Sumner Healey | The Closers Podcast #6

Most land investors are bleeding money on leads they'll never convert — Sumner Healey fixed that, and the numbers are absurd. Sumner runs a 22-person land business doing 10–12 acquisitions a month, has a 21.75-day average on market, and his cold calling team generates $840,000 in realized and pipeline profit from 117,000 dials. He also built Land Insights, the software that makes all of it possible. This is one of the most data-dense episodes we've ever recorded.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

All right, guys, today I've got a very special guest, somebody who's been a good friend of mine for almost four years now, which is crazy to say. Um, this man has started and grown over three companies into the seven-figure, multiple seven-figure, and maybe one soon to be eight-figure. Uh, this guy has single-handedly revolutionized the land industry between market selection, data selection, and what it looks like to actually scale a land business. Today, I am honored to be sitting down with my dear friend Sumner Healy. Sumner, welcome to the closers podcast. How are we doing today?

SPEAKER_01 0:35

I'm good, brother. I gotta say, what an intro. Uh, thank you first and foremost. It's always a treat to hang out and talk to you. Um, so yeah, I'm I'm excited on a lot of levels. I'm excited just to catch up with you. And dude, I feel like 2026 is the year that I am the most excited about the land investing business, which is like so counter to what you would see on social media right now. So I'm just happy to share, man. I'm excited.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

I cannot wait to dive into this with you, man. It's such an interesting era because I feel like, and maybe this is just my algorithms, but there's just always this like doom and gloom, the market's ruined, land is dead type uh messaging that's been going around for maybe two or three years now. Um, and we've continued to make money on several multiple six-figure, you know, land deals. Uh, I know you are crushing on things you're doing. So let's let's dive into your business, man. Before we get into the weeds on exactly what your business looks like today, I'm sure there's some folks in the audience that maybe don't know exactly who you are. Um, will you give us just like, man, I would love a three-minute background. I would normally say 30 second, but I kind of want if you could start me in California, take me to books, and then get into land. Give me give me that that uh line. Got it.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Yeah, we'll give you the elevator pitch. I mean, it's been a hell of a life, man. I turned 31 uh this week, actually. And so congrats.

SPEAKER_03 1:58

It's a good time. Yeah, thank you, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

It's a good time for reflection. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about just what a wild ride it's been over the last couple of years. I mean, really, I guess the last 31 years. So uh I grew up California kid. I grew up in Big Sur, California, to two very amazing parents that were also very young. And uh my my mom was a hardcore hippie, she was living in a TP prior to having me. I was born in a log cabin in Big Sur, and so yeah, pretty uh untraditional upbringing in a lot of ways, which I think served me well. Came with some bumps and bruises, of course. But I think it served me well because everyone in my environment, no one was a business person per se, and they weren't radically successful, but everyone was an entrepreneur, like everyone was living life on their own terms. They were you know contractors or massage therapists, or they had little cafes or restaurants. Like that's just kind of what was normal to me. And so I just figured that's what my life would look like too. I never really envisioned myself having a job, and so first business in high school is a photography business selling photos to real estate agents, uh, architects, painters, developers-like super nice homes would have all these third-party uh companies that worked on them would sell the photos to them. So I was making two grand a month, but in high school, that's pretty crazy money, right? It's good money back then, it's good money, and I I mean at that point I was convicted. I'm like, convicted is probably the wrong word. I didn't go to jail, but I was all in on the idea of being an entrepreneur. Then I go to junior college, Cuesta in San Luis Obispo, California. I trip and stumble into literally a dumpster one night and find a barrel of books behind the library and started just taking those home as put them on Amazon, put them on eBay, made a couple grand within a week, and I was like, okay, there's something here. And what year is that? This would be I went to I graduated 2014. This would be 2015. God, that feels like a long time ago, 11 years ago. Um, and these books I got for free in a dumpster, right? So that was like, okay, holy smokes, or something here. Started going to the libraries at the junior college, libraries at Cal Poly, which is uh a pretty big school in San Luis Obispo, and started aggregating a ton of books. And I was living in a uh garage at the time at my friend's house, and it was just me, my girlfriend, and literally stacks of books. I mean, hundreds of books in my garage at any given time. And we basically called fulfilled by Amazon, which is it's called FBA. So essentially, we get all these books, we mail it to an Amazon warehouse, they ship it out. But at any given time, I'd be prepping hundreds of books. So I had to live with this constant inflow of new books. Did you have to get a paper cut? Dude, my hand, it's so weird. My my hands were destroyed for my hands, they were never worse than running the book business. There's some kind of like drying agent, I think, that they use on book pages too. So it makes your skin really dry, like just kind of sends chills down my spine thinking about it. My hands were so nasty. Um, but dude, I grew that to like 20, 30 grand a month, and it took me like about a year to get there. Now that's top line revenue. I was not putting that in my pocket. Okay, but still it's pretty good, right? Yeah, Amazon takes their 20, 25, whatever it is. And then, you know, our cogs were very similar to what we get in the land business, uh, if not a little bit better, but getting 2x would be a minimum on your money with a book, and more realistically, it could be 5x, 10x, 20x. And what I started to do towards the end of this business, which is so fascinating, and again, similar to land, it's such an inefficient market. So I really started to go into textbooks, and what I noticed is on Amazon and eBay, there's there's mispricings all the time. Where there's a there's a company that has a thousand of these uh physical education textbooks, right? And they just accidentally fat-fingered the price at nine dollars and 99 cents opposed to 99. Dude, it happens thousands of times per day, and so I use this tool to start sniping these missed pricings. I was buying it's crazy. I was buying books from Amazon and reselling them on Amazon.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

It's a crazy arbitrage, and I think it still exists today. Um, and you know, our margins truncated a little bit, but it was still pretty powerful, anyways. I did that for three years. I was like, I don't want to be the book guy forever. Let me do something about time. It's a long time, it's a long time, and like I had a bit of an identity crisis, it's just not cool to be 21 years old living in a garage full of books. Like, I felt like a weirdo, to be honest. I had this purple Saturn station wagons, the ugliest cars in 1992, just stuffed full of books. I was like a crazy cat lady, man. I was like, this cannot be my life, but there was such a desperation to make money. Like, I was like, I was I was so uncool, I was willing to do that. And then eventually I was like, I gotta get a little cooler, stop living in a garage, ditch the Saturn. But that business gave me conviction to leave college. I mean, I dropped out after okay, I think it was I think it was a semester after doing the business. I mean, I was looking for any reason to leave college, I was like not cut out for college.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Out of curiosity, Sumner, what did you think you wanted to study in college?

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Dude, I mean, it was really throw a dart at a dartboard. First off, no one in my family said like college wasn't even a topic. No one was like, Let me give you money to help pay for the college submission. Like, no, no, no. It was like, if you want to do it, do it, sure. But it was very much I just kind of got peer pressured into it by my friends, honestly.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

Okay, yeah. So everybody else was, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

What else was? And I'm like, well, I'm not gonna live at home, I gotta get out of my hometown. That was a big thing for me, and so I landed on psychology, like any basic white dude or white girl, like starts with psychology when you don't know what to do. Um, and it was, yeah. I mean, I did I did like a year, a year and a half, and that was pretty much it.

SPEAKER_02 7:47

I think it was man. The irony of that is you probably learn more about psychology in like Chris Voss's Never Split the Difference than you would in like all those text back, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

100%. And I thought like I had this idea of like maybe this will help me with business, but the stuff they were teaching was not applicable. I mean, you pick up any sales book, it's gonna teach you more than more that's actually actionable uh and applicable to business. So went moved to San Diego, needed to change a scenery, opened a gym. That was moderately successful, a couple grand a month, nothing crazy. Took an internship. I was actually uh sourcing uh software engineers for Raytheon, which was then sort of giving them to uh the CIA, oddly enough. So I was a recruiter, it was a really weird situation. I did that for a year, uh, absolutely hated it, moved back to San Diego, and I just had this crazy inkling that I needed to get into real estate. I don't know where it came from. I'd always listen to bigger pockets, so I think it was always percolating in the background. And yeah, man, tripped and stumbled my way into land just like I did with the textbooks. I started door knocking for houses, one thing leads to the next. I find a tax delinquent list online, Elko County, Nevada, mail some handwritten letters, and it at some point you're like, this just feels like destiny, to be honest. And to look back on all these weird businesses that I ran prior, and there was many I didn't even reference. I mean, I had a tactical flashlight company, I mean, really weird stuff. Um but boy, has it all compounded to get to this crescendo today, right? So this was way longer than three minutes to put a bow on it. Okay. Today I run a land business that I started in 2019. Uh, we've got 22 team members. We do about 10 to 12 acquisitions a month and about 10 uh dispositions per month. Um, I've got a coaching uh program called Leah, a community. Um, and then I've uh launched a software company, Land Insights, with two of my friends uh exactly almost three years ago. So that's what my life looks like today. Sorry, man, that was like seven minutes.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

No, man, it was so good. And and transparently, it was very entertaining. I've known you for four years and I didn't know all those details about your story. I had known bits and pieces, right? But we don't always talk about all the failures that got us to the actual businesses we want to run necessarily. So um, it's funny the brain damage you endure trying to find what it is you're actually gonna do for whatever season of life we're in. But I want to drill down, man. So it's 2019 and you're you're hitting desert squares, right? Um like out of curiosity, how quick was it before you had a meaningful amount of income from land?

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I my my education path was really weird. I started with bigger pockets, general real estate, then I found a Jack Bosch episode with bigger pockets, kind of got the framework, like rough understanding of land. I had such hubris, though, I was like, you know, I've been successful before, I do not need education. Like I was like staunchly against it, you know what I mean? Which is so funny. Um, and then I went into the land geek Facebook group and just like would like try to sleuth like how this business worked by reading posts and reading comments. So yeah, by virtue of that, I thought you could only do this business with Desert Square. So that's where I started. Uh, we did 50, I can't remember 59 or 62 deals my first year. Now, full disclosure, I started June of 2019, dude. I didn't get a deal, a signed contract until January of 2020. So took me six months to get a deal. So I'm sure you talk to beginners that are like, it's been 90 days, I haven't gotten a deal yet. So it's really not that crazy. Could take you six months, take you a year. Who cares? My thing is like, if you know the models proven, and if you're gonna get to where you want to get to in three years, would you be willing to have somewhat crappy results for the first six months or a year or two years? Who cares? Like, I don't know why people get so fixated on the now money, anyways. That's a whole side tangent.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

We can no, yeah, we could get into that for like an hour.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Dude, I was I was doing deals mainly in Trump, Nevada. These are buy for a thousand bucks, sell for 2200, 2400 bucks. Nothing meaningful. I did right under six figures my first year on my tax return. I think it was like 90 some odd thousand dollars. Okay. The first deal that was meaningful though was 2021. Now it came from a lead in 2020. This was a deal that really changed, I guess, my financial situation and also my view on this business. It was an infill lot in a uh gated subdivision uh that was all built around this lake, and it was right outside of Houston. I can't remember what direction it was in. And um, it was my first time trying to mail bigger, more valuable properties. And I sent a campaign. The property owner owed like 40 grand uh as a mortgage on the property, but they sold it to me at 15, which is like a really weird situation. It just like, yeah, fire sold it to me. Um, and in my acquisition ignorance, I didn't ask any questions, I was just like, Do you want to sign the contract? Sure, okay, let's do it. I find this realtor named Bud, I think his name is the most like classic Texas guy, the worst freaking realtor, dude. This I'm still pissed at this guy, okay? It's been six years or whatever. This guy didn't this is illegal, too. I think on the MLS, he used property photos from a different property that he had listed in the subdivision for my what you're joking. I'm not, dude. He like had a monopoly in this subdivision, was just recycling the same photos.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

I'm like, how lazy do you need to be to just not get new photos?

