This is the Land Academy Show.

This is episode number 2051. Jill and I are talking about expanding your land business into other real estate types. This is imperative. It’s imperative for your success as we’ll talk about later in the episode, especially right now. One of the most popular questions that Jill and I get is, what should I be doing now to respond to hurricanes, to respond to it’s an election year and this expanding your business?

Expansion is how we are addressing and we’ll explain. This week is all about the theme of five phases of your real estate empire. I put them into five groups and we talk about one of those phases each day. Today’s Wednesday. We’re talking about expanding your land business. On Monday, we talked about nailing down the basics and getting all your stuff straight from an education standpoint and whatnot.

On Tuesday we talked about putting your land business on autopilot so you’re not actually having to deal with the day-to-day stuff. You are concentrating on where to make money and what the best role is for you in your own company. I can almost guarantee you it’s not being an administrator or a transaction coordinator. Today though we’re talking about expansion. This is the fun when it gets fun. When you’re making a bunch of money, you’re not necessarily working in your own company on the day-to-day stuff. You’re really assessing where else you can make money and do well.

When you're making a bunch of money, you're not necessarily working in your own company on the day-to-day stuff. You're really assessing where else you can make money and do well. Share on X

I love it because you start off, you’re learning the basics. Sorry, there we go. You’re learning the basics. My favorite is to like, I got this now. What should I really be working on? What help can I bring in? Week three is let’s look to the future. Let’s grow. What else could I be doing now that I’ve got this locked in and then comes 4 and 5?

If you’re not a startup person, if you’re not a person who just loves to look at new things and try it and make things better and address the market, this is not for you. If you are an administrator.

If you’re still on Windows three.

If you’re just an administrator and you want to, you just like to keep the wheels on the bus and solve problems all day and deal with staffing and you love your HR job.

You have the original iPhone.

Jill and I, here are the people who join the Academy and stay with us, usually coming from some STEM profession, pilots, accountants, software engineers, or career salespeople, but we don’t get a lot of HR people or politicians. The good news is that in November, there are going to be a lot less politicians or politicians who want to be.

There we go. We might get them after November. It’s going to work out. I’m joining a land Academy. That’s going to be the new campaign. That’s good. “Did you not get enough votes? We’ll vote for you. Come on over.”

Land Academy Member Question

Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum, and we take a deep dive into a land-related topic that we’ll talk about in a few minutes.

Is that correct or did it just, is that a typo?

It’s correct.

Cool. We’re just checking.

Just make sure you ask in front of everyone first. I want to make sure. Versus just blowing right through it and assuming that.

Jack, is that your spelling error, or is that just kidding? I’m joking.

That’s what I’m saying. Jill loves to point out spelling errors.

No, I’m not joking.

Do you have a spouse like that? If you have a spouse who likes to point out your spelling errors and whatnot, please dial 888.

Don’t do that. You’re a stinker. Zane and Tara wrote another question. Jack was on Zane and Tara’s week apparently, so I just wanted to make sure. This question is for funders. We’ve been reviewing higher-price properties and I’m wondering what profit margin partnerships desire / require. When the initial investment is upwards of $100,000 and even into the $500,000 or more range. That’s a buy for $100,000 to $500,000.

Then we’re selling for 2 and 3 times that. I’ve got a few properties that are out of my acquisition budget and I want to gather funding knowledge for those deeper pockets than myself, thanks so much. My main thing is you have to have comps and some data and active things going on in that market to support it. If you came to me, Tara, and said, “Jill, this is a piece of dirt in Torrance, California, and I can get it for $500,000, I don’t care.”

It’s buildable.

It’s a point three acres. I’d be like, “Holy cow. What did you just say? Like, now I happen to know that area and that’s just giving you an example.” It could be down Manhattan, New York. I mean, think about there are places that we all know. How do we know that because there’s data to show that and we know things are moving there and we know what things sell for. This is not crazy. If you come to me and need $450,000 for a property that is worth probably a million, maybe more, and whoever’s going to buy it, and it’s a zoned apartment, and they’re going to build on it, and it’s going to be a $5 million, whatever, investment thing.

