In episode 1971, hosts Steve and Jack DiTela, along with Jill DeWitt, delve into the latest Career Path Trends and Wealth Tracking Tips. Discover “What’s New in Career Path” starting on September 27th and get ahead with the latest developments. Plus, learn how to “Track Your Wealth Every Single Week” with practical tips and insights from seasoned land investors.

Join the discussion on our Land Academy Discord and send your questions via text to 480-530-7383. Stay informed and subscribe for more insightful content!

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Listen to the episode here

What’s New In Career Path? | Weekly Wealth Tracking! (LA 1971)

Importance Of Weekly Wealth Tracking

This is episode 1,972. We are talking about what’s new for Career Path starting on September 27th, which I think is like a week from now. Then a little later in the episode, we’ll talk about how to track your wealth every single week, which I think is imperative. We spend a ton of time, if you’re Jill or if you live in my house, managing what you eat so you don’t get too large.

We are foodies. You’re just into what you eat anyway.

If you live in our house, you drive around town trying to get gas that’s three cents cheaper than the place right down the street from you. We spend a lot of time on stuff. 

That would be him. That’s not me. 

We spend a lot of time on things. We need to spend as much time tracking our wealth every single week or month or whatever makes sense to you.

Track your wealth as diligently as you track your calories or gas prices. It's an investment in your financial well-being. Share on X

 

That’s good. I got to tell you, as we sit down right now if you’re watching this, you notice like, “I recognize that fireplace in the background. They must be home.” Yes, we are home. As I sit down too, I’m looking like, “Where’s the camera?” I have to get myself re-acclimated here that we are back. 

Turns out that a real consistent, reliable internet connection is a huge luxury.

A consistent and reliable internet connection is a luxury we often take for granted. Share on X

It really is. 

Jill and I were on a 99-day trip. 

It was 99 nights, so 100 days. This is good. It sounds like you guys kept track. We did because you go away with your spouse 24-7 for 100 days and I mean 24/7. You’re going to remember exactly when it ends.

We lived about 10 yards from each other for 100 days straight and about 300 square feet, maybe a little less.

You know what I felt? What we were doing, we were in our RV, if you weren’t following us we went all over the country and this was really a different time. Last year we kind of went South. Hit Ozark and Tennessee and some things. This year we went north. We seemed to head to Michigan to do fun family stuff and then we goofed off after. This time we really got to know Montana. We got to know Idaho. We got to know Wyoming. Spent our time in Utah, definitely Colorado. We’re all totally drawn to Colorado. You mountain town folk, we love you. We really identify with you. It’s nice to be home and nice to have internet. Nice to have the room that we have here, but I think I speak for both of us when I say we miss being on the road and we’re just excited to do it again. 

The biggest luxury is the freedom to hit the open road and explore. Home is where the heart is, but adventure fuels the soul. Share on X

The big question after these trips is, would you do it again? That’s what our friends here asked us. I said, “Yeah, in two weeks I would.”

I’m tearing up as we put our sweet rig into storage. We have it in enclosed storage. 

Needs some light body work too. That was a user error. 

It’s Jack Zero, Boulder One. That’s the score. 

Oil change. We did 8,000 miles and actively shopped for 3rd and 4th houses in two markets. In two markets we just had so much fun. We’re going to probably buy a house there. Each week on the show we answer questions from our Land Academy member Discord forum. We review land acquisitions from our weekly member webinars and we take a deep dive into two land-related topics by popular request. If you want a sneak peek of our Discord forum, go to LandAcademy.com. It’s free.

Also, don’t forget, if you want us to answer your question here, or you just need some help getting started, text my team, it’s that easy. 480-530-7383.

Let’s take a question. 

We’re not using our thingy over here. I’m a little confused. 

What? I forgot. 

You did.

That’s like 100 days on the road. I’ll do that.

Where’s the question? I’m not used to looking at it there. Here’s the question that was presented. 

She means a teleprompter. Everything’s a thingy to Jill. We’re not using our thingy today.

I follow up with a finger.

What does Jill mean dot com that’s how I go through my life.

You’re the thingy right now.

If you’re in a long-term relationship, do you learn to read minds? 

It goes both ways. That’s very true. All right, back to the question. Lucas wrote, “Folks, I have a lead on an interesting land deal. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t share a deal like this on this forum because it’s outside of the typical land accounting process but it’s not an ordinary deal. It’s large acreage in South Carolina, and I think it could be lucrative for the right person. It’s an ideal location at the junction of X and Y. This location, in my opinion, is the most desirable rural land in this greater blank area. I’ve lived in this area for ten years. Here are the details. 

I got the number. It’s 362 acres and the purchase price is $4.6 million. My partner is telling me that I believe the seller would probably go as low as $3.6 million if the terms are right. Like cash, quick close. There is an extensive 200-page study that was done in 2008 on the land by a company that was proposing a major development, including a golf course, multifamily, single-family, and commercial slash retail. 

If I had the capital, I would buy it and I’d subdivide it into 5 to 20-acre parcels and then sell each one for like $20,000 to $30,000 an acre. It would be a major endeavor to actually build the subdivision that was planned. Apparently, the guy who was spearheading the project died a couple of years ago and the landowner has been sitting on it ever since. For more information, send me your email and I’ll share it with you. Also, check out the nearby completed subdivision so on the blank for an idea of what’s possible there to be built. I love these.”

