Seth: Hey everybody, how's it going? This is Seth Williams. You're listening to the REtipster Podcast. This is episode 290. Today I'm talking with Abi Asija. So Abi is the co-founder of Gokce Capital, a land business that he and his wife Erika started back in 2018 while they were living in a small apartment in New York City. Since then, they've completed nearly 800 land deals and built the company into a seven-figure business. But what makes Abi especially interesting is that he spends a lot of time thinking about the deeper mechanics of business. Things like customer lifetime value, goodwill, speed, proof, offers, and what actually allows a company to grow over the long haul. Abi is also the founder of Honest Wealth Builders, where he sits down with other business owners, digs into what they're doing, and tries to identify the one constraint that is holding back their growth. I also got to spend some time with Abi and Erika last year when they joined us for the REtipster Inner Circle trip in the Grand Tetons. And I've been looking forward to having this conversation ever since.

Seth: We're going to talk about how Abi came to the U.S., how he and Erika discovered the land business, how they made the transition out of their corporate jobs, and what they've learned from doing hundreds of deals, and why he believes the customer, not the property, may be the most valuable asset in the land business. So Abi, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Abi: Thanks for having me, Seth. I'm doing great. Very excited.

Seth: Great to have you here. So where did you grow up exactly, and what brought you to the U.S.?

Abi: So I grew up in India, came to the U.S. for my master's.

Seth: Nice. What year was that? How long ago was that?

Abi: That was 2007. It's been a while.

Seth: Gotcha. And did you have any expectations for what your life and career were going to look like when you showed up here? And how did your experience line up with the expectations exactly?

Abi: So my expectations were mostly out of the show Friends.

Seth: Nice.

Abi: Pretty accurate. And that's the reason why I picked a college right in Manhattan. I want to experience just like Ross, Rachel, and Joey experience New York City. So that was my sole reasoning why I picked Manhattan as my choice.

Seth: So in India, do you get like all the US TV shows and stuff? Or is it just like the huge hits like Friends?

Abi: Yeah, mostly the hits. Back in the day, I'm sure things have changed now. But back in the day, it was mostly the mega hits, Friends, and Everybody Loves Raymond and the big ones.

Seth: So you still have family in India?

Abi: Yeah. Well, my parents moved to the U.S. as well. My brother moved to the U.S. So pretty much everyone is in the U.S., at least a close family.

Seth: Is it like a common dream or aspiration for people in India to move to the US? Or was that just your dream?

Abi: A lot of people want to move abroad, obviously, because we watch all the movies and stuff like Hollywood, right? And it's like an aspirational thing, you make more money, like your money goes further, right? Less corruption.

Seth: Yeah, I know, as an American born and raised here, I have often heard this idea, among Americans that like everybody in the world wants to come here. Like this is the greatest country in the world. So I'm always curious from people who didn't actually grow up here. Like, is that actually the perception or are we just kind of patting ourselves on the back?

Abi: That was the perception back in the day. Just imagine if you watched all the shows that were in like Spanish, right? And I'm sure when you were like, I want to visit like Mexico because all my shows that I watch on the TV are in Spanish. Well, learn the language, learn their culture and whatnot, right? So exactly that's what my perception was.

Seth: Yeah, it is interesting. I don't think I've ever been to New Mexico per se. I've owned properties there, but I've never been there. But when I think of it, my brain goes to the show Breaking Bad. Like that is New Mexico. That's how it is there. Maybe it's accurate, maybe not. But like to your point, that's all I know.

Abi: Yeah, I know. So we buy a bunch of properties in New Mexico and Erika does a bunch of shorts. And shorts, short videos goes pretty much to general audience, even though they don't want to buy land. Right. It's just YouTube will publish it. So we get a lot of Breaking Bad type comments on our New Mexico properties.

Seth: Nice. Makes sense. So you went to New York City. What exactly were you doing there? What was your job? How did you eventually discover the land business?

Abi: Right. So I did my master's, graduated, and then got a job in the financial industry. So I was doing really well, getting promotions, getting promoted, climbing the corporate ladder. But then I was dealing with some health issues, migraine issues, and I had to work from home for like a month. And I really got scared because I was like, if I can't go to work and I get fired, and my livelihood depends on me being at the office, right? So that was kind of like the pivot in my career. And I was like, okay, I need to find a backup career where I actually don't have to go to the work. So I ran into your blog. Thank you, Seth.

Seth: Oh, cool.

Abi: Back in 2018. And so actually, before then, we were looking at multiple strategies in real estate. So we're like, can we flip houses? Can we flip apartments? Can we do commercial real estate? And all of those strategies required going in debt. And I was like a Dave Ramsey fan. And I was like, no debt. Never get debt. Never be in debt. Debt is bad. So I was a little bit hesitant in doing house flips. And 2018, I ran into your blog and you were like, well, you could buy land for a thousand bucks and flip it for 3K. I was like, oh, I can afford a thousand dollar piece of property. So that's where I got started. So I bought your course. I sent a bunch of letters. So first couple of mailers completely flopped. I got some callbacks, but no one, probably because I was really bad at sales back then. But yeah, so it didn't happen. Nothing happened. But I was like, it's still so many other people are making it work. So we tried blind offers. That worked. So we acquired a bunch of properties and we listed, we didn't have a website.

Abi: So we listed it on eBay and people bought it in a couple of months. We sold it on terms and I'm like, okay, so this method works. And then I was like, all right, so how do I convince Erika to help me out? Because clearly I suck at sales. I need someone who can actually talk on the phone. So finally I was able to convince Erika after badgering her over and over every weekend. And then eventually the plan became... As soon as we replace, so I was making more money because I was in finance. Erika was working for the city of New York. So the plan was as soon as we replace our monthly terms income in monthly revenue, and it becomes greater than or equal to what Erika was bringing home, Erika will quit her job. And then when it replaces mine, then I will quit my job. So that was the plan. And that's, we executed it. That's how we executed it. So first Erika quit and then I quit.

Seth: Yeah. In hindsight, do you think that was the correct model to follow? Like, is that good logic? Like, yeah, once the terms income replaces this income, Erika can quit and so on. Or should you have quit earlier, or should you have waited longer?

Abi: It's hard to tell, but I think the logic that we came up with was the soundest logic. I could convince myself that this makes sense on paper because it's like a very safe way. Only if we could go back in time could we see if I quit earlier, maybe our revenue would be higher or not. But at least, that was like the safest thing I could think of. And that's how we executed it. I'm also like very risk averse. So, it all worked out.

Seth: So how many years or how many months were you working the land business on the side before Erika quit her job?

Abi: Maybe a couple years in, two years in, Erika quit. And then I quit like two years back. So I, well, so I replaced my salary, but then I got greedy because I was like, okay, so I'm getting two salaries. So maybe I can hold off a little bit longer. And then I think that probably was a mistake because if I paid attention or if I paid more attention to the land business, we would have grown it further.

Seth: Yeah, it's a good thing to think about. I know this is a common dilemma. I certainly had it, and I know pretty much everybody who quits their job, there's some mental gymnastics they have to go through to figure out like, when is it okay? When is it safe enough? And some people are less risk averse. I'm more like you, where I kind of worry about stuff. Like, I need to know this is going to be okay. I'm not just going to willy-nilly do this. So when you quit your job was it still mostly terms income at that point or had you diversified into other stuff like cash flips or bigger deals or anything?

Abi: We've always done cash flips. It's always been part of the strategy. From a business perspective, now that I understand more of the business, I have realized that without terms income, it's really hard to sustain the land business. You could theoretically run it, but a lot of the successful land operators, they always have some sort of a side income. Maybe they're selling courses or selling mentorships or selling another line of business, that's bringing in predictable income, or maybe they have a wife or a spouse who's bringing in income, right? It's very hard to find a land operator who is just doing land and also not selling on terms.