My pen’s in my hand, literally. It has to be that if you’re coming to me like, “It’s $450,000 in this very rural part of fill-in-the-blank state. I think this is possible. I know there’s a hotel here and there’s the Riverwalk and whatever it is.” Like, hold on a moment. Let’s make sure we’re making a good decision here. You don’t even sound that sure of it. Then we probably don’t have the data to support it.

What Jill’s saying is, and there are people so much want hard and fast rules and criteria. It’s between $30,000 and $80,000 at $81,500. We will not fund it. That doesn’t exist. What we want is for you to come to us and we want the same thing that every funder wants. You came to us believing in the deal already. With all kinds of support points about why it’s a great deal, you just need some money because you don’t want somebody to get the deal.

You need some money right now. We can buy the thing together and get into it and get out of it together. It’s that kind of confidence that we’re really looking for and support. If you come to us with a transaction and you say, “I don’t know if this is a good deal or not. Can you guys look at it?” We’re going to look at it but that’s an initial red flag. If you go out on a date with a guy and he says, “I’m not sure if I like you yet. I’ll let you in an hour.” That’s not good.

I’ll tell you one thing too for me personally on the deals that I’ve been reviewing very, very recently, Tara, there’s one piece that’s missing that a lot of people are not telling. You’ll tell me they’re alive. You’ll tell me if there’s access, you show me what’s around there. I get all the information, but I do really want to know what’s really going on. Like he’s retiring. This is the last one.

My wife was just hot because those tell me it kind of paints a story of if it’s a good deal or not. When I know the guy’s had it for 30 years, he was going to build on it and now they need the dough and this, this, and this, and this is a different story than an investor who bought it last week. I’m like, “Now why do I want it? Why is he jumping ship and why would I even jump in?” You could see two different stories. I need to know that information.

All the deals that Jill and I are doing right now let’s say since we got in the RV, about six months ago ish. There was a moment when we looked at each other and said, “Now we have to do this deal. We have to.” That’s true. it’s usually after a price reduction, we already bought into the deal itself but it just wasn’t priced right, which is a very common occurrence now. Some stuff changes to maybe a month after that. Maybe two months, maybe three months.

Maybe time changes at the price.

All of that, or seasonality, or life circumstance but the reason that we’re ending up doing these deals is the price got to a point where we just said we got to do the deal. The price got to that point because Jill kept in touch with these people. The first contact that they had with her, they liked her. They do pick up, they take her call when it shows up on the caller ID.

We need to do a show on that. That’s the theme right now.

This is a show.

I know we do a separate show on that, but that is a theme of how there are deals that you love and the price is not there, but man if the margin is there, stay on it. Like this deal right now, Tara, maybe it’s $450,000 and you’re like, “I know Jill would jump on if it was $200,000, but right now it’s $450,000.” You know me, I’ll be honest. I’ll tell you. “I cannot, I’m not going to do it at $450,000.” Stay on them because that’s a bigger deal, and enough margin there that maybe in three months, the $450,000 will become $200,000 because that does happen.

There are deals that you love and the price is not there, but man if the margin is there, stay on it. Share on X

This happened to us recently.

It does happen.

Expanding Your Land Business

Today’s topic, expanding your land business into other real estate types. Here are some facts. More people are sending mail than ever before. Why? Because more people have taken the Land Academy course, terminated their membership, copied everything, and then went on to regurgitate and start their own land group.

They try.

For the vast majority of the people who do this, it doesn’t last. It all takes care of itself. I’m not complaining. I think it’s humorous but the result of that, at least in the short term, is more people are sending mail. You’re getting more comments from sellers that sound like, “This is the third one I got this month, and it’s the lowest.” To which Jill says.

Yes, and I’m real. Let’s do this.

That’s why we’re here.

I’ve got the dough, let’s go. They obviously realize it wasn’t maybe worth that much, or you would have done it by then. They never called me back.

