This is episode number 1967. We are talking about how and where the real money is made with Land Academy. A little bit later on in the show, we’ll talk about reviewing Western Montana as a land acquisition candidate because Jill and I are here for about a week. We’re loving it.

Where the real money is made with Land Academy is in doing one thing really well. Share on X

By the way, speaking of Montana. This is one of the greatest things about what we’re doing. Here we are on the road in our RV. Could you even imagine we woke up, not planned, and we have the Blue Angels literally doing practice maneuvers over our heads? 

I think I was having that exact same thought. 

How lucky are we and we roll into this stuff? 

That’s what it is. We didn’t plan for this, but we’re driving all over the country right now and we’re falling backwards into fun stuff. It’s not all fun. In each episode, we answer questions from our Land Academy member Discord forum. We review land acquisitions from our weekly member webinars and we take a deep dive into two land-related topics, usually by request. If you want a sneak peek of our Discord forum, go to LandAcademy.com. It’s free. It’s in the resources section. 

By the way, don’t forget, too, you can always text us. If you want us to answer your question and you simply want some help getting started in our community, send us a note or text us at (480) 530-7383. We read them all. Your question might pop up here.

Property With A Tower

Let’s take a question, Jill. 

Mike wrote, “Everyone, could any of you guys acquire a 7.6-acre property that looks good, but it has a cell phone/radio tower with an outhouse on the back side of it? The land for the tower takes up about one acre and it has its own access road. The previous owner signed a deal for the tower to indefinitely lease the space for a one-time payment. The tower in the outhouse is what is throwing me off on this one.” 

One of our members wrote in here, so I’m going to read that first, and then we’ll weigh in on it. Dave S. wrote, “Mike, I literally completed a deal very much like this. Mine was about a 6.5-acre property in an industrial park. The property backed up to a creek and the rear third of the property was actually in a floodplain. The tower and the outbuilding took up a much smaller footprint, maybe 100 to 200 square feet in the back left corner of the property.” 

“The right of way went along the board of the property and to the rear, so it didn’t impact any use anyone would have for the rest of the property. The guy I bought it from had agreed to the same right of away in perpetuity for a one-time payment.” Brilliant, by the way, these cell phone guys. “I’m going to give you $50,000 and you’re never going to charge me again.” That’s a whole other thing. 

They learned. I don’t want to interrupt you, but they learned from the outdoor advertising billboards, the mistakes that they made, by paying for that stuff forever. 

“Long story short, I had multiple offers the day it was listed and that’s because I priced it way below market value. The buyer I ended up selling it to make some noise about the tower, but it was more like he was trying to find out every last detail rather than trying to get out of the deal. He wanted to know what he was getting into. I totally get it. I bought it for $46,000, listed for $199,000, and ended up selling it for $195,000.” If your numbers look good, do the deal. I was going to say that anyway. Don’t you agree?

This is how many years now. If the numbers are great, if you’re buying a piece of property for $50,000, selling it for $200,000, it’s probably worth it. If it sells that fast, it’s probably worth a lot more than that. The good news is that, and this is ironic, the cell tower itself may be seen as a reason why they’re getting the other part of the property so inexpensively. It’s all about buying it super cheap. 

All these numbers make sense to me, too. Think about it. If you have not walked a five-acre property in a while, you should. 

It’s massive. 

It’s good. Now you’re seeing these are 6.5 and 7.5- acre properties. We’re still ending up with a good five-acre chunk of land. That’s plenty of room to do things with. 

In Discord, you should go look at it if you would like to. It goes on. Everybody weighs in because we all get properties back from our mailers that there are cell towers and that’s not going to change. 

Not always.

It’s only going to increase. Almost always, they’re a great deal. A lot of times, there’s a monthly revenue stream that’s coming in, which is even better. 

Here’s the other thing, too. This is for you to know about the mentality of these sellers. They already cashed in. They’ve already got money in their heads for the property. That warms them up to take a so-so offer to you. Maybe in Dave’s deal, he’s buying it for $46,000. Maybe the guy already got $100,000 for it. Here’s part of the thinking and I would do this too. I often put my head, I’m the one that’s talking or my team is talking to these sellers. 

