Daniel Apke : Land Portal

Brandon Parker00:00This is Brandon Parker, and you're listening to the Legends of Land Show, where I deconstruct the tactics of elite land investors so you can scale smarter and close more deals. My guest today is Daniel Apkey, a land investor, educator, and founder of Land Portal, one of the fastest growing data tools in the land space. In just two years, Daniel and his brother flipped over 500 properties and generated $5,000,000 in revenue. But what's more interesting is how they did it. In this conversation, you'll learn why Daniel scrapped a $20,000 custom CRM and the simple system that outperformed it, the biggest mistake land investors make when hiring and how he solves it with a single mindset shift, how to filter out 30% of your bad leads before your team ever even picks up the phone, what actually works in 2025, cold calling, RVM, omnichannel, and what's already fading, and how Land Portal's new pricing engine could change how blind offers get sent at scale.

Brandon Parker00:56Whether you're doing five deals a month or just starting out, this episode will challenge how you think about systems, delegation, and data. So without further ado, please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Daniel Abke. Welcome back to the Legends of Land podcast. I'm Brandon Parker. Today, I'm talking with Daniel Apkey. He is the founder of Land Portal, which is a epic tool for land investor. I'm sure... Land investors, I'm sure you've all heard of, recently bought droners.io, and we're gonna get into all of that.

Brandon Parker01:27So let's jump right in. Daniel, you did 500 deals in two years with your brother that's wild. So take me to the beginning. What do those early systems actually look like, and how did you do that without the wheels flying off? Yeah, man. Excited to be here, and thanks for having me. To answer your question on 500 deals,

Daniel Apke01:45we've always been action first and kinda create systems. We're not, like, engineer engineer minded or anything. So my whole philosophy with business, I came from the ecommerce world first and had electric bike company. I sold that. My whole philosophy, just the way I operate was always, like, just attack and get the business early, and then the systems will kinda come along with that. And we use that approach in the land in the land flipping business as well. We just put all of our resources on acquisitions early, especially in the earlier years. Like, all of them were just on how can we get more deals, more deals, more deals.

Daniel Apke02:17And we hired salespeople, title people, virtual assistants, transaction coordinator, people to do all the major parts of the business. But the main thing we focused on was the acquisitions for a long, long time. Obviously, doing 500 deals in a couple years, you gotta worry about more than just acquisitions because your acquisitions pipeline full of things will break. You're not selling things fast enough that you get lost in in your CRM. It's a lot of move... Moving parts and pieces. The biggest thing is just surrounding yourself with the right people, like, when you're scaling like that.

Daniel Apke02:50And number one, when you're trying to keep track of that many deals, you need really, really good transaction coordinators or someone to just manage the pipeline. That's huge because, obviously, it can get lost so easily with 500 deals, especially when you have 50 to a 100 deals at any given time. Some are selling, some are acquiring. That... That's always been my thing is just surrounding myself with the best people that can help us keep those wheels on essentially. And it it didn't come... We didn't go from zero to 500 like that. We went from zero to one deal a month, five deals a month, to 10 deals, and we just scaled up gradually.

Daniel Apke03:23So as you're scaling up gradually, you add a little system here and there. You add some processes. You refine things. You get better, and it's... It doesn't happen overnight. It takes a while to... Things things aren't built overnight, so it does take time.

Brandon Parker03:36That's a common theme that I've heard talking to some of the biggest land investors is this idea of creating problems in the business to solve them or building until a bottleneck becomes clear and then solving that. I think that I get caught up in, and a lot of people get caught up in, like, we wanna automate everything and make this perfect system, but that's, like, a a form of procrastination almost. It's like... That's why I love the idea, and I've... It... That's common with people who get big is they're... They go for it, something breaks, and then all the resources go to fixing that. Yeah.

Brandon Parker04:07You don't wanna fix things before they break. Unless you absolutely know they're gonna break and it's gonna be a problem and you're getting ahead of it. But early on, like, put your resources in where you know the money, like, where you know the money, where it makes the most sense for your business. It's like acquisitions at the time. When you're starting this business,

Daniel Apke04:21try to acquire property. All your resources should be going to marketing, texting, or your your your processes on that side of the business. And then as you scale up, things will break and then focus on those when they come up.

Brandon Parker04:33You mentioned the... Getting lost in the CRM. So when you're bringing in deals at that level, what's your CRM look like, and what did it look like as you were scaling up through different levels? So

Daniel Apke04:46we we actually have used Airtable for a long time, And we... It was very basic at first, not not very automated, but Airtable is a big company. I think it was under contract to sell for, like, $20,000,000,000 a cup... That deal fell through. But it's a big company, and they have a lot of third party integrations. But there are tons of companies. With our other businesses, we use HubSpot. We had a custom guy from Canada build us a 40,000 CRM, and we started testing out and using it. And it ended up... We realized we're ending...

Daniel Apke05:16We ended up doing what I said not to do is... Which fix things when they're not broken. So we didn't even integrate it with that 40,000 just went to waste to build that. But we did learn, hey, what we have now is actually working fairly well and fairly organized. So early on the CRM systems... And my brother's the one who creates and does all the CRM. So I don't... I'm not as versed in the technical side on the background of what's going on. But I do know we used Airtable, and it start... We started with something very, very, very basic just to track the deals. Are we buying it? Is it closed? Is it in title? Is it closed? Is it listed for sale?

