Joe:  Buckle your seatbelts. Get ready. Because what if I could tell you we're going to talk to a guy here in a minute who got ten deals under contract from one workshop. We're going to talk to Ray. He. While we were doing our workshop a couple months ago, he got ten deals under contract from the direct mail that he sent in like 30 minutes from the workshop. We're going to be talking with Ray, but I want to just say hello. Welcome to the Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast. This is going to be a great episode here. I want to talk to you about what's working today. Whether you decide to come to our workshop or not. We're going to be talking about what's working right now, not what's working. Six years ago, two years ago, three months ago, what's working right now? I mean, like we're as we recording this, it's end of July things, you know, kind of slow down in the summer. It's easy to get discouraged. You're like, man, I know what's going on, but we're just talking to Ray second and go. And it's like, you know what? It's slow this time of year every year, and it may not even actually be slow. It depends on compared to what. Right. So it's important. Consistency is important. We're always harping on consistency. Whether you're doing houses or land it's important that you stay consistent. And so this is a show I've been doing this podcast now for 13 years 13 years. I'm all about consistency. This is why people succeed, why people fail in this business. So if you want to have success, you need to learn consistency. And we're going to be talking with Ray about all of that first. Again welcome to the Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast. Type in your questions your chats in the comments. You might be listening this later on an audio podcast. You might be watching this live right now on YouTube or Facebook, but type in the chat in the comments right now. Tell us hello. Tell us where you're from. I'd love to say hi and just connect and find out, you know, what are some of your burning questions? You know, things are you seeing things slow down right now in the summer months, are you kind of getting nervous or concerned about, well, what's going on? Why are things slowing down. But it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. And I'll tell you why in a second. But right now, real quick, this podcast is brought to you by the Do Deals Workshop, which is why I've got Ray Zhang here on the podcast with me. He's got an amazing story. The guy went from homeless living to living in a car doing land deals and he's killing it now. He's one of the most successful land investors I know. He's going to be with us at this workshop. Right now. It's August 26th 27th in Saint Louis at Busch Stadium. And if you go to do Deals workshop.com, get some more information and we'll talk all about it. Should we bring him on right now finally. Yeah. Can we just bring him on. What's up? Ray Zhang, how are you from Virtual Flip Land? How are you, man?

Ray:  Well, Joe, you are my favorite people because you are the only guy pronouncing my last name right.

Joe:  All right, I love it. All right. So, Ray, I'm so excited about this because you've been messaging me and we did our workshop. Do Deals Workshop a couple months ago. I forget the dates right now. Right. But then was I was talking about some of my favorite markets. I mentioned Missouri and Oregon. And these are not markets and states where a lot of people are doing land deals. Right. And I saw you, you know, get your pen and paper out and start writing down. I was like, What's Ray up to in his write down? And then that evening you did mail campaign to about 7000 records, is that right?

Ray:  Yeah, about 7000 records that night.

Joe:  And then. Okay, that night you did 7000 pieces of mail and we'll talk about what you sent later on. But about approximately we're just texting a little bit ago. How many deals did you get under contract.

Ray:  Out of all the monies I made, by the way, all this county was inspired by you. Oh, I saw you talk about your assistant mail to county in, Oregon. So you also talk about, you know, Missouri people are very nice to the audience. I was like, let me test how nice they are. Right. So. And now the for county is totaled to that to, to those for county. And I got a total ten plus deals.

Joe:  Ten plus deals. And you're working on by the way, could you move the mic a little bit closer to you? Yeah. So you got ten deals under contract. Thanks. And then what's your strategy? Do you wholesale them. Do you hold them sell them on owner financing. What do you stretch. What's your strategy?

Ray:  I mean I mainly buy and sell them. So I buy them with my own cash and then just sell it. And what I love about Missouri is the land. There could be very cheap. You know, I bought some land for $900. The land worth. Yeah, the land worth about $7,000.

Joe:  7000?

Ray:  Yeah. Not eight. Not. It's not too big of a deal. Buy is a super good for when you first started, you know.

Joe:  Now, you also mentioned in the text thread a minute ago the deals that you're flipping right now. And they're not all from those two states. You're sitting on about $195,000 in profits. I think you said, is that right?

Ray:  195,000 profit in just one week last week and last week.

Joe:  And so that was land from Missouri and Oregon, but also Texas and Florida. Those are two of the other states you target, right?

Ray:  Correct. And funny thing is, I have a deal in Oregon where you suggest me. It didn't suggest me to do it, but I got inspired by you. But I when I close that deal as a buyer, the title company sent me a big email and they said, right, why do you buy a land for 15,000 where the land was 55,000? And they asked me that question. So they were even surprised how much we bought it for. But, you know, you can see how big opportunity that is. So yes.

Joe:  Oh, I love it. And then these are markets. The context of this conversation was when the workshop, we were talking about how maybe you don't need to go into the most competitive counties where everybody is already doing a bunch of marketing. Right. You can still do deals in states that are not competitive. For example, somebody asked me one time, can you do vacant land flips in Ohio? And I said, well, do people go camping in Ohio? Do they go hunting in Ohio? And he's like, yeah. I said, all right. Which counties do people want to buy land in for recreational use, you know, to go out there and ride their four wheelers and shoot their guns and shoot their deer and all of that, so you can do this business anywhere. Personally, the reason why I was bringing up Missouri in this workshop, we were doing this because again, we were talking about what's working now, what is working today. And we've done there's two counties in southwest Missouri that we're going into right now, which is near the Branson Springfield area, Silver Dollar City, table Rock Lake, make Lake of the Ozarks that kind of area. And we've done three deals we've bought and sold, and our profits were 20,000, 25,000 and $12,000. So whatever that totals up to. And then we've got 2 or 3 more that we're currently working on right now. I think we've bought 1 or 2 of them are in the middle of listing them and selling them and all that crazy. And this was these two counties. We sent Ray 2763 postcards, 20, 763 bogus postcards. I was just looking at my list this morning, and we got five deals out of that crazy and zero competition. Now, there was a little bit of competition, but like, we just know what we're doing. So it's this is a great business. I'm so excited about this because even though maybe it's slowing down right now in the summer, the summer is not going to last forever. Things are going to pick up again in the fall, and we're going to see kind of a just a new. And then and even though in some areas we're hearing this from students, and I wanted to talk to you about this, Rei, you know, they're kind of complaining about it being competitive, quote unquote. But when you compare it to houses, if there is any competition, it's practically irrelevant. Would you agree?