Where are they coming from? This guy already got some money for the property. He’s already feeling good about it. He already invested in the property with that one cell tower sale before Dave got to him. Now, when Dave gets to him and he offers $46,000, the guy’s like, “I already cashed in. I’ll take another $50,000 for this property and walk away now. I’m done.” Dave got a great deal. 

We had a deal like that on our Thursday weekly member call where it was deforested. Same situation, same economic situation, the person owns a piece of property, once or twice in a lifetime of ownership of that property, gets deforested probably one time. You’ll get a chunk of change first, then you get to sell the land. It’s a good thing. It’s not a hard sell.

Where The Real Money Is

The first topic is How and Where The Real Money is Made With Land Academy. How is it made? More and more, we get questions that are outside the realm of Discord. They’re from people who are in the real estate business or in another type of business where it’s very logical for them to improve the piece of property or the asset that they’re actually going to sell. This is a natural, normal state.

We’re smacked with this message everywhere you look, especially like HGTV or in a manufacturing environment, let’s say, where the basic concept is you buy something and do some cool stuff to it. In the case of HGTV, you renovate a house, God forbid. In a manufacturing environment, you buy 2 or 3 raw material-type components, do a bunch of stuff to those components, maybe attach them, maybe shape them, or whatever ends up happening in a manufacturing environment, and sell for a lot more. The sum of the parts is worth more than the raw material. Plus the labor that goes into changing it. That is not the case when buying and selling land. 

At least the way we do it. There’s money to be made, that’s true, but we want to hit home with the way we do it. 

More and more, we’re seeing people come up into this environment saying, “I can buy this piece of property and this 40-acre piece of property and split it into 19 other separate pieces of property and make some money.” That’s all true, but that’s not where the real money’s made. The real money is made by what the person in question right before this said, “I bought this piece of property for $50,000 and sold it for $200,000.” That’s what we do. 

This came up, for me, I want to talk about this because I have a guy that came to me, not a Land Academy member, who submitted a deal for deal funding through LandFunding.com. If you want to know where you can do this, you don’t have to be a member. They popped this deal in here and it came to me to review. I cannot remember what the acreage was. I’m going to say somewhere around 20 acres. It was 20 to 40 acres. I believe it might’ve been Florida. I didn’t look it up, so I’m going to go from memory. It was like buying for $1 million as a group.

It’s actually not nuts. Everything he’s saying is not nuts. Let me paint the picture here. “Jill, do you want to get in on this deal? Here’s the property. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to put in the roads, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that. We have it all spec’d out. We know how it’s going to go. By the time we’re all done, we’re all going to put in money to make $1.2 million, whatever. In the end, it’s going to be $4 million or something, let’s say.” It is all true. 

However, I have to say, I don’t like that place, I’m not comfortable in that area. I would definitely reach out to people in Land Academy who know that area even better than I do. Number two, it’s the time involved and the work involved. Going from $1.2 million to $3 million in the course of 2 to 3 years by the time you’re all done. That’s the thing, which is very real. However, that’s going to be what all that person’s going to do in that time. “Jill, what’s wrong with that?” 

There’s nothing wrong with that but it’s so much work. I’m going to argue, because I can do it and I can prove it, I can do that in a year and not have to go through all that work. That’s the whole point here. You can work or even the same amount of work, putting in the same amount of hours sitting at that person’s desk. By the way, they cannot do it from an RV because there are times I have to show up out there and look at stuff and make sure the holes are in the right place and things are plowed the way it should be and people showed up. 

There is an extra expense of hiring a foreman to oversee all that, too. There are so many things that are different that you have to think about and plan for to get to the end of that. It doesn’t make sense. That’s where we come back to the Land Academy model. Maybe it’s not going to be as fancy as like, “That’s my subdivision. I named all the streets after my kids,” because you can do that, and I call it instead of Del Webb, it’s Del Jill. There’s a Jack Street and a Jill Street and I put the clubhouse in your name. Whatever I want to do. I’ll be dreaming up. 

All this stuff is possible, you guys, but why? That’s the point. What are you doing? Are you trying to make money here and make your life easy or are you trying to get your name on a building? This is a thing, too. People want their names on buildings. As we’re driving around in these old towns, you look up, and you see Stapleton. Who was Mr. Stapleton who built that eight-story building in downtown buildings in 1890? Who was that person? I don’t even know anymore, but they had their name on the building. That was definitely a thing. 

