Join Steven Jack Butala for a candid interview with Land Academy Ambassador, Karl Lathus. Get a peek into what it’s been like for Karl and his wife as LA Ambassadors, managing the ebbs and flows of land investing. Uncover their strategic approach to investing, their commitment to community engagement, and how they find fulfillment in every facet of their land ventures. 

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Interview With LA Ambassador Karl Lathus (LA 1972)

Introduction

Jill is off today. I’m interviewing one of the Land Academy Ambassadors, Karl Lathus and for the record, the other one is his wife, Samantha. This is episode number 1973. Karl, how are you doing? 

I’m doing great. It’s interesting to be in a meeting with just me and you, and no supervision. I don’t know what’s going to happen.

On Unconventional Deals

Speak freely because that’s when it’s the most fun. We were speaking earlier in our regular staff meeting and you had a deal that you were talking about that seemed intriguing. We have all these crazy limits that we put on ourselves to do great deals, but this one seems a little bit out of the box and profitable. 

It’s funny you say that because we have a couple going on. This has been an interesting week. It’s so cool how this business is with the ebbs and flows of everything. We pick it up as it comes and that’s the best that we can do. It’s funny because even further on past what we spoke about, we have continually more interesting things that are coming along. 

What you’re referring to is I broke one of my own rules. It was my birthday and we spent it up in Michigan. My grandfather came with me and we had those players side-by-side. I told him that we had purchased a property that wasn’t super far, probably 10 miles from where we were staying. My grandfather is getting up there and he wants to still do things. 

He said, “Let’s go over there and see it.” I said, “If we’re going to see it, I’m going to break one of my rules. I’m going to bring a chainsaw and we’re going to make this thing look cool.” My grandfather’s name is also Karl. Me and Papa Karl hopped in the side by side. We got up first thing in the morning and ripped down the road in it. 

It was cool driving through the country and seeing all the beautiful land around us. We got to the property and I said, “Let’s start cutting some trees down,” trying to make it look pretty. The property is situated on top of a hill and there’s a lake down the valley but you couldn’t see it because all the trees had overgrown. 

I started cutting trees down and moving around and we had a lot of fun with it. I purchased this property. I think it was $6,500 we paid for the property. It wasn’t the typical deal that we were looking for. Samantha and I were looking for a little bit larger deal but we take what’s given to us. I think that it’s important to keep in mind with this land investment that you always have to take what’s given to you. 

In land investing, you always have to take what's given to you. Share on X

We don’t make our mailer smaller ever. I think most people in Land Academy are saying, “I want to buy for 10, sell for 30. Buy for 30, sell for 70.” They have their business model, but we still mail everything. This one had come across as a little smaller than we were looking for. My grandfather and I went out there, we cut up some trees and we made it look beautiful.

I sent it over to our agent. She came over, she took these gorgeous drone shots. Initially, before we cut down the trees and all this stuff, she wanted to list it around the $25,000 mark, which we were okay with. She inevitably listed it for $35,000 and we got several offers on the first day. Right now, we’re going through and figuring out what our best option is and what’s the best deal for us.

You broke all the rules we set for ourselves and you’re still making money. I love this. 

It was fun. I got to spend some time with my grandpa. That’s what I did for my birthday. That’s the thing that we always say, “Just send more mail.” Don’t go out there, cutting down trees and working like that when you could sit down at a computer and send another piece of mail. Every once in a while, you want to hop in side by side with your grandpa and cut down some trees. It could be worth it too, I guess. 

That goes straight to you’re a land person and so am I. My free time involves land. I didn’t mention this, but I joined a group probably since we got back from this 3 or 4-month RV trip. I got back from the trip and I was sitting in this big house and Jill and I asked, “What do we do the rest of our lives?” That was a blast and now we’re bored. I went on Facebook and joined the Arizona dual sport group about people who are into on and off-road motorcycles.

I immediately jumped into what I realized now a bunch of people like me who are bored. A bunch of guys who seem retired because they can do anything anytime they want, which is great for me. It involves land is my point. It’s all it. Everything I do surrounds that and every time I get out there, I don’t want to leave. You were slinging a chainsaw around on your birthday, improving a property that you bought. It’s in your soul.

