In this episode, Steven Jack Butala and Jill K DeWit delve into how to adjust your land business for the evolving real estate environment in 2024 and 2025. As seasoned experts who have weathered multiple economic downturns, they share key strategies for adapting to market shifts, ensuring your business remains profitable and resilient. Tune in to discover the adjustments you need to make now to thrive in a changing landscape.

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5 Key Adjustments For Your Land Business In 2024-2025

This is episode number 2,018, and we’re talking about the five ways Jill and I think your land business needs to be adjusted for the 2024 and 2025 real estate environment. Big changes are coming, and we’ll talk about how we have already adjusted our operation and the plans we have because this is our third time going through a real estate economic downturn.

Big changes are coming. Adjust your land business now to thrive in the 2024-2025 real estate environment. Share on X

We’re here to help you and talk to you about this.

We’re seeing the same things happening in commercial real estate, the housing market, and the land market. We’re watching it happen now for the third time. The second time around, it seemed strange that it was so similar. There’s a small bit of uncertainty, but it is very controllable.

We’re here traveling the country and doing temperature checks across the country. By the way, I’m looking to see where you can’t.

Literal temperature checks.

There’s a fly fisherman working his way down the river behind us. We happen to be sitting outside of Creed, Colorado, right now. You can probably see the water. You can definitely see trees and lovely nests behind us. It couldn’t be more dreamy.

Jill, we’re going into this real estate recession. You seem calm, and you guys are traveling around the world. How can you be so calm when all this uncertainty and craziness is going to happen?

We got this. I’ll tell you why. We’ve been ready. Do I have cash and property? Yes.

Partners.

Do I have a ton of paid-for assets? Do I have an amazing partner who knows what he’s doing, listens, and is on the same page 99% of the time? Yes. Do I worry about deal flow? No. Do I want to spend some of my cash coming up? Yes. We’ll talk about that.

We’ve got five points each, five ways that your land business needs to be adjusted. It was not eliminated, not dramatically changed, not kicked to the curb, not abandoned, and adjusted.

That should have been the title of the topic.

I listed a few of them.

Don’t abandon your land business. That is the wrong thing to do. Many people do. That’s reality.

Abandoning your land business is the wrong move in a downturn. Adjust and keep pushing forward. Share on X

By the time we get to the end of this, my goal is for you to have the same confidence that Jill does. Thank you. Each week on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum and take a deep dive into land-related topics, usually by popular request from our Land Academy community. Single question.

What does it usually mean? It may not be by popular request. You just like it.

Sometimes.

By popular, meaning one person wanted it.

Once in a while, and this happens in Discord about once every quarter, maybe once every other month, some land-related topic just explodes. I create a question, and I will answer all of it.

Evan wrote, “I just want to share a quick reminder that the right agent changes everything. I bought a commercial property back in March of 2023 for $53,000. I hired a local agent that I thought was a good fit. She put together a good listing, appeared to promote the property, and communicated well. After listing it for a year, she never brought one offer.

I gave the listing to a Mossy Oak agent who did a great job selling a residential property for me. He listed the property for $150,000, the same price as when the listing expired with the first agent, and brought me a $135,000 cash offer in three weeks. We closed 30 days later. Lessons learned. Spend time researching and interviewing your agents, and no twelve-month agreements. That’s my land Bible. Six months tops.”

This question I put it in here specifically because it bleeds into our actual topic, if you don’t have the right partners, employees, or life partner, you can’t choose your kids. That’s a different topic. If you don’t have the right people in your life, get the right people or do it all yourself. You only have two options because, eventually, it’s going to catch up with you. I have to tell you on a personal note, and Jill’s going to kick me under the desk when I say this, the people and the experience that we have had from an employee and partnership standpoint on the land side of this business for two decades now, 15, 20 years almost, have been nothing short of amazing. It’s the reason that we make a ton of money.

Buying and selling land.

