This is episode number 2109. In this episode,  Jill and I are talking about how to set realistic goals for your land business in 2025. In fact, all week, all 5 days, we’re going to talk about 5 real live ways to run your land business. These are dead-set examples of what Jill and I do every month.

Importance Of Setting Goals For Your Land Business

If you don’t have goals, you don’t have a roadmap. It’s interesting. I did our January land ladies call and this was the whole topic. I came up with my own little ideas and then I did some searching on the internet, and then I merged some ideas, so I have a lot to talk about. I was wondering. You are so good at setting goals. It’s routine for you. I talked about that too with my ladies’ group. You review our goals weekly. Am I guessing right?

If you don't have goals, you don't have a roadmap. Share on X

To directly answer your question, it’s in real-time. I’m constantly looking at everything. Every decision I make, I’m like, “How does this fit in the plan?” I don’t do it even consciously anymore. If I ever did it consciously, I don’t know. It’s probably to the point of unhealthy.

I don’t think that’s true at all. It is healthy. Some people say you should have goals and review them three times a day to make sure all day long you’re on the right path. You’re not nuts in this situation.

My big point on this, and we’ll bring it up during the topic, is everything’s got to work on paper first. It has to work out in your head so you can see the end that you’re moving toward. If it all works out in your head and it’s likely that it’s going to happen, then go do it in real life. Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum and take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular requests.

Explaining The Red-Yellow-Green Test

Here’s the question from Cesar. I happen to remember Cesar in Land Academy. He wrote, “Regarding the Red, Yellow, Green Test, can anyone give me some insight on what I’m seeing when I’m doing the Red, Yellow, Green Test? The new list to pending percentage in the spreadsheet shows up as 0%. I find when doing several ZIP codes in a county, there are always a few that show up this way. What’s that indicating?”

The Red, Yellow, Green Test is something I devised many years ago for Jill and me in our own land business to take a look at whether or not a local market, like a ZIP code, is worth sending mail. In its most basic form, there are three things to check in the original Red, Green, Yellow Test, which is the one that I present in the Land Academy programs.

Number one is days on the market. The lower, the better. If all types of property are listed on the MLS and it’s got low days on market, it’s green. That’s relative to 3 or 4 ZIP codes right in the area. One of the other ones in what Caesar here is talking about is a new list to pending. You want to see a lower percentage here.

The new list to pending is quite simply the number of properties that have been listed that real estate agents went out and got a bunch of listings to the number of properties that are pending that are set up to be sold. They’re under contract. You want that number to be less than 1 to 1. If there are 50 properties in a market that are listed and 50 properties that are pending, that’s 1% or 100%. That’s a 1-to-1 ratio. In a perfect world, you’d like to have a lot more properties pending than are listed. More properties are being sold and fewer properties are being listed. If that keeps up, eventually, there are no more properties left. Hopefully, you have a bunch of properties in that area that are getting flushed out of the system quickly.

What’s your third one?

The number of properties that are listed against the number of properties in that market. The third one is if I have 100 properties that are listed and there are 10,000 properties versus 5,000 versus 1,000, those are different percentages. I want to see a small amount of property in general listed against a ton of property that’s sitting there. There are not a lot of properties listed. All three of these things go together. These are what I would call statistics 101.

In Cesar’s question, the new list to pending is zero. That means things are getting listed and nothing’s moving. Is that right?

There could be a new list to pending percentages. There are a lot of reasons for this. The probable reason for this statistically is that there are no listings and there are no pending. There’s nothing happening in that market, which is why I included this in the original version of the Red, Green, Yellow Test. You want, in general, if you’re new especially, some activity in a market.

Jill and I’ll go off into the wilderness and buy property. We’ve been doing this for 30-plus years. We know if we buy really inexpensive, attractive property where there’s no activity, which North Dakota, North Minnesota, or Wisconsin that’s close to Canada are great examples, there’s not a lot of high demand and therefore no real sales. There’s nothing happening.

Using A Check Engine Light As A Business Analogy

We’ve done very well in those markets in the past. This is not one of those times because of economic reasons. Cesar, what happened here is you tested it and this market that you tested failed. Do you know when that check engine light comes out in your car and you’re like, “This is ridiculous. I can’t believe this check engine light came on.” The fact is it’s doing its job and you’re mad.

That’s why it’s supposed to come on. You fix it and move on.

Let’s talk about the check engine light for a minute. How many times does a check engine come out on your car and it’s a cry wolf situation? You pull the codes and look at the whole thing or you take it to your mechanic. It’s like, “That sensor’s bad in that back rear tire. You’re good. You could have driven on this for three years.”

I do that. We both do that. We’re on the same page with that. I’m like, “How red is it? Is it blood red or light red? Is it flashing?” I don’t know. I go by, “How does the car smell, sound, and feel when I’m driving?” I’m like, “Do you smell oil? We have a problem.”

