Looking to transform your land investments without ever leaving your desk? Join Steven Jack Butala and Jill K DeWit in Land Academy episode 1969, where they reveal the secrets to completing land improvements from the comfort of your desk, and why your brand can revolutionize your success in the land business. Discover the strategies that can turn your investments into profit and set your brand apart in this competitive market. Plus, don’t miss out on our vibrant Land Academy Discord community for more engaging discussions. For any questions or to be part of our community, text us at 480-530-7383. Tune in now!

Thanks for listening, and finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

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Listen to the podcast here

Mastering Land Improvements & The Power Of Your Land Business Brand (LA 1969)

This is episode number 1970. We are talking about how to complete land improvements that actually create equity right from your desk. We’ve got a couple of topics. Number one is how to complete your land improvements that create equity from your desk. We’re going to talk about splitting up property, taking one APN, and creating 4 or 5. A little later in the episode, we’ll talk about why your brand is so important in your land business. “Jack, what are you talking about? I don’t have a brand. I’m buying land and reselling it. I’m doing it through a real estate agent on the South side. What am I branding?” We’ll talk all about it.

My original thought was as we creep up towards the 2000 episode mark, I wonder how intimidating that is for other people who are like, “I’m starting a podcast.” Do they even do that now? It used to be a thing for a while. I think it was pre-COVID and then COVID. Everybody’s like, “We’re doing a podcast.” Everybody’s like, “I’m doing a podcast with my mom,” like dreaming up. I don’t hear that anymore. Do you think it’s still a thing? Are there a bunch of new ones? I feel bad. I don’t know.

I don’t think anyone’s intimidated by our show. I’ll tell you that.

Based on the talent that does it.

Based on the content.

Based on age, gray hair, and goofiness. I’m sure you got a lot more you guys can all share.

Funding Partnerships

Each week on the show, we answer questions from our Land Academy member’s Discord forum. We review land acquisitions from our weekly member webinars and we take a deep dive into two land-related topics by popular request. If you want a sneak peek of our Discord forum and I highly encourage you to do this, go to LandAcademy.com. It’s free. It’s in real time and it’s all of our members talking to each other about the deals they’re doing.

You don’t get to see all of it, by the way. You get parts of it that you can see, but it’s cool. Also, don’t forget, if you want us to answer your questions or you want some help getting involved in our community, you could simply send us a text. It’s that easy. The number is (480) 530-7383. My team reads them all and your question might pop up here. Here’s the question. Mike wrote regarding funding partnerships, “I have a few friends with deep pockets. Let’s call them A, B, C, and D.” Isn’t that great?

Deep pockets friends.

Aren’t those awesome? I love having friends like that.

Jill and I, could be E.

We’re E or maybe we’re A. I hope we’re A. Let me add it first. All good. “They want to invest in my land deals.” No kidding, because word’s getting out that you’re doing well. Got it. “How are you structuring deals that include more than one person/entity on the funding side? I’m considering creating LLCs for each of these partnerships, like A and me, B and me, and so on. What if there are two people involved on the funding side, like A and B and me thing?”

This is like a narcissistic nursery rhyme.

This is funny, I know. That made me think of like a Dr. Seuss thing. “Funder A, Funder B, Funder C and me. All get rich.”

That’s the end of the story. “How did that go?” “I structured it all wrong.”

Funder A, Funder B, Funder C, and me.

I structured it all wrong.

I found the deal. It’s a steal.

Made money anyway. I did everything wrong and still got rich.

I got equity for free. I like this. I could totally write this children’s book. It’s a land-flipping children’s book. That’s my new thing. This is what you read to your kids like, “This is what daddy does and mommy does. This is what you’re going to do. It’s called investor. Everybody repeat after me. Investor. Yes, we’re going to learn to write that word before we write our name.”

This is not crazy.

I know a lot of people in the Land Academy who are doing this with their kids, planting the seed. Come on, we know who you are. You have your seven-year-old helping doing stuff, and other people. It’s awesome.

Make your kids lick the envelopes until they pass out.

They’ll never have to do that because they’re learning the right way. Back to the question. He says, “Typically, I would get half of the profit and the partner would get the other half, so 50/50. With two investors sharing 50, do we split it three ways? What are the legal tax implications of any of this, if any? I want to make sure everything is done legally and everyone is protected. Looking for advice on how others are handling this. I’m willing to spend money to talk to a lawyer to get it set up, but what are some ideas going in?” Can I answer first?

Yeah, I have a lot to say.

I have a perfect example of what we’re in a deal right now, like this. I think there are five of us, and it’s our same two-page purchase. Our same two-page is a partnership agreement that you have as a member of Land Academy. Instead of 2 companies on that, there are 5. In that, what we spelled out is each person put in, like if you put in 40% of the acquisition and you put in 20% and you put in 10% and someone put in 5%, whatever it is, that’s the same percentage they get back on the profit side.

