A Brief Look Into A Land Investor's True Success Story

Hey, it's Mark Podolsk at the Land Geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com and today's guest. I'm very excited to talk to you, but I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host. You know him, you love him. The brain, the professor, your flight school sherpa. Scott Todd from Scott Todd.net landmodo.com learn anything about anything. Investor ninjas.com Scott Todd. How are you, Mark?

I'm great. How are you?

I'm really excited to talk to one of our own fellow land investor.

That's right. It's always nice, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. So Jill DeWitt from Land Academy.com is our guest. I bet you a lot of people who are listening already know about Jill and Steve Land Academy, but this is the first time we've had you on the podcast, so welcome.

Thank you very much. I'm really excited to be here.

So, Jill, let's just rewind the tape and let's just talk about your land investing journey. Like, how did you even get into it?

Well, oddly enough, probably similar to the way you found the niche. So I learned about real estate growing up in Orange County. My dad was an investor, so I watched him do it mostly with houses. I just grew up knowing that, you know, here, especially in Southern California, there's money to be made in real estate. And I didn't really know the land part. So I was one of my first jobs, I worked for some land developers actually, in Santa Ana. They would buy the dirt. They would build strip malls or office buildings and they would lease them out. And I'm so, I'm like, okay, I got a taste of this. So then fast forward. I didn't do anything with it, unfortunately. I wish I would have back then, right? So fast forward, you know, gosh, going on 12 years ago, bumped into Steven Butala, and he was happily doing this and pulled me out of what I was doing and showed me the way, and it was just a perfect fit. You know, I'm. He's the data person. I'm the talk on the phone person. So we made a fantastic team, and here we are. I can't even count how many thousands of transactions we've done. And it now is, you know, like you, it's just. It's on autopilot and going fast.

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, you're a deal junkie.

Yes.

Yeah. So, Scott Todd, what are your thoughts?

You know, it really is crazy when you, when you think about it. One that a lot of people struggle to even understand. Like, wait a minute. You buy land, right? You don't put anything on it, and then you turn around and you sell it. And, like, you've done thousands of deals in, like, six years. I've done. Yeah, six years. I've done, like, over 2,000 deals. I mean, it's like, how do you even count anymore? But, like, when you're going through this, what do you say to people that say, like, well, you got to do more than just flip dirt? Like, how do you help people get their brain wrapped around the fact that all we really do. I even struggle. Like, Jill, I'm telling you, I struggle with Bill. Say, like, what do you do? And I'm like, you wouldn't understand it. It's too simple.

And isn't that funny, Scott? We do that with houses, too. I mean, we take houses. The three of us know. It's. It's how you buy it. You immediately buy it. It's worth something. I don't have to do anything to it, but make it pretty and get it out there, you know, in front of the right person kind of thing. And it's. It's so true. It's. It's funny. We. You know, we laugh about it. You know, you're. You're out somewhere at a dinner party, and people ask you what you do, and I'm like, oh, boy, here we go. Because it's so hard to explain. They. They just don't. Some. Some see it, obviously, or we wouldn't be here, but some people don't. And I just say, okay, that's fine. We'll be quietly over here doing just great.

It's funny, Mark, the other day. The other day, I'm out on a. I want to say it was a. I want to say it was a Thursday. I could be wrong. I'm out. I'm out in the middle of the week, and where am I? I'm at the golf course, right? Like, I'm playing golf. Some guy catches up to me, and I like playing by, you know, like, alone. I'm like, you want to join me? He's like, yeah, no problem. And we start talking, and he's like, hey, like, shouldn't you be at work right now? I mean, like, it's the middle of the day. And I'm like, well, I kind of am at work. And he's like, well, what do you mean? Like, you work on the golf course? And I'm like, no, no, no. I'm like, My business is running without me and like, I don't like it. This is my work. Like I'm a passive income bum. And he's like, what do you do? And I explained to him what we did and then he goes, I go, wait a minute, shouldn't you be at work? And he goes, I actually should be at work. I said, well, what do you do? And he was funny enough. He was the real estate manager for a big burger company, Big one. And his job was to, after they bought the raw land, to go through the zoning and get it to the point where they could get the permits. He was the entitlement VP or whatever. And I'm like, how often you get to play golf? He's like, like once a month. And I'm like, your job sucks.

You're right. It's all the stuff we don't want to do. I don't want to do that stuff. I'm, I'm very happy my role knowing that, you know, when we sell it to the next person, he's still going to make money off it, you know, and that's, that's, we all know that's how you get buyers for life. I'm going to mark it up this much. You go, you go to it. And whether it's land or houses, that's why we get people going, all right, I need 10 more of those. I'm like, no kidding?