On the land side only. That is not the case with our other companies, specifically Land Academy. It’s incredibly difficult to staff that company for some reason. We have bought, sold, acquired, and started several companies during the ten years we’ve had Land Academy. Staffing is tough. This is just glaring, and I love this question. Thank you, Evan. I appreciate it. It says it in a really brief, concise way, very frustrating.

Every now and then, as we’re out traveling the country like we are now, we stumble across a really cool rock show, like the gem and mineral show here in Creed. I’m like, “Maybe that’s my new little side business.” You think I’m kidding? I’m telling everybody there’s something else we could do, too. We got this. This is going to be fun because you’re right. Some of the things we’re talking about right now are tripping into my five.

 ‘s topic is five ways your land business needs to be adjusted for the 2024 and 2025 real estate environment. Jill, go. What’s your number one? Before we actually get into the five, I’m going to briefly describe, please, let’s do this together, what’s going to change in the environment. If it hasn’t already, it’s going to change. Trust me.

People are freaked out about money and politics. People are freaked out about interest rates and staying in their homes. People are freaked out about their jobs. What else do you want to add in there?

Facing The Uncertainty With Confidence

That’s all true, and it’s going to get worse. I believe that the job scenario in the country is going to get worse. There will be fewer jobs and more unemployment, but in the real estate environment specifically, there will be more property inventory. There already is way more inventory than there was last year. We look at that on our closed Thursday webinar for all Land Academy members, and we study it in detail. There will be more willing sellers. In fact, there’ll be a lot more. Why? Because there’s so much property on the market. The stuff that Jill described, if you own several pieces of land or a couple of extra houses and stuff starts going sideways in your financial life, you start to sell things that you don’t need. Yes. That’s what we’re here for.

What do we always say? We are here to buy assets under their actual current value from people who no longer want them, who are usually experiencing some type of life event. This is about to be life event central. It will also be more difficult for you to sell the property you’re about to acquire. Why? There’s more property on the market. How do you rectify that? That’s what these five points are about. My number one is you will have to send more mail. You will, and you want to. This is not a negative thing. This is a positive thing. This is a time when you can buy some seriously undervalued real estate.

If you’re a person, and Jill and I have a lot of people in our lives socially, who loves to rent property, now is the time to buy rental property. My sister has 30 or 40 rentals. I don’t understand that. It’s not our thing. We’ve tried it. With very few exceptions, we have a bunch of rentals, but they’re all rented to people we know, and they just get paid.

Are they related to us?

Now is the time to buy rental property. They’re related to us.

That really stinks because the money’s not always consistent. Anyway, we’re not there to make money off of them. That’s our point. Our rentals are not there for real income-producing purposes.

Our rental properties are one of many nonprofit organizations that we have.

That’s it. That ties back into our companies.

We have a few that are nonprofit.

It’s about to be parcelfat.org, LandAcademy.org. We might still have that.

We do.

Good. We’ll bring that back.

It’s always been a .org, by the way.

We’ll bring that back.

Sending More Mail And Changing Your Message

You have to not only, this is still my number one, send more mail. In addition to that, you need to consider changing your message.

Here’s the thing. This ties into mine.

This is so good. Here’s the thing. We have so much more information at our fingertips than we did during the last recession. The last recession was about 2009 for us. It technically went from about 2007 to 2011. It caught up with us in a material way around 2009. We didn’t even really know. We had RealQuest back then, which was a subpar data company that was just assessors’ databases. We know everything now. We know the credit score of the person who received our letter. We know who they’re married to.

All about the mortgage information. Exactly.

You can pick and choose very intelligently who gets your mail. We know what level of education they have. When you start to really look at the different messages that you can send somebody, we know when their mortgage is going to change, especially if they have an adjustable-rate mortgage. When the mortgage is going to go from 3% to 5%, let’s say we know what the value is going to be. If that person has any land or extra houses lying around, they’re going to be interested in selling. You can time it. They get your letter or your correspondence two weeks after their mortgage changes dramatically.