That’s number one. It doesn’t have to be that legal. We don’t need LLCs. We don’t need any of that stuff. By the way, some of them are LLCs. In our agreement, it has our LLC name, another LLC name, personal person name, personal person name, and LLC name. We can mix them all together, too, by the way. We have an agreement where all of our names are on the deeds and that’s the right way, too. The final part is written in our agreement, nothing escrow anybody needs to know about this, but this is part of the agreement with all the people participating. Who is calling the shots? It’s basically at our deal. The individual who found the deal as a manager, they’re calling the shots.

I’m guessing we’re the biggest investor. We’re number two there. Anyway, we all agreed that that person and we would call the shots on what we’re going to accept, how long we’re going to let this hang out there, and that thing. All five of you have to be on the same page at the same time and when it sells, then that it’s going to be a nightmare. We have two people calling the shots. However, this person and I, and the manager and I don’t do anything flippantly and we do include everybody like, “Guys, this is what we think. I want to get your input before we do. What?

You lost me at calling the shots.

Do you understand that part?

Mike, this is a very smart question. I know you want to protect yourself and structure all of this correctly, which is very wise. Here’s the thing. Please, this is the whole point of all of this. This is why I included this question among many questions I could have chosen. Every single one of these deals is different, no matter how you try to put them into a box and use the same box or an LLC or structure deal structure for each of these transactions. It’s not going to happen. Jill and I still structure deals with each other based on the circumstances.

For you to have these people in your back pocket is fantastic. For you to want to know what the legal implications are and how to structure these deals is fantastic. To directly answer your questions, there’s no SEC reporting required in any way and I would not, this is my opinion, get a lawyer involved in this because lawyers are a lot less intelligent than you think.

You’re the best person to structure this. You’re going to get a deal in. You’re either going to bring it in by sending out mail or you’re going to get it in from somebody who found a great deal and needs money from you. In general, the partnership agreement that we have works. The variable in that agreement is how the parties are structured. If somebody brings us a deal to fund, Jill and I have separate LLCs. We have one LLC where we’re 50/50 owners and depending on the situation, we may partner with that person with one of the LLCs that we have.

What goes on in the agreement, there are two parties. We call the party that brings it to us, the manager, and the funder, which is what we are, so we’ve got Jill and Jack LLC as one of the partners and John Smith, who brought the deal to us. What you do not want to do, and I want everyone to remember this, is that you never want to do this unless you’re so far down the road professionally that you don’t want to have two people on an LLC.

I was going to bring this up. I know. Don’t do that.

You do not want to do A and me and B in me and any of that. It’s complicated. One of the beautiful things about real estate is that two people, as joint tenants, can own a piece of real estate. I can own joint tenants with the rest of survivorship a piece of dirt with Jill. If I pass away immediately and without action, Jill owns all of it. Unless I stipulate in some crazy way and take title differently so that if I had separate heirs, I don’t want to get into that but this is not complicated, especially with real estate. If it was a company, if you had a metal stamping plant and you wanted a partnership with somebody, you would probably have to be on an LLC with two people. This is real estate. You don’t need to do any of this.

One of the beautiful things about real estate is that two people as joint tenants can own a piece of real estate. Share on X

Don’t do any of that. I agree with that. I was going to bring that up, too. What Jack’s saying is, “You have A, B, C, and D. Three years pass, and you and C, your buddy, and now all of a sudden, it’s only you and C, and you guys decide, “Let’s take this home together. Let’s make an LLC with both of our names on it and then we right off into the sunset,” happily and romantically every day without conflict ever.

What’s going to end up happening is there’s five parties here you and then A, B, C, and D. One’s going to be a dingbat, one’s going to do no work at all, and that would be me. One’s going to do all the work, which is probably you. You don’t want to find this stuff out later and have to undo an LLC, and you guys all own ten properties together. Just deed to the property. Each property that comes in, deed how you think you should deed it.

I appreciate you, Mike, trying to think ahead and be aware of doing it the right way. I hope it’s a relief to know that you’re going too far. You don’t have to think that hard. You’re like, “Good. Dodged that bullet.”

Cost about $50 to create an LLC by the way, in about fifteen minutes in certain states.

I would like to add, before we start the topic, we are entering month four. Right now, as we are recording, and this airs in September 2023, we’re entering month four being on the road together.

Create Equity From Your Desk

The first topic is How To Complete Land Improvements and Create Equity Right From Your Desk. What does that mean? How many people have seen HGTV? HGTV are packed full of shows with people. Sometimes they’re brothers, sometimes their mother and daughter, sometimes they’re married buying a house, and sometimes even knocking it down and renovating it. That’s the improvements all with the hopes of the final product being worth more than the sum of all the parts. In that scenario, you buy a house for $100,000 that’s fallen down, and you renovate it for $100,000.

