The One-County Strategy: Why Going Deep Beats Going Wide Every Time

Thank you.

I once dined on steak with a candle's soft glow, but the bill left my savings despairingly low. Now wisdom has taught me, so simple, so grand, Eat baloney, buy land. Oh, eat baloney, buy land. Trade the fork for the deed in your hand. Skip the filling, let the sandwiches stand.

Your fortune will grow when you buy your own land. Oh, that song pumps me up. What's up everybody? Welcome to Land Geek Nightcap. All right guys, uh, Mark's not here tonight, which usually means one thing.

You go off the rails?

We're probably gonna go off the rails a little bit, but, but that's okay. Uh, we do have a good topic, and honestly, this topic, we've all become kind of passionate about this over the years because most land investors make a mistake of leaving their first county too soon. But if you stay in one county, it can actually accelerate your growth and you can really become an expert in a market that will help, help you make money more quickly. So tonight we're talking about the one-county strategy. Why going deeper in a single market can produce better deals, better relationships, lower acquisition costs, more repeat buyers. And ultimately, uh, much more scalable business than constantly changing to the next hot county.

I feel like, uh, the intro should come in. I think we need to do that. You need to talk like that, right? Intro, that would be so much more powerful.

I think you're right. I think you're right. We need to— we should look into that. I don't know how exactly we would do that on StreamYard. I gotta look it up.

Well, figured out, I think, too. Mark's not here, so here's a script for tonight. We're going off the rails.

Oh man, I just wanted to do that. Zeno's got some energy tonight, man. What's going on with you?

A little allergies. They'll do it for you every time.

Allergies. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

So talking about—

it sounds great.

Focusing on one area and how it can really, uh, Yeah, but yeah, but Mike, first, first.

Yes.

Let's tell her. Let's— I got two, I got two things on the agenda before we get to that. Okay.

So first, too fast, too far.

I'm gonna ask you, Mike Zaino, tell all the new watches, the new watches out there.

Yeah.

And by the way, let me do intros first. I'm Scott Bossman, Dude Buddy, the Nightcap OG. It's the second time I've introduced myself as that. It feels weird.

Presumptive, is that the word, John?

Presumptive, little— Yeah, but it's just my name.

You have to, you know, you have to speak the facts. Go ahead.

Yeah, right. So, and then I'm joined by, as always, on the bottom of the screen, that handsome Italian man, Mike Zaino, the Zen Master. Breathe in the mailing, breathe out the marketing.

Thank you.

How's it going, buddy?

It's going great. I'm happy to be here. Happy to see the both of you.

Nice to see you, Mike. And then in the top right, uh, of the Family Feud— or Family Feud? No, top right of the Brady Bunch screen, that's what I'm trying to say— is John Eight Is Enough, handsome Rob Burnett.

Look at that, I got 2 middle names. That's great.

Yeah, yeah, you have 2 nicknames and I have 2 nicknames, and the guy on the bottom, he has one.

Just a single nickname. It's a pretty good one though.

It is a really good one. It's a really good one. Uh, okay, so Mike, first on the agenda before we get to the topic, can you tell all of our new watchers who we are, what do we do, why the heck are we here?

Yeah, we're the Land Geek Guys, which means, uh, we're a bunch of guys that invest in land and we're kind of geeky. Land Geek Guys. What we do is we, we are experts in buying land. Here's the buy box, you ready? $400 or $500, maybe $5,000 or $6,000, anywhere in the middle. We buy these properties 25 to 30 cents on the dollar. Yes, it's possible. We do it all the time. I'm currently buying over 100 properties right now. That is true. So we do this all the time. When we sell these properties, we sell them on owner financing, meaning that we allow people to pay us a small monthly payment. Very affordable. Could be $50 a month, could be up to $500 a month, anywhere in the middle. What happens is we usually get all our money back in the first year. So whatever we pay for the property, we're made whole in the first year. Several years of payments thereafter, that's the passive income. Do it one time, you have a land note. Do it multiple times, you have a land portfolio, and you can create enough passive income to pay your mortgage, then replace your job, uh, your, your spouse's job. You could literally just live off of The passive notes that you create. And the great thing about it too is that we don't have to do all the work. It can be systemized, systematized, automated, delegated. We can work a couple hours a week in the business. No, not out of the gate, takes you time to build it, but over time you can become very good at managing a business, working on and not in it. And you just have true time freedom all off of cheap parcels of dirt.

That's what we do.

More than 30 seconds, but I think it's a good—

I mean, who has goosebumps right now? I like them. Like, I feel like the first time the business has ever been described to me and I got like the goose pimples.

I'll take it.

I'll take it.

Goose pimples.

Yeah, goose pimples.

No, but that's, you know, it's a boring business, but the returns are exciting. The fact that we can manage it, not do all the work, is exciting. It's a pretty cool little niche that we're in.

Yeah, and if anybody wants to learn more, we have some great or a niche some great. We have a niche. It's it's actually we're in a niche within a niche.

I think not niche niche nichey.

I think it's a niche.

A niche.

I think it's niche too. Yeah, it's not nichey. Mark says nichey. I really don't think it's nichey.

Sounds like an admission niche.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, but for everybody, uh, tuning in for the first time, we have some great resources, right? Uh, on thelandgeek.com, you'll learn all about the business. And if you go to thelandgeek.com/podcast, you'll see every podcast that Mark has ever done going back 12, 13 years. Uh, Mark wrote the book Dirt Rich, which is an Amazon bestseller. You can check it out there, uh, on Amazon or Audible as well. So, all right. Thanks, Mike, for that. Now, second thing on the agenda before we get to the topic. John Burnett, why do we eat bologna and buy land?

Oh my goodness, this is the hard question. Finally, eat bologna, buy land. Long ago we had an inside joke that came to pass because we realized that you can, uh, we sell our land at such affordable prices that you can afford a piece of land and buy it from us just by simple savings within your day-to-day life. So if you cut out the ribeye, eat a bologna sandwich, then for that small sacrifice, you can own a piece of land because we sell land for $50, $100, $200, $500 a month, like Mike said.