Seth: What does the pie chart look like? Like maybe back then and even today, what percentage of your stuff ends up going terms versus just a cash sale?

Abi: Historically, it's been 80-20. So 80% would sell on terms, 20% would sell on cash. And it's exactly the same right now. 2023, 2024 were exceptions. When land was selling really fast and we were selling a lot more on cash because it was just like selling so quickly. But yeah, now I feel like the market has reverted to how it was back in the day when we first started.

Seth: Yeah. So one of the dilemmas with selling on owner financing, and there's more than one dilemma, but one of them is you don't really get all your profit up front. You got to wait a while. Yes. And things can happen. Maybe they'll stop paying. Maybe, who knows? And with having to wait for your profit to come in, there's basically this cash crunch at some point because you need money to buy the next property. So how do you deal with that? Like, do you use funders or something or where does this cash come from?

Abi: Yeah, that's like one of the biggest constraints in the model that we use, right? We run out of cash. So two ways to solve it, right? One, obviously, you can use debt or you can use partners. The other way is something that we recently discovered, which is really exciting, but also extremely hard to execute, extremely, extremely hard to execute. So that's it's moving cash forward, right? Pulling cash forward, right? Alex Hormozi talks about it. So how do we pull cash forward so we don't have to rely on debt or investors, right? For example, one of the things that we've been doing is like incentivizing our borrowers to pay off the loan early. So one of the things we've been doing is like offering cash back. So we say, well, you have this loan. It's a four year loan. But if you pay it back within six months, we'll give you a 5% cash back. If you pay it back within a year, we'll give you 2.5% cash back. So that's been working. Obviously, not everyone takes it. Maybe like 10% of the people will take it, but it works.

Abi: The other thing we have been doing to pull cash forward is using the interest rate as a lever. So, for example, we will say, well, if you put a higher down payment, then we can reduce the interest rate on the loan. And a lot of people will be, like, OK, yeah, if it helps, yeah, why not? So essentially, the way is to you want to position the sales call as like that you're going to be like their goal is to become a landowner. So if you position the sales call as you're going to become a landowner sooner. Right. I think that kind of like helps us make a good case because a lot of times we're we'll get calls and we're selling the same properties everyone else is right in same Florida, New Mexico, California. And they'll be like, well, so you have this property in Valencia County, New Mexico, and we gave them the terms of 20% down and $500 per month. But then they'll be like, well, your competitor is offering $1 down or $100 down and $199 per month. And our argument would be like, sure, you can take that. But I thought your goal was to become a landowner.

Abi: Like with $1 down and $199 per month, it's going to take you 10 years to become a landowner, right? So those are the sort of conversations we're having, quote-unquote, objection handling we're doing on the sales calls that's helping us move the needle. So to go back to your question... Yes, we can take debt. We can partner with funders. But I feel like if we can solve this problem without using external capital and external funders, that makes it so much easier because then we are using our customers' own ability to pay back faster to solve the cash conversion cycle.

Seth: Do you guys ever sell off your notes early?

Abi: So we on purpose decided to not do that. And the reason for that is because cost to acquire a customer has continuously gone up, right? Like every year, I was on another podcast. We were joking about the only person or only entity who has won year over year in the land model has been CoStar, right? The company that owns Land.com because every year, like they, I remember 2018, they used to have standard listing and premium listing. Standard was whatever, 20 bucks per month. Premium was like 50 dollars per month. Then they came up with Signature, which was like a tier above, because everyone wanted Premium. And then Land.com is like, how do we make more money? So they came up with the Signature plan, so everyone upgraded to Signature. Then they came up with the Gold plan, so everyone upgraded to Gold. Then they came up with Platinum, then they came up with Diamond. Who knows what they're going to come up with next? And so they started by charging $40 a month for a premium listing. And now they charge $800 per month for diamond. They're just absolutely crushing it.

Abi: They're like minting money, right? So cost to acquire a customer on the sell side always keeps on going up. Every year it goes up. Like Facebook ads get more expensive. Google ads gets more expensive, right? So the only thing you can control is LTV, lifetime value of a customer, right? Because CAC and LTV are the only two things that move the needle. It tells you how profitable you are, right? In terms of the diff, how much it costs. If you're acquiring a customer for $500 and then you're selling the property for the lifetime gross profit of your property is five grand, right? You take $4,500, right? That's the diff that you're making. So if you cannot control the CAC, the only thing you can control is LTV. So how do we increase the lifetime value of our customer? That's the only problem that if you can solve at least in our business model, you will come out ahead. So the way we are trying to increase our lifetime value is how do we make the same customer buy multiple properties?

Seth: And just to clarify, when you say LTV, you're saying lifetime value, not loan to value, which is a different...

Abi: Yeah, lifetime value.

Seth: So it sounds like your strategy is more sort of trying to squeeze more money out of people rather than just getting your money back as quickly as possible. And that could be in the form of selling another property to the same person or getting them to, I guess it's a different thing, getting to pay off their loan early for a discount on their loan balance?

Abi: Right. So those are two different concepts, right? So cash conversion cycle, when we try to move cash forward, that helps us avoid debt, right? So that's a different angle. The LTV angle is how do we make our customers more valuable so they can stay with us longer? Like, for example, if we provide an excellent customer service to our loan borrowers or people taking loan right from us. We provide excellent customer service. So for example, how do we do that? For example, we'll do monthly check-ins. That's customer success. We'll proactively call them, ask them how things are going. They need help. They need anything with maybe they were clearing the land or minor improvements that we allow during the loan term. Do they need any more information? Do they need help reaching the right person at the county? That kind of stuff. So we proactively reach out, make sure they're doing well. And that also helps us from them defaulting.

Abi: Because if you're always in contact with your borrowers, they tend to respond well and they know you're respecting them as opposed to someone like a faceless company and they never talk to the borrowers. Back in the day, in 2018, the way we used to run companies, our company was to talk to them when they signed the contract. And the next time we talk to them is when it's time to record the deed, like four years later. So two conversations over the four-year period. Now we talk to them like every single month. Like we literally have like our CRM that reminds us, all right, you got to call this person. And we call them. Unless, obviously sometimes people like stop calling me every month and then we remove them from the monthly cadence. But some people just love chatting. A lot of people are retired. They love chatting. So increasing the LTV by making sure we take care of our customers. So at the end of the loan, right? Like literally we had this situation where the person just paid off their whole thing. And they're like, okay, do you have anything else?

Abi: I want to start another loan, right? And the fact that we took care of them makes them want to buy it from us again.

Seth: Super interesting. So I don't know anybody who does quite what you're talking about, where they're like on a monthly basis talking to all their borrowers. Before we get into that, though, I got some questions on that. But just to make sure I'm understanding. So you talked about these two concepts of pulling cash forward, but then also increasing the lifetime value of each customer. But to pull the cash forward, an example of that might be offering a cash back 5% bonus for somebody paying off early. Isn't that diametrically opposed to the idea of increasing lifetime value? You're trying to do one thing that fights against what the other thing is doing. Or am I misunderstanding that?

Abi: No, because if we are able to pull cash forward, we get to sell them the second property sooner.

Seth: So that's assuming that every time you pull cash forward, that will always result in them buying another property.

Abi: No, that's assuming that in both scenarios A and B, if they're likely to buy the second property, then we're just pulling that cash forward.

Seth: But you're also giving them that 5% discount, right? So if you give them the discount and they don't buy another one, then you've sort of shot yourself in the foot, right? Depending on how you look at it.