Daniel Apke05:48Is it pending on this disposition side? Just to track it simply, and then it'll go to different tabs, and you can see everything you have with all the links. All the documents are in it nice and clean. And then as you scale up, you really have to start automating things.

Brandon Parker06:02I wanna, like, double hit on that point there because I also spent over $20 on an Airtable build that I scrapped, and it's because I tried to automate before I just... It's something that just needs to be really worked out manually. Sounds like what you're saying too. And then as you need things, automate and build them. But trying to imagine this grand CRM or process and then build it and put stuff through it just... It's backwards. Yeah. Feels like the right thing to do, but it's not.

Brandon Parker06:32And so... Yeah. K. People listen to that, please. We've both done that. I'm sure it's it's pretty common. How do you surround yourself with talent? I I think that that's hard to do, and it sounds good.

Daniel Apke06:46Yeah. It's probably the hardest thing to do. Like, think it's easy to get a business to one, two, three million dollars fairly quickly without talent because you can do it through hard work, surround yourself with a couple of employees, virtual assistants, whatever. But to go from three to 30, to three to ten, to three to 15, it changes. And you actually need legitimate talent who can do things better than you can do it. And that's actually... If you're a top level entrepreneur, that's actually hard for a lot of things to hire people that are going to do something better than you as the founder.

Daniel Apke07:16You care the most. You're gonna put the most resources into it. But if you can find people that can do things better than you and then put them into those places or find them to do it almost as good as you in some situations, because then it takes it off your plate, and then you can put your time and energy into something else. And that's what it's all about. It's just slowly filling in the gaps of where you don't want your time to be essentially, where you think the most valuable places to outsource are, and then putting your time in more valuable spots. But talent is very hard, and there's levels to it. You have your basic talent, which is just like the average employee, and then you have, like, your c c suite talent that can actually help organize plans and growth plans and, you know, the CFOs and COOs of the world.

Daniel Apke07:56And those are... It just gets harder and harder as you go up the ladder. The more important the role is, the harder it is to really source the right person.

Brandon Parker08:05And it feels like the more talented someone is, the less instruction they need. You know? At some point, you get up to that COO position. You'd be like, hey. We need to go to marketing or a CMO. Let's say, we need to go to marketing plan, and then they do the whole thing. Whereas if it... You know, in the beginning, it's like you have a social media manager, and you're like, I need you to post this on this and this this socials. How do you think about paying for that talent? Like, at what stage are you like, I'm gonna take money out of the business.

Brandon Parker08:37My bottleneck is now better people.

Daniel Apke08:40Yeah. I always, I don't wanna say I'm... I always started with the cheapest employees first. And like that's Dan Martell. I don't know if you follow him. It's like his rule number one is start with it like an executive assistant or just overall VA. Start with the cheapest thing that can get all the nuanced task off your plate. Like start small, and then you kinda scale up. The hardest thing to hire is obviously, like, the management, the executive roles. But the second hardest thing to hire is the sales, and it's the most important. Sales is really, really hard to outsource because the business owner's almost always the best at selling his own company and selling his own product.

Daniel Apke09:15He built it. He knows it. Right? So that's the hardest thing. But the first thing you should really do is just get those easy task off. You don't need someone with, like... You don't need a high level person. You can get an overseas person if you want. It's very cheap to do. But you don't wanna do it prematurely because it needs to make sense for your business and where you're at. If you're in the hole and not making money, do it all yourself. Learn it. Do it all yourself. You should always know what you're hiring before you hire, I think. Some people rush the hiring, and then they're not trained properly, or they don't know what to train them, and it's backwards. I always like to learn it for the...

Daniel Apke09:46Especially the lower level. We're talking about the COOs who can take it and run. That's different. But for the lower level people, you should know what they're doing better than they are so you can... They can come on, and you can train them properly and then outsource it.

Brandon Parker09:57Yeah. And there's there's two parts to that when I think about it. There's there's some nuance there because what you're saying is you you have to know what you're delegating, and you have to know it really well, or else you're not gonna be able to measure it. Another place that I see people get stuck is they don't hire someone. They just... They never take that leap. And so sometimes I tell people, like, you don't have to know. Just hire a VA for twenty hours a week and start giving them stuff and learn what it's like to delegate your work away. And delegation and how to give someone a task and then make sure it's done in that feedback loop is a skill in itself.

Brandon Parker10:34So there's something to be said for both of those. Like, just get an employee. It doesn't matter what and just see what it feels like, and then make sure that you're hiring for actual stuff and not just trying to

Daniel Apke10:47give work away. Yeah. And you can just write down everything you do. It's simple. Like, write down everything you do on a weekly basis and then think of which things you can give away fairly easily. That does... Isn't gonna take much work from you to teach them that they can do right away. Start small, start part time. I remember starting my... When I started this land business, my fur... My full time VA came over and we're like, we just don't have enough work for you. But I... He came from my ecommerce stores, and I wanted to bring him over. So I was like, we're just gonna give him as much as we can. And then over time, he'll have enough for a full time.

Daniel Apke11:19And that was, like, way, like, the first few months of it. And then as the months go on, his plate's full. His plate after three, four months is completely full. Start with one task, then add a task, get him to do it, and it just keeps stacking and compiling. And then he has a weekly routine he's going through, and he's checking the emails. He's responding. He's updating the website. He has his daily tasks checking everything off. And over time, it just compounds and stacks on each other. But if you have never hired an employee, a VA, just an assistant, someone to just do all these tasks, like you said, just...