You know, bologna is underrated. It's a very tasty meat, very much underrated.

My kids are very into— you know what my kids are into is Spam.

Oh, I love Spam.

You know, here's an interesting fact. I have a friend, and I'll have to get the book for the next show. We used to go to these, uh, you know, martial arts get-togethers, and we train in the woods for a week, and then we'd eat around the fire. We told stories about Spam, but he is a— he told stories about Spam. He did. And he, he draws like He's like a, uh, what do you call someone that draws, uh, cartoons for like Disney? What would you call that person? A character? How would you say?

Cartoonist.

Cartoonist. He wrote a whole book on Haminal because I'd always say, I want to be a real boy, I'm Spam Boy. And he wrote a whole book on it and he had these little stuffed animals. I'll bring it next week. So John, I'm gonna actually send one to the kids. I'm gonna get a copy of this book and send it over to kids. It's crazy. And I inspired it.

Wow, look at you!

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Oh, you guys probably hear me typing. I hope not. But well, thank you guys. Thank you guys for that. We have a we have a number of faithful viewers here tonight with us. John Don the Land Thrasher is here.

Hey, Don.

Good to see you, Don. We missed you last week. We noticed. We noticed your absence.

Pay attention.

It was very low energy.

We all very low energy. Yes. Brian's here. He's looking forward to the topic tonight. We're talking about staying in one county as you get your business up and running. Let's see who else we got. Julie Howard, great energy already tonight. Thank you, Julie. Great to see you here. Thanks everybody for chiming in. And as always, post your comments or questions in the chat related to our topic or not, because we like to go off script. We'll answer your off-script question. No problem. All right, so let's talk for a few minutes about, about our topic.

All right?

Yeah.

So, Mike Zaino.

Yes.

When we start this, we encourage new land investors to stay in one county.

Yes.

Uh, so many of us have a tendency to leave that county way too soon. So let's talk about reasons why we should stay in one county, um, for maybe for, I don't know, your first number of months, maybe even year or years in the business. Uh, like we had a webinar last week with Valerie Young. She's already at $10,000 a month passive income. She's working in one county.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I was kind of the opposite in the beginning, and I've learned my lesson. I was a little bit— I guess, is the word fickle— does that ring a bell? Is that a good Scrabble word? Like, I was Hopping from county to county without care. I just, uh, hey, I'll get a deal here, a deal there. But what you miss out is when you dig into one county, you become over time the expert there. You start to learn all the details about the properties and different subdivisions in that county. You build a buyer's list. This is where people that want to buy land, they begin to know you as an expert there. But I was doing a lot of wholesale, so it Which means I was buying land and flipping it to other investors where I would close to double my money. They would sell to the end user. So my buyer's list was really other investors. So it didn't really affect me initially, right? Because I'm just trying to off this land quickly to create cash. But as time went on and I wanted to start building passive income, that's when it became apparent that digging into one area would be a much better decision. Because I, I want people to recognize that that's my lane. That's where I work. They come to me for land in that area. So it's, it's, it can be difficult in the beginning because you're trying to find a location that speaks to you, sings to you as they might say, you know. And you could jump from here to here, you could try land arbitrage, we could talk about that in a minute. You could try different areas in simple ways, but eventually if you find one that clicks, it behooves you to stay there, dig your heels in, and become the expert. It's going to have A massive payout to you in the long run.

You use the word behooves.

Behooves.

Very good.

Right there.

Scott's big into Scrabble, and I try to bring the Scrabble words to the table.

We need to have a Land Geek— we need to have a Nightcap Scrabble night. Well, you know, we can each put a board on the back, on the back wall or something. That could be fun. I like it.

We need somebody One of our many viewers should design a nightcap bingo sheet.

Yeah.

And then we can distribute those.

That would be fun.

They could all just be concur every square.

Yeah, thanks for that, Mike. I agree. I concur with you on, on everything you said. But, but John, question, um, have you seen, have you seen investors, um, exit counties too early? And, and what are your thoughts on that?

Yes, don't do it.

Expand, please. So let me ask you this, what, what do you, what do you think causes people to abandon counties like prematurely?

So my kids, uh, have a book called Sam and Dave Dig a Hole. And in this book, uh, this is on point, I promise.

Yeah.

It behooves you to listen to me. But, um, Sam and Dave Dig a Hole, basically the premise of this book, these boys are digging a hole, they're looking for treasure, and you see a cross-section. They're digging, digging, digging, digging, digging, right? And then you can see a diamond just below the dirt, and they say, let's pivot. Right? And so they move in a different direction, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig. You see an even bigger diamond just beyond where they're digging, right? And they say, let's pivot, we're not finding everything. And so they keep on digging, and then it ends with them like finding a bone or something like that. But anyways, sometimes I think we can do the same thing. The reality is when you send out mail to a county, you might not get the response rate that you want. And what that is, is it's the market telling you something, right? So if I send out a bunch of letters, I guess I've got an example of this and I think I've told it before, but there was one time there was a guy named Luke who was working in a county that I worked in and he had purchased a property for $2,000. And I thought, if Luke can purchase these properties for $2,000, I can purchase it for $2,000. I could not purchase it for $2,000. And I sent many, many mailers Right? And just did not get response. And so I slowly came up, up, up, up, up, up, up. I finally found that point at which the mailer stuck, and then I did dozens and dozens of deals in that county, right? But what I could have done is I could have just said, this county's not working for me, I gotta move to a new county. And what I would have done is I would have lost out on a lot of money, right? And I wouldn't have learned from my lessons, and I would have started over in a new county and started learning those lessons over again. Yeah.

Yeah, so yeah, I think, uh, I totally agree with all that, and I love your— I love your story. What's the book called?

Sam and Dave Dig a Hole.

At least Sam and Dave Dig a Hole.

