This is episode number 2158. Jill and I are talking about the mindset shift you need to succeed in land investing. What a good topic to end the week on and a good topic in general because it’s so important. This is all a mindset. Succeeding at this and in anything, where are you in your mind?

If your heart’s in it, you, you’ll, you will succeed. If your heart’s in it, the drive is there, you’re motivated to get out of bed, and you believe in it, you will overcome any obstacle and get yourself to the end. I love it. This is good.

Capital Raising Strategies For Land Business

All week, Jill and I have been talking about developing and improving your land business. 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.

Rex wrote, “What’s the best way to raise capital for the land business?”

That is a great question. I see it all over the internet, not just for land, but everything. Capital raising has become a delight, for lack of a better simple description, since the internet. There are tons of people with money. They all want to see your deals, and they’re going to throw them at you.

I don’t see that as raising capital, though. When they say raising capital, I see, “I’m going to get a bunch of people who believe in me and give me money. I have it all in the bank to spend what I want.” I’m not so into that. I won’t do that, but I will get behind every deal. That’s good that you are going to do. I can see that.

Jill’s exactly right. There are two capital raising efforts in general. Number one is to raise capital to see what’s going to happen with the company or in a business. That’s what you see in Palo Alto every minute of every day. We’ll talk about what that means in a second. The real way to do it in our business is to have an amazing real estate deal. We look at people’s deals all the time. When a person’s amazing and the deal’s amazing, we do it.

That’s it.

Do you know what we do? We had this conversation. We’re like, “We love this guy and we love this deal. Let’s put a thing together where this isn’t the last one. Let’s make sure that he gets enough money and that we establish a relationship with this person so we can do ten deals a year with them.”

It’s not about that, Rex. It’s about having an amazing deal. What you should be saying yourself is, “Jill, that makes sense. I found a property that I’m going to buy for $200,000. It’s worth $600,000. Do you think I’m going to have any trouble finding somebody to get behind me and fund the deal?” No. That’s it. It’s like, “Nevermind.”

There’s a concept out there that’s newer to me, but it’s probably been around forever, called family office. Picture this. The family that developed the cotton gin, let’s say, from the 1700s or 1800s has an obscene amount of money. This exists. This is an extreme example. A more likely version is that some guy started a manufacturing company in the ‘70s in the Midwest. They have $600 million or $700 million. It’s got it all invested. The trust funds are done. Everything’s done. They have $25 million left of bucket play money. They create a family office to go out and blow that money to see if one of these ideas that they invest in becomes the next Google. Those things are all out there on the internet. You can find them easily.

I hate that idea.

I know you do. I don’t like it either. I don’t like giving them money and receiving it. The idea there is you spend a couple hundred thousand dollars on people, knowing full well you’re going to lose most or all of it. One or two of them might be sellable or profitable. It works. It’s a diversification way. There’s a horrific personality type that becomes a capital raiser.

If your heart is in it, you will succeed. When the drive is there, you are motivated to get out of bed. If you believe in it, you will overcome any obstacle. Share on X

They know that this is out there. They know, “I’m going to raise $500,000 this year. I’m not going to work. I’m not going to do anything. The company’s going to fold and then I’m going to go do it again in January of next year.” That’s what you don’t want. That’s why Jill hates it because it’s very prevalent and it’s getting worse, not better. The best thing you can do to get an infinite source of capital is to be a great person, have a dynamic personality, and find great real estate deals or align yourself with people who do it. Is that it?

Yes.

Mindset Shift For Success In Land Investing

This episode’s topic is The Mindset Shift You Need to Succeed in Land Investing. You had something to say.

Let me back up and tell a story. There’s a guy who was and still is wildly successful in our business. He’s been with us for probably 8 or 9 years with Land Academy. One of the things he told me very early on was, “I had to stop what made sense to me and follow the blueprint or follow the recipe you guys spelled out in Land Academy. There were a couple of things along the way that didn’t make sense. Why would I offer that little? Why would I do this? Why would I do that? I put my head down, did it, and came up for air. You’re right. It works.”

For me, the big thing is you have to almost forget your past experiences a little bit, trust in the system, and follow the recipe. You have 30 years at it. I have sixteen years at it. We have ten years of Land Academy and other people doing it. If you can do this, it will work. That’s my main point. What do you call that? What’s the mindset shift? Be open to new ideas, stop assuming, and that kind of thing.

The Three Personality Types In Business

There are three personality types in business. An author put this together. I don’t remember where I heard about it. There are go-getters. Most or all of the people who are tuning in to this are or are some version of that or else, you’d be tuning in to something else. There are drifters. Those are the people who usually have W-2 jobs and most of whom do very well. They have a happy life. They pay a mortgage off and raise some kids. If it’s a bell curve, most people are like that. Then, there are the victims.

