Mike Malek : EcomLeads

Brandon Parker00:00This is Brandon Parker. Welcome to the Legend of Land Show where it's my job to deconstruct the tactics of elite land investors, how they think about their business and the strategies that drive their success. My guest today is Mike Malek. Mike has run tech companies, a lead gen operation, and did over a thousand house deals before he transitioned into land. Currently, Mike does 30 to 50 land deals per month and runs his office out of Dallas, Texas. He also has a global team. In this conversation, we cover how to stay competitive as the land industry matures, pay per click marketing, how to dispo 50 deals a month, and what a more sophisticated land business looks like as this space evolves.

Brandon Parker00:43So without further ado, please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Mike Malek.

Mike Malek00:53Tactics of world class land investors and learn tools to build a 7 figure land business.

Brandon Parker01:07Mike, welcome to the Legends of Land Show. Great to see you here today. How are doing today, Mike? I'm doing well. Thank you, Brandon, for inviting me. Yeah, absolutely. Wonderful to talk to you. I met you at the conference in Dallas and you had a few questions and we're doing some of the most deals of the entire conference. So I was like, I need to talk to him a little bit more. Yeah. Just talk about maybe what you're up to in land, how many deals you're doing a month, who you are, what your business is, and we'll go from there.

Mike Malek01:35So basically I do about 20 to 50 deals a month. That's what I'm doing right now. I do all cannoliated lands. I do small pieces. I do large pieces. I do subdivides. I do $2,000 lands. So whatever comes through the pipeline, we have to build the system, process them and figure out what to do with them. So, that's what we do.

Brandon Parker01:58When you look at that wide range of deals, are you getting eyes on that many deals yourself and underwriting them or what's your team look like to make that happen?

Mike Malek02:07So overall we have about 40 people. So it depends on the lead source. You have both the region and inbound. So when the inbound lead comes up, it goes to our call center. They take the basic information from the seller, then it directly goes to our evaluation team. So we have four people that we have trained to evaluate. They evaluate it, put a value on that thing and then we decide based on that what acquisition team it goes to.

Mike Malek02:43Small dollar, it takes different scale. If it's a large subdivide, 100, 200 acres goes to a different acquisition manager. And then they start acquisition process, basically contacting the seller, discussing the different things they need, hopefully putting it under contract. And then if it's a small piece, of course it just go immediate, it goes through the sales process. And if it's a larger piece, again, it goes to another due diligence team, which they go further and further and look at a lot of things before we take it down.

Mike Malek03:18So it all depends on the gate, what size, what amount and what days it look like.

Brandon Parker03:24That's interesting. How do you hold data, decide where to pull data for that much? It sounds like you're calling entire counties possibly. What are your filters like and how are you targeting those areas for that wider range?

Mike Malek03:37So I have different sources. I do pay per clicks, I do texting, I do IVR, that's the basic what we do, okay. So on our pay per clicks, we just know the areas we have done deals and we think the states we want to go to, we start doing, starting the process over there. On the texting side, like everybody else, the counties that we know, we're more familiar with and pull data, we skip trace them, we send the text and that depends on what it becomes.

Brandon Parker04:10And if you're doing that many deals, are you sticking in one area? Are you just continually going into new markets or do you have a certain set of markets that you work in over time? So

Mike Malek04:21the answer to your question, we grew too fast and realized that was too hard to manage. So, we have rolled back and we're playing the eightytwenty rule, which is basically looked at it, what worked for us, and we're concentrating more on those area right now. And

Brandon Parker04:37talk about how you hit those in order. If you're doing RVMs, texting and pay per click, do you have a strategy around the cadence you hit those with

Mike Malek04:49The markets or? I mean, on the pay per click it's very simple. You choose a state. It's not really that hard. You choose a state, you see what it comes because it really hard to scale it in one area. You don't know where the lead comes up and how does it come. On the texting, we do it like everybody else, we look at the sales, look at the comps, we see what works, we do. But our system is large enough that we can process so many pieces of land that we don't have to just stay in one thing, so we really do everywhere.