SPEAKER_01 13:27

These guys are oh man, I have such a I love-hate relationship with realtors. We move everything in our business through Realtors currently, but boy, do they piss me off, man? Yeah, anyway. We sell the deal, we sell it 55 grand, bought it for 15. Holy smokes! I sold it to a doctor that wanted uh to build a lake, uh lake house, and she was out of uh Houston, and so that deal was like, dude, that was my base salary in my previous job, but I got one deal, and the irony is dude, it was easier than the desert squares, it was easier than property. So that was a life changer in a big way.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

Yeah, well, so there's a lesson in there that I think I myself did not realize until probably my like third or fourth year in business that you need to make more money either in your deals or in your overall business in order to like afford people in a deal, right? So, like what I mean by that is you think about your business today and you've got an acquisition manager who's getting a commission, you've got, you know, um cost of efficient tech and marketing on top of uh cost on dispo, typically a realtor is getting somewhere between three and 10%, depending on how it's chopped up. And so on a $2,400 desert square, there's simply not enough sheer margin for enough people to make money that you can run a business that way. So at a certain point, you need like the unit economics uh to have enough actual margin, like like dollars margin, not percent margin, so that you can outsource or bring people in-house higher, right? And it's such a simple concept. Like, hey, dude, if you make more money on every single deal, you can like bring people on because they also make money, but it like didn't click for me until like year three, you know what I mean? Where I'm like, why is it so much easier to do big deals? I don't know, but I'll keep doing them, you know. Um, hopefully, though, that was a light bulb for you, I assume. And and you continue to pursue those. So, where did you go after that? Is that where you started pursuing kind of like the bass boat type properties, the like 300ks?

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Yeah. So did one interesting thing just to kind of tag on to what you're saying, I also think like this is a capital-intensive business, whether we're talking about acquisitions, maybe you're using funding, so maybe that's not a problem for you. But even if we think about team, software stack, marketing costs, like anytime we want to go through a growth spurt in this business because it's a direct response business, it's like, okay, I know I'm going to have to double my marketing spend and I'm gonna have to grow my team by 30, 40, 50 percent, and we're gonna have to allocate a chunk of capital up front before we see the upside from it. So it's a front-loaded business in that sense, right? Um, and so I just find that if you don't get those you know big pops of cash, the liquidity event from that big deal selling, whatever it is, it's so hard to have the excess capital just let's say, let's add some gas to the fire. Yeah, so I did that deal, and it's like now I can literally triple my marketing spend. Yeah, and that's exactly what I did. My next campaign was heinous, though. You'll love this. I took the southern 50 of Colorado, five to 40 acres, mailed all of them the same the same price per acre. But insane. It was like, I don't know, 20,000 records or something ridiculous. Did you make any money? I did, oddly enough, but it was like the worst acquisition dynamic because the responses that I got were all properties way over priced in Pueblo County, Costilla County, Alamosa, and I didn't like you know, I didn't get any of the good stuff, but um, yeah, I mean, after that, I put my it's actually kind of a funny story because I really zigged and zagged. I put my my pedal to the metal, foot on the gas to go and scale up and start doing bigger deals. And so I started uh in Colorado, I did the southern half of Colorado, and then I did the western half of North Carolina, and oddly, the western half of North Carolina, even with this essentially like statewide pricing, actually worked. Even I mean, I think back then, yeah, you could get away with stuff like that, probably not. And so I started picking up all these properties in Yonsee County and all like along the western uh side of North Carolina, kind of by uh I think it's Asheville.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

Uh okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

So uh these were deals. I was getting more deals than I knew what to do with, so I had to start raising outside capital. Now these were buy for eight to fifty grand. Um, but we were getting like I got like uh a little over half a dozen in a couple months, and this is in 2021. So I was like quickly out of money.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

You know, it's crazy back then, too. There were so few funders that understood our asset class. Raising money was just so wildly different. Like, people don't realize how easy they have it if you need to go find like a hundred grand, and like we can have a whole discussion about that, but yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Spoiled nowadays, man. Yeah, I don't, I I don't maybe I was ignorant, but I didn't I didn't know of any joint venture funders, to be honest. And so I just went friends, family, and Facebook groups, I guess the three apps. Okay, sure. So and I started raising, you know, eight grand at a time, 10 grand here, and just pairing them up with a deal. Um, was a really tricky experience because now I'm managing whatever 12, 14, 15, 16 uh funders, and these are people that have no real estate experience. So there's like a lot of weird, really weird expectation setting and like constant updates and things like that. Funnily enough, though, I actually did raise some money, and actually some of the best money I raised at that time came from strangers in real estate Facebook groups, and I just took it on Zoom with them, explained the business model, showed the deals. Um, and those were some of our best investors. Dude, what ended up happening though, so we buy this portfolio of 12, I forget what it was. There's a little over 12 properties in Western North Carolina. Now, for context, I keep on saying we because I actually hired the VP of sales from the the previous company I had worked at. So wow, brought him along with me. It was a wild ride. He was a dad at the time, he had another uh baby on the way. It was like high stakes for a business that was not yet really producing at that level. But uh, he's a phenomenal salesperson. He's actually the one that showed me all the Chris Boss material, and he was my six. Yeah. And I mean, frankly, I would say a lot of what I know about sales actually came from him. His name is Dan Madison.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

That's great.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

And uh, what Dan and I ended up doing is putting all these properties on land.com, and we get this private equity company from Florida that reaches out and they say, We want to clear out the full portfolio, we're gonna buy all the properties. Now they did get it at whatever 75 cents on the dollar, so we did give them a discount. Ended up being in the mid 300 grand range for the full package.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

It wasn't Desiree, was it? Do you remember the name of the company or no?

SPEAKER_01 20:11

I can't remember.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

They were the only reason I ask is fun side note. We we sold 80 acres in North Florida uh to this company, and we later found out it was owned by the Mormon Church. So, fun fact, they actually are the largest landowners in the state of Florida, which is just wild. But yeah, that's a little bit off topic there. But I was I was really curious. I'm like, Oh, are the Mormons also buying in North Carolina? I don't know, but yeah, they might have been.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

I think these were like Wall Street guys that had retired and then started raising capital. And essentially, what they were doing, they had this private equity shop where they wanted to buy land in bulk from land investors. So land investor takes the acquisition work off their plate, and then they just get smaller margins, but they buy in bundles from land investors. Kind of a weird model. I don't think it ended up working out well for them because I saw like literally three years later, some of those properties were still listed. Um, and I've never heard from them since. So that was like huge, life-changing six figures uh and spread for us after paying out funders. And then I had this weird idea, middle of 2021 of you know what, I would love to build a business that's more passive. And I kind of had fallen victim to the whole passive income concept that's totally preached in this business. And I was like, man, it's just just a lot of work. I mean, to get that package across the finish line took 60 days of negotiating on the dispo side and then months of work on the acquisition side. I just didn't really see a path to make this sustainable. And so I went down the owner finance route. I ended up actually pausing what I call these mid market deals. I just paused the bigger deal acquisition. Dan and I split ways. He moved back to New York, where he was originally from, and it was just me and one VA. So right before Dan left, this is horrible. I hope I don't get in trouble for saying this. He went on a Reddit forum called Slave Labor. It's a terrible name. I'm so sorry if anyone is offended by that. It's a virtual assistant hiring forum. Now he didn't name it. I don't know. Some other psycho name. That's crazy, dude. It's a horrible name, but it's it's it is popping. There's a lot of VAs on there. I'm not gonna lie. Wow. And so he hires this guy named Newman. And he he before Dan leaves, this is how you got Newman? Yeah. And here's the craziest part before Dan leaves, and we parted on good terms. I had a a last call with him, and he said, Hey, you know, I hired this guy Newman a couple weeks ago. He had been working with Dan. I hadn't met him yet. He was just doing back office data stuff with Dan. He's like, you know what? I don't really think he's a great fit to the business. I you I would consider letting him go and starting fresh and finding someone else, but I'll let you decide. And for you guys that don't know, Newman runs essentially our entire land business today. In fact, he actually lives here in Bali with me, doesn't live in my house, but separately. Um, and started as our first serious virtual assistant that actually stuck in the business and has moved over to COO. Um, I should give credit where credit's due. He does co-manage the business with someone named Ares. So there's essentially kind of two managers in the business, one that's more people facing, one that's more back office facing. Um, and has really built the business in a way that's allowed me to work on things like land insights and Leah. It really wouldn't be possible without the work totally. So it's just an incredible story. Um, so him and I started doing small desert square owner finance deals 2021, April till uh the end of the year. We did 200 plus dispositions. Majority of those were little, you know, desert square properties.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

Those like uh 99 down, 99 a month type, you know, maybe a couple up to 199 or 247 or whatever you were doing.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

Yeah, we had some, we had it we probably like a dozen or two, like you know, 399, 499, some big those actually aren't bad.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

You probably have some of those that still pay and you don't hate them, you know.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

We still have like it's probably got to be 150 or 175 that are still on. Yeah, that's awesome. Um, but you know, the majority of them, our model is one dollar down and then a 249 document prep fee. So we get you with the market angle of one dollar down, and then yeah, 99 a month is what we did typically. But by the end of that year, we were at 20, 25 grand a month in recurring revenue that flex month to month, yeah. Um, but dude, same thing. I was like, I just didn't see how I could scale that model. It was just me and Newman. I didn't really see a growth path. So took another zigzag January of 2022. I said I'm going back to what I call the mid-market deals, deals that are between 25,000 and 250,000 as a list price, and that's really where I shaped the model that we teach now, and it really started in 2022. So, like the the Leah framework playbook model was really, I guess, founded then. And that's the model that I've ran ever since. And so a lot of zigzagging to get to the kind of business that I run today, frankly.

SPEAKER_02 25:08

Man, that's so cool. And and I know this because we've been friends. Um, initially, when you started Leah, wasn't part of it just because you were freaking lonely, like in how the land investing niche was. Could you speak to that?

SPEAKER_01 25:23

Yeah, yeah. So it was kind of twofold. So, first off, in 2020, dude, I'm like six, eight months into the business. I start getting emails, and when I say uh emails, I mean two emails in particular. It's what I got from two aspiring land investors through the plural, baby. Yeah, it sounds like a lot, okay, but it was only two. Um, and they were both like, Hey, can you teach me what you're doing? I see that you have a lot of listings uh on land.com. One was a gentleman named, yeah, one one was named Levi. He was in San Diego. I said, Don't pay me, I'll coach you for free. I felt like a fraud to charge anyone for coaching at that time. And him and I started meeting up in person and doing calls, and I definitely got like a little bit of a bug for ooh, coaching's fun, and running the business is way more exciting when I have someone to vent to or share wins with. So, like that kind of started to pique my interest to maybe there's something here.

SPEAKER_03 26:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

Um, and then I had a second guy reach out. I won't name him because I did multiple coaching calls for them for free, and then they were like, dude, you've given us so much, we're gonna pay you for the next one. I said, Okay, fine. I do the next one, they never paid me, which I still kind of have a slight grudge. I mean, if you say you're gonna do it, just follow me.