Daniel Apke11:50That it's extremely valuable to delegate these small, low level tasks.

Brandon Parker11:56You've... So those 500 properties you've you've flipped and you've built the whole land data platform. So you've got a lot of insight. What do you disagree with most of the land investing gurus about or coaches about?

Daniel Apke12:09It's changing a lot right now. It's interesting to see the the world... The land space change so fast. Because before when we first started, everyone was just sending direct mail, like, for the most part, and blind offers was the big thing. And then texting and cold calling and all these different things go. But a lot of land gurus try to pitch a one way, like, one way road. This is how you do it, which I think is meaningful to people who need direction, and you do want you do want some extent of that for sure because people wanna be told what to do when they're coming in. That's just factual.

Daniel Apke12:41But I like to call this space land investing because it's broad. Right? You can go into different niches. You can subdivide. You can... There... You can double close. You can high ticket double close a $500,000 property for $600,000. You can survey hack and split up part of land and only buy someone part of somebody's land. There's just... There's no definition to what this is, so don't stay in a box. Like, there... One... The thing I see with the a players in this space, the very experienced players, are they kinda went their own route, and they found their own direction, and they found their own niches or whatever is working for them.

Daniel Apke13:15And some of them are... Have their own in house cold calling teams. Some of them have outsourced lead generation. Some of them do combination of everything. Some of them just subdivide. Some of them do entitlements. They all find their own path, so stay very open. There's not one way to do it.

Brandon Parker13:31And with all of these niches, it's like the research and... What I see is people, they come in, they start doing low level flips, and then as they grow to two or three deals a month, they're like, okay. I want more expensive stuff. A lot of times that goes into subdivides, and then it just turns into this branch of entrepreneurial blue ocean where they just make up their own game plan. And those... Yeah. Like you're saying, those are the people that crush it. How do you think that data and research and the front end of the strategy plays into that.

Brandon Parker14:07And, like, obviously, like a date... Like, land portal is a platform for that. Like, how does that play in, and how do people use that? It just... Land portal is just a tool to be more efficient in your business. Like, it's it's going to help tremendously,

Daniel Apke14:19but it all comes down to your ability also, just like any other entrepreneur. Like, it's gonna assist you in your journey. Right? So if someone's going for... After subdivides, well, go on the land portal, target subdivides with using road frontage. You can target by road frontage. You can target... You can even target... We have a lot of people now that are targeting we have nationwide MLS data. They'll target MLS data with a certain amount of road frontage in a certain acreage range. And they're attacking subdivides on the MLS because those people already want to sell. They're already listed. And they subdivide. The finances still make sense.

Daniel Apke14:51So when I first started this business, there were no tools like this. I created a tool that was for my business, for those 500 properties we flipped in two years. I created a tool for that. And we attacked the things we couldn't get elsewhere. Right? Because we are pulling from different data softwares that you just pull county records. That's it. There's no... There was no land specific data at the time. So what we did, we just... First thing we did, we're like, we're we're sending a lot of mail in Kentucky and Alabama and all these different states.

Daniel Apke15:2230% of our properties would be landlocked half the time in some of these Alabama counties. Kentucky, 20%, 30% would have mobile homes or structures on it. But the county says it doesn't. So why does it have that? Wetlands, sloped properties, you have the ability to filter by buildability on the land portal. So we really just went down a list of what we want in our business we built it for ourselves. We didn't even know we're going to go to market or how this was going to turn out until we realized everyone else wants this. But we built it for ourselves just to get the cleanest data. Because there's one pet peeve I had, and I hated this.

Daniel Apke15:54When someone would call me, a lead would call me and they'd be so interested in selling. And I I would answer the phone and I'm talking to them. I'm asking why they're interested to sell, and they're ready to go. 10 out of 10 on a heat level. Right? And then I pull up the map. I'm like, oh, it's landlocked. Oh, it's wet. It's in a flood zone. We don't have that anymore. You don't need to deal with that, and that was a huge issue. And we are sending so much direct mail that's 60 for thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands over time of records, and it's just a waste of money. But more importantly, it's a waste of time because these calls are calling in.

Daniel Apke16:25You're wasting your time. It's going in your CRM. Your analysts looking at it, reviewing it. It's just a waste of space, and that's what we wanted to eliminate.

Brandon Parker16:34Yeah. That's a huge... We've been cold calling for two years, and so I saw a lot of data come in. And we were we were at one point, like, percent of the properties were either landlocked or flood zone. And it gets obvious. It's like, oh, the people who wanna sell are the people who have a property they can't sell. So when someone calls up, they're like, oh, a sucker. Let me see if they'll take it. And so it's like you have a third of your leads that are coming in looking for a sucker. And, yeah, that... So that is a huge solution. I mean, that's...

Brandon Parker17:05For for someone like me pulling data that's not landlocked or flood zoned, that's 33% more efficient with our leads, and that's that's an insane change. So

Daniel Apke17:16yeah. And we kind of just added things. We we listened to the community on what to add because obviously we have our own business doing that. But we quickly found out when we released the software that other people have their businesses and they do things a certain way. And you start hearing request of what people want and 20 people requested this one month and then the next... You know what I mean? So we're literally... The way we build our software is just listening to what you guys want, listening to what we hear over and over again, and then putting it in a prioritization list for our developers. That's how it was built. It wasn't built... Like, the starting point was that 500 properties that we flipped in two years and using our knowledge internally.