Just saying fill in the blank.

Leaving out some of the details.

This guy doesn’t need any competition. He’s going to go buy it. I love these deals also. When there’s a study done. When developers take a look at a piece of vacant land and want to make it something, whether it’s an industrial park, subdivision, or anything else, the first thing they do is tie up the land and order a feasibility study. That’s what he means by study. This one in this case is 200 pages long, which I love. Then the guy dies. 

This is a fantastic and amazing opportunity and this is the thing that you can expect when you send a mailer out or you’re involved in our group. I’m just going to be direct about it. I’m not selling you anything but these are the kinds of discussions that happen. Multiple people have responded to him saying they really want to look at this deal in Discord. He doesn’t have to build this subdivision out. Honestly, if I were involved in this, and I might get involved in it, I would not recommend that. 

I love his idea of breaking it up into 5 to 20-acre properties and not developing the entire subdivision. I love this. The kicker is that there’s already a completed community to complete the feasibility study to see what’s going to happen. That’s the final point for me to confirm real demand. Is there a real demand for this? To get 5 to 20 acres in an area that’s already been proven and growing and you can hopefully double your money on the south side.

Don't wait for opportunities, create them. The land investing world is full of hidden gems waiting to be discovered. Share on X

It’s 362 acres. We’re starting with that.

Love this deal.

That’s what this group is all about. 

That’s my point. I want to drive this home and I really want to preface this by saying I’m not selling anything. There are other groups out there. Do you think that they’re doing 362-acre, $3.6 million deals? I don’t think so. I think they’re buying what is known now as desert squares for cash and selling them on terms. Our group is packed full of people from other land investor groups. It’s packed. They’re recovering from learning somewhere else first. 

It’s not that it’s negative, but it’s a different type of deal. I’m here to get rich. Every Thursday, Jill and I do the Thursday webinar for our members and I have permanently installed a portion of what we talk about getting rich. I’m not here to create $4,000 or $5,000 more a month of income. This is how you get rich. These kinds of deals. The first topic is What’s New For Career Path? The next newest Career Path starting on September 27th, Jill.

Career Path Mastermind Program

I’m so excited. Let me back up and explain what this is. Career Path is the level of our mastermind group. Everybody knows that term. It’s an eight-week program taught by Jack and myself and it’s for people who are not new to this, need to come at it, or have some experience in either doing land deals or maybe you own a company, something like that, something you’ve retired. You know what’s going on. This is not Deeds 101. This is for people that are like, wait a minute, like Lucas here. They are just like, this is my life now, or I want this to be my life now. I want to do it.

It’s your career.

Customizing The Career Path Program

I want to be a land investor like you guys, not just learning what you do, but I want to do deals like you, with you, and maybe even more than you’re taking down this month because that happens too, which I love. We’re getting ready to start. I only did one this year, isn’t that interesting? I only did one. This is 2023, we’re wrapping it up. At the end of the year, I’m going to do two side-by-side, groups 7 and 8. I keep them to like 15 people in a group, that’s it because we want to customize this for you. 

I just want to talk about a little bit today because I do have a few more spots if you’re interested in that. I’ll tell you in a few minutes how to get in touch with me because I’m personally handling it right now and making sure everyone’s a good fit for this group, by the way. I want to talk about some of the things we’re going to add. I know you’re going to talk about that too. It’s so customizable. 

Basically, Career Path, like I said, it’s an eight-week group, an eight-week program where we’re taking you start to finish not just what it is to do deals the Land Academy way but to tweak them, make them great, and go big. Then we’re going to help you through the whole process to identify if there are any hang-ups or issues or there’s anything standing in your way from hitting whatever your number is, whether it’s $2 million this year or $20 million this year, and getting you ready and thinking to do that. 

Can I jump in here? 

Of course. 

Career Path is an eight-week course. Each week on Wednesday and Saturday these sessions, we meet for two hours and we go over what I call a guided module. For about an hour, I talk or teach how we do this, and then for an hour we discuss it. The first 4 or 5 modules are me because it’s doing a mailer it’s data, data analysis, and all of that’s involved. The last 4 or 5 modules are Jill about how to answer the phone, how to turn deals and turn angry people, theoretically, this is just one example, into actually creating a real estate deal which is a small part of this. 

Then we have office hours. On Wednesday and Saturday, we all get together and everybody loves this. We talk about the deals that we’re doing or where we’re coming from and what the goal is. My favorite is the very first session. We go around the room, this is all on Zoom, and we ask everybody where they’re coming from. People will say things like, “Last year, I made $6 million. I want to make $16 million next year.” 

The other end of that spectrum is I am brand new at this, but we had a guy who sold a restaurant chain and he’s like, “I’m not ready to retire yet. I had a bunch of money and I’m here to learn how to buy and sell land.” Every single thing in between, we have many, many people who come back from former Career Paths and rejoin because they’re at a different point now in their career, the first Career Path worked out for them.

We keep evolving. Keeps getting better and better. That’s the part thing too. From Career Path one to now, it’s like your first child. We’ve learned a lot. 