That’s exactly what I was down to. That wasn’t a work thing for me. That wasn’t a thing that I had to do. It was as you said, it’s in my soul. I think about it 24/7, whether or not we’re actively at a piece of property or I’m on a computer, I can tell you I have two monitors right now. One of them is open to Zillow. That’s what it is. I can’t help myself.

There are 4 or 5 notifications that I get on Zillow and other websites like that. Railroader.com for example where there are new listings that are populated every day. There are 4 or 5 markets that I’ve identified, not necessarily as markets to make money, because we have a system for that. That’s what the whole Land Academy system is all about. You have Samantha for that. 

Personally, where I want to buy land are maybe small rural houses and they pop, that’s the whole first hour of my workday. Every single day is get notifications from those markets. One’s in Northern Michigan. There are a couple in Wyoming and a few in Colorado and Arizona. I love sifting through those listings. I’ve never pulled the trigger on one, but what it does is it identifies a place for me to send mail for personal use property. 

I have this habit of searching. I like to look up $15 million to $20 million houses on Zillow that are for sale and like scroll through the photos of them. It’s funny because if I go through my saved homes on Zillow, or even save land for that matter. There are a couple of properties that we identified out in Washington state that I think are the most beautiful piece of land of all time. 

They’re listed with real estate agents above market value. They’re not anything that we’re interested in with the Land Academy model but for me, we don’t sit down on the couch and watch TV most often. If I have a half hour to burn, it’s usually going to be on my laptop, scrolling through properties, and thinking about different things in this world. 

I have to tell you, my profile is the opposite. I want 10-plus acres and I want a house that’s less than 1,200 square feet, old as possible, the biggest pile of crap house or mobile home that you can think of on the greatest piece of dirt for way undervalued. After we drove around the country, it was shocking to see what populates. There are some amazing bargains. I am not advocating at all to our audience, and I’m sure you’re not either, that this is the way you buy real estate because it’s not, but it’s a great way to identify markets where you might think are undervalued and get ideas about sending them out.

You do have to follow your heart a little bit. I intentionally don’t invest in Arizona. I’ll say that. I’ve said it before. I don’t understand the desert. I don’t understand the lure of it. Samantha and I send mail to places that we do enjoy, we do love to look at, and we do love everything about that specific land. She then narrows it down with her tests and with the way the Land Academy way of using a red, yellow, and green test and does all the tests to make sure it works in that regard. 

We always do mail property. I’ve never bought a property that I wouldn’t be okay with hanging on to for the rest of my life, I’ll be honest. They don’t stick around very often at all, but we buy a property that we love and we understand. That being said, I don’t understand the desert. I understand nothing about green areas and areas with water. It doesn’t resonate with me so we don’t do it. I know that you made it a business for a lifetime out of purchasing properties in the desert. 

It happened. This whole thing started with exactly what you described with the chainsaw event. It was a one piece of property that I bought for myself that I was going to keep forever and posted on the internet to see what would happen and it sold. I had a seller’s remorse. What was I thinking? It is because you think in the back of your head when you’re new at this.

Sure you went through this, and maybe still do. I don’t know if there’s ever going to be a deal like that. Maybe I shouldn’t have sold it. I don’t have that as much anymore. However, once in a while, I sold a fly fishing property in Arizona, right on the water. It was the same situation. I don’t know what the numbers were, $3,000 or $4,000. 

We sold it for 35 in the first week, which A) Makes me think that we didn’t list it for enough, and B) Waterfront property in Arizona is pretty hard to come by. It all happened fast and the truth is probably I shouldn’t say this out loud, but we’ve got people working for us that make automatic decisions, which I’ve trained them to do and asked them to do, and they’re there to make money. It’s like, “Wait a minute, wait a minute.” It’s sold too fast.

That’s the thing, like you said, training people to do things so we don’t have to spend our whole days doing all these subtle nuances that eat up our whole day. Hindsight is 20/20 and it’s easy to look back and say, “Why’d you sell this property for 35,000? I’d keep it for that.” At the end of the day, the financials are there and what we’re doing is we’re creating a business. 