You’ve got $200,000 into it, you try to sell it for $300,000. Hopefully, the home buyer wins because it’s all decorated pretty and all that stuff. I personally believe that 98%, or maybe 100% of the numbers that they share on their shows, is complete garbage. I don’t believe any of them because Jill and I have renovated houses, and with some stroke of massive luck, we’re still together because it’s awful. Many people join Land Academy because they’re recovering house improvers. What’s the answer? The answer is to buy a piece of land and try to achieve the same outcome.

The final product is worth more than all the money that you put into it. Here’s an example of stuff that we do all the time. You buy a property that’s maybe 10 acres, 5 acres. Let’s say it costs $100,000. It’s got a single APN, and you’re fortunate enough to buy it in an area that condones and has a process for minor splitting. The end result is 1 APN becomes 5 APNs with access. You individually sell those properties for much more, hopefully double or more than you paid for the actual single APN. You’re taking 5 acres and theoretically making it 5 acres 1-acre lots with 5 separate APNs.

Maybe you can sell those separate APNs for $50,000 each. You’re $100,000 in. You sell the whole thing, all APNs, to separate people for $250,000. Those are real numbers, very real, possible numbers. How do you do it? The first thing you do is find out where this is possible and feasible. It’s not likely that that’s going to happen in Los Angeles County or New York County, where Manhattan is, but I think it’s New York County. It’s very likely that’s going to happen in some of the Southern states, certainly in Texas, where they’re a little bit more open-minded about real estate land in general and its use.

New Mexico.

You don’t ever have to leave your desk to do this. What do you do when you find an accounting that engages in this thing? There’s always a surveyor that offers a service in addition to surveying the plan where they literally know everybody at the county because they’re real local there and it’s usually a rural county. They can literally walk the process through the county to get those five APNs as a result of the survey.

They do the physical work and they do the legal work. They write all the APN, they write all the new legal descriptions, they create the deeds for you to sign, and they get them recorded for you, which is cool.

I’ve never paid personally more than $10,000 for this whole process. $10,000 is on the real high side. You can get it done for a lot less than that by a surveyor. You want to make sure if you have 3 or 4 choices on a surveyor, ask the county. Ask planning and zoning. The person who does planning and zoning, even the recorder, ask them who’s the best and who does a great job. There are not a lot of mistakes, and they don’t have to undo things or do all of that. The chances are they’re going to give you the name of the person who’s the most expensive because they do it right.

You got what you pay for sometimes.

What’s the $2,000 or $3,000 difference when you’re about to make $250,000? These are true land improvements and, in most cases, you don’t have to. Hopefully, you buy a piece of land where all five of those properties have access. They’re like in a rectangle on a county road. If not, you can plot in, and we’ve done this both ways. You can create access from the other properties because you control all five. It’s simple. I’ve never been required to actually put in improvements, meaning connecting to sewers or putting in a well. We never do any of that stuff. We sell it to the person who’s an expert at that locally.

That’s part of your initial recon, too. When you find out what is possible in the areas, find out what’s required to do. If that is required, you’re going to make some different decisions now. You might move to another county or another state.

I’m using minor splits as an example. There are places in Texas where the same process can happen where you split it into 30 properties. They will have a lot to say about improvements at that point, but the numbers almost always work. You have to make sure that your budget is correct and that 1 acre out of 5 is going to command the price that you think it is.

I have one and only one serious issue with this whole thing.

That’s new for you.

This is the only reason that we’re not doing this all the time. What’s my one issue?

I have no idea because I don’t see any downside to this.

Time.

It does. It’s going to take some time. Six months at least through a year.

That’s the only thing you have to think about. Time. Do you have time to wait for this? Do you have time to work through those things that come up? If you think you’re going to do this in 90 days, you have another thing coming. I have them bought, split surveyed, split, deeds recorded, and sold. If you’re like, “We’re going to cash in fast. $500,000, it’s going to save our company, save our finances in 90 days.” Think nine months. I think that realistically. My only thing with this is because of the time, it’s such a great thing, but that’s what does me in.

I’m not that patient. I have a hard time with that. That’s why we don’t do these as often as we could and should. The other thing is you need to do this in addition to something else. Have this running in the back. If you’re doing a minor split, good for you. Why you’re doing that? Please buy and sell a property a week or every two weeks or something so that’s going to keep everything going as normal. Thank you. I’m done.

Lawrence County, Indiana

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

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Would you do the Steel Lawrence County, Indiana, 3.4 acres defunct road?

The road’s right here.

I’m wondering if even you have access off 4th Street, though I like that. Will have the title confirmed. It has actual access, no HWA. Accepted offer of $8,500. The comps range from $5,000 to $15,000 here back from local agents. It sits behind some houses at the top of a slope. The slope goes down to a creek, likely with very nice views from the top, not in the flood zone. The inspector is out there to look at an appropriate flat area for building potential at the top.