Let me tell you something about my life partner. We have a Freightliner, a huge rig. It’s a Class A RV. Once in a while, the light comes on. There are a lot of systems in that, which is way more than a regular car or truck. She has figured out a way without me knowing about it. She figured out that when this check engine light comes on to get into Freightliner without a code reader, get the codes, and find out what they are and how to address them and solve them. That’s when I get involved. I’m like, “We’ve got to do this.” I usually go do it. That’s the kind of business partner she is too. She’s going to get in there deep, dark, down into why the light’s on before it blows up.

Cesar, this is what 0.0 is. The check engine’s light’s on. Make sure it’s pulling the data correctly in the Red, Green, Yellow Test, first of all, and then get to the bottom of it. You’re like, “I’m very confident. There’s no activity. There are a few other reasons that could happen but this is what’s happening,” and then make a decision. We could call the Red, Yellow, Green Test and check the engine light.

I love this. Review the codes, see if it’s a fire, and then decide, “Before you pull over and call whoever you call, like AAA, let’s make sure.” On  the new list to pending, when it comes up zero, did you put gas in? Is the cap tight? You could have messed up something or it could simply be that you need to drive it for a little while or a bad sensor.

The dreaded bad sensor.

That can happen.

Most of the time, you drive it out. With that vehicle specifically, you drive it until the light goes off.

It’s like, “Let’s go for a couple of hours and see what happens.”

I bet 9 times out of 10, that solves it.

That goes out. You’re like, “Problem solved.”

This episode’s topic is how to set realistic goals for your land business in 2025. Jill has a lot to say.

Setting Goals And Staying On Track

This is timely because this is what I talked about in our meeting. I talked about setting goals, rewards, and staying on track. The reason I put that together and the reason we’re talking about it is it’s one thing to set goals but another thing to get up and do them. That’s really it. You have to find a way to do that. Invariably every year, come at the end of December and going into January, you do it or we do it. I look at all my expenses. I look at things going on. I’m planning out the next year, “Did I use the gym membership or did I not?”

It's one thing to set goals; it's another thing to actually get up and achieve them. Share on X

I see Land Academy as a gym membership for people. It’s always the same thing. They tell me the same thing I tell the people at the gym, which is, “It’s not you. It’s me. Your classes are wonderful. They do everything I need. It’s me. I’m not showing up, so it’s on me.” I’m trying to help people. Sometimes, the goals might be too lofty. People are like, “I’m going to lose 20 pounds in 1 month.” You’re not. Let’s be realistic. Maybe in a year, that’s realistic. For Land Academy members, it’s like, “I’m going to make $250,000 this year.” Not this month, but you could. This 2025, let’s be realistic.

The Gym Membership Analogy

H ere’s the thing about a gym membership and here’s the thing about exercise versus building a company. If you build a company correctly, you’re going to put the right people in place. You’re going to move forward. At the end of that year when you’re supposed to lose twenty pounds, for exercise, you have to continue to do it. It’s a lifestyle change. In fact, you should be doing it every day for the rest of your life. That’s hard to swallow. It’s even hard for me to swallow. That’s not the case with business. If you put all the right people in place to get things moving, you can kick back and sip that cocktail down at the Caribbean if you want to and look at the numbers.

Jill and I have multiple lines of revenue or multiple companies. Several of them are like that. We don’t have to spend any time at all. I love the gym membership analogy for the first year maybe, but you don’t have to continue working out every single day for the rest of your life like you do with the exercise with business.

The key is if you have the right members or the right team. I talked to someone. There was a woman in our group who hit her seven-figure goal in 2024. I said, “Tell me about your day. What’s your day like?” She gets up and does land and reviews deals at 5:30 to 8:30. She’s rigid and on it. This is not her first year. She’s about year 4 or 5 in this business. 5:30 to 8:30 is her schedule. At 8:30, she goes to the gym. I was going, “That’s smart.”

That’s discipline.

Planning Out Your Time

Here’s what I said. I thought I could learn from this. She uses the gym as a reward. I’m like, “If I got up and got in my work and I’m reviewing deals, checking on escrow closing, wiring money, looking at agents listings and all that good stuff, and replying to emails in the morning and then I get to go, “Now I get to go have some me time and go to the gym before I come back,” then I would trick myself into thinking the gym’s a good thing. That was where I was going with that. She’s still 4 or 5 years in. Since I know she’s had staffing changes and things like that, she’s not there yet. That’s a key component that we are very fortunate. If we didn’t have the staff that we had, I couldn’t let my foot off the gas if it was just me. That’s her. She’s a one-man show. That was the thing there.

I’m going to jump back into my whole topic, which is setting realistic goals. For us, it starts with our equity planner. I asked Jack about it earlier. He has been using that for us and his own personal self forever. That’s how he rolls. I have learned to embrace it. It really is important to have daily, weekly, monthly, and annual goals or you’re never going to get there.

I talked to everybody about, “Let’s not go crazy.  I want you to have big-picture goals.” We talked about where they want to be in life. They were like, “I want to have no mortgage. I want to have this much in the bank. I want to have my kids’ college education paid for in the next five years. I have to think about it.” It’s stuff like that. You should have that.