Here’s the thing. You’re responsible for one single thing to be ridiculously successful in Land Academy. That is finding undervalued land. You need to master that in the true sense of the word. Send a ton of mail out, review the properties, and identify the fact that they’re a great deal. That’s it. That’s all you have to do. I’ve been in an acquisition seat my entire professional career since the very early ‘90s in all different types of capacities.

What people expect from you, if you’re an up-and-coming acquisition person, which you all are, your own up-and-coming acquisition person, is to find great deals, undervalued deals in our case, for land that can be resold quickly without doing anything. Don’t worry about the money, don’t worry about the time, learn how to send out mail, answer the phone, or get somebody else to answer the phone and identify tons of properties that are inexpensive, undervalued, and prepped. You can prep them or somebody else can prep them for resale. 

If in that big stack of amazing deals is a subdividable deal in East Texas or something, I say Texas because it’s easier to subdivide property there than it is, I think, anywhere else in the country, great. Line up that deal. That $1.2 million deal that will be worth $3.5 million in three years, or whatever Jill said, against the pile of deals that you’re going to buy for $50,000 and sell for $200,000, like the cell phone guy earlier. Which one are you going to choose? You’re going to choose a pile of deals where you can do nothing and get money fast. 

There’s one other scenario. You don’t necessarily have to kick that deal to the curb. Let’s think about this here. That $1.2 million deal, what if it’s worth, in its current condition, $2.5 million? Don’t think, “I can do this and this and make my $2.5 million, $3.5 million.” Hold on a moment. What if my $1.2 million, in six months, I can cash out at $2.5 million and not do any of that work? That’s what I want to do and that’s the Land Academy model. 

One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned and continue to learn professionally is walking away from situations where I know it’s going to make a bunch of money. I’ll give you a weird example because Jill and I are driving around all over the country and I’m constantly doing math at these RV parks where we’re staying and how much money they make and what little maintenance is involved and expense and all of that.

Jill and I could go buy 3 or 4 of these things and add 20 more locations to it quickly if we had the right business partner. No, this happens all the time. It happens almost nightly. We have a couple of glasses of wine or a beer. We talk about how great it would be. I do all the math. We high-five each other and then we come to our senses about it and say, “No, stop. All we got to do is continue to buy and sell land.” That’s where the dough is. That’s where the real money is made with Land Academy, doing one thing well. 

That’s so true that we do. Can you imagine? Here’s how we go. “Isn’t this park beautiful?” “Yeah.” “This is all that’s involved. I can do that. We could do this. We could do that. Let’s go buy it, build the most beautiful park,” but then we go, “Who’s going to run it? I’m not going to run it. Are you going to run it?” “I’m not going to run it.” “Now we need a manager.” “Great. Who’s going to manage the manager?” “I’m not going to do it. Are you going to do it?” “I’m not going to do it.” That’s how it goes.

That’s a pretty extreme example, but we come up with products specifically within Land Academy. We’ve identified this situation, let’s say, in the Southwestern part of the country where there are specific types of data that are more available than the Northeast. “We should do this product. We should put it all together. We’ve got staff in place to do it,” and then we come to our senses and say, “We should just continue to buy and sell land.”

I’m going to argue, this is my final point, that we have gone there. One of the values and reasons that you’re following us and one of the reasons everybody’s in Land Academy is because we have, since the ‘90s with him, and then combined probably floating into 17,000 transactions. These are not our members. These are our transactions, by the way. Somewhere over 16,000 transactions. We’ve done it. 

We’ve done it right and wrong. 

The niches that we’re talking about, these little offshoots. We’ve gone there so many times and at the very end of the day, we come back to land, we come back to our very simple model because you could work as hard as you want or as little as you want, create the life that you want, and I’m telling you, buying and selling land the way we do it has always kept food on the table. I never worry about it. 

Career Path And Signature Blocks

Let’s take a look at one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar. 

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Thurston County, Washington. Price is $24,000. They think we can sell it for $160,000 to $180,000. Those are my kind of numbers. That is not one I would kick to the curb if you submitted it to me to deal with funding based on that initial criteria and you have under access. We’re good, two acres. The current owner purchased for $150,000 in 2008. The previous guy bought it for $80,000 back in 1996. 