Ray:  Absolutely. 100%. There's nothing to compare with. I talked to a guy who is regular wholesaler for houses. I said, what's your response rate for mailers? He said 0.025%. So that means for every 4000 letters you send, oh, you get one cost for land is anywhere from 1 to 10%.

Joe:  Yeah. And this county that we were looking into now, I sent a lot of different kinds of mail. This particular postcard is a little vague. It doesn't really tell them why we're mailing them. It just says, hey, I need to talk to you about your 2.6 acre vacant lot. Call me and listen to my 24 hour recorded voicemail. We got an 11% one 1% response rate on that campaign. Now only 3,035% of the leads were any good. Okay, so even if you look at just the leads that were good, 3% of the leads that came in were good. Those were people who raised their hands and said, yeah, I'd want to sell my property, make me an offer. Triple that is triple for 4 or 5 times greater than the response rates we get with houses. Okay. And Ray, is there a is there still a market to sell these properties. Who buys these properties. Right. Are we are you still able to sell your deals.

Ray:  Yeah, absolutely. Fairly simple. I have, done something a little bit different right now. I want to try melon without a realtor. Some of the realtors don't like me anymore, but, has been very successful. Seven last I saw last week, absolutely no realtor involved. I just posted myself, and I was sold very, very quick.

Joe:  How did you list them?

Ray:  I go through a service called Broker less.com. Okay.

Joe:  And I still put him on the MLS. But you used a flat fee discount broker.

Ray:  Yeah. And, you know, eventually the broker will be less right after using that service. But, that service works and you only pay $100 for six months of listing your land on the MLS, and you can post six pictures. So, yeah.

Joe:  That's really good. That's broker less.com. Yeah. That's nice. We do that sometimes. Kind of depends on the on the market that we're in. That's great. Fantastic. All right. We got a bunch of comments here I asked people hey tell us where you are. And we got a bunch of people that responded in like what's up Michael? Gregory said depends on the county. Cool. Gregory's also asked. What database or platform do you use? I used Freedom Soft. What platform? Database CRM do you use Ray?

Ray:  I use primarily to list services call list, source and data tree. We have various a very big discussion on those if anyone needed one. Just get ahold of me. I can help you set it up, but the accuracy of those data is very, very good.

Joe:  What do you use to manage and track your leads as they come in?

Ray:  Yeah, it's very sophisticated, you know, Google, Google Sheet. All right. I use Google Sheets. Yes. Yeah.

Joe:  All right. They're. Good. Good. And Greg is here from Las Vegas. Michael's from Houston. Oh. What's up Joe? Joe is coming to the workshop.

Ray:  Awesome.

Joe:  Go ahead. I love it. Gregory asks real quick here. How many mailers are you pushing a week? We send about sometimes I don't mail send mail every week, but we're sending probably on average 3 or 4000 postcards a month is what we're doing. What about you, Ray?

Ray:  I try to send out 10,000 a week. 10,000 a week? Yeah. Yeah, I slow down a bit. I used to be 100,000 a month.

Joe:  So when do you have to do that much mail to do deals?

Ray:  No, I just have a lot of counties out at the beginning. You send 3000 a month. That's pretty. Pretty good already?

Joe:  Yeah. Guido. What's up guys? Good to see you. Good to see you too. Okay. Jay Diesel's     to the next workshop. Bam!

Ray:  Welcome. I love it.

Joe:  Gregory. So these are off market deals? Yes. Off market. So we like to go direct to sellers. We send we buy lists of people who own vacant land. We send them a postcard or a letter saying, hey, do you want to sell your lot? Call us and we'll talk about all of that in the workshop. That's a great thing about this workshop is we're showing you exactly what we're doing today. And I got a video I want to show you guys in a second. I think you've seen the video, Ray. But real quick, one more question that just came in. You're picking these up at 40% of value, selling them at about 80%. Yeah, approximately. We buy our deals anywhere from 35, $0.45 on the dollar. We price them to sell quickly. I price my properties to sell within 1 or 2 months. So I'm all when I when we list our properties, we're always making sure they're the cheapest properties on the market so we can sell them as fast as possible. Is that about what you would say, Ray?

Ray:  Absolutely. But I don't want anyone to have a, like a frame. I have to get around 20% of the value or 40% of the value. What I do is I send offers about 60% of the value. And when that call come in and you go see it again. So there is really no bottom how much I can buy the land for, for example, I just got a deal for $900. So the original offer was about $7,000. And if you do the percentages, that's about 10%. But if you have that frame of mind, oh, I have to get a 40% a value that will limit you from what you can achieve.