Sam and Dave, or is Dave a salmon?

Sam and Dave sounds like a superhero or something.

Oh yeah, is it 2 people? Uh, actual 2 people.

Sam and Dave.

All right, just clarify.

Uh, I think there's a couple things that can happen here. I think you're right, John. I think that if, if someone starts this and they have what they would consider an unsuccessful mailing campaign— and it's frustrating sometimes because we don't all hit the nail on the head with a mailing campaign, right? Sometimes it takes a little while, but in the beginning you want a win so bad. So you don't, maybe you don't have a successful mailing campaign. So then somebody thinks, uh-oh, this county's dead, right? Or I need a new market. I need to follow a different shiny object. And then suddenly they're in like 5 different states. You know, they're, they're in Arizona, Florida, New Mexico, Colorado, California, or they're just all over the place. And it's hard to become an expert in the area when you're all over the place. So it's like, dig in, become an expert in one county instead of like me, a mediocre guy in 5 or 6 counties, right? So stay the— stay the— stay the path. What's the word I'm looking for? Stay the course.

Course.

Thank you. Stay the course in the county you're in, and if you don't hit the nail on the head with the first mailing, adjust like John did. And then like he said, he did dozens of deals there. On the other hand, you might have people who they hit the nail on their head with their first mailing and they do a couple sales and they're like, this has got to be too good to be true. Like, I'm— I bought— okay, I bought all the land here, now I need to move on. And I think that's, that's part of the— just, it's just coming to know the market and the fact that Because I did that. I did deals in— I did multiple deals in one county, and I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna move now. Like, why? Why would I do that now? It doesn't make any sense, right? Because maybe I thought I bought all the property there that there was to buy. Because just too—

Scott, I remember how many— because I had this wholesaling mentality, and I'd buy land, I'd advertise it for a little bit of time, and then I'd be like, I gotta wholesale it. And then inevitably, like a day or two later, all these leads want to buy my property, and I'd already wholesaled it, right? Just this anxiety They all sell. Stay the course, which is, uh, looks like, uh, Don Thrash's comment. By the way, I can see comments now, and I see the one you brought up, but can you bring up the one from Don at 9:16 PM? I think that would be a great one to bring up.

Oh, I concur. I concur, Mike. That's a shout out. You can't give shout outs anymore.

And he's shouting out to me, and I appreciate it.

All right, well, Some person last week told me I looked— I was aging backwards. So that's like the shout out of all shout outs.

That was good. I was a bit jealous to see that. And you weren't even here.

I couldn't even rub it in live.

Still jealous. You shared it with me.

Go through the comments in retrospect.

Much like the tallow, you rubbed it in my face.

I just may find that and share it tonight.

Um, yeah, all right, cool question from, uh, George— wait, George?

That's Georgery. Georgery, nice to see you. I talked to Georgery today.

I think that's a great one for John because, John, how long you been in that county? Because they're saying how long before you consider moving on. How long you been in your county?

So I've been in my county for coming up on 9 years because that's how long I've been land investing.

So wait, the same county, John?

The same county, John.

For 9 years?

For 9 years.

And you haven't run out of land?

Yeah.

And, and how, and how many other land investors work there?

A lot. It is not an unpopular county. So, and like, I, I mean, to that effect, like, um, it's one thing that I think is Like, to the point that you were talking about, Scott, like this temptation to move on. One point at which you can have that temptation is when you get to the bottom of a list, right? Like you're mailing a subdivision, you get to the end of the, the list and you're like, I guess I need something new. You don't. Go back to the start of the list and then just work your way through. And you cycle and there's a predictable churn rate and you can keep on working one area over and over and over again.

So, no. Yeah. And I think, again, that just comes down to— I think there's some— there are some fears early on, or maybe some misconceptions early on that you're exactly right. Once we get to the end of the list, like, we're done. Like, we're not gonna, you know, why mail that subdivision again? But these subdivisions we're working in are huge, thousands and thousands of land parcels. And what we found over time is that really kind of if you show up in a person's mailbox frequently, they remember it, right? Like we get, we get, we sell land all the time to people who say, hey, I've gotten your letters for the last few years. Now, who's going to be more top of mind for that person when they're ready to sell their land? The guy who showed up, or gal, who showed up in their mailbox multiple times over the last few years, or somebody who showed up one time 3 years ago? And I think that's another reason to stay in one county, because you become a familiar name in that county for, for people.

And you just build every aspect of the— like, we, we talk all the time about repeatability, right? Doing the same thing over and over and over again. And when you've got an area that you've worked for a long period of time, you can have consistent processes, right? Another Scrabble word.

Processes.

You can, because ultimately, you know, when you are sending out your mailers, it's going to get easier and easier and easier to price those because you know the area, you know exactly what you can sell these for, you know what buy it for. Due diligence— you're gonna— like, there are areas in, like, in some of the counties that I work where due diligence is like, it's like nothing, right? I know exactly what I'm getting into when I buy this property, right? I'm still checking the title, but in terms of, like, reviewing the properties, it's a very simple process. And then ultimately, marketing and selling that property— you've got a consistent product. Right? So, and you have built up systems for how to market this product, right? And so, and you've got an audience for that product. So you're just looking to keep that on the shelf. And when you're in a single county, you've got your processes in place. If you're moving from county to county to county to county to county, you're building those up again every single time in each one of those areas.

You know, you're exactly right. You become more and more and more efficient. By staying in that county for a long time, and and you become more efficient on the sales side. Right? When you're having discussions with potential buyers, you get to really know these areas. I've never been to this area, but I can tell you there's this wildlife refuge seven miles down the road that has this, this, this, this, and this for you and your family if you're looking for recreation and fishing. Right? Or they have this over here, and the nearest Walmart is 20 miles here, and the nearest hospital is here, right? And it's 2 and a half hours from this airport. Mike Zano, you're—I'm feeling the end. We started with really good energy. I'm not gonna lie, and now I'm feeling it. I'm feeling you getting sleepy?