Next to train tracks and the H ways across the street. It’s two acres, though. Partially cleared electricity to the line includes a well and septic one, one of the last vacant lots in the neighborhood. He listed it for $215,000, but he took it off the market after 82 days. Based on this, my agent recommends $160,000 to $180,000 for a quick sale. Has potential gopher soils, like most of Thurston County. It would require a gopher survey for permitting, as most projects still go forward, even if gophers are found. 

It’s a good listing, too. 

Let’s go look at it. Do you have a minute to put the property address and find the posting?

Yeah. 

It will tell us a lot right there. 

Old for $153,000, relisted for $215,000 a lot of years later. This is the worst listing I’ve ever seen. 

What’s the story? There could be more pictures. I’ve noticed on Realtor, there might be more pictures. It’s how many that pulled in. It used to be a manufactured home in a large shop, which used to be a church. That’s why we have that stuff in place. He will let this go for $24,000. I have nothing, but I would probably do that. Thank you, Carl. All right. I know if I click on some of them, they’ll have more photos. I go to old sites.

I would buy this someday. I wouldn’t even hesitate. If there used to be an old structure on it, then that clears up use for me for the most part, unless a lot of things have changed.

What’s the story? 

He has no issues with gophers. Gophers don’t stay in one yard. If you’re feeling concerned about it, then you open escrow, tell them you need 20 or 30 days to check it all out and make sure it’s okay. This property has acreage for the area. Let’s go through the A’s. Acreage, yes. It has complete access. 

I’m looking for something wrong. I’m like, “Hurry up before this guy changes his mind.” 

Let’s say it all goes wrong. I sell for $80,000. I would love to do this deal with you. Just let us know. 

I’ll take on the gophers. I’ll go kill them myself or move them. I’ll extract them and I will lovingly place them somewhere else. 

She’ll infest some other city. This is a stand-up double. 

I’ll drive them down the coast. 

This is a fantastic deal. 

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Career Path is coming up, Jill.

Yes, it is. I’m so excited. Career Paths 7 and 8. Our last two are coming up. Where can you get the details? Go to LandAcademy.com. Look under programs. You’ll find it. It’s Career Path. We have two dates. We’re going to have Wednesday and Saturday sessions. You can flip-flop around, depending on what is easy for you.

It’s the first time we’ve ever done that. Every session, it gets better. We are always coming up with new things and ways to look at stuff and new tools, resources, and things to make your life as an investor faster, easier, and more efficient to make more money because we’re doing it right here with you. That’s the thing about us, too. We are and always will be land investors right there with you. If you need it, we need it. We’re here to help you. 

Career Path is a blast. There are a lot of successful people in there. There are also very brand new people. It’s a two-way street. I learned a ton, and Jill learned a ton. Hopefully, everybody who joins Career Path is in some place and they want to be better. They want to do more deals, make more money or address that topic directly for eight weeks straight. Let’s take another question posted by one of our members on the Land Academy Discord online community. If you want to sneak peek, go to LandAcademy.com. It’s free. 

Sid wrote, “I’m in the process of buying a property in Texas that is owned by two sisters. I sent out the standard Land Academy purchase agreement and both sisters signed. I opened a title with a local company and then I received a call from them. They said that the purchase agreement was okay, but it was not an executed contract unless all three parties signed it. I made myself a signature block, so I signed it and resent them. Everybody’s happy, and we’re moving forward. I know that the ABUP process is correct for house purchases in Texas, but this is a first-in-the-land business. Have you seen this before, and should we add a buyer signature block going forward?” It should already be on there because I agree with that.

There’s an electronic signature the way we do it and how I think most people do it. If you follow the Offers 2 Owners way, you’re doing it correctly. There’s a signature block for you as the buyer already when you’re sending an offer out and 9 times out of 10 for us, maybe more than that. The seller will sign it and send it back and it works. More and more and more, and this is the real reason I put this question in here. Title companies are telling you, “We need a little more from you.” You can fight it, which I do not recommend, or you can say, “I’ll sign it the way you’d like me to sign it and send it back.”