You can time it to hit then, is what you’re saying.

My final point to number one is the tools that we have available to us about selecting who gets mail are extraordinary now. You’ve probably heard that, if you’re in the real estate business, people focus on probate. When somebody dies and there’s an estate, there are usually people. I know this from personal experience. There are siblings involved who don’t want it. They think, “What are we going to do with Mom’s house? I don’t want it. Neither one of us lives in that state. Let’s just sell it.” If you start sending it, people have been working probate because it’s public information. It’s called “working probate.” Multiply that by 80. That’s the amount of information we have about people and their real estate now. Please dig around the internet and find new tools. We are.

Your number one is my number two. Mine was not only really taking a look at and adjusting or increasing, I should say, your mail volume but also being open to other ways of reaching sellers. You can use other touchpoints to further enhance how you’re doing it. I don’t want you to put all your eggs in one basket because we’ve watched it change over the years. We used to think email was the bomb, and then it wasn’t. Texting seemed like the bomb, and then it wasn’t. Even social media has been used for the last 5 to 10 years in Land Academy.

People would say, “I send a mailer out, then I make sure this pops up on their Facebook.” You could tie all this stuff together. You could get creative. I say don’t put all your eggs in one basket because the most efficient way, especially for some of the people we’re reaching who are old school, is still getting that letter. They hang on to them. That’s the thing, too. If you text, how many times have you had to scroll through and find a text? I was literally looking for a Durango RV wash person, and I had to scroll to find them. If I had a letter, they hang on to that stuff. It’ll be on the fridge or in their file. That’s why I say enhance it but don’t pivot 100% yet. If there is a pivot, you’re in Land Academy, and we’ll let you know.

A couple of weeks ago, we’re really saying you need to have more deal flow, during this downturn because it’s packed with people having life changes, and they’re more willing sellers than in an upturn. You need to have a bunch of deal flow. Every time I do a mailer, I get it all done, and then I bring Jill in and say, “Take a look at this before I push the button.” We just look at it together for, I don’t know, maybe 10 or 15 minutes. The last time, she looked at me and said, “Is this mailer going to generate ten deals a day? Ten opportunities a day. Not 10 deals, but 10 properties to look at?” I said, “No, are you kidding? No way.” She said, “Can you call me back in here when it does?” I added thousands and thousands more units. I said, “This is probably going to generate 10.” She said, “Cool, let’s send it.”

Of my top five things to change in how you adjust your business, consistent deal flow is my number five. You just hit two of mine, mail volume and consistent deal flow. We got that out of the way.

Maybe there’s 10, not 5. My number two is that sellers are going to be much more interested and open to receiving your letter and talking about selling their property, whether it’s a house or a piece of land than they would have been, let’s say, two years ago, when interest rates were at a sub-3%. There was nothing for sale because everything would get sold. That requires you to adjust to that. It’s going to be more intense, more emotional. Specifically, in the case of houses, there’s going to be some hand-holding.

You have to be cool about this. It’s a tough situation. I can think of one in particular right now, which is a house where the family’s a little cocky. They haven’t really done their homework. They think it’s worth way more. They don’t know the market. They haven’t looked to see what else is out there. Everything you’re saying is true, but they don’t know that. My point is you have to be careful how you let them know. There’s a nice way to say, “Hey, you’re one of ten on your block,” versus just saying it like that. They may not know. They might still have this dreamy idea from two years ago when they inherited the house, and now nobody uses it anymore.

They think it’s still worth [fill in the blank]. It’s tough. What I do in these situations is gently let them know the current market and the situation. I come back to them in a couple of days or maybe even weeks, depending on what you’re buying. Sometimes, you have to give them a little time to realize, “Shoot, she’s right. This is our chance.” I nicely let them know, “If you want to sell, I’m going to be your option. I’m probably going to be your only option. You can do it now, or we can do it in 90 days. Let me know what you think.”