Daniel Apke17:49But once we had the base and foundation, we just use the community now and the the people of land to tell us, hey. What are you looking for in this space, and what do you want on this platform?

Brandon Parker17:58What do you think is going to happen in the next year to two years in the land business with data platforms? There's a lot of tools out there. There... People are creating all kinds of interesting stuff. With AI, the land business, where do you see it going bigger picture?

Daniel Apke18:15Yeah. That's what I'm... We just had a podcast today on that, actually. I'm really curious, though, because we were talking about five years ago, the podcast today, what it looked like five years ago. It's like, gosh, it's like archaic compared to now. And in another five years, we'll look back at this episode and think it was archaic. You know, it's gonna keep advancing. I don't know. In a year, it's pretty short term. There's gonna be more AI solutions. I still personally don't think... And I I don't think there's enough good funding in this business. I think there's a lot of traditional deal funding with profit splits.

Daniel Apke18:45We need more hard money. We need more people coming in with good lending terms, 15% annualized. Give me a percent upfront. Funding is going to change rapidly and it should because the traditional profit split, you know, 50%, 25, whatever it is, 40% profit split is great for both sides and it works. But as you're scaling your business, you need more than one option. You need to be able to go after a wide network of people that are offering good interest based loans with a mortgage backed on the property. I I think there's... I think that's only 10% of the way to where it's gonna get, and I think there's a lot of room for good funding to come in.

Brandon Parker19:19That's a good call. And as the business... As the operators, the land operators, as they become more professional, the money can be more confident. Like, here's a 15% interest rate. Like, the underwriting's better. Like, this system is... We know you're gonna deliver more often. Risk goes down. More money comes in. And so For sure. Yeah. That's a great call. I hadn't I hadn't really considered that, but that's such a bottleneck too. That's that's one of the main bottlenecks that people hit is, okay. Now where am I gonna get money? And that... If that ends up being a fifty fifty split with another land investor, it definitely slows things down.

Brandon Parker19:54So Yeah. And there's something to that, though, because there is no... For new people, like, is no risk on that, you know, because it's all... The the the funder consumes all the risk with the profits. But Mhmm. So there is still... And and especially for bigger deals and

Daniel Apke20:07project based where it might take longer, there's still room for traditional deal funding, I think. But you look at these other industries like house flipping and all this, they're not doing any profit splits. You know? So it's like they're all interest based loans. So I don't know about all, but most of them are interest based loans. So I just think warehouse flipping and wholesaling is, we're kind of edging, and we're getting closer with the lead generation and texting and all the systems that we're seeing and the technology coming. We're getting close to wholesaling, but it's still gotta go that route with the loan side.

Brandon Parker20:37Yeah. The... Something else that that they do in wholesaling is they'll they'll leave a little meat on the bone with cash, like operating capital for their... The wholesalers, which we don't see often in land right now. But let's say you're buying a piece of property for a $100,000 and you're gonna flip it for $1.70 or something. The lender in wholesaling might give you a 115,000. And that 15,000 is kinda like operating capital for you to fix up the property and things like that.

Brandon Parker21:08So Good point. That cash flow... Keeping that cash flow cycle moving is is critical too. And so there'll be some really in... Interesting developments. People in the right spot get the right funding can be a a competitive hack, especially when it's early before a lot of people... Before it's real easy to get. Yeah. People who find that are probably gonna put themselves in a good spot. Yeah. I connected my friend who does... He funded a lot of our deals the last

Daniel Apke21:33eighteen months or so, and he did a good 15% loan for us paid deferred. So you don't pay monthly payments back on it or anything. So when the property sells, we pay it back. And since we're going after bigger deals and not as many, I started referring him to some people that I knew in just the land communities that I thought would be a good fit for those loans. And he already got... I introduced him, like, three people, and he's already got 15 to 20 deals submitted to him in a week or two just because of how high the the demand is, and that's what really opened my eyes.

Brandon Parker22:01That's a good point. And if you you know the best people for this is, like, successful dentists. I have a few dentist friends who just crush it, and they're, like, they're they're pretty entrepreneurial, but they're dentists, so they don't really have time to actually start a business. But, like, you offer them something like... They're like, yes, please. Like, I'll give you all all the money. Here. How much do you want? They don't see this return in the market. You know what I mean? Yeah. For sure. For sure. So there's definitely capital out there looking in the right places. That's a cool angle. So you generate a ton of leads.

Brandon Parker22:32What does your team do to separate tire kickers from real sellers?

Daniel Apke22:38A lot of that is salespeople have their... Every salesperson has their own ability to do that. A set of questions always helps, but you can... Once you have a little bit of experience, you can quickly tell if someone's tire kicking or not. Like, very, very quickly with the... Whether it's the tone of their voice. Sometimes they just call and they ask. They want 400,000. You offered them 40. Okay. Obviously, that's not gonna work. We can't get up there. But a lot of it's just experience on that. We do ask a set of questions, like, especially our answering service, ask very basic questions. Are you interested in selling your land?