My assumption is somehow, the template that he was using or wherever he got it, maybe he got it from somebody else, and accidentally deleted that part. Ours should already have the signature on there. What you’re doing, if you use our regular template, your signature’s already on there. They execute it and send it back. Now you have all three, you’re good to go or you have both, whether it’s you or one person. Minor little tweak. Isn’t it great, though, too? The nice thing is most title companies are cool about it. You’re like, “No problem, I’ll do a quick docu-sign or whatever it is.” That’s fine, too. 

Western Montana Land Acquisition

You could even pile it all in the same paperwork that you send the escrow company every single time. The second topic is Reviewing Western Montana as a Land Acquisition Candidate. Jill and I are in western Montana midway through our stay here. I’m noticing that there are two very distinct parts of Montana and there’s always different stuff everywhere we go. Obviously, to travel back west from Michigan, we had to cross a lot of agricultural property. Until we got here, I didn’t see much agricultural property at all. What I see is ranch land, recreation land, infill lots, and very sparse out little towns. 

The railroad was built and ran through the center of the country to haul agricultural stuff and supplies back and forth from each part of each side of the country. There are a lot of little towns. I kept wondering why every single one of them was ten miles apart. I obviously looked it up and realized that way back in the original steam engine days, not the cold days, but the steam engine days for trains and locomotives, they needed to fill up every 10 miles. The country was developed on that model. Every 10 miles, there’s a little town. That’s not the case in Montana. I’m guessing, but by the time that the West was developed the 10-mile town to 10-mile sparse out town and, let’s say, Nebraska was unnecessary. 

It’s easy to do ten miles when it’s flat. It’s hard to do ten miles everywhere like, “This is a spot in the Rockies. We need to stop and put something.” That is not going to happen. 

You have bigger properties here. You have much larger ranch-type properties or recreational properties, acreage-wise. You have many fewer small towns. These small towns they’re not all beat up and left for dead like they are in the Midwest. It’s one of the advantages of driving around the country and looking at all this stuff. 

You’ve got these, for lack of a better description, cute little towns left that are actually thriving. Now I believe, and here’s my point to all this, reviewing Montana as a candidate, these little towns, and it’s not necessarily Montana specific, are setting themselves up to be, they don’t know it yet, amazing Zoom town locations where you can set up shop from a real estate standpoint or anything. 

If you work on the internet all the time, as we do, and you do because you’re buying and selling land, these are great acquisition candidates that need to be presented once you buy them. These properties need to be presented as this is the up-and-coming thing from a Zoom town standpoint if it’s an infill lot. If it’s a recreational property in Montana, that speaks for itself. Listen, I would sit here and tell you if I believed it, that Western Montana sucks as an acquisition candidate, but it doesn’t. I think it’s got some huge merit.

That’s great, Jack, and I 100% disagree. 

Do you really?

Yeah, let me tell you why. 

Seriously? 

Totally disagree. 

How long have you been holding that up? 

Just came to me. It’s one of those episodes. Here’s the deal. Montana sounds all dreamy. Got it. It’s Yellowstone. Got it. What else have we got going on? It’s a non-disclosure state. That makes it even more dreamy. Like, I’m going to uncover this. These are all things that go through our heads. I’m going to kill it here and nobody’s doing it. I’m going to do it. I’m going to make so much money. 

These are the reasons why. Here’s the thing. I thought all that too, until truth time, we were driving into Montana. I’m looking at what Montana is all about. I’m looking at population. I’m looking at the resources. I’m looking at the industries. I’m looking at growth or not growth. I’m digging into this stuff. I have to say, for me, it’s not there yet. 

The little towns in Montana are little towns. They have less than 10,000 people. That’s little. Where’s your buyer’s pool there? That’s not enough for me right now. When you think about the biggest town we’re sitting in right now, I want to say 60,000 to 70,000 people, if I remember correctly, in the 2022 census. That’s still a small town and a lot of it is not growing, there’s not new companies coming in, there’s a heck of a lot of trucking and things moving through here, that’s for sure.

It’s reflected in the price of the properties here. We talked about that the other day as we were driving around. It’s not expensive. How am I going to make money here? Would someone want to buy this? It’s not that it’s not an opportunity, so I don’t mean to totally poo-poo your thing, but when you stack it up against some of the other parts of our country, it’s so much easier to make more money faster than I would target. It pains me to say that because I do have a dreamy, heartfelt appreciation for Montana. 