Mike Malek05:20If we go to county, I pull every record in that county and I send everyone a text. Okay. And then based on what it comes with process.

Brandon Parker05:31I haven't seen a lot of people who do pay per click. How long have you been doing that for? And do you have a feel for the ROAS on pay per click versus texting and RVMs? So I've been doing pay per click. My background, I used to do lead generations.

Mike Malek05:45So that's where I come from. I'm very familiar with pay per click. And the biggest challenge on a pay per click and what this value ROAS is how you process your deals because it's not like you can go through one subdivision and say, I'm just doing deals from this subdivision, I know how to exit it, I know where to go. I know what to do. I know how to evaluate it. You get in Texas, day you may get from Galveston County and one day you may get it up North Texas. Totally two different monster. Anybody wants to get on a pay per click, it's a great source, but at the same token, your backend has to be able to handle so many different things.

Mike Malek06:25You cannot say I'm just doing over one acre deals, honestly. You might get a 100 acre and you might get a two acre, and if you cannot monetize those correctly, you're lose money. That leads culture the same amount of money regardless. We get good ROI on those things, but as I said, it takes a different approach for pay click than you're doing your texting. Because you're texting, you can't control everything. You decide to decide, you can decide where it goes. You're biased even before you started and pay per click you don't.

Brandon Parker06:55Yeah. That's a whole business in itself trying to run that whole pay per click campaign. So that's probably why you don't see a lot of people doing it is because it's such a unique angle. Do you sell services to other teams like lead gen services or you just all just do all All in of house. What was the lead gen you used to do?

Mike Malek07:14Well, basically non private services I used to do for credit cards, auto loans, things like that, which generated about 100,000 leads a day, so the last Dang,

Brandon Parker07:27okay, so you're pushing, this is why I wanted to talk to you, I was like, Yancey's pushing some serious weight compared to a lot of people that you see out there. So how big is a team that handles 30 to 50 deals a month?

Mike Malek07:40Okay, in call center, it depends on the division they handle, okay? So for example, for incoming call for the paper clips, have three dedicated agents. For texting, I believe it's seven right now, which is they do the texting, they do the follow-up calls and that's what they do. They get the leads ready. We have four evaluators, so their job is as soon as the lead comes up, they evaluate the leads. That's their job. Then it goes to acquisition team and acquisition team today is I believe about six people, so we have six over there.

Mike Malek08:15Then from their acquisition team, once they have it under contract, then it goes of course to the disposition team and it goes on the title team, which is title team is about four people itself and then we have game disposition team, depends on MLS team or Facebook team. The MLS team, we have two on it and Facebook team, I believe today we have seven on that and then we also have people that prepare the pictures, march the materials, all those things, so that's what it is.

Brandon Parker08:51Okay, yeah, that's a serious operation. So with your acquisitions team that she looks like a big part of your team. How are you hiring them and what type of things you look for in good acquisitions managers? How do you find those people and train them?

Mike Malek09:08So it has changed over time. Now we have four overseas and I believe three in house right now, so somebody can talk. So one thing we did with our system, which was we realized early on was that I can hire a salesperson, I can hire a call salesperson, I can hire a waiter to do the job, okay. They just do not understand the technical side. So that's why we separated the evaluation team. So evaluation team goes out there, does all the evaluation, puts all the comps, put all the links, put everything else ready, put inside our CRM.

Mike Malek09:47So when our acquisition team talking to these people, all they're doing is sales bar, nothing else. So basically the way we do it, first of all, we're looking at someone that at least understands the basic of sales. They got to understand that. Customer service and sales because they're both actually together, that's great. And then you have series of videos they watch, then they shadow for a while and then we start putting them on the low value deals, figure out and as they improve their skills, they understand better, they go to higher value deals as they move forward.

Brandon Parker10:18And so you can have people that work their way up from $2,000 flips all the way up into maybe your minor subdivide teams and things like that, where they're doing million dollar deals type thing. Yes, sir. That's fantastic. And how do you incentivize them? Is it hourly play? Do you do parts of deals or commission? Yeah.

