This is episode number 2162. In this episode, Jill and I are talking about the biggest time wasters in land investing. I have to tell you, I love this topic.

I got three good ones. I got one at the beginning of the whole process. I got one in the middle and I got one at the end.

Member Question: The Red Green Yellow Test

Each episode, we answer a question from our Land Academy Member Discord Forum. We take a deep dive into land related topics by popular requests.

The question is from Tanner. Tanner wrote, “My wife and I are new to Land Academy.” Welcome, Tanner. “We are phishing for our first area to mail, and we would love some input. Here is the obstacle we keep running into. We find a place in the initial Zillow phishing test and it passes. We test it in the red, yellow, green data tree test, and it passes with green numbers, but then we do the second Zillow test where you leave the zip code boundary and we look at for sale versus sold, and then it doesn’t pass, and then vice versa.”

“We found other places that pass the second test where you keep the zip code boundary and then look at this sale versus sold, but it doesn’t pass the red, yellow, green test with all green numbers. Any advice or thoughts on this would be great.” It took me a second to figure out the boundaries and the zip codes and now I got it.

The answer is this. There’s a reason that the red, green, yellow test has multiple checks and balances. The Land Academy program comes with three checks. One stays on market, one’s a new list is sold, and one is the universe of property count. We spent a lot of time really defining what those are, and now’s not the place to do that. What’s happening is one’s passing and one’s not and then he is throwing in boundary issues.

That’s even further. It’s another test, and I actually kind of like it now that I’m thinking about it, but you just keep the same boundaries as zip codes. In between the lines in this question is this. Zip codes are just a zip code boundary that the post office puts together, but there’s like kind properties that might cross over that line. Forget about that because believe me, we’ve been doing it this way for a lot of years and it works really well.

You’re testing the red, green, yellow test and it’s not giving you the results that you want, which happens to me every single time I do it, so I go somewhere where it does gimme the results that I want. That’s what making data driven decisions really is. This is a good fantastic real life example of, yeah, I shouldn’t be sending mail here. It’s not passing my tests. I’m testing it this way. I’m removing the boundaries. It passes over here. It doesn’t pass over here.

Jill’s Three Biggest Time-Wasters In Land Investing

Wherever your data is acceptable, the results of testing this data are acceptable to you is where you should be sending mail. I’m very glad that you asked this question. Our topic, the biggest time wasters in land investing. Jill loves this and I can tell because before we start an episode, she writes stuff down. Only on the episode she likes.

Only the ones I like. The other ones, I just sit quietly.

Make data-driven decisions. Share on X

She hasn’t written anything down in months.

That’s great. All your topics, I just sit there. Wake me when it’s over.

Take it away, Jill.

Do you know what it’s like? It’s like Jack’s topics are like the opera because you want to sleep. I’m sorry. In my defense, we’ve been at this for a little while, but yeah, I’m joking. Okay, so here’s the deal. Thank you for letting me go first. You wrote this topic, so I know you have a lot to share, too, but I thought about what are some big time wasters that I see people doing right now? I’ve got three big ones.

Number one is at the beginning, they’re over analyzing the mailer. There’s some part, maybe it’s the pricing, maybe it’s like Tanner’s picking whatever. Tanner could go down a rabbit hole and spend a month on this and that’s not good. Now you’ve got a month that the mail didn’t go out. Tanner could say, “No, I got this part.”

You then get to the next part, like pricing and spend a month on that. People do that. That doesn’t work. The last one is, my website is set up and my phone number. I don’t know if I like that phone number. Who’s going to take the calls? We got to think about that one too before I hit the send button on the mail. Do I have the best cell phone for this? Do I have a good charge on my thing? I’m not sure. We got a vacation coming up. I need to plan around that too. You could see right there, you could slow things down. That’s number one.

Number two digging too deep into due diligence. I watch people do this too. They got the mailer out. It came back and they’re spending too much time on each individual property. For example, who cares about the depth of all the neighboring wells to the property you’re considering. People do this and you know who you are. You know who you are. I know who you are. I do know who somehow you are.

You can’t do that. You have to limit your due diligence time to, when you’re new, fifteen minutes. When you get to me, five minutes of property. I’m going to say, I don’t even spend that sometimes. It’s like, “No. See it. Got it. I’m out.” You watched us on the Thursday member call. You know how fast we can whip through these things. You can’t dig too deep into diligence. It’s a huge time waster in your business.

The third one is people selling without help. Unless you know exactly what you’re doing, you’re a wizard this, I write descriptions of a talk, whatever, and I’m selling it myself. I’ve sold a ton on Facebook marketplace. I got this, I know this area. We have people in there that do really well with that. That’s okay. If you’re not, don’t try to save $5,000 and waste 6 months because you want to really sell it yourself. It took you that long to do it. Get it in there, enlist it and looking great and whatever. Bring in some help because otherwise it’s a big time waster when you should be back posting on finding more great deals.

Jack’s Advice: Don’t Do What You Don’t Want To Do

How many times have you had this thought in your life?

Ten.

Your biggest time waster in land investing is doing stuff you don't want to do. Share on X

“I hate this class.” You heard your kids say this. “This is the dumbest class I’ve ever been involved in in my life. I will never use this ever. I don’t care what happened in World War II. High school history is dumb. I hate it. You’re not there. Of course, I could look up YouTube on this thing. I’d be done with this whole thing in a half hour instead of an entire semester. My life’s is terrible.”

What they’re teaching you to do is to do stuff you don’t want to do. For the rest of your life, when you join places like Land Academy and you want to make a couple million dollars a month, you go through the stuff that you don’t like without having a lot of emotion. The more emotion that you have when you are doing stuff that you don’t want to do, the less likelihood is that you’re going to get it done.

Take a piece of paper, draw a line down it. Forget about Land Academy buying and selling real estate or any of that. Write down the stuff you don’t like in life. Write down the stuff you do like to do in life and then that should be part of your long-term goal to get rid of all the stuff you don’t want to do. Otherwise, you’re going to end up having a lot of big time wasters and land investing in everything else. You’ll never get it done because you don’t like doing it. I can tell you in great detail the stuff I don’t like to do in life.

You’re going with the psychology behind it, not the actual event?

I’ll get to that. The vast majority of the stuff that I don’t like to do at my age, it’s outsourced. I have gotten somebody else to do it or chosen a life partner who doesn’t have the same list I do. They don’t mind talking on the phone or doing whatever. Your biggest time wasters in land investing is the stuff you don’t want do. Here’s my way to get over it.

I live inside of Microsoft 365 and that’s the one component of that is an Outlook calendar. I would never, ever have made the amount of money and been able to even have a successful show without knowing that on Thursday at 10:30 in the morning, everything has to be done and ready. Jill and I have our butts in our seats to do these five episodes. It would never get done. Outlook, the learning curve at my age to all the software that we used to do this, the whole Adobe, is very steep. For young people, it’s very easy or if they don’t like it, they’ll find something easier or better products. I did not enjoy learning the Adobe suite of products to do this show. Trust me.

You did very well.

Especially at this age. I got done with it. I got through it and only because it was in the calendar and I gave myself a deadline just like I did in the classes that I didn’t want to take in college at all. I’ll end on this. There’s a bunch of phrases that do not exist in the world anymore, but they did exist when Jill and I were younger. One of them is tough luck. Tough luck, you don’t want to go to high school history.

Not my problem.

Tough luck, you don’t want to answer the phone. Outsource it if you need to over time or have it at a long-term goal to get people in your life, whether they’re employees or whatever so you can do the stuff that you don’t want to do. There are time wasters in everything and they’re all very personal and specific.