I am so fortunate to have our official Land Academy Ambassador, Samantha Lathus, with us today. How are you?

Doing well, thank you for having me. I love when we get together and have our conversations.

Totally. We do it a lot anyway, but it’s fun to share with everyone what we have to talk about. It’s even nicer when it’s just you and I.

I know.

Jack is not in the next room. He’s actually in a different zip code. Is Karl there?

He is not currently in this building either.

We can speak freely, but we will keep in mind that there’s a chance one of them might watch this. I’m going to bet it’ll be Karl more than Jack.

Yes, definitely. Karl is always up to date with all the podcasts. Better watch it a little bit.

It’s even really more special, I think, because this is officially episode 2001.

It’s great.

I have this champagne bottle of M&Ms here and I figured out how you get into it.

There’s a secret door on it?

There is. I don’t have to unwrap the top. You can get into them. Yes, I have been eating them. Not a lot because you can see it’s pretty full. I’ve been stealing. If you look, you probably cannot see. I went far too.

Is it your guys’ face on it?

It is. Is that not hilarious?

That is so cool.

There’s a photograph. There are three different ones. One says congrats on 2000. Then the third little thing is a sweet podcast microphone.

That is so cute and that is such a thoughtful gift.

That actually came from our Erin, who said that. I love it, with this really sweet note that, wow. It is, she was even, I didn’t even realize too, it’s a very small percentage that makes it even over 50 episodes. Here we are, nine years later, it’s a huge milestone. It’s great. I’m really happy and proud, and it’s fun. I don’t know if we’re going to start. We’ll have to talk about it. As we’re talking about this today, what are we talking about today? How about if I give you this subject? Samantha and I are going to talk about women in land flipping because not only do I believe land flipping is still a niche, but when you bring in female investors, now you’ve got a niche within a niche.

There are more of us than you realize. If Samantha and I have our way, there’s going to be a lot more of us soon. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. Our three topics today, we’re going to describe what it’s like now. I’m going to share my experience from 10 to 15 years as a female investor. I’ll have Samantha share her experience in the last couple of years. Then we’re going to talk about why we think women are different. I’m going to go with different. I’m going to use a very neutral word. I’m going to say better.

Personal Experiences

Then we’re going to talk about what we’re doing and how we’re prepping to help and grow this amazing female land-flipping community that we’ve got, investment community, whatever you want to call it. Everybody understands land flipping. Some of the big terms they don’t get it. I’m like, “We’ll just call it that. People get it.” What do you think, what do you think it’s right now? What have you seen? I’m going to throw in my thoughts, like what I’ve seen.

I just go back to when Karl and I had started with career path number three, this was maybe three and half years ago now. There were twenty people on the call. There’s a couple of pairs, a husband and wife doing their land business, and out of the room, there were four, maybe five of us that were women investors. It was just crazy that the investor world seemed to me at that point, because it was my first exposure to this land business, that it seemed very male-driven and dominated.

Fast forward three years and we’re involved with all these other meetings like Land Academy pro and even this last career path where it is the opposite. I feel I am discussing land deals, reviewing land deals, and talking about this industry more with women than with men. It’s crazy how we all of a sudden have taken over this little niche. I’m sure you’ve seen it even crazier because I’m just speaking from the last 3 or 4 years of where we were involved. I’m sure when you started, it was even further in the other direction.

I love it. Even when I started, I was the only one, the only one I knew anywhere when I started doing this with Jack, and even back in the day, going to auctions and stuff, there wasn’t even a couple involved. It was just all guys. I remember too, it was so funny. We’d be at these, back in the day, here in Arizona, we even went to some in LA. Remember, meetups were a big thing and we would go to some of these real estate investment meetups. When there was any indication of any other property focus, we’d show up there.

I always looked like arm candy on him. Nobody would ask me any questions. It was the funniest thing. I’m just like, so I would just sit back and let them go. It was like all the guys talking, “Look, he brought his wife or his girlfriend or his partner, whatever they thought.” I’m just there. Every now and then I’d dropped a little nugget, then we were like, “How do that?”