Daniel Apke23:10Yes or no? It's very straightforward in answering service y, but you ask basic questions and can hear the recording and listen to it. But are you interested in selling your land? Are you ready to move forward with the offer you received? Do you have any questions on how the process works? That type of stuff. And you just see the response. And based on how they respond, a lot of times you just get that feeling. I think that's one of the things that just comes with a you know, 10 to 20 calls like it, and you have that feeling now.

Brandon Parker23:35And does that look like, just process wise, the

Daniel Apke23:41acquisitions manager is... That's landing in CRM. They're listening to the recording, deciding if they're gonna follow-up with it or not, and then pushing it somewhere else in your CRM. What's that actually look like? Yeah. So there's, like, no no. It's like, I'm not interested in selling. I'm not ready to move forward. That's like, no no. But you always wanna look at the transcript of it. We don't actually listen to... You can listen to the recordings. We have them in there. But you'll want to look at the transcript to see what they actually say because you... If not, you're relying on the answering service, you know? So you want to make sure that you're accurate with it.

Daniel Apke24:11So yeah, this... It goes to the salespeople. The yes, yes is what we call them. Yes, yes, because they answered yes to the questions are the hottest leads. They all kick to the salespeople and the salespeople call them back and their jobs to close the deal. Essentially, they have a, we do a lot of blind offers, so they have a offer price in there. Salespeople call with the property in in front of them, ask them questions, try to gauge them. If they're hot, they'll try to close them right there, obviously. But a lot of them need negotiations, take a little time. Maybe we gotta go up a little bit on price. Maybe we have to close faster, whatever it is. And they just really work with them based on those notes.

Daniel Apke24:42But that's just to gauge the lead right away so it doesn't go directly to a salesperson just so we have 1247 answering, and it's always gonna be answered. And then two, some information to keep data on as we move forward.

Brandon Parker24:55And so there's a lead manager or someone in between the answering service and the acquisitions manager who's looking at the transcript and deciding?

Daniel Apke25:04Yes. No. So the... Yes. So the... So we have a virtual assistant that always goes through and kinda confirms everything that they see in the Airtable, and then they'll put it over into our salesperson's tab in Airtable. And then the salesperson will go in, and there's different stages in sales table for the sales specifically. And that's, like, their new lead stage, and then they'll see the notes, then it's their job to to get back with them.

Brandon Parker25:27What's a ballpark conversion rate on leads that make it to your acquisition manager?

Daniel Apke25:33Direct mail, it's a good question. And that's changed a lot over time and based on the deal sizes we do as well. Mhmm. I feel like direct mail was like a a one to 10 to 15 on direct mail, roughly. Mhmm. What it cost? It cost us anywhere up to $1,300 or so to get an... 1,300 to $2,000 to get an acquisition historically. So, really, if we have 10 to 15 different direct mail blind offer leads, we'll we'll close one one of them.

Brandon Parker26:09And have you expanded into anything outside of blind offers, texting, cold calling, RVM, anything like that?

Daniel Apke26:14Yes. Texting. We haven't done RVM. I've been talking a lot with the lead mining pros, Nicholas Nick, and brought him in, and he's doing some education with us and stuff right now. I believe in all of it. Listen. They're all... The only one I'm not as familiar with is RVM. I know it works, though. I'm just not personally as familiar with it. But the pillars like texting, calling texting, cold calling, mail, those aren't gonna go anywhere. So when you ask me about the question of where this business is going, those three are always gonna stay around. And the more people go into texting and they go into cold calling, the more opportunity is gonna come back around to direct mail.

Daniel Apke26:47Direct mail got saturated. Right? That's why people went to texting and cold calling more and more. But then what's gonna happen, it's gonna shift back and it's eventually gonna balance out. So I just think those three pillars are always gonna stay around. Things are gonna change a little bit. But, like, you talk about how do you reach people? You call them, you text them, or you mail them, anyone, and that's not changing anytime soon.

Brandon Parker27:10Yeah. I I look at cold calling, and I saw the wave happen. When we first started our little... When I was doing cold calling for land deals, there was no one cold calling. It wasn't even a thing. Land caller hadn't even started yet. We were just launching, and no one cold called. I mean, there was people that kinda did it on the side. But now it... There was, like, this wave that became really popular, and now it's it's dipping back a little bit. But like you're saying, there's, like, waves of what's popular and what's working.

Brandon Parker27:41And, I like the idea of mailing, cold calling, texting, and just almost a little bit of an omnichannel approach. Yes. The only difference I see is that I feel like people should keep it simple until they're ready. You know? I I... When people... Sometimes people come in and they wanna mail, text, and cold call all at the same time to kick it off. Right. But there's, a... Each of those has its own lead management process, and so it can get messy. And so a lot of times, it's like, just do blind offers to start.

Brandon Parker28:13Yeah. Get your systems going, and then, you know, hit another channel. I think Hormelzy is, like, more better new.

Daniel Apke28:19Yeah. And and especially if you're in one of those three that are proven. You know, if you're... If it's not working for you and you're texting or mailing and it's not... You gotta look internally because other people are doing it successfully. These are all three proven things. Master one before, like you said, that's a really good point. I'm glad you say that because we have the same issue that we see as people come in and they try to do two or three channels at once, which is really, really, really difficult. Right? Master one before moving on for sure. Get a deal, understand the systems, have your process in place, and then consider another route.