Joe:  Yeah. This is so good, man. We could talk about this for a couple hours. And one of the things, Ray, that I want to talk about, but I first want you to tell your story for people who don't know you because it's pretty incredible. But we're going to talk about in a minute after you tell us your story. How do you negotiate these deals? How do you talk to sellers? And in the workshop, we're going to actually do this even more than we did last time. I want to do more role playing, practicing, talking and negotiating over the phone, because that's where the money is happening, because you're what you just said is you sent an offer, a blind offer to somebody for seven grand. They called you back and you talked them down to $900. And we're gonna talk about how you do that, because I see one of the big mistakes I see a lot of beginning land investors make is they're offering way too much for the property, and they're not getting on the phone and talking to sellers and negotiating that price down. Okay. So we'll talk about that. But Ray, tell us your story real quick. You came from China to the United States. How long ago?

Ray:  About 12 years ago. And I was still learning English and, learned primarily from you and Tom. Tom Krol.

Joe:  At least. But I didn't know we taught you English as well.

Ray:  No, I listened to you guys podcast all the time. And then, you know, you guys conversation really sparked me about real estate. I have no idea. And I was just barely surviving because I had to pick up free stuff on the street and sell them on the Facebook Marketplace just to have a meal every day. Right. And then I got some money saved up about a thousand, and I started to flip cars. When I flipped cars, I made pretty good living, you know. And then I remember I wanted to do real estate so bad. So I tried everything. I bought all the courses. I tried it on my own in Hawaii. It didn't really work well for me in that market. I bought some houses, my program, trying to do apartments, houses, none of them works and eventually came to the land. That's when everything changes.

Joe:  Nice. By the way, you how long were you kind of living out of a car home was how many? How long the time period was that?

Ray:  I live in the car for about four months. And the lowest point was my alternator broke down. I couldn't even drive the car, and no AC, I couldn't. Started. I had to just, you know, roll up, throw down the windows and sleep for a couple months. So.

Joe:  And where do you live?

Ray:  I live in campus and, in Hawaii. So I kind of have that free Wi-Fi and where I want to go.

Joe:  Where do you live? In Hawaii. I thought you lived in Florida.

Ray:  Yeah, I was in Hawaii for eight years.

Joe:  Okay. Where do you live now?

Ray:  I live in Florida right now.

Joe:  That's right. Okay. Yeah. Married kids.

Ray:  Have three kids.

Joe:  And not married.

Ray:  Married? Yeah. Of course.

Joe:  Okay, okay. You got still married, right?

Ray:  Still do? Yeah.

Joe:  What's your wife's name?

Ray:  Larissa.

Joe:  Larissa. Cool. Yeah. Is she. Where she from? And how did you meet her? I'm just curious.

Ray:  She actually saved me. Without her, I would still be in China. Because when I came to the country, I just came out of, like a visiting visa. So I have maximum six month to live here, and then I can choose to go home, you know, which is legally, or I can choose to stay and legally. Maybe it's on my or find me and keep me out of. But I met my wife, and, she happened to be a U.S. citizen. So I got married, and I remember. Remember the day we got married. That's about a couple of days over the six month period. So if we get married a little bit later, I would have to go back to China and come back a couple years later.

Joe:  Wow. So do you still have family and friends in China?

Ray:  Yeah, definitely.

Joe:  Are you allowed to go back and visit?

Ray:  Yeah. Of course. Yeah, and I have that green card right now so I can come back for it. You know, I'm coming back right after the workshop we are going to do.

Joe:  Are you really? Yeah. Is your wife and family going with you?

Ray:  Yeah. They're cool.

Joe:  Do your kids speak Chinese or Mandarin?

Ray:  They understand that, but they don't speak anything. Okay. You know.

Joe:  Oh, cool. Well, I didn't know some of that stuff about you, so I just did decided that. Okay, one of the things we're going to talk about at this workshop is how to talk to sellers. Okay. Direct mail. That's easy. We're going to show you the direct mail that we actually use. I have a postcard that we've been using lately that's not even in my course, but we're going to be talking about that. We send, you know, brand buyers will also be doing the workshop with us. Brant has been, guy doing land for a long time. And when I had this idea for doing this workshop, I the two guys, I thought about asking to do this with me. It was Ray and Brant, and I said, hey, would you guys be interested in doing this? And it's let's do it as a two day workshop. Day one will be teaching. We'll show you what we're doing here today. Now it's working. And day two will be doing. And day two, what we're going to do is we're actually going to you're going to hear us talk to sellers. We're going to you're going to watch us make offers and we're going to give everybody leads. Everybody is going to get 2 or 3 real seller leads, and you are going to be actually making offers. So, you know, it's nice to actually we could have spent the whole two days just to teach, teach, and you would have walked away with a full belly and like, oh my gosh, I'm stuff. I'm overwhelmed, but well, good as I do. Let's actually implement what we're learning while we're there. Let's actually do that. How do and how other how many other workshops are there where you can actually do that. So that's why I'm excited about one of the things I want to make sure we do is, I want to do role plays because it's so important how to talk to Sellers and Ray. Some people just don't believe this. And I've seen it in person. I've just known you for a long time. When you get a deal that might be worth $50,000 and you'll buy it for $1,000 something, people are scratching their heads. How on earth do you do it? What's your philosophy? You know, when you send out mail, whether it's a blind offer or neutral letter or something like that, and the calls come in, what's your what's your philosophy there? Do you answer phones live? Does it go to voicemail? Use your answering service. What do you use? What do you do?

