The Single Best Business Habit For Land Investors

This is episode number 2155. The topic is the best single best business habit for land investors. This is an easy topic to discuss but philosophically packed. This week is kind of deep. We’re talking about developing and improving your land business. It’s not how to do a better red, red, green, yellow test, or when to send mailers, as you’re going to find here. That stuff is all in the program and it’s mechanical.

That is the technical skill that, let’s say, a guitarist has. That’s not really why one guitarist is average and one is ultra-successful. We’re talking about the ultra-successful version. Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy Member Discord Forum. We take a deep dive in land-related topics by popular request.

Focusing On Your First Deal Vs. Getting Organized

Tanya wrote, “Jack and Jill, when you guys started, how did you get over focusing on getting the first deal done versus all the other organizational stuff needed?” I got it. Focus on the first deal and let the other stuff work itself out. It’s almost like, “I need a business bank account. I can get that real quick. I need this. Okay, we’ll do that.” We didn’t set out to get our office, order business cards, test our phones, put everything all pretty, have a sweet bell on the door, hit the unlock switch, and go, “Now we’re ready for business.” You already had this up and running, but for me, it was kind of just jump in and figure it out. I think that was great.

Why Some Entrepreneurs Are Built For Startups, Not Operations

This is a great question and I think what you’re really asking is, “Everything’s a big, huge mess right now. All I want to do is a real estate deal,” and there’s a couple of different types of successful business people that end up going the distance. Number one are startup people. Jill and I are startup people. Number two is operations people. You’ll notice that the name-brand Billionaire Entrepreneurs are no longer CEOs of anything. They’re not operations people. The reason they’re so wealthy is because they’re startup people.

I’m not advocating that. I’m just saying be aware of it. When what you’re saying is, “I want to get my first deal done, I don’t want to deal with all this other crap.” Your business for the rest of your life will look like a train wreck. I wish somebody would’ve told me this a long time ago. There is no secret, amazing apex place that you get to after 3 or 4 years where everything works great. The tax returns do themselves. Your customers are happy. All the revenue’s coming in on time.

Employees have zero complaints, zero requests.

You have amazing office space and your wife’s happy all the time. That will never happen. Never.

Kids don’t need braces. It’s just beautiful.

That’s for television. It’s unfortunate because the internet and television, specifically before the internet started to portray this thing and realized everybody loves that. I don’t really need to do anything. I can just watch someone else do it on the internet or watch it on TV and that’s not good. Please accept this now, wherever you are and wherever you are in your business. Your business is going to be a disaster until the day it stops, however it stops, if you sell it, you close it, whatever happens.

Your business is going to be a disaster until the day it stops, however it stops, if you sell it, you close it, whatever happens. Share on X

The real value is the stuff that you’re bringing by getting a deal done. There are a few things that have to happen, but that’s it. I’m just paraphrasing what Jill said. You don’t have to get all your stuff all set up. Get a phone number that you think you’re going to keep forever and make sure you get into a mailing schedule and that’s it.

I’m writing a book right now and I’m done with almost the first half of it. The first half of my professional life was a mess. It was a train wreck. While it was happening, I was having a blast. I had a full-commission job as a commercial real estate broker at the very beginning of my professional career out of school, where I didn’t make $1 for two years.

I look back on this and I put a whole section in there about, “What did you do for money?” You know what? I don’t remember. I truly don’t remember. I had some part-time jobs. I think my credit score was not 700, but 7. I had an American Express bill that got paid when I felt like paying it. I don’t remember that or care about it. I just accepted it.

The One Word That Defines The Best Land Investors

I didn’t like it. It’s certainly not that way now, but that’s what it is. Just get the first deal done. That’s it. Make a bunch of mistakes. Laugh while you’re making mistakes. Get on the phone as much as you possibly can with sellers and potential buyers, wake up in the morning, start working the phones, and make sure you got the mail out on a schedule. You have to do a deal when that happens. If you sit around and wonder about things and have feelings, you’re probably not going to get stuff done as fast as you want, if ever. This episode’s topic, the single best habit for land investors. You’re strangely quiet during that question and answer.