I’m going to ask you a professional question about sellers. Where do you think sellers get their notion of what their property is worth?

From the coffee shop down the street, where they overheard a story of a story of a story that somebody got top dollar.

That’s exactly what I think.

They don’t know that it’s agricultural. They don’t know that it has been 100% remodeled, studs up, all that stuff. All they heard was, “He got a million dollars for that house.”

He got $1 million for that house. “I bought this thing 60 years ago. I only paid $300,000. We can get $1.2 million. My house is worth $1 million.”

It’s really worth $600,000, maybe on a good day.

In fact, the time that you’ve lived there has deteriorated more. It hasn’t improved.

That’s the reality.

It’s tough. My point is, during this downturn, you’re going to get a little bit less, probably substantially less, pushback on price if you do the mailer. Price it low. There will be more people calling you back, saying, “Let’s do this deal.”

I’m going to wait because one of mine ties into your next one. Go ahead. You just started to lean into the idea that they’re going to be less hesitant and more amenable, you think? I’m going to jump into my number four because it ties into this. My number four in this situation is that when you’re talking to these sellers, they see what’s going on, and you get them on the same page. My number four is faster closes on the buy side and the sell side.

You believe that.

That is so important to me, and I think it’s a good pivot. You need to be fast. Do it, get it in escrow, get it closed, done. Even when you sell it, don’t leave any chance for anybody to change their mind. Just get them done.

On the sell side, on that note, you need to make sure as a real estate investor that your property, stuff goes sideways in deals, time kills deals. That’s what Jill’s saying. If your property, stuff comes up in your property on the sell side that nobody knew about, not even you, if it’s priced so much lower than the regular average in that market of properties, then it’s still going to close. It is so important. Price is so important in a downturn like this. You have to buy it cheap.

Price it well and get the right agent. As with Evan, the situation we discussed earlier breaks my heart, he had to sit for twelve months with an agent who did nothing, and then he finally found the right person. That’s why I always go into these situations with a broker. Most of our properties are sold that way, and the conversation is always the same, “What do you think you could sell it for in, let’s just say 90 days?” That’s what we’re aiming for, not five days, but 90 days. I want to be aggressive, but I’m not trying to hold out for top dollar.

After we all agree on a price, I say, “Great, let’s do a six-month listing agreement.” If they ask why, I explain that we’re all agreeing on 90 days. If it doesn’t happen in six months, we’ll talk about it, figure out what we goofed on, and adjust it together. No one ever pushes back. These six-month agreements are no problem. You shouldn’t be stuck for a year.

Diversifying Your Property Portfolio

Number three is very important. Please seriously consider acquiring more diverse types of properties than you have in the past. If you just buy and sell land and do it successfully, congratulations, you’ve figured it out. Please consider adding houses, small properties in rural environments, small SFRs, single-family residences, mobile homes, and commercial real estate. Commercial real estate is the first to experience a downturn, and they’re going through a huge one now. I just reviewed a motel in Michigan as an acquisition candidate. Jill doesn’t even know this. I did it.

Consider acquiring diverse property types—houses, rural properties, and commercial real estate—to adapt to market shifts. Share on X

No, true. I don’t know about it. Did you buy it?

No. It’s right on the lake or one of the lakes. It was a great piece of property.

A room for you and for me.

It was too expensive. Even if I shaved half a million off of it, I’d still be unsure if we could resell it. It’s such a specialty property. The point is, I looked at it as an acquisition candidate. So, I’m not saying go off and buy a golf course. What I’m saying is, please add these types of properties. As a Land Academy member, you have all the data and information you need. Why wouldn’t you just add it and then run through the differences between buying land and buying a house or a mobile home? There are a few caveats, but they’re not that different. The pricing and all that stuff is essentially the same.