Abi: Oh, I see what you're saying. So you're saying basically we're losing 5% if they pull cash forward. Well, so that 5%, we look at it as like the cost of, like we would have to pay a lot more than 5% if we were to go out to the market and borrow money.

Seth: Moving forward, this concept of you calling people every month, is this like you calling them? Or you'd have like a whole staff of people that just their whole job is just to stay on top of these existing borrowers? And like, what do you talk about? Like, what is the purpose of this call exactly? Exactly. How do you even start the conversation when they didn't really ask you to?

Abi: Right. So, we make them aware in the orientation call. We make them aware that we do monthly check-ins. So one of the monthly check-ins, one of the yearly, quote-unquote, yearly check-ins is like on their birthdays. We always call them to wish them happy birthday. So that's one call. So that month, we're not going to do an extra call. The other call is on their six-month anniversary because we're, or actually five months, because we're reminding them of the cashback deadline that's coming up. So fourth month, fifth month are essentially reminders of the cashback coming on sixth month. So the six month will also be like, well, it's almost here. End of the month. Would you like to pay cashback? And it's the same thing for the 12 month, right? So if they don't take the six month offer, then month 9, 10, 11 would be reminders for month 12, the cashback event. Essentially, we need a reason to call them.

Abi: So in the onboarding session, we will remind them that these are the six or we'll let them know that these are the six months and 12 month timelines or milestones that we will be touching based on. And obviously when we call them, it's not just a reminder about the six month and 12 month. It's also about like how things are going and just like small talk, making sure. Because a lot of times what happens is people will be like, well, actually, I saw this, you sent that weekly mailer about this property in Pennsylvania. Like I wanted to know if like how far it is from the nearest electricity pole or something like they will like generating curiosity. Like if they have, if curious about one of the recent emails or any property, we start the conversation. So maybe it leads them to buy another property as well. So essentially the principle is every time you talk to a customer, it's a potential, it's a potentially revenue generating conversation because they might buy from you.

Seth: And when did you guys start doing this? Like, have you been doing this for like the past year or five years? Or when did you figure out that this was what you should be doing?

Abi: I think it's been two years now. It's a customer success thing. I listened to one of the podcasts where the person was trying to make a case of why customer success is revenue generating. It's a revenue generating activity. It's like the polar opposite of what traditionally we have been taught in real estate. People are like, well, you never want to talk to your customers. You want to offshore it. Literally, we went to the live event, the last one, and there were people who were like, well, I don't want to ever talk to any customers. So they hired a loan servicing company to deal with their loan provider, the borrowers, and talk to them. They don't want to deal with customer service because it's painful because it's a lot of work. But then as soon as it flipped in my head that it's actually a revenue generating activity, that's when I was like, oh, I see. I see why it's so important. I see why Zappos goes above and beyond and tries to help people. Because it's not about, yeah, it's costly in terms of manpower, but then people love that.

Abi: And people, especially in the age of AI, and it makes them want to do more business with you. So once it flipped in my head, I was like, oh, now we're going all in. So we hired three extra people, by the way. So right now we have a staff of 20 people. So there are three extra people that are hired just to, because at a given time, we would have anywhere from like 150 to 200 active loans. So that's a lot of loans that we're calling monthly. So that was one of the reasons. And the second reason was speed to lead, right? Calling, when we get a brand new lead, right now our internal mandate is we have to respond within 60 seconds. And for us to do that, it's very taxing in terms of manpower, right? You need people, like one person needs to be available at all times. But what if you get three leads at the same time? Now that person can't take all of them. So the next person has to take it, right? So it's like a whole complicated system in the CRM we have set up that, like one person always needs to be available to take the, respond to the lead within 60 seconds.

Seth: It's a really important thing you're pointing out, though. And I feel like much of the business world still does not understand this at all, which I'm kind of mystified by because it's a pretty basic concept. But this idea of like how important customer service is, like it's not just about getting a customer. It's about keeping a customer. This is something that Mike Baucom and I have become acutely aware of in running Stride CRM. Priority one is getting new people, but like almost as important, possibly just as important is keeping people. Because if you're not making them happy, like they can leave whenever they want. And I think that's kind of a 101 concept that many people still don't grasp. But this 202 concept is what you're talking about, where it's like, you don't just keep them like you can actually generate more revenue from the same people. They've already proven that they're ready to buy because they've bought from you already. So it's like, how much easier is it to get it from them rather than finding somebody off the street from scratch, right?

Abi: Yeah. So there's this whole concept. So before I get into it, so just to clarify, right, customer service versus customer success, right? It's extremely important for pretty much every business owner to understand, right? I think we discussed this when you were on my show. So customer service is passive. Like someone has a problem, they reach out and you help them out. That's customer service. But customer success is proactive. You are proactively reaching out, right? So most people confuse between the two and it's the customer success that's revenue generating, not customer service. Customer service is bare basic that you should be doing anyway.

Seth: Yeah. Right.

Abi: But the second point is increasing the lifetime value using customer success. So this is like, so these are the four offers. I think it's one of the $100 million books series. There are four types of offers. Pretty much every big business uses. So we have an attraction offer, upsell offer, downsell offer, and continuity offers. And these are the four types of offers that helps you increase the lifetime value. A good example would be, this is one of the classic examples of renting a car. So say you're flying to Vegas. You see this ad, car rental for nine dollars per day. You're like, oh, that's so cheap, I'm gonna get this one. Budget, nine dollars per day. You get like whatever car, and then you get to the counter and they'll be like, Mr. Williams, I see you have a family of four. You booked the small car. I'm sure you would want an SUV. Would you like to upgrade to an SUV? It's only like $39 per day. I'm like, yeah, sure. Why not? Right. And then the upsells start. Oh, would you like $1 million liability insurance? Would you like this? Would you like a baby seat for your baby?

Abi: Would you like GPS? Would you like to prepay for gas? Right. Upsell, upsell, upsell, upsell, upsell. And then if you say no to an upsell, you're like, no, no, I don't need a million dollar liability insurance. And be like, well, sir, you should at least get the basic for like 250K. Right. So downsell offer. Right. So we looked at the attraction offer, the $9 one. We looked at the upsell or like seven, eight, nine upsell offers. And then the downsell offer, like if you say yes and say no to something, they make a downsell offer. And then at the end of the thing, they'll be like, well, Mr. Williams, you had a good experience. You should subscribe. You should get the budget membership because next time you can skip the counter, go straight to the car. So those are the four offers. When I thought about it, I was like, wait a second, I should be using all four of those offers, four of those four types of offers in my land business. So that's what we implemented.

Abi: So attraction offer, the way we implemented it was like doing free land giveaways, doing $1 down for our very cheap properties, because then they're attracting people who otherwise won't be interested in your property, right? So that's attraction offer. Upsell offers. So this is another thing we've been doing to increase the LTV. So people, a lot of times people are late on their loans or they will be like, oh yeah, can I, paid my whatever? I lost my job or whatever. Can I pay skip this month payment? Right. So all these things people request a lot of times, like people were like beneficiary, like, oh, can I put a beneficiary on my contract? And we're like, wait a second, we're doing all these customizations, but we're not charging for any of those. Why don't we create like a plan for them? If you would like a premium, like a concierge service on your loan, for an extra $29 per month we can add in, like, you're allowed to be late a couple of days every month, that kind of thing.

Abi: So we built the whole stack of upsell offers, and every time we have an onboarding call when they sign up for the loan, we'll be like, well, would you like to upgrade to this plan? Would you like to upgrade to this plan? And some people buy it. So we were supposed to get $299 per month and now we're getting $399 or $499 because they bought the upgrades.