Very rural.

Can I give you my truth time already?

Yes. We’re to see how sloppy this is.

Christian knows us. Christian knows what’s possible, too. I’m having trouble with a buy for $8,500 and hoped to go between $5,000 and $15,000. That means I need to buy for $2,000.

Look at your screen here.

There’s my other reason. It’s like the houses are up on the ridge, and then that’s the hill where the kids ride their bikes down when they’re going to the park or playing in the creek.

It’s cheap. I don’t know how much these houses are. There’s a chance that some weirdo is going to want this just to fish on.

We’ve got these two not built lots. It’s a parking lot. What is that?

It’s a church. It’s a parking lot for the church.

Now I don’t want it. The church isn’t going to buy it. We got a church in the parking lot.

It goes down. Their only chance here, like the last property, the duck hunting property, is that some crazy person wants to fish off their own land if you can fish in that little creek at all. I think I would pass on this altogether.

That’s what I would do.

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Career Path.

As far as I know, I still have a couple of seats. I can make a couple of seats.

I don’t know either.

How about that?

It’s been popular this time.

It’s a combo group. What are you guys talking about? To recap and to introduce for anyone who’s not sure, Career Path is our highest top level. You want to call it mastermind, you want to call it top-level coaching, whatever you want to call it, that’s what it is. It’s an eight-week program, topped by us, and it’s designed for anyone who is here to make this your career. It’s very beneficial if you have some real estate background, background owning a business, or have been in Land Academy for some time, very beneficial.

Is it a deal killer? No. We interview you and we’ll make sure. We won’t let you get into it unless we’re sure that you’re a good fit for it. That’s the other thing I want you to know. If you’re like, “I heard about land flipping, I think I want to do it and I’m going to do Career Path.” I’m going to politely say, “Let’s do some deals first because we need you to catch up to the rest of us.” That’s the thing. If you’re a prior business owner, there’s a lot of the thought stuff that you’ve already figured out, and we can work with that, too.

Anyway, it’s coming up. As I said, it’s eight weeks long. It’s led directly by Jack and myself. This one’s going to be cool because it’s a combo one where I have a Wednesday group and a Saturday group. We let you flip-flop between the sessions. If you loved it on Wednesday, you want to hear it again on Saturday, you sure can or you want to show up for all of it.

We also handpicked some people from the former who were very vocal and very material in both entertaining and profitable from prior Career Paths and they’re going to join us too. Every Career Path gets a lot better.

We have alumni coming from prior groups because we started this years ago. It’s very small, very intimate. I put fifteen or so people in each group and that’s it. I do like 2 or 3 a year, that’s it. If you’re interested, send a note to my team. Let’s cut to the chase and they’ll fill you in. Send a note to Support@LandAcademy.com saying, “I need to know more about Career Path. I think it’s for me.”

Join Land Academy

Let’s take another question posted by one of our members on the Land Academy Discord online community. If you’d like a sneak peek, go to LandAcademy.com. It’s free.

Troy wrote, “Hello all. I’ve been on the fence of joining for a few years now. Finally, Christopher gave me a call, and much like the sellers, it was the right time and the right situation to say yes. I own and run a five-employee auto repair shop, married with two kids. My data scrubbing and prepping using Python and Pandas, which are open-source programming, since I learned it to create an engine data comparison web service. I did scrub and prep by using that. I knew I wanted to get into real estate, but I wasn’t sure how since I didn’t have the time to swing hammers, drive for dollars, or do any other time-wasting activity. Came along Jack and Jill, and the greatest epiphany ever.”

I put this in here because Troy’s a perfect Land Academy employee, not only for Land Academy but also for Career Paths. He’s got a business. He’s way down the path of life with children and in marriage. He’s already taken this into his own hands by creating a little microproduct for himself to make it easier to scrub data and get the mail out. He’s innately trying to make it efficient by not driving for dollars or doing anything else that is incredibly unnecessary.

He had this light bulb went off over his head. I’ve been having this thought about how much I love land and real estate. I know Jill’s right there. In fact, it was probably one of the first five conversations you and I ever had together back in the day, just about real estate. I’ve come across some people who are doing pretty well buying and selling land, but they don’t care and have any real interest in the difference between Tennessee and Oregon.

I have a real interest in what those differences are for a lot of reasons. It’s not because I want to judge them or anything negative. It’s a hobby. I think land and little micro-cultures and communities that surround the land, how they use it, whether or not they allow minor splits, what they do with riparian rights, how they handle their legs- all of that says a lot. I think that if the light bulbs go off over your head and you’re like, “Me and my wife, we’re on Realtor.com all the time trying to find a lower price deals and we’re running numbers on this.” This is for you.