SPEAKER_02 26:37

It's probably like a hundred and fifty dollar invoice outstanding, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Like, yeah, it was a small fee. And the funny thing is, they would hit me up for years after, and I'm like, No, yeah. I mean, if you give me your word, I think you're gonna follow through on it. So um, but I didn't really do anything with that information, it just was like, okay, this is interesting. Um, I ended up paying, I forget what it was, 25 grand, something like that. I joined another mastermind that was 2022, I believe. And I learned a ton in there. Like I definitely did kind of cement some of the direction of where I wanted to go in my business. It was kind of like the four-minute mile, like seeing other people that were successful. Yeah, but I didn't make a single friend in there. I don't know why. I was like a shy little alley cat, like I really just kind of stayed to myself, and so I still have this hunger uh to have community.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

It's kind of intimidating too. So, like, Sumner, I'm sure you remember the like average age of land investors back in 2021 was like 45 plus, which I'm not I'm not hating at, but the the demographic you got was like a lot of like good old boys, I feel like that were over the age of 45. Whereas as it's evolved into a more tech-centric business, you've seen a lot more people, you know, in our age in their 20s and 30s that have joined, even some younger. I mean, you know, you and I think have both worked with people that are as young as like Nick Staley, for example, I think was 19 not that long ago. I don't know, I don't remember now, but um, the point being, uh, it was it was different when you were, you know, a pretty successful 24-year-old or whatever at the time, it just feels a little different making friends with 50-year-olds that do this in like the middle of Missouri or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Right. No, it's such a good point. I never thought about it like that, but I think you're right. I think that definitely made me feel a little more ostracized, I think. And I also had like, I don't know, I've always had I just had a lot of shyness, and I like about my business in particular. I like on calls, I would never speak up because I didn't want to be boastful if I was doing well and if I was doing poorly, I didn't want to be vulnerable. I don't know, it's just like this. Yeah, I never put my best foot forward, which is ultimately on me. The turning point, though, where I was like, okay, I love this and I need to do something about it because I it literally fills up my cup more than the land business does by a you know a factor of a hundred. Um, was Michael Bull. And Michael Bulls, funnily enough, he's actually traveling with his family right now through Asia. They're they're actually in volume, yeah, which is super cool. Uh, him and his two girls and his wife. But he was a wholesaler that I had met in San Diego. Actually, my girlfriend at the time uh was the hairdresser for his now wife.

SPEAKER_02 29:19

And no way, that's how y'all met.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Yeah, they connected us. They said, like, hey, you guys are both in real estate, you should check out awesome. Now you guys are still homies. That's sick. And the the journey that we've been through is just kind of wild to reminisce on. We ended up getting on a Google meet um and just chopping it up. This was at the middle of 2021, I think. By 2022, Mike was like, I see what you're doing. I'm all in on land. Teach me everything you know. I'm dropping house wholesaling. Again, I said, Don't pay me anything. It was a really weird structure. I said, What we're gonna do is we're gonna send out 5,000 letters to Costilla County, and I'm going to get, I forget what I said, half your leads or something like that. It was a really weird payment plan that I devised. I don't know why I did it, especially in such a place with lack of value, like Costilla County. Added $1,200 a month to his notebook, but it was uh that that I was like, holy smokes, I've never been more fired up about the land business. We would surf like three times per week in San Diego, go early in the morning, sunrise, surf, and just talk the bids. Dude, and I would come home so charged up. I'm like, oh and so I just knew I needed that in my life. I just knew that community is the backbone because I think it's about staying power, man. Like strategies are nice, tactics are good, and you definitely get upside from taking things from people and installing them in your own business. But I just think sometimes you just need camaraderie and some support to like weather the storms of business. And I think if you can do this for decades, like I don't want to say your success is guaranteed, but damn near is guaranteed. Yeah, and so I think community is kind of the glue that allows you to stick around for a long time. It's changed my life, man. It's changed my life.

SPEAKER_02 31:02

No, I agree, man. And I know I've seen so many powerful stories come out of Leah. Um, you know, we send transparently at the Land Closures Academy, like when we get lead flow of people, like you guys are just so A to Z in everything that you've created. If I get folks, because so much of what we do with sales training, I'm like, if they're just not ready, my closer is actually trained to plug y'all school community now. Like you just send them over. No, like, and it's not even it's selfish because I'm like, you know what? I know, Sumner, is if they go through you, the odds of their success goes up drastically. They'll have more spending power and come back to me when they're ready to work on sales. So it's a very symbiotic relationship. I think we've had an awesome relationship that way for years, and it's almost been unspoken in some ways, but I think like good people know good people, and you're always gonna send folks to people that you know are gonna take care of the people that you know you you trust. So, anyways, long story long there. Um I've seen tons of positive impact through Leah, both personally and then with everybody in our sphere, man. Um, so that that's so cool. Gosh, there's so many different angles we could take, but what I'd love to do is spend a little bit of time dissecting your land business today. Because before we had kicked off the call, you had dropped some crazy stats between, you know, um just over 20 days on market for your properties, $400,000 per cold caller on your team, and so much more. So if that's not good, you know, clickbait for when we're running short form on this later. Uh, let's dive into some of that. Why don't we just start, Sumner, with um the makeup of your team? I know with 22 on staff, it can get a little hard to keep track of how many who's and what's where, but just give me rough schematics of like who's doing what on the team.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

Okay, yeah, we'll we'll ballpark it. I definitely may miss a few heads here and there, but that's okay. We've got two people that lead the business, Newman and Aries. Newman's more on the people, uh, HR hiring, recruiting. We don't really have HR, but just human resources more in general, right? And Aries is more uh like you could almost call him like the CTO in a way. He's more tech back office, numbers, and those roles have kind of been split in a very non-traditional way, but it's it's really worked, it's actually played out beautifully, and both of them have been with us for over four years. So, like, oh wow, yeah, really long tenure, a ton of trust. Um, and so those are the folks at the front lines in the business. We've got three acquisition managers. Um, I actually just hired my third acquisition manager, and I'd say this in the best way possible. He's actually the oldest person I've ever hired, and I hope he doesn't take offense to that. Don't know his age exactly, but I think he's uh 60, 65.

SPEAKER_02 33:45

Um, 23 or just something like that. No, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 33:51

A hunch here, though. I mean, he's a phenomenal salesperson first. Like, yeah, you hear this guy talking, he is just smooth as butter. He's truly a seven-figure closer. He was getting seven-figure commission checks in his previous role. Yeah, oh wow, 200 grand in commission in one month. I mean, the dude's an animal, but he's one of those salespeople that doesn't do it with pressure. I don't know, he's just so I don't know, he just had the presence, man. He's just smooth about it, yeah. Smooth, man. Um, and so he's a phenomenal salesperson. And then, you know, I was looking at him and I was looking at our land sellers, and I'm like, you guys are kind of from the same demographic. So, my thesis here, there's gonna be way more trust with him than someone that's you know 25 years old. Totally. So we'll see how that plays out. We've got a texting team, there's three people on that team. Uh, we've got a cold call team, currently only two cold callers on that team. We float between two and three. Turnover is is a is a real thing, both from us letting people go. Uh, and then we did just lose our first cold caller that left on their own accord.

SPEAKER_03 34:50

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

Um we've got a sales manager, so they manage the acquisition team and the cold call team. So we do sales huddles, sales training calls, daily sales reviews, all of that stuff. Uh, we also set quarterly benchmarks with uh our sales team, cold calling and acquisition. So one-on-one call setting. Hey, this is your plan for the quarter, and then we hold them accountable. We do monthly check-ins on that uh one-on-one. Um, we've got a back end appointment setter, so they're not doing front-end appointment setting. Leads come in, they still actually go through our acquisition team. I have a lot of thoughts on why that's better. Um, but they're taking anyone that's not hot, they're then going to the appointment center, nurture, nurture, nurture, and then eventually rebook if it makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 35:35

That's great.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Um, then we've got a whole slew of data people. Uh, we've got a dispo TC person. Um, yeah, I guess the rest is kind of comprised of virtual assistants and things of that sort that wear a whole bunch of different hats in the business. Now, I will say that 22 is only, I believe, 15 or 16 full-time team members. The rest are part-time, uh, usually on a weekly basis. Some float bi-weekly. So that 22 might be a bit of an illusion if you don't count the uh the part-time folks. Um, you know, I had this kind of like epiphany January of 2025 last year. So, like in full candor, I'll just be dead honest. I launched Lia September of 2022. Uh, January 2023 just goes parabolic. I don't know what happened, just went like boom, and it was all hands on deck really quickly. I mean, we were at six figures a month uh in the coaching business within like four or five months. Uh crazy. So yeah, and I knew nothing about running an info product business or anything like that. The only thing I knew how to do was fulfill and coach, but everything else I was like flying by the seat of my pants.

SPEAKER_02 36:50

You know, ironically, though, it's so much more important because at scale, like product is actually what scales info. So yeah, I love I love that that's like your honest story, but sorry, keep going.

SPEAKER_01 37:00

No, dude, you bring up a good point. This obviously isn't an info product uh podcast, but I think this is why info has such a bad reputation. It's been taught as a sales and marketing business.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

Agreed.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

Yeah, that's true, but like that's making a quick buck overnight to disappear tomorrow. Yeah, real info is a game of fulfillment and product. So um, in the the 2023 to most of 2024, I completely pulled back from my land business. Now I was still running it, but I did absolutely nothing to grow it. I mean, I'm lucky, I'm talking two to five hours per week. Yeah, really minor. Now we were still doing north of 500k a year in profit in the business, so it's still profitable. Um, but I just I just didn't do anything to grow it, and I was needed elsewhere in 2023. So you launched Land Insight, so there was a lot going on. January 2025, though. I just had this epiphany, man. I don't, I don't even know if it's an epiphany, I just had a calling to become the best land investor I could become because by virtue of that, I think I'll become the best coach I could become. And it just felt like there was kind of a twofer benefit where it's like I get to serve my team members, they they they need an opportunity vehicle that can take them to where they want to go, and we've flatlined for the last two years. And I need to serve our community inside of Leah. I could talk the talk, and I was walking the walk, but I wasn't pushing it. And there's something different about someone that's operating a business versus like really pushing a business, and their depth of understanding, I just think is different, you know what I mean? Yeah, and I think that's part of the reason that most of the info products in the land space suck because these coaches, even if they still run the business, it's like this, you know, it's flat, and more than likely they don't even run the business anymore. And so you get this nerfed, sterilized, ancient education that's just not relevant anymore. Yeah, I never wanted to fall in that category. In fact, I've had a hard rule. My hard rule is I can't make more money through info or software. Uh like my land business has to do more than those businesses, not in revenue, but in profit to myself. Okay. That's a great rule. Uh you know, it's a stupid rule, it's a made-up rule. But that I just I was so scared of being clumped into that guru category.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

I think it's an integrity thing, right? So you're you're sitting there and saying, I will not feel like I'm in integrity if I'm making way more money on like selling the thing that I do instead of doing the thing that I do, right? So I I respect it, man. Um, you know, and I think it's a good call out to talk about revenue versus profit. Crazy that those numbers really matter. I also think it's so funny coming from like the land geek world. Um, I didn't go through that camp, but I feel like most people did. Like it was probably one of the largest ones that brought people through. And gross revenue was like legitimately a stat that people would talk about. And I remember being so just like dumbfounded by it, where I was like, guys, you're making $200 a month. Why are you talking about like yo, you got like a quarter million sales, but you're like cash flowing $4,000 a month? Like, and those aren't exact numbers, but you know, it's like this just does not feel honest at all right now. Like, what are we doing? You know, um, did you pay yourself this quarter? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:24

Yeah, I mean, I don't even understand how that model works. You're doing four grand a month, and then you've got to market and you've got to have capital to acquire those properties.