Seth: Does it ever shoot you in the foot having these calls? For example, say you call somebody and they're like, you know what, I actually don't really want this property. I want to give it back to you. Or like, do people get annoyed with you? Or basically you would have been better off not calling them. Like, does that ever happen? Or is it so, if it does, is it so few and far between like, it's okay?

Abi: The upsells we do in the onboarding call, not on the customer success calls.

Seth: Oh, okay.

Abi: So customer success calls, we never lead with an offer. We always lead with how things are going. And just as a reminder for something they already said yes to. So for example, if someone says upfront, yeah, I'm not, there is no way I'm going to pay this property off sooner. And yeah, you don't have to call me. Obviously, we're going to take them off the list. So this is permission-based marketing, right? Seth Godin talks about it, right? Permission-based. So we get their permission for monthly check-ins and they say yes. If they say no, we remove them.

Seth: If the rest of these calls beyond the onboarding call are not to upsell on them on anything, why do them? Just for kicks and grins? Or like what benefit is there to you to continually doing this if you're not ever going to use that opportunity to try to upsell them on something?

Abi: Let me clarify. I'm not saying it's not to upsell. I'm saying we never lead with an offer. So we would upsell if they show interest. Like, for example, if they say, oh, by the way, I looked at your recent email, the weekly deal of the week email that you sent about this Pennsylvania property, then we're like, oh, okay. Would you like me to send more information? Would you like me to set up a call with Erika? Would you like me to do X, Y, Z, right? So it's an opportunity for us to convert a person, but it's not, the angle is not to like, oh, we're making this call so that we can make offers. We're making these calls because, essentially, the principle is conversions happen over conversations, right? And we want to, our goal is to try to start as many conversations with our customers as possible. Because the easiest thing to sell is to a customer who has already bought from you. Like, because if you go out to the market, it's really hard for us to convince someone, like they have to know us, like us, and trust us before they will buy from us.

Abi: But if someone has already bought from us, it's extremely easy for us to sell them the second property or an upgrade on existing service because they already know, like, and trust us.

Seth: But you said you're not going to lead with those questions unless they bring it up, right?

Abi: Right. We're not going to lead with an offer.

Seth: Do you have like leading questions that get them to realize, oh, there's more, and then they ask, and then you reply? Like, without some kind of background intent of doing that, it seems like a lot of just ongoing calls without pushing them in that direction. You know what I mean?

Abi: Yeah. We have questions as in like, well, are you in the market to buy? Are you looking to buy land somewhere else? Like, of course we have those. But once again, it's it cannot feel like a sales call because if it feels like a sales call, they will just say, please don't call me again. And we don't want that. It's very icky, right? Like sales is generally looked at as icky. How do you determine whether a sales call was successful or not. One way to look at it would be, well, if the person bought, then it was successful, right? But that's like the old school frame where the call was successful or not. Whereas the way I look at it, or I've been like trained to look at it is, did I help them make a decision? Like if I'm having a sales call, and so there are only three possibilities. The answer could be yes, the answer could be maybe or the answer could be no, right? So my goal in the sales call is not necessarily to get them to say yes. My goal is to help them make a decision that leads to either a yes or a no. It's the maybe that's a failed call for me, right?

Abi: Because if that's your frame in a sales conversation, then you can genuinely feel good about the call because your intention is that I'm just making sure that the problem they're trying to solve, can this property help them solve this problem? So we either lead them to a yes. And if it cannot solve that problem, we lead them to a no. But at the end of the sales call, the way I'm measuring whether it was successful or not, whether we led to a yes or a no answer. Because if it ended the call with maybe, then I sucked. I did a really bad job in that sales conversation. Because my whole sales is education. My whole job is to educate them into making a yes or a no decision.

Seth: So if you hired me to be one of your callers, to call these people and do these monthly or whatever they are, the check-ins, and if the decision that the borrower made was always no, like they said no every single time to everybody I ever called, would you consider me a successful employee or would you fire me eventually?

Abi: Very good question, Seth. It seems odd that everyone is saying no to you, so I would definitely listen to the call to see.

Seth: Yeah.

Abi: Why are they saying no?

Seth: That's part of my point. The fact that them all saying no is a problem at all tells me that it's not really about making a decision one way or the other. It's about getting yes decisions at some point, right? Otherwise, no would be totally fine because it's a decision, right?

Abi: Seth, in an ideal world, if everyone is saying no to you, and if it's genuinely, it's possible, just luck of the draw that the 20 calls you made, all of them led to a no, and I listened to all of them, and I was like, okay, that makes sense. You did what you did. And as a salesperson, that's the decision you led them to based on your experience and knowledge. And I think I wouldn't consider it as a failure.

Seth: How many no's would it take to be a failure?

Abi: But I would trust but verify. I would also listen to the calls to make sure you're not like sabotaging me because you're like a Trojan horse from another company.

Seth: The point I'm getting at, though, is like it is actually a problem at some point if they only ever say no, right? Like the goal is to get them to a yes at some point, right?

Abi: From a textbook definition, I would disagree. Yeah, because the goal, because the, and the reason for that is because if you start thinking like, oh, I'm trying to nudge them to a yes, then it defeats the purpose of us helping them, right? We really want to just help them make a decision and the right decision. Like obviously if it's a good fit for them and then you lead them to a no, clearly then you're not a good salesperson.

Seth: If this happened, if you're three people or however many people are doing these calls for you, if it started turning into a trend where everybody's always saying no all the time, like, would you keep paying for those people? Or would you eventually be like, okay, this isn't worth the expense on our business. We're going to cut this position.

Abi: At this point, I'm 100% convicted that customer success is revenue generating because based on the calls we have done so far and based on the feedback that we have received, we are going to continue doing it. Until the end of time, irrespective of what someone says or what results come in, because we have already established in the last couple of years that it is like, literally, we have people who have like, we have endless testimonials at this point, right? And a common theme among those testimonials is like, they just love the fact that we're always available, always reachable. And we will continuously check in with them, right? So people love it. And I'm sure like, especially in the age of AI, like where our competition is taking the complete opposite route. They're like, how do we get rid of their assistants, virtual assistants and executive assistants and have AI do these calls? So we're taking the complete opposite stance and we're seeing the results. So I'm 100% convicted that this works.

Seth: So what I'm hearing from you is that a side benefit, if you just forget about whatever extra money you might make, a side benefit is the testimonials, just the overall good vibes and experience that people have in that alone is worth it. It's almost kind of like a company value. The customer experience matters. Even if we're not making money, we'll pay extra money for these people just to give these people a good experience with us. Right?

Abi: Yeah. At this point, we have made all the extra money to justify whatever expense that is. I also feel like it's just, you just feel good about running a company like that. It's just a good feeling when everyone is happy, like your customers are saying good things. And even if you don't make a ton of extra money, it's just a feel good because it's such a rote business, right? We're repeating the same processes over and over again, the same properties, the same flips. And if you're not getting good feedback, right, it's just like creating content. You can produce excellent content and no one comments on you. No one likes your videos. No one does anything, right? At some point, you'll be like, all right, what's the point? Even if they're bringing in ad revenue, right? But if people like it, people comment on it, people say, oh, this is great. Just like I'm sure people come to your show, just like I did and say, Seth, you changed my life. Thanks for writing those blogs in 2018, right? I'm sure it feels good and you would continue to do that. But take that feedback away.

Abi: And then you're like, what's the point?

Seth: Yeah, I can totally see that. But do your employees who do this, do they get some kind of bonus or compensation when they do get an existing buyer to say yes again?

