Land Investors Member Eric Ko and his Success
Transcript:
Jack Butala: Jill and I interview Land Investor member, Eric Ko.
Eric Ko: Hey, Jack.
Jack Butala: Hi, Eric. How are you? Good, you know you have both of us. Jill's here. She happened to be in my office, so she jumped on.
Jill DeWitt: Hey, Eric. How are you?
Eric Ko: I'm doing well.
Jill DeWitt: Good. Thought I'd say hi and just listen in the beginning, if that's okay with you.
Eric Ko: Yeah, no of course! Finally get to talk to you in person, I guess, right?
Jill DeWitt: Thank you!
Eric Ko: Yeah. It's good.
Jill DeWitt: How's everything going?
Eric Ko: Everything is good. To be honest with you, I was doing pretty okay, and I felt like I kind of lost a little momentum because I was busy. I have another business.
Jill DeWitt: Okay.
Eric Ko: My coffee business, so I'm starting that, too. I was a little busy doing that, and then kind of lost momentum a little bit. Now, I'm kind of back, and I wanted to move forward with it and start doing it again.
Jill DeWitt: Cool! How far did you get before? Did you flip some properties? Did you-
Eric Ko: Yeah. I've done about 16 deals, about five cash and 11 terms.
Jill DeWitt: Wow.
Eric Ko: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Wow, man.
Jill DeWitt: Good!
Eric Ko: Yeah. Thank you. I was actually pretty surprised. To be honest, I was a little skeptical at first. I bought the [inaudible 00:01:22] and I just followed everything, and I worked.
Jack Butala: Hey, can we make this a podcast?
Eric Ko: Uh, yeah, you can.
Jack Butala: I hope so.
Eric Ko: I don't know if I'm good enough to-
Jack Butala: Don't mention any county names or anything, and I'll just drill some questions. That's a fantastic story.
Eric Ko: Sure.
Jill DeWitt: I love it. I was going to ask you that, Eric. I was going to say, "Are you one of those guys that are like, 'Hmm, does this really work?' And then the next thing you know, you're like, 'Wow, it does work!'"
Eric Ko: Yeah. It's good. I was going to get into flipping houses and stuff, and my wife's uncle, he's been doing that for the longest time. He's more specialized in the back taxes and all that kind of stuff. I've done it in a couple of counties before, and just a lot of work. I spent like 23 hours on the list, and I only got maybe one or two properties that I really wanted. It's a lot of work upfront and not so much on the return.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah. You heard our people. A couple times ago, Dave V in our group, he said, "I never lost 20,000 dollars on a land deal, but start doing houses and everyone doing houses, they're not all perfect. A lot of them are really hard, and the return is ... " We did it, too. You know that, Eric.
Eric Ko: We're good in the groove.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah, we tried. I sat there and I really ... That was the defining moment when I really sat and added up all the hours and what I could've been doing.
Jack Butala: Two dollars an hour.
Eric Ko: Oh, wow.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah, and I never really thought ... We had a 45-day move-in walls event, and that was my full-time job.
Eric Ko: Yeah.
Jill DeWitt: While I was doing that thing, I'm like, "This is really ridiculous for this little amount of money."
Eric Ko: Right. I think it's kind of like what you guys were saying. It takes a certain personality. I have a couple of friends here in Las Vegas that does that for a living. I say, "Oh, this is kind of cool." I have no experience in real estate. I never was a realtor or anything, but I kind of liked the idea of [inaudible 00:03:41] investment. Always have been. I just dug a little bit deeper and found you guys.
Jack Butala: Tell us, how long have you been in the business and when did you send your first mailer out? What was the response?
Eric Ko: Yeah, I bought the program, I think it was in August 2016, and took me about two or three weeks to really learn about and go through the whole program,