It’s a two-way street. I learn as much and I hope that everybody, the recipients, the customers, or the members of Career Path learn. I love that type of feedback. In this situation here in this show, we’re talking about not receiving anything. Obviously, it’s one-way communication. In Career Path, we’re all in a room learning how to be better land investors and ultimately doing deals together. That’s what ends up happening. 

Part of why we’re talking about it today too is because I had a call with someone last week and they said, “I joined you guys because of House Academy. I haven’t really gotten into the Land Academy thing, I’m doing houses. I want to find out a little more about Career Path and I want to find out what will this help me with are things in there that’s going to still help me because I’m still doing house flipping.” I’m like, “Yes.” 

I immediately came to Jack and said, “Can we even add a little more in-depth on the house Academy side of it.” Of course, he said, “Yes.” That’s the whole point of this too, Career Path is so customizable. We’re here for you. You know what we do. You know what the deals that we’re doing, which is pretty much bring it anything. We can help you. Jack has modules on mobile homes already in there. What do you want to talk about? 

Here’s a perfect example of what’s changing for this next Career Path. Not changing but adding. Jill and I just spent 100 days in a mobile RV driving to what I would call resort destinations in Michigan, Wyoming, and Montana, places like Charlevoix, Michigan, and Jacksonville, Wyoming, and Bozeman, Montana, and many other places. I don’t know how many stops we made, 28 stops. I got to thinking because I’m sitting in a bar still talking to all the local people there or in Michigan. I’m from Michigan.

I’ve got a lot of friends there and casually asking about real estate markets and one of the things that I learned, and I didn’t take it very seriously for most of my career until now, is it makes a lot of sense to buy property, rural houses specifically, in December or January and sell them during the tourist season. To back that up, I pulled all the data and I created a module in Career Path. Now we’re going to talk about this in great detail about buying a house in northern Michigan in February for $300,000 and selling it for $380,000. 

Never open the door, cut the grass, and resell it for $100,000 or more in the summer. To support that, I want to dig into the data resources that Jill and I have and Land Academy members have to prove this. In some towns, it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I’ll tell you, after this module, we’re all going to know exactly where it works and how to test every zip code in the 26,000 zip codes in the country. You can run this test and very quickly find out where it’s worked in the last 4 or 5 years and then just go replicate it. We haven’t taught that. We haven’t seen that, but it’s a topic. 

There’s a bunch of other things that we’re going to talk about that are new. Minor splits, taking one APN and making it five in Texas specifically. There are a lot of members that we have that have been doing that really successfully. You buy a property for $100,000, it’s one APN, 20, 30 acres, and you cut it all down into five-acre properties. You’ve got five APNs now, and you sell it for $100,000 to $250,000. If you do that 2 or 3 times a year, you’re approaching $1 million. It’s not a joke. Career Path is a blast. I love teaching it. We wouldn’t have so many recurring people coming back if it didn’t work. I’m excited about it. 

I am also.

How many slots are available, do you think? 

I don’t know. I have a few. Let’s just leave it at that. Here’s the deal. If you’re like, “This might be for me,” go to LandAcademy.com. There’s a thing at the top that says Career Path for more information. Check the schedule. Read about that, and see if that works for you, which pretty much works for everybody. I’m doing a Wednesday group this time and a Saturday group. I want you to pick a group that we can think about where you’re going to be attending whether it’s Wednesdays or Saturdays. 

Know this, you can flip-flop if you’re like, “I started on Wednesdays. Now this week doesn’t work. I need to do Saturday.” No problem. Show up on Saturday. The other thing is if you’re like, “That discussion we just had on Wednesday was phenomenal. It was all about filling in the blanks. I want to hear it again on Saturday. I want to see what questions this group brings up. I’m showing up Wednesday and Saturday.” Bring it, you can do it all. 

The guided modules are the same on Wednesday and Saturday so we want to make sure that you are involved. If you’ve got a job and you cannot go on Wednesday, but you can on Saturday or vice versa. It’s the first time we’re doing that too. It’s been responded to very well. 

I just told my group too, by the way, to make it easier on my team and make it better for you attendees also, while you’re in Career Path, it’s recorded for you to replay and watch later, and then it’s good for like a month after that or something like that. Anyway, I want the recordings to be available to all. If you’re even on the Wednesday or say you could only do Saturdays on the Saturday group, you want to watch the replay of what Wednesday went on, you have that too. It’s going to be really awesome, so much great content. I’m really excited. Anyway, do you want to know more? Then I want to talk to you. Seriously, let me know at Jill@LandAcademy.com. Send me a note. I’ll figure out a time. I’ll take the next steps and we’ll figure out a time. That’s all you got to remember. 

Let’s take a look at one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar. 

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We are doing this deal in Lawrence County, South Carolina. Accepted offer price of $22,500 for 1.8 acres, thinking of countering at $15,000. Things we can sell. Hard to determine since all the local land here don’t touch anything less than 5 acres. I couldn’t really get an opinion. I was thinking of putting it up for about $31,000. I see where you’re going. Physical and legal. He has a legal easement. Awesome. Mobile adjacent. The issue with this property is that the local comps in the area are estate lots that are newly subdivided. It threw off the price per acre. This was also teetering on whether I should have priced it at one to one and a half acres or 1.5 to 3 acres. It was also in a transition from Fountain Hill and Lawrence. It’s a mix in terms of the type of neighborhoods. Just want a second opinion. 

