Join us for a special rerun of an engaging interview with successful Land Academy members Karl and Sam Lathus in episode LA 1965. Today, you’ll uncover their inspiring journey and learn the secrets behind their land investing triumphs. Looking to connect with like-minded individuals? Explore our vibrant Land Academy member Discord at https://landacademy.com/discord/. If you want to join our thriving community or have any questions, feel free to text us at 480-530-7383. Don’t miss out—tune in now for insights and inspiration!

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Interview with Successful Land Academy Members Karl and Sam Lathus (ReRun) (LA 1965)

We have Karl and Sam from Central Western Chicago.

We are the first rural community South of Chicago. As everyone knows, the North side of Chicago, if you’re not familiar with it the downtown area are beautiful place to be. The South side of Chicago is where you hear a lot of those statistics from.

We are further than that.

We live in a farm community, but I could be downtown Chicago in about 40 minutes from where we’re at. 

We wanted to have you guys on the show because you’re pretty active in Jill’s Clubhouse event, every other week she does it at 1:00 Pacific Time and then is active on the Thursday call. You’re active in the community and a Career Path alumni with some pretty apparent success. 

Sam already quit her job. That didn’t take long. 

We wanted to have you on. Maybe you can share some of the reasons that you think you’re having success, maybe a little bit of your background because it’s very helpful for existing members and potentially new members to know about real-world success. What’s the key? Share it with us, please. 

Before Land, I worked for ten years in the corporate office doing accounting. It was a 40-hour-a-week thing, then on the side, I was helping Karl with his two businesses. While doing all of that, I was trying to raise two small kids. There was a lot of time and a lot of pressure. Every time I had a breaking moment, I’d go and complain to Karl and he said, “It doesn’t have to be this way. We can be land investors and you can free up your time.” At first, I thought he was being crazy because that’s how he is then after about a year of whispering that to me, I finally was like, “Let’s do this we took Career Path.” Once I saw the writing on the wall of Career Path, I was like, “I need to quit my job now.” We figured out a good time when it was going to work, and I quit. Now we are full-time land. 

Didn’t you put your notice in before we even finished Career Path?

I gave him a two-month notice because I didn’t want to burn any bridges.

We started this thing. We weren’t even super familiar with Land Academy. We started to understand what was going on, and we became aware of Career Path. We joined up for it. By the time Career Path was over, Sam already quit her career as a CPA at a large chemical company. That’s not to say that we have crazy success. What that says is that what we noticed and what we saw was the writing on the wall. We proved the concept to ourselves, and that’s what we needed.

I’ve been in business for many years now, and I know how businesses work. Through Career Path and stuff, essentially the business, you break it down a lot of, “Here’s the steps. There’s not that many.” I can tell you, there are a lot more steps to running a construction company than there are to running a land company. As we saw that and we were able to prove the concept to ourselves and utilize a lot of her strengths as a CPA when it comes to data analysis and stuff, we realized pretty quickly that, “This is the path that we want to move forward with.” 

There are a lot more steps to running a construction company than there are to running a land company. Share on X

Sam, I know you’re more like me, more technical, and these two are a little bit different, but what is it about Career Path that pushed you over the edge? 

It was the 1st or 2nd class where we were seeing an equity schedule of how little needs to be done in order to make a certain amount of revenue. I was like, “That would take me like three months to make what I’m making at my current job.” It is effort. I still work 25 to 30 hours a week at land, but it’s not the same pressure of like, you’re working hard to make somebody else money. You’re working hard to make yourself that type of money. The hours are flexible. After listening to all that, I was like, “Let’s continue doing this.” It works. It’s great. 

Jill and I have had Land Academy for many years now. There are always 1 or 2 things that push specific people over the edge or on the other side, 1 or 2 things that people say, “There’s no way I can’t do that or I don’t want to do that at all,” but I’ve never heard anyone say equity.

You were showing such a basic example of you were dumbing it down because you can do that. It made much sense. It was a light bulb moment. I’m a numbers person though. I like to see a number of examples, even if they’re basic, seeing how they play out over time. It makes me feel more comfortable dealing with numbers. 

Realistic Investing

It’s been a few months since you were done with Career Path. Have you done a bunch of deals? Is it working out how you wanted? 

