How to Build a Scalable Land Business With Tim Ebie

Brandon Parker00:00We are live. Welcome back to the Legends of Land Show. My name is Brandon Parker. It's my job to deconstruct the tactics of world class land investors. Today, my guest is Tim ABA, founder of Land Fast Offers. Tim's been in real estate for almost a decade and over five years specifically in land. He's run hundreds of pre foreclosure deals, transitioned into land, expanded into multiple states, and built a seven person acquisitions operation with real systems and KPIs behind it. Most investors do a couple deals here and there, but Tim runs a serious business.

Brandon Parker00:34Multistate marketing, structured acquisitions, repeatable underwriting, and a functioning dispo machine. Today, we're breaking down exactly how he operates. So welcome to the show, Tim. Hey. Thanks for having me, Brandon. Glad to be here. Yeah. Great to great to meet you at Ajay's event. Hop right into the the the the weeds here. Walk me through your acquisition system. End to end lead comes in. What happens next exactly?

Tim Ebie01:00Yeah. So typically, just to kind of even take a step backward there, I think it all starts with... Obviously, before you can actually get to the acquisition, it starts with the market selection. Right? That's where I look at it from kind of from end to end. Right? So the tool we used we use actually is a land vision. So a lot of people in the space know that. And what we do is I I read an article. I don't remember which way it was, but the bottom line is it talked about different regions around The United States that... This is specific to land, different regions around The United States that produced certain type of sales and transactions over other areas.

Tim Ebie01:36For example, like the Northeast where you have, like, Boston, New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, there's certain type of sales, a certain type of land assets that actually sell there versus maybe the Southeast United States, etcetera, etcetera. And they broke them down into nine regions, and those regions cover, like, most of all the states in the in the country. So what we started doing is we just follow that article because they come out with the yearly. I think it's the land institute. Think I those are the guys that do it. So we follow that yearly. We just follow the regions that they kinda recommend, and they... Because they break down the trends and whatever's happening.

Tim Ebie02:06So what we do is we have our... One of our team member that help handles our data. They go into LandVision based on those regions. We pull our data based on, you know, land sales, pending sales, what is active, etcetera, etcetera. And we come up with these different metrics to say, okay. If it meets meets these certain criteria, these particular counties, right, it meets these criteria, pull it in, we send it over to our data scrubbers, they clean the data for, you know, wetlands, they clean the data for road access, etcetera, etcetera, topography, etcetera, etcetera.

Tim Ebie02:40Then we bring it to our system. Once it comes to our system, now we skip trace the data. So there are three steps here. We skip trace the data. We text them first. Once we're done texting, everything else that's not a lead, right, then we use long script for that. Everything that's not a lead, we cold call. Everything that's not a lead from cold calling. Now in most cases, if we get a deal between texting and cold call, we will send out the real... Direct mail marketing. Right? So now when this lead comes into our system, the first step we're doing is...

Tim Ebie03:12You know, let's say it's a text. Our lead manager... Because they're different marketing channels. I'm sure we can talk about that. But a different marketing channel, let's say texting because text is our first step. Our lead manager will get on the phone to prequalify them tomorrow. So they have a lead manager script. They go through, prequalify them more. The only goal or the outcome of their call to get an appointment. Right? So once the lead managers book the appointment from this text lead that's been generated, they'll put it on the acquisition manager's calendar. We use Calendly. The... You know, we have it set up in the background with the the seller or the property owner will get, an automated text in your your appointment is tomorrow at 03:00, kinda like dentist and doctor's office do.

Tim Ebie03:47Right? We do that. Once that acquisition manager goes, gets on the phone, and we take them through the sales process, and, we can close them. If not, we put them in a follow-up process.

Brandon Parker03:56Nice. Okay. There's a lot in there. Mhmm. That's fantastic. That gives us a lot to talk about. So let's start at the beginning with the regions. What are the regions that you're looking at now and

Tim Ebie04:10like, what's that specifically look like? Yeah. So so the regions are states and each... So so the regions are states. So the... So region one talked about the... Basically, in region one, the way I can phrase it, the most expensive land in The US, which which makes sense when I thought about after I read the article. And it come out yet. I can probably get it to you guys later. But it's, the most expensive land in The US is actually in the Northeast, which makes sense because it's smaller landmass. So Boston, what about Boston, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, the state of New York.

Tim Ebie04:43People just think Upstate New... People just think New York City, but the state of New York. So that region, one, it makes sense because it's not that much land. So that land per acre is a lot more expensive. So if you get a deal that you sell, you probably... You know, there's there's there's there's good demand there. Right? But they have a lot of rules and restrictions. You gotta still be careful there also. Right? So we're still in Region 1, and we went through Massachusetts. And what we do is, let's say we pull a state Massachusetts. We'll pull every county, and we'll run these data metrics on every single county that...

Tim Ebie05:13Let's say Massachusetts is the first state in Region 1. We'll pull the data, how many land sales, how many active, how many are pending, etcetera, etcetera. We're looking at the metrics. If it makes sense, it qualifies, we'll now pull that data. Oh, the other step is we're pulling from, let's say, zero acres all the way to one acre. I should say point nine nine acres. Right? So we're looking at the infill lots to less than one acre. That's one subset, and we're qualifying that. Because when you're pulling the comps, you know, they're they're kinda different.

Tim Ebie05:44Then we pull from one acre to 40. Base everything that's kind of rural, maybe, like, you know, subdivision rural type one acres all the way to 40 acres. So we're we're we're breaking it down to those two subsets, and now we're pulling data for zero to one acre and one acre to 40. And based on who comes back with better data in those two sectors, now we're probably doing an outreach to them. So Massachusetts, we go there, pull out every county. We'll go to, like... So right now, to answer your question, we're in New York, the state of New York. We're going through. I mean, he does have his challenges more on the dispose side, which you can talk on the back end.

Tim Ebie06:17Just to let you know, I mean, we'll get to this also on the back end. We do a lot of double closes. Right? So that's why we can be very aggressive and kind of go to different counties. Some people, they do blind blind offers. It might be a little different because you gotta learn all these markets. We don't really care. We just look at the numbers, and we're double closing on the back end anyway. So it's a little different strategy. I think I should kind of mention things like that for different people to know. Yeah. That's great because you cut your teeth in wholesaling. So you've got that that model is where you started. Right? Yes. Yes. Exact... Good point. Yeah. Good point.

Tim Ebie06:48Most people... Yeah. So we're very comfortable with that double close because coming from the house world, doing wholesaling assignments, double closing, it's very typical. So it's it's not uncommon to manage different moving parts, which they are. You gotta have a team, so which we do. So you talked about

Brandon Parker07:04your... If if the land qualifies basically or if it... With the sell through rates or how much is selling, how much is on the market. What are you looking for specifically in there? What's the type of data that you say, yep, That county we want, that one we don't?

Tim Ebie07:20Typically, we're looking for... So first of all, like, one of the things we're looking for also is price points. Right? We were at 50 k minimal market value a lot of times. I think we went down to about 30. So I'll say about 30 or 25. I wanna say about 30 is our our baseline of the cheapest we wanna go through. But we're looking for where sales are happening. So the sales through rate based on the sales versus what's active. I think I wanna say... I'd have it in front of me because we have, like, the whole datasheet. I wanna say it's at least probably about...

Tim Ebie07:50We're looking at maybe... And we're doing three months. We're doing six months a year. I wanna say if it's typically over... I wanna say about 50% as far as sell through rate, we're we're comfortable moving in there. Right? It has to be just a terrible sell through rate. I'll be honest. Typically, the only typically, the only time we're maybe not going out... Going after a county is if the sales rate is just, like, in in just dirt, like, just nothing. Typically, we're just going after everything. Here's why. Because with LandVision, we have get unlimited data.

Tim Ebie08:22So we don't really care. Right? So we're not as strict there because... And long term, we have about 20,000 a month. We can scale up, but it doesn't matter. My point is we're just kind of go more about going after the quantity versus, like, the quality. Because here's why, Bradley, and you asked a very good question. Part of it is because we don't know these markets yet, so we don't wanna we wanna weed out or we don't wanna deselect the market too early. So we wanna get... We want the market. We wanna get some kind of market feedback. So as long as the sell through rate is okay, I'll say about 30%, three months, six months, or a year, we're okay.

