Seth: Hey, everybody, how's it going? Seth Williams here. You're listening to the REtipster podcast. This is episode 171, and today I get to talk with some old friends, Jaren Barnes and Drew Haney. Guys, welcome. How you doing?

Drew: Hey, guys. Doing well.

Seth: Yeah. So something I appreciated about preparing for this episode was that I didn't have to do much preparation because the conversation flow so freely with these guys. I don't have to think too hard. I just know something good is going to come out. So I don't have a whole lot of pre-scripted, pre-thought out questions, but I mainly just want to find out what's going on with you guys, what's been happening over the past year.

I know, Jaren, you've had some big new developments with the Land Maverick Society and everything that you're doing there. And Drew, you're also playing an integral role in that, in the podcast, and you guys are working together a lot. So I just wanted to find out how it's going, what you guys are doing, and what you've learned over the past twelve-ish months. So where do you want to start?

Jaren: Well, I guess I could kind of give a summary of what Land Maverick Society is. You helped give me some very strong feedback on the importance of being able to clearly articulate what we do and who we are.

So the Land Maverick Society, in a nutshell, is a community that provides everything that you need to get started in the land business and then to scale to a 100K/month model. We have kind of an ecosystem, when you buy into it, that includes training through the Land Maverick Academy, strategic partners like Supercharged Offers to handle the marketing, Pebble REI to handle the lead processing system. I have a sister company called Virtual Outsource that also provides a bunch of outsourced VA solutions and scaling automation tiers of service.

And then we have Rooster Capital, which is Drew, who is exclusively the funder for the Land Maverick Society. We fund deals between 15,000 to 250,000 per acquisition for a 50-50 split, and we buy at. So that would be a market value of 30,000 to 500,000. And we will fund deals that are more expensive than 250,000 per acquisition, but we're normally doing a 60-40 split in our favor because there's more capital risk.

So in a nutshell, that's who we are. It includes a lot of really nifty kind of perks, I guess you could say. I give out my cell phone number to everybody in the community, and I'm pretty much outside of Saturday I'm just a text away for anybody who has any urgent needs. So direct access to me.

We have kind of a video database called the Land Maverick Academy. But really the big value is the one-on-one training that you can have with me. So I walk you through everything from picking a market, sending out the mail, getting started with Supercharged Offers. When you subscribe to the Land Maverick Academy, you also get a build out a carbon copy of my Pebble environment. It's based on the starter plan, but it's like six months included.

So when you sign up, you get six months of Pebble included in your membership and all that. So it's pretty much like everything that you need to crush it as a land investor.

Drew: And I just want to brag about Jaren for a little bit. I did some research, and from the competitors that I pulled, he is the most affordable one-on-one coach by less than half. So I've told him multiple times to increase prices. He refuses to, and he's doing a great service to the land flipping community. So thank you, Jaren.

Seth: It sounds like this is one-on-one coaching, right? Or is it group coaching or both?

Jaren: At this stage, it's one-on-one coaching. Yep. So Tuesday through Thursday I have availability on Calendly, and maybe by the time this launches, it's going to be a different scheduling link. But people can jump anytime on my calendar.

If I don't show availability, I intentionally bookmark the ends of the week, Monday and Friday to do makeup sessions or to squeeze people in, and I walk them through every step of the process.

Seth: Yeah. So it sounds like this is just like one-off coaching calls. Or is this like a six-month engagement or twelve months or what does a coaching relationship look like?

Jaren: Yeah. So it's membership-based. I would look at us not necessarily as kind of pigeonholed as a coach. I would look at us as a membership to a mastermind or a community, and then coaching is a footnote of that. That's a part of the full suite of services and value we bring to the table.

But to answer your question, it's an annual membership. So on the front end, there's a larger cost, let's say. I don't want to necessarily timestamp myself and throw out numbers because that may change in the future. But then the annual membership renewal fee is $5,000 a year.

Drew: Does that include access to you, Jaren?

Jaren: Yes.So as long as you're an active member in good standing, you have direct access to me, like forever and ever.

The long-term goal for us as a community is to be partnering with members of the Land Maverick Society. So our goal is to fund 40% to 60% of all of the people that we are training and are part of our community. And again, we have resources in place to help them not only get started, but then to scale to 100k/month model.

Seth: So basically you're paying for this annual membership and whether you use Jaren or not directly, like what? I want access to you that's available. That's just part of the package.

Jaren: Yeah. And I would very much encourage people to, at least in the beginning for sure, if they're getting started to meet with me, if not once a week, several times a week, in order to get a strategy going and get a game plan and what have you.

A lot of, in the beginning, especially the bulk of one-on-one training sessions, are revolving around running comps. Running comps and due diligence. I actually call back sellers with people, so I showcase how the conversation works. All that.

Seth: Yeah. Is there a particular thing like you just talked about, running comps, calling back sellers, picking markets, that kind of thing. Is there any particular line item or task that you find people need the most help with? Like a place where people get the most stuck the most often, or is it just kind of all over the place?

Jaren: It's mostly comps, yeah. Market research is pretty straightforward, at least initial due diligence. We run through Land ID. We have a six-step checklist within Land ID that we run through each time.

But comps is more of an art than it is a science and you have to develop a feel for it. I actually had somebody who is in our community come from kind of the luxury real estate world, and she was one of the top performing agents in her market, but really struggled to wrap her head around land comps because it's kind of like you get to kind of a certain amount of surety and then you just kind of go in the direction of being conservative. You just kind of merge conservative.

We verify comps and as we go through the process, we get land specialized agents to come in and provide list amounts and stuff. So as we move through the pipeline of processing leads, we do have lots of checks and balances in place to ensure we're not making a mistake. But on the front end, we do try to call back our sellers with an offer in hand. And we're able to do that about 80% of the time with online resources, 20% of the time we have to loop in an agent before we make an for.

Seth: Yeah. Interesting.

Do you ever get calls or just people who want your help because they're doing the direct mail thing and the responses just aren't coming back or the deals aren't coming out of that? And if so, are there any typical problems that you see that there are things that are going wrong? It's like, okay, fix this problem and then you'll start to get those responses.

Jaren: I think a big key, at least right now at the time that we're recording, is pulling from First American Title data. So when I first got started in the land space, I was actually working with you at REtipster when I ran this comparison.