Evaluating Land Deals

Let’s see what the data says. Action is it doesn’t have access. 

It’s an RV or a small motorhome that was on there and it’s no longer there but it almost looks paved. I’m guessing it’s just a really good dirt road.

Hopefully, there’s an existing easement. 

He said legal access. We’re going to have a legal easement. I just need to see the numbers so far. I think no word slope. I don’t think it matters because they obviously put something on there anyway. We’re cool there. Does the guy in the front own the back piece? That’s what makes me think that it’s him in the front. Address, you show me the address. 

No, the front and back are different. Undefined. 

Simpson. It’s a different mailing address. 

Let’s run through the A’s if you’re new acreage. He’s already got a concern about that picture because they like to see larger properties there, but it’s got that living situation. Now it’s more of an info lot. That passes my test. Access, he says it’s okay. I had a concern, but it looks like it’s okay. Price, we’re going to find out in a second. Adjacent, it passes with flying colors. There’s all kinds of stuff going on everywhere around it. All everywhere. Adjacent’s great. Attributes, South Carolina itself can make this up. 

These two neighborhoods. 

It’s between these two neighborhoods, Fountain Hill and then whatever else. It’s got enough attributes, I think. Alive, I’m sure. 

The guy he sold it to is selling it to Victor potentially. 

It comes down to price for me. Starts at $50,000 for an acre and a quarter across the zip code. $53,000 there, $68,000, these are all good numbers. This is an acre and a half for $50,000. We’re at an acre and a 0.8 for $22,000. This passes all my first phase one due diligence. Does this pass for yours?

Yeah. I’m trusting you on this one because I was looking for the physical stuff and you just confirmed the money stuff. 

The other thing we always do too is let’s just see what the house properties are right around here. 

I see it’s showing up. I’m sorry, I’m looking at the low to high. You’re looking at that number. We’re on the same page. I saw houses for millions of dollars. 

My gut says get a second opinion or get a local opinion, but I think this property is great.

Right now, honestly, if I had to make a quick decision, yes or no, I would say that you’re $15,000, Victor, I’d buy it. You could get it for that?

It’s true. 

You could make up something like $22,000. I thought they had the mobile on it. Even at that, think about this. Was it a mobile home with some septic and well, some water and power, or was it an RV that was self-contained that they were just hooked up? They ran a hose from the house or something. 

I appreciate your being really conservative about this, but he says the past sold numbers are somewhat concerning. I don’t think so. Then he says, he’s concerned he’s buying an acre lot with a mobile home on it for $15,000. Great. Now you’re diversifying and offsetting the risk of this one. It’s in your favor. That’s not how this goes because I love these kinds of deals. 

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What are these guys talking about? What is this business about buying and selling land? Go to LandAcademy.com and download the ebook. It starts off with me telling the story of how I got started in this crazy business and then tracks us through what really makes sense, how we send out all these blind offers by the tens of thousands sometimes. We pick the deals that we want to do at the end. It’s free. It’s downloadable. You have nothing to lose and it’s a really good introduction to how Jill and I make this work. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of members make it work also. Let’s take another question posted by one of our members on the Land Academy Discord online community. Again, if you want a sneak peek, go to LandAcademy.com. It’s free. 

Ed wrote, “I need to learn more about negotiating skills. I have done a lot of houses and multifamily deals in the past and felt like I was a good negotiator, but not sure I would have got to $22,000 when the seller wanted $65,000. I know in all the calls I talk about how good Jill is at talking with sellers and getting deals done, I feel like that’s one of the areas that is lacking in the training, and we could use more help there. Happy to talk about it, happy to do it on the Thursday calls too.” I do also, Ed. 

First, let me pause right there. Bring it up. Steven knows I just love talking, but bring it up on the Thursday call too if you have a specific question about it, or you want me to role-play or do it in action too. That’s why we’re there with you every single week to help you even more in this area. The first thing that I talk about, I’m going to give you some things here. The first thing is I want my seller to know I put a lot of thought into this. I’m going to end a call, if a seller calls me back and I’m looking at this deal, I offer $22,000, and they want $65,000. The first thing I’m going to do is try to figure out if is it worth $65,000, am I wrong? 

Is there something going on that I missed? I’m going to get all the information from them, I’m going to end the call and have a call scheduled with them in the next day, 24, 48 hours, not too long, to call them back and talk more about it. Then when I hang up, I may even know right then and there like there’s no way this guy is right. I’m still letting him think that it is. I’m either going to really do my due diligence, which I really am. I’m going to dig more into it and I’m going to prepare. You’re antsy right now. Do you not like my answer? I can tell. You just called spending too much time together. He’s moving around and he’s like, “Am I talking too long about this or you don’t like my answers?”

It’s just really long-winded. Listen, you send out 10,000 offers, you price your campaign at about 20% of what you think the retail value of a property is. If you’ve got a $60,000 property that’s retail. You sent them a $22,000 offer. You’re going to get one of 3 types of responses. 1) Go pound sand. I will never sell you my land. I don’t like you and I don’t like Arizona or wherever you’re from. 