Tim Ebie08:52We'll still pull the data, clean it up. Let's text them. Because remember, texting is cheap. So let's text them, and let's see what comes out of this. Right? And, obviously, we're looking at a baseline of 35 k market value as far as, you know, that. But let's text. And the feedback went to tell us, okay. This is a terrible county because we're not really getting any leads here. So it doesn't matter. But what it cost up front was so cheap, so it's... To us, not that big of a risk.

Brandon Parker09:14Mhmm. Yeah. You're going wide and testing and seeing what happens. That that makes sense. And then you're just

Tim Ebie09:20probably rarely throwing out counties if there's some sort of outlier where it's like nothing selling here or it's it's noticeably worse. But besides that, you're calling... You're texting almost everyone, it sounds like. Yeah. We're texting because, really, we're we're trying to see, okay, where are the top counties in this re... Not... Yeah. The region one, for example, but in this state. And after a while, started to know... You know, we started looking at your your dashboard. It's it's it's clear as day because you start seeing patterns. Mhmm. Because we started to okay. Where are these leave? Where are we getting contracts? And you start seeing, like, the same counties in Massachusetts. And you've probably text ten, twenty counties, but you see the same three or four.

Tim Ebie09:54Keep... That's what we need to spend more energy and time in. It... Yeah. The data will always tell you market feedback. So I think that's how it it... You know, because when we've got into North Carolina and Florida and Texas, we knew counties that make money. So we're like, we're comfortable. But because we're going to these new regions, we have no idea. So we want the market to tell us if they want us to come or not. That's why I look at it. That's

Brandon Parker10:14smart. What's the most interesting thing you've found operating in the Northeast? Because most people aren't up there?

Tim Ebie10:22Well, that's a good point, man. That's why that's why why we're there. I know another land investor. Don't know if he's gonna watch this. My guy,, he he he does business there. But a lot of people don't do because everybody joins Gland. I mean, these land programs and into Atlanta, go to Texas. Everybody's going to Florida and then North Carolina, Northeast, and, you know, you know, stuff like that. So not Northeast, but Southeast, I should say. Mhmm. But the most interesting thing about there is that, for one, there's probably not as much competition in Northeast. There are probably some investors out there, but not as many because people just don't think there.

Tim Ebie10:52But those... That line that that can be pretty profitable if you get good at it. The only challenge I will say for our model, if you have a different model that purchase property right off from the seller, you might be more... It might work good for you. The only challenge I see for... From a Northeast standpoint, a lot of times, these are attorney states, and these are not just any attorney states. These are attorney states that everybody has their own attorney on. Oh, yeah. So because it... When when we close deals in North Carolina, Brandon, we can use one attorney to do both sides, a and b and b to c.

Tim Ebie11:24So that's two sides of the closings with the buyer... Sorry, with the seller and the back end buyer. And we're the... We're in the middle. So they could... One attorney can do everything. Oh, not North... Not Northeast Massachusetts. They were like, nope. No. No. No. Seller gotta get their own attorney. Buyer has own attorney. You have to have your own attorney. What what what happened is in Massachusetts, we actually finally figured it out how to how to solve it. We just learned how to get out. We had an attorney. Basically, we had to work through a few. We reached out to an attorney. I explained to her, hey. This is what we do. We're not trying to hold this property.

Tim Ebie11:54We're just trying to move it. So you're gonna have to be able to work with a buyer's attorney and communicate this is what we're doing. So in Massachusetts, it worked great. The most challenging state we found, I just closed the deal today. We just got the wire today, was Connecticut. It's probably a very challenging state to work because we tried the same stuff like maybe just two attorneys, buyer and seller. Connecticut, they had to be three attorneys. Oh, nice. It was just a mess. But we finally got it closed today. Again, we explained it. Like, this is what we do. It's a lot of moving parts.

Tim Ebie12:25So with what we do with double closing, with this kind of, like, lot of activity, I should say is the word, We have a transaction coordinator. Right? So they just manage that. I'm really I'm really involved on the back end unless there's something I need to look into, but you need someone that's just gonna focus to help these... Because there a lot of moving parts. So that's what I'll say with the biggest challenges. These attorney states that every everybody has to have their own legal counsel representation

Brandon Parker12:47in Northeast, at least what I've seen. Can the legal counsel come from the same office?

Tim Ebie12:52No. No. No. No. It probably has to be totally different attorney. They they will say it's conflicts of interest. Yeah. At least that's what I've seen. Always looking for loopholes. Oh, yeah. It's smart, though. It's smart. Yeah. Actually, that's a... Actually, now I think about it. That's a good point. I might have think... I didn't think about it like that. But I think for the most part, I think it's the law firm. Mhmm. They don't feel comfortable. They're like, hey. You have to have your own. And we tried everything. You know? I mean, there was a there was a mini loophole with one deal in Massachusetts where we wanted the buyer's attorney just to represent us, and he was like, okay. Just pay us like... He's like, just pay me $500.

Tim Ebie13:23I'll just draft up your quick claim because there's a lot of quick claim deeds out there. It's different from us in Texas. We use a lot of general warranty deeds, which I thought was interesting. So they'll just... He... When he says, like, hey. I'm gonna represent my client, the buyer. I can draft up a deed deed, a quick claim deed conveying interest from your company to my buyer, and that's it. You just pay me $500. I'm like, yeah. Just do it. I don't care about all the extra stuff. You know, he's like, nobody's gonna review it. I'm like, yeah. We can review it ourselves. So sometimes you find some attorneys that might do something like that. But even still, on the front end, we have to use another attorney just to close with the seller before we move to the...

Tim Ebie13:58This buyer's attorney. So in the Northeast, there's a lot of moving parts. You have to think through your dispo. But if you have a dispo brand and where you're just purchasing directly from the seller, you're fine because you just close with them and put it on the market and resell. You should be as much cleaner. It's more traditional, but we do a lot of double closes, so we're different. Yeah. So the the double close is what gets you those extra steps up there in the Northeast. Sounds like? Mhmm. Yep. A lot of moving parts on the back end. Why is... Why aren't people up there, you think?

Brandon Parker14:25I just think investors target anymore.

Tim Ebie14:27I'm I'm sure some are. Like, I know one investor that's out there. Let me just say, sometimes it might just be herd mentality. Right? Yeah. People just come in and... I'm sure when people take courses and these trainings... Because most people that come into the land space, my my belief is they probably have to go go into some coaches or classes where they're learning, and it's just Florida. It's Colorado, Costello County. Mhmm. It's Arizona. So Texas. So people just... Which is fine. I do the same thing too because you're like, hey. Start here. They... You'll... Most people that you've talked in land space, they're probably in Texas, North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee.

Tim Ebie14:59They're they're probably... Nobody's probably in South Carolina because of the whole... A lot of wholesaling rules. Right? So there's certain places where people just follow each other. But Northeast, like I said, what I started doing is... A lot of people use all the tools. There are there are lot of marketing tools out there. I think Land Insights is one of them. So people use all these tools. Land Insights helps a lot because it can show you... So those are great tools. What I started doing was I was like, you know what? I wanna begin to think for myself and do my own research because I love research personally. So I started researching land markets, land trends, and we came across this...

Tim Ebie15:32Think it's the Land Institute. I think that's what they are, National Land Institute. They they release yearly reports on the best land markets from agents. I mean... And it's a free report. So I'm like, I don't gotta pay all these tools. I just gotta study this stuff, and it started explaining the regions where the best sales are happening. We just started following that. And it was the simplest thing to scale because I just hand it off to my data guy. He just follows the regions. He he follows one state at a time, pulls every county, pulls every data, hear the metrics, load into the system, skip trace. It's a machine. Pretty straightforward after that.

Tim Ebie16:02So that's the reason we're in Northeast. Eventually, we're gonna come all the way down to other regions, but right now, that's why we're there. We just started there because that was region one, Northeast. They happen to win. Be the best area, so to speak.