Ray:  I use, app called burner as an app. And you can use phone. You can get ten phone numbers, so I recall. Come in. I don't answer it. I don't have, like a complicated voicemail. Just telling them to leave address for our parcel number for the land, and then I call them back. But the main thing, I think I get super crazy. This kind of deals. I think if I have to summarize to two points, these are the two I just had, conversation with a realtor yesterday. He's a buyer agent. He said, Rei, I just saw the record. You bought this land for 30,000 is. No way I'm trying to sell for 90,000. I said, oh, don't believe that number. You know, I had to do something. I was to get that. But in reality, I actually buy that land for 30,000. And the agent just sent me an offer for 75,000. But how to do that is how I would compare this negotiation with dating or marriage is very similar. So I forgot if that was a you or a Tom Krol. Talk about this. He said to be a deal finder, not the deal creator. So what is the biggest difference is when you try to find a guy or try to. Let's say I convince a guy to marry you or a lady, and that marriage may not turn very well, because how many times a woman think I'm going to change him after we get married? And guess what? After marriage. No way. Right. And to do the deals is the same. And you don't try to convince a guy to sell you. Hey, I am really can close the deal. Verifies I have cash. Hey, can you do this cheap? And if you talk to the wrong person, guess what? No, but be a deal finder. So how do you be a good deal finder? First of all, you have to send a lot of mailers to give you more opportunities. And secondly, just only talk to the guy who want to sell the land to you fast. That's it. And the second thing is you have to be there to offer a very low that you couldn't even believe it. That's a, that's a top secret I have is I don't care about what that person care about me to think about me, because we've never met. So we're probably never going to meet each other. Why do I care so much about the other people's opinion of me? I do care about them, how they think about themselves or how their life is. But I don't care about how they think about me. Oh, this gray guy is really cheap and he want to get my land for nothing. Fine. That's me. Right? And I really want to provide a solution for you so you can use in exchange to get a, you know, some of the land for is such a cheap price. So I love that.

Joe:  Let me just interject something to that. I've always said if you've not made somebody upset by 12:00, you're not doing enough marketing. You're not making enough offers, right? You're not marketing hard enough, and you're going to make people mad. They're going to be really upset. And if you offer if you don't feel like this queasy, stick sick feeling in your stomach when you make an offer, you're offering too much.

Ray:  Right? Absolutely. And the way you negotiate is not supposed to be a comfortable conversation. And if you feel awkward, shameful. That's a rare feeling.

Joe:  Yeah, that's a good feel. All right, so when a seller calls and they start telling you about the property, one of the things I learned from you that I have kind of did before, but I didn't really think about it, that I thought was so good. And I'm we're going to be spend a lot more time talking about this in the next workshop is how to find something that's wrong with the property. Right? And if you dig, there's always going to be something wrong with the property. You're talking to the seller on the phone and you recommend a really good book. By the way, everybody should go get this book called go for no, go for no. Because I like to say you need to be the reluctant buyer. You need to be pretend like you're not really interested. And sometimes I even say this to sellers. I'm probably not your buyer, but, you know, tell me a little bit about the property. What's your situation? First thing I tell him, I probably not your buyer. Because you know what? I'm probably not. I only get one out of every 30 offers accepted. You know, I'm probably not the buyer because I want it so cheap. But the first question I ask is, tell me about your situation. Do you do I want to learn? Do you need to sell this or do you just want to sell it? There's a difference between the two, right? And if they just want to sell it, well okay. That's fine. Maybe I'm not your guy. Probably not. Yeah. I would suggest you just listed with the realtor. What? Why don't you. Why do you even want to sell this property? Sounds like a nice property. Why do you want to sell it? Something wrong with it? You should probably just listen with a realtor, right? I'm going for. No, I'm just playing the reluctant buyer. I'm not trying to convince them of anything. I want them to convince me why I should want to buy their property. So one of the things I learned from you that was so good was try to find something that's wrong with the property, and there always is. For example, it could be. And then you can chime in here and add some more to this too, you know. Does it have road? Is the road paved or not paved. Right. And most properties don't have a paved road. So when you ask them does it have road access okay. Good. Is the road paved? No. oh. Shoot. All right. How about this one, Ray? Have you done a survey on the property recently? Not yet. Have you, have you done a perc test or a septic test in order to determine the suitability of a septic system? No. Oh. All right. When you're looking at a satellite view, you know, maybe there's. It's covered with trees. Is he going to ask? Have you ever cleared out any of the property? Oh, no. Or if there's no trees. Okay. It's a. Are there any trees on the property at all? No. Shoot. Right. You see what I'm doing here? How about what's the slope of the property? You know, if it's only 25% of it is flat enough to build. Let's say you could ask them the question of like, well, what percent of the property is actually buildable or you don't know? Shoot, I'm looking here. You can look. You can look at active comps, see what similar properties you're selling for while you have them on the farm. What if similar property sold for in the last 12 months? You could look at the satellite view. Right. And you can maybe see some neighbors. And if there's a neighbor with a vacant lot that has a bunch of junk everywhere, you can ask them about that. Power lines, railroad tracks. You know what I'm saying, Ray? Talk a little bit more about that, because this is so for me, this is like I kind of knew it before, but when I saw you do it, my little light bulb would just went off in my head because I was. This is huge.

Ray:  Yeah. Because, for any land, there is a lot of problem. Landlocked slope land, like all the stuff you talk about. And, the shape maybe is not like typical is, triangle are very narrow, long. Yeah. No, there is millions of problems with it once you find it. But the key thing is, once you find it, don't be critical, because. Well, I'm not trying to tell people. Hey, why? Once you're trying to find the problem, you have to find it out and really argue with a seller. See, this is the problem. Nobody wants to be, you know, judged. You see, all the people post their kids on Instagram. You know, even the kids that are kind of ugly, you don't tell them, right. And the photos say something like that land is their kids. If you tell them, hey, your land is really strange shaped and guess what? They will become very defensive. But when you did just there was different. You point out the problem. You didn't say nothing. And that kind of worry the seller. If I were the seller, I was imagining what I was feel when you were talking. I don't feel worried. I would be like, yeah, you know, that's kind of concerning. So what is negotiation really? Negotiation is a transfer of conviction. So if I, I'm more convinced that you you're not gonna negotiate with me. Let's say I want to sell a car for 2000. I'm, like, super firm. There's no way I can go, like, a dollar off. It will be really hard for you to negotiate because I. I'm more convinced than you. But when you do something like what Joe did, which is kind of be not sure if I want to even buy the land that kind of reduce the seller's confidence or conviction. I never want to come to a point where you kind of break through everything and, you know, I break the wall. The seller, well, it'll be totally surrender to the price you want. Yeah.

