Clay Hepler: The Land Man

Brandon Parker00:00The Legends of Lanzhou, Brandon Parker, deconstruct the tactics of world class land investors and learn tools to build a 7 figure land business. The Legends of Land Show starting now. This is Brandon Parker. Welcome to another episode of the Legends of Land Show where it's my job to deconstruct world class land investors, how they think about their business and approach strategy. My guest today is Clay Hepler, who started building a real estate portfolio using the BRRRR method and then pivoted into land investing where he created a multimillion dollar business on the back of great processes and top notch sales skills.

Brandon Parker00:41He also has a very personal and honest connection with every land seller that he works with. You can find Clay online at Twitter and on Instagram at Clay Hepler. He also has the website Hepler Land Holdings, plus he has the Landman newsletter and the Landman podcast. In this conversation, we cover what's the difference between a hobbyist and an operator, his sales skills and how he built a 7 figure business, and his killer marketing machine. Also, why cash is king, how that plays into the land business, and how to manage and qualify inbound leads.

Brandon Parker01:15Plus, towards the end, we talk about a premium partnership announcement that is coming to all of us soon. So without further ado, please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Clay Hepler. Alright, Clay. Welcome to the show. Let's start with, what do you think the difference between a hobbyist and an operator is?

Clay Hepler01:35The difference to me between a hobbyist and an operator is seen in like everyday life. Right? Have you ever gotten into a Uber? And when you got in that Uber, there was a Uber driver that ignored you. His back was a little bit... The back of the car was a little bit dirty. He was playing his own music. Maybe he's on the phone. I know sometimes you see the people with their little headsets on and they're on their phone and they're talking to their friend and they just ignore you.

Clay Hepler02:08Right? They're doing the job, but they're just ignoring you. It might be the their primary profession, but they're just not there. You get into that Uber and you see a strobe light in the background, five or six screens in front of you, and there's, like, different playing screens. You got... You have kid that'll perfect for them. And they're asking you questions and they'll say, hey. What brings you to New York City? What brings you to Los Angeles? What brings you to Miami? And they're asking you all these questions and they're engaged and they have different things along the way to say, hey.

Clay Hepler02:39If you think this is a valuable experience, you're Uber ride. Make sure to give me a five star review. It would really help me out. Maybe give me a tip. Asking for a fake. Being fully present. The difference between a hobbyist and an operator is someone that takes their shit seriously. That takes total ownership of the outcomes of whatever they are doing. A hobbyist and an operator could be someone that works out in the gym. Maybe you see someone listening to a podcast and they're working out. You maybe see him doing a bench press. Right? And they're just there, but they're not present.

Clay Hepler03:12They're not fully engaged. And so how that manifests in the land business is, if you go and attack every part of your business and say how can this be better? How can I take total ownership of this outcome? How can I have a standard, a level of the highest level that I could possibly have? That is the mark of a operator. So commitment, presence, and an engagement with I own the outcomes is for me is when you said that, was like, right away. That is exactly the difference between a hobbyist and an operator.

Brandon Parker03:45I love that. And so does that go into other parts of your life outside of land? I imagine it does. And what's that look like?

Clay Hepler03:56Yeah. So my wife told my wife, I she's just my absolute the light of my life, and I respect her very deeply in many ways. She has a story that she told me that really impacted her life, and she she lives this way and really taught me this. When she was in, I think she's like seven or eight. This teacher looked at her, and she said, you're either gonna go to jail or you're gonna fail out of her class.

Clay Hepler04:28And she gave this sort of quip. When we hear this quip is very cliche, but how you do one thing is how you do everything right? And it's impacted her throughout her whole life. And when we got into a relationship, just noticed these certain things that she did, but everything that she does is like to be up those excellence that could be executed. So if you're working out, you're putting the barbells back when you use them. Right? The things that people don't actually notice, but you have that standard, the ownership of how I do one thing is how I do everything, right?

Clay Hepler05:01And so how that shows up, losing track of McWise did right to the thought of this story, but like how you do one thing, whether it's showing up for a podcast interview, whether it's showing up for maybe you don't like your mother-in-law as much as you... Yeah. Yeah. You're supposed to. Right? But you still bring your full self when you're with her. Right? Or whether it's working out or eating right or doing whatever you think is the right thing or taking care of your kids or going the extra mile. How you do one thing is how you do everything. Right? And so that's how it shows up.

Clay Hepler05:31I think that as an operator, if you are an operator as a human being, you can't be an operator, right? You could be a hobbyist. You can be someone's cuts around and like lives by the law of accidents. Shit just hits hits the fan and you're like, oh, well, I'm gonna have to deal with it today instead of getting in front of it. Instead of taking total ownership of the outcome instead of saying how I do this.

Brandon Parker05:52Whatever it is, how I do one thing is how I do everything. And so I don't know if that really necessarily answer your question. But Yeah. That does answer my question. That puts a good note on it and gives a good... People a good idea of how you live your life and probably what that means about how you run your business. And interestingly enough, I started to read some Nietzsche lately. He has this concept of the Ubermensch or the Overman, and it's that concept of finding meaning in life by pursuing your own greatness. And, like, the idea of being a little bit better each day and striving towards something gives us some sort of meaning through the pain or difficulties.

Brandon Parker06:29And and so that lines up with what you're saying. Absolutely.

Clay Hepler06:33Mhmm. Mhmm. I agree. Yeah. So

Brandon Parker06:36with that idea of full accountability, let's talk about Thanksgiving twenty twenty two. Yeah.

Clay Hepler06:42So this is not, this is the day that I knew that I had to go all in on landfill. So the day before Thanksgiving, my wife was working out and I was working, of course, right? And my wife gives me a call in the middle of the day. And she calls me up and and when she when I pick up that phone, I know that my wife is working out and I know that she's she does not call people when she works out. She listens to music.