Brandon Parker16:15I noticed that's common with high level land investors is that they've forged their own path and they're doing something unique. And I was just at the Land Operators Alliance with, like, 40 different people in Savannah, and they all had a different business model. And they were... They'd been doing it for a while like you, but they were all just doing something completely different. There was... They were... Had kind of risen above the just general competition because they made up a business out of it that was their own.

Brandon Parker16:47And so... Yeah. I think that's common with people who end up who end up scaling like you have to have something that no one else is really doing it exactly the same way. That's pretty cool. Yeah. I appreciate it. Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about your text call mail stack there? It sounds like you're texting at the beginning to go wide,

Tim Ebie17:08and then you are calling the people who didn't respond to text. Is that right? Right. So we're... So first thing we're doing is because... And part of it's because of the cost the cost of the leads. Right? It's much cheaper to text. Actually, cold calling is probably the cheapest, be honest. But anyway, texting, was... We we already set up in text before we got to cold calling. So we text them first because it's a little faster interaction. People people today... In today's day and age, they like texting versus calling. I do them the same way. Anyway, so we text first. Everything that's not a lead goes to cold calling.

Tim Ebie17:41So what we do is when we text them... Let's say we text a a thousand records. Let's say we get a 100 leads from there. So what we do is a lead manager, she makes sure before she passes it down to our cold call person does our cold calling. She makes sure those 100 are not put... Be put into the cold call system to cold call. Because you don't wanna... I I don't wanna be annoying. You don't wanna be that person. Like, somebody just text me about now you're calling. We don't wanna do that. If they responded, it's a lead. We take them out of our system. And so the only people that actually become cold call people that never really responded.

Tim Ebie18:12Right? So now they're calling those remaining 900. Out of those 900, let's say we get another 100 leads. Right? That's kinda why I pause because I'm looking to... I don't care about the leads as much. I'm more concerned about do we get paid on it? Do we do we close on a deal? So after we cold call, if we close on it, our team is automatically trained. If we close and receive the wire, the next day, as they're doing their texting and cold calling, guess where they're starting, Brandon? They're going back to the area we closed in. Right back. Now we're drilling deeper because there's something there.

Tim Ebie18:43Right? So they're going right back. They go back and text right there again. They go back and call it again, and we just keep hammering the air because now that market has shown us there's something there. Somebody's willing to do business. Not only is the seller willing to sell, but the demand is that some buyers willing to pay for a certain kind of property. Right? So that's what we do. Then after when it's all said and done, if the area is really good, like I said, we've maybe closed multiple deals, then I'll decide to now do a direct mail campaign there because I know we've made money. And sometimes it's the money we made from the text and the call in. Right? So the direct mail campaign is paying for itself.

Tim Ebie19:14So we take some of that... Those funds that we receive from texting and calling, and now we use some of that money to pay for direct mail campaign, and we go from there. Because here's the thing. Somebody told me once, I was in a mastermind. They mentioned that every operator, every business, at least in our real estate world, should be like a three legged stool. So there should always be some kind of cold calling going on, texting and direct mail because different people in different regions and different cities respond to different things. You will notice a trend. Cold calling works extremely effectively...

Tim Ebie19:44Well, I shouldn't say extremely more effective in areas in a city, big cities. When you cold call people in Houston, Alabama, Houston, they're probably gonna answer their phone. Versus rural, it might be a little slower. Rural might be more direct mail. Your baby boomers, they might respond to that. So every region is different, and there's no way to tell unless you test it out. It's almost impossible. Right? Because you can't... That's why I'm I'm not a believer. We say, oh, direct mail, direct mail, cold calling, there's no such thing. Every market in China works, but also depends on your region. If... Especially if you're tech... That's why you have to test the regions because we've noticed trends.

Tim Ebie20:15Like, certain markets, we literally are closing deals every time it's direct mail. Some are just literally only texting. Some are just literally only cold calling. They just respond better. You see more leads coming in from cold calling from this particular county. It's just how those people respond. Right? So... And the only way you can know it is marketing is also testing. You have to test it, track, you have to measure, you have to pay attention to the data. You really gotta study your data to make sure you're not just throwing dollars away. So I don't if that helps answer your question.

Brandon Parker20:42Yeah, absolutely. Something I'm big about in our company is called the OODA loop or the the feedback loop, basically. Observe, orient, decide, take action, and then observe again, orient, decide. And then just as quickly as we can make that happen, the more successful we are, the faster we operate. That comes from Boyd, famous US fire fighter pilot. And he changed... They became some of the most successful dogfighters ever because they focused on that feedback loop of observing what's happening, orienting yourself, making a fast decisive action, taking action, and then observing what happens at that action.

Brandon Parker21:22Just keep repeating it. Yep. And just that that circle that you're doing there clicks for me because that's something we try to be really effective within our business. We're more of a SaaS company though, so it's like it's very logical for us to be taking that approach. I think that with what you're doing and putting it into land how you are is something that not... I don't hear a lot of people doing it like that and I think that's fantastic. Yeah. Well, appreciate it. Yeah. That's killer. And then the...

Brandon Parker21:54You're you're booking a Calendly call now too, it sounds like. So we tried booking Calendly calls or just basically booking an appointment with clients Right. Or possible sellers. What we found was that sellers didn't seem to care about appointments, and they just wouldn't show up to them. And then we'd have our clients on the call, like, waiting for an appointment and the seller wouldn't show. But it sounds like you've been effective with that. Can you talk a little bit about why that works or how you're making it work and how often people show up? Well, I I think it all... Good question, Brad.

Brandon Parker22:24I think it all depends on two things. One is

Tim Ebie22:27cadence, and I think the second thing is setting the stage. Right? So studying this guy, John Martinez, out of Florida, popular sales trainer for our sales process. The first step in the sales process is setting the stage. We go to a dentist before you go to a dentist or a doctor, let's say a doctor... Before a doctor injects you with a needle, like, hey, I'm about to inject you. It's gonna hurt just a real ten seconds. The doctor said in the stage, this doesn't inject you like, ah, what is... Yeah. So I thought that was a great analogy. Right? So same thing. Right? I'm I'm gonna answer the question. I'll start with expectation, and I'll get to cadence.

Tim Ebie23:00Expectations, like, when our lead manager gets on the call, she's setting the stage. The call is gonna be five to ten minutes. She tell them the outcome. At the end of this call, this is gonna happen. This may or may not work for you. The seller's calm. And we take away the buyer pressure. We're like, hey. We we we... This... We might not... Nothing might happen here. Like, we might not be the best fit, and that's okay. If you... If... And we tell them also also like, hey. At any time of doing this call, if you feel like this call is not going good, can just hang up. And people just like, I guess what? People always do the opposite. Right? So Yeah. But people like that feeling that you've empowered them.

Tim Ebie23:30Yeah. Okay. You can make your own decision if this call is... So my point is at the end of that call, after she sets the appointment, she sets the stage again like, hey. You're talk to one of our land buying specialists. What's gonna happen, that call is gonna take twenty to twenty five minutes. See that? She set the stage again for... She does the hand off like a relay race. When acquisition manager jumps on the appointment, same thing. And what she's do... Also tell our lead lead managers also let them know, you're also gonna get a text to remind you. Mhmm. So right there. And we verify the number. Is this the best number?

Tim Ebie24:01We also get an alternate context right there. Is there any other number we can reach you on besides this number? Right? So as soon as they hang up, we tell them... We set the stage that they're gonna get a a call or a text. Actually, we tell them we're gonna get a text. And the way we have Calendly set up, the automated Calendly message, as soon as they hang up, the message goes out like, hey. Your appointment is tomorrow. Let's say Monday, the twenty fourth, if that's the twenty fourth. Yeah. The twenty fourth at 9AM central. Right? Do we get that? Then what we do is we do like... I think we also do an hour before. Mhmm. They get another text.

Tim Ebie24:31Like, hey. Just remember, Brandon, Emily specialist is hour before the next thing, ten minutes before they get another one. But here's part of the secret. I just remembered. We rarely set appointments that are more than forty eight hours out. We... Preferably, it's twenty four hours out because we were still top of mind. Mhmm. Because we we we found out the further we set it... Let's say today is Friday, I set it for next Friday. Oh, they gonna forget. Yeah. Yeah. A matter of fact, on Friday, we don't even like to do Friday, Monday. That's... The weekend is too much.