2) We were thinking about selling our property but that price probably won’t work. 3) Which is what we’re all looking for. Love to sell you my property for $20,000. Your timing is perfect. My uncle Jethro just died and it’s a good time for us. He was the reason we were keeping it. The question is, do I need to learn how to negotiate better on that 1st one or that 2nd one? I don’t believe in negotiating and a lot of people said this and I think they’re probably copying me in Discord. I don’t negotiate. I’m not good at it and I don’t want to be good at it. Jill and I joined forces about 14 years ago but I was doing it a long time before that. 

I had Jill’s job and my answer was I’ll send out 25,000 offers and I might get 50 calls back but three of them are going to sign it and send it back and those are the deals I’m going to do. That may or may not happen to you. I don’t think negotiating is part of this. I think there’s a huge emotional component to negotiating. Think about going to a bazaar. Every time we go to Mexico, there are people on the street selling jewelry and stuff and I can see all these Americans lined up to just they cannot wait to take a crack at trying to get the best possible. Why? I think there’s a high that comes with it and getting the grid. You see, Nancy, do you want to jump in here?

You told me my answer is too long. You took over and made yours even longer. 

That’s all I want to say. Just send the mail out. 

Hold on a moment. The question was not the Jack way, which is to move on. The question was to me. May I finish my answer?

Sure. I can leave if you want.

I wouldn’t mind. That would be helpful and I’m trying to help here. Here’s the deal. They want $65,000, you want $22,000. You need to come back to them with why yours is right and why theirs is wrong. Let them think you spent a lot of time on it, which you probably did. In my time, at my point in my career, I don’t need to spend as much time on it. I have a really good feel for it. Again, if they brought some pertinent information like it was just rezoned or somebody’s moving in down the street, now I know about that, I might change my things. 

I listen to them. Then I go back and give them all the reasons why I’m sticking with my number or if I’m changing my number slightly, look, I can come up to $30,000. That’s it. I looked at it and I took that into account and you’re right. I do appreciate that it has that attribute but it’s not worth any more to me than $30,000. I’m not going to use $65,000. In the very end, I might like to give him a little and then I move on. I’m not here to go back and forth and back and forth. 

I love that. 

I don’t play that game. Come back with one number or nothing or no change. Tell them your whys and then the last thing I want you to do, Ed, is I want everybody to be on the same page when you hang up the phone like, “I hear your number, you hear my number. If anything changes let me know and I wish you all the best.” 

Click and move on and then watch what happens, Ed, because a lot of the time it might be two days, it might be two months but watch what happens, how many people do come back. You’ve long forgotten about it, by the way. They’re like, “Remember you want to give me $25,000 for that property, I want $65,000. I’ll take your dull $25,000. Nobody in my family wants it.” You’re like, “Hold on a moment, let me see if I still want it.” No, that does happen, you’ve moved on. That’s it.

You’re solving a problem for somebody. If their problem is they want retail, you’re not going to solve that problem. You have to identify. Jill’s an expert. Jill doesn’t negotiate. She has to identify why they’re on the phone with you still. If that happens with any sales, and when I think of sales, I think of a car dealership. You don’t walk into a car dealership, or people don’t if they don’t want to buy a car. They don’t walk in there just to look.

They got dropped off in an Uber at a car dealership, so there’s a good chance they want to buy a car. No, seriously, you got to get to what’s really going on. This is a very common theme on our Thursday member calls. People put in, “Would you do this deal?” and they give me the numbers and then you watch me. I’ll say, “What’s the story? I need to know because if this person is holding out for $65,000 because their neighbor sold for $65,000 or $75,000, and they don’t need the money, they’re all set, they could care less if they sell it, you’re not going to get it. They’re going to die with it. Knowing $65,000 was their number because they don’t care.” You need to find out where they’re really coming from. Then you can move forward.

The word negotiating really gets under my skin. We don’t do it. I think that there’s so much other stuff all of us, you the listener here, can probably name 2 or 3 people that you know love to negotiate and what that means to them is, soak every single possible squeeze that penny until it’s dust, and then walk away feeling great about yourself. That’s not what we do. If the property, in this case, in Ed’s case here, he wants $65,000 and it ends up you look at you offer $22,000 and he wants $65,000 and it ends up the property’s worth $120,000 because you really looked into it and like, “Wow.”

That could be.

That happens all the time to us. What do you do? If you’re one of those people that you have to get it for $22,000 because that’s what you offered because you’re crazy, then the deal doesn’t get done. You’re there to do a deal and you’re there to make sure that you’re going to buy it for about half in general what you can sell it for. That ends up being very often the seller will say $22,000 doesn’t work but $65,000 works and it’s worth $120,000. Then you buy it. You buy it for that person’s price. There’s no emotion to it. There’s no winning. This whole business of, “Great we negotiated a deal and great no one’s happy.” Then you know it’s a good deal. I hate that crap. It really is truly a cliche and it’s untrue. I think that everybody can be really happy. 