Mike Malek10:39Both. So what do we do? And again, it depends on what level they are. We offer everybody guarantee. They get a guarantee and then every time they have signed contract, they have a bonus based on how they got it in the contract and what we think their profit on that deal would be, and then at the time the sale finalizes, you have a percentage of that.

Brandon Parker11:02How do you keep track of their sales calls? Are you listening? You have a coach who's listening to them? Are you have a QA process or do you just get them going in the right direction and trust them?

Mike Malek11:14So we use Dialpad and we record every call. We try to listen as many call as possible, but I'll be honest with you, that's a little bit impossible. We have a checklist that we ask everybody to go through during their call, so we make sure they cover everything we ask them on our script, so it has a flow on it, so we want to make sure that they follow that flow on that one. And I have a meeting with different groups, for example, Thursdays is made with my acquisition team.

Mike Malek11:49Friday with my disposition team. And we grab a couple of calls, we listen to the calls and we basically, everybody

Brandon Parker11:58tried to figure out what they could do better. That's been the best training ever. What's your day look like with a team like this, not many deals. I'm curious just what you do during the day, how you spend your time effectively.

Mike Malek12:12So the way my day goes is that I wake up very early. I'm usually in the office about 07:30 and 08:30 I have a meeting. These are our team, of course in The US, different areas of US, we have a team in Egypt, we have a team in Philippine and we also have a team in Peru. I always set up my first meeting at 08:30 in the morning, and 08:30 in the morning to 10:30 is the meeting with one group. I don't bring everybody at the same time because acquisition team has nothing to do with this position.

Mike Malek12:42We haven't done that until about 10:30, usually it goes like that. Oh by the way, each team has a leader, so I don't really manage this team myself, I manage the leader, so what I do is basically I meet with everyone one time a day, but I don't meet with anybody else, of day. And rest of the goes depends on what the business needs, you know, system, dealing with finances, putting fires out down, so there's always something to do of course, figure out what's coming next, so that's what I do.

Brandon Parker13:14Are you meeting with one team leader a day or you're meeting with every team leader every morning after that first?

Mike Malek13:20So all my team leaders are in Houston, okay? So I get to see them. We have a pretty large office in Houston. I meet with them as the day progresses, okay? I try not to make too many meetings because then all day long we'll be, but I meet every day with a team and their, not every day with one team and their leader. Okay. That's what I do. Let's imagine acquisition team and their leader is Thursday morning, that's when I meet with them. Now, if anything else happens, emergency, I just meet with their leader.

Mike Malek13:51Also, one more policy we have is that everybody in my company has to be on camera. So if you come to my office, there are monitors everywhere and you feel like everybody's in the same office. So I can walk to area and I see all my BAs, everybody else, the acquisition team, everybody else. That's They can see me, I can see them. So that's when one of my requirements from day one. We don't hire anybody that cannot say you can.

Brandon Parker14:19That's interesting. I've never heard that before. So you have a physical office and then what you have, computer screen, like a big screen up that has everyone on it type of thing? Exactly.

Mike Malek14:28One screen. I wish I could walk you to my office and right now my operation manager, I believe has six or eight screens from him and each screen has four, six people in there. Oh, that's cool. And he literally just talks to everybody. It seemed like we were in the same office.

Brandon Parker14:43That's great. I've never heard that before. That actually makes a lot of sense. It's hard to build a culture without everyone in the same office or seeing each other, but if they're seeing each other all day like that, that's crazy. Do you have that in multiple rooms? Does each of your people at the office has their own heads up screen where it shows everyone else? And are you on screen too? No, so it does, so

Mike Malek15:05again, different department, for example, we have a Facebook department, okay, the person that runs that department has everyone in that department on a screen that he can talk to, turn around and talk to, they're just sitting like next to them, okay? That's what the computers are. An acquisition department, disposition department. So they all have their own group and they all have their own channels.