SPEAKER_02 40:32

Like, yeah, like hire people, like it just doesn't make sense. Maybe sorry, go ahead. I was just gonna say that the gurus so seldomly taught how to scale a land business because their model transparently just did not scale very well, right? Which I think is where folks like like myself and yourself kind of came into the scene of like, okay, how do we build an actual business out of this? And I think we had slightly different journeys. I remember a lot of mine was tied to the uh the mastermind collective genius, where um that's where I learned what KPIs were, core values were, hiring and firing, what stand-ups should look like, and basically took all the things that I learned from these professional household sailors and installed them into our land business and then tried to give it all away for free as much as I could, you know. And I always say, like, I'll give away info for free. I can't give away my time, is always like my you know, line in the sand. I think that's fair.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

But well, here's the thing that I just want to throw on, Ajay, too. You dude, you you're teaching something that you actually do and are actually good at, you know. I think that like that gets missed. People have you know a little bit of success in the land business and they want to become this kind of macro land investing coach and teach the whole business. But it's like, hey, are you even good at that? Like, I don't teach people how to get to five million dollars a year in their land business because I've never done it. Like, my my sweet spot is to go take you from zero to half a million or a million bucks. That's my domain, that's my zone of genius. And I see a lot of folks that see a cash grab opportunity to teach something that they're not even good at, man. Yeah, so I think again again goes back to to product, building a great product and info, and just walking the walk. Like I guarantee you, you still get on calls with sellers. Am I wrong? Oh, I get on calls with sellers. I'm still in this business every freaking day, literally trying to grow it month over month. And I just think the the quality of education is reflected in that for both of us.

SPEAKER_02 42:28

I would agree. I man, I love I'm like addicted to a good deal, dude. I've done I've done videos online where I stream me closing my clients' leads because I'm like, I'll show you how real I am. I will literally live stream this. You give me your leads and I'll close them and you keep the deal. You know what I mean? I just I think when you find your zone of genius, honestly, it's one of those things where you become addicted to the things you're good at. And I just love the art of closing the deal, man. It's funny. We um, my wife and I we went to Disney World a month ago, and this isn't gonna sound like the brag I think it is, but I'm gonna tell this story anyways. I had a couple folks hit me up because they had this deal that was falling apart. And my buddy that I was with that I've known since middle school, we haven't lived in the same state for over a decade, but we've stayed friends forever. Him and I are walking around Disney World because my wife and I, we met uh him and his wife, and it's just the guys right now. We're chit-chatting. I get this call and I take it. And he was like, dude, is everything okay? And I was like, Yeah, like, you know, these guys had a deal that's falling apart. And they're like, Well, like, are you in on the deal? And I'm like, Well, no. And he's like, Why'd they call you? Are they clients? And I'm like, actually, no. He's like, So why'd you get the call? And I was like, I'm the guy that people call when the deals are falling apart, man. And he's like, Do you do like, do you save them? I was like, probably like 60% of them. And he's like, but why? And I'm like, honestly, man, I'm addicted. And like, if if the worst part of my day is I spent four minutes while at Disney World so that like somebody in my ether could make 60 grand. Day that they weren't gonna make. I'm gonna sleep pretty good at night, man. Like, I don't feel too bad about that. So I love this stuff, man. I'm sure you feel the same way about the problems that get brought to you that you love solving, right?

SPEAKER_01 44:11

So um it all comes back to that note real quick. I think that like that's on some level, like the greatest realization that someone can have, at least in the domain of work, but I think it carries over to all areas of life. Like, if you're so fortunate to find the thing where you put in one unit of energy and you get 1.5 or two units out from that work, dude, that's the ultimate blessing, man. And unfortunately, a lot of people never find what that is for themselves. And I you know, I pray that everyone does because I think that man, when you get that strategy goes out the window, you've got a moat that no one can compete with, and it's called passion. Totally, people can feel it, man. So, yeah, man.

SPEAKER_02 44:51

Like, even as we're talking about it, I'm like in a state of euphoria, or I'm like, bro, give me a lead that you guys like had to cancel on or something, you know. Like, I just love it.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

Man, I you don't be careful what you wish for.

SPEAKER_02 45:05

I love it, man. I love it. But okay, let's let's come back to your business here, Sumner. Um, so you broke out the team. I think you had mentioned uh two or three texters, two or three cold callers. Will you um break down the actual volume of each of those? So, like on texting, how many texts are you hitting per month? On cold calling, if it's not call volume, maybe just hit me with like how many leads you're loading up and how many leads are you getting pushed into your CRM? Just give me some level of measurement so we can get some apples and apples here.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

Yeah, so texting, uh we've really brought our volume down actually. Oh, really? Yeah, so this this year we launched something called seller IQ inside of land insights, so it's front-end lead scoring uh that shows us the probability for uh what we think is gonna make it uh make a seller sell, right? And so we went through and I looked at all of my historics, and like for example, in 2025, I only did one deal with a low probability seller, um, which is pretty crazy, right? And so we've just and this is this is true for cold calling as well. We've just gotten way more niche down with our data. So at our peak, we were doing about 350,000 techs a month. Now we're doing about two, yeah. Now we're doing about 200,000 techs per month.

SPEAKER_02 46:19

That's a lot of volume. It's a lot of volume.

SPEAKER_01 46:22

I mean, we're we were getting 700 plus leads a month in the CRM. It was too much, honestly. That was part of the constraint as well. Yeah, is our acquisition team are actually our acquisition numbers went down in terms of gross profit and quantity of contracts because it was just a tsunami of leads coming in. Yeah, and so I said, you know what? Let's focus on better leads, but we'll pull back uh quantity, and that's exactly what we've done. It's the same exact thing with cold calling. So inside of Lead 2.0 that we released uh this year in January, I revealed my cold calling process, which I started nine months ago, and so I think I do cold calling different than what I've ever seen out there. Now, the byproduct of that is our cold calling is very low volume. We make about 5,000 dials per caller per month. So we've got two callers, yeah, about 10,000 dials. Now, to give you context, uh, in the last nine months, we made about 117,000 dials. Now that math floats a little bit because it's like we had two people and then we had kind of three people, but the third person never really ramped up. So, like the numbers aren't perfect, it's more like maybe two or two and a half people. Um, let me pull up the numbers so I don't give you a misrepresentation here. But from 117,000, 117,000 dials over the last nine months, we've had $840,000 of total profit that's been realized or is in the pipeline. Okay, so it's about right under 200k of realized gross profit nine months, and then 600 some odd thousand of pipeline profit from deals generated from cold calling. That looks like from 117,000 dials, we've signed 40 contracts. I don't think anyone has numbers like that that are quite that efficient. Like it's kind of bonkers. And so what we're doing this year is really like quintupling down on our cold calling operation. Um, because the numbers are just insane. Now, if we compare that to let's just take texting, for example, okay. This is true for a lot of other marketing channels as well. Average gross nowadays, if you're following like what we teach in Leah or elsewhere, 25, 30 grand, right? And those are our numbers too. That's about what we would see from texting. Our average gross profit for a deal from cold calling is like north of $60,000. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's really, really high. Here's the crazy thing, though. And this this is the stat that just really cemented it for me. Now, if we look at the same time period, okay, we got 142 signed contracts through texting the same time period.

unknown 48:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 48:52

But for 142 contracts, we had to generate not leads, but hot leads. We had to generate 2936 hot leads in the CRM to get those 142 contracts. It's a lot of volume. To get 40 contracts from cold calling, we had to generate 310 leads. So if we say there's like a 4x difference there from contract volumes, if we multiply by 4x our cold call contract volume, that'll get us about the same texting contract volume. Okay, but 4xing it will bring us to 1200 hot leads versus 2,900 hot leads. So the the literal like units of work for our acquisition team is so much lower, and our gross profit is double on these deals or almost double. Wow. So the math is just it, the math is math, and the efficiency is nuts.

SPEAKER_02 49:41

I I will tell you just side note when um my team or when I'm talking to other people in land and we want to imitate you, we frequently uh for emphasis will use the words both bonkers and bananas. So I just want you to know, and I say that in a way that's flattering. So we're not doing it to make fun of you, it's it's more flattering because it's admiration, but I appreciate it, man. Yeah, and and as we dive into this, Sumner, I actually really want to point out something that is like gonna make me bang my head against a wall when people don't understand this concept. Because if you pay attention to your sequencing there, okay, what came first? Lead volume or lead quality? Okay, it was volume, then quality. And I see so many people take so much longer to grow their land business because they become so hyper fixated on quality early. And and look, man, I'm not talking about like you have your brilliant people like like Kay Walker, for example. Yeah, okay, fine. She's focused on quality, she's an exception. Okay. Now you have the 99% of investors that are normal people, and those people need to increase volume so that you even know how to rein in quality. And so, as I heard you say, you know, we were getting 700 leads a month, the constraint of the business, you know, changed. We actually dialed in quality. My brain had this light bulb moment of like, well, yeah, dude, because you were able to say, hey, which leads in here are working, which ones aren't. Now we know where to put our focus. And it's that stair step piece of scaling where like scale is just messy and you break constraints and it's ugly, and you pull your hair out and people quit. But man, when you get to the other side of a phase of growth, like you hit it, sounds like there is something so rewarding that just feels bananas for lack of a better term, you know. So I just really wanted to hit that point. Uh, what was going through your head? I see a thought.

SPEAKER_01 51:41

No, it's well said, man. I mean, I think it's uh I was just having the the same thought. Like when I started making YouTube videos, I mean our quality is still not great. I take very messy action and I'm willing just to throw stuff at the wall, but you know, it took a lot of quantity to kind of figure out my voice and how to make these videos, and I just think it's applicable in all areas. Typically, start with volume, quality will take care of itself down the line. I do think quality is higher, it's higher leverage if you get it right, but I think you need quantity to inform quality. You know, I just I just ran a mastermind here in Bali in what was that in March? And we had one of our Leah members come and she did about $140,000 in profit in her first year. Um Leah, uh no, she was very disappointed. She was like, These numbers I'm like, great, she did six figures, man. She's like, these are terrible numbers. I'm so you know, so mad at myself. What am I doing wrong? Um, but when we looked at her numbers, we did this whole like three-hour long hot seat KPI audit. Sure, dude, she was generating on average three and a half leads per month. Three and a half leads per month. That'll do it. You run with three and a half leads per month, and so the fact that she still made six figures is actually wild. I know. Um, so yeah, I mean, here's the thing: new land investors have all sorts of problems for sure. We can't chalk it up to one thing, but usually it's a marketing problem to start, you just don't have enough bats, totally. Um, and that's why inside of Leah 2.0, we've given a fork in the road for new investors because our demographic is new investor or struggling investor. Like, let's get you to quarter mil, half a mil. I think that that's our that's our lane. And so we'll either take you on the direct mail adventure, which I think that we've really dialed in direct mail in a way that's pretty different than what most people do, or we'll take you on the cold calling adventure because I think those are the two best marketing channels for new investors to start with for a multitude of reasons. Um, so yeah, man, I just I but with my own data, I've just become so jazzed with what I'm seeing on the cold call side. And I'm really, really enthused. And so I you know, by the end of the year, I would like to be at eight to ten callers. But here's the constraint no one talks about or not the constraint, but so much of the value is created in the hiring process. I mean, we'll have to go through a thousand candidates to find one true killer, totally, and it really is a power law. Like our best cold caller works part-time, but she 5x's the numbers of every other caller that we have in terms of gross property. Wild, wild, right? So it's like finding eight to ten of those people is really, really hard. Yeah, and so it'll take us six to eight months of recruiting to find those people.