Tim Ebie25:02We like to say, like, we talked to them Monday. Your appointment is probably Tuesday or Wednesday morning, and we drill that into our lead manager. It has to be a quick turn time because you're still top of mind. And part of it also is, like I said, for us to click the dots, it's not about the technology. It's about the people and the process. What do I mean by that? We do a lot of training on our lead managers on the sales process, tonality, setting the expectation. When you go through a proper sales process, Brandon, right, by the time your your lead manager is done with them, your company and this conversation is gonna stick out to them subconsciously.

Tim Ebie25:38They're gonna remember you because you you... Because our sales process is not just a regular sale. Yeah. This is Brandon. You wanna sell? Okay. Bye. Oh, tomorrow at 02:00. Yeah. We're we're training for at least ten, fifteen minutes. I mean, we're digging deep and we're asking great questions. So by the time you hang up, they're like, wow. I really like Karine. And we get that on the back, like, oh, we actually like them. So they're forward to the appointment. The Calendly, just a reminder, just, hey, don't forget because you might be busy, you have kids and, you know, eating dinner, you might forget. So I just think it's it's more than one. It's kinda like a package of different things that come together to make the Calendly work.

Tim Ebie26:10So we found that that's kinda help what helps us be successful using Calendly to kinda schedule those folks, bring them in.

Brandon Parker26:16Yeah. That's sharp. The interesting tidbit for your cold polling party operation. I think that over half the land, the vacant land is owned by people over 50 years old. And and that over half of those people still have landlines. And so that's when I was thinking back about how you're texting and then you are ending up calling some people. That's that percentage that you're probably a lot of them that you're calling is those people that still have landlines.

Brandon Parker26:48And and to me, that's what the cold calling ends up being for. Mhmm. There's there's the people who are gonna be texting and they're gonna be getting follow-up texts and reminders about appointments. And there's people that are just siloed into their landline world. And you're catching them with the cold calls. So, yeah, that's that's

Tim Ebie27:07I will say this about that. Mhmm. The three legged stool. The reason reason it's opened my eyes, Brandon. And you're right about that point because you're right. You're not texting the line lines, and they're gonna answer the phones. They answer it with cold calling. One of our biggest deals, one of our first 6 figure deals we did was we just started doing cold calls. Right? And it was the most basic deal. But after we closed this deal, Brian, it was a cold call lead. They got on the phone. She's probably in mid of thirty or forty as I talked to her myself. And after I talked to, you know, I talked to her everything. I went back and looked...

Tim Ebie27:38You know, I said go back and just kinda feedback on, you know, postmortem, so to speak. I went back and looked at our CRM. We had mail... This is what we should do mail before. We have mailed her, like, two or three. I saw the letters in our CRM. I'm like, she never responded. But it's because we were, like I said, a three legged stool. We also followed up... It wasn't even a follow-up. It was just a regular cold call. We cold called her, and she answered the phone. Right? She didn't respond to texts. She didn't respond to mail, but she responded to a phone call. So my point is if you're not doing a three legged approach for each lead...

Tim Ebie28:09It shouldn't be easily because direct mail can be expensive, but at least some level of that, they call it... Is it omni marketing omni marketing channel? Right? If you're not doing that, sometimes you might be leaving some money on the table. So

Brandon Parker28:21And there's a lot of times people want to take action. It's kinda in the back of their head. It's on their to do list. It might sit on their to do list for ten years. And so part of the omnichannel marketing is just giving them the path of least resistance and kind of opening that door for them. Like, when she might have been ready to sell when she got those mailers, but she just never got around to, like, picking it up, making the inbound phone call. It's just like, that's a chore. And so when you just got her on the line, it's like, actually, I've been meaning to do this. So

Tim Ebie28:49Very good point.

Brandon Parker28:50What's the... What's your what's your team setup look like? Because you have a lot of systems in place. And also touch on the dashboards that you're looking at.

Tim Ebie28:59Yeah. So, yeah, so for team setup, it's it's changed recently. We could talk about that. So the Lampart... So lead manager, that's one. We had a cold caller, that's 2, which she's no more, but I'm gonna touch on that cold caller and 2. Text her. So here's the thing. I text the same as our lead manager. That's 2. We have somebody that does dispo. That's 3. Data, that's 4. Acquisitions, that's 5.

Tim Ebie29:32I have an executive assistant. She's kinda part time at six, and has meet at seven. So that's that's kinda the team setup there. And the other question was dashboards. Yeah. You mentioned dashboards earlier when you're seeing where the deals are coming from, and what do those measurements look like? Yeah. So so... Yeah. So we have several dashboards. Right? So it's like a pile like, different dashboards are on the planet. Mhmm. So what what I mean... When I'm saying dashboards in this sense, dashboards, Brandon, is just... We just use a basic Google Drive. You know? It's just...

Tim Ebie30:02Sorry. Google Sheets. Is it Google Sheets or the Excel version, whatever... Whichever one there. Think it has Google Sheets. Right? And it just has, like, all the properties that we have in inventory. Right? We have the ones that are pending to close. Like, when I mean pending to close to get paid on the b to c side, we have the ones that have canceled because we need to see cancellation. Cancellation rates... Matter of fact, that's something we can probably talk about. It's, like, 50%, which is crazy. We have cancellations, and we also have, like, inventory, a contract signed, new contract signed. So we're looking at all that, and we're pulling a lot... We're looking at lot of things. We're looking at we're we're tracking the CCC, the cash conversion cycle.

Tim Ebie30:37We're tracking days on market. Not not really days on market. We call it days in inventory. We're tracking that. We're tracking when the seller contract expires, when the buyer contract expires, who's a closing title company, when we got the lead in, when... You know? So we're tracking all these different things. And, typically, we're just... In the morning, we go through our daily stand up. We're just going through each one from the top and just talking about is there anything we need to know about as a team and everybody's contributing. So that's our overall general dashboard to see what's... How many... What we have on our deal board. I actually really call it a deal board. Then we have our other... It's really called a a scorecard where we just kinda...

Tim Ebie31:10People talk about their metrics daily and, you know, what they're doing. But overall dashboard is really a deal board, what's going on with our deals and where they are in the pipeline. And what's the... You mentioned something about your cold caller, them being gone. What's the story on that? Right. So good point. Yeah. That's why I kinda hesitated on the team there. So we we we changed our strategy a a tad bit. We're still doing land, but now we are... We're actually adding houses to it. We're actually adding houses, and we're doing is we're doing we're doing...

Tim Ebie31:40And you probably heard it, but we're doing a lot more deals that where you have where they have title problems. So what we find a lot of times where you have... Some of our biggest deals are... Our best deals are typically when people are deceased or inherited. So we're trying to find out, like, how can we get more of those? So we started going after deals that maybe there's some kind of death or deceased and the attacks delinquent because you start finding trends. Okay. What's happening? A lot of the inherited deals, some of our best deals... I went back and studied some of our best, best, best deals. Somebody deceased, and the person we're buying it from is an heir.

Tim Ebie32:12And most times... I talked to a guy when we did a deal recently, and he was like, you can't miss something you never had. So in other words, the mindset is like, they never own this property anyway, so they're more willing to sell a good deal to you versus a landowner that really owns it. They're probably still attached to it. So we're going after more of that, more curative title. That's another space we're getting to. More of the curative title space where we're having properties would have curative title issues, and we're fixing up the title issues, and selling on the back end. And because of that, we're getting cheaper. So we're not doing as much of the crazy cold calling as much.

Tim Ebie32:45The calling we're doing now as part of our team, which we're just adding this component, calling we're doing now is more one to one direct calling. Like, we'll skip trace the list. There might be 10 numbers, and, yeah, we can throw it in a... I thought about they would have thrown in a dialer, but we're trying to get after the heirs that might not necessarily might not necessarily be on the land record as owner of record. So it's a little more meticulous. We have to actually call them manually. So we have our lead manager now. She's manually calling people, and we have a script. She's actually asking the right questions to kinda generate more of these kind of leads, which we believe will be more profitable.

Tim Ebie33:17So that that was a little bit change of our strategy there.