For some reason, we don’t get a lot of drifters because they’re already happy in the place that they’re in. We get a certain percentage of victims who are attempting to be entrepreneurs. They’re the loudest of all the groups. They’re loud about what’s wrong with the world. The Internet is a megaphone for victims. You can post anything on the internet. You’re going to get all kinds of crazy opinions that are unfounded. The Internet’s old enough that the victims have been training themselves to be victims because they were born with Facebook. The further we get into this, the more that’s going to happen. If you’re 1 of the 2 people reading this who are victims, you can turn it off because nothing’s going to work.

Do you know what bugs me about victims? I’ve been in a company where we’re doing a team sales thing. They had a lot of negative stuff to say. We’re like, “You come over here. You do it with us. We’re all going to do this stuff.” They’re like, “I don’t want to be involved. I want to bitch about it.” I’m like, “Are you kidding me? I’m handing you the power to do something and make this great together because you’ve told me all the ways it’s wrong.” Usually, that’s the last thing they want. They’re like, “I want to bitch about it. I’m not going to do anything.” I’m like, “Hold on.” That’s what makes me mad.

Back to the go-getters, this is what matters. The best thing that you can do for yourself is free. Sit in front of the mirror and figure out who you are, what you want, what you’re good at, and what you suck at. Be honest with yourself and start down the path of creating and writing a plan for the rest of your life. I don’t care if you’re 80 years old or if you’re 14 years old. If you’re a victim, you will never do this. It’s what Jill said. You’ll scoff and laugh at what I said. You’ll say, “I don’t need a plan. Are you kidding me? I’m amazing.”

They’re like, “I deserve not to have a plan.”

If you’re a go-getter, you’re probably going to say, “That’s all in my head already. All you have to do is write it down,” or, “I’m already doing this and it doesn’t work,” or, “It is working,” or, “It might not work.” The trouble with a go-getter is that you don’t know when you’ve been beaten. I say this with personal experience. You might go so far down a rabbit hole that you’re sticking your head up a year later saying, “It’s working exactly how I want it to, but the thing is only going to make $82,000 a year.”

I did that for 15 or 17 years. It was one company.

It hit the glass ceiling.

Golden handcuffs.

Be open to new ideas and stop assuming. Share on X

I talk a lot about this exact thing in the book that I’m writing. Drifters don’t care. I would call them employees. It’s always in the back of their head, like, “I could do better. I might win the lottery. I’m going to continue to do this. I know my wife wants a bigger house. She’s probably right, but this isn’t good enough.”

Do you think people generally are strong enough to get them out of one of these buckets into the go-getter scenario?

Yes, if they do this, “I’m good at this. I’m terrible at this. I know that this is the plan that I have. These failures, I don’t take them personally. It doesn’t mean I suck or I’m terrible. It means I have to refine this. I have to start over.” How many times have you started over in your life professionally?

Professionally, three.

It’s about the same for me. Do you think that you failed?

No.

Did it ever even cross your mind that you failed?

No, I never thought I failed.

Me either.

I shouldn’t say that. There was one in the middle I spent too much time in and I wished I hadn’t, but it needed to happen.

Here we are.

Apparently, it needed to happen. That’s fine.

My mom always used to say, “Two years from now, it’s going to be two years from now. If you’re not where you want to be at the point of the plan that’s two years from now, it’s because you’re lazy.” That’s what she meant by that.

I never liked that saying.

Why?

Failure doesn't mean you're a failure. It just means you have to refine your approach. Share on X

I don’t know.

Tell me why.

I had a boss who said that one time, “Four years from now, do you want to be with a degree or without a degree?” They would usually use it in that sentence. I’m like, “Whatever.” I don’t like it.

You didn’t get the degree then?

No, I did not.

That’s maybe why you hate it.

That’s right. Good point. Touche. I’m not bad about it. I had other goals then and I fulfilled them.

Achieving Success: The Power Of Persistence

I’m going to end this whole week on this. Everybody I know who’s ever been very successful puts their head down, and then they pick it back up two years later. They have a ton of money in their bank account, and they’re shocked by that. That has happened to me several times, including now where we’re deciding what we’re going to do with the rest of our lives.

We both looked at all the money that we have all over the place and added it all up, which I do generally because I manage all that stuff. I was pretty shocked when we lined it all up and looked at it very clearly with both sets of eyes. It’s one thing when you’re paying the taxes on it and it’s mechanical and it’s another thing where this could be over.

When you’re going, “Do I even need all that?” It’s nice.

Join us again for more land investment content. You’re not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.