Yeah, yeah. So what is your focus now? Is it more land? Is it more houses? Is it fish? 50. 50. So and why, like, why houses and not just land?

No, it's still more land than houses. But in today's environment with the days on number getting shorter and shorter and the stellar data that we have for houses, it's, it's hard not to. So, you know, we all know we can all put in a zip code and zero in on an area and know that, wow, every three, four bedroom house in this radius sells in 12 days as long as it's priced like X. But then why wouldn't you go do that? So that's still what, what we do. But with land we all know too. It's just, it's so much easier to hit bigger numbers with houses. It's, we kind of, it's kind of like a Steven phrase too. It's like houses are singles all day long and that's no brainers. But when you have land, you know, I can double and triple my money, especially in today's environment. So we're doing numbers with land where I'll buy them for $50,000 and sell them for 150. You know, I've got one right now, and just north of here in a county really close to me, but it's not Los Angeles county where we're buying it for under $500,000. It's under contract for 1.5. So you. You know, that's why land is still great.

Yeah, yeah.

It's amazing that those deals are still there because the market is so inefficient.

It's amazing. I have. I'm sure you guys are feeling this too, you know, especially with. With everything going on in our world right now. We don't have to be in the big city. We can get out here. We can go to, you know, these zoom towns and, you know, live a couple hours away, and, gosh, now have that ranch we've always dreamed about. And so land is flying off the shelves. It's. It's a great, great thing.

Yeah, yeah. So now what about the housing model? So how does that work?

Same thing. You know what, Mark? Is a great question. It's all the same stuff. It's just, you know, and it's. That's where. That's where Steven shines. He is my. He knows how to pick them. He knows how to price them. He knows how to make my phone ring. And it's never changed from whether on the buy side or the sell side. So right now, my phone is just blowing up. Now. I thank goodness I have a team now, which is really great, but our phones are blowing up with all kinds of property types, and we're just, you know, and now it's so much volume, I can really just pick the best ones. But so back to your question, Mark, about houses. It's kind of the same thing. You just really get in there and, you know, he's nuts about that. He gets in there and really focuses and prices well. And so when the offers come back and someone says, yeah, I do want to sell. Thank you. I'm so happy to get your offer. Wow, this makes sense. I don't have to remodel the kitchen, and you guys have the cash and let's do it. I'm like, yep. So we just. We just move in and do it.

Scott, Todd.

I mean, one of the things that Jill's talking about is a lot about what we talk about as well, too, Mark. It's really about buying, building a machine. Not. Not buying a machine, building a machine. Right. Like, whether it's land buying or, you know, like, houses, whatever. Okay. Like, it doesn't really matter what you're doing, ultimately, you need. You need to have the deal flow coming in on the front side, right? So you got. Jill said this. She's got to get her phone ringing. So Steven gets her phone ring. Okay, so he gets her phone ring. All right, so you're building the land buying machine, house buying machine. Whatever it is, you buy it. But then you got to have the process, right? Like, to me, it's just an assembly line. I just think of this whole thing as an assembly line. It moves from here, here, and ultimately, at the end, we finish with the. With our finished product, which is a sale. Right. Because we want to sell that asset. And unlike other types of businesses like real estate, where it's buy and hold, our end goal is to sell it a lot faster than, like, the buy and hold guys. Right? Like, we want to sell it and get it going. That's our finished product. The buy and hold guys, they want to. They want to add that asset or that trophy to their shelf. Boom. I got this shelf over here of all my assets. And then they want to look at them. They want to look at them. And, yeah, they produce income that way through, you know, rents, et cetera. We also have the ability of producing income the way that we sell it. But I think that that's one of the things that a lot of people miss is you want to build a machine, get the phones ringing.

It all starts with good quality data. That's it. And so that's been our big focus. Right now we have two things that I wasn't gonna share, but I'll share. Like, we're getting even more strategic and focused on our data and how we use our data. So it really takes all the guesswork out of it. And then the other thing I was gonna. I was debating and sharing, but we're doing mobiles. I tell you, that's a huge focus for us right now. So it's kind of like it's, you know, more land, but there's something on the land. So we're working on stuff with that too. We might even come up with our own little program all centered around that at some point.

Yeah, I mean, mobile homes, I think, are great, and it's very similar to the land niche. And for a lot of people who want to do multifamily, I always tell them, like, the land investing niche is a good gateway drug to go into multifamily. And the next one up would be mobile home parks, because you can just rent the dirt if you don't want to deal with the actual mobile home, which, you know, I personally like. I can even change a light bulb. I don't want to deal with any homes dealing physical.