Especially with having these people in place who don’t have the emotions behind a fly fishing property in Arizona, they’re saying, “Jack told me to sell it, I’m going to sell it.” That’s what’s great about putting these systems together because quite frankly, I tell you, if you sat down and thought about it was probably the right decision to sell it and you did well on it. You made you 4 or 5 extra money or more, no more than that. 

Land Academy Ambassador Role

I have a few questions for you. What’s it like to be a Land Academy ambassador? This is the first time we’ve ever done this. You and your wife Samantha are two of the first and potentially the only ambassadors. What’s it like? 

We’re dominating the market of ambassadors. There are too many of us. Honestly, I guess we haven’t spoken about this. Samantha and I were very honored when you and Jill approached us to be the Land Academy ambassadors. Quite frankly, it’s been a blast. We’ve been able to reach out, speak, and be involved with the community at such a great level. 

Not a lot of people get to speak with the members as often as we do. We get to be a part of things like Career Path that’s coming up. We’re on Office Hours Pro. We’re on all these calls with you and you know, I don’t have to preach it to you, but there are some amazing members in this group. Every person we end up on these phone calls with. We were on a couple of calls with some members who we were signing up for career paths. 

It never ceases to amaze me the level of successful intelligent people that are here. That’s what we’re trying to do. As the ambassadors, we are trying to be out there and say, “We’ll tell you our story, but we also want to hear your story.” I can’t get enough of it. Some of these people we met blew my mind away. We’re coming up on a Career Path and there’s going to be quite a few of those people that I’m referring to.

The Career Path will start next week and I’m excited to get to know everyone a little bit more. I’m excited to hear their stories. I’m excited to learn from them. I know they’re excited to learn from you and to learn from us. That is by far in every way the best part about being the Land Academy ambassador is getting to know everyone. 

I call what you describe there as the light bulb moment. For the record, the Career Path starts on Wednesday. It starts the day that this is published. That light bulb moment happened to me with that first deal. You wouldn’t be out on your birthday with a chainsaw and your grandfather cutting trees down if it hadn’t happened to you guys, and I could tell you guys, it immediately happened. 

The Career Path is generally packed full of people who have that light bulb moment. If you don’t, it’s a struggle. There are a lot of things in my life that I’ve thought I wanted to do, but never had that light bulb moment. For my entire school age, my school-age goal is to become a medical doctor but I know now that I never had that light bulb moment and here I am. Buying a piece of land that’s amazing and reselling it for a price that’s still not retail.

I don’t know, there’s something about it that makes sense to me. I love to hear the enthusiasm of people who have had that light bulb moment. That’s the reason we asked you guys to be the ambassadors because I think you’re sharing. That’s the kind of presentation you’re putting forward on what’s possible financially and in your soul. 

I agree. I see a lot of similarities in exactly what you’re saying, what you’ve experienced, and what we’ve experienced. It is addicting. You’ve said it before. You don’t know how long you’re going to be working as hard as you are with all this Land Academy stuff but you’re always going to be a land investor. I can’t ever see a time in my life that we’re not going to say, “Samantha send out that mail.” I don’t care if I’m 90 years old, “Send out that mail. Let’s get some property over there.” I don’t see there being a future that after knowing what I know now, there’s no future and not investing in land for us. It’s not a job for us. It’s what we enjoy doing.

I completely agree. One of the most common questions that I get and I still get it. It is, “What were you thinking? You’re starting Land Academy. You’ve got all you’re creating competitors for yourself. You’ve got all these people sending all this mail all over the place. What were you thinking?” I can’t share this and you know this. Now, after being in the Land Academy for what? How long have you been around in this? 1 or 2 years?

We’re coming up in two years.

What ends up happening is people who have that light bulb scenario send a bunch of mail out, understand it, and generate some great deals, but they don’t have the dough. They come to people like us and you then say, “I love doing this, I see the whole point, don’t have the money, let’s partner a deal.” What ends up happening is we do way more deals now than we’ve ever done and make more money than we ever have. I’m answering that question for everybody who’s tuning in to this because that’s the real reason we’re here. To create partners for ourselves, not competitors.

