Don’t Let Anyone Tell You “It’s Not Enough Money”

Show Notes

Billboards pay land rent for the right to be on a property. Sometimes that amount is small, based on the projected revenue the sign can produce. But don’t let anyone tell you that even a small sum “is not enough” to warrant their time working with you. In this episode, we’re going to discuss how to sell very rich people on accepting small amounts of money, and why it makes complete sense for a property owner to embrace the incremental benefit of a billboard on their property.

What is The Billboard Mastery Podcast?

Welcome to the Billboard Mastery Podcast, where you will learn the correct way to identify, evaluate, negotiate, perform diligence on, select the construction type, build, rent the ad space and operate billboard signs. And now here is your host – the guy that built from scratch the largest privately-owned billboard company in Dallas/Ft. Worth – Frank Rolfe.

Money is proportional. But don't let anyone try and tell you that even small amounts of money are worthless. This is Frank Rauf. With the Billboard Mastery podcast. It's one of the issues with the billboard industry where you're renting little bits of land from various landowners and sometimes the amount that you can pay them just based on revenue. And the cost of building the billboard or buying the billboard equates to situations where you can't pay them huge amounts of money. It might be 83 bucks a year, which is $1,000 a year it might be 3000. Year in some cases, it might only be a few $100 a year. But nevertheless, there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes some people to try and have their own little ego play will try and shame you on the fact how dare you call me with such a concept, the amount of money is so very low, it's not even worth my time talking to you. That is to say that money is to them in their world, nearly valueless, that they're just so very wealthy, that talking to you about hundreds or 1000s of dollars is beneath them. Back when I was starting out in my billboard career, I was looking for locations along the Trinity River, there was a road there that had zoning for billboards, but not a lot of billboards, I thought, Well, I'm gonna go ahead and see if I can build some billboards along this corridor. And I was I was going to the records of who owned the land, I came upon a prominent name. This was a person who actually owned at that time Republic National Bank, which was one of the biggest banks and taxes. So the person was very, very wealthy. And I thought now this can't be them. That's just so weird. But okay, I'll go ahead and send a letter anyway. And I thought, well, if it is them, they'll never call me because why in the world would they talk to me? I think it was offering like $500 a year. But I sent out my thing. Within a few days, I get a call from this person saying, oh my gosh, are you serious? That's fantastic. Hey, if I get you some other people, would you pay me a commission? It blew my mind. He was one of the wealthiest people in Texas, he was just overjoyed of getting $500 A year from a billboard location. And so excited about it. He wanted to go out and get other neighbors he knew along that street, to also do deals and therefore get a commission on that. Because that's how wealthy people are wealthy people appreciate money. They value money, you may have seen the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, remember that the rich dad is the one who really cared about money. And the poor dad was the one who looked like a high roller, but actually had no net worth. So when people tell me, Oh, $300 $500 $1,000, that's beneath me. Well, they're posers. They're not real. They're not really wealthy people, wealthy people don't look at things that way. Wealthy people look at basically rates of return on their investment. If they own a piece of land, and you're trying to divide it build a billboard on that land, you're gonna pay them money, that enhances the value of their property roughly 10 times the amount that you pay them. So if you give them $1,000 A year, that increases the value of that land by $10,000, if they were to sell it or refinance it, and that's significant money. And if you're paying someone $5,000 a year on a billboard, well, that increases the value of the property by $50,000 on an appraisal, and that's a huge increase. And beyond that, that $5,000 that you pay them that may cover the property tax and may cover the insurance, other costs on that land. Anyway, you cut it, a smart person looks at money coming in on that land, as being beneficial to them. Doesn't matter how much money they have them if they're a billionaire, trillionaire millionaire, it doesn't matter. Money is money. And smart people always realize the value of $1. And they don't just trivially throw it into the dumpster and say, Oh, man money that's so beneath me. Well, no, it's not an it shouldn't be. Now, here's some tips. So to make people feel better about getting smaller amounts of money, the first thing is always talk in terms of the annual amount. So if I was to go to someone and say, hey, I want to put a billboard on your property, and they say, Well, how much would you give me a nice I'll give you $83 a month. That doesn't sound that impressive on the surface. But if I say I'll give you $1,000 a year, which is the same as $83 a month, suddenly there are interested, because suddenly now there's there's there's four digits instead of three. So sometimes you can get way far ahead, if you simply puff up the number based on an annual rather than a monthly amount. Another trick you can do is to go ahead and take it out of their hands and instead, equate the amount of money you're giving them to someone who has no money. So yeah, I know you're super rich. But here's the deal. What if he just gave it all to charity? Okay, well, how would that work? Well,

if I gave you $1,000 a year, let's see $1,000 A year could do many things it could get you Oh, I didn't know he would get your name on the plaque down at the art museum as a contributor. Oh, that sounds pretty good. Or we could go out and get a Christian Children's Fund kid. Those are, what $80 A month. So it would pay an entire kid's cost of living a year, you could raise a kid to maturity, and then just recycle with a new kid. All off this bill word. That right now you have no money coming in from at all. That's another tool to often try and get people who over the hump who say Oh, money doesn't mean much to me to realize there may not mean a lot to them. But it may mean more to others who don't have as much money. Or you can try and spin it that is something they can use for some other hobby they have of some type. So if you're gonna pay someone $4,000 a year for the Billboard, and they say, Oh, $4,000 means nothing to me. Well, how about this instead? How about I you just count this as your special slush fund to go to Las Vegas every year? Hmm. Okay, that sounds interesting. Or tell them to contribute it to a family member who's not doing as well as they are. A lot of times when people tell you this nonsense of money is beneath them. They're wanting you to stroke their ego by saying Oh, yes, I know. It's not. That's what's important to them is they like the affirmation that they're wealthy enough to tell you the money means nothing, even though when money often does mean a whole lot. So instead stroke their ego and say, oh, yeah, no, I know, it isn't anything to you. I know that money is valueless to you. But there's many others who could really use the money. And if you can tie that into something that really strokes their ego yet again, just as donating that to a worthy cause where they're going to get invited to parties or people sending them letters thanking them for giving money. Now you found a way to really break the ice. Let me also tell you that those people who used to tell me Oh, no money doesn't mean anything to me. I would kind of track and follow them over time and see what happens to them. I remember sitting in the office with one guy was he was just adamant, oh, I would never sign a contract for that low amount of money. It's not worth my time to even read it. It's just a waste of my time. Okay, I followed after that guy. What happened to that guy, he went completely bankrupt, lost everything. Why? Because he was full of nonsense. He wasn't looking at things from a mathematical perspective based on rate of return on his investment. Instead, he was just on a big old ego trip and in the end, said he wasn't did not make good business decisions based actually on business on making money. The whole his whole world blew up on him. The bottom line to it all is ignore people who tell you that money doesn't mean anything. Ignore people who tell you that the amount you're proposing for your billboard is just too tiny and too small and too far beneath them. Instead, stroke their ego if necessary, tell them you know, you're right. I'm sure it is to you. But let's find a way to to police this in the hands of someone who needs the money. Let's find a way to allocate this to someone who isn't rich. And you're gonna find at the end of the day, when you've talked to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of landowners over the years, that all of the good ones the smart ones are successful was the richest ones in the world. They're just as excited about $100 as you would be. This is Frank Rolfe, the Billboard Mastery podcast. Talk to you again soon.