I do this and your guitar is a perfect example. We’ve talked a lot about how you’ve got another guitar and are getting back into it. Now it’s been on your mind for years. It’s never gone away. I think it’s so cool that Troy knows and this is going to be his end goal because this stupid idea doesn’t go away. Finally, now he’s committed to going, “I’m doing it.” That’s good. I love that.

I’m not here to sell anything. If this is you, if you’re sitting here looking around the room saying, “This is me,” email Support@LandAcademy.com and tell them Jack said this and that you want some type of promo code to get a bunch of money off. I’m causing all kinds of problems for our staff.

I’m going to change the marketing campaigns. Here’s what we’re going to do. He jumped into my side of the business.

This is Jill’s idea, not mine. That would be better for me.

Great. Thanks. Talk to Christopher. That’s all you need to know. On that note, by the way, speaking of wreaking havoc in relationships.

Is that what this is? Wreaking havoc in a relationship with a promo code?

No. You brought up something funny. You said, “I wonder what it was that the top five things that we talked about when we first got together.” I think the first thing that you and I talked about was music. We agreed on music. I think it was travel. I think real estate came in there somewhere. At the bottom, what we didn’t talk about, and thank goodness we were on the same page, but things you don’t talk about when you get with somebody is voting and kids.

It turns out we’re very similar on that.

We agree on all five of these topics. Isn’t that funny?

That would be bad if one of those was 180 degrees.

What’s a topic that we are 100% not on the same page? We should give one.

Probably something like personal hygiene. You reader can guess who’s for it and who’s against it.

Look at this. How many days have we had that shirt out? Just kidding.

This is a result of living with someone in 300 square feet for four months.

Yes, I do take his clothes, wash them, and put them right back, but he has no idea. Here’s what I think. The one thing that I don’t think we agree on, which I think is comical and it wreaks havoc in our daily existence, is food. We’re done. That was it.

I would eat soup out of a can, happily.

I’ve caught eating the yuckiest things out of a can. Not heating them up. I’m like, “That’s gross.”

I’ve heard that French people believe this, but Jill believes that every meal is like one meal closer to your death. You need to make it count that’s important how it’s presented is important.

Every meal is like one meal closer to your death, so you need to really make it count. Share on X

It’s probably right.

The color of the tablecloth is important and all of that. I have absolutely other end of that completely. I think eating is a waste of time and incredibly inconvenient.

I have to say, in my defense, since we’ve been on this road trip now three three-plus months, this is month four, I’ve only broken out the placemats and cloth napkins twice in an effort to make your life better.

I’ve eaten out of a can 400 times.

There is that. To make my life worse.

Land Business Brand

The second topic is called Why Your Brand is So Important in Your Land Business. “What is he talking about now? I don’t have a brand.”

I have some questions about this, too.

“I don’t have a brand. What are you trying to sell? Pepsi is a brand.” You do have a brand. If you’re younger in this audience as a young person, you know exactly what I’m talking about because we all have a brand. If you have a handle, mine’s Jack Butala on Facebook, that’s my brand. If you are buying land and selling land, specifically buying land in the same area and have been for a lot of years, sent out lots of mail to maybe like the first 8 or 9 counties, 2 or 1 counties that we send mail to all the time.

Jill DeWit’s at the bottom of that letter. They’ve received and maybe even spoken to Jill many times or 1 time or 5 times. She’s branding herself. It’s not a brand like Pepsi. I’m not talking about we’re going to go get commercials and do campaigns and things like that. It’s your reputation. If you’re my age, you call it reputation. If you’re younger, you call it a brand. You need to make that work for you.

If your brand is a proper land buyer in 5 or 8 or 10 counties over a decade, people are going to start to talk about it. Neighbors are going to talk about it. They’re going to say, “Who’s this Jill DeWit? I talked to Jill and she’s fantastic. We’ve got some property way outside of town here that we’re going to sell to her. Here’s her number.”

That’s a brand. That’s your marketing and yourself and marketing a brand. I’m not saying, “I’m John Smith. I got a brand and I got to go out and do something.” All I’m asking you to do is be very conscious of the fact that you’re part of a community and your potential sellers are going to perceive you as such.

For me, this is transparency. This is one of the things that we talk about when you first join Land Academy. Put Land Investor on all your stuff. Go on your LinkedIn page and Facebook page. Whenever you have social media out there, update it because people will look you up. They know and they see. I’m glad that you have a day job. You have your day job listed, accomplishments, and experience there, which is awesome. Add in there, on the side, you have your own little as your occupation. One of your things at the same time is CEO, founder, principal, or whatever you want to call yourself, such as president of JohnBuysLand.com.