Abi: So we do performance bonuses. We don't do per sale bonus because it's really hard to track because it could be like a lot of our sales are like it's never a one call close. It's usually like a seven call close, right? Because just the nature of the business itself, like, people have to, oh, I'm going to check it out. Give me a weekend. And then the next rep calls them and say, oh, did you check it out based on the notes in the ticket from the CRM, right? So it's never a one call, one person close. So that's why it's very hard to track who was actually responsible for the sale. So we do more performance bonuses and we have other metrics that we use, like how many calls did you make? How many people complain sometimes, how many complaints you got and all that stuff. Speed to lead is one of the metrics we look at. So it's more of an end of year performance and less of sales commission.

Seth: So if one of these employees was doing a bad job, how would you know that? Like, what are you looking at in the performance to now? Oh, you're not cutting it. Is it just not doing enough calls or something like that?

Abi: A lot of the basic stuff, like, are you showing up on time? Are you putting in, like, overtime when it's required? Are you, like, are we getting any complaints? Because a lot of times people would, like, people are really good at, like, giving feedback in terms of, like, so we have a setter-closer model, right? So we have 18 people in the Philippines and two people like me and my wife in the U.S. Right. So the setter team is like 10 people. So they are setting appointments, doing customer success and all that. So if someone has a bad experience, Erika, who is the closer, will usually find out about it. And then we take appropriate action on how to resolve that. But usually, they're very well trained. Erika trains them personally. We have a lot of recorded. We've been running the business for eight years now. So we have a lot of recorded training internally. So we train them really well. And it's very rare that we get a complaint.

Seth: Sorry, I'm like doubling down on so many questions about this exact thing. I've just it's such a unique thing. I've never heard anybody doing it. And so I'm really trying to dissect, like, what is going on here? And if you did not stay in contact with these people, like if you were not doing these periodic check ins for the customer success role, how much harder would it make your life? Like how much harder would it be to just find a new buyer every time instead of recycling the old buyers?

Abi: Great question, Seth. It comes down to the CAC and LTV, right? So literally, there are two ways to make money in business, right? One is you can spend more money on ads and go to the marketplace and keep on acquiring new customers. And the second way is to increase the LTV or lifetime LTGP, lifetime gross profit per customer, right? The problem is for the first model to work where you continuously go to the marketplace and acquire a customer, that mechanics only work if the diff between CAC and LTGP is wide enough, if the spread is wide enough. The problem is the spread has continuously shrunk over the years. Right. And that's why that's the reason why so many people are leaving the land business, because it's now it's like running a real business. It's no longer right. Oh, I'm in Bahamas and I have a couple of people running and I'm just collecting checks. Now it's actually you have to do the fundamentals, because if the CAC is cheap enough, just like Facebook ads were so cheap in like 2015, you don't even have to take care of your existing customers. You can just keep going.

Abi: Yeah, you don't care. Like literally, I'm sure without naming names, people used to like actively get people off the phone. Like when customers call, like, yeah, are you going to buy the property? If not, please don't call me again. Kind of like it was really, really rough back in the day. And the reason for that, I'm sure you're laughing, you know who I'm referring to. Of course. And that model worked. It's not like the guru was misleading. No, he was 100% right. The CAC was so cheap. Why would you waste time having long conversations and relationships with your customers? Because you could just go to the marketplace and just keep on acquiring more because Facebook ads, you get a new lead for like five bucks, right? And you sell the property for 10K. So huge, huge diff. But now your cost to acquire a customer is like $800 or like $1,200 and your profit keeps on shrinking, right? And the cost, the direct mail cost keeps on going up, right? So it's not about would you do it or would you not do it?

Abi: It's like that's literally the only way I think to survive for the next 30 years to do the best practices, to follow the best practice of how to run a successful business.

Seth: I don't know how often you look at your data and analytics and all this stuff, but do you have any idea what percentage of the properties that you sell are selling to other existing buyers versus just a brand new person? Like, what I'm getting at is, how well does this work?

Abi: It's so hard to track. Like last week, I was listening to this conversation Erika was having because I was in the same room, and the guy said, oh, I can't believe it, Erika, you're the lady from the video. I've been watching your videos for two years. I'm finally ready to buy. Oh my God. How do you track that? Like two years back, how was it a Facebook ad? Was it a Land.com ad? Was it YouTube native? Was it a short we did on Instagram? Where did that person come from? So hard. In fact, we were like, I was like, Erika, ask, ask him, wait, how did he find? It was like, Erika was like, where did you find me? Like when you first started like two years back? I think it was a Facebook ad or I think it was YouTube. One of the social medias. I was like, oh my God, that doesn't help at all, not one bit. So even people don't remember how they found us. So it's very hard to track. Is it truly a brand new customer, or is it someone who has been watching us for a long, long time?

Seth: What I'm getting at is like when you sell a property and you've identified who the buyer is going to be just looking back at your existing buyers or past buyers and be like, yep, they've bought from us before. That's all I mean. This customer success role, going back to the existing buyers and eventually, hopefully at some point, without being too obvious, upselling them on another property. What does the pie chart look like? How often does that actually happen? Versus like, nope, these were sold to totally new people who we've never had contact with before.

Abi: Yeah, something we'll have to pull, look at the data. It's not something we're actively tracking. If I had to guess, I would be like 80% still 80% new and 20% old. It's not like it's not going to flip. We're not like delusional. We don't expect it to be 80% existing buyers, 20% new buyers anytime soon. I'm sure. I had a, this is an interesting story, Seth, you'll like it. I had a founder on my show, right? This Honest Wealth Builders podcast. And so this is like an older gentleman. He's been running the business for 50 plus years. Does like, his net worth is like north of 100 million. Company does like 50 million plus. So I was talking to him and I always ask this question. What is your customer acquisition pie chart look like? What is the biggest lead source of where the customers are coming from? And the guy was like, and I was like, usually people have like five or six different lead sources. Oh, I have 10% coming from Facebook, 20% coming from word of mouth, 7% coming from Google ads, 20% coming from LinkedIn outreach, blah, blah, blah, email, blah, blah, blah. Right.

Abi: And it's like, oh, I've seen that. Yeah. You ask everyone. Yeah. Don't worry about it. We don't need to do a pie chart. I only have one source. So what are you talking about? You're running a $50 million plus revenue company. How can you just have one? So that doesn't make any sense. Please explain. He says, Abi, when you're running a business, same business for 50 plus years, you don't need new customers. It's like, really? All of them are existing customers? Say, yeah, either they're existing customers or these are the people who have we have helped in the past who have referred. Right. So when we ask that question, like, what about the people who are new versus existing? There are also people who are referring. So even though we're counting them as new, technically they are part of existing because there's like a friend or a cousin or a brother or a sister that was referred to us.

Seth: That's interesting. So is it more about the property or is it more about buying from you? Like what if you just don't have the property they want? Will they buy from you anyway?

Abi: Yeah, no, no, no, of course. Once again, not overselling the role of customer success. If you start, if you are listening to this and if you start doing customer success, do not magically assume that all 20% of your sales in 2027 would come from existing buyers. Yeah. Sorry. Well, ask me the question again completely.

Seth: I'm just thinking about like, most of the properties that I have bought either for my personal use or like very important properties. Like this wasn't just a speculative willy nilly. It's been fun to see what happens, but more like, no, I'm going to buy this and build on it. Or I'm going to live here. Like, I frankly don't really care who the seller is. I just want that property at that price. So it sounds like these people who buy again, why are they doing this? Is it because you just happen to have the perfect property or it's like they're just sort of speculators where they just kind of do this stuff where they buy land that they don't necessarily want to use, but they just like you a lot? Or what motivates them to do this?