SPEAKER_02 54:23

So yeah, almost makes me wonder like on the the point we just made of volume. Like, how do you increase the volume of your candidates to get there faster? Like, is there somewhere we pay? Because there's there's a couple different ways you do it, right? On one end, it's you have to be doing it long enough, and on another, you can like pay down the tax essentially. But cold callers are kind of man, they're such a unique beast because there's also just like what's the word, like a grit and endurance piece to the role where, like, come on, guys, anybody that has done any level of cold calling, myself included, has been cursed out, hung up on, spit on, just like the most profanic, horrible things said to you. I've had sellers curse me, like I will curse you. I'm like, what does that even mean, dude? Like, dude, it's it's wild. And so unfortunately, the the other side of that is cold calling is extremely rewarding when it's done well, but it also has an extremely high churn because it can be a very abrasive role in an emotional toll, which is where culture can really help combat that. Where, like, if you love who you work with and the environment you're in, I don't know, man. We're gonna turn this into a whole different kind of conversation. But I think there's there's a question there, and you let me know if you find the hack on placing these unicorn cold callers because that that would be uh amazing.

SPEAKER_01 55:39

Well, I'll tell you just real quick on that. No, I don't I definitely unfortunately don't have the secret, but we treat it just like any other funnel, right? Like you're not gonna run a land business and turn on lead flow and turn off lead flow. Totally. So we always have candidates coming in and we're always qualifying and trying to move through the funnel. But for us, the number one thing that I've seen that's gonna determine how one, how good of a cool caller they'll be, and more than likely how long they'll they'll be in their role. I don't even know what to define this as, but like they actually get a little bit of pleasure out of confrontation, like that, like that it gives them a little boost of energy. Like our best, I she like she like it's like a cat and mouse game. She likes to kind of play with them and poke the bear. Yeah, that's energy given, you know. I mean, if a seller gives her a crazy price, I've got a good point. Yeah, I've literally heard her say on a call, the seller's like, you know, I want a million dollars. She said, You just roll out of bed? What are you thinking? Like, just like the hammer on them, and you know, knock on wood, I think she'll be with us for years, and so those are the folks that I'm looking for, and then of course, from there we have to build the right incentive structure. So, of course, we do pay a percentage on gross for the deals they bring in, but the incentive for that when someone starts is way too long tail, and so you need a pop in the beginning. So, in the beginning, you pay for a contract and then it moves over. Uh, because you've got to get them engaged, and then on top of that, yeah, like you said, it's a culture game. I think our culture is it's it's bee's knees, ride or die. We talk on calls every day, usually multiple times a day. It's such a competitive yet healthy environment, it's like that perfect balance, and I would chalk a lot of that up, not to me necessarily, but to Newman and Aries. Um, and that's why I like at a certain point, if you want to go from high six figures, low seven figures, and go beyond, like I think you need managers, man. You need people that have autonomy to manage other people because you're just not gonna do it on your own at scale.

SPEAKER_02 57:45

So, anyways, that's so true, man. Gosh, we could spend so much time on this. I think to finish out maybe part of this. Um, could we so I want to break down we're we're gonna hit your business a little bit deeper in a few different levels here, Sumner. Rough agenda is I want to drill down on um sourcing talent. So, again, like where you're putting job postings and what countries these folks are coming from. Um, and then I want to really break down your deal structure. And then after that, we have to talk dispo, market selection data, uh, and and obviously the features within land insights that makes all these things possible. Because, bro, I still cannot believe you're getting under 30 days on market this year. Again, we we like we do deals, and I have a lot of people in our community that do a lot of deals. And I'm like a big proponent of like, dude, just drop your prices to move stuff quick, but I still don't move stuff that quick, you know. So, anyways, so Sumner, I want to spend a second just diving into like where are you sourcing your talent from? And when I say from, I want to talk both what platforms you're bringing them in on, like indeed, wise hire, uh, online jobs.ph, wherever it is, and then also um like what countries are you sourcing your talent from?

SPEAKER_01 58:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good question. So on the sales side acquisition, we're uh all US, and that's actually predominantly come from Discord, our community. Um, that's been an incredible hiring funnel for us for actually all of the businesses. Uh, you can make the argument that's actually been one of the biggest advantages because you get people that know, like, and trust you, they're already kind of indoctrinated in your way of doing things, but you know, not everyone's cut out to be a business owner, and so people try it for a year and like I want to stay in the industry, I just don't want to run my own business. So that's been the sales side. Um, all other roles are overseas. We are spread out all over the world. I mean, Canada, Pakistan, uh, Egypt, uh, Southeast Asia. But what role do you have in Canada? Yeah, actually, Aries, our kind of co-co. Oh, he's he's in Canada, funnily enough.

SPEAKER_02 59:46

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:46

Um, initially started in the Philippines, ended up moving to uh moving to Canada. So on the cold call side, um, we're all Egypt. That's our bread and butter. And then for everything else, it's mostly Southeast Asia. Um, now in terms of where we hire from, so about a quarter to or a third of the jobs that we hire from, we use outsource your tasks. I've actually been very pleased with the service they provided me. Um, I've had honestly, for me, nothing but good experiences. Um, Facebook groups. So we go through a lot of what a lot of what these recruiting companies do is they actually just go through Facebook groups. Like if you actually look at the back end of how a lot of these places work, they either have their own Facebook groups or they're in hundreds of other Facebook groups. Interesting. So yeah, I think there's a lot of hiring arbitrage in those groups. A lot of people aren't putting job listings there. Uh, we do use online jobs.ph. Yeah, it's okay. Uh, obviously, Reddit, as I've mentioned before. Um for our last role in Egypt, we did have one of our team members go and put like job listings on more traditional listing platforms in Egypt. I can't tell you which ones they were because I didn't use them. But uh Eva, who's our sales trainer, um, she's helped source talent for us locally in Egypt from job listing platforms, then also just from referrals and connections because she's obviously well connected in the area, but also she used to run a hundred-person cold call team. So she's got yeah, she's got a lot of pull in terms of uh old names of people that she's worked with. So that makes up the bulk of it. I would say the majority of our hiring is uh OIT or Facebook groups. That's where most of the acts have for us right now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:31

Okay, sweet man. That makes sense. Um, let's spend a second and talk about like what your average deals are looking like right now. Um, I don't know if you want to get into some level of like location, just talk rural rec, talk price point, talk is it mostly flip, wholesale, subdivide? Um, give us, yeah, give us give us some deal oversight. For sure, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:54

Um, so if we look at I I got our numbers pulled up for this month so far. So um uh month to date uh pipeline, the gross this is a gross profit pipeline. So we're we're removing like we're including realtor costs and uh closing costs. We factor that into our pipeline profit estimate. Um, so it's 561,000 for the month so far. That's made up of we've had 10 contracts signed this month, so you know, we we most of our deals are 50k plus on average in terms of spread, but the deals themselves, we zoom in, look a little bit different. So it's kind of split right down the middle. We've got your vanilla, buy for 25, sell for 50, buy for 25, sell for 45. And we just do those all day long. Totally. And then we have like a hundred to five hundred thousand dollar price point deals. Um, and I'd say about 10 to 15 percent of those is value add, and the others are just standard flip, they just don't make sense for a value add perspective. Like we actually just got an offer this weekend on a $1.2 million just flip, no subdivide. It looked like it could have been a subdivide, just didn't really make sense. So obviously, those really bring our averages up, but like that's kind of like where most of our deals are happening. Um, it's about 50-50 uh flip to double close. Some months it's a little more, like 60-40, a little more cash. Um, some months it's a little more double close, but it's usually right about that 50-50 mark. Um, and we're doing about I'd say three to four value add deals per quarter right now. Um, but in truth be told, most of the value add deals we acquired in Q1, we went and put the listing up while we were subdividing them and just got good offers and moved the deal. So, like a lot of our uh was supposed to be value add inventory just got sold to sold through on market while we had them listed. Sure. And the math was just you know hard to deny. Um, most of the deals that we're buying are uh 35 cents on the dollar. If we're talking about you know sub 40, 30 grand properties, we pick those up pretty at a pretty steep discount typically, uh, all the way up to like 75 cents on the dollar is usually the most that we're gonna pay for a deal at that point. And you'll take title to that. No, no, no, no. Oh, okay. I was like, that's crazy, dude. Oh, yeah. 75 cents on the dollar is either gonna be a double close. Um, assuming it's like, bro, what are you running?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:29

Yeah, gross revenue is great. I buy on 75 cents on the dollar, I sell for 70.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:36

There's some land investors that have tried that model and it worked out too well. Um, and to be clear, like those 75 cents on the dollar deals are either double close or subtitles, obviously. But 75 cents on a dollar for a double close is assuming it's at least a six-figure property.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:51

Totally.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:52

If it's not, we're picking it up 50 cents on the dollar if it's you know 75, 50 grand, something like that, as a list price. Um, so yeah, that's what most of our deals look like currently. Now uh we're averaging about 10 contracts per month on the acquisition side, 12 would be a great month, and that's been with two acquisition managers. Uh so we just hired our third, he just started about two weeks ago. So I would say we're gonna be at on the low end 15, more realistically, probably about 20 deals per month in a quarter, frankly.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:23

Quick clarification there, Sumner, because you said uh I could I don't know if you said acquisitions or contracts. So um, like when you say 10 contracts, I just those words sometimes need to be specified. So, how many of those actually realize uh into profit?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:39

So we actually have uh an incredibly low fall-off rate for these contracts, it's about 15% that will fall through.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:47

Wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:51

But here's the thing our contract cent volume is way lower than your typical land investor, way lower.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:58

So for example. If I look at my uh if I look at the math this month, you're gonna love this.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:04

10 contracts signed, 22 contracts sent. So we're about a 40 plus percent close rate. Now, I would like to get our contract sent volume higher. Um, we will have more of a fall off. There were some deals falling through. I understand that, but we are snipers. Like when we give you a contract, we are probably taking title to that deal or double glad. We we really have a very low fall-off rate. We haven't had a single double close fall through that we haven't sold in over it's got to be over a year now. So we have like almost no fall off there. It's your due diligence and your data is just dialed, dialed, and we almost have no fall-off with sellers. We've had like one big one that I can remember in the last six months. It was a big six-figure deal. The seller backed out. Most of where we're running into snags is like you're you'll you'll love this, but like title problems or property problems that are so extreme. You know, like property doesn't perk, there's nothing you can do with it. Yeah, or there's like a lien from the Cayman Islands for 300 grand. Where it's like, oh god. Now here's the interesting thing like we're always carrying a backlog of six to eight properties that have in quotes fallen through, but the seller hasn't given up, and we haven't really given up yet. So we're still going through the motions with them. So it's like it's actually hard to know what the exact number is. That's okay. Our fall-off rate is very, very, very low, very low.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:30