Clay Hepler07:13She's fully focused. So I knew something was wrong and she called me. It was just totally hysterical. And she doesn't really... She doesn't cry like that. In the middle of the day, you're like, something's going to be wrong and someone's hysterical on the end of... On the end of the phone. And we find out that the company that she was working for, she was making a very good salary, went under. So her boss had a bunch of investors that were going to invest in the company and keep it afloat, and they pulled out. And one day it was all sunshine and rainbows and the next boom dawned.

Clay Hepler07:51That was the day. Then I had to decide. What I was going to do to make money for my family full on full out because previous to that, you know, we talked about this earlier. I was buying older apartment buildings from my city. It we had 1,900 vintage apartment buildings. Right? So I had this dream of building this portfolio of apartment buildings, right? And living up the cash flow, right? The bigger pockets way. Yeah. And I could do that and I knew that I could do it in a couple of years and I would bury these buildings and I would pull out some equity and have some and have a little bit of cash flow.

Clay Hepler08:25But what happened was I didn't realize that real estate, like when you have tenants and toilets, it's a lot more than just buying the asset. Real estate is actually mostly managing up the asset. So we had all these older buildings. We bought 65 units in a year, right, from nothing. And we were burning these buildings and flipping and doing all this stuff. We had the box gutters, the cast iron pipe, terracotta sewer lines, plaster lock walls, the boilers, the buildings that were built in.

Clay Hepler08:57So they're like sagging because they're on the side of a hill because the city that I live it lived in was like half on the hill, half down on the hill. Moisture issues, mold. I mean everything that could go wrong. And so we had all these CapEx that just kept coming and coming. And I didn't really realize it because she has such a great salary. We weren't relying on this income. And so I was blinded. Number one, was immature. I didn't really know. I was thinking about the bigger pockets way if I could cash flow my way through early retirement.

Clay Hepler09:29I shortly realized that what happens when you have a $20,000 sewer one month, the next month you got to replace your three tap shingles with box gutters and it costs $40,000 That security blanket that you had, that you thought you had in your business, is extinguished. And so I knew on that day that I had to find another way to produce revenue for my family. Because the next year, I'm sure we'll talk about this later. But the next year, I was getting married.

Clay Hepler10:01I had to pay for my wedding because my parents couldn't afford it. Her parents couldn't afford it. I had to pay for my life. We recently acquired a vacation property in Colorado that had a 5 figure mortgage, right? It wasn't doing that well. And so at that moment, I had to look at myself and say, I gotta produce money. I gotta produce revenue.

Brandon Parker10:25That's wild. So there's something about your back being against the wall and producing for your family that is maybe the ultimate driver for business people. A lot of you hear this story. It's almost like a repeating story, and it's beautiful. Talk about what happened. So you got into land flipping. You 10x ed your income. Well, what ended up happening? Like, how did that transition go? And I'm just throwing that number out there to know how... If that happened, how quickly. I know eventually that happened. But talk about that transition.

Clay Hepler10:56Yeah. And I wanna just emphasize that there's a survivorship bias that occurs when you are successful against all odds. It doesn't necessarily apply to everyone. In fact, most people don't make it. I don't believe in burning the boats and going all in on anything. I think that you should have a security blanket before you do that, especially if there are other people like a child, like a spouse, or other people that are depending on you for their income.

Clay Hepler11:30So if I could have gone back and and done it again, I wouldn't have done it the way that I did it. It was so stressful. It was the hardest year of my life. I work harder ninety hour weeks every week. Every single week. It was... I had to pay for all this stuff. I had to get a land business off the ground in one of the most competitive, if not the most competitive markets as, right, 2023 that there's ever been inland. More people are getting into it. People are doing these old models of land flipping and setting up stupid offers and sellers missed expectations.

Clay Hepler12:07Interest rate had been low for such a long period of time. Sellers were expecting higher priced offers, and so they're waiting out higher priced offers. There wasn't the friction yet in the market that there is today as a higher motivated seller. And so I was getting in the land flipping market in the hardest time with the worst conditions. Right? Like, I had a certain amount of money that I could live on and I could get into the land business. So I bought a couple of courses like you did. Right? And I had to jump in. Right?

Clay Hepler12:37So I I mean, I was your question. How did I get started? What was the original journey? Like, what?

Brandon Parker12:44I I don't got it going off on a tangent. No. That's actually... That information is clutch right there because I think that you can see people be successful on land and think that I'm gonna hop in here and get this done. It's gonna be easy, but it's... I think that is a big misconception about land, especially because of all the courses of the easy entry. Come in here. Send a 100 blind offers with this minimal commitment. Start flipping $5,000 properties.

Brandon Parker13:14Get your cash flow up, and then jump into $70,000 properties, and you're gonna be rich. And I think that because the entry level courses are so prominent that a lot of people get pulled in with the hobbyist mentality as opposed to the operator mentality, and it is a grind. And so... Yeah. So putting a pin on what you said there, I like that. My question is just around maybe how you transitioned. Like, how did you get started? What did you... You took some courses. What were your first flips like?

Brandon Parker13:45And then how'd you ramp up to where you are now? Yeah. I mean, the first flips was sending sending mailers to info lots of Florida. Exactly.

Clay Hepler13:53Yeah. And I remember one campaign that we had instead. And when I say we have you me, but we... I set this campaign. I got like a 10% response rate. I'm like, I'm the best marketing genius in the world. Mhmm. And so I do my due diligence. And in Florida, for those people who are not... Or in a lot of markets, but specifically in Florida, What happened in the 60s, 70s, 80s is these developers went down and bought all this swampland. Okay, and they would parcel this swampland out.

Clay Hepler14:25They'd subdivide this swampland and they put sub roads in and maybe utilities, maybe not, but they parcel this shit out and go up to Chicago, New York, Washington DC, Boston, outside of Florida. Right? There wasn't the technology, the the access as there was today and say, let me sell you this piece of land for $10,000 at your retirement home in Florida. And there's so much extra income at that point that people are like, I'll I'll do it. No problem. And so these people sold all these lots in Florida in swamplands, and now there's all these, like, protections, like ecological protections or wetland protections that...