Jill and I are in Jackson Hole, Wyoming right now. We went and had dinner at a bar. There was no tablecloth, and we intentionally sought out local bars that are not for tourists when we can. We sat down next to a guy who’s lived here for 5 or 8 years. It always comes up eventually, usually after the third beer. “What do you guys do?” “We buy and sell land.” They launch their land story because everyone has a land or a house story or a real estate story. Some of them are happy, some of them are then sad.

In this guy’s case, he does a lot of work for local people who own very expensive houses that have a lot of land. He went straight down the path of, “I have people who want to sell me their land. What do I do?” We started talking about that. We’re Jack and Jill and it is virtually unforgettable when you introduce yourself as Jack and Jill. Ninety percent of the people appreciate it. The curmudgeons out there, 10% think it’s the stupidest thing they’ve ever heard and that is fake. We hang out with the 90%. He will remember us forever, and the next time he has that conversation, I hope he calls us and looks at it to see if there could be an additional business model in there.

I’ll bet you money, by the way, because we’re going to be hanging out here for a little bit. We told him that. I bet he’s going to be in that bar every night when he gets back in town looking for us. I knew that. I told him. He’s younger than us and a lot younger. I said, “You’re going to go home. I know this is going to totally marinate. You’re going to wake up tomorrow and start putting things together.”

Put deals together.

I know. He said, “I’m already doing it.” It’s like we planted this little seed about what’s possible and think about this way of doing it. “Think about that way of doing it and you know the people that want to sell. You also know the people that have money. Think about putting it together.” He’s like, “Oh, yeah.” It was super cool. That was a fun conversation. I love those, by the way.

In this case, we branded Jack and Jill at that moment for him anyway, and who knows where that’ll go?

He knew a lot of people in that bar. It was funny as it worked out. That helped us, too, because we’re at the end of the bar laughing for hours, and then all of a sudden, we’re getting better attention from the bartenders and everybody else because he’s buddies with them. Now we can walk in there and they’ll take good care of us.

Louis County, Washington

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

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Could you do this deal on Jackson Highway here? Where are we? Lewis County, Washington, 20 acres. Accepted the offer price of $125,000. Thinks we could sell for a $200,000 at least. Affordability. Ten-acre across the street, listed an hour ago for $175,000. Let’s go find that comp. The county-owned land across the highway. Farms, timber and houses nearby, attribute fish-bearing streams and views of mountains near Lewis and Clark State Park. Everyone’s alive. The property is wet. The road furnishings are as great as they seem. The guardrail extends over half. We need to drop a man down there.

I wanted to point this out. I’m clicking on this FEMA thing, and there’s clearly a creek that goes through this property. It’s obvious, and it’s not over here. Here’s a FEMA. This is a gauge to see if the property is wet. For whatever reason, they’re in this freak wet. That’s fine. I’m saying it’s a stage one due diligence/acquisitions tool if you cannot completely rely on it.

I bet if we drop a guy, if there’s a bridge over that, that’ll tell us, too, if there’s any concern.

You’re saying it’s all wet. It’s 100% wet. This is way too much money to take a chance. It comes down to price now. You’re not buying 20 acres. You might be buying five.

I’m still not loving. I cannot wrap my head around $125,000.

I would not buy for $125,000 and sell for $175,000. Would you on this property when it’s all wet?

No.

If it’s two APNs, you’ve got to sell them together because somebody’s going to end up with all wet property.

This one’s one.

The good news is that these numbers are fantastic.

Can I give it for $75,000?

Yeah, something like that. That’s the number I was thinking.

I can wrap my head around $75,000 if everything else pans out.

You can dump it for $100,000 if you need to with these comps. $60,000 to $70,000 is even better.

We need to zero in on that area. That’s my final.

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Working With Your Partner

Jill, do you have something inspirational to share with us?

I didn’t have anything prepared. I thought I would see how it flowed. I incorporate how the episode is flowing, It’s not a bad thing.

Please share your feelings with us.

It’s not a bad thing. Everyone, we’re going to talk about food. I’m totally kidding. Here’s what I’d like to talk about with you. I thought this would be fun. I want to revisit a conversation we had because I’m sure there are many people reading right now who are doing the exact same thing. We’re in our 50s and we’re doing relatively well. We can now start thinking bigger picture. Not the bigger picture, but we’re starting to think about the next twenty years. Where do we want to be?

What do we want to do? How hard do we want to work? How many deals do we want to do? All this stuff and it comes down to money. When to retire? How to retire, and then where you’re going to live and what it’s going to look like. The big question is, are you on the same page with your partner? This is hard. I want to share that as close as we are we have these struggles too. You’re probably not going to get all of them, and I want you to interject with me here. I want you to tell me your thoughts.

I’m not sure what your big-picture point is here.

Are you on the same page with your partner? That is the whole thought thing. Are you on the same page with your partner number one?

This is not about land at all.