Abi: No, that's a perfect question. I understand now. So we have to understand the profile of the customers that are buying from us and also the profile of properties we're selling. So the properties we're selling are not unique. This is not one hour from Austin selling for 120K. This is more like selling for 10K, 15K, 20K. We rarely go over 50K. Most of the buyers on average, so if I look at my average loan portfolio value, like how much was the loan, it usually hovers between 14 to 19K. So these are not very expensive properties. So people who are buying rarely build on it. So it's more of a recreational play, legacy play. I'm going to leave it for my kids. Show off like or like some immigrant who's like, oh, I've never bought anything in the U.S. Kind of thing. Right? And these people are putting like 10% down, 500 per month kind of profile, right? So they're not going to build. We literally, from all the properties, we have sold close to 800 properties.

Abi: We have one documented case, one real documented case where the person literally sent photos of the house they were constructing on the property after they paid us off. The rest, 780 sales, 790 sales, no one has built on it. At least we're not aware of it. So these people are not buying, are not building on the properties that we're selling. It's mostly a rec play. So knowing now that we know the profile, a lot of times they'll be like, oh, people will tell. We send like custom trophies to our, that's another LTV play, Seth, for you. We send like custom trophies to our buyers. So we embed the GPS coordinate and then obviously name of our company. So they have it in their homes and we have US flag, US flag on it. So people keep it in their living rooms and then the people look at it and like, oh, what is this? Well, these are the GPS coordinates of the properties that I just bought. And then who did you buy it from? That's how we get a lot of leads as well.

Seth: I probably have like more of a cynical, skeptical take on this, which I don't love about myself. I actually really think it's cool how you have these ideas of what people are going to value. But my brain always goes back to like, just because I think it's cool doesn't mean they're going to think it's cool. Somebody could send me a gift that I don't care about. And so then I go back to this thought of, well, if that's true, like, how long do I keep spending money on this thing before I know it's actually worth it? Or do I just kind of accept, yeah, this is just a slush fund. I'm just going to flush this money down the toilet and hopefully something comes from it, but I'll never really know. Like, is that kind of the position you take on it?

Abi: Seth, it's just in the age of AI, it's just like human touch is our competitive advantage. And I know none of my competition is going to do that because it's a lot of work. I have to hire like three, four additional people just to do it. It's a lot of conversations Erika has to do. My setters have to do. It's a lot of extra work. And the reason we do is to have a competitive edge, is to have a moat around our business.

Seth: Just an example, like yesterday, I got a call from somebody. I could tell the second I picked up the phone by the tone of voice and why they were calling. And what they wanted was to buy my self-storage facility because I get these calls all the time. But he opened up in just kind of a really nice way, trying to find ways that he could serve me and do different things. And like to be honest like I just get annoyed by these calls like it's not helping anything, get out of here. Like, leave me alone. Like, that's kind of my take on it. In our past conversations, you kind of think differently about this. Like, you're more energized by these kind of conversations. It's more like fun for you. So, I don't know, it just makes me wonder. I think there are certainly cases where what you're thinking is absolutely true. But there's some people who are like, it might not help. It might even hurt. It might be a thorn in their side. It's annoying them. Like, how do you know?

Abi: So, Seth, this is permission-based marketing. So they are giving us permission. If someone like you bought from us, in the onboarding call, you'll just say, yeah, actually, don't worry about the monthly calls. And we don't we're not going to call you.

Seth: Do you ask that question or do I have to proactively say that?

Abi: No, no, no. We ask, we have this six month program and a 12 month program and we will do a reminder calls every month. Is that something you would be interested in? Obviously, we'll check in. We just don't say, well, we're only going to be reminder calls. We'll do check-in, make sure. And if someone says, oh, there is absolutely no way I'm paying off. I'm on fixed income. The max I can afford is $299 per month. Please don't call me ever again. We'll talk in four years when it's paid off. And yeah, of course, we'll respect their wishes. The goal is not to annoy them. The goal is to ask for the permission, whether they would like to have a conversation. And Erika is like a very nice person to talk to. So in your example, there was a cold call, right?

Seth: Essentially.

Abi: Yeah. As opposed to say you have a banking relationship with Chase.

Seth: I get annoyed with those calls too, from the ones that are not cold calls.

Abi: The scenario is not that you are a cold customer. The scenario is you actively trying to secure a loan for your next self-storage facility. And then you have this Chase person who's really talkative, really nice. And then he's doing check-ins. Hey, Seth. So, the papers moved to the next department. Signed looking good. I should be expecting something to hear back next week. Stay in touch. Hope you're doing well. Say hi to the kids. Blah, blah, blah. Right? You're not going to get annoyed at that.

Seth: I am, actually.

Abi: Because you're inactive.

Seth: Well, so I do get these calls from my Chase rep every quarter. And every time I say, you don't need to call me anymore. Like, I'm good. Like, I don't need anything. I'm fine. Now, if I was actively looking for a commercial loan, that would be one thing. But even then, like, I would want to control that. I don't want to just, okay, you called me, so I'll do it with you. It's like, no, I'm going to pick who I want to work with. I don't need to just have you call me. Again, I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just wondering, is there ever a point at which you can measure this and know like, well, it's not actually the best thing for everybody. And it sounds like maybe it's that initial onboarding call where people can opt out? Get out of here, that kind of thing.

Abi: So this is great for retention. If you were not taking the opposite position, you would just be agreeing with me and then we would lose everyone. Right. So this is great. This is what happens when you're interviewed by an experienced host who takes the opposite side.

Seth: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you would know because there has been a time when you did not do this. And now you have been doing this for two years. So you have a couple of different measurements of knowing how life is your current way and how it used to be before. If it's clearly better now, then don't change. You're probably fine. I'm just, I'm coming up from somebody who has not done this. So I've not seen both sides of the fence. I'm just talking about my one little bias perspective. So feel free to ignore everything I'm saying.

Abi: Yeah, once again, so Seth, if going back to my example, right, if you had an active loan that you are looking to get from Chase, right? And the loan officer is calling you to let you know how things are going and giving you little updates, you would still be annoyed by those?

Seth: If I was currently looking for a new loan and the loan officer that gave me the original loan happened to call in that moment, I would definitely entertain that conversation. But you were talking about the Chase person who does call me for no reason and it's super annoying and I never want them to call me again and they keep doing it.

Abi: So yeah, that's a cold call. Now I was talking about like a warm call with a loan officer you are actively working on on an existing loan. That's different, right?

Seth: It's still a cold call if I do do my banking with Chase and like I do know who they are. Like I do use their products. They're just trying to find other ways to sell me more stuff. Like, is that still a cold call?

Abi: I would consider it a cold call. Warm call is someone who you know. So these are people who have actively borrowed from us and they are paying monthly. Or in your situation, it would be like, say, you working with Chase, with John, who is actively trying to get you approved or servicing your loan. That would be a warm call. You'll still be annoyed?

Seth: Not as annoyed because it would be somewhat relevant, but whatever. I'm going to move on from this topic because we've talked a bunch about it. And I appreciate you dealing with my pushback and all this stuff. I'm just, it's not even pushback. I'm mostly just curious, like, where are the boundaries? Where are the limits? How does this work? But I was wondering just more general questions about your land business. So I think you said the typical disposition price. Did you say it's rarely north of 20 grand? Is that what you said?

Abi: North of 50. We never do over 50.

Seth: Gotcha. Okay. So are you typically buying for like 20, selling for 50? Or like, what does a typical deal look like for you?

Abi: Typical is like buy for 10, sell for 20. That would be a typical deal.

Seth: You and Erika are working in the same business together. How do you divide responsibility? Like, what exactly are you in charge of and what is she in charge of?

Abi: Well, at this point Erika is running 90% of the business and I'm focusing more on the other business, HWB, Honest Wealth Builders. It's a more mature business now. We've been doing it for eight years. We have all the processes, everything set, so now we just need to do reps, more and more reps. Back in the day, it was more 50-50. So Erika would do sales. I would be responsible for acquisitions and back office, managing people. But yeah, now it's mostly Erika.