Clay Hepler15:07Because fetus flytraps or or some other, like, local plants are endangered, And so you can't build on these lots. And so there's thousands thousands of useless lots in Florida. Right? And a lot of people make a living in Florida, 7 figures, 8 figures, whatever. But I sent a bunch of mailers to a lot of these counties. And so my first couple of mailers worked fails. Right? I got one deal, Landmark Lane, Santa Rosa County. I bought this deal.

Clay Hepler15:38Oh, man. Think I bought it for 20,000. Used a line of credit on my house and sold it for 39,000. Something like that. Dude, I was like, oh my gosh. I made this money. I sold it four months, three months, four months, which at at that point, I was holding on to everything. I was like, I can't believe this. So I got all my money back, got some of my initial marketing dollars back, and made some money. And I was like, oh my gosh. But they would've take some money off the off the table, and I was like, wow.

Clay Hepler16:09This is great. And at that point, my wife and I were house hacking. We had three unit building. We were living in this three unit building, so our housing cost was paid for. So we were able to start pulling cash out to pay for our life, etcetera. And and so that was my first marketing gift, and it's sent to all these small players in the middle of Florida. And I I did okay. I bought a couple of parcels, made a little bit of money, but it was the belief that was I could do this. I I could do this. In Florida, Infowatts, I mean, of those that don't know, they're, like, the most competitive landscape that you could possibly find in land.

Clay Hepler16:46It's so competitive. But it doesn't matter if you price or get good enough sales skills, if you think through your direct mail pieces, all these things, going back to being an operator, that you could build these marketing campaigns and you could find these deals and... Oh my gosh. I did it. I did it. And I I remember when we sold that deal on Landmark Lane, I switched my real estate broker. Right? Because I was, like, freaking out. This real estate broker that I had, he was this Australia guy, and he, like, completely ignored.

Clay Hepler17:16That's another thing about real estate purposes. Sold me this dream because I didn't know how to pick a real estate broker. He, like, completely ignored me after the fact. And I and I found this other lady who'd been selling real estate down there for a while. And I broke my contract with this broker and found this other lady. She sold it. It was awesome. And I'll and I remember talking to my wife and. She was like, woah. You just flipped a piece of land and made funny. I said.

Brandon Parker17:46We're gonna do this. We're gonna do this, man. We're gonna do this. That's amazing. That's amazing. Why do you think that in competitive markets, it's still possible to do deals fairly regularly? You mentioned some things in there with sales and marketing. What's that look like?

Clay Hepler18:07Yeah. So there are two things in my opinion that builds a very successful land flipping business, right? Two levers that you can pull to be very successful. First lever is market selection. Picking the right markets that can sell quickly, that maybe have this perfect sell quickly, but not super competitive. It's a perfect balance. Right? And it's this like concoction that some people gar close to them. Because market selection is the ballgame in that aspect. But when leads come in and you're a good salesperson, you can convert more leads per lead that comes in versus the next person.

Clay Hepler18:48And so if you can close more deals, even if it's competitive, you can create

Brandon Parker18:57lemons or lemonade out of lemons. And so these two levers that if you can master market selection and sale, even if it's the most competitive market, you can still do well. And and so if you can master those, that's the key to 60. And if you're willing to talk about market selection strategy, go ahead or talk about what a good salesperson looks like and what those follow ups and those conversations look like. Well, just to be fair. I hate Marcus selection more than anything,

Clay Hepler19:28right? And it's the overhead in the land business that you need to do. You need to get good at it. It's such a high leverage activity that I still do to this day. And so I have people that price my mailers. I have a whole sales team, but finding the markets are so important. Right? Eventually, I'll give it up. It's probably a scarcity mindset of the reason why I haven't given up yet. But I hate market selection. So you might ask me about it, but I'm probably not gonna be the best person on market selection relative to maybe the top data analyst whomever in the world just because I don't have a bend towards it.

Clay Hepler20:09I'm good at market selection. Doesn't mean I'm the best. Right? For sales, I've built sales teams and I've done sales. I've been in sales my entire professional career. Right? I used to sell chocolate. I used like to big hotel chains. Right? The Omni Hotel chain, private aviation groups, wealth managers, small businesses, which is the hardest shit to sell to because these specialty shops in the middle of nowhere are pure. Like I have to sell bringing this inventory to replace your inventory. Like how do I do that?

Clay Hepler20:40How do I justify it? And so that's really hard selling. And then I did sales. I mentioned this to you earlier, but build a wholesaling house flipping company did sales in that. So I think the the Paul made for me is on those earlier calls. I was on the calls and I'm just closing deals, right? I know how to close deals because of my experience. And when you don't when it's out of necessity, you follow-up like an absolute fanatic. Like I'm calling people at 09:05 at night, because I need to get this deal done.

Clay Hepler21:17And it's hard to replicate that in the salespeople that you bring in, let me just say that. But at the beginning, I was getting on these calls and I was going against other land investors that might have been in the business for ten years, but I'm like, I don't care. Like I'm going to win this sale. And so that's what's important, especially early on for me, because I was just like, I need to close these deals because I have to pay for my life. It was total necessity. It wasn't like, oh, I can wait till tomorrow.

Clay Hepler21:47Like, someone that might be in a corporate scenario because I have this other income. I was like, dude, no. Like, everyday, Mavs. Because every day gets closer to my wedding. Every day gets closer to the next month's paycheck. Every day gets closer to whatever.

Brandon Parker22:02I have this thing that I tell a lot of our clients. It's if you have a lead, you're talking to them about selling their property. That's the most important thing you're doing right now. All the other distractions, all the other leads coming in, all the other marketing, etcetera, like laser focus and just continue calling them, call them the next day, call them the next day, get an answer. Like, it's far easier to take a deal from from almost there to closed than it is to start all the way over, try to find a brand new deal, bring it in. Like, you're almost there.

Brandon Parker22:34There's gotta be this, like, killer instinct to push it over the line, put it in the end zone, put it in the paint. That's what the whole game is. It comes out of that very last push.