Brandon Parker33:21Why'd you decide to get into more curative title instead? And

Tim Ebie33:27are you expanding the business or pivoting the business? Both. Right. So we're we're we're pivoting and we're expanding. So part of it... Part... The one of the the part of the reason I did is because for one, we we started coming across... The truth is I'm sure anybody doesn't land or any any kind of real estate asset. We started coming across deals with title issues. Right? You're talking to people who has... You're like, oh, shit. And what we did before, like anybody else, you just toss it out. Okay. Close this deal. Too many issues. We need to go after the ones that low hanging fruit, double close, whatever. Part of it is when I started learning about I'm like, man, the...

Tim Ebie33:58Honestly, the first thing that came to my mind was the skill set. Because now we know how to... Our team is being trained. We know how to go do our own title abstracting. We do... If if anybody doesn't know what title abstracting means is we're able to go into the land records ourselves like title company and do our own research for judgments, for liens, for deeds, for affidavits, anything you can think about. We can do our own thing and we can find out what's really going on with this property and that can help us. And we can do our own title abstracting. We can do our own title examination, and we can also finally do our own underwriting.

Tim Ebie34:30Does this... Is this a deal we wanna do? So the biggest thing for one was the skill set. The second thing was also... Was a lot of the wholesaling and double closing laws are changing. I'm sure you've heard about them. Right? South Carolina, I think they said North Carolina might be implementing some stuff. Yeah. You can still do double closes. That's why a lot of houseguys are doing renovations. They're starting to make it more complex or more challenging to get over the hurdle, so to speak. So to us, remember I told you we do a lot of double closing. With this new model, Brandon, we're not taking title.

Tim Ebie35:02We're just buying the deed right up front. If it's a deal where we're gonna buy the property, we're just getting the deed up front. So now it changes our model where we're taking title up front. Sorry. I was gonna say taking taking title. We're taking ownership deed up front as opposed when I should do double close. So now we're not double closing as much. We're taking inventory. We're owning it. And now we... Once we clean up the title issues, we cannot put on MLS. So it's a little more quieter, which I like. It's not as... A lot of moving parts going on. So I like that. So I like it for the skill center plus the... We feel like the profits are greater, less competition.

Tim Ebie35:33And sometimes, you know, you can just... If you get good at it, sometimes you can find some great deals, land or houses. So it's just a... It's it's a pivot. It's a pivot, and it's also to me... I I call it a pivot and also an addition because they're still doing land. We're just finding probably better land deals.

Brandon Parker35:47Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. You've you've trained up the team. I mean, now you have a special skill that you can leverage a little bit and, get in a spot that's not as busy. So

Tim Ebie35:58Exactly.

Brandon Parker35:59Yeah. How do you define a qualified lead in your business?

Tim Ebie36:04Yeah. That's a very good question. Yeah. So there are two things. Right? The distinction, which a lot of people I think don't really understand, well, some people probably do, which I have to learn recently. There's always... When people are pulling data for... Let's go back to line vision when I say the first step market selection. We pull all this data. Let's say we download 10,000 records. Those records are just prospects. Those are just prospects. There's something there that none of them consider leads. Right? We can't call those leads yet because we don't know. So when we start having a conversation, let's say we text...

Tim Ebie36:36Let... Let's use... Leah, let's say texting. We text them. Obviously, long scripture, we have all these qualifiers. We're asking these questions. Now we consider a lead. This is us. There's a gross lead and there's a net lead. A gross lead is once the lead comes in, if somebody just says, I call Brandon. Brandon said, yes. I wanna sell. I don't care any other motivation after that. Do you wanna sell your gross lead? You're not a net lead yet. So that's a gross... So we consider that a lead. Right? That's a lead. But now if you wanna qualify that some more, our lead manager has three things she's looking for to really qualify this person for an appointment.

Tim Ebie37:11Are they are they willing? Are they ready? And are they able? Those are the three qualifiers. And if they're willing, if they're willing, ready, and able, we can now book an appointment. And there's some other qualifiers we're looking for. Right? And what what does willing, able, and ready mean? Willing is is this person willing to sell, I'll say, within the next six minutes to six months? Are they willing to sell? I don't care of the price. Yes. You're willing. Okay. Great. Are you ready to sell? Right? Right. So, yeah, so they're ready.

Tim Ebie37:41And are they able? Able is a big one because sometimes you might be talking to somebody, it might be the wife, or she's not... She kinda makes... She's not a decision maker, so she's not able. You need me to make sure you're talking to the decision maker. Ready, willing, able if they are. Now we can book an appointment, and we don't really care about price upfront until we get to the acquisition part. So that's kind of what we're looking at as a lead qualification. There's a prospect that's a lead. When a lead comes in, it's a gross lead. Now become a... Before you go from a gross lead to a net lead, you can die because as soon as a lead comes to our system... I think this is something to ask initially.

Tim Ebie38:13We started this conversation. When a lead comes to our system, the first thing we're doing, we call it DA in fax. DA stands for deal analysis, and we're doing something called fax. And this is our operations guy, data guy. He's checking for the deal. He's going to the he's going to the CAD records, the county appraisal district records, checking, is this the right owner? Is the market value right? The legal description, checking very basic stuff. Then now he's checking facts. Facts are the... Is there flood? The access... Does he have access? The lines are transmission lines, railroad, things like that, pipelines if you're in Texas.

Tim Ebie38:48So we do a lot of initial due diligence upfront. If all that passes, now our lead manager will call them. Right? But if it does, it might become a dead lead because, typically, if it's... If a property's... If it's land, if it's over 50% wetlands, over 50% of it... Of the wetland covers the road, we typically just disqualify it upfront. So there are little things we're looking at. But we go after we go after a landlock. A lot of people skip those. We we don't we don't we don't don't don't scrub our landlock properties. That's a gem for some people because you make money on landlocks. So anyway

Brandon Parker39:17That's fantastic. What's the... Do you know your gross lead to net lead ratio?

Tim Ebie39:23Good question. It's typically... Very good question. It it varies. I'll say anywhere from about 60 to 80%. Okay. So if we have a 100 leads that come in about 80... 60 to 80 would be net leads. Okay. Because you... The thing the thing between gross and net, you gotta be very careful. Some people would... I think the mistake they might make, they might overqualify too fast. Mhmm. And so I'm very careful with that. We tell them when those gross leads comes in, just check for these things. Floodplain, da da da.

Tim Ebie39:53If it's for sure to... The main thing we're looking there, it just has to be a terrible property or to think property has sold or something like that. Mhmm. Typically, what we do is if it's listed, we count it as a growth lead... Gross lead, but it doesn't count as a net lead. So it still comes in and we just push it to the back burn... Burn to follow-up in six months because we don't wanna talk to the list of properties. Little things like that. So anywhere from 60 to 80%.

Brandon Parker40:15Mhmm. Yeah. That's I find very similar numbers. We have basically gross leads, net leads, and then we have, prequalified leads. And it goes from, gross leads would be a 100, net leads would be somewhere around 80, and then prequalified would be somewhere around 30. And so we have a a similar setup, but I think with our big numbers and big data, we're getting a similar to what you're saying with gross leads and net leads. There's just some that are just all kinds of reason to throw them out. So...

Tim Ebie40:46Yeah. You don't wanna clog your system down either. So

Brandon Parker40:48Yeah. They're getting a bunch of stuff in the in the CRM that shouldn't be there. There's... I think there's hidden operational drag and just having extra stuff in the CRM that should have been sorted out. So we try to keep that clean garbage in, garbage out. What... How are you managing all these leads? What's what's your CRM setup look like?

Tim Ebie41:06Oh, yeah. So we use we use Pebble. Pebble is still our CRM, land land specific CRM. So like I said, they come in. It's pretty it's pretty simple. Right? So the board we have, have we an acquisition board. If anybody's the same company, there's an acquisition board. There's a disposition board, and there's a buyer lead board. So an acquisition board has different stages, gross lead, net lead. Then there's a disqualified or dead, right, between gross and... Because you can go from gross... Because here's the thing.