I’ve had a similar situation not that long ago. It was in the fall. There’s a local group that just meets up, and we just talk about real estate in general. Some people own houses, and we do land. It’s just a group of us that got together, and Karl actually started it or was part of this group for the last 3, 4, 5 years. He would always come home talking about, “This guy said this and that guy said this.” He would give me updates on what everybody was talking about. Finally, he was like, “Why don’t you just come with me? Like just as much real estate as everybody else.” We ended up going, and he was shocked because it was the first time, the meeting that I went to, was the first time that there were three other girls there.

In the group, I think there were eighteen of us, there were three girls there. At first, we girls were like, “Let’s see how these boys are going to act around us girls, see if they include us or not.” Before you know it, we were the ones leading all the conversation. They were asking us all these in-depth conversations or topics about like, “What do you do for land?” Then this other lady bought the property and she was turning it into a wedding venue. They had all of these questions about like, “How did you do that? What permits did you need?” It was just amazing because it’s like, “We really did know more than some of these guys and they were asking us all these detailed questions and we had all the answers. It was cool.

Isn’t that great?

It was fun.

That’s awesome. Then even I can remember one, let’s just say, I do remember one individual right when we launched Land Academy, and she was like, “She had a PhD,” I cannot remember what it was, some macroeconomics or it might even be a biology-related, I don’t know. She was following us before we launched. Right when we released it, in July 2015, she joined, and she’s one of the reasons that we started the whole online community. She’s like, “We need to connect. I got some questions.” I’m like, “We got this.”

She wanted to stay at home and not have to go back to work and supplement her PhD income. I’ll never forget that. She was with us off and on. I cannot remember her first name right now. It’s hitting me because, a couple of years ago, I brought her up and she reached back out like, “ I’m still here.” What she started doing is she quickly figured out what we were doing. She was doing 1 or 2 deals a year. That’s it.

She was just making sure they were like they would yield $200,000 a deal. That was just it. She’s like, “That’s all I need, that’s all I want.” I’m like, “This is great.” Then I remember a couple of years later, more people coming in like Bae, you know Bae, and some other gals, just slowly trickling in. I never would have calls though. It’s funny when we people book calls to be on LAND Academy, I’m always like, “Is there any women?” Now I’m going to say definitely more than 25%, which is big, of women catching on and booking the calls. It’s so great.

Then when I have some of the calls too, though, it’s nice. I do have sometimes the men and my wife’s here. I’m like, “Awesome, you’re on speaker. I’m like, great. I love it.” Then I quickly pivot to them. I want to make sure I answer everybody’s questions and, B, I want to pull them in because, as we’ll talk about in a minute here, why we’re different. There are some really valuable skills that we naturally bring to the table in this world. I love it. I’ve definitely seen a rise and it was coupled. It was all guys, then couples, and now I’m seeing no more women.

Taking It Slow

I wrote three things down. I’m going to let you go first, Sam. Why do you think that we female investors, like, what are we different in a way that we just excel?

I think that there’s one main point that I’ve been thinking about. I feel men are rushing into things. They want to see the profits right away, and they want to rush and they want to get this thing done. They’re just go, go, go, go.

Speaking from experience, Karl is just a hundred miles an hour, nonstop. Just keep going.

They’re the same on that.

It’s the same way. Let’s just get this going. We should have done this yesterday. We should have done this last year. They’re just so far into it that they don’t take time to slow down and actually see the process, where I think women have a better understanding that there are little productive actions that if you repeat it over and over again, you’ll start to see the success. One example that I think everybody can relate to if you have kids is when you’re watching your kid learn how to walk. It’s very interesting because they’ll try to get up on their own and then they’ll fall down.

It doesn’t mean they give up. They just go over to a chair and then they start using the chair as a guide, and they’ll fall down again. Before you know it, they’re moving from the chair to the coffee table, and then they’re taking steps on their own. It’s this slow process of taking little steps at a time, and it results in a big success of learning how to walk.

Then if you have a boy, then they start scaling the fridge, but that comes quickly. It’s like, “How did you get up there?”

“It’s like, “Why?” The girls are like, I’m not going to do that. That ties into this.