Yeah, no, it's important though, right? Because I think investors sometimes don't know and they hear so you you get the whole spectrum, man. Because I know I've had seasons where we would get, you know, maybe 10 PA signed, but only six of those get realized. If you're like pretty average, I would say is like a six or a seven. And then if you're pretty bad, it's like four, right? And so, um, or less, right? Or a lot less. People lock up stuff without doing any due diligence or know what they're doing. Um, but there's always a question and process there. And so that just tells me with how tight your um margin is there that oh, okay, your due diligence is dialed, is what I heard instantly, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:07

Well, yeah, there's two things to tack on to that. Obviously, our due diligence is as dialed as we can. We're not, you know, title experts per se, but we do a pretty good sniff test. But I think the the two big drivers here is our underwriting is dialed. We are wizard, and we're taking people that have no comping experience and plugging them into the land insights comping tool, and then they're just as good as me in 60, 90 days. So we don't really make a lot of bad offers, to be honest. Um, the other thing, in terms of sellers not following through, I mean, if you listen to our acquisition calls, we are the sweetest people you've ever talked to. You know, I mean, like we build such a depth of connection with these people. Um, we're walking all of them through the contract live as you teach, and so we just don't blindside people, it's just a lot of trust there. And I mean, I would say almost every contract I can think of when we sell the deal, we have parting words with the sellers, like email, text, call, and it's always like, You are amazing to work with. Yeah, and so I think a lot of people just get like they they'll get a double close, they mismanage expectations with the seller, they're not touching base during the timeline with the contract, and the seller backs out because they're like, Screw you, dude. Yeah, um, so I think those are two big drivers for us as well. And most people, frankly, stink at underwriting. I know this is a contentious point, but I don't think you should be contracting a property more times than not. Maybe there's exceptions if you have no idea what to offer. I just think that's you're dragging the seller through a process that's not high integrity, in my opinion. Like, I know it's beneficial to contract it and figure it out later, and there's a time and place for it, and I'm sure we'll do it at some point this year, but I really try to avoid that as much as possible.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:50

Totally, totally. There's so much there, man, that I think is just a testament to your time in the game. Like the maturity to understand how valuable good comping and due diligence is such a it is not something that your gurus that have been doing this for three months uh are really honing in. And it's funny, man, because I have um there's this guy that just popped up uh some new land guru, and he's using a name that's like eerily close to mine. And my attorney hit me up out actually and was like, dude, you should hit him with a C and D. And I'm like, ah, I'm like, that's not really my style. You know what I mean? I'm like, it's not that deep. My uh closer was asking me questions about it, and I said to him, his name is Jacob. I was like, Jacob, transparently, dude, he'll be out in a year. Like, most of these guys build such bad products, which sucks because his name is kind of close to mine, but like he like I hope this doesn't have any cross, you know, reputational uh impact. But what I know is that like he's gonna spend too much money on ads to build a crap product and nobody's ever gonna buy after like three months. So it's you've seen it, man. How many of the Miami bros have come and gone, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:58

I know man, I know, and I'm seeing that uh now, too, really over the last two years, especially as these AI coding platforms have become somewhat better. You have these people trying to ship software with no context on how to build a product, and frankly, you know, cloud co-work and cloud code, like all this stuff has come a long way. And we do use that stuff for the very early iteration of our code. Like when we're building a new feature, we'll mock it up, but there's still so much human labor to get the code in the place where the product's good, and so I just see I see people are just like, you know, here today, gone tomorrow for software for info. Um, we come back to product, brother.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:40

You gotta love product and good business, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:42

Oh, yeah, good business, man. Good, that's a great point. And look at you'd be in business long enough. I'm sure you're gonna step on some toes. It happens, it's impossible to have whatever thousands of people that you work with. And you're gonna drop the ball in some places where not infallible, but it's like, what do you do when you do drop the ball? How do you clean up the mess? And I think good business is is the secret, man. Again, it's staying power, and so I think that's something that you've done very well. Something that I I I hope I've done well uh too in all the businesses is um, yeah, just operating with integrity. And in the Instagram era of selling lifestyle to sell people that dream for some crap product. I mean, that's just gone out the window, man. I think you and I are a little more old school where it's like reputation really matters 100%.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:26

Yeah, 100%. You only get one, man. Like, I mean, I think you and I both know we've got people that we probably ran with at certain points where their reputation went down the drain, and I get questions asked about them, and I'm like, hey man, no comment. Like, I've got nothing to say. I had one where I like, uh, you know, I'm sure you you made this mistake once of like you plug a vendor and then you hear a bunch of bad stories about that vendor, and then you remove everything you've ever plugged them on. I had somebody DM me on Facebook and was like, dude, you used to plug this person, but I'm not seeing any of your old stuff, and now you're plugging this vendor. And it was a mistake I think I've only really made once or twice. Um, and and it was like actually an integrity issue, not even just like a bad product. It was like some really shady stuff that I don't want to talk about on here. But I was like, hey man, you ever hear that expression in elementary school of like you got nothing nice to say, you don't say anything at all? Like, I got no comment, brother. Like, hope you have a nice day, you know, and that was that.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:18

But take the higher.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:20

Yeah, exactly. On the topic of good business, summer sumner. I want to transition into land insights, data, and how that is driving your decision making in your land business and so many other land investors. Okay, so there's a ton we can talk about when it comes to land insights. Um, I almost want to start with like give me an elevator pitch on what problem it solves, but it solves so many freaking problems now since it was just a piece of tableau software. So uh why don't we start there, man? Give me the elevator pitch, and then I want to drill down into a couple of different features that you guys are chipping right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things I quickly realized in this business when I first got started is like it is a tool heavy business, it's a data heavy business. It is the backbone of what we do. You can't operate with no skill and have the best tools and expect results, but like when you have the best tools or the best data, the best visibility to information, and you have skill, it's a lights out combo. And like I I don't like, I don't even need to pitch the software, I guess. Like my results speak to it because I I use this tool, my team uses this tool day in and day out. And so it's like the numbers that we've talked about here, I I God's honest truth wouldn't be possible without land insights. That's just a matter of fact. And so I realized okay, there is there is leverage to software or code that can do things that humans can't do, um, and that gives us information that would just be really hard to unearth otherwise. Then I also realized why the heck do I have 10 subscriptions to a gazillion different tools? I'm paying, you know, thousands of dollars a month for all these different tools. And so the ethos is like, how do we create the land investing operating system where you only need one subscription and everything's under one roof? And then there's also efficiency because all the data speaks to each other. Yeah, we've got a massive feature release coming out in Q4 that I can't really talk about, but it will be the it'll be the bow that puts everything together. It's it is the chef's kiss, it's the crescendo, it's it's the thing where it's all native in one place, everything that you would possibly need. You would never need to leave the tool. So the ethos is can we build an operating system? And like I've always been in the trenches in my business, just being like, God, if I was smart enough to code, I wish I could do this or this or this or this and this. And I finally found the people that are smart enough to do that. We can take these crazy ideas and put them together. So if we look at the land business as it stands right now, land insights kind of takes you from cradle to grave. It selects our markets, it aggregates our data, it does front-end lead scoring for our data, AI scrubbing to remove all the properties we don't want to market to. So it's not just like let's get access to clean records. It's like let's get access to the best records, the best of the best of the best. So we can take shots on goal for our marketing. It helps us with our pricing. If you're pricing offers for your marketing, you can do that on the front end. We invented something called a Genie Index. We track all of the how homogeneous prices for counties and zip codes across the across America. Then from there, once we start getting leads inbound, all of our comping runs through the comping tool. What's crazy is like historically our comping was about on the front end, new lead in the CRM. We do our first pass, about 15 minutes is what we were doing historically, and that's pretty conservative, frankly. We're on on average in our team about five minutes per that first pass for underwriting a deal. So 66% reduction. But here's the best part I'm taking people that have no understanding of land, plugging them into the system, and now they're comping like me again within a couple of weeks. And so, like the ramp up for employees has been huge. Because before, dude, I was always the guy that needed the final say on deals. I was the bottleneck. It's like we don't really trust the underwriting. Sumner, can you look at it? That never happens now. Wow. Um, then from there, we get the deal under contract, right? We've underwritten inside the platform, then we move over to the realtor database. So we select all of our realtors through Land Insights. We've got a double closed database and a standard agent database. Then from there, we actually design our uh property photos inside of the platform, and this is where I think that we've really won with disposition. So to put the cat out of the bag, our average days on market for new inventory acquired in 2026 and the start of the year is 21.75 days. So 20.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:44

Oh, that is bonkers.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:45

Like that is nuts, dude. Yeah, dude. We have some properties where we're getting six offers in 48 hours.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:52

I was gonna say the fact that you said your average is 21 days means that there are some under that, right? Which is just insane.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:58

I listed one on Friday, got an offer last Friday, got an offer on Saturday. I mean, it's just like bang, bang, bang. It's crazy. Um, we just can't acquire enough inventory right now. Like we're kind of at parity, like where we're never really growing our inventory, like acquire 10, sell 10 kind of thing. Um, and how that came about was spending the last year just becoming psychotic about what makes listings move. So, what I found is okay, we need to be in the right markets, we then need to have the right realtors. Realtors really do move the needle if you have the right ones. That's why we select them out of the database inside of Land Insights. We're looking for land realtors that aren't afraid to walk that property and aren't afraid to pick up the phone and follow up with prospects. That's all I need them to do. You're a contracted salesperson, all the marketing that's on me. And so, from a marketing standpoint, there's three levers that we pull on for our listings. There's the cover photo, there's the sequence of photos, and there's the listing copy. The cover photo baits someone in, it gets them to click on the listing. I think we have the best cover out photos in the space. I used to say Landio had better ones. No, ours are better now. Ours are next. Wow, that's a claim. Claim, baby. Then we have the sequence of photos. So, like on Zillow, they're going to show you the first five photos. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:10

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:10

And you have to click to look at the rest. Those first five photos have to tell the full story about the property. Most listings show you five photos.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:17

It's a drone photo from the you know, just slightly different angles, it's just the same thing over and over and over again, or it's a picture of a tree, and then from there from the ground, from the road, it's a picture of overgrown front with this ugly tree and some bush.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:33