Brandon Parker15:27Yeah, that's cool. With your management style, how did you learn this management style? How'd you get to where you are? Because running that type of operation, I think probably takes a lot of trial and error. Yeah.

Mike Malek15:40I've never had a corporate job. I graduated from college. My first business, I owned a chain of hair salons and that teaches you a lot. Then I luckily became one of the first people that was able to get a license from Mastercard to pre issue prepaid cards and that's what was my entry to a technology business. After that I ended up to own affiliate networks and that taught me a whole lot about technology side and understanding working remote. I had a team in US, I had a team in India, had a team in Russia, had a team in Israel, so that became again taught me how to work with remote.

Mike Malek16:17Then from that I moved to flipping houses. I got into flipping houses about year 2015 and I bought, fixed, sold and center finance about a thousand house between 2015 to 2020. Oh wow. So that's what I ended up doing on that part and I got in land business about 2019. Thanks to Jack Bosch. I just got one of his courses and I always heard about land, so I did not know what to do with it, so I started dabbling in it and I said, you know what, I have a couple of people, just dedicate them, and then 2020 life changed and then we happened and had some time, nothing to do, so I started doing lines and building the line business.

Brandon Parker17:04But what do you like about land versus the houses, wholesaling? Were you doing wholesaling or flipping? I missed that. On house or land, what are talking about? On houses.

Mike Malek17:15So on houses, we do everything. We buy them, we fix them, we sell them, we sell or finance them and right now we also do nationwide wholesaling.

Brandon Parker17:23Oh, wow. Okay. The whole thing. When you look at the land industry versus the houses and the stages of the market, what do you see the differences between land and maybe the wholesaling industry?

Mike Malek17:41To me, land, one thing I like about it is that we really don't have to deal with anything, toilets, anything else like that. So there's a lot less human emotion. The land people don't sell it because they're getting foreclosed on. That's great, they even want the money or things like that. But so that's what I see about the land, but I'll be honest with you, land is also a very frustrating business. Why? Because in houses, when you get them under contract, probably 90% of the time you're going to be able to close.

Mike Malek18:13There is no title issues. That's great. One of the things that kills a lot of our business is title issues. You get it under contract, then you realize last time they actually went to a title company was 1,900. And they think they own it because they paid taxes on it. So we get a lot of those deals, so it becomes a lot of frustration. And land is very illiquid, it's not a business that banks go lend on, there is no FHA, VA, so you have to create your own liquidity on that one. It has different things on it and depends on what section of land business you are, your ticket average is different.

Mike Malek18:50I think if you're going to do large volume, houses ticket average is much higher than land. Now, land is lower volume, you can just do sub demand and say I'm making $100,000 at the end, but can you do 200 pieces of land a month? No, you can't. So that makes a difference because increase your volume, your ticket average comes down because you'll have to process everything to clean the pipe. You've got to be able to monetize everything that comes to your pipe. So that's the difference.

Brandon Parker19:18And are you still doing houses or did you shift all the way into land or you're doing both? I stopped doing houses 2023

Mike Malek19:25and started back 2024.

Brandon Parker19:28Okay.

Mike Malek19:29And why'd you stop? Why'd you start again? I stopped because as the interest rate was going up, we were not sure where the market's going, is it going to slow down, uncertainty, and we feel like that interest rate's coming down right now and we see the pattern and going down and everything, more activity is going be coming up down the pipe. So it's a good commodity to get into.

Brandon Parker19:53Turn it back on, Mike. Turn it back on. Yeah. So that we talked a little bit about your acquisitions team. Another big part of your team is your dispo team. Sounds like you have nine people, maybe a few more. You're just going on MLS and Facebook. What's the lowest hanging fruit for people to do better dispo?

Mike Malek20:10Depends on the type of product they have. If you have large properties, probably MLS. If you have a smaller dollar, probably face it. A face, you sell a lot of $5.10, $15,000 deals. On MLS, if you have 50,000, $100,000 deals, probably we sell it at least more in an MLS than Facebook.