Tim Ebie41:37Everyone knows, Brian, it's a funnel. Mhmm. Big huge funnel comes in all the way down to money in bank. Right? So it's funnel like that. So it's coming in, it's just like things are falling out. So gross leads, some of them might die along the way. They go to Netlead. Then from Netlead, we go to Netlead. It can go to an appointment for... Not not really an appointment because our lead manager doesn't do appointment. Lead manager's broken down to, like, zero to fifteen and fifteen plus. Zero to 15 is like the lead comes as a net lead. She's not able to get ahold of them, so she she puts them to zero fifteen days.

Tim Ebie42:08She needs to keep following up from them. If it falls out of zero fifteen bucket, it falls to 15 plus. These are people she cannot get ahold of. Now she's able to get ahold of them as a net lead. She's normally just booking an appointment. She's not able to book an appointment. It becomes a hot lead. Hot like, oh, yeah. They're released to sale, but they're not ready to do an appointment yet. Mhmm. Warm lead is like, yeah. I'm thinking about it. And cold lead is like, don't call me anymore, the other crazy stuff, or they're they're rude or disrespectful or abrasive. They just become a cold lead. And that's... It's... Hot lead for lead managers, thirty, thirty days. Warm is, I think, I wanna say it's ninety days, then cold is a hundred and 80.

Tim Ebie42:43And those are that. But let's say she gets them on the phone from a net lead and she books an appointment, now it goes all the way to acquisition manager... On the acquisition manager's board as a new appointment. That And goes into Callie and this acquisition manager's board. The appointments... If whatever reason the acquisition manager does... Is not able to get them on the appointment like you mentioned with Callie, we have a stage where she kicks it back to pending appointment. It goes back one stage to pending appointment. And the lead manager's job is to go work that pending appointment board to get it back to an appointment. So she kicks it back because sometimes the lead manager has better rapport.

Tim Ebie43:16Mhmm. And a lot of times, acquisition manager will kick it back because they didn't show up for the appointment. Lead manager will just talk, oh, get him back, get him on appointment. Does the appointment, and then out of hers, she's she's... Acquisition manager's done. It's either negotiating. It's an offer made. It's a deal closed. It's a follow-up, or it's just a a dead deal. And so that's kind of the board, and it goes to DISBOL if we get him on a contract, and Dispol has all the stages also.

Brandon Parker43:39I worked in sales and I see the CRM is like a living tool that is just so integrated with... It's part of the sales conversation to me. Like, are we following up at the right time? Are we nurturing? Are we calling them back? Are we... We have good notes in there? Like, that is so integrated in my mind into the sales process. And how you're explaining it is, you know, someone who's crushing it with their CRM. That's integrated into your business.

Brandon Parker44:09So that's one of the biggest holes I see in... Or not the biggest holes. It's most often that's a hole in a... An investor's business is is a really well functioning CRM. That's not just holding data, but it's helping drive the sale forward. And so

Tim Ebie44:26for anyone who just listened to that, that that's epic. Yeah. Good. So one of our process on the back end... And this will go to what your point is. We used to call them... We call them, like, winning Wednesdays. So after we close a deal... And this goes to your point. We call it winning Wednesdays. After we close a deal, what we do is on Wednesdays, we come and say, okay. Let's look at the deal guys that recently closed. And we go to the CRM all the way to the bottom. This is everyone's on the call because we have our daily calls. We go all the way to the bottom for when this lead came in. Let's say it was a cold call lead or a text. And let's let's see how the team all played a part because now everyone can see how everyone is working together.

Tim Ebie45:00Oh, the team came in. It was a text lead immediately. We're looking at the time stamps. It came in at this time, 11:48AM. Within thirty minutes, Paulo has finished his d and fax his due diligence. After that, he tagged Corinne, moved to the net lease stage. She came in within twenty minutes of that. She was on the phone with him. Within two days later, appointment was booked. Emily's notes are there, the acquisition. Emily was able to book all the way down to dispo. So they handed off to our dispo team, all the way to listing, all the way to TC. It might be two, three months, you know, something about ninety days. Right? Boom.

Tim Ebie45:30All the way to money in the bank. And the team can see the whole process, and everybody see the hand they they played in it. I think that's powerful because like you said, your CRM is a source of truth, and everyone can see how every... Because, typically, there's not a time where not everybody on the team is not touching a deal that we close on. Like, everybody has a part to play. And and also we compensate people. Like, even our data guy, he gets compensated on deals that close. Why? Because I want us to really pay attention to the data. I'm pretty pretty pretty pretty detail oriented. So he gets compensated also.

Tim Ebie46:01The deal closes. Hey. Because he also knows our comps. Right? Because we wanna make sure those comps are good. So everyone is playing a part in that CRM to your point. So that CRM is really so so true, so it's important. You know, recently, I was out of I was out of the country for, like, two, three weeks. Honestly, Brian, like, the whole team ran everything because the process is what wins. I'm sure you know it being business. It's a process. Typically, where our business is set, we do a lot of land stuff. All the way from market selection, I'm typically not involved to TC. Like, I don't have to... Like, literally, it's not like a bracket.

Tim Ebie46:31It's because when we put the processes in place, everybody knows what to do and hand off all the way. Of course, there's a lot of process. We have a lot of checks and balances. We have daily meetings when people are doing their KPI checks and updates, we have scorecards that we're tracking and things like that. But it... It's a process that needs to be built out and takes time.

Brandon Parker46:48How did you go about building that process out tactically? What tools are you using for SOPs? Did you build them yourself in the beginning? How do you get the team to follow them? Are they building SOPs themselves now? What does the nitty gritty of building processes like you're talking about?

Tim Ebie47:05Yeah. So I think I think initially before we we we had a consultant company, Sharper Sharper Business Solution, and they they get their stuff off of... What's this guy, Jean? What's that guy, Gene? Something I did with Oh, Traction. Yeah. The Traction. Traction. EOS. Based on... Yeah. EOS. Right. So it's based on that, but they have their own system. It's called the Rise Framework, but we brought them in later. Mhmm. Initially, what we did is we'll just... Like, I'll create the process, and we'll have it documented, like, in... We had our video boards and everything like that.

Tim Ebie47:37We'll have all the data, the maps, everything mapped out. So we'll put that in there. We... Typically, we're just using... Like I said, we'll use Google Sheets. Right? We'll use Google Docs and just draft up the processes. I learned this from, obviously, this guy on buy back your time, Dan Martell, is I love the idea of the SOP and playbooks. I actually love that. A matter of fact, when I handed it off to our TC... Because our TC is a third party person we use. We pay them per deal. And she mentioned... This... Again, it's not a brand. She was like, this is the best. She's like, you guys are the easiest to onboard. Why? Because I learned it from Gina...

Tim Ebie48:08This guy, Dan Martell. I built out this... It's called a TCSOP Playbook. He has a process with videos, and we just hand it off to her. And she was like, boom. She was onboard like this with TC, like, you know, within, a day. And when she brought somebody, was easy for her to onboard. So what am I what am I saying? You don't have to have any fancy tools. We just use Google Docs, draft up the SOPs, see all the steps. It doesn't have to be detailed. Step one, step two. I will say we use a lot of Loom videos. Mhmm. And one trick I learned from Christina Aguilera, she's a great SOP lady, process lady in the real estate space. I was talking to her at Mastermind one time.

Tim Ebie48:40It's like the mistake a lot of operators make is when they do training videos, Brandon, this is key. They make the videos too long. Mhmm. Like, 30, twenty. Stop it. Mhmm. What we started doing is our videos are, like, three to five minutes. Mhmm. Why is that? Because if you ever have to change a process, it's so much easier changing a video for three to five minutes versus a forty five minute video. Mhmm. So you need to, like, think through your outline, short quick videos, short steps. Right? And just think through it. Part of processes, we have something called... Have a...

Tim Ebie49:10We do a lot of processes. Right? A lot of process we do is also our onboarding hiring process. Right? We have thirty, sixty, ninety day goals, and that's a process there. That thirty day, here's your checklist on things you need to do. People have SOP onboarding checklist where your data onboarding, we have that. We have thirty day goals checklist. We have sixty day goals, ninety day goals. People love them when they come into your company because they know there's a plan here, a plan of action. So they're onboarded properly. Also, when people come on board, we don't we don't just say, hey, Brandon. Welcome to LandPass. Operators your first date.