Joe:  Excellent. Greg, I want to put you on the spot here, okay? Greg's asking if we can do a role play. Can we do a role play? Right? Sure. As a practice, just give it a guess. Give a little taste of what we're going to do, it or not at the workshop. So let's say this is a, this is a five acre parcel of property. It's a five acres in Missouri. No utilities, but it does have road access. So you be the investor. I got your letter. I'm calling you back, and, we'll just we'll just play it out a little bit, okay? Is that right? Sure.

Ray:  Let's imagine the land is in Colorado. That's sounds very similar. Familiar with, Connie in Colorado?

Joe:  Yeah. Colorado. So I'm going to answer the phone because you're calling me back. Hello, this is Joe.

Ray:  Hi, Joe. Just calling you back about the land. I saw that you call me.

Joe:  Yeah. Hi.

Ray:  How can I help you?

Joe:  I love that, okay. How can I help you? Well, I don't know. My. I'm just. I'm calling you back. I got your message that I think you called me about some piece of property I'm trying to sell or whatever.

Ray:  Yeah, I made a offer on the letter as I had. What are you talking about? Yeah. Well, you know.

Joe:  . That's right.

Ray:  Yes. Yeah, yeah. How do you feel like that? Do you want me to. To buy the land.

Joe:  Or do you.

Ray:  Want me to help you sell it? Oh. What's your plan?

Joe:  Oh, yeah. Well, I got your letter here. I thought, I thought I'd see what you had to offer. I'm open to selling it.

Ray:  Yeah. Yeah, I, I look at the land. Let me see the land first. Okay. Yeah. It looks like, there's no, no utilities nearby. Yeah.

Joe:  Yeah. That's right. There's no utilities.

Ray:  Do you know how much to. For utilities on there?

Joe:  No, I have no idea why we bought the property, like 20 years ago.

Ray:  So you never been there?

Joe:  Yeah, it's been a while. Yeah. I don't. It's been a long time.

Ray:  Well, what kind of, motivate you to sell it right now, if you don't mind me asking?

Joe:  Well, you know, honestly, I didn't. I haven't really thought about it. Kind of forgot about. We pay the taxes once a year, and I got your letter, and I've been getting a bunch of other letters from people for some reason. I don't know if something's going on out there, but, I mean, it seems like I've been getting more and more mail. So I thought I'd call to see what I could get for it.

Ray:  Right. You have the offer price on the letter. What do you think about it?

Joe:  Well, you said here $9,000. You know, it's a little lower than I was. What I've been getting from other people.

Ray:  Okay. And you have been sold for the higher price?

Joe:  No, I mean, like, I've gotten some other offers, but I'm just trying to, you know, see, you see what's out there, I guess.

Ray:  Okay. All right, I understand. Yeah. You know, Joe, I look at the land now, link the utilities. It's kind of, you know, in in the desert. Is that is that the case?

Joe:  Yeah. Yeah, it's out there. Kind of out in, south central Colorado, which is kind of on the eastern side. So it's a little it's high desert.

Ray:  High desert, five acres. Yeah. I don't know what to do with it. Well, what were your plan when you bought it? You wanted to build a house there. I just don't know how much they cost to build a house, because it kind of out of nowhere.

Joe:  Yeah, but. Well, yeah, when we bought it, you know, honestly, I don't remember why we bought it. It was super cheap. We bought it 20 years ago thinking that we would do something with it, you know, maybe go camping, pull out the RV a little bit once in a while. But we've just. We've just had it for so long. We've not done anything with it.

Ray:  Yeah, I got it. Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure. You know, I, I wish I can do an I, but, for this particular one. Yeah. I don't know how much I can do it, but. Well, what if I ask you, how much would you consider selling if I pay you cash?

Joe:  Well, I'd consider the offer that you made that you sent to me here. $9,000. I'd. I'd consider that. How long would it take to close?

Ray:  Are we close? Very fast. However, like I said, Joe, I cannot do a 9000 for this parcel.

Joe:  Oh, okay. Well, what's what can you do then?

Ray:  I'm not sure. Looks like, I saw there's some, some land. So for, you know, 2000, 3000 for a similar lot. I'm not saying I could do that, but, yeah, I don't know. What do you consider somewhere around 15?

Joe:  I mean, I don't know. No. Probably not. I should, yeah. Well, I, you know, I appreciate the time. I don't think that 1500 won't work.

Ray:  Okay. Got it, got it. Well. Good work. I mean, how close can you get to that number if I. If I pay cash and, we can close fast.

Joe:  You know, I could maybe I just sell it for maybe 8500.

Ray:  I can do that because. Okay. Because it's. Yeah, as you might know. You know, it's really hard to get utilities out there. Yeah. Even though five acres is quite a big lot, but.

Joe:  Yeah, well, if you know what I mean. Like, what are you going to do with the property?

Ray:  I'm not sure yet. You know, decide what to do after we purchase it. One question kind of confuses me right now is since, like, you know exactly how much you want and you get higher offers already, how come you don't, you know, less with, agent, you know, just sell it. That way you can get more price, right?

Joe:  Yeah. Well, you know, maybe I should. I just it's, you know, I don't want to deal with the hassle and pay the commissions. I'd rather just sell it and be done with it.