It does. It definitely does. I just think that it’s the same thing with starting a business. It’s like, you just don’t have a business and then just run a hundred miles per hour. There are little things that you need to do along the way. I feel girls are more equipped to be patient, trust the process, and walk through each of the steps little by little. That’s actually a little by little is actually like a saying in my house that we’ve implemented. It first started, if we could tell a quick story.

When starting a business, you do not have to run a hundred miles per hour. There are little things you need to do along the way. Share on X

I love this. Tell me because this is a good one. I’m going to remember this now.

It started with our honeymoon. We went to Costa Rica and we stayed at this cute little hotel that I would consider to be on the side of a mountain because this hill was massive, and it was called poco a poco. When we first got there, we were like, “That’s a very interesting name.” We were talking to the staff and they’re like, “It means little by little.”

The way that the resort was built was it was actually a one-bedroom house, and little by little, the owner built out different sections and added on additions, and it turned into this really cool resort, and it was on top of this hill. When we were staying there, we noticed that there was a city center that was at the bottom of the hill. It was a half mile and you could see it directly. We would go down there for dinner and drinks. By the time the end of the night would come, you had to climb up this hill.

After you’re like, “No, your tummy’s full from food,” tell me you’re probably like, “Woohoo. It’s your honeymoon after all.”

We had all these drinks and stuff. I just remember sitting down mid-hill being like, “How am I supposed to get off this hill?”

How are we going to get home?

How are we going to do this? We were joking about it with the staff the next day because we just couldn’t get out of our mind of, “Why would you build this resort on top of this mountain and expect people to go down the hill for dinner and drinks and stuff?” To their response, the response was really funny. They’re like, “When you’re trying to get up the hill, you have to go poco a poco. You have to go little by little and you have to go step by step.” Again, it just reiterates the fact of why we call it poco a poco. We’ve adopted that in our household that you have to work at things, especially if something’s hard, like climbing up the mountain after you have too many cocktails. You have to go slow, poco a poco.

That’s your family mantra. That’s good, I love that. I was thinking about when you talked about how women are used to these steps. That’s one of the things that is why I think we’re different is not only we’re used to steps but we’re used to multitasking too. We’re used to breaking things down and having all these things. Then we’re also used to slotting in things as we need to. In our business, I’m trying to think of an example in our business. I mean, you’re posting a property. Say you’re sitting down right now today, you’re posting a property for sale. We all know the phone’s going to ring and it’s hard for people.

I want to say it’s easier for females for us to pivot. I can easily stop the screen, pivot to the screen, take a call, put together a deal, and have the whole conversation. I know you can do this too, have a whole conversation with the seller. I can be looking at Parcel Fact and I can be having the deal and agree upon a number and in 5 or 10 minutes we all know what our next steps are. I’m like, “Here’s what’s going to happen. Someone’s going to reach out to you. We’re going to get escrow open and I’ve got everything I need now and we’ll get with you tomorrow and film and then you hang up.” Then in our head, I’ve got my notes and stuff I’m ready to go, but I can get back to my posting because I got a timeline. I need to get this thing done. Then when I’m done, I can pivot back.

We’re really good at that.

I know in my house and on my team. The men are very different. They need to be uninterrupted in their steps. It doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong. It’s just different. I just think that we’re so used to that. I don’t know if it’s got to be nature. We’re both moms.

It has to be that in keeping a schedule, just knowing this is happening this day, this is happening then like escrow closing and people going to look out at the properties and just keeping your life in order, it translates so much into the land business as well. I totally see that point. Different hats scheduling. It’s doing that already.

Keeping your life in order translates so much into land business. Share on X

It’s interesting as a little side note. We have three new employees coming on this right now in this period and two of them are women and they’re in high leadership roles. These two women, I cannot wait for what’s coming. They’re going to make everything around Land Academy way more efficient. This is actually two parts. They’re coming in on the Land Academy side. I’m so excited. That’s going to be amazing. What’s interesting is already on my land company side and the same for, I know for Samantha, our team who helps close our deals and gets things done, it’s women.