I should open with this. It’s got to pass the red, green, yellow test and there are places in the state, like every state, and ZIP codes that are going to pass it, and zip codes that aren’t. You have to choose whether or not you’re going to follow that pattern or if you’re an experienced land investor, veer from it. I know that Montana, from a ranch standpoint, that it sells well. Mostly to our friends from the West. I’m not allowed to talk about her anymore on the air. 

I don’t know. It’s going to be interesting. We’re going to get to know more of Montana and then we’re going to go in some of the other states around here, too. I’m excited. 

Let’s take a look at another one of our favorite land acquisitions from the weekly Thursday member webinar. 

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Would you do this deal? Doherty County, Georgia, 13.3 acres, access yes, accepted offer price $70,000. Realtor things could sell up to around $160,000. He’s thinking I’m going to be conservative and say $140,000. I like those numbers. Paved on both corners. Good high ground, worry about the flood. No HOA. Power, water, and well installed. Several subjects take in the front, able to support three or four mobile homes. What’s going on here, you guys? These are amazing. 

It’s zone commercial C3. The remaining single-family on the property is not owned by the seller. The mobile owner pays a small fee to park on the land. Other improvements include an installed driveway on the Northwest corner. See it, that’s nice. Up there, I think that’s part of it. The Northeast portion of about one acre of the land was graded and graveled twenty years ago and uses a lay-down yard at one point. Of course, you’re probably not yet dealt with. I would like a partner with someone who can support the financial side as an experience. Where are we again? 

Georgia. 

It’s that sign. We’re done with a mailbox. 

It looks great. I don’t see moments, but this could be a lot of very different years. 

Let’s see when we have this stuff on it. I like that.

I think there’s stuff on it now, Jill. This is 2019. It happened since then. This is 2014. There are the models. They’re managing utilities somehow there. I don’t know if that was in compliance or if this part of Georgia even requires it. Comes down to the money for me. It passes all the A’s with flying colors.

Those are homes over there.

You’re looking for sales data and ownership data.

There’s D3. 

It passes all my tests, all of them. The question is, can you sell it for what you think, which is buy for $70,000 and sell for $160,000? 

Even $140,000. 

Even $100,000 or $120,000. I’m going to take a look at the property right across the street. There’s no data. Sometimes you can see recent sale information, the adjacent property, which is some type of functioning recycling situation. Sold in 2008. That’s a good sign. That’s adjacent. Here’s a house across the street. What’s this worth? Going to try to get a feel for any type of value for the current house/commercial property at all. 

That’s listed or not listed and then we’ll go into Zillow and see. $117,000 for a three-bedroom house on a lot of acreage. Three acres, this is 13 acres total. That’s working in your favor. This is what I would do, Parker. I would go to LoopNet here. Here are a few listings. These are land listings in the same ZIP code. In fact, here’s that same one. I would contact one or all of the listing agents here. I would say, “Please give me a price on this property. How fast can you sell it?”

Whether or not you’re an escrow, let them think you are like, “I’m about to close on this.” That’s all you got to say.

Just justify that price really strong. Hopefully, you can get a listing agent out of these conversations and LoopNet, a good one that you all click with. This is a great piece of property. 

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Inspirational: Strong Women

Jill, you have something inspirational to share. 

This is going to be a little bit of a controversial episode for us. I love it. As I was thinking of this topic, Jack very nicely said, “Do you need to talk to me about something?” You came to me like, “If you want to say something, let me know,” because I started my sentence with, “Here’s how men think about us sometimes.” He’s like, “Where are you going with that?” I’m like, “I’ll save it for the show.” 

Here’s my inspirational thing I want to talk about for a moment. It’s still going on. It still happens that a lot of people, mainly men, are threatened. I see them being threatened by strong women. I thought this would be done years ago. I thought that we’ve changed from the ‘50s and ’60s, obviously, but I’m still coming up against whether is she strong or is she bitchy? Depends on whether you’re asking a man or a woman. Not kidding. Feel free to weigh in here and feel free to ask me. Ask me questions. 