Ray:  If I can do exactly that, would you consider some are close to 2000?

Joe:  No. Probably not.

Ray:  Or not. Okay. Yeah, I'm for that kind of seller. Pretty much. Yeah.

Joe:  Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I was, I was playing a little bit harder. Right. My, my motivation on a 1 to 10 was maybe 2 or 3. Not very motivated at all. Right. But one thing I liked about what you did is there's these long pauses. Right. And then that was intentional. Right? Right.

Ray:  Yeah. It's silent.

Joe:  So. Right. And you asked a lot of questions, which is also intentional. And you asked me, I like this where, I was like, why don't you just listed with the realtor a couple of times, and I asked the questions you just answered with, I don't know, and that is so important because sometimes we vomit out when we're nervous and we're talking to sellers. You know, we talk too much, and it's uncomfortable to have those pauses or to ask questions or to say, I don't know. You see the powerful thing of that and you notice Ray guys, you watching this raise not some, you know, master used car salesman guy. Right. He's just being himself and he's trying to find a reason to say no. And he's asking questions. I could, you know, I couldn't just bring up the problems with no utilities. So it's going to cost me a lot of money to bring utilities out there. Right. And, and. I'm looking here at soul comps and I see some that have sold for this. Not saying that I could do that, but you know what? So like that he's and this is really important, to do. Here we go. Vance asked this question. Great. Do you primarily use neutral letters or blind offers? I received a blind offer from you in Texas. It was too high, and I knew it wouldn't sell for much more than that. So. And then this this next question is here. Do you send blind offers and renegotiate? My agent, Cheryl ended up selling it for 12 K. She also sold some properties for you in that area. So do you send neutral letters or blind offers? And this is a common question we get. So when you normally send blind offers, but you, you, you never buy it for actually what you sent them that offer for, do you?

Ray:  No, never. Okay. And, that's the one thing good about our workshop. Because me, I'm gonna talk about how I make offers in the workshop. And I know you definitely were going to talk about how you make your neutral letters. So me and Joe and Brant, we don't have to agree with each other, is there is no better way. And, you know, we have dealers, you know, under our about each of us. So you got to find out what's the best fit for you. And that's why the workshop is so important. You can see different point of views and then you can make your own decision. Yeah.

Joe:  Yes. And then, you know, whether you're doing blind offers or neutral letters, you need to learn these skills of how to talk to sellers and negotiate. And it's nothing fancy. We're going to give you our scripts. And it's not really scripts like word for word stuff. It's just a list of questions, you know? Here are some questions to ask. Like I like to ask, you know, you notice how Rei started out, the question, how can I help you? But it's just like, it's very simple. And so the question I like to ask is, you know what? Tell me. I don't think I'm your buyer, but maybe I don't know. You know, let me ask you some quiz. I catch you in a bad time. You might have. I ask you some questions about the property. Tell me, what's your situation? Why do you need to sell this thing? Okay, what's the, what's the reason? How quickly didn't want to sell this thing? Is this a now thing or a later thing for your. You're not in a hurry, right? I mean, another question would be something like along the lines of, what are you going to do if you can't sell this thing, right? Why don't you just list it with the realtor? I tell them, you know, I'm not a retail buyer. I'm an investor. I buy properties at cheap discounts. You should probably list it with an agent, but if you want the easy button, I can buy cash closed in 30 days, and you can just be done with it. All right, so tell me a little bit about, well, you know, have you gotten some other offers? Why haven't you taken those offers. And I while I'm talking to them I want to pull it up on Google Earth, Google maps. Right. I want to look at similar properties that have sold nearby. I'm going to ask questions about utilities and slope and road access. And he's was like, oh, that's a good one. You know, if there are ways you're going to be like, oh man, I don't know. Was he was pretty expensive. They probably have a lot of restrictions don't they. Or you can say, is it an easy HOA or are they going to let me do camp, you know, RV hunt, whatever. Right. So the other thing I like to do, and we'll talk about this in the workshop, is sometimes they won't give me a number. They just say, just give me a number. And so I approach that a little differently. I'll say, listen, I, I don't know, I don't even know if I want to buy this thing. Right. Like, what's the least you would take? Give me a price range. What would make you happy? What do you think it's worth? Okay. How did you come up with that price? Is that a fair price for this crazy market? I'm just asking a ton of questions. Right. I don't know if this would work, you know, for me, but, like, I don't, I'm looking at sold here. There's some of the properties that sold for five to, you know, 5000, $6,000. That's not that's not going to work probably. Is it. Right. And then so if I still can't get a number from them, I'm going to say something like, you know, I'm looking at this and my offer is probably going to be really low, is probably going to make you really mad, to be honest. You know. But what if what if I'm just saying, what if I were to offer you something like $2,000? What would you say then? Oh, they get mad, they blow up or whatever. I said, well, wait a second. You know, time out. Good thing I didn't offer that then, right? So what do we need to do to get you closer to that number? So it's okay to, like, make fun of yourself or, you know, like, one of the things we have a mutual coach and mentor, Claud, diamond, who talks a lot about sales. And one of the things that he likes to do when somebody, when he when he calls somebody back, he has their phone number and, he says, you know, listen, I, I've got your number here. I have, I have I had no idea how did I get your number or I don't know, I just oh, you know, I'm so embarrassed. I'm sorry. I kind of like, makes fun of himself and I'm, I'm a I'm a dork. Whatever. But that kind of, like, lowers the resistance from the seller. So anyway, there's a bunch of little things like that where, you've got to learn how to talk to sellers, and it really all it is, is it's being yourself. It's being nice not being a jerk and just asking a lot of questions and not chasing them. Right? Because the harder you chase them, the faster they'll run, right?