Brandon Parker20:37What's it take to get stuff sold on Facebook? Just good pictures, drone footage, putting it in the groups, like how do you go about that?

Mike Malek20:45Exposure. Facebook is free, but you have to play by Facebook rules, which is very difficult and nobody knows what that rules is. That's the problem with Facebook, you don't have stability. There is no one that I knock on their door and I say, I want to list my property. You don't know when they're, what thinks that you are spamming someone or that you have sold something illegal or you have a pet in your house. Very difficult. The way we're handling it, we have about, I don't know, eight or 20 Facebook accounts and we just hand a group of land to one of our Facebook representatives and they just market it.

Mike Malek21:22As they receive the lead, it goes to our sales managers, they communicate with the buyers and then hopefully they're able to do it.

Brandon Parker21:32With 18 to 20 Facebook, so you're creating Facebook accounts, like tactically how are you doing that? You're buying seasoned Facebook accounts and then protecting them, are you building up your own or what are you doing there? Used to, but not anymore. People could have multiple Facebook accounts, so we create them,

Mike Malek21:50we keep them warm, we follow the best practices on that and basically you grow one at a time. There is no Facebook form that I can go buy Facebook account from, but there are a lot of hygienes, lots and lots of hygienes.

Brandon Parker22:06We do all that. So you have one probably team lead who's an expert in keeping the accounts warm and staying up on ahead of what Facebook's up to so they don't get kicked out. And that's, I guess you just have someone who's an expert at that. They're always changing things. Yeah, you have to be human at the end of Facebook,

Mike Malek22:25nobody just posts property on their Facebook all the time and do nothing else. You have to post pictures, you have to make comments, you have to do likes, so you have to be accounts active on it. Everyone that we hire, they have to be trained on Facebook, how to keep it active, how to keep it warm, that's what we do for sure on that one. Then how to post a property, how to communicate, like for example, what do we do is that the moment somebody says, are you interested? The follow-up question, yes.

Mike Malek22:57How can I help you? They have to answer the question, whatever they want to. Would you like to get some more information? Yes. Can I get your phone number? And that goes now to our follow-up boss, which is then our lead manager, our sales manager start communicating with them from there. That's how the process works.

Brandon Parker23:16With all the technical things you've got going on, how do you train new people? Are you real diligent with SOPs? Or do you have

Mike Malek23:23really good team leads who have all the knowledge and they're able to teach people how to do it? How do you actually get that done? Like any other small companies, that's great. We like to create those SOPs. We are creating everything as we can move forward. Always changing our heads. Unfortunately, we have another Fortune 500, so I don't have a whole team that all sits in the there writing SOPs. We try to document it as much as possible, we try to put it on the videos as much as possible and then put a lot of fire down. As I said, it's real out there. We have to make money while we're working.

Mike Malek23:56We create as much of a SOP as possible, we have it documented, we have things like that, but it changes every day, I always tell my staff, everything is written on SANT, so it's subject to change, that's correct, every day. But yeah, every time we could bring someone, we hand it to that team leader and try to go through what we have learned, the frequently asked question, the frequent things that has happened and teach them that way.

Brandon Parker24:25Do you have a main operations guide? Do you have a chief operations officer or are you driving forward a lot of this stuff technically and also the CEO role? How's it look? I am developing those. So

Mike Malek24:37I do not have, what do you call the sort of the operation manager that runs something because we group one piece at a time. I explained that, have you ever bought a one bedroom house and then you realize you need another bedroom, so you build it next door to it? It's not like you said there, spend $2,000,000 to plan that house architecturally and say, okay, I need five bedrooms, I need two bathrooms, I need this thing. You build one room at a time, it happens sometimes a door opens to a bedroom, so you know, that's how it grows, But so the way I have done it is that at least I have head of each department and I work with everybody myself.

Mike Malek25:19So I'm the guy that goes out there, brings it, but I try not to go down to the operation level. I have the head of that department, I teach them what to do, where to go, and they implement. We started a small company and it was a very tight group, so I get to meet people, and I have kept all my managers in Houston. I get to see them, I get to walk outside of my office, talk to them and deal with them, so that's how we run it. And I run a technology company for a while myself because that's what the lead generation company was, that's so every morning, one of the things I do, I communicate with my developers and add our own software.