One of the things that we have done very successfully and not just now but in the past and we brought it back is expanding our business into other real estate types. I think that is because our land business just runs in the background constantly. Expanding your business, all businesses into other product types that make sense, I think is a fantastic growth position to be in. If you are Procter & Gamble and you make toothpaste, it might make sense for you to either acquire a brand for deodorant or start a new one.

How about just a new flavor?

New flavor.

Think about Listerine. It’s different. It’s purple now. I like the purple one. They didn’t always start out as purple. There’s green, there’s blue, there’s purple. There’s kids’ versions, there’s this version. That’s it. You have to roll with the times and expand and advance. By the way, try things and they don’t work. Now there’s a whole thing, Diet Coke. You see Diet Coke has taken, somebody got in trouble with, there’s something like their Diet Coke has real cane sugar in there. They’re like, how come they’d be Diet Coke then? They’re having to like to retract something. Now that could have been fake news, but you have to roll and change.

In the first part of your career, you’ve got the basics down and grow. In the second part, you put systems in place that allow you and free your time up to do what’s really important, whatever that it means to you. In this phase, which is phase three, it might be the thing that’s really important, which is expanding your land business into buying mobile homes or single-family residences or even strip malls or companies one second.

You already know how to send the mail. You already have the systems in place from phase two. You already know that it works. You already know where to get the data to do things like that. You have somebody answering your phone. Hopefully, it’s you. You have all this stuff worked out. It’s too easy to do a second mailer for mobile homes in a market that you’re already in or a single-family residence. It’s just a logical next step. This is step three, expanding it into other real estate types.

This is not putting all your eggs in one basket. It could be as simple as I’ve only dealt with X state and now I’m doing a different state. I’ve only dealt with residential. Now I’m going to try a commercial. Great, it could just be little things like that. “I got some properties that are zoned for mobile home parks.” I’m not going to build one, but there’s an opportunity there or there are all kinds of things that you could do. Cool. Are you wrapping me up?

No, I think I hope that covers it. Expansion is a jeez, you’ve heard it a million times expand or die.

Expand or die. Share on X

We’re good at this. The thing is this is Land Academy. There’s a reason why we’ve been him for 30 years sitting here full time. Never sweat it. Me for 15 years, I sleep great, by the way.

I sweat more than Jill. That’s the truth.

I know there’s that. In general or about our business?

This is a compliment. Jill goes into every real estate deal we do and she’s not saying this even consciously. I’m the only person who realizes it. She’s subconsciously in the back of her head saying, “Let’s just see how this goes. I wonder what journey we’re going to be on in this real estate deal. Whatever it is, we’ll adjust it.” Come out okay. Every time without exception that happens. Every time I go into a real estate deal, I’m going to, I say in the back of my head, “I wonder how this is going to explode in my face.”

It’s so weird. I don’t know how you do that. It’s so funny. It’s true though. I go in going, I’m like, “I see three different ways out of this deal. I see how much money if I screw it all up. I’m still going to make this much money.” That’s it. I won’t let it fail or I won’t do it.

In the end, I said earlier, the deals that we’re all doing are because there was a moment where we had to do the deal because I ran out of ways that the deal, if the deal really goes sideways, how we’re going to lose financially. That’s what this business model is. We’re buying it and not doing anything and reselling it. Thus the price gets down to the point where they close the deal because they want to deal with Jill, not because of the price. I’m signing up, I cannot sign fast enough because I know we can resell it for a lot more immediately because that’s how we price our real estate.

If we just do nothing. Do nothing.

Why not do that with mobile homes or houses or strip malls or whatever expansion or in another area or if that’s what expansion means to you?

Another zoning or something.

Maybe you don’t think that now your dealmaking skills are where they should be. You take some education, formal education, public speaking course, how to be an amazing person or whatever it ends up being and become the deal, a Jill level deal maker, or Jill level deal creator, I should say. Maybe that’s your expansion.

Thanks.

Join us tomorrow where we discuss phase 4 of 5 in your real estate career and institutionalizing the operations portion of the real estate business. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.