Ray:  Absolutely.

Joe:  Okay, cool. The other thing we're gonna talk about this is important is making offers. How? How do you make offers? And this is critical because you need to think about and Brant and I do this a lot. You spend a lot of time on this where we look at what can we sell this for quickly in 1 or 2 months, and then we subtract our numbers from there. Ray, on average, what would you say your average profit on a vacant land flip would be?

Ray:  This is my minimum rule is 100% return plus at least $10,000 profit. So I wouldn't do a deal if those two conditions don't fit together.

Joe:  So explain what that means. What is 100% return profit?

Ray:  So, for example, if the, I have to put 10,000 on the land, that return has to be over 100% return on the 10,000 plus, I got to be more than $10,000 in profit. Okay. Yeah.

Joe:  So you're not chasing a deal unless it has a minimum $10,000 profit?

Ray:  Yes. So.

Joe:  And so, we're seeing questions here. Do you always renegotiate the price on that blind offer that you send? Yeah. So and another good question here from Timothy. We'll get to that in a second. One time, Ray, you have this cool story you like to tell where you intentionally sent offers way too high just so that you could get more calls. Was that in Texas or something?

Ray:  I was in Arizona because I had a student trial and challenged me and he said, Ray, you know, offer price is all there is. If you make the wrong offer, you're done. You know, you cannot get deals. I said I'd completely disagree. So I said, it's not cheap, you know, offer price doesn't matter. You just need to send it out to the people, call you and negotiate. Yeah, right. And he said, no, you're wrong. So I said, okay, let's not argue this. Let's prove it right. So we did a experiment in Arizona is very close to Phenix. I said, this is what I'm going to do. I'm gonna offer 20 x of what supposed to be. So not 20% x 20% plus is 20 x. So the land was about, you know, 5000, a 6000. I did crazy numbers like, at least 50 grand for a piece of land that worth 5000. So imagine my return, cause I still get calls every once in a while right now from Dallas. From the first seven days is crazy a hell week. I got, like, 40% callback. I send us 3000 something, offer letters, and, you know, every day I got, like, 100 plus calls. But when they call, I don't even have time to do the negotiation. But just. Did I just tell them one thing? Hey. I'm sorry. I made a mistake on the pricing. The price we can do for this land is far less than the price on the offer letter. That's it. And then I want to listen to their response. Some people say, oh, no problems. Some people say, oh, you know, you gotta do better next time. And there are only a select few said, what's your real offer than what is the right offer? And they're the guy I want to sell. So I bought 11 laws in that county. If I'm that comp from 500 to 1500 each and, some of them and I sold all of them already. So, you know, the price offer on the letter don't matter much.

Joe:  Yeah.

Ray:  But a lot of time when we first started, we really want to get, like an exact formula. We want to not make a many, many mistakes. I have to be right. Otherwise I won't have deals. That's not true.

Joe:  Yeah. Good. So, Timothy, a question from Timothy here was rate. And then the example that we were doing, you wanted to offer $2,000. I wouldn't budge from I went from 9080 500. Would you still send an offer back to me even though my motivation was low?

Ray:  Probably not, because I know right away you're not motivated because by the time frame, you respond to my questions. So here's the thing. Most people don't know what they want. If you ask them, hey, what do you want in life? Most people say, oh, more money, more, you know, health. That doesn't mean anything. It's not specific enough. But most people are pretty much all people. I know exactly what they do not want. And like you said, I want to. There are some kind of seller. They want gave me a price. One way I do is, you know, I can know their price range right away is I would just tell them, hey, if you ask me, you know, I can do like, a thousand if you want. Just say that. Yeah. Joking away. And people who don't give you a number, they will tell you a thousand. No way. And I tell them, hey, I'm just kidding. But, you know, well, the price you would, you would consider. You know, I'm just trying to see what can make a deal happen here. But, like I said, most people, if I make an offer and if they keep silent and think for a couple seconds instead of telling me no right away, they're motivated. Yeah, because. Nowadays people, very few people will tell you, hey, I'm super motivated. Just buy this land for nothing, right? And very few. Yeah. But, if they hear your offer. They don't say anything. That's a clear sign you got motivate other. So don't let them go. Right. If you meet a girl who can cook, don't let her go. Right. So that's the that's the line.

Joe:  Yeah. All right. Or learn how to cook yourself. Right. Sure. Okay. So listen, we've got this workshop coming up August 26th through 27th. How much is this? How much are tickets for this workshop?

Ray:  $500, you won't believe.

Joe:  $500. That's it. And we've got a conference room in Busch Stadium is going to be a lot of fun. We're going to go, actually to watch the Cardinals play that night. We have 1 or 2 private suites. Now, tickets for the game and the private suites. That's extra. The tickets are about 100 bucks, and that includes all you can eat, food and drinks. So we're going to get into our private suite about an hour and a half, two hours before game time. It's a lot of fun just hanging out, networking, talking about real estate, because as we as day one, as we teach this stuff, you're going to have a million questions. And, so we'll be happy to talk to you and chat with you about you and your specific business, you know, at the workshop, but also, in the private suite that we're going to have to watch the Cardinals game, but for 500 bucks and then day two again, we're going to actually do what we learned to do on day one. And the tickets are just 500 bucks. We're going to sell this thing out. I thought we had enough room for 70 people. We actually only have room for 50 because the way the conference room is set up. So we only have room for 50. We're going to sell this out. So if you're interested go to Do Deals workshop.com and check it out. Ray, would you mind if I share this video with everybody real quick?

Ray:  Absolutely.

Joe:  All right. So we did it. I had a video guy who was a friend of mine do a little video of our last workshop, just to get a feel for what this is all about. Check this out.