Our main goal right now is to build a pipeline. I left my job in July. That’s when we hit the ground running. We’ve been sending out mail weekly. we’ve been getting responses weekly. I feel we are setting ourselves up to be very successful, which is how we anticipated this business going. We have sold some properties and we’re buying properties, but our main goal is as this is a building year, a learning year, and then next year we’re going to continue to build on that, have things in place and then explode with that. 

That’s a great plan. That stuff doesn’t happen overnight. You guys are very realistic. 

That’s what we’ve learned. What we were discussing amongst ourselves was the speed of investing I think needs to be taken into focus. I’ve bought houses, and foreclosures, rehabbed them, and closed on them through the process of buying them, which is a nightmare in itself. Rehabbed them, which is a crazy nightmare and then listed them for sale with an agent. I bought it off the MLS from an agent. Those are my first couple of flips and stuff, but think about how long that process takes. We get numb to that in the land, especially once you build a pipeline because you’re always having something closed once your pipeline’s built. 

At first, it was frustrating. I know that this is the voice of some other people that I’ve spoken to is like, “I want to buy this property. I want to have that money now.” It does feel that way after you get your pipeline built, but the speed of investing is slow, and this is the fastest speed to get, “Go put your money anywhere else and get your money back as quickly and as much money as you do in land. You’re not going to find it.” When you go to flip a house, that’s a quick way to make some cash. That’s a quick 90 days if you’re the best contractor I know, and 90 days is unrealistic. You could completely have your money back, but I do see that you have to build your pipeline if you want to have consistent cashflow. That’s what we’ve continually harped on. It does take a little bit of time, not as much time as anything else. 

Jill and I had just come off of a two-month RV trip. One of the stops that we made was my hometown in Michigan. We met with a bunch of my high school friends and found out where everybody was and what happened in their life. We’re at this age now where most or all of our kids are out of the house and so we can have a good, “What happened in your life?” past-tense conversation. One of my friends inherited a pretty thriving manufacturing company from his parents, took it to a whole new level and then sold it all. He is now an Angel investor. He was asking us about deal funding and how we do it.

Jill said, “We fund a deal for somebody that they bring the deal to us.” A lot of people bring deals to us. We choose the best ones. We fund the deal. If everything goes great, about 30 days, we double our money, or close to it. At least we get a 50% return on it and then I go replace the money. This is a guy that’s ridiculous wealth accumulated and his jaws on a table because Angel invests tons of money in 20, 30 or 40 companies at any given time, 39 of them fail. The one that makes it either goes public and gets a great return. His cycle is ten years. I totally agree with you. We’ve turned deals in two weeks.

We sell on Friday and it’s sold on Monday, and I’m like, “Whoops.”

It’s two weeks since we bought it and we never saw it. I’m not explaining this to you guys. I’m telling the story to the benefit of readers because that’s why you’re here. You know that that’s possible. 

A lot of that came up because we own a rental portfolio. the general rule of thumb with a lot of people is, “You’re going to get your investment back in five years if you’re good at what you do.” I’m at the point now where I went through a big buying spurt and where each one of those investments is essentially being paid back in my mind is full, which is all a paper game. It’s five years to even get the money back that you put into an apartment building for the most part. Tat’s how those deals would be structured a lot of times. When was the last time you had to wait five deals to get paid in land? It doesn’t happen. 

You're going to get your investment back in five years if you're good at what you do. Share on X

It’s like putting a needle in your arm. You’re like, “Now why am I doing that?” I’m sure you guys are having those conversations, like, “Think about how much money we’ve got tied up over here. What we could be doing with it over there.” 

That’s a daily conversation. 

“How fast can we get out?” We’ve done that. That’s one of the nice things too. I like to share with the planet is been there, done that. I’ve worked hard on renovations and come home like a soy mess because you’re around construction, everything and dust and dirt, all for $45,000. Big whoop.

Jill and I did two full renovations, and that was it. We’d made money. In fact, the second one, we never sold it. It was bought for $80,000 and cleaned up for $20,000. It’s worth $500,000. It’s rent spent rented for many years. It’s not like we’re complaining about the money. It is just I hated it so did she.