A lot of people, mainly men, are threatened by strong women. Share on X

Let’s take the gender out of this. We can get back to it, but let’s take the gender out of it for a second. I think that I agree with you. There’s a very fine line discussion for men, too. Are men being a dic* or are they being a leader? I think that there are a lot of things that can be misconstrued by people who believe they’re receiving negative stuff. Women are receiving some type of response that they don’t want because they’re women. I’m not talking about you specifically at all. Take a step back for a second and consider this. Maybe what’s going on and how you’re not being received by whoever might be doing this, your perception is because you’re having a bad day.

Great, turn it around that it’s the women’s fault.

No, I took the gender out of it. 

We’re too emotional, then? 

Let me give you an example. This is not about women. We’ll talk about women in a second, but if you are having a tough time communicating with the checkout person in the grocery store, my first reaction is, “What am I doing wrong? Am I not smiling? What am I doing that’s wrong?” That’s my first response. 

Sometimes you can rectify it quickly, smile a little bit more, tell a joke, thank the person, and all of that, or what could be going on is that person’s a whack job, and they shouldn’t have that job anyway, or they’re having a bad day, or it’s them, not you. I think a lot of stuff can be solved right there. I think that if you’re not getting the response out of somebody that you expect or want, look inside yourself. If it’s not solvable, I’m probably 50/50. Start looking at the person saying, “I’m not going to use that check outline anymore.”

Here’s the reason I want to talk about this. I appreciate your story and your input, but for me, it’s bigger than that. I am here right now, sitting next to you, to promote women land investors. Actually, any woman in business, by the way, but specifically, what I know the best is women land investors. What I come across a lot of times is pushback. I get it sometimes, no offense.

You can stop saying no offense. I don’t take offense to any of this. I love that we’re talking about it and I’m sure that you’re right. 

This is stuff that we talk about. This is why I have the Land Academy Ladies group. If you’re a struggling woman land investor and you’re like, “Yeah,” then join our group, by the way. 

How many times have you sat in this environment and said, “If you’re a woman and you’re answering the phone, you can disarm angry sellers much faster and probably get a deal done faster if you’re a woman.”

True. A thousand. Why? 

How is that a threat? 

Do you know what it is? It’s strong women are still getting a bad rap where men will look to people like Steve Jobs or somebody like that. A crazy, maybe even Elon Musk rolling in and firing people and he’s celebrated. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong here. I’m saying it’s a different reaction than if it was a woman. I bet if it was Stephanie Jobs or Elania Musk, fill in the blank. 

Is that a real person? 

No, I’m making it up. If a woman came in, bought X, and started firing everybody, I think it’d be a different thing. I still see that and I still feel it because, in our company, I love our company. We have a strong female-to-male ratio of people within Land Academy. I’m talking about our staff, not only our staff actually, so personally, I feel good about that, but also our member community.

That’s not intentional, by the way. 

We pick the best. 

The people that they’re the best people for the job. 

Correct, but there are still times that come up, and mostly me. I want to speak out and share a little bit of my truth so other people know that you’re not nuts, that it still goes on. It probably always will go on but I wish I could make people stop from that pushback, that you’re being too hard or you need to reword this or something because why? Things like that come up. Things may be reworded or rewritten or told a different way. I’ve never heard that being asked of a man. 

That’s hilarious, Jill. 

Do you think that happens? 

Yeah, men don’t talk about it like you’re talking about. Men reword and represent themselves constantly or they don’t succeed in whatever they’re trying, but I can speak personally. I am conscious of how I deliver a message and why and constantly rewrite it in my head to present it better for the recipient. It’s very often. In the grocery store example, it’s not received well and I am consciously immediately changing that to make sure it all works. I am not pushing back right now. I’m not saying that what you’re saying doesn’t exist. I’m sure it does. I’m saying I wonder if you could use it so that you’re better for it. 

That’s what we talk about behind closed doors at Land Academy Ladies. 

What’s the problem as long as you get what you want at the end?

No, we don’t. That’s the sad reality. If you want to know, we go, “Never mind. That’s wasted.” That’s what happens. That’s the 100% truth. 

Are you personally not making enough money or having leadership? Hold on a second. Do you have a leadership role that you want within all of our companies? 

No. Actually, take it back. I do. I’m speaking for all women. Why are you poo-pooing me? 

No, because if you received and are receiving the feedback that you want, the money that you deserve. 

Not necessarily the feedback that I want. Honestly, that’s where this came up. It still happens. 