That is true. They’re very good at their job and very good at multitasking and staying organized.

They have their number. They have escrow agents’ numbers which I have to wonder if it helps that they’re all that most of the time we talked to female escrow agents. It’s just the way it is. There are guys out there.

I’ve never dealt with a guy during escrow. I’ve only dealt with women, which is so funny, but it’s true.

They’re so good in our gals, they’ll close them early. That’s the best part. I mean, I’m not the poopoo man, but I have to think that if it’s on the schedule, I know my man. How about this? I know my man and I know my team. They’re only going to work, they’re going to have it all work to meet the goal at the goal time. That’s how they’re wired. We’re like, “No. Let’s just get it done now.”

Good On The Phone

Why wait? I was going to say too, the second thing I thought about why we’re different is, and this is a big one for Jack said, “You guys got to talk about this, which is how we’re good on the phone.” Our phone skills, I want to say, and our communication skills that’s just, again, nature. I think that number one, speaking to a woman is obviously different than a rough man.

Even a grumpy woman, it’s a little bit different. It’s a little harder to get mad at us. I think that with our communication skills and how we are wired, we pick up on nuances that men don’t. If Jack and I are ever on a call sometimes with the same person and even for a podcast, we’ll finish a podcast and I’ll go, “Did you pick up on this, this, and this?” He’ll go, “Nope.” What are your thoughts?

Karl’s the same way. I hear him answer the phone all the time. Just some of his responses are I’m just like, “I would have handled that differently.” I wonder if I would have gotten a different response and sometimes that I do answer the phone I feel like, “They’re not nearly as angry with me as they are with you.”

I feel I can have decent conversations and I don’t mind, obviously, there’s wasted time, but I don’t mind keeping someone on the phone and talking to them for five minutes where Karl it’s like, “You don’t want to sell. Okay, bye.” He tries to get off right away and it’s like, “Maybe she had questions or maybe the person had some questions before saying I am actually willing to sell. They made an effort to pick up the phone and call you.” At least give them five minutes of your time to figure out the situation.

Better Buying Decisions

Dig a little deeper. That could be too. Lord knows we do have a lot of patience, more patience. That’s not on my list, but maybe it should be. The other thing I was thinking about again, I’ll just keep using the word different. I’m trying to think of a better word for different, unique. Unique in our skill set. Here we go. Is the way we come at buying decisions. That’s my favorite one, I always think. There’s a book behind me right now, all about that. There are scientific facts like our heart rates and our thoughts, our minds, brain waves, and our heart rates and all that stuff.

The way that we look at things and make decisions on prices and what to buy on these properties is a really important thing. I just see us female investors, sorry guys, I see us making really good, smart, and sometimes a little better buying decisions. We’re not going to let our egos get in the way. We’re not going to try to say, “I don’t need to reset the market. I don’t need to hang my hat on that. That’s not why I’m here. I’m ready to get these deals done and have a healthy profit that I feel great and my buyer feels great and my seller feels great and everybody wins.”

I totally agree. We have this, I feel it’s a gut instinct. You know in your stomach, whether it’s going to be good or bad and you just trust it. I could pull up properties and instantly be like, “Something is not right.” Karl would be like, “It’s great, look at this, look at that.” Then I’ll pull up a couple of things and he’s like, “How did you get that so quickly?” It’s just like, “I just have this feeling. I can make these decisions because I just feel it differently than he feels it.”

You and I are so into this. It’s a funny thing. I got to share. Very often, we’ll be on our Thursday member calls. I don’t have control of the mouse on my side, but I’ll pick up on things. He will scroll down some of the details really fast. I’m like, saw it. I’ll look to you and I’ll go, “Did you see that in the legal?” You’re like, “Yeah, I saw that.” Jack’s like, “What are you guys talking about?” They don’t pick up on those little details. You and I, we’ve learned and we remember, like need to pay attention to that, like undivided interest. You and I would pick up on that real fast. He won’t even maybe scroll down to the bottom to normally catch that.

It’s there and it’s important.