I already answered. I answered in about a minute, and you had about four minutes, so I just got to let you go.

Were you watching the clock?

Not at all. I just like, “Just let him go.” You had a lot to say. The single best habit of land investors. I have mine down to one word. Can you put yours in one word? I thought we both say them at the same time.

Yeah, I probably could. I know you always do this. Let’s do it. Why? What’s the outcome here?

It’s just fun. I want to hear what you have to say because it’s so often that we’re in alignment. It’s cool to hear that.

I’m so super sure we’re not here.

Really? Okay. I have one word. Do you have one word?

Yeah.

I’m going to say 3, 2, 1, and then you say the word. 3, 2, 1. Drive.

Execution.

They’re kind of similar. That’s what I thought.

It’s not a perfect miller.

Yeah. No. It had to be one word. The word wasn’t perfection. That’s good.

Perfection’s never going to happen.

Mine was drive, like, the single best business habit is drive. Can I go first?

The single best business habit is drive. Share on X

Yeah. Drive is not a habit. It’s just something I think that you wake up with, but go ahead.

I’m going to say you develop it. You can develop it. Hopefully you have it, but you can develop it and you can develop it by figuring out what motivates you to maintain that drive. For example, getting your deal done, knowing that every deal I do, I take a percentage, maybe, or I get to anything over $20,000 for something, some great reward that I want to do for myself kind of thing. For some people, like me, that will help further my drive, knowing that I don’t have to wait for the reward at the end. They get to have little things along the way. That keeps me going.

There are a lot of places that you can research and educate yourself on about habits and habit forming specifically in business. I would encourage you to do that.

Once you make this a habit, it’s almost like it starts as a chore, and then it becomes a habit, and then it becomes who you are.

How many times have you seen this in the restaurant business where whoever’s opening the restaurant, God help us all if it’s a chef.

Just the like starts up the restaurant?

Just a, “I’m going to open a restaurant because everybody loves my food. Everyone’s loved my food since I was a little kid. Look at these pictures. I was six years old making cookies.” That business is going to fail. It’s not about the food. It’s about you, your personality. It’s about you knowing how to get and keep customers, listening to customers and what they want, and understanding that you are pretty insignificant to the whole thing.

It’s really the experience that people have when they go to your restaurant that makes them want to come back. It’s about managing your staff, keeping them happy, and all of those things translate to every single business on the planet. It has almost nothing to do with the food. Your land business is no different. It has almost nothing to do with doing an amazing mailer or the actual technical aspects of this. It has to do with you answering the phone, talking to sellers, amazing and dazzling your sellers so that they only want to sell to you.

Keep a pool of buyers or constant buyers wherever you’re buying, keep them happy, and keep your staff happy if you have any. Making decisions like, “I’m going to outsource this because I don’t want to do it anymore,” or, “I’m going to get a partner like Jill or like Jack because I don’t want to do that anymore and I’m going to be better for it.”

I include myself in this. It’s very natural and human to say, “I’m going to be the best chef in the world and therefore make the most money. I’m going to be the best guitarist in the world. Therefore, I’m going to be a rock star.” That’s just not it. All this philosophical stuff’s coming out on me because I’m writing this book.

This all comes into your execution?

Execution Matters More Than Perfection

Yeah. The habit for that I wish I would’ve had a long time ago was putting a plan together, a big, comprehensive, crazy plan with a lot of details into it. Executing that plan and then fully realizing the second that you start to implement this plan, stuff’s going to fail. You’re going to have to change. You’re going to have to adjust. It’s going to be a messy but hopefully successful, long path to reaching the end of your goal. It’s all about execution, having a plan and executing. What was yours?

Drive.

You can’t do what I just described without drive.

That’s why it’s kind of fun. I like that game.

Join us next time where we discuss how we would build a land business from scratch in 2025. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. This is the second time this week, right?

What? Sorry.

What are you thinking about?

I don’t know.

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