Mike Malek26:00We have our own CRM, everything designed for ourselves. So everything we have been designed us to do it. I developed that myself, not in a form of coding, but the concept.

Brandon Parker26:09Yeah. You have a unique background because running a software company and then also working with global talent and working with remote people so much earlier in the game than most people. So you've got like a unique skill set there to do this. Cause I know that global talent's gotten really popular lately, but you were saying you were doing that a decade ago. So yeah, that's cool. That's cool. You built an interesting business here. What's next? What are you planning to do in land? Are you going to keep growing on the trajectory you're on?

Brandon Parker26:42Are you thinking of getting into a new venture or what's your vision?

Mike Malek26:46So my vision is to grow it, have an operation to make it sustainable. I look at different things and to me, the most sustainable business is Walmart. What do I mean by Walmart? They do everything. I see a lot of people moving from one thing to another thing, but they just run away from operations. Operations is very difficult, but at the same token, I ask myself, what is the sustainability in two years, five years, ten years? Are we going to rather subdivide?

Mike Malek27:16I don't know. There are just so many 100 acres in Texas with 2,000 feet of frontage. So one day you'll got to learn how to build roads. You got to decide. So I see those things and as I said, for me, because I am doing blanket marketing, have to be able to process everything. But to be honest with you, I think my way out will be financing. One of the things I learned and through the housing business, when I got in this business, everybody, took a year off and I decided I wanted to see what I do.

Mike Malek27:47First, everybody said wholesaling because it was the easiest one. Then everybody said rehabbing. And I said rehabbing. Then they said do notes. So I went out there, took a couple of note classes, I learned about notes. Then rental, learned about that one. Now somebody gave me a great idea and said, look in this town, where do you see the tallest building and what do you see on top of their name? A bank. I said, great. He said, what do they hold? They hold the notes, they don't hold assets.

Mike Malek28:18So I started at that. In my housing business, we learn how to make $130,000 profit on a $100,000 house by financing So it I think my way will be long term note holders and just create a note machine, that's what we did in the housing business and I want to do the same thing, buy loans and seller finance. And I want to be in control of that. I want to be able to create as many notes as possible, so I know what the qualities look like, how was both asset and borrowers under written land, grow that.

Mike Malek28:51Have you seen Eddie Speed? Have you come across him anywhere in the land community? I've came across Eddie quite a few times. He was one of the first guy I learned from when I was searching to know business. So yeah, things.

Brandon Parker29:06He's an interesting character. He has a very strong note portfolio and his whole approach to it is cool. I actually just one of the podcasts that's coming out shortly is going to be him. But but yeah, he's unique how he looks at it. He's he looks at it more like an institutional investor and is real thorough with how he looks at notes as opposed to a lot of the industry. That's a little bit more operating

Mike Malek29:29a little bit more loosely with notes. Let's say So, yeah. So Eddie, he's probably one of the most knowledgeable person you can find on notes business. I pretty much attend every gathering. I can find him. There's a lot to learn from. The only difference between him and I will be that he buys his own notes, so basically he goes out there and finds all these note creators and buy the notes from them. I am trying to both create and hold the notes, so I want to have my own supply note, which is a little bit different model.

Brandon Parker30:04Yeah, why do you like that model? What do you see about that? I control the supply

Mike Malek30:10and I control the quality. When I got in this business, I was looking at the defaulted note business, when I got in the housing business that, then I realized that I don't want to be buying a note for someone that I don't know how the asset looked like, how the note looked like and be default. So actually there's another gentleman, his name is Mitch Stephen, don't know if you heard of him or not. I spoke with Mitch and he taught me how to create my own notes on the housing side of the business, So that's what it is and not that one is better than the other one, it's just people do things differently.