The two leading competitor data service providers were DataTree and AgentPro 24/7. AgentPro 24/7 pulls its information from Black Knight. DataTree pulls its information from First American Title. AgentPro 24/7 evolved into a company called Sitex Pro, and then the market share, when that happened, went to a company called Prycd. And Prycd pays for API access into DataTree. So they're getting First American Title information secondhand.

And what that translates to is there's what I call kind of like an “artificial saturation” taking place where if you just diversify where you're pulling your data from, you'll get a competitive advantage. So pulling from PropStream, Versium, Supercharged Offers, kind of anybody that's not First American Title, is going to give you a competitive edge.

And we've seen it across dozens of different land companies that I've helped kind of oversee in the evolution of, I guess you could say, when I first ran a comparison between AgentPro 24/7and DataTree in Citrus County, Florida. In AgentPro 24/7 there was say 30,000 record counts, but in DataTree there was only three. And there's other places within DataTree where they had more information available. But the majority of the land investing community is targeting the same owners over and over again, those, say 3,000 owners that are registered in the First American Title database.

For Citrus County, Florida, there's going to be an artificial saturation and then there's going to be a big missed opportunity for the 27,000-odd, at least at the time when I ran, were not registered in the First American Title database. Beyond that, there's a lot of house wholesalers that also pull from First American Title information. David Lecco, we've actually interviewed him at the REtipster Podcast together. The entire DealMachine operation pulls from First American Title Information. There's also a company called REI 8020, REI-something, that's like a big lead provider in that space. They also pull from First American Title data.

So people that are registered in that database are just getting hit fairly often. It creates kind of this artificial saturation where if you can just pull from a different database. And again, I'm not mad at DataTree. It's just that fact that most land investors are all collectively pulling from that source that creates this artificial saturation where if people just pull from something else, I've seen it firsthand, overseeing different land investors getting started in the land business, DataTree, they'd have lackluster results, and they come to me, why is it not working? What's going on? I say, just pull from somebody else.

And then it's back to… these days we're seeing about one deal for every 3,000 units of mail, sometimes 3,500 depending on the market. If it's a Florida or parts of Texas, Colorado, that can even be 1,000 units of mail. But generally, in most places, we're still seeing about 1,000, 3,000 to 3,500.

Drew: And another thing I want to add is that I think a lot of people, especially newer land investors, they don't have a big enough sample size. So they'll send out 2,000 mailers. They won't get any responses or any deals from it and they'll get frustrated and think it doesn't work, where in reality you need to send out significantly more, maybe 20,000 mailers to really understand what's working and what's not.

So a great example, everyone knows Dave Denniston, he mailed to Wisconsin, multiple counties in Wisconsin for the first time, didn't know what he was doing. Out of four counties, three of them bombed. One county he picked up, it was actually Door County, Wisconsin, where my parents lived. He picked up a parcel for 80 grand and then once he owned it, he sold it in one day for 200. So let's say he spent ten grand on mailers, then it's totally worth that profit was totally worth it.

And I think a lot of people aren't willing to try large numbers because they're afraid where in reality you just need a larger sample size to see the results.

Jaren: Yeah, and if you're going to grow a land business and really treat it like a business, you probably need somewhere in the vicinity of 20 to 50 grand to really do it right. Now, those that are just getting started and they want to just take some savings that they have and start using land as the vehicle to generate more working capital. That totally makes sense. But you're probably going to be a part-time investor, kind of a side hustle type of situation before you're able to really grow until you get to that point of having 20 to 50 grand plus.

Seth: So several questions came up as you were talking here on your comment there. About 20 to 50 grand. So what do you think is like the minimum viable amount now? At what point should you not even be considering getting into land because there’s not enough money.

This has changed over the years, obviously understandable. Things have gotten more competitive. It takes more to get the data and the mail and you send more and depending on what kind of marketing mediums you use and all this. But what do you think the current amount is? Like, “Have at least this much ready to go or don't even try.”

Drew: I think you can start with $0. I want someone to try it. So go on Facebook Marketplace or go on Zillow and make a thousand offers at 50% of whatever they're asking, it's impossible to not get a deal. And I still haven't had someone try it. How long would it take you to make 1,000 offers? Maybe 40 hours of work.

Seth: These would all be like assignment offers.

Drew: Yeah. So you'd need to get it under contract, I guess.

Jaren: Or a partner, a funding partner.

Drew: You would need to have someone holding your hand or you would need to have a contract. You can't just start off knowing nothing.

But once you have it under contract, you can go onto all the Facebook groups, find someone to assign it to or find someone to fund it, and then boom, with almost no money, just a bunch of sweat equity, you have a deal under contract and I still haven't… I've told that probably to five to ten people. Nobody's done it yet. Nobody wants to make a thousand offers.

Jaren: I would answer that question. I completely agree with Drew's assessment there. You can get started with no money. You can get started, partner with somebody. You can use Facebook Marketplace and Zillow or online, different directories to his point, and just sit there and really strategically have a game plan of getting out a thousand offers.

And you're probably going to get a deal. You probably end up getting a deal within your first 250 offers. So within 1,000, you're probably going to get more. But I really think it boils down to the type of land business you're doing.

If we were to talk cheaper deals, because again, our buy box is a minimum of $15,000 acquisition. When I first got started, I would routinely buy stuff for 2,500 to 15 grand, that was kind of my starting point, that is a very different response rate in terms of units of mail you need to send out, I guess deal-to-unit ratio, what have you. And if you're doing red ocean, I guess that's know Travis King is dubbed the red ocean, is kind of the cheaper stuff, that's very different. You could do a blind offer campaign right now, and if you do Mike Ferreira's strategy, you're going to have more deals than you ever want. But he's buying the stuff that's not buildable, that has crazy elevated property, that's landlocked, troublesome stuff that nobody really wants. But he has an ecosystem that he's built out in his business to consistently sell those through his buyer's list.

So if you have a model that is able to get dumpy property and sell them on terms, that's very different, you can do a blind offer direct mail campaign, you're going to have a crazy response rate. It's going to be very different. But if we're talking like our model where we try to buy kind of more, I guess blue ocean, as again, Travis King kind of coined in the space, where we're buying 15,000 up to 500,000 as kind of our go to buy box, it's a different animal. And you're going to have a different conversion rate in terms of your marketing efforts and what have you.