Seth: Regarding your team, when we were hanging out in Wyoming, I'm going to butcher what you actually said, but it was something to the effect of when you hire a new person for the first two weeks, it's just like a really hard time for them or something. Like you put them through hell. I forget how you worded that, but explain to me.

Abi: Micromanage. Yeah.

Seth: Yeah, what do you tell them? What is the experience like for them? And why is it like that?

Abi: Seth, for some reason, I knew you were going to bring that up.

Seth: You're a smart man.

Abi: Because you were like flabbergasted.

Seth: Not necessarily. Actually, I can kind of see where you're going with it and why you would do that. But I'm just curious more specifics of like, what are you doing? Like, why is it so hard for him? And why exactly? What would be your rationale?

Abi: So the theory behind that is if so this is based on my experience managing virtual assistants. So the theory is a lot of the virtual assistants would do fine for the few months, but then every now and then they will have crunch time where like, oh, we got like seven sales in a day, which is like, it doesn't happen often. But every now and then something like this would happen and be like really stressful. Oh, can you send the contract to this person? Oh, this person wants to pay half via Zelle, half via wire. Can you call them? Sometimes what would happen is that would be a very busy week and people would be required to put in a ton of hours of overtime and they would be like stressed. And we have noticed that if things like that happen, people would, some of the virtual assistant would quit because they're like, oh, this is too stressful or this is too demanding or this is I am working too many hours. So the theory was, what if we try to stimulate or simulate that environment in the first two weeks of hiring a virtual assistant?

Abi: Because then we know if they don't quit in the first two weeks in that stressful environment, then when it actually happens, they're not going to quit. So the way we try to do that, I used to do it when we had like a team of five people because everyone was reporting to me. But now we have a team of 20, so we have team leads. So now my team lead does that. So basically we try to overwhelm them in the first couple of weeks. Okay, can you do this, this, this, and this? Work on these four projects at the same time, and we'll give you the SOPs on what needs to be done and how you need to do it, and it needs to be done by the end of the day. If it takes more time, you gotta do overtime. Obviously they're getting paid, so it's not like they're doing it for free. So that's the mandate for the first couple of weeks, and we let them know. This is not a surprise, by the way. In the interview, we let them know the first two weeks, we're going to throw you in the deep end of the pool to see if you can swim or not.

Abi: A lot of people literally will be like, no, I don't feel comfortable with that, and they'll just say no in the interview itself. So that worked really well for us as a filter for candidates who don't have the staying power in the company.

Seth: Yeah. What percentage of the time did they either say no in the interview or like you hire them and they can't cut it and they quit? Like, do you lose half the people through that process, or?

Abi: Yeah, more than half. We lose most of them in the interview because, it's funny, my mandate to my team lead is to try to scare them into not taking the job. And I come in and I double down. So our goal is to like scare them. Like there's a TV show, like they scare the kids, like who are in like whatever. Yeah, scared straight, right? So it's the same thing. Like it's like, I know, highly controversial, probably won't work in the US. The other thing is like, we have so many candidates, right? Like virtual assistant, you literally put a job, you get like hundreds and hundreds of people applying. So it acts as a filter. So we tell them in the interview process that it's going to be hard. And then we try to scare them, like, don't take the job if you don't feel like you're going to be, you're a hard worker and you can go through stressful times. So a lot of the people won't even make it to the final round with me. But people who do make it to the final round, they tend to, because then they're like, oh, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, I've worked in stressful situations in the past.

Abi: And then they come, once they start with us, usually I would say 80% of the people make it. More than 70% do not make it in the interview round. They don't even reach me.

Seth: It's interesting. Do you think they're misunderstanding how hard it's going to be or weird that like that many people would not be up for the challenge? But on the same coin, maybe it doesn't surprise me.

Abi: Yeah, it works. I wish I had more of a deeper psychological reasoning, but this is like more empirical data. It's just, I tried it, it worked. And people, usually the people, the virtual assistant we were attracting were the ones that they were like, yeah, I don't, they're more like, yeah, I don't. Throw whatever at me you can because I can handle it. That's their attitude. So maybe that's what separates from people who are like, yeah, I don't know, versus like, oh yeah, I can handle it.

Seth: Well, it's probably much easier to say goodbye to a candidate in the interview process than after you've hired them. And then you got to like unravel everything and that kind of thing. So yeah, it makes good sense. So Abi, I had Claude do a little bit of research on you and it pulled some things that you have said in, I think these may have been some of your interviews for Honest Wealth Builders. And I thought they were pretty smart things. So I wanted to ask a little bit more about them. So one of your principles is money equals goodwill multiplied by offers. Can you explain what that means in plain English and show us how it applies in the land business?

Abi: Yeah. So goodwill, the way I define goodwill is essentially a good feeling or going above and beyond than expected. So I was, like, first time in Minnesota, this is like most of my life in the US, I lived in New York. So I was not expect I was like, usually expected, the expected customer service was like negligible to nonexistent in New York City, right? So the first time I went to Minnesota, and the lady just like at Starbucks, the lady just gave me a free water bottle because I bought something, and I was like, oh, shoot, I forgot to get this bottle. Can I add this to my order as well? I say, oh yeah, just take it. Don't worry about it. I was like, wait, what? What just happened? People are like so nice. I was like, so the person tends to go above and beyond. And that going above beyond is how I define what goodwill is. Because now I have goodwill towards that business, right? Same thing what we're trying to replicate in our business by doing more customer success calls, right? So that's goodwill. And then the offers, right? The more offers you make, the more money you make.

Abi: So an example, an easy way to understand that example would be, I used it in some other podcasts and it was well received. So say for example, Seth, you and I were in a small town. We have our own respective coffee shops. And people come to the coffee shop, they come to my store and they say, oh, I would like to buy small cappuccino. And I serve and then they leave and say, thank you for coming in, right? People come to your coffee shop and you say, well, I would like a small cappuccino. And you're like, hey, John, how have you been doing? Yeah, you should try these bagels. These are really good. We just freshly baked them, blah, blah, blah. Well, we have some coffee beans that just arrived from Costa Rica. You just, obviously this is not like a sales sales, more like you're having a conversation and you're just throwing it in because you're just excited, right? So if I am running the coffee shop as just like, oh, you come in and more transactional and you are running it as like, oh, you're having this conversation as part of the conversations, you're tying in more offers.

Abi: So everyone who comes to my coffee shop gets one offer as in like someone, what they already wanted. Whereas people coming to your coffee shop get maybe four offers over a span of like a five-minute conversation, you can imagine your average AOV, average order value, would be higher than mine, right? And if we look at, if we project it to the end of the year, if my shop did 200K in revenue, you might be at 600K because your average order value was much higher, right? So the concept is, if you have, obviously, going back to your point, you can make more offers, but if you don't have goodwill in the marketplace, if people don't know, like, and trust that, it'll be very hard for others to take your upsell offers because they're like, yeah, I just don't like you or I don't trust you. But if they do, you have goodwill in the marketplace. It becomes much easier to make more offers and get those accepted, right? So that's the overarching concept that if you want to make more money in business, first, you need to have goodwill in the marketplace.

Abi: And then if you multiply that, with making more offers to your existing customers, then you will make more revenue.

Seth: I love that. It's pretty basic and simple when you boil it down, but some people might not realize that formula and how it can have a compounding effect when you've got more goodwill. Another principle I've heard you talk about is speed beats persuasion. So where have you seen a fast response that beat a better sales pitch?