From there, you break it down to annual goals. For our chat, I said, “Let’s say our goal is $250,000 this year.” They were like, “With $250,000 in 2025, I can afford to quit my job because it’s more than I’m making right now at my day job. I can pay off a percentage of my mortgage. There are three things I’m hitting. My monetary goal of $250,000, I can quit my day job at the end of the year, and then that $250,000 also pays off a large percentage or a certain percentage of my mortgage. Maybe it’s 25% of my mortgage.”

I love this stuff.

That’s where I was going. I’m like, “$250,000 is the number I’m hanging on.” I then plug that into the equity planner and work it backward. How many deals do I want to do in a month? $250,000 a year is a little over $60,000 a quarter and a little over $20,000 a month of profit in land deals.

Look at you rolling these numbers out like this.

I worked really hard on this. It’s fresh in my mind. I’m like, “You want to do two deals a month?” They’re like, “Duh.” That means 2 deals a month, they have to make at least $10,000. You can do that easily. Whether you’re using your money or somebody else’s money for deal funding, making $10,000 per deal. Doing two a month is not crazy at all. There are so many people in Land Academy doing way more than that. That’s where I started.

We talked about the equity planner. It’s a spreadsheet that we share within our group. You plug in your numbers and it’ll work it all the way backward, including how much mail that equates to. I can look at it and I know what I’m doing. Here was my thing. I said, “We have these goals. We see where we’re going with that. The only thing for me is that I have to plan out my time.” That was the key thing. I was talking about this person and how she structured her day. You need to structure your day and your week so you stay on track with that. Be realistic and build in cushion time. I don’t want you to take your calendar and schedule every dumb hour. We talked about that in a group. One of the gals said, “That’s what I do. All my meetings happen on Thursdays and all my hardcore data stuff happens on Mondays. I try to give myself Wednesday off and Friday off.” I’m like, “These are lovely days. On Tuesdays, you can do all the other stuff.” T hat was her thing. I was like, “This is awesome.” That was Tara. The other one’s Michelle. You have that structure.

How To Stay Motivated

Here was my challenge and here was my thing to really get you moving and motivated. There are two parts to it. One is to give yourself some rewards in maybe the second month or the quarter. Let’s say in the 1st quarter if you hit those goals where you did your $20,000 in month 1, your $20,000 in month 2, and then your $20,000 in month 3, you’ve got your $60,000 in your 1st quarter. Why the heck would you not reward yourself with something you’ve been really wanting?

Like what?

For girls, it’s a purse or something like that. Maybe I want to go out and buy my $500 or $1,000 purse I’ve been dreaming about and I feel really guilty doing it. That’s a real thing for us. For you, maybe it’s a motorcycle.

It’s not a material thing for me.

What is it for you?

It’s every Friday at 3:30 joining my friends at the bar to have a few beers.

I want to go even bigger than that. I want to say you put your head down and reward yourself for a quarter of hitting your monetary goals.

It’s not a material thing for me. It’s having the time to go do what I want. It’s not a material thing for me because I’ve already done all that.

Put yourself in the shoes of a brand-new investor.

That’s what I mean. All I’m saying is whatever it is for you, Jill is right. Reward yourself.

Think of kid number three. What do you think kid number three would do? He’d probably do something to his car. He’s been wanting new tires on his car. I don’t know but maybe there’s something. I was talking to women. Think of it as a reward. You should do it and not feel guilty about it. That’s a huge thing. It gives you the momentum to go forward.

Pushing And Challenging Yourself

The second point I wanted to bring up was after Q1, you hit it, you put your head down, and you did it. In Q2, you hit it and you’re on track. I want you to challenge yourself. In the first month of Q3, which is July, try to condense it all until 1 month, not 3 months. This is how you really move ahead, how you get momentum, grow it even bigger.

People may be like, “What are you talking about, Jill? I made two deals in a month. I made $60,000 altogether, so I made $60,000 in Q1 and $60,000 in Q2. You want me to make 120,000 in one month?” I’m like, “Yeah. I want you to push yourself. I want you to take these two deals. Maybe it’s not all in one month. Maybe you take 4 weeks and can condense them into 2 weeks. It could be something like that.” That was my point though. You need to challenge yourself and push yourself a little bit harder and then watch what happens at the end of the year.

You need to challenge yourself, push yourself a little harder, and see what happens by the end of the year. Share on X

I want to drive this point home. This is super important. Forget about land or real estate investment entirely. What Jill described is what you should be doing anyway. That’s how you should live your life. That’s how I have lived my life for as long back as I can remember. There have been times wwhenI don’t have that level of discipline, but in some way, and I know you have to, you have to implement some serious discipline and have a plan.

Force yourself to stick to it or you won’t get there.

Real estate, in general, happened to be our venue to execute that personality scenario. Join us tomorrow where we talk about the importance of consistency in sending mailers. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.