So I think if I were to advise somebody to have a certain dollar amount in terms of getting started, I would probably say a minimum of $10,000. And you probably want to do cheaper deals. You might be starting off with kind of doing one-off direct mail campaigns or different marketing efforts. Get a deal, have that deal sell, and then take that capital and then reinvest it in your business to develop working capital. But I think that's probably the bare minimum that I would suggest people have.

I mean, again, if you got hustle, you can put the pieces together. There are people you can partner with. You can literally go to Facebook Marketplace and sit there and make offers all day if you want to 80-20 it just, whatever they're asking, just have like a templated script that says, “Hey, I'm an investor in the area. Would you take this amount for your property?” And then just cut the list asking price in half. And it's a numbers game. As long as you get that out there, you're going to get a deal at some point.

Seth: Yeah, it's interesting what you're saying, Drew, about the way to do it for no money by just sort of pounding the pavement, digitally speaking, reminds me of the comic I just saw this morning. It was of two different tables with two guys standing behind it.

And above the tables, there were signs above them. And one of the signs says, “Hungry to win.” And there's a huge line of people at that table. The other one says, ‘Hungry to do what winning requires,” and there's nobody lined up at that table. So kind of made me think of that.

Going back to what you were saying, Jaren, about the DataTree issue. So I almost wonder if the data is either right or it's not. So it makes me think, like, is DataTree wrong? I know the filters are different among different data sources. I almost wonder if it's more of a misunderstanding of how to use the filters, or maybe I don't know what the answer is, and I don't know that I wouldn't even know how to begin split testing this in a reliable way among multiple markets, seeing what everybody's doing and how they're filtering it to know for certain what the issue is.

But is there like a secondary or alternative data source that you recommend instead of DataTree? And if so, where are you sending people?

Jaren: Yeah, so my hypothesis—don't hold me to this, because at the end of the day, I don't know. But my hypothesis behind why there's discrepancy in different databases of data collection agencies, let's say, is because certain counties aren't digitized. And certain counties, you, literally, if you want to get an update of property ownership, have to go manually to the county and pull all of that information manually. And whoever, in terms of the data collection agency, goes to that specific county first is going to have the most up-to-date information on those counties.

But it's a grind. I mean, Costar is one of the largest data collection agencies and providers in the commercial real estate space. And they take it to such an extreme that they literally hire a pilot to go back and forth across the United States, taking aerial snapshots of the ground to cross-reference their database, because there are people like me out there who don't pull a permit and notify the county that they put a fence in their backyard. So they take the aerial snapshot and then cross-reference the database in order to get the most accurate information that they can.

Nobody has a monopoly on all the data. We like that, by the way, because the discrepancy in the market is what gives us the ability to buy property at $2,000 and sell it higher. We don't want a centralized system of data information. We like that because that's why we have an opportunity as land investors. But I think that's probably what's going on there.

But to circle back to your question about who I recommend, I really like Supercharged Offers. From an 80-20 standpoint, they are more expensive, but you're buying into an ecosystem, essentially what Supercharged Offers is.

Seth: You're talking about downloading lists from Supercharged Offers and like doing your property research to them?

Jaren: So actually just becoming a full-on client with them. So Supercharged Offers will provide you data, they'll scrub the data, they'll do your branding for your website, they'll set up your letters, they do everything. You pretty much just say, here's my market criteria and list criteria, and then they take it from there.

So from an 80-20 standpoint, I like working with them a lot. At least at the time we're recording this video, this podcast, they have really solid property data information, but they're a little bit limited on the ownership demographic side of things. So if you wanted to target things like senior owners, pre-probate inherited property, there's some limitation there. I do think that they have things (actually, I know that they have some things in the works because I talked to them quite a bit) that will kind of remedy that and give us a lot more options in terms of ownership demographics to target.

But from an 80-20 standpoint, in our model, there's really three core skill sets of a land investor. We're experts at running comps and due diligence; we're experts at talking to motivated sellers on the phone and handling negotiations; and we're experts at finding, managing and vetting land specialized agents. Outside of those three core skill sets, it's noise and a distraction, and as much as possible should be automated or outsourced so that we can focus on what we do best, which is making offers and getting deals done.

So Supercharged Offers, from a system standpoint, is really a solid route to go and I would probably say 95%-plus of our community use them to process all of their mail and marketing, because when you buy into them, you are essentially buying into a fractional acquisition marketing department for your land business. So it's all on the acquisition side. But if you build out over six months with them, they do have some on-demand options where you can come and just do a one-off campaign and stuff. But if you buy into them, they will literally build everything from your website.

They do retargeting ads now they're actually starting to provide cold call leads in addition to direct mail leads. Like, it's pretty cool what they bring to the table. And they actually care about their clients, so they routinely meet with all of the people that they service on a monthly basis, sometimes twice a month basis. How's it going? What are your results like? And if you're not getting results, they work with you to try to figure out how to get things moving. So it's like buying into a fractional team, and that's why I really like that.

That being aside though, I think that the north star of getting deals is targeting pre-probate senior owners and inherited property. Anything that you can do at a principal level to target that demographic over and over again, you're probably going to have the best source of deal. PropStream allows you to easily do that.

Now there's limited data, just like there are with all different data service providers. In certain areas, they might not have any pre-probate leads registered, but in the areas that they do, it's very convenient because you know that you're targeting property that's in the name of the recently deceased, so you can actually go in and specifically target those demographics and really get a competitive advantage.

I really like PropStream from that standpoint. It's pretty clunky, since it's made for house wholesalers and there's some issues from a user interface standpoint, but all in all, those are probably my go-to for data service providers.

But I would say and highlight your recent review on Versium, because I think Versium probably would win the cake. I haven't used it personally, so I can't vouch for that, but it seems to be pretty phenomenal, especially when you couple how cheap it is to get like emails and phone numbers and all that. So if Supercharged Offers didn't exist, I probably would be pointing people in the direction of Versium.

Drew: I want to brag about Alicia a little bit. So her team did ibuyland.org. She completely redesigned that. So if you guys want to check that out, that's a good sample of what her team can do.

Also, as Jaren mentioned, you pay a premium per letter, but you get all kinds of data analytics and you get a consultant. Alicia meets with you personally. Is it every month or every three weeks? It's pretty often.