It is so funny. You know what, you brought up something good. I’ll never forget it, it was probably twenty years ago, I’m going to say. I always stuck with me as I was listening to the Dave Ramsey show back on the radio before podcasts. I remember a guy called in and he was asking his advice about some investment. He goes into all the details about the investment and the ROI and here’s how much it’s going to cost and here’s what we think is going to happen and da da da. He had this five-minute thing on it. Then the first question that Dave Ramsey asked the guys was, “What does your wife think?” They’re right there. I loved it. Dave said because he said, “These gals and their gut instinct is often right.” He said, “I would go with what your wife thinks.” I’m like, “I knew it.”

That was twenty years ago before. That’s very forward-thinking.

Did you ever listen to the radio? I should have thought that was even AM now I’m really going back here.

Don’t age yourself, Jill.

Exactly. It’s so funny. I love that. Maybe that’s us too. I might look like I have no trouble making knee-jerk good. I mean, let’s just say a little bit wild decisions like, “Let’s go to wherever tomorrow. Okay. Let’s do it. Buy tickets and go,” like, “Did you think that through?” Behind the scenes, I am conservative about money. Sam and I, you’re probably like me when it comes to our deals, boy, I’m conservative. Sometimes too much. We’ve talked about this. Sometimes I don’t pull the trigger on deals I should have. They come back and tell me, “You should have got in on this one.” I’m like, “You know what? I guess I should have, but good for you. I’m okay with that.”

I am too, just because I’d rather sleep well at night and know that the investments that I did make are something I truly believe in, rather than just taking this wild jump and spending all this money and not fully sure if I’m going to make it back. I am so conservative. I inflate all my numbers and that’s like, “Worst case scenario, we’re still going to make this.” If I’m okay with that, I’ll for sure, 100% just go all into it, knowing that the worst-case scenario I’m still okay with. I think you’ve talked about that too. What profits do you want to make this year? Now cut it in half. Are you going to be happy? If so, then you’re on the right path. I always love hearing that talk in career path, but how we get into all those numbers and I think you’re the same way.

You can sleep better at night knowing that you have made investments you truly believe in rather than spending money on things you are unsure about. Share on X

Buy Property

Isn’t that great? That’s the thing too. It still keeps coming up now and then. There’s a lot of people out there. Just to back up and give a little background of what we’re talking about, if you’re new to this. The way we buy property is we buy property. Some people might be saying, “There’s no risk anyway if I just wholesale the property and I’m running around with a piece of paper.” That’s partially true because it’s not your money on the line, but the risk is you lose a deal. I keep seeing that a lot, especially nowadays.

I know why it’s in whatever Facebook groups I’m in, I keep seeing things pop up that people are there was a guy just recently buy for 20 sell for 50. He lost the deal because he started to market it because he just had a piece of paper, an equitable title, and then his buyer went around his back and went to the seller directly. Now he’s out of the deal. Then he’s like, “What are you going to do? You’re going to try to sue the guy? No, come on.” Let’s be honest. That’s the risk you run. That can happen versus the way Sam and I do it. We’re buying it.

Buy for 20, sell for 50,000. I like those numbers. If I don’t have the dough, I can call Samantha. All I could do is show it to her and Samantha be like, “I’ll write the check, done.” Same with you. I mean, we’ve sent out so much mail in the last month that we’ll probably be calling you guys soon. There’s a couple of good deals that came across and we’re just like, “Maybe.” You know what? One of these days we got to add it up. When you have time, Samantha, I’d love for you to say, “If we bought every property, this would be awesome.” Are you looking right now? If you have a spreadsheet open, bring it, but if not. We just sent out an 8,900-unit mailer. If every person said yes, and we bought every property, it would equal this.

I used to do that just to play with it to see how much are we actually offering? I remember just the one, I think it was only, I don’t know if it was 2000 or 3000 units, this is a long time ago, and looking in, it was multiple millions, tens of millions of dollars. I was just like, “That is nuts. That is so crazy that if you add up all these properties, it would equal that.” Then you think about it and you’re like, “If I did acquire all these properties, the actual market value, if I went to go turn around and sell it, that would be cool, too.”