Clay Hepler22:42And I think a lot of people overlook that. And Yeah. So Yeah. What I would say related to this is that I think about my business like a conveyor belt. Right? So I send out marketing. Okay? And and the faster I can convert my marketing dollars into profit, the faster I can scale. Okay? So if the the... This is called the cash conversion cycle. And this is very present in any business. And we're an inventory based business, right, would make no mistake. Our whole business is taking inventory that we acquire and maybe it's acquiring for investment fund that we convert that inventory to profit, Right?

Clay Hepler23:17The finished inventory is whatever we sell it for. Right? And so our ability to reduce our cash conversion cycle increases our ability to sale. It increases our profit. Right? Because if I can sell something in from when I send the marketing out to when they close in ninety days versus a hundred and eighty days, I can do that twice in a year. I can make more money with the same amount of dollars that I put in marketing dollars. I can put more money in. I could scale quicker. And so we use that to define our sales process in my business.

Clay Hepler23:48What does that mean? That means when a lead comes in, we get on the phone with them. We get on the phone with them. We do everything we can to get on the phone with them as fast as possible. We And do everything we can to get them to a hell yes or a hell no as fast as possible. Right? And we are very forthcoming about that. Right? I am on the call with you to see if this is gonna be a good fit for you and me. Essentially, is what we say. Right? We can get into scripting later if it's if it's helpful. Right? But we are trying to get to a yes or a no very quickly.

Clay Hepler24:21Why? Because the value of a lead to us decreases over time. If I'd have... If it takes me fifteen calls to get get a hold of someone, right, versus two, that is more expensive to me. Because I'm spending the time of my acquisitions people to track this person down. Right? That... Think about all of those amount of calls that we're making out to this person, that could take two weeks, three weeks, whatever it is, however long it takes you to make those 15 calls, if we can convert those 15 calls to two calls or to three calls, we can close the gap between when we get this deal under contract or when we say, hey, we'll put you on follow-up and we'll reach out to you in three months.

Clay Hepler25:04And so our acquisitions people can laser focus on the opportunities that come through our funnel and convert those opportunities quicker. So we're like, we gotta move this conveyor belt as quickly as possible, a to z, when these deals come in. Because we wanna get them to a hell yes or a hell no, so that we can convert the opportunities, or we can say, hey. It's not gonna be a good sit. Maybe you're looking for market value. Maybe it's just not the right sit at this current state. Maybe we can't do what we're we're looking to do here, and so we refer to someone else. Whatever it is, we wanna get Brandon to that level, that hell yes or that hell no immediately or as quickly as we possibly can.

Brandon Parker25:39That makes sense. So you've got hell yes. Let's talk pricing, and let's negotiate a contract, and that goes to someone else. You're... That goes to you or that goes to the closer or who's that go to? Closer. Yeah. I am... Sometimes I get in when it gets a little complicated. Right? But I I have closers. I I have two closers. And then you've got a... Maybe it's not the right timing. They want market price, and you say, And then you put them in a drip sequence three months, six months, year long, and they're just there over time until the timing's right. What...

Brandon Parker26:09What's a disqualification? Not the property owner, no road frontage. Like, what types of things do you just kick them out of your CRM and don't deal with them ever again? Sure. So

Clay Hepler26:19exactly what most people would say. Right? The the wetlands, the floodplains, the non buildable area, the unrealistic price, the person that's not the actual owner, all the things that you would think of that would be detractors of what a motivated seller would be, we still eliminate them.

Brandon Parker26:41So unrealistic price. You don't touch with them in a year and see if anything changed to for sure.

Clay Hepler26:48Have a very extensive follow-up process of getting on top of that. When we when someone has unrealistic price, we will pitch a double close. We will pitch a terms offer. We'll try to pitch those sort of opportunities, but there's this scale of motivation that we have to understand when we're having a conversation with the seller that land is a very low intent, low motivation deal, right?

Clay Hepler27:20Most of you sellers have owned these properties for twenty years and they don't have a lot of motivation. They got a letter in the mail or they got cold call from landy leads, right? And they're like, yeah, sure. I'll take it off or whatever. But if there is no clear motivation underneath the surface, I'm gonna pay for my daughter's graduation. Really? Could use some money for an additional on my house. I'm thinking about going to Vegas and betting it all in black by him on Friday, whatever their motivation is, right? If it's not detectable and we're not aligned on price, we're going to, we're going to disqualify that person pretty quickly and we're going be very straightforward and forthcoming about this doesn't sound like it's the right deal.

Clay Hepler27:59And that's why we disqualify people quickly. And then we say, okay, maybe we follow-up in a month, maybe we follow-up in three months. And that's a subjective gauge based on our salesperson. And they understand scenario based follow-up. And so most people every three to six months have a life event. Whether it's moving, whether it's hey, my kid's getting gotten into this private school, I could use the money, every three to six months. Right? So we are following up with people in that time frame.

Clay Hepler28:31And because we know a life event. If you think about your life, most people... Stuff happens every three to six months. Crazy stuff happens, going through a divorce, going through whatever, and and you wanna be on top of it. You wanna be touching that person over that period of time.

Brandon Parker28:47Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And so it sounds like the main two things that you qualify for, hell yes or hell no, is do they have motivation, and are they in the ballpark on price, or are they willing to negotiate on price? Those two things, then we're gonna dig deeper. Yeah. Exactly. When your salesperson first gets them on the phone, do they have a price in mind? So it's... A lead comes in. You've sent offers. Lead comes back in. Now your salesperson's gonna call, and they call on them blind.

Brandon Parker29:18How much due diligence are they doing, and how much of an idea do they have on pricing to feel this person out in that first conversation?

Clay Hepler29:24Yeah. So we have a series of... It depends on what lead channel, first of all. So we have two... We have a setter setter and closers. Right? Direct mail leads are all closer leads. So our... Let's just give an example of a direct mail lead. So so it's universal. Direct mail leads are very high intent. They they got the letter. They're interested in selling, or they're interested in telling us that we're the worst people on the face of the earth. One of them took it right. And so my sales guys will listen to the calls and they'll basically whether it's from Pat live or live call answering service or they're calling directly to us.