Maybe you should put yourself in a role model position because you’re getting what you want, which is what I heard you say. You are a strong woman and you own half of everything and that’s the way it should be. 

That’s what I’m talking about. Thank you for your input.

You’re welcome. 

I’m trying to talk to other women right now who are reading and thinking about this or doing this and their partners are involved or not involved. It still goes on. I know it, I recognize it. You know it, you recognize it. There are still way more men in this environment, but I have noticed a lot more women coming forward and I love it. I hope it’s because of us and everything that we’re doing. I want to keep getting this message out there that I got your back, man, woman, whatever. Whoever you are, we need to be helping each other. I’m going to leave it at that. 

The message I got out of this is if you’re a man and you’re a male investor, you got it made, pal. You don’t have to work at anything. You can snap your fingers and everybody around you is going to do what you want them to do. Are you so much further ahead than your female counterpart? Congratulations. 

Here’s your coffee, just the way you like it with arsenic. Jack, what have you got to share with us? 

Questioning Everything

My topic is called Questioning Everything. Jill and I, like I said 50 times in the show already, we’ve been traveling around the country and it cracks me up as a source of sad humor about how everyone is going through the motions. They’re not questioning anything. I had this original thought because I’m driving the RV around and we’ve got, at times, several hours in the car alone with our thoughts and I’m watching the traffic differences between Sunday at 4:00 PM and Monday at 10:00 AM. 

The roads, no matter where you are in this entire country right now in the summer, are packed on Sunday and there’s nobody on the road on Monday because everybody’s racing back to go to their stupid job. My initial reaction to that is if you want to have all this fun in your RV with your family, why don’t you sit down for a second, maybe hopefully with your spouse, as long as she doesn’t think that you’re threatened by strong women? Sit down with your spouse and try to figure out what jobs you can change personally or what changes that you can make so you don’t have to do this. 

I don’t think there’s enough questioning of everything. If you’re not happy or you have to travel on Sunday, you don’t want to, and go back to your job, you should question that. The other thing, too, which is shocking to me, is the seasonality of the places that we’re visiting. The net effect of that, we spent a month in Northern Michigan, which is fairly rural compared to the rest of the state. 

Rural but beautiful. It ends up being the summertime paradise and frozen in the winters. It cuts off the economy. You’ve got four months of economy. We live in Scottsdale. I’m used to saying, “These tourists are here again. It’s March. Everybody wants to watch baseball. I cannot stand it.” I reflect that in all the people that we come across like, “We’re the tourists here, sorry in advance.” They’re like, “No. We make all of our money in four months and then we don’t do anything for the rest of the year.” 

They’re not saying that in a positive way. They have a four-month-a-year economy. Maybe you should question that. Here’s a great example of somebody who made this work for them. We stayed in a highfalutin RV park in northern Michigan, which was very upscale. They encourage you to get your rig detailed whatever you want. The guy’s got Florida plates on all of us. He’s got probably six rigs in that whole park cleaning full-time inside and out. I got to talking to him. I’m like, “What’s the deal with Florida?” 

He’s like, “There’s a couple of these parks like this down in Florida. During the other off-season, during the winter, everybody goes down there. We clean there. we come back up to Michigan and we clean there.” He’s created for himself a twelve-month economy instead of being stuck to the weather or tied to the weather. He questioned it, made some changes, and dude is smashing it. I did the math on that. He’s a super nice guy. I don’t remember his name. I think it was Eric. Anyway, please question everything if you’re not happy, especially if you’re a woman. 

I do. Don’t worry. I’ll question it for you. Jack loves that about me. 

See how quiet she is during this stuff? 

Why, what? 

No, I don’t know.

I was wondering that. I know. I was letting you go. 

Here’s another thing. If you’re threatened as a woman or you’re not being taken as seriously as you think you should, you’re questioning that. I think that’s fantastic. As a strong woman, I think you’re capable of changing some stuff. You don’t have to continually hang out with men who don’t value you for who you are and what you’re capable of. That includes you, Jill. 

You’re capable, as a strong woman, to change things. Share on X

By the way, don’t forget, you can reach us for questions or for help. If you want to get involved and learn more, send a text to (480) 530-7383. 

Join us next time for another interesting episode. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.