It's like the wrong aspect ratio for the platform. Oh my gosh. Um, and then from there, we have listing copy that needs to answer all of the potential objections. I don't mean that in a sales way, I mean that in a very tactical way. Because what a prospect does is they look at the listing, they say, it's a nice property, but I guarantee you this thing won't perk, or probably doesn't have water, right? All that pertinent information, we're putting it in there to bust any potential objections. We always have a call to action. And the call to action is just get a hold of our realtor because we know you call them, then we show you the property, then we follow up, then you make an offer. So it's like everything's just driving to traffic to the page to save the listing to call the realtor to walk the property. That's all we're trying to do. Yeah, and so this month we released a platform called Deal Flow inside of Land Insights. It's free for Land Insights Pro users. It's my entire disposition brain and process consolidated into an AI agent essentially that tells you what it tells you what your cover photo needs to look like with the sequence, how to write your copy, when to reprice it, when to hold price, when to relist the property. It tracks every data point on the listing every day. So if you go to Zillow, when you see views and saves, you're only seeing a rolling 30 days. This tracks every single day until infinity. And so we can actually see in real time the exact feedback of if I change the cover photo, blip, if I don't, if I change price, if we can actually see this play out. Where before you're kind of you kind of have this rolling 30-day information, it's not very clean. And so the platform can learn from that daily information, just give you the most tactical next step. And so when we bring listings to market, everything flows through deal flow. It tells us how to list our property, when to drop, it just does everything for us. And when you have an inventory of 25 properties or whatever it is, it's like I need to know every day what's a straggler, what needs to be relisted, repriced, what marketing needs to be changed. And before, my team was just going through this manually, like going through Zillow links, bing, bing, bing, bing, and then they're trying to decipher what they need to do. It's the same phenomenon with the comping tool. The goal is how do I take a new land investor or a new employee and make them as good as me through the code and the platform? And that's leverage. So our dispo manager, we hired him a couple months ago, knows nothing about dispositions or land. He's the best dispo manager I've ever hired because he's leveraging these tools. It's freaking wow. So this is crazy. In the first nine days, DealFlow had 51 million dollars of land move through it with over 20 million dollars of profit on those deals. Yeah, crazy. I think that a billion dollars of land will move through it in the next year. Let's call it. It's insane. Wow, yeah, dude. And people are just like people are using it like crazy. Like I it could be our biggest feature ever, and it's free. My whole concept is you hold a membership, which is a subscription. I'm just gonna keep on pouring value on you forever. And I really do try to make sure it's free or at cost for what we ship. Here's the kicker: this is dropping this week. This is the first you'll first tell all. One of the other things that we've been using this year, I haven't used a single drone pilot. I we built we built a system inside of Land Insights that produces instant drone photos. For anyone that tries to copy us, we've already filed the patent, so buzz off. Go do your own thing. I'm so tired of these stupid copycats. Um, and so what we do is it creates instant drone photos. It usually is about 30 minutes to render these images. These are, God's honest truth, the prettiest photos you've ever seen. I can't share my screen here, but if you looked at this, you would be like, that's the prettiest drone photo I've ever seen. Gorgeous, you know, sunset, golden hour, like just crazy. It's $25. So we'd go from spending $300 to $500 for photos. It's now $25, and we get those photos essentially instantly. And we've removed the friction of having these annoying uh drone pilots that are either slow to get out there. So now we've got the clock ticking on our contract waiting for the photos, or they're just like a random variant. Some are good, some are bad. You never really know what you're gonna get. What we've learned is when you list a property on the MLS, naturally you're gonna get this seven-day surge where the platform is really gonna push you. So, what we need to do is we'd have to wait for these drone photos, but we got a contract where the clock is ticking, it's a double close. We'll just get the listing up and then we'll put the drone photos on once we get them. It's a big no-no. You need to start that listing at its most optimal form or as close to it as you can take advantage of that surge. Now, you don't always get it right, right? So DealFlow will tell you on day one what you need to correct right then and there to make sure that surge is in your favor. And I think that's why our dispo has been so solid. We we just broke down how the MLS works and have gamed the system to have it play in our favor, and land does it for us. So we don't use drum pilots, our photos are all through land and sites, and we use deal flow to manage our pipeline. Um, and our dispo's just gone insane. And now, to be clear, if you guys don't know, this is not like a great disposition environment. We've got one weird the worst, the worst, man. Um, and despite that, we're still rocking and rolling. I think it's really a testament to what we built. Um, so yeah, that's a long that was a lot of information, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:54

Dude, I'm like mind blown, and I should be better because I am a happy land insights user and have not kept up with the most recent ship of features. I had to get you on a podcast to learn about them, clearly. Uh, you know how it is, man? It's like you you see it and you're like, oh, I should sit down and check that out. And I just have not sat down. Um, but okay, so promise me this.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:16

How many properties do you have in inventory right now that are that's just land, not houses?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:19

Uh, specifically land, probably like eight that are sitting and a couple under contract.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:25

Have your team go put them in the deal flow this week. You already have access to it, it doesn't cost you anything. Yep, and then do exactly what the platform tells you to do. Like, literally, don't don't slide just all of it to the to the T and watch what happens. I promise you you're gonna be blown away.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:42

Okay, deal. I will do it and I will I will text you when I get an update, like the honest truth. So done. Um, okay, so I do want to break down a couple of pieces here. Are you still good on time or do you have a hard stop in seven?

SPEAKER_01 1:25:54

Uh we'll keep going. 10, 15 minutes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:57

Okay. Um, so man, you basically engineered with with land insights this disposition process that in my brain I've segmented into three portions. Okay. So on the front end, we have market selection, which is basically making sure that I have an underlying demand at some level, right? So I have to choose markets where people are buying property and they're buying property that I'm marketing to. That's piece one. And I think that was the first big problem that Land Insight solved to solve the macro problem of getting properties to move, right? Problem number two now is essentially what I would call like your marketing funnel when it comes to these properties. So, top of funnel, there's so many variables when it comes to moving these properties, right? Uh, you broke it down so well, but you've got your cover photo, then your top five photos, then how the algorithm pushes new listings, your copywriting, a strong call to action, right? So you you broke down all these elements into my brand. I'm like, oh my God, he's cracked the funnel of the MLS. Like, that's nuts, right? Not to mention this tool that in real time is analyzing what is or isn't working, right? So that we can shift how fast properties get moved and adjust based on what the market's telling us. And then on the third tier, you define what good sales looks like, right? Because the truth is, man, if I can have a realtor that picks up the phone and I can get them to get buyers to walk the property, if they're gonna buy, they're already price qualified by the time they reached out, most likely, right? And it's a pretty serious, high-intent buyer. So, like, freaking convert them, guy. And it's crazy how hard it is to get realtors to actually pick up the phone and walk the dirt, man. I had a realtor once, oh my god, Sumner. I don't, I'm gonna like get heated if I get into this. But this guy literally uh had over 50 leads he had gotten from MLS. From land.com did not convert a single one. And I said to him, I can't remember this guy's name. He was one of the Whitetail guys. So, like, those guys are so hit or miss, man. Whitetail and Mathiokes. I like there are some that I have worked with that have been world class, and others that I'm like, you suck. And like this guy had over 50 leads, three property visits out of that 50. Did not convert anyone. I literally said to him, I said, Oh, I think I do remember his name, but I'm not gonna say it here. I said, Dude, can you please just give me everybody's contact info so I can call them? And he was like, No, sir, I'm not allowed to do that. I'm like, bro, you were fired respectfully. Like, and I literally fired him, hired a different realtor that day. Uh, I will plug him. His name is Oh, it's Jeremy something, best realtor in Kentucky I've ever worked with. If you do a deal in Kentucky, I can give you the best realtor. This guy was out there every day and he lived like two hours away. He bush hogged the property for us, repainted. There was a three-bed uh ranch on this 212-acre hunting property we had bought. He literally repainted the house and cleared out the basement for us. No charge to us, except for if he had to pay for something out of pocket. Like he just asked we reimbursed him materials, like no labor cost, basically. This dude was great. So if you need somebody in Kentucky, um, I forget where he's based, but the dude was a legend. Um I plugged in with a few other folks and he is awesome, especially like big hunting and ranch type properties. He's great at those. But, anyways, long story long there, dude. Yeah, you took these three elements of a funnel and basically just hacked how it is to actually move properties. Can I ask from from the market selection piece? Because I think this is the piece where people we've hit a state of maturity where you've been preaching like sell-through rate for about three years now, to the point where I'd say most investors that have been doing this for six to 18 months understand what that means at some level. How much does that play into effect versus these other two variables versus like you know, the the middle of funnel, if you will, of like good pricing, good copy, good call to action, and then like almost end of funnel slash sales piece, right? Which is um essentially your uh uh your realtor doing the things they need to do.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:05

Yeah, yeah. Um, it's a great question. I mean, to be clear, if you aren't doing anything with market selection, it'll I mean it will literally change your business overnight. Now, for us, that variable hasn't changed. We're selecting markets just like we were last year and the year prior. And so that's why I feel very strongly that this shift with days on market is you know related to the things that I mentioned. But if you're not paying any attention here, uh it's huge upside, right? I think that most land investors, once you get over the hump of understanding direct-to-owner marketing and talking to sellers, look, you can acquire deals, you can acquire them for any marketing channel, you can acquire them in any market, and you can do it profitably. I find that a lot of land investors, once they get going, they have like a liquidity problem. They just don't have enough cash or they've got inventory, they haven't realized any of it, or or they they're buying deals that are the wrong price, but that's a whole other that's a whole other discussion. Um, and yeah, usually there's just no rhyme or reason to their market selection. Um, so if you're at the point where you're like, dude, I have inventory, it's just not moving. That's always the first place I look. Now, I think a lot of folks have been privy to this idea that we coined with sell-through rates, but I'll take it a step further because the sell-through rates don't tell the full story. There are many high sell-through rate markets that I personally would avoid. What I'm looking for is what I call non-obvious high demand markets. So, for example, if you go to the tertiary markets outside of Dallas, those are some good rural rec markets, man. There's demand, those are well-priced properties, good subdivides, good flips, etc. But Dallas acts as like this like bat signal to pull investors to it's like that classic like tertiary to a city, three to five hours away. So I find these markets are just bloodbaths, man. Um, I also find when you are on the outskirts of let's call it a city, now you're also competing with entitlers, new home builders, realtors are even doing direct-to-owner marketing. True, so it's just it's just a lot. I can't say that it's impossible to acquire land there, it's not, it's just a lot noisier. The sellers have a lot more noise, and so the markets that we're working in are the kind of markets where you look at them and you say, I have no idea why anyone would buy land out here. Like, I literally don't understand, there's no explanation.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:18

Some examples.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:19

Oh man, there's a lot right now in Minnesota, parts of Wisconsin where it's like you know, dead of winter and land's just cooking, and you're like, I just can't understand why. You know what I mean? Or parts of New Hampshire, even again, dead of winter. And you're like, I just don't get it, man. Like, what's going on out here? But the math doesn't lie, right? And we're balancing that Goldilocks zone of supply, typically 25, 250 active listings for land for the whole market. Um, most of our deals are you most of our markets are usually right in the middle. That's usually our sweet spot, like 40, 60 active listings. What that allows us to do is we get to become the market maker because most of that inventory is just so god-awfully priced and listed that we come in with the perfect listing, the perfect price, and we get to kind of come command and control the market. Um, and so those are the markets that we're looking for. Now, that often means that I'm sacrificing sell-through rate. I'll take something that's not as hot for that more off-the-beaten path market. Um, to be clear, too, one thing that with our marketing, we don't really do this because we're at such a big scale for volume, but you can find bad, you can find good submarkets and bad macro markets. And so that is just as an FYI. There are Goldilocks zones in counties that are subpar. So if you niche down, you can find sweet spots, honey holes, right? Inside of Leo, we teach four market fracturing techniques. So if I wanted to look at a market and break it down to make offers on the front end, I would either look at countywide pricing, like acreage brands for the whole county. You need something very homogenous, like a county in Oklahoma, to do that, where everything's trading in a very linear fashion. From there, we would either look at zip codes or subdivisions. That's a great way to find those honey holes and so so uh macro markets. And the last is polygons, which is pretty advanced. Usually we're building out polygons based off like topographical features. My favorite model for new land investors that are doing direct mail, though, is the subdivision model that we teach inside of Leah. We've got people that are getting uh one contract per 1100 letters. Then this is data that they've been running for years. It's not like it's a flash in the pan, you know, on average 15k spread per deal, and they're just following the subdivision model that we teach in Leah. These are really high yield marketing um campaigns because I think that you get landowners in these micro markets, zip code, uh subdivision, whatever it may be, that are consistently getting the wrong offer because people are mailing the macro or marketing the macro. And so, like we come in with the right offer because we broke down price for that little pocket and we validated there is demand in that pocket, and it's just it's lights out. I mean, we have campaigns where you get a deal and you send a hundred letters, you know what I mean? Just like crazy number. But here's the last thing I'll say we don't follow that micro approach approach because we're doing volume, but we we have for years prior to this. One of the other things that we're using though as a guiding light for a market selection these days is are we vertically integrated? Because we found at scale finding realtors and title companies is hard. And when you have the right ones, it's a real advantage. So I'll work in a market that's an 85% sell-through rate in the last year, it's not at our 100% rule, but I'm vertically integrated. And if I have proof of concept, for example, I sold a hunting property in the adjacent county, and that was a stronger county, but this county's got a very similar profile. I feel pretty convicted that even if the sell-through rates meh, I'm still gonna do okay. Now that's within reason. If it's 30% in the year, I'm not gonna bother. Um, so we are kind of meshing some of our own data with the land insights sell-through rate data. The mistake I see people make though is they get on this market selection bandwagon and they think, well, highest sell-through rate must be the best. I don't think that's that's actually true. And we're working on a feature in land insights in the market selection platform that's going to give you a really interesting layer of information that has to do with how competitive those markets are. Because what you ultimately want to find is high sell through rate, low competition. That's the that's the sweet spot, in my opinion. So, yeah, man, that's the long and short of it. But look at if you're a brand spanking new in this business, here's what I recommend. If you're doing direct mail, I want you to pull subdivisions and zip codes. They can be great micro markets and bad macro counties. That's fine, or you can stack the odds in your favor. Or if you're doing cold calling, we don't have to worry about pricing that can go out the window. Take the off-the-beat in path counties, we're gonna pull data for the whole county, we're gonna look for at least 100% sell-through rate on a 12-month basis, 25 to 250 active listings. And I want you to look at that market and say, I don't understand why people are buying land here. And that to me is like the light bulb moment.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:09