I’m going to be conservative. Let’s just say I set out a 5,000-unit mailer tomorrow and I’m going to spend, let’s just say an average of $34,000 a property. That is 1.7 million, is that right?

I don’t know. It does seem low.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 excuse me, 17 million.

That sounds right.

That would be $17 million, which actually, within Land Academy and Samantha and I, we could come up with $17 million.

We probably can. That’s not a hard number to hit.

Let’s just say… I’m going to divide that by two. We don’t want half of them.

I like this game.

This is good.

I’m using a stupid little calculator. Don’t say, Samantha. Samantha is right now in Excel, but I don’t know how to open it. I don’t like half of them. I buy half of them. That’s 8.5 million bucks. I’m going to at least double my money. Let’s just say I don’t even do that great. I come in at 1.1 of that. That’s awesome. $9,350,000 works for me. Does that work for you?

That works for me.

We got 2024 squared away. There we go. Thank you, everyone, for attending the Samantha and Jill 2024 deal budgeting meeting. That’s awesome. That’s really how you look at this stuff and how we budget and plan. That’s Land Academy. We have an equity planner and this is really it. What do you want to make this year? Then you back into it to really see. These numbers we just threw around, we know it because we live, eat, and breathe this. For someone coming into this, you could plug in like, “Your numbers are great but how about if I only want to make $500,000 this year and this is how much time I have?

I think I can do two, maybe three deals a month.” “No problem. We can show you in Land Academy, let’s plug in this number, and back it up. This is how much time it’s going to take. This is how much mail you’re going to have to send and this is how much yield you’re going to need on each of those offers to do your 2 to 3 a month to hit that $500,000.” When you look at it like that, isn’t that funny, Samantha? You look at it, you’re like, “Now that doesn’t seem so hard.” You’re like, “Shoot, let me make it a million then. Now that I know if I just do one more, let’s just add a zero.”

See where that comes up. To your point, I love how you can personalize that worksheet because it’s not going to be the same for me as I started three years ago, as I started last year, as I’m starting this year, and it’s going to be different for the next investor. That’s what’s so great about that worksheet and other tools that Land Academy provides is that you can take it and make it your own and personalize it and it can show you what is possible.

How often are you getting calls or signed purchase agreements from your first couple of mailers that you just like, you giggle, like I’m not doing that?

There was one, and it was from our, I think it was the fourth mailer that we started, and we got it last December. It was two years old, and it wasn’t a property that we wanted. It was in a flood zone, maybe back then we would have entertained it since we were so new to Land Academy and just weren’t quite sure of the deals that were possible. Now, after we’ve had all this experience, we just looked at it and we’re like, “That’s kind of funny. They must be really desperate.”

Then we just wrote them a nice email being like, “It doesn’t meet our buying criteria.” That is so common. Just yesterday, we got a letter back, and the offer expired last July. It’s almost a year old. It’s eight months old. Again, that one was in the wetlands. We’re striking out a little bit, but I mean, it’s funny. You never know when they’re going to reach out to you. It might be the day they get it or it might be a year from now. The cool thing is your letter is out there right now.

I thought you were saying it’s a personalized professional thing. I cannot believe how many people, I think because it’s not a postcard and it’s not a pretend handwritten yellow pad. I crack up at all that stuff. I know you get it too. This is so funny, but it’s a very professional, simple, one-page introductory letter and a purchase agreement and people open them up and if now is not the right time, it goes in their file. They save these things for decades. It’s hilarious. Then someday when dad passes and the kids open up the file, A) Like, “We didn’t know dad had this.”

1. B) Let’s see if these people are still around because they want to buy our property. I love it too because some of them especially some of our offers from the last, just pre-COVID kind of thing. It’s like they come at us and me like, “I know I, this is old. Would you even entertain anything like this price?” I’m like, “I’ll pay that price all day long. I’d pay more than that now, but if you’re good with this price, we’re going to make this happen.” That is really funny.

That is the one good thing about the old mailers too, is that the market always is improving for the most part. Not always, but for the most part, if you have an old mailer from two years ago and somebody’s like, “Yes, I accept this price.” It’s like, “Hopefully the market has improved in the last two years and now this deal is a better deal and you could even make more on it.”