You have to have a stomach for that stuff. You don’t know what’s coming. It’s true. This is our daily conversation. We’re like, “HGTV makes it look all dreamy. It’s not like that.”

That’s a show. I mean, I don’t mean an episode on this silly show. I made a whole full-blown show about how HGTV is fake news. 

People tell me how much fun it would be to do. I’m rehabbing an apartment, and it is work, “I love demos.” “Do you want to pick up a hammer? Come demo with this. Let’s do that.” You love swinging the hammer in front of the cameras, but you know how much work that is. Most people can’t handle it. 

Demo’s a blast until you demo something and find out there’s black mold in there or whatever. Once you demo it, you find out what’s going on, then your budget changes. Eventually, you stop having a budget and they just want to get the project done.

That’s another thing when it comes to land because you’re in control of everything. If you’re flipping a house and you’re not a contractor, I am lucky, when that budget’s blown, that budget’s blown, and that contractor doesn’t care. You can control everything when it comes to land. I know you’ve been speaking a little bit about doing enhancements and things, but a driveway is never going to blow a budget by $20,000 if that’s what you end up doing, putting a culvert in, and it’s going to be pretty standard. You can control the ship a little bit. If you pay an electrician to go to a house, replace an outlet and before you know, you’re placing a panel, that’s a huge cost variation. That’s not going to happen in the land world. 

When it comes to land, you're in control of everything. Share on X

The Big Picture

Do you think that this sung you much because of that prior life experience that you’re like, “I didn’t know we didn’t have to work this hard?” How much of that do you think attributes to this? You get it. Obviously, you guys quickly got it. You understood it made sense to you. Still, many people don’t understand the one little piece of, “You buy a piece of dirt, you do nothing to it, and you sell it for more. How is that possible?” You guys got it. Do you have any idea why it made sense to you? 

From the data’s perspective, I understood where the data was coming from. I understood how to send out the offers. It made sense like, “That’s what you’re offering these people.” I started seeing common situations that were happening like, “These people inherited it. They don’t want it, and they don’t care how much it’s worth. They want it off their plate they know they have a weird title situation with many people on it,” or some people are desperately in need of the money.

They see this as like, “In 3 or 4 weeks, I can get my money,” and it’s like, “Yes, sign me up. Let’s do this.” Once you start understanding how the data works and how there’s a need for it, you’re helping these people out, then it makes sense that you’re getting it to them as fast as possible and they don’t care what you do with it afterward. If it takes you 1 or 3 months to sell, they don’t care. They already have their money and they’re happy and moving on with their life. 

I told Samantha when we first started this, because I have experience answering phones, I have experience with all that stuff and I was prepared for what the hate is. We love the hate. We laugh so much fun. We’re still answering 100% our phone calls. I told her when it started, it’s like, and I’ve been doing this for years and I thought this for years, “Do you ever see Bill Murray’s Groundhogs Day? Every time you answer that phone, you know that there’s going to be one of many characters they’re going to call you. There’s that happy guy who wants to talk to you, the old guy who hasn’t talked to anybody.”

You could probably nail it down to ten characters, “This character beat me the last time I talked to him. How am I going to approach this guy so at the end of the day, it ends up with me owning the property?” It’s Groundhog Day. You get to practice. Every time they call us, the first time they’re calling either yell at you about your mail or what, they think they’re original. The thing is the ten other people are doing the same thing.

Maybe the first two guys shook me, but you’re not going to shake me after a while. It’s ground practice. We get practice every time. No one out there is original. I have yet to find an original person. They are in their own little ways, but for every one of them, you can put them in buckets. After a while, it’s like, “Don’t yell at that kind of guy.”

That’s hilarious. It’s almost like I want to have little flashcards like the call comes in, I can hold it up like, “It’s in here. You don’t know what to do. The wife just found her husband’s folder. I got that one.” 

We found a county, and I forgot even where it was. It was like everyone who called it was super nice. They were very backhand. We call it the backhanded nice, “Never call me again,” and say something terrible to you and hang up.  You had a great conversation for three minutes and then all of a sudden they changed you and hung up. It was one specific county where we got that same call. I was like, “We got to figure out how to beat that.” 