No, I'm battling a little allergies, but it's okay. Allergies.

We have a long haul.

It's funny, I realized that, uh, today I was talking to someone, I said, geez, it's killing me, my wife's out there cutting the lawn, my allergies. I realized, oh yeah, my wife's out there cutting and I shouldn't be complaining. She's very happy. She hasn't had to work a W-2 in a decade. You know, this land investing allowed us to retire, so she's— she does things like cut the lawn, so I shouldn't complain. Although it did affect my allergies. Um, so yeah.

Oh, I mean Geez, come on, Laura.

First world problems, you know. Laura, yeah, slow down on the cutting of the lawn.

I mean, oh man.

But I think I, I have some good comments in here. Like someone's— Tony Sanders, do you change your price when you go through this? We're always adjusting to the market, right? You know, John, I'm guessing that, you know, pricing may vary over time, over the 9 years, and the property acquisition price. So absolutely. And then, uh, Dawn made a great point. Not only are we, uh, easier when we speak to sellers and buyers, but the support staff at the counties— I mean, we begin to develop relationships. And, and, you know, coffee and donuts and muffins go a long way with these people that are typically underappreciated. And we become very, um— we have great access to them over time.

How do you send people coffee?

Well, you know, you could send them from a local brewer And you send them like a box of coffee with some donuts. You've done that. Come on. Don't—

I've never done that. That's great. I've done brownies.

Well, yeah. Yes, I've heard you. It was like, what's the brand of brownies you like? I've heard this before.

Fairy Tale Brownies.

Fairy Tale Brownies. I love brownies. Just throwing it out there. Maybe someday I'll eat a Fairy Tale Brownie on the Nightcap.

Maybe. But anyway, I'm just mailing you bologna sandwiches, Mike.

Oh, I would eat that too. Um, if you didn't grow up with a paper bag and a bologna sandwich, um, you know, you missed it because, you know, that was the best field trips, right? You know, they just didn't need to be refrigerated. Something about that bologna doesn't even need to be—

it just has a shelf life of 9 years.

It's a great point that Don makes. You know, we get connected with the county, we understand the way they work, we understand the nuances of that particular area, we begin to know the people, and, uh, you know, it all contributes to our overall success. It's just part of the bigger picture about being an expert in one area.

You know, I, I think, uh, I think another, another reason to become an expert in one area is because When you sell that land once to one person and you sell 20, 30, 40, 50 more properties in that county, those people are buying that land from you for a reason. They love that land. So what's the likelihood that they're going to come back and buy more land from you in the same county? And I think that's another really great reason to stay in one county. Or to have a primary county. Like, I— that's how I think of it. I have a primary county and then, you know, I've branched off from there. But your things are gonna kind of compound the longer you're, you're there with, uh, with buyers and, and repeat buyers as well. Yeah. Um, and deals are gonna— deals are gonna find you more, I think.

I agree. And I think that a great way to safely If you feel like, you know, in the beginning, let's be honest, the first county you choose may not be the one. Just like when you start to date, you may not marry that first girl that you date, right? But eventually you find the one. You might go to a couple of counties and be like, it's not sinking. But when you finally find that one, one way you could do it is there's something called land arbitrage. A lot of investors out there have a surplus of land. They might allow you to pay them a small monthly payment. smaller than it would sell for on the open market, and you can sell it and make that spread. What a simple way to test a new market to see if it speaks to you, you know. Um, we're very fortunate to have these type of, uh, um, you know, opportunities available to us.

So maybe we should talk about that too, because I bet there are people listening who are thinking, all right, so like they're in that position where they're, they're dating the person and they're asking, is this, is this the one? Right. And so, and they're wondering, maybe I should move on, right? And maybe, like, so the question is, are they in the Sam and Dave dig a hole? Are they that close to the diamond? Right. Position where they should move on. So what are the— maybe we should talk about some of the reasons why somebody would move on.

Yeah, because you could hit an obstacle. It's like having a little argument with a girl you're dating. Does that mean you're going to break it off? I mean, we're all going to have arguments with anybody, right? So you hit a little obstacle. It doesn't mean throwing in the towel. You dig a little deeper, you know, and, and you see if you can overcome that obstacle. And perhaps, uh, it's not as difficult as you think. So it's a great point, John. Like that, you know, we don't want to just say, hey, this doesn't speak to me. It's like, no, put some time and effort into it and figure out what's going on. It could be that your marketing is a little off. You might need to tweak it. Your pricing— how many times have we seen people— and this is a great lesson You buy a property and say I bought a $2,000 property. Well, geez, I think I'm going to get $2,000 down and then $300 a month, and now I'll get my money out on the down. Sounds great, but it's not really realistic, right? But we're looking to build, um, we're looking to set it up in a way that it's super attractive to the person who wants to buy it, but yet we can recoup our investment in a, in a, in a good period of time, typically under a year. So Sometimes it might be that we have unrealistic expectations, right? And so we need to adjust that as well. So I think you bring up a great point. You can't just willy-nilly say, oh, this doesn't work, I'm out. And then, because then you'll never settle on any of them, right? You'll never go deep on any of them. That's a, that's a great point. I'd like to hear more from the two of you. And what do you think about that?

I think like one of the things too, if you're struggling on the acquisition side, like, I think it's worth asking yourself, do you know of other people that are not struggling on the acquisition side in this county, right? If you know people that are buying property at a good rate, then that means that it's doable, right? It's not a— it's not a county issue. Um, but sometimes, like we talked about, like if you're in a county, you know, we want to buy at 25, 30, 35 cents on the dollar. At some point, if you're buying at like You know, if you're not getting responses until you're offering 40 cents, you know, or more on the dollar or something like that, right? At that point, you should just be buying wholesale in that market, right? Because of the added cost of just doing due diligence, recording, all the effort, you know, like you might as well just buy it from another investor who's already done all of that, right?