Mike Malek30:46Somebody in our business likes to do large subdivide. Somebody likes to do small $2,000 notes, that's great, Buy it in Arizona instead of it. So one is not better than the other one, it's just a different way of doing business. What are some tips on creating your own notes in the land business? What kind of note do you want? For example, in our business, first of all, we have this formula that we require 50% down of our purchase price for a note.

Mike Malek31:17So remember, you got to think about is it really usable land or unusable? What do I mean by that? Is it something that they're actually going to use or is it something they just buy and they never got to see that place? If you have something that is usable, then it comes to the stability. Like for example, in our business, we look at two things, down payment and income. Can they afford making the payment and is their down payment large enough that they just don't give it up? That's correct, and that makes stability for us, not that.

Mike Malek31:49If you are doing useless properties, then I probably want to just tie it to their checking account. Ding them every month, get their money, and when they say, okay, I'm not paying, I'm saying I got my property back then just resell it. So it's not all notes, not all the same, that's a very totally different business.

Brandon Parker32:06And when you see yourself getting maybe into the financing aspect of this longer term, what type of notes are you focusing on? What's that look like? Well, we have both.

Mike Malek32:16Both? You're focusing on both. Okay. Yeah. Right now, if you're a land business, you got to understand financing because the banks don't finance you know, that's when you got to know how to create them, how to manage them, how to raise money. Are you looking at the lending

Brandon Parker32:29as well, like doing hard money loans and getting into that part of the finance?

Mike Malek32:34Not at this moment. I'm not saying that's something odd, but not at this moment.

Brandon Parker32:40And so we've talked about your pay per click and your valuators and your texters, acquisitions, dispositions, other kind of interesting angles do you think you have in land that maybe a lot of people don't,

Mike Malek32:53that isn't real common? Honestly, there's no magic out there. It's just doing it and trying to find people, I call it McDonaldizing, which is basically breaking things to different parts. That's correct? Because I see a lot of people, they find a cold caller and they want the cold caller to become an acquisition agent and then do a disposition for them and do everything and that does not work. What I have realized is that you got to divide it and stop dividing one more time in order for it to grow.

Mike Malek33:26So I said there's no magic out there. If every course you listen to, they teach you the same thing, all, everybody, it's just doing it. That's all it is.

Brandon Parker33:36Yeah, that bias towards action, breaking it down into repeatable parts makes a lot of sense. Hear the Sumner Healy sometimes talks about it land, just being a widget, just build the conveyor belt, keep moving stuff through it. One more commodity. Yeah, that's right. So if you were gonna put a message out to all of Twitter, the entire Twitter would read it at once. What would you say to people? Do you get that message everyone at once? In the land industry or the world?

Brandon Parker34:08Is for the audience. Let's do, yeah, let's do both. Let's do the land industry first, maybe something just to the land people and then to the entire world.

Mike Malek34:17Land industry, start doing it, you know, just try to stop overthinking stuff. I think that would be the message to the land people. To the world boy, I don't know. I really don't want to say what I want to say.

Brandon Parker34:33Okay, if you decide you want to say it, you can hop in and put your message out there. So one thing interesting we do towards the end of each show is we give a question from the past guest, and then we'll let you ask a question to the next guest. But the last guest we had was Robin Zeep, and he is from The Land Pilot. He does the dispositions. He's a dispositions agency. What he asked is how do you expect the industry to change in the next two years, the land industry?

Mike Malek35:06I think it becomes like the housing industry. Everybody's going to come into it and still get molded for every day.

Brandon Parker35:12So you better get your act together. And when it becomes more difficult, what do you see setting people apart?

Mike Malek35:21Operation. 2015, when I got in the housing industry, you had to literally send a letter and get a house. I remember the first whole city course I attended, you send 5,000 letter and you're guaranteed two deals. Literally that's what it was. I don't think you can do that anymore. In Houston right now on pay per click, a lead cost is almost $550 to just get a lead, not a house. Oh wow. Okay, it used to be about 10 leads to get one house, today it's about 15 to 20 to get one house, so you really have to have your idea in and out and understanding everything, so that area, somebody came in, spent 50¢ per postcard, sent 5,000 postcard, 2,500, send it to the voicemail, and next day answered the call and picked up one house is gone.