Your number three is my number one. That’s exactly what I had down. Isn’t that weird? Truth time, of course. We always do this, and we don’t talk about it. I asked about the topic, then I went off and did my thing, and he did his. I sit down with my notes, and it’s funny how often we’re on the same page. My number one is trolling.

This is what Jill just said. It’s funny how often we’re on the same page. I’m going to remind you of that in a few minutes.

We’re not on the same page on everything, but we are on this. My number one for this whole thing is trolling and making constant adjustments, adjustments with the type of properties you’re buying, the money you’re spending, and where you’re doing it. My main point is to buy whatever people are looking for.

That’s it. How do you do that? By trolling. How do you know what they want?

Yeah, it’s pretty easy for me to pop in right now, move my mouse around the country, and see what closed in the last 30 days and where everything sold between $150,000 and $200,000. Ding, ding. Whatever it is, then you zero in on that.

Here’s how you know what everybody wants. It’s pending. Pick a ZIP code, go on Zillow or Realtor or anywhere, click on it, and say, “I want to look at property in this ZIP code,” then choose all the stuff that’s pending. If what’s pending in that environment is a 3-bedroom, 2-bath, built after 1970 but before 1990 SFR, that’s on an acre of property, and on and on, that’s a profile. You’ve profiled that, and it’s $350,000. Everything on the market above $400,000 is still for sale and aging. Everything below $400,000 seems to be pending. That’s what everybody wants.

This is drinking water for you. This is very true. You have it down. We’ll drive through different areas, and you’ve already done your research. Every time we’re going somewhere, he’s already researched the area thoroughly before we get there. While we’re there, cruising through town, you’re finessing, adding little tweaks to your analysis like, “That’s exactly what that property looked like,” or, “Hmm, I thought this looked a little bit better online, but now I’ve got a good feel for it.” It’s fun for me because I can go, “Where’s the sweet spot?”

There’s next week’s show. Buy what everybody wants. How to buy what everybody wants? Seriously, I’m going to write that down.

I love it. That’s part of how to buy what everybody wants. Jack and I talk about this all the time. There’s a breakpoint. I go, “What’s the breakpoint, babe?” He goes, “In this town, it’s $500,000. In this town, it might be $150,000. And in this town, it might be $800,000. In Jackson, Wyoming, it might be $4 million.” That’s the breakpoint. You have to know these markets.

I just think it’s brilliant that some of the most brilliant stuff is so obvious, yet no one says it. You need to buy what everybody wants.

What if they don’t see it?

Why would you buy a mobile home in a place where every single mobile home is aging on the market?

True, 150 days on the market.

The municipality is dying to get rid of all mobile homes in that environment. Why would you buy those and then wonder why they can’t sell? There’s so much common sense in that. Every single house in one ZIP code that has one bathroom, because it was built in 1890, is on the market. Every single one under $300,000 that has two bathrooms is pending. Send the mail out that reflects that.

I’m going to argue that people have been told to do something and didn’t take a step back to think, “That doesn’t make sense.” That’s why we’re here. That’s what we do. This is Land Academy. I’m not here to tell you, “Go mail here, do this area.” In six months, it’s going to be different. This is all Jack. Jack’s whole thing is he’s teaching you how to find this stuff, look for the triggers, and then pivot when you need to. Go here, go there, just like this whole discussion.

Buying Fewer Properties With Larger Profit Margins

Everything north of $400,000, in my example, is sitting on the market. Everything south of $390,000 with two bathrooms is pending. What do you do? You send out mail for about $325,000, and you’re going to find somebody, or multiple people, within that zip code who are experiencing a life event and just want to get out. That’s been our whole business model for decades. We’ve been doing that and teaching it. It works with some fundamental micro changes, which is what this show is about, adjusting. Now, my number four, if you’re ready, We have chosen to buy fewer properties and do fewer deals with larger profit margins. I’m guessing we will probably do 12 to 15 deals this year that make us $100,000 to $150,000 net each. You can do the math on that. It’s a pretty good year.

Maybe more.

With not a lot of work. Maybe more.