Right.

So the price point, I think, is, is a big one. But yeah, I think The question— the first question I ask is, are other people buying property off of mailers in this county?

Right, right. Great point about wholesale, because you can pay more than you would pay for a property you mail to because you don't have the mailing expense, you don't have the due diligence. Many times the wholesale seller might have photos, you're not paying for those, right? So you can pay more. So great, great point.

Okay, dude, does that count as a concur? Do I get it?

I concur.

Uh, it's a concur fish.

It was a concur fish. Sorry.

Oh, that takes away the— it wasn't concur, but now it's been struck from the record because Sam and Dave, he's fishing for it.

I, I, uh, okay, so to John, to John's point, John, I think we should talk about when it's time to move on to a different county. However, I want to bring up one other thing that I think is important, and that is in, in the, in my primary county, I've made connections over the years, right? Like, I have 2 or 3 go-to photographers that live in that county where if I need pictures, I shoot them an email. They're like, yeah, Scott, I'll get out there tomorrow. I'll get out there today. You make connections, right, with photographers. I have a junk guy. I had some dead cows on a property. I had some tires on a property. I had other stuff on a property. And he's like the guy I go to. No, different properties. He's like the guy I go to when I need help, like cleaning up the property, right? Another, another person that you might kind of make a connection with in the, in the county Is maybe a realtor in that county. Zano, you've done this a lot of times. You've made connections with realtors in counties. Yeah. And you ask them to hook you up with people who are ready to sell their land at a discount.

Just people helping people, Scott. That's all. People. Here's an interesting thing as a side note, um, just to make everybody cringe. I once paid probably 10 or 15 Bitcoins for someone to take photos of one of my properties. That is a true story. That was probably a long, long time ago. And I was like, what do you want to be paid in? Bitcoin. I'm like, and how do I get it? And I don't remember how I got it. For those of you wondering, I have no idea. I can't log into where I got it. But I paid this crazy amount of Bitcoin. This guy is probably a millionaire now. He is a millionaire.

That's what, like, what, $500,000 to $750,000 in Bitcoin?

Yeah, if you paid him 10 Bitcoin, that's 750 grand.

So yeah, yeah, you know, it's a great deal off of those photos.

Some guy knew what he was doing, that's for sure. Yeah, knew better than us. Um, but anyway, you do digress. No, that's okay. The old— and the only other thing I'd say before we move on to the next little mini topic here is, and Burnett, I know you've done this, uh, you've made friends with title company people. In one area. I have. I mean, that's another perk, right?

It's a big perk, right? If you find a good tile company— I mean, I found a great tile company and they would just start— they just started answering all my questions. And then I kept on asking them more questions and they kept on answering. And they were like, where are these questions from? Like, these are so obscure. But, um, and then yeah, I just started sending them brownies. So, you know, I became brownie guy.

That's a great point because, you know, here's the thing, assessors won't give you legal advice, but if you ask them a sort of, oh, kind of a rephrase— it's like when you ask AI something and it won't answer you and you rephrase it, then it answers you. It's the same thing with like, they won't give you legal advice. We say, but if I was to send this in, would you record it or would you require anything else? That, you know, there's a lot of information they will give you if you don't structure it as a Legal advice. So it kind of made me think of that, John. Right? You know, you know they have, you know because the recorder records anything. They'll tell you record a piece of toilet paper. We'll record whatever you said. We're re-recorded. We're just like you record, we record. Then the assessor gets in and goes, ah, what's this? No, I don't think so. So you call them up and say, hey, I'm just curious. Would you accept this or what would you prefer? You know, so you can get some intel from. Good relations with the county as well.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. All right, any questions out there, folks, about going deep and wide in one county? We'd love to hear, uh, any questions you have about that, or comments, um, personal experiences, uh, with this. But yeah, let's go ahead, John.

Oh, I just said anecdotes.

Anecdotes, yes. Uh, And then let— yeah, okay, let's talk about 2 other things. So one is, when do we move to a different county? And the other is, when do we expand beyond our county? We're gonna keep our county, but then we're gonna expand. So let's talk about the first one. When do we actually move? And I know we kind of touched on it a little bit earlier, but let's give the audience some talking points here. Mike's Anal, when do we move?

Well, I've seen, experienced, uh, several people over the years that just for whatever reason it's not clicking with them. They've had a property or several properties in an area, they've been advertising them, good pricing. For whatever reason, it's just not working. But here's the kicker, other people are selling the properties. Now, it could be that their Facebook is just getting weirdly blocked or whatever, who, who knows, right? But there's something that's not resonating with them. Depending on how long it's been, I'll tell them, hey, you bought these, right? Why don't you wholesale them? Take the quick win, go out for dinner with your spouse, enjoy it, celebrate because you learned a lot, you make some nice— and then refocus on something else. So I think there does come a time when you just feel like you're beating your head against the wall, and it's like, you know what, I've really put a lot of effort in, I've adjusted pricing, and it's just— it's not all counties work. That's the weird thing. But sometimes part counties just don't resonate with you. I've seen that happen. But if you bought these the way we show you, you have an exit. You can wholesale them, you can make a nice return, you can celebrate, and you can replenish the coffers, and you can redirect it to another area with all the experience you've learned. I think there's a time where that could be a good idea.

Coffers, man, some guy's throwing out some words tonight. To me, it's also about velocity. Like, how fast can we move these? So, Mike, I don't know if you remember, but back when we first started partnering up on some deals— because I have my own business and you have your own business— and we decided, let's, let's partner up and do some deals. We picked an area and we're like, dude, nobody's working here. Like, we're gonna kill it in this area. Because I think we were a little bit nervous about competition.

Yeah.

So, so we go to the area and we buy just A lot of land. Yeah. And then it did not sell. It sold eventually.

Yes.