Jaren: I think with us it's on average like twice a month, but it varies client by client. If somebody's doing low volume, I think it's at least a once a month.

Drew: She helps—she's a consultant—you figure out, okay, if you're not getting the results you want, what are some potential pitfalls? Because she runs her own land business as well, and she knows she can help identify very quickly, along with Jaren as the coach, what is not being executed properly.

Jaren: Exactly.

Seth: Yeah, interesting. So Supercharged is basically just kind of handling the marketing funnel department for your business. Like they just deliver you warm leads and then it's up to you to close on them so they don't have the conversations for you, but they have all the mechanisms in place to do the lists and the mail and the ads and whatever that consists of to get those deals coming or those leads coming your way. Is that accurate?

Jaren: Yeah, I would say for everything outside of SMS marketing management, which Virtual Outsource, a sister company of ours, can fill in the gap there.

Drew: And then if you use Realtors, you're outsourcing the last 50%. So really, you only need to master 10% to 50%.

Jaren: And if you work with the Land Maverick Society, the deal funding aspect is also outsourced with Rooster Capital through you, Drew. We're putting an ecosystem together. We're putting a templated model for people to get started, learn how to run comps, do the business, but then all the pieces are in place to actually scale.

Drew: So if you can comp land and talk with sellers, you can run a land business?

Jaren: Pretty much, yeah. And I can train you how to do that.

Drew: I remember I used to have to chop up Excel spreadsheets and it was very frustrating. Now you can pay a small premium, outsource all of that.

Seth: When you say comp land, does that include due diligence in that? Is that also what you mean?

Jaren: Yeah, so I would say high level, how to use LandID practically in order to run initial basic due dIligence. But then at some stage, after you get a purchase agreement in place, you've had an agent opinion of value in place. You want to call through the county and walk through a series of questions, maybe multiple different county departments. Like if you have to verify, see if there's a perc test on file.

Depending on the circumstances of the deal, you might have to call a couple of different county departments. But yeah, high level. There are checks and balances as things heat up towards the finish line. But yeah, we will walk you through A to Z on all that, man.

Seth: So if you could figure out a way to outsource the comping, due diligence, talking with sellers, I mean, you can basically just do nothing, right? Is that the idea? Is that where this will eventually lead to?

Drew: That's what I've done that with Land of the Free. So if you go to Western Arizona on Landwatch, you'll see my cheesy smile there on slot number three. But that business is 95% outsourced. I pretty much host a weekly call with my team, make sure that they feel valued and taken care of.

I handle any fires, I put out any fires or problems that come up. But the day-to-day is totally outsourced with very competent employees that really love what they do.

Jaren: I would say, from a educator standpoint, you're probably better off for a long while still being involved in your business. I know that to do what Drew has accomplished is very sexy, and he makes it look really easy, but it's hard, and you want to make sure that you have systems in place and really good people on your team before you let go of the reins, especially in the beginning.

I have had people come to me and be like, “I don't want to be hands off from the beginning.” And we've tried to bring on VA Filipino-based lead managers and has not worked very well. You need somebody probably Stateside who at least is a driver, and pay them well and compensate them well, make sure that they're incentivized to do a good job for you and happy to be on the team. But I would very strongly discourage people from being super hands-off, at least for the first long while, maybe six months, a year, year and a half.

Drew: And paying them well is extremely important. My general manager of Land of the Free makes more money now than the job that I left. My salary was less than what she makes now. And so when you pay them well, they feel valued. They'll ride with you to the gates of hell and back and absolutely love every minute of it.

Seth: So, Drew, it sounds like this business that is 95% hands-off, just from what I hear you saying. It sounds like it's a smooth sailing, well-oiled machine that's just kind of churning out deals, and you just kind of check in every once in a while to see how it's going.

What was hard about getting into that point, just going off what Jaren was saying? What were the biggest challenges, and how did you do that? I mean, it's kind of like the Holy Grail that everybody wants.

Drew: So it's not perfect. It's more like a used car with tires that are almost falling off. But it works, right? It's like a ten-year-old Honda Civic that gets you from point A to point B. Our systems are not perfect. A lot of our systems don't talk to each other, and the communication between different databases is done through the employees.

But I think the biggest thing that people struggle with is letting the employee you hired potentially crash the ship. And if you don't let them potentially crash the ship, you're never going to have time to build a new ship, a different ship, right?

So I've built two, maybe three businesses now, depending on how you see it, and I would have never been able to do that if I didn't trust the employees on the first business to manage the day-to-day. They can send money. I still have to approve it, but they buy stuff without me knowing it, I don't even know.

I asked them the other day how many parcels we have. It turns out we have 130, which I didn't even know. And so the potential is that they ruin it. but that's such a small risk, and most problems can be solved with an apology or with money. And so usually, they make it better than what you did. Right? So my employees, they care more about their job, their specific little niche, than what I did when I was doing that job. And so they make it better, they make it more smooth, and they really master their area of expertise versus me. I was so spread thin that I couldn't do it as well as they're currently doing it.

Jaren: I want to chime in there, though, because I have the benefit of knowing you personally, Drew, and you are a really good leader when you want to be. And I think the key to accomplishing what you've accomplished is really strong leadership. People need to be willing to follow you to hell and back, like you brought up earlier. And a lot of business owners, for one reason or another, they don't know how to inspire their team. They don't know how to get the best out of people.

But you do. You can turn it on when you want. So I do want to highlight that from a practical standpoint, you can't just go out and hire any random Joe Schmo off the street and think that it's going to thrive. From day one, Drew has been really good at getting one.

Just kind of blessed to get good people, but then massaging those people into the role that they are into today, being able to kind of run shop for everything. So I do want to emphasize that don't go out and just hire some random person on Fiverr or HireMyMom and think you're going to get what Drew gets, like, the same day.

But if you can develop those leadership skills and encourage and inspire and provide an incredible opportunity. People will die for you. It's true. They will go to the nth degree to serve the leader well if the vision and mission is very clear and you're taking care of them. Like Drew's point, his main person at his red ocean business makes more money today than she ever has.

Drew: She makes more money than the job, the W-2 that I quit.