Exactly.

I mean, I just want to, you know, shuffle paper, make money. That's.

Isn't it funny? So many. It's. I love it when I get people that come to us from other things, like so many other property types, you just. You just hit it, right? Perfect. Mark. They're so hard, you know, and we've been there, done that. You know, we've done renovations. I've done that stuff. I'm like. And I sat there and, you know, added up how many days I sat in that house and I came up with dirt in my hair because you have to micromanage the project. And I went, wow, how much more money I could have made sitting at my stupid desk with this behind me, you know, and not have to go through all that. So. And it's. So it's fun when I meet people that come from, like, commercial real estate and all kinds of things. And I almost have to, you know, like, you do too. You have to kind of undo their thought process and remind them it is this easy. There's a buyer, there's a seller. How do you want to close? What do you want to do with it? You get to make all the shots. You make all the decisions, call all the shots. You know, it's so awesome. And it's funny because so many people, they're like, okay, they come into this thinking and they have big plans, all right, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna grow my empire to this. And then. And at the end of the day, there's a lot of people that say, you know what? This land thing, so flipping easy. I'm just gonna stay in the land space, you know, and just do bigger and better deals. And that's kind of, for me personally, that's my favorite thing. So the, like, the mobile part of it, it's really more Steven. The house part of it is really more Steven. Like, I'm. I'm here and happy to help, but my number one end of the day thing that I love to do the best is just plain land. Just buy it, sell it for more, for cash, double my money, you know, knowing it's worth more. And then I move on and I go play on the beach.

It's not a bad life.

Exactly.

Not a bad life. Scott. Todd, what are your thoughts?

I'm just thinking, like, I like what you said. Do you work in the morning? Then Go lay on the beach. Right?

Totally.

And it's funny because that's kind of what I tell my wife is morning time. I'm going to dedicate a little bit of time to do what I got to do and then the rest of day is all mine. Like whatever I want to do, I'm going to go do it.

Exactly.

So what's some of the worst advice you see or hear given in land investing or even house investing?

Let's see. Gosh, the worst advice is probably that you have to do something to the property. A lot of people go in thinking that they're going to maximize profit by rezoning or improving it somehow. And instead of just taking a step back and realize as long as you bought it right, that's all you had to do. So I see a lot of people going down that rabbit hole and trying to learn all these things. They don't need to learn. You don't need to be a perk expert or basically, you know, spend a week at the county and understand how they do things. It does. It's not gonna, it's not gonna make a difference. Just learn to do the deals and, and get it like, like you said, you know, Scott, if you once you have a real good thing that you understand and you like it and we all know niches often find you. So I'm a huge fan of if it comes easy to you and you're really good at it, it's probably meant to be don it. So if you are really good at that, like some people are really good at undoing title messes, you know, and they may be the only person in that area doing that. Well, great. You have no competition, including me, because I don't like that. I'm just happy with doing, finding really good deals, big deals. I'm happy working in areas and dollar amounts that make people cringe and they don't sleep well at night. But I know exactly what I'm doing and I know how well I bought it because my data guy hooked me up. So it works out. It's great.

No, that's amazing. That's amazing. So let's talk about these bigger deals. Half million dollar million dollar five million dollar deals. Because we all know banks don't want a loan correct. On raw land unless you're gonna get a construction loan. So it's about, you know, finding the capital.

There's a few out there. There's like, there's some companies. But this is a really good point. This is something that we have personally gone into and, and we have a lot of people in our community that do the same thing. I'm now being the bank for a lot of people because we firmly believe no good deals should go to waste. And it doesn't matter if you're part of Land Academy or not. You can bring me a deal. I don't care what it is. If, you know, and I'll look at it and it's that good. Yeah, I will. I'll give you the money. We're going to figure this out because we all know what's, what's going to happen, and that's never changed. You know, it's regardless of the size of the deal, if it's that good of a deal and you get it from the right person, there's no problem with the money.

Yeah, I mean, I, I mean, Scott would agree. Like, in real estate, we make our money on the buy.

Yeah.

And you should never lose a deal because of capital. You'll find it.

Oh, yeah.

If you show that, you show an investor the numbers, the, you know, it'll come to you. Scott Tyler.