We’re only halfway through. Things change, stuff’s going to come up, and more opportunities are going to come up. I expect that to be more.

There are more opportunities. We just said the market produces more inventory in times like these, more willing sellers, better prices, and all of that. What that allows us to do, and this may or may not be true for you, is have a larger pipeline of property. It allows Jill, and I actually learned this from her probably three years ago, to really just look at the deal in thirteen seconds and say, “Yes,” and that’s it. It’s because it’s easy enough for her to do, it’s profitable enough, and when a bunch of stuff goes wrong, it still closes.

We bought it for $125,000 and sold it for $210,000. It’s not just that everybody’s alive. She’s got a good feeling from the seller, and whatever their circumstances, they’re buddies now. The deal’s going to get done. There’s more to it for her. If all that stuff’s going to go on, I’d rather do a bigger deal. I don’t want to do smaller deals.

This just came up in Discord. I responded to someone who asked, “What are you guys doing with these deals that are too small for your current acquisition criteria?” This person is looking to scoop them up, and I’m like, “Hold on a moment. Make sure the profit is worthy of your time.” Do you really want to do a $3,000 deal? Are you going to make $3,000, or do you want to make $30,000? My note to him was, “What if it even takes an extra couple of weeks, but you’re going to make $30,000 versus $3,000?” I’d rather you spend your time on the $30,000. For me, it does take less time on the ones where I’m making more money because I’ve got agents involved. This person is doing this, and that person is doing that, so I’m not doing any of the work. If I’m out there buying for $1,000 and selling for $4,000, I’m doing my own listing, I’m selling it, I’m taking my own calls. It’s not worth my time.

To cap my number four about doing fewer but bigger profit margin deals, in good times, you might review twenty acquisitions and buy one, maybe 20 to 30. It’s a big, round number. In times like these, you might review 100 deals. Believe me, if you review 100 deals, there’s one good one in there, probably ten good ones. My point is you can look at it that way. For every 20 deals in good times, I buy a property that we review. I buy one property. In bad times, like now, I don’t review 100 deals and buy five. That’s still 20 to 1. We don’t do that. We look at it like we’ve got such a huge choice here now. We’re going to make it count.

I still pick the best ones.

I’m going to do all of them from a bigger pool.

That’s a nice thing. I don’t have to worry about, “I can only afford five.” No, I’ve got other people’s money. In Land Academy, I can do 50 if I want to. It doesn’t matter. This is good.

Should I do my number four?

Yeah, because I have one more left. Your number five and my number five are so different. Go for it.

This is not so much economics-tied but a sign of the times from an information technology and AI standpoint. Things are changing so rapidly with tech and the internet and all kinds of stuff. God knows what the real implications are. What the real unintended consequences of AI are, we’ll never know, but there are consequences. I don’t care what your age is, what your background is if you can’t stand the internet, or if you love it, or anything in between, you have to embrace the new technology, the new datasets, how to send mail, and where to send mail. You have to embrace that.

Embrace new technology and data. Use today's tools to make smarter real estate decisions. Share on X

In a downturn, it’s a great time to look at all that stuff because there are people going out of business and new people who are amazing at data who are coming up and creating products for us to use to buy and sell real estate. All this gray hair on my head, I know how to do deals, but technology is not my thing.

These kids coming up with all these IT products, some of them are great. They don’t even know how great because it’s my job to interpret the data that I’m looking at, or the tool, or the AI version of whatever it ends up being, and make better real estate choices. That’s the gap. Embrace this. You have to embrace it, and you have to apply your wisdom. I have many examples of companies that we’ve all heard of, iBuyers.

That didn’t work because we have tech people from Palo Alto creating products like Zillow, believing that they can create a 3% margin real estate deal, and they can’t. They don’t know what they’re doing. They can’t close a deal like Jill can. Use that technology and your real estate experience. That’s my number five.

Thank you for not saying the gray hair was because of wives and children. I was waiting for that.