No, it’s not about land. This is inspirational. Are you on the same page with your partner? If you’re not, what is the answer for me? Pick your battles.

Do you know what the answer is for me? This is true. All kidding aside now. Jill and I have a certain screen presence. We get questions about, “How do you guys get along like this?” As time goes on, we get more questions like that. Here’s my answer. My canned answer is, Jill and I, for whatever reason, if you look as far down the path as you can look socially and financially and relationship-wise and all of that.

Far down the path.

As far as you can possibly look down that road, Jill and I are absolutely and completely on the same page. How we get there, she has very different ideas. Does that cause, in the bitter end, that yin and yang about how to get to that goal is very healthy? It’s like thinking of the first record, the first album that your favorite band put out was probably amazing because everybody was compromising and then one of the band members eventually gets their way, the lead singer usually. All the rest of their music sucks because one guy got his way and there’s no yin and yang.

I was thinking about this, though. For me, the whole thing is we are on the same page, and how we get there is not always the same. Sometimes, things change. I’m thinking about this. What are we talking about? Are we talking about retirement and money, and what do we give the kids? Why do we not leave the kids? He’s like, “Let’s leave them all this.” I’m like, “Screw the kids.” That’s what I’m at. I didn’t get it. They don’t get it.

We are on the same page and how we get there is not always the same. Share on X

Actual conversation right before this for some reason.

I literally have like, “I think the kids are done. We’ve done some things for them. I think they’re good.”

They’re going to get a bunch of real estate. That’s your answer.

This is for us. It’s going to happen, but it’s going to be different. I’m not going to buy things. We bought some things intentionally for the kids. Not anymore now.

They don’t see it.

They’re fine. Now I want to buy some stuff for us, and then they can have it later on, including whatever real estate.

She means 3rd and 4th houses.

Then it comes down to, I’m going to bring it right back to Land Academy and bring it right back to you and your partner. There are many of you in Land Academy that are not doing this solo. Some of you are doing it like us, your couples and some of you have other relatives that you’re doing with us, which is amazing to me. Some of you found a partner in Discord. You reached a person like, “I’m, I’m struggling with the data. You’re a data nut. I am awesome on the phone. Let’s work together.” That comes all the time.

The big thing is there are going to be times when you’re not on the same page with your partner. One of you has to back down. That’s my final thing on this. The thing about it is it’s not keeping track. You shouldn’t keep track. You shouldn’t keep score. It’s not that thing, but be aware of it. There are times that you’re going to say, “I feel strongly about this, but they obviously feel stronger about it.”

Is it going to matter five years from now, one year from now? I say, there are times you’re going to let them win because otherwise, it’s not going to work. The flip side is true. I hope that this little conversation sparks a conversation with you and your partner to say, “Let’s all be aware that we need to sometimes back down. We don’t need to make decisions right now, but we all make sure we are on the same page. Sometimes, I want to have my way, and you’re going to have your way. It’s all going to work out.” I totally agree.

That’s amazingly nice of you. I don’t know how else to say it.

You have to. You’re never going to get there. Otherwise, it resolves to break up the company. You don’t want to do that.

When there’s less emotion, not more, and when there’s some goal that you’re trying to hit, and you agree on that goal, and you’re going about it with very little emotion, it’s going to work for you.

Emotion gets in the way, even with men.

I know. Rage is an emotion. I’ve been told that several people throughout my life.

Where did that come from? Did somebody bring that up recently?

I don’t know. I made it up.

That’s the tagline for this episode. Rage is an emotion. Why don’t you put that in the title? Join Landon Cannon where they talk about rage as a real emotion.

Rage is an emotion, too.

Don’t feel bad, get mad. Let’s move on. Jack, what do you have to share with us?

Being Intentionally Successful

My topic is called being successful through very intentional acts to a very specific end. You don’t want to walk through life and let stuff happen to you. There’s all the self-help stuff out there under the heading. Enjoy the day live in the now. The art of not caring and all that that’s a bunch of garbage.

The art of not caring.

The art of not giving a F***. There’s a book like that is very popular.

That’s true.

I think I think you should you should give a huge F*** about what happens to you and what happens to your life. When you wake up in the morning, whatever you end up doing that day, you have control over it for the most part. If you don’t, you need to start making changes about that now, whether it’s changing your financial situation or your social situation or any of that stuff, because you’re not going to get to the top of the financial pyramid.

You should give a huge shit about what happens to you and what happens to your life. Share on X

If you were part of our Thursday call, you know exactly what I’m talking about by letting stuff happen to you or by buying a lottery ticket. Winning the lottery is not going to happen to you. I can tell you that right now. You need to intentionally put things in a calendar that you do with the intent to reach some very specific gun. For me, it’s getting mailers out and doing podcasts and things like that. For Jill, it might be a little bit different, but she has the same calendar that I do.