I mean, I agree, man. Like, you know, essentially, you know, one of the things I think you asked, you asked a couple questions. I wanted to chime in on one of them. You said, what's the bad advice? Right. And I like what she said. I will tell you that, like, one of the things that I think a lot of people, sometimes I'm about laying a lot of people go down the rabbit hole with is when it comes to advice is I think that a lot of people, they, like, they. Sometimes I'm trying to find the right words here because I don't want to, like, insult somebody, but what they do is they will chase after somebody that, like, doesn't know what they're even talking about. Right. Like, okay, so, like, hey, I'm new to this business. I've done, like, I don't know, X number of deals, and I know what I got to do now. Okay, great. That's fantastic. But why not listen to people that have done it thousands and thousands of times? Jill and Steve, thousands of times tens. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Right? Like, how do you stop counting? It's really the years, okay? Like, it's not just one deal or one year. You can have a flash, a fresh, flashy way of doing something. It doesn't change the cores of the business. And I like what you said. The niche finds you. Right? So, like, I think that you have to go down that, that niche and really explore where it is that you want to go. But, man, there's so much opportunity in this business. There's so much opportunity and big, big deal, small deal. Like, literally, we. Everybody can. Can do something with land and still not touch the market and affect it because it's a big country. There's a. I mean. I mean, I don't know how long you've been doing, Jill. I've been to land. Investors come and go, and the reality is, is that my business continues to grow every year. It's like, you know, you got to believe. You got to believe, and that's probably the hardest part for a lot of people, is just taking that first step of belief.

It's true. Yep.

Yeah. So, Jill, how do you handle people that have scarcity mentality that come to you, like, looks like, you know, all these people are buying land or houses in these counties, you know, there's not gonna be any deals for me, it looks like, you know, you guys are buying it all or, you know, this group buying it all. How are we gonna buy anything?

Well, we. That's one of the things. I'm sure you answer that a lot, too. I'm like, you know what? That's one of the conversations that we had together, like, before we all share this whole thing. Let's make sure we're not, you know, is there enough land to go around? And the answer is, oh, my gosh, heck yes. And we know people, and I'm sure you do, too, that have made whole careers in one county, you know, because once you find an area that you know and you understand and you get to know the people kind of thing, you know, before you know it, you're buying all the five acres, and then you're buying all the 10 acres, and you could do all the 20 acres and the 40, and it's endless. It's, you know, especially where I'm sitting right now in Los Angeles county, if I really wanted to, I could retire off of doing homes and never leave LA county, period. There's enough here. And I don't. I wouldn't be the only one, too. There could be a lot of us doing the same thing. So there just. There's just so much out there.

Yeah. So the due diligence, though, on land, like, we don't even go look at the land anymore.

Correct.

Because we can do everything virtually, if we really had to go look at it. We could have somebody, you know, like a. Like a gig on Craigslist for 50 bucks, take pictures, fill out our proper report, take videos do all that. How do you do with houses? I imagine, is it similar or do you have a. Do you actually physically go look at it?

Very good question. We have a program where we developed, it's called Boots on the Ground. So we have people that we know and trusted and have done deals with in the past and they're kind of our eyes and ears on the ground. So they'll go. And it's really not a lot of conversations anyway. It's really just a one time meeting with the seller, you, you know, getting that signed purchase agreement, maybe answering any last questions that they have, you know, getting eyes on the property real quick, taking initial pictures and at that same time they're scheduling an inspection and a formal inspection which of course we pay for. So they, they. And then once I have all that data, you know, back everything else, I kind of take it from there. And they're just there just in case again to hold a seller's hand once in a while, you know, for move day or whatever. And if I need anything like hey, you know, if they have to turn out, they will help maybe turn on some utilities or things like that. But even my team here can do things like that during the sale process. If I need a sign in the yard, you know, they can do that. But it's, that's how we handle it.

Nice, nice. And as far as, you know, growing and managing a big team, how do you do that? Do you use software? Do you have daily meetings, weekly meetings? Do you have training videos? How do you approach it?

I'll tell you, Mark, that is the one part of this whole business. I would love to hear your opinions on this. But finding the right people is sometimes the hardest part of this business. And it takes, it can take years to find the right team and groom them. But once you do, man, you're set. So we are there now and the last addition to our team was my personal transaction coordinator. And I sent her flowers last week because I so appreciate how hard she works and I know her phone is nuts and what she juggles deal wise for me is insane. So that's the thing. So we have different teams. It depends on the level of what they're doing. Of course we'll have people that they do real routine tasks and we're real fans on making a video, sharing it to them and they could just go in and plug in numbers or whatever we need to do with the routine tasks like calling a county, checking what the tax situation is on a thousand properties or something. I don't know that's, that's easy. But then the other ones, you know, like my transaction coordinator actually, she came with experience. There's, of all levels. She was, she's a former title agent and actually still does stuff, helps her friends out on the side because we all know every title, age on the planet right now, if they're any good, they're, they're swamped. So she actually moonlights and does deals for her friends, which is hilarious. So I love it. So she's always got her foot in the door, you know, and has a, has connections for me too, which is great.