But it did not sell in 30 to 60 days like we're used to, right? Yeah. And we decided to leave that area. And I think it's because, you know, when you, when you kind of zoomed out on the map, like, it looked like the moon. Nothing was happening. There was— there were no RVs, there were no mobile homes, there was no nothing. Like something was off about it. We bought a lot of it and we sold it eventually, but it took a lot longer for it to sell. And why did that happen? It's because we went to an area where other land investors were not working.

Right, right. We tried to shortcut the model. And, you know, yep, here's the thing, all land will sell, and these did sell, but, you know, there's a much easier path. You know, we're looking for an active market. That's what you should be looking for, an active market. Insert— bless you.

Got a bus here.

Insert yourself in an active market and just, you know, bring yourself into that situation and start getting some deals. There's no saturation in this market. There's no saturation in any markets. You know, John, you've been in this area for a long time. Other people are there. You're still doing deals. We're in areas where there's a ton of other people. We're still doing— they're doing deals. So, um, you know, you got to have that Um, sort of stick-to-itiveness that you talk about, Scott. But—

Don't steal my word.

Uh, well, I'm just— I'm quoting you though, so it's actually a compliment. It's not stealing, quoting. And then, so essentially, you know, you can— and we did make out, we sold these properties, but we didn't need to do that. We didn't need to be, um, innovative, right? We didn't need to be trailblazers. We should have just gone where we know the deals are. But, um, you know, it's a lesson that you, you know, even, even we can learn, right, over time. They did sell, uh, but there's plenty of other areas that would have been a lot easier for us.

Yeah. John, anything to add about why you would move, uh, out of a county?

No, I think you guys covered it pretty well. I mean, the only other thing is It's just like there's the— there's kind of 2 market going rates for a property. There's what a property will sell for, right? So what you can sell a property for. But then there's also what you can buy a property for, right? And that number fluctuates over time, right? And so, you know, I think if, if that number's climbing up and up and up and up and up Like at a certain point, uh, you know, if like we were talking about earlier, if that— if there comes a point where you, you might as well just buy those properties wholesale, right? So it's not necessarily a reason to exit the county, but it is a reason to maybe start mailing other areas and start taking more of a wholesale strategy.

Very smart. You know, one thing that I will say, I was thinking of— there's many areas that I've worked over the years that are strictly just for wholesale. You can do that. I mean, if you can buy property anywhere where it's an active market at the right price, you can move it very quickly wholesale and create cash value. But then there are areas that you should just focus on owner financing, right? So sometimes there's that dual play. You could have one or two areas that you wholesale and one area or two that you use for your retail and your owner financing. Nothing wrong with that. Um, as a wholesaler for many, many years, I worked in a tremendous amount of markets because I didn't care. I wasn't trying to build a buyer's list there. My buyers list already existed in the form of other investors.

Another another benefit of staying in one county: you you learn who else is working there. Yeah, because how many how many times have we all made money? Because maybe we'll come into a bulk deal where we can buy ten, twenty, thirty properties all at once, and. You know, that's, that's a significant capital, uh, requirement, right, to, to purchase all those properties. So how do I offload half of them to recoup my capital, to create some momentum to move on to the next deal? Uh, and we, you know, when you're in a, when you're in a county where there are other land investors working and you get to know those land investors, I mean, what a great network to have. to be able to offload some of those properties. That's another benefit.

Yeah, you just talked about multiple exit strategies, right, that we have that exist here. And if you buy them right, you always have those multiple exit strategies.

Yeah, awesome. All right, well, let's talk a couple minutes about when to expand to a new county. You're going to stay in your primary county, but you're going to expand. And then we'll get to some questions, and we're almost to an hour, Zano, so you can, you know, go get your Beauty, beauty rest, because I know you're tired over there.

Well, for some of us it's, uh, gonna be close to 7, other of us close to 10. Some of us still have daylight. It's crazy. I'm looking at John, down to so much daylight there.

I know, I just ate breakfast. Great.

I think for me, I would echo what I said earlier. If I'm going to expand I might want to go to a different price point. I mean, I buy properties that I'll sell for $50 a month. I buy properties I'll sell for $500 a month, so that I might want to have some variety at different asset prices. But mostly I would expand if I wanted to just go into another wholesale area, you know, if I want to generate— because I— it doesn't matter to me. I have zero attachment to the area. If I know other investors are working there and I can buy them at a price where I can make money, Like, that's it. Like, the buyers list exists automatically. They're there, other investors. Like, if I get them for the right price, they're going to buy them. So that might be another reason why I might— or the primary reason I might expand out, just to get some more cash.

Love it. Yeah. What about you, John? Why do you expand beyond your primary county?

I think like a lot of it does for me would come to— come down to variety. So when you think about— and I've used this analogy before— like, if you think about a grocery store, they've got different products, right? And so you've got the milk, you've got the orange juice, you've got the eggs, you've got the yogurt, right? There's different functional products. And in one of my counties, right, I might actually have multiple products, right? So there's different price points, different property types that service a different audience. But if I'm in Colorado, right, in the winter, it is cold, right? You know what's less cold in the winter? Arizona. So for me to have a couple different areas allows me to service different people at different times. If I've got a property that's at 10,000 feet elevation in Colorado, that's going to be a hard one to sell in January. Right? Because people probably aren't going to be able to get to it. But if, you know, in that, in that same month in January, if I've got a 2-acre property in Arizona that's warm, like everybody in Colorado is thinking, man, I got to get there. So that's kind of the way I think about it.

Yeah, I love the The variety play, right? Add some variety to your inventory. We've all heard from potential buyers. We've all heard buyers mock us in our ads. Where are the trees, right? I heard that early on so many times. Where are the trees, man? I need some trees on my land. I'm like, okay, well, these are selling, but maybe I will add a little variety in my life and I'll buy some. property in an area that's— that has some trees.

Yeah.

And because people love trees, but, but I think it does come down to usability as well. Like, maybe I could find another area, um, that has different features, um, that has really awesome usable land, uh, and it just expands your buyer pool, I think. Um, so, but, but I do think, I think the, the, the moral of the story here is like people do better if they have a primary area and then you branch out from there. Um, yeah, because of all the reasons we, we talked about.