The kids are all out of the house, and I’m happy all of a sudden.

Good, thanks. Here’s my take, and I love that. I can’t tell you how much, like you said, the gray hair, and I have it too, is because we’ve lived and been around the block. You see things come and go. I’m already seeing less chatter about AI. There are so many things that were the bomb eight years ago, and now we don’t even talk about them. They’re like, “That didn’t work.” How many people do we know, including young people, who are backing off from many or all social media platforms?

I still believe in all that, but it’s not every single new platform that is the bomb, and I’m involved in every single one anymore. People pick and choose what they focus on. It’s so interesting, and it’s probably going to change. What we’re all into right now is going to be different in six months, probably even six years from now. By the way, we’ve had Land Academy for over six years, let alone our whole business model. You’re going to have to adapt to this, too.

I just saw an interview, not recently, with George Lucas, the guy from Star Wars, who said, “Think about what movies were like a hundred years ago in 1924. Now think about what they’re going to be like 100 years from now.” The technology changes.

I was even watching a movie that was 30 years old, thinking, “Look at how our backgrounds have changed.” The special effects have changed so much in the last 30 years, even in the last 10 years. It’s amazing and cool.

That’s how much your real estate business will change, by the way.

Lean And Mean Staffing In Your Land Business

If you’re not ready and don’t accept it and roll with it, you won’t make it. My number five, you need to think about a lean and mean staffing situation. You might need to go back to some basics just to save money and allocate your resources where they should be spent. Think about answering your phones. Do you really want to overdo it on your PatLive bill or whatever you’re using? We’re going to get the best bang for our buck, which is pretty much buying properties.

It’s all in the acquisitions and choosing the right real estate agent, which is why I included Evan’s question here. It really was a statement.

If you’re lean and mean, and you’re doing a lot of the work yourself, and you have agents selling it for you, that takes that out of the picture for you. If you don’t have time to scrub your data, you can outsource that. It’s not a full-time employee. That’s my big thing. I’m buying an acquisitions manager. This comes up all the time. “I’m doing great. I’m hiring an acquisitions manager, Jill. Should I pay them a salary or commission?” I’m like, “Well, hold on a moment. Let’s stop for just a second. How much time do you need? How many deals are we talking about here?” You don’t really need to overpay someone 40 hours a week and then find stuff for them to do. A lot of people do that wrong.

Let’s break down what Jill’s saying from a numbers perspective. You do not need additional employees if you’re interested in making between $5,000 and $150,000 a month. You need to send out the right mail to the right people, and it has to be priced right. “Jack, I don’t know how to do that. I suck at Excel, and I don’t want to learn.” Fine, find somebody like me. You need to answer your phone correctly, create real estate deals, and get them purchased. “Jack, I’m a data person.” Find somebody like Jill. That doesn’t require any expense.

A partner. Who’s doing deals with you?

It doesn’t require any expense at all. It’s utilizing what you’re good at. Before you found Land Academy, it utilized what you’re good at. If you’re doing between one to two deals a month, whatever the profit margin is, all you need is what I just described. If you want to send it to the moon like we do, you need between 1 and 2 additional employees on the land side. We’ve had $10 million years.

It’s not complicated. I think people make it complicated. You don’t need a big staff. In a perfect world, those people that you have working for you are variable costs, not fixed costs, meaning you do a deal, they get paid. Not that they have a salary and are just sitting there. We have multiple companies, so we’ve chosen the salary route, and it works for the people who are there. They’re happy, and we’re happy. Let’s put it that way.

We have different kinds of companies, but not for our land companies. It’s very different. This has been great.

Do you have something inspirational to share?