That’s my whole point. That’s my goal when I end, and everybody feels good about it. I know what you’re going to do. I know it’s worth more. Thank you for taking it off my plate. I couldn’t stand to look at it anymore. You’re welcome. 

We buy rural houses and have in the past a lot of rural houses where they don’t. They have to clean a bunch of crap out of there or whatever. There’s some problem that you’re solving other than the price for them. Here’s the price and here’s the keys.

Here’s my one last comment and I want to move on to the second topic, which is there’s one time, one situation. Let’s see if Jack can think of it here. There’s one situation that you might find me negotiating. 

I don’t know. 

You don’t know where it is. It’s in another country. It involves silver in Mexico. 

I just brought that up. I just gave that example. I think about a vendor selling silver in Mexico. I think I’m going to pay him retail and I mean it.

Move on. They want to do that. He doesn’t get it. 

I don’t. I do not get negotiating. You’re absolutely right. 

It’s okay. That’s why you have it.

The second topic is How To Track Your Wealth Every Single Week. Are we done with Jill’s negotiating?

My negotiating is making you rich. 

Making me rich. Thank you, Jill. Would you like me to kiss your feet? 

I’m just kidding. 

Thanks for making me rich, Jill. 

I didn’t mean it like that. 

How’d you make it? How’d you mean it?

I didn’t mean it like that but you may or may not understand or be able to do it the way I do it but you benefit and we all know it’s good. 

Let’s talk about that after the cameras are off. On the first day of accounting class, any class. They teach you about financial statements. There’s the income statement. I made $30,000 this year. I spent $42,000, so I lost $12,000. In Jill’s case, I made $580,000 this month, and I spent $180,000 so whatever, it’s the revenue minus the expenses and how much money you make. That’s statement number one. Statement number two is a balance sheet, which I love. I love balance sheets. The equation there is very simple, assets minus liabilities equals equity equals how much you’re worth. 

The easiest way to understand what a balance sheet is to think about a house. You buy a house for $300,000, you get a $200,000 mortgage. You have a $100,000 of equity. You’re worth about $100,000. As time goes on, your house goes up, the value of it goes up, and so it might be worth $500,000 and you paid that mortgage down over several years so you’ve got $50,000 of debt left. 

Assets $500,000, liabilities $50,000, and your net worth is now $450,000. Assets minus liabilities equals equity. This is how you take the temperature of what you’re worth. In Elon Musk’s case, on the asset side, he’s got a ridiculous amount of stock, mainly in companies that he’s taken public. He’s got all the stock value, minus what he owes or what the companies owe, which is the net worth. In his case, it’s a lot. That is how you track your wealth all the time. At the youngest age possible, our kids when they were little, we taught them a little song about assets minus liabilities equal equity.

How does that go would you like to sing?

No, somebody else asked me I cannot remember but they used to run around the house singing it and then one day we woke up and they hated us so because as children do.

Still going on.

Wealth Tracking Module In Career Path

We were really cool until that one day. If you obsess on a balance sheet, list all the stuff that you own, every single thing that you own assets, and then all the money that you owe and calculate your equity. Believe me, if you’re thinking about it, the way that you’re thinking about how many calories you take in or how many calories you burn off or anything else that you really pay attention to and manage, it’s going to go up. We talk about this in Career Path. There’s a module in Career Path that I created actually for this time called Wealth. 

I started doing it on our Thursday call. Everybody loves it. Everybody loves to talk about getting rich. That’s what this is. This is a metric for you to actually take measure of exactly where you are and continue to make sure that equity goes up. When you drop in doing a land deal and you don’t have the money. This happens in Land Academy every single week. You find a great deal. You don’t have the money. You come to us, Jill and I, or a ton of other people that are in the group, in our group, and say this is a great real estate deal. 

I did my job. I sent the mail out and negotiated the deal. I think this is worth it. We’re going to buy this for $60,000. I think it’s worth $180,000. These are real numbers. I don’t have the $60,000. Investor X, another land Academy member, if you put in your $60,000, I’ll do all the work. Sell it for $180,000.” Now this person’s balance sheet and we’ll split it. We split the actual margin which is, I think, $120,000. The person who funded it gets their money back plus the $60,000 profit, which is 50% of the net margin. 

Then the person who found the deal gets $60,000. What did the person who found the deal put in? Zero. Think about a balance sheet like that. On the left side of your balance sheet, you have equitable interest in five real estate deals. You didn’t put any money in, so you have no liabilities. Now your net worth potentially is a lot. It could be millions of dollars. Your only job is just to find these properties, manage the deal, and resell them.

If you do it right, you don’t put any money in. Please consider seeing your personal wealth this way all the time as much as possible. It really works. It’s the way that Jill’s gotten me rich, apparently. I watch this stuff all the time. I know where everything is in it. Our equity, our wealth, net worth goes up because of it. It’s like the bathroom scale. Let’s take a look at another one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar.

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Riverside County. 

Would you do this deal? 2.84 acres next to custom homes and mobiles. If I buy it for $93,000, I can sell it for $180,000 and it would be the cheapest around. 

I can tell you right now. It’s awesome. 771. That’s what the house across the street is worth. If you use the 10% rule, you should be buying the property for about $70,000. You’re very close to $90,000. That’s true. Another one.