Absolutely. It’s better together, always. I see Samantha does a lot of our deal funding. She handles a lot of that. She’s so good at connecting with people and helping people. I see the people that she helps with these. First of all, moving them along the process and showing them what is possible. She’s made a lot of great friends that she communicates with daily within Discord who are sending our deals for review and things like that. It’s a partnership thing and it’s a better together kind of thing. We’re not adversaries. It’s not you or I. It’s all of us together and that’s cool. 

Working With Spouse

What is it like to work with your spouse? 

This isn’t recorded or anything, is it? 

This is recorded and published. If you’re going to be straight with me, I’ll be straight with you because I work with mine also. 

It’s great. Quite honestly, this isn’t the first business that I’ve started. Samantha came over to this land business under my pressure to do so but when I started my initial business, I had the help of my father. He showed me some of the ways of what I knew to do but at the end of the day, it ended up being me. I felt like I had to do everything. I woke up every morning at 4:00 AM for almost ten years and I didn’t stop working till 8:00 PM. 

I did everything that I could do for the business because I thought that no one could do it like me and no one was going to care like I did. Now that may or may not be the case but at the end of the day, there’s no reason for all that. After I started to realize more and more through my other businesses, and then once I took Career Path with you, Jack, I started to realize how important it is to let go of certain things and to understand that this is what I’m good at, this is what you’re good at. 

Whether or not it’s your spouse, your business partner, or somebody you’ve hired, you can’t waste your time worrying about the things that other people are worried about. Samantha and I are on the same page when it comes to many things. She’s my business partner and my life partner. You have to have a level of trust between each other. 

You have to trust the fact that she’s going to do what she’s going to do and she has to trust the fact that I’m going to do what I’m going to do. We stay out of each other’s lanes. I know what she likes and what she doesn’t like and she knows what I like and what I don’t like. We do buttheads at times, but most of the time it’s a straight line of, “Listen, I hear that you don’t want to do this. This is my reasoning, but this is my lane.” She’ll back away and ask why. 

I always want her opinion and I always want to hear it. She’s a thousand times smarter than I do. Of course, I want to hear what she has to say. At the end of the day, you have to respect each other’s lanes and respect each other enough. You have to learn to delegate and then once you delegate, especially when it comes to your life partner and your business partner, even, micromanaging is not a thing that you can do to the women in your life when it comes to business or in anything. 

Delegating and micromanaging are concepts that don’t apply to working with your spouse. 

We have fun doing it. There are times when things get stressful and you have to figure things out. Tempers flare, but at the end of the day, you always have to remember to enjoy it. Nothing matters that much that’s ever going to affect us, “This didn’t work out, this deal the worst and we’re done with it.” It doesn’t affect our relationship, our marriage, or our business. You have to remember to always enjoy it. As bad as things sometimes can be, quite frankly, I’m speaking of other businesses as opposed to this land business because there hasn’t been that level of stress there. You have to remember to enjoy it to stay in your lane. 

I had a business partner of many years before Jill and I joined forces, and it ended very well. I still talk to the guy all the time, but what I realized toward the end of the partnership, was my business didn’t end at all, it got better and changed and got different. As it grew, the business description changed, and the primary point changed. 

I realized in the end that we didn’t have the same goals. He wasn’t in it for the reason that I was in it. As soon as the partnership or what we were doing together ended, he went off and did something else. He never had that light bulb moment. He was a computer programmer by trade and was incredibly useful at managing staff and the backend computer. 

This was all during a time when the internet was growing up. This is from 2003 to maybe 2009. It experienced massive growth in our land business. This is long before Land Academy but I did realize at the end, especially because you didn’t go on to buy and sell land. We’re printing money like we are now, but he didn’t care enough about it to continue. 

You got to have that light bulb moment. The reason Jill and I do so well together is that we have the same super long-term goals, like as far out as you can see. We want the same thing. How we go about it is very different. If you’re going to explain to your spouse how and why we’re all here and what the point is, you’re already lost. You just need to know. 

Everybody needs to wake up saying, “We’ve got that same goal.” Because we’re going at it so differently, the second part and final part of this is you got to have a mechanism or at least we do where you can almost daily implement it so you can stay out of each other’s hair. It’s a disaster in the history of ever. I have never heard of a company that’s got a co-CEO and has ever been successful. There’s no such thing. 