Dude, there's so much there. And honestly, you and I could talk for like three more hours, you know. I think uh I was lucky enough to come visit you about a year ago out in Bali, and I remember we just sat and talked, it felt like for like three days straight. And I was like, I could keep talking to this guy. Like his heart is freaking so good, and his uh love for business and people is so present in everything. But I want to be respectful of your time here today. And so we'll uh we'll close out with just you know a question and a half here. Um, I guess the the big one just being like final words of wisdom for people um who are struggling in this business right now. You know, you get people full spectrum, some that have been doing this for a while, some that are a little bit newer, some that are uh relatively low on spend. Just final words of wisdom for people that are um, you know, just trying to take care of their families and make a living at the end of the day, a lot of times.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's kind of twofold. One, uh, you got to stop putting the cart before the horse. And I think that a lot of folks have this kind of expectation that this business works in a vacuum, which is if I spend money on marketing, I deserve to get a deal. It's like totally they think it's just a math game, and to some extent it is, but initially it's a skill game. The skills pay the bills. You've got to dedicate at least six months to mastering the skills of this business before you have any expectation of making money. And so what people do is they come in limited budget, they want to throw a Hail Mary, they say, screw skills, I need a deal now. They burn through their whole budget, and at six months they've got nothing to show for, they've got no money, and they say this business doesn't work them out. Where if we reverse that mindset and just said, All I want you to do is focus on education and skill acquisitions, frick a deal. Like forget the deal for a little bit, dude. That's how you build a solid foundation to work off of. And I I mentioned something at the Colorado event uh in the summer last year, which is like, I think we're in the skill era, and I still very much feel that way, and I think that's going to continue to be true. The winners just have more skill than you in all departments, and people have just kind of sidestepped that. And I think partially the educators are to blame, they're not teaching skills, they're teaching the theory of land, and they sell a dream that makes it feel so easy. So marketing make money, just not true anymore. Um, the next thing is I have this kind of principle I call the three-year rule. Maybe you've seen this in your own life. Oh, good. Yes, I know your first deal was a monster, though. So maybe I'm not really fair.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:38

But I didn't get the compound effects of it till much later. So there's there's a caveat there.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:42

Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. I just seen this with Leah members. We've had 650 people, uh, some odd number beyond that in the last couple of years go through it. I just see this so consistently. And we've started to hit obviously our kind of 10-year to three-year uh members. We've started to see the fruits of this. Um, dude, three years, like that is the line in the sand where more times than not, you end up way further than you ever expected. So for me, it's like just clicks, man, something about it. Yeah, dude. And I see it with my friends too that are business owners. And so it's like, then the mindset's not how do I get rich now? It's like, how do I just weather the storm to make it to the three-year mark? And it's like, dude, my first year I made like $90,000 on paper in this business. Did I have $90,000 in the bank? Heck no. And so it's and like most people in Leah, if they hit those numbers, they're underwhelmed, they're frustrated. Screw that, dude. It's staying power. Just make it to the three-year mark and watch what happens. Like year one, you're never where you want to be. Year two, okay, I'm not where I want to be, but I kind of feel like I know what I'm doing. Then year three, it just compounds and it's it's just game over. Totally. But dude, I don't I don't get what it is, man. People aren't willing to pay that price. And it's like everything has a mother freaking price. If you want the fruits of the labor, you want the rewards, fuck it. Sorry, pay up, and that you're gonna have to pay up with your time and some hardship, you know? Yeah, and so it's like stop kidding yourself. This isn't a get rich quick scheme. This isn't an overnight success game. Pay the mother freaking price and show up every day. That's it, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:14

I freaking love it, dude. I love it so much. Again, we could talk for so long. I think there's so much wisdom to pull out of you, Sumner. Um, yeah, as we close this out, I will say quick plug for land insights. We should have a link if you're watching this on YouTube. If not, reach out to the team, we'll send it over. Um, I think they they hooked us up with a free deal for anybody that's associated with either this podcast episode or Land Closers Academy, where you get $250 in free credits and I think a 14-day free trial, if I remember correctly. So you can check out so many of the features that Sumner's been been checking out. The reality is, I think any land investor that's making a meaningful amount of money is plugged into land insights right now. So once that old expression, man, success draws clues. I would just highly encourage you guys to at least check it out, take a call with the team. You're gonna meet some great people, learn a lot of stuff. You'll learn very quickly um how to use the tool to actually serve your business.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:02

Um, Sumner, if if I'll plug in on that real too, real quick real quick too. And yeah, Ajay's got uh a deal that I don't think we've really offered anywhere else. So definitely go through his link, get the deal, literally $250 in credit so you can use for data, skip tracing, etc. Um, but what we'll also do, obviously, you might not be ready to sign up. That's fine. Get on a call with our team, and what we'll do is we'll actually work with you to build out your next campaign. So we'll kind of go cradle to grave with what we talked about. By the end of it, not only will you have an understanding of how the tool works, but we'll also give you the data for your next campaign, right? We're happy to skip trace it for you, we'll lead score it for you, we'll pick the market with you. And so I think it's just like an even if you're curious, just get on that call, you're gonna walk away with something that was frankly worth your time, no matter what.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:47

That's electric, man. The reality is, too, if you've got fast marketing, like cold calling, test text messaging, and you're getting a 21.7 day uh cash conversion cycle, guys. Come on, less than three days, you get an ROI. You put that. I'm not I never encourage people to put stuff on a credit card because it's like risky, but I'm like, oh my gosh, man, this would be the easiest thing ever if I was just getting started. If people are interested in working with you, oh sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:14

I was gonna say we had a guy a couple months ago, he went on the call, we built out his campaign, he made 40 grand calling that list like a couple weeks later.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:22

So incredible that could be you, dude. Again, yeah, I think we're gonna have to try a little experiment between our camps, see uh, see what we can drum up, man. I think that would be electric. But if folks are interested in working with you, Sumner, whether they've got uh deals they want to partner on, get plugged into Leah, um, any of that kind of stuff, what's the best way to like connect with you, reach out to you? Who on your team can we send them to?

SPEAKER_01 1:43:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I I have this kind of like hairy, audacious goal this year to uh work with a thousand land investors and and change a thousand lives through our little Leah model. And so our previous coaching program uh was just not the vehicle to do that. It was a you know five-figure program, it wasn't for uh everyone that was just getting started. And so I wanted to build something that had like more potential surface area, wanted to touch more people in a not weird way. Um, and so we released Lia 2.0 this year in uh January 31st. Now it's just a simple monthly subscription three by about 300 bucks per month. Uh, no commitments, come when you want, leave when you want. And it's the best program I've ever built. And I think that the fulfillment is almost on par with uh our previous Lia program. Now, of course, we had to pull back some of the quantity of coaching calls. We used to run 15 calls a month. Naturally, we've pulled some of that back to make it where we can offer something that's uh inexpensive, frankly, for beginners. But every single month, I just keep on saying, okay, we're not close to that thousand-person goal. What do I have to do to make this happen? So, what we just put into place in the last 30 days, one is a seven-day free trial. You can come get in there, get on a coaching call with me, work with me, get put your deals in there, get questions answered, go through the course, no payment up front. I want you to try before you buy and just see if it's the right fit for you. The other thing that I just put into place too is when you join, even if you're on a free trial, our team will take you through a one-on-one coaching call. We'll build out the next 12 months in your business, we'll show you how to extract value from Leah. Even if you don't end up staying, we'll still run that one-on-one coaching call with you because I'm so confident when you see the level of care that we put into this stuff, I believe it'll be a no-brainer for you. Um, so that's our demographic. Look at if you're not doing six figures in your land business yet, I think it's the best place to start. And I would stand behind that. Now, you don't have to be a direct male person. We'll you can go the cold call route. We've got a fork in the road in the education you can go down uh either path. So we'll put the link for that somewhere as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:49

Yeah, happily, man. And I don't need any kind of affiliate link for Leah, and I will forever plug people to it. I need you to make sure you have enough margin to keep fulfilling on it.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:57

All right, so yeah, I will say it's a horrible business right now. The economics do not make sense, but I'm playing the long game. You know, here's here's the truth. Like for me, coaching is a fulfillment passion thing, and then a business second. And so I'm having a lot of fun in there. And I just think if if you do enough good work in the world, it will catch up to you. I don't know what that looks like, but I'm just pouring my heart into this, and I know at some point maybe the business will make sense. But right now, take advantage while it doesn't. It's a great deal for you.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:27

So true, so true. Sumner, you were such a wealth of knowledge, brother. I can't say enough how grateful I am that like we're friends, we get to do life together, that we get to sit down and have honest conversations like this, even if we don't chat for six months at a time, sometimes. Uh, it really, really is just an honor to get to do life with you as we've both grown in our careers in this small but ever-growing niche, man. I uh can't say enough kind words about you. I appreciate your time. Um, yeah, man. Thanks for being a guest here on the closers podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:58

Thank you, brother. I love you, Ajay. You're the man. If anyone needs help with sales acquisitions, I would stand behind the fact that there is no better person than the man on the other side of this screen. So now it's my time to plug you and promote you. We've had so many Leah members go through your guys' program and go from four deals a month to eight deals a month to 10 deals a month. Like, I really think it's actually kind of a beautiful sequence where it's like start in Lia, get to a couple of deals a month, and then ignite your acquisitions with uh everything you guys are doing on the sales training side. So that's my promotion for you, man. And I came to say that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, dude, you want a good testimonial. My acquisition team is on those calls. Like we get better by going to your education. So if you want a freaking testimonial, I mean, there it is, right? We still go to you to learn how to improve our process. So this is the guy for you. I love you. Thank you, man. I appreciate it, brother.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:52

Thank you so much, Sumner. Appreciate you too, brother. Love you, dude.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:55

Love you.