I do wish it was cheaper. How big is that? 

This is a two-APN situation. This is agriculture. Let’s see it from the road. You got a pretty serious slope situation to deal with. That’s everywhere. 

That’s a lot of San Diego and a lot of riverside.

They address it here. They dug in pretty good. This person has their own water plant. I’m not the best person to ask about these California properties. Everything has some type of slope or terrain issue to deal with. There are now water issues for everything. There’s just a lot of stuff that can go wrong with a property like this. That said, we passed on a bunch of properties. We passed on a property. They took it to somebody else. They bought and sold the property and made $1.2 million and bought a new house, moved to Arizona.

I personally would not do this deal.

Neither would I but I’m really saying this honestly. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. We are just not California, Southern California, specifically land people. 

—

Jill, do you have something inspirational to share?

Real Estate Agent Mindset Vs. Investor Mindset

I want to talk about this discussion that we had last week, which was we were talking about how real estate agents think and how investors think. I love it. You wrote down my notes. Are these my notes or your notes?

I wrote down paraphrasing the conversation. 

Hold please while I reread my notes. That’s so true. This is good. This is a result of the conversation that we had in private, which is now not in private anymore about a specific real estate agent and their mindset. I’m like, I wish I could get out of there. I don’t know why, it’s hard for them sometimes to shift gears. I wanted to talk about it with you about agents. We know this, we have a personal relationship with an agent. I think a lot of agents are like this way. They are very focused on that one deal, that one family, that one situation at a time, and they don’t think big picture and look at the broader aspect of what’s happening. 

Here’s an example. This agent that I’m talking about is helping a family buy a house in another state east of here because they were worried about Salt Lake running out of water. I’m sure it happens with Arizona too. They just lump it into, it’s a desert thing, everybody’s worried about water, and we’re like, that’s not true. Where are they coming from? That was their experience with that one family. 

They lump them all into that’s the situation, that’s what’s going on. I’m going to watch for more of them, whatever it is. I don’t know. My whole point was they go from situation to situation to situation, they help that one family and they move on. They’re not really focused like we are on the big picture. What am I talking about? Like trends, like seasonality, like major movement from one state to another because maybe work rules are changed, price per square foot, or tenant laws have changed. 

What I’m focused on right now is the Airbnb community. I’m watching that city by city by city. They are changing the rules on what they allow. An agent won’t look at that. Most agents I know only know that one story of that one person who sold that one Airbnb in Park City, Utah, because they now have a 30-day rule, they cannot do it by weekend like they used to and make all this money. They’re not like really looking at and thinking about how can I really use this information and knowledge to get more customers, get more clients. 

How can you manipulate it to put money in your pocket?

I’m looking at this. 

This is a question for Jill and then obviously the listener, allergic to math. 

I don’t know. 

What’s the first thing somebody does when they walk through a house that’s for sale? I don’t like that wallpaper. 

They look at the flooring, they look at the colors. 

This color is terrible. 

They look at how cluttered it is. 

Let’s look at another house. I don’t like how this is painted. 

Even before that, they drive up to it. Sometimes they drive up to it and the curb appeal turns them off right there. Cannot see past that. Sometimes they don’t even get to the curb because the pictures are awful and they don’t even want to look at it. You can tell it. They just have a feeling it’s dark and dirty from the photos.

Now there are feelings and real estate. I don’t think those two things should be mixed. I think it’s all just money. If I was a real estate agent, I would look at myself in the mirror and I would say this the day that I got my real estate license, I will have no less than 100 listings revolving at any given time and that’s it. My new job in my life is to get a listing. Every single time one sells, I get another one. 100 listings, 120 listings. Listings, listings, listings.

Why? Because I don’t have to do any work after it’s listed. I’ll put it into a system. I’ll get the right software, I’ll make sure that the sellers are aware of what’s happening, and I’m going to hire somebody or get somebody else in my office to do any showings, and my name’s on it. I get half the fee and it’s over. I will never, this is me talking to the mirror, ever work with a buyer. Why? I don’t like this color. 

Let’s look at another house. “We looked at 32 houses, ma’am.” “I don’t like them. I don’t have a good feeling about any of them.” You’re not my customer anymore. Real estate agents have feelings and see colors, and they’re not looking at this property. I’ve never had a real estate agent come to us and say, “This property is listed for $320 a square foot. In this zip code, the average is $550. If you can see past renovating it, as you guys seem pretty smart, if you can see past redecorating this thing, it’s a smoking deal. Now you got me. 

Do you know what I would do if I was an agent in that situation too? I’d say, “If you’re not going to buy it, I will.” I mean it. That’s the whole point. 

That’s brilliant. 

If I were a real estate agent, I would be doing it for my own personal benefit to source those deals. Like I said, maybe sell them. One of us is buying this house because this is nuts how cheap it is and I know what to do to solve it. As an agent, I can say, “I can hook you up with a contractor that can do it because they’re my contractor that can do it.”

We were in a market where there’s a lot of water in Michigan. The same real estate agent, there was more than one. I was asking just real simple direct questions over dinner with a beer. What’s the price difference between a property that’s on the water versus a property that’s one block back? What? What are you talking about? Why would you need to know that? That was their response. I have no idea. She said I have no idea what the price per square foot is in any of these markets. I just don’t understand how you can do your job. 

