with your offers and then you move into the marketing, now you actually have a business where people continue to come back and that's where you end up. You know, that's the difference from being a long-lasting business owner and being someone who has a concept that gets a few sales, then gets bad reviews and then fizzles out. The difference between an online guru and an actual business owner, that's it right there.

Yeah.

When you're learning how to do, because you've learned and shared a ton that you've really dove into going from a W-2 employee to a company owner. You've learned a lot in not that much time. If you're diving into land in 2018, you've given this obviously an incredible amount of thought and an incredible amount of time going from A to B. The question everyone waits for. The highest stupid tax that you've paid when you are 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 listener today time, money, or pain that you had to go through to be where you're at today, what was the most painful? What was the highest stupid tax that you paid not knowing what you didn't know?

Yeah. So the biggest ignorance, ignorance, ignorance tax was not paying attention to the sales, like the sales aspect of the business. Right. And I'll give you, I'll give your audience This is a very tactical thing that literally moved the needle for us by a lot. So most of, when you are a new business owner, right? You learn about sales, you take sales training, you take sales courses. Most of the sales training is around objection handling. I don't know if you have ever taken a sales course, but you—

I have taken far too many. The first 8 years of my career were only sales. That's like my entire background.

So you would relate to this. What most of the focus is always on, like, oh, objection handling. How do we handle this objection? Or someone says, I don't have the money. How do you handle that? Someone says, oh, I need to talk to my wife. How do you handle that? Oh, I need, I need to think about it. How do you handle that? Right. So that's what you're learning. Right. But, and that's what I learned. And then we tried to implement 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 help, but the biggest thing that helped was speed to lead, how quickly you respond to them. Because when someone buys land, this is like very specific to land, but it literally applies to every other business. When someone buys land, they go on Zillow or they go on land.com. They're not just picking one piece of land and say, oh, request more information. They're going request, request, request, request, request, request, request, like 20 times. 20 different properties, right? And if the 20 different businesses this request went to, and if someone responds, if my competitor is responding within 60 seconds and I respond next day, they already started the relationship. I'm dead in the water. Like there is no chance I'm going to come and restart a relationship if they've already had like multiple calls within 24 hours, right? So the day we learned this, we literally had to hire 2 extra virtual assistants to meet this 60-second metric because we were like, oh yeah, we were responding anywhere from like 4 hours to 12 hours. That was our speed to lead, which was like ridiculous in retrospect. And now our speed to lead is our directive to our team is less than 60 seconds. We don't always meet it, but we try to keep it less than 5 minutes, right?

Yeah.

But the day we implemented this, we saw immediate, immediate returns. Like literally we were like, oh wow, I can't believe last month we closed 12 deals and this month we closed 18 just because of that one change, right? So that would be my biggest tactic, biggest takeaway for all the entrepreneurs listening to this.

It is, it is. And just put yourself in the mindset of like, hey, you just saw, you just got exposed to this product. So you can view it as like you got an ad on Instagram. It's the one ad that you're like, oh, I actually am interested. I'm going to go engage with this. You engage and someone immediately calls you versus tomorrow when I'm not thinking about it.

Yeah.

Like, hey, you checked out a pro— like, you don't even remember. It's so obvious when you think about it, but it is probably the most missed thing in apartment leasing. That is like the main thing we train everyone. It's the most important thing. Speed to lead. If you are reaching out about an apartment and you're looking, 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. The first place that you tour, 85% of the time, that's where you end up moving. So whoever responds to you first and just books the showing, if it fits your requirements, you'll move there almost every time. So if you're the slowest one 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 that.

Yeah.

I'm like, what's happening? You have an employee problem. And half the time, like, no, our employees are awesome. I'm like, they, if they're taking 2 days to respond to a lead, you're getting destroyed. Speed to lead is everything. Beautiful, beautiful takeaway. Yeah. If you're not doing that right now, you're losing a ton of money. And if you apply it today, I talk about speed to lead. You now have the information. If you apply it right now, you will see a significant ups— uptick in sales now.

Yeah. And just to, just to just like an advanced version of the tip, make sure you're measuring the metrics, like, you know, the speed to lead, cash collected, how many closed versus, and also how many disqualified people showed up, how many people, I'm forgetting. So if, yeah, 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 if you improve the no-show rate, right? You literally are like increasing your conversions. So measuring all these sales metrics will show you where the gaps are and then you can like pinpoint and tackle those. But yeah, but all of these, of all these metrics, speed to lead is the most important.

I absolutely 100% agree. And that is, I could do a whole episode on tracking metrics because it is so fun as a business owner to be able to get into like, Okay, we launched 100 ads. Which ads had the highest click-through rate? But that's not really what we wanna know. It's good to know, but I wanna know which ads resulted in sales. Yeah. And then I wanna be able to reverse engineer all the way through what was the entire path, who clicked what, how many no-shows were there, who was qualified versus unqualified on— sometimes if you look, this is a huge mistake I see people make right on this, uh, train of thought. They go, hey, which ad got the most views, the highest engagement? And they base all their decisions off engagement. And what you find, if you look through exactly what you said, is maybe you had a really catchy ad that was really easy to watch and you're attracting a ton of no-shows, unqualified contracts. And, and you go, it goes back to your cost of your, your cost of customer, your CAC, cost of acquired customer. We're spending 10x on this ad per dollar that it makes. but it's bringing a ton of people in the door. It's mostly worthless. I've seen that happen on, you really have to have a robust set of metrics. So, you know, every step from they saw me for the first time to 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 spending in many cases. When you look at the metrics, if you don't have the metrics, you're guessing what's working based on the fact that like, it feels like we're making more money. Like it's, and there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are there. I mean, there's the, I would say very significantly more than half, probably like 90% are like the, yeah, did it work? Well, we made more than before we launched it. So yes, very hard to make decisions about that. And everyone's been there. Every entrepreneur has been there at some point where you're like, wait, before we had metrics, after we had metrics, how much better do we get? Astronomical. Uh, all, everything you said in that last segment too, very Alex Hormozi. Yeah.

Yeah.

Work on the offer, work on the leads, track the metrics. Uh, it, it, there's a reason his business worked as well as it did. It, these are principles that are fantastic and universal and, uh, also, uh, principles that we'll find in your book, uh, which is great. Great point. Uh, linked below. Not only is it a fantastic cover and title, uh, but you have a lot of the most successful practices I've seen in businesses. Uh, you mentioned 'em all in this episode, so I have to imagine There's a lot more in there. So if you guys wanna learn more, click the link below, check out his book. It's available on Amazon. What does the book cost? I can't remember off the top of my head.

Well, it's free on Kindle Unlimited, 99 cents on Kindle, and like $10 on, I kept it like at the lowest amount they allowed me.

Oh, see. Okay. So for $10, get a ton more. I like physical copy. I think you should, do the physical copy.

It, yeah, I know there is for Kindle.

It's basically free for knowledge. $10 is also essentially free. Get the hard copy. I'm telling you to do it because I, the advice that it was given here is unbelievably solid. You should get more of this. Check out that link, grab the physical copy and check out more. How else do people find you? If someone has questions, they want to follow up with the business, maybe they want to get started and do their first land investment. Where do they find you?

Yeah. So you can find me on LinkedIn. I also offer mentorship, like one-on-ones. So that's my company, honestwealthbuilders.com. So you can check out there as well.

Awesome. That will also be linked below in the show notes. Guys, this was the Owner Meeting Podcast, learning from the people who have done the thing that you want to do. Super solid advice given here. Thank you so much for joining the show, and we'll see you all on the next episode.