Brandon Parker28:52Yeah. We need to bring in the Bruce Lee, afraid of a man who does one kick 10,000 times Yeah. Meme meme for this one for sure. It's true, though. For sure. Yeah. What's a great follow-up look like, and where do you think most investors drop the ball on follow-up?

Daniel Apke29:10Most investors drop the ball just in sales in general. Follow-up's a part of that. But either people just aren't good at sales, to be honest. And the people who are good have a major advantage in this business because it is very sales focused. And it used to be like... People used to say when I first started this business, it's all about the blind offer. Like, your analyst is... Your way you price land is your salesperson. And there is something to that because an engineer with no sales background can come in and still do really well in this business. No doubt. But if you can get on the phone confidently, qualify or disqualify someone fast, build rapport with them, and follow-up over time, there's so, so, so much value to that.

Daniel Apke29:52And it comes down to your sales ability. If you don't have the sales ability, you can. D salesperson can become a b minus, a b salesperson, and do very, very well. But if you're gonna stay a d minus salesperson and not improve over time, you have to figure out what you're gonna do because your business isn't gonna get better as long as your sales struggle. So you gotta either outsource it, partner with someone who's good at sales, or learn it. And I think that's the biggest problem people have in this is their sales ability, to be honest with you.

Brandon Parker30:20Yeah. That lines up with this this theory that I've been kicking around that the... So where we're at is we've had a a influx of us newer land investors and a lot of coaching and a lot of people sending out their first thousand or 5,000 mailers and then not following up real well or just not real professional. And so there's a lot of land sellers who have been essentially burned by poor follow-up. And so I think that the sellers are getting a little bit jaded and that there is a hole in the market with lead management where just high quality follow-up, like, do what you said you were gonna do.

Brandon Parker30:59They get a email and a text from you. Like, this is me. This is... Here's an email with my website, and it's professional, and you follow-up the day you say you're gonna follow-up. You have a few automations that keep them in the loop. I think that right now might go a really long way, and I think that it also ties into your sales because part of sales is them believing what you say. And and when you can follow-up, strategically, I think that fills a little of that hole.

Daniel Apke31:25Yeah. And that honestly... Guys, if you're not following up with your leads when you say you're going to, like, you're not gonna win. You're just like... That's... It's crazy that you can literally beat out 50% of the people by just doing what you say you're going to do, And it's that... So half of sales is doing what you say you're gonna do, is answering your phone, is calling them back quickly because that does build trust. Even if you're not good at talking back and forth with them, you do what you say you're gonna do. You send the notary out there when they say whatever it is, you're getting them back with them. You get them a price on time. You're following up.

Daniel Apke31:55That's building trust subconsciously in their in their mind because you're you're doing exactly what you say. And if you guys do have bad sales ability in general, that's the one thing to do to combat it is just be very trustworthy and follow-up. But that's... I don't like to hear that people aren't following up when they say because that... It's it's definitely happening. It happens in every industry, but that's just basic one zero one stuff, guys. You you you can't just... You gotta do what you say you're gonna do.

Brandon Parker32:21Yeah. And the reason I say that is from listening to, you know, thousands and thousands of cold calls. There is a there's a a lean towards this answer that we get more often now of a, yeah, I've got a bunch of calls. I've got mail too. No one follows up. And so it's like this... It's just a thing that I've been hearing and kinda getting this vibe of. It's like... And, obviously, people who are probably in your community and, like, who are involved in communities are are

Daniel Apke32:48doing what they say they're gonna do, but there's also people who've watched a few YouTube videos and send out mailers and ghost people. You know? That's how it's such a No. For sure. And it get... It gives good business owners, good people with good systems in place who are taking it seriously a major opportunity because everyone's sending mail... All mail is not equal. You know what I mean? They get two pieces of mail. They call two people back. One calls them back in ten minutes. The other calls them back in two days. Who are they gonna go with? Mhmm. Mhmm.

Brandon Parker33:12Yeah. That... I think that speed to lead is a big part of it as well. Like, how quickly are they engaged? There's the... Hormozi has a really interesting quote about the... There's a 391% uptick in closes when the original lead is contacted within a minute to three minutes of their first reach out. So it's like they reach out. They say, hey. I want some information, and then someone calls them back instantly or they get an instant text. That that is... Builds massive amount of rapport.

Brandon Parker33:44And so just simply automating that first contact to be quick somehow

Daniel Apke33:49is a... Is some low hanging fruit, I think. Yeah. And you hit them when they're hot. Yeah. Like, they're submitting something, you hit them when they're hot. And they're... They don't go to sleep and wake up with a different point of view. You know? That's a big part of it also, I think. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Brandon Parker34:03What's something that you believed about land investing three years ago that now you think is dead wrong?

Daniel Apke34:11That's a that's a tricky one. Something I believed is true. I honest... I still think this is true, but I think the biggest thing... Like, three years ago, if you would've talked to me, I was 10000% blind offers. I'm not doing anything else but blind offers. I had a feeling it was going to change, though, and it has drastically. But, like, how focused we were with only blind offers, and we thought that was ends all be all. That was all what was in our programs. That's all we really, know, taught and preached everything. But the biggest change that we've seen that I didn't probably didn't even know about then was double closing.