Jaren: Yeah, exactly. You see, it's important to make sure you provide that for people. I don't want anybody listening to be like, okay, I just got to go hire some random person and then just give them the reins and then see you later. It doesn't work that way. You got to be able to lead them well, massage them into the position, and probably do it in increments where you say, okay, this person, I'm going to give this amount of authority and responsibility and then increase it over time as they continue to perform well.

Drew: And I would say generosity is big part of it. So giving them an uncomfortable amount where you actually wonder, is this too much? Am I paying her too much? And am I too nice? For example, every employee at year one of their first year anniversary, they either get a vacation on the company or they get, like, my second employee, she just hit one year, and they're going to rent out an Airbnb the whole weekend. And her friends are coming and they're going to have a party. And that's all going to be paid for by the company.

Each employee gets, as long as it's legal, gets an AR-15 paid for by the company. Because one of my employees lives off-grid and is actually a security device, they get treated quite well. And the thing is, you need to treat them like family, because really, they're putting food on your plate, not the other way around. Right?

So I would say two things that have helped me was the US army putting me in charge of 45 soldiers at age 22 and then also doing books that most people see as unnecessary, such as “How to Win friends and Influence People.” Just the basics of learning how to take care of people. I think those books are often overlooked. Everyone wants to jump to the strategy. What's the secret sauce? And in reality, the secret sauce is being a good human being and taking care of people.

Seth: You mentioned earlier, Drew, that your business is running like an old used car where the wheels are falling out off like a ten-year-old Honda Civic type thing. So why is it running like that? What should you be improving that you haven't? And why haven't you made those improvements so that it's not running like a brand new Mercedes? Just out of curiosity.

Drew: Because I've put forth C-level effort and I'm getting B results and I'm happy with that. So it's a sweet spot right now, even the general manager, she'll agree with me that there's so many imperfections in our system, but it works. And it's the type of thing where, what takes more effort, to improve it or just to keep it how it is?

Seth: So I just wonder, could you actually make more money or would there be an impact to revenue if you made those improvements? Or is that why you're not making them because the improvements wouldn't result in making more money?

Drew: So there's a million improvements we could make. The question is, do I want to work more than 5 hours a week? So a great example is: we currently have (and I'm not going to name the name) a loan service provider that we are not happy with. But the question is, do we continue living with the quirks of this software program or do we switch all of our 60, 70, 80 notes?

I don't even know how many notes we have, but let's say if we have 70, 80 notes, is it less work to deal with the frustrations of this current provider we're using, or is it less work to switch them over to a better provider, but have maybe 20 to 40 hours of work on the front end? So there's all kinds of little decisions we could make, When we post land for sale, all we do is put it on land.

Seth: So along those same lines, Drew, I know you've got this funding operation with Rooster Capital, so you've got that, you've also got your own land business. How do you decide and prioritize, “I'm going to put my capital to this business instead of this one”?

It seems like, not necessarily conflict, but sort of, because if you put it towards one, you're not enriching the other one. So how do you make that call on which one you're going to prioritize?

Drew: I just do a lot of praying. It'll be very common where it'll be a Saturday I'll have twelve grand in the account, and by Tuesday I need 200 grand. And I don't know how it works, but it always ends up working out where everything that gets funded needs to be funded. So far, fingers crossed, we have not dropped the ball yet on not funding a deal.

So I don't have a good answer to that. I just know it always works out, and it's been going very well so far with both companies.

Seth: And then back to the leadership question. So why do you think you're a strong leader? And when you talk about paying people more in this kind of stuff, how do you decide what's enough? How do you justify, “I'm paying you this dollar amount because of this, like this is a data-backed number.” Or is it more just like. “Well, it's more than I made at my previous job, so it must be pretty good. Here you go.”

How do you nail down, like, okay, this is a generous amount, and it makes sense because of this, and therefore, you are happy and you want to keep working for me. What are you doing to make people go to the front lines for you?

Drew: Yeah, I don't think I'm a very strong leader in terms of convincing human beings to take the hill and attack the machine gun nest and risk their lives. I think I'm an okay leader in that category.

Where I think I am good at is I truly care about people. So, if you're listening to this and you have a team, have you visited each one of your employees? Because Jaren and I went to the Philippines and visited his team. I've met each one of my employees multiple times. I just hired an executive assistant. She lives in Houston, and I'm seeing her next month. So do you care enough to go actually see them? And then also, are you casting a vision that people can buy into?

So, we run for-profit companies where we're trying to put food on the table for our families. What is the vision? Is the vision just to make money, or is it to make everyone we interact with, to make their day 1% better? Because I tell my people, even if we don't do a deal with a seller or a buyer, we want to make sure their day is better, and we want to sow goodness into their life. That's a vision people can get behind.

And then the second question. So, Land of the Free has three positions. One is to buy, one is to sell, and one is an admin support position. Two out of those three are commission only. So they only get paid when they perform. And so those variable costs really help the cash flow, where your overhead is actually quite low because they only get paid when the company gets paid, essentially.

Seth: What are those positions? Is it like a sales position or acquisitions role? And then what is their commission like? What do they make?

Drew: Yeah. So, the first position is an intake manager. She takes the football from the zero yard line to the 50. So she does the mail campaigns, she answers all the phone calls. She buys all of our properties. We're still doing self-closings in Land of the Free. And once the ball gets to the 50-yard line, we own the property. Then the sales manager takes over, takes the ball from the 50 to the end zone, and she lists it. She answers buyer leads, she sells it, she gets it under contract, and we transfer title. We have an administrative support position.

So those first two positions are all about making money for the company. So, buying and selling properties, anything that doesn't fall into those two buckets, the admin support does those tasks. So, downloading photos, uploading photos, ordering photos, anything to do with that.

The intake manager is 125 flat fee when she buys if it retails under ten grand, $250 flat fee if it retails over ten grand. And then when it sells, she gets 4% of gross profit if it sells cash. If it sells on term, she gets 2% of gross profit. So, when I used to have that position, I would take one to six hours per acquisition on average. So that position makes anywhere from 30 to 200 an hour if they're as efficient as me.

The second position, which is the sales manager, she's also currently my general manager, that is 10% of gross. If she sells a $15,000 property, she makes $1,500. She sells it terms, it's 5% of gross. So if on terms, she sells it for 18 grand, she would make $900. And then the admin support position is $15 an hour.