I think it comes down to trusting the process overall, right? They could sum it all up and say just trust the process. If you go to any area and you buy correctly and you market them at a Competitive price, eventually it's going to sell. It really is. So if it's not selling, take a look at your marketing, take a look at your pricing. Like, there's something that's not connecting with the market and you just need to adjust it.

Awesome. All right, we got a question from Ncave7147. Would it be better to pick a county that you can visit, or, or so maybe nearby to you? That's what, that's what I'm thinking. Would it be better to pick a county nearby to you? I think is what they're getting at. Yeah. John, while Mike is yawning.

Yeah. No, it is not. So I mean, like, part of it depends on where you live. And like, honestly, if I lived right next to you know, one of the counties that I'm working in, yeah, that'd be great, right? Because there's a level of connection that I have to that county. But you don't have to— you know, I've never— I haven't, I haven't put my foot on the ground on any of the properties that I purchased, right? Ever. And that's across hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of transactions. And so proximity has never been an issue for me. And it's the kind of a thing that can trip people up if they're not careful. They think that they have to be close to an area, and you really don't, right? You can, you can be hundreds or thousands of miles away from an area that you do a lot of deals in.

I concur.

Hey, I didn't even fish for it.

No fishing, no Salmon Dave there.

Sam and Dave. I want a shirt that is Sam and Dave.

John, you want lots of— you want lots of shirts.

I want lots of shirts. I want my Land Thrasher shirt, my Sam and Dave shirt, Eat Bologna by Land shirt. Bologna by Land.

I mean, some people do live near the properties. I don't have the luxury where I live in Boston area, Massachusetts, uh, The model does not sing out here. It doesn't work. So no chance. I know some people that lived out in the rural areas and yeah, they can go visit. And so there's a little bit of a nice thing there, but certainly not necessary. Right. And if you're going to use that as a criteria, you could really pick a bad area if you don't live near something that works well.

Yeah.

I hear that all the time. People are like, oh, I just want to learn this. So I figured I'll look where I know. Yeah, it makes sense in one sense, but in another sense, it's horrible, right? Because you, you're not— you're basing it on your knowledge base, which has nothing to do with where the markets probably really are.

Love it. All right, here's a question from Brian. Do you find it easier if the area you like or connect with, uh, to sell or buy? So I think, I think what he's asking is, do you find it easier if you, if you connect with the area? Is it easier to sell or buy? Um, you know what, I kind of feel like it doesn't matter what we think, right? I think it— I think it matters what the data shows, right? Like, if, if you can find an area where land is being bought and sold, it's being bought at a significant discount and it's being sold, it, it honestly doesn't matter what I think.

Right.

It matters what— it matters what the data shows. So as long as— now there are a few things that are important to me, but like the important things are I want my land to have access, road access, right? I want it to be— I want you to be able to get there. I want there to be some features in the area that are nice. I think land that you can live on and camp on sells faster. Like these are things that are maybe important to me. Maybe if you zoom out on a map, there's actually some activity and it doesn't look like the moon. Right. So those things are maybe important to me, but I don't necessarily have to connect with those land parcels myself to be able to buy and sell them. If I, if, if I can buy them at 25 cents on the dollar, it's a numbers game. And then you just have to— but you, what you do have to do is get in the mind of the people that the land does connect with.

Yes, in the marketing, you're right. Uh, I don't think a lot of the land I sell connects with me, you know. Um, but it's okay. I always use the analogy, if I use a— don't own a donut shop and I didn't like blueberry muffins, would I not sell blueberry muffins? That would be crazy. I would, I would, you know, all these people that love blueberry muffins, like, what, no blueberry muffins? Like, I don't have to love them, I just have to provide them What they want and what they need. So that's what we're really doing. We're matching people up with land that they truly desire. So it doesn't have to speak to us. What can speak to us is the fact that we can connect people with land that they love.

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. All right. From Tony Sanders. Tony, how's it going? Do you change the price when you go through the list the second time? It depends. John Burnett.

It depends. Yeah, I mean, basically it, it kind of ties back to what we were talking about before, where there's the market rate for, for what you're going to sell the property for, but then there's also the market rate of what you're going to buy that property for. One of the benefits of continuously mailing is that you keep your finger on that pulse at all times, right? And so you'll find, you know, and we talk about if your response rate is crazy gangbusters You can lower your offers a little bit, right? And your response rate will go down. You'll be able to buy at a little bit of a lower price, right? And so that number fluctuates over time, and that's what we want to hit. Sometimes it's higher, sometimes it could be lower, but ultimately it just depends on what we, what we think the market will bear. Um, and then, but yeah, I mean, I'll for sure mail somebody to the same number multiple times in a row. sometimes different numbers, right? And so it just, it just kind of depends.

Great. Awesome. I think— oh, sorry. No, go ahead, Mike. No, sounds like word-of-mouth marketing. I was just looking at the last question there from Organic Firm about if you were starting out with zero experience, do you go where the money is, or do you— where wealthy areas are, or is there a specific budget to target? So Uh, we, we want to go where people want to own land, but also within our buy box, right? There's plenty of places out there that people like to own land, and it's like $50,000, $100,000, but that's not what we're looking for. We're looking to buy land that we can acquire 25, 30 cents on the dollar, typically purchase price $500 to $5,000 or $6,000, so we can offer it on a competitive owner financing payment that attracts them but also has the unique ability to bring all our money back within first year. So we're really just looking for areas that are in demand in our buy box, um, and then we just try to get as many of them, many of them as we can, right? So it's not just necessarily wealthy areas, they're just desirable areas that fit our buy box.

Look at that.

Hey TJ, that's a shout out.

Mike's getting all the shout outs.

Yeah, Mike's getting all the shout outs.

Organic Firm TJ, but, uh, Pleasure to see you.