So nice. No, scaling is hard and it's, it's just one of those things that you just, you know, building those systems, building those processes so the human being isn't as important. They're very important. But you got to have that system process down so that they can just come in, ramp up and then you get lucky and you find somebody that's, you know, puts emotional labor into it and they go above and beyond that process and system and that's when, you know, the magic happens. Well, Joe, this has been fantastic, but we're now at that point in the podcast where we're going to ask you for one more gem of information. A tip of the week, a website, a resource, a book, something else actionable for the art of passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. What do you got?

Neighborscoop.com I don't know how I got by without it. Check out Neighbor Scoop Han you just put in the state county apn. I mean, it's your, it's, it's, it's one stop way to do all your due diligence when you're looking at a property. And it's, it's a tool that we actually created. And again, I don't know how we got by without it.

All right, neighbor Scoop.com Scott Todd, before we get to your tip of the week, we got a shout out to our sponsor, flight school. Learn how the next 16 weeks can really transform your life. Start going up that mountain of land, investing quickly, safely, efficiently with Scott Todd, who's done it thousands of times as your Sherpa. And by the way, the tuition is going to cost you anything. We guarantee you you're going to make back that money in cash, returns, deals, 180 days or less. Get on a call, learn more. Go to thelandgeek.com training thelandgeek.com training Scott Todd, what's your tip of the week?

Well, you know, I'm a fan of landing pages. I know you are. Landing pages are really good. You know, you can do different things with it. You can stand them up quickly. You know, like leadpages is probably the best known landing page place out there. The complaint about LeadPages is that they're kind of pricey, but check out SwipePages.com Swipe Swipe Pages. And, you know, it's pretty cool alternative to LeadPages and you can build a landing page quickly. Just further proof you don't need a website for your land business. Stand up a lead page or a landing page for every property that you have. Quick and easy. Someone wants information on a property, send them here again, you don't have to have a website. So a lot of times that stops people from moving forward. Oh, I gotta get my logo first or I gotta get a landing page. No, you don't. This. I'm sorry, a website or logo, you don't need that stuff. You can just use a landing page like this and super simple.

I don't know, man, this is scaring me. Oh, no, it isn't. Okay. I was a little worried about the pricing because, like, you know, I see all these great software like, oh, start for free and then they have no monetization and they go out of business in six months. Yeah, no, they're making money. This isn't so bad. 29 bucks a month for unlimited conversions, one domain, 20,000 unique visitors a month, unlimited landing pages. It's not bad. Swipe pages, okay, that's. I mean, leadpages, what, 79 bucks a month? Yeah.

Yep.

There you go. Finally, a little competition for leadpages. Well, my tip of the week is, you know, look, every pain point in the land investing business think can be solved@landacademy.com if we just go to their site and check out the tools. You've got countywise.com, deal funding, deedperfect.com house academy, neighborscoop.com which Joe just talked about, offerstooowners.com parcel fact.com they've got consulting. So every pain point can be solved. Go to landacademy.com I've been doing this a long time now in teaching. It's a very simple philosophy. We want to rid the world of solo economic dependency. And Land Academy is doing a phenomenal job helping people transform their lives in land investing, house flipping, whatever it is. But once your passive income exceeds your fixed expenses, you're free. And it's. Why go through the trial and error and take advantage of somebody's collective knowledge and wisdom. They've been doing it 20 years. Jill's been doing it 12 years. Learn more. Go there. And, Jill, thank you so much for coming on. Are we good?

Yeah. Thank you so much, Mark and Scott, that was awesome. I'm really happy I got to catch up with you guys.

Yeah. It's good to see you. It's good to see you, Scott. Are we good?

We're good, Mark.

Well, look, I want to thank the listeners and just remind them the only way. The only way we're going to get quality guests like Ajil DeWitt from landacademy.com is if you do us three little favors. You got to subscribe, you got to rate, you got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review. To support thelandgeek.com we're going to send you for free the $97 wholetailing course, how to double your money, three days or less. All right, we ready to do this?

We are.

1, 2, 3.

Let freedom ring.

All right. Jill's like, I don't know. They were gonna.

That was awesome.

That could have been. I could have been on the. On the beach right now.

No, that was awesome.

Kind of like that. All right, thanks, everybody.

Thank you so much.

Thanks, Joe.