Tim Ebie49:40No. We have videos explaining this is the company. This is what we do as a land company. This is our vision. This is our mission. Right? Here's our core processes. Sorry. Not corporate. Yeah. Our core processes. Here's our core values. And these are videos I've put together. Again, Brandon, they're three to five minutes. So somebody come in, we just put them onto the videos, and they just keep going through all the way to their training for their team. So there's a company training SOP onboarding. Right? And now there's an individual group. If your acquisition here is your onboarded for acquisitions. Right? And we're just onboarding them like that.

Tim Ebie50:11Before you know it, you you have processes in place all the way from onboarding to your daily operations.

Brandon Parker50:16And those are living. So that takes a year or two years. That takes a substantial amount of time, but it's like a... Just the act of every process that someone puts in place saves them time. It's like a snowball effect. Exactly. So your first process, it saves you five minutes the next time you do something. And then once you have 50 processes, it's saving you an hour when you bring a new person into the company. And then, you know, when you have everything, now you onboard someone and it's saving you a week of work and that snowball starts to build on itself.

Brandon Parker50:49And one of my favorite things in my company is looking at our at our Notion space with every SOP detailed out, like similar things you're talking about. But that to me is so gratifying because that represents years of work and processes. That's to me what a well functioning company is, is it's that set of documentation of how we actually do this thing we do, you know, and your ability to walk away from it because everything's written down and everyone knows their role specifically is I think what my dream of being an entrepreneur has always been is like, can I build something that I can walk away from it weeks at a time and it'll continue running?

Brandon Parker51:32Killer that you have all that in place. Let's talk about, like, the... You're you're clearly very detail oriented. So I'm I'm curious. If you were to look at your acquisitions department, let's say your leads, your acquisitions, and your dispo, what would you say the top KPI? If you had to pick one KPI that drives each portion of your company, what would that one KPI be that is your indicator?

Tim Ebie51:58Yeah. Okay. So leads acquisition and dispo. So for for leads... Really, for lead managers... I'll say lead... I'm saying lead managers. The biggest thing I'm looking for for leads are number of leads. Typically, we're looking at about... For texting, we're looking at about 20 a week. So I'm looking at that for... Because we we look at it weekly when we have our weekly level 10 meetings.

Tim Ebie52:28They call them the rights level 10 meetings. We're looking about 20 a week for texting. Cold calling, I think, is about 20 also. So I'm looking at that total number. I think it's about 40 or 50, whatever that total number. I'm looking at that total for leads. They also are for lead managers. I don't care about appointment. This is big for lead managers. I don't point... I don't care about appointment schedule. I'm just looking for appointments attended. Because we're tracking scheduled and attended because that ratio is about 80%. Sorry. 80%. Because you might schedule 10 appointments.

Tim Ebie52:58Only six people show up. So something the lead manager needs to do a better job on. That's what I was saying about setting the stage at the end of that that conversation. Because Calendly, it tells how how effective we are. There's no point of scheduling a meeting and nobody's showing up to it. Right? So Mhmm. Don't really look at appointment attended. Like, that's huge. Like, we're looking at... Okay. Because if they attend, Brandon, have a chance to make an... Book an appointment... I mean, sorry, make an offer. So out of acquisitions, the biggest enough acquisitions, man, I'll be frank. I wanna see contracts booked. Contracts are down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Ebie53:28Say offers. I don't care about offers. Yeah. Did you get a contract? So I'm looking at that. And for dispo, the biggest one we're looking at for a dispo, obviously, is just really just... Honestly, new contracts also. I'll be very frank. I like to say all leads in, offers, people make people make offers. No. I would say it'll probably be for this this position is probably offers that have come in because that's an indicator because we're not getting enough offers. We have to do price drop. That's just for me. That's one of quickest levers we pull.

Tim Ebie54:00So offers coming in, and we're looking at the offers... Total offers per week coming in. And also looking at out of these offers, you know, we get in contracts. Think... But this probably definitely says offers. Our buyers making offers. If they make an offer, that's a good sign that they wanna move forward or something.

Brandon Parker54:13Yeah. That's a good point. If you got some action, that's what you need. Yeah. Okay, interesting. I was asking because we just, not just, but a couple months ago we did something interesting where we took, so we've had North Star KPIs in our company. Like this is the main thing that is driving the company. This is the one number we want to be looking at. I got that from Elon Musk. He's got the the idea of... With SpaceX, it's their North Star KPI is the cost per pound of matter into space.

Brandon Parker54:46So, like, what's it cost to get something out of orbit? And that's the key thing that drives all of their business decisions. So I like that idea. What we ended up doing is is bringing that down to the company level, and then each department has one North Star KPI. And then each... The head of each department is in charge of that North Star KPI. So during our weekly meeting, it's like, hey, you're in charge of the ratio of handoff from the cold caller to the system, And that's that's your most star KPI.

Brandon Parker55:19So come tell us what that is. And specifically for us, we had one big change and that was we were handing off. So we have cold callers who live transfer to conversational AI, who does the lead management. I like that. Yeah. And so that that handoff, we were not... We were measuring the ratio, but we weren't paying attention to it. So we had someone own that, and that handoff was at 75%. So, like, 25% of people were not waiting for the ring and hanging up. You know, something was happening.

Brandon Parker55:49And, so we had her start coaching on that and fixing it. So that went from 75 to 95%. Oh, wow. And that speed... Then that's that's a quarter of the leads that we were capturing the... A change. Like, that was a huge lever point that because we started having an individual own that, it made a big improvement. So I I I love hearing about what people measure, how they measure it. Like, you you have some key things in there that drive companies, and I think it's a good lesson for a lot of land investors to hear how you do it because what gets measured gets managed.

Brandon Parker56:28Mhmm. Are... We've talked about so much stuff, and we've come into the last few minutes here. What are some things that you'd like to cover that we might have glossed over, some of your topics that you might want to get into?

Tim Ebie56:45Yeah. I think we've covered most of that. Think one of the big... One of my biggest strengths there is processes, I will say, and having a vision. I would just say the the the last part for me personally, probably just like just just the mindset, right, behind behind how people look at things. I'm a big proponent on... Again, this is me paying for education or coaching because you can you can you can can speed up your process of getting to the next level. You you...

Tim Ebie57:16I'll be hard... You... You'd hard pressed to tell me any professional athlete in any sport that's operating at high level that doesn't have some kind of coach or mentor, somebody that's training them. You know? And and and sometimes when it comes to the business where I think sometimes we have a challenge of investing and even if it might be in a a course or a program or something, of course, the keys after you've vetted it and you feel comfortable, okay, this is it. Right? I feel like... So for me, feel like that's big. I'm I'm really looking at how much we're spending. I'm looking... I look at it more like how much we can make off this spend or this investment.

Tim Ebie57:46Right? So I think that that little mind shift shift because I've talked to other investors like, oh, I don't wanna pay for... Because we brought in consultants helping with our processes. I thought our processes were good, but I was like, man, I'm I'm in masterminds and other operators operating at a higher level. And another thing is success leaves clues because all these guys are operating at a a elite level as far as their processes. I'm like, man, I gotta get this kind of processes done myself. Right? So we we paid a consultant 20,000 and flew them out like some... And I was talking to some of the investors. They they can't comprehend that. I'm like, no.

Tim Ebie58:17No. No. I'm thinking myself because... And that helped me after we made these investments. I was able to go out of the country for two, three weeks and company's just running like, oh, it's an investment because it takes you to the next level. Your team appreciates that. Because only so much you, Brandon, me can tell they... We have process people feel empowered and also has built in accountability. That... Because everyone is accountable to their numbers. At the end the day, everybody know... Has one number they're responsible for, everyone on our team. Everybody has one exact number, including myself. So my point is the mindset as far as investing in yourself, in your business, whatever it is, some coaching, I think that's huge.

Tim Ebie58:52And also, part of it is also just understanding business, man. Where we are when you're kind of a startup where a lot of us start up phase, so to speak, if you're still under a certain threshold dollar amount wise, is does these different laws, right, these philosophies I've got to put in place. One of them is, for example, you know, this helped me build when I was in pre foreclosure in our land business. I encourage my lead managers and acquisition team, law of averages. You call 10 people, they hang up, then who cares? There's an average out there. God is putting... It's gonna come in your favor.