What we’ve done countless times, and we still do it when there’s any type of conflict, take out a freaking pad of paper, and draw a line down the middle. This is what you do and you’re great at it. This is what I do and you’re great at it. Where’s this conflict coming and who’s going to address it? We figured it out together without emotion. Not always, but hopefully. Certainly not after a couple of scotches.

Does this ever go on? He said, “Tomorrow morning, I’m going to deal with this.” The other person says, “Yes.” I think that’s how it should go. Does it go that way every single time? Absolutely not. I’ll tell you what goes on in our world at the bitter end. Did we lose any money? Are we losing any money? Are there cash flow issues? Are we blaming each other for stuff? No. When you remove the pressure of cashflow or lack of cashflow, I think you get over a lot of stuff. It then becomes like personality BS. 

That’s the thing, financial worries change everything. That’s why I said that it alluded to the fact that, there hasn’t been much stress in this land business because we’ve never lost money in a deal. Not even close. We’ve never even done a double-your-money deal. It’s been above that at all times. I think that takes such a level of stress away from a business. 

The first handful of years that I had my construction company, we didn’t have anything. I worried about what it cost to pay for a new extension cord so my guys could work. That’s not the case with land. From day one, we bought our first property while we were in Career Path with you. We bought it for 45 and sold it for 165. 

That blew my mind after being in the construction world for ten years. How hard I had to work to even afford extension cords or to put new tires on the work vans. It’s just wow. I think that takes a level of stress away from the atmosphere of financial worries, that will change you and it’ll change your relationship. That’s for sure.

Financial worries will change you and your relationship. Share on X

On the flip side, I agree and I’ve been through that twice in my life, and both times I came out of it as a much better decision-maker and generally a better person. If you’ve never gone through that, I’ve never met anybody who hasn’t gone through any type of serious financial hardship because it’s either going to make you a better person or you’re going to be stuck working in a crappy job the rest of your life. 

One of those two things is going to happen and you have the choice to do whatever you want. Jill and I went through it separately. When we got together, we both came together with different but the same meaning of horrific financial stories. For me I think it’s imperative to have to go through, “Can we afford this extension cord? I like that. The answer is no. Of course, you can’t afford it but you need it. It wouldn’t have come up if you could afford it. You’ll just buy it

Since Samantha graduated college, she got her CPA. She spent the last ten years in an office working for somebody making a salary wage. It wasn’t a bad wage or anything. To step away from being in an office and working at W-2 for ten years and to step into an office where this is her business and she’s in control of everything. She doesn’t have to answer to anybody, especially me. It changes a lot too. 

I made that realization a long time ago that I couldn’t work for somebody. I think sometimes that hardship too is working for somebody and being under the thumb of the corporate veil. For her to walk away from that, I’d seen her mindset and her approach to everything change because, at the end of the day, this is for us. 

This isn’t for some mega-corporation that’s going to change anything in her compensation because she altered the way they do business. That’s not what’s going to happen. We’re doing everything for us. We keep that in mind. I could turn off our land business, turn off all the lights, and walk away. The only person that’s going to hurt is me. We could get up, we can work, and we can do things, have some fun, send out mail, do some good for some people, and feel good about ourselves. That’s what we’re doing. 

Success Profile And Insights

Now that leads me to my next question, which is, you guys in my opinion, which is one of the reasons we asked you to be ambassadors, fit the profile of somebody who can be and you’re super successful at this. This is another question I get all the time. What do you think the profile is of somebody who’s going to do well at buying and selling?

In our calls earlier, we were talking to a couple of members who are joining up for Career Path. They wanted to ask some questions. I spoke to a guy. He’s been land investing with a member since I think he said 2017. He’s got 25 properties for sale right now. He’s sending out mail weekly and he put his two weeks in for work. 

He’s going to sign up for a Career Path. He’s starting his Career Path journey and he said, “I don’t. I feel like I’m about to start. I feel like I can’t get there.” I said to him, “This is the boss that you put your two weeks into, how many properties does he own right now what do you think his net worth is?” He said that he doesn’t own any properties and I know that he’s working the job.