Daniel Apke34:44And that's such a big percentage of... Like, we... I couldn't imagine the millions of dollars we lost from not offering that when someone wants 70% market value or it's a little wet, and I didn't feel comfortable buying it with my own money. 500 deals to acquire is a lot, but think of all the deals we lost and we didn't double close that could have been in there. Maybe they... The the land was a little sloped. We could have offered a double close and probably made a lot of money on it. So that's the biggest thing I've seen because I used to be so hard with just we're buying it at this price. Go up to 48,000. Don't go any higher than that with our salespeople.

Daniel Apke35:16And we'd... And they'd always try to talk us up because they're trying to sell the... Buy the property, obviously. But we were so hard headed with... And stern with our prices. It's like we know what we need to be at. We have investors. We have funding we need. We need to be at this price, and that was it. Now the strategy has changed a little bit. We are... We look at it more of approach of, okay, option a, we get you cash in two weeks at this price. Option b, I can get you this price, get you more money, but I need a little bit more time. So I think the hybrid approach for the acquisition method changed a lot over that three years.

Brandon Parker35:45And I've seen some people shifting towards, like, a... Almost like a partnership format as well where even the level past the double close where we will partner with you, subdivide it to give you a percentage of the profits. Are you into that realm, or do you think, like, keeping it simple with the double close node?

Daniel Apke36:04No. I'm absolutely into that. Like, that's just a type of almost creative is what I kinda look at it as. When you start getting into that and you're partnering with them and you're giving them a certain space... I've seen some people do, like, interest only payments on what it's gonna sell for for the first. They they... There's all kinds of crazy things you can do. I was thinking of one that I saw example in Michigan. I was trying to think of how he structured it, but it was, like, the most creative land deal I've ever seen. I don't remember the details. But if you can get into that, like, it gets a little more complex and a little higher level when you get into that.

Daniel Apke36:35That's why I don't preach it as much. We're not personally doing much of it, but I know there are so, so many opportunities out there for it. Because then you're cutting the owner into what you're going to do on the improvements, and they're gonna be excited about it as well. Mhmm.

Brandon Parker36:49Yeah. And that's that's the line that, yeah, I think you were talking about earlier where people get to a certain point, and then it's a choose your own adventure. You choose how you do your business and where you wanna put your extra time. So that that resonates for some people, and some people are like you know? So, interesting. There's a lot of noise in the land space right now. There's courses, CRMs, AI. What do you think is actually worth obsessing over this year?

Daniel Apke37:18I don't like to fall into any of the noise, really. Just people are all in the handwritten envelopes. It works well. Have you heard that noise? No. A lot of people are doing handwritten envelopes. That's blowing up, and it does work. So don't get me wrong. These people are getting a lot of leads from it, but things balance out over time. They always, always, always will come back to a neutral and a balance. So anytime you hear something very loud and exciting, yeah, maybe dabble in it, but be careful going full force and completely pivoting your business because things do balance out over time. I I... Like I said, I like to stick to the main foundations of business, have extremely good negotiation and sales abilities, and stick to those three pillars of acquisitions, texting, cold calling, mail.

Daniel Apke37:58You do those very well. I don't care what noise comes in the way you're not going to lose. Like if you just get good at those simple things, very simple, and then noise comes, maybe you get some efficiency things here and there and test different things out and they work really well for your business. Dabble it, but do ten, twenty, 30% of your marketing spend on it. Don't completely shift. There's too many people in this... In general, it's not this space. There's too many people who are always looking for the next and best thing. It's like we know what works. We know what's gonna continue to work. Yes. Dabble in different things, experiment, see what works for your business.

Daniel Apke38:30But a lot of the noise is just noise at the end of the day.

Brandon Parker38:34And with land portal, how do you not chase shiny object syndrome and and make sure that you're kind of delivering the next best feature that people are asking for?

Daniel Apke38:47Well, so I categorize it. There's there's... You can make a lot of money in SaaS selling high perceived value things that people... You add a little AI sticker on it, but it really doesn't do that much. It's high perceived. I'm gonna select your market for you. Think of that. I'm gonna tell you what market... My system's gonna tell you what market to select for you. Think of the perceived value there, but think of the actual value because then it's telling everyone the same markets and everyone has the same criteria. So think of the actual value. So I like to look at things that first off have...

Daniel Apke39:18Even if they're not as high perceived value, which means you won't make as much money in SaaS off of it, but have tremendous actual value to the users, that's the first thing I look at is the actual value versus the perceived value. Obviously, you want very high... Like, we had a comp report released about three, four weeks ago. It's an AI comp report. It actually is AI, so it's not just some random sticker. We have a machine learning team. But that actually estimates the price for you, and it gives you a TLP at the land portal estimate. And it's been very, very, very good so far. But that was one of the things where I'm like, this is very, very high perceived value.

Daniel Apke39:52And my goal is to make it very, very high actual value as well. So I always look at those two things, like what's high perceived value and what's high actual value and get to those as... Get to those first.

Brandon Parker40:03That makes sense. With the market selection, I hadn't thought of that angle, but that's a really interesting angle. It's almost...

Daniel Apke40:11Yeah. Wow. Okay. You can you can... You offer someone a market selection tool would have done, like, just an AI little piece, select the market for you. You can charge a thousand bucks a month for it. But my opinion on the longevity of this business is that's not gonna help you. So I'm not gonna do it. It's it's a low actual value in my mind.