Video:  Hey, guys. Joe, Brant and Ray, here we are in the middle of this amazing workshop. We're calling it the Do Deals Workshop. We're talking to sellers, we're making offers, we're doing deals. This has been a blast, I love it, I love meeting everybody. It's neat to see Ray and Joe and Brant. I follow all of them. And so to see them in person, I love having a team. The atmosphere at the event has been super collaborative. Ultimately, when you don't have clarity, you have so many things that you need to do your marketing, your mailing, your follow up, your calls, your texting. It's really helpful to come to this kind of thing because once you get clarity, that's pretty much the whole thing. It's the power of proximity. We always do more deals when we're in a room with deal makers, deal doers. Joe sold the land deal yesterday. I got an offer on a land deal. And then Ray also sold the land deal two yesterday. Right? Man. Anytime I can get in the room with these three guys, it's worth it. No matter what they're doing. We went to a baseball game last night, and this guy is on the phone talking to sellers. The fact that they went with us last night to the game, we all got to just kind of hang out. That was just really a cool moment. We are at the Cardinals game right now with all of my friends. Cardinals are up two to nothing. It's been a lot of fun, and I hope that you come to the next event that we're going to do. I want it to gain more confidence and to network and meet wonderful people. And of course, our leaders, Joe and Ray and Brant. That's why we came all the way from Hawaii. I came here with questions and I got all of them answered. For me, just like proof of concept that actually I want to be around people who are doing exactly the same thing. And it's possible. Get started. Don't let anything hold you back and take massive, imperfect action. Like my mind right now, I'm thinking big and I think everything is possible thanks to what I have learned. You're going to walk away doing deals. That's the big deal. It's why we call it the Do Deals Workshop. If you're going to have any interest in coming, can't wait to see you. We'll see you there.

Joe:  Hot diggity dog. Let's do it. Let's go. I'm excited about this. The workshop is going to be a lot of fun, right? I'm always learning something new from you. I'm always being challenged by your boldness and tenacity. And, you keep things really simple. It doesn't need to be complicated, does it?

Ray:  No. I have, very little brain to think a lot of things, you know, but, so let's say boom phase right in, because it's very simple. It's not that hard. There is nothing on top of the land, right?

Joe:  Yeah. All right, let's wrap this up. Any final words you want to say? Let's talk to somebody, maybe. Who? You know, they maybe can't even come to the workshop, but they're interested in doing some more land deals. What would you say to somebody who's beginner in this? And maybe he's a little afraid. They hear you sending, you know, 30,000 pieces of mail and they just get overwhelmed with that. What do you say to somebody?

Ray:  One thing good about landscaping is no matter what your price range, you can do deals from, selective county for example, if you don't have a big budget, I say I only have a couple thousand. You can make it work. First of all, I don't suggest you to quit the job and do that full time yet. You have to have a side saying to give you money, cash flow every single month. So you have this, this mindset of not, you know, rush, when you are in a rush, the seller cancels the first bad and they won't give you a good deal. So you have to have a main job or it's whatever you do to earn money. I use that money as a side thing to do, like landscaping. And, second thing is try to find a colony that fits your budget. One thing good about landscaping is you don't have to just start in Florida, Texas, where the land is very expensive. You can start on the west Coast, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, those land are very cheap, affordable. I bought my first land for 1100. I sold it for 2500. It's exactly what your lesson are. Talk about five acres, no utilities, right? Right next to the mountain out of nowhere. So you can definitely find those market. You know, I'm try to try to flip some and, after that, you can build a confidence and then, you know, it works. You can move to the better markets where you can earn big money is nice. Yeah, yeah. And, I wonder if I can. I just shared a video today in my Instagram. Yeah, I know you read Bible a lot, but if you don't mind me sharing that story, I thought that was super, super interesting for you to talk about it. Talk about Jesus walking on water and then he one night, all his apostles are followers are on this boat. And then Jesus is a walk on water and kind of observing them suffering. So this guys are against the wind. So the ocean is like going crazy in a small boats. And all those people are super afraid. It may not sound frightening for you, but for me, I, I've been to one of those situations where I was in a little boat in the ocean, and it was really scary. And for every normal person is like frightened to death. And, then it came to one important line right there. It talk about Jesus came to them on the fourth watch. So what does it mean? Well, fourth watch is a time frame between 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. right before the sunrise. So Jesus Christ, so I one nights can be divided, divided to four, four watches, so forth. Watch. Second watch, third watch. He didn't come all from he didn't come to rescue them even though he was watching them on the first three watches. He came the last watch. Yeah. So is the same with our land flipping, you know, and, and God has a different way to test everyone, right? So if you, if you, if you feel like you have no money. So I made me a test. And if you have money, you couldn't get ideas. That may be a test. But when he is going to save you is the last minute right before you want to give up. So don't give up after you have the deals.

Joe:  That's really good Ray, I love that. And how can people follow you on Instagram? Where do they find you at?

Ray:  It’s virtual flip land.

Joe:  Good virtual flip land? So is Instagram your main channel that you are most active on then?

Ray:  Yes.

Joe:  Cool. Yeah. So just go to IG, do a search for virtual flip land and you will find Ray. Great. All right. Cool. We got just quick comments here. Yeah. Greg says, Jesus said, I'll meet you on the other side. I watched the same one that also you watch. Was it the chosen episode we were talking about? Okay. All right. Greg. Thank you man. Ray appreciate you. We'll see you guys later. Again, go to do Deals workshop.com. We will see you in Saint Louis August 26th, 2017. Going to be a lot of fun. Appreciate. To you all. We'll see ya. Thanks, Ray.

Ray:  Thank you.

Joe:  Bye bye, guys.