Isn’t that true?  When we send out mailers sometimes, I’m like, “I want to be involved in the first wave,” because I learn a lot about them. They’re the sweetest people when they’re telling you to bite me or they’re smart like, “These people know what’s going on. They inform me of what’s going on. There’s a new plant or something over here being built that I didn’t even pick up on.” That’s why days on marketers are so low, “We got to change our approach here.”

We have an extra layer of hate in the world right now because of the political climate, COVID and all that stuff. You got to dial up your game a couple notches. I call it putting your thick-skin suit on and then you buy some property. That’s the whole thing.

It’s all the game. In the end the results, the grand prize is land.

I love what Sam says at the end of the day, and I feel like this too, you are helping people. I’m not here to talk anybody out of anything. It’s like, “If it works, great. If it doesn’t work, I wish you all the best. I’m going to answer the next calls.”

We got a thank you card in the mail. It’s crazy. The whole family didn’t talk. They signed a card for us and said, “Thank you for helping us through this because grandma had owned it and passed it down to all these people and they don’t talk we coordinated things and got it done. They all had money in their pocket and they were happy.” We tripled our money on that deal. 

I was going through Discord and putting together questions for the other episodes that we’re going to do. I’ve found an entry in there with you guys about how you got a call from the same person four times. She didn’t remember that she called you the prior three times.

I felt bad for the lady. The second call I was like, “Maybe she’s pranking me.” After the third one, I was like, “She has no idea.” It was like triple landlocked. It was in a flood zone. It wasn’t anything we were going to pursue in the first place. It was only 1 acre. You could hunt it. There was no value to this property. She kept calling back. She called 4 or 5 times. By the end of it, I was like, “We already spoke. We need to not call again.” 

“When you call, someone could take care of you.” 

I’m almost going, “I need your daughter’s phone number because we need to have a memory care conversation.” 

That was the response in Discord. That’s what people said.

You feel like that sometimes, you get to know these people, which is sweet. I’m sure you’ve probably had it not you will, then, “When are you going to be in town because we want to have you over for dinner calls?” Those are the sweetest.

Speaking of daily conversations, what is it like to work with your spouse?

It’s not that bad.

You guys are still young. 

We have two separate offices and there’s a window. I built the offices. We have a separate building even on our property because I am dedicated to the construction company in our offices, and there’s a window in between of them. It almost looks like a drive-through. I put a bell there so I could ring it and she slams that window shut when she’s mad.

Sam’s going to install her own blinds that come down fast. 

I haven’t seen that bell in a long time. 

It’s those metal shutters when you travel on your way. In Florida, they have them. We’ll put those on the inside. 

Do you have to replace the window yet? 

That’s a whole other layer to this. Do you know what’s cute? I’m sure you guys heard this too. People go, “You guys can work together. That sounds dreamy and romantic.” I know a lot of people have come to us and said, “I wish my wife got this as you do, and I would love to do this with her.” I’m like, “Hold on a moment. It’s harder than it looks.” 

We have a lot of rules and most of the time it works. It took us years and years to have rules about when we should be talking to each other and where to work and what we’re doing, what’s okay to talk about and when. For the most part, I think it works. 

There are different processes that we have in place that help us communicate without communicating. We have bins in his office for the construction and real estate rentals. Whenever he wants me to do something, he puts it in my bin. He doesn’t tell me to go check my bin. He doesn’t tell me to do it any time, but I know that that means he wants me to do something with that piece of paper. Communicating without communicating works out good. 

Communicating without communicating works out good. Share on X

We have Airtable for that same thing. We put notes in there and notifications pop up, but you have to play those games. They’re not games. They’re systems. 

That’s a lot of that too. Systems are as important and knowing your lane. I’ll step into Samantha’s lane, to help her. I understand that like, “She’s going to be doing this. I understand my lane. I stay in my lane,” but I we help each other often. If she sees it looks like, “He’s overwhelmed. She’ll take things.” Knowing your lane and staying in your lane as often as possible is pretty important. I used to try and issue checks. I used to try and pay the bills and stuff like that after a while Samantha was like, “Don’t touch it.” 

Knowing your lane and staying in it as often as possible is pretty important. Share on X

“You can’t work on the same deal.” That was one of our rules too. We had to figure it out. He’s like, “I’m helping you. I called the guy back.” I’m like, “Thanks, you undid everything I did and now we’re paying more money for that property.” 