Growing The Community

Love that. Thinking about prepping, we’re not going to share too much. We would like the final topic that Sam and I want to talk about is like really what we’re doing right now. What I want everyone to know is that we are prepping to not only help our existing female investors but grow the female land community. I am so excited. I was just going to say what, the thing that I’ll let you share some stuff, but I was going to share that.

What Sam and I are working on is not going to be, I don’t see it as a whole separate thing, it’s going to layer on top of this foundation because we got nine years of Land Academy and we were teaching before that just unofficially kind of thing. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but it can always improve. We’re talking about today, there are so many nuances and things that we want to do to promote and help some of our amazing already successful female investors excel. What if we did our own career path even? Just thought of that.

Like a woman’s career path? That’d be pretty cool.

I don’t know. That might be cool.

I don’t like that. I think our last career path was one of those. That was in the third path.

There were a couple of boys.

Do you guys do that? We’ll sit there and everything. Jack would write me notes like, “You women don’t need me right now.’ I’m like, “No, it’s really sweet.”

That’s why Karl always says that. He’s like, “I’m just here to support you because it seems what you’re doing and you got this. Let me know if I need to chime in.”

It’s funny. It used to be that was like, I feel that was my role in Land Academy. We talked about last week on our 2000th episode. I’m like, I was never supposed to be here. I was never like, the podcast wasn’t my thing. I was a filling guest. While he was doing all this stuff, I was running the land companies. Then here we are.

Taking over, ruling the world.

You know what’s great about it? Our men are not threatened by that at all.

No. Karl’s like, “Just let me know when I can retire.”

That’s it. That’s still going to be our line. We’re going to really make that. We haven’t had the hats made yet, but we’re going to do something to retire your husband. That’s coming. What things do you think we could help with first or the most this year? What are your ideas?

I think that we are doing an awesome job listening to the community to see what everybody’s needs are. I think that’s where we’re going with some of these new products with Land Academy. We’ve really been listening, and we want to take your input and build on top of it to make this a more, I don’t know what word I’m trying to describe, a communal base and I can grow if you can grow and we’re all in this together type of thing. I’m really excited. I know I’ve been working a lot on a couple of the projects which I’m excited about. It’s getting to the point where Karl’s like, “We need to focus on other things too.” I’m just so jacked about it. I cannot wait to roll out these few products that we’re working on and just hit the ground running.

Same here. That’s like, we’re having our own little meeting here, everyone. I hate to put some stuff on pause, but like you said about having a system earlier and we put them in, Sam, this is how we are. Sam and I could run right now and put out something and have it starting tomorrow, but content and thoughtfulness of all that needs to be well planned out. The people that I’m working on bringing in on the support side are going to just make it so much better. When we release this, look out. It’ll be awesome. What are we going to do with the guy? There’s going to be guys. I haven’t thought about that. I think there might be arenas. We’ll let the guys participate. What do you think?

I think so.

We’ll still keep with some of our closed calls and things like that because it is different. We have different thoughts and different ideas. I don’t want to stifle any of our creativity. We’re going to still keep some stuff separate. Sorry, Cindy Dean, who is not really Cindy, but anyway, a hitchhiker who keeps trying to get into our thing.

He needs a better wig.

We’ll come up with something like that. You know what? Little by little.

Little by little, poco a poco.

I love that. Maybe that’s going to be your saying like, is it “poco a poco?” I love that. A long time ago, Jack came up with the way I just do transactions. It was really winning over sellers and winning over buyers. He named it, Jillify it people still once in a while say, I Jillified it. I’m like, “That’s great. You can tell me if you want a different one, but I like it for now. I think if we go little by little for you or poco a poco. That’s it.

That is seriously a conversation we always have at the house. It’s like you’re always trying to run forward and go super fast. It’s like, “Wait, why are we doing this?” We know that we have to go little by little. Take a step back and be patient.

Episode Wrap-Up

What else is going on for you as we wrap up? What else is going on for you this week? Any crazy deals coming in or are you overwhelmed with what you just got to, you say you have a mailer. Did it go out yet?