I wanted to wrap up with this. When we watch people go away, what’s happened before is that people were not ready for it during tough times. They couldn’t weather the storm. They overspent, they had tons of seller financing, and maybe they even did terms. I haven’t heard much about that lately, but people used to say, “You can buy a property and then sell it on seller financing. Take the triage in the middle there.” I just want to make you aware, and I want to make sure you’re making smart decisions and you’re here listening. Hopefully, that’s why you’re here. I don’t want you to abandon your company. You should not have to abandon your land company. You can scale it up or scale it back however it needs to be, but you should not have to abandon it. If you do, it’s on you. That’s money.

Even if you have to shelve it, the stuff works.

Do a deal a month, or maybe we’re doing a deal a week. If you don’t do that, make it a deal a month and make it count. Get yourself out of that hole.

You don’t need any money. If there is a hole, it shouldn’t be. If you’re out there finding great deals, securing them, and creating great deals, that’s all you need. You don’t have to have any money. Just go on a Discord channel, Land Academy’s Discord channel, and 60 people will beg you to finance or partner on the deal.

Over the years, the only people I saw who didn’t make it were because of their financial decisions. It’s not deal flow. It’s not the deals. It’s not stuff like that. They just didn’t know how to position themselves and buy the assets.

That’s my talk.

I’m sorry.

Final Thoughts And Inspiration

No, it’s good. It’s a perfect segment. My advice right now, or my inspirational portion here before we wrap up the episode, is if you’re young and this is your first time, this is a perfect time for you to look straight into the mirror and say, “Now I’m making different choices. I am making permanent financial changes in my life.” This is what happened to me the first time. I got rid of all the debt that I had, one way or the other. I got rid of it. It’s not a pretty thing to go through. Hopefully, you have to do it alone. I did it alone with Jill around, fortunately. We’re still together.

I got confused. Was it better alone or better not alone?

Way better alone. I don’t know. Maybe that’s a guy thing.

It’s better alone, but that does not mean file for divorce, babe. “I got to get through this financial pickle and then I’ll call you in a year.”

Maybe the person you’re married to is the reason that you have all these problems. Maybe some permanent change needs to happen there.

That doesn’t mean kick people to the curb. We could get on the same page.

My point is get rid of all your debt. All of it. That’s true. Permanently. “Jack, leverage is the way you make money.” Yes, you’re absolutely right. Leverage is for a certain personality type, someone who sleeps, eats, and breathes capitalization and how things are capitalized and utilize leverage. Those people do use debt correctly. For the rest of us, and I include myself in this, it’s not a good idea. It’s very difficult.

Think of our friend who owns a bar. Jill and I know them well. Their parents started this bar in the 1940s. It’s on a very popular corner in Scottsdale, in Old Town Scottsdale. They own the building and all the land around it. They only take cash, and they do not serve food. They print money because even in the worst of times, they don’t have any expenses. They pay property taxes, and they don’t even pay labor because, in a downturn, labor is a variable cost for them.

You want your business to be like that. You want your life to be like that. In the worst of times, you don’t have any bills. You can sell assets, even if they’re below cost. Jill and I have been through this just to eat because you don’t have any debt. Debt will kill you, including mortgage debt, as we’re seeing now with these adjustable-rate mortgages again.

I’m not worried. Are you worried?

No.

Same thing.

I’m not worried 1%.

I’m looking at all the assets. You have us really well-diversified, especially in property. I’m not worried about the things we have for sale right now. I just wrote a note to Jan. I’m like, “We missed the boat on this one property with this agent. I can’t put a mobile on it. It’s got the few things we love.” It could be for personal use. We’re still not sure. I said, “So I just wrote her a note back in Airtable, and I said, ‘You know what? It’s expired. It’s not going to be what we want it to be. Let’s revisit it in the spring and maybe relist it then with a good agent, a different agent.'” I don’t have to worry about it. Nobody cares. I don’t care.

That’s the way it should be. I’m sure that’s the right decision too. It’s a calm, no-pressure decision, and it’s not like you need to make payroll next month or anything.

It’s not going anywhere. Exactly.

That’s a great example. Join us next time for another interesting episode. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, providing information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.