Seth: This is kind of going a slightly different direction, but it's in reference to what we were talking about earlier in this conversation about Jaren, how you're using Supercharged Offers to pull the list and basically do all the marketing for you.

And I'm wondering… I mean, it sounds like it's working, which is awesome, and that's probably the most important thing. But when I think of outsourcing the list pulling function to somebody else, that's a lot of trust I'm putting in that person to understand what I even want and where to do this. And I'm curious, how much guidance do you have to give them? And then how much do you even have to pay attention to what they're doing?

Are you even kind of aware of what's happening, or is it just a matter of, like, “Well, leads are coming in, so it's working, and I'm outsourcing this anyway. I don't have time to hassle myself with that end of the business because I'm paying them to do it.” So do you even have to pay that much attention, what's going on? Or do you have to police them to make sure that they're doing what you want them to do?

I say this from the standpoint of somebody who has a hard time letting go and just trusting people to do the right thing. So how do you handle that?

Jaren: I think a lot of it boils down to who Supercharged Offers is as a company and the integrity that they have. I wouldn't just go in the direction of anybody, but because I have tested the waters with them, not only in our company, but also in kind of overseeing the evolution of a lot of other land investors getting started in the space. They are very detail-oriented, almost to a fault.

For a long time, even back in the day when I worked here at REtipster with you, Seth, I remember you interviewing them, and in my head, I was just like, oh, they're an expensive direct mail company. And that was how I checked them off in my head, because on their website and a lot of their branding, they're almost overly detailed on all the things that they can do.

So why I say that, why I highlight that, is whenever they provide you the direct mail list before mailing out for approval, they have something like nine different tabs on the bottom that walk you through systematically all the different checks that they have done with the data. They also send it to you for a review. And I have people who I've worked with who are much more detail-oriented, who have, on the rare occasion, caught a couple of things that maybe were some mistakes or some, I guess, missing criteria, stuff like, for example, using assessed value as opposed to market total value in their assessment of kind of trying to project certain dollar market value on the property that they're targeting.

But at the end of the day, when you're a business owner, you got to kind of weigh the 80-20 of it all. And instead of being so bogged down on data and focusing on, are they doing it right to the nth degree, just getting to good enough and then having somebody who's like…

I wouldn't even say good enough, I think they're exceptional at what they do. Everybody makes mistakes. Nobody's perfect. Direct mail is still direct mail. The nature of the beast is sometimes you do everything perfect and you don't get any leads. So that does happen. But all in all, they are very detail-oriented, and they actually set a specific number on the letter that tracks all of the calls. So they know at their level they will forward it to whatever number you want to use, Open Phone, Pebble, whatever, but they actually track every single call that comes in.

They also have a number of other checks and balances in place, like they use inform delivery. They have a system where they can track all the way to the point where the mailman takes it from the post office and is in route to deliver. They can't track if the mailman chucks it out the door or not, but they can get all the way to that point. So when they say deliverability rate within their dashboard, it's as accurate as you can possibly get. So there's a lot of things that they have in place to actually ensure the quality, and it's pretty phenomenal in that regard.

So, no, if you are more detail-oriented, you want to make sure that you want to have all your I's dotted and T's crossed. They are available for feedback, for pushback, for dialogue, brainstorming, which is phenomenal. I don't know any other data service-ish provider, I guess technically I think they white label with somebody that they pull that they keep close to their chest.

Seth: DataTree? I'm just kidding.

Jaren: No, definitely not DataTree. But they really do a lot to ensure quality and they're very detail-oriented and they're an open book too. I don't know any, I guess, direct mail processor that will use that as a term that would do this level of care and detail for their clients.

Seth: So how much time do you spend scrutinizing what they do? Is it like after every campaign you're like, okay, let me review where you get how you filter the list and what you said in the mailer. So I provide the criteria that they target and I work with the Land Maverick members to figure that out. So we'll do market research together. We have kind of a standardized criteria that we target and we customize member by member based on what their goals are and so on.

But at this stage, because I've been working with them for, I don't know, a year and a half or something, and I've repeatedly seen dozens of other clients and I've done the in-depth checks and what have you, I kind of just trust their system. I tell obviously the Land Maverick member to make sure that, to cross-reference stuff, walk through things with the staff there. But at this stage, I kind of just trust them to do their thing because they haven't disappointed people. Send enough amount of mail, and that's a big key. Gone are the days of sending out 2,000 units of mail and getting a deal. I think you at bare minimum need to be no less than 3,000, 3,500. But as long as you send out ample mail size within one to three campaigns, you're off to the races.

And sometimes things you do on the front end. Maybe your letter is off or maybe you use a weird logo or maybe you would be better off not using a picture as opposed to including a picture on your direct mail letter. There are some things when you're first getting started to kind of tweak and refine, but that's more on like a coaching land operator side as opposed to Supercharged Offers.

Seth: I can say that actually I noticed this with REI PrintMail when I was talking to them a few episodes back. There's a huge benefit to taking this portion of your business, whether it's just direct mail or like all of it, like every possible acquisition funnel and just being like, if something's not working, just say, look, this isn't working, figure it out. Why is this not working? Give me suggestions or what can I do to make the warm leads come in as opposed to just being completely on your own, when you're kind of just like guessing around and poking around in the dark, you don't really know what's not working.

But with something like Supercharged Offers is where they're doing this for, I would presume many different land investors. And they kind of have their hand on the pulse of like, we know that this is working and we can track these results over here. You know, you've made it big as a boss when you can just yell at somebody, “Figure it out!” and hang it up. So if you're able to just say that to Supercharged Offers, it's kind of a nice luxury to have.

I don't know if that's exactly how it works, but is that how it works? Like, if things aren't working, can you kind of just throw it in their lap and tell them to figure it out? Or what of that process is on you to figure it out versus they will step in and figure it out for you?

Jaren: So I think it's not as extreme as you just figured out, but it's more know or if they're in one of their review calls and Alicia is running in and says, hey, your conversion rate's a lot lower than what's average or what we should expect. I think we need to kind of go back to the drawing board and assess a couple of things. And then they'll give different template options for different mail pieces. They'll think through. Maybe we readjust the logo or maybe we use a local number.