Clay Hepler30:02My sales guys will listen to the call CA is persons actually motivated, not motivated. They don't leave a voicemail. We'll call back and try to get on the phone with the calling couple of times, right? To get on some. In that initial call, we are going to try to qualify them. We're going to qualify them based on. Hey, tell me about the land. Tell me about your background. What's the history of this land? Past. What happened in the past of this land? Why did you buy it? What was your regional intent? And where are you going?

Clay Hepler30:33What could be the future potential of this land? We use a series of questions, situational impact picture perfect. Why are we having this conversation? Clarifying why they're there with us. Number two, impact that that. Event that that motivation has on their life. Is this a big deal? Is this a little deal? Is it gonna change your life, or is it just convenient? Are you calling me because you're bored on a Saturday afternoon? You got a beer in your hand, or do you actually need this to pay for a certain thing?

Clay Hepler31:07And then what is your picture perfect scenario at the end of the day? Right? Is it working with a firm that is high integrity, is gonna be able to close this deal? Is it getting the most amount of money? Is it fill in the blank? Every person is a different thing. But there's a lot of similarities between what most people say. Right? And so when we understand the situation, we understand how much it impacts and we understand the picture perfect scenario, we can then craft an offer around.

Clay Hepler31:40Is this person gonna be the right person? Hey, you call... You send me a voice... A letter in the mail. I'm not... I don't really care. I'm not really that interested at selling. It doesn't really matter whether or not I sell this. I'm paying $100 a year on taxes. If you really dig into that and those are three or four questions deep and they're still saying that shit, they're not a motivated seller. They tell you that after we figure out motivation impact and how it's impacting them in the picture perfect scenario, we'll have a conversation about price.

Clay Hepler32:12We'll see if they're realistic on price. But really the reason why they're going to sell to us versus whomever down the street is we understand those situation, motivation, the deal killers better than anyone else does. And we craft an offer that's going to fit with it. And so after we go through the motivation, the situation impact, picture perfect, then we're then we're gonna focus on the deal killer. What could prevent this from happening? What could be the reasons why this could happen? Maybe you're uncomfortable with us. Maybe you got an uncle that has a grave on the site.

Clay Hepler32:43Maybe you add on paid homage to it twenty year. Gotta go down there one last time. It's Bryce ashes over the grape. Whatever it is. Right? You got it. You gotta talk to influencers about that. There's a lot of other things that could be deal killers that could prevent us from doing a deal. So we're gonna figure out what those deal killers are, and there could be deal killers that take them from a motivated seller to a non motivated seller. What could that be? It could be someone say, I've been in a lawsuit with my cousin for fifteen years over this land, and there is no way that I'm gonna be able to sell this.

Clay Hepler33:21Yeah. And you dig deep. You actually dig deep and say, is this true or is this not true? You ask the right questions. You see how much it's impacting them. Try to figure it out. If there's nothing there, Brandon, there's nothing there. And you say this is not a motivated seller. We either mark them dead. We'll say, hey. We'll follow-up with them in a little bit. But we're trying to figure out the quick wins. Right? Because we're in this business for a long and so we want to build up a list of people that we can continue to market to after they've opted it to our market.

Clay Hepler33:53And so I know that was a lot, but that was a high level view of our sales process on that initial qualification call.

Brandon Parker34:02Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. You want those quick wins that are... This is gonna be something we wanna put more time into get this deal done. These other people going into an extensive follow-up campaign where when their life situation changes, we'll just crush it at that point. And then that makes your database more valuable over time with that. You're opening the top of the funnel, putting as many people into it as possible, getting the wins now, but then the extra benefit is that you're building this giant database of people that when their life situation changes, they're gonna pop back up in your system.

Brandon Parker34:35That's right. And that's... Yeah. That's beautiful. Talk about the so I've talked to one of the biggest real estate wholesalers in The States, and his salespeople will pull a property up online as they're talking to the seller, and they will price it in almost do quick due diligence as they're having the sales call, which surprised me. What's your research look like before this... The setter gets on that sales call?

Clay Hepler35:08So if we're using the direct mail examples, the direct mail example, there is no setter. It's just the acquisition person that closer because they were gonna take that person from there today. We wanna offer same day close same day if we can. And so when they're on that call, they will potentially pull up depending on the motivation of the seller. They're going to pull up and price that land, comp that land. But it's spread itself. It's not that easy to price the land, to comp the land.

Clay Hepler35:39Right? Which is why there's such an opportunity. So depending on the pricing of the copying of the land, we might have to schedule a call out. We're going to schedule appointment. We're going schedule a callback. And we're going try to do same day. Right. And then if we can do same day, we'll do it the next day or whenever it is, depending on the type of property. This is a two acre property, five bed, fifteen, twenty. Shoot, we'll figure it out. We'll be able to put it together. My sales guys can crush that. They'll just eat it up and they'll know exactly what it is even maybe on the call.

Clay Hepler36:12Right? We'd like to do two call closes because it separates. Like, I don't like one call closes because people don't... That's unsettling. It's this too easy for this person to come up with that number. Am I leaving money on the table? We never want to get the best feeling that they're leaving money on the table. We need to do our due diligence. We need to do it right. We need to really put time into it to really understand the whole situation so we can craft an offer that's gonna be a solution to their problem. So later, we'll...

Clay Hepler36:43Maybe later that day, if we get the comps, we'll call them back and we'll go over the offer call. Okay. But some life will go on... To answer your question, sometimes we'll pull up the number on the call, but most of the time we'll just ask for the call, review it, or they will. My sales guys have full autonomy to close, you know, the offer on deals without me looking at it, and they'll they'll just offer.

Brandon Parker37:06Yeah. So this is something I've played with, the idea of how to see if they're willing to talk price or see if they're in the right ballpark on that first call. And I have thought of or I've attempted using a range offer. Okay. Let's say quickly looking at it. It looks like it's worth $80 and just say, towards the end of the call, with everything I've learned here, we're probably in the, you know, 40 to $50 range, but we need to put some better eyes on it and do some underwriting.