I think it's three to zero to zero tonight. That's it's pretty pretty bad.

Thank you. I might tell people that it drives my buddy Scott crazy when I get shoutouts. I might tell them. Yeah.

So it's not really an authentic organic.

He had some great questions and a nice shoutout. We'll take it.

A lot of prodding, a lot of prodding to get the shoutout.

I think Mike just has like built out his AI agents, and they're just crawling the comments. Shout out every 5 minutes. I built one of those. Like, that's the best way to use bots.

Well, I could— maybe next week I will have Nova join and make comments. I'm gonna try that. My AI agent that I built, and that obviously she loves very much, she tells me all the time. So I'm gonna have her log in next week and comment. Oh my God.

Hey, should we, uh, should we talk about boot camp for the last—

Yes, we should. Yes, we should.

You do have a shout out, Scott, from, uh, uh, Georgie.

Oh, look at that.

3 to 1 to 0. No, John, you got one earlier.

I'll just wear the little dunce cap. It'll be great.

3 to 1 to 1.

Actually, I was meeting with Mackenzie today. Mackenzie is amazing. She helps organize all of our events. And, um, because, um, is it facilitate? What word would you use? MC? I'm helping.

You're the MC, dude.

I'm the MC. I'm not gonna be rapping, but I am the MC for this upcoming boot camp. It's the last 3 days of May, right? Was it like the 20—

28th, 29th, 30th.

What I love about this is it's, it's strictly a value add for the people that work with us, right? We don't sell tickets to this. This is for people that are already working with us. We do this 2 or 3 times a year where people can come deep dives into the business. You know, this is the 2.0 they're doing. I had some insight today. I don't know if you guys have seen it, but things are a little bit different. There's a little bit more, uh, things are being sort of, uh Changed around a bit to really bring a, you know, a unique perspective on the business to everyone. So, um, I think it's amazing, not because I'll be the emcee, that, you know, I'm— I guess they think I like to talk a lot, uh, go figure. Uh, but, uh, we do these 2 or 3 times a year, and I think— how would I get into this, Scott, if I wanted to come to it? Um, what's the requirement?

Yeah. So, well, first we want to have a conversation with you to see if land investing is up your alley. So I would just go to thelandgeek.com/training.

All right.

And schedule a call with John, Mike, or myself. Seasoned land investors now for what, 8 to 11 years, something like that. And we'll help, we'll talk about you know, your current situation, where you are, where you want to go, what your goals are, and help you determine if land investing is for you. And if it is for you, there is a way to get into the boot camp. The easiest way is to get what's called our starter kit, which is a kind of a land investing for beginners course that we have that is a really great course that gets you on the path to doing deals. So you get the starter kit, you're into the boot camp, and not only this boot camp, but boot camps for the next 2 years.

Yeah, which I think is really great.

So 3 days of content and community. What's that, John?

I was gonna say, like, I still get stuff out of boot camp, right? Oh, for sure. Like, yeah, because we, like, we talk about the state of the market, we talk about what's working, what's not working, we do breakout sessions, we do planning, right? Mike's going to be there, and I actually saw you'll be presenting.

Maybe they didn't tell you. There's a little, uh, presentation by you that I'll have to introduce. I saw that. And Scott, you as well. There's a few things in there that, uh, things I'm gonna facilitate the ability of you guys to help people learn the business. That's gonna be cool.

It's gonna be great.

That will be fun. Um, what I love about when people get on calls with us is that truly Our agenda is nothing more than to see if what we do is a good fit for them, right? We, we ask you some questions, we try to understand what you're trying to accomplish, because honestly, it's not a great fit for everybody, but for some people it is. And if, if it is for you, then we can show you how to, you know, how to get this done in the quickest, most efficient way possible. So it's worth just getting on a call and exploring it if you think this could be something for you.

Awesome. Well, thanks everybody for, for joining us tonight. Uh, I meant to, at multiple times during tonight's episode, remind all of our watchers, the thousands of you, to, to put in the comments if there's any type of, uh, any topic you would like us to talk about.

Right.

Uh, land investing related. Um, I mean, Mike can talk about jiu-jitsu, but land investing related, uh, any land investing related topics you would like us to talk about. We would love for you to bring those to our attention. So next week I'll do a better job. Actually, next week I don't think I'm gonna be here, so you guys might be on your own.

John, you're in charge.

Yeah, it'll just be me all by myself.

All by myself. What year was that? Scott has this unique ability, you know, when songs are gone, who sang it and what year.

Well, it was Celine Dion. Uh, and All By Myself. So, oh, let's see. Well, it was a— it's a mid-'90s song. I'm gonna say late '90s, so I'm gonna say '98 or '99. Let's see what we got. I guess on the All By Myself, there's an original before Celine Dion.

So Celine Dion did have one, um, but hers looks like before her. Uh, Eric Carmen.

Oh, Eric Carmen! Look at that, Charles Jones, he knew right away.

No, I looked it up. I didn't know.

No, Eric Car— uh, Eric Carman knew. I mean, Charles Jones knew.

You know, so I— here's the thing. I grew up in the early to the mid to late '70s. I'd wake up to the station in Boston with WVBF with Lonnie Wally, and they played all this music. And it was always— my wife loves this— it's always, you know, in 4th, 5th grade, some girl broke my heart and I'd have to listen to All by myself. Yeah, it was just very torturous, you know, to hear all these love songs for a 4th or 5th grader who thinks that, you know, the end of the world because some girl won't be your girlfriend.

Well, then you definitely heard the Eric Carmen version because the Celine Dion version didn't come out till 1996, and that was way past your high school time, your grade school time, middle school time.

Yeah, just a bit. That was before my middle school times. Yes.

Oh, man. Alright, everybody. Thanks for a good night. This was fun. Hopefully, this was helpful. And we'll see you next week with another fun and engaging topic. Hopefully. Good night.

Alright. Have a great night.

Talk soon. Bye, guys.