I can see what she’s working on and where she’s going with it. I don’t have anything to say about it ever. I don’t need to because she wants to get to that place that I talked about earlier, way down the road in her own way. She has proven over and over and over again that the little goals that she sets for herself hit them. It’s all toward that big, long goal. She does it differently. You have to act intentionally, and it has to be very specific. In my opinion, the end of that long road is a pile of money for us and a happy relationship. It’s not any more complicated than that.

I want to add. I hope you’re listening to this because you gave me that speech and I’m way better, night and day better, than I was when we first got together about stuff like this. You did teach me a lot. I’d wake up every day. This is totally truth, and Jack thought it was cute in the beginning and then he thought it was stupid later on because I’d wake up and decide that day how I felt and what was going to happen.

I feel like doing this today. Jack would be like, “You cannot get anywhere like that.” I’m like, “Why? It’s worked out fine right now.” As we got together, we started to see what was possible, doing deals and writing on the wall. I’m like, “He’s right.” If I’m holding myself accountable, you said intentional. I love that, but there’s another word I’m talking about. I’m sticking to it. Setting it up and making yourself do it.

Implementation.

Holding it like, “It may suck today. Who cares how you feel? Get it done because this is part of what you’re doing. This is step three right now of ten. You’ve got to get through three to get to ten.” I want to give you a little compliment back because you are super good at that and you’ve even helped me and I find myself now. I regurgitate you on that when I talk to other people.

Regurgitate is a nice word.

It is a very nice word. Not regurgitate. Like, spit up. I spit up what you said.

I’m going to tell you it’s cute now, anecdote about Jill and I in the beginning. Now, I’ll skip to the end. When we have time off now, it’s on the calendar. Jill, very often on Friday, Jill will put in the calendar from like, I don’t know, 10:00 AM to, should you be like 4:00, it’ll say, Jill time, or it’ll say spa time, or it’ll say shopping in like a cute little town and those things. She stopped inviting me to the stuff a decade ago because I didn’t want to do it. Her free time is, that’s what happens. I accept it. I accepted the invitation and not accepted to join her, but I accepted that I got it.

That’s who you’re going to be. I go, I’ll go do that version for me. It’s important for us. It might not be for you to schedule that. You don’t have to think about it, and you don’t feel bad about walking around Jackson Hole and buying a necklace or whatever Jill does. I should be at work. I should be doing something. For those five hours, she does whatever she wants. That’s a mental health thing for me. When Jill and I got together, she was still working. I was not. I was buying and selling land myself.

We had no intention of ever doing the same stuff professionally. As it got more and more evident to both of us that we should join forces and she should quit her job, of course, we started calendaring stuff together and she worked for American Airlines for 18 years, 19 years. Vacation time on those specific vacation days like Labor Day and whatever and all that stuff was all by her employer dictated. I would book work days like Labor Day because Labor Day and a regular Wednesday, from a time standpoint, are the same for me.

In fact, I’m realizing now, at this age, I want to work on Labor Day because all the schmoes are out. Yeah. All the whack jobs and I don’t need, we don’t need that, but she would blow her top so that I would schedule a bunch of stuff for us to do professionally on Labor Day, even though she had the same thing for her. It was Wednesday, the same as Labor Day. This is relevant to this topic.

It was so embedded in her soul that holidays are days off regardless of whether or not you run your own shop, regardless of your own employer, regardless of the fact that you have $10 million in the bank any of that stuff. Nope, Labor Day. We’re taking it off. It took a long time for me to say, “It’s Monday. It’s another Monday.” That’s it. Saturdays are the same as Wednesdays. Wednesday’s the same as Sunday for us. If it’s in the calendar that we’re working, or is it in the calendar that we’re going to see a movie, both of those things are in the calendar, by the way, and whether or not we do it on Labor Day or not, I don’t care. Are you good now?

I know you’re over it.

I’m poking fun. We’re long over it.

I forget. Now I go. Here’s the only thing that comes up now, which is like, “We’re out traveling.” I’m like, “Keep in mind, heads up, it’s going to be a party weekend because everybody has a three-day weekend. We may want to work and not be involved in the Hoopla.”

She calls it two Saturday nights. Saturday night is the worst night.

That gets Saturday night times two.

We have two Saturday nights in a row. You don’t want to be around that. I don’t want to be around that.

Thank goodness the full moon was the other night, so we got that out of the way. When you have two Saturday nights in a row and then you have a full moon out there, don’t be on the roads, don’t be out. We all know.

Go to a movie. That’s a great time to go see a movie.

Totally. Cook, stay in. Don’t forget, you can reach us with questions and help simply by text. (480) 530-7383.

Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode. Buy land, sell it for more. On the internet, usually a lot more.

That’s us.

We are Jack and Jill. Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.

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