Our phone is ringing nonstop, which is really exciting. We’re hoping something shakes out for that. This year has been weird, which is, it’s been a weird start to the year where some of the properties that we had listed, they’re still sitting there and I’m not sure why. I feel they’re priced appropriately and they have amazing views and a lot of saves and stuff. It’s just, I feel there’s this stall. What we’re trying to do now is we’re trying to focus on ourselves and try to prepare and stay ahead and self-educate. Just keep us, our mindset in the right direction and keep moving forward during this little. I feel every industry and everything sometimes has lulls in there and you just have to push through them in order to see the success at the end.

Every industry sometimes lulls in there. You just have to push through in order to see the success at the end. Share on X

Are you worried about anything?

No, I’m not worried about it one bit.

That’s good. Isn’t that great? I swear, when my feelings, I feel once you figure this out, you’re done. That’s it. It’s golden. Then you can pivot to there’s so many property types. Once you get in and understand what we do and you learn all this, there are niches within niches. Zip codes within counties, property types within zip codes, and zoning things within that. Is it getting a little noisy in our space? Other people out there are learning what we do. You know what? They don’t do it like we do it. I know they don’t do it as well because I respond to some of those things that I get crickets.

Sit down and then, so it’s interesting. I have one right now. I got to tell him on this. I’ll let how it goes. Someone sent me an offer on a property, of course, that I long forgotten about. It’s like, I don’t know how long we’ve had this dumb thing. I’m like, “I don’t even know who this person is or they’re actually not in Land Academy.” I’m like, “I signed it, send it back.” I don’t know if they know who I am too. It was sweet because my transaction coordinator was saying like, “I don’t get anybody nowadays. It doesn’t know who Jill DeWitt is.”

I’m like, “That’s okay.” Anyway, this person, they were asking a lot of questions and I’m like, “Stop it. I’m not going to entertain all your questions. You need to go do your own due diligence. You do what you’re doing. If you want to follow through, let me know.” I got an email and it said, “Checks on the way.” Like they’re sending me a check and all the documents about myself. I’m like, “This is a little nuts for me to sign it, notarize it, send it back, and they’re trusting me on all this.” I’m like, “This is a little loosey-goosey to me.”

This is the first time hearing of all this because I haven’t received one of those yet. How do I get on that page?

I will let you know if it happens.

I have one property that I could think of that Karl said was a good idea that I would like to throw in this bucket.

I’m like, “Wait a minute. If you’re sending me a real check, you’re trusting me and I’m going to cash. I’m not just going to cash a check and then go dark on you too.” This is not what we teach everyone, by the way, obviously, because I’m a little shocked by it. Then I wrote my transaction corner back a note and I’m like, “Do you have any red flags here?” I’m like, “Is this money laundering?” I’m like, “ Am I not picking up on it? No, I think it’s good. She’s like, “I don’t know if it’s going to show up too.” Now we’re waiting to see. This will be really interesting.

Keep me updated because that is.

I will. That’s the weirdest, funniest thing. There you go. There’s stuff out there but I guess my point was even Sam and I know that there are other people who have caught on. Our Land Academy community is not that big. Within Land Academy, even our real heavy hitters, there’s not a lot of us. Sadly, I’m watching people kind of get discouraged and not stay with it and fall out. It’s going to be really interesting in the next year or two, how many of us are here doing it, but we’re not worried.

I know our Land Academy Community is not worried and we’re always, you got Sam, you got me, you got Jack, you got everybody here, Karl. We’re all staying on the forefront, keeping our eyes on what’s coming. Jack and I have been doing this for decades, Jack more than me. We’ve weathered many storms. We know how to pivot and whatever’s coming at us, we’ll pivot again. Helps me sleep great at night.

I totally agree.

Thank you, Samantha. It was fun to spend some time with you again this week. I hope you guys have a great week. I cannot wait to hear about some of the deals coming back from your most recent mailer and how that all shakes out.

We’ll definitely keep you updated. Thanks for having me.

Thank you. Have a good one, everyone. Bye.