At that moment, he started thinking about it. He said, “Yes.” That’s the profile of the people in Land Academy. We’re always looking for the next step. I personally always feel that I’m still at the starting line. I feel as though I have something else to do, something else to prove, and something else to keep moving forward on. 

That was the conversation we ended up having, you may have 25 properties in your pipeline, but you still want to keep doing this. You’re leaving your job to double, to triple, or to 10X that. I think that’s the profile of a lot of people that I’ve met in this. I want to continue to move forward. I want to continue to grow. I want to continue to help myself. When I work hard, I want to be the one who’s rewarded for it, not some corporate entity. 

That’s a lot of the people that I meet here. A lot of people who are smart and successful business owners. I had struggled to pay for an extension cord for ten years and realized that I could send out some mail and watch my money grow, as opposed to waking up every morning at 4:00 AM and working till 8:00 PM. I’ve been there and that was tough. I enjoyed it. I would never take away from that. I definitely would do it again if I had to. I just don’t have to. 

I think I meet a lot of those kinds of people who’ve had these great and successful businesses. They know how to run businesses. They feel like they’re still at the starting line. I met a member not long ago, he owns a very successful publishing company. He feels like he’s at the starting line still. He’s been doing deals. He did over a hundred deals in this one specific county. 

Those are the kinds of people that I love to see. Those are the kinds of people who I feel are going to innovate and they’re going to smash it. Those are the people I see coming through a Career Path. The people I’ve met through the advanced member calls and the Land Academy pro calls. All those people are great. That’s back to the original thing. That’s the great part about being the Land Academy ambassadors for Samantha and me is we’re privy to some of the most successful people I’ve ever met in my entire life. 

I think that there are some basic traits for successful people. Land investors do not constantly prevail. Everybody I’ve met, most of my friends from high school ended up being very successful financially, and recently met with them all. I haven’t seen a lot of them for twenty years or even spoken with them in any way. 

I hesitate to say this because I’m not sure it’s that accurate. All of us have this air of, “It’s not going as well as I think it could go.” The fact is we’re all pretty much doing incredibly way better than our parents ever did. Let’s call it this. I constantly am trying to improve. I’m never going to sit around and say, “I think I did well at that. I think I smashed it and it’s over, and I’m going to pat myself on the back for it.” That’s not how I’m wired. 

That taps into one of the reasons we started the Land Academy because that’s another extension of being successful at sharing this and helping other people get their good deals done. I think a lot of this is a personality trait. Some other huge components go into the profile of a successful land investor. One of them is coming to Land Academy or coming into that land investment business, owning another business, which you guys have done. 

Once you understand how to manage a staff or at least understand that you never want to do it again, or you’re great at it, or you are bad at it, or you’re a great manager of people, or a terrible manager of people, or something in between. Once you get your feet wet doing a couple of things, you’re going to like it or not like it. 

It forces you to remove a lot of emotion and remove the constant self-assessment. Those things are not going to lead to anything. You got to do stuff and you got to do it to some goal which for us is making money. It’s that light bulb thing. There’s a land light bulb component and I’m okay at running a business component. If you have those two things this is going to work. 

Neither is rocket science either. It is it. I feel that I am pretty successful at this. I knew that Samantha was a thousand times smarter than me. I don’t ever want to do it, but independently we could both run a land business successfully. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do this. It takes passion and it takes understanding of how business works, how to manage, and how to be an intelligent business owner. 

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to run a land business successfully. It just takes passion and understanding of how business works, how to manage, and how to be an intelligent business owner. Share on X

Closing Remarks

I’m glad you’re with us. I’m glad to do an episode with you. We’ve spoken a million times, but the ladies aren’t here and it’s fun. 

Yes. 

It’s great having you. As far as career path goes, for our audience, we always have one or two spots left at the end. This will be published on Wednesday and this time we are holding a mirror image of classes on Wednesday and Saturday to accommodate everyone’s schedule. If you’re super interested in joining and getting in for the next couple of days, jump in. Let us know at Support@LandAcademy.com. We’ll get you on the phone with Jill. See if you’re a logical fit and candidate for the group and see what happens. Karl, I can’t thank you enough. It’s great speaking with you. 

Thanks for having me. 

Talk to you soon.

Important Link:

• Karl Lathus – LinkedIn