Abi: Seth, you're gonna love this story. So I had a guy, this was a Friday evening, like I think 7 p.m. So someone calls us and says, oh, I love this property in Jackson County, Florida, ready to buy. Tell me how much down payment I can put. And so this is like the voicemail he left on Erika's cell phone. Right. So this is back in the day where we did not understand customer service. We did not understand customer success. And if someone leaves us a voicemail Friday afternoon or Friday evening, they're not getting a response until Monday morning because we don't work outside business hours. So we call that person Monday morning, because, hey, John, you left a voicemail on Friday evening. Yeah. So we're, whatever, say a thousand dollars down. Yeah, we can do a thousand dollars down. So ready to move forward. And the guy's like, oh, who is this? I say, oh, this is Erika from Gokce Capital. You wanted this property in Jackson County. Oh, yeah, that property. So, I had a thousand dollars. I got the bonus from my job and I wanted to buy the property. But over the weekend, Walmart had a sale.

Abi: They had this flat screen TV. Usually it's like two grand. They were selling for like a grand. And I bought that. So I don't have money anymore. I was like, holy cow, we lost that sale. If we were to have responded to him Friday evening, when we received that voicemail, we would have closed them. And that's when I realized speed is... It doesn't matter how good of a persuasion skills you have. It's the speed. The speed to lead matters more than persuasion. Because think about it in terms of competition. If we are competitors in the marketplace, we're selling the same type of property. And if I'm responding within 60 seconds and you respond after 48 hours, I get to start that relationship much sooner than you are. Right. So I have much higher chances of closing the deal as opposed to you do. Right. So that's why I feel like speed beats persuasion.

Seth: That's a great point, man. I appreciate how you explain that with that story. Reminds me of a conversation I had with a college professor many years ago when I was in school to try to get a good or better job. That was the frame of mind I was in. And I was talking to this professor and he pointed out that it's not enough to be the right person for the job. It also has to be the right time. The company hiring, the timing is right for them now. You can be the best person in the world, but if they don't need you at that time, then it's all irrelevant. Likewise, the timing could be right, but if you're not the right person, it also doesn't work. So like both things have to be true. And when you get a prospect or a lead calling, what they're kind of telling you in that moment is, it's the right time for me now. I just need the right deal. And you're right. Every second that goes by, the timing becomes a little less perfect.

Abi: Yeah. So speed and the adjacent principle is availability is also a competitive advantage, right? Back in the day, we used to have our calendar like, oh, we're just going to do sales calls in the afternoon. Now we have like a rotating schedule. We are open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Like, and there's some laws against like you cannot call before nine and you cannot call after nine kind of thing. So we're like maximize that window as well. So if someone calls in, we always have someone responding to that lead right away.

Seth: You say never waste a no. So when a seller or buyer says no, what should a land investor do next?

Abi: Oh, that's an interesting one. So in the past, if someone came to us and said, oh, I'm looking for a property. So I or they responded to us very specific properties, the same Jackson County, Florida property. And they said, oh, I'm looking to park my RV on the property. And oh, actually, I'm sorry. The county doesn't allow RVs in Jackson County. You can't. You have to build a house or put a manufactured home. Usually we would end the conversation there. Like it's a no end of relationship. But now what we have done, same customer success principle is like, instead of saying no to them, we'll be like, oh, tell me more about it. So what kind of RV? Is it like a fifth wheel? Is it more of a standard RV? Like, how big is it? What are you looking at any other counties? Or is it just Florida? Are you looking at other states? Right. So we still try to help them.

Abi: Like a lot of times it would be like, we'll refer them to realtors and stuff because we don't work in that county or, just to build goodwill because we know like even if that person never comes back, we just leave that little bit of goodwill. So maybe down the line, maybe they refer us to someone else or maybe they come back themselves because they have a need of a different property or maybe they subscribe to our YouTube channel or something, right? Just because it's a no doesn't mean it's a no to a relationship with you.

Seth: So I got three closing questions before I wrap this up. Somewhat broad, but one of the questions is, when you look at what you do especially well, what would you consider to be your unfair advantage?

Abi: Hiring is my unfair advantage, just because I have a lot of reps. When I came to the US in 2007, one of my jobs, like first jobs that I got after I graduated was to set up an onshore offshore model at one of the big banks. And I got to build offshore teams from scratch. So that means I have more than, at this point, more than 20 years of experience, or like close to 20 years of experience managing offshore teams. And I think, I feel like because I have so many reps, that's my unfair advantage.

Seth: When you say offshore, are there any particular countries that stand out as like you've got the most experience in these countries? Or is it just literally all over the place?

Abi: Well, most experience in managing people in India, Philippines, and Pakistan.

Seth: So if you had to start over today with all of your current knowledge, but only $10,000 in the bank, what would you do during your first 90 days?

Abi: If I just had $10,000, I would start a podcast and use that as my top of the funnel to get coaching clients.

Seth: So we're talking about the coaching business specifically, not the land business?

Abi: No. Well, the land business is capital intensive. One of the biggest constraints is capital, so I don't think $10,000 will help there, unless of course you're doing wholesaling and stuff, which is a completely different business model that I have no experience in. So I would rather do this, because the good thing about podcasting is it just doesn't have any startup expenses, right? So if I only have $10,000, I'd rather just use it to get lights, get some good cameras and paying for the podcasting software and stuff, which is like less than five grand, everything included and use the rest five grand and hiring editors and stuff to edit and thumbnails and distribution.

Seth: What if I pin you into a corner here and I say, you have to use that money to start a land business. How would you handle that? So not coaching, but land specifically. Is it even possible with 10 grand? And if so, what would you do?

Abi: Yeah, of course it's possible. I think the only model I can think of is the wholesaling model because then you're not actually acquiring the property. You're flipping the contract itself. It's just that it's more tenuous in the sense that because you're not acquiring the property, the buy side could fall through. And sell side falls through all the time, right? Buyers flaking, title issues and whatnot. It just adds more complexity. But that's the only viable model if you're starting with 10K.

Seth: You wouldn't go after the ultra cheap properties that you could buy for maybe a thousand bucks?

Abi: Yeah, because you still need capital because you have to pay your bills. I know from experience that 80% of the properties sell on terms. So it's not going to pay my bills. So unless I am starting with like maybe 50, 60, 70K, if you have me start with 50K, then I would choose the other model because then I can redeploy the capital, use the move-cash-forward approach and still pay my bills. But with 10K, it's just not enough. The only viable model I can think of is wholesaling.

Seth: So you would rather do wholesaling than use funders?

Abi: Yes, because with funders, you're including an extra variable, right? You're introducing an extra dependency in the ability to feed you, right? Because what if a lot of times you've tried the funding approach? We have funded, obviously use funders here and there, but a lot of the times we haven't had good experience with funders and not necessarily because the funder's intention was bad, but because the funders usually have their own jobs and own businesses and own lives. And there's this redeploying capital, right? So if it doesn't meet their exact criteria, if they don't think the deal is juicy enough, they'll just say no, even though they might have said, well, it meets my criteria in the beginning, right? So why introduce another dependency if you only have 10K to play with?

Seth: So if people want to find out more about you, follow along with what you got going on, where should they go to check you out?

Abi: Yeah. Abi Asija, you can find me on all socials. Also check out my website. Seth was on my show as well, which you can check out at honestwealthbuilders.com or on YouTube at Honest Wealth Builders.

Seth: Great. I'll dig up that conversation between me and Abi on his channel, as well as links to all this stuff. I'll put it in the show notes for this episode at retipster.com/290, because again, this is episode 290. Abi, again, thanks for chatting. Appreciate the great conversation. And to all the listeners, we will talk to you again in the next episode.

Abi: Thank you, Seth. Appreciate it.