But where I think I step in as kind of a coach and lead educator at Land Maverick Society, that's where you can kind of get to that point of like boss level. Just go figure it out. Between me and Supercharged Offers, we kind of get you going.

Drew: Jaren, are most of your students, they're receiving the calls and they don't use PAT Live or an answering service. Most of your students are receiving seller leads themselves?

Jaren: Yeah. So I recommend people, especially in the beginning, to have everything go to a pre-recorded voicemail. This is how I learned the land business from the REtipster Masterclass. And I think from a workflow standpoint, it's best to have everything go to a voicemail and then try to call back people with an offer in hand. Especially when I'm training people and I have to meet with people to run Land ID and run comps before generating the offer amount, it's a lot easier to manage that way.

Now there are people who kind of, I guess, quote-unquote, graduate or evolve in their land business that will handle the calls, take some calls live. I do think that with texting you kind of have to like you're generating leads and you have to have that kind of initial filtering between the noise and actual qualified leads.

But on the fence about PAT Live, I think PAT Live can work very well, but you have to do a lot of massaging. You have to be very intentional to review the calls of the call reps and to give a lot of feedback. And I have seen people come to me and be like, “Jaren, I don't know what's going on. Six months ago, all my leads dried up.” And I was like, “Oh, really? When did you start using PAT Live?” And they’re like, “Oh, six months.”

Again, I'm not saying anything negative on PAT Live.

Seth: Kind of sounds like you are.

Jaren: No, I mean, because there are people who get it to work, but the key is you can't be lazy about it.

To your point about how detailed do you need to be with a third-party person? In regards to the conversation we had earlier on Supercharged Offers, it's very important to make sure that if you use PAT Live, that you are all hands on deck in the beginning and that you're auditing calls and providing feedback and ensuring the lead quality or the process quality, I guess you could say.

Drew: And then getting back to that very quickly is extremely important. So in my business, I instruct my team, you need to get back with seller leads within 24 hours, ideally within a few hours. And with buyer leads, we need to answer within 10 minutes or we need to respond within 10 minutes.

And then I was in Travis King, I'm in one of his group coachings right now because I just love, never stop learning. I've spent close to 100 grand on education and it's never going to stop. So I was in one of his meetings yesterday and he was saying, if you don't feel like you are great at converting seller leads, the way you can make up for it is just by being more consistent than your competition, by following up more, being more prompt. Because a lot of the competition, you can test them out. So message your competition, pretend like you're a buyer or seller lead and see how long it takes them to get back with you. Usually it's multiple days in a row.

Seth: Well, I was just going to say, for anybody who listens to these podcasts consistently, you're probably noticing. What I've also noticed is that this follow-up issue comes up again and again and again.

Everybody who's making this work consistently says that how important follow-up is. That's kind of what wins this game. I've even heard, I think we were talking with Ajay mentioned this in the last episode about how if they look at the number of contracts that they send out and only half of those are getting accepted or actually closed, there's some kind of an issue with follow-up. Like you can spend nothing more on marketing and just improve your follow-up process and double your business, potentially.

And a lot of people, I get offers all the time from people, and when I try to follow up with them, they don't answer the phone, they don't call me back, they don't respond to emails and do anything. It's like people have this idea that if I just push these buttons on the computer, money will start flowing in my bank account. But it's like you're flushing money down the drain, like you're starting a process and not closing the loop. It's like, why would you do that? That's crazy. But a lot of people just unconsciously apparently think that.

Drew: So we all have that skill inside of us. So think back to your childhood before texting was a thing. How did you get to play with your friend? You had to pester them. You had to call them five to ten times and figure out when they were getting home from soccer practice. So what I would do is I would call my friend every 15 minutes and just wait till they got home. Right? And it drove the grandma nuts because the grandma had to deal with seven-year-old Drew calling all the time.

Think of it like that. We all have that skill set inside of us to follow up almost to the extent where we're annoying the seller lead. But we've all done it in the past and we can do it again.

Jaren: I want to say how important that is. I want to very strongly emphasize what Drew just said because I run into a lot of different personality types. And the people that are afraid of bothering people, whether me as a coach or seller leads or even canvassing for land specialized agents, they struggle. You got to get rid of that. You're in a sales-oriented business. Even though it's weird because we're buying property, it's still sales. And I promise you, you got to throw that out the window. If you're bothering somebody, they're going to tell you to go kick dirt and then you can not con them anymore. But until they say that, be very aggressive.

And I do want to say there is a line there because you don't want to be, like, calling every 15 minutes like seven-year-old Drew. But twice a day follow up, three times a day follow up. Ajay Sharma's famous double dial, where you call him and then what goes to voicemail, hang up, call him again. All those things are really important for you to be successful.

And I do want to circle back a little bit to the PAT Live conversation. I think a lot of why PAT Live may struggle or why there may be an issue there is because people are responding to a letter and they're expecting you to be familiar with the property already and to have an offer in hand. And when you call into a call center and they're gathering property details, that really kind of jars the seller lead.

And I just want to say, principal level, you're going to be far better off having an offer in hand as much as you can before reaching out to the seller leads because that's going to streamline things. I would not really approach the initial call for gathering data. You can get that data on different software websites and different platforms. You want to call the seller to build rapport, number one, and then to talk about your offer amount. And I really strongly encourage people to frame the conversation around the offer.

Seth: You guys know Joe Roberts from Landcaller.com?

Jaren: No.

Seth: Yeah, I interviewed him a few episodes ago. He really gave me a very good, clear understanding on how they do cold calling.

Anyway, it's basically a cold calling call center, but the process they follow. It's episode 168, if anybody wants to listen to that. So basically it's a three phone call process. And the first phone call is coming from that call center because that's the lowest value task because you're going to call lots of people. Some people won't answer, some people won't be a warm lead. But basically that first call is to establish is this a motivated seller or not.

The second call, that's then where you jump in as a land investor, and that's where you're building rapport and you're figuring out specifics of the property, getting any questions answered. But that offer is not made on that second call.

You then come back on a third call, and that's when you make the offer after you've built rapport, after you kind of know the person and the situation, and it's kind of been through a lot of this filtering screening process already, and you're much more likely to get a positive response. And even if the answer is no, it's not like a “I hate you” kind of answer. It's not like what you'd get with direct mail because you sort of know each other already and you're humanized very much more.