Brandon Parker37:37Is that something you wanna hear an exact offer for? And that's the technique we've been using as far as qualifying on price. What are your thoughts around... You don't... Maybe you don't know the number that well. I mean, you're just really guessing the price of this property. What are your thoughts on how to actually qualify whether they are willing to talk price and... Or they're reasonable on price?

Clay Hepler38:02So when you throw out a rage offer like that, you give up your ability to negotiate later on in the conversation. So if you're doing what you do, which is your your cold you you cold calling. Right? Yep. It could be a good qualification metric. Mhmm. But we will drop the anchor on that offer call. And so the seller... If I give someone, hey. This is gonna be for... Between 40 and 50, let's say, for an offer. What if I could get it for 35?

Clay Hepler38:35Mhmm. Mhmm. Because I know the seller shows that they are... They trust me. The seller feels that they I have their best interests at heart and I'm going to close this deal because there's a lot of people out there wholesaling deals, don't have any money and we're the people that close. I always use this as gem. Ever been in a hotel room and it is 11:00 at night, you might have gone out to sushi. I always feel this way about sushi. Right?

Clay Hepler39:06I got sushi. It's so expensive. Right? It's so expensive. I love... My wife loves sushi. We go out to sushi. Eat the sushi. I come back. I eat my sashimi, my whatever nigiri rolls, whatever it is. I get back to that hotel and I am RV. Right? It's dude, I literally ate 15 sushi rolls and I'm just. I don't know what it is about that sticky rice, but it just doesn't fill me up. And so I go on my phone, I pull up a Uber Eats and it's 11:00, right?

Clay Hepler39:39I'm looking on my Uber Eats and I say, don't want to let this, chips and whatever I want, right? I'm looking cookies, maybe I'm thinking about maybe slow cookies here and looking through this. And I look and it's like, it's $10 for me to buy these cookies that I'm thinking about buying in. Right? Insomnia cookies. Right? But it's $20 as a delivery fee. It's $20. I'm looking at this. It's $30 for three cookies.

Clay Hepler40:11It's $10 a cookie. Plus I have to tip the driver, plus there's a tax. It's $45 to get these freaking cookies. And guess what? I hate buy. Hate buy because I have greater motivation in that instance. I wanted the convenience. I could walk across the street or walk down the street some half a mile away. I'm good. But I'm back. I drank my sake or I have my cocktail. I have a full of sushi rice, and I want a little bit of sugar before I go to sleep.

Clay Hepler40:46And I don't wanna get my ass up and walk downstairs and walk outside. Yeah. And that happens to sellers. Right? If you can provide them a service, we can be the Uber Eats. Right? If we understand their situation, their motivation, why they want to work with us, we can offer them a better price. Right? We're still serving them to our highest degree possible, but we're offering them that convenience. That's why our business exists, right? That's why we can make money.

Clay Hepler41:17Period. And so if I just throw out a number and bake... Then I become a commodity. I don't become helplessly in all things. I become... Oh, what what was that guy's name that gave me a number? Jerry. I don't remember his name. He just... He... When when he called me two days ago, instead of it was Clay from Hepler Land Holdings. I love that guy. I have a relationship with that guy. And you know what?

Clay Hepler41:47We have an offer a little bit higher, But I want to close with him. And so could be wrong about this. But when we give our offers, if it's a direct mail offer, whenever. And we call it lower. We can still win offers because of that. Because of sales, because of sales training, because we can give the perfect example of that Uber Eats example. And we come in and we give them the solution to their problems with trust, with credibility, with the ability to close, confidence with rapport.

Clay Hepler42:18We win. We get that deal. We make more money.

Brandon Parker42:22I like it. So when you're qualifying for motivation and you're qualifying for willingness to negotiate on price. How do you do that? What are the tactics you use to feel them out on price to get that? Or is motivation good enough if they're not just overpriced? How do... Are you asking how do I ask for price? Yeah. How do you... No. How do you... So you have this first call and you want to see if they're motivated and you want to see if they're in the right ballpark on price. How are you figuring out if they're in the right ballpark on price if they're qualified?

Clay Hepler42:56Wait, you gotta ask them. Oh, just ask them. Hey, what do think it's worth? Well, I mean, we do, and I'm just gonna... Every land investor, I don't know how many people listen to your show, but every land investor in the world is gonna start using this. Right? What we do is when we get on that call with them, and we're at the end of that call, what we say is, okay. You'll summarize the situation, motivation. Brandon, I gotta ask you this. If you sell this to me or anyone else, you just gonna buy another piece of land?

Clay Hepler43:34You gonna buy a house with it? Oh, no. I'm gonna buy x amount of... Whatever. I'm gonna buy... I'm going to Vegas, betting it all black. I'm going to the Encore the win and getting the sweet the best sweet in the house. I'm gonna get chocolate sundae and martinis all night. Great. Great. So that's what you're planning on doing with this? Because if you ask directly, they're going to say, that's none of your business, but Mhmm. Happens all the time. That's none of your business. Yeah.

Clay Hepler44:04We built reports. She's saying in a in a way that's that's not directly talking to them. Yeah. But it still brings it up. And they'll say a certain thing that they're going to do. Right? And you got to push in to figure out what that thing is. And then when you get that thing, you ask, that's it? That's all you're looking to do? You've owned this sled for twenty years. That's all you're looking to do? Honestly, Yeah, that would be the that would be the best thing I would love to get. I've been looking to get chocolate sundaes at the Wynn forever.

Clay Hepler44:37And I've heard they have the best chocolate sundaes. And I know they're $50 apiece, but I love them when they have 50. Okay. So what hotel room at the Wynn is thousand dollars, $50. You're telling me you only need to get x amount out of this property to make you feel comfortable moving forward. Whether it's the addition on the house. Hey. Have you already talked to to Joe the carpenter about how much it's gonna cost you? Well, we haven't. I'm sure your wife has.