A perfect example of what I’m talking about here because that’s the difference. That is a huge difference between just I’m not poopooing. I’m going to poopoo a real estate agent, but it seems like my experience is more of that than the real estate agent. How about this? If you are thinking like we’re thinking, you’re like, “Jack and Jill, slow down. I am the 1% that can actually tell you what the difference is in the price per square foot on the water versus the next block over like in Southern California.” Then you need to be an investor like us and we’ll help you. 

Jill’s exactly right. What you know after you get some practice at it, some saddle time, is when a deal comes in because you sent 7,000 offers out and you’re looking at the deal and you’re talking to people in the Land Academy group or you bring it up on our Thursday call or whatever you get some experience, it’s going to come in and you’re going to say, “Are you kidding me? This is fantastic. I am going to buy this property for $30,000. I know it’s worth $60,000 or $70,000 and I’ve already established that with a relationship with somebody who’s got a bunch of money.” We’ll do the deal.

That’s it.

There’s no emotion. It’s just I did my job. This is a great deal. Let’s get it purchased and let’s get it sold. 

That’s perfect. We know you’re a real estate agent and you have a deal that comes to you. It’s $450,000. It’s worth $700,000 in its current condition and it’s worth a million when it’s all cleaned up. There’s plenty of money. There are people here in Land Academy that will fund that all day long for you. You do two of those. Now you’re a deal funder for somebody else.

I have to tell you a story. When Jill and I lived in Southern California, happily, before COVID, we lived adjacent to a community named Torrance, and Jill found a property. It was listed on the MLS. She had at the time just a social friend who happened to be a real estate agent, but a total go-getter. Knew the markets and was a real bright, very successful real estate agent. I’m making up these numbers because I don’t remember, but Jill went to this person. I think it was listed for $600,000 or $700,000. 

For whatever reason, after Jill’s research about how long they lived there, the condition of the house, and all that, she called the real estate agent and said, “Please submit an offer on this house.” I think it was listed. Let’s just say it was listed for $700,000. For $523,000 or some number like that and the real estate agent’s response is I’ll never forget it, “For $523,000 I would buy it,” to which Jill said and I heard this phone call, “Then why don’t you?” There was just silence because I know this is a very bright person.

This is true.

She was thinking, “Why the hell don’t I just make an offer of $523,000 and buy it?” Why don’t real estate agents think like that? They get so sidetracked with paint colors and emotion. 

They just cannot. For some reason, their mind doesn’t go there. Like, I can be the investor.

$523,000 I would buy it. I love that.

There are so many agents running around going, “I wish I was the investor because they’re the ones making the money. I’m doing this. I’m doing that.” Why aren’t you the investor? You should be. 

You really are. You’re like 98% of the way there. Only just one more conversation with yourself in the morning in front of the mirror and then you are an investor. 

There you go. I’ll be the bank. Don’t worry about it. That was my whole point with her. She didn’t get it. Jack, how about you? What are you going to share with us as we wrap up here? 

Do you know that little balance sheet? Yes, assets minus liabilities equals equity. You have to make sure that number goes up every month. There’s a lot of different ways to do it. Conventional wisdom is to save money. There’s nothing wrong with saving money. It’s going to take a long time. 

I thought conventionalism was do nothing, wait. I hate the waiting game. 

Assets minus liabilities equals equity. If you eliminate entirely and completely eliminate all of your liabilities, meaning your mortgage or whatever ends up happening there, then your equity goes up. If you never have any debt to begin with, your assets are the exact same value as your equity because there are no liabilities. If you concentrate on making sure that that goes up every month and then you really sit down with the spreadsheet or however you do it, maybe it’s a $5 solar-powered calculator, you can calculate and manipulate in your favor how much you’re going to be worth when that happens. 

Unlike what everybody wants you to do, put all your money into a 401k and let somebody else deal with it. Super bad idea. You don’t let other people raise your children. You shouldn’t let other people manage your wealth. If there’s a child-raising consultant, please contact me if you’re a child-raising consultant. 

It’s a little late now. I do not want to hear more about all the things that I did wrong because they remind me of that all the time. Don’t forget, you can reach out to us anytime you have any questions. If you want to talk to my team or find out more about Land Academy, just simply text 480-530-7383 or send a note to Support@LandAcademy.com. 

About a year ago, one of our kids came to us and said, really came to Jill and said, “What do you guys know about money? You’re rich.”

Which one of them?

Number two. I said, “You’ve always been rich.” Jill almost fell out of her chair. She said, “Are you kidding me? She worked at American Airlines for 18 years in a union job where she was not allowed to make a lot of decisions on her own. She was paid what they told her. That’s it. There’s no discussing it.” We weren’t like this the whole time. It’s really funny about it. I just love that sentence. “What do you guys know about money? You’re rich.”

It’s so mindless.

It can happen in an accident.

I landed, I fell, and found a bank account.

Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode right here. We buy cheap land and sell for more on the internet, usually a lot more. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.

Important Links:

• Jill@LandAcademy.com
• Support@LandAcademy.com