Tim Ebie59:22It's like gravity. Gravity works whether you like it or not. Right? So just keep calling because, of course, you have to keep getting better sales process, your skills. But overall, people that have no skills can pick up the phone, call 20, but they gotta get a deal. Right? So when you understand law of averages, it's hard to be discouraged is my point. You're not easy to say, oh, I'm not getting deals. No. No. No. Law of average, as long as you're planting the seeds. Right? So the law of average is huge. So I'm I'm big on those philosophies. As long as people understand that, you know, it's gonna keep taking to the next level. So I'll say this biggest thing is just that that mindset.

Tim Ebie59:53And the final one is when it comes to scale... Scalability. One thing I learned is scale. Yeah. I heard people say scale like, oh, yeah. You come and scale and leave your nine to five. I did leave my nine to five. Thank god. But here's the thing, Brandon. I learned. I'm sure you know this and appreciate it. When we talk about scalability, the first thing I learned about scalability when I started building my team, scaling is all about leadership. Mhmm. Let me explain what I mean by that. Yes. You can bring people on, but if these people aren't trained and developed, your company is going nowhere fast because all it's gonna do is gonna pull you right back in. So my point is I started learning that scaling is people.

Tim Ebie1:00:27Your ability to bring people in the right kind of people, the right people on the right seat. Right? So they talk about Jim Collins, good to great. You bring the right people in, but you gotta be able to spend time and cultivate and develop them to leadership levels where you're not needed as much. And they can also be able to train others underneath them. Right? So to me, that's why I understand that's true scalability is an investment in your people. You gotta invest in them, the trainings they need, the time, the KPIs. We have daily calls. Sometimes we have our daily calls, Brandon. I tell some people to stay on because they're doing more role play, more training.

Tim Ebie1:00:58That's how they get good because what you're doing, you're injecting confidence in them. Right? And the thing is if you don't know how to do it, you say I'm not good at training. Well, hire a sales trainer. Make some money and invest again because the thing is you gotta invest in the people. So I'll say scalability is all about people and your leadership ability to kinda lead them. Right? So it's it's really mindset. That's what I remember when I said the mindset piece of it.

Brandon Parker1:01:20And there's people that I've hired. When that clicked for me, it's when I hired people who started coming in and doing things that I hadn't thought of. Oh, wow. When that starts happening, that becomes like a real clear identifier like, oh, this is so helpful. This isn't even someone that, you know, I have to tell everything to do. They're they're coming and teaching me things. And so I love that that mental shift. It's... It takes... It took me, I think, longer than most people.

Brandon Parker1:01:51I think I was very hands on. And so I would very slowly letting go of pieces. And then once I like had the first big chunk where someone came in, I'm gonna do this whole operation side of the business for you. And they started running with it, and then I was like, oh my gosh. I can't believe I I should have done this. Everyone says to do this. I should have done this years ago. Just... It it was hard for me, I think that... But, yeah, I I feel what you're saying there. That... That's great. You're you're quite an operator, man. I I I see that you're implementing a lot of the things that people talk about.

Brandon Parker1:02:25And something that stood out to you... Me there was the thing about hiring mentors or coaching. The biggest level up in my business was... It wasn't even the second or it was the third coach that I hired was the one that made a breakthrough. And I wasted money on coaches too. And I think that's part of the discouraging thing with mentors or coaches is, like, you can go give someone $10 and get, like, very little value, like, some expensive course or something. Right. A lot of times, it's just like, oh, shoot.

Brandon Parker1:02:55Like... And so then you do that once or twice. It's like, am I ever gonna drop another 10 or $20 on, like, just... Don't know. I felt stupid because I lost money buying stuff because I'm that type of, you know? But the third mentor that I hired who was John Matzner, he's on Twitter. He sat and he... All he did was talk to me once a week, and, like, I just bounced my business thoughts off of him. In the direction that he pointed me in my business life and just how he... How effective that was, it changed the entire course of my of my business career.

Brandon Parker1:03:29And so I'm a big advocate of finding the right coach or the right system or like you did, the the perfect consultant who comes in and can build the perfect thing. Like, if someone nails that, it it puts everything... Supercharges everything. So

Tim Ebie1:03:45Yeah. Yeah. The the philosophy is powerful. I'm glad you mentioned this. And I'm... That's what I... I still struggle with that because as we mentioned, we're pivoting... And this is a good point I'll end with this. As I mentioned, we're pivoting. Right? And we use Pebble right now. So we're considering Salesforce right now because we're let's get the best CRM right now. Yeah. I don't wanna change this. Well, think about getting Salesforce. So here's here's a mindset shift. So we... My myself and my position lady, Emily, we're looking at it inside of research. I almost found myself, Brandon, because I come from a software testing background. I come from a technical background.

Tim Ebie1:04:16So I almost found myself trying to figure out Salesforce myself and, like, oh, they get the... Then this hit me. I remember the book. I think it's Dan Hardy or Benjamin Hardy. Don Sullivan. It's the who not how. Right? I'm like, oh, Tim, stop. I told myself, stop. Stop. Stop. It's who can do it, not how to do it. Right? Because I'm like, how do you research? How do you change this, Rick? I'm like, stop it. So my point is what... Even for that, once we get to the... Implement Salesforce, we're gonna have to pay a consultant. I'll pay her because she knows what we need and she has experience and it's the who now now because I can use that time doing more stuff where I'm good at.

Tim Ebie1:04:49Right? So again, that's again, that's the mindset. Right? That who not how. Like, yes. Yes. You can do it. Yeah. If it's something simple, yeah, but who not now? And that's why I had an EA. I was talking to a friend one time. He like, may you have an EA do all that? Yeah. My mail, I don't even do my mail. I don't sort my mail. Like, I can't because it... At first, I don't like it. But, you know, you just delegate tasks. It's EA comes to my house. I make sure I've got an EA that's local to Houston that she can drive down the miles, and here's the mail, and we sort it out. And boom. And she helps me pay bills. Who not how. Right? And that's the thing. You have to spend that extra money.

Tim Ebie1:05:20But, again, it's gonna be hard to do that if you don't have that mindset shift. So I think the the mindset shift philosophy wise first comes, then everything else will flow. And it just opens the door, like you said, with this culture, mentor you got. You know? Yep.

Brandon Parker1:05:33The last question for the day here is it'll be short and sweet. Right. If you could send a message out on Twitter on x and everyone in the world saw it at once, what would the message you'd send to the world be?

Tim Ebie1:05:48I like that. That's a good question. I'll say b... B... BDC. I'll just put those acronym BDC. And so once I say, what does that mean? That comes from... So when I hired a consulting company, they made us go through this exercise. Like, people... You know, if I say, Brandon, know, if I... Let's say you're you're a great operator. You know, I can tell. But let's say you weren't a business person. I say, hey. You just started a business today. I say, Brandon, what are your core values? You just probably make up all integrity, hustle, hard work.

Tim Ebie1:06:19Okay. Great. Why? And you have no idea. Just start rambling. Okay. So they made us go through a deep level exercise, and it was deep. Don't have time to explain it. But by the time we got out of it because we were trying to get our core values to come to the top, and mine ended up coming out... The core values were innate to me in my essence were BDC. B d... BDC stands for belief, drive, and character. Right? So that'll be my message. Belief is we believe in god. We believe all things are possible with him. Drive means I'm hungry.

Tim Ebie1:06:49I need people that are hungry on my team, people that are ambitious, people that are driven. That's the d. And c is character. I don't want people that are hungry, ambitious, that wanna do things by all means. No. No. No. You still gotta have character, have a moral moral compass, do things that are above board. Right? So one people that still have character. Somebody mentioned, you know, higher higher character trained skills. So we're big on that BDC. Believe in our team knows this because we told our team, we hire, we fire, we promote, we recognize, etcetera, etcetera, based on our core values, which is belief, drive, character. So my message to the world would just be BDC.

Tim Ebie1:07:20Believe in God, have drive, and have the character to match that.

Brandon Parker1:07:24Wonderful. And I saw that running through this whole conversation we had. So that's fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Tim ABA, and I look forward to when we come across each other again. Have a great day. My pleasure. Thank you so much, man. Bye bye.