Clay Hepler45:08Right? Get down to the bottom of whatever they're gonna use the money for. And then you can figure out the price. So you're telling me if we can convert this land in $2, this Jordan $2 for you, and you can pay for that addition on your house, $50,000, whatever the heck it is. You wanna put that pool in the backyard in the summer, you look up, it's a beautiful day, you're tanned, you're reading your romance novel that you love, you're telling me that is what you want?

Clay Hepler45:41Yeah, if you could do that, that would be great. Dollars 50,000. Okay. Okay. Then you don't. That's what you know, you're solving the problem, whatever it is. And if they say don't have a problem, that's bullshit. They're what they're going to put it in the bank. Okay, they're going put it. I'm going put money in the retirement fund, right? They're going to put money in the retirement rate. So what's it? What's a number that that makes you feel excited? Because if I'm gonna go back to my team, I wanna make sure that I don't come back to you empty.

Clay Hepler46:15Always same side selling. Always figuring out a solution to their problems. Always knocking down the barriers between you and getting the answers that you need so that you could serve this person. And if they give you a number that's ridiculous, then you can say, okay. It's not gonna work. We're not gonna go on an offer call. We'll put you on follow-up. Maybe you'll be more motivated because in three, six months, a life event happens to anyone. And so I know I can call this person back in three, six months. It... Probably something's gonna happen, Brandon, that we can get a better price for it, or they sell it on the market.

Clay Hepler46:47And then that case, we waste a fifteen minute, twenty minute offer call. Right? Mhmm.

Brandon Parker46:54That's big time, Clay. You're clearly quality salesperson. Here, you're changing your intonation, and you're actually on the phone, and I can see your... Why you're successful. Do you teach sales? Do you teach... What do you teach as far... Or in addition to land, do you have other things going on? Do you have a course? Do you have things where people can learn some of this stuff?

Clay Hepler47:18Yeah. So not... Nothing yet. A lot of people have been reaching out to me. So I... As we found each other on Twitter. Love Twitter. Yeah. Right. Tell me. And in July, I don't know when this is Aaron, but in July, I will be launching a freemium white glove course, the landman accelerator course. Now it is not a sales based course, but you will learn how to scale a sales team, how to hire the right people. Using personality tests, using weekly trainings, daily trainings.

Clay Hepler47:51I mean it's everything. So the Laman accelerator is the aggregation, right? It's a big word. It's all the shit that I learned in the hardest market in the hardest year in my life, plus all the years thereafter to create this course of this is exactly what I did to take me from a to z in the hardest market ever. How do I build my sales team? How I build my marketing machine? How I scaled it? How I built my operations, a playbook from a to z of how to be successful.

Clay Hepler48:24Now this is one thing I wanna just say this. This is not a upsell to a direct market. Like, some people put courses out there and it's an upsell to a CRM. I don't have a CRM. I don't have... I don't even have a direct mail service. Right? I don't have an extra service, cold calling service like Landy Leads. Right? That's a standalone thing that other people have. This is purely how to go from zero to six figures. And maybe you have experience with another shitty course and you want to get a better opportunity to scale your business.

Clay Hepler48:560 to six figure in twelve months using a proven system. And then take you beyond 6 figures. This is not a this is not a three module course of how to do that. This is if you have doubts about legitimacy of other courses because the other people aren't actually practicing the business, this is the course for you. It's not the course for you if you wanna spend a thousand dollars or $2,000 and get a, outdated course that has no accountability, has no community, has no direct coaching from me, which this course will have.

Clay Hepler49:29It's not that type of course. It is a premium course. So do not expect a low price, a low entry point, because I had a profitable land flipping business. And so I'm only going to coach people that are as devoted and obsessed and relentless as I am, because I don't want to coach people who want to pay whatever amount and not be committed to the process. This is a commitment, a full on accelerator to get you from 0 to 6 figures.

Brandon Parker49:58The Landman accelerator course, that's... And you say white glove service or a white glove course. So a lot of these are... There's a very structure. You go through the video course and all that. You're gonna have video course. And then in addition, like, what's the white glove service? What's that? What's that look like? What do you mean? So what there is lacking

Clay Hepler50:17in a lot of courses in general. Listen, information's everywhere. You can go to my Twitter account and you can read a lot of what I do. I mean, I'm pretty open. I mean, I had that tweet that went 500,000 impressions, right? This this past weekend, right? You can learn the information. It's everywhere. I mean, you gotta duct tape it together and this course has the a to z of exactly how to get to where you wanna be. But the real juice is when you're sitting in your basement, and it's 06:32 in the morning, and you're about to leave for work and you're not sure if you should send out this mailer to this market because it's your third mailer in a row, you haven't heard back from people, this is the type of course takes you to that next level that says, hey.

Clay Hepler51:07There's accountability here. There's community, there's structure to help the mental game. Because this business is a lot of the mental game. You have to understand that when you send out a mailer in six months, that's when you get the money in. Or four months, that's when you get the money in. And so how do we help you get your mental game right? So that you can get your business to where you need to be. And all the other tactics, like cash conversion cycles, like Steve the lead, like, that actually work in today's competitive market.

Clay Hepler51:42Non, I'm gonna send a bunch of direct mail pieces to a desert square and then owner finance it back and get a 300% ROI on nothing. This is... Let's go out to big properties. Let's make big money and accountability and community within that.

Brandon Parker51:59What do you think the starting capital someone should come in with? You're a proponent of them obviously keeping their w two, keeping their life in check as far as their finances go. What type of cash should someone have on hand to come into something like Landman Accelerator Course and be ready to wait four months? What are we looking at? Yeah. So that is an excellent question.

Clay Hepler52:26So the thing is with Landis, it depends on how quickly you want results. Let's talk about that. Because there are different lead channels that are in the gray area, right? Texting, ringless voicemail, cold calling that are cheaper than direct mail. And so a lot of it depends on direct mail, what channel you use it to get, right? So we're still figuring out pricing for the course.

Clay Hepler52:59So I can't tell you right now, the sort of high level pricing for the course, but it's going be in the 5 figure range. Let me just say that. Right? So that's period, right? If you want to be successful, I think you need to send out at least 5,000 pieces of direct mail a month. Right? If you actually want this business to work. And so again, I'm saying this because my course is not for the person that has $5,000 or $7,000. This is a premium. Let's get you to the next level.