Mike Malek36:13Those of us that they are doing it right now, we better get our act together, we better become more efficient. Think about it right now, I know you attend a lot of those conferences. Everybody talking about subdivide, that's correct. So I remember my first subdivide, bought it 2020, I paid about $200,000 for 53 acre and I sold the first 10 acre for $250,000 so that became a million dollar deal, that's great. Yeah. So I mean, was easy.

Mike Malek36:45It was really easy. Now today, the same person getting five calls a day and two letters a day. And by the way, there's a limited supply. As I said, one of the concerns I have, there's a limited supply. If you look at it every time we go somewhere, they talk about this piece of land, 50 to 100 acre, but it's so much frontage. It's not that they build in more frontage every day to a 100 acre piece of land. So it's both two things that are happen. More people are going to come to this industry and less supply will be out there.

Mike Malek37:18So that's going to make a difference.

Brandon Parker37:21And so the people operating with the best systems and the best processes and best operators are going to start separating themselves in the house industry. Do you see less big companies? Or do you just see to get in, you just have to be a better operator? Like is it?

Mike Malek37:41No, actually housing you'll probably see a lot bigger company and a lot more efficient people, really are, if you go out there, they're much more sophisticated than land, because as I said, land is easy, still you can do mail outs and people send you a contract and they send you their deeds. That never happens in the housing industry. No, land is less sophisticated. If you look at it, a lot of people moving from housing to land, because land housing is too difficult.

Brandon Parker38:06And what's the sophistication actually look like? What are some things that a big company does in household sailing that we don't see very often in land yet?

Mike Malek38:18Just an acquisition process, you know, how they process their leads, how they deal, how they do everything. That's one part. Of course, their disposition is one side. Now if we do a rehab, it's one side and then, you know, center financing one other side. So there are a lot of different places, but just the wholesaling side of it, the whole acquisition team and the way they behave, it is not a reach end job for them. It's a profession.

Brandon Parker38:44Okay, so you're picturing like people, professional salespeople at a desk, on commission, getting paid a couple $100 a year type of thing that are just high quality salespeople versus just randomly calling people up and trying to close deals and that type of thing. That's where it's growing.

Mike Malek39:03That's where it's going to because there is a limited number of sellers that there's a limited number of sellers that everybody is going for.

Brandon Parker39:11So who's going win that deal? Yeah. Okay. That's good. That's a great question because that gives the people who listen to this podcast a little bit of a roadmap of where we need to be going to survive land in the next few years. So that's cool. Mike, if you were gonna ask the next question to our next guest, I'm not sure who that is yet, but I'll tell them this question came from Mike Malek. What question do want to send along to the next guest?

Mike Malek39:40My question, I guess I wanted this question. What do they see coming in?

Brandon Parker39:46Well, there you go. All right. So I will ask that, send it on from you. Anything that we bounced over a little too quick that you'd like to go and talk about your business? Want to revisit the Twitter question for the message to the world? Any kind of things that you'd like to talk about as we get towards the end here? The message to the board is that,

Mike Malek40:08no, I'm not going say the message to the board.

Brandon Parker40:12Keep them, the

Mike Malek40:14message is keep them in suspense. Yeah. Yes, it is. No, not really. You asked great questions and it's a big topic and with a lot of different points to cover. I'll answer everything you want me to answer. Wonderful.

Brandon Parker40:27I think that next time people see you at the conference, Micah, hopefully a few of them listen to this and they got a feel for what you're up to and all the interesting things you're building. One of the coolest parts of this podcast is that I get to meet people like you and hear way more about their business than I might otherwise. Yeah. It was killer to meet you today, and I'm sure we'll come across each other at a conference along the way or somewhere in the land business. Same to hear. It was Blake to talk with you, Blake gets you on the game. Alright. So let's do it, Mike. Land show. Thank you.