You have to realize, that the only way to do this is to fail at it over and over again, and then try to improve it. Once you realize that the person who’s your partner is better at something than you are and vice versa. I don’t think that all spouses can work together. I think that if you have a spouse who has the exact same skillset that you do, that’s going to be tough. That’s true. If you have a spouse that sucks at everything, they don’t want to do anything at all. They don’t have the same spirit that you do to try to move forward in the world, that’s not going to work either. That describes the vast majority of people. This was not intentional. I found all this stuff out about you long after we met. 

You weren’t dating me to get me into the business.

No, it was the last thing on my mind. Jill is much better on the phone and better with people. I’m better with all the technical, math stuff. I don’t want to discourage people from working with their spouse, but I do think it’s the exception, not the rule. 

It wasn’t an accident with us. We started dating when we were thirteen so we planned out the CPA thing. 

I’ll do the finance stuff. I could handle that. I took all the courses that I needed to. 

I did my homework for me and stuff. 

That is important. One of you has to be able to do math. 

One of us is going to have to be articulate. It’s not going to be me. 

Same here. Anytime anybody asks me something about taxes or how we do this or do that, I’m like, “Are you kidding me? Don’t even go there.”

That’s good too because I need to manage all that. 

I don’t, and I will not fight you on any of that. Before we wrap up, do you have anything you want to pick our brains on now that we got to know you guys a little bit better here? 

I’m sure you can attest to this, and everyone is aware, but we’re going through some market cycle. We’re very excited about that, only because of the fact that we’re younger. This is going to be our very first real estate cycle. It’s interesting to see how to it’s visible. You could graph it. It’s interesting to see and I’ve met a lot of successful people in my life and someone I look up to owns a pretty large company. He’s on the Chicago Board of Trade. He is trade stocks.

I asked him, “When are you going to retire?” This guy is beyond wealthy. He said, “I’m waiting for one more cycle because it is the most fun you could ever have in business.” He’s not out for the money. He’s out for the thrill of it. He’s one of those guys. He told me that right when I started my company many years ago. I’m thinking, “I bet you Ed’s having a great time.” I want to understand cycles like he has. He’s older. He’s seen them. He knows how to navigate the waters and he’s excited about it. I’m excited to start to understand and learn a full real estate cycle finally. 

I’m glad you’re excited. That’s good. 

The cycle is going to be a blast. It’s always so much fun. Buy as much as you can and as cheap as you can, then figure out what to do with it later, as long as it’s an okay property. I don’t think it’s going to hit houses like it did last time, but I think it’s going to be a lot longer than we think. I think it’s going to go into ‘24. It is going to be an acquisition frenzy. If you guys can and I’m sure you will work out the sell side marketing speed thing with a real estate agent or however you decide to do it, you’re going to turn some serious property and probably end up funding other people’s deals if you’re into that.

Buy as much as you can, as cheap as you can, and then figure out what to do with it later. Share on X

Our plan is to we were retooling a little bit this year as we’re moving forward and anticipating that honestly, we’d start getting on the sell side for a minute there, and then we said, “Let’s pull it back a little bit.” We have the ability and the understanding of how to move forward without having to sell those properties to purchase our next. Whether it be through deal funding or through other our own capital, we want to keep moving forward buying as much as possible right now and worrying about selling later is definitely at the forefront of our thought process. 

 It’s great having you guys on. Do you have any advice for new people before we leave? 

 Be patient with the process at first.

It’s fast-moving, but I think that people get blinded by the idea that there is no such thing as an overnight success. People see a final product. If you need to learn how to do your data, that’s going to take you a little bit of time. If you need to set up your systems, that’s going to take you a little bit of time, patience, build it or build it strong and organically. Patience is something that people lack. I do it myself. I’m the least patient person ever. I’m the pot calling Cuttle, black. 

This is probably where I think Sam and I are more alike you two are more alike. 

I’m not the most pasting person they ever watched. Thanks for being on. It was great to speak with you. 

It’s great speaking with you.

We’ll catch up with you and see where you’re then. It’d be fun. 

It sounds perfect.