Clay Hepler53:31Right? And so I think that you need $5,000 a month in order to really steal this basis of squiggly, 3,000 to $5,000 a month in order to get all the the bells and whistles. I mean, you can tell me differently about cold calling. I don't know how much cold calling is maybe 3,000 a month with direct skipping, with skip tracing, etcetera. So it could be less than that. You can do Google sheets and whatever. So I'm just giving you a high level. Think 5,000 a month, 3 or 5,000 a month in order to get them the marketing up and running.

Clay Hepler54:03I think that's a good number. How does that sound to you?

Brandon Parker54:07Yes. That that lines up. I tell people between 4 and $6, and you can be off the ground and running. You need to be ready to handle the lead flow. So that's something that a lot of times with cold calling, what I come across is that people have the capital to get started. Their processes, systems, automations, specifically their CRM and their intake are... And then their follow ups for nurture are lacking. And so you can get the leads coming in, but you better make sure that the rest of the funnel is ready to crank because those can start to overwhelm you and then you start losing a lot of the value of all those leads.

Brandon Parker54:45So... But, yeah, that four to six thousand range is is right on, I think. Yeah. And and that and you need to be able to

Clay Hepler54:52if you're going to do this, it you would successfully because what I see is there's a lot of false starts, right? There are people that get into the business. They spend the $2,000 or the $5,000 on the course, right? And then they false start. And then they stop and then they don't mail for two months or three months or don't do your colleague or whomever else is. And then it's four months their lead stops. And then they have to do a lot of mail or do a lot of marketing. And so I always would say is if you pick a number and stick to that for six to eight months.

Clay Hepler55:29Say I can stick to this for four... Six to eight months, and you'll be out the competition just by doing that. Yeah. But don't pick a number that's Honey, like, stretch to get this number. Six is too much a month to stretch to get that number. Start at four. And maybe your first shield, you only make 6 figures. Maybe you only make a couple 100, something thousand. Right? And then the next year, have the capital, I have the commitment, and I know I can take this to the next level, then I'm going to go way higher.

Clay Hepler56:05And I'm going to invest in marketing because I've done this. But if you're just starting out first ninety days, first one hundred and eighty days, you want to make sure that you can have that consistent lead flow. Because then you'll also get used to it, right? If you do cold calling, like, I'm going do X level because I'm sure you have different levels of services. A lot of the cold calling is right. Okay. One call or two or three calls, whatever it's. You want to know that this is the lead flow that I can handle and no more. And if you lose leads, you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a good lead, and you lose it.

Clay Hepler56:38That's such a shame.

Brandon Parker56:40Yeah. That's the... And that's the key to me, and that's what I've started vetting for really hard on the front end of clients that we take on is talk about what's your follow-up process look like, what type of CRM, you know, which... Just from a to z, what are your processes look like, and just get a feel for are you gonna be able to handle the leads or not? Because initially, our biggest churn with clients was just too many leads, just getting overwhelmed. And so that six month mark, you said as well, was something that we've started implementing. We don't take on clients for less than six months just because we need to have time for all of this to develop.

Brandon Parker57:15We want you to not do the start stop thing. It's very easy to throw some money at something, start doing the start stop thing, it just is... I love seeing people scale and do well. And it's... I don't like seeing people seem to do the start stop thing. So and and that's the biggest thing about community and accountability.

Clay Hepler57:31Mhmm. Because when you're sitting by yourself and you're sitting on your computer and you're looking up and you're looking at your screen and saying, should I send it this month? I don't know if I should send it this month. And do you have your own insecurities and your doubts and your mindset telling you certain things that shouldn't... When you're a part of a group of people, they say, this is what you've committed to, man. And that's 90% of the battle of entrepreneurship, especially early on in Lehman when you're sending out that mail, you're doing the cold calling, the texting, whatever it is, and you're not sure if this is gonna work.

Clay Hepler58:06Oh, it might have worked for Brandon or Joe or Jim or Clay, but it's not gonna work for me because I'm some special snowflake. No. If you do the right marketing, if you follow the playbook, if you follow the blueprint, it will work for you, But you have to make sure that it works within your lifestyle. And so setting that goal up for the first ninety to one hundred and eighty days, this will work within my lifestyle and I know I can afford this. It's better to go fewer than more so that you can sustain it is key in the accountability, the community, whether or not you're in any my community, someone else's community, be a part of a community with other ballers that are doing the same thing so that you can hold each other accountable to the results.

Clay Hepler58:55Because that's a difference maker, because it's a lonely business.

Brandon Parker59:00Well, I love the idea of the landman accelerator course. I look forward to that coming out. This podcast will likely drop in July, and so it'll be good timing for, when that ends up launching. And so we'll be looking forward to that. That's really cool. And clearly from this podcast, you're quality personal to learn from. And so, yeah, this is gonna be cool. Look forward to seeing how that goes. Where are you most active online? Is that Twitter? Is that where people can find you and see your thoughts and spot?

Clay Hepler59:30I'll... I'm very active on Twitter. We'll be doing the podcast thing, solo casting, talking directly about my biz. You can go on landman.io. I could share all the stuff with you too. Yeah. Instagram.

Brandon Parker59:42Right? So those are the the channels, Instagram, Twitter, podcast, my website. And DM me any time. I'm I'm always happy to talk. We will drop your we will drop your links in the show notes or the com... Or the description so that people can find that. And, generally, the final question I ask people is, Clay, if you had one message you could put on Twitter, everyone on all of Twitter would see it. What would that message be?

Clay Hepler1:00:19How you do one thing is how you do everything. Take that seriously.

Brandon Parker1:00:24Love it. Great to talk to you today, Clay. I look forward to connecting on Twitter, seeing the Landman accelerator course journey, and seeing what you're up to next because, you're crushing it. Thanks for, letting me learn from you today, and I'm sure everyone listening would say the same thing.

Clay Hepler1:00:40My pleasure, man. Thanks for having me on.