Brandon Parker40:27With the comp report, that is high value. That's one of the biggest pain points that I've seen our clients have when they're... They wanna look at leads. They wanna get to them fast, but then do you just call them without comping? Do you comp and then call them, but then you sacrifice, you know, spending a bunch of time before every phone call when a lot of the phone calls aren't fruitful? So the comp... The land portal estimate, I think you call it, like, a land portal price. Can you talk more about that?

Brandon Parker40:58Like, what it looks at, how it gets with machine learning to an accurate pricing, and how accurate it is?

Daniel Apke41:06Yeah. So it's... It was launched about a month ago. It had... It's started off good. It was good on about 80 to 90% of the properties. It was very good. And then 10% had a bunch of outlier weird stuff going on. So the last month we spent fixing a lot of those outlier counties. We have data now on everything, pretty much. We have data on the land. We have the wetlands. We have the flood zone. We have the road frontage. We have every one by one meter square of dirt slope in the whole country. So we have all the data we need to be able to look at like kind comps.

Daniel Apke41:37And we have the MLS data to be able to compare it. But we look at things like sales price, that obviously sales price, the distance and all these other factors, the district it's in, the zip code it's in, we have it. And then it analyzes the property and then it gives you, let's say, five to 10 comps and then it puts weight on certain comps that it thinks is best based on certain criteria. We worked on this since last summer. And last night, we are on a call and we do a Wednesday call, and we review a bunch of deals.

Daniel Apke42:07And Ron was doing the deal review, sharing his screen. And while he was doing it, I was up on the stage too. And I was looking at the comp report separate to compare it to his estimate just without him even knowing. And then at the end, I'd tell him. It was within 5%, everyone last night, of every single one. And we even did an over under for him. And he's like, give me three guesses with this property, and I'm gonna try to get within $500 of that, the land portal estimate. So he started off at 59,000. And then he said 61,000.

Daniel Apke42:38Then he went to 62. We are at 62 exactly. But that's how close it is. It's within 10% on almost every property. And it's very good at finding similar comps and putting weight on where it should. That's great. Are people able to use that when they pull data for blind offers and individually price thousands of properties or are they still pricing in chunks? How's that work? So, yeah. So once we, we don't have this on every export yet. So it's gonna be when you export a list, it's gonna be on there for every single one. So you can use that for your blind offers.

Daniel Apke43:10That's the goal. That's why we built it originally. Comp report's great. You can see it. You can send it around. You can send it to your investors. It's it's phenomenal. It shows you on a nice scatter graph. It gives you... It's like a PDF of a property. So it tells you everything about the slope on your property, the characteristics, and then wetlands, floods on it. It's almost like a PDF for your specific property, but then it goes to the comps after that. And then it doesn't tell you how to weight it. It doesn't tell you any proprietary stuff. We have a full time machine learning team that's on this project. That's what they've been on. And I'm telling you, this thing has been so hard to develop.

Daniel Apke43:41I'm so... It's not over. It never will be, but I'm so glad we're to the point we are today because, like I said, last summer, and it's just been a nightmare.

Brandon Parker43:49Yeah. I've, we're developing a software product, and the amount of just little technical hiccups that are seen, it just... It never ends. Ends. It's insane. It does never. Software does not end. Software does not end. It's like... It's just like, oh my gosh. This is amazing, actually. I can't believe that... How much work that takes. So congratulations on getting that to the point it's at, and I'm sure you'll just keep crushing it over time. That's that's exciting. Really exciting.

Brandon Parker44:19Yeah. We saw, like, a 20% jump in subscribers when... Since we've launched it.

Daniel Apke44:24And the feedback we're getting, I mean, from our best... The feedback from everyone's great. But when I say we have an enterprise unlimited data plan that a lot of people are on, and that's just the people who are doing hundreds of thousands and want unlimited data so they don't need to pay per row or export anything, we have a lot of people on that now. And I am constantly talking to those people because they're our biggest users, obviously. And all of those people have been so, so happy with the comp reports and the results it's gotten in their business. And that's like the biggest compliment to me because those are the people using it the most and actually doing the most land deals out there.

Brandon Parker44:59Yeah. That is... That... It it makes it feel like there's going to be a... As we professionalize the industry, it becomes more like wholesaling. There's gonna be people who pull away from the pack. There's gonna... Like, the that middle ground is gonna be a lot different from beginner and just expert who's leveraging all of these tools like like Land Portal. Absolutely. Where is the best place for people to find you online,

Daniel Apke45:27ask questions about land portal, follow you, etcetera? What's the what's the socials look like? I'm active on all social media. If you guys are on Instagram, I'm at Daniel Apke, a p k e. Send me a DM. Let me know what you're going through. Let me know what you're looking for. Let me know your problems you're having in your business or just introduce yourself. I love talking to all these people in the space or people looking to get in. I'm always happy to help, man.

Brandon Parker45:48Wonderful. Anything

Daniel Apke45:50that we glossed over you wanna go back and hit on? Any big thoughts around the land business that you wanna chat about? No. I think we hit a lot of the major things that we that we should have hit on, like the the sales, focus on your sales ability, ignore distractions, don't worry about the shiny objects coming in. Those were the main things I really wanna talk about because I think that's what the... And stay consistent, obviously. Those are the main things I wanted to hit on.

Brandon Parker46:15Well, absolute pleasure to have you on the show today, Daniel, and I can't wait to see what happens next in the land portal and in the land industry itself. Good to have you on, Daniel. Yeah. Thanks for having me, Brandon.