And going through this three call process is something that pretty much no other land investor out there is doing right now. It's very unusual for somebody to go through all those stages, but apparently it's working really well for the people that are doing that. And it makes wonder you generous saying, like, with that first call back, like have an offer ready. Do you think it would help to, I don't know, build rapport first and then have a third call or any thoughts on that?

Jaren: I don't think it would be beneficial. Obviously, it's working for them and I'm not questioning their success or any of that, but I probably would shy away from that depending on how quickly those three different calls are taking place. Because while they're building rapport, I would come in with a strong offer day one, and we're talking numbers again. You have to be good at the phone. That's one of our core skill sets as a land investor and good at building rapport and what have you.

But if I come in and I'm just as nice or equally as nice and I have an offer ready, they're going to proceed faster with me than with that other person. Of course, if they have stronger rapport with me, it's a competition. I get all that. But Ajay actually had an epiphany in his land business talking to my wife, Asia. He was taking too long to get offers out, and after he heard that my wife can comp and get back with an offer within about 15 minutes of analysis, it was a complete pivot in his business. You can talk to him about it.

But we were actually, I think, indoor county at our famous retreat between Ajay, Peter Nukasani, and Drew and me. And that was a big shift. And I think that from a KPI standpoint, you really should double down on offers made and really focus on getting more and more offers out. Statistically, the more offers you make, the more deals you're going to have. And maybe that's an oversimplification, because you have to factor in variables like making sure that they're accurate and so on and so forth.

But Ajay even has kind of highlighted past mastermind groups and things we've been a part of. He has this system in place where he offers his VAs, get to, like, 70% accuracy, and then goes 20% down, and then 20% above cuts it in half, 50% on the dollar, and then that's the offer range. And on the rare occasion, they have to go back and renegotiate.

But having a simplified system that allows, whether they're Filipino-based VAs or other people on the team, to get more and more offers out. So over the long run, even if on the rare occasion they have to go back and renegotiate or lose the deal because they offer too much, it still gets them getting more offers out.

So I would personally beg to differ, respectfully, to that guy.

But, I mean, it depends on how many. If it's day-to-day, if it's lead comes in and then you're calling, like, three days in a row, sure, it probably could work, and it probably would be good. And he has the results for us. I could be very wrong.

Seth: Do you guys do cold calling at all?

Drew: I do want to clarify real quick the equation, because you went through that real quick. So let's say Ajay's team, they're 70% sure the parcel is worth 100 grand, then they go 20% below that (correct me if I'm wrong, Jaren), they go 20% below that. So 80, then they offer half of 80. And that, statistically, they found, is a sweet spot for getting enough accepted contracts and also being safe enough.

Jaren: I could misunderstand, but I think they also do the high range, too. So they would bump up between 80 and 120. Ajay, I wish you were here to clarify this.

Seth: Yeah, man.

Jaren: And then cut that in half. So it would be 40 to 60 would be your offer range.

Drew: Oh, I see. Okay, that makes more sense.

I do want to brag about Jaren for a bit. He's one of the few people I've met in this business that truly cares about every single person he interacts with. And so there'll be plenty of days where I know he's extremely busy, but he knows that I'm stressed out or bothered about something in my personal life or even professionally, and he will take the time to help me work through it, and he does that for his students as well.

So thank you, Jaren, for who you are as a person, and I'm excited to hang out with you.

Jaren: Thank you, Drew. I really appreciate the kind words, and I really love working with you. You know, I think that you are an incredible human being. You're one of the really leading with generosity, really caring about. Know the feeling is very mutual.

But I really want to highlight Seth before we jump off since we're loving each other right now.

Seth, I owe you. So Land Maverick. Society wouldn't exist without you, who I am today. I look in the past of my life, and you're one of the key people that really mentored me and smooth out the wrinkles, as they say. And I think the entire land investing community is better because you and REtipster are here. And honestly, none of this be here without you.

And, you know, I kind of feel weird talking about all this stuff on the REtipster podcast, because in a lot of ways, I feel like it's a baby of the REtipster Community. So just really appreciate you.

Drew: I'll never forget when you spent time hung out with me in my car when we were waiting for that river cruise to start. It was like having a celebrity in my car for a whole hour and we got to hang out.

Seth: That was fun, man.

Drew: And, Seth, you're always willing to spend that extra moment with someone when you know it will really impact them. So thank you for that.

Seth: Yeah, I appreciate both you guys, and thanks for highlighting the good things about each other as well. It's good to just hear the mutual love and appreciation. And I can echo the same thing as Jaren.

I know in our time together, I mean, you're absolutely a very caring person, and I've seen you show that love to me and a lot of other people. It's unusual, but it's a good kind of unusual, for sure.

And Drew, we've interacted not as much as me and Jaren have, but in our interactions, I've seen you to be a great leader in the cohort that we were in. You had a lot of great things to say, and I almost felt like you were a better leader of the room than I was. You just kind of knew how to control the tempo of the conversation and when to interject and when to comment and when to let people talk. And I don't know if that's something you were just born with or if it came from the army or what, but you could probably write some kind of leadership book at some point if you wanted to. That'd be interesting to see. If you ever do that.

Jaren: You're the best at navigating human psychology compared to anybody else that I've ever met. You are the absolute GOAT. You're great at that leadership influence. You're fantastic.

Seth: Thank you, gentlemen. Awesome.

Well, again, if people want to check out Jaren and Drew, are there specific websites or something they should go to or what's the best way to learn more about what you guys are doing?

Jaren: LandMavericks.com for me, Drew, what about you?

Drew: Just find me on Facebook. Andrew Haney, send me a message. Love to talk with you.

Seth: Do you find that people search more for Drew Haney or Andrew Haney?

Drew: I need to figure that out because I'm usually called both names and I need to brand myself as one. I think Drew Haney sounds better, but Andrew Haney is my legal name. And so we'll see.

Maybe by the time this airs, I'll be Drew Haney on Facebook. Maybe find me as Drew Haney.

Seth: Cool. Well, thanks again. Appreciate great to hear your insights and the updates on what's going on in your business.

And again, I'll have links to a lot of the stuff we talked about. Supercharged Offers, PropStream, DataTree, all these different things in the show notes. The REtipster Podcast